Today (being the Monday of this particular week) will be the day that I set out to put a down payment on my soon-to-be existing computer. I think it's rather a good deal, the entire rig will cost me $1270 CDN, or $1460 with tax, ahd I merely need to put a pittance, $450 down, in order for him to build it. He being Mr. Rieger, of Apex Computers. The reasons for me paying for someone else to build a system are threefold. One, it's much faster than if I were to catch the bus around town, tracking down the places which I have listed as having the cheapest parts. Two, it's cheaper overall, since I'd be paying approximately ten dollars a day on fare, finding parts by bus. And three, Mr. Rieger generously gives a one year warranty on parts and labour, in addition to those pertaining to the manufacturer's.

The reason I set this down now, December 8, 2000, is because I have been awake for the last two and a half days working on a secret project, and I believe I will now sleep through the weekend.

Wait, I will wish a happy birthday to Shanoyu. I don't really know you, but you are a fellow E2'er, and you took the time to announce your birthday, so I shall take the time to congratulate you.




Ah, as an addendum, I shall attach the specs for the system in question as requested by, 'you know who you are'.

AMD Duron 700

Gigabyte 7ZX Socket A Mainboard
w/ integrated Creative Labs SoundBlaster PCI128 (4-channel, CT5880 chip)

128M PC133 SDRAM

2x Quantum LM Plus 20G Hard Drive @ 7200 rpm

Video Excel GeForce2 MX 32M AGP

AOpen 48x CDROM

56k v.90 Motorola SoftModem (or PC-Tel AMR riser)
 - this I shall be replacing with DSL, when the time is right.

Linskey 10/100 PCI Ethernet Controller

Liteon Internet Keyboard

Mitsumi Scroll Mouse

MidiLand MLi 747 5-piece Subwoofer/Satelllite Set (40W total)

17" ATX Case w/ 300W Power Supply

17" Samsung 750s (.24 H)


I should like to purchase a CDR drive as well, but in that respect my finances are lacking.

My plans for monday -

  • 1000 - 1300, study for Stats exam, and finish various bits of homework.
  • 1300, do exam, try hard not to fail.
  • 1400-1700 working in argos, whenever i get there after the exam. The boss knows I'll be late.
  • 1800-2200, drink some Bud, chill out for a while.

;-) this is my first attempt at doing this, it'll help me keep my head straight, and also remind me to write up the day.


10:33 GMT - I haven't done any studying yet, I've not been awake for very long. I need to find the info on the shitty website (http://www.stams.strath.ac.uk/) if you're interested...

Stupid exams.


I think i passed the exam, it wasn't that awful. The formula sheet helped lots though... ;-)

I left my friggin jumper at work, so I shivered all the way home before I realised!! yeesh, I musta been tired...

Monday, 11:05am

Today I feel a strong sense of completion. Yesterday, Sunday, was our Internet Industry Association end-of-year defrag BBQ, held in the beautiful and leafy Telopea Park in Canberra. As this first annual event was basically my idea and project for the past month, that it went off really well makes me feel content and satisfied.

The day was great. 29 degrees, sunny with a nice breeze, around 60 people. We held a cricket match, with the geeks versus the suits. Peter Coroneos captained the suits, and I was nominated to captain the geeks. Although we lost (by 13 runs), our side had some standout players -- Tony Hill from ISOC-AU and Chris Yeo from Linuxcare ran over a dozen each, and Anton Blanchard (also Linuxcare - those boys swing!) was a fantastic wicket keeper. I bowled OK (none for six) but was out for a golden duck as opening batsman.

The bastard suits immolated the bails which were stored in a billy can to create a challenge to the geeks for next year. My brief defeat speech pointed out that the lawyers always win, anyway but the geeks get paid better. It was a fun day.

Menu for the day: organic & biodynamic beef sausages & lamb chops, conventional chicken breast marinades (honey soy, sweet chilli), Endeavour prawns, vegetatian frittati of sweet potato and eggplant. Turkish salads (tabouli & lentil, fetta & olive. Rock oysters, condiments, fresh fruit.

Today is a tidy-up day, prepare for a couple of days work in Sydney from tomorrow, with our work Christmas party on Wednesday... Should provide plenty of drama to report...

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Time: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 00:19:54 GMT
Everything server: Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) Debian/GNU mod_ssl/2.4.10 OpenSSL/0.9.4 mod_perl/1.21_03-dev

Number of nodes: 773709 (830 new since December 10, 2000 [921.6 wa7])
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Node to user ratio: 36.379 nodes per user
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New Nodes: [E2 nuke request] [National Eagle Scout Association] [I Understand] [role-playing] [Tropicana] [RPG] [the day the Citgo Sign wasn't on... day 2] [Hats Off to Halford] [folk music] [Pathfinder] [Thanks Bro] [funk in the periphery] [Integrated Noding Environment] [folk music] [msdos.sys]

Users Online (58): [dem bones] [dannye] [Sylvar] [fondue] [Dis] [Electricsound] [JeffMagnus] [hatless] [tftv256] [Fruan] [ToasterLeavings] [jbird] [WWWWolf] [simonc] [kaytay] [mcc] [crayz] [m_turner] [proj2501] [Randofu] [Tosta Dojen] [WolfDaddy] [Brian Feldman] [yerricde] [gkAndy] [Tarquinious] [Yurei] [Seqram] [AntonZ] [lillianvalencia] [pokey] [Infinity] [jt] [qousqous] [LukeyBoy] [sunhill] [Kubla Khan] [humbabba] [ursus] [Karla] [WyldWynd] [Dataknife] [illuvator] [Sirius] [MrFurious] [taschenrechner] [neoliminal] [Dr. Plaid] [mneek] [joemaller] [Storm_Damage] [zorrak] [Speck] [DataJunkie] [Roland] [sageran] [rswinford] [Ungrateful_Ninja]

JeffMagnus node count: 4071 (1 new since December 10, 2000)
JeffMagnus experience: 10077 (-1 more since December 10, 2000)
JeffMagnus experience to node ratio: 2.475 XP per node
JeffMagnus nodeshare: 0.527% (Via alternate method: 0.946%)
JeffMagnus node of the day: God

02:15

OK, so it's pretty... early... and I'm supposed to wake up early... awww, what the hell.

Happened Since The Midnight:

I tried to use GNUS, but infortunately adding a mailbox to the newsgroup list proved to be impossible even after two hours of work. (GNUS is going to be the Next Mail/News Reader for me. I just hope the university will upgrade the XEmacsen in the workstations to some version that won't crash when I try to do something that requires loading of elisp function...)

Asked help from the newsgroups.

Fighting in the catbox. Not nice. Not nice at all. Violence never solves anything. Peace, folks...

OK, time for me to go to sleep... or something... (just... one... more... vote...)

12:37

Morning! (Or afternoon. Or whatever time of day you may be living, anyway.)

I woke up slightly late, because, um, I finally got to sleep at 4 or so...

Well, time to face the challenges of the day.

14:34

Done Usenet and E-mail.

GNUS is slowly starting to understand what I'm doing. Slowly.

(Maybe I should make "Reading Mail With GNUS HOWTO" or something? =)

GIMP 1.1.30 is out. This might fix the problem I'm having with new XF86 4.0 and the Wacom tablet...

16:59

Had to reboot Linux.

I have no idea what the hell is going on. Just that I got ext2 errors to kernel log that the filesystem was corrupted - I rebooted and it fscked happily away, and it worked again.

Two theories:

  • The hard disk (/dev/hdb) is failing. It has served me for a longish time, but aside of noise® (Seagate trademark =) I've not found it to act strangely.
  • 2.4.0-test11 sucks. This is more likely; Last time when DRI made it to crash and fsck I got a physical hard disk error of some sort (not "media error", however, I think...) every time after a partition was fscked and it just resetted ide0 succesfully and kept movin'.

I can already imagine the next telephone conversation I'll have soon: "Uh, dad? You said I will get CD-R drive someday.. I could really use that now. Can I get it for Christmas?"

I backed up over 500 megs worth of downloaded files and about the same amount of files from my home directory. I wish I'd have a graphical interface for tar... (/me goes to install GuiTar)

The file stuff backup had its good sides, though - I found a copy of StarFox 64 USA version ROM. I finally got to try out UltraHLE on a strong enough machine... the game didn't work, but at least I got to hear the absolutely beautiful main menu music.

17:27

Hmm, maybe I should go for ReiserFS once the stable 2.4 gets released...

18:01

Ah, I see - it was a kernel bug afterall... "Should Be Fixed In test12".

18:58

...so Randofu is "done".

I wonder what the heck is going around me. In case you were wondering, I've seen that recently, the world around me is... well, disappearing in flames and sorrow.

http://velar.ctrl-c.liu.se/vcl/Artists/WWWWolf/sketches/notlosing.jpg

My advice: Stay Cool. Don't give up.

Even under desperation, there is always hope.

"What you're experiencing now is a temporary distortion of reality..."

If anyone out there feels sudden anger, come to me and I'll hug you. And give you a flower or something. I promise.

22:24

::WWWWolf sighs::

...I wish I would be a poet or something...

...and that people would show even a little bit more that they care about other people...

Forgive me my sins, World, for I have sinned.

22:32

Is this a tear? It's rolling down my cheek... Yes, it's a tear. And another, and another.

There are no words to describe this pain of the world.

The sky is dark,
Will drown the cries of pain
the wind, in shades of night

(These poems won't translate well...)


Other day logs o' mine...

Noded today by y.t.: no one cares about your homepage Back button GuiTar StarFox 64

Updated:

This is nuts. I'm taking an E2 sabbatical. It's obvious I need a break from here for a while.

Ciao.

(Oh, and don't worry; this isn't how I quit - if I were quitting quitting, you wouldn't know about it)

Seeya later.

today was the day that it began to feel like christmas.
i woke up. my sister informed me that she and i were going to decorate our hovel and let christmas in. i became rather miserable, as i was not in the mood. (christmas decorating is only bearable if you are in to mood). then, suddenly, my salvation came.

outside, on the street, i could hear the shrill, screaming voice of an old woman.

"bah humbug! it's not snowing. this isn't snow! i moved here from toronto to get away from this shit!"

i looked out my window. there was an old woman, a few flakes of drifting white stuff flying through the air as lazy as my brother, and her dog. no other people. she was yelling at her dog. the christmas spirit had found me. i was happy. i decorated. and made fudge. it was great.

The new computer is just about done. I still need to get a cheapo dvd drive and maybe another hard drive. Oh, and a sound card so I can listen to my tunes. I talked to James the other day. He was having a party up in San Francisco, but when it finally happened, I suddenly got all timid and shy and didn't go. Now I need to clean up all of the old computer parts and dump them in a plain, brown box or something.

My sister finally got engaged to Jeff. I'm very happy for her.

sunshine wrote me from Venezuela. Yay!

I started looking for another job tonight. I looked on dice and hotjobs. I hope I don't have to go through a recruiter again this time. I hate feeling that half of the money I'm making is going to the damned headhunter. Oh well. A necessary evil, perhaps.

At least I'm done with my Christmas shopping.

---

Heard back from James. He's not mad at me for missing his birthday. That's good. I don't like people being mad at me. My mom got a box of persimmons from my Auntie Pauline so I guess she'll be eating persimmons for the rest of the year. Spent most of the morning writing random crap in my journal. Started to write a field guide to hanging up Kewpie Dolls on a wall so, of course, it hasn't been all that productive.

It's an almost refreshing feeling, trying to pack up your life and put it in little bags. It makes me realize what's important to me, as I take up precious space within my backpack for my notebooks and papers from years past. It'll be heavy, but I don't mind. I fill the rest of the space and the space of a small suitcase with clothes I'll wear, a couple sweaters, little necessities, bathroom oddities, five blue ink pens, a couple photographs, Little Earthquakes, a couple things of sentimental value that don't deserve to be left in my drawer.

I know I'm missing something but I can't think about what it is. I move all my important files, all the writing I've done on my computer, and move it somewhere I know it'll be safe. I start up a hotmail account because I won't be able to log back in here, and make sure I don't lose anything precious. Not again.

I write down email addresses and regular addresses and phone numbers, just in case, not wanting to lose touch and wondering if it would matter if I did. I don't know where I'm going, and I certainly don't know how I'll get there, with two dollars and 37 cents to my name, a research project due in three days that I can't possibly finish now. Maybe I should be frantic. But I'm not.

I feel bad about leaving all my books, not knowing where they'll end up, not wanting them to be packed away into an attic, unread and untreasured. All my CDs, and all my space, but it doesn't really matter, anyway. I guess I've never stopped running away, and I wonder if that's what I'm doing now, but I don't think it's all bad. Where will I go? they ask, and I don't know. I've done it before, and I've had nowhere to go, and I'm not really worried.

back | days | forth

9:45 GMT

How does one normally feel when one knows one cannot provide everything in the world for the one they love?

Guilt? Anger? Hurt?

So, as per usual, I miscalculated the amount of money I would have left. I completely forgot about the huge phonebill that would be paid automatically. It's ironic that the amount of money I have spent on calling my beloved is equal to buying a plane ticket to fly to her... twice. But do I blame her? No. Instead I ponder my awful financial situation, I wonder why I am so terrible at living within my means. I, of course, have my usual list of excuses; I bought my house with no support from anyone and had to borrow money to pay for all the furnishings, or I should have a better job by now, or whatever. Each excuse is just a lie, a denial of the mistakes I made, whether slacking at work or just letting myself get deeper into debt through simple lazy apathy.

Even now, I sit at work waiting for yet another appraisal where I will be told to work harder, take more personal responsibility and communicate better. I wish that I was more proactive, harder working, more extroverted; but I have been like this for a long time. Again, I find myself thinking that it is someone else's fault, never my own. This time, I think I will blame my father. He left when I was 8 or 9, so it is his fault that I changed from a happy outgoing child to a withdrawn husk, never playing or laughing for a long time afterward. Of course, that is perhaps not the entire truth; I was introverted from the first year at junior school, moving a to new town perhaps scared me more than I needed at such a vulnerable time.

So, yes. Um, it's all everyone else's fault that I am such a loser at money and my job, OK? :-)

So, the point of all that tangent? Well, I have suddenly run out of money before christmas, so I will not be able to afford all the wonderful things I wanted to do for my fiancee. How does that make me feel? Damned awful. I curse the day I thought "Yeah, I will be able to pay that credit card off with next months overtime" or "Yeah, five years at XX% isn't too bad" or even "Yes, I really need that stereo."

It's not as though I have no presents for Dana, just that the pile of presents for me will be rather larger than the pile of presents for her... and that sucks, not because it is a competition, but because I have precious little money and I want to do the best for her. Huffpuff, I wish I would just win some money or something. eek, the lament of the man who is terrible with money :-(

But, in other news, I decorated an entire wall of my bedroom yesterday! So, even though I got a paint fume headache, I can now put curtains up and make one wall at least a little more homely.

11:15 GMT

One of my many bosses has just asked me to sign a bunch of christmas cards for our customers. I refrained from telling him to fuck off, instead politely declining the signing request. What exactly would I sign them? "From Anthony, the guy who makes your update CDs, even though he is a talented web designer" ??

I am sure I will get an attitude readjustment talk soon...

Nightmares woke me to grey skies outside and in.

This is ridiculous. I have to get some things straight with her over the next little while, I need some closure, or answers or something besides doubts and suppositions...

Thing is, I want to be there when her compass finds her true north. She has never offered anything but friendship, but I want more - a piece of her life and I will accept the fault for that.

"I can fall in love at a distance of thirty feet, through rain and snow." - from a 'three lines free' my brother wrote in the university paper. I'm older than him, and my range is upwards of 1000 miles over slender copper wires, over coded beams of light. But this is like training to emotional failure. The weight is about to drop.

Gonna be a long day.

I woke up today thinking it was the Christmas Holidays already! (Hmm..sounds familiar.)

7:29am EST
But then I came to my senses and discovered myself waking up exactly one minute my alarm clock was suppose to go off. And WOW my room is cold! I miss being with my Love and staying warm in her cozy room.

This weekend was amazing! I ended up buying Final Fantasy IX for my Love as a Christmas present and played it for most of the weekend. We were suppose to go out to some Japanese cultural event on Sunday, but had forgotten. I guess it's because we had already sold our bodies to finance our Final Fantasy habit. And what did we have for lunch? Fish n' chips. We finished Disc One already with about 10 or 12 hours of play.

The weekend was so relaxing, that I really thought I was on vacation today. I suppose also, my brain hasn't re-adjusted itself from telling the rest of me that I am not in school anymore. Exam time is now for people in university. And last year, I was there, but had no exams. I had about one month's worth of holidays just playing Playstation games. And this year, my brain was probably expecting the same, hence my almost not waking up today.

9:40am EST
"Hmmm....it seems as though I think my best thoughts in solitude. This is what I think as I'm in the washroom. (Is this too much information?)

10:30am EST
I found out that the entire office is going to "leave early" today because of the impending snowstorm. I suppose they want to avoid traffic and the weather conditions. I, on the other hand will stay for the duration of my shift, and maybe leave a little early. I don't even think it'll be that bad. My drive on Friday night when I was going to Ottawa was bad with near white-out conditions. I drove for about two or so hours from Toronto to Kingston in that weather at an average of 80km/h. I feel brave and stupid for staying here longer.

11:00am EST
I feel like Charlie Brown placing my elbows on my cubicle wall and talking to my co-worker.

2:39pm EST
It's snowing as hard as ever. People at work are still here. I wonder when they are leaving. I haven't done much today except e-mail a few database links. I should really consider basing my work at home unless I really need to be here. Is this how the software industry is supposed to work?

3:36pm EST
WOOHOO! I'm going home early! Time to play in the snow!

took cozmo to the vet. i should have put it off. $200.00 total. i don't think i'll have enough to cover the second ring i bought, and i deffinitely won't have enough money to bring mom another little gift she asked me for. i don't quite know what to do about the situation. ugh.

at the vet i found out that cozmo is probably a purebred bearded collie, and may get up to 60 lbs. they estimate his age as 7-8 months. currently he is 21 lbs. they don't think he'll get all the way to 60lbs, probably somewhere between 40 and 50, but even still. he's a bigger dog than i was led to believe when i adopted him. i don't mind, i'm keeping him regardless. he is sweet.

but god. i know i needed to take him to the vet, but it really should have occured to me that i should wait until after coming home from mom's house. if i can't pay for the ring i was to give her, i'll have to give her the one that is already here. that's not such a bad thing, but... argh. i feel like a heel. poor poor planning. dumb peg. guh.
so everything is cool. i reactivated an old credit card. i wish i had thought about it before asking my sister for money. i feel like a loser.

so i have taken a look at stuff about bearded collies, since that is what cozmo has been officially identified as. they're dogs, needing standard dog care plus some extra attention to their long hair. cozmo likes being brushed, so that shouldn't be a problem. the problem i DO have is that if he's going to get bigger, i need better accomodations for him... a larger crate than what he has now. on the plus side, they are well suited to sleeping outdoors, so craig's covered porch should do well, if everyone is agreeable.

time to vacuum. adios.
GIVE IN TO MATERIALISM, NO. Christmas presents always leave me slight nausea. So I've decided to give most of the allocated xmas budget to charities, and a minor part of it to 'real' gifts. Still, I'd like the 'real' gifts to be as non-standard as possible (two of them will be edible, I think).

BLIND DATE coming up. Need to do laundry.

I am going to put the finishing touches on my room later this evening & start drooling over furniture ads in Wallpaper*. Might get some spare time to set up bind for the apartment's LAN, too.

Soundtrack for today: I'll stop by the store on my way home and check if Freddie Wadling's new album is available.

Today my mock GCSE exams started (aside from the 2 english literature papers I did last week and completely messed up). For anyone who doesn't know, GCSE stands for General Certificate of Secondary Education. Here in England GCSE's are the key to actually getting somewhere in life. They are the first exams that you take that really count for something, however, they count for more than just something, they count for everything! If you are unfortunate enough to fail your GCSE's you have no choice but to sit them again, this is because when you go for a job it's these results that they ask for. Fortunately, these are only the mocks, i.e. a sort of "pretend" exam which is to be treated like the real thing only it doesn't matter so much if u do badly.

I started off the day with a nice refreshing 2 hours of maths (end sarcasm). It wasn't so bad, but there was one question on the paper that involved an algebraic magic square. So far I don't know of anyone who managed that question! Other than that it went well and I think I'll have done good (shame it doesn't count as the real thing if you do good).

Later in the day i was back in that exam hall again, only this time for a Religeous Education exam. I felt like screaming, a full 2 and a half hours of a torturous exam that nearly killed me. RE exams are a lot harder than all the practice questions I've done in class, perhaps it was a little foolish of me not to revise for that one. Well anyway that's about it today. I'm going around a friends house after I finish doing this writeup and then I'll probably be going to bed a little earlyer than usual since I start tomorrow with a biology exam... does the nightmare of exams ever end?

The weekend was mainly spent in unpacking/cleaning/moving furniture as the sequel to our recent move. Things are going quite well; most of the disorder is limited to one room at this point.

You may recall in a previous episode my alarming discovery: that my husband's platonic friend had filled our attic with her debris. I went up there like a fury to organize the stuff so that we, too, could use the space (!).

As I shifted things about, I found a man's hat (!), and then a box of mens shoes (quite large), and the light began to break upon me: that this stuff was not in fact the unwanted belongings of Miss Platonic Friend, but things pertaining to the owner of the house himself. Gosh. And I had been such a heel to her (behind her back, of course).

Was told yet again that I look like David Duchovny, yes Mulder from the X-Files. That's the seventh time now (not like I'm counting or anything). My friend Dayton said, "If only you could find a girlfriend that looked like Scully." "If only," I thought, "If only." note: I have a little obsession with Scully, but then again what X-phillie teenage boy doesn't?

My cousin said I looked like Mulder, Trent Reznor, and a young Scarface yet again. I can see the Mulder somewhat but Scarface. Come on now! Oh well, that was pretty much it, more games, Rogue Spear and Half-Life.

Oh ya, and send me a postcard, check out my homenode for the info. THANKS!!

6:00

Suddenly, the dream I'm having about wiring the Air Force Academy with cat 5 is met with the addition of the idiot college dropout DJ on the local pop radio station. His monotone voice seems distant, and he's just rattleing off a list of cities. Why? I slowly come out of my restful slumber. A glance at my window shows that there is a lot of snow on the ground! As I begin to get up and look at it, I realize what's going on on the radio: SCHOOL CLOSING ANNOUNCEMENTS! I turn the radio up and listen intently.

I'll repeat the list one more time. In Illinois: Alton, Astoria, Quincy Catholic schools, Quincy Christian, Quincy College- erm, I'm sorry, Quincy University.

Huh? Why are all the Quincy schools out except for us?

And Quincy Public schools.

>---->====>====>*<====<====<----<

The weather really isn't that bad. We've only got about 1½ inches, which is nothing for us hardy midwesterners. I've gone to school with b4 inches before. I think the superintendant must have been watching channel 10, where the idiot weatherman Cory McCloskey predicted that we'd get 8 inches combined with freezing rain and high winds. Oh well, I don't care. I'm posting this and then leaving, 'cause I've got to go break out my Flexible Flier.
Lucky me had two exams today - Basic Engineering M1 Materials and Mechanics, neither of which went too badly. In between, we hung around the QMU and people other than me played pool. I didn't because I'm so crap at it.

Gort a call from work this evening - the job that pays lots to stand around PC World to try and sell iMacs. I had previously been down to work every weekend until Christmas in their East Kilbride store, which was a bit of a hassle to get to, but worth it for what they pay me. But then they realised that nobody buys computers in EK, so fired me.

Now they can offer me three more days demoing. This Sunday, and the two remaining Saturdays this month. The problem? It's in Edinburgh. I'm not sure I'd like to negotiate the M8 on my own, even if it is first thing on a Sunday. And I've yet to discover if there's a train station nearby. Lets hope someone knows.. :)

Today was the most boring days I've had in a while.
Last night, they had been forecasting 5-8 inches of snow. Some teenagers would put off all schoolwork in anticipation of a snow day. I, however, live in the Des Moines Public Schools district. As in Des Moines, Iowa. This means that due to the ungodly amount of snow we have been known to have, it takes a tiny miracle to get the schools to shut down. Oh, the school districts for our suburbs and other cities in central Iowa are smart enough to shut down school, but our sadistic school board has a real problem with the whole idea. So I continued to prepare for my Monday as I normally do. This consisted of doing homework that I had the whole weekend to do but chose not to.
I woke up at 6:15 this morning. As I pried myself out of my warm, almost womb-like bed, I decided that we must have school since my parents had not told me otherwise. Of course, the first thing my mother told me was that school had been cancelled. I did not feel elation or any joy. Rather, I felt a type of emptiness. My plans for the day had been ripped from me! They weren't very enjoyable plans, but they were mine, dammit! I proceeded to go through my morning routine. I get up at 6:15 every day anyways, so I had no desire to go back to sleep. I spent most of the day playing Final Fantasy III. That's right, my Super Nintendo has yet to fail me. This monotony was broken by brief episodes of activity, none too exciting.
I thought that by now someone else would surely have shared about the god-awful weather in the Midwest, but I see only one post from Illinois. In Des Moines, we were at 1 degree pretty much all day, with wind chill of -30 to -40 degrees. It was not a fun day to be outside, as I had to be twice. But then again, any other climate would sort of weird me out at this point in my life. Snow and bad weather is normal and acceptable here. I love it, although I must admit that I hate it as well.
8:00 PM

Very frustrating day at work.

The networking group switched over our internal network from a FUBAR'ed 55.* address to a more correct 192.168.* address. This messed up some code that was tied to specific IP addresses on the 55* network. It also caused some problems with the firewall and other security stuff. So not only was it necessary to go through several software systems to update their configurations, but it was slow to impossible to telnet into those machines over the network.

Also, we updated something in the windows domain that required all of our computers to be reset. My userid changed to match the userid in my email address, so that meant that I lost all of my configurations and links to programs in Windows. As long as it was all gone, I decided to upgrade my box to win2k. It's alright, but I've got a lot of stuff to reinstall and reconfigure now.

My stomach is somewhat upset, but I don't know if it's from lunch, hunger, anxiety, or just having my nerves frayed from the chaos today. I do seem to feel a little anxiety towards our christmas party; more now since I'm bringing someone with me. But I don't think it's all from just that.

I didn't get anything done on my list from yesterday except "go to work". I will go to the gym after work, and hopefully pick up something from the grocery store or a fast food place so I have something to eat tonight besides soup. I might just get fast food since I'm probably going to be a sweaty mess after my workout.

Right now, I'm still at work waiting for a co-worker to show up so he can make a hardware modification and reboot the server. I need to be here in case some application doesn't come up properly after the restart. I can probably do this from home, but I'm not going straight home from here, so I should wait.

I picked up a t-shirt during lunch at a place called Hot Topic, which has written on it a few dozen times "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me." I'm not sure if this line originated from the Simpsons or not... :)


10:46PM .. er.. 11:10PM

Weird.. my clock was off by 24 minutes. I just noticed because I left the gym at 10:50, and I know I didn't travel back in time :) BTW, there's a very nice simple utility for Windows called WebTime that synchronizes your computer clock to the standard time servers on the net.

I have Sara's contact info, so I think I'll send her an email tonight sending her my info in case she needs to contact me. I'll probably see her tomorrow night anyway at the pool hall..

I've got a lot of energy tonight, which is bad because I need to get to sleep fairly early (probably in the next hour). I guess it's going to be a Unisom night tonight.

The front seat of the car is interesting.

That is the only real comment that I have on this past weekend. After going down to Santa Cruz, I feel refreshed, not pooped, as one might expect. Especially after discovering exactly how interesting the front seat of a VW Golf can really be. I will leave that comment to the imagination, however.

I drove down with this guy who might be my boyfriend. It is hard to say, because these things are so ill-defined these days, and I hate to piss anyone off by referring to him as such if that is not the case. At any rate, he's the fellow I've been hanging with for the last month. We met in Vegas, strangely enough, though I live in Oakland and he lives in San Francisco. This is the way it is in the computer industry, I suppose. It was my first time down in Santa Cruz. He used to live there for a while, so it was not his first time (I have a keen and highly developed talent for pointing out the obvious.)

We went to a very entertaining concert, which was a lot of fun. His "Ex" was there hanging around for a good deal of that, which was strangely weird to me. I don't really know why this was weird, but I didn't really know how to act or what to say. It was strangely more annoying than I would expect, I was mad at myself for being annoyed. How childish. She seems like a very cool person, I just don't know what to say . . . it's not like we are likely to be best friends or anything. She doesn't seem all that friendly toward me either, and I guess that is what made me uncomfortable. It's probably all in my silly female head, though. I'm sure I'll deal.

We hung around, partied, saw the scenery, etc. It was a really good time. Didn't really leave until the wee hours of the morning on Sunday. Sunday, we slept in, ate at a Jewish Deli (I am addicted to matzo ball soup and latkes), got ice cream, drove around in the Berkeley hills, and hung out with his parents. I don't know if any of you caught the last part of that, but let me repeat it: "and hung out with his parents." It wasn't exactly planned out that way, but he needed to return the car and such, and given the fact that we were in Berkeley at the time, it was easier to go straight to Albany, than to go to Oakland and drop me off, and then meet up later. It was a lot of fun, actually. I always enjoy meeting people's families. It is facinating to me for some reason. They all seemed like cool people. I met Mom, Dad, the brother, and the brother's girlfriend.

Today was a typical Monday, I'd rather not discuss it, in all honesty. I finally got home from work, and for some reason whipped out the classical guitar book, and decided to attempt to learn how to read damned sheet music Sheet music annoys me, but seems necessary somehow. I think I'll have a beer and read the end of "The Cryptonomicon" by Neil Stephenson.

Crawled to all my classes... Crawled cause I was on the phone with my friend Aaron trying to figure out our chemistry problem set. At 4 am, I did... Only to find out in the morning the proffesor wasn't collecting it...

Got back, don't know how... And passed out till 8:30 pm...From that time on, been studying for my Microbiology Lab Practical, yeah, for 6 hours. Nothing eventful happened there, except that I went to study in the hallway since Crystal, who I do love dearly, could not shut up, and talking is bad if you are trying to learn a semester worth of stuff...

Day was topped off with me sitting down on a plate of Katsup left over from my fries. Well, at least I made my friends laugh... So now my butt is stiky and I am too tired to shower...

Was going to go to bed, but Aimee now wants to run away from school cause she is so stressed, and I have to talk her out of it. Though I think 3:20 am is a good time to cut this node short and go to bed.

Exam week sucks.....

The alarm goes off, and I hit snooze. A few times. Then I wake up, look at the clock. 8:30. Shit. I must have turned it off. I get up rather quickly, start to rush, and then relax. If I don't have set hours, why does it matter? I can just stay late, as if anyone would notice.

A glance outside. It wasn't snowing when I went to bed, where'd it all come from? The beautiful white landscape, polluted by roads, cars, slush, as the snow comes down to attempt to bury that and make things serene. A bad drive, even though I'm close.

A shower, a bowl of cereal (I need some oatmeal for mornings like this, something warm.), and I eventually wander out to the car, and clear it off. Snow inside my gloves, up my sleeve, in my socks. Cold, as effective as the shower at waking me up.

A slow drive, and I make it in to work by 10:00. Some time reading websites that I ignored over the weekend, some time on Everything. Plenty of people not at work, but that's not too suprising. An e-mail, announcing that the facility will be closing at noon, and I need to go home. Always nice.

I have yet another day to my weekend, as there wasn't enough time at work to really count. A change into comfy flannel pants, my hair in pigtails for fun, and plenty of time ahead.

I play, I clean (still stuff to be done, but not much), I chat on IRC, I play. A wasted day is always good.

About 6:30, I decide it's time to do something I've been putting off. Friends from college that I haven't talked to much, that don't yet know about the details of my big changes in my life, deserve to be informed. I take the time to write, not just a small note, but something that runs to a couple pages long, and I feel good about.

I click send. Amazing how such a small action can initiate such a big response. My stomach starts dancing the Nutcracker Suite in fast forward. Was this the best method? I'll soon find out.

More playing, no response. More chatting, no response. One bounced message, an e-mail address out of date, she might not find out for a while.

Hours pass. A response. The same person who's e-mail bounced - someone else forwarded it on to her, as I asked them to forward to anyone I missed. The person who forwarded it is an important friend to me, that I want to stay that way - he's read it, but not responded. I am uncertain how to take it.

I realize that, as people read, as they respond, I get to see deep into who they are, by initial reaction alone. The core personality is exposed with something so big, so important, that they can hardly react. I will know things about them I never knew before, and they may not even realize that I have learned these things. It is appropriate, though, as I've dug deep into myself and given them a window into me that few expect to see, and I get a glance in return.

Bedtime arrives, and I wonder what the future will bring. Other than work, which seems a given, as the snow has stopped coming down.

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