o/` BOA – Little Miss o/`

I think I need to work on my self esteem. My social paranoia makes people think I’m really qwirky…

This morning I met with the guy that I’m making the webpage through (he’s sorta a middleman, since he lives in the area). He liked the site, I showed him how everything worked, explained it all… it’s actually a lot of very simple things, but it’s *A LOT* of very simple things, so I have no doubt I’ll be getting calls from him in the next few days asking how things work %) Hopefully he’ll be happy with it and not need *too* many changes to be made.

I think I will play with Perl a little this afternoon, poor Perl has been neglected for too long! Speaking of which, that birthday script I wrote is still doing really good, I should consider packaging that up as a project for people to be able to download, hmm. Of course I still have about 20 half finished projects on the shelf that I should get to before talking about starting another %D

Yesterday turned out to be a fairly uneventful afternoon and evening, same old… ate dinner, read for a while *shrugs* I did speak with my aunt tho, and she told me that she had cryotherapy done to get rid of irregular cells, more than once, ugh! And here I was hoping I’d be lucky and only have to go through this once ;) Anyway, she has a lot of scar tissue, and had to have her son via c-section. Bleh! Anyway, I made the appointment today, I’ll have the procedure done on May 7th.

Anyway, I am going to go work on some stuff. I’m so glad it’s friday. *wanders off*

The reason I can’t email my friends on aol:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/894113.asp?cp1=1

FUCKING AOL!
FUCKING COMCAST!

*sighs and goes back to work*

o/` Sister Hazel – Your Winter o/`

Yesterday… hmm. Well I got the webpage basically done, I uploaded it to the cobalt webserver, now I just need Myk to turn on mysql so I can setup the database and stuff, yay!

We (well Myk did, I helped a little) did some touchup painting around the apartment yesterday, the recaulked the bathroom, wee fun! Actually, we should have waited to do it on a warmer day, so we could open the windows, paint and caulking fumes in a closed space == not good %) Anyway, it’s amazing what a little plaster, paint, and caulking will do. Of course Myk’s immediate responce to this was “wow, I could drill a hole in the wall for ethernet, and just fix it up before we move out! Ugh… men %) Anyway, we neglected to read the caulking instructions completely (I’m infamous of that), and after it was all caulked I picked up the bottle and said “errrm… this says ‘do not expose to water or mositure for at least 24 hours'” Doh! Myk was able to take a shower this morning, being careful to try to not get the caulking wet, drying it where needed… I think I’ll just take a little bath %) Sucks to only have one bathroom at times like this, heehee.

On monday night I was feeling kinda crappy, had a bit of a headache, and I knew if I fell asleep too quickly then I’d wake up too early, so I decided to watch some tv to keep me awake (and it was less painful than a computer or book when having a headache). Anyway, nothing was on (how unusual?) .. so I ended up watching the Discovery Health Channel… which is usually pretty gross, it’s often either a surgery or a pregnancy, ugh. But this time it was a special on Obesity, which turned out to be quite interesting. It’s amazing how some people are just predisposed to being heavier than others, and it made me feel quite guilty about my laziness %) I mean granted, growing up I developed fairly good eating habits, last night when I felt hungry I immediately went to get a salad without a second thought, and I generally do like to eat a lot of healthy things. Then again I go to Friday’s for dinner, get a fried chicken sandwich with an “extra side of mayonaise” *grins* So I’m watching this show, and I notice that some people really are more active and eat about the same as I do, and they gain weight, and it’s really sad. I couldnt weigh morethan 150 pounds if I tried (that is how much I weighed in high school because of medication I was on, I’ve lost quite a bit since then), and even now, with little activity, I seem to stay a nice healthy weight… and that made me realize that I could be really in shape, and look really awsome if I just expended a bit of energy every day to getting in shape. I see all these people who try so hard and just cant be fit, and it would be so easy for me. I should really start some sort of exercise routine… the metabolism that makes me thin won’t last forever ;)

A guy dropped by #deep13 yesterday who reminded me of my ex boyfriend in his political views. He was basically one of those people who believes all the liberalist propaganda on sites like guerrillanews.com … now I am not saying that some of what they say isn’t true, but mindlessly believing it all is just as bad as becoming an MSNBC zombie. And yet he attacks us for watching real news networks, saying that we dont “understand reality” because we are “brainwashed” by corporate news media. Not only that, but everyone in power in america is evil, the voting system is horribly flawed and just doesnt work, and a silly string of other conspriacies. I can’t stand these people! At the end of this debate he made it came out that basically he’s in favor of a communist dictatorship… of course he wouldnt admit that was the type of government he was proposing when I pointed it out to him. And on top of all this “anarchist” stuff, he said that if he were elected he’d “legalize marijuana” … so I asked why not to legalize all drugs, and I got the same sort of crap I get from everyone in this position… with which I argued back with my normal arguement about alcohol being lega
l, and killing people, and destroying families. Now you may not agree with my postion, most people don’t %) But this guy was calling for anarchy, and yet would take a stand to say illegal drugs should stay illegal! And he obviously was not educated enough to fight this point, because he didn’t even know that cocaine was ever used for medicinal purposes %) Anyway, I guess my biggest problem with him is that I agree with him on some points, I have done research in a variety of places (not confining myself to just corporate, american, news, but not excluding it like he did) and there are reasons for my points of view.. but people like this guy make us all look like fools! Especially since they don’t realize that the system that they “want to bring down” is the system that allowed them to become fat and complacent AND have the time to complain, I doubt they’d be happy if they honestly brought anarchy down upon us, or have any idea what that would mean.

Now that I am done complaining about other people, I must complain about something about myself that bothers me. On saturday I was bringing my computer out to the truck for the lan party, I unlock the car, put the computer in, and turn around, and a group of about 5 or 6 black kids (midteens) walk by, and the first thing I think? “Woa, I better lock the truck!” … As soon as I thought that I felt bad, then quickly tried to justify it, and tell myself that I would have acted the same way no matter what race the kids where… but in all honesty, I don’t know if I would have, and that upsets me. What has caused this sort of unconscious racism? I have had friends of all races, in my mind I know that everyone is the same! But then I have reactions like this… is it because I grew up in a sheltered town in the state of the union with the least minority? Is it somehow because of my parents, the way I was brought up? Is it because of the media leading me to believe that certain races are more apt to commit crimes than others? Am I just afraid of all people in this area? I don’t know, but it makes me really ashamed…

I found another person who uses debian but “cant use apt” … now tell me, what is the biggest ‘selling point’ of Debian? Well apt of course! Without apt it’s just another boring, old, pain to use linux distro… so I am assuming he is just using debian because it “looks cool” for him to doso *sigh*

Ok, I need to get to work now, hopefully this’ll be done today %) YAY! *wanders off*

o/` Lost Highway Soundtrack o/`

I am so sick of meeting bitches. You know, I try so hard to seek out fellow female geeks, and I think “hey, #linuxchix is a nice room filled with fellow smart women” … and for the first few days it was fine, but now it feels like everytime I say something it is somehow attacked *sigh*I might just leave that room. Maybe I’m too sensitive, but I’m just not comfortable there anymore… I’m sorry I’m not a freaking super genius!I went there because I thought I might learn something… *sighs*

I guess I’m in a lousy mood, I havent been feeling good, maybe it’s stress, maybe I’m sick again, maybe the crazy weather has got me feeling weird… the smallest things are upsetting me, maybe I just need to get away from the computer for a while and relax.

*Just thinks happy thoughts instead*

On sunday we went out to the store (to get soap, since we had run out) … we decided to pick up some stuff for chicken sandwiches too. Then while driving home Myk decided that he wanted to go out to eat. It had started to snow (strange!), so we didn’t want to drive all the way to the sushi place. So we headed toward the Indian food place. Got there around 4:50, they weren’t opening til 5. So we decided we should just go somewhere else. Decided on the Drafting Room, and while we were about halfway there I realized i wasnt really in the mood for beer. “Maybe wine, hey if we turn around now we can go to the Indian food place and it’ll be open!” … but we couldnt get any wine because the Indian food place doesnt have a liquor license (they don’t give enough out around here…), and it was sunday, no liquor stores open. Oh well, we decided to just go get indian food and remain free of alcohol. The food took a while. While we were waiting a guy came in with a handful of balloons, and they set up tables for what looked was going to be a birthday party. Oh geez. This is a very nice restuarant, described as “Fine Dining” on the sign, entrees starting at about $12, but it’s a small place… still I was hoping that this birthday party wouldnt prove to be annoying. Our food is brought (about 45 minutes after ordering, but this food is *Good*) and that’s when a truckfull of 20-something year olds pile into the restaurant and sit down at the birthday table. I try to ignore them, eating my food, such yummie food! Then one person from the birthday table says “woo! Goodie bags! *BBZZZTT* Kazoos! YEAH!” … oh god. The rest of my meal consisted of trying to talk to Myk, while next to us there is a party of people who were quite possibly older than me, blowing in kazoo’s playing with assorted noise-makers. And this party was thrown by a couple parents. Now could you imagine being ~22 and having your parents throw you a birthday party like that? Could you imagine going to a nice restaurant and acting like an 8 year old? They had no respect for anyone around them, and I *know* the owner was torn between her need to keep other patrons happy, and the huge check she’d be getting from this party. *sigh* It sucked.

So after that we decided we should get a movie and go home to relax. Ended up renting “Lost Highway” which I had never seen. We went home, snuggled in bed, and watched the movie.. which turned out to be quite good. It’s one of those movies that I owned the sountrack to before the movie, ’cause it’s such a kickass soundtrack %) Yeah, so I went to bed after that, it was a good night.

Yesterday I got a call from the guy I’m doing the website for. He actually called while I was writing up an email to him… and I sent him a demo of how the site would look and work, and a non-functional admin page so they could get an idea of what I was working on. I told him it’d be mostly done by friday… at least finished enough so that he could start using it… maybe a few finishing touches, and edits if anything breaks.I bought the domain yesterday, and it’s actually up and running now (no site yet, just ‘under construction’ sign), and today I finished basically all of the backend. Tomorrow I will spend putti
ng it all up on the webserver and setting it up. Thursday will be spend debugging, testing, and working up a small how-to use the site. Friday the guy is coming over to the apartment so he can get an introduction to how everything works. YAY!

Anyway, I am going to go get a couple more things done so the server is all ready for me to upload everything tomorrow *yawns* I might take a nap too, I’m not feeling so hot. *wanders off*

o/` Tricky – She Makes Me Wanna Die o/`

I’m actually a cat person, not a dog person… like these pictures might lead you to believe.

PL2 And Pogo 1
PL2 And Pogo 2

Unforutnately the batteries in the digital camera died after Myk took these pictures, so we never actually got any decent ones of the lan party, sigh!

We got to the lan party around 3:30, no one was really there yet, and it had started *pouring* out, so we decided to wait til the rain let up a bit to bring the computers in. Around 4:30 a couple more people showed up, and we decided, despite the unrelenting rain, that we’d bring the computers in (by “we” I mean the guys, they don’t often let me help). So of course as soon as we got the computers inside the house the rain stopped.

Now R2D2 is not a a huge computer, it’s not a full tower, and his insides dont make him a monster to carry… in fact I don’t have trouble carrying him, but he’s not a tiny computer either, so travelling to lan parties always takes a bit of work, and yes, after 8 hours of gaming, the last thing I want to do is drag my computer home, hehe. (Picture of R2D2 On My Desk). Luckily my monitor is a tiny 13 inch… and even if I got a bigger one sometime in the future, I’d rather bring this one to lan parties %) Myk’s 19 inch is huge and too heavy for me to carry alone.

So we ordered pizza, Barry and Rae always have tons of snack foods… rice crispy treats, brownies, chips, dip, pretzles, mmmm I ate so much, heehee. Didn’t help that I positioned my computer right next to the food, was that on purpose? %D Anyway, we started off with playing a bit of Battlefield 1942… despite my lack of practice, and generally sucking at that game anyway, I didn’t do bad *shrugs* and it was fun. Then we ate food, I played with the dogs (actually, I played with the dogs several times during the evening, heehee). Then played some Homeworld, which was ok… I have only actually played it once, and I suck really bad at it %) So of course I was the first one to die, but it was cool, I got to learn more about playing the game than I had previously known… after I died I pulled out the camera to take pictures of people playing and noticed that the batteries had died. I should really get rechargable batteries for that thing, it eats batteries so quickly *sigh* Anyway, then N-Tropy pulled out his gamecube and showed me the new Zelda game. Now I havent played Zelda in years, so I can’t call myself a fan anymore, but after seeing this game, I fell in love with Link all over again ;) It’s done all cartoony, and so it’s really cute! Definately the kind of game to get me back into console gaming again… it was so smooth too, and had the awsome little details that make games like that so cool.

So now I want a gamecube *grins* … of course there are games I want and just can’t afford for the playstation 2 as it is *sighs and pats her poor little ps2*

Well after drooling over the Zelda game for a bit I went back to playing games… we wanted to play some ut2003, but not everyone had it installed, so we wasted about 45 minutes messing around with seeing if anyone had the disks, seeing if anyone actually wanted to play, and finally decided that a few of us would play normal old UT, while the rest of the people there wanted to play their new Rainbow 6 game, which they didnt have extra copies of, and apparently you need the cd in constantly (no jump-starting), to play.. so we couldnt play anyway. UT is always fun tho %) I am a UT fiend! And actually did well in a couple matches ;) … I miss my sniper rifle that I don’t get in ut2k3 *weeps* … so old UT is definately more fun for me %)

Anyway, I am going to go read for a bit… prolly wont do anything else today, relaxing is good. *wanders off*

o/` Chorale – Voit Mua Kosketta o/`

I feel better than yesterday, emotionally anyway. I’m not sure what was wrong, maybe the stress of a lot of things just got to me? *shrugs* Myk came home from work, and we just sat around and talked for a while about all sorts of things, and I felt much better.

So a friend came over last night so Myk could help him out with his computer. Spent hours on it… ended up ordering pizza and wings, and I went into the bedroom to watch a movie ’cause I got sorta bored. They tried all sorts of things, nothing worked… they believe it might be issues with the motherboard. It really sucks for him %(

Today we’re supposed to go to a lan party. The weather outside is warm and humid… and it’s supposed to rain later, but we DID say we were coming, and I genuinely want to go, but the prospect of carrying my computer through the rain is not too appealing. Oh well, I am sure we’ll go and have lots of fun, despite the weather…

Bleh stupid allergies, can anyone suggest any over the counter allergy medicine that’s good AND doesnt put you into a coma after taking it? I have a feeling I’m going to be sneezing all day, and if i am going to a lan party I don’t want to be benadrylized ;)

Yep, so I’m gonna go take a shower now, and make sure I have all updated drivers for windows so I can play games, whee! *wanders off*

I am in a horrible horrible mood. I don’t know if I’m depressed… or just upset… or tired. I’m not hungry, tried to eat lunch and just felt sick. Tried to work on a couple things and just got frustrated and gave up. I want to sleep, but I think I am too anxious for some reason *sigh* I wish I knew what was bugging me… I should take a bath or something to relax.

I got a jar last night so we could finally get paint to do some touch-ups around the apartment. I called up to the rental office and they said I needed a few containers, since different rooms use different paints, ugh! So I ended up walking up to Eckard’s and getting some of those disposable “tupperware” container things from Glad. They were pretty cheap *shrugs* it was better than waiting another few months (to collect jars, hehe) to do the touchups around the place.

So this morning I replied to a post on the #deep13 website… apparently one of the ops feels that people idling are to blame for the decreased nightly activity… when in reality, the total room activity is about the same as last month AND how on earth could idlers be blamed for few users? I made my opinions known to him through a reply to his post, and I’m sure it’ll piss him off, but it doesnt matter… he shouldnt be critizing people who idle, when he is barely in there at all.

I did a bit of work on the Realty site’s backend today, it’s coming along nicely, I considered doing a preview feature, but in the end decided against it, it’s really not worth my time, and they said they wanted this to be simple… previews add another level of complexity… unfortunately my current mood is making me unable to do much work on it now *sigh*

So I watched about 20 minutes of that FX show “The Shield” last night after i hit the wrong button when changing to a news channel. What a terrible show! I can’t even begin to describe how bad it was, beware! Hehe…

I am going to go try to relax a bit now *wanders off*

o/` Vangelis – One More Kiss Dear – Blade Runner Soundtrack o/`

So you work for certain things in your life. You strive to meet goals, and so at the end of the day you can look at what you did and be proud of yourself. But what happens if one of your most vital roles is hit with a blow that makes you feel utterly useless? You realize that all the work you have done in this area is completely worthless, all the time you spent, all the frustration you’ve endured, not only are you unappreciated, but you now feel that no matter how hard you try, you will never be. *sigh* Sometimes things suck.

The webpage job is going good. I think I have a good design finished for the site, and I spent a lot of time yesterday browsing other real estate sites, deciding what I liked, making sure I didn’t duplicate what I disliked, and it was very productive. I began working on the php and mysql backend this morning, it’s going well… and as with every project, I am learning a lot %)

I took some Benadryl yesterday afternoon. I really didn’t want to, but my allergies were just *so* bad, teary eyes, stuffy nose, cough, and a headache was coming. So Myk came home, we went out and did some grocery shopping, came home, had some Boca Burgers, and sat down (on our bed, the tv is in the bedroom) around 6 to watch the News. Well, not surprisingly, I fell asleep. I woke up at 9:06, looked at the clock, didn’t *believe* it was 9 pm, and went back to sleep. I woke up again around 11, said to myself “fuck, I missed the west wing… hey where is Myk?” (apparently he had gotten up). Then I fell back to sleep. Woke up around 5 am, completely awake. So I got up. 11 hours of sleep! Gahh… stupid Benadryl, I really should find something that doesnt put me into a coma, hehe.

So I rediscovered my hatred for Netscape and Internet Explorer. Netscape (4.7x) just sucks because it’s old and doesnt support a lot of good tags, and it’s to be expected… I just have to make sure the site looks presentable and is easily navigatable in Netscape, I don’t expect many people to use it. Now IE… IE is the big problem, why does IE care about the spacing within the html document itself? I wanted to make my code look all pretty, but *spaces* in the code were causing me trouble. And why does IE only accept the td valign tag when it feels like it? Ugh. And why are heading tags so huge? I would define all table things in CSS, but then I’d have serious issues with Netscape. I hate browsers!

Well I am going to go back to work, need to keep focused on it so I don’t start getting all stupidly depressed *wanders off*

o/` Bel Canto – In Zenith o/`

Well I had that meeting with the guy for the webpage yesterday, and things went well %) I started on the design yesterday. It looks a lot like their letterhead, but I wanted to keep a consistant look to their stuff of course. It’s coming out quite nice, I’m really happy with it. I’m probably going to buy the domain name tonight, and hopefully today I will finish the basic layout for all the pages, woo! The difficult part of course will be the “back end” … which is php and mysql which will allow the “owner” of the site to update real estate listings himself.

I discovered the coolest thing this morning:

http://www.rocketsnail.com/chat/penguin/chat.htm

It’s chat, with dancing and snow-ball throwing penguins… requires flash 5, but the ‘good’ flash 5 that works in linux %)

I spoke to my mother the other day. Apparently my sister has been suspended from school for two days. Her crime this time? Calling the vice-principal a “dickhead.” She’s 14! And calling authority figures “dickhead”! To their face! Ugh… she is so horribly immature %( Hopefully she’ll grow out of it SOON. This time my mother said that her time home wont be any fun, “no tv, no phone, no internet” Hmm, right… she claimed she would have her sister in law come over during the day to make sure these rules are enforced, but somehow I doubt that. Annette will find a way to make a vacation out of these two days, like she always does.

So there was a thread recently on the GrrlTalk mailing list (part of linuxchix) that started with someone asking if anyone had a tux cross-stitch pattern. It morphed into writing a cross-stitch pattern creator program for linux, it was extremely amusing %) And it’s what I love about that list! So girly… yet computer related %)

Hmm, I hear a cricket. It’s not my music… the windows are closed…

Yeah, so I am going to go work on this site now *wanders off*