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*

o/` Naked Eyes – Always Something There To Remind Me o/`

I feel, odd.

Slept horribly last night. It was one of those nights where I couldn’t stop thinking of *things* … I go to my “happy place” in my mind, to try to relax, and as soon as I stopped focusing on that I’d think of webserver hosting! Or getting a job! Or my parents bugging me about visiting… It sucked, I was tired when I went to bed, but it still took 2 hours to fall asleep %( Then tossing and turning all night *sigh*

I woke up fairly alert this morning. Worked on finishing up the mplayer how-to. Then just on a whim I did a search for keybindings in opera. I had heard people say that binding vim-keys in opera was hard (or impossible?) but I just decided to look, and lo! I found some help, eventually figured out myself how to do it. It was simpler than I thought *shrugs* maybe it was older versions of opera that people had trouble with? I dunno, so then I went to the plug howto site, and grabbed the Mozilla howto for vimkeys. And put them all together on a Vim-Keys How-To site. I also did laundry, dusted and vacuumed the apartment, and took a nice relaxing bath %) It was a productive day.

I got a call from the guy who is working out the webpage stuff with me, he said I got the job! Woo! We worked out some figures on to how much it will cost, and he agreed. And we set up an apointment for him to drop by the apartment tomorrow morning %) YAY! I guess I’ll be starting the design and such tomorrow %)

Um, yeah so now I’m having a strange “lost” feeling. Getting a lot acomplished in the morning turns my whole day upside down %) I think I am very very tired too, I am sure that doesnt help any. At least my allergies arent as bad today… I am trying to hold off on taking any Benadryl ’cause it makes me so exhausted. Actually, yesterday after I wrote that entry, I crawled back into bed with Myk “for a few minutes” and then woke up 3 hours later… that’s probably part of the reason I couldn’t fall asleep last night.

Anyway, I am going to link these how-to’s to my main page, probably change the sections of the main menu a bit, I’ll post the links here firs tho %)

Debian MPlayer How-To

Using Vim-Keys In Other Linux Applications

*wanders off*

o/` Depeche Mode – Blasphemous Rumours o/`

Well we didn’t *plan* on doing anything yesterday. Myk went into work for a bit, when he came home we headed over to N-Tropy‘s house. Had pizza and we were going to watch Riverworld on scifi, but after about 10 minutes we realized it was just going to be another crappy scifi channel movie and turned it off. Then N-Tropy popped in his DVD of Red Dwarf. I had heard about it before, I guess they showed it on the scifi channel for a while *shrugs* It was pretty funny %) N-Tropy said he’d rip the episodes for me if I wanted, YAY!

I also learned more about the wallace and gromit game that is coming out late this year (I hope). Gamers.com has a “preview” of the game up, woo! Wallace And Gromit Game Preview. Looks like it’ll be interesting. And it’s good that I was able to find this article, since my “News” section on WallaceAndGromit.net has been neglected for two almost months %)

I helped a friend of mine install mplayer today, and it was successful! I used the how-to that I “sorta” had written, and it worked well, so now I think it’s ready to be polished and placed on my website %) In reality, my friend helped me as much as I helped him, he got mplayer installed succesfully on Debian testing, and I got to test out my how-to! I think the biggest issue is hosting the 17 mb codec tar file that I use for the install (it includes win32 and quicktime codec’s in an easily installed format). I guess it wouldnt be so bad, I mean how many people will actually use my howto? Hehe. Now to silence Naru_Chan‘s constant clamoring about xine, I asked this friend who I helped install mplayer today why he didnt use xine, and he claimed that it poorly, or just failed to, support some file formats he wanted to use *shrugs* Seems that once you get past the painful mplayer install that it works great %) Yeah, so tomorrow I’ll try to get some work done on that How-To.

It was rather amusing how I got this person to ask me for help… I seem to be quite an advocate of mplayer in #goddess, so now when people have problems they keep coming to me! Gah! Just two months ago I was ready to give up on poor mplayer, and now they are thinking I am an expert, heehee. I’m glad I could be of help tho.

Bleh, allergies are already driving me up the wall, it seems to get worse every year. I took some Benadryl this morning, and now I am feeling quite tired %) Benadryl in the spring/summer, NyQuil in the winter, it’s amazing I ever acomplish anything %D Heehee.

Now, I must take a moment to tell you the story of the “Girl Who Cried Love” … there is this girl I know. She’s in her mid-teens, and is fairly transient with her relationships… but each time she dates someone, she “falls in love” with them. She comes to me to talk about it, each time it’s the same “I’ve never been so in love” and “He is so perfect” an “I want to be with him forever” … but every time (obviously) something happens to end the relationship. She’s hurt for a time, but the cycle just begins again. How do you deal with someone like this?

At first I thought she was just really unlucky, but this has happened several times, and each time she INSISTS that it’s different… this time she even claimed to have made marriage plans, but again, her boyfriend now feels she is distant, she doesnt see him much anymore, and things are just *dying* between them. I believe she thinks that the beginning infatuation that you generally have for someone you are dating is “love” … I think she’s just not old enough to understand that EVERY relationship loses a bit of it’s primary excitement, of cou
rse things arent as wonderful, you get to know a person, know their flaws, get used to their presence. But how would I explain this? I guess all I can do is continue to listen to her, I know she won’t listen if I say that it’s just infatuation, she’ll claim I don’t understand “true love” … I just feel bad for the guys she hurts, ya know? Many are older than her, easily burnt by someone like her, they think forever means forever.

< / gossip >

So I was on Livejournal yesterday evening, very bored (Myk was at work, and I was having trouble concentrating)… so I did a search for the interest “linux” to see if I could search some sites of people who share my interests, maybe read some interesting web logs. And you know what I found? Most people who put linux as an interest are people who “once saw a screenshot of something linux and thought it was neat” … or who have dabbled weakly in a linux install and gave up… or just script kiddies who think it’s “leet” to put linux as an interest. It was quite disappointing. I did find a few interesting ones however %)

I also found that most of the web logs had some reference to the “war” in Iraq. I am glad to hear people have interest in this conflict, but it got a bit dull, maybe I should remove war-talk from my web log, since it seems to be a well-covered topic. Hehe, nothing I can say at this point will be original.

I will however recount something interesting I saw last night. We were coming back from N-Tropy’s house, and I saw a couple of american flags flying at half-mast. One was outside a car dealership, another outside of a store. When I saw a third outside of a chain restaurant, I got suspicious and asked Myk to turn on the news radio station, maybe something had happened? Nope… still the same old war. Why would these flags be at half-mast? Is it a war thing? Is it a protest? I find it hard to believe that a company would take a stance like that…

Eh, anyway, I am going to go take a shower, and attempt to wake up more %) Damn allergy medicine! Oh well, at least I can breathe. *wanders off*

o/` Sade – No Ordinary Love o/`

I love keybindings, I never touch my mouse unless I’m surfing the web, it is much happiness.

Didn’t really do much yesterday, it was very dull %) When Myk came home we took a nap… I dont know why I was so tired, maybe it was just because I was feeling crappy. Woke up and had a big salad for dinner, it was yummie %d … Then Myk went out to the store and got some M&M’s (and creamer for the morning coffee). Mmmm m&m’s … he’s so good to me %)

I am feeling much better today.

We probably won’t do much this weekend.. probably will finish Speaker For The Dead ’cause it’s such an awsome book. I don’t know why I didnt read it faster, I think I just havent been in the mood, stressed out maybe, stress usually makes me more inclined to play games and rot in front of the televison.

Next weekend is the lan party, woo! It’ll be a nice change from all these uneventful weekends, hehe.

Anyway, I guess I don’t really have anymore to say *looks at the entry* god I’m boring %) *wanders off*

o/` A Perfect Circle – Orestes o/`

So after reading about phyx‘s fun (or lack thereof) with mplayer and svga, I recalled that you can use links (the web browser) in console with svga. What I didn’t remember is that it requires framebuffer… so when I compiled it with graphics enabled yesterday I was frustrated that it didnt work. Hmm, so to get this to work I’d need to recompile my kernel with framebuffer support *ugh*. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but do I really want to recompile my kernel for the novelty of graphical links in console? Probably not. I can see graphical links fine in x of course…

Not that I have an obsession with this new haircut (I fear I have sounded very girly during the past few entries havent I? Heehee). I guess it’s just because it’s such a big change, I’m still not used to it…

I am feeling pretty crappy, that test they took yesterday at the doctor’s office ended up causing me to bleed more than expected, I called the doctor’s office and they said it was “rare but not unheard of” but they said I should take it easy and “take tomorrow off of work if that is possible” Heh, well that’s more than possible! ;) It sucks tho, I don’t like pain. And today is cleaning day! Myk said “relax, and don’t clean tomorrow!” Rar… days like this make me feel like such a bum… but I guess it’s for the best.

So concerning the war, without getting into strange details, what is with all the media attention to “how children feel” during a war? I remember the first gulf war when I was, how old? 9 or 10? I dont think the images of war ever scared or bothered me, at that age I could barely grasp what was going on… honestly, how could children be badly influenced by this? I think it’s just adults who feel that children are only pseudo-human, the kind of adults that speak down to children, the kind of adults that kids HATE. I’d rather be honest with children, they will understand, and if they don’t, they will when they grow up… and appreciate my honesty. Even if it’s a war, everyone deserves to know what is going on, children are people too.

So that got me thinking about Mr. Rogers. I wasn’t feeling good yesterday, and I was sick of war coverage, and I stumbled upon his show. I watched for a few minutes, HE knew how to deal with issues with kids! Watching it now may seem like he is silly, but when I was little it felt good to have an adult talking to me, and although his explainations of things shielded us from the gruesome reality of life, he opened the door to understanding, and did it without talking down to us. I guess it all comes down, AGAIN, to parenting. Should 5 year olds be sitting in front of the tv watching war coverage while mommy/daddy is gone? Of course not, but there are ways of explaining issues to children, even if it’s a simple explaination like “Saddam is a cruel man, and we are going in to make him stop hurting people” .. but completely shielding a child from reality does not help. Bleh, I wish more people remembered what it was like to be a kid.

Anyway, I am going to go look for some things to work on *wanders off*