o/` Craig Armstrong – Rise o/`

Have you ever tried to do scripting/coding/programming after taking DayQuil? Well don’t, all you end up with is 3 hours wasted and a big mess of incoherent code *grins* Needless to say I didn’t get anything done on that script yesterday. It’s ok though, I’ll have plenty of time next week.

Well last night escapepenguin joined the ranks of xanga people who have entered into the vast depths of my favorite chat room, #13thHour. He follows in the footsteps of sevenoverzero (yes, I saw you come in one night, don’t try to deny it, too bad it was dead), and radbatik who visited often enough to be put on the members page. It’s cool to see people dropping by, too bad I wasnt there when escapepenguin came in, I was relaxing by the fire reading that Dean Koontz book (on a side note, I agree with you escapepenguin about Koontz, definately a “ramen writer” the book held my interest but sucked, hehehe). Myk (Time is the nick he uses in IRC) came into the livingroom with that moderately jealous look on his face that he gets when a guy drops into the room saying he knows me to tell me someone I knew had dropped by… poor Myk, sometimes I dont think he realizes how much I love him (% Anyway, by the time I wandered over to the computer it was too late *shrugs* be sure to come back some time! That invitation extends to everyone of course %)

So last night when Myk came home I was feeling really zoned out. I hate that! I ended up snuggling with Myk and we took a short nap (I was so exhausted), then he got up, I didn’t even hear him, which is odd… I woke up finally around 6 not feeling much better than when I had lied down, Myk told me to stay in bed while he made dinner. He’s such a sweetie %) We had a nice fire last night too, luckily had some of those starter logs because the wood outside had gotten snowed on, and while the temperature went up last night it melted so the wood was *wet* and just didn’t want to burn. Myk did manage to get a really nice fire going tho, it turned out to be a really nice relaxing evening, YAY! I love our new livingroom setup, it’s the perfect snuggling/reading place now, I always feel reluctant when I have to go to bed from there, hehe.

So it’s raining out. Yesterday the temperature was in the 50s! So all the snow is melting… Usually I’d be sad about this, but because the roadcrews around here arent great at removing snow, there are snow piles in all the worst places! Half the roads we drive down to get to the local grocery store are almost blind to people coming out of a side road, and the people coming out of the side road are just as blind to oncoming traffic… I don’t worry too much about my own driving skills when it comes to this, but there are some crazy crazy drivers out there, and they love to cut me off. So the sooner those huge piles are gone the better. Oh that makes me feel so old %( Thinking about the practicality instead of the fun.

I finished Intensity last night, that markes the 3rd book I’ve read since I last posted reviews… I should get on top of that. I’m reading Eric now, a Terry Pratchett book. It’s only about 200 pages so I’ll probably finish it by the end of this weekend. *Frowns at her bookshelf* so few books I havent read! I still have about $20 on that gift certificate to barnes and noble that my mother gave me for christmas, and I wouldnt mind reading Orson Scott Card’s Homecoming series again, hmmm… Yay books! %)

Oooh I hates colds! Each year is almost the same tho, Around October-November I get a cough (no other symptoms) that lasts for weeks, every year whoever I am living with says “you should see a doctor, you have had that cough for a long time” … I never do because I know it’ll go away eventually. Then, sometime when the weather is changing in the winter I will catch
a cold that’ll be pretty icky. Luckily I don’t often run fevers, havent had one in *years* but I still do not like feeling tired and coughing so much, bleh. Ok, I’ll stop complaining now, I just hope Myk doesnt get sick.

I spoke to my sister Heather (PurpleDragon11, 19 years old) yesterday, she seems to be doing alright. Of course she HAD to tell me that her Canadian boyfriend now has a warrent out for his arrest. “It’s all a big misunderstanding” oh boy! A great misunderstanding and yet he doesnt want to turn himself in to get this worked out like any normal person would do? Hmmm smells fishy! But it’s her life, I remember what it was like at her age, falling for a complete loser… nothing I can say will make it better, but I clearly expressed my disapproval. *shrugs* I guess all of us Krumbach girls have a tendancy to lose our heads when it comes to men, ugh! Ah, and she informed me that you can get a US-Canadian dual citizenship. She assured me of this after she mentioned that she might move up there after graduating college, oy… I guess she has “ties” (family) to the US so she can get this dual citizenship, I don’t know, I havent looked into it, but moving to another country for a guy? Oh man, what if things dont work out? You aren’t a couple towns or states away from family, but in another country! What a mess… she’s only in her freshman year of college tho, hopefully she’ll see the light, or this guy will clean up his act before then. Anyway, she asked me when I was coming to visit, I told her about the car troubles and she seemed to understand, I’m sure she’ll relay that to my father. I need to email my Aunt Elaine too, she wanted us to visit *sigh* that is definately not an option anytime soon, stupid cars! Rar.

I doubt we’ll do anything today, I don’t really feel up to going out anyway. Maybe we’ll make another fire this afternoon, mmmm that sounds nice %)

I have to say I am really liking this Linux Chix mailing list. The PLUG list is full of men with big egos who get off on proving each other wrong while exhibiting their “vast knowledge” of linux. It’s really not very helpful to someone like me, and prone to flames %) I don’t know why the linuxchix one is so much different, maybe because there are more newbies on the linuxchix list? Maybe because most women dont have that ego problem? *grins* Whatever the reason I have actually replied to a couple posts (I have never replied to anything on PLUG), and I feel really comfortable with it.

Yeah, so I should go grab some breakfast (or lunch now?) and take my daily dose of Quilly so I stop sneezing and coughing all over my poor desk, hehehe *wanders off*

o/` Better Than Ezra – At The Stars o/`

This is going to be short.

I officially have a cold. Yesterday I coughed so much that I made the pain in my chest get even worse, and when I woke up this morning I felt like my insides had been taken out, stomped on, and put back inside me… ugh, not to mention the fact that it felt like I hadn’t slept at all. I cleaned the apartment like usual this morning. I’ll have to leave the mopping til tomorrow, I’m just so exhausted.

I actually got quite a bit of work done on that php stuff yesterday once I pushed myself into being interested in it. The mysql database has 4 columns, one for an id number, one for title of article/update, one for article/update text, and one for status. The ID will be used to reference each entry (it auto-incriments with each entry), the title and text of the update are sorta self explainatory %) and the status will be either “active” or “inactive” which will be read by the php, if inactive it will not be posted on the page, if active it will be.. this can be toggled easily by the php admin interface. The Admin interface will allow you to add new updates, edit old ones, and as mentioned before, toggle active/inactive. It’s actually fairly close to being finished too %) After I finish I am going to put in comments and write a readme file about putting it together, mostly for that friend of mine who was interested in the script, but if I am going to go through all this work I’ll probably post a tar.bz2 file of it on my website as well, we’ll see.

Anyway, I am going to go try to focus on working on that script some. Stupid DayQuil *zones out*

o/` Peter Murphy – Subway Epilouge o/`

I just read back through the past couple entries, boy what a week! I don’t do well under stress, and this was all quite stressful… I am so happy it’s over.

I woke up this morning with a lot of tightness in my chest, each time I breathed in I’d start a restricted asthma-like coughing fit, it hurtys %( … hopefully it’s just a morning thing (I often have cold-like symptoms when I wake up in the morning that go away before noon). But until it goes away, yuck, I hate feeling sick.

*Goes to take a bath*

That didn’t help much *sigh*

I am not in the mood to work on that php update thing, bleh… Maybe I can just zone out most of the morning and I’ll eventually get into the mood. I think it’s because today is like a monday, Myk went back to work this morning, so although it’s thursday, I still have the “i have all week to do stuff” lazy feeling %(

I shouldn’t complain so much, what’s with me today?

I started reading Dean Koontz’s Intensity last night (finished Homebody wednesday). It’s starting out ok… Koontz is a pop author, so employs pretty cheat tricks to keep the reader interested, and it’s a bit easy to read for my taste *shrugs* I’ll read it tho, the story seems pretty good I guess.

Anyway, I put together a little page that has some of the pictures from the snow storm this past weekend, YAY! Check it out: Snow Storm 2003

Bleh, I’m obviously not in the mood to write %) I am going to try to get some work done on that update php project, yes, I will MAKE myself work on it *wanders off*

o/` X – Crystal Ship o/`

They just towed the Jeep away. Hmmm, maybe some history would be good %)

Yesterday was quite busy, and I guess I started getting out of the “freaking out” mode and into the “depression” mode. But then I tried to get ahold of myself. In the end, Myk is the one who needs to worry about getting everything paid for, going to work, etc.. so what am I to do? I HAVE to be there for him emotionally through this whole car trouble, so I can’t be weak. I was able to pull myself out of the depression. We rented a car last night (Enterprise again… they said they’d pick us up at 4, instead they came at 5:30 and did all the paperwork in our doorway since the place was closed already. It was kinda sketchy. Sketchy! Hah! Anyway, we got a crappy Ford rental, decided to eat dinner… then go to the Toyota dealership to look at the Rav4’s.

We get to the dealership (after an interesting partially snowy drive in the stinky Ford, I HATE FORDS), take the Rav4 for a test drive, and it’s SOOO nice. Exactly what we need, and despite it being white, we decide that that’s the car we want (hey, we don’t have the time or money to be terribly picky here). It’s a 4-year lease, but not bad all around, we are very pleased.

Of course I have to make a HUGE fool of myself and freak out about driving it home. See, Myk had to drive the rental car back, so I was going to have to drive the BRAND NEW Rav4 home, eaaak! On big scary 309! AH! … ok it’s not that bad, I should really have more confidence in my driving skills, but I *did* feel really stupid for asking. Anyway, the sales guy said it was no problem… and we ended up just driving to the rental car place, and then we drove the guy back to the dealership. On the way back Myk and Will (the salesguy, who was young and not an asshole like most young salesguys) started talking about Jeeper (the deadish ’95 Jeep Cherokee). At the mention of what kind of car it was Will said “really? What are you doing with it?” At that point we hadnt really thought that far… and Will said that he had been looking for one, we told him it didnt run, but apparently he’s a mechanic and can get it fixed up as his “playcar” Woo! So we had someone to take the jeep off our hands! He even offered to give us some money for it and take care of all the towing fees and fees associated with changing the title over and everything. So my reluctance to drive the Rav4 back turned out to be really great for us! %)

Anyway, money is going to be tight for some time, I mean who expects to have a car die on them? The Jeep had been running great. Luckily we will survive, it’s not like when I was living in Seneca Falls with no money %) It’s nice to NOT be in a situation where you just HOPE that nothing goes wrong, and get screwed in anything ever does…

Bleh. I hate cars.

Myk took a day off from work again today so we could get everything worked out with the new car stuff, and get the Jeep sold to Will (these things are very hard to do on weekends!). I guess everything is for the best now, I mean the air conditioning in the Jeep stopped working a while back, the rear windshield wiper fell off during an icey storm this year, it had begun to rust… we did need a new car, and I am quite fond of this Rav4 %)

Best of all, we got through Sat-Today without having a single beer! YAY! Can this be proof I dont have an alcohol problem?

Hmmm what else has been going on? Isn’t this enough!? Gah… Hehe. I am feeling better now that most of this is cleared up tho, even if we have to eat ramen noodles for the next 4 months %D

So I think tomorrow I am finally going to get around to writing that PHP update thing on my site, like a little admin page (behind my firewall, I am veerrrry paranoid) that will update an “Updates” database (MySQL)… updates are the updates on the index.php site of princessleia.com. From this admin page I could add, edit, and delete any updates that appear on the index
page. After everything I’ve done with PHP recently it shouldnt be difficult %) And a friend in #goddess recently asked me if I knew of an existing script that does this (I don’t), and I offered to send him the finished files. Yeah, so that shouldnt take much time, it’s a good project to occupy me these next couple days before the weekend %)

I guess that’s it for now… *wanders off*

o/` Bel Canto – In Zenith o/`

Where to begin?

Yesterday morning I woke up, looked outside.. there were flurries. I looked at the weather forcast and they were saying then that we’d get 8 inches by monday morning, woo! Around 1 I woke Myk up before the snow got too bad, so we could return the rental car (luckily they had a key dropoff as well, so we don’t have to worry about getting there today). Anyway, I should have woken up Myk earlier to go to the car place, there was two inches of snow on the ground by the time we left home, and I guess I am spoiled by the good job New York and Maine crews do on snowy roads, PA doesnt know anything about snow removal! It was a mess! I drove the Jeep, behind Myk who was driving the little Metro.

So we’re halfway to Enterprise, I stop at a stop light, and the Jeep stalls! AH! It had *never* done that before! I get all scared, but I’m able to start it again… it stalled twice more before getting to Enterprise. We pull into the little parkinglot there, and I hop into the passenger’s seat and smoke starts coming from the Jeep, FUCK!!! (I don’t often swear, but as recent entries have shown, cars drive me to it!). I shut it off. We realize it’s not *too* bad and that we can just drive it home real quick. It stalls out once more while driving home (Myk is much better at keeping a car from stalling then I am, and he has much more experience with Jeeps), then the engine starts knocking (like when you have no oil), and something makes this huge rattling noise, we stall out again in front of a Wawa (a chain convenience store in this area), we are able to pull into the parkinglot. Things are not good. After about 5 minutes we are able to start the Jeep again, we’re only about 1 1/2 miles from home. We finally get home, park the Jeep, go inside, and go into a prolonged state of panic.

What do you do without a car? Myk needs a car to get to work! etc, etc, etc…

Finally, we get sorta calmed down… I guess we’re going to look into getting a new vehicle, maybe a new jeep? We are thinking about leasing this time. *shrugs* anyway, in the meantime we’ll have to rent a car, YUCK! Luckily the forcast is better for the rest of this week, so if we rent a little crappy cheap car it shouldnt be too much of a problem. Still, it’s expensive to rent a car, expensive to buy a car… we werent expecting this *at all* especially since we just spent freaking $400 to fix it! Pisses me off that Pep Boys didnt see that the Jeep was fucking falling apart… we are NEVER going back there *sigh*

So the stress level was much higher than we expected yesterday. Things just fucking sucked. I made some pasta, and we tried to relax, but it was difficult. We considered drinking some beer, but went for lots of caffeinated soda instead, luckily. I read for most of the afternoon, while Myk did some “shopping” for cars online. We had a fire in the fireplace, it was relaxing, but worrying about things kept creeping in the mood. Around 9 Myk said “We should move the couch so it’s facing the fireplace.” It’s a fairly known fact that rearranging furnature is an excellent cure for worry and depression %) It gets your mind off problems, and if things are rearranged it’s a nice feeling of acomplishment. Anyway, we decided to move the TV into the bedroom, make the couch face the fireplace, put the stero under the couch, hide the speakers between the turntables and the couch… (Pictures! Before and After. It’s really comfy %) and I feel much better having the fireplace as the focal point of the room, rather than the television. Anyway, around midnight we finally finished, it wasn’t just moving stuff, when we began all we knew was we wanted the couch in front of the fireplace… everything else took a lot of time to figure out %) It was nice moving everything around…

After that was finished, I sat down with a book and relaxed (see the “A
fter” picture). We had sorta silently decided not to mention the car troubles last night, and that helped us a lot. Sorta pushing off all responsibilities for the night (with the snow piling up outside we knew Myk wouldnt have to worry about getting into work this morning)… it turned out to be a fairly good night, in spite of everything.

There is close to 2 feet of snow on the ground, Myk has the day off of course, I believe this area was declared to be in a state of emergency. I love snow %) … but tomorrow we are going to have to figure out what we will do with the car situation… bleh, very stressful, I HATE CARS!!!

I guess I’m going to try to keep my mind off the troubles today… nothing is open around here, we can’t go anywhere, and worrying will only getme sick and depressed. I finished Guards! Guards! last night… started reading Orson Scott Card’s Homebody, it’s starting out slow
, but most of his best works do.

*Yawn* I’m gonna go wander off and see if there is anything to do… I gotta get caught up on the PLUG and LinuxChix lists, hmm… right. *wanders off*

o/` Nine Inch Nails – Even Deeper o/`

Ugh.

I don’t feel good, and it’s not a hangover sick feeling. It’s an exhausted I’m coming down with something feeling… Maybe it’s a combination of stress and hangover and getting sick. In any event, it sucks.

So yesterday we rented a little $15/day car from Enterprise, it has no power and it’s tiny… but cheap, and we just needed to in case the Jeep was having huge problems. Around 3 yesterday the Jeep was done (some bad hoses connecting to the radiator apparently, only $400! Ugh!). So we drove out to Pep Boys and picked up the Jeep, I drove home while Myk followed me in the little car, it was actually the first time he ever saw me drive, and although I have only gotten in one accident (it wasnt my fault, I wasnt even moving) and have been driving for about 4 years, I am not terribly secure with my driving skills… so I was kinda nervous, then I noticed that the engine gauge to see the heat in the engine was completely in the red, AH!!!! I kept driving, hoping it would be ok (home wasn’t too far, it couldnt possibly have heated up that fast, and they said everything was fixed…). So I’m driving, Myk is watching, the engine says it’s fucking hot, I’m starting to freak out, I don’t even dare try to turn on the heat, and by the time I get home I’m so scared! Luckily it didn’t do anything to hurt my driving, and Myk said I am a good driver… we opened the hood and looked in, the coolent fluid level looked low (well, what we thought looked low). So we go inside and call pep boys back. They said that the level it was at is normal, and said that there is a good chance the thermometer was broken when bad things happened friday night… so the gauge was not working properly. That sucks, but at least it’s not something major.

Myk ended up going out to get wood for the fireplace last night (and beer!), and when he got home he says “so cold! The heat in the Jeep isn’t working anymore!” FUCKFUCKFUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hate cars %( Apparently when things broke on friday it killed the heat first, uggghhh. We aren’t even worrying about that right now, we can live without it for the moment I guess. Myk’s looking at new Jeeps tho *sigh* stupid car problems! But the Jeep IS a ’95, I guess it’s time… It’s still made for a stressful weekend. We didn’t end up going to the lan party last night, too much.

We watched The Matrix last night, with commentary. It was alright… the commentary people “fell asleep” during some parts, and half the time they talked about methods of filming and funny parties, so it was sorta boring at times. It was interesting tho, I still like that movie, despite it’s flaws. We ate pizza and had a fire, drank a couple beers to relax… it was a nice evening.

I am going to spend like, all day today under a blanket reading.

So as if I’m not frustrated enough this weekend, I learn that the goverment is telling people to buy duct tape and plastic so they can “seal up their homes in case of some sort of biological terrorism” … what? When I first saw this on the news I thought it was just a few stupid people being paranoid, then I found out that it was a government recommendation! It was completely serious! And people actually believe this crap! I suppose it’s important to keep the “fear level” low, so by lying to people and telling them that putting duct tape and plastic around their windows will help them survive, then I guess they can succeed in this. What amazes me is how many people believe it. I watched on the news as this young couple (both with university almuni shirts on, obviously so it would seem like “college educated people are smart and they do this too”) go into their house, and be like “oh it may seems silly, teehee, but it’s really just to make us feel better”… ok, do they honestly not realize how stupid this is? I mean COME ON! Or are they just blindly following because the “goverment said it would work”? As one of my friends put it recently “maybe you can even make it simpler, put the tape over your mouth and nose !”

This whole w
ar with Iraq thing pisses me off. Sure, they arent doing what the UN told them to, but do they have reason to? The last time they tried to do a weapons inspection (after the gulf war) Iraq evaded, and evaded, and evaded, and finally the UN just gave up… so why would Saddam think this time would be any different? The UN showed weakness, and Saddam took advantage of this. And now wonderful president Bush wants to go inand attack Iraq, without UN support. So lives will be lost before all peaceful diplomatic avenues are exhausted. It’s just stupid. So here I am, living near a large city in a time when our tyrannical leader is taking actions that will threaten us further. And don’t even get me started on the “Patriot Act” or the preposed second one! DON’T EVEN MENTION 911! This all angers me greatly, while I’m not a conspiracy theorist, thinking that we knew about/invited the ‘terrorist’ attacks on sept 11th, I think that’s over now, and Iraq has very little to do with that. (I remember a political cartoon recently that tried to show the “link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, it was bush pointing at a picture with both of them written, Q’s circled). And I am sick of losing my rights because the goverment is trying to “protect” me.

I am in a very angry mood %) But my anti-war rant is over for today.

It’s snowing. I like snow but I have to drive it in today and I HATE driving in it. We’re going to drop off the little car at Enterprise today, they arent open, but there is supposed to be 8 inches of snow on the ground by tomorrow morning, so Myk will just drop by there tomorrow morning and give them the key. Bleh, it’s almost noon, I should go take a shower so we can go out before it gets too snowy out. *wanders off*

Well my Valentine’s Day didn’t exactly go as planned…

Around 4 pm Myk came home from work. We were sorta hungry and decided to just head out for sushi then, to avoid traffic and crowds at the restuarant (although the sushi section of this place is *never* full). So we drive out there.. get there around 4:40 or so. The dinner was great, we even tried some squid tempura (squid fried like sweet and sour chicken is fried, with the batter), it was really yummie. To drink, we each ordered a Sapporo… it’s a Japanese Import beer, very good. We ordered some cheesecake for dessert, mmmmm … they gave us a little ice cream with it, it was green and tasted like grass (the stuff that grows in your yard). Anyway, the dinner was excellent, things were so perfect!

5:20 – We’re driving away from the sushi place.
5:35 – Driving on 309 (big fast two-lane road right off the turnpike, moderate traffic as it’s the beginning of rush hour), and the heat stops working, very strange… the engine heat gauge is near the red, ummm?
5:37 – still on 309, smoke/steam starts coming out from under the hood “oh shit” as we are pulling over to the side of the road a brown liquid starts coming out from the front of the hood and splatters all over the windshield. The car is barely stopped when we pull the keys out of the car and run away from the Jeep, about 100 feet. “FUCK!”
5:40 – We decide that it’s not going to blow up, and notice a big red van on the other side of the road (there is a barrier in the center of that part of 309) with a red flashing light. Myk is on his cellphone, first he called his mother (she lives less than 10 minutes from where we broke down), she’s not home. Then he calls the insurance company, in his insurance plan he can get some towing services (like AAA), and calls a tow-truck.
5:50 – A small fire crew van pulls up in front of the Jeep look at the engine real quick and make sure nothing is going to explode… a local cop pulls up behind, and behind him a state cop, by now the sun is going down and the traffic has increased dramatically. Did I mention it’s cold and getting ready to snow? Everyone leaves, the state cop last… after he sets up a couple flares and tells us to just wait in the Jeep til the tow-truck comes.
6:00 – “Uh, I think we will still need a ride somewhere, I dunno if the tow-truck guy will take us home” … we a few futile attempts at reaching anyone (it IS V-Day night afterall), then call Enterprise Rent-A-Car… they are closed.
6:10 – The tow-truck shows up, the guy says we’re welcome to ride in the truck with him to Pep Boys, YAY!
6:20 – Jeep is finally loaded onto the tow-truck, and we get to go for a ride in a tow truck! I had never been in a truck like that
6:50 – Despite the Pep Boys being about 7 miles from where we broke down, it takes a half hour to get there, SOOO much traffic.
7:00 – Everything is settled at Pep Boys, they assure us that it’s probably just a problem with the radiator or connecting hoses, and they will run a diagnostic for $30, and call us in the morning with the status… We still have no way of getting home, the tow-truck guy asks where we live, and since it’s on his way back offers to take us there (YAY!)
7:20 – Finally home.

It wasn’t exactly a traditional Valentine’s Day evening, but I tried to look on the bright side… it could have been much worse. It wasn’t actually as cold out as it has been lately, we were able to pull over to a safe place on the side of the road, despite 309 being busy, it wasnt in a “bad area” … it’s a weekend, so Myk doesnt have to worry about getting to work til monday, and at least we got our sushi! Hehe.

We had an alright evening last night, never got a chance to get any firewood or stop at the movie store to rent a movie, and this whole car thing had us both a bit stressed out, but we tried to relax and have a nice time anyway. Myk went surfing the web a bit looking at cars (the jeep is a ’95), he kept going back to the US BMW site (it doesnt work in Opera)… and actually stumbled upon BMWFilms.Com … I remember when this site was created, a big ad campaign (well not as big as they had hoped, not everyone knew about it) where they paid some big directors a couple million dollars to create short “movies” that “starred” the BMW’s … we watched the one directed by John Woo, good stuff!

*Hears a knock on the door, opens the door, sees a box* Woo!!! Honey!!! *grins* this should be yummie. Hrm, I should go make some food. We are going to eat a dinnerish meal ’cause if the Jeep is fixed in time (we rented a car for the day this morning) we are still planning to go to that lan party. Right, so I need to make food noew *wanders off*

o/` Fisher – February 1994 o/`

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Ok neofreak, BillMeir, and all those other Anti-Valentine’s Day people … what is so awful about this holiday? Sure it’s commercial, sure it’s a holiday where you buy useless trinkets, cards and flowers that you will throw away in a week .. but how is that so different from any other holiday? Because it’s from your significant other? Just because Hallmark stores are red and pink from New Years til discount sales after V-Day doesnt mean you HAVE to celebrate Valentine’s Day by spending money. It’s a nice excuse to be romantic, it’s a nice excuse to go out of your way to show someone you care, it’s a great excuse to go to out to a nice dinner, it’s a great excuse to shop at Victoria’s Secret ;) Now I do understand that it’s depressing if you are alone.. but that’s not usually the complaint I hear. So just come out and say you hate all holidays AND birthdays … because they are all very commercial. %P

I don’t really have much else to write… I’m sorta tired. *yawns and wanders off*

o/` They Might Be Giants – I’m Gettin’ Sentimental Over You o/`

Last night in IRC (I wasn’t there, just read the buffer) some people in #13thHour were talking about how “in love” they were. This got me thinking this morning about all my previous relationships. It’s quite obvious that I have learned a great deal from each, to the point of taking the next relationship to some sort of extreme so to avoid previous mistakes. But with each relationship I was “so in love” with the person I was with. Of course I was, in any serious relationship the person you are seeing is a direct reflection of yourself… people see who you are with and, right or not, they make judgments about you… so of course you want to promote and “show off” this person. I guess going any further into this issue will debate what love “really is” and how you can love someone differently, or more, or less than another person. What this is all leading up to is that each serious relationship you have is different, and there is a point (if you are lucky) where you get into a relationship that makes you happy, comfortable, and completely open… and I believe I have found that. Now just for my own entertainment I’d like to reflect on past and present relationships.

Boyfriend #1
I was 17, a senior in high school, and pretty unpopular. I was quiet, clumsy, and just a mess… so I get online in september of 1998 and meet Rob. He’s 27, but infinately sweet… we can talk, we laugh, we share an interest in science fiction. Despite him living in Michigan, we decide to start an online relationship. As the months passed my interests changed, I started really getting into computers, while he just wasn’t interested. I had this desire to learn and grow, while he was settled in his job as an airport mechanic. He wanted to settle down while I wanted to run off and be crazy. We were “together” (met twice in real life) for about 9 months, I broke it off the summer I was in Phildelphia (that’s the LAST time I broke things off, we were ‘separated’ a couple times before that). I guess I basically learned that I NEEDED someone who shared my interests, and who wasn’t ready to lie down and have a boring life just because he thought that was what was supposed to happen.

Boyfriend #2
I must backtrack a bit. Rob and I cut things off for about a month ago before I graduated so I could “think about what I wanted” (I know what you are saying “damn women!” hehe). During that time I spent a lot of time with my online friend Dave. I met him in real life, and although the relationship wasn’t very serious for me (I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go back and be with Rob), it was for him. Dave was 25, and he absolutely WORSHIPPED me, in a very unhealthy way. He had some issues too, very very depressed, rough family life (still lived at home with his mother), and although he was a smart guy, he just couldnt cope with reality. I took pity on him, and seeing what a great person he could become I tried to help him out, tried to show him how special and wonderful he was, and of course he took that as some sort of attraction. He visited me in, um, I guess it was April or May of 1999, he was the first guy I ever kissed… heh. But it was short-lived, I talked out things with Rob and we agreed that we’d continue to try to work thinks out. From him I learned that I couldn’t spend my life taking care of someone, I couldn’t be the person who kept him out of his depression, he had to do that himself.

Boyfriend #3
This is when I took a sharp turn for the ‘opposite’ of what I had before. I met steve online while I was dating Rob… he was into computers, and little naive me thought that was cool… we shared an interest! It turns out we shared a lot of interests. From the beginning it was all me showing off to him, and him not appreciating me. Why did I see that as good? Because we shared interests, he was young (16) and still wanted a silly crazy life before settling down, and I noticed that he could easily live without me (so it seemed).
We did have a lot of fun, we tried to teach each other a lot, but deep down there was this problem… the relationship was based on me being perfect, and him taking that for granted. It got to a point where he treated me badly because he saw my flaws. I started hiding parts of myself from him that I knew he’d ridicule. I was living with him and I was forced to become more and more of a stranger to him. Obviously this all led to the relationship breaking up 2 years after it began, we just didn’t know each other anymore, we weren’t happy.

Now
With Myk I guess I went to an extreme again. I had known him almost as long as I knew Rob, and had met him in real life a few times the summer after graduating, we were close friends so I knew he had similar interests, I knew he was still a lot of fun, I knew he was his own person who could hold his own without me… but this time I wasn’t going to hide who I really was. I had aquired this realization that I couldn’t even begin to imagine spending the rest of my life with someone I couldn’t share everything with, someone I couldn’t tell my deepest secrets without being laughed at. I was very upfront with Myk. From the beginning he knew some of my more quirky tendancies, and I made it quite clear that I wasn’t going to change. And to my surprise he loved me for it. *Start of mushy stuff* I am finally able to be completely open with someone. Completely honest. I can tell him the silliest little things that I do, I can have beanie babies all over our bedroom without him complaining, instead he finds it indearing. I don’t feel the need to avoid certain subjects, or put on a “mask” for him. I can get in bad moods, I can be at my weakest moment and let him inside, I can become excited and he’ll be right there beside me encouraging my every step, I can even disagree with him and we can equally argue our positions without actually fighting. I could go on for pages, but I’ll spare you. I am finally happy!

*blushes slightly* I’m done %)

I was playing with my /etc/profile file today. It’s along the same lines as the bashrc stuff, in fact, the context is the same… and I think I could probably put the same stuff in /etc/profile that is in ~/.bashrc (I have to becareful tho, so one doesnt override the other and make things weird). Anyway, besides editing how my prompt looks I started playing around with aliasing.

alias lm=’ssh lyz@minute’

That makes it so in a terminal when I type “lm” it does ssh lyz@minute (minute is a box on our lan where our webpages, mail, and irc sessions are, so I use this often). I also wrote one that make it so when I type r2m it does ssh r2d2@minute … r2d2 is my ircbot, and has it’s own user on that box. Fun stuff %) (I put my whole /etc/profile file on my site, complete with pretty gvim syntax highlighting! /etc/profile

I was reading my World History For Dummies book last night, and it really is amazing how far mankind has come in the past couple hundred years. It’s all something we take for granted for the most part I think… I mean when I wake up I can turn on CNN and watch what’s going on in the world, it’s always been like that. Imagine being a ruler of a country and not being able to get communication to the other side of your country in under a day! Let alone foriegn policy. 500 years ago one half of the world didn’t even *know* about the other (that could be debated, but I don’t want to get into it, I’m generalizing)… Imagine having no idea what your world looks like, or precisely what your country looks like. I’ve thought about this a lot in the past couple years, and it never ceases to amaze me.

In the same catagory as that is talking to people from around the world. My father used to tell me about when he was a HAM radio operator in his teens, and he could communicate with people all over the world, and how cool that was. And now, anyone with an internet connection
can do the same, and so much more. It’s really a cool time we are living in…

I guess that’s about it for today

See which Greek Goddess you are.

*wanders off*

o/` Jimmy Eat World – Cautioners o/`

Yesterday was fun. Nita picked me up around noon, we went out to the King Of Prussia Mall and decided to grab some lunch… went to Houlihan’s, which Nita described to me as “Like Bennigan’s” … a comparison completely lost on me because I had never been to a Bennigan’s either, but I looked at the menu and they had a chicken sandwich so I was happy. It was a good lunch, the waitress was awful, she was this tall black woman who mumbled everything she said so I could barely understand her, and she only came to the table when she absolutely needed to (take orders, drop off food, give us check). Luckily the food was great, and I didn’t really need anything. Anyway, while eating we were talking about computer stuff, yay! Apparently her and her boyfriend are getting really into svcd creation, going through a lot of crap to get it good and have their dvd play nicely with them %) It was some really interesting stuff, especially coupled with Myk’s new interest in creating a digital VCR. We also talked about people who use linux and know less than us, hehe… I’ve been using linux for about a year, Nita has used it on and off for a few months, and we both agree that it’s really cool when people believe they can learn something from us. I guess it makes us feel better about our knowledge too, I think it just gets to a point that you take knowledge for granted, cant imagine *not* knowing it… so you tend to forget there are people out there who have never used/done things you have.

The King Of Prussia Mall is HUGE… I believe it’s two separate buildings, and so big that a few stores are in more than one place (two Electronic Boutiques, two Bath And Body Works’…), they even have maps printed out! It’s nice going shopping with Nita because neither of us are mall fans, and like I’ve said before, the only reason I go to malls instead of shopping online is for social interaction with a friend. But to make an afternoon of it we did lots of window shopping. I went to Bath and Body Works to buy some bubblebath and candles (the only things I actually *planned* on buying yesterday), and I was convinced to wander into Victoria’s Secret … so many nice things there, so expensive though… but valentine’s day is friday! So yes, I bought things *grins* … didn’t spent *too* much though. We also wandered into Hot Topic … I was looking for new shoelaces. Right now I have cute rainbow brite ones, but I wanted to see if HT had anything cooler *shrugs* they didn’t, they did have Chocolate Penguin Mints tho! I hadn’t tried them yet. So I bought them… the guy at the counter was obviously insulted by my preppy looks (when I came in and he asked to help I asked where the shoelaces were, he told me, then said the spongebob shoelaces and stuff was in the back.. wtf? I HATE SPONGEBOB, ty.). Oh! We also went into an FAO Schwarz store, I had never been in one before %) It was cool, YAY TOYS! Hehe. We went to a couple bookstores too, just window shopping really, I miss buying books at stores, but it really is cheaper to buy online.

It’s nice to actually have “a life” to write about… I should get out more.

We left the mall around 4:30, and Nita drove me home. Myk was home when I got there of course (he gets out of work around 3:30), I had a yummie turkey sammich for dinner (Myk had eaten ’cause he wasn’t sure when I’d be coming home). Spent the evening relaxing and trying not to fall asleep too early, hehe. I am reading Terry Pratchett’s Guards! Guards! … funny book, Pratchett rocks.

Around 9 last night my Aunt Elaine called me (the one I lived with on a couple occasion
s, we are very close). Apparently she spoke to my 13 year old sis Annette recently, and things aren’t going so great with her. I guess Annette has gotten 5 detentions since new years, and one of them was for calling a teacher a “bitch” to her face, ugh! I was always very good in school, I can’t imagine acting out like this… she is so unlike me. Well the biggest thing was that Annette is really into sports, and previously the want to play sports made her keep her grades up, but now she apparently just doesnt care. She was kicked off her sports teams until she improved her grades. I guess Elaine was very upset about this (obviously) and got rather stern with my sis and told her that she needed to start taking things a little more seriously, Annette got mad of course. Bleh. So Elaine calls me to tell me what’s up. I had no idea her acting up had gotten so bad… I mean I knew she was bragging about all her detentions (“of all my friends I have the most detentions, I WIN!”), but I didn’t realize it had gotten as far as her not being in sports anymore.

The problems with Annette are so frustrating because we used to be very close. She called me “Bethy Mommy” for *years* and I had a crapload of guilt when I moved away from home, because I knew that she’d be a bit lost… especially since my parent’s divorce closely followed. But I learned to deal with this guilt feeling, although I had acted like it for Annette’s entire life, I am NOT her mother, and I should never have had that responsibility. I guess my mother just stopped punishing Annette because if she took something away from her she’d “bug” my ma til she gave in … what kind of parent gives in to a little whining when their child doesnt get their way? Looking back I realize it was really my father who kept rules when my mother consistantly became too tired to do so… apparently my mother’s new husband has no part in raising Annette (which I can understand and mostly agree with in most situations), so Annette’s punishments are insufficiant, and she’ll just keep breaking the rules. I guess another big part of it is that my mother hated school, and so she never encourages, never helps, and never stresses the importance of education onto Annette. Again, growing up it was my father who did that. I realize that all these factors are going into how Annette is acting now. She doesnt care about school, she acts out because there it’s fun, “cool” and there is no punishment.

I was reluctant previously to critize my mother, but last night Elaine told me that my mother said “I wish Beth were here, then Annette wouldn’t act out” … Where would I succeed where she failed? It’s NOT just a sister thing, it’s purely because my mother *knows* she is doing a poor job, and knows that I would care and work so much harder to see Annette get on the right track. Of course my mother would never tell me to my face that she wished I was still there for Annette, but it bugs me that she even thought of that as a “solution” to her problems. I have my own life now, and I can’t go back to ‘fix’ things. My mother is apparently unhappy in her marriage too (hardly a surprise, she is never happy), I have no doubt that is another part of wishing I was there… she always confided (complained) to me, I am a good listener, she could trust me… and I am sure she misses that. Bah! Family!

Anyway, Elaine wants us to visit her *sigh*. I already promised my family in Maine/New Hampshire that I’d make it up sometime in the near future, traveling is just so hard to do, especially since Myk needs to work around work schedules, and probably take time off to do that. I would love to see her and my cousin Chet, but I just can’t plan any trips right now.

Bah family!!! *grumbles*

I am quite surprised with the increased number of hits on WallaceAndGromit.net, I have been getting 2-5 per day, which may not sound like much, but it is more than in october, when I was lucky to have one in a week. It’s still not very high in the google search (I’ve looked th
rough the first couple hundred hits in the search ‘wallace and gromit’ no luck), so I assume most of these new hits are either directly from princessleia.com or from guestbooks I signed maybe? *shrugs* either way it’s cool, I love my wallace and gromit sitey! *hugs it*

So an aquaintance of mine, knowing that I have experience with apache, recently asked me if I’d help him out. Sure! Why not? Apparently he’s frustrated with his inability to find a good, free, webhosting place for his little site, so he figured he could just host it at home, and instead of buying a domain name (he doesn’t have any spare money for that) he thought he’d just send people to the IP. Now Myk does all the name stuff for our sites, so I am VERY inexperienced with that, and I never actually have set up a public webpage, but I have worked a lot with apache on our home lan, so I know “in theory” how should work. So I start helping him out, gave him some pointers on installing PHP and suggested he also install MySQL just in case he wanted more dynamic content without relying on a bunch of txt files. I didn’t log this conversation, but I’ll reproduce from where it gets interesting ;) … PL2 = me … nick = guy I was helping (nick as in nickname *to protect the innocent*)

-PL2- MySQL is nice, and it’s fast enough with smaller databases so even on connections like my slow cable connection it doesnt take away from page load time
-nick- that’s cool, I’ll really need it to be fast because this is on dial up
-PL2- what? you want to host a page on a dialup connection?
-nick- yeah, it’s just a little site, and mostly text, people will just have to deal with it being kinda slow, I don’t mind
-PL2- right, that and all the other problems aside, dont you have a dynamic IP?
-nick- yeah, the dial up connection IP changes, but since I am behind my router my computer’s IP stays the same, neat huh?
-PL2- ok, your network IP stays the same, but that is not the one people will need to connect to to get to your site
-nick- yes it is, because I’ll be hosting the site on my computer
-PL2- people can’t access your internal network, if they tried to connect to your computer’s IP they wouldnt get there
-nick- why not? I don’t think I understand

This went on for a few minutes, I *think* he finally understood what I was saying, but he sorta wandered off after that and didn’t ask me for anymore help. I didn’t mean to insult him, but it just was amazing to me that someone who had obviously set up their own network (granted he is VERY inexperienced with Linux) would be so completely clueless as to the difference between internal and external IPs, and what you can and cant do with each. Maybe this falls into the category of “knowledge I take for granted”? In any event, it was an amusing exchange.

Great, so now anyone who wants to ask me to help them is going to be paranoid that I will make their experience public in my web log ;)

Honey. I love honey, and hadn’t eaten it in over a year… but then Myk suggested getting some for our tea (we drink a lot of caffeine free tea in the evenings). Sure! Besides, we both have allergies and it’s said that if you eat honey from a local place it helps you build up immunities to some of the pollen in your area. Coincidentally Myk’s friend mentioned in IRC recently that he gets his honey from a guy near here… a bee-keeper who sells his honey for *very* reasonable prices. So Myk emailed the guy, and he said he’d ship out a couple jars of his honey, then email him with the cost so Myk could send him a check. Amazing! A guy who is trusting enough to send his product to someone he doesnt know (or only knows through another person) without assurances that it’s been paid for. It made me feel good that people still exist in this world. And ever better to know I’ll be getting lots of yummie honey!

Uh, this entry has been long *poeks the people that fell asleep while reading this and quietly apoligizes.*

I should find something to do today *wanders off*