o/` The Cure – More Than This o/`

Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you.
But the roses are wilting, the violets are dead, the sugar bowl’s empty and so is your head.

^^ in a fwd from MorganHorse … possibly the most entertaining fwd I’ve recieved in years.

So this weekend… hmm, it was fairly relaxing %) Saturday evening we wanted pizza, so we considered going to Unos, even drove all the way out there, and when we got there there was an hour wait! Gah! So we turned around and started driving home (realizing that most every restuarant would be that busy, it was a rainy saturday evening, where else would people go?), then stopped at Tony A’s, a local pizzeria, and ordered a pizza and wings. Then went to blockbuster and rented The Usual Suspects, Strange Brew, and Black Hawk Down. So we got our food, and drove home. We watched The Usual Suspects first… The movie is a few years old, but I had never seen it, and that’s sad since Kevin Spacey is one of my favorite actors. Besides some small problems (in the scene where they are raiding the boat there is a big explosion in the beginning, this is in a crowded harbor, and no police or anyone show up for quite some time…) I really enjoyed the movie. Then we got out the beer to watch Strange Brew… I broke one of my rules and decided to drink while Myk said he didn’t feel like it (rule: I never drink alone!), but after i had one beer Myk was like “mmm that looks good” and decided to have a few himself… it was a funny movie, and I just died laughing at the stupidest parts! Ah it was great. We flipped through channels for a little bit after the movie ended, watched some old Dr. Who (i really was drunk! hah! … I dont remember it being that cheesey…), then I went on IRC for about an hour to make a fool of myself, around 2 I went to bed. I had a nice night.

Sunday I spent reading and playing Final Fantasy 6. Around 8ish we decided to watch Black Hawk Down. It bored me. I respect the work, effort, meaning, great cinematography, good acting… but it’s just not my kind of movie. I was feeling pretty crappy too, and maybe that’s not
the sort of movie you should watch while your stomach is tied in knots %)

The woman upstairs leaves her fan thingy in her bathroom on all the time, it’s weird.

I installed a neat little mail script for irssi. When I get a new mail it tells me in a little section on the status bar… [Mail: 1 new] and stuff… it’s pretty nice. I had talked about writing on myself, but decided just to use this one since it’s fairly nice %)

I guess I’m going grocery shopping this afternoon. Myk is coming home for lunch, and I guess I’ll drive home with the Jeep to do shopping *oh joy* … I hate grocery shopping.

I hate mondays!

I guess I am going to go get a couple things done before Myk comes home for lunch… *wanders off*

It was quite a surprise to wake up to the developing story of the Space Shuttle Columbia losing contact with the ground. Even moreso when I saw the video of it breaking apart and the newscasters saying “it doesnt look good.” Just when the United States needs reassurances of our power, something like this happens. *moment of silence*

Crontab In Debian Stable

Now I’ll be the first one to defend linux’s wondefulness, but as with every operating system, there are tangable flaws. I completed the birthdayperl script (the one that queries a database to see if a birthday matches tomorrow’s date, and emails me if so) and went to put it into a simple crontab so it would run daily. I am doing this on our debian stable webserver/gateway, and for some reason the crontabs that I am testing just *don’t work* So after 2 days of utter frustration I discover the trouble.

First I thought “This is user error” … because I am not quick to blame linux when I know my experience is lacking. So I besides reading all the local documentation I could find on cron and crontab, I googled for a bit to make sure there wasnt something important I was missing. Nope.

Then I think maybe it is something with my script that is making it not work. Nope, it should run perl scripts fine.

Ok, maybe cron is crashing because something in my script is doing something bad. Nope, I am running it as a normal user, no one would release a system with that sort of major flaw.

How about if I restart cron after I put in the crontab! Nope, what is the point of a crontab? So a regular user can setup timed jobs without needing to consult the admin… “hey mr/ms admin can you restart cron?” “grrr!”

I was at a complete loss… finally last night we were testing some stuff out, and I just gave up and wandered off.

This morning I check my email and apparently the script ran! WTF? Unfortunately the script was a bit broken (hell I didn’t expect it to run!) and ended up emailing me like 50 times til the script crashed *oops* … but it was then I found the problem!

Apparently it takes a few minutes for the crontab to install. Stupid? Yes. Why didn’t I discover this sooner? Because I never even *thought* to wait more than 30 seconds or so to test the crontab .. I’d want to test it, so I’d set it up to work for the turn of the next minute, right? Why 5 minutes in the future? *mumbles something about how silly debian is* I love debian, but on redhat crontabs are installed within seconds (that was a major reason why i never thought of this solution, I had used crontabs in redhat in the past…)

Yep, that was my crontab adventure… At least it ended well and my birthday script works %)

*wanders off to get ready to go out for pizza*

Sometimes we make choices that we don’t want to make.
Choices that may hurt us, hurt friends, but in the end it’s for the better.

We cannot regret these choices.
But they may haunt us.

I am haunted.

Dont understand?
Dont care?
Dont ask.

I was just talking to myself anyway *sighs and wanders off again*

o/` U2 – With Or Without You o/`

I got a pirate paint brush through a trade on neopets yesterday, YAY! Noew firethrower13 (above, the neopet I adopted) is all “ARR!!!” I should make a new little webpage for him since he’s all piratized, hee… I spend too much time with neopets, *uses the excuse that they are to replace real pets she doesnt have*

Speaking of pirates, one of Myk’s friends gave us copies of Age of Mythology, Mech Commander 2 and Homeworld. YAY! New games! I will have to check them out this weekend %)

Mmmm games. I was talking to DarkonZero the other morning in IRC … and he just recently bought Final Fantasy: Origins *is so jealous* … it’s final fantasy 1 and 2, released as a playstation game. It got me feeling all nostalgic about old Final Fantasy games. Now true, I did just discover final fantasy a couple years ago, so I am not a fan from “back in the day” … but I still have love for even the old games. I decided the other night that I wanted to play FF5 … so I start playing from the start, la la la happy playing … *goes to save* I COMPLETELY forgot that the disk is damaged and prevents saving! The save screen is all froozy, I assume it saves the game, but you cant see the save screen, obviously it would be a mess if I wrote over some file I didnt want to %( So I sighed and took the game out and decided to play FF6 instead, mmm FF6… I never did finish it, I just didnt have time, between working, and my ex monopolizing time (on MY PS2 might I add), and just daily chores and errands that need to be done. So I think I will take the time to finish it this time, it gives me something to do other than reading on weekends, and I really do miss playing Final Fantasy… Ok, I guess it was a mix of playing NeoQuest and talking to DeeZ that made me want to get back to my beloved RPG’s %)

I am over my depression I had yesterday… I think I was just tired, I didn’t sleep well (surprise surprise) the night before. *Shrugs* Oh, I got my mail-on-birthday script done yesterday afternoon %) It wasnt too difficult actually, on wednesday I thought it would be impossible (i had a headache and couldnt focus) but it all made sense once I looked at again yesterday %) It looks like it’ll work fine.. *crosses fingers* … I’ll just have to make sure I keep an eye on it ;) yay perl

I hate AOL. I sent a fairly important email to my grandparents last friday (they sent me some money, so I wanted to thank them and touch base IMMEDIATELY). And yesterday I get “Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender” msg because for some reason the mail was refused by the AOL servers, UGH! So I decided not to take the chance of that happening again so I just sent it from my Yahoo! mail account. Ugh. They mailed me back this morning, all excited about this trip I said we were planning to make to New England in the spring… I didn’t say which spring *g* jk! I think we are sorta trying to plan a trip, it’s just hard right now.

Right, so it’s 10 and I still havent gotten any cleaning done (my usually friday morning thing), I just don’t feel like it.. makes me very glad I got a lot done yesterday %) But I should end this entry so I can do it, and then take a shower *yawns* Maybe I’ll even find something to work on today or (as i suspect) I’ll just play games. *grabs the windex and paper towels an
d wanders off*

o/` Stabbing Westward – Stabbing Westward – Perfect o/`

I cleaned this morning, you know what it means when I clean and it’s not a friday? No, the place is not a mess! I’m depressed again. Bleh.

All through my high school career I did very well in my classes. I would never have called myself an over-achiever there, I did work much harder than a lot of people, but I never was able to get ahead the way I wanted to *shrugs* … still I graduated with an A- average, and never came home with a report card grade under a B-. My parents came to expect that. When I worked my ass off for 3 days to study for a history test and came home with a 99 my parents didn’t care… When my sister came home with a 93 on an exam that she “actually studied for” they threw a party. I would come home completely crushed when I got a D on a chemistry test, and my mother would MOCK ME “aww, you didnt get an A?” then “Well do better on the next one and your grade will be good” my sister came home with a D and it’s all *support* … My entire life has been marked by this sort of thing. I worked at a gas station… when I didn’t do extra work it was all “what is wrong with you?” when a lousy worker actually got all their appointed work done it was “good job!” … I am so sick of this double standard. I don’t expect my life to be all praise, but I hate being taken for granted…

I was talking to a friend this morning, recalling the “days when I was poor” … it was really sad. I guess it cheered me up a little ’cause I have so much to be thankful now that I am living with Myk… we may not be able to buy a BMV … but at least we can afford to buy what we want and need at the store every week.

I started work on that daily “check if there is a birthday” script yesterday. I only got a far as writing the first part about getting the next day, it’s not as simple as date + 1 … then leap years, i didnt even take into account that anyone’s birthday could be on febuary 29th, if it was i’d remember it %) I started working on the mysql query, and got a bit of a headache and couldnt concentrate anymore so i just got frustrated and gave up. I will hopefully finish it sometime today…

I am going to go noew… *wanders off*

o/` Bjork – Aurora o/`

Linux is better than chocolate chip cookies.

That stupid MS SQL worm has been knocking around comcast networks the past couple days, we checked out the access log and it hit our debian webserver box a bunch of times yesterday. I hate M$.

So we watched the State Of The Union Address last night (and no, I didn’t play the drinking game, just for the record the official count for that was 160 drinks, hee). I had a headache tho, so about 24 minutes into it I just wanted to go to sleep. I finished watching it though, that’s the first time I’ve watched the whole thing! It was just the normal sort of thing, saying he’d increase spending everywhere, while funding a war, cutting taxes and decreasing the budget deficit. Yay for america.

I think most of my entries start out so bitter because I write this in the morning and I am not a morning person.

So, I finally thought of a project to get my mind busy for a little while! See, yesterday I learned how to use the mail command… I was able to send a mail to my yahoo account. So I think I am finally going to write that “mail when there is a birthday” script… See last night I got Myk to set up the internal site for our address/phone/email/birthday book, yay! So now we have the mysql database setup. My script will execute to query the database daily (probably with a simple crontab) and if a birthdate in the database matches the following day it will email me to warn me. It’ll be nice, and it’s something to work on for a bit so I dont feel useless.

So I visited the scifi server the other day, I guess I was just bored… And it was actually fun, finally ‘officially’ apoligized to bluefox83 … I mean he was a jerk too, but I took my “dont forgive” thing a bit too far with him, and I never let him explain himself. And that being part of my psuedo-new-years-resolution it was good to get that out of the way, I hate having people hate me. Anyway, I was chatting in two rooms there… and three fairly active rooms on psiblade, as well as two private messages… and I couldn’t keep up! GAH! I must be losing my touch… the slowness of psiblade and not turning on my instant messangers for a couple months is making me lose my edge ;) Heehee…

Anyway, I am gonna go get to work on this little project of mine, *wanders off*

http://www.marcmelzer.net/sotudg/ <– State Of The Union Drinking Game

o/` Fisher – Believe In Something o/`

I’m so glad monday is over.

I spent most of the day yesterday discovering the Neopets game “NeoQuest” … it’s a little rpg, you gain levels, beat monsters with skills you
can get, use potions to heal yourself, collect magical items. It’s actually quite fun in it’s simplicity, especially since I really love this sort of thing to begin with. I live a sad sad life.

Someone I know in real life just recently got a livejournal. Now I *do* spend time in a chat room with him and a bunch of people who are friends in real life, and I know about half of them, but I still see them as part of my real life world, not my internet world, and I usually just lurk in that room, whenever I say anything I get that clammy-hand feeling like I am saying something outloud to ‘real’ people. This line between reality and the internet has been blurred recently and I guess that’s a bit scary for me. Why? It’s difficult to explain. It’s not that I am a different person in reality, I’m not, but I guess I can get close to people online without being fearful that I need to look them in the eye next week at a party. I just have a difficult time relating to people I spend physical time with… the exception being close friends of course. And I’m afriad that an aquaintance in real life having a “key” to my internet life through my weblog would throw me into some sort of online shyness that I have not experienced yet, and really don’t want that. I really need to get a handle on this shyness thing. So I never did give that real life aquaintance my livejournal name… nor did I add him to my friends list *sigh* Although by going to my main site princessleia.com anyone can get to my journals…

Anyway, this thread of thinking got me to thinking more about this blurred line of internet/reality. The driving fear behind my shyness is the fear of rejection… in real life you must think of social graces, holding yourself properly, having good timing, looking good, getting a word in… but online these things don’t come into play, sure you need to be moderately good at spelling, but you can hop online in your pajamas and if you get into an arguement with someone you just walk away from it, no awkward physical repositioning, just the click of a window or ignore button. Not to say there is no community or cyber-etiquette .. there is, it’s just easier to follow than in real life. So you can make friends, get close to people, without feeling as though you have to live up to some sort of expectation I guess. This is where it gets confusing… If IRC is such a comfort zone for me, why do I have so much trouble talking to acquaintances I have met in real life online? What is it about meeting someone online first that makes them so much easier for me to talk to? If I met pdx6 or radbatik I could probably talk for hours … but if I first met them at a party I wouldn’t say a word, even when approached I would be rather quiet, worried about making a good impression.

Someday I will uncover the madness behind my shyness, I should keep a page on my website documenting this search.

Speaking of webpages, Myk has gotten a lot of work done on bevilacqua.us, YAY! … I made the basic framework html and css (he just doesnt have time) and he’s been putting in some content over the past couple days. He even has pictures and descriptions of all Systems! It’s turning out to be a really nice looking site %)

I got another idea for my site today while I was in the shower … I think instead of using that silly php counter and text file that I have for my counter… I might make a mysql database, a database that will also store the $_SERVER[“HTTP_USER_AGENT”] (browser info) … so I can make some sort of chart with the results of what browsers are identified hitting my site. On load of the
page it will connect to the database, incrimint the number, and add an entry (maybe in another table?) identifying the browser… or maybe I will keep the counter and just grab the browser info, I dont want to slow it down too much… *shrugs*

I guess that’s all I am going to write noew… *wanders off*

o/` Nirvana – All Apologies o/`

*Looks at her two previous entries and shakes her head* No, my weekend was not dominated by drinking, s’just at those particular times all I could think of was the act and the results when I decided to write in my web logs.

The superbowl was last night, I didn’t watch it, completely forgot about it til I got onto IRC on Sunday morning and a couple people were talkingabout it. I hate sports.

So I log onto Yahoo! this morning to check my email, and scan the headlines quickly to see what’s going on in the world (my daily dosage of biased news from Yahoo! YAY!)… and BELOW the superbowl scores I see “Powell says has lost faith in inspections” … now did we have any doubt they were going to pull this? “You didn’t tell us what we wanted to hear, you must have failed” … fucking US, the UN won’t support our government if we attack, and according to stats I heard on NPR saturday 63% of Americans do not want to risk a war without UN support. But these statistics and predictability of the stupid US’ actions are not what amaze me about this whole thing… it’s that the freaking superbowl stats are listed ABOVE important lifeordeath war news! I read another article recently about Janeane Garofalo’s Anti-War stance, and she correctly said “It’s disgusting that we know more about Winona Ryder’s trial than we do about the Iraqi people.” … I don’t by any means see her as my hero for saying something like this, but it’s good a few people who can get camera time on the news are voicing an opinion, even if the media proceeds to tear them to pieces. I hate war.

What a wonderful monday, two of the three first paragraphs end with me hating things *tries to change the mood of this entry*

It snowed last night %) It’s so pretty out now.. and I’m watching for snow squirrels o_o … what’s a snow squirrel? Well last year was VERY mild here, so even when there were flurries it was always bordering the freezing mark, and the squirrels spent the entire winter preparing for winter, they were out looking for food and stuff to make their little squirrel-homes warm even when it was snowing! The first time we saw this was when Myk was on his computer and looked out the window in front of him and saw a little squirrel looking at him, before it scampered off into the snow. It was so cute %)! There havent been as many this year, maybe they realized that winter is here for real this time, hehe. So, thinking about squirrels this morning I wandered over to some squirrel sites, like squirrels.org (a site which I must commend, because although their site is a mess of evil java, you DO have the option of seeing it as “text only”)… did you know that the original name of a squirrel (skiouros … named in anchient greece) means “he who sits in the shadow of his tail” ? Yay! Useless facts!

Last night while reading up in my World History For Dummies book, I realized that over the past few months I really have learned enough about anchient history to finally have a solid base for learning more. I can give a fairly accurate picture from what is known about the beginning of civilized world til the fall of the roman empire. Again, I know we learned all this stuff in school, but I just dont remember. What is it about learning in school that did me absolutely no good? Was it just because I didn’t care? Is the method used to teach history bad? I remember the history that we learned in “fun” ways (games, interesting projects) even as far back as 5th grade.. and yet I can’t remember learning some things we were taught in my junior year of high school. I suppose it’s a bit of both, if some teacher had gone far enough to actually spark my interest in history instead of just going by the textbook learning method of temporary memorization I probably would have been interested and learned more. *Shrugs*

I have finished three books since my last review, so here are my most recent ones…:

Dune Messiah, By Frank Herbert, 331 pages
Thsi book takes place a few years after the first, Dune. Paul “Muad’dib” Atreides (now the Emperor), has secured his hold as ruler of the known universe through his massive Jihad. The guilds outwardly obey his wishes, millions of religious pilgrims are flocking to Arrakis, the world of the Messiah. It is obvious from this book that Herbert expects the reader to be completely familiar with his world. Like the first book, his attention to character AND plot development is complete, even in so few pages. Basically this book is focused on a single plot (of many before it no doubt) which precededs Paul’s final steps to becoming “immortal.” An excellent book, this series is quickly turning into being one of the best I’ve ever read.

Brave New World, By Aldous Huxley, 270 pages
This book is of the genre that books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, and movies like “Gattaca” and “Brazil” … it’s the future, technology has taken over, and we have order but no freedom. In the world of BNW, people are not born, but manufactured for different social classes, each essencial for a thriving society. They are conditioned to feel and behave in a certain manner, suited for their place in society and kept blissful through various entertainment, sexual promiscuity, and a manufactured drug called “soma.” This book was amazingly written, the future so frighteningly believable (yet we hope humanitarians would never let scientists go quite this far!). The social commentary in the last portions is very interesting, explainations of how and why the society “civilization” was made and suceeds in this form was enthralling and scary. Wonderful book.

The Door To December, By Dean Koontz, 510 pages
This book tells of a girl who, kidnapped from her mother by a crazed father, is recovered but is no longer a normal 9 year old girl. The story quickly unfolds, and a clever detective must solve a string of inexplicable murders surrounding the girl’s case, all while trying to keep the girl and her mother safe from unknown enemies. This is the first Koontz book I’ve ever read, and it interested me because of it’s paranormal ties. I guess the only problem I had with it was that it’s ending was rather abrupt, the ending comes 2 1/2 pages after the climax, certainly not enough time to resolve everything to my liking. Still, it was a good, yet not difficult to read, book… It kept me turning the pages chapter after chapter.

Whee books.

So it was recently brought to my attention by a friend that I might be “missing out” on part of life because I have never truly been on my own and single. They were concerned that I’d grow up and hit middle-age and realize that I never lived the single crazy life that I should have. Myk has hinted at similar possibilities… I don’t believe they are correct, but I can’t help but wonder a little bit. Everyone I’ve ever dated (4 guys) I met online and since 1998, when I started dating my first online boyfriend (at 17) I haven’t been single for more than a total of 3 weeks. I guess I do tend to rush into things, but at the same time, with 2 out of the 3 previous relationships I was in I dragged it out, feeling guilty for breaking up with them, putting it off until there were absolutely no feelings left. And EVERYTIME there have been male friends around to comfort me. Now, each time, I naively thought they really were all trying to be sweet, comforting friends, but as SOON as I started dating someone again I hardly heard from these other guys. I guess Myk is the exception, he was always a close friend. I guess what I am trying to say, is with my personality, it would be difficult for me to resist being in a relationship. I am just not the kind of person to have a “one night stand” … so if I wanted to enjoy my time with someone in more than just a “friendly” relationship I’d have to be involved with them… I guess a big part of my problem is that I have trouble keeping myself happy, alone. I spent most of my high school career being alon
e, and I fear that now, if someone offers me attention I draw from that, and do everything in my power to return that attention. Is this a bad thing? I suppose I do demand a lot of attention, especially from Myk … I’m one of those “high maintenance” girlfriends, hehe… Anyway, I do intend to spend the rest of my life with Myk, so maybe I have missed out being crazy and single, but do I need that? I have supported myself, lived in a “real world” while one of my ex’s sat on his ass and played video games in our apartments, been responsible for my own well-being, is that enough to be well-rounded?

Enough of that…

Ah, so, my weekend. Friday evening I went grocery shopping (yuck), took back dvds to blockbuster, and got that check from my grandparents cashed.I got home and certainly didnt feel like making dinner, so around 7 I called the local Indian Food place, and went to pick up some beer and the yummie dinner. It was soooo yummie, and despite my craving for beer that I’ve had for weeks, I only had two beers. Saturday I got up around 10:30, played around uselessly online for a couple hours, woke up Myk… then around 2 Myk’s friend from work came over so he could get Debian installed on his system. I read most of the afternoon while they did the install, but I spent a little time hanging out in the computer room with them. It was interesting to see a windows lover try to use linux. There is no such thing as a perfect linux install on a new system, and that was difficult to explain to someone who had always used windows. And it quickly became apparent that he is scared of the command line, which isn’t cool. We got pizza and buffalo wings around 5ish, and Myk showed Brent a bunch of linux things, got KDE set up for him, and by 9 pm he had a pretty nice linux system running. After he left we both had doubts about how far he is going to take it, his fear of the command line is going to severely deter his learning… I guess I definately take my interest in computers for granted, I just dove into everything linux when I began using it, I suppose it’s not that easy for everyone.

Before Brent left we started drinking a little (apparently he doesn’t drink tho *sigh*), I ended up getting really silly around 11ish… and at one point I was trying to find this stuffed animal that I COULD HAVE SWORN that I still had, it was driving me crazy, I went through ALL of them and couldnt find it! I then blamed my drunken state for my inability to locate this toy, but even the next day I was looking and couldnt find it, very very strange… the gnomes took it %( I’ll find it the next time we move, it’ll be packed with all my stuff and I’ll know I am crazy. Anyway, we had a nice night on saturday, I got pretty toasted, yay! Sunday moring I felt like crap of course, but I drank lots of water, and was never far from the Advil, and by the afternoon I was feeling fine again. I read for a while in the afternoon… made boca burgers for dinner (yum!)…

Yep, that was my weekend. Goddamn this has been a long entry %s I am going to go work on things noew *wanders off*

ooooh… my head. %(