o/` The Police – Every Breath You Take o/`

It has begun. I could write 5 paragraphs about what I saw last night on the news, but somehow it just doesn’t appeal to me.

I went to the doctor today for that coloscopy, and let me tell you, what an AWFUL thing it was. I felt like I was going to be sick after, horrible cramps, and bleeding *sigh* They hurt me! Bleh.. I just hope I wont have to have another one done for a long time %( I should go back to bed, but it’s so boring… I’ll probably read for a while after writing this. I wish I had a laptop so I didn’t have to sit in a chair and write this, hehe. Anyway, I was weighed while at the doctor’s office, and the hairdresser wasnt kidding when she said all that hair was about 3 pounds! Hehe… the “hair salon weight loss program” … not that I needed to lose weight…

After the appointment I was feeling kinda crappy so Myk took me out to eat at Friday’s for lunch, we got there right as it was opening, so it was pretty quiet, the service was good, and the food was surprisingly good. I got a chicken sammich and then some chocolate cake, mmm.

Talked to my mother last night, she called after I sent her the photos of my haircut, in total disbelief like I knew she would be, hehe. I talked to her about how I probably wouldnt be able to visit for a while and she understands (as much as a parent can). I’m glad she’s not being a nag like my father, even if I know that is her being the “good guy” to my father’s “bad guy” role *shrugs* oh well, it’s good to have one more relative off my back about this.

Hmm so about this 1U mount rack servers, I was going by prices of them used, ones I looked at on ebay… I will probably end up buying one from ebay *shrugs* I will look around tho, this is a big purchase, and I have a lot of time to shop %)

Yeah, I am going to lie down now, hopefully I won’t be horribly sore for too many days *moans slightly and hauls herself off to the bedroom*

o/` BOA – Little Miss o/`

Anyone have a 1U rack mount server they want to sell to me for real cheap? Please? %)

Looks like I’ll probably get this website job, woo! They are wanting a php and mysql backend (well, they will need one, based on what they told me they want) so they can update “listings” of the real estate business, which is cool… all the work I have done recently with the journal, and even my guestbook on my website has prepared me for this, I can do it! %) And I have a few months to find a “home” for it other than the cobalt (that goes away in august), and I have a few ideas… anyone know any place that does webhosting with php, mysql and a decent amount of space and bandwidth? I am considering getting a 1U and going in with some friends to colo them at a nearby ISP… the monthly costs wouldnt be bad, s’just buying the 1u that is sorta out of reach right now (for what i am looking for they tend to be $250 – $400).

So I went to get my hair cut yesterday. The hair place was *really* nice, I had honestly never been in a hair place that nice for myself before, apparently the haircuts are usually something like $45, gah! Hehe, so I get there, and the woman cutting my hair asked how I wanted my hair cut. Now it was all quite uncomfortable, I don’t know how I want my hair cut! I had never really worn my hair any different than long and straight, so I asked her what she thought… so I sorta got some layers *shrugs* not much, still pretty boring %) Anyway, when I got there I was nervous, I was cutting off 10 inches right? The hairdresser showed me how much 10 inches was, and I realized I was really prepared to get rid of more than that, honestly… if I cut off 10 inches no one would have noticed! So I showed her how far I could deal with cutting it, and guess what? 18 inches! Yeah, I was surprised they could take off that much and still have it pass my shoulders.

I guess I was a little upset, I didn’t cry … and Myk really likes it %) I changed my pic on here to reflect it, I took these pictures in the mirror this morning so I could send them to my family (it was the only way they’d believe me).

It’s really weird tho, brushing and washing my hair is completely different! And it’s not as messy all the time, and I can wake up with morning hair now! Hehe… I think I like it, maybe I’m still in shock ;)

I need to lay off the caffeine *pours out the rest of the pot of coffee*

Um, I don’t know what I’ll do for the rest of the day. The morning was pretty much spent trying to mess with the digital camera (I didnt have the driver installed in windows, and the USB is really crankie), then talking to the guy about the web design thing, bleh, where do the hours go? Oh well, at least I have the prospect of a job now, even if it won’t pay a whole lot, I really should get around to getting a real job to.. *sigh*

iI discovered WinSCP today. See, I was thinking, how is this guy going to move images from his computer to the webserver? FTP really isnt an option, it’s not secure enough, and teaching someone to use icky old command line pscp? Ugh. Apparently WinSCP is a lot like Cute FTP, it easily allows users to upload images via scp, woo! I will have to go into windows sometime and test it out, hopefully it’s as easy to use as I hear.

The temperature outside has cooled down a bit… we ended up shutting the windows last night because it was just so cold, currently it’s not even 50 out, it’s nice to not have to turn on the heat. It’s a bit chilly in here, but completely acceptable, as long as I don’t try to make more coffee to “stay warm” … maybe I should make some non-caffeinated tea, mmm.

So now that I have these pictures of my haircut, I think I am going to put together a small locksoflove.org
promo thing on my website, including pictures. After telling a few people about this program a couple said “I wish I had known about that when …” it’s really ashame that more people don’t know aobut it.

This entry is getting horribly dull… *wanders off*

o/` A Perfect Circle – Brena o/`

I am torn between my pacifism and the fact that the UN made a decision last fall and if they don’t stick to it then they open the door to more people who think they can fool them, and possibly cause worldwide problems. *Sigh* So what are my thoughts on the upcoming war? I don’t know, I am so exhausted with caring.

The trip to the outlet mall yesterday was… interesting. I didn’t really have a wonderful time, the place was about an hour and a half away, I didn’t shop at all, and I was fairly uninterested in most of the shops we went to. We went out for lunch at Ruby Tuesday’s, which is an ok place, we each ordered a mixed “fruity drink” it was like a strawberry daquari, but with amaretta instead of rum, and vanilla ice cream instead of so much crushed ice. Boy it was yummie %) I didn’t even *feel* the alcohol, but the redness of my cheeks completely gave me away %) We even had a yummie chocolate cake dessert that was so big that the three of us had to split it. Then we went shopping, never walk around a huge outlet mall when you are full!

Anyway, it was nice to get out, and I like hanging out with Nita, her sister is an interesting person, but it’s always entertaining to watch them together. Apparently her sister is having a wedding in May 2004, and the outlet mall trip was to plan wedding stuff. Ah! After that trip I *know* that my wedding someday will be small %) I just dont have the talent (or money, egads!) to put together a $10k wedding, thanks. I don’t think I *know* 200 people! Maybe 100 (including family), and I certainly don’t want them all to come to my wedding, hehe.

I am going to get my hair cut. I was thinking about maybe just six inches or so off, when I mentioned this to my friend Nita, she said that she knew a place that would take six inches, and you donate it to help children with “medical hair loss” (like on chemotherapy) get wigs. Wow, neat. I did some research online, and discovered Locks Of Love. Minimum hair donation? 10 inches. Gah! 10! My hair would still be past my shoulders, but ahh! I talked to Myk about it because I just wasnt sure, and surprisngly he thinks it’s a really good idea. So 10 inches off. I have had long hair forever! The last big hair cut was in forth grade, where it was cut to a little past my shoulders to even it out with my grown out bangs. 4th grade, that was 13 years ago, over half my lifetime! It’s for a good cause tho, and it’ll grow back, why waste six inches, when I can cut off ten and make some child happy? Yep, so this afternoon Nita is taking me out to get the free haircut that comes with the hair donation. Oy %\ I am nervous, but it’s a good cause… yes, and hey, I might look good with shorter hair.

When I brushed my hair out this morning and washed it I cried, I mean come on, this is my hair! I will just need to keep telling myself that it’s for a good cause and it’ll grow back, yes, it’ll grow back, it’s for a good cause, it’ll grow back.

While I was out yesterday I got a call from the real estate agent (yeah, real estate agent, I was mistaken) who wants a webpage. The message is on the answering machine and I will call him up this morning sometime. We worked out a pricing scheme last night that seems resonable, we’ll see, again I am not getting *too* excited, they could end up going elsewhere. I do have to admit being nervous tho, what if I don’t do what they like? What if I am just not good enough? Then I remember that they are basing this hiring after viewing the sites that I did design, so they know what I an do. *sigh* I shouldn’t worry.

Of course this did get me thinking, this is a REAL business deal, no under-the-table payments here, ah! I don’t know how to run my own business! I don’t know how to file taxes on this! I don’t know anything about it! I should figure this all out quickly %) Anyone have any pointers?

S
o I downloaded Teamspeak recently. It’s a program that was apparently developed so people playing games could talk to each other over the net… but it works great when you want to do an online chat with fellow linux users, or people on win32 systems. So I set it up, and tried the local test thing. No worky. Hmm. I checked my mic settings, they are turned on, I checked with people to make sure that the sound card drivers were all I needed to make my mic work, yep. So what is wrong? I didn’t know, so I forgot about it for a while. Then on sunday some people in #goddess set up a teamspeak server and I finally decided to see what was wrong with my mic. I booted into windows to test the mic, since I had never actually made sure it worked. It works fine. So I boot back into linux and express my frustration, and then: “Oh, that local test thing doesnt work, just join the chat, we will probably be able to hear you” ARRG! Why didn’t the people who recommended this software to me tell me this sooner!? KILL KILL KILL! Hehe… so yeah, my mic works fine in linux *rar* I guess it’s my fault too for only using that one piece of software to test it, but I really don’t know much about recording software in linux…

Bleh, I shouldnt have coffee on mornings when my stomach is feeling weird, bleh.

Anyway, I am going to give this guy a call about the website job, wish me luck! *wanders off*

o/` Fisher – Breakable o/`

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

On my Disney Days calendar today there are some of the green army men from Toy Story. The irony is not lost on me. This can’t be a good omen.

So I met this horribly mean german woman today in IRC. Apparently she is offended when people “assume” that things in the United States arent available in Europe. I was having a conversation with someone about shopping online, and was pleased with the selection in online shops, but since I primarily shop in the US I mentioned that I might have trouble if I lived in Europe because of high shipping costs to Europe. She told me “We have online shops in europe, we even have christmas trees, running water (hot and cold) and cars.” Erm… I honestly have no specific “pride” concerning being an American, I simply assume that since we can’t get everything from Europe in the US, that they can’t get everything US in Europe. But apparently this woman has a history of absolutely no tolerance for Americans. She ended up getting into an argument with another person in the room and leaving soon after. I expressed my concern at upsetting her after she left, and luckily the rest of the room assured me I shouldn’t worry about it.

So what is this with so many Europeans having this intense hatred for Americans? I can understand a healthy adversion, but completely alienating someone because of their nationality? It seems a bit close-minded to me, and really ashame for her, because by not giving people a chance she will miss out on meeting a lot of cool people. *shrugs* And it makes me feel bad, I hate it when people dislike me, even if it’s invalid…

So I’m going out with my friend Nita today, and her sister. Just window shopping, I need to get out for a while %) And I don’t exactly have money to do anything *but* window shop.

It’s so nice out… we had the windows open yesterday and kept them open all night, woo! I had a great night sleep last night, nice and cool %) Anyway, I need to go do a few things before I go out… *wanders off*

o/` Something Corporate – Konstantine o/`

I think my problem is allergies, it’s been getting progressively warmer out these past few days (64 F out now!), and my allergies have been known to act up to a point where I get an upset stomach. Bleh, I never got allergies until I moved to New York, here in PA I get them from March til October!

Myk had to go into work yesterday, guess he went in around 2:30 or so… didnt get home til about 11:30 %( it was a rather lonely saturday, it sucks when he has to go in on weekends, poor myn %\

I joined the linuxchix chat room on irc.linuxchix.org yesterday, and I’m very glad I did. Immediately I realized these are the sort of women I have been searching for! I have been so lonely for female companionship (even online), and this room gives me exactly what I need! These women are intelligent, unix users, helpful, friendly, funny, and they share so many of my interests besides computers! I am so happy to have found these people, despite it meaning I have to “become part of” another chat room, it shouldnt be too hard.

*Yawns* I slept horribly last night ’cause I wasn’t feeling good, hopefully such a bad night sleep last night will make me sleep better tonight…

Yes, at the request of pdx6, I am going to start using cut tags *grins* I am sure everyone will like me more now, heehee.

Children of Dune is gonna be on scifi tonight… and we still havent gone over to our friend’s house to drop off the tapes, DOH! Well we need to go grocery shopping sometime today, I guess we can drop the tapes off then *shrugs* … mmm oh, we had pizza last night when Myk finally game home from work. We didnt really have food in the house, and papa johns was the only place still delivering, we hadnt had it in a while and I forgot how much I tended to dislike that pizza, and they forgot the soda we ordered! Doh… that sorta ruined the meal, drinking water with pizza! Bah! Oh well, they took the price of the soda off the order and said they’d give us a free one next time… too bad there probably wont *be* a next time.

St Patrick’s Day is tomorrow, I didn’t even realize it til someone tried to tell me that it was yesterday %) Yesterday was the Ides of March! He clarified and said that one must “start early, you cant drink on mondays anyway” … oh well, it looks like this year will be a dry St Patty’s day, but that’s ok %)

Um, I guess my mother went “clubbing” last night with some friends of hers (not her husband)… Annette (14) helped her get “dressed up” so she would be “cool” and “not a lozer” … and apparently my mother was wearing some of Annette’s clothes, and no offense to my mother, but some laws of physics must have been broken for that to be possible %D Or Annette just wears really baggy clothes. Anyway, my mother is going out clubbing? I can just imagine her meeting a guy “Hi, I’m married and live on a chicken farm..” and a CLUB? In Augusta Maine?! There must be a lot of winners there %D Ugh… my mother is so weird, but she did get married when she was 19, maybe trying to get back some of that youth she lost since she had me at 20? Who knows…

I have that doctor’s appointment this week, I’m not terribly concerned about it, certainly not as worried as I was when I first found out that I needed to go in for these tests *shrugs* It’ll be nice to get it done and over with.

I cleaned off my desk yesterday (wow, this entry is getting more and more interesting!), and found entire colonies of dust breeding behind my monitor and computer! Strangely enough, it seems like of all the places in the apartment, this area gets cleaned the *least* … I always say I’ll clean it when we go to lan parties, but we missed the last one (car troubles) so it just didnt get done, hehe… I should really try to do it at least weekly like the rest of the apartment.

I’m still working on moving all those old journal entries over to the journal on my page, it’s taking forever… it’s funny how I embark on projects like this, and after all the puzzling, figuring out of coding,
and polishing them all up, that I don’t really want to use them… the whole point of the project was getting it done, knowing I could do it… and now I have my own journal, yay, oh, now I need to go through the tedious process of putting in the archives and updating daily? Ugh! *grins* It is funny reading back portions of the entries tho… there are some from when I first joined #deep13 and thought I wouldnt stay, imagine that! My membership in #deep13 is what *made* psiblade! I suggested #13thHour (and irc.clockbot.net) join a few linked servers, and the server grew immensely. I guess the best entry that I have stumbled upon was one where I talked about learning PHP and MySQL … it’s just amusing because now I am putting this entry into something I created with php and mysql! Whee %) … it’s cool tho, ’cause that entry was made back in October, as much as I think I make no progress sometimes, that *definately* can be considered progress %)

This has been dreadfully boring, I’m sorry %) I think I am going to need some benadryl soon… *wanders off*

How can I get sick if I never leave the freaking house? *Upset stomach* … maybe it was something I ate.

o/` Bach – Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major o/`

How many cents off a gallon of gas is a human life worth? Next year will you sleep well every night despite every mile you drive on your cheap gas being paid for by the blood of our fellow countrymen? Of course you will, because you think this war will be about “terrorism” you think this war is because we “might be attacked.” Have you honestly thought out these scenarios? Do you care?

I am such a hippie.

I talked to my sister Annette today, apparently she is being held back in the 8th grade… I’m not terribly surprised, just disappointed. I guess they are giving her a chance to go to summer school and stuff to try to make it up and proceed to high school with her class, but she doesn’t care and said that she’d rather stay back. I asked her if she’d try harder this time, her response was “nah” … *sigh* oh well, there is really nothing I can do about it.

We were going to try to have some people over this weekend to watch children of dune… but like so many of our plans, these were rather short notice, so no one can make it *sigh* I am however going to go out with Nita and her sister to an outlet mall on monday. I’m not a big shopping fan, and I don’t have any money, but it’ll be good to get out of the apartment for a while.

So this linuxchix mailing list is really great.. there is one mailing list of theirs I signed up for recently called “grrltalk” and I’m really glad I did. See the number of female friends I have is very very low, and of those that I can talk to when I am really stressed out? Well, I dunno one or two maybe? And they are not *very* close friends, so it’s hard… why this lack of female friends? I dunno, I think it basically comes down to not sharing enough interests *shrugs* … But, I do share their feelings! There was this thread on the grrltalk mailing list about dealing with stress and when it gets you down, it was quite interesting, and made me feel much better that the feelings I have when stressed out are universal… I mean most guys I talk to when I am stressed laugh at me and it feels like I’m crazy! But I now realize that the reactions I have are normal, yay!

Something has been bugging me lately, and it has to do with people, surprise suprise! … I complain about people too much, but this bugs me. These people who continue to try to teach me obvious things about computers. Now I do love to be helped when I ask for it, I appreciate when people answer my questions, and I do enjoy helping when i can… but some of these people just go on and on, as if I don’t understand the fundamental elements of computers. Even when I tell them I understand, are they just trying to show off their computer knowledge and using telling me as an excuse? It bothers me because it makes me feel like they think I’m stupid, it makes me look stupid because people come into the channel and see that someone is explaining this to “me” … I dunno, I should just avoid these people %)

So I hate “reply” … it never works the way I want it to! I am fairly new to mailing lists, and in mutt I try to be careful because when you hit r to reply (g for group reply works a little better, but its not perfect) it trys to send the message directly to the person instead of the list. I have only made this mistake twice, and people have done it to me too while replying, so I dont feel so stupid I guess… But yesterday Myk forwareded me a message from a list that he and some of his friends are on (private list) from a friend of is. I read the mail, and hit reply to send an email back to this friend and guess what? Yep, reply sent it to the private list. FUCK! Luckily it needed to go to the moderator for approval, so I msg’ed the moderator and told him to ignore it… he said it was fine but it still made me look stupid! Ugh… hopefully this will teach me to pay attention to the “To:” field!

Now what was this email about? A web design and host
ing job. Woo! This small company doesnt want to spend a lot, but they believe having their own company website will boost sales. So I sent our friend my information, apparently i’m the only person who replied to his list message, so he said he’d give the company (who is owned by his friend) my information, along with info for some web design/hosting companies, but he said he’d try to push them in my direction since he’s really not sure how much they are looking to spend, and there is no doubt I would be cheaper than a web company. So we’ll see, I am trying not to get too excited about it, but with the money I’d make from this, I might be able to pay for a hosting place for both the company website *AND* my own! That would be so great. Plus I’d have a company website under my belt to put on my resume! Woo! … ah shouldnt get too excited… (%

So I had a bit of an arguement with a couple of the other ops on psiblade last night. I am just glad I was around to catch what happened… see apparently someone flooded off the server the other night in what could have easily been a text flood or something (it only happened once). But one of the ircops decides to ask the guy who did the flood what happened. So he came into the guys room (which is a secret room, but since we are ircops we can see it) and asked him to explain what the flood was. Well of course, as anyone who owns a room and is confronted with someone asking such a question he says “who are you?” … now instead of the ircop saying “I am an ircop, just checking it…” he says “i’m me” … the owner of the room proceeded to kick him. Wouldnt you? Possibly not, but on psiblade we allow people to kick ops, and he didnt even know this was an op! Well, the room owner added the op to a shitlist or something, so the op would auto rejoin, and be kicked, several times. So what does this ircop do? Unregisters the channel! The admin for mst3k then got involved, and AGREEING with this ircop, he unregistered the room AGAIN and took it over. This is when I was messaged by the room owner to tell me what was going on, I looked in #opers and asked what the fuck was going on. The other ircops claimed they were in the right because the room owner didnt “ask politely” for them to leave. I called them Nazis. Luckily a fellow ircop came to my aid and agreed with me. Of course, who wants to be on a server where the ops are that controlling? I don’t. Luckily I was able to talk the room owner into coming back and not talking shit about us all over a bunch of networks. *Sigh* … I wish the other ircops would just realize how much work I do to promote psiblade, not everyone joining the network will be a shining example of humanity, but if we want our network to grow we need to tolerate a bit of it, this person caused no trouble and was being put down by ircops! That is unacceptable.

Anyway, it’s about noon, I am going to go find something to work on *wanders off*

o/` Everclear – Song From An American Movie Part 1 o/`

Erm, Everclear… yeah, it’s sorta nostalgic.

I made hard boiled eggs today. I had never done it before, so to find out how to do it I search on google. End result? One cracked, on broke and spit some yucky egg yoke out into the pot, and one had the yoke almost touching the outside edge of the egg… but they were easy to peel! I’d say it was a success %) Woo! Hehehe… Maybe next time I should pay more attention to them, like roll them around to make sure the yokes stay in the middle of the egg. I am so bad at cooking.

Anyway, we finally watched our copy of Children Of Dune last night, woo! It was better than the first. Then we went to the chat with Alec Newman on scifi… it was cool, short tho. Naru_Chan was there at the chat too… and there was some crazy chick who owned an Alec Newman domain, creepy stalker! Hehehehe. Anyway, today I spend almost an hour taking screenshots of the various characters in the movie… yeah I searched like 5 hours of movies for these, heh… So enjoy them dammit! (Excuse that they are displayed in an icky directory, I dont have the time right now to do otherwise)

Children Of Dune Pictures

So I might be creating a webpage for a leasing company! A friend of ours is putting me into contact with a company that needs a website and doesnt want to spend a lot on it *shrugs* i’ll see what I can do, he’s going to give them my name and we’ll see.

Bleh… I need to get some stuff done now *wanders off*

o/` Better Than Ezra – The Killer Inside o/`

Rule number 7 of the #13thHour rules states:

Do not talk about killing yourself. If you are seriously suicidal you need a therapist, not strangers on IRC.

Now, this room only has 8 rules, why do we feel like this is important to be in there along with a ban of mp3 scripts and and fighting? Because it is equally as annoying. The rule was established back when we were on Scifi, see there were lots of girls who loved to get attention by going to rooms when they were depressed and cry about wanting to kill themselves… it works, generally when they do this they get 4545 private messages asking if they are ok. Well to be honest, this sort of behavior gets old. I completely understand that people get very depressed, sure I have had thoughts about suicide, and OF COURSE I go to my friends when I have this sort of trouble, but I don’t go into IRC and cause a scene. I don’t care if you come into the room and private message me to talk, that’s perfectly fine, I *want* people to do that, but coming in, and interrupting a conversation for this sort of attention is unacceptable. And so, when people do this we are cruel, we laugh at their complaints about suicide, sometimes say “wow your life does suck, you should kill youerself” … because 999 out of 1000 times the person is just looking for attention, and doesnt have it in them to actually go through with something like this. I realize that we may lose people because of this harsh opinion towards this kind of discussion, but we want to keep a happy (although often sarcastic) mood to the room, we come there to have fun, to talk to our friends.

Why do I bring this up? Because although I want my friends from journal sites to visit me in IRC, I want them to read and abide by the rules. If they don’t then they will be kicked, or more often hated, by my fellow room members. The rules were established and are enforced by all of us for a reason, if you break them you offend people… and then of course my fellow room members say “who was that idiot?” and I have to come out and tell them that *I* was the one who invited them to the room. You know who you are.

Moving on… I spent quite a bit of time playing with keybindings more yesterday. The borderless keybinding thing is impossible so I gave up %) But I am able to expand windows to their full size by pressing alt m … YAY! I dont use my mouse much for anything but surfing the web now, hehe, it’s so nice not to be dependant on it anymore %) I also made my file.menu and user_apps.menu more up to date, and a bit more customized (Click here for screenshot of new menus), and a friend of mine who I was helping navigate through all of enlightenment menus found out a way to get icons out of the Debian Menus! See, i have “menu” installed, which is a debian program that automatically puts every new installed program from apt into the “Debian Menus” it’s really nice, but when it puts it in the menu it often puts an icon next to it… now if you look at my little screenshot, I use icons in my menus, but those are 15×15 pixels, the ones in the debian menus were often 32×32! They looked awful! Small text next to a huge unneeded icon. I didn’t really use the debian menus since everything i needed was in my user_apps.menu, but it was cool to learn how to make the menus prettier. How do you do that?

as root open /etc/menu-methods/menu.h
now go down a little to where it tells you about icons showing up in the menu, uncomment the first two lines, and comment the last
save and exit
run the update-menus command

So simple! So now my debian menus are pretty and annoying icon free, woo! %)

Um, I guess that’s it for now, things are a bit stressful here, but they will get better I’m sure… *wanders off*

o/` Mediaeval Baebes – The Snake o/`

“House cafeterias will be serving fries with a side order of patriotism Tuesday with a decision by GOP lawmakers to replace the “French” cuisine with “freedom fries.””

Haha! That’s funny *laughing* where did you get that article? The Onion? What? You’re serious? This is true? *weeps*

Besides the fact that the fries are named for the style in which they are cut and not that they are from france (they are from belgium), this is so childish! Not to mention intolerant, since when did we treat our ALLIES with such indignity because we don’t agree with them? During WW2 patriot cabbage, or victory cabbage, was the name for sauerkraut, but Germany was our enemy! And this was laughed at later as a clear case of propaganda. I am so ashamed of my country right now.

I am however, more upset at my family at the moment %) I messaged my sister Heather (PurpleDragon11) yesterday to see how she was doing:

-PrincessLeia2- Hey sis, how’s it going?

-PurpleDragon11- good

-PrincessLeia2- good %)

-PurpleDragon11- Oh, dad is mad at you for spending the money granddad sent you on a new car instead of coming to visit like you were supposed to

-PrincessLeia2- What? We didn’t, the money is sitting in the drawer next to me

-PurpleDragon11- Oh

-PrincessLeia2- I wish you people wouldnt jump to fucking conclusions

-PurpleDragon11- Well you said you spent savings on getting a new car

-PrincessLeia2- That was not THIS savings, that was savings we had particularly for that purpose! Besides, granddad DID NOT say this money was for a trip up to Maine, this was with “no strings attached” and he said if I needed money to visit that I could ask for it

Now understand, the check my grandfather sent me was only for $500. It was really nice of my grandfater, and I appreciate it, but not exactly a gold mine. The down payment for the new car was twice this, we pay over twice this a month in rent! What kind of reality is my father living in? This isn’t 1980. Without even getting into the fact that he is a fucking failure in alcoholic rehab that I am sick of defending and shouldnt be judging me in the first place… doesnt he realize that this sort of critism and nagging only makes me want to visit LESS? What will I get when I finally get up to Maine? More lectures and messages of disapproval? I don’t need that. And doesn’t he realize that I’m an adult now? I can’t just grab some cash and drive 600 miles when I feel like it! We have responsibilities here, I remember growing up that we didnt get to go on vacation much, we saw family in other states only once every couple of years, the only reason I saw my grandparents yearly was because they were retired and could drive up and visit. I moved away from home for good over three years ago, and have my parents even made the slighest effort to visit me? No. Have I visited them once? YES! Last April. I saw my mother and sisters the year after I moved away from home because they came to New York to visit family, but I still had to drive an hour to get to the family she was staying with! While my presence in New York was no doubt one of the reasons she visited, she made no attempt to visit me at my home. But has my father done even this much? No. He had a responsibility to my sister to keep the house he was living in, and thus working sometimes two jobs, so why does he not seem to understand the responsibility of being an adult? Is it just an issue of still seeing me as a child? Is it an issue of him having trouble letting go?

Besides, if he was so concerned about how I was spending my money, why not confront me about it? Why complain to my younger sister? It’s the same game my parents played when I was younger, complain to everyone in the family EXCEPT the person you have the problem with. I understand that it’s hard to confront someone with concerns, everyone is guilty of being non-confrontational, everyone is guilty of holding a grudge and just letting it fester because they don’t feel comf
ortable with a confrontation. But in all cases it just makes it worse, not only am I upset because he feels the need to judge me YET AGAIN, but he brings my sister into it because he is too cowardly to tell me himself. After all the times growing up that I defended and stood by him, why does he treat me like this now? Does he not realize the sacrifices I made growing up for him? Does he just not fucking care? I know he wants to see me, I want to see my family too, but he is just driving me away now. All plans to visit are officially put on hold.

I also learned the other day that my father didn’t even call Annette on her birthday, he is basically not even a part of her life anymore. I don’t care what his excuse is this time, there is NO excuse for not having contact with your daughter on her birthday, not even the week of her birthday! He left her no message on the answering machine, no card, not a written note saying happy birthday (even I got that)… Unfortunately from what my mother said Annette was sad, but not surprised by my father’s lack of contact, and she was just glad that she heard from Heather and I.

Ok, I will stop complaining about my father now.

So I spent 4 hours yesterday afternoon trying to write a keybinding the “borderless” window option in enlightenment. Unsuccessfully. I can do almost anything else! Apparently the “Window Operations Menu” (alt rightclick in E, how you get your windows to do cool things, like go borderless) is defined in /usr/share/enlightenment/config/menus.cfg This is the only reference I found to the defining of the WINOPS_MENU. And what does the section about “Set Border Style” say?

BEGIN_NEW_BORDERS_MENU(“WINOPS_BORDERS”, “EMPTY”)
END_MENU

That’s it. Nothing in the menu. But there IS! Now in ~/.enlightenment/themes/darkone/borders/borderless.cfg there is a definition of what borderless should mean

__BORDER __BGN
__NAME BORDERLESS
__BORDER_SIZE_LEFT 0
__BORDER_SIZE_RIGHT 0
__BORDER_SIZE_TOP 0
__BORDER_SIZE_BOTTOM 0
__END

So maybe, automagically, enlightenment has the WINOPS_MENU look to the theme for the configuation of what borderless means? I honestly don’t know. But you figure, hey, I can just put the “__BORDER_SIZE_TOP 0” info into the ~/.enlightenment/keybindings.cfg file, right? So I try that.

__NEXT_ACTION
__KEY t
__MODIFIER_KEY __ALT
__EVENT __KEY_PRESS
__ACTION __BORDER_SIZE_TOP 0

So now when I press alt t with a window focused it should make the top border disappear right? Just like when I hit alt m and it maximizes a window. Nope! Segmentation Fault, Enlightenment crashes. I tried dozens of things, even calling the borderless.cfg file by name. I can do anything with keybindings but the things in the Set Border Style menu! Maybe it’s an enlightenment bug that makes it segfault? Maybe I was just going about it all wrong? When Myk came home yesterday afternoon I told him of my ordeal, he laughed and said he had a similar experience, and he felt better knowing that I ran into the same troubles in the same places. I googled for this, but found nothing on the problem, apparently Myk even went into #enlightenment on freenode but they were unhelpful *shrugs* Looking back it seems like a funny thing to spend an entire afternoon working on but linux is all about customization! The way of linux is being able to do whatever you want even when you press the limits. I hate being stumped.

Hmm, so MorganHorse‘s comment yesterday about the “geek analyzation” being like a Discovery Channel documentary got me thinking… You know, I could easily expand that to a website, including pictures, and stories from other geeks, little “sections” of encounters that other people have had with fellow geeks, it could be an awsome mockumentary of unix geek culture! I’d need help tho, obviously my view as a female geek does not encompass all of unix geekdom, nor do I believe I could define each big group of geeks myself. Any voluteers? This could be really fun…

I guess t
hat’s it for now, I will find something to do today, it’s supposed to be fairly warm (50s) so I think I’ll go take a walk this afternoon %) Of course tomorrow there is a weather advisory for snow and sleet, yay the winter that wouldnt end! %) *wanders off*