Hunting The Muse

So my dad, George Siffert

So my dad, George Siffert from Long Island, met another George Siffert, I think also from Long Island, and gave him a call. The other George Siffert is 15 years older, just bought a boat, just like my dad, and is also known by his nickname because he didn't want to be called Junior, just like my dad. I almost want to send this guy a card as my half-grandpa.

boing boing Behold. boing boing

boing boing Behold. boing boing Behold. Yum.

By the way - turns

By the way - turns out I did not meet my monthly expenses this month. But it's the best month I've had since losing my job last August - earned more money than I had on unemployment, anyway. And, I did meet my goal this week - to surpass my average income of the previous six weeks. And next week I'll surpass the seven-week average, as well. So far so good.

So last year I

So last year I got laid off, and had never been laid off before. Spent six weeks stressing out and accepted a job that I didn't feel totally psyched about but was a better opportunity than the other ones I had at the time. I ended up getting let go three months later for flunking the 90-day eval. They were creepy about the whole thing and using it to hide the reason that they were having financial problems. When I left I found myself wondering if I should have listened to my gut more about it. The thing is I had been stressed about money, and I did get three months worth of a fat salary. So I never quite came to the conclusion that it hadn't been worth it. But now I'm thinking. I'm getting back into employed land and am once again making a good impression on employers, same as I have every single time before that bunch of creeps. And yet it surprises me a bit. To be making that good impression. And so I'm thinking about how long it took me to get back on the horse. Economy and 9/11 aside. And thinking that maybe that experience really did damage my confidence for a while, in ways I hadn't totally grasped. And that even though I got that fat salary, I sure didn't make a lot last year. So maybe it really wasn't worth it.

Ah, that's not quite it though. I'm not exactly looking for a reason to feel like I did something wrong. The only conclusions here are, I like freelancing, I like listening to my gut, and they are STILL creeps.

And I'm up way too late. What the hell am I doing?? I all wanted to go to the unitarian church tomorrow for easter. I might not make it. Ah well. My only really big goal for tomorrow is to finally finish my taxes.

I guess it's been

I guess it's been spreadsheet week this week. I did a bit of business analysis about the ringtones, and I did a bunch of work with spreadsheets today to get a handle on my freelance income and if it really had a chance of supporting me. I guess my thought right now is that maybe it could, but it would be better if I had one more semi-regular client. With where I'm at right now, I'm really only beating expenses on the weeks where my one market-rate client is active.

Pete is bugging me to buy my Macintosh already, and I'm finding more and more reasons to do so... it's just not quite the right time.

April's about to start and it's probably the time to start apartment hunting. I need to have an idea of what I'm doing by the end of April so I can give my notice at the beginning of May. It would be nice if I could find something really cool and also save myself around $300/month. It would be perfect because I'm almost finished paying off my truck, too.

Yes, that's right - my last truck payment! It's at the end of April. Then I have to go to the DMV for some sort of title thing, but then I'm in the clear. Let's hope I don't get in an accident in the next month. Last time I was close to paying a vehicle off, I totalled it, in an accident that changed my entire life direction.

Awright, I'm audi 5000 dude.

One day I's running naked

One day I's running naked through the woods
One day I's running naked through the woods
I saw a little leprechaun
He said, "Why you running naked?"
I said "I don't know."

Damn my ex-girlfriend's sister.

And TOTALLY special thanks to

And TOTALLY special thanks to Peter, who designed my new invoice!  He's awesome!  He's marketing himself as a copy-editor but he's really good at layout/design, too.  Woo!

March 29th, 2002 (Reuters)

March 29th, 2002 (Reuters) - Universal Music Company announced the next phase of their anti-piracy efforts today by introducing empty compact discs into their music catalogs.

"In 2002, gross music sales for our artists went down 9.4%, but popularity of music as a whole is up," said Frederick Farling, Universal's V.P. of Music Media Production. "This can only be from piracy. We've calculated that for every nine cds sold, an equivalent cd's worth of music is stolen from us. So, we're balancing it out."

Universal's plan involves shipping hundreds of thousands of empty cds - a full 10% of its record catalog - to record stores nationwide. The cds will be placed into store shelves and will appear to be identical to other artist cds, with identical artwork, labels, and liner notes. However, the cds themselves will be empty save for a recorded announcement from Hilary Rosen, president of the RIAA.

"Pirates have ruined lives for too many artists," says the recording by Ms. Rosen. "As their risk of losing money due to piracy increases, we must pass on that risk to consumers. This cd you have just received is the end result of piracy. If this makes you angry, it's your friend's fault."

Universal will not accept returns or offer refunds for these empty cds. "Why should we?" asked Farling. "It's those teenage pirates that are stealing the money, not us. We're just restoring balance to the music community. This is about looking out for the artists."

Universal Music is a large part of the RIAA. The strategy is rumored to be part of a larger anti-piracy effort including such technologies as interlaced subliminal messages, advanced frequency technology to slowly damage stereo components, and new cd pressing techniques to create razor-sharp edges on popular cds.

Woo! I just filled out

Woo! I just filled out my first professional-looking invoice. Thirteen hundred bucks. Yay me! I've turned in little email things before, handshake-and-a-smile type things, but this one needed to be all pro looking. I learned what "Net 30" means. Freelancing is fun.

Chess Player's Head Explodes -

Chess Player's Head Explodes - You know, I heard about this a few years ago, but I thought I had dreamed it. So I remembered to google for it and I found this. What really gets me is that list of possibile indicators at the end. I'm a big fat yes for most of them. SO, if you are ever around me and then are all of a sudden covered with brain matter, you will know why. I hope that comforts you.

On another note I am going to vent about stupid indicator lists. The ones that really bug me are the ones that are released by prescription drug companies to test whether you are clinically Depressed(tm) or Anxious(tm). Crap questions like "Are you sometimes sad without knowing why?" They basically make the feeling of any emotion a possible "symptom" and I think that's one of the big evils in society today, no hyperbole. Anyway, I don't take them seriously anymore, but I know a lot of people do.

On a third note (hey it's almost a melody), someone who has the ability to spontaneously make their head explode could be very valuable for political or CIA purposes. You could use it for framing an enemy! Anyone want to write a short story about that? Three cheers for Hyper-Cerebral Electrosis!

Well, I quit my choir

Well, I quit my choir today, this was after not attending rehearsal last night. It just wasn't sticking and I don't totally understand it. I'm comfortable with when things feel right and when they don't, but I haven't figured out how to deal with things when they feel somewhat right and somewhat not. Or maybe I have... maybe it's just a sliding scale thing and I finally came out on the "no" end of it yesterday. It's a bit exhausting to be on the fence for a long time, though. Should I have left earlier? I don't know.

Spreadsheets are cool. I

Spreadsheets are cool. I got an offer to write ringtones for a website that wants to sell ringtones for Nokia users. A long time ago they offered me 10c royalty, which means I would get a dime for each time one of my created ringtones would be downloaded/delivered. That sounded intriguing. Then it fell through for a while. Well, they just got back in touch with me and offered me a different package. First it was $15/hour, which didn't sound like too much fun. Then it was $15/hour plus $0.04 royalty per download, which sounds more interesting, at least as a mental exercise. Although I'd need to buy the Nokia.

So, I got out my spreadsheet and looked at a year outlook. I figured that I could probably spend five hours a week on this... could probably average three or four ringtones an hour. I know they want to max out at about 500-1000 ringtones in their library. And I know what traffic level they are at, and what traffic level they want to be at and what they think they could be at.

And so far it is looking like it might not be worth it for me. There just isn't a very intriguing upside. I could possibly make around six or seven grand on this project over a 12-month period, which seems kind of silly. I mean, maybe it would help and everything. But even when I figure in the royalties on top of the hourly fee I'd be getting... it still doesn't put my overall hourly fee too much over what I calculated as my Survival Rate the other day. And my regular programming rates are 3-4 times that of my Survival Rate. The idea of getting a couple hundred bucks a month in royalty sounds nice, but it would only happen after a lot of work... and the royalties would stop as soon as these guys decided they wanted to shut down or sell the company.

So I'm leaning against it. I might make a counteroffer, though... like maybe 10c/delivery plus some combination of $10/ringtone or an hourly fee or a buyout fee of $x/ringtone if they sell out within x months. We'll see.

I have to think of other plusses though. Maybe if I got really good at making ringtones other companies would know about that. Seems like half the searches that hit my webpage are people asking how to make ringtones. And I could also make my own ringtones for the heck of it. And maybe I could convice them to let me see their code that does all their wireless SMS delivery also, which would help my skillset.

So I'm still letting it roll around in my head. I probably talk to them tomorrow. Any advice?

Saw Blade II today. They

Saw Blade II today. They say it's really violent. You know, the violence didn't bother me so much - the punching and hitting and killing. Most of it was vampire violence. (minor spoilers ahead) You know, silver into a heart and the body explodes into a bunch of lava. But what it was, was GROSS. Ever seen a crotch shot in a birthing scene? That's what some of these creatures looked like that would feed on vampires. The entire lower halves of their face would just open up into this huge orifice, and then something would come out of the orifice, and YUCK. That was more disturbing than the violence. Gross.

Freelance Status Report: -

Freelance Status Report: - Well, I'm close to meeting my March expenses. But I'm really pushing it. I might need to work Saturday. And this is, unfortunately, BEFORE I figure taxes.

I figured out that for freelancing, 30 hours a week really is sort of the limit of my comfort zone right now. I don't really feel like working harder than that right now. But in order to meet expenses (BEFORE taxes), I find that the average hourly rate I need to pull down, at thirty hours a week, is just OVER what I'm accepting from one of my clients. So I'm hoping I find something else soon to average out my time... or after this project figure out how to increase the rate I'm getting.

The other contract I have is helping a lot. Still not as high as I'd like, but sane.

Maybe next month I can figure out how to meet my expenses AFTER taxes.

It would be nice to land another part-time thing soon. We'll see.

Here's a snapshot of what

Here's a snapshot of what I'm doing right now.  Sitting in a messy warehouse with brightly colored walls (a blue wall, a yellow wall, an orange wall, and a purple wall just in this room - the hallway is green), trying to get a directory full of code synced up to the master codebase and my copy of the codebase.  Next, I will try to get this copy of the database and its schema synced up to changes I have made to the schema on MY copy of the database that resides on my workstation.  Then, I'll start unwriting more code.  This project has a lot of data that is in the code that should instead be in the database, so that basically means that my coding output, lines of code per hour, is somewhere in the negative.  Does that mean I suck the computer code into me?  Is that bad for me?  Will I need to do a cleanse?

I seem to have a

I seem to have a couple of regulars that I don't know.  I suspected that one of them is someone I do know in disguise, but now I'm not so sure.  So tell me, Harlan, Rebecca, and Beth (no, not you, Beth.  Or you, Beth.  The other one.)  How did you find me?

IT'S MY DAD'S BIRTHDAY!

IT'S MY DAD'S BIRTHDAY!

Happy birthday, dad!

He doesn't know about this webpage, though. So that didn't do much good.

I am trying to

I am trying to get some regulars to attend my blog and, you know, be fans. Hang out. Comment on me. Find each other in the comments. Talk to each other. Little mini Curt-centric community. Ego trip, or just a good group of friends, your call.

OF course, it could never compete with my little Thunder-Thumbs fan club back in college, when I put together a large fan mailing list to discuss the mystique of Thunder-Thumbs while I mailed them every day with news of what I, Thunder-Thumbs, had for lunch. And you think Thunder-Thumbs doesn't live on??? Think again.

I have thumbs of thunder!

Here's my question. Why

Here's my question. Why do we procrastinate? I'm not looking for an off-the-cuff answer, like "because we'd rather be doing something else". The more I think about procrastination, the more I think it just doesn't make sense on a root, emotional level. Which makes me think that any of us who is prone to procrastination has some sort of dark dank tightness within us, some old misunderstanding that we adopted back when we were guppies in the ocean/spirits in the void (choose one depending on your creationist/new-age-uh-nist beliefs).

Think about it. Procrastinating isn't the same as putting something on the back burner. It's not the same as delaying the completion of something until a more appropriate time. The nature of the concept says that we are *acknowledging* that it's probably best to do it now, we're just going to do it later anyway. In fact, it's often with the knowledge that it will probably suck MORE to do it later rather than now. And yet, we still put it off for when it will suck more.

The part that gets me is that it feels instinctive. It's not like that human thing we do, where we can deliberately go against our instincts. We've got this dim awareness that it would be in our self-interests MORE to go ahead and do the task now, but we almost instinctively resist. Instincts shouldn't be about going against our own self-interests, should they? Why is it such a base impulse? Maybe that dim awareness we have of consequences is just a bit too dim?

It shows a lack of balance in our perceptions of now and later. It's like going into responsibility debt. So, uh, WHY AM I DOING IT NOW? I should be programming, god damn it!

This entry ended up funnier than I intended.

Grump. That's what I

Grump. That's what I feel like. One of those days where nothing went as fast as it should have. They say that Virgo's ruling planet is Mercury, which is very often in retrograde motion. I try not to believe in astrology too much, but that would sure make sense. I guess these "backwards" times are when I could probably better use the time to reflect and think and plan for when things start moving forward again. But sometimes I just use it for getting impatient instead.

I put off my taxes for the first time in a few years, and wouldn't you know it, it's the year where I discover I'm missing an important form, my W-2 from my first employer last year. So now I have to track that down... I was hoping I'd have my taxes finished tonight, but no such luck. All the questions it asked me has started to make me nervous about this self-employment thing I'm doing, too. It's dreadfully complicated. I expect I'll have to go see a tax advisor this year to figure out how to do those dreaded quarterly tax estimates. Yuck. Then I'll probably do an SEP this year for retirement. In the future I'll have to actually think about setting up my own corporation (eek!) and starting a Keogh plan (double eek!). I don't want to take it all that seriously, though - I don't want to grow into a big consulting company. I just want cash, and savings, and extra spare time.

Wow, what a boring blog entry. I should talk about sex and violence a bit. .... Can't think of anything.

Grump! urgh! bleah! stupid stupid stupid! fleh!

I wrote a new chapter

I wrote a new chapter for the Glob. To read the whole story, start from the bottom entry.

Another story about my

Another story about my niece, who is not even three yet. From my sister Tobi:

HORSETRADING WITH MIR:
Mir: I want to buy a horse. You be a farmer who sells horses. White horses.
Me: Okay, I'm a farmer who sells white horses. I have a white horse named Cobweb.
Mir: How much is it?
Me: $300
Mir: (looks at me in disbelief) $300! That's a lot! (Thinks) Do you have any other white horses?
Me: I have a $5 horse and a $10 horse.
Mir: (skeptically) You don't have any $6 horses?
Me: Nope, I have a $5 horse, a $10 horse, and a $300 horse. Which one do you want?
Mir: (confidently) I want the $300 horse!
Me: (after a long pause) Well, do you HAVE $300?
Mir: No, I have a $300 cat and a $300 donkey. You can have the $300 cat.

(She leads her horse away, looking back only to inquire how much it weighs. I say it weighs a ton. "Wow, a ton!" She looks pleased. "That's a lot!")

BUYER'S REMORSE:
(Mir returns some minutes later with her horse).
Mir: I'm selling my horse to you.
Me: Why, don't you like it?
Mir: (shakes her head ruefully and laughs) I just want my cat back!

I guess that somewhere in there, after Tobi said the horse cost $300, Mir actually asked her, "How's your work going, selling horses?" Probably implying Tobi wasn't much of a horse seller, some kind of bargaining strategy.

And she's not even three. I wonder what will happen first: she turns three, she discovers compound interest, she starts a business trading imaginary $300 korean seagulls.

HI BETH!!!

HI BETH!!!

Korean seagulls?? WTF?

Korean seagulls?? WTF?

I learned today that my

I learned today that my two-year-old niece has finally kicked the vegetarian habit. You see, it is because she is a lion. And lion eat shrimp. So she insisted that since she was a lion, she needed shrimp. So they got her some popcorn shrimp. And it turns out that lions are also quite selfish, because she didn't share her shrimp with mom and dad at all.

Feeling preoccupied about attachment

Feeling preoccupied about attachment these last couple of days. I feel like I remember college less than my same-aged friends do. And I feel like I feel my friendships less than my friends feel my friendship. (Yes, that sentence made sense, read it again.) I am trying to think of more ways to fully feel and realize how much my friends value me. I must have some sort of creepy self-protective thing going on because I consistently nag at myself underneath... anything to keep myself from really relaxing in someone else's appreciation.

Maybe it's just a phase... it sure has been overcast lately. Weather makes me insane.

I have a very bad

I have a very bad ISP. I will have to print up the correspondence and link to it somehow. It's pretty ridiculous. These are the guys that put porn in my website without telling me.

Here's an excerpt from a

Here's an excerpt from a letter I got from my local unitarian church. It's a microcosm of my impressions of the church:

"The earth does not belong to man. Man belongs to the earth. This we know. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." - Chief Seattle (19th century gender usage.)

Lovely quote. Fits with my politics. And that parenthetical thing at the end bugs the hell out of me.

When I wrote "I might

When I wrote "I might have to move" a few entries down, I only meant to somewhere else within Portland. A couple people have asked. :)

Heh... someone just did a

Heh... someone just did a google search for "match.com password hacking" and came up with my page. Looks like there's some desperate guy out there that is turning into a stalker.

Hey, creep! Yeah, you! Leave her alone!

I met Stephen R.

I met Stephen R. Donaldson's son today. This guy was one of my favorite authors for many years, while I was reading the White Gold Wielder books, and more intensely, the mirror books "A Man Rides Through It" and "The Mirror Of Her Dreams" - I also really liked "Daughter Of Regals", his book of short stories.

Anyway, I was at Powell's here in Portland, and I was browsing the fantasy shelves, and I overheard this guy - probably in his late teens or early twenties - talking about his dad writing all these books and pointing out the ultra-thick hardcover "Mirror Of Her Dreams" book. A minute later, his friend (guest?) remarked how big it was, and since I was right next to them I said, "it's a good book!"

So the son looks at me and says, "My DAD wrote it!" I thought he had already known I had overheard so I said, rather reactionless, "Yes, I know. I overheard."

He just looked sort of crestfallen. I felt bad. So I immediately said, "That's really cool!" and he said paused and said "Thanks!" in a subdued voice. Then they moved on.

That was all it was. Nothing big. Peter gave me shit about taking the guy down a couple of pegs. Which wasn't my intention and probably didn't happen anyway. But it was funny. And really, it was cool that he was so proud of his dad. And the mirror books really are good.

I am an idiot.

I am an idiot. I had all these thoughts prepared for my six month blog anniversary, but then I realized it has only been five months. Fuck it, I'll celebrate five months instead. :-)

It is my blog anniversary. Five months ago I started my blog. I mentioned feeling "pregnant", waiting for the next big thing. I mentioned hunting for my muse, hunting for something to feel vaguely single-minded about.

Well, it looks like my freelancing thing is starting to take off a bit. This week I got my first check from a contract in progress. Next week I start a new one, and today I submitted a proposal for a third. It's still really sporadic, but things might be happening. I also feel pretty consistently charged up about my side idea, hints of which you can read about here. Spending a few hours a week programming it.

So my technical life is going okay. What I'm sort of sad about is that my musical life is still only moving in fits and starts. I got access to a grand piano but I'm not practicing regularly. I had goals to buy a piano but I abandoned that goal by saying no to a salaried job. I am in a choir but it's not a really good fit. I found an a cappella group to be in but it didn't last... I found a couple of possibilities for music collaboration but none have turned into anything yet. I really want my musical life to start becoming a bit more active.

I guess there have been a lot of fits and starts in business as well. I had a ringtones project that fizzled. I had a project in video compression software that fizzled. I had ideas in starting online publishing services that fizzled. But somehow through all that some things started to take hold and move forward. Maybe it will be the same with music. Just have to keep trying.

I also have had some writing projects moving in bursts and starts. My nanowrimo novel went nowhere, but I did have a lot of fun not writing it. ;-) I started up The Glob again and I'm supposed to write the next chapter. (By the way, if you are a solid creative writer and want to write some collaborative fiction, please apply.) And this blogging thing seems to be going well. Maybe this is slowly starting to take hold as well. I'd like to start experimenting with some more formal writing styles and structures.

And finally socially. My friend situation has moved in bursts and false starts also. I dropped a couple of new friends and I believe that one, sadly, has dropped me. I lost a love and she is trying to find me again. I have toyed with dating a couple of times and it isn't really "taking" yet. I meet my best friends' wives and girlfriends and am stunned at how high-quality they seem to be when I have trouble finding those types of women when they are single. I have focused mostly on female friends but am possibly finding some new male friends as well.

These last five months have been quick. I am not sure what to focus on these next five months. Right now my priorities seem to be the following:

• Grow my freelance business. Get some recurring customers. Increase my skill set, and increase my rates to the point where I can live comfortably and not feel like I'm having to drive myself crazy.
• Increase my musical life. Collaborate musically. Find somethere where there is actually a continuing musical project and some synergy that involves me being musically creative. Perhaps some recording. Something where my skills fit in well.
• Devote myself more fully to the alumnudes, grow it into a network where people are more tightly connected. Think about this production company idea.
• Find some closer social relationships, including something that helps me feel more excited about future potential romantically.

I think just with those I will feel like I am making good progress. The annoying part is that I think I will probably have to move... I don't want to, though. I hate moving. Maybe I'll resist it unless a true opportunity comes along. I'll just listen and see what happens.

And I reserve the right to write a six-month retrospective also! I don't care if it has less of an impact now! nyeah!

I'm on hold right now

I'm on hold right now with "Data Peer" and their hold dialogue is hilarious. They've got background music and narrators apologizing for the delay, but the funny part is that they've got different layers, and all these different voices apologizing actually interrupt each other. Man: "Please continue to -" Man 2: "Thank you for continuing to hold, your patience is appreciated." Woman: " - is only moments away!!!"

Job hunting is weird.

Job hunting is weird. Freelancing is weirder because the job hunting never stops even when you already have a job. Right now I actually have two jobs, but it doesn't exactly leave me feeling like I can relax. But even while working at a job and having to look for more, I kind of liked that I was able to just get up in the middle of the day and walk up to this other appointment without having to explain anything to anyone. This feels like a right lifestyle for me for right now.

I've done a bit less work for Derek than I thought I would this week, but I have tomorrow to do more and he wasn't expecting me to do a lot this week, anyway. I've spent most of the week preparing for She, being with She, and recovering from being with She, and since then doing job hunting stuff. I got some pressing items off of my todo list today, but I still have to do my taxes. I'm probably just going to use Turbo Tax again this year, even though I hear it's possible I could find a lot more deductions if I used a tax specialist. I just don't think my tax situation was all that complicated last year. Next year, definitely.

"She" is confusing me. Actually, I am confusing me. She's being decidedly less confusing than she has been in the past, and that is what confuses me. It is nice being with her, which confuses me. But I still don't really feel like opening up to her a whole lot - not that that is all that voluntary of a choice right now. It's just taking time, and I probably won't know which way it settles for a little while. I do tend to feel a bit annoyed at all these little steps to go through, though - just that life is taking a bit longer to clear up than I would like. But that is not all a She thing. I just want my house and piano and solid happy job/company and joyful mate already, so I can start working on the rest of my life again. I feel like I'm a level behind on the maszlo's hierarchy compared to where I want to be. I want to be thinking more about my spirituality and how to make the world better for more than just me, not thinking about where I'm going to live in three months and who I should date. Geez.

I do like chocolate chip

I do like chocolate chip cookies, though. Made them last night.

Landed a contract today. This one is much more official than my other one. Maybe I'll be a little bit okay for a little while. It would be nice to have a month where I'm actually above water. We'll see.

I hate cookies. I

I hate cookies. I mean the netscape kind, programming them. Annoying. Just finished most of an implementation for php. Mostly. Time to sleep now.

Quotes from my niece, while

Quotes from my niece, while playing with her dolls Peggy and Izzy in her "forest" (the branches Dad cut up for her - she plays with them constantly):

"'I don't want to be in your arms,' Peggy remarked."

"'Not Thursday night!' her sister gasped in disbelief."

"'It's all soft inside,' she murmured to herself."

She's 2 yrs. 10 mos. old. yikes!

It is strange how

It is strange how sometimes real life pushes itself in on you in the most inopportune times. AWEGAWEKLTAJWEGAEFLKJSGES and I were nervous about seeing each other after eight months of not, after four months of being broken up, and there was a lot of build-up. So I go and get her, and she comes over to the apartment, and what's the first thing that happens?

The toilet backs up.

It's never backed up before for me, just a fluke. And it wasn't too disgusting or anything... well kind of... but then we realized that I didn't have a toilet plunger. Flushing it repeatedly wouldn't do anything - it would just come up close the rim and go back down - each time closer to the rim. So I had to go buy a plunger. And she wanted to come with me. And then we started laughing about how strange it would look to go through the checkout lane with ONLY a toilet plunger. And we started thinking about what else we could buy with it that would make it better... or worse... so we thought of things like buying a plunger and metamucil, or a plunger and a case of Ex-Lax.

And we ended up having a good time the rest of the day. So, there's real life for you. I guess life is better with real life than without it.

I had a decent

I had a decent weekend. I had a bit of an emotional workout on Friday meeting up with the Acronymed One (see below), and it went in a couple of unexpected directions - mainly that we had a much nicer time together than I thought we would given the circumstances. Then I met a friend for dinner, but unfortunately the music was loud so the conversation wasn't extremely rewarding. Today I hung out with my married couple and we saw A Beautiful Mind (surprisingly good for a Ron Howard flick), made bowtie pasta, and watched Alias. A good relaxing wrap-up for the weekend.

This week I get my first bit of freelance income (hooray!) and will be trying to land two other opportunities. If I don't get any fresh leads this week I'll be depressed.

Sometimes computer networking can

Sometimes computer networking can be so confusing, especially when you are trying to keep current on a linux distribution through constant upgrades. The latest challenge was that Mandrake released a newer version of OpenSSH, but they neglected to mention that they compiled it with libwrap support. After installing, all of a sudden none of my other boxes could ssh in. I've learned to search for the exact syntax of the error messages on google and I ended up finding the answer (I had to put some extra commands into my "hosts.allow" file) but man, it sucks when the only way to solve a problem is to answer a question that you have no way of knowing you even need to ask.

hee hee

hee hee

Whoops! I misspelled her convenient

Whoops! I misspelled her convenient acroynm in the previous entry. It should actually be MFTISCMEBICHTMADHTOFWSSIRSJCHBNETSTIMBIDWTCHBN.

This is what happens when you procrastinate going to bed.

Well, it's a strange

Well, it's a strange second half of the week. My friend that I shouldn't call my "ex" because it compartmentalizes her too much and doesn't honor the other facets we share so I really should just call her by name except that since this is my blog I don't want to call her by name (hereafter known as MFTISCMEBICHTMADHTOFWSSORSJCHBNETSTIMBIDWTCHBN) is arriving in town on Friday after eight months away in Ireland.

It is kind of freaky. We weren't on steady footing when we left; had already decided to start living apart even before she decided to go overseas. Then some Bad Stuff happened and we broke up, and I've ended up feeling like I'm done with that phase of my life. And now she's done with Ireland and is moving to Portland, and I see her on Friday.

We decided to just spend a day together just to kind of deal with this thing head on. On Friday. I guess I don't feel too worried about anything... just knowing that it will be really weird to run into her. And I'll feel like I ran into a ghost, and I will be mad, and it will hurt, and maybe I'll see some new things also. I guess I'm expecting that it will be intense and not entirely pleasant, but healthy in the long run.

We say we are looking forward to seeing each other but I also wonder if maybe that is a bit idealistic and if it will just hurt a whole bunch. We have a lot of safety processing pain with each other, but what will make this weird is that I will feel protective about showing too much of my process to her anymore... just from being worried about it being too bonding in a false way.

At the same time, my social life is getting a bit active in a couple of interesting ways. I'm being a bit clumsy about it, idealizing a bit heavily and then getting a hold of myself... I have to remind myself that even if I imagine I might feel ready to start dating a bit, I might still only be ready to make new friends. I've had a couple of experiences already where fantasy starts getting closer to reality, and then reality shows itself to be a bit more complicated than I remember. So I put effort into balancing myself before it gets to be too late and someone (whether me or the other person) gets left in the lurch.

So I guess I'm a bit guarded in general. That's fine by me. I'm okay with melting slowly.

I am wearing TUBE SOCKS

I am wearing TUBE SOCKS with my DRESS SHOES.

Deal with THAT.

Overall a good day today.

Overall a good day today. I got another possible contract opportunity by being creative with networking - a current client was saying no to other business because he didn't have the time, so I convinced him to refer these businesses to me as clients - I'd get paid by the third party, and have the current client's permission to implement on his servers. Could work all the way around. We'll see. I also did some good by evangelizing MusicBrainz, a really cool open-source music metadata service, and it looks like my efforts will result in a good advantage for them. Hooray!

testing out a new feature...

testing out a new feature...

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I've been feeling out of

I've been feeling out of sorts all day today... I thought most of it was just because I was nervous about my dentist appointment, but it stuck with me afterwards, too. Sometimes we work hard on ourselves to balance everything, and then I guess we get pretty good at it so the universe decides it'll just start throwing more at us. Never more than we can handle, but enough to make it a challenge.

The dentist appointment was good. All these problems we thought I had all ended up looking pretty good. I don't need any periodontal work, I don't appear to have major bone loss in that one tooth like we thought, and they think the mobility in my one loose tooth might just be because of the orthodontics I had as a kid. Makes more sense since I don't remember that tooth ever not being slightly mobile. Made me more mad about the first dentist though - my hygienist today told me that she knew others that worked there that had had the same complaint I did, that they were very aggressive and tended to overdiagnose. Ticks me off...

Monica: "I think I just

Monica: "I think I just thought it would be a fun fling," she says at one point. "I judged him in the sense of thinking, 'Well ... oh OK ... whatever. You know, I'm young ... it's the president ... he's cute. It's kinda cool. Irresponsible ... but cool.'"

That has got to be the coolest quote ever.

This isn't going to

This isn't going to be a very deep entry because I feel sort of worded out right now. Probably because of an eight hour phone conversation I had last night. I think that's the longest phone conversation I've ever had that wasn't a long distance phone call. Anyway, that's not what this entry is supposed to be about. Funny that my brain wants to revert to that subject though no matter what else I'm thinking about.

Anyway. Time. Sleep. (Discipline, Curt.) I put in twenty hours of work this week. I put in the effort to wake up at a normal hour. Fell asleep a bit later still. Did more stuff during the days. Felt a bit more active in general. And at times it sucked being up when I got up - I actually felt sleepy at times (I had gone months without ever feeling sleepy just from sleeping whenever I felt like it), and I relied on caffeine a little bit, which I almost never do... but, the week actually felt longer. That's a nice feeling. I feel like I did a lot this week, lived a bit more this week.

I think this was a good week. I haven't had a bad week for a while, of course, but this was a good week. And that feels, well, good.