January 2003 Archives

ok, so, i have setup a new forum, since the old one will go away with the server moves. and i rather like this one better than the last one, kdkelly.net/forum is a lot easier to remember, as well.

so many toys on the new servers.

and quite geeky, but hopefully not in a boring way.

started out this evening, kurtwood's blog did not recognize me after the move. other blogs did, his didn't. intrepid idiot that i am, i poked around in the guts of the berkeley db files looking to see if ... well i'm not sure what i expected to see, it's of course gibberish, all encrypted and stuff, but you can make out a thing or two, and it looked like it should work? all the other berkeley dbs moved without a problem.

it's bugged me since the first time i saw it. wrong on many levels. i mean, way to blame minimum-wage earning, taco-bell working folks for their extravagant $6.75/hr lifestyle. way to point vague blame at the sort of operating costs that are part of a good business plan, or a good contingency plan at least. and finally, for crying out fucking loud, the cost of the soft drink syrup in the average cup is what five whole cents? ten? yes, it adds up. i can only hope that the dollars that seniors would have otherwise spent there, feeling they were getting a little extra treat, are also adding up.

i'm probably not being entirely rational about this. ok, not probably. i really can't explain in any logical way, why i get so bent every time i see this stupid sign. whatever happened to respecting your elders? ferfucksake, give granny her mountain dew, put the spring back in those fallen arches. now, pops, you give him that sierra mist stuff, he's cutting back on his caffeine, his ticker ain't what it was.

damn. i have to quote adam sandler.

well, early, at least. today, i'll install the DSL at the car wash, this i will enjoy.

i adore both my jobs, but there is one thing that absolutely drives me to drink. windows XfuckingP. both places have newer, nicer computers than these here. not top of the line, but faster by a bunch than mine at home. and yet, and yet, they run like dogs. not fast dogs, mind you. they run like thirteen year old overweight three-legged arthritic dogs with asthma. all that foo-foo pastel prettification, all cloying and patronizing and intended to hide any actual control or functionality behind layer after layer of helpful options - "here, we've decided you want one of these things, rather than what you actually want". it pisses off power users and confuses newbies, which should be a really sucky business model, and yet, and yet ...

... and you know, i really had to dig to figure out something to bitch about, otherwise, other than the of course frantic nature of the way my days go these days, things are good.

hello, four fucking oclock in the maudeforsaken morning, howthehell areya? fine, fine i see. and that sounded a lot fussier than i feel, i'm more whimsical than any other one thing. the evening's geek session was particularly epic, and the aftermath is just antsy. and speaking of bugs, the moth i pulverized against the screen with a cigarette box earlier is really getting in the way. you know, at first i was concerned that there were no identifiable mothparts left over after, thought perhaps they'd fallen where i might touch them, but now i see that the smear is all there is. when i commit insecticide, i don't mess around. well, ok, mess, but ... oh, there we go, it's after four now.

doesn't help that i'm the sort of person that has several cardboard boxes in my living room, generally, (as opposed to the sort who puts things away and breaks down the box and places it neatly in the recycle bin) - because cats are nocturnal. but so am i, so we're fine. you know, i do not like that song sail on sail on sailor, yet the chorus is playing in my head. perusing the lyrics, i ought to like it more than i do, but i don't.

do you know that i have chat rooms now? several. there is one that calls itself entropy chat, and while the name appeals, it appears to be one of those reloady things. there is a java chat, which looks promising, also, i have that phpmychat, but, java is ever so much the better chat platform, isn't it?

i made a page with the chat links, a whole page, just the two links.

i really didn't have much to say, if anything, anything at all, however i do feel less lonely.

oooookay. so that was a nice little ohmygod type freakout. at first it was like the PHP wasn't working, i've seen this before - but the mime type was set up right, so ... there i was. finally i got the browser to open up the error page and lo and behold, it was hacking up a hairball about my index.wml file (the wireless internet page, remember?)

so i zapped the page(s), and all's well, well, sort of. now i have to go and figure out what all else is pointing somewhere it shouldn't be and all that, but basically, i'm moved.

and now i am much more qualified to guide the rest of the moves. much.

i think i might almost feel better? not sure.

that would be job #2 (the one with no snakes). nice, yes? gonna have to mess that up some. (notice small stuffed platypus under monitor - it's a start).

off to job #1 now, where hopefully there will be DSL to install (and eventually, blogging and blogreading opportunities to be had).

new poll is up, results are in more (is it my imagination or does image::magick choke to death on .gif's?). after this, i have a little time to surf and such, feels almost normal, whatever that may or may not be ...

the most difficult thing to adjust to is the fact that i absolutely do not have the ability to be online personally while at work. this takes a good 7 hours of potential goofing off time out of my schedule, every day. back at my old job i knew just what i could get away with, and the workload was quite light. that's no more - my comfy dead-end job.

and i feel incredibly disconnected, and yet, considering i got home close to 7pm, watched a movie (big trouble - hysterical) and now am about to collapse into a wheezing heap, i have no other way to be than disconnected, right now.

more on everything later, i will be sort of back someday, for now, *thunk*

i'm just not well. but that's ok. really.

i have many millions of server move thingys to do and i'm about to go lay down again, but at least i've gotten this lurking email pile looked at, if not responded to. that was really weighing on me as i lay there trying to snooze and stuff.

on the bright side, our cable underwent some massive re-channeling and i now have many more channels on basic including cartoon network. that may have been a factor in the adhesive qualities of the couch. and now, more scooby doo!

tomorrow i start part-time job #2. i have purchased clothing, which i hope to be suitable, and will have to -- get this -- shave my legs. yes, that's correct. i'm wearing ... pantyhose tomorrow. well, clients are coming. so yeah, i'm ... this is all so strange. i'm going to be wearing a charcoal grey skirt, rather long, a taupe sweater-top, grey hose, and sensible shoes (black). i'll be getting in my grey buick, and commuting. to, er, westlake. westlake village. (you have to be from here to understand what i mean, it's a ... fashionable enclave or somesuch, ok?) um. i. um. i'm not a yuppie, ok? i'm still a total rebel, without a clue even (i heard that song today, it made me happy). really. hey, those stretchy khaki pants i bought today? have kind of goldish shinyness to them. that's right, shiny pants. that's kinda different, right?

getting dedicated server. today. going to be moving stuff, soon. won't be too painful, not like the other server moves, we'll be with a new hosting provider, so basically the sites will exist in both places and the DNS will change, the only possible problem is during that time, whatever gets posted on the old place won't show up on the new place.

doing redirects by IP will fix that, more on that later, on the portal.

dan if you're reading this could you send out a notify on the portal that this is in the works? i'll have more details later but gotta run, late, busy, crazy, eeeeeeeee.

i believe eve has psychic powers.

this morning i agreed to go into a partnership on a dedicated server, and in my mind i'm thinking, i am going to be such a horrible burden to my linux-geekier friends. honestly, i'm still a raving newbie, with so little knowledge that i'm not even dangerous yet.

and this evening i get home to find an Amazon box containing a copy of the brand new, just released Linux for Dummies, sitting on my computer chair. you could call it a coincedence, but it was just a little too perfect. leave house with a very specific need, return home to find it sitting where i was about to sit down. do you have chills? i do.

first of all, Zander has a school project -- he has some polls set up, those are on his main blog page, if you could take a minute and head over there to give him your opinions on the war?

and speaking of war,

... Bush added, �That is why we will not be invading North Korea. Any oil we might find there could not possibly be worth the potential for loss in human life.� - [article]

and now we go back to not thinking about the war, at least not out loud ...

so i get a call this morning, the mechanic. "i need to talk to somebody about this buick" and from his tone i gathered she had been very naughty. not at all; as it turns out, the reason she had been running like crap for pretty much a year now, was a bad coil. there are three, one for each pair of cylinders.

well, since i overlooked sex in that last poll, i thought i'd go ahead and devote this one entirely to sex, however the subject got all twisted around somewhere along the way, and ... i'm deeply ashamed. and really sorry. really.

so i could swear that the mechanic person called the part a harmonic somethingorother, so as we speak, some mechanic is chanting and waving incense at my car, ohmmmm. which is fine, i've got no time for harmony.

i'm not getting used to this being frantic yet, though that is probably the thing to do, practice acceptance of the several different ways i'm going to feel pulled in every moment of every working day. but honestly, having clients with web issues happening right now live online, is a uniquely hard thing to let go of and go skipping off to my internet-free job.

sorry, i just feel a little crazed today.

so in the course of accompanying the boss to the mechanic's to help him pick up his car (lincoln mark Viii. daaaaamn.), i visited the buick. i was able to have a look at the harmonic rubbermetal dealythingy, and man oh man, talk about one unharmonious piece of car. i'm sure it was upsetting the balance of many things, and it might even be the reason that the last tuneup didn't result in the car seeming tuned. so, um, i am such a ... you know, the sort of person that would be so impressed by the lincolnness of the mark Viii that i actually took its picture. i'm not sure what that says about me, but anyway.

the job is fun. the duties are very varied. the boss is cool, and for some reason, after three days of having me around, it suddenly occurred to him that he needs DSL. i did not mention it, not even in passing; but it's possible that my very presence suggested to him that there should be internet access in the office. sure, it could be just a coincedence, but we can't rule out the whole bandwidth vibe i give off, it's doubtless quite powerful. and i'm not sure what having such a thought says about me.

i also got a better picture of bob, who is recovering from an encounter with his light and looking mighty cloudy-eyed and in need of a good shed, but still all in all one impressive reptile. it may be that the sudden python-mentioning here is some sort of attention-getting device, or at least an attempt at one. i'm ok with that, really.

and this is me babbling about my day, and pretty pointlessly i might add, and yet i am posting it anyway. (the pictures, which will follow, will be the digital imaging equivalent of babbling). there are no statements being made here, except whatever these things i've babbled about say about me, and i'm not sure what that is.

totally frantically busy. maybe just a few too many things going on at one time? yeah. ok, gotta run!

it's been a day. seven hours being reminded how rusty a person can get when they don't do something for a decade or so.

in random babbling type news, the poemgen place does not seem to work anymore. so i have removed that section from the sidebar, alas. also i removed the 'recent entries' since it's rather redundant to list them and also have them listed on the main page. i replaced these deletions with a new thingy, a 'random entry' thingy. this only works with the archives from august on, but it's randomness, and i felt the need.

in other news, the car is in the shop, and it actually probably is the thingamawhatsis that we thought it was, it's kind of a ... something near or related to the flywheel, sort of a ... thing that dampens ... stuff that needs dampening, it's quite common for buicks like mine to ... become undampened and ... you know, rattle. or something like that.

i am boring myself with all this, but too brain dead to do better.

the only think i can think to do now is install that random plugin on the old copy of MT and do an include thingy so that there is a random new and a random old.

and then maybe go lay down and get into that stack-o-tabloids my neighbors give me when they're done. when you're brain dead, i always say, go with that.

ear clogged, sinuses, headache, wheezy, lots of whining. otherwise ok.

my son is producing dinner theatre. he's got the stage set up and the chairs (even one that "my big butt" will fit in) and the only thing left on his list (he does have an actual list) is costumes. oh, and i think he needs to have something to perform, pretty sure that's the point where things kind of stalled last night.

i'm sure i'll feel better when all those aspirins kick in.

D got a lot older yesterday, a whole year older, and i missed it, laying around on the couch whining. sigh.

happy day, dude. ahh, remember last year? good times, good times.

the last one went so swimmingly. see more for details.

polls rock. 106 votes on the last one but i fear it may have been my best work, so, i'm not sure it'll ever be that cool again. *shrug* it's still such fun.

i got an email this morning from a good friend, who has all sorts of good things happening in his life. he told me that he has been involved with paganism, and exploring energy with great success. he told me that this energy is detectable and quantifiable. i've never had any first-hand experience with paganism, but i know this energy, it's just part of the way the universe works. it's most powerful when people gather together and make something happen, and i've seen the results of it this morning.

when people combine their resources to help a friend, it causes real miracles. there is the tangible aspect of this, the quantifiable part, but the real miracle is how it feels when it happens. can't begin to describe the emotion this morning at the point where i started to see there was a pattern, and realized it was my friends gathering together to make a difference. and you guys made a difference. and i'm absolutely overwhelmed right now, i'd go on but i have to go sign deferment papers and make an appointment with the mechanic on monday and they really need my help at the car wash, so i will go and work.

thank you all.

i feel better than i have in a long time, and ... i've been drinking. not only that but i'm a bit out of practice, being that i was being as conservative as i could manage to be, and tonight being the night after the first day of one new job and ... other excuses, well, i have beer.

and i rarely get to the must-have-my-mp3s stage after like four beers, but here i am. i love my mp3 collection, it's small (only a quarter gig) but it's mighty. i made a selection of the things i was in the mood for, which is now randomly playing. i'm going to post the list in more, please don't make fun of me.

this is really almost a cross section of my taste in music. it's not refined taste, it's ... all i can say is it's all heartfelt, or gutfelt maybe. uneven is another thing it is. and i'm posting this because ... why? um.

so my first day involved detailed auditing of the previous day's sales, due to the fact the cashier was caught on tape yesterday and hauled off in handcuffs this morning when she came in for work. i have some backstory on her, but it's really too depressing to get into, suffice to say that i would consider her crimes as coming from desperation rather than greed, and i hope that somewhere in the system she finds the strength to get away from the source of that desperation in her life. which i would guess is the father of her unborn kid, who is by all accounts a junkie. pretty sure she herself was off the stuff, but, ... oh, i wasn't going to get into this was i? she was a friend of my daughter's, before she totally went off into hard-drugland. she helped me move one time. anyway.

it's interesting working where chris works, it feels quite comfy right from the start, knowing all i already know. and the boss guy is just really nice. and the office is cool, i have a few pictures, then i have some of kurtwood's that i found on the camera to go upload, and then i have to post a script on surreally.org, and i have had one hell of a great day.

and i want to thank everybody one more time, and let you know the difference you made means i get to keep my car. the day started with a phonecall to say that my deferment was approved, which still left a lot of things uncertain, that is, until you all got together and made a miracle.

 

these are days off, right? i know that i talked about having days off, and goodness knows i needed them. and so there's no need to feel this weird urgent guilt like i ought to be doing something other than goofing around with the portal. i started with the blogstyles three column layout and have been customizing the hell out of the templates, and now it's nearly 12:30 and it feels like i should do something that feels less like a vice.

of course, i can say this with no intention of applying any willpower to the situation, i like my vices. and after a brief venting of vice-related guilt, i'm going to go play with the portal some more.

as it grew closer and closer to five, i found it nearly impossible to tear myself away from all the wonderful MT stuff out there. and then all of a sudden it has to look like i did stuff in the house. twenty five minutes of panic cleaning, i swear to god it's like when i was sixteen and my parents would go on vacation and i'd leave everything till hours before they were due back in, it's that same feeling. and chris ... well, whenever he's talking about the subject of the stuff he'd like me to do during the day, he projects a sort of patronizing pessimism. which is not entirely unfounded, but it doesn't help. nothing would, there isn't an attitude he could have that would get this house cleaned while there are internet connected PCs in the picture.

so i'm sitting here posting, saying it's a break (after twenty five mintues of cleaning). i sit here as the deadline draws closer and there's no way to fake it to the point it looks like there was any real effort made on my part.

i would try to have a so-what outlook on all this, but i know it's not right. one of these days i'll do the house stuff first and the rest of the day will be a reward, rather than have the whole day fly by while i dread and postpone and bargain and generally ruin my own fun, knowing that the consequences are building up with every ten more minutes i take. i take this time, for myself, but i also take it from myself. and all this time i take, for all i spend it doing things i enjoy, i also waste a significant percentage of the enjoyment knowing what awaits me.

ok, i have to go finish swiping halfheartedly at some bathroom surfaces, and maybe fold the laundry. it won't be enough, not even to assuage my own guilt feelings, let alone to avoid hearing him complain again.

i would like it better if this weren't just a lot of whining, but it is, and it's all i've got, and ... ok, i'm going, i'm going.

there are little spots floating in my coffee. i'm not encouraged about this, but not particularly concerned, either. they don't seem to have any texture, which is good.

so it's wednesday and what have i done? not as much as i'd have liked.

sitting here staring vacantly at the monitor and trying to think of something interesting to type isn't quite on my to-do list, but here i am.

oh, and accoding to the poll, the blame is distributed as follows:

bill gates - 22.22% (14 votes).
my parents - 3.17% (2 votes).
the media - 9.52% (6 votes).
"them" - 30.16% (19 votes).
me. muahaha. - 17.46% (11 votes).
fault? what for? - 17.46% (11 votes).

i knew it was them. it's always them. damn them. so, another thing on my to do list is to switch out polls, i have a few reruns from the old surreally guestbook questionnaire, before i have to start coming up with original material. polls are fun.

ok, i'm going to get going now.

the very talented Mr. Blank has relaunched his site, which features a sketchbook, a drawn blog, and a written blog (though the one entry in that category is handwritten). it's Blank Headspace 3, go on now.

i just wanted to say that that whole bloggy love thing going on? i just wanted to tell you i love you all, i am so too scatterminded to focus on doing a proper tribute.

ok, now i'm really going to upload those patches.

it was seven when chris woke me up, and ... there's very little i can say about that hour of the morning. so i was getting dressed to go down to the car wash to talk to the boss guy, and chris objected:

he: don't wear that. it's drug related.
(it's just a bunch of stoned bunny mushrooms smoking a hookah, and you have to be gazing at it pretty intently to discern that)
me: i used to wear this to work all the time.
he: but we work with the public.
me: i used to wear this to go meet clients.

sigh. so i wore the minnie mouse sweatshirt. fine.

i it's 8:39am, i've already been somewhere and done something and am back home. don't worry, i'll probably recover.

i'm going to have such fun with this car wash job. i really am. just a completely mellow part time gig. i'll have to take pictures of the office, it's quite wonderful. and the snake! i'll have to get pictures of Bob.

now, i didn't get all the patches uploaded last night because it was really boring, and i got sidetracked gazing at many wonderful MT plugins and going, hmmmm. i did install the MT Sanitize here and played with it, got it to where it was allowing just what i wanted it to, and, as demonstrated by SpunkyTheMonkey in the comments on the last post, it works. so i only have about 32 or 57 more copies of MT to patch, which is fine, really. i should do them now while i'm still dazed about the whole getting up while it was still dark thing, fewer distractions in the empty mind.

so the phone rings. and it's the owner of this marketing company i've done some coding for before, and i've always loved collaborating with the graphics guy there. we make cool websites together. we always made noises about wishing we could work together, but they never had the work to hire me. when the phone rang, i thought it was him, but it was the boss lady. and she was offering me a job. part time to start working into full time.

it's a good thing i was sitting down. i'm such a spazz, i started babbling about my car (this job is about 26 miles from here, and there is a large and intimidating hill to get up). then i got a grip and muttered something about working that out, no matter how farfetched that concept is. sometime monday (which i picked so chris could drive me if necessary while whatever is happening to get my car going, i have only vague optimistic thoughts about how that might happen, and this frightens me).

friday i was going to be a freelancer. and now i have potentially two jobs, both part time, both of them telling me i can have whatever schedule i want, both doing things i'm fairly good at. i'm a little taken aback by this, and that's only if 'aback' means 'completely fucking freaked out'.

this is the coolest little company, a small shop with talented people doing really wonderful work. unlike my last job, they are totally committed to developing the web side of the business. the only thing between me and a very bright future is 26 miles and a big hill, and a buick with a deathrattle.

i'm not sure what to do next, probably beer. yeah.

in fact, it's very monday. they seem to want me to go start working at the car wash, like, now. um. now? today? monday? no, not monday. not today. i have a million things to do. for instance, that little poll over there? well, i was so disorganized i couldn't find my way into my own server to set up a fresh database, so i just stuck the tables in an old database i don't use over on dot net. because, as you can imagine, the poll thingy was oh, so urgent this morning. paramount importance. because, ok?

so, now there is a poll. yay! mission accomplished! day already a success, i can go back to bed right? it's just, you see, i lived my weekend like a person who had no job to go to, and i'm not going to let having a job to go to get in the way of the natural progression of all this. that would be wrong.

i'll go talk to the boss guy in the morning and try to convince him i need some days, i really need some days. aside from three weeks unpaid leave two years ago to help when my dad had his surgery, i have not had a vacation of any sort since the day i started my last job. three and almost a half years ago. what paltry vacation hours they doled out, i would end up using up when i got sick (no sick leave) so i haven't had more than a four day weekend since i was in my thirties.

and they wanted me to go in today? no, not today.

well, there might be. if you allow HTML in your comments, you could have the same thing happen to you as i had over at surreally -- find a hacker bot nestled in one of your directories. i've just now found out what causes that, and as security holes go, this one's huge. basically all a person has to do is put the right bit of server side code, in a number of different languages, in the comment box, and submit, it will execute commands on the server. big, scary hole. more about that here.

the patch is simple, and right now i'm about to upload it to all the copies of MT running on all the surreallys, then i'll put up instructions outlining the very simple template changes that will be needed, i'll link that up when it's done, i just wanted to get the word out on the patch.

those of you who aren't using HTML in your comments don't need to worry.

before there was exciting web code, there was bookkeeping. i learned this on the job back when it involved large pads of green paper with many columns. i'll never forget the first time i took a trial balance and it actually balanced, this was deeply thrilling. over the ten years that that was my primary career, i never lost that thrill, though my last position (with a CPA firm) took much of the rest of the joy out of the work. there's a difference between hands on full charge bookkeeping, and having someone, or 16 someones, present you with records in various states of disarray and you're tracking your time by the 1/8 hour as your struggle to make sense of it all. plus, that place was the antithesis of what i consider a sustainable work environment. you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a dozen pretentious, success-dressed up and coming yuppies, casting around looking for that fast track to partner or whatever. politics thick in the air, suffocating, really, and as if that wasn't bad enough they were really anal about that whole, arriving at a specific, predetermined hour in the morning every day. every day!

i could have blended in better trying to infiltrate an alien civilization.

after that, i explored a number of career paths, from secretarying, to job developing, to ... well, remind me someday to tell you about the mid-90's. anyway, when i discovered the internet, i knew this was what i wanted to do.

however this does not prevent me from being entirely delighted to learn that the car wash would like to hire me as a part-time bookkeeper, which takes almost all of the pressure out of the freelancing without in any way interfering with it. and it fits in with my delicate flower sensibilities, which dictate that i not try to fit in where there are dress codes, politics, specific work hours, or pretentious yuppies.

also, i'm sleeping with the manager, which helps.

and that's just the weirdest feeling. ok, well technically these are the usual days at the end of the week, but in a really unusual way. there is an open-ended feeling to it, which is kinda cool, in a way. but that would be the slightly dizzy way, and what i need to do is establish some sense of purpose. like make this dining room table in this breakfast nook feel officey. it should be much more officey than my former office was. it was ok to be cluttered and scattered there, because it was surrounded by office people doing business stuff, it was obviously a workplace. whereas this nook here is in serious need of a new image, a denookification if you will, so that it looks like a workplace and not a beerplace or a chatplace. this isn't going to be easy - the nook is steeped in beery tradition, i can feel its relaxed atmosphere sucking the purposefulness right outta me already, it's just that cozy and messy and such a fascinating accumulation of artifacts of late night misadventures, and oh, the memories. this was the table i was under that night i was under a table, you know. me and the nook, we have history. which must now be razed for sake of progress.

i need to organize. i need a list. maybe several lists. i wish i had a snazzy list notebook, and a nice comfy pen with pretty ink. but that would be a little too conducive to listmaking, list rewriting, list editing, list tearing out and starting over, going for that perfect list, which could be a problem. the perfect list isn't what i need right now, no matter how seductively the thought of it beckons.

i'm not sure i'm entirely ready to plunge in to productive organizing, at least on the physical plane. perhaps i'll begin by going through all the files on this computer, or, um, damn, sitting here thinking distracted me from the fact that one things i was sitting on was my foot. owie. bad tingles. bad.

obviously i'm a danger to myself, and require more coffee before i even start to try to think.

so. i arranged my (computer) desktop just so, everything in its place, all that. nice if i'd done that to the actual desktop surrounding it, but i did straighten a bit. did some dishes, took out some trash (all of this at around 3:35, mainly so it wouldn't look like i had been sitting around fiddling with the computer all day). so i decided to reward myself with something completely frivolous.

i made an MT template for wireless phone browsers.

the only thing is, it's WML not HDML so my phone can't read it. more research is called for on that, but for now, if you have a non-sprint phone, and it has a browser, you could point it at hooha.us/index.wmland see my last three entries. no comments, nothing fancy, it's a bit much as it is, long, long pages.

you can go here and put in that URL, to see what it looks like on a variety of wireless phones, if you don't have a wireless phone. or if you have a sprint phone. why must sprint be so difficult? *grumble* and what is it with browser developers anyway?

i could go get the big box of computer books and crap from the car and begin stocking the workplace with worky looking things. this would be a useful endeavor, as opposed to my actual plans, which include an HDML template, a little phone browser detection, and goodness knows what else. maybe something for PDAs?

i'm putting off packing stuff up. i have put all my monitor critters in my bowl that's been here since the last potluck, but that's it so far. there's only about two hours left of this place. only a few people know i'm going. i should be wandering around saying goodbyes and things, but i'm not. besides, i'm told i'm 'still a member of the family' and they'll invite me to potlucks and barbecues, they're that kind of company that people come back for that type of thing. the kind of company that welcomes people bringing kids to work. hell, we even had an official company baby till he got big enough to wander around the building.

three years, four months. to those of you stable types, that seems an average thing, but to me with my attention defecits and career switches and such, it's a long long time.

contemplating the jumping off point is causing mild vertigo, and making me feel all awkward. it's 3:15 now what should i be doing? there are 105 minutes left, that's not enough. ok, i really have to start cleaning this desk. ok, now it's 100 minutes. damn.

and so i'm actually sitting here actually working. well, not right at the moment, but i certainly have been. what else was there to do but come here and work after i failed miserably at my attempts to get the DSL router going at home, "no internet". hopefully it's just a little late, rather than wrong. wrong would be bad. and as if this wasn't enough, there is a charge in progress in my checking account which looks suspiciously like the amount that telocity charged me around this time of the month.

so i sit here asking myself, how could things have gone so wrong? i keep thinking of the good old days, when i first hooked up that multiple computer support and felt the sweet thrill of fast access surging up every wire. it was there for me, everywhere, always ready, i adored that broadband. i talked baby talk to that broadband. what we had was wonderful, that is up until the time it left me and took my debit card number with it. bastard. apparently all those nights we spent together meant nothing at all. i was a fool to ever love and trust telocity. *sniff*

and now, here i am committed to a questionable new relationship. suspicious and bitter, i find myself constantly comparing it unfavorably to the glory days of my first love. and it even wants us to use the same modem, doesn't that seem wrong?

i need to go home and spend some time trying to work these things out, it's hard to focus on work with my home life in such a mess, the cds and instructions and wires strewn here and there betwen the many unhappy lonely boxes which sit sadly blinking their tiny lights, signaling their connection errors to an empty room.

screw it, i'm leaving early.

***
update: it wasn't my telocity! it's the new guys, i'm supposed to get a free month and they charged me. fuck i miss telocity.

i think i'll put a boring warning on this one. sigh. eyeroll. sorry.

relentlessness is a specialty of mine. and when it comes to someting as crucial as fast internet, well, my relentlessness knows few, if any bounds.

nine came and went, and there was no change in any of the indicators, all of them glowing green in the right places. the modem saw the LAN, the LAN saw the modem and the computers saw each other. one small problem, there was no internet.

so i sat here knitting brow furrows, as if clenched facial muscles would help? why do i do that anyway? and it occurred to me that since i had just logged into my linksys via its IP, that surely the telocity modem had an IP of its own. a quick google search and 10.5.1.2, and sure enough there i am looking at my modem in the browser. and it's fully configured - to the obsolete telocity addresses. the only thing i can do is turn off the multiple computer support, which i do, just in case that helps, and it doesn't.

i call tech support, he calls me back. i tell him about the modem settings, and how i even dug up my old telocity software to see if it would allow me to reconfigure the thing, and that i couldn't. he does some searching of his own and, well, telocity had this wonderful self-configuration thing going on, it's what made it so easy for me to set it up in the first place. the bottom line is, it's the right type of modem for their service, it just won't actually work.

so i ask, can this be hacked? he says that's what he was looking for too, and it doesn't look good. sure, i can have one of their modems tomorrow, but what's the fun in that?

i'm off to google to see what i can see.

morning note: this seems like even less of a good idea than it did, oh, 6 or so hours ago when i wrote it, but i'm in no mood to be prudent. also i'm having major internal conflicts on whether i should go in to work like a good girl, or be half a day late due to urgently crawling around the floor plugging wires into boxes and randomly hope the internet gets faster. but this has nothing to do with what had me all worked up last night.

* * *
i should have taken it as a sign when i got this half-typed and my computer did one of its catastrophic clunk-choke-gasp-BSOD things. i'm not one for conflict, but occasionally something upsets me to the point i go all stubborn-bitch. as it is, i'll wait for the light of day to post it, morning me is a far more timid creature and may think better of this. two am me says, deal.

i was told this evening, that there are people, plural, a goodly number of them, who are upset that the vegas blogcon was held in vegas, who feel that that choice of venue was disrespectful to the east coasters. and this i do not understand. at all. the question was posed, why not the midwest, a compromise? well, because no matter where you hold an event, it's going to be better for some, and worse for others. a midwestern event would have excluded some folks from both coasts, and an eastern event would have excluded some folks from the west, there's no avoiding that. the only solution is to do things like this, the east coast blogger gathering. put it this way -- for as inconvenient as vegas was to the eastcoasters, it would have been just as inconvenient for the westcoasters to hold it on the east. blogcon vegas was not a vast left coast conspiracy.

i'm a great believer in bloggers gathering. i think it should be done as often as possible and in as many places as there are groups of people willing to organize. there will be people who can and will travel from all over to get there, but most importantly the folks who can't go far, will get the opportunity to attend an event near them, hopefully without arousing any animosity amongst those who aren't near the event and also can't go far.

acknowledging at this point that it's pointless to object to the opinions of others; then again, reserving my right to respond to direct criticism with a reasonable defense, all the while observing that it's my blog and i can be pointless if i so choose, also asseverating that i actually do have a point here, somewhere.

on my next to last day here, i get horridly busy with client emergencies. so busy i can't even blog.

shocking, i know.

so i try not to be boring, but i'm not very good at not posting, so here we have this: if i had anything to write about at all, it would be about how i spent my afternoon getting my mind's ass kicked by things like the #sessions.sessionID# variables in Application.cfm. 'logout and clean up after yourselves', i asked politely, and the dysfunctional little fuckers decided to take a timeout and give me this 'we don't exist' attitude. and that was just the finishing touches on the day's misadventures. the site had formerly been separated, secure space here, insecure there, and suddenly had to be integrated into one place. each side had its own database, both of which had been given the same name and address by the idiot who designed the thing, and so it was all about renaming and rearranging things and nothing recognizing anything anymore. and everywhere cryptic errors, some inexplicable, as in those sessions hooligans, others very explicable, as in, not only have i been faking it with this cold fusion stuff since day one, i have been without the software since day thirty of the trial.

another thing that's probably only interesting to me, is the discovery that the idiot that made this site basically just copied code straight off of the CD that came with the cold fusion book, with a few modifications here and there (by which i mean, he copied it, then he broke it). he also let his graphics program code his image rollovers. badly. and his passwords all refer to christian hair metal bands.

the fact that he actually managed to do this for a living for a decent length of time does wonders for my confidence levels.

and while i was working away madly on all this, my email dings, it's my future ex-bosses with a huge-ass list of changes they want made to the company website before i go. how terribly amusing.

in other news, if i had even a shred of coherency left in my fuzzy little head, i would be futzing around with this router here. for all i know there's DSL in these here walls, and me too mentally spent to get to it.

clippit, or clippy, whatever his cutie little name is, is back. now i know for a fact that i haven't been mucking about in the settings for outlook, i don't do that. no need. so i'm figuring that my lil' buddy sensed me, needing his cheerful little smile, his jaunty little eyebrows, those flirtatious eyes. i could just sit here for minutes on end, making faces with my little paperclip friend.

i'm not sure why i made him go away in the first place -- probably some concern about seeming cool. but you know what? screw cool. i love my little paperclip guy, and i have no shame about it. none.

look. those of you in snow might wish you were in 80 degree weather with 70 mile an hour wind, but you don't. honest. the ions in the air make you crazy, you itch, your lips crack, and there's no way to sleep. allergies like fire. trees being blown out of the ground. the power keeps going out. you long for bundling up in cozy clothes and drinking hot cocoa weather. really, you do.

now. announcement: the surreally store now carries size XXXL tshirts! those of you expressing interest in the large size, can now have your shirts! also, please visit miss b's store, where she has some very, very hot bazima-wear going on. oh, so hot.

i'm not too enthused about my new DSL provider. got an email yesterday asking, what color is your old modem. what color? got email today with info on how to configure computer or computers. it says something about congratulations on your new modem. my what? i email back and ask, will the old one work? answer: she doesn't know but she's emailed tech support and they know more than she does. well i certainly friggin' hope so.

so DSL on thursday is now dependent on if my old telocity gateway works, otherwise they'll have to get me a new one. oh goody.

doesn't seem real, really. weird. i don't want to be here, of course, this is standard protocol for monday, but next monday? probably i'll wish i was here. i'm terrified that i will have no work.

and i am going to miss my car. i've been putting it off and putting it off but it has got to go. i've been driving it with the radio off to get the full effect of that rattle, 'cause with the radio loud it's still my nice car.

my head's spinning right now. sorry for the whining.

fucking weather.

first of all, meet Lambchop. she's new to this, but she has certain family ties to the blogworld already -- and it is one of my life's goals to party with these two.

and speaking of partying, Cheyenne has all the incriminating pictures of this weekend's wild bay area debauchery.

sigh.

it's eighty degrees out. i may not get to go make wild with the party people, but i have better weather, so thbpppppt.

naah, i'd really rather it was raining. seriously. (sigh)

so the comments on my bloggie post, referencing wil wheaton, fell into two categories: (1) incredibly venomous, and (2) what the heck? for those of you who weren't around for last year's bloggies, i'll try to explain to the #2 folks why the #1 folks are so pissed.

wil wheaton started blogging, oh, about a year and a half ago, and it created a sensation in the blogging community - an event which was metafiltered half to death, and dominated blogdex for a good week or so. i believe he's the only celebrity blogger to have an open comments section like that, and it quickly got to the point where the guy could have posted "i got up this morning, went poo, and had some toast" and 148 breathless fans would coo "oh me too! we have so much in common!". his fans were legion.

enter the bloggies. thirty categories, open nominations, then a panel of voters selected from the nomination ballots. i would theorize that the disproportionate numbers of wheaton nominators, caused the panel to be overwhelmingly pro-wheaton. he was nominated for six awards and swept his nominations. best merchandise, best american weblog, best tagline, most humorous, best new, and *choke* weblog of the year. here's the awards page, and here's the metafilter thread about the awards page.

wil wheaton dot net is not a bad blog, really. but it's not nominations-sweeping great. he's not better than all of the bloggers that he beat, he's just more famous. i think D summed up the prevailing attitude quite well here, and Miguel summarizes the winners here. i'll tell you right now, D is a hell of a lot more humorous than ww, and Miguel's tagline (a victim of kind, but unscrupulous friends -- oh, there was a story behind that one, it was a great tagline) was better than "50,000 monkeys at 50,000 typewriters can�t be wrong".

hope this clarifies things, and thanks for letting me vent, i think i needed that.

74�F
Humidity: 18%
Visibility: Unlimited
Pressure: 29.93 inches and steady
Wind: From the East at 21 gusting to 31 mph
* * *
the santa anas are blowing seventy four degrees rattling my door, nearly 11 at night. i'm hormonal, and i've been drinking. you've no idea how relieved i was when i checked weather.com and discovered that, yes, there is a reason i've been behaving this way. behaving you ask? why yes. i spent the last, oh, six, eight hours, mostly surfing, reading political stuff, subversive and conservative alike. searching for ... something. at least three hours spent at this 9-11 document archive figuring this is where it all went this insane, this is the seminal event that turned this country all around. changed the political climate forever. so i read the individual stories, and looked at ... i am not making this up, approximately one thousand three hundred pictures. on dialup. page after page, clicking, clicking.

fucking santa anas make me crazy. depressed obsessed and entirely unanswered. nothing makes any sense any more. so i walked outside in the wind and looked at the sky, orion my winter companion still with me, wishing i could will the streetlight to wink out and let me really see, even thinking briefly that if i were a pelletgun person, i'd make the damn thing go away myself, only for a moment before i realized that that's a really, really insane thing to think, even very briefly, and i blame the wind. estrogen and beer don't help, but it's not just my chemistry, it's the fucking weather.

i left the door open when i came back inside to finish this up, the wind is now tickling the soles of my feet. my poor kitty, his winter coat meant for different weather, is sprawled on the table next to the computer, dreaming overly furry kitty dreams. my son came into the room with the standad mommy i'm scared, i sternly ordered him to shut off the light and lay down on the couch.

i'm tired but not sleepy. i'm lonely but not alone.

i don't know where any of this is going.

yes, it's Dru's birthday today, now go sign her card!

personally, i'd like to take this moment to thank Dru for helping me open my mind to many things, and for being a woman of such strong convictions.

so i was pretty much ignoring them, after last year's wheaton debacle, but i can't overlook them entirely, considering that some of my friends have expressed the desire to be nominated. and being nominated is cool, last year i remeber being all aflutter over surreally's nomination (and if you look at the awards page, scroll way down to see where me-fi won, you'll notice that my little but-kissy entry addressed to potential bloggie voters was the featured quote. sigh)

i'm working up a list of worthy nominees, and gathering up all of my many and varied email addys so that i can vote early *and* often.

may the best blogs-not-by-a-former-member-of-the-TNG-crew win.

in response to the overwhelming amount of support offered in the comments on the last post, i'd like to point you all at purplemoose's comment. this is something that i believe is best done within one's own community -- it wouldn't be fair to collect from all over the country and donate locally in ventura.

you can contact local shelters, recovery homes, mental health organizations, and find out what they need, and arrange something on your own or with some neighbors, to get a donation together and deliver it. it doesn't have to be anything extravagant, you know, the little things count. and that personal touch that moosie mentioned -- that's the best part.

when i worked for a dual diagnosis program here in town, an eight resident place, once a chiropractor came and gave everyone an adjustment. that was simply wonderful, a real hands-on act of generosity. the same agency that ran that home, has a day treatment center that has benefitted greatly from people donating their old but still running computers. there are so many ways to help.

the important part, i think, is that the spirit of generosity tends to peak during the winter holidays. come january, it's really important not to forget that the needs are still there.

so i was reading this, about how important it is, during the cold weather, to donate blankets and coats. there are so many people out there, and so little a societal safety net to catch them. and they are cold. even in the warmer parts of the country, it gets damn cold at night.

and in the reading of that i was moved to tell you a story about my past, something i don't often speak of. i don't feel comfortable with this, but i am compelled.

it was a litttle over three years ago. chris and i had a major falling out, and through a series of circumstances that aren't even really writable, i found myself, in the last months of nineteen ninety-nine, with no place to live.

for the purpose of this story i must admit that the hard times i'd fallen on prior to this falling out involved me being in the cal-works program. that's welfare, ok? i was a single welfare mother with a part time internship job found through the cal-works office, where the educational counselor was impressed enough by my fledgeling attempts at making websites to find me this job, this minimum wage for half the time i worked job, while i went to school. i made so little money i still qualified for welfare payments. but none of this was enough for me to afford an apartment when i found myself suddenly out. out of my home.

enter the salvation army transitional living center, and a small miracle. there were eight studio-type apartments and a single women's dormitory in the facility, in the heart of downtown ventura (yes, a homeless shelter three blocks from the beach - very ventura, that). openings in the family shelter were rare, but the morning i met with Miss Donna, there was a resident moving out the next day. chances of that? maybe one in fifty. maybe more.

i'd like to go into how much that chance saved my sorry ass, how without it i have no idea where, or if, i'd be now. but that's not what i had to say when i began writing this. i just wanted to tell you about a dream of mine.

while i was living at the shelter, one winter afternoon, a couple pulled up in an unremarkable, rather worn looking mini-winnebago type thing. they approached the fenced patio area, where children were playing and parents were smoking and hanging out. they had a huge bag, full of child-sized knit gloves and matching caps, and they handed out a set to each kid. it was a quiet, simple, thoughful gesture. it was a small bright difference made in some difficult lives.

it's my dream to do just that same thing one day. i'm figuring this year -- this last one ended kinda rough. but i'm going to do it, just as simply and humbly as that couple did. if i did do new year's resolutions, this would be mine.

in line with my nefarious plan to take over the world, i announce the opening of the surreally store, featuring handmade t-shirts made to order for you, by the radiant miss b.

i'm pretty excited about having our own store of handmade stuff, and i welcome any and all ideas for more fun surreally schwag.

◊
when you start seeing little things out of the corner of your eye that probably aren't there, go to bed. sure you're not sleepy yet. and sure, you're wondering whether it's in fact an insect or actually one of many itty bitty mini bits of your brain, whizzing past in your periphery after tunneling out the optic nerve, only to end up trapped in the aqueous humor. none of this is conducive to sleep, so screw it. stay up. wait. is that the vitreous humor? whatever. the eyes are the windows for the soul, and possibly fishtanks for failed brain escapees.

◊
if it is too late to take a bayerPM® without the dopey pill hangover in the morning, feel free to have one more beer (it's medicinal) while you whine in a way that someone can hear (or read) you, loud and clear and at great length. if you can't get rid of the general malaise, you can at least share.

◊
spicy food, followed by a double dose of healthy calcium-rich tums® chewable antacids. you escape the heartburn part but still hopefully have the entertainingly psychotic deep-fried jalapeno dreams to look forward to. you know, eventually. when sleep comes. if.

◊
look up some current public opinion polls on the internet. counting sheeple is quite mind-numbing, if you can deal with the annoyance factor.

◊
(geeks only) you know that chapter in the PHP book about multivariate arrays? your eyelids are gettng verrrrry heavvvvy. your mind is now clear of any semblance of content, a quiet void except for the fluorescent lighting flickering, and making that little subconscious buzzy sound. it's got a bad ballast, i think.

◊
use your mother in law's golden brown carved representation of the last supper as your focal point, stare until the room goes white around it and the shapes resolve into some sort of mid-seventies acid rock cover art.

◊
look, the more i think about it, maybe that little flying thing is a bug, a creepy bug, and not just an innocent brain fragment gone astray. can't sleep with potentially airborne insects in the room, they're attracted to pillow-drool.

◊
um. why are you listening to me? i have no idea how to deal with sleeplessness, insects (mental or actual), sheeple, mid-seventies acid rock cover art, or multiwhatchamacallit arrays. beer and whining, these are the only for sure things here.

i'm done with both, and am ready to go be awake in bed instead, hoping for the pillow drool.

some see it as a day off -- i see it as a week with two mondays.

anyway, a couple months back i bought a pair of pants while in a whimsical mood. prior to that, i had purchased a pair of size 18's, which fit in the store, but during the course of wearing would become terribly baggy, so i figured, this time, i'll get some 16's maybe? and yet somehow i managed to choose a pair of size 14's that i could almost, but not quite, get into. there is absolutely no excuse for this, first of all it makes no sense to buy clothing that one can only hope will fit, and second of all, i've done it so many times, so very many times -- i know better. or at least i'm supposed to.

so i did wear the pants. once. fastening them required lying down on the bed and buttoning and zipping with all my might, and a nasty hangnail for my trouble. i had convinced myself that wearing them would be an appetite deterrent, but as it happened, i got invited out to fish and chips that day, huge platters of excellent fish and chips. i experienced a momentary sense of unease as i accepted the invitation, but otherwise was undeterred. i hurt myself with those fish and chips in those pants.

so those pants were good and loosened up. i didn't wash them (that shrinking in the wash thing causes me to have very relaxed standards for cleanliness as regards too-tight pants: as long as there aren't actual clods of dirt and/or food caked on, in an area that is visible to others, they'll do). i just put them in the drawer and made vague plans to get some exercise, or just up and quit eating, or maybe win the lotto and have lots of liposuction (you know, realistic stuff). and there the pants sat, or rather, lurked.

until this morning. i decided for some reason to wear them. and guess what? the loosened-up version of them is exactly as tight as the non-loosened one was, in the store.

unless pants fabric springs back to its original size while folded in a drawer, do you suppose that could be it? sure. time and folding probably have the same effects as water and heat, right?

sigh.

i would just like to point out that Faith, who has had her lomo for approximately, oh what is it a couple weeks now? is already a featured lomo home of the day.

i'm as happy for her as i am deeply envious. should i say that? ahh, well, it's said. i am.

this is when my dsl company says i can have dsl again. thursday. the ninth. excuse me but that's a lot fucking longer than five fucking business days you fuckers. *ahem*

and so i'm suffering, only being able to surf blogs for short periods of time before the ickyness of this totally obsolete setup sends me spiraling into the abyss of wretchedness. spoiled. yes. that's the word.

meanwhile, the other night i gave the surreally news and updates site a new look, and then i went on a (slow, careful surf up against the wall) and attempted to discern just how many folks are blogging on surreally. have a look at that blogroll. does that not rock?

i'm going to go play sonic the hedgehog now. i got up to level four last night, stopping only when i realized my thumb was starting to look puffy and turn colors. oh not bad colors, just kinda reddish. and no, i'm not kidding. but heck, i'm up to the boss on level four and my god it is fun to be a hedgehog running amok freeing all the little animals from the evil doctor robotnik or whatever his name is.

i'm actually as good at this game as my son is. well, almost. and that's saying something.

so from last night up till just a little while ago, we had an unexpected houseguest, and ... it was a little crazy, not a lot crazy, but somewhat crazy -- basically she just didn't feel like going home, as her hubby was being a real jerk. a little bit of drama here and there and otherwise no harm done.

my goodness, i haven't checked my email in so long and i'm so tired.

sigh. real life interfering with blogging.

also -- if anyone has seen my phone, please let me know. i suspect the battery's died because i call it and call it and i hear nothing. i've looked everywhere.