May 14, 2000 | May 15, 2000 | May 16, 2000

Everything Statistics

Statistics               stats   wa7   inc  l_stats l_wa7
Total Number of Nodes:  514948  2038  1210   513738  2176
Total Number of Users:   14446    36    22    14424    38
Total Number of Links: 1459973 17739 14414  1445559 18293
Current node_id:        550970  2128  1316   549654  2263

Everything's Best Users

Users                  XP wa7 inc   l_XP l_wa7
Pseudo_Intellectual 10474 126  76  10394 134
dem bones           10176  95  34  10142 105
jessicapierce       10102  93 135   9967  86
pukesick             7464 117 112   7352 118
DMan                 7102 150 152   6950 150
Saige                6788 147  10   6778 170

Server time: 00:38 Mon May 15 2000 
Your Fellow Noders(24)

l_ = last (previous) value
inc = increase in stats value
wa7 = ((stats + (6 * l_wa7))/7) = weighted average with denominator 7

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Still Waiting for Everything Snapshot. No change.

To node ...
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Well, I just did it.

I shaved "the boys." In fact, I shaved everything but my head.

It feels really really neat. I'm all slick, aerodynamic-like. More on this as the day progresses.

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Well, sleep was interesting. I have a heightened tactile sensitivity all over, and I kept getting aroused by the feel of the sheets. It was quite breathtaking, actually. I got a few weird looks this morning in my 9 o'clock class, but nothing too weird. So far, so good...

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I really, really, really like it! Dr. Evil was right! There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum.

Wow, I haven't used a computer in 10 days (literally). I took a much needed vacation from work and computers in general. Where did I go, you ask? No where. Just kicked around Cincinnati and enjoyed having entire days with nothing specific to do.

But I'm back now. Back to work. Back to having shit to do everyday. Back to having a boss and an assistant, one telling me what to do, the other asking. Back to having e-mail and voicemail. Back to waking up at 8AM and staring out my window for a good portion of the day wishing I was outside. Back to one hour lunches and drinking 15 cups of coffee a day. Thats right, I'm back, and I hate it.

Things to do today:

• Get over initial shock of having 261 new emails (not counting lists)
• Up caffine intake to 20 cups of coffee
• Meeting @ 2PM

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Updates:

1. Meeting was a disaster
2. Still sorting thru damn e-mail
3. Haven't had as much time to node as I would have liked

Thank you, please drive through...

18:00 EET

My current project at work is practically completed, and the material needed for my next job should arrive tomorrow. No break for break, I guess.

The award for The most stupid act of the day (tm) goes to my mother.
Returning from the supermarket, he noticed a strange guy snooping around on our property. He introduced himself as an alarm salesman.
Yeah, Right.
And instead of calling the cops, my dear mom gave the man our telephone number! So if he was just a thief looking for a potential target, he could just phone in to see if anybody was home or not. Way to go.
The weirdo did however leave his name and a few phone numbers, I'm planning to check if they're real or not. Even if he was a real salesman, such tactics seem really odd and suspicious.

Yesterday, Mother's Day, I took my cool mom to visit my grandparents at their farm in Missouri. This will probably be the last time I ever see them, since they are 85 and 89 years old, and I am about to move to California. I don't know if I will miss them or not; we have never been that close. Still, I'm glad I went; it made them feel good, if nothing else. Grandpa and I looked at an atlas so he could see where I'll be going to graduate school. They lived in Contra Costa county during World War II, so he knows the area some. His sister even went to Berkeley for a while. Grandma had me smell the mock almond bush out front, and I think I can still smell it.

I wrote Li Qingzhao's lingering fragrance last night, and State of Tomorrow today. And I'll try to quit now, honestly, I am vaguely embarassed by the fact that I node poetry. Sigh.

It is the second day that my beloved has been back at his home. I miss him. Still, I have so many things to do in order to move that I guess I won't have too much time to feel lonely.

See May 13, 2000 write up.

Well, it rained last night and overflowed the gutter again.

The wood strip above the door helped but didn't cure the problem.

First thing, my wife turned to the Yellow Pages and started looking for a firm who might be able to look into our gutter. She identified one (that shall remain nameless) and phoned them. They had someone who could come the following day.

Which would be too late - the weather forecast was predicting thunderstorms that night. She pressed for someone sooner. As it happened, they had someone in the area who could be around shortly.

Time passes.

The man turns up and looks at the gutter. "Oh, it's quite high up then. I don't know if my ladder will reach." He looked rather worried. "I don't really like heights." He stood and thought a while longer.

"No, my two-section ladder won't reach. I'll have to go back and get a three-section." So off he went.

My wife phoned his office to ask what was going on, after he didn't reappear. They told her it was a two-man job, so we'd be charged for two people for an hour. This worked out at rather a lot of money for what we reckoned would be a ten minute task.

She decided to try our household emergency insurance cover (who have been wonderful in the past). She explained the kitchen was being flooded. They said, yes, we'd be covered and they could send someone out tomorrow. Again, she explained about the weather forecast. Again, someone was found.

All this arranging and failing to get up ladders had taken up most of the day. The man the insurers sent arrived after 4pm. Wasted day.

He put up his ladder, climbed up, fished around the top of the downpipe, climbed down and presented my wife with a tennis ball. "There, that should sort you out."

He assured her there was nothing else wrong with the gutter.

Oddly, the ball looked like it had been there for ages. Maybe... But it's odd how we never noticed flooding before.

Oh well. Now we're waiting for the next disaster...

craig (my boyfriend) and i have been making rounds of the local parks. this past weekend we found scotts run nature preserve and climbed to the waterfall where the run hits the potomac river. it was a nice hike, we took the low road downstream and the high road upstream.

we're planning on taking some private kayak lessons, and i'm very excited about it. i miss recreational river boating. i used to go canoeing every summer.

i'm quite sunburnt on my shoulders, but the rest of me has a nice healthy glow. we've been going outside to do stuff lately and this is helping my mood a lot.

Finally finished my Business Studies coursework. I'm not 100% happy with it but a deadline is a deadline. Walking up to college with it revealed just how hot it is today.

Everybody in the office was complaining about the heat and guzzling back cool drinks while not getting very much work done.

K was having more troubles with her computer. I went round to look at it and discovered that although the database front-end had been upgraded her icon had the old file name - fixed it.

J is back from his illness and he had a problem with the same database. For some reason he had lost the workgroup security file from Access Workgroup Administrator so I put that back and it started working nicely again.

Another J was granted Internet Access today, luckily he already has it at home so lessons in hyperlinks were not required. His proxy settings were missing though so I had to slot those in to place.

A had just got used to his replacement laptop when I returned his normal one. The repair firm don't want everything any more, just the CD-ROM unit. A will continue to use the replacement until tomorrow as it takes so long to plumb all the cables into his normal laptop. I've bet Vert that we will have to return the entire laptop within a week, that's what out supplier is like.

The wonderful PHP `n' MySQL database advanced precisely zero lines of code, it is just too hot to sit and code. I'll have to get Evrsoft 1st Page 2000 (perfect for PHP) installed on one of the workstations in the server room. It has nice air conditioning.

Vert revealed that he will be joining in a roleplaying game next Monday. I showed his the Real Men, Real Roleplayers, Loonies, and Munchkins page before going to catch the bus. I could hear him laughing streets away.

-/+

Did yesterday happen?

I have to assume it did, because I have some stuff here on board now that I didn't have before. One of the things that people don't always mention about shipboard life is that it always seems the same. Everyday is the same routine as the one before it, and the same as the one my grandfather followed in World War II, and the one Richard Henry Dana experienced when he wrote Two Years Before the Mast back in 1840. Of course, now I can't wear a beard or pony tail, but they can't flog me either.

Have I mentioned that 3:30 am is early and wrong?

Yes, I have. I had to get up really early again. Tadpole and wife were snug and cuddly in bed. I wanted to stay, but got up anyway.

"Someone's been sleeping in my room, too!", said little bear.

I entered my stateroom to find a new, unknown individual in the top bunk. He stirred, and I decided that I am moving out today and back to my old place. It's noisy up there under the flight deck anyway, and far from the food. MMMMmm. . . food.

Sleepy at work. Stayed up too late noding.

My new gelly wristrest is nice, but my wrists still aren't happy. RPM kept freezing while I was trying to post the price file. Bastard. Two hours later (turns out it was an indexing problem after a fund code correction on friday), it's working and I can finish the bloody start-up procedures. Make an appointment with my doctor. Rest of the day is pretty tame. The most boisterous of my many managers is taking a vacation day, and the president is off somewhere all day. Quiet. I spend lunch, after eating some fish, holed up in the Social Sciences division in the central library. It's funny the attitudes about religion growing up a-religious brings me. I try to hide the titles of books I'm reading, even dry and scholarly survey texts, lest someone see me and label me a religious nutbar. Leave early to go catch the painfully slow Main St bus.

Poke, prod. I have tendonitis! Woop! Great. I'm to bring cushions in to work to compensate for my chair and desk being designed for tall people, and NO TYPING AT HOME SINCE YOU CAN'T AVOID IT AT WORK! Oh, I know, I'm typing now, but I've been SO good all evening. I only checked my email twice and bonk twice and everything twice and that was all with my mouse and my less-affected right hand. Hee, whatever, brooke. Just goes to show what a twitch I'll be if I ever DO completely lose the usefulness of my wrists.

Pick up a gelly mouse rest from RadioShack, henceforward to be known as StupidShack (in the august tradition of StupidStore (Superstore) and StupidShop (FutureShop)). Mm. Gooshy. Doesn't help my left hand any, but might as well pamper them both. Buy butter and fruit snacks, even though I've got quite enough sugar in the house as it is with that blasted box of lucky charms I bought on the weekend. Sit around and read trashy dragon fantasy books. Trash trash trash! Rot my brain! Don't think I'll need it again! (slap!)

Ow, my left wrist is hurting already. Good night.

I take the Sundance to work, drop it off at the mechanic at break time. The odometer is shot, I'll have to get a replacement from a junkyard if I want a working odometer. Well, how else will I know when it needs an oil change? They fix the turn signal though. That's the sort of auto repair I could do myself, but I don't feel at all bad about paying someone else $10 to do it for me.
I call auto insurance co. to get a quote on adding the second car to my policy. Eeek! $466 IN ADDITION TO the current annual $615. Considering I can only drive one of them at a time (ergo, only one car can be "at risk" at any one time), how do they justify that additional cost? I don't actually care enough to ask.
Finally set up automatic 401(k) contribution, effective with tomorrow's paycheck. With the seemingly endless grind of optimizing my automotive situation, it's nice to get something done quickly and with minimal hassle. Chat with Mom a bit about the health of relatives, and give her a Mother's Day card. Her apartment always reeks of cigarette smoke, I hope I didn't smell that bad when I smoked.
I notice one of those hateful gypsy moth caterpillars that so disgusted me in my youth. My schoolmates would torture and crush them, the grammar school playground was a mess of smashed caterpillars for a week every spring. There was an oily, acrid smell (or was that my imagination?) They will hatch all over the neighborhood soon. Bugs are gross.
Finished watching The Ref. Evening: We declare Roommate Laundry Party, and I get ALL my laundry done! For the past six months I've kept a big cardboard box containing a mix of suspected-clean and suspected-worn clothes, slowly rotating as I make piecemeal laundromat trips, but now all the clothes are clean at the same time! I can finally put them all away! Except I need more closet space. Why do I have all these stupid clothes? The big box is recommissioned as the Goodwill Box.

Today was really a very interesting day. This week for school is mainly spent preparing for exams, and for the tests and quizzes the teachers want to give us before those exams. Those evil b*stards.

In History, Lindsey Ling and I found out our outlines had to be one page, and that we had to reduce them for tomorrow. Yay.

In English, I was hoping to get my research paper back, which didn't happen.

The rest of the day wasn't anything special until kick ball where Coach Lee made me Team Captain, especially because I suck, but oh well, it was fun anyway. Sara was the MVP because she caught the ball...That is how much we suck...

I get home, and lo and behold, who did I get a letter from? Michelle DeJean!!! She sent me a headshot, a Christmas card that she and Mark made 2 years ago, and a signed picture of me and her. Tres exciting. More later..