Everything Snapshot

Time: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 00:19:48 GMT
Everything server: Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) Debian/GNU mod_ssl/2.4.10 OpenSSL/0.9.4 mod_perl/1.21_03-dev

Number of nodes: 809026 (858 new since January 25, 2001 [873.3 wa7])
Number of users: 24385 (89 new since January 25, 2001 [91.7 wa7])
Number of links: 3331155 (11746 new since January 25, 2001 [11539.1 wa7])
Number of writeups: 448436 (404 new since January 25, 2001 [444.4 wa7])
Number of cools: 58402 (199 new since January 25, 2001 [182.5 wa7])
Number of votes: 1865221 (7622 new since January 25, 2001 [7919.7 wa7])
Number of hits: 31199638 (143921 new since January 25, 2001 [143898.2 wa7])

Node to user ratio: 33.177 nodes per user
Link to node ratio: 4.117 links per node
Link to user ratio: 136.607 links per user
Link to writeup ratio: 7.428 links per writeup
Votes to cools ratio: 31.938 votes per cool
Cools to user ratio: 2.395 cools per user
Hits to user ratio: 1279.460 hits per user

New Nodes: [icbemp] [laundry gibbon] [tricycle] [slowfox] [Dream Log: January 26, 2001] [The Honeymooners] [Viennese Waltz] [January 25, 2001] [duct tape & chicken wire joke] [January 26, 2001] [ballroom dancing] [The Everything People Registry : United States : Nebraska] [English Waltz] [Edge City] [James Clerk Maxwell]

Users Online (57): [dem bones] [hamster bong] [yossarian] [tregoweth] [Gamaliel] [anotherone] [perdedor] [WickerNipple] [bob the cow] [Ereneta] [Ground Control] [Jinmyo] [m_turner] [Frater 219] [Gorgonzola] [baffo] [Kit Lo] [renster] [vivid] [ZamZ] [Kesper North] [Lith] [Lactic.Acid] [Aresds] [graceness] [vladkornea] [Gritchka] [taschenrechner] [lillianvalencia] [tres equis] [cureobsession] [WyldWynd] [GirlsDontLikeMe] [Jennifer] [Prophet4] [Kubla Khan] [litmus] [BJuarez] [Phssthpok] [msjae] [Halspal] [Albert Herring] [-brazil-] [Nanosecond] [elwoodblues] [Andukar] [emoin] [Syntari] [Skinwalker] [merigold] [vagabond] [tomwhore] [st.augustine] [moundie] [StFiend] [leighton] [Adam]

JeffMagnus node count: 4092 (1 new since January 25, 2001)
JeffMagnus experience: 11877 (1 more since January 25, 2001)
JeffMagnus experience to node ratio: 2.902 XP per node
JeffMagnus nodeshare: 0.506% (Via alternate method: 0.913%)^*
JeffMagnus node of the day: aol

Note: The Everything Snapshot daylog will return as soon as I work out one that is more pleasant for members of the Everything Whino sect.

Today was one of those days that just plain sucked.

Started off as usual, rolling out of bed still in a semi-conscious sort of state, but it went downhill very soon.

I've got the radio making lame attempts to inject energy into my otherwise zombied mind, and the next thing I know, the car in front of me has stopped and I slam on the brakes, not really knowing what was going on.

If you've ever been in a car accident, you know the feeling. I saw the 2000 Toyota Celica get bigger and bigger until I realized that I wasn't going to stop in time.

boom.

The first car, an old Volkswagen, had stopped at the pedestrian crossing so abruptly that the Celica, also unable to brake, slammed into the Volks. Me, in a daze in my Jeep TJ (which doesn't really have the best brakes, I must admit), then proceeded to slam into the Celica.

It all happened so fast, I didn't really have time to digest it all. Everyone got out of the cars and inspected the damage. Lucky for us all there was no damage to any of the cars. Without bothering to talk about it, the guy in the first car leaves. After exchanging information, the second guy and I leave as well.

Probably a pretty boring story up till this point, I must admit. A routine bumper car act, nothing so special, right? I guess it would have been routine, except for the fact that the lights weren't blinking at the crosswalk, nor was there anyone crossing the street. This guy in the Volks just decided to stop for no apparent reason in the middle of the street. It's still the fault of the cars behind, but I found that kind of odd. That and the fact that he left before we could get his licence.

Oh well. It was one of those days. I arrived at school five minutes later to the cheering of a bunch of friends who had seen me blocking off a lane of traffic but failed to stop and see if things were alright. Heh, some friends. :P

The funny thing is, it didn't really get much better from there.

My Tuesdays and Thursdays tend to suck. An 8:00 am lab, where I forget to check if the probe was set properly on the oscilloscope, is a great start to the day. Actually, the great start begins earlier, when I have to haul my tired ass out of bed at 6:30. The lab sucks though, because I'll be damned if I can remember to set the scope probe to x1 instead of x10, and neither can I look at the op amp pin out, so we get the pins on the right side wrong and fry a couple of chips. Let the smoke out, so to say. All our measurements were off by a factor of ten, and I didn't notice because that was still in the swing range of the op amp. Doh.

It's always nice to follow up a lab with a nice rousing read in the library, a circuits assignment, and Shift. Follow that with 15 minutes of technical writing, 15 minutes instead of an hour and a half, because the instructor is sick and only wants to stay long enough to tell us what the next assignment is. So back to the library for more Canadian Studies reading. Fun fun, and then CNST itself.

It's 5:40 by the time I leave. I walked to school in the dark, and I walk home in the dark. My life exists in the dark. Home to a fight, because nobody wants to use the phone to call for pizza. Bad moods all around. A stress basket and a slack ass.

So yeah, that's my boring day.

---

And oh yeah, I used "your" where I should have used "you're" in a node title, and I got my ass voted down.

Strange week, strange month. Time is flying by, and I am now totally into the swing of work. This cuts down on my time at my studio apartment, which not all that bad of a thing.

I have not changed my mind about the incompetence of my boss, but I have decided that if I don't get over it I will go insane.

Strange observation today: fast-food restaurants in the Boston area seem to avoid self-service drink machines, or maybe it is just the downtown area. When I checked today at Burger King, they said the refill price was the same as the original price. What a rip. But staying with the theme, I will get over it.

Well, the Simpson's are on, I have to go now ;-)

First week of the semester is almost over. That leads to the weekend, which means relaxtion and the Super Bowl!

Today, i had my weekly chem lab for the first time this semester. Lab today was actually pretty good. I'm right between three girls, who are constantly messing up their experiment. I mean, one of them was unable to boil a chemical. You just keep adding heat, and it boils. This is not a complicated theory. (The chemicals boiling point was about 20 °C below that of pure water... ) I kept laughing at them and they kept trying to ask me for help. Its always good to have some comic relief during a chem lab.

While looking for the hw due tomorrow in my comp sci class, i came across some shocking information. One of the TA's for the class is someone one year older than me that i went to HS with. Uh oh... he does the grading... this kid was kinda weird. Oh, and look... he runs the review session for the class. This is gonna be interesting.

After i was finished with all my classes, i relaxed and watched some Trigun (all of which i've already seen multiple times) and ate some Doritos. I was kinda curious why the people i usually eat with (basically we eat together every day) didn't contact me about dinner... Hmm... maybe something happened... Oh well, i'll find out tomorrow.

As I lay there watching the movie the stress settled into me like an old blanket. I am stressing about my personal issues. I am stressing about a decision I have just made. I am stressing because of the ache in my heart that pulls at me and cries out to be loved. But mostly, I am stressing because I fear that somehow this may harm our friendship. I love you and it would tear me apart to loose your friendship. To walk away from this and have us never speak again.

All these things are crashing about in my head right now. I know it is silly. I know that there is no reason to stress about it now.. maybe not ever. But I am, and I do. You mean a lot to me.

A brief sample of Random Thoughts

1. Dissidents are the lifeblood of democracy
2. It's the cracked ones that let light into the world
3. If the universe is finite, there are a finite number of points in a line. Therefore squaring the circle is possible, and my life, once again, has meaning.
4. Creativity and insanity are intimately related, but not linearly
5. Chaos is the lifeblood of reality
6. The crackpots are onto something.

Further, deponent saith not.

My third day in the Emergency Department. Somehow I'm more flustered today and only managed to handle 2 and a half patients. This is vastly worse than the 3 patients I handled yesterday.

Today's patients included a woman who thought she had another stroke this morning but turned out not to have any significant neurological deficit and no abnormality on a CT scan of her head. She was a highly anxious patient, so much so that testing her reflexes were difficult because she would not relax. An interesting point in her history was that she was a heavy smoker for many years ... up until her previous stroke 2 years ago, when she quit cold turkey, no doubt after getting the shock of her life.

My "half" patient was a 55 year old man who came in with chest pain (of the appropriate type) and an ECG from his local doctor confirming a likely new myocardial infarct. It was near the end of my shift and I only had time to insert an IV cannula, take blood, order blood tests (FBC, EUC, CK, CK-MB), order a Chest X-Ray for him and order up a first dose of clexane (an anticoagulant, as directed by one of the registrars) before handing him over to one of the other interns doing the evening shift.

Today is also Australia Day. I have turned down going into the city to watch the fireworks as I'm feeling really tired. Might still go and watch the (likely smaller) fireworks display in Parramatta though, which starts in about an hour's time.

Visiting my girlfriend to celebrate our 3 year anniversary this weekend. Just wanted to record this fact for posterity. It probably means nothing to you, my fellow Everythingians but, well... it means the world to me.

Now I lay me down to sleep.
Please Lord, don't just watch me weep.

Please let me die before I wake,
My ugly soul is yours to take.

Today is a great day. After many months dreaming about constructing my own Everything, today I've seen for the first time a naked Everything, a clean nodegel awaiting to be filled.

As I said before, I needed someone to help me, and there it came daniel++, a programming genius that has been able to install an Everything server in a Mac OSX G4. Impressive, doing it in a Linux box was too easy for him. Thanks also to nate and the others at Everydevel for their help.

Now there's a lot to do. We have to customize and translate our Everything server, we have to think what we want to do with it (Spanish Everything Project and Catalan Everything Project anyone?).

But the best thing is that we have it here to stay.

This is the clean everything...

friday, friday. I feel like I haven't done anything all week, and indeed many things I have not.

I'm still exercising. It's good. I'm drinking 8+ cups of water a day and starting to learn the guitar and to record my singing. It's good. I'm attending a singing workshop all weekend. I'm kind of dreading it - not because I don't want to go, I do, it sounds great and the woman who runs it is supposed to be fabulous to sing with - but 'cause it takes up the whole weekend and I can't see my boy very much. We're SO codependent.

I'm sleepy. Ohhhh.

I wish our lead would return to choir. Everyone in my section treats me like I'm the substitute lead, and while I'm happy to help if I can, it's very stressful to feel like it's my responsibility. I mean, I only joined the choir last year. Feeling like I'm a competent singer, like I'm a more competent singer than most people even in the choir (..?), is a very strange feeling still. In choir in highschool I still hadn't found my singing voice and I was in a small section that was lost a lot. Then last year I joined this choir and I found to my delight that my worries that I wouldn't be good enough were unfounded, that I was a good singer, that I had a singing voice all along.. it's a wonderful feeling. Unh, but I want to spend my time singing, not giving pep talks to our terminally self-denigrating alto section. They can all sing well enough, but are mostly convinced that they can't sing at all without the lead. Now whenever we do sing things well, they blame it on me instead. STOP THANKING ME! I'M NOT DOING ANYTHING! YOU WERE JUST SINGING TOO! AHHHHHH! The combination of this worrying and the beauty of the music made me almost cry last night as we were going through the first movement of the Rutter's Requiem. (It is beautiful. I love the first bit. All those weird crunches and the latin. Mmm.) I'll pretend it's the barometric pressure.

The end of another week. I am just finnishing of some last tests, uploading the results, then fucking off back home. See Sarah and going to the pub for a well deserved (dozen) pints.

What have I done today? Well, actually, work. The devices decided it might work today so I only spent 3 hours on the internet (out of 7.5). Pub lunch, no stress at all.

Official countdown to new project: 9 days 15 hours 48 minutes and 16 seconds!

I didn't intend for this to be a test of my friends.

I have been in a dark, if not joyless mood: dark, quiet and slow. My preoccupation with the work I am doing has made me uninterested in people, and the loneliness that has come has edified my nerves. It has made me feel hard and strong.

There is something coming to fruition here; I feel on the verge of what I need. It's coming from me, and from no other place. It is coming from me, and I need to extract it from all that has begun to lay down in my head, sorting away the worlds I used to know that are leading me slowly to this climax and conclusion. I feel like I'm making something, and the world is only a distraction.

I looked up from myself this morning though. I find no one has called in my absence. I find no one has really come looking. In my new fascination with solitude, I am not sure I care, but I am thinking about coming out soon. My nerves are resteeled. I'm almost reformed. I might be beginning to fathom who I am.

But I think I'll be looking to new people when I do come out. When I do come back to the world. My time of carrying on one-sided conversations is closing.

I'm going to miss you, old friend...

Thanks to this time, I don't need them. I want them, but I don't need. I can afford to look around, and find something right for me.

My sister-in-law called to tell me that it was snowing up in Dogpatch, so my carpool buddy and I took off from the Sacramento River Valley and headed north. We were very close to home and had almost climbed to 1700 feet but the roads were still clear and dry. Then, suddenly, a line of cars ahead, a policeman: it was a chain check. But only for cars going higher, to Wiffle Valley. To us he only said, "Be careful."

Well, a few miles from home and still no sign of snow, when suddenly the rain turned to these strings of white yarn. The wind must have been blowing pretty well, because they were falling almost horizontally. Still, it wasn't sticking.

Then, within a mile of home, it got deep and heavy.

Within a few feet of home, it got dark. I thought it was our old friend The California Power Crisis, but instead it was a good old fashion tree falling on a power line somewhere down below.

No power for three hours. Then it came on for a half hour and was off again. A friend came by and dropped off some firewood, so we had heat. We sat in the firelight with the neighbors, my daughter crying to see Scooby Doo and to turn on the light, so the neighbors went home and we went to bed.

The power kept going on and off all night. When it goes off our thermostat makes some weird chirps; when it comes on the answering machine and VCR clear their throats and the refrigerator kicks in. So I was waking up and down all night.

By morning it was all melting.

Today marks the end of my first week in my new job, as a classroom assistant in a school for the deaf and hearing impaired. It's been tiring and interesting, and most importantly for me, remunerative. Tomorrow I go to Birmingham to spend my ill-gotten gains partying with friends. I'm so tired now, though, that I'm just going to go home and crawl into bed.

Good grief I haven't written a day log since early December. Vacation started and I dropped off the face of the planet. It was really nice to just vegetate for a couple of weeks though. I managed to get some long postponed reading done and sit still for more than ten minutes at a stretch. I guess that's what vacation is all about - getting just enough time off to keep you from going crazy and when you're safely away from the threshold of murder suicide throwing you back into the water. I feel rested and collected.

It's been nearly six months since I last held a job. This may sound inconsequential but it is the longest stretch of unemployment I've ever been privileged to live through. I've worked non-stop (mainly at shitty jobs) for the past fifteen years. The need for fiscal reality looms in the near future. Yoon has been supporting me for the past couple of months. I need to find a new place to live in a little over a month. My roommate is moving into some enormous space up in the mountains to be part of some art community or something. Sigh.

On the good news front, it's looking like the old kidneys and pancreas have decided to go back to work at least temporarily. I'm relieved but still very cautious about taking the results too seriously. Diabetes is mysterious and volatile. I am not going to get all optimistic about a situation that may change at any time. I'm still on the list for organ donor recepients. Those who give a shit please keep your fingers crossed for me. I'm not a believer in prayer but...

My band finally managed to track down a drummer. If you play music in any capacity you probably already know how difficult that is. The really strange part is that he's insanely good. He might be the best drummer that I've ever played with. Imagine playing with a drummer who actually counts and has suggestions for structure instead of just complaining. The only down side is that he chews (tobacco) and despite my own disgusting habit of setting tobacco on fire the cups full of brown spit are a little hard to take.

I'm also really curious about the much hyped Macintosh OS X. I know that most people put Macs in the same category as Etch-a-Sketches in regards to their worthiness as real tools. I'm excited because I do a lot of layout work and as cool as Gimp is these days it is not Photoshop. Try doing two page spreads with even the most sophisticated of the commercial Linux software and Microsoft Publisher starts looking pretty slick in comparison. As much as I heart using Linux I seriously wonder if it's the slightest bit practical for my uses. Sometimes the easy way is just so seductive. Maybe I take the rantings of Linux zealots a little too seriously? Anyhow, the article in Open magazine about the new Mac OS really got me thinking about the full range of options again.

My new year's resolution (I know, I know it's already January) is to try to get to know more people in my neighborhood and at school. I realized that I completely avoid interacting with entire groups of people because I assume that we have nothing in common. So I'm on a mission this year to find out exactly what the commonalities and differences are between me and the people I avoid. It's pretty ambitious but I'm going to give it a shot at least until I get my ass kicked or something.