Ahh the pleasures of late night shopping.

I needed groceries. I had just finished work installing a 1500VA Uninterruptable Power Supply for the main switch and router.

It was 2am.

My first choice was to go to Coles - the large food retailer in New South Wales, Australia. I love this time of the night - quiet, cool, gentle breeze. I stroll in to the normally manic Bondi Junction Coles and observe one thing - NOTHING. Nothing at all. No people shopping. No screaming toddlers. No suicidal maniacs steering shopping trolleys in to my ankle. Just the occasional staff member unpacking stuff on to shelves.

I took my time. At 1am, I know that Coles gets its next load of fresh fruit and vegetables. I had the pick of the lot. All totally fresh. I mean, not "Oooh its crisp". I mean "GOD DAMN THATS CRISP!!!"

I was unhurried. I did all my grocery shopping in under 10 minutes. I walked right up to a checkout chick, who was surprisingly alert for that early hour, and was greeted in an extremely friendly manner. She was actually GLAD to serve me!

All up a most satisfying experience.

On a different spin, I found out that my boss is considering leaving her job in a few months. August or so. You heard it here first. She is cool, and will be a great loss. She has also confided a lot of stuff, secret stuff, to me. But it has made my life easier and I appreciate all that she has done for me.

And I don't know what it is, maybe my honest face, but I had the event manager come up to me to ask advice on changing careers. He wants to move in to an I.T.-based project manager role. He wanted to know what courses he can take to further his education and knowledge to increase his chances at getting a job. Quite hard considering he isn't a technical person.

Pasta for dinner. Legs and back again at gym.

Life is good.

simonc loves his sleep

As regular viewers would gather, I had a challenging weekend, which flowed (in a brutally elegant way) into Monday. The backup and recovery from hell (FROM THE CREATORS OF SURVIVOR AND SURVIVOR 2!) that began at 7:30am Saturday didn't end at pre-dawn Monday morning. Oh no.

After a 48-hour stretch, I retired to my hotel room at 7:30am yesterday (Monday) and opened a beer. Ahhhh. Spent a very relaxng 45 minutes on E2 and then more-or-less passed out. At 9:30, woken from the sleep of the dead by my irriatingly shrill Motorola phone, I was summoned back to The Flaming Pit Of Hell as some network disks were not visible. Ack!

Man I dragged my arse over there. I operate really poorly on inadequate sleep. And 7.5 hours over three days-and-nights is my definition of inadequate, 'specially when added to heapin' helpin's of stress, grief, terror, boredom, and everyone's favourite, paranoia. Fixed the mount point thing (funny, one of the netatalk conf files (AppleDouble.default) had just lost a line). Then, "while you're here, Simon, could you just do (fill-in-the-tedious-but-crushingly-urgent task)"

THIS is the part of sysadmining I hate. The computers are cool, friendly, soothing. The users and their addle-headed practises and their inability to appreciate what sysadmins go through to keep their ships afloat are quite another thing. My current job description has kind-of "executive sysadmining" in it, but with my kick-arse full-time sysadmin on vacation in Thailand, I'm the bunny.

Gotta change my job description. MUST LEAVE THIS JOB.

Anyways, I finally escaped with my suitcase and my two laptops (uhg! they're heavy) at 8pm and caught the last flight home at 9:25pm. Gemma and Molly collected me at 10:15pm, and I slept.

Tuesday morning, 8am. RING! RING! RING! RING!

---

Okay, now some good stuff.

Gemma loves me. Molly adores me. I love them both very much. E2 is full of really interesting people whose company I enjoy immensely. I have lots of nice computers. I have a a perfect coffee cup. I have good prospects. I have broadband at home. I've seen the world. I have respect from many people I admire. I don't suffer from migraine. It's not so bad...

Everything Snapshot

Time: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 00:19:06 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: 821398 (976 new since February 12, 2001 [752.4 wa7])
Number of users: 25734 (74 new since February 12, 2001 [72.2 wa7])
Number of links: 3570999 (12605 new since February 12, 2001 [12534.5 wa7])
Number of writeups: 454341 (511 new since February 12, 2001 [371.8 wa7])
Number of cools: 61472 (191 new since February 12, 2001 [173.5 wa7])
Number of votes: 1997961 (9342 new since February 12, 2001 [7848.5 wa7])
Number of hits: 33789493 (156475 new since February 12, 2001 [145708.5 wa7])

Node to user ratio: 31.919 nodes per user
Link to node ratio: 4.347 links per node
Link to user ratio: 138.766 links per user
Link to writeup ratio: 7.860 links per writeup
Votes to cools ratio: 32.502 votes per cool
Cools to user ratio: 2.389 cools per user
Hits to user ratio: 1313.029 hits per user

New Nodes: [I found another one of your secrets.] [capitalism] [500] [If an E2 user called you, what would you say?] [sevivon] [Deciding whether or not to take your fiance's last name is a tough decision.] [What Does Our Login Name Say About Us?] [How to take over the world using cows] [The Elixir] [Nukees] [Impressing Girls By Spouting Polish Surnames] [It's obvious you've never owned a penis] [Darren "Gav" Bleuel] [digital emunction] [comic strip]

Users Online (87): [dannye] [Gamaliel] [ophie] [mat catastrophe] [N-Wing] [hramyaegr] [--OutpostMir--] [kamamer] [simonc] [m_turner] [mcc] [ToasterLeavings] [hamstergirl] [achan] [Girlface] [Cletus the Foetus] [Gritchka] [renster] [narzos] [coby] [r4v5] [SgtCoolGuy] [srkorn] [Zorin] [nieken] [dolphinboy] [cody] [Anark] [Crux] [Trina] [GirlsDontLikeMe] [muegge] [deeahblita] [iandunn] [ithron] [Malicious Kitten] [artemis entreri] [GangstaFeelsGood] [muted] [mofaha] [CrowJane] [pziemba] [thax] [disarmed42] [Albert Herring] [senbei] [kozmund] [MrTunney] [Sirius] [Kalon] [Mad_Dog_Fargo] [krsi] [st.augustine] [Lost and Found] [nevalnin] [cerberus] [infinityseeker] [jem] [eliane] [Pfilip] [andman] [inciteful] [aznin] [dunne] [mpbubb] [Twin Eclipse] [Pessimistic Views] [Skinwalker] [iceburn] [Maayan] [xenophon] [wildkitten] [Thumper] [kmcardle] [zerth] [moby1gnubie] [xealot] [Killio] [Persian Man] [doggles] [howlingfrog42] [The Hegemon] [Exodus] [paulv] [RainMirage] [laxian] [DigiBlitz]

JeffMagnus node count: 4090 (1 new since February 12, 2001)
JeffMagnus experience: 11980 (7 more since February 12, 2001)
JeffMagnus experience to node ratio: 2.929 XP per node
JeffMagnus nodeshare: 0.498% (Via alternate method: 0.901%)^*
JeffMagnus node of the day: what will occur the day after Windows NT becomes open source

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.

It's my birthday.

A time to pause and reflect on my life.

I remember last year at this time, I was anxious about finishing college. I was also very worried about my wife. She was having terrible pain in her neck and down her arm, and nothing the doctor suggested seemed to help. It was a very trying time for me. I was working very hard to finish school and doing the housework because my wife could not lift anything with a sore neck. When she needed support, I had to dig as deep as I could just to find the strength to keep her going. I was running on empty, but I always found the strength to keep going.

Now it is a year later, and life is so good. We finally found a doctor who could diagnose what was wrong with my wife and he referred us to the proper specialist. She had a crushed disk in her neck that needed to come out. We managed to schedule the surgery just two weeks before my college graduation. She made it through sugery without any problems. One of the happiest moments of my life was walking onto the stage at graduation and seeing her sitting in the audience. She was still wearing a neckbrace, but looked as lovely as ever. She was so radiant and was smiling from ear to ear. It is a moment I will treasure forever.

As for other things, positive energy is abound. Our oldest son will graduate from college this year. Our daughter graduates from high school in two years. She's near the top of her class, and quite a looker, just like mom. Our youngest son is also doing good in school, and seems to get taller and smarter every day. I love my family.

My daughter asked me once if I wanted to be rich. I told her I was rich with my family. I would rather be loved than be rich. John, Paul, George, and Ringo said it best. All you need is love.

"Hey, don't get bummed out. It's better than chemo."

This is what my dermatolgist told me today as he was performing the 4th wide excision on my back. I've had five moles removed. One was melanoma and the rest have been dysplastic, which means "Uncancerous but having ambition to expand the empire." I've been laid up and in pain since early December, and it's starting to get on my nerves.

Today was when I learned that I have another three months of this to go through. Because all of the moles have had tendancy so far, more have to be removed than originally thought. And by removed I mean cut out. Biopsied. Excised. Ninja chopped. Argh.

Also, my first real girlfriend IM's me last night as I'm on my way to bed. She tells me she's marrying a guy she's been dating for 2 and a half months. It's a Church of Christ wedding, so there won't be any dancing, any music, or any booze.

I said "Why not just toss it in at the end of Sunday service and save everyone the cost of formal wear?"
She said, "But it's still a wedding! You don't have to have booze and music and dancing for it to be a wedding."
I said, "I'm not talking about the wedding, I'm talking about the reception."
"Oh, well we'll just stand around and talk and stuff. It'll be great!"
"Won't there be any food or punch I can spike or anything?"
"Uhm.... no. Not really."
"You know, ancient warring nations that performed sacrifical virgin killings had better weddings than this."

After that the conversation was pretty much downhill. The only other interesting thing I learned was that the exact carat weight of the engagement ring is 1.88.

Does it seem weird to anyone else that she knows the EXACT carat weight of the diamond, down to the hundredth?

It never would have worked between us.

Warning: Pointless, angry rant about windows 98 is coming up. Duck.


I am an RCC, a residential computer consultant at Oberlin College. This means that whenever some luser manages to break their computer, I have to go fix it. Or try to. Frequently this involves dealing with stupid people and stupider OSes, like Windows 98.

God, what a piece of shit. The people who made this worthless heap of donkey droppings must have been smoking large quantities of extremely potent crack to come up with something this crappy. I wish Bill Gates was in this room right now so I could whack him with a pimp stick and smack him around for inflicting the horrible boil on the ass of the Earth that is the Microshit Corporation. I currently have a box that was having trouble detecting a sound card, which had been working previsouly. So I put the card in a different slot. At which point Windows, in all it's infinite wisdom, decided to stop working. I put the card back in the original slot. I took the card out entirely. Nothing. It now occassionally manages to boot into safe mode. Safe mode. The way a shitty OS can become even more shitty. Safe mode. Where windows, once again demonstrating the kind of design genius that can only come from large quantities of extremely potent drugs, decides not to load any useful drivers, like say, your NIC, or your CD-ROM, but, somehow, decides to load such necessary things as ACTIVE DESKTOP. Yup, you don't really need that CD drive, but you have to be able to see your desktop as a fuckin web page. Christ, would I like to get my hands on the ass pirate who made that decision. So, anyhow, you don't have your damn CD-ROM, so you can't reload the pile of fetid bat dung that you call an OS. So, you might try using the ever useful mscdex utility to manually load the cd drivers. HAH. You think. Until you realize that mscdex has no documentation. NONE. It is not mentioned once in all the Windows help I could find. So of course now you want to look on the web for any help you can find, but FUCKING WINDOWS DIDN"T LOAD YOUR FUCKING NIC. So you don't have any net access. Amusingly enough though, in safe mode, it apparently is able to detect that sound card that it stopped detecting in the first place, and in fact claims it is installed and is working properly. Amusingly enough though, the card was removed and is sitting on the desk in front of you.




Fuck you, windows 98. I hate you.

So here goes Day 2 of my attempt to keep a regular online diary.

Is it sad that the most exciting thing about my day is that I made it to Level 2? In three days, no less. Is that a new record? I had a hard time deciding what to node for my 25th write-up. I ended up posting the lyrics to Here's My Check, Carnegie Tech, which is my favorite parodied Carnegie Mellon song. It's not as deep and profound as I would have liked, but I'm not feeling very deep and profound.

Other than that, my day was really weak. I went to class, did homework, went to more class. Band practice was fun. I went to the grocery store. I got some of those cool yogurts with the crunchy granola things in the package on top that you stir into the yogurt to give it texture. I'm very easily amused. I really should go to the computer cluster... But I called my grandparents in Israel. Yesterday was my grandfather's birthday. I think I'm a bad person because I was truly, honestly, bored listening to my grandparents describe how one of my cousins might have a cold, and why can't he put on a sweater when it's cold? Sigh.

Ok, enough procrastination. As if I'm not going to be up half the night regardless...

Oh, and can I just say, that it makes me really happy that I followed the hardlink in my day log to granola, and the very first writeup about granola contains a hardlink to yogurt? Ok, I'm really going now. Really, I mean it..

Okay, I've been kicking around E2 for a couple of weeks now, adding new nodes every so often. I was up to 10 nodes (not an X-noder, since that seems to be set for 10,000 nodes, not 10), and I had 41XP. I'm not bragging, just setting up the facts. I decide to add another node about Pitcher Abuse Points (fantasy baseball analysis statistic). It's nothing that I expect people to really NEED to know, but it's a pretty interesting metric for evaluation purposes. When I finish the write-up, I add a bunch of soft links, admire my work and move on to other parts of the web.

Fine and dandy...or so I thought. I'm about to go to bed (it's after midnight (EST) here on the east coast) and decide to visit the E2 Node Tracker. It had been a day or so since I visited it, and I think it's a fantastic tool. I'm just curious to see if anyone had voted on any of my nodes (up or down, its all good to me...down means I have to work harder on the nodes I write...up means I've written something someone likes). I log in, and up comes the data.

One node created (PAP), one node getting a + (PAP) and one node getting a - (ironically, my last daily log entry). No problem there. But when I check my XP, it has plummeted to 32; a drop of _9_ points! I'm stunned. I thought it would be going up 1 point (for the new node). That (-9) marker beside my XP in the node tracker stands out like a sore thumb. But then I ask myself

"How did it drop so far without any negative votes?"

So if anyone knows how it happened, please tell me how. Feel free to /msg me the answer. Until then, I'll just have to assume it's just a karmic thing and keep on noding.

My mind is sludge...

Much thanks goes out to whoever gave me the evil death flu from San Fransisco. I can't breath, I can't move, I can't think, and medicine isn't doing a damn thing. Not to mention, I have the most intense, paralyzing craving for chocolate right now that I feel like I should be climbing my walls or something. Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. Oi, the hormones.

So he thinks I'm a bitch... well, at least he finally said it to my face, in a way of sorts. Although... making a nodeshell and softlinking my name to it is pretty fucking juvenile, if not cowardly; I would have expected better from him. Why not tell me in person? Huh? If I'm really that horrible, if I'm really such a huge bitch, and if I'm really that psychotic, why not tell me to fuck off six months ago? Why pretend to be my friend? Sometimes people make no fucking sense.

Accidently cut myself earlier... a nasty wound, and as I was washing the blood off, I watched it circle silently down the drain... and felt my own life going the same way as well. Now I'm bitter, depressed, nauseated, and sick as a dog...

Wonderful fucking day.

Some therapist I'm going to be...I can't even facilitate communication in my own relationship. We have trust issues. We have boundary issues. Ever since we participated in the leather show, Wayne has been expressing feelings of inadequacy related to his personality...he thinks I want someone more dominant, assertive. More extroverted. On a certain level I do, but I also value him as he is. The trouble comes when I try to reassure him of this...it falls flat. My words of comfort reach his eyes and ears as vapid platitudes.

The trust issues arose last week, after he noticed I still have amicable relationships with a couple of my exes. He began hovering near my monitor whenever one of them would instant message me. He opened my email program while I was taking a hot bath and subsequently began investigating the websites in my bookmark list. I felt as though I was dating a CIA agent. He left his computer connected to AOL while we went out Saturday night, and upon returning I jokingly moved the cursor to the mailbox and said, "Let's see what you're hiding. He all but tackled me to snatch the mouse away and disconnect before I could invade his privacy. That was when I chose to go home for the evening rather than argue.

My feelings were hurt, I couldn't think of anything to say, and we spent the next day apart and in terse silence. Earlier, I finally emailed him the lyrics to The Dangling Conversation by way of breaching the stillness. The reply was less than encouraging: "I don't think I even want to begin to interpret this song. You walked out...the ball is in your court." The ball is in my court, but I don't even know what game I'm supposed to be playing.

I hate sports.

Well here I am again.

Let's see... I had to abort a cd I was going to burn for Kristi because my DAE app was flakin out on me and it was givin me lots of jitter errors.

Wanna know what was on it? Ok

Fall of Troy by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan
Genova Per Noi by Paolo Conte
Good Evening Mr. Waldheim by Lou Reed
Simple Twist of Fate by Concrete Blonde
Oh Sister by Bob Dylan
Roses Are Free by Phish
Visions of Johanna and So Many Roads by the Dead

aborted, abouted, aborted....
Instead I threw the I Ching on the question, "I say, Uninstall It?" because my Winamp was givin me problems... I recieved the following Hexagrams:
#52 -> #8 ... many moving lines

So that was that... i uninstalled Winamp.
Just read that they told Napster to shut down... old not 4 me here in Italy.

Payday is tomorrow, which menas i get to do laundry, go shopping, buy some hash, pay for the 8 rolls of film I had developed and pay Kristi 300,000 lire of the 1 million lire I owe her.

WEll today I've got some work to do...
the Annual report is due by the ned of the month and I'm only 1/3rd done
+ there are flyers to design for my upcoming photo show at the Cafe Des Artes here in Torino,
+ I need to finish the Cafeteria Vecchia Torino's web page,
+ I need to edit the sound down from the Ken Kesey interview and create a cohesive MP3 that corresponds to the edited text that i sold to Baoom.com,
+ uh, well that's it actually.

Mensa story: It wasn't so much in her face as it was the way she carried herself, the proportions of her body, the way her breasts hung and the fullness of her lips. These are the things that caused me to think of Jane, when I saw the Italian girl in the mensa (cafeteria).

Jane... of all the women I've known in this lifetime it's Jane I miss the most... well, sometimes. She was a good girl, ready to love me fully and without hesitation, willing to do damn near anything I asked of her all to win my approval, which of course turned me off. I like `em independent, not in need of my approval - that quality has to come from within - and over the months we lived together Jane's neediness reminded me of my ex-wife's neediness and so I had to end the affair.

Jane, I still miss her sometimes. She was a good girl, full of love and energy, ready to have a bit of fun at a moment's notice. Sexy in an unassuming way, Jane was one of the more enticing of my lovers, she had something special which even now, 4 years after we broke up has me twisted up inside. She invited me via e-mail to her wedding last year. I wrote back to say that I was living in Europe and that I couldn't make it and that it would weird me out just the same, being as I still regretted letting her go....

On another note... I've decided I really don't like one of the two Italians I share my office with... he talks to himself and swears at his computer... he never smiles and has never invited me to have lunch with him. He's not mean to me, but he's not nice either... So I'll dedicate this E2 fuck you to Mario Gallantina...che petza di merda (what a piece of shit). It all started when he reminded me to never leave anything of value around the office... (I hate people who assume the worst), And if he ever leaves the office even to get a café or go to the bathroom he'll lock his computer as if either me or our colleague would have any interest whatsoever in scooping out his shit... Whatever Mario... you just sit there and talk to yourself, because you have nothing social to say to anyone else in the office... but it doesn't equal communication when you're ranting and mumbling to yourself about how fucked up some things are...

Enough of that. Now for something completely different... I'm a bit slow today... I'm tired and I don't know why... slept well, ate a good lunch, but something's just off. To top it all off, the net crashed (a common occurrence here in Italy, happens more frequently than the government crashing which happens bout once a year.)

11:45

Hello hello.

I'm actually awake. Last night I did some unremarkable things, like added a graffiti support to YiffCam for "unedited public opinion" or something like that. Took old script and added that to a web page.

Today... Well, I'm just a bit hungry again. Apparently the noodles last night were a sort of temporary solution...

Today's other schedule? A course about UIs starts today.

"Programming environment" course is sort of interesting. To complete it, I must make an essay about something related; I think I'll make my about programming project management in UNIX (Make, GNU Autotools, RCS/CVS, and so on).

19:48

Done reading yesterday's Usenet articles. =(

Onward to today's articles. I hope.

21:31

Two segmentation faults from supposedly stable programs (MPEG video encoder and netstat?)

Suddently it feels like 1996 again...

OK, the mpeg encoder was built to fail, it included assembly-language routines for MMX optimizations (and we know what happens to people who use assembly... =)

---

Other day logs o' mine...

Noded today by y.t.: Autotools

i broke up with my boyfriend tonight

other than that, i've been talking with my roommates about the fields. the fields where the migrant workers earn a tiny bit of money and a mcdonalds playplace. i can't tell you why. out of pity, maybe? out of white guilt? i don't know. i was born this way, so don't ask me. i wish upon a star that this wasn't my problem, that i was part of some 'minority' that no one knows of and i could just exist without being stigmatized or drunken.

i don't get those luxuries. i get to think, every day, about how lucky i am to have moved on up from white trash to middle class boring. but i still feel it. it sounds suspicious, sounds pretensious, but fuck that lack of trust. i can tell you. i was there, with hunger cold in my belly and beyond then, the warmth of knowing it would be days. i never saw a can of chili so beautiful. or a sack of potatos. i could tell you why i love food..

remember, remember this formula: there's always a tommorow on the horizon full of the white gold we've been promised for so long. it's only our hesitance to reach out for it (tihnking it not ours) that prohibited us. but it's waiting for us, that same battered american dream. and if i can have it, so can you, even my ex, whose is insanely sweet and the most mature boy i've yet to break up with. tonight we, the underclass take back our pain and make it into our own poetry. tonight the wine of sorrow is ours alone.

it's a monday. welcome to our world.

Well, obviously I am doing something wrong. Like not thinking. Hasn't anyone else ever made a booty call to an ex? Am I the only one? Am I that fscked up about it? Therapy last night, and when I mentioned it, her eyes opened wide. No judgments (good old therapists) just - surprise. And I told a friend or two about it - one was quite non-judgmental, no big deal. Another was - apparently - very surprised and her e-mail seemed angry. So my friend wanted to know why I made the booty call. What was I thinking. How hypocritical. And what a mental mind fuck. For both of us.

...sigh... She's probably right. I want it all, and I want it my way. I don't know what to think, or how to think. I feel in a fog today, tired, not willing to think or figure out what I'm feeling. Poor little old me.

Coming up the escalator from the Crystal City Metro station this morning, my ears were greeted with the sweet strains of a violin, being played quite well.

At the top of the escalator, there was a busker, violin case open in front of him. I grabbed a handful of change from my pocket (~$1), and tossed it in his case. Two nods exchanged, and I walked down the hall to my daily grind.

Smiling.

---

Also, Henry Rollins turned 40 today. Happy Birthday Hank!

Another day in Paradise.

My wife, for lack of a more accurate term (does any language out there have an easier way of saying "the woman I will one day soon be divorced from"?), leaves on a "business trip" on the morning of the fifteenth. Valentine's day is obviously not going to be all that special, and she leaves the next morning, to go to New Orleans on "business." I don't really have any reason to be paranoid, but she has lied to me in the past.
I should move back home to Texas while she is gone, but I am too scared. What would I do? How would I help her pay the bills and support our kids? I know I can find a job as a coder-geek, but I would also need a place to live and a car...

It is really hard to keep going on with this crap.

I was sitting in my office trying to get something done and I got a message from a friend of mine. I always keep the damn messenger service running for just such an occasion but this one was a little more unusual...
This is the abridged version of the conversation:

Kevin: What are you doing?

Tandex: trying to fix my invoice html so that it will work on Netscape properly.

Kevin: oh... so you're not busy, then?

I sighed for a second and looked at the mess I was making with my code. Having an IE captive intranet made a lot of things easy and my coding was a simple experiment anyway...

Tandex: ok, not really. What's up?

Kevin: We perpetrated a monstrous prank last night.

Tandex: and?

Kevin: It was mucho amusing.

Kevin: It was this girl's birthday today.

Tandex: ok

I looked back at my code trying to figure out which one was more interesting...

Kevin: So last night we came in and filled her cubicle top to bottom with balloons.

Kevin: And then gift-wrapped her entire cubicle with bright yellow happy birthday wrapping paper.

I looked again at my code seeing it take a sudden, far more interesting leap... but I persisted with the conversation.

Tandex: oh... ok... are you still at rSP?

Kevin: Yeah, I start BFC next week.

Tandex: ok

Kevin: Why do you ask?

Tandex: just wondering

Kevin: What do you know about BFC anyways?

Tandex: well, they make great fried chicken...

Tandex: wait a minute...

Tandex: wrong 'FC'

I smiled at my smartass-ness

Kevin: So in other words, not a damn thing.

Tandex: ding!

Tandex: I know a girl who worked there... she seemed to enjoy the place

Kevin: So, is that girl the kind of person who would enjoy working in the same kind of places I do?

Kevin: OK...what was up with Embers yesterday?

Kevin: She looked at me like I was some sort of dead-freak-walking-zombie-puppie-killer.

Tandex: what do you mean? She seemed fine to me? What did she say?

Kevin: Dunno...just thought I caught a very unhappy vibe from her.

Tandex: she was pretty tired. She got to bed around 5

Tandex: that was probably it

Kevin: OK, so she was the walking dead zombie...I feel better.

Kevin: At any rate, I made a major ass of myself last night...even more so than usual.

Tandex: what did you do?

Kevin: There's this girl, Crystal, that we work with. She was there last night helping with the balloons.

Kevin: She was already here when I got here.

Kevin: So I show up and as it turns out she brought her (slightly) younger sister with her.

Kevin: And they're both laughing and giggling like made.

Kevin: Med I mean.

Kevin: MAD.

Kevin: Damn...anyways...

Kevin: They were acting all drunk and stuff.

Tandex: ok... and?

Kevin: So I asked them jokingly if they'd been hitting the bottle, and they said no.

Kevin: So we go on, and Crystal is acting much better.

Kevin: But her sister is still acting like she's lit off her ass.

Kevin: So the whole night long I'm making jokes about her being a drunk and all...good-naturedly of course.

Kevin: And then about 15 minutes before it's time for Crystal to leave....

Tandex: then...?

I've always hated it when people lead you into something with a phrase like: "guess what?" or "then...".
Just SPIT IT OUT!
I suppose I could be more forgiving because it was typed conversation... I guess I'm a jerk.

Kevin: ...she starts telling her sister what to do, in the way that a mother would tell her 10 year old child what to do.

Kevin: And then it all suddenly clicks into place...

Tandex: oh no

Kevin: Her sister has a developmental disability.

Tandex:

I was laughing too hard at him to type.

Kevin: She's 20-something and has the mental capacity of a 3rd grader.

Kevin: Talk about egg on my face...

Tandex: you are such a moron.

Kevin: I felt like an ass...

Kevin: Literally.

Kevin: I felt so bad...

Tandex: that is funny... that goes into the bin.... have to write this down.

Kevin: I didn't know for sure until they left and I asked Ferguson and he confirmed it.

Tandex: oh my god....

Tandex: Stimpy! you are an eeeeediot

Kevin: I felt so bad that I spent probably 15 minutes this morning apologizing to Crystal.

Tandex:

...More laughing at his expense

Kevin: I swear, I thought that she was drunk.

Kevin: She didn't sound stupid, she didn't slur, she didn't act inappropriately.

Kevin: She just acted really slappy.

Tandex: You are a fucking idiot

Another quiet day at work.

Did some comparison shopping between firewalls for a customer of ours. It seems Microsoft has introduced an Enterprise-Class firewall package. "Microsoft Internet Security and Accelleration (ISA) Server." It doesn't look too bad, though I haven't used it myself. It's not cheap for home users, though.

Still haven't had a chance to talk to the Division Manager yet. He comes back "probably tomorrow", so I'll see what happens then.

Lunch Log: Tostidos with Home-Made Salsa.

I didn't feel like going to class today. I woke up and remembered my brother was sick, so i decided i would feel a little under the weather as well. so i've been moping around the house, eating chicken noodle soup, mumbling to myself about how sick I feel. People called me asking why i wasnt in class, i told them i was god awful sick. Cant even get out of bed! Im perfectly fine, noone is at home, i just felt like being sick, i wanted to play the role. i should have gone to class today, I haven't been to