Today is my 19th birthday, so I hope everyone will forgive me for jumping in and squatting on the first writeup.

Despite the fact that I'm writing this on the 14th, I think I can still give a fairly accurate account of what's going to happen to me today.

3:00 am

Decide I just can't hack any more Perl this night.

3:05 am

Go to bed.

4:00 am (approx.)

Roommate returns from clubbing. Do not wake up.

9:00 am

Wake up; groan; go back to sleep.

1:30 pm

Recieve birthday phone call from mother. Get up.

1:45 pm

Shower, get dressed for the day

2:00 pm

Kill most of the rest of the day playing TFC, MUDding, and web surfing.

4:00 pm

Roommate wakes up.

8:00 pm (approx.)

Greet roommate's friends as they come to pick him up. Normally, I'd decline the invitation to come with them, and settle into writing more Perl (I'm getting better! I only need to refer to the Camel Book every 10 minutes or so now.) However, since it's my birthday, I may just go out for a change. I feel very daring.

---

Well, I forgot that my roommate's girlfriend would be visiting this weekend, so that messes with my expected schedule a bit. Oh, the difficulty of prognostication! In other news, thanks to everyone for wishing me a happy birthday!

This is what i feel, this might help you, or you will probaby just think i'm a yaafi.

I am currently going through a bad patch of my life, I can feel the depression in my head and I want it, so much, to go away. This motivated me to write losing control, because I find that everything is getting too much. Things have always been bad, just not this bad.

The solution that I am trying is to find someone to open up too, someone I can trust with my life and someone who cares. I cannot let this hate, anger, fear, and loneliness continue, and now it is time to stop complaining and to do something about all the bad stuff.

Something else I have found to have helped a little is to get more sleep, and instead of trying to get to sleep, relaxing, controlling my breathing and getting into the most comfortable position possible.

When I have opened up, I will try my utmost to solve all my problems that I can do something about. The shit has gone on too long…

The problem will be written down, analysed, discussed until I find the perfect solution to solve the most complicated problems. Determination is what shall help me.

I cannot live this “abnormal” life anymore, I need people.

Am i talking crap? /msg me

Just Do It! (please replace with less crap saying that means the same thing)

to do when i wake up:

• shower (maybe a bath) - done, took at bath, 7:30 am. fell asleep in the tub til 10. i haven't been able to get warm since.
• water the plants - done. fertilized them too.
• find a tax man - fuck it. let the gubment come after me.
• mail a package - done.
• get a manicure - done. i love the manicure.
• eat (right now i'm thinking veggie burger) - done. but it was a foot long turkey sub (i can't believe i ate the whole thing!)
• buy new paint brushes - decided the ones i have are fine.

it's actually pretty cold out. and it was very windy today. there were mounds of big stormy clouds but when the sun poke through it was bright and an amazing contrast to the gloomy grey cloud shadows.

more later

okay it's later. i accomplished everything but the tax man. the bath was cool before i fell asleep. the rim of the tub presses against the back of my head and it feels like my scalp falls asleep. the water was cold when i woke up. my fingers and toes were so wrinkly they hurt. but i got out, wrapped up in some warm clothes (yay i wore my size 10 jeans!) and went out to get everything done. in addition to the above, i also bought slipcovers for the sofa and loveseat, curtains and a rod for the living room, 1 and 1/2 dozen each of orange and red roses, 6 fishies, 2 snails and a new filter for the tank.

here is what i must accomplish tomorrow:

• laundry
• vacuum
• steam clean
• wash the dog
• clean the kittybox
• eat

there is a show on the discovery channel about the legend of king arthur and the kights of the round table. they are shoing lots of men in suits of armor and i am reminded of when i had to don one. they are quite uncomfortable. actually it wouldn't have been so bad if the armor had been made specially for me. it was too large, and the weight of the whole suit came to bear at a seam which rested firmly on my collar bones. but it was fun. i digress. on this show they're showing links between the myth of king arthur and george lucas' Star Wars. and this, i realize, is why i hated episode one. the original three movies were a long wonderful saga, an epic*. it was a no-nonsense tale of good versus evil. then comes episode one. and i kept expecting jarjar binks to break into song and dance. i shouldn't be so quick to judge since there are two more installments to go before we get to Star Wars in the time line. Maybe the cartooniness of it is intentional -- to show the disparity between then (episode one, sunny and smurfy) and later on (Star Wars, grey and dismal). but i also feel one of the great flaws of episode one is that they used well known actors for the roles. the characters, in my opinion would have been more believable. i also really REALLY wish they didn't use CGI aliens as main characters. no matter how good it is, there's just a CGI look to it. anyhoo. on to other topics...

* but i hated the ewoks

---

a letter to my love in utah,

my dearest, my soul. i wish you were here. sleeping alone on a saturday night sucks. but. i don't want you to be be sad about being in utah. i am proud of you. i think where you are working is going to turn into a very good thing. you are, as they say, The Man. we are at an exciting time in our lives, our individual lives and our life as two people who love each other. we are both busy, but i think we both are very much charged by a frenzied work environment. we might spend some time apart now, but we have our whole lives ahead of us.

i miss you terribly. when you come home i am going to smother you with hugs and kisses. for now i have the danners and the squeek and bosley looking after me.

i love you! i love you! i love you! remember that. and i am proud of you (and you look super-fucking-fine in a suit) two weeks will pass quickly. i will be waiting for you. with a bottle of wine and pretty panties under my usual-peg-uniform. i'd offer to have dinner waiting, but...

well that's all for now. i'm sure i will hear from you via phone before you even read this. these are the things i want to say to you but would wind up sounding so gushy and girly -- and you know how i feel about gushy girly stuff.

smooch. i'll talk to you soon, my love.

love, peggy

Yesterday, nothing interesting happened, except that my foxy friend Reno Caspain (old E1 user with one writeup) came to E2 - to post dreams. Just What We Need. Some of his dreams are really cool. =)

<h4>... oops, 14:52

Well, today, nothing uninteresting. Uh, I tweaked my WindowMaker theme a bit, and posted about it in newsgroups.

My machine has now an alternate DNS name: nighthowl.penguinpowered.com - probably because I may get a frigging dynamic IP some day. I've had a static IP for... uh, since 1996.

Kuro5hin.org is still black and has a DOOMSDAY CLOCK ON THEIR PAGE! THE END OF THE WORLD IS COMING! Repent your sins! The Armageddon shall begin in the year 2000, as the Phrophets have said!

18:25

Welll... After checking out the newsgroups and stuff, I had nothing to do... and because "nothing to do" is generally also entwined with certain kinds of intentions of how to make the state of inactivity (not-doingness) to evolve into state of action, I decided to make use this ocassion of inactivity to enable me to move from state of having not done anything in certain manner to state of having something done in that same manner.

(Yes, this was a Baldrick paraphrasing, from the last Blackadder episode. Though this description is no way better than the mathematical description found in Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.)

In other words, I had TinySex for first time. Harrrrr! I wonder if I have the virgin record of Tapestries MUCK? I got the character in May 1999, and nothing had happened since, until now! =) Should I be proud or something? Who knows? Does it really matter? Duh, I guess not.

Um, was it worth it? Well, I have to say it was the best and probably the most creative three hours I've spent on-line so far... =)

22:04

Wonderful! Some of my favorite TV programs are back in TV: Stiller show, Iltalypsy and Uutisvuoto. What else? I'm frigging tired right now. =/

---

Other day logs o' mine...

back | days | front

Trepidation

I've just got back from a trip to the consultant about my leg. I broke my left leg some years back and had many operations to fit pins inside it. Now is the time for those pins to come out as they are causing irritation; my leg is healed pretty much completely so I should manage OK without them. The surgeon will also remove some bony calluses that have formed around the break site, causing pain, and will also clean up the scar on my leg.

I'm a little worried at the speed with which I agreed to have the operation; the doctor said that I would be OK without it. But I said that I wanted the op ASAP. The doctor looked at me with some brief skepticism, making me wonder if I was coming across as a hypochondriac type person...

So, Tuesday the 26th is the big day. I wonder how things will be this time? During my last round of operations I was pretty much dependent on my Mother to organise things and make sure that I was OK. That was before I gained my independence and bought a house; I should be able to cope more on my own this time around...

I'm not looking forward to telling my project leader about this; he never takes notice of other people's feelings. I can picture how he will take it: He will look at me as though at a child, with an exasperated expression on his face, he will then make sure I know how much of a hassle this will be to him and tell me that homeworking is out of the question. :-(

I only hope that BT installs ADSL at my house before the operation: I shall have to spend a lot of time recuperating at home and will be very bored.

Hmm, I'm quite scared of this...

Oh well, at least I get to brush up on my crutch-fu :-)

A little later...

Mild Worry

Of course this means that I shall have to tidy my house up, wash and iron clothes and generally make sure that if my Mother was to actually enter my house, she wouldn't be embarrassed...

I went to work. Boring. But not so bad. Spent most of the time talking shit with the supervisor (Kelly). We got in a huge shipment of 4" brass and silver Reindeer Nut Bowls. Somehow, the name got turned into a dirty joke. It was Kelly's 21st birthday, so I decided to make up a song for her, all about the Reindeer Nut Bowls. We were singing it for hours, although not loud enough to be overheard by the customers. They might have been offended by our word choices.

Finally it was time to close. I swept the floors, emptied the trash, and dust mopped the entire store. I went back to the office to help Kelly count the money and see if we made budget for the day.

I found her on the floor with her head under the desk.

She had lost over four hundred dollars worth of checks, and was searching for them all over. We tore the office apart, but they were nowhere to be found. I took everything off the metal shelves in the corner and pried the bottom off, just to see if the checks might have gotten stuck underneath. After an hour of looking, neither of us found a clue as to where they might have gone. There was nothing left to do but call the Senior Supervisor, Nancy. She was not happy to hear from us. Kelly was on the verge of tears, and said she felt nauseous. No wonder; if I had lost $400+ I'd feel a little sick too. She's in college, and can't afford to pay the store back. I felt so bad for her. But the checks had disappeared. There was nothing we could do except go home.

Got home around ten thirty, ready to get online and find the copy of Cyrano de Bergerac I had bookmarked earlier. The phone line was dead. I needed to read the play for my French homework, but it wasn't gonna happen now. I moped around for a bit, and finally went to bed.

I could swear that I enjoyed my job when I first took it, about 6 months ago. Now, I'm not sure what to think about it anymore. It's Satuday now, and that's all that matters I suppose. It doesn't help that my boss is a moron, with absolutely no tech savvy whatsoever. I wonder how much a hitman charges?

I'm tired of the bullshit, I'm tired of 30 minute drive there and back.

I was asked by Allison if I was still gonna move to Austin. I did not know what to say. At the moment I need this job, to badly, at the same time, I've got to get the hell out of this town. I'll figger something out I suppose.

Happy birthday, JustSomeGuy!

I need to start doing some character art for an RPG ender02 is building, so he'll stop "borrowing" sprites from other games, but first I need to talk someone out of a digitizing tablet for the afternoon (I can't draw as well with a mouse). Yay for The Gimp!
17:21:00 CDT - Well, I showed him my concept sketches, and he like the good knight, but I made the evil one look a little too evil, and I have to re-do him. Oh well, I guess a villain who looks like the devil dressed in armor made of bones is a little too creepy for this game.

There's a football game tonight, Texas A&M (WHOOP!!) vs University of Texas at El Paso. It will probably play like a repeat of the Wyoming game last week. I'll post highights and the final score here tonight.
Update:22:48:18 CDT - Final score was 45-17, Texas A&M won. The defense had a little trouble in the first half, but in the 3rd and 4th quarters, they came back to life. UTEP didn't score at all after halftime. As usual, the nationally famous Aggie band was excellent. Now Texas is losing to Stanford 13-9! It's a good football day(sorry, Ivan, I couldn't resist) I'm still hoarse from screaming and whooping. When I came back from the game there was a note on the door - "If you're cute, call nnn-xxxx" (number omitted to protect the innocent). Unfortunately, I've mostly lost my voice, so I don't think I'd be impressing the ladies over the phone. Besides, I'm not sure if I'm "cute"

Strange weekend. And it just started ...

Last night, a friend of mine had a party at her house. I'm not really big into enormous social gatherings full of people that I don't know, particularily because some of her roommates' friends are ... well, trashy. Not really my scene at all. In general, I'd rather grab a couple of bottles of wine, a decent movie, and some people of intelligence and wit than go to a "real party."

Of course, I'd usually rather eat glass than go to a "real party."

Anyway, I went, intending on staying for just a bit and then going home. I was really, really sick all day - had to take a half day at work (which my employers were cool with, because they are beautiful human beings) because I couldn't even get out of bed in the morning. So, I went over around 9:30, thinking I'd walk home and get back by 11:30, at the latest.

I got home at 2:30. I have no idea how I managed to piss away the night like that, but I succeeded admirably. I actually knew a large percentage of the people there, and the rest of them were ok.

I also was given a couple of your mission, should you choose to accept it missions. One was taking care of my ex-boyfriend's little brother (who's a friend of mine) in his drunken stupor, with a success rate of about 50% (I walked him home, but he then walked BACK to the party and got more drunk). The other was getting rid of a white trash, drunk neighbor who crashed the party and starting eating the fruit soaked in alcohol that my friend and her roommates were selling cups for at $5 a cup. Paid nothing, generally was the stereotypical party crasher. So, a friend and I took it upon ourselves to subtley get rid of the asshole, again with a success rate of below 100% (we got rid of him, he came back, I got rid of him again).

Eventful night.

Weird - that's the most social I've been in a long time. I guess it might help that I was drunk.

So, today I wake up at 8:30 a.m. (I fell asleep about 3:30) and can't go back to sleep. *sigh* Oh well, at least it gives me the opportunity to be productive. As unlikely as that is.

I leave for the Gorge in five hours to see Counting Crows and Live play ... not a bad weekend, overall.

Got back from the Alpha Chi Sigma rush party at about 1:00... talked to some friends online... went to sleep at about 3:00.

Woke up to my roommate playing the radio because he doesn't wanna miss some soccer game. I guess thats what happens when you live in Europe, you start living and breathing soccer.
Went to Brunch. Ate some french toast, ham, and pineapple. MMMM... food.
Played some starcraft. Actually won for the first time. (yes, i'm a newbie)
Checked my mail, and headed over to E2 for some noding.

I am writing this down, but I still cant believe its true. After many many many months of writing and more all-nighters than I have digits ...

MY THESIS IS DONE!.

I cant wait till I'm finished typing this node so I can see the html. Maybe it'll sink in then. So - its done mostly sorta. I have to give it to my committee members who get to ruminate over it and use it as a stool/doorstop for two weeks. Then on Sept 29, I defend my thesis (wish me luck!). At that point, I'll make whatever corrections the committee has found and submit the final copy for binding at the library. THEN, I'll really be done...

So, the statistics:

• 370 pages
• 3 main chapters
• 4 appendices
• 114 figures
• 10 tables
• i didn't number my refs so I dont know the total count but they span 23 pages

This sucker's large, although a lot of the bulk comes from putting figures on separate pages. Lessee, anything else nodable? oh, the title ...

Spectroscopic, Structural and Computational Characterization of Tryptophan NH-pi Hydrogen Bonds.

One thing I've learned during the last few weeks is:

Never complain about your thesis to someone who already did one.

Surprisingly, whenever I wanted a tinge of sympathy after a long night of pagination mistakes or printers eating random figures, all I got was an even more depressing story from them. e.g. ...

Me - "can you believe it, Dima? It's taken me almost a week to print all the pages and figures of my thesis from start to finish."
Dima (with strong Russian accent and thundering voice) - "Heh. When I was finishing thesis, took me more than month to print. Computers were not as good those days."

I didn't dare complain to my advisor, who wrote his back before there were computers or xerox machines. Maybe some day (later rather than sooner) I can enter it into the database. ugh ... Thank god its over. Now I can start working on those papers!

So its Saturday and our final day of preparation before the students arrive. We are just checking everything is ready in the training room and then I will run through Monday's schedule with my guys one last time before we break for the weekend. The plan at the moment is for a few of us to head into Chicago tonight and stay in a hotel. I hope to check out some blues at Kingston Mines and then find a Chicago House club and throw some shapes.

Last night we we went into St Charles again and got horrendously drunk. I learnt a new drinking game which I will have to get around to noding at some point. I also had a small liason with one of the other instructors here. We were both obscenely drunk though and today we treated each other no differently than before so I am not sure what the deal is. The thing about a broken heart though is that I don't really care either.

Kung's USA Daylogs prev next

Well despite my lack of a job (I wish they would hurry up and finish building the Walgreens up the street) I managed to earn some money today by helping out my dad. We went up to his office and helped him and his boss clear out the office storage area. Lots of dust, cardboard, and some sticky stuff I don't want to know about. Wasn't that hard, and it got me away from the house for two hours.

Meanwhile, in the Etrix, I've decided to rethink my place in here. I'm going to try and calm down, not be so schitzophrenic-like and act "normal" (--OutpostMir-- laughs at the word normal) here. I'm going to try and node intresting stuff and avoid crap. Thank you dannye and Uberfetus for waking me up, I'm sure that things will once again be intresting here on Mir.

Don't think for a second that this means Senshi Red will go away. Just wait until late November or so...

I was planning to go get a nice enclosed rack in Orlando today, but woke to the news that a tropical storm was headed for Florida's Gulf coast. Because we couldn't be sure about high winds, my pickup-owning friend and I postponed that plan.

As I watched the Volunteers and the Gators battling it out, Gordon became a hurricane. It's still headed straight for Tallahassee, which makes me suspect that God is pissed off at FSU's meteorology center for giving away the punchline.

Side note: I may be the only guy in the world who yells at the TV while watching college football and drinking herbal tea. Kill him! Mmm, that's good tea...

Anyway, I'm looking at my options: evacuate? Ride it out? It's still a small hurricane, only Category 1, but my wind chimes aren't going on vacation anytime soon. There are no small hurricanes, only those whose destructive force are confined to a 200-mile swath of torrential rain with wind faster than any car can legally drive.

And yet... It's so calm out there right now that I can't imagine what will come tomorrow. I plan to treat the storm as the day's entertainment -- it should be quite a show. I'll node my experience, of course, providing there's still power. Good thing I have a UPS.

You know, I KNOW it's not really MAJOR XP hits or whatnot, but I've been getting Ack! every time I've logged in recently. It's getting on my nerves. If someone's systematically downvoting me, come on, would you at least let me know? I know that editors usually TELL or WARN me if they're gonna nuke a node, or at LEAST put it in their Editor Log...

Besides that, today was spent either A) Sleeping, or B) At work. Too bad both did not coincide with each other. However, at work, I, for once, came home HAPPIER than when I left.

I was taking up returns back to the service desk. I have to do that every once in a while when some boneheaded customer decides to leave stationary or housewares crap in the grocery department. (Or, I do it when I feel like wasting time... it's a long walk to the service desk) I was putting things away when I noticed one single, solitary, peaceful, happy looking small black, white, and yellow colored tin.

I looked up at one of the guys back behind the desk and asked, "Do we sell these here?" (Yes, people return the oddest crap, including some stuff we don't sell, so this question WAS, indeed, valid) He looked at the tin in question and told me to look it up on the computer. So I keyed in the UPC, and the computer came back with the lovely words:

"Penguin Caffeinated Peppermints".

Meijer now sells Penguin Mints. This will make things interesting.

(Yes, this WAS the highlight of my day. I work an exciting job.)

Well, Sam moved in today. His mom and dad were here. His mom cleaned all my shot glasses (there was really nothing else in the sink). I thought that was funny. We got Giordano's pizza and they fucked it up. Instead of a pepperoni and a half canadian bacon, pineapple, and green olives/half cheese and black olives (no meat for me!), we got one pizza with half pepperoni, black olives, and canadian bacon, and the other half was green olives, canadian bacon, pepperoni, and pineapple. $50 for such horrible service is bullshit. At least they gave us replacement pizzas, although it took another whole hour and the fucking guy asked for more than they told us it was the first time he came. Oh how I hate the city.

It's nice to not leave the house for a day. Haven't done that for a week or so. Sam's in his room right now slowly becoming addicted to Age of Empires 2.

I hooked our computers up to make a nice little LAN. We played Unreal Tournament for about two seconds. Had to quit because my shit's all fucked up since I got this new video card (Riva TNT2) from Craig (hey, he didn't need it anymore). So I even got his computer to use my modem for dial-up networking. I feel like a Windows networking god. I know it's no big deal, but with my history with Microsoft networks it's a bit of a big deal.

Cleared a whole lot more of that beer tonight. Maybe a party last week wasn't such a bad idea; the leftovers are nice. Shot of Jack Daniel's really makes the night a nice thing.

I watched Office Space again today. I've been watching it like ritualistically lately. Seriously almost every day. It's like an addiction; a dream that you want to come true. I really really want to do nothing for a living. That movie displays my ideal existence. Don't know what to think of it really...

Broke BeOS's modem workingness again. Had to boot back into Windows after only six days of uptime in Be. Pissed me off too, because I'd just got it working after 3 months.

Derek's back from his grampa's funeral. I felt really bad for him, but he's so quiet anyway that I had no clue how impacted he was. Hope he's ok.

Today I also asked Sam if he had any interest in playing Magic or if he even knew what it was. Planting a seed...

Tomorrow should be fun. I plan to go see The Seven Samurai at the Music Box if I wake up early enough. Otherwise, I'll just lose out on an important life experience and sleep all day. Story of my life...

Listened to the Deftones (White Pony) and William Ørbit (Pieces in a Modern Style) today. That is all. Good day.

If life were a series of postcards today would have two. The first would be the view from the futon in my living room as I looked out the window this afternoon. The sky was the clearest of blue and warm and a cool breeze contrasted with the warmth of the sunbeams that streamed over my skin. It was a day that smiled so brightly on it's own you couldn't help but smile back.

The other postcard is my reflection in the mirror of a gap fitting room. A thin blue spandex shirt on top, my legs squeezed into a pair of green leather pants a size too small and too heavily made to stretch and accomidate. Somewhere in that moment I stopped. A question stepped forward and called for attention.

As I entered the subway I passed a man with a couple piercings that only enhanced his lack of esthetic appeal. His clothes attempted to make some statement but lacked any hope of doing so and instead mumbled randomly.

"What are we trying to say with the clothes that we wear? What am I trying to say with the clothes I wear, with the color in my hair?

All I could come up with from todays outfit was "Hey look! I have tits!" And that is just pathetic. I don't wear tight shirts like that because I really love them. I wear them because I like not having to worry about people questioning my womanhood. But, the truth is I'm much happier in the XL mens T-shirts my dad sent me from Eddie Bauer: thick colored cotton with sleeves that go below my elbows, so long it hangs below my groin and obliterates all but the smallest hint of breasts when I slouch. Cover my legs in cotton leggings and I am a happy girl. That is comfort to me.

Yet, every day I go to work I try to look some part. Some days I'm dressy, some days I'm gothic, some days I'm silly, but rarely am I just comfortably me. This past year has been a lot about finding, and redefining myself. And, although I have made huge, dramatic, strides there is still some part of me that is still trying to please society, still trying too look the part, but not really knowing which part to look. So, it comes back to the question, "What am I trying to say with the clothes that I wear?" And, I think what I want to say is, "I'm happy. I'm happy being me." Because, I am, and that's really all I need.