April 30, 2004
(Shut up, Harlan. You can’t copyright a title.)
A few notes, then I’ll get into my angst. First, you will have noticed a three-line list of news headlines at the top of the page now. Thanks to the people at United Networks, anybody can add headlines to a page. So I did so. Follow the link at the top, entitled “United Networks News Cast,” and see the instructions on how to add headlines to your own page.
Second, I am strongly considering setting up a mailto-based form for comments; apparently even though clicking on the "Email me" link to the right automatically opens your email, people want the simplicity of doing it all right there within their browser.
Last, but not least, this is the last entry that will fit in 64K (it actually goes a bit over), so the next time I post an entry, this one and all the ones currently on this page will be archived.
On to our previously scheduled rant.
I have no love life. I have no money. I have no joy.
I have monotony. I have stress. I have obligations.
I really need to focus on the good things in my life, like having a job and a car and friends and family and a house and food and clothing. But I can’t focus on these things for very long. Once you have certain needs met, you begin to concentrate on the ones you don’t have met, even if they’re rather of a spoiled brat nature.
I see people arguing about the issues of the day, and it’s so pointless. The issues are more complicated than the either/or, left/right, 1 or 0 way that so many people seem to look at them. But people (myself included) allow themselves to be polarized.
I look at all the messes we’re in, economically, politically, militarily, and diplomatically, and it makes me want to drop out of society. There’s too much that needs to be fixed, and too many short-sighted people who are supposed to be fixing things who are instead looking out only for themselves or their own little part of the world.
There’s no enlightenment. People extend their own petty personal biases to encompass the whole world, and enforce their own behavioral dictates on others. Often dictates that they, hypocritically, don’t even follow themselves. Short-term results are favored over long-term plans. Ethical or moral behavior takes second place to getting ahead.
IT’S ALL GOING TO BITE US IN THE ASS.
Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but it will. Mark my words.
The world is screwed up, I have no hope, and I have no means to seek even a temporary solace. There’s not a whole lot that makes me keep going on anymore. I can’t even reinvest my emotional energy in myself, because of the problems that Mom is going through. I want to run away, abandon all my responsibilities, and just get out from under.
I still feel stuck/stalled in transition, too. At least a couple of people at work use the correct pronouns, so technically I’ve made progress. But there’s no money for wardrobe replacement — and especially no money for electrolysis. Not having facial hair would help a lot in my presentation, but I’m still having to use a 3-blade razor to keep the shadow away. And you can forget having any money saved up toward the big operation. I have $110 in savings.
I can’t even get started on trying to correct my bad habits: I ate a 12-inch sub with double meat today at lunch, and I’ve been saying to myself that I’m going to switch to a 6-inch with single meat for months now. I don’t exercise even though I know I should. I eat too many carbohydrates and sugars for someone who is type-II diabetic.
Argh. And then I have to be there for my friends, too. That’s not a complaint. I want to be there for my friends… I force the obligation on myself. But there are times when I’m not sure I can do it, and then I feel guilty for that.
I need to learn to focus on the good things in life. I need to start doing what I can to change my bad habits. I need to stop spending money on expensive food and large amounts of it, so that I might just be able to have some zapping done, and maybe save up for the operation. I need to learn when to say “no” to demands on my time and my emotional energy without seeming harsh.
I need to win the ( P )( O )( W )( E )( R )(BALL).
Mood: Duh. You figure it out.
Music: Manhattan Transfer (featuring Felix Cavaliere) - Groovin'
April 8, 2004
I’ve got pieces of April —
I keep them in a memory bouquet.
Mom had some serious depression and some issues with her medications. Things are looking better on that front, but during the worst part of it, things really went to hell in a handbasket. She’s even more behind on her bills, to the point of being in danger of contempt of court for not fulfilling her obligations to pay the car note under the ad litem support court order.
It’s going to be a struggle to get everything straightened out. But, we’re all going to work together (except my sister, who wants to do things on her own terms, and we need to work together as a team on this), and things will work out.
On the subject of things getting better, Quinn seems to be feeling a little better, too, but she’s still reluctant to go out.
When I think of all the people I know who are some sort of general systemic dysfunction that keeps them from being able to be productive members of society, I find myself wondering. There’s at least three, and possibly more. What’s going on? Is it pollution? If so, what kind? Maybe it’s in our diet. Is it spiritual malaise? Is that part of the consumer culture?
But I think we’re going to start drowning in this. And I worry.
Mood: emotionally exhausted
Music: Howard Jones - Things Can Only Get Better
March 8, 2004
More than a month has bone by, and what a month it has been. There are things I don’t talk about in this journal right when they happen, and not just because I haven’t updated it recently enough. Sometimes, I have to have a little bit of distance before I can talk about them.
Mom had a heart attack back around the end of January. Notice that I didn’t say a word about it in my last entry, even though it was written after she had already gotten out of the hospital. That’s what I mean about not always talking about things right away.
Really, it was no huge deal. The attack itself was relatively minor; Mom actually thought that it was indigestion for quite some time (though she did take an aspirin and put on a nitroglycerin patch, just to be safe). It wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning, when it woke her from sleep, that she decided it was worth going to the hospital. She went to the best hospital in town for cardiac care, and one where she wouldn’t have to put up with the idiocy that takes place at corporate-run hospitals nor endure the indignities at a teaching hospital of having med students poking and prodding her.
She went in early Friday morning, had a stent inserted in her coronary artery fairly soon after that, and spent all day Friday and Saturday just resting. By Sunday she was ready to get OUT. They noted that there was another artery that was almost but not quite completely blocked, and they told her to come in and get that one taken care of as well. At the follow-up appointment on February 20th, they scheduled her for it, and she took care of it a week ago today.
Distance.
But even when I don’t talk about things right away, they still influence my writing. I probably wouldn’t have written an entry centered around sexual frustration if there hadn’t been a lot of angst in my life right about then.
Here are some other updates: Quinn and I are not serious, and not likely to become serious. It’s been established that she’s still way too attached to her ex to be able to rechannel that energy toward a new relationship. All we are is good friends with the possibility of some so-called “fringe benefits.” And that’s fine with me. I could stand to have a casual fling.
I didn’t go there on President’s Day weekend; I wound up being on call at work, and so had to stay in town in case there was flying to be done. The next opportunity will be Memorial Day weekend, because Easter weekend is not convenient for her.
I worry about her, too; she’s caught in a bit of a depressive spiral, and she’s also caught up in things that could generate serious problems for her down the line. But you know, you just have to trust adults to make their own decisions, and let them sink or swim on their own. Self-destructive behavior either gets corrected or else the person achieves the goal of self-destruction. Usually it takes a little bit of the latter before the former can happen.
It simultaneously draws me toward her and pushes me away. I have a tendency to want to “fix” people, and I have a soft spot for people who reveal their vulnerabilities to me. But I also don’t want to take on the burden of fixing people, plus depression isn’t something that can be fixed by well-meaning interference, nor do I want to get caught up in those serious problems should things turn out that way.
Which, cyclically, brings me back to Mom. From time to time, she shows signs of memory loss under stress, and her ability to take care of herself is becoming limited as a result of her increasingly limited mobility. She has made noises about my coming to live with her, perhaps building in the basement so that I would have my own space. She also mentions that it would be a great way for me to save money by renting out my condo, and not having to pay the mortgage out of my own pocket, while still owning some real estate.
But I don’t really want to move back in with my mother at the age of (mumble mumble). I am concerned for her, but I enjoy my independence. I feel guilty for not wanting to move in with her, and at the same time I still don’t want to do it.
I have told her that if it’s going to happen, I’m going to need a full, self-contained apartment, with kitchen and bath. She was only thinking of putting in a bath, and letting me have the run of her kitchen. Well, she blocked at that. At the moment, we’re at an impasse.
Fortunately, at the moment, there’s no money for such a project. The divorce proceedings are slow going. She’s heavily in debt, and there needs to be some resolution to that before the financial issues of the divorce can be confronted properly. And considering her current finances, it’s going to be quite some time before she can clear up the debt. It may be another year or so before the issue comes up as a real possibility. Until then, I’m quite content to let the impasse stand.
I haven’t heard anything concrete from the CEO of our little business venture. I’ve submitted the budget numbers for perusal by the whole company, but there’s been no feedback. However, the CEO did manage to find a nice new computer for me. Well, newer, anyway. It’s about four times faster than my existing system, and has eight times the RAM. And it’s going to be running Linux. No more email virus concerns. Woohoo!
The last update is about my car. I did finally have the belts changed, and it charges the battery much better now. However, the mysterious battery drain that afflicts it if I leave it for more than 36 hours is still there. I forgot to remove the battery cable before I left it Saturday night (actually very early Sunday morning), and didn’t drive it again until this morning, and the battery would barely even crank the starter. I’m going to have to either drive it every day or else remember to remove that cable.
I am also concerned that I may need to change either the bearing, the brake shoes, or the brake drum on my passenger side rear wheel. I really don’t want to lose a bearing between here and Quinn’s place, so between now and the end of May I need to get the problem diagnosed and fixed.
Mood: cautiously optimistic
Music: Basia - Third Time Lucky
February 4, 2004
For some people, sex is easy to find. For them, it’s not all that difficult to meet people, find them interesting and attractive, and wind up in bed with them within a few weeks.
This is not the case with me.
I have led an astonishingly asexual life. Not only can I count the number of partners I’ve had on one hand—I can count the number of times I have actually had sex with another person on that one hand, while still holding up the fingers representing the number of partners. I didn’t even lose my virginity until I was 30. By Clintonian definitions, I still haven’t lost it.
Most of the time, I’m fine with that; sex is usually just not a really big priority in my life. But sometimes, I’m ready to scream in frustration. Right now is one of those times.
The closest thing I have to a potential partner at the moment is someone new I’ve been chatting with online. I’ll call her Quinn. Faraway Girl has cooled off toward me, and I toward her. But even Quinn is not exactly “the girl next door.” She lives about 300 miles away, less than half as far as Faraway Girl. And Quinn lives in a city that I’ve visited before on weekend trips.
Maybe I’ll actually be able to visit her. Today I spent money on preventative maintenance on my car. Finally not having to fix something that’s broken but actually able to take care of something before it breaks. Now all I have to do is get the oil changed, and then I think I would trust it to drive to Quinn’s city.
But that’s going to have to wait at least until President’s Day weekend. Yes, I have been on the same trip for only a regular weekend twice before, and both times I came back exhausted. I think that one extra day will make all the difference.
Do I think we’ll just fall into bed and have all kind of sex when I get there? Not quite. I’d like to think I have a more realistic point of view than that. No, the only expectation I have is that I can find out more about Quinn and she can find out more about me. I also have hopes that she has a spare bedroom or at least a pull-out sofa that she can put me up in, just so that I can possibly save myself the cost of three nights’ hotel stay, because that can be expensive.
If it just so happened that sex did take place, I certainly wouldn’t object, mind you.
Mood: all charged up and no place to spark
Music: Lisa Stansfield - All Around the World
January 12, 2004
More than a month has gone by (more like six weeks) since I’ve updated this page. What can I say? The holidays were uneventful. My sister decided, for the first time in 10 years, not to have her Christmas Eve festivities. So I spent Christmas Eve at my aunt’s house, and went back there again for Christmas, too.
My sister is of a rather petulant nature. It doesn’t take much to upset her. I may have mentioned before that reports of her behavior to licensed mental health professionals have resulted in a provisional diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder.
Mom had said that she might spend the night with Sis, so that she could be there when the kids woke up, to see their faces. However, Sis’s house is not very well set up for temporary guests, and about a week beforehand, Mom decided that she would spend the night at my aunt’s house. When word of this got around to my sister, the invitation to her traditional Christmas Eve party, buffet, and exchange of gifts was rescinded. Everyone’s invitation.
Her excuse was that she was only going to have the Christmas Eve thing this year for Mom. And since Mom had other plans (she didn’t have other plans for the evening, just for where she was going to spend the night), she wasn’t going to have her party.
Oh well. It’s not the first time this has happened. Well, at least, not the first time I have had my invitation revoked. In 2001, a dear friend of mine came for a visit of about a month, on her way moving from a Great Lakes city to a West Coast city. She’s trans too, and my family knew about her. My sister asked that I not bring her to the Christmas Eve festivities. Now, I didn’t want to leave my friend alone on the holiday, not after she had traveled some 700 miles to see me. So I said I wouldn’t come if my friend couldn’t come. And I didn’t.
As a result of the discussion I had with my sister over our plans for this year, I did not exchange gifts with my sister’s family directly, choosing to relay them through Mom.
Still—the holidays were uneventful. None of these things erupted in a fight or even much of an argument. We all just went our separate ways.
New Year’s Eve went the same. There was no family drama, but I didn’t have any arrangements to go anywhere, and didn’t really feel like getting out and being around a bunch of drunk people. I stayed home, and spent the time online. Uneventful.
And then came the fun. I get paid, via direct deposit, on the 15th and the end of every month. A couple of days after New Year’s, I happened to check my bank account, and it did not reflect the balance I thought it should reflect, given the deposit that was to have occurred on the 31st.
As it turns out, Mom’s financial troubles as a result of the divorce she’s going through have begun to affect me, since I have a joint account with her (it’s joint with her for various reasons, but she does not make use of her access to it). She got garnished. Her main checking account is completely paid by Social Security, and as such is exempt from garnishment. So guess who got $669 removed from her account, the day it got deposited.
The company doing the garnishment had the nerve to levy this after having returned an uncashed check she had written them as an effort to pay what she owed in installments.
So I was completely broke, and would be until the 15th. Fortunately, an online friend helpd me greatly by sending me a few dollars via Western Union so that I could go buy some groceries. Yay Cinnamon! Thanks.
Now I’m in frantic mode. Remember those various reasons I mentioned above? Well, one of them is so that someone I trust would have access to my funds in the event of some emergency. But the main reason is that I had some trouble with a bank several years ago as a result of some financial difficulties of my own. These troubles have kept me from opening a bank account as the primary account holder.
I am going to have to start a separate bank account, apart from any connection with my mother. I am also going to have to take care of the outstanding debt to the other bank in order to do this. I also have no cash to try to get a jump on this. And I can’t let the direct deposit go through on the 15th, because the garnishment isn’t finished, and I’ll lose even more money if I let it go in that account.
I have to get a check cut in actual paper, and the finance department isn’t happy about that, because they far prefer not to have to cut paper checks. Then I have to take that check over to the bank that I owe money to and attempt to clear the debt so that I can start an account without having someone else be the primary account holder.
Then I have to try to pay my household bills with whatever money I have left over. But it’s not going to be enough, and some of them are going to have to wait until I get paid at the end of the month. But then I’ll be getting a bonus for years of service included in that pay. That should help me get caught up.
I’m even going to have to play catch-up with my tax refund check this year. The tax refund this year is probably going to have to go toward paying off my current bank account, because some checks went through on the account before I knew that there was a problem. So now I can’t even close the existing account until I get out of overdraft.
The roommate didn’t pan out; I managed to get my condo cleaned to the point that I was willing to show it to people, but the prospective roommate got a job in another state. Oh well, at least I got a clean house out of it.
The preparations for the start-up company are slow going. Ducks apparently don’t just line up by themselves, one has to go to some effort to get one’s ducks in a row. But we are starting to have some numbers to show to investors, so we’ll see how that goes.
Mood: stressed
Music: Soulspace Music - Fire Dance
November 26, 2003
I didn’t want to bore anyone with my car problems, but suffice it to say that it didn’t seem to like cold and wet weather, and it has now had the alternator and battery replaced, again, under warranty for each.
I might be getting a roommate, and if so, that will help out with some of the bills. Also, there is a possibility that I might be able to get in on the ground floor on a software company. The guy getting things all together has shown that we actually have a business plan and a specific product to offer, not like the people who were riding the dot-com bubble.
The software company job would pay $30,000 a year if it comes through, and it won’t make me have to quit my current job, either. So that would mean that I might actually have some discretionary income for a change. That would be nice.
However, in my life, windfalls of any sort, including getting an interesting, decent-paying job (my current job is interesting but not decent-paying), are few and far between. I have every confidence in my budding entrepreneur friend, but I have a naturally pessimistic outlook when it comes to my own fortunes.
Today would have been my grandmother’s 89th birthday. At last year’s Thanksgiving dinner, she was able to hold her great-great-grandchild in her arms even if she was barely aware of what was going on around her. Five generations of women were together then. But she passed away back in late January, of complications from Alzheimer’s disease, brought on by weakened kidneys.
I think that’s part of why some people get depressed on the holidays; they think of all the people that can’t be with them, and all the people they left behind along the way. You can only live so long before you start to realize how lucky you are to just be alive, because you’ve lost so many friends and family members, either by death or by simply moving away so far that they’re out of touch… out of reach.
Wherever we go, God, we’re trying so hard,
to make every place feel like home left behind.
But despite of all endeavors,
nothing’s changed; as ever,
we’re homeless in our hearts.—Basia Trzetrzelewska and Danny White, “Yearning”
It’s a joyous song, she goes on to sing that she’s found her home in her love, but there’s a hint of melancholy there. That song happened to be playing while I was writing this, and now it’s Enya’s “On My Way Home,” which is a very similar sort of song about reminiscences. Ah, the wonders of shuffle mode.
Mood: reminiscent
Music: Off and Gone - Blueplant
November 12, 2003
Oops. Forgot all about updating this page.
I’ve been a little bit busy. There is the novel I’ve been writing for NaNoWriMo, and the volunteer stuff, and over the last three days, the entitled adventures in HD.
Mom’s old Hitachi TV had been showing symptoms of impending failure; the top of the screen was beginning to “fold over” instead of going all the way to the top of the tube. And Saturday or Sunday, it finally gave up the ghost. Now, Mom tries to keep a low balance on her credit cards so that she can afford to pay more than the minimum payment, and the only card she had that didn’t have an outstanding balance was her Sears card. So off we went to Sears to get her a new TV.
As it happens, HDTV monitors and sets are getting less and less expensive all the time. We actually found two models on display that were less than a grand. Both were Samsung direct-view CRT models, one 27" model that was $799, and a 30" model that was $999.
Mom wanted to keep a fairly big screen. The old Hitachi was a 27" model, and in terms of screen area, that translates out to about a 30" screen in the widescreen format of HDTV. Therefore, we got the $999 model.
Annoyingly, there are very few HDTVs out there with built-in HDTV tuners. Just to make sure we could receive HDTV, we had to get an HDTV tuner too, and that ran $399.
But the set is nice, and the tuner goes well with it. The tuner only receives digital signals, though. And the local cable company, Comcast, does not pass through the original digital signal. It does carry the HD channels of the big three networks’ local affiliates, but to decode them, we had to get a different cable box.
As it turns out, with the HD cable box in the loop, the tuner isn’t really necessary. The cable box has the same component outputs that the tuner does. The only reason to use the tuner now is to receive the digital versions of the over-the-air signals from the other local channels (PBS, FOX, UPN, and WB) that Comcast doesn’t carry in HD. But Mom doesn’t want rabbit ears. The tuner is currently a four-hundred-dollar useless lump of circuitry and metal and plastic, sitting unused atop the cable box.
I want to take the tuner home with me. If Mom doesn’t care to watch the digital offerings of PBS et al., I can certainly make use of it. I have a ViewSonic E655 monitor that I can watch it on (in 720p mode, anyway), and a home theater sound system that I can hook up to the digital sound output.
I don’t know what she’s going to do with it; she may let me take it home after all (she’s bought me a television and a VCR in the past). She may return it. She just really doesn’t want to have a pair of rabbit ears on top of the TV.
Mood: is ‘geeky’ a mood?
Music: Art of Noise featuring Max Headroom - Paranoimia
October 27, 2003
Well, my birthday has come and gone now. I got no presents, but then I’m not all about the loot. I was going to go out to eat, Mom’s treat, but she wasn’t feeling very good. I worry about her; I think she might be in the throes of a major depression, but there’s not much I can do for her without her cooperation. Anyway, instead of going out, I just went over there and she ordered pizza delivery.
I signed up at a car forum, 3GEEZ, and started telling my tales of woe to the people who could best understand: other owners of 86-89 Honda Accords. Because of the money I spent on my registration coming due and my little tire snag, I am once again on a temporary ramen diet. Yep, I sure could use that $120 back. Oh well. Friday is pay day, not that far away. Then I get to get the other front tire replaced (it’s worn down almost as badly as the one that went flat was). Then in December I will be able to afford to have the front suspension aligned.
I’ve also been thinking about whether or not I want to participate in National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNoWriMo. It would be quite an interesting way to force myself to write more often, a habit I could certainly stand to get into. The whirlwind of writing 50,000 words in one month is a daunting task. If I can manage that, then Running Blind should be a snap to finish.
In fact, I just re-read my story, and now I want to know what happens next. But NaNoWriMo doesn’t want people to start from a work in progress, so I won’t be tackling the existing story if I choose to participate in it.
Mood: ambitious
Music: Tone Loc - Wild Thing
October 17, 2003
I haven’t just been ignoring this journal. Wait. That makes it sound like I’ve been doing other things. I have, but not enough to justify the lack of attention to keeping updated. This journal isn’t the only thing I’ve been ignoring. That’s what I meant.
No, I’ve been ignoring other things too. I’m an equal-opportunity procrastinator.
As you can see, though, I’ve gotten off my duff <simpsons character="homer"> Mmmm, Duff...</simpsons> and added some new comments I’ve gotten recently. As always, tell me you don’t want something posted and I’ll yank it.
I’ve still been ignoring my potentially Hugo-Award-winning science fiction novel, though. I got off to a great start, then it just fizzled out on me. I think I got bogged down in the details. See, I wanted to tackle some clichés while I was at it, and lost track of how to keep my story moving.
Do you want to see what I’ve got so far? It’s not much, but it gets the main part of the story started. I think I really need to sit down and draw up a rough outline of where I want the story to go. That should help me get past this little bump.
I’d love to be able to blame this lack of progress on my director’s duties, but alas, I’ve been putting off the novel for several months prior to being involved in that stuff. Nope, it’s just a case of writer’s block combined with persistent procrastination.
Mood: I’ll tell you later
Music: Genesis - Mama
October 14, 2003
Well, as it turns out, the membership director duties don’t take up a lot of my free time in terms of actually having to do stuff, but they do take up a fair portion of my unused brain power. In other words, I think about my duties often. That makes it difficult to concentrate on keeping up this journal.
But here I am, in less than a fortnight. It’s not exactly my shortest interval between entries, but it’s not my longest one either.
Shall I tell you my latest car woes? All righty then. I had a flat tire. At the recommendation of the person who offered to let me use his driveway so that I wouldn’t have to leave it on the street, I went to a junkyard to find a replacement tire and replacement space-saver spare (my spare didn’t fit my front wheels; it wouldn’t clear the brake caliper). They didn’t have any 14-inch rims for my year and model of car, but they did have some from a later year, so I got those. As it turns out, even though they’re for the same make and model of car, the bolt patterns are different on the later generations.
I finally took the original rim to a tire shop (what I had planned to do in the first place), and had the tire replaced. But now I have two albatrosses that I can’t do anything with, because they don’t fit, and I can’t take them back to the junkyard. All sales are final. Anybody want to come and pick up a 14-inch rim and space-saver spare for a 90-93 Honda Accord?
The whole tire fiasco has also brought to my attention the next thing I’m going to have to fix: the suspension. You see, the front tires are wearing much more on the inside edge that on the outside edge. That means that the bottoms of the tires are farther apart than the tops and so the tires are basically riding on the inside edges, which is fixed by an alignment adjustment called “camber,” and I’m going to have to get that taken care of. It may involve getting new struts, too.
In other news, I got a little nuts with that mailing list I mentioned before. I pretty much went off the deep end of libertarianism. I’m not going to drag that into this journal, though. The only reason I bring it up is that it’s a little stressful to deal with. I’ve decided to just not respond anymore. Maybe that will help me calm down a little bit.
Let’s see… I’ve covered the support group, the car, and the mailing list. I think that’s all I have to say right now.
Mood: occupied
Music: Jondi & Spesh - Miles of Boom
October 2, 2003
It’s October. The month of Halloween. The month of my birthday. I’ll be (mumble mumble) years old this year. I still don’t feel like I’m anywhere near that old. I feel as if I am fresh from university (which I never finished, but still), not as if I’m part of the “over thirty” crowd.
The membership director duties of my support group have fallen to me. It’s not easy taking over a job from someone who has been ill, because things tend to be in a bit of disarray.
I keep learning things about Faraway Girl, and the things I learn continue to interest me. It’s frustrating. At the very least, I’d like to hang out with her, even though she’s a little bit wilder than I am. Without winning the lottery or some other equally unlikely windfall, I’m not going to be able to travel out to where she lives.
Another car tidbit: I got the tags renewed yesterday. I had to; they expired at the end of September. It’s probably going to need to have its exhaust gasket replaced, because little wisps of smoke come up under the hood, and when I checked on it I could see a tiny little opening around one of the manifold pipes.
My email account here expired too, so I renewed that as well. It took some wrangling, because there were some problems with my other (Xooville) email account never receiving the notification, but it eventually got done. Thanks CrossWinds, both for the email service and for this web space.
Mood: busy
Music: Frankie Goes to Hollywood - The World Is My Oyster
September 25, 2003
In case you didn’t know, a “meme” is any idea that seems to have a life of its own. It spreads quickly, and then either takes hold in the culture or dies away.
Lately, there have been two memes running rampant in the web journal world. One is to put up little quizzes, and either answer them yourself, ask your audience to answer them, or both. I don’t have a comment-posting facility other than the email link in the column to the right, so while I could post a quiz and ask for reader response, it wouldn’t show immediate results.
The other is to have quizzes much like the ones in women’s fashion magazines, that generate a result. The difference between the magazines and the meme is that the meme quizzes tend to generate results like “What Pokémon are YOU?” instead of “Is Your Man a Stud or a Dud?”
I won’t be putting up any quizzes of the second type. They annoy me.
However, I may consider putting up one of the first type. Whether I do or not will depend on lots of things, like whether I want to reveal my own answers or go to the work of posting reader answers.
Mood: inquisitive
Music: Robin Hackett - Runnin’
September 24, 2003
As a small number of my readers may be aware, I’m a fan of an old computer system that doesn’t get much press anymore, but used to be the #3 personal computer system back in the late 80s: Amiga.
The company has fallen on hard times now, and there are other companies not only circling like buzzards, but actually swooping down from time to time and making little snips at them.
Business is business, right? If you’re in trouble, other people are going to take advantage of that, right? So I shouldn’t be too surprised at this behavior. And really, I’m not. I’m just disappointed in the form it has taken.
The buzzards could have done just fine by simply pointing out that they have product shipping, and that the product is largely compatible with existing Amiga software, while Amiga’s own efforts ignore the original Amiga entirely, and their licensees are taking a very long time to come out with the next generation of Amiga hardware and software.
Don’t you think that’s plenty damning in and of itself? “We have a product, and they don’t,” seems to me to be very effective competitive behavior. But the buzzards haven’t stopped there. They tried to register the Amiga trademarks for themselves, just so they could strip Amiga Inc of one of their major assets. They are suing Amiga so as to deplete their already minimal cash reserve. They have encouraged former Amiga employees to sue Amiga for back wages, despite the fact that those employees were told, more than once, that they should find other paying jobs and that staying on with Amiga would be strictly on a volunteer basis.
The buzzards simply couldn’t leave well enough alone. They even orchestrated astroturf campaigns (fake “grassroots” campaigns) to misrepresent virtually every piece of information that has been released by Amiga.
Well, right now, I’m making a stand. I am not going to support any company that takes such underhanded actions. I will not buy any product by any of the buzzard companies—not now, not ever. I’m going to make every effort to purchase products from Amiga and from official Amiga licensees.
Mood: indignant
Music: Broken Spoke - Travel On
September 19, 2003
Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks these reporters out on the shores when a hurricane hits are stupid. Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post thinks so too. He also adds that while a Category 2 hurricane is quite powerful, the US has been hit by 65 more powerful (Category 3, 4, and 5) storms in the past century. Even more reason, I think, for staying indoors—and preferably, inland—when a hurricane makes landfall.
To change the subject, I still haven’t sent the reply back to E. I’me sure I’ll eventually get around to it; the weekend seems like a good opportunity to work on it.
I also need to take care of some other things this weekend, like getting the house cleaned up. I have been living in squalor. We’re talking health code violations here. Trash spilling out of the garbage can and several already-filled trash bags sitting around the floor of the kitchen as well. I’m ever so anxious to get to it.
But it needs to be done. After I get back from JP’s tomorrow, I should start tackling it. Did I mention that JP’s mom is going to come by some time in October or November to help me with this project? Well, she is. But while last time she surprised me and just showed up at my doorstep, this time there are two differences: She’s giving me notice, and the house actually looks worse than last time she came over.
I think I’d like to be able to see the floor in the kitchen again (okay, that’s a bit of hyperbole, because I can see the floor in the areas where the trash bags aren’t covering it). I think I’d like to have a nice clean bathroom again (I only keep the toilet and the bathtub even marginally clean; the sink has a gritty off-white film in it). I think I’d like to find some of the things in my house that I thought I had lost.
But I’m not particularly excited about the prospect of actually cleaning my house.
THIS time, once it’s cleaned up, I am going to try to keep it clean on an as-I-go basis. Throw out the trash when it gets full, not “later.” Wipe the tub when I finish a shower. Fold up clothes when I’m done with the laundry, and do laundry more often.
I’ve said that before, too. Hopefully I can actually start doing it this time.
Mood: blasée
Music: Yes - Starship Trooper
September 18, 2003
Hurricane Isabel is pounding the coast of North Carolina as we speak, and scores of television reporters are out there in the storm so they can give us the details LIVE! AS IT HAPPENS!!! The reporters who accept these assignments and the assignment editors who give these assignments are all foolish, if not downright irresponsible. I think of how much trouble do the authorities go through to convince people to evacuate their homes when a hurricane is approaching. Then I see these idiots out in the rain and wind, going against all the cautionary advice and information for the sake of a few ratings points (it’s September, it’s a ratings sweeps month).
How are people in a hurricane landfall zone supposed to take evacuation warnings seriously when they see reports from Cynthia Synthetic and Chet Chiseled originating right from the place that was just evacuated?
I was perfectly happy to see the NBC reporter in the NASCAR wind tunnel struggling to fight winds up to 100mph, straining to stay upright despite being held up with strong cords, and periodically making odd grunts because he couldn’t speak for having his lips pulled away from his teeth by the wind. He was in a controlled environment, he was under supervision, he wasn’t getting wet, he wasn’t subjecting the technical crew to suffer under the same conditions and putting more people at risk. But it got the message across that Category 2 hurricanes are powerful.
In fact, I just saw some footage of a reporter actually trying to interview a weather expert out in the area of Kill Devil Hills. They were literally blown away by the storm gusts. Fortunately for them, they were okay, but they could just as easily have been swept away into the storm waters or slammed into a building. Foolhardy.
No, just plain stupid.
Mood: irritated
Music: Clamnation - Cupid’s Bow
September 16, 2003
I think I should go ahead and acknowledge some recent events. The second anniversary of the WTC attacks recently occurred. Johnny Cash died. John Ritter died. I don’t have any personal connection to any of these things.
I don’t have any personal connection to Mr. Cash. If anything, I am passively antagonistic to the passing of the Man in Black, because I live in a region of the US where his music was particularly popular, and therefore media coverage of his death and funeral services and memorial events has been incessant.
I think I will probably miss John Ritter the most. Again, I have no personal connection to the man, but at least in this case, I was a fan of his work. I enjoyed his movies as well as his television shows. I even appreciated his voice work in the PBS children’s series Clifford.
I simply cannot wrap my mind around the enormity of the WTC disaster, and two years down the line, that infathomability of scale turned to numbness, and finally to a palpable apathy. Please don’t misconstrue that to mean “antipathy;” I have deep respect for those who grieve for the loved ones they lost that day. I just cannot manage to feel the empathy or the hurt or the shock that I think I’m supposed to feel. Without a personal connection, I can’t make the emotional connection. The closest I can come to that is to remember the story of an online acquaintance who worked in the neighboring World Financial Center. She wrote a harrowing tale of the events of that day, from their first realization that something had happened, to the evacuation of the building, to the long trek uptown.
“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind,” said John Donne. But the deaths I grieve are only of those who had a significant presence in my life. All I can do is give my respects to those left behind. Their lives are appreciated; their deaths are felt by others even if not by me; that will have to do. And so it goes.
Appreciation is important, even in the more general parts of life. It’s a good thing, I think, to have an appreciation for both the finer life and the simple life. Ballet and tractor pulls. Beluga caviar and hot dogs. Diane von Furstenberg and cut-off overalls. Rolls-Royce Corniche and Geo Metro. A person who is conversant with all walks of life will never find themselves in a situation they cannot handle.
It is not false humility that Sam Walton actually shopped in his stores despite being worth billions; it was recognition of value, and appreciation for the simple life. It’s not “putting on airs” to seek to broaden one’s knowledge and improve one’s living conditions; it is aspiration and ambition. Oh, sure, in either case it can be a problem if taken to the extreme. It is a false economy to scrimp on things that have a legitimate cost to be done well, and it is unwise to overextend one’s credit limit in order to live above one’s means. Moderation in all things.
In other news, I should mention that I’ve been investigating farther into the land of DOS. I had forgotten that Arachne has a mail client built in, too. And I’ve discovered that the FreeDOS distribution comes bundled with Arachne, as well as several other programs for making useful systems based on old hardware and DOS. It’s worth checking out to see all the programs in the distribution.
I also learned that Breadbox does not sell the Ensemble package directly to individuals. However, they do sell a package called NewDeal Office 2000, that has almost all the features of Ensemble, and even comes on 12 floppy disks for those who do not even have CD-ROM drives. My review of Ensemble is actually based on experience with NDO2k, and while I do not own any system that has a DOS-accessible modem, the productivity features of the system are excellent, even on my old 486/25 laptop. So don’t throw away that old system just yet.
Actually, I plan to build a DOS-based system for my sister’s kids to use, as they are fast approaching the age at which they will be writing term papers for school. A computer will certainly help with that.
I think that’s enough for now.
Mood: investigative
Music: Mony Smith - Willows & Rain
September 15, 2003
I think if I let myself keep it short instead of feeling as though I need to write long entries, I may just be able to update more often.
As predicted, my friend with the journal thought I was making too much out of my predilection for podiatric mastication. But then, they also didn’t think much of the more light-hearted, supportive, and considerably less barbed comment that I replaced my original one with, either. Must have just been a sore spot about that particular subject.
Maybe I’m not the only one who beats themselves up too much over social faux pas.
Anyway, on to the topic at hand. I’ve gotten a couple of complaints about the popups that accompany this page. I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do about them; it’s the price we all have to pay for me to have free web space. I’d actually like it if as many people as possible were to click through on those popups, so that my hosting service stays in business.
However, there are several things that you, as the reader, can do to avoid them. You can get Opera, for one. Opera comes with Sun’s own Java system, or without it, and even with Java, it’s a smaller download than an IE upgrade, at roughly 12.5MB. Without Java, it’s roughly 3.2MB, which can be downloaded in a reasonable amount of time even over a dialup connection. It comes with its own mail client and news reader, too, with a very flexible folder configuration and good spam protection. The best part is that it does not suffer from the security holes in IE and Outlook Express.
Opera can be configured to allow popups, never allow them, or allow them only when you request them. It supports ActiveX plugins such as Flash and QuickTime. It seems to have some problems with Adobe Acrobat Reader 6 when running under Windows 2000, but if you simply tell Opera to open the file in Acrobat Reader instead of in the browser window, it works fine. There are some small incompatibilities with IE that can get in the way at some sites, but they are few, and you can always fire up IE to go to those sites.
There are other browsers out there that simply don’t support popups at all, nor most other modern browser features such as CSS or JavaScript. One of them is called Off by One, and it supports the full HTML 3.2 standard. It doesn’t support the entity codes I use to make nice looking apostrophes, though, so you may not find it useful for reading this particular page.
And there’s always Lynx, the text-only browser. Since my page is (so far) only text, you certainly wouldn’t miss out on anything. It supports the entity codes, but you may have to tweak it a bit to get it to display properly on your system. It tends to fail on startup if you don’t get the setup right. Once you get it going, Lynx is great for surfing when you are on dialup. With some work, the built-in mail client and news reader can work quite well. Lynx runs everywhere, or at least nearly anywhere that there is a way to connect to the internet. It can even be run the way it would have been run if it had existed in the days of old mainframes, via ancient TTY interfaces.
Let’s not forget the browsers for DOS. There are at least three of them. Lynx is one of them, and it’s nearly indistinguishable from the Win32 version, but the DOS version cannot use the Win32 networking layer; it requires a DOS networking driver with a standard interface to be installed. Another one is Arachne, a graphic browser that even has some limited support for CSS.
The third comes as part of a full office productivity and internet suite, but only supports HTML 3.1, so suffers from many of the same limitations as Off by One. However, if you want a way to make use of that old 386 or 486 you have laying around, and you don’t want to hassle with getting Linux running on such old and limited hardware, then Breadbox Ensemble might just be for you. It includes mail, news, web, and IRC internet programs. The office productivity package includes a word processor, spreadsheet, database manager, and numerous utilities, and can export to Microsoft Office file formats.
Last, but not least, there are third party add-ons for IE that will suppress popups. Some of these programs are solutions worse than the problem, though, because they install spyware on your machine during setup.
Mood: informative
Music: Dimension 23 - Intelligent Brain
September 12, 2003
Okay, so I’m doing better now; this is only 2 days since my last entry. Please don’t get used to it, though.
E wrote me a nice long letter back on the 3rd, and I have half a reply still sitting in my Drafts folder, waiting for me to finish the reply. There are some parts of the letter that I don’t know how to answer, and it seems inappropriate to leave them unanswered.
I am out of my element. She’s going through things that I have very little basis for understanding, except for from the outside. Oh, and since it’s personal stuff, I’m a bit handicapped even talking about them here, lest someone come across this page in her history file. I want to offer my sympathy, but I don’t want it to sound hollow because of my lack of similar experiences in my life.
I also don’t want to say anything inappropriate. You see, at one point, back in high school, I had a bit of a crush on E. And, while that crush is quite dormant and shows no signs of activity, it’s still unresolved. So there’s the possibility, however slight, that I might say something in my reply that would be… presumptuous.
I suppose I’ll work on it some more and try to have the reply done by the weekend.
Mood: dazed and befuddled
Music: Basia - An Olive Tree
September 10, 2003
Do you remember the days of September... something something... and follow, follow, follow.
Well, it’s only been two weeks since my last update, so that’s not too bad this time. I’ve been trying to figure out how to break the news of yet another car problem without seeming repetitive. This time it was the battery; it had a shorted cell. It only cost me $102 to fix it this time, though.
Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, says that we’re all stupid, just in different ways and at different times. Even the smartest of us—nuclear physicists, brain surgeons, rocket scientists, Nobel Prize winners, etc., have moments that can only be labeled, “What was I thinking?”
And for some of us, we’re stupid in the same ways, over and over, and only later (if ever) are we able to parse what we did wrong. It’s a sort of mental block about one subject matter or area of life. As for me, I have trouble saying the wrong thing. I made a comment on someone else’s journal, and it was intended as gentle teasing—they’d just had one of those brief moments of stupidity, themselves, and I was simply ribbing them about it. Unfortunately, it seems that the person considered it to be a bit bitchy, and actually removed the comment from being displayed on the comments page. It’s a good thing I typed it, because I wouldn’t have been able to say it out loud for my foot being wedged in my mouth.
Some people might think I’m making too big a deal about this (the friend with the journal is probably among them). But for me, it represents a pattern of behavior that I don’t seem to be able to break. It’s annoying for me to realize I’ve done something like this yet again.
I’m going to try not to dwell on it. I’m going to try to look at it the same way I looked at the time I was trying to configure my newsreader for a new account and it wouldn’t work. I kept checking all the settings and I just couldn’t figure out what was wrong, until I finally realized that I had accidentally mistyped one of the dots in the newsserver domain name as a comma. Yeah, that was a goof, but I got over it quickly enough, and can laugh about it now.
So I’m going to try to get over this latest gaffe as well. Depending on how my friend feels about it, maybe someday I’ll even be able to laugh about it, too.
In other news, I’ve got yet another project humming along in the back of my mind. One of my interests is information. How it travels, how it’s organized, how it’s stored, and so on. To that end, my latest project is a newswire. I have been reading over the way the AP newswire works, as explained in the 2003 version of the AP Style Guide. I’ve been trying to break it down into more general principles, so that I can design my own system instead of duplicating the AP wire feed.
Once I get it broken down and have my own routing system set up, then I will work on a delivery method. I could just simply put the wire up as a web page and update the source regularly. It could be in HTML form, or plain text, or maybe XML. If I used XML, a custom client would be necessary. I could also go for a more “live” delivery method, such as a modified IRC system, instead of the more static web page method.
Then again, maybe nothing more will come of this than has come of my other projects lately.
Mood: occupied
Music: Yes - Long Distance Runaround
August 26, 2003
It has come to my attention that the word “blog” is most often used to indicate a web page that the author uses as a personal soapbox, not a journal such as this one.
But I like my page title, even if I don’t like the word itself. So, perhaps it behooves me to post an opinion or two. As soon as I have one, I’ll let you know. But seriously…
I could be very opinionated if I let myself be. But to be honest, I get more than enough of that sort of behavior inflicted on me by others in a mailing list I subscribe to, so I’m not very inclined to spread that kind of conflict-inducing behavior around by posting more of it here.
Thus, this is a “kinder, gentler” personal web page. That’s not to say that I don’t ever have opinions—I do, and they are likely to be aired here on this page from time to time, but I will try to be restrained and discreet about expressing them.
So, not much has happened lately, except I got a little more food donated to me. I had to actually turn away part of what was offered; I do get paid on the 29th, and I have already been given enough food to last me through then. It’s really amazing to have friends that are willing to help out that way.
Oh, here’s an opinion: A friend of mine went walking on a local greenway recently. She was overdressed, and got strange looks. Why does that happen? If she’d been wearing an evening gown, I could perhaps understand the reaction, but she was just dressed nicely for a non-casual workday. I am not the type of person who gets very dressed up (because I have such trouble finding nice things to wear that I find actually comfortable, and that don’t take 20 minutes to put on), but I have great admiration for the people who do take the time and trouble to look nice. It just seems that sometimes, other people react as though they’ve been snubbed just because someone got a little dressed up. It’s false egalitarianism, if you ask me.
There, how’s that for a laid-back opinion piece?
Mood: bemused
Music: the steady drone of a box fan
August 22, 2003
Well, the last time I posted anything to this page was back on August 3rd. It might just be time for me to post a bit of an update.
First of all, you’ll notice that there are considerably fewer entries on the page. That’s because I have archived them, here. I did mention in a previous entry that I would do that once the page size broke 64kB. Well, it did, so I did.
Secondly, dealing with my car has been no picnic this month. To start the month off with a bang, it decided to lose its alternator, which I had to have repaired, to the tune of $387. Not one to shy away from trouble when it’s on a roll, it decided last Friday (the 15th) to pop the driver side window out of its track. It took a considerable amount of wrangling to get it raised back up. It’s now almost all the way up, but has a slight opening at the very front of the door frame.
I’ve actually come up with a punch list of all the things that are now wrong with my car. And I do mean everything. Anything that’s wrong on my car that can’t be fixed by a simple thorough cleaning is on that list.
Some of those things are mere trifles; others are serious problems, like the hard starting thing. Right now, my priorities are to get the window and A/C fixed. The hard starting thing is about 1mm lower than that on the priority list, but due to its ephemeral nature, it will probably have to wait until I can afford to let it stay at the mechanic all day. I can probably fix the window myself, taking it to JP’s house, where they have a nice big garage that I can do that sort of work in (taking the door panel off). And the A/C recharging can now be done at my local Jiffy Lube.
But, thanks to the car, I am quite literally out of money as of yesterday, until the next paycheck comes in on the 29th. Not even ramen. I’m reduced to begging from friends and family. Fortunately, they have been able to provide what they could, so I won’t be starving.
So, anyway. The publications director of my support group wound up resigning due to family situations, so now the other person on the publications committee has been appointed as the new publications director, and I am now the entirety of the non-director portion of the publications committee. That means I may not be able to give this page a lot of attention, but hopefully, I will be able to do a little bit better than I have been doing the last few weeks.
Oh, and I have a Link of the Unspecified Time Period: Students for an Orwellian Society. Yeah, it’s a bit strident, but it’s actually funny in a scary sort of way.
Mood: busy
Music: airforce - I Could Be Anyone
Email me. Talk about my page. Just send a friendly note. Harangue me for updates. Whatever. If I get around to it, I might post your comment up here. No promises, though…
(Ed: Editor’s replies will look like this, and letters chosen to post will have their more personal contents removed.)
This part of the page has been archived along with the main entries, but please feel free to send more comments.
From: Barbecue
Date: October 16, 2003
Bonjour, Kelli.
You wrote in your blog:
> In other news, I got a little nuts with that mailing list I mentioned before.
Join the club sweetie. Some of the Neanderthals on [that list] tends to get us intelligent types a little stressed.
> I�ve decided to just not respond anymore. Maybe that will help me calm down a little bit.
My last post to [the list] was sometime in July or August. I suffered withdrawal symptoms for a while, but I’ve managed to survive. I may go back, someday. You are a survivor too. Don’t let the cons get you down.
(Ed.: Well, in this case, my libertarianism was actually coming into conflict with the leftist part of the list, not the rightists. I was a little bit off the deep end, calling for a complete end to the welfare state, and the more people kept arguing with me about how there are all these people that need help, the more I kept arguing that it isn’t properly the government’s job to help them. I am afraid that the more they pushed me, the more starkly Randian I got with them. So, in this case, I had to not let the libs get me down.)
From: Faraway Girl
Date: October 16, 2003
Gah, you’re such a girl. Of course the bolt patterns are going to be different. That’s like saying “I want to make food, and I need an oven, but I don’t have an oven…I’ll use a blender instead.”
Silly girl.
So is it your whole wheel that’s gone kaput or just the tire? If it’s the tire you should be able to get a decent one for under 50 bucks, or a retread for half that. I finally got Buckaroo back, although she needs a new clutch (sigh) but at least that’s only a 500 buck problem instead of a 3000 dollar one. Ugh. What are you being for halloween? I’m going to be little red riding hood and have a great f—k-all gigantic double layer petticoat that’s just the bee’s knees. I wish I could wear it everyday because it makes my waist look tiny (in proportion).
I’m glad you updated. I’ve been sluggish updating mine, although I’ve had so much going on, it’s not anything that I could just blurt out but instead it needs to be written, edited and then published. I’m going to my first all-girl dance tomorrow (in said costume, except the white socks will be replaced with seamed fishnets and heels. Oh hell! I forgot to order the shoes. I’m going to get my first pair of red shoes today and I don’t care that both Dylan Thomas and my grandmother said only whores and children wear red shoes, I need them.
(Ed.: Well, the entry does say that I managed to take the original rim that was on my car to a tire shop, and had a new tire mounted and balanced. That may be a little unclear from the text, but that’s what happened. It cost a little less than $60.
So, the rim was okay. I was back driving it within a day. But now I don’t have a spare that will even fit my back wheels. The old 13-inch spare would at least do that. I really didn’t expect the bolt patterns to be different; they are, after all, still Honda Accords, and Honda doesn’t tend to change things unnecessarily.
If I do anything for All Hallow’s Eve, it’ll be a surprise to me. But your costume sounds um, intriguing.)