It's amazing what can liberate you.
So this girl who I met online agreed to go out with me, right? On a date, that is. And gave me her number. So I called her tonight. And I spent literally[1] hours agonizing over what to say on the recording I would leave. Or what to say if she picked up the phone. After the first half hour, I recorded the Titanic of voice mail messages. Actually more like the Hindenburg, with the crashing and the burning, and the announcer yelling "oh, the humanity, the humanity". Fortunately it occurred to the usually slow-witted Bob, moments before he hung up the phone and left that message -- the one that would literally[2] have been the "message to end all messages" -- that some phone answering systems let you review/cancel/etc the message if you press # instead of hanging up. I pressed # ("bloody sod, as if the 7-second awkward pause weren't bad enough, now he's pressing keys to make me listen to annoying beeps?")... and a heavenly voice from the handset gave me my menu options. I was saved. Anyway, from that experience I decided I had no choice but to write out the entire message I would leave, and rehearse it.
Anyway, I went through the whole rigmarole, recorded a decent message (after recording a second, not-so-great message), and left it, telling her to call me if she felt like it but not to expect to meet me this weekend (more on the details of the actual plans later, maybe). And it was like freedom had just been handed to me on a platter. It was only Friday, and I had accomplished something, and was basically off the hook. It was well before midnight, and I had utterly and finally (in the "final" sense) completed my task.
Ooh, why did I suddenly remember that I still haven't done my taxes?
Anyway, yes, I really felt elated when I hung up the phone, not that I thought I had done an excellent job and was assured of getting laid soon, but just that the ordeal was over, and I wouldn't have to spend the whole weekend working on it, or something like that.
[1]I hate the overuse of that word, especially when it's used to mean the opposite of what it means, but sometimes it's really hard to find a substitue for it that effectively communicates what that word does, even though it's not being used "correctly".
[2]I believe that's the correct usage, there.
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I was going to say something brilliant and non-computer-related, but I got distracted by the fact that my self-compiled Mozilla no longer remembers new URLs I've typed in. So as usual I got super distracted by that, and now I no longer remember what I was going to say.
It's closer to 5 AM than to any other hour, so I think I'll go to bed.
Well, I finally got a hit on my personal ad. A COLLECT CALL! How cheap can people be? Besides, I didn't have any credits to spend of my own; there wasn't much I could do. Actually, I did have a nice plan: return the call with another collect call. Then, update my profile to debase those who are too cheap to buy credits to make their own calls, and add a "note to self: buy credits". But the weekend was approaching, and I was faced with quite a lonely one: Henry's away in Chicago, and Won is too busy to have English lessons. So I thought if I was lucky I could get a date this weekend, far from anyone's prying eyes; great opportunity! So -- I panicked, sort of. Not that it killed me to buy some credits.
Unfortunately, I was thinking too 1337ly, and shared my Speakeasy address instead of the usual one. That's right, I used the address for my Speakeasy account. The one where I can use my mail reader of choice. The one where I can have decent text-editing capabilites and manipulate the headers if I so choose. The one that is often full and bounces messages as a result. Yes, it got full today. I don't know for how long, but it's certainly possible that my suitor(?) emailed me during that time, and thinks I'm a looser[sic] for giving a bum email address. And she'd probably be right....
Geez, why is it impossible to print a PDF file? I've been through two installations of Acrobat Reader on Winblows; and Kghostview, gv, and xpdf on Linux; nothing works. I swear I'm about to just open up the stupid thing for viewing and copy it by hand.
Actually, I can't even print an MS Word document from my (work) PC. Think something is b0rken with the printer driver. Time to whine to Scott.
Boss man is stressing me out. Always stopping by my cube to ask how I'm doing on whatever. Asking for status reports at the end of the day. Always near my cube when I'm trying to read Slashdot. He always mentions he thinks he's gonna get fired if the project doesn't go well. I try not to blame him. If I felt I was working hard, I might tell him to back off. But I'm not, so I don't. Really gotta beat this ADD thing down.
Even though I bought my AirPort card a month ago, I haven't had a chance to use the damn thing. May end up being a wasted $90, all told. Anyway, I finally did get a chance to try it out at, yes, Starbucks. Of course I tried it with OS X, since I was fairly sure that way I wouldn't be given the finger for using something other than the 1.5 approved OSes.
So I forget exactly when, but as soon as I did something (probably either tell the computer to use AirPort or tell it to use DHCP), the Airport icon chirped (noiselessly) something about t-mobile, which sounded commercial enough that I was assured that either I had found Starbucks' HotSpot or it had found me.
When I tried to visit a random Web page, it transferred me to t-mobile's sign-up page. You can get a pay-as-you-go account, for 10¢ a minute. Once you've got your account (and you don't start paying until you sign in to actually use the network, which doesn't happen at sign-up time). Some of the agreement terms -- I tried to read about 50% of them -- are pretty horrific: can't use it on a different machine or something, you give them permission to fuck with your computer, etc. But anyway, I used it fine, and have a hunch it may work in Linux. I just didn't have a chance today, because I only had a few minutes, and I didn't want to risk getting charged twice or something weird like that. Also just wanted to maximize my use of the $6 minimum I was paying for.
So yay! Another piece of hardware on my computer works! Don't think I mentioned so far that my DVD drive works in both OSes. Might have something to do with why I didn't make any entries for a couple of weeks ;-)
Heard another indication that someone I'm hoping is available is not. I didn't take it seriously when I heard it, but I can't seem to let go of it in my mind. Can't concentrate on doing my usual stuff -- whatever that is.