Below are 20 journal entries, after skipping by the 20 most recent ones recorded in ks' Blurty:

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Thursday, February 26th, 2004
8:51 pm	It's been a week already? I've been in an increasingly better mood since my last post. I was unsure how last weekend would turn out, but it ended up going really well. I went to Indy with Ashley and Georganne for Kristi's Power Hour party and had a really good time. Chris Moran saved my life -- if he weren't there, I probably wouldn't have had near as much fun. We have similar senses of humor and sarcastic streaks, so we make good drinking buddies. Hardly anyone actually did Power Hour; Chris and I dosed ourselves with Jaeger bombs for an hour or so. Lisa's apartment was really small -- probably no larger than the Seifert lounge, or maybe one Schwietermann room and a little bit extra. There were probably 25 people there, half from SJC and half from IU or Indy or Detroit. Everyone kinda stuck to their own groups, which was disappointing -- I barely met anyone knew. And I can't say I was too impressed by the people I did meet, for the most part. I talked a little bit with one girl from IU whose name I think was Katie (I was pretty drunk by this point), but it was just a few moments of idle conversation while we were mixing/pouring drinks in the kitchen. A cop came sometime maybe around midnight, after we'd been drinking barely an hour and a half. We were making lots of noise. I guess Lisa had left notes with her neighbors to ask them to come let her know if we were too loud, but someone called the cops anyway. The cop told Lisa that it was fine that we were having a party and drinking, we just had to quiet down. She didn't come in or card anyone or anything, which was a damn good thing for almost everyone there. After she left people didn't quiet down much, so some SJC people got nervous and decided to head back to school. I hitched a ride in Liz Scholl's car, because I knew there would be drama later on and I wanted to sleep in my own bed. I had a really good time on the way back to school, pleasantly blitzed and chattering away to Liz the whole time to keep her awake. Georganne was passed out in the back seat, and she was very amusing to talk to. When we got back to school we put G to bed and then I started walking back to my room when I saw Dom and Schmitty, 2 of my freshman neighbors, outside the apartments. They had both been drinking and were actually being kinda retarded.... Dom was walking around with a beer bottle while security was standing one apartment away. I walked them back to Seifert to keep them from doing anything stupid and I ditched my booze in my room (I have a lot of leftovers), and then chilled outside while they smoked cigars. John and Caleb walked by and I tagged along with them to Schwietermann. I had another drink and eventually ended up in Abbey's room talking to her for quite a while. We went through the latest Victoria's Secret catalog together, critiquing the clothing and the models. That was fun. It was good to talk to her -- I haven't really done much of that for what seems like a very long time. This week has felt really long. Classes haven't been bad, but it just seems like I don't get to relax. This weekend will be a good time, though, starting in about 2 hours. Chris and I are hitting the bottle and a half of Jaeger we have left, and there are parties all weekend long that I'm invited to. Plus, Peewee's visiting, and Anne's visiting, and I think several other people are too. I can't wait. I crippled our network yesterday. I was trying to set up a DNS server to resolve names for the networks I run in the upstairs computer lab, and had a hard time getting it going. The official linux howto was written by a moron and is no help, and Dave wouldn't really help me set it up either. So I did my best to get it running, and it failed miserably. It would seem like it was working and just really slow, so I left it on to try to troubleshoot it, and it generated enough traffic that it bogged down our network as well as interfering with the main DNS server so nobody could resolve names. I think I pissed off a buncha people, but I got pretty pissed off too because I didn't think I should be taking blame for an accident brought on by the lack of anyone to help me. It's all cool now, but yesterday was pretty tense because of it. I designed a simple system today to use instead of DNS on the machines up here. I put all the hostnames in /etc/hosts of the machine that was going to be the DNS server, then created an NFS share there that all the other linux machines up here can access. Then I wrote a simple perl script that copies the server's /etc/hosts to the nfs share and writes the nfs hosts file to the local machine's /etc/hosts. It's simple, but pretty sweet how well it's worked so far. I have it set via cron to autoupdate once a day from the server.... so we can add new hostnames easily and have them propagated to the rest of my network. I dig it. : ) Rehearsal is going a lot better. I'm having a lot more fun since I bonded with Georganne this weekend and have been hanging out with Chris more. I'm also getting to know more people in the show, and I'm just a lot more comfortable than I was. I don't quite look forward to going every night yet, but I end up enjoying myself almost every night. And it keeps getting better. Now it's time to print a Core 6 paper due tomorrow.... then off to begin the festivities. : ) Current Mood: better Current Music: Tenacious D -- Fuck Her Gently (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 18th, 2004
12:45 am	another day I don't know where to start. It's been a long day. Classes were disappointing again today. We got tests back in both Bob and Dave's classes, and I was annoyed by both of them. My grades were respectable, but the stuff I was marked off for was largely stupid semantics that don't have anything to do with whether or not I know the material. I got a lot of Core reading done, and a nap after we got out of Bob's class early. I spilled a whole glass of milk at lunch on the table by Sarah Chalik and Holly. Smooth. So in high school I went through what everyone who knew me then now calls "Kenny's Asshole Phase". I got fed up with bullshit from several different people, frustrated by my insecurities about the future, and hurt by a couple people I was very close to. Though the circumstances now are pretty different, I feel like I may be entering a similar phase. I'm very easily annoyed by drama and bullshit, and so have consciously removed myself from situations where these are likely to appear. It's lonely and I'm not happy with it, but I guess I prefer isolating myself intentionally to going off on people that only slightly deserve it. I just hope I get over it soon. There have been over 185 emails on the techies email list in the past 2 days. There are some people on the list who I really don't think belong there -- almost all of that was drama, or bullshit, or both. Phil and I started having fun with it, making fun of the people sending emails, each other, random other people not involved, etc. It actually ended up really amusing, but it's not something I hope happens again. Play rehearsal was not pleasant this evening. I took a nap before it, and woke up just in time to make it there. I was groggy the whole time, and I got flustered because I didn't know which character I was playing, and I was just bored..... I didn't really have anyone to talk to. I feel like everyone there already knows each other and has their little groups set or whatever, and I'm not interested in working hard to get to know new people. There are a lot of people there who I don't know at all, and I want to get to know them but not spend all my energy just doing that. I almost feel unwelcome there. No, that's not quite right.... I don't feel unwelcome, just not welcome. That's how I feel in many many places at SJC now, and I can't quite pinpoint why. It's pretty upsetting, actually. I went running tonight, for the first time in almost 2 months. It was good. I needed it.... the first IM Dodgeball game was right before that and it was very poorly run. I think everyone there left frustrated, which isn't that unusual for IM events this year. I just haven't been to one yet this semester, so I forgot how bad it was. Eh. I talked to Peewee online tonight, which was cool. I told him I'm going to a party in Indy this weekend, and he bet me $5 that I would get some action. I don't know how likely that is, and I really am almost more interested in having $5 than in a random drunken hookup. We'll see what happens, I guess. I miss Peewee. I hope he comes up next week like he said he might. Current Mood: annoyed Current Music: Sebadoh -- Willing To Wait (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 16th, 2004
3:03 am	mind over matter I'm still not sleeping well. I think I could quite possibly be diagnosed with clinical insomnia at this point. I'm getting more done, though.... It's been probably a week since there's been a day when I *haven't* been in the computer center after midnight. Tony and I and Blake have really been working a lot up there, on various different projects. I'm learning a ton about asterisk, linux modules/drivers, and other stuff. Most of today Tony and I were working on writing a program that will allow users to modify asterisk config files from a webpage. We got all the parsing done for sip.conf, now we just need to web-ify it. We'll see how that goes. I woke up from very vivid dreams last night. They involved USAFA, or at least USAFA people.... I guess the setting was unfamiliar to me, but I could positively ID hundreds of people around me who were cadets. The night before I dreamed I was drafted into an army and was being transported on a really tall ship shaped like a skinny fish. There was no fighting in either dream, but they were both very military. Kinda uncomfortable, but at least interesting. I wonder what tonight will bring. I skipped musical rehearsal to go to the SUB event tonight. It was a hypnotist. He took 15 volunteers to go up on stage. I didn't volunteer. But I decided to try to let myself be hypnotized by him where I was in the audience, and I "went under". It was a totally bizarre experience. I felt like I could have decided not to follow his suggestions, but I was choosing to do what he said. After 10 minutes or so he came off the stage out into the audience where I was and sorta woke me up, but not all the way. A few minutes later he had me come onto the stage and stay up there the rest of the show. I think I remember most of the experience, but I'm not sure. It kinda feels like a dream.... the longer ago it was, the less I remember. A few people told me I stole the show... I guess the people on stage weren't as interesting as the random kid in the audience who wasn't supposed to be hypnotized. : ) The things he had us do were pretty typical of hypnotists.... pretend you're on the beach, driving a sports car, naked/everyone else is naked, do goofy stuff on command, etc. A bit different was having us have a pet bird we had to name and pet (I had a hawk named David). John Whelan named his bird Toby, I sorta remember laughing and looking at him then. I felt really rested and relaxed after the show.... perhaps that's a good excuse for not going to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. : ) Church was good tonight. There were literally twice as many people there as normal, prolly because it's the admissions sleepover event. There are high school kids everywhere. The songs were all favorites of mine, and it was a good homily. Fr Schnipke gave it, he's only here once every couple months so it was cool to hear him. I had a good conversation with Dom and Schmitty at brunch today. It was cool to be able to talk seriously to people about some of the stuff going through my head lately I don't wish to bring up with the people involved. I'm going to try to read some of One Hundred Years of Solitude before falling asleep.... early night for me. I need to remember to finish my AmeriCorps application, figure out taxes, and send my backpack away for repair. Those are my goals for this week. Current Mood: restless Current Music: Del Amitri -- Spit in the Rain (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 10th, 2004
10:39 am	Tuesday morning I've been planning for five days what all to put in my next Blurty entry, and now that I'm finally doing it I've forgotten everything I wanted to write. Oops. Oh well. The Mock Trial competition in Utah was interesting. I had fun, learned a lot, competed well, but it was also really stressful and draining. I was glad to get home Sunday afternoon. We competed against 4 teams, 2 of them from USAFA, which I thought was really ironic and bizarre in a way. We beat one of them and lost to the other. It was odd being in direct competition with Air Force people.... really difficult to describe. But it was definitely strange and unexpected. I'm still marinating on it. I had a good time on the trip hanging out with people I normally don't. Mike Barry is a cool kid, and I had never spent time hanging out with Sarah or Sonia before. They're both cool girls. In fact, I got along really well with everyone on the trip except Abbey at times. Sometimes I think we're both just too stubborn to get along. I felt by the end of the weekend like everything I did annoyed her, and that made me annoyed, etc. It was good to get back. I got a part in the musical "Anything Goes", even though I didn't audition. At Kristi's suggestion (read: insistence) I emailed John Rahe and told him I wanted a part. Sunday evening when I got back was the first rehearsal, though we didn't actually rehearse anything. We just went through the music and got to see who everyone is. It seemed like a smallish cast for a musical but not everyone was there. I have a couple tiny parts, a sailor and a drunk. All together I think it's fewer than 10 lines. That's perfect -- I won't have to be at every rehearsal, yet I still get to participate and have fun with the cast. Chris Moran is in the same boat. He only has a few lines (usually with me, which is even better), so we'll get to screw around together the whole time. I'm really excited for that. Lindsey's in the show too, but I don't know what part she plays yet. I'm excited to spend time with her. Caleb's in it too, and of course Kristi and Georganne and their crew. It seems like a really good cast. I can't wait to get started with them. : ) I was really productive last night. I read the 85ish pages in "One Hundred Years of Solitude" for Core 8, and took Delauro's asinine networking test, and went to bed before midnight. I read in the library instead of my room, so there were people around. That was a good idea -- I got to talk to Rachel Winings and Kate and Barry some, and people-watched. I fell asleep at the table in the library for a while too, that was nice. I'm sick so I need all the sleep I can get. I got over 8 hours of sleep last night, which is almost a record for a school night lately. I'm not tired today at all so far, though my nose won't stop dripping. I sorta got yelled at after Bob's class this morning. It was another waste of class. It was supposed to be review for a test on Thursday, but instead we spent an hour (literally) on homework he assigned Thursday (which he didn't email me, though he said he would). We stumbled through it together because Bob hadn't done it yet. Then he tried to re-cover a few points for the test, but took a long time writing silly little examples on the board and didn't get to any questions the class had. If he knows he's going to demonstrate subtle syntax differences in code, why doesn't he prepare them ahead of time?? Jamison and I were screwing with each other like usual, and I hit a soft spot or something. He got more upset than I think I've seen him for something like this, and yelled/sweared at me in class with genuine emotion. Bob played it off but talked to me after class. He asked what the deal was between Jamison and I and I told him we just screw with each other. He pointed out that it was disruptive to class and I told him that I wasn't getting anything out of class since I was gone and hadn't had a chance to look at the homework yet. I don't know what he thought of that. I admitted it was immature and disruptive and I told him I'd try to curb it some.... but I think both of us understand that I act out only when I'm not adequately challenged by class. I really think that when the class is interesting, I'm one of the best students there. Senioritis is striking -- if the class isn't interesting and I'd rather be somewhere else, I'll fuck around to make it interesting. Sure, it's immature. I'm not changing it, though. We'll see what happens in Dave's class, since Jamison is in there too. : ) I spent most of Bob's class writing a letter to Jill. I just got another one from her yesterday, that really struck me in some ways. She has a lot of insight and understands me better than I think I realized. I enjoy writing her, I think it's a really fun and unique way to develop a friendship, and I dig it. : ) Time for Core 8. If it's a video I'm starting a revolution. Current Mood: sparky Current Music: Lifehouse -- Take Me Away (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 4th, 2004
7:03 pm	"Waste of school" Those were the words I used to describe yesterday, after 4 spectacularly disappointing classes. Bob's 835 Programming Languages class started it off. I think nobody in class got enough sleep the night before, since nobody had any energy at all. Bob seemed out of it, and didn't really teach anything new. We just went over a quiz in painstaking detail, taking about forever and a day to do it. I found out later he only had about 3 hours of sleep the night before, too. Go fig. I ended up sleeping most of the last half of class, more out of boredom than being tired. Peter's Core 8 class was a letdown, too. He's an outstanding instructor who has the capability to lead true Core discussions.... so we watched a video. The video was material we had already seen in another video in lecture, and this even had 2 or 3 of the same experts talking about the same things. I finally finished writing Jill back, so that made me feel productive.... but this class made me 0 for 2 in the learning department for the day. By Dave's TCP/IP class after lunch, I had given up on the day. It was a review day for an upcoming test, so there was no new material. And the review did nothing for me because so far this is stuff that I'm very familiar and comfortable with. I ended up actually being an asshole and constantly disturbing class, making jokes and randomly insulting Jamison, Tony, Blake, etc. I hope nobody actually wanted to get anything out of that class yesterday, because I pretty much single-handedly made that an impossibility. : ( At least people laughed a lot..... the human interaction was welcome. Donnelly's class was average, which means I didn't enjoy it. I really think she doesn't like me (anymore), and by this point I just had no energy left to even pretend to pay attention or care. At least I didn't blatantly disrespect her in class, which is something I think I'm capable of and don't want to do. So yesterday was a waste of class. There were 4 different times I could have been taught, and mostly through no fault of my own nobody offered me the opportunity. :` ( Current Mood: disappointed Current Music: Bob Dylan -- Like a Rolling Stone (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, January 19th, 2004
11:43 pm	Showers I despise dorm showers. Seifert 1st East has 3 showers, each one with a personality of its own. Lately, none of them have been very friendly. The far one (traditionally the one I prefer) has just been cold since we got back from Break. Not the kinda cold where it's just slow to get started, but bone-chillingly, mind-numbingly, shiver-till-you-cry icy cold from the second you turn it on til the second you turn it off. Leave it on for 20 minutes, an hour, whatever... it doesn't get warm. The middle shower is the backup. It usually starts warm, and when it doesn't it still warms up quickly (enough). It's decent. It was unusable today because the shower handle was really stiff and absolutely wouldn't budge. This isn't the first time it's done that; it's actually a somewhat regular occurrence. That left shower # 3. The little one. And by "little", I mean tiny. And by "tiny", I mean RIDICULOUSLY SMALL. You get the point. The shower is 6 or 8 inches shallower and narrower than the other two, for reasons I can only speculate. Pipes in the wall? Drunk contractors? I'll never know. It's not important, anyway. Whatever the reason, the shower is narrower and shallower than the other two. By a lot. The total area of the shower is 8 4" tiles by about 6 4" tiles. Now, you have to consider a few other things, though.... this 32" by 24" size isn't the effective useable area of the shower. This is a handicap shower, so there are bars coming out of the back and one side that eat up 2" or so. And on the other side, there's a shelf/seat thing that sticks out about 10". So the effective size of the shower is maybe a little more than 20" square. Think about that a moment.... 20" square to shower in. That's not a lot of room. At all. Some of the implications: -- You have to physically move the showerhead to cover your whole body, because you sure as hell aren't moving around into the stream. -- When the toilets flush or the pipe gnomes rebel and scalding water comes out of the shower, it is absolutely impossible to escape. You can't sidestep. You try, but you hit your hip or whatever random body part against the side wall and then you have that pain compounded with the agony of having your flesh seared. -- When it's time to towel off, you have to be a friggin contortionist to dry your back. Go ahead, try and stretch out a towel in a 20" square box. No fun, huh? This wasn't quite the most miserable shower I've ever taken. But it was close. No wonder I only shower once every few days. We now return to our regularly scheduled core reading. Current Mood: claustrophobic Current Music: Sesame Street Theme Song (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 17th, 2004
4:45 pm	chicago I had a fucking blast staying with Calvin. It was really good to see him and hang out with him. And it was my first time really hanging out with Jillian, and we got along really well. All in all it was one of the best weekends I've had in a very long time. This was last weekend. Last Friday Calvin picked me up from Midway and took us back to his place, near Cicero and Grand (I started to learn my way around chicago after getting a 10 minute mini-lesson from Calvin in the car). I like his place. It's right above his parents, which understandably sucks, but it's fairly roomy and really comfortable. We went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant called Leona's and Calvin wouldn't let me pay for myself, which was okay because I'm so broke. : ) Then we just chilled at his place the rest of the night. Saturday Calvin had to work. Mary came up and she and I took a bus to the train and then a train downtown to go to the art museum. I had been there before, but a few years ago now. We only had a few hours there, but it was still worthwhile. I got to see works (again) by all three of my favorite artists, Magritte, Kandinsky, and Picasso. I love art museums. I want to live somewhere where there's culture in abundance. After Mary went home Calvin and I went to the southside to Bennigan's to meet Egan, Dave, and Chris for dinner. Jillian went out with a friend of hers so she didn't come with us. I would have liked her to come too, hopefully there will be another chance. : ) It was good to see them again.... I miss Summer Kids. : ) After Bennigan's we drove to an Irish bar Egan knew of and spent the rest of the evening there. It was really packed at first, but it started clearing out around 1130 or midnight.... a lot of the crowd was older than us, maybe they just needed to go home and go to bed. : ) It was the first time I saw Egan drink, so that was cool. : ) It was a decent bar. It wasn't too smoky and the atmosphere got to be pretty comfortable after a while. Some of the waitresses were pretty cute. Egan had his eye on a waitress named Ashley so of course Calvin had to be obnoxious and keep bringing her over to the table. She was pretty cool, though. Calvin told her Egan wanted a shot, but he didn't know what to get so she suggested a Jager bomb, and then convinced us all to do it. She told Calvin she'd take one too, and she'd pay for hers and one other.... that was really cool. After hearing a particular 80's song done karaoke, Chris and I dialed 867-5309 in 3 or 4 different area codes, so she could prove her point that that wasn't a working number anywhere because of the song. Later Chris and I both got Blue Moons in cool glases which we stole. They have the Blue Mooon logo on them, pretty nifty. I think we left around 1ish (?) and went to pick Jillian up from her friend's place. She was pretty drunk, which was really amusing. Haha, I remember her growling like a big colorful monster at one point, and I'm not gonna say anything more than that. : ) Sunday morning (early afternoon?) Calvin drove me all the way to Merrillville where Heather picked me up. The four of us (Jillian had come, too) ate at Joe's Crab Shack, which brought back more memories. I got in a big, almost yelling pretend argument with Jillian about whether a dinosaur in an ad was a tyranosaur or a velociraptor (really I think it was just a badly drawn dinosaur, it really did look like both) which was quite entertaining. Calvin pretended to be upset that Jillian and I got along so well, which was a funny change from the rest of the weekend when Jillian was pretend-complaining that Calvin liked me better than her. We spend I think almost 2 hours there, before we left different directions, me with Heather headed back to school. I can't remember the last weekend when I had such a good time. Thanks, guys. : ) I wanna live in Chicago. (That's for you, Chris). Current Mood: content Current Music: Tommy Tutone -- Jenny (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 6th, 2004
12:07 am	Dreaming I had a dream last night. It was another one of those ones that I didn't remember on waking up... I didn't recall it until after I'd been up several hours. The most lengthy part I recall was at Clearwater, where I worked for 2 years in high school. I had the feeling that it was the same room I spent so much time in, but it looked much different and I only knew a few people there. Doug Lantz, who left even before I did over 3 years ago, was working the supervisor desk. Margie was there, long hair and all, but was no longer a supervisor.... she may have been visiting too, or doing desk work or maybe janitorial work or something. I couldn't tell. I mostly just talked to her, asking about old people that used to work there. I don't remember much of the conversation, except talking a bit about Becky. And I only remember that part I think because Becky showed up later in the dream. The Clearwater part of the dream was weird, there was a definite sense of creepiness or eerieness from being somewhere I spent so much time and have so many memories from, but which no longer exists as I remember it. I was definitely not comfortable being there in my dream. But to be fair, I wasn't comfortable there the last few weeks I worked there, either. The only other part of the dream I remember isn't as clear. I'm in a bedroom, possibly a dorm room (but not my Seifert room or any room at SJC), with a big window. I don't know what I was doing before, but the part I remember is when Becky and some guy are standing outside the window, and Becky says, "Are you gonna let us in?" or something very similar. She almost sounds impatient, but that's not quite right. I don't know. The guy is smoking, and my thoughts flow like this: That must be her husband, what's his name? Why is he smoking? That isn't a good influence on her. Why is she here? Paul. It's been so long since I've seen her. What does she want? I still miss her... Her face is the only image I remember with any clarity from this part of the dream, and even that isn't very vivid. She had a large birthmark that covered much of one half of her face, but I don't remember seeing it in the dream. My memory fades to fog again as I leave the room to let them -- her -- in. I know what led to parts of this dream. Yesterday my mom handed me a picture and asked "Do you want this?" It was a picture of Becky and I sometime during the year 2000, when we were together. I look so young.... Mom said she had just developed that roll of film a few months prior and had no idea what was on it before developing it. I hadn't seen a picture of Becky in a long time. I honestly don't even think about her too much anymore, definitely not still daily. Even being in Boise isn't proving to make me too nostalgic or pensive about her this time. Granted, it has been 3 years now...... Anyway.... I took the picture, grateful for it. You can't see her birthmark in the picture, and the expression is similar to what I recall from my dream. -- I learned tonight that a person I like a lot from SJC won't be returning at semester. This one was a shock.... I knew Peewee and Jill wouldn't be around anymore, but I thought that was the extent of the people I would really truly miss in their absence. This girl that's leaving is really just an acquaintance; I wouldn't even call her a friend -- but her peronsality and character have been an inspiration to me since I met her. She will be missed. Current Mood: lost Current Music: Van Morrison -- These Dreams Of You (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 2nd, 2004
2:58 pm	Pi I didn't know what my New Year's Eve plans were until about 4 that afternoon. I had hoped for something small and relatively quiet, perhaps just me, Inez, Liz, Cami, and Sarah.... I wasn't in the mood to see too many other people, really. It didn't work out that way. Liz and Inez gave up their plan of a small get-together at Inez's house to join up with Amber and her big group. I had been told Amber had calmed down in the last few years, so I had high hopes (if not expectations) that we would get along well. I showed up at Amber's house before almost anyone else did, though I was still 10 minutes late -- I didn't remember how to get to her house, though it's only a few blocks away, because I hadn't been there in literally 5 years. Most everyone that showed up there I knew. Nick Doan was there, and Amber's friend from college Katie (the one I had a drunken one night stand with oh so many years ago), and the usual complement of Liz, Inez and her boyfriend Jeremy, Kristi and whatever guy she's with now, and Cami. Robin was conspicuously absent, but nobody seemed to mind that. I guess it's still pretty much a unified front in the dislike of Nate, her boyfriend. As a pleasant surprise, Doug Beatty showed up, too. I hadn't talked to him for several years, either. At 830ish we all piled in 2 or 3 cars and drove downtown, to a bar I had never heard of called Pi. It was an $8 cover, but that was pretty much the going rate for downtown Boise bars that night, so we don't feel like we got screwed. We found a buncha chairs and couches in a somewhat secluded corner of the bar and just hung out drinking pitcher after pitcher of Bud Light. People came and went, I saw Tony Blasick and his fiancee, and Chris Waters. It was actually good to hang out with everyone, I think I've largely forgotten the distaste or discomfort I have for some of these people or at least all of them together. I've decided I'm really just not a big party lotsa people kinda guy. Anyway... I had good conversations with Liz and Inez, and tech-y convos with Jeremy (who studied MIS at UofI) and Doug (who is studying CS at George Foxx). I preached The Word of linux to them... they were at least familiar with it, though neither uses it. They both seemed impressed with my knowledge, which they both agreed was greater than their own. Whatever else you can say about SJC, we sure do have a decent CS program. : ) Kristi and I called each other a few times throughout the night -- she called me at midnight Detroit time, I called her at midnight Boise time. It was fun. : ) 10 minutes after midnight, Sarah called me from Kathy's house asking where we were. They came down with Kathy's brother Tom and Kathy's college friend Carrie, and that was cool. It was the first time I'd seen Kathy since August, she still looks pretty good. I didn't talk to Sarah much because when they got there I was pretty (okay, really) drunk and she just kept laughing at me. S'all good. : ) At some point, Kristi and her boy and Cami left to go see Robin, and I missed them leaving -- I would have liked to say goodbye to Cami. Oh well. At maybe 230 (how did it get to be 230 already??!) we left the bar because they were closing... which is pretty weak, now I think about it -- closing a bar at 3 in the morning on New Year's Eve? Ridiculous. We went to Shari's on Chinden and hung out there for a while. I threw up in the parking lot, and then again in the sink in the washroom. Of course I felt stupid, but it could have been worse. While waiting for a table (in Boise, everyone goes to Shari's after the bars close), I ended up sitting next to Joan MacMillan, a good friend from high school. It was good to talk to her for a bit, though I don't remember much of what was said. I must have given her my phone number, since she called the next day to say hey. : ) We finally got a table and I continued to make an ass of myself... overturning a full water glass, yelling for toast about every 2 minutes, and eventually passing out on the table after 2 bites of toast. I woke up as we were leaving, still drunk and very confused. Luckily Jeremy was taking care of me.... they paid for my toast and walked me outside. Inez laughed at us because Jeremy and I bonded so much, it was amusing. I guess everyone was going back to Amber's, but I had Nick drop me off at Mom's house so I could pass out. I got home at 5 and somehow managed to get in the house and somewhat ready for bed. I thought I was good to go and just pass out until I woke up sober, but no such luck -- at 1130 the next morning, I woke up really queasy and went and dry heaved a few times. I would have been fine, except for the weird bed in the room I'm in -- there are 2 mattresses sitting on 2 box springs for some reason, so it's a really wobbly and shaky bed. I haven't much minded the other nights I've slept there, but that night, with way way way too much beer in my stomach, it caused a problem. When I went back to bed I took the blankets and just crashed on the floor. I had a wicked hangover all day long, not even food or a hot shower helped much. I had like 6 glasses of V8, and that didn't even do much. What a night. All in all, it was a success and a good time, but I'm glad it only happens once a year. Current Mood: mildly disappointed Current Music: Cranberries -- Linger (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 31st, 2003
10:39 am	technology is cool Yesterday while running errands with my mom, we stopped at the Sprint store where I got my newest phone in August. I've been paying for their Vision service for internet access through the phone, but it wasn't configured right so I've been unable to use it. They configured it and I can now connect and I love it. I discovered late last night that I can log into AIM from the phone, and leave myself logged in... so now I can check for IMs on my phone, which is uber cool. I miss not being on 24-7 and therefore missing people. This morning I woke up to IMs from Heather, Peewee, Anne, and Chris Malnarick, none of whom I had spoken with recently. Technology is so awesome. Now if only I didn't have to punch 30 buttons on the phone to actually check the messages.... : ) Current Mood: snowy Current Music: Hole -- Celebrity Skin (Comment on this)
2:48 am	hurray for old friends I spent this evening with Sarah and Cami, two of my closest Boise friends. Sarah and I have been tight since the beginning of high school, and Cami I've only really gotten to know since graduation. It was wonderful to spend time with them just talking -- catching up, reminiscing, discussing.... just being together. We all seem to be at similar points in our lives... feeling somewhat disconnected and not entirely at ease with where our lives are leading us. Talking to them helped me focus more clearly my sense that I'm missing something. Lately at SJC I've felt somehow incomplete, like I don't relate well to many people there. Of course there are exceptions, but my general feeling of late has been that I'm more attached to people at SJC than they are to me, and that's not entirely comfortable. Talking about it to close friends and confidants that seem to be feeling the same and can completely empathize with me went a long way toward curing that ill. We spent 2 hours at Moxie Java on Cole, my favorite coffee hangout Back In The Day. When that closed and they kicked us out, we went down the hill to Shari's, the 24-hour diner that is the main hangout for late night conversations... I've spent literally hundreds of hours there over the years. We stayed there for 4 and a half hours, and could surely have gone longer. We traded rumors about classmates, horror stories about old boy/girlfriends, political views, and memories... it was the best night I've had in a few weeks, and the most fulfilled I've felt in longer than that. Nothing was missing, and I felt absolutely for the whole evening like there was no other place in the world I'd rather be. Cami especially I was excited to converse with. I hadn't spoken with her in a year, since last time we were in Boise for the holidays. And our friendship is still young in the sense that we don't know each other all that well, so there is still an excitement in sharing anything with her... yet at the same time, we've now been having conversations like this in coffee shops or all-night diners for 3 years now, so there's also the feeling of catching up with an old friend. It's a beautiful and fulfilling relationship. We all readily agreed that we should keep in touch better this next year, and make honest efforts to visit each other -- I really intend to. Current Mood: peaceful Current Music: Blink182 -- Dammit (Comment on this)
Friday, December 26th, 2003
1:27 am	I wish you enough Part of a forward from my cousin Kirsten: I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright. I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more. I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive. I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger. I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting. I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess. I wish you enough "Hellos" to get you through the final "Good-bye". And to add my own: I wish you enough peace and love, always. Current Mood: content Current Music: Blessid Union of Souls -- I Believe (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 25th, 2003
2:37 am	122403 We're gonna try somethin' new -- A coupla top 5 lists, Casey-style: : ) Top 5ish cool things today, in no particular order: 1. Visiting my cousin Ryan and getting to see his new place, and pictures of his brother Micah and his new wife and daughter. 2. Talking to Calvin for 20 minutes or so on the cell. 3. Winning 3 straight games of pool against Mom, Kevin, and Nathan, who is cousin Kirsten's 10-year old son who talks more shit than any little kid I've ever known. 4. Playing Trivial Pursuit with the family, and helping the Young beat the Old. Take that. : ) 5. Talking with Becca, Kir's 12-year old daughter, about various different things -- I really like this little girl, she seems intuitive and sensitive and very interesting. 6. Seeing Baron, their Great Dane, stumble around like a drunkard because they had given him a tranquilizer. Dog was on his ass for several hours, and I shouldn't have found it amusing but I really did. He would trip over his own legs, and was unable to walk anything close to a straight line. 7. Finding that our hotel in Limon has high speed Internet, paying only $5 for said net access, and using it to download ~20 songs so far that will go toward various mix CDs I'm compiling, including one for a special someone. : ) 8. Reading another few hundred pages in my book, I'm almost done and may in fact finish it tonight. 9. Colorado sunsets. Top 5 not-so-cool things today, same drill: 1. Starting to get sick from the cigarette smoke, or altitude, or just a cold, or something... I really didn't feel well for most of today. 2. Unintentionally overhearing part of a conversation that should have been private and discreet and was neither. Don't ask, I don't wanna talk about it. 3. Upsetting my mother by not understanding why she thought I was giving Kevin a hard time. 4. Not getting cell service where I'm staying, again, though I'm in a different place. I really wanted to call a few people to offer Christmas benedictions. 5. Not getting to go to Midnight Mass. Nobody went, and I didn't tell anyone ahead of time I wanted to go. Suddenly it was 1215 Christmas morning and it was too late. I miss Mass. Does it say something about me that my positives outweigh the negatives by almost 2 to 1? I hope so. : ) Current Mood: hopeful Current Music: Blessid Union of Souls -- Peace and Love (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2003
6:03 pm	finally vacation What a lazy day! I slept in until almost noon, went running in the mountains, and read 100 pages in my for-fun book. I wrote a letter and wandered around a Super Walmart for an hour, too. It's been a decent day. The run was killer. It's really hilly here and I ran 15 minutes and prolly made it only a mile and a half or so. I ran 6 minutes downhill and the altitude difference was literally probably 100 feet over that span. I made it back in 9 minutes, which I'm satisfied with. Because of the altitude (5600 ft MSL), it's taken me a very long time to get all my breath back. I ran like 6 hours ago and my lungs still have that crisp and fresh feeling like I just ran. Part of that too is because my aunt and uncle smoke in their house, though... This finally is starting to feel like an actual vacation. I'm enjoying myself. Current Mood: refreshed Current Music: Vertical Horizon -- Willingly (1 Comment |Comment on this)
12:25 am	Rifle, CO Mom and I drove almost 12 hours (with stops) to Rifle, CO today where my aunt and uncle live. It was a pretty uneventful drive, and went by fairly quickly. We got along well for the most part. I'm really tired because I haven't really slept in yet this break -- I actually don't remember the last time I did sleep in -- but I'm in a good mood. I finally started reading Salem's Lot today in the car, I hope it reads quickly so I can get back to Wolves of the Calla. Katie and I drove to Moscow yesterday to see Erin. It was awesome. Everyone thought we were crazy for driving 12 hours in one day to spend only 3 or 4 with a friend, but it was absolutely worth it. I miss her so much!! And it was really good to have the 3 of us together again, that hasn't happened since high school. Her life there isn't easy but she's doing alright and it's good to see that. We were all really excited to see each other, and the ride with Katie was a lot of fun... especially when we stopped in McCall for 10 minutes to play in the snow. : ) I talked to Heather briefly on the phone this evening, and I got an email from Jill. Both were uplifting, since I still really miss school. I'm going to read a bit and crash for the night... we'll see what tomorrow brings! Current Mood: distant Current Music: Five for Fighting -- Something About You (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 21st, 2003
12:00 am	chillin' in the 208 I went Christmas shopping with my brother today. Every single place we went he knew at least 2 people, which I guess is cool. I wish I could randomly run into cool people I know... but I'm thinking of SJC people, not CHS people. We saw Nicole Vernon walking into Barnes and Noble. I couldn't decide whether to consciously try to avoid her or not... I just wasn't in the mood to talk to her. We did end up running into each other, and talked for 10 minutes or so. She's still at UU and will actually be doing a show when I'm in SLC in February for Mock Trial. I told her I'd try to get the gang to come see it if she emailed me the when and where. There's nothing like an ex-girlfriend to make you realize how big yet how small a city like Boise is. There are enough people that everyone seems like a stranger, and yet not enough people that I can rely on the comforts of anonymity. And another thing -- it seems like everyone here has a kid. Everywhere we went, there were literally dozens of babies. What's up with that? On the way home from Walmart (I was 1-hour'ing 2 rolls of film to finish off my SJC album) we passed a small-ish car that had 6 or 7 high schoolers in it. We both thought it was really funny and laughed a lot, and they saw us and took it personally. They tried to get me to roll down the window, but I wouldn't. Then they all kept staring at us and waving (with just one finger, though....). Then they tailed us really close for a bit, and pulled up alongside us, and Kevin slowed way down so they shot past. They immediately pulled over and we kept driving. They didn't pull back out behind us, though... it was random as hell but we both thought it was really funny. I like hanging out with my brother, we have similar senses of humor (or sense of humors?). Current Mood: nostalgic Current Music: Badly Drawn Boy -- Bewilderbeast (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, December 19th, 2003
1:28 pm	Boise sweet Boise Yesterday was an interesting day. Heather and I didn't know how to get to Midway, so we ended up going *WAY* past it to the far north side of Chicago. I called Calvin for directions and we were close enough to where he was that he had us park in a parking lot and wait for him to come find us. We got to see him and hang out a bit, then he guided us back to where we needed to be. It was awesome -- I was so grateful that he just dropped everything he was doing to help us. He's a true friend, and a wonderful man. The flights were good. On the second one, from Kansas City to Salt Lake, it was nearing sunset and we were above the clouds. Everything was a brilliant shade of pink that was almost unreal. It was one of the most beautiful things I think I've ever seen. I saw a plane fly below us in more or less the opposite direction, and cut through the pink puffy clouds.... it looked amazing. From my moving position, the sun didn't actually set for prolly another hour and a half, because we were flying into it. I wrote in a letter during this that it felt like we were chasing a dream. : ) There was a layover in SLC, but it wasn't bad. On the last flight I slept across from 2 Centennial graduates, from 1998 and 1999. The girl I recognized, but couldn't remember her name. She didn't remember mine either, though, so it's okay. We talked and traded news and stuff. It was really cool. We know tons of the same people, and they both knew Erin pretty well back in the day, so that was cool. I saw Lord of the Rings last night after seeing Kevin's dorm room and meeting his roommates. It was ridiculously long, but an excellent movie nonetheless. Very well done, I would definitely see it again.... in a few days after I recover. It was intense. I crashed for almost 9 hours after that and I'm just now getting up and figuring out what to do with my day. Dinner's with dad, I guess, but other than that I have no idea what the day will bring. I miss SJC and my friends and family there. Current Mood: lonely Current Music: 3rd Eye Blind -- Semi-charmed Life (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 16th, 2003
1:53 pm	reconciled I just finished Capouch's Operating Systems final, very very quickly. It wasn't difficult at all, though (of course) I spent a minimal amount of time studying. I was the first one done, I love doing that. : ) As I handed him my test he handed me a wad of cash. I was confused at first, but he said he convinced his business partner to buy my extra laptop stuff, and this was $200 of the total. I'm getting $50 more than I would have accepted, so that's cool. And it'll be nice to have cash. Though I'm not excited about carrying $400+ on the airplane... I wish there were a bank around here I could deposit into. I think I'll try to give him back the cash and ask him to write me a check that I can cash in Boise. He told me he wants to talk to me before I go about working over Christmas, too. I'm s'posed to meet with him tomorrow to see what that's about. I'm excited -- I had hoped to do some work for pay for him, but since the SE fiasco I wasn't sure he was still interested and I wasn't going to ask. All is working out well. I suppose now I'm studying for Core 9, my last final of the day. Almost done... Current Mood: satisfied Current Music: Green Day -- When I Come Around (Comment on this)
10:28 am	getting there I took both my math finals just now. Number theory was easy and fun, and probability was confusing but not as grueling as it could have been. Both were pretty representative of their class. I have 2 more finals today that I'm only somewhat prepared for. I'm not worried, though. I'm glad Blurty is finally back up... I prolly missed 5 posts or so over the 4 or 5 days it was down. This morning I had several IMs responding to the song lyrics in my away message: "Bouquet of clumsy words A simple melody This world's an ugly place But you're so beautiful to me" Good song, I haven't listened to it for a long time but it seems to fit now. Wow, as I look through the lyrics again the song *really* fits. Hmm. My credit card --> paypal --> bank account trick worked. I'm pleased with myself. My mom put $50 in my bank account and emailed me saying "Merry Christmas!" I'm grateful. I won't get to take another class with Doc Olsen. I'm sad. Current Mood: optimistic Current Music: Blink182 -- Going away to college (Comment on this)
Friday, December 12th, 2003
2:44 pm	"Written code." Capouch's 2-word response to my emails asking what I could have done differently for our group SE project, after I tried to explain the difficulties our group had with teamwork and motivation. He's absolutely right, of course. We failed miserably, I can't argue that. I had hoped for some understanding from him, but I know I've put him in a tough position. It really wasn't like we totally slacked off the whole time; we did do actual important work, just not in the direction he wanted. I didn't expect him to be as upset as he apparently is, though.... we'll see what happens. : ( I'm taking a nap, I have nothing to do -- I'm not used to having discretionary time of any real sort. Current Mood: upset Current Music: Whitesnake -- Here I Go Again On My Own (Comment on this)