Monthly Archives: October 2005

*yawn* work 0

I was dreading going to my other job today, knowing that I would get chewed out by my boss for not showing up on Monday (even though I had no clue I was supposed to work Monday, the guy I was covering for only said to do it on the 11th). But he didn’t (yet) and the workload wasn’t so bad today. And I managed to cram in a bunch of web surfing (I was waiting for like thirty minutes for them to finish this one file). I am totally getting the 23″ Apple Cinema Display. Or maybe this cheaper HP one. But I’m definitely getting a huge monitor. I’ve decided.

But that opens a whole host of problems, the main one being that my current computer can’t handle a 23″ display. Not even a 20″ display. It would melt my current current video card to sticky silicon goop trying to pump out the 1920×1200 pixel glory of the cinema display. As much as I hate to admit it, I need a new computer.

It’s really wierding me out, but I’ve been really getting into math, I even spent a half-hour or so reading about four-dimensional cubes and such. Well, I’m at work and can’t use voice-recognition, so I should probably save my wrists and stop now. I hope Misty calls me, but I really should go home and work more on my math tonight. I’m two chapters behind now.

Categories: Lethargy

Published:
October 22, 2005 – 11:48 pm
Author:
By A.

whoa. 0

This is incredible. It’s an animation of a four-dimensional cube.

Categories: Ennui

Published:
October 22, 2005 – 6:23 pm
Author:
By A.

cool things, displays and video card inadequacy 0

Well, now that I’ve purged all the bad things that happened today, time to talk about the few rays of sunshine in this utterly crappy day.

1. On my lunch, I ran into Charley at Ray’s Food Place. I was quite tired and needed food badly, so I really wasn’t a very good conversationalist. But it was cool that he talked to me instead of just pretending I wasn’t there. I didn’t notice him, but he yelled at me. Which was cool.

2. I caught two Star Trek episodes tonight, one of them the really good one where Dr. crusher gets stuck in this subspace bubble and everybody starts disappearing. Her interactions with the computer are priceless. “Computer: what is the universe?” ” The universe is a sphere 700 meters in diameter.”

3. I found out that the Dell flat-panel widescreen monitor uses the same panel as the Apple Cinema Display, and is $150 cheaper. It’s definitely not as sexy, but I definitely won’t pay $150 for sexiness alone. And let’s face it, I don’t have that kind of cash. Its $700 for the Apple display, $550 for the Dell one. And in the review I read, they were almost exactly the same. In fact, the Dell display was a bit brighter.

Well, for the moment this is all academic. I don’t think my video card supports the advanced DVI interface that either of the displays use. I think I’m going to have to get a new computer, or at least a new video card in order to use a resolution that large (1680×1050). But still, step one is getting the monitor, step two is using it.

I probably should have told my boss that I have jury duty on Monday, but it really didn’t dawn on me that the 24th was Monday until tonight. I should probably call the number to see if it was canceled. Nah, I’m too lazy. Tomorrow.

Darn, I was checking out some of those really great displays and it doesn’t seem like my video card is capable of powering any of them. Lame. I can’t believe I need a new computer. I want to build another one from scratch, but I’m really weirded out about that new socket 775. It’s supposed to have twice as many pins as the old socket and is supposed to be near impossible to self install. And that processor is going to be at least $300. I simply can’t break it. I succeeded with my first computer building experience, but I don’t know about another one. Well, I just had an amazing thought. Oh, never mind. I was thinking about replacing my motherboard with a new one, forgetting that the processor is inextricably attached to the motherboard. I definitely need some sleep. Maybe I should see how much that North Coast electronics place will cost to build me a new system. Well, basically all a need them to do is to install the motherboard into the chassis and attach the processor and heatsink.

But it impugns my status as an ubergeek to have to have someone else put my computer together. Oh well. I should read about how difficult the installation actually is. Well, I need to go to sleep. I hope tomorrow is better.

Categories: Tech lust

Published:
October 22, 2005 – 1:29 am
Author:
By A.

name. number. message. 1

Robots in Disguise – Turn It Up [I was listening to this one all day]

I must say that today was one of the most disheartening and depressing days that I’ve had in a very long time.

I really don’t want to relive why it sucked. I’ll just give the highlights.

9:40 a.m. – I wake up. With six hours of sleep. I’ve only been getting six or so hours this entire week, so needless to say I’m a bit exhausted.

11 a.m. – I get to work, and I’m immediately taken into my boss’s office where he berates me for leaving one hour early yesterday. Okay, let’s rewind: yesterday I had finished with all my tasks, and not much had been submitted, so I had to decide whether to surf the Web randomly for an hour on the clock until my boss got back or to leave, I decided to do what I thought was the professional thing and leave. That part of the tirade I didn’t really mind, but the next thing he said really got me. One of the people that I really respect there and thought was my friend (Matt) went and tattled on me. Apparently he was so busy answering my phone that he couldn’t get any work done. If he was so bothered, he could’ve just gone up to the front desk and told them that I wasn’t there and to take messages. And basically all I ever do is sit around an answer people’s phones when they’re gone. And he has to do it for one day? Boo fucking hoo.

The accusation that I was lazy infuriated me. The understatement of the fucking century. I sit there and type even though my wrists hurt. I sit there and do my work when that nincompoop Coworker of Doom is surfing the Web and playing video games. I answer the motherfucking phones, I’m polite, and I do the best job I can. I’ve come in on weekends, I’ve done all sorts of shit that was above and beyond. I quadruple-check the obits to make sure that there isn’t a single error. And this is the thanks I get. I get INCREDIBLY ANGRY even thinking about it. Let’s see that lazy videogame playing bitch type with some tendonitis instead of sit there and complain about her allergies all day.

I simply must find a new job.

I’m rarely very perturbed when I get chewed out for things that I genuinely did wrong, but this ridiculous notion of staying at the office yesterday when I didn’t have anything to do really fucking pissed me off. And it didn’t help either that I had an incredible workload that day: the normal crap plus three epic obits (They were so painfully detailed that I was half-expecting to find for each person a list of their most promising bowel movements, complete with weight and volume measurements), and a neverending file of convictions to format.

And to top it all off, there’s a stack of messages on my desk with either no name or no contact number or no information whatsoever. For future reference, guys, this sort of message is not a message:

Jane Doe called.

That tells me about as much as if you were to smear human excrement across my monitor. Come on, you inept fucks. I can do it for one dollar above minimum wage. Let’s all say it together:

Name.
Number.
Message.

Amazing! It’s taken me years to master the intrinsic complexities of phone messages. And you idiots with a four-year degree can’t comprehend it. Let me say this to you tattletaling fucking pansies:

Eat. Shit. And. Die.

And thanks for fucking up my day.

Categories: Vitriol

Published:
October 22, 2005 – 12:42 am
Author:
By A.

creativity, a puzzle party, and DDR. 1

> Modjo – Rollercoaster
> Lacquer – Time for Yesterday

Today was pretty fun, I got off work early and got to walk over to beachfront park and take a bunch of photos. I posted them all on my flickr gallery.

I love this one:

dead bird, weird pipe

Anyway, after that I went over to Misty’s house and we talked for a bit. Then I went up to my house, took a nap, ate dinner (spaghetti, yum!), and went up to my class in Brookings. I think that I’ve gotten over the part of the math that I was getting stuck on, but I’m having to solve these incredibly complex, tedious problems. I have to spend even more time doing my work now. Grr.

I don’t know why, but I have this incredible desire to create art now. Like, I can’t even fight it. I HAVE to take a million photos a day, even if most of them are crap. I think that the creative part of my brain is fighting the logical math part. I sort of enjoy the duality. Well, after my class was over I went into town and played dance revolution for a while. I was still pretty good, but I would always die on the last song. Like, right before it would end my life bar would run out. I guess I’m just not as good as I used to be. But I will soon fix that.

Today I told Misty that I couldn’t move in with her, and she was fine with it. That felt good. Now I have to tell Matt that I can’t work on his web site. I’m so tired today.

I ended up running into Misty and Katelyn (the one that I went on the trip with) at the movie theatre, and we met back at Misty’s house. We ate this delicious ham and lima bean soup that Misty had made and watched the end of 50 First Dates. Then we got this puzzle out that Misty had been working on for a few months and we started on that while watching Will and Grace. After Will and Grace we got such a craving for ice cream, so I drove us over to Safeway. I got all natural mint chocolate chip, and it was de-freaking-licious. We kept going on the puzzle for hours, watching Sex and the City and this prurient “cheaters” show, finishing the puzzle around 1:30 a.m. I put like five pieces in, but still…I helped. Me and Katelyn had this cool convo about David Lynch and weird movies, and I was able to supply her the name of Lost Highway, a David Lynch movie she’d seen but couldn’t remember the name of.

I’m hungry and tired. Last night I dreamt that I took my iPod swimming with me and it got in the water and the headphone plug broke, turning into a plug made of clear plastic covered with thin tin foil that was flaking off. But it was still playing music even though it was all full of water. Weird.

Oh yeah, I have great news. One of my coworkers is going on vacation so I’m going to have to cover for her for three weeks which means I basically have a full-time job all through November. And guess what I’m going to get!

I really want the 23″ display, which is $1100, but I probably will only be able to afford the 20″ display, which is $700. I really like my current monitor, but I have outgrown it. I can’t deal with only 18 in. of workspace. That means I have to cram every single thing I do into 18 in. Yes, I know. Not possible. With this new display all be doing lots more work and less alt+tab. I hate it when I think that I’m done toning a photo, then I zoom out and realize that I’ve just done the rectangular center of the photo and it looks ridiculous.

And I also want a great digital camera. My current one is perfect for taking pictures for online viewing, but it only makes prints that are like 8×6 in. and I really want to get into the whole digital photography thing where you print out your prints instead of just uploading them to flickr, and to do that I’m going to need a camera with more than three megapixels.

Omg. The more I read William Gibson’s Neuromancer, the more I realize that the Wachowski brothers (creators of the Matrix trilogy) basically stuck Neuromancer on the copy machine and made millions of dollars. Guess what the orbital space station where the characters are staying now is called? Yes, you guessed it. Zion. And the descriptions of the characters that inhabit this place are exactly like the ones that are in the Zion from the Matrix movies.

It’s still sort of interesting though, to see what the moviemakers took from the book and what they didn’t. I wish this was a Philip K. Dick novel, because I would know that there was going to be some incredible twist at the end. Well, they’re still might be. I just have to be patient.

Crap. I need to go to bed. I put off doing some work yesterday, and it’s going to catch up with me tomorrow. Damn people. Why do they have to keep dying? They bore me by dying. When they die in droves, my workload goes through the roof. Old people are lemmings. Well, I should go to sleep.

Categories: Happiness,jamais vu

Published:
October 21, 2005 – 3:03 am
Author:
By A.

1

Robots in Disguise – La Nuit
!!! – Pardon My Freedom
Dopplereffekt – Porno Actress
Muse – Sunburn
Modjo – Music Takes You Back

I’m experiencing math apathy. All of a sudden the problems have gotten twice as large, and they’re not easy anymore (well, they are easy but they take five minutes each). And they’re all algebra. Which I hate. And I have two chapters of that algebra excrement until we move onto the next visual sort of math: graphing (which I sort of enjoyed). But until then it’s 16 sections of inequalities and equations that have absolutely no relevance in the real world. I was flipping ahead in the pages, and for an entire chapter there isn’t one real-world application of any of the problems. Before, there were some interesting things to work out that you might actually need in some sort of situation, but now there’s nothing. Everything is variables. And I am so bored.

It reminds me of this thing my old friend Daniela said one time.

Me: “I don’t really feel like going to Religions of the World today.
Daniela: “Yeah, my apathy level is a 10.”
Me: “On a scale of one to ten?”
Daniela: “On a scale of one to two.”

And that’s how I feel today. I made it through like a few pages, if that… and then the exquisite tedium that is order of operations reared its ugly head. I don’t know how Joe could ever find this interesting. But I guess he was doing trigonometry, not basic algebra.

I wasted so much time today and last night. Today Apple made an announcement that they had updated the PowerBook G4 and Power Mac G5 lines. The new Power Macs are incredible, instead of two single core 2.7GHz G5 processors (which was the top-of-the-line) it’s now two 2.5GHz dual core G5 processors. It’s the equivalent of having four 3.8GHz Pentium 4s in one machine. In short, that level of rapid-fire, blazing fast number crunching is enough to make me wet myself. I guess the irony in the math thing it is that every day I use incredibly complex mathematical operations, ones that I could never even dream of. Right now I’m using the most advanced speech recognition algorithms ever developed. It’s all math. And I’m going to be left behind the technological age if I don’t learn it. I think I need to find more comfortable workspace. Until now I’ve been working on my bed. I think I move out of the kitchen table would be beneficial. Perhaps I can make some tea.

I made the picture of the 20″ Apple Cinema display that I want as the background on my computer. Its $700, but I could save that up in a few months. And with Christmas coming, I just might be able to afford it. What I really want is the 23 in. display, but it’s $1100. The way I see it, this year is the year to save up for a new incredible display, and the next year is the year to save up for an incredible Intel-based Power Mac.

Today I saw an advertisement that the California conservation Corps is looking for workers. I’ve met so many people that have worked for them and had such cool stories, that I was tempted to quit my job and do some good physical work in the forests. But that’s just a dream. I can only live the inauthentic life.

My mom talked me out of moving in with Misty again, and the timely announcement by Apple of those incredible new Power Macs really made me not want to blow all my money on lodging and food when I could be saving up for my very own box of speed metal.

I downloaded a new version of the Linux distro that’s on my dad’s computer in the living room, and from what I’ve seen in the screenshots the interface seems to be cleaned up quite a bit. I really like Ubuntu. It works, has a clean UI, and it’s free. I downloaded the new version because my dad wants to be able to print to my printers in my room. Well, he probably wants to print to them in the living room, but I bought the color cartridge for the inkjet so it’s staying in my room. Maybe I should be magnanimous. I think he’ll get pissed if I install that new distro, because there’s only one hard drive in that machine and there’s nowhere to save his bookmarks and e-mail and stuff.

I guess I could put them on my iPod, but that would involve mounting a flash drive in Linux, and from what I remember, that involves command line. And I don’t do command line. Just like I don’t do algebra. I wonder if my dad is asleep yet, I need to move into the living room and get some work done.

It’s not like I’m totally inept with the command line, I’m actually quite fine with it (I’ve fixed my XP installation using the command line Recovery Console many a time), but I just hate it. I hate having to visualize things. I want them right in front of me and I want to be able to move them around with my hands in liquid crystal 32-bit color. I guess I should get on with my work and stop this stupid procrastination. As of tonight, I am about two chapters behind. I’m just not to make it unless I spend all night working on this crap. Well, at least all evening.

Oh yeah, I was noticing today as I was watching some porn that when I’m watching it, usually the PowerMac tech specs are in my Firefox window behind it. Whether that’s because I get off on blistering computational performance or whether I just happen to be lurking around Apple’s site 24/7 remains to be seen.

And just so you all know, Sean Cody is God. And whoever doesn’t agree, you are gay.

Categories: Ennui

Published:
October 19, 2005 – 9:46 pm
Author:
By A.

ennui and an incredible workload 0

This math class is sucking up ALL MY INTERNET TIME. GRR.

But I did get to go out and take some photos. Check out my flickr gallery! Today’s pics are of Tsunami Landing, I hope to make galleries about every part of Crescent City.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dariusofthedark/

Categories: Ennui

Published:
October 19, 2005 – 7:10 pm
Author:
By A.

0

god, it’s so late.

I just finished Concrete Island. It was really really really strange. But very good. So tired. Must go to sleep. Sorry I’m sucking with my blog, I’m in sort of a haze this week.

Categories: Ennui

Published:
October 18, 2005 – 2:27 am
Author:
By A.

Eureka, clothes, and fun 0

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged. Let’s see… I went on that trip to Eureka with Misty and that other person, and it turned out at the other person wasn’t the person that I thought that she was taking it all. I thought the trip would totally suck, but it was actually really really fun. It turns out at the girl that she brought and I have the same birthday, and all sorts of other stuff. We got along very well. I got a bunch of new clothes, a cigarette lighter power charger thing for my iPod, and a new belt. I spent a lot of money, but I can’t really feel bad about it because I got so many cool new clothes and such. And I didn’t go over my balance either. I also got some new shoes! They’re very nice, and very comfortable.

I also have some pictures from the trip, but that would require me to open Photoshop and do a bunch of stuff that I don’t feel like doing this morning. My wrists hurt quite badly this morning, and I don’t know why. Anyway, the hotel we stayed in was quite affordable, and very nice. I wasn’t even grossed out about taking a shower in it, and I am so picky about my hotel rooms.

Well, I’d better get dressed. I got a white dress shirt, and I’m wanting to include it in my outfit today, but I really don’t want today to be the day where everybody is commenting on my clothing. One day I wore a brown blazer and everyone was freaking out because it wasn’t black. I don’t enjoy such attention.

I wanted to ride my bike to work this morning, since I rode the three-mile loop yesterday and it felt great. However, there is a big difference between riding 3 mi. and riding 10 mi. I would have to start out much much earlier than normal just to have some sort of safety cushion in case I got exhausted. Well, I should get ready. More details about the trip will follow.

PS: I started J.G. Ballard’s Concrete Island yesterday, and I’m about halfway through it. It’s a really interesting novel, but it’s much shorter than I ever thought. It’s more like a novella. It’s around 170 pages, but the margins are absolutely enormousand the type is a bit large as well. I’m loving the idea of the story more than Ballard’s style of writing, but they combine to make it the cool story that it is.

Categories: Happiness

Published:
October 17, 2005 – 10:13 am
Author:
By A.

shitty day, for no apparent reason 0

I wish I was dead.

Downloaded two good bands, Modjo and Robots in Disguise.

Listened to Portishead, Garbage, and the Cardigans all day. I always do that when I’m depressed. And now I’m eating chocolate, like a real nancy. My subconscious gave me a virus of the mind in the form of a dream earlier this week. Oh yeah, from now on I mean to call caffeine substance D. I hope I remember. That sounds so cool. Anyway, the dream virus was as follows:

I was in a beautiful part of San Francisco, and who should I happen upon but Andrew Taggart, my infamous ex. But in the dream I only remembered the good times. We hung out and did some shopping or something, then we started walking down this hill. I looked back to see if he was behind me, and he was now standing right in front of me, looking at me with this endearing smirk, and in that moment none of it mattered. He was just too beautiful. Too perfect. And in the dream, I kissed him. He told me he loved me. And I believed him. And he was mine. And happy fucking tra-la-la with that duplicitous heartbreaker. Then I wake up to the week full of people yelling at me for my mistakes and never praising me for my successes. And I want to go back to that dream and live in it forever, blissfully ignorant of the rest of the world.

Misty, for all my superciliousness towards her, made a very poignant observation of me last night. Wait…never mind. I was going to put it in quote marks, but now I remember I’m the one that said it, but she put the idea in my head.

“If I didn’t have computers, I would probably do drugs and just party all the time.”

Because when you really think about it, I don’t have very many passions. However, I was reading one of my old textbooks a few weeks ago, and it said that technology is the practical application of knowledge. And it just seemed to make sense that my two obsessions should be knowledge and technology. One is simply a consequence of the other. So I only have one passion. Knowledge in all its forms.

Now there’s no more chocolate. I seek knowledge and chocolate. PEZ will have to suffice. I think my dad went to sleep, I should see what’s on TV. Oh, guess what. Instant messaged Jon, to see if he had had a change of heart about wanting to be friends with me, and it turns out that either he’s just a taciturn person by nature or he still doesn’t want to talk to me. But anyway, I asked him about the club, and Club West is closed! They got sold or something and will open up in November as a straight-only sort of place. How fucking gay.

So that means I’m definitely going to be reading. All weekend long. I should get a car charger for my iPod before we leave or I’m going to be in a world of bored silence. I saw one at Rite Aid for 30 bucks, but I know I can get one cheaper. Oh, that reminds me. Must charge the pod for the long, long car trip. I’m going to turn off the backlighting and make Misty carry out all my music commands to strech out the battery life as long as possible. Or so I hope.

I’m really not in the mood to go anywhere. But I know once the doldrums of Friday set in, I’m going to be wanting to do something. I hope my car doesn’t break down, it’s been acting a bit strange lately.

Well, we’ll see. I hope I don’t end up hating Misty after this trip. She’s like my last friend that doesn’t piss me off (very much at all). And if the computer mistypes one more word of profanity I’m going to scream.

I think the realization is setting in with that dream that there isn’t a single gay guy in this world that’s going to understand me or love me. So I’d better be looking to settle.

De-fucking-pressing.

I need to watch some Daria.

PS: I started William Gibson’s Neuromancer, and it has fluctuated between being cliché, boring, and unimaginative… but I’m hoping that somewhere in the middle it will stop sucking so hard. I have a bit of faith. It couldn’t have won all those awards just for sloppy sex scenes with a cyborg. But hell, who knows?

Categories: Lethargy,Melancholy

Published:
October 13, 2005 – 9:16 pm
Author:
By A.