Monthly Archives: December 2005

banner 1

Spade Photography update: I made a banner for the homepage today. I made three or four incarnations of it and uploaded the one that I liked the best. What do you think? Are the bones overkill? Should we look for a new font for the logo?

I’m sort of going with green as the color scheme for the site. I feel like the bones in the banner look different than the ones in the background image. I have a few more ideas on what the banner could look like, this is just the first that I created. Shall I make the buttons or move onto idea number two for the banner?

my coolness alcove. 0

DSCN4889

I will marry anyone who has a Doom Gen and Power Mac G5 poster on the same wall.

money, success, fame, glamour 0

We are living in the age of the thing.

(UPDATE: 1/9/05. Here are the full lyrics:

Greetings, citizens.
We are living in the age
In which the pursuit of all values
Other than
Money, success, fame, glamour
Has either been discredited or destroyed
Money, success, fame, glamour
For we are living in the age of the thing)

mudslides and disappointment 1

Just when I was shifting my packing into high gear, Brian called and told me that there is a big mudslide on Highway 101. I would go the other way (I-5), but there’s going to be snow on the pass and I’ve never driven in snow before. I’m hoping that they will clear the mudslide on 101 by Friday, but if it doesn’t me and Kelly’s super fun weekend might get cut short.

I mean, it’s not like I mind spending the weekend with Brian, but that wasn’t the point of the trip. I just have to cross my fingers and hope that the slide will be gone by tomorrow.

I discovered something wonderful while I was on the Caltrans web site! They have live traffic cameras of Sacramento. I am watching it right now and it is absolutely mesmerizing. Kelly could be one of those people driving! It’s totally impossible, as we never go on I-5 when I’m down there, but it’s an entertaining diversion. And to think, when I was driving by that camera months ago someone could have been watching me!

I love technology.

I need to finish the last two chapters in my math book before I take my placement test, and I have been having a very hard time motivating myself to do it. What I need to do is take my gigantic monitor off my desk so that I actually have a workspace in order to do the problems, but I am so caught up in packing that destroying my perfectly arranged, perfectly masking-taped mass of cords and cables is just not on my list of things to do today.

My dad suggested that I take a sleeping bag on the trip in case I get stuck somewhere. That’s a good idea. I feel like I’m missing some very important travel thing though. I guess I will post my list of stuff not forget and if I am forgetting something incredibly egregious I’m sure it will come to somebody’s attention.

I am now watching the traffic camera for Highway 50 and Sunrise Ave. Kelly works at this place near Sunrise, but this looks like more of a residential area. I secretly wish everyone I knew had WebCams installed in their house so I could vicariously hang out with them. This is very relaxing watching all these cars. It’s almost voyeuristic.

I think I might have to end up spending Friday in Eureka so I should probably to find the nearest Internet cafe (if such things even exist anymore) in Eureka.

I found an Internet Cafe in the phone book. I don’t know what the point is, since my wrists are killing me today, but at least I will be able to check my e-mail. I’m feeling very disappointed tonight. That damn slide better be clear tomorrow. I should probably pack.

testing…testing…1, 2, Feng Shui 2

(the audioblog thing cuts you off after six minutes, I’ve learned…)

Liquid crystals on his watch catch rays of morning peeking through 0

> Ladytron – Cracked LCD

I just ate a whole bunch of chocolate. I am totally gaining back all the weight I lost during that week where I was working 24/7. Oh well. I spent the day redecorating my room and doing more laundry. I ate this toffee stuff earlier tonight and I simply can’t get it out of my teeth, so I’m blogging, chewing some gum, and waiting for it to dissolve so I can floss.

Brian called me twice today, and it turns out that I ran out of minutes on my cell phone yesterday and that’s why the call ended. Luckily I had given him my home number a few days ago, so that’s how he got a hold of me again. I’m going to see his cuteness in only two days! And if I play my cards right, in only one day!

I’m going to ask for Friday off. I’m not sure what my boss will say, but the worst he can say is no. I wonder what it’s going to be like to hang out with Brian alone without Kevin as social lubricant. I hope it’s going to be an all-night make out session. However, part of me is scared that it’s going to end up turning into sex. Nowadays, sex is so… clinical. I can’t get caught up in the moment anymore. I am paralyzed wondering if the condom is broken, if I’m going to orgasm too late or too soon… it just has ceased to be fun anymore. I don’t know… the first time having sex with a new person is always such an act of theatre. You have to put on a great show of how hot you are, moaning and all that other ridiculous crap. And another complication is that I’m always a top, and what if he is too? Even more weirdness. What I want is a hot female cuddle buddy, or a hot impotent male cuddle/makeout buddy. (Think James Spader’s character from Sex, Lies and Videotape.) You can get caught up in the moment when you’re making out, because there are no life-and-death decisions to be made. What I need to do is come clean to him that I’ve never been tested and that I could have all sorts of diseases. I feel like a terrible person. I need to call and find out about the clinic in town. I was going to ask Kevin to go with me, but I hadn’t really felt comfortable. I’ve seen Kids too many times to go through such a cathartic experience as an HIV test with just a friend. I don’t know.

I redecorated my room today. I took down a lot of the papers and random stuff that was up on my walls and reduced it to a few tastefully chosen posters and carefully placed art and vinyls. I like it. It looks very classy, but I need to work on one wall as it looks really bare and I can never find anything to put on it. I took down my Christmas lights that I had around my room and used thumbtacks to make the fake spider webs that normally hang from my ceiling to stick to the ceiling instead of hang. I realized today that what I need to do is move furniture, and I’m not in the mood for such a massive redesign. I have this cute little alcove above the head of my bed with my Power Mac G5 poster above it, and I’m not sure how I would preserve it if I were to move my bed. I have been obsessively cleaning lately. Maybe it’s my subconscious reacting to my fears of viruses. I have one more wall to redecorate, but I’m not sure whether I want my Power Mac G4 Cube poster to be the centerpiece or my big painting.

I did do one sort of cool thing. I hung these flamingo lights that my dad’s girlfriend gave me on my last birthday from my ceiling over my computer so they make a little alcove of cute lights around my monitor. It’s just enough like to see my keyboard, which is all that I need. I still have a giant pile of stuff in the corner to go through, and at least it will keep me from thinking about my disappointment if my boss doesn’t let me take Friday off.

I can’t believe that it’s already 1 a.m. Well, I accomplished one thing today. I found out when the new semester starts at the college in Brookings. The last day for registration is January 13, but I want to get it done much sooner than that. If I don’t get Friday off, I’m going up there tomorrow to see when I can take the placement test. Actually, I’m going to do it no matter what because Brian doesn’t get off until 9 p.m.

Not only have I’ve been cleaning my room, I have done extensive work cleaning up, organizing, and backing up files on my computer. I had been meaning to set up regular backups for a few weeks ever since I realized that the ones I had previously scheduled weren’t working. So I went through and organized stuff (it took hours), set up all the rules for the backups, identified all the files that I need backup copies of, and the software should do its thing. I scheduled daily backups for important files like e-mail, and weekly ones for things like music and videos. So if one of my drives fail, I will still have all my data. If both fail within the span of a week I’m fucked, but the possibility of that is infinitesimally small.

Secretly I have been wanting to brag about my new boyfriend to my coworkers, but that is totally unprofessional and childish. I don’t know why, but I can’t banish my puerile desire to rub my happiness in other people’s faces. Oddly though, the subject actually came up today. Matt asked me what I was doing for the Fourth of July, and I mentioned that I was going to Eureka and then to Sacramento. He asked what I was going to do in Eureka, and I totally went blank. I wanted to say, ” Well, I met this guy down there and we’ve been going out for a few weeks and I think I’m going to go see him,” but what came out was ” I have some friends down there that I’m going to go see.” Was that a lie? I am such a completely “out” person, but I just feel that it is entirely unprofessional to talk about sex at work, even indirectly. So am I closeted? I don’t know. Maybe I felt weird saying it because I had a mini-crush on him when he started working there. Oh well. I’m not going to lose any sleep about it, I’m not closeted.

Before I forget, here’s my schedule of events for this weekend:

Thursday: (if I get Fri off) drive to Eureka, make out with Brian until tomorrow morning.
Friday: peel myself away from Brian and drive to Sac.
Sat: party!
Sun: party even harder!
Mon: drive back to Eureka, hang out with Brian some more, probably go back to CC the next morning.

I had a bunch of weird problems with my audioblog, so I don’t think there are going to be any posts from the road. Well actually, I might as well call the damn thing to see if it works. Oh cool! It does! Except the podcast will be above this post, so you’ll already know…darn. Well the suspense entertained me at least. I really need to get to bed. One last thing: I have been reading this book that Kelly got me for Christmas, Pulp by Charles Bukowski, and it is incredibly funny. I love it!

Be sure to click on the “audioblog” link on the top of this page to view my latest audio posts while I’m driving/partying on my trip. Due to some incompatibility issues, they won’t appear on this page immediately after they are recorded. Updates will only be on the audblog page this weekend. Have a great new year’s, my loyal readers!

we have 200 couches so you can sleep tight 3

> Interpol – PDA

I’m talking to my friend from China, Phoenix Wang. I don’t know whether that’s his real name, but that’s what it says on the screen so I guess I have to accept it. He’s telling me that in China a lot of people are starting to celebrate Christmas instead of the normal holiday which is their spring festival. I asked him about what happens during the festival, and it sounded really cool:

[A]ll the family member[s] get together for dinner and sitting together before the tv… and in the stree[t] there were all the people wear[ing] their best clothes ..they went to their friend[s'] or relative’s house.. [to] say ”happy new year .. and people will be more friendly during that festival…no matter who you are ..if you knock on the door of other people ….all the people are welcomed during that period.

That sounds like a wonderful alternative to Christmas, but probably just because I’m overdosed on all the commercialized excesses of our holiday. He goes on:

and we also have something interesting customs about this festival..such as..we are told not to say any unlucky words in the frist day of the year(according to our canlender)..and we are told not to use knife or other shape things …and our children will get money from there father or mother or their relatives…’cause people believe give money to there children is a very lucky thing to them

I am absolutely in love with Skype! Things like this make me really happy for the future. If everyone can just easily talk with anyone anywhere in the world, maybe we will all eventually realize that we are all part of the human race and that borders and wars don’t mean anything anymore. I mean, if everyone in America had an online friend in Afghanistan, would we have bombed the hell out of it? Of course not. It’s only a public relations disaster if the dead women and children are caught on tape.

I really need to be doing important stuff, but I feel incredibly tired. I needed to clean my room and wash my sheets today, so I shouldn’t feel guilty for doing that instead of working on my long-term problems.

Basically, it all boils down to this: is my dad going to let me live here long enough to finish my degree? I really don’t think so. I need to move within the next six months. I’m going to have to give up everything I know, quit the only job I’ve ever had, and move to some strange city.

This makes me very scared.

I hope I make contact with Brian again this week. I’ve been counting on seeing him this weekend and it would really make my life a lot less fun if I didn’t get to see him.

My best online friend ever, Kieth, is telling me his sexy tales of seducing hot boys in SoCal. I want to be him! I really hope that he is making it all up, because it makes my life seems so pathetic in comparison.

Is it bad that I’m measuring my lifetime success in how many hot guys I’ve had sex with?

Well if life has no meaning, we have to come up with our own meanings. And I guess sex, something that we are born for, just seems a natural obsession. I don’t know. I’m a total slut, but it’s not like I mean to be. I just haven’t met anybody that shares my love of technology. You know, I actually found myself writing Brian off in my brain as some sort of short-term emotional pacifier simply because he did not own a computer. That is such crap. I can’t believe I think of these things. Was I just trying to justify promiscuity? I live in a moral vacuum. The only thing that’s important in my world is ideas, not orifices.

I’m tired. I should stop talking. I accomplished nothing today, as usual. But I’ve promised myself that tomorrow I’m going to drive up to Brookings and see what’s going on with my classes.

I can think of anything to say to Mr. Phoenix Wang. I’m tired. And I can’t exactly concentrate on our conversation with his cuteness Keith deluging me with sexiness. I feel like a terrible person today because I spent so much money. I blew through all that extra cash I made from that second job. Well, I guess it could be worse. I could be fiddling around with my old headset that doesn’t work and only succeed frustrating myself. I guess the thing that I am most incensed about is the sheer volume of money that I wasted on restaurant food. I also need to cancel my Netflix. I just don’t have a comfortable place to watch them. Maybe I should play them from my iPod onto the TV in the living room. That would be cool, but would involve hours of transcoding. For once, the prospect of my computer doing some serious numbercrunching doesn’t make me excited, just vaguely tired. Oh well. I should probably get to bed. For those of you needing a bit of a laugh this post-holiday season, click here.

Sand and Fog 0

I was going to attempt to accomplish a bunch of important things today, but I got so distracted in little things like cleaning my bathroom and washing my sheets that now I have nothing to do but watch House of Sand and Fog for the first time and wait for each load of laundry to finish. Well, you can’t win them all. At least I didn’t get high and eat potato chips all day. No matter how my day goes, I can always imagine one that is less productive and more depressing. I’m thinking that that’s a good skill to have. Maybe I should have been gregarious and gone out to lunch with Misty. Eh, then I would have a dirty bathroom…and that would be gross. I should start having movie/laundry nights more often, this is quite fun!

audiogasm 0

This day just keeps getting better and better! I got my new USB headset from Plantronics, and it is incredible! I also found a setting in my voice recognition program that has a slider where you can go from fast response (the program gives you words on the screen quickly) to a setting where it will take the most amount of time to process your speech, but it will give you the most accurate results. I turned a slider all the way to highest accuracy, and the words appear on the screen with the same speed as before. Having an powerful system pays off yet again!

The recognition quality is incredible! I haven’t had a single error in the transcription yet. This headset is USB, so there is absolutely no interference in the signal. It’s perfectly digital from the start. I think I have reached audio nirvana. This is a perfect excuse to watch a movie with my new headphones.

I will write epic poems chronicling the glory of Plantronics (the microphone gods), and Nuance (the company that makes Dragon NaturallySpeaking). Woot!

Of course you know I’m going to be posting every 15 minutes now.

we run this city 0

> Mount Sims – 9 Voltz
> Miss Kittin & The Hacker – DJ Song

Even though I didn’t expect to, I had a wonderful day! Well, it’s not over yet, I shouldn’t judge it. Work was very relaxing. My wrists didn’t hurt very much, but I worked as quickly as I could. Apparently one of my coworkers has some sort of infection, so I wanted to be sure to get out of there before she arrived. The last thing I need is to get sick.

As soon as I got home, I discovered that Joe was online and we talked for a bit. I felt sort of lame that I had to hang up with him because Brian called me, but Brian doesn’t have a phone so I guess it wasn’t so rude. I still feel bad though. I’m eating some delicious oatmeal I made, and contemplating watching a movie… but I really need to get some stuff done before everything closes. Brian called me earlier but two minutes into the conversation the line went dead and it said “call ended.” I had just been launching into the whole Kevin’s comment saga when that happened, and I was sort of sad that I wasted my minutes discussing something so pedestrian. Crescent City drama bores me. I refuse to participate in it.

I ran into Misty after I got off work earlier today. I went over to her house for 20 minutes or so. She has a new boyfriend, I guess, and they’ve been going out for as long as I’ve known Brian. The house was filled with the sounds of children and there was furniture and children everywhere. She didn’t introduce me to her new boyfriend or to the husband of the girl that’s living there. I felt really out of place, so I said goodbye and went home. The house has a totally different vibe to it now.

I need to get out of Crescent City.

I just feel tired today even though I got enough sleep. Before everything closes, I need to make a list of crap that I have to do and then do it.

Set up an appointment to get new glasses
Call to see when the next semester starts
watch all my Netflix movies and send them back
start a new novel
work on the web site

Maybe I will take a mini nap before I get started. That sounds like a good idea.