This morning the power went off 10 minutes before I was supposed to get up. I woke up anyway and halfway through my morning routine, the power had come back on. So of course I got in my car and drove to work. Big mistake. The power was out all over Crescent City and there was absolutely nothing to be done at my job since everything is produced on our computers. I waited around for 20 minutes or so listening to the Insipid Coworker of Doom complain about how no one wanted to come to her Halloween party that she had planned. If I had a costume, I would’ve planned to make an appearance. Possibly. But of course just to mentally mock her. Anyway, I went home, caught up on my blogs, watched some Sean Cody, worked on my painting, etc. By now it’s around two o’clock and I woke up at eleven. I called the office at 2:30 to make sure they weren’t back up and nobody picked up, so with nothing else to do I watched an episode of Star Trek. Around 4 p.m. they called to say that the power was back on. Unfortunately, everything was working but the Internet. We use it for everything…it was such an infuriating day. It’s nice to work in an office where you can curse to your heart’s content. Well, I didn’t do any cursing, but my coworkers articulated my feelings very well. There’s something about being on hold for two hours that will make anyone snap.

Well, long story short, it was very hectic but I got everything done and ended up driving the pages on CD-ROM up to the factory in Smith River (due to the lack of Net). It was actually sort of fun and am glad it happened on a day where I didn’t have anything else to do. I’m really glad I have the Internet at my house though. I don’t know what I would do. Well, I would be writing this… but I wouldn’t be able to post it. And that would be a hollow blogging victory.

Ben was online when I got home, he instant messaged me and said that he had seen me driving the on my trip to Smith River. He didn’t have anything to talk about and from the incredibly long pauses between his responses, it was obvious that either he didn’t care about the convo or was talking to 20 different people. Probably both. I got angry when he gave me this bullshit four minutes into the convo about having to work on his halloween costume, and blocked him. However, I didn’t really block him; I just hit delete because I wasn’t really thinking straight. So I accomplished nothing. As usual.

So here I am back at my house with power, the Internet and television but nothing to do with any of them. I would go work on my painting again, but I already did stuff do it today and it would be a bit of overkill to work on it twice in one day. There’s really not much else I can tweak. I just have to let this layer dry before I can put the second part on it. Perhaps I should start Ender’s Game.

Oh yeah, I really wanted to talk a bit more about how that last novel I read and that movie I saw last night. *spoiler alert* so okay, in the end of the Neuromancer novel you have the protagonist Case (the Neo character), Molly (the Trinity character) and Malecum (the egregiously flat character that is the pilot of this their ship). They are on this giant orbital space station called Straylight which was made by this corporation called Tessier-Ashpool. This company made artificial intelligences to protect their data, and one of the members of the family that controlled the company created two artificial intelligences who she wanted to make sentient, Neuromancer and Wintermute. Wintermute has been behind the scenes the entire book, guiding the characters into this whole situation, but Neuromancer is like, the personality of the AI. They are both engineered so they can never know the other one’s name, except for if it is spoken into this crystalline head in the center of the Straylight station which Wintermute thought would erase his program.

So eventually Wintermute and Neuromancer get into some sort of fight in the Matrix while Case (Neo) is trying to steal something from the Tessier-Ashpool corporate network, and they mesh with this Chinese virus and Case’s (Neo’s) construct to become a whole sentient artificial being. In the end, Case (Neo) sees the new AI and talks to it, and it says that it isn’t in the matrix anymore, that it is the matrix. It’s an interesting ending, especially because you end up seeing that the AI looks exactly like Case. It also says that it has been communicating with another artificial intelligence in another galaxy, which would make an interesting (albeit totally lame) continuance for the matrix trilogy. I’m sure in 2032 they will remake all of them with new special effects a la Star Wars.

I have much less to say about that movie The Dreamers. It starts as a classic bildungsroman, with the hackneyed plot of the American student in France who ends up learning all sorts of things about life. But the thing I found so disappointing about this movie was that the characters don’t learn any lessons. They don’t really even get a chance to. They live in this apartment for a month and get all incredibly intimate and such, but right when it seems like something’s going to change and the characters are going to have to face all their problems, the movie just ends with this shot of policemen running in to fight this mob of Communist protesters. And that’s it. We never learn what happens. It seems like it was the beginning of a movie that was three times as long…and the characters never really changed. The beginning half (where it seemed like there might actually be some drama) was good though.

Well, I’d better go look for something to do. I hope Misty calls me. I’ve got her hooked on this delicous cherry brandy. Well, the discovery of the wonders of cherry brandy is actually quite a funny anecdote. I’m lying, but it’s an anecdote about me and Joe so I’m going to play it up as much as I want. We were hanging out at my house, desperately wanting some alcohol (we were such lushes) when we came upon this half empty bottle of cherry brandy that I had bought years ago to make a Black Forest cake. After much careful deliberation, we decided unanimously to make it into screwdrivers. It was SOOO delicous. Cherry and orange. Heavenly. So last time we were at Safeway, I told Misty about how good it was then of course she had to try it. And now she loves it. Do I have good taste or what?

I’ve been meaning to read the Wikipedia entry on the different types of alcohol and how they are all produced and what the differences are (sherry vs brandy vs cognac, etc.) I feel like a fool not knowing such things and being a guy. I think another part of it stems from me just not being a beer person. Beer bores me. Maybe I just haven’t had anything that was so good, but I don’t see what all the fuss is about. When I want to get drunk, I don’t want to have to go through a bunch of beers. Just take a few shots of hard alcohol and you’re buzzed. It’s all about saving time. And then you can get back to the glory that is moments like these.

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.

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?

I feel vaguely hungry, but I don’t know for what. I finished the amount of sections in my math book that it would take to not be behind (1.5 chapters), but I’m still behind a week’s worth of work. It’s not that the work is difficult at all (I just finished the lengthy and completely pointless chapter on absolute value). Let’s do some problems:

Find the opposite.

-4.

Hmm. I think I’m going to get out my calculator for this one.

Painstakingly writing out all of the pointlessly ridiculously stupid easy questions. On this one section, the question was the answer. You didn’t even have to do any work. Find the opposite of the opposite. Which is the number they give you. So for five minutes all I’m writing is:

15: 3 -> 3
16: -10 -> -10

Well, I guess I shouldn’t be complaining about how easy it is, I should have gotten a better grade on the stupid placement test.

Wednesday I will get more done, but I think I ate too much PEZ today. I kept bribing myself with it and I just couldn’t say no to the cute PEZ dispenser that my mom got me. Thomas left me a comment on my MySpace today. He didn’t say very much, but seemed interested in being friends. I sorta want to send him a message saying that I’m in Brookings every Thursday, but I’m not really sure if I want to hang out with him. He seems sort of immature. But then again, that’s just judging by his MySpace profile. And I have no idea how I come off in my profile. If the Internet has taught us anything, it’s that MySpace profiles are not a clear reflection of people’s personalities. I was all into that Philip K. Dick novel yesterday, and now I barely even care how it ends. I’m about 30 pages from finishing it, and I’m also about 20 pages from finishing Frankenstein. Maybe I should do that instead of surfing the Web.

I’ve only been surfing for like 15 minutes anyway. Matt sent me another e-mail wanting to know what’s going on with the web site, and I really don’t have time. Nor do I care. What he wants are like big upgrades, things I don’t have time to do. Well, it’s not so much time as my wrists hurt and I don’t care. And my Internet leisure time has definitely been curtailed, so to fit in all that Web surfing and blog reading, I have to stop working on my web site and his web site, at least until this damn math class is over. I should go in the living room and find something to eat that will assuage my hunger. I just don’t know what I want. My dad made some sort of pork roast thing, but I know that sandwiches made out of that never taste good and are always filled with blood vessels and the like.

Apple is supposed to make some world shattering announcement tomorrow, and as soon as I wake up this morning, it’s going to be all over the Internet. At least I hope. I usually leave the house around 10:30 a.m., and the special developers conference starts at 10. I hope those people bring their damn mobile phones and laptops so they can leak out the information immediately. Or I guess I could watch the webcast, but I don’t think it’s going to be live…and for some reason the broadcasts rarely work on my connection, even though I have three megabit downstream.

Should I send Thomas a message? Eh, maybe later tonight when I’m really bored. I’m going to go into the living room to ignore Matt’s e-mail and work on my math some more until a show I want to watch comes on (probably never).