Category: Uncategorized

Give me ideas for what to do this evening.

All roommates are gone, and I have a big empty house to myself, an excess of fare on a bart ticket (more than enough to get to sf & back), no real desire to play video games at the moment. I could go for dinner in the city, soma clubbing, hanging out watching Taken or some dvd, something lowkey, and at least semi-social would be nice.

I’ll be reading material for my paper until I get a comment or call suggesting something better to do with a friday evening. 😉

So, this project has been more or less torpedo’ed by a project manager who has trouble distinguishing between his ass and his elbows, but that’s okay. It sucks alot more for Ro. I’m just along for the ride, really. I should be employed through march or so, which should give me plenty of time to find a job. I should search here in addition to checking in with the Uncle on his company.

Ro will probably have been my longest running employer by the time all is said and done. He’s already number 2 (having lasted more than a year). The switchover is mid-january.

Anyway, on friday we were out in Albuquerque last week, getting data from the plane, hard drive problems having been fixed. I flew back here without my laptop power supply. It’s been a week, and still our data aquisition system master has not burned the data to a few dvd’s and shipped it off to us. (with my power supply packed in it, though he knows where it is). Grrrr.

In other electronics related news, our dryer, which was failing to heat has had both its circuit breaker, and the melted wire behind it replaced. So, our house is less likely to burn down, and I can do laundry again. Yay. =)

Taking six years to graduate, while taking classes at an achingly slow pace, and doing progressively worse in them, made me wonder. Bouncing over the U.S. with no apparent rhyme or reason, trying out jobs the way some people try out brands of deodorant, and piling up mounds of credit card debt, also had me suspecting there’s something wrong with me. What’s “wrong” with me is that I’m still building my sense of self. I got a late start, and while there’s some suckage involved, that just part of the game. And I intend to walk away with a sense of the rules, as winning is irrelevant. =)

I came to the realization that my notion of “experimenting with commitment” was rather naive. I’ve found that a good commitment is an expression of something that is clearly known. While an experiment is all about getting to know something better. They’re fundamentally different modes. Commitment will come if and when I’m ready for it.

Assuming that I’m not to blame for anything in particular that could possibly be my fault is mindset I might wish to cultivate.

I know I have a tendency to premature attachments. Particularly over the net. Or meeting in some other largely unstructured circumstance. Filling in the blanks with my own hopes. There are many guys whose company would bring me happiness with their pants on. Probably, alot of them wouldn’t work so well with the pants off. Yet I seem to be shooting, balls to the walls, for someone to share my bed with. Including trying to recruit the occasional wholly unsuitable individual. And ignoring potential female friendage. Clearly the road to optimal happiness. Hmm, must ponder alternatives.

Stupid cultural obsession with sex/dating/exclusive romantic love. Stupid me for not shedding annoying cultural biases. =)

Two housewarmings in one evening. Started off at ‘s place in oakland. Food, and stuff. Chatting with people. Went with Simon and Ro, had a pretty good time.

Ro drove me to the MacArthur bart station, before heading off in search of SIGBEER west (think SIGGRAPH, if you don’t get it, don’t worry, it’s a geek thing). Bandit told them about it from ABQ. I heard later that they found no evidence of it. Anyway, I hopped on the train to the city, happening to run into Joe Brooks, co-officer of ALLIES from my days at cmu. We chatted (so much for me reading more on zoning economics), but got along fairly well. Then I got off at civic center, walked to ‘s early so I could help setup and stuff. I also got some quality time with Emery’s lesbian mom.

I had a great time at Temery’s place. Lots of friendly happy gay couples, straight neighbors, etc. I turned on my little extrovert in the middle of the evening. It petered out at some point, and I just sat in an out of the way corner for a bit to recoup. I was kinda wondering whether Josh would show, and he did, along with Anthony, and Cornell-Mike. I managed to go through the evening without spilling a drink on anyone, so that’s a plus. Though I did have a brief cessation of consciousness.

Grabbed bart back, and there was this 40’s-50’s gay male couple that just settled into the seat across from me one half laying down on the chest of the other. They started off in an argument about whether the place they’d crossed really was a crosswalk, and then got onto quieter topics, but there was just this casual, un-self-conscious, comfortable vibe they had to them.

I kinda wish Ro could have come. It would have been good for him. He’s starting to think the sorts of relationships that I saw so many of last night simply aren’t possible. He’s starting to think about getting back together with his long-term female ex, and moving to los alamos (where many of his friends are). Ah well, his life.

So, I got about 40 hours in during my 4 days in albuquerque. About half of those hours were spent twiddling my thumbs at the airport. Though I did go up briefly in an airplane, and do some total busy work. A sad testimony, but this did result in me feeling better about the whole operation.

Add in my per diem for food, and a quite respectable sum will come out of it. This is good because Simon mentioned last night that he didn’t recall ever getting the security deposit for the last place from me. Turns out he’s completely correct. D’oh! $522.07 that I do not currently have. In fact, the only roommate I do not owe money to the tune of multiple hundreds of dollars is Shannon. I need to find another job so that I can negotiate a higher rate, or just haul my ass out of debt.

My uncle is the ceo of a little software company, http://www.ulrichmedicalconcepts.com to run paperless medical offices. Other employees of this limited size company include my cousin, as a developer, and my aunt as a trainer (and some other Ulrich as a developer), out of seventeen total employees. My dad is also one of their customers. We were talking on the phone the other day as I was getting over the romantic disappointment I’d set myself up for, and he was talking about how one of his partners had been screwed in the Zanesville office when the new lexington office, which held the central server went offline. We then got started talking about synchronizing multiple servers and so forth and so on. I said it was complicated, but doable, and I have to admit, at that moment, a little light went on, and I thought that I could move out to KY, work on this with my extended family, and possibly pull my ass out of debt. In the same phone call, I’d arranged to join my parents for thanksgiving (they’re buying the tickets, shit, need to get back to them on that), and we’d go down to visit said uncle, along with other members of the extended family, including granny, my sole surviving grandparent.

Which leads to other news. My maternal grandfather bit it shortly before I headed off to ABQ. Turns out he was something of a jerk to me and my sibs, I haven’t seen him in over a decade, and a year or two after I’d last seen him, in response to a question regarding why we hadn’t seen him, mom declared that he’d abused her, which I totally buy, and that she didn’t want to expose us to him. I was fine with that. I didn’t go to the funeral.

I also read more for the upcoming class than I have for any prior day of class. It’s nice to know that I can do it, but kinda sad to think that I have to be somewhere that there’s nothing to do and no one I know to get those kinds of results. Maybe I should go to Madison or Cornell for grad school. (assuming of course I got in. I could apply to Ohio U for similar rural-ness with a greatly increased chance of acceptance).

cut for your convenience

Turns out if you applied within the past two years (I did), you can submit a much abbreviated application to get into Cal. Most notably, I need not submit new letters of recommendation. YAY!

Still getting one from Ro. Still also need them to apply to other places. But at least…

Addenda:

– Cal has the soonest application date by three weeks. This takes considerable pressure off of me. Whew. Time to read up
– Will be getting photos for a passport after I get back from albuquerque. Been meaning to to do it for awhile, simply running out of excuses not to. =)

Yesterday started off reluctantly getting out of someone else’s bed. No nookie, not much cuddling, mostly just alot of traffic noise kept me up. Drop off video, on my bike to the gym, workout, psych myself up to do some work, come out and find my rear bike tire flat. Work is about a 10 minute bike ride from the gym. More like a 40 minute walk. I take my bike over to missing link, where I find it doesn’t open for another hour and a half. (not terribly unexpected, it was before 9am & all). I am so not dragging my bike up the hill at this point. Go home, and waste the rest of the morning.

Leave the house around 2:30 in the afternoon, do some shopping for bike bits (a seat that won’t damage my sex life, a new tire, a new inner tube, no head light (doh)), and a frame-attaching tire pump. Also took my wiggly front wheel down to their shop storefront, where they tightened it up in less than 5 minutes. Spend some time in the basement fucking with my new purchases. Manage to bust a hole in the new innertube (don’t ask me how, I only noticed the hole as I was trying to pump it up. Also broke the hooky bits off of both my tire levers (post hole discovery). Patched old innertube (it had a smaller hole). Put it on with new tire. Hopefully fewer flats in my future. Went for a little spin around the block. Much better. Take my laptop apart, and add the third penny (plus duct tape). Hopefully no flexing of the screen casing will ever be required to keep the damn thing working (in preparation for upcoming travel).

Unlocked Dr Mario in Super Smash Bros Melee. Finished off event battle #30. (strangely, even after simon finished off the horde of puffballs, completing battles 1-30, we still don’t have 31-40. Ah well.

Going to albuquerque monday morning. Through thursday. We’re doing some flight simulations for the whole ranging mess. Fortunately no class on tuesday. Unfortunately, the following tuesday, I’m presenting on the economics of zoning. And I volunteered to give sort of an overview on the topic (5-10 minutes is the plan). (I plan on a brief foray into the history of zoning, including why it was put into place, and some samples of typical zoning legislation, and the briefest glimpse as to criticisms leveled against it.) My compatriots then get to argue whether we should scrap zoning entirely.

Then, on the following monday I need to have written my homelessness paper. Also, cal’s application deadline is december 15th. I haven’t even checked into other places yet. Need to write up a letter of recommendation for Ro to rubberstamp, and another one to go through the berkeley free clinic approval process. Fortunately, Lai-San (aclu volunteer coordinator in pittsburgh) has offered to write her own, which brings me up to three recommendations.

I hate marketing myself.

Funkity funk funk. Go for a bike (and be exhausted by the time Gymnast-Patrick’s bday party rolls around) or go in to work, and be lonely and probably grouchy. Or maybe start work on the recommendation letter drafts. Hmmmm.

Princess! The river holds the trout;
so does the world take care of me.
And if you do not choose to see
that what we are, we choose to be
It’s hard, but is all one to me.