August, 2001:

Saturday night farrisgoldstein> and I trekked to the long-forgotten land of Arlington to meet .

On our ride back, farrisgoldstein> and I ended up in heated discussion regarding relationships. I had just finished relaying the events of a time when a good friend of mine told me that I was DESTINED to end up with someone like an ex-girlfriend of mine: a manipulative, ego-smashing, constantly upset, unagreeable, yet somehow still caring and loving bitch that I dated for over two years. The look on ‘s face, and her reaction to this statement was nothing but refreshing.

On our journey home, farrisgoldstein and I continued to discus our relationships and the troubles we’ve seen. He and I have been though a lot of the same shit with a lot of the same type of people. It’s nice to talk with someone who understands without any explanation. Of course, even though he is better looking than I am, my charm surpasses his ten-fold; not to mention penis size.

I believe he said it best when he wrote:

Sometimes when he and I hang out with other people, it’s like we’re some kind of team just kinda sittin’ back and enjoying the show.

It’s been a good morning so far. Although the taste of stale coffee and cigarettes still remains on my morning ridden breath, I feel accomplished.

At eight this morning I received a phone call from my boss. He was calling to tell me that the system I had spent all weekend monitoring and repairing due to other system changes was not functioning properly. After several phone calls and a lot of poking around, I found that report was founded on nothing but user error and that the system was functioning properly.

In the course of my research this morning, I caught brief discussion of all the other systems that ARE failing due to programming mistakes. And as I watch the access log for my system continue to be filled with successful requests I can only smile and feel good inside.

Yesterday afternoon I received the following page from my boss:

Thanks for the updates. I know you’ve had a long week-end. Take another day off on my next week-end for a four day weekend. Nice job.

Anyone wanna go to Arizona (or any other of these contiguous United States)?

On rare occasion choosing between refreshing conversation and sleep is a difficult choice to make. This evening was one of those occasions.

I have a new cell phone number. It is: 972.670.7587. Please make a note of it.

Last night I made Banana Bread.

I am constantly distracted by trying to find a better way to do something. Why take out the trash when I can design a mechanical arm to catapult it down to the road every Monday, Wednesday and Friday? Why vacuum my apartment when I can genetically engineer an anteater to eat dirt and dust instead? Why water the plants when I can put mini sprinklers in each of them and run tubes throughout the apartment and put them on a timer?

The problem is that in the meantime, the trash takes over the kitchen, the dust mites kick me out of my own home, and all the plants die. At work I have a project that seems to never end because, instead of just doing it, I am trying to make it do itself.

It is a constant battle between putting in a lot of time now, or putting in a little bit of time from now until eternity.

The truly damned is the lazy man who thinks before he works.

Anyone know why this doesn’t do what I think t should do:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print POOP::printversion();
print “\n”;

package POOP;
use vars qw($VERSION);

$VERSION = “0.1.1″;

sub printversion {
return “VER:” . $POOP::VERSION;
}

1;

chupacabra:/var/log/apache# zgrep “default.ida” access.log* | wc -l
3415

Blech.

I was scared
uncomfortable
worried
and I wanted to talk about it
to anyone really
but preferably to you
and within three minutes
of talking this morning
you were pointing your questions
lining them up
to jump down my throat
and making it impossible
for me to say a word
and so
I will handle it alone

Last night farrisgoldstein>, , and I rented “15 minutes” and watched it over at my place. Stupid movie, don’t bother watching it.

There are times when I wish my door bell would ring, and when I open it, I would find an attractive, and mostly naked, woman standing outside it who would invite herself it, and after a few minutes of silence she would state plainly and softly, “if you call in sick to work, I’ll take the rest off”.