July 16th, 2002:

breathe daniel, breathe. breathe daniel, breathe. mind over matter. breathe daniel, breathe. mind over matter. I will control the situation I am in, it will not control me.

P.S.: In case it wasn’t clear, this post has very little to do with “quitting” smoking aside from the fact that the same principals can be applied in that situation as well.

I just checked my account balance. I consumed over $1,000 this weekend. Insurance payments, groceries, housewares, birthday parties, etc. My $548.00 prorated rent check (which I realized they OVERcharged me and I have to go bitch about) has yet to clear, and neither has my $544.76 truck payment.

Broadband now, on top of not giving me a credit for the past 4 months of service like they said they would, also charged me $297.69 for their cable modem. I called them and their representative, David, told me that he was the one who spoke to me when I cancelled, and that he told me I had to mail in the modem (which I am certain that he did not). He also told me that he never got the fax from the Mansions saying I moved out on 3/31/2002 which is why they didn’t give me the credit. I am going to go to the mansions myself, get the paperwork, get the modem, and personally drop it off at Broadband Now and not leave until I have a check in my hands.

I am getting poorer and poorer by the second. I am doing everything I can to not let this happen, and yet it is happening. And I was doing SO good two weeks ago. Looks like I am going to have to tighten my belt even more, pinch more pennies, deposit the checks I have in my wallet (Emily, Justin… they are yours), collect owed money, and pray that everything works out okay. I am also going to cancel my cellphone service in the next few days and get something MUCH cheaper. As cool as Nextel is, it’s just too damn expensive. Especially now that I have to have a home phone.

I looked into selling my truck and buying something cheaper, but that is looking like more and more of a bad idea, so, I think I may attempt to refinance. I know, that’s a bad idea, but, when I can go through this much money this quickly, I need as much as I can possibly get.

This really, really, really, really, really, really sucks. Bad!

My list of things to do is growing out of hand and yet all I do is sit here and type them out, as thought making this list will some how make the items on the list go away:

• Get an alignment on my truck.
  
• Balance/Rotate the tires on my truck.
  
• Get my truck’s oil changed (like about 2000 miles ago).
  
• Get the rear drivers side window replaced with a window of the proper color by the dumbshits at Toyota of Irving possibly paying another $72 for the installation.
  
• Get a detail job on my truck. Since I’m not a smoker there is no sense in having my truck smell like I am.
  
• Do 147 loads of laundry so that ALL my dirty clothes are clean.
  
• Move my dresser, two TVs, a night stand, a plastic filing cabinet, two guitars, a djembe, a trash can, a computer chair, a HUGE pile of clothes, and other assorted things from my old apartment to the new one.
  
• Move four kitchen chairs and possibly a futon from my parents house to the new apartment.
  
• Throw away or pack away neatly all of the boxes I unpacked.
  
• Take apart this wall-mounted storage unit that I bought at Target that will not work even though I thought it would, so that I can return it to Target and get my money back.
  
• Mop the kitchen, dining room, bathroom and laundry room.
  
• Acquire and install shelves in the laundry room.
  
• Put together a desk.
  
• Establish a plan for getting a phone jack for Internet access (Dialup or DSL) in the den. This may involve purchasing Wireless Ethernet equipment in order to avoid running a phone wire under the carpet.
  
• Rearrange the living room.
  
• Attempt to acquire two additional pieces of seating furniture as well as a comfortable chair.
  
• Attempt to acquire two moderately identical, rather tall bookshelves in poor (read: cheap) condition to be repainted by Jess and I.
  
• Setup (or sell, ha!) my home theater equipment.
  
• Setup my desktop machine.
  
• Setup or purchase a NAT firewall/router.
  
• Setup my DSL connection.
  
• Bring Jaclyn’s bed to her dad’s house.
  
• Bring Jaclyn’s dog to her dad’s house.
  
• Bring Jaclyn’s cat to my house.
  
• Bring Jaclyn’s dog to the vet.
  
• Bring Jaclyn’s cat to the vet.
  
• Setup the den.

I’m sure there is tons more that I am missing.

I currently pay $95/mo for internet services outside of my personal connection (i.e. webhosting, FTP, IMAP mail, etc). I host the sites of several friends, a few businesses, my personal sites, and a site for my father all on the same account, and all free of charge.

I am considering purchasing an unmanaged dedicated server, as opposed to what I have now. The cost is $99.95/mo with a $250 setup fee. With this configuration, the amount of CPU power, disk space, alloted memory and software possibilities all increase drastically.

Here are the down-sides:

1) I will have to do backups myself. This can be as simple as a script that just copies from one HDD to another during specified intervals, or can involve offloading the data to another site for safe storage. For another $50/mo, software disk mirroring will be provided for me.

2) With my current configuration, I have unlimited bandwidth. I will be limited to 50GB/mo with a cost of $35 for each additional 10GB of transfer needed, when pre-paid. I am uncertain what my current usage rates are to know whether I would exceed 50GB or not. I doubt it.

3) I will have to move everything. Enough said.

4) I will have to configure and install all the software I want, and I will be responsible for upgrading it as time goes forward. This can be considered a good thing, but it can also be very bad. This may also mean that migrating to the new server could take some time, as I will have to setup all of the software and copy over all the data before I can make the switch. During this time period, I will have to pay for BOTH servers, which means, at least ONE month, I will pay $200.

Of course the configurability of my current hosting company is very good, but still nothing compared to having root level access to my very own machine.

Is the move worth it? You tell me.

It hurts that I
didn’t even have
one piece
of that
German Chocolate cake.
It hurts to know
how much trouble
you went through to get it
and yet
I didn’t even
get to taste
the frosting.
But, most of all,
it hurts that I
know I’ll probably never
get another one
from you.