March, 2004:

Wow. The “sex/purity meme”:http://revjim.net/item/9956/ I posted is going around pretty quick (with my modifications, yay!). Mostly in “other” journals or as friends-only/protected posts (which is probably where I should have put mine).

I’m surprised, however, at one statistic. There are several women who’ve participated in the meme who are not bi-sexual, nor are they 100% hetero-sexual. They are, I guess, bi-curious. The interesting statistic is that all of these women (so far) have stated that they either already have or would kiss another girl, engage in “heavy petting” and have sex with another girl. Yet they all stated that they would NEVER have oral sex with another woman.

That’s interesting in and of itself. However, when I couple that information with my own personal knowledge of myself (which should certainly be noted somewhere other than “here”) its very surprising. Don’t knock it until you try it, girls.

Inspired by the popular drinking game, this is one meme that seems fun to fill out, so I’ll do it.

“babycola”:http://livejournal.com/~babycola/ posted this “in her journal”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/babycola/340495.html. I’ve decided to adapt it a bit.

First, I’ve added a few more “I’ve nevers” to the list… just to make it dirtier. Secondly, I’ve added one addional mark: I’ve never but I would.

Leave it blank (_) if you’ve done it. Mark it with an ex (X) if you’ve never done it. Mark it with an oh (O) if you’ve never done it, but would.

(_) I’ve never been drunk
(_) I’ve never smoked pot
(O) I’ve never been tied up
(_) I’ve never been caught masturbating
(_) I’ve never kissed a member of the opposite sex
(_) I’ve never kissed a member of the same sex
(X) I’ve never had anal sex with a member of the opposite sex
(X) I’ve never had anal sex with a member of the same sex
(_) I’ve never had oral sex with a member of the opposite sex
(X) I’ve never had oral sex with a member of the same sex
(_) I’ve never been in love
(_) I’ve never rode in a taxi
(_) I’ve never been dumped
(X) I’ve never shoplifted
(_) I’ve never crashed a car
(X) I’ve never been in a fist fight
(O) I’ve never had a threesome (or moresome)
(_) I’ve never snuck out of my parents’ house
(X) I’ve never pissed myself
(X) I’ve never shit myself
(X) I’ve never tasted urine
(_) I’ve never been arrested
(_) I’ve never kissed a stranger
(_) I’ve never been handled by a stranger
(_) I’ve never had a one night stand
(_) I’ve never stolen from work/school
(_) I’ve never caught my parents having sex
(_) I’ve never gone out on a blind date
(_) I’ve never lied to a friend
(O) I’ve never been to Europe
(_) I’ve never skipped school
(X) I’ve never cut myself on purpose
(_) I’ve never been married
(X) I’ve never been divorced
(_) I’ve never had sex with more than one person within the same week
(X) I’ve never fantasized about a family member
(O) I’ve never had sex in a dressing room
(O) I’ve never had sex in a public bathroom
(O) I’ve never had sex outside
(O) I’ve never had sex in a car
(O) I’ve never had sex on a method of mass transportation (train, bus, plane)
(X) I’ve never cheated on a partner
(_) I’ve never tasted someone else’s cum
(_) I’ve never tasted my own cum
(_) I’ve never posed nude
(_) I’ve never gotten someone drunk just to have sex with them
(_) I’ve never flashed anyone
(_) I’ve never been flashed
(_) I’ve never received scars from a partner
(X) I’ve never received bruises from a partner
(_) I’ve never thrown up in public
(_) I’ve never had a crush on a teacher
(X) I’ve never purposely set a part of myself on fire
(_) I’ve never eaten sushi
(X) I’ve never been snowboarding
(X) I’ve never broken any bones
(O) I’ve never legally purchased pornography
(X) I’ve never cheated on a test
(O) I’ve never swapped partners with a friend
(_) I’ve never smoked a cigarette
(X) I’ve never done any psychotic drugs (LSD, Mushrooms, etc)
(X) I’ve never done any narcotic drugs (excluding pot) (Codine, Valium, etc)
(X) I’ve never done any stimulant drugs (Speed, Cocaine, etc)
(_) I’ve never had sex while one partner was menstruating
(X) I’ve never been involved with golden showers
(O) I’ve never had my cum on someone else’s face
(_) I’ve never had someone else’s cum on my face
(_) I’ve never posted nude pictures of myself online in a public place
(X) I’ve never used food during a sexual act
(X) I’ve never used a vibrator on myself
(O) I’ve never used a vibrator on someone else
(X) I’ve never had a vibrator used on me by someone else
(X) I’ve never faked an orgasm
(X) I’ve never had sex with a member of the same sex
(_) I’ve never had sex with a member of the opposite sex
(X) I’ve never engaged in “heavy petting” with a member of the same sex
(_) I’ve never engaged in “heavy petting” with a member of the opposite sex
(_) I’ve never watched other people have sex (in person, not in porno/video/online)
(_) I’ve never watched someone else masturbate
(_) I’ve never willingly let someone else watch me masturbate

That’s good for now. It’s fun to make more of these up. It’s like the purity test… only as a journal/blog meme.

Thanks to some code from “Dougal”:http://dougal.gunters.org/, I now have a page devoted to displaying my up-to-date “Weight Loss Graph”:http://revjim.net/page/weightloss/.

Overall, since the beginning, I’m down 12.6 pounds. That’s a little more than 1 pound per week. I was doing better, but with all of the eating and going out with the inlaws in town, and my avoidance of anything low-carb during “that week”:http://revjim.net/page/weightloss/?start=2004-03-12&end=2004-03-21, I gained a few pounds.

I’ve realized that my body is way too sensitve to carbs when I am on the low-carb diet. My weight fluctuates (and increases) rapidly when I start eating carbs again, and that makes it difficult to acheive a weight I can maintain. So, I’m laying off the oure low-carb diet for a while. I’m still going to adhere to most of its rules, but I’m going to add some carbohydrate flexibility in. By eating a few more carbs than I was before, it should allow my body to handle additional carbohydrates a bit easier. In order to makeup for the lack of weight loss this will promote, I will be back in the Gym 5 days a week starting today. Don’t let me slack off, okay?

We had a pretty good time, I’d say. Jess’ parents were very nice and her brother was very kind. We spent most of our time driving around Dallas/Fort Worth seeing the sights.

In no particular order we went to Dealy Plaza/The Grassy Knoll, The West End, Deep Ellum, Fair Park, Mockingbird Station, Six Flags over Texas, Lone Star Park, The Stonebriar Mall, The Willowbend Mall, The Parks Mall, Sundance Square, The Fort Worth Botanical Gardens, The Dallas World Aquarium, The Fort Worth Water Gardens, and my parents house. We ate out often. One day, while I was at work, Jess and her mom made Cabbage Rolls (one of my favorite foods) for dinner. Jess’ mom was obsessed with HGTV and watched it every chance she had. We went to the Gym a few times. One time, her brother showed me how DumbBells worked and for the next three days I was sore as hell.

My parents got along with them very well and they even talked about visiting Canada this summer with us. Jess’ mom showed her true motherly colors with the repition of the phrase “chaque chose a sa place et chaque place a sa chose” (every thing has its place and every place has its thing).

It all made me think about how wonderful (and insane) it would be to live with a bunch of people. Relative, Friends, whomever, as one big family. It’s a good feeling — Everyone doing their part, everyone laughing and enjoying one another. I mentioned, several times, how much I would love to live near them in Canada if only I could get my foot in the door with some kind of business or job up there. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t seem possible. It’s hard enough to find work here, let alone try to make a brand new living in a new place in a new country.

Regardless of all that, I’m very glad they came, and am looking forward to visiting them in the Summer.

Yeah, my inlaws were in town all last week. But I’m not talking about that, yet.

It “looks like”:http://www.quicken.com/investments/news_center/story/?story=NewsStory/dowJones/20040318/ON200403182233001372.var&column=P0DFP Xbox prices will drop to $149 during the beginning of April. Add $50 for a mod-chip and you have a great machine for doing lots of things (in addition to playing video games) for about $200. If only the thing had a TV tuner so it could be used as a PVR as well.

I think, at this price, my loving wife might actually let me buy one. And that day will mark the day that I buy my first gaming console. Of course, I’ll probably never use it for gaming, but it’s still a monumental occasion.

I work for a large telecommunications company. One particular project that I have developed interfaces our company’s ordering systems with the ordering systems of other companies in order to allow the provisioning of “meet-point” orders (customer orders while terminate at locations served by different companies). My implementation is one the first among the large telecommunications companies to allow Public Internet based transfer of these orders in a secure fashion. Additionally, my implementation provides for the combining of ordering information from the newer transfer methods and from the older modem based order transmission systems. Because of this, I’ve work with quite a few of the RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) and small teams from many different companies know of the system I’ve developed.

Today I got a phone call from large IXC (IntereXchange Carrier) doing business as a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier). Because they are operating as a CLEC, they also have to receive these meet-point orders from RBOCs. I assumed, at first, that they wanted information on how to receive from us in a more efficent manner (something I can’t help them with as I only handle receiving not delivery). However, as the phone call progressed, the situation became clearer. This individual wanted me to sit on a conference call with his developers and give them the basic outline of how to build a system just like ours for themselves. They weren’t offering me a job, they weren’t offering to pay my company any money for this consultation, and they weren’t using this information to do business with us. They just wanted me to provide this information to them for free, despite the many hours of development time we put into the project.

What? I mean, I’d love it if this was a free world where competition wasn’t important and everyone looked out for eachother. But this is a capitalist society. Everyone is here to make money. Telecom companies are very competitive. Even the smallest advancement in technology can mean a huge lead in the market. Why would any company give away information that they paid good money to have researched or give away technology that they worked hard to produce when they receive absolutely no benefit for doing so? The Open Source, GPL, go free software guy inside me wants to be able to release something like this to the world. But, the truth of the matter is, most of the companies that would benefit from this software don’t have the resources or the knowledge to improve it and would, in most cases, be slimey enough to keep those changes to themselves if they did. And, even if that weren’t the case, they work for a large company just like I do. They know that, if I value my job, I can’t just give them this information. Our legal department would have me fired very quickly for such an action.

This is just absurd.

Two great people, both members of a “great band”:http://www.letyoursoulglow.com/, have asked me to take some publicity photographs for them. We’re supposed to do this on Sunday.

I’m honored that they would ask me to do this, and think that it will be a fun and rewarding experience. I’ve agreed to do it, but I am skeptical. Since most of my equipment was “stolen”:http://revjim.net/item/9788/, and I’ve yet to replace it with anything worth mentioning, it’s difficult for me to take on such a project with tools that don’t really do the job.

I’d prefer to shoot digital in this case, as, this way, I don’t have to charge them anything up front (no film or developing to pay for). Additionally, since they will most likely be used in print materials, digital medium is where the photographs will need to end up, in the end, anyway. But my Canon A80 isn’t really a good choice for a camera to use under these conditions. Granted, it takes great photographs, but isn’t exactly quick or accurate, two things that are needed in such a situation. So, it looks like I’ll be shooting with film. My N90s body wasn’t stolen, which I am thankful for, but all of my lenses were. I’ve since repurchased a 50mm f/1.8, but that’s all I have. And one lens at this focal length is most likely not enough to do the job.

They have offered to led me their Canon Elan something or other system. I don’t know how many lenses they have, or what range they cover, but it might be an option. However, I really don’t want to be using a NEW type of camera with untested lenses and metering systems on the day of a shoot. Not a great idea. And I don’t have the time or the money to do any tests with it before hand.

I’m going to look into renting a D100 and a lens or two. But, even with that, I end up in a position where I’ll have to charge them something up front to cover these costs, and I really don’t want to do that.

I’m still trying to talk Jess into letting me buy a D70, but, since they aren’t even being sold yet, and since that still wouldn’t solve my lens problem (unless I spent even more replacing lenses that were stolen as well) it doesn’t look like it’ll provide a solution for this Sunday.

Ugh. So I’m not sure what I’m going to do.

I realized that many of you have never seen the inside of our Plano apartment. Additionally, I have yet to show off the beautiful bedroom my parents got us for Christmas, the new living room furniture we bought, or the dining room table we recently made. So, enjoy these pictures of our apartment. I was tired when I took them, and it was at night, so I’m sorry if the quality isn’t the best.

Guess who is playing with BNL? Howie Day!