November 2003 Archives

i can't understand but i'm only meant to grow

i can drift anywhere, swim anywhere.. i know of land, but i can't see it

i've been looking forward to seeing this movie since i saw it advertised earlier in the week. i've seen it before but it touches me for reasons i'm not really sure.

i am very close to accomplishing what i've wanted to for several years -- near perfect separation of content and presentation using TAL, Python, and WebWare without Zope or a separate application server. i've been going strong on this since about 7 AM and the fruits of my labor are becoming more apparent as the minutes pass. when i'm complete, nick.org will use a completely different architecture. woo hoo!

i bought gifts for Aine, Shogo, and Eriko. I'm making Yasuko's gift now. I also picked up something for Katrina and myself. I don't know why but shopping makes me tired.... Zzzz

i'm really enjoying myself today. i slept in, talked to my parents on the
phone, and have been playing with my new computer setup. i'm a bit of a homebody
and a bit of a hermit. =)

"an accident of self organizing behavior" -- Kaya

Eriko is working on a play with some d00d and I keep hearing his name. The
bastard! I realized last night, however, that I have nothing to worry about.
He cannot provide for her as I can; it will be quite common for either of us
to have crushes as time goes on. What matters most is that we are loyal and
honest -- and I have nothing to worry about as long as I do my part. Words
and thoughts do not necessarily eliminate feelings but they can have an affect.

I updated several sections of my website tonight and I couldn't help but be brought to tears as I thought of how to describe my family. I realized that as I grow older I only appreciate them more. Why the update? I was adding a page ("trends") describing my sleeping patterns and tracking my weight and I got to poking around. Katrina is also visiting me and I must admit that she continues to impress me. I hope that she and dad can find a way to overcome their fears and get to know each other as they have always wanted.

Eriko mailed me the script from her play -- it is overwhelming in its content.
So much so that I don't even know where to start -- I will ask the Japanese
lady in my building to help me; I'm hoping she will agree. Unfortunately I
don't remember her name and that definitely feeds my procrastination... As I
analyze this I realize I have to move on it if I'm going to get anywhere.
Katrina is coming on Sunday and I leave in two weeks.

a little down, lonely, frustrated, lost...

i managed to wake up early and go swimming in the morning. i feel a little tired now but no more tired than i normally do -- and i have this feeling of pride somewhere. the trick is not to put any pressure on myself... just let it happen, if it wishes.. ;P

I have been asked by my friend Art and the users group he belongs to, PSNUG,
to present a seminar on SUSE Linux. It will be a professional seminar, as the
attendees will pay and I will be paid a salary. Our target date is for the
last Wednesday in January. I will have to get approval from Isilon to take
that day off (although hopefully I can switch it with Saturday). Anyway, this
will be a very interesting experience and I am looking forward to it. I think
I will invest in a cheap upgrade for my computer; I need to develop a
professional syllabus. On a different note, I was able to wake up at about 5:30
this morning -- and early wake up for the third consecutive day. I did take
about an hour nap today but that may have been motivated more by boredom than
being tired. I'm starting to feel more and more determined and more confident
in the choices I am making. Bailey is cute and sweet as can be lately. ;P

now i can track my weight, wake up time, sleep... will i do it is the big question...

i'm eating bacon and drinking coffee. talk about whims. i woke up about 6 AMt
this morning. did lots of stuff at work. not feeling like doing anything productive now. ;P

Right now I am concentrating on satisfying my whims.. like writing this entry. I don't feel like sharing much so I suppose this could just be considered filler. Back to the whims...

this is the first entry in my new database driven diary. before i was using imap as a back-end because i'm lazy. ;P why am i doing this? so that i can create a form with some standard fields that i would like to record (copying my dad) -- such as wakeup, sleep times; menu selections, and weight.... for starters..

i'm making lasagna. first time, all by myself. i'm nervous. minutes remain until first tasting...

prompted by my co-worker Kaya's hard-core devotion to lose weight, i bought a scale. it is a cheap, analog, hard-to-read thing but it should help me gauge my relative progress. Kaya is being much more extreme than i think i will. i'm more interested in developing healthy habits than immediate benefits. i believe my current weight is about 136. if i get some time this evening, i will be redesigning the diary. so many things to do! =)

i worked from 10-4 yesterday, worked on spike, went out with some buddies and watched 'Dark City'. i'm not sure if it was the two beers i had or the exhaustion but i was not very thrilled with the movie. it provided very little excitement. maybe if i had seen in 1992 or whenever it came out. i woke up today about 10 and i have been fixing issues with spike until now. smtp auth wasn't working, as well as gallery. this experience is really helping me find the weak points.

i am tired. i lost a few scripts i had recently written. bummer. i should be able to recreate them without _too_ much
difficulty, but it sucks nontheless.

i wanted to be busy, and busy i am. the ressurrection of spike in bellingham's data center went well. now comes the long and arduous task of reconciling data differences and getting it back to the position it was in. i intend on doing that tonight. i'm real busy at work -- my own plate is full and i have been eager to volunteer for other things as well. why? well -- idle hands are the devil's playground... or something.. ;P if my brain is busy working on stuff then it cannot be drafting scenarios about the end of the world, the end of love, etc. gotta go, too busy.

spike decided to take an unannounced vacation today. apparently root raid under linux sucks and now i have one dead server. luckily, belle is still functioning and all the backups are intact. it took about 30 minutes to extract the needed setup files from the backups and populate belle. this experience has taught me quite a bit, and i want to record it. belle needs to have copies of all of spike's setup and they need to be in as much of place as possible; failure should take less than 5 minutes; spike and belle need to do more rsync'ng of each other's unique data (home,spool,etc); root raid needs to be eliminated in favor of a solid drive and another drive which will be mirrored (but not dynamically); i need serialcon access and a sweet boot/initrd image that has network tools. i'm going up to bellingham tomorrow (if bill allows it) to address some of these things.

i have two really good sisters. that is so very rare, i think. i'm proud of them both, i admire qualities in both of them, and i'm lucky to know both of them. they say credit where credit is due... and that goes to mom. =)

You are capable, competent, creative and careful. I like the sound of that!

i can't blame my parents but i'm not sure i would have realized how much i enjoy wine if they hadn't offered it to me... ;P so i am currently enjoying a glass of wine after having worked for about 6 hours on a contract project for polyformus. i hope to get more contract work and i hope to fill my schedule to the point where i have 0 free time. but i want it to be a stress-free schedule, filled with fun activities. =) t-minus 1 month. yeah, i'm counting.

I think I made a diary entry that didn't make it due to some messing around
with mail settings on my local machine, so I'll make a summary. Brian came
into Seattle on Friday night and I picked him up; then we hung out with Susie
and David. It wasn't bad, we ate Mexican food and then went to a bar. I really dislike going to bars though -- stinky, loud, and typically boring. I worked for several hours on Saturday and ran some errands; then I went to Korean food with the three + a d00d named Chuck. The food was good but I was real tired and a little cranky. What I realized is that I was really annoyed with the way Susie interacts with me when there are other people around. Normally we have interesting, engaging discusions and that was missing from every one of our encounters this weekend. At worst, I was pissed; at best, I was annoyed. However, I think encounters like this are good to put things in perspective. Relations between people, as between countries, animals, etc. needs to be balanced from time to time. I feel as if I put too much faith in my friends and not enough in myself.