Free Toy with Every Click

Dear Internet, please send me a girlfriend so I will have someone to distract me from the dark of night and to keep me from having hellish panic attacks. Also, I am super lonely. Thanks in advance.

addendum: or just convince my wife to give me a booty call call and have a nice conversation

So I've been knitting hats! The scarf thing wasn't doing it for me, though of course my scarves were nothing more than plain knit rectangles. The hat pattern I'm messing with is much faster than a scarf, and more fun to actually do. Maybe mittens or socks next?

Mark One became Zoe's, because it fit her. That wasn't the intent, it just sort-of worked out that way.

Mark Two is just sitting around. Too shallow by maybe a half- inch. With the edges turned up a touch, it's a dapper little cap. It's also far to wide around, hence too loose to stay put. Did some crazy made-up-experimental cast off that merged in the loops from the cast-on. That part worked very well, actually.

Mark Three is much better. The edges roll up to the perfect depth, it's a nice snug fit. The cast off was similar to that from the Mark Two, but twisted, so not as nice. This one became Jenni's

Mark Four is in progress right now. Same depth as Mark Three, but with a different weight of yarn. Hopefully I'll make the cast off as nice as the Mark Two.

I think I want to try some sort of double-knit pattern on the next one. The problem is that I have no idea how to double-knit. I'll look it up.

So I'm back at The W Hotel. It's a good thing I got this laptop, or I'd be really bored right now. The day started off with my arrival at Amazon at 10am to fill out forms, followed by two interviews, lunch (secretly also an interview), then a short meeting with an HR person, then two more interviews. Then I wandered off with one of the interviewers and had some tea at a local coffee shop (heh, in Seattle) and had something that seemed like another, albeit informal, interview. But that was good. The people working here are all awesome. I really hope that I was able to present myself in a fashion not comparable to a ridiculous ass.

I'm going to try and find Laura now. I need to find Jenni a present, and take more pictures. My feet hurt, because I've was walking all over the goddamn place yesterday, and I walked to and from Amazon today. This place is going to be great exercise if I end up living here.

My brain is fluttering all over the place. I think too much writing on the white-board may have fried something important in my brain.

Jenni, why aren't you answering your cell-phone? :)

So it looks like I'll be flying on over to Seattle for an interview with Amazon next week. I'll be leaving Thursday the 28th, interviewing on the 29th, and flying back on the 30th. I'll be staying at some place called The W, which I need to look up. I hope it is swank :)

This is wild. I hate to fly, but I guess that's the only option for crossing the fucking country.

I'd also hate to move for a job, but if they make me an offer and it's enough to allow me to afford a comparable house in the area, I just might. Jenni seems sort-of willing to move, but isn't thrilled about it. If I can't give her enough reason to really want to move, then there's no way in hell it's going to happen. But I can at least do the interview and have a bit of fun on the west coast for a while :)

I wonder if I can meet Laura and her beau while I'm over there? *poke poke* I know I'll be seeing Zac while I'm there, because I'm relying on him to be my tour-guide! I wonder what I should do while there...

Born October 1, 2004, at 5:30 PM to Jennifer Lilly O'Brien and Christopher Justin O'Brien. Weighing in at a solid 7lbs and 4oz., this 20" long beauty immediately reaffirmed the admiration of her long-time fans.

I'll post pictures as soon as I figure out a good sampling :)

I *love* Tales of Symphonia. I've logged 45 hours thus far, and am on disk 2. It's simply wonderful. Last night I was up until 5am after a nine-and-a-half hour binge, and then I only stopped because I was having a hard time reading the dialog.

Heavy elements of Secret of Mana, Star Ocean, and FFX, but in a way that makes me feel like I'm playing a game set in a world I've already played, but at a different time. I am pleased.

So last evening, as I was making tea, I happened to glance out the kitchen window for a moment and saw something strange. There was a tiny black kitten laying and panting under the table. Now, how such a tiny kitten had managed to make her way all the way up the stairs to get to this position, I do not know. She looked absolutely terrible.

So I took a little food and water out to her. She was so skinny, and her fur was matted and damp. She had trouble keeping her eyes open, and she'd only stand up for a moment before flopping back down on her side and panting. She didn't seem to regard the dry food as edible, and she wouldn't drink...

In retrospect, I should have taken a picture. I should take one right now, as well.

Well, to cut this story short, Jenni and I have a new kitten. Sophie is looking much better now, after just one day of wet food and water with some electrolytes mixed in. She's closed up in the upstairs bathroom with a little nest of towels and a spare litter box Tiffany loaned us. Jenni and I took her to the Garner animal hospital at 10 am (fucking early for me). She doesn't have feline leukemia or kitty AIDS, but she has some fleas. The vet indicated she was around 14 weeks old, and was just now getting her new teeth. Got her a shot for... something. Kitty stuff. Bought some flea and worm goop for her, Aslan and Dorian.

After Jenni comes home tonight, we're going to give her a little washcloth bath. It's not terribly necessary, as she's been cleaning herself now that she's not, you know, starving to death. But we'll also give her some flea goop, and then we'll unleash her into the house. I'm pretty sure how Aslan will react (or rather, how Aslan won't react at all), and I've got a good idea on how Dorian will react (which involves a lot of hissing and running away and bit of hiding for good measure). I have no idea how Sophie will react to the other two though. Let's hope she's friendly :)

All in all, she's quite lovable. Very loud purr. She's a black kitty with huge ears and white socks. She holds her front left paw at a slight angle. I mentioned this to the vet, who indicated it might have been a small sprain. Did I mention she has huge ears? Seriously, she looks like a bat.

I hope three cats in one house isn't going to be too crowded! Two of the bedrooms (the master and the baby's room) are closed off, so that removes some hiding spots and run-around places. We'll see :)

Now I'm just bored. I remember back in the day, when other people would be online at 4am, too. What happened, are we old now?

Maybe I just haven't fully accepted my fate; to sleep nights, grow old and pay taxes.

Once, I ran away from home. Right after I got my car. I'd been in a fight with my dad over the conflicting ideas of both having a curfew and paying rent. I was driving around and I thought, "fuck it, I'll just drive west and see what's happening over there." But then I thought "wait, I have no money for gas. Or food," and I ended up just camping out in a church parking-lot for a day or two. I moved out not too terribly long later. I wonder what would have become of me if I'd just kept driving.

I suppose I should revel in the security I have now. Nice house, cute wife, decently-paying job. That job won't last forever, so I'll get plenty of fucked-up work hours, stress and nightmares, and be poor and worried just like in the old days. The only problem is now I've got Jenni, and a baby on the way. I can't just go driving now, that choice is gone; I gave it up willingly.

I had a dream once that I was dead. Well, not really dead. But like, something terribly traumatic had happened, and I was sort of mummified. So, dead. I didn't need to eat, or sleep. I was lost to everyone I had known, I had passed some sort of terrible barrier, and this was what was on the other side. A strange fresh start with absolutely no fear or worries. It was the best dream I can remember having.

This is how I know I'm an escapist. I don't deal well with the arbitrary garbage of facts and reality. Don't want them. I'll make up my own as I go, thanks.

Memories are the greatest torment. Not because they haunt you, but because they taunt you. You remember some cold morning when you were eight years old, and you know you can't have that again. You recall the first or second time you went to a show, and those circumstances and the people there can't be put back together again. Sure plenty of stuff will happen as the future goes on by, and after those moments have passed there will certainly be a few I'll look back on, too. But why the fuck do you only get to have them once, and never again?

I once decided that heaven would be my grandmother's house, and summertime. Forever. Then she moved to Florida, and I can never go back to that house again. Someone else is there now, and in my heart I have a burning, hateful conviction that they are spoiling it.

Are there people living in the past? Are they living in the things I knew and loved, in the first times and the choices and moments? Would they even know it? Am I despoiling the future's past, ignoring their favourite parts and times? Do they hate me as much as I hate those that follow?

May time stand still

I managed to successfully avoid all joyous birthday related activities. Score one for me! Next year, I'm going to aim for a Zero Knowledge birthday. It's got to be possible, I just have to believe

Refactoring meanwhile code, listening to Tull at 3am. The only way this could be better would be with a cigar and coffee. Actually, I think I have both of those things upstairs.

It's been an interesting month.

The house is coming along really nicely. There are a whole bunch of things that still need to get done somehow-- things mounted on walls or on the ceiling, wiring run, switches replaced, plants... planted-- but it's really turning into a home now.

I've ordered the beginning of the tap system. There's a stainless-steel drip-tray and a chromed tap tower out there in a box headed this way. I'm in the market for a small refrigerator to drill a chunk out of. It needs to pretty much be just a cooled box; no trays or shelves or door-thingies to get in the way. The bar is so going to rock.

My office still isn't fully painted. The primer doesn't really bother me, but there's still some places where the god-damned purses are showing through near the ceiling. Some day, this room will all be blue. Some day.

We've got our bed-frame now. There used to be a bedroom, now there is only bed. A king-sized sleigh-bed is not a small thing. If I were to roll out of bed at night, the fall could possibly be fatal. I need a step-stool or pole-vault or something. More likely, Jenni will need a step-stool as she gets further along with this whole baby thing :)

Jenni's been putting pretty flowers out front. They'll help to block off my office windows in years to come, and for that I am grateful. Also, they look nice :) Speaking of the front yard, I love my little reel mower. It cuts just fine, no fuss, and no gas. I'm trying to extend the lawn to replace some of the pine straw that covers so much of the front. Then, one day, I'll do chunks of the backyard as well. Oh, and I built a picnic table yesterday!

Apart from the house, things are going nifty as well. Meanwhile had its second release, against Gaim 0.77 this time. I'm actually getting a user-base. I've put a bunch of work into the project website, of which you can see a copy here. Some of the links won't work, because they're relative to a different server, but you can see the gist of the site itself. Since Novell released a GroupWise plugin to Gaim, I've got a slightly better chance to get Meanwhile (which is a Lotus Sametime client, by the way) out of IBM and into the wild. That would be a glorious day.

I need to go get my license done today, I think. I don't want to, bleh.

So.

Jenni's having a baby, we've moved into a house in Garner, I've got the best office ever, and I think I may be getting old.

Most of you already knew at least parts of this, but since I haven't posted since... a while ago... just consider that a recap.

Jenni's upstairs snoozing on the couch, I'm down here in my office at my enormous desk trying to not do something productive. Things I should instead be doing:

• Painting the office blue
• Poking holes in the wall and pulling cable for phone/network
• Installing the new under-the-counter lighting in the kitchen
• Installing the new front-porch light
• Searching for the camera's USB cable
• Looking on eBay for a new G74 to replace the left one that's going "wiggly"
• Un-packing shit

Whoops, kitties!

I've been spending way too much time writing a sametime plugin for gaim. Since I don't want Lotus to kill me for using the name "sametime" for the project (library and plugin), I'm calling it... wait for it... "meanwhile". Jenni thinks it's funny, anyway. I'm sure this all sounds really boring-- unless you have to use sametime at work, and then it sounds great! Well, only if you use gaim already.

The little icon attached to this post is a version of the protocol icon I'm using.

I was originally going to try and donate the code to the gaim project itself, but then I realized that the risk of IBM being pissed off about this and summarily taking it out on me and my contract would ruin my current house prospects. So I'm running the gambit of internal channels and trying to get it released inside of IBM first. Maybe if I'm really goddamn lucky, the part of IBM which is Lotus will think it's a good idea to have an opensource version of their client available.

I decided to take a break from looking at ethereal trying to figure out what goes into multi-person chats (conferences) and post something in Ye Olde Journal. That's why I'm here. Only I've discovered that my brain is actually pretty goddamn numb, so I think I'll go to sleep instead.

This post has no purpose.

In response to the meme, here is My LiveJournal Haul. I made out pretty goddamn well, thank you.

I have to go in to work to pack up my desk so I can move to a new building. Now. I wonder if I have to move the boxes there myself, or if some nice mover-person will do it for me?

I can't decide on what music to listen to. This is normally fine, but now I can't even listen to an entire song. I was listening to the Clifmen, but now I'm listening to Poe. Oops, now it's Slipknot. Now Melt Banana. Can't... find... stability... !!

So I've found a way to get better than a dollar per GB using eBay and some older Compaq hardware. The really lousy thing is that I'm talking about maybe 100GB when I'm done. Granted, that's two channels, each RAID5, but still... 100GB??

An exclusive pleasure of being damn-broke is never having to make intelligent decisions when selecting an item for purchase from amongst a large range of products. Consumer ratings, name brand recognition, likely-hood for failure, etc, all thrown (along with caution) to the wind. Just snag the one with the lowest number after the dollar-sign-- the end. For instance, the drill I just recently purchased; is it the best drill? Will it last me forever and ever? Will it endeavor to murder me in my sleep-- having hated me from the moment I robbed it of the comfort of its loving and warm box? Does it include bits made especially for drilling through people? I don't know! What I *do* know is that it was only twenty and change at Wal-Mart.

"Now siege, why in the hell do you need a drill," you ask? None of your fucking business! But since you've asked, I may as well hint vaguely at my plans for a wonderful halloween-related endeavor. It will involve wood and paint and hinges and wheels, and-- if I'm particularly agile with a shovel-- re-animated human remains.

Fuck, I forgot to buy a shovel. I need to go to Wal-Mart again tomorrow. Maybe Lowes... are they cheaper?

I managed to pass End of the Century on light. Oh, this paragraph is about DDR. I can't seem to make more than a B though, so I must be doing something wrong. However, my foot hurts in stange places. Well, one place primarily, but allow me to assure you, it's stange. For instance, you certainly wouldn't want to have your foot hurting there.

Are Italians pre-Italicized?

I went bowling for the second time this year. I suck at So Many Different Things. I am a Jacked of All Trades, no trade goes un-jacked. Luckily while bowling nobody insisted on knocking down my left-over pins on their turn. For the pedantic: yes, this is due to a general inability to exercise that particular end-game option while playing on a customarily constructed bowling lane. You know who you are. And so do you.

On the side of the freeway in the car
In the car.

I need to get my brakes checked/fixed. They're... squeaky. Not the nice "I'm running out of brake-pad" squeaky, but this horrible, overpowering shriek which is sometimes occuring independant of actual braking. So if I disappear sometime in the near future, it's probably because my brakes exploded or something incredible. There won't be a recall though, because it's just a 1/10,000,000,000 fault. It's up to you to make the Truth known.

Just finished helping a good friend move away. We had a lot of lunches and a lot of video games. All in all, we had a lot of fun. But now he's driving to Colerado so that he can have a job again.

So long, Zac.

So I've finally done the unthinkable-- I've engaged in a genre of video games which involves actual motion. And I didn't just play it, oh no! I went ought and bought the game and pad bundle so I could fall-down in a tangled-leg mess in the privacy of my own home as many times as I damn well felt like it!

I am so very tired now. Zac and I played for a very long time. I actually got a (an?) AA on a four-foot song! Lookit me preen!

The mats that came with the bundle (DDRMAX2 for the PS2) are pretty sweet. They're heavy plastic, with sorta-sticky bottoms (though when I play it still migrates about 6 inches to the right). After a day or two of practice, I think I'm going to give the DDR machine at the arcade a try.

Whee! Now I just need to convince Jenni to play.

The government Really Wants I should pay them their due. Never mind the fact that I took a second job to make ends meet a bit more evenly, and that it's this second job that makes me now owe something slightly more than 500 bone.

Of course, in the grand tradition of my way of handling things, I've just not sent them a cheque. However, they've grown a bit more persistent recently, and Jenni is worried. So I'm grabbing some nearby loot and handing it over to the fuckers. Oh well.

My cat. Cool cat. Good cat. Pussy cat.

I've been playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (Turbo Alpha Plus 3 SP) recently. I'd been playing simple platformers originally (the castlevanias, metroid, the marios), so this is a nice change of pace. Annoyingly, there doesn't seem to be a sleep function! Granted, I can save and quit the game on my turn during an engagement, but that's not nearly as handy in an atmosphere of "oh shit, I've got to stop playing this game right now and do something else for ten to twenty minutes or I'll be fired or inconvenienced"

One bullet in this gun, not sure if it's for you or me

I wonder how much fun it would be to get money/equipment/experience for beating people up, and have everyone just be fine with that.

Oh well, just another useless entry. I'm bored and have nothing to say.

You look so pretty but this will not do
You still have color, there's still life in you
Your body's still, but your skin is warm
This mere illusion will not turn me on

What is it about women who play dead, anyway? Similarly, why does the sound of women screaming make the best background for any given bit of music? Questions which plague us all!

So, I'm doing the livejournal thing (obviously). In my defense, it's because I accidentally visited my Friends page, an error leading immediately to posting comments and ultimately to this. I am not ashamed.

I've been doing a lot of this terrible... thing lately. It's known to many by a very common moniker-- call it 'work'. Some know it as 'day job' or even 'career'. I'm not willing to label what I do as either of the latter as:

• I don't do it during the day
• I'm not willing to vouch for the longevity of this project

It's interesting work at least. In the end, I may be able to scavenge a framework from the mess. It seems possible to make modifications to the normal servlet structure of Application/Session/Request and turn it into Application/Session/Task, and move away from http as the presentation and input layer. Using RMI or some variety of RPC to connect an application to a remote controlling entity itself isn't a brand-new idea, but attaching it to an existing struts-backed application... well that may be nifty. Best of all, it removes the fucking web-browser from the equation as an application platform.

Did you know LLK did a remake of Johnny Cash's Personal Jesus? Well now you do. Melt-Banana (swapping subjects) can be fun, if you're into what appears to be Japanese girls producing metal/distortion in english. My sister's impersonation sounds a lot like little yipping dogs! Please take the time to imagine this.

I'm done. Nothing really to say makes for a shitty entry. I could just fake it like everyone else, but nah.

Shaolin Soccer US Theatre Possible Release Date: August 8th, 2003

And it's dubbed. There's an ever-so-slight possibility that one of the Ambassador Entertainment theatres will show it (read: we're showing the trailer).

Source of information: psychic waves and mood altering substances. Woo!


Picked up Final Fantasy Origins today. Damn Fine remake of the original FF, thus far. The Soul Blazer cart arrived a couple of days ago from eBay, and I've been playing that an awful lot... I hope I don't neglect my duties in hunting down Deathtoll too much replaying FF.

I'm thinking of snagging a copy of FF: Tactics sometime in the near future. I've heard it's a pretty excellent game, but having never played it I can only nod slowly hoping you think that means I *know*.

Also ordered some more cheap-ass CDs from various online shoppes. rip-rip-rip-a-roo! Sadly, I've been neglecting my duties of music collector (or converter, or something), and now mouse is *way the fuck* ahead of me in terms of storage allocated purely to ripped oggs. I'll catch up, see if I don't! Then we can synchronize our collections, and have One Massive Collection. It would probably help if I had a DVD burner, too.