My journal has received 413 comments as I type this (and still going), and that’s just in the last 12 hours. 95% of those comments are harrasment and spam. Why are they targeting me? I don’t know, but I have no intention of unscreening the offending posts. However, to the offenders, be aware that I have searched out your IP addresses, I know exactly who you people are and where you live, and if it continues I WILL be involving the authorities. Get a fucking life already.

To those who post legitimate comments anonymously, please put some sort of identifier at the end of your posts, it’ll make things much easier on me when wading through the junk comments.

On to happier topics, I finally made it to my database class today, and my professor LOVED the interface components I made. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, so I thought I completely screwed up the functionality, and tried to cover it up with pretty graphics. In my bumbling attempts at building the damn thing, I managed to make it function exactly like the professor wanted, so I got a perfect A on our major end-of-semester project! Yay for accidental success!

I don’t have class tomorrow, so I’m not sure I’ll be doing about that robotics project, but I may not have to worry about it if I’m not in this area by next semester.

Got my new computer parts installed, leaving only one more item to get before my system is complete (and I may skip that piece, it’s not overly necessary at the moment). I’m SO looking forward to LAN Champion!

I skipped class again today. This was the last meeting for that class before exams. There was a major project we’ve been working on that was probably due today. Why didn’t I show up? Because I was up until 5:00 AM playing a stupid game, and didn’t wake up until 1:00 PM. Class starts at 1:30 PM, it’s a half-hour drive, and it takes me 45 minutes at the very least to get ready. So, if I didn’t fail this Comp Sci class, I’m probably damn close to it. Tomorrow is the final session for my Database class, and I have to put together a form to use as an interface for a project we’re building for the admissions department. I don’t know how to do such a thing because I spent the entire semester slacking off and skipping class. I hate school, or more correctly, school work, but I need a degree to get a decent job as a computer technician. Times have changed since six years ago when my dad got a hell of a nice tech support job with little more than an MCP certification. Everyone keeps telling me that the MCSE I’m working on will be worthless, and judging from the number of unemployed MCSE/MCSA technicians out there, I’m starting to believe it. And I can’t get an interstate CDL until I’m 21 (I can get an in-state CDL for Virginia at 18), so I can’t be a trucker either (not that it’s my first choice of careers, but it’d be better than nothing). Basically, that leaves me with the usual dead-end jobs as my only source of income, like my current employment at the hospital. The chances of winning the lottery or something are so absurdly low that I don’t even bother buying tickets, and there’s too much competition to do computer repair independantly and expect much return from it. My only hope is that I’ll be able to finish my book soon and publish it, if I can line up the necessary endorsements I should be able to make decent money from it, but that’ll never happen if the hard drive recovery place can’t salvage the manuscript.

Bleh, much whining. This is been kind of a downer day for me. It’s cold outside (AGAIN!), my mom is acting like she’s pissed at me but denies it, and the boredom of this town is starting to get to me. I think I might try to go camping one of these weekends, that always perks me up a bit.

EDIT: While I was bitching and moaning, Skippy came to the rescue with an absolutely wonderful tutorial on how to make forms in MS Access. I just might pass this class yet!

First of all, I found the full text and history of the aforementioned anti-gay Virginia law, available here.

Secondly, I got off work at 10:00 and I was quite hungry, having not eaten anything all day. I just had Wendy’s yesterday, so after coming home and checking messages I decided to go to Burger King. Left the house at 10:55, got there at 11:05; they were closed. I then went to McDonalds; they were closed too. After driving to every fast-food restaurant in the whole damn city, I discovered that Wendy’s was the only place open past 11:00. I remembered that there was a brand-new McDonalds on the edge of town, so I went out there, and ironically enough, they were actually open. I swear, this entire town thinks exactly like my mom: If you don’t have a “normal” schedule, we don’t have to accomodate you. I never really noticed this before, but EVERYTHING here is closed by 11, except for a select few gas stations/convenience stores (most of those close at midnight), and our two Wal-Marts. And if you’re hungry and want something other than a 7-11 death dog, and can’t cook, you’re screwed. Even Taco Hell closes at 11:00 on weekdays, and Wendy’s is only open until 1:00 AM Sun-Thurs. But all those restaurants had signs saying “Open Early!” to advertise that they open at 5 or 6 AM. Whoop-de-do, that doesn’t help me!

Skippy says he wants to move to Florida, so maybe we can both go down there when we’re ready to move. Hopefully I won’t roast, we wolfies are built for cold snowy mountains

Yes that’s right, that evil anti-gay bill proposed by the VA legislature actually passed, apparently by veto-proof margins. I didn’t know this happened, until I received the following email:
(more…)

First of all, I’ve decided to become a Baptist, turn heterosexual, and renounce this whole furry thing. Farewell, all you sinners, have fun in Hell.

Just kidding, not many people have been commenting here, so I figured I’d post something eye-catching to wake y’all up [evil grin]

Anyway, had a huge argument with my mom this afternoon. See, she and my grandma like for us to go eat dinner as a family on weekends, except “dinner” for them usually happens at around 12-1 PM. Normally this wouldn’t be too bad for me, but I work night shift and I’m usually up ’til 4-5 AM, so it’s extremely difficult for me to wake up before noon on weekends (my semi-sleep-in days). Also, she got upset at me awhile back for taking my nightly showers at 4-5 AM, so I have to do that in the mornings now, hence the reason why I’m seldom able to straighten my hair like I used to (can’t straighten it wet). So, when figuring all that up, expecting me to be ready to go anywhere on a weekend before about 2:00 is pretty much out of the question. Yet every weekend, she gets all fired up and upset, and usually leaves without me, then she’ll call the house about a dozen times wondering where I am. Today was a bit different, she was still home when I came downstairs, and she started the guilt-trip crying game, bitching about how I was upsetting grandma sooo much and I needed to get up at a “normal” time. I basically told her to fuck off and pointed out that waking up at noon IS a normal time for me, otherwise I’d be getting about 2-4 hours of sleep per night. I also pointed out that noon is NOT a “normal” time for dinner, and it’s not that damn difficult to eat a small lunch and then go out for dinner at DINNER TIME. I don’t know how next weekend will go, but hopefully she got the message. She spent the rest of the day hinting that she wanted me to apologize, which I will not do because I didn’t do anything wrong. She’s the one who bitched for months and months that I should get a “real” job, and now that I have one, she’s bitching about how it’s not convenient for her. And just because she always put family before friends when she was growing up doesn’t mean that I’m the same way.

Hopefully I can move out soon, I’m not in a position to leave town, but living in a different building would make a world of difference.

In completely unrelated news, I heard that some show voted “We Built This City” to be the number one worst song in history. Excuse me? Have these people been living in a damn hole for the last 10-15 years? Have they not heard ANY “music” from the 90s and 00s? Or for that matter, some of the OTHER 80s songs that HAVEN’T survived this long? Anyway, out of my love for the under-appreciated group Jefferson Airplane/Starship/whatever they decided their name was, I’m playing their music a lot more from now on. I happen to LOVE “We Built This City”, and I’m a fan of almost anything by that vocalist. Yay for guys with freakishly high-pitched voices

Wow, what a day. I patched things up with Joe, things are cool between us now. We both made mistakes, but life goes on, right?

I spent most of the day cleaning spyware off of my sister’s computer. She managed to get a particularly nasty infestation of it that neither Norton Antivirus Corporate nor Spybot S&D could get rid of, so I had to go key-by-key through the registry. I finally got it cleaned out, but I need to find a way to stop this from happening again. I can’t keep her from going to sites that are notorious for installing such things, which leaves me with restricting the computer as my option. She’s running Windows 2000 with a wireless network. The utility to control the wireless card has to run in an administrator account because it’s stupid like that, so I set her account as an administrator, which allows her to install whatever she wants (or doesn’t want). Policy restrictions seemed to have no effect when I tested them, so I think I’m going to put XP on her system (which wouldn’t require the wireless networking utility), set her account to be a standard limited user, and hope that she doesn’t overrun her 256mb of system memory with her perpetual 20+ AIM windows. It’ll slow her down, but I don’t have the patience to do this again.

I looked into applying for an EZ Pass today (which is an automatic toll payment device, for those who don’t know), and I almost sent in the application online with direct-charging from my credit card, but I noticed that there’s a $4/month fee, plus a $3/year fee for each transponder tag. Now, I’ve heard that the monthly fee is waived if the account is setup for direct-debit to a checking account, or something, can anyone verify this? If I have to pay a monthly fee for it, I won’t bother, but if that annual fee is all I’d need, I’ll probably sign up to save myself the hassle of paying cash whenever I go up to PA. Cash is yucky.

I just ordered some Corsair memory for my computer, hopefully that’ll help my performance, plus it’ll open the door for overclocking. The memory I bought originally was pretty cheap, so it just fits to put top-of-the-line memory into a system where everything else is top-of-the-line. I also got some stuff to finish my case mods, and some much better CPU cooling equipment. I’m SO looking forward to showing off this computer system!

Had another tech support call today, some old guy wanted me to come show him the basics of computer usage. Basics meaning “What’s this thing on my desk with buttons?”. Needless to say, that was the longest two hours of my life. Oh, and it gets better: I did it for free because he had a certificate he bought at a church auction (which I had donated). I donated four certificates for one hours each, and he bought ALL FOUR!!! He said he wants me to come back sometime, but I pointed out that there was an expiration date of 4-30-2004 on them. So hopefully I’ll get paid if I have to go back there again.

SYNOPSIS (Provided by IMDB)
Jenna Rink is a typical preteen girl who wants more than anything to grow up. On her 13th birthday, Jenna’s only wish is to get older and fast. When she wakes up the next morning, she’s 30 years old, a sucessful magazine editor with a live-in boyfriend! Jenna tracks down Matt(her best friend when she was younger) to try and figure out what has happened

REVIEW
I wasn’t expecting much when I went to see this movie, but having free tickets makes it easier to see a mediocre film. Basically, there’s this girl who wants to be grown-up, she makes a wish on her birthday, and with the help of some magical dust, she becomes grown-up. Sound familiar? If you’ve ever seen the movie Big, you’ve basically seen this one. Subsitute a girl for Tom Hanks’ character and toss in some backstabbing friends, and you’ve got the whole thing.

Although, I must give the makers of this movie credit for being at least somewhat original. Rather than aging only the main character, they aged everyone and dropped her into an environment 17 years into the future, with her friends all grown up with her and she can’t remember any of it. With the help of her best friend from high school (whom she hasn’t spoken to in 17 years), she realizes that she became one of the popular girls in high school, took the star football player to prom, etc. She’s now a major editor for Poise magazine (her favourite as a kid), working with one of the other super-popular girls.

This movie kinda upset me in the first 15 minutes. Jenna’s best friend Matt reminded me so much of myself in high school, and the way he was treated by his peers brought back way too many bad memories. He had my same attitude, “Be your own person, don’t be a clone”, kinda pudgy, couldn’t dance worth a hoot yet didn’t care, and happy/depressed all at once, much like myself. He even looked a good bit like me back when I was starting to grow my hair out. Oh, and the stuck-up preppy girls were just begging to be bitch-slapped :-). The ending was cute, but I still wasn’t impressed. I give it 4/10.

Movie Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337563/

Wee, the joys of allergy season! Yesterday I was supposed to go work on a computer at 10:00 AM (which is very very early for me), and kinda slept in too long. The guy called me, and I made up something about having a migraine from the pollen. So, I went there today and cleaned up his virus infections and gave him a $10 discount for the delay. I have another client Friday at noon, joy joy.

Never made it to class Tuesday, class sucked today. We’re working on a massive database project for the admissions department, and I have to put together a login interface for it. I don’t even know what program I’m supposed to be using to make the damn thing! I’m assuming I’m supposed to use Access, but if I have to use Oracle I’ll be screwed. Luckily, there’s only one more week of classes before exams, so I’ll be through with this headache soon enough. I just hope I pass.

I’ve decided to overclock my system, since with the setup I have, it’s easy to do, not very risky, and quite stable (according to the hundreds of people who’ve done it and wrote about it using this exact same hardware). To do that, I need to upgrade my memory (since I got cheap stuff), hence more money. But, the projected performance increase will make it worth it. My next paycheck will be a big one, so even though I should probably start paying off all this other stuff, I want to finish this project ASAP rather than dragging it out over the next month.

If I get this finished and get my data from the recovery place quick enough, I might try to organize a pre-LAN Champion lan party. I was averaging 180fps in Unreal Tournament this afternoon, with all the graphics options turned to the maximum detail and resolution, and absolutely zero lag. My computer is begging to play against real people :). Hell, I might even give Battlefield 1942 a shot, I never played it on my old system because I couldn’t turn the resolution up high enough to satisfy me without lagging. But now? Murrrrr

If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably figured out that I really didn’t have anything to say about the last two days, I just felt so naughty not posting anything yesterday. Catch y’all later!

Yay! Finally got my computer up and running! And it is sooooooo sexy! [licks it]

Many many thanks to Kyle, who came over and backed up my entire HD for me, then stuck around to make sure everything was working properly. He’s going to help me overclock the computer once I get some higher-quality memory, so my processor(s) will move even faster

My co-worker at the hospital (the other guy who does what I do) IMed me at 5:15 PM and asked f I was going in to work tonight (shift starts at 5:00). Normally, whoever works the weekend gets Monday off. But, he and I switched weekends so I could go out of town this weekend, but we hadn’t switched any weekdays, so the way I understood it was that he was working tonight, even though he worked the weekend as well. After dinner I went to go pick Kyle and his computer up, and when I got back my mom said my boss had called wanting to know who was working tonight. Now, I thought I’d made it abundantly clear that I could not and would not being going in tonight, but apparently the other guy didn’t get the message and he didn’t go to work. This was at about 6:30. So, this guy said in his away message “Apparently I’m working tonight”. At 9:00 he IMed me (from home) and wanted to straighten out our scheduling miscommunications. I don’t know about y’all, but if I were to ever show up to work almost two hours late, I sure wouldn’t have the balls to leave 10-15 minutes early. So, chance are good that

1. He didn’t get anything done
2. I’ll have to do extra tomorrow night
3. He’ll be fired soon (he was already treading on thin ice before this)
4. I’ll be on my own for the 2-4 weeks it’ll take to hire a replacement for him

As much as I’d like to see his ass get canned, I can barely keep up with the work as it is, much less by myself. So, if/when he gets replaced, I hope the hiring process will move quickly.

I’ll be posted the specs on my new computer at a later date, it’s still a work in progress and I still want to keep it a secret as long as possible. I’m pretty damn proud of this system