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[
humor
]
2001-03-30
The php reference tells me:
something amusing about functions: Calling a function with a number of arguments different from the prototype is not an error unless you write your function that way. Indeed!
[
random thoughts
]
2001-03-30
I forgot to respond to the doomed input,
which is an error I will shortly remedy. Here are my responses, in order: - mutt looks neat, but I don't have time to deal with a new email program right now - too much other stuff to do. I'm backburnering it.
- No.
- Yeah, Elena was pretty barfy there for awhile, but she's been doing well since (so I'm told).
- I am back now and taking care of myself (and taking my medications as directed), but please don't call me God. I prefer to have no title at all and conduct myself as an ordinary person. Even with all the odd things I believed were true a couple weeks ago, at no time did I consider myself God.
[
random thoughts
]
2001-03-27
Doomed spew:
I'm tired of it hanging around my inbox, so here's a bevy of doomed input (or output, depending on your perspective) that was placed in the box o doom. I am not sure what some of it means. Pardon my tone at the moment, I am quite exhausted. It's been a long day. Anyway, here it is: - [oops] Consider mutt instead of elm. Proper
MIME support! Colour!
- Ever notice http://www.stargazerranch.org/
Lots of Small Barfing Person days recently ... - quilt=WOW!
- Oh, my God Beth. Please do not play with these things. You have to take care of
your self! If not for your sake then at least for Elena's. I hope you'll be back
soon and that you take care of yourself.
If any of these are repeats.... sue me! Oh, no wait, you'll have to get in line because I'm already being sued. AHahahhahahaha. Yes, I laugh the laugh of the weary tonight. Really I will have time soon to create proper weblog entries, instead of the typical whiny drivel of late. Sorry. Truly. I just have so much to do and I've crammed a lot into a couple days already. I didn't even get to work out today. And my body is dropping some huge hints that it thinks that it/we should head for a comfy horizontal location, very very soon.
[
mental
random thoughts
]
2001-03-27
Met with lawyer.
Feel better. Mostly. Sigh. Still so much stuff I gotta do. But first, I'm at work finishing grabbing all my stuff, including my beloved lava lamp, and my plant. I also must turn in my id. Then I am going to work out, which should feel good, I think. Then I would like to take a nap, perhaps. I'll figure it out when I get there. One o these days soon, log entries should return to relative normalcy. I think.
[
mental
rants
]
2001-03-27
YOU HAVE BEEN SUED.
This is what the document I'm looking at tells me. It also tells me various other unsavory things... - It says I have to pay child support. Hmm, talking with Spencer yesterday, he said his lawyer suggested this but that he knows my financial situation isn't great right now, so he wouldn't ask for that. Uh-huh. Hmm.
- It says I have to enter drug rehab (?!) and to submit to periodic drug testing. Wtf?!?! I am definitely gonna fight that. What a fricking crock!
- It says Elena will suffer "irreperable harm" if the restraining order isn't granted (it was). Yeah, right.
- Then there's this affadavit thingie... which goes on for a sentence or two before attempting to paint a friend of mine in a bad light. Wtf?!??
Okay, I've entered a land stranger than any I was in during my psychotic delusion. This place is known as Lawsuit Land. I can't even begin to count the number of lies here... Sigh. All right, enough of this. I've got to take a shower and try to write out some of the TRUE chronology of events before I have to leave to meet with my lawyer.
[
beauty
]
2001-03-26
Two pretty things:
to try to drive these blues away... Props to those who sent me these links: Mars, Daniel, and Leslie from work. It did cheer me up a bit to have nice things to look at.
[
mammalog
mental
rants
]
2001-03-26
I'm finally home:
and I was met at the train station not by my daughter, but with a restraining order. By law, I am not permitted to be alone with her, and I am forbidden to breastfeed her. As you can imagine, I'm pretty upset. I'm also tired. Tomorrow I will look into getting a lawyer. I feel pretty stupid and naive for thinking that Spencer would be willing to work things out amicably with me. Instead, he's filing for sole custody of Elena. I still haven't seen her, and it's been almost two weeks now. My milk has essentially dried up, and I wouldn't nurse her anyway since Zyprexa might get into the milk and cause nastiness (I checked the world-reknowned expert's website about it, and unfortunately not much is known). But it still hurts to have a *court order* saying I can't do it. I miss her, and I just want to see her. She's my baby, and I would never, ever hurt her. Even in my psychotic delusional state, there was no chance of me harming her. But that didn't matter - I wasn't allowed to say goodbye, and now... now all this legal crap has been shoveled onto my head. As if I didn't have enough stuff to deal with, what with being away and having all kinds of things stack up (car insurance, etc). I'm still in shock - it hasn't sunk in yet, really. On one level, I can't really believe that he would do this to me, but he has. I think of all that I put up with from him, and I feel like a total fool. For three years I tried to make it work with him, at great expense to myself. I'm not talking money, I'm talking about denying parts of who I was in a misguided effort to make him happy. It didn't work, of course, and eventually I just couldn't take it anymore. Life has been a lot better once I finally made my decision and moved out. Well, until now it has been better. Had been better. I'm very tired, so I'll try to sleep some. I'm back for good, now, I hope.
[
body
food
good
mental
]
2001-03-22
Oddly enough, I'm losing weight:
even though weight GAIN is one of the known
side effects of my antipsychotic medication ( Zyprexa). As a side note,
just the surreality of being able to say "my antipsychotic medication" just
about sends me into giggles every time I ponder it. Reminds me
of when I got drunk for the first time. I was laughing uncontrollably
at the very thought that *I*, Beth, could somehow be drunk, as I
just kept proclaiming "I'm drunk!" over and over again. So where was I? Ah yes,
this medication, Zyprexa, supposedly causes weight gain, but I seem
to be in a steady slow comfortable decline (which I need, what with
all these extra pounds and so on). How is this possible, you ask?
I am on what I call the Perfect Appetite Diet, also known as the Half Diet.
This is something that automagically happened as part of all the
wild strange things I did to my brain by pouring odd chemicals into it,
exhausting it for three days, then pouring in more odd chemicals (and
having my little "escapade", as I shall refer to it in the future).
So now, when I sit down to eat, I eat half of what's on my plate, and
I am *totally* satisfied. I get that "this is enough, please" feeling
from my stomach, and I *listen* to it, and stop eating. I eat a wide
variety of foods - I even ate FISH last week at the hospital. Willingly.
This is unheard of for me - I never eat fish unless it's tuna and it's cooked
(no sushi). I recite my little rule against fish at every opportunity - just ask
my friends who've heard it all before a thousand times. But yet I was
faced with a menu from which to choose my meal, and I chose FISH of all
things as opposed to the non-fish choice. And get this: I ate it, and it
was pretty good. Which is funny because one of the other patients told me
that it sucked compared to outside-the-hospital fish. Anyway,
I even succeeded in doing this Half thing last night, with Kentucky Fried
Chicken. That's right: a big old breast of extra-crispy sat in front of me,
accompanied by coleslaw and mashed potatoes and gravy, and I ate half. Only half.
I can hardly believe it, it works so incredibly well. Wow. But it's nice, I'm
melting off fat, and I can tell the difference in the mirror. Even freakier is
that when I got on the scale this morning, I was 170. My jaw dropped. I've been
stuck at 185 for... a long, long time. That's where I was before I got pregnant
with Elena (and ballooned up to 242). That's where I settled after I lost all the
weight from the pregnancy. Before this whole escapade, I was at around 182.5, or so.
Now I'm at 170. I am utterly agog. It's quite nice, though, I must say. I can
see this really neat lanky body starting to peek out. I still have a ways to go,
and I'll know by the way my body looks when I've finally gotten rid of the extra
fat that I don't need. Granted, I may be a bit dehydrated at the moment, so I'll
have to make sure to drink a lot of water here in the Land of Dryness (Colorado).
So try it... the Half Diet works really well for me! It might not work for
other people, though, I'm afraid, without major lid-flipping. Wouldn't hurt to give it
a go, though. I'm so excited, because for lunch, I get to have the other half of my
calzone that I got at Mannie and Bo's pizzeria in Golden yesterday, when I was out
and about and taking pictures of and paying respect to places of great meaning to me
out here (yes, a web page about the whole deal is to follow). Mmmmm, canadian bacon
and pepperoni, dipped in marinara sauce.... mmmmMMMmmmm. See, if I'd eaten it all
yesterday, I wouldn't get to enjoy it today. This is the really cool part of the Half
Diet. Okay, this is way way long, but I'm probably excused due to the inability to
add anything for a week or so. Bear with me, relative normalcy will return when I'm back
in Austin, on Sunday night. Then I'll break the normal pattern again when I start hosting
my log at thirdhand.org, and make it many orders of magnitude more powerful. Okay, fingers tired, stopping now. :) (yes, I feel better than I did last night!)
[
mammalog
mental
rants
]
2001-03-22
I miss my daughter, dammit!
And I must wait until Sunday to see her. Argh.
It would be slightly less frustrating if I had been allowed to say goodbye to her.
And if I had consented to the separation.
And it would hurt a bit less right now if I didn't have this milk
to get rid of every day. Because of course I couldn't possibly
be allowed to nurse my daughter. You know, I knew ahead of time
that weaning would suck. But I didn't realize just how much. Here I
am, a thousand miles away, feeling very alone, trying to distract myself
so I don't have to just sit here expressing milk... Milk that I wish
I could give to Elena. :( I've been avoiding this, trying to focus on what
I'm doing to get home, that kind of thing... but tonight it has surfaced, and I
just want to whine a bit, because I'm sad. I miss my little baby. I know I fucked up,
and I know I put substances in my body that made my milk probably not exactly safe
for her... but this feels like punishment beyond the severity of the crime.
The nasty stuff is out of me by now, but the antipsychotic I'm on may not be
safe either. Feh blah okay this part is just whining - the price I have to pay
for mental stability I suppose. I feel like I've lost Elena, over and over again, every day since this happened.
Tonight I heard her crying in the background on the phone, and I wasn't allowed
to speak to her. Wasn't fucking ALLOWED. I don't know if you, dear reader, can imagine
what that feels like. I wouldn't wish it on you, that's for sure. Part of me worries
that she won't remember me. Irrational, I know, but we're talking emotion, here. I feel
like I've disappeared from her life, and the fact that she's gone on just fine without me (so Spencer tells me)
is proof that I don't matter in her life. Proof, in other words, that my identity as her mother is... nothing but piffle.
I know that's not what it really means... I just... feel so worthless in this regard right now. I just want to be with her, to hold her,
to hear the words she's learned in the past week since I've been away. I want to hear her call me "Mommy" again. And even
that thought gives me pain, because I fear that she will ask to nurse. (I also fear that she
*won't* ask to nurse, which would hurt too. Nice double-edged sword, eh?)
And I will have to deny her. And she will protest, probably horribly, with those
heartbreaking sobs that cut right through me. Damn. Guess I'll have to deal with it, one way or another. On a
brighter note, I *am* glad to be able to wear non-nursing bras for the first time in two years. Yippy dippy do. :/ P.S. I notice Daniel added a new category for me, "mental". Snicker, snicker. How utterly appropriate.
[
mental
rants
]
2001-03-20
I'll be back on... Monday, I think.
I've just been real busy, y'know, being in the looney bin for a little
while. (*pause for dramatic effect*) I'm not kidding. (*pause for the
reader to consider that I must somehow be kidding*) No really, I was
flown up to Colorado to be with my family because I had a big huge psychotic maniacal episode thingie. Really.
I was taken by my family (& Spencer) to the emergency room, and put on a mental health hold. That was Wednesday morning. I was transferred
to another hospital, where I was ... taken care of until yesterday evening. I am on my medication now, and everything is better. In fact, I am even *better* than normal. As
you can imagine, I will go on at length about this once I get back home to Texas. I will probably take the train (yes the same one
that derailed, only in the other direction), stop off in Chicago for a day to spend a bit o time with my dad, then go back to Austin. I hope
to get there on Sunday night. Trust me, I'll write a *LOT* about all of this. Anyone who saw me at the end of
the SXSW interactive conference can attest to my looniness. It is pretty funny in retrospect, actually - but it's only funny
because no one got seriously hurt or anything. It could easily have been uglier. I don't have much online time here at my mom's house,
so there will be few if any updates til I get back. Be assured, I am very much OK, and will remain that way. Oh yeah, the whole thing was triggered by a combination of the following:
(admit it, you were just *waiting* for the bullet list, right?) - I took ecstasy, aka MDMA, X, e, etc.
- I hardly ate or slept for three days.
- I took DXM (dextromethorphan hydrobromide, the active ingredient in cough syrup) three days later
So I would say,
if you are a person who considers messing about with such a mix of chemicals, please, PLEASE learn from my mistake and just don't do it. My lid
was thoroughly flipped. At several points I was firmly convinced I was going to die. It was terrifying and I hurt my family very badly - they
were extremely worried about me. And of course my friends as well. I am profoundly embarrassed, but I feel I have to be open about what
happened, the better to deal with it. Plus, this is just *such* ideal weblog fodder, how could I possibly resist? :) So remember, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. YOU COULD DIE. I AM NOT KIDDING!!!
I'll post more later... there are some interesting intellectual and other realizations that have endured through this bizarre mindflipping. Including, for one, that I now believe in God. Heh. No kidding on that either, eh.
[
mammalog
]
2001-03-10
Today was another Small Barfing Person day:
and I would like to state, for the record, that I do *NOT* prefer to be woken up by being puked on. Just wanted to let the world know that, in case anyone who was in control thought otherwise. So I was away from my computer all day, stuck at home. I tried to take Elena to Sam's Club with me to get some things for my upcoming party tomorrow, but she threw up on the way, again. Doh! I hate it when that happens. Poor pitiful thing. Sigh. She felt better later - I think the McDonald's fries helped (I swear, those things are more addictive than crack). Anyway I am exhausted. But guess what? My pachinko machine arrived, so I'm going to go play with it for a little bit before collapsing for the night. South by Southwest starts tomorrow, should be fun! This post does not meet my usual coherence standards due to my current exhausted state. Just so you know. Okay, as long as we're all on the same page, I guess it's safe for me to finish. G'night.
[
cognition
good
]
2001-03-08
The placebo effect:
Was identified a lot more recently in history than I had supposed, according to this interesting article at the National Institutes of Health. I guess that explains why the deepest implications of it haven't seeped further than they have. This has a lot to do with my ongoing work, actually, about belief and cognition and why people think the way they do, and so on. I'll elaborate more later... just filing in the "ruminations" bin for now.
[
later
]
2001-03-08
Blindness to race:
When it happens to be white. That is, the typical high school shooter is white, but the mainstream media never seems to mention this... Hmm.
[
humor
]
2001-03-08
Dang, they're on to me!
Somebody must have leaked my secret plan to kidnap Russell Crowe and make him my love slave. Kidding, of course. I'll bet he's giving his FBI guards hell. Hahahahah!!! I sure hope nobody does anything stupid to try to hurt the man. He's an international treasure. Well, to me and thousands of shrieking groupies, that is.
[
good
humor
]
2001-03-08
Ben Brown in consumer hell:
This is only funny because it didn't happen to me, of course. I hand the man behind the register my check card. So convenient. I admire my slim, cashless wallet. He swipes the card. I eat a fry. He swipes the card again. I take a sip of my drink. He swipes the card again, and shakes his head.
"We've been having trouble all day with this damned machine."
I have only one card, a visa check card. I'd like to get another backup card that's actually a credit card, but first I have to fix my damn credit report. Argh! I keep putting that off... grumble grumble self.
[
rants
]
2001-03-08
What can I say to this?
There are no words to really address this. I, for once, am at a loss. Today is International Women's Day. Supposedly. But crap like this still goes on, every day. Including today, of course. Widespread deprivation in Moldova and other parts of post-Soviet Eastern European has created golden opportunities for organized criminal gangs involved in the illegal sexual trafficking of women and children. "Traffickers turn up in a rural community during a drought or before a harvest, when food is scarce, and persuade poor couples [to] sell their daughters for small amounts of money,"... Grrrr. Stop this planet, I want to get off... :(
[
humor
]
2001-03-08
I hereby submit:
that the next "All your base are belong to us"-style wildly-spreading meme should be: Lobster Sticks to Magnet. So pass it on! (if you haven't already, that is) Surreal, yet satisfying. Mmm.
[
beauty
canoe
]
2001-03-08
Bluebonnets are up:
Well, a few of them, anyway. I took a picture of them this morning on the way to work (the building I work in is just to the left of the light pole in the middle of the picture). Elena and I went to the park the other day:  She is wearing her Buzz Lightyear t-shirt in the picture, if you must know. She *loves* Buzz Lightyear. For some reason the powers that be decided that such t-shirts should be in the "boys" section, but I don't think that kind of fun should be kept from little girls. :) We hear rumors that snow sometimes falls this time of year, but as you can see from the picture, that's nonsense. The weather is clearly nice. Well, it was, that day. Today we have rain. I hope it's nice on Saturday, because I hope to go canoeing then. I'm trying to see if some weblogging types from sxsw would like to join me. Could be fun!
[
good
my site
]
2001-03-07
Category coolness!
Daniel has updated my weblog categories page so you can see how many entries are in each category! Or rather, I think the whole thing is now dynamically generated and this ability to the number of entries in each category is part of the overall new spiffiness. Of course, now that the numbers are available, I have to notice which one has the most entries - I feared it was "rants", but I was very happy to realize it was in fact "good". Here's a rundown of the top few (as of the moment before I composed this one): - good - 74
- rants - 62
- beauty - 57
- humor - 48
Interesting. I'm not sure what it all means, but I'm glad that rants is not on top, somehow. The next few, in order, are: "consume", "my site", and "design". I have no idea what that means, either. Ah, well. Keep in mind one entry can appear in many categories, too. And there's certainly nothing to prevent me from making entries in seemingly orthogonal categories - I could easily write a rant about something good, for instance. Once I get this puppy moved over to thirdhand, sometime in the next few (-ish) months, I will have an even more powerful category system. Fear ye, fear ye: my output shall mightily increase once I finally have a good place for all my data!
[
rants
]
2001-03-06
I'm not saying it:
I'm just pointing it out... At work someone just sent out a link to this Microsoft bashing of Lotus, which had some interesting links to other stories... Including this one, which had some interesting bits in it (the bolding is mine): Cambridge-based IT Factory Inc., Lotus' largest value-added reseller, said the internal structure at Lotus doesn't lend itself to supporting partners because there is no system in place to coordinate software development and support. According to IT Factory CEO Lars Johansen, resellers and other partner vendors essentially are left to solve software compatibility problems themselves, even if they have committed much of their company resources to building on top of Lotus products.
What Johansen said publicly was echoed privately by other business partners who said the lack of support is frustrating and added that they are looking for more support.
Wow. Well I uh work in Lotus Support, and I've been here almost four years, and I will just say that I found that article quite fascinating indeed. Personally I am of the opinion that it is ludicrous to expect the Support division to make money, yet that is exactly what IBM and Lotus think it should be - Profitable with a capital "P". What they don't realize is that Support lends a huge amount of value to the product itself, far and above the monetary value of the support contracts that are sold. Support is what keeps customers from dumping the product in droves, in other words. If Support shut its doors tomorrow, Sales would crumble. They don't seem to appreciate this. Personally, I think they should make Support a fun, cushy place to work. They should give the analysts a huge raise, more time to do their jobs (increase headcount), and offices with doors that close so that they can concentrate and feel like real human beings, instead of peons. I think they will get back much more in quality and customer and employee loyalty than they will spend in money. *Much* more. As it is, Lotus tech support analysts have an extremely difficult job, and they are by and large very brilliant and hardworking. But they are treated like the lowest of the low, slaves to the phone shift, unworthy of anything more than a cube. And don't even get me started on the *ahem* communication between Support and Development *cough ivory tower cough*. Oh well. In one respect I feel like they're just gonna reap what they're sowing, and I have no pity for those at the top. But on the other hand, I feel bad for the people I see here who bust their butts every day trying to keep their heads above water with a crushing workload of a nigh-impossible job, and they get ground down with too much work and too little respect. And I watch people leave, in droves, as soon as it sinks in that they're worth so much more than a job like this - in terms of dignity as well as cash. I'm so glad I'm going to be out of here. I've been on the sidelines for two years or so, as an editor, so I haven't been under the thumbscrews myself for a while, really. But I see it all around me every day, and I see what it does to Spencer. I hope he wakes up and gets a job more in tune with what he truly deserves before he has a heart attack from the constant stress here. He's got a *Master's Degree* in computer science, ferchrissake. And he's doing tech support among college dropouts like me. And holding out for a promotion that I firmly believe they will never, ever give him. Argh.
[
random thoughts
]
2001-03-06
Bowling today did not go well:
In short, I totally sucked. Oh well. I am so easily distracted and annoyed by things today. Perhaps it's a hormonal thing. I would not be surprised, considering how I felt last night (exhausted and emotionally overwrought) and what seems to be brewing biologically. Sometimes it sucks to be a chick. Especially when you have irregular cycles and they just creep up on you. But then again, sometimes it's very cool to be a chick, such as when you get to create another human being (with a collaborator on the blueprints). And the whole being-able-to-create-dairy-products thing is rather amazing as well, I must admit. I hate it when paypal's down right when you want to buy something. Damn! Oh yeah, Daniel told me how to *really* fix my mail From: line in elm: Create or append this line to the file ~/.elm/elmheaders
From: Beth Roberts <beth@bethroberts.com> I have the coolest friends! Knowledge of undocumented features is hella cool. Okay, it may have been documented, and I may be an idiot for not having noticed (I did rtfm, but I was skimming through, admittedly). But the point is, it works now, and I'm happy. If you don't know what elm is... uh, you wouldn't like it anyway. Trust me.
[
good
my site
]
2001-03-06
Exciting morning:
Yes, that's right, I've been modifying shell variables so that using vi and more (well, less) and elm is less aggravating for me. I'm sure you're thrilled. So I had to page through many man pages, figure out how to do a custom prompt for less, and so on. Here are the results of my labors: # make pager sane, dammit!
setenv LESS "-e -P %f %pb\% (page %db of %D)"
# fix reply-to addy
setenv REPLYTO beth@bethroberts.com
# make happy vi sessions
setenv EXINIT 'set wm=5 tabstop=2 shiftwidth=2 autoindent'
# more or less the same thing
alias more 'less'
You realize all this futzing about is because I can't do any substantive work on my project while I'm sitting here in the office. Because then they could say that they owned it. So really, I have done all the work on it at home. Honestly. I don't think twiddling shell variables counts as substantive work on the project... I hope IBM's lawyers agree. Which reminds me of the employment agreement I signed when I came here, which purported to attempt to claim that anything I did during any hour of any day while I worked for Lotus would be their property. Heh. I don't think so... And come to think of it, I now remember the little clause I added on a separate page before I signed it, saying that the existing and ongoing work on my project was not subject to this agreement. And the scope of the project that I mentioned there is much larger than the thirdhand project, actually. Thirdhand is just a stepping stone to what that project is all about - it's just the informational architecture that will eventually be used for some rather interesting purposes. Well, if I ever get it working, mind you. I certainly may fail. The project I've been aiming at for years is nothing other than the Holy Grail of Computing: ai. This is the part where you're supposed to laugh and snort your beverage through your nose, then shake your head and say "She's nuts". It's okay, I think so too. :) But on some days.... some days, I have an inkling I just might be on to something. I guess we'll see. Give me ten years, I might have a fraction of something worthwhile by then, okay?
[
design
good
]
2001-03-05
Riding a trebuchet!
Wow, this sounds like a total blast! I'll add it to my list of Cool Stuff For Beth's Ultimate Playground. Oh, you didn't realize I'm designing an Ultimate Playground? Well, it's one of those things that's been in the back of my mind for quite awhile... About a month ago, during a three-hour-long meeting at work that I had to dial into, I came up with FIVE (5) pages of designs for cool bits of the Ultimate Playground. Uh, when I've got thirdhand capable of holding info like this, I'll put it all there... and ye shall learn the wonders of Wood Tag, and why and how it must be resurrected. :)
[
random thoughts
]
2001-03-05
Silent freeze:
Well, I dunno what to call it - my machine just locked up, for no apparent reason. Silently. I wasn't even really doing anything at the time. I was reading a weblog, and went to scroll down, and nothing happened. I hit ctrl-alt-delete. Nothing. Did it again. And again. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Screen staring back at me, looking entirely normal. I hit the power button. NOTHING. The computer stays on, looking completely normal. I bang on the power button a few more times, then give up and turn off the power strip. *Finally* it yields. I've just never had a freeze like that before. Heh. Good thing I didn't lose any work - I'd be truly pissed. Btw this is a very new Win2000 machine. IBM Netvista. Go freakin' figure.
[
random thoughts
]
2001-03-05
I hate it when I forget:
my badge to get into work. I got here this morning and tried to get a temporary badge, but they were *out*! I can't believe it. So I had to bug my pal Jeanmarie to come down and sign me in as a guest. So I'm wearing a little red-and-white IBM visitor sticker today. How... unfashionable! There is a flurry of email going around about how all Lotus sites in Massachusetts are closed because of that big storm thing up there. Well, I'm jealous. I remember when I was in the Blizzard of '82 in Aurora, Colorado when I was a kid. It was *so* cool. The roads were closed to all but emergency vehicles, and my brother and I had to trek over to my Grandma's apartment to exchange our Christmas presents. It was so much fun, we had a Mission, and we did it with great energy, dedication, and delight. When you're a little kid (I was 10), it's so seldom that your particular skills are actually required to get something important done, that it really gives you a massive sense of satisfaction to be able to come to the rescue of the adults. We also built a snow cave in the HUGE snowbank that formed against the fence at the back of our playground. I love blizzards... So all those folks Up Northeast get to have some fun, and it just ain't fair. :( I'm so glad I'm not an analyst on the phones - the poor Austin workers have to make up for all the shifts that the Massachusetts call center was supposed to do. But where's the payback? When do *they* ever have to make up for bad weather *here*? Uh... never. Utter bogosity.
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2001-03-03
Morning coding update:
I'll just keep adding to this as the morning goes on, rather than make zillions of entries. It looks like I've got a couple/few hours to work with this morning, so I got up, grabbed a Pepsi, and here I go. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole is serenading me right now, and it's putting me in the right mood. :) - First goal: make generalized tool to add new data types to the database, since I'm going to be doing this a lot
- Second goal: abandon first goal (this entry is about three hours after the first bullet point). The first goal just isn't necessary, I realized, since I'm getting so much better at my sql commands, so it's just easier to massage the database manually.
- I made my very own weblog! That is, I built the code myself, and it works! I'm so incredibly thrilled!Okay, so it's rudimentary, so what? I can add new entries (and nobody else can), I've got permalinks, I can edit the text at the top online.... yee freakin ha!
- There is still so much to be done, of course, but I've made so much progress in one day, that I can see that I really honestly will be able to do this! I feel so creatively powerful. And uh... exhausted. :) I need a big-ass nap, I tell ya.
More updates as they occur. Next up: streamlining, cleaning up, chopping up re-usable bits of code so they can be... re-used. Then: adding more features to the weblog specifically and the whole db in general, including the Magnificent Power of Relative-focus Linking, and spit-to-html capability, which will help ease some of the strain on the db for pages that do not need to be quite as dynamic (such as those burned to cd, where there is no web server at all, such as for a photo archive!). Looking back up at my bullet list, I consider that it is good that I am the kind of person who is able to quickly abandon lines of action that do not seem to be fruitful. In the end, this makes me more efficient. All due to the programmer's virtue of Laziness (plus a dose of Impatience). I think I'm ready to start moving towards the third virtue, Hubris. It's been awhile since I learned of the three Sacred Virtues, back when I bought my holy Camel Book... Okay, rambling, sorry, need sleep, must remove butt from chair...
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2001-03-03
Ahhh, success!
Wow, I got a lot more done, even. Now I've got authentication really working with a form (instead of the bs browser password window thing that I hate), and I can change my password! Utter coolness. And I password-protected all my little scripts that can actually affect the database (adding and editing tidbits, and adding users), so rogues don't go in there and mess with it. :) Okay, it's entirely too late (or rather, too early in the morning, and I haven't slept), but I'm actually rather hopeful that I will soon have my weblog hosted with code that I've written myself. There will be much rejoicing! What's odd is that even though I'm soooo tired, I can tell I've been getting more efficient as the night has gone on... Heh, cool. And it occurs to me that I'm really going to need to learn more vi commands. I don't really know all that many - enough to get by, but not to work truly efficiently. I'll have to change that, since I'll be doing lots more coding in the future. G'night already. My left hand is starting to cramp up!
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2001-03-03
Sweeeeeeeeet!
I totally rule. Okay, not really, but I have succeeded in allowing myself to log in! With a name and password stored in my database! And of course, since I'm a Good Girl who knows a thing or two about security, my password isn't stored in my db in plaintext, nosirree! It's an md5 hash. Spiffaroonie. I've never done anything like this before. Kewl! Okay, what next? I think I need to make a master item entry and editing facility. That is, a form where I can control any darn thing about an item, change any field that it's got defined, that kind of thing. I'll surely need this for debugging. Much easier than using SQL statements to try to kludgingly clean up the db. Like using chopsticks in my left hand, I tell ya. I'm just not well versed in it yet.
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2001-03-03
I am slowly getting somewhere:
emphasis on *slowly*. Gah, it takes me so long to look up every single dang command, it's a wonder I get anything done at all. Now I'm stuck because for some reason php is making my $id variable null, when I know dang well that I entered a number. Why is it doing this? There must be some trick. This is aggravating, for sure. Sigh. I need more Pepsi, I'm starting to get sleepy again. At least I'm not freezing cold. I realized my shell account has the spiffy unix program known as "screen", but I can't get it to work right. I invoke it, then my cursor sits up there at the upper left hand corner, and everything freezes. I end up having to disconnect and reconnect. Weird. I'll be a lot happier once I can start using screen again. Damn, I miss that program. It kicks ass! Control-A space, Control-A space, whooooosh, switching between windows. Sure made life easy. Those were the days, I tell ya. Guess I'll have to get Chris to beat it into submission for me - he knows so much more about these things than I do. Too bad he's out of town, though. Harrumph! Ahh well, back to debugging Things That Should Be Trivially Easy...
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2001-03-02
I'm attempting to get some coding done:
So I claim, anyway. I'm sitting here with extremely cold hands, having wasted a bunch of time trying to get my stupid webcam working (without success), and in other ways futzing around with my computer. I stupidly made myself a glass of the Most Sacred Beverage (chocolate goat milk, if you must know), not realizing the somnolent effect it would have. Stupid! So I just grabbed some Elixir of Life (Pepsi), and I turned up the heat four degrees to see if it will help. I gave up on the webcam. I fixed my tidbit.php program by adding a '}'. I have no idea why I had to add it. For some reason php 3 is more forgiving than php 4. Go fricking figure. Anyway, I printed it out, then realized that it made no sense for me to do so. On Winamp at the moment: The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas by They Might Be Giants. Cool. Rockin'! My hands are too damn cold. This is a conspiracy to keep me from doing my Very Important Work, I tell you! Oh well, I'll just grab my lava lamp and read something until my hands warm up. Sigh. The goal for tonight: get authentication working. Sanely. I really want to do more, but I must be realistic. Status updates as I go on... hopefully it won't just be a quickly thumped out "I give up, going to sleep".
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2001-03-02
Belated box o doom: Yes, I've been terribly lax in regurgitating entries from the box o doom, but that's what happens to doomed input - terrible, terrible things such as languishing in my inbox. Anyway, here's what we've got at the moment: - Someone writes:
Heaven holds a sense of wonder And I wanted to ...to finish your sentence? By all means, try again, I'm curious to see where this leads... - Another respondent:
It is curious- the space-annihilating power of thought. Indeed it is, I must agree. Reminds me of the idea I came up with one day, that motion is a magic whereby time is exchanged for distance. Or something like that. Well, it seemed deep to me at the time, but now it just sounds doofy. - And more:
Take advantage of Dr.Dose's Health Tip of the Day, designed to help you live a healthier and happier life. Ahh, this appears to be a reference to the venerable services of iPing.com, about whose lax security policies which allow easy harrassment I ranted awhile back. For the record, they responded with utter cluelessness to my message. They came back with something like "Hey, but the service only calls numbers *that people ask it to call*, so it's okay, see?". Yes, I see, and that does nothing to address the fact that any random person can cause any random phone to be rung at any random time, repeatedly. They assured me that if I got any unwanted calls, I should tell them and they'd make it stop. All well and good for me, since I have internet access and I know who they are, but what of, say, somebody's poor Grandma who's getting fifty calls a day or something, and who has never even used a web browser? Ahh well, I hope they get duly flayed in RISKS soon, and the RISKS members are moved enough to beat them over the head with a clue-by-four until they learn how to require an email address verification, at the very least. - Next:
The woman looked ruefully at the translucent plastic container in the freezer. In it were the remnants of the meatloaf they had shared that last night - was it just three weeks ago? - when some small annoyance spiralled out of control,
when their words became sharp and spiteful, when she shouted things that she knew she should not, when he turned, wordless, scooping up his coat and slamming the door behind him.The woman dropped the container into the trash, not bothering even to open it. And when it hit with a violent sound she stood there, breathing shallowly for a moment. Then tears came unwanted to her eyes and she cried,
at first bracing herself against the counter and, when her arms shook and her sobs turned to anguish, collapsing, her knees colliding hard with the tiles, and her arms wrapping around herself as her body shook in hoarse gasps for what seemed like forever.From the front room came the sound of a key in the lock and the muffled clack of a door opening. "Mia?" The Infamous Mia's aura of mystery reveals a small glimpse...Oddly, I've had a bit of a similar experience, though quite different. I remember vividly early on when Spencer and I were dating, when we had a big fight and afterwards I waited to put the passenger seat in my car back to its full upright position, because I liked the laid-back way he had left it. It was a small remembrance of him, and I didn't want to get rid of it. But then there was a decisive day when I realized we were probably going to break up, and I decided "Screw it. It's over, then." and I reached over, grabbed the handle, and put the seat back to its normal position.But somehow, we didn't break up (well, not then, anyway). I guess we had enough inertia built up by then - we just kept seeing each other. But inertia won't carry you forever, you know - friction eventually saps your kinetic energy, converting it to wasted heat.Er. There's something there that I'm not ready to say outright, yet. So just... read into it what you will. :/ - Speaking of freezer stories, Sarah Bruner of syrup dot org just happened to write up a particularly ghastly one in her journal (under the entry at 02.04.01, sorry no permalink). One of her roommates, some kind of artist, had kept a dead cat in her freezer. Because he wanted to make something out of it later. Oh, my. Dearie me. That just brings Freaky Roommate Stories to a whole nother level, doesn't it?
- Back to more doomed stuff:
down the rabbit hole of delight - that's a great phrase Why, thank you! Props to Lewis Carroll, of course, who gave us so many lovely metaphors to play with. - An inquiring respondent asks, in reference to my claim that I was neither dead nor missing:
How do you know that you are not dead? Or missing? Dang, you got me there. I just had this odd hunch that if I were dead, the afterlife would not closely resemble taking care of a barfy toddler at home, but I could be totally erroneous in my assumptions. And if I were missing, I would guess that being lost in a place that looked *exactly* like my house carried extremely remote odds, but in a similar manner, I grant that I certainly could have been entirely mistaken. Or hallucinating.But if that's the kind of thing I hallucinate about - staying at home with a small cute pitiful sick person, doing repeated loads of vomit-covered laundry, then I really need to work on my hallucination skills.Perhaps psychoactive drugs would help? - More doom:
http://www.acme.com/heartmaker/ayc/ Oh. Geez. So I was completely unoriginal with my little "YOUR BASE" candy heart thing. Ah well, I guess this is the result when you have a temperament like mine such that you only go for trendy stuff once it has become so passe that you can be considered ironic when you refer to it.If I weren't so lazy, I'd put an accent on that 'e' in the previous sentence that cries out for one, but I am, so I won't. - The last one:
And we are eager to know... did you do it? {inw} Yes! I have done it, as mentioned in the log entry immediately preceding this one (scroll down, I'm too lazy to make a link). And the response so far has been: silence.But I did learn something lovely from my pal Jeanmarie - apparently one of the people who left my group about a year ago has been seeking a way to get back in, and various bureaucratically-tangled plans have been discussed. She was (and is, I'm sure) an extremely competent and very amiable person, so I would be thrilled if my exit allows her to smoothly re-enter this role. She is, after all, several orders of magnitude more qualified than any other potential applicants, having done what I'm doing for several years, plus additional duties.So, assuming that the bureaucrats are clever enough to allow the easy refilling of an open "req" for my position, everything should turn out quite happily in the end!But these are bureaucrats, mind you, and occasionally they get a little too excited about that "improving Profitability" thing, and so unwisely decide that an open slot should close, unfilled. This then dooms the rest of the team to struggle along, shorthanded, groaning under the strain, while the bureaucrat shuts their door so they don't have to hear the noise, and is rewarded with additional stock options, or a nicely framed little certificate or something.Lovely little system we've got going here, eh?Oh, sorry, *THEY*. See, I'm not stuck in it anymore, muahahahahhahaha!!! Well okay, two weeks. Two short little weeks. Oh yeah, and three of the ten days, I'm not gonna be here - I'm taking time off to attend sxsw. HA!
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2001-03-02
Alia jacta est:
I just sent my "I'm resigning" email. I actually wrote the thing yesterday, but couldn't think of a good subject line. I finally settled on "Thinking about my future" as suggested by my trusty cow orker friend Jeanmarie. I was trying with difficulty to come up with something that was not too direct, yet not too opaque, either. The message was short, sweet, and to the point. I did not say "I'm sorry", because I'm not, and there's really no reason to be. I wrote that it makes sense for me to leave because I am completely lacking motivation and satisfaction in my job, and I should make way for someone else who will have both of those things. It's a fine job, it's just not right for me anymore. The last bit concluded with a statement that I was glad to have the opportunity to work as part of my team, and that I have the utmost respect for everyone on the team. And in case you don't know Latin, the three words at the beginning of this entry mean "The die has been cast", and were originally uttered by... someone famous, but I can't remember their name. I think it involved taking an army across the Rubicon river in Italy, and the fact that once that decision was made, it was not... retractable. I felt a bit nervous sending the message, realizing that it was a final act of a sort. But then I just clicked "Send" and there it went. It's odd because my boss is out on parenting leave, so I'm not sure when he'll get back. I cc:d the two people covering for him while he's out, though. Weird timing, but I really couldn't wait any longer. Oh yeah, I'm wearing my "Capitalism Sucks" t-shirt today in honor of the occasion. :) I only wear it once in awhile, because it's old and beginning to fall apart. It's one of my favorites of all time. As you can see in the picture, it says "Capitalism Sucks" in Russian, and then written in English in smaller type below it. I bought it in 1989 in Boulder (of course), way back when we were still having the Cold War. I thought it was funny then, and I still think it's funny now, but for different reasons. And I just so happen to have scanned it because I am planning someday to do a little "my favorite t-shirts" project much like Girlhacker's, but I haven't gotten around to it (of course). But starting two weeks from today, I'll have enough free time to put it together!
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2001-03-01
Bleakness:
is what I feel when I think of my job, in every aspect. The commute makes me feel like an animal being led to slaughter. Looking for parking presses all my aggravation buttons, and I cannot imagine the hideousness of the new location they plan to move us to in April, with *even less parking*. Coming in the door and seeing all the Tivoli "branding" in the lobby makes me want to puke. And what's this word, "branding", anyway? Don't people realize it originally meant to hold an animal down and burn your proprietary symbol into its skin, while it thrashes and screams in pain? I hate hearing this word used by marketing types all the time. The lighting here makes me want to hide under my desk. Fluorescent light destroys quality of life, mark my words. I unscrewed one of my fluorescent bulbs in the lighting fixture immediately above my desk a few weeks ago, which turned off two of three of the tubes. It was a very, very small improvement. Why I am not worth fucking *INCANDESCENT* lighting? They pay me a shitload of money a year, but they aren't willing to give me humane-quality lightbulbs? *AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH* I'm sick of watching all that is good in life being screwed over for the sake of the almighty sacred Profit. Don't get me wrong, I recognize that any business (or other organization) must be able to support itself financially in order to continue operating. Duh. So I'm not against the idea of a company making a bit extra so that they can invest it in the business, pay their employees more, and let the owner buy another boat now and then. But this great sucking sound I hear every day - the siphoning of every ounce of what is perceived (wrongly) as mere "excess" so that it can be turned over to the precious Stockholders, it's HURTING MY EARS and I just want it to STOP. I drove by a bunch of brand-spanking-new housing developments today on the way to work, all of which were spewing forth their occupants onto the roadway in front of me. As I looked I saw how the houses were nearly identical and completely lacking in character, having been thrown up (literally) with the least amount of design work possible, the cheapest labor possible, and the cheapest materials possible. So that Profit could be fed, mind you. And I realized, they charge tons and tons and tons of money for these things, putting people into debt for 20-30 years or so, all for a glorified box which isn't half as well-made as those in, say, the 1970s. Okay, I'm not an expert, but I know that of the few people close to me who've had new (expensive) houses built these days, there have been numerous major problems, clearly visible mistakes that should have been noticed and fixed by the builder, in *every* house. There's no commitment to quality anymore - you can't even BUY a house with smooth interior walls anymore. All the major builders require you to have a texture on the walls. Why? So they can better hide some of their mistakes, poorly fitted drywall panels, etc. Fuck that. I'm not buying into this system anymore. It's making me nauseous. I feel like my soul is being sucked out through my wallet. Yesterday, here at the office, the air conditioning went out for a couple minutes. The blissful silence was a striking reminder of just how incredibly *loud* (and unpleasant) the everyday background noise is. We get used to it, so we take it for granted - it seems as though it's always been there and always will be there. Bullshit. I have heard the silence, and it is beautiful, and I will not forget. I will not put up with being treated like a sub-human slave for the sake of someone else's Profit. Not anymore, anyway. In other words... I'm going to tender my resignation today. Two weeks. It's all I can stand, barely.
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