I think I just needed to vent or otherwise rid my system of all the anxiety I’d been holding within. I’m feeling a lot better in regards to various things.
A very small number of individuals know what I’ve been busy with, everyone else must think I’m off in the land of… something.
The fact of the situation is that my life just flat out sucks right now. I’m putting in, on average, more than twelve hour days writing code for Positive Fusion. Unfortunately my motivation is dwindling quickly due to what I’d call ‘real-life circumstances’ ….
Life outside of writing code is less than desirable. I really did, although incredibly naively, expect things would be easier than they apparently are. I didn’t expect him to create new obstacles once the old ones cleared out, but sure enough that’s really how it appears now.
I have three journal entries still pending. I’ve not written about our Christmas celebration, nor have I written in any public way about how New Year’s turned out. The third is where I write about putting my heart out there on paper… even virtual paper for that matter.
Slightly more than a week ago I spent the evening with this guy, the guy I’ve been writing of vaguely and mentioning in rather off cuff manner. Our spending an evening together is in no way remarkable, as it has occured enough to describe the frequency as, well, frequent. There was a scheduling conflict of my own making, I needed to leave quite early in the morning.
When the alarm sounded and I prepared myself for leaving this… anxiety fell over me. I
kissed him goodbye and caressed his face, saying that I would see him very soon.
I walked down the stairs, out of the building, toward my car several blocks away.
My eyes welled with tears. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, other than I was leaving him.
I realized as I was driving home that leaving him was enough to bring such sadness. I wrote about it prior to new years, but I never actually told him how sad it was when we left each other.
I failed a goal, one of those invisible goals I wrote about. I was really trying to straddle the edge of being a friend whose boyfriend has left, because I can relate to that oh so very well, unfortunately… and also the edge of someone so very interested in moving things forward between us.
I joked with Matthew that this man should be able to judge the nature of my visit by the type of shoes I’m wearing and if I’ve brought flowers. If I wear my black italian leather shoes it is clearly a date, otherwise… I’m there as a friend. I realize it’s silly, but this is the sort of territory where things are hard to define, thus any sort of defining feature becomes increasingly important.
I was casual, but I also brought him a rose. This was clearly, if you’ve been following, a blend of the two. Perhaps that is one of my failures; I have been trying to hard to fit the appropriate role instead of going full-out for whatever it is that I want. I felt it inappropriate to move in so soon… and I still feel that it would be have been inappropriate.
He gets so much breadth of patience with me.
The only certain way to gain my disfavor is to disrepect me. The most disrespectful course of action is to lie, to forge the truth. Actually, that isn’t the most disrepectful, to lie by method of omission is even worse.
I’m the type that will keep giving rope. I won’t tip my hand, or if I do, it is in a calculated way. I am, by nature, a very calcuating person. I am manipulative, I make no dissaugement of that in any way. On average any manipulation I endeavour toward is completely transparent and is done not for the pursuit of negative goals. Even so, one must realize that nothing is said without it first passing through several filters: Is it appropriate given the situation? Is it for purposes of being vindictive? Is it for purpose of explaining how I feel? Does this person deserve to know how I actually feel? You get the idea.
With him I’m putting significant effort into letting him know how I actually do feel. It is highly difficult, I need to bypass so many of the filters that would normally stop me from saying anything.
That was precisely the case the other evening and more so the other morning. I stood at the door to the bedroom looking back at him, not wanting to leave, yet knowing that I needed to… I never told him that I love him, I wanted to… I just didn’t. I didn’t tell him how much it hurt to leave, I wanted to.
I walked down the sidewalk as if I’d never see him again. All the things I wanted to say to him flowed through my mind and I felt regret.
I suppose I can say it is because of my father’s death that I feel the importance of making sure someone knows they’re loved…. everyday, every time you see them, and especially every time you part from them.
I can’t make up for mistakes in my past. I can; however, avoid making them now.
My invisible goal is to tell him I love him every time I see him. The words were on my tongue more than once, but I kept stopping myself from actually saying them.
Realizing that I failed that goal was painful, no matter how ridiculous it may seem to those reading this.
Upon returning home I wrote him an email where I put my heart out on the virtual paper. I told him everything that was coursing through my mind that moment where I looked back at him.
He didn’t reply.
I’ve not seen him since that morning.
The screws have come loose. I think it may be time to cut losses.
I was reading something yesterday where a Windows user was mentioning the typical biannual format and reinstall of the operating system. This is something that most ‘power users,’ and I use the term loosely when applying it to Windows, are quite familiar with; the OS just collects so much junk that it ceases to function optimally, even for Windows. In defense of Windows, I gather XP doesn’t suffer from that problem as much, but the general nature of applications installing dynamic link libraries randomly within the system folder is still very much there.
Actually, saying “Two Years of Gentoo” isn’t correct, now that I check. I didn’t install Gentoo until November of 2003, but the point being (I suppose) is two years of Linux in general on this workstation. That also means I’ve been using Linux as my desktop OS since June of 2001… wow, right?
I have never had to format and reinstall Gentoo. I don’t see the need anywhere down the line for doing it either. The OS runs just as well fourteen months post installation as it did originally.
I’m very happy that I made the switch.
I need to remember to read all those rss feeds that are not personal websites, like Engadget. Of course all problems would be solved if I kept apple.com as my start page instead of blank. What I’m getting at is nobody mentioned the new Mac Mini, nor the iPod shuffle to me. Zilla mentioned iWork 2005, which while interesting doesn’t really get me all wowed up or anything. None of the RSS feeds I read mentioned anything about them, and even worse, Seryozha, my adorable macfiend didn’t even mention it, lol.
I guess it’s one of those things, we, as Apple users, are just supposed to know about these things; plan ahead on our schedules to watch the live feed of the expo and ready the bank account for imminent spending.
Just for fun, I was reading over the opinions of all those “non-sheep” out there, you know, die-hard wintel fans, the black sheep, or the anything with a dozen or more security issues means it great sort of people. It’s the usual bullshit, the lusers too cheap or stubborn to ditch Windows bash the Apple fans by calling them sheep and that we’ll buy anything that’s white with an Apple logo on it, pointing to ill-designed yet ‘just as capable’ flash players that are supposedly ‘oh so much better’ than the new Shuffle.
There are two reasons to buy a Shuffle:
I fall into category number two. I don’t take my iPod on short 2 mile trips to the smoke shoppe or Sheetz. There is a certain hassle involved with choosing a playlist or album for such a short trip so I’m usually going to listen to the radio — and thus have to endure horrid pop music for the duration of the trip. The concept of having something so tiny that I can just keep in my coat pocket is very appealing, especially when I just turn it on and it plays music that I’ll actually want to listen to.
The lack of screen and having to fiddle with choosing which music to listen to is precisely why I want one. This brings us right back to the two points I’d made, this isn’t meant to be your only MP3 player, it is to augment your existing iPod.
Another important point is that the Shuffle isn’t just an MP3 player, I actually see the ability to play music as an added benefit; the Shuffle is a 512MB or 1GB USB2 flash drive that also will play music.
I spent $80 a little over a year ago on a 128MB flash drive, the idea of spending $99 on something from Apple that also performs that function is a rather comfortable one; like I said, I also then get the benefit of being able to play music. I won’t take my iPod with me when we go out clubbing, I don’t like the idea of leaving it in the vehicle, a broken window would result in the loss of a $400 piece of technology.
Of course, then there is the Mac Mini. Oh, how I want one of those! I was just complaining to Zilla about the need for a desktop Mac, because the 12″ screen on the iBook just doesn’t cut it for working with Photoshop or Illustrator. I almost always boot to Windows from Linux so I get the beautiful screen real-estate that my flatpanel will offer me. The fact of the matter is that I do not need a new computer, I have four already, not counting my brother’s or mother’s computers. While I would love a new iMac, or even better a PowerMac, the budget just doesn’t have that sort of financial leeway for something unnecessary.
My LCD has three inputs on the back with a button on the front to switch between them, I can so easily see sitting the cute little Mac Mini on the desk and switch back between them on the monitor.
Coming in at a starting price of $500, it’s much easier to justify getting one of those, and in reality it would meet my needs much better anyway. Of course, after upgrading the ram, drive, getting wireless (bluetooth & G), and input devices (also wireless, of course), the price comes to more like $1000, but it’s still considerably less than any other offering.
I’m quite convinced that within a couple of months I’ll have one sitting on my desk, at least when I don’t have it sitting downstairs in the lounge. I’m also going to be making quite the push for Matthew to get one, the pricepoint will definitely be a nice little help in that regard.
This a truly odd situation. We expect css to render differently in broken browsers (IE - on any platform, really), but Firefox is rendering with a one pixel error between Linux, Windows, and Mac. I think it might have something to do with the fonts in Linux though.
This is how the set of tabs is supposed to look, and it appears this way while using Firefox under Gentoo Linux.
This is how the set of tabs looks under Windows and Mac in Firefox. I adjusted the css to illustrate how it appears, versus taking a screenshot in Windows, so the fonts are the same, obviously, in this image.
It’s just one of those funny situations where I need to decide if I want it to look right for me, or for everyone else. ;) That is, unless I can fix it, which I’ll certainly attempt to do. I think I just need to totally rethink the implementation, bugger.