So this weekend in Ct was just amazingly beautiful. saterday i woke up and left my house at around 11 am, i went for a ride down 146 which i forgot that during the day was a visually pleasent road to drive down. windows open music blasting smile on my face i was crusin, and it felt good. so around 1 or 2 i meet up with Jim and Meg and we went for an awesome hike through supply pond, the air had this smell, a smell that i have only ever smelled in supply pond when things are damp but not wet and there is a cool breeze, as i sat waiting for them to arrive i got a nice blast of fresh air off the water that brought the biggest smile to my face i can remember. saterday night was nothing special just a good cap to a great day. Sunday was also great, colder than saterday but still clear and warm and just a great day. it was nice again today unfortunatly i was inside most of the day at work, but i got a quick ride in before i left this moring thanks to Flying Tim having me work for him late today. over all i suppose things are looking up, we shall see i suppose.

Man, I can't believe it's already November. And it's actually damn cold here in LA right now. It was barely even 60 when I got into my car this morning. I can't turn the heat on in my new apartment because the smoke detectors go off and it smells like something is burning.. they'll fix it in a few days, until then I will have to bundle up.

Moving was a fucking ordeal and a half. Wilson and I began the process on Thursday the 30th with packing (which we did quite well I must say). I woke up on Friday at 6am to finish packing and start cleaning the old apartment. We went down to the new place just after 9 to sign the lease and get the keys. We then proceeded to the U-haul to pick up the truck.

This is where things started to go wrong. There was no truck for us. The bitch who rented it the day before hadnt returned it, and the shady Armenian U-haul dealer didnt have anything else for us. By noon we had found another truck, a smaller 10' one.

So we spent the next while loading the truck with boxes. The hand truck and dolly combo we rented ended up proving to be great. The problem now was that the Comcast people were due to come between 1 and 5, and we were way behind loading. So I asked Kevin to sit in my empty apartment until they came. I went down to meet him and give him the necessary cash to give to Comcast. Grabbed some grub on the way back to the old apartment.

We spent the next few hours loading the truck. We were quickly approaching 5pm, our supposed deadline to move out, and we had so much left to do.

We finished off the load by putting in the beds.. all three of them. Only once we had loaded Stone's bed did we realise how stupid it was to have loaded his bed (since he wasnt around, and his bed was not supposed to go to my new apartment). We drove down to unload the load, and left Stone's bed in the truck. Stone eventually met us at the place and helped us do some unloading.

Oh ya, did I mention it was raining most of the time? After 100+ days of no rain, the skies pick my moving day to start doing something.

The rain was getting heavier, and the kids were trick-or-treating. The unload process went sort of quick, but not really fast enough. On the way back to the old apartment, we stopped by Stone's new apartment to drop off his bed.. he didnt have keys to the place yet, so we left it in the courtyard there.

By 6 or 7, we were back at the old apartment..... only to realise that we had left the hand truck and dolly in the god damn new apartment. No big deal right? We're only moving 6 miles away... but it's Halloween and I am moving to Hollywood, the place to be on Halloween. Well, it took me 2 hours to make the 12-15 mile round trip through the pouring rain. During this, the cable guy called to say he had left equipment at the new apartment and hadnt finished installing things because we had no tv there at the time.. he wanted to come back the next morning at 10am.

Our second load consisted of the more oddly shaped crap, and unfortunately it looked like we had to make a third load because our two refrigerators wouldnt fit with all the other stuff.. bummer. When we finished loading the bulk of Wilson's stuff, we went to my old apartment to find that the electricity was off. Now we had no light, until we could bring a power cable back from the new apartment. It was not fun.

The second load went sort of quick. Stone left at this point to go move his bed into his apartment. We began moving the fridges down to get ready to load. The third load didnt have much stuff.. but the rain was a problem. It was just pouring down, so we lost a lot of time waiting for dry patches to get electronics and the like into the truck.

By 6am we had the last of it loaded, and we had vacuumed and such at the old place. We had everything, including the fridges, unloaded by 7:30am. We had the U-haul returned by 8am, and after a bit of a breakfast we were back at the apartment by 9. Wilson soon fell asleep, and I began re-arranging the mess of boxes in the living room while I waited for the cable guy.

10 o'clock went by, and I began calling the number I had for him 45 minutes later. The person on the other end of the phone was the cable guy's friend.. he tried to get ahold of the cable guy for me. Eventually, after almost dozing off, the guy arrived and set up the cable. By now it was past noon, and I was dead tired.. I crashed and woke up six hours later..

My hands are sort of swollen, and my skin was rubbed raw.. Wilson found some old raspberry body lotion in his bathroom, so that helped a bit.. I got a good amount of sleep last night (went to bed by 1am), so I'm sort of rested right now.. but my body is still sore from the 28 hours of physical labour.

Now.. should I have hired movers? It would have cost over $750 probably, so with that money we saved we can do something way more fun. Next time, if I have real furniture (like couches and crap), I will have to hire movers I think..

Anyway, now it's sunday and I should do some unpacking.. especially since I have a bit of a project to complete early this week. I'll post about that when that's done.

Well, I got back from Los Angeles last night. Very interesting place.

I can't think of another place I've ever seen that can be so ugly and so beautiful at the same time. Malibu's beautiful, the rolling hills in central California are pretty astounding, the weather's reliably nice day after day, and the city has a crass sort ofmajesty at night. I didn't notice smog. Despite that, though, the city seemed fairly consistently dirty - and sort of yellowed, like an old paperback. The entire place is sprawl, like one of the five boroughs stretched out into an entire city. Highways are ugly. I couldn't feel any sort of palpable character, the sort of thing you notice in NYC, Boston, or London.

Nice women, very flirtatious. Not as attractive as the ones I saw in Phoenix during my flight transfers,though. I don't know if there was some sort of Hot Young Girls convention in Arizona going over the weekend or something, but goddamn. Must be something in the water, fluoride, I dunno.

The Chevy Malibu is a pretty good car. I didn't like it at first, but it grew on me, nice overall package. I wasn't sure if I was actually going to be able to do all the vicious irresponsible things to the rental car that I was hoping for, but early Monday Morning (3am), heading down from Monterrey back to Los Angeles, I was able to get the car going sideways a couple of times on Highway 1, fun stuff.

Not exactly smart though, Highway 1 is this long, long road that travels alongside the Pacific Ocean, often on cliffs a hundred or so feet above the water. No barriers, very, very curvy. No one was driving on it that night - the highway's probably about 80 miles long, and I saw about 3 cars, 1 that passed on the left, two that I overtook on the right side of the road. I saw about 10 cars just parked out on the side of the bluff, lights out.

The experience was odd, hurtling along this curvy road in the middle of the night - pitch black out, cloudy, no stars, so I couldn't exactly see the ocean - there was just this enormously inky well of, what, blackness covering up my right field of view.

I managed to almost strand myself in the middle of nowhere, also. I headed onto Highway 1 with about a quarter-tank of gas, expecting to find a gas station at some point. In fact, there weren't any 24 hour gas stations on the road. So, about a third of the way through the drive I hit empty, kept driving, seeing nothing around me, not knowing when I'd run out of gas. Eventually, after I had driven for what seemed an absurd amount of time on E, I stopped atthis little motel, figuring that it was better to stay there than to actually have the car stop 10 miles away from anything. I wanted to go ahead, but I guess, I dunno, common sense, fear, whatever, won out.The motel had a gas station, but it wouldn't open until 8am - by which time I would have waited too long to actually catch my flight. The motel's name, and the area in which it was in, was, get this, "Ragged Point". There were cars outside, but the place was completely dead, no lights on, no one in the lobby. http://www.raggedpointinn.net

Ah, yeah, I left Monterrey around 3am and had to make it to Long Beach by about 11am. Ended up calling a tow truck to come out and bring me gasoline, and while I waited, I got bored and decided to see how far I could get before actually running out of gas. Restarted the car, headed off, and somehow I made it another 12 miles and actually hit a gas station that, while still closed, had a pump that accepted credit cards and was operational. Odd little experience - I felt like kicking myself, though, for not attempting to go further.

On Saturday, I think it was, I got up early to go look for an americano (I couldn't sleep, guess it was jet lag). I drove around for what seemed like forever, and eventually ended up at a Starbucks in West Hollywood. West Hollywood is the gayest place on earth. Guys wearing leather vests and no shirts riding around on funny-looking bicycles, groups of Hispanic guys that would've looked like a gang (that sort of clothing) if not for the fact that they were giving each other backrubs in the middle of the store, I dunno. A guy in a pink suit with some sort of multi-colored fro. There was a theather that had a poster that said "Homo Sweet Alabama 2". A large African-American woman who was making the drinks who looked pretty angry until I came up to take the Americano - then she smiled and called me "sweetheart" or "honey" or something like that. Completely fucking absurd. There were a bunch of stores that sold seemingly normal things but had really gay names - like, I dunno, "Tools A'Plenty" or "The Oil Can" for a hardware store, that sort of stuff. I wonder if men and women act like that in the real world and I just don't notice it or something.

The fast food was terrific. In and Out is excellent, as good as it's supposed to be - lives up to the hype in a way Krispy Kreme doesn't. Very fresh ingredients, tasty, polite, solid milkshakes, so on. El Pollo Loco impressed me more than even In and Out, though - better, more interesting flavors, solid food, great. There was a place with Chili burgers that was good too.

Hm, what else. I was impressed by everyone's apartments there. Nice places, nice areas.

The job interview that got me out there in the first place went well, very well, in fact. The woman who arranged the whole thing called me today, left a message, asking me to return the call - I imagine she'll ask me to take the job, don't know if I will.

Anyways, I had a good time, and I appreciate the hospitality of everyone there. Fine place to visit.

Stone

I think my problem with Insult is the lack of freedom. I don't feel free to talk about what is on my mind, since it will probably offend numerous people.

I have a solution to my problem. My solution is the new version of Insult, that seems to never get finished. I don't see it being up until the fall at this point.

I love the americano. I always enjoy it, despite the $2.40 price tag. It never disappoints. My favourite time to have one is when I am already pretty awake.. it becomes just enough to push me over to a nice caffeine high.

Anyway.. I better get back to work.

Happy Birthday Caniprokis.

Someone said recently to me that the every time I post I mention how it has been a while since I posted and that I'm going to post more.  Well, I still agree with that, but I guess I won't change my habits for some time.

Every time I post, I feel like it should fit in with the other posts.. I don't know why this is, but it is.  When Insult started, it wasn't like that.. each post stood on its own.  That's how I want this to be..

I am seeing 'Boomtown' for the first time right now.  It's Law & Order in Los Angeles.. or NYPD Blue in LA.. it's very LA.. dramatic, involves the personal lives of the characters.  Decent show.. but I don't know if it deals with the lawyer side of things.  Seems all cops right now, although now I notice that it follows various people.. they do it like a passing spirit in each person, sorta cool.  It's on TNT now, which means it probably has better hours than when it was on network TV.  Yadda yadda.. who cares.

Went to Riverside, CA for the first time today.  It's the sticks of southern california.. or part of the sticks.  Shithole really.  It's a lot like poor southern Georgia.  I don't ever want to live there.

There are a lot of places on this earth that I would like to live.  Why?  I have no idea.. I just want to live there for a while.  I could say visit, but I would like it to be an extended visit.. I don't like going to a place for a week.  I don't want to be a tourist.. I want to be at the place.  Even six weeks is too short.  A year is better.  Three to five for places I really like.  Why not?  I am sorta doing it already.. I did nearly ten years in Connecticut, four years in Massachusetts, and I'll be in California at least three years.  I didn't even like Massachusetts, and four years flew by.. it was the school really.  So perhaps after my three years in California, I can spend three to five years at grad school some place..

I think I would enjoy a stint at grad school.  I by no means want to enter a life of academia, but I would like to do it for a little bit more.. and I mean the research kind.. not the bullshit 'ill take classes for an extra 3-20 years for a bunch of random degrees'.  I want full out research.  I say this only because I have a research interest in mind, and even a specific project.. and the best thing here is that the research is not going to be really ready to be researched for at least a few years..

Anyway.. perhaps I will remember to write more.

I figured I'd take this opportunity to launch a pre-emptive birthday well-wish onto Devlin. Happy Birthday mang, you old bastard.

The Red Sox are atop the Eastern standings right now, so I figure that's worth celebrating. We have to take what we can get - good to see that $180 bajillion dollars can't buy consistency.

Graduating tomorrow, which is good.James Carville is speaking at Convocation at noontoday, which is at noon. For some reason,the graduation speaker doesn't speak at...Graduation/Commencement, he speaks at Convocation. I get to hear our class president speak, too- I didn't even know we had a class president. I haven't done any of the "Senior Week" activities: stuff like playing paintball, organized get togethers, stuff like that - which means that I think I managed to go five years without ever attending a school-propelled social activity, and that includes the first couple of weeks of my first semester.

Carville, Carville - Democratic political strategist seems like an oxymoron right now ("Let's sort of agree with the Republicans!"), but he ought to be at least mildly entertaining. I dunno how the school/selection committee even keeps up a facade of impartiality when every single speaker, every year, is left- to far left-, though. Danny Glover, Janet Reno, Carville. It's like we're holding a DemocraticElectoral Convention, not a graduation ceremony, but whatever.

My mother is coming up today. I've been interested, watching the progress with the peace plan in Israel. Wouldn't it be great if Bush and Sharon were able to sell a lasting peace plan to the Israeli people, and the Palestinians? I don't think peace would've ever worked with Arafat, but I'm open minded about this new guy, Abbas or whatever his name is, so perhaps there's a shot. And, it'd be sweet if the two men who were able to bring peace to the area were the child-murdering Sharon and the fascist imperialist colonialist Nazi Bush. It's not like it really matters who does the job - the irony appeals.

I had a good cheapGerman Riesling the other day. St.-Urbans-Hof QbA 2001 I think it was, only about $8 or $9 for the bottle. I don't really like white wine, but this one was good, worth buying - you guys ought to try it. I found it in the local wine shop in Collegetown, so the winery probably made a lot of cases, should be fairly accessible. I think I had it with some scrambled eggs.

One other thing - they really do let some stupid fucking people into college. Ithaca College is a good school, but the quality of the students varies so much. I know one girl who goes there who's brilliant, great person, and then I know a number of kids who seem to be able to super-naturally suck the intelligence out of anything they come into contact with. It's like a super-power. People put way too much stock in good high school grades.

Damn!

Steen

It's been a while since I have posted.. I even had to reset my password because I couldn't remember it.

Happy Birthday, hunch. Hope you had a good one.

I am watching CNN right now, and they're talking about the jobs being lost to India. Tech jobs mostly, but some financial positions (analysts, etc). It's not exactly news, but it's sort of funny to watch people fight it. I am not saying you shouldn't fight it, you have to get your piece of the pie, or whatever.. but it really is futile to try to stop job exporting short of being at war with a country. Corporations have a great ability of transcending government. They can exist under multiple governments. During a war, this becomes a conspiracy or something.. I have heard the term, but even when these relationships are illegal, such as during WWII, these companies continue to exist in one form or another. Okay, I lost myself.. enough rambling

Well, it's bed time I guess. I need to start posting more. I was home sick today, it doesn't feel like the flu I had in January at all.. I am coughing, my body aches, but I only had a little nausea and a slight fever. I expect to be fine tomorrow.. I usually get sick bad once a year and every other time lasts

Well, I had my last exam yesterday.  Odd feeling, having it all over with.  I don't know what exactly to say about it - I've noticed that, recently, I feel more like I did when graduating high school, 5 years ago, than I have at any point during that 5 year stretch.  It's hard to pinpoint exact reasons: I've been having the same dreams I used to have, having them about the same people, but I think it's more than that.  Some sort of unnerving feeling of surprising akinness.

I'm coming back home tomorrow or on Friday.  Things fluctuate, I get these periods of feelings of lethargy, worry about the future, but generally I'm looking forward to things happening.

Stone

For the love of God, why oh why..

My body clock has been off for over 4 months now. I keep going to bed later and later, and sleeping later and later.. it's horrible. Every attempt I have had at rectifying this (by staying up for over 24 hours) has backfired.

The worst part about this? I can't tell how many days have passed between events. Since my days are actually nights now. When I say yesterday, I don't even know what I mean anymore.

My roommate asked me to wake him up at 2:30 since he knew I'd be up still. I told him I was planning on being in bed by then, but I said that on the off chance I were up I would wake him. And I was up. So I woke him. The bastard then said he'd be up in 30. It has now been over an hour.. and he is half asleep in bed. Every so often I yell out asking if he's still awake, and I get a sleepy "Yes". But I will persist and I believe I will manage to survive the night because I have a companion to keep me awake. I think.

Other attempts have failed around 6:30am. Not fun.

I just wish that tomorrow (Today) wasn't a Friday though.. Thursday night is a bad night to not sleep. But whatever.. we'll see.

I want to go to bed at 11:30pm at night and sleep till 7:30am.

I havent ranted in a while, and this will be short because its real late.

Spring break for me was horribly short, I came back up to school Tuesday night.. late and the roads were really really quiet. I didn't realize why until I woke up and saw the snow storm out the window when I got up to take a piss. My roommate was home too, he came in that night, and I took a piss and decided to go back to bed for an hour or so in light of the weather. When I woke up I couldn't tell if my roommate had really been there, but I shrugged it off, poured out the moldy coffee left in the coffee machine (it had only been there since last Thursday), looked in the fridge, and then put on some layers to head out to the store.

Once I got outside I couldn't even see my car. So many times in the past few days had I seen odd odd weather. That fog was fucking awesome that last Friday, and this wasn't quite as cool since it was cold and windy. I didn't have my ice scraper, so I slopped the wet snow off the car with my wool gloves. I got in the car, turned the key.. and the car didn't want to start. It wasn't even turning over. I was ready to kill something because I had no food in the house. But then I turned the key one more time and it started without a hitch. Weird.

The 7 mile drive to the store took an hour. I couldn't see much beyond my car, and there were lots of cars on the road. I bought a lot of food at the store, and an instant camera. Included in my purchase was a blender and fruit. So I also bought some beer (case of heineken) and vodka (skyy was on sale, but I really don't know my vodkas.. everyong goes absolut when i notice).

The drive back took longer. I snapped some photos along the way. At one point a dumb ass farmer in his farm truck laden with cinder blocks decided to overtake me. See, I was going almost 15mph, and he overtook me at 20mph or so. At one point I thought he was going to skid into me, but instead he did the opposite, he took off on the left hand side of the road into the ditch/gully/whatever. Only after did he start sliding off did I notice the car coming in the other lane.. he had no way to slow down to get behind me, and couldnt overtake me in time to avoid getting hit head on. Anyway, I grabbed a shot of the truck in the ditch too, we'll see how that comes out.

That night I started my project for my class.. I was going to make an adaptation of Paper Boy in Shockwave (its a shockwave related class). I got interrupted to re-activate my Netflix account and queue up about 30 movies, but basically worked on the shockwave crap. I ended up scrapping the Paper Boy idea, and decided to do Bubble Bobble. By Thursday night, I only had it rendering the levels based on ascii text.. its like my own version of ANSI.. but not using any high ascii.. so much simpler.. but can draw the same shit really.... ANYWAY.. I checked my mail and my first three DVDs had arrived. Amazingly fast delivery through the USPS. So I had to watch Waterworld.

Waterworld is a movie I had been wanting to see since it premiered. I was unable to see it because I wasn't around a theatre that had it.. but it made all this news, and was a movie I had wanted to watch before it came out. And since it is one of those eyesore movies, it is never in video stores. Since Calliander has only the power to order films such as Watch Granny Tinkle, I had given up my quest to watch Waterworld. But Netflix has it, and I finally saw it.

It was okay.

I actually like mariner type crap.. like 15th-17th century trading ships.. pirates, etc. I like it in books, especially Wilbur Smith. But this movie was like a bad comedy for some reason.. even tho its not a comedy.

I kept thinking the bad guy was Patrick Stewart at times. Weird.

I did a bit more work on my game, and went to bed. Woke up to the phone ringing at noon on Friday. It was my neighbor wanting to know if I wanted to go to this bar near here. This girl he knows is now bartending there. We finished our first pitcher by 2, waiting for the rest of the people to arrive. They left before 4, and we went back to the complex to meet up with some other folks just getting off work.. and then we went to another bar I guess. I don't really remember, there was dinner in there somewhere.. but who cares anyway. I was wasted still at 2am when i collapsed in bed.

Spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday working on the game. It is still not done.

Shitty past 5 days except for that Friday. And I still haven't had time to finish Insult either. I don't see it changing before May. I think it will be much better, but the dwindling readership will continue to dwindle until May I think. Ah well.

Okay, bed time.