I don't post here much but I assume the few people who might end up reading this are the people who would actually care, so here goes. I don't really feel comfortable talking about this stuff but I need to vent so this is at least posted somewhere.

I've got horrible unfun health issues going on right now. Anyone who really cares, google 'gastroparesis'.

To summarize without going into much detail :

My diet consists of eggs, oatmeal, vitamin supplements and a couple different types of bland vegetable. Most other things result in a lovely combination of constipation, fatigue, indigestion and sometimes vomiting. For the people giving me shit about not going drinking with them : yes, booze does this too. Fuck off and stop asking already.

I go to sleep at 9:30PM and get up at 5AM. If this schedule gets fucked up I'll wind up staring at the wall for a good 4 hours the next few nights as well as basically being a zombie during the period i'm awake.

As of February I've decided not to break these rules for the purpose of social interaction anymore. Since then I've been feeling a lot better, so it's going to stay this way. If I'm blowing you off these are probably the reasons why. If you've got any problems with these, feel free to fuck off forever and never contact me again.

If you're looking for me on IRC, I don't hang out in #nn anymore. Most of the old #nn regulars have moved on to a different channel, which is fairly easy to find if you know some basic IRC commands. Just be sure to check the domain for the password. If you're one of those people who immediately follows up on "hello" with "We should hang out so you can do some sort of unpaid tech work for me" feel free to die in a fire instead.

Small non-drama sidenote : I'm probably changing my major to psych/research next semester assuming I get this huge pile of transfer paperwork and crap dealt with before the deadline. HI RENEE.

[[Awesomecat]] crash car go boom. She's fine though.

Also half of us had the flu and we generally decided that going to a waterpark on the first week after a school semester ends would be a horrible idea due to the school crowds so we're aiming for the end of the season so the people who have full-time jobs can request time off.

Also gas is 5.35$ for -regular- in some of the places between Klamath and Eureka. What the fuck?

So it's definitely happening. If you're reading this and didn't come here via a google search, you're invited.

The general plan seems to be carpooling down on the 15th (sunday), getting up and going to the waterpark early on monday morning (as early as possible to avoid the crowd, as parents and little kids generally don't start showing up until 11AM or so.. not like it matters really, but good parking is a priority at this place) and the fleamarket/weirdstuff afterwards, followed by an evening of wandering around the mall and getting drunk at Dave & Buster's, and then driving back on Tuesday.

Expected cost should be something like




This includes hotel, gas, waterpark admission, and probably something like 20$ extra per person for food/alcohol at D&B or fleamarket money.

If anyone knows some negative people we could invite to make it even cheaper go ahead as long as we don't land on the asymptote in which case we're fucked.

You should all come. All of you. We'll stuff people in the trunk if we have to.

okay so june 15th-22th is semester break and Awesomecat, Kremlin and I are probably going to roadtrip down to san jose to go to Raging Waters sometime early in the week. Anybody who's cool and can kick in some cash towards gas/a hotel room for two nights/admissions (~22$ish for admission, dunno how much gas, probably $30 towards the hotel.. ~80$ total?) should come with us. ALSO THE WATERPARK KICKS ASS AND YOU SHOULD ALL COME BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME AND THERE'S A HUGE FLEA MARKET/COMPUTER PARTS WAREHOUSE THERE TOO.

So we did, with a shitty camera.

I got accepted at OIT. Hooray?
In march I get to move away from the remaining friends I have around here.
I hate everything. Especially carpal tunnel.

My house is in one of those typical suburban blocks with letter cross-streets and unnamed, unpaved alleys that bisect the blocks. Our garage opens onto one of these alleys, most of the time. I say 'most of the time' due to the fact that any potholes the alley once had have long-since eroded into into a gigantic basin that miraculously transforms into our very own turd-brown pond (sometimes complete with ducks) every time that it rains. It didn't take us long to figure out that the pond hungers for cars and trucks, so its presence effectively renders the garage and rear parking spaces completely inaccessible. Calling Public Works always results in an apathetic reply of "we can't re-gravel while it's raining" or something similar. A year or so, they actually tried to fill The Pond with gravel, but within a month it had returned to its normal sunken, inaccessible state.

So a few days ago we had a gigantic storm, causing the Pond to once-again manifest in full force. Today was garbage day, so around 10AM I go out to put a bag of trash in the now-empty garbage can and find that the pond has claimed a victim:



Apparently the garbageman took note of the pond and put a call in to Public Works about it. The Public Works guy shows up, drives directly into the pond and immediately stalls. You can't see it in the picture, but his muffler is entirely underwater in that picture. Roughly an hour later another PW truck showed up to tow him, and as I write this the alley is cordoned off as dumptruck after dumptruck of gravel is dumped into the pond.

Unrelated moral of the story : Sprint picture messaging is a load of shit and it took roughly 30 minutes to get that picture off my mom's crap camera phone.

If you're reading this you probably know who I am. I really hate writing about my boring life so I'm only going to post things here that fit into the category of "Stories that I don't really want to repeat to 10 different people over various IM clients and IRC channels".

My crappy (and also mostly ignored) codeblog is still up at http://www.signalshift.net if anyone cares (which they probably shouldn't, seeing as I haven't updated it with anything interesting in more than a month.

TIME FOR COMPLAINING ABOUT COLLEGE:

Sometime in October I got this phonecall:

"Hello, this is the Oregon Institute of Technology admissions office. We've been reviewing your application and can't make a judgement yet based on your lack of transcripts. However, since you haven't taken English 1A yet, you may be required to write a paper in lieu of taking the english proficiency exam."

No subject given, no due date. Oo-kay. Time passes. A month or so later I get another call:

"Hello, this is the Oregon Institute of Technology admissions office. We require you to take the english proficiency exam before we can finalize your admission. No paper will be necessary."

So I drive up there (round trip = 16 hours of driving total) and take/pass the exam. Admissions then tells me that they can't make a formal judgement until the grades are posted for winter semester.

Yesterday, I got home to find THIS waiting in my voicemail:

"Hello, this is the Oregon Institute of Technology admissions office. We've been reviewing your application and can't make a judgement yet. Although we've recieved your transcripts, we also require you to write a 2000-word paper on yourself and what you intend to get from your studies at OIT. Please submit this to by the end of office hours on Friday. Thanks."

I hate writing that type of paper more than anything else. It really didn't help to have an overenthusiastic/paranoid parent 'checking in' to see if I had made any progress every 15 minutes for the entirety of the four hours it took to get the paper written (and of course going on a psychotic I DO SO MUCH FOR YOU trip whenever I said anything that could possibly be interpreted as 'you are distracting me go away' or worse).

The paper is done and submitted. If I get stuck here another semester I'm going to go insane from the unrelenting flood of parental bullshit. Ugh.