May 2003

May 1st, 2003 I hate to do this, I had a pretty important message in my last journal entry on the ending day of April. So if you haven't read this yesterday, you need to go to the archive and read the last message. My stats aren't active until around 0300, so I'm not sure if you've been to the site on May 1st yet, considering that i'm writing this at 2300 hours on May 1st. I know that some of you noticed that I had the wrong dates heading each entry. Can you please email me when I make mistakes like that. Something like that is sort of important, because now, since Google has been here and gone to index my site for May, all my dates are going to be screwed up in the search engine results, and I'd prefer it if people know that I'm pretty active on this page. So when you see any errors, even spelling, feel free to email me. It's a big task, trying to keep this site as error free as possible. So I miss stuff from time to time. With my two brothers really being the only editors of this page, it doesn't help either. They really don't look at much except their own pages, and this diary, and most of you look at most of my site in a given sitting. I know some of you have been anxious for me to get more of the pages up. I'm actively working on it as we speak. It is sort of another big task to get each directory up and going. I take a lot of pride in some of the images that I'm making for this site, so that's the time. I usually can create an image for navigation in one night, however, right now my task is getting the "doug" link up and going. I have a pretty cool idea for what that is going to be. I'm quite proud of it, and sent the preliminary version to my brothers to get an idea of how it's going. I spent about 2.5 hours working on it last night, but now I think I'm going to scratch that one and make something a little better. I always always do things better the second time around, so it sucks when the first time around takes so long, and I know how much better it's going to be if I redo it, but that also means about the same amount of time will be taken up. I also have a new intro page that you are going to love. I spent a hell of a lot of time working on that. It's about as cool as I want it to be. There are minor imperfections, but it's such a massive task to fix it, that I'll just let it go as is. Maybe I'll do that tonight sometime. Yeah, i think i will do that. Ok, so my day today was about an uneventful as a day can be. What happened today, nothing, went grocery shopping and nothing else. Ugh, how boring and wasted. Mostly, my daytime is spent waiting for it to be night, because at night is when I run, and when I work on my sites, and all that fun jazz. Then I go to sleep, wake up, and wait for it to be night again. I actually pretty much hate doing anything on my computer during the day. It's always so incredibly nice here during the day. I remember being in school, looking outside in the spring and early fall, and thinking to myself that it was just too nice of a day to be in school. If i was going to grade school here in Tucson, I'd think that about 90% of the days. It's amazing how it is ALWAYS nice weather. Granted, next week it's supposed to get into the nineties, and I'm not totally looking forward to that, but it'll be good to run when it's hot out. I need to start running early in the morning too, so I get used to how it's going to be in the military. I play guitar at church sometimes here. I really don't like doing it, because the music is always different for me. I never play most of the chords in church music, so that's tough. I'm always drowned out by the piano, which is sometimes nice. But sometimes I get paid for it. This last saturday I was at SOS service, which the church has on Saturdays. It's sort of this completely untraditional church service. Everybody sings, and, well, it's about as non-church like as I've ever seen. Anyhow, my mom organizes these services. She writes them all for the pastor, and is usually the song leader. Last Saturday she had big plans for a "band" to be there. So she got a drummer, a flute player, a piano guy, and me on the guitar. The theme was about joy, so we'd played some "joyous" church songs, along with stuff like, "i've got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart, down in my heart, down in my heart", and other stuff that we've all heard about and sang when we were kids. So it was sort of fun. The entire congregation is all really old people, but last saturday this lady brought her 2 year old granddaughter along with. She was fun. There is usually only around 20-30 people who go to this service, so it's quite informal. The kid was just having a ball. We had blown up balloons for everyone to take with. Well, we play the first song, and after we finish, the kid starts clapping. So everyone there is applauding our performance. If you go to church, you realize how unorthodox applause is. So it was funny. Then, every time we played a song, people applauded us, so that was pretty cool. Everyone was clapping for themselves and for us. Made it all pretty cool. When the Pastor (his name is Tracy and he is about the coolest pastor ever) was doing his prayer, he was repeating joy a few times, and everytime after he said "joy", the kid yelled out "PARTY". Damned funny. So I was really expecting the service to be horrible, because of my feelings toward church, but it was actually quite fun, and I got paid 50 dollars to be there, so that was cool too. Speaking of Pastor Tracy. He has Parkinson's Disease. It's quite unfortunate, because he is one of the most interesting people I've ever met. He is extremely cool to talk to. I was in Oro Valley one day talking to Taft, and I called up my mom in case she wanted anything from Burger King, so she suggested I get something for Tracy as well. I got him a Whopper Jr., and after he finishes eating it, he asks if there is anything else in my bag that I can borrow. His wife ordered for him and he was disappointed with the lack of substance I purchased for him. We talked about the military for a while too. He was a chaplain in the service, so he has a really good idea of how things work. You should meet him though. The doctors aren't really giving him a great prognosis, so he probably won't be able to be a pastor for that much longer, but if you are in Tucson, and you have the opportunity, go and see him preach. He's such a great speaker and you just really should meet him. It's unfortunate that some people that are so cool don't get the best of breaks in their life. His wife Linda, who is possibly the most outspoken person I've ever met, is pretty decent as well. They compliment each other well. She won't hesitate to tell you exactly how she feels about something. Everytime I run into her, we always have to hug and I get a kiss on the cheek. She tells me about God's plan for me and stuff like that. Super nice lady to me, but you have to understand her to not get offended by some of the things that she says. Anyhow, they want me to go over to their place and do a few tasks that they can't do themselves. Stuff like cleaning places that are hard to reach for them and other odd jobs. My mom said it's just an excuse for them to give me some money. Seriously, people here are way too nice to me for not knowing me at all. It's pretty cool. We hung out with Linda and Tracy at christmas with some of their family. The interior of their house is painted super cool. They had just finished when I got down here, so Dan and myself got a tour. It was about the coolest looking paint job I've ever seen. WHen I buy a house, I have to make sure to paint it like they painted theirs. If you get the opportunity, go and see it. It's way cool. Mom wants to do something like that with her new house that she purchased. So I've been giving her some good pointers. My mom loves painting. Her and Jenna buy a lot of used furniture that looks like it's on it's last leg, and then they paint them up all nice. It's pretty cool too. I think Jenna takes a lot of pride in the stuff that she has all painted up. My grandma also came down here last week. She's a super cool lady. I have some good stories of her throughout my life. I don't know her all that well because most of the time she's been in Seattle and I've been in WI, but it's cool to be here with her now that we are both in the same place, and I'm a little older. She has a really cool place, she only stays here through the winter mainly though, then goes up to Seattle for the summer. It gets hot here in Tucson if you didn't know. Anyhow, she had to get a hip replaced, so she hasn't been here this winter at all. She asked me to go and pull some weeds for her in her yard though. Give us some good bonding time. My mom said that she just wanted an excuse to give me some money. Of course, any time I help people out here in Tucson they always way over pay me. The people who's computers I fix, they way over pay me. When I would telemarket for Mike, he would way over pay me. Playing guitar at the church, or performing other little tasks there, like putting stuff together, they give me way too much money. Seriously, everyone is way too nice down here. In Wisconsin, at least around where I grew up, everyone was always super nice to me as well, but it's different here, because most everyone is more than comfortable financially, and everyone is always ultra laid back. If you have the urge to try new things in your life, like moving around and all that fun jazz, you should give southern arizona a try. I hope that I can get what I want out of the Army so that I can decide where I want to live, or feel comfortable about moving around. What I want to do in the Army is see the world. I want to travel around and meet people and form good relationships, at the same time hopefully obtaining a career in something with the computer world. I was thinking of maybe trying to be a programmer, or something along that line, but I might be more suited towards managing and troubleshooting networks. What I might do is engage in a couple of correspondence schools, and get various computer degrees. Get network certified, get a graphics design associates degree, maybe try to get a little programming courses under my belt, and have the Army pay for those classes with their tuition assistance programs. Hopefully I can get a few certificates by the time I'm done with my four year enlistment. I'm not going to do anything until I've served for about a year though (my training takes six months). Then I'll decide whether or not I want to get a bunch of certifications, or if I want to get a four year degree in Computer Science. Mainly my decision will be based off of how much I like the Army life. If I like it, I'll probably go for the four year degree that way I can re-enlist as an officer, make more money in the Army, and have a little better options. Then I would re-enlist with something like a computer tech job, as opposed to artillery which is what I'm in now. Of course, maybe I'd go into the Navy or Air Force too. I wouldn't mind trying my hand at becoming a pilot. We'll see. I'm definitely more than excited for it though. That's all for now. Hope May is a good month to you, and this day finds you in good spirits. I'll talk to you soon. Go To Top May 3rd, 2003 I'm glad I was so convincing in my last entry for the month of April. Sure am glad I do a good job of persuading visitors that come to my site to do anything other than just read it. Christ people. So I've been renting a hell of a lot of movies lately. A whole bunch. Usually at least 3 a week, most times 6 or more. I always rent in groups of three. My membership entities me to get one free with everyone paid. And then I always pick up another just for good luck. Yeah, I watch a lot of movies. It's hard to rent now, because I've seen so many. I usually budget about a half hour whenever I go there. Anyhow, I was thinking that Blockbuster wouldn't be too bad of a job to have, so I went to their website and applied. I really didn't have any expectations of getting a call, but I figured I'd give it a try. Anyhow, they called a few days later, and since then I've had to go to two grueling interviews. I don't think it's really all that important for them to put me through such hellish torture for a 6.50 an hour job. But whatever. It's not like I don't know anything about movies. Movies and myself are one. I rent and watch all the time, way more than I probably should. I read the paper, and always read the Life section (that's a prerequisite we should NOT ignore), and I go to IMDB.com daily. Why do I obsess like this. I have no idea. They send me trivia and movie quotes every day, and it always takes me to their site. Plus the give me news updates, and it just lures me in. It's about the greatest site on the internet, and I go there more than any other site. I also get news stories from cnn.com. The combination of those are going to kill me. Once you start reading one article, you can't stop. I always like to be up-to-date on current events, be it news, or movies, or whatever. I hate talking to someone about some current event and don't know what they are talking about, that's probably why I do it. I'm also very careful where I get my information from. I don't want too be reading too much of the conservative publications, because, then, god forbid, I might establish a conservative viewpoint on something. We all know what happens when you become too conservative. I don't want to be some money hungry capitalist that only worries about themselves. That's really how you can describe a conservative. Without sugar coating it of course. You know, I was reading in the paper today that if George W. Bush what would happen if George W. Bush declared a victory in Iraq. Under international law, any country that declares a victory in war, requires having the leader of the country to be killed. Something like that. So if George W. declared a victory, he's really opening himself up to assassination attempts. That'll add to the stress when doing speeches. Granted, I don't really like Bush. He's a moron in short, but I wouldn't condone assassinating him. Thought that would be messed up. Since I'm talking about news stuff, I saw that Cedar Point in Ohio got a new roller coaster. If you haven't been to Cedar Point, you should check it out. When I was in school I always got to go on trips to Great America (another amusement park). Every year I went. So I've seen a lot of rides that have come and gone at that park, and sort of got into critiquing them after I got older. When we went to Cedar Point after my senior year of high school, it was a definite welcome change of pace. The place is seriously like Great America on steriods. Everything that I complained about at Great America was perfect at Cedar Point. The rides were higher, longer, and faster. The lines were of a comparable wait, some longer, but it was much more worth it at Cedar Point. Anyhow, In the USA today they had this huge cover article in the destinations section on Cedar Point's new ride. The picture of it was pretty amazing, just a shot of the train coming down the track. Then I started reading the article, and they said it was now the fastest and highest ride in the world. They had the previous record for a while, when they built one in 1989. I remember going on that, and being pretty freaked out because I'm not the biggest fan of heights. That bastard was massively big and fast. They've since built one higher than that, and faster, since I've been there that is. But this new one is the world record. It's 420 ft. high, the second place holder is 318. Can you believe that, how much higher they went. They are using some new sort of technology to get it up that high, and then to slow it down they use magnets like those used on high speed trains in Japan. Pretty cool stuff. They showed an overhead shot of the whole park. The ride is basically going up, flipping over a few times, and then coming down. It's like one big upside down "u" if that makes any sense. Anyhow, this picture... I fell on the floor when I saw it. Because I remember how high most of those rides looked when I was there, and they weren't even close to as high as the new one. It was pretty amazing. The ride goes 120 mph. That smokes all other records too. I think the maximum speed of descent is 120, so it's be hard to make a ride go faster using forces of nature. I would like to see the responses of my friends that I went with to that picture. Seriously, you would have freaked out. I bet the people that go to the park are mainly too scared to even go on it. They put bleachers up so people could watch it in action. The first time a park ever did that. Anyhow, I thought it was pretty cool. So how do you like my new intro page? I'm still working on it. I didn't think it would be that hard to make a preloader, but I'm having some difficulty. So I've been spending some time on that, along with this image that I made up last night with 166 other images. It's pretty cool. I sent it to my brothers for a test run, but I haven't been to impressed with their responses. I'll still post it though, just needs a little bit of work before it's ok enough. You'll see it on the "doug" page by the start of the work week. That's all for now. Go To Top May 5th, 2003 Happy Cinco de Mayo today. If that's how you say it. I didn't even know that american's really celebrated that as a holiday, or if it was anything big at all. That was when I was in WI. Since being in Tucson, the last few days it's dominated the news. All these big cinco de mayo parties places were having, and all this jazz. So my family wanted to celebrate it a little. There was a big bash Saturday at a bar we've frequented. This marichi (however you spell that, just sound it out), loads of food, drinks, all mexican stuff you know. Anyhow, that wasn't really cinco de mayo, so I talk to my mom today and she tells me this big meal she is planning. This was for my grandma, her boyfriend, jenna, ma and me. So I make some flan, which if you haven't had it, it's this pretty good mexican desert. Definitely much more complicated to make than I originally anticipated. You have to melt sugar in a pan, and my first attempt resulted in burning the sugar. Way too much smoke in the place. I wasn't really paying attention because i didn't expect it to melt in 2 minutes. So I had to dispose of that, which is easier said than done. Then I made some more. This time it was beautiful. So I coated this glass pan with it, then made the flan. It looked absolutely perfect when I was done. I hate stuff that has too cool, because I want to eat it right away. That's why I never make jello, I'm just too impatient. Anyhow, everyone was real impressed with my flan, as I was of course. I'm a big fan of cooking. However, no where near as good as my mom. If you've been here in the past, you already know that. My mom is the master. She's telling me what she is planning, and my mouth just starts watering. What she did was found three recipes that she liked, and combined them using whatever ingredients she saw fit. She said she sat over the stove, tasted it, and when she thought it was missing something, she looked over the three recipes and picked one she thought was good. This was some mexican soup that she appropriated calls "southwestern soup". It was absolutely amazing. As typical, her boyfriend and I don't speak when we eat her cooking, however, this time was accompanied by moans and groans by both of us, and then threats of bodily harm over whoever got the last bowl. Seriously, you should try it. I asked her if she followed on recipe more than another, and she said no, so i asked her if she wrote it down, and she said "no", followed by a "I'll probably never be able to cook this the same again". Of course, her boyfriend and I wouldn't have any of it, and forced her to write it down before finishing the rest of her meal. I told her she should bottle it in a bottle shaped like her body. Ha, quite funny her response to that, but her boyfriend got it worse for laughing. Soup doesn't make a meal however, and my mom also provided us with Tacos and enchilada's. Just how I like them this time, with as much cheese, sour cream, refried beans, meat, as possible. I loaded my plate up way too much. Way too much. still finished it, but I decided it best not to move for a few days after finishing that meal. The flan on top of it all put me over the edge, and I'll have to give my stomach a few days to digest. Of course, with every meal there is something that ruins it, and with this, it was with each bite, I knew I could never go back to the one I just ate. I knew that eventually I would be too full to eat anymore, too full to move, too full to fit into my pants. Eventually, the meal will only be a memory in my mind, and although that hurts me emotionally as well as physically, I'll try to keep it a good memory, and not focus on the bad points, that I'll never be able to eat that meal like that again. I'll never be able to exactly capture the emotions that I felt taking the first spoonful of that soup. Like I said though, I'm going to try to only remember the positive. Talking to my grandma about cooking, she was saying she had just cooked "chicken streleski" (her last name). Telling me about how people were raving over it. So I asked how to make it, and my mom told me that I already know. That's the chicken catchitorri that I make already. I didn't know that my grandma invented that twist on it. Apparently, my mom tells me that my grandma is a much better cook then her. I have a hard time believing that, but a date to go and eat some of her cooking is quickly being scheduled. I did tell my grandma about some of the raving reviews that i've gotten from it. She was flattered, but not surprised. Yeah, she knows she's good. I must eat some of her food before I go off to the army. Aside from that wonderful meal, not much else is going on. I did create a new navigation page for this site. as you've probably already noticed. I just don't like the shadow that was behind the sun there. I don't know why I put that there, but it's a lot better now. I'll probably change the font too, all easier said than done. The hours that I've spent creating graphics... I am definitely going to try and get a degree in computer graphics through the army though. It's just about the most fun I have sitting behind a computer besides playing super collapse, which, after achieving one of the highest scores of all time worldwide last week, I'm starting to hate it. However, I still play on. remember, do not download super collapse II. seriously, it'll ruin your life. Also finished a page on the flash site. That took some time. Although I know just about 95% of HTML languages and tricks, I know about 5% of flash. Although it's easy to pick up initially, it's extremely hard to master. I'll try to finish this site and all the eye candy pages with flash before I leave. That'll put me in good shape. Still, nothing from centurytel. I'm extremely bothered by this. I have no idea who it is, and I'm positive it's isn't a spider anymore. Somebody is coming here everyday, and I don't know who it is. Damnit is that bothering me that I don't know. I should just accept it as web anonymity, but this site isn't about bringing in money. It's about an outlet for my emotions, a learning experience, a testing ground, a backdrop of my life, and opportunity for people to stay in contact with me. However, i get zero feedback on the site except from my brothers, so instead of people staying in contact with me, it lets people into my new life here in Tucson, and I don't know anything about the people who seem so interested in knowing what I'm up to. I don't know, maybe this page is just interesting. To be honest, I get more people that I don't know from other parts of the world looking at my site then I do friends and old friends looking at it. Most people come to this site via some search engine, look at the page that came up in the results, then realize that what they were looking for wasn't there, so they browse my site, coming to the diary first (every single person does), then goes on to the ladyfriends page, then leaves. That's the typical stay of a visitor of my site. However, people I know come to the diary first, always, most of the time they leave, or they go to the guestbook next, always, then maybe a few more pages if I put something new up or changed something as denoted in this diary. That's why I always post what I did on the site in this page, because really this is the navigation page that people use. I'd put something at the top of the page to show people what is new on the site, but that would make the page look cluttered, and I like keeping it looking like a notepad. Seems appropriate. What I haven't been doing a lot of recently is delving into my emotions and personal life that much. Maybe because I don't have much of a personal life or emotional life as much. To be completely honest, ever since I've got her I find myself really regretting things that happened with a former ladyfriend. Sometimes I really miss being by my dad's place. I was thinking about that the other day, about being by my dad, how I hated it a lot of the time, underappreciated mainly. Genuine underappreciation too, because my father and I had talks about it. Anyhow, certain things I really miss. I miss being able to do field work on the tractors. Just chilling out with my thoughts, which always keep me entertained. Then I miss working hard all the time. You feel better about yourself when you work hard. Although I hate manual labor, the hormones my brian release always make myself feel pretty good. It sucks that you have to do that every single day, no matter what. It was a good decision to get out of that, because I could never meet some of my life goals working on a farm all the time. I miss working on my car, a lot. That was a fun project, more so even looking back on it now. It's a main goal of mine to finish that car, and I hope that when I'm done with the Army, I'll still have an opportunity to finish it. I really miss working with Matt. The shittiest labor ever, roofing that is. Hot weather, hard work, death defying feats. I made ok money, but I seriously never really thought about that. Working with Matt was great fun. It was just the two of us, sweating or asses off, me coming up with the dumbest comments about shit ever. I respected him as a boss though. Even though we are such completely opposite people. I'm so damned easy going all the time and anybody that isn't, or doesn't have any patience, always gets pissed at me after a certain amount of time. I work hard though, and I did work hard for Matt most of the time. That's why we got along ok roofing together, because I respected his talents and I ripped on him just enough for enjoying roofing so much, and takign it way too seriously. I made way more money working for matt than I did for donald, but I never really thought about the money. That's why even though I hate manual labor so damned much, I still know it was ok working with matt. I miss being able to work myself thin, and not even be concerned with money. When I worked for my dad, all I thought was, "this bastard better pay me some money". Matt appreciated me helping though, even though he might not have really realized that i didn't care about how much he paid me. That was good though, because otherwise he wouldn't have thought that money was a way to motivate me. It's always good to let certain bosses think that money is your motivator. Money has never been a motivating factor in my life, and I'm goddamned proud of that. So there was so much I hated about being in Luxemburg. I hated being seen by anyone, I hated people knowing I was there, etc. There is still a ton of shit that I loved about it. I liked being there more than I hated it. But I had to move on, and I don't regret leaving, except for one thing. The number one thing that I liked most about being in Casco was the excitement of knowing Jamie was coming there for the weekend. The excitement was almost better than living 10 minutes from her in Milwaukee. Not quite, but it was cool. The worst time of being in Casco was when Jamie left. So the best and worst parts of the place are all in one. i was thinking about that the other day, because, well, that's what I do, think a lot. I miss my cats, and I miss seeing Jamie with my cats. I miss driving a tractor, and I miss Jamie riding on the tractor next to me. I miss roofing, but I miss Jamie seeing the roof I was working on when we drove past. So that's the hardest part of being away from Casco, not just the memories of everything that I've done there, or the people I've established or grown relationships with, but experiencing everything with Jamie the one weekend a month that I saw her. I don't know why I feel this way. I try to make excuses for myself something, so I don't feel so guilty or ashamed about still thinking about her. And I do. Like I've said, I'm always real good about forgetting things that bring emotional pain to myself. I don't actually try to do it, because that would require more thought, but I just don't do it. When I know thinking about something is going to hurt me, I just don't think about it. I've never had a problem leaving behind girls in the past, and maybe that's why I'm so ashamed of myself. I never fully expected to know Jamie longer than the day I was with her, so that's how I lived when I knew her. I was preparing myself to forget about her the day I met her. However, if I only knew her the day that I first saw her, I can guarantee that she would still be lodged in my thoughts somewhere. I'm so damned glad for the time I knew her, and I so damned pissed for having the philosophy about the whole thing when I was with her. She hasn't been out of my thoughts since the day that I last saw her. I'm quite ashamed for feeling that. I'm ashamed to be typing this all out, but it's making me feel a little better about it all. I've been so afraid to write anything about her at all, because I'm just trying so hard to forget about everything. It's not cool at all, and I don't expect anything by writing in this diary about it all. It's just easier to figure things out when you see them on paper or a computer screen. I don't worry about why things went wrong anymore. Who cares, maybe things didn't go wrong, and it was just bad timing. I don't want to think back about Jamie and wonder what I could have done to still know her. I know what I could have done. I made a decision to not be close to her anymore. I didn't want to do it, but certain things in my life had to be done, and I couldn't do it in Milwaukee. I didn't leave to hurt anybody. I didn't leave for any other reason than myself. I horribly regret that things unfolded like they did. Heath being so goddamned pissed at me. My friends getting no notice. It's over and done with, and it's not a regret. I think I might have been looking at the whole thing too immaturely and too maturely. I'll explain... I wanted to be just a kid. There was a lot of responsibility living a "corporate life". I wasn't really ready for that. I came from living in a place where I went out with friends every single night to a bar. I worked as a waiter, and the money I had over 200 went right to a bar. It was tough to transition right from that to "growing up". I had one week to do it. I had no responsibility in my life other than paying rent. That's all I worried about in Oshkosh. I didn't have a responsible job, or kids, or a car payment. Or any payments. Then Health told me I could work for him in two weeks. So I went home by my dad for a week, and then moved to Milwaukee. Immediately I had a truck payment, rent, a job that I didn't technically have a supervisor but I had resposibilites that had to be done without someone looking over my shoulder. All of this for the first time in my life. However, Heath was way cool about it, and sort of took me on his back. He made sure I could always handle everything. However, maybe he was too helpful, or maybe I was too afraid of getting help. But living in the Blatz was not a positive life building experience for me. Then I started at Choice One. The first real job I've had. At first I was goddamned dynamite. I'm always good at whatever job I have, always. There is always something I do as good or better than the best person. However, certain things about having a white collar job for the first time started pressing on me. For the first time, I had constant pressure for an organization to succeed. The pressure I've felt in any job was always induced by myself. No matter how well I did at the start, or at certain times of a month, there was still some lingering pressure. Not to mention that for the first time I was on my own completely. I have a hard time focusing on more than one big task at a time. I don't want to be a salesman for the rest of my life. I want to go back to school. Working at Choice One would have been a perfect opportunity for me to do that, take night classes, but i can't focus on more than one thing at a time. I've never had two jobs at once. I never try to do two websites at one time. I just devote myself to one thing so much, that I could never just shut off from something and do something else. Maybe unconsciously I was thinking this, I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do, so my focus was gone from Choice One months before I quit. I wouldn't say i'm more mature now, but I have a better analytical mind about the whole thing. Analyzing everything has been so much easier now that I've distanced myself from everything. Of course, the time there was the most pressure on me was the time I was making the most money. The time I felt the best and the time I felt the worst. I had artificial emotions in that situation. Stuff that I kept hidden because I'm not a public person about emotions that bother me. I'm way over public about everything that doesn't bother me emotionally, but when things hit me hard, I close off. There's another immature. I drank a lot at times, i didn't talk to anyone at times, I ate a lot at times, I never ate at times. About the only thing constant in that life of mine was the amount of sleep that I never got. I sleep a lot better now that I'm running. I eat one massive meal in the evening and have two snacks, maybe a couple pieces of meat and cheese, or a bowl of cereal during the day. I stay up late at night, but my nights are productive. I might not be accomplishing anything overwhelmingly great financially right now, but i know what I'm doing is to help me in the future that I want to have. I wouldn't say I'm more mature now, but I have the direction that was lacking in my life since 2 weeks into my freshman year at college. That's when I lost everything. Before then I knew exactly what I wanted to do, how I was going to accomplish it. Then things went south. I had a bad 4 years in between there. There were good points. Things I wouldn't change for the world. Things I regret, and people that I'll never forget. However, it's taken me 4 years and about 10 jobs to figure myself out. I had to get younger before I got older. I'm making a transition in my life now. That's an understatement. I'm joining the military. However, I think this is the best choice I've ever made in my life. I know exactly who I want to be in 4 years, and I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that happens. I have my goals and my mental checklist. Times in the next 4 years I want these goals met in my life. I'm excited to come out of the army, or to be done with my enlistment to see what I've become, but I have no doubt in my mind, for the first time, that I'll have done exactly what I want to do. I've analyzing the differences in my personality from when I've gone to college and now. I have great talks with my mom's boyfriend who, without thinking, has been a major influence in my becoming more comfortable with certain things. Obviously, I don't want to shun everything of my old life. I wouldn't mind forgetting every experience that I've had, as long as I still know the people I've met that have been a positive influence. Heath, probably the closest I've ever been to a person. He's taught me more than any other person I've known. He's stuck his neck out and helped me more than anyone else. He's about the funniest guy I've met, and the easiest to get along with. The most understanding person, the most helpful person. He defines the word friend to me. And Jamie. Those are the two people I wish I would have never lost contact with in my life. They came in both at vulnerable times for me, so my bonds with them are stronger than with other people. Granted, I'll never forget all probably always keep in some sort of contact with most of my friends from high school. We are all too close to forget about each other. I think we are closer than almost any group of people could have become at that age. We didn't drink, we didn't do drugs, so we don't have artificial connections that drugs inevitably induce. Believe me, I know exactly what I'm talking about, and anyone that tells me that had great fun with their friends drinking and doing drugs should try to do what me and my friends did, and see how long they last. We had a unique situation, in the fact we basically new each other from our first day of school. Alex, Kelly, Keith, Buddy, Ryan, those are my life long pals that I would have and still would take a bullet for. regardless of how long it's been since I've talked to them, i don't think it deters from how I feel about them. And Jamie, obviously mentioned above, actually the whole reason I got into typing this whole long entry. I've been stepping around that topic for almost half a year now. I've been stepping around what I've felt, and definitely things I wanted to have a conversation with about. I want you to realize that I've really gotten away from talking to myself when I type these entries. I've mainly been talking directly to you, as I am now. However, I feel it incumbent upon myself to write "from the heart". This shit has been bothering me for months, it's really been affecting me. For those close to me, I want you to realize that I would never talk to you about what has been said and what might be said. So I don't want it to affect any of your thoughts of me. I just want to write about her for way too many reasons to list, mainly, I just want to throw myself out on a piece of paper and see what it does to me. Let's not talk about it though, ok? Too much has been said about her already. She's dominated my thoughts ever since I first started writing in these archives. She's been on my mind way before I started a website, and it's affected me immensely. Since I've known her, she's affected every decision of my life. I way too loyal like that. The people that I appreciate, I'm just way too loyal, I've made and will make mistakes, but that's just how I am. I've never really believed in certain things. I've never been forced to hide my emotions, or hide from anything. I never been forced to keep anything from anyone. It's all a result of my tendency to put too much thought into everything. I've never believed in telling someone how you feel about them, because they should be able to tell by my actions. I'm a non-verbal guy, and I assume that people I come in contact will pick up on things. It's a big assumption, and I know when to and when not to be like that. I usually know exactly what type of person to be in any given situation. So that's why nobody ever knows how I feel about those close to me. Nobody has ever known what I really feel about someone, they know what I want them to know. I'm an extremely good liar, and I'm extremely good at when I want people to lie. I'm extremely good at controlling what I want people to think I'm thinking. Some people have told me I'm a terrible liar, but that's because I want them to know when I'm lying. If I don't want you to know when I'm lying, you won't know. I can count the times I've been caught keeping stuff on one hand. I'm not bragging about being a liar mind you, don't misconstrue my words. My point is just that it's not difficult for me to tell you exactly what you want to hear, or exactly what I want you to think. I've been called a manipulator in the past, but that was when I wasn't as good at hiding things that I am now. The only thing that I lie about is how I feel about people. No ladyfriend ever knows what I truly think about them, because I play the "i'm not an emotional" card. No friend of mine ever knows what I think about a ladyfriend, except what I want them to think. I say what won't get me in trouble and satisfies their need to be a friend. I'm saying this because I really hate myself for doing it all. I hate that I've taught myself to be so good at keeping things from people. The worst thing is that I've done a good job of doing it to myself. I don't have any thoughts or regrets about not seeing any of the girls I've been with anymore. I don't have regrets about things I've said to them, or things they've said to me. I've learned to forget everything. Although I've cared so much for every girl I've every known, except Jody and Nicole (nicole was merely a great friend, the relationship I never wanted). I've been so tied into every girlfriend I've ever had. I had such a dependency on them for the things that they provided in my life. Yet, I'm sure not one of them knows it. Go ahead, read my ladyfriend's page, and you'll see that I'm nearly completely objective about every girl there, and my page when I was in college was even worse. I did a better job of being a "ex-boyfriend" on this site than any other thing I've done in the page. I might have even become so good at it that I've even fooled myself into doing it. The last emotional bond that I've had with someone was Amy. I left out everything with Jamie that I could control. After about two weeks, I had a hard time dealing with it. I tried so hard when I first started hanging out with her not to get emotionally involved with her. She was hands down the most standofish girl I've ever known that I hung out with more than a few times a week. I'm not going to get into every little detail of how things started, because that issues has been rehashed many times before. This is just way too long, I'm been going for over an hour left, and I can't take too much more of this stress I'm putting on myself. I'm not going to write things like this anymore if I can help it, because I hate myself for doing it. Either way, here is my point. I've heard something like "absence makes the heart grow stronger", and shunned comments and those like it right out the door. To me, that was all bullshit, and just all that romantic crap that people love so much. However, I knew in my mind that my moving down here would eliminate any thoughts I had about Jamie. I knew that for a fact. I knew that once I got down here for a month, and met some people, she would be the last thing on my mind. Since I've gotten down here, I've been waiting for that to happen. I've have been unable to remove her from my unconscious mind, for the first time in my life. No one has ever breached that wall. I miss her more than I'll ever be able to accurately convey on this page, or talking to someone, or even to myself. I wish sometimes that I could go back to the last night in her apartment before I moved to Casco. I want to go back and tell myself to make Milwaukee work, because this girl is worth it. She is worth every sacrifice I could make for myself. And I should have done it, but I've never been honest with myself or anyone I've known about what I truly thought. I'll be forever pissed about it for the rest of my life. I'm not going to talk about her ever again to anyone in an emotional sense. I'll never tell any girl I'm with in the future how I really felt about her, because I just don't want to do that to myself. Time heals everything, right. Nobody was a believer in that statement more than I am. However, it's not working. She could be dead right now and I'd still be writing this page. To be honest, I have no idea. Yeah, I don't talk to her at all. Nothing, because that's how I forget about people. I don't talk about her to anyone, I don't even mention her on this diary page. Yet, she's still there. Anytime her name is brought up in a conversation with something, I get a twinge of pain that runs down my spine. That'll never go away. Believe me, if it hasn't already, it won't in the future, and don't give me any of that crap that "time heals everything", like I said before, I've never had a problem forgetting about things. No shit do I know that time heals everything. I know a lot of other things that help you forget painful memories, and they don't work on this. It fucking bothers me. But that's it. That's the last you'll hear about her in an emotional sense. If she's mentioned again, it'll be objective. Don't talk to me about it either, it's nothing something I want to discuss. On that splendid note... this concludes this fifth of may diary entry. Have a good day. Send me some emails people. I've been removing all my subscriptions to mailing groups because I don't need to know everything about perl, and how to get listed at the top of search engines for a couple of years now. The people I want to come to this site will get here. How, open up your email programs, and send something to doug@dougmalcore.com, and tell me a little about yourself, because an empty email inbox is a lonely doug malcore. Go To Top May 6th, 2003 Why I'm even opening up this page I don't even know. I have nothing good to write about today. Another uneventful day. Get up, work on the site, go running, work on the site, read the news, work on the site. I'm not tired though, and I don't feel like cutting and pasting anymore of my site around. I finished the index to the info link just now. That's ok. It's depressing that the monitor I'm using doesn't render color like I want it to. I need to get a macintosh to make up some good graphics...Windows just isn't doing it for me. Whenever I finish something I usually send to my brothers right away for some feedback. Usually they are pretty positive, but I like them to nitpick. Usually their picking is a lot different than mine. They don't mind things that bother the hell out of me, and they usually bring up something I really didn't even think about. My monitor that I'm using (i left my old one for my dad in Casco) doesn't render colors very well. I have to keep it pretty dark, compared to most monitors, otherwise everything is just way too bright. Doing this means that when I create these images, they look so damned different on a different monitor. Like I have this unique viewpoint of everything computer wise, because of this fucked up monitor. So luminosity and color is all so important to me when I make graphics, yet they look so different on another computer. So I get happy with how something looks, then I realize that it's all messed up for someone else to see it. I'm sure you don't even really notice. Subconsciously maybe you think I'm some total amateur with some of my graphics, but I can assure you that it looks different on my monitor. Damned windows messes it all up for me. I really pushed myself pretty hard working out today. I ran 3 miles, which isn't really a big deal for me anymore. I wanted to run some sprints though, develop the white muscle a little. I'll get to a point soon where my muscles are just long, and I'll be able to run as long as my lungs will support me, but I won't be able to do it very fast, so I have to make sure I do sprints maybe three times a week to keep me relatively fast. I do pushups too. Usually four sets of 15 is all I can do for now. I do them facing downhill so it's much harder, I put my hands quite low, so it's harder too. I want to be able to do 100 pushups normal when I leave for Basic. But I do them until I can't do them anymore. Right now 4 sets of 15 is pretty tough. So when I'm done with them, I do as many as I can on my knees. It goddamned hurts too. I'll do them until I have complete muscle failure, and I can barely pick myself up off of the ground. I do it every other day, because when I wake up in the morning, it's hard to pick myself up I'm so damned sore. I'm afraid to do situps because I know that I'm going to go in over the weight limit. I'll have a hard time getting under 196 lbs, just because I haven't been there since I was a junior in high school. I have too much mass to get down that far. So if I do pushups, it'll make my gut all fat, and when they do the bodyfat test at MEPS before I leave, I'll appear to have too much bodyfat even though I know I'm way under what they say I am. There is no way that I put on that much bodyfat since I was in college. I was way fatter then, but the goddamned bodyfat test they do sucks. It's not right, and I don't feel that it's an accurate measure of a person's actual bodyfat. Yeah, I'm pretty emotional about that. Blockbuster hasn't been pulling their weight in my getting hired there. It's pissing me off, so I'm going to try and get a job somewhere else. I don't need much money, just enough to pay the bills that i need to before I leave, and so that I'll have enough cash while I'm in basic, because I don't want to take a debit or ATM card along because it's just too damned risky. I'll take cashiers checks, maybe only 100 bucks with, whatever I could stand to lose, then I'll send for more as needs be. I have to direct deposit my pay from the Army, so it's not like I'll be getting check in hand. I hate doing that too. I hate direct deposit. I like it that it's faster, but the checks should just be cut earlier then. My first experience with direct deposit was with Choice One, and I didn't like that at all. I didn't want to do it, but I was told I "had" to. I like the feeling of check in hand, and me taking it myself to a bank. Or cash, that's the best way. When you buy with cash, you don't get targeted direct mail, or certain agencies and companies can't track what you buy. I've purchased some questionable items on the internet in the past, and I could kick myself in the head for doing that. That's basically on my permanent financial record. Then I had to get a background check when I became a manager at Boston Market, and I was all worried about the shit that was on my record that I bought. Stupid, it's nobody's business what I buy, certainly not any job place. I don't feel it necessary for someone to judge my quality as an employee based off of things on my criminal and financial backgrounds. Sometimes I wish I was back alive around the turn of the century, so I could have some privacy in my business dealings. I would have been a much more successful person back then. Ok, have a good night, I'm tired now. Go To Top May 8th, 2003 My mom's birthday today. I forget how old she is, 43 maybe. That's not too old, considering how old I am. Which I really am now. It's too bad her birthday is so close to mother's day. Come to think about it, May is probably the worst month for holidays for me. I have my ma's birthday, Beaker's birthday on the 15th, my grandpa's on the 15th, Mother's Day. That's too much for one month. Too much to remember, I'll probably get married to a wife who has a birthday someday in May, and of course, we'll probably get married in May, and I'll have a bunch of kids that are all born in May. Actually, that's just too scary to think about, in more ways than one. I'll probably actually die in combat anyhow. With my luck I'll be one of 100 that die in combat. I couldn't believe how bad it would be for me to be in captivity. I think it would be different for me though, because I really don't have anything to live for. No wife or kids. Maybe I'll find out someday. Since my duty stations are more than likely going to be overseas, I'll have plenty of opportunities. I've been working on a new website a lot lately. I'm sort of impressed with how it's coming along. It's the most difficult project I've embarked on to date, so I'm getting pretty frustrated. I always have to make sure that I have someone to critique my work, because sometimes on the smallest graphics I'll redo them 20 times trying to get it to look how I want to. I never really ever start out with a look in mind too. I usually sketch a general storyboard of the homepage, but I don't really do colors or how I'm going to do graphics. I have so many tools at my disposal now. I literally have 100's of plugin's that I downloaded for photoshop and paint shop pro. Plus I have Mac. Fireworks, Flash, Swift 3d, 3ds Max, Premiere, Dimensions, and Illustrator, to name a few graphics programs that I use. And I've been locating and "buying" all these plugin's, so many that I don't really take the time to learn what they actually do, and I just try them all out to get a look that seems ok. There's a better process to doing this, I know, but I have more tools then some graphics design firms. I just know how to get them. I need a Macintosh pronto. Wait, I'm going in the Army. You might be interested to know that I broke three website records on May 4th. Actually, you guys broke them. I had more people come to my site on that day than any else, I've had more pages looked at, and more bandwidth taken up. Those three pretty much go hand in hand, but that was sort of exciting to learn. It's even better knowing how many of those people are signing my guestbook and sending me feedback...harsh... At least maybe you could link to me on your own site, if you have one, or email my site to other people that could possibly sign my guestbook. I just need to get the snowball rolling. Get something started. I'm actually thinking about paying for some advertising before I leave for Oklahoma. We'll see how that plan goes. My friend Alex called me tonight. Apparently my friend Kelly and him might be moving to Wash D.C. That's pretty cool. Got to be exciting. I'd like to be on the east coast some time in my life. Although after being here on the western side, I don't really see any real reason to go there. I know I'll like it better here. I miss snow and cold weather though, but there is something about it never raining and it always being super sunny that a person really can't complain about. I might be a permanent West Coast guy. Seattle is my dream though. We'll see, I have a lot of years left to live. Best to take advantage of them. Have you visited the flash site at all. It's hard to tell because my stat processor doesn't tell me. That's only one file, broken up into a couple of scenes, so I can see why it doesn't work. Once I'm able to get Swift 3d up and running again, I'll be able to do more what I want to with that. Still recovering from the virus. I can't think of anything else good to say. I almost typed up some stupid rant, but this page is getting long enough. By far the longest journal entry page I've ever had, and it's not even into the "ides of may" yet. That's about the coolest comment ever. Plus, all you faithful readers that come here every week will start taking for granted that I write such long entries, and come to expect it. Then be disappointed when I only type in 3-4 paragraphs. And we can't have any of that now... Alright, time for bed. I always enter the day before I write these entries. Lately I've been typing at times between 1-4 in the morning, but it just doesn't make sense to put that it's actually the 9th right now. I stay up late, but that's because I always run late at night, since it's cooler outside, and I just like working in the dark. Gives me a more intimate experience with my computer. like I need any more intimacy with my computer... hmmm... Hope your day is full of fun and excitement and for those of you that can only read this at work.. I hope your weekend is good times and you take advantage of it. I actually hate weekends now that I don't have a real job anymore. Man, when I was a working man, nothing was better than the weekends. I never liked Friday's better and hated Monday's more. "looks like someone's got a case of the monday's" -Office Space...HA!. Get "minnie the moocher" by cab calloway too, great song, I'm trying to pick out a song for my intro page. That's it. Have a nice day. Go To Top May 10th, 2003 So I think we got my ma a pretty decent mother's day/birthday gift. My brothers and I that is. Jenna get's her name on the card, but obviously, she doesn't pay any money. I'm trying to get her to rub my feet in return, but so far, those attempts have rendered themselves unsuccessful. I'll write more about what we got her when the day is past. She doesn't read this page, at least, I'm pretty positive that she doesn't, but I still don't feel comfortable. Actually, I'm almost positive that right now she thinks we didn't get her anything. It's hard for me to buy gifts, I always try to put too much thought into everything. I think this one is ok. Finally fixed my computer. It's good to go, and at about 95% health right now. Some of the programs that I never really use, like some of the MS Office files that have to stay on here for the twice a year times that I need them. Those are corrupt still, and Tweak UI is corrupt, but I have X-Setup, and that's more powerful than Tweak UI anyhow, just not as easy or as quick to use. What happened was when I installed my anti-virus, it came with a firewall, so I disabled Zone Alarm, in order to make the installation smooth. Well, I didn't think about disabling the internet monitors that run in the background, so what was happening was my firewall was still doing it's job, but I didn't know about it. So because I had to re-install a bunch of programs, they changed and my firewall wasn't giving them access to the internet. I was thinking when I was running one time that it could be something like that. And I knew to check that somewhere in the back of my mind. So I uninstallled the program, and boom, I got connected. I'm so pissed at myself that I let something that I know is so basic mess me up so bad. I mean, I was getting seriously stressed out. I slept well last night though, for the first time in a few weeks. I've decided that there is nothing more that I like that installing new programs on my computer. I'm absolutely addicted to the feeling of getting new stuff to use and run on my computer. It's sick, I know, and it makes me like a total geek, but I love it. I love trying out some new sort of software. I love downloading. So I'm going to try and get a job this week somewhere. Hopefully by this time next week I'll be employed somewhere. I'm sort of running lown on funds, and that always sucks. I don't need massive amounts of money, but if I don't have something in the bank saved up I just don't feel very comfortable. I actually don't even care where I'm going to work. I'll try a few places I wouldn't mind, but if push comes to shove, I'm going to apply at McDonald's again. It's only for a short time, so I think I can swallow the pride a little to work there. Make a few bucks, stay away from the drug addicts that work there. At least it's not like Milwaukee and all black people that barely have a high school education. Speaking of which, I saw that Milwaukee was in the news this past week. Apparently some bus driver beat up some kid who had down syndrome or something like that. Yeesh! What a freak. And the kid videotaped it all. Man, that's messed up. Like it was going on for some time. I would never, ever let kids go to the Milwaukee school district. I just think that place is a black hole. I've known people who've graduated from that school. People who appeared to be intelligent because the courses have to be easy. Skipping school is too easy, the teachers mostly suck. It's got to be the worst school disrict I've ever seen. I can't imagine any self-respecting parent sending there kids to the Milwaukee Public Schools. It brings in kids with a good future and an opportunity to do well in life, and it teaches them how to skip school, perform with the minimum amount of effort in class, and end up with decent grades, because of who the scores are based off of. It just seems like the most terrible place to raise a family. So that's all for now. Tomorrow is mother's day, so I'll be going out to eat with my grandma and mother. My brothers are all trying to get "best son" points for who has called my mom on certian days and such. I should win that award though, I picked out the present and am doing all the hard work involved with it. They just send me a few dollars and get me to sign their name on the card for them. Which is very cool by the way. Ok, have a good mother's day, I'll talk to you sometime else. Go To Top May 11th, 2003 I've been doing quite a good job of writing in this journal, don't you think? Probably because I'm exceedingly lonely right now. And I'm damned worried about certian factors with my joining the Army now. Goddamned nervous. I can't really start any real relationships with people, since I'm supposedly leaving for 4 years. It doesn't really pay to meet anyone now. So I don't go out, at all, I don't really do anything to be honest with you. So I'm just waiting to leave, and worried about leaving, because I've been putting everything into the Army, and if it doesn't come through, my life will be ruined. Seriously, I'll have no place to turn at all if the Army plan falls through, and it can too, very easily. Easier than I've let on and for reasons that I can't discuss online right now. These reasons are also out of my control, so I'm goddamned nervous about it all. Just last night, I read something that really really is putting me on edge, and nothing can happen to ease my fears until I graduate basic training. I'll never feel comfortable until that day. Christ does this sucks right now. Like my dad said, "it's never easy waiting on the fence". So today was mother's day. Went with my mom, jenna, and grandma to Outback Steakhouse. I was worried they'd want to go get some mexican food somewhere, so it was great to go there. I had a way to big of a meal of course. My brother's and I got my mom a gift certificate to buy all her paint stuff for her house. She wants to paint the walls in her new place all these crazy cool colors, it's all pretty exciting really. She was impressed, more so with the card that I got her, which was just about perfect. She was telling everyone about how cool and appropriate the card was. I bought "catch me if you can" the other day, along with a few other movies. The movie was pretty good i thought. I absolutely loved the introduction. You know, when they run the credits at the beginning of the movie. Well, I thought that was absolutely beautiful. I replayed it a couple times just to watch it again. That was pretty cool. I think eventually I could be doing stuff like that, and I'd totally love to do it. It was worth buying the movie just to see that. Obvously, I was pretty impressed. Anyhow, the movie was pretty good. I don't talk about movies that much on this page, but let me tell you, I see about 6 movies a week at least. I've seen as many movies in the past 4 months as I've seen in the past 3 years. Probably more. But this one sort of affected me a little. I mean, I've seen a lot of movies lately that I just thought were wonderful, and I've seen some that are questionable, but this one was sort of fascinating. It's based on a true story, so once I got done with the movie, and after playing the introduction for a third time, I came online and read up a bunch of information about the guy it was based off. Seriously, if you've seen the movie, you should look up the main character. There is a bunch of stuff on him just because he has just about the most interesting life ever. I don't know what inspired me to write about that now, but it's all pretty fun. I should keep better track of all the movies that I've seen. Actually, I should keep better track of the movies that I own, or did own. I go to blockbuster and see these movies that I've bought, then I wonder where they went. Man, I bet I have over 10 DVD's that I bought that I have no idea where they are. That sucks too, A lot of good ones... American History X, Office Space, to name a few. Pisses me off. But it would be nice if I had a database of all the movies that I've seen. I've kept every single movie stub from moives I've seen in theater's since my first date with Jody. I have every one of them. Some have been through a wash machine once or twice, but I know them all. I like that, it's nice to be able to look at a stub and then I have the memory of that specific day. It sort of jogs my memory into everything that happened that night. As opposed to just looking at a movie, because that doesn't do much to me. It's nice to have something tangible. I've been reading a lot about computer programming, hacking and phreaking lately. It's all pretty interesting stuff. I'd like to be able to be good at that because I think it would help me a lot in general stuff. Being able to sit in front of a computer today and stare at my code of webpages, or javascript, or some of the other programming languages that I've written basic stuff it. It helps me to be able to think clearly. You sort of have to have this database in your head, because certian things require that you call in your memory tags or arrays or whatever. Like, when I want to bold text, I know what I have to type. The more I do it, the faster I get at coding, which in turns, helps me to think faster in general. Overall, I'd love to be able to think really quickly. You know, when someone mentions something I'd like to be able to think of a certian bit of knowledge more quickly, and all these computer languages help me to do that. So it's damned nice to get my computer all fixed again. I'm going to install Linux on this box soon. I have way to many programs that I store the setup files on my secondary hard drive, and that's taking up a massive amount of space. So by next weekend I'd like to move all those setup files onto backup CD's so I can install another partition, and on that partition install Linux. That'll give me a lot more computer power to things that I can achieve. Certian goals that I can meet. It's hard waiting on this army thing. I want to go in more than anything, but I'm so worried that it's all going to fall through. I've decided that if it does, my life as I know it is over. I'm screwed more than I'll ever know. Certian things with joining the military required my spending of an exorbant amount of funds to be assured that some things couldn't come back to haunt me. So I've done that, and it's left me in a position that if I don't join the military, about my only option is to live on the streets for a few years. I don't think I could survive that, so if I don't make it in, No one will probably ever know. I'm going to just disappear from my life and either try to start all over from absolute scratch, which could be nearly impossible to do nowadays. Or I'll do something else more drastic. Sometimes now I regret joining just because of all this uncertianty, and what will happen to me if it doesn't work out. Yeah, I'll have nothing in my life. Realize that most everything I have right now is already given away. I will have nearly no personal possesions, no clothes, becuase I won't need that many for the Army. Obviously, I'm just worried about all this. I've got to write about it, even though I don't even want to think about it. It's dominating my thoughts recently, ever since last night, when I made the mistake of trying to read too much into everything. Probably why I worry so much. Ugh, it's ultra depressing and deeply affecting me. I goddamned hate it, and I don't really have anything to get my thoughts off of it. On that stupid somber note, I'm going to go and do something else for a while. At least I have my movies to keep me sedated, which to this point, is about the only thing I can do right now. Have a good week at work, for those Monday to Friday folk. And the others just have a few good days. That's all. Go To Top May 12th, 2003 Today was a pretty eventful day for me. I helped my mom with some of her gardening stuff. If you've been following along, you already know that she has purchased a new home recently. She got quite a good deal, and the place is pretty nice for a Tucson home. See, houses around here are sort of wierd, and there isn't many acual homes as I think of them. Most seem like Condo's or Townhomes. Sort of halfway in between being a home as I know it, and a Townhome. And I bet probably 80% of the places around Tucson are like that. Anyhow, she bought it from an older couple, and the husband passed away recently. They haven't been in Tucson recently, and the landscaping part of the home reflects that a little. The back patio was way overgrown, and nearly every plant needs some sort of trimming. So she's been going mad at it lately. Trimming everything down. She then puts all the yard waste into garbage bags, and they pick it up free of charge, rather than having to pay someone to take it away as is. Well, she asked me to put all this shit into bags. So I soon realized that nearly every plant, tree, flower in Tucson has thorns. These thorns make a rosebush seem inviting to the touch. It's nearly impossible to handle any plant here without getting a massive thorn in the hand, wrist, arm, whatever. Some of these thorns are lethal, and you can almost feel them penetrating the bone when you run into them. So anyway, putting them into plastic bags was one of the worst experiences of my life. Not to mention it was 95 degrees outside when i was doing it. I didn't really dress for the situation either. I decided not to wear jeans... which was a mistake in almost every way there could be a mistake. Man, do I have some holes in me right now. It took me about an hour and a half to get everything put into bags, and it was only 6 garbage bags full. I was thinking that at least the garbage men who pick up the bags won't have to worry about what is inside of the bags, considering there isn't much left to the outside. Thorns, branches, leaves, all falling out of the gaping holes in these bags. Remind me never to do my own gardening here in Tucson. There is also just about zero lawns here. Most of the lawns that are here have massive brown spots, aren't growing in a lot of areas. It's not a very conducive enviroment for water loving plants. Tucson really doesn't classify as a desert either. In order to be a desert, there needs to be 10 or less inches of rain a year. Tucson get's 12. Granted, it's all lumped into about 2 weeks, twice a year. So a lot of rain comes down in a short period of time, then, no rain. It hasn't rained here since Feb. I think. It's strange to think about, how consistent the weather is. It's starting to get quite hot outside, but for those of you not familiar with a desert enviroment, it's like nothing you would know. It's about the strangest sort of hot, because the humidity levels rarely get over 25%, and that's even a high humidity. Ok, enough with the weather lesson already. I've chatted with a few of my old friends recently. I don't know if this diary thing inspired them, or what, but that was sort of cool. Alex called me the other day, told me he was moving with my friend Kelly to Washington D.C. That's pretty cool. I wish I had the education to be able to go wherever I wanted to and was able to find a job right away. Granted, I could always work at some shit place, but that's really not me. I talked to Ryan today too. Been a long time since I talked to him. He's quite funny, starts talking to me about cheese, and his verbage is always goddamned hilarious. You'd have to speak with him to realize it. You'd be rolling on the ground. We talked about the high school reunion, and how we all aren't going. I got my invitation about 2 months ago, I skimmed over it quick, then through it in the trash. Like Ryan said, I have no urge to find out what "paul degrave and jeremy jacobs" have been up to". The black hole of a place that is my high school. Granted, it was ok for me, because I was cooler than everyone else... Ok, I just don't really want to go. I actually have no urge to go, and I'll have no regrets missing it, nor will I ever probably go for the rest of my life. The majority of people that will be there I have no desire to know about. I don't care about what "everyone is doing now", or where everyone is. I don't care about any of those bastards. They could fall of the edge of the earth and I still wouldn't be inspired to know who exactly did. It's not my type of place, and it never was. Way too blue collar for me, or way to redneck, or way to uneducated, or whatever. I'm just generalizing. Not everyone is like that, and I'm sure there are people that are there that would be ok for me to talk to, but not enough for me to be there. I have a certian sort of pride that wouldn't allow myself to be seen at one of those events. I knew by the time I was a junior that when I graduated, that was it for my association with that school. The people that are important to me will contact me, or I'll contact them as life goes by, that's really all I care about. I've started using a new HTML editor. Usually I get comfortable with one program, and stick to it. 1st Page 2000 was what I used to use to write up these diary entries and work on all my other projects, but I've decided that I'm going to start using EditPlus for my diary pages now. It's just a whole lot quicker of a text editor. The GUI is much more user-friendly for writing lines and lines of body copy. Granted, I'll never uninstall 1st Page. It's what I learned on, so we have a sort of relationship there, plus, it's a lot more powerful of a HTML editor. It's extrememly fast for HTML tags. The keyboard shortcuts are ideal, the alternate click menu is perfect. But something I don't have to write a lot of tags for, like this page, I'll use EditPlus. That, and it has a non-buggy FTP program built into it, so it's just two clicks away from uploading this page to it's appropriate spot on the server. The only thing it lacks is a spell check, so you'll see a lot of errors now, because I usually run this page through a spellcheck. I hate making spelling errors, but I can't always take the time to go back and correct everything. So that's where I'm at as far as an HTML editor, just because I knew you'd be interested. I also got Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. Which is a "what you see is what you get" editor. Much like MS Frontpage, except a lot more options to use, you can actually make really good looking pages with Dreamweaver. A frontpage site you can see from miles away. So I might take some time with that for a few pages. I'm just so damned fast at HTML coding that I'm unsure if it's worth the time to get good at that. But I'm sure it'll help me to make some better pages, give me a few ideas, whatever. Plus, I got it now, and it's quite expensive software, it costs quite a bit more than Frontpage, so it's probably worth learned. You're probably asking yourself why I bought that program then, since I really don't need it... I got a partition mananger for my computer now too, so I can add a few more partitions and install a new OS on a different partition if I want. I'll have to get into that soon. For now, my goal is to find a job. However, I still have one more site that needs to be finished yet. I think I'm experiencing some sort of writers block with that site. I have every tool known to man to work on it, but I still come up empty with thoughts for how I want it to look exactly. Maybe it's just because I really, really don't want to do it. I underbid myself big time on that one, and I don't know why. I should have bid much much more, so he didn't give it to me, but at that point in my life I didn't want to appear so sleazy. Oh well. This page has gotten much, much too large. I have a rule that my pages can't be over 75K in size. Most of them break that rule, but I fake the loading time pretty well because I don't have much body copy on the pages. This page though, way to big. Way to long of a download, way to much body copy to keep someone new here interested. I just have too much to say, and too much to say about stuff that isn't interesting. I'm sure this page get's more and more boring everytime you come to it. But I still can't figure out who centurytel is. Goddamnit is that bothereing me. You'll never know. Seriously centurytel, I think you are doing it to spite me. You know I can't stand it, seeing someone come here every single day almost and not revealing your identity. Seriously too, I'm losing sleep over it. I actually wake up in the morning, and the first thing I do after my emailathon, is check my webstats, and there, always, like clockwork, is centurytel. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. It'll haunt me for the rest of my life, I'm sure of it. Her'e's what I know about centurytel. (I'll just refer to this IP/ISP as centurytel for simplicities sake) Centurytel almost always come to my site between 5 am and 730 am. At least, that's been the time for May. Although, there was one time that centurytel came here late at night, around 7pm, but that was only once. Usually, they are here for quite a while. These times are my server time zone, which is my time zone. Right now I am east coast time, which is 2 hours behind old wisconsin time. I assume that Centurytel is Wisconsin, because I don't know of them anywhere else. That, and the IP lookup says "denmark", so Denmark wisconsin. However, I don't know anyone from Denmark that would be checkign my site so often, so I assume they are located near Denmark, which is a little south of Green Bay, sort of. A normal pageview session would consist of coming to this page, then going to any new pages, then going to some other pages, for whatever reason, then usually ending at the guestbook. Obviously, never signing it. Average viewing is about 30 pages. Of course, that doesn't really help me figure things out. I know enough of the IP to figure out that it's centurytel, but not enough to do a trace of the actual user. Not like I'm psycho enough to do it. I just want to know this person. I respect people's privacy too. I don't trace every single person that comes to my site. I usually just try to find out how the majority of people are getting here and what sort of methods they took to finding this site. Also what pages people are looking at. That's all I care about with my stats, but someone coming to this site everyday is such a glaring mark in my stats that I jsut can't avoid it, and the more I see it there, the more that I get curious to figure stuff out. Centurytel probably knows the content and layout of this site better than I do. I change stuff too much. So maybe centurytel could email me, or sign my guestbook and let me know some suggestions for this site? Huh? That would sure be a cool thing to do. I'm going to try to fall asleep now. If that's even possible anymore. Have a terrific Tuesday. I have big plans, and I'll let you as time permits. Go To Top May 28th, 2003 So, it's pretty obvious that I haven't written in some time. Well, my computer is pretty much down and out. It's over, going to require a reformat of the hard drive and a clean install of my OS. Not a terribly big deal, because I have everything organized well, so I don't have to worry too much about losing anything important. Actually, the entire task should be completed by now, but I'm waiting for my brother to send me the disks that I need to do it. I honestly don't know what is taking him so long to send it. I'm using just about the worst computer ever right now to write this entry. Fortunately it doesn't take much to edit a webpage. All I needed was to download an FTP program, I can use programs that come with windows to type up this page, but it's a lot more work. Very raw that is. I won't be able to make any images or anything like that, all I can really do is add to a page. Funny, with how far computer technology is, you still don't need very much in order to make a website. That's all I'm going to write though. I barely come online anymore. I've taken down www.thedustsettles.com website, which also means that my primary email address I've used for the past year and a half is gone as well. If you are meaning to contact me, it's best to email doug@dougmalcore.com. It isn't really necessary to pay 5 bucks a month anymore when I don't even need that site to be up. I'm trying to eliminate some of my bills so when I'm in basic, I don't have to worry about paying certian things. Ok, that's it then. I'm unsure about getting my computer up. If I don't get the CD's from my brother within the next two weeks, I'm just going to leave my computer as is, and I probably won't talk on this page anymore. Maybe an entry here and there, but, like I said, I barely come online anymore. It's hard to replace the time I used to spend on my computer, but I'm finding stuff. In case I don't write again, you can expect a new page on this site when I'm in basic. I'm going to try and keep a daily journal of my events when I'm in basic. I'll send them to my little brother, and he'll type them into a page I make for him and you can read what's going on with that as he updates. I won't have email when I'm in basic either, so you can expect long delays in the time I'm writing the pages and the time it takes to get them online. Per the Post Office that is. I'll try to post an address you can write to ASAP, if you care to write that is. Otherwise maybe Dan will keep track of my email and print them out and mail them to me as well. I'm not sure what's going to happen with that. Go To Top Home © Doug Malcore 2003