(note: all pictures are linked to large versions and have captions visible if you hold the mouse over them)
Grapevine, June 6, 2000
I just finished watching A Boy and His Dog. Great flick! As good as I remembered it.
A census taker came and knocked on my door. I turned in my damned form so I wouldn't have my privacy invaded even more than simply asking the questions in the first place entailed. I wasn't as rude as I felt like being, but I was curt. She was just doing her job, but I don't like the federal or state government in any way, shape or form. Ok, maybe I'm an ass, but a stranger who knocks on my door and asks me personal questions deserves much worse than I gave her.
I wrote to a guy named Mathew regarding his excellent
page discussing the nature of agnosticism,
the freethought movement
and atheism.
Even though I admired his scholarship, clear writing style, and thorough coverage
of the subject, I took
exception to his identifying "agnosticism" as "weak atheism." This isn't because I object to the word "weak," but because -- in my own unscientific polls -- I have determined that the average person identifies "atheist" as "a person who believes there is no god." I don't know whether there is one or not, and this makes me an "agnostic." I'll probably not hear back from him and be dismissed as a crank, a charge that I can't wholly deny.
I put on my favorite belt and it's now too big. I think I like it more that way, even though it means replacing it.
My neighbor, Amanda, came over last night and we chatted until 2:30AM. She's not my physical type, but she's pleasant company. She turned my invitation down to come over, get drunk and watch movies claiming the silly excuse of tiredness. The movie I wanted to watch wasn't a chick flick at all, so it's probably just as well.
Grapevine, June 7, 2000
Heather Dos Santos canceled out today on our date Sunday. No explanation...
Just:
>Ken - It turns out I'm not going to be able to make it. I'm sure you
won't
>have a problem finding someone else to go though it sounds like a great
>show.
If she only knew... Sure, I can find someone to go with me, but probably
not anyone who would make my day as pleasant as she would. At this point,
if schedules don't cooperate, my companion likely has a beard.
Plus Belle Janelle may give me a mercy date... It depends on whether we can get to the Botanical Gardens by 6pm after the show. I'm waiting on a reply from Dallas Summer Musicals about the run-time on Fosse. I made plans with Mike Knickerbocker to go see King Lear Friday, and it looks probable that Plus Belle Janelle will show up then, too. Janelle is pretty, clever, witty, and unavailable (to me). Janelle, aside from her predilection for canines and aversion to carcinogens inhaled through a filter, is "Ken Bait." Unfortunately, Ken doesn't appear to be "Janelle Bait."
I
read an article today about how some folks managed to send a "pulse of light"
200 times faster than c. I hope this isn't another case of "cold
fusion."
I sent a note to Jessamyn. Her site is the one that inspired me to make this one. She's a very cool gal who reads a nice collection of books. Too bad she lives in either Vermont or Seattle: places where it snows. It was another perfect day here... Mid 80's (low 30's C), golden sunshine and a mild breeze. I'm a hothouse flower who likes the city and she's apparently a semi-rural snowbird. She probably doesn't smoke, either.
I had a long chat with my buddy Mary Anne today. There's a guy in Seattle who she melts for. She hasn't met him. She's been e-mailing and calling him for a year now. She bought a ticket for July 14.... Whee!
Grapevine, June 9
So much for King Lear. I was rained out once, and I'm not gonna do it again. I was supposed to go tonight, but "weather doesn't permit." So I sit at home with my deviled eggs and read.
Last night Kevin came over. We talked about our sci-fi world and the cost of a whole pig. Kevin is trying to get a whole pig for roasting at the annual "Men Are Pigs" weekend at his lake house. This event consists of heavy drinking, playing in the water, heavy drinking, slamming women (and praising them), male bondage (sp?) and heavy drinking. It'll be held the weekend after Father's Day. I'm looking forward to it.
I
heard back from the box office and the show ends plenty early, so Plus Belle
Janelle will join me for "Fosse." Tomorrow is "Habitats
for Humanity" day (which she also attends). Shall I lament the fact
that I'm not "Janelle bait" again? No... at least not in print.
Last night I finished Don't Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear, a sci-fi anthology of stories about relationships with mother figures. Several of the short stories were good. Read it if you're in the mood, you're a mother seeking affirmation, or if you don't like your mom and would like a reason to...
Cooking: Deviled Eggs (last night, for the aborted trip to Shakespeare in the Park)
Grapevine, June 10
You know, some days are good, some are bad, and some just really, really suck. This was one of the latter.
I worked until about 2am last night because of a problem with a system I support. I went to bed, and about 2:52am, the system crashed. I didn't know it.... if the system crashes, it doesn't page me.
I got a call at 9am this morning about it. I was 30+ miles from home doing volunteer work at Habitats for Humanity. I spent 20+ minutes painting with one hand and working on the problem with my cellular phone in the other. Because of system problems, the export didn't run last night so we don't have a "real" backup for the database. (We can still, in an emergency, restore the system from tape, but transactions processed between 12:01am and 2:52am will be lost. There's nothing to be done about that now except to make sure we don't have an emergency.) The problem was not resolved, but was kept to manageable proportions (or so I thought).
We worked hard and painted an entire room floor to ceiling in about three hours. Then they told us that the coat we had laid (at instructions) was "primer" and that the room had already been the right color. The lady who told us wrong acknowledged fully that it was her fault, but that didn't change the fact that the room was now the wrong color and had to be painted again. So we did. We finished some other minor things, then went to lunch.
Over
lunch, my date for Sunday (Janelle) casually informed me that she was standing
me up. This was the second woman who canceled on me for a date to see
this show. I ate, but the food didn't have a taste. Phone
rang: it was my DBA saying that the system was going to crash in about an hour
unless something was done. I got a ride to my car and drove back home
-- a 40+ minute trip.
Still covered with paint, I logged in to look around. I found that the system was gobbling up all available disk space. Great. Why? I wrote a script to do some off-peak transactions and, instead of getting 4,000 as I had planned, it queued 54,000. (An extra semi-colon in a bad place. They were all valid transactions, but I knew better than to queue more than 4k transactions.) I couldn't just delete the transactions because that'd fill the log with 50,000 deletions, filling far more disk space than we have. Ok. What next?
I called the DBA to get him to stop logging. He didn't like that. I didn't either, but what else to do? He suggested suspending the process that's handling the transactions. I explained that we couldn't because, even though the transactions I queued are "optional," the ones that still come in over the weekend are not. He agreed to do as I requested. I set the "processed" flag to "W" (a value that means nothing, but as long as it isn't "N," the transactions won't be found by my select statement).
The game wasn't over yet, but close (or—again—so I thought). I got him to move some files around so that the transaction volume won't fill up until tonight's export, then verify that the export would occur correctly tonight. He said that he'd log in at midnight eastern time and turn the transaction logging back on. I told him to go ahead and start it now, because we wouldn't have more than 20Mb or so worth of transactions between now and midnight, and "don't we have a full back-up tonight?" I called up the help desk (I don't have privs to check the cron for "root" and the "approved" back-up utility runs as root) and talked Kevin, the help-desk guy, through the simple process of verifying that a back-up will run tonight. No, it turned out we don't have one until Monday at 12:01 AM.
I then suggested that we do an extra full system back-up tonight. "Good plan," the DBA agreed. I told Kevin to call the on-call system administrator [SA] and tell him to cron a back-up for tonight. A little later, I got a call saying that there's no tape loaded. I don't believe that, but I didn't remember how to check and it'd take me about as much time to drive to the office and load a spare tape as it would to figure out how to check. Since there could be a faulty tape, I figured that I might as well drive in and do it.
I got to the machine room and the tape was loaded. I had a sudden inspiration and checked the headers (reasoning 'if you can read it, it is loaded and functional'), and it looked fine. I put in the spare tape anyhow. (Why not?) I called to get the SA to test it. Shift change, and I had a new guy at the help desk. He said he'd page the on-call and call me back, but I didn't know the extension of the phone I was at and I told him I'd hold. I held for ten minutes and the SA hadn't called. He paged him again. I held for 15 minutes more.
Standing there covered with paint, fuming over Janelle's callous cancellation (at least a phone call would have made it much less of a nuisance because I could have at least moved my tickets if I couldn't find someone else who wanted to go with me), tired, wet (did I mention the rainstorm with 20 knot winds?), annoyed at spending half an hour on hold, and annoyed at having wasted half a day painting a room twice that didn't need it, I was truly miserable. I still am.
God, I'm pathetic. At home drinking too much beer and waiting for my 7pm (EDT) conference call at 8:38pm (CDT), I'm absolutely depressed and still covered with paint (don't want to shower and scrub while they're expected to call me at first opportunity), I keep hoping for something bright to happen in my life, and it isn't. It really isn't. And I can't get a date who won't stand me up even on a "just friends" basis, and that really pisses me off.
It's 9:17pm, I have a buddy who's going to "Fosse" with me tomorrow, and the SA called to tell me that the tape's been tested, and I'm going to take a shower (finally).
Grapevine, June 11
I just got back from "Fosse" with my buddy Pete. It was great: incredibly
complex lighting, good music, and beautiful bodies moving in dramatic eye-catching
positions. We went to rent "All That Jazz" (the movie version of a broadway
play directed/choreographed by Bob Fosse) after the show, but Blockbuster doesn't
carry it.
Grapevine, June
Grapevine, June 16
It's been a very busy week for one where nothing was actually going on.
I have given up on "real women" and ventured into
the realm of Women in Chains.
I spent most of the week writing to beautiful women of
dubious reputation. I wrote one poem of dubious quality and seven
letters. (The way I figure it, I don't respect the criminal justice system of
the nation I live in, so women who are incarcerated for running afoul of this
system deserve the benefit of doubt. That doesn't change the fact that
I am statistically guaranteed to have written to a woman whose ethics I despise,
or that I am unlikely to have written to any women whose ethics I would likely
view as "reasonable." It doesn't really matter: women to whom I write seldom
write back and never go out with me.) (The gal pictured at right,
Brenda, is one whom I chose not to write to, but I admit to a certain degree
of fascination with her picture. I wouldn't object to dating a woman who looked/dressed
like that [unless I picked her up on the street and had to give her $30] [shudder],
but not one who's in prison who can't summon something more interesting to say
about herself than that she cooks and does SCUBA diving. She seems to be looking
for a job as an "ornament." Nice navel, though.) Unfortunately, the color printer
that I use (in my apartment complex computer center) is currently non-functional,
so I can't print out pictures to send to these ladies who have been deprived
of male company for years. (I figure they might be as desperate as I am
by now.) I asked a friend to print out a collage I put together of my
pictures, and he said that he might get it done today... In other words,
I have letters, but I can't mail them.
Speaking of "letters," I checked at Jessamyn's site and she apparently got my note yesterday. I am on her site on June 15 as "a long-haired stranger." That isn't much of a claim to fame, but Jessamyn is everything that Brenda isn't. If she were in Texas (or Oklahoma, Louisiana, or Arkansas), I'd take her up on her offer of hospitality in a heartbeat.
My efforts at writing have largely displaced most of my usual reading. No new books completed despite the fact that it's been several days.
Other things going on:
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went shopping last night for a smart outfit for the trip to meet her Seattle
internet sweetheart. She said to me over the phone, "Despite your feminine
attitudes, you're still a guy. What should I do to look my best when
I get off the plane?" I answered, "Do these stores sell color-coodinated
sacks?" (I owed her one.) Today, I told her about my impending
e-mail address change and new domain. She suggested that I change my
pic on my contact page to look better. "Better yet," she said, "PUT
A BAG OVER YOUR HEAD!" I got her back, though: I asked her in return,
"Do you mean that I should put a picture of your face above mine?" MuahahahahaHAH!
Cooking -- breakfast: leftover 1.5" thick rare london broil, reheated and covered
with crust of Stilton cheese; dinner: grilled fillet of tuna with dilled butter.
Grapevine, June 17
I made great strides
in my web site today. I haven't done web development for quite some time, so
I cheated and got Flash and Dreamweaver from Macromind. Both are evaluation
copies. I hate to say it, but I'll probably buy both of them. I am a coder from
"back in the day" where if you wanted an animated JPEG, you did it yourself
with CGI. THAT was "web development." I lost all of that code years ago,
and I am not gonna write it again. These apps are sweet, almost dragon-dropping
development. My picture for the day is the one intended for my home page, constructed
with Flash. Unfortunately, I forgot that you can't use imaps with GIFs (and
spent two hours dredging through help files that don't mention this fact), so
this is fun, but useless.
"Spice girl" Amanda got back from her promised run to the Indian store and brought back Garam Marsala and Cumin. I sense Saag Paneer in my future. She also picked up some hot curry paste for me, so I can do a curry if I want. I normally don't trust commercial curry pastes and it's too much damned trouble to make my own, but she recommended this brand. It's worth a try.
Tonight was Movie Night with the North
Texas Church of Freethought. We went to see Titan,
AE. I had a blast. No, this wasn't great scripting: it was a comic book
in film format, but it was a damned good comic book. I won't go to James Bond
flicks anymore because I got tired of the explosions and the dud plots. This
was similar but the animation was incredibly good. (I hope that we're
to the point where we can expect that as a matter of course... I'll be happy.)
Grapevine, June 18
I'm getting frustrated with my service provider:
Not to mention that I actually had to work for money today, too. Money is good, but getting paged at 6am isn't.
I think I'll have a beer or three and chill out. No picture today to eat up
your bandwidth (say "thank you").
Grapevine, June 19, 2000
Last
night when I got off the computer to pretend I had a life, I had these urges.
They were creative ones. So, I wrote a couple of post
cards. I still didn't have a life, but at least
I wasn't on the sofa with a remote control. I'm thinking that I should by a
remote control so I would have an excuse for my beer belly. I don't want a TV,
but a remote control would be good.
Today, I finally got some info about doing CGI on my server. It was wrong, but any information is better than none, right? (wrong-o garbanzo breath) I felt like telling the dweeb I was talking to, "Ok. You've given me bad information three times, now. I want you to be sure about this. I want you to be as sure as if being wrong meant that you're going gind your testicles fed into a meat grinder." If you plan on CGI, don't buy from simplehost.net despite their attractively low price.
I went swimming for a while today. I should do that more often.
Cooking: Omelettes filled with green onion and Chimay Cheese.
Grapevine, June 20, 2000
I created a "virtual snail mail address" today: rented a PO Box. If I don't know you, feel free to use this address for anything but bills, junkmail and threatening letters:
420 East FM 3040 Ste 118 #111I talked to a fascinating guy today. Out of respect for his privacy, I won't give his name (I haven't asked whether I could tell his story), but I'll call him "Sam." Sam told a strange, but interesting tale of how he appeared on television last year and, through that, learned he had another daughter. He told of how he'd had a fling 14 years ago with a model in Chicago and she'd gotten pregnant. She never told him. Her older brother knew what he looked like and told his sister, "Look! That's your Dad!" I lost the details of how they came to get in touch with him, but the upshot was this: he picked up and moved halfway across the country to where the daughter lived so that he could get to know her. He's in the process of giving her his name right now. He says that he's spending weekends with her and trying to make up for lost time. He has a son and three other daughters—all grown—and has grandkids. Nonetheless, he treated her with the same respect and love that he would have if he had known of her since the beginning. Sam's an ex-Marine—that's the sort of honor and fidelity that I expect of a Marine. (I'm anything but a warmonger, but all the Marines I have had the good fortune to meet have been courageous and honorable. It's a shame that a few of the ways that our country uses their lives are outside my definition of "honorable," but I would not say the same of the men and women who wear that uniform.)
Lewisville TX 75067
I put together a "personal ad." Give this to every single woman you know.
Getting ready for "men are pigs" weekend. I guess
I'll have to drive alone. What a pain.
Grapevine, June 21
I
went to Joe's house tonight. Joe's cool, but he hadn't printed out my pics like
he said he would, his printer was out of ink, and he didn't have another cartridge.
Back to square one. Actually, I have an ace in the hole: Anna said she would
print me some pics. (Of course, she also said that she would pray for the woman
of my dreams to materialize, and that part hasn't happened, yet. God, if you're
listening, you aren't doing what you're supposed to.)
Today, the whole city of Lewisville, Texas, was left without telephone communications. This includes Lewisville Xerox, my current main client. Joy. One of the applications I support does paging of Xerox technicians. I use a phone line. More joy. (God, do you hate me?) Pages queued up for eight hours until the phones finally came back online a little after noon.
Then, while the queue was emptying, Radio Page America's [RPA] server went bonkers. This may not be their fault... I might have had a dirty line to them that crashed their server because I aborted a transaction in the middle, but in that case it's still their fault, isn't it? Whatever, my ability to debug was hampered by prejudice: I thought I knew what the problem was, and spent two hours trying to fix something that wasn't broken. Finally, a co-worker suggested I call RPA and see if there was a problem at their end. There was. It took about two hours to communicate the problem to them, determine that it was them and not a dirty phone line, and get the problem fixed.
I got a tee shirt (and magazine) from Adbusters, but it was too small. I called them up and asked the woman with the friendly voice, "I'm 6'2in. tall and weigh 225#. What am I going to do with a size 'M' tee shirt?" After a little discussion, we determined that she would send me another tee shirt. We also determined that I wasn't going to pay the postage to mail their tee shirt back. I have a spare cool tee shirt that's too small for me. Want it? Pay postage for 0.3kg.
I sent the second half of Jackie's note today. Hee hee.
A strange coincidence: a gal paged me today on Yahoo who has a group that exchanges post cards. She calls it a "pen pal swap group." Three guesses as to what your favorite low-minded bard guessed that meant... I was wrong: it means swapping POST CARDS. She said that she would send me an e-mail with her address to me with that in mind. I'm game. No address, yet.
Lewisville Habitats for Humanity still hasn't answered my e-mail. The volunteer coordinator called and said she would, but hasn't done so.
I feel hollow. My life is measured out in tiny spoons.
Grapevine, June 22
I am not normally bipolar, but I was down yesterday and today I am way up! Of course, things went really well for me today, so I think it is more fate than chemical imbalance. It was a good day at work, the gal wrote back from Lewisville Habitat, I got to flirt with the cool chick who works on the other end of the building, and I am packed and just about to walk out the door to be ferried in style to MAPY2K in a vintage 'vette.
Be back with pictures and a sunburn Sunday.
Grapevine, June 25
I just got back from a Repercussion Theater production of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. They did an outstanding job. With me were Tamara, Buck, Buck's date Dianne, Byron, Byron's date Mike Knickerbocker, and the ever-effervescent Mary Ann.
Before that, Mary Ann and I went to see The Sound of Music at Fair Park Music Hall. This was also a good production and both Mary Ann and I cried. There's something about that story that causes humidity of the lachymorose variety.
Before that, I slept through most of the car trip back from MAPY2K, having played cards until 6:30AM and been in the Tom's sweet 'vette for a ride back to DFW at 8:30AM. (Sorry, Tom.) MAPY2K was mostly a success. Pictures and an article are forthcoming.
I read an interesting article in Adbusters stating that (according to the World Health Organization of the U. N.) Chronic Depression will be the #2 disabling disease (next to heart disease) by 2020CE. According to that article, I am in a high-risk group because I live alone, was born in 1940-1960CE, don't have a strong "traditional support structure" (close family ties, marriage, religion, etc.). I had a long chat with Mary Ann about it while we drove to The Sound of Music. She reached the conclusion that my life goals aren't dependent enough on other people (specifically, "friends and family"), and that it was a shame that I placed so much importance to adding a slender, smiling woman to my life. I countered with the fact that my goal of "making a life such that, if, when I die my entire life flashed before me, I can say, "You did it right" subsumed making my friends important, and that I don't so much seek a slender, smiling woman as somethingthat can make me feel alive each moment. The fact that the only times in my life when I have felt this way was when I was in love with a slender woman who likes to laugh makes me pursue this as a goal, but doesn't keep me from a) seeking a mindset that will give me this state without drugs or self-delusion, b) delude me into thinking that any slender, smiling woman is automatically the cure for what ails me, or c) realizing that externalizing my happiness to another person is a pretty lame way to go through life. I think she's wrong.
I sent two more post cards to Jessamyn for her postmark collection. I've gotten no answer from the previous cards, but I didn't expect one because I haven't exactly asked for one. I find myself thinking in terms of carrying on a conversation with her, though that's pretty stupid because all the "conversation" thus far has been—with one short exception wherein I asked her about the name she shares with one of the lesser known lights of American literature—wholly one-sided and fairly superficial.
Poetry.com sent me a notice that a poem I wrote had been chosen as a semi-finalist and would be published... along with 1500+ others. They wanted money from me for a copy of the book wherein my poem would be published. I demurred, but I did respond, correcting the butchery of the indentation they made on it. "Stupid," I might be, but at least I'm vain enough not to try and hide it. (Er... Wait a moment... Ok, that's the truth, even though it smarts.)
I took way too long writing this, my DNS is apparently ill, and I am falling
asleep, so I close.
Grapevine, June 26
I really need to cultivate patience in myself. I have a cigarette lighter that bears the slogan "I want it all and I want it NOW!" That's pretty much how I think, I guess.
Jessamyn sent me a cool hand-made post card (disproving the thesis that women never write back) and my netflix movies came today. Patience is a virtue.
I found out today that Patrick Stewart is gay. Ok, I don't have this confirmed from his mouth, but Buck is the kind of information hound who would find out that sort of thing, and he says it's true. Someone raised the rumor likely started because he played a gay man in the movies (Jeffrey). Buck answered that the rumor likely got started when he started dating men. Heh. I once put together a "Ken vs Keanu [Reeves]" page. Maybe I can revisit this with "Ken vs Patrick [Stewart]" page and all of the women all over the world will see their ways. (Not.)
I got the new David Feintuch novel in the "Hope" series today. Hopefully, it will be as good as the first three and not like the last one. So far, it seems to be...
The Lovely and Charming Anna Shadix beeped me today for our once-per-week-or-two chat. The bank hasn't given her the loan for her new salon, yet, but they haven't said, "no." She made a suggestion that I pretend to have a girlfriend so as to improve my chance of getting one. I informed her that that was a meritricious plan except for the fact that it involves lying. I have no qualms about distorting truth, but out-and-out lies are verboten. We arranged a version of the truth that involves stretching, distortion, and evasion, but doesn't involve lies: there's a sexy gal down in SE Texas who isn't really my girlfriend—more of a friend-girl and a fucktoy; every time I have seen her in the past several months, she has fucked my brains out. Between you and me, I haven't seen her for a year and never made love to her, but those details are "top secret," ok? Shhhhh.
I'm
signing off to watch So I Married
an Axe Murderer. Speaking of bizarre marriages... Jessamyn, if you read
this, you're safe from me: I am not gonna get my genitals pierced. I
paid a doctor to stab me in the balls once already, and one time was sufficient,
thank you. You have, however, managed to supply me with a fourth valid (in a
dada-ist kind of way) reason for marriage.
Grapevine, June 27
I
also ended up watching Wag the
Dog last night... no willpower. Patience was twice again a virtue that
I didn't possess: Anna's printouts of my pictures arrived today. Having pictures,
I wrote to five women in prison tonight. Four of the women to whom I wrote are
at least "pretty" and one is gorgeous. Replies expected: one. Whether
that reply will be something other than an attempt to take advantage of me is
a matter I refuse to speculate on.
I carved a "return address" stamp and did a mediocre job of it. It would have been much easier to have written my return address, but I am expecting to need a return address stamp when my ad goes to 1,000+ women in prison next month. I am hoping for 30+ replies. Yes, I bought a personal ad that will be sent to women in prison. Yes, I know it was dumb.What can I say? I'm desperate. Do I think it will work? Let's put it this way: "no worse than anything else I've tried to date." I've been looking for a woman who meets my stringent standards for years.
I got a reply to my reply to an internet personal today. She said she was busy and would look over my information later. I have gotten this sort of reply several times before and it amounted to nothing, so my hopes are not high. Patience is a virtue. Patience is a virtue. Patience is a virtue. There: I've told you three times, so it must be true.
I'm thinking of writing to Jessamyn, but I am also thinking it's after midnight.
Grapevine, June 28