Take My Cat, Please!

I’ve had my cat for nearly nine years and I have to say it has never really been a great experience for me. When she was a kitten she used to climb the walls, run madly around the house and scratch up my carpet and furniture. It was driving me crazy. At one point I had attempted to return her from the shelter I got it from, but I some how allowed them to talk me out of it. She also likes to chew wires. She has cost me so much money on cell phone chargers, speaker wire, laptop power supplies, headphones, whatever she can get her teeth on. I can’t tell you how many cell phone chargers I’ve replaced over the years. I try to keep wires out of her reach, but sometimes I forget. And later I come home to find something of value destroyed.

Now that she’s older, she doesn’t run around the house or scratch on walls much anymore. But her old age has introduced new issues. Now, for reasons unknown to me, she meows and whines whenever it’s dark and the lights are off. At first I thought she was having nightmares and was “crying” in her sleep. But when I check she’s wide awake. She doesn’t do it when I’m present, only when I leave the room and turn the lights off. I have no idea why she does it or how to make it stop. It’s so annoying. And recently I’ve discovered another issue. She’s now wiping herself on my carpet. It’s disgusting. I never see her when she’s doing it, but I can smell it when she’s done, and then I have to go and clean it up.

She’s driving me mad. I can’t even stand to look at her anymore. Now I’m not the kind of person who would take a pet and drop it off on the side of the road, but I have to admit I do think about it. For now I’m just hoping she runs off or kicks the bucket soon. It’s been nine long years. I’ve never even had a relationship with a human last that long and I have to admit I’m ready for her to go. I hate my cat.

Stranger things have happened…

It has been 4 months since my last confession…

It’s Thanksgiving here in North America (I was about to say Thanksgiving Sunday). I am still recovering from my week-long battle with influenza, but I do plan to return to work tomorrow. As a holiday, it was pretty much the non-event it usually is for me. I did little out of the ordinary. I baked myself a (pre-made) pie and had a couple of beers and that’s it. No complaints.

I’ve been talking to AE (now AC) online today. She says I should get out and see the world. Quit my job, disconnect from the Internet, stop watching movies, to to foreign lands, meet interesting people, kill them. Well, maybe not the last part. Her feeling is that this is just what the doctor ordered, although no doctor I’ve ever talked to ever made such a suggestion. Why send me off when I’m a perfectly viable source of income? Still, I can’t just get up and move. I have an obligation to my job, my animals, my finances, etc. The only people who can just take off are the ones who already had one foot out the door to begin with. And there’s no guarantee that it will make things better and could even make things worse. It’s so easy for her to suggest that I do such a thing, but would she do such a thing? Hell no! Not in a million years.

Still, I’ll think about it. Maybe in a year. Maybe get rid of the car. Put the animals in a shelter. They’ve had good lives. That’s pretty much all I have. And when you’ve got nothing you’ve got nothing to lose. Right?

Thugs & Porn Actresses

One of my biggest peeves is women who go around in public with those pants with writing across their asses. I mean if it’s not the most disgusting sluttiest thing I’ve ever seen. And to believe some women are so critical of men who treat them like sex objects. Bitch, you got “Pink Taco” stitched across your ass. What the fuck do you expect me to do comment on your mastery of trigonometry?

I should walk around with pants with writing across the crotch that says “Let me coat your sugar walls with a fresh load of paint” but I’m certain a lot of people would be offended by that. And it’s likely that it violates some law or another. I don’t really have a lot of room for all that text anyway. But apparently “Pink Taco” on a woman’s ass is fine.

I had cereal for dinner. I had pizza for breakfast. I took a nap for lunch. That’s pretty much it. I imagined having sex with someone. I imagined arguing with someone. No… that was real I think. But the sex was imaginary, I think. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell. Who could possibly tell the difference anymore. When I’m in bed and I’m half asleep and the radio is on it’s like I’m there. Like I’m half dreaming and in the dream I’m experiencing the things that go on on the radio. The thing is my radio is tuned to public radio and it’s mostly news so as my thoughts flow in and out of consciousness I’m being blown to bits by IEDs, going down in plane crashes, take performance-enhancing drugs and acquire AIDS from being raped by my father’s fishing buddy. Occasionally I will wake in a cold sweat.

I’m seriously starting to doubt my own intelligence. I mean all my life people have been telling me I’m smart. But I just have a hard time seeing it. I really don’t think of myself as smart because I see so many other people who are smarter than me. I think what’s at issue is that the people I hang around are all fucking idiots. So to them I must seem like some fucking Einstein. It’s like that movie Idiocracy. I’m just a normal guy in a sea of retards. If only I could convince the real smart people that I’m one of them…

Google has been a pain in the ass lately. I mean I use to champion Google because they use Linux and seem to not be afraid of open source and stuff. But lately two things have really made me lose faith in them. The second thing was their intention to acquire DoubleClick. DoubleClick is a piece of Internet enema. DoubleClick is my enemy and therefore Google is my enemy. The first thing is the whole YouTube purchase. I hate YouTube too. 90% of the shit on there is useless. The only time I ever go there is to watch some news footage that I missed on television or some footage that television doesn’t have the balls to air… or air their balls.. whatever. Anyway now YouTube is getting sued left and right. I don’t even feel sorry for them. They have no defense either in my opinion. I mean they can say that they can’t filter stuff, but it’s obvious they can. I’ve gone to YouTube plenty of times looking for porn and I can’t find none anywhere. You’d think that a site that big, with everyone and their mother trying to get seen, that there ought to be a lot of homegrown porn on that site. But it’s nowhere to be seen. Someone has to be filtering that shit. And if they can filter porn then they can filter copywritten material. So fuck Gargle/AssTube/DoubleDick. I hope they crash and burn!

I’d better go now. It’s past my bed time and my medication is wearing off.

2007-01-24, 14:51

I had trouble getting to sleep again last night. I find myself sleeping in the mornings. I got up around 11:30 this morning. I have a headache I guess from the four beers I had last night.

I braved to get on the scale this morning and discovered I had gained four pounds since I left my job. I have been eating/ordering out a lot, especially the last week and a half since I’ve been too lazy to get off my butt and go grocery shopping. So I finally did so this morning… well, this afternoon.

There are so many women and children at Target during weekday working hours. I think I only saw two men who weren’t working there. A lot of the women had babies or small children with them. I never felt more out of place…

When I got home I decided to reorganize one of my kitchen cabinets, where I discovered a box of Bisquick that had expired in 1997. I moved into this apartment in 2001 and I moved to Dallas in 1996, so this box must have been one of the first food items I purchased when I got here. I’ve had cleanings before (a few months ago I discarded some items that had expired 6 years ago) but somehow I overlooked the 10-year old Bisquick. It was so old even the bugs in it were dead. Oh well…

Last night I talked to KY and DL2 on the phone, though I’m really to tired now to write about it. Think I’m gonna take a nap.

↓

So if this morning is any indication of how my day will be then I’d be well advised to cut my losses now and just go back to bed.

I responded to an email from a recruiter. This guy has emailed me a couple of times before, and then twice yesterday. The thing is I am in no way qualified for the position he is seeking. All he’d have to do is look at his own fucking posted job requirements and look at my resume and see if there’s a match. Is that so fucking difficult. The #1 requirement on his own job post is a minimum of 10 years systems level software development experience. Where on my resume does it say I have any systems level software development experience? Nowhere! Nor does my resume claim that I have ever had any experience developing Linux kernel device drivers. I wish I had, but I don’t. So why is this guy even wasting his time with me? He does a few fucking keyword searches and my name comes up and that’s all he should have to do to start spamming me about some shit that neither benefits me or himself. I blame online job sites. The Internet has failed us.

I politely responded to his email informing him of my lack of experience.

So I’m already on nerve when I start breakfast. I started to make the same breakfast I do every morning: boil an egg, make some coffee. Except this morning I decided to start the coffee and egg at the same time. In about 3 minutes, my electric kettle alerted me that my water was ready for the coffee. I’m trying out some of the General Foods International coffees. They’re just tasty (except for the chai. It’s disgusting). So I make my coffee and then I take the egg off the heat. I start peeling the shell of the egg and it’s not coming off. I mean it’s like someone had krazy glued the shell to the egg. What is coming off is taking significant portions of the egg with it. I become frustrated. I do this every fucking day and now this egg wants to give me shit. I get so mad I throw the egg into the sink… with force. The very-soft boiled egg splatters. And I mean splatters. There was egg all over the sink, counters, and the floor and walls in the hallway. My cats ran for cover. In an act of senseless stupidity (redundant?) I had neglected to boil the egg for the full 10 minutes that I usually do and somehow my brain processed coffee being done as egg being done.

I see that I don’t multi-task very well. Moral to story: make coffee after eggs.

So as far as my mood this morning: foul because of the idiot recruiter and even more shitty because of the idiot within. I think I shall take a nap now.

It’s ok. She fell down some stairs…

In November, after Nao (TS) and I broke things off I started talking with this one lady online. From the start it appeared that she was not my type. Everything from the start seemed like “bad news”, but I kept talking with her because you never know right?

We really didn’t talk much. Just a phone call every now and then. There were no “sparks” or whatever. But we talked on the phone the night before last and I felt maybe things weren’t going that well because I wasn’t putting enough effort into it. So I decided to call her two nights in a row.

So I called her again last night. The conversation went ok. No problem communicating. But does she really say anything that I want to hear and vice-versa? We started talking about movies, one of my passions. I like movies, but I like good movies which, in my opinion, are few and far between. This is a sensitive issue for me, so I got a weird feeling when she recommended a movie to me.

The squirrels are nice here…

I suppose I should go in chronological order…

Yesterday I went to the liquor store. It wasn’t really that I had a craving or anything. It’s just that I was thinking it was the last day before Christmas that I can buy hard liquor so I’d might as well. Besides, I’m expected to drink. I’m lonely and it’s the holidays. People expect people like me to drink during the holidays. If I didn’t drink they’d think something was wrong with me…

So I did go the the liquor store. It was crowded. Everyone doing their holiday shopping. I imagined most people there were either buying gifts or drinks they intended to share with loved ones. I was just buying for myself.

Showing my sensitive side ))<>((

Well, it’s over. This morning my hands were shaking real bad, but at around 10:30 I talked to my boss and gave her my two weeks’ notice. To my surprise things went a lot better than I imagined. She was not angry. Didn’t really try to make me stay. I mean she did ask if there was anything that could be done to convince me to stay, but I think that was more an act of politeness than sincerity. She wasn’t surprised, not that I expected her to be. Her real surprise was that I hadn’t done so sooner. Everyone could see my unhappiness but as I said I have a tendency to prolong my own unhappiness as a form of self-torture.

We had our holiday luncheon. It was ok. On the way there I spoke with DL1, who talked me into taking the job in the first place. She wasn’t surprised or angry either. I expected her to be very angry, but she wasn’t at all. Altogether things went very smooth.

The next two weeks should be interesting. CH will be on vacation (he was actually on vacation my first two weeks as well). I had forgotten about the Christmas holiday so technically I’m not giving them the full two weeks anyway.

I don’t really know what is next for me. I have two potential new jobs. One on the East Coast and one on the West. I’m not sure that I’ll get the jobs. I’m not sure I’d take one if I did. I’m still considering taking a few months to a year off. I definitely don’t want to jump into another job that I’ll end up leaving a few months down the road. I’m still depressed, but feeling better. After the end of the year I won’t have insurance anymore so I’ll have to get off the meds unless I find alternative means. I guess I made one big decision (to leave my job) but I still have a lot to think about.

Don’t subscribe to Sys Admin

I haven’t written in a while. Not that nothing’s been happening; I just didn’t feel like writing.

I’ve been sending emails back and forth with AE now. Kinda weird that the only person I can talk to now his my ex, who I hated just a year ago. I told her my two deepest secrets (that I’ve been clinically depressed most my adult life and I was sexually abused as a child). She said she already knew the first one. I dunno, maybe I told her. Or maybe she just knew.

I guess she’s happy with her new husband and baby. Thinks seem to be going well for her now.

I decided I would put in my 2 weeks notice on the 15th. So my last day at my job will be the last work day of this year. I don’t have another job lined up now. Maybe I’ll take another six months off again.

Work has been fairly boring, especially with my boss on vacation, but it’s not been too bad. They let us leave a couple of hours early today because everyone here gets paranoid when the temperature drops below freezing.

Today I upgraded my box to 2.6.19 and have been toying with the new PATA code and ext4. So far no issues. I may play with Ecryptfs a little, but to me it doesn’t seem to provide anything over encfs which I already use and am pretty happy with. I mean the performance isn’t that great but I’m not running a database or streaming video on it so wtf.

I really don’t feel like writing anything. I’m just writing now because I haven’t done it in a week and don’t wanna stay out of practice.

Oh, here’s a story. I haven’t recieved any issues of Sys Admin in months (since July?). So today at work I called them. They didn’t have my name or either of the two addresses I had them delivered to in their database. Like no record that I ever did business with them. So the lady asked me if I had the account number with me (the number that’s printed on the address label). I didn’t have a copy of the magazine with me so I told her I would call back when I got home. Well when I got home early today one of the first things I did was call them. This time someone different answered the phone and even though I explained everything that happened on the previous conversation, he continued to ask me for my name and address and then told me it wasn’t on their computer. No shit, I just told him that. So then I told him the lady I talked to before said I could call back with the account number. Well this guy says they can’t look up subscriptions by account number. I’m like what?! This makes no fucking sense. What kind of company can’t look up your account number? It seems like whenever you call any business the first thing they ask you is your account number. So I explained to the guy that I know I’ve been getting magazines because I’m looking right at them. And my name and address are spelled correctly on them, so either they gotta have my name or account number because they were sending me magazines for months until they just cut me off. He said he couldn’t do anything so I asked to speak with his manager. Well, after putting me on hold for what seemed like forever he came back on the line and said that the manager was unavailable and that he would take my name and number and a manager will call me. Well, it’s been 5 hours now and (surprise) no call. I either want my magazines or want my fucking money back. I don’t understand how a company could just “forget” me. I understand even less how a company can not be able to look up a customer’s account number. This makes no fucking sense to me.

wild turkey

I woke up around 4 am this morning. To my surprise I had slept on the sofa in my living room. I can’t figure out why I had done that. It wasn’t that I just fell asleep. I had turned the TV and DVD player off. I don’t think I finished the movie I was watching last night. I must have been drunk.

So today is Thanksgiving to most. To me it was just another day off from work. No friends or family. No big meals. I had a burger for lunch and for dinner the same thing I had yesterday. I called no one and no one called me. I spent most of the day on the computer, listening to music or browsing the internet or on IRC. Read some of my Linux Administration book. I simulated a RAID failure and re-built it just to see if it would work. I resized some of my filesystems and converted one from jfs to ext3. So I guess you could say I was bored.

I went for a ride this afternoon. Actually, I went to get lunch but ended up just driving around. That was pretty much the only time I actually thought about Thanksgiving. I was listening to NPR in the car and they had a couple of Thanksgiving-themed broadcasts. So this year what can I be thankful for? Well let’s see: my “girlfriend” dumped me, I have a job that I hate more than life itself, I have no one to talk to and I don’t love or feel loved. So I guess I’m gonna have to go with “health” again this year.

When after I got back home I jerked off. I haven’t been taking my Lexapro for the past few days so my penis kinda works again. That’s pretty much the only pleasure I get out of life anyway. Sex is way underrated.

Tomorrow back to my crappy job. There won’t be that many people there, so hopefully it won’t be that bad, but I’ll be bored shitless.

I have half a bottle of Irish whiskey left before my drinking binge ends (I finished the vodka this morning). I’ll try not to go on another one at least until Christmas.