Did you know stuff happened today while you weren't watching?

I am any of dying, dead, unbourn, bored, or sick. I'm guesing the last. If I can keep my head still, I will write... if not, I'll just go trailing off into...

... Got up around 1000. Ate breakfast (a Sunday-only tradition). Made this. Grandparents came down and took us to Tony Roma's for lunch. Mmm...onion loaf... (Okay, so the link doesn't work NOW. But give them time. They're based in Scottsdale, btw. And will be hosted by Inficad.)

Came home to find nothing happened while I was gone. Worked on the 8227 some more. Found out that the image of the EPROM I've been examining is corrupt. And I tried reading it four more times. Each attempt resulted in a nearly completely different image. That's bad. I think the reader wants a slower machine. I shall have to find it one. I can't tolerate inconsistency. Especially when it wastes two days of my time. [I forgot to mention that yesterday during the time I marked as "examining...ROM dumps", I spent the majority of my efforts towards finding a stupid app to run my programmer since aparently the copies I had are gone. I ended up at some French site that had pictures. Enough clicking on said pictures got me an app that works. Well, appears to work. It also appears to generate corrupt images...]

Tara used that ridiculous vibration transportation device to call me and tell me that I was not on AIM. I would have figured it out eventually. [Haha... I just remembered a stupid argument I had with a teacher many years ago. About the word "telekensis". My stance was that there is nothing in that word that implies paranormal activity. And that when you talk on the telephone you are in fact performing telekenisis... you are moving air on the other end of the connection without directly moving it. Okay, back to the future...]

Was getting ignored by Amanda later on, so I in turn ignored Cat (who was once again yelling some rubbish about world domination...cursed Cat... this was in fact nothing new, for I usually ignore her when she gets on that train...). Then I decided that I was about ready to fall over (which is quite concerning since I was, at the time, sitting down) and made the decision to go to bed. And here I am. It's March. Ugh.

Well now...

Slept til 0900 or so. Got up and wasted a bit of time. Started staring at the NatSemi Ethernet Databook (83905 section). I was attempting to discern just how you'd combine a system ROM, a PCMCIA option ROM, and an ethernet boot PROM all into one chip. I think I've figured it out. Then spent nearly the rest of the afternoon examining (partially dissassembled) ROM dumps from the 8227, along with burning some test ROMs and a few other things. My current aim is to find where the ethernet boot PROM starts and ends inside the whole image, then insert my own prom in that spot and burn a new ROM for the 8227 (that boots using a more sane method than IBM RPL). I just don't know exactly what I'm looking for. My guess is that this will require quite a lot of trial and error.

While I was looking at the EtherBoot/NILO/NetBoot packages trying to determine what a boot prom looks like, a few people arrived at the door. (Actually they arrived in the driveway first, as noted by the screams of Tara being mocked.) Those people would be Amanda, Tara, Brock, and David. It later turned out that I would be joining them on their excursion to Garcias and later to Amanda's dwelling. [Keywords: Garcias, dead car, salsa, salt, ice, Pepsi, birthday, forks, flan, Polaroid, money, Blockbuster, Antz, socialism, irony, comedy, other.]

I was going to be brief. And I will remain that way. But I must comment on Antz. Big political and moral statements in that movie (esp regarding socialism, communism, totalitarianism, and individualism). And a whole big bunch of irony.

Got home about 0240. I've had plenty of sleep, but I'm tired anyway.

A trifle of a fruitless day. Slept nicely til 0800. Sat through some annoying speaker in english. Just more nothingness from there.

Came home and slept some more. I sleep too much. Spent the entire evening getting nothing done. Really. I'm serious.

The only thing i learned for the evening is something about the trackpad on my laptop. I knew that tapping the pad was the same as clicking the left button. What I did not know was that tapping with TWO fingers is the same as clicking the (physically non-existant) -middle- button. And of course, tapping with three fingers is the same as hitting the right button. I was amused. (It should be noted that tapping with two fingers is not a very smooth operation, and especially not three fingers.)

Isn't it amazing that I took twice as many words to explain that five minutes of my evening that I did to explain the entire remaining day? I just find that odd. Good night.

Tiring day. Don't know why. I'm probably just tired because I didn't get a nap...

I unknowingly decided for myself that I was sleeping through first hour. I didn't know til I awoke at 0800 and wondered why my clock said 0800 instead of 0600. Oops. (Actually, I lied. The didn't say either of those...it is still incessively flashing "12:00am" at me. I really wish it would set itself.) So I grabbed a mtndew and meandered down the street like someone who was drinking a mtndew at 0830 in the morning. Blasted 'fire drill' in english. Grr... Got rid of Scarlet. She decided not to give a final test. Oh well. Don't have to write a paper either. Which is a bit ironic because this would have been the easiest book to do a paper on irony for, yet we're not doing a paper at all.

APUSH was actually productive. Went and talked to my calc teacher after that. I think I will be dropping calc for the duration of the semester. I was going to retake it next year anyway. And it won't be A-B next year, so I will be able to finish the whole class by Decembre. That's a Good Thing. We'll see what goes on... Came home and helped Sara with math for a couple hours. Ate dinner. Then left again....

Went with Christin and Melanie to the Phoenix Black Theatre Troupe's production Spunk. It was a trilogy of stories by the somewhat famous Zora Hurston. The title of the production is a bit odd because also there was a Hurston story titled Spunk, it was not one of the three done (Sweat, Story in Harlem Slang, The Gilded Six-Bits). Great show indeed. Quite out of the ordinary. Theme was stressed far above hard interpretation. Very neat. Most people didn't like it. But we did. The first is an interesting tale of ironic revenge. The second was probably the most obscure (hint: it has less to do with male prostitution than it outwardly looks to). The third was a pleasant love story. I think the most interesting connection between the parts of the trilogy concerns the role of the male ego and domininance. In the first, the male is a cruel, unlovable husband; in the second, the male(s) are superficial and boastful ("bull-skating") but still maintain dominance; and in the third, the male is nearly equal to the female (though decididly off-balance). Oh well. You probably don't understand any of the above unless you've read the stories anyway.

That was just outside the middle of downtown Phoenix. I swear that entire city smells like a large dead animal of some sort. Sickening. Oh well. After the 'discussion' after the play, we left about 2245. Stopped at McDonalds on the way home. Actually stopped twice. The first was to get ice cream, the second to get spoons. There would have been a third time because they also neglected to give Christin a straw for her coke. Lesson for the evening: If you can't find a straw, find a pen, remove both ends and suck. It aparently works suprisingly well (for a pen being used as a straw, that is).

Got home about 2345. Wandered round the house and now I settled back here to write this before I go to bed. I think I will probably sleep through first hour again, since most of the exciting people will be in Flagstaff. Oh, and its Amanda's birthday. Everyone yell 'Happy birthday, Amanda!'. And its got to be loud too. She's got to be able to hear you from Flagstaff....

Oh dear...

Hmmm... School. Boring. Then minor sleep. Mmmm...sleep.... Then I had to get up. And go play a concert. Moderatly okay. Got back by 2100. Ate a 12in sub and two mtndews shortly thereafter. Been doing calc ever since. Thats a long story. But I feel like going to bed now. So guess what...I am.

For some reason, I woke up and was too awake. I was done getting ready at 0615. I decided it wasn't sane for me to stay up when I was so awake. So I went back to bed. But I still had to get up again. And go to school.

Came home and finished Scarlet Letter. Then took a long nap. It was long not for the sake of being long, but long because nothing woke me up. Got myself caught up on the day's mail and the day's news (nothing exciting). Alan says he has never dealt directly with IBM. He also recommended the best way to talk to them would be to fly myself to the LinuxWorld conference and grab the first person seen with an IBM shirt. Although that would probably be the most effective plan, I doubt it would be the cheapest.

Spent the middle of the evening wandering around altavista and dejanews looking for IBM references. And rising kernel god Warner Losh has aparently taken the ranes of the latest effort for LAN Entry drivers (and this one has a mailing list -- talk to majordomo@omegacs.net). We'll see. [I speak so highly of Warner because of other good-hack efforts such as Linux on the Psion5 and other MIPS-based WinCE-based PDAs/handhelds. He's done a bunch of other odd stuff too.]

Then spent the third slice of the evening (the shortest) on documentation-related rubbish that I've been meaning to do. Finally renamed the front page to say auk instead of delphid. Also added info on Linux on Jetta laptops. I should add more info to that. IBM and some more video (bt848/tuner/videoblaster/videospigot) stuff still needs to get documented more. Someday, someday...

Cat keeps sitting over my shoulder while typing this. I think she wants me to pay attention to her. I think I'll keep babbling just to mock her begs. Hahaha...

I take that back... I need to go to bed. Ok, so I did decide to do one more thing...disassemble d2eq13.com and fref.com that run on the 8227. The asm to fref.com is here, with the annotated changes to turn it into d2eq13.com (yes, only three bytes are different). Now I just need to figure out what its suppose to do. I pity the ones who used such a dredful compiler. I've got the Opti 82c491 databook in front of me (the 8227 uses the UMC version of that chipset) and that asm isnt making too much sense. Port 22h on the 82c491 is the Shadow RAM Control Register I. Something you should only set once, maybe twice, per boot.....not eight as this code seems to do. I must be looking at something wrong. Help?

I managed to scrape the hell out of the side of my left foot, thanks to an overgrown token ring MAU (when they say "rack mount model" they mean "you'd better mount this on a rack and not leave it laying around on the ground because its got sharp edges that can easily kill you when you get in its way"). And yet where does it remain, even after its tried to kill me a couple times? On the ground. On the way out the door even. I'm just asking to get a few toes accidently amputated. Oh well. Now I have something more to complain about.

I guess I'm the only one who noticed that I had two 20 Feb 1999's in a row. Ooops. Oh, and /a is not the same as /i in HTML...

Got up early after having depressingly little sleep. Sat in the dark for 30 minutes before I left. Suprisingly, I didn't fall asleep again. Wandered through the morning... Ended up at lunch. Brock talked me out of keys. And scared the tar out of my sister when he came barging through the door. (HAHA!) I went to calc. Boring old calc. I'm not doing well in there...

But in any case, I came home. And took a long nap. (Yay!) And then worked on wireless stuff for a bit (okay, three hours). After making zero headway on NDIS, I finally just gave up and started looking seriously at win95-based soltutions. There's two of them majorly: WinGate and WinProxy. WinGate is the most prominent, so I figured I'd try it first. That was well and good until the trial licenense key they sent me was invalid. That got me mad and sent me to the other possiblility, WinProxy. Yes. I like things that work (even if its only for 30 days). That has got to be the easiest to set up proxy server. But anyway, it got me going. Which leads me to my current location...

The living room (there are no chairs in the kitchen). Its nice to be able to wander around the house and still be in touch. Performance is to be expected. Telnet is about the same as it was on the 38.4kbs Wyse. And I still have to use Win95 on both ends (ugh).

I mailed Alan to see if he has any contacts at IBM. I'm currently attempting to find a contact via their website, but its not working all that well. We'll see what goes on. The guy who was working on drivers for this thing hasn't made any progress on them and doesn't seem to intent on finishing them. I need linux drivers...bad. I need to run linux on this laptop... and I need a functional 8227... I hate proxies!

I have a bit of other things to get done this evening/morning, so I bid a tired farewell... (that, and I only have a few minutes of battery life left)

Slept in a bit once more, and nearly to the same late epoch as well (1100). Dabbled around in doing nothing for a bit. Ate some food. That's (usually) always nice.

I twas angered much once more by NDIS. That lasted most of the afternoon. (If you were looking at my webcam during that time, you would have seen something far more interesting than normal. For it was not my image that would appear, but that of a DOS console. Although how ironic it is that while that shown on the webcam, its viewers were missing the only time that what normally is shown would have been exciting... I mean, I don't get that pissed off at these machines that often. You might have found my dances of anger somewhat amusing...) From any vantage, no further success was made.

Then took the rest of the evening to watch TV. Yes. Faithful TV. Shortly (an hour and a half) after XFiles, I went outside to read more Scarlet Letter. I get through one chapter and Brock shows up for as yet unknown reason. We ponder existance, religion, irony, the irony of religion, the religion of irony, AI, C, C++, SmallTalk, Java, and generally mock life itself and then he leaves (at a somewhat later time). I continue reading. It's quickly approaching 0200. And I need sleep. I have yet another useless week of my life to waste coming up.... woohoo!

As I previously noted, I received the pleasure of sleeping in. Spent a few hours after that wasting time. Then started on wireless stuff again.

No success. I downloaded a (somewhat unlicensed) copy of Artisoft LANtastic 6.0. Its got RPL booting built in and that was part of the instruction I got from the seller. Everythere there went perfectly according to the instructions. Except for the last step: working. The 8227 was sending requests but lantastic just wasn't seeing them. I have no way to dump IEEE802.2 LLC or DIXv2 frames that IBM FIND/FOUND RPL uses. So if it doesn't "just work", there's no way to see whats going on. And that's the case I ran into.

So in my process of trying to figure it all out, I just started thinking about the instructions. Turns out that the "boot image" that the 8227 (wireless-ethernet bridge) loads across the lan is merely a IBM DOS boot floppy. Okay so that means the 8227 has got an x86 in it capable of running DOS. That got me too interested and I just had to take the lid off. Ahhh it was neat. i80486SX at 33MHz, 8MB RAM, UMC 82c491 chipset, Cirrus Logic PCMCIA host controller, and a regular old NatSemi 83905 (SONIC) ethernet controller. Hum. Once the PCMCIA Lan Entry drivers are working, I hope to use a Linux boot image instead of the DOS one...

But that still doesn't help the fact that I can't get it load the image. However, I figured if I configured a PC with compatible specs as the little 8227 box, I should be able to run the boot image directly from disk.

IBM has this way (a way very similar to Digital's style) of making things incredibly complex by making them incredibly simple. Sure they could have used a somewhat esoteric (but still non-proprietary) integrated controller IC in this 8227 bridge, but they didn't. Instead they built a custom 486 PC out of completely industry standard parts, creating modularity and ease of programming. I say ease of programming because most of the boot image is industry standard as well. Okay so it runs DOS. Then it starts up Microsoft Protocol Manager and loads normal NDIS client drivers for each of the onboard 8390 ether and the wireless PCMCIA card. Post-boot operation involves sitting at idly at a DOS prompt. The only custom bit of software in the whole entire system is a specialized NDIS driver that does the bridging. And it is incredibly small. But while being this simple, they've made it terribly complicated, as anyone who's ever set up NDIS knows. Oh well. It's 'Really Cool' design if you ask me. I'm still in a bit of shock over the whole thing.... to think I bought an ether bridge and ended up with a 486 SBC....

Still, the marvel doesn't work. I gave up for the evening in the middle of tweaking the boot image to work with a standard PC. On the 8227, the drivers didn't have to deal with floating IRQs because IBM fixed them in hardware. But, since its all NDIS, I can just plug whatever drivers I need into there and reconfigure the bindings. Its not easy. Its barely clean. And in fact hasn't even worked yet. But its damn neat.

It would sound like that has been the only thing I've done today. Thats probably a pretty good bit of writing then... because that is indeed all I did today. (Besides sit here and watch Chef and Mr Bean....)

This log comes a bit late. Oops.

Nothing really exciting at school. Came home, sprayed water at the trampoline in a futile attempt to remove the Black Dust, and then took a nap. Amanda came over. Talked til 2300. Then I started working on wireless stuff.

Tried to boot up gw2k only to find that its OS was expired (Win98 Beta3). So, I formated it and put win95b on it. Also but in a Vadem VG-469 PCMCIA-ISA bridge card in it. Slooooooow. I hate win95. In any case, it did eventually get itself working (I say 'get itself' because all I did was reboot it three times and watch it work).

I pinged the garage from the kitchen at about 0200 this morning. That was using Win95 on both ends and the cards in standalone mode (my laptop and gw2k, without the 8227 ethernet to wireless bridge). Aparently neither of the PCMCIA cards I have actually contain the 512kb of flash required for the 8227 to boot in LPL mode. So I must boot it in RPL mode. Meaning I must have a boot server that supports IBM/Novell RPL. I don't think I do. I hope samba or marsnwe does. The latency and drop rates were what I would have expected. 6 to 10ms latency when standing still and up to 50ms while wandering around the house. From the garage to the kitchen (if you've been here, you know thats quite a fair distance with many many walls in between), the standing packet loss was 3-6%. Roaming was higher (10-15%). Nothing surprising there.

Wandering around while pinging caused such excitement that I had to take a nap shortly after. Got to sleep in for the first time in five or six weeks. Til 1100. It felt good.

Band was a bit...ahem...skewed. English was a bit of waste. It was however recommended that I forego honors ENG101 (and take std) especially if it can get me through faster (which it can). The rest of the day was more repetitious amounts of unfruitfulness...

The wireless stuff arrived today. Spent an hour or two trying to get that to work. Strange stuff happening there. I can't seem to get the Access Point card to configure. Requires a mess of DOS rubbish. Ugh.

Then nap. Then went to the choir concert. Then came home. Then I attempted the APUSH homework. Then I talked to people for a bit. Then I used the word then too many times. Then I stopped.

This has not been all that wonderous of a day. In fact, its been fairly mediocre. Oh well...

School was utterly boreful. Came home and took a (somewhat truncated) nap. Went over to GCC to take the ASSET test. Took a bit over an hour. Got perfect scores on the writing and the reading test, but not well at all on the math. That qualified me for ENG101 honors and makes me excempt from CRE101 (some creative reading/writing BS class). But aparently I'm not qualified to be in anything even close to calculus... I guess that would explain why I'm not doing well in there...

And actually that was the night. The 64mb SODIMM for my laptop came. Installed that. Now have 96mb. Runs great. Wireless stuff arrived in Phoenix this afternoon. Should have it tomorrow (if UPS decides to let me have it).

I guess I'll talk to Amanda a bit more and go to bed.... I feel terrible too... ick....

Not a terribly interesting day. Mostly I was just in a sleeping awakeness. An amusing state indeed.

Stumbled out of bed four minutes too early. I felt it too. All day I was cursing myself because I got out of bed four minutes early. Why I had to take a four minute nap in calc because of it. Alas, it didn't help. In fact, it just put me four minutes behind in calculus. Now its going to take me four minutes longer to do my homework which means that tomorrow I'm going to be going to bed four minutes late and need to get up four minutes late to make up for that. My point? Well, you can see my point. The direct moral however has nothing to do with the grander scheme of always thinking about what you do. It has more to do with setting your clocks more accuratly and not getting up four minutes early...

Now that I've fully discussed getting up four minutes early, let's move on. Most of the morning was a waste of time (as if there is another kind). In fact, the afternoon was too. Took a way-too-long nap (plus four minutes). Then did APUSH homework. Then talked to Amanda and Tara for a bit. And now I'm soon to be moving over to read more Scarlet.

I get to take that lovely ASSET test tomorrow. Ooo. Aye, I'm excited. This is so I can take classes at MCC schools (ie, GCC and Rio Salado). I just haven't decided what I'm going to take quite yet. I know I'm going to take Englisc over the summer. So I can completly avoid english next year (yet I may take AP Comp and Lit for the fun of it anyway).

Last night I noticed a seemingly perminent blue dot in the upper right corner region of my laptop LCD panel. It never went away. I mailed the vendor when I got up. No response all day. And then I discovered something interesting... TFT LCD panels are more like Etcha-Sketches than one might think. I left it sitting upside down (like how you erase an etchasketch) for a few hours. I turned it back on and the blue dot was decidedly more invisible. I am quite fearful of bad pixels...especially in a panel this new. But its really not noticable and I can't see it unless I'm really looking for it (even then its a bit of trick). I don't think its worth sending back.

I think I will depart now. Or sometime soon.

La la la la... Well, let's see. I made it home. Decided to actually do the factory-recommended thing and run the laptop battery all the way down. Did that. I had made it home with 18 minutes of battery life to spare. It ended up lasting twice that. And it never really died.

Amanda came over and we watched the X-Files I missed from yesterday. That really wasn't what they hyped it up to be. In fact, it was mostly nothing. Certainly not the advertised "full disclosure". Talked about a bunch of things. She left. I came back here. Wrote this. Now I'm going to bed. How about that.

Back on the road once again (pulled out at exactly 1357 -- haha! found a clock!). Aparently the community service guys from yesterday aren't actually required to remove the garbage they collect, just bag it. Maybe they leave bag-removal to the next group. Or maybe they just leave it there, wait for the sun to rot through the bags and spill all the trash out so they can have something to do the next time. That's people for ya.

The traffic is off and on bad. I would have expected worse for the end of three-day weekend. Though, most likely by the time we hit New River we'll get the onslaut of lake goers. I don't expect the batteries of this laptop to last through the traffic jam that will ensue.

Just a lot of boring road out here. With utterly boring deserts of ugly plants on edges. Ooo...Cortes Junction... Back on I17 now (1447). Mmmm...Tyson chicken (truck).... Sunset Point. Anyone ever been to Bumblebee? Not a very enchanting little hole in the ground (and I do mean hole in the ground). It is a lovely mtn range, however.

This isn't turning out to be overly exciting now is it. Haha that's nifty: an El Camino half-embedded in the side of a mountain with a for-sale sign on it. There's one of those "Don't drink and drive" greensigns. They put those in the middle of the freeway. Like you're going to read it and say "Hey! I think I'm too drunk to drive!", then pull over, knock over the railing and plow your car into the ground thirty meters below. Ya, that helped the situation. And the "Road Work Ahead" signs. Like there's any possible way for you to get away from it anyway. Does warning you really do anything? People still got 75mph. Gee, a cacti farm right in the middle of a cacti-filled desert. Smart, guys, smart. Scott Bundgaard for Senate. Who the hell is he??? Oh look, the outlet mall at New River. Looks like some over-hypified mideveil fantasy land (with a southwestern motif, of course). "End of Road Work" Hey I didn't see anything. "No U-Turns" That's quite an obvious statement considering that to actually make a u-turn at that point would require plowing through two Palo Verde trees, a cactus, and several dozen prototumbleweed weeds. I think I'm being a bit overcritical. But what the hell...its fun! Phoenix city limits (1520). The onramp for the river is right here. Suprisingly few people. Time to change CDs. We can't for the life of any of us open this stupid giant bag of M&Ms. Grrr....

I think this whole 'Adapt-a-Hiway' thing is a big joke. No one ever actually cleans anything. "Detection center: Do not stop for hitchiker's" Like you should stop for them anyway. The crazy drunken no-thumbed lunatics. Sheesh... 100 minutes of battery life is a lot more than it sounds. I've still got over a half-hour left. Of course, its probably lying to me and will die here in a few minutes without warning. But that's what makes life exciting. And terrible. I find it amazing that humans have such a fear of change, innovation, mystery, and surprise, when the entire basis of their civilaztion is based on it. [Turnoff to 101west, 1538.] Remind me to look up what Syntellect is. They have a new building out here. Along with that huge AMC 30 and...guess... a Petsmart. Beardsley...sounds like something you'd call a hairy old geaser...or a pug-nosed dog. Take your pick.

Out of mtndew. Damn truck just sprayed sand all over the front of the van. I think I've run out of interesting things to make snide comments about. And besides, we're only one exit from home. One last thing. Did you all hear about Garth Brooks joining the San Diego Padres for spring training? And guess where they do that... IN MY BACK YARD (well, sarcastically speaking...its really a mile or two away...but close enough). I think we should turn our backyard into parking lot of sorts and use our suburbans and vans as shuttles...for profit... hmmm.... (thunderbird exit, 1538).

I still have yet to find a clock, so I've resorted to just looking at the Sun when I require the time. Its roughly noon-thirty. (And I must say that these TFT LCD panels are definitly not made for outdoor use.) It is a most beautiful day up here. Feels like about 55 or 60degF. Extremely quiet (sans the rustling of the birds beyond and the occasional bit of traffic on the road at forward). I'm sitting in a bed of tiny pebbles (I know not why) and the things keep getting stuck in the bottom of my feet...a bit painful... Mmmm...cold breeze...

Most of the morning was somewhat wasteful. Had another two-hour meal (aka breakfast). That was after getting up around 0800 (again, solar time). All that food made me tired, so another nap was required. Read chapters nine and ten of The Scarlet Letter (I think I have a test over those tomorrow). I guess that's basically been the morning.

I'm glad I brought this laptop with me... I usually have to resort watching CNN repeat itself (if you've ever watched CNN all day on a Sunday, you know what I mean). Actually, I usually do that anyway to stave off my craving of being informed. But I've managed to avoid it so far. Going outside helps (somewhat). [You'll also notice an abundant number of logs for today and the day past... a final recollection of my boredom.]

My dad is trying to teach my grandfather how to use MS Excel since I have no idea how to operate that mess and have no plans on learning. I think my grandfather is still stuck in fascination mode. His engineering background is helping him, I think... he's one of the more logical persons I've trained. [He taught engineering at CSU for quite some time, after being a civil and waste-management engineer for many decades more.]

I suppose thats about it for now. I should probably go back inside now to make sure I have enough battery life for the journey homeward (and my current can of mtndew is nearing completion). That is, if I can defrost the pebbles that are fozen betwixt my toes!

Well it appears it has come the time once again to go to bed. I actually have no idea just what time it is. I forgot to set an acceptably accurate time on this laptop before I left. Its something like an hour forty-two off, but I'm not real sure. (Earlier, I used the car clock. But there's no clocks around here to look at.) Oh well.

To continue, not much occured. We arrived at my grandparents house and hauled all the stuff in. Started by setting up the new computer (they bought a computer through us...which was the whole point of the trip to begin with: to set it up). That didn't take terribly long. Quickly used an old copy of LapLink5 we had laying about to trasfer the old hard drive to the new one via a parallel cable. (It's probably worth noting that the 'old' computer is not to be taken lightly. It is in fact 15 years old, dating to circa 1984. Classic XT clone (640kb RAM, i8088, 30mb MFM hard drive with real servos, MDA display). The new one on the other hand is a 300mhz AMD K6-2.) Got everything tweaked to everyone's liking. I took a 'break' of sorts to finish up some calculus homework that needed to get done. Then dinner. And dinner here always lasts three to four hours. In this case, til quite a ways after 1900. Then the work became mostly mine: teaching my grandfather how to use Windows 95, MS Word, Excel, et cetera. I don't really like training. But its better than having my dad do it (who is decididly worse at it than I am). That took another two hours or so. I nearly had him an AOL account, but aparently AOL doesn't have a Prescott POP. Oh well.

I learned an interesting bit of trivia this evening. Loveland, Colorado, as many may know is sort of the premier Valentine's Day city. One of the more famous accents of that is their special postal markings that contain love poems and things (I'm talking about the mark that gets put over stamps when you send them in order to void them for future use... "postmarks"). The interesting part is that my grandfather (Jack Chasteen) designed the very first Loveland postmark (note that this was back before they used stamps and used actual branding irons instead). Okay. That's enough trivia for now.

That leaves me back here. Played a short game of Koules and now I'm feeling a bit tired. And I have a terrible headache. Hopefully nothing much to do tomorrow. Maybe I'll type a log in the car again. Rereading my earlier writings, it sounded like fun....

Well, I must say this is a bit of a first: typing while moving. Not just walking, mind you, but actually in a car (well, van). Typing at 75 miles per hour. Kind of freakish the first time. My family is probably sitting behind me wondering just what the hell I'm doing (or more like, what I'm typing). Let's let them wonder. Oh well.

Bump. Big bump. Larger than your average bump. But not exactly a spectacular bump. I think I will watch the road for a moment until we're passed The Hill....

My mom is reading a review of the Disney cruise line. I find the fact that they have a 'swanky' restraunt/bar on the top deck a bit ironic, considering the supposed 'family-centered' environment. Interesting indeed. I'd like to have my own island. Actually, I wouldn't...it would be a bit lonely indeed.

I could review the morning up to this. Woke up around 0900. Wandered around aimlessly for a bit of time. [Ooo, Bloody Basin in one mile.] Got XFree86 going completely on my laptop. Then packed up the laptop and everything I would need to keep me occupied for this day and the next. Talked to Amanda for the several hours that I waited as no one would tell me just when we were leaving. I hate waiting to leave. You know the second you start doing something, they will want to leave. [Just turned off I17 onto SR69north. Managed to royally demolish a tumbleweed on the exit ramp. You know thats the only tumbleweed I've seen in quite some time (other that the ones growing by the ditch out to east of the house -- but they're not dead yet; I'm not quite sure what you call a living tumbleweed... prototumbleweed weed?). I'm just going to have to do an aside on hitchhikers...]

Okay. Aparently the middle day of three day weekends brings out the wierd ones. The first one I spotted was obviously a novice at the whole thing. Aparently he didn't know that to qualify as a hitchhiker you must actually put your thumb in an upright pose. He was just standing there with his arm out and his hand in a fist. Odd. (It was right outside an outlet mall (New River) so I'm guessing he was looking for a ride after giving up on finding his wife.) The next one was just a few minutes ago. Now this one was quite a bit further on the experience scale...and obviously to a point where his brains were rotted. You see, he had transportation (a seemingly functional bicycle). Yet, he was walking and aparently hitchhiking. I'm guessing he was drunk as well (I surely hope that there does not truely exist a person who cannot manage to walk in a straight line!). Okay, back to the morning...

After talking to Amanda for quite some time (and after refusing to consume cold leftover Chinese), we did leave. Stopped at Diamond-Shamrock. Mmmm...big Pepsi... (I hate fountain MtnDew. I don't know whats wrong with it, or if there is anything...maybe its just the different consumption environment that makes it diffierent. It just doesn't fit the 'MtnDew Experience'.) Dug out my laptop once we started the main stretch of I17. Saw this. Then meet up with the above statements.

I just let my laptop suspend while I was in X. Aparently thats a bad thing. I had to kill X and restart it. I really need to read the Battery-Powered-Linux HOWTO...

We just passed Prescott Valley. A lot of people at the Big Swap Meet today. A lot of people period. Just can't get away from those cursed humans! [Prescott city limits. Oh look...a bunch of juvaniles serving their community service...picking up trash on the side of the hiway. On a Sunday. Isn't there a law against that?] Prescott gets more disappointing everytime we come. More people. More houses. It's just too much. I swear... once the Petsmart comes, there's no stopping it. Next came Sam's Club (or Price Club or whatever the call it this week). And then there's what brought all the people: CASINOS. The eastern edge of the city sits convieniently on an Indian Reservation and when the state decided that they weren't being nice enough to the natives (well, they're not natives either...all the native Arizonans died off quite some time ago) that they should let them gamble and make way too much money. And now there's casinos everywhere. [Bucky's Casino passes on the right...] That combined with all the craaazy californians that have moved here in fear of their home being pushed into the ocean, there's too damn many people here (its somewhat non-astonishing that Prescott's population bursts in the weeks following Calif. earthquakes). And Willow Lake is kind of funky these days. They drained it all for a bit for use as irrigation. Then some beurocrats modified the deal and its filling back up again. Somewhat. Still not as high as it was a decade ago. Oh well. Damn civilization.

Another note from this morning. Somewhere on alliancequartet.com, the van I'm currently riding in is famous. There's a picture on there somewhere that shows Dusty relaxing in the back seat. Haha.

Nearly there. And suprisingly, I've still got 45 minutes of battery life left. But I think I will shut down now anyway. I'm not used to doing things while riding and I'm a bit nauseous. Ta ta til this evening.

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!! Thy need sleep! Now!

Yes, well, I got up at 0700. Worked on my laptop for a bit. Then went down to the fairgrounds, where the VNSA was having their (43rd annual) book sale. Oh my. It was huge, I say! And cheap too! The five of us escaped with no less than 70 books for a grand total of $78. Picked up some nifty stuff on philosophy and ancient lit...

Then moved on. To Mesa. Here I thought Mesa was a decent sized place. Aparently thats not so. Aparently all its got is a bunch of houses, two fast-food restraunts, a high school, and an Enterprise renta-car. We ended up at Burger King. Yes. And this particular physical instance had tables that were tremendously high. It was funny at the time. Somehow I can't recall just what was so damn funny. We sat there and sat there because we had nothing better to do. How exciting are we. Oh well.

After wandering around Mt View high school trying to figure out just which side of a square building is the front door, we found a door and sat down. And listened. It was the AMEA Festival for the Central Region, you see. The choir was quite good...and did some wierd stuff. The orchestra followed. Splendid performance. The band that followed was quite disappointing. Sure didn't sound like a regional-level performance. Oh well. Arrived home after a tremendously long drive.

Finished up all my laptop dealings. Win95 is all working now. And now so is Linux (stampede europa-0.89). Even got PCMCIA stuff working right (yes, I'm typing this on my laptop across NFS!). How I finally got it installed was quite messy and a bit embarassing. A word of note: avoid compiling kernels in the bathroom.

I'm dreadfully tired at this point and would much like to just go to bed. In fact, I think I will. So there.

Ha. I'm terribly tired for a reason I know not quite.

Slept in through first hour...mmm...sleep... Englisc brought absolutly nothing... I do mean nothing. We just sat there. It was a trifle odd indeed! APUSH was about the only productive hour. Oh so very glad to come home. And sleep some more. Odd.

Chinese (food) for dinner (what? did you think we're cannibals or something!). Spent most of the evening trying to get Win95 on my laptop to cooperate. Grr. In fact, I still haven't succeeded. Oh well.

Tara and Amanda got back from regionals practice around 1930. Tara went to bed. Amanda came over here for a bit. I think she discovered why drinking coffee is probably not the best thing to be doing when you need sleep...

Oh well. I'm going to fight with Win95 a bit more. Then go to bed. A fair amount of things that need to get done tomorrow.

Well I was quite pleased with this room's climate about an hour ago when it was about 40degF...but its quickly approaching freezing... and I -might- just have to shut my window (though probably not). This has been quite the cold front the past few days...quite odd.

Band was a bit odd as well. Somehow I ended up being both completely out of it and doing someone elses' homework. I somehow got myself out of that mess, but the bubbles took a bit longer to rid my mind of. The walls were fighting with each other on the other side of the room. I'm sure its a bit too complicated to go into. [Allegory? What's that you say?] English was a big bunch of nothing. New age learning rubbish. Ahg! Tests, people! That's all I want! A simple test! Then calc! No not calc! Actually, it was easy. Just a review of logs. Ha. But that means its going to get real difficult real quick.

Okay so I walked back through after school to get my Crucible paper which had kindly been graded. I did end up talking to the teacher about everything but that for many a decaminute. I got a 95%. Zowee! Anyway, I did eventually walk home. A bit after 1500. Yes. Took nap. Got up. Sat around.

Ordered my wireless stuff. Ended up going with the IBM setup. Should be fun. Mostly sat around the rest of the evening avoiding things I should have been doing.

And various band members (ie, Tara...eg, not me) today partook in a somewhat interesting activity... the filming of TV commercial of some sort. To quote Tara, "you see my butt, hands and feet...we spent most of the time in the van talking...it was cold outside." [I enjoy irrelevent quoting, don't you?] {Adam always makes Tara seem so stupid. No further comment.}

Alas, that is about all. No sticky shower feeling this morning.

I don't remember getting up. I'm serious. Spent from 0720 to about 1030 in ASVAB result parsing. Primary carrer area target: artistic. Secondary: investigative. How nice. So while I'm not making any money writing I can code (and not make even more money). Golly gee. Such a productive test. But all the test scores were within the 98th percentile ('military score' of 224). Except that is, for 'general science'. I was in the magic 40th percentile. I figure either they messed up or I did something really stupid (like off-by-one or something). 'Oh well.' Then went to APUSH (wasn't planning on doing that).

Ran into Herbert after school and then Brock and Kim ran into me. Yes, I finally met Kim in person. That was followed by me getting a free ride home and Brock got a free phone call. Funny how that works.

Ate some lunch then went to Tara's. Watched ST: First Contact. In all my travels, I had yet to see that movie. Not bad. Amanda even dropped in.

Came home and (gasp in surprise) took a nap. Unfortunatly, no one was here to wake me up and I slept til nearly 2200. Eeek! Oh well.

I think I've found some IBM wireless stuff for not-too-bad of a price. The only problem is that the only Linux driver around for them is not stable (actually, I don't think it even works). But it might give me some more kernel hacking to add to my growing-too-fast TODO list. We'll see.... Oh, and they're kind of slow... roughly 350kbs. Not any slower than I had with my old parrallel-port ether adapter. But: they have a 1500ft range (and hackable up to 15km!).

I guess I'll probably lay around here for a while and eventually fall asleep. That's usually how my life goes around this time....

So here. Contrary to the day prior, this day I got up -before- I should've. When will time just start cooperating!? The shower smelt like adhesive. I decided I'd risk it and take a shower anyway. I got lucky in that regard that my feet didn't get glued to the floor. Now how often do you get to be thankful that you don't get glued somewhere embarrasing?

You'd think after that pro-optimism incident I'd be in a good mood. Well, I wasn't. In fact, I was in a rather subdued mood for most of the morning. Oh well.

Tara wanted to be mentioned here, so I think I will mention her. Yet, I'm not going to make it easy for her. I'm going to truely embarass her, in fact, to point where she'll never ask again. So at lunch she was just walking along and her feet somewhat decided to go in the other direction. And she fell on her face. Haha.

I think I atually managed to pass that calc test; which if true, is something I haven't done in many a month.

Afternoon spent napping. Early evening wasted away trying various methods of getting Stampede Linux onto my laptop. Succeeded in deciding that burning a CD would be the easiest way to do it without hacking kernel code (the DE-620 driver seems a bit miffed about being in 2.2.x). Then succeeded in getting mad at various stupid things regarding compling cdrecord and mkisofs. Grr. Finally just gave up and sat around web browswing the rest of the evening.

And that's about where it ends. Early release tomorrow. And aparently I'm going over to Tara's (yes, the point-and-laugh one) in the afternoon. {Adam betwixes a look to the floor...wondering just what it takes to get promoted to being a ceiling...} Maybe that could be part of the plentary polarity reversal theories... that every couple hundred thousand years, people start walking on the ceilings instead of the floors... hmmm.... damn clocks....

Oh my. Oh well.

Well then. I woke up to the sight of sunrise. I normally find that most enjoyable except for the fact that this day was Monday and that sunrise is over an hour later than I should be getting up. I aparently either slept through my alarm or it never went off. I'm not quite sure which. So, I never made it to first hour. Oh well. (That probably seems a trifle bad because I seem to remember missing first hour last monday too... Oops.)

Quickly read the rest of Scarlet Letter that I forgot to read on my short walk to english. Then did the APUSH work I forgot to do during lunch. Ha. Oh well. Yes, I had a real productive weekend without homework.

Nice long nap. Spent the early part of the evening browsing around looking for cheap wireless equipment so I roam with my laptop (yes, Orb, you predicted right). Found nothing spectacular. But it seems I'll need at least $200, possibly $400 to do it (depending on if I want 200ft range or 300ft range). Looks like all the good stuff these days is 2.4ghz (yes, gigahertz). I looked 900mhz stuff, but its shorter range and of less quality and looks a bit obsolete.

Then sat around and finished up a bit of homework and talked to people. I should really set a clock in here. Ever since the power went out last Thu, I've had no source of accurate time. And I get the feeling that people are starting to get annoyed by my persistent queries of the current time. Oh well. (Oh, and don't bother recommending getting it ihpled because its even more inaccurate than my 'best guess' clock in my room.) Actually, the real reason I should set them is because syncapation of my two flashing VCRs 12:00's is starting to make me think in wierd times..... ee-eeeeee-ee-eee-ee-eeeeee-eek...... thats like 13/8 or so...

Well I bet you thought I was dead! In Reality, however, I was just my normal misplaced self...... I shall attempt to recollect the past few days from my wretched memory....

Okay so does that sound like a good enough excuse to have skipped the past few days? I hope you just yelled 'Aye!'...because if you didn't, then, well, don't then.

Slept in nice and late... oooo ... Sat around in the smugness of having nothing better to do.

Grepped the house for a video camera battery and a blank 8mil magtape. I found an entire box of old 8mm data magtapes and a mostly dead battery instead. Oh well. Charged the battery and blew off the tapes. Ran outside and starting shooting pictures of the dead palm tree... see an, twa, threo, or a healthy palm, and then a dead one and a healthy one together. They need captions. Maybe later. I also took some pictures of the backyard (ie, the sheep and goats) as well. I still need to grab them off the tape.

Also upgraded my main kernel source repository to 2.2.1ac5. And compiled a kernel for my laptop and my dad's machine. Then finally figured out the whole IDE-SCSI emulation oddities. The former machine is all ready to burn CDs now. Just need to install all the user-space utils and go. Laptop is going to need some work. I would normally do an network install. But my NIC is PCMCIA, and the pcmcia-cs package has to be run from user-space. hum... Maybe I could just plug that DE620 parallel port NIC into it...its got full kernel drivers... yes, I think I will do that. I was going to burn a Stampede CD.

Speaking of CDs... my dad sampled the audio off the video tape of the yesterday's concert. CDs of the concert are available for $5 each. :) [He made one last night that sounded absolutly terrible... the one he made this morning however sounded nearly perfect. Well, as perfect as we played it. Which wasn't all that perfect.]

Anyway, the early evening was spent watching the normal stuff, esp X-Files. Great episode. Then talked to people for hours on end and got absolutly nothing else done. Finally gave up trying to be productive and watched Looney Tunes followed by Tom and Jerry. Oh yes my life is so exciting.

Finally talked to Brock's infamous Joanna. Interesting she be. Talked to her boyfriend Tony too.

And now I go to bed. Finally. Weekend is over!

I don't think i've ever hit the 'snooze' button on my alarm that many times in a row before. Got up as late as i possibly could. And still made back to rehersal on time at 0900. Luckily, this days stretch went by a bit faster (and less painfully for my backside). Concert at 1600 (well, we were a bit late). I'm not sure how long it lasted. Long enough, I'm sure.

Came home and sat for a little bit. Then Amanda came over. She had the astounding pleasure of meeting my family (including one who isnt quite related (yet ;) ). Sat around talking all night. See departed shortly before midnight. I then went to sleep. It had been a bit of long day indeed!

Day started off normal enough. Except for the lack of any clocks. Aparently I'm not the only one who didn't feel like resetting their clocks. Oh well.

After english (~1030), all the honor band people piled into a van that was..uhm... a trifle too small. Then went to lunch. And somewhat suprisingly did make it to SMHS where the rehersal was. [It was a bit stressful for I, because alas, my tuba had not yet arrived there. It eventually did. With a really bad excuse.] Sat in rehersal til 1800. Contrary to what my back was telling me to do, I did sit down again. But in the car... ahhh...nice and soft...

Managed to be completely unproductive and have a terrible time doing. So I decided to revert the utmost unproductive state: sleep.

Well, if you're reading this within 24 hours after I wrote it then I'd be mighty suprised at you. I'll get to that in a bit.

Got up too damn early once again (actually, getting up too damn early is part of my daily routine). Amanda pointed out to me that my log was inaccessible. I came very close to going insane. But I decided to go to school instead.

Started reading Scarlet Letter in english. Promptly thereafter, the power went out. So we read in the dark in utter silence. Actually, it was quite nice. But then the power came back on. [If it had stayed off slightly longer, they would have cancelled the rest of the day. But alas, that didn't happen and we had to stay at school. Blah.] Anyway... Found mild amusement in APUSH. It was Triangle Day. Well, for me it was. You'd be suprised how many different ways of making a triangle out of a single sheet of paper are possible. I didn't count however.

Came home. Yes. A laptop on the doorstep. Jetta lied. They didn't send it UPS 2nd Day. They sent it FedEx Priority Overnight. How nice of them. But anyway, I didn't get around to opening that up til a few hours after I got home... prior to that, I was...

Working on the massive DNS faults going on with delphid/ihpled/auk.cx. Yes, its official: delphid.ml.org (and ihpled.ml.org) are NO LONGER. They are gone forever. Don't use them. Avoid them. Replace with www.auk.cx. But even that won't work today. Because aparently I stupidly referenced the delphid.ml.org name in the zone info for auk.cx. So when delphid died, so did auk.cx. I'm currently waiting (and have been waiting for many an hour) for the rest of the internet to catch up with the changes. Bad news.

Which means, if you've sent me mail to ANY address today or any day in the near future, I urge you to ignore the 'host unknown' returns and retry it within a few days. I do care. (well, maybe I care. I really could do without all the spam that was collecting on those addresses.) I'm a bit pissed because now I have to resubscribe all my mailing lists. Ack. I really wasn't prepared for this to happen.

Anyway, I eventually got to looking at my laptop. Works great. They even gave me a free copy of Win95c. (All you slashdork readers out there: No, I'm not going to bug MS about it because I didn't pay for it. I bought an OS-free laptop. Take your suspicion elswhere.)

Went to Fuddruckers for dinner... mmm... all that beefy goodness.... with aeroplanes made from balloons too!

Wasting most of the evening away. I think I got myself out of going to the aeroport in a few hours. Goodie. I hate the aeroport. Especially at 0100. There's some scary artwork down there... and its even scarier in the dark. (Like that Southwest kiddy plane with the beedy eyes that just give you the chills...)

Oh well... tommorrow shall be short for school, long for rehersal. Only have english. But from then til 1800 is rehersal. Saturday is nearly the same.

And yeah, its been raining. Yes. Raining. Here. In Arizona. Yes, it does happen. Like today. Very nice. Got that wretched smoggy smell out of the air anyway. Am I the only one who smells that every morning? Truely sickening indeed....

Got more mtndew and citra today too.... mmm....

As I hear the sound of a thousand horns honking, I just can't help but think 'WHY CAN'T PEOPLE JUST SHUT UP!'. But I digress...

I committed the unproductive act of waking up. And then Obligation forced me to follow that with getting up. I hate having to get up. Its so..so... painful. To waste all those hours of sleep by getting up. You know all that's going to happen is that you get tired once again, and then you have to start the whole sleep/eat mess all over again. Life is so bloody ineffecient.

Had the bitter-sweet joy of turning in that Crucible paper. Ha. Lunch was not as yellow as the yesterday past. Did a nice short review in calc. That's not the nice part. The nice part is that I knew how to do it.

I called Jetta (laptop people) when I got home. They got the hint and sent it back 2nd day air. Should be here friday at the latest. And hopefully not as damaged as it was last time. Then I took a nice nap. Yes. But then I had to get up. Well, I guess I didn't have to. I suppose I don't really have to do anything. But, I do. "I do but I don't."

And I discussed a few important matters with Brock and Josh. Nay, not matters per se, but numbers. On the topic of the Most Important and Relevent Numbers in the Universe. I contend that although 42 is the First Most Important and Relevent, that there must be a Zeroeth Most Important and Relevent.... since 42 is two digits, there must be a one-digit number that occures more frequently and more importantly than any two or more digit number. I say that number is 2. Two is the basis of all. Including what I deem the Second Most Important and Relevent Number in the Universe: 848. (Although 848 is even and therefore divisible by two, I point out that 2 is embedded deeper than that: its components 8 and 4 are both powers of two (sequential powers even!).) Yes. I think I've consumed enough space/time talking about that for now. [Its also noteworthy that the theory did arise that in reality 842 is the Second Most important number (the sequential powers of 2) and that some Demonic Force has been pushing 848 in to district us from the Real Power of 842. This also implies that the Third Most Important and Relevent Number in the Universe is 16842. But alas, I've never seen that number anywhere. Oh, and the Negative First Most Important and Relevent Number would therefore be 1. I'll stop.]

I seem to be caught up on all my mail as well. Hopefully. Maybe not completely, but at least 99%. I'll finish tomorow, I suppose.

Words and Phrases that I seem to have brought into more common usage: "good day", "aye", "indeed", "alas", and hopefully soon, "nay" and maybe "rue". (Indeed I most likely shall rue the hour that I actually bring 'rue' into common usage....)

Oh, and I nearly forgot. With all the free time he's got in Idaho, Brock has finally had the chance to update The Lack Thereof (his log).

Hmmmm...

Well, didn't start off the morning feeling all that great. School certainly didn't help. Managed to fake having a second draft in English. Ha. Took a nice quick APUSH test. And that was that.

Came home and talked with (a somewhat energetic) Amanda and then took a nap. Then got up and (slowly) finished my Crucible essay. Oh that only took three and a half hours.... Then worked on calc for a while. Then wrote this.

David has his TV card. And guess what... Windows doesn't like it. The Bt848 and the MSP3200 are obviously working. Just the bt overlay isn't. Single frames okay. Stupid Direct crap kills everything...

Not really anything happened today. Sorry for the disappointment.

My interactions with Netscape just keep getting more interesting all the time. Warren has checked with AOL and there's no way they will provide open source code for OSCAR/AIM. So... he's now checking to see how mad AOL would get if they used my (somewhat illegal) code. Should be interesting. I should start looking at Mozilla code.

Bye all...

Okay, I was on mediocris and decided I had a bit of time to do the rotation this time. {In reality, Adam has no where near the time to do such things. But he seems to have convinced himself quite well that this is something he needed to stop doing calculus to do. I'm not convinced, obviously.} So... Welcome to Volume Nigon: Feb 1999. I don't really remember ever doing a red before, so this may be something a bit new (if you don't like red, I dont really care -- I never look at this in color anyway; I suggest you try using lynx instead). Oh, volume eahta: jan 1999ad is still around too. That was a really small month.

Oh well. Lets start. I made my official decision to not get out of bed this morning. Again. I really haven't done that in a long time. I was feeling all that great and knew there was probably nothing to be missed the first two classes of the day anyhow. Got up about 0930. Talked to Brock for a bit. Then grabbed a mtndew and hauled myself of to school. Met with only slight applause. Wasted some time in calc... as if there's anything else to do in there...

Actually going to school only provided me a reminder as to the amount of work I must get done in the next few days. A lot. Too much. Damn me.

After some minor stalling, I started on homework (no, no nap today -- I was depressed about that too). And actually I didn't really get started on it till around 1700. I have NO idea what the hell happened in between. Its a big blur. I do know what happened after that. I worked on my Crucible paper. Very slowly. Took an hour or so out to go to that stupid 'meet the teacher night' thing. Oh how utterly worthless that was! Ahg! Oh well. Finished a rough rough draft around 2200. And I've been doing worthless things since. Yes, that includes starting on calc.

This day has started dreadfully and I'm sure there will be no end. Not until at least a week or two down the calendar.... It would appear this is the end of a term or something... but its not. But for some reason, everyone has decided to make everything due sometime in the next few days. Arg....