I’m annoyed.
I’m staring at my laptop watching the cursor blink and i had to question myself “how many times does it blink per second? per minute? per day.” put the ben and jerrys down and slowly back away.
You see, I have a 486/66 laptop that i have lovingly restructured by hand. it runs (well it did!) winders95 and it served my purposes for when I did light travelling. and i had decided to “fix” it (for whatever reason) and i ended up toasting the drive as well as losing all information on it. did i mention that the floppy is flaky and only works half the time? did i mention there is no cd-rom. now i have a computer with no OS on it and I need to have it up and running before I move within the next two weeks.
Sometimes I hate technology. I abhor it with a passion that makes grown men crumble to their knees. I suppose i could tell you about when i first got into computers. i was 8 or 9, and i had gotten a TI 99/4A for christmas. I remember sitting there happily for hours writing BASIC to play games and then dumping it after i had finish writing it. my mother wouldn’t spend the cash for a 300baud modem and i had no tape backup. It was just me, bored out of my gourd doing BASIC all day.
Then high school came and we took a “computer literacy” class which basically had us write-up documents and I ended up playing solitaire.
In college, I remember asking a friend of mine “What’s used more so in the business development? IBM PCs or Macintosh?” She told me PCs and away i went. I took a few classes on programming (got bored) but the internet really fascinated me. I remember showing this guy in my calc class how to grab REM lyrics using gopher and Archie and the whole world just opened up.
A lot has happened to me in the last few years since that makes my head spin. Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore.
Many people assume, rightly, that I’ve been doing this for years. not so. i started playing, full-time, with computers in 1994 and haven’t stopped since then. It’s been a short five years from that point and i’m amazed at my knowledge that is growing and leaping.
The thing is, honestly, I wonder in a lot of ways if I am all that better for it. I’ve been thinking for the last few years this is not something i want to do. I can’t fall into the same patterns as other geeks because i don’t follow the same rituals or patterns as they do. It’s just not me. I hate star* (star wars and star trek), I don’t get into cons that much, I don’t game that much (unless it’s quake — I’ve been hungering for some quake), and I don’t code.
What the hell do I do?
Month: September 1999
love
How do you have a girl fall in love with you?
You buy her boots.
friday
Friday, September 17 had to go down in history as being one of the worse days in mankind. Well, at least in my personal history line.
I woke up early Friday morning to take Justin to work when I noticed something odd about my car. It didn’t look “right.” I found a note attached to what used to be my drivers side mirror. It was from Cathleen. It seems that during the night she was pulling into our driveway, tried to miss one of the cats and ran into my car instead.
All of Pleasant St. heard me screaming “FUCK!” at 5am. What a way to start the day.
This is the story she’s sticking to, but, I’ve conceded that to an extent it can’t be true. See, not only is the drivers side mirror fucked up (and hanging by a few wires) but there is also a 6 foot long scratch going from tire well to tire well. ugh.
I played show and tell all day at work with dragging people out to look at this mess. I wouldn’t have been so pissed if it were not for the fact she a. left me a note and b. i had spent nearly a grand within the last month getting my car out of impound and getting it ready for the trip in a few weeks. I forgot to mention this didn’t i? My car got impounded for being parked in a “commuter” zone on 3rd street in san francisco. I had a nice little anxiety attack at the corner of 2nd and Stillman, Justin slapped me and I was back to normal again.
The other fucked up part is that while both my roommate and I go through the same insurance company, they are notoriously slow with getting their act together. Last October I had rolled into a car while waiting at the toll booth to get onto the Bay Bridge. No biggie really, my foot slipped off the break when i had leaned down to grab my cd-holder. But the woman whom I had hit claimed that she got a neck injury! Ugh, I wasn’t going any faster than less than 1 mile per hour. You heard that right. 1 mile per hour. And she’s claiming neck injury?
Lisha twitches.
Anyway, that started off this past glorious friday. Got into work and found that we had a power outage at 6am with no UPS back up. Though power was restored fairly shortly, NIS+ had taken a dump which meant that people couldn’t get logged into the network and route. And if they were logged in, they couldn’t route. I was logged in at 6am and had gotten dumped (I was in fact, writing this column). I went to log back in and got these lovely funky errors. I tried dialing into several other providers and couldn’t route for the life of me. I figured something had gotten fucked up along the way so I did some maintenance and found that my disk had errors. No biggie. Went to reinstall Windows (which overwrote LILO) and then it started crashing back to hell and forth. I couldn’t even just BOOT into windows without getting a ton of errors.
bah.
So Friday.
Car got sideswipped.
Windows partition died (I’m now exclusively in linux or mac)
network goes down.
I’m sure I can think of a few things or ten that also went wrong. I kept claiming I was going to go home and buy a fifth of vodka (750 MIL for you non-us folks) and drink it down and fix my machine. I did neither. I haven’t even ATTEMPTED to get into windows to fix it. I should, my firewall is so airtight that I can’t even freaking do DCCs on IRC. I can’t ftp (ftpd is broked — jesus) and mah stupid fucking quickcam sucks ass in linux. *growls* However, GNOME is quite pretty. I like it much better than KDE or windowmaker. I should say, Enlightenment with Gnome on top. Whatever. It’s pretty. If you want to see my KDE desktop?
obsess
The strange man lurking on all my desktops is Paul.
You wanna see something really sick? Go here.
I had conceded in my head that I was ready to talk about this. I’m not yet. Don’t ask. I’ll tell you in a few weeks.
moving right along
I’m so fucking bored at work, it’s not even funny.
A little over a month or so ago, someone had asked me to send out an email for them to the staff mailing list. I had done these requests before. This time, the letter was not (supposedly) appropriate. Both me and the letter-writer got “in trouble”. The thing is, that they couldn’t fire me and since I’m leaving anyways, they haven’t done jack. All I do everyday (and all day) is fuck around. I try to get involved with projects but they don’t give me responsibilities because they know I’m leaving. Many people wanted to see me fired — but if they fired me they would have had to fire the letter-writer which they were not going to do.
They also gave my counterpart Matt a raise so that now I AM the lowest paid person in the company (at least in our SF office) — and I am also one of the most senior people there.
Fucked eh?
To be honest, I care and I don’t care. I haven’t give a shit about my job in a few months seeing how fucked over Matt and I were getting. We were promised raises back in April and July only to never see them follow through (well, now at least for me). I spend all day doing documentation because they want what’s in my brain but yet I didn’t “qualify” for a raise.
BAH.
I’m so stressed out these days, it’s not even funny. As my leave date approaches it seems more and more shit is being thrown in my face. Carolyn, Cathleens sister moves in (making five people living in our 2 bdr house instead of the original 2). Justin is moping around because I’m leaving, we have nine cats that Cathleen promised to take to the SPCA months ago and never did (I’m so leaving that up to her). Our house looks white trashy enough to make me gag, I’m sick of my job. I hate the area (is there any real reason why it takes me 1.5 hours to drive a 20 minute drive?) and the list goes on and on. The only bright thing is that I’m leaving, but with the added expense (car stuff + misc crap that keeps popping up), I’m finding myself frightened enough to start just freaking out.
I have no idea.
You know, I told Shelly on the phone last night that I was afraid of things working out. I have NEVER been happy — at least I know not for the last four years or more. I can’t remember when I was just freaking content with my life. Many people have said that my cross country odyssey makes them slightly jealous. you know, me doing a thelma and louise bit (minus louise, minus brad pitt, minus going off a cliff) as I will be alone for four days in my car. alone. with a carton of ciggies and 260 cd’s and a trunk full of computer equipment.
And I can’t get through peoples heads how frightened I am of packing up and just MOVING my shit cross country. I do so well with impromptu things but since this is planned and this has been dragging on for months now, the closer i get to my leave date, the more I find myself falling apart.
I’ve never ever told the story of how I came to California or why I came. I think maybe less than a 1/2 dozen people know the truth, and even then it’s hard for me to swallow. The last four years of my life have been this period i like to call the dark period because so much has happened to me in such a short amount of time it’s ridiculous. I find that, when I go to tell the story, my mouth drys up and I block out events. I knew what I was doing to get me here and I manipulated my way across the west. I can’t forgive myself for doing that but I also am having a hard time forgiving the person that I was involved with.
To many of you, my life starts when you read this and for majority of the world I’ve always lived in Oakland and I’ve always worked at slip.net. To be honest, it’s always felt like i have. Like there is no time and space before this. But there is. I’m NOT a california girl and I’m not happy here.
Justin has said he is afraid that I’m running away (again) to something that doesn’t exist. That my move to Virginia will just make things worse. I know he’s being selfish. If he could, he’d live with me forever, work at PBI and watch the Hitler, I mean History, channel is his off times. But I’m such a shell of a person I used to be — that it disgusts me. I can’t deal with it much longer.
I’ve got everything lined up in a row. Prospective boyfriend obsessing over me. New job at a kick ass company (making phat bank), new place. My own place. New things to do. Education. Everything. It’s like, God finally knocked some sense into his head and said “Yanno, Lisa has been having a rough life as of late, I think I will finally put things in perspective for her and give her what she wants” and the thing is, I’m so fucking intent on destroying it because I can’t handle being happy. But see, I can’t believe in a god or a god when I can barely have faith in myself.
I know, this much is true. There has never been a righter time in my life to move on then now. I know, that despite my grumblings, this is the best thing for me. I know that the trip will be fabulous and that I will fall in love on the way and that everything will work out for the best.
Because to be honest, I really have nothing left to lose.
Except myself.
Or maybe I’ll find myself out there in the wilds of Texas and join my mom in a convent.
I’m just kidding.
x0x0x0x0x
moi
oh L’amour
As I sit here and write this, our gateway has died. And it’s almost funny because last week the big mulit-billion dollar company forgot to pay their phone bill — so we were forced to use 1010321 to dial out to make calls. Which wasn’t that big deal for me — I don’t call anyone. 🙂
Anyway, I’m bored. I can’t being to tell you how bored I am. I’m sitting here drinking Diet Mt. Dew and eating Rolos — and writing a chronicle. Wishing I would have left early — which I did not. buh.
New Nine Inch Nails cd is out called “The Fragile.” I got the mp3s yesterday from mah crack dealer, and let me tell you, “Even Deeper” and “Starfuckers, Inc.” of course own. I do, do so highly recommend picking it up.
Ask Lisha! Someone had decided that it would be a good idea if i started doing an advice column mixed in with my regular column. Which we all know, based on my very strong opinions, can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what it is. heh. So, without further ado, here is the first question I got (and a pretty simple one if I may add):
Dear Lisha, All right, here’s a question. Where the heck do you go to meet people (Read: Women, I suppose) if you don’t drink and you work in an all-male enrollment, where everyone’s a decade older OR (at least one) standard deviation stupider? –SabbathRM |
Funny that this is the first question, as I have been giving “advice” to several friends who have been bitching and moaning about the lack of a social life in their area. Are they listening to me? Probably not 🙂 But, since I am also moving to a brand new area within a month, this is a damned fine time to put my ideas into action!
You didn’t tell me how old you were or where you lived — which can either be plus or negative points depending on how you look at it. Do keep in mind that because of this, you have to adjust this to your flavor.
1. Are you happy with yourself? This may sound like a very trite question, but it’s a very simple one. See, all too often, we as humans, often think that finding the “right” mate will cure us of our ills — when they really won’t. The first important step is to make sure that you have /some/ sense of self. This makes for a better foundation of anything that you are doing.
2. Do for you. Again, sounds trite, but it is true. When in the process of going out into the evil world, do keep it in mind that you want to make yourself happy. IE: Don’t join a club of some sort just to meet women. You’ll end up regretting it later. Draw up a list of what your interested in. Name everything and anything possible. Also list stuff that you think you might be interested in: IE: you’ve always wanted to learn how to sky dive but never had the balls to do so. maybe now is the time for you to do that.
3. With that list in mind, start thinking of ways to get going on that list. Meaning? Very simply, start looking for clubs/mailing lists/places local to you that cater to that kind of activity. For instance, I’m moving 3000 miles into a new state I’ve never stepped foot into and have no idea what the social scene is like. While my perspective roommate is also one of my best friends, our choices in activities vary greatly. With that in mind, I started making a list of stuff i was interested in and have never had a chance to get involved with. Like linux. I would love to join a LUG. I searched and found two LUGs in my new area and got signed up on the mailing lists. I’m also into astronomy, poetry/book readings, and dancing. I’ve also wanted to front a band, play at being a domme, etc etc etc. One of my plans when I get into the area is to look for activities based around those interests. I’ve also been interested in volunteering at a rape crisis center for a few years now — and plan on giving some of my time to that. This listing of activities will help me get off my supple young ass and into the world, while meeting and greeting people. I know that I’m not going to like them all, but that isn’t the point. The point being I’m not sitting at home glued to my computer.
4. Maybe your shy. Yesh, I can understand that completely. When thrown in new situations, I tend to be more of an observer than a participant. This may seem contradictory to what many people know of me (mainly those who have meet me in social functions), but my own shyness has lead me to not take advantage of the things that were offered to me in the Bay Area. I’ve never been farther south than Santa Cruz and have never done a lot of things that I want/should have done while i lived here. In a lot of ways, I regret this but that little experience also spurned me to want to do better in a different local. With that being said, do realize that you are not on any time schedule of the sort. You have to do for you — in what makes you feel better. Don’t put a time limit on yourself.
5. Put up a personals ad. Okay, stop laughing now, but I’m not kidding. One of the many things I keep hearing from all my friends is how lonely they are. Many of the whine and bitch about how men/women suck ú and how they are tired of dating and etc. See, I’ve always been /alone/ but I’ve never been lonely per se. I’ve always known how to amuse myself (as it were). And I’m picky. Really picky. When I moved to SF and my boyfriend at the time and I had broken up a few short months later, I put a personals ad in to see what the local flavors were like. I met a few people, went out on a few dates. Okay, so they were pretentious yuppie fucks that I wanted to bitchslap, but I got /out/ and /about/ and really tired to get some sort of social scene started.
The big question is always, “but i want to fall in love” or “i know what i want, but she/he seemingly doesn’t exist”. I honestly believe that there is one right person for everyone. But people do change. I’m not the same person I was 10 years ago or even five years ago. When mah ex Alan and I had started dating, many of the core details in my life remain the same as they were then, but in many many ways, I’m a completely different person. So, what was right for me at 21 isn’t right for me at 27.
Age has never been a big factor in my life — at least when choosing someone I want to be with. As many people do know, there is a seven year age gap between Justin and I. This never bothered me so much as it did about his life experience vs mine. What did bother was that he was unwilling to /gain/ the life experience i thought was crucial. And then there is Paul, who is also younger than me but who has life experience to share. And Christian, who was older but had the mentality of a 2 year old (literally) and was boorish.
We all have a certain idea of what or who we want to be our life-mate with. My recommendation is get out in the social scene and date to see if what you think you want matches what you get. You may have a thing for snobby bitchy girls but find that when dating one, you can’t deal with them. It’s called trial and error. A lot of people don’t like this idea of casual dating, and I’m not saying be a slooty sloot and compromise. I am saying, do have a clear idea of what and who you want before you start looking.
I hope this helps you on your quest to find a girly girl.
If anyone has any other questions, feel free to email me with it. Next up will be “How to configure ipmasq and chains in redhat”.
C’mon, ask me anything, i dare ya 😉
x0x0x0x
Moi
she’s quaking
be afraid.
be very very afraid.
For the last couple of months, Matt and the guys from work have been trying incessantly to get me to play Quake or any of the other RPGs lan-type games. I’ve been resisting with “I don’t play games” but when Matt got me the 16MB AGP vid card, handed it to me, I knew I was lost.
This past Friday, we installed Quake2. All day long I started futzing with it because the whole concept of killing people without going to jail is kind of appealing. I futzed and futzed and futzed and finally got it working. When it did work and I entered the arena, Matt killed me in under 3 seconds. Not fun. I logged off and tried playing solo — but the game kept stalling and I was getting frustrated. I reinstalled a different version of Quake 2 (namely, the upgrade) and that worked. But I wanted to kill people dammit. I then downloaded Quake3, and installed it. But since Quake3 is tourney style, again I was dead pretty quickly.
I retold this whole story to Justin over the weekend (whom he thought it was amusing) and last night he came home with a legitimate copy of Quake which we both immediately installed on our boxes. For over an hour last night Justin and I hunted each other and I got mah ass handed to me 9 to -6. However, it is fun. I’m downloading the patch for quake 2 now :D.
violet eyes
Justin’s new schedule has me getting up between 4:30a-4:45a to take him to BART so that he can get to work. for the first time in a few weeks, instead of staying up, i immediately crawled back into bed when i got home. i didn’t wake up till nearly 11am. Woopsie. Since I’m leaving in three weeks anyway, they have been pretty lenient with me at work. Woopie. So I spent most of yesterday doing household items and talking online while my clothes got tided.
someone in the channel mentioned about buying colored contacts and i said how when i was younger i had gotten both green and violet flavor eyes. i had to dig up a few pictures to prove my point:
Lisa at 17
Lisa again at 17
Now, don’t yell or email me about how fucked up the hair is — I had no idea what the hell was going through my head at the time. However, I was at Shelly’s apartment in Wyoming, MI sitting in “my” chair (we all have that right? we go to a friends house and sit in the same chair. i also was obsessed with using this glass for drinkage that was actually a fancy measuring cup. Shelly didn’t understand my obsession with this thing.).
So, I post the pictures to the channel and to be honest, I got really disgusted with how people reacted to them. Why? because the first thing everyone noticed was the weight difference. In those pictures, I was 50lbs thinner. Big difference. Okay, fine, I can deal with that. The main thing was that people kept going “oh you were so cute/hot/beautiful” almost as if “what the fuck happened to you?!?”. Well, I’m 10 years older than I am in those pictures. I don’t think they are the best representation of me at that age but it really irked me that people were so fucking shallow.
The biggest pet peeve i’ve always had for a long time was people not accepting me for me but accepting me for what i looked like. It was like, jesus christ people, grow up. I’m still the same person 50lbs or not, purple eyes or not.
I was ranting and raving to Paul about this because it was bugging the fuck out of me. he was like “lisa, you were cute and innocent then, but to be honest, you ARE HOT now weight gain or not.”
The thing is, I’ve always known i would grow into my looks. I have such strong features that I knew that I would get better with age. Like a lot of people didn’t believe I was 17 in those pics and a lot of people don’t believe I am 27 now. Then it was always that I looked older and now it’s that i look younger. I can thank my mother (for once) for having her beautiful genetics.
I have always ALWAYS known that I was or never would be conventionally beautiful and that doesn’t bother me. I’ve not let it bother me for years because it helps weed out the imbeciles and numbskulls who hit on me. Same reason why I got pierced in the various fashions that I have — because i know and have always known that I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. Which is just fine by me. I don’t want the whole world to love me — just one person. That’s fine enough for me.
But what REALLY irks me is that people who are so, just, ugh, normal, pass judgement on me as they sit on their 300lb fat asses eating king dongs and HO-HOs trying to tell me I look like shit. I always look good. I can afford to be egotistical because I am god and what I say goes. I’ve never had a problem getting a man or winning over friends. The problem I have is that the men that generally like me are fucking nimrods and bore the living fuck out of me.
But enough about me. let’s get on to something interesting!
x0x0x0x0x
moi
boredom
all my life, i’ve been running towards something. I’ve never been able to really clarify what it was i was running to. anyone that has come in contact with me has always expressed that i was impatient. impatient about something — what i’ve never known.
sometimes, as i look in the mirror, and i see my self, i don’t see me. i don’t see what i should be seeing and i certainly don’t think i look close to 30 —
it’s like, i always expected they would give you a set of instructions when you became an adult. kind of like you’ll stop wearing this and that and you’ll act this or that away. but it’s not like that. when i turned 20, i automatically assumed i would stop getting zits — because i was no longer a teenager. i was wrong — i still got them monthly when my period kicked in. my mother, at 57 still gets acne on occasion.
that is what confuses me so much — partly because i count the years and i know my chronological age — which doesn’t add up my emotional age. shelly once said that one of my greatest problems is that i will always think i am 17 — that i would never ever grow up.
in a lot of ways, she’s right. i know a lot more know than i did when i was 17. but, the overall feeling of who and what i am, is still the same.
i’m impatient. i’m moving in less than a month and i can’t wait to leave. it’s like everyday is slowing down to an inexcusable crawl. i do nothing at work (i won’t quit and they won’t fire me — we are at a stalemate) but IRC and dig for MP3s. I come home and IRC and do email or whatever is available. I don’t watch tv, I don’t read as much as I should. I don’t do a lot of things. I’m afraid of getting involved locally around here because i don’t want to invest time when i know i’m leaving.
mom’s birthday
Today is my mom’s 57th birthday.
I got a few emails from friends of the family asking if I was gonna call her and I haven’t made up my mind yet. Last time I spoke to her, which was a week ago, I started crying after the short 10 minute call. I’m sure my brother will call her. Hell, she’s found Jesus™ now, so what does she need me for?
Ufie dotted — again
Several weeks ago, my cohort Thyla and I put together a page simply called Carbonated Borscht for the Evil Geek’s Soul that parodied some funny stuff. It got mentioned on the news feature of UserFriendly and actually got /.’d. This week, Godmoma put together a page called Illiads Harem.
I have no idea what’s going through Godmoma’s head. 🙂
So, any rate, I’ve been Ufie Dotted — again. Got over 500 unique hits yesterday. Woo. That surprised me 🙂 So I felt I must update. heh.
Blatant Promotion
My buddy and yours, Mike Norton recently finished work on his new comic The Waiting Place. I got to see the um, rough draft of it when I was in Mayumphis in July. The story is really cool and the drawing is incredible. Mike is obviously, ultra excited about this.
Since I’ve met Mike back in May, he’s helped influenced my non-comic reading butt into reading comics. Now i’m addicted to Strangers in Paradise and have been looking at other comics as well — namely ones that Mike and other people have recommended.
It goes without saying I was completely detached from the fact of just how many people read comics these days. It’s almost as bad as the damn Trekkies. 🙂
Regardless, Mike came to me and asked me to promote his work since I have gotten a ton of people to read SIP and they all adore it. So PLEASE PLEASE go support a young starving artist before Mike makes me buy 15000 copies!
Speaking of comics though, I’ve been neglecting my own habits. I’m only up to early Vol 3 in SIP and haven’t had a chance to catch up. People have been offering new comics left and right and I’m going insane with the divulge of offers. Calm down people, after i move and get settled in, i’ll start my addiction back up again.
Lisa-Cross-America ’99
Well it’s been official for awhile, but you all know I’m leaving the greater Bay Area in early October.
My numwitted ex-fiancee Danny has recently informed me that he cannot drive with me and thusly I’m doing it alone. I had a brief panic attack (like ohmygodwhatifigetcaughtwithaflattireinbfetexas) — but after a minute or 100, I calmed down and realized that spending four days alone, in my car, could be a good thing (you know they say if you keep repeating something, it just might come true).
I’ve been mapping out my itinerary and it looks like i’m driving south to SoCal and then straight across crossing through NM, AZ, TX, OK, etc on my way to Atlanta. What’s in Atlanta? Why Atlanta Linux Showcase my dears. There will be the BIGGEST party that side of the Mississippi for geeks. I hit LWE, now it’s on to ALS.
I think it’ll be cool though. I will have my laptop, cell phone and all my credit cards. I will be updating on the road as I plan on spending about four days driving — maybe less depending on my speed. heh. I might end up in Atlanta on Monday night. Who knows? Anyway, I’ve been attempting to coordinate with friends about crashing at their place on the way across. So, I’ll be okay. Just look for the black Saturn with LNX and LinuxGurven stickers plastered all over it doing 80 and you’ll find me.
I realize that driving cross country is something that I’ve been dreaming about for years. I wanted the opportunity to see this great land we call home before I flee this white trashy country and go to Europe. What I can’t understand, is that with so much time available for me to do it, why I’m planning on taking a more direct route and not seeing the country. My friend James, who drove solo from SF -> Gainesville FL was telling me about the pit stops he made when he drove across — which he did twice. Not many people get the chance to see this wonderful country of ours and I’m worrying about all the extra time I’ll have.
My favorite catch phrase recently has been “But I worry”. It’s driving me insane.
I’m gonna end up in Virginia, where Shelly already has our apartment that she’s cohabitating with her bf. Everything is set into place. On one hand, I’m ultra excited about doing the move. On the other hand, I’m afraid of falling on my face.
This should be very interesting.
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moi