Monthly Archives: November 2002

New Parts, New Mattress, New Restaurant, New Marks

I bought a sec­ond ATA133 60GB hard-dri­ve and installed it today. It feels good to get into my case and fool around with the cables and parts. I feel like I’m soup­ing up a car with NOX, where I should be say­ing stuff like, “My sec­ondary cable is too short, so I had to put both dri­ves on the pri­ma­ry, so my back­up dri­ve is run­ning as a slave now”. I bought it to keep as a back­up of all my data that I don’t want to con­stant­ly burn to back it up; stuff like my cur­rent mp3’s, my tem­po­rary mp3’s, my tv episodes, my web­pages, and my movies. I got some soft­ware called Second Copy which backs up all the infor­ma­tion auto­mat­i­cal­ly. I’ve been get­ting freaked out from all the reports of hard-dri­ve fail­ures, and hard-dri­ve for­mat­ting web­code, so I thought I should find a solu­tion. After all, I would­n’t want to have to remem­ber every mp3 I down­loaded, and try down­load­ing them all again. Although nei­ther of my dri­ves are Fujitsu’s, there have been lots of reports on huge war­ran­ty reduc­tions of the major man­u­fac­tur­ers in the last few months. Better safe than sor­ry.

My mat­tress arrived today, and it feels amaz­ing. I was so used to a crap­py, old mat­tress, that I guess I for­got what good sup­port felt like.

I went to a restau­rant called La Gondola for lunch yes­ter­day, to see Melissa Kenny off for her new job, and the ser­vice sucked. The food was alright, but I could prob­a­bly have made most of the stuff at my home. The wait­ress rushed every­one to get their bills, and did­n’t ask a sin­gle time how the meal was going. I ordered a decanter of white wine with Natalie, and it tast­ed watery. I left a $1.00 tip.

I’m not sure if I’m going to look for a job for next term or not. I’m still a full-time stu­dent, if my final project is con­sid­ered as a full course. I’m not real­ly sure where I would work, but I know that I’d be okay with a shit job. I love mon­ey too much.

I final­ly got back a pass­ing mark in my algo­rithms course, which still means that I’m fail­ing on the whole, with only two weeks left. I’m pleased, I guess.

Helplessness

I found the diary of a bulim­ic girl. She seemed so lost, not know­ing what to do. It was one of the only times where the sim­ple read­ing of a diary tru­ly scared me. The image of find­ing blood on one’s fin­gers after throw­ing up is what real­ly affect­ed me. I felt so help­less, so sad that there was noth­ing I could do.

I’m not sure what it is about myself, but I always feel like I should try to relate and help some­one who’s depressed. I haven’t com­plete­ly been there myself (I’ve nev­er been com­plete­ly depressed or euphor­ic), so often I feel like it’s not my place to be talk­ing about it. Yet I feel like I can under­stand such strong emo­tions.

It makes me feel so for­lorn when some­one seems like they’re stuck in a hole, with no way out. I always felt that when I was in that hole, noth­ing could help me out, only the under­stand­ing of anoth­er per­son. That per­son is gone for me now, hav­ing changed my life, nev­er know­ing it her­self.

I real­ize now that I want to help peo­ple in emo­tion­al dis­tress because of how I looked up to that per­son. My admi­ra­tion for her has made me want emu­late her, to help oth­er peo­ple the same way in which she helped me. I still remem­ber how much I need­ed that help. Perhaps if I was able to change some­one else’s life, then they could be bet­ter off than being stuck in the hole.

It’s so dif­fi­cult to cure one­self of such emo­tion­al dis­tress. After a cer­tain point is reached, one feels so help­less, as if noth­ing can make things bet­ter, and noth­ing will ever get bet­ter. Thoughts even­tu­al­ly lead to sui­cide, life goes black, ash­es turn to mud. It’s some­thing that can’t be escaped alone.

I wish there was some­thing I could do.

Pandora's Curse

I had a dream last night, a dream that seemed so real, a dream I did not want. A dream of scat­tered mem­o­ries sewn togeth­er, cre­at­ing such a per­fect world, where love was requit­ed, where I was bliss­ful­ly hap­py. When I awoke, every­thing I had was gone.

All I was left with was hope, and empti­ness. I imme­di­ate­ly knew that what I had was false, too per­fect a world for me to live in. I felt bit­ter, as if I had some­thing tak­en away from me which I felt was right­ful­ly mine.

Why would my sub­con­scious trick me so? Why should I feel so ter­ri­ble, so laden with hope? Couldn’t my mind sim­ply give up this strug­gle, freely, with­out inter­fer­ence?

Hope is not a good thing for me. It makes me weak and vul­ner­a­ble. When I have no hope, then all is known. Nothing is uncer­tain. I am sure of what I have and what I don’t have. Progress can be made on accept­ing this. But when hope enters my mind, all progress is lost, and I can only try to fight for what I’ve gained.

Yet I wish to dream again tonight, of mem­o­ries strewn togeth­er, for they were so won­der­ful, that any let down seems worth it. I don’t know why I’d want to tor­ture myself again, feel­ing emp­ty and bit­ter when I wake up. Somehow, the high seems worth it, like some addic­tive drug Pandora was sell­ing out of her mag­i­cal box of plagues and death.

Perhaps I actu­al­ly do believe in what my hope is telling me. Perhaps I need to believe in some­thing, that some­how this will change, that things will be dif­fer­ent. Or per­haps I’m sim­ply a fool, will­ing­ly falling for some­thing that may make me hap­py, but emp­ty in the end.

Nothing good ever came out of Pandora’s box.

The Feel of Solitude

The night sky out­side my win­dow burns with orange plea­sure, and I try some min­i­mal­is­tic Vincent Gallo songs to mel­low out. It’s work­ing.

Ever since my Christmas trip has been can­celled, I’ve been at a loss for things to do. I real­ly have no plans now. I think I might just spend it here, instead of going home. I think I’ll buy a pair of skates for myself as a Christmas present, and go out on the canal at night, when it’s lone­ly and chilly. The win­ter sky is always breath­tak­ing. I’ll just stay here and relax, not actu­al­ly doing any­thing. Perhaps I’ll be able to catch up on some read­ing, or I can work on some projects I’ve been mean­ing to fin­ish. Sometimes it’s great to be alone, because it’s so bru­tal­ly hon­est when one does­n’t want it to be. The stark real­i­ty allows me to real­ize many things.

Things which need clar­i­ty.

Hurt For No Reason, And Failure

Sometimes peo­ple say things that just seem to hurt. One knows that they don’t mean it, yet it hurts any­way. For some rea­son, it’s even more painful, due to the igno­rance involved. But what can one do in such a sit­u­a­tion? Pretend as if noth­ing hap­pened? I sim­ply become anti­so­cial. That hap­pens a lot actu­al­ly. When some­one upsets me in any way, whether I become angry, sad, or for­lorn, I’ll close up. I’ll dis­tance myself, and I can’t help but be tac­i­turn.

No won­der.

I got my cryp­tog­ra­phy mid-term back yes­ter­day, and it turns out that I failed it. That means that I failed more than half my mid-terms. I’m start­ing to wor­ry about my finals. I was actu­al­ly con­sid­er­ing my absence at Dougie’s LAN par­ty, but Aaron (rather eas­i­ly) talked me into going.