Better make that two speeding tickets.

*sigh*

w00t.

Found out I was *not* accepted into San Marcos because I got a C- in my fscking Oral Comm class (thank you again, you fat fucking bitch for tearing apart my speech. ugh, I hated that teacher/class)

And then, on the way home from hanging out with Bri at a bar, I got pulled over and ticketed for speeding. Note: I hope it would go without saying that I had not had anything to drink all night, as I was driving.

Fuckin eh. What a shitty night.

..|..

So much to say, so much to say, so much to say.

I was bored and so…..

Top Ten Most Frequently Asked PetCo Aquatics Questions That Make You Groan:

10. “Which fish are mean?”

9. “What will happen if I put two Bettas together?”

8. “Do you have those Chinese Fighting Fish?”

7. “What’s the hardiest fish you have? Oh, I don’t like those. What else?”

6. “So to have saltwater fish, I just put some table salt in my aquarium?”

5. “Do these fish die?” (or its variation: “Is that fish dead?”)

4. “If I put this in my saltwater tank, will it grow?” (where the object in question is a piece of plastic coral)

3. “Do you work here?”

2. “How many fish can I fit in this shot glass?” (ok, so that one’s a little exaggerated.)

   And the most commonly asked question guaranteed to make any Aquatics worker groan:

1. “Do you have those baby turtles?”

Nirvana’s Heart Shaped Box. Thats one fscked up music video.

Oh! Last night, I was installing this program, id3v2. It’s a nifty little command line utility that can change the id3 tags of mp3’s. Comes in handy when I want to delete all the id3 tags from all my mp3’s (death to id3!) without clicking on each freakin 1400+ one. So anyways, I’m compiling this program from source code, and it gives two errors. Whoa. Very few programs actually have compile-time (as opposed to run-time) errors. So I took a look at the errors. Oh. Hey, I know what its saying. Pop open the (C++) source code, edit two lines, and boom, it compiles. Sweet! I just debugged and hacked a program I got off the internet. So I e-mail the author with the code I changed. Total buzz. So yeah, I was a bit pleased with myself. I didn’t even do anything really. But it was a nifty feeling.

What else. Oh… installed the nVidia 3D drivers for my GeForce4. Nice. I installed NWN for linux, too, but its still in Beta, so it didn’t quite work. Oh well. I did get bzflag running though! w00t! bzflag! Next on my mission? I’m going to download the Quake II source code and compile that, then play some OpenGL Super Heroes! Oh, and I’m going to have to look for an NES Emulator, too, since I just found all my old ROMs. Heh, its a good thing its now Spring Break at Palomar.

Oh, so wanna hear how SDSU almost screwed me? But for once, SDSU wasn’t at fault? Yeah. So I checked San Marcos’ website the other night, to see about my admission status. Turns out, they haven’t recieved my transcript from SDSU! WTF?! I took care of that back in December! FSCKING SDSU!? Yeah. So I call SDSU up and ask (politely, of course) what the dillie yo? “We sent it December 3rd” they tell me. Hmmm. Ok, call San Marcos. Yeah. A lady by the name of Sheila answers.

Sheila: “So, how long ago did you send the transcript?”

Me: “December 3rd.”

Sheila: “Oh my God!”

Me: “Yeah.”

Sheila: “I’ll go look for it right now, whats your Soc?”

… So she goes and looks for it. Sure enough:

Sheila: “I found it. It just hasn’t been processed. I’m sorry it took so long, but since you’ve been waiting, I’ll have them do it today, and I’ll have you moved to the front of the line.”

Me: “Wow. Thanks.”

So I never expected it was San Marcos’s fault. But I’d never imagine SDSU would ever do anything even close to that.

Ok, so maybe those aren’t ordered how everyone else would order them. Or maybe some of em don’t make sense. I thought it was funny.

Oh yeah. So in Math. We’re doing this really cool thing. We’ve been dealing with infinite series and stuff, and its kinda neat. But what’s really cool, is that we’re learning how to approximate a number, using an infinite series.

For all the non-math nerds (not that I’m a math nerd, its merely forced upon me) in the audience, basically it works like this:

Take a number. Square root of 61. Lets say you don’t have a calculator. Who the hell knows the Square root of 61? Not me. Well, take a graph. Look at the graph of the Square root of X. It’s a nice curve. Thats handy, cuz with a nice curve you can draw what’s called a Tangent Line. A Tangent line is basically a line that only touches one single point on another line and does so perpendicular to the point. And it’s just a straight line. Why is that so special? Well, because if we find a number we know the value of at the Square root of X, then we can approximate it using the tangent line. Straight lines are easy to calculate. Or at least easier than the Square root of X. And it just so happens we know that the Square root of 64 is 8! So if we take the tangent line at X=64, then we’ve got a line that touches our Square Root at only one point, 64. Imagine that line for a moment. If you go a little higher or lower than 64, the line doesn’t touch, but it is very very close. Thats your approximation. Using the Tangent line, you can find the value at 61, which is approximately the Square root of 61.

So that’s kinda neat. But what we’re learning right now is that there’s an even better way. If you can make a sort of Super Tangent Line that curves closely (technically, it’s not a tangent line, but the idea is similar) to your actual line, you can get an even better approximation for a certain range of numbers. If you think about it, the tangent line of X is just a straight line. So while its a decent approximation, its not the best. Really, a curve would be better. Something that’s not quite the Square root of X, but its really close. Closer than a line. This all makes a lot more sense in person, but it is fairly interesting.

Anyways. The point was that I was thinking the other day about how I could write a program that did all this. Like, you input an equation you’re looking for an approximation for and then the program spits out (after some number/equation crunching) a value, and a %error. It’d be one hell of an undertaking, but a very interesting idea nonetheless.

I definitly have reached my nerd quota for today.

Well, its definitly April now.

You all know what that means. Peeps. ^{[1] [2]}. Yeah. Those wretched things are back. *shudder*

Then of course, there was today. I woke up an hour and ten minutes before work and then realized I had to be at work in ten minutes. Accursed daylight savings time. A pox on you Benjamin Franklin, or whoever thought a measly extra hour of daylight would be that useful.

In other news, I ate entirely too much Vanilla Pudding. It could have been worse, for sure, but the amount I ate was definitly no good. Of course, Tyler had some too. *rolls eyes*.

On the positive side, I’ve officially procrastinated my english paper by another day.

Oh! Hey, that girl that works in grooming at work actually talked to me today! It was amazing! I think her name is Michelle. Or Margaret. Or… well.. it starts with an “M” and isn’t “Melinda”. She doesn’t wear a nametag – I’m pretty sure its Michelle. I seem to know a lot of those. Anyway, so I was in Fish, and I looked over and saw her coming, and thought – like I always do when I see her – about how she never talks to me. Or really, it seems, to anyone. She’s kinda cute, or at least, I could see how a guy would definitly say she’s cute. So she’s walking over. She’s got a big stack of folded towels in her arms. She looks at me, we make eye contact and she looks away. I hate that. Why do people always try to avoid eye contact? Sometimes I think its the way I look at people. I typically look them in the eye, especially if I have just met them. I guess that makes most people uncomfortable. I just like looking at people’s eyes. I think the eyes are the most attractive part of a person. But I digress. And her eyes were looking anywhere but at me. But she was still walking toward me. She wasn’t smilling, but then I’d never seen her smile, really. Some people never smile, either. That bugs me a lot too. But she was walking straight toward me. “What does she want,” I wondered. Finally she reached the counter. I looked up at her from wiping the counter. She looked at me again, and looked away. Then she left the stack of folded towels on the counter, turned around and walked the other way. “Thanks,” I called after her. “Welcome,” she mumbled without turning around.

How ’bout that, eh? /me rolls his eyes. Why do some people just make zero effort to be friendly? I don’t mean making friends, I mean being friendly As if it were so much effort.

Oh well. It’s spring time. Bunny Day is only like 13 days away. Not that I get excited much over Bunny Day, mind you. But I do love painting Easter eggs and hiding/finding them. Especially painting them. Every year I make the ugliest Easter eggs I can. It’s good times. One time I made one that actually looked like a rock. It was great.

Oh, and the other counter. It’s been approximately 34 entries of mine since Tres has updated his diary. I had no idea he was so profoundly patriotic, but this past Veterans Day must have left him truly speechless. Well, its 12:30 now (accounting for Daylight Stupid Time), so I’ll call it a night.

Bein sick is lame. ‘Course, I probably shouldn’t be drinking chocolate milk, I doubt that’ll help my runny-but-at-the-same-time-stuffed-up nose. Or my I-need-to-cough-every-other-minute problem.

In other news. Got sound working on my onboard nForce2 board. Sweet. Doesn’t sound bad at all either. Onboard sound typically sucks, but I think this is ok. It doesn’t even skip or stutter when I’m doing lots of other stuff in the background (copying files from CD, compiling huge programs)

“Edwin McCain – I’ll Be” just came on my playlist… *sigh*. Always makes me think of Christine. Better than Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight”. I can’t listen to that without getting sad anymore.

Anyways. Also got the second onboard network card working. This motherboard is a pretty sweet little setup. Next step is setting up 3D graphics on my GeForce4. I love Slackware. It 0wnz m3… And yet, I 0wnz it. It doesn’t hold my hand, and it doesn’t get in the way. It gives me a clean base to tweak to my enjoyment. It actually lets/makes me learn.

I’ve been considering hosting this webpage on my own computer, lately. Still not sure how difficult it would be. I probably get less than 4 hits a day, so it couldn’t be too bad, right? Right? Well, at least I’d be able to host my own pictures and files. And mess with the code. That last one is a big selling point.

I think in the next couple days I may make a trip to a local Buddhist Monastery. Not that I’m thinking about multi-classing to Monk mind you. It’s just this guy came in a few weeks ago, talking about a Monastery. He was looking for large fish for the Monastery’s pond. So he’s tellin me all about this place… Deer Park Monastery… its peaceful and quiet, and tucked away from the city. Sounds nice. Reminds me of Mt. Helix. So I think I’ll go check it out. They have a website. I think Melinda and I may go up there sometime soon.

Speaking of Melinda, she almost read this the other night. I said I didn’t mind, but she said she didn’t want to pry. I wanted to tell her to go ahead and read it, but I was still a little wierded out by the idea. I mean, she is more than welcome to read it… its just… I don’t know that I’m ready to bring it to her attention just yet. Heh. I dunno what I’m saying.

I think I just need to say that I spend time with her because I like spending time with her. No alterior motives; she’s a friendly face and an open ear. She’s a good friend, and anything else is entirely secondary.

You left me last summer. Is there something I forgot to say? Now I’m left here to suffer. Do you feel the same way? Cuz now I’ve found out, that I can’t make it here on my own. So tell me, when did I lose control?

It’s been too long without tunes on the comp. I’ve missed my Local Punk Bands. o0o0o0o. Looks like FON is coming out with a new CD soon. Good times.

Yeah. Totally my bedtime. Gonna go read myself to sleep.

Melinda said she’d be reading this sometime. I just wanted to clarify a couple things, for her and for anyone else who reads.

• There is very little I don’t/won’t write about. This journal is a very public way of talking about private things. Stacy said its brave, but I think I just have to put certain things down in writing, no matter who sees them. Maybe because of who sees them.

• This journal is subject to exaggeration. Take this into account when reading. Everything is true, but not all of it, if you get my meaning. Some parts are more true than others.

This is the song I was listening to when my Grandfather passed away. It just came on randomly. I cried, then, and I almost always cry now. He was in a sort of coma… and then he just sort of… was gone. It was peaceful, at least.

I’ve found a long way back to sanity again

Though I don’t really know what I’m gonna do

When I get there…

Take a breath and hold on tight

And spin around one more time

And gracefully fall back to the arms of grace

‘Cause I’m hanging on every word you say

And even if you don’t wanna speak tonight

That’s alright, alright with me

‘Cause I want nothing more

Than to sit outside Heaven’s door

And listen to you breathing

It’s where I wanna be, yeah

Where I wanna be…

I’m looking past the shadows in my mind

Into the truth and I’m

Trying to identify the voices in my head

God, I wish it were you

Lifehouse – Breathing.

Amber was talking to me all day long that day. While I might not have agreed with everything she was telling me, I was still very glad she was there for me. It’s good to have friends like that. Amber’s a good friend.

le sigh.

I feel guilty. Each journal entry I make that mentions Melinda makes me feel guilty. Perhaps guilty isn’t the proper word. I’m not sure what is, though. I want to show her this journal… but I don’t want her to get freaked out about it. I don’t want it to seem like I’m obsessing… I’m not.

It’s just she’s very important to me, now. She’s the best (only…?) friend I’ve made since moving up here. I should tell her *that* at least. I also don’t want her to think I dislike Paul, or anything of the sort. I’ve never had any reason to feel that way, and I don’t.

And I like her. In more than a ‘just friends’ kind of way; but not to the exclusion of being friends. I thoroughly enjoy spending time with her, even when we’re at work, surrounded by asshole customers. “I do enjoy working with you; it makes the time go by faster,” she told me today. And I definitly agree. And it makes the rest of my shift when she’s gone home that much more boring.

I think I’m a storyteller. I’m not sure if she knows that or not, though. I think most people I know do realize it, if not conciously. I love to tell stories. Part of telling stories though – part of what makes a good story teller – is making stuff up. Not changing the story, of course. But adding details. Small little flamboyances that make the story feel that much more real. I want people to feel the way that I feel when I’m telling a story. Or perhaps thats not it exactly. Usually it is. But sometimes I just want people to feel a certain way. To make them laugh, or to make them shocked. The more detail there is to a story, the more it feels real. So when I tell her I woke up in my kitchen with a package of hot dogs, buns, and condiments sitting on the counter, I’m in Storytelling Mode. What really happened was I woke up holding the package of hot dogs. But that just doesn’t sound as right, to me. It’s a funny comment – but thats just it. It’s a funny comment… not a story. A funny story is waking up at 9 am. You know what its like when you first wake up? For the first few seconds you’re not entirely sure where you are. This particular morning was even more surreal than that. I woke up and realized I was in my kitchen, with a package of hot dogs, buns, and condiments on the counter. No shit.

That makes the point I was trying to get at. If I tell a person that, chances are they’ll likely feel something like the shock I felt when I woke up with hot dogs in my hand. And I really did wake up with hot dogs in my hand a few weeks ago. That’s the truth. But if you tell people that, they don’t believe it anyway. They think, yeah, whatever. People automatically throw away, ignore, or doubt so much of a story anyway, that in the end they’re convinced I’m full of it. But if you add to the story, then maybe they’ll actually think about it. Rather than throwing a simple rediculous sounding comment out, they actually parse the story, looking for what they’ll believe is the truth. It makes the person you’re talking to actually listen to the story. Actually listen to what you’re saying. Unconciously, I think we all doubt what we hear from other people. We all scan it for what we’re willing to believe, and what you’d like to dismiss. But if you craft a story in the right way, what you’re left with after this analyzation process is the truth they’re willing to accept. And maybe it’s the true truth. Thats what I think anyway. After putting entirely too much thought into the matter. I think I’ll write my essay for English100 on it.

But I’ve gotten way far afield. I’m not sure if Melinda will ever read these ramblings or not (I haven’t given her the URL explicitly, but it is in my aim profile…), but I would like to say a couple things for the record:

– You are the best Escondido friend I’ve made.

– You can make me smile on the shittiest days I’ve had.

– Don’t take my ramblings as anything but ramblings, remember, I just feel the need to tell a story, sometimes even if it involves seeming over-zealous about the subject.

And with that, I’m gonna call it a good night.

Last night was incredible.

After I got offline, I coudn’t sleep, so I went down the street to the Jockin Joes to go play some pool (it’s a bar) and just hang out. So I got there, got a drink and challenged this dude to next game. He was pretty trashed, I think… thats probably why I won. I played another game, he ended up hitting the 8-ball in and then kinda left. So I played a few more games, had a couple more drinks, then this girl comes up to me. Her name is Sarah. She’s pretty hot. She asks me if I’d like to make a bet with her on the next game.

ehhh, fsck it. I’m too lazy to finish this bad april fool’s day joke.

Happy April Fool’s Day anyways.