i think we all know the feeling, that moment that we all have experienced at least once, where you just feel like everything you do is not enough, where you feel that your life is completely worthless, and where, just for a moment, you really really wish that there was some way to just give up. well, about 4:15 this afternoon, i walked out on one of the loading docks at the back of my building, and this feeling just washed over me. i was soaked with it, drowning in it, but there was no reason for it to be there. it was the strangest thing. i sincerely felt, for that moment, that every little struggle that life throws at us is completely, utterly pointless. in fact, it was such an odd thing, there being, as i said, no real reason for it, that i pointed it out to my buddies who were out there with me. of course, by the time i was able to articulate it, the tide itself had passed, and i was only feeling the little substance that remained as it drained away from me.

don't look for me to explain it, or to launch into some great exposition about how it's not true, life's not pointless, things aren't as dismal as they seem, because though i don't really believe it, i also can't firmly deny it. if there is a point to life, it's as i explained to a friend the other day… our one and only purpose for being here, alive in this universe, is to reproduce and continue the cycle of life and death. and lest you misunderstand me, i'm not talking from a spiritual perspective at all here, i'm referring merely to our biological imperative and reason for being. the spiritual or even theological side of the argument is an entirely separate side of the coin.

anyway, the past weekend was very enjoyable. spent some time with some friends i don't get to hang out with much, and had a great time. paul's drinking buddy (and music playing buddy, and just general all-around buddy, i guess) neil showed up ,and when told that paul was with us, his (somewhat tongue in cheek) remark was "Alright! Paul's here! Now i can DRINK!" maybe that's too much of an inside joke to really be funny here, but believe me, it is funny.

that bad bad girl sharon still hasn't updated her page, since even my last update, so everyone be sure to visit and tell her to write something. i mean, really, if i've updated twice since her last update, something needs to be done.

finally, my sister finally finished her self-described NC17 story (which started here) which turned out to be as funny as the first part suggested. my poor naive little sister. of course, i'd have been had just as easily.

well, gee, i guess that'll do for today, don't wanna overwhelm anybody. i really need to post more often so i don't have to play catch up every time. oh, and speaking of updating more often, our illustrious former web-host and all-around systems brainiac just chastised me for not having updated my web-cam in almost a month. i'll see if i can't get 'er up and running tonight, and at least get a fresh picture up there.

hump day again, folks, and today it really is comics day. (last week's was postponed 24 hours on account of easter).

for some reason, it seems like the weeks have just been flying by lately… there's no break, no pause. perhaps it's got something to do with the fact that i keep myself busy doing meaningless stuff on the computer or hanging out with friends. i really need to get out of the house more. at the very least, i'm hoping to start taking my laptop with its freshly charged batteries out on the back deck and doing some writing when i get home from work in the evenings.

BTW, thank the great oogly-moogly for bartelby.com.

so, this weekend was pretty fun, except for the fact that the instigator of the supposedly two-day affair bailed out by calling the Wicked Witch of the West (his bitch girlfriend) around midnight or so and leaving with her. i swear if she didn't owe him almost 2 grand, i'd kick her ass to the curb myself and lock him in his room without his phone for a week.

but, nevertheless, while people where there, the party was pretty damned fun, me happily prepping and grilling the food, and later climbing up on top of the garage with everyone else, me with a half-glass of whiskey in my hand that brian insisted i drink (since he was kind enough to bring the bottle with him when he came), and all of us hooting and hollering at what was at best an average fireworks display.

having finished yet another accelerated development project here at work, i've had a little time today to get back to reading some of my favorite blogs. puffin-a-go-go's a given since we spend and obscene amount of time together (y'know, being buddies and all), and there's also sharon (who hasn't updated in a couple days… much like yours truly), and my favorite sister whose most recent post has a long and funny story tacked onto the end. sara (my sister) has been trying really hard to keep a daily routine going with her blog, despite being horribly overworked. but, y'know, as i like to explain it, she may be horribly overworked, but she's horribly overworked in FRANCE. and finally, a post from a few days ago on murmur where tim serves up what is a really great metaphor in general, and really great for the way i myself have been feeling for a while now… except i'm still stuck in the "lost my keys" stage.

oh, and on Sunday, i went through the whole ordeal of reinstalling windows yet again, in an attempt to stabilize my system, which really can never work since i'm running on windows. perhaps i should just say screw it and learn me some linux.

it's comics day, so i gotta post this real quick before i head out the door.

this little flash animation is pretty kick ass, if you'll pardon the pun. haven't had time to poke around to find any other goodies on the site, but rest-assured, i will.

ok, now it's geek time.

well, i'm back now from my short weekend visiting my folks and my little bro, and i'd have to say i had an enjoyable time. seems like a whole lot happened in a 30+ hour period. saturday afternoon i spent pretty much all my money getting my oil and other various fluids replenished, so i ended up having to ask the 'rents for money (for the first time in a thankfully longish time) to get me through until payday. if my roommates would stop giving all their money to their stupid evil girlfriends, or spending it on guitars, i could probably actually do more than just pay bills with my money. (to set the record straight, brian has actually been the most consistent and responsive rent/bill payer for a while now, so the guitar comment is more of a friendly jab than an actual complaint).
i seem to inevitably end up in the "godfather" role, where i'm the one handling all the bills and my roommates end up owing me large sums of money. i don't anticipate having these problems when we move in with paul, even though the roommate i'm taking with me is the one who owes the most money. but, i've pretty much decided that if he doesn't catch up soon, i'm going to have to open up the proverbial can labeled "whup-ass"–either on him, or on that evil bitch of a girlfriend (who owes him probably a couple thousand dollars and keeps asking for more despite the fact that they both make about the same amount of money and she's living with her parents).

anyway, enough about that. my mom cooked her usual excruciatingly good meals while i was home, and i, of course, brought little samples back with me to help me survive 'til payday. today it's leftover country ham… mmm good.

my brother's been getting more and more interested in computers in the past year or so, so quite a bit of our conversations this weekend centered around that (he wants to buy a new computer, and m&p have agreed to front the money if he stops acting like a holy terror for a while.) so we discussed his options, and we've pretty much decided we'll build him a system like the one i'm planning to build, and probably come in under the parent's budget constraints. he wanted to buy an iMac, but it was about $500 outside of his range, so we're talking a PC. it's cheaper, and there's tons of free software (hehe). i also helped him out a little this weekend by acting as his computer merit badge counselor for Boy Scouts. basically i just asked him a bunch of questions, he gave me a bunch of answers, did a few little things on the computer, and everybody was happy. and, this may sound like neandarthalic chest-thumping, but i surprised myself with some of the stuff that i knew about computers and computer history.

sunday was fun, we were in the kitchen standing in the patio door with an air rifle (BB gun) trying to see who could shoot the ears of corn in the squirrel feeder (no animals were harmed in the making of this blog). then we ended up talking about my prowess as an archer from my own Boy Scout days (me insisting i was good, my dad insisting i was… well, maybe not that good). dad ended up busting out my old little kid bow and an arrow (probably the only one left intact from my days of shooting trees, stumps, the ground, and the garage). after my bro hung a soda can from a tree limb, i tried to shoot it with the bow and arrow. took me four tries, but i nailed it. after that, of course, for like an hour the three of us were standing out on the patio trying to shoot the can with dad's different bows. i think i was the only one who got a good solid hit on it several times, dad and javan each either hit around it, nicked it, or "bumped" it with the shaft of the arrow. so, i guess i was pretty proud of myself for proving to my dad that, hey, i really WAS good at it.

so, all in all it was a good weekend, a little of mom's home cooking, some family bonding time, and some good driving (amazingly enough, there wasn't a single spot of construction on the entire Western Kentucky (aka. William H. Natcher) parkway).

but i'm back at work now, bored as hell. half our servers are down because the AC went out in the server farm area and they overheated. hehe. ain't technology great.

oh, and be sure to check out my sister's posts about underwear (Mon., Apr. 9) and French radio and music (Thurs., Apr. 12). very entertaining stuff.

and also, sharon–continuing her sometimes theme of posting "forwarded emails" with commentary– has a nice post (Fri., Apr. 13) with some guidelines for interacting with and/or understanding the opposite sex.

well, it seems our server is having some troubles lately. the main reason i decided to switch x13 to a commercial server space was so we could get more consistent service and uptime. so much for that. luckily, the web server itself has been operational more often than the rest of the service we're paying for… the FTP has been up and down for the past several days. we're investigating our options.

This past weekend was fairly enjoyable. friday night paul and brian took it upon themselves to "medicate" me in hopes of curing me of the cold i've been fighting the past week. the night before, i went to the "healthy" burrito place (Qdoba, on bardstown road… and well, it's healthier than La Bamba's) where i proceeded to completely soak each bite of the burrito in lovely lovely tabasco in hopes that it would help "burn" the infection right out of me. as you can imagine, by the end of the meal, i was sweating like a pig, with a big grin on my face. but back to Friday… now, for nearly five years, i've had this aversion to whiskey as a result of a bad night with a bottle. couldn't even stomach the smell of the stuff. i've been trying, over the course of the past year or two, to regain my ability to stomach it, since i like(d) it so much more than beer. as far as i'm concerned, beer is piss water–any kind of beer. and, you have to drink so much of it to get any effect, you end up feeling bloated and uncomfortable by the end of the night, which kind of defeats the purpose of getting drunk.

anyway, brian and paul got this idea that they could give me whiskey to fight my cold. they lined up three shots for me. a regular, a kind of regular +, and a double. they expected me to drink this. number 1 went down fine (followed quickly by some mountain dew), number two went down not quite so fine. i stared at number three for a while contemplating the wisdom in shooting versus sipping. i went out on the back porch for a smoke. i decided sipping was about the only thing i could handle, as my gag reflex was fully prepped and ready to go were i to even attempt to shoot the last one. funny thing is, i barely got a buzz. normally, three shots of whiskey would have made me loopy… i'm afraid this may NOT be a good thing.

i won't go into more details of the night (paul & brian were both much worse off than i was, to say the least) but all in all it was a fun night of walking, completely f'ed up, up and down bardstown road (and spending half the time on back roads for reasons of paranoia).

yesterday was a nice day at work. not once, but twice i got an eye-contact/smile/wave/"bye" combo from the cute girl at work. i've been digging on her for months now, but i can't seem to get the nerve up to ask her out. i'm too much of a shy guy, and don't know what to say in those situations. i just know, as soon as i walk up to her, i'm going to feel like a complete moron. a maroon. ah, well. i'll figure it out eventually. oh, and one of the guys at work is threatening to reveal my secret, or force me into a situation. his threat earlier today was to page her over the intercom and use MY number. the fact that i'm a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than him doesn't seem to dissuade his eagerness for subterfuge.

finally, for those of you who enjoyed the pics of capeboy, here's a couple more now that amiga.org is back up.

unfortunately, i still haven't been able to find a good pic of the cute amiga girl, but if i do, i'll let ya know!

alright, now that the internet's working, our servers are up, and i've gotten some free time, i'll finally write the post-Amiga-convention update you've all been waiting for.

of course, paul pretty much covered the majority of it already, but i suppose i have a few things to add.

the drive up was thankfully uneventful, though we did have to stop a few times for strong coffee. as we came into St. Louis, we started following the directions we'd gotten from mapquest.com. We pulled off I-270, and saw in front and off to the right of our exit ramp, the hotel that i was pretty sure was the one in which we'd be staying. despite the hotel's location, the driving directions said to turn left. we followed it left, right, up a big hill, and to the right again, where we came to the literal end-of-the-line. a big metal guard-rail was spanning the abrupt end of the road we were on, looking out over I-270. we cracked a few jokes about mapquest trying to heighten the sense of adventure for travelers, and i suggested that it was possible, if he built up enough speed, we might be able to make it over 6 lanes of divided expressway and the banks on either side to land in the parking lot that sittingly off in the hazy distance. he decided not to put alice (his car) up to that test, as she'd just had a hard day of driving and needed a rest.

at the convention, we found the typical assortment of rather large, mustache wearing, long stringy-haired people… the types of people you'd expect to find at a star trek convention. in fact, these people and their fanaticism are partly why i've never bothered to go to a meeting of the local Amiga user group. i had my fill of those types during my tenure as president of the star trek fan club in Murray. (ooh, there's a good bit of history for ya.) now, looking around on the web after the convention, i'd managed to locate a few images of the people there who were "out-there" enough for paul & i to actually give them names. unfortunately, amiga.org has been overwhelmed by visitors searching for show news and have been shut down by their hosting company for exceeding their transfer limits. after more searching, i was finally able to find a pic or two of capeboy. as soon as amiga.org comes back, i'll introduce you to funnypants guy and amiga grrl, and maybe the amiga girl we actually thought was fairly attractive, but who, of course, neither one of us talked to.

also, as paul stated, we spent the majority of saturday drinking the free beer, walking around the exhibit hall floor making fun of 85% of the people there. oh, and of course, there were the several hours i spent drunkenly struggling over whether or not to purchase that almost $300 worth of equipment, or to save my money and be able to eat this week. well, i ended up stalling long enough to not have to make that decision, so i purchased almost $100 worth of software as a consolation — not like i could go to an Amiga convention and come back empty handed!

so, day one saw paul & i drunk for the majority of the day, and one the free beer ran out, we went to the bar next door to "top off."

day two was a little more laid back, considering paul's difficulty recovering from the previous day's sleep-deprived drunkenness, and the return of his cold. we decided (for paul's sake) not to stay for the entire day of the conference, partly because he wasn't feeling well, partly because he wanted to get home to watch x-files, and partly because we'd already seen everything in the exhibit hall at least 20 times the day before. i went to a couple more seminars, and stalled my purchase until around 2:30 or 3, then we took off for home.

ok, well, this has gone on too long. suffice it to say, i had an enjoyable weekend, and i really appreciate puffin offering his services as chauffer and body-guard for the trip.

and finally, in reference to the whole spider-girl thing, marvel announced today that spider-girl will NOT be canceled. so, if you guys actually wrote in at my prompting, i'd just like to say thanks, you've helped save one of my favorite books.