I believe I may have just found heaven.

it seems that there are some situations in life that you will always be doomed to repeat, or to find out you've repeated them without even being aware of it.

i was just made aware last night that this girl I used to work with, and whom I'd had a huge crush on the entire time she worked there, had also had a crush on me. DAMN. 'course, she was dating someone at the time, but still. i HATE finding out stuff like this, because I always feel like a fool for not having any clue. and, of course, this isn't the only time something like this has happened. why, with me, is it almost always a case of bad timing? why can things never happen how and when they should? what is the deal?

still. there's hope. and simultaneously there's the complete lack of hope. i've also found out that she is now single, living with another girl who was a great friend of mine and who helped me through quite a bit of emotional struggles with the idiot-jerk dating girl mentioned in my last post. there's the hope. the final piece to the puzzle (you may, at this point, be thinking, "hey, sounds great. you're single, she's single, you're both aware of your mutual attraction, now all you've gotta do is hook up."), the piece that makes this such a similar picture to all the other puzzles in my life, is that she's leaving next May to join the Peace Corps for two years. what wouldn't I give to at least find out if there might be something to that mutual attraction we felt over a year ago. do I dare try to establish something with this great girl, just to have her run off and leave the country in less than a year? do I set myself up so that I have to deal with this situation again, or do I just take what I've got–a nice feeling–and leave it at that?

knowing myself as well as I do, which I tend to think is pretty well, most of the time, i'm sure i'll try to see what might develop and then deal with the inevitable leave-taking when the time comes. the potential for happiness is too great to pass up.

well, this is getting kinda long, don't wanna send too many of you running & screaming, bleeding from the eyes.

two final points.

I've just changed cubes here at work. pretty sad that I've had to move after only being here a little over two months. i like the new place better, i've got my back (and my monitor) to a wall, and my eyes facing the "door." i feel quite a bit more comfortable here. funny thing is, as I was moving stuff around, I found a CD-R behind the desk, popped it in the drive (once I got everything set up) and found an amazing collection of really bad MP3 files. i had thought the guy that used to occupy this cube seemed like a pretty decent "cool" guy, but this CD is filled with bad 80's hair metal music, Days of the New, frickin Matchbox 20, limp bizkit, and other stuff too horrible to mention. on the positive side, there's some Johnny Cash, a Duran Duran track, Prince, a couple Jane's Addiction, Foo Fighters… a few decent things. I hate to say it, but just having Matchbox20, limp bizkit, and Bush on the same disc kind of negates the coolness factor of the good stuff.

and finally, something I found that's just fuckin funny as hell. it's on this moderately interesting site word.com, that you should browse around after viewing this little shockwave goodie. **update 12/17/2004 this site now goes to Merriam-Webster Online. linkrot sucks.**

that's it. i'm out.

mothers against drunken scripting

I'm excited I get to see my sister again. she's been gone away all summer, after visiting me for one day after her year-long trip to France. Now, she's coming up for a visit for one day and I'm taking her to the airport tomorrow so she can go to France again. I'm beginning to think the only way I'll ever get to hang out with my sister again is if I go visit her in France. not that that would be a bad thing, mind you.

I've also realized today that I'm going to have to do some more crazy javascript crap for these pages, since anybody trying to link to our archived pages is going to get bounced out to the main pages (only if you try to access them directly, otherwise, as long as you're in the frames, everything'll work fine.) got some thinking to do tonight.

i wonder if I can code javascript while drunk? we'll find out.

well, I've finished one whole week at my new job, and I've gotta say, I'm loving it. It's amazing how quickly the day passes sitting in front of a computer doing something you enjoy. the most difficult thing has been trying to join a project in progress while figuring out how they do things. the biggest plus has been that I've already gotten a paycheck, after only having worked there one week (lucked out on the pay cycle), and that I got my first paycheck from my new job the same day I got my last paycheck from my old one, oh, and that my paycheck for one week at the new job was almost as much as my paycheck for two weeks at the old job. 'course, rent is due, and the landlords are charging us an extra hundred dollars since brian moved in, so rent alone almost took the sum total of both paychecks. once again, I'll be struggling the next two weeks to buy food, gas, and cigarettes.

so, my life looks to be shaping up somewhat, finally getting to the point I've wanted to reach for a long time now. but things are never perfect are they?

now that I've got a great job, that it looks like I'll actually enjoy, and that pays well–now that I don't have to worry about what I'm "doing with my life," and seem to actually be in a position to achieve happiness, at least on a professional level, I can now devote myself to other unsatisfactory aspects of my life. only once in my life have I glimpsed perfection, there was a time, over a year ago, when I had a great job, was making decent money, had a wonderful live-in girlfriend, and was very very happy. things obviously didn't work out, through a combination of internal and external influences, I pretty much lost it all. with this new job I'm starting to build that back. now I can get depressed over the failure of past relationships again. 'bout time.

ok.

I've not updated in a couple days, and have seen the new X-Men movie three times since then. and I say I'm not a fanboy…

I'm pretty sure that those of you who care have already read at least 25 or 30 different reports/reviews/commentaries on the movie, so I'll spare the long-winded shit. overall, I thought the movie was great (obviously, since I've seen it three times), probably the best comic adaptation ever done. The opening scene sets the mood and theme in a very powerful, recognizable way, and the movie doesn't stray from that feeling too far at any point. From a philosophical standpoint, this movie definitely has something to say. I really hope people are taking it seriously. (I've not read any reviews of it at this point, mainly because every time I've read reviews in the past, the reviewers inevitably are either out-of-touch morons who don't get the point, or potentially intelligent people who went in with strong preconceptions that colored their experience).
      from a comic geek standpoint, I'd have to say they pretty much hit the nail on the head. I'm not that up on the X-Men and their history, but Paul and brian could probably tell you the name of Iceman's first girlfriend, what issue she appeared in, and who the creative team was that worked on that particular issue–and they said that pretty much everything was pretty close, with a few acceptable (considering the circumstances) shortcuts or omissions here or there.
      I thought the various "powers" were done well, with the exception of some of the flying/floating/jumping stuff (which I understand is difficult to fake with wires & harnesses). and I loved Magneto's "I don't think I can stop them all, Charles." (though why the guy didn't just get out of the way of the bullet when it was stopped, I don't know.)
      my two biggest gripes about the movie are 1) the bodies flying straight back when hit (Wolvie didn't do this when smacked with the tree, which was good), and 2) screws in Wolvie's claws (on the train…)
      the weakest characters were Storm and Sabretooth, the weakest acting by those two actors and the guy that played Cyclops. Jackman was perfect as Wolverine, probably the best performance of the whole cast, including the always brilliant Patrick Stewart.

to make a long story short, if you haven't seen the movie yet, what the fuck are you waiting for? quit reading and get your ass to the theater!

just a quick update concerning my recent happy news.

Jim from Corvus Digital called me yesterday, finally, and at a time when I was awake and home to receive his call. after brief chit-chat, he informed me that he was calling to "offer me a job." glory be and hallelujiah, after weeks of nailbiting and despair at my inability to succeed in the world, I have been redeemed! I am finally a "professional" web developer (well, will be in two weeks anyway), I have landed my first salaried position, and my first official position making more than $9.00/hr. maybe now I'll be able to start paying my bills on time.

in other news, i've pretty much decided to go in a completely different direction with my coffeemonk.com redesign idea. the two people who've responded with useful and detailed constructive criticism don't quite agree on the things I've attempted thus far, and I've come to realize that the old adage clearly is true–"you can't please all of the people all of the time"–and really, you can't please some of the people most of the time. (–this last is not an attack on my friends, whose time, help, and honesty I truly do appreciate–)

also, I've taken some time surfing around in that randomly connected chain that is the web, and have been inspired by some of the really great graphics design people out there, whom I could never hope to equal. my jumping off point for this little sight-seeing trip was saturn.org which is a great example of the type of web design I enjoy, and wish I could create.

I'll be doing more surfing for inspiration, and perhaps will have some new inspiration in the next few weeks (I already have half an idea tickling at the back of my head, but haven't quite got the whole picture yet).

getting ready to go home for the weekend, visit my parents for the first time since christmas. since I've got a few days before I start my new job, and since I haven't visited them so far during my month and a half unemployment, I figure its about time.

it's nice to have cool parents… well I guess I can't really say cool, but understanding, helpful, and loving. it's nice to have parents that really care about you and really do what they can to help you achieve something, either by their encouragement, or by bailing you out with rent money when you're unemployed.

so many people don't have that, in fact, most of the people I know don't have that loving, stable family background. its really sad, but it has made them stronger people, more independent I suppose.

I guess as long as we learn how to take care of ourselves, and don't fall into the traps our parents set for us–whether they were good parents or bad parents–we'll turn out okay in the end. parental guidance helps a lot, but self-guidance is perhaps more important.

anyway, I'd intended this to be just a short little entry saying have a good weekend!