how pretentious is that title… oh well.

it's nice to see that some people have gotten into the spirit of my last post. kinda makes me feel special (in a egotistic kind of way, not a short-bus kind of way). perhaps i should post more often?

you'd think that now that i've got a workable new system all for my lil' ol' self at home, that i'd be more conscientious about it, but i can't seem to actually get anything done. i'm trying to catch up on all the email that's been neglected for the past several months, to all my friends who are probably pissed at me for not writing before now, expect to hear from me soon.

things at work are kind of slow right now, and it's sapping my energy and inspiration. we're in a "lull." at least, that's the word that's been used. i had a much better ending to this paragraph, but the link that it hinges around is apparently dead. if it "resurrects" itself soon, i'll come back and replace it. ( how're you supposed to do a weblog when the links spontaneously combust? )

oh, and don't worry too much about brian over there, he's just not getting enough sleep lately–it's affecting his mind.

and paul, tell dennis to send some MY way. i think we can afford a san-fran trip between the two of us.

thought i'd actually use a song lyric for the title this time, even though that's brian's m.o. it fits, especially considering the fact that we're going to chicago to see the monkeywrench.

well, i haven't updated in a few days again. seems i've actually been finding things to do at work this past week. or, i guess, "having things forced upon me" would be a more appropriate statement. that, and i guess i tend to have less to talk about when i'm not allowing myself to be snubbed by women.

i know brian's already been touting puffin-a-go-go over on his side for a few days now (he's also been updating much more regularly and voluminously than i have, of late) but i'm gonna mention it anyway. it's nice to finally be able to link to Paul without having to resort to that out-dated crappy coffeemonk.com site. oh. wait. that's one of mine. it's crappy and out-of-date because i'm a lazy bastard. BUT puffin-a-go-go is neither crappy or out-dated, in fact, it's pretty damn snazzy, and you should check it out. knowing Paul as well as i do, i know it'll be a neat place to visit.

ok. i think that's four. that should just about catch me up to brian.

let me just state for the record that i am frightened as hell that g. dubya might be our next president. if that happens, brian, jack, and i may be on the earliest flight to australia following the announcement. hell, maybe we could even get walk-on parts as stormtroopers in the next Star Wars flick.

my day today has been interesting i suppose. woke up late, as usual, got to work much later than usual since i had to drive brian's non-car-repairing ass to work. checked my daily sites and then looked up the nearest locations of valvoline and big-o tires so i could get my car in tip-top shape for the arduous journey to chicago. on lunch, i went and got four new tires. unfortunately, i couldn't get them on credit, so i ended up spending more than i'd wanted to.

after work, went to get the fluids checked/changed/whatever expecting like $30 – $40 or something. nope. i let the guy do what needed to be done, and it ended up costing me over $70. again, more than i expected.

now, of course, my car's in good shape, but my wallet is looking a little ill. this will have to be a cheap chicago trip. i'm just hoping they sell mickeys up there. it's cheap, but it's oh so good.

though we'll be gone for the weekend, we'll be at least attempting to update bipolar while we're up there. i'm gonna pack up my trusty laptop so you all can revel in the avalanche of joy we are sure to experience. i'm really looking forward to hangin with nanette and co.

MARK ARM!

well, i'm back on the job today, after taking two days off for that whole birthday thing. thinking, yeah. i'll take two days off, come in on Friday, then have TWO MORE days off… well guess what? we're on a deadline. "we need help and you're the only man who can do it, you're the last man available, can you, maybe, work this weekend? please?"

"yeah, i guess."

ah well, this'll make it much easier for me to get next Friday off to go up to chicago and watch one of my absolute most favorite bands in existence, the monkeywrench. their latest album is pretty kick ass, btw, but i've long considered Clean As a Broke Dick Dog to be one of the greatest albums of all time. it's definitely in my (not-really-defined) top-ten.

hm. this week has been a little odd, both nights that i was off work, i ended up getting drunk (not wasted drunk, but pleasantly drunk). this is not like me. my friends usually bitch about me "never drinking with them." sad thing last night was i was drunk after only two pints of Bass. i guess i've become a lightweight again. well, we'll have to fix that.

oh, and i still haven't heard from her. i'm trying not to think about it, because, y'know, fuck her if she can't make a little effort to at least pretend she cares. lip service is all i've gotten (and no, not that kind of lip service). a person can talk about how much they care until the mad cows come home, but it doesn't mean shit if they can't make a little effort to show you. yeah, maybe she's busy, maybe she's got stuff going on. she could still take five minutes to call & leave a message, or just say hey, can't talk right now, but wanted to say hi. even that would at least be something. can't you tell i'm trying not to think about this? oh yeah.

seems like brian's been admirably picking up my slack around here, updating bipolar on a regular basis while i've been busy doing a bunch of nothing.

first off, thanks to the executors of the Sebastian Stirling estate for their birthday well-wishes, all the more meaningful considering their recent loss.

i've certainly had a decent birthday. can't complain too much. yesterday, i had my 90 day evaluation at Corvus and got a raise! if that doesn't make for a decent birthday, i don't know what does.

spent most of the day today lounging around the house in my bathrobe, as I like to do, surfing the web, pricing new computers. looks like i'm going to end up going the sony VAIO route. and as brian said, "they made the PlayStation 2, how can you go wrong?"

had a good dinner and good beer with good friends at the irish rover (with no horrible bitch waitress in sight), and afterwards went to the hideaway saloon with brian and proceeded to drink two more pints and play some really bad drunken pool.

and finally, i told you all that stuff partly to avoid thinking about this–
she didn't remember. not that i'm surprised, mind you, but after i, on her birthday, and after not having spoken to her in like 4 or 5 months, wrote her a letter and made the effort to rekindle at least a friendship of some sort, i had kind of hoped that she would. i guess she's too busy being the little queen bee, having all her little drones buzzing around her (-like i used to do-), and doesn't have time to remember the birthday of the person she keeps assuring is her best friend in the world. agh. enough of that.

i am a happy person, see :^)

**update 12/17/2004** signaldrench is no more, now there's newartillery

having nothing to do for a few days really kind of ruined me. now I can't seem to convince myself to do any real work around here. lucky for you, while I've been not working, I've been… uhh… doing research.

Check out this kick ass flash animation site–Modern Living–there's some really cool stuff on there. This link is courtesy Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report.

I keep meaning to post something other than just links, but i've been wasting too much time. I'll try to do a post before I go home today.

well, thought I'd do a quick little update before I leave work. one thing of note is that I've added permalinks (at the end of each post, use the "PL" links to link to individual posts) not that I can really imagine that anyone will ever need or want to do this. I'll have to add it to brian's blog tonight, if he wants it.

yesterday was comics & denny's day, and after doing that thing, Paul and I went over to his house to watch Star Trek: Voyager (which I'm completely out of the loop on, not having seen an episode in something like two years now.) It was a fun little episode, lots of Seven of Nine, which always makes Voyager worth watching.

I've had jack to do today, sat around in my new cube most of the day just surfing the web, found some weird stuff, but nothing really cool enough to write about. checked out some other blogs, saturn.org, powazek.com, and some others I didn't pay as much attention to. I pretty much clicked almost every link on saturn.org, there's some interesting stuff there.

I had an idea that I was going to finish what I started talking about in yesterday's post, but I don't think I can.

I keep wondering why I'm doing this. right now I guess I'm doubting my reasons for keeping this up, and wondering what the ultimate purpose is. I'd like to think that I do it to give myself a forum, somewhere to work out the things in my head, since I can't seem to find time (or enough inspiration) to do my other creative writing stuff anymore. i'd like to think I do it to communicate things to those people I should talk to everyday but can't, i'd like to think i'm doing it for something other than my ego, vanity, and desire for recognition.

hopefully I'll feel better about this whole thing tomorrow.

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.

I started out this past week doing pretty well, updated three times in two days… kinda fell off after that.

to follow up on my last post, the next day I was once again working a little late, and once again ran into the janitor in the bathroom before going home. this time he was rather more friendly, he actually spoke to me, and he seemed to be in better spirits. I wanted to tell him that I thought he was doing a great job, but I couldn't figure out how to say it. I guess even despite my last post, you just can't really tell these people that you appreciate them without sounding like a bastard. probably the best way to respect them and show your appreciation, I guess, is to just do your part to not make their job more difficult than it needs to be. clean up after yourself, don't smear shit on the walls, don't piss in the floor, don't pump the soap dispenser out all over the counter, don't put an entire roll of toilet paper IN the toilet.

I can't help but think that his improved attitude and friendliness towards me was some form of positive karmic feedback as a result of my contemplation of him, his position, and my presenting my ideas and trying to engender respect for him and his fellow "menial laborers" among the readers of this weblog.

in other news, the site we're working on at my new job has slipped by yet another "deadline," but we'll hopefully have it up this week (people are thinking it might go live tomorrow, but that hope is probably unfounded). If it goes live, I'll link it in here, so you guys can go check out the demos for a laugh or two.

since I hardly ever include a link, I'll just post this one here for your surfing pleasure. my apologies if I've posted it before.

I've just been struck by something… you know how it is when you're going through your day as you normally would, then for some reason, some normal event stands out and causes you to think about life, the world, existence, etc…

I'm getting ready to go home, shutting down my computer, washing out my coffee cup, and I see the janitor guy in the breakroom. I say hello, and get no response other than a general (not really thrilled) look. which makes me think about the necessity of those "unwanted" jobs in our society. now that I have a good job, one that I'm (so far) happy with, and in fact have been searching for for years, what about those people who don't have the jobs they want, what about the person I, at one point, was?

the thing is, our society, our world–as it is today–could not exist without these people doing these things. if all the janitors, bus drivers, stockers, delivery people, street cleaners, etc. just up and decided to quit, our whole society would fall apart at the seams. we have to have these people in place, unhappy or not, to maintain what we've built up. when I think about it, I know I would'nt be happy as a janitor, probably not anymore than our janitor is. I would be resentful of the well-paid staff of the company of which I would be a vital, but largely underappreciated and underpaid, part. I would be resentful of the people who work normal hours, not thinking once about me, or the mess I'll have to deal with when they leave for the night. the trash I have to pick up, the floors I have to vacuum, the toilets I have to scrub. I would be resentful, and unhappy.

I suppose there must be some people out there who enjoy janitorial type work, enjoy being able to do their job when the place is shut down and quiet, to be able to work pretty much at their own pace, taking breaks whenever they like, having time alone away from the family. in some ways, I guess it must be even desirable, but probably most people in those positions are not (necessarily) there by choice.

I'm not suggesting some great outpouring of our gratitude for these people, since I don't really know what we could do, if anything, that would make things better/easier/more enjoyable for them. I guess, I just want people to think about it, and understand that without these people doing these jobs, we wouldn't be able to do ours. and if one of these people is reading, well I guess I just hope you know that you are appreciated, you are respected, at least by me. I certainly couldn't do those jobs, but I am glad someone is willing.

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.