nothing

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this entry box is intimidating this morning and i don’t even have any pictures to show you. sorry.

acronyms

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xml. xsl. xsd. css. wap. wml. asp. jsp. html. xhtml. php. xslt.
yeah, i’ve got another big assignment due this weekend. i’m all about the homework this week.

happy anniversary

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Just as there’s a time frame for withdrawal symptoms from stopping tobacco, there’s a time frame for reaping some great health benefits. Keep these points in mind, especially during the first weeks and months of stopping.
Within:
– twenty minutes your blood pressure, heart rate and temperature in your hands and feet normalize.
– eight hours oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in your blood normalize.
– one day your likelihood of having a heart attack decreases.
– two days your senses of smell and taste improve. Nerve endings start to regrow.
– two weeks to three months your circulation becomes better and your breathing improves. Walking becomes easier.
– one to nine months coughing, sinus congestion, shortness of breath and fatigue decrease. You have more energy.
– one year your excess risk of heart disease is now less than half what it was a year ago.
– five years your risk of cancer of the lung, mouth, throat and esophagus is half that of a pack-a-day smoker.
– ten years your risk of dying from lung cancer is similar to that of a nonsmoker.
– fifteen years you are no more at risk of heart disease than if you’d never smoked.
in the last year i’ve not smoked 2080 cigarettes and saved at least $728. my breathing has markedly improved and my sense of smell is freakishly sensitive. i don’t have that annoying “throat gurgle” anymore. now that i’ve finally reached the one-year mark, i’m ready to proclaim i’m officially a non-smoker again. go me!

grumpy

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i wanted to rant about how much i hate my job and my car and my life and pretty much everything that has anything to do with me, but i realized i even hate ranting and writing and typing and computers and blogging and websites and the internet. i especially hate anything that has anything to do with government or media or consumerism or money or people or causes. i hate working. i hate being bored. i hate chores. i hate waking up. i hate cooking. i hate cleaning. i hate homework. i hate parties. i hate gatherings. i hate dirt. i hate dust. i hate being the last person on the call list. i hate being the organizer. i hate being dumped on. i hate being dumped. i hate guilt trips. i hate fake compliments. i hate eye contact. i hate interruptions. i hate phone calls. i hate sleep-drooling. i hate not having a cat. i hate not having a real bed to sleep in. i hate my upstairs neighbour. i hate that i never get mail on fridays. i hate distance. i hate loneliness. i hate idiots. i hate the nosey motherfuckers who think it’s their job to check up on me. i hate spam. i hate raw mushrooms. i hate my crappy fridge. i hate being broke. i hate being in debt. i hate hating so many things. i hate that you now think i’m a hateful bitch who has no idea of the priviledges she claims. i hate being miserable. i hate sweating. i hate dirty fingernails. i hate tailgaters. i hate awkward silences. i hate strangers. i hate that skunk smell. i hate my sore wrists and my sore neck and my sore tooth and my sore back. i hate the way i feel if i drink more than two beer in an hour. i hate that farrah fawcett hair is back. i hate that i don’t care i’m wasting time thinking about all the things i hate instead of actually doing something to eliminate some of the things i hate from my life. i hate that i haven’t had coffee in two days. i hate being so far away from some of my favourite people. i hate that i lost so many years with my dad. i hate that it’s not time to go home yet. i hate that i’m hungry and i have nothing to snack on. i hate that i think i’ve disappointed more people than i’ve impressed. i hate hating.

long. ugsome. day.

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ugsome (UG-suhm) adjective
Dreadful, loathsome.
[From Middle English, from uggen, from Old Norse ugga (to fear). As in many typical stories where one child in a family becomes well-known while the other remains obscure, “ugly” and “ugsome” are two words derived from the same root — one is an everyday word while the other remains unusual.]

meep!

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after watching the saturday night live i taped saturday night (duh), i must now admit that i am utterly and completely aroused by dave grohl. dear god, i just wanted to grab his tie and pull him offstage to ravage me senseless.
ahem.
sorry about that. i didn’t mean to go that far. i know none of you really care what gets my juices flowing, as it were. i mean, really, you’re probably now searching for a good therapist. i wouldn’t blame you. it’s like picturing your parents having sex or what really goes into that hot dog you ate for lunch.. you have a vague intellectual awareness of them as facts, but you daren’t dwell upon them for long if you wish to keep yourself sane and your puppies properly furred.
*grin*

geek

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there’s a cloud outside my window which looks exactly like the starship enterprise (ncc1701-d) flying in a direction away from me.

snark

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today, i’m drinking green tea with mint (and stevia) instead of coffee. we’ll see if there’s enough caffeine in it to keep me from becoming ms. krankypants. of course, it’s monday, so there may be little hope for that.

if you know me…

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read this. just a taste:
Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion.

everything and nothing

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last night i dreamt that i was on an alaskan cruise. there was a mystery involved and before it was all over bruce allen (bryan adam’s long-time manager & vancouver well-known) was trying his very best to seduce me. by the time the alarm started squawking at me, i had decided i had made the wrong decision and wanted to tell bruce it was entirely all right for him to kiss me.
besides the unfulfilled dream loving, i can’t seem to sleep enough lately. i’m absolutely exhausted by the time i get home, but when it’s time to go to bed i can’t fall asleep, not to mention the fact that i just cannot seem to get out of bed in the morning because i’m up so late trying to fall asleep. fuck, i hate unflexible schedules. i’m so tired i could cry.
so, it seems i’m scared shitless of intimate relationships with men. that’s got to be it. i’m doing everything in my power not to take any risk of falling for anyone, ever. if i care for you, i’ll either smother you with my attention or shut you down if you’re really getting too close. i can’t deal with being emotionally vulnerable. it freaks me out and i don’t know how to deal with it. that being said, the greatest contradiction is that i’d love to have someone to trust and love unconditionally. okay, that’s a lie. even typing that out makes me uncomfortable. i once believed that i really did want that story-book love of your life thing. in some respects i still do, but only as an ideal.
now, i think i just need someone who’ll call me on my bullshit and be patient when they have to yank out my feelings because i’ve been hurt or offended. oddly, i have someone like that in my life now. too bad he’s already married.
i tried pmachine yesterday (on ej’s recommendation) and although my first reaction was unfavourable, after some time to cool down from my frustration with it, i can see how it could be used in a more flexible manner. but, the authors have made it difficult in some respects and their documentation is sorely lacking in several areas. next to test: moveable type. maybe next week, because i still have a lot of pictures to scan this weekend.
oh, i haven’t mentioned that, have i? well, yeah. there’s a project at work involving a whack of scanning and when i told them they really didn’t want to use the old, crappy scanner for that task (where perfection is paramount) they ordered a brand new one and told me i could take it home to do the work in my off hours. of course, while i have such a beast in my possession, i’m scanning all of my photographs. i figure it’ll be fun to have them all on a couple cds and instead of having to haul out the trunk and find the box with the right collection of prints, i can just pull them up on the computer. although, after last night, i’m starting to think i bit off a whole lot more than i can chew.
i finally finished the crossroads of twilight the other day. two days late to the library and two weeks wasted. dear me, that book pissed me off. seven-hundred pages covering 36 hours in the lives of the characters. a set-up book. there wasn’t even a payoff at the end. nothing remotely interesting happened. that’s it, robert jordan can kiss my ass (until such time as he finished the series and then, i suppose, i’ll see what the hell his point was).

paris is for photographers

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while enjoying jason kottke’s beautiful photographs of paris, i was struck by several notions:
– north america will never be architecturally historical. our obsession with newer and better almost forces us to destroy things we deem as old or outdated in order to improve upon them. personally, i think this a failing, but i’m the minority.
– it appears there are no more than 25 people in all of paris. these 25 people spend most of the their time reading, walking leisurely along a river, selling produce or visiting museums. tourists don’t count, of course.
– notre dame makes me weep.
– parisian stencil grafitti rocks.
– obviously, there is no electricity in paris for not a single powerline obscures any of the breathtaking views.

dorque!

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it’s a banner day in my quest for geekdom! i’ve been selected to moderate slashdot! w00t! i have the power!
(wow, lots of exclamation points.)

phone lust

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i phoned ing direct last night to finalize my new account set-up and had a delightful experience with one of their “direct associates”, anthony. they will get more of my money just because i fell in love with his voice and his telling me “it was a pleasure” talking to me. yes, i really am that easy. sometimes.
i wonder if they fill their night-shift off-hours moonlighting as phone sex operators.

go back to bed

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some days i think i could happily deal with weevils in my gruel and lice in my bed to live a life ruled by nature’s whims and not the arbritrary ticking, or clicking, of clocks. some days, no matter how early i went to bed the night before, it seems a sadistic affair to have to wake up before my body says it’s ready just to punch in at work. work. ptooey. claire on six feet under was right. all we do is work to become good consumers. i’m tired of being a good consumer. god, i wish i could find what i love to do and have the luxury of doing it every day. my back is itchy. crap, i’m late.