mace's journal

Having had the same ICQ account for about a decade now, "show offline buddies" really gives a strong sense of nostalgia. So many whose "Last Seen" values are NULL; our drifting apart predates my latest Pidgin install. I've awakened dusty memories of persons and events that now sit alongside memories of tangible things. They've all melded together as part of my adolescence. What effect might this have had on my psyche?

Uh-Oh!

September 27th, 2004 is the last entry in this journal. That's a long time to be keeping you in the dark, Netalive. Sorry about that.

Since February, 2006 I've been working as a PHP developer for a company whose major product is a large adult dating website. It has been a wonderful learning experience. I work on a development team with about 30 other people. I came from working on a team with two other guys.

In May 2006 I moved into my own apartment. Here are two different views from my balcony, looking out towards Young street (the longest street in the world):

I've got a projector with an 83" screen hooked up to my computer, I've got a digital piano, and a couple trees.

But all that stuff is pretty unimportant compared to what happened on June 5th. I'd like to introduce you to Alexia:

She's my niece and, coincidentally, the best baby in the world. She's always happy and laughing, showing you the few teeth she has. She hates it when people wear glasses and will whip them right off your face, then try and eat them. She loves flicking the lights on and off and she loves chewing on the TV remote when you're trying to watch something. Here's another picture of her with her mommy for good measure:

As an ongoing project my dad and I have been working on a MAME cabinet (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator for the laypeople). Here are a couple pictures:

It has taken us a long time since I only get down to my parents place about once a week. And I'm usually being beaten up by a baby for most of the time I'm there.

Other notable events occurring within 2006 will have to remain stories for another time. I will leave you with this:

"If eval() is the answer, you're almost certainly asking the wrong question."
-- Rasmus Lerdorf, BDFL of PHP

Words to live by.

I went to bed pretty early last night. Around 11pm. I had woken up at 2am (20 hours earlier) so I think it was justified. I woke up around 4am this morning and took a shit. Then I was having trouble going back to sleep. Internet. Pr0n. Masturbation. Problem Solved. I'm asleep once again.

About four hours later, I'm woken up by someone pounding on my bedroom window. I stand up on my bed and peek out. My mom is there in our backyard crouching down to see through my basement window. She screams, "Michael come open the door! I need help!" I'm scared. I run upstairs and open the back door and my mom is frantic. She tells me she went to mail a letter and left her keys in her car and that it's running and her purse is in there and she's locked out and it's a block away and she doesn't want somebody to steal the car.

So I put on a pair of pants, grab my set of keys, and run down the block to where she says she was stopped. She was masterfully parked in the middle of an intersection. Luckily it was a quiet street. I realize I hadn't brought my glasses or my license, but it's just around the corner, so I figure I'll be ok. I hop in and start driving home. Half way back, my mom is walking down the street. I stop and let her drive the rest of the way home.

We get home and I hop out. She says, "Do you have your keys to get in the house?" I say, "What am I? An idiot?"

In December I quit my job so I could spend three weeks in California. When I got back in late January, I bummed around for a week or two before doing a contract job at my old place of employment for just under three weeks.

Since then, I've been bumming around again. Meet my friends for coffee, go play pool, I've played paintball a few times. I stay up till about 5am and wake up around 2pm. I don't know why, but I always default to nocturnal when I have the option. I've watched a few movies... I'm re-reading 3001 a bit at a time.

Overall, I've done absolutely nothing productive. I've applied to university, but that won't begin until September. I could get a job, but for now I'm living off my savings. Plus, I still live with my parents, so that makes unemployment a bit easier.

I promised myself that when I got back from California and I finally had some time to myself, I'd get to work on a bunch of different projects I had been putting off while I was in school and at work. Well, I'm finding it hard to get started.

I've got a bunch of songs (some complete, some incomplete) that I've been meaning to record. Every time that I've sat down and tried to record, I've run into some minor technical glitch and just given up.

Much like the recording, I've been meaning to brush up on my C++. I've got a project in mind that's not within my current abilities. I sit down, open up one of my C++ books and read a single paragraph before I become bored out of my mind and close the book out of frustration. I think maybe I have ADD. Either that, or programming text books aren't as exciting as people had told me they were. =P

What it all seems to boil down to is an inability to self-motivate. I'd really like to have an album recorded. And I'd really love for someone to find my name in the about box on some shiny piece of software. But I can't seem to get off my lazy ass.

I figure what I need is a mentor. Someone to help motivate and teach me. Any takers?

Tomorrow I'm leaving for a three week trip to california. I'm going to be meeting up with a bunch of online friends and staying mostly in San Diego.

My dad is gonna let me take his digital camera with me, so I'll be taking tons of pictures. I'll be sure to upload some for your viewing pleasure.

This is a big deal for me. I've never left Canada before and I haven't flown anywhere since I was 7. I've never been away from home for more than 2 weeks and I've never been away from my family for more than a single week.

I'm sure my mother will cry when I leave.

People seem to expect me to be nervous and worried, but I'm not... not yet at least.

I'll be spending two weeks with a friend in San Diego and then another week with a different friend in Bakersfield. Potentially, I'll be meeting about 11 people I've never seen face to face before. It should be wonderful.

A couple guys started telling off a my friend King King as we were walking by, so he basically told them to go fuck themselves and they started to follow us. My friend Saul who’s not from my neighborhood starts to run and I grab him and tell him to chill. King King is walking 30 feet behind us so the guys catch up to him first and one of them has a gun. I turn around and go back, thinking I'm gonna have to convince them not to shoot my friend and it turns out we know two of the three guys.

So we kinda laugh it off.

If we hadn't known them, we may be dead right now. We don't even know them all that well. We just used to hang out at the same coffee shop.