This weekend I set up sharing my DSL connection with my cousin.
I first set up DHCP, to simplify networking. Then I made a four floor long ethernet cable and dragged it all the way to the basement. Finally, I configured both the laptop and the desktop to use ethernet instead of dial-up.
Last week I smoked again for the first time in four years. It was nothing, really. Linda and I were curious about cigars, so we bought one. We were so pathetic. We took ten minutes just to choose one. We didn’t have a way to light nor cut it, so the guy gave us matches and a blade, which we didn’t know how to use. (The guy eventually cut it for us.) Once cut, I tried to light it, in the process wasting several matches and soaking one end of the cigar with my spit.
Eventually, we lit it. I smoked it like a cigarette; she smoked it like a joint. (I heard you’re just supposed to puff a cigar instead of inhaling it, which we did.)
Tonight, I considered taking up smoking again. It was something I had joked around with Linda about last week, but watching Sex in the City was a further reminder.
I don’t know if it’s the subliminal advertising or the sudden intake of nicotine into my system last week. I keep thinking that it’s nothing, really. Just a little bit of smoking. I don’t smoke much, and I doubt I will ever become a chain smoker. What’s the harm?
I never really felt the nicotine the first time I smoked, anyway. I just liked the action of smoking, the way I blew smoke out of my mouth and nose, the way I flicked the cigarettes away at the end.
I wonder why I even consider smoking, though. It’s analogous to taking a knife and stabbing myself every time, really. If anything, it’s just evidence of my willpower losing to the nicotine or subliminal product placements.
I am very untimely. I always am, though I don’t mean to be. I realize that being late is a strong indication that I don’t care. It’s not so much that I don’t care for this one particular get-together or job, it’s that I just don’t care much for anything. Nothing ever bothers me much, and that is a problem.
I am worst in the mornings. I usually blame it on the fact that I’m sleepy, as though I am another person when I haven’t awoken. This is how I rationalize my lying, my cursing, my arrival to work several hours late. “It wasn’t me,” as the ever-wise Shaggy muses.
These are just excuses, though. I’m the one who is responsible for my actions. If I valued my job and my friends, I wouldn’t be making up excuses, blaming my imaginary scapegoat.
Damn it, I need to sleep earlier and wake earlier. All the forward clock-setting in the world won’t help if I don’t give a shit.
I like driving at night. My nocturnal sleeping habits keep me awake while driving. There is less traffic. I also find it easier to see at night. I contrast between the dark road and the headlights helps me identify moving cars.
I have an urge to speed at night that I can’t explain. Perhaps it is the open road, or the adrenaline rush as I slalom around cars at speeds well over the legal limit.
To me, speeding is an intellectual challenge akin to predicting the stock market. I am continuously analyzing the car movement patterns, attempting to choose the optimal lane. Once found, I push my car to its limits.
I used to be a patient person. I saw others become frustrated at the littlest things while I couldn’t care less. I taught my baby cousins the basics of arithmetic and spelling at their slow pace, insisting they learn instead of giving them the answers. I scoffed at those who drove wildly, cutting left and right for a car’s length advancement.
My patience has worn thin. I am not the patient, kind teacher I was. I rapidly weave through traffic, trying to gain every last inch ahead of others.
Gone along with my patience are my manners. More than once I have hurt those I care for because of my impatience or my stress. I answer questions as though I gaven’t a shit. I raise my voice in frustration at an exponential rate.
I don’t know when this change happened, nor why. I realize that there has been a change, and that I am not as carefree as I would like myself to be.
Increasing selfishness and a growing ego are setting in. I can feel it.
With secrecy and humbleness comes power. To act as a non-threat is to be a non-threat. Those who seek power must learn to act in a secret fashion, never revealing their true intentions.
Suspicions are never cast on the weak and kind. Friends receive trust, trust which can be manipulated for personal benefit. Stupid people are always assumed to do the obvious. The seemingly powerless will never be suspect when a theft of power has occurred.
Once power is obtained, it must be kept secret. With great power comes great responsibility. Unknown power cannot be intentionally stolen.
Once power has been revealed, others will be envious or scared of it. They will gather in number and in power. Theirs will be ever-increasing, until yours is no more.
Today I watched The Usual Suspects, re-affirming my long-held belief that anyone who ever does anything illegal should not brag. It is obvious to me that those who brag are those who lose. Feed your ego, go to jail.
Why do people have this need to brag? Most of the time, the reason they do a certain act is not to gain recognition or anything; an academic paper would have fulfilled that need.
People are usually involved in illegal acts due to necessity, be it for money or otherwise. Once the need is fulfilled and they are not caught, unfortunately, a feeling of safety and pride form. Pride that they beat the system and got away with it. Pride that they weren’t one of those fools who got caught.
This little felony becomes something they can reminisce about years, months, even days later. They will chuckle about it with their buds, about how they were so reckless, thus revealing how reckless they still are.
I believe that the trick to getting away with something is denial. Never admit to it. No matter how damning the evidence, until you yourself admit to doing the crime, there will always be that sliver of chance that you are innocent in others’ eyes.
The other trick would be complete honesty. Never lie. Always be truthful. Ergo, never do anything you would want to be caught doing.
I don’t like Windows. I don’t like the way I have to scan for spyware every time I surf the web. I don’t like the way the computers at work are constantly being taken over and set up as warez servers. I don’t like the way cruft builds up and slows down the computer every time I use it. I don’t like the way newer versions of software are always bulkier and slower (but oh-so jazzier!) than their preceeding versions. I don’t like the way the bomb known as the registry allows mystery software to hide data from me, threatening me of self-destruction if I meddled with it. I don’t like the way I no longer feel as though the computer is mine.
I hate stereograms. I’ve been trying to view them since I was in junior high school.
I remember in eighth grade how I used to have software that could actually create stereograms. I would print them out and bring them to school, making 3D “FUCK YOU”s and stuff; yet in the end, I was the one left out of all the fun.
Today Wendy brought back all those bad memories.
Apparently, she had purchased a stereogram book from Taiwan and smuggled it back to the States. She was cleaning her room today and found the book. When I informed her that I could never see them, she decided that tonight would be the night I started to.
For a couple of hours, she kept barking commands at me, telling me to do funky optical acrobatic stunts. (“Look at here with your right eye! Now, look there with your left! You’re moving your right eye!”)
The book had four different ways of viewing stereograms; we must have tried twelve. I’ve tried everything from staring into space to concentrating on Pikachu to putting a piece of paper between my eyes.
When I broke down and cried, she threatened me by withholding food. I tried and tried, but she herself finally broke and fed me.
It reminded me of those days when my mom used to force me to stay up and finish every problem in every section I was tested in.
There are certain songs that just irritate me to no end. One of these is The Anthem, by Good Charlotte. At first, all I could discern was, “I don’t ever want to be you, don’t want to be just like you….” It was the way the singer emphasizes the word “just” that irritated me the most. I don’t know why, call it an unjustified hatred.
Over time, the song was drilled into my head as I listened to the radio, and I was able to figure out more crap lyrics. This song seems to be about a non-conformist describing his oh-so-cool rebelliousness that everybody speaks of these days. In the midst of the song, though, he takes an intermission from his song and starts saying: “Shake it once that’s fine, shake it twice that’s okay, shake it three times you’re playing with yourself….” Right. A little consistency here, please?
Another song that hit the airwaves like a storm and, luckily, left just as quickly was Cameltoe by FannyPack. I can but attribute one reason to this song’s success—people’s naitivity. If the people who heard this song had, as I have, known long ago what a camel toe was, this song would not have made it to the number one spot on Z100 when I first heard it. (As a side note, some of you may sneer at me for listening to Z100. I do so out of lack of choice. Please let me know of some good alternatives.)
This is essentially a poor song. The beat was awful, the vocals sucked, but, but, but… it was about camel toes. And hence it becomes a great song to many ears.
I really need a better source of music while I’m driving.
Whenever I sense something wrong with my friends, I immediately ask questions.
Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?
I cannot help it. I must. I dislike being unable to help, the feeling of helplessness.
But there is a limit to caring, apparently. Sometimes caring becomes pestering. Sometimes the other person just wants to be left alone. Sometimes even the closest brothers and sisters can want her or his own privacy.
There was one point in time when I thought that I was good at the art of distraction—I could talk to a person who was visually upset and then slowly steer clear of that topic, eventually leading to jokes and having that person forget all about their problems. I don’t know if I’ve lost my touch, but recently it seems that I have been more of a nosy bastard than a caring friend.
On the flip side, I also feel that some of my closest friends distrust me sometimes. Because of their reluctance to share with me their personal feelings, I feel that they do not trust me as much as I trusted them. It is not a very good feeling, though, I realize that not too many of my friends have actually heard my personal problems either.
I can’t tell if it’s because I’m so mellow or it’s because I don’t show my feelings most of the time.
As a friend, you have to trust me fully. You may question certain kinks in our friendship, but I have yet to abuse your trust.
I have put more effort into this friendship than for any other. For our friendship’s sake, I hid my feelings. In the end, I let the truth out. Because that’s what friends do. They tell the truth.
I went back to the city to deal with this jury duty nonsense, and stayed the following day to celebrate Brooklyn-Queens Day. Upon my return, I discover that my laptop now displays inverted colors. Red, green, blue, and white are now cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, and vice versa.
At first, I was horrified. Now that I’ve grown used to it, I kind of like it. It makes my laptop seem so much more ’leet.