a ba'b'ian journal

old stuff


  • January 28, 2001
went to a superbowl party at john brodack's place. i talked a little to sherry, the missus. she was being the congenial hostess and devoted wife. she is 16 years younger than him, 10 years older than me. closer to me than him, but two teenage girls, so they are join by the common enemy. she was talking with marion, wife of dr john mcnsomething, who works in training at fedex and has worked on my project, compass. they were talking about how to make the world a better place, i said peace love and understanding. she said that was her generation's choice. at the end of the party i asked her about it, and she said it was a secret, they were talking about religion. shame. but somewhere in there, she got down on her knees and was cleaning up a spill from the dog's water dish, and i was watching this loving, devoted person, and i got hit by a shot up her blouse at her cleavage. and this was after like three beers. she was too young for the free love stuff. i am sorry? should i be? i cant helpa little bit of lust, but i guess i chould get over it. it doesn't mean anything anyway. just what i need-- another woman who wont sleep with me.

  • January 26, 2001
a generation lost in space with no time left to start again.

wisdom is less and less every day. less and less what? less attachment, less hate, anger, fear.

saw aimee. didnt recognizer her as she was walking in. the short hair. maybe the color is a little darker. talked about the position. dont know if she's interested.

saw clockwork orange on dvd. and it was odd that i didnt feel any symapathy for alex, our humble narrator.

  • January 25, 2001
the new pc card ethernet couldnt get an ip from roadrunner. must not be the card. i guess i need to connect it to the desktop.

i suggested to aimee that she apply for an open manager position in my department. kind of weirded out by the prospect. i doubt it'll go anywhere. and she doesn't get involved with people from work-- would be my loss.

michele's birthday is february 4

  • January 24, 2001
based on the difference in what he's doing and what he said, george w. isn't the same person that the supreme court appointed president.

i had a food issue. i got some fast fixin chicken nuggets, like a three pound bag for 5 bucks, and when i tried them i didnt like them, too peppery and not so good, but i figure i can eat anything. so i ate some, and later i ate some more, and i think on the third try i was looking at them closer and i noticed that they didn't even really seem all that much like chicken. it seemed kind of like a spongy paste with maybe some chicken broth flavor. so i looked at the ingredients. it says chicken meat at the first, then breading, and spices, but then dough, and of course, soy protein. it really tastes pretty nasty. i really hate to throw food away, but i chunked the rest of that plate and the rest of the bag. the bag does say if it doesnt meet your expectation send in the proof and receipt, but i aint gonna worry about. chalk it up to experience. read the freaking label. i just didn't think they could mess up chicken nuggets. i mean is chicken so expensive that they need to use filler?

i saw a weird thing happening in a cloud of smoke. there was a little bitty fire on one side of the freeway riding into work. maybe leaves or a dozer pile, pretty far off the road. but you would only notice if if you followed it back from this hhuge black cloud that was hanging way on the other side of the road. if it was just from the wind, it would have kept blowing, but it was all gathering together in a cloud maybe a quarter mile away. and as i drove up i guessed and then saw what was the cause, if not why. there was a lake under the cloud, and somehow that did something to trap the smoke over it. thermal current rising, maybe.

i called michele at work, and she said i was a jerk for just calling her and thinking she doesn't do stuff all day. they really do keep her busy. and i'm noticing that i am a jerk.

  • January 23, 2001
i watched much of the supplemental dvd from fight club. deleted scenes. making of stuff. one scene the words that came out of marla's mouth. "i want to have your abortion"

so what is the best beatles tune? i've beenlistening to "1" the cd of theyre number one hits. maybe all you need is love, yesterday, or hey jude. probably that's just a bogus question and there is no best song. the cd is a strange experience, though. in the anthology series, all the songs are slightly new variations, so i can accept the new ordering as a new thing. but for each of the songs on one, i am familiar with that specific version on the original disk in relation to the other songs on that disk, and in listening to 1 it seems discordant to get them out of context, or in the wrong order. and putting the early beatles next to the late beatles is just something that sounds wrong. clashing. discordance. it seems pretty odd. it just doesn't sound right in a slight way at the boundaries between songs, though the songs themselves are good. rough edges, perhaps.

my general doctor is from long beach. visited south, but not north. some of these doctor kids look like they might be in high school.

  • January 21, 2001
date in intro to database systems has a claim that has affected my outlook on object oriented programming. his claim is that all subtype should be contraint subtypes. for example, we have a type "ellipse", which is defined by its center and major (a) and minor (b) axes lengths (a >=b). and by the way, the area of an ellipse is pi*a*b. a subtype of ellipse would be a ciricle, which is an ellipse with the contraint that a = b. a variable that is a circle could become a non circle by changing its a or b. there has to be a distinction between variables of a certain type and the type of their values. an ellipse variable might contain a value that is actually a circle type, but a circle variable can't be allowed to contain an ellipse value. so their are some restrictions on what methods can be inherited. variable subtypes can inherit all observer methods that just return data, but there must be restrictions on the mutator methods (or you could have problems with a circle variable containing a noncircle). but the odd claim is that all subtypes must be using specialization by contraint. subtypes are subsets. some systems (and this is what i'm used to) might say that colored_circle would be a subtype of circle, but date claims that they really are different kinds of things, and should be treated as separate types. a circle as defined before has no color, so it can't be a colored one (!). so there is kind of a deep semantic flaw in the way i've been looking at java objects. one type extends another, but by adding to it, it really is no longer the kind of thing the old one was, but it does have the old abilities. it is said they implement interfaces, but thats to just give a list of things that can be done, what abilities are there. but what defines what something is?

an expert knows of more wrong ideas. a novice does not yet know that they are wrong.

  • January 19, 2001
that's an interesting problem. if you read a book, you form an image of what is happening, and the scenes involved. if you then watch the movie based on it, it won't match what you envisioned, and you will invsariably be disappointed, if you can't separate it out. also, seeing the movie locks you into images if you read it later. there is also the problem of trying to shoehorn long stories into movie length. dune. theyre going to make a live action lord of the rings. it's going to have some trouble. and they are going to make a harry potter movie. a whole book?

i think i'm even getting a little friendlier. scary thought. i was thinking i'm turning into a true blue psycho.

i just about filled out my wish list. citizen kane is not out on dvd. boo hiss.

what was that paul mccartney song from my childhood. band on the run?

these are the best times of life. the water runs into the cracks.

a smile is a glorious thing. infectious. shared. they say the external can cause the internal.

that was differrent. with robert i had been chummy i guess, with a lot of personal interchange, but a lot of kind of kidding, and fairly contentious behavior. he's generally grouchy. his lady-love is training to be a massage therapist, from being a nurse. and i said it wasn't legitimate. he was furious-- livid comes to mind, he kept asking me to repeat, as if i would stand down. i do not submit. he said not to insult his future fiance. and closed with "i will accept an apology." trying to browbeat the wrong psycho. so life goes on. he gives me the cold shoulder. next, one of the server programs isn't running, so he goes around me to the lady next to me, and she comes to me. and he's working on a piece for me and finishes it up for me, and i come up with some lame thing about how i'll finish hooking it up on monday. and he's all cheerful about how that's good. i had no reason to say. it's nothing to him. so we've hit a point where we were almost friends-- i was going to get him to do an off work favor for me, aimee who lives by him was going to drop off some books i loaned for him to take back. then we bumped back to being neutral. i take it as an opportunity to be less disruptive at work. we tended to chatter a lot at work, and the pods are so open that i'm sure it was bothersome. one guy actually often wears ear plugs. i shouldn't be using work to satisfy personal connection needs, anyway. so this will enable me to be properly quiet and focus on work.

man, i've been getting it wrong for years. it's not "can i help", it's "let me help"

  • January 15, 2001

i'm drawing a blank.

it seems like i get in a sort of fake good mood when i go see my psycho. so its kind of a good day

  • January 13, 2001
went to denim and diamonds. wimped out and didn't dance. but there was this one girl that i almost went up to. i gotta get into shape. anyway, you know how in movies they'll have someone gorgeous (sandra bullock comes to mind), and they'll stick glasses on to sort of indicate that they are suppose to be unattractive (ok, so they tend to use pretty ugly looking frames). well this was her. tallish long red hair. was with a blonde and a little tiny girl, also four-eyed. i guess there were too many of them. and it is too loud to talk in there. i hope it was inspiring.

i had the knife in my hand

i upgraded the ram in my laptop. doesnt seem to help much though, though i havent run jbuilder yet. i need to get a big new hard disk for my desktop. as for other stuff i still need to get. i need to get some more they might be giants. Michele put me on to them. they are a fun band, a little weird and into the nonsense stuff, but i can deal with that. im thinking maybe i should get some drums (preferable an electric kit), but i'll see how the toy drums work out. they are actually pretty neat. there are some canned rhythms, but i can slow them down to learnd how theyre played and play along and practice, and speed them up as i learn. i might be able to learn some stuff this way. i need to get a real amplifier. i really should fix up the speaker sitting in my closet. put it in a box, and conneect up the tube amplifier i have if that still works. i guess i could use a car booster (i think i have one sitting around) and a preamp. I've been wanting machine tools for a long time, though i don't know if i'll be ammbitious enough to use them. robots. gadgets. i'd like to make a little steam powered something. make me take thermodynamics, will they. some movies to get: help (i just have to have that scene where they are singing, i think it is, ode to joy, or something in german) hard days night, holy grail, joe's apartment, fight club, 2001, clockwork (no time for the old in out, love. i've just come to check the meter), easy rider (though popping it into the dvd doesn't make you a rebel)

the mona lisa's smile is strange. i think if you look just at it, it doesn't seem to be a smile, but with the rest of the face, it is one. trippy

  • January 6, 2001
ok, well the doctor showed up and cut that last one off. and in the evening i'm too busy sleeping. they're playing don't let medown here in the theater atmalco on the square, waiting for traffic, lot's of people here at 1 saturday afternnoon, nice review in the paper. big oscar contender and all. so with drumming, you get into this groove, a slightly altered mental state, which seems similar to what you get in drawing. i hadn't noticed it, but i suppose playing the piano can get like that, if it's fluid and you're not struggling. more work, though. just my luck to be in the handicapped row, but its row 3, where i normally sit.

now i've seen traffic. too conventional. i dont care for michael douglas. really a letdown after requiem for a dream

  • January 4, 2001
starting up writing again. what am i up to? a hundred and ninety pounds. time to be losing weight. but i'm sitting here in the doctor's office. i was talking to cindy, the assistant. the world does seem to be well-populated with nice ladies. or maybe women are just well-disposed to be nice.

so what is happening? i've been on the whole non-dualism thing and trying to be a happier person. i finally got through William James' Varieties of Religious Experience. The neatest thing I saw in it was one guy who heard that anger and worry weren't necessary, that you could simply live without them, so he gave them up. James also makes an interesting distinction between once-born natural optimists, who just don't notice bad things (an optimist, btw. is someone who thinks his failures and problems have transient, local causes, not permanent, global ones--eg i was just having a bad day, not because i am a bad person), and the twice born people, who have understood that terrible things exist, and yet they have surrendered to them and made peace.

and i've been seeing this nice young woman, Michele, though not as much of her as I'd like. We really seem to think along the same lines, though she is much less inhibited than me, or maybe more self-indulgent if you want to put it that way. i suppose i like to think that i'm staying more focused on the goal of infinite happiness, and not getting too distracted by temporary pleasures (though i guess that's not quite right). well, she writes, and acts, and draws (she suggested a book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain that i'm still trying to get through. anyway, i really like her, but this time i know that we won't have any kind of serious relationship, but maybe we'll have more fun, and maybe we'll be friends. we still seem to be trying to see f we'll scare each other away, though. and when i called a couple of times last week, she seemed to have someone who had moved in with her.

i got a little toy drum machine. yay! $50 at best buy (man, i spent at least $1500 on christmas, maybe more like $2k)