Today, even though the sky is gray and cloudy, spitting cold rain, I’m oddly optimistic, and feeling good. yesterday I had a hard time focusing on things, and I feel it was in no small part due to a sense of disconnectedness (if that is such a word) at work and in my personal life.

I got on the phone with my buddy Matt last night and talked with him for about an hour to catch up, and it was great. I miss him, and his girlfriend Sophie, two of my best friends from college. I’ve felt, for the last few months, like people have been pulling away, and this is in no small part due to my poor skills at keeping people in my life. I’m noticing the message light on my machine does not blink anymore, not with the frequency it used to. That upsets me, and adds to my sense of loneliness a guilt that’s hard to shake.

From the New Yorker last week: the definition of Coulrophobia: morbid, irrational fear of or aversion to clowns.

Date posted: April 11, 2001 | Filed under friends, general | Leave a Comment »

Another sort of dull day; not a whole lot going on. I saw the Mead 1999 Annual Report show today- the rep came around with all the entrants lined up around the table, and brought pizza. Some fantastic work. Beautiful annual reports that must have cost a fortune to make.

Well, here goes: I’m writing out a check to T.Rowe Price for my IRA this year, after losing half my paper value since January. Makes me want to puke, really. As much as I hate thinking about throwing good money after bad, it’s not like I’ve lost any money, just my valuation on paper. Still, it’s depressing to see the valuation dropping that much.

On the positive side, I saw a guy driving a beautiful early-model 1210 Travelall to work this morning. Teal green, split grille, funky split arrow brake lights, no panels, and lifted about 4″. I want one bad, now. It’s the kind of truck where it could look very cool or very stupid, depending on what size tires you have on it and how it’s lifted.

Date posted: April 10, 2001 | Filed under general, money | Leave a Comment »

I woke up tired this morning, but after the thunderstorms had stopped and the sun came out, I smelled the first real spring morning we’ve had this year.

Jen and I did one of my favorite things yesterday: We took a walk down the waterfront in Canton to Fell’s Point and stopped at Lista’s, a sort of second-rate Mexican restaurant with a first-rate Margarita. She and I had spent an evening there our first night getting to know each other, drinking Margaritas and talking, on a hot summer night last year, up on the deck under an almost full moon. There’s something about the wind blowing in off the water, heat of the day rising from the floor beneath you, and watching the ripples and eddies below to make an evening special. I think I’ll always remember that evening as a fantastic one.

She is afraid now, that our relationship is reaching the boring stage, where we take each other for granted. I wish, sometimes, that I had the words to tell her how much I look forward to her company, how much I live to make her laugh, and how much I want to make her happy.

I heard back from the poster guy today! He was out of town. I’m going to order about 4 of these, and I can’t wait to get them in. I’m going to have to drop some scratch on framing now. I love the whole story behind this company, and the idea that they’ve been hanging on to overruns to sell

Date posted: April 9, 2001 | Filed under life | Leave a Comment »

Warm, overcast day today. I drove the Scout to the train station, and noticed a strange hiccup in the idle when she’s cold- a first. I think the choke needs to be adjusted, which is not a surprise, considering that I had the carb rebuilt almost three years ago.

It will be very good to have the top off her again this year, although I’m still scrambling to find somebody to do the bodywork. As it is, the sills behind the B pillars are going, and every time I get in the truck, I hear the B pillar on the driver’s side settle. I have almost all the money together for a new fiberglas tub, but I’m going to need at least that much more (roughly $4,000) to convince somebody to help me with the work.

My sister, meanwhile, is taking care of Bear, a chow/rottweiler/shepherd mix- he bit somebody a few days ago at his old house, Brian and Jill’s. Unfortunately, somebody got in the way of his fresh kill, an oppossum, and he defended his food like any territorial dog would. They’ve had it with him- in my opinion, he should have been leashed anyway-and so Jill asked Renie if she’d take him. The plan sounds good-she’s going to set up a kennel-type thing in the backyard, and open up the woodshed off the back of the house as his cover. I’ll sleep a little better knowing that she’s got a dog there to bark and keep watch over the place.

→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.

Date posted: April 6, 2001 | Filed under Scout | Leave a Comment »

Beautiful day outside. Ate lunch on the steps of the church. Tired now. Head hurts. Will take Advil.

Date posted: April 5, 2001 | Filed under general | Leave a Comment »

11:18 – Working on some scripts this morning, and I found all the old notes scripts from 2 years ago archived on CD. I also found most of the old sites I did at System Source on CD as well, except for the one I was looking for, The Jewish Times. It’s really good to see that I’ve not lost a lot of the reasoning and learning I did a few years back- I was able to identify problems I made two years ago and fix them, as well as look at some of the problems and begin to think about new ways to solve them. I’m really excited to get working on this.

Still no word from the Globe poster guy. That bums me out- I want a bunch of those.

I replaced cnn.com today on my links page with abcnews.com‘s news page; after a long relationship with cnn.com going back to about 1997, I can’t use their site anymore. it’s just too much hassle to find any news worth looking at. So I’m going to give the Mouse a try, and see if their newsfeed is any better. I might give the AP site a whirl after that, but other than those sites I don’t know who else has a decent online newsfeed.

As for other news sites, I can’t get over how much news.com and zdnews.com are the same. One REAL bad thing about this economic tailspin we’re in right now is that all the content portals have curtailed their reporting to the bare minimum- I fear in a few years that the only thing to read will be direct pulls off the AP newsfeed. Which is about all the current newspapers ever print anymore.

Baltimore-the City That Reads. Too bad the city newspaper, once home of H.L. Mencken, is now designed and written for a 7th-grade education level. No shit. Somewhere it was just published that this city is proud owner of the highest rate of syphilis in the country. Isn’t that nice.

Date posted: April 4, 2001 | Filed under Baltimore, geek | Leave a Comment »

11:00 – Today is a beautiful spring day. I got to spend about 15 minutes outside at lunch, basically walking to and from work. It had better not rain this weekend, or I’m going to go out of my mind.

I got Dan to set up permissions on the Scripts directory at billdugan.com, so I’m starting to get back into working in Perl. My ultimate goal will be to have this log set up as an online form so i can enter text and have it read out of a text file on the server. Then I’ll work on database stuff, after I’ve mastered getting it in and out of a simple text file, and formatting the page the way I want it. With the condition of my office, and the brutal realization that A. I’ll never be able to get a static IP for my NT box at the house via DSL for less than $40/mo, and B. it’ll take me another three months to get the basement/house wiring/server closet finished at this snail’s pace, I’d rather have the scripting access set up on the server to work from either at home or at work.

I started reading a $30 ‘Learning Perl’ book I got at the now dying Bibelot down in Canton; somehow I’m ready to get back into this stuff. I feel like my mind is opening up with possibilities and it’s soaking up information like a sponge. It’s an exciting feeling.

I need to find the Visual Quickstart Guide to CGI I bought two years ago- that was the book that seemed to work the best for me.

Teller the cat, after making a slow recovery from some eye booger problem, turned up lame yesterday. He’s not using his left front paw too much, and last night was remarkably laid back- more so than usual. I figure he must have sprained it jumping off the tower of crap in the living room yesterday.

3:55 – Today is almost blindingly dull. If I don’t stop working on this site soon, and get back to designing, I’m going to lose my damn mind. The Flash stuff is over for the time being, and the client keeps postponing the meeting. The only bright spot has been finding the old Perl scripts and playing with JavaScript a little bit. My back hurts and my eyes are tired. God, do I sound like a whiny bitch.

4:55 – Not much better. I want to go home.

Date posted: April 3, 2001 | Filed under geek | Leave a Comment »

On the train to DC this morning. Feeling tired (thanks daylight savings) and sick (sore throat.) Jen and I drove to Laurel yesterday to hit some thrift stores and do some cheapo shopping; the Salvation Army store was closed, so we couldn’t drop off a carload of donations. (List: a box o’ pants, from when I was thrifting about 7 years ago, and buying Levis and Gap khakis that didn’t fit for outdoor contracting; Shirts from high school, and a black turtleneck that didn’t fit when i bought it.)

New favorite store: Rugged Wearhouse. Bought a Timberland windbreaker for $40, marked down from $90, and a pair of Levi’s for $17. gotta love that.

2:30 PM: Flash sucks.

Saturday night was the Addy awards here in DC. We all got dudded up in our wedding suits and taffeta and co-mingled with the beautiful people from the DC design scene. The whole evening was open bar, so it sort of became a race to get as liquored up as we could on someone else’s dime. Very fun, very interesting peoplewatching.

globe_poster

After that was over, we hit Bedrock Billiards up in Adams-Morgan and played bar games until 3am. I haven’t thrown darts in about 7 years, and I forget just how much I love to. They didn’t have a foosball table, which sucks- I need to get some foos-zen going again. Let us now doff our caps in memory of the now-deceased 75-cent Tornado at the mighty Fletcher’s in Fell’s Point. Amen.

Cool site of the day: a no-name poster site selling original Globe Printing Company stock. I want several of these. They’re bad-ass as all hell. I e-mailed the guy today to get some prices on some of the better ones.

5:30 PM: Flash rules.

Date posted: April 2, 2001 | Filed under general | Leave a Comment »