2002-10-18 - 7:46 a.m.

Another breakfast-before-entry day. Now I have Corn Flakes stuck in my teeth.. argh.

I went to see the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra last night :o) It was quite interesting, and at some points very moving. At other times it was so-so. Still, it was an experience I'm glad I didn't miss and I'm sure going to be there next month too. Actually, I'll probably be going twice next month, once for the Beethoven (I think) Symphony, and once for the Shaolin Monk performance: Wheel of Life.

So.. WHAZZZZZZZZAPP?

Oi.. I'm kinda tired. I've been tired for days because I was short over 5 hours of sleep at the beginning of the week. It's made work a bit hard because I keep losing focus. God I want coffee. It's been the hardset thing not to have any :o( Damn my addictions...

Speaking of coffee, I've noticed my left foot twitching a lot lately. At first I thought it was because my new boots are too tight and until they wear in, they press a bit on the sides of my feet. But then I noticed that even if I take the boots off, it still happens. Well, it could still be the boots, but I don't really think so. Anyway, it's significant because I haven't had coffee in.. um.. well since at least August 17th. Hey, cool, yesterday was my 2 month anniversary of abstinence from alcohol, coffee and pot.

Anyway, another thing of interest is that the last time I quit caffeine for an extended time, I started getting wicked cravings for it after about 3 months. I was living in Toronto and leading an extraordinarily healthy lifestyle for a while. I thought I had the coffee habit kicked completely, but then I found myself craving pop badly and after indulging in that form of caffeine for a while, I one day just made the decision to go to the cafeteria for coffee with a bunch of coworkers. I kept saying I was bad for doing it, but they didn't seem to think I was.

Hmm.. I was just thinking back and it's only been in the last few years that I was really into coffee again. When I lived at Bay street I never drank coffee, and the place before that, Darwin crescent... I can't seem to remember drinking it there either. I know I didn't use my coffee-maker there. I'm sure I bought some coffees at school, but that isn't the same somehow.

Now that I've been thinking so hard about it for a while, I'm realizing again what a terrible substance coffee is, and I've lost that craving that I had at the top of the entry. Good. I know it'll come back though .. :o( They need a patch for this stuff.

I'll just tape a coffee bean to the inside of my eyelid.

I just remembered a thought I had a few days ago. I was looking at some girls and pondering how they looked and if I found them attractive when I realized they looked too young. It made me think: what age am I looking for in a mate right now? Sometimes I talk about myself as being old, but I realized that I wouldn't want to be with a girl who was much less than 25.. say around 23 at the youngest. Any younger and she would be too immature.. I'm really starting to get irked by immaturity in those around me. Anyway, it really made me think because I don't think of a 25 year old girl as very old.. I think of her as just old enough to know what's what with her life and what she's going to be doing in a few years. And so that reasoning applies to myself, too.

Work went well yesterday. It turned out to be one of those days where I couldn't get started in the afternoon but then right at 5 I was on a roll and didn't want to leave. It took a long time to wrap my head around a new problem because what I thought was going to be easy is in fact rather tricky and still only half done. However, I was able to get a display going that shows which files are currently being downloaded and their progress. It doesn't update very frequently, only every 10 seconds, and the code is horrendously inefficient, but it's fine for our current purposes.

I just spelled inefficient with the doubled letters wrong: "inneficient". I wonder what it is about my mind that makes me do that. I've done it for as long as I can remember. I also had a hard time remembering the difference between "b" and "d" when I was a kid, but don't we all?

So yeah, for most of the afternoon I sat there and groaned and bitched and got up and walked around and made tea and ate cookies and surfed the web and groaned and bitched and groaned and laid my head down on my wrist rest and groaned and bitched and bitched and groaned and sat on the can to think. Nothing was really helping.. this problem was really bitchy. I must have gone through a dozen different ways of doing it in my head and none of them seemed quite right. I'm an extremely picky software designer. I'm extremely picky in most things I do, but software design is the one place I can't be picky enough.

Anyway, I finally ended up going with the simplest route I could, regardless of the fact that I'm creating and deleting the whole list of download objects every time the display is updated. Currently this is every half a second. So whatever. And when I add in the historical updates to the list, I'm going to be reading and parsing an XML file twice a second just to display this list of updates. Who cares. If we get work from this company I can design it for real.

Anyway, today I have to wrap up this shit quickly and then move on to the main application. There's still quite a bit to do with it. I wish I would get some feedback from Ollie. I wonder if he's run the program yet. I can't really complain because he's never been paid by the company and he's done plenty of work for us. I think I was the only person who said no to being paid partly in shares. In a way I feel bad because I made (and make) lots more money than the other people at the company, but in another way I feel like that is justified because I do the most important work.

Ok, enough work talk. And then there was home. I was graced by an easy meal since Mark had made "spaghetti sauce". At least he fried some ground beef to go in the canned pasta sauce. It wasn't bad, actually.

On the roommate down side, Mark pissed on the toilet seat again yesterday. On the up side, he cleaned it before I got home from the symphony. Hopefully with his ass. Disgusting mofo.

On the roommate up side, Mark left me $60 for rent, unfortunately a few days late from when he said he would and $90 short, but I appreciate the gesture. It's a good thing we won't be living together for very long... oh .. wait, this is the "up side". Oops, I'll shut up.

So.. what else? I'm biking to work today. I think... Yeah, it's not raining today so I'm biking. I got the long johns on and everything. Look out, baby, here I come! On my bike! I have to keep reducing the pudge. I realize I've been eating a bit more lately, and I think it's because of the season changing. I sure do want to snack all the time. I have to pack a lunch yet and I don't think it would be a good idea just to bring a can of beans and some bread. I may have to, though, I can't think of much else.

It's weird, I've got a craving for food that isn't sweet, but that is meaty and salty. I don't know exactly what would satisfy me, though. I'm sooooo tempted to eat out for lunch today but I'm telling myself no. No no no. Sometimes I think I'm overreacting because, hey, I have $60 in my pocket right now and I'm doing good for finances.. But then I think "I just spent $60 for me and Tanis to go to the symphony last night.". My average weekly personal spending for August and September was $25 a week.

Annnnnnnyway. Whatever. Must go make some lunch and make some bike to the office.

Brrrrrr... -8C.

A chilling goodbye....

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