Category: Stress

This is pretty gross

May 24, 2004 /

Before I was born, my father had surgery for periodontic disease. They gave him a local anaesthetic, cut his gums open, pulled the flaps up above his teeth, and used metal tools to scrape away the dead tissue underneath before sewing them up again.

I’m a six-year veteran of badly administered braces, and I’ve had five regular teeth pulled plus four badly impacted wisdom molars. I am no stranger to dental horror, but I really want to avoid the above experience. Thus it was that yesterday, I began flossing.

It makes me feel old and boring, and when I swish water around in my mouth, it feels like my teeth have shrunk.

May 18, 2004 /

If anybody knows why TSQL has ten thousand date formats and the ability to guess how much two words sound alike, but no capacity to find and remove one character from a string, please tell me.

May 17, 2004 /

I forgot to mark down a deposit a while back, which means I have about $350 more than I thought I had, and that’s nice. According to my checkbook, though, that’s now about $150 less than I should have, and I haven’t missed another credit or debit in at least seven months. I must have screwed up something big last fall.

The annoying thing is that thanks to the Interweb, I can always see my current balance in relatively real time, but that’s inaccurate because paper-based checks still lumber around like elephants (not that electronic transfers are in any way instant, but there’s no chance of them getting forgotten in somebody’s pocket). The whole point of my check register is that it’s supposed to be more accurate, because I record all transactions as if they took place instantly; since it relies on a human agent (me), though, it’s fallible, because I am fallible and my arithmetic doubly so. I’m tempted to just reset my check register balance to what the bank tells me it is, but then I’m sure some transaction that’s in the register but hasn’t yet posted online would sneak up and blackjack me. And anyway, it’s bad policy to trust the bank blindly.

If I could find the error–either online or in my register–this would all go away, but I’ve tried several times and I can’t. I’d go back all the way to the beginning of my account history, if I could, but the Interweb only lets me go back six statements. I’d use my paper statements, except I immediately rip them all up and throw them away on principle. After all, they don’t tell me anything I don’t know!

This problem would also not exist if I wasn’t a moron.

April 23, 2004 /

Did okay on the final, I think. And it stopped raining. Today is back but on probation.

April 23, 2004 /

In forty-five minutes, I have to walk a good half-mile from the bus stop to my dreaded Prob and Stat final. In the pouring rain. Today is fired.

None of this, of course, applies on Tuesdays

April 22, 2004 /

We’ve developed a pretty good collective work ethic, really. Maria and I both get home around 6, lounge for a bit to recover from the stress of the day, and probably change clothes. I’ll hit my RSS feed, friends page and email. We decide what we’re having for dinner (almost always pizza, beans and rice, or leftovers of the above) and heat it in some fashion. We sit at the table and eat while watching an X-Files episode (into Season Three and going strong). We dump the dishes in the sink.

This is the point where we discuss getting some work done, and I usually go in and at least sit at the computer, where I do the email / friends / rss dance again. We talk for a while about how we should be studying, and sometimes Maria will actually study. I basically just talk about it. I brush my face and wash my teeth while Maria takes a shower. Most days we read aloud–we finished Small Gods a little while ago, and have started on Neuromancer. We bring up the subject of homework; Maria, because she is diligent and responsible, actually does some. As for me, you know, by now it’s past 2200 hrs and I have to get up early, is it really even worth starting at this point? I usually get a phone call or call somebody around then, and Maria talks to Graham, Bee, Michelle or somebody via phone or IM. We’ve both likely crashed by midnight.

Like I said, it’s a pretty good work ethic. Except for my work.

March 30, 2004 /

Oh, and Dreamhost sent out an announcement last night saying that the downtime / slowdown was caused by a DDOS attack. I guess I believe them, but I don’t understand why NFD shows up while the front page completely refuses to load. Did they somehow break PHP?

March 29, 2004 /

Grr. I like the fact that I have an insanely cheap deal with Dreamhost, but apparently the site’s been really slow lately, and until about ten minutes ago it was completely dead. If it doesn’t stay up, my apologies. If it looks like the downtime is enough for me to consider switching hosts, you can check my LJ for updates. Bleagh.

I should thank Aleeezon for very kindly putting me up this weekend, post-bacchanal. Will’s wedding was nice. Nobody fell down. And now back to the sweet, simple work that is failing my classes.

January 28, 2004 /

Getting really sick of deleting MyDoom junk mail. Most of it’s not even to me, it’s to “ted@xorph” and “stan@xorph” and other nonexistent addresses. The perils of owning a domain! And having your address as the default redirect, anyway. I should change that.

Haven’t seen a thing on my U of L or Hotmail addresses, though. Way to go, U of L and Hotmail.

Confidential to somebody who goes to theatre websites and also the Lexington library, I don’t know who: You have MyDoom. Please download the cleaning tool, stop sending it to me, and never open an attachment again.

January 16, 2004 /

Gave blood today. Hoping this doesn’t bode ill for the Street Legal debut later tonight. I’ll try not to throw anybody. Also, because of the way my blood sugar finger-prick and today’s blood iron finger-prick are positioned, I can squint at the middle and ring fingers of my left hand and pretend they’re a hammerhead shark.

Oh, and yeah. Project Improv is putting on a couple of non-improv comedies this weekend and next: Peace by Aristophanes and Fools by Neil Simon. I’m running sound for both, as is my wont, and Yale plays an old woman in the latter, so that pretty much guarantees all the fun you can have with or without pants. There’s some kind of afterparty thing (after every show) at Bearno’s, and Street Legal has been chain-ganged into performing something or other (after every show). Thus the debut. I won’t get to change clothes between now and then, so I’m going to be the only one not wearing jeans. Like… most of my life.

Have I ever mentioned that I don’t wear jeans? Well, I don’t.

Peace runs tonight, Sunday and next Saturday, and Fools alternates with that. I’d see Fools, if I were you, unless you’re really into Greek comedy. If you want to see anything at all. I’m… I’m just gonna leave, okay? We’re not really getting anything accomplished here.