So yeah, funerals are never fun, but I'm back from Rochester in one piece. It was good to see the family and the boys; Rochester is familiar.

Jess & I went to her work's picnic today; that was nice, cause she got a half day off, and we got to eat BBQ by Lake Travis. Or, rather, I got to eat BBQ and Jess had bread and pickles, but what can you do.

I'm learning Struts for JSP so I can make the dating site just oh so personable. So, between that and grillin', this weekend should be pretty easy and enjoyable.

As long as India and Pakistan don't blow up the world.

Ught.

i love you jess :)

so does blue.

Mmmm, Jess and I made Thai food last night and I had the leftovers today:

Delicious.

So uhm yeah, remember that letter I got a while back about sending all my money to Nigeria? Foiled again ..

"These 'advanced fees' often cost a bundle; there are cases where U.S. victims have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars".

Unreal. People actually sent them money. Probabily you deserve to lose your life savings if you suq that bad.

So now that I quit my silly job, I have much more time to spend on my "real" job, which is probabily a bad thing, because it doesn't take that much time. Yahoo is going to allow free personals, which directly competes with our idea to charge as much money as we can for something which people are used to not paying for. Yay, business model.

Go read this, it's an interesting article. I'm in it, although not by name, and I'm horribly misquoted, but it's still an interesting article.

And this is just beyond funny. I think I cracked a rib laughing.

Jess is home, the house is clean, and shes making me stuffed shells .. it's 78, sunny, and feels like Rochester in the spring.

I feel at ease.

But poor, poor pikachu does not.

Jess comes home today :)

Soo, I quit my job at the claypit, and as an added bonus, made $125 in tips on my last day of lunch.

The blisters on my feet will thank me; I'm just not cut out to be a waiter. The part that kills me is that this is some people's lives. There are people at the restaurant that have kids and families. To me it was an experiment - a "learning experience", as my parents like to say .. to some of these people, it's how they feed their babies.

Bizzare.

I think I've hit rock bottom in terms of being jess-less: i'm eating a cold Wendy's hamburger that I threw in the fridge yesterday.

She comes home in two days. I'm never letting her leave again.

I remember my boss, at my first real job, had one of those "Attitude" signs. You know the one I mean - wrinkled, photocopied many times, one step up from the kitchy "I'm calling in Dead" and "No Whining!" signs that secretaries hang in their cubes. The boss was crazy, a lunatic, and probabily not a great businessman, but he would point at the "Attitude" sign and make sweeping generalizations about how we control our own destiny.

(For those of you who know me, this was the same job that had the obese telemarketers who would sit on big cushions and mutter things like 'oh, it hurts' and 'i hate my life'. In fact, come to think about it, there wasn't a normal fucking soul in that entire office; Bill used to come into work still drunk from the night before, hours late .. There was that guy who would bring his baby into work, sit it next to him on the desk, and coo at it 'who is the baby? you are the baby .. yes you are! yes you are!' .. And Natelie had so much back hair, it used to spill out of her nasty tanktops she would wear .. I wonder what kind of attitude it takes to hire people like that.)

(As another aside, the boss used to berate his wife on the phone, calling her a fucking idiot and treating her like she was a piece of garbage; interestingly enough, they have still been married for however many years, he is still crazy, and she still has a hunchback. every time I see her, which isn't often, I stand up extra straight. What a zoo.)

(Haha, for those of you joining us from the Rochester area, I'll be happy to drop you their company address; I'm sure the company is still around, and could use a good office lacky .. The funk of 600-pound-unwashed-woman builds character. *puke*)

So fine, I'll shoot for the cliche' today. I control my own attitude, blah blah blah, and today will be better than yesterday. I'll get good work done today, not get sad, and Jess will be home soon.

Yay team.

This totally sucks :( I feel like I'm alone, like I'm nothing without her. It's her job, to go on these stupid week long liquidations, but it just isnt worth it; no amount of money - how much is it, a few hundred dollars? - is worth the time away from her, not this long. I could do a few days, we did it last time, but a week .. I feel so lonely. I've run out of motivation, distractions; beer, music, it just isn't working anymore.

Come home already, Jess.

I really do the same things I do when jess is here; cooking, complaining, sitting on the couch .. the tv shows are the same, the beer is the same .. texas doesn't change when she's gone.

But she is, gone, for the time being. And the same things I do; the things we do together .. they lack, they just aren't the same.

Shes become such a part of my life in one year, in five years .. It's surreal. I'm here, I'm fine - I'm not crying, or depressed, or even sad - but I'm not the same without her. I'm not whole, or complete. The house feels empty; the bed feels empty; I am empty.

five days.

I'm sitting on my porch, drinking coffee, and surfing the web. The stupid linksys product finally decided to work with a different cisco wireless card; hooray for small miracles. I'm going to go write a scathing review of it at epinions & amazon.

Since Jess left for a week, the house has fruitflies, the garbage is starting to overflow, and the air conditioner broke (thankfully in the "on" position).

I fall apart without her :(

Oh, and it's Petro's birthday, but he doesn't want anyone to know, so go wish him a happy birthday ..

drinkin' beer, eatin' pizza.

the life of a one-week-bachelor.

it kinda sucks. i want my jess back.

so spending three hours with linksys tech support didn't get anything working, but did make me realize how contagious apathy is. their "technicians" are so numb to the human on the other end of the phone; i ended up walking away from the conversation frustrated and not really caring if their stupid product worked or not. i think when he said "well, the product must be bad. you should return it", i realized that i didn't care what was bad; I just didn't want anything to do with it anymore.

working doubles suck.
jess being in miami sucks :(

my poor linksys access point is driving around austin in a ups truck :(

so jess and i are standing outside on the porch, looking around, watering the plants.

and jess says, "whats that?" and points at some red liquid dripping out of our tree. "is our tree leaking?" ..

then she says, "maybe its sap".

and then she says, "maybe its blood".

this is the snake living in our tree:

and this is the blood from a dead squirrel. that it just finished eating.

ught.

from Netscape's documentation:

Usually you work with Option objects in the context of a selection list (a Select object). When JavaScript creates a Select object for each SELECT tag in the document, it creates Option objects for the OPTION tags inside the SELECT tag and puts those objects in the options array of the Select object.

Fucking yeah, man.

So is this fun, or is it really lame?

I actually got a kick out of it :P go ahead, give it a try..

Look at me, I'm a statistic. Whutever.

Working today; off tomorrow; going to a bbq with some contextual kiddies tomorrow. Should be a nice reprive from html monkeying.

The other project is moving along at the pace of a small ant, but its moving; theres a sekr1t teaser if yer clever.

Overall, I enjoyed the interview, but nothing about the company really blew me away; I wasn't astounded at anything, and I kind of expect to be. It seems very corporate -- too corporate? .. Maybe I'm looking for too much out of a job, who knows - perhaps jobs aren't supposed to thrill and motivate, only pass time; perhaps not.

Regardless, today was pretty good. I was expecting some kind of interview, but for the most part, it was really a meet, greet, and chat.

The building is old and relative uninspiring, but they are moving to a brand new "swank" facility within the next few months; sounds good to me. The group's "war-room" was the most impressive looking of the building, with couches and large format printouts of architectures on the wall, but alas, it really is cube-land.

The people I met, and there were about three that I spent a fair amount of time with, seem both intelligent and nice, and all seem to enjoy their jobs. The overall user Experience group has a very standard process set in place, with handoffs and documents and guidelines, which is both intimidating and exciting(and useful, I guess; they used to do it the "fend for yourself" way of Trilogy, and learned it didn't work that well).

It's the sort of job that I could fall into a routine with, learning quite a bit and being generally challenged, but perhaps not very *excited*.

I can't really figure out if that's what I want next; something that doesn't *excite* me. Hmm.

Kansas City, on the other hand, seems kind of bland. I didn't really get a huge chance to explore, but from the casual drive-by of the entire city, I got the impression that its large, not very personable, and not very interesting. I don't know; everyone who lives there seems to have lived their for their entire life, born and raised, and would never leave. That either sounds ideal, or totally bizarre; it reminds me of either Rochester or Buffalo.

The Kansas City airport is awful, though; ught, what a mess of inadequate signage and poor planning. And I'm stuck here for another two hours :P