Well, here I am, back again for some more excitement. Just kicking back, procrastinating (i really ought to be reading some Networks shit for next week), and listening to some Tim Reynolds that Funkmaster Pink gave me last night. 'Tis an excellent album.

First, I'll finish my story that i started last time. Mixmaster H and I left Fargo here at around 10 last saturday, 10 at night that is. We drove to his hometown of Morris, MN, picked up his dad, and drove to St. Louis. We got there around 1pm on Sunday, and spent the rest of the day in the hotel room, awaiting our software demo the next day.

Sunday was my 22nd birthday.

The session blew major ass, on Monday. "Mix" and I didn't demo PlotMaker - another person did. He sucked it up, hard, confusing basically everyone in attendance (over 60 professional soybean breeders, etc). Thankfully we had the opportunity to speak for about 10 minutes after that, saving a bit of ourselves. Nowhere near the level of interest we hoped to see was generated, though, angering and saddening us. Alas.

So where do we go from here? Who knows... we've a few angles we may play, but it's anyone's guess at this moment. Because there was someinterest, though, I'm going to start working on a website for our little organisation (since we're not a true company yet, etc). All we need to do now is think of a name - and, so far, that's proving to be harder than we thought. Oh well.

I think I'm going to score some food; i'm not terribly hungry, but I am a little, so hell - if it postpones networks some more, it's all good. Have a fine evening.

Well hell, this could be a long entry, so i'll see about maybe taking a few hrs off early at work tomorrow so i can study more for the exam in Social Implications tomorrow. Since I have a good 70+ pages to "read". Bah.

By the way, as a side note, turns out I scored a 30/30 on my OS II test I took last week. Praise the gods! Totally didn't see that one coming... let's just all channel some positive energy in the hopes that I'll keep this run going.

The Goat had himself a rather eventful weekend, so I'll take a few dozen moments to recap the excitement. Friday and Saturday I didn't do a whole hell of a lot - if I remember correctly I just sort of putzed around and got some homework done (gosh, I never seem to do that on weekend nights...wtf). Saturday night, though, Mixmaster H and I took off for St. Louis to be at the demo of PlotMaker. The drive was about 14 hours, and the trip rather uneventful.. fairly routine highway travelling. Course, the events that transpired whilst there offer the most enjoyment upon reflection. I just realised that I can't much tell you all of it now, for that would spoil everything. Much better to keep the reader in a state of suspense. So, actually, I'll be lazy and just tell you more tomorrow. :)

Don't worry; noone got hurt. Physically, that is.

I suppose I'll mosey on over to my Social Implications text and nestle in for a good night's cram. Sleep well, and dream of someone that brings you a bit of light in life.

I don't have a huge amount of time right now, since I have to go get my hair cut and I may try to go lift after awhile as well, but... I just needed to quick vent for a second. Work was fucking bunk this afternoon. It just got really frustrating towards the end because I changed the functionality of an admin-side editor I'm creating for some of the websites I help maintain, and this change dictated that I change how the stored proc used for updating the records in the database works as well. Needless to say the thing worked damn near fine before I started fucking around with the proc, but then the editor happily decided to not do any updates. Of course, just to make my life joyful, it also decided not to tell me why it was pooched. After about an hour and a half of a wild goose chase I stumbled upon the reason it was breaking - something i should have thought about far sooner. Alas. Course, to fix it, i'll have to spend the better part of wednesday interfacing my proc with some other portions of the database to get it to work. I guess the thing that pisses me off is that the proc is really fucking simple (i'm just updating one field in one table of the database; i'm not dealing with any wicked logic or joins or any of that shit); i'm spending all this time to get one little bit of functionality implemented correctly. Oh well... you have good days, you have bad days.

Time to call "Colonel Kernel" and see if he wants to lift.

Tonight I started plugging away on my taxes. Goddamnit, it looks like i need to file a 1040. nice finding out about that after i'd done my 1040a. All because of a fucking $36.00 net reported on my 1099-b. Yay for education IRAs!! So it looks like i get to delve into the wonderful world of researching how in the fuck one completes the investments portion of the 1040 - like Schedule D. Fuck me...

And tomorrow's Black Friday. Alas.

Sleep well, faithful reader, and dream of glorious, happy lands - lands without federal income taxes.

Listening to some Sunny Day Real Estate ("How It Feels To Be Something On", a fine album) and drinking a tall glass of Brita-purified water. Ahh, the pleasures in life...

Today was a pleasant day. Work kept my interest level peaked, I got a few errands done - including finally getting some Carmax, I worked out with Steve, and I met with the other guy in my Operating Systems project group. We're working on the Resource Manager module of the distributed OS we're making, and I'm getting excited to work on it. I really get off on architecting systems, looking at things from the grand scheme and peicing all the little bits together. Of course, i still enjoy my lower-level implementation coding; I dig it when I'm in the zone, pumping out some phat programming wizardry, going at it all ninja-style and shit. But sometimes I need to pull myself away from that in an attempt to drive towards some balance.

I'm a balance junkie, what can i say?

I'm also a fucking Tower junkie. The Dark Tower, that is, by Stephen King. The whole series just rocks to beat hell. I read my first bona-fide Tower book, The Gunslinger, back out in California (so, something like 1996?), and I've been mesmerised by Roland's world ever since. Not only are the four books in the series amazing (the last three will be out in a year or two, supposedly), but so much of King's work connects with the series... books like The Stand, Eyes of the Dragon, Rose Madder, Hearts in Atlantis, Insomnia, and now even 'Salem's Lot bring it all together and enrich this place I can escape to now and again.

Oh, tonight I also crunched on PlotMaker some more. I wrote this visualization report this past weekend, and I extended it a little tonight to handle some mouse events and shit, besides just tightening the code itself and making the UI a little nicer. Hopefully it pays off.

I think I'll go venture across our hallway here in The Preserve and hit the shower. I'm almost out of words, so I'll spare you the pain of reading shitty writing (sshhh... i know what you're thinking!!). Sleep well, and dream of days yet to come and nights unforseen.

"Crank it to eleven, blow another speaker... I ain't got, I ain't got much to lose" - Citizen King

Yes, not a band that stood the test of time, I guess. They had a unique sound that caught my attention, back in the day when I worked at Disc Jockey in Bismarck. Hence, I procured myself an MP3. Good stuff.

I've got the playlist - the main list of MP3s I have - on shuffle. I haven't updated my collection in forever, since I just don't have a lot of drive to fuck around with p2p file sharing services as of late. Perhaps that's partly due to the fact my Qwest DSL **POWERED BY MSN!!!!** sucks major ass, and I can pull only maybe 22k/sec max. Wow. Just enough to tease you when transferring big files. With dialup, you just know it's gonna be slow, but with this shitty DSL you always hope for some good 'ol 50k/sec or higher transfers. And I'm always let down. Oh well...



Tonight's been nice and relaxing. I so needed it after the past few days, studying like mad for the OS test. Actually, tonight turned out to be pretty productive. I washed some clothes, did my Stats homework for Thursday, and did part of my Networks shit for Thursday as well. I left some for tomorrow night, though - figure I can't be too ambitious all at once. Oh, and I also read for my Social Implications of Computers class, and checked out a AAA-provided tourist guidebook of Canada. Now there's some pure, raw, clean-burning Tuesday night excitment! I found out - much to my suprise - that Saskatchewan has two pretty large cities within it. Of course I knew Edmonton and Calgary were up there, but I was totally in the dark about their population (over 700,000 each). Why I found this so profound is beyond me at this point, but I did. Maybe it's due to the extreme cold spell we're in up here in Fargo... or it might simply have to do with the fact I'm a spaz. I'll leave the conclusion to an exercise for the reader.

<... Everlast - "Ends">

Hmm... what to rant about? I've got the writin' bug, but I'm just not sure how to feed the monkey, so to speak. Perhaps I can just open the valve a little and let you, dear reader, take a peek at what's been on my mind as of late. Certainly school, for one, and PlotMaker, for another. Still really looking forward to the whole St. Louis trip this upcoming weekend. Other than that, however, I guess I'm not thinking about a lot else. Sometimes I think about getting some fine liquor (painfully, I'm out of Bailey's) or I dream about how I'll go about furnishing my new pad in Bismarck this May. Take tonight for example. I was being a good member of our notorious household in Fargo and cleaned up some of the newspapers near our coffee table. During this process I happened to find a sale flier for Herberger's. According to said leaflet, they've a sale right now, on stuff the Goat needs - cookware. I obsessed over their offerings, from Analon to Circulon to Emerilware, to some other crap that was almost $600 for a 10-pc set or something. I think I settled on the Emerilware - they have a set of 10 on sale for only $199.99; it looks pretty tight.

Besides dreaming of crazy ways to blow money I don't really have, I've started thinking of the womenfolk once again. I'd hoped to defer this for a longer period. See, after the failed experience back in November/December, my desire to persue another relationship was nonexistent. I guess I just didn't want to put up with all the shit that comes hand-in-hand with all the good things one can find by sharing yourself with someone. I still don't - the last thing I want right now is to be back in a relationship - but with valentine's day's cheesy commercialism creeping up soon, I can't help but notice that, well, I'm one in a very, very small group of singles in my circle of friends and aquaintances. Again, this isn't a huge issue right now (at other times, I'd likely feel pretty down about this), but it's just one of those things. It's the little imp that runs out from under the porch whenever I leave home, the one that pummels me with shit and taunts me with small utterances, always looking out for me, just making sure that I'm prepared for the day; ready to tackle the world's problems with a stone facade of uneasiness and doubt.

It seems that time is creeping forward faster, now - it's almost the Witching Hour. And especially on nights before workdays, I try to be in bed before the witches ride.

I leave you with the fine sounds of a live track by Metallica, from Woodstock '99: "Seek and Destroy". Sleep well, faithful reader. Slink in the dark tonight, between cars and through the alleys. Seek your nemesis - and destroy-ahhhh.

Right now, I'm on one of my aforementioned tuesday/thursday lunch breaks. My other roomate, "Coyote", cooked up some penne alfredo, for which I am ever so grateful. She's kind. :)

Operating Systems II today was absolutely smashing. Why? 'Cause I took my first test of the semester in it, duh! Aww, christ.. it was kinda bunk. Perhaps I pulled a B or a C on it, although who really knows. I've got a feeling that this exam is one of those where I come out of it feeling like a millionaire but I end up feeling like a bum cast off by all of us upright citizens when I see my real score. See, I recognised all the terms and had a pretty damned good idea of the concepts behind each question (like the differences between distributed systems and network operating systems coupled with middleware, how weighted reference counting works, the issues with process migration, etc etc), but I knew I left a few of the details out. I guess I'll just see how destitute I become next week sometime.

Since that bear is out of the way, I'm thinking I'll take the better part of the day off. I might read a little tonight, but it's really hard to say. I could just use some Goat time right now - 'tis been awhile. Curl up with a fat load of nothing and let my thoughts drift off, slowly, like a canoe resting on a mountain lake, inching farther away in the unknown world of midnight blackness. I'll let my dreams rise to the starlit infinity above, and become one with the world. I'll smile.

I shall restore my balance... I shall become whole again.

Bah... the Goat is tired, and tired of school.

This weekend was spent in lavish agony, reading my Distributed Systems text. I'm sick of that fucking book. Alas. Hopefully my studies shall pay off during my first exam on Tuesday. Truth be told, I'm a bit worried.

I did spend part of the weekend coding, however. Generally an enjoyable time, it was a refreshing break from the dull book by Tanenbaum and van Steen. I worked on creating a reporting plug-in for PlotMaker, the contract project my friend "Mixmaster H" and I have been working on - the one that will be shown off (to some degree) in St. Louis on February 17th. That was about all I did this weekend, though.

I just finished a major chunk of my Networks homework, as well, due on Tuesday. The little bit I've left myself will die slowly sometime tomorrow afternoon, since I work until 2pm.

'Tis midnight, so I'll cut this short and get ready for bed. Sleep well, and never lose sight of the real things in life.

Nothing too noteworthy today... worked an 8-5 shift at the office today, finishing up some shit i've been working on for the past few months, and hung out with some friends this evening. Had dinner at Applebee's - some chicken brocolli alfredo. Not too bad, but I've had far better Italian. Alas. Still made for an enjoyable time after a long day at work.

Plus, a tall Killian's helps. :)

That's it, I guess. I'm not feeling terribly witty at the moment, so my efforts are best diverted to more scholarly persuits - reading my Distributed Systems (OS II) book. Joy.

Sleep well, and dream of sunny days.

Hmm... seems the proverbial trucker's atlas i've got hidden away in my Vehicle of Destruction (read: "Ford Taurus") has given me some forward direction after all.

Today, I received an offer for employment from the engineering firm in Bismarck... of course, I'll be accepting said offer. The opportunity is wicked nice, the starting pay is pretty tight - all in all, "mighty swell". And, I get to move the fuck out of Fargo. If you, dear reader, have never visited this land, you're not missing out. It's flat - perfectly flat - and smells alternately of ass or sugar beets. Not a pleasurable mix. Bismarck, on the other hand, has topography, a real river, does not smell like ass, and is jus' plain purdy.

Strangely, what I'm most looking forward to is setting up my own place. Those who know me well, like the Lobster, Steve, or Funkmaster Pink might indeed think I'm off my rocker - since last summer in Bloomington, whilst completing my second internship, I decided living by myself blew. It blew a lot. Things, hopefully, are different now; instead of being in a massive metropolis by myself, I'll be back in little 'ol Bismarck, town of 55,000, where all my family is. Not to mention The Mexican, and for a short while, Toaster and the Chanimal, Katie, and the Lobster's sister.

See, having my own place lets me get a) my own kickass furniture, b) some new kickass cookware, c) a kickass entertainment system ... and I can host parties, get down with my bad self if i want to, etc etc. I just hope I can find a suitable pad.

Well damn, i can't think of anything more to say. Since I'm suffering stream-of-conciousness block (aka "duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh"), I will bid you farewell once again. Sleep well, and go foreward with smiles.

Well, I'm back from Bismarck, still in one piece. This is a good thing.

Right now, I just got a hankering to update the 'ol blog. I'm just sitting here, thinking about the year 3030. How we'll soon merge with machines, become one with the tools we've worked so hard to create. The ones I help create today. Dark, dark days lay ahead for us all.

Not a lot is new in my life. I'm in this limbo state, fresh out of a definate future. I'm single - and the well runneth dry as of late, and I've no particular idea where I'll be working come May when I graduate. It's really anyone's guess, but there stands a chance that I may get a job back in Bismarck at an engineering firm working on some really cool software. I might even help to manage some interns after awhile. It looks to be a "fantabulous" job. It'll blow my socks off! But if my socks stay on, so to speak, cause I don't get the job, I'll probably just stay working where I am now, in Fargo, if I can. It's a nice job; it can be hectic sometimes but it lets me flex my creative muscles - can't knock that too much.

My previous job, you see, was quite the stagnant sea of creativity. I worked at the main computer cluster at North Dakota State University, in a place affectionately called the "Service Center". My unofficial title whilst punching the clock there: "bitch". In a nutshell, I simply filled paper in the printers when needed, helped people print stuff in the back on the high-end colour printers, and answered peoples' questions. Not much of a creative outlet for a coder, much less a Goat. The people I worked with helped me stay sane, but I found myself fully drained and in need of some expression. Hence, my current title is now "database engineer". Word.

One nice thing about my job, besides letting me write some new code, is that I always have weekends off. Yay! So that lets me head back to Bismarck now and again, just as I did this past weekend. There we drank copious amounts of alcohol, both Friday and Saturday nights. Suprisingly, the Bailey's still remains (although not a lot...), but the Kahlua is toast, the Peachtree is almost gone, and there's hardly any Cruzan vanilla rum left. Alas. We all had a fun night, so I can't much complain. Steve came both nights, and so did some other friends - including the Lobster and her sister, the Chanimal, Toaster, Katie, and my best friend's bro "The Mexican". Fun times.

Aw, look at me, here I go rambling again... this whole rant needs a major unfucking; it's far too disorganised. Alas. Perhaps it's just all that thinking about the 31st century I've been doing lately... global apartheid and worldwide spiritual disconnection. In 3030, noone's feeling the love, noone feels quite right. Everyone wanders; everyone misses their cozy homes they don't have in a society of data mining and machine-driven life, in a land of information junkies and international broadcasting.

People flicker on and off, waver in and out, fly from light to dark and back again, in an antiseptic steel world of perfection.

Sshhh... listen - hold your lover close and watch for the sunrise. It's almost here.