Well, I think the cold finally broke last night. I feel better (for someone who woke up way too f'in early to feed the goofball and never fell back asleep).
Other than being a little tired, I feel OK, tho.
I'm excited... in a matter of hours, I'll hang out with trillain-san (again) and meet tallin and phinnia at the Galleria Mall. And a good concert is expected tonite.

The last couple days have been a bit of a blur. I despise being sick. Truly 100% despise it. Blah. But I caught up on some good reading and saw a couple of decent movies and I'm feeling mostly better which is good for hanging out at a mall.

Got my first GIS project. I hate to say it, but it excites me... I enjoy doing this stuff. I know I can do it and do it well.
Cocky? Yeah, but with reason.. I CAN do this.

My life has suddenly gotten Superbusy.
This weekend, of course, Jen and Robby are here and we'll hang out with friends and see a concert.
Next weekend is my brother's play. I'm excited to see the end results, but I'll be relieved when it's over, too. He's SOOOO UPTIGHT before the play. I know he'll be good, though and I know the play will be good, so it's all good. It'll be cool to see some of the extended family coming down to see Josh, too. Freddie's coming down, of course, and my uncle Jeff and aunt Janice (and possibly their kids: Jaime, Jonathon and Josh). I like my family most of the time. They're coolies :)
The unfortunate part is that this would be the weekend of the SARPA roleplaying event I enjoy being a part of.. but... family is a priority.
Besides, I ask alot of them, too... more on this to come.
The weekend AFTER I'm up in Syracuse at another conference and giving a presentation on my thesis project.

Other busy weekends are.. may 10th and 11th. Why?
Commencement!
I finally gradjeeate undergraduate university!
Only 9 years later! :P
The plans are.. as the first ever Environmental Engineering class, the faculty are going to take us and one guest (we have to pay for any other guests we take with us) to Daffodil's, a super fancy-schmancy restaurant. So (and I think I may have mentioned this), I'll bring Josh, mom and grandma.
And then Saturday, I walk on stage, shake the dean's hand and walk off in front of my attending family (not sure how many people will attend, since I'll just do this again next year, too)

In other news, tommorow is Marc's birthday. He WANTED to come over here and cook US dinner, but we nixed that idea. Instead, we might meet HIM at some restaurant or other. I'm SO thrilled (not). Still.. it'll (hopefully) be a decent dinner out... silver lining and all that.
Hopefully, I'll have worked up an appetitite at the gym, too!
I miss the gym :(
I'm such a freak.

Not much else I can think of that I need to say. So, I'll go attend to my guests and watch "Whose Line'' with them.

So, if the weather holds out, we're headed to Letchworth today. I'm simultaneously glad (our group will get it out of the way) and annoyed (our group wasn't exactly prepared.)
I spent most of yesterday getting things ready: getting the conductivity/temp meter calibrates, opening the pH tape, making a prototype water collector (Jean was supposed to do this. She got all the stuff, but she didn't put it together. Not that it was difficult. Actually, I felt very engineer-ish duct taping a sampling cup to a long extendible poll) and heading out to ECMC (WITHOUT GETTING LOST! HA!) to get sample bottles for the Nitrate tests they are doing.
Meanwhile, everyone else.. didn't do much.
It's all our faults that we didn't get on it all sooner. We knew we were going out today, we just didn't DO anything for it.
I'm a little irritated at one person, in specific, actually.. Heather. She's extremely talkative, extremely bossy and, so far, hasn't done much for the GROUP. *annoy*

On another topic, my work computer is broken :(
Well, it's not the end of the world. At least I don't have to pay for it!
Basically, the memory chip seems to have kablooed. As such, I'm sitting on a Sun in the Bell Lab. I can still read email and lj and stuff.. just not from my very own work computer.

As I said earlier today, I'm afraid I may be coming down with something. My throat is really sore (and has been all night) and that's (unfortunately) usually a sign that I'm going to be sick. *sigh*
It seems like everyone involved in the Buffalo trip is suddenly sick.
Curse you, Lord Murphy :P

In other other news, I've started building again.. on MattRhost (run by thematt). I forgot how much I enjoyed just building without worrying about the running of the game. I'm just happily building a spacestation. It'll be of the usual LITE fare.. with "puzzles" and pop culture references (for example, the Genesis Device I want to stick on the spacestation, probably in the science section) and I'm just having fun building it and planning it :)
Yay, fun :)

Not a whole lot else I feel the need to talk about, so I guess I'll finish this up.
Hasta, my peeps!

Today's been a good day. A REALLY good day :D
It started this morning when, after bitching and whinging (and yes, I mean the g to be in there. A friend uses the whinging and it amuses me) about my weight loss, and I got a reading of 254. I KNEW that 70 minutes of Cardio would pay off.
Go to school, practically sleep through groundwater (I can't wait till the good stuff is discussed), hang out on Chaotic for an hour, go to the gym for.. less than I'd like..come back and cruise around barnesandnobles.com for books to spend my $15 gift certificate and find out Terry Pratchett's released two more older Discworld books.
YAY!
Run out to get them... well.. one... they had "Moving Pictures" but not "Eric" but I found Eric at Media Play, so yay!
I love discworld books! I love new reading!
YAY!
Go to my second class (nothing special. I'm either going back to Letchworth Tuesday or over spring vacation, I'd prefer vacation), go home, we go out to buffet (yay, favorite restaurant, stop by the bank and my income tax has come in! YAY, MONEY!
So... now there's one thing I have to get... a new printer. The one I have now works, but it's damned expensive to get ink. The printer is, like, 8 years old. So I'll go to CompUSA tommorow, prolly, after school and look.
We WERE at Wal-mart to look there. Didn't find a printer, but I did find a SmartMedia 32 meg card for under $30 and grabbed it. So now I have another half an hour of music for my iRock! YAY!
The best news of the day comes when I check LJ, though...
Zoo Tycoon is doing what I'd hoped and adding an expansion pack of prehistoric animals: Dino Digs. I'm so excited! 20 new species, new buildings and staff. I'm so excited... :D
So that's been my day...
And now, a few random online tests.

( I'm putting alot behind lj-cuts lately, aren't I? )

As maybe can be guessed by the Subject, this is probably going to be a longish post. Lots of thoughts bouncing around in my head I want to touch on, briefly or... less than briefly.

Let's start with the DiSC test. What is it? It's a personality profile that tells you something about your basic personality: your drives and how you are wont to be. I had to take this test for the design course. The results were.. interesting. Truth be told, the results were dead on about me.
My results were as such...
I am strongly dominant. I want control. Simply put, I need to be in charge. If I'm not in charge, I'm generally not as happy as I could be.
I'm very focused on the tasks in front of me. I'm not, in general, interested so much as the people responsible for getting the tasks done as much as I am for getting the tasks done.
I'm professional. During business meetings, I expect us to stay on track and not run off on wild tangents about what people did this weekend or what some other person is doing.
For feedback, I look to myself and those who have more knowledge in the subject at hand than I. Sure, it's cool if my peers think it's good work, but if an expert or my professor or my boss like it, then *I* know it's good work.
I'm very future oriented. Things happen now in order to get to some result I hope for and want in the future. I'm willing to sacrifice the present for some prefered goal in the future.
I have a very strong personality. I tend to dominate others in that fashion as well. Shy is not I. I'm very verbal.. if I have something that I need to discuss or that's bothering me, I'll just say it.
I tend to think nonlinearly... I can go from steps 1, 2 and 3 to 8 and 9 without any problem. I'm very multifocussed.. able to do three or four things more or less at once. I tend to set a very fast pace for myself that way. As I said before, no dawdling.
I got my results from a professional who helped explain the results of the DiSC test. For those interested in taking the DiSC test, you can take a free version of it HERE and while you may not be able to get all the answers I got, I might be able to supplement a few. I'm lax to explain the test more than that because I'm afraid to do so might give it all away and change the results of the test.
If you DO take the DiSC test, please tell me what your answers are. I'm rather curious :) I suspect I know what a few of you are, but I'd rather not say, again in the hopes of making sure I don't sway the results.

So there's that...
In other news, I'm annoyed.. I'm annoyed for a variety of reasons. My main annoyance is Sid Meier's SimGolf. I bought this game a couple days back and was ready to play (time permitting). I'm still rearing to go. Problem is.. I loaded up, sent it to play and it gave me error messages. I can't get the terrain to load. So what I see are things floating on a "black" terrain. This sucks.
I emailed tech support and the best they had to say is that they were aware of the problem and hope to have a patch out soon.
I guess I'll wait.
*grump*
On the PLUS hand, if I had played SimGolf, I'd never been able to complete "Running Through The Rainforest" (more on this later).
In other news, my mom is apparently sick. Apparently because I have no idea what she is.. she just says she feels crappy. She's not stuffy, she doesn't look all that bad, she just says she feels crappy. S'cool though.. the weather sucks and *I* dun wanna go anywhere anyways.
And that's reason #3.. the weather... a couple days ago it was bright and sunny and 50. Now it's snapped back... I would have been OK if it had just snowed. Snow I can handle... but NOOO.. it snowed.. and hailed.. and freezing rain.. and rain.. and more freezing rain.. back to hail.. rain.. hail.. freezing rain
Now the ground is slick and slippery and I really DON'T want to drive in it at ALL! Hell, I don't even want to walk in it...
Stupid Weather. :P

And this is a fitting segue into why the pixie is a putz. The pixie has been a putz all day.
I woke up really early, mind.. like 3:30.. tried to sleep for 45 minutes and gave up, went downstairs and screwed around on the computer for another 45 minutes and then went back to bed. I'm a bit tired. This may be part of the reason why I've been so putzy.
Woke up.. made lunch... forgot to put the fork in my lunch pail. So I had to eat salad with a spoon. That was... interesting.
Anyways, put lunch in trunk along with bags. Drive to school.. slowly (the crap weather had started already and I wanted to be careful driving).. was so worried about driving safely that I turned the motor off, turned the lights off, opened the door, locked the door... and preceded to lock my keys in the car.
Called home and mom tells me to call AAA, so I do.
I call AAA, tell them where the car is, tell them to meet me in the front of the Alumni Arena, pick up a Time magazine (to read while I'm waiting) and a Diet Dr. pepper and wait... on the wrong side of the Alumni Arena. Called back over an hour later to find out that they'd been there and I was never in the right place... stupid me. So ask them to call back, wait on the REAL front of the Alumni Arena (you know.. where the front lobby is.. not just a pair of stairs and a door :P ) and get the keys out of my car.
Feeling stupid, I then precede to eat the salad with a spoon.
I go back to the Career COunseling center to get them to take one last look at my Resume before Monday ( a few minor changes were suggested, but otherwise the resume finally looks good! WOO! :) )... get back into the trailer... and the power goes out.
So I stood around for like 20 or 25 minutes, talking to the other guys in the trailer (some of whom are going home in this terrible weather. I would, but for a 3:30 class... we're going to do the teamwork workshop.. you know.. the ROPS COURSE (if you don't know what I'm referring to, you've never been stuck doing a leadership workshop. Consider yourself lucky. It's an amusing way to waste an hour and a half, but I'd rather be at home...)

And now the end.. why I rock.
As I said earlier, since SimGolf WON'T WORK I looked for other things to do... picked up Dance Ejay 2 and decided.. what the heck.. i'll play with it.
By the end of the night, I finished my... *goes to mp3.com and counts* 19th song (not including remixes which don't count because some of them I did simply because of the vocals mp3.com wouldn't let me keep in the song because of copyright laws...)
Let me be the first one to say that this song really rocks. I want to make a few minor adjustments before I post it to mp3.com (with a certain sample that comes in a little too early for my taste and cuts out a little too late), otherwise I'm completely satisfied with the song. it really rocks. :)
For me, that's the test the song has to pass.. if I don't think the song rocks enough, then it's simply not good enough. I don't know if I can explain it much better than that.. I look for a lot of things.. it needs to have continuity and development. It needs to express a theme of some sort (for example Theme to "Haunted Dancefloor of Death" is a near perfect halloween song. It just speaks, to me, halloween... even if I took the sound effects out (heaven forbid) it would speak halloween to me. It just sounds, to me, like a typical slasher film theme. This song, on the other hand, does what I'd hoped to get out of Hunting with the Tribe.. a song that says "Lookie me! I'm a song about a jungle!"
Truth be told, I'm half-considering switching the titles. I'll name THIS one Hunting with the Tribe and the other one Running Through The Rainforest.. it sounds, to me, like it'd make more sense.
Except I won't. I've already named the other Hunting with the Tribe. S'all there is to it.
Anyways, I was lucky and found a whole bunch of great free samples off the ejay web site that I'm rearing to play with and I may end up with a new song on my hands soon. Yay new songs! :)

That's all I can think of to report, so I shall post this.

I am highly amused (and a bit flattered) right now. My mom comes up to me this morning (as I just woke up and just before she had to go) and says "Howard, what are you planning to wear to New York?"
Um... probably a dress shirt, tie and a nice pair of pants.
My mom nods and says I need a new dress shirt, then. My two dress shirts have started to look sloppy. Apparently, I've lost enough weight that my dress shirts don't fit right. I find this highly amusing and rather cool. So, as long as my check DOES come today, I'll go get a couple of new shirts to wear.
And a 1 and 2 and a YAY WEIGHT LOSS! :D

Actually, I can note with another sort of amusement that my waist size has dropped approximately 5 inches. I've gone from the last notches of a sized 46 belt to half-way on a 40-42 sized belt.
And again... YAY WEIGHT LOSS! :D

So, the AWMA dinner meeteing was rather cool. Arrived at 5:30 for the open bar. I chose not to partake of the flowing alcohol and walked around, instead, with a glass of diet cola. A couple classmates (Jean Balent, her boyfriend whose name I can't think of, and Natalie Sauer) arrive and we sort of huddle in one corner talking about this and that. Throughout the open bar, people kept coming up to us, shaking our hands and meeting us. They were thrilled to see UB students (and one student from the Buff State geology department) at the meeting. They hinted, in a not so subtle fashion, that they had lots of money they'd be willing to spend for worthwhile causes (one man at the table we were sitting on, stood up, laughed (much like Santa Clause) and said "Wow, we gotta lotta money!") including us university types.
Dinner was good. I had the cornbeef and cabbage. I was shocked and amazed when they handed me my plate with, I kid you not, a eighth of a head of cabbage and a HUGE side of corned beef (let's not forget the previous courses (potato soup, salad and a fresh-baked roll.. PLUS desert) with a few potatos and carrots on the side. Certainly not a bad dinner for $10. Then there was a presentation on creating a landfill without a leachate collection system.
What is leachate? It's water that gets caught up in a landfill, either from the waste itself or infiltration from rain events and, having gone through the landfill, needs to be treated. It can't be left in the landfill or it might leak out and contaminate the ground around it.
Anyways, they created a landfill for concrete kiln dust (CKD) (some some of leftovers when making concrete, I guess.) which tends to be very dry. As it is dry, they don't feel leachate as a problem because it will just naturally settle into the system and get sucked up the CKD. I'm not certain I believe it as A) water + concrete = hard and water landing on a hard surface on concrete won't catch the water and B) it looks like they assumed the water would mix equally with the CKD, but it probably won't. I dunno, though... I'm not an engineer YET.. it just made me wonder.
In all honesty, it's cool to be able to listen to such a talk and understand it. I feel all smart now :)

UBEESC meeting at 3. We'll be talking about the coming trip to New York (which, if I get the check I expect and it's as big as I hope, I'm in... more on this soon), the Greater Buffalo Environmental Conference in May, the upcoming design competition and more.

To New York... I'm not sure what to expect, but I'll (most likely) be going to New York for the day on February 5 for a NYWEA conference. Tuesday is the students day and there'll be a round table discussion and other goodies I'm not 100% certain about. They've offered to reimburse us up to $500, so hell.. I'll go :) I'm not certain what to expect, but I'm sure I'll enjoy myself. The only question is when we're all going (as in... are we taking the 6:30 AM flight in or the 10:00 AM flight in), since I WAS going to take the 10:00 AM flight in, but i don't REALLY wanna be the only person trying to get a cab to the convention when everyone else is there.

What else? Gotta pick up materials for my EngiNet course. It's all fixed up, so I'll take Biological principals from that (and see if I can get into it or not.) This might be tough because I'll be watching a tape and NOT in a classroom situation and I'm not sure I'll enjoy it.

Probably going midnite bowling again tommorrow.. past that, no plans this weekend.

That's all I can think of to post. Laters!

Well, as of tommorow morning, my vacation is officially over :(
I'm ready for school, though. Excited, even.
What classes am I taking?
I'm taking:
Environmental Engineering Design
GIS Applications (an engineering-based GIS application course to give me the info on GIS I really wanna know that the geography course didn't)
Groundwater Modelling (the first half of the course will all be review, but the second half looks interesting and coolies.)
and POSSIBLY I'll be taking an EngiNet course on Biological Principals for Env. Engineers. It all depends on whether I'll be charged extra for the Enginet course. If I am, I won't take it and I'll actually register for Groundwater Modelling. If I won't be charged, I'll just sit in on the class and not do any homework (I just want to learn about the modeling of groundwater. While my interests are in surface water, I want to have a backup plan of being able to do groundwater (the field seems a bit more open anyways))
Ah, the games we play, eh?

In other news, UBEESC is making me a busy bee. On Thursday, I'll be attending an AWMA (Air and Waste Management Association) dinner. It's $10 to get a good meal and rub elbows with people in the air pollution and landfill management business in the Buffalo area.
I'm just going for the dinner, really.
On the other hand, on February February 5th, I'll probably fly down to New York for the day to be part of the NYWEA (New York Water Environment Association) annual conference (NYWEA is more in my interest region. So I'll be rubbing my elbows with potential employers there. Note to self... try really hard to get a freaking resume done by then). The plan is to leave fairly early and come back in the early evening. Literally, just for the day.
Ah, the joys of being an engineer.

What did you guys think of the Golden Globes? I'm still bummed that Lord of the Rings won NOTHING. I thought it was the best damn film of the year. :)
Actually, I just went and saw LotR again today with Josh. My third time. The movie is STILL packed. It's THAT good :) Well, *I* think it's that good! :)

As most of you know, I met trillain at the Galleria Mall saturday. twas cool. You can read her journal for an account of what we did. it was cool. As I said, we need to meet more than once every 6 months. :)

I still want to know ONE THING...
how is it that everyone else is a Zorilla. I'm beginning to feel outnumbered by skunk-things. And me, just a hen!

*thinkles* What else?
Oh! my weight! My weight for the week is *drumroll please* 257. Woowoo! :)

Can't think of anything else I need to report.
See y'all on the flip side.
No, the OTHER flip side.
Yes, that one.
Right!

Lots of stuff to discuss.
I've been a busy busy boy. Final weeks are upon me. I had my first exam this morning, the evil Advanced Math one. For those like mythagon.. you.. you.. MATH MAJORS, I HATE YOU ALL! Any of you who want to do Math full time. Math is EVIL!
At least Advanced Math was
PDEs and ODEs and Eigenvectors, o my!

So.. yesterday was weigh-in day. Boy, do I have a story about that! See, officially my weight is 264. Neither an increase or decrease. HOWEVER, before Sunday it was 260. I dunno why or what happened, but Saturday I was 260.5 and Sunday I was 264.5.. then 264 and today 263.
I wonder if it's because I've got a bug.

You wouldn't know about that. I have some sort of bug. I've been exhausted for three days straight (since Sunday), get nauseous when I move too much and am pissing like a river.
I had a similair bug last year.
It's not fun.
Not at all.

So, I've started work on my web page again. You can check what I've been up to HERE. As you can see, I've started more or less all over. I like what I've got so far :)

It's been a stressful day, between the test, trying to get hold of a dentist (I have a big ass crack in one of my teeth. I don't know WHERE it came from, but I know I gotta do something about it. Hopefully not including a drill!), finding out that my "dental coverage" is only good if I accidentally lose a tooth. (I hate having no dental.), getting some paper work I needed to get done done and gassing up my car and adding this stuff i got that's supposed to clean the engine out.

Speaking of the car, I got a new book: Car Repair for Dummies. While I don't plan on repairing it, it's got a lot of good stuff about maintence and what certain sounds and actions might mean. By the sounds of it, I may need to get my spark plugs looked at. Let's see how the engine cleaner works, tho.

What else?
A friend of mine said something that surprise me today. It's sort of two-fold. On one hand, he surprised me by telling me something I didn't know (then again, neither did he.) On the other, he surprised me by telling me that YET ANOTHER off-handed prediction was right.
It's kind of scary, but I do have a knack for predictions. Especially ones about personal relationships. I don't know why that's specifically so, but... *shrug*

Can't think of anything else I wanted to say. Talk to y'all later!
Ciao, babes

Well, I think I found yet another problem (and hopefully the main one) with the car. The transmission fluid was way low. So I added to "normal" level. Yay fluid.
The car drove pretty well on the way to school, but it isn't a LONG drive.
On the other hand, compared to the drive HOME yesterday where the car was switching gears oddly on me. One minute in 1st and then in 3rd and then it stalled on, then I was in 3rd. It was a scary ride home. But I made it home, called the mechanic and he said.. check the transmission fluid. I did and it was below "do not drive"
I just hope no damage was done to the transmission.
I hope.
And I hope that adding the tranmission fluid this morning solves the majority of my car woes.
Hope hope hope.

What else? Did I mention I have a presentation today? I have to present "modelling a jump in base in a confined and unconfined aquifer using analytic elements" for advanced groundwater. I hate presenting. :P But, I think we got a good presentation so that's good. :)

Got another presentation on Friday. This time on "Modelling desorption of hydrophobic contaminants from sediments during resuspension". I gotta get all the materials for that one, though since everyone but me has stuff they SWEAR they're gonna give to me.

...

Alright, who's the wise guy picking my song list?
"Carful of Pain" by the Arrogant Worms just came on. Talk about ironic.

Can't think of all that much else to write about. Gotta stay home tonite and finish my math homework and, hopefully, watch the second half of "Jack and the Beanstalk: the Real Story"
Hasta, folksies!

Lots of fun things to talk about.

Do you know what I hate more than changing my schedule around to be at a meeting? Getting stood up for the meeting. My practicum group was SUPPOSED to meet at 4:00 in Jarvis 120 today.
I was there.
No one else was.
Including, I think, the person we had to meet.
Bah.
So I hung around on campus for near two hours longer than I would have needed to otherwise.
Bah, I say.

Plus, we're supposed to meet at 8:00 AM tommorow (of course, my hope is... since I don't think anyone met with Todd, we CAN'T put the filter together until we do and, hence, no 8:00 meeting. That' my hope in any case) and then I have another meeting at 12:00 for a groundwater project.
Whee meetings.

And I need to do math homework again this weekend. Yes, the same math homework that nearly killed me two weekends ago.
13 problems this time (instead of 12). But I have a PLAN!
It's due Wednesday.. so.. if I start it today, I only need to do 3 problems a day and it'll be done by Tuesday night.
Plus, I may have a little extra time this weekend to do more than 3 problems. The point is, it doesn't need to ALL be done by Saturday.
Yay plan! ^.^

Today is Nicole radio day! Yay! trying to decide already what I shall request.
I'm thinking of requesting one of my own.
I'm THINKING of requesting Illudium (Full name: Illudium Pu-36 Explosive Space Modulator.
The Illegal (cause I don't have the rights to the wav samples of marvin the martian I used) vocal version.

I'm on a weight plateau again. Worse than that, it seems like I'm GAINING weight.
Though, this catches me as odd.
This morning I weighed myself and realized.. I had to take a pee. So i did.
I went back to weighing myself (i triple check. I'm a freak like that.) and I weighed 0.5 lbs. MORE than before the pee.
Can someone explain that to me?
Anyways, due to the plateay, I fear this means I shan't weigh 250 by new years day. So I am henceforth changing my goal.
I want to weigh 255 instead.
Now if I could go back to losing weight.

I had a Fluids test today. The third. I either did VERY well or I was so off base it isn't even funny. I'm not actually sure yet. I guess I'll find out when I get my test grade, eh?
Here's hoping, right?

What else?
I think the psychological effects of the happy light have worn off. Hopefully the very really physiological effects are just getting ready to take place, though.
Yay Happy Light!

Note: When I tried posting this the FIRST time, it wasn't yay this and yay that.. I was pure bitchy. Now I'm home and I'm yay this and yay that.
What does that say to YOU?
Hmmm..

OK, so I'm saving the best (or, actually, worst) for last.
I want to talk about Stebe.
I'm not gonna be happy with just dropping it. I just... I can't do that. When i'm angry, I need to let people know.
I'm screwed up like that.
So... I want to give an account of my side of this argument. For myself if no one else cares.
The whole thing started Tuesday. I posted I was grumpy at certain people on ChaoticMUX. Stebe was one of them.
In.. a conversation I don't even fully recall, he said eris@discordia was a "hoar" (I don't remember the conversation, but I do distinctly remember the misspelling.) I happen to disagree.. I have a bad relationship with much of discordia, but eris was OK.
So I was unhappy about that.
The REAL start of the argument was Wednesday, though. After a good night sleep, I was less grumpy and feeling apologetic towards people who had annoyed me Tuesday. I don't remember WHAT Stebe said that pissed me off (it wasn't the orange thing), but the WAY he said it reallly ticked me off. He sounded nasty and .. arse'ish
So I told him he was an arse.
And I /gagged him.
In retrospect, I should have just /gagged him quietly and gone on with the rest of my day, but... hindsight is 20/20, right?
Stebe took great offense to this. And he got mad. And posted a +bbpost suggesting I take a vacation from Chaotic because, to the best of his knowledge, 2 people (ara and scoob) had left because of me.
I'm still a little.. sensitive, bewildered, upset, angry.. over ara and scoob leaving. I can't say as I still really understand what happened. All of a sudden, i was sexist and racist and beyond contempt. I'd been friends with ara for near 9 years. scoob for a little less. And suddenly, I wasn't even worth talking to anymore.
So.. it's a sensitive spot for me.
A sensitive spot, Stebe has harped on again and again and again.
Between the two, I got VERY pissed at him.
Hence, when yesterday rolled around and I'd been under the happy light and felt better, I thought about it and I *STILL* think Stebe is being an immature ass.
So, Stebe read that in my lj. And then quoted that portion of my journal so everyone could read it and decide I was an ass.
kalidor responded thusly, and I think it sums up my own feelings.
Begin Quote:

Lessee, you are dragging it out, trying to make a public spectacle, (of course... the spectacle seems to end up being you) and .. well ... only you seem to care? Yes ... I think the evaluation of your personality .. is .. uhm .. well correct. Perhaps you should do whut others like you have done in the past. Make a personal bulletin board that only your friends are allowed to read, so as not to pester the rest of us. Of course, the people with those boards .. mostly decided to leave anyhow... but .. more is the better.

End Quote:
Then, as I hear tell (and I have no proof of this), Stebe contacted lj_abuse and complained about my post.
So... let's review. I /gagged him and made a couple of rude comments.
He posted not one, but two +bbposts and complained, i think, to lj_abuse.
So.. like.. WHO is being the immature asshole here?
So today comes around and this is really pissing me off. I'd LIKE to take him somewhere private and just thwap him around.
Not that I would.. I'd just LIKE to.
So today comes around and I'm pissed at him and I make a couple more comments.
And he responds by mailing the ChaoticMUX adminning and complaining about me.
Now, I admit some fault.
1) I should never have told him I was /gagging him.
2) I shouldn't have made the comments
However, I'm not the one totally twinking out.
(personally, I'm curious to see how he responds to this post. Not that i'm worried, I'm just curious.)
So, like... I've promised I'll stop making any comments to Stebe on Chaotic. He can just sit in my gag until he apologizes for the way he's acted and is acting.
But.. here.. here I won't bother to censor myself. After all, if you don't like what you read, why read it? It's still my personal (if live for the world to read) journal.

That's all I have to say about that. Well.. for now. Maybe more later as more on the Stebe argument.. happens.

In closing, let me offer CONGRATS TO thepoet_khayman on his baby, Lazarus Kaine Matthew!!

This may be another long one. Lots of things on my mind.

As y'all know, Flight 587 crashed in Rockland, New York yesterday morning 3 minutes after takeoff. All passengers and crew are presumed dead as well as a few (and thankfully ONLY a few on the ground.). An estimated 300 people died last night in the worst "accident" since the TWA 800.

The blame is being placed on the engine. The engine that the plane used had "Been known to have problems with cracking" and 7 such problems with the engines had been dug up. This engine is used on litereally thousands of planes (INCLUDING Air Force One, so says anonova.com) with no catastrophic failures to date. The left engine that apparently failed had just been overhauled recently and both engines had had a maintence check the day before.
It's hard to say that American Airlines are, therefore, criminally negligent.. or negligent whatsoever. Of the 7 such problems with the engine, none of them had caused the engine to fly off the plane as happened in Rockland.

I'm not an Aerospace Engineer so I can't speak much on how planes are made or manufactured or even how an engine falls off or blows off a plane. However I fail to see how an accident causes the engine to fall or blow off.
Does anyone know?

And what about the sprayed fuel over Jamaica Bay? Why did the pilot start losing his fuel? He must have known he was about to crash. So why didn't he SOS? This also seems suspicious. He must have known he was going to crash if he started losing fuel. He must have known SOMETHING was wrong.

Add this peace to the puzzle. The US Government has said time and again that in order to keep the peace, they would lie or simply not tell the truth. So it's altogether possible they KNOW that this is sabotage but to keep us all from panicking some more, they'll say it was an accident.

Of course... if they hold with this story, I think you can probably kiss American Airlines, the biggest airplane company in America (i THINK) goodbye. I can't imagine consumer confidence in flying was high before yesterday but I'm sure it's gotten lower since. Will the government allow AA to go bankrupt?

I dunno. But like I said, it all seems a little too suspicious to me.

And if it WAS sabotage, I have some uncomfortable questions to ask:
1) Where was the FBI? or NSA? Why wasn't someone aware that this was planned?
2) How was this allowed to happen? Why hasn't airport security BEEN beefed up since the 11th. As kolys has said, airline security is STILL a joke. It's a joke at the borders too. As someone who lives near the border, my family and I go in and out of canada a bit and the security there is still... pathetic.
What will it take for security to increase? How many more thousands need to die?

*shakes his head*

On a more personal vein... yesterday was... interesting

Let's start with my presentation. Did I mention to y'all that I had to give a presentation yesterday on UBEESC to the GSA (Graduate Student Association) to try to get members? Well.. I did.. one problem.. we'd made a powerpoint presentation and the computer couldn't see Disc A!! So I start my presentation with "Well.. pretend there's this beautiful presentation behind me..." and go on from there. That was... interesting.

Oh.. and I found a SECOND Phish song I like: Cavern.
So I've decided I might give Phish a second chance and try to download some of their stuff and see if I like it.
So... anyone know of any good Phish I should give a chance? if so, please comment and tell me!

That's all I can think of.. so.. you're quote of the day!

***
"I can't stand it! I know you planned it!
But I'm gonna get it straight, this Watergate" - Beastie Boys "Sabotage"