Yesterday I was on some sort of shopping trip with my brother-in-law where he was getting something-or-another for my sister. Something to do with St. Valentine’s day. My plan is to just go out drinking tomorrow, not go shopping for something for someone who doesn’t exist. Actually, spending imaginary money on imaginary people is cheaper and better for my health than my real plan, so I may end up doing what I’ve been most of the weekend: watching my RAID array rebuild itself unsuccessfully and restarting the rebuild again. Re-rebuilding as it were. Exciting, and it only cost me $500 in hard drives. Fun life, no?

OK, so most of my system administration appears to happen when I’ve been drinking. I got back from the gym today, feeling like I’d been beat up all week, and I still felt hungry after dinner. Two days of drinking my lunch (Muscle Milk) and a salad and bean & cheese burrito weren’t enough. So I went and had a couple of beers. Of course, I was also swapping disks in my NAS. What a mess.

Destroyed my backup and it’s even a school night. Craving a hamburger. Planning on drinking even more on February 14th. Maybe I’ll even combine the two.

Very often on Tuesday evenings I used to be a bit glum and I think it was probably due to being tired from the gym and not having enough grease in my gullet. I’m feeling glum today and I figure it’s the same reason. I’m in a class where I’m supposed to be programming in Windows WITHOUT CURSING and that’s really taking it out of me, plus I don’t have time for a good greasy lunch. And the gym was rough tonight. So the combo is making me want to run right out and get a Big Mac, but I’ve also had some stomach pains lately and a Big Mac wouldn’t help with that. Maybe a burger from Metrovino…

It’s getting close to Oregon’s anniversary, or as it’s more commonly known, THE WORST DAY OF THE YEAR (February 14th.) I wonder what sorts of things I’ll do that night? Perhaps a drink is in order. Just one, maybe. A very, very large one.

I know I had a couple of beers and ate some brisket, but I’m not sure why I had a bizarre dream last night. It really didn’t piece together. I remember kissing some woman on a bus bench, deciding we should start dating, then being in a house in a sunny, hilly neighborhood looking down at the street watching the runners go by like it was some sort of parade. I somehow knew it was our house, and I saw our 2YO daughter (who wasn’t Asian, so now that I think of it BITCH MUST HAVE BEEN CHEATING ON ME) and wondering where my wife was. Her father and his buddy were sitting at the kitchen table, asking me if I’d seen her and when I was going to turn myself in since I’d just at the scene of some crime: though I was just a witness, I was the main suspect.

Really, this probably just means I’m watching too much TV and reading too many mysteries, but it was a pretty entertaining dream.

For some reason I often see the hilly neighborhood in my dreams. It’s not really here, since there aren’t enough trees and it’s not raining. I wonder if it’s somewhere in California. I seem to recall adobe tile roofs, at least in last night’s dream.

And how did I go from meeting a woman to immediately having a house and a 2YO daughter who I knew was mine even though, as I mentioned, SHE WAS WHITE? Perhaps it’s my inner whitey trying to get out.

HaHA! The Packers win! I spent a pleasant afternoon at a friend’s house, watching the Superbowl. I felt like a complete space cadet, because I was there once helping them move in and it looks completely different now that it’s not just boxes in rooms. I thought they’d repainted and refinished the stairs, but I think it was just that they had decent lighting in the room.

Even thought it seems like I would have gotten nothing else done, I finally got 20G of data to my sister, and I FINALLY FINISHED THE DOORBELL PROJECT.

Wow, what sorts of setbacks can it take? First I bought a doorbell. I had to rewire the rat’s nest of doorbell wiring to get it hooked up. I had to get a bigger transformer when I realized that the one the electrician put in wasn’t big enough to run two doorbells. Then I had to try two different ways of getting wiring from the basement to the upstairs and that caused me to break the fiberglass fish sticks I was using to get the wire through the walls. I had to cut holes in the firebreak after using a different path. I had to cut a hole in the wall and add an access hatch/door. I had to plug one of the holes in the firebreak when I realized I didn’t need it. I had to drill a blind hole in the header above a wall in the attic, run a wire, and then use a toner/tracer to see where the wire ended up so I didn’t have to cut the sheet rock too much. This is weeks and weeks of this nonsense and it’s finished! Now I can hear the doorbell ring even in my upstairs office for those few occasions where the UPS guy is adding to my horde of computers.

I was supposed to go to the Trailblazer’s game tomorrow, but I think my friend is taking his nephew instead. I think that’s a better idea anyway because the kid loves sports. We’re hoping he’ll play in the major leagues someday and then maybe I can get even better tickets as the friend of his uncle. It’s a long shot, but I’m all about the delayed gratification. Delayed until it’s too late, probably, but whatever.

My sister just sent me a link to a Japanese food blog. It reminded me that I had a plan to start studying my kanji again. Maybe I’d study for the JPLT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) that I haven’t taken in years. I’ve heard it’s gotten easier since I took it but, really, I don’t care that much about grammar or writing. I just want to be able to read more.

I had this fantasy of moving back to Japan, but I think I’m just remember my mid-20’s with more nostalgia than I should. I was reminded that I was even more of a hothead back then (which I think I’m slowly outgrowing) and I sometimes remember the difficulties of living in a society that really had no place for me. Sort of like here. But it’s a lot easier living in America, really, even for the simple reason that electricity, gasoline, and land are so much cheaper that I can have a lot more toys here than there. Speaking of which, I need to dump a lot of the crap I have, and I have to keep reminding myself of that.

I remember thinking what a waste it was when my neighbor’s kids took everything out of the house and tossed it in a dumpster, and now I know that’s probably a valid way of dealing with a lot of daily crap people live with. For example, we have a kanji branding iron somewhere that my dad used to mark up the gardening equipment. He’d burn a kanji into the handle. How many decades has it been since we’ve used it? I figure if someone takes my rake, someone takes my rake. I also have things that look like homemade cleavers and I think there’s homemade desks in the garage. I think they all have to go.

Maybe I need to get rid of a bunch of stuff and move to Japan. Oh, well. It’s nice to have a decent fantasy life. At least there I’m doing pretty well.

The best version of Microsoft Word I ever had was the old 5.1a that would run on a Mac SE. But today I went and bought Office 2011 and immediately had to update the software after I installed it. Fortunately, most things update automatically over the intarwebs, but some things still require manual intervention. My new NetBSD system, for example, gets the WHOLE operating system rebuilt several times a day, just for the fun of it. That’s why I like having faster and faster computers. Even the Linux OS that I installed at work today took an hour to download a bunch of updates before I could get it running. What a mess.

Too bad I can’t order updates for my life or anything. The only updates I can think of are to eat more delicious food that would cause me to balloon to the size of a small truck, meaning I would probably have to buy a small truck to haul my carcass around town. I’m still looking into getting a Prius for three reasons: Heated Leather Seats. Ok, so that’s three words, not three reasons, but I still like them.

And it’s 20 minutes past the time I told myself I’d be in bed already? So I thought running outside at the gym would be awful today since it was probably several degrees colder than yesterday, around 36°F, but it wasn’t so bad. I think the problem yesterday was the wind was worse and I was sweatier when I headed out. The temperature was far from ideal, but not as awful as I had feared.

I usually give myself the month of January to come up with resolutions and I haven’t done it yet. So here goes nothing: I think I’m going to try to get rid of a lot more crap this year and just forget about this eBay nonsense and just give it to Goodwill. And not even worry about the receipts because I never seem to donate enough to make it past the standard deduction on my taxes. A lot of this crap has got to go, and it really should go soon. We’ll see how much resolve I really have, though.