I just got a web message on myspace.com from someone who said she was using her friend’s account. Well, the email address “she” gave me was invalid (I didn’t send her an email but I did check to see if the user existed on yahoo.) So what’s the point? Don’t women usually wait to be asked for their phone number or email address before they offer up fake contact information? Or am I getting so pathetic that they’re even giving up on trying to scam me out of money and they’re just sending me fake messages to taunt me?

And before you think that IT is something exciting, you should know that all I did was bought the electric snake (or drain auger if you prefer) because I checked my Quicken files and noticed that I paid $175 to have Rescue Rooter come out and the electric snake was only $150 including shipping. I know I can rent one for $50 or so, but I usually need it at 10PM or on Sunday or some other inconvenient time. You know how it is.

I just figured it was time to start worrying about something I can actually do something about.

Oh, and have you ever had weird ideas pop into your head when you’re trying to get to sleep? I mean really weird ones, not like, “Did I turn the stove off?” or “Can I make it all night without peeing or should I go right now?” I saw the kickboxing instructor from the gym (who is very attractive and wiry) knocking the crap out of me. I have no idea where that came from, but I hope it never happens.

HOLY CRAP WILL THIS BASEBALL GAME NEVER END? 

I think the new tires I bought may or may not be giving me a better ride to work. See what I mean about having nothing?

Yesterday I got up and I was so tired that I took a nap and actually had clearer dreams than I usually do. I dreamt I was back at MIT and I was in gradual school. I was the TA for a class and I had no grasp of the subject matter. Heck, I never had any grasp of the subject matter when I was taking the classes there. I wish I had something more interesting.

I could tell you about following around an 89-year-old man making sure he’s OK, but that’s like having a kid almost. But it’s very Asian; a lot of people would have shoved him in a “home.” I think I need to remodel his bathroom soon, and by remodel I mean, “tear out the nasty stuff.” See? You really don’t want to know any more.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably mention that I’ve had a couple of beers tonight. Generally, though, I’m a happy drunk, and an overly chatty drunk too. So when I’m feeling not so happy after a couple of beers, I know I’m really not so happy.

I got up early to go to a biannual ham radio swap meet about an hour and a half south of here. It was incredibly empty this year and there was nothing I wanted to buy. One of the main reasons we go is to talk to old friends, and we did get to do that. But there even seemed to be fewer people in general. I think it might be because of the fairly dense fog on the way.

On the way back we hit Harbor Freight and they had no electric snakes. I was wandering around and Greg asked if I had taken too much lithium, because I was walking around going, “Oh, look a left-handed blooble. Eh.” I mean, how thrilled can you get about cheap Chinese tools?

In the evening I was invited to the Portland State University vs. North Arizona University football game, but it wasn’t a football game. It was a football practice where a college team played a high school team. My team was winning, but it was so one-sided that Portland State put out the second- and third-string. The final score was 45 to 0, Portland State.

And finally, one of the guys in my peer group (dateless pathetic guys) has been “not dating” a woman since early this summer. We thought she was imaginary and it turns out that not-dating takes a lot of time whether she’s imaginary or not. Well, I finally met her today and she’s very attractive, but also looks kind of mean. I really could get over my jealousy and be happy for the guy except for the mean thing.

OK, I’m going to sleep now and maybe I’ll be happier in the morning.

It was chilly last night, but today was clear and almost 70°F, a perfect day for the contractors from the window company. I worked from home and the installers arrived at 8:00AM. There were two of them. One had been here before to check out the work site. The guy who hadn’t been here before told me, “Yep, that there is the ‘lectric wahr for your house. We cain’t work until you get that insulated.”

So that means after waiting a month for the guys to show up, they left after a half-hour and doing almost nothing. Now I have to wait for the power company to come insulate the drop to the house and that might take a week. Then I have to wait for rescheduling, and it usually is about a month later that the installers show up. I’m thinking of just putting some plywood over the thing and asking for my money back.

So I was back on friendster and all the women there seem mean. Back on match.com, all the women looked like they wanted a nice rich husband. Well, apparently you can go to one of those “adult dating” sites (where dating means something a bit naughtier) and they hire people to write fake emails to you until you actually join and find out that the site is full of fake pictures of women and a bunch of dumpy looking guys who might as well be hanging out with you on Friday night playing five-year-old video games on your networked computers and then watching anime with images of hot cartoon women. What I’m basically trying to say here is that if I joined that site, I could increase my fantasy life by getting fake emails that told me that women were interested in me. Until I joined, of course, and then I’d be with all the pudgy dudes smelling like sour milk or something.

So my boss at megacorp seems a bit stressed lately. I don’t think all the projects are working out and often poo rolls uphill there. Well, I better get on the ball and show some results, ’cause that’s what they like. I’m glad the results don’t include finding someone to date, because there ain’t nothing going on there. Maybe I should take my friend’s mom’s advice and start looking under rocks. 🙂

And here’s the drill pr0n for the night.

OK, so I’m a 41-year-old software dude living at home with his parents. I’m up too late on a school night and so what sort of crazy sexy fun could I be having? Well, I went to the gym and I think I said hello to some cute women, but the real fun started after I got home and took a shower, fully intending to go straight to bed. THE DRAIN PLUGGED UP. And you can imagine how much fun it is to snake a drain using a flimsy manual snake bought at a local hardware store. It’s fine for snaking out short things like the trap under a sink, but going all the way down the convoluted bathtub drain? It took me about 45 minutes of snaking. (You notice I use the word snake a lot as a verb and a noun. I don’t know what else the item and its usage is called.)

I’m thinking of shelling out the money for a real snake with an electric motor. I can only find one on Amazon and they’re like $250US. I wonder if I can find a used one somewhere.

OK enough about my plumbing. Did I mention a guy spit on my car today? I usually never have to spit. Only when I accidentally swallow bugs do I need to spit. This guy rolled down his van window and spit directly onto my windshield on the freeway. He probably had no idea he did it. Sometimes guys spit on me when I’m walking downtown too. What is up with white people and spitting?

And just to end on a different note, here’s a picture an online acquaintance sent me of her new future kitten. (Note that I never asked her if I could post it, so I’m effectively STEALING the picture.)

I was a half-block from the gym when my phone rang. I thought it was my sister and was about to say, “What do you want?” when I noticed it wasn’t her phone number. Well, it was my trainer. Last Friday we were going to find out last-minute whether he was free, and it turns out he wasn’t. So he told me to show up Tuesday (today). He forgot to write it down. He did tell me he was waiting for some contractors to show up to discuss work on his girlfriend’s deck, so I can understand how he was distracted last Friday, but everyone has been cancelling on everything lately.

Oh, I updated my friendster profile. It’s along the lines of what I write here, so nothing new.

Oh, and eight glasses of water a day my ass. I just about died in my six hour megacorp corporate rah-rah training today, and I only had two drinks. OK, so one was a double-sized cup of coffee and the other was a 20oz Diet Coke, but still. If I had drank the 8 glasses of water, I would have burst.

Looks like they changed the rules of the mailing list without telling me, and then deleted me from the approved senders list this morning! I unsubscribed and no more headache for me.

Come to think of it, I never did volunteer to be the “Vice-President of Communications” for the local MIT alumni club. I was asked to do it by a guy who was tired of it, and no wonder. At the same time I also was volunteered to keep track of a few cross-university alumni club mailing lists, and all I got was grief. I mean, Stanford University was already near the top of my list of west coast jackass factories when this Stanford alum told me, “arrogant functionary. we’ll meet some time. watch your back,” because I asked the list to see if a newcomer had the proper qualifications to join the list. I guess everybody in Portland is supposed to know who the Stanford grads are and just bow down before them.

Today I forwarded on an event to the MIT group mailing list and I was told, “This is spam. Do not use this list for forwarding these events.” I’m sorry, but whether or not it’s spam is MY call, or it will be for a while longer. It looks like they changed the passwords for the alumni club web site without telling me, so I may have my job taken away. I know that MIT alumni aren’t the most socially well-adjusted people, so it might just be better that I stay away from them.

I went over to help a friend’s dad with his computer. The main problem was getting the modem working. Of course, that took me all of about 5 minutes, and then we tried getting his sound card working. Two hours later, we gave up. He really just wanted the modem working so he could get online.

Later in the day, I was over at my sister’s, trying to get her wireless router working. I got it working in five minutes, then decided to change the password on the wireless. Of course, that only wasted a half hour of my time, so I decided to upgrade the firmware on the router. Another half hour. Well, now my brother-in-law can use his laptop upstairs, but yeesh, it’s supposed to be easier than that.

Oh, so friend 1 told me to try to meet chicas on Friendster. He has 18 friends there. Friend 2 who has 37 friends there told me that sure, you can meet chicks there, but you’re gonna meet chicks who really want to meet other chicks, if you know what I mean. This probably explains why I can find some of my gay friends there when I can’t find them anywhere else. (Except for the ones who are still hiding from me, and you know who you are Terry Pribble.)

So, I’m not much of a planner, so the fact that I had a couple of things lined up for Friday night was kind of a surprise. In fact, on Wednesday I knew I was supposed to meet with Dave the trainer and meet Il for dinner or something. Well, they both bailed on me. Dave is redoing his girlfriend’s deck and had to meet with a contractor, and Il claimed he wasn’t feeling so hot. So I headed to the gym.

Well, the gym wasn’t so bad, but nobody seemed to be as friendly (or so it seemed to me) and the high point of the night was that I finally got to watch an episode of “Numb3rs.” It wasn’t all that great.

Oh, and I was told at megacorp that what I’d been doing for the past couple of days was nonsensical and useless. I hope things seem better after I get some sleep.