Usually, one of my computers goes on the fritz about finals week. I don’t have any finals any more, so I figured I’d generate some trouble for myself now. I usually update my NetBSD system daily (the NetBSD-current churn) and that’s why I have my fastest computer doing just that. I also decided to update my Macs to the alpha-release of Fink where I can run gcc-3.3 on Jaguar. And I fixed some, but not all, errors on my web site.

So, basically, I spent all day trying to get my computers to do the exact same thing they did yesterday. Of course I screwed it up and ended up reinstalling the NetBSD and my fink install.

This is all very geeky. What it means is that I played with my computers today. And tomorrow and the next day too, I bet.

My friend has decided he needs to see naked women and the only way he can do that is to go to strip clubs (and there are many in Portland) and dragged me to another one. I’ve got nothing against them but I can’t imagine anything good happening in one. Except maybe I’ll get drunk by paying a lot of money.

Once I was minding my own business in the local strip bar, having a good time, when a young woman came in and wanted to start a fight. She told me, “She’s going home with ME, not YOU!” Heck, nobody’s going home with me. I was just trying to spend all my money, a dollar at a time. I told her that. Finally, the bartender had to tell her to knock it off.

So there you have it. I can go to a strip club and not only can I spend a lot of money for bad drinks and marginal food (though I’ve had better food than you’d expect at a couple of strip clubs) but I can also get beat up by women in their early 20’s who want to go out with strippers. Too bad I’m not into kinky stuff.

Last couple of weeks, we’ve had our share of visitors. Some old friends from Japan, and my sister was here for two weeks. Her friends are in town as well and I haven’t seen them recently. So my sister is leaving tomorrow, just in time to miss the marathon.

She’s really the runner in the family. I only run 5 miles 3 times a week on a nice flat waterfront course. I avoid cars and off-leash dogs and that makes me much happier about my running. People ask why I don’t run the trails in my neighborhood but I almost twisted my ankle earlier this year on two consecutive trail runs so I’m back to running on the awful concrete. She’s run a few marathons &emdash; SF with me, Portland a few times, Chicago, Big Sur? and others I’m sure I forgot &emdash; trained with ultra-marathoners, and is much faster than I am.

Oh I also went up to my friend Greg’s house in the woods of Scappoose, but it won’t be wooded much longer. He has heavy machinery clearing the land so he can buy his daughter a horse. I am not too partial to horses. I’d rather walk or, barring that, ride a motorcycle.

The logging machines take trees and yank them out of the ground. They look like backhoes on steroids. Sometimes the trees break off, but I saw a clump of vine maples 40 – 50′ tall and 10′ across just yanked straight out of the ground. Taller firs and alders as well. It’s pretty amazing. He lives in previously logged tree farm-like property, so I can’t say too much against the logging, other than my previously mentioned aversion to horses.

I’m trying to come up with a list of songs I’ve used to cheer myself up. There are songs that I like, but aren’t quite peppy enough, like “Oh, Sherry” by Steve Perry. (I’m missing my best of Journey CD by the way.) While my favorite CDs include several Pet Shop Boys CDs and Scritti Politti, they’re not guaranteed mood elevators, either. So here’s what I can think of so far:

I can’t remember what else was on the list, which is why I wanted to make a list in the first place.

Perhaps I should list all the versions of “Blue Monday” I have.

We had some visitors from Japan the other week and one of them, a doctor about my age, thinks I should try to get into Japanese medical school. Funny, I was looking at the titles of Japanese novels at the local Kinokuniya bookstore and I couldn’t remember any of the kanji. Any fantasies I might have had about getting into med school in Japan were dashed to bits on the rocks of difficult kanji. Woo. What a horrible metaphor.

I wonder why I’m running so slowly lately. Perhaps I should add more measurements to my running routine. Yeah, like one of those Nike or Timex watches that has a pulse rate monitor, mileage counter, and even downloads to my computer. And I can pay for it all with my fancy new job.

Wait, I don’t have a fancy new job.

I’ll let my girlfriend buy it for Christmas.

Wait, I don’t have a girlfriend. And I’m not Christian.

How about graduation present?

I’m not sure I graduated. All I got was a form with a rubber-stamped signature on it that said my prerequisites were completed.

Well, I better get on with just dreaming about it. That’s going to take time away from my imaginary girlfriend and she’s not going to like that one bit.

Just to let you know that have chosen another candidate for the position of system administrator at XXX.

Thanks very much for taking part in our interview process.

Lets’s see:

• I got a call on Monday for an interview on Tuesday.
• My interview was only scheduled for 30 minutes.
• Secondary interviews were supposed to take place on Thursday.
• The above came in an email at 10:32AM on Thursday.

So that means either the email is poorly worded, or I’m just being jerked around. Either way, one (unsuccessful) interview in 6 weeks of looking for a job is pretty poor.

I have to admit that I’m more upset than I should be that I didn’t get a call back from the art school about the sysadmin job. They told me that the second round of interviewing would be Thursday, so I’m not expecting a call. Currently it’s Wednesday night, about quarter to eleven.

My sister thinks I shouldn’t try for the machining job. She says, “Oh, you should just get a computer job.” How close is that to winning the lottery nowadays?

Oh, and Hall-Kinion, worthless headhunters who have never found a single job for me since I started asking in 1998, are now posting jobs in Portland, OR that require you work in India. And guess what? cio.com has an article sayiing, “Non-Indians can’t get work visas to work in India.” Well, I’m sure their unemployment rate is a lot higher than ours.

I met my sister’s friend’s baby today, but for some reason I don’t think I have much more to say about her. She’s quite cute and intelligent, but as a guy, I’m sort of at a loss for words.

Well, I’d go drown my sorrows but I don’t have the energy.

Here it is, my first attempt at keeping a blog. Just trying different software.

Today was an eventful day. I went running and had a guy try to run me down. Near homicide by people who either blow stop signs or stop all the way into an intersection isn’t an unusual occurrence, and I usually end up screaming obscenities at the driver. But this time I just yelled, “Hey, stop sign!” and listened to him scream at me so enthusiastically that he was spitting out of his grey SUV, “What the F*CK is your PROBLEM? I SAW the sign! That’s why I stopped!” (Three feet into the intersection.)

My reply was just, “What’s your problem? You need to calm down,” in a very quiet, even voice, like he was nuts.

I had my first job interview since graduating with my MS in the field where all the jobs are being sent to India Computer Science. Running computers for an art school, which actually sounds like a good match for me. Now only if they think the same thing.

On my way back from the interview I went to see a friend who rewinds electric motors. He just let me know of a possible job running a CNC milling machine. So there you have it. Two leads for jobs I’m actually interested in, but one for a job I could do without going to graduate school, and another where all my practical experience was freshman year at Benson Polytechnic High School.