August 23, 2000 — Kinda weak

I had planned on getting anti-greg TV going today, but Sympatico was down. After thinking about it for awhile (during my forced exile from the online world), I decided that it was pretty ridiculous of me to spend all this time setting up the camera and getting everything to work properly at home, given that everything would be over dial-up. This would mean only a couple of hours of activity per day, which would just be silly. So the official launch date is now September 4th (fuck orientation, I figure), at which point anti-greg TV will run 24 hours a day for at least 8 months.

I really wish I hadn't waited so long to write this journal entry, because I'm a little exhausted and I just want to go to sleep. But I did have a really good day, and I'm in excellent spirits. Plenty of good news today cancelled out all of yesterday's grumpiness, and even though I've a lot of work to do before I leave for Toronto, I know I can pull it off, so I'm not worried. I'm actually kind of looking forward to it; compared to the projects that dragged on at work, these will be great simply because I don't have an IT department to work my way through and because there are no office politics plotting against my every move.

Now then. I woke up at around 12:00PM, and my mom knocked on my door shortly thereafter to tell me that I was to call Johnston before 12:30PM. My sleep habits have good timing, it would seem. After an epic adventure trying to get my septum ring in, I was forced to give up, leaving my nose feeling considerable amounts of pain. (I think that once I've arrived in Toronto, I'll be all about keeping the ring in all the time.) I eventually arrived at Johnston's house and we went computer shopping with a pretty decent budget for a laptop. With DVD.

After trips to Future Shop and CompuSmart (who lost the sale due to a horrid lack of people willing to sell Johnston a computer), a nice-looking Compaq notebook was purchased, with a PCMCIA network adapter thrown in thanks to Johnston's haggling abilities.

A victory dinner at Pizza Hut followed, which allowed Nathan to charm the waitress into a free pizza. Well, perhaps his order having been screwed up had more to do with his getting a free pizza than his charm did, but I'm confident his charm alone could've acquired that pizza were it given the chance. And he even gave me a pity piece of his pizza after mine turned out to be toddler-sized.

After leaving Johnston with his new toy, I drove home excited at the prospect of watching my new "Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai" DVD. Little did I know that the television-watching audience in my family would be possessed by a contrived, reality-based TV show that shall remain nameless.

Fortunately, I was able to convince my dad that he was selling out to the man and whatnot (I think he looked forward to bragging at work that he hadn't watched the final episode of said nameless show), so he watched "Ghost Dog" with me downstairs and the TV-watching contingent was forced upstairs.

The movie was as good as I remembered, although the music video and "documentary" were both quite brutal. I have a feeling that if I ever buy a DVD for the special features, I'll be exceptionally disappointed.

So yes. I'm in an excellent mood for reasons that are difficult to explain, but take my word for it and know that I'd explain it here if I could.

I don't think there will be too large of an outcry at the decision to launch anti-greg TV when it'll actually work properly instead of going things in half-assed mode as per usual. Perhaps this can be taken as a new direction for anti-greg...