September 12, 2001 — We now return to regularly scheduled programming

Yesterday was supposed to mark the triumphant return of antigreg. The universe had other plans, though, and I spent the day distracted by breathless news reports and oft-repeated amateur footage of the morning's events.

Then, today, I woke up to find that my message board was no longer working for reasons that I don't entirely understand. The solution, of course, is to close down everything and to slowly start anew. It's not like anyone was using the message board anymore, really, so it's probably easier for all involved (especially me) to start fresh. More and more sections will come online over the next week or two until the new discussion system and the new journal system are each online, and until I've redesigned all the other pages on the site. It's not like I'm short on time...

In any case, I'm back in Toronto. I'm making a slow recovery from my weeks of doing little outside the realms of work and sleep, and I'm doing my best to learn to keep a journal again. It has been far too long.

My room in Toronto is enormous compared to last year. (Well, it's not actually any bigger than the one I shared with Johnston in residence last year, but this year I'm not sharing it. Which means I've room for a computer desk and a work desk and a table for my stereo equipment... Given that last year I only had a single desk [and it was under my bed], life is getting better.) I'm mere steps away from actually being content in my current situation, what with the Raiders of the Lost Arc soundtrack playing in the background and without silly things like work or school to worry about. (Emphasis on the Raiders of the Lost Arc soundtrack, of course.)

Our current living arrangements also benefit from having a Pizza Pizza less than three blocks away. Since I'll be malnourished in general but eating far too much pizza at the same time, I'll be moving ever closer to the epitome of the "thin fat person" as described in Microserfs — I aim to not only be underweight, but also to have whatever meat is on me be made up mostly of fat. And my planned diet of exclusively pizza and packets of oriental noodles might just do the job.

To be honest, though, I've been eating a lot better here than I ever did at home. Today, for instance, I ate Cheerios and orange juice for breakfast, a grilled-cheese sandwich and a glass of milk for lunch, and oriental noodles with a tofu-like meat substitute and a few slices of cheese for dinner (with a fruit cup for dessert). I'm a bit short on vegetables, but I've had more protein today than I would have in a week at home, so all this pride is more than warranted.

Speaking for Warrant, I was going through my 7"s and 45s today when I remembered that I gave my copy of Warrant's "Heaven" 45 to Dave Williams a year or two ago. I'll have to remind myself to download that MP3 once we get high-speed Internet access going again...

And on that note, I guess I should go over the plans for the next week or two: On Friday, we should theoretically have Sympatico High Speed Edition going. I've already set up a router and everything should work out fine, but... Well, I'm a little doubtful of the quality of the wiring in this house. So we'll see come Friday. But ideally we'll have high-speed access by then. Which means that the 24-hour webcam will be back online, and this time it will be much better quality as I've more or less retired the old (and exceptionally blurry) camera. So if all goes well, there will be hours of voyeuristic fun for all involved as soon as Friday.

As far as the rest of the site goes, it will probably be back at full speed by early next week. Except for the message boards, the programming of which, I suspect, is going to turn into quite an ordeal. But hopefully everything will be back at 100% by the end of September. The journal archive is going to be much, much more logically organized, complete with the "next journal" and "previous journal" links that Kim suggested so very long ago. And the complete archive back to May of 2000 will all be in one place, and you'll be able to reply to the really old entries again, too. Oh, the excitement!

I think that's about it. So to reiterate: no journal archive until I get it reworked (which should be by the end of the weekend, I think), but I'll be posting journals pretty much daily, and they'll all be added to the archive once it's going again.

Sick of me yet?