December 5–7, 2001 — I feel much better now, thanks

For the first couple days of this week, I couldn’t get any work done. I just wanted to sleep and to generally avoid life.

I felt a bit better by Wednesday. I could force myself to work again without spending the entire time wishing that I were lying down instead.

Rodney (otherwise known as R-Kade, I guess) called me during the afternoon to talk about his Web site. I hadn’t spoken with him in quite awhile and was wondering if he was even looking after the site anymore. He said that he was, and he emailed me a link to a redesign of r-kade.com that someone had done for him.

I had already started a redesigned version of the site, and I didn’t want to lose all the work that I’d done on that, so I started work on finishing it. The person who had done the redesign had done it for school, so I don’t think I need to feel too guilty about not using it.

I mostly worked on that for the rest of the night, taking breaks to edit Amy’s essay on Oedipus and to clean my room up a bit.

Then I went to sleep.

On Wednesday, I woke up to the sound of a jackhammer ripping up the street outside my house. I couldn’t see a clock, but I decided that it was much too early for jackhammering. I also decided that I would not be satisfied with any reason for tearing up the street unless it was to extend the streetcar route to the front of my house in an effort to create an exclusive, chauffeured streetcar line that picks up Andrew, Johnston, and me on demand.

It turned out that (as far as I could tell) they were making repairs to the sewers. It also turned out that it was after 12:00 pm when they woke me up, so I really didn’t have much to complain about. Not that that’s ever stopped me before...

Once I was awake, I went back to work on the R-Kade Web site. I was having trouble with transparent GIFs, and I remembered seeing that the MTV Web site had the same problem that I was having, so I wanted to see if they’d fixed it. (My theory being that if MTV is fucking it up, I may as well too.)

Upon arriving, I noticed that MTV was hyping the new Saves The Day video on the front page of mtv.com. They also describe Saves The Day as being in between Green Day and Blink 182.

Shuddering slightly, I was happy to see that I could finally watch the video for “At Your Funeral.” It’s a pretty nice-looking video, all in all. And since it was an online stream and not the version they play on US television, they didn’t censor the bit about getting high in the back room. US censors never fail to amaze me when they go so far as to censor out drug references that paint a negative picture of drug use.

My only complaint about the video was that it pretty much skipped over the lyrics of the song entirely and was based solely on the title. Anyway, go watch it, if you like. And if you’re lucky, you’ll get to see the same truth-about-marijuana banner ads that I did. (Is truth your anti-drug?)

I decided to leave the house sometime on Thursday afternoon to check the mail and to buy light bulbs. My first pin order arrived in the mail, which was exciting. I was a bit bewildered to find that light bulbs are in fact available in more than one wattage, though. I bought 100–watt bulbs, figuring we wanted things to be as bright as possible.

As it turns out, all our light bulbs had been 40–watt bulbs up until now. I’m sure that the landlord will freak out and give me a lecture about her electricity bill when she sees the new ones, but I’m beyond caring at this point.

And damn is it ever bright in the hall now.

Thursday night, I spent more time cleaning my room. I organized half of my CD collection alphabetically and I considered vacuuming. (Because the first step is admitting you have a problem, right?)

I’m getting there, anyway.

I couldn’t sleep on Thursday night. My mind was buzzing for hours as I thought of all the obsessive and unnecessary features I wanted to program for Swivel Base, my current Project That Will Never Be Properly Completed. I devised a way to have allow users to submit their webcams and to have the site rank and sort them all by itself. Among many, many other things.

Now if I could just convince myself to start coding even the most basic aspects of the site... Maybe next week.

And now it’s Friday. I wasted today quite thoroughly in most ways.

I woke up and started working on the R-Kade Web site. I took breaks for food. I finished the aforementioned Web site and uploaded it during the evening, although I’ve yet to finish installing the new forum software for it. I’ve yet to start, actually, but don’t sweat the small stuff, my mom always says.

Anyway. It’s red. Go look at it.

Dave and Matt are visiting on Monday. I look forward to introducing them to our landlord.

I haven’t done any Christmas shopping yet. I’m not sure if I should be worried. I think I know what I’m getting my parents, but the rest is still blank.

I think I’ll go clean my room some more.