matt is busy moving the rest of his belongings and furniture out of our apartment and into paul's place. i'm slowly starting to realize how empty it will feel around the house. matt will be gone, jess is never home. it'll be like living by myself again. that's fine, i would never complain about it. i'll have lots of space. i'll be able to run around and do whatever. i'll be able to fall asleep to the tv. leave the lights on until i go to bed.

but i also won't have matt to talk to. we both had that annoying habit, at times, to come up with something seemingly brilliant right at the point where we know that we're not going to get enough sleep for work the next day.

i'll miss yelling across the room to matt, saying "turn that fucking thing off" about his alarm clock. of course, i'm half asleep when it happens, so it probably comes out as "mmmmf! fuck!" it's okay, though…the point is made. sometimes i think that i end up doing the job better than the alarm clock.

i guess i barely knew matt when i moved in. we had talked quite a bit, but there's so little you know about a person until you share that kind of space. i think i learned a lot about living with someone. i think i learned a lot about matt and how we are both similar, yet very different. there are fundamental things that matt and i have in common, and we've had long talks about them. he's the quiet one. i'm the loud, obnoxious one. it happens that way.

at first, the idea of bipolar was a novelty. we were two friends that both wanted to do a weblog. i can't remember which one of us came up with the dual weblog idea (probably matt. all the good ideas are his), but we rolled with it. i've learned a lot about (semi)daily writing. i've learned a lot about myself. i've learned a lot about matt. bipolar, now, seems like such a natural thing that i don't know what i'd do without it. i don't think i would even write here without matt on the other side.

probably write that screenplay ginna is hounding me about.

it's raining outside. i'm stuck at work, hoping to squeeze out early so i can help (watch) the guys load up the u-haul and head over to paul's. i'm sure they'll need me sitting on the porch, drinking beer, supervising with the best of 'em.

i'm home.

four wonderful days, bookended by a pair of eight hour (almost on the nose) drives.

i went to atlanta, which is in georgia, which is in the region of the united states that we affectionately call "the southeast." i ate at a place called einstein's. i remember hearing something about albert being a vegetarian…that made the lack of meat-free fare on the menu slightly disturbing.

i did not hang out with outkast, the goodie mob, or ludacriss. they were nowhere in sight (except we did see a stretch suv limo). i was assured by megan that ludacriss was hanging out at her apartment, waiting on her to get home. this was when i went out to meet up with her at her place of employment on sunday night. we missed out on pizza, but got to shoot pool in the dive next door. i won both games; one by default, the other by skill. once again, i reign supreme.

it's called luck, ladies and gents…something i seem to have in buckets sometimes…

i had the best reuben of my life at a place called vortex. let it be known that i will eat there again. i would move to atlanta just to have that reuben within reach. it's a miracle to come across a place that can get those all-important ingredients into the perfect ratio.

i had a lot of beer at a place called the earl. it was a nice place. paul would love it. imagine the mag, but bigger…and in a neighborhood like where we actually live. good music. a bar that has high life but no coors light. a place with priorities.

priorities…there's a novel concept. when was the last time we took a long look at our own? realized what's really important?

my weekend was long, but so short it hurts. i had a lot of fun, but there was so much left to do…

there's always next time, right?

i hate moving. i'm sure i'm not alone in this, since pretty much every person with whom i've ever had even the most rudimentary conversation regarding moving has agreed with me. i've never mentioned moving to someone and had them say "oh, i love moving!" i think if i had, i would have shot them.

really though, i think when all is said and done, i'll have gotten all my personal belongings (not including furniture, of course) into a total of about 15 boxes. so far, i've gotten 8 of them packed up and moved. thursday will be the big day though. we'll be renting the u-haul and lugging all that furniture down two flights of stairs (three if you count the 10 front porch steps) then back up one or two flights of stairs. i'm really dreading it. especially the couch, which in the past has been the bane of my existence. but we've already chopped the legs off of it, so hopefully that'll make it easier this time around.

not much else to say. at this point, moving is my life.

(does the word "moving" look weird to anyone else… maybe it's my disheveled state of mind, but for some reason after i finished writing this, it just didn't look like it was spelled correctly. that is just one of the strangest feelings in the world, when a simple word that you know you're spelling correctly just doesn't feel right… bah.)

OH, and, since i didn't get to post about him "behind his back" this weekend (since our server was apparently down again…), a hearty welcome home to brian. hopefully his several days without a net connection haven't scarred him for life…

as a last day before leaving town, today was rather uneventful. i ended up getting up terribly early today and sitting around the house for a great deal of time. i went out to the record store to pick up the jealous sound ep. while i was there, i ran into a friend of mine, garrett. we caught up, since we hadn't seen each other in a couple of months. garrett let me know he was living right down the block from me. we decided we'd hang out for a while. he came over. i showed him my bitchin' hellboy lunchbox. garrett offered me his electro-harmonix small stone. no catch…just free. that garrett…what a guy.

we hung out for a little while, he headed home, i went out to eat with guy and another friend. it was so fucking uninteresting to anyone that wasn't there that i can't believe that i'm writing about it. worse yet, i can't believe you're still reading about it.

jesus christ…what has this world come to?

the pedal doesn't work. it seems to have a burned resistor. nothing $.25 and a soldering iron can't fix. blah blah blah…it was fucking free.

i'm leaving at 9am tomorrow. i have yet to pack. i have yet to shower. i have yet to do anything closely resembling getting prepared. oh…my life is a sedentary one, it seems…

hope this weekend proves to shake things up a bit. what do you say?

in some shady attempt to promote the illusion that i've updated twice in as many days, i'm posting the following extract from a conversation that i had on AIM with a coworker. i'd like to think that it's both an interesting and informative discussion about free software. this conversation is released under the GFDL.

BenCo**us (11:23:13 AM): Blogger is fucked up. you can't just download the source. it's strange.
BenCo**us (11:23:23 AM): i don't trust it!
MrCoffeemonk (11:23:42 AM): oh, its proprietary. it's one guy trying to make money… not open source…
BenCo**us (11:24:02 AM): well, it is "free"… free as in beer. not as in speech
MrCoffeemonk (11:24:57 AM): wow, i'm not sure exactly how to interpret that statement…
BenCo**us (11:26:00 AM): that's the quintessential "free software" statement. Software can be "Free as In Beer" meaning it doesn't cost you anything to get the software, but "Free as In Speech" means you are allowed to get the code, and use it as you wish, as long as you note who originally said it. (or wrote it)
BenCo**us (11:26:26 AM): for instance, Blogger is "Free as In Beer", but since you don't get the source, it isn't "Free as In Speech"
BenCo**us (11:26:38 AM): it's a little confusing at first. it took me a while.
MrCoffeemonk (11:27:19 AM): ah… i think i'm at least partially getting it… the only thing that's tripping me up is the "as in beer" part, seeing as most beer, unfortunately, isn't free.
BenCo**us (11:27:27 AM): yeah.
MrCoffeemonk (11:27:31 AM): oh, what a world we'd live in if beer were free.
BenCo**us (11:27:32 AM): it's strange.
BenCo**us (11:28:23 AM): http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
BenCo**us (11:28:29 AM): the first line sums it up.
BenCo**us (11:28:44 AM): Free Software means liberty, not price
MrCoffeemonk (11:30:00 AM): ahha.
BenCo**us (11:30:15 AM): for instance, Microsoft gives away their source to certain vendors. It is "Free Beer", because you can't modify, redistribute, etc, etc. it. It's like "Source Under Glass"
MrCoffeemonk (11:30:44 AM): oh. yeah. now i'm getting it…
MrCoffeemonk (11:31:11 AM): that's actually a really good erm… analogy.
BenCo**us (11:32:21 AM): meanwhile, Microsoft has termed that "Shared Source". And if by "Shared" you mean "Viewable", then yes. It's almost like saying, "Oh, I'll share my pudding cup with you, friend" and then waving in front of your friend's face, so they can smell, see, pray HEAR the pudding, but they can't eat it.
MrCoffeemonk (11:34:31 AM): right. pudding withholding bastards.
BenCo**us (11:34:35 AM): hehe
MrCoffeemonk (11:34:58 AM): not that, really, i'd even WANT to have software based on Microsoft code, mind you.
BenCo**us (11:35:15 AM): well, it'd be nice to see. i guess.
MrCoffeemonk (11:35:51 AM): i would rather have the freedom to destroy all copies and traces of microsoft code in existence, since they'll only end up confusing the coders who have genuine skill and ability.
BenCo**us (11:36:19 AM): i think a big concern of theirs is security holes. Like, for instance, i'm working on a content management system called Kludge-o. I'm a little worried that when i release this thing into the wild, any old body could find a security hole. but then that fear will make me design a more secure application.
MrCoffeemonk (11:37:02 AM): it's a valid concern. there are more "hackers" out there, just looking for something to do, and some way to "prove" themselves.
MrCoffeemonk (11:37:35 AM): but yeah, the awareness of that will help you watch for potential holes.
BenCo**us (11:37:49 AM): true. i think that there were actually more security notices regarding Linux last year than NT, but that's because the Linux code is open.
BenCo**us (11:38:09 AM): and the Linux holes have been fixed. NT's unknown holes haven't
MrCoffeemonk (11:38:59 AM): i imagine it must be difficult tracking those things though. i've often wondered just how crazy it must be to have thousands of people working on the same piece of software.
BenCo**us (11:39:18 AM): well, "thousands" is a little exaggerated.
BenCo**us (11:39:48 AM): while there may be thousands of contributors, there is usually a limited number of people who determine what goes in, what stays out.
MrCoffeemonk (11:40:19 AM): did you ever, in elementary school, do the thing where the teacher gave you a photocopy of a drawing that was overlaid with a grid, and a sheet of paper, and told you to reproduce on your paper the image that was inside one square of that grid?
BenCo**us (11:40:45 AM): Linus Torvalds is the BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life) for the Linux kernel, and he ultimately decides.
MrCoffeemonk (11:40:46 AM): then, when all the individual pieces of paper were taped to the wall, they never quite matched up…?
BenCo**us (11:41:02 AM): uh. yeah
BenCo**us (11:41:08 AM): i think we did do that.
BenCo**us (11:41:26 AM): or a version
MrCoffeemonk (11:41:36 AM): it reminds me of the "open source" method of software development in a way… or at least my perception of it.
BenCo**us (11:41:47 AM): yeah. you could think of it that way
MrCoffeemonk (11:41:53 AM): there are going to be places where the image doesn't quite match up.
BenCo**us (11:42:05 AM): true, but the outcome of that code is what matters.
BenCo**us (11:42:26 AM): the overall effect of the picture, from a distance, is the same.
MrCoffeemonk (11:42:45 AM): true. and if you have a controlling body, then they can go over the drawing in the places where it doesn't quite match up, and make it match better.
MrCoffeemonk (11:42:59 AM): plug the holes, so to speak.
BenCo**us (11:43:46 AM): an interesting piece of reading is Eric S. Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", it explains it nicely. in the "Bazaar" there are many contributors, and the folks in the cathedral choose what they want from the bazaar, and make product from those selections.
MrCoffeemonk (11:45:02 AM): the cathedral, therefore would be either the Linux distributors, or the individual end users… i'm assuming.
MrCoffeemonk (11:47:11 AM): admittedly i've never really attempted to install or use linux, so my view from the outside sees it as being this potentially very confusing thing. so many different versions of things that do the same thing… how do you pick the pieces you want or need, how do you pick the best apples for your apple pie?
BenCo**us (11:49:34 AM): well, that is what the distributor is for. Red Hat chooses the applications which are bundled with their distro. often, they will bundle more than one application that does the same thing
BenCo**us (11:49:59 AM): like mail transfer agents. there is Qmail, Postfix, Sendmail, etc, etc.
BenCo**us (11:50:31 AM): it can be a little confusing, but i think that it is more natural. Exchange Server shouldn't be your ONLY choice. Survival of the fittest.

i'm wearing a shirt and tie at work today. i washed my nice shirt when i was doing laundry the other day, so i thought i'd wear it today. i was going to wear it yesterday, but that whole "sleeping an hour late" thing kinda got my morning off to a frazzled start. so here i am, drinking orange juice, lookin' snazzy for once.

i just finalized plans for leaving town, this weekend. i'm headed down to atlanta with seth on saturday. after friday, i won't be able to post again until tuesday. someone has passed an edict that i will have no computer access for the entire holiday weekend. no . no websites. certainly no bipolar. i hope i live…

i called sarah last night. things are okay. she should be looking forward to her much delayed and misrouted birthday gift to be arriving either today or tomorrow. i hope she likes it.

it's been announced that hey mercedes is playing krazy fest here in louisville, this year. looks like i'll need to take bob and the gang out for some cold ones. the invite was also opened to the bike, as well.

where is my mind? i haven't a clue…

so since i'll be in atl, i guess i should maybe make it a point to harass those tame girls, huh? should be a fun time…

ugh ugh ugh….drawing blanks…maybe more later.

wow. a whole year. yep, as brian pointed out, and as the more observant of you might have already noticed (yesterday), bipolar is now officially a year old. and i think i'll take a cue from brian on this one, and talk briefly about how the year has played itself out. i already did the self-referential link scavenger hunt back in january, so if you want links the easy way, go check that out.

how have things changed for me since my first entry on bipolar?

well, i guess the biggest thing would have to be my employment situation. when bipolar accepted its first visitor, i was unemployed and had been for a few months. i would have to say that was a pretty down time for me, emotionally, but i did enjoy the fact that i didn't have to do anything at all during the day if i didn't want to. i got a crappy job at Kinko's, because it was easy to get and i needed money pretty desperately. a month after getting that job, during the week i was in the training class, i got the job offer for my current job at corvus. so now, a year later i'm still happily employed, doing what i love to do and making decent money doing it. my professional life has never been better.

i'm just now (next week) preparing to move out of the apartment i've lived in for over two years, to go share an apartment with paul and current roommate brax. the three of us have lived together (well, obviously brax and i have) before on several different occasions, and we get along famously, so i'm really looking forward to the move. not to mention the fact that i'll finally (after over a year) have my own room again. when i first moved into my current apartment, i was living with my then-girlfriend–the often-mentioned, evil her. of course, i was completely in love with her, and everything was fine for a few months until she did her heart-stomping and friendship/fishhook thing on me. after she finally moved out, i had our room to myself for a few months until brax moved in (the first time). since brax couldn't share a room with Jess (since she's, y'know, a girl) he and i took the upstairs bedroom and shared that for a few months until his girlfriend got her meathooks back into him and dragged him back out into an apartment with her. then i had the whole upstairs to myself for… about a month, until brian's roommate situation fell through and he needed a place to stay "until he got on his feet and got his own place." a year later brian's still here, still sleeping on my couch. soon enough, though, he'll have the room to himself, and i'll have my own room to myself. as brian said, he thinks i'm the only person he could have shared such close quarters with for so long. i'd have to agree with him. i think i'm the only person on the planet who could live with him this long without going to the pawn shop to buy a gun, or checking myself into a mental institution.

i wrote my first post something like three months after the breakup of a very brief but intense relationship, and thankfully, by the time we started bipolar i'd pretty much gotten over it. so, i haven't yet had the pleasure of writing any serious relationship posts, since i've not had the pleasure of being involved in any relationships for the past year. i like to think that i'm just being picky and waiting for the right girl to come along, but i suppose i'm really just fucking shy as hell.

i'm probably about 20 pounds heavier than i was a year ago, but i've recently started trying to work out on a semi-regular basis to try and get back down to a more ideal weight. most of my friends say they can't or can only barely tell. of course, they're my friends, what else are they gonna say?

so, with all that's happened, it's been an interesting year. it's strange to realize that i have a record of quite a bit of that time. i've attempted to keep diaries in the past, but never been very successful (thus, my seeming inability to post on a daily basis). you are all witness to my longest running continuous diary. don't you feel special.

well, here's to another year and all the fun and excitement that it might bring. for those of you who've been here since early on, i hope you've enjoyed participating in our lives, and to you newcomers, thanks for reading… stick with us, the party's just begun.

holy shit. can it be that i actually missed the bipolar one year anniversary? well…i missed it by a day. not too bad, considering. so if you want to take this day to browse through the archives and see what's been going on over the past year, feel free (not like you couldn't look through the archives any other time). i'm feeling nostalgic, i guess. i was going to link to some specific posts in the past that i think are of merit, but to tell the truth…i think i'd rather just let some of it lie. it's a year of my life. some of it feels like it happened six years ago. some of it seems like it just happened yesterday.

one year ago today, i was working at kinko's. i worked in the computer services department and i hated my job. i don't think i hated what i did as much as where i did it, if that makes sense. i had quite a few cool co-workers, but there were also some shady people. the shady ones are always the people that color your feelings about a workplace, i think. they're the ones that make you unhappy. at least…for me, anyway.

now i work at an isp, troubleshooting network and cable modem problems all day long. i work ten hour days, but i get three off days a week. i make a ton more money, and my chair is more comfortable. i miss laying out things in pagemaker all day, but i like cramming my head with all kinds of new knowledge. i do think i've traded up, though.

one year ago today, i was fairly fresh out of my relationship with jess. we only dated for about six months, all told. it was a good relationship. we had a lot of disagreements. we were too good of friends for us to be together, i think. looking back on it, jess and i had fun. we're still really close friends, and i think that our time together has only made it better.

now i'm fresh out of another relationship. it didn't last near as long, but i think i learned a lot from it. things are really looking up for me, lately, but i don't want to jinx it by saying too much. i'm happy, if that counts for anything.

one year ago today, i was living with my cousin chris and my friend mike. we had a nice apartment. the living situation didn't really work out as expected. chris is still one of my best friends in the world, even if we don't talk as much as we used to. he definitely falls in that category of "people i'd take a bullet for." that's pretty select company, i'd say. once again, it was all a learning experience, if anything.

now i'm living in a big apartment with matt and jess. matt is moving out at the end of this month to go live with paul (only a couple of blocks away). i think we're officially dubbing this "the great roommate swap of 2001" or something. it's kinda funny. jess and i will be the only ones living in our apartment, at the end of this month. at first i thought it would be hard to even talk to her, now i can't wait to have the room to stretch out. matt and i have shared a room for a year. we sacrificed privacy for longer than we thought we would be, but i can honestly say that i haven't felt uncomfortable. i think matt is the only human being that i could share space with, in this capacity, for this length of time.

one year later, my life is totally different, yet strangely…the same.

i slept late this morning. i forgot to turn my alarm on when i finally wedged myself beneath the covers last night. i was tired. i had a swarm of good thoughts in my head. the alarm was the furthest from my waking conscious. i cracked my eyes open at about 9:30am and panicked. i had slept over by an hour and a half and was already a half hour late to work, even if i was able to teleport directly there. i went through the morning ritual on hyperspeed, surprisingly i didn't forget anything.

i decided to take a chance and stop off for some coffee on the way in. i think it was much needed, and you always have to answer that call. i lucked out. there is coffee in my coffee. as a matter of fact, there's extra coffee in my coffee. i mentioned not getting a proper mocha last time, so she was like "do you want an extra shot today?" my answer was a resounding "hells yes." now i am awake. bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. okay…maybe not that awake. maybe still a little dim-eyed and tailless.

jesse gave me a card that has reed richards on it, brandishing the ultimate nullifier. this will only mean something to paul and matt.

did i mention that there's actually coffee in my coffee?

it's feeling uncomfortably warm in here, this morning. it feels pretty nice outside today (aside from the spitting rain), but just…strangely warm. that kind of warm that makes you feel sticky and uncomfortable.

this is just kind of sickening. [i would say thanks to molly, but should you really thank someone for showing you something so horrible? how about "link courtesy of molly"?]

i have a vacation day approved for sunday, meaning i have a four day weekend to look forward to. i have some big plans. i hope they pull through.

i don't take your silence as a negative thing. i know you're just listening.

the bank called at 10am this morning to tell me that they had been able to extract my card from the hungry machine. i then proceeded to go right back to sleep.

i woke up at around 12:30 this afternoon. i went about the business of burning some cds and such until i finally headed out with guy to do the afternoon's errands. we stopped at the bank and picked up my card (or should i say cards? for some reason they also had my insurance card! now i wonder how that happened…). we ate at the weed (tumbleweed for you non-louisvillians), stopped by compusa, and then headed off to the post office.

ahhhh…the post office. what a waste of time. they only had two registers open and one of them was being completely tied up by some foreign man getting a passport. he didn't seem to understand that passports were cash only. he then decided to not understand it the 600 other times the lady at the counter told him. and the three or four times after that, even. it wasn't a language barrier thing, might i add. this man spoke fluent english. he just kept trying to get her to put his total onto his debit card. some people, i tell you… there were about a million people in line and the other lady was getting swamped. i really felt bad for her. i got my transactions taken care of with a minimal amount of fuss, and then we were out of there like a bullet.

i stopped off at my house and picked up some laundry and met guy at the laundro-mat. clothes washing hi-jinks ensued. there was a fellow there that seemed like he was claiming every washer, running one guy off with a shout of "i was going to use that one!" ("i claim these washers in the name of spain!") i swear i've seen chimps act more civilized about whacking off than these people were about laundry. it was a shady, shady place, indeed.

clothes clean. time to go about the rest of my day.