I had dinner with Aaron tongiht, pork chops and white wine, to celebrate the closing of the term and the worst of finals being over with. It definitely was nice to relax with a friend and talk about anything and everything. Having friends like this at school that I click with so well makes me think of how much I miss my friends from back home, and how it is so easy to talk to them. I really wish that we weren’t on trimesters so that I could see them more often. But I guess this is part of growing into the people that we are going to be, being apart.

I remember talking to Nate one day a long while ago and he said “One day when we’re grown up, you’ll have your people call my people and we’ll have dinner sometime.” I really hope that isn’t the case; I don’t want my people to call Nate’s people, I want to call Nate, and I don’t want it to be dinner sometime, I want it to be anything on a regular basis. This really makes me think about the people that I grew up with and how I should make more of an effort to stay in contact with them.

I miss you guys.

It started out crappy. For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to stay up until 2am last night finishing that poem. Whatever, it felt good to get it done. So when I woke up this morning, at about 7:40, I was still a lil groggy, and I used the snooze twice- I haven’t done that in ages. Then I chilled and played some HL2 until I went to work at 9 to cover Dan’s shift because he had a final. It was cool, I talked to another ITS worker about RPGs a bunch and I think I might try to play Final Fantasy 7, if I can get ahold of a copy. For some reason, the whole morning just seemed…off. After my review session for Real Analysis (which is going to kick my ass, btw) Pat found me and we had nothing to do, so we went out on the towns. We went to Borders and I got some sweet new books: Anthem by Ayn Rand, and The Pelican Brief and The Firm by John Grisham. Then we were on our way to hit up the Hobby Lobby to get paint and check out the sweet model car selection when we saw that the new Fuddrucker’s was open. This was when the day started to totally pick up.

So we go in, and I’d never been to a Fuddrucker’s before, but I kind of understood the concept: you get a burger and you alone are responsible for condiment application. Pat and I each got a combo deal that came with a shake, and I got strawberry, but Pat was too cool for strawberry so he got vanilla. Then we were waiting at our table for the milkshakes to come and for our food pager to go off so we could get our burgers, and we were discussing how the girl that rang us up was totally not liking the day (she was completely bland and had that ‘I need to get the fuck out of this place’ look on her face) and a waitress came over to clean the table next to us right as a pair of people were going to sit there. She was totally cool and was all like “You want me to clean that for you? I mean, I could leave it dirty for you if you really want me to…” while she was cleaning it- totally suave. So I commented about how she was totally lovin’ her job way more than the girl at the register, no big deal. When our shakes came it was the cool girl that brought them. She asked “Who has the strawberry?” Me, of course. Then she said something about strawberry just loud enough for Pat to hear but I couldn’t quite make it out, and Pat started cracking up. Obviously, I had to know what she said, so I asked. Turns out she said “Strawberry shakes are for pansies.” [Jaw agape] She was totally just joshin’, but I played it smooth: “I think that deserves a hug.” So I totally scored a one-armed hug from a Fuddrucker’s cutie. Then later she came back over during a lull in her service to ask “How is the strawberry shake?” and I couldn’t help but shoot the “Well it was fine…until you came back” playfully. I made sure she knew I was kidding by saying “I’m kidding” over and over again while she went back to work. She was totally diggin’ it. I decided that I like Fuddrucker’s.

Nothing else really interesting happened for the rest of the day, but I’m liking the day, and I should think that I want to keep it that way. 🙂

WordPress 1.5 is up, looking sexy (almost as sexy as me, I might add) and the install was virtually painless. See, Aaron? Backing up just the plain old data folder of my mySQL folder wasn’t so silly was it? I didn’t even need to install PHPmyAdmin. Eat that, bitch. In other news, Steam doesn’t want to be updated very quickly these days. Poo on that.

Also, I thought this was quite funny:
You start with this…
And finish strong with this…
Thanks, Grimes.

Apparently, I have girly handwriting. At least that’s one thing that you could deduce from today’s story:

So I decided to do something for Valentine’s day (I know, totally out of character, but what can I say?) so I went to Walgreen’s and picked out cards like 2 weeks ahead of time so that I would be totally prepared and have time to mail things- I was completely on top of my game (again, highly out of character). Needless to say, not everybody was on top of their respective games. I sent a card to a friend and didn’t put the name on the envelope in hopes that she wouldn’t entirely figure out who sent in until she opened it, thereby adding an element of surprise, and apparently confusion. So she decided that she was going to send cards back to people that sent her cards, but she mistook my handwriting for someone else’s (A GIRL’S-THANKS [I’m just messin’, I think it’s hilarious (maybe it’s just your way of telling me I have nice handwriting? [how many times can I legally do this (I don’t know [is it wrong that I responded to myself? (I hope not)])])]). So she sent someone else a card in response to the card I sent her, lol. But she called to apologize and explain the situation and we talked for like 2 hours and that totally made my day, so it’s all good, not that it wouldn’t have been good, cuz I just can’t bring myself to be mad at her anyway.

Some sweet valentine’s day statistics:
Number of people that are my valentine: 1
Number of little valentines that you used to hand out in grade school that I got: 1
Number of cards that I got: 0
Number of cans of spam that I got: 1 (it’s true!)
Number of hugs that I got: 2 (but they were from the same person, and 1 of them wasn’t v-day oriented)
Number of hugs that people owe me: 1

Moral of the story: no love for Mark. Whatever, I’m used to it. 😉

The ides are upon us! Beware, for when the ides draw to a close, the worst will be here (but at least it will be pink). Tomorrow will mark the one-year anniversary of my shoes and my shoelaces, and while they have been running strong for so long, I think it might be time for a new pair of shoes… 🙁 In addition, tomorrow marks the due date of my Psych214 term paper, which I am about to write. That’s right, I have…a paragraph so far. Not pretty. I guess I should get on that.

It’s a hard knock life, being a n3rd. The zits, the angry stares when you set the curve, the “please don’t look at me…ever” look that the girls get when you walk up to them. But the worst is that “please don’t use all my bandwidth” look that the network admins give you when they have to shut off your network connection because your uploads are taking half of the school’s upload capacity.

Of course, I’m kidding…mostly. As some of you know, I was taken offline for a couple of days, a few days ago. What happened was that when I upgraded to the new version of eMule, the eMule traffic had a new signature that our school’s packetshaper couldn’t identify, so it didn’t know how to throttle it. I was expecting the packetshaper to take care of throttling eMule for me, so I had my eMule transfer rate caps off. Soooo when people started downloading from me, they were getting hella fast transfers, and I wound up using at least half of the school’s upload capacity, which looked really suspicious. So they canned my internet. But in the end, it was just an honest mistake and an unforseeable incident, and the guy who took me offline totally understood and was a really cool guy and so I’m back online with no problems.

That doesn’t stop the zits, angry stares, or “please don’t look at me” looks, though. But it helps.

So I go to update today, thinking maybe I will just make a post to my journal, my haven for my thoughts, and what do I find? My journal has been spammed by a bot posting random comments with a link to play poker at the end. That hurts. I have no respect for that. Now I have to screen all further comments before they will be actually posted, just to make sure they are people.

In other news, I had a long talk last night with one of the closest friends that I have ever had, and I feel like we really bonded, and I have come to realize the appreciation that I have for all that she has done for me and how much of a great friend she has been.

Thank you for always being there to talk.
Thank you for always watching out for me.
Thank you for being the voice of reason when I am not.
Thank you for bringing people into my life that I can not imagine being without.
Plainly and simply stated: thank you.

I went snowboarding for my third time ever today, and oh-boy did it hurt… I can’t wait to go again. Is that wrong? Should I not like the fact that I can’t sit down without groaning? Should it alarm me that I fell on my arm once so hard that it tingled and went numb? Is it not cool that I flipped onto my back and hit the back of my head on the hard snow so hard that my hat flew off? Well too bad, because these are the prices that I am willing to pay for the exhiliration of ripping down a slope with my eyes watering from the cold wind, or for the thrill of some sweet air, or for the feeling that you get when you realize you have to jump off the chairlift to the ground 6 or seven feet below cause you didn’t get off it for some reason or another and it didn’t stop moving cause nobody realized that you were still on and so you just jump off and look like a dumbass (it happens pretty much every time I go), or hell even for the feeling of helplessness you get when you realize that you’re rolling around awkwardly and you probably just broke your left arm when you rolled onto it. What can I say, I guess I’m crazy.

But at least I didn’t bust my face on the TUBE HILL. Who does that, seriously? (Hint: It was Pat.)

I am angry. Why did Valve implement Steam? It sucks. Here’s a typical attempt at playing a Steam-powered game:

Isn’t that wonderful? The answer is blatantly no.
Asdfkgjhdfglkjnglsnkadkldsfmndsf,mnsdf,mndf,msdfdfidfksdkjwe.

Who ever thought that REQUIRING people to validate their CD-key for their SINGLE PLAYER OFFLINE GAMES over the INTERNET was a good idea? What if I don’t HAVE the internet? Or what if, and this is purely hypothetical (until you actually try to connect to Steam’s servers), your service simply does not have the bandwidth to entertain even the thought of validating my CD-key? Why should I be denied the right to play a game I paid $50 for because you can’t maintain a damn network, especially a network that I don’t need to be on in order for the game to run?!

I bet the same person that thought that requiring validation over the internet was a good idea also thought that requiring everyone to update their games EVERY TIME A PATCH COMES OUT was a good idea also. Well, you’re an idiot. If the game works for me, I shouldn’t need to upgrade, unless I am about to play with some friends who have upgraded to a version that is not backwards compatible, OR something is terribly wrong, like if I try to complete a mission objective then it will give me a siezure. And why should everyone be required to download the updates from your servers? Why not create a distributable single file that does the update, like in the olden days, so that when my friend downloads the update, I don’t have to waste my time, your time, and everybody else’s time on the internet bogging down the server just to get it- I can get it from him on CD or over a LAN or something.

There is no reason that I should have to wait over 8 FUCKING HOURS from the time I start installing a game from a set of CDs until I can actually play it.

Steam, you are fired. I seriously hope that somebody figures out that your system is not worthwhile and decides to actually do something about it. I hold no power, and you should count that as a blessing, because if I could do anything about this, you would be so sorry that your momma would feel it.

Today, I feel good about myself. Something that had been bothering me for quite some time in my mind has actually come to a resolution, and I can finally stop torturing myself about it (just one of those times when a well-developed imagination is a bad bad thing). Maybe now Kali will stop ragging on me (“Mark! Why are you such a crabby pants?!”) I swear I wasn’t being a crabby pants, I was just a little placid there for a while. That time has come and gone, and I feel like the world doesn’t hate me so much. Except the real number line. That thing hates everyone.