I have determined that the headlines above are an utter waste of time and effort, simply because I cannot aptly describe this post before I write it, and it invariably does not do the post justice, and as such, is usually a haphazardly attempt at being clever, witty or apathetic, none of which I am good at. Did I mention I bought a new waterbed mattress? It is amazing. I sleep like a baby. No, seriously, it really is that good. I should take a picture of it so you can see how majestic it really is. I even bought new sheets for it. So take that! Unh! I went to the Beer Expo on Sunday with Keen and Tony. It was a lot of beer, and it was all oh-so-tasty. I realized that when it comes to alcohol, I can slam down the hard stuff with the best of them, but when it comes to guzzling down pint after pint of the sudsy stuff I cannot hold my liquor at all. There are new photos of the [L=http://rand0m.org/images/endofsummer2k3/index2.php]End of Summer 2k3 party[/L]. Also, the original post is updated to reflect the new pictures, as is the birthday post. So I was talking to Corey today and he mentions that some day I will find the right girl and I think that “man, she would make a good mom / wife / whatever-long-term-thing”. That sort of freaked me out because what if I have already found her, but it will not work out? What if my love life is already condemned and I do not even know it? “Holy Shit!” I thought, and then I realized that I am only 21. So Huzzah! Maybe there is still hope. On the same vein, though, I made him realize that it is super-duper to have a nice cuddly female around to help be an emotional crutch for us emotion-bearing-but-denying it manly-men … I think his kids are his make-my-day tool, whereas mine (and most youngins) is just girls in general. I wonder if girls like having a manly man around to make them feel good, and if so, why the hell are they not battering down my door in an attempt to have manly affection showered upon them? The universe will never know. *ha* This post brought to you by the complete lack of contractions. [b]Update[/b] – I totally forgot to mention that Manny is no longer with us. After attending a short party, Keen, Tony and I all took Manny over to his place and dropped him off and said goodbye. He is being reassigned to Boston with a month long vacation to Amsterdam. Cheers to Manny for being neato – I hope we get to see you again sometime 😀

Work has been nuts. I don’t like it when things are really busy and such. I’ve been doing like 10 hours days forever, and then there’s the store thing, too. Oof. Just feeling stressed out. Nick Bailey, a friend from junior high (7-8 years ago?) came in to HPI and colocated his server today. We sat and chatted for an hour or so. It was good to catch up. I actually have a whole lot to say about that, but I do not feel like typing that in. In other news, Tony has not been the talkative sort around the house. In fact, he has been totally anti-conversation — very unusual for him. It might have something to do with the labor day weekend race he attended, at which he (apparently) broke his rear bicycle rim. Nevertheless, he came through like a trooper and scanned in a shitload of photos: [L=http://rand0m.org/images/endofsummer2k3]End Of Summer 2k3[/L] [L=http://rand0m.org/images/21stbday]21st BDay Pics[/L] My truck’s starter stopped working rather unexpectedly while I was running an errand. I had to call Keen and get him to bring me a hammer. This is a bad sign. I bought a new bed. It’s a Hibernation Series Premium 90% waveless mattress. It is so amazingly comfortable. Everybody should definitely take time out of their schedule to come lay on it.

I went out with Keen tonight. We went to Phantom Canyon, played pool and got drunk. Tatum, the waitress chick who is a junior (Economics) @ UCCS is the shit. Too bad she’s a waitress and probably hates men / meeting men on the job. Also, I ran into Jennifer Berkbigler (sp?) from highschool. (Thanks for the name, Tore! God, I abuse him when it comes to me getting people’s names …) She is fine-ass, and doing well to boot. Regardless, we played pool, it was good. And then Keen started thinking about *his* ice queen, then decided to drown his sorrow in alcohol, so we went over to Tequila’s on the way home and he had a backdraft. (To the uninformed, a backdraft consists of like 2 mid-proof liquors and a shot of Bacardi 151. You light the Bacardi and put your hand over the top … the results in an emulsified cloud of Bacardi + Oxygen, which you then inhale. Then you drink the remaining alcohol, and recap the glass with your hand, again emulsifying the remaining alcohol, which you then breathe again. Results: 1 shot of Bacardi *in your lungs* (which means you’re breathing almost pure alcohol), and then 2 shots of hard liquor. Plus breathing some more liquor.) Then we stumbled over to 15C, where Keen said that someone named Janelle wanted a cigarette. I was like “WHAT THE FUCK!?” because I thought Janelle, you know, The Janelle, but instead it was some random hotty. Gave her a smoke, and then Keen and I had a martini. And then we came home. w0ot. I know now is not the time … or shit, maybe it is. There is nothing like a good fuck. I miss good, ol’ fashioned fucking. *sigh*. This past Saturday was the balloon glow … keen and I both have some memories of the balloon glow, of which I will not delve into, but they are not-so-much-fun. Also, I spoke to Emily the other day while she was really trashed. I don’t know what to make of it, besides that I am now classified as one of those people you don’t talk to while drunk. meh. Tony walked into the room the other day and tells me “Janelle is coming over Monday night to play Trivial Pursuit.” Me: *blank stare* … what. the. fuck. That’s all I have to say. Again, I need to decide if I’m going to pussy out and “have plans” or if I’ll ram a blunted broomstick through my chest and meet up with the girl that I’m totally falling all over myself about. [b]Update[/b]: quote of the day, from Space Ghost Coast to Coast: “welcome back, stupid viewers! you’ll watch anything. Go ahead, change the channel, you’ll be back.” Hahaha. I just realized that this is post 404, you know, “404 Not Found”. Heh. [b]Update 404 (LOL)[/b] – I talked to Sammi about how I kissed her on the cheek when we went out after my birthday. She’s totally cool with that sort of thing between friends, which is pretty neat, because now I’m not some sort of freakish deviant … but … you know, I just don’t hand out to kisses to anyone. I’ll need to think on this. And why the FUCK am I putting this on my webpage?

Last night, Keen and I went over to the Citadel Mall and picked up my pre-purchased copy of Soul Calibur II. Man, what an incredible game. It’s a *really* good second version of an outstanding game, and has taken over my life. We played until 4am this morning, when I passed out. Then I got a call from Qwest & ICG at 8am about the issues I wrote about in the previous post. I was on the phone until about 10:30am, organizing and scheduling and yada yada. That sucked, but at least the issue is mostly resolved now. So I’m coming home from work today, and all of a sudden at like 5:03pm, God decides to move the Mediterannean Sea to Colorado Springs. It was raining really hard. I had to stop at the Perk to not get soaked … I was there till like, what, 6:30? It just didn’t stop raining. Rain rain rain. You know what happens when it rains? It gets cold. So here I sit on the couch at home, wearing a sweatshirt while under a blanket. It feels good. When things start getting cold, I’m pretty pleased, particularly because my fall/winter wardrobe is 5x better than my summer one. So tonight I’m sitting on the couch (see above paragraph), and someone knocks on the door. I get Tony to answer it, and in stroles Betsy! I had thought she was gone for good, having ran off to LA and all. But no, she’s back, and she came over *here* to chill out. Obviously this is because none of her other CC friends are in town yet, but that is immaterial. She’s really smart and fun to hang out with, but wants to be “one of the boys” … dunno bout that. Betsy = w3rd.

I don’t know why, but I’m just feeling weird today. Like, not weird “oh my god I’m growing a tail” weird, just … a little off. My pool playing was off last night. Started out good, but I just couldn’t hold it together. Finally got really irritated at like 10pm and called it quits. That might have been a precursor to today? I was supposed to meet Qwest out in Falcon today at noon to discuss our T1 and it’s lack of being buried. So I showed up, but Qwest did not. I’m fucking pissed. Not only did they waste my time, they wasted my coworker’s time as well. Fuckers. I’m done dealing with Qwest. I wish they would just burn in hell. ICG is a nice, friendly company … but Qwest. Man. They should sell out to someone who doesn’t fucking suck. I’ve got it now, about how I feel. I feel like I’m in the doghouse, even though I don’t have a girlfriend. How the fuck does that happen? Maybe I’m trying to fake like somebody likes me. Heh. Maybe it has something to do with how I continually fuck things up. God that sucks. Store is slow. No good news, only more near-showstoppers. FUCKING A. And fuck you all for not commenting on the last post. Blah blah blah, I want more content, blah blah blah. STFU.

So we threw a party on Friday night. It was fun, but I expected more people to show up. We had this great big, humongous 15 gallon plastic we picked up at Wal-Mart for like $4.39. Into this huge bucket, we poured 1.25 Gallons of Everclear, ~12 gallons of water, 20 bottles of fruit juice concentrate and about 10 pounds of chopped up fruit – apples, pineapples, bananas, strawberries, watermelon and oranges; a glorious batch of jungle juice. Oh, and we had a quarter keg of Beehive from Bristol brwerey. I guess I’m just a serious wheat beer fan. All in all, it was a shitload of alcohol, and we ended up with about 8 gallons of juice and 8-10 gallons of beer. Tons of alcohol left. We’ll have pictures of this thing up hopefully tomorrow or Tuesday — as soon as pictures get scanned in. [b]Update 09/08/03[/b] – Pictures are here – [L=http://rand0m.org/images/endofsummer2k3]End of Summer 2k3[/L] So the next day, after about 4 1/2 hours of sleep, I woke up at like 11am. That’s a good time to wake up. Unfortunately, I was still really tipsy … and the hungover struck me right in the middle of the afternoon. So I was hurting pretty bad and didn’t want to do anything. Drank a beer, took some aspirin, and chilled out until we went over to this other party. Tony got their first, and took the jungle juice with him … Keen, James and I showed up later and had a decent enough time. All the people seemed like they were 16-19, so it was a little awkward because we didn’t know anybody and everybody was *way* younger than us. So that was okay, but we left around 2am (after they finished off this *HUGE* blunt) and got a good night’s sleep. I went out and got coffee with Janelle on Tuesday night. It was pretty fun. I feel pretty bad because I did a lot of talking, and when I go out 1-on-1 I really am looking to just be interested in what my company has to say instead of stealing the limelight — although I usually do that in groups, being selfish/loud/overbearing does not fly when on a personal outing. She is of course doing absolutely super in every way. She’s going to Rome for her fall quarter, speaks a bunch of languages, is totally in love with her pre-Randal boyfriend, Derek, has had a great summer, school is great, blah blah blah blah blah. I’m glad that she’s doing really well. I stuck my foot in my mouth a couple times … I’m good at that. And of course, I rambled on a lot. During the course of talking about me, I realized that, wow, I have done near nothing with my life for going on 3 years now! Woo! :-/ I also realized that I am a very stressed out, sleep-deprived, snippy, tense person. And that is why I do a lot of beer + pool — gotta chill out somehow. I also realized, after the meet up, that although I’m still totally in love with her, and by her, I mean who she is now, not who she was, she’s not the same girl I dated. Speaking of girls, I found out from James that Emily [L=http://rand0m.org/viewcomments.php?NewsID=379]still has me blocked[/L] on AIM. I honestly can’t fathom why, but I’ve been blocked for going on 7 months. I was thinking it might have something to do with Burnz pulling his stupid stunt and putting his pride before our friendship, but I spoke to James about it a little and he says that she said that it’s because we just “don’t get along.” I really don’t understand this, because Emily is a super girl and don’t really have much of anything negative to say about her. hmmm. The store is going to explode very soon. We have the money in the bank, and are going to be ordering everything this week. I am about to be a *really* busy guy.

Reminders for me to post about when not towtally tarashed: Becky Called. W0o. Wetn and got drunk with keen. W0o. Wrote a long thing sor work. Wooo. Ran into Danny, he’s getting married! Cybercafe? Other misc things like matres and family and serious hangu on exfgf. ROGER DOGGDRE! [b]Update[/b] – 08/16/03 @ 9:28pm – I’m glad that I at least put something down last night so I can kind of go off that … it’ll jog the memory, you know? I spoke to Becky on Thursday night. That was enjoyable. Turns out that she joined the Navy and just got out bootcamp on Tuesday. I can’t believe it. Of all branches, the Navy? That is sucky. She is doing very well, though — came out of boot camp at the top of her class and has been promoted twice. It was really nice talking to her again … what with the Oklahoma accent and the good natured thing going on. She says she’ll visit Colorado Springs before she goes to her first duty station at Corpus Christi, TX. I hope I get to see her. I wrote a paper for HPI about our Email, our current setup, an analysis of it, and how to fix it. You can find html and pdf versions here: [L=http://www.hpi.net/whitepapers/]http://www.hpi.net/whitepapers/[/L]. I went out to Phantom Canyon last night with Keen and got really drunk. And totally whipped at pool. God I sucked at pool last night. Generally, I’m a rather good pool player (humble, aren’t I?) but last night he just took me to town. Anyway, their beer is really good, their tables are really good (the one we had was newly felted), and their cues are straight. So that was fun. While I was there, of all people Danny Smith walks up. I sort of knew his name was Dan, but I wasn’t sure, so I called Tore and he gave me the hookup on his name. Thanks Tore! Anyway, he tells me that he is getting married on Sunday to his highschool sweetheart, Kristen Doherty (sp?). I find that absolutely astonishing. I’m not even *close* to getting married, and here is one of my highschool pals tying the knot. Wowsah. The cybercafe is progressing. Take a look at a demo of our splash page: [L=http://rand0m.org/temp/everlanfront.html]http://rand0m.org/temp/everlanfront.html[/L] … and then please give me your opinion on which of these we should use for our front sign (I like the very bottom left one): [L=http://weberstreet.net/images/sign.html]http://weberstreet.net/images/sign.html[/L] Things are going, slowly yes, but they are going. Supposed to have more money this week, so things should gear up very quickly. I moved my old mattress and box springs out to a friend of my parent’s last night. That was enjoyable because we got free food. Yay! I also got my cell phone bill – $39 in extra charges on top of the $39.99 plan. Boo! I am totally hung up on Janelle. I caught a glimpse of her on Friday [Actually, it was Wednesday. my bad.] night and got the shakes. The panic strike, if you will. What the fuck, you know? I am supposed to meet her for coffee on Tuesday at 7pm … will I pussy out and cancel? Who knows.

Okay, before I get started, the moral of the story is “always use the bathroom when your body says you need to go.” So Tony, Keen and I decide to go out last night and have some beers and play some pool. The best venue for this shiz is over at Phantom Canyon – great beer and good, cheap pool tables. So after like waiting an hour and a half, we finally got a table and started playing. And getting trashed. It was good. Nikki showed up, that was nice. Around 1:30am, we decide to head home. So we’re walking up tejon at early AM, and we see these three girls. We’re like “WHOA, three girls.” We have just enough liquid courage to talk to them, so we cross the street as planned and happen to be waiting with them at the light. We fire up a conversation, and it is good. We make it to just north of bijou and tejon (west side of acacia park), and we’re chatting away having a good time. One of their other friends shows up, so we’re standing around talking. One of the girls, Kelly, complains that she wants to go home, but has no way to contact her ride — I offer her my cell phone, and she steps away for a minute to make the call. So we’re talking to the other three girls, having a good time, and they decide they’re all ready to go. I get my cell phone back, and the Kelly girl says that her ride will be here in a minute. So the three girls go off to Tony’s or wherever, and Tony, Keen and I are standing around keeping this girl company until her ride shows. All of a sudden I have to pee really bad, so I go running off into Acacia park to pee on a tree. Luckily, they have port-o-lets on the east side of the bandstand, so I use one. I come out of the bathroom and come running back to the guys only to see, from about 40 yards away, some dude just up and cold-clock Tony, who sort of staggers and is stunned, then turn and rabbit punch Keen, who crumples to the ground. Then this random guy just turns and saunters away. I get over there, take a look at Keen, who had fallen down to make sure he’s okay, then turn to see Tony on his cell phone already talking to 911, covered in blood. I turn and flag down a passing police officer, who gets out of his truck and asks what’s going on — I say “My two buddies just got punched by that guy!” So the cop goes over to talk to the random dude, and sees the random dude push the Kelly girl down! Cop instantly hits a run, cuffs the dude and throws him in the police vehicle, while Kelly starts sobbing. So then, just like always, we get a fire truck to show up. And then we get like 6 more police cars to show up. And goddman a fire truck holds a lot of firemen. So we’re getting interviewed and Tony’s getting checked out, making sure he’s okay. The cops totally cross examine Matt and I’s story, then interview Tony, and of course all of our stories match up. The random dude’s buddy is apologizing the whole time, and was actually being pretty cool. Gladly, the punk bitch motherfucker was in the cop car the whole time. So the CSFD determines that Tony’s lip is fucked up, and sends us all (in a cab) to the emergency room. We get there, get checked in and all, and find out that Tony’s tooth went straight through his lip. I got to enjoy watching him and Keen get checked out by the nice people at Memorial hospital, and fill out sickening amounts of paperwork. I also got to see them squirt saline solution *through* Tony’s torn lip! We met a nice police officer-ess (?) named Shannon, who we determined we’d meet up with at Tony’s (the bar) some time and have a beer. We left the hospital and walked home, Matt with a bruised up face and Tony with three stitches and a guaranteed scar. Apparently the random dude was dating the Kelly chick, and gave the story that Matt and Keen, of all people, were trying to tear her clothes off and rape her (LOL) and that he was protecting her. Turns out the guy, Sal Alvarez (I think???) is a recent Air Force Academy graduate and that he is now facing two charges of 3rd degree aggravated assault — low level misdemeanors 🙁 … he actually got in more trouble for pushing Kelly than for decking Tony and Keen. Amazingly, Tony didn’t kill the little fucker … luckily I came out unscathed … if he had punched me, it would have been all out war – we all know my no-back-down attitude; ask tony about his episode with punching me 😉 So all of that totally brings to bear the moral of the story: when you gotta go pee, go pee, because you just might avoid some psychotic asshole punching you, getting interviewed by the police and enjoying a trip to the emergency room.

Man, today is Friday. It has already been nothing short of good. I went and got my 21 year old license because my previous license actually expired August 5th. Oops. The picture isn’t too bad — I did shave off the goatee for it. I can’t believe I’ll have this peice of plastic for 10 years. Wow. I was interviewed by the Colorado Springs Independent and, despite their rampant misspelling of my name and creative license they used with my words, they put me in their latest issue – [L=http://www.csindy.com/csindy/current/iq.html]http://www.csindy.com/csindy/current/iq.html[/L] Keen bought a new car yesterday. It’s a 2003 Hyundai Tiburon … normally I’m a total anti Hyundai person, but as of 2002, they’re rated equal to Honda on initial quality … I think the best thing about his new purchase is the warranty — 5yr/60k bumper to bumper, 10yr/100k drivetrain. He’ll never, ever have to worry about his car breaking down. Man, what I’d give to not have to worry about my pos dying on me and for a hot new sports coupe. Okay, so this has been nagging me. I know a person who is dating this girl. Let’s call him [b]M[/b]ichael and her [b]W[/b]hitney. Michael has been seeing Whitney for a while, and all of a sudden, Michael is no longer interested. Whitney is madly in love with Michael. Instead of Michael doing the right thing and telling Whitney “hey, I don’t like you anymore, sod off”, Michael has been steadily ignoring her, sort of. Not even a good, total ice wall of ignoring, just a soft, sort of patronizing wall of ignoring. This has led Whitney on and on and on, to the point of near mental breakdown … Michael knows all this, yet still does not have the nuts to tell Whitney that it’s over. I think Michael needs a good kick in the rear, but I’m not going to give it to him.

I woke up at 7:00am to the sound of my cell phone receiving a page, notifying me that our secondary DNS/Mail server had rebooted. It was angelo rebooting it, no biggie. Saw matt get up to take a shower, and then I went downstairs and started up some coffee. Man, I felt good. Like, wow, refreshed, got enough sleep, everything’s good. And that’s been my day in general. Sure, there have been some downsides, like work. All of it. The whole day so far. But you know, it is a Monday. I brought my webcam to work and turned it on … so there is a new pic in there. w0ot. I’ll probably have it on most days. I want to buy a digital camera, but I cannot find a cheap one that doesn’t suck. And I’m not going to spend $500 for a good one. I saw Jackie … *searching brain for last name … failure* … Janelle’s good friend, over at the Perk while I was getting a mocha for lunch. It was nice seeing her, but she came down the stairs and my heart started pounding and I got all fidgety and man, I was freaking out, in fear that Janelle was up there too. Man, I still don’t know how I get all shook up over her. Jesus, that was years ago. Like, YEARS ago. No other girl has done that to me, and I find this whole thing very odd. To think I get clammed up at the *possibility* … man, I suck … I realized today, while looking at my webcam picture, that I now look like every other twenty-something who’s trying too hard: short, spikey haircut, goatee, sunglasses … ahh, I just love conforming. Oh, and I spoke to the Independent person again to tell her what I do for a living. Neato. [b]Update[/b] – 10:10pm – I just finished watching the DVD of the movie “They” … and omg was it scarey. *whew* if you’re in for a good fright, go get it. Now I’m gonna go watch a comedy with Kevin Spacey, “Swimming with the Sharks”