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”

Goddam I do a lot of these runkden updates. I should stop. LOL. OKay, so I’m tottally trashed, but that’s opkay, because manny is CHESTER TEH HSICLD MOLESTER LOL cuz he’s hitting an 18 y/o and h’es 27. meh. that’s i feunny. Also, matt owes me a pitcher of beer, cuz he thought Tony would be home, but he’s not, so free ptitcher becasue of a bet for me! w0ot! On another note, Anna @ SAM’S, the world’s smallest bar, has humongous breasts — more worthy of acclaim than Sammi’s …. although Sammi is better overall. w0ot again1 Other than that, I have to say that Tony’s hires on the shittest bands evear. Goddamn they suck. In fact, we left Tony’s to go to 15C …. where we consumed sick amounts of staright liquor (in the form of martinisi) … the sour apple martini = scrumptious. Wow, i spelled that right. Also, Matt’s UberGEEK shirt got me the hookup with these two hotties. which was good. But the bitch with the scar tattoo spinal fusion thing … fuck her, what a huge B. Giving me the figner after I durnkenely asked her what the scar was from. her friend was cool, but she was a B, or so Keen tells me. F taht. I think I’ll talk to janelle tomorrow, as mentinoed tomorrw, err yestserday. DON’T YOU WISH YOU ERWER 21!? WOO BOOEZ UPDATE OKAy it’s liek 3;a00ma or so, and I have totoallly powned matt at both Soul Clibur and MOrtlak Comabat 2. Dealdy alliacne. MK is normally his game, but noOoO, lost at that. Soul calibure went wel for me — 5 to 1 …. good times. powned. W0ot. I feel like I have not give the lats post enough credit for its’ … ummm. not drunkenns. so please go comment there, insetad of on this wildly incoherendt post. Thanks foryou time, RNADLA> UPDATE #@ Okay, so we went over to 7-11 on a lark, and foundo ut athat Canaan, a 7-11 employee, also dleivers pizza, dnd has done so for over a year. He has never been ofered pot iin exchange for his pizza. Evar. That is whack. I think that pot + pizza should be a new currency. ALso, I bought a GOATORAGDE, in hipes that the ELCTOTRLYTES will make me not hungover. Oh, and some chedar and sour cream chips. I like thise. mmmm, chips. That is all.

It’s 1:10am on a Saturday morning, and I spent my Friday night on the couch asleep because of the terrible mediocrity of my day. I don’t even know why, but I always feel wore out — and my days are generally pretty activity-less. I work, I walk around downtown, I come home, putz around for a couple hours, then sleep. Maybe it is the lack of activity. Or my diet. I got a haircut Wednesday night. It looks pretty good. At the advice of a girl who knows what she is talking about I am going to wait a few days to let this here haircut grow out a little before I go to the DMV to get my flashy new drivers license. Until then, I will continue to get stares and odd looks from the one in four doormen who actually card me. *realizes that I would have never gotten carded before …. sigh* I have been sporting a goatee for a while now. I keep it pretty trimmed, and I think it looks pretty good. I took Mike’s advice and made it less wide at the chin; that was a mistake, because now my face looks a little out of proportion I think I’ll let this grow out for a few days (just like the haircut) and see where it takes me — I’ll post a pic of me sometime soon. I think I’ll shave it off before the drivers license photo, though. I got interviewed by the Independent today. I was on my way to work, and this young lady comes up to me and asks me if I read the Indy. I’m like “well, of course, every twenty-something should.” She then proceeded to ask me a set of 5 questions about the indy — how long I’ve been reading, what I like about it, what I dislike about it, my favorite feature and my all time favorite article. I answered with “wow, 6 or 7 years now”, “the fact that it’s exactly not the Gazette”, “the fact that it sometimes does some serious liberal agenda pushing”, “the Reader’s Opinions section”, and “I have absolutely no idea — too many good ones to keep track of.” Those are the short versions of the long-winded, intellectually high-minded answers I gave her. She took my picture, though, haircut and goatee unprepared. I’ll have to keep my eye out for myself in the next Indy. I just had a moral dilemma about writing “young lady” or “young black lady” at the beginning of that last paragraph. It does not matter if she is a black, white, brown or yellow, so I decided to write “young lady” instead of defining her. I am sure that almost all of you thought of a white person when you read that, if you thought of a person at all. This strikes me as odd: am I a bigot if I were to have put in the single word “black”, am I witholding the truth if I leave it ambiguous? That is a tough call. I almost feel like I am censoring myself here, which is a crime. With that, I would like to say that, based on slurs alone, I love and hate all kikes, nips, dykes, niggers, chinks, fags, slopeheads, japs, spics, towelheads, wops, canucks, honkies, fobs, flips, and gooks equally. *I would like to note that it is sad that I knew all of those off the top of my head. Heh. [b]Update[/b]- 9:30am 08/02 – I had the oddest dream last night. For some reason, I was at Rum Bay, and of all people, I saw Janelle. This makes no sense because she is not 21. Regardless, we chatted for a long time. Even in dream-time it was a good 45 minutes, which means at least 6 hours in real time. Then, we finished chatting, and it was over, just *poof*. It was all very well and good, and immensely satisfying, which is the odd part. I think I might look her up and actually talk to her before she heads back to Chicago. [b]Update #2[/b]- 10:30am 08/02 – Somebody had asked about the store in the previous post, so I thought I’d answer some questions. First off, we’re still getting there, there is motion. The internal build out is all done — walls are painted, things are hung up, network is mostly ready to go. We are at the big-spending phase, where we buy all the PCs, desks, and other expensive goodies. There is hesitation here because it’s a lot of fucking money — everybody believes in the business plan and the store and that it will work, but the risk is still there. We are no longer aiming for August 8th; it is unattainable. Instead, we are aiming for Aug 29, which is right before Palmer HS starts school (I think). Feel free to check out the store – 324 N. Nevada.