Well here’s another news post. Eat eat, you damn jackals! Things to talk about in this post: Store, Betsy, Columbus Day, Grooveman, Emily/Party. This post is going to take a while, as I’m sitting at the store on IRC, AIM, MSN messenger while eating chinese and reading my book. The store is going pretty well. I am over the freaking out. I am thinking that with enough freaking out and panicing, I’ll eventually be able to see it coming and sort of dodge out of it’s treacherous claws and not totally lose my mind. That’s a pretty good skill. Had a run in with Andrew and got into a sorta pissing contest, but that worked itself out. I just wish people wouldn’t beat around the bush so much … if you have an issue, just spit it out. Not delivering it is just going to piss me off. So yes, the store is open, we are not bankrupt. We have at least a few more months to make it work. Betsy. Ahhhh, Betsy. I hadn’t seen Betsy in almost 2 1/2 weeks when I saw her last Sunday. It was nice. I don’t think she *likes* me. At all. But she does insist on having dinner sometime, even offering to come over to the store with some sort of take out. She might be interested, which is a-okay by me … only that I work like 173 hours a week and have only some select times during the weekend with which I can actually talk to people. I think she’s super, but alas, no time. Columbus Day was today. I did not get today off, as I am not a government-anything, which is sucky. However, I did get to hear people yammering on all day about how terrible c.columbus was, and honestly, that’s fucking irritating. Does everyone think the whole imperialism/slavery thing is a new discovery? Well, it’s not … I’m sure the founding fathers knew of it when they decided that columbus day should exist … it’s pretty hard to cover up slaughtering millions of people and yada yada, but somebody who has had a lot more of a hand in the history of the country than I do decided that hey, despite all that, it’s a pretty good thing that he found America, because if he hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here. So yay! for discovery! Boo for evil slavery / white men / whatever you crazy hippies Boo at! Still, Yay for discovering America! Now STFU. I was talking to Steve-o the other day and he almost had a Randal-esque breakdown as we were talking about his super-extraordinary sister. He got to the whole “what have I done with my life? I’m useless yada yada” thing that I do on a pretty regular basis, and I’ll tell you what, it scared the shit out of me. Steve is one of the people that I totally depend on to be absolutely immovable in every way. Tore is the other. These two guys are the kind of people that have an unshakable sense of self worth, and goddammit, when I see that get a little shook up I start to freak out. So please, people, don’t lose it like you do, because I’m depending on you. I sure hope to god that nobody depends on me like that 😉 I saw Emily the other day for the first time in a looong time. I mentioned a while back that she blocked me on AIM, and she hasn’t unblocked me, still. I don’t know why. Maybe she hates me, or maybe she’s being an icey bitch. Hell, I don’t know, and I don’t even care that much. Anyway, I saw her on my way to work the other day, so I pulled over and talked to her for a minute before getting back under way. And then I saw her over at James’ party on Friday night, which was a little odd. A little bit of a shock to go from her not talking to me to seeing her twice in a week. That was okay, though. Her roommate, Lauren (?) is a fox. I’m sure that I made a complete ass of myself and have zero chance though, as that is the way that it always works out. 11:03pm, time to close the store and get the hell outta here … gonna go read my book, drink some hot cocoa and hit the rack. Fucking jackals.

I don’t know why it struck me just now that I should post, but here I am, posting at just after midnight with god knows what on my mind. Life in general is pretty good. MikeLee tells me that my website is a waste of the internet, and is totally surprised to hear that I still get hundreds of hits a day. Honestly, it surprises the hell of out me too. Shit, I haven’t posted in nearly 3 weeks, yet you ravens are still here, picking at the corpse of rand0m.org. I digress. Yes, life is good, minus the total lack of sleep and over abundance of work. I think Betsy (Pikes Perk) likes me, but honestly, I can’t tell through the haze of confusion that follows me everywhere I go. I haven’t played a good night of pool in forever, and the closest thing to “fun” I had was on the opening night of the store when I got totally sloshed and almost got into a fight backing up Mike. Oh yea, and I don’t sleep. I am tired. That is the byline of my life. All I do is work. From 9am until midnight+ every day. I can feel my soul slowly creeping out of my body, wishing me a fond goodbye as it wisps away into the realm of “not burdened by a shuffling husk of a man, totally beaten down by his unnerving ability to not sleep”. It really isn’t *that* bad, but it’s bad. I get 6 hours a night. Maybe. I’m aiming for 7 tonight. Please Jesus, give me 7. I come home from the store and it’s like midnight+ and I walk around the house. I don’t know why. I just pace. For like 15 minutes. Then I try to calm down with some tea and my book … but my book is at the store. Or it’s at HPI. Fuck. I guess I’ll just post here and then pace and then go to sleep. HPI. HPI is good. We hashed some things out. It’s good. Everything is moving forward — wireless, CoLos, the whole shebang. It’s neat. The Store. The Store opened up on Friday of last week. It was a nice, big hurrah of an opening and we had a few truckloads of people come through the store … although that is fine and dandy, the word is still not out. We have not made much money in our first week of business. Yes, we know that we’re not going to be millionaires our first month, but goddammit I was really hoping it would just go nuts on us. Like, just sit at the desk and take people’s money all day. Thousands of dollars a day like, you know? That is far off. Very far off. We are spamming the city with flyers trying to get people to come. But there are complications, as always. I am having a panic attack right now. Andrew and Baker came in tonight (‘nother story) to hang the EverLAN foam sign thing. It’s neat. Some dude came in while they were here and wanted to play Counter-Strike v1.6. We don’t have 1.6 because of Steam, Valve’s new “Content Distribution / Ability to take away cybercafes’ ability to make money” system. He left. But not before talking to Baker for like 20 minutes. What for? I do not know. Baker gave me shit about not using CS 1.6. I almost told him to fuck off, but decided that the more diplomatic “well, we’ll have to look into that” is a better approach. So tonight I looked into the whole Steam Licensing thing, and now I’m having a total panic attack. We’re not going to make money, ever. Big corporations like Valve and Blizzard and id are going to license us to death. Or sue the shit out of us. The money isn’t coming in. The word isn’t out. Everything is just not what I thought it would be and I’m totally freaking out. I guess that’s why I’m posting …. this is the most severe emotional hangup I’ve had (time for). But it’s purely emotional, so I can get over this. I just need some sleep. In other news, I finished off Signs By Tomorrow’s network / phone system on Sunday. It’s like sex, if sex came in the form of cat5e, jacks and punch blocks. I’m glad it doesn’t. Janelle is in Rome, Italy doing her semester abroad. I say “her semester abroad” because it seems like every intelligent, going somewhere girl that I really like out there does “their semester abroad”. Sammy did. Lilly did. Betsy did. Amy did. Janelle is. See!? It’s a trend! Anyways, her first weekend in Italy, Janelle got to experience a country-wide power outage. Don’t worry, it was only like 22 million people (smaller than our outage), because Italy is small. huzzah. This website will soon be moving to login-based system, where you will be required to have a valid username and password before being allowed to view any content. Yes, you’ll be able to signup on the web. No, it will not cost anything (laugh). Cheers!