Okay, so last night was the 2nd [L=http://cos.everlan.com]EverLAN Gaming Center[/L] Lockin. It was packed before it even started. Unfortunately, there was a lot of tension amongst a lot of people, named [SOB] (which is comprised of my good friend steve and a bunch of denver pals 🙁 ), team [RP] and and a whole shitload of regulars who did not prepay. It’s a shame that we can only let 23 people in to the lockin – if we could have 40 PCs, I’m sure we would have filled them all. It’s not viable to pick up 20 more computers though – that’s a lot of bucks. So because of that, a lot of good guys and good friends got the shaft. That sucks. On the other hand, we made enough money to pay for rent. That’s good. Tough trade off. Corey offered to work the lockin last night and I totally obliged – I needed a night off! Ian was in from Alamosa, along with Ben from Denver. Those two, plus myself, Keen and for a little bit Tony, all went out and had some brews. First stop was Old Chicago, where I finally broke 20 beers and got my 10% off deal (w0ot), then it was off to Jack Quinn’s for a Hefe and some hot-chick-watching. That was good, minus the one chick who had the thousand-mile-stare and ended up puking on the sidewalk behind us. We then headed over to a freezing cold 15C and enjoyed some yummylicious martinis. They have the best martinis in town — but I have a really narrow scope of where to get martinis, so please advise if you know of anywhere else. Then we went home and passed out. Blessed sleep. Speaking of sleep, I slept like a baby and woke up refreshed! That’s happened twice in the past week! “WHAT!?” You say? “Randal is not tired 100% of the time!?” I know, I can see the disbelief. The store has totally turned a corner and we are absolutely ramping up — we can almost pay the bills! Because of this, I sleep better. Like, 5-7 hours a night, very little of which is filled with fretful, stress-induced tossing, turning and general unrest. It’s great waking up and not feeling really tired. For breakfast, Ian and Ben wanted to go out … it seems like they conned EDub into it too, and I followed suit shortly thereafter. We went over to King’s Chef, which is the best damn breakfast place / greasy spoon in Colorado Springs, bar none. It was super. And yummy. And filling. And just right. And then Ben, Ian and edub went home, because the weekend is nearly over. It was good seeing those guys again 🙂 So here I am at work, typing away. I have some PC heat issues to fix, along with stupid Steam to deal with. POS. argh. Oh, and this is totally a side note to Sammi, right on the front page 😉 I think you’re super, although wildly unattainable. You live like 27,000 miles away, how do I deal with that!? I can’t! You’re also a lot smarter than the average bear, and hence and have hundreds of highly intelligent, going-places and doing-things men clawing over each other to pour your coffee! I can’t compete with that! So, I’ll continue to dream and look for alternatives. You can still come here and read my drivel if you want, even if it’s under the guise of “missing home”. Ha! We all know it’s just pity – you know, like the King/Queen taking time out of their oh-so-busy schedules of golf, brunch and high-falutent conversation to address the unwashed masses 😉

So the general gist is that my life is a string of days that all run together in a haze of work work work, with the occasional attempt at sleeping more than 5 hours a night. Blah blah blah pitty party for me, blah blah blah. The store is going really well. Two mondays ago, the store made a total turn around in progress. We ran a lockin the weekend prior, and ever since, things have just been booming. We’re full+ during lunch hours, but it slacks off to nearly nothing after 5pm. That sure sucks, because I’m the post-5 guy, but I have to console my self with the fact that we aren’t going out of business due to our strong daytime. Despite that, we have an odd reboot while playing issue that has me stumped. EverLAN was this last weekend. It was really long, but a really good time. It was just huge, the biggest EverLAN yet. You can read all about it at http://www.everlan.net. I am really impressed with my roommate Matt Keen. He’s a stand up guy and has been absolutely invaluable in making the store go. He also puts up with my near-incessant bitching / whining / demands, all without a word. Because of that, we’re going to do whatever we can to keep him around. <3 keen. My truck lost a drive shaft bolt on Monday night around midnight. I drove her home, but am waiting for my $1.44 each bolts to arrive at Toyota so I can pick them up. Other than that, no other issues at all. Yea, incredible that my POS truck still works, huh? I was at Old Chicago the other night and got to enjoy see that not only is the food good and the beer excellent, it’s also a huge drug hotspot! If you’re looking for some drugs, you absolutely need to go to Old C’s, cuz they’ll hook you up. Our wait totally scored some weed while we were waiting for our food, and then sorta pranced around all happy about it. I’d like to put in a section about Girls, but I have even less to say here than about any other section. I haven’t spent any time with any girl at all, which is unfortunate, but you know, when you’re hella busy, that’s breaks. I guess I’ll just keep dreaming about Sammi 😉 It’s almost 2am, I’ll post something more indepth tomorrow as it crosses my mind.

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!

So last night Keen and I went to Denver and Boulder to buy software. Not just any software, but Battlefield 1942, the bestest game by Electronic Arts. It’s normally $44.95 a pop, but CompUSA was selling them for $19.99 … when you’re buying 25 copies, that adds up really fast. So instead of waiting around and buying them at the high price, we decided to buy them at the low price. The local CompUSA only had 4 copies … after talking to the manager there, David Pierce (props!), we pointed us to the Aurora/Denver store, and then to the Boulder store. So we drove up to the Aurora store, which is right off of 225 & Alameda and bought 12 copies there … which isn’t enough. We left there at 8:15pm and made a mad dash to Boulder to get them there … showed up at like 3 minutes till closing — all the employees knew who we were and that we were coming 😉 … we purchased our final 9 copies there, ate some good food at Siamese Plate To Go, picked up some beer and then headed home, with a short stop to Paris on the Platte in Denver, which, I might add, is a very awesome coffee shop / cybercafe place. I wish we had something like it here. I spoke with Mr. Case at length today on AIM. Talk about being quite the pimped out MOFO. He get props on Too Short’s latest CD, went to Vegas and met Aria Giovanni, drives a Benz, has a mad job at MCI … just wow. He has pics to back it all up too. I think he is one of the most successful people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. There is a new openssh exploit out there running around and it affects everything currently out there, including all OSs(open/freebsd, all linuxes, *all of them*). The patch is like 4 lines … [L=http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/crypto/openssh/buffer.c.diff?r1=1.1.1.6&r2=1.1.1.7&f=h]Here is the diff[/L] between the old and new buffer.c … just replace, recompile and install. Also, nmap 3.45 is out today and it’s freaking awesome. Get it at [L=http://www.insecure.org/nmap]http://www.insecure.org/nmap[/L] Quick Update – just realized that my [L]ink parser was broken so I fixed it … you can use & and ? without fear now.

I took a bunch of pictures of the store, feel free to take a look and ask me any questions: [L=http://cos.everlan.com/gallery.php?gid=1]EverLAN Gaming Centers Pre-Opening Photos[/L] I was talking to Janina the other day, who is [b]W[/b]hitney (who formerly was dating [b]M[/b]ichael)’s roommate. She tells me that she’s engaged and happy and yada yada yada. She then proceeds to tell me that she’s really sad that I never asked her out or showed a lot of interest. I did have interest, still do … just that she’d been seeing this Travis guy, and I wasn’t about to compete, but honestly, I should I have grown a pair and asked her out. I told her that although I’m male, I’m not blind and that she should have dropped a few more clues that *she* was interested. She agreed to this, and then it seemed like we both agreed that we should have gone out together. And then I added (mentally) that she shouldn’t be engaged. Went out and got lit up on Friday night and paid for it on Saturday. I also went and got a haircut on Saturday, and gave my number to this nice girl Leah … I seriously doubt she’ll call me to go out and get a beer, but hey, I can hope. I figure that if I blanket the city’s population of women with my number, at least one or two will call me. [b]Update – Quote of the night[/b]: (overheard at Tony’s Bar) – “In every relationship there is a bull and a cow. I am the bull and you are the cow. Now show me your udders.”

Shit, I got about 4 lines into this post and I realized that I had alread posted info about the beer expo and such. Well shit. I got my first WeberStreet Networks, LLC paycheck today. Man, that was such a rush. Seriously, carrying the sliver of paper that entitled me to lots of moolah was rather thrilling. Let’s hope to god there are a lot more of those coming to me down the road, you know? Honestly though, it’s all been worth it. Even if the big bucks are still a ways off, just knowing that it’s coming soon (Sept 26th, maybe???) is a big upper. Oh, FYI, there is an informercial page at [L=http://www.weberstreet.net/everlan]http://www.weberstreet.net/everlan[/L]. Please let me know what you think of the design & content. And yes, I know that the pictures link does not work. Thanks. (I just realized that I think we’re going to run into an IP crunch. Oof) I had some women withdrawals (sp?) today. I got to thinking, get this, not about Janelle, but about some other fantabulous ladies I know and I felt bad that I totally puss’d out and didn’t attempt anything. That’s a bummer. More inspiration to actually give the meeting girls thing a try? Maybe. I don’t know how much damage my bruised, overworked, tired ego can withstand …. I do hear that chicks totally dig guys who own their own business, though …. 😉 I finished [i]Cryptonomicon[/i] by Neil Stephenson tonight. It’s been a loooong time in finishing, but man, that tome of a book was totally worth it. Honestly one of the best fiction books I’ve ever read – I highly recommend it. In fact, I’m so enchanted by the quality of the writing that I picked up another Stephenson book, [i]Snowcrash[/i] – I’ll let ya’ll know how that one goes. I replaced the starter on my truck yesterday. $54 and about 45 minutes later, which includes trying to rinse that orange pumice lava rock cleaner stuff out of my eyes (the memories bring back the pain! aghhghgsgh!), my truck now starts on the first crank every time. I still need my exhaust to be fixed up. I am once again seriously considering a motorcycle. Maybe as an additional vehicle? I haven’t talked about HPI in a long time, so I will now. HPI is doing super, barring internal personality conflicts. Seriously, it’s pretty fucked up … I start prepping myself for the inevitable “bail on HPI” move, and all of a sudden HPI starts doing well. This throws my long term plans into a blender … I need to think on what I’m going to do long term. The wireless out in Falcon is going really well – we have installs every day of the week, and so far we’ve only hit a few roadstops. Our Co-Location program is going really really well with new, big $ customers coming in a lot more often than they were. Today, I began our migration to a FreeBSD anti-spam gateway setup, as detailed in [L=http://www.hpi.net/whitepapers/]the whitepaper[/L]. I also got to enjoy climbing around on buildings and transitting antennas all over down. As enjoyable as things are, it seems like HPI is rife with indecision and lacks cohesion. I don’t know where this will end up.

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?