(Phaysis)

Last night, I stayed home. I do that on occasion, and last night was such an occasion. Mostly watched TV; it’s becoming my new hobby of late. Something tells me rigging up a ghetto antenna for my TV tuner card was a bad mistake. Let’s watch my productivity drop, shall we?

After a few hours or so, I got bored. Decided to open up my installation of Acid Pro 4; first time in over a year. Loaded up and listened to some of the rhythm loops I built, loaded up some songs, watched them play. One of those songs was “Tripoli” (those of you who’ve heard it will know what I’m talking about). As it played, I decided that it was finally time to attend to it, fix a few problems that cropped up during my migration from Acid Music 3.0 to Acid Pro 4, most of which involved editing and repair of volume and pan envelopes. I had a chunk of work to do, but I got it done. Even tweaked the mix while I was at it.

At the end, I started wondering to myself why I ever quit, why I stopped writing music, why I folded up the keyboard and stashed it away, why I let Glass Door rot. It’s good stuff, and it’s fun to do, at times it’s really fun. So what’s the problem?

Frustration, really.

Got tired of a lot of the technology. Seems funny that the impediment to hammering out a melody, a lead, a bassline, and a rhythm is high technology. Funny, that. No matter what kind of software I was using, it did little but stand in my way. The very tools I used made my work of creating music that much harder.

Actually, the problem I have is a little deeper than the tools I use. While there is space for improvement in that regard, I think what’s really at issue is the high cost of creation. It takes a lot of energy, determination, focus to get it all out, put it down, and make it work. Damn the polishing. Damn the fine-tuning. Just get it out and create it from nothing. It involves the whole of my attention and a lot of energy.

Music, programing, writing. If there’s the least little distraction, the whole effort is wasted – nothing gets done. I need to be alone. Need to be disconnected. No IRC. No IM. No people talking. No girls walking by. Which means no coffeeshops during the creation process. But that’s a problem, isn’t it? It is.

The work of editing, polishing, revising – that requires not as much attention. I still need to pay attention, but I can afford to function among distractions. It’s then OK to clean up code, manipulate volume envelopes, fix grammar. It’s already been put out there. But the initial challenge of creation and its requirement, the abolition of the environment, is the hardest part. If I could do that, then I can build the world.

Well, here I am writing a log with four new holes just four days old in my mouth where my wisdoms used to be. It’s something different, I’ll say that much. Had the procedure done on wednesday; decided that I had enough money to get all four removed at once, so I did. The aching left wisdoms on monday helped in that decision.

Don’t remember much from the procedure; remember being beside-myself nervous before, and the slight freaking out when I first felt the sedative take hold, but after a few seconds I just didn’t care anymore. I vaguely remember at least two of the pulls. Vaguely remember the oral surgeon using a drill or something similar on a right wisdom, but I don’t know which. I remember stirring after a pull, grabbing my pen from my pocket and scribbling on my hand what i knew read “KEEP TEETH”, and I remember the doc and his assistant saying, “Woah, what’s he doin’? Heh.” and “It’s ok, Michael, just relax, we’re almost done.” I remember coming around after the procedure while the assistant was cramming more gauze into my new holes, and remember looking at my hand to verify that I wrote correctly only to discover I gained a new language resembling sanskrit during the procedure. My requesting effort was fruitless: the teeth had already been placed in the biohazard bin.

After filling my prescription for hydrocodone and (oddly) amitryptaline (an antidepressive drug sometimes used for pain), I went home, changed the gauze, took my drugs, and proceeded to crash out for the rest of the day and night, waking up to redose and change gauze. Around 8am the next morning I knew I wasn’t able to work that day, so I called in. Slept and lazed around. Attempted to eat some yogurt and drink a meal-substitute shake. Still weak, I got a call from work asking for help in setting up a job, so I volunteered to go in, helped set it up, then left and got some mashed potatoes and mac & cheese from KFC on my way home. Rented “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” and “Napoleon Dynamite” (why haven’t you watched these yet?). Watched “Harold and Kumar…”, laughed a lot, and went to bed.

Worked friday, still kinda weak and undernourished, and in pain but in decent spirits. Stayed home that night, watched “Napoleon Dynamite”, looked up historic photos of Austin roadways. That’s pretty much it.

Saturday started well, then continued into the foul. Dunno what happened, just got angry, depressed, mad at myself, etcetera. I had made plans to go to Eeyore’s Birthday and to my friends Ed and Mel’s baby shower, but both were scrapped. I just wasn’t worth a damn to myself or anyone on Saturday afternoon, so I did nothing. Sorry, guys. After some research it occurred to me that the small 3-pill prescription I had for amitryptaline (remember, it’s a psychiatry drug) could’ve been to blame.

With not much food and growing weaker by nightfall, I cleaned myself up, went out and had a decent meal, the first where I had actual hard food, then after the nourishment I felt fine enough to go to Spiderhouse for some tea and maybe some company. The chatter was light and I didn’t stay long, but it helped lift my mood. Went home and decided that the disarray on my desk and around my room just wouldn’t cut it, so I pulled out a sack and started sorting the bad piles into trash and good piles. Now that the desk is clean, the room is clean. Lit a votive lantern and nodded off to sleep.

Today, woke up at 9:30am to the pain in my upper teeth. The 6 fillings are still bothering me; I’m still living on tylenol. So it’s my alarm clock. After some breakfast (which required chewing), the pain numbed itself down and I was in better spirits. Chatted online, then got dressed, grabbed my bike, and rode off for the day to get some lunch and tea. Late afternoon I left the coffeeshop and rode to Cheapo’s, picked up the new Garbage album (which is good), and my bike and I caught the bus home where I still remain.

Tomorrow I return to work; so far, it’s shaping up to be an uneventful workweek. No dentist appointments. No having to cut out early. Hopefully my holes will grow closed soon; the clots are still there and it appears the gums are closing in underneath. Hopefully my molars will stop hurting soon as I get accustomed to eating harder, chewier food (believe me, if you don’t give your teeth a workout, they’ll let you down). Hopefully I can get my life back to normal soon. My biggest hope is that this season of dental despair is over.

So here I am. Whatever. Nothing ecstatically, fantastically great to report. Whatever. I hate technology. My Time-Warner cable modem connection has been sucking shit for the past three weeks. You expect me to feel gung-ho about life when I can’t reliably tell anyone? Time-Warner states that there indeed is a problem in the neighborhood. No shit. It’s not like it’s rocket surgery. Fix the fucking thing, or I cancel service. Then again, going to another company wouldn’t work — they all use the same fucking equipment. Whatever.

Last week, during the morning of a major downpour, there was water pooling and flowing across the road in the construction zone outside of my apartment. It’s a stretch of road I have to drive every day to get to work. Around 3pm, I stick my head out the back door of my job to check on the weather. It was then that I noticed that I was the proud recipient of a flat tire. Fuck. Three-inch long piece of stamped steel, looked like a hinge or a latch, buried in my left-rear tire. It must have washed into the roadway from the construction debris. So, I finished up a job, excused myself, clocked out, put on the donut tire, and limped to the nearest tire shop. One hour and $100 later I have two new tires to replace the flat and the other rear tire which has been patched a year ago. So, with all that, I was officially, undeniably poor. I still am until this friday, a long-overdue payday.

Things suck.

If you know me (which you should, since you’re visiting my site), and you see me in my recent daily life, you’ve probably noticed (if you cared enough) that I’ve been getting really short-tempered lately. I’m growing impatient with a lot of things. My tolerance of bullshit is growing really thin.

Case in point — the bosslady is growing on my ever-fucking nerves. I really don’t know what the hell is up with women who grew up as the girls who made THE RULES of the playground. They made all the rules, they made all the games, and if you weren’t playing according to the rules, spoken AND unspoken, then you were the target of their anger. So the bosslady, a.k.a. the woman married to the boss, has joined our team in an effort to police her husband make things more efficient and to help “set up ‘systems’” (that’s a term straight from corporate hell). Whatever. If she doesn’t stop pandering and condescending to us, I’m afraid she’s not going to have a workforce left to help pay for her future retirement. We’re adults. We’re not her daughters. Stop that shit.

So, yeah, I’m hating my job. Too much bullshit. Leave us alone and let us do our jobs. That’s all we ask.

But you can’t tell her that.

I was going to go to Texarkana last weekend to see my mother for her birthday weekend, but I don’t feel comfortable at all with driving that distance with my timing belt getting as old as it is. It’s about 50-thousand miles overdue, and I don’t like that. How much will it cost me to have it replaced? Hold onto your lunches, because I lost mine: no less than $450. What the fuck for? God. Something replaceable like that, there’s a system for doing it if the mechanic’s experienced. No sense in that shit. $80 for a new belt and water pump, so what’s the rest of the cost? Four hours of labor. Fuck that shit. Bullshit.

Nothing good to brag about. Sorry. Tune in later.

It seems to me that I can’t catapult forward into a higher state of well-being. The moment I garner faith, confidence, and the heady determination to make things happen, :slap: something knocks me back.

Friday evening started out well. I just got paid, went home to unwind, shower, and head out for some kind of excitement to kick off the weekend. Since the new A Perfect Circle album is out, I made for Waterloo Records to pick it up. After browsing, I found the album, and also found that David Bowie has released a new album. So, pumped up and with two new purchases, I head back to my car. As I step on the brakes to shift into reverse and pull out of the parking slot, my brake pedal bottoms out and reaches the floor. Unusual. So I pump again — hits the floor. Again, hits the floor, and hits the floor, and hits the floor.

The first thought in my head was, “fuuuuuck.”

I grab a rag, get my flashlight from the trunk, and I kneal down to see under my car. Underneath my left-front wheel there was a fresh puddle of brake fluid. The first word out of my mouth, “Fuck!”

I got back in, started my car again, tried some more pumping, and still it was bottoming out. The puddle had grown in size. I turned the wheel a hard left and looked behind the tire. There was brake fluid squirted in the wheel well. I found the brake line and followed it down to where I found a brand-new hole in the line. It was toast.

When I realized that I would not be able to leave, I started freaking out. I ran back inside to use the phone, and attempted a few rapid attempts to reach my roomate at home, not knowing if he was still here or not, and not knowing if he’d answer or not. After 5 attempts, I finally reached him. Told him where I was and what happened. Asked him if he could come down and help me, and he agreed.

During the half-hour that I waited on him to arrive, I returned the CD’s and got a chargeback, just in the off-chance that the brake repair would take an astronomical cost. I went back outside and sat on my trunk to wait. In that time, I considered several scenarios for getting my car out of the parking lot, or leaving it there, or having it towed, or asking for police escort or whatever. The traffic at 6th Street and Lamar Blvd was absolute hell, and the topography of the parking lot and the neighborhood required that I’d have to either go up and down a steep hill to leave or take the equal hazard of crossing lanes of traffic to loop a block. None of the options was favorable — they either involved much hazard (and possible misdemeanors for driving a not-safe-to-drive vehicle) or much monetary loss (like getting towed). I was at a short-circuit about what to do.

When my roomate arrived, we discussed some plans and found that getting towed was the best option; his cell phone plan has road-side assistance, so he called to arrange for a wrecker. After an hour, the wrecker arrived; he loaded my car up on the platform and followed us to the brake shop. Luckily the shop was less than 3 miles away, so there was no charge. I tipped the guy, wrote a note to the brake shop and slid it under the door, and after taking my bag and laptop and other valuables from the car and locking it up tight, I kicked the tire, got into my roomate’s truck, and we headed out. He dropped me off at Mojo’s where I spent the evening in a muddy funk. Got home around 5am thanks to a friend of mine.

I woke up today just before noon, put myself together, looked up the bus schedule, and headed out towards the brake shop. After waiting for 30 minutes, the bus finally shows up and within 10 minutes I was 15 blocks away. Really, folks, I should’ve just walked. Would’ve gotten there sooner.

I walk into the shop, the manager greets me and finds that I’m the one who left the car overnight — he said they had been trying to contact me all day. He promptly got my paperwork started and moved my car into the garage bay. Looked to me like the whole team had been waiting on my car even though there were others already on risers and in the parking lot. In no time my car was raised, my tires removed, and my back drum brakes opened up. They got inside the front wheel wells and found the hole in the line. After some deliberation among themselves they agree that, at the least, I need a new pair of hoses; they suggested, after looking at the cylinder pistons on my back brakes, that I let them repack the pistons, but I decided to hold off on it.

So, the estimate? $106us plus tax. Fuck. All that for a blown line. Happenstance. Ruined my plans. How badly? How’s this: they don’t have the pair of lines. NOBODY in town has those lines. No single parts shop in this great city of Austin, the capital of fucking TEXAS, has those lines. Not a one. They told me there’s a place in San Antonio that has one line, and some place out of state has a line. I was incredulous, but too defeated to get angry. They’ll have to order the parts, so I’ll be without a car for, at the least, monday afternoon. Tuesday at the latest.

So. I was going to possibly maybe go see a movie. Fuck it. I was possibly going to take a drive. Fuck it. I was possibly going to hang out at Mojo’s for a good long evening to do some programming and whatnot. Fuck it. Can’t do anything without walking with heavy bags, waiting on the bus, and relying on rides and the kindness of others to shuttle me from point A to point B.

And the real shitter is this: it’s raining. Pitter-patter long-term raining. Grey cloudy gloomy breezy chilly raining. After a summer’s worth of praying for rain, it finally comes when I have to walk in it, when I have no other choice, when I’m a pedestrian. :sighs: A previously-pampered pedestrian. This problem’s effects go deep with me: when my car has a problem, I get ill; a known fact, I get ill. My car is, admittedly, an extension of me. It’s only a tool, yes, but it’s one of my most important tools. It allows me to be a dependable person. It allows me to seek out new places, to take care of responsibilities, to be in different places in a respectable timeframe. If I can’t drive, I totally feel like I’m back to living the hidden, stunted life of a kid growing up in the projects. That hurts. You can call me a typical American, I don’t fucking care. When I hit walls, it hurts.

So, now, I’ll stop bitching. I’m not sure if I want to sleep or make the attempt to show up at Mojo’s for an all-nighter until the busses run again in the morning. I can thank my lucky stars that my brake lines didn’t burst while I was driving, sure, but that doesn’t change my feelings or my mood. And my mood is like a wet cat. So other than the verbosity of this journal, don’t expect to hear me speaking much.

All I know is after years of driving other people around from place to place out of my kindness and generosity, I better get some fucking karmic payback. God-damned right. Fuck. I’m out of here.

Hey friends. A new entry.

friend: /frend’/ n. 1. a close acquaintance 2. one who has been befriended 3. one who reads Shawn’s journal even though there’s been no journal updates in over two weeks. “Hey friends. A new entry.”

As many of you know, I have fallen off of the wagon and back into the tobacco fields. This doesn’t surprise me, just depresses me. I realize now that I can’t hate the devil and still dance with him. Just doesn’t work like that. :sighs: The next time I quit, I intend to not have a cigarette, period. The crazy, intense dreams are gone. The hacking is back. The urge to be productive, waned. From this three-day-weekend’s round of smoking my throat is now puffy and tender. Perfect. I set myself up for an upper-respiratory thing; feelin’ it, too.

My health concerns aside, I called my family yesterday and got some disturbing news. My mother twisted her upper back pretty severe while at work about a month ago. If not for the cooler in front of her, she would’ve hit the floor. Some preliminary x-rays didn’t reveal any broken backbones, which is a relief. But there still exists the chance that a disc is blown. From what she said, it sounded like a loud pop; even some of her customers heard it. Geez. She’s been scheduled for an MRI later this month. I hope it reveals something repairable.

I also found out she lost her job. Some political b.s. involving a crooked coworker saying something to the owner. I dunno, but that whole bar was crooked. So much for that.

Called my sister, too. She and her family are doing well. Found out she’s been diagnosed with type-2 diabetes. It’s inherited from her father’s side. So she has to count sugar and sodium grams in her diet, measure her blood sugar twice a day, and take an insulin pill once a day. She has also quit smoking, and is sticking with it. I’m proud of her. She says her feet are no longer swollen; the fact that her doctors went overlooking this for so long astounds me — it’s one of the early, major signs of diabetes. Damned fools. But now that she’s watching her diet and taking better care of herself she’s losing weight and, as she says, she’s feeling better than she has in years.

As far as I’m doing, since I started smoking again (now almost back to a pack a day), I’ve been feeling rather cruddy. Especially now. Tsk tsk. (You can save your browbeating comments — I’ve enough of my own.) Stomach’s not as upsettable as it was, though. Thinking watching my own diet (sort of) is contributing to that. Dunno. It still tweaks every now and again, like it did about an hour ago at Mojo’s. Something about sitting for hours at my laptop while sucking on iced tea, peppermints, smoking, and generally not moving can kinda contribute to built-up internal pressure or something. Once I packed up, got up, and moved around by driving home I felt better.

This weekend, though, has allowed me to render several new chunks of code towards my website engine. I’m playing with a thing wherein disparate subobjects in my engine can communicate with one another and run each other’s methods transparently. What this means is that the master object in the engine, called “Kernel”, creates each subobject; when each subobject is created, it “registers” its methods and accessible data with the Kernel, and registers any messages it’ll “listen” to. Later on, during execution, objects can simply ask the Kernel to do something for them, and the Kernel looks up the task, calls the proper subobject to perform it, and then sends the results back to the original subobject that made the request.

Something like this is a huge improvement in the way I’ve been doing things in the engine thus far. By allowing this “proxy” subsystem to exist and by rewriting the current modules so that they use it, I can almost completely unlink the modules from each other; they’re no longer bound to each other, and they don’t have to know every single bit of information necessary about each other to make those calls. In the programming world, this is called “loose coupling.” If they want something, they call someone who knows where it is. Now, if I make a drastic change in how one module interacts with something from the rest of the system, everyone else is shielded from those changes; editing one part should not mean you have to edit everything else.

Pardon the geekout, but this is very exciting to me, and the fact that I was able to hammer out the guts of this in a few nights’ free time makes me feel excellently successful about it.

I think I’ll head over to some bookstore or something and pick up a ton of crossword books for my mother. She needs something to do while she’s laid-up on her back. I’m planning on sending her a care package with some books, a card, and some money to help her out. She’s in financial straits now, and if I was in her shoes, she’d do the same. She has for years, and now it’s my turn to help.