Ever in my mind

Sunday, November 18th, 2007 | Insanely long, Life | 1 Comment

I was just sitting in the chair playing some music. New to me music that has no prior associations and once again I am hit with the “damn, I bet Beth would really like this song”. Yet, now I will never know. Well I know she would have, but now she never will. For the most part, I get through most of the days without any “never more” thoughts. I can focus on my own life and how to improve it. So far I have actually been improving it. I am exercising every day (no joke) & paying off debt. I am active and fairly productive.

Yet, I go to work and I say I will go in with my A Game today and kick out more posts than anybody else like I was consistently doing before at the end of September and beginning of October. Yet I can never do quite that much. I just can’t focus on the task at hand anymore. It’s not that my mind is flooded with negative or sad thoughts. It just won’t grip onto any one thought.

I used to make my sister laugh. When I lived in Wisconsin she wouldn’t sleep on Fridays and would come hang out with me during the day. She would be really over-tired from not sleeping and if she hung out with somebody else she would get cranky. Yet with me I could just make her laugh. So we would often go out for lunch and by the end of lunch we always had our waitresses convinced that we were crazy (well, not exactly a stretch), because we would be laughing so hard.

I enjoyed that, and enjoyed the time we spent together. Yet I was growing older and my sister was older than me. I needed to break away from my friends and my family and leave. I needed a break from it. I needed to make new friends and to force my sister to do the same by me leaving.

I did. She didn’t.

She absorbed a couple of my friends that had lived in the Madison area and latched on to them very hard. She had known them through me before I had left. It was comfortable. It was easy since she didn’t have to meet new people. In her dishonesty she would just bitch about how hard it was to make friends. If she had to be honest with herself she would have actually said that she didn’t want to make more friends because then more people would have had to see her suffer and she would have just made their lives more miserable. This is what she actually believed.

As I have lived in Arizona since April of 2006 now she came to visit me once. The trip was paid for half by me and half by my mother. I was glad to see her and vice versa but she was so damn miserable inside and couldn’t outwardly think of anything except the money it was costing to be there. Took her and some friends out on the town and she was just miserable the entire time. This was so foreign to me because I have always made her happy.

I knew she was fucked up inside, but she has always tried to hide it from me when she can. Still, she left early and I was glad to see her go. She was being a bitch and I wasn’t happy with it.

She left and on the way home she broke down. Seems she had a panic attack and cried for 12-14 hours straight. I mean she was clearly sick and suffering, but I could not see it. To me she was just my same old crazy sister, and I would not take any more crap from her on a crazy day than I would on a non-crazy day.

Despite me seeing it as a lousy time for all involved. She said she enjoyed her time in Arizona and wanted to move here. She started saving up so that she could move here. I warned her that I would NOT live with her. That we would end up killing each other. She agreed and set that as a goal. Go to the nice warm place where her brother lived.

Me, this didn’t seem like such a great deal. I had moved away from Wisconsin to be my own independent person and did not need my sister brining me down.

Well, Fuckin’ A. Now I would give anything to have her live in Arizona making me miserable.

I miss being able to call her and say random things about nothing. I miss being able to give her shit about not being able to think of the word flashlight (one time, long ago). I just miss knowing that somebody else in the world needed me. That somebody gave a shit about the stupid things that I do.

See it kills me because I have something my sister never had. I have a lot of friends who would listen to me and actually care. However I don’t have anything to say to them. There is just no part of a conversation that I can have with them that will resemble the conversations I had with my sister. It is something torn that can never be mended.

Most days I will be fine. Unfocused, but fine. Today I was totally fine until right before I started to write this. Yet, now I can hear her voice in my head saying “hey kid”. I can hear a conversation that never happened, and never will. I can see her in my mind and I wish I couldn’t because it’s not real. Because seeing her and really thinking about her is harder than not thinking about her. It’s eating at every one of my senses until I cannot breath.

I am not an emotional person and I held it together like a fucking rock when I needed to, but now as the people and things in my life gain more distance from me I can’t help but to get drawn in. To be just another example of psychology’s 5 fucking stages.

I am a non-emotional optimist with a good outlook on the future, who never dwells on the past and whom rarely worries. Yet for all of who I am, nothing in life prepares you to accept something just because you understand it.

“hey kid”… It’s just there. I know why it’s there and I know it’s not real. Yet If I were holding a seminar right now to teach people what I would know I would tell them that all we are is our memories. I would tell them that we can change and shape our memories and our perspectives to move beyond things. I could tell them how to make the memories more or less intense at will and thereby change their entire life.

Yet, I can’t bring myself to do the same thing to my own memories. I do not want to loose them, or change them at all. I don’t wish to have a different perspective on them, or make them less intense. I want to just be ok and go on with my life, but only time will let me do this.

I shall never forget her, even in death, even if it pains me she will live on forever in my mind.

The randomness of a day

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 | Life | 3 Comments

I got 6½ hours sleep last night! that’s more than the previous 3 days combined…. Yeah!!!!!

Went to work… Started work and was going to kick some ass and take some names… but I lost interest in that after a couple hours and dropped the goals again… Decided later that so long as I beat my previous day I was ok and I did.

Came home and watched an episode of House… Because House kicks ass… He’s just a Smartass… plain and simple… Near perfect show.

Looked for new movies, only added one or two since the rest seemed like a waste of time since they would just die…

Ate some random food…. Very random… Instant Mac, Yogart, Cashews…

Decided to watch the rest of Revolver. I must say, though the movie would not be for everybody. It is clearly for me. It’s totally a mind-fuck movie and I love those. It fits in a category with Memento, Stay and Run Lola Run… It’s still working on the site as I write this so I recommend downloading it if I have not removed it by the time you read this.

Decided to kick up my workout a bit. Instead of running or doing a normal workout video, I decided to do some P90X. Yes, I should know better. That workout is NOT for people who are not already in shape. I mean if you aren’t a fucking athlete you might just die. Made it through Core Synergistics and clearly am feeling it. I fucked up my left hamstring a bit… Have tried to do some extra stretching to make up for it.

I was going to run to Wallmart for something, but now I think I am just going to chill and watch another TV Show. Perhaps Bleach and then If I feel up to it I am going to answer some Ask-a-Smartass questions. I think my problem with them is that I try to do them in the order they are asked. Well I am SOOOOO far behind that now that would be totally worthless. Might as well give the people who just asked the questions an answer since the other people probably gave up. I could have solved this problem by letting 2 other people who volunteered to answer questions do it for me… However there answers were not my answers and It just wasn’t the same… So I was a dick and deleted the ones they did only to make more work for myself.

Damn my hamstring hurts… Whatever.. If I can keep up a schedule like I had today (including actually sleeping at night) then I will be feeling less shitty in no time. Perhaps I will only do a P90X routine once a week… If that… Think you are an athlete? Get that… Try plyometrics… Just download it with bittorrent from somewhere… (and then pay for it when you like it…. Of course you already knew that ;).

I need to make 2 of me. One to go to work and one to be a total computer nerd who just works on his health and the website all day. I’m more suited for the latter so if anybody wants to volunteer to be me and earn money for me I am taking applications. I will train the shit out of you and all you have to do is earn me money. Then because of your generosity my website will flourish and add new features and content until it is the biggest site of random stuff and junk to ever exist!

Good times.

I Need To Go The %$^& to Bed!

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 | Life | 2 Comments

I have had 5½ hours sleep in the last 3 days. Well I’m sure I have fallen asleep at work but it’s a micro-nap with my eyes open. Not exactly what I need. If I were smarter I would have at least taken a power nap with one of the mp3’s I have (they put you to sleep and wake you up right before you leave stage one sleep). That would at least be logical. See I can’t just lay down for a normal nap because if I fall asleep I won’t get up at a reasonable time. I would end up waking up at 2:30am and then would have a screwed up schedule again.

At this point it shouldn’t matter. I mean it’s 9pm, which seems reasonable to just sleep all night. However only an hour ago I remembered my fitness goals so I went out for a run. So now I am awake again. Gotta love exercise… Wakes you the fuck up. Not what I needed.

So I started watching this movie on my site… Revolver. The movie would clearly not be for everybody. However It seems to be for me. I say it seems because I am only 30 mins into it and it’s 1:46:55 long. It’s interesting and gets me wondering what will happen next. It makes you think. FUCK, now my mind and my body are awake.

Well I am writing a blog post because my mind is clear enough to think now and the movie is buffering. Man do I ever miss my 14meg connection. This Supposedly 5 megabyte DSL sucks donkey balls (and no I don’t mean that in a good way… what good way? well if you translate donkey it becomes ass, and as a smart comment it would clearly be referring to a smartass which could easily be me and I can see nothing wrong with having your balls sucked. No I just meant it sucks something unpleasant.). I mean I can only have 1 thing downloading, and if my roommate wants to play halo3 I need to stop my downloads so that he isn’t fucked over by the download. I stuck QOS on my router with fancy firmware but it doesn’t seem to be working like it’s supposed to so bittorrent traffic does not take low priority like it said it would… oh well…

Gack, the buffering is so long and quiet… Must have music. Here’s what I decided to listen to (nice that youtube has every song ever in some video so I can reference everything so quickly):

Hopefully this buffering will take so damn long that I just decide to go to bed instead of waiting for it. I could just hit play now, it’s 50% done… but it will freeze another 30-40 minutes in.

Screw it, sleep is overrated. Sure I have been zoning out at work, but I am still getting my job done.

What I need is one of those masks from the James Bond Movie, the one with the super hot blond who’s name escapes me (and I don’t want to spend the half a second on imdb or google to find her name) AND Halle Berry in it… Guy can’t sleep anymore so he just uses the crazy dream mask to work out his problems. I think that’s the way to go. Give your subconscious a good change of pace….

I wonder if my posts will keep getting more and more convoluted everyday that I don’t sleep. Will I still be able to drive if I don’t go to bed in the next hour? Will I be an asshole to somebody who doesn’t deserve it? Will it be worth it because I may discover the great secret of the universe when my conscious starts to merge with my subconscious during the day? Hmm, actually that one though I would love to know what it’s like for a day or two I know that I wouldn’t want to keep it, since my family seems to have a history of mental illness and schizophrenia. Probably not good if I start seeing my crazy dreams while I am awake.

I actually have gone to sleep the last couple nights too… It simply hasn’t worked out as planed. So tonight I just need to decide to not let anything wake me up until my alarm goes off in the morning. Oh yeah, and I need to not think. Normally it’s so easy to do and I pretty much just lay down and go to sleep.

Whatever, exercise / mental stimulation be damned. I shall try again to sleep. Yep, I need to go the %^&# to bed.

A Relationship in Time

Monday, November 12th, 2007 | Life | 6 Comments

The weather is perfect tonight,it’s been perfect for days. The cool breeze feels amazing in the (mostly) bug free air. I am tired, so tired. Last night I only had a few hours sleep and the night before I didn’t sleep at all (unless you count work as sleep). I am a good sleeper typically. I can go to sleep on command within 3 or 4 minutes. However when your mind is filled with thoughts that it cannot process it does not want to let you change your focus.

I suppose I should mention that I have a girlfriend. However nothing is ever simple. She lives in Wisconsin and I live in Arizona.

Have you ever tried to make a LONG distance relationship work? It’s tricky. The relationship is being run by text messages (I kid you not) and it’s very hard to keep up a connection and convey emotion through text. So I end up over analyzing everything. I think to myself “why didn’t she respond to that? did I say something wrong? did she misinterpret what I said? is the world just fucking with me by giving me an amazing connection to an amazing girl and then drive a 2000 mile wedge in it?”.

Now I pride myself on my big head. Yes, I know a little bit of everything and I like to learn new things and to help other people to learn the things that I know. However there really is no solution to “not knowing”. So I end up probing for answers to things that just don’t currently have answers.

We both have our own sad stories: Me? My sister just died and I seem oblivious to it. I almost called her the other day as I was driving home. I wanted to call somebody that would want to hear from me and I went to her phone number in my cell. I mean how fucked up is that? There is now one less person in the world who gives a shit about me. Sure I still have a lot of friends and a website with a lot of visitors but none of it seems to amount for anything if I can’t call my sister and tell her stories about it.

Her? Most of the people she cares about have moved away and she is in constant pain from an injury that she needs to have surgery on (again). I try to cheer her up about it, but I am unable to earnestly empathize with her pain and since I cannot physically be there for her I become just another onlooker. I feel like I am poking her with a stick everyday when I ask how she’s doing because I know that she’s probably not doing that well.

Where will the relationship go? It’s so hard to say. The distance makes it so hard, because I sincerely want to be with her, but cannot be. I’d like to think it will endure and thrive, but only time will tell. As it stands I will see her at the very end of the year when I make another trip back to Wisconsin. My friends have mixed opinions. A couple of them think I should just shack up with random girls and abandon my long distance relationship. That for one will not happen. I made a real connection with this girl and I am a straight up relationship guy who just want to be with somebody who really wants to be with me (for more than a night).

I am going to make mistakes and say the wrong thing from time to time. I do however believe that we make mistakes for a reason and that the things that we say and do wrong today will make us into stronger people tomorrow.

Right now I am trapped in time:
-Past: My childhood made me strong, and made me into what I am today. It is only through great trials that we can see our own path in life and can choose to change it.
-Present: 2007 has hit me like a cannonball and left me with holes that cannot be mended. Yet I have something real to hold on to now and I will fight to make it work.
-Future: The future holds so many great things, but I am blinded by the light that shines there so for now I keep my eyes closed.

The below song was on loop while I wrote this post.. The video for it is an “unofficial” video made by some random person, but I liked it so I am inserting it in this post. I am not trying to send a message with the song, I simply just heard it tonight and like the sound of the song.

My site is a smartass without me!

Monday, November 12th, 2007 | Life, Site Updates | 1 Comment

So get this, I have a “.htaccess” file that’s like a book. I mean I must have 2000 redirects in it based on who you are, and what you are trying to do. It’s so big I have written tutorials on how to help other people to make their file big and mean. Why would you want to do that? Well in my case it’s a necessity because a lot of people try to hack into my site on a daily basis. When they aren’t trying to hack in they might be dickheads in the chat. They could be using a program to try to “rip” my site and download everything, which is a huge hit to my bandwidth etc.. They could be a copyright search engine going around looking for stolen artwork ;) etc… I have a zillion reasons to want to redirect people to different places.

I have gotten so “good” with my htaccess file that I can make it so certain people get redirected to English lessons only when they try to “ask-a-smartass” question.

Well it seems that you can know everything at the time you are doing it but troubleshooting something caused by it that you don’t expect is a pain.

So I am hosting my friend Jacob at fivecows.thesmartass.info and he comes to my chat tonight and says “Greetings from the recluse. Hoe are things going here? Busy as always? Just thought I’d mention that if you try going to my blog and get the message to go F yourself, please know I’m sorry.”.

Now I am freaking out, I am thinking I pissed off my friend and he is telling me to go fuck myself if I visit his blog~! Well I had to go check it out… and I instantly noticed that when you clicked on his archives it redirected you instantly to a google search result for “go fuck yourself”. Now I know damn well that I redirect people that are spamming / harassing people on my site to this page. So it had to be my fault. Sure enough, If I mucked with the line in the htaccess file it gave me an internal server error for that page.

At the moment I need to go to bed so I renamed his index.php to index.htm (since there didn’t appear to be any php in it at the time it won’t hurt his page to be named that. However I cannot pinpoint exactly what is causing it to redirect. Technically it should only direct a few exact things and hooligans :). So I need to muck through my big ass file tomorrow and figure out why his blog archives are telling everybody to go fuck themselves!

You raise it from when it’s very small and nurture it and low and behold my site has truly grown into it’s own smartass…

They grow up so fast.