Fear the Crab

I have decided to donate to the Aloha United Way (AUW). Every year our company holds a fund-raising drive to give monies to AUW. Aside from the huli-huli chicken sales, baked goods and other commodes, they give us a little authorization form to deduct a specific amount of monies from our paychecks. We can either have them take out one big lump sum, or take out each paycheck.

I have decided to donate a penny. $0.01. And I will request that this penny be removed only once, from my February 28th paycheck. That’s correct, I’m giving one huge penny as a one-time donation to AUW. And it won’t even be a penny that I’ll physically have up my ass, or wherever it is one keeps their pennies. No, it’s going to be a virtual penny that exists in cyberworld, to be removed from a cyborg paycheck that deposits directly into my bank (the amount, not the actual paycheck).

My reasoning is because I haven’t gotten any raise in the past two years, whereas before I was satisfied with even a nickel increase in my hourly wages. My hours have been reduced, from 40 to 38 to 35 to 19 hours per week. I try and scrape by while our glorious Mr Brennan makes 35-minute videos where he probably flaunts his bling-bling, all the while telling us to gear up for another year of economic hardship (I haven’t seen it yet). Ol’ Mr DiLessio tells us that he doesn’t care about shoplifters, because our profits can cover those losses. So, on behalf of Mr Brennan and Mr DiLessio, I am donating one penny. They can cover the rest.

I dreamt that I was getting ready to go out, and I was running a brush through my hair. Instead of the usual crop-cut that I have, my hair was as long as it used to be back in high school, that sort of local boy surfer style. I tried to get it to look nice, but there were bulges I couldn’t get down in my hair, so I decided to go for that bed-head look and use some gel. Then the dream changed a bit, and I was sitting inside a salon and I was going to have my hair colored. However, the person doing the coloring used the wrong oil. Instead of using the FN brand of oil required for a lustrous deep and rich color, by mistake she used a bottle of fn dandruff shampoo. After she was finished, my hair was as long as it was during college, and it was dyed blonde. She was very apologetic, especially when she explained that I couldn’t wash my hair and it wouldn’t cut, so I was stuck with that hair forever. I met Maile afterwards and tried to explain the situation to her, but she didn’t seem to quite understand it all.

I almost forgot to post today. I spent most of my time trying to study for my math exam, but since I was at work it was tough to concentrate. I did manage to make some progress towards further, if not better, understanding of the material, though I’m still a long way from claiming omnipotent knowledge.

One of the watch bay doors fell and cracked the mirrored glass. It broke so hard that the lock came off. It is my suspicion that the sales clerk just wasn’t paying attention to the door and let it drop down to hit against the drawers. Either that or she misjudged the weight of it (which isn’t very heavy). This isn’t the first time it’s happened.

I went over to Maile’s house after work for some dinner. Instead of studying, we watched some Rurouni Kenshin and a bit of the special features on the Monsters Inc DVD.

When I pulled into her driveway, I noticed that her mom’s car was gone. Maile’s mom had gone to Vegas eariler in the week, so I thought that she had come home already and was either out or hadn’t returned from work. However, I found out that Keoni had taken the car. It seems that the mom gave Keoni permission to use the car only during specific conditions. First, he could use it if he had an appointment such as for the doctor, or a job interview (yeah right). Second, the grandmother had to accompany him. I thought these were more than reasonable terms for some bastard who’s about as trustworthy as the DFS vice president. Yet it seems the grandmother did not accompany Keoni, and he did not have any such appointments scheduled. Though he denies it, we highly suspect he went over to Josephine’s house (the “first woman”) because he came home with a gigantic hickey on the side of his neck. Maile was, understandably, annoyed and angry, but I think that will pale in comparison to how the mom will feel when she finds out.

Came home and watched some of the UH football game on delayed broadcast. During that time I worked on my coding assignment and made rather significant progress. There are stilll a few bugs, and in my current state of mind I can’t seem to comprehend what it is I’m doing wrong. Perhaps tomorrow will hold greater success in my endeavors, but if that fails, I can always email the professor or TAs.

I had a nightmare about my truck. I dreamt that it finally came in, but when it did, everyone, including the sales manager and my parents, thought it wasn’t a very good truck at all. I had gone to Toyota City to have my trade-in appraised, and while I was there, the sales manager took me to where they were servicing the truck. I asked where I was supposed to drive my trade-in, and he told me to just leave it somewhere and he’d find it. I though that answer was rather strange, and wanted to get more information out of him, but he went into a building and grabbed some material of different colors. We went across the street, and my parents were in the service area looking over the design specs of the truck. That was when they all started to say aloud that it wasn’t a very good truck at all.

We got slammed today at work. It was as busy as we had been in years past, but I have to take into consideration that back then we had a lot more people on staff. Perhaps it was simply because we are short-handed that it felt busier. After all, in the duty free section there used to be 4 people working any given night; now it’s just 2.

Maile called me after work. She had some trouble falling asleep, so we talked for a good hour, even after I finally reached home. Having insomnia sucks eggs, especially if one has to wake up early the next day. Maile usually has an early run on Saturdays, and often wakes up at 5 to get in to the lab. I hope she’s all right tomorrow.

George won’t be working tomorrow. I found that out when I saw him tonight as I started and he was leaving. I don’t know if he has vacation or switched a day off, but it doesn’t really matter to me because it’s his time off. He’s not one to normally take a day off just because he feels like it. Tomoko made some kind of wisecrack about calling him in to work, saying that I was going to call in sick. After she said that, the thought briefly occurred to me that I, too, could use a day off. I have two exams next Thursday, one of which is the dreaded Discrete Math. Top that with the homework assignments that I have due for both classes, and that doesn’t leave much time to get any studying done. The 211 homework can actually substitute for studying, because the coding itself will be similar to what I’ll have to do in that exam. That doesn’t mean I can rest easily, however, because a lot of my programming is done through heavy references to my notes and materials.

Speaking of notes, for both classes I will be allowed to bring in one 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper with whatever notes I want, and use it in the exams. I wanted to use my time tonight to jot some things for the 241 test, but as mentioned before, work was too busy to even take a glimpse at my current pile of notes. I also need to consider how I’m going to format my “cheat sheet.” I plan to use both sides of the paper (it’s allowed), but I haven’t decided if I’m going to write all my notes or use the tiniest legible font on my computer. The problems with doing it by hand are that I may not recognize my own writing, there won’t be much organization, and I may lose efficient space. The problem with doing it on the computer is the risk that a special symbol may be lacking, forcing me to leave some space to fill it in by hand.

Forgot to mention in previous entries that my mom’s painting was shown in the local paper. There’s an article about an art fund raiser for the REHAB hospital, and the sole painting displayed is the one made by my mom. The only time I ever had my name in the paper was when I was on the high school bowling team and scored a 222. Coincidentally, that was the only game we had ever won, and it was against Iolani. My name was written in the sports section (obviously) in the tiniest font possible. I think someone clipped that statistic article, but I have no idea where it is after 12 years. Anyway, I’m currently trying to find a way to either scan or digitize her painting, so I can post it on the web page.

Went with Maile to LCC as she took a Psychology test. I spent the idle time studying for my 211 quiz that’s coming up Thursday. There was the very rancid smell of manure towards the back of the campus, and I thought some toilet had overflowed because I only smelled it when I went past the bathrooms to get something to drink. Maile told me afterward that was the Agriculture department. I guess they have a full garden/crop field or something. There’s a lot of brush behind the campus, so it’s plausible that it’s back there.

Keoni irritates me to no end. Perhaps I’m making too big a deal of this, but there are just things people do that piss me off. One such thing is saying, “I going take some cigarettes, okay?” To me, that is the rudest thing you could say to someone. The polite thing to say is, “May I have some cigarettes?” or something to that extent, where the request is actually a request. A question, if you will. Not some statement of what you’re going to do. That’s just assuming the other person will be okay with it.

Not to mention, he took over half of her pack.

Learned about Vectors in 211 today. Vectors are cool data structures that can hold any sort of Object (that’s a programming-related term) and can expand itself if more information is stored.

I had an interesting discussion with Maile a little while ago. She mentioned how there are times when she is tired that she has a bit of a problem listening to people talk. My theory behind that can be explained with a bit of imagery:

When someone starts talking to you, engaging in some intellectual dialogue, your mind forms a box inside your head. This box is empty. As the person speaks, what they say is stored by you into this box. You use this box to hold whatever is spoken, and you constantly refer back to the box’s contents to discuss particular topics. This constant referencing and sorting and scanning of the box’s contents is a tremendous drain on one’s intellectual energy. On a normal day, a person can manage this energy loss and feel no ill effects. However, when a person is tired, there is simply too much energy to spend on the sorting of your mind-box, and instead that box becomes a garbage can. As the person speaks (blah blah blah) it gets dumped into the garbage can and some imaginary garbageman comes along and removes it. You no longer contain what that person was talking about, and if you try to concentrate it seems like your brain just became fuzzy, and as a result people think you just aren’t listening.

I’ll bet you’re not listening now.

Since you’re not listening, I will end this by saying Fairuza Balk is one hot woman. Just thinking about her is enough to make me drool.

Blah. Work was blah. At least I sold a Bvlgari watch. It was only $945, but that’s more than what I have in my bank accounts.

Visited Maile for a couple of hours after work. I ate two grilled cheese sandwiches and some bacon. I first felt like eating fried rice, but easily changed my mind to grilled cheese. I’m easy to please, that way. The bacon was thrown in because it was offered, and I am not one to turn down food.

I’m feeling rather awake right now, which is bad, because it’s another school night.

I dreamt I was a football player, as well as a sports journalist. I was walking up Red Hill, Ewa-bound, but the time it took for me to get to the top was the same amount of time it would have taken me driving. I met up with a bunch of other journalists, and we all had these question guides. Our task was to fill in all the questions based on what the players and/or coaches said. This time it was Dave Shoji and the womens volleyball team that we were “interviewing.” The people around me were asking stupid questions, trying to fill in their papers, while I just kept writing. About the only question I had to ask was what date the game was. Then once I was finished, I was supposed to go to the stadium. All the journalists went to the top of the hill, and there we were in a room where we had to wait and they had to issue us these press passes. I walked down to the stadium as soon as I got my pass, and when I entered the field I saw that the football team was already warming up, and I was late. I hurried into the locker rooms to change, and strangely it seemed I wore my old aikido gi under my uniform and pads. It also seemed that I was the kicker, and I had just finished putting on my outfit when the game started. I hadn’t warmed up, a voice in the back of my head was saying that I was wearing the wrong shoes, and I was supposed to kick off. I rushed onto the field, tipping my baseball cap (why I was wearing that and not a helmet I don’t know) in apology to my teammates and referees. As expected, I didn’t kick the ball that far, but something happened and I ended up tackling the return man close to the goal line on his side of the field.

I somewhat finished my applet for ICS 211. Fixed a bug involving the deletion of pets. If there were two pets of the same name, and you wanted to delete the second one, the program would only attempt to delete the first, and never move on to the second. I fixed it by requiring not only the pet’s name, but the owner’s name. Unfortunately, I haven’t solved this other glitch where the program accepts duplicate entries. I used to have a check that ran to see if a pet’s name and owner’s name were already in the database, but when I converted the program to an applet, it didn’t seem to work. At least I have a whole week to ask for help.

Today I wore one pair of those women’s hiking socks. They fit well, as expected, and were a bit more comfortable than what I used to wear. Shoes are shoes, though, and when standing around all day, feet hurt no matter what you wear. When I got home my feet had an imprinted pattern on the top. That’s what happens when you wear socks like that.

Today I kept craving a cigarette. My mind tried to justify the craving, but thankfully the mere thought of having to shell out $6 kept it to a minimum. Maile said my mind is not ready to quit smoking, and I believe her. I just feel I should “get a head start” on quitting, and now is as good a time as any. I must maintain my discipline, and hopefully this discipline will spill over to other areas, such as car maintenance and my homework.