Fear the Crab

Today is Maile’s birthday. I stopped by to see her, and gave her a long-stemmed rose. I couldn’t help celebrate because the Evil Empire had scheduled me for work. Still, it was nice seeing her.

Hm. Everything else sort of pales in comparison to that.

Work today. Blah.

Irene was acting like a spoiled brat today, which doesn’t really befit her 29-yr old status. What started it was the fact that she “was busy” with work and only took a 5-minute break. Her lunch bag was in the refrigerator in the lounge, and she asked the supervisor, Dean, to get it for her. I don’t know if he forgot, but he didn’t get it, and he locked up the lounge and set the alarm. That meant Irene couldn’t get her bag without tripping the sensors. She started going off like a hot tea kettle, “I want my bag I want my bag I want my bag!” over and over again. I discovered her intent was to irritate Dean to the point that he would go and retrieve her bag. Instead, she succeeded in irritating everybody else, because when she wants to, she can have a very loud and very high-pitched voice. Sort of sounds like Minnie Mouse on ice, or like the barking of a chihuahua. On our way to our cars, Irene mentioned idly that she thought she had Dean “wrapped around her tiny finger.” A bit of arrogance on her part, I believe.

Tried to get the point across that there are greater tragedies in life, and she can’t fret about a bag that will still be there when she returns from her vacation. Don’t know if I succeeded.

Visited Maile after work, and ate some of her leftover dinner. She and her family went to Sushi-Ten, which made me highly jealous because I also like their food. I haven’t been to that restaurant in months. I really like the pocket watch, money clip, shoe polish, and electric toothbrush she got me for Xmas, and it was everything I wanted on my list. Woo!

I spent Christmas Day with Maile and her family, and ate dinner there. They had honeyed ham and other goodies like stuffing and salad and mashed potatoes. It was very nice and great company. In fact, I think I shall visit her tomorrow as well.

I had to wake up early today to take my brother to his dentist appointment. After that was done, we went to Ala Moana so he could do some shopping, but he ended up getting nothing except exercise. We tried to go to Costco and Pearlridge, but by then traffic was simply disgusting, so we canceled that. An interesting occurrence befell us as we were leaving downtown; some bloke rear-ended my new truck. It was less than a love tap, and at first we didn’t even realize we were hit. I had just described a scene of a giant robot stepping on something and right when I said “stomp” and dropped my hands down, we felt the car shake like we had run over a pothole. Except, we weren’t moving at the time. I think we were quiet for over a minute as we tried to figure out what happened. My brother asked “Were we just hit?” and when I looked in my rear view mirror there was a car very close behind us. We pulled over to check, and that car followed us. When we got out, there was no damage, not even a scuff, so I suppose in the end one could say nothing happened. In fact, when I went to check I was looking in the wrong area. The driver of the other car had to point out where he tapped us.

Ate dinner with some of the family from my mom’s side, which was weird to me because tomorrow there’s a big family dinner that includes the people we ate with. Had pot roast.

I spoke to Maile for a bit, but she wasn’t feeling very well. It left me not feeling very well, too, but that was because of the my uneasiness in her discomfort and my apparent inability to help. One of the few times I wish I were psychic, I think. Anywho, I can’t sleep now, and while I don’t have anything planned for the coming day (except for the dinner, which I’m still not sure I will attend), I wanted to sleep early so I could run an errand. I will probably still have time enough to do it, since the dinner is at 1700 hours, but one can never tell what the day will bring. Again, that psychic question is ever so pertinent.

After work I stopped by Maile’s classmate’s house and joined them at the tail end of their party. I met the husband, who seems like a nice guy, as well as a few of their friends and neighbors. There was one girl who at first glance looked like a young version of Natalie Portman, but I only had a quick glance before they left. I don’t even remember the name anymore.

I ate some food that was leftover, and I enjoyed Maile’s chicken drummettes, which are always good (despite whatever she thinks).

I must remember to pick up my brother at the airport tomorrow night.

I got stopped at a police roadblock, on my way home from work. The reason I got stopped, according to the officer I spoke to, was “that I looked intoxicated.” I actually looked tired, because I had just gotten off work. But, I have no complaints, because this was their job, and I’m glad they’re doing it. And, I wasn’t drunk, so I had nothing to fear. The whole thing took less than two minutes.

I’ve officially completed the Fall 2002 semester. Today I took the ICS 211 final, and I feel pretty confident about my results. Everything was pretty straight-forward, and the only thing that caused some hesitation was the inorder traversal of a binary tree. Normally I know how it goes, but the particular layout of the tree generated some momentary confusion of how to traverse it. Still, I think I did it correctly. The only thing I didn’t do correctly was answer the extra credit questions. There were two questions, each worth two points, so I think I missed out on those. The first was “What does XML stand for?” and I blanked on the X (I believe now it is eXtendable). The second was “What does TCP/IP stand for?” and I wrote Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, but for some reason I don’t think that’s correct. At least they were extra credit questions.

I sincerely believe the one page of notes we were allowed to bring helped. I didn’t look at it much, but I could always refer to it when I was unsure if I was doing the right thing. One surprising little twist on the exam was the last part, where we were asked to code a Java method. It just so happened that I had the exact same method on my “cheat sheet.” The reason I had this method is because a couple of days prior, the professor had emailed the class with a list of what “may” be on the exam, and she stated that there would be light coding involving Linked Lists. All I did was copy her in-class coding notes on Linked Lists to my page of notes, and it turned out to be a most excellent decision. In fact, the programming section was straight out of those in-class notes! Madness!

I suppose I was relieved when the final was over, because I went home and began work on my web page. I updated the pictures section, adding new photos and organizing the existing ones into a more effective (I think) layout. That took me a good majority of my evening, though I tried to intersperse it with quality time with Maile and Titan.

My next adventure will be to clean my room.

I dreamt I was in my brother’s old room, and it was arranged how it was more than a decade ago. Against the wall was a small fish tank, a rectangular one, and rather flat as well. Not in a bowl-y type of way, but like a Phillips Magnavox flat screen monitor kind of design (4 inches thick, I believe). Anyway, there were fish in this fishtank, three small goldfish in clear water with the usual plants and rocks. But as the dream progressed, the fish kept changing. It became two goldfish and a weird white fish. Then it was one gold fish and four tiny blue fish. Perhaps it was that Dr Seuss book in my dream. But it felt like I had this fishtank for years, and I don’t remember ever feeding them. I did remember, however, that there was this box, which used to contain a self-feeding apparatus that worked on a timer. So I looked into the fishtank and there it was, a long glass tube that dispensed food to the fish so you wouldn’t have to remember to feed them. I was staring at this tube, trying to figure out how it worked, when one of the blue fish went up and nudged this thing loose, which was underneath the tube. When this thing came loose, all the food started to spill out into the water, and I thought, “Damn, that’s not going to go well.” And then the food turned into tiny tiny fish, like the size of an ant, and I realized that the tube actually contained fish which were meant for food, and these food fish were kept alive by tiny tiny plants which were also in the tube. But these food fish got out, and all the other fish, of which now there were two sturgeons, one goldfish, and about half a million tiny Kermit the Frogs (yes, all in this fishtank), they all starting gobbling up the fish and I thought, “Damn, that’s really not going to go well.” The Kermits all swam up to the top of the fish tank to say “hi ho” while the rest of the fish busied themselves by doing fishy things.

Then the dream turned weird, but I don’t remember too much of it. I am haunted by images of a bottom-feeder trying to disguise itself as a crab, and not doing that well a job of it.

Maile, George and I joined George at Bucca di Beppo, an Italian restaurant, for his birthday. It was a surprise party, because George had no idea everyone else was going to be there. His girlfriend planned the whole thing. There were other people, too, that were from George’s side of the social circle, and they were pretty cool, what few we managed to talk to. A couple of them reminded us of other people. There was a guy named Stacy (sp?) who reminded me of Reid, and another guy named Ken who reminded me of Richard. It wasn’t really a case of looks, it was more because of their actions, or little movements of body language that just screamed of similarity.

Speaking of screaming, when Maile and I went to pick George up, we idled some time waiting for the guy to finish work. We took a few pictures with my digital camera, and one picture Maile took of me standing next to my truck was.. well, interesting. There were these hazy swirls of white that suddenly appeared in the photo, and it’s not present in any of the others we took before or after. I can’t rightly explain it good enough, but it freaked us out because we can’t explain it. You can kinda see me and my truck through the white swirls, and that is very clear, so the camera wasn’t moving. And it’s a digital camera, so I don’t think there’s a problem with any double exposures. Weird.

After the dinner the three of us went upstairs to Dave & Busters for a drink and a few games. Combined we managed to acquire about 2000 tickets, bringing our running total up to a little over 17k. We actually don’t know what we’ll use those tickets for, but since all the good things are in the 50k and up range, it’ll be a while before we have to think about it.

Maile has a final to take tomorrow, then has to study for another on Thursday. I only have one final on Thursday, but I also plan to wash my truck tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll wake up early enough to get that done, but it’s been raining these past few days, so I’m not sure just how effective my little chore will be.

I went over to Maile’s classmate’s house, because the two of them were going to study for their upcoming final. I busied myself with writing notes for my 211 final, which is on Thursday. It was an interesting day over there. The house is loaded with animals, for there is one dog and five cats. Three of the cats are only kittens, so there was a lot of exploration going on in the living room. Those cats seemed really interested in my Cancer Man cap, though it was probably because of the scents from Maile’s house.

While there, I happened to chance upon someone else’s wireless signal. It was very faint, and probably from one of the neighbors. It was the first time I had ever done that, and I don’t really plan to do it again. For one thing, it’s usually an unprotected signal, meaning that someone, if they really wanted to, could hack into my computer. Not that there’s anything important on my laptop, but a hack is a hack all the same. Anyway, it was a rather interesting experience.

I tried to help Maile with her history paper, but my head was feeling stuffy, like my brain wanted to spill out through my eye sockets, so I only managed to write two paragraphs. I was feeling a bit lethargic after the outing, and that didn’t help much. Hopefully tomorrow will see me a bit more chipper.