Fear the Crab

Put the car cover over the truck to see how good of a fit it was. It’s pretty decent, snug enough at the ends so that the cover doesn’t fly off when someone sneezes. I do have to keep the front a bit loose, though, because of the hood protector that’s installed.

Must remember to bring my shopping list for the employee sale tomorrow.

Updated the quiz page for myself and Maile.

Sleepy.

EDIT: Quiz page no longer available.

I washed my truck today. I hope to get into the habit of doing this once a week, but since this is only the second week I can’t rightly call it a habit, yet.

I took Maile to LCC so she could take an exam for her Psychology class. Since this class is strictly online, all exams are held at the Learning Resource Center and merely have a deadline by which a student must take them. Otherwise the student can go anytime the LRC is open, such as today when Maile actually didn’t have any classes to attend. As for myself, I spent my time sitting on a chair outside, watching the birds dance about the grass and trying to get those images from The Ring out of my head. It’s already been a couple of days since I saw it, but every time I think about that fuckin’ movie I get creeped out. I’ll be the first to admit I’m easily scared from horror movies of that caliber. It’s a brilliant movie, extremely well done; I just wish I didn’t see it. From now on, I’m sticking to strictly Disney movies.

Spent the day at LCC with Maile, as she worked on her ceramics project. She’s making a lamp. How cool is that?! She’s already got the hardware and wiring ready, and now we’re just waiting for the firing of the clay, which will end up being the fancy lamp thing. It’s way more than what I could ever hope to accomplish.

While waiting at the ceramics room, I spent my time trying to figure out my homework assignment. It basically works, but I haven’t really tested it out. That will be later, possibly tonight. I also must remember to ask the professor about a few things on Thursday.

I burnt three of six CDs so far. I must say I have prioritized my time very well, yes indeedy.

I just saw “The Ring” and I am freaked out. The movie scared me so badly I closed my eyes. Maile could tell I was uber nervous because I kept pinching the folds in her jeans. I must say that it was one of the best scary movies made, primarily because it didn’t require any gore or lots of blood to make it horror-rific. Still, I don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. It’s not really because of the story in the movie, rather the images that have been burned into my mind like.. well, like the movie. Damnit!

I’m feeling slightly better, because I’m going to be sleeping over at Maile’s and I will find great comfort in her presence. And, the presence of a 170 lb great dane.

I met James and his new girlfriend Mary tonight, too. They came and saw the movie with us, even though they had already seen it. They were still a bit freaked out by it, but not as badly as myself. In fact, when we went to Anna Miller’s afterward and I was feeling better after a root beer float, James had the bright idea of bringing up a scary nightmare he had the evening after he saw The Ring for the first time.

He said that he was dreaming about something, and then he was woken up by a high-pitched noise, like that of a steaming tea kettle, accompanied by the static of the TV which is now on. He found himself on the floor, and it was broad daylight like the normal times he wakes up, and when he sat up to look at the TV, that “well scene” was playing. So he reaches behind him to get the remote to turn off the TV, and by the time he finds it, SHE’S at the screen. So he shuts off the TV, and everything is cool. Then the door to his bedroom opens up, and SHE’S there again!

He woke up with a scream on his lips.

Bastard.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, not because of work, but because of the possibilities after work. I may go out, I may not, but I will definitely see Maile. That makes all the difference in the world.George gave me more CDs. I will work on those when I have the time. I thought I could get a jump start on them, but I just received a new homework assignment for my programming class, and that might take some of the hours I would have had to do more productive things. It’s a shame I can’t do these things at work; I have more spare time there than anyplace else (but isn’t that always the case?).

I finished work on my Java applet, and it seems to run pretty well. Of course, I have yet to receive feedback from other people using their own browsers. I do know that it won’t work on IE if it doesn’t have any Java plug-ins, and on some machines the layout seems a bit weird. Hopefully the more people test it out, the more I can try and figure out how to make it universal (though the absence of Java in other browsers is something I can’t fix).

Because Min told me that a car alarm’s starter kill was only two wires, I bought an Auto-Lock for the truck, the type that fits around the brake pedal. At first I was worried that it wouldn’t fit, because on the back there is a listing of vehicles that won’t accept the Auto-Lock due to a “unique brake pedal arm design. The Tacoma was in that list, but it was only for 2000-2002 models. Since mine is a 2003, I took a chance, and it paid off. I really don’t know if the brake arm design changed between 2002 and 2003, but the Auto-Lock works for me, so I guess it doesn’t matter. In any case, I have a 14-day return window if I discover something’s wrong.

Titan is feeling better today. Yesterday it seemed something was wrong with his neck, because he walked around with his head low to the ground. Whenever Maile lifted his head, the neck muscles twitched. It was scary. Today, though, Maile said Titan looked better, so perhaps all the guy had was a stiff neck. He is an old dog, after all.

Today’s saying was:
“It spices up your coordination”

Today I got my truck windows tinted. Just the two front doors, since the back already has what they call “privacy glass” which is just a dealer-fancy word for dark tint. There is a slight difference between the front and rear windows, only because the law states that the front must be 35%. I say there’s a slight difference because from afar it looks the same all around. I think only when you inspect real close and the light is just right can you tell the difference. Now I must remember to not lower the windows anytime soon, to let the tint have time to cure.

I finished my 3D tic tac toe game. It’s not required for class or anything; I just did it to see if I could. It works through the command line interface, basically meaning that it runs strictly on my computer and uses a DOS window. My next step will be a highly ambitious project of converting the code to run as an Applet, so that it can work on the internet. If I succeed, I’ll post it on my web page. So far I’ve managed to design the layout and implement a few workable buttons. Later I will work on getting the code to understand when someone actually wins the game.

So I wake up at the usual 4 in the morning, and I do the usual school thing. Only instead of going home and relaxing afterward, I get ready for work and go in for the night shift. I am never, never doing that again. My body and mind kept zoning into daydream, except I wasn’t daydreaming about anything. I didn’t think I would make it through the entire night, but after talking to Maile on my break, I seemed to have pepped up a little. It’s amazing what a short 15 minute talk can do for you.

Of course, having eaten a few chocolate covered espresso beans before work probably helped, too.

I went to Costco and bought a spindle of 100 CD-Rs. It was uber cheap, considering the sheer amount of disks. I would have preferred CD-RW, the kind that you can rewrite to (I’m not entirely sure if you can erase, but it must be possible), but the only pack they had there was a 20-pack for about $25. It wouldn’t have mattered either way, because this time around I managed to burn two disks in three tries, and the wasted disk was only because I had forgotten that I only needed one disk burnt, not two. This time, on the advice of Kyrol, I set the recorder to a lower speed. It took longer, but the results far outweigh any time inconvenience. There were no problems this time, so I guess the speed of the recorder makes a big difference.

I washed my truck today. It hasn’t been a week yet, but today is pretty much the only day out of the week that I have a lot of free time. It was worth it, too, because at the same time I washed Maile’s car. We put Rain-X on both vehicles, too.

And because I washed my car, it rained. It’s still raining now. I must remember to buy a chamois cloth when next I get a chance. I searched for the one we had at home, but my dad informed me that it was pretty much deteriorated beyond help. While I’m at it, I may as well buy one of those sponge mitts that you put over your hand. I didn’t wax my car this time because it still has that factory wax, and people generally recommend I wax it once a month.

I managed to actually reverse into a stall at the UH parking garage. It took me a while, but not as long as I thought it would. And it turned out okay, too. School itself was an ordinary school day, though my stomach was churning the entire time and it hurt.

I talked to Maile for a little bit, but she seemed a bit preoccupied, probably with the amount of homework she has to do. Now I know how she felt a long time ago, when I did the same thing to her. That makes me feel sad.