hee LEGO movie. 10:04 am

yes, it's been a long while and will probably be even longer. i've been doing diy stuff. painted the guest bedroom a dark "cajun red" and promptly decided i hated it before it was fully painted. then discovered late sunday night that the in-laws are gonna be here for labor day weekend. which is why i spent all day yesterday painting. it does look good now tho. a nice sagey green with frosting on the windows to block out the oh so pleasant view of the neighbors and the neighbors' view into the bedroom.

Bad Managers - We Suspect That The Emperor Has No Clothes. this is the kind of site i should have started 3 years ago instead of writing an easily discovered journal. oh well. always good to read other peoples' employment nightmares. speaking of employment nightmares, i'm not sure how long this contract gig is going to last. there's something distinctly unpleasant about doing what one person tells you and then being aggressively laid into by another more senior person for not doing what you were supposed to be doing. sometimes it's nice to know you're just a contractor. 10:13 am

every time i update the portal i get depressed. basically because i've got a 600 weblog backlog that i need to validate. sounds kinda impossible huh? 01:27 pm

thankfully, in the light of day, i've recovered from my temporary insanity. phew. 08:45 am

haven't written much lately. i got a new contract out of the blue and spent friday and monday coding like crazy. today i had off while they "work out the glitches in their system", so i took the opportunity to clean our disgusting house. i once again discovered how frustrating working in someone elses' office can be. ergonomics suck. no email. and getting permissions on their server is like pulling teeth. not being able to edit or create files kinda makes it hard to get any work done.

it was nice to be working again. doing site maintenance. there's such a lack of pressure when you're fixing someone else's mistakes and you don't have to do any design work. on the bad side, you get to do the mindnumbingly boring edits where you fix the same thing in every file. bleck.

i've been very disturbed lately. as you may know, i have never ever *ever* entertained the possibility of having kids. if a hysterectomy wasn't a major surgical procedure, i probably would have gotten one. this attitude changed slightly after i took care of my nephew for a while. i realized that aging had developed a heretofore unseen tolerance of babies. i then came to the conclusion that while i did not want to ever have children, i could no longer say *never* cuz who knows where i'll be mentally 5 years from now.

fast forward 4 months. it all started at dinner while kirsty was here. in response to some cynical jest from jason, my brother said that he would never do it differently and shane was the best thing that happened to him. or something to that effect. as far as i know, nick was never particularly interested in having children. this brought to mind what graham joyce wrote. not wanting children, dealing with the avoidance of parenthood by default, and then passionate gratefulness about having kids. it seems to be a recurrent statement amongst former disinterested parents.

on the way home, jason and i talked about it. basically wondering if there was something we were missing. were we excluding ourselves from some amazing experience simply because we couldn't comprehend it? is it like deciding to be a virgin forever without understanding what you'd be giving up by denying yourself an orgasm? is there truly any parent who wishes they had never had a child?

fast forward to last sunday. doing the family dinner thing, beth was talking about her mother and sister who haven't yet seen the baby. which prompted me to say how much i would have regretted not being able to watch shane develop over the last 8 months. in a way, i had answered my own question. if i hadn't spent so much time with shane, i would never have known that i was missing something in watching him grow. i went home that night very disturbed.

i'm concerned about my state of mind. i've been wondering what it would be like to have a kid. picturing myself with a kid. checking into my medication to see what risks there are. imagining discussing the possibility with my neurologist. i'm not sure how to deal with this. have i lost my mind? am i just going through a "oh, it's such a cute puppy, let's bring it home" phase? where hopefully i'll realize that the cute puppy grows into an annoying needy dog *before* i take it home.

honestly, i'm scared. i'm scared that i'm cracking open a door that i thought was locked. a door which i was positive i'd thrown away the key to. i can't even confront the fear of dealing with a teenage child or even an 7 or 8 year old. i'm scared because i'm becoming someone i don't really know. the me i know is still adamantly against having children. so who is this stranger putting these thoughts into my head? i'm scared because i have the feeling jason has been entertaining the same thoughts. what kind of monster am i becoming? i can only pray that it's a temporary fit of delusion. meanwhile, i'll just continue to with my mantra. "this is not happening to me. this is not happening to me. this is... " 10:08 pm

take artificial life forms, combine them with a shared online world, and you haveDALiWorld. i've always been a sucker for virtual worlds. besides how can you say no to fishes? 03:56 pm

seeing a photo of jk. rowling, i was curious when the next book would be released. of course, i found the answer at a harry potter weblog. 03:47 pm

there's something so surreal about this photo. it looks more like art than an exploded whale. i guess that says something about the art i've been looking at lately. 03:33 pm

well, i downloaded pocomail. looked at it for 5 min. and promptly decided that it was way too much effort to attempt to configure it and learn a new interface. maybe i should just upgrade my eudora. i don't know if i can tolerate the ads tho. 03:14 pm

PocoMail seems to be getting some very good reviews. i think i might have to try it out, eudora4.3 is starting to bug me. via ev. 12:55 pm

The War On Drug Wars - Ashkan Sahihi Gets Normal People High. via kottke. 12:47 pm

like most people (i assume), i had not realized that the tax rebate is not a rebate . i think i'd prefer the rate cut. via meg. 11:54 am

i admit it, i haven't been reading much online lately, which isn't really a good excuse. which is why i'm belatedly congratulating rcb and jjg, despite the fact that their wedding was almost 2 weeks ago. 11:44 am

this describes it a little differently. 10:24 am

boong ga boong ga. 10:23 am

Internet File Download Calculator. since i happened to be searching for one of these this morning. 10:21 am

Spirea's Diablo II calculators 10:56 am

RuneWord Wizard 10:45 am

D2 LoD Item Drop Probabilities. just in case you're searching for the perfect item. 06:59 pm

if you're sick of not being able to get to diabloii.net, try The Lurker Lounge. 06:55 pm

My most embarrassing cacti 06:51 pm

for those of us who are really into games, especially "abandonware", Home of the Underdogs. 04:30 pm

for those of us who are really into games, especially "abandonware", Home of the Underdogs. 04:30 pm

i had a really long post about our day at thunderhill yesterday, but i clicked on a link without switching browser windows and lost it. i'm too tired to rewrite it all, but here's some pictures. jason's in the yellow s2k #24. 12:32 pm