Checksum Arcanius

The last two days haen’t gone too well from a resolution standpoint. After gettting donr with my presentation in my technical writing class and a major homework deadline in my electri circuits class, i forgot all about the libert6y forum and instgead ended up playi ng basket bll with a church grouop until a bout 11:00. I started out poorly, but e nded with the wi n ni ng shot so it nturned out o0k, After getti ng home, i i set to work on lau ndry and encded up satyi ng up uiuntil abou t twso amj playing cs wyhile w azitiing for the dr yer to finish up. Redsukltaz ntly, i d idn’t msake it uinto work u ntil s bout noon o n thursdasy .I stayeed late sin ce all i had in teh wiriti ng 2was listeni ng to presentstio ns. last night wassd a bnout /the same, bu twithoput thne lau dnry. I did well, but tgot to sleepo prewtty lastge. I still made uit into weork, todasy. Pretty mcuh no0thi ng welse on the lists got done thosre days. c

Now i am in a cafe in seattlw iqwht dan and jay marashm wiri9tn g thsisw piost on dan;s journada.c in cawse4 you hav ew nm;t noticed, i am no vgoo d at typi ng on this kry board. i gave up try7i ng to fix the writ6jgn a whiel ago since it was taki9ng too long. I hope you are a ble tgoi u nderawstgand the post.l

The web statistics for SilverFir.net continue to astound me. May was a record-breaking month in nearly every category. Total transfer approached five and a half gigabytes, more than a gigabyte and a half more than in any previous month. Average hits surpassed 5,000 a day for the first time ever, fueled primarily by explosive readership growth of the Well of Mirmir, a newer silverfir.net-hosted blog that is already accounting for an astounding one fifth of all traffic on the server.

June, from the looks of it, is going to be even hotter: so far, less than two days in, its averages already well exceed those of May. On an interesting side note, just minutes ago, sf2 had become very slow and unresponsive. MySQL, especially, seemed to be having problems. A reboot seems to have cleared things up just fine. We shall see how things hold up in the future.

Yesterday, I was in bed by midnight (or so), I read several pages, and Counter-Strike hovered around an hour and ten minutes. Not too bad on those three, but I didn’t get anything done in the exercise section.

Stress can be a great motivator that causes me to accomplish tasks. However, introspection has led me to the conclusion that I usually respond badly to stress and that I have very poor stress management techniques. This comes somewhat as a surrpise, because I tend to think of myself as a mostly calm and collected individual. I now believe this calm under fire to be mostly a facade. For example, I now believe that my episode of insomnia leading up to the 2005 FIRST Robotics Competition Championship is an indication of my unhealthy response to stress.

Insomnia alone is not to bad. However, when stressed, I find that I often fall into a rut and spend vast amounts of time going down paths that lead nowhere. The two most common ruts seem to be compulsive Counter-Strike playing and mindless internet surfing through online forums, news, porn, humor sites, and other dubiously useful information. These episodes are not short-lived either. I have spent hours in these ruts, going nowhere, but going there quickly.

I believe that it would be highly beneficial to me to retrain myself so that my response to stress is an immediate and direct response to the stressor, or at the very least, a healthy coping technique such as running, as opposed to my current techniques which make me feel bad about myself and get nothing useful done. If only self-mastery were a pill I could swallow. Instead, it is a process that only the dedicated few can truly harness.

Here’s to not giving up.

Usually, I do not sunburn badly. So when I took off my shirt on Saturday while playing ultimate to stay cool during the hottest day of the year so far, I thought little of the red glow I acquired in the process. I thought little of it, that is, until yesterday, at about 1:00pm. At that time, over the course of just a few minutes, my sunburned back went from a mostly comfortable tenderness to a burning volcano of firery indignation. Lava boiled from within my back like needles threading their way between the layers of my skin. I convulsed and contorted, pricked by the searing itch inside. Anyone who might have seen me would have surely thought I was having some sort of seizure. It was, I am convinced, the most physically unfomfortable I have ever been in my entire life.

Scratching brought only temporary, painful relief. Aloe Vera, Hydrocortisone, and Vitamin E, applied in frenzies of itch-induced rage, only exacerbated the symptoms. I found extended relief in a shower, with water gently massaging the entire affected area. However, only after steeling my resolve, asking for divine intervention, and, against all odds, defying the urge for temporary relief by, among other things, pounding a carpetted floor with all my strength and walking backwards while reading the comics, was I able to find relief outside of the shower.

The erruption slowly subsided, and soon I was able to funcation as a normal human being once again. However, all of my resolve to actually complete homework, for example, was drained. It was a terribly non-productive day. I failed on all four of my resolutions. Sunday, on the other hand, had gone quite well, missing only the push-ups part of the exercise routine. Welcome to the roller coaster ride that is my life.

Today, I went to see the Fly Filmmaking Festival, an annual staple of the Seattle International Film Festival where directors are given ten days along with a set of other restrictions (such as just 5 hours of tape) to make a ten minute film. In years past, this apparently has been devoted to documentaries on subjects drawn out of a hat. This year, it fetured narative films with open subjects, but with requirements including a location, an actress, a prop, and an action that had to appear in the film. The first film, about a girl who can’t drive, called Driver’s Ed, I enjoyed. It was mindless, but fun, and used the ten minutes well enough. Nothing to rave about, though. The second film was called …Loving Martha, about a man disenchanted with his life as an office worker who falls in love with a copy machine. It was an interesting idea, but not as well executed as the first film. The third film was a disgrace. Called “Circus of Infinity,” its attempt at creating art fell flat and fell hard. It was a real shame they chose to end with such a terrible film. But yes, it got worse. Afterwards, the directors came up, as did several “on the fly” critics. Well, there was no critiquing going on, just adolation. Since about half the audience were somehow involved in the making of the movies, I suppose it was the only PC thing to do at the time. Still, this is definitely a SIFF production I’ll be happy to miss in the future.

Well, day 2 (that would be Saturday – I can’t really report on this beforehand since it involves me going to bed by a certain time) went pretty well.

#1 Bed by midnight: I got into bed at midnight, without a laptop computer, and with a book instead. I pass!
#2 Read one page from a book: Passed. I read from Seven Habits of Highly Effective people until my eyes got heavy, well more than a page. Woo-hoo!
#3 Exercise regimen: I played ultimate for nearly two hours, getting quite the sunburn along the way. I did pushups and sit-ups before going to bed for the night. Excellent!
#4 Limit CS to 1 hour: Well, I played probably about an hour and a half. Still, I didn’t let it get out of control. Just something to improve on.

Overall, a very good day.