This is just a quick note to say that I will not be writing to this blog again for the next while. Thanks for reading, and good luck.
May, 2009:
My very first blog post
I found it!
I don’t know if I ever mentioned it here but I had an orphaned Blogspot blog from 2002-2003 lazing about the internet not being deleted or edited because I’d since forgotten my username and password. But no more, I remembered them! Lucky guess, after trying to get access to the blog via Google’s support a couple years ago, when they didn’t believe that I was the hypochondriac computer science student depicted therein.
I’d always worried that someone would find the thing, realize it was me, and then try to blackmail me with details from my past. Yet surely I’ve mentioned far more lucrative personal information since, not to mention photographs.
My blogging experience has it that I had this blog from 2002 to 2003 and at some point was given a Livejournal account by a Kazaa friend (that sounds so nostalgic for a simpler internet!), which I had going from late 2003 into 2004. That summer I stumbled into a local blogger meetup, and from that decided to set up a more professional blog, that is, running from my bedroom at my dad’s house.
But during all this time I forgot my username and password into Blogger (before Google bought it up), but the blog stayed up. Until now, where I’ve deleted all the posts, because they make me so sorry to have been me back then.
I was looking through the posts, though, and found the first one, dated February 13, 2002:
And here begins my first ever blog.
I suppose I could have picked a better time to start this, such as when I’m not weeks behind in classes due to the flu. However, there’s no time like the present to procrastinate. I think my boyfriend is having a bad effect on me.
At the same time that I am typing this, I am writing emails to instructors requesting extensions or exemptions from assignments. I can’t help it if homework makes my headache worse while everything else I could possibly do makes me feel better. I’ve been saying for years, as a joke, that I was allergic to homework, and found it rather amusing yesterday when I was sneezing uncontrollably at my computer while trying to write a Perl script.
My doctor just prescribed me antibiotics today, as over 3 weeks of being sick is really more than I deserve, even for selling my soul to the devil last December to not get sick during exams (and he did come through on that one). Perhaps I’ll get the added bonus of having my skin clear up. It would be nice to look normal once I feel normal again.
I am particularly impressed by my linking to Perl there, what with it being so integral to the content. And, boy, my writing style hasn’t changed in 7 years: so much for progress. I’m sure my Perl skills haven’t improved much, either.
We can reach the other side?
If you live in Vancouver and you haven’t gone to Daiso then I’m not sure you’ve really lived. At least, if you’re not 100% adverse to shopping. There’s something about that Japanese $2 store that I can’t seem to get enough of, so I try not to go more than once a month since obviously there are narcotics involved. Also because I can’t seem to spend less than $35 in that store at a time.
I was sad to discover today that they’d run out of the I love cat gift bags which I was so fond of. I’m so moved by the poetic verse of unrequited love in Only imflowing you don’t flowing imflowing/ I must go to you stay a place. Sigh. That’s so sad it hurts me inside.
They were also low on the Sailor Ink Pens, one of the cheapest fountain pens on the planet (again at $2). I have a great fondness for fountain pens despite having absolutely no use for writing instruments in general except for chicken scratching on note pads about server configurations and grocery lists. Nor is my handwriting worthy of fountain pens, even $2 ones, but I like to pretend.
This time at Daiso I picked up some disposable panties, because I like the idea of having disposable underwear even though I don’t exactly know when I’d need them. Frankly, though, it was the packaging that sold me on the product:
We’re just a heart beat away
One touch could make it happen
We can reach the other side
if we hold on to the passion
I see now that it’s lack of use-once undies that’s been keeping me from romantic fulfillment. But no more! Let the passion begin!
I’m a little afraid to open the package up, though.
I hate being unemployed
I really do. I hate it with a passion I usually reserve for people who smell bad in my vicinity.
I was watching the Canucks game on Saturday with a bunch of people I hadn’t seen in years, and they were telling me it’s no big deal, the weather’s nice, enjoy this time off. Thing is, I already did that. That was September. I’m all good for the time off, thanks.
I’m taking these night courses at BCIT. The instructors say things like, “I know you’re really busy with your day jobs”, and I cringe. From introductions in the first week, it seems I am the only unemployed person in either class. Also the only database administrator (besides the instructor), though maybe it’s time I stopped calling myself one.
I’m cursing my decision to focus on MySQL database administration for the last 3 and a half years. I am 90% certain it was a complete mistake and that I should have focused on software development instead. All I’m hearing from people in the industry here in Vancouver is “nobody wants your skills” and “no company wants to pay for a MySQL DBA, what would they need one for?”.
Hand me that noose, will ya?
I’m now applying for jobs outside of Vancouver, because I’d rather have a job far away than be unemployed in my home town. Given my love for this city, my connection to family and friends here and my dislike of change in general, that’s saying something. I want a job more than I want my life here.
The next suggestion I get after relaying the above paragraph to someone is always that I should reevaluate my priorities, because living-to-work is bad. Well, screw that: I don’t want to change. I just want my career back. And as much as I try not to, I’m going to be miserable until that happens.