Feb 2004
Ok, so, I need to write more often, it helps me think a lot better, and I guess it’s a way to vent. So, what to talk about, well,a lot of things really. Things with Freenode are going well. We finally have enough servers to be stable, and Oregon State is going to help us a bit more to become more stable. Osu is Freenode’s biggest sponsor, and in all honesty, we’d be screwed with out them. They’re the most stable, and the easiest to work with. From what kveton has said though, I don’t think we have to worry about losing them any time soon.:)
Well, the stuff with fnr has finally come to a close. To make a long story short, isky took over the project a while back and never got lilo the stuff he needed (a bunch of documents for the non-profit) and we finally decided to close down the fnr stuff for now. Too bad, it was a fun project while it lasted, and I still have the archives of the shows I did.:)
If anyone is interested in hearing these email me I can email back a listing of the shows, you can let me know what file you’re interested in and i can upload them for someone to grab. We dont have the storage space on our vps to make it available all in 1 go.
I applied to Oregon State University a while back and was accepted. I’m so happy about that. I don’t know how the financial aid stuff will go, but I have at least one grant already it’s some grant thing for out of state students, which I really really need. Right now, I need all the financial aid help I can get, out of state fees are expensive and if I don’t get enough help from financial aid I don’t know if I’ll be able to still go. Oh well, we’ll see what happens I guess.
Ok, now that that stuff is more or less out of the way, let’s talk more about my personal life so to speak. I was trying to get involved with the debian project, but that didn’t go well. I felt like I was always never good enough to get through the maintainer process etc. My am was a nice person, but we clashed a lot, and the answers I gave to the test thing were never good enough. Every time I tried, I kept getting it back from him “this is still not right”. He told me one day what I would need to do for the tasks and skills part, and I started to realize that I would never be able to do what he expected of me. Basically, he wanted me to create one of my packages with out debhelper. I think that the reasoning for this was to make sure that I understood what debhelper was doing, which is fine. If you’re going to use a tool, you need to know what it does, but, I’m not a coder, and I don’t think I ever will be. However, I do understand what debhelper does, even though I can’t recreate what it does in code. Oh well, I wasn’t gonna argue with the guy about things, and I don’t have the time to spend the next several months trying to make that person happy when we seem to clash anyway. I also need to be fare here and say that there are some good people in the debian project to. My sponsor especially. Mike helped me out a lot when I was trying to get through the debian stuff, he also put up with my ranting and frustration with my am. There were several other things that happened that lead to my getting out of the debian stuff completely, but I eventually did pull out of it. I don’t want to speak badly of debian, because they do have a nice distro, and some nice people, but there are several that I just don’t really care for either.
Hm, where to go from here…Oh, yes, let’s talk about gentoo. When I started getting frustrated with debian things, I started looking at gentoo. At the time, it looked like something new to play with, and quickly became more then that. I’ve been involved with the gentoo project since November: creating one patch out of the 50 smaller patches for speakup for the kernel team, doing accessibility testing, helping with mail stuff, helping with irc stuff, and several other smaller things. I’m also involved in their recruiters process, helping interview new developers. I think this is finally a project that I enjoy, and am happy with. The people are friendly, the developers are great, and they in general seem to handle things a lot better then debian does.
I’ve come to like one of the gentoo devs in particular quite a bit. Spider has always been nice to me. I guess I have people that I like more then others for some reason, and those that just drive me insane. Spider is one of those that I like, heh…I saw spider’s website the other day. it was kind of like looking in a mirror and seeing myself as I read. I don’t think that’s a bad thing in a sense, but it makes me take a closer look at myself. Though I’m not really sure if that makes any sense.
I mentioned my guide dog mikie the last time I wrote. Things went wrong a while ago. his medical problems got worse, and I was forced to get rid of him because I couldn’t afford to keep him. I’m tired of having to give up dogs, this is the third one, and the more I do it, the more it hurts. It makes me wonder why I have dogs, and I’m almost to the point of just saying screw it and not getting any more. The sad thing is that I need that dog, it helps me become more independent, and I’m sick of depending on people.
I’ve put off writing about me and how I’ve been feeling lately, because that’s something I don’t want to deal with, but I need to. The day I took mikie to have a home found for him was the day my heart broke again I think. I keep going in and out of this depression thing, and it’s hard, because I’m not fully coming out of it. One minute I’m OK and happy, and the next minute it’s all I can do not to cry. I feel so lonely, when all I want is to be held. Physically I’m not alone, but in other ways I feel like I am. I hate myself for being like this, but i don’t know how to control it either. I get irritable with people too easily lately, and I don’t like that at all…
I need a way to make updates to this thing a lot easier to do. I don’t mind doing the HTML thing, but I think that it’s a little annoying, oh well… Who knows, maybe some day I’ll learn to like coding and actually write something to make writing this a lot easier:p. Need to get ready for doctor soon. will write more on this later. Going to at least put this up for now, so at least I can say I’ve done something with this site.
My doctor appointment went well. The main purpose of it was to get documentation for Oregon State that says “yes, I am legally blind”. I was also able to get some prescription sunglasses that I really needed. This will make it much easier for me to see when I’m outside which will be nice.
Stuff with Freenode’s has been OK. We got some new boxes from OSU so that we can move two of our ircds off their core boxes. The switch went more or less OK for that, though took a little longer then I had hoped.
This past week has been kind of blah… It’s been raining a lot, and I haven’t been feeling real well. The pain in my jaw is almost constant now. I can live with it, but I wish it would go away. Constant probably isn’t quite the right word, but it’s definitely there a lot. Oh well, I guess we’ll see what happens. I don’t have any money to do anything about it.
I don’t really feel much like writing today, I have this headache that won’t really go away, and I’m really sleepy. I think most of this is the rain though. It’s kind of like when it rains a lot people feel sleepy, and don’t want to do much accept sleep and stuff.
I’ve been trying to eat a lot healthier lately. Sticking to healthier foods,cutting out the sugar and other things like that. I’ve done OK, but it’s making me irritable. I don’t like not being able to occasionally have something nice like wings or pizza or subs. My mother is on the same diet to, and she’s driving me insane with it. Oh well, I’ll survive, it just drives me crazy when I want to do something all I hear is “you’re on a diet, remember?” and other things like that. Her and I differ a lot I think. I can go months with out spoiling myself, where as she will eat junk-food a lot, and I think that’s why she’s so hard on me. But, she forgets that I don’t eat it that often to I think. The nice part about all of this is that I’ve lost 16lbs. When I came here I weighed 192lbs, now I’m at 176, so it is a large improvement, I just need to keep it up. I really wish it would stop raining so we could start walking again. The walking helps me get rid of some of my frustration and irritation. It helps to make me feel a lot better to.
Oh, blind services called me yesterday, and wanted to meet with me then. I really hate that organization. They won’t do anything for me, they won’t keep in contact with me or anything like that, and yet they think they have the right to just show up at my house when ever they please just so that we can have a meeting where we accomplish absolutely nothing accept that “yes, I’m going back to school, and no, it’s not worth looking for a job right now for me since I have to go get another dog” and “no, the lady who was supposed to be assisting me in looking for a job hasn’t called me in six months” and “yes, I have called and left messages with her but no response”. I’m so tired of playing games with thees people. It’s not worth my time to deal with them when all they do is sit there and act like they’re doing something to help me. Oh well, I’ll be rid of thees idiots soon enough when I go to Oregon.
I have more to write about, but maybe I’ll write about it tonight. Going to lay down and try and get rid of this headache and maybe read for a bit.
I hate bugzilla. It’s the most inaccessible bug tracker I have ever seen. It’s pretty bad when people who can see hate the thing to. It’s form fields aren’t labeled, it’s buttons aren’t labeled, and the stupid thing uses javascript. All of thees things make it impossible for a blind person to use it with a text web browser, because most don’t support javascript, and even if they did, you still have the problem of almost nothing being labeled. I tried searching for a command-line client that would query bugzilla, and do what I needed to, but still no go. The only command-line program I found that would work with bugzilla is something like 4 versions out of date, which means it would need a total rewrite to work correctly.
Why that long rant some might ask? Gentoo uses bugzilla to handle their bugs. I don’t have a problem with that, it seems like a nice system, even if it’s web interface seriously sucks. My problem is that I can’t write bugs, reply to bugs, or close bugs. In order to do any of this, I have to ask someone else to do it all for me….And, I so hate depending on people. The people who close my bugs don’t seem to mind, but I don’t like asking them to do it for me all the time. It’s kind of like “I should be able to do this myself, there’s no reason to depend on people to do it for me.”
Other then that, things have been OK. No headache for the last 2 days, and I actually slept decently last night. It’s still raining quite a bit, and I’m sick of rain. I still wish it would get nicer so my mother and I can go for a walk again some time soon, though from what I gather, the rain will not let up any time soon…That sucks.
Freenode is upgrading to a newer version of the ircd code tonight. I’m actually getting used to this right now. Mike and I work well together with this stuff and we seem to have a nice way of bring it all together when it’s ready to be upgraded. If I really think about it, Mike and I work well together in general.:)
I’m really looking forward to going to Oregon State. I’m already more or less guaranteed to have a job when I get there, and they are looking out for what I will need to deal with my disability, which is something that I’m thrilled about. The thing I like even better, is that I’ll be doing all of the stuff I’m already doing accept that it will be for Oregon state, and I’ll be getting paid for it. I’m so happy I’ll finally have a job I’ll like, and will be paid for.
Things have been interesting lately. The weather here has been wonderful. Cool, but very nice. lows around 40 or 50, highs, around 60 or 70. I’d love to live in a place where it was like this year round.
I’m frustrated about not having any money right now. Kveton told me that if I was in Corvallis right now, he would hire me as a temp to do the job I’d be doing when school started. This is so frustrating. I finally have someone who wants to hire me, and I don’t have the money to even go there. I need probably 2 or 3 thousand dollars to be able to get a small apartment at least, plus be able to have money for food till I can get paid. I’m really frustrated about this. This is an opportunity I would so love to have, but I don’t have the money for it. Oh well, I’ll keep talking to Kveton, maybe we can work something out, and he can give me some ideas of how to make this move as cheap as possible.
My grandparents are supposed to arrive tomorrow. I haven’t seen them in several years, it will be nice to see them again, even if it’s not for very long. I think the last time I saw them was when I first got buddy…Wow, that was a long time ago.
I finally have a meeting with seeingeye. One of their trainers is supposed to come out and talk to me for a bit, and take me on a Juno walk to see what he can do about the possibility of matching me with a dog. I really really hope that I will be able to get in to get another dog soon. I don’t see a reason why I wouldn’t be able to get in, I’m just a bit worried about it I guess.
I miss having a dog. It’s not even really missing being independent, I think it’s the companion type bond thing that I miss. A guide dog is a tool, but in some ways it’s also a friend, and I think that’s what I miss. When my dogs were around, they always made me feel better, and now that’s not there. It makes me sad I guess.
I got my eye reports together to send to Oregon State, and got a second copy for seeingeye. I’m glad that’s out of the way. I need to go back to my normal doctor to get a physical to actually get the dog….gah…I hate those things.