March 2004
OK, I’m going to try this thing a bit differently again. Someone suggested using straight txt files instead of HTML, Today I tend to agree. I’m not in the mood to argue with HTML right now though it does help my page look a bit nicer. Oh well.
This month started out pretty good, I got to see my grandparents, and that was kinda cool, especially since I haven’t seen them in a couple of years. We didn’t exactly talk overly much, they mostly did stuff with my parents but it was still cool. My grandfather gave me $100 to help me out with paying bills. That was nice, because it’ll help me get back on track. I’m mostly caught up on bills again. If I do it right, I could even pay off gateway next month which would really be nice. I’m so sick of bills right now it’s pathetic. Hopefully I can have things mostly paid off by the time I go back to school. Even if I don’t, it’s starting to look decently promising.
The trainer came out from the seeingeye guide dog school yesterday to talk to me and interview me etc. The interview went really well, and I’m happy with the way it went. We walked around for a bit so he could check my mobility schools, and other things like that, and he talked to me about my past dogs. He seems to think I’ll have a chance at getting in, and doing well. I hope I do, I really think that this will be a nicer school then south eastern, and I honestly think that the people will be much nicer to deal with. He seems to think that I will be in a June class. I really hope that that’s the case. That would give me a few months for things to settle down, and give me some time to get used to the dog.
Freenode things have been going alright, we got two new sponsors, one I don’t think will be working out well. The server keeps having some problems, a bit splitty, etc. Not all servers work out, and we’re not overly desperate for rotation servers right now, but I do like the guy. The second sponsor sponsors 2 servers, and I suspect that those will work out rather well. They seem to have good connectivity, and you can tell that the sponsor does care. One of the servers had one problem, but that was because they powered down the box to fix the CPU fan, but forgot to tell us about it. Oh well, things happen, and not much you can do about that. The box is supposed to go down tomorrow for 2 new 160GB hds, so that will be nice, always need more space.:) I also like this sponsor because he’s a really nice guy, and very good with coding. He wrote a patch to have dancer work with the latest freebsd release, and it seems to be working well. I also have him doing some work on our services, which is cool.
Things with gentoo seem to be both going good and bad. I was asked to lead their accessibility project. This project handles accessibility issues in gentoo, as well as helping users with accessibility issues,also probably helping out with ebuilds, and things like that. That seems to be going well, though in the case of speakup in 2.6 kernels it is not going well. There seem to be problems getting the kernel to patch right, which is seriously annoying. Oh well, could be a lot worse to. At least the project seems to be moving at a decent rate, though some things still have to be written for it yet, like the project page etc.
The bad part about gentoo showed itself today, and that’s part of what has me in a bad mood. I had to fire a dev today, and I hate firing people. I won’t really go into the details, but I really liked the person, and I just don’t like firing people. but I won’t deal with that kind of behavior either.
The upside to gentoo is I love doing new developer bugs. It’s fun to interview new devs, and teasing them a bit in interviews. I think that you tend to learn a lot about a person by interviews. Most of my new devs are a lot of fun. I really need to remember to spell check the profile emails before I send them though;p
Back later. Going to find something to vent my frustration on. Maybe I’ll mud for a bit.
Ugh, feeling kinda bleh today. I was sick yesterday, so didn’t really get much done. It was the kind of sick where you’re constantly hot and cold, hot and cold, and to top it off the cold medicine I took only made me feel worse. I won’t take that stuff again. Don’t even remember what it’s called.
I wrote the project page for my accessibility project for gentoo. It probably needs some improvement, but it’s better then not at all.
sigh I’m not even really making much sense tonight I don’t think. I’m tired, slightly depressed, and kinda scared I guess. I talked to the seeing eye today to try and find out the results of my interview with the trainer. They said everything looked ok, but they have one concern. That is that because I gave mikie to the humane society, they wanted to know why. I was upfront and honest with them and told them about all of mikie’s problems. I told them how we tried for 2 months to find him a home, but when my parents started paying his medical expenses, I had to decide on what to do with him. All of this makes me wonder if I should have just sent him back to the school and taken the consiquences but I really feel that would have been wrong. I loved that dog, but I couldn’t keep him. I’m scared I think because I have to wonder wether they will deny me for that. I didn’t want the school to put mikie back out to work with all those problems, and I didn’t want someone to end up witha dog like him who has so many problems because it’s too expensive. I’m willing to let the school have all his medical records if they want it. I’m not afraid of that. I guess I’m afraid of being penalized for something I couldn’t control. Sarah says that they’re fair…but…I don’t know, we’ll see I guess. What I really want to do is curl up and cry…bleh, stupid I guess.
Anger. That’s all I really feel right now is just flat out anger. Here’s what apparrently happened with SeeingEye. From what I gather from talking to Judy at SeeingEye, South Eastern told them that I gave my dog to animal contrl, that I didn’t want him any more etc etc. All I wanted to do was cry when I heard that. It breaks my heart to think that people would think that I’d ever do that to any animal. I loved Mikie, all of my friends knew that. Anyway. I called Sarah and told her what happened and she called Judy on threeway, and we got it all straightened out. As far as I can tell, I’m farely sure that I will get a class date soon and be able to get a dog from them.
I just can not believe a guide dog school would do their best to make a person look so bad. That makes me so mad to think that they would do something like that to someone. Especially someone who loves animals like I do. From what Sarah and Judy said though, apparrently there are some guide dog schools who will do that to people though. They don’t want to see that person get another dog, and they do their absolute best to make that person look horrible. That’s just so wrong though…
Other then that things seem to be going ok. I’m still feeling a little icky, but in some ways I’m feeling better then I have been. My mother and I are doing a lot of walking lately, and I really like that. Even though I complain, I still like it.:)
I’m starting to lose weight again to which is real nice. There was a period of about a month where I kinda leveled off and wasn’t losing anything, but since we started walking I’ve picked up again. It’s a good thing we’re walking to. I’ll be in much better shape this time when I go get my dog then I ever have been. I now weigh 174 lbs, which is the lowest I’ve weighed in years I think. I wonder how much I’ll weigh when I go off to OSU. I need to keep track of that and see how it goes. I think it’ll be interesting to see how much progress I make over the next 6 months. I figure if I can lose 5 lbs a month, I can be down to at least 140 lbs which is something I’d love to be, if not even 130. (130 would be even better though)
I wish I could get the money to do something about my jaw soon. The tmj is really starting to bother me, but I’m not sure what can be done about it at this point. I guess at worst I wait till I go to osu and start working and I get the mouth piece then, but I’d rather not wait if I can help it. The sooner I can get it taken care of, the better. I need to get my teeth cleaned to…One of those real deep deep cleanings, though that’s just as expensive, which really sucks…
Oh well, going to go and find some lunch I think, my stomach is making lots of noises.
The past week or two has been stressful and interesting to say the least. Monday was my birthday and I turned 25, yay.:p My parents baught me shrimp for dinner which I loved, but that’s the extent of what I did really. I can’t complain, it was nice, but a part of me wishes that we had gone out or something. Oh well, it wasn’t bad.
Progress with my application to seeing eye was rather interesting to. I waited a week before I finally called this morning to try and find out more results on the application. (I should point out here that the us mail service is insanely slow.) The lady I talked to this morning said that the admissions comittee decided they wanted records from the humane society that I took mikie to. That caused a lot of panic, and some crying because I knew my mother really wouldn’t be able to take me down there for a while. What made it worse, was that the humane society wasn’t going to fax the records to the school either. I called the lady from the school back and told her what happened. I asked her if she’d call the humane society, she didn’t seem too sure, but then decided she would call. The story she had to tell when she called me back made me want to scream.
Apparrently the humane society called south eastern, and they came and got mikie. This makes me very very angry. I thought the humane society would have taken better care of him then that.. I feel bad for mikie, because the school will put him back out again, and they’ll put him with someone who can’t afford to keep him. This just makes me very angry.
I feel really bad, my mother wants me to go to some womens conference thing, and I don’t like stuff like that. I feel guilty because it means a lot to her, and I don’t want to go at all. I don’t know, maybe I’m missing something somewhere here, but I don’t understand it. We have done a lot of things together since I’ve been back, I went to the mentoring thing for her, we go for walks a lot, we go to church together, we’re in the same sundayschool class, but when it comes to doing things like my taking her out to lunch, or me going to this stupid conference with her, neither of us seem to bend. I love my mother, I like doing stuff with her, but I don’t like conferences, I never have. It just makes me feel really guilty, and kind of sad I guess. I think the worst part about it is that I know she’s upset by this and that I hurt her feelings by telling her I didn’t want to go, and that makes me feel even worse.
Well, so, I decided to go to the conference after all. It wasn’t bad, the people were nice etc. I got bored towards the end of the morning, and left early, but my mother was happy I went at least. Got free breakfast and lunch out of it:p Some of the stories the lady told at the conference were funny, others made you want to cry, but overall, it wasn’t a bad thing.
Gentoo stuff has been going well. We’ve gotten a lot done with the accessibility project. Created a category to dump the accessibility stuff into, got a couple of new packages done, andgot some others updated. I really have a wonderful team of people to work with. I feel a bit bad because I feel like I’m not pulling as much of the load as I would like to, but I’m trying and I guess that’s what counts. I just feel bad that I can’t code. I’ve submitted a couple of ebuilds, and I guess that counts for something, but I’m so annoyed that I always have so much trouble with the harder ones. I guess the other thing I feel bad about is that the media-sound guy ends up getting a lot of work dumped on him because of my inability to do anything decent with scripting to make some builds work right. I’m kind of afraid that he may be taking on too much, but that’s a bit hard to tell. I don’t want to take him away from his origional project, but at the same time I really need him. That makes the balance hard.
We still haven’t found a kernel person for the kernel stuff. This kind of sucks, but I guess things will always work out, they seem to one way or another at least.
I also found a java person to help out with the gnome java stuff. This is a real real real good thing, because apparrently the gnome java accessibility bridge is a real pain. I hope I can keep this group of people, though it really would be good to get a few more. I don’t want to overload the media-sound guy so much, but we’ll see what happens I guess. If anything, maybe I can help him with little things, but I’m discovering that most things aren’t that simple.
Well, March is coming to a close, and I haven’t really had much to write about. My class date to go get a new dog is May 21st through June 17th. I’m so so so happy about that. I miss having a dog for more reasons then just the companion. The dog makes me much more confident, and I like that.
I finally found another person to help out with the gentoo accessibility project with creating ebuilds. He’s a very nice kid, and seems to be doing a lot of nice work with the speech-dispatcher ebuild. I feel a bit better about this because it means that the media-sound guy won’t be stuck with all of the work, he’ll have someone to help.
I’ve been proving lately that I suck at ebuilds. My suggestions for things are generally not good enough which just reinforces that feeling of not being good at ebuilds, and makes me wish I was, but too frustrated to keep trying at it. Oh well, I’ve never liked coding, and this just reinforces it.
Seemant is stepping down as devrel lead. This makes me a bit disappointed and sad. I like seemant a lot, and he and I work real well together on things. If avenj is chosen as devrel lead, that will be nice because I have a good solid working relationship with him as well. Avenj is the only one I would even suggest for the roll of devrel lead. He’s the most active out of them all, and the one I think would work the best. Cybersystem asked me if I would do it. I’d love a job like that, but I want what’s best for gentoo. Most of all though, I want who seemant thinks will do best.
I need to find a way to work with spyderous some more. Half the time I think he’s annoyed or angry with me, when he’s not, and I don’t really know how to deal with that. I feel like I’m talking to someone who never has fun or smiles, and I guess that bothers me a bit. Oh well, I guess time will tell, won’t it…