This is my first entry, and I’m still trying to iron out the kinks in this thing. I have an emacs function (thanks to Bill) that opens a text file with today’s date whenever I do a C-x C-j, so I can always pull up a file for today. They are text files though, and I have no idea if they will later be html-ized in any way. I’d like to, I guess, but I don’t want to be typing this stuff and adding tags and thinking about page formatting – it’s too much of a distraction. Just straight text will work for now, and I can always reformat it later.
I also don’t know how I will index these into a master html page. I guess I could write some kind of script to run through the directory and then somehow order the stuff, make links, and slap in the html. That’s a future project, I guess. For now, I’m just going to keep journaling on a daily basis so when I do create a web page, it won’t be for like 3 journal entries.
This whole project is sort of conflicting with my regular project, which is journaling on paper. I’ve kept pretty much daily journals since November of 93, and I have odd bits and pieces of journals that date back to high school. I’ll still keep a seperate paper journal, because it’s somewhat of a different project. This online journal won’t contain any of the private information that I keep in my paper journals. I’ll talk about personal stuff in here, but there’s a certain boundary I’m going to create, since this is on the internet, and anyone with a search engine, or from work, or whatever, can look at this and read it. Also, I don’t intend for this to be as in-depth as my paper journal. But I guess the boundaries and differences will define themselves further as this whole thing progresses.
I’ve been thinking of putting my paper journals online, or at least typing them in to have a backup-able format. Also, I don’t think I’ll be able to read my own handwriting in 10 or 20 years (I can barely read it now). But I don’t think I can put my journals on-line, because of the privacy issue, and it would take forever to do. I think i figured that I have about 1200 sheets of spiral notebook paper I’d have to type in. So that project will probably wait. But last night, I did type in all of my information from a smaller 1992 diary and a 1989 daily planner, just because those two things will probably get lost or destroyed at some point.
I should probably start talking about something other than the mechanics of the whole endeavor. This is a bad time for me to start an online journal, because I’m leaving for vacation on the 15th. Karena and I are flying to LA that day. Actually, we’ll be going to Orange county and staying in a hotel near Disneyland. The trip package included a car, and passes to Universal Studios and Disney. We’ll be going to Universal on the 16th, and spend the 17th-19th and maybe the morning of the 20th at Disney. We fly out on the 20th. We’ll also try to hit any other LA touristy things each night, since the park is only open till 7 on weekdays.
I’m pretty excited about leaving for a while – this is my first ‘real’ vacation. I’ve been on school trips and parental vacations, but they don’t entirely count. This is the first time I’ve booked a flight for something that didn’t involve family or work. I have taken many roadtrips, and I have been to more than half of the states in the country, but this will be a real change of pace. Also, it has been pretty shitty in Seattle – it is always raining and dark. In the last week or two, it is almost clearing up, but it will be nice to be in California.
I am also nervous about the whole trip. I always get nervous before I travel – that I’ll forget something, forget the tickets, miss a flight, or whatever. I’m also not sure how we’re getting to the airport, since both the shuttle services and the airport parking are a complete ripoff. So I need to figure all of this stuff out. At least we are leaving in the afternoon – I really hate getting ready to fly out on an 8:00 am flight, which usually means you have to get up at like 3 in the morning to shower, pack, check everything, wait for the shuttle, take the shuttle (which is always late), check in, etc.
Today is the 5 month anniversary of me and Karena being together. I think that means this is my 3rd longest relationship. I was with Tanya for 6 or 7 months (although there was a summer break apart in the middle of it), and I was with Becky for just over 11 months. It still feels weird to be in a relationship, but I guess I am pretty settled into it now. Still no complaints or anything. This weekend will be weird because we aren’t visiting each other. Since we will be on this trip all week, we decided it would be best not to visit, save some money, get all of our pre-vacation stuff done like laundry or whatever, and just wait until Monday when she is coming up here. It will be odd to have a weekend by myself again. My first thought is that I’ll be sleeping all day, eating junk food, getting a bunch of writing done, and enjoying myself like when I was single. In reality, I will probably miss her a lot and just mope around the house and do some laundry.
I just spilled chili on this yellow shirt. I should watch my eating while I’m writing…
I’ve been worried like hell about money lately – I owe the school, the dentist, and two credit cards about $500 each. Last night, I calmed down about it and sort of figured out a schedule to get it paid off. Then thismorning, the dentist calls to say he wants me to come in to get some more fillings done. Every time I think I am done there, he thinks of some other thing I should get done that will cost me another $300. Plus he wants me to get braces, will be another 10 grand and 2 or 3 years of agony. My teeth don’t hurt, they look OK, and I can eat okay. So I am just going to tell him to go fuck himself, and change dentists before my next cleaning. He is worse than the Ford dealership on this stuff (and more expensive!).
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I’m so proud of myself. My litte C program to convert directory listings to html is mostly working. It’s been almost 4 years since I worked with C on a daily basis, so it was very muddled when I started. I couldn’t remember any specifics about file i/o, and string operations were not too clear either. But it can read a file and convert it, so it is technically functional. I’ll add more to it later, but it looks like I’ll be able to work with this.
I got my Queensryche fan club stuff today – a signed photo, some stickers, and the price list for other merchandise. It was pretty quick – about 8 days turnaround time.
Life is otherwise boring, and I’m going to give in to my TV vice and watch ER.
Some site news here: I finally enabled SSL here, so HTTPS works properly, and that stupid warning goes away in Chrome. I’ve put off doing this, because I thought it involved buying SSL certs from my domain place, and I didn’t want to pay a monthly charge for it. Turns out I was able to click a button in the admin panel, tell it to use Let’s Encrypt, and change one character in my WordPress config. HTTP requests now redirect to HTTPS, and that’s that. I’m sure there’s some dumb thing somewhere that gets tripped up and goes to the wrong thing, but it seems to be mostly functional? I think the various links scattered around the site need to be changed, but I have a list of a dozen other things I need to fix, so I’ll get to it.