I'm not going to apologize - I've never been a big blogger, though I want to change this. In fact I'm going to need to change it, for lots of reasons.

First and foremost - I'm going to be moving soon. On the 18th of July, I fly from what has been my home city for 26 years to what will become my new home, Seattle, WA. The move is permanent - I won't be coming back except to visit once I'm established out there.

I'm moving because I want to better my life and the lives of my family. Two software consulting firms have responded to my resume - Avanade and Epicor - and several programming recruiters have contacted me as well (one of them very interested in meeting me). My current employer expects I'll have no trouble getting $80,000 annually with benefits, so that's what I'll be looking for.

It's going to be hard. I'm going by myself - Tasha, Kaylee, and Scarlett are staying here. I'm going to be staying with my boss for a little while, until I get an apartment out there and am able to move Ta and the family out. It's going to be a while until I can get them out there - two or three months, which means I'll be missing Kaylee's 1st birthday. We're having a party for her this Sunday so that I can at least be there for that - she won't know the difference. Plus I'll be away from Ta the entire time - she and I have spent almost two years together on a daily basis, not spending more than a few hours away from each other. Finally there's all the friends I can't take with me... It's going to be tough giving all this away.

So that's been life lately. Dealing with anxiety, some sadness, excitement, etc., all at the same time. It's weird.

I'll try to blog more often, especially once I get out there, since that'll be my primary mode of communication with everyone. Not sure *where* I'll be blogging yet - either here or MySpace. Once I decide I'll post it and everyone who cares will know where it is.

The world ended in fire again.

'Death by Supernova' is a the biggest recurring theme in my apocalyptic dreams, followed closely by alien invasion, with other natural cataclysms being a distant third. In all of my apocalyptic dreams, though, there is the overriding sense that what is occurring was completely unexpected. Nobody, including myself, ever sees it coming.

Take last night's dream for instance. I was up in the middle of the night talking with my mom and some other people that I don't know in my living room when a bright flash of light illuminates the sky outside. I went to look, and just above the horizon was a small ball of light, roughly half the size of the sun, but maybe ten times brighter. I could feel my skin cooking, in fact - so I rushed back inside. Before I closed the door I noticed that the small ball had tripled in size, and that various things outside were beginning to smoulder.

After I closed the door I turned the TV on to see if there was any kind of news report, and all that was showing on any channel was the Emergency Broadcast signal. I checked my computer, but by this time my internet connection was down.

This is all I specifically remember, unfortunately. I vaguely recall hearing someone talking on the TV after I checked my internet connection, but I don't remember what, if anything specific, they were saying.

Well it's not just for LJ - apparently this thing works with a whole lot of blog providers, and also seems to be able to "learn" the style of your blog and somehow work with that. It's pretty cool!

It's called 'Windows Live Writer' and is currently in beta. It's pretty cool - I'm happy with it. :)

The common consensus on Wisdom Teeth (aka, 18 year molars) is that they are useless, a leftover from our ancient grass-eating ancestry that we have long since outgrown. In the sense of strictly biological usefulness, this is true - however I have since discovered a more sinister use that Wisdom Teeth, in lieu of their former occupation, have taken up: that of causing a rediculous amount of pain.

For the past week and a half, I have had, quite literally, a pain in the neck. At first, I thought it was my tonsil on the left side, because that's what hurt. It hurt to swallow, to move, to touch - and it just hurt whenever. I had taken to downing tylenol every 4 hours, every waking moment. The pain was so bad that it would start in my neck, and then would slowly travel up the side of my face, ending at my temple.

Finally I asked my dentist (my mom's boss) about it. He felt around and figured it out. The problem was a lymph node. So he looked at my pan (panoramic x-ray of the whole mouth) and saw that my wisdom tooth on that side of my mouth was impacted, and was sitting very close to the nerve, and he recommended that I get the tooth removed.

So I had my mom make me an appointment for Friday.

The extraction itself was fine. They had me high on Nitrous Oxide for the duration. The only tough part was the injections - now normally injections don't bother me, but they had to inject into the roof of my mouth to kill some of the nerves up there, for the extraction, which they don't usually do for just fillings. But after that, it was fine.

The tooth that was impacted, the lower left wisdom, also had a tiny abcess bubble forming at the root - which is very likely the infection that was causing so much trouble with my lymph node. Consequently, to take that tooth out, my dentist had to cut through my gum, cut away some muscle, and drill through some bone. Even after all that, he had to remove it in 3 pieces! It gave him a hell of a lot of fuss apparently. :P

Except only an hour or so after the operation was done, my numbness started wearing off... And I didn't have any pain killers on me, since we were gonna get them after my mom got off work...

I made her leave early. :P

I spent the majority of yesterday in a good deal of pain, after the numbness wore off completely. The pain killers weren't really doing much, except making me light headed and giving me hot flashes... But today is much better. Hardly any pain, only a little soreness. I guess I'm a fast healer. :)

But - the lesson is, Wisdom teeth are good only for causing pain. I should have gotten these taken out years ago.

Pardon this bit of geekish hero worship for a bit... :P You likely won't understand this. ;)

I posted a question on the LINQ project forums (LINQ is Language INtegrated Query, which is a way of integrating query-type language elements in with normal-type languages to perform queries over data sources other than relational databases, like in-memory objects or collections, or XML documents). The question I asked was relatively simple - just about some of the new features of C# 3.0; specifically something called "Lambda Expressions".

The question itself isn't exactly relevant - but I got an answer. The guy who answered my question was none other than Anders Hejlsberg, THE founding father of C#! :D He took time out of his schedule specifically to answer my question - really frickin awesome. :D

Told you it was geekish. :P lol

Increasingly now I've found myself unable to be in the livingroom with my mom... I don't know why, but tobacco smoke has started bothering me far more than it used to. It's been giving me bad headaches, made it hard for me to breathe, and I feel sick to my stomach if I inhale too much.

Even just being in my room, with the door closed, is a problem, because the smoke still comes in under the door or through the vent. And I can't afford an air purifier...

None of this I can bring up to her though. Any attempt at rational discussion on the topic is futile, as the mere mention of her smoking pisses her off.

I guess I'll have to get lung cancer for her to take me seriously.

I've created a new Novel Journal, called northernnode. It's a friends-locked journal, so if you want access please stop by over there and reply to the public post.

I don't know how to feel about this... Lol

So Wednesday, I left the house with Mike, and we played Sim City for a few hours. I called mom around 6:00, to let her know where I was, and I was greeted with "bad news". I left the bird outside, as I typically do (the bird drives me nuts, the only escape I have is to put it outside where it's noxious 'Coo' won't affect me), and apparently some neighborhood dogs got into the yard and either killed / ate or freed the bird.

So at that point I didn't really know how to feel. I hate the bird's annoying coo, but I don't wish it any specific harm. But at the same time, I kept thinking about how nice it would be to not have to listen to the cooing anymore...

So yesterday morning, we get a knock at the door. A woman - one of our neighbors - came to ask about the bird, and my mom, told her that he had gotten out. So the neighbor says, "Well there's a while bird out in the woods behind my house..."

So I am tasked with retrieving the bird. It seemed simple enough. Jump a couple fences, a ditch, grab the bird, and put it in its cage.

Except the dogs are still out. There's three of them, big, playful dogs, circling me while I wade out into the woods behind our houses.

I get over to where the bird is, and it reminds me of an Indiana Jones movie - the prize is sitting in the middle of a clearing, perched on a branch, looking too easy to be true. Surely there must be a trap.

I walk over to the bird, put out my hand for him to grab onto, and get him on my finger. Great, I think -- this is working -- until 'Whoosh' -- the little bastard flies up into a tree.

....

The neighbors are watching, my mom's watching - and so I do what anyone lacking a brain would do - I climbed the tree. =P So I get up in the tree, to where I can reach the bird. Being a bit smarter this time, I opt for a small twig to handle him with. All's going well this time - he took the twig, and then I put him on my shoulder so I could climb down.

I got within inches from the ground before -- Whoosh! Back up in the same damn tree.

So screw it, says I - I went and found a long, thin branch, and lifted it up to the bird in an effort to get him down. Amazingly enough, it took far less effort for me to coax him onto the branch than I thought it would. I lower him down, and start my way back to the house.

Remember, dogs are circling me - it's like a sea of dogs - and I have a ditch and a fence to cross. A 5-foot wide ditch. Luckilly there's a bunch of trash in our portion of the ditch - crap that's been there since before I lived here - and included among the junk is a very old truck seat. So I step out onto that, and start the process of passing the bird off to my mom.

Long story short, she got the bird and put him back in the cage. I got to be the hero for a day. =P

But now I have a dilemma. Am I supposed to feel bad because the bird is back to annoy me, and I supposed to feel relieved because the bird's not dead (no matter how much I may hate the bird's coo, I don't like the idea of animals dying in cruel ways, like being ripped limb from limb by a pack of dogs), or am I supposed to feel good because I'm the hero?

I'm so confused!!

So this weekend I was called upon to build a 7 system network in a brand new office. The lines were already installed - all I had to do was hook em up and make it work, and I'd get a decent paycheck.

Great, says I, I'll do it.

*slaps forehead*

Turns out the people who own the building had about 30 lines installed, with multiple lines in each room, in different positions. Which is actually a good thing - I gots no problem with that. Except for one thing: Not a damn one of them was adequately labeled. What would have taken me maybe two hours (if that) to do turned into two 9 hour days. Since I don't own a line tester, I had to hook each line up to a patch panel, then to a switch (8 at a time mind you), then plug my laptop into each line in the building to identify them all.

Not to mention the fact that, along with those 30 network lines, were about 30 phone lines, 12 cable lines, and a bunch of others that I couldn't identify. Luckilly most of the lines were easilly distinguishable - but the only thing that identified SOME of the phone lines was the coloring of the text on the lines. Damnit, when they installed the network, the LEAST they could have done was use a different color!

So this weekend was a pain in the ass. And it wasn't worth it at all.

Had my first class of the new semester today.

So my English instructor is a skydiver... =P

Got bored with the old one. Some time when I get bored I'll probably roll my own S2 style, but for now I'll stick with this one. I think it looks good. :)

So I'm adding save and load functionality to my timers. Originally I wasn't going to do this, but at the insistence of one of my users I've decided I'm going to. :)

Instead of like last time, where I used a seperate window to save and load timers, I'm going to add a menu into the timer form that will allow the user to open saved timers, and to save the current timer. That should work out just fine. :)

I play the game EVE-Online. It's a fun MMO, where you pilot a spaceship, fly around, do missions, go pirate hunting, fight with other players, mine asteroids, start companies, manufacture stuff -- pretty much do whatever you want. It's a great game - but sometimes it can be a little... well, boring. =P

I've spent the past, oh, 4 hours shooting frickin laser beams at big space rocks, because I need the cash. If only automating the task weren't considered unethical... >=)

... my cat Jasper. :) Isn't he adorable?

Things are more or less as they always are. :P

As far as productive things go, I guess the major headline would be that I changed my major from Computer Technology to just plain Science. The idea here is to get my Associates, then move on to a 4-year where I can major in Math, and minor in Education - and thus become a highschool math teacher.

It's been tough though - sometimes it seems the school is doing everything in their power to prevent me from making good on my new decision, now that I have a path I want to follow. They cut my funding entirely for this coming semester, because I canceled some of the classes I was taking last semester (computer-related classes that would not have applied to my new major). Had I know that was going to happen, I wouldn't have canceled the classes - but no one told me.

Outside of that, though, I've been trying to relax. An old highschool friend and his wife (Alex and Dorothy) moved back into town a while ago, and we've been hanging out on and off since. They've been helping me to learn how to loosen up. ;) Case in point - this New Year's was the first time I've ever been drunk... Totally frickin drunk. And lemme say just for the record that it wasn't my intention to get blasted... It was a conspiracy - Alex took my saying that I'd never been drunk before as a challenge. Lol. Definately not making that a habit...

I guess the only other somewhat interesting thing I've done last year was finding my father's email and starting a conversation with him. He left when I was 11, and the only time I saw him after that was about a summer later when I spent a couple weeks with him. But after that - nothing. Found his email through the wonders of Google, because his wife is an artist, and he's basically acting as her agent, or something. It's been a weird experience, but somewhat gratifying. He seems to be a genuinly different person, and he's openly apologized to me... But I don't know if it's enough, really.

So, aside from all this, things haven't really changed all that much. I take school more seriously now, and I try to have more fun as much as I can.

Please leave a comment - just a hi, how goes, or whatever. I'm going to be keeping a journal again, so I'm doing some housecleaning. Anyone who replies will stay on my friends list - those who don't, well, won't. :P

Thanks

PS: If you're one of my more recent friends who isn't on my list, feel free to respond here and I'll add you.