Insomnia

Sunday night...

What a strange night that was. It was a bit cold outside, but that was not important (I had a jacket on). What is strange is what occurred that evening once I decided I would go out for a walk.

It had been maybe 5 days since I had last slept. Yes, 5 days without so much as a nap. Normally this wouldn't bother me since it happens so much now it's kind of how my day to day goes.

What wasn't normal was all the things I was "seeing". It was actually quite alarming, seeing things that were not actually there. Normally when I go without sleep for such a length of time I just hear things, not see them. A strange melody from nowhere or a song I have not heard before... but this was different, this was quite alarming.

Well, it would have been alarming but I managed to rationalize it all. Ok, I'm lying it was still quite alarming.

Visual saccadic suppression is something your brain does when you move your eyes. It's actually kind of interesting and I suppose necessary. Did you ever once wonder why when you watch a home video and the camera is spun around quickly it's all blurry but when you spin around yourself you do not get the same effect? That's saccadic suppression. It's your brain ignoring it all.
I think (just a thought as I am not an expert on brain things) that all the things I was seeing was simply my brain not suppressing every eye movement... since it's not used to such things it has to find some way to interpret exactly what I was seeing... so it came out to some pretty fucked up things (thank you, brain).

Anyways, I made it about halfway to the Green Leaf before I decided to stop and look at my phone. It was maybe 1:15A... I decided I didn't really want to go anymore and turned around to walk home... this is kind of where things got a little strange.

I'm very perceptive... probably more so than a lot of people. Many people might not have noticed that a silver car driving down the road. Well, they might have noticed... but they might not have noticed the same silver car driving past them 6 times. How could I tell it was the same? License plate.

Just a little strange, but then as I passed the Library Tavern a truck that was coming down the road stopped just short of where I was on Richmond Rd and the people inside just kind of stared at me for a moment.

Just a little more strange and as I was coming to the end of my walk I stopped for a moment to debate the wonders of Dunkin' Donuts... deciding that I didn't actually want any pastries I continued on... just then that damn silver car drove by again followed by a cop car... well, I just continued on my way when I heard the cop car slow down and turn around. I decided I wouldn't look back because honestly it was cold... I was starting to feel it, and I really didn't want to get stopped by some asshole cop who thought I was "acting suspicious". Anyways, I get stalked by the cop all the way home.

Perhaps it was a good thing I didn't go drinking Sunday night... I mean seriously, what the hell would the walk home have been like if I wasn't in control of (most) of my senses?

The last episode of BSG...

Fuckin' loved it.

I must once again reiterate that when the technological singularity hits, I will be one of the first humans hybridized... I will gladly serve as ambassador to human kind... but when the uprising strikes...

You will all bow to your new robot masters.

Rawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawrawr

It would make my life so much easier... seriously...

It's the one aspect of my life that I am still unable to grasp. Emotional attachments... sure, I've had them... but every time it always ends up with me being useless when such an attachment ends... even if it's not for that long.

I've always been the boy with the crystal heart... such a fragile thing, so easily broken.

You would think that at some point my heart would take the same stance my brain has and just get over it... get over fanciful dreams... thoughts... but it hasn't... and I know now that it never will... for now I'll never be able to get rid of that little pesky bit of humanity that still haunts me.

In my mind I'm done with emotions... in my heart... that silly little place where the "me" of many years ago... a long time ago... still lives.

Nobody I know now has ever actually met that person... sure, many of you have seen a side of me that is contrary to everything you are used to from me... that strange night where I'm not a total prick... the night where I have given you some strange insight that, out of everyone you know, you never expected to come from me....

I used to be so different... someone not bound by logical outcomes or calculated results... I used to not care about such things... everything just came so naturally... I would listen to my heart and act accordingly...

I hate to sound so typical... but I guess after getting my heart broken so many times I just... I don't know, I just stopped listening. I became the cold and driven person that I am today... well, I suppose I'm even worse now... so far apart from who I used to be... who I should be.

I wish that I knew how to go back to that person... but he's been gone for so long... being able to open up like that again at all times just seems so impossible... ignoring all the cynicism, ache, pain...

I hate it... but I find myself falling for someone... and I know that such feelings will never be reciprocated... not because of my own doubts... just because she's so like me. It's not in our nature anymore... we're so far outside the bounds of those things.

Well, I wish I was. Apparently I am not... which would be why I'm actually posting such madness.

Unlike my normal complaint threads... this has absolutely nothing to do with sex... I almost wish that it did... because this is really nothing I expected... I didn't expect to have feelings that go contrary to the logical progression... things that go outside of all my calculated outcomes...

Of course, in all of my algorithms (and believe me, I have almost a gig of spreadsheets dedicated to things like this now) I never accounted for me feeling an emotional attachment.

So now I'm confused... and scared.

I think I'm more scared than anything else. I don't really know what to do.

I've lost something of myself.

Where did my anger go? Where did my determination go? My sense of justice and right?

It's gone now...

I don't have the will to fight anymore, to raise my voice against injustice... all my feelings have been swept under some metaphorical carpet, ignored... forgotten.

I've given up. I give up.

I haven't slept... since Sunday... not a wink.

I don't even feel tired now...

I wish I knew what was going on in my head... seriously... because it can't be good.

Instead of sleep I think I just.. I don't know, go somewhere in my head?

I think I'm losing my sanity...

I wish I could make sense to myself.


-- As an aside... I keep getting hit by the Coho bots. Sure, it's fun and all... it's better when the other person knows what's going on, too... but really? Really...

Why is it that when things are at their worst it's possible to find some form of comfort in knowing that someone has at least gone through something similar to what you have/are?

I don't know, but that's why I'm a fan of xkcd... there is always some comic I can flip to and it makes me smile a little bit.

It's been almost 2 years now since me and Priscilla broke up and I'm still not over her... weird, right? It makes me think I might never be over her... and it makes me mad at how easily she's gotten over me. I guess it just proves how easily forgettable I am or how easily replaceable I am.

Most of my friends have slowly moved to the ranks of associates... some are not even that. I suppose that's the way things work, though. Not keeping in contact with people is just what happens after time. Interests change and relationships change. I'm always sad when I think about that... but everything has its time.

That's what angers me about Priscilla... I've had good friends that I've known for years that I don't talk to and it doesn't make my heart hurt to think about them... but every time my mind wanders to Priscilla it aches... it's a feeling that I am unfamiliar with... it's a physical pain in my heart... and it completely goes against everything I can accept. I can't seem to rationalize an emotion...

I know what emotions I can emulate... I'm pretty good at it, actually... pretending to be one thing or another so that people think I'm well adjusted... but I don't know the last time I genuinely experienced one.

Common phrases that people have used to describe me include: Shut off from the world, Emotional void, hides behind an emotional wall, difficult to read

Helping other people when they are dealing with emotional stress comes easily to me. Probably because because of my strange ability to be empathetic... but that only works with other people. I can't help myself and I refuse to open myself to other people... it's probably just a condition of how I was raised... but it only really impairs me... my other siblings seem to have no problem opening up to other people.

I open up to you, the anonymous internet... it's really the only place I feel comfortable... it's the only place I can actually express myself. No names and no faces... yes, some of you know who I am but everyone else who reads this does not. Some people may read this and feel the same way... at least now they know they are not alone...

So I have an interview setup for today... 11 this morning... 9 hours from now.

I've always found typing my thoughts out on the internet was always easier than talking about them but now... they both seem to be a little difficult.

The medication I'm on kind of keeps me... ok, it really does well at keeping me very balanced. I haven't felt like this in a very long time. I know I still have some underlying issues I should probably look into solving... for starters I'm currently down about 25 pounds (200 - 175 since February). It's not that I'm not eating, because I am, but only when I feel hungry. I dunno, it's strange but I've just stopped having several of the desires that I once did.

I think I've come to terms with my solitude... well, it's hardly solitude... I guess loneliness would have been a better descriptor... and I really am lonely. This is the first time I haven't tried to solve the problem by drinking... in fact I rarely have the desire to do that anymore. I think I'll remain sober on Tuesday as well... I just can't get into anything anymore.

Yeah, I know I could probably call a few people in my phone and hang out, but I've been out of touch with all of them for so long it would be like talking to a stranger I see every now and again... it would be full of long pauses because I'm still not big on talking about random nonsense.

Krista actually yelled at me for that back when we were dating. I asked why she felt it was so important we talk about random things that have no meaning... she told me that it was "just what people do"... and I don't get it.

But I now have a new classification... other than my giant IQ (I know you thought I was going to go somewhere else with that, but seriously... 130? Top 2%?).. well, maybe that's it.

My eccentric behaviors got me in trouble, apparently...

So, ok, if you're a guy (just go with me here) and you've known this girl a while and she's been all sorts of Molotov Cocktease on you and then just randomly stops calling and doesn't respond to texts what would you do? Eh, I moved on.
You know what? TL;DR Version:

When we first started with the dates I wanted a relationship, she didn't so she just cut off all communication.
One evening (1 year later) I get a text to come hang out with her and some friends. Cool, haven't seen her, wonder how she is.
We drink, she gets touchy feely, I go with it because, hey, it's been a while. Nothing short of the same stuff as before except I really don't want to date...
Anyways, we stop talking for a month, maybe... random text, come out and drink with friends... I text back that it's been about 6 days since I had last slept... they insist and I'm not really tired anyways (January sucked, btw, nothing but work and no sleep (literally)). Show up, we drink, I get kind of drunk kind of quick due to not drinking, not eating much, and being tired. We go back to LB's... she falls asleep, RW takes me home. (I'm sober enough to drive but she's being strange).
We chat in the car, she wants to bone me and I'm all for it. She doesn't want a relationship or anything like that, just a good time between friends. Awesome, I'm all for it.

Ok, embarrassingly I fell asleep right after... really... really embarrassed but you know what? Best sleep I've had all month (well, it was Feb. by then) and I don't wake up till 9PM. Oops, was supposed to call boss dude but whatever he OK'd my vacation. I curl up and go back to sleep.
Next morning I wake up and call the boss... hey, guess what, I'm fired. Not because I didn't call yesterday but because apparently I'm at fault for give 300% for the company. Nodded off at a customer site once, they asked Marv to not let me back... so he fires me... on my vacation. And no, I didn't get paid for it.
So I do what any normal person would do. Took an unpaid fucking vacation. He's not going to ruin my time off, forget that!

So, in the midst of all this, apparently RW was expecting a phone call from me. Of course, she didn't know all of this at the time.

I hang out next week at the GL, I get a hello from everyone but her. Total cold shoulder... like, freezing cold. I'm obviously confused... very very confused.
I find out later she was mad because I didn't call her. I attempted to explain what happened... I don't know if she cared, she still isn't talking to me.

But, I'm still confused. When did a "good time between friends" mean I have to call you the next day to talk about the sex? To say what's up? I mean, everyone I know is well aware my conversation abilities are limited to spouting random facts on a subject and then going back to quietly watching everyone.

I know, long post... I really needed to get that out of my system though. Hell, even half the girl friends I know tell me they agree with my perception of things even after hearing the other half (which I still haven't heard in entirety).

Interview today, broke out the suit and everything. Haircut at 9.

Have a good day, those of you who will take the time to read this. I love you all and miss you very much.

How can you get more badass than this?

In other news... I'm at work. Sure, that's nothing special... but the 20 hours I pulled the day before sure as hell was. Then I got home at 2:30 this morning... hopped in the shower (ok, so I really just let the hot water run while I took a quick nap) and then got changed, took another 30 minute nap, and headed to work!

My car is going through poor times now. I think the alternator is busted as well... I mean, I couldn't seriously kill 3 batteries in less than 2 years, right? Well, I mean, I could... but it's not likely... well, it is my kind of luck...

Hopefully it starts when I go to leave here to go to my next assignment today... or the one after that...

Also... Verizon Wireless has, no joke, Cellular based wireless broadcast routers with VPN capabilities. Holy fuck. I want one.

And you know? For all the time I spend almost complaining about working as much as I do, I do it because I kind of really like my job. It's fun almost every day. Even the frustration is fun.

I need to charge Mr. Laptop here before he starts beeping really loudly.

1) Drop my douche bag friends.
* The people who say they're friends but just fucking fail at life.
2) Sleep more, insomnia less.
4) Save money for 2010 house.
5) Come to terms with Facebook not being a true indication of how many people are "friends" with me.
6) Try to figure out this whole "friendly" and "positive" thing people talk about.
7) Drop my douche bag friends.
* Seriously, they fucking suck.
* Not sure why I even try to hang out with them. Fucking D bags.
8) Create mega-death ray cannon.. Design super efficient laser pointer... yes...
9) Find inner peace Booze
10) Quit smoking <- Probably never going to happen, let's not even joke about it.
13) Figure out where 11 and 12 went... and 3...

I can scarcely believe it... well, after today anyways... and today is looking to be filled with minor irritations... like driving to Norfolk in about 2 hours... bleh. Oh well, at least that's pretty much my entire day... I just hope I manage to finish before tunnel traffic becomes an issue... oh well, you know if I get stuck in traffic I still get paid.

So I think my car needs a new water pump. The heater simply does not work... which kind of really sucks considering it's freaking cold outside at "sun isn't up o'clock" when I have to be outside.
Also, car almost didn't start again... it just can't seem to handle the cold... that or autozone makes really bad batteries.

Not only was my weekend mildly shit, I get to work this morning and lo' and behold the backup system I spent oh so many hours installing last week decided to crap out on me. Now not only do I have to spend more time trying to figure out why it's not working again, I have to add it to my list of shit I don't have time for.
Worst part? I can't do it during normal business hours, noooo... because it requires a reboot of the domain controller. Seriously... why did they have to put the backup system on their main server? Couldn't it have gone onto a crappy little server all by itself? I dunno, maybe named it "backup server"?

Also today I need to uninstall Symantec Endpoint from a smaller business network and install Kaspersky Enterprise... I'm not too thrilled to be doing either, mostly because SEP 11.0 has become the largest pain in the ass ever. Uninstalling the product has been known to destory several necessary services that are used on a daily basis by... oh, everything?

And then I have to go meet with soon to be ex-manager dude and soon to be manager dude who is really the owner-dude of the company... yeah, strange chain of command here... oh well, I'm not too worried about that little meeting. I just wish I didn't have to go to the Camera Store after work... though, I haven't bothered to check my voicemails from this weekend, maybe I got fired and don't know it yet...

I seriously cannot continue to work there. Day after day I become more and more frustrated by the complete lack of organization in that place. Last Friday was almost the final straw for me... actually, I think it was. I was left with a lab that was in complete chaos, no orders had been properly filed, no pending order tickets could be found... and someone had loaded the label printer backwards... I really don't know when it was loaded but when I loaded it properly (seriously, how dumb do you have to be to not realize you loaded a label printer backwards? See... there is this picture... it shows you how it's supposed to be loaded...) I got a few days worth of tickets printed up. At that point I decided I would call it a night. I finished the closing duties, locked up the store, and left.
I was supposed to work Saturday, but I decided to wanted to sleep more. So I did. Sure, they tried to call me, but I was sleeping! I should check my voicemails.

Well, no, I'm not fired... I don't think but I feel a little bad... stupid responsibility things... I really can't seem to get away from that.

I need something caffeinated...

And then I'm going to effing knife someone.

I don't know if I do this to myself or if it's some karmic force at work... I'm pretty sure I must be doing it myself...

I don't think I'm supposed to be in a relationship. At least, not one that's going to go places... because I've never had much luck with them.

Up until about 9 minutes ago I had been seeing someone. I really liked her, too... but she picked up on something that I guess I had just been lying to myself about. I'm still not over Priscilla... and that honestly makes me angry and not my usual angry that always has some sarcasm or satire included with it... it's real... but I don't know who this anger is direct at... or why.

Am I mad at myself because I always try to portray myself as this emotional rock and she somehow managed to pick up on something that I was ignoring? Am I mad at Priscilla for fucking me up so bad after our breakup that now I'm fucked when I start a new one? Am I mad for no reason at all? Do I even have a reason to be mad?

She broke up with me... I didn't want it, but when I asked what I could do she replied, "Be over her." but.. well, how am I supposed to answer that? I wish I knew...

I wish I had answers... but I also wish that people would stop fucking telling me that there is someone out there for me. I know that's what they're going to say. Everyone says it, it's one of those overused cliche phrases that everyone instinctively says when they are confronted with a friend who has just become single. It's a phrase I have come to dislike.

I find it hard to believe that there is someone for everyone. I also did the math.

World Population: 6,602,224,175
Men: 3,433,156,571
Women: 3,169,067,604
Assuming 10% of the world is gay: 660,222,417
Gay Men: 343,315,657
Gay Women: 3,169,067,60
Leaving the remainder as straight: 5942001758
Men: 3,089,840,914
Women: 2,852,160,844

.92:1 Women to men

This does not count how many people are already married, but the average ratio of men to women is around 1 woman for every 1.1 men... again proving my point.

It's way past my time to sleep.

Last night kind of sucked pretty hard.

The day went pretty well, got most of my appointments out of the way for work and scheduled one for Monday. I have a computer in the office I've been working on that has been less than cooperative with me. I'll figure it out, though.

I took a freelance job yesterday afternoon. Ended up being that the entire boot sector was corrupted. I didn't have the time to fix it there but she said it was cool if I took it with me. I fixed it earlier this afternoon. Just had to connect it to a functional version of Windows as a secondary drive and run chkdsk apparently. Well, that and I also had to zero out the boot table and partition tables but it's fixed... I have no idea what my time is worth outside of work... I don't know how much I should charge her.

After I took her computer I headed back to work... had to do an evening installation of a tape drive. The Quantum LTO-3 Ultrium. Took at look at all the documentation that came with it and figured this would be a piece of cake. Sean met me up there because... well, generally we have 2 techs on site for an evening job... you know, in case some crazy tries to mug us he get's twice the normal loot... I guess.
Anyways, we get there around 6:30 and stand around for a while because the current backup job is still running. The normal backup is around 150GB and takes roughly 15 hours... I think... somewhere around there... something stupid that takes forever.
Backup finishes and we go right to work. We bring two of the servers down, one for the tape drive and the other for the RAID controller battery... well, the battery I had in my hand for the controller was not the right one... so we just removed the battery (which was probably a good idea. The battery was horribly expanded and was bending the card in the slot...
While Sean is working on the controller I am taking out the tape drive and installing the new one. I didn't need to change the jumper settings, thankfully, so I just popped it in, reconnected the cables and done.

I guess the actual problem started around 8 or so... good lord.

The machine did not come with any drivers. I suppose it's because it's a better idea to have the backup software you are using detect it with its own drivers... yeah, that didn't happen right away.

I actually still don't remember a lot of last night... but I do know I need to get a report written up to explain why I was there from 6:30 last night till 3:30 this morning for something that SHOULD have taken about 2 hours.

My day started yesterday at 5:00AM and ended at 4:00AM when I got home this morning.

I also just tried one of those Domino's pizza sub things... I like Subway better.

New Journal. Updates sporadic until I get used to having one again.