do_While(True)

Keeping with today's trend, I find This to be rather
irritating, but also a little frightening. A woman in Canada had her
children (aged 7 and 2) taken away by Family Services after drawing a
swastika on her daughter's arm (apparently a repeat offense). Now, granted,
given that the home was full of neo-Nazi flags and such, and the woman
acknowledges her political leanings, and given that the whole Nazi thing has
a LOT of bad attached to it, not the least of which is a legacy of hate,
racism, and genocide -- given that, it's hard to have sympathy. But if her
only crime is holding beliefs you don't like, and that's enough to
take her children away, that's really frightening. It wouldn't take
much change for a lot of my personal, political, and religious beliefs to be
held as offensive.

So I'm no great apologist for gender equality* (quite the opposite in some
cases), but This
story kind of makes me upset. A 10-year old girl in Cleveland wasn't
allowed to join a local football league because she's a girl. (She later
successfully joined another league across town.) But what really gets me is
that, after saying the bylaws from 1971 barred girls from joining, the
president of the league suggested she try out for cheerleading instead.
That's just insulting, if you ask me.

(*Equality here means 'sameness'; the discussion about what equality means
and how equal the genders are or should be is for another time.)

So, Meghan.

As a little background, she and I were involved a little over three years ago; my Senior year, her Freshman year. We weren't dating, mostly because of me -- I was still enamoured with Suzannah at the time. I met Meghan at Contra (which I'd been going to in order to see Suzannah), and I asked her to dance because she was being quiet off to one side and, after being in the group for most of a year, I felt pretty comfortable there and wanted to get new people to enjoy it as well. Since Suzannah was, in retrospect, trying to see less and less of me, Meghan and I spent more and more time together, dancing and talking afterward and stuff.

Fast forward a bit, Suzannah's out of the picture, I know I'm going away to school in California, and Meghan's been fairly open about wanting to date me. This puts me in a rather awkward spot, as I'm not over Suzannah (despite my mistreatment; comparing me to a dog isn't far off the mark, really) and past experience has given me misgivings about long-distance relationships (in my mind if not in truth, my summer in California contributed to the disintegration of my relationship with Claire). And, as I told her and myself, I had misgivings about being her first relationship, because experience had taught me that first-time romances never work out. (And she'd never been in a relationship before.) So I hemmed and hawed and pulled back, and then I was in California. (Just before my leaving, she and I went out to dinner together; it was a rather emotional parting, and we both left in tears because we weren't to see each other for a long time -- at least, that's why I was crying.)

When I was out in California, we still talked. She still wanted a relationship, I was still reluctant. As Christmas break drew near, she suggested that we at least "give it a try" while I was home for the holiday. That seemed a bit absurd to me, especially since I only got two weeks which is hardly enough time to see each other let alone "try out" a relationship, but I relented and said, yeah, we could see how things were over break. Then we had a fight.

There's a lot that could be said about the wheres and whys and whats of the fight, but it pretty much came down to the fact that she wasn't comfortable with me having close lady friends. As anyone knows, 90% or more of my friends are girls, several of them I'm very close with and a few I've dated before. I imagine it was one part feeling threatened and one part her up-bringing (I'm pretty sure her parents don't think boys and girls can be friends; as Harry said, the sex always gets in the way), but the bottom line is she wasn't comfortable with my friends, and I wasn't about to give up my friends for a romance, so... Very shortly after our fight, she started seeing this guy Patrick, and we didn't even see each other over Christmas, let alone "try things out." (Unless we did, and I just forgot, which is possible, but I don't think it happened.)

Patrick didn't like me one bit, which is perfectly reasonable considering that (1) Meghan had liked me, and (2) I'd hurt her. I'm pretty sure most of Meghan's friends didn't like me very much right about here, but I can't really say, I never knew them. I can't remember the hows or whys, but for some reason I tried to reconcile myself with Patrick and he'd have nothing of it; I never so much as spoke to the guy, but he really disliked me. I'm not presenting this bit very well, Meghan or Laurel might be able to explain it better. Patrick didn't want Meghan to talk to me any more, didn't want us to be friends, and I really don't understand not-being-friends. Meghan and I did stop talking at one point, I think, then she started up communication again. She had less-than-great stories which basically said to me that he was a jealous, controlling jerk and his family hated Meghan, which I said was more than enough reason for her to not be seeing him. But she apologized for him... There was later a story about Meghan getting fed up with him and asserting herself (which I found odd, because I'd known Meghan to be fairly assertive; she's an Irish Woman, for crying out loud), and after that he allegedly started behaving better and treating her like a person. This whole section is rather fuzzy for me, though.

Relatively recently (in the last year or so?), I asked her why she'd been avoiding me and she said she wasn't avoiding me, but it was maybe best that we weren't friends any more. Which hurt me a lot, not least because it was essentially the same thing Suzannah had said to me. A while after that, I let her know that I was still angry about her calling off of our friendship. She apologized for it (for what that's worth) and said vaguely that maybe we could be friends again If, but she couldn't say more than that. (I surmised that the If indicated she was having troubles with Patrick, but didn't get confirmation.) this is putting her in a worse light than it should be, I think: I'm afraid as it is that all my friends are biased against Meghan. (And it's not like they don't have reason to be.)

Through all that, Meghan had transferred from Christendom to Steubenville (though I can't remember if it was before or after getting together with Patrick, who himself was at Steubenville, I think). Amusingly, she got to be friends with my brother Josh's circle, at least in part because her childhood friend Tahlia was in that crowd (and, coincidentally, one of my brother's ex-girlfriends). I saw Meghan a few times when I was visiting Josh, though the timing gets confused.

This is all important, though, because Elizabeth (another of the group, and also one of Josh's exes) was having a cook-out on the 5th (last Saturday). I really like Josh's Steubenville friends, and I like seeing people, so of course I wasn't going to miss it. A few days prior, though, updates on Facebook let me know that Tahlia was making arrangements with Meghan to get a ride to the cook-out. Which means Meghan was going to be there, which only makes sense because she is part of that crowd now. But I was rather conflicted on the point, because while part of me wanted to see her (the fact that I still carry a torch for her had recently come up in a conversation with Leslie, though I don't remember how), most of me was still hurt and angry and didn't really want to see her. But I resolved to just play it off and not make a big deal about it, and even if I was angry I could be civil.

The cook-out came, Meghan arrived, we got along well. We got along really well, actually. The whole night was really good, with Elizabeth's College friends meeting her High School friends, and lots of laughing and joking around and watching Clue. (I'm pretty sure at some point the potential for Leslie putting me in a bridesmaid's dress for her hypothetical wedding came up.) As we were leaving, Meghan told me that it was good seeing me, she'd really missed me, and we should talk more. I agreed, we should. And it really reminded me of how things felt between us that night before I left for California.

She's said a couple more times that she's really missed me, and we've started catching each other up on our lives through Facebook messages. And I've missed her, too. So, that's what's going on with Meghan -- in short, I have no idea. But, when I logged into Facebook today (how juvenile can we get?), I got notice that she was no longer listing herself as "in a relationship."

And now I'ma shut up.

So, right now, I'm paying about $150/mo for my Internet, TV, and phone
service from verizon (split about $42, $54, $42 respectively, plus taxes and
fees). I got the phone line figuring I'd get a fax machine. I didn't.
(All my actual phone needs are satisfied by my cell.) I got the TV service
figuring, with a DVR, I'd watch more shows. I don't. The only thing I do
use is the Internet, which is roughly 1/3 of my bill. So, I need to just
end my other services. I think there's going to be an early termination
fee, but if it's less than $100/mo then I come out ahead in the long run.
Getting just Internet would cost me about $58/mo, less than half what i'm
paying. (Getting Internet and phone service drops the Internet price by $5,
but phone service is at least $30; net gain of $25 for a service I won't
use.)

I just need to buckle down and actually call them to change my service; I
keep putting it off, and I'm losing $90/mo for it.

This is funny, since Ubuntu is free and CDs cost nickles.

It's 9am. Because of the holiday, I get out early today, at 1pm. That's
four hours. It's going to be the longest four hours of my life.
On the plus side, I have non-trivial (but incredibly dry) documents to go
over.

Since Rachel asked, an update on Tin Man. I watched the first part of the
first CD last night (a lot longer than I expected it to be). Some of
the acting is pretty bad, to put it bluntly, the writing could probably be
improved, and the fighting is pretty horridly staged. That being said, so
far I like it, at least comprable to any TV series I've ever watched. It
sit somewhere slightly below the opening of Heroes, right about where I
would put Dr. Who. (Heroes has sunk a little since it started, of course,
though the acting is still quality in my opinion.) As Daniel noted, it
really is just a remix for the sake of being a remix, and some of the
changes are just really bizarre. (Like what was with turning a field of
flowers into man-eating monsters?) I have to say, though, I kind of like
the sorceress (and don't really like the dethroned Queen).

This is one of the coolest things I've seen on YouTube.



OK, yeah, I don't watch a lot of YouTube (more than regular TV!), but this is still really awesome.

Right now, I am furious.

In February, I was put on my first real project, a short report we owed a
client. The report had sat mostly-untouched fior a few months before I got
it, and we needed to get it out the door in short order. I had my completed
report done near the end of April, and we considered the task completed in
early May. It had to go through another depatment to get to the client, but
our part was done. (This wasn't just my opinion, either; my management
agreed that it was a completed task.)

Except that a month later I found that the report hadn't been sent out yet,
and an addendum had been proposed to state the conclusions of the report
more-clearly. That's fine because, as anyone who's talked to me on a topic
I 'get' would know, I have a tendancy sometimes to be unable to clearly
express myself to those less-informed. The report wasn't intended for a
techie, so a clear conclusion was good.

But now, a month later still, not only is the report not out but someone up
the chain in this other department is questioning the level of detail that
we put in there, and askingh if we talked with the ubertechies (those guys
know things that make MY head hurt). So now the report is nearly a year
late and the value of my input is effectively being questioned. I'll admit
that the ubertechies know a lot more details about specific points, but I
like to think that I know something of what I'm talking about,
especially for a high-level report like this is.