Backlog

Eek - I'm updating again. Well my backlog of comics is gone - so I need something to fill the void again. Boy will I be glad when June gets here. The main reason is obvious - Charlotte arrives ::grin:: there's another reason though - no timezones will mean earlier nights and more sleep and it won't be so bloody difficult to get up in the morning any more. I should start getting up earlier and getting the 7:30 train - but at the minute I'm just too tired every morning. At the weekends all I do is catch up on sleep. Timeout - train to catch. Superpowers would be nice. The Flash's speed for example - get up at 5 to 9 get dressed - run to work - arrive 4 mins 58 secs before 9. An emptiness inside me. An emptiness beside me. But so much less than the emptiness before. Only 8 weeks until the emptiness goes - never to return. I wonder how I will update this entry. At some point I should move my domain off of NT - I was going to get my own server and move it onto that. I have other expenses to think of first though.

Gush

Wow, over a month between updates... And what a month :) I've met my baby. I flew half way around the world to meet Charlotte and she was everything I thought she would be and more. The wedding is in November ::grin:: Yup, that's right - we're gonna be getting married ::uncontrolable stupid grin:: I have piccies from when I was there... I don't really know what else to say at the moment except that I am a very happy chappy... And that I should be getting back to work, so I'll end this rant now :)

Foreign affairs

Another long gap between updates... ::shrug:: My mind isn't really on this any more - I want to keep it going though - and my regular reader's aren't going to let me stop anyways :) Had a birthday since the last entry. Was a fun night - went to a party a friend was throwing for an unrelated reason and got completely slaughtered... 12 hours of drinking and then sitting around chatting until the evening of the next day. Very fun - a good Birthday... Thanks Lou - mucho fun, yes indeedy :) Made the decision to extend my holiday at about the same time - asked Charlotte on Monday and she was as excited as I am about the thought of me being there for 3 weeks now... ::bounce:: Only 10 days to go... gonna be the longest 10 days of my life... Dan's managed to get his flight out to see Eb at the same time - me and Charlotte will be going down to see them. 8 hour drive each way... That'll be the furthest I've ever been in a car I think. Quite looking forward to it. ::sigh:: I can't think what to write - my mind is elsewhere... My Valentine's day presents to Charlotte were a day late - which sucks - but she liked them, so that almost made up for it :). Well - just one more thing before I go...

I HATE BEING SO FAR AWAY!!!

::ahem:: sorry for shouting like that, but it had to be done...

Image of me

Technology

Another morning.  Charlotte is going down to Melbourne this weekend, so she's not gonna be around for long phone calls :(  I'll call at Ebs though - I couldn't stand the idea of not speaking to her.  There has still couldn't stand the idea of not speaking to her.  There has still not been a day without speaking and we've been together for over 5 weeks now.  I hate technology.  Last night we both had email problems - Netscape stopped working on my home PC, in the end I set up fetchmail to grab my pop box and shove it into the local spool.  I then used mutt to send mail - which I haven't configured properly yet, so it was a pain to use.  And then when I did finally get my mail at shortly before midnight there was nothing from Charlotte.  I recieved an SMS moments later telling me that she was having problems with chickmail... Grrrr.  At least orange weren't having network problems again though - having no way to talk would be very bad :(  Sun in my eyes - I hate that.  Drinks tonight.  DaveE is leaving - and it's my birthday tomorrow.  I don't want to get pissed though.  I want to sleep at home tonight - not on Dan's floor.  And I certainly don't want another dodgy kebab. ::sad sigh::  I hate distance.  I hate timezones.  I hate the unreliability of email systems and of SMS.  The closer it gets to flying out the more I wish I was there right now.  Serious missage.  ::grin:: but random happy thoughts are happening too :) Spoke to Charlotte's sister through email last night - had a warning about hurting her. Last thing I want in the world. I hope it never happends.

YAWN!!!

::yawn:: I am so tired lately.  Got some extra sleep yesterday - but it didn't do any good - sleep doesn't help when you're ill...  Should never have gone for that kebab.  Lots happening all the time - many many things have happened since I last wrote...  But my memory is a blur.  All I remember is how me and Charlotte grow closer every day.  Finally got rid of windows on both my home and office PC - getting used to Gnome has slowed me down for a while - but I am getting back up to speed now - and I don't have to take reboot breaks anymore - which is nice.  Oooh, just noticed the construction of the millenium footbridge by the new tate gallery - they've probably been working on it for months and I just haven't noticed.  Damn - I'm gonna need to get my Palm synchronising with my PC so I can upload this - I installed jpilot last night, but didn't use it to sync because I didn't have permission to access the serial port, I didn't want to do the sync as root and I was in the middle of a couple of ICQ convos and didn't want to have to log out for new group settings to take effect...  London Bridge - time for a break...

This is world of shit

Yet another reminder of how shitty distance is.  I don't think there could possibly be a worse feeling than hearing my baby upset, knowing she needs me there to comfort her and to not be able to do anything because I'm on the other side of the world.

The Joy of Trains

Well yet another major fuck up on the trains this morning - and all my fault. Damn email problems. Late night again... All my fault that I'm late. Got to the station about 10 mins late - had the choice of getting the 8:00 to moorgate or the 8:09 to Brighton... I'll get the 8:09 because it will go direct to London Bridge and I'll get there a couple of minutes early. Should have known that wouldn't be the case... Bloody 8:09 doesn't stop at London Bridge :/ I thought all of the Brighton trains did these days. Stupid mistake. Oh well - I'll just work late to make up - I've had people telling me I should be less uptight about the hours I work anyway - I'm not customer facing so I can move my hours by a bit and as long as I put the time in it doesn't make a difference. Still feels kinda wrong though. Other people have to be in on time or get in trouble - why should I be any different? ::sigh:: Mind seizing up again - random staring into space and grinning moment. Should be able to finish off the Linux install on my PC today - as soon as the Graphics card is sorted I'll be able to work without windows. Which is nice.

Flopping hell

Scared. Confused. My life has flip-flopped. Things I always found painful before are now perfect. And yet I am finding myself unsure about what was previous the most stable thing in my life. I can't really talk about it here. Luckily I have a pair of ears. She is not around at the minute though. I miss her. Every second we are apart. Not that we are ever truly together, but the hours of the afternoon stretch out. Even submerging myself in work doesn't help. Not that I got much work done this afternoon due to an OS reinstall. Finally got fed up of the constant waiting in Windows. 128Mb of RAM in my PC at work, yet it still ran like lump the no-legged dog (see www.joecartoon.com).Defragmenting and resizing my Win98 partition took hours - during which time I had to work on someone else's machine, and then the Linux install took an age because the bloody install floppies were corrupt - meaning installing drivers for the wrong kernel version to allow an NFS install. Wheefunyay. Still all is not bad. The machine is nearly ready now. Bugger - I just remembered that I'm at an offsite meeting tomorrow - I won't be able to finish installing until Friday :( And even worse - a whole morning without ICQ :( :( Badbadbad. Should be a fairly interesting meeting. As long as it's not all marketing bullshit. Which I have a sneaking suspicion most of it will be. Need to think cheery thoughts. 4 weeks. Happy for 4 whole weeks and there are no signs of that changing. My heart soars constantly. Dizzy with the unfamiliarity of it. My head spins now. Thinking of her does this to me. Dan and Crazy Jo are official at last. And he is being teased mercilessly - just as he showed no mercy in his teasing of me. I am very uncomfortable typing now - someone has sat next to me and I have no elbow room. Keep hitting the wrong keys because I can't get my hands at the right angle. Still have a cramp in my leg - I woke up at about 4-5 am this morning with a bastard of a cramp in my lower leg - felt like someone was driving a red hot poker into the muscle. It had eased by the time I woke up for real at 6:15 (was on the verge of turning over and going back to sleep when I got an SMS from Charlotte telling me to log on and check my email) - didn't remember until I got to the corner of the street when the muscle started to complain about the movement. I hate that. Why are my muscles giving up? It must be the over tiredness I guess. Not really a lot I can do about it though. Staying up for good reason. Sleeping at weekends. I need to post Charlotte's present in the next couple of days... Grin. Corny present, cute present, useful presents, fun presents. A little bit of every thing :) Not sure if this keyboard is such a good idea - wrist acheing. As if I need another ache... Heartache is enough for me - don't need all these other aches to go along with it :( 7am in Sydney. I'll be home before she gets to work so I can write her an email after all. Damn PC being out of action all afternoon was a pain - worth it though. I must have wasted days worth of working time over the past couple of months waiting for my damn machine to respond. So slow. And it happened so quickly too. Wish I could run Norton on my PC at work - keeps my PC at home in check - I bed it'd speed things up no end. Wouldn't have taken half as long to run speeddisk as it did for running defrag either... But defrag is free and Norton isn't. Take care of the pennies and the pounds look after themselves. Is that really the best practice? OK, nearly back so I'd better stop. 90 mins or so until my baby is around. 90 mins to kill

The pain, the pain!

Ow.  My neck hurts.  And currently smells of menthol...   Which doesn't put Charlotte off as we snuggle because she's on the other side of the world and can't smell it...  Colds shouldn't be allowed to play about with your muscles - sure they should be able to give you headaches and sore throats and blocked noses (all of which I have as well by the way), but they shouldn't be allowed to give you neck ache, or back ache. Oh well. Feel like shit, but feel good inside because I can still phone Charlotte. Forgot to mention that BT have still blocked my International calls, but I don't care because I'm now using OneTel who are amazingly cheaper. My bill is going to be huge, but I can't be bothered with an early bill, so I'm going to just leave the international call bar in place... So for the money it cost for our longest call so far (5 hours) we could now speak for 20 hours...  Hmmm, tempting... ::grin::  Ow, just turned my head to look out of the window and got pain shooting through me again. I'm going back to bed soon.  Sooooo tired. Soooo in pain.   But sooooo happy too :) Damn!  I just split the tube of Ibuprofen/Menthol gel type stuff that I've been using on my neck... Wish I could keep my hands still when I'm concentrating...  Lost in thought.  Mmmmmm, long bath sounds tempting too.   Decisions decisions - does the long bath come before or after sleep?  I hate that it takes so long to run a bath here.  Crappy hot water pressure - Grrrr.   Heheh, random thought - me and Charlotte have competition to the most sickeningly mushy couple... scrub that they're not a couple - honest - and I have the spatula mark in the back of my head to prove it...  lol.  Oh well.  Can't be arsed to write any more - just not getting into the flow of it really.  Oh, and I have decided that Sarah Michelle Gellar is evil.  Why?  Because - "I am concerned by how much of a computer generation we are becoming, we are forgetting how to be people, how to have a conversation, how to do anything on our own.  We even try to date on the Internet."   Thankyou very much.  Some of us actually think that dating on the Internet is actually a good thing - a way for those of us too fucked up to speak to anyone in real life can actually meet someone special and talk to them, get to know them well enough that talking to them offline is possible rather than just gibbering and making random vowel sounds.  Just because there are some bored people out there that are pasting your head onto other people's naked bodies doesn't mean that the Internet is the tool of the devil.  Sure there are fucked up people on the Net ::waves at Dan:: but there are fucked up people offline too.  If someone was to actually cut and paste here head onto a picture of someone else and reproduce it optically would that not be just as bad as doing it digitally?  ::panting hard, frothing at the mouth:: OK, time to calm down. Stop.

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Eggs and Spam

Back on the train again. Forgot to take my palmtop with me when I left the office on Friday - a lot happened at the weekend, not all of it good. Our first meeting is all going according to plan, but there will be a delay in her moving to London. I understand her reasons totally, but cannot help but feel disappointed. BT (Bastard Telecom) have blocked international calls on my line due to the size of my phone bill. And they are now going to send me an interim bill that I will have to pay before they lift the ban. not sure if I'll have the money to pay it until payday due to some expensive purchases over the past week. Probably should have waited until next month for one of the purchases, but I couldn't resist it. Mind is slowly getting back into a state where I can concentrate. Writing again - writing this anyways. My head is hurting. That bites. Have a huge backlog of comics to read. Am not making much headway. Magazines and books too. Some of them are getting read, or flicked through anyways.. Others are getting ignored. And I am talking utter rot. Obscure much? Back on the Buffy Burning today - Episodes I downloaded ages ago... as well as some I downloaded last week. Not sure when I'll get around to watching them though. I wish my DVD player could play MPEG files stored on CDROM - that would rock. But it can's so I need to watch them on my PC monitor and hear the sound through my PC speakers. New VHS boxed set in March - cool. Means a chance to watch episodes in better quality than the realmedia files I have at the moment. Stupid grin plastered over my face. I'm going to grow my hair out. Go long again - althought that will take forever - I think it took me about 5 years to get to a decent length last time... Scary thought - I'll be 30 in five years... Almost to St Albans... time to stop for a while...

Late

Bloody typical. I got into London Bridge at 8:56 - the 8:52 is always late - except today. The one day I could have done with a delay and there are problems on every line EXCEPT Greenwich. Absolutely bloody typical. Still - I'm on the train now - should be about 20 mins late in the end. Still a pretty big delay considering I was only 2 minutes late out of the house - a total delay of 40 mins over getting the earlier train. Yay Thameslink. Yay Connex. Grrr, I still want to know where my transporter is. Now I have the sun in my eyes too. At least things can't get much worse. In fact I should be about 5 mins away from them getting much better.

Communication

Gonna be really late. I'll work back to make up. Calling Charlotte again tonight - Yay! Addicted to each other's voice. I have no problem with that :) Gotta remember to call BT to get them to check the line - might as well ask them to turn up the gain while they're at it - see if I can push my line further than 45.3 - although the long extension cable probably doesn't help. Should probably re-route it so it doesn't go behind my stereo and TV - could be getting interference from them. Gotta look at getting a headset type thing for the PC. I wonder how long it'll take BT to sort out my country calling plan thing on my line - \xa31 a month to take my discount from 25% to 43% - I'll make that money back in the first 30 mins probably. Yay me. At least BT can do something right. Really surprised at how competative BTs international rates are when you have the right discount schemes. This is weird I actually like something BT do - scary. I wish they'd factor in the discounts when they do the online bill display though - I know what the full price of the calls I've made this quarter are, but I also know that there is at least 25% discount on that - if it was internet only then it'd be 40% but there's a large portion of the bill that is calls to Australia, so I don't actually have a clue what the bill's going to come to. It'll come while I'm out in Sydney too, so I'll have to be careful not to spend all my money while I'm out there ::grin:: I'm back to waffling about total arse again (did I ever actually stop?). Although the topic still isn't varying really... I don't care though. Weird day yesterday - bad start followed by good - very bad and very good - the change left me kinda dizzy, busy afternoon with a couple of weird problems left me feeling numb, and then a massive email bombing campaign to Charlotte's very cool new email address ::grin:: Was being asked questions about IOS at 2am - couldn't answer them. I'll have to have a look today...

Travel Plans

Bugger. Two minutes late leaving the house and now I'm gonna be at least half an hour late for work. I hate the way that trains magnify delays. Trains suck. Timezones suck. Money sucks. Visa requirements suck. But I can't be angry about anything because my love is never far from my mind, and any time I think of her the anger just melts right away. Managed to find a MUCH cheaper flight using Singapore airlines - and it means I need to stay an extra night in order to take advantage of the offer. How utterly frustraing ::grin:: I sent of a booking request for the hotel room last night, but it was before I found this offer, so I need to get back to them about the extra night. I need to dig my passport out of wherever it is hiding so I can get my ETA sorted. Still 6 weeks until I travel, but I don't want to leave things until the last minute. So long between trains - I wonder why they leave this long between rush hour trains - it's less regular than during the day - it's no wonder the earlier train is always so packed if there isn't another one for so long after it. One 10 mins later would be idea - would mean the earlier train is a lot less packed and if I was late again I'd only be a couple of minutes late into the office (well in theory anyway, but the 8:52 at London Bridge is always late) Train will be here soon so I'd better pack up. More later.

Neglect

I've been neglecting you all for a while (well maybe not all of you, but I've been neglecting the diary as a whole...). Plans are progressing about the Sydney trip, I have been promised a very thorough tour. Hope the jetlag doesn't hit bad while I'm there... Two weeks today... Is that really all? Only just over a month since we first spoke by ICQ and yet already things are gone so far. But I'm not going to talk about that. Or am I? Can I really bring myself to break away from this subject? We have been chatting for at least 3-4 hours every day for the past 2 weeks - several months of time together by offline standards I would imagine. Not that I would know of course. I am so tired - not through lack of sleep - I have been lacking sleep for a long time without feeling like this, but because of the intensity that I am feeling in everything. Didn't know exactly how numb I was feeling until I felt something else. Something beautiful. *retch* God I make myself sick with some of the things I am saying when I look back on them with my logical head on, but logic holds little sway with me at the moment. I can hold logic together for work, but I am left for the evening now and logic left through a different door. Huge purple raspberries. Random thought popping into my head. I want to hear her voice. I can hear the echoes in my head, but it is not enough. The crackling on the line is a pain too. I want to hear her words without electronic interference. I have been drafted into fixing her PC while I'm out there (not that I took much persuasion mind you) Don't know the relevance of that, but I thought of it now so I'll say it now. Or then rather. Whole. A piece of me is far away, but I am still more whole than I have ever been. I asked before if love was possible when you've never met the other person face to face. I knew it was. And I know it even more so now. I love you baby. A very painful six weeks to go until we meet. If they pass as quickly as the past two then it will be no time until we meet. Every second of the now drags though. Except the time we are together. ::sigh:: I don't seem to be able to talk about anything else at the moment. I have a secret but I won't tell. She has, but I won't. Not until March anyways. Now that's got you all interested - those of you that are still with me and not wretching anyways. I meant it when I said I wouldn't tell though - sorry. It's funny - I have been thinking back on things. I thought back to Erin all those months ago - talking for longer, moving slower. I thought there was something, but there wasn't. or maybe I took it too fast. I'm glad nothing happened with that one really. Glad I was still available two weeks ago. I have a girlfriend. That still sounds weird. She's smart, funny, caring, good looking, she's everything. And I am sending you all reeling for the sick bucket again.... Including myself... She's at work - or will be soon anyway... My head is so spun about at the moment - I have no idea what the time is most of the time. Well I've managed to ramble on for the whole journey - I hope those of you that complained about lack of updates are satisfied now :)

Extremities

So much to talk about, so little time to write. Have been so distracted, such a wonderful distraction. I am happy. But I can't let myself drift away. My thoughts are elsewhere always, thousands of miles, 11 hours ahead, upside down... Soon my body will be there too. I am going the first week in March - to visit my baby in her home town. To get the guided tour of Sydney in the same way that I will give the guided tour of London, but in a much shorter space of time. I was so nervous about telling her, so afraid that it would be taking things too far. But I needn't have been. She is excited. I am excited more. I will arrange the trip so that it has a weekend in the middle - means less time off, but she will be working so I don't want to lose the full days together because I have to get the plane. I am so distracted just thinking about it. Nearly to London Bridge, not much longer to write now. Wheee! She's just replied to the email I sent this morning about our plans. I will stop now so that I can have it read out to me on my phone. I can't wait until tomorrow when I speak to her again. To talk about what we are going to do and hear the excitement in each other's voices. Oh and baby? lym

Voices

So many feeling churning through me at the moment.  Where to start?   I have now heard my baby's voice.  I hate the phone, yet this morning we spoke (mainly she spoke and I listened - I love her voice) for 4 hours and it was nowhere near long enough.  It was sooo hard to hang up.  I can't wait until she is here and we can talk face to face.  Can you find love with someone you have never seen in the flesh?  Someone you have only known for a matter of weeks, that has only been more than casual friendship for less than a week?  I believe so with all my heart.  I feel so relaxed, and yet my heart races.  I feel whole, yet while she is so far away there is a piece of me missing.  And what a week it's been.  Tuesday 4th January 2000.  The day I fell.  Wednesday 5th January.  The day she said she felt the same way.  Thursday 6th January.  The day I comforted her when she was low.   Friday 7th January.  I upset her and the bottom fell out of my world.   She forgave me and everything was good again.  Also the day she let me tell.   Saturday 8th January.  The day I first heard her sweet voice.   I'm gonna go before I make you all sick. I'm not finished but she's not the only one that needs to stop before getting carried away.

And now for a word from our sponsors

No proper entry for today, but I have had a request that I cannot refuse.   I have been given something very special to post here from someone who wants a word with you all.

I want you to tell them that you aren't a complete fuck up and that your very wise girlfriend said that you were a liar when you said you were worthless cause no one is worthless...disillusioned but not worthless. that she also said you were funny and adorable and wonderful and incredible and that she decided to stop before she got too carried away.

Wow.

Grin

I'm sitting here with a stupid grin on my face and for once I feel truly happy. No rocks in sight to be shipwrecked on. I don't know what to say so I'll just go back to silent contemplation in a minute. Slight frustration caused by the fact that my palmtop isn't picking up email, but that doesn't dent the rapture. Only one cloud on the horizon - distance. But that cloud will dissipate given time

Harmony

mp3s of old JoJ tracks play on... I don't have enough tracks... but those I do have are quality... well quality songs anyway - the sound quality is diabolical... Damn, I feel all funny inside. Probably being a total tit. I'll find out soon enough. I hope. God I wish I wasn't so obsessive - how many times have I said that before? Many. Wonder if this version of the OS has the same limitations for applications as the old one... communications are better anyways - don't need to play about with enabling the different apps that need to access the serial port - dial access and keyboard and hotsync all living in harmony...

Keyboard

Well this is the first test of the keyboard. Seems to be working pretty good... Much easier than the handwriting recognition. Confusion reigns at the moment.   I think I've finally got this thing fully operational again after yesterday's fuck up. yay! My fingers are freezing here, and unfamiliar keyboard means lot of mistakes, still faster than the handwriting recognition though... Listening to my new mp3 player at the moment - very cool. I don't have enough mp3s yet though... Something tells me I will be doing some encoding to rectify that - the CD player is good, but this is a lot less bulky - I will probably get a good compilation on this thing and have the cd player for when the batteries are low... Bloody cold hands now - can't type any more - can't feel the keys... and so it ends...

Toothpicks

Bollocks. I was just about to field test my new keyboard and found that the crash I had on this thing yesterday wiped the driver. Oh well - add one more thing to the list of stuff that needs updating... That'll teach me to fuck about with something that's working - actually it won't.. Why are there so many beautiful people in the world? And why can't I just enjoy looking at them rather than get depressed by that fact. Whoops - better not mention depression or Crazy Jo will pounce on me and poke me with toothpicks until I cheer up... ::applies latex smile:: look - I'm happy - honest!

Image of me

Scabs ack venting.

meta-date: Sat Jan 1 15:16:00 2000

So many people have tried to tell me that this year will make a difference. Complete and utter bollocks but it's nice of them to try and cheer me up. People willing to listen to my problems and not complain. How can I still feel this alone with friends like that? Some of them have used me as a sounding board too - no details here, obviously, but some of the shit they have just makes me feel so petty - how can I winge when I have it so much easier than so many other people.

Tructutio sis sional motonalyzes azerman.

meta-date: Sat Jan 1 14:45:00 2000

It's the 21st century, so where's my damn rocket car? I could do with a teleporter too.