I owe someone an apology. I make it publicly. I made the accusation privately, except for the veiled reference in last night’s posting.

Neither of us has named names in his site. But how good can a public apology be without naming names? I don’t want to add fuel to the fire, so I won’t name the name. But if you read his pages, or have written him, you’ll recognize the handle.

He wrote me this morning, (in part):

Point out to me exactly where I "accuse [you] of wanting to gain access to you [sic] your little club."

Here’s what I wrote back a little while ago:

Subject: Olive Branch

I'm glad you pointed out the typo. I hate typos.

But I did re-read what you wrote on the 18^th. And sure enough, except for the welcome to the community, there are no other specific references to me. But after that, my defenses were fully up on red alert. Someone hits you once . . .

When I was in that defensive posture, I was the one who put myself in the group of site owners you chastised later in the posting. I assumed it, because my site has come along after yours. I find no specific evidence that you put me there.

My apologies, both privately and publicly.

I regret the timing's bad. I'm moving the site to a new server and am unable to update the "old" one. Until InterNIC gets around to pointing the domain name to the new server later this week, you can get to it by IP address.

[Deleted]

Give me a couple hours to think, write and post it.

In retrospect, unless you heard about it from [deleted], I doubt you even knew of my site's existence, even though you inspired it and invited me to write it.

I owe you a second apology for that. I'm sorry. I should have written you sooner.

Yours,

B

I think I mentioned my sleep disorder causes me to tense up instead of relax when I sleep. Hence the pain. And I have vivid 70mm Cinemascope Techicolor Dolby Surround Sound dreams. Really wild ones tonight. So I knew I’d been out for a while.

Got something to drink, took my meds, and a handful of Tylenol. Glanced at the PC. Dialog box in the middle of the screen saying I’d been disconnected. I’d never logged-off after checking mail! I hope my account isn’t locked-out. RPA doesn’t like it when you do that.

Third PC error of the day. Although the most minor. Man my shoulders hurt. And I’ve downed a liter of water in the last 15 minutes. Time for another already!

Damn. There’s the reason I passed out! I stopped at the grocery store on the way home. I was out of snacks and needed some real food too. Bought a box of snack crackers I’d never tried before, looking for a change of pace, and they were on sale. I never checked the ingredients.

MSG, monosodium glutamate. Glutamate is a neurotransmitter. One of the many chemicals the brain uses. When I eat something with MSG, my system doesn’t break it down. Passes the glutamate directly into the bloodstream, and the ol’ gray matter just sucks it up. Knocks me right out. Explains the sudden urge for a major nap. Sedation.

So let me tell you about a near (thank heavens) major disaster I had at work today. It’s tech stuff if you wanna skip over it. The project I’m on is to migrate all the PCs from Windows 3.11 and NetWare, to Windows NT, Workstation and Server. I’ve done hundreds if not thousands of ‘em. Old hat.

Gone are the days when a tech shows up with a bunch of disks and CDs and reloads and configures the system by hand. We use imaging software now. You set up a master PC, configured exactly the way you want it, right down to options settings in Word, Excel and Internet Explorer. Then you create an "image" of that PC on the LAN. After that, you can churn out hundreds of perfect carbon-copies of that master PC.

So I just show up, with a single boot-disk. Record some information, copy your personal files up to the LAN, reboot and blast the image onto the disk. The image loads at anywhere from 10MB to 20MB a minute depending on LAN traffic. We’re loading about 300MB and it usually takes about 20 minutes. Then just setup the printer connections, copy the personal files back, and you’re done. Par time, 1 hour. Mindless stuff. No real skill required. Anyone, and I do mean anyone, can do it. That’s why the pay is so low on this contract.

So my first "victim" after lunch, is a data quality auditor. Swing in, run through the pre-imaging checklist, pop the boot-disk in, watch it start, then bop down to the data center to move her e-mail from the old MS-Mail server on NetWare to the new MS-Exchange server on NT. Conveniently, this also takes about 20 minutes.

In the middle of migrating her e-mail, it hit me. Mistake number one. I’d never copied her data files off. People get a bit, shall we say, testy, when you wipe out all their data. I could only imagine what a data quality auditor would do. I finished migrating the mail, preparing for my execution. Within the first few seconds after imaging starts, whatever was on the hard-disk is gone, so there was no point in not finishing the work with the mail.

My direct report-to had gone home sick after lunch, the next management level is vacant, so that left the big boss that I’d have to deal with after the user and her management. I packed my personal belongings so I could leave quickly after being discharged. Feeling grim, I hoofed it back upstairs to confess my sins to the user. A big ol’ A prompt was on her screen. Shoulda been an F prompt. Mistake two. I’d selected the wrong network card drivers when I booted from the floppy. Wrong drivers = no network connection = no image to pull down from the LAN.

Stupid mistake two, and not waiting until I noticed it loaded the wrong drivers, saved me from stupid mistake number one. I still have to ‘fess up to the boss though.

Well, it’s the Ice Queen’s birthday today. What do you get for a woman who has everything and finds fault in anything?

And then at the bar, a friend (?) said, "I love it when you have your hair down. Your look like Kirstie Allie." This kinda set the tone for the night. "You mean I look like a fat woman who can’t keep a husband?"

I laughed so hard I my face hurt, (OK, so ya had to be there.) Meanwhile, this incredibly cute guy is cruising me from around the corner of the bar. He usually plays pool all night, and we kinda hang around there checking out his butt. Hmmm. Laughing must really look good on me! Have to keep that one in my pocket, so to speak.

I can’t believe work is so laid back. It’s almost like not having to work at all. I pre-loaded a couple of PCs this morning, installed some software for users this afternoon, then for the last hour and a half, we stripped a PS/2 Model 55. Took apart the hard drive and everything. (Don't try this at home.) And this was the whole department, including the "big boss." Easily $300/hr of people ripping this thing apart. Apparently they all figure that since they’re not going to have jobs in six months, why bother.

So I went over to my parent’s for dinner last night. I said "fuck it" and just got the Ice Queen a card. I still came home with soup and cupcakes. She does a pretty good job with the soup, but it IS my recipe, and like all good cooks, I don’t give out ALL the details.

Of course, the flaw-o-matic was on and set to maximum. They’re redecorating the master bedroom. And, thanks to the flaw-o-matic, I know where every defect is. When they replaced windows, they actually filled in where the windows used to be and put new ones in. Then they put in new skylights. In the walk-in closet. How many people do you know with a skylight in the closet? Must be genetic. The landlord wants to take pictures of my closet, and my parents put a skylight in theirs.

I got Mom good though. They put in a kinda lilac carpet, painted the walls in this cool color that looks either gray, periwinkle or lilac depending on the light. She’s rearranged the furniture around the new windows, then complains that the chair she usually keeps her bathrobe on is visible from the door. I looked and said "And particularly in that aqua. That’s just too tacky!" Aqua chenille bathrobe? What happens to people when they get old?

The last couple of nights, I read the new book by Dean Koontz. "Fear Nothing." What a read. I’m back up to 100 pages an hour! Feels real good. I really like his style, and the storylines are great. And I started "Airframe" by Michael Crighton today as my lunchtime book. Awesome read. I regret having waited until it came out in paperback.

I went out to Muther’s last Saturday. Yeah, two nights in a row. Anyway, I liked the music better than Fridays. Have to see if the same holds true tonight. The crowd is a lot different on Saturdays too. More really cute guys. So, maybe something’ll come up.

I’ve gotten tired of posting to the new site, but nobody being able to see it. I don’t know what’s going on over at InterNIC. All my site modification requests go unanswered. So, I’m deleting all the files at the old site, and posting a single page with a link to the new one. Of course if you’re reading this, you know that by now.

I can’t lie. It’s not in me. When I try, I turn all red and sweaty, so people know. Because of that, I don’t even try. Some people think I’m brutally honest. I don’t think there’s anything brutal about the truth. Lies, now that’s brutal.

I can give the occasional white lie, you know, someone asks "How ya doin’" and the automatic response is "Oh, fine, and you?" That sort of thing. But beyond that . . .

So I’m at Muther’s tonight, Johnny found me just after I checked my coat. He apologized endlessly for not calling back earlier tonight. He’s apparently thinking seriously about moving out from his parent’s house. He asked about rent in my building and if there were any open apartments. My guess is that they’ve become very dependent on him and it’s becoming intrusive. He didn’t really wanna talk about it, so it’s only a guess.

After a while, I went to get another drink. It was really busy at the bar so I had to wait a bit. Meanwhile Willie-my-fuck-buddy comes in, slides in to the bar next to me. We talk, get our drinks, I go back to where Johnny and I had been standing, not five feet from the bar. He’s gone. Willie comes over and we’re talking a while. He’s all done with coursework, just has to finish his thesis and find a job before his visa expires. He’s been working real hard this week and needed to get out just for the break.

Johnny wanders back, (if you can wander in there when it’s packed to the rafters.) Now this is awkward. My fuck-buddy and the guy I’d like to be my boyfriend are right there. What do you do? I introduced them. The three of us talked a while. Willie finished his drink and decided to go home and get some sleep.

So Johnny asks me, "Do you like him?"

Yeah I like him. If he were going to stick around after his thesis, I think we could become really good friends. Things work out in the sack pretty well too. But I don’t think either of us sees the other as lover material. Which is fine, for both of us. Any relationship, be it friends, fuck-buddies or lovers needs to be balanced. Willie and I are balanced in that regard, so it works out.

So what do I say to Johnny? "Yeah, kinda" was the only thing that came to mind. He pressed. And "Well, we’re fuck-buddies" came out. Oh good. Now what do I do?

Well, we played cat-and-mouse all night after that. I did get the opportunity to ask "Does that bother you?" and he said "No, as long as you’re careful." Somehow, I get the feeling there’s a little more to it than that.

I’ve just run some performance testing on the site. (Mentally subtract one hit from the counters. It was me.) I cleared my cache, so everything had to come down from the server. The graphics-intensive pages are loading in the low to mid 40s, and the mainly text pages are loading in the mid to upper 60s. (Measurements are reported in "kbps", (kilobits per second,) just like your modem. The higher the better.)

Hiway also has a lot of neat stuff for site owners. They’ve got an extensive tech-support area including several webs, and a listserver. There’s an online site control panel where I can configure just about every last little detail. Things like e-mail accounts and auto-responders, FTP access, password control, and stuff like that. It’ll come in handy if I ever decide to resell space on my account.

I don’t foresee ever using all of my 25Mb of disk space or all of the monthly 1GB of data transfer. Yeah, if I were to do a porno site, both those figures would be a little cramped. But right now, the site’s about 3MB in size, and last month, as near as I can tell with no real stats from 9Net, I served up about 200MB of data transfer. Plenty of room. I should have a better idea of traffic patterns this month.

Time for a nap.

Yet outwardly, they all look different. It’s not "type" in the physical attributes that draws me in. It’s something I’m just not consciously aware of. Affect? Maybe. Is it as simple as that? The affect of the wounded psyche attracts me to a guy? And it’s not just with regular guys. The rentboys and strippers that attract me all seem to have it too. Although in those lines of work, it’s more or less an occupational hazard.

And then there’s communication. I ask questions, I get "I don’t wanna talk about it" answers. How do you have a conversation with anyone, let alone get to know them, if they don’t want to talk about themselves?

How do I find guys who won’t return a simple phone call? It’s frustrating. I feel manipulated. "Call me." I do. I wait. "I’m sorry I didn’t call back." I forgive. "Call me." Repeat endlessly.

And if I hear another "I think you’re a really nice guy" I think I’m gonna shoot someone! The kiss of death, nice guy. I follow the "do unto others" bit, and get shot down every time. Am I supposed to be abusive, thoughtless, uncaring? Is that the key to finding the right guy? God I sure hope not. I can’t be any of those things.