Journal

Before I forget: In case you missed it, I did two little updates last Sunday. And I thought of another little self-destructive thing I do when I’m depressed, I don’t pay my bills. The money’s in the checkbook, I just don’t get around to writing the checks.

Anyway, it’s interesting how different those of us with journals are when we e-mail. The journals are really only a little glimpse of who we are. It’s only one thing we’re thinking at that moment. We frequently write about our concerns, and because that’s all you see of us, not the whole picture, it can sometimes seem that we’re always in the throes of some issue or another. Of the guys I read and have corresponded with, every single one is a lot more well rounded that you might think from their journal. Even me.

So, what’s the well rounded yours truly been up to this past week? The usual combination of the interesting and the mundane. We’ll skip the mundane stuff and go right to the interesting stuff.

Yesterday, for instance, was incredibly interesting. The last e-mail I sent out before getting ready for work, I closed with "Off to the corporate battlefield!" Well, the guns roared from on high. Like real high. Lessee, there’s me, my report-to, his boss, (who signs my timecard), his boss and then his boss, who reports to the CEO. There’s a chain of command beyond that too, because the Student Loan business is part of the Mortgage business, which is, well, you get the picture.

As you may recall, Citibank Student Loan Corporation is moving everything except Administration, Sales and Marketing, and Technology (that’s me) out to South Dakota. Well some technology guys from South Dakota are coming in next week to install some of their software on some of our PCs. Since they hadn’t told anyone about it or asked how it may impact our PCs, network or operations, all the bosses got, well, a bit more than pissed.

So the word was lock-down all the workstations as tight as you can as fast as you can, by Monday. From a system administrator’s viewpoint, things are pretty open now at CSLC. At yesterday’s pow-wow, I came up with the workaround for every stop they came up with, even with an ordinary user login having no administrative privileges. Things are that open.

The bottom line is that it’ll become a pissing contest between our technology department and theirs. And I don’t put my money on us winning. After all, we’re just a subsidiary of a subsidiary, managing a measly $10 Billion in assets. After the fallout, I expect there’ll be a lot of files named RESUME.DOC flowing out of the technology department. Which will leave more work for contract help like me, so I’m not worried. The nice thing about being low man on the totem pole is that you always have work.

Somehow, I can’t imagine not working at something. A lot of people dream of living a life of leisure either at retirement or after winning the lotto. When the circumstances are right, like they are at Citibank, I genuinely enjoy working. Back when Vince and I were together, I genuinely enjoyed building our business. At least until things got a little lop-sided.

If I were handed a nice chunk of change, to the point I wouldn’t have to work (remember we’re imagining here), sure, I’d spend some wisely, spend some foolishly, give some away, and invest some. But I’d either start a business or buy my way into one with the rest. It’s not that I’m a workaholic (although I was at one time,) or that my self-identity is wrapped up in what I do. It’s just that I find it fun, and at the same time, intellectually stimulating.

I need something to keep my mind occupied, or else it wanders off and gets in trouble.

What’s occupying my mind right now, is the need for an after dinner nap.

I’ve not wanted to jinx anything so I haven’t written about it, except for the sex part. You see, he’s been here for two years doing his Masters at RIT. Smart man. And he’s been here on a Fulbright Scholarship. All school expenses paid, plus stipend for living expenses. Very smart man.

There were only two or three scholarships awarded to students from his country, (Nicaragua). Who knows how many applicants there were, but the Fulbright people interviewed over 300 of them. He made it through several rounds of testing and interviews over the course of more than six months before being awarded the scholarship. Did I mention he was smart? Tenacious too!

I’m not sure if I have all the details right, but here’s the gist of it. He had until today to find a job in his field of study because his student visa expires at the end of the month. Otherwise, he had to move back to Nicaragua. Of course Fulbright would pick up the tab for that too. But Nicaragua isn’t the most gay-friendly country in the world, and the unemployment rate is very high, 30 to 40 percent, I think.

On the other hand, he’s been entertaining job offers from all over the US, so we knew he’d nail down something. But he’d have to move away from here anyway.

That’s been weighing heavily on our minds for the past couple of months. Although we’ve tried not to let it bother us too much, it’s always been there, almost palpable. A few times in the last month he’s called and stopped over just to talk. I could tell just by looking at him that he’s been very concerned, even though most of the time he would talk about anything else. And when he did, it was about how awful it would be to have to got back in the closet.

Holy cow! I forgot to ask if he’d called his parents or his sister yet. Well his sister lives in London. It’s about 4:00AM there, so I doubt she knows yet. He must have called his parents though, it’s still only 9:00 there.

Oh now we have two reasons to celebrate. His birthday was last Friday, and I had promised to take him out, but he was leaving Saturday for Manhattan, and didn’t return until late Tuesday. But when will we have time?

Former President Violetta Barrios de Chamorro of Nicaragua arrives in town on Sunday. He will be translating for her and attending all the official functions too. He bought two new suits for the occasion. He’s still putting the finishing touches on his thesis. And as a Teacher’s Assistant, he has lots of papers to grade too. Then graduation on the 23^rd, and he starts work on June 1^st. We’ll have to fit it in somehow.

I’m so happy! And it may just open a new chapter for us. I’ve tried, and done a pretty good job, of keeping my emotions out of our involvement. Still, we’ve become good friends. And now I can say it, I think I’m falling for him. Oh gosh, I’m gonna cry.

Nonetheless, I had a delightful evening. I decided I was going to have a good time even before I got into the shower. When I got to Muther’s, I successfully avoided getting tattooed at the door, only to find out they gave you a ticket for the first drink free. Story of my life. At least I don’t have to SANDBLAST my hand tomorrow.

Maybe I haven’t told you, and you wouldn’t know it by what I write, but I’m a really shy guy. I mean PAINFULLY shy. In my younger days it wasn’t a problem because guys were always hitting on me. Of course, I went home with almost every one of them. How do you spell slut?

Now, firmly ensconced in middle-age, well, one has to take the initiative. Especially with this hair, or really, the absence of it. (Although I was told tonight that I’d look really hot if I shaved it all off. Hmmm. Gotta think about that.) Anyway, I promised myself that I’d talk to at least these three different guys next time I saw them. Three completely different types of guys, but I find each one attractive, both physically and the, I’m not sure or the right word, attitude, affect, whatever, that they give off.

The first, I refer to as my raven-haired beauty. He’s tall, thin, longish raven-black hair and skin that’s white as the driven snow. A study in contrasts. He always hangs out, wearing a black t-shirt and faded jeans, looking kinda lost. Well tonight, by the time I got around to him, (only ten minutes after I got my first drink), his (apparently new) boyfriend came in and joined him. They held hands and talked all night on the patio. It’s the first time I ever saw him smile. I’m glad for him.

The second, I call the Arrow Shirt Guy. Always wears a striped button-down oxford shirt, nicely pressed, conservative corporate-style medium brown hair, (Do ya get the feeling I have a fixation on hair here?), and I’ve never seen him talk to anyone in the bar. Tonight, I noticed something else. He always has his car keys in his hand. At first I though, "Oh, he’s waiting for someone to finish their drink, and then they’re leaving." A natural enough assumption.

Two hours later, he’s still carrying around his car keys. Hmmm. Self–defense weapon, or showing off? Well, it's obviously not one of those HUGE keys for a Lexus or an Infiniti. So I have no clue. I mean he’s wearing jeans, they have pockets, don’t they?

So finally later he walked by and I couldn’t see the car keys. So I asked him, "Where are your car keys?" He says, "What?" And I said, "I’ve seen you all night with your car keys in your hand. What happened?" All right. Admittedly not a good opening line, but I was curious, okay? He whips ‘em out of his pocket, waves them in my face for a second, and walks away. Do I know how to pick ‘em or what?

The third guy, falls somewhere between the first two. Not exactly corporate conservative, but not radical either. (Medium-brown hair again, okay?) Well I never saw him off the dance floor, so I never got a chance to say anything to him. But, I noticed him noticing me, so there’s always tomorrow.

Actually, there’s a fourth guy, but this one’s way out in left field. Skinny little blond twink, barely old enough to be in the bar. Great nellie thing too, but (s)he always seems to be laughing and enjoying himself. On the other hand, I only ever see him there with this HUGE black girl. So what’s going on here? They’re inseparable, so I guess I’d have to bed them both. No, don’t think so.

Thank heavens Johnny was there, (oh here we go again!), and in an equally festive mood. By the way, due to the humidity tonight, his hair was REALLY big. Anyway, it was really hot and sweaty inside, so we got chairs out on the patio.

DIGRESSION: Once upon a time, Muther’s was a lesbian bar called  the 40 South Union. (That's the street address.  How boring.)  They put in a dance floor and DJ booth and suddenly all us queens drove the gurrls out. Dancing is, after all, sports for faggots. Apparently, Rochester’s last remaining lesbian bar has closed. And the mixed crowd at Muther’s has gotten more mixed.

Well initially I was HORRIFIED!  But later I accepted seeing topless lesbians on the dance floor. Tits bouncing all around, uh! All I could do was STARE! What’s a self-respecting faggot like me doing staring at bouncing tits on a lesbian? Well, the guys take their shirts off, so why not the gurrls? END OF DIGRESSION.

So it turns out, that Johnny’s a "Muther’s patio virgin". He’d never been out there before. Hmmm. I got a patio cherry, and never knew it! Anyway, it’s nice there. Sandwiched between the bar and the building next door, a couple of nice flowering trees, some chairs, tables, lights and whatnot. And for some reason tonight, the lingering fragrance of dogshit. Well, ya can’t have everything!

Cable modems are coming to Rochester soon. Road Runner service from Time-Warner. The beta testing starts later this month, with rollout starting in July. I signed up to be a beta tester almost two years ago when they first announced it. I hope I’m still on the list.

If you’ve never worked in a big company with direct network access to the Internet, you have no idea how fast it can be. We’re talking megabits per second, not kilobits. It’s a big difference from 28.8kbps (28,800), or even the 56kbps (56,000) connection I have now. Theoretical maximum throughput on a cable modem is 10mbps, (10,000,000)! That’s fast. Even if you only get 1/10^th of that, it’s a million bits per second. And, just like your cable TV, or the LAN at work, the connection is always there. No dialing, just turn on the PC, and click on your browser.

I’m looking maybe four to six months in the future here, so a lot could change between now and then. But here’s what I’m thinking.

If things work out the way I’d like, I’ll be able to set up a web server right here in my apartment. That would be cool. Not only my own domain, but my own server. It’s already cool to tell people my site’s at brucew.com, (no GeoCites secret decoder ring crap!)

It would be WAY COOL to answer the question, "So who’s your web-hosting service?" with something like, "Oh, I do my own web-hosting. The web-server is in my closet between the shoes and the laundry basket." I’ll have to put it in the closet. I live in a one-room apartment, and I’m not going to listen to the cooling fans and the hard drives whine 24 hours a day.

Of course it’ll mean a few more wires running around the baseboards. But I already have the cable TV wire, two phone lines, and the wires to the rear-channel Dolby Surround speakers running all around the room. So how much are a couple of Category 5 LAN cables going to spoil the décor?

I already have a lot of the parts I need to build a server. And the planned upgrades to my PC will pretty much fill it out. I’ve got spare keyboards, a ton of mice, a couple of network cards, and the Pentium 90 I took out of my PC when I put the Pentium 180 MMX OverDrive chip in. The only thing holding me back from adding more RAM to the PC, is that I don’t have anything to do with the old SIMMs. And I’ve got my eye on that new Seagate 9.1GB Ultra-ATA hard drive, and the ATI All In Wonder Pro graphics card. So hardware-wise, I just have to get a cheap Socket5 motherboard, power supply and cabinet.

Software’s no problem either. I already have Windows NT Workstation 4.0. With the traffic I get, the ten simultaneous user limitation of Workstation will be no problem. I’ve already got NT Peer Web Services (250 user limit) and FrontPage 98 server extensions running, so I can test my site without going online. And I’ve got a copy of Network Associates PC Firewall to prevent unauthorized access to my PC from the Internet.

I’ll need e-mail server software. I like Eudora Pro 4.0 as an e-mail client, so I’d probably go with their server software too. Proxy and DNS services should be available from Time-Warner with the cable modem access. If not, I’ll just have to get them from Microsoft too.

So the web-server will look something like this: Pentium 90, 64MB of RAM, a 1GB hard-drive for the operating system and programs, and a 2GB hard-drive for web pages and data, all in a mid-tower case. It’ll be running Windows NT Workstation 4.0, NT Peer Web Services, FrontPage 98 server extensions, Network Associates PC Firewall, and Eudora WorldMail server.

Now lets look at the costs. First, the hardware upgrades I’ve been wanting for my PC anyway.  Four 32MB SIMMs, $250, Seagate ST39140A hard disk, $420, Ultra-ATA drive controller, $60, ATI All In Wonder Pro with 8MB video RAM, $300. Total: $1,030.

You could cook the numbers and say that all the hand-me-down parts going into the server are free. But it’s coming out of my pocket anyway, so I’ve gotta include it.

Next, stuff required for the server. Case, $70, power supply, $30, motherboard, $100, and maybe a used monitor for about $100. I’ll also need the e-mail server software, $160. Total, $460.

Finally, I’ll need an Ethernet hub for about $150. So we’re looking at maybe $1,700 all together. Actually, that’s pretty cheap for a web server.

The Road Runner cable modem service is $40 a month. But, I can drop my dial-up ISP service through RPA, the web hosting service at Hiway, and the second phone line. Each costs me about $25 a month, $75 all together. So my monthly running costs will be $35 less.

The math doesn’t look so good at first. Spending $1,700 to save $35 a month. That’s a 48 month payback period, and it doesn’t include the extra electricity to run the server 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

But, here’s the beauty part. I’ll be able to sell web-hosting service. Let’s say I sell my services for a little less than half of what I pay now at Hiway. That would be $10 a month for hosting, and a $20 sign-up charge for account administration and set-up. With just five other sites hosted from my server, that’s $100 in set-up charges, and $50 a month for hosting fees. Brings the payback down to 19 months. That I can live with.

Oh screw it, I’m going to bed. Alone, again, naturally.

Anyway, had a nice lazy day today. It was warm, but threatening rain all day. A nice day to just lounge around. So you don’t think I’m a one trick pony with regard to music, when I flicked on Music Choice this morning, I changed channels from 2, the dance music channel, to channel 30 so I could catch some 80’s Alternative.

Every day from 8:00 until 3:00 is the show they call RetroActive. You’ll hear anything that falls under the umbrella category of Alternative on this show. Stuff that leans towards punk, or dance, or metal, or pop. And a lot of obscure things too. I’ve always disliked commercials and chatter with my music, so until I got Music Choice, I listened to high-school and college FM stations. And in the 80s, it was all alternative. So it’s not only music I enjoy, but there are memories associated with I too.

After a while, it dawned on me that I wasn’t really reading my book. I was paying more attention to, and enjoying, the music even more. Besides, reading seemed like too much activity for such a lazy day. Since I hadn’t even folded up the bed, it was an easy decision to make. I put down my book, hopped back into bed with my remote, propped myself up with pillows and cranked the tunes.

A lot of people tell me I should get a bigger apartment. Maybe move up to a one-bedroom or something. But a one room apartment has distinct advantages. One of them is that I never have to decide whether stay in the living room, lie on the couch and listen to the good stereo or watch the good TV, or go to the bedroom, lie in bed and watch the little TV or listen to the crummy stereo. Since it’s all one room, the decision simply becomes, should the bed be folded out, or folded up?

And quite frankly, having the stereo at the foot of the bed and the Dolby Surround speakers at the head of the bed is quite a luxury. And it’s fun to feel the beat hit the bottoms of your feet, and have the whole bed vibrate along with it. So I spent the afternoon listening to music and watching a baseball game. After all, it’s cute guys with big sticks. J Is this the life, or what?

You know, you never realize exactly how stupid most TV commercials are until you’ve seen them without sound. Try it sometime. Turn off the sound on the TV, and turn on the stereo. Suddenly, instead of being just plain annoying, they become incredibly stupid. And people get paid big bucks to turn out that stuff. Only in America!

Back when Vince-the-ex and I still ran the business together, I always made sure that the audio and video portions of our commercials could stand alone. The best way to be sure the images are right, and convey the message you want, is to watch the tape without audio. And in case someone left the room to get a snack when our commercials aired, I wanted to be sure the audio would carry the message alone too. Put ‘em together, and it’s like two for the price of one. Making four new commercials every year was the most fun we had in business. And Krista, our producer, always got it right.

Anyway, when RetroActive ended at three, and it was the bottom of the fifth in a game that had been decided in the top of the first, the next most logical thing to do, was take a nap. I was just trying to decide whether to get up or nap a little longer when Willie called around five. He wanted to come over, so I said sure. And the bed was folded out anyway . . . J

He brought over a CD he wanted me to hear, and we talked about his trip to Manhattan last weekend. We also talked about his big day tomorrow. That’s when former President Chamorro of Nicaragua comes to town. Actually, her flight arrives at 11:30 tonight. As it turns out, Willie has been acting as a Protocol Officer in the preparations for the visit too. Except for a couple of hours tomorrow afternoon, he’ll be with her all day acting as translator. He gets paid and fed too. There’s a breakfast, luncheon with the press and the official dinner tomorrow night.

After fooling around a bit, we got around to talking about us. I can’t think of a better way to put it than I did in an e-mail reply to Larry:

We broached the subject tonight.  He said, "Well, you know you're not the boyfriend I'm looking for."  I'm okay with it.  I'm not holding a torch for him. 

We still feel very close.  We'll continue seeing each other, and we'll continue looking for boyfriends.  And I know that sometimes what we're looking for isn't the best thing for us, or doesn't turn out the way you think.  And he still has some wild oats to sow.

Anyway, I kinda know where he is right now.  He's learning and enjoying the experience of being out.  He's only had two years to come to terms and come out.  Because of the situation in his country, he still has a lot of shame, guilt, isolation and internalized homophobia to work through.  It's been fun to experience the changes he's been going through over the past six months.  I think it'll be fun to watch his growth continue.

And that, kids, just about says it. *Sigh*

Will ya look at this!  Four postings, 31K in FrontPage, eight pages in Word, all since Friday.  Some hiatus don’t cha think?