The Personal Pages of
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Journal
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Monday August 17, 1998 3:00AM A few things have been rattling around my cranium tonight. All the noise has kept me up. J I called Willie just a few hours ago. My first international call. (Oooo, Willie! You’re my first. Was it good for you?) It was good to hear his voice again after only a few short weeks, that have seemed an eternity. You know, talking with Willie was such a novelty, yet other people do the same thing every day. I get a pretty good percentage of my e-mail from international readers, so that’s old news. And Willie and I write back and forth a few times a week too. The phone, though was something else entirely. Anyway, he’s giving his notice at work later today in preparation for his trip to London next month. He’s arriving there on the same day Jeffrey starts school here. And with me starting a new job later this week, it seems like we three are together again, on a new journey, destination unknown. It still amazes me, modern telecommunications. I just picked up the phone, dialed 13 digits, and the phone rang in Willie’s parents’ house in Nicaragua. Well there was a little gimmickry involved too. MCI gave me 10 minutes free, domestic or international, on the calling cards that came when I changed carriers. Two lines, twenty minutes. I just had to hang-up and redial with the other card halfway through our call. Actually, we talked for the better part of an hour, so MCI still made money on the deal. Because the gimmick was with the calling card, and I was calling internationally, the MCI operator came on the line first to verify billing information. And she wanted me to be sure I knew I was calling Nicaragua. How do you accidentally dial 011-505-xxx-xxxx? Well, I guess there must be a 505 area code here in the states, so I suppose it could happen. From a security and toll-fraud standpoint, I guess it’s a good thing. Willie is jealous of the cable modem. His studies here covered two areas, telecommunications and computers, with a focus on the internet. His first question was, "What’s your bandwidth?" My answer, "1.5 megabits per second, the functional equivalent of a T-1." Willie: "Wow! I never thought I’d know someone with a T-1 right into their apartment!" It got me thinking. Does some kind of responsibility come with this bandwidth? I know I had originally thought of hosting the site right here from the apartment rather than leasing space on a server farm. The way Time-Warner has implemented things though, I get a new IP address with each login. Domain names need to be directed to a permanent IP address, so that option is out. I can’t possibly write more than I do, unless I give something up. Like sleep, work and social life. So maybe I’ve got to make the best of what I have. Maybe promote the site a little bit. And maybe work on my writing skills. One of the other things rattling around tonight, was the way I left last night’s entry. Without a bit of clarification, one could draw some conclusions I hadn’t intended. First, the part about my friends when I wrote, "I’m afraid that like me, my friends have already seen too many of our friends pass from this world to be greatly effected by one more." I don’t mean to guess what they might feel, or discount it. It’s just that after a while in the funeral-of-the-month club, you run out of tears. Fortunately, things have quieted a bit on that front. It also got me thinking about something someone wrote to me last week. We’d been writing back and forth on the subject of isolation. He wrote:
Frankly, I hope it stays that way for him. It’s consumed far too many good people. I dunno. I guess I feel cheated somehow. For the most part in the western world, people die of old age rather than disease. So many of our age-peers don’t know first-hand the pain of losing someone you love to disease so early in life. Of all the straight people I know, only one, my brother, has lost a friend to disease (not HIV), and only two, Jeffrey and a friend I’ve never mentioned here before, have lost children. That leads me to a report from PlanetOut this weekend. From the NewsPlanet headlines they e-mail daily to subscribers:
Check out the full story. If you‘ve never visited PlanetOut, take some time and look around the site. If you like what you see, join, it’s free. The other clarification I should make, regards Jeffrey and I. I’m slowly coming to terms with my feelings for him. Yes I had been hoping a "relationship" could develop. And since I have at least one, sometimes two, infatuations with the "unattainable" each year, I’m pretty used to it, and I know it passes with time. This week a couple of times I really felt different about him. Like he’s the brother I never had. (Okay, I have two biologically, but we’ve never been close.) And I sense our friendship deepening again. We’re each enjoying that. I guess that’s what brought on the conversation about what will happen when one of us dies. Just knowing that someone has such faith in your friendship that they’re planning so far in advance, is such an incredible feeling. And admitting that I’ve been thinking the same things too, well it made for a powerful moment. Friday night rush-hour traffic on the interstate wasn’t the best place to explore it. I’ll return to that subject with him soon. Maybe later today.
Monday August 17, 1998 11:00PM Didn’t get to it today, but we got a lot of other stuff talked out. Court didn’t go so well either. But we have a sentencing date in December at the end of the semester, so it’s not all bad. I’m tired. No sleep last night, long day today. Can't really proofread the entry above, so I'll post it anyway.
Saturday August 22, 1998 8:00PM I've been messing around on other PCs lately and discovered that not every PC has the fonts installed that I've used in designing the site. So the site doesn't always look the way I've intended. See "A word about fonts" at the bottom of the About the Site page. If after installing the suggested fonts you agree with me that the font, Verdana, is easier to read on-screen, here's how to change your browser's default font so that your browser will automatically use Verdana, unless the page designer has specified something else specifically.
If you're using an older browser, (check by selecting Help then About from your browser's menu) why not upgrade? Go
This week has had incredible ups and downs. I’m still deciding what to share and what to keep private. I’ll have something posted by tomorrow night. What I can share with no reservations is how things went at the new job this week. On Wednesday I started working for Ajilon Information Services as a consultant/contractor at the University of Rochester Medical Center working in the Information Services Department. I work with the ISD Customer Services team supporting about 6,000 users at Strong Memorial Hospital, the university’s School of Medicine, and over 30 off-site clinics and doctor’s offices.After training, I’ll spend about half my time on the ISD Help Desk fielding tech support calls from end-users. The rest of my time will be spent as on project work, and as an on-call technician visiting end-users at their desks to install software or solve those problems you can’t really handle over the phone. The facilities are great. Our department offices are way off the beaten path in the hospital which eliminates the problem of users dropping in unexpectedly. The cubies, although not spacious, are bigger than most others I’ve been placed in, and mine has a whole wall of windows on the south side of building. I get flooded with natural daylight all day long! J I’ve been issued a Dell PC with a 200MHz Pentium MMX, 3.0GB hard drive, CD-ROM, 17" monitor, and Windows NT Workstation 4.0. It’s the nicest PC I’ve ever had at work, although someone copped 32MB out of it before I started. L The people I work with are great. There are presently eight of us on the team, with one slot still open. Everyone seems helpful and cooperative. I guess you have to be if you work on the Help Desk. And the only comment I got about my rainbow-flag mouse pad was, "Hey, nice mouse pad. Was that here or did you bring it in with you?" Dress code is slacks, shirt and tie. I really prefer it that way. All I have to think about in the morning is which tie to wear since I usually wear a white shirt and black slacks anyway. And when you’re working with doctors and other medical professionals all day, it’s important to look as professional as they do out of professional respect and courtesy. Besides, when you walk down the halls dressed well and wearing a medical center ID badge, everyone moves out of your way. I’ll tell ya, "business casual" does not look good on me, so I’m glad to be rid of it. Chinos, (for example Dockers) make me look fat and you can never keep change in the pockets when you sit down. Maybe I’m just a bi-polar dresser. I look good and feel good in business wear and in casual wear. Anything in between and I’m uncomfortable and I look rumpled and fat. One of the best parts of working with the University are the shuttle busses. Parking in the hospital ramp garage is $5.00 per day. Parking passes for the staff parking lots are only $11.92 per month, but the contractor parking lot is a ˝ mile away across the river. When summer recess is over, I can pick up a free university shuttle right at the end of the block at the Memorial Art Gallery. I make one transfer at the River Campus, and get dropped right at the staff entrance of the hospital. Alternatively, (and during summer recess) I pick up the regular city bus ($1.25 fare) also at the end of the block, and it drops me right at the hospital’s main lobby. So far, I like taking the bus to work. There’s no traffic or parking hassles, and I can just sit back and enjoy the ride. Up to Mon
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