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Journal
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Tuesday December 29, 1998 10:30AM The sunrise this morning was beautiful. Large and orange with just enough cirrus clouds for interest. "Humph", said Jeffrey. You can't really blame him. We were up until after 4:00 this morning, and I don't think anyone likes to be roused from a nice warm bed after less than three hours and have to venture out into the cold morning to do battle with the other commuters. And of course, he has to surrender to jail tonight. So many things today. So many "last times" today. Our last night together, our last sunrise, our last shared cigarette in the car on the drive to work, our last kiss in front of the staff smoking outside Patient Discharge, our last ... so many "our lasts". Thank heavens this place was a zoo for the first hour of the morning, for the tears were right there, ready, willing and able to flow ... Last night, we finally got it back in sync. Joint efforts and teamwork went flawlessly without need for verbal communication, or even gestures. Our psychic connection was stronger and richer than ever before. We knew what the other was thinking, sometimes before we knew what we were thinking ourselves. We've never been able to see each other's actual thoughts before. Yet somehow, he doesn't get it that my sentence starts today as well ... I'm on eggshells trying not to let this day degrade to the petty bickering, through the arguments and finally to the fights that characterized each of the aborted trips to the jail in October and November. It's worse than the last times, not only because I've been there and know the direction his mood will be moving and how he'll bait me and everyone else around him until we feel as bad or worse than he does. But for the first time I can see his thoughts and emotions. And I fear that he can see mine. What I see is far worse than I ever imagined, and it tears me up inside. What if that pain is reflected back to him? What if he can see my pain and anguish? And why, WHY, WHY is it that now of all times, I can see not just his spirit, his core being, but his thoughts and feelings as well? This is a "gift" I did not ask for and don't know how to return. It's not as easy as walking into JC Penney with an ugly tie ... And all the servers are back up, and the phones have calmed down and all I have now is the waiting until noon. Why did I take the afternoon off? Why won't a server or network catastrophe happen to take my mind off the pain ...
Wednesday December 30, 1998 1:00AM The electric bolt on the door retracts, the door opens and the deputy steps out, putting on his gloves. He performs the pat-down search, and respectfully steps aside. Debbie gets a final hug and kiss, I get a final hug. The dep carries in the same white trashbag we packed six weeks ago, and a large manila envelope of stuff accumulated since then. I say to the dep, "This is the only best friend I have. Please take good care of him." He replies, "We have many times before." And with that, my best friend, still holding my hand, backed into the doorway, and pulled it shut behind him. The electric bolt whined and clanked into place. My sentence of loneliness has begun …
Thursday December 31, 1998 At work To the several guys I owe e-mail replies to: I've not forgotten you. I'm hoping the three-day weekend will give me the time to reply. The questions and comments I've received lately are tremendous. Not only do you help me clarify my thoughts and feelings, but just having the support is ... gee I dunno ... uplifting (?). Things went really well yesterday morning in City court. I sure don't like seeing Jeffrey in "county tans", but at least in City court they don't bring him in shackled. Besides looking somewhat disheveled, (they only let the inmates shower every-other day, no personal care items are allowed in from the outside, and he can't buy a comb at the commissary until next week), he looked quite hungover. Not surprising since he consumed several 40oz Red Bulls and the better part of a liter of Bacardi Gold before checking in. Anyway, the judge apparently hadn't recorded in her notes one of the restrictions she was going to place on his sentence. So instead of running consecutive, her sentence can run concurrent. By my calculations, his earliest possible out-date is March 12th. There are complicating factors and personal issues which I won't discuss now, but will certainly extend things beyond that. But these are future issues. As things stand right now, 3/12/99 is the date. However, I'm projecting July 10th. Best of all, as far as I'm concerned, is that I had a bail refund check in-hand within ten minutes of his sentencing! My bank has a branch right across the street, so I cashed the check, put his $50 from the bail into his commissary account, and went GROCERY SHOPPING! I even got a roll of quarters for LAUNDRY! Pox on the Town of Brighton! When I checked with their court clerk's office on Tuesday, they told me it would be next Wednesday at the earliest before I could see a bail refund check from them. Just so you know, they keep a 3% service charge, and $95.00 in surcharges. We had been concerned about his being able to call me from the jail. As you may recall from this past summer, inmates can only call out from special phones which automatically place a collect-call, disconnect after 15 minutes and only work between certain hours. We initially had problems with this, but eventually things were straightened out. But, I've never been invoiced for any of the calls he placed this past summer, nor am I able to receive collect calls from local public phones. So imagine my surprise when he called last night! After talking about his hangover and how things went in court, he reported that they had let him keep everything he had taken in with him. He was "pushing the envelope" on a few things, but everything passed muster with the deps. So he already has all his art supplies and everything. I won't have to go shopping for coloring books again! And he has his preferred brand and quality of colored pencils and won't be forced into using the crummy ones from the commissary. After court yesterday, they moved him from Reception to the Mezzanine Dorm, the same one he was in this summer. (Some of the same guys are still there!) During the course of the move, his bag ripped, and out dropped the Orajel he had smuggled in. It was confiscated. So the toothache which has been driving him nuts, (and trust me, it's NOT a long trip) for the past week is now going unmedicated and untreated until he can see the jail dentist sometime next week. Anyway, what I found most touching was how happy he was that he got to keep his favorite photograph of us. It's one of the four I have on my wall here at work. This one, taken at the beach this past June. (They're all on the Pix page too.) I didn't know he had even packed it. [deleted] Now, I have to report what's just about the strangest turn of events ever in my life. Jeffrey's girlfriend, Debbie, is now living with me. Yeah, I know. I'm still shaking my head in disbelief too. As you recall, things have been, uh, well, strained between us. It took months for her to believe that Jeff and I weren't fucking like bunnies. She has always been jealous of the time he and I spend together. And remember that time in August when she came after me with a steak knife? Most recently, during my December hiatus, she turned to attacking my car. One day she put her fist THROUGH the front passenger door glass. Before that was even fixed, she tried to kick out the windshield, (still waiting for a new one of those). A few days after that, she had it impounded, again. I had her arrested for criminal mischief after the windshield incident, and tried, unsuccessfully, to get a restraining order preventing her from phoning me or having any contact whatsoever with any of my property. She has been staying at my place since Christmas Eve. She has Jeff's set of keys. With any luck, she'll be out by the third when she (allegedly) either gets a new apartment here, or joins some Christian Fellowship program for addicted mothers and their children in Syracuse. Love, and grief, make strange bedfellows. Before you EVEN get any ideas, she brought her own bedding, sleeps on the floor, and I sleep on the couch. Apologies to the "fairer" sex (and their admirers), but for me it's creepy enough to have a female in house. Don't even THINK about one in my bed. In any event, I doubt I'll be updating again today. The entire reason I started this entry was to pass on what I thought was the most nicely worded, and appropriate, New Year's greeting. Originally from my friend michael (of the broken shift key J ) in Ohio: may '99 be a truly new year for you. Amen.
Friday January 1, 1999 11:00PM I don’t have a profound New Year’s entry like so many guys. I tend not to use the calendar to decide when I want or need to reflect, make changes, or do something special. When the time is right, the time is right, and fuck the calendar. I do observe some of the traditions though. Jeffrey, (no doubt accidentally,) left just enough Red Bull in his last 40oz in my fridge to fill two wine glasses. Debbie and I toasted the new year, ourselves and Jeffrey at midnight. For the first time in months my home is once again alcohol-free. More importantly, it’s also pot-free and cocaine-free. I’ve not had much sleep since Sunday night. An hour or two here and there. I usually need more sleep than most people, ten hours or so a night. Of course this runs counter to society’s current norms and I’m frequently accused of being either lazy or escaping reality. Reality IS that my body and mind don’t work well on less than ten hours. Yet stress, emotions, and yes, the occasional Danger-Boy, conspire to keep me perpetually sleep-deprived. This morning I was finally able to get some shut-eye. Still not enough mind you, but it’s a start. More to come soon, I hope. In any event, when I woke to pee around dinner time, Debbie also woke up and had a craving. She took her last $20 of crack money, walked to Kentucky Fried Chicken, and blew it all buying us dinner. Besides the fact that the dinner really hit the spot with me too, I felt touched that she would spend her last dollar on buying dinner for the two of us. (On the other hand, walking to KFC and back in 5°F, and a wind chill of -17°F was a sacrifice I felt she didn't need to make.) It’s also particularly gratifying that, while still struggling with the decision and the particulars of acting upon it, she’s sworn off drugging and has decided to go in-patient on Sunday after we move her stuff out of her apartment and into storage. I don’t claim to have had any influence on her decision. As with everything else in life, timing is everything, and she’s decided the time is right. Several factors have come together to help her decision. The most significant, however is that she and Jeffrey lost their first child shortly after birth two years ago next week. And she is pregnant again. They have asked me to be their child’s godfather. Despite my feelings on Catholicism, (and it’s doctrine against gay people,) I accepted the honor several weeks ago. I’ve been concerned with the health of both Debbie and their child given her addiction, and other health problems which contribute to her being prone to problem pregnancies. There are dozens of feelings surrounding the issue I’m still trying to sort out. But my mind is eased with the knowledge that she’s making the right choices now. Truth be told, I’m beyond glad that she’s been staying here for the past few days. We have been helping each other with the grieving process. It has been so different to be with someone else who feels the same as you to help you through a difficult time. It’s one thing to have someone "be supportive", it’s quite another when someone feels the exactly the same. Still, it’s been quite a roller-coaster, and today particularly so. Someday, I’ll be able to tell that story. And now, I’m going to make the best of the balance of my three-day weekend, and go back to bed.
Saturday January 2, 1999 5:00PM Today is my Grandpa Wilbur’s birthday. Frederick A. Wilbur, veteran of World War I, would have been 101 today. We haven’t had a Tech Talk entry in a long time, and I’ve been farting around with the site this afternoon, so why not share the experience? One of the nicest things about FrontPage 98 is how easy it makes site maintenance. Structurally, I’ve let the Journal get out-of-hand. All the HTML files for the entire site were in one directory, and scrolling around the list has been getting tedious. So the first thing I did was create separate directories for the Journal entries. All the files for 1998 have been moved to a 1998 directory, and a new, empty, 1999 directory is waiting for next week’s file. The FrontPage Explorer "Folders" view looks and behaves like Windows Explorer. So that part was a snap. Highlight the root directory of the web, from the File menu, select New, Folder, type in "1998" and click OK. Same for 1999. Then just drag-and-drop the files to the new directory. FrontPage updated all the links in the site to point to the new directory automatically. You’ve already noticed the changes to the "Bruce W’s Journal" page, (also called "Present"). The table I use for navigating to each week’s entry was getting rather large, so I moved the first nine months of 1998 to a "Journal Archive" page off of "Past". Cut-and-paste. Done. I’ve decided to keep only the current month, and the preceding three months on the Present page, moving older entries to the Journal Archive at the beginning of each month. So far, none of this made any changes to the "Navigation View" of the site. Navigation View designs the web’s structure for the Navigation Bars. Since I use the image map at the left for primary site navigation, I use Navigation View primarily to control the functions of the "Previous" and "Next" buttons and so on. The Navigation View looks like a organization chart, with an icon for each HTML file in the web. After creating the Journal Archive page, it was simply a matter of drag-and-drop to move files from under "Present" to under "1998". This was the only awkward part of the process. I couldn’t use extended select (Shift-Click) to grab a group of icons and move them all at once, so I had to move each icon one-at-a-time. I forgot I had to keep them in order, but that was easy to fix afterwards just by rearranging them. Since there are now six levels in the site’s structural hierarchy, (you’re four levels deep right now) I’ve started adding "You are lost here" links to the top of every page with the exception of the Journal pages. While I was doing this, I remembered I needed to change the copyright dates in the "Shared Borders" at the top and bottom of each page. So I added "& 1999" to each and clicked Save. This is where disaster nearly struck. As you may recall, I have three hard drives in my PC. I have a 2GB drive formatted as NTFS which boots Windows NT Workstation 4.0, my operating system of choice. I also have a 1GB drive formatted as FAT-16 which holds Windows 95. I boot from a floppy when I need to run 95, which isn’t that often any more. There is also a 2GB drive formatted as FAT-16 which I’ve used as a shared drive between NT and 95. It holds the NT Page File, the 95 Swap File, all the cache files for the three browsers I use, and any files I need to be accessible to both operating systems. Both operating systems know this drive as D. All the source files for the site also live on D. This is a holdover from when I used to edit the site while running under 95 as well. I have only one private client these days, and when I need to take stuff to their site, I put it on the D drive, and remove the entire hard-drive cage (all three drives) from my PC and off I go. I think it was back in September when on a visit there the drive cage fell out of my backpack and onto the floor, landing with such force that it broke part of the aluminum casting on the D drive. It hasn’t worked quite right since. Basic laziness is the only reason I haven’t addressed the issue until now, even though it has effected performance and made the data less secure than I like it to be. In the process of updating the Shared Borders, FrontPage reported the D drive had crapped-out. I double-checked the drive, and everything was still accessible, so I defragged the F drive, (which is what NT calls the 1GB 95 boot drive,) and moved the NT Page File, the NT Temp and Tmp directories and all the browser cache files to it. I had to use the Help screens a couple of times, but I found it was easier than I’d anticipated to move the local copy of the site to another drive or directory. You can’t do it from outside of FrontPage because FrontPage has to keep track of all the files I create, and the stuff it creates, a total of just over 4˝MB right now. (FP generates tons of files for it’s own use.) The solution was to click "Publish", and output the site to a new directory on C, then delete the old copy from D. I lost about an hour averting disaster, but I never lost a single byte of data. And I feel much safer with all the stuff I really need moved off D. So while there’s still 1.13GB of stuff on it, nothing on it is irreplaceable, and the drive is getting a much deserved rest. By the way, it’s a Maxtor drive. It’s taken quite a bit of abuse, and still works, for the most part, despite the cracked and broken frame casting. On the other hand, both the Western Digital 1GB drive that came in the PC four years ago this month, and the Samsung 2GB drive (which I took in trade for services last January) survived the same fall to the floor with nary a scratch and continue to perform flawlessly. In any event, performance is back to normal because I no longer have to wait through seek errors on the D drive. What FrontPage reported as a drive failure, was only it’s boredom in waiting for seek errors. Somehow, it’s disconcerting when a program gets bored before I do. And truth be told, had the drive shit-the-bed entirely, I could always download the site from the server again like I did in July when I intentionally zapped it entirely from the disk. Well, Debbie’s off to the races, literally. She and a friend got to OTB every Saturday night. I’ve got the apartment all to myself for the first time in a long time. Now I just have to figure out what to do …
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