It's a quiet night in the computer lab. I wonder if it's the weather outside - a cold rain, or if it's maybe that everything seemed due last week, and this week the only thing to worry is for people in ACM who are preparing for the weekend's EOH.
Today is Jessy's birthday. That's my sister, two years younger than me, if you didn't know. Doing the Math, I realize she's now 21. Old enough for legal liquor. I reckon she may well be partying it up tonight. The weekend before last I met Beth at the Canopy Club, formerly the Brew 'n' View, and the band was a Dead-type band, and near the end they started playing "Jessica". It was sweet.
I gotta figure out my finances. Augh, not so much coming in, and so much going out. Last time I contemplated my money I built a website that sucks pictures off of the news server and puts them in a web site. Since a lot of it is porn, the idea is that I can plug in a credit card verification service and make money off of subscriptions. There are some neat questions to work out - such as the bandwidth consumed by thumbnails, and the legal questions of making money off of copyrighted material that others have posted. My thinking is non-subscribers get to look at banner ads and can only see so many "thumbnail" versions of the images in the archive at a time, and maybe, since I'm using a CGI, I can program some latency into their viewing.
As far as copyright goes ... I'm only providing a service for existing content, but I reckon I should have a liberal policy about censoring things - if something looks like a copyright violation, or someone points one out, I can kill it, and maybe put a filter in to keep it from being re-posted to the site. This way I can also filter out that disgusting kiddy porn too, and say I'm not trying to monitor content, but that in obvious cases where it breaks the law or exploits children, then I'm happy to try and avoid that where I can.
It's something else to see sasquatch work at it - a poor little '486, regularly loaded anywhere between 2 and 8, sucking news and making thumbnails. My CGI script is pretty lightweight, avoiding the overhead of some of the bulkier Perl modules like CGI.pm. Still though, I wonder how well a live porn site could be handled, with several people running the CGI at once. I also need to move forward on the Credit Card verification. Here is another interesting trouble where normally you need a merchant's account, which is no small feat. But if you're just providing a service, and no actual product, there are other companies who will act as a merchant reselling the service for me, for a heftier chunk of the revenue.
Which is fine by me, because I'm talking low-risk, low-overhead. Lower revenue is acceptable.
The bug is in the shop. I took it to PeterB's, which comes highly recommended. Their website, while sparse, also left a favorable impression. I walked back in the morning rain, appreciating the judgment that allowed me to go on a long walk home in the rain, while lately it's been downright nice out.
Why it's at PeterB's, you might ask? Well, there's this problem with gas leaking about the place, and I can't for the life of me find it. I reckon it's something to do with fuel pressure, as gas has spurted out of the filler hole and it leaks from the top of the gas tank too, which makes no sense at all. Anyway, rather than let the car ignite itself and make me feel like a jackass someday, I've opted to let a professional take care of it. I'm just hoping it wont be too expensive. I've gotta pay insurance too. Between that and rent and my last EnterCheck which still hasn't arrived after the first was lost in the mail, I think I'm pulling my last $1k out of savings.
It builds character though, to not have money. Right? I'm pulling down enough from this CS job to cover rent though. I've got a consulting job on the side, and another guy just contacted me for some code. If I turn up the porn site as well ... it's exciting, if in a scary sort of way, to be low on the moolah like this.
Still, I look forward to having cash again. Damn, it's March already? And the semester ends in May? That's like two and a half rent checks ... I can make it, really, I can ...
This semester's been going pretty nice and lazy. The most challenging class in CS 338, which is computer networking. I had wanted to learn databases because I get plenty of networking in the normal course of life, but this way I get to catch up somewhat with the wiz kid at EnterAct they call Blake. I'm enjoying the challenge too, mostly. After all, the Internet is my thing.
Another class is uhmmm, something about writing articles for magazines. We're in conference now, and I'm slated to write somethin', or a few things actually, for Daemon News.
I've got Geology, which is easy, though I've shot myself in the foot by missing some stuff by skipping class, and one hour of independent study writing technical documentation. Why one hour? That's all I need to graduate, besides this 300-level English course.
I've been sleeping too much though. I'm getting to that point again with all too much regularity, where I just can't motivate myself for the work. I miss work work - working at EnterAct, after I had thought about it some, was vaguely reminiscent of Army Training, where I had to get up every morning, and where things were almost always challenging and crazy. The intimidating personalities of my coworkers played into it too.
Now though, it's a different challenge. Arguably a better, more professional one. I'm not being driven so much by any one environment, instead I've got to juggle a bunch of things - I have to actively work on and take some initiative with classwork, with making money, and with making a social life for myself, never mind figuring out the car. It makes EnterAct and the long commutes seem nearly simple.
Different game, same difficulty. I guess I like a simpler game, though this University stuff is not without its interest either.
Some of you know what I'm talking about, the rest of you don't, and there's no explaining on my part either. Feh.
You may have noticed my prolonged journal absence. Well, in part it's because my life has been somewhat tumultuous lately and I don't know what I want to say. Partly too though, I have that ever growing ambition to put the web site as a whole in better order. You may note that the main index page is now just that - an index page. The "new" section is now separate. My real ambition is I can just work on something new and stick it somewhere, either in the journal or somewhere else, as new stuff comes about.
14 February
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