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December 29, 1998

Technicolor!

Iko is in Technicolor! Guess who got her Christmas present in the mail today? Yes, Constant Reader! I got my digital camera! <bounce bounce bounce> It's beautiful. My only real gripe is that I have a tendancy to touch the lens, which means I should go out tomorrow and buy some lens paper to clean it with. Otherwise, the images that it takes are beautiful, large, and has great color. I don't like the fact that it is kind of noisy when I turn it on and take photographs with it (it's got a bzzt bzzt bzzt when I turn it on and a small kechunk sound after I take a photograph that is reminiscent of the film forwarding in a regular camera), but that is completely forgiveable. I think I got a good choice from my month or so of research for a camera. Plus, it was megacheap since I bought it from Buy.Com. The photograph above isn't as good as it could be since I turned off the flash, but I think it compensated well. I love the color of my nightgown. Beautiful. I spent most of the evening snapping pics. Getting to know my beauty, I suppose. Get into its nuances. It takes about 5 seconds to cycle so that I could take the next picture. Acceptable. I suppose the camera in the mail is a gift from what I had to deal with after work... Work was pretty dull. We're wrapping things up, so we've been in a working frenzy and trying to get all the little details that the application needs to have by the end of this month. They asked us to add new forms and we only just got the details. <sigh> But, thankfully due to good planning, we were able to add components to the application relatively quickly. I did some research on JavaScript error handling today. It sucks! It has to initialize itself whenever a page loads, so you get an "error message" when you load the page, regardless of whether or not there is a JavaScript error. Yuck. According to the documentation I've seen, it's all JavaScript 1.1, so I suspect that 1.2 or 1.3 might fix the problem with new/better syntax but then I would have to test to make sure it works on all the platforms the application needs to work on. Yuck. So we gave up on JavaScript error handling. That was the evil code for the day. I worked a bit late and I was also kind of dumb and didn't take an umbrella this morning, so I got soaked. I did manage to make a stop at the theater that is showing ART and I bought my father his Christmas present: two tickets to the show on the evening of January 9th. Nice seats too: 3rd row Mezzanine. It's supposed to be about three friends, one of which purchases (at great expense) an all-white painting and the other two proceed to mock him. It was the Tony Award winner for 1998 and it stars Judd Hirsh and George Wendt. Sounds pretty good, right? I'm looking forward to their review: it's somethign that I want to watch as well. It looks like my parents are going to become regular theater-goers because I got them tickets to the Blue Room in February. Perhaps I should give my mother an early birthday present (it's in April) and get them tickets in March? My dad has been talking about season tickets for NJPAC and that sounds like a really nice deal. Someone on ScribeTribe posted a great question today. I wanted to share that question and my answer. What are your 10 Best Things about 1998? 10 Worst Things? Great question! Hmm... This will be in no particular order. Best Things Landing a *great* job with a *great company* doing stuff that "if I didn't need the money, I'd do it for free!". Along those lines, the feeling of getting a genuine raise (actually, a 10k/year raise.. that was *very* sweet) and a Christmas bonus. Firsts for me! Having my partner of 5+ years "follow me" to the east coast from the midwest. I'm the career-minded one and it's wonderful that he's willing to "tag along". Getting my own domain (woolgathering.net) Gaining friends in the east coast. I was scared that I wouldn't make any.. but I've found my niche! Getting to hang with my parents more. I think they are a fairly cool couple, especially my dad (I am my father's daughter. We've always got our heads poked in one computer or another...) Writing. I'm not a natural writer but the fact that I'm writing more is a Good Thing(tm). Thanks for everyone who has motivated me to do so (ScribeTribe included!). Having my own money for the first time in my life. Wow. It's quite a difference from being a poor college student. I can do so many more things now that I have more money in pocket. My sister is getting better. When I moved back to NJ from IL, my sister was having a great deal of emotional problems. She still has them but she's less episodic now. I guess I'm a bit mean-spirited because I think her problems are primarily her being very spoiled and really hating it when she doesn't get her way (temper tantrums and crying fits whenever my parents tell her that she can only be out until 11:00pm or that she should do her schoolwork before she goes out) and not from something clinical. She's a smart girl and she's good at playing with people's emotions (like I used to when I was younger). Getting more in touch with myself. Worst Things Gaining weight (I write about my angst at length in my last journal entry) Missing my friends in Illinois and having to deal with the fear involved in making new ones (I'm a geek. It's hard to make friends for me) Associated with this is the lack of parties/dancing I've been doing. My friends went dancing almost every week. Monday is Industrial/Goth night at the local dance place/gay bar and we used to go all the time (what's the correlation between computer-techy geeks and goths? There seems to be a high correlation). I'm not the party-type... but my friends (H0L.. house of 'leet where there were 2.6 computers per person that was living there) had the best parties. We'd play great 80s music (some 90s... "Barbie Girl" was strangely popular) and have great debates on the existance of God or the domination of Microsoft. Inevitably, they would play "Come on Eileen" for me and we'd all go into a dancing/singing frenzy. <sigh> I miss that social interaction. I mean, my partner is a wonderful guy but he will never take me dancing (hates loud music, dark smoky places, and strobe lighting). Having to deal with the city on a daily basis. Now that I've lived in IL, I'm a midwestern/country girl at heart. I like lawns and open spaces. I want to see the stars. I have to drive over an hour to see any others but the brightest ones. My sister having problems. My relatives having problems. They are all in the Philippines and they are having monetary problems right now... so my family has rustled up about $10,000 for them to help them. Helping my partner find a job. Anyone have a position open for an extremely intelligent mathematician? Having to move in with my parents have made me lose my sense of "space". I like having my own place and my partner and I are looking forward to moving into the apartment that my parents own in near-by Montclair at the end of this Spring. So, this is a bad for 1998 but a good for 1999. On the whole, 1998 has been a pretty good year for me and I'm very grateful. I've got good friends, good spirits, and I'm looking forward to 1999. Remember I told you that my mother got me a great conversation piece for Christmas? Here it is. Posed in front of a door. Doesn't it look like a little girl being punished? I think it's pretty good. Mike is right: it is definitely twisted. PS: The Elmo hat was my mom's idea.

© Copyright 1998, Eileene Coscolluela
[woolgathering]