Once again, I started upgrading some software after 10PM. And I ran into troubles. However, the problem is one that has been in the software for a while and I kind of knew what to look for. So Gallery has been upgraded and even has security updates but the developer didn’t think it was important to send out a notification. Or maybe the email was stuck due to a spam filter. Who knows?

The closest thing to a date I had last year was a trip to the Mt. Angel Oktoberfest with a neighbor. In fact, it was the closest thing I’ve had to a date since I broke up with my girlfriend the week before 9/11/2001. Today we went out to breakfast. Thus, I’ve made it halfway to my New Year’s resolution. If, of course, you count the breakfast as a date. I had to leave so I could help my friend John with his yacht. It turns out he just needed me to crawl under the fly bridge-thingy to disconnect some wires. It didn’t take very long.

I’m thinking of ordering some old CDs from BMG and I’d like somebody to give me some help. I mean, this is the third time I’ve mentioned Rob Swift because that’s the only cool CD I’ve bought in years. On BMG I’ve got the following CDs in my “Shopping Cart”:

It may be lucky that the web site is broken and won’t allow me to buy these CDs rignt now.

Honestly, I finally have an iPod with 5091 songs (14.8 days worth) but I’ve been listening to Erasure‘s “Pop! The First 20 Hits” repeatedly. I think I should break out into something else, but not just The Pet Shop Boys. Maybe Journey.

I guess I’ll have to give them more than a couple of days. I called my prescription in on Friday and they called my home phone instead of my cell phone. I walked in expecting nothing and I got nothing. But they did tell me to come back on Monday. So today I went in and they’d called my home phone again. The pharmacy tech was a nice guy (as are most of them) and told me they didn’t have my cell phone on record. But I gave my cell phone number to the surly lab tech late last year. Well, I guess surly is as surly does.

I think I’ve decided not to keep trying to find the Pepsi with the iTunes caps. I saw the Pepsi delivery guy this morning and he hasn’t seen the caps, either. If he hasn’t seen them, I’m sure they’re not in town yet. Maybe they’re all in bigger markets. Well, I’ve been meaning to buy more CDs now that I have a job anyway.

The joys of technology. I haven’t completely figured out my iPod yet and so that means I have to scroll through hundreds of CDs to find one that I can sort of tolerate. Funny, since I bought all these intolerable CDs in the first place.

And work has been keeping me from running, and instead of getting a Charley horse in my calves like I usually do when I suddenly stop running, I got one in my quadriceps. That kept me from sleeping well last night. The first time I got up was 4:04. If you recognize that number, you’re a web geek.

And, since someone asked, I’m working for Verinform doing database coding. It’s a small company and has a practical solution to an identified problem (see how vague I’m being) unlike some of the internet companies I’ve worked for.

And I’ve been hitting all the local convenience stores looking for the Pepsi bottles with the iTunes sweepstakes thing but I haven’t seen one of them yet. I’ll keep looking.

So I was going to see my friend Craig sing on Friday night, but I blew it off since I was tired, lazy, and not supposed to drink. Anyway, I went home and kept quiet instead of going out, and I feel pretty lame.

Well, the drought broke today and I had one whole beer today. It didn’t bother my stomach and it helped me make it through the tedious first quarter of the SuperBowl. But there were some interesting commercials and a better football game than many were expecting. Some of the best ads were from Portland. The Trunk Monkey rocks. Too bad they don’t have the latest commercial.

Actually, I’ve never had much trouble with my teeth. I have a few small filled cavities and got four wisdom teeth (two impacted) removed, but I’ve never had big problems or any fear of going to the dentist. I remember when I was little, I was deathly afraid of the doctor and his needles, but I got over that as well. So there’s a lot of things I think are worse than visits to the dentist.

This leads into the the latest horrible job fair experience I had today. I prepared a new résumé, begged at the door to be let into the “technical” section, and then found NO JOB OPENINGS FOR ME. I talked to some people from IDT just because I was bored, but it was nothing that was leading towards a job. I left to look at the “normal” jobs, but the pickings were slim there, too. There was a huge line at the Providence Health System table, for good reason. Two hospitals in Portland closed down just this month. Other that, the only table with a long line was Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Nobody had any swag, and the only other companies I remember were Burger King and Paychex. It was really grim.

So there you go. Did I mention that I’m hooked on VH1’s Bands Reunited.

I had to quit GreenCine, the arty NetFlix-like DVD rental service. I haven’t been watching as many DVDs because of football season, and I really don’t think I should be spending the $20/month when I don’t have a job.

And I got another rejection letter today! It says, “Unfortunately, the application materials you submitted were not complete…” I called to see what I was missing, and it turns out that the optional résumé wasn’t optional. I just love things like that. According to the person answering the phone, I wasn’t the only one who got bit. I went to Adecco and I’m going to see about temporary warehouse jobs.

I have Chronic Myelogenogenous Leukemia. They did the genetic tests on my bone marrow and found the Philadelphia chromosome. That means unless I do something about it, I’m dead in five years.

CML is treatable with Gleevec, the wonder drug from OHSU and my prescription costs $2000/month. Apparently, my insurance may cover some of it if my doctor approves it. I spent an hour at the pharmacy finding out that they had never heard of Gleevec and they didn’t have any of it. Plus, I have to wait for them to arm-wrestle with my medical insurance before they’ll order it. How nice.

Well, I still don’t have a job. What a nice year I’ve had.

So, New Year’s Eve and I’m diagnosed with leukemia. There’s a good chance I’ll get this medication that may prolong my life, but I probably shouldn’t drink beer while I’m taking it. I headed down to the pub for my “last” beer but they were closed. I hope next year is better.

It snowed last night (though it wasn’t supposed to) and as the kids were sledding across the street, I did what I usually do: shovel wet snow. My next-door neighbor thinks I’m a stick-in-the-mud, but I like getting the snow off the sidewalk. That’s my fun with the snow. Like most years, the snow was wet and heavy. Sledding was kind of hit-or-miss, too, since all the snow gets so slushy and the bottom of the hill becomes one big mud puddle.

It’s going to freeze tonight and that’s always a joy. All the slush becomes a nice slick surface, making travel nearly impossible. It’s supposed to be 23°F. My room has been warm all winter, so we’ll see if it’s nice and cold tonight.

I’ve spent the last few days reading online comics. I’ve always loved comics, and now here’s the list of comics I liked. Not all of them are appropriate for public viewing.

Serials

• Achewood
• Scary Go Round — this has zombies
• Orneryboy — and more zombies
• Goats — and more zombies
• Wigu — might have zombies

Not So Serial

• Hackles — geek humor
• Slow Wave — illustrations of peoples dreams
• Boy on a Stick and Slither — incomprehensible

What hurt the most was numbing with Xylocaine which burned like crazy and sucking the bone marrow out which felt like I had a charley horse in my buttock.

The bad news, the doctor said:

One possible treatment is Gleevec. However, I saw this quote on the American Cancer Society web page

…the cost of treating a patient with Gleevec is estimated at $25,000 per year. Should a young patient continue to take this drug throughout his or her lifetime, it would be very expensive compared to other therapies currently available.

There’s always the chance that it’s all a mistake.

My sister told me not to worry about it, since we won’t really know until the lab analysis comes back. My next appointment is on New Year’s Eve. I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep from worrying, unless I’m completely drugged.

This could get a lot worse.

I was tired today. I was so tired I took a nap at noon (just like last week) and had to drink coffee to keep from falling asleep a couple hours later. But I didn’t break my car (that I know of) and I didn’t get any bad news from my doctor. That’s tomorrow.

Yesterday I watched the movie Rififi, an old French jewel-heist movie which I would recommend. Today I received a couple more movies from GreenCine, High Fidelity and Sex, Lies, and Videotape.

I meant to see High Fidelity when it first came out but by the time it was in the cheap theatres, I was going out with someone who refused to see it with me. I was, once again, rebound-boy and her previous boyfriend had stolen a bunch of her rare punk-rock records and sold them. She thought he got the idea from the movie, which they watched together. I read the book and it’s about relationships, something I haven’t experienced recently. And there seemed to be some sort of parity in their cheating. Most cases in my geek life, the guys come out on the short end of the stick. For example, I haven’t had any luck since my ex dumped me and she’s had at least two boyfriends in the interim.

As someone who doesn’t believe in much religious or spiritual, I still use luck to explain things. That’s just because I think a lot of things are random, and if you ever study randomness you see it doesn’t look random. Consequently, you can’t tell whether things are going your way or not. I use this to explain a situation I heard about lately, where “someone” was stopped for drinking and driving, and the cop just told him to park it and gave him a ride home to an adjacent city. If it were me, I would probably have been shipped to Guantanamo Bay and deported, even though I am a citizen of these United States of America. And that’s my luck.

I returned my only Christmas present (from my sister) already. She got it online from Sears, and it wasn’t sent as a gift, so I had to get it back per their return policy. I turned a laser level into a boring gift certificate that goes bad in two years if I forget about it. As I was putting it back in the box, I got a nasty cardboard paper-cut that bled like an SOB.

The worst part about returning the laser level was going to the (unnamed) mall during the holiday season. It was almost as bad as walking down 23rd Avenue, which I had to do because my dad ran out of pipe tobacco. I kept bumping into tourists on 23rd Avenue. (Anyone with an umbrella in Portland is a tourist.)

The (unnamed) mall is a trash-o-rama. It’s crowded and everybody looks like they were kicked out of K-Mart. And the most frightening thing was seeing the women coming out of Victoria’s Secret. If anyone needed huge grandma underwear, it was the women walking out of that store.