IMR: 1998: August: 28

IMR: 1998: August: 28 -- Friday, 11:16 p.m.
Our Apartment, Makiki, Hawai`i

Sometimes the degree to which I am an idiot stuns me to silence.
I was asked to stop in at the office downtown today for a short meeting with the Secretary General (now that's a title you gotta respect). I had told them that I'd have Katie with me, and they said that's fine. Now the meeting went well -- the phrase "10,000 times improvement" was uttered -- and they went gaga for Katie. They even gave me my first paycheck.
They also decided to "go live" with my redesign, even though I hadn't updated all the pages I had planned to finish first (and the main page is practically blank, and I just don't like the splash screen, and...).
Oh well. Obviously they like it. The phrase "10,000 times improvement" was uttered, which is only barely an exaggeration given the old look.
I skipped out of the building, hopped in my car, and drove to dad's office where I helped him set up his new computer. Then I hooked up with William and we browsed around Ala Moana and CompUSA (god I love that iMac!). Finally I picked up Jen at work and we headed home.
There was a message waiting for me on the machine. "This is David from PBEC," it said. "Umm... you forgot your computer in the office..."
My god.
I wasn't surprised by the fact that I'd forgotten it. I forget things all the time. But I was absolutely stunned that I'd zig-zagged my way through a very busy afternoon and didn't even notice it was gone.
That fact was made all the more disturbing since the hard drive in said computer contained the only up-to-date copy of the new website I'd just busted my butt to build, as well as several other not-recently-backed-up sites I'd been working on this month.
All that work, sitting on the floor of a dark office, hundreds of feet above Merchant Street, locked up tight, probably over the weekend.
Though it's pathetically geeky of me to say it, I feel very vulnerable right now.
So I'm hacking this entry out on Jen's trusty Compaq Presario, fighting with Word 97's various and annoying autocorrect "features" (no, I don't want that capitalized, damn you!) and trying to remember what else I wanted to say... since, of course, my journal notes are also presently in a galaxy far, far away.
Depending on whether or not I can hook up with someone tomorrow, there's a chance I can be reunited with my PowerBook earlier than Tuesday morning. I sure hope so. Otherwise, I'm not sure I can make it.
I think I need a Macoderm patch.

Classes, classes, classes. I'm not neccessarily excited by them, but I think I'll survive them.
Today's media law lecture picked up somewhere in the middle of Wednesday's lecture. That is to say, Kato repeated a good 20 minutes worth of material that we already covered -- right down to the terms on the chalkboard. Even more disturbing, though, was that only a couple of other students and I seemed to have noticed.
Eventually we got into the distinctions between criminal and civil law, an area of our legal system that I unfortunately know far too much about.
Hawaiian class was just bizarre. We were told to bring a personal photograph, and when we met today in the Moore Hall Mac Lab, we were instructed to scan them in and to write a paragraph or two about ourselves. The point, it seemed, was to get us comfortable with computers, and specifically the Hawaiian software.
Turns out the lab has a customized (i.e. hacked) version of Claris Works that's almost entirely in Hawaiian. "Save" is "Malama," the "OK" button reads "`Ae," and the "Quit" option is "Ha`alele." The menus, the dialog boxes, all in Hawaiian.
Pretty trippy. Fortunately since the basic setup of any Mac program is consistent, I could do what I needed to do without having to translate things first. And since I could just grab a picture of Katie off her web page, I didn't have to bother with the Apple OneScanner. I was done with the assignment with twenty minutes to spare.
I spent those twenty minutes helping my classmates figure everything out.
Both the instructor and I struggled to give directions in Hawaiian, especially at the scanner terminal, which used the standard English version of Photoshop. And the customized Claris application was unusually buggy, causing more than a few students to lose all their work when it would crash in the "Malama" menu.
Apparently we're going to be doing computer work every couple of weeks. Apart from being called into service as tech support now and then, I think I'm going to look forward to those days.
Dammit, I wish I had my notes.
I remember having something to say about a feature article in today's Ka Leo, which focused heavily on the "Student Body" fitness fair and one of its key organizers, one Robert Lastimado.
The very same Robert Lastimado that works as full-time advertising manager for the newspaper. And the same Robert Lastimado who has substantial interest in a fitness-oriented company that plays a large part in these campus events.
I remember I wanted to say something articulate and powerful about how that is just plain typical of the kinder, gentler Ka Leo. But I don't remember exactly what.
Too bad. It would've been some good stuff.
Oh. And I wanted to ask why Chief Copy Editor Christy no longer gets a listing in the staffbox, and whether she knew one of her coworkers is also now listed in IsleTies.

So. Week one as a full-time dad, part-time student, and employee at three part-time jobs is over. And I'm beat.
I can do it. I run myself ragged and go to bed every night with my head throbbing and my mind racing, but I can do it. Of course, I haven't had to squeeze homework into the equation, but I can do that too.
Really.
Maybe I should just drop all these joblets and get one big, fat full-time job. Kinko's, maybe. One that that fits neatly opposite my classes, Monday through Friday, noon to 9 p.m.. If I could get better than $8 an hour, that'd be enough so that Jen can give up her job at Tower and do the full-time mom thing.
Now that she was passed up for a promotion to supervisor -- her two years with the company somehow trumped by the other guy's three months -- she wants to quit more than ever.
Damn. I could go on for pages. But I've got a headache.

< PREVIOUS · MONTH INDEX · NEXT >