Train I Ride 19 February 1999

4:32 PM: Madre de Fritos! Two hours to get in to work on MUNI. I could have waltzed here faster. The only thing different about this breakdown is that I actually managed to talk to a supervisor. After going through the details of today's breakdown, I asked him why it seemed like the trains were always having difficulty in the late afternoon lately. "It's that stupid computer, that's what it is."

I just don't get that. What is it exactly that the computer could be doing that could cause this much trouble? More to the point, who's allowing it to do so? Computers are convenient blamesinks, like Communists and the ruling classes, it's true. But ultimately, you know, you can just pull the plug on them. Suddenly I'm all a-itch to find out exactly what it is that is supposed to be going wrong here. Oh yeah, there's a career with a bright future - debugging mass-transit..

8:36: I think I'm listening to Deep Forest right now. It for sure doesn't sound like Stone Roses, and for it to be neither of those bands I would have had to have sat through both of their CDs without hearing them. I know I live in space mostly, but it's not that high an orbit.

Bad news on the Mir front, too. Damn it. Bean-counters. Line em up.

I've been noticing, now that I have another big bag of raisins at my desk here, that very few people can hold out against them for more than five minutes or so. By then, either they've gone or they start eating. Must be some grazing instinct. I've also discovered a gross downside to raisins - if a bit of one gets caught in your teeth, when you get it out it looks like a dead bug.

Can you tell that I've been living by myself a little too long?

I've started a little experiment. Every day, I leave the house, and I'm all ready to clean up, straighten out, and fly right. Yep, gonna start saving money, clean up the apartment, get some better clothes, and take my bike around to be fixed this weekend. And all that smoking and drinking and pornography - whoah, gotta cut back on that. Not healthy. A new man, that's me.

By the end of the evening, especially lately, I could give a fuck. What good does it do to even try? This whole site is crap. Nobody reads it anyway. God, does everyone on Earth have a boyfriend or a girlfriend? No, only the happy energetic talented ones, you nard, the ones that keep online journals because their lives are worth reading about, unlike some people we know. Aaaah, fuck it. Can I leave yet? I'll just skip out a little early and go get drunk. I need cigs anyway.

So, OK, something is going on in between those two states that's converting one to the other. Bad air, coffee, tidal action, I don't know, but something. I figure the first step is to measure it. So I set up a little mood-vote screen: I can use it to make a quick note about how I'm feeling right at that moment, from "shitty" to "great!". It's all stored in a database, where I can monitor my current average mood, and later start tracking its trajectory over time.

The next step will be to start tracking other variables - I don't know if I can prove causation, but at least I can see if there are any strong correlations. I mean, other than "showing up to work and interacting with people bums me out," which is undoubtedly true but hard to change as one big lump. Plus I need the money.

Any social scientists out there wanna make me a grant project?

Oh yeah, that was definitely Deep Forest. Not bad. I think it's not so much that I don't like techno as I don't like the Bad Watch Guy who plays it on his PC speakers instead of using headphones, so that from 20 feet away it sounds like hamsters doing heavy construction work.

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Willfully blind self-indulgent nebbish or amusingly quirky old coot? And how bout that local sports team? Discuss among yourselves.

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