An Ancient Sword
(1-10 April 2004)

10 April 2004
[from Oakland]
-Went to the A's/M's game down the freeway & thoroughly enjoyed the experience despite the unfortunate outcome, a 2-1 comeback win for the A's.  Sitting in the sun watching baseball is one of the most satisfying things one can do.  Period.
-Amazing how a great mood can turn to abysmal in short minutes.  I have so much anger.
-It can't stay for long.  Not in these surroundings, anyway.

9 April 2004
[from Oakland]
-It's a well-known fact, or at least something that some of my friends & I have discussed (mostly Fish, really), that in the music world, tracks #7 & #10, on balance, dominate all other tracks on any given CD.  Try this at home, kids!  I bet an inordinate number of good songs on your CD's appear in slots 7 & 10, while other tracks have fairly equal smatterings of quality at a level much lower than the mighty 7 & 10.  How to best honor this 7-10 split of glory?  Yesterday I recorded my first two real efforts at burning mix CD's (all previous mixing was done on my favorite music medium, the cassette tape... how I miss cassette tapes!).  Track 7's Greatest Hits & Track 10's Greatest Hits are legendary compilations of the vibrancy of the blessed numbers of music.  Now I will have something to listen to besides "Pandora's Aquarium" (Tori Amos), which Fish played for our cat & is now stuck in my head whenever I see the poor feline.
-In transferring some files from old computer to new, I discovered my archive of saved AOL-IM conversations of yore.  Just browsing them was painful.  In reviewing a couple of conversations, it occurred to me how many times a pleasant conversation turned to something hostile just because of how poorly emotions are conveyed via AOL-IM.  I've had bouts with thinking about returning to the world of away messages & little dings, but these archives set me back on course every time.

8 April 2004
[from Oakland]
-Amy's been on a one-woman crusade of late to get me to like Reason, an online magazine that purports to be about "Free Minds and Free Markets".  Despite my blanching at their premise, this article about anti-depressants is truly stellar.  It evaluates fully the differing perspectives on depression & mood-modification drugs & comes to some excellent conclusions.  Ironically, the subtext of the article seems to reveal that so much has gone awry with peoples' view on their own mood because of the profit motive.  Joli Jensen, the author, frequently asks "Who benefits?" with regards to the perspective that depression is a disease or that we should all be happy all the time.  Without the profit motive driving the pharmaceutical companies to sell their products to anyone & everyone, would we really have all this pill-popping getting in the way of people fully confronting their minds?  Regardless of your political stance, you should read the article if you've ever been interested in one of my mental health rants, or anyone else's.
-I have finally updated the Introspection Stats (linked atop this page) after over a year of neglect.  Highlights include Berkeley overtaking Waltham as #1 all-time with 495 Introspected days, as well as a new "Notes" section at the bottom of the page to clear up some vague [from]'s of the past.  Now I need to archive, get the year-in-review up, & e-mail out my new contact info like I promised everyone a week ago.  & probably work on my Dad's webpage.  Always something to do at least!

7 April 2004
[from Oakland]
-Wednesdays put me in such a foul mood.  The last thing one needs at the end of the week is to hear how one's boss will never be satisfied with the job everyone's doing.
-Today we discovered that one of our kids who is only on meds for seizures only had seizures in the first place because of psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin.  I think that's neat.

6 April 2004
[from Oakland]
-After making the San Francisco Chronicle with this article a week ago, Emily has now made the front page of the Fresno Bee with this one.  Both detail the report she wrote for PIRG about prescription drug costs & have appeared on numerous local news shows in both areas as well as these articles.  In short, my wife rocks!
-Some days, I feel it's amazing that I have any energy at all.
-Is there any term in level-14 mental health more absurd than "24-hour placement"?  This week, we find out.

5 April 2004
[from Oakland]
-I don't like some surprises.  Even if my view on time seems utterly unique.
-A recent swing of the Google world shows that I'm now on the charts for a search of the word book, with a BP page being the 46th entry (of 177 million).  Other chart-topping Google searches for the BP include blue (16th of 79 million), country (16th of 110 million), quiz (9th of 20 million), & pyramid (6th of 3 million).  Fame, manifest in the approval of a programmed search engine!
-With the recent & not-so-recent decisions of many of my friends, it seems like a great number of my favorite folks are congregating in the Baltimore metro area.  Which makes a lot of sense to me, since so many of them seem to be tied to the East Coast & Baltimore is, in my opinion, the best city in the East.  I really like Baltimore.  If only Kunkel would respond to e-mails these days.  At this point, said city is probably taking over top billing for a city to travel to (that isn't Albuquerque) in the next six months.

4 April 2004
[from Oakland]
-Ah, the joy of working on the morning after Daylight Savings begins!
-4/4/4 turned out to be a decent day.  I'm ridiculously exhausted at its conclusion, however, along with a headache the size of a grapefruit being in my possession.  I suppose it didn't help that I banged my head on the fridge this morning.

3 April 2004
[from Oakland]
-After watching Fish play a great deal of Dance Dance Revolution on PS2 (actually he's playing DDRMax2 to get technical), I have decided that I want to see someone release a rival parody game, France France Revolution.  It could come with a France pad, where one steps on various insurgent groups, either to raise them up in Stage One (the Tricolor stage) or to order their guillotining in Stage Two (the Reign of Terror).  I could come up with a whole prototype page, which I may do once I accomplish about 90 other web-based goals & feel motivated.  It doesn't hurt that the French Revolution is probably the period in history I have most examined in my life.  Well, other than the last 24 years.
-Saw Stina for the first time in quite a while.  Fremont is far away from the Bay in many ways.
-I never get enough done on my long breaks between work.

2 April 2004
[from Oakland]
-Well I'm finally officially back in visibility on this website, thoroughly enjoying the irony of having a drought of 3 weeks appear that started on the day of the 4-year anniversary of Introspection.  I just finished cleaning out 1,654 e-mail messages I received between the 7th & 26th of March at my storey@bluepyramid.org account.  (Note:  If you are my friend, you should be sending me e-mail at the other account, which I will give you if you call/e-mail me.  The other account receives zillions of spams a day & thus don't check it often.)  On the 26th, the account shut down for going over 50 megabytes of stored space & started rejecting everyone's e-mails.  It is now operational again.  Now my next project is to send an e-mail to all my friends with my new address/phone number here in Oakland.  You can also call/e-mail me for this information (if you call the old number, it will give you the new number).  Okay, enough with the discussion of contact info.
-Heading for the A's/Giants exhibition game at Pac Bell (or I guess now SBC Park, bleh) tonight.  Baseball is back!!

1 April 2004
[from Oakland]
-Now our PS2 works.  Fish & I put it to the test today, as I'm afraid we will early & often around here.  BestBuy simply gave us a new PS2, dance pad, & controller without testing the old ones.  Corporate America is built around waste, & I feel bad about my role in it.  Yet I keep playing the PS2.
-Fish almost got me, but I woke up telling myself not to be fooled.
-So I was the #1 mental health note writer for March at Seneca.  Not a huge deal, especially considering that the #1 winner for many months prior recently left the job, but still.  I've come a long way in a few months.

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