My Amalgamated Mind

Again, a week (or more) has passed since I’ve written here. I’ve come onto the site many times in the interim, but it always seems like I get caught up reading someone else’s diary, instead of writing in my own.

One of the funny things about keeping a journal like this is that I often find myself thinking of how I would write something in my journal when it happens. If something really funny happens I find myself laughing, and in the back of my head is (that would make a great journal entry)…hear something heartbreaking in the news and get choked up (wow – that would be a powerful journal entry)…etc. The funny thing is that in my younger days when I fancied that I would grow up to be a writer, I would do the same thing – when presented with a unique or interesting situation, I would always have a subtext running through my head…narrating how I would write about it in the Great American Novel I would someday produce.

So instead of actually making seven journal entries in the past week, I am now getting away with giving you snippets of the entries that might have been:

Entry 1 : Love/Hate List

Things I have a love/hate relationship with.

Love owning a black Stratocaster (makes me feel cool) / hate never having time to play it.

Love working in the Internet industry / hate having to use computers to do it.

Love my kids / hate the times I am more strict with them than I should be.

Loved my car when I bought it / hate the junker it’s turned into after “bumping” into a few too many things and not wanting to pay for bodywork

Love opinionated people / hate having them try to push their opinions on me.

Love my wife / hate not being with her more than I can be.

Entry 2 : Warning Geekspeak Ahead

In the span of one workday, I had two NT servers fail and refuse to boot up, even from so-called “repair disks”. I had to rebuild them entirely from scratch, and worst of all had to resort to calling on the dimwitted guy in the glass room with the big machines to TRY to restore all my ex-files from a tape backup. Guess how successful he was. In the same day, I had router problems that basically closed my web server off to the world, and to cap it all off, my computer monitor CAUGHT ON FIRE. Fourteen years in the business, and THAT had never happenened before. I tried to tell the people I work with that it was a sign I’m working too much, but they didn’t buy it.

Entry 3 : In Defense of Stupid Husbands

It seems to me that in our politically-correct world, where it is unforgiveable to put down anyone for any reason, one of the few groups people can still make fun of are the stereotypical dumb husbands. Now don’t get me wrong – I think there is a grain of truth in all stereotypes (otherwise they wouldn’t exist), and I know plenty of married men who ARE clueless in their relationships and in life. It just bugs me when ALL husbands are lumped together into a beer-swilling, football-game-watching, LazyBoy-sitting, honey-I-bought-you-a-vaccuum-cleaner-for-Christmas, Neanderthal mass. Like all other people, husbands come in a wide spectrum of stupid, and deserve to be recognized as such. This rant was set off by a local talk-radio show doing a call-in segment on “Why My Husband is a Dumb Jerk”. If someone (other than Howard Stern – he could get away with it) did a segment called “Why My Wife is a Stupid Airhead”, they’d be crucified.

Entry 4 : Well, you get the point.