Forgive me.

Here we are again. So many months of taking medication, reduced to my brilliance in deciding I can manage without them. The old miseries are back. I snap at everything, I feel a constant agonizing dread at everything I have to do, I feel like I have nothing to look forward to, etcetera. It is at this precise moment I accept that being single is a blessing. To me and to whoever I might have been with. A fresh relationship is exciting, it's a challenge; I can handle that. Anything resembling stagnation or droning sameness infuriates me. The only thing in my life right now that I can say honestly I get excited about is the prospect of being with someone. I have nothing else to feel driven to. The only thing that comes close is manual work, specifically, wiring at my cousin's. It's a constant challenge, I'm learning continuously and I get to put into practice my knowledge as I go.

I write very well when I am distressed.

I'm reading The Picture of Dorian Gray on my breaks at Graphic. I find myself startled at the things the book covers, the absolute reversal of common thought and feeling, especially expressed by Henry or Harry or whatever his name is. It's interesting, I'll definitely keep going with it.

Back to the panicked ravings:

What the hell should I be doing? Where should I be? I feel trapped; unable to function. I am at my happiest when I am detached from the philosophical portion of my mind. I can do practical; logistics are my specialty and I'm good at time management (planning, not implementation). It's just when I let my control waver. When I have not occupied the processing centers of my mind, they decide to do their own thing. Which I guess is freak out and make me hate everything because of how confused and frankly scared I feel. I have no idea what of, but it's there. It's anxiety in its most raw form. Baseless, senseless worry.

How do you manage desire?

I came up with a rather nice Facebook status the other evening (yes, I do hate that our philosophical musings have to be reduced to Facebook statuses): "Andrew Kellogg believes that a man who dreams of contentment does not have far to fall."

Not bad, eh?

The whole point is; the best I feel I can do is be neutral. I would settle for that. By definition, I suppose. All the same, I don't know that there is a state of life where we are really, truly happy. I feel that it might be more accurately expressed as different stages of "better than [given baseline]", where for some of us, that baseline can be absolute crap. So, I can feel like garbage, but if that is still better than how I usually feel, I could justify saying that I am happy, because relative to what normal is for me, I might be damned well ecstatic. The part about falling, as the whole thing is, is rather simple. It just felt right.

I can't do anything creative when I'm on my medicine. I am, on the other hand, wonderful at monkey work. When I'm off, though, I'm a different man.

I long to be contacted. Not by the same people. Those of you who read this, God bless you, are not the people causing me this small apprehension. It is those who I wait to call, those who I fear to scare off. An extremely select few people know even remotely who I speak of.

Music really is a lovely release.

Let's keep the reputation slaying to minor atrocity levels, pending the finish of this little post. However, I have been checking out new stuff through Pandora, and there have been a few songs by Slipknot, Korn, and similar artists that I honestly didn't mind a bit. I am able to find the expression in some of the songs.

I imagine it would be wise to go to my doctor again. I also imagine that I will do so before too long. I have things I need to accomplish, and this portion of me should be socked away in my head somewhere. If I do wind up, by some miracle, with who I'd love to be with, I will be staying on the medicine. It's not worth totaling another relationship and alienating another person just to feel free of medicine. It's not worth it.

I'm going to post some things I'd like to say to people, but that I never will:

• Stop it. Idiot.


• If I have to beg, I will. Whatever you want, take it. Please.


• I feel so insanely awful for how we didn't get along. I feel awful that I still can't forgive you for the things you'd said.


• Think carefully about what you're doing. I don't think you understand what you've put yourself in to.


• I'm sorry, but it was you. I can't love you anymore. All I feel for you is bitterness.


• I'm genuinely sorry.


• Give me some room, or you will not see me or your grandkids.


• The hell with it, alcohol is a coping strategy. So long as it doesn't become an addiction. Same as food.


• I actually pray to have you call me. I wish you knew what the potential means to me.

I do suppose that should be all before I do any real damage. A word of kindness would mean the world to me right now.

A brief update:

• I'm buying my dad's car this week. I got approved for the loan without a cosigner(wooo!) and almost all the paperwork is done.


• I'm kind of lonely, but not like a desperate lonely. Like, I would really like to be dating someone, but I'm honestly having a great time just having friends and not worrying about relationship junk.


• I bought two books today: A Picture of Dorian Gray and War and Peace. I'm going to try reading again! [gasp] for the first time since AP English in High School. Being forced to read kinda ruins it, imho.


• Kyle and I are living together next year at Western, and this Friday we're going apartment hunting. It's gonna be ballin'.


• I see that 'Jessay' is following me. Also ballin'! Haha. I'd love to chat it up if you get bored. :]


• I am phenomenally frustrated with my ex right now. She's being borderline psychotic. Someone, help me.

More later, promise.

i AM DRUNK. WATching superbad with my FUZCKING faggot friend and my new friend Chrsitine who is pretty but aCurt hates me and my friend vince. vince says I'm bringh a cockblock but hes wrong. curt cockblocked me earlier. before, there were pictures of dicks. but then there were bekah who evan likes. the fat kid likes to draw penises with a pencil and remarks that fully the bedst foods are made of dicks. evan le gustan a los inatas. I stop drinking now because it does me no good to have fun. any fun I get ends in failURE FAILURE. FAILURE. in the future I will not sabve my passwor dbecause I will post more drunken stupidity which is detrimental to my personal ality. sorry to whoefer reaseds this, espeicalsly kyl eand dkurt but not CUrt with a C because he cocklblocked me and stole the girl aI liked. BNYE BYE all and I'll delete this tomorrowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Wow. that was fantastically frustrating.

I tried to see if Western's homepage servers would allow PHP, and of course, they don't. I tried to use their premade functions and tutorials to achieve my needs, and of course the links are nonfunctional and what code they do provide results in an internal server error. How frustrating.

I emailed the help desk, so I'll get a response..probably by February or so. I uploaded the files, less the SQL database file, on my site, but you'll need WAMP server software to do anything with them.

I am currently looking for a new hosting place for my stuff, one that allows mySQL and PHP. Kyle, this is mostly directed to you, but I'd love some help.

Grade Update:

Accounting
Exam: 81.67%
Final Grade: BA

CS 2800
Exam: 81%
Final Grade: TBA

Oookay. What a mess. My last lab for CIS went actually reasonably well, I'll get around to posting it sometime. I have a ton to do, and not much time to do it. I've actually lost the ambition to post..sorry guys. I'll let you know how my Accounting Exam goes, though.

I had another stupid mistake. Where I posted before, the column names need to be referenced by 'lastName' and 'firstName' and so on and so forth. Like this:

$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
do {
print("{$row['ID']}");
print("{$row['ISBN']}");
print("{$row['Category']}");
print("{$row['Title']}");
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
} while($row);
?>

Okay. So, the previous error was actually pretty straightforward. in PHP, concatenation is done by . , so for example, a string with a value (such as what I had before) is done like so:
("stringData".$phpVariable."more string data")
So (fixed in previous post) I needed static references to the columns, which are `firstName` and `lastName`. Now, I have a situation where everything goes through, but my output is not displayed, but it gets the right amount of data entries. Just have to see where I'm screwing up in this tidbit:

$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
do {
print("{$row['`eMail`']}");
print("{$row['`firstName`']}");
print("{$row['`lastName`']}");

$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
} while($row);
?>
Post when I figure it out.

So:
extract( $_POST );

// build SELECT query
//NOTE: This is where we're throwing an error, somehow. I think.
$query = ("SELECT `firstName`, `lastName` FROM `users` ORDER BY `lastName` DESC");

// Connect to MySQL
if ( !( $database = mysql_connect("localhost", "root") ) )
die( "Could not connect to database " );

// open Products database
if ( !mysql_select_db( "lab6", $database) )
die( "Could not open 'users' database " );

// query Products database
if ( !( $result = mysql_query( $query, $database ) ) )
{
print( "Could not execute query!
" );
die( mysql_error() . "" );
} // end if

mysql_close( $database );
?>

Now, to many of you, this looks like jibberish. Well, my friends, you are not alone. I can interpret it, but it's quite foreign to me as well. My previous error was at the opening of the users database. I was trying to open `users` when in fact I needed lab6; basically the container of the `users` table. Now, I have an error where commented (sent to my prof, because he humors my idiocy). I'll update if/when I figure it out.

A few thoughts:

My girlfriend's little brother, William, did not get accepted into the Alaska Great Lakes Project. This sucks. He's fourteen years old, has few friends, and has yet to be accepted into a community activity or group in Marshall. He's a smart kid, boy scout, polite, the whole nine. So why, Dale, was he not accepted? I'm quite sure it was nothing I wrote in my page-long recommendation letter for him. It's not his grades. I don't believe he's had any problem with his teachers. It would be nice for Will to be included in something. It's not looking like he'll be going to MHS for high school right now, anyway. Oh well.

My project for CS just isn't happening right now. I really, really have to get it done before tomorrow, and I haven't the foggiest how to do it. I have some obscure error about the sql database not able to open, which is horse shit, because I defined both the database and the table name, rechecked and reloaded the whole thing, and I'm just plain stuck. The exercise is due tomorrow, which is a big component of the assignment due Friday. I have a small stats assignment due tomorrow, as well as some accounting. I have a 3-5 page Russian paper on topic of choice due by next Thursday (?), which is not such a big deal.

I have to bring in my calendar to work to see how many conflicts there are between exams and work. Should be a real treat talking with my boss about it. On the plus side, they're training me on vending, which is like free money..I already know most of what you have to do to be on the vending shift, and while training, the work is minimal. On the downside, I have to have Oaklawn's stupid CBL (computer based learning) modules due by the 15th of December, of which I am 50% complete. At least I can do it at work and get paid for it, though.

Pretty standard issue end-of-semester stress, really. Oh, and I might take Russian in fall '09 as a language. If something happens, I'll take it sooner, but I'm pretty excited right now. Humans are fickle though, so we'll see.

I'd love to hear some comments, hope everyone's doing well.