Almost There

Two more weeks of school. Most of my assignments will be finished this week allowing me to coast into the end of the term.

God I can’t wait for this to be over. I want my weekends back just as badly as my family wants me back.

More later.

Problems

This past weekend I was in Louisville for my senior project. The weekend before that I was in Windsor Ontario spending time with my wife’s family. I am now twelve weeks into a fifteen week program before I graduate. I can see light at the end of the tunnel.

There have been highs and lows, ins and outs. The server and router implementation that I was part of went wrong on about fifteen different levels yet still managed to end up right. At every step of the way we were tripped up by the simplest things, proving that no matter how many plans you make, they can all be foiled by starting the project. Let’s just say that somehow we (my teammate, business sponsor, and I) managed to pull off a miracle with this implementation.

For the four days that I was in Louisville, I was able to stay at my Aunt’s. It’s been roughly fifteen years since I’ve been to Louisville. so I was making up for lost time. I was able to spend some time with family when I wasn’t working on shoving a square server into a round hole. (Or trying to take it out before attempting to shove it back in again).

I can’t adequately relate the degree of stress that I was under while I was down there. I was under intense pressure to get things done right, and slowly began losing more and more of my cool the worse things went. I would spend all day puzzling out technology problems, and then go back to Carol’s only to have the problems running through my mind while she and I talked about things like family, my Mom, and her life down there.

Sometimes, I almost feel guilty about how blessed my wife and I are and the life that we have together. We have no major dramas or problems to speak of. Just the occasional lack of money to buy enough groceries and such.

My Aunt is (as you may or may not have guessed by now) my Mother’s sister. She was with my family when my Mom died of cancer back in 1996. Her daughter has a family of her own, and her daughter has a son with a number of mental problems. 

I find that when I look at my Cousin I see an exponential magnification of myself. What I could have been potentially. I do not say this in a derogatory way or a negative way. I say this like a man looking into the ripples in a pond and seeing a distorted reflection of himself. My cousin has the tendency to say exactly what is on his mind without regard for social graces. He can’t help it, that’s just who he is. I used to be the same way until I learned that I just can’t open my mouth whenever I want to and say what I want to. He tends to want the biggest and best things, and the last time I checked I had a new laptop and a Sony PSP in my backpack. He is easily obsessed with things like photography and trains. I easily obsess over things like the Internet, new computers, new video games, and new books.

The key difference between he and I is that I have the filters to control myself, and he does not. He’s just not wired that way. This past weekend was my first real experience with hanging out with him for any extended period of time and as a result I found myself thrown headlong into getting to know him. During family conversations, ideas and sentences would come to him, and they would come spilling out of his mouth. He just can’t stop himself. This had the effect of making conversations dull and muted. People would subconsciously (or consciously) steer the conversations in certain directions in an attempt to keep my cousin quiet or to minimize outbursts. It introduced a subtle degree of stress into social interaction that was difficult to maintain.

I found that the more time I spent with him, the more agitated I became. I found myself snarking off sarcastic remarks and responses to him. Afterwards, I had plenty of time to think about my actions/reactions and why exactly I did react the way that I did. It was all because of the reasons that I mentioned above.

Part of who I am is who I choose to be. The rest is how nature made me. Sometimes who I choose to be is the better man, sometimes it isn’t. I can only hope that I choose to be the better man in the future.

So.

On to other things.

I am considering offloading some of the remnants of my youth. These include but are not limited to comic books, video games, baseball cards, and other sundry items. I am getting to the point where I have an overabundance of crap holed up in the nooks, crannies, and niches in the basement. With this preponderance of material goods I am starting to feel their metaphorical weight on my shoulders.

That’s the long winded way of saying I need to have some kind of geek-errific yard sale or something. I’m sure there’s some teenager who wants to buy a sword (or three) somewhere, and properly advertised I’m sure I could get rid of my 2000+ comic books. My moldering collection of GI Joe’s were disposed of in the last yard sale. There’s stll lots of other crap to get rid of. eBay? I don’t think so.

I think I may be able to get rid of some of my video game consoles for cash or store credit at one of any used video game shops around here and where I work. I’d probably get rid of my GameCube and my PS2. Maybe even my Game Boy and my PSP. I haven’t completely decided just yet. I don’t play them anymore, and when I do buy games I only play them for a few days. That’s too much money wasted on trivial things. Granted I am graduating, but that free time will go towards spending time with Cheryl and Emma since I have been a hermit for the last five years (doing school work and all).

Maybe it’s just the sad truth that I am growing up. I don’t enjoy the games as much as I used to, and even the more complex ones just don’t hold the entertainment value for me they once did. I mean after all, how many hours can you spend leveling up to fight another nameless monster who is only slightly different than the last one? It gets kind of derivative at times. Even new games like Katamari Damacy are only a momentary stimulation before boredom once again asserts its iron will upon me.

The only game that has really done anything for me recently is the game which shall not be named but even that has lost it’s lustre with the preponderance of online lowlifes. I’m seriously considering dumping my X-Box too.

Has Peter Pan finally grown up? Oy gevalt.

Oh, and Battlestar Galactica starts again tonight. Happy day happy day. Set your TiVo’s one and all. Don’t miss it.