Before I turn in to bed, this evening, I’d like to take a moment to say “Sweet Dreams” to all of you who might be going to bed, have gone to bed, or may be waking up in the next couple of hours. The last couple of weeks have been long, stressful, and trying to a lot of us, for a lot of different reasons. So, sweet dreams to all of you. It may not be of much help, but I hope tomorrow will be brighter for all of you.

Thanks, again. All of you. You know who you are.

Goodnight.

As if to compound the emotional state of the world even further, one of my boss’s birds died today. Olive, who I had grown the most attached to out of all his animals, apparently drowned in the sink after another bit of flying about the house. Definitely a sad day for the family …

I’m going to stick this to the top for a while, so I get a chance to see it everyday.

In Memory … [Deleted]

Edit: The page will remain, but this will not be stuck to the top.

Edit 2: So much for that.

On a lighter note …

I generally like to keep my workspace pretty clean. Only having open the files I absolutely need, while I’m working on something. Today’s been stressful and hectic, and my workspace shows that brilliantly, now that I think about it …

Take a look …

That’s all the files I have open in my editor, right now. Some blurred due to NDAs and stuff, and I can’t let any of my readers know what I’m working on, exactly.

This is a public response to what was posted over at Jennifer’s LiveJournal. I’m putting it up here, because I can draft my stuff here, and I’ll probably do that often since I’m going between this and other things I have to be doing. This is just going to clear up some of the nonsense that she’s put up due to either 1.) mis-understandings; or 2.) bullshit that Jason’s drilling into her head now. Off we go.

You know, for someone who said he wouldn’t fuck me around, Jeremy’s sure done an awful good job of it.

I was looking through crap today and discovered he removed my ability to read the JoS forums. While I pretty much expected him to be an ass about it, it pisses me off that I did more work on the thing than anyone else and yet I get thrown away like a month old pizza. And they’ll be happily using my ideas while they call me a bitch and whatever other names they can think of. Providing, of course, that they even get anything much done without me. (Yes I know that sounds egotistical, but I think I had twice as many posts as anyone else on there, although of course now I can’t check.)

Nothing bad has or will be said about you in the JoS Forums. But, this project has been going on as a personal thing for me, since long before you ever came into the picture. Since long before ANYONE on that project, besides Brice, ever came into the picture. After the way I was treated, you should’ve more than expected this, though. And anyone new on the scene can check older entries in this blog for full explanations as to what I’m talking about. Also, our current most active Wizard is Steel. You reached a point where you got too lazy and didn’t feel like putting any effort into it anymore, just like everything else you do, apparently.

More importantly, if it turns out that he got John to fire Jason, I’ll be even more screwed.

Did I not say that I wasn’t going to do this? Do you think I’m going to lie about that kind of thing? When I said I wasn’t going to fuck you two over (even after everything that was done to fuck me over), I was telling the truth. As a matter of fact, I have work for Jason to do that I e-mailed him about this morning. That reminds me… I haven’t got a response. If Jason gets fired, it’s not going to be because of me. It’s going to be because he’s not doing his job.

Though, money wouldn’t be as tight as it is if he hadn’t made Jason be the one to buy all the shit he wanted to get for me. I mean how fucked up is that? If you’re gonna get shit for your girlfriend, shouldn’t you be the one buying it instead of getting someone else to?

Uhh… First of all, buying those things wasn’t my idea. In my mind, after all we’ve been through, I thought that we were above stupid shit like material possessions and money. Excuse me if I was a bit more concerned about having the money we needed to live off of, considering Jason has (and he’ll admit this himself) an extremely alarming tendency to just blow money.

Though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given it was Jason who actually risked his ass to come get me because Jeremy couldn’t be bothered to. So he had responsibilities, that didn’t keep him from making Jason ignore his responsibilities to come get me, and by the way risking his job in the process. I don’t know about you, but to my way of thinking, real friends don’t endanger their friends’ jobs just for kicks.

Again, Jason’s idea. I was waiting and trying to find other methods, and he suggested that he could go get you. Matter of fact, I put my ass on the line to make sure that he wouldn’t get caught and/or fired, the entire time he’s gone. I was more than prepared to take the heat for Jason, and if he tells you any different, he’s a fucking liar. I told him personally, after the first time he came back because he got busted in Kansas for no insurance that as long as he took care of me, I’d do everything in my power to take care of him. This wasn’t “just for kicks” … This was because I loved you, and he was being a good person and helping me out because he understood how I felt. Hell, I’m putting my ass on the line, just by posting this here.

Speaking of fucking people over, I appreciate you making that huge public article in a place where my boss could read it and not only get me in trouble, but Jason, too. Thanks for that one.

He talks about how I supposedly never loved him and just used him to get away from my mom. Of course I loved him, because I was under the delusion that he’d give me as much attention in person as he did online and on the phone. Or maybe he thinks people are supposed to ignore everyone they live with. The sad thing is, I’ve had more conversations and just plain human contact since he left than I had while he was here.

Apparently, you don’t truly understand the concept of stress and pressure. Let me give you a perfect example. This morning, a very critical meeting was taking place where some things needed to be shown. Some of said things were my responsibility, and I’m way behind, due to all the emotional bullshit. When I arrived at the office today, I originally had to complete what should’ve been two hours of work or so in thirty fucking minutes. That, my friends, is pressure. You were supposed to understand the kind of shit that I go through, and how much work, stress, pressure, etc. is placed on me. And I told you, repeatedly that it was going to be a little rough to begin with, but I promised you that it would get better.

And before he left, he talked about how he worked his ass off trying to make sure he could provide for me. Well, we’ve all heard that story before. How many doctors have ended up getting divorced and having their wives take the kids because they never bothered to pay any attention to the ones they were providing for?

Again, I told you it wasn’t always going to be like that. I’m very aware of how things are in my life and I know how they’re going to turn out, if everything goes as planned. I’ve grown up a little more since I’ve been out here, and I now realize that you can’t take the easy way out all the time, because it just leads to more headache and frustration, in the end. I’m working hard to make sure that I don’t spend the rest of my life working like I work, now. I’m not a doctor, and my profession doesn’t always require me to be like one, but we’re sitting on the bridge smack in the middle of a shitload of work and not near enough time to do it in. Yet, we pull it off, because we’re all dedicated individuals who not only love what they do, but because we work together so well that things just click. You gave up on me too easily, especially after I realized how bad I was fucking up, and made an attempt to correct my mistakes.

The sad thing is, I came pretty damn close to going back to him the night he left, prior to his little temper tantrum where he broke his mouse. The one thing that kept me from it was the fact that he’s only capable of being part of the time what Jason is all the time, and that’s giving him the benefit of the doubt here considering I’ve yet to see it for myself.

If you had any idea what I’ve been through over the course of the past two weeks, the fact that I didn’t completely lose it and do a lot more than that would surprise you. The body and mind can only take so much pressure, and mine partially gave weigh that night, after some of the things that I heard. But, that’s fine. Jason can keep on being exactly what you want him to be, full-time. It would’ve been impossible for me to do everything I needed to do and still please you, and he doesn’t have to do half as much as I do, and he still won’t be able to. And I can tell this already, just by the lack of anything getting done and the lack of response John and I have both gotten today. So, he’ll sacrafice everything for you, and you’ll be screwed, because he doesn’t have any sense of responsibility or priorities. Just like you.

I really didn’t want to get pissed at him, considering up until recently part of me still loved him, or rather loved the him I thought he’d be instead of the him he actually was. But since all he seems able to do is bitch about me to everyone he knows and screw me around in every way he can think of, that part kinda shriveled up and died. I’ve learned more about his character after breaking up with him than I knew while we were still together, and it makes me pretty damn relieved that I didn’t stay with him any longer than I did. If this is how he treats those he supposedly loves, I’m perfectly happy not to be one of them anymore.

Yeah, I bitch about you. But, I believe I have the right. And I think anyone who’s got half a brain would think I do, too. Especially, after everything I went through for you. You didn’t get to see me, because you didn’t stick around long enough for me to get past the last stretch of the seriously stressful shit. I feel a lot better now that I’m not under that kind of pressure, and I’m my old self again. But, you’ll never see that, now. Besides the JoS thing, I can’t see how I’ve been “screwing you around in every way I can think of” … I firmly believe that if I had called John with the intent to get Jason fired, the two of you would’ve known about it plenty before now, because there would’ve been some hellatious repercussions, in that case. But, that’s not how I am, and the fact that you openly display you’re lack of that knowledge just shows me that you really don’t know as much about me as I thought you did.

This verse of the song from the previous entry, is what I found the most ironic:

I never really wanted you to see
The screwed up side of me that I keep
Locked inside of me so deep
It always seems to get to me
I never really wanted you to go
So many things you should have known
I guess for me theres just no hope

Because, it’s true. I hate having to be serious so much, on the level that I am. But, there’s nothing I can do about it. No one else would step up and take on the things that I have to deal with. But, it’s okay. I can see the point where things are starting to come together, for me. Especially, after today. And I really wish I could’ve shared with you the feeling I had today when I realized how much closer we are to completing our goal, but you deprived me of that. You deprived you of that. And that’s fine, because if you’re really so much happier now, I wish you all the luck in the world, but I will not sit here and take the kind of slander you put up about me without even acknowledging the parts where you faulted the relationship. I made everyone very aware of both times I fucked up. They’re in the note, they’re in the previous entries, and I told everyone I talked to about it. So, where’s yours? I admitted my mistakes… Where’s yours?

(Three… Wow.)

I can honestly say that it’s been a long time since something this ironic has happened (bar the actual incident itself). I haven’t actually been able to listen to any music for a while … If I wasn’t too depressed, I just plain forgot. So, my playlist is very random and shuffled, and it automatically picks a random song when I open Winamp. Of all the songs it could pick (over 450), it picked Cold by Crossfade. For those of you who don’t see the irony in this, it’s probably because you’ve never heard it. Well, here are the lyrics.

Irony aside, it’s a really good song. I recommend it.

( Two in one day, I’m on a roll. )

It’s amazing what kind of a world the internet has opened up to people. The best friends that I’ve got have time and time again proved to be my online ones, which may be a little sad, but it’s true. I really realized this while reading the responses to my entry “Moving On …” … The people that I felt so bad about leaving behind in Alabama … I’ve only been contacted by a very small few of them, even after attempting to contact some of them, myself.

So, this is my little tribute to the internet. May all of you continue to find good friends in so many different parts of the world.

Morpheus: “What is ‘real’? How do you define ‘real’?” ~ The Matrix

It’s a sad day when a person can’t really be who he or she is. I have to suffer this problem, everyday. Time constraints, stress, pressure, schedules. It’s the life of a programmer. But, every person has a face for work and a face for living. I’ve seen enough of it to know. Some are lucky enough to be able to use the same in both situations. Others, like myself, are not. Depending on the situation, you sometimes have to be a completely different person. Trust me, there’s nothing bad about this, it’s just another inconvenience in life that you have to become accustomed to… Otherwise, you will let one part take over both scenarios.

“A man with friends is no failure.”

I have no idea who originally said that, or if that’s the way it’s put. It’s just what comes to mind. It’s also one of the truer statements I’ve heard in a long time. As painful as they are, I personally love situations like the most recent one. It forces your “fake” friends … The ones who really don’t give a shit about you, and are really out for their own gain … To rear their ugly heads. It also forces your “real” friends … The ones who are honestly and truly there for you, no matter what … To really shine. And I had a handful of people who really shined over the past couple of days, and I really cannot thank any of them enough. I know what their reaction is, too… “No thanks necessary.” It’s what friends are for, and I feel comfort in knowing that they’ll be there if something like this happens again. Just like I hope they feel comfort in knowing that I’ll be there, in the case it does to them.

Be yourself. I know that’s cliched and highly overused, but it’s true. Whether or not I or anyone else wants to accept it, who I am when I’m working is apart of who I am as a person. If that’s not acceptable to you, I’ve got two words for you. Screw you. I will adjust my lifestyle for no man, woman, or anyone. “That’s a bad attitude to have, Jeremy.” That’s bullshit. I’m not out to impress you, whoever might be reading this, or anyone else. I’m here to be who I am, take it or leave it. The sheer fact that I have as many “real” friends as I do, must mean that I’m doing something right. I admit, I have my problems… We all do. But, I feel proud that I’m “cleaner” than over 75% of the guys my age (rough estimate, probably more ;)). The point I’m trying to make is if you know how someone wants something to be, don’t violate who you are to try and give it to them. Unless, of course, you want that change yourself. If you want things to be that way, by all means, that should be even more motivation to get you from point A to point B. Don’t sell yourself short, and don’t live your life attempting to be someone else.

If you have to fake it, to make someone happy, you’re walking down the wrong path. Your feelings may be real, but your actions aren’t, and I’d rather have someone who genuinely loves and cares for me who’s being all of who they are than someone who’s trying to make me happy by being someone they’re not.

Of course, this is all entirely relative. People don’t change easily, and when they do, they have an alarming tendency to revert back to their old ways. A hawk may try to swim with the dolphins… and even if he succeeds, even if he enjoys it, something will eventually take him back to the skies. In order to make a successful transition, you have to actively know that you want it. If you don’t, you won’t put forth any effort, and you can’t succeed if you don’t even try.

Once a hawk, always a hawk.

I meant to mention this last night, but I wanted to get the last entry about everything that’s happened out of the way, first. So, I get up yesterday and have breakfast with John and Family … Well, they had breakfast … I was still upset and nauseous. Afterwards, we went upstairs to the “home office” space and got setup and worked for a little while. At the time, I was so physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, that it didn’t take me long to pass out in that chair, where I slept for a couple of hours.

Anyway, when I woke up, I had a talk with John. After he found out everything that was going on, he actually bought me a little gift, a couple days ago (I e-mailed him prior to the other night’s incident, to inform him of the actual break-up). I’ve now got Dungeons & Dragons Online. Amazingly enough, as much as I love RPGs, this is my first MMO. So, I got it installed yesterday, but there were so many updates, that it spent all of the evening doing that. So, I haven’t had a chance to play it, yet. John says this might be a game that we could play together, which would be nice. He’s been a good friend to me all this time… It’d be great to have something to do with him that’s not work-related, although I did watch a couple movies with him and his family yesterday.

Work’s still busy, but hopefully I’ll be able to check this one out, soon.

So, a couple nights ago I was shit on by the two most important people to me. And I snapped. I literally couldn’t take anymore. I really think I temporarily went insane. I wanted to take Jason’s head, and smash his face into a brick wall. But, after all we’ve been through, I couldn’t allow myself to do any physical harm to either of them. So, I did the only thing I could think of. I called John. I pleaded to him to get me out of there, otherwise something bad was going to happen. And I have to say I was surprised. At 2:30 am, he woke up out of a dead sleep to come and get me out of there. I gathered together my laptop and some of my clothes and just left. To John: If you’re reading this, I love you, man. No one on this planet, outside of my parents, has done as much for me as you have. You helped me escape a horrible situation that was going to eat me alive. All I can say is thank you.

I cussed her out before I left… I was so … furious that it was all I could do. As the note says in my previous entry, I was given one week. I don’t care what anyone says. Yeah, I screwed up and ran off at the mouth, but I was damn scared. I didn’t know what to do. But, either way, one week is not enough time to judge how things are going to go. One week was apparently plenty of time for her to judge how much better my best friend would be than me, though. I’d point to her LiveJournal, but the relevant entries are friends-only, so there’s no point. Matter of fact, I’m surprised I’m still on her friends list… Hell, I probably won’t be, after she reads this.

I’ve blocked them both on all my messengers. I don’t want to have anything to do with either of them, ever again. I was used and abused by both of them, and I’ve had it. I won’t take it anymore. Jason’s been doing this bullshit to me since we were younger. Everything I held dear to me he wants to take away. He even took my parents away from me, for a brief point in time. But, I said I won’t screw them over. Oh, boy … Could I. Anyone who really knows me, knows that’s not how I am. Of course, I have to go back to that place to pick up all my personal belongings, and that will probably happen soon. After being away from there and into a place where people really care about me and my well-being, I’ve had a chance to calm down. I feel a lot better, because now that I’m looking in from the outside, I can see exactly what happened. It didn’t have anything to do with me working too much. I’m not to blame for anything. They were both very aware of what they were doing, and I have a feeling it would’ve happened, no matter what I did or tried to do.

So, it’s done. I’m not just done with her, I’m done with him, too. For those of you who are in on the JoS project, it will continue as planned. I’m not going to let this affect it negatively. There will just be one less wizard around the group. Anyway, since I’m at the office, I’ve got some things that need to get done … Not to mention a lot of phone calls to make. Any of you who may be worried about me … Don’t. I appreciate all the support that all of you have given to me, but I’m doing a lot better now. I promise. Sure, it hurts… It’ll be something I won’t forget or get over for a while, but I’ve spent the last couple nights in a home where I actually feel safe and at home. The last couple of days, before I left that damn place, I was sleeping on the floor in the office room. Talk about taken advantage of …

Anyway, that’s enough of this subject. When we go by there, I hope they aren’t there. If they are, they better just leave me the hell alone. That’s all I’ve got to say.