I was very disappointed in the Web 2.0 Expo yesterday at Moscone Center in SF. I wasn’t expecting much since everything I was interested in was part of the conference and not the expo, but I thought it would at least be fun and interesting. It was not.
I was glad I left late for the city. I stayed home in the morning to work on the big site upgrade that I am doing. I reached about hour 25 of what will most likely be a 30 hour project that I will get paid $300 for. I suppose $10/hr. is a big improvement over the $2/hr. I was making last year. I am happy about the job. It is for a long time client who has sent me many referrals, and the updated site will make it much more usable for us both.
I digress. Back to the expo. So many of the things that I consider to be the future (and present) of the web are open source projects with large enthusiastic development communities. The small expo floor was filled with large corporations and smaller startups focused on selling their products to other companies. The people I spoke with were sales reps rather than developers.
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My new meds are still working much better than the last ones. It is still hard to concentrate, work, play, and read, but for the most part, I am feeling about a million times better than I was just a short time ago 
It is easier to be with people. I had a really good weekend that turned out to be very social and I didn’t even hate it at all. On Friday, I met D at the White Horse for a little while. It was very nice to see her. She is one of the very few people that I can ‘talk geek’ with. It is a rare and beautiful thing. We have other things in common too that make it easier for me to hang with her than it sometimes is to hang other people. She came over and had dinner with me and K.
After dinner, we all went to Velvet to meet Lorena and Tess. It was a good night. We played pool even though we were all sucking pretty bad, even D who is actually good at pool. There were a few obstacles like a giant pole and huge speaker in the way of making certain shots. Still it was fun, even though my knuckle is still a little swollen from smacking it into the giant pole while trying to shoot around it. Eventually, I completely lost all focus of what was going on around me and went into my own special world where it is quiet and stimuli is almost non-existent. I think D ended up in some other world too. I am lucky to be able to do that. Otherwise I would have needed very badly to get out of the bar immediately.
Yesterday, me and K went to Spin’s birthday party. That was lots of fun too. Happy birthday Spins! Nice people and a custom ‘Pin the Tail on the Tigger’ game with Spin’s features imposed on Tigger and magnetic tails for pinning that was made with obvious love for her by her guy. He even had a special ‘tail’ for himself which was actually a heart that matched the heart on the card that he gave her (at least I assumed that card was from him. Only saw the outside, but it had an identical heart). Very sweet Other than that, me and K did some errands and even had a little bit of quiet time to watch Prehistoric Planet and for K to start a puzzle that she has wanted to do for a while, but hasn’t had the time.
And then, tragedy struck… (not really. just having a sudden flair for the dramatic)
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I dropped my classes. i am very sad about that, but relieved too. It was too much. So much work and trying to deal with meds (or lack of them). I just couldn’t keep up. It is very similar to what has always happened when I’ve tried to do school, but with one major difference. Since we actually learned by doing things, I still know everything I learned and can use it for my work.
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Work has been very busy lately. I have one very big job, and possibly several other smaller jobs coming up. I am hoping to be able to partner with d. We will try a test run with one of the smaller jobs. We have almost completely opposite skills and completely opposite ways of working. I think that is a good thing. She is very organized about the initial process of signing up a client, including managing expectations, writing contracts, and charging realistic prices based on actual time worked, rather than pulling some random number out of the air like I tend to do. She is also skilled at graphic design and has experience making web sites. If I had my way, I would stick to the (x)html/css and back end coding for the site and do technical support for the client after the site is complete. I would leave the business stuff, front end design, and client management to someone else. Could be a match made in heaven if we can somehow merge our oppositeness into a working business.
It is getting harder to keep up with school. The ’side-effect’ of feeling better lately is that I have lost the super-focus that I was having when I was undermedicated. I have also been very twitchy and shaky which is quite annoying. It is a strange balance. It is still hard for me to get out, but not as hard as before. The main difference is that I am not completely exhausted like before. I can do a wider range of things, but am back to having a one second attention span. Going to see the doc on wednesday, but not sure if I am ready to continue experimenting with new meds and/or doses and timing of meds.
I am tired of waiting and waiting to find the right combination of drugs and going through long periods of terrible side-effects until the next drug or dose kicks in. I will probably keep experimenting, but am thinking of taking a break for a while and going back to figuring out ways to make myself feel better even when things aren’t so good. It has been very hard to do that while continuously messing with my meds, and I am hoping that taking a break will help, at least in the way of keeping things stable for a while. One of my best skills is adapting to life under less than ideal circumstances. It is impossible to adapt to something that keeps changing.
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It is quiet here. K and B just went out to get a mani/pedi. I have NO work to do! Nothing is broken. Or hacked. Bills are paid. All there is to do is clean up for the party later. And then party It is nice to have B here. Shiki is especially happy. I love that last night me, B, and K were all in the living room together, each with our separate laptops, doing our own thing but still enjoying each others company. It is not usually like that with house guests. Usually it takes lots and lots of energy to have them, even if it also very fun. B likes to chill. So does Ali. He will stay here tonight too.
I am less freaked about web hosting today. I think it will be okay to keep my reseller account for another year. That will be plenty of time for everyone’s accounts to expire, and for people to move to a new host. I also would like to host the International Asperger’s Year site (once it is made) for free for a year. Who knows, maybe by then I will be breaking even or (gasp) actually making money. In any case, I would move my own sites to a server with lots of space. I would always like to have enough space to experiment and do some free hosting for family, friends, and other random do-gooders. Actually, my family members are some of my best customers!
It is hard to read the news. So many fucked up things going on all the time. It is kind of strange to be happy in such a situation. But I guess it is better than being a homicidal maniac. I’m not really the homicidal type, but sometimes a person just really wants to kill assholes! There was a horrible earthquake in Pakistan yesterday (which was Saturday there). It was a 7.6 magnitude tremor and over 3000 people in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan were killed. That doesn’t make me homicidal. Just very sad. On Friday, the Governator signed a bill that bans the sale or rental of extremely violent video games to children. It is hard to understand the big government concern over kids playing games, when that same government is responsible for uncountable amounts of actual extreme violence that happens every day all over the world. What kind of effect does THAT have on children? I think that Jon Stewart should be appointed the US Minister of Prioritization.
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