Doug Goldstein

So I’ve finally began to learn how to play the guitar with the help of Jenn. She’s even made a lesson plan for me and let me borrow her guitar. She’s amazing. It’s been a lot of fun but super painful on my poor little fingers. I’ve learned a few chords and that’s about it. I’m working on learning more chords and learning how to transition between chords. Apparently the transitioning is the toughest at first but once I can do it successfully it’ll be smooth sailing. BTW, Jenn’s so awesome that I even wrote a song for her already…. since I have her guitar.

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Thinking back on today I was reminded of a story my mother told me once. Before I was born and before my mother moved to NYC, she lived in Bellmore (out on Long Island), somewhere near Merrick Rd. At some point the neighbors had their neice and her husband come live with them, they’d just come to the US… blah blah blah… Anyway… they were about my mother’s age so they became friends but my mom was still learning English and so were they. But my mom remembers that one time the couple decided they were going to see California and so my mom asked them how they were going to get there… and they told my mom “Merrick Rd”, and that they’d just take it until it took them to California. Which if you’re from Long Island could easily be understandable that they thought this road went everywhere since it is the alpha and omega of local roads on Long Island. Well one day they up and left and just about a year later my mom got a post card from them saying that they made it there and love it and they’re going to stay, that they found their happiness and that they’d taken Merrick Rd. (I kid you not, she showed it to me)

Now, time to relate this back into why I spent so much talking about it. In a way sometimes 441 or 13th st is my “Merrick Rd”. My parents live near 441 now, Jamie and her parents live just off of 441, and I too live on 441. So, basically I went driving today and got on 441 and just wanted to keep going until it got me away from class, away from everything that happened this summer, and away from G’ville. Unfortunately I think I took it the wrong way… So I cruised through Payne’s Praire and decided to turn around… the Focus performed beautifully in a 55mph handbrake through the U-turn… and raced up 441 at 100mph… Just before I got to my apartment I managed to pass a cop at about 95mph… Luckily he was going the other way but that only bought me some time. He popped on his lights and made the quickest U-turn he could. Unfortunately for him I was doing 95mph and managed to make it to the entrance to my apartment complex… a little weaving back in there and parking and he had lost me. Oh well. Fun stuff.

Maybe someday I’ll go to my “California” on my “Merrick Rd”, right now it feels like my “California” is somewhere adrift.

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It’s official… Floridians are wusses. All over the country we always heard how bad hurricanes are… I’ve now officially driven through 1 and sat through 2 others and I can say “THEY ARE NOTHING!”.

So, I drove through Tropical Storm/Depression Bonnie (it’s debatable what it was when I encountered it) when I was returning from this summer’s Pennsylvania/New York trip to visit Jamie. I encountered Bonnie somewhere in the northwest around Washington DC or Pennsylvania… I forget where right now. Only thing of note about Bonnie was that at one point it began to rain frogs… yes… frogs… there is still one embedded in the radiator of my car. On the last leg of my trip into Florida I managed to drive into Hurricane Charlie, I wasn’t impressed by this storm the least bit. It rained but not as bad as the regular rains in South Florida. There might have been a little wind associated with it as well but nothing that kept me from driving.

Now Hurricane Frances was a bit more fun. We stocked up on water and food and then just sat and waited… and waited… I think Frances realized he was coming on a Friday night and said, “Well… it’s the weekend… I work doesn’t start till Monday… so… I’m going out drinking” and then just got drunk and slept all day Saturday because it didn’t really start raining until Sunday. However the power did manage to go out at virtually everyone’s apartment/house. I was staying with Josh and Jenn and the power was out there but the neighbors across the street still had power for a long time so we got a long extension cord and mooched power off of them. Then Jenn’s dad came up with a generator and life was good. I didn’t get power at my apartment until Wedneday morning and Josh and Jenn didn’t get power until Wednesday night (or was it Thursday morning). I drove around G’ville looking for sex (my term for looking for damage) and I took a whole bunch of pictures. I’ll post them shortly. But basically we sat around bored with no power, getting hot and listening to the rain.

Hurricane Jeanne… the drunk Hurricane that went on vacation before it finally hit. So this Hurricane was a waste of time as well… didn’t even bother getting supplies cause it was pointless. I didn’t lose power but Josh and Jenn did… sucks… I drove down 34th to Angie’s and it looks like a lot of 34th lost power and there was some flooding… but the greatest G’ville sex was on 34th. Big tree fell down OVER the 34th street wall and took out a street light and they had to close off 2 lanes of traffic. But other then that there was no real damage from Jeanne.

And last but not least why Floridians are wusses… They can’t handle temperatures below 65… Soon as it hits 65 they’re all running for jackets and I’m thinking its perfect shorts weather. Oh well… crazy people.

Pictures to follow at a later date.

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Hmm.. So I mentioned this the other night but I think I’m finally going to do it… Create the list of all the girls that I can remember who I’ve tried to date and what resulted from it.

Kristina - the girl next door from kindergarden until 3rd grade… we kept in touch until we were almost 12… still got some letters from her…. We’d play husband and wife games when we were little.

Allison - 3rd grade or 4th grade…. sat in front of me… prettiest blonde hair

Allison - beginning of 5th grade… sat next to me… different school…. I kind of had a run in with the nun’s and they didn’t want me anymore… ooops.

Alissa - end of 5th grade.. right when I moved out to Long Island… met her on my 11th birthday… she lived diagonally across the street from me… The day my parents told me I was in the way when they were moving to go outside and play. We became friends and apparently she had a crush on me right away but I was too shy/nervous to admit I liked her back so nothing happened of it. She dated other boys and we grew apart. But before that happened her and her girl friends got me over to play truth or dare in Alissa’s backyard. And I got dared to kiss her (had my fingers crossed for this one) so she was my first kiss. She was also my first “real” (read: tounge) kiss…. later that year we were playing in the snow and she buried me in the snow (ok… so I let her) and then I buried her back but we managed to basically build an igloo and we kissed in there.

Nicole - she was Miss Popularity… no chance… First girl of my HS years…

Sam - never knew a thing…. why I kept it that way… I dunno…

Steph - we all know Stephanie and how wonderful she is… even to this day.

Kelly - First girl in Florida and first girl at UF…. she is the “Steve Stam” story girl….

Stacy - Wow… why did I like her? I even made her chocolate covered strawberries for Valentine’s Day… my roommate remember’s that one.

Teri - haha… Classical case of attempting to jump ladders… I got kicked into the abyss… at least we’re friends now and can laugh about it…

Lindsay - brought her a present one day and found her doing her ex bf… that kinda ended the relationship….

Jamie - what to say here… other then she’s still wonderful and means so much to me…

This by no means is the final revision… this list will be revised and expanded over the next day or so… Gotta add funny stories… maybe they’ll become their own posts.

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So after the game today I had to meet everyone at Outback and had to drive though the annoying G’ville traffic and that made me think back to when I was in New York in August. After probably one of the most significant changes in my life, only #2 to my biological father dying when I was younger, I got to go back to New York. I was tired and rushed during my trip to New York but it was amazing to just drive by and see all the memories I had as a kid. To drive by the Trump Towers where I’d go sometimes to get out of the rain when I was in the city. To drive by the Empire State Building, the memorable spire on top that they change the light color to match the season or holiday. Then I finally came downtown by the World Trade Center, incredible what once stood there and the emptiness that is there. It made me think of the picture the Newsday published on Sept 12th, 2001 on the cover. It was a picture of the WTC from the ground of tower #2 in the direction of the stairs from the glass doors facing the fountain (details much?). What makes this shot memorable for me and why I have a copy of it saved is because in 1989 when my biological father left his job at WTC we had someone take a picture of the family. The person who took the picture for us and the Newsday cameraman must have been standing in the exact same spot, it’s kind of eerie in a way.

I wish I could have stayed longer, it would have been so much better. But the thing that reminded me of New York was the traffic because the traffic in NY is nuts… Jamie and my mother both react the same way to my driving however I picked it up from New York, no idea why my mother reacts the way she does since she spent half her life in NY… she should be used to it. Always the tensing up and sucking in a breath of air bracing for impact when the other car is like 2 miles away…. If we were planes… it wouldn’t even count as a near miss… Anyway. However in NY I defintely cut things close, especially the cabbies.. Those freaking cabbies are nuts and they don’t care about other cars on the road or where they want to go. So I had to do the NY thing and roll down my window scream and flick one off before he understood I meant business.

That was such a happy moment, one of the few shining stars of this summer, like back when I was a kid and I would splash the puddle that always existed in that pothole in front of the New York Stock Exchange, which mind you was still there. Just ignorant bliss basically. And what made it even better was that I got to spend this trip with the greatest person in the world.

That’s all the reminicing for now.

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So being all about QA how I am and the fact that I had to deal with not be able to commit a needed ebuild for almost 48 hours because of QA issues due to a specific herd not using repoman (read: macos herd). This is the first time I ran it. I sync’d the tree and then I began repoman full at 1414 EST (2:14pm for non-military date/time understanding types) and it didn’t finish until 1803 (6:03pm). As you can see from the output, it’s straight repoman, there’s 0 clean up currently. I will begin to hack it up and sort it out by error and catagories to make it easier to read and work on. Consider this 0.0.0.0.1_alpha_pre1_rc1 of the script. Yes, that’s Release Candidate 1 of Pre-Release 1 of Alpha version 0.0.0.0.1. Only reason I’m letting people see this is because I want people to start cleaning the Portage tree up! But without further adieu…

emerge autobones

Note: URL will change…. Probably to my dev.gentoo.org space.

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So I finally finished reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki after my parents insisted I read it and I saw two classmates with a copy. Not a bad book, it defintely points some important things out to keep in mind but overall it was broad. However, it’s impossible to be detailed in the art of making money and how to go about it. This by the way is what the book is about, making money. The author talks about the different tips his “two dads” gave him. His poor dad, his biological father is highly educated and wants his son to go out and get a job and be happy and secure. His rich “dad”, who is infact his friend’s father teaches him and his friend to exercise their minds to come up with ways to have money work for them. That is the ghist of the book.

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