the job search is just sucking. one of my two good leads turned to crap and the other is turning to crap. the manager I was talking to at the OSDL has been very unprofessional - apparently at some point he decided against hiring me. rather than let me know he decided to ignore my every call and email over two weeks. Similar to how the pointy haired bosses in Office Space "fixed" Milton's salary problem by not telling him they stopped payments. I got a letter in the mail from an HR person saying thanks but no thanks. Easystreet says they're still interested but after a week of waiting for a promised call to get an interview scheduled, I email to ask whats going on. The manager says we're still interested, I'll have (blank) call Friday or Monday. Friday goes by, no call. Its monday morning and I figure I'll be proactive, I emailed (blank) saying hey Im ready, Tue Thu or Fri, just let me know when. Monday goes by, no return email or call.

The stock market seems to be making a big rebound. My tracking portfolio, started in June 2001, not too long after the bubble burst, is back to its initial value after a 50% drop in value. RedHat jumped 20% today. The biggest winners in the portfolio are Palm (+290%) Redhat(+194%) and Yahoo(+121%). Biggest loosers are Activision (-73%), AOL (-70%), and THQ Interactive(-69%). Activision and THQ are big PC gaming companies. Electronic Arts on the other hand is +79%.

Im doing very well in my classes, as far as I can tell. I havent had anything graded come back to me yet. Im starting to know the names of a few students, and Ive visited with one of my professors three times. In the "lobby" outside the computer science office there are always CS geeks, usually grad students for some reason. Funny though that lunch today I felt very lonely. I dont like to eat alone and I felt like a looser not having anyone to eat with. I wandered around the food court, it was too crowed and too much waiting in line. I went outside and ended up at a mc donalds that was on the way to the comp sci building.

I think the thinkpad may have finally finally crapped out for real. Ive got it 30% disassembled and I put in a support request to IBM to see how much a new motherboard is. I expect it to be prohibitively expensive. Its not too bad in that Ive got plenty of access to computers at home and the comp sci labs.

On Saturday K and I went to her sister's for a birthday party. It was her sister's kid's birthday #1. there were a lot of her sister's husband's family there. A couple of the presents caught my interest. One thing that was really odd was that there were 2 cakes. The first one was put in front of the 1 yr old and she was encouraged to smash it with her hands while some other folks giggled and took photos. It was fun to meet some new people and be out in the stix. there was a cow, a steer, and chickens on the property.

On Sunday I went up to rocky butte on my own. I fixed the soekris configuration problem and its running now , but the east side antenna is too weak to use. The vagi needs to go back up there. The west facing antenna should be rock'in.