Damn You, Spreadsheet of Truth

I often come up with unorthodox solutions to help me with my problems. In situations in which most people would turn to a best friend, I turn to a friend I only barely know. So, of course, in a situation in which most girls would scratch their pretty little heads and shrug their pretty little shoulders and put the matter at the back of their minds, I turned to a spreadsheet.

I have this thing with spreadsheets. They make me feel... safe, I suppose you could say. Spreadsheets, graphs, charts- they all give me a feeling that everything is going to be okay. They're comforting. Call me OCD, call me a freak, I don't care.

Here's the situation: you know the nerdy boy I've been pining after the last few posts (who, for clarity, we will now call Kirby)? Well, as is the usual when I like someone and they like me back (I think I may write a post about that particular issue of mine), my feelings for him sort of faded. And by "sort of faded," I mean I can still see myself dating him, I just don't see myself kissing him, and when I think about him, I don't get that little lurch in my stomach. Unfortunately, that means I won't let myself date him (I refuse to allow myself to date someone to whom I am not even slightly physically attracted, as I believe that relationships should have a healthy physical level). I don't think it's anything he's done; it's just me being me.

So, while I'm pondering that, along comes a boy we will call the President. Why? Oh, you'll find out. God forbid he ever reads this blog. *shudder* If any of my "readers" who know me still actually read this, and you figure out who the President is (because honestly, if you know me and even know of him, you'll figure it out), you'd best not tell him about this blog, or so help me I will kick your ass. And cry, probably.

Now, I used to have quite the crush on the President. Unfortunately, none of the signals I was sending out seemed to get any reciprocation. I resigned myself to the fact that I was being obvious, and that if he liked me, he would have asked me out by the end of the school year. So... I gave up. I gave up, and (shit, now my throat's going all dry and my eyes are getting all watery) I listened to Bulletproof ("I'll never let you sweep me off my feet," indeed) a thousand times over, and I got over him. I actually stopped talking to him for a period of time. I don't think he noticed, but... maybe he did. I don't know. The first week of summer vacation, getting it off my chest, I told him that when, on Valentine's Day, he'd asked if he could be my Valentine and I said no, I'd actually meant to say yes, but I didn't have the guts to go back and fix it. Of course, he asked me about the message later, and I just told him that I was frolicking about telling people all the things that had been stuck in my head all semester, and that this was all brought on by a Mountain Dew overdose.

Anyways, I thought I was completely over the President. That I was totally into Kirby. But no, the President just had to come along and fucking mess everything up. Actually, he didn't "come along;" he just responded to my starting a conversation. I sent him something along the lines of, "ello there!" and we went from there. The conversation ended with us having gone back in forth in nonsense (him in French, me in Spanish) and having created a Facebook page for his run for presidency (hence, the President), him going off to bed to sleep, and me wondering what the hell had just happened.

I realized some things while thinking about that conversation: a) I like doing ridiculous things for no reason, and b) the President makes my heart beat and my stomach tickle. Oh, and c) I really need to work on typing things right the first time.

Because this just put me in an absolute tizzy, I ran to the only available comfort... a spreadsheet (see, Persephone is asleep and Ember is at the Deathly Hallows part 2 premiere without me, the little chit). Down the leftmost column (column A), I put all the traits I value in a guy and how much I value them on a scale from one to ten (one being least, ten being most).

Example: Friendly (7)

Then, at the top of columns B and C, I put their names. After that, I just worked down each guy's column, giving him a score for each trait. For example, for Spontaneous (which was worth eight), Kirby got a five and the President got a seven.

At the bottom of column A, I put Total (164) because total, the value of the traits ended up being one hundred sixty-four points. Then, I added up each of the guy's point totals and put them in the Total row.

Kirby got 118.5 points (or 72%), and the President got 133.5 points (or 81%). It's not a wide margin to win by, but I may have upped Kirby's scores a bit for fear I'd be unfair due to my recent feelings as of late, and I may have brought the President's scores down for the same reason.

I think the reason I like spreadsheets is that they tell me what I already knew in a manner I can't ignore. It's fact now.

Hacker

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested After Bank
Tampering"...Damn kids. They're all alike. But did you, in your
three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look
behind the eyes of a Hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick,
what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a Hacker, enter my world... Mine is a world that begins with
School... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they
teach us bores me... Damn underachiever. They're all alike. I'm in
Junior High or High School. I've listened to Teachers explain for
the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No
Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work, I did it in my head..." Damn kid,
probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because
I screwed up. Not because it doesn't like me...Or feels threatened
by me... Or thinks I'm a smart ass... Or doesn't like teaching and
shouldn't be here...

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it
happened... A door opened to a world... rushing through the phone
line like heroin through an addicts veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a
board is found. "This is it, this is where I belong..." I know
everyone here, even if I've never met them, never talked to them,
may never hear from them again... I know you all.

Damn kid, tying up the phone line again. They're all alike... You
bet your ass we're all alike...

We've been spoon-fed baby food at School when we hungered for
steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were
pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found
us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the
desert.

This is our world now, the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing
without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by
profiteering gluttons, and you call us Criminals. We seek after
knowledge, and you call us Criminals.

We exist without skin colour, without nationality, without religious
bias... and you call us Criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage
wars, you murder, cheat and lie to us, and try and make us believe
it's for our own good, yet we're the Criminals.

Yes I am a Criminal, my crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that
of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look
like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will
never forgive me for.

I am a Hacker, this is my Manifesto. You may stop the individual,
but you can't stop us all. After all, we're all alike.

The Mentor

That was shamelessly taken from one of the realistic missions at HackThisSite.org, my new favorite playground.

The Ever-Changing Goal

My "goal in life" changes a lot. I get that I'm young, so it's expected to do that, but it's still off-putting. It's my own fault, too. Back when I was (what I believe to be) depressed, I began planning everything. I thought I knew how my life was going to turn out. I was going to grow up, meet a guy right out of college, fall in love, have a kid, and be the successful American dream woman, balancing my home and career. Once I snapped out of it (rather, once I moved in with my mother and got away from the source of my depression), I realized that none of that really makes sense.

Why the hell did I try to plan my life out? Who knows when I'll meet the love of my life? I mean, I could've met him already and not even know it! Besides that, I don't even want children. What kind of awful crack was I on?

At that point in my life, I'd decided I wanted to be a high school history teacher, just like my uncle. I figured I liked history, and all my favorite teachers reminded me of me, so why not? There were lots of reasons not. If I didn't like learning to standardized tests, why did I think I would enjoy teaching to those same standardized tests? I have issues with authority figures even when I agree with them. That situation wouldn't have ended well at all.

The issue with realizing that I was in a really bad place back then and wasn't thinking straight is that now I know that I, you know, don't know anything. I know I don't want kids, but that's about it. I get that I'm a selfish human being who doesn't want to set her career back, and I know that I want to fall in love. That's just about the extent of my knowledge of myself. Not even kidding.

I take career suggestion tests all the time because I have no clue what I want to do with my life. Actually, that's not true- I have clues. Lots and lots of clues. A veritable ocean of clues. In all honesty, there are more fields I'm interested in than there are followers of this blog (not saying a whole lot, but you get the message).

"You should work with computers." A lot of people suggest that. My step-dad told me I should do something where I can "analyze the shit outta something." I agree whole-heartedly. My Mimi wants me to go into a field in which I can use my knowledge to the best of my ability. She wants me to be a doctor. Doesn't matter that I hate biology and can't stand studying cells- she's convinced I should be a doctor and find the cure for cancer.

I kinda want to do something involving law enforcement. I like the idea of catching the bad guy. I've looked into jobs where I could analyze things like JT suggested, and it seems like criminal psychology would be a good bet for me. I don't like the idea of saying, "I want to do this!" because it seems whenever I become certain of something, I lose interest or it floats away.

Slightly philosophical blog posts FTW?

I'd love comments on if you know what you want to be "when you grow up," even if you're an adult. I love asking these kinds of questions. One time I asked an attorney and he said he wanted to grow up and be the Grinch. (He was kinda strange.)

Life is Technical

I went to a movie with a few friends: Rachel, Julianna, Jennie, John, and Bree. Brandon (ugh), Steven, Patrick (and his girlfriend), and Ryan (and his girlfriend) were going to come, but those two girls couldn't make it, so Patrick and Ryan decided not to come. So, it was girls' night out. Heh. 

Went to see When In Rome. It was mine and Rachel's second time. Still just as great. It was so great, in fact, that I'm downloading an AVI cam from TPB and putting it on a USB for my dad- his DVD player has a USB port, which he is very excited about. O_o

I'm using Monolingual to get rid of the many, many extra languages. (EDIT: It's finished. Cleared up 412 MB on hard drive, I swear to Jeebus.)

And... I forgot. 

Meh.

I'm at dad's.

Updated Firefox

I updated Mozilla Firefox on my school's computer to... I think it's 3.6, but I may be wrong. Anyways, it's the latest version for Windows (the version listed on the front page when you're on a Windows computer).

And they can't even get mad at me, can they? It's not like I went off and downloaded TOR (Google it). Which I totally would... if I wanted to get suspended. Moving on...

They have this new thing for Firefox called "personas," and I set the one on this computer to be red, white, and blue stars (our colors are blue and white, and I think we have red, too).