my ramblings

*aaahhhh...siiiiggghhh* it's enough to get me through my day. thought i'd share what my desktop looks like.

enjoy.

well i've changed my desktop wallpaper. it's a collage of matthew macfadyen as mr. darcy. heavenly. :) today's been an absolutely boring day. nothing really going on here at work. atleast i have dane cook to keep me company. if you haven't heard of him you should search him out on imeem. imeem is God's gift to a boring desk worker. so dane cook, gorgeous and funny. i went to see him live last year in october for my birthday. i nearly wet myself he's so hilarious! lol. -- on a more sour note...management here at work sucks as usual. our fearless leader seems to have a 'tmi' problem (too much information) and loves to spout off at the mouth about his managerial stresses. hearing about them everyday makes for disgruntled employees when we have to sort of undertake his worries because we hear about them everyday. it's really a very toxic manager/employee relationship. much like that friend you have whose problems turn more into a personal burden because you have to hear about them constantly. you almost feel as if you're actually in the situation and it brings you down. bleh. however, this job is flexible with my schooling so i keep it for now and at the first break of light at a job in clinical psychology i'm outta here. i need a new job. definitely. -- until then...i will sit here at my computer staring at matthew macfadyen...*sigh*

spring term is officially over. i couldn't be happier. it felt so great to get my last two papers in to the professor last night. i have time now to do things like just be lazy. wow can't wait!

a couple things i forgot to mention...some friends came by saturday night and we had tacos and chips and salsa...good times, good fun. this weekend coming up my daughter turns 8 years old so we're having a big to do for her birthday. lots of planning and lots of money, i'm going broke! having a daughter isn't cheap!!
i was able to catch up on a few shows this weekend. i watched bridget jones' diary twice, the vicar of dibley, and a whole lot of movies i'd been wanting to watch. i was a couch potato saturday night with my friends but i managed to do a full house cleaning saturday during the day and on sunday did a ton of homework and worked out on my eliptical and used my weights. finally! they were starting to collect dust. time to get in shape! that's for sure. ok...gotta run now for sure.

today is a very busy day for me i'm barely squeezing in time to do this blog. i have to get some stuff done for a friend of mine on the internet that i'd promised last week. procrastination seems to always find me. i have to get my paper typed for sociology and still have yet to write my final paper for that same class. i finished my final for anatomy yesterday and have two finals today. after tonight though this term is finished! yay me. with any luck at all i've managed to get a 4.0. wish me luck. i've done the best this semester but retained the least...go figure. ?? well, the weather is crummy out. it's chilly and raining. looking gloomy and nasty. boo. i have tons of work to finish here at my job and still have yet to touch it. i have no motivation today so hopefully that will pick up. my blog today is really just a bunch of long winded rambling that i just wanted to get off of my chest. so yeah, here it is.
my term will be over after today but next month begins summer term and abnormal psychology. i'm actually excited about that.
on another note, i've been away from the computer all weekend and today tried catching up with everyone's blogs....wow! it's so hard to keep up with everyone. especially when you all post a few times a day. i tried getting around to everyone so now, i'm off...to do work. bleh.

well i've recently been dipping in my past. i've found a couple of old friends from back when i was 16 and 17. two of my friends, simon and marius, are from switzerland. i haven't heard from marius since highschool and simon i hadn't heard from since i was in college. we had written a few times, he sent a picture, we lost touch. i found simon today on the internet. i was digging through old boxes and found his old letters prompting me to 'google' him. lo and behold, he's a very popular name to google. all sorts of stuff about him. google 'simon libsig' and you find out that he's a slam poet, a radio personality in baden and an afficionado of political science...well, when you muddle through all the german this is what you learn. marius, i haven't heard from him yet. i did contact him on facebook...we'll see if he returns contact. another friend phil, living in the uk, whom i haven't heard from in quite a number of years other than one sporadic email in 06 or 07, i was able to locate him on a digital photography forum using his full name. what are the odds?? i met phil while mooing (see previous posts) when i was 16 and we hit it off and became fabulous friends. He came to visit me back when my daughter was 2 or 3 but i haven't really kept touch since. i've known him since i was 16 so it's been 12 years!! wow! well, phil must have been led to check his email one day after i contacted him on the forum and got my contact information via an email i had sent awhile back. i answered my work phone and there was that lovely accent i so missed from my dear friend who'd been missing for so long. we talked for a second but when i gave him my mobile number he tried to contact me through it and apparently it didn't work. my carrier's network was down, go figure!? i was irritated to say the least. so, long story short, he couldn't get through and i haven't heard from him in a few days. i hope he tries me back soon. i didn't get to ask him for his number.
then there is my friend tony, who passed away earlier this week. we met at the same time i met simon, marius, and phil. tony was a really good friend who turned out liking me as more than friends back, back, back in the day. it's such a small world that he ended up marrying my old roommate whom i had a nasty falling out with some years ago when she moved out and left me high and dry. i've since recuperated and all is splendid. i lost track of tony. he was my right hand man at one time. we both loved, loved, loved the beatles and had that as our common bond. he was funny, nice, cute and loyal. i ran into him a couple of times and now i wish i'd have said something to him the last time i seen him with my ex-roommate, no matter how awkward it might've been. tony's visitation is today and the funeral is tomorrow. well, i've found three friends this week and lost one...life has a funny way of handing out situations like that.

before i start my day, i've taken some pictures from my other page and put them up for everyone to see and get to know me a little better. enjoy.

well thank you to the friendly welcomes. i appreciate it.

so here's a blog i lifted from my myspace page. of course i'm blogging instead of doing my homework...typical me.

i am a mooer. most likely none of my friends know what this is...except jed and gerald....

but i've been a mooer since i was 16 and was introduced to it by my student teacher my senior year, mr wolcott. he was the mchottie teacher all the girls tripped over but yeah, we were cool. he introduced me to rivermoo and that's where the love affair began. i've been mooing ever since. it's actually how i met my friend phil in the uk.

really it's more a dying breed, mooing. but if any of you get a chance and are up for something new, try it out...just once. rivermoo is a nice place to visit but it's really dead these days...needs new life, a new population. i'm mainly on lambda where i'm just a player but i'm a programmer on river and i'm very rarely there. so what is it?? text based virtual reality. here's an article:

Before there was World of Warcraft or Facebook or even MSN Messenger and ICQ there was LambdaMOO. An online community unlike any other and ahead of it's time…and in a way, still ahead of the game. Ahh the memories…the all nighters connected when I should have been studying. Making more friends in the virtual than I ever made in the real…it was a good time.

Now, for the majority of you out there and likely everyone younger than 30, I know you have no idea what I'm talking about. Here is a bit of a history lesson. LambdaMOO was, well, a MOO (Multi-user Object Oriented or MUD Object Oriented) and a MOO is a text based virtual reality / community / rpg system on which hundreds of users can connect simultaneously and interact in real time. Oh, but don't think it's just chat…no no no my friends, it is much more than that! It is also a complete object oriented programming language which members can use to create and / or manipulate the virtual world. The best analogy I can give is to think of World of Warcraft meets Second Life…but completely text based.

There used to be literally hundreds of different MOOs in existence, but LambdaMOO was by far the largest. On any given night there would be 300-400 people connected. It had every type of feature you could imagine…and if it didn't, you could create it. All this for free. Guest characters were welcome and to have a registered character all you needed was a valid paid or institutional e-mail address.

Ok, great…so why should you care… well, you probably don't have to. This is all just me reminiscing. Cleaning out my software folder, I found the old client I used called SimpleMU and fired it up…I logged into my old character on LambdaMOO and was amazed to see that it was originally created almost 13 years ago! I hope LambdaMOO continues on…it is the grandfather of Web 2.0, Second Life and all the Massive Multi-player games out there today.

I wrote this article for the kids of today. for those who grew up with the Internet and not knowing there was a time before graphical browsers and MySpace and Instant Messaging. This is the beginning and the foundation of your online world now. This is legacy and legend.

How to connect

Connecting to LambdaMOO is easy. Open any Telnet client or a dedicated MOO / MUD client and go to the address lambda.moo.mud.org port 8888
For more information

LambdaMOO Wikipedia Entry
Rachel's Super MOO list (the most comprehensive listing of all MOOs that ever existed)
Pavel Curtis' Blog (the founder / creator of LambdaMOO)
Download SimpleMU (a freeware MOO client, better than telnet)
If anyone out there used to, or still does, connect to LambdaMOO or any other MOO, leave me a comment. I'd sure love to hear about your experiences!

so, here are a few posts to get me introduced...hopefully i won't get denied anymore. i guess that's left to be seen though. until next time...

the semester is winding down and i'm glad. i need the rest. let's see, what's been going on? other than the usual, not too much. i picked up a few movies the other day: stardust, super cute movie. love in the time of cholera, i wasn't too impressed, quite disturbed now at growing old. atonement, i cried.

got about 5 more papers to write in the next two weeks for three different classes. 2 in sociology, 2 in personality theories, and 1 in adolescent psychology. a few tests and then that's it. done with this semester! then off to summer semester. must get it done though.

karen is out this weekend on her cruise (lucky!). so since i'm her back up i'm out on the floor...away from my precious desk job. good times, good fun. *sigh* i gotta go get some work done i s'pose.

well, it's another day. i'm tired. i stayed up reading last night. only two more weeks of school......

i registered for classes today. feels kinda weird to get my last two classes scheduled. it's kind of flying by...and kind of not. let's see, what's up? well, i've been hanging out with my friends a little less in the last couple of weeks due to approaching finals. i have to do what i have to do. friends are important but when the going gets tough i have to count on myself. friends can only carry us so far, then it's up to us to push forward. my schedule will be pretty relaxed for the rest of the year...i think i deserve it.

next month i have my 9 year anniversary here at work. i can't believe i've been here for that long already. by the looks of it i'll be here a little bit longer.

i'm almost finished with my pride and prejudice sequel. i think i read that more than my school books. you know, reading doesn't account for one's intelligence as a whole but there is something to be said for reading being a contributing factor of intelligence. it incites creativity and imagination, it excercises your brain, it enhances your vocabulary, and it can be a useful tool for learning, no matter what genre you might choose...fiction, non-fiction, biography, whatever. people are more sedentary these days and choose to 'learn' by watching the television on the couch (i do it alot too), but there is so much more to be gained by reading a good book. if you find the right book, the possibilities are endless. i think i just had a mind connection with levar burton. 'take a look, it's in a book....' yadda yadda yadda. lol. it's funny...but everything i said is true. feed your brain. you do yourself a disservice if you don't every now and then.

guess i should go now. i have lots to do and no energy to get it done. but atleast i have things to do right? i appreciate that for what it is, truly.

well, a little history on my discovery of this blog community. i have been reading one of many sequels to jane austen's pride and prejudice, mr. darcy takes a wife. i was googling the words 'mr. darcy' and amongst my results i happened upon this group. upon seeing said results, i clicked on a link that took me to a users page. this user shall remain nameless for reasons of privacy, however it is a 'her' which makes it a lot easier to delegate ownership of certain ideas and sentences. i read some of 'her' blogs and thought 'her' to be a very interesting person. i linked to a few other peoples blogs and thought some of them to be equally as interesting. i clicked them into my favorites and later when i had time i decided to set up a blogging account here. as i verified my address i quickly went back and requested some of these saved favorites as my friends. i don't have much time at work to sit and dwell but i set up my account as best i could with the time i had and added a picture for you all to see me.

i figure at a later time, when i have more of it readily available, i will add more pictures.

on to the rest of my story...so i get a mobile email that i have private messages. i think, 'yippee, from the new blog thingy i just joined. wow a response already and no posts yet?' well, much to my sadness i have already been denied by 'her'. however, that's ok. all is well and one potential friend lost doesn't mean i can't make more. so...my name is dominique and hopefully i'll be blogging here again soon and often. i'm rather tired of myspace quite frankly. it's time for something new...perhaps i'll post up a few of my old blogs from my other page...i'm off then.