I have been living alone in my apartment for 2 weeks. I used Google Earth’s ruler feature to determine my apartment is only 480 m (direct distance; road or walking distance is farther.) from my parents’s house. I have actually gone grocery shopping alone and need to go again tomorrow (on Sunday). I should have gone today (on Saturday), but I procrastinated. (fail) It is still hard for me to go to bed early enough to be well rested at work the next day, but I am improving. I think this is the 8th time I have moved in the almost 23 years since I was born. This is the first time I have lived away from my parents and the first time I have lived alone, though.
I still have no female companion, but I wonder how much I really want one: if I really wanted one, why do I not try harder to find one? For example, I could actually attend the meetups in Vancouver for the dating/singles groups I joined on Meetup.com months ago, but I still have not attended any of them because I always make other tasks a higher priority. I know priorities are everything: if I do not make finding a female companion a high priority, it will probably not happen. Then again, though, only 3 years ago, I did not think I would ever fall in love, nor have a girlfriend, nor have sex, but all 3 things finally happened in 2007. :) Having sex is notable because I am not desperate enough to pay for sex and because living with my parents makes sexual relationships very awkward. These things may not seem very notable to some people, but they are very notable to people who know me well because I am usually too shy and self-conscious to try talking to my female peers. I also isolate myself from face-to-face/human contact with new people so much. I know there are many offline events for dating and shared interests, but I have to actually make attending these events a higher priority than tasks involving being alone at home. There are always things I want to do with my computers which I have to wait until I have sufficient free time on the weekend to do, but if I want to make new offline friends, I have to make attending these events a higher priority than my solitary tasks. My actions/choices seem to say I do not want to make new friends because I do not even try. It is not as if attending these events is so difficult for me: I own my own car, I can drive alone, I can legally use my GPS navigator in my car again (see below). As long as I can find parking, this makes travelling much easier than relying on others, including public transit, for transportation. However, participating in Internet communities from home is still much easier than travelling in the physical world. And yes, I realise this is probably because I am more comfortable with participating in Internet communities because I have so much more experience with this form of communication. I know we learn by doing, not saying, so I should attend many physical/offline events, even if I do not think they will interest me, to practise travelling in the physical world, but I still choose to stick with what I know best, which means isolating myself at home. I already have more experience than my closest friend I know offline, Andrew Williamson: I can drive a car with a manual transmission, I have kissed girls, I have been on dates with female peers, I have had sex, I have industrial work experience, even if I do work for my parents’s company, and now I am finally living alone and away from my parents. Of course, it would be satisfying and pleasing to have a girlfriend/lover who understands me well and can relate to me, who shares my passion for my computing interests, who is both physically and emotionally close to me and who wants to share her body with me to satisfy both of our (or at least my) desire for intimacy. Of course I have sexual desire/lust for girls, but I do not even have anyone with whom to share my desire for non-sexual affection, such as cuddling/snuggling, kissing, or even simply holding hands and/or staring into each other’s eyes. Again, these things may not seem so notable or hard to get for some people, but they are very notable for me because I am so shy and quiet/reserved. I was very close to my birth/biological mom Judy Patricia Reimer, but she died from breast cancer on 2002-10-03, when I was only 15. :(( That was the most difficult thing to ever happen to me. It still saddens me: I am literally crying for the first time in months because writing about her reminds me of how much I missed her after she died. :( However, I still manage without these things: they may be required for long-term happiness and satisfaction in life, but are not required for me to function in society. I received my Dell Vostro V13 laptop: I am using Mozilla Thunderbird v3.0.1 on Windows 7 Professional 32-bit on brolin-V13 (my Vostro V13’s hostname) to write this message. :) I love this laptop because it is so thin and light. My largest complaint is the laptop display’s very poor viewing direction/angle: it is extremely frustrating because the colours change so much even with the height distances of different postures while I am sitting at my desk. This may be less noticeable if I was shorter, but I am 191 cm tall. :) My laptop has only VGA output too, no digital video output, but VGA is still sufficient for using 1920x1080 on a 23" Acer LCD monitor at home and 1680x1050 on a 22" Samsung LCD monitor at work. I know it is technically inefficient because the computer has to convert the graphics frame buffer from digital to analog, then the LCD monitor has to sample the analog video signal to convert it back to digital, but the resulting image quality is still sufficient for me. Furthermore, I was willing to compromise on video output to have the ultraportable coolness of the Vostro V13. I do not know if there are any comparable (similar) laptops, other than the 13" MacBook Pro, with digital video output? 1366x768 on my laptop’s 13" display is surprisingly usable, but I prefer to use an external LCD monitor for better viewing direction. I almost wish I had chosen a MacBook Pro with an IPS LCD panel for much better viewing direction, but I thought it was silly to pay such a premium for an overpriced Mac when I would not even run Mac OS X on it: I prefer Windows Vista or 7. I was concerned because my laptop has no optical disc drive (ODD), but it actually does not matter because I still have not yet needed one. :) I love having the same PC at both home and work: it is so much simpler and more practical than using separate desktop PCs in both places. I still have desktop (minitower, actually) PCs in both places, but they are headless because I can ssh to them from Cygwin on Windows 7. :) I have finally exited the province of British Columbia’s Graduated Licensing Program (GLP): in Richmond on Friday morning, I passed my first Class 5 passenger vehicle road test with only 3 mistakes: 2 stopping distance, 1 lane position. :D I did not pass the Class 7 passenger vehicle road test until my 4th time. (fail) I had been practising following all driving rules and parallel parking all week before my road test, but I was still afraid my driving examiner was going to ask me to parallel park and I was going to screw up because I almost never parallel park. I was lucky, though, because I did not have to parallel park on my road test! :) Following all driving rules is hard at first because I am so used to my habits such as speeding and rolling stops. These habits are technically illegal, but many people do them; I never never been caught. I was actually stopped by the police for the first time ever a few weeks ago, but it was only for a roadside check (the police officer wanted to know what class of driver’s licence I had, probably because he thought I look young. I answered “Class 7”, then he asked if I had been drinking because I cannot drink before driving (AKA drink and drive ;)) until I have a Class 5 driver’s license. He also verified I had my magnetic ‘N’ (Novice stage of the GLP) sign on the back of my car.), not because I had done something wrong. Part of the ‘N’ sign is stuck to my car’s hatch, though, because it has been on there for so long (2 years). I used to remove it when I washed my car, but I wash my car so infrequently: I probably have not washed it since October or earlier. (fail). Now I can legally use my GPS navigator while driving again too. I also finally have a relatively modern (from 2004) digital (still) camera again: I won a used Canon PowerShot G6 on eBay. I chose this model because I liked my cousin’s PowerShot G10 so much. My mom gave me her old (2005) flatbed scanner because she never uses it any more because she uses the photocopier at work, but I still have not even tried the scanner to see if it works. (fail) I thought I needed it to scan a personal document at home, which is easier than bringing the document to work to scan and e-mail or fax from work, but the recipient actually has access to the same document, so I did not end up needing to scan it. This is the first time I have had a scanner. It would be useful sometimes, but I have survived without a scanner until now, especially since I can use the photocopier at work to scan and e-mail documents to myself. _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community