Older blog entries for AilleCat (starting at number 18)

So anyway, I've decided to move personal stuff over to Diaryland I'll post what little technical content I have lately over here.

Enjoy!

So I spent the last few hours on AIM with Angela, and sharing my mp3 server here at the house with her, the blessings of a cable modem is that its pretty fast and she's on a fast network at school, we ended up looking at Celtic Jewelry goodness and then listening to Simon and Garfunkel, and if anyone knows me well, they know I'm a huge Simon and Garfunkel fan. So we spent a long time listening to S&G together, and though we're separated by distance, it doesn't feel that way when we're doing stuff like this. This is a good thing. I go to bed contented knowing that someone else, especially her, smiles at S&G music like I do.

Random (or not so random) lyrics:

	
	My mind's distracted and confused
	My thoughts are many miles away
	They lie with you when you're asleep
	And kiss you when you start your day

 Simon and Garfunkel, "Kathy's Song"

So in the interest of not causing waves with *anyone* right now, and trying so hard, because I want to scream it from the rooftops, I am extremely happy over some really honest sharing with a friend (definitely more than a friend to be honest, MUCH more than a friend, though our friendship, we both agree is the most important part, and the core of our relationship)

So how to explain this, my roommate, Zane, who I love dearly once described relationships to me and a couple others in terms of flavors of ice cream, now Zane and I both have this gift for metaphor, which enables us to really communicate well, its neat to have a friend that communicates so similar to me. So back to his ice cream, he was explaining relationship dynamics, especially poly ones, and he said "everyone wants to be `chocolate 'in a poly relationship, but `strawberry' can be just as yummy".

What he meant by this, is that theres a tendency to want to be primary, and that being secondary is not where most people want to be. And my response was "I want to be strawberry, dammit", mostly out of the fact that I had just gotten out of a relationship where I was `vanilla' (he didn't mention this, but to me that particular flavor is monogamy, which is definitely *not* me), and I was not particularly into committing myself as chocolate, unless it was one certain person, which due to certain circumstances, was not happening at the time, and to be honest, with this person, strawberry was "ok", because I valued our friendship so deeply.

Well through alot of talking this week, I think (no I'm pretty damn sure) that "I want to be chocolate, dammit" and not strawberry, as if that was ever in question. So I tell my roommate this, and he says "You *are* chocolate loser" and then he says "strawberry covered chocolate", and I think "yum, just the way I like it"

Slowing Down:

So you may notice I'm slowing down on diary entry stuff, as my life's been pretty busy. So I'm not sure when the Interactive Week article is coming out, but it should be interesting, I'm happy, if I wasn't going to be leaving the computing world so soon (to go back to school for psychology)

I have little views of burnout lifting slowly, which is good, the other day I got alot of catchup work done at work, and I need to get the CVS thing done sometime this week for Listar, I may have to put it on anagram or victor because OSDN isn't really handing out free machine space and bandwidth anymore *sigh* I'll have to pitch it first whereas before I had pretty much free reign. Guess I totally gave that up when I didn't want to be a full-time manager.

Good News:

So my ex is dating someone else now, I find this is good as I'm not the object of an obsession anymore, well maybe not her obsession, I'm sure there are people in the world obsessed with me *giggle*.

A person I have a lot of care and feelings for and I, have been discussing alot of things lately, it came out we feel alot of mutual attraction (comma DUH bang bang bang which reads as ",DUH!!!" for the stupid, DUH!!!) towards each other, and we are going to spend some time together. Yay for honesty,(even if it only comes after a whole bottle of champagne and 3 prairie fires (tequila + hot sauce).

I am probably moving out of Acton by the end of July, which will be good for me, personally. I like it here in Northampton, and I have a cable modem and nice stuff, and my roommates are finally starting to settle down and not hate each other as much. Lets see if their issues can be repaired, I love both of them alot, and I hate to see my friends fighting.

Windup:

So I guess I better wind this up and get back to work, I'm for the most part happy....oh one other thing, I went to see Ember Swift (and the yummy Lyndell Montgomery and Cheryl Reid) and Gooselove and Antara, and Pamela Means on Monday night, it was an *incredible* show, I mean just amazing.

Pamela Means is a wonder on the guitar, very infuenced by Ani and maybe Paul Simon, and folk guitar greats.

Ember Swift, is amazing, a bit of vocal acrobatics, but musically incredibly good, Lyndell is a monster on the violin, s/he's got this amazing electric violin, and pumps it through an octave pedal to get it to sound like a weak string bass, but its really cool. and then he plays it like a bass at times which blows my mind. She also is a pretty good bassist and Cheryl is a really good drummer. If you have a chance, check out Ember Swift's page.

Gooselove and Antara are a local duo, and just amazing, its folk and rap fusion its amazing, kindof reminds me of Arrested Development once in a while, and really heavy and sometimes inspirational song lyrics. Goose's website contains alot of cool observations, lyrics and such, but if you are homophobic or even not cool about queer culture, please, don't bother (for that matter please stop reading my diary) I may mention that it also contains a link to Antara's website as well , which I also just linked to.

Queer music at its finest, and you all heard it right here at the queerest of the queer's music review ;) (notice the pronoun fluctuation when talking about Lyndell? No that wasn't a mistake, it was intentional ;))

nice to have such adoring fans, hey, is this thing on?

Feeling much better lately, I know its been a while, but seriously the Sun helps Psoriasis big time, and I've been spending alot of time out in the Sun. So, I've been up and walking around and actually feeling halfway decent. Although, the downside is, my skin is red as a lobster now. As my friend Tristram would say if he was around, "Moderation, Grasshopper"

New Look for Trish:

So I decided to somewhat radically change my look, so I had my hair chopped, and I got a septum piercing, and no, this is not something that was "just a whim", I seriously thought about both things for several months, and took the plunge this past week when I was feeling decent. Pics to come soon.

Thoughts on Stardom:

Well not really, the "You're a Star Now" thing isn't me, but I think its cool that Interactive Week is sending someone over to take my picture, so the whole world gets to see the "new Trish" when that Interactive Week issue comes out.

So anyway, I'm here, I was interviewed for an Interactive Week article this week on people involved in the Open Source community, evidently Hemos gave them my name, yippee. More to come on that when I know more.

I'm getting this feeling I don't fit it anywhere lately, I mean how many Butch Male to Female Bear Leatherdykes do you know? Its slightly frustrating and lonely. Not to mention that my inability to generally get along with people has obviously caused me difficulties at work. I'm kinda tired though, I gave my all, and nobody had any complaints for almost a year. Then I get burned out, and somewhat lose interest in my job, then I'm just in no mood to deal with people. I usually leave jobs after a year because of that, however I'm trying to stick around until I go back to school in January.

I'm going to visit Robin and Angela on the 20th though, and thats good news, they always make me feel better and loved.

So yeah, I'm burned out, what else is new, oh yeah, I'm sick, sometime around after I got back from TSC, my arthritis got much worse, now I wake up with a fever every morning, sometimes it fades, sometimes it keeps going. I'm tired of it, honestly, I've really made an attempt to not let it get in the way of the rest of my life, but feeling ill all the time makes someone VERY cranky. Especially when its combined with the inability to move around.

I try to keep things positive, and not whine about anything, I hate whining, and I'm personally not feeling like whining myself.

Work lameness:

So evidently, I don't pay enough attention to what people on my team are doing/have done lately, because sometime last week animfactory.net DNS went wonky, and I didn't notice, however we got an email from the person who is now managing us, who is a friend of mine, that upper management was unhappy due to money stuff associated with the failure.

However throughout the time I kept things running pretty much singlehandedly from Feb-July, then Yazz came aboard, and it was mostly the two of us, with some help from Liz, and they were almost ALWAYS up, no praise.

I really have issues when people only notice when something fucks up, its really positive fucking reinforcement. So I mention this to my manager, 2 hours later we have an email saying that executive staff commends us on the fact that we finished a bunch of projects in somewhat record time.

How much do you want to bet that was after the fact, and after the fact that I was discontent with the situation was communicated to my manager, and possibly he agreed and said something. So it didn't mean anything to me, honestly. Am I just a malcontent and can't be happy with anything recently at work?

I also have to say that the advice from management for me to take a step back and let people make mistakes isn't working for me, I mean I like to run a tight ship, where nothing goes wrong, I get frustrated that I'm not the one handling everything right now, but I get equally frustrated when I am. This isn't a reflection on the other people on the team, I'm easily the most experienced, and as a result, I do things much faster, and have a better feel for things, however when exec staff gets pissed about stuff that breaks, I feel responsible, *blah* I can't wait for Recovery.

So anyway, just before coming to Noho this weekend, one of my best friends tells me that theres some drama in my vacation household (which I'll be living full-time in by the summer), which may have made things a bit uncomfortable (they did slightly, but it wasn't unbearable). I made it clear I was not taking sides, and I would be the same friend to everyone that I had been the months before.

So our play party was the next night, and my one roommate decided that he would definitely be there, and he gave a demonstration of some play, with which I helped a bit, I wasn't feeling well enough to start a scene of my own that night, but being involved with my roomie and another friend's scene definitely was a bonding experience (pictures will appear at some point these next few weeks). It was alot of fun.

I got the pictures back from Angela and Robin's trip here and I miss them alot, I was thinking about them alot at our party, and I somewhat miss their company even though its only been a week since they came here, spent a week and left. They rock so much though, and my roommates adore them as well.

I met Frankie yesterday, someone I'd been talking for months with online. I realized we had met last summer at Pride. He's definitely a cutie, and woo, he would make a good hausboi, and maybe even more than that, if willing, I guess we'll see where that goes.

Trish takes another service opportunity, this one she wanted really bad:

So Shahn mentioned yesterday that he was looking for a tech contact/person for Amboyz, an organization for FTM identified people and SOFFAs, which has been mentioned before in my diary. Though I'm burned out, I want this particular service job badly, and it may be one of the few contexts I'll enjoy tech work in lately. We're going to talk more about it as the work that needs to be done comes up.

Round up:

So thats Trish's busy weekend, we now return you to your regularly scheduled Open Source related website.

Case of Mistaken Identity:

So anyway, the other day my parents tell me that 2 police officers show up at thier house, demanding I "turn myself in", evidently I had sold drugs to an undercover cop in NJ in May of 2000, anyone who knows me knows this is impossible due to two major things:

I wasn't in NJ in May, I was dealing with issues from the migration of Slashdot to Exodus.

Anyone who knows me knows that I do not sell drugs, and I have never sold drugs.

So how did this happen?

After talking to the police officer in charge, evidently someone driving my sister's car, and named "Patrick" sold ecstacy to an undercover police officer, they ran the plates and saw my mother's name on the car. They put "Patrick" (my old name) and "Lynch" together, and got my old name, go figure. I know who it is, but I'm not saying, but the police now have a good idea as well. My sister was possibly in the car. While this is not cool, better them than me.

Gotta love our law enforcement officers, at least they were reasonable when I talked to them. And to some extent they were cool, it just kinda scared the crap outta me.

So anyway, here I am, I slept ok last night I think, I'm back to banging my head, which I think only happened a few times while Robin and Angela were here, its a weird thing, I've been doing it since I was a baby, and when I get enough sleep it stops, but lately I've been pretty high strung, having people who cared around me and sleeping and cuddling kinda helped. Lorraine used to put her hand on my head to stop it. I think this time I was doing it on my hand, and as a result I kinda bruised my hand...ok...sorry for the weirdness.

So its a brand new day, I'm hanging out here, wondering how Robin's doc appt. went yesterday, I didn't hear from them, and will probably call later on. I'm settling back into loneliness pattern, but its a little different I guess.

I heard from Robin, everything is "ok" though I'm doing some legwork for him as far as docs and stuff.

Unattainable Crushes:

So I've kindof realized I have a crush on someone totally unattainable, which always happens, theres this totally wonderful Diva top I'm totally crushed on, and I know that since I'm not a biowoman, theres no hope. Its definitely not a good space, but I'd be happy just to develop a friendship with this person. She's got so many similar ideas on the nature of friendship and such (I am *fiercely* loyal to my friends).

ObTechContent:

So anyway, now to the work I must do, which I'm putting off, for some reason TCP DNS stuff is not working through the arrowpoint, and I must look into it. Especially since zone transfers are done that way. I am so unmotivated towards tech space lately, and I hope it changes soon, or I'll be looking for a new line of work, and despite massive burnout, I do like my job.

Thoughts on burnout:

So anyway, I've been doing computer stuff for like 8 years, and honestly, I did it for several reasons. I was good at it, 'nuff said. But there was alot more to it. Its where the money was, I was interested in exploring my geek side. I needed money to transition (from male to female)

So the last few months, I no longer feel the drive I have towards computers, Open Source, and anything else having to do with coding/sysadmin/network architecture, all three of which I have done, and enjoyed alot. I'm starting to get this drive to enjoy life outside the office, the home office, and away from the computer. Before I was locked in a relationship with someone who would not let me explore other parts of myself, she reveled in my geekness, as much, or more than I did.

So, its definitely burnout, I mean I have so much to do, I have information on trademarks and copyright that I got from Larry Rosen, to pass onto Listar core, I have the OSTF stuff to think about, I'm still working for OSDN, I'm writing for /. and Open, and I'm feeling so overextended. This is all besides the transgender activism I do, my relationships with several people, and all the kink stuff I do. Trish is a busy girl, and just a little burnt out.

Happier Stuff (and a bit of a bummer):

So Angela and Robin left yesterday evening, it was nice having cuddle partners a few days, and maybe a little more than that...

I *think* the relationship is being slightly redefined, but I'm not sure, so some processing must be done with both of them. But I'm trying to figure out how to breach the subject. Ahhh! I have an idea! How about ,simply, "Where is the new boundary?", the annoying thing about it was, evidently it was redefined for Robin and Angela, and they kept it a secret, like it was supposed to surprise me (which it did, and I'm honored that they love me as much as I love them), and honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about changing the relationship dynamic, kissing fine, outside of that, I'd like to know where this is going, and honestly, I'm happy with whatever, I love them both alot, and want this to be comfortable for all three of us. I mean, it does make it easier to express myself in the ways traditionally I express certain feelings. Ahhh... poly-boundaries are wonderful.