Another day in a slow hell done, another empty night nearly gone by, and a busy Friday is looming on the horizon.

So far, I’ve been spending most of my time reading the days away. Almost finished reading Programming Perl which is a nice book, been a long time since I’ve been able to read anything that length (I prefer Fiction). Higher-Order Perl has also been on the hit list recently, but haven’t had to much time to spend on it the past half-weekish; so far, I think HOP should be required reading for every programmer, perl or not lol. (If the concepts in it are new to you, please don’t sit next to me!) I’ve also been inhaling one of my favorite classics, The Art of Unix Programming; don’t think I’ve ever finished it, but hey… about it’s time, and I’ve got plenty of time to pass…

I’ve also interspersed the days routines with working on one of my larger (Perl) projects whenever I’ve got the mental resources free, and otherwise dealing with [SAS] Business whenever possible; tomorrow + the weekend is gonna be a long stretch. One way or the other… I’m going to get some drill time on SWAT 4 back in my schedule, if I’ve got to start playing at 0500R lol. Ops have been going quite well, on both sides of that coin. Mostly, it has just been a problem of getting stuff done around my family, and ever mounting levels of exhaustion… Earlier today, I remembered something I used to say in response to everyones frequent “break times”. Namely, that I’m not allowed to get tired, because if I did, I would be poked and prodded into continuing on; for all intents and purposes, that is just what my family is doing to me now >_<. I really need a _long_ vacation, one very far away from this place and virtually everything in it. Really, my life would be a lot less painful, if I just learned to stop caring; but then I wouldn't be myself, would I? Despite periodically being pushed to drop my principles (particularly whenever they interfere with my mothers demands), I've generally refused to compromise -- or as my mind repeats on occasion, they may kill me or crack the walls of my defenses, but they will never break me… Only GOD can do that. Sometimes, I feel like the only person around here that actually gives a damn… Oy. I remember many yars ago, I tried my part in establishing peace; only to be treated like a fool, guess my family liked it the way things were spiralling. Eventually, I gave up and left everyone to their own mutally-destructive ways of dealing with one another, and dived into the cover of working myself into a stupor. The past few years, have actually been the most peaceful in a very long time… Maybe since ’94 or so. Heh, I remember how as a child, I used to count my families larger squabbles in terms of “Family World Wars”, since within the scope of our family, it was on the same scale of fighting; I lost count around 7 or 9. The difference being though, while most of the in-fighting has settled down (Thank GOD) in recent years, it seems the side effect is I’m more or less a primary target rather then a chip on the table… Fuckers never would respect my neutrality policy, so why would I be surprised? If the character of Ernest P. Worrell should have “He never knew when to quit” written on his tomb stone, they should write on mine… “He never knew when to just keel over and die”.

The worse these days get, the more I think about what a /good/ day could have been like. The more it hurts, looking at what I’m chained to (in some ways, chained, bolted, and gamma-welded into this hellhole) to this rats nest; it is all the more that I long for change, and for freedom. What can I say? I hate my life…. I have enough trouble getting a decent nights sleep here around here, like I really need all this other crap tacked on at home? FFS, I don’t think I’ve really slept decently since the early 90s., not a good thing, when one considers that I was only born in ’88 lol.

Somehow, I don’t think the word surrender was ever programmed into my volcabulary.