In Real Life...
My girlfriend wants to meet an online friend for the first time... This puts two layers of discomfort on me... first, the whole cyberfriends thing is not something I'm too accustomed to, secondly, it's a guy... I know that I'm more bugged by that than if it was a girl she was meeting for the first time. Partially because I don't have any direct friends that are girls... They're all either my g/f friends, or my male friends g/f's... but I'm also remembering the last direct friend I had that was a girl... she wasn't really a friend... more of a "hopefully she'll like me as more" prospect.
I've heard theories that men and women can be just friends. While I have full confidence that women can be completly oblivious to this, I've never known a guy to just want to be a girl's friend. There is always more.
I have a hard time understanding this guy's motivations cuz I've never met/IMd him...
But at least she is able to understand my discomfort. She's able to put herself in my shoes and she too would be uncomfortable if I was meeting some girl... So that at least eases my mind that she's not looking for anything... but still... Any Comments???

It's so hot outside. It's not only a matter of temperature, but a combination of temperature and humidity. It's the humidity that kills you. It triumphs over the body's natural cooling system. Your sweat glands are rendered useless by the humidity. The only thing they do accomplish is to make you look sweaty. The heat is not a new thing to me, I was just sure that I would never have to deal with it again. Let me explain... A few years back, I graduated college and moved to San Francisco. If you're not familiar with the bay area, it rarely climbs above 80 degrees. It also featured a devine sea breeze that further aided the cooling. Everything was going great at first. I shared a nice house with my best friend, my girlfriend lived right across the bay bridge, I had a high paying job in Silicon Valley. I was very happy with my living situation. Unfortunatly, no good thing lasts forever (with the excpetion of the universe :) ) and for reasons that went out of my control, I ended up back at my starting point, southern California's Inland Empire... While the cost of living is significantly cheaper, and I live close to most of my childhood friends, and my girlfriend visits me enough to keep me happy (while she finishes school up north), I am left to deal with this incessant heat. Well, at least I have A/C...

I sit. Waiting for the screen to change. Counting the seconds of my life I have wasted.
'tic.tic.tic.tic.tic.tic' the monotonous passing of time. What am I doing? I'm not 100% clear on that. What I do know, is that someone told me to do it, and I am...
'tic.tic.tic.tic.' I'm a few seconds older, and a lot more depressed. Does my life have meaning? Do I contribute to any sort of greater good? Does anything I do matter? In the grand scheme, no, it does not. I'm not a doctor helping the ill. I'm not a teacher instructing the young. I'm not a lawyer defending the innocent. I'm a drone. One of many. We take tasks and parameters, and produce an output. Day in and Day out.
'tic.tic.tic....' The screen changes, I type some more...and wait...
'tic.tic.tic.tic.tic.tic.' Will anything I do make any difference to anyone? Probably not. So what if my work will save 56milliseconds on the average transaction. Who cares if my work will save 13% in storage needs. This is irrelavent to the drone, he just waits for the screen to change again.
'tic.tic.tic.tic.tic' I begin to nod off... I dream of another life. A life in which I matter. A life where I can change the future, or correct the past, or at least enjoy the present.
'tic.tic.tic' the screen changes... subtask 37 of 104 complete... I type some more...and wait...

I'm sitting... looking busy... I've spent the last 5 years trying to get to this position, but now that I am here, I feel so let down. When I started, the industry was rampping up for what would inevitably be known as 'the bubble'... But we were nieve back then, we had no knowledge of solid business plans or long term financial strategy, all we knew was that we loved tech and the world needed us. The world was willing to pay for our otherworldly skills. The arena was filled with miscreants and degenerates with fundamental knowledge of the concepts they "specialized" in. If they could spin some good BS, they could be looking at a six-figure salary and a fast german sports car. But I digress. Today is Wednesday, just like any other Wednesday. I will undoubtedly finish my work day pretending to work hard. When did the magic die? I used to enjoy working in technology. I had no knowledge of buzzwords, I had no need for deadlines, or project status. Life was just about getting your kernel just right. Doing something that hadn't been done before, the great thrill. Unfortunatly, all the countries have been discovered, the computer had already been invented, and Gates was already a billionarie. So I missed the start of the revolution. We really weren't on the cutting edge like they were on the cutting edge. We weren't kids in garages putting together a circuit board and calling it an 'Apple'. But we were eager to make a name for ourselves. Maybe we wouldn't be the next Gates, hell, we wouldn't be the next Woz or Torvalds for that matter. But we had fun. We were part of something. Something greater than school, greater than our jobs, greater than ourselves. The revolution may have ended. The new became the old, what we did for fun, we do all day everyday, only it's not fun anymore, it's work. Sigh.