Hello list,<br><br>I am writing a follow-up/update to my original post just over 2 months later.<br><br>What has changed since my original post?<br><br><ol><li>I hired Dave McCormick to help me overcome some of my indefinitely-deferred tasks.<br>
</li><li>I have actually overcome my priority inversion and started trying to find my own home, partly with Dave’s help. I had my first housing offer for a 2-bedroom basement suite in East Ladner, but declined because of the crappy laundry situation. I visited another basement suite and an apartment with Dave and applied for both, but did not end up getting either suite. I wanted to live with Andrew Williamson because he has been my closest friend I know in person since we meet at Kingsford-Smith Elementary School in East Vancouver in 1995, but Andrew still does not have a job that pays money. He has been given 2 laptops and an iPod as payment for his current job, but he does not want to live with me unless he can contribute to the rent, which requires income of money instead of used electronics. Anyway, I have to call the Resident Manager of an apartment complex in Ladner (the same complex as I visited, but a different apartment) later today to see if my application has been accepted. If it has, I can probably get either a 1- or 3-bedroom apartment. I want the 3-bedroom so Andrew can live with me, but I want to split the rent with at least 1 (probably only 1) roommate, so I will probably ask for roommates on Craigslist and/or Kijiji if I get the 3-bedroom apartment. I decided I was going to apply for a mortgage to see if I was even approved, but I never did. (fail) I talked to a lender at my credit union about getting a mortgage and said I would apply, but never did. (fail) “When all is said and done, (far) more is said than done.” is so true. I have not even contacted a realtor about buying a home either. I know I will never own my own home if I am renting, but this is the path I have chosen. Writing of choices, I have recently been overwhelmed with ambivalence: I know there are endless things I could learn and tasks I could complete, but I choose to lay in my bed and inevitably end up falling asleep. I lay in my bed because I want to fantasise/dream about having a female companion and because I am tired of driving myself insane with overthinking and speculating about what I could be doing instead of actually doing something physical/observable to someone else.</li>
<li>I registered for OkCupid, mostly completed my profile, messaged at least 4 of my female peers. Not surprisingly, none replied. I lost interest in OkCupid and have not used it much for weeks. I even found a thread in OkCupid’s bulletin boards/forums about other users (OkCupidians)’s similar experience, so at least I know it is not just me who is ignored.<br>
</li><li>I met Alishams Hassam at one of the Vancouver Hackspace (VHS)’s Open Nights. I got extremely frustrated while driving there because I got lost in Vancouver. I have only a paper roadmap, but I often turn the wrong way because I do not know which direction I am going. That reminds me: I completely forgot about buying a better compass for my car. I wanted to install plain Debian on a MicroSDHC card so I could use Navit on my FreeRunner. I got recommendations of MicroSDHC cards to buy from this list, but I have not yet made finding a place to buy the recommended cards in Canada a sufficiently high priority for it to actually be done. Oh well, at least I may eventually be able to navigate Vancouver without a GPS navigation system if I get lost enough times, but I hate being lost. We learn by doing, though: I wanted to give up multiple times while I was learning to drive because I was constantly stalling and could not even change lanes in traffic, but now I feel confident enough to drive even in busy traffic in Vancouver; I have not stalled for months either. I used to hate my car’s manual transmission, but now I love it because it is fun to drive; I think driving an automatic would be very boring. Anyway, to get back on topic: I enjoyed meeting similarly geeky people in person at VHS. It is novel for me to discuss technical subjects in person because normally I discuss them only textually. I hoped to make some new friends I could meet in person outside of the events where I met them, but so far I have not except for Alishams, whom I have met in person only twice but have at least communicated with via telephone (we both use Fido monthly plans on our US FreeRunners. :)).<br>
</li><li>I registered for the Ubuntu Vancouver LoCo’s Meetup.com group + some dating groups on Meetup.com, but I have not even attended any of the dating groups’s meetups. (fail) Many of the meetups are in Vancouver on weeknights, which does not work well for me because if they are like the VHS Open Night I attended on Tuesday, I will stay too late, possibly get lost again while trying to drive home, and arrive at home too late to get enough sleep for work the next day (I have to get up at 07:00 on workdays) even if I do not get lost while driving home.<br>
I attended the Ubuntu Vancouver LoCo’s October General Meeting and the Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” release party, even though I am not even using Ubuntu 9.10 anywhere: I still use Ubuntu 8.10 at work. At home, I still use Ubuntu 8.04 on <b>k7t266</b> (my old home PC) and Windows Vista on <b>optiplex960</b> (my new home PC). Even though I am a Linux sysadmin, I still believe Windows Vista is a better desktop OS than Linux. Projects such as Ubuntu are trying to make Linux into something it was never designed to be. Anyway, that is off-topic again; I do not want to start Yet Another™ Linux versus Windows debate. If you have to ask why Windows or Linux (depending on which you currently use) is better for you, it is probably not: if it was, you would already know why and consequently would not have to ask why. Anyway, I need to get back on topic. I met Alishams at the Ubuntu 9.10 release party, but I have not met him since nor have I even contacted any of the people I have met at the Ubuntu Vancouver LoCo’s meetups outside of the meetups. While trying to drive home from the release party, I got lost even worse than before and ended up in North Vancouver, then drove around Vancouver without knowing where I was until I recognised the area and went south on Knight Street to return to Ladner. I did not get home until about 01:30 (Or was it even later? I do not remember. It is ephemeral and often meaningless temporal bullshit anyway.) on Saturday (the release party was on Friday night), but at least I got home without stopping to check my paper roadmap. :P<br>
</li></ol>Time flies, as always. I have already spent >1 hour writing this message, yet my message seems so short. Why do I always have so much to overthink about, yet it takes so long to express myself verbally? :( I have now spent over 1 hour and 40 minutes writing this message because I have been proofreading it, which involves writing all the things I thought I wrote the first time but actually only thought without writing.<br>
<br>Anyway, what is my conclusion? I have made some progress toward living away from my parents, I have stopped isolating myself at home and work to meet some people with similar interests even if I still do not know how to express myself with them, but I still spend most of my time isolated at home or work. I still have no female companion, but how am I going to meet her if I continue isolating myself so much? It is my nature to isolate myself even though I get so lonely sometimes. :( Web dating does not appear to work, so I have to try to meet girls in the Big Room, but that does not seem to work either. I did meet Tamara Poustie through Zoosk, but she was the only female peer of the 4 I messaged who even replied to my message. I still communicate with Tamara but I have not met her for months: she does not even want to meet me now because she has a boyfriend, which is understandable since I am sexually attracted to her and want to fuck her even though she has told me many times she wants to be only platonic friends. :( I am still overwhelmed with information in the Too Much/Endless Information Age and Age of Endless Distractions, even just with the replies to this thread I started, but that will probably never change.<br>
<br>Brolin<br>