Author: TeRRY

well, well. it appears my fourth affair anniversary came and went without my realizing the significance of the day. (my “affair anniversary” being the day tamara tabo (my ex-wife) told me she was having an affair with alistair isaac.) i just realized yesterday that it was mid-october and thus the day had already passed! it is kind of funny i wrote an entry near the anniversary date and mentioned her and the affair, but didn’t realize what day it was. perhaps this is a good sign for my future mental well-being?
fear not though, reader! i have two versions of the 3rd affair anniversary entry from a year ago which i never posted. now that all legal and monetary obligations of the affair have been resolved for over six months, i feel able to make the historical posts available. (at the time i didn’t want to jinx what appeared to be a rapidly approaching conclusion to all of the divorce-related issues.)
the two unposted entries were composed of an original entry, then an entry i self-edited in an attempt to avoid anyone complaining about the content of the first. i had prepended the self-edit with this:
[i went ahead and self-edited this entry before anyone had to complain and tell me they were upset about it. i’ve still got so much i could say, several of which i already removed…]
but as you can see from the archives for october 11th last year (2006), i ended up posting neither and just went with a “placeholder” which included an excerpt from an earlier affair anniversary post. i did mention i was planning on posting a follow-up entry once the divorce-related stuff was over.
today — over a year later — is the day.
below i have combined the two drafts into one, trying to show the full emotion of the first, but without maybe quite all of the acidic tone that was originally there. and still self-editing some of the revelations about the goings on with tamara and/or alistair. as much as i’d still like to lay it all bare, it just doesn’t feel right on some level. it’s the truth, and it hurt me — and screwed up a lot of stuff for tamara, me, and the divorce proceedings — but i’m not sure putting it out there would do much except make me feel better, like at least the truth was known. i’m not sure that’s a good enough reason on some of it.
i must say it is rather odd to go back and read this, as right now, today, i don’t have much of the zeal about the topic that i did when i wrote the stuff to follow. but what happened happened, and it is still what i felt at that point in time. perhaps it reflects poorly on me. perhaps it is irrelevant. whatever the case, it was where i was at and it is what i wrote, so here it is…

Continue reading “happy belated 4th affair anniversary to me”

the last couple of weeks i’ve been looking around on ebay motors for a car. last week i spotted one that really caught my eye. it was a black with red interior 1955 chevy bel air 2 door hard top. the “buy it now” price seemed reasonable, but i don’t do much purchasing and selling of old vehicles so i wasn’t sure. i decided to watch it and see what it did, and make a bid near the end if i could. i called the credit union and got my funding confirmed, called and talked to a guy who buys/sells classics, dropped by the classics place this past weekend, started thinking about how i’d get it and drive it back, etc. the auction end point was this coming sunday around 5pm.
about an hour ago someone did the “buy it now” on it. oh well.
in other failings, i was hoping someone was going to let a domain expire and i could pick it up and bring it back to its glory days, but they re-registered it a day or two before it expired. *sigh*
we’re going through some transitions at work. yet another re-organization. i’m cautiously optimistic about what it means for me as far as my responsibilities and assignments. but there are a lot more changes coming, i’m sure. my benefit from that so far is that i’m getting a couple of weeks of training on the ibm aix os. it’s one of the bigger unix os platforms that i’ve pretty much never touched (even as an end user), except for a bit of “testing” a few months ago.
tuesday night i went over to jack’s work office and helped him do some stuff with email, voip, and networking. i also discussed the ability to do hard drive copies. after that i talked with him about life and goings on for a couple of hours. i got home and went to bed way too late. especially considering i’d gotten too little sleep the last two nights and was hoping to make some up.
before going to jack’s i’d spent an hour or so at crescent city beignets. i finished up the book i’d been reading while there: letters from a skeptic: a son wrestles with his father’s questions about christianity by dr. gregory a. boyd and edward k. boyd. it’s a series of letters between a father and son, the father being an atheist that grew up in the catholic church and the son becoming a believer in college and now a professor of theology. the letters cover about three years, with the father asking all kinds of questions about christianity and the son replying. in the end, the father ended up becoming a believer.
i found the book to be a very good casual question and response about any number of questions about christianity, faith, world views, etc. i also really liked the way dr. boyd responded to some of the questions. i wouldn’t say i’m on board with all of his positions necessarily, but overall i found his comments to be fair, well constructed, and respectful. i especially liked his comments about G-d’s omniscience, since his view is pretty similar to mine and he seemed to express it much better than i’ve ever felt able to. it’s good to know there are intelligent, well-spoken believers who have some version of similar belief on that topic.
i haven’t had any close relatives who weren’t believers so i can’t really empathize with the situation, but i kept thinking about tamara and her dad. she became a christian in high school and her father grew up in the catholic church but has been a pretty staunch atheist as long as tamara has been aware of things. she used to really want to be able to have good conversations about her faith with him, and be able to discuss it in ways that would help it make sense to him. after all she’s chosen, gone through, and done, i’m not sure where she stands on any of that anymore — but since i stopped knowing her about the time she threw our life and love away, i can still relate it to how she felt back then. i know how much at the time it would have meant to tamara for something like this to happen between her and her father, so that managed to give the book some emotional punch it wouldn’t have had otherwise.

saturday i got up late. i went over to Texas sports and specialty cars (website) near fountain view on 59. i found out they’re open by invitation only on saturday, but after standing outside awhile looking at the cars in the showroom, the guy walked out and started talking to me. eventually he took me in and showed me around. they have some incredibly nice vehicles. unfortunately (for me, at least), they also have some very high price tags on the incredibly nice vehicles.
while i was there, sue called to see if i wanted to meet her and the kids at memorial city mall. i drove over there and hung out with them for a few hours. we parted ways and i headed to the gap to look for jeans. i really need some jeans…i have about two decent pair left. the other three or four pair i have are all threadbare to the point they’ve got holes and you can reach down and rip new ones by hand. i found some at the gap, but then i noticed they were $50. i laughed and put them back.
exiting the gap, i decided i would try and find a nearby computer store so i could buy a new ups. the one on my power mac started beeping incessantly every second or so a few days ago. i found the manual and it said that meant there was an internal ups failure and the solution was to call the manufacturer. since it was over two years old, i knew the only likely solution would be to pay to have it repaired. so instead i went looking for a new one. on the start of my journey, less than a minute into it in fact, i ran into a yankee candle store and they had “buy one, get one free” signs. i was sucked in.
i drove to a compusa, where i learned ups prices seemed much higher than when i last bought one (2.5 to 3 years ago). i headed to fry’s, but their prices weren’t any better. (in fact, they were the same or higher.) dejected, i half-heartedly stopped by a mcdonald’s redbox just to see if knocked up might be available. it wasn’t. i headed over to the potts’ house, where sue and i watched saturday night live. i also finally talked sue into making butterscotch oatmeal cookies. it didn’t take much work, but i did have to mention it several times over a couple of weeks. (just kidding…it was sue’s idea to make them. but i did mention it a few times over a couple of weeks.) they’re really good.
i drove home and was persuaded by my beeping ups to do some detective work on ups prices online. i eventually noted circuit city had a $50 off rebate on a model, which would make the price of the next lower model. i was excited until i clicked on it and the coupon expired at midnight and it was 2am. i went ahead and called to see if i could order online and slip into the rebate timeframe, but no such luck. for some reason, i couldn’t get to sleep when i went to bed and ended up not getting to sleep until around 5am.
i got up sunday around 11am. i registered on yankee candle’s website, which got me a $5 off coupon. i then headed to the yankee candle store in rice village. i must confess something here. i need to stop buying scented candles. i don’t burn them that often, and in an 8 day period i’ve bought 6 of them (not including the votive and small ones i bought to give away). granted, every one of them i bought on sale or with a coupon, but still. i’m not a fan of outdoors or musky scents, much preferring foods, fruits, and sweet scents. that said, here’s what i bought recently:

• cucumber and cantaloupe (yankee candle, medium jar), $5 off
• mulberry (colonial candle, large two-wick jar), $5 off
• vanilla cupcake (yankee candle, large jar), 25% off
• cherry lemonade (yankee candle, large jar), 50% off
• spiced cocoa (yankee candle, large jar), 50% off
• vanilla lime (yankee candle, large jar), $5 off

i also bought a couple of the ceramic candle shades (buy one, get one free) and one of the metal “illuma-lid” things. in addition to being decorative, they also help minimize wind and thus sooting, plus they retain heat which causes the candle wax to melt and burn more completely. like i said…someone needs to stop me.
anyway, from there i headed to old navy. i found a couple of pairs of jeans i liked there. and at about $26 per pair, they were almost half the price of the others. while there, i also couldn’t resist picking up a blue jean jacket. it’s been years and years since i had a blue jean jacket. i remember the one i had in fourth grade. i loved it. then one day at recess i took it off to play. about 10 minutes into the next class period, i suddenly realized i didn’t have it! i jumped up and told my teacher and she told me i could go outside and see if it was there. it wasn’t. i later checked with the principal’s office but it was never returned. *wipes tear from eye* i had a levi’s one in high school, but in those days who didn’t? i remember one time i loaned it to jennifer, and when i got it back a couple of days later it smelled of her perfume. it wasn’t upsetting in the least. (awww.) i had it through at least the early years of college as well. i don’t remember when it left me. and now i’ve got another one. who knows if i’ll ever wear it?
the next stop was circuit city. the $50 rebate had expired, but the new deal was $30 instant savings. the extra $20 savings would have been nice, but there’s something to be said about not having to mail anything in and wait, or pay taxes on the rebate money. (not $20 of something though, unfortunately.) i ended up buying an apc 1500va ups (bx1500lcd). since i only hook the cpu in, i should probably be able to get 2+ hours of backup life from it.
while doing my shopping, i got texted by chris to see if i wanted to go to a show that evening at the meridian. i thought about it and decided it was a good idea. on the way home i stopped by pei wei for my meal of the day, then around 7pm i met chris and some others at sherlock’s on west gray. from there we headed over to the meridian, where we caught the applicators (female punk rock from austin), roger miret and the disasters (from agnostic front, old school punk/hardcore), and the horror pops (psychobilly with go-go dancers, originally danish). it was a good show. all the bands were good. the sound was kind of loud, but eventually i won’t be able to tell.
after work today, natalie came over and we went by demeris bbq for some food (which was good), then we watched word wars. it’d been awhile since i’d seen natalie, so it was good to see her again. and i’m sure she was glad to see…the movie. 😉

this past sunday night i was settling down for the night, reading my Texas monthly in bed, when i heard screaming. it was pretty loud, and sounded like a guy and girl. i figured it was a domestic dispute, although loud and/or nearby. i could make out words, but not exactly what was at issue. it kept going for a couple of minutes until a male voice started screaming “help me!” “no! don’t!” over and over. i was worried about getting in the middle of some kind of violent dispute, but i finally decided i should try and see what was going on. i jumped up and got dressed, then loaded my kimber .45, put on the safety, and put it in the back of my pants. i walked outside and i could see flashing lights up the street. there were three or more cop cars at the corner, a few houses away. i stood outside for awhile but i never did figure out what was going on.
monday i decided to open up the 20 gig ipod that had been sitting in its box for about a year. i quickly learned my music collection won’t come anywhere near fitting on a 20 gig ipod. i guess this’ll do for now while i’m still slowly importing my music.
tuesday i went to crescent city beignets and read and had some beignets and cafe au lait. while at the register, i noticed passes for a free screening so i picked one up in case it was interesting.
wednesday after the radio show i went riding with brad and jason. i met them at chuy’s (negra modelo), then we went to the flying saucer (young’s double chocolate stout), then to la carafe (st. arnold’s oktoberfest). it was the first time we’d been out riding together in awhile. it was nice to do it again.
thursday after work i met sue at the angelika and watched the free preview for the pass i’d picked up tuesday at crescent city beignets. (i was originally supposed to watch a movie at home with natalie, but things didn’t pan out.) it was for lars and the real girl. it was really good. the story is about a socially awkward fellow who is nice and polite and a good person, but has had a lot of emotional baggage over the years and develops a delusion that an anatomically correct life-like sex doll he buys on the internet is alive. (remember mannequin? yeah, it’s nothing like that. as in, it never comes to life.) the movie is funny, touching, and deals with some complex issues in ways you don’t realize until later upon thinking about the movie. the acting is really good (appropriate to the movie), and you eventually come to terms with what’s going on and accept it. i kept thinking how dumb the movie would seem if someone just walked into the theater, even though the audience is laughing and crying about what’s happening. i think i could see comparing it to little miss sunshine in some ways, although it leans a little more serious with a lot of comedy, while …sunshine leans the other way. both are hilarious, but have great comments to make, and are touching while dealing with people with quirks and problems. oh yeah…the main character works in an i.t. cube farm kind of job, which they portrayed pretty accurately. i.t. people are weird.
after that i dropped sue off at the house of pies because she was meeting brad there, and i went to barnes and noble. i couldn’t resist picking up a few things while i was there:

• catcher in the rye – j. d. salinger (little, brown and co)
• crime and punishment – dostoevsky (everyman’s library)
• a short history of christianity – stephen tomkins (eerdmans)

(the first two are hardback versions.)
friday after work was the geek gathering at tropioca. we didn’t really announce it that well, plus jay is out of town, so the turnout was somewhat low. but it was still a good evening. from there i headed over to leon’s lounge for the vinyl ranch night. barrett had also planned to go over there, so i met him and a couple friends. later, when we were leaving, i noticed a motorcycle in front. then i realized it was brad’s. i went back inside and found him and kelli, so i hung out for a couple more hours. there was some cool music being played, but the occasional dj tricks on the vinyl was a bit odd to me, and most of the people seemed to be ironic about their appreciation of country. it was somewhat awkward, since i tend to hang out at places where there isn’t anything ironic about the clothes they wear or the music they’re listening to.

last wednesday i rode around with brad and kelli. it was the first time i’d seen them in some time (other than the wedding, when i didn’t see them much). we started off at poison girl, then we dropped kelli off and brad and i headed to the pearl bar. i’d been wanting to check it out because i’d heard they play old country on wednesday nights, but i wasn’t too excited about going by myself. we got there and they had a sign saying they were closed for renovation or whatever. brad suggested we go down washington to a place called the darkhorse tavern. we hung out there for a couple of hours. it was a pretty cool place.
last thursday evening i watched miller’s crossing. i’d been planning to watch the movie for some time, as it is a coen brothers film, but had never gotten around to it. it was pretty good, but i’m not a huge fan of the film noir detective/gangster prohibition-era movies so i don’t think i was as excited by it as i would have been if i were into those movies.
last friday after work i hung out with chris and mary and a few of their friends at berry hill. afterward, i went back to their place and watched some halo 3. i don’t really watch or play any modern games at all, so it was interesting to see the “new” thing in high-quality visuals gaming. i still don’t see it entrancing me, but watching it for awhile was cool.
this past saturday i helped a co-worker move some stuff (with my pickup). he took us to eat at outback afterward. then i went and joined sue and the kids at a chick-fil-a on westheimer. originally i was supposed to go and pick up knocked up for us to watch, but i went to four different mcdonald’s plus an heb (3 of which i stopped and waited in line at) and couldn’t find a copy. eventually i gave up the search and out of desperation (and not wanting to annoy the 10 people now in line behind me by taking forever to pick something) chose beerfest. i mean, i remember the preview looking like it might possibly be funny. i went back to the potts’ place and we watched beerfest. it was pretty lame. i mean, even with low expectations it was pretty lame. in fact, there were funny parts in the preview that they evidently couldn’t manage to keep in the movie. that’s pretty bad.
sunday i ate at goode company bbq. from there i went to home depot, target, and bed bath and beyond looking for a floor fan. but, oddly, i had no luck. a lady at home depot said they were “a seasonal store”. uh…we’re in houston. what seasons? and it’s september. hello? while i was at target i looked at their portable ipod speaker systems. i saw some stuff that looked pretty good but i didn’t make any decisions due to prices…i need to do some more research before i drop what they want for them. i thought about buying an led flashlight too while i was out, but i made no decision on that either. what i did end up buying was a new set of bed sheets. which i don’t think i can open until my cat dies, since she is using the side of the bed as a scratching post sometimes. *sigh*

so you want the latest citrix client on your new fedora 7 box, eh? but the 10.6 citrix ica client wants openmotif 2.2.x. and as of fedora 6, fedora axed openmotif due to licensing requirements, so it’s not available. what to do? no need to commit citrixide, i can show you a way! (well, on an x86 32-bit fedora 7 install at least. but i’m sure you’re clever and can figure it out for your nifty x86_64 install.)
[1] grab the openmotif rpm for an older fedora version (4, for example)
wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/
   core/updates/4/i386/openmotif-2.2.3-10.FC4.2.i386.rpm
[2] openmotif has a dependency so it won’t install via “yum localinstall blah.rpm” — so use the rpm command itself with “nodeps”
rpm --nodeps -ivh openmotif-2.2.3-10.FC4.2.i386.rpm
[3] you also need libXp.so.6, and it’s availble for fedora 7, so use yum to install it (if you don’t have it already)
yum install libXp
if for some reason you need the actual rpm file, you can get it at: http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/
   releases/7/Everything/i386/os/Fedora/libXp-1.0.0-8.i386.rpm
[4] now you can install the citrix icaclient 10.6 (get the rpm file from the citrix site, silly)
rpm -ivh ICAClient-10.6-1.i386.rpm
the ica client is installed in /usr/lib/ICAClient
(that means wfcmgr, wfica, and so on are in that dir)
it’ll show up in your menu in Applications -> Internet -> Citrix Presentation Server Client
run it, accept the license agreement. now you’ve got your citrix client.
but wait! there’s more! another thing you might want to do:
[5] open your browser and go to your citrix server website. log in.
[6] when it asks what to open launch.ica with, choose /usr/lib/ICAClient/wfica
OR, more cleany,
[5] as root, ln -s /usr/lib/ICAClient/npica.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
(or put it in your own personal mozilla plugins area if you don’t want to do it as root. that would be ~/.mozilla/plugins if you didn’t know. create it if it doesn’t exist.)
[5a] if you kept selinux active, it will end up complaining later on. if so, do this:
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t /usr/lib/ICAClient/npica.so
[6] restart firefox.
in the address bar, type “about:plugins” and look for the citrix client in the list.
go forth and citrix.
some info taken from:
http://drpixel.tuxfamily.org/index.php?2007/07/07/
   74-installation-du-client-citrix-sous-fedora-core-6-et-fedora-7
http://support.citrix.com/forums/thread.jspa?
   messageID=597771&fromSearchPage=true&#597771
http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/linux.html
along with other sites, plus my own tinkering.
i claim no responsibility for accidential citrixide that may occur by following these steps, or if your fedora install gets borked, or if your cat gets feline diabetes from this, or whatever else may result. you’re a big boy or girl and you chose to run linux. use google yourself, you lazy good-for-nothing freeloader!

we got up tuesday morning and did eat breakfast at a whataburger. i was able to try the honey-butter chicken biscuit, which is pretty good. while there, we learned two inmates had escaped the day before, killed one guard by hitting her and her horse with a pickup, and been loose for about 4 hours. interesting way to be introduced to a town.
from whataburger we drove over to the cemetery where sam houston is buried. his current tombstone is pretty big, but his burial back in the day wasn’t very well attended and his original tombstone was rather ordinary. in fact, he didn’t enjoy much popularity in the last days of his life. he was buried in a pretty simple casket that was built by some union prisoners of war he had befriended. but he did some amazing things for the country and state of Texas.
from there we headed over to the sam houston memorial museum. we started off watching a 20 minute movie in the building with the gift shop, walked the trail looking at his various houses and such, then went to main museum building.
to tell just one thing: houston was unpopular late in life due to his lack of desire for Texas to secede from the u.s. because of this, he refused to take an oath of allegience to the confederacy, so he was removed from his office as governor of Texas. when he moved back to huntsville, he didn’t have a lot of money or clout. (and supposedly no one wanted to rent or sell him a house.) a guy had built a house for his son and daughter-in-law, but they wouldn’t live in it because of its odd design…evidently people made fun of it. it’s called the steamboat house, and it looks like…well, a steamboat (without a big paddle). it’d been sitting there vacant for a few years, so that’s where sam houston spent the very end of his life. they have the steamboat house on their grounds.
overall, the museum has a pretty cool setup. sam houston was a very interesting character, so there’s plenty of stories to tell about him. they have some cool stuff that belonged to houston, including a few things he wore in pictures and paintings of him.
after we were done at the main museum, we headed back to the gift shop. i didn’t manage to not buy anything this time around. i bought two books:

• sam houston – james l. haley (university of oklahoma press)
• the Texas revolution – william c. binkley (Texas state historical association)

i also picked up a few old documents reproduced on antiqued parchment, created by the historical documents company. i’d seen some of these around and had been meaning to get some, just never had done it. here they are:

• * Texas decleration of independence (1836)
• * freemen of Texas to arms!!! to arms!!!
• * proclamation of sam houston (1834)
• * col. william travis letter of february 24, 1836

after leaving the museum we drove up the street a little and stopped at a wendy’s to make plans. my parents decided they should probably go ahead and start heading back toward austin and brady. so we parted ways, and i headed back to houston.