May 7th, Sunday

It's early sunday morning (10:47am, that's as early as it ever gets on a sunday) and i thought i'd write a bit.

I had a dream last night. As far as i can recall i was in a more or less intimate situation with somebody i identified as "a friend". We were really close, and the light was low and warm, when i noticed that she had scars all over her arm. The same kinds of scars i've got, smooth and straight and slightly pink, which you get from cutting yourself deeply with a razorblade or similar. I had no idea that she cut herself too. I think i hugged her and cried, i know that i touched her scars, gently stroked them. And in a twisted way i felt relieved, because i wasn't alone anymore. I wish i could recall who she was. Of course i know that just because i dream it doesn't mean that she really cuts, but i seem to be telling myself that i can trust her.

Last weekend mum was at an assertiveness-training course for women. Apparently she learned a lot about dealing with her emotions, and she was really doing well afterwards. In the follow-up to this course she talked to friends at the local crisis-center for abused women, and has decided she's going to see a therapist. I think this is a good move (i've been known to say that just about anybody could do with a bit of professional help). She said that it's to get help with being a support person for me. <snip> She has her first session on tuesday, and i hope all goes well for her.

Thursday and Friday were very "interesting" at the office. Like so many others we caught the loveletter-virus, and i handled the clean-up more or less on my own. Of course my boss was there too, and he did most of the communicating, calming down clients and so on, but the actual handling of the virus he (quite wisely) left to me. And i was good at it, by 4am on friday our system was clean of virii again. And for once he even gave credit where it was due, i got a lot of congratulations from clients. But i doubt that there will be any material benefits (a raise or at least a bonus would be nice). What i am most proud of is having planned and implemented the clean-up by myself, without needing to rely on the somewhat imprecise instructions handed out by most anti-virus companies, and that we were finished hours earlier then anybody had guessed. And just to say this too, i'm impressed by this virus. The programming is excellent, it's simple, clear, and easily understood. Also everybody who is mad at the guy for doing something so destructive should remember that just by adding a few lines, or even by changing three letters from .mp2 to .doc, he could have created billions of extra dollars of damage. So i don't think he was out to be destructive, but that it was more on the lines of an exploit, a chalenge between hackers, for example. And he (why do i think that it was a "he"?) has certainly succeded there.

Oh well, enough for now, i'll join the others for breakfast.

Love, Ruby

Same day, later

Oh, i forgot to mention earlier that i got a present on thursday. We had guests, they stayed for the whole week-end, and as they'd just arrived i spent a nice part of the evening with them. Also i was still in hyperdrive from work, that virus was really something. So it was quite late when i finally came upstairs to check my mail. And what did i see lieing on the chair? A package from England, adressed to me! Really to me, it said Ruby Schmid on the adress. That's only the second time i've gotten post under my real name! (the first time was a christmas-present from my friend Hanna) Inside was a (fake) silk scarf all in bright orange and dark, almost burgundy red, really lovely colours that suit me, and a long two-page letter from my aunt. My mum had told her about me last time she was in England, and at first i had been rather dismayed, because she hadn't even asked me if she could. But she had assured me that my aunt had taken it well (and to be honest she's the person in my family i'd been least worried about, she's very religious, but in a very good way). And here i got the acknowledgement that she really liked me still and accepted it.

And just so that it is said, i'm working on my link-pages, giving them a new layout and a rating-system where you can vote for them. They should start coming up tonight, or in any case sometime soon.

Love, Ruby

p.s. Yes, i got the international and the swiss resources up :)

May 10th, Wednesday

Well, as you can see i've got the links-pages revamped, they're up and running. Now i'm waiting for those ratings to poor in :) Actually, nobody has used this new function yet, but never mind, it was fun creating it and putting it all up.

A friend of mine plays in an amateur theatre group, and this weekend they're performing. Last night she invited me to come and see it. There's a couple more of my friends who are going, so i'll probably tag along with them. The nice thing is that i'm out to all but one of them, so i've been thinking of going dressed. Of course none of them have yet seen me dressed, so that might be quite interesting :)

Oh, and what i wanted to say really was that having done the links, now i'm thinking very hard about redesigning the rest of my site too. (got to figure out those mouseon/mouseoff functions) It might take a while, but let it be announced :) Oh, and i've got a nice original name for my site too :)

Hey, i seem to be doing really well today :) look at all these smiles :)

Love, Ruby

May 16th, Tuesday

I wish i was still as happy as in my last entry. Unfortunately things haven't been going as well as i would have wished them too. It started on friday, when i almost had a panic-attack right there in therapy. The only reason it didn't get out of hand was that i dug my fingernails (i'm tempted to write "claws") into my skin, and i got welts that lasted for 2 days. Then in the evening i wanted to go to the play, but i didn't know when it began, and was late, and my friends had allready left, and i didn't even know where it was! So i had a rather dreadful evening reading a rather boring book, and hated myself for being so stupid and incompetent. Then on Saturday i couldn't get myself to get up, and just stayed in bed reading until the late afternoon, and of course starving. Then spent the rest of the day feeling miserable, and even working on my site-revamp only helped a little. And the whole time being tempted to cut or smoke dope or just to do something so that i would fall into a coma or something. Sunday my mood was pretty much the same, at least i got a nice bit of my revamp done (it should come online soon). Oh yes, and my hayfever has started, it's early this year, which promises a nice long while of suffering. Then it was evening, and i had to go home. I put over a load of laundry, and as i was sitting in my room waiting for it to be done i just picked up my pencil-case and got out the x-acto cutter and started using it on myself. Like in the old days. Why? It felt great. How come does something like cutting yourself feel great? It really sharpens my concentration, makes me feel that i'm *here* and *now* and *real*. And the time passes in no time. And the blood is so beautiful. I didn't do it again, but i'm scared now that i'll do it again, now that i remember what it feels like.

On a much happier note, just as began to write this my parents came home, and mum came up and asked me if she was right in thinking that i didn't have anything to wear now that it's summer. And then she gave me a dress. It's dark blue (jeans), with silver buttons down the front, sleeve-less and aproximately knee-length. And a white top as well. I wasn't expecting this at all. She just made my day! Now i think i have to go home and try it on! :)

Love, Ruby

May 17th, Wednesday

Well, for all of you who are eagerly waiting for my new design, i'm sorry to say that you will just have to wait a little longer. I downloaded Netscape 6 today, and it's supposed to be ultra-compliant with all the official standards of how to display html and so on. (little word of advice, this is a "service release" or something like that, it's still got some minor bugs to be ironed out, so if you don't want to fight with those then wait before downloading it). The problem is that when i looked at the new version of this site with it it displayed it all wrong. Not the layout and such, but it displayed the pictures wrong.

I'll include an example. The little graphic on the right blends in smoothly with the background. At least it does on netscape 4.72, and i presume it does on explorer too (humm, i'll have to check that out). It does that because i designed it that way, the background colour being FFCCFF in html, which translates to 255,204,255 in photoshop, which is the same colour. It works perfetly fine in netscape 4, but in 6 it shows it as FF99FF, which is the colour of the text in the above graphic. The strange thing is that it only does it with the little images, and the main image, which works on the same principles, is showed just fine. I thought for a moment that it might be because they're links, but i tested that, and it shows them darker even when they aren't links. I don't know. So until i figure this out i'm not putting it online! I just had another idea what might be it, the script has a function which makes it not apply to old browsers, so i was thinking that perhaps it might be excluding new versions too, but itisn't so, because obviously the script is still running.

And that reminds me :) the little geocities pop-up window that we all love so well doesn't get shown correctly either, instead of being allways on top in the right-hand corner it gets shown only at the bottom right of the page, down below all the content :) now that's cool. But it's also a sign that perhaps all isn't working quite as it should be....?

Then again, considering how few people allready have netscape 6, perhaps i'll just put it up anyway?

Oh, and some coolies, i've got a hairdressers apointment on friday. He's a weird guy, he wears multicoloured contact-lenses, he's got a very feminine voice, a stud in his lips... but he's a very nice, kind, and wellmannered guy. I wonder if he's gay (errm, to be honest i'd be surprised if he was anything else, except perhaps if he was trans.... bit i think that would be hoping to much).

Allright, i've got to go now, it's getting late. I'll keep you all updated on how things move along with the update, and in my life.

Love, Ruby

May 20th, Saturday

Well, i saw the hairdresser yesterday, and it was really cool. I wrote a long letter about it to antijen, so instead of typing another long report i'll just copy it here:

Letter to Antijen:

Right now that's about it, i'll try to write more during the weekend.