New Features

Some changes are occuring in my journal. If you've read it before, then you'll notice that the font and colors changed. I started to like the idea that maybe I did it with a typewriter and so I tried to make it look that way. If you knew how my journal entries actually get composed that would seem ridiculous, but we can do whatever we want with computer. Anyway, the look is a minor thing but neccessary for the important new feature.
I've complained myself, and gotten complaints from those who know me well, that I wasn't being true to myself in my journal. This was because I had to carefully censor how I really felt due to my silly idea to make my journal public. I don't know who could be reading so I have to bring it down to the lowest common denomitor. There are things I don't want my close friend reading that I'd want to say about them, there are things my parents don't need to know about my life, there are things I wouldn't want strangers to know, and then there are things I wouldn't want anyone to hear me say but want to express none-the-less. I could pretty much only type stuff so benign (and boring) that I wouldn't mind anyone reading.

The solution is to be able to have private content in my journal. Stuff that only I can read. Now for everyone else the experience in terms of what you can read will be mostly the same. I'd like to think I took an interesting approach to this problem. Rather than seperate private entries, private text can be intersparsed among public text within an entry. It might be a few words, a sentence or two, or as much as whole paragraphs. Also, rather than have it just be invisible to the world, I thought it would be neat to let people know I had private thoughts I just didn't want to show them, like when goverment documents get declassified but some details still needed to be blacked out with marker. So it will look something like this:Sorry, this is private text and you can't read it. Neat, huh? Anyways, you'll be seeing some of that. Maybe at some point I'll find a way to allow some people access to partial access to private information based on who they are (some private text is only so certain people can't read it, but not everyone), not soon though.

Goodbyes

One of my best friends, Mike Weiss, is leaving for good this weekend. I'm really going to miss him. He's been a staple of my last three summers, not to mention the last four years. Late nite Denny's runs. Well, since he's leaving now and I'm leaving after the summer, we went today to wish Mark Stehlik fairwell in our AEPi tradition. He's the CS advisor. He's done a lot for both of, as most students. I have him to thank for me being a CS student at all, and that goes a long way towards being responsible for me still being at CMU, my job in Stage3, everything I've done the past three great years, and graduating at all. We interrupted him in some work to share with him a drink and some memories. Mike and I still have several other things planned we must do one last time. I've said I'm going to spend this week doing the usual things since it is near the end of when I can (or at least with Mike there), afterwards I get to start doing thing with the people who I see less who are around this summer.

Other Stuff

I don't know what they heading here should be. Just some random stuff. It is a shame that you can't have an unheaded paragraph if it doesn't occur first. After the first heading everything is just assumed to be under that heading. Oh well. Many times these past few days I've said some bizarre things that I thought should go in my journal, but I wasn't able to write them then. I should probably carry around a notebook and keep notes. Yeah right. I don't even carry a wallet cause I think it takes too much space. I'm sure there's more I don't remember. I'll be done for now, finish up with the first really private stuff.