Three Shades of Awesome

So my life is seemingly starting to work out, in some ways it’s rather strange.  I feel like in so many ways I’m becoming a whole person more so lately than ever before.  I’m less defined by what exactly I’m done at the moment and more by who I am.  Which is ironic because I think in a lot of ways I’m set to accomplish now more than I ever would have before.

I confess a big part of that is a result of meeting someone who’s just made this whole month wonderful.  By all rights I should still be mourning my RRC rejection, but the fact is life feels like it’s so in perspective now.  I have great people in my life, and great possibilities in my life.  Single setbacks or even achievement doesn’t define me.  Today I’m David, and yesterday I was David, and hopefully if all goes according to plan I’ll be David tomorrow!  I’m slowly starting to remember what I learned during my first year of College, which is that I’m able to be loved (not in the gushy movie sense, or the life long commitment sense, but more in the love in an instance… if that makes any sense.)  and I’m able to be valuable not because of what I do, and not simply because “Jesus died for you so stop being emo or else!” Rather, I’m David, and that’s reason enough that I’m valuable.

I’ve just this whole month been having that lesson shoved in my face, be it when I’m hanging out with a special someone, or when I’m talking with friends like Brian, or Logan, or Rob, or Brynna.  I’m being reminded that the people who know me see something that for especially the last year or so I haven’t been able to see about myself.  I’m more than simply good at stuff, I’m great at being David, and that’s something great in and of itself.

And so now in a lot of ways I find myself in a newer place, because to be honest while all of this is built on many years of being David, I haven’t been David this much in a long time… or ever?  I feel like now I’m really at my best.  So with that, and the support of the people in my life I’m going to take life by the balls and give it a playful squeeze to let it know who’s boss!  (Please don’t hit me back life I was only kidding!)

Progress on my book is going swimmingly, I’m probably a bout half done or so?  I’m still flushing out a good bit of the plot, and then I’ll have to go back and fill out some chapters, fluff some stuff up to make the chapters really have as much depth and feel as I want, and then see about getting it edited?  I wasn’t originally wanting to get it published, but I kinda feel like, what the hell?  I think first I’d create an epub file, and sell it on iBooks, and then perhaps create a “hardcover” edition for the iPad and iPhone with custom graphic novel style illustrations.  I mean, that could be fun right?  And the cost of entry is so low.  I mean, I’d have to put out a website, which wouldn’t be hard to do.

I also got a word on a job I’m going to apply, it would be a graphic arts job for a company that doesn’t want to have to pay people with degrees!  (Hey what’s what?  I don’t have a degree!  Huzzah!)  Wait that sounds bad, anyway from what I understand, now I could be entirely wrong, but essentially they just want a Photoshop monkey, which I could pull off handily.  I mean, doing some quick edits on this and that, is hardly that challenging, but it’d be a chance to build up cred, get a chance to see what it feels like in that sorta environment, not to mention it’s a bus from right in front of my building, straight there!

In other news, I have the world’s most kick ass laptop bag… ever!  Ironically my mom bought it for me thinking I’d need it for school next year, but we shall have to see how many uses I can find for it!  I’m tempted to start carrying around my MacBook for sport!  Granted the thing is like four years old, I did just buy a brand new after market battery (60 bucks, even if it’s not as good as the OEM one who can argue with that!?  Good enough for sitting in Sbux and looking pretentious!)

It’s actually a gorgeous bag, it’s this sorta olive… olive?  Forest?  Forest green, kinda muted, very earthy, very me.  It’s made out of, I don’t know but it doesn’t look cheap or juvenile, at the same time it doesn’t look overly leather and lame either.  It’s very David’s a 20 something now get out of my way!  If a bag can be that… (and I think it can!)

All in all this week end has been great, once I get a classic controller pro (wow it’s like it was named by Apple!)  then I’ll be able to play all my old Mega Man X games, and maybe run my way through a Legend of Zelda or two.  I think ultimately I should probably hold off until winter to waste my time on that there’s lots to do now as it is, but even just having this project accomplished feels great!

That said, as per my title what I have realized is, I’m not a college student anymore, and dorm chic  isn’t quite what I’m aiming for anymore.  So I’m not sure exactly where or what I wanna do about that, but I’m really hoping I can move into something that’ll pay me out a bit more, not a lot, I just want to be able to have enough cash that I can both give to things that I want to, and justify things like…

Buying one of the new minis as a HTPC,
Buying a new big TV
Buying a netbook just to put OS X on it and then realize why Apple never did it in the first place
Buy three more wii controllers that I don’t really need.
Pay for dinner with friends as much as I want to!
Buy far too many external HDs just cause I felt like it.

Oh I guess I should put new clothes somewhere on that list?  I think I might go shirt shopping one of these days?  Though on that note I also want to start using my weights more, building up some more muscle, perhaps trim down a little bit.  I confess I think one reason it was so hard for me to drag my ass to the gym this last year was that I just thought the whole thing was futile, but now that I have someone who looks at me and well… anyway, I confess that’s a bit of a motivation to get back to working out!

Anyway, so that’s my life update for now.  I’m sorry I haven’t been blogging much, I don’t want to blog too much about Mr. Incredible since I don’t know if that would make him feel uncomfortable or pressured or something, and besides he knows he makes me happy so… whatever.

Oh I should also say I totally cleaned up my desk today, cleaning is kind cathartic…

Jeannine.

The sidewalk, it looked less like a sidewalk, and more like broken patterns of broken dreams, shattering in the faint glow of the Chrystal’s, my favourite greek restaurant. Stepping out into the flowing breaking, the rain caught me in the face. I pulled my jacket tight, and some somehow thanked the night for crying with me. Splashing steps kept me moving, in a fog of rain and the mixture of neon signs blending with the orange street lights. It was all a haze, the night, the thoughts, the thinking night, so dark inside.

Just moments before we’d been laughing as he’d stopped the car out in front. The rain had been coming down, but if anything it had felt romantic. I’d gotten out, popping up an umbrella and I’d raced around to his door as he got out. He’d thanked me saying it wasn’t necessary but used it as an excuse to give me a peck on the cheek.

So why? I’m left with just why? As the rain seeps into my underwear, all that I’m left holding on to is the water running through my hands. It doesn’t make any sense, how can it not make sense? In this orange fog cars come and go, they seem like little more than glowing orbs of noise sliding along the all too wet pavement. Scattering broken dreams in the gutter as they go.

The hostess had seated us, next to the window, in the dim candle light we’d both marveled at the storm outside. Yet it was warm, and safe inside, as I stared into his eyes, I felt as if the entire world could fall apart, and I’d barely care, just to stay locked in his gaze, I could be content. It was like there was a happy force field emanating from his eyes, neither lasers, not acid or rockets could penetrate it. In there with him, it was safe.

Crossing the street, a few blocks from my apartment, a noisy orb of light came barreling through the intersection. Turning, my face was lit up in the headlights as the car broke through the fog and knocked me off my feet. Being tossed into the air by the momentum, I bounced off the hood and into the windshield. Much like the sort of thing you’d see in a Hollywood movie, though nothing exploded.

Everything felt, strangely perfect. We were talking about where we saw ourselves in a few years, and he was talking about how he wanted to eventually start his own law firm, get his name on the door, and I was totally falling into his dream. I saw myself as the doting boy friend he could take to lavish lawyer dinners, dare I think even doting husband? I pictured myself, maybe going back to school, maybe letting somebody else take over the crime fighting, or at least, cutting back on it all! But then the topic changed-

I laid on the pavement catching my breath, even when you’re invulnerable, getting hit by a car still isn’t fun. I slowly stood up to, I hoped relieve the fears of the poor thoughtless, perhaps drunk person who’s car had just made such tender contact with my sopping personage. As I walked over, raising my hands as a disarming gesture, the driver and passenger side doors of the car opened. I was expecting a string of apologies, or at worst an angered exclamation that I shouldn’t have been in the road, but well, neither of those happened.

“I’ve been seeing someone else,” a confused smile leapt onto my face, as I sat there unable to speak, “Did you hear me, I said I’ve been seeing someone else.” The confusion stayed, but the smile drained from my face. “Her, her name is Jeannine.” I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to do, what do you say to that? What do you do? Do you tell him that you didn’t even mean to like guys? Did I tell him I was just picturing us married? Do I lie and say that I’m OK with that? Do I try and find some other meaning, some way of saying that that doesn’t leave me worthless and alone? Her name is Jeannine.

“Get him!” the yell came from the shadow exiting the passenger side door, with that the night sky was lit up with flashes of machine gun fire. It wasn’t the first time I’d been hit by a barrage of bullets. But this time I didn’t know what to do. Why on earth was this happening, and why now? I certainly didn’t feel like fighting crime, and even less than that I didn’t feel like defending myself from an attack that is more annoying than anything! More over, why tonight? Why now! Isn’t getting dumped bad enough? I’m not even in my costume, how the hell do these guys even know I’m me? Beyond that, what’s with the machine guns? What part of Mr. Invincible is so hard to understand? Is it the Mr. or the Invincible? If the Mr. then I hope the facial hair could be taken as a hint, and if the invincible, I think these bouncing bullets should clue you in!

I sat there, I still had a clump of fettachini on my fork. Jeannine. What do you say to that, “We met at a bar a while ago, well I shouldn’t say we met, we reconnected there, we’d gone to high school together, we’d never really been friends, but, we just kind of hit it off, we had drinks last Friday evening-” so that’s where he’d been last Friday, he’d said he was staying in, I’d offered to order a pizza for us and he’d said no, apparently staying in means going out for drinks with some woman named Jeannine.

I could barely make out the figures, even less than that I could barely care. As one of them threw a balloon filled with some form of oil at me, another lit what looked like a molotov cocktail, connecting against my shoulder and setting me ablaze. I imagine I looked something quite like the human flamer at this point. Thankfully the super powers had long since kicked in, and the only damage that was being done was to my favourite shirt, and the jeans that made my ass look good. I realized I had fifty bucks in my wallet, that was likely gone now, and now that I think about it, my iPhone was surely toast, if the rain and the gun fire hadn’t gotten it, I was sure the fire, would have taken care of it.

“Look, it’s, it’s nothing against you. I mean, I’d told you I liked girls too.” He’d also told me he liked to do dishes, and yet it always seemed as if I was the one loading his dishwasher. “I just, I don’t know, we met, and we clicked, and I guess, I mean you’re a great guy and all, but, I just, well I’m not sure that I really,” here it came, I couldn’t believe it was coming, I couldn’t believe that he was saying it, how dare he think he had a right to say it, “I just don’t know that I’m ever really going to be in love with you. I’m sorry.” He was sorry? He was sorry? Really? Cause, well for me, for me if I’m sorry, then I don’t cheat on someone, I don’t go out for drinks with Jeannine, I don’t meet her at a bar, I don’t decide that I’m not in love with someone else, I don’t lie to that person and tell them I’m staying in when I’m really going out for drinks, I don’t make them believe I care when I don’t, I don’t tell them what I know they want to hear, I just, I don’t!

The thought of my iPhone being broken kind of set me off. It was one thing to hit me with a car, it was another thing to put bullet holes all through my favourite shirt, it was even one thing to douce me in fire, which when it doesn’t hurt is actually a kind of fun experience, (I might have done it before…) but no, they broke my iPhone! That was a 32 gig! I paid three hundred dollars for that thing! Do you have any idea how much those things cost to replace? As I thought of my favourite gadget going up in flames, I got angry.

“You’re, you’re not saying anything.” Duh. “Are, are you OK dude? I mean, say something, I know, well I know you probably didn’t want to hear any of this, but, I just wanted to, you know be honest with you about everything.”

Walking towards the car, my motion turned into a jog, and then to a run. One of the men tried to get in my way, he drew a sword. Really? A sword, yup, a sword, as I ran forward he tried to slice through my gut, but as soon as it made contact the sword shattered, and I thought huh, that’s new. Reaching their vehicle, which I now discovered was a large SUV (I hate SUVs, nothing says I’m insecure about my small penis like an SUV!) Raising my arms above my head, I smashed my fists into the hood of the vehicle. The entire hood caved in, which was, well it was a little surprising. Fixing my left hand under the bumper, I pulled the SUV from the ground, flipping it on it’s back. Well, never done that before.

“Look, it’s nothing personal, I just, I’m not really sure that I see a future with you, and to be honest I kind of want to have a family. I mean, I’m sure you understand. I mean, really do you see yourself with me in a few years? I mean, come on, I’m gonna be a high class lawyer, you’re still wasting away at some little cell phone kiosk. Do you really think we’d be a good match? I mean, honestly?”

By now I think I’d have thought they’d have realized that they weren’t about to do much more damage to me than they had, but sure enough one of them came rushing at me, this time a girl. From her shape I figured she was pretty, seemed athletic, as she broke out the martial arts moves, she was kicking and punching, and fact is I let her land every one. Being invulnerable, there’s not a big reason to put a lot of work into a fist fight. She had her hair pulled out of the back of a black balaclava, it looked blonde, though darker since it was also drenched in the rain. I tried to imagine who this person was who was trying to rearrange my face rather unsuccessfully. I figured perhaps she was a pretty girl in high school, fell in with the wrong crowd, and… somehow ended up as an assassin for hire? Assassins are always hard to figure out, I mean what could possibly make you want to do the bad things that other bad people don’t even want to do? It just seemed like a really lousy career choice. Though I hear there’s really good money in it. That is, if you, you know are a sociopath.

The waitress came and asked us if we were ready for our bill, I nodded my head, she asked again, this time if it would be together or separate, “Separate please.” Separate? Separate! After all that he couldn’t even pay for my meal? Is it just me or does that sound wrong? With that, I threw my napkin down, stood, grabbed my coat, and walked toward the door. “Can’t we at least talk about this? Seriously man, I still care about you, I just-” The door shut behind me, and I found myself running away, faster than the rains through the storm drain. down the street in a haze of neon lights, blending with the street lights.

I stood outside the door of my apartment building, buzzing random apartments. I hope that someone would be awake, and would let me in the building. I guessed it was near 1 am, but I was some some neighbour had to be awake. I made up a story about having lost my keys, in fact they’d melted, and that I just needed them to buzz me in. I hoped nobody looked at the TV channel that showed the entrance way. The fire had burnt or melted most of my clothing, and the rain had washed away much of it. I was rather nude, and not in the best of ways. Thankfully an elderly lady let me into the building, she said she wasn’t sure if she recognized me, but that I had a hot body, and if I liked she was in apartment 57, the door would be unlocked.

So, for anyone who knows me, it’s kinda funny that I haven’t blogged about Apple as much as I used to when I was younger… though perhaps this is just a sign that I’ve grown up and have begun defining myself more by who I am and less by the various camps of loyalty I may subscribe to.

In a lot of ways I’ve moved beyond being unique because I’m a Christian Gay Mac User, and now I’m just unique because I’m David… who happens to be Christian, gay, a Mac user, iPhone nut, artist, author, etc. I guess in a lot of ways now I’m me for me.

In other news I’m typing this from my desk on my MacBook, which is crazy because I’ve been using a monitor and keyboard while at my desk for the last few years, and I haven’t typed from this angle for a meaningful sitting in years… I’ve lent my trusty Samsung LCD to Logan with my mom’s old Mac mini and my keyboard while Logan gets Futureshop to warranty his slightly over a year old HP laptop… which broke because it’s an HP. (HP has twice the failure rate of Apple, Lenovo, or Asus, the only company that would be worse to buy a laptop from would be Acer/Gateway)

All that to say though, I am very excited about the iPhone 4 launch, though I’m a lil ticked off that they’re launching in Canada a month late… I realize it’s a smaller market… but come on, it’s a smaller market! I want my iPhone now! It shouldn’t have been that much effort, but at the same time I imagine Apple is probably not too concerned with the Canadian market, they’re probably making more in the other markets, and the Canadian carrier s are probably a pain to deal with. I know when I worked for Rogers I’d sometimes hear some of the somewhat higher ups complain about how much trouble it was to deal with Apple, mostly because they’d want to do things their way and Apple has their own agenda. Apparently they’d rather push out as many low quality Android devices like the Sony X10 than push out a bajillion iPhones. At the same time this also allows the carriers to charge for another month before all the iPhone owners start bitching that they’re not able to upgrade yet haha.

Anyway, the new phone looks killer, in a lot of ways it’s an evolutionary upgrade, the big points that make me want a new one… aside from being able to upgrade, are the new display which looks sick, and despite Samsung’s belly aching about them not using OLED (most likely one of the reasons they decided to go with a higher end LED backlit display is simply because they could get LG to make enough of them, where as Samsung couldn’t deliver.)

That and the A4 processor which, actually it’s really hard to find out how fast the processor is, in the iPad it’s 1Ghz, I’d been assuming it was in the new iPhone, but I can’t find a single statement of that, so we’ll just assume it’s a Ghz.

FaceTime really doesn’t mean a lot for me, odds are I’m more likely to make a skype video call with it than I will be to use FaceTime, well I dono we’ll see maybe if I get several friends with iPhone 4s… which on my short list there should be… Chris, Jonathan, Jon, Luke, Jason… OK so a few people I know will be upgrading for sure… but anyway I think I could see myself skyping with Amy in Korea before I’d see myself randomly FaceTiming with someone who I saw just last week.

I think if they managed to link up FaceTime with iChat AV that’d be great, but I think that’ll require more of an upgrade to iChat AV than it will involve an update to the iPhone. I’m really surprised to see that Apple didn’t try and get a major industry partner on board for FaceTime though I mean, Skype would have been an obvious one, or at least pairing it with iChat AV would be been smart. Really what would be great is if Apple, AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Skype could all get together and decide on some standard protocols to use, or at least some way of routing them so that they’d be able to be used interchangeably.

That said, I doubt that’ll happen since Apple’s gotten big enough that lots of companies are scared of them, and in the end Apple prefers never having to compromise. They’d built their own wireless networks if it wouldn’t be insanely expensive.

Of course I don’t really care much about the HD video editing, since while it’s a pretty impressive feat, I imagine the audio quality is still gonna be sub par so it’ll always work best when simply paired with a random song from your library as a sound track. I know they announced iMovie, and I was excited about that, but to be honest after trying Keynote on an iPad I was sorely disappointed, I tried to change a background image and apparently that just wasn’t something you could do, I was like… seriously?

Anyway, overall I’m pretty excited about the new iPhone, but it’s mostly the screen and processor that have me really excited.

That said, what I’m also really excited to keep watching is the Apple vs. Google vs. Microsoft slug fest that’s been going on lately!

See back in the day it was Apple vs. Microsoft, and Apple often seemed more like a brilliant kid shouting insults across the play ground against a big bully. Then it was Microsoft vs. Google, where Microsoft was acting like a paranoid nut job pouring money into any and every product they could think of to try and keep Google from gaining more market share. They’re in online advertising and barely making a dime there, actually I don’t know that they’re making any money with it. But they’ve seen how much Google is able to leverage the gobs of information they collect from users to serve up things that people want.

This of course was a fun war to watch, you often had Google and Apple teaming up to do some things that just seemed incredible, Google Maps on the iPhone was mind blowing when it was introduced. And sure the competed on a few fronts, iPhoto vs. Picasa, Safari vs. Chrome, but there wasn’t that much over lap so they got along really well.

Well, that whole love fest between Google and Apple has pretty well crumbled! See Google kinda decided that while they were pissing off Microsoft they’d get into a few markets like email, and calendaring, which was fine, but then they thought, hmmm let’s do an office suite, Apple was fine with that, it’d work on everyone’s computers and it’s not as if iWork is a major revenue stream for them, (Despite being the #2 selling productivity suite in the world behind MS Office… no joke.) but then Google thought, well let’s take all these web apps we’ve been making and roll them into one really simple desktop/laptop OS!

Well that’s where things start to get a little iffy, see Apple’s cool with Google eating Microsoft’s lunch, they rather enjoy it really. But at the same time this OS is being dubbed as simple and easy to use, that’s Apple’s selling point! More than that though, Google bought Android all the way back in 05, but they weren’t doing such a big thing with it, but now if you look around, Google’s pushed Android to where it’s major competitor is the iPhone, I think the whole time Google had been presenting it to Apple that they were going to be a major Microsoft competitor, but the fact is Google has already thwumped Microsoft soundly and over taken the non-Apple and non-BlackBerry market. they trounced Palm, and they’ve got a few phones that while not doing nearly as good as the iPhone or BlackBerry are still kicking some ass!

Anyway, that and Adobe’s getting in on all this. They’re mad that Apple isn’t opening the iPhone up to flash, which is ironically a closed platform that Adobe has a great deal of control over. The major reason that Apple isn’t doing it is because well, flash is kinda lousy, especially the version of it that Adobe has for years left the Mac with, which is what would get ported to the iPhone. Flash is responsible for most of the crashes people experience on Macs, and all this other stuff. Not to mention in general if Apple did allow flash, and developers started designing stuff for the iPhone in flash, Apple would have to keep making sure that they didn’t break anything in flash with every update! Oh that and Flash could make an iPhone so hot you could cook an egg on it.

I’m in a very unique place right now, a place that is strangely new. I’ve met someone incredible, someone unlike anyone I’ve ever met before, and I get the feeling he might describe me in somewhat similar terms. He’s smart, he’s kind, he’s clever, and he has a smile that can make me melt like nobody’s business. He’s the sort of person that just has me thanking God constantly for him being in my life.

Part of me wants to blog about it, actually most of me wants to blog about it in great detail, but I don’t know how he’d feel about that. My guess is it could be a little awkward, so I’m going to avoid that. But meeting him has made me just rethink so much in my life, and so many things that once seemed like they were the biggest deal in the world, suddenly I couldn’t care less.

There’s so much that I’m leaving unsaid, mostly because things are so new. But what I will say is that we have agreed not to “see” other people, and I’m still trying to get used to the notion that he wont’ turn into an evil douche bag like most other guys I’ve fallen for. All scans indicate that he’s the genuine article, and I’m trying to just make sure I enjoy him, and allow him to enjoy me.

I’m happy, I met someone who is incredible, and I am so happy. That’s all I’m going to say for now… cause we all know David’s blog is a jinx on all things good because it thrives on my emoness… force of nature… but I am so bloody happy it’s not even funny.