I’m at Cafe Ruba and I’m waiting for Lindsay, Jon, and Juliet to join me.

Lindsay and Jon should have gotten out of class about an hour ago. Juliet just called from work (she should have been off a few minutes ago) to ask if I knew where they were, since they were actually supposed to meet her at work and come here with her after she finished. Of course, I don’t know where they are. I’m sitting here waiting for them.

And just my luck I wore a short-sleeved shirt and it’s breezy. I should have ordered a larger drink to keep me warm longer. My bad.

Meanwhile, my battery is at twenty-three percent, so it won’t last much longer. Especially if I keep typing at this furious pace. (For your information, this “furious pace” mostly consists of hitting the backspace key since I make so many mistakes when I type quickly.)

I’m cold, I’ve finished my drink, my friends aren’t here, and my laptop is quickly dying. Remind me to have two things in my car at all times from now on: a pad of paper and a sweatshirt. Batteries only last two hours (with “normal” usage, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t involve running any applications), but a pad of paper lasts at least two and a half.

Shit… twenty percent. When it gets to ten, loud sirens and flashing red lights go off and the computer forces me to stop working. It’s anal like that. It really likes to save the last ten percent for its own selfish needs, like finding pictures of naked peripherals on the internet.

It’s late. They’re not here. What the heck could they possibly be doing? Don’t answer that. I know what they could possibly be doing. But dammit, they’re not supposed to be polishing chairs, they’re supposed to be meeting me for coffee.

Juliet just called and told me they’ve arrived at her work. They’ll be here in five minutes. Thank goodness, since my battery is at eighteen percent, so it prob’ly won’t last any longer than that. Heck, maybe I should shut it now so it can check out that new PCMCIA S&M site.

Oy. So all around me there are whiz kids making millions of dollars, and all I have is a cool apartment, a good job, a wonderful girlfriend, a supportive family, and a lots of powerful computer equipment.

Hm. Okay, so maybe I don’t have it that bad. But still, I think I could handle all those things and still have some millions of dollars. And maybe a better car. And less acne.

It’s such a fine line between the things we want and the things we really, really want.

I’m at my grandparents’ house watching “Wheel of Fortune” and playing with my new laptop.

I just finished buying a wedding gift for my uncle and soon-to-be-aunt at crateandbarrel.com… I like the fact that I can do that from my laptop instead of having to use my grandparents’ computer. My new laptop is ultra-cool. It’s bright silver in color (though made of plastic, of course) and it doesn’t have a touchpad. I hate touchpads. I always end up doing weird “mouse pointer olympics” inadvertently with my palms when I’m typing. It’s terribly annoying. So I specifically sought a laptop with an alternative pointing device.

I’m just an alternative guy like that.

The keyboard on the laptop works really well with my hands. It feels very natural. The only thing that’s weird is the “end” key. I apparently use it quite a bit, and it’s in a weird spot on this keyboard, so I have trouble getting it without looking.

Anyway, I think I’m being antisocial by typing instead of visiting with my grandparents. So my laptop will just have to sit in that lonely, dark bag. Sad laptop… I’ll have to bring it out later when I go for coffee with my friends.

I’ve managed to spend four days in Vancouver without ever exchanging or withdrawing Canadian cash.

Granted I was here with my family, so my father paid for most of our meals, but more importantly I was able to use my Visa card at any restaurant or store. My father was even able to pay for parking with his Visa card instead of cash.

It’s nice to be able to use such an international method of payment. It makes travel much simpler. I hate going to another country and coming home with all kinds of unused foreign change. When that happens, I end up having to go to a bank to exchange the remaining money, and that’s frankly a pain in the ass.

You know, after sending dozens of emails every day for my actual real-life job, I really can’t stand the thought of sending any more email.

All day long it’s “why is Oracle doing this?,” “can I restart the Sun?,” “where’s the Netscape server documentation?.” When I take a break from work, I think it’s understandable that I don’t choose email as a leisure activity anymore.

Oh, but I used to. Back in “the old days” (I’m only twenty, so do I really have old days?) I would send pages and pages (er… the equivalent) of email to my friends on a regular basis, ranting about everything that happened in my life. And yes, occasionally I’d even update my own rant page on the web.

Nowadays, though, the web has really become work for me instead of play. I no longer frequent the cool web sites of other web people. In fact, I’m no longer trying to be a “web person.” I’m not on top of the latest thing. I never update my site.

I’m sure that’ll change back to the way I want it at some point in the future. When my job is less hands-on web development and more managerial or in a different niche, I’ll be free to pursue web design again as a hobby and not feel like it’s a pain.

As for email, well, I’m not sure if I’ll ever be in a position again in which I’m not sending and receiving dozens of email messages every day, but if I ever am, I’m sure I’ll recover my previous passion for that also.

In the meantime, feel extremely lucky if you hear from me (not that you shouldn’t anyway), and declare a holiday when I update the site.

Okay, so the beverage vending machine in the break room is finally working (although it’s sold out of several drinks), but I’m suffering from terrible hunger pains because we still don’t have a working snack vending machine.

Until today there hasn’t been a snack vending machine at all. But now, just to tempt me with anticipation, there’s a snack vending machine in there, and it’s powered on, but it’s comepletely empty.

I want my junk food, dammit!

How do they expect me to get through an entire day without a bag of White Cheddar Cheez-Its or some Corn Nuts to satisfy my salt cravings? Sheesh.

And it was bad enough when they didn’t have the machine in there at all, but now the machine is actually there (so my stomach is growling), but there isn’t any food in it. I think that’s a direct violation of the Geneva Convention.

I keep going into the break room a couple times each hour just in case something has grown in the vending machine. But alas, every time I go in there, eager to find some kind of sustenance for my vacuous tummy, I’m hurled into despair by the site of the barren vending machine.

Oh, the horror.

So Tuesday I had an audition for a twenties musical called Good News. It’s about a college football team, and it has a lot of banjo music.

It was a really quick audition. I went in there and sang my song (I sang “Grow for Me” from Little Shop of Horrors), and that went better than I thought it would. My throat has been hurting all week (I have a cold–it’s a symptom), so I was surprised that I sang well. I think my body just knew that it couldn’t be sick for those three minutes. Anyway, after that I waited about fifteen minutes and talked to some people at the auditions and introduced myself, and then we all went in and learned a really easy dance step and ran through it a couple of times so the choreographer could see our dance skills.

And then I went home.

The only person I knew at the audition was the choreographer, actually. I worked with her in a few other shows. She likes me; I’ve done good work for her. That’s a good thing.

I had a few friends who were auditioning, but I guess they auditioned Wednesday instead, ’cause they weren’t there Tuesday.

Anyway, so then Tuesday night I went out with Roger and Goodwin to see The Thirteenth Warrior. It was entertaining, and it had good action-movie action, but other than that it wasn’t a real winner.

Felt like shit Wednesday morning, so I didn’t go into work until noon. That night I went to my grandma’s house for dinner and then helped my brother make some changes to his web site. Exciting, eh?

Anyway, so last night I had callbacks for Good News, and those were fun. I got called back for the part that everyone wanted–the comical lead, Bobby. He’s not the romantic lead of the show, but he’s the funny one, so he’s a very memorable part of the show. I think I might have the part; by the end of the callbacks, only one other guy was still reading for it. And at the very end, the director put us into groups to see what we all looked like together, and he had me standing with the two girls who were up for the two parts that interact most with Bobby.

Bobby likes Tom’s girlfriend, Pat, but Beef’s girlfriend, Babe, likes Bobby.

It’s confusing.

But the cool thing is, Bobby has two romantic interests in the show, so I get to act alongside two beautiful, talented girls. So hey, bonus. Actually, the real bonus is that I had good stage chemistry with both of them. One of them, Jesse, I knew from the previous show, so of course we were great together because we know each other, but I was surprised that the other girl and I got along so well. Masaya (pronounced like “mossy-uh”) and I didn’t even meet until we read together, but we interacted very well. She did a great nasal, high-pitched character voice for the part (sort of like Adelaide in Guys & Dolls), and I did a nasal, nerdy character voice, and when both of us were doing it, the people watching us couldn’t stop laughing. We made the most annoying couple on Earth.

You should have heard us sing together.

Anyway, the callbacks were fun. Everyone was really into it, and we were getting really carried away (which is a good thing at callbacks). It was a total laugh riot, and I’m pretty sure that everyone who made the callbacks will be in the show. Everyone was pretty talented.

I’m crossing my fingers. It’ll be great to do a musical again.

This new mousepad really stinks. I don’t mean “stinks” as in “doesn’t function properly,” but rather, it smells bad.

My coworker Ken gave it to me. It came with an issue of PC World. I’ve been wanting a new mousepad for a while now, because my current mousepad is a little uneven, so the mouse sometimes gets stuck.

So Ken brought me this new mousepad, and I was really excited. It has a nice, flat surface, so my mouse glides smoothly over it. Also, it has acronym definitions (AFK, BRB, IMHO, ROTFLMAO, etc) on it, as well as examples of emoticons and some rules of Netiquette. It’s the ultimate web geek’s mousepad.

But the damn thing seriously smells like rotting vegetables or something. I have never smelled anything as raunchy as this mousepad. Mind you, though, you can’t smell it in the air or anything. The only way you can smell how putrid it is is to either hold the mousepad directly up to your nose or touch the mousepad and then smell your fingers.

The second one is the problem. No one goes around sniffing his or her mousepad all day, but we inevitably smell our fingers anytime we put them anywhere near our faces. And believe me, it’s impossible to not touch the mouse pad. I only have a certain amount of available desk space, so I am constantly shifting my mousepad into more comfortable positions on the desk, depending on how much I’m using it at the moment.

So it’s really annoying. I’m trying not to touch it, and I’m hoping the smell will eventually dissipate, but in the meantime, I have a stinky mousepad.

I was in the “gifted” program since the first grade. Always hated reading and doing homework. Rarely did either. Always aced the tests. That makes me a geek, by the way, and not a nerd. Nerds study. I never have.

Anyway, so in middle school my grades started slipping because they counted homework as a major part of the grade. I still aced the tests, but I was doing poorly because I didn’t want to do stupid worksheets every day. For gifted kids, they basically taught the same crap they taught the other kids, but they gave us more homework. I always thought that was sort of a backwards mentality. Anyway, I squeaked through the end of middle school (8th grade) with mostly Ds.

I always hated reading, but that was just because I read really slowly. I can’t comprehend what I read unless I say it aloud in my head. So naturally, it takes time. I think it’s because I’m an auditory learner or something like that. First semester of high school I did pretty well. I had some teachers I really liked, so I actually read most of the books, and it was okay.

Had an evil drama teacher from hell, but besides that, it was okay.

Let me take a moment to explain my high school. I was in PACE (the Program of Additional Curricular Experiences), and the rest of the school was divided into seven “academies”: Beach, Pac Rim, CIC, Spirit, Fine Arts, and two others that I don’t remember….

Enough explanation. You’ll need it later, though. Sophomore year was another story altogether. I didn’t like any of my teachers, the drama teacher was causing a lot of trouble in my life, and as homework counted more and more, my grades slipped more and more, and I eventually stopped caring because I decided it wasn’t worth it.

Side note: I don’t regret any of the decisions I made.

First semester of that year I got Fs in both AP US History and English (I never read any of the books, and I never did any of the homework, and the teacher didn’t like giving tests, so I was screwed).

So I got kicked out of PACE.

No big whoop, right? I’ll just leave the program.

Wrong.

You can’t leave an academy without entering another, and you can’t enter an academy except at the beginning of the year. They can make exceptions, but it would be a cold day in hell before the other academies would make exceptions for a former PACE student.

So I was forced to transfer to another school.

It took two weeks before I dropped out.

I was more intelligent than the teachers at the second school, and that’s not saying much for the teachers.

At the second school, I realized all I was doing was wasting time. I wasn’t learning anything because no one would teach the way I wanted to learn. And I couldn’t make many friends (though I did have a few who went to that school) because the people there were really cruel to geeks like me. (Case in point: I went on Valentine’s Day in a pink suit. No one thought it was cool or funny or anything. They just called me “fag” all day. It was so lame.)

My first day at the second school, by the way, was my birthday.

Talk about a crappy birthday.

Anyway, so I decided that I wanted to do things my own way, and I dropped out. That spring I took the California High School Proficiency Exam (the legal equivalent of a diploma… like a GED), which I could have passed with ease in the seventh grade.

I went on to take a few classes at the local community college, but academia is really not my thing (no offense to you Acadians out there).

I had to learn to do something profitable, and I was good with computers, so I taught myself to make web sites.

Fortunately for me the world is changing again. In the world of computers, you don’t need a college degree to get a good job. You just need the skills to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. I taught myself those skills, and I’m damn proud of it. Now I make more money than any of my peers will be making when they graduate in two or three years, and in two or three years, I’ll be making twice as much.

There’s a Forbes magazine article that I still need to frame and hang on my wall. The cover says, “College? Who needs it!” It’s about young web developers making a killing off the Internet age without college degrees.

So that’s me. High school dropout. High-tech developer.

So Jason brought a Wired article to my attention. It’s entitled Founder and CEO, Age 15 — Cool. His comment to me was, “you’re old.” Jason was referring, of course, to the fact that I’m already nineteen, while most of the kids making headlines these days for their web development accomplishments are not yet old enough to see R-rated movies. Is that bizarre or what? On page three of the Wired article, they make reference to Justin Frankel, the founder of Nullsoft. He’s worth about $400 million, and he can’t gamble away even a cent of it in Vegas.

Meanwhile, the PureRadio kid will have to take his mom with him (or sneak into the theater) if he wants to see the South Park movie. It’s true that I’m too old now to be one of those whiz-kids who gets on the cover of Forbes. But the nice thing is, I’m still young enough to always make more money than my peers…

Most people my age are in college, and when they get out, they’ll be entry-level and I’ll be management (my official title right now is “lead web developer” …I’m one step away from hiring people to do my job for me). Three years from now they’ll be making half of what I’m making now, and in three years I’ll be making double what I’m making now. They’ll never be able to catch up, even with their fancy-shmancy diplomas. They’ll be submitting their resumes to me… the “drop-out.”

I’ll prob’ly turn them down and hire a teenager.