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my battle with the devil, b/w some thoughts about band camp

8-21-'^o1: 9:06pm

i was thinking that it would be cool to be able to have cute little away messages like everyone on AIM, so i went and downloaded aol 6.0. it took almost an eternity, but it eventually downloaded onto my computer. i should have known something was wrong when it immediately closed down my old version of aol and began installing itself on my computer. all by itself.

i went through with it, though. the thought of witty away messages gave me tunnel vision...akin to the kind you get after playing a video game for 5 hours straight but not quite as severe. i let aol 6.0 branch is tentacles into my system...little did i know it had more in mind than giving me a "more plesant, enjoyable aol experience".

what it was really planning to do was take over my computer.

as soon as it was finished loading itself on to my drive, it opened itself and i signed on. i promptly made two away messages:

"stepped away from computer to save world [ from evil ]. be back shortly."

and

"having affair with [ insert *nsync memeber here ]. be right back."

i was giddy and was glad that i soon had to use the bathroom. i put the new away messages into action. everyone was much amused.

but...little did i know that at that very second, aol 6.0 was starting it's slow and steady destruction of my computer.

when it freezed and kicked me off for the second time after a night of slow internet connections and mysteriously clogged bandwidth, i finally threw in the towel and decided to go to bed. but not before making a cd full of my recently downloaded don ellis tunes. i slapped the cd together, started it burning, and began my nightly wash-face-brush-teeth ritual.

before i was even done with that, the cd burner spit out my cd. unfinished. said that there were some mysterious errors and it couldn't be completed. it was then that i realized that the right hand of satan was taking control of my computer and it MUST be stopped. but in the morning. i was tired.

first thing in the morning, i cleared up as much drive space as possible. this involved removing two ancient versions of aol [ a real and a beta version of aol 4.0 ] and making cds of most of my mp3s. the last part was difficult, seeing that for whatever reason the system wasn't responding fast enough to keep up with the burner. eventually, i was left with only one choice: surrender the cute away messages and perform an aol 6.0 excorsism on my computer.

but...but...i had even made two more away messages!

"calling matt ackerman fanclub meeting to order. leave message if you would like to join"

and:

"[ dance break! ] be back in a minute!"

while the removal of the aol 4.0s had taken mere minutes apiece, getting 6.0 to let up it's grip took a great deal longer. i left the computer after 15 minutes or so, still uninstalling, and went to the store. fortunately, when i came back, it reported that the action had been a success, and would i like to designate 5.0 as the main copy? yes.

but there was still work to be done. aol 6.0's joyride across my hard disk had left gaping holes in the form of fragmentation. when i wasted yet another blank cd trying to burn my don ellis cd, the very very user-friendly adaptec create-cd program [ props to them, it's been a super little piece of software ] suggested that maybe i should defragment my hard drive. the thought had crossed my mind, but this put it into action.

three hours later, my computer works. praise the Lord.

_____________________

so anyway...last week was band camp and although i spend the entire weekend beforehand wringing my sweaty palms and dreading it, it did me more good than i would ever admit to anyone's face. it whipped me back to stand somewhere near reality. i have come to the conclusion that my distance from reality is directly proportional to the amount of time i spend around people and the number of them there. i went from:

1] being mostly around people in electronic form, occasionally going out with a small number of friends, and working in small-people groups with the quartet, our clients, my students, and their parents.

to:

2] not only being around very large groups of people for most of the day, but actually working with a good number of them. sometimes one-on-one, sometimes in small groups, sometimes in large groups. having to deal with people who irritate me, people i like, people who exasperate me, people who confuse me...intimidate me...inspire me...sometimes within hours of each other, sometimes within minutes.

the effect was much like that of streching out a rubber band and letting it go to smack you in the face. it's easy to build up the tension, and you can hold it like that as long as you want without any kind of repercussion...eventually, you kinda forget about it. once you let that sucker fly,though...it'll get you good...and it smarts. but while the pain is instant and it lingers for few seconds as kind of a tingle...it's gone almost as fast as it came and you wonder why you had kept the damn thing stretched out for so long.

well. maybe it's not exactly like that, but close. i felt kind of funny..."tingly" i guess you could say...for the first few days. by the band-o-rama thursday, however, i was my old gung-ho bandgeek self. i guess it's easier to forget how much i love it than i thought. losing focus is easy when you're really far away from what you're supposed to be focusing on. sometimes i just end up focusing on something else.

another source of weirdness was the whole buisiness with being in teacher/student limbo. i guess that's my own fault for coming back to band camp at the school i just graduated from but...i'm glad i did. it was plesant even though i didn't get paid. i learned a ton...i think that if i had gone to one of the other school i would have only learned more ways to supress frustration. i mean...i'm not saying that wouldn't have been an esperience i would have learned from...but you know. it doesn't always have to be that way.

so i'm helping with rehersal until i leave for school. one month. crazy. both kelly and mark lane said it won't be the same without me...as if it was a bad thing that i'm leaving or something. well...i'll show them. i'll just be around so much until i leave that they'll get irritated with me. then we'll see who will be sad to see me go. muahahaha!

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