My name is Greg, and this is my online journal.

I live in Austin, Texas, and I work as a web developer. At least, that's what it should say on my business card. I'm good enough at what I do, although I'm probably better at other things.

I've worked at a newspaper, a child support collection agency, a record store and (currently) a technology company. My degree is in music and journalism, so I guess two of the four jobs I've had were relevant to my education.

I'm homosexual in the clinical sense, but in terms of living up to all the stereotypical imagery of the term "gay", well, I'm a miserable failure at that. The number of times I have sex would make people weep. I'd weep, too, but my brand of self-pity has a lot more dignity than that.

I don't have a boyfriend. I probably ought to get one, but if Tim Gunn can go two decades without one ...

I have a reputation of being a music nut. I listen to it a lot. I write about it a lot. I even make it, not a lot but getting there.

For a long time, Duran Duran was my absolute favorite band. But then they recorded Pop Trash right around the time I ran across Number Girl and Shiina Ringo. I still like Duran Duran, but I think I'm the only Duranie in the world who wants the band to break up.

I've spoken at great length about Japanese music, and it's something of a trademark. I know enough Japanese to slog my way through a Japanese web site, but I wouldn't want to try to conduct a conversation.

I'm not Latino, I'm Filipino. I'm first generation and all the socio-economical issues that entails. Even though I can understand Japanese (to a point), my parents language is absolutely unknown to me.

I don't talk about my family much because I see no need to involve them.

I grew up in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. No, I don't want to move back there. Hawaiʻi could never really offer what I need from the world. I miss the food and the few friends I have back there, but that's about it.

I spent most of the '90s devoid of television. At the turn of the century, I developed an unhealthy addiction to Law & Order, and now I can't shut the thing off.

I just got a TiVo.

I won't draw a Johari window, but I think you and I would both agree I'm pretty smart, perhaps even funny.

Some of you may not know how much of an angry asshole I am, or that I'm quite misanthropic.

Some of you may think I'm sweet and generous, perhaps even sexy, but I would have no knowledge of that.

Neither of us would know I'm contagious.

This is my online journal, and you may find reference to all the things I've just mentioned therein. Some of them may be new discoveries for both of us.

This entry is my final one.

And it happens on the 10th anniversary of the journal's inception.

I set out to write everyday for the past 365 days as a way to mark the event. It ended up killing any enthusiasm I had about this site, which had been waning for years.

So I'm retiring it. But I'm leaving it up.

I've got some pretty deep archives, and I want to show some of us have been doing this thing way before it became "blogging".

I'll still write on my other sites, so it's not like I'm totally walking away from writing about the personal.

And who's not to say I won't come out of retirement?

Right now, on the 10th anniversary of this journal, it just seems like a nice stopping point.

Here's where I thank my readers.

Thank you, readers. Ten years is a long time to bore people, so I hope you come out of this all right.

And if this visit is your first, well, you've got some catching up to do.

I spent most of the day transferring shows from my DVR to my computer, then burning the MPEGs to DVD-R to author later as full-fledged DVDs.

When I started to cut the commercials out of an episode of Psych with TMPGEnc, the program kept putting the audio and video of the resulting file out of synch.

I spent all night fiddling with the markers and rebuilding the files, which takes a long time since video is a time hog. I never got around to writing an entry last night.

I didn't go out at all yesterday. By contrast, I was in and out of my apartment all day.

I bought more DVD-Rs and stumbled across a new colleciton of short stories by Murakami Haruki. Then I headed to Fry's to get some packaged video editing software. TMPGEnc wasn't going to do what I wanted it to do, and I'm tired of all these freeware and shareware user interfaces. They're the kind of interfaces only programmers would love.

I ended up with Pinnacle Studio 10, and while I had the minimum amount of RAM needed, my computer was slooooooooow. So I impulsive bought more RAM. Something or other was going to force me to upgrade at some point, and this excuse was as good as any.

So I now have 1GB of RAM, and I saw a noticeable (but not vast) improvement in the speed of Pinnacle Studio 10. When it came to do build an MPEG, it took more than an hour, and I wasn't terribly pleased with the resulting encoding.

(I just checked the return policy on software, so it looks like I'll have to live with it. I like the interface well enough, though.)

And here I was thinking I'd get more writing done.

2006 is just about 3/4 done, and as busy as it was, there isn't much to say about it.

I learned the hard way that classes three times a night, in addition to a full-time job, is not a lifestyle to pursue.

I never mentioned I got my first "B" in my academic career at ACC. It was the marketing class I thought I aced. I'm not sure what brought my score down, because I thought I did reasonably well on the exams. Perhaps my papers were too esoteric.

I hauled ass with my C++ class though. My reimbursement was riding on it. I thought I needed to get an "A" for a full reimbursement, but then I discovered a "B" was also acceptable.

I'm rather ticked that I didn't take the marketing class more seriously. ACC was the first place I've ever had a 4.0 GPA, which isn't exactly a stunning accomplishment.

I better not screw up this semester's synthesis class.

Of course, the big event of the year so far was the surgery.

Although it was a minor procedure, it still resulted in some ambitious arrangements. It was the first time I've ever been hospitalized in Austin. I've gone through surgery before back in Honolulu, and the little things like arranging transportation and post-surgery care were easily taken care of by family.

This time, my parents came to town, and I had my concerns about how they would get around town if the need arose.

Looking back, I'm glad they came because I really was pretty useless for the first few days immediately afterward. I was useless for that entire week, but I could fend for myself as the days passed.

I'm feeling fine now.

I finally got a TiVo, but you can just read the entries of the last two months to get a full perspective on that.

I'm not sure what the rest of 2006 will bring. I'm taking a synthesis class. I'm still working for the same company. I've experimented with digital audio. And I'm still recording demos like a possessed man.

You don't get to find out what happens in the last 1/4 of 2006. Not at this particular Uniform Resource Identifier. That doesn't mean I won't drop an update on the other sites I maintain. I mean, hell, I essentially have about eight webblogs.

I set out to celebrate this journal's birthday by updating everyday for a year. I ran out of things to say years ago, and this exercise was just overkill.

I like talking about myself, but man -- even I'm sick of digging out my own navel lint. (Yeah, TMI.)

So I'm going to shut up after tomorrow.

And it'll feel good.

The soundtrack of my 2006 would so far include:

• Dylan Rice, Wandering Eyes
• Sloth Love Chunks, Shikakui Vision
• Utada Hikaru, Ultra Blue
• Eluvium, An Accidental Memory in Case of Death
• Anthony and the Johnsons, I Am a Bird Now

And yes, you have only two days before the free CD-R offer ends.

Tired of waiting to earn the kind of income that allowed me to start building a home studio back in 2000, I decided just to sink myself much deeper into the red and start buying up music equipment.

I fished out Cakewalk Pro Audio 9, which I bought in 2000, and started laying down tracks. Then my web server died, and I had to buy a new computer.

That purchase opened the floodgates.

I upgraded Pro Audio 9 to Sonar 4. I bought a new MIDI interface, an external soundcard, a dynamic microphone, a condensor microphone, Reason 3.0 and an old Kawai K-4 (my first synthesizer) off of eBay. Plus any needed accessories (mic stand, keyboard stand, cables, headphones.)

Each purchase of new equipment went hand-in-hand with the momentum of my writing.

First, I recorded Imprint, what I consider my "adult contemporary pop album". I took of my favorites songs I wrote in high school and expanded the sound of those songs to eight others. I fleshed out two songs I sketched around 2003 and 2004. Everything else was entirely new. That was February-March 2005.

In the summer, I re-recorded my original demos and started divying them up. 「風の歌を聴け」 and an early version of A Ghost in My Shadow were done by August.

I also managed to flesh out songs dating as far back as 1999, what I would consider my post-college work. By December, I had produced Restraint, an album of singer-songwriter stuff, and Revulsion, a punk EP.

I started 2005 with a whole lot of sketches and a single old demo tape. I had only 20-some odd finished songs. By the end of 2005, that number would grow to approximately 45.

In 2006, I've managed to bring it to 50.

The resurrection of Eponymous 4 has implications that are only starting to play themselves out. I've done all this writing -- what am I going to do with it?

Good question.

I had a car accident in August 2005.

The first thing I thought when I felt the impact was, "Shit! I haven't even had this car for a year yet!"

It was a four-car pile-up caused by some white trash driving some beaten-up Oldsmobile. He was uninsured, so my insurance policy went after him to cover half of my deductible. (I doubt he coughed it up.)

I felt most frustrated two days afterward, when the back pain flared up. I couldn't sleep very well, and it felt like something was clenching my spine.

I got a referral for physical therapy, and after the first visit, I unknotted some tightened muscles and got a good night's sleep. The exercises I was taught rehabilitated some tenderness developed by my walking days at Waterloo.

After a month of sessions, I felt much better. But it sucked having to drive a rental for three weeks.

I was so glad to have my own car back.

Another big event of the year was my first traveling vacation to somewhere other than where my family lives, namely Hawaiʻi and Chicago.

It was my New York City homecoming after 13 years. Before that trip, I was starting to dismiss the idea of returning to New York City to live. I felt the adventurousness that spurred me to go there in the first place was starting to wane, and my older self would probably be put off by the pace of the city.

But it didn't take more than few hours to reacquaint myself with everything. I booked a hotel near the Flatiron Building, which was approximately my old neighborhood. I traveled on the 23rd Street bus and recognized a number of places that were there when I was around.

I visited Lincoln Center, shopped the classical section of Tower Records, found Book Off! and Kinokuniya, ate at Benny's Burritos.

I refamiliarized myself with the subway system to the point where I was giving people directions. I even got swept up in the subway tunnel pace -- that occassional glance down the tunnel to see if a train is on its way.

I reached the conclusion that perhaps I could live in New York City again, even if it's just for a handful of years. And honestly, I'm working toward that goal.

The soundtrack of my 2005 would include:

• Gang of Four, Entertainment!
• Sigur Rós, Takk ...
• ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Worlds Apart
• Duran Duran, Beautiful Colors
• Kate Bush, Never For Ever

And have you requested your free CD-R yet?

I went to Waterloo last night to pick up a Sleater-Kinney album I discovered I had sold for cash, which I guess was a desperate measure since I was dumb enough to part with it in the first place. There were two guys there in tank tops who struck me as being way too cleaned up. If anything, I got a couples vibe from them.

The first one I saw face on had a decent face and an incredibly slim figure. So did his friend, whose back was turned to me. I went around the aisle as I did my browsing, and when I saw the other man, I was immediately smitten.

He reminded me of DAS, the guy who served as my incentive to come out of the closet. The same physique, a similar face and glasses. Of course, glasses do me in everytime.

I will be crass and admit I wanted to bed him.

The guy at the party wore glasses as well, but took them off not long after he arrived.

I've been shutting myself in for a number of weekends, and it's made me forget there's a lot more eye candy out in the world than the stuff I see at the office day in and day out.

The closer the retrospective tour reaches to the present day, the less enthusiastic I'll be about the events of the year.

Around the time I started the journal, I was going through a lot of personal drama, and I experienced things that shaped me as a person.

These past few years have been relatively uneventful, which is a good sign that things have settled down. I could improve on some things, and on others, I'm willing to accept what's there.

So now the tour stops at 2004, and there isn't much to say about it.

Gay Friend-Drinking Buddy moved away at the start of the year.

I forgot to mention the one reunion we had back in July 2003, where each of us was ready to leave the past behind. But his partner questioned my presence in his life, and that put a kibbosh on things.

Then Gay Friend-Drinking Buddy got a lucrative job offer which meant relocation. I didn't see him off, and I wish I could have.

Que sera so what. That's an album title, isn't it? (Actually, no it's not.)

I received an e-mail from him recently. He applied for a job and interviewed with a friend of mine from the Dow Jones program. I don't know if he ever got the job.

My Nissan continued to break down, and I sank more money in keeping that piece of shit afloat.

October rolled around, and I got a notice from a credit union in Hawaiʻi telling me a certificate of desposit would mature. My mom opened one up in case of a proverbial rainy day, and nothing says shitstorm like an old car breaking down all the damn time.

So I consulted with my mom about cashing in the CD. Combined with a 1 1/2 years of weekend work at Waterloo -- in addition to my full-time job at the company -- I had enough for a downpayment.

I went to my credit union in Austin to ask about a car loan. I was pre-approved, and I had a month to find one. I settled with a 2003 Toyota Corolla, and I've been happy with it ever since.

After the drama of the previous car, I've bent over backward to make sure this car runs fine. I check the fluids every time I gas up, and I endeavor to get the fluids changed every 3,000 miles.

I've had something of an antagonistic relationship with my Nissan from the start. I have no such relationship with my Toyota. If anything, I'm its bitch. If I sense the slightest thing wrong, I get automotively hypochrondriatic.

But it's a healthy car, and my fears are usually allayed.

I was officially hired by my company in February 2004, even though I had been working for them as a contractor since June 2003.

The economy was still pretty wobbly, and all hiring was frozen in 2003.

When the anniversary of my official hire rolls around, I point that disparity out by calling it the "x.66666667-year anniversary".

Bitter, me? What makes you think?

The soundtrack of my 2004 would include:

• Sasagawa Miwa, Jijitsu
• Art-School, Love/Hate
• Mindy Smith, One Moment More
• Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose
• Kicell, Mado ni Chikyuu

Just a reminder to say get your request for a free CD-R to me before Sept. 6, 2006.

I had attempted to throw one together a year ago, but I wasn't fond of the final product. Today, I nipped and tucked a few tracks and came up with a track listing with which I can live.

Here's the program:

1. Sloth Love Chunks, "Loveless ideals"
2. eX-Girl, "Pop Muzik"
3. Molotov, "Puto,"
4. Number Girl, "Destruction Baby"
5. Shiina Ringo, "Koko de KISU Shite"
6. Cocco, "Count Down"
7. Death Cab for Cutie, "Title and Registration"
8. Duran Duran, "Beautiful Colours"
9. Madonna, "Ray of Light"
10. Everything But the Girl, "Wrong"
11. ACO, "Spleen"
12. Des'ree, "Kissing You"
13. Mindy Smith, "Come to Jesus"
14. Hem, "Half Acre"
15. Enya, "Book of Days"

This disc is, essentially, a soundtrack to this online journal. Each of these songs mark a year (some more than once) this journal has been in existence.

Contact me through e-mail or post a comment if you want a disc.

Offer ends SEPT. 6, 2006

If one person is to thank for keeping me in Austin, it's Jette.

At the start of the year, I announced I was moving to Chicago if I didn't find an office job by October. That's when my lease would end. I mentioned it to my sister, and she was willing to let me crash.

And I would have done it, too. I needed to do it because the savings account was dwindling, and a Waterloo paycheck was not enough to support the level of lifestyle I wanted to live. In short, I wanted to keep my cable and my high-speed Internet connection. Those things don't come cheap.

I don't know if Jette really dropped a hint to one of the managers to scoop me up before I head to Chicago, but I like to think she did.

I actually interviewed with her company and for Waterloo Records at the same time. I wasn't hired there, and I was set on working at Waterloo anyway. The manager who would eventually hire me liked me, and from what I hear, some "other factors" prevented her from doing so at the time.

Then a position opened up, and I was asked to come back for another quick interview. I was offered a job as a contractor, and I accepted.

The move to Chicago was called off.

I've been with the company ever since, and for all the grumbling I do about my salary, it's not an evil place to work. The culture of the office is oversold a bit, and they can clamp on their pennies pretty damn hard. But my co-workers are nice folks, and I like what do well enough.

If I had moved to Chicago in 2003, I probably would have missed JournalCon.

As much fun as JournalCon Austin was, I didn't take advantage of the networking opportunities nearly as much other people who attended did.

Hell, I missed out on all the Saturday night shennanigans because I fell asleep on my futon after dinner.

I just wanted to show Ryan my town. He got me to go the first JournalCon in Pittsburgh in 2000, and I insisted he attend the 2003 convention in Austin.

I wish I could have taken him to Maria's Taco-Xpress -- however much he loved the Las Manitas breakfast tacos, I wanted to see what he thought about Maria's.

I'm also glad I got to take him to the Alamo Drafthouse. We saw Kill Bill, Vol. 1 after a big dinner at the County Line, and now he wants a franchise to open in Hawaiʻi.

Dreama came down to Austin as well, but she got caught up with the whole JournalCon 2000 reunion crowd. I think I spent that entire weekend around Stephen Deken and his groupies. Stephen's pretty hot himself, but I could have done without a lot of the hurry-up-and-wait.

Ryan pointed out that Brian of Open Brain Surgery reminded him of JFK. Then Brian, who is straight, started to flirt with me while we were all eating dinner at Marekesh. Haaah?

It was odd seeing all my worlds colliding that weekend. A friend from Hawaiʻi meeting friends from Austin. Co-workers past and present rubbing elbows with non-offices co-horts. My life is pretty compartmentalized, and it was nice to see Jette, chip, davidnunez, Ryan, Dreama, Kramer, Double-A, OmarG ... people from these different circles converging.

I wish the weekend had lasted just a bit longer.

The latter part of the year also marked the slow death of my Nissan. I had been driving it for seven years, and it was turning 10 years old. I didn't take very good care of it, and I tried to make it do things -- like go up hills and gun past slow drivers -- it didn't want to do.

And I paid for it with a ballooning credit card debt.

I came to despise my car, and I made up my mind to buy a new one in 2004.

My sister got married that Christmas as well. I went back home to Hawaiʻi for the holidays for the first time since 1997. I learned my lesson about flying on the day after Christmas, and since then, I insist on visits that don't happen during the holidays.

That year, I chose to leave on Christmas Day, and it wasn't a bad flight.

While at home, I visited with old high school friends, the Ozawa clan and even JFK. Of course, I shopped for a lot Japanese CDs.

I haven't been back home since.

The soundtrack to my 2003 would include:

• Shiina Ringo, Karuki Zaamen Kuri no Hana

I think I'll just stop right there. I had that album on repeat for an entire year. This album is one every serious musician should listen to. I can't begin to list the superlatives this album represents. I'm just sorry it had to be limited by local market.

I had lost my job in August 2001, and I blew the 6-month allowance for unemployment. I filed for a 3-month extension, and I had until May to find work.

Right around the holidays of 2001, I dropped off a résumé at Waterloo Records, hoping to get some temporary work. Alas, I was late, and no positions were available.

Then in February 2002, I received an e-mail from the human resources manager at Waterloo. She asked if I wanted to interview. I didn't care if they would pay me $6/hour -- I was so there.

So fished out a tasteful but somewhat formal shirt -- in my book, that's anything with a collar -- tamed my hair and went in for an interview. Later that week, I was hired to help out with SXSW.

I was so out of shape.

After two hours of being on my feet, I was wondering when my half day would end. I didn't anticipate how much worse my feet would feel as the week went on.

After SXSW was done, there weren't any positions open just yet. So I had to wait till June before I was brought on part-time.

My schedule was 24 hours a week, Saturdays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Two of those shifts were night shifts, but unlike the graveyard shift of Austin360, these shifts lasted from 2:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. I could get a reasonable amount of sleep and still wake up relatively early.

At the end of the summer, Sundays were tacked on to my schedule, bringing me up 32 hours a week, which was considered full-time. At the end of the year, I qualified for health insurance coverage, and I stopped paying COBRA insurance with SupportKids.

The unemployment officially ran out in August, but by then, I could scrape by with my Waterloo paycheck and some savings. Unfortunately, my rent was too expensive, and I had to move to a smaller apartment.

I went from earning $46K/year to $6.75/hour. And I didn't mind.

My joke from when I got laid off wasn't a joke after all.

There were some downsides to working at a record store.

For most of the day, I was subjected to music I wouldn't normally listen to myself, and I ended up discovering a lot of stuff I didn't like.

All garage rock sucks. That is my conclusion. One customer asked me for a good garage rock band. I told him (with a half-joking disguise) there was no such thing.

Noise bands from the downtown New York scene are just wankers. All my classical training makes me demand an intuitive sense of order amidst the chaos of dissonance.

I can't fucking stand Modest Mouse. The idea of a "good" Modest Mouse album makes as much sense as a "good" garage band.

I developed a knee-jerk reaction to dismiss first, accept later. When you're surrounded by that much music, it's the only way to keep sane.

Sore feet and fatigue are also downsides, but they're mitigated by a loss of 10 pounds. I didn't notice the weight loss till I discovered I was pulling up my jeans every few minutes when I was stocking CDs.

Working at Waterloo was exhausting but fulfilling. It was an environment totally different from the insanity of the dot-com boom and just the thing I needed to feel grounded.

At 30 years old, I was working my very first retail job.

I felt proud of myself for having swallowed my pride and applied to retail jobs as well as office jobs. And I felt really priveleged to have my bizzare music expertise recognized as something valuable.

I can type 10-key now, and I'm much faster with calculating math in my head. Uh -- make that slightly faster.

The funniest part was the fact I could set myself apart from the rest of the staff by not being cantankerous. In my office jobs before Waterloo, I managed to turn into the grouch of the office, the crank who made snide remarks about everything work-related. The tables were turned at the store. Everyone there was some level of cantakerous, and there was no way I was going to compete with that.

Record employee humor -- there's nothing darker and wittier.

A lot of my co-workers who were around when I was a full-time employee are still there, and when I go in to shop, I still feel like part of the gang.

The time I spent working there made me realize I'm fully equipped to handle retail work, should the situation arise, and I like a career in computer programming well enough to do it for the rest of my life, if I had to -- but I don't have to.

The soundtrack of my 2002 would include:

• ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Source Code & Tags
• Hem, Rabbit Songs
• Hatakeyama Miyuki, Diving into your mind
• Hajime Chitose, Hainumikaze
• Zoobombs, Love is Funky

I actually knew I was getting laid off earlier in the month, but they couldn't exactly get rid of me right away -- I was the only remaining web developer on the staff, and I was still in the middle of a few tasks.

So I didn't get axed till the end of the month.

On Sept. 8, I went to Emo's to see eX-Girl. Then on Sept. 11, I knew the economic downturn which cost me my job was going to last for quite a while.

It's something of a boring question to ask where you were on Sept. 11, 2001, and some answers are more interesting than others.

My first reaction when I turned on the news was "not again!" I was living in New York when a car bomb was detonated in the World Trade Center parking garage in Feb. 1993.

The building was up and running again in a matter of months, in time at least for me to visit the observatory deck before I moved back to Hawaiʻi. Knowing only the towers were attacked again that morning in September, I assumed the fires would be put out and the World Trade Center reopened.

But then I heard planes had been flown into the towers, and it was a different story after that.

I didn't have a job to go to, so I kept the TV on. I don't know what else I did that day. I did go to Waterloo Records to get a new Ozomatli album -- some excuse to get out of my apartment and not get bogged down by the news coverage.

I probably turned to the cable stations at some point. As immediate as broadcast news can be, I didn't need it to be constant.

Read the entries from after August, and you'll see one self-pitying diatribe after another.

Losing a job is a crushing thing to face, and however crappy I felt at the time, I still consider getting burglarized far more traumatic. The work-weary part of me kind of looks back fondly on those days.

To distract myself, I set out to write a novel, and I finished it. I haven't shopped it around to publishers because I want to prove to myself I can write another, and I haven't. So I guess that one novel was the fluke. But at least I know what it's like to write one.

I did manage to line up interviews for some web development positions, mostly with state or city offices. I went to them pretty half-heartedly. I was burned out by the whole web thing, and I wanted a change.

I fooled myself into thinking working for a public office instead of a private business would be that change, but in reality, I needed something far removed from development work at all.

I joked with my then-ex-coworkers that I'd just apply to Waterloo Records and work for minimum wage, given how all the web jobs were going bust. But part of me knew I wasn't joking (and part of me was hoping I was being clairvoyant.)

By contrast, the first half of the year still felt propserous for me.

I had more money in my bank accounts than I ever did, and I managed to splurge quite a bit on music equipment. I bought a bass guitar, a bass amp and electric guitar. I also invested in a small mixer, a MIDI interface for my computer and Cakewalk Pro Audio 9.

Yeah, I was building my studio back then as well, and the economic downturn pretty much halted me until 2005.

I even took guitar lessons.

My sister who lives in Chicago got married in Honolulu, and I brought Double-A and Angeles with me to split a hotel. I so didn't want to be home with that kind of stress. And I wanted to show my friends around Hawaiʻi.

I agreed to be an usher, not realizing I would be forced to wear a tuxedo in 80-degree heat. After that experience, I made a lot of noise of never volunteering for that kind of duty ever again.

Another highlight of the year was visiting Patrick in Boston. I started to flirt with him over AIM, and I offered to take a trip to Boston to meet him.

It was a nice trip. I'll be a gentleman and leave it at that.

2001 was a year with a split personality.

Before August, I was happy with my job, learning a new instrument, building a bedroom studio and living a life I wanted.

After August, I was unemployed and depressed, but all the time on my hands allowed me to finish a novel.

The soundtrack to my 2001 would include:

• Shiina Ringo, Shouso Strip
• AJICO, Fukamidori
• fra-foa, Chuu no Fuchi
• Wayne Horvitz/4+1 Ensemble, From a Window
• Shea Seger, The May Street Project

Monday was my first day of synthesis class, and my instructor was demonstrating Ableton Live. He was urging the class to download a demo copy and try it out.

I vaguely remember two pieces of software bundled with the external sound card I bought a year ago. One of them was Reason. The other, I was pretty sure, was Ableton Live.

So this morning, I poked around my software discs and found the special verison of Ableton Live. Then I remembered it came with a registration number on a brightly-colored card. I felt uneasy. Did I throw those cards away? I don't remember where I put them.

I looked for them after I got home from work, and I didn't find them. I searched the designated places where I keep computer-related items and came up empty.

Surely I wouldn't be so careful as to throw away registration numbers. I learned my lesson the hard way when I attempted to reinstall Cakewalk and had no record of a registration number.

I stopped and gave it a good think. I didn't find it on the bookshelf, where they ought to be. What if I stashed them somewhere? I flipped through the various user manuals to see if the cards were tucked in them, and sure enough, I found the registration numbers in the manual for the sound card with which they were bundled.

This kind of phenomenom would never happen at home. When something got lost, it was lost. As a result, I structure my life in such a way that something isn't "lost" -- I just don't immediately recall where I put it.

Is that sad?

2000 was an interesting year.

I went home in February for something of a family reunion. It was my parents wedding anniversary, and my sister flew in from Chicago while I flew in from Austin.

While I was there, I asked my brother for recommendations of Japanese pop music. However much I loved Cocco, I wanted to listen to other artists similar to her.

On that trip, I ended up with albums from L'Arc~en~Ciel, the brilliant green, Utada Hikaru and Shiina Ringo.

That trip pretty much turned the course of my listening habits. I was so enamoured of the albums I bought, I looked forward to covering Japan Nite for SXSW again.

I picked up more discs by Number Girl and Mummy the Peepshow at the festival. Although I warmed up to Number Girl slightly more than last year, I didn't experience my awakening till I was listening to School Girl Distortional Addict in my car.

After that, I went on a total tear learning as much as I could about the music scene in Japan. My music 'zine -- which would not become Musicwhore.org till September 2000 -- began covering Japanese music extensively.

I was on a mission.

2000 was also the year I finally moved on from Austin360. It was also the only year I managed to change jobs twice.

I was so desperate to leave Austin360, I jumped on the first opportunity that gave me the time of day. I ended spending two very unhappy months trying to get my head around DHTML. It was the first time I encountered the true suckitude of cross-browser development.

I hated it, and I resigned before I even had another job lined up.

It all worked out well, though -- an Austin360 alumna who jumped ship herself mere weeks before me talked up her company. I expressed interest, she buttered up her supervisors and I went in for an interview with Supportkids.

When I was hired, nobody had really big expectations of me. They knew I was comfortable with scripting, but it wasn't till I got involved with an actual development task did I show the true depth of my skill.

My boss didn't waste time changing my title and giving me more programming tasks. For that, I'm eternally grateful. I was able to learn on the job, and before long, I got so comfortable with making web sites communicate with databases, I ventured to host my own sites out of my living room.

The bump in salary also allowed me to subscribe to cable. It was the final season of Star Trek Voyager, and I needed my Garrett Wang fix. It wasn't till it was up and running did I discover the local UPN affiliate closed shop.

Not to worry, I discovered something even more addictive -- Law & Order.

When I felt particularly cheap -- which was often -- I would drive home for lunch, since my office was only three minutes away. I'd watch Law & Order on A&E (before TNT bought all syndication rights), then head back to the office.

It was a nice arrangement.

The burn-out with Austin360 and the other job (which I will not name) made the first half of the year difficult, but the second half of the year brought me a prosperity I hadn't known. I really started to enjoy life at that point.

2000 was also the year I met Dreama and Patrick in person. That was the year of the very first JournalCon. Ryan managed to con me into attending.

Patrick thought I was icy, which I was because I felt uncomfortable meeting an admitted fan of mine who also happens to be pretty hot. I'm also socially inept at the whole flirting thing.

I probably enjoyed myself more than I would admit, but I didn't go out of my way to bond with every attendee as most everyone there seemed to. I still had a chip on my shoulder about my writing.

The soundtrack to my 2000 would include:

• Cocco, Rapunzel
• Number Girl, School Girl Distortional Addict
• L'Arc~en~Ciel, ray
• Utada Hikaru, First Love
• Do As Infinity, Break of Dawn

The year started out with one final piece of drama. It wasn't really drama, but it sure felt like another jolt in my confidence. Gay Friend-Drinking Buddy found a better-paying job.

It bummed me out, because it felt as the dot-com gravy train was leaving me behind -- which it was -- and I reacted pretty immaturely. I made a concentrated effort to lose contact with him. I didn't e-mail him. I didn't call him. I went so far as to trash talk him on this journal a few times. I avoided the places where he might show up, which meant anywhere gay.

Yes, I'll come clean -- I retreated from anything and everything gay because I didn't want to run the risk of running into him. I stopped going to bars. I stayed away from popular gay hang-outs. I disconnected myself from the community.

It's a pretty lousy excuse to deny a big part of my identity on the count of one person, but if it weren't Gay Friend-Drinking Buddy, something else probably would have caused me to disconnect. Alternately, I could have stayed connected to the gay scene and realized I had cut myself off from something else.

And that something else was live music.

With Gay Friend-Drinking Buddy departing his daytime slot, I was offered the position, of which I couldn't really take ownership until someone filled my early morning position. Gay Friend-Drinking Buddy left in January. My replacement didn't start till April.

Compound that with my first SXSW, and I was exhausted beyond belief. More on that later.

Once I was working a normal shift, I started going to concerts by myself on the weekends. I traded in Saturday nights at Oilcan Harry's for Saturday nights at Liberty Lunch and Emo's.

I felt so much more comfortable standing in front of a stage, hanging around fashionably unkempt hipsters, enjoying the crush of a loud band. The more shows I went to, the more the idea of spending any time a gay bar seemed like a waste of time.

I drove down to San Antonio to see some arena shows. I drove up to Dallas to listen to Café Tacvba and Molotov. I attended two Duran Duran concerts, two more than I would have in Honolulu. And I squeezed in the Kronos Quartet in there as well.

I finally got to hear why Austin was called the Live Music Capital of the World.

I did manage to squeeze a date here and there, but when I mentioned the local music scene to my dates, they'd give me blank stares in return. Another reason to get disenchanted by the local gay scene.

So in 1999, I took a break from the local gay community, and it turned into a seven-year exile. The music scene is pretty ambivalent about its gay audiences, and the gay scene is oblivious to live music. It felt like a situation in which I had to choose.

And I made my choice.

1999 was the first year I attended Japan Nite. I forgot to bring earplugs, and I ended up hurting because of it. As a result, I didn't really look too fondly on my first Japan Nite. I would eventually appreciate Missile Girl Scoot and Number Girl. (Nicotine remain unimpressive to me.)

But like everyone else in the audience that night, I fell in love with eX-Girl.

The moment they took the stage, the audience was eating out of their hands. And ever since, eX-Girl has been an Austin favorite.

I haven't managed to go to all of their shows -- subsequent SXSW appearances have always clashed with other engagements -- but I've gone to as many as I can. I even drove up to Dallas in 2000 to see them.

I also remembered Number Girl. At the time, I thought I could like them if only my feet didn't hurt and my ears didn't ring. When I watch footage of the band's SXSW performance of that year, I kick myself for being so cranky during it. Because they really kicked ass. I even remember Tabuchi Hisako snapping that photo in the middle of "Iggy Pop Fan Club". Sometimes I think I can spot myself way in the back when the shot appears in the footage.

I covered the daytime panels of the music and interactive festivals as well.

Panels during the day, bands at night -- it was tiring but exhilirating. I understood the lure of SXSW now, and I'm forever hooked.

Realizing I would never make it in management, I took my career into my own hands and signed up for a PERL programming class in 1999.

When I finally peeked behind the curtain of a dynamic web site, I knew a lateral move would suite me best. My ticket out of my job would not be to follow in Gay Friend-Drinking Buddy's footsteps. I couldn't remain in content production if I wanted to stay sane.

I needed to get into development and make my mark that way.

So I started to code like a fiend. I was proud of my first efforts, even though I realize how flawed they were. But they were impressive enough to people who didn't know any better. Best of all, I got my company to pay for my education.

1999 was also the year I applied to Austin Community College. I knew I was limiting my social circle by excluding the gay community, so I figured I may as well use continuing education to make further contacts.

My first class was a survey of the music industry.

I also took classes on audio engineering and MIDI. I was getting the education I wish I had when I majored in music at the University of Hawaiʻi.

No such program exists in Honolulu.

In 1999, I started to take control of my life. Some things fell by the wayside that shouldn't have, but other things paved the way to where I am today.

The soundtrack of my 1999 would include:

• Molotov, ¿Donde jugaran las niñas?
• Shakira, ¿Donde estan los ladrones?
• Jordan Knight, Jordan Knight
• Nina Hynes, Creation
• The Kiss-Offs, Goodbye Private Life

Man, what a mindfuck.

In January 1998, I was really deep into my thing for Gay Friend-Drinking Buddy. I couldn't stop thinking about him, which was hard because I saw him more than I saw other people.

That month, I attended a statewide convention for the Texas chapter of the Asian-American Journalists Association. My homesickness was in really full force by then, because I clung to that day like my life depending on it.

In Hawaiʻi, I was part of the majority. But moving to Texas was the first time I was ever made to feel my "minority-ness", as it were. And it really opened my eyes.

While still crushing on Gay Friend-Drinking Buddy, I started seeing Bobby in February 1998. He ran across my web page, and being a total Internet neophyte at the time, he didn't understand my splash page. So he ended up e-mailing me directly instead.

We e-mailed each other for a few weeks, then went on a date. He spent the night.

We saw each other for a few months, but he had to slow the momentum of our dating when I started thinking he was a boyfriend. In November, he met someone he wanted to get serious with, but we had stopped having sex by then.

He would be the last person I dated.

(I've gone on dates and hook-ups since then, but they're so sporadic, you could count the number of times in the last seven years on one hand. And maybe a few fingers.)

Gay Friend-Drinking Buddy recruited a friend of his from college to be part of our night news team. With him around, I stopped hanging around Gay Friend-Drinking Buddy and let his friend take over for the after-work hang-out.

I really started to flame out professionally by then.

I went for a promotion to move to a daytime shift and got passed over for Gay Friend-Drinking Buddy. Then I went for a content manager position and got passed over for his college friend.

My hours shifted from a night shift to an early-morning shift. Instead of coming in at 5 p.m., I came in at 5 a.m. It wasn't any better. And I had to work with a real bitch.

Yeah, I hated my job.

To top it all off, my apartment was burglarized.

I came home one night after work to find some erroneous notice on my door from the apartment office about some missed payment. But that didn't shock me as much as the bottle of juice sitting by my front door. I didn't drink juice, and I didn't leave a bottle there.

That's when I saw my sliding doors had been pried open, and when I turned the knob of my door, it was unlocked.

I walked in to see my VCR and stereo gone. I dashed to my bedroom and saw empty spaces where my MIDI workstation had been.

A neighbor three doors down had been hit a week or so before.

I took out renter's insurance when that happened.

Just typing out this story again is hard. I wanted to go home, right then and there.

I got to a level of frustration that I trashed my apartment when my insurance company canceled my policy after paying out the claim.

The lowest blow was discovering my original demos had been stolen. The burglars took my cassette cases without checking to see they consisted entirely of mixed tapes. They probably ended up in a dumpster somewhere. I didn't notice they were gone till I tried to look for them two weeks after the burglary itself.

1998, for me, will always be the Year of the Burglary.

After my policy got canceled, I did what I should have done all along and get both auto and renter's insurance from one company, and it paid off with a discount.

Most significantly, I bought new equipment from the insurance claim, and it made me realize just how limited my original MIDI workstation was.

All the music of Eponymous 4 was recorded in part with that equipment, and I've been able to do more with my writing because of it.

As painful as the burglary was to live through, it did result in some good.

My best friend from high school -- the first guy I ever for whom I ever felt sexual attraction -- got married that year, too. So I flew to Portland to attend the ceremony, and I was so proud of him. I reached a level of comfort with my sexuality where I could joke and flirt with him, and it wasn't awkward.

I also got to visit my sister in Chicago that spring as well. In fact, a week before my place was broken into.

So the year wasn't totally bad.

The soundtrack of my 1998 would include:

• Cocco, Bougainvillia
• Madonna, Ray of Light
• Asylum Street Spankers, Spanks for the Memories
• 8 1/2 Souvenirs, Happy Feet (BMG version)
• Craig Armstrong, The Space Between Us

Ryan called it "an unforgettable year, but that doesn't stop me from trying."

Every year that puts more distance between me and 1997 is a welcome thing. Oddly enough, 1997 was a pretty good year for music releases.

1997 was the year I had a relationship of any length or signficance. JFK had come out to me after a conference we attended in Orlando, Florida. Since I was only out of the closet myself for about a year and a half, I did a stupid thing and helped him out of the closet further by ... introducing him to sex.

And so we started seeing each other, even though he really didn't find me attractive. JFK, in contrast, is a very, very pretty guy.

But sex kept us together, far beyond what a relationship of that ilk should have lasted. And after I moved to Austin, I still hadn't quite separated myself from him emotionally. When I found out he started to see someone else not mere weeks after I moved, I got ... pissed.

Now that I'm writing about it, I have to say being in a relationship with a guy who wasn't into me may contribute significantly to my ambivalence about dating today. I'll have to bring this up with my shrink.

Over the years, I've developed something of a condescending perception of that relationship. "Oh, it was just about sex!" I've told myself numerous times. I'm sure JFK has had better since me, and I assumed he probably doesn't look back fondly on it either.

I was kind of surprised, then, when I met him for lunch back in 2003, when I went back home for my sister's wedding. I called him out of the blue, and he sounded genuinely happy to hear from me. It made me wonder how being his first experience has effected his own perceptions on relationships.

I have to say, I haven't given much thought about how it's affected mine.

The spring semester of 1997 was my final at the newspaper. The competition for the next editor-in-chief was getting toxic. Very vocal factions started to emerge, and some political shenanigans ensued. It's been mercifully long enough now that I can't dredge up the details clearly. I just remember something about "harrassment".

Ryan had some drama of his own going on, which he recounts somewhere on his site. He started getting distracted, and I got distracted alongside with him for my own reasons (JFK.)

There was a point when it got really, really dark. And so I distracted myself by creating a print zine called The Soloist's Notebook. The seed for Musicwhore.org was thus planted.

May 31, 1997 -- the day I arrived in Austin.

I remember heading into my room at the Austin Motel, and some black women were catcalling me. I ignored them -- I didn't want to break the news that I didn't swing their way.

I remember writing a lot of entries about all the grown-up things I had to deal with -- finding a place to stay, paying my own bills, arranging a move.

I was exiled to a crappy night shift, and I had to work weekends as well.

As a result, the only person with whom I had any social contact was Gay Friend-Drinking Buddy. It didn't help that I was incredibly attracted to him. And at the risk of raising the ire of his husband, I still do. He was my type physically, and he has a great personality.

(I need to find an aging hispter to date. I usually go for guys who are ultimately out of my league, so I need to hit closer to my array of interests. Guys like Triggerman, Chainsaw, D-Rock or the Head Hackle -- I don't mention them all that much here. Unlike, say, the guy in marketing.)

But the attraction was (is?) one-sided, which I couldn't really handle on top of the first signs of homesickness and job burn-out.

The people I would meet that year who I would continue to know today:

• OmarG -- practically the first person I met.
• Double-A -- not till much later in the year. She would be my cigarette supplier.
• Grote -- another Dow Jones alumnus. We met in Missouri, and he's stopped by Austin a few times.

The soundtrack to my 1997 would include ...

• Duran Duran, Medazzaland
• Shawn Colvin, A Few Small Repairs
• Pizzicato Five, Happy End of the World
• Björk, Homogenic
• Kim Richey, Bitter Sweet

Yeah. Didn't think so.

There are roughly 10 or so entries left before the end of my endeavor to update this site everyday for a year. For the folks randomly stumbling at this late stage in the game, I'm commemorating 10 years of keeping an online journal with daily updates.

I said I would retire this site on its 10th birthday, which is Sept. 5, 2006. At first, I was non-commital about ending what's been a constant presence in my life for a good decade. But after pulling entries out of my ass for a year, I so need to step away.

So for the next few entries, I'm going to look back on the years, one entry per year. That should take us to 2006 by the beginning of September.

And what better time to start than with the beginning -- 1996.

I was still in college back then. It was my last semester, and I was one core requirement away from graduating. Technically, it was also my last semester at the student newspaper, but I agreed to stay on for a semester more as an non-degree student. I took a chorus class.

That final semester was pretty much a rush to find a summer internship, and my friends and I were all sending out résumés and clips. We applied for the Dow Jones Copy Editing internship and took the copy editing exam.

Everyone was scraping just to work at some small-town newspaper on the Mainland. I managed to get the interest of the Washington Post and Dow Jones.

I didn't hear back from the Washington Post after I submitted my exam to them. I was, however, offered a Dow Jones internship. That was when I learned I was heading to ... Austin, Texas.

Texas? That's the last place anyone born and raised in Hawaiʻi would willingly go. West coast? Yeah. Chicago or New York or -- if you're Filipino -- Virginia Beach? Yeah. But Texas?

A friend of mine who graduated from the University of Texas two years before assured me Austin was not like the rest of Texas, and I would eventually grow to love the place. I was skeptical.

But I wanted out of Hawaiʻi. I've wanted out of Hawaiʻi since before college. I wasn't going to be choosy -- if Austin could get me off the rock, then moving around the Mainland would be reasonably easier.

I always thought I'd be the first of my siblings to move out of the house, but I wasn't.

My oldest sister started dating a guy who lives in Chicago, and in November 1996, she packed up and followed him there. My internship wouldn't start till May 1997.

I'm sure my parents were hoping I'd do the internship, then come back home to find a job. But I think we all pretty much knew I was leaving the nest.

I started writing my online journal at the start of the fall semester. I didn't find out about the internship till the semester was ending. And I graduated from college in December 1996.

I would spend 10 months working as managing editor for the fourth largest daily newspaper in Hawaiʻi. It made me realize how badly I sucked at management.

I remember 1996 as being mostly stressful. I was finally reaching the end of a long college career, and I was really anxious to stop going to class.

Hawaii's job market was in the crapper, not like media jobs were easy to get in the first place. Everyone in my senior class felt the anxiety of getting an "in" with the Advertiser or the Star-Bulletin or one of the stations.

Ryan and I were running the paper without a copy chief, and we were getting run down.

Compound all that stress with learning how to date, and it just didn't feel all that great.

I think that was the semester when I met Dick, a one-night stand I can't forget.

I started my journal complaining about how tired I was, and when I try to remember everything from that era, fatigue is all I can recall.

The soundtrack to my 1996 would include:

• Everything But the Girl, Walking Wounded
• Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet
• Värttinä, Kokko
• Emmylou Harris, Portraits
• LeAnn Rimes, Blue

So I opened up the computer and tried air-blasting the dust off. Maybe eight years of dust was gumming up the works. That only made the fan sicker. Or perhaps, it gave its old age more clarity.

I'm not a total dummy when it comes to computers, and with effort, I can fix my own software problems. But hardware? I get skittish. The stakes are higher with hardware. Screw something in wrong, and it may cause a fire. Okay. Maybe nothing that dire, but having a processor melt and losing hundreds of gigabytes of hard drive would really, really suck.

So when blowing off the dust from the fan didn't quell its sickly-sounding behavior, I immediately went to the dark place. Am I going to have to buy a second external hard drive to back up the drive on the computer? Should I just tie that financial noose around my neck and get a laptop? Will I have to search Google high and low on instructions of how to replace a heatsink? How much does a new heat sink cost? Couldn't I just replace the fan?

A few searches on AskMetafilter later, I decided just to replace the fan to see if that would make a difference.

Straight after work, I went to CompUSA to buy a new fan. I thought about stopping by my apartment first to remove the old fan and to bring it on my search. But I figured I could recognize what I need if I saw it. Plus, I wanted to pick up dinner from Firebowl Café before the dinner rush.

All the fans in stock were obviously too large for my heatsink. I ended up buying the only thing that looked remotely small enough to fit.

I brought it home, opened up my computer and discovered it was too small. So I ate dinner while Without a Trace was on and waited for the sun to etch closer to the horizon. Have I mentioned how much I dislike August heat?

This time, I removed the fan from my computer and brought it with me. As it turned out CompUSA did not carry the kind of fan I needed, so I asked where I could get it. I was told Fry's. Someone had suggested Fry's to me earlier in the day. Huh.

I got my refund and headed up to Fry's, which is located so close to the office, I felt cheated by the fact I wasted an entire commute's worth of gas on the trip.

I found fans of the same size, but the pins were different. Being the hardware dullard I was, I asked for help. The guy told me I could use the ones with the different-sized pins in such detail that it totally went over my head. In essence, I could plug the fan into the power source of one of my drives -- preferably not the hard drive -- and plug the drive to the second pin provided.

I took his word for it and spent $6.48 on the new fan.

I installed it as instructed, and now I don't hear my computer struggling any more.

Replacing a fan on a motherboard is, in fact, no big deal, but I feel a sense of accomplishment. I always do when I perform some sort of hardware fix without managing to do strange damage to the computer.

Of course, all those trips took all night, so I don't have much of the evening left to work in the studio. But at least I got an adventure out of it to recount on this site.

Number of entries before the end: 11.

It was hard not to notice.

Perhaps the most original reaction was one of my co-workers, who's from Japan. He asked me whether I was going to buy a watch. I didn't get the reference, so he explained -- it was "The Gift of the Maggi".

Since I cut my hair, he was asking me whether I was going to buy a watch chain, just like the wife in the story who cuts off her hair and sells it to a wigmaker to get her husband a chain. The husband in turn sells his watch to buy a brush for his wife's hair.

No, I told him, I wasn't going to get watch chain.

Everyone's reaction so far has been positive.

The guy in marketing shaved off his goatee. I didn't get a clear look at his face, but oh dear -- I'm already lusting after him hard enough ...

Number of entries before the end: 13.