Roller Coaster Day...

First, I'd like to express my sincerest apology for missing my entry for yesterday. I've been emphatically repeating how much I don't want to miss a day of blogging, because I know that once that happens, I'm doomed to slip into worse habits of skipping entries, degrading eventually to the point of non-use. Well, it happened last night--but it wasn't entirely my fault.

You may have noticed that I don't tend to get a very early start on these entries, with an average posting time that's probably somewhere around 2 AM (the time you see is when I *started* the post, not finished it). So, when my internet started slowing to a halt last night around 12:50 AM, I hadn't even begun my entry. A quick investigation revealed that RoadRunner (my ISP) was performing maintenance between 12:00 AM and 6:00 AM, so I was SOL. Without the internet, I had nothing to occupy my attention that late at night, and I wasn't about to wait until 6:00 AM to get back on, so I reluctantly shut down my computer and went to bed. The silence was erie, but the sleep was nice. I realize, now, that I certainly could have typed my blog entry in Word, and then just posted it in the morning, but that didn't occur to me at the time, so you all had to suffer through today without a new blog entry. Like I said, I'm sorry :'(.


I don't do very well to remember what happened earlier in the current day, so it's really not a very productive exercise for me to try to remember what I did yesterday. If I need to know what I did on a given day, I pretty much have to try to figure it out based on files I've saved, internet history, and phone called and emails I've sent and received. Now, I suppose I could reference my blog, but I haven't yet gotten around to actually re-reading anything I've written here, as is the case with pretty much anything I write. I've submitted 8-page research papers without reading through them once, and I've already typed more than that in my blog, so I'll just ask one of you, my faithful minions, slaves, readers, friends.

Despite that, I'll try to humor you with a half-hearted attempt to recall Wednesday.

It's safe to assume that I didn't sleep much on Tuesday night (5 hours, I believe), and was consequently tired at work, for a good portion of the day. I don't know what I did for work, but I know I invested some more time into my web site, and became very frustrated with Microsoft [Internet Explorer] for not behaving how I wanted it to. <geek>If you've ever done serious web design, you'll understand what I'm saying about this, to an extent. Things used to be designed for IE, and wouldn't work in Netscape. Now things are designed for W3 standards compliance, and don't work in IE. An ironic fate, isn't it?</geek>

I believe I watched a really horrible movie when I got home, named Cheerleader Ninjas. For just a glimpse at how...[shifty-eyes]...good...it is, check out this picture from it. It was a good waste of an hour and a half, and I don't regret it (unlike that horrible hour or so that I spent watching the Olsen Twins' 16-year-old movie "Getting There"...never waste your time one that one). I was on my own for dinner, so I made a frozen pizza and ate that, which was tasty. I would highly recommend the same to anyone else (unless I didn't like them, in which case I wouldn't want them to share in that tasty delight). I like you, though, so I think you should make, and then eat, some frozen pizza. Come back when you're done with that.

[...Later]

Well, I already explained what caused me to miss my blog, so you pretty much know what happened with the rest of my Wednesday night (that I can remember, anyhow). Please let me know if you remember something about my night that I should know...any children I've fathered and forgotten about, any buildings I've started on fire, and should check on...things of that nature :P.

And on to Thursday....

(Hey, that was today!)

I woke up around 9 at the mercy of my relentless alarm clock, but snoozed it until around 9:30. I proceeded to dick around until about 10:15, when I finally went for a nice 15-minute shower. I then managed to whittle away another half hour or so, before I actually left for work around 11. For various reasons, I started my day in a really fantastic mood. It was a gorgeous day outside, I'd slept a lot, and well, last night, some good music was playing (although I can't remember exactly what it was, at the moment), and I had a happy conversation with a friend, before leaving for work. I was actually kind of looking forward to work, believe it or not.

After arriving at work around 11:20 (I would probably be embarrassed about that, if I really liked my job), I was soon drained of the energy and enthusiasm that had characterized my morning at home. I know I had a conference call with my boss and another co-worker at 11:47 AM (phone call history is nice like that), but past that, I just remember looking at the clock, and being amazed it was 1:45 already. (Isn't it fascinating how quickly 1:45 arrives, when you don't get to work until 11:20? :-D) I biked over to Chipotle to pick up my lunch. It takes about 20 minutes to get there, order, and back, and I bike pretty quickly, so you can try to do the math on how far it is, if you want. I was a little reluctant to eat Chipotle today, because I'd eaten there three times last week, I believe, so I don't want to tire myself of chipotle before the summer's end. Even so, the only real options available to me are Chipotle, Noodles & Co, and Subway. I'd eaten Noodles on Monday and Subway on Tuesday, so Chipotle seemed like the best option.

With all this Chipotling I've been doing recently, I have my ordering process down pretty well (although admittedly not as well as I had the taco bell ordering down for my senior year). "I'd like a chicken burrito with pinto beans please." [Wait.] "Hot salsa, sour cream, cheese, and a little [make the universal 'little' gesture with thumb and forefinger about 1" apart] lettuce, please. Thanks." With the exception of this person putting a little more lettuce on the burrito than I would have liked, it all appeared to be prepared to my standards. The bike-ride back to work always seems to be into the wind, so it's an annoyingly more difficult ride, but I get there eventually, anyhow. I've also gotten into the trend where I know that I'll drink exactly two cans of soda with my Chipotle Burrito, so I grab those, and make my way back to my desk. (What can I say; I like routine/not-change.)

The first 2/3 of my burrito was fantastic, as well it should be. I've also started trying to consistently take one Centrum a day, to hopefully compensate for my horribly un-balance diet over the summer. I don't remember thinking about this in the past, when I took Centrum, but the pills have a pretty bad taste/after-taste, just from putting it on my tongue for a moment, before swallowing it. I'm supposed to take the Centrum with a meal (it aids with the absorption of certain vitamins into the body, or some crap like that), so I usually try to remember to take it in the middle of a meal, which I've been doing surprisingly well. I only think to mention that, this time, because of the god-awful taste that was waiting for me in one bite of rice in my burrito. I still don't really know what it was, but it reminded me slightly of something being extremely salty (like when I had to gargle with really strong salt-water when I had mono). I ate the rest of the burrito except for the rice, so I was fairly displeased with that overall experience.

The rest of the day passed essentially without incident. I went home around 7, microwaved a Chicken Cheese Chimichanga (mmmm, delightful...no bad bite in that one), and then had to run out around 8. I had agreed to tutor my neighbor in Excel. I had absolutely no idea, going into the lesson, what her skill level was, so I was scrambling to get together some examples, and whatnot. After seeing her Compaq Presario running Windows 95, I pretty quickly guessed what her skill level was, haha. We spent an hour and a half doing something I'm confident I could replicate in about five minutes. It paid well, though, so I'll do that. I don't think I could do that for 40 hours a week, but I'll do it for an hour an a half, once or twice per week, for the price she's willing to pay. She was, without a doubt, the most excited I have ever seen a person get about Excel. Yay for number crunching...apparently?

I got back here around 9:30, then, and actually started this blog entry shortly thereafter. That would make this my longest blog entry yet (both by measure of time spanned from beginning to completion, as well as page length), although it still doesn't make up for my missed entry yesterday. I killed another ant while writing this, so I can't give the disclaimer that "no animals were hurt during the production of this feature." I can just see PETA (not to be confused with PEDA) rallying together to come protest outside my house.

I also was somewhat productive tonight, in that I finally got a computer ready for my brother. I told him, yesterday evening, that he could come pick up a computer to borrow, some time after I got home from work. I was supposed to call him when it was ready. Meh. He can live without it for one day (unless of course he needed it to order an online prescription that he needed to prevent his death...that'd suck). I've apparently turned into some sort of computer broker. One friend picked one up some time last week, now my brother's picking this system up tomorrow, which I just wiped clean after getting it back from another friend. Damn, I'm such a geek pimp.


I think that's all I have for tonight [sigh]. Nelly - #1 just came up on my playlist, so I think that's a good song to listen to while going to bed. I want to see "I, Robot" (or possibly Catwoman, if you'd rather see that) this weekend, so let me know if you're interested. G'night, at long last.

Tired p14nd4

I'm sorry. It's 3 AM, and this isn't a Matchbox 20 song, so that's just a bad sign...and not even slightly catchy. I slept about 3.5 hours last night, and maybe five the night before. If I was asleep right now, I'd be on track for six tonight, but I don't appear to be in my bed right now, nor are my eyes closed. This blog entry will be, for real this time, very short, so you can have a healthy p14nd4 to read about.

So I begrudgingly got up around 7:00 AM this morning, because of the absolutely horrible idea of an 8 AM meeting at my job. I got there around 8:03, grabbed a soda from the machine (I really needed it), and got to the meeting around 8:04, which was just in time to hear the announcement that the meeting was canceled. ^&#%!*#@%! That was an extremely unpleasant way to begin my day. I toyed with the idea of leaving for a few hours, to go back to bed, but the damage was already done, so I just stayed.

I met with my boss for about 20 minutes to discuss a few things I'm working on. Mind you, this is the same boss that requests people schedule meetings with him, even for 5-minute meetings. But, we just sat and talked for 20 minutes. That hypocrite.

I know I went to Subway for lunch (three more 12" subs and I get a free 12" sub), but most of the rest of the day is a blur, with one exception. Can anyone say "hot 18-year-old summer temp chick wearing tight white stretchy pants?" Come on, I know you can do it. Say it with me now! Well, no, I guess you don't have to do that, but yes, she does have quite the nice ass, as was made readily apparent with those pants, today. Mmmm. [Aside: I debated whether or not I should include this in my public blog entry, which I'm fully aware my girlfriend reads, but decided it deserved to be in here. I'm not being disloyal, dishonest, or deceptive, so all she/you have left to yell at me about is being at work today. It's not my fault I'm an observant young man.]

I then spent a good chunk of time, tonight, editing another article for my own company (not my regular job), which I had to get done before going to bed, because we're the first site to post a review, after the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) expired 07.28.2004 12:00 AM EST. I didn't write it, but it might be worth a read, if you're technically inclined. Either way, you should know that the product name is Sempron. Sem-pron? I don't know if it's just the sleep deprivation talking, or just my own sick mind, but I see Sem[en]-P[or]n from that product name. Someone had to say it, and I just might be the only person cool enough to actually do so.

Anyway, this went longer than I planned, as always. I need to sleep. Stop keeping me up. Ribbit.

In the meantime, enjoy my new photo and BANANAPHONE!

A case of the Mondays...

I'm starting this a few hours earlier than I have the past few nights, in what I believe to be a futile attempt to get to bed earlier. I feel incredibly exhausted right now (more so than my regular state of exhaustion), and I have an 8:00 AM meeting tomorrow. Despite that attempt, an hour managed to pass between my second and third sentences, so my chances of getting to bed early are not looking very good so far. People keep distracting me...IM, chat, phone...gah. I hate technology.

So today was Monday. What a horrible day, even though I did sleep in until about 9. There should be mandatory breakfasts provided at work on Mondays. I was strongly considering stopping at Bruegger's Bagels this morning to pick up one of those egg and sausage bagel sandwiches they make. It's been a long time since I've had one of those (this past spring break in Colorado, to be exact), and it sounded particularly good this morning. If you ever want to pleasantly surprise me, get me one of those, some morning when I have to work. I've also discovered that no matter how much extra time I give/allow myself, prior to some deadline (as in, a deadline to accomplish something, such as leaving my house for work), I'll uncontrollably waste enough time to either push me past the deadline, or at least make the margin of completion about 10 seconds from the deadline. Even though I've reached this conclusion many times, I still optimistically set my alarm to allow myself about 40 minutes in the morning (versus the 15-20 minutes, or possibly less, in which I could actually accomplish everything, if needed).

I had to "fix" a laptop used by one of my bosses, today. It kept rejecting her email, explaining that one of the recipient addresses was wrong. After some investigation, I discovered that, *gasp*--like it said--it wasn't sending email because one of the recipient addresses was wrong. Nathan@mycompany.com won't work when the actual address is Nate@mycompany.com. As a Mac user, I'm sure she wrote that off in her mind as the fault of Windows.

Later, the "Mac server admin" asked me to make a change in one of the other servers. Later in the day he complained to me about why his Mac wasn't working right, with the new change. I demonstrated it worked perfectly in both Windows and Linux, so he kind of sulked off. Take that Steve Jobs!

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, my company organizes lunch runs (they send one of the assistants out to buy everyone food). I still have to pay for lunch (except Free Pizza Fridays), but it means I have a sure shot at getting lunch. Today was Noodles & Co., so I got my classic large "Wisconsin Macaroni and Cheese." They specifically wrote on the sheet of paper that we should calculate tax for our meal, and give them money accordingly. Not being one to over-spend something on the scale of $0.06, I calculated the exact cost, and included exact change. The "lunch lady" for the day (an assistant for one of my bosses) then proceeded to complain that some people had included change. Wtf? How am I supposed to calculate and include tax, if I'm not supposed to give them change? I'm not going to give them $6 for my $5.14 meal. Maybe I'm cheap. Maybe they're just stupid. Well, I'm the one writing this, so screw them; I win; they're stupid.

I also spent a moderate chunk of time (both last night and today) editing an article for my company, since AMD was bitching at us to get it edited and posted. After showing the edited article to the author, he commented "it doesn't look like you changed very much." Ow. I proceeded to show him a word document with "track changes" enabled, which showed every page crammed with changes, which then earned the response "Oh, you changed a lot. Thanks." That's what I do it all for--some recognition and thanks. That reminds me that my friend's mother, whose computer I fixed on Sunday, emailed me today, to thank me for the work I did. That made me feel good, too. Remember this: if someone (I) spends his or her time doing something for you, that they don't necessarily have to do (or even if they do have to do it), a thank you can mean a lot. I like doing nice things for people, but it pisses me off when they don't acknowledge it.

I didn't get home from work tonight until about 8 PM, but I did have a nice, freshly-cooked steak dinner waiting for me shortly after I arrived (and yes, I did say thank you). It was a truly delicious steak, although I would have preferred a twice-baked potato to go with the meal instead of cuscus and asparagus, but I won't complain too much. It really was fantastic. After dinner, I got some things together, because I'd agreed to tutor a neighbor in the use of Microsoft Excel (at a really nice hourly rate). I called, received no answer, so I just went over there. Well, she'd forgotten about it, so we rescheduled for Thursday evening, which is probably alright. I'm sure I won't do any preparations with my newfound additional prep time, but it's a nice thought. I just hope I don't get there and have some huge mind fart, and forget how to add. I'm sure she'll have some database-minded questions I won't be able to answer, but I'm generally alright with that, assuming I can throw at least an hour of new information at her.

You know the rest from there...got back, wasted time by talking to people and listening to music, and such. I spent another unnecessary $100 tonight on a new video card. Blargh =E. Maybe one of these days, the fact that I'm going to be broke soon will sink in. We'll see. G'night.

Abbreviated Blogging

Tonight's entry will have to be cut short, due to technical difficulties with the time continuum. I seem to be having some difficulty preventing time from passing tonight, and I need to work in the morning, and my f-ing crappy body needs sleep, so something's gotta give, and the blog is that something. I'm sure you must be devastated.

Anyhow, I was woken up around noon today by my mother offering me an omelet. Now, you might think this is one of those really nice things, that I couldn't possibly complain about, but you're horribly mistaken. I value sleep on weekends very highly. I was doing just fine digesting that Chipotle burrito from the previous night, in my sleep, and needed an omelet at that very moment about as much as I needed a spare transmission for a semi (I have zero, and that's about one too many, if you didn't figure that out on your own). But, the damage was done. I was awake, and there was an omelet waiting for me, so I ate.

I came back, only to find another f-ing ant crawling on my speaker, which I promptly killed, after swearing for a few moments. What the hell do the ants even want in my room? It's not even like they're all in the same place, ever. Some on one wall, some on another wall, one on the floor, one on the desk, and so on. I just don't get it. F-ing ants.

Despite my then-crappy mood instilled by the ant, I managed to proceed with my day, with the aid of AC-DC - Back in Black. I'm still kind of in awe of music, after having lost about 5000 songs for about six months (and getting them back, finally, about a month ago). Think about how much you take it for granted some time. It's crazy.

I listened to music, talked to people, the normal deal, and then showered, dressed, blah blah blah. As mentioned last night, I had to repair someone's computer at 2:00 PM, so I was hoping to leave around 1:50. Well, around 1:58 I finally got out of the house, and arrived a minute late or so. No one else cared, but it pissed me off. I got right to work on the problem (adware, viruses, etc). The computer was slow, so much time was spent just watching the computer scan for things. I was able to talk to my friend's parents for a while, though, which was pleasant. I think conversations go much better with pretty much everyone, after getting out of high school, but that might just be me. It's probably because I've stopped caring about even more, since then, so I'll tell people things that I wouldn't have told them before, and am much less guarded, in general. I'm probably just over-analyzing this all, though, so I'll stop with that.

The family ended up having to leave before I finished, but paid me the flat rate I'd suggested, before leaving. In fixing one (or a few) problems, another fairly major problem appeared, in that right clicking any file would cause Explorer to restart itself (and the right-click menu wouldn't appear). I'd never seen that in my life, which isn't usually a good thing. I spent more time than I would have liked fixing it, and then started installing security fixes over dial-up. I wrote up a summary sheet of everything I'd done, and some future recommendations for self-service before I left, since I made a point of complaining that my friend's computer repair store didn't do that, when I was visiting him at work. I left with 115 minutes left on one Windows update download, so hopefully that finished without issue, and they were able to figure out how to click "Ok" to reboot it. And damn, I really hope that didn't break anything else. As a side note, it would have been worlds faster for me to simply return home, download the necessary patches, burn a cd, and return there, but that would have required much more effort than I was being paid for, so that simply wasn't going to happen.

I went back home, and ended up eating dinner with my mother, of all people, at Applebees. As you may know, I really don't get along well with my mother, in virtually all situations. I have, however, been making a conscious effort to be less of an asshole to her, though. The results of that experiment are still up in the air--I'll try to remember to keep you posted. We somehow managed to avoid more than about four long awkward silences during the meal, didn't get into any major arguments, and I got a free bacon cheeseburger, so overall I felt it was a successful outing.

I returned home, did some work on my own stuff, talked, music'd a bit, got into some big arguments online about the current political state of the US, and then another argument later about racism and affirmative action (I think the argument kind of just migrated to that, but I tuned out for a while). That delayed me quite a while, but now I wrote more in here than I initially planned (although I did manage to keep this entry down to 1.5 pages singled spaced, as opposed to the previous two 2-page entries), and am going to bed much later than I initially hoped. Damn you. You manage to keep me up, even when you're not even talking to me at the moment. (Look, now I'm talking directly to a text box. How awesome am I? Very awesome.) I'm off to work soon. Tschüss.

Blog: Reloaded

Hm, at first I was trying to explain how this was like the Matrix (Matrix: Reloaded being the second movie in the series, and this post is the second in the series), but got too lazy to finish the analogy (which, believe me, wasn't shaping up to be anything worth posting...unlike the rest of the fine literature I choose to leave in, of course). You can try to figure it out for yourself, should you choose to be so ambitious; I obviously wasn't.

Today started for me around 3:15 PM. I did wake up a couple times earlier in the day, but I promptly decided anything less than 12 hours of rest was simply unacceptable, and promptly fell back asleep. (I wonder what my boss would do if I started coming in to work around 4 PM, and simply explaining that I needed my 12+ hours of sleep. Maybe I won't test my curiosity on that one, though.) Although I dislike many things about my job, virtually never having to work weekends is a definite plus. Well, I rolled out of bed, un-marked myself away on AIM, started up some music (Die Fantastischen Vier - Vier Gewinnt), and went to check out whatever was going on. I'm living with my parents this summer (what can I say, it's cheap, I'm lazy and poor, so I'll tolerate it), so their location is something that always needs to be assessed. My father is away for the weekend, and it turned out my mother was working until 6 PM, so I had the house to myself for a while yet, anyway. Although I don't really do anything that really requires having the house to myself, in situations like that, it's just nice to know I don't have to deal with annoying parents for a few hours, know I can play my music loud enough to hear down the hall...things like that.

After wasting a couple hours, interrupted briefly by a shower, which I can't really consider a waste of time, I concluded I wanted to see either "Bourne Supremacy" or "I, Robot" tonight. I scanned my buddy list for potential candidates to join me, but my main choices were either offline or away. I too lazy, or weird, or something, to actually call people to see if they want to go to a movie with me, so I ended up going to see "Bourne Supremacy" by myself. On the bright side, by not inviting the chick I was initially going to invite, I saved $7.50-$25 (depending on what we might have done for food), and presumably prevented any potential anger/jealousy from my girlfriend (although it's her fault for being two states away). Some other people assured me it wasn't terribly strange to attend the movie by myself, but it still felt a little strange. I'm sure I'll get over it (in about 10 hours...by the time I wake up).

Overall I thought it was a pretty good movie. It had some good fighting, some good driving. I thought they abused the camera shaking effect during certain fight/driving scenes, though, which detracted from its quality, and made a few specific details difficult to track (although never to the point of making the events difficult to follow). I also thought the movie lacked closure on what happened with the Russians; the ~8 second "scene" left a few things ambiguous. I also thought it was a little interesting that they used the exact same song to finish the movie / begin credits that they did in Bourne Identity. I'm not sure if that's supposed to mean something, but idunno. The knowledge that a third movie is coming forced me to think about what might be in store. The only real ideas I had involved Bourne cooperating with the government again, and probably learning more about what exactly happened to make him this way, and something to fix his condition. Maybe Julia Stiles will finally actually play some role in the movie (her minimal participation struck me as strange, considering she's a moderately big name). Enough about that, though.

I headed over to Chipotle after the movie, which was my third meal from that restaurant this week. I think I may finally be re-acclimating myself to spicy foods, after many months of not consuming them. I've really become an increasingly large fan of Chipotle this summer, possibly due to its convenient locations relative to my office and my house. It may be the "new taco bell" for me. I used to eat Taco Bell at least once a week (during my senior year of high school), but have eaten there only rarely since then. It's not that I'm a huge fan of Mexican food (hm, can Taco Bell even be considered Mexican food?), but Taco Bell just filled a hole in my life; it seems Chipotle may be able to do the same (although it is admittedly much more expensive than Taco Bell; minus one point for Chipotle).

Coming home late in the evening/night is always nice, because the stop-light a few blocks from my house changes from its normal daytime operation schedule to a night-time schedule. During the day, it will always remain green for the main/busy street for at least a minute or two, regardless of how many cars are going through it, or waiting from the other direction. I'm not sure exactly what time it switches to "night mode" (maybe 9 PM?), but once it does, damn is it glorious. The moment a car pulls up from the side street, or the moment someone pushes the walk button, the main street will turn yellow (followed shortly by red, if these concepts are foreign to you), so the maximum wait time is about six seconds. I want to get one of those police car remote control dealies so I can change the light to green for my direction whenever I'm coming. Screw everyone else.

Once I get back to my room (read: computer), time is pretty much lost. Between the period of about 9:45 PM (roughly when I returned) and now (2:25 AM), I can only think of three things I've done: watched star trek (again, that falls under the category of "yeah, I'm just that f-ing cool"), talked to people, and written this. I'm not exactly sure how that adds up to almost five hours, and the fact that it has, frightens me somewhat. I really need a personal, on-site personal assistant, to keep me in line, and notify me when I'm being overly wasteful of my time. (I have no problem being wasteful of my time...but there's a point at which it crosses a line. I'm pretty sure I passed that a few hours ago, despite having no recollection of said line.)

As a last few notes for tonight, I killed the sixth ant I've found in my room in the past three days. I'm slightly concerned, but I don't really know what could be drawing them in, nor how I can prevent them from getting in. I even go out of my way to remove sweet, sweet soda cans from my room, specifically for the purpose of not drawing insects in here. I'd also like to remind everyone to NEVER ASK ME TO DO ANYTHING. When people ask me to do things, I find it very difficult to say no, so I usually end up doing it, even though I'd probably rather not. And, for further clarification: NO, I WILL NOT FIX YOUR COMPUTER. I have to get up around 1 PM tomorrow (er, today already) to fix a friend's family's computer. Grr. I'm sure it's spyware/adware/viruses, etc, but I know it's an old POS too. I'll probably just recommend the $319 (+tax) Dell to them. Maybe for payment they can give me SOMETHING TO MAKE MY HEADACHE GO AWAY.

Meh. I'm off to bed. I know it will be difficult, but you can (probably) live without my presence for the next 10 hours. G'night.

Hm. Hello.

I've never been a huge fan of blogs. It's 11:11 PM on a Friday night, and I'm creating, and posting in, one of my very own, though. I'm not exactly sure why, but I can guarantee you it was prompted by seeing one of my ex-girlfriend's blog. I was dissatisfied with the quality of her profile on there, so apparently I'm rectifying my dissatisfaction by potentially making a better one of my own, that virtually no one will read (hey, like virtually all blogs!). I'm guessing this is going to be one of those things (like my first personal web site, http://thepieguy.tripod.com/ ... or much of anything else I do, for that matter) in which I maintain interest for a brief period, and then abandon. I'll look back at it in a year or two and have a nice laugh, and a good time will be had by all.

...Anyway, since I know everyone is dying to hear about my day (because I'm just that cool), let's have it:

I've recently been setting my computer to start playing my music in the morning to wake me up (in conjunction with my alarm clock), since my alarm clock has proven to be fairly useless in its primary goal. The alarm clock sits at the foot of my bed, but I've apparently mastered the skill of sitting up, and turning it off (not just snoozing it) without actually waking up. (Even more impressive was during high school when it was across the room, and I was able to walk across the room (which entailed stepping in very specific places, over computers, piles, etc), turn off the alarm clock, and get back into bed, without really waking up (I didn't remember doing it, much of the time, and no, the alarm clock never stops on its own).) Back to my exciting day, though. Anyway, I woke up to Tool - Forty Six and 2 at 8:05 AM, laid in bed for another song or two, then showered, and such, sat around my room for about 20 unnecessary minutes listening to music, and eventually headed off to FedEx (my third time in two days).

I bike to work (and most everywhere else I need to be), but FedEx is about one minute from my office, so it's not a big deal to swing in there before work. I picked the most retarded way ever, to get there, though, which pissed me off. I literally thought to myself "This is the worst decision I've made today. Wait, no, sitting around my house an extra half hour was a worse decision. But this is definitely the worst decision I've made in the last ten minutes." (Yeah, I'm...cool...like that. We'll stick with that choice of words.) Anyhow, I decided not to lock my bike at FedEx, which sounds like a stupid comment, but I've pretty much locked my bike everywhere I've left it (except my garage) for the past five years, so it's weird. I guess maybe I'm getting lazier, which may be difficult to believe, but I think it's true. Into fedex...

I've always been confused with the forms and packaging they offer at FedEx. I've been going there for years, but not consistently enough to really get it down. There are certain things you're supposed to use their packaging for, some you're not...some charge by size, some by weight...it's all very foreign to me. There are two forms for ground shipping, both of which I filled out. It turns out I didn't need to fill one of them out, and the other one, that I did need to fill out (which I did), is possibly the crappiest form I've ever seen. There's no way I can write all the necessary information legibly in the space they provide. Bastards. Well, the shipping was cheap, and I'm getting reimbursed for it anyway, so it didn't really matter, but that was good. My bike wasn't stolen (although you probably figured I mentioned it for some deeper reason, earlier in the story, you were wrong), so on to work I went.

I park my bike in the underground parking garage at my office-building. Everyone else from my company just parks in the regular lot in front (which does have a bike rack), so it's kind of strange that I park [my bike] down there, but it's closer to the bike path, and then I don't have to lock it (the garage exemption rule ;)). It's nice and cool (temperature) down there, too, which is pleasant after a vigorous bike-ride, heh. Parking where I do, means that I also end up using the back entrance to the building, which kind of reminds me of Peter Gibbons (my idol, by the way) explaining that he uses the side entrance so that Lumberg doesn't see him come in late. I sit down, mark myself not-away on AIM (not only does my company allow the use of AIM, they require it...for company communication purposes, of course :P), read some email, catch up with a few people in chat, etc.

I won't get too much into what I do at work, for various reasons, but today's activities included:

• Telling a few co-workers to check out freeiPods ( http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=7274942 ... one co-worker signed up)


• Researching a few WiFi/Ethernet bridges (I was annoyed that a co-worker mac-lot suggested the $125 AirPort Express off the bat ... and laughed at Apple's site claiming that they revolutionized wireless by introducing the first / affordable WiFi solution (geeks might find that funny))


• Visiting web sites and recording 1-800 number extensions from them into an excel sheet.

Hm. How horribly stimulating. On the bright side, though, I got free pizza. My company does free pizza Fridays as a morale boosting exercise, because they require you to put a note commending a co-worker on a specific thing you noticed them doing well. I think it's a big load of crap, but if I get free pizza, I'll jump through a hoop. The whole company then left "early" around 5:30 PM for a company party at the CEO's house. It was alright...more free food, entertaining dog fight, fireworks, CEO walked into a glass door. I got a ride back to the office around 10 PM, at which point I biked home, read some away messages, including a link to a blog, which then started this. Damn I'm cool.