2006 Weblog Archive

Eh I don't really know what to write. I think I'll cover things as I think of them. Oh, I meant to put something in here about the machine I made for Blaine. I'll add that in a bit.

Car Savings

I haven't put any money in lately because of three things: 1. paying down old debts. 2. anticipation for my dental crown. 3. Buying a Wii. I spent quite a bit of money paying off some creditors that came knocking that I'd forgotten about. It doesn't make sense to save money when I still have a couple dogs on my credit report weighing me down. I've been going to the dentist now a few times to get a root canal and then a crown. I'll talk more about that later, but suffice it to say that a crown is not covered by my insurance (yet) and expensive. I spent quite a chunk of change on a Wii, too.

I plan to start saving again in earnest with the mid-December paycheck. While I don't want to dump my paycheck of the beginning of december, I do anticipate spending a little on gifts.

Toofers

So last time we talked I had just got a handy-dandy root canal. Plenty of people inquired about my well-being and I really appreciated the kindness. I feel like pointing out that I recovered painlessly. Not because I was out of my goddamned mind on painkillers as some people assumed. Rather, it simply didn't hurt. The Endodontist told me to take tylenol if it hurt. It just never did.

So after the root canal I had to wait a bit to make sure it all healed. I was really worried while my mouth was healing. See, the endodontist packs a temporary filling into the space created by the root canal and if it falls out, they basically have to perform the whole root canal again. Luckily I managed the entire time without a colossal tooth malfunction.

So I went back in to my regular dentist for a tooth build-up. Basically there's not enough tooth left to make a crown, so they have to pack a lot of more permanent filling material in there. Afterwards the dentist and I discussed the crown and talked about insurance. He actually brought up the idea that we could wait until August (when my insurance kicks in) as long as i don't eat anything crazy. No taffy for me. That's nice, so I'll save like $3-400 overall, and $6-800 now. Rock on.

I can chew on the other side again, finally.

Wii

The week before the Wii was released I was so sure I was getting one that I ordered 3 games off of amazon.com. They arrived last monday and tuesday. Anyhow, sunday rolled around and my grand plans for getting a Wii fell through. Rather than braving the cold I decided to try the online route. That fell through, but luckily Mark K managed to get one on circuitcity.com, and I bought it from him for only like $20 extra. I got an extra controller. I have 2 more controllers on the way, and between Mark K and Kyle I will have enough nunchucks too. Update: The final two controllers arrived on Monday!

As for games I have Wii Sports (it comes with the Wii, how great is that?), The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Redsteel, Super Monkeyball Banana Blitz, and Trauma Center: Second Opinion. So far the only game I'm disappointed with is Redsteel. The controls are just doggy. It's not so much about fighting Yakuza as it is about fighting the damned controls.

I love the Wii. God damn, this is what a game console should be. I'm so glad I got one, and so glad I got it right away.

Wii Party

That brings me to this Saturday's party. I'm having a few (hopefully lots of) people over to play party games and stuff with the Wii. I'll have enough controllers and nunchucks, and I've got Super Monkeyball already, so it should be a blast. Wii Sports is also pretty fun with friends.

It'll also be a great wind-down from...

the LSAT

I'm retaking the LSAT saturday morning. Hopefully I can squeeze another couple of points out of it to try to get scholarships.

Thanksgiving

Oh yeah. Thanksgiving this year was pretty small. Just my mom, stepdad, myself, Jessica, and her boyfriend. Mom had to work 3rd shift Thursday morning, so she got off at 6 a.m. My stepdad did a lot of the cooking, but I offered to help. So I was tasked with buying a pumpkin pie and making cranberry sauce. I decided to make the pie too. And the whipped cream. Everything was a hit. So I guess I can make pumpkin pie now.

I have a lot of leftovers, even after eating a couple of plates over the 4-day weekend.

Car | Money

So the day is here. At around 12:00 p.m. today I'll be strapped in a chair and the grim task of inflicting the maximal amount of pain through my mouth will begin.

Actually, I've been doing quite a bit of research about a root canal. Most everyone knows that a root canal is painful, but I guess no one really knows what one is. Well, at least I didn't, and since I'm the smartest person I know, I just assume the general populace doesn't know either.

So here's the deal. First they numb the hell out of you. I guess the thing is that people mentally lump all of the pain before-hand and during recovery together when they recall the pain of the procedure. But according to my research, you're so fucked up on drugs that you're probably out cold during the procedure.

Then they cut a hole in your tooth and start using files to remove the nerve from inside your tooth. Basically your tooth is a thin veneer of enamel, then a layer of spongy white tissue (well it's still pretty hard, but not as hard as enamel), then way on the inside is some tissue with blood vessels, etc. That's what's commonly known as the "nerve".

So anyhow, they gotta get all of that living tissue out of there so it can't get infected and stops inflaming your surrounding gums and messing up your jawbone. So they scrape it all out.

Then they put little shims in there to take up all the space so bacteria can't get back down in there. Afterwards they might put a metal post in your tooth to hold a crown on (if, for example, the top of your tooth is very fucked up), and then you either get a bigass filling or a crown. If your root canal is on a molar (as mine is), you basically have to get a crown due to the damage done to the tooth.

So at the end of it you've essentially got a false tooth surrounded by your real tooth. I will have a badass gold toof. Bling!

Aftermath

Ok, so I'm safe and sound at home after the root canal. The right side of my face was entirely numb. I didn't eat anything all day till about 8:30pm. I had a couple fajitas. I await a bitchin crown now.

I also stopped at Best Buy to pick up my laptop and went to see Borat with Jess. Hot shit that movie rocked.

Car Savings

One other thing about getting this work done. I have insurance, which is great. However, they classify a crown as a cosmetic procedure, and they don't cover cosmetic procedures during the first year of coverage. Even though they covered 80% of my root canal (leaving me with a couple hundred dollar bill), I'm going to pay out the nose for the crown. So now the really bad news. I've dipped into my savings account to pay for the work. I haven't lost any of the money I've put away for a Car, but I haven't added any in a month, either. I expect my next contribution to be at my end of November paycheck. So this has effectively postponed buying a car for a couple months. Knowing that it'd be pretty silly to get a brand new car (a brand new rear-wheel drive car) during the winter, I'm going to try to hold out until late February or March before I finally buy my Magnum. The bonus of this is that I'll have more down payment available; if I play my cards right I could even manage to put 20% down.

Weekend

I basically drank the weekend away. I got put into a sour mood on friday, so I didn't go see my roommate's final performance. She's in a band, or rather was, and has a beautiful singing voice. Oh well; she'll be in other bands. I can go listen to them.

Project

I'm like 99% done with the project for the Ag Dept. I'll be so happy when its done.

Teeth | Job

So I went to a dentist after a long period of absense. It's not that I'm scared of the dentist or anything. I simply haven't had insurance a while. So I got some good news and some bad news.

Good news: My teeth and gums are in generally good shape. Startlingly good shape, considering it's been like 5 or so years since I went to a dentist.

Bad news: The one problem I knew about, a missing filling, has gotten so bad that I need a root canal. My insurance will cover 80% of it, and it'll cost somewhere between $800-$1200.

Really bad news: Most of the time, if you get a root canal, you have to get a crown. My insurance will not cover a crown until August 1st, and even then it'll cover it 50%. That leaves me with another half grand or so to cough up. Of course, if the Endodontist decides I need a crown now (as opposed to a huge filling which they might, in the best possible world, use), then I have to pay up immmediately. Do not pass go, do not eat candy ever again.

So this could put the whole "buying a car" thing back a couple months. We'll have to see.

In other recent news, my chili is still great. I have about half of it frozen, and i think I'll save that for some other time.

I'm nearly done with the big project for the Ag dept. Good thing, since we were supposed to start testing last week. Grumble Grumble. This makes me wonder about returning to school; if I can't do something as simple as this, how could I go back to school for 3 more years? I think I just need more time to unwind and have no homework for a while again.

My laptop is pretty bad now. It's having trouble charging the battery and keeping it charged. Also the video seems to be going out on it. I have backed it up and reinstalled windows in anticiation of taking it back to best buy for a warranty repair. Oh, and the DVD burner still doesn't burn DVDs.

Over the weekend I dinged 54 in WOW, and also spent about 70g buying mats to level my leatherworking up to 300. I rewarded myself with Green Dragonscale pants and Gauntlets. If I win the auction on the pattern for the breastplate, I'll have to make that for myself too. So anyhow, I've finally been able to make some armor that's substantially better than what I was wearing.

So that my laptop service doesn't interfere with WOW, or at least doesn't totally cripple me, I'm going to install it on my machine at work. Don't worry, I'm not doing anything verboten; a couple of the other guys have it installed there too. Obviously they don't play during working hours. On the plus side, my workstation blows the holy hell out of my laptop, and is on a big fat pipe. I'll be able to turn the detail all the way up, get no lag, and high fps.

Medical | Money | Job | WOW | Car | Computer

I'm sick of being invisible to women.

I didn't notice

The thing about being far outside the norm of acceptable appearance isn't that people stare or make fun. Sure, kids do, but not grownups. The problem is that people don't look. Ever.

I've been tracking my weight for quite a while now. I've gained about 35 pounds since Trisha broke up with me, despite off and on attempts to lose weight. Every time I try things seem to be going ok, and then some kind of self-destructive urge kicks in and I stop tracking my weight, or exercising, or both. A lot of times I just use a handy excuse. Anyhow, I seem to find myself more and more encumbered by how I look rather than how I am.

I read a book recently, "Living Large" by Michael S. Berman. It's basically just this fat guy's life story. It dealt a lot with coming to grips with the problem of being fat. One thing he talked about was how to truly overcome it, you have to accept who you are. I really have a problem with that. I don't see myself as fat as the rest of the world does. Every time I see a full body picture of me, I'm astounded. I can't be that fat, can I? The trouble is, I feel pretty normal. I don't have a baseline to compare myself to, since I've been fat since before I started school. I have to deal with the consequences of it, sure: My back aches if I sleep over 7 hours, my knees ache almost constantly, my ankles make a grinding noise when I walk and need popped constantly, and some times, some times when I'm really lucky, one of the metatarsals in my right foot rebreaks itself. Aside from that I feel just fine.

So now I'm trying to lose weight again. I don't have any goals or expectations. Why not? Simple; with goals and expectations I will have something to strive for, and ultimately fail. That said, I have lost about 5 pounds in the 3ish weeks I've been monitoring my weight this last time. I would not mind if this trend continued. No daily updates. No graphs posted online. Sorry, this is between me and the scale.

LOL, no.

A big thing is not putting myself into situations where I can meet women. None of the ones I know are remotely interested. Some times I want to save money (getting a car soon, I think). Some times I'm too busy*. Some times I really just don't want to go out in public because I know that any attempts to improve my situation will be met with inevitable failure. Its that last one that hurts the most.

I get frustrated easily. Its really hard to watch as women flock to guys I know who definitely aren't as awesome as I am. Braggarts and such. It's even more frustrating when women I know and wouldn't mind hanging out with more decide to spend their time with guys less fantastic than I. Just my invisibility kicking in. I get pissed off about the whole thing.

You know that scene in A Christmas Story where Farkas throws a snowball and hits Ralphie in the glasses? Ralphie snaps and just beats the hell out of the bully once and for all? I feel like that a lot. Trouble is, I don't even have a real bully to pummel with my mittened fists.

The other day a few acquaintances came over. Wish I could call them friends, but we don't really hang out that often. I fed them chili. Normally I wouldn't stand for being simply used for my cooking skills and abandoned like that, however I did happen to have 2 gallons of chili.

I think most of all, I'd like to have someone to go out to eat with at fancy places. There's also a shitload of movies out now that I'd like to see. Oh, sorry to switch gears again like that.

Mo money

Ok, I think I ran out of things to bitch about. I'll return to hastily cobbling together this project for ISU. I can't wait to be done with this. I just need time to relax with out any extra obligations outside of my 9-5. My "too busy" comment earlier is a reference to this; I've been trying to work on this for a long time. I don't play WoW much anymore because I'm "busy", nor do I go out to Southpark Night at Welch Ave Station because I'm "busy". In actuality, I'm sitting at my computer doing anything but coding on this. Dammit.

Women | Weight | Job

Whoops! I seem to have accidentally made just shy of 2 gallons of chili. It just happened. I swear.

Check out the Recipes page for how I did it. (I cut everything in half for the recipe there, so if you follow that recipe, you will end up with about 1 gallon of the best chili ever)

Now for sleep.

Tomorrow (today, actually) I'm going to Des Moines to get new tires and a 4-wheel alignment. Hopefully that will stop the shaking I get on the interstate around 70mph.

I think I'm going to try to post a message to some of my other networking sites when I update my weblog. That'd be cool.

Food | Car

Not much going on.

I've been stabilizing my income more. I moved all my student loan payments to the same date per month so I don't have to make two payments to them, and I moved them to automatic debit so I can't forget and pay them late. Of course, it takes a couple of months for all that to kick in.

I have a big bill to pay off, and aside from that the saving for the car is on schedule. Well, as on schedule as it can be. I'm thinking more and more of actually waiting till January, so I can have more money towards the car. Of course, this is all contingent on my credit union not giving me the cold shoulder. In that case, I will just save up another 16 months and purchase the car outright. Lets hope that doesn't have to happen.

I got my tie rod ends replaced on my current car. I took it in thinking it was a problem with the right front control arm, but the mechanic said those looked fine, but the tie rods were really loose. It was about half the cost of replacing the control arm, so that's good. I would have done it myself, as with other car repairs, except I don't have a garage nor even a solid driveway to work on. I need a new set of tires and a 4-wheel alignment. I can get those done at the same time, and use mom's firestone discount to get some cheap labor. After that my car ought to be pretty good.

My phone battery has been dying very quickly now. I think it might be windows media eating through batteries quickly, so I've been doing some testing to see what's up. A friend is getting me a car charger at Best Buy. What a good friend.

Car | Money

It's my birthday.

Lately I've been trying a new method to control my fatness problem. We'll see how that pans out. I do need to make time to exercise, though. That made me feel really good, though every day I go home meaning to exercise I find an excuse. Monday I got (what I thought was) my DVD burner. Tuesday I was invited to run Mara (a WOW instance) with several good friends. Today, though, I don't plan on exercising. I have plans for dinner (unless they fall through), and then plans for later tonight. Tomorrow would be good, I think.

I still have lots to do for my second job. It's due in 2.5 weeks now. On the plus side, they're pretty pleased with the progress so far. We put the paperwork in to pay me so far. That's cool. I'll be happy to have it over with. I've got plenty of video games, relaxing, and other stuff I want to be able to do guilt-free.

My full-time job is going fine. I've been really busy with work lately since we're getting close to some deadlines. I'm still learning a lot and teaching myself lots of new things like Smarty and a lot about javascript DOM manipulation. I wish I could show you what I've been up to. If you really want to see then go buy a PacketSure and see for yourself.

I had a birthday party last Saturday. It was lots of fun. We had a keg of Leinie's Sunset Wheat. To borrow a Kleinism, it was nummy. Also a keg of 1919 was had. Truth be told, we're still trying to finish that one. Anyhow, we had lots of fun playing Guitar Hero.

Oh, on Friday instead of going out to a movie with a female-type-person as planned, I drove to des moines and helped my Sister move out of her boyfriend's place. I'm happy to help my sister out in anything to the best of my ability. I always try to be a great big brother and to always be there for her. However, I'd have been much happier if it happened on some other day. Oh well.

I've been talking to dealers about the lead time and deposit required to order an 07 magnum. So far the story is, according to the salesman, if I ordered one today it'd probably be 2 months before I got it. That's not terribly bad compared to some manufacturers and some cars. In other news, my credit union is being weird about it. I called and asked them a couple questions about filling out a loan application thing to get pre-approved. Basically, to get pre-approved they want me to have a purchase agreement. However, according to any sane definition of things, that's not pre-approval. That's approval. So until I get clarification I'm sort of stuck in a chicken and egg situation. I don't want to go through the pain in the ass of getting a purchase agreement if they're going to deny the loan. And they're not even going to consider a loan until I get an agreement.

Its at times like this I wish my credit were better so I could use other funding sources. I'm trying to rebuild some good credit. That's tough when I can't even get a loan or anything to rebuild it with. Is the car I want expensive? Sure. However, I can afford it just fine. I have a monthly budget, and I'm sticking to it. In fact, once I start making payments that'll free up lots of money for other things, since right now I'm saving up for the down payment by saving essentially double the car payment will be per month. I could get a smaller loan for some other car, sure. However, I don't see the point of paying all that money for some other car where at the end of the day I really don't want it. I want something nice to show for my effort in college.

Oh yeah:

Beth made me a cake

Car | Women | Money

Ok so my birthday is next wednesday. It'll be my golden birthday. woohoo! or something.

In celebration of that, I'm throwing a party this saturday. It'll be at my place. Depending on how many people let me know they're coming, we might get a keg of something. Either way, there will be free booze, so don't worry about that. (Donations welcome). Probably just getting drunk, playing video games, and whatever else happens.

I'm sure I'll go out on my actual birthday too, but I like to have a party at home too.

Anyhow, if you're reading this and not a total tool, you're invited.

Birthday

I'm finding it hard to stay motivated with work. I love the job, I love the coworkers. I just, I don't know, it's like I just can't keep focused. I can work for short bursts and then get distracted by something. I dunno. How distracted do you have to be to have something wrong with you? Could a pill fix this dumbass behavior? Does my insurance cover it (doubtful!) It's almost like there's a part of me that wants me to fail at everything. I stop myself from doing my job, paying my bills on time, etc. I just get distracted or put things off. Hell, I just don't know.

Lunch was interesting yesterday. I drove to city hall to pay our utilities and my parking fine. Then to GICU to deposit my roommates' rent checks. Then to the post office to buy some stamps. Then home to grab my earphones. Then to Martin Property Management to drop off the rent check. Then back home because I left the check there. Then back to MPM. Then to McD's to grab some lunch to go. Then back to work.

I've been talking to this chick lately. She's pretty cool. Eh, just friendship I suppose. We'll see. I don't really mind whichever version of this is going down. Chatting with her definitely helps pass the time at work, and she's pretty cool to drink with too.

Oh, so I forgot to pay my tickets I got in Omaha, so they issued a warrant. I got a friend in Omaha (Thanks Justin!) to go pay my tickets for me. What an awesome dude. I paypaled him $5 extra anyhow cause that's how I roll.

According to the Iowa Student Loan website my consolidation has gone through. Now I just have to see if it shows up on the dept of ed website this month. I really hope so, since it'll drop my payments by about $300 per month. I owe just shy of $500 this month to the dept of ed. Ouch. Also I saw that my request for a due date move went through quickly. Rather than paying $500 on the 7th, I have to pay by the 21st. Let's hope it goes through by then so I won't even have to pay that :)

So because I found myself with extra money this paycheck, I updated the car savings graph. After double checking all my math, I might transfer more money over to car savings.

Money | Women

[01:02] <daoist> I want to build a gaming PC.
[01:02] <fuck_you_vegan> www.dodge.com/magnum
[01:03] <daoist> You make a good point.

Car | Computer

This update is mainly for Adam: I get paid twice a month, so don't expect my car savings to change more often than that.

Had an unproductive weekend. I meant to unpack some boxes now that the excuse of being short one bookcase is gone. I meant to do my laundry. I meant to do some design work for the website I'm making for ISU.

I did nothing of the sort.

I did, however, go to dangerous curves to give moral and financial support to Stella. I really wanted a private dance from this hot blonde chick who looked a little too familiar, but luckily my hunger got the best of me and we left for WAS before I was out $20 for a bunch of nothing.

WAS was a little busy. Had some new waitress. She was hot but took forever to bring our drinks around.

Walked home and drank some tequila.

Oh, at the last minute on Sunday I did a load of laundry so I could wear clothes to work on Monday. Slick.

I was pretty up yesterday and all of today. Then after work I quickly fell way down.

The steak I had in lieu of my date, however, was delicious.

Women

Today after work I went to Lowe's and got some chain to tie around the tree outside for a tie-out for Amica. It all worked fine, but I think the chain's too heavy for her to carry around. Maybe I'll have to get a rope or something.

I lent my Sister $100 to get her goddamned car fixed. I wish she wouldn't dump money into that piece of shit.

I picked up a tube for my bike tire, so I can get that fixed.

I also put my weight bench back together. Good stuff.

Oh, and washed my bedsheets.

Neither of these girls are particularly interested in me.

Amica | Car | bike | exercise

And then you realize that she's not interested at all, and is simply being nice.

Women

Ok so Tuesday night I started cooking some stuff for a meal on Wednesday. God, i'm starting to get like mom. Anyhow, the plan was to have fajitas and various other tex-mex type foods. I managed to churn out

• Chicken Fajitas (with various toppings)
• refried black beans with queso blanco
• queso blanco
• baked tortilla chips
• guacamole
• Avocado ice cream for dessert

(Most recipes here: Recipes)

It was a great meal and one of my roommates, Beth, helped me eat it. She was impressed, so I guess I did ok. I didn't have any cumin, so I had to fake it a bit. Also I was trying out queso blanco for the first time. It was pretty easy to make, but next time I think I'll try to use lemon juice instead of vinegar to see if that kicks the flavor up a bit.

So then yesterday, Thursday, Beth made sushi. Truth be told, I've never had sushi, but always wanted to try. It was pretty damned good. She got some tuna and some salmon. We made a variety of rolls, way too much to eat. Also she made some crab rangoons (fake crab) and they fried up nicely. All in all, I'm very interested in having sushi again.

When I get home I plan on attempting deep fried sushi. I had the idea myself, but then the internet showed me that it's not a really new idea anyhow. It ought to be fun to try, at least.

Our fridge is packed full of food. Rock the hell on.

This weekend I plan on making some burgers. Hell, I need to get some onion and potatoes while I'm thinking about it.

Food

I'd like to find someone to go to the fair with.

And in other news, I've been pretty frustrated lately with the ladies.

Women | Fair

So I got myself moved into my new place over the weekend. It took all of friday, saturday, and sunday. The big problem was that it was hot as balls out there. However, most of my stuff was still packed up since I had moved back from Omaha only about 6 weeks ago. I was able to move without renting a truck by using my car to transport everything. It took several trips, but the new place is only a couple blocks from the old one anyhow.

My new place is a bit smaller than my old place. We're going to have trouble fitting everything in. When I say "we" I mean "me", since my roommates don't have quite as much crap as I do. We'll work it out.

By the way, my roommates are Beth and Tas, both pretty cool people.

The parking situation is a little fucked up, though. See, our house is on a corner. Attached to it are a couple of dinky apartments. The parking spots are on the other side of the apartments. The landlord has promised all three of us (the house and two apartments) two parking spaces each. Whoops, there's only 4 spots! Goddamnit. Further complicating things, one of the streets by our house allows 4 hour parking only, so it's essentially useless. The other one does alternating-day parking, but there are very few spots, and it will be useless once more people move back to town.

Amica is doing just fine in the new place; she really likes my roommates. And they like her.

I'm still trying to pack crap away as efficiently as possible. I plan on having a shelving unit dedicated to servers in the basement, as well as some storage for computer parts and various crap like that. However, first Talenos will need to get his stuff out of there, since we're letting him temporarily store stuff in our basement.

Beth is currently trying to sort out the kitchen. Last night I got the TV setup and at least the Tivo plugged into it so we can watch prerecorded shows. The cable (and thus the internet) is not on yet.

Amica | Moving | Roommates | Car

Just a quick note before I go to bed. Yesterday (well, I guess 2 days ago, on the 18th) I fixed my car. I replaced the serpentine belt and now finally the squealing has stopped. It's such a joy to drive my car without that constant whine. I just had to brag about it. Also, I got to buy a new tool; a serpentine belt tool. Yeah, I guess it's pretty much a uni-tasker, but to change belts you have to have one or fuck around with some jerry-rigged shit that I simply wasn't interested in.

So anyhow, squealing down. Next up: the front left tire shaking.

Car

Now.

Ok since last we spoke a lot has happened, so pay attention. I will try to go roughly in order to keep things straight.

Car Repair

While still in Omaha I replaced the spark plugs, oil, oil filter, and air filter on my car. I did it all myself, with only a tiny bit of help from a neighbor. He helped physically loosen the oil filter. Then in my next repair attempt I got new brake pads. After removing my front tires I found both shoes to be incredibly rusted and the rotors to be gouged beyond any reasonable limits. Also, I couldn't get the pads off. So I put the tires back on and had a professional do it. A hundred and change later, I had new brakes.

Flash forward: Here, in Ames, yesterday I replaced my squealing alternator belt. Except this time (unlike the last two times) it wasn't the alternator belt. I already own a replacement serpentine belt, looks like I'm going to have to go through the pain in the ass of installing it.

Flash back!

The Move

For the move back I used Budget instead of uHaul. They were about $50 cheaper. My two friends in Omaha, Justin and Sam, each helped me load my truck up. I drove it to Ames and then the plan was to pick my sister up and go back on Saturday to finish cleaning. She backed out, so I went back on Saturday myself and spent all day there cleaning. On Sunday I unloaded the truck, with a little help from Hanna.

All of my stuff is still pretty much packed up. It'll be easier to move again come August.

The Carpet Saga

So when I moved back in my landlord and her husband were here renovating the place. No problem; they thought we were all going to be gone. Anyhow, they had ripped all the carpet out of the living room and dining room, replacing it with a rolled up carpet and a rolled up carpet pad. So I can't put anything in there; carpet installation is imminent. A couple weeks roll by. Finally, on July 3rd, a guy shows up and tacks down the padding and rolls out the carpet. He does not stretch the carpet or tack it down. He'll be back.

It's been a couple more weeks. Wtf, mate?

Oh, also due to the carpet saga, I can't really cook either. I can't set up the kitchen table I have, and I can't really prepare food on the 1.5 square feet of counterspace in the kitchen proper. It's frozen pizzas, tv dinners, pb&j, and eating out for me until I move.

The New Job

Ok, so you've been dying to hear about it. I work for Palisade Systems. We make packet management appliances. It's great; basically nothing like my old job. All of my coworkers are nice. No, really, I'm not just saying that because they might read this. They really are. That's good because there's about 20 of us, give or take, in the entire company. So far in my month I've been there we've had a lot of meetings.

No, its great. See, we're actually designing the software before we start coding it. Pretty amazing, huh? Also, it is a great opportunity for me to learn about the inner workings of our appliances; everyone asks questions (they're so complicated that no one person is 100% how everything works) that I don't feel too stupid to ask questions. Also, they actually take my thoughts into consideration, so I don't feel stupid making suggestions. It truly is a great place to work. Wow. Just wow.

Women

Been rather frustrated with this topic lately.

World of Warcraft

So right now in order to save money for the phenomenal cost of breaking my least / signing up for housing in ames at the same time, I don't have cable TV or internet service. However, the best phone in the world comes through like a champ. I've been using this as my sole internet connection for the past month. I can even play WoW.

Speaking of that, things are still going alright. I've decided to write an AddOn for Wow. See, they provide a way of changing how the interface of the game works via a programming language called Lua and an API. For the non-programmers, an API (Application Programming Interface) is a way to interact with something. The best analogy is that the programming language (Lua) is like English, and the API is like ordering a burger at McDonald's. You can't just show up and wave your arms around and spout gobbledegook; you have to say "I want a cheeseburger", then you have to give them money, then they give you the cheeseburger, then you can eat it. Same with an API, but instead of cheeseburgers, you get the program (in this case, the game) to do something for you.

He Works Hard for the Money

The friday after I left West was payday. Normally I have direct deposit (rock star!) but for some weird reason, West's policy is to always mail a paper check for your last pay period. So after about 3 weeks I started to question where the hell my money was.

See, I had to write 2 post-dated checks to my ex-landlord, and I severely needed that paycheck to cover them.

The story is, after about 3 days of emailing back and forth, that the check was printed and given out for normal distribution. However, Khem, my former manager, went home to Nepal on a family emergency. So my paycheck was probably locked in his desk. The day after I finally got ahold of a real person in payroll (previously I was introduced to every single person at west in payroll who assured me that my problem was not their responsibility before forwarding me onto the next peon), maintenance broke into his desk and my check was in the mail.

Earlier today I recieved 2 important pieces of mail. 1. My paycheck, which contained 2 weeks of pay + 1 week of PTO pay. However, due to the extra week triggering some kind of red flag in the tax withholding compumotron, Uncle Sam took out enough that I only saw an extra hundred bucks or so. No shit? Yeah, no shit. 2. My first check to my ex-landlord, as returned from my bank for NSF. Motherfuck that's embarassing.

Saving for Car

One of the reasons I moved back to Ames was to decrease my cost of living in order to get a car in the near future. I've recalculated my budget and it will happen. However, it'll take me about 4-5 months to actually save up a respectable 10% down payment. I have $0 right now; all my money is going into lease breaking, deposits, etc. I hope to fix this real soon.

The Roommate Situation

As a further measure to decrease my monthly bills, Beth (future roommate) and I have been shopping around for a 3rd roommate. Surprisingly we've had a great response to our pleas. I've narrowed it down to 4 candidates:

• Cool dude from strangetalk, nice guy, but has a backup plan and doesn't really need a place to live.
• A friend of a friend, one of Joel's good friends. He really needs a place to live, and he's totally cool too.
• A hot chick. She's got a boyfriend anyhow. Shouldn't let my dick decide. That's part of how I ended up with the first roommate. (Just kidding Beth, you know that!) No, not really. heh.
• Another dude from strangetalk. Philosopher-type. I dunno about him; my gut instinct is that I don't want my philosophy-peen to be challenged in my own home.

We've also contacted the new landlord about moving in early. Hopefully that's a possibility so I don't have to move in on a monday night / tuesday morning.

Side Job

Not much to tell. I'll be creating a website for a part of the ag department or something like that. It's a windows platform, so I'll be using ASP. Yuck, but at least it's a resume stuffer. And more importantly, it'll pay me a little over 1/3rd my car down payment.

Things I Find Out on the Internet

This thread made me start poking around on the internet looking for stuff. You can read the thread to find my reply, but I'll just cut to the chase:

trisha's pregnant.

Moving | Car | Money | Women | Wow | Job | Trisha

Remember my old phone number, the 515- area code one? Yeah, that's going to be my primary phone number again.

It's going to be hella expensive to get out of here. I will have to pay 2 month's rent extra, plus get utilities back at my old place in ames, and put a deposit on the new place in ames, and, and, and...it's all a big pain in the ass, and very expensive.

I predict being broke for about a month, maybe a month and a half.

I got a job today.

Today my friend Justin from West Corp and I went out to test-drive some cars. We weren't going to buy any; we just wanted to see what we could get away with driving.

Cars Test Drove:

• Dodge Caliber
• Dodge Magnum
• Ridiculously Large GMC Truck
• Porsche Boxster S
• Ford Freestyle
• Ford Focus (hatchback)

Dodge Caliber

I was really looking forward to this. As you all know, I fell in love with the Magnum when it came out. The Caliber promised to be the Magnum Lite: All of the sporty fun and storage space, at 1/2 the cost.

There were plenty of doodads. Lots of nooks, lots of crannies. The flip-out mp3 holder was just the right size for my cell phone. This car was equipped with the pop-cooler in the glove box. Under the hood the engine was so fancy it was covered in a plastic cover. Every user-servicable part (fluid filling, basically) was up top and super easy access. This is perfect for someone who's comfortable changing his or her own fluids but not comfortable tinkering and fixing bigger stuff. In fact, I bet it'd be hard as hell to do anything else under the hood due to the crampedness.

I was really impressed with the car.

And then we went for a test drive.

It has a 2.0L under the hood with a CVT Transmission. Acceleration was very sluggish, often I would floor the accelerator and wait for the engine to rev up and the car to accelerate. The salesperson explained that the weird feeling was due to the CVT not switching gears. However, the spedometer didn't lie.

The Caliber was a total lazy bitch under the hood.

It would be the perfect car to give to my 18 year old daugher who is just graduating from high school: With such a shitty engine there's no way she could get in trouble in it.

Dodge Magnum R/T

I get the feeling I'm going to have to custom order a Magnum SRT8. But hey, an R/T, still with the Hemi engine, gave me a pretty good impression of the car.

There were fewer doodads on the interior than the Caliber, but a few things I liked. There was a power outlet near the liftgate, which was cool. Also there's a small storage area under the floor (between the floor and the spare tire cover) to hide stuff. It'd be fine if you, say, went out and bought a few DVDs or books, and wanted to go get food afterwards. It's hard to explain, but the cover opens up and folds in the middle like this: /\ and there's notches in the side so it'll stand up in two positions to be perfect to hold something against the tailgate. Groceries, for example.

Inside there was ample room. From the outside it looks like a fairly respectable mid-sized station wagon (like a Taurus, only meatier), but somehow it's bigger on the inside. It felt like driving a huge car, like a crown vic. I wasn't cramped by any means, and the spartan interior felt very substantial.

Under the hood (and under the plastic engine cover thing all new cars seem to have) the engine was mighty impressive. It featured the same "up-top" engine maintenance stuff as the Caliber. About the only complaint I had about the car was that it featured the rat-maze style gear shifter. What the fuck's wrong with the simple forward-and-backwards kind?

And then the test drive.

The sales-person warned me to "take it easy on the tires, please". Once traffic permitted, I really opened it up. Hell yeah!

While getting onto the freeway on a particularly tight cloverleaf on-ramp the salesman told me not to hit the gas till halfway up (i'm sure if I'd done so earlier I would have spun us off the damn ramp). So about halfway up I followed his directions and stomped on my new best friend: the pedal.

We were pushed back in our seats. By the top of the ramp we were doing 80. Not that I noticed; the car was quiet and aside from passing all of the cars on the freeway proper, I didn't even notice until I glanced down at spedo.

That car is fucking crazy.

Ridiculously Large GMC Truck

(Note:I think that's the truck. Jesus, it was huge)

We went to a Chevy dealer to look at SUVs. Chevy hasn't made an interesting car in years. So just for fun I asked the salesperson for a truck. Not for work, just for fun. He showed me this huge monstrosity with a 6.something liter diesel and an aftermarket customization job with ridiculous bolt-on wheel flairs and a silly "NASCAR-style" gas cap.

So out on the road, I sat a full two heads higher than other trucks. The engine had plenty of power, of course. The ride was very rough. This would be the perfect truck for someone who works for the DOT: You can feel every bump, every pebble out of place.

I have no idea why rednecks would pay $42,000 for this piece of shit...

Porsche Boxster S

When for $3,000 more you can get a used Porsche. I didn't actually drive this thing, my friend did. Since it's a two-seater I couldn't go along :-(

Ford Freestyle

Go check it out, first: http://www.fordvehicles.com/cars/freestyle/

From the front it looks like a car, but from the back it looks like an explorer. I wasn't sure what to think, but since it's a competitor to the magnum for my station wagon dollar, I went in to a ford dealership to drive one so I could rule it out.

Holy crap, folks.

I know it looks kinda goofy. But if you're looking for an SUV but don't want the huge size, go drive a Freestyle.

The 3rd row seats fold flat amazingly easy, the 2nd row seats fold down too, and flip up for easy access to the 3rd row. From the driver's seat there's a variety of storage space available, including a neat bin up top of the dashboard in that wasted no-man's land in the middle. The top of the car sorta bubbles up towards the back (it looks like some Monster Garage result of welding the front of a car to an explorer back-end), but the result is that the 2nd row seats has amazing headroom. Also amazing leg-room according to my tall friend. The rear seats also have great head-room, but the legroom was a little cramped (not for me, since I'm only 5'5")

I was skeptical of the engine and transmission. All models have a 3.0L V6, incidentally the same size engine as my Taurus Wagon. However, this one gets a bit over 200hp, whereas my taurus gets about 140. This is coupled to a CVT, so I was prepared for heartbreak as I drove it off the lot.

Wow. Fuck Dodge for saddling the Caliber with such a shitty engine. The 3.0L was able to accelerate well (not sports-car well, but better than you'd expect for a wagon or SUV). The car handled very well and was much more nimble than you'd expect from a car it's size. I was extremely impressed. The CVT allowed for a very smooth ride (no jerking around during the gear changes, etc.)

It's times like these I'm glad I have shitty credit. If I had good credit, I'd own a Freestyle right now.

Ford Focus (hatchback)

I wanted to test drive a focus wagon (5-door), but they didn't have any. I drove a 3-door hatchback instead.

The car might as well be a 2-seater. There's almost no room in the back seats. However, there was plenty of space in the back, since it was a hatchback. Honestly I wasn't really paying much attention aside from thinking over and over again "This is way not as cool as the Freestyle".

The little engine did a great job moving the car around. It had plenty of pep and was fun to get on the freeway and off, and did just fine with it.

Summary

I'm definitely torn between the Magnum and Freestyle.

I really want a magnum for the power and total coolness of it. However, the 10 g's price difference between that and the also-cool Freestyle is really tugging at me. The power in the Magnum was scary. No, I don't mean it's got a lot of power, I mean that I was actually frightened by the amount of power under my foot. I'm sure I could get used to it, but dayam. The Freestyle, on the other hand, seems perfectly reasonable. I'm really not sure what to do. I don't really want to buy a "reasonable" car. I want to buy a monster and pretend it's reasonable (see? it's a wagon!). Driving the Freestyle didn't feel like a soccer-mom thing to do, though. If they had different engine sizes of Freestyle so I could at least get the fastest version, I'd probably be sold. It's all still up in the air. I really don't know what to think.

Anyone else interested in SUV space and car handling, go check out a freestyle. Even if you think it looks silly, go test-drive one. You will love it.

Today I am going to go get a job.

Ok, so stuff going on. Last week I was sick a couple of days, so I didn't exercise on Wednesday or Friday. It's not that bad though, since that was week 6 of my 6 week rotation. Today I worked out new One-Rep Maxes (see Exercise for details) and will get going on them this Wednesday. I've lost a few pounds, and the trend is continuing. I'd like to get my daily calorie deficit up to about 400 or so, and then on to 500.

I've updated my resume and have began applying for jobs. I used Monster.com to find some jobs in Omaha, Ames, and Des Moines. I also looked on ISU's career management site. Amy sent me a link to the 100 best companies to work for, so I applied to a couple that piqued my interest.

I got a couple of phone calls and an email yesterday (Monday). One call was from a head-hunter from Primerica (pyramid scheme insurance) who I assume found my updated resume on Monster.com. The other was from a head-hunter I mistakenly applied to because of their expert obfuscation in the job listing. Finally, I got an email from a company I actually applied for...and he wants to interview me. Woohoo!

To wit:

• My manager is now suggesting 12 hour work days to get a redesigned report ready for our client this week.
• My efforts last week, even staying 2 1/2 hours late one day, to get the bugs fixed in the report done on time went unnoticed.
• My efforts to duplicate the report functionality to cover both applications and a combined form went almost unnoticed.
• The quality of software work of my predecessor and coworkers leaves much to be desired.
• My enlightened coworkers and I are not allowed to fix obvious problems in the software.
• I make just enough money to pay my bills. I will not be able to save any money, buy a car, or buy a house once my student loan payments kick in.
• Gloria Cain, my friendly neighborhood Com Sci advisor, has published the statistics for graduating seniors this semester and I fall well below the average.
• I really want a new car.
• If I were making the average Com Sci graduating salary, the difference in pay each month would be enough to cover the car payments on a new car. Say, for instance, a 2006 Dodge Magnum SRT8 with a 6.1 Liter HEMI v8 pushing 425hp, sun roof and side curtain airbags. Just for instance, ya know.

It's not that I'm hiding anything, it's just that not much is going on. Really.

Last weekend I bought a TV stand and a shelf for my various TV crap. If you were ever to my house in Ames you'll recognize them as the same ones Nate has. Well, the TV stand isn't exactly the same; it's got one drawer in the middle instead of 2. Here is the audio "pier" and the TV credenza.

Next weekend I'll be going to Des Moines. Blaine's got the weekend off and Sunday is mother's day.

Work is pretty hectic lately. My various bosses have promised our client some new reports very quickly. I've had plenty to do lately. I'm not happy about it, and neither is my boss James. No, no, he's not mad at me. He's mad at his boss and the client services people. Decent guy, James.

Anyhow, here's a Recipes page so I can stop searching on food network.

For work i've been getting caught up in our next major code release this weekend. I had a lot of bugs to fix in the reporting software before everything goes live this Monday. I'm working on some cool things to streamline things too; I'm given some freedom to fix things as I see fit, as long as I get other required stuff done too, of course.

I've finally had some time (and the inclination) to implement forum-sharing on the mtgmidwest.com sister sites. Now I can share some forums between the sites, as well as keeping some forums specific to one site only (check out mtgiowa and mtgillinois for examples)

I think it's time for a page on things I can do without.

For a couple weeks I played WoW quite constantly. I've restarted my exercise regimen and weight tracking.

I have gotten my second bedroom set up as a weight room. Well, the weight bench commands the bulk of the space, and a wall is comprised of my MTG armiore and some bookshelves. Most of my boxes are stuffed in the closet. I plan to unpack one or two a week, on tuesdays and thursdays.

I think I told you all about my cool new cell phone, right? Ok, I think so.

This weekend I went home for Easter. Note that I haven't gone all religious. It's just that my mom uses any holiday as an excuse for a bigass dinner. Given a floating holiday from work, I chose to use it for Monday.

Friday I got word from Blaine that he was having a baby. That day. He wanted to know if I'd go work at his Store. Hell no! I tried leaving work early, but due to the workload, I had to close some bugs before I left. Bugs that were opened that day. Grumble grumble. I ended up leaving around 4:30. I packed quickly and got to des moines about 6:30, then went to the hospital to see Blaine, Cecilia, and their daughter. Everything was cool there.

I headed up to ames and picked up a 32 inch TV from a classified ad and a 100 foot run of ethernet from Markk. I stayed the night and woke up around 3pm then did my laundry and headed to Des Moines.

Sunday I was awoken by Blaine asking me to go in and help him during his lunch rush. I agreed but his rush was pretty light so I left around 1. My sister organized an easter egg hunt for her friends and their families, so we went out to Easter Lake for a cookout and various easter stuff.

After that I hung out at my mom's house and played WoW via my cell phone's internet connection. Yeah, cool, huh? Then had a great dinner. I decided to go back to Omaha Sunday night to have all of Monday to myself.

Monday I did nothing. I woke up, showered, watched TV, took a couple of naps, ate, and went to bed. It was truly a great day.

I've decided that in order to have more spending money, I need a live-in girlfriend to help pay the rent.

In order to help my sleeplessness I've bought some Tylenol PM, since I couldn't find any actual sleeping pills at the store when I looked. Are they locked up behind the counter or something? Anyhow, they seem to help, a little. They're not powerful enough to make me sleepy, but if I'm a little sleepy they help push me over the edge.

I arrived to work to find a bit of a present. It's my week to be on-call. So that means I have to carry a pager, extra cell phone, laptop, binder, and a big laptop bag to carry it all in. I could go to Des Moines this weekend, but since it's the first time I've had the pager, I decided going 2 hours away might not be a great idea. Well, also today was friday so it was doughnut day. Oh! also also, there was a pot luck, so I pigged out.

Also, it gives me a chance to unpack, clean, and play with my new toys.

New Toys?

Yeah. I grabbed World of Warcraft and a new optical mouse on my lunch break. I wasn't hungry because of the snacking earlier, in fact I went to lunch at 1:15. We got out of work at about 3:15 due to the holiday and lack of ability to do any work because everyone left early anyhow.

I stopped into the Sprint Store down the street and picked up an expensive toy; the Sprint PPC-6700. I talked to the sales-person about getting the $150 new account discount even though I am an existing customer. He added a second line to my account which qualifies me for the $150 discount. Then he waived the activation fee, and also put in a credit equal to the cost of my first account's bill for the next couple months, until I can cancel the account without the early termination fee. So I did get the discount. Cool. Still pretty goddamned expensive.

I can ssh into my servers from my cell phone. From my cell phone.

Let's see, a bunch of little stuff has happened.

I still haven't unpacked a lot. Here's how my usual day goes:

Wake up between 6:30-7. Shower, eat some cereal, dress, take the dog out. Go to work. Work till 5. Take the dog out. Watch TV and catch up with the intarweb, take the dog out. make dinner, eat. Take the dog out. Go to bed.

There's time in there to unpack, but I fail to find the motivation.

So I hung out with that girl from my childhood. I guess I'm just not very impressive in real life. We haven't really talked since. Oh well. No big thing, I suppose.

Work is still going alright.

Ok, so we made an IVR for a client, a major medical healthcare type company, and it gets about 100-120k calls a day. So it's pretty big and complicated. We have to provide reports for the client. Basically, how many calls we took, how many were clients, how many were providers, what sort of things they did on the calls, that sort of stuff. The way we get these reports is by having programs, written in perl go through the logfiles generated by the IVR and pick stuff out. That is then stored in several different places to be used for different reports and such. We have a script that generates an excel spreadsheet (via perl no less) and emails it to the clients. It's all pretty slick, aside from some questionable coding I noticed, but I'll fix all that eventually.

So Chris, the guy who is in charge of reporting, is going to a different team. Let's see, who else on the team knows perl and is pretty good at it? Yeah, I'm in charge of reporting as of the 20th. Scratch that, Chris took yesterday and today off, so now. My first act as the "reports guy" was adding a couple email addresses for people at our client to recieve the daily reports.

I've also been working on a centralized way to say which reports go to which people. Currently each script controls who recieves teh email it generates. So to change the recipients for a script, you have to go find the script, find the variable, and add the person, and hope to god you didn't cause a syntax error. I've created an include script with a few common functions (logging, a die() wrapper, that sort of stuff) and added a function that will read a common file and using the name of the program determine who to email stuff out to. So the idea is that I just have a text file somewhere with the name of each program and who recieves teh email. It ignores comments and such too. So since this file isn't a program, it can be edited by anyone with little chance of it breaking big stuff. Now I just have to modify the scripts to actually use it.

Also I've been (slowly) creating a catalog of what each script does, what files it needs, what files it creates, etc. It will be not only handy for myself (who has to control everything) but also just a good idea to finally have around.

I also plan on auditing the scripts. I've already seen lots of goofy stuff (whoever wrote half of these scripts was not comfortable with perl). Here's an example:

$STRINGY = "$VAR1,$VAR2,$VAR3,$VAR4";
@FIELDS = split(/,/ , $STRINGY);
somefunc(@FIELDS);

So first we've got a costly conversion to string, and a concatenation into a string. Then another costly operation to split it up by commas, then the function. This could be rewritten as:

somefunc($VAR1,$VAR2,$VAR3,$VAR4);

To save a hell of a lot of time and effort.

Also note the capitalized variable names. Ugly as sin.

Last weekend Blaine came over to Omaha to visit. He showed up Friday and we played 5-Color then got up early Saturday to go to a Magic ptq. It was sealed-deck, so I didn't need to own any of the new cards. Over all I did a little bit better than breaking even in terms of the cards I got versus what I paid to get into the tournament. I also picked up a couple boxes of an older set that was ridiculously cheap.

This weekend I'm going back to des moines / ames to give my mom some of the money I owe her and try to get more of my stuff out of my place. Also I will be grabbing my server and bringing it here to Omaha.

My server was down for a few days because something got bumped with it or something, and everyone in Ames was gone for spring break. Sorry about that. This is why the server's coming with me; when it breaks I can fix it quicker.

A few days ago I went and bought new earphones for my mp3 player, so now i can rock out to music at work. It has increased my productivity. No, really.

Oh, I did get my tax refund, so that's good. And today is payday. Alright then.

I really need a girlfriend. No, not why you think. I've gotten a pretty bad case of bacne lately :-/ Need some help. Ok, and that other stuff too.

I plan on buying world of warcraft this weekend. Almost everyone plays it, and a couple of people here in Omaha do too. So it's not like it'd be a 100% excuse to never go outside and do anything or meet people (I am perfectly capable of doing that already) because I'll be playing with a couple people from Omaha anyhow. Or I'll hate it and just not renew my subscription.

I'd really like to go back to school, to law school. I keep waiting for this mythical "when I have money", but let me tell you, bills fucking suck. If I have to have a job to make money, then hopefully I'll at least have one that pays me $ridiculous.

Stay in school as long as you can.

If you have someone special, hold on ot them tight tonight.

This weekend I'm going to Des Moines to pick up my McPaycheck (probably my last one, I think) and my State of Iowa refund, which my mom called and told me has arrived. Thank goodness for that at least. I can pay off my delinquent student loan stuff and pay mom some money, and have some to live on for a week. Kinda.

Even though my rent for March is free at the new place, I still have to leave a check for my old place. Dammit.

About a week ago a girl I used to know contacted me again. It's weird, I don't really remember much but I do know I used to know her. It's really weird that even though we haven't been in contact for about 13 years, half our lives (she's 2 days younger than me), we have a lot in common. Weird stuff.

Oh, by the way: I got a 162 on the LSAT.

Day negative 1

I packed all friday night, finally getting done around 1:30 or 2am. After my planned nap until 7, I slept in all the way till 11. I called Yulia at the apartment office to tell her I'd be late. That'd be fine, as long as I arrive before 4pm.

The travel went without incident. It felt kinda cool to be driving a big truck again. Upon arrival, I signed all the papers and wrote a check for $510 to cover the pro-rated February rent and the pet fee.

I finally started unpacking around 4pm. I met 2 of my neighbors. Each building in this apartment village has 4 apartments, 2 upstairs and 2 downstairs. Mine is upstairs. The other apartment upstairs belongs to Patrick, a laid-back 30-something black dude and his woman of some sort, and a couple kids. Downstairs is a rather muscular dude I think named Chris, and his wife and kids. There's another apartment down there but I don't think I saw the inhabitants yet. I took a break from unpacking to have a beer with Patrick. He's alright by me!

I unpacked the whole truck myself, obviously. Writing this 2 days later I am still sore. Highlights include moving the armiore upstairs. Interestingly, the easiest way to move it up the flight of stairs was to flip it end-over-end up the stairs, since trying to push it I had to push the entire weight up, but flipping it I could use small bursts of strength. I had about 40 fryboxes I unloaded and took upstairs, one by one. It took until about 1am to get everything into the house.

Awaiting me in my apartment was a gift basket with junk food. I ate that for dinner.

Day 0

Luckily the lights are already on, because I couldn't afford it otherwise. I don't have cable TV or internet access (so I'm writing this now and will upload it later), because I can't afford to have it turned on. Anyhow, I slept in until about 5pm, then rabidly drove the uHaul back to drop it off, after-hours. I hope to hell they don't charge me for another day, though I fear they will. My muscles very sore, and my ability to walk a minimum, I puttered around the apartment unpacking a few boxes. I hooked my tivo and television up so at least I can watch the shows my 280-hour tivo has stored.

I was going to go home to borrow some money from mom, but after talking to her and deciding that it'd be a waste of time and money since she can deposit the money directly into my account at Firestone Credit Union I stayed home.

Having no food, I did not eat on Sunday.

I went to bed at 12:30 with an alarm set for 6:30.

Day 1

I woke up and jumped out of bed. I jumped into the shower stall in the master 1/2 bath. I haven't mentioned it yet, but this apartment has amazing water pressure and plumbing. The shower has enough pressure to blast the dirt off without soap at all (not that I don't use soap), and the toilet uses enough water per flush to drown Poseidon himself.

I went to the West Employment Office and had an orientation. At about 11 I went to my building as directed by my boss to go to lunch with him. After getting a little tour of my department I waited for my boss and he took me to a chinese buffet. It was pretty nice. Maybe a little better than King Buffet. After that I came home to Amica out of the crate and go for a little walk.

I picked up the mailbox key from the office and found out that they've already got someone scheduled to look at the noisy exhaust fan in my bathroom. Wow. I went to the Try N' Save, err, Bag 'N Save to get some food. 10 (ten) packages of ramen (including lime shrimp and spicy lime shrimp), 1 bag of sugar, 1 box of tea bags, and 1 bag of generic cereal later, I am $11.66 poorer. Today I also got $8 in gas, bringing me down to $9.59 to live on until the weekend. I plan on charging the gas needed to get back to Des Moines and depositing the McPaycheck to pay it back before it hits my account.

I didn't bring a cup to drink tea in, or a little pot to cook ramen in. I will have to make due with what I have. This will be interesting.

Here is a list of facts about Omaha.

Ok, back to unpacking.

Hey cool, my Mom called me to see what was up with my first day. She also told me she gave me an extra hundred dollars. This is cool, I can afford gas and real food now, sorta.

Day 2

The power was out at work from 11-11:45. That was kinda fun. Right after that we had a lunch meeting, which was great since they provided food and I'm broke. I got really tired at home and went to sleep at like 9:30.

Day 3

I have finally started learning a bit about our client, project, and how we do things. As an experiment I left Amica out of the crate while I was at work. That experiment is an unequivocated failure. I finally got through to the IRS and they said they'd send my refund check out this Friday. Oh fuck.

I owe about $300 on my oldest Partnership Loan because there's no grace period and apparently it went into repayment while I was in school, but I didn't notice. So if I don't pay up before March 3rd they will accelerate all of my Partnership loans. shiiiiiit.

I get paid this Friday from McDonald's, and I was planning on paying that back to Mom. I'll have to use 300 of it to pay partnership loan and hopefully can give $100 to mom or something. Jesus I'm so fucked for a few weeks.

Just kidding.

In other news, I totally fucked up my taxes. I somehow got the wrong bank routing number into turbotax. If the routing/bank account number don't actually point anywhere, the IRS will cut me a check automatically, which can take 3-4 weeks to arrive. Now, is that 3-4 weeks after I file, or 3-4 weeks after they try to deposit the money? I'm hoping for the former, but fear it's the latter. I was counting on that money to finance my move. As-is, I have paid for the security deposit and can afford to pay for the truck. I can't pay rent or the pet deposit, or buy any clothes for work, and I'll have less than $100 to live on until I get paid. I hope I can borrow like $500 from my mom or something. If not, I don't know what the fuck I can do. Maybe a payday loan or something? Fuck.

Oh shit, almost forgot: SHAMROCK SHAKE IS BACK!

Ally had been planning this for a while, and with news that I was leaving, was worried that I might not attend. Not so! Free steak is good enough for me to leave the house. We went to Rube's Steakhouse, it was ok. I wouldn't go there again, but free tastes pretty good.

After the outing Blaine and I were in the mood for dessert, and my car was parked at our McDonald's anyhow, so we went in. Besides, I'd get a chance to check out that chick again.

The place was a mess. There was crap all over the floors, grill was out of nearly everything, and they ran the shake machine out of both mix and syrup. Basically, the shit was ba-na-nas. So Blaine and I started helping out. Grill had about 8 orders on screen, and there were a few people in lobby who hadn't been helped yet. We got things stabilized; I helped out up front and Blaine helped the chick in grill. Then as I was checking the shake machine out, I heard the back door alarm go off.

It's very loud. It's all the way back in the store, and it is still plainly audible rather loudly on front counter. It just drones on and on at the same frequency until it's deactivated. So I look up and say to Blaine, "You know what that sound is, right?"

"Yep"

I run to the back to check out the door. By the way, no sign of this manager. I figure maybe she went to the back and got pissed off and hit the door, or pushed the garbage bin into it or something. She's not in the back room. She's not in the break room, the back stock room, the cooler, or the freezer. Shit.

I go back up front to let Blaine know. Well shit. He doesn't have his keys, and I don't have mine, so there's no way to turn the alarm off! Going into the office to maybe try shutting all the circuit breakers off, I see my keys sitting on the counter. Thank god! And I shut the alarm off.

Blaine calls Ally to tell her what's up. Ally agrees to let us close 1 hour early. Big whoop. So Blaine and I are running the store with one of our worthless employees and a dude from the Waukee store (also brought in because of short-handedness). After an hour or so I try calling Mike to see if he'll come in to close for me, since I planned on going to Ames. Blaine decided that I could leave at 11pm (when lobby closed) as long as the kid from Waukee knew how to close a grill. He did, so I did.

I went to Wal Mart to get some packing tape, a couple big markers to label boxes, and a new collar for Amica, then went to Blaine's house to get some stuff I needed for Ames. While there, Blaine called me. He couldn't find some money.

Oooooooh shit.

Ohhhhhhh yeah!

My mind raced. That fucking bitch robbed us! Not only will we be able to get her irresponsible ass fired, but arrested too! Unfortunately he called back a few minutes later, money located. Damn.

I took the LSAT and I feel like I did really well on it.

I work a total of 4 more times at McDonald's. I have Sunday off, Tuesday-Thursday off, and then the weekend off. I will visit Omaha on Tuesday to check out apartments and hopefully pick one out and get the paperwork done/started on that. The bulk of the time will be spent packing and moving.

I have Sunday off to go to Jess Riedl's birthday party, so I will hopefully get to Ames early enough to do some packing.

Ideally I will not have to do any official moving Saturday or Sunday of next week, and can instead do some unpacking. I hope my friends will be able to help me move during the week, but I doubt it. I might have to move on Saturday.

It won't be so bad; I just have to get some vitals to Omaha; enough to last a week. I will get a moving truck, so everything too big for my car will go over first, as well as anything else I can cram into the truck. I can come get other shit on the weekends until I've got all my shit in Omaha.

Lately I've been getting super bad tension headaches. I really need a neck massage. Bad.

Now I need to:

• Move to Omaha.

Shit, what have I done?

Tomorrow is a big McThing, the SIO Verification, wherein a bunch of managers come visit my store while I'm working, pick the place apart, and conclude that I've failed and am a shitty manager. Really, no one passes these things. Well, I want to. Not because I really care about my McFuture, but just as a point of pride.

After getting a grand total of 2 hours of sleep last night and working all day, I'm super duper tired. After my new uniform is done washing, I'll toss it in the dryer, get a shower, then go to bed.

In other news, I got called back by West Corp but didn't answer my phone due to being passed out at the time. I will have to call them back tomorrow to hear the news. I'm sure it's good news; if they didn't want me at all they would have just left a message. Part of me wants them to offer a boatload of cash so I can get out there, get working, and finally not feel like a failure. Part of me wants them to offer something tiny and insulting so I can avoid going through the hassle of moving to Omaha. I really want to hear back from Iowa Bankers soon too.

This friday and saturday I will be in Ames. The LSAT is on saturday. After that there will be much drinking.

Ok kids, class is over for today. Next time we'll cover tattoo placement and social pressures. In other words, the lower-back cum-target.

The day of the interview I woke up late. I went downstairs to put my clothes into the dryer, since I washed them the night before. Blaine's washer didn't empty out. Crap. So I had to pick out different clothes to wear. Aside from the comedy of errors, I still feel as though the interview went well. They plan on hiring someone soon, and it was basically between myself and one other person.

I tried doing my taxes online. Turbotax doesn't have all their stuff updated or something; it kept telling me that the IRS hasn't finalized some deductions or something. Weird. I didn't plan on finishing it soon anyhow, I still need to grab my W2 from the USDA in Ames.

So I petitioned to join the beta for Dungeons & Dragons Online, and I noticed that the chances of getting accepted increase if you are a member of their forum, so I joined that too. They use vbulletin, which the Tilted Forum Project uses, so that brought me back to that site. Naturally my inquisitivity got the best of me, so I logged in and did a couple of quick searches.

In a couple of threads in their porn section about some pics shot in Jamaica, Tim was bragging about having pics of his wife shot in the same places. It just hurts to see that. I did it to myself. Didn't have to go looking.

Hopefully soon I'll have some of my own to mention.

Oh, the wind was killer on the way there and back. I got a couple calls. One was from a headhunter which wanted an embedded programmer for a place in Marshalltown, and one was from Joel. Joel said that ISU's vet med college called him for a reference. From what he described, their talk went well. The Vet Med job doesn't pay much (they advertise a minimum of 31, but looking on isu's pay scale info page it shows a max of something like 38 for that position) so yuck.

So the other day Ally sat me down at McD's for an RDT. I told her I didn't have any plans to stay with McD's, and she was dissappointed. Her point was that with a degree I could go further in McDonald's than she could; I could be more than just a store manager. That's all well and good, but I bet I could do that anyhow without trying to move up from within the company.

To wit, I have applied at McDonald's Corporate being a regional support guy thingie. Sure, whatever, we'll see how that works.

I have decided to express salary offers in terms of SMUs.

Oh, here's a couple things I wanted to talk about:

• McRecipes
• How to be a shitty McDonald's customer

Degrees Conferred
  B.S.   LIBERAL ARTS & SCIENCES
         12-17-2005
         MAJORS: COMPUTER SCIENCE
         AND PHILOSOPHY

Glad that's over. Next up: finding a job. I have a real interview with West Corp in Omaha next tuesday. Let's see how that goes.

You'd think a conversation that begins with "I want to sublease your rooms." would end with a subleaser. But no. Of course not. Oh, and you dumbass, I'm crashing on my friend's couch because I haven't moved a bed in, because I don't have a subleaser yet. So no, that's not a good point.

I am just resigned to the fact that I'm stuck with this $350/month turd until July.

Freelance unfucking

Drew has been out of town and will be out of town until the 22nd. Until then, I'm handling his computer repair business. So saturday night I closed, but on saturdays the store is open until 1am, so we got done at 2:30am.

Sunday my first appointment was 7:00am; a sunday-school teacher whose computer wouldn't boot. He needed to get his lessons or something like that to print out. I actually managed to get there on time and get the machine working with some massaging via chkdsk in recovery console. He tipped me well, which was good, because I was going on no sleep at all.

From there I went to diagnose a printer problem and check out a non-booting computer for an elderly couple who smoke; which is why their printer was going to hell. The non-booting computer has a dead PSU. I should be able to fix that in Ames.

After that I went to try to repair a lady's internet access. Her wireless would just drop out at random times. I found that there was a WPA password set, and the admin password for the router was set up too. So I settled for moving the router closer to where she was using her computer to minimize interference. Later I found that this didn't solve the problem. I went back to fix it this morning, free of charge, and I think it's the same netgear router I had so many problems with, the 614 or something like that. I reconnected her laptop via ethernet to the cable modem. Drew will have to solve that little mess later.

I have an appointment on thursday to install wireless internet, and who knows what else.

Jobbity jizzob?

I have been in contact with West Corporation about a phone interview on thursday. I got some emails from my Com Sci advisor saying that an ISU alumnus, Justin Emgarten (famous for amesbeat) would be at the career fair. The name was familiar, so I looked him up on facebook and found out the facebook connection. Also, he was in some of my classes. I got his AIM name and chatted with him for a while to learn a bit about West Corp. From what he said it sounds rather fun to work there. He even sent an email recommending me to the HR people. Woohoo! I'm very positive about this lead, even though it's in Omaha. Omaha isn't that far away anyhow, and real money in Omaha is better than McMoney in Des Moines, right?

Poo

In other news, I picked up a crate for my dog, since she's been sorely needing it for a few months. I also picked up Battlestar Galactica season 1 on DVD. w00t for director's commentary.

With 3 days off, I plan on going to Ames tomorrow to get some stuff done for picdump, a PSU for this dead computer, pay some bills, and collect my mail.

Part of the reason I went the wiki-way with bbp.com was so that I could write on topics outside of the normal flow of blogging (time/date).

So here we go: McDonald's

But anyhow, back to your regularly-scheduled blog entry. I took the job at Jordan Creek because Blaine needed help on night-side. (As an aside, every McDonald's everywhere needs help on nightside) So that was fine my first week; I just worked the exact same hours as Blaine. Then when the January schedule came out I found, to my horror, that Ally had scheduled me primarily daysides.

So my problem is this: I want to apply for jobs. In fact, I have already applied for several. Now that the holiday season is over, many of these places are picking up the big stack of resumes they recieved in december, dusting them off, and calling applicants. For the past couple of days my phone has been ringing off of the hook! Wait, that's bad; I'm at work when they call. I. Can't. Answer.

To top it off, Ally has been wanting to sit down and talk to me about my future at McD's. (Did I mention this before? Maybe, but she hasn't talked to me since then, so it's next week some time, maybe.) I hope she got the message when I was hired that this 40 hours a week thing is temporary. I don't really want to accidentally insult her or anything; she's very nice. However, the fact remains that for me, McDonald's is no longer a real job; it's something I'm doing until I can get a job more closely related to my degree. Oh sure, I'll stick around and work a day a week on the weekends if I get a local job, just because it's fun, but that (if even that) would be the extent of it.

I was going to post some McStories but I figure I should just make a whole different page for those. There. Ok, it's a category. How about the tale of the Insistant Thieves, for starters.

So after coming back to Ames I found myself checking up on my websites and read metafilter for a while. Here's a few links I found browsing at random. No, not related. Not at all.

If/when I get married, I hope to find a girl who isn't going to insist on getting a diamond. Just look at how many women act when a friend gets engaged. It's all about the diamond ring. Fuck that. Maybe I should give her a big phatty fat fat rock of a ring, then secretly follow her around. As soon as she goes nuts with her friends about the ring, I pop out of the bushes. GOTCHA BITCH!, grab the ring, punch her in the tits, and run away a free man. I'll have to think about that more; maybe revise that plan (slightly).

Drew is going to hook me up with some referral work while he's out of town next week. That ought to be fun, but I worry about fitting it in around work. Hopefully it works out to the benefit of everyone; me, drew, and the clients.

Oh shit, I just realized what I was talking about in those paragraphs. Rest assured, ye of upstanding morals: The clients I was talking about are computer repair clients. Though getting a few of the other kind of client would be interesting to say the least.

So I got a logo made, a favicon too, and got the fancy URLs setup for bbp.com. Last night I also reconciled my checkbook via quicken and sorted through a big stack of papers and shit. So it was rather productive. The bad news is that I stayed up all night doing so. I'm starting to really like mediawiki for bellybuttonporn. Well, I always liked it, but the more I use it for blogging, the more I like the potential.

Still thinking of how to get stuff to crosspost. Going to have to put that on my long-range todo list.

A couple weeks ago I got the brilliant idea to transform bellybuttonporn.com into a wiki. So with some help from http://jrandomhacker.info/MediaWiki_as_a_weblog I decided to take the plunge.

Good points:

• Editing via mediawiki syntax. I love the syntax that wikis use. Markdown, on the other hand, blows ass.
• Nonlinear articles. A lot of what's in my head doesn't fit categorized nicely into day, month, and years. Sometimes I want to write an article on a topic or just gather random stuff together. Mediawiki allows that as a matter of course, movable type does not.

Bad points:

• No crossposting to crazylife, yet. I'm probably going to have to do somthing complicated to get that done, I think.