Magnum

Leaving work one friday at the beginning of November, I was a bit excited and lit 'em up. I thought I was about 10 feet to the right of the giant dip created by a storm drain in the center, but I was right on top of it. Total retardation.

I heard what I can only describe as the sound of a ton of bricks falling out the back end of my car and coasted to a stop. I figured I just hit the dip and the wheels hopped off the ground, and that was it. I looked down and noticed the transmission was in neutral. Ahhh, that explains the coasting. I put it into gear and hear a slow and steady sound of metal grinding.

Freaking out that I tore a damn wheel off or something, I jumped out and checked out the back end of my car. My expert math skills deduced that there were 1+1=2 wheels on the back, so I poked my head under and couldn't see any damage. Of course, it was getting dark and the underside of my car wasn't any brighter.

Where did the gate go?

Nicer interior

Dorky antenna.

The dash was familiar. There's a weird new cruise control stalk.

Crappy radio, but at least an AUX port.

I swallowed my pride, opened my glovebox and got the towing assistance card out. I called up Chrysler and played dumb. They sent out a flatbed truck for my car (it's low enough that towing with a standard rig is guaranteed to destroy the front or rear fascia). Decker's sent a standard truck. Luckily he had dollies with him.

We had some fun getting my car hooked. He'd back the grabber bar up to touch my front wheels aaaaaaand it'd roll back a foot. Yep: no drivetrain means no Park gear. I got in and held the brakes while he hooked up.

He towed my car over to Benson's, which was the closest dodge dealer. A couple of my friends picked me up and we went to dinner to cool off after the incident.

The next morning I called up and the news was that I snapped a half axle like a twig. It'd take about a week to get one from Chrysler. How in the hell can I get a hard drive from singapore in 4 days, but a chunk of metal from detroit takes a week?

I inquire about a loaner since I was sorta boned. Well, the news was, Benson's doesn't do loaners. They do, however, have a deal with Enterprise whereby I can get a rental car (has to be a chrysler product) as close to my car as possible from their on-hand inventory.

I pout a little and ask what they reserved for me, remembering rows of bright gleaming PT Cruisers parked out front every time I drive by.

"Hmm..." he says, "looks like they have a Charger on hand. It's an '08. That gonna work?"

Yeah, I think so.

I went to pick it up. It had about 200 miles on it and smelled like new car. As a rental it was the lowest trim-level and a V6 (don't know if it was the bigger or smaller V6, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and guess bigger). Despite the bottom-of-the-line trim level, the '08s have an upgraded interior and I was jealous. This thing had soft armrests and a few other refinements that my car (top trim level 07) lacked. Aside from that and the strange not-a-key-keyfob it was so similar to my car that often I'd hit the gas expecting it to be there, only to be reminded that it was, indeed, not.

I drove the charger around for about a week. Sadly, I notice dudes checking out the magnum. Chicks check out the charger. C'mon, groceries!

They get the half axle, put it in, and make sure the transmission isn't also hosed. Everything appears good and I pick my car back up. I missed my CDs, but damn the aux jack was handy on the charger.

As I was waiting for the paperwork to finish up I wandered into the sales floor. A manager tracked me down and frantically tried getting me to sign the papers for the repair. I was pretty cautious because I was short on money and I wanted to be sure of exactly how much they were going to charge me for this learning experience.

I checked the papers over and over while he watched. "Just sign on the bottom, sir."

Diagnostic. Parts. Labor.

Total ?

"I can't find on here how much this costs, am I signing for any money?" He gave me the best "What the hell are you smoking?" look I've ever seen.

"No, sir, everything's covered under the warranty."

Magnum

Okay Atheists, now's the time for the big question: Christmas or not?

First, let me dispel one silly notion often propagated during the holiday season. Folks, there is no "War on Christmas". There just isn't. There's no big Atheist conspiracy trying to remove your holiday from you and stamp out the good times like a heathen, hellbound, Scroogy, Adolf Grinchler.

The fact is, Christmas gets bigger and bigger every year. More and more spending is done every season to placate the consumerist fallacy that presents = love. When was the last time you saw thanksgiving decorations? Yeah, exactly.

Christmas ceased being about December 25th and now takes up a good 2/12ths of our calendar, with no signs of abating. Hy Vee started staging their christmas candy and other seasonal items a week or so before Halloween, and I'm sure they're no exception. The silliness grows.

So, what are we, dyed in the black-sheep wool atheists, to do? On the one hand we hate God, Jesus, sunny days, and kittens. On the other hand, our families might be a little upset if we don't participate in their consumer-driven pagan-borrowed not-actually-religious traditions.

The standard atheist screed against Christmas goes as such:

We shouldn't participate in Christmas because it's a Christian holiday. Christians constantly try to force it into the public square by many means. Some of them are innocent enough; wishing everyone "Merry Christmas" regardless of their beliefs. Some are an insidious co-optation of public funds for sectarian purposes; public displays of blatantly Christian nativity scenes. Most are in-between; the over-abundance of Christmas decoration in our neighborhoods, work, and commercial areas. At the very least, Christians beat their religious holiday into everyone at every turn.

So there's plenty to be mad about. So this war on Christmas business? Still, not happening. Arguing that you should tone it the hell down isn't the same as trying to take your holiday away. We just wish you'd simmah dahn nah.

Merry Christmas

With that introduction out of the way, let's get this War on Christmas started in earnest, shall we?

Why do we fault Christians for saying "Merry Christmas"? I don't understand it. It's their holiday, and they have freedom of speech. Why get huffy about it, and why only about Christmas? If a Christian says "God bless you!" when you sneeze, do you get bent out of shape? No? Why not?

Now, suppose a Muslim says "God is great!", do we fault him for not saying "God is great, Jesus is great too, and no god at all is also great!" Obviously we don't fault the religious for expressing an honest thought they have. So why isn't "Merry Christmas" the same?

It sure as hell should be. If a Christian tells me "Merry Christmas" it's because she wants me to have a merry Christmas. Nothing more or less. That's not so bad at all. People can say what they want.

There's something to be said about being exclusionary. "Merry Christmas" excludes non-christians. Well, you might have a point that I can't readily address right now. However, as I was getting at in the previous few paragraphs, people say religious things all the time without us taking them as exclusionary. If "Praise be to Allah!" isn't exclusionary (I don't think it is), then why is "Merry Christmas!"? I don't see it, the mere phrase used as a season's greeting, as exclusionary.

Finally, and I think this might just be an aesthetic thing, I'm offended at these ridiculous multi-phrased "inclusive" cards. I find them more exclusive than anything. When someone sends a card that says "Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, and Happy Solstice!" it doesn't mean that they actually want you to have a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, joyous Kwanzaa, and a happy solstice all at once.

That'd be patently ridiculous! Only if you were a Jewish Christian African (I really have no idea wtf Kwanzaa is) secularist/wiccan would you truly have all those at once. What they really mean is "Merry Christmas! Also, stop whining you fucking whiners!"

Why can't people just have different religions and admit that? Christians want you to have a merry Christmas. Jews want you to have a happy Hanukkah (not really, since it's not a happy holiday, but whatever), and Atheists want you to have a happy Tuesday.

Overt Religiosity Sucks

So here's a bit of the normal argument against public celebration of Christmas:

Christmas is a religious holiday. As such, it shouldn't be propped up by our government. It shouldn't be paid for by non-Christians. And by all means, Christians shouldn't be forcing the rest of us to participate in their sectarian celebration.

Certainly governmental support is right out; public lands, money, or effort (paid for by all and representing all of us) shouldn't be used for religious displays such as nativity scenes. The argument is sometimes extended to things like Christmas Trees. I disagree with that, but I'll explain more about that later. I think since you're reading my weblog we can pretty much agree on that one core point: Public money/land/etc should never go for private religious practice.

But what about stores? What about private people expressing their beliefs? Well, it's not very cool to try to force your beliefs on others, right? Suppose a bunch of Muslims started pushing you around, trying to get you to pray 5 times a day and not eat for a whole month? That'd be ridiculous. Sure, Christmas isn't that bad, but there are still some pretty deep social pressures that you might not experience living within the Christian viewpoint.

When everyone around you is talking about Christmas, and everywhere is decorated for Christmas, it makes anyone who doesn't celebrate that holiday or isn't Christian an outsider. The things a community chooses to do together help define it; Boone has Pufferbilly days, Pella has a tulip festival, Chicago dyes the whole damn river green for St. Patrick's day, etc.

The United States celebrates Christmas. If you're not down with Christmas, get the fuck out!

It's Commercialized Anyhow

Besides, our learned Atheist friends remind us, Christmas isn't really a religious holiday anyhow. So you shouldn't get all worked up celebrating it. It's a pagan ritual to begin with, you shouldn't take my bah-humbuggery as a direct affront to your lord and savior, lord baby lord jesus laying peacefully in the manger, lord, amen.

This is true, for two reasons.

First, Christmas is really an amalgam of pre-Christian rituals and marketing. The tree is from pagan fertility rituals. A common practice for religions trying to gain converts is to take over or coopt the local holidays to make the new religion seem more familiar to the converts. To be fair, this isn't just an "ooooh you sneaky Christians!" thing: Pretty much all religions do it. But anyhow, there's almost no chance that Jesus was born on December 25th. No pregnant woman would be walking around at that time of the year, and likewise no herdsman worth a damn would have animals out to pasture in the winter like that; the story doesn't add up. Still, being infinitely generous, there's a 1/365 chance Jesus was born on Christmas. Wouldn't that suck anyhow? You're going to be crucified in 33 years and every year you get screwed out of gifts. "This frankincense is for your birthday and Christmas!"

Santa Claus is a newly-improved and updated version of Sinterklaas and didn't even wear a red suit until Coca Cola started using him for an advertising campaign. Why red? To match their corporate logo, of course! I'd go on, but you're a big kid and perfectly capable of reading that wikipedia article yourself.

Now, look what Christmas has become (been all along?): It's brazenly used as a general-purpose advertising platform by any retailer with half a brain. They don't even hide the fact; retailers calculate how much they're likely to make in the upcoming holiday season and then plan on that income. They carefully consider advertising campaigns to divorce consumers (that's us...everyone) from their dollars, and Christmas is the lever they use for that. Every possible consumable item from baby clothes on up to Lexuses are touted as the "perfect" christmas gift for your loved one! They can't all be perfect gifts. Well, this one is, but that's about it. From the plain view of what all this means, there's nothing religious in how we (as Americans) celebrate Christmas.

At its very heart and origins (as we now know the ritual) Christmas is a blatant power-grab designed to fool natives into joining Christendom, festooned in great swaths of corporate branding. What room is there for something as humble as the Son of God in all that unabashed cynical manipulation to liberate pagans from their pantheon and consumers from their cash?

So doesn't it make sense to just do away with it?

Wait, back up

No, it doesn't make sense. Let's put it all together.

A. Christmas is a religious holiday and thus shouldn't receive the attention it gets in the public square.

B. Christmas as celebrated today by the vast majority is completely commercial and secular, so Christians shouldn't be personally upset if a few people sit it out.

Can you see the contradiction there?

The argument simply doesn't hold water as a general-purpose indictment of Christmas. I think the second argument can be switched around to be used in favor of public celebration of Christmas; that it's a secular holiday (much the same as Thanksgiving) and thus is a-ok for public celebration.

Just because this line of argumentation doesn't work to bah-humbug Christmas as a whole doesn't mean that everything overzealous Christian merrymakers do is kosher. While I don't have a problem with christmas trees (secular) we still have the problem of them trying to shoe-horn nativity scenes into public lands (sectarian). That's still bad. Officially recognizing christmas as a holiday? That's fine, but couching it in religious language isn't cool.

Just because the event itself is secular (the purchase and exchange of gifts near a pine tree) doesn't mean that everything you do during that event is secular. It's obviously possible to inject sectarian nonsense into any secular activity; witness any kid praying before a math test in public school. So long as we take a reasonable and pragmatic approach to it, I see no problem with the public celebration of Christmas. Not just "Happy Holidays", but honest-to-whatever Christmas.

So instead of fretting over what you, a fine updating Atheist brimming with moral character, should do, rather, enjoy the fruits of the season. If you really want to celebrate Christmas go right ahead. If you'd rather not, then that's fine too. After all, that's what we're really after, right? The freedom to do and believe what we want?

And this atheist wants the freedom to get a fat bag of loot on the morning of the 25th.

Topics

While searching for an unrelated file, I found a conversation I had with a friend. Here's a snippet:

Start of buffer: Sat Dec 29 2001
keith:  you know what I'd like?
friend:  what?
keith:  1 fucking date
friend:  I WANT A DATE TOO
keith:  i'd like a girl to go to the movies and sit next to me, 
or go to dinner and eat with me, and then i'd take her home, and that'd be fine.
friend:  yes, no kissing or anything.. just a damn date
friend:  haven't had one in too long
keith:  i want someone who will watch a damn movie or eat with me
keith:  that's all
keith:  anything else would be bonus

I exchanged a few emails with an interesting girl on okcupid. It seems she's gotten bored and moved on. I didn't think it'd go anywhere, really, but at least having that stimulation was fun.

My roommate and I put up more plastic sheeting to try to insulate our house more. I also filled in the mailslot with expanding foam insulation and we attached a regular mailbox to the outside of our house.

Women

A couple days ago I went to walmart and bought insulation for our windows and foam tape for our doors to cut our bills down. My roommate and I installed 2 doors-worth and he did a couple of windows. We're slowly going to get the rest of the windows done. I'm going to go buy some foam sealant and I'm just going to seal the drafty front door closed.

Somehow Amica's tie-out got broken, so I went out around midnight yesterday to buy a replacement. I bought a trolley thing but it won't reach to the weird little playhouse thing behind, so I had to go back and buy more wire and I got the whole thing installed today. I rock.

I finally found the 09 Camaro concept bumblebee transformer I've been looking for. In fact, I found two. This was at the afore-mentioned walmart trip.

I didn't notice there's so many pictures of me on facebook. I'm very very fat. I pretty much don't like anything about how I look at all.

The landlord still hasn't salted our walkways or driveway. The faucet in the basement still drips. If they don't soon, I'm going to buy a bag of ice melt and deduct the cost from our next month's rent. It took 3 tries to get my car into the driveway today. I got stuck on the last try and my roommate had to help me rock it out. Lame? Lame.

A girl on OkCupid has actually been replying to my messages. Yeah, I don't understand either. Let's see how this goes, I suppose. It'd be nice, at least, to have someone who will go see movies with me. Is that too forward?

There's about half a dozen movies out now or soon that I want to go see. I've stopped asking.

My family's oldest dog, Tasha, is going to die soon. She has inoperable tumors on her ear and in her lungs. She's not in pain and still moving about. She can't really see anymore. I hope she makes it through christmas. She's gotta be at least 16 years old now. Such a good dog. Why does she have to die?

There is nothing out there making sure things are fair. In fact, far from it. Never forget that. Do it yourself.

On my way back from the store today I almost got into a car accident. I was travelling south on Stange, on a big hill, and it's very slippery and slushy. A guy in a burgundy pontiac 6000 pulled out in front of me, from my left, turning south, crossing all 4 lanes of traffic. I had to swerve into the center lane to miss him. He was on his cell phone. It was a razr. He had a blue coat on. Yes, I was close enough to see all this, in the dark.

My cold is essentially over.

My car needs to be washed very badly.

I'm sick of one-sided friendships.

I can't ever remember a time I've felt at home in regards to dating. Sure, there's been a few moments of peace and tranquility, but that's never been an overarching theme.

Looking back, in each case where I've felt something strong for someone, it's felt like a heist. Careful planning, the exertion of will, trying to make sure everything went as I hoped. In the few cases where I actually got what I wanted from whom I wanted it from, I felt like a thief. This was someone else's happiness. I was just stealing it. Or that I was cutting in line. Sorta like a burglar. Always looking over my shoulder, fearing for the moment I'd hear the jingle of keys in the front door lock, the homeowner entering and stomping the snow off his boots, and innocently turning the lights on, catching me in the act.

I drove around a bit today, to organize my thoughts. And I came to this realization; that I do this. That settled, should it be so? I hope not. And if this really just is how things are, then please lie to me and say it's not. I don't want this anymore, and if that's all there is, I'd find it unacceptable. It doesn't feel like I deserve a happy relationship. Or, at the very least, that I'm not in the class of people who 'get to' have them.

A friend of mine is pretty sad right now because she isn't anybody's Number One. I can understand that. As an analog, it really feels like I'm not even anybody's option. Nowhere on the list. It feels like I have to claw and fight my way up; either everyone gets a head start or I get held back. Love is a shipwreck, there weren't enough life boats, and I'm in the water freezing.

So what, now? Well, I don't really know of any sort of plan I can take away from this. However, I have a hunch. I'm not sure if it even follows logically, but in my gut I think I'm right:

I'll know I've found someone worthy of my attention when it doesn't feel that way. When it's just there, and there's no scheming, no panicked worrying that it'll all crash down. Then I'll know I can be happy. And then the roaring static I feel in the back of my mind will finally die out.

My sister is in the hospital.

Sunday I got a call around 2pm. I was still in bed. It's my sister. She's sobbing uncontrollably. She's going to the hospital. I don't really get the whole story. Something about a CT scan and a blood clot in her lung.

I got to Des Moines around 3pm. I don't know Mercy very well so I park near where I've parked before. Eventually I make it to the ER. My sister is in Room 1. Mom and Paul are there; I told jess I'd call them so she could get to the hospital faster.

My sister has had pneumonia the past few days. She gets pneumonia and bronchitis all the time. And she has asthma. Her left side hurt, but it was a different hurt than the standard coughing ache she was used to. She went in to the Mercy Clinic on Saturday night to tell them about it. They took a CT Scan and said it was okay, and that her pain was normal muscular/skeletal pain associated with coughing.

The next morning another doctor looked at the CT Scan and they immediately called her to come back into the Emergency Room.

This brings us up to yesterday.

When I arrived she was sitting on a hospital bed covered in one of those shitty hospital gowns. It was mostly just her, my parents, and myself in the ER, with an absentminded nurse coming in occasionally. She had to be reminded 4 times to bring her some pain medication for the pain in her side.

Several doctors came in one by one to give her an exam. She doesn't have any of the normal things associated with blood clots. Normally they're from smokers or from people with leg trauma. Her legs are fine and she doesn't smoke. It could be that their assessment of the CT scan was wrong and that she was fine. She was still in pain and very worried.

My parents left after an hour or so I think. Jose came back into the room. There's only supposed to be 2 visitors in the ER, and we had three anyhow. They wheeled my sister out for some more scans and tests. They had us leave so they could catheterize her. Still nobody knew how the blood clot got in her lungs or what was going to happen.

Dr. Korte, our childhood physician cum Hospital Bigwig even came in to see her to make sure things were okay and to take a look. It was very comforting to see him there. Best case scenario: The diagnosis was a mistake and they'd let her go home on Monday, the next day. Worst case: They'd keep her for a week, put her on blood thinners for 6 months, and hope the body digests the blood clot (and any others that might be hiding). They still didn't know how it got there or anything.

Eventually I had to go.

Monday came and went. They did another scan of her legs. Still nothing there. She could not go home. She was feeling a little better and at least less stressed out. She is on 100% bed-rest.

Tuesday came. They scanned her lungs again. When the results came back, if they were negative, she'd get to go home. They weren't. There was a blood clot there, but now it was gone. They could tell that it had probably dissolved on its own, but it had indeed been there. So that's pretty shitty. They still don't know where it came from. They are keeping her for 3-4 more days of 100% bed-rest and she would have to do the full 6 months of blood thinners.

She started crying to me on the phone. I tried to comfort her. She really is in the best place now, so they can catch anything that happens. Sure it's not great news, but it's not as bad as it could be. I couldn't really tell her I've been crying about it too. Her friend Kathy left a portable DVD player there for her, but she doesn't really have any movies she wants to see with her. I'm going to go visit her tomorrow after work. I'm bringing a few DVDs with me. I hope she likes at least some of them.

I hadn't been in a great mood anyhow. This just made me dwell on my sister's situation, and on my own mortality. I feel pretty shitty that this makes me think about myself some, but it does. I worry about a lot of things. I want my sister to have a long and happy life. As I want for myself. It makes me worry about my plans and what I want out of life. Mostly it just makes me sad. Very sad. I just want everyone to be okay. I want my sister to be okay.

I didn't even realize it's been this many days. They just run together. I can't really think about anything else. It's all just a spiral. It's times like this where my loneliness is all the more sharp.

This isn't very good, guys. Not very good at all.

Update

November 14, 2007 So I went to visit her again today, Wednesday. I got off work at 5, picked the dog up, dropped her off at mom's in des moines, and hung out with Jess until about 10ish. We talked about weight loss, getting out of the hospital, and watched a movie. She's in good spirits. They let her get out of bed now to use the rest room and sit in a chair.

A friend had brought a portable DVD player for her, so I picked out a bunch of movies I thought she might like and let her borrow them. The flowers I sent look pretty I suppose. I didn't know exactly what they'd send; I used Mercy's giftshop and they didn't really have details. My mom sent flowers, my sister's friend, and my dad too.

For the past few days they've been telling her she's going to get out in 4 days. So the chances of her getting out before the weekend's over is pretty slim. So far she's been in the hospital since last Sunday.

After an episode where I lost my goddamned car (Mercy has two parking ramps, apparently!) and felt like a total idiot, I made it home. Now that I'm finally home, sitting and relaxing, I feel...crappy. Why must everything be about me? What an asshole.

Update 2

November 18, 2007 She got out today! Woohoo! Her levels of whatever they were tracking weren't as high as they wanted, but they decided she could go home anyhow. She's still got horribly bruised spots from the injections she was getting and will have to be on blood thinners for the next 6 months, but otherwise she's so happy to be out. I took her and her husband out to El Rodeo for dinner, and then we went to pick her prescriptions up. I'm so happy to have her out of there.

1. Flash Phone
2. Align screen, set time.
3. Allow Sprint customizations to run.
4. Insert memory card.
5. Install Total Commander to memcard
6. Copy pim.vol back to main memory.
7. Soft Reset.
8. verify PIM data in calendar and contacts
9. change windows theme from annoying yellow back to bluegreen.
10. install devicelock to main mem
11. in settings -> device lock -> lock on wake
12. install fp7 (flash player) to memcard
13. install google maps
14. install HTC home plug
15. install oggsync to memcard
16. install ppcgeeks MMS to memcard
17. allow device to restart
18. install PHM regedit to memcard
19. install SiriusCE to memcard
20. install tcpmp to memcard
21. copy fonts to windows/fonts
22. copy rings to windows/rings
23. copy start menu items
24. copy windows/ to windows/
25. launch regedit
26. import slidesound.reg
27. in settings/buttons, change email button to Left Softkey
28. in settings/buttons, disable keyboard backlight sensor
29. in settings/input, unselect "add a space after word"
30. in settings/menus, remove everything, activate calculator, device lock, google maps, running programs, shopping list
31. in settings/owner information, type my name
32. in settings/phone, choose oldPhone ringer
33. in settings/sounds and notifications, new email->vibrate, new txt->fanfare-short+vibrate, voicemail->donttazeme
34. in settings/today, remove everything, activate htc home, device lock, calendar, tasks
35. in settings/screen, enable cleartype and bump font size up a notch.
36. in connections/beam, uncheck.
37. open pictures & video, find optimus, make him the today background with 0% transparency
38. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shell\ShowTitleBarClock = 0
39. add stuff to HTC Home's launcher
40. Set up email accounts.

Phone

Haven't felt like updating lately. I do have a list of shit to finish up writing about my sister's wedding, so don't worry. I'll get to it all.

Girl I've got a major thing for is in town this weekend. That's pretty cool, huh? Well no, not really. Okay so, see, I'm awful at picking women. I really like her. She doesn't like me as anything other than someone to chat online with when she's bored at work. She's got a boyfriend she kinda sorta loves, but he moved out to California without her. The idea was that eventually she'd move out there too. She's been considering breaking up with him because she doesn't really want to move out there, and she's been looking for a local guy because she's pretty lonely anyhow.

Could I be that guy? Honestly? No. Not really. The shitty thing is that I'm perfectly capable of knowing this fact and also knowing that it doesn't really matter to me. I'm not really local anyhow. I'm closer than california, at least. But there's a lot better guys (in just about every way) even closer anyhow. That's fine. I wasn't an option. I wish, though. It'd be nice. I think we could get along.

Soooo anyhow. She's in town. We were supposed to hang out. At least get a beer or something, and then on sunday both go to a local car detailing event.

But her current/former/quasi-/yes-really boyfriend flew into her local airport instead of DSM. And she has to drive him to iowa, and cart him around for all the things he wants to do. So she's a glorified taxicab for the weekend. I mean, this guy is ostensibly her boyfriend so naturally she's going to gravitate towards hanging out with him. I can understand that.

But then to make plans to hang out with me, and at the same time talk to me about how inconsiderate he's being about the driving him around thing? Well, I dunno. It's a shitty situation all around.

I don't like this guy. He doesn't give her the respect she deserves. She certainly deserves better.

Amica's birthday was the 17th. She's 3. Since I got her, I haven't had any relationship, significant or otherwise. She's 3. Folks, it hasn't been about sex for about 2 1/2 years. I'd like a nice date every now and then, that's all. Just enough to keep me going. Just enough to get by.

Women

Why do you ask me for dating advice?
I'm not very good at it.
I last had a date a year ago.
Why would my advice be any good?
I suck at dating.
At any rate, I'm averaging approximately 1 pity date per year (on my birthday) with no sex.
How in the hell am I supposed to manage my own love life along with those of every girl I know?
I wish I knew. I wish I had some bomb-ass great advice that would get us all laid with whoever we want.
I'd tell you, then write it in a book.
Then i'd be rich.
Women

I started tracking my weight again last September, mentioned here. In one year, I have lost 26 pounds.

Weight Loss, September 06 - September 07

If you're curious, the blue line represents my weight, taken daily. If I miss a day, the program I wrote to make these graphs fills in the intervening days for me by averaging them out. Those are the occasional green lines you see. The red line represents a running weighted average weight. The basic idea behind that is that it smooths out the rough ups and downs while giving more weight to the most recent measurements. If you ask me how much I weigh, I'll tell you the number according to the red line. Make sense? The black line is a simple linear regression over the time frame, it's what's used to calculate the calorie/day and lbs/week measurements.

I have again stabilized. That's not a ball-bustingly horrible thing; it's happened before and I've gotten through it before. I just need to do it once again.

I will be attractive some day.

Weight

I went for a walk to clear my mind. It worked too well. I didn't really think about anything at all while I was out there, so my problems were waiting for me when I got home an hour later.

Had a big stupid fight with a few hundred miles away girl. It really felt like she was pushing my buttons. Through the entire thing I just felt so helpless. It felt like she was pushing my buttons and that's what made me so angry. Not what she was saying, but the fact that it felt like she was trying to anger me. I wanted nothing more than to not be arguing, but there I went. I felt so bad about it. It's been a long time since I've really gotten angry about something so inconsequential. it's been a long time since I've gotten angry at anyone worth feeling bad about. This whole thing is so frustrating. So very frustrating. I just want everything to work out as best it can. I feel so bad for making her unhappy.

On a lark I asked one of the girls I met at my sister's wedding out for a dinner thing this week, no big deal. Apparently she's too busy. That's cool. It wasn't a big deal. At least I didn't get the pocket veto.

Oh, and few hundred miles away girl told me something very unsettling while I was at work earlier today. So much so, in fact, that I must mentally run away from the topic without looking back on pain of my mind being turned into a pillar of salt. Salt flavored like every single negative emotion I can experience. My mind fills with a red static. I want to hurt things. It's all in there, all at once. And salt.

Women

This is Part Two in a Four Part series about my sister's wedding. There's just way too much for one post. Part One

Another quick wedding-related note. Two, in fact.

I went back down to Des Moines Friday night in a hurry because I got word that my grandma was in the hospital with chest pain. She's doing fine now and back home. Anyhow, there was a wedding on Saturday of an acquaintance of mine. A friend, Jen, wanted me to go with her since her boyfriend backed out, so I went. Why? I love weddings. Shut the fuck up. I'll kick your ass if you tell anyone. The wedding was nice, and I went back to Ames that night so I could relax for the rest of the weekend.

In more-important news, Iowa (briefly) legalized gay marriage. And a couple guys I (sorta) know managed to get married. No shit? Yeah, really. You may have seen pictures of them on CNN or whatever. Here's the Youtube Video. Congrats to them and good luck.

Shopping

So after I rolled out of bed and took a cursory shower, I emerged from the faraway land of upstairs.

Mom had prepared a list of everything I needed to buy, painstakingly inscribed on a small notepad. Hey, did I mention she was drunk when we wrote this list out? After rewriting it to make a little more sense and making sure I understood everything, I opened the gate and drove my big fancy automobile out into the world.

If memory serves, I went to Dahl's (which is like Hy Vee or any other chain-type grocery store). Did you know the french word for market is 'marche? Guess what the french word for supermarket is? Okay here you go: supermarche. Hope that tidbit gets you laid; hasn't helped me any. The highlight of the Dahl's trip was buying a case of cheap sparkling wine. I have my very own bottle I'm saving up for a trashy occasion.

I also visited Sam's Club and then Wal-Mart later with my sister. Sam's club didn't have the cheap sparkling wine, so I guess I've caught myself in a logical trap. Maybe I went to Dahl's twice? Someone get timecop on this one. I bought a big friggin jar of pickles. This much I know is true.

My sister needed a new speaker setup for her computer since she wanted to use it to play music for the wedding and reception. I helped her pick one out. We got the cheap one, since they all suck.

Cooking

Going from my mom's cooking out into the real world, I've noticed two main facts:

• My mom cooks better than everyone else's mom, and everyone else agrees.
• Her dishes are given names of other totally unrelated dishes.

The first point is self-explanatory, I think. If you disagree, it's simply because you haven't sampled her cooking. Are you busy this Thanksgiving? As for the second, let me give you a few examples: Goulash, sopapillas, mostaccoli. They have almost nothing to do with the dishes you're thinking of. Interesting, huh?

I made the mostaccoli salad, baked beans, loosemeat for sandwiches, tomato salad, and probably some other stuff I forgot. Oh, and some shrimp dip. And some other meaty dip stuff. It was a big dippy, fatty, caloric blur.

Saturday

My mom has this thing where she rents 5-10 DVDs at once. She just picks them out by their cover art, I think. She brings home the weirdest shit. Friday night I recall trying to watch the Number 23. Let me spare you this shitty movie: The number 23 didn't do it. It was really 27. Where did the Eternal Sunshine performance go?

Oh, Saturday. I tried watching "Are We Done Yet", which she inexplicably rented. Oh, mom.

The sun set, and the sun rose, and it was the day.

Shopping Again

My job for saturday primarily consisted of getting the final few things we'd forgotten. Also, a keg of beer.

I lobbied for a full 1/2bbl keg, but we got a pony keg instead. Turns out it was the exact right size. Oh, that's in part 4. My car has a movable cargo thingie in the back (go look at the pics, I'm sure there's a dozen of the cargo area). It's pretty good for keg-related hauling.

Cooking Again

Cooking was limited. We broke out the heavy machinery for slicing the tomatoes and onions. Mom has an old spinny slicer. Sorta like a professional meat slicer, except made out of plastic, with a dulled blade, and about 400 times more dangerous. It sliced the onions just fine. It sliced the tomatoes just fine. It sliced my fingers down to the second knuckle just fine. Not really. This thing could be used for pickle slicing.

Just don't stick your dick in the pickle slicer. Speaking of putting your dick in the pickle slicer, Blaine did that. Her name's Cecilia. Since he couldn't come to the ceremony I took her. Some McHoes are hot. More on that in Part 3.

Gazebo Hoooo

Okay, so gazebo in the middle of a park. There's no seating there, so we have a bunch of folding chairs. They wanted me to bring 5 over, since I could fit 5 in there, right? Whatever, I threw all 20 in the back and headed over to set things up.

What else is there to set up? Well, music. At weddings there are certain pieces of music that are expected to be played. I copied the requisite songs to my laptop and my mp3 player so we'd have a backup.

Music. Gazebo. Speakers. We bought speakers. Come on guys, what are we missing? What didn't we think of. Electricity. Damn straight. You need to plug that shit in, mang. Guess who thought of it and assigned tasks? Okay so I unpacked the little speaker things and hooked the mp3 player up and made sure they brought the power inverter (hooked up to a nearby minivan, obv) and bigass extension cord.

Since my car has the cleanest interior (by a margin of a zillion to one) of anyone my sister knows, it got coopted into transporting my sister, the maid of honor, and the flower girls (MoH's kids) to the ceremony.

Everything's fine, and we're ahead of schedule. I've got to kill about 10 minutes, then go get them.

Go!

My phone rings. It's Kristina (Maid of Honor). Jose's car broke down on the way to the Gazebo. We need to go pick him up before the police show up.

See, when you're an illegal immigrant, a lot of public services are cut off from you. For example, if your car is stalled out somewhere, you don't want to get the cops involved. For another quick example, if you're in a traffic accident, you definitely don't want to be there when the cops show up. Luckily his car was just broken down. It's not like he got rear-ended or anything.

My phone rang again.

Jessica's Wedding

My knees ache, a constant reminder of my largest flaw. Not my most major flaw, but my largest. I can't really blame her for not wanting me in return; she's got so much more to choose from. It's just so frustrating to talk to her every day, my feelings growing stronger, knowing that, even as I haven't felt this way for someone in a long time, my feelings will, by necessity, never be returned in kind. I get jealous that she's visiting her boyfriend, but not as jealous as I am when she talks about her new friend. Jack or Jake or something like that. She constantly talks about him, now. I'm certain that when she does eventually break up with her absentee boyfriend, this will be the new guy. And I'll be expected to stand here and watch the whole thing. And why shouldn't I? He's everything I'm not.

Late edit due to questions: This entry is not about super-maybe girl. This is about few hundred miles girl.

Women

This is Part One in a Four Part series about my sister's wedding. There's just way too much for one post.

Just a quick foreword about the party I hosted this recent Friday: It didn't go well. Less than 10 people showed up, but at least we did have fun. In retrospect, it was a bad weekend to try to host a party. I just don't have quite the fantastic drawing power of my youth.

Super Maybe girl stayed overnight twice; Friday and Saturday. No, that's not really a good thing. I wouldn't really mind her monopolizing my weekend if there was even an inkling that things were going to go anywhere with her. About all I got out of the deal was a sore neck because one of my pillows was parked on the couch downstairs.

anticipation / what i thought would go down

For the bulk of my summer the specter of my sister's impending wedding hanging over my head like a mixed metaphor. They announced it rather recently, as far as preparations go, leaving little time to work things out. Also, she couldn't afford jack squat.

Our conversations about the wedding tended to sound very similar as time went by. She was in a time crunch, because she didn't give herself enough time to prepare. She had to make a lot of concessions to get things planned in time. They rented a gazebo in Union Park. She had a big problem finding someone to officiate the ceremony, but got one at the last minute.

A lot of our conversations as time went on were of the form:

Jessica: Oh my god I need to reserve/buy/pay for <something> for the wedding but I can't afford it! Keith: Sounds like you can't afford to get married.

I sorta hoped in the back of my mind that she'd wise up and postpone or cancel the wedding. She didn't.

Side Story

Side story: I remember one day when I was a kid with a paper route one of my bundles of Sunday comics (the sunday papers came in 3 chunks and the paperboys had to assemble them) got soaked in the rain. My parents were ecstatic because that weekend there was a kickass coupon for cigarettes (the Comics section has all the ads in it). So they dried the ruined papers off and had 30 copies of that coupon.

News from Headquarters

So time just hummed along with little to no update as far as when things would happen for the wedding, and what I'd have to do. Jessica dragged her feet enough on sending out the invitations that they arrived rather late, and a lot of people she wanted to be there simply couldn't change their plans in time. Personally, I didn't receive my invitation until the day of the wedding, so I didn't know when it was or where it was. Since I was the bride's brother everyone would ask me where and when the wedding was. Except I didn't know. Embarrassing? Yes.

Since I was on deck for giving the bride away, I called early in the week to see where I needed to go to get a tux and when/if we were doing a rehearsal dinner or how that was going to work out. Also to find out when the thing was. Well, they weren't doing tuxedos for the wedding. That's a shame, because I look like a P I M P in a tuxedo. I can't lie. Also, I wouldn't be giving her away since we'd patched things up with Dad; he'd be doing it. No problem for me.

Then word came down from H.Q. (Mom) that I was expected to come home early on Friday to help get things ready. As this was news to me, I had to practically beg my boss for the day off. He capitulated and it was all set up. My vacation time decimated from the 3 days I took off to move at the beginning of the month, the day off for the fair, and now the finaly day I'd accrued for wedding preparations, I decided to grin and bear it. Who am I to bitch? It's not my wedding.

friday morning wake up

I made it down Thursday night, rather late. I think the holdup was finishing up my laundry; I needed to wash and iron my nicest shirt. I stayed up talking to my mom really late. I like those conversations we have. We just talk about anything, you know? It's just fine. So the plan was to wake up early on Friday and get to work. Mom had been making a big list of stuff for me to go out and buy so she could stay at home cooking. After I bought all the stuff, I'd come home to help cook.

So I rolled out of bed around 2:30pm.

Jessica's Wedding

(slightly updated August 15th)

I'm pretty moved in. There's room in the garage for the car, All my stuff that's going inside is inside, the living room is livable, the kitchen is cook-in-able, and the bedroom is bedroomable. There are still quite a few boxes to go through, however.

Back Thing

So I had a boil on my back. It's gone now. A boil is like a super zit. It was about an inch deep. I took some pictures of the stitches on my back, but have no idea where they went.

I plan on telling chicks the scar came from a knife fight in a tijuana brothel. So please don't tell anyone elsewise.

Lapdance Died

Lapdance, my trusty IBM Thinkpad X20 (Pentium 3/600mhz, 320MB ram, ultraportable), is dead. The hard drive in it finally gave up the ghost. Sure, I could get another hard drive for it, but there's plenty of other stuff wrong. Namely, the screen is way messed up (several lines through it and extensive damage to the polarizer) and the battery is dead. I don't think I'll bother fixing it. Okay, maybe I will. It depends on how expensive a new screen is. Okay, I will fix it. You convinced me.

Went to the Fair

Today I went to the fair! It was pretty fun. I took the day off from work and went down to des moines last night to stay at Blaine's. We played some WOW together, hung out for a while. Today we dropped his kid off at her grandmom's, got my car, and went to the fair. I didn't get sunburned! I wore my Captain Morgan hat I got in minnesota. I think I look ridiculous in a hat, but it kept the sun at bay a little.

Me, Blaine, and his wife went to the fair together. Despite some knee and ankle problems, I had a lot of fun. We went through most of the buildings and looked at the stuff. I really like the dollhouses, photos, and tractors. The spa sales varied industries building was a necessary evil; you have to visit. They had a Creation exhibit from some Baptist church. I looked at the ridiculous ark model they had. This one didn't even have any dinosaurs! One of the booth workers what I thought, so I matter of factly told him it's all full of crap. He was heartbroken. We left the exhibit.

Okay, so food!

From memory, I had a funnel cake with strawberries (and cream, sir? What the hell, why not?), a pop, a strawberry smoothie, a nitro-sized cup of vanilla blue sky creamery ice cream (sold at a booth under the grandstand, GO GET SOME!) that I didn't finish, a bottle of water, a cup of blue moon beer, a cheesesteak and some sweet potato fries from the Depot, and another cup of blue moon. It was the first time I'd drank at the fair, actually.

I want to go back just to eat the rest of the stuff. Hopefully this sunday.

Girls

Been having some girl problems lately. Dames is nothing but trouble.

So first off, big troubles. It's not often I feel a big connection with someone. The last time I felt this way was a few years ago. It didn't work out so well either. This one won't. I've told her what's up, and she's still talking to me, so that's cool. I don't want to lose her as a friend. However, she lives a few hundred miles away, has a boyfriend that she's really in to, and is planning on moving even further away to be with him. And let's not kid ourselves here. If she were single, I wouldn't even be near the top of the list. She's just way too nice to say so. I have to move on. It's just not going to happen. Ever. Do you hear me? They say never say never. Well, I'm saying never right now. Never. You can't always get what you want. Well, maybe you can. I sure as hell can't.

So then there's this other girl. The Super Maybe girl. Why Super Maybe? Well, some times it feels like she likes me as more than a friend, and some times not. And on the same token, some times I feel like I should pursue her company, and some times I don't think so. Maybe on both ends, I think. Plus, she broke one of my policies already. However, I think she maybe is worth a shot, so I'm willing to overlook it. She seems like more than a handfull, though. I really don't know what to think of her. Maybe she doesn't even like me at all, and it's all my imagination?

I talk to a cool woman in Des Moines. We met a few times a long time ago, when I worked at McD's. She's all grown up and has some kids, but she found me on myspace and we chat occasionally every now and then. Lately we've been talking a lot. She's really fun to talk to, and even lets me flirt with her some times too. It's good for the ego. And I've got a giant glass ego with a hair trigger. Anyhow, she's really cool. I talk to her about these other women, and she's supportive. Cool. She reads bbp.com too. So, Hi!

Dish Drawer

So I'm watching a commercial on Food Network. A guy is sitting on his couch, lazily staring into the kitchen. His (presumably) wife is bent over, unloading the dishwasher and placing the dishes in a drawer a couple feet away. So she picks up a dish, he says "dish". She puts it in the drawer, he says "drawer". This happens over and over again, and the camera never waivers from her SWEET ASS. So he's just sitting there, watching her ass as she puts the dishes away.

So a few things go through my mind. So far, I have no idea what this commercial is for. I'll spill the beans: It's a company called Fisher & Paykel, and they make a product called the "Dish Drawer". It's a low-profile dishwasher apparatus that blends into your kitchen decor, and allows you to be a lazy fuck and just store the dishes in the dishwasher. BRILLIANT!

But as I'm watching it...

Who in the hell puts their dishes in a drawer? Every one I've ever eaten with stores their dishes in cupboards. So I'm thinking, this guy, on the couch, decided to put the dishes in a drawer way down low so he can stare at her ass all day. I was expecting a sly smile, a fist pump, or even a self high-five, followed by the Budweiser logo, of course. Until the reveal at the very end, I swore it was a beer commercial.

It's a pretty funny commercial, sorry for spoiling it for you. I couldn't find a copy of the commercial online. If you find one, let me know so we can add it here.

Women | Computer | Fair

I'm in the process of moving right now, so I'm sorry I haven't been online lately. My lease expired on July 31, 12:00pm. I've moved into a nicer house with more room and a garage. I'm still living with Tas, and a new roommate I met via Strangetalk.

Since we would have had to do the standard "homeless for a day" waltz, I conned the new landlord to give me the existing tenant's contact information. I called them up and asked if they'd let us store stuff in their garge. Being agreeable fellows, they well, uh, agreed.

So Starting last Friday (July 27th), I started moving stuff into the new place's garage. A lot of my crap was still packed from the last time, since I knew I wouldn't be staying more than a year. That made packing somewhat easy. I have a lot of books, CDs, DVDs, and Transformers. Those all got boxed up and sent over.

I figured out that i can totally remove the bench from the back seat of my Magnum, allowing the rear seats to fold totally flat (even more than flat, actually). That's good because the brakes on my Taurus are out, so I couldn't use it as a moving vehicle. With the magnum packed full of stuff (pics later), I'm pretty sure I had the fastest moving van in Ames over the weekend.

To be honest, the days just sorta blended together. I don't remember when things got done except in a sort of vague relationship to other things which happened. Matt (3rd roommate) showed up with a minivan sans seats to move some big stuff, so our couches, TV stands, bookshelves, weight bench, etc. went over with a minimum of fuss. I basically continued the pattern of filling the magnum up to the roofline, stacking it in the new garage, and repeating, until the stuff was all out.

I busted ass to clean the kitchen, including a horrible looking stove and the inside of the fridge. I cleaned the bathroom too (except the toilet, Tas did that). I also put Tas in charge of mopping because I was still taking communal crap over to the new place. We got the place cleaned up literally moments before the girl from Martin Property Management showed up to do our check-out.

I had 4 styrofoam coolers in the back of my car with our freezer and fridge stuff in there. The fridge stuff packed in ice, the freezer packed in dry ice. That worked out well. I had a few odds and ends and my 2-wheeled dolly in there too. Since the rear seat of my car was stacked somewhere in the midst of the garage, I couldn't fold the seats up and strap Amica in. So for the first (and hopefully last time ever) she got to ride shotgun. Now that I was officially homeless, I did what all homeless people do. I drove to the big city to seek my fortune.

Des Moines, city of my birth, land of my forefathers, and location of the most comfortable couch to sleep on, ever: Mom's. After chatting with her for an hour or so, I passed out on the couch. In my hazy recollection I seem to dredge up two or three phone calls of friends wanting lunch or other various hangings-out, all in vain. I Finally awoke to Hanna's call, asking me to eat with her and Ericha (I think that's how she spells it. It's a shame her mother sucked at spelling). So I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and drove back up to Ames. I decided to break into my new house (or just sleep in a recliner on the front porch) after dinner. I also decided to leave Amica at home with my parents so she wouldn't be under foot while moving.

A sidenote: A funny thing happened on the way to Ames. I nearly died.

After getting in the car I was futzing with my cell phone to get it charging, get my sunglasses out, and prepare for the drive to ames. I noticed a tighness in my chest and I started panting; as though I had just got done participating in those fat-kid-torture sessions otherwise known as the Presidential Fitness Challenge from elementary school.

Hey kids, guess what dry ice is? It's carbon dioxide! Eight hours of sitting in a sealed car in the hot sun ensured that my car was chock full of this life-stealing devil gas.

I opened my door and practically fell out, gasping for air. I rolled all the windows down and waited there, carefully doing my best not to die. It seems to have worked, so I started driving.

After dinner I was party to the easiest B&E I've ever seen. Noticing our pile of furniture stashed in the back yard (yes, we filled the whole 2-car garage), the landlord left the rear door unlocked so that we might move furniture in. So we did. Matt showed up and we moved my bed in so I could sleep, then I started moving the food products inside. So now I had severely improved my predicament: Rather than being homeless, I was a squatter!

The next morning I went to the new landlord's office to pay the rent and make our residency official. By the way, all of the hot chicks have returned to Ames. Thank you, hot chicks!

We spent the better part of tuesday and wednesday moving crap inside. I'd say we're about 80% into the house. I have no internet access, but can sometimes get a weak wifi signal from the neighbors, so I might be online (off and on).

My bed won't fit around the corner and up the stairs into my upstairs bedroom. Also one of my bookshelves is about a quarter inch too tall to stand up under the 6ish-foot ceilings upstairs. I need to sand a little off of it to make it fit. I plan on replacing my current queen-sized bed with a king-sized bed since everyone tells me king beds come with 2 little box springs which might fit easily up the stairs. Mattresses bend enough to make it around the corner, I'm sure.

Moving Tasks

1. Move out
2. Clean
3. Move everything into new garage
4. Move everything into new house
5. Assemble network
6. Assemble living room A/V stuff
7. Wash car
8. sand bottom of bookshelf so it can stand up
9. unpack books,etc. in bedroom
10. get a king sized box spring (maybe mattress too if not expensive) to fit up the stairs

So there you go.

General Nerdonics

Over this past week, I:

• Resubscribed to WOW and reinstalled it.
• Bought several Magic cards.
• Bought a new pocketpc phone.

You know what? I don't really mind that I'll never see a naked woman ever again. Being a nerd is in my blood. I can't get rid of it.

So my friends Blaine and Matt still play WOW, and they've been wanting me to get back in for a while. I finally caved. I got WOW reinstalled (took a good goddamned long time), but found out that my mods are all out of date and/or malfunctioning. I'll have to go get updates and get my UI put back how I like it.

I put my mono-brown 5-color deck back together. I think I'm going to take it back to it's more combo-ey roots and take out the little Myr dudes and put the big crazy game-breaking ridiculous chunks of shiney back in.

Also I found out in recent sets they released something on the order of 40ish new sliver creatures. It's going to take a while getting a full playset of those in foil.

Sprint Mogul aka PPC 6800 aka HTC Titan

I went and got a PPC-6800, newly renamed by Sprint as the Mogul. That name is pretty tragic, even though I'm carrying around the phone Sprint thinks is for CEOs and stuff. Since it's brand new no store has them in stock yet, so I had to call around and ask if stores had them or if they could order them. Nobody understands when you ask for a "Sprint Mogul" over the phone, because they hear "Sprint Mobile", so then I have to go through some verbal gymnastics to convince the person on the other end of the line that there is a new Sprint pocketpc phone which is the successor to the PPC-6700 (coincidentally my previous phone), called the Mogul. HTC, the phone's maker, calls it the Titan. I like that name much better. TITAN!

This phone is basically a little better than my old phone in every way. Better OS, more memory, better feeling keyboard, more battery life, a little faster it seems, and better bluetooth support. Later on they're going to upgrade the internet access to EV DO Rev. A, which is even faster.

Timed as it is, to coincide with the iPhone's release, several people have asked me if I got an iPhone, and when I say no, they ask why not. Well, frankly, the phone I got is better in almost every way than the iPhone. The iPhone's feature set is strictly worse than the Mogul's. It's got slower internet, a shitty mail client, non-expandable memory, non-replaceable battery, can't to MMS (picture and video) messaging, doesn't allow 3rd-party applications, doesn't support Instant Messaging, can't take videos, and doesn't have a real keyboard. The only thing the iPhone's got going for it is an admittedly slick UI. However, that doesn't make up for its critical lack of features.

Oh yeah, and the Titan is $200 cheaper than the iPhone. Eat that, iPhone.

Wu-Tang Clan!

mp3 player

A few weeks ago I bought a Sansa Express 1gb mp3 player. This is my first new one in a few years. It rocks my holey socks off. It's sized and shaped like a USB Thumb drive, and in fact it plugs in like one too. So there's no goofy cable to lose. It's even got an FM tuner in it in case I want to listen to the radio, oh and I can put a memory card in it too, to add more space. All for $60. Eat that, iPod Shuffle!

Transformers

Omg what a great movie. It could have been so shitty, but was so good. Admittedly there was some sidestory that could have been cut, but I don't care. I could have watched a 9-hour Transformers movie. I really want an 09 Camaro now. Maybe I'll ask for a big fat raise and pay the Magnum off early? :-D

Personal Life

I've been thinking a lot about death lately. Well, more than normal. Something will trigger a thought of my own death, and I'll get a sudden wave of dread. It feels like it's pushing down on me from all directions. On one hand I'd rather not feel this way, but on the other hand I'd rather not die, either. Maybe I should go see a doctor about it or something?

In other news, I'd like to go to the fair this year. If you've got a couple X chromosomes and you want a free trip to the fair, let me know.

It was a pretty good song. Anyhow, the news.

4th

Is sexy? Yes.

This beautiful picture of sky brought to you by Zaino Bros car polish

Today was pretty uneventful. I slept in, and that was pretty good. I woke up early enough to catch McBreakfast. I also grabbed a sausage biscuit for Amica, because she enjoys diarrhea as well.

After breakfast I washed the car and detailed the interior. I was thinking of claying it today, but god damn it's hot out and I need to reorder Z6 spray anyhow. I took another shower after washing the car then drove around a bit.

At home I drank a couple beers (planned on drinking more) and then passed out from exhaustion. Whoops! After I woke up I drove around a bit and stopped at DQ for a blizzard and watched the fireworks from the parking lot there.

I guess I didn't eat lunch or dinner, but the blizzard and beer had enough calories anyhow.

It kinda sucks that the 4th is on a Wednesday, and I had to work the two previous days and have to work the two next days.

Visited my Dad

Hell, I dunno. Maybe a month ago now? My sister and I drove out to my dad's acreage to visit him again finally. Everything went well. Dad is doing fine, and Wanda was even nice too. He liked my car, and we talked a bit more about just about anything. We stood out on his porch while he cooked up some pork chops. He's got a big garden and a few fruit trees which, if the deer don't kill them, should be pretty cool when they mature.

They loaded us up with some canned goods and a box of old family photos and sent us on our way. Hopefully we can get out there to see them more often.

Misc

Okay that's enough for today. I've updated the list of The best stuff ever.

Over the weekend I visited Blaine. It was pretty cool. Also yesterday I saw the new Transformers movie. Hot shit it was good. If any of you (my friends) want to go see it, I'm up for it again, just let me know.

A friend of mine had mentioned she wanted to hang out more often. Well, she posted as much to one of the various social networking sites I visit. So I asked if she wanted to go grab some tacos or something, since I have it on good authority that tacos are her favorite food ever. Anyhow, with the offer on the table, her interest in hanging out seems to have dried up.

Women are crazy some times. Okay that's sexist and unfair. Women are crazy all the time. Maybe we'll have tacos some other time.

When I find my piece of mind, I'm gonna give you some of my good time.

Thank you for everything, Mr. Wizard. I can honestly say that you were a great influence on my life. Like many kids, you taught me about science and how the world works. I wouldn't be the person I am now without you.

You will certainly be missed.

Don Herbert (a.k.a. Mr. Wizard)

July 10, 1917 – June 12, 2007

Since I was getting a new car, with seats worth preserving, I started looking around for solutions to protect the seats from my dog.

I found This product on PetSmart.com. It covers the whole bench seat with straps around the headrests. Looks good. I ordered it before my car arrived, so I got to just look at the pretty box for a while. Here's the box, with Amica modeling it for us.

Initial Impressions

In the box I found the hammock, some instructions, and a free water bottle. It's nothing to really write home about, but it looks like it'd hold water just fine if you were so inclined. The box is festooned with product feature blurbs.

The manufacturer's picture

Features

• Waterproof Material
• Machine Washable
• Durable Protection
• Slips on in Seconds
• Protects your vehicle's interior
• Allows use of pet restraints
• Prevents pet from falling on floor
• Fits most cars, SUVs, minivans, and trucks
• Handy pouches for organizing pet gear
• Includes FREE water bottle
• Allows you to ride in back with pet
• Easy to install or remove

I'll discuss each feature in-depth next.

Wet dog? Dry seats.

Waterproof Material / Machine Washable / Durable Protection. On a couple occasions I had to put a non-dry dog into the car. After taking Amica to Ada Hayden Park to walk around the lake, she was panting heavily when we got in the car. She left a huge spot of drool on the hammock, but as far as I could see none leaked through to the seat. Then it was raining another day, rather hard. I put the dog in the car very wet. Aside from my car smelling like wet dog, the back seat did just fine. I haven't washed the hammock yet, so I can't really comment on that claim. I worry, though, about all the stitching on the pockets and the straps. The connectors are made out of plastic. So depending on how you store your pet hammock when not in use, they could get broken if it's just floating around in your trunk and something heavy bashes into them just right.

Slips on in Seconds / Easy to install or remove. Well, any period of time can be expressed in seconds. Once you get good at it, it will slip on in, oh, say, about 300 seconds. That's 5 minutes. Not a bad realistic time. Once you get used to it, it's not bad. It'd be even better with rear headrests (read on), but even without them hooking the hammock up to your LATCH anchors isn't a super big deal.

The hammock doesn't cover the seat side.

Protects your vehicle's interior. It's good insofar as your dog will mostly be sitting directly on the seat. However, the hammock does not extend down the sides of the seat. So your dog's paws might end up on the sides of your seat and whatever mud or water is on there will still end up on your interior. Be careful letting the dog jump in if it's been doing a lot of walking outdoors or is wet. Also it won't keep stray dog hair from getting on your interior; you'll always have a few. It's all just part of having a dog.

Velcro closures allow your seatbelts through

Allows use of pet restraints / Prevents pet from falling on floor. First things: By simple virtue of its shape (a hammock shape that covers the seat and goes up the back of the front seats) your dog can't fall off onto the floor. This is a non-issue. Your dog needs to be restrained in your car via a pet harness if it's going to ride in the seats like this, hammock or not. If your dog is restrained it can't move around or fall.

Velcro holds the hammock around your seatbelts.

That said, the hammock has a few really nice features to allow your pet harness. There is a long velcro closure along the back of the seat to allow your seatbelt buckles through, but can stay closed to prevent stuff from getting through. Along the sides there are velcro straps which close around your shoulder belts. This lets you use them with your pet harness and keeps the corners of the hammock up against the seat for more protection. Rock on.

No rear headrests makes this pretty hard.

Fits most cars, SUVs, minivans, and trucks. Well, it didn't fit mine. For this hammock to work you must have large rear headrests or some creativity and child safety seat anchors. As you can see in the picture I don't have the proper rear headrests for this to work. I had to rig it up with bungee cord.

Lots of pockets for stuff

Handy pouches for organizing pet gear / Includes FREE water bottle. The pouches are pretty nice. They might interfere with folding the hammock up if you stuff them full, but I can still fold it up rather nicely with the supplied water bottle tucked into its holder.

Allows you to ride in back with pet. The front side of the hammock features a vertical zipper. If you unzip this the front will become 2 flaps. If you strap one flap around the headrest like normal, and leave the other one dangle, someone can sit in the seat. This is pretty good for those cases where you've got 3 people and a pet to move.

No rear headrests? Got LATCH?

Bungees + LATCH = No Problem.

If so, you're in luck. The clips that the headset straps use to attach will fit very well into your upper LATCH anchors. Also, the plastic piece your clip clips onto is perfectly shaped for a short bungee cord running to your LATCH anchor also.

I found some short bungee cords at target. Most any bungee cord about 18 inches long should work as long as the hooks can get through the 1/4 inch holes in the straps. The hooks on the bungee cords I found are about as big as can work. It's kind of hard to get them into the LATCH anchors, but it works.

Storage

The nice thing is that this thing folds up nicely. I'm sure it'll store out of the way in your trunk if you have a car, or if you're desperate it'd probably fit under your seat. Even with the free water bottle in its pocket it folds up flat. You might have a problem if you routinely stuff the pockets chock full.

Folded up, it fits nicely into the sub floor storage area in the back of my Magnum. It's exactly the right size, like it was designed to hold this hammock.

Action Shots

Car | Pets

Waiting to go

A couple weeks ago I took my new Magnum autocrossing. I haven't been in a blogging mood, so I've got plenty of stuff saved up to talk about. Since I'm currently ducking out the brunt of the hailstorm running through Iowa by hiding in a parking ramp, I've got some time. I'm sure I already told a lot of you about the gallery, but for the rest of you here it is again, with the story.

Autocross is like racing, except you (typically) take your regular car to the competition. Also, there's no other cars on the track or at least they're spaced out so you can't run into each other. There aren't really any winners or losers. They time you going around the track and you try to beat your best time. If you're really good you can try to get the best time of the day, but really it's comparing apples and oranges so the number doesn't really mean much. But you get bragging rights.

The track

This event took place in Marshalltown and was put on by MCCI (Mustang Club of Central Iowa). Being a non-member, it cost me $25. The event goes down at a go-kart track which is about 2 lanes wide, so just big enough to move a car around. Normally they have some kind of rigid setup because there's lots of people there. But since it was raining a lot (kinda like today) only about 15 people showed up. So we each got to go out on the track a lot.

We got a lot of pics of me out there

It was raining cats and dogs so it was a great chance to get to know my car. My car is rear-wheeled drive, but also has an electronic stability program (a.k.a. traction control). What this means is when my car senses its wheels sliding around, it uses the brakes and throttle to keep the car stable. This both helped and hurt me while autocrossing, as I'll explain later. Later on it dried up and then I could really start to push things.

During a few runs I had passengers. Some times they rode along just for fun, and some times they took videos. Here's the videos of me:

• May 6 2007 MCCI autocross, Marshalltown, Ia. Shot by Steve
• May 6 2007 MCCI autocross, Marshalltown, Ia, In-car 1. Shot by Steve
• May 6 2007 MCCI autocross, Marshalltown, Ia, In-car 2. Shot by Sam (google video)

This is Russ talking to me in the staging area

The traction control really helped me out in the beginning to keep the car on the track during the worst of the storm. As you can see from the map there are lots of turns in the track so lots of opportunity to go off the track. Once the track dried out a bit I started feeling constrained by the traction control. When going around a corner, a real-wheel drive car will tend to oversteer (a fancy name for spinning around more than you turn the wheel). In contrast, a front-wheel drive car will understeer (it'll try to go in a straight line when you turn the wheels).

The hairpin right in the middle

Well, on a twisty track like this I should have a nice advantage in rear-wheeled drive because oversteer would let me get around the corners faster. My normal instinct when I think I can't make a corner is to let go of the gas and hit the brakes. However, to get around the corner better in a rear-wheel drive car you should stay off the brakes and give it a little gas to break the rear end loose so it starts sliding around (that oversteer thing I described earlier).

OH YEAH BABY, IT HURTS SO GOOD!

However, when I'd try that the back wheels would slide (according to plan!) and the traction control would apply the brakes and cut throttle (not according to plan!), which would make the car try to plow off the road just like if it were front wheel drive. There was one time when I did drive off the track because of that. I was able to get back on without being stuck in the mud, so no harm done. From then on I tried it a couple times without the traction control. Much better!

This was my first time autocrossing. This is my first high horsepower rear-wheel drive car. This was my first real event with my car. A lot of firsts, but it was all so fun. I want to do more and more and more!

Magnum

It's 2:17am, why am I still thinking about Trisha?

I was talking earlier to a friend about sleeping habits. I like to hold someone while I fall asleep. Or something. It's been, what, 2, 3? years since I was with Trisha, why in the hell do I still think about her on these lonely nights? I used to have a pillow with her smell on it, for a little while after she left, at least. I can't really handle smelling Happy anymore. Why are they lonely, even? I need to get out and meet some women. I can't very well meet any if I'm never in situations where that might happen.

My mind is racing. It feels like I've been in bed for at least an hour thinking, but I layed down at almost precisely 2:00.

So much crap has happened lately that I forgot to tell you guys about, so here's the cliff's notes. My taurus had a problem with the power steering pump. I fixed it with the help of a friend. When I got my Magnum my sister's car got hit in an accident (full write-up later, I guess, it's quite a story) so I lent her my taurus. Either I fucked up or the new pump was bad too, because it's doing the same thing again. I bought another car for my sister. A 93 Sable for $270. It's got problems, but I hope it will at least run for a while. Hanna hemmed my pants. Thanks, Hanna. Work is going kinda OK. We're in a crunch time and the boss thinks I'm not pulling my weight. I dunno, I've been pretty tired lately and it's very hard for me to concentrate at work, or any time really. Things just move around so fast and it's like, I don't know, a compulsion to not do anything. I really enjoy sitting still lately.

Washing my car is fun.

Beth moved out. In her place is Elspeth. She seems cool too, but doesn't hang out here a lot.

Got the dog all vaccinated and gave her some flea and tick preventative crap since I found a couple of ticks on her a few days ago.

This weekend went fast, but at least I fixed my sunglasses and got my prescription filled. Oh, I'll have to explain why both of those needed done too, but in another post I guess. I forgot to make a big post about autocrossing. I think I'll do that one next. Crap that was already like a week ago, I can't believe I didn't mention it.

Trisha really calmed my mind.

My left cheek, right at my jawline. It's twitching. I feel like there's more to write, but I just don't know what else to put down here. Is this really what life is like? It just feels like everything is behind a haze. Like, just out of reach, if I could just stretch out, I could pull back the curtains, and see things how they really are, or how they should be.

I can't think of anything else to write. I hope she doesn't bother herself with reading my journal anymore.

One thing I got from my dad is a finely-honed bullshit detector, and enough of an asshole streak to point said bullshit out.

My parents got divorced when I was maybe 14 or 15. I can't remember. At first my sister and I lived with my mom. The single lifestyle was a bit overwhelming and she wasn't the best parent possible for us, so my dad got custody of us and the house. So mom moved out, and dad moved back in.

Things were going fine. My dad is entirely responsible; my sister and I were fed, clothed, and safe. He pays all his bills on time, and even managed to pay for two teenaged kids without recieving any of the child support payments from my mom, and also managing to pay off the credit card debt she'd racked up on their joint cards.

My dad met a woman named Wanda. I don't want to say it's a typical wicked-stepmother story, but I really think it is. Wanda seemed nice. She has a son my age. Very soon after she and my dad started dating, she and her son moved into our house. This wasn't a big problem.

Then, I don't really know what started going wrong. Wanda would bicker with us, my sister and I. She'd pull so much bullshit and I wouldn't put up with it, that's where that bullshit detector came in handy. She'd say mean and hateful things to my sister when dad was out of earshot. My sister and I had always fought each other from a young age. We were pretty shitty kids, I think. Anyhow, little kids squabbling is the best way I can put Wanda's behavior. It was like a third teenager moved in.

She even tried to kill my dog! I think pets can sense evil. Molly, our cocker spaniel, was about 8 years old at this point. She started shitting and pissing on the master bed, on Wanda's side. Concocting this story about how she was getting old and losing her mind, Wanda harped and harped to dad about having her put to sleep. My sister and I raised holy hell until dad agreed to let Molly go live with my mom. Where she lived happily for about 8 more years. Never pissing or shitting indoors at all.

One summer, I think I was 16, I had had enough. I talked to mom, who was living with her boyfriend Paul in Paul's house, and asked if I could move in. So I moved in for a trial over the summer, for a month. At the end of that month I told my dad I wanted to stay there with mom. Dad freaked out because he didn't (or didn't want to) understand why. Dad was always a better provider than mom ever could be. Wanda was just too much to deal with. My sister, daddy's little girl, stayed with them.

Things got better for me almost immediately. Paul and I have our fights occasionally, but he's a good guy. For my sister, though, things got worse.

With me out of the house, Wanda focused all of her bitchiness on my sister. Wanda would constantly chastise her about her weight, her intelligence, and any other little thing. Wanda bitched about how jessica chewed her food! The emotional abuse was so bad my sister would run into her room and rip her own hair out.

Eventually my dad and Wanda put jessica into therapy for "acting out". Within one session the therapist had deduced that Wanda was the entire problem, and jessica would otherwise be fine. The therapist, in the guise of better helping jessica to change, suggested group therapy for the three of them. As soon as the therapist suggested dad or Wanda change anything in their behavior, therapy was over.

During this whole time I had minimal contact with my dad and wanda, since i was so resentful. Unfortunately, that meant I had no contact with my sister. I just had no idea that was going on. Pretty soon thereafter, my sister moved into my mom's too. We have been pretty good friends ever since then.

My contact with dad has always been a little strained. Typically I'd call him after a while and Wanda would answer the phone and chastise me for not calling more often, then give the phone to dad. I could still hear her bitching in the background while he tried talking to me. So I would call less and less frequently.

The final straw was when I was 18, just graduated from high school. My mom's credit was shit (due to the credit cards I mentioned above), so she couldn't cosign my student loans. I asked my dad to do it since he has pretty good credit. I wanted to talk to him alone, but as always, Wanda was right there. They wouldn't do it. I wasn't worth it, and a college education wasn't really worth bothering with. Paul cosigned my student loans. I think I only talked to dad one more time after that.

So now back to the present. Some other guy with my dad's name died, and the obit was in the paper. Several people called to give condolences. He's not dead. But what if he were? I really don't think I should let Wanda ruin my life and my relationship with my dad, whatever that amounts to.

So I called him to talk. We only talked about 45 minutes, but I dunno, not much to say. I told him I had graduated from college with a double major in computer science and philosophy. I said I had a job in Omaha, but a better one opened up in Ames, so I moved back. I told him about my new car, and he told me he had a Chevelle SS when he was about my age. We talked about the obituary for that other guy; apparently everyone at work gave him shit. We talked about my grandpa, who's holding onto a thread in the nursing home. He's about to go soon, I hope. His mind is totally gone. He chokes when they feed him since he can't regulate his breathing while swallowing. I hope to see my dad (and Wanda, who I hope has matured over the years) soon. I hope my sister goes with me.

Lust

Pure, red-hot lust.

In college I was looking for a car to buy after graduation. Being a wagon aficionado, my choices were rather limited. Here's some cars I have considered along the way:

• Cadillac SRX - On the front page it makes it look more like an SUV than it is. It's essentially a wagon with a really fat ass. Really nice, but a tad old lady for me.
• BMW 5-series wagon - The 5-series might as well be passed out with computer or engineering degrees. Though the wagon is set off a bit from the sedans, it's still just so...predictable.
• Mazda 6 wagon - These things look great. The only negative is that it's a smaller car than I like to have. It's essentially a funny-shaped hatchback. Almost had me, though.

The first time I ever laid eyes on her...

• Ford Freestyle - Given my search for the coolest wagon, why would I consider what many believe to be a boring crapmobile? Well, it is a large wagon, which earns points in my book. I'm sick of people calling these things crossovers. They're clearly wagons. I even test-drove one. It was so awesome that had I had better credit, I probably would have bought one right there. Ultimately, though, I'd have found myself longing for a Magnum. Hopefully Blaine buys a Freestyle, so I can at least get some vicarious kicks.

I was introduced to the magnum in 2004. A friend told me about the concept. At the time, if memory serves, I had settled on getting the SRX, as it was the only large wagon-shaped vehicle acceptable at the time.

Not any more.

I had to have a magnum. I quickly drank up as much information as I could. Pictures, reviews, news sites. It didn't matter, I read it all.

I have lived in this purgatory from 2004 until Monday, March 19th, 2007.

Research

Oh shit yeah

I didn't know anything real about buying cars, especially new cars. So I started googling. I eventually found a couple of sites that offered lots of help. First is Carbuyingtips.com. He gives lots of good advice and explains several concepts and scams to avoid. He also has a spreadsheet and a plan to show you how to calculate an asking price, but don't do that.

From Carbuyingtips.com I found a link to Fightingchance.com. The guy at Fighting Chance sells information packets. They contain information about the car you want to buy, it's MSRP, invoice price, and the prices for all of the options and add-ons. It also tells you how much other people are paying for that car across the country. Also, it tells you other industry news that might be of use, like how well the company is doing, how fast they're moving cars, and other facts you can use when talking to dealers. Finally, he describes a car-buying strategy called the "fax attack". The packet costs $35 and is well worth the money. I decided the "fax attack" was how I'd buy my new Magnum.

Saving

The sun was in my eyes. Despite the look on my face, I was happy with the car and not at all pissed off by the salesman.

I have bad credit. There's no way I'm getting a fancy 0% deal. Or any deal, for that matter. My only hope: My credit union. Since my mom works for Firestone Tires, I'm in the Firestone Credit Union. As you can see by their low-rent website, they're entirely small potatoes. I love it. Here's how my phone-based account access works:

(dials their number. A human being answers)

• Barb: Hello, Firestone Credit Union. Barb speaking, how may I help you?
• Keith: Hi, this is Keith Twombley, I --
• Barb: Oh, Hi Keith! What can I get you?
• Keith: Can you transfer $1000 from my savings to my checking?
• Barb: Okay! Let me get that entered here for you. Alright, any thing else?
• Keith: Nope, thank you!

I've had a couple loans from them before, so I figured they were my best best for a car loan. I set a goal of saving at least 10% of the purchase price as a down payment. I started with a goal of $4000, but once I decided to add the navigation system (another $2k), I bumped it up to $4200.

Even though I opened the virtual account in Quicken on June 9th, I didn't deposit anything until August 15th, 2006. You can check the Car_Savings/History page to see the progress I made on that. August 15th is also when I started making those graphs, and put them up on the site.

Here's the ticker from the top of the site:

I saved up for a new car, and ordered it. I'm still saving until it arrives. As of 2/28/07 I have saved: (history)

At of beginning of February I had saved enough.

Research Part 2

It's more dark gray than blue. I love it.

After sitting a while, I finally bought the packet from Fighting Chance and read it. I already knew the invoice prices for the car and the options, but there's so much more in the packet that's worth-while. Very worth the $35. I won't go into details about the fax plan that's in the packet, because the guy who prepared it makes his bread and butter that way, and I think he deserves every penny. I will say that he gives you instructions to prepare a fax, how to choose dealers to send it to, and how to negotiate when the dealers call back.

Please, This guy saved me over $1500, for $35. Go to http://www.fightingchance.com and buy the packet for the car you want, if you're shopping for a new car. How often do I endorse anything? Never. This is really that friggin good.

The Deed

I started getting dealers from the dodge.com website and getting their fax numbers from their websites. Some times I had to call to get their fax number and a person to address the fax to. Then I wrote up a fax according to Fighting Chance's instructions. I basically laid out that I'm buying a car, listed the exact car and options I wanted, and solicited a quote in reply.

I finally sent the faxes out on Wednesday and awaited replies.

Offers

The wheels are Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge!

I started getting replies that afternoon!

The gist from everyone was that there aren't any of the car I want within 500 miles. Ryan Greenwood from Woodhouse even looked nation-wide. My exact car is sitting on a lot...in California. Screw that! Factory order it is. One dealer said I couldn't even order one at all and I'd have to wait for the 2008s. Nope.

The local dealers gave me some ok price quotes. They hovered right around the invoice price. I was all set to settle for Invoice - 300, offered by Granger Motors. Then in a 1-2 punch on Thursday I got a couple of badass offers from Nebraska car dealers Tincher (the official vehicle supplier of the Todd & Tyler Show) and Woodhouse. Tincher beat Granger by about $250. Not a lot, but at least enough to give me some working room to negotiate with Granger. Then Woodhouse swept in with the killer price:

$35,999. Out the door.*

This is for the car exactly as I specified, mind you. This price was, to say the least, astounding.

How astounding? Well, the car's MSRP (as configured) is $42,290. The car's invoice (what the dealer pays the factory for the car) is $39,312. Dealers have a thing called 'holdback', which is actually a secret profit built into the invoice price. In other words, if a dealer sells a car for exactly the invoice price, they will still make a little profit. DaimlerChrysler vehicles have 3% holdback, meaning that there's $1269 of hidden profit built into the invoice price. That brings us down to $38043. Finally, there's a $1,500 customer rebate on the car, meaning that the factory gives the customer $1500 for the car (which is then applied towards the cost for you by the dealer). That brings the price down to the absolute bare-bones, no-profit-whatsoever, why-am-I-even-selling-this-to-you? price of $36543.

And I paid $544 less than that.

There has to be some extra double secret profit in there somewhere, and I'm glad I contacted Woodhouse. They made their sale.

• In Nebraska car dealerships don't charge for tax, title, or license. So that would make the total price something like $38,250.

Credit

This is the best picture of anything ever.

Well, I have to skip back for a minute to explain this.

I had previously talked to FCU about financing, in an attempt to get pre-approved. With my credit tenuous at best, I figured it would be wise to ensure I wasn't wasting my time trying to buy a car if I wouldn't get the money for it. Barb explained that they don't do pre-approvals until I have a "purchase agreement". Now, I don't buy new cars all the time, but a purchase agreement and "pre-approval" don't quite seem to jive to me. By the time I get a purchase agreement, isn't it a bit too late to get pre-approval? Wouldn't I be shopping for approval? Faced with this chicken and egg problem, I decided to just keep saving up and deal with it when it got here.

Ok, back to now.

On Thursday after I agreed to buy the car from Ryan, I told him I would call my CU and get back to him. Unfortunately we agreed to the deal too late in the day, and it was 5pm before I knew it. So Friday morning I called up Barb again and worked through the loan application. I faxed it along with the paperwork from the dealer over to her and then had to wait till 1:30 to call back, since she said it'd take about that long.

Mentally I prepared myself all day long for the inevitable "you'll shoot your eye out, kid."

I called back at 2pm and asked after my loan.

"Yes, it's all taken care of. Just call us back when the car is getting close so we can draw up the paperwork."

WHAT?

Aloud I said "Thank you very much, barb!", but to myself I was thinking "THE FOOLS!, THEY HAVE NO IDEA OF WHAT THEY'VE JUST DONE! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Pulling the Trigger

Props to my friend Turbo for taking pics

I called Ryan at Woodhouse back and told him to order the car. He got some more information from me and also my credit card number for the $1000 deposit. Since he hasn't called back, I'm going to assume the $1000 debit worked out just fine. Update: They never took the deposit out. I guess they trusted me.

The Interminable Wait

So here we are, my friends. I have 6-8 (5-7ish now) weeks to wait. I found an 800-number I can call for my status. Armed with the VON (vehicle order number) from Ryan, I have called this number daily to check. I made a box for the front page with the build status, and made a sheet for work to keep my coworkers updated. Maybe I'll snap a pic of it tomorrow to show online.

I've spent the rest of the time shopping for insurance. So far Progressive has the best rate, but I've got 5-10 more quotes to get.

I also bought a pet hammock for the back seat. They even had free shipping for orders $50 or more, so I just had to buy one more thing to get free shipping. Cool.

Insurance

I don't think I really believed it, even when sitting in my driver's seat.

I've been gathering the names of insurance companies and soliciting quotes. So far I've found a few interesting facts.

• Esurance, despite advertising the hell out of us, doesn't do business in Iowa.
• Only a few insurance companies do online quotes.
• Some insurance companies claim to do online quotes, but instead of giving you the quote instead tell you that an agent will call you. If they're not honest on their website, why should I trust them with my insurance?
• It's not worth it to bother with small independent companies. At least for me. The big well-known companies, while screwing me over, at least screw me over $100-$200 less than the small companies.

My list of companies has swelled to about 20, even after I started pruning hopelessly tiny companies. I've got quotes from about 11 of them. So far it's between State Farm and Farmer's.

As of April 5th, I have finally determined that I will go with State Farm. Their quote is the lowest and after soliciting opinions from several people, nobody ever had anything bad to say about them. You can see, in my google spreadsheet (linked at the bottom), the quotes I received.

Status

It's gonna look sorta exactly like this

• March 27: D (dealer allocation and all parts accounted for) This means it's OK for the dealer to order the car (they haven't ordered too many) and the factory doesn't have any delays on the parts (like sunroofs)
• March 28: D1 (gateline scheduled), It's actually on the schedule to be built
• March 29: D1, Dealer gave me the VIN. Estimated Ship date of April 11, 2007.
• March 30: D1, No update for today. The customer service rep tried to give me some news for today, but I already know the VIN and estimated ship date, so there wasn't anything new to say.
• April 2: D1, No update for today. This time she elaborated and said that "it's on the assembly line being built right now". That leads to the question of what the statuses signify. I assumed the status would trigger at the beginning of the operation (e.g. It would list as "E - frame" when they start building the frame), but maybe the status codes are like checkoffs to mark when these things are done?
• April 3: D1, They revised the date on my dog hammock thing for the car. Should arrive today now.
• April 4: D1, A friend of a friend works for Dodge and hooked me up with some info. His guess is that I'm not going to see my car until May. This page is going to get pretty dumb if I keep updating daily to say it's still in D1, so I think from now on I'm only going to update when there's some news. I'm still going to call daily, though.
• April 6: F (Painting), E means the frame is being made. Well apparently they got that done last night. Because now it's on F, where they're wrapping my frame in a sexy Steel Blue Metallic velvety glove of goodness. I bet they can get it done by the 11th now!
• April 11: KZ (Released by plant, invoiced), After sitting in F status for a while, it leapfrogged right into the shipping process. Depending on who I ask, that means it's either waiting to ship, or has shipped. The customer service lady didn't have a railcar number, though.
• April 12: KZL (Released, but not shipped), So I guess this means it's on the train, but the train hasn't left yet. I emailed my dealer and asked about delivery times. He said it could take from 2-3 weeks, depending on how many cars the factory is "sending this way". Still no railcar number. The customer service people don't seem to know much about that.
• April 13: KZM (First Rail Departure), Today's CSR wasn't as helpful. She said it had departed, and that it was in a KZ status, but didn't know if it was still in KZL or not. I guess she didn't know. But since she said it had departed, I'm going to guess it's KZM. I think I'll call back later today and try to talk to someone else. The same FOAF from earlier (the one from April 4th) has been contacted. If he has time and is willing, I hope he updates me again; his information is much more detailed than the CSRs'.
• April 16: KZM, I wasn't sure last time because she didn't give me much information. This time, though, the breathy southern belle told me it definitely is in KZM status. I think it'll be here within the week. Within the week. Wow.

I bought a magnum!

• April 17: KZM, I finally got the railcar number, from the dealer. So the tracking page tells me the car is in Gibson, Indiana. I should have it before the end of the month.
• April 18: KZM, An update rolled in this afternoon. At 13:20 my car was tracked in Proviso, Illinois. I don't know why my car took a trip north after going down that far south. After doing some searching, it appears there's a Gibson, Illinois. Furthermore, it's just down the tracks from Proviso. I think that's the solution; the tracking information had the wrong state. I put both routes on the google map. It shows an "arrival" date of 4/21, but I don't know what that corresponds with. I'm guessing that's when they'll transfer it onto the truck. The 21st is this Saturday. I think Woodhouse is closed on Sundays. So that means I can probably get the car next Monday. If I can get there.
• April 19: KZM, I checked this morning and the railroad tracking website says the car is estimated to leave Proviso at 5:10am (pretty damn precise for an estimate). Dodge's customer service line is broken; it plays the "Thank you for calling" and doesn't follow up with the prompt to choose an option. I can't barge in nor does any of the "gimme an operator" tricks I know work. I hope it comes back up later today. I'm very curious if the status is still KZM, or has switched to KZN (first rail arrival) or KZT (second rail departure).
• April 20: KZM, Union Pacific's tracking website is pretty precise. I tracked my car all day yesterday, even going so far as to get a few pictures of the train as it sped through Ames. I'm going to add a table of the entire trip when it's done. Since I'm updating the Google Map and making a chart for work, my time is pretty monopolized and I can't keep everything updated. If you want to see what's going on, check out the map linked below.

A view of the imposing nav radio

• April 23: KZN (First Rail Arrival), The car is there. Right there! It's sitting in Council Bluffs (right on the Iowa-side of the river from Omaha), at the dealer (about 20 minutes north of Omaha), or somewhere in between. So now it's just the waiting game. Sorta like at the beginning, but 100 times as frustrating, because I know it's there! I'm glued to my cellphone and my email, waiting on news. If it comes today I can probably get my sister to drive me. If it comes Thursday or Friday (I think) Blaine might be able to give me a ride. In between? I have no idea. On Friday I went to Des Moines to sign the loan papers and get the big fat check. So now that's burning a hole in my pocket. I also have the insurance all set up. Just waiting for the word.
• April 24: KZN, I called Ryan at Woodhouse to check up to see what's going on. So here's the story. The car was unloaded (I knew that), and waiting to be put onto a truck to go the 30 miles to the dealer. The guys that do that are unionized, and paid by the car. So there's good news and bad news. They've got an incentive to hurry (paid by the car), but on the other hand, if it's going to take forever the dealer can't just send a guy down to grab my car. They give themselves a 2 week window to deliver all the cars, so that's why the estimated date is May 6th. The dealer won't know anything about the car until they actually put it on the truck, so that gives him a 45 minute lead time on when it'll arrive. They have to do some tests and final detailing of course, which takes a few hours. Oh, and if it takes them 2 weeks to move my car 30 miles, that's .08 mph.
• April 25: KZN, Ryan doesn't work on Wednesdays, so I don't really expect a call about the car today. I added and nicely formatted the railcar shipping information I gathered. I see that the railcar which formerly carried my car is now on its way to Wisconsin, empty. Godspeed, little autorack, and thank you.
• April 26: KZN, In case you missed it at the top of the page:

Railcar Tracing

The train passed through Ames. Here it comes

My camera won't let me turn the flash off in night mode, so I had to wait for the flash to recharge between each picture.

So I didn't get many pictures. If you look at this full-sized, you can see the automobiles inside.

I tried chasing the train in case it had to stop, but it was too fast for me.

While I was chatting with Ryan, Turbo snapped a nice pic of the gaping liftgate.

And another interior shot looking in from the back.

First Impressions

I stopped at a rest area on the way home to take a few pics.

Well, let's get this out of the way up front: I was already in love a few months before I bought the car. You're not going to read anything near a fair review of the car here.

Upon hearing the news, I jumped in a car with a friend from Strangetalk named Turbo. Ok, his name is Matt. Who knew internet people have real names? The ride home was pretty fun. Turbo had to meet someone in his home town, so I was unfortunately on my own. The car's a lot bigger and I was unfamiliar with it, so while in Blair (where Woodhouse is) I drove pretty much like an old lady. It's really easy to accidentally squawk the tires at lights, so after a couple embarrassing starts I started letting the car roll forward a bit before applying any gas. I like to think I'm a bit better at starting now.

This is a pretty good pic from the rest stop.

Yeah, it's got a HEMI.

I can't help but remember that my palms were really sweaty on the drive home. I didn't want to do too much fiddling with buttons and knobs while driving (totaling my car on the drive home would have been spectacularly sad) but I did try to figure out the A/C. It's got a dual-zone automatic climate control system. What that means is the driver and passenger each choose a temperature on a dial, and then using another dial I choose the blower setting (standard low-med-high, and an auto-high and auto-low setting). I couldn't find a way to turn it off entirely, though. That made me feel pretty guilty having the windows down in town. Don't worry, I figured it out later.

You can see the block peeking out in this pic. It's HEMI orange.

It took me a few minutes to figure out how to get a CD into the radio. It's got a 6 disk changer built into the dash, so that's neat. So far I'm not a super big fan of the Sirius satellite radio. To my ears it's a "200 channels and nothing's on" thing. Also, it takes a couple seconds to change the station so each time I change the station I have to wait to find out if I like the song or not, and then change the station again. Kinda frustrating. I stuck to my prepared CD for most of the ride home.

I associated my phone with the uConnect, and thanks to a couple phone calls from my roommate Beth, I know it works well. I also got the radio presets programmed after some RTFM on my part. I recently read how to use the autostick (it's an automatic that you can manually shift, sorta) so I can't wait to try that out next time I'm out and about.

Spreadsheet & Other Stuff & Gallery

The speedometer goes to 180, making the legal portion acute.

I made a spreadsheet to track the price offers I got on the car. Then I expanded it to have full final price information, the invoice/MSRP, and insurance quotes.

Google Documents and Spreadsheets has awesome privacy settings. I made this spreadsheet public so anyone can look (but only I can edit it), so if you're curious about how much I paid, how much the car costs, or insurance, check it out.

My google spreadsheet

Here's the tracking website for union pacific:

UPRR Tracking site (requires IE, d'oh)

I updated the map with the corrected route my car took, and a big arrow pointing out where it is.

Google Map I made a google map to trace where my car has been.

If you want to see the gallery of all the pics I've taken, check it out: Pictures of my car.

Old and new, side-by-side.

Magnum

Went to des moines last night to hang out with blaine. Today was his daughter's first birthday, so we did that whole thing. It was alright.

We've been talking about buying the Boheme, since it's for sale.

Came back to Ames tonight and went out to the bars with some friends. We didn't go to WAS since I guess it was packed. My foot is broken again so I didn't really feel like going up to the bar to get drinks at the shitty places we went instead, so I drank just enough to get grumpy and not enough to feel better later. For part of the night I actually felt violent. I wanted to get pretty drunk. Oh well.

Tomorrow I have an appointment to see a movie with a girl. Since nobody accepts the other definitions of the word "date" and I'm just sick and tired of explaining to everyone why they're goddamned wrong about it, I've decided to simply refer to any social interaction with the same verbiage as a visit to jiffy lube or the dentist. I have a feeling she will come up with an excuse. Regardless, I'd like to see Grindhouse, so I'll see if anyone else wants to go if she doesn't.

Update: Of course not. lol. I'm hilarious.

The 2.1.0 Patch notes were just the icing on the cake. I haven't been enjoying WOW for a few weeks now.

WOW

I've been compiling a list of music to burn to a CD and have with me when I go pick up the car. This is my list so far, in no particular order:

Found:

• KMFDM - Ultra
• Spiderbait - Black Betty (original by Ram Jam)
• Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song
• Led Zeppelin - Battle of Evermore
• Led Zeppelin - When the Levee Breaks
• Box Tops - The Letter
• Led Zeppelin - Gallows Pole
• Trick Daddy - Sugar Sugar
• Nelly - Grills
• Eminem - Shake That
• Korn - Got the Life
• AC/DC - Thunderstruck
• Mobb Deep - Never Goin Back
• The Cult - Painted on my Heart
• Rolling Stones - Paint it Black
• Rolling Stones - Sympathy for the Devil
• Goldfrapp - Strict Machine
• N.E.R.D. - Lapdance
• N.E.R.D. - Truth or Dare
• Kanye West - Gold Digger
• Deep Purple - Smoke on the Water
• Pink Floyd - Run like Hell
• White Zombie - More Human Than Human
• Bonnie Tyler - I need a Hero
• CCR - Fortunate Son
• Ginuwine - Pony
• Powerman 5000 - When Worlds Collide
• Static-X - Bled for Days
• Static-X - Push It
• Sean Paul - Temperature
• Ol Dirty Bastard - I can't wait
• Wu Tang Clan - Reunited
• White Zombie - Thunderkiss '65
• George Thorogood - Who do you Love?
• Motorhead - Ace of Spades
• George Thorogood - Bad to the Bone
• AC/DC - You Shook Me All Night Long

Need to get:

Car | Music

Big dooin's afoot.

Details here:

Buying the Magnum. (Note that this article is still under construction, of course, so check back for updates!)

Last updated April 6th.

Car

For the past couple of days I've been kinda depressed. Often I worry that I'll be dead sooner rather than later. Well, dead at all. I really don't want to not exist.

Today I've been pretty tired and grumpy, and without a very excusable reason.

So just a note if I've been a dick to you recently: Even though I think you're a stupid jerk right now, it's probably not permanent.

I put my car in the shop to get the brakes fixed and the oil changed. This will be the last time the car is repaired I hope; I plan on putting things in motion to get my goddamned dream car this month.

Since the mid-afternoon I've had a facial tic. That's a pretty good sign I'm overly tired, I guess.

I lent my sister $500 to bail her boyfriend out of jail before INS deported him. I went down to Des Moines yesterday to get the money back. She had $450 for me, and she'll give me the other $50 later. She's going to try to get gastric bypass done. I'm so worried for her. I don't want her to die.

I wanted to see 300 with blaine, but he couldn't find a sitter. Not really a big deal. We went to perkins for dinner instead. His daughter is pretty cool. I bet she'll be funny as hell when she learns to talk.

Ever feel like you've been ripped off? Eh, I don't know why I feel that way some times. I shouldn't have a sense of entitlement. I'm a white male, born in the wealthiest nation on earth. Even if I'm not at the top of the pile in the US, I'm still doing better than the other 98% of the population of the earth. Luck plays a big part in who we are and who we become. Do not forget that. We are all lucky. Extremely lucky.

You know, I've made a lot of mistakes in my time. Lots. Some times it seems like rather than living my life I'm just trying to keep those spinning plates up like you see in the circus. Well, I haven't seen them in the circus, but on TV in the circus. I watched a lot of TV as a kid.

I think I see my brother coming, riding many a mile. Brother did you get me some silver? Did you get a little gold? It just feels like I'm so desperate. I don't really know what I'm desperate for, really. I think if I had to pick something, it'd to be "normal", whatever the fuck that is. Failing that, I wouldn't mind being filthy rich. Why? Because I'm exceedingly lazy and self-centered.

I've had a lot of great situations I've fucked up. I don't know why. Sometimes it's like everything's fine, and then I do something of my own volition. Well, really what does that mean? Thinking about something logically I'd say "why would someone do that? That's the wrong thing to do! I wouldn't do that!" but I did. But I do. Over and over again.

During school I just got depressed for no reason. No good reason. I stopped going to my classes and even lost jobs because of it. That's my fault. It's fucked over my credit, it tanked my GPA; I'm still paying for my childishness.

I've never been popular with the ladies. (No shit? Yeah, really!) So why do I fuck it up when given the chance? Well to be honest and fair with myself, I don't choose available women. I had a fling with a really smart redhead, Monica. She was nice, and I think was attracted to me. When she finally broke up with her boyfriend I thought she was all mine. Mighty presumptuous. There's some other bad shit that went on with that thing, of which I'm pretty sorry too. We still talk occasionally, and for that I'm grateful. However, it's mostly just banal pleasantries. There have been a couple other girls, but they'll forgive me for saying they were a minor part of my life because I'm sure the converse is true. Then there's Trisha. Obviously she was seeing someone else, but I was selfish. I don't know why she has a thing for big giant fat guys, but like I said, I'm lucky. It was great in the beginning, but she wasn't really mine. I still miss her occasionally. I wish we still talked, but that'd be inappropriate. She's made a life for herself with the guy she should be with. I was greedy and took her for granted; which I guess is what her boyfriend did to lose her to me in the first place. What self-centered hubris! Why didn't I think that'd happen to me? Maybe I knew it all along, and just lied to myself. Just a little longer to drag it on? I was very self-centered. I still am, I suppose. Still, nobody could calm my mind like she did. I feel like I really fucked that up. The whole thing was fucked up from day 1, I guess. I want her to be happy.

I want to find someone to trust me, and I trust her. I'd marry that woman.

Am I trustworthy? Probably not.

Am I paranoid? Probably.

Throw down your plow and hoe - rest not to lock your homes. Why do we do anything? What's the point? I think I've got some good ideas about objective morality and epistemology. I should write them down. Sorry, that was a digression. If everything I love is going to crumble into ashes some day, why should I bother? Why do I surround myself with trinkets and crap? The truth is, they don't matter. They're just a diversion. I can't prove that, of course, but I've got a pretty good feeling. So what is the point? What should I be striving for? It'd be pretty trite to say "well that's what you've got to figure out yourself" but what does that simplistic platitude really add to the discussion? Nothing. What is the great fight I should avail myself to? I feel like I've got all this rage here, ready to go; to be unleashed in righteous fury, if I were going to use a silly cliche. Well I guess I did. But what's really worth fighting for? I do argue about things, and I do feel strongly about some issues. However, am I one of the best, lacking conviction in the things that matter? Or am I full of passionate intensity for the worst of things?

So I got a dog, Amica. I love her dearly. However, barring any accidents, I'm going to outlive her. What the fuck was I thinking? That's going to suck. I'll love her while she's here and mourn her when she's gone. That's a pretty selfish sentiment, I guess, to be worried about my own mental state at another's death.

I feel a little better. I don't know why, but I started crying in there somewhere. In retrospect I don't know why any of that was cathartic, but I guess it was. God damn, there's nothing sadder than a fat man sobbing like a bitch with a skinned knee.

Well, I expected that to be a short one about my grumpiness, but it got a lot longer. Oh, and my face is still twitching.

So I brought in some bread, peanut butter, and jelly to work. I'd make sandwiches out of it for lunch. It was a good deal. Well, I started skipping lunches to help lose weight, and just sort of forgot about it.

So the other day I was thinking about how hungry I was and remembered the sandwich fixins I stashed in the crisper. Whoops. It's definitely rotted by now. So with resignation, I went to the fridge and opened the crisper to throw the old bread out before it started stinking the fridge up.

It was still good. Holy crap! This bread is like 2 months old and there's no mold and it's still soft enough to use. So I made a sandwich.

This was a couple of days ago.

Today I got hungry again so I checked in on the magical bread. After making a sandwich I got curious about the actual age of my magical bread.

Inspecting the entire bag I found the date printed.

It said:

BEST IF PURCHASED BY NOV 09

wow!

This bread is just shy of 4 months old.

It is magical.

Update

March 8, 2007

Today I ate the last sandwich from the loaf of magical bread. It, like all the rest, was delicious.

I will miss you, magical bread.

Army of Darkness is such a great movie.

Car

You may have noticed the graph at the top of the page getting rather full. I went and added a history thing too so you can see the progress I've made. I'm basically all set except for a snag with my credit right now.

Before I got this whole process started, I decided to pull my credit report to see my score. Sure, it costs money (the free ones do not tell you your score), but it's important to know. Good thing.

A new loan showed up on my credit report. It says I took it out in 2000 and never made any payments. It's even with a company I've never done business with. Cool! So now I have to wait a month for the dispute to clear it up. Also I found that a debt I paid off appears to be claimed by 2 debt collectors. I disputed those too. Hope this gets done quickly.

Snow

The city of Ames sucks at plowing.

Shamrock Shake

It's back. Go get a Chocorock shake.

Living

I'm looking for a new place to live. Tas is going to live with me again, and so is a girl named Kristen I met on Strangetalk. She seems ok. Very pleasant. We're trying to get some place decently priced, and close to a bus stop since Kristen doesn't have a car. I want a garage since I plan on buying a car.

House?

So I got thinking, triggered by my friends' discussion of their various house-buying plans. Why don't I buy a house? Well, I've got bad credit, but if I can get a car, maybe I could get a house instead? If I were to get something like 100k-worth of house with 3 bedrooms the mortage payment would be somewhere around $600/month. If I were to charge my two roommates (I guess they'd be renters) $250/month, that's most of the mortgage payment. Sure, there's other things like taxes (on the rental income), insurance, and all that stuff, but I can't imagine I'd be any worse off than I am now.

The big question, of course, is how does buying a car fit into this. I surely doubt I could buy a car and then a house. But what if I get the house first? Would I then (hopefully soon) be able to get a car, considering that I'd be making more income to compensate for my increased debt? I wonder.

Maybe I need to borrow that Home Buying for Dummies book I bought for Blaine.

WOW

I'm at level 68. I don't know what happened. It just sorta, well, I don't know how to explain it. It's not that it's boring, it's just that when I sit down and think of what I want to do, I just don't want to play. Don't know how to explain it.

Phone

I made a costly blunder last time I visited Blaine's. I was sitting in his Lazyboy with my laptop in my lap, and my phone hooked up to the USB for charging. Somehow it ended up in the sweetspot under the corner of the chair and when I tried standing up...crunch.

• Good news: The screen isn't broke
• Bad news: The directional button below that is.
• Good news: I can still use the phone
• Bad news: Sometimes it thinks I'm repeatedly clicking the directional button, which is the same as hitting "enter". So it dials people over and over again when I hang up if I'm not careful.
• Good news: I can fix it by getting a broken phone off of ebay and swapping the tiny circuit board. It'll work. Honest!
• Great news: I found a cellphone on ebay with a broken screen.
• Bad news: It cost me $166 goddamn dollars. For a broken phone.
• Bad news: I wish my screen would have broke instead. That's only $70.

When the phone arrives in a few days I'll frankenstein up a functioning phone. Then I'll sell the faceplate to a friend of mine to recoup some of the cost.

Weight

I've been slowing gaining weight this month. Since the weather is getting warmer (theoretically), I want to get back down into the basement soon to lift weights I'm trying to get it under control, which isn't easy (but not impossible) due to...

Sick

For about the past week I've been sick as hell. Coughing up all kinds of nasty pointy phlegm. Beth got me some cough syrup and offered me some cool pills of hers. She's a neat person.

Oh, Toys

I also bought a cool toy. I'll post pics when it arrives and I get it put together.

Car | Money | Weight | WOW | McDonald's

So I was on vacation for this past week. My Plans? Warcraft, of course. On Tuesday (at midnight) they released the Burning Crusade expansion. It raised the level cap to 70 and added a whole new world to explore. So at midnight I bought it and started playing.

Lots of fun. Before it came out I decided my goal was to hit level 65 before my vacation ended. I did that around 11pm today, so that's all good. Got a few new toys to play with in the form of new spells, and got a few upgrades to some old ones. Lots of new armor, too. Since people are replacing their epics with the new stuff we're finding, it makes me feel much better about not having all those epics in the first place. I can't wait to hit 70 and we start raiding.

Aside from WOW, I went to Des Moines for a couple days to hang out with Blaine. Of course we mostly played WOW. And by mostly, I mean exclusively.

So all in all it was a pretty relaxing week. There's nothing quite like not doing anything. I suppose that means I've got a simplistic outlook on life, but that's just how it is. Kinda like in Office Space. What would I do with a million dollars? Nothing. And I'd love it.

Oh, I did pick up Wario Ware Smooth Moves. It's pretty fun. Had a few people over on Friday night to play.

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone at work tomorrow. I have no doubt they've entered plenty of new bugs for me to work on, and we're probably going to be busy planning the next iteration of our software.

I think for my next vacation I'd like to travel or something. It'd be a lot nicer to have someone to go with. Maybe Vegas, or a cruise. I dunno. Of course by then I'll have a new car. A road trip?

WOW | Job

A post wherein Keith describes what he got himself for Christmas.

Quick note to Matt and anyone else wondering: I finally made a page on Blaine's Computer.

• Magnum model car - With my Walmart gift card I decided to go walk around and see if there's anything I wanted. I picked this up along with BSG 2.5. Hey, I also found an older giftcard and asked if there was any money left. Yep, about $15! I didn't spend a dime of my own money for either of these. The last model car I put together had to have been at least 10-15 years ago. I'd like to get the proper paints and glues and stuff to do this right.
  

  

  New Tools
• DVD Player - I think I might have already talked about this. I actually got it while I was at best buy picking up a giftcard and a WOW card for Blaine. It plays DivX movies and has HDMI so eventually when I get a newer TV it might not be 100% obsolete. The one complaint I have is the remote. The shape is symmetrical from front to back, so its kinda hard to tell which end is the front from feel alone. Also it's kinda awkward to hold since it's brick-shaped and wide. Did I mention it plays DivX movies?
• Salt Cellar - Hell yeah. I've wanted one of these for a while, and the price was right.
• Pepper Mill - No, I didn't buy this because of the name. I bought it because I'm a relentless AB fanboy, and he recommended it (for good reason). The name is just a happy coincidence.

Money Shot

Oh yeah, Amica says Hi!

Hi!

Cooking

I don't really like updating when there isn't anything to talk about, so that's why I didn't feel like updating the site during December, apparently.

A few things have gone on, I guess. I could tell you about them.

LSAT

So I took the LSAT again. And apparently they got the scores done early. I got the same score as last time. A 162 is quite respectable, I guess. It's just that I'd like to go to Iowa, where the median incoming score is 163. Frankly my GPA is nowhere up to snuff to get in there. Naset keeps telling me that since I'm a sciences guy and had a year out in the real world they'd love to have guys like me in there. I dunno, though. While I'm not quite sure about my place in the real world, I really don't want the super-duper stress of school again.

WOW

I've mainly spent a lot of time playing WOW. I guess that's why not much is going on. I got my main up to 60, but maybe I did that in the previous post. I've been playing on my Hunter alt. She was my banker. Well, she still is. But see, in the latest patch they changed the rules for disenchanting stuff. Previously, an enchanter (a profession you can choose to have) could disenchant any kind of high-level armor and crap. Now they've changed it so you have to have a certain amount of enchanting skill per level of item you want to disenchant. So my banker, who disenchants all the crap I can't use, needed to gain enchanting skill.

Of course, this brought another problem: you need to have a certain level to get a certain amount of profession skill. Professions go on a range of 1-300. So for example, to have more than 150 enchanting you have to be level 20. To have more than 225 enchanting you've got to be level 35. So I'm at level 23 right now I think. Actually I'm hoping to take this character to 60 before the expansion comes out since I foresee enchanting being very profitable. At least I hope it's profitable; with the new rules causing a dearth of items being disenchanted, the raw materials for enchanting (created by the disenchanting process) have gotten a lot more expensive. Leveling enchanting is proving to be a very capital-intensive project.

Christmas

Christmas went OK. I couldn't find a goddamned cordless electric can opener for my sister. Most places didn't seem to stock them, and the places that did were always sold out. Damn. Aside from hooking my sister up with a set of bath towels, hand towels, and washcloths, I nabbed a kickass 4-slice toaster that had 2 really long slots so you can toast all kinds of shit in there. I'm sure she'll like it.

I had a great idea for my mom. My sister and I went to Sears and got a portrait taken of us, framed it up, and gifted it. I thought it might be a bit self-centered, but mom teared up pretty damn good. I have no idea how in the hell we're going to top that next year. Maybe if Black & Decker makes a hand-held kitchen gadget that opens cans, bottles, mixes, blends, chops, cooks, and freezes leftovers.

I bought myself a DVD player that also plays DivX movies. I've never owned an official DVD player before. It's also got HDMI output so it's somewhat future-proof.

General Stuff

• I'm sick of seeing the Sinclair/Mediacom shit. I don't care who wins. Anything on Fox I want to watch I could just download anyhow.
• I think Iowa Student Loan has fucked up my automatic payments. I got a couple overdraft notices from my credit union. They've taken a couple of payments out of my checking account lately instead of my savings account. I have to call them tomorrow to ensure this sort of shit doesn't keep happening. For the payments where I don't know which account they came out of, I deducted them from both just in case. When I get my quarterly statement for December I'll verify that they didn't come out of my savings account, which means I have more money than I think I do. Or something.
• I also need to call my two previous employers to make sure my W-2's are sent to my new address.
• Money is tight, due to the holidays, but I did manage to sock away a little tiny bit more for the car. I'm still on track for a February / March purchase.
• Work is busy. We're in the bug-fixing phase of our new development. It's quite a challenge to fix bugs quickly and without sacrificing good coding practices.
• I really like the song the Absolut commercial. Also the Hennessey V.S. Cognac commercial.
• My weight has stabilized. I'm going to get that back on track.
• New Years Eve was icy and snowy, so I stayed in. I planned on drinking myself silly and playing WOW. Instead I played a few hours of WOW, got a headache and a stomach ache, so I didn't get drunk at all.
• I was kinda lonely around christmas time, but that passed.
• My sleep cycle is messed up again.
• The front steps need de-iced. Don't camp out there unless you're wearing golf spikes or enjoy head trauma.
• The Wario Wii game comes out soon. I need to get that. Also the Mooby-meal Clerks 2 special edition.
• I didn't get a pepper mill for christmas, so I want to buy one soon. Also Alton Brown's salt container.
• The hatch on my car isn't latching properly. I'm going to try some WD-40.

I'll make a page on Blaine's Computer soon.

Oh Yeah

The dentist and I talked about insurance and the like. He said it's A-OK to wait till August to get my crown. Awesome.

Law School | Holidays | Job | Money | Car