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Flickr in the house
10/10/2004 11:16 p.m. Yo, I didnt want it to get to a year before updating the blog, so I've added a flickr badge and some other stuff. I'm going to try and get some content up, but i need to implement a content management system. More later. Peace. new blog

Woo xmas, woo pubs, woo bulls, woo schedule
12/14/2004 10:47 p.m. Well, it's been a long time, but there really hasnt been that much stuff going on up here. anyway, this last weekend, stuff finally happened. Saturday meant going to Kristin's company Christmas party. This means driving to Indiana for a nice dinner and free drinks. Before we left, we talked about who would be "that guy," abusing the free drinks. turns out, there were 2 "that guy's." They spent most of the night doing "drinks on the rocks" because the company prevented shots. so they just had the bar keep poor drinks on the rocks, and they would just drink it right away to get the same effect. eventually watching them got old, but we were stuck there because we carpooled with some people who wanted to stick around and kiss more big wig arse. eventually, we took off and headed to this big long pub crawl that we signed up for earlier. this pub crawl started at 11 in the morning and marched through 10 different bars lasting over 12 hours. well, we got there almost 12 hours after the start. so our whole crew was wiped out except for dave, who was bumming hard after the long time of boozing. eventually, ronnie woo saunters into the bar. ronnie woo is the guy in left field of all the cubs games and just yells, "woo cubs, woo sosa, woo, woo cubs" all game long at an incredible volume. scott van pelt of sportscenter has actually used some of ronnie woo's material. needless to say, a few drunk phone calls were made to commerate the event, and we caught a cab home shortly thereafter.
Yesterday, I decided to go to my first Bulls game at the United Center. It was actually a lot of fun. We drove up there and parked in the middle of the ghetto for free, walked 3 blocks to the UC. Before we even got up to our cheap seats (10 bucks per ticket, less than a movie up here), we popped a squat considerably lower and watched a close ball game. suprisingly the bulls lead the mavs for all but 45 seconds or so of the game. unfortuneately, they did not lead the last 3.6 seconds after michael finley put a dagger in our hearts and the crowd went home disappointed. I'm really happy that after this weekend, I'll have gone to a bulls game, and 2 bears game within a month. I really love going to sports and it's so nice to have my teams close, with people to go to the game with me. god bless america.
unforuneately, tomorrow, k starts a mean streak of about 8 millions 12 hour shifts in a row. During the holiday season, this will equate to a shit load of money, but at the same time it's going to be such a pain in the ass.

Slow Ride...
11/20/2004 11:04 a.m. So, I've had a few blog opportunities, and have been lazy of late. Last weekend, I went down to purdue because K's ma was in town. Just after I left, my car loses power in the fast lane. So I have to cross 5 lanes of traffic with no horsepower, which was fun. So now that I'm stuck on the side of the road, I call dad, AAA, and the girls, who were well on their way to spending money. They come back to me, but after some trouble, eventually I end jumping in the tow truck with the guy, and I tell him that he's taking me to Boswell, IN. He axes how far that is, I tell him, "about an hour," even though I know in the tow truck, it'll take a good 2. We proceed to cruise down US-41 with slow jams blaring at top volume all the way. I couldnt tell if he was mad at me or just cruising along. After a while, my chauffeur gets a phone call from some guy, and he responds jubilantly, "Man, you out already..." What proceeded was 5 minutes of conversation that resembled the movie Pootie Tang. I really couldnt tell what was being said except for one question about cars. anyway, he drops me off in boswell 2 hours later, and so i tipped him 25 bucks for his trouble. He proceeds to thank me, and then give me knucks, which was pretty sweet.
Last week, I went to see the Pixies, which I was super psyched about since they are one of my favorite bands freshly outta retirement. It was interesting because while their music is high energy, it isnt aggressive like many of the bands that I typically follow. I had not seen a recent picture, and the band looked like 3 of your uncles and an aunt on stage. Despite their appearances, the performance was spot on. Most songs were performed exactly as they are on the records, but they did do some extended versions of songs. I was surprised to hear "where is my mind" fourth, and upset that I didnt get "Into the White," my favorite song of theirs. At any rate, the performance was awesome.
Finally, this past weekend, MJ got into town. So we had more visitors, including, chris kaup, ozz, dre, mj, and timmy. Add a couple chicago friends hanging out for a bit, we proceeded to trash the apartment with a weekend of football and football. Unfortuneately the bears were hoed by the colts. However, after a look of the new Soldier Field, I can say that it's awesome inside. the views were excellent, the concourse was large and full of shit to do, and the seats were fairly comfortable even for a large person like me. Anyway, having people around makes me happy that we have the 2 bedroom because it allows us to have a little more personal space when it's so crowded. Anyway, after a broken garage door was fixed, we finally got them on their way.
notice that the lady of the residence was absent from this weekend story because she was working 13 hour days, leaving before 8 and getting home at 11 at night. it's pretty safe to say that her job sucks ass, and we can't wait for her to find a new opportunity.

Vote or Die, Bitch
11/03/2004 11:04 p.m. i was not suprised that bush won re-election after watching kerry's campaign. Basically, i think the democrats chose a poor canidate. Gov. William J. Clinton didnt really look much like a presidential canidate, but his ability to communicate and relate with rural and suburban folks along with his policy and compassion to align himself with urban folk. kerry lost because he was too much of a robot. two things alarmed me more than just kerry losing. First, it was the map of states, which was so bizarre with the middle of the nation going for bush, and the coasts and the northern midwest going to kerry. this was just shocking. next, the dems lost several seats in the house, senate, and even several governor races. I talked to my mom about this, and she believes that america was just saying, "we want to elect a more moral government, and this is how we're going to do it." i guess i have to agree with her opinion, but it blows me away how everyone can be satisfied with the current state of the nation. I am happy with the president progress on education, but i really dont think many voted on that. there are so many people jobless. almost everyone knows some one who needs a job and some onen who is in danger fighting for our country. I guess people are OK with war (see WWII) and even a slow economy (see the 80's), but it'll be very interesting to see where our country goes in 4 years, if we get attacked again, and what the dems are gonna do to dig their ass outta a hole.

big weekend, big city, and the best parking job of my life
11/03/2004 10:17 p.m. this past weekend, ozz, dr. dre, and major tim came north to visit the crib and the second city. of course, this meant that I had to think of lots of stuff to show them to keep the weekend full. Friday night, after they arrived and had a relaxing drink, we walked to the ghetto El station and trekked up to Wrigleyville. Of course, I knew this would be a popular trip, especially for Tim who walked around the stadium with the look of "this is so fucking cool." i wish they werent quite so far away so that it could be easier getting north and south. anyway it was rather dead at the stadium bars, but a little south people were out. of course, many of the costumes were fun to talk about for the originality or hoochiness. anyway, after a couple of joints, we headed home because all were kinda tired because we had all worked full days.
Saturday was supposed to be headlined by a Boiler victory over the hapless Northwestern. however with as big of a let down since the Georgia-Purdue Outback Bowl, i was bummed for some time. After that, we headed for some food and later to visit Trish in Lincoln Park. Everyone knows that Lincoln Park has about 5 parking spots in the whole neighborhood at any one time. I happened to find one on a narrow side street. The events that followed were a blur of glory and driving proficiency. I managed to put the mystique, full of 5 people into a spot as small as humanly possible. In the end the car was nestled against the curb with about 6 inches or so on either end. After a walk and an hour visit, we all packed in the car, with Trish, to head back south, down the miracle mile, and to our place for some rest and relaxation before another night out. This night, we headed to Wicker Park, which is a young, but alternative neighborhood that I hoped my crowd would especially appreciate. Kristin was spending the day on no sleep and her lack of sleep combined with some alcohol to make a her not only slap happy, but very delirious. We were at the bar for some time, and eventually cabbed home.
Sunday was supposed to be a day of rest, but we ended up driving out to the 'burbs to watch the colts-chiefs game and go to ikea. lucky for ozz, the chiefs won and he made like 200 bucks in assorted bets he had with his co-workers. next we headed to ikea, where we proceeded to spend about 2.5 hours browsing. these events showed everyone how much kristin's job sucked, as her body was so messed up from sleep and non-sleep, that she was mostly walking dead all day. That night, k got a nap before work, and we got ready to go the the longest evening concert ever. it featured 7 bands covering and performing as other bands. though some of the bands were dead on and enjoyable, teh whole night was a prelude before seeing one of my top 6 or 7 favorite bands play. in fact, the previous 2 times that i've seen Local H play, they've performed 2 of my top 10 concerts ever. anyway, when the time came, "Local H" walked out. it was in fact 4 random guys and the guitar player/singer of Local H, all dressed in excellent Oasis geer. The ensuing show was a dead on cheeky version of Oasis. However, I was hoping for the real Local H lineup, all 2 of them, performing Oasis songs in the style of Local H. anyway, it wasnt, but it was still pretty damn cool. after the concert was over, I got home at 1:30, a full 4 hours(after the time change) before my naptowns compadres. anyway, sorry about their monday efforts at work.

cool video, big couch
10/27/2004 10:14 p.m. So i was watching tv tonite, flipping by channels in between innings of the w.s. i passed mtv2, which was showing videos, believe it or not. i saw an eminem video that was not only really cool, but the best political song and video that i've seen since rage against the machine. i recommend checking out the video because i know that no one who reads this blog dont watch much mtv or videos. it's impressive politically and graphically.
other news going on is that we just received our couches. they are big and they are comfy, but they still look pretty weird in our place. i assume that they will seem more familiar before too long though.
fyi, i really do intend on doing updates to the site. I really will get the comment thing going eventually.

the one that got away
10/18/2004 11:05 p.m. so this past weekend was purdue's homecoming. so the chicago folks drove down to the west side to hang out with the old crew. i met andy and 4 other people from my pledge class for dinner and drinks later. all of us are employed in good careers, and its good to see people be successful. of course, the main event of the weekend was the big game between the undefeated boilers and badgers. the stinking game started at 5:30, so people start tailgaiting at 10 or 11 in the morning, which makes for way too many hours of sitting around in the cold. i was impressed by the number of people who came back for the game. at any rate, i went to the game w/ my dad. we played alright, but we just arent that good. i dont think that we would have won out even if we had won this game. our offense really didnt move the ball until a couple of wisconsin's defensive studs got hurt. so sure enough, we came up short in the big game and blew it in the last minutes.
later that night, everyone was so tired of hanging around campfires in the cold, no one wanted to go out. we ran around looking for something to do, but were unsuccessful. by the time i got home, i was so happy to lay down in bed because no couch can possibly compare with one's own bed.
on to more important matters. every now and again, you hear a song that you can't live w/o hearing. all i can say is download this. i gotta believe that the drugs used to make this song are at the "needle hanging out the arm"/layne staley levels. god bless america, land that i love.

Visitors in the house
10/13/2004 09:02 p.m. so this past weekend, andy and his new "friend" maggie came up to visit us. of course, we wanted to take them out on the town as much as possible. friday nite, we took them to a couple places up in Lincoln Park to several places for drinks. pretty uneventful on the whole, but good times on the whole. the notable event was buying a Chicago style pizza and eating it. however, i thought it sucked. the sauce and cheese was excellent, but the crust was too sweet and was ill flavored. i will try other joints in order to see if it was just this restaurant.
saturday, we hung around for a while before walking grant park and the mag mile. after that, we went to a purdue bar in lincoln park. this bar was completely packed to the gills w/ purdue people and paraphanilia. this place blasts the fight song whenever we scored and erupted on bad calls. it was truly weird because we ran into lots of people that we knew being so far from purdue, but anyone not from purdue surely would have ran from this joint. so all that was great, and everyone i was with really loved it. however i was lukewarm about the joint because it was hella crowded and loud. so it was kinda like having big city prices, but college town crowds. i really dont enjoy watching important games in bars just because i like to concentrate on the game too much. it's not that i'm totally against bars like this, but not for big city prices. so i say, college bars in college towns. that way you can get a big pitcher of cheap beer for 6 bucks, the way i like it. anyway, after that, we ate dinner and returned home to watch girly movies and eat popcorn. hoorah.

boston creme pie
09/21/2004 11:41 p.m. wow, it is so easy to not update this thing some time, especially when there is stuff to do. it is a lot easier to read these things than write them. first to the status report of the big city. on the plus side, the friend situation is going very well. at times it's tough for k-gun because all the people that i've met are young dudes, and she has little time for socializing anyway, but she's still way better off than i was down in orlando, by far. jobs are going good for the most part. i have responsibilties at work, which is something new. the commute is going better since i'm being desensitized to idiot drivers, and i now listen to books on tape instead of radio commercials and songs by Jet. so that's good. on the down side, in the past week+, i got my bike stolen and kristin's car got busted into. fortuneately, there wasnt jack in her car. so it mighta just been a vandalism thing. dunno. anyway, that's all i have to say about the big city now because it aint getting me down.
this past weekend, we visited the fam in boston. this means that we go there for a weekend, eat very well all weekend, and come home full. this is the advantage of living in chicago, america's quintessetial hub. we can get a cheap direct flight about anywhere, spend the weekend, and come home not feeling jipped. we attended the vow renewal of an uncle, whose wedding i attended this spring. this means that i've been to his weddings 2 more times than the promised one. i also am in a collage of his first wedding. talking about commitment, damn. we also got a tour of fenway ballpark. this was cool, but i realized taht the area around fenway is about 1/10th as cool as around wrigley. we were at one of the biggest bars adjacent to the park during a september yankee-bosox game, and hardly anyone was there, and no one there was even drunk. i assure you that this doesnt even happen when the cubs are playing in april against the rockies. wrigleyville is a wonderful neighborhood chock full of cool shit to do. the otehr day we were out on teh town up there, and we went to a bar by the park that had batting cages. you'd take your old style, put it on the ground, grab a stick and hack away at slow pitch softballs or 80 mph heaters. sure it zinged the hell outta my hands when i actually caught up w/ the heaters, but it was great fun. no one ever brings this up in arguments for the confines against that cracker box with cracker box seats. so i'm happy to say that we have the best ballpark for this and many other reasons. go cubs.
side note: i learned on the tour that it was hawk harrelson, one time red sox, that was the first to wear his golf gloves at bat after he golfed 39 holes on a gameday after being incorrectly told he had the day off. his blisters were so bad that he started a trend that almost everyone now follows.

the case of the stolen mat
09/07/2004 10:36 p.m. so before our visit to purdue this weekend, our bright orange welcome mat was stolen. so that sucks. so after work today, i decided to inspect each and every floor for our mat. sure enough, in front of an apartment tucked in the corner of floor 14, i found an identical bright orange mat. so what did i do, you may ask. i jacked it back. i'm 90% sure that it's our mat. w/ that 10% doubt, i dont know if i should contact somebody, or even just ask their neighbors if that mat just showed up. not sure.
for the weekend, i went up to purdue saturday nite for a little bars w/ andy. sunday, we saw the boilers romp up on 'cuse. after that, we were sun burnt and tired. so andy decided to buy an xbox. we proceded to play 6 1/2 straight hours straight of halo in order to beat the entire game in 1 sitting, a slightly more momentous task than the 17 minutes that it takes to to beat super mario. i contend that tim and i coulda done it in about 14 or less if we didnt have oz's slow ass doing one outta every 3 levels.
as for other affairs, my work is going great. it is so nice to be able to work w/ young people that you enjoy hanging around w/. i already have a couple good friends from work. so all is good for me. on the other hand, kristin's schedule really sucks. she's worked 10 straight days of graveyard shifts, and she gets to work 2 more! i dunno. also, we just got the news that one of the other FLM's, took the entire 2 weeks around christmas off. this means that instead of just having to work about all the time around xmas, now she has to work 12 hour shifts all around xmas. she'll have a lot of extra cash around the holiday season, but in my opinion, this schedule sucks too much for both of us, and i cant wait till she's no longer on it. maybe i'm just a pessimist, but since i graduated, it's been a constant wait till something happens.

cubs, seattle, boswell, and new job
08/19/2004 12:40 a.m. When one has no job, it seems silly for him to take a "vacation" since he would always be on vacation, but I did anyway. this past weekend, kris and i flew out to seattle. on top of that, i had a baseball day game to go to before we flew. so after the game and some cervezas, we took the train to midway. i'm not sure if it's because i never used to use it, but in my opinion, nothing is cooler than taking public transportation. while in seattle, we obviously went out a lot, because marques goes out a lot. we saw the sites and the bars, and a cool tour of seattle's underground. there was also a party w/ some of mj's work friends that was particular chilling to kristin and i because it showed us that we were going to have to start making friends, eeekk. anyway, we ended the weekend by buying mj some shelves for his barren apartment. i have no doubt that they probably still are bare though.
after a rough flight home, i had the end of the week to take care of some chores, including getting my car fixed. i got it fixed in boswell because it was cheaper than taking it to someone in the city. my cheapest estimate for the work in the city was 250 bucks. to get it fixed in boswell, it cost me 45 bucks (65 after i gave him an extra 20 for the ridiculously low price). after getting it fixed, i ran some other errands in boswell, which is now a ghost town. there used to be several businesses and people walking on the interior streets of this town, but now, there is no one. this caused me to feel a little bit guilty for shopping at walmart, big grocery stores, and home depot. it's hard to match all this stuff in one place and prices that cant be matched by a mom and pop joint or corner hardware. i also feel weird walking around bumping into people that i didnt know very well w/ in the past because i want to avoid an awkward conversation, damn anti-social tendencies. part of this comes from my fear to forget something that i obviously used to know. for example, driving through tiny towns that i know, and i take wrong turns. lots of little things change to result in big things. i really need to be more social with people from the past. i have found myself being terrible about keeping in contact with people from high school and college. i really only have phone numbers for very few people that i was friends with even 2 or 3 years ago.
finally, my first day of work was today. it was a good experience, but i'm really scared about this daily drive. some days, it's gonna take an hour and a half to get there, which would not be near as bad, if i was moving the whole time, but there is going to be periods of stop and go, with lots of stop. this is exponentially more frustrating than a nice moving drive. unfortuneately, i think that this is really going to get to me. i came home, and w/ all my free time due to kristin's oddball hours, i've already started looking for better locations for us to relocate to.

Weekend at Timmy's
08/10/2004 01:00 a.m. This last weekend, the girl was working ridiculous hours. so i high-tailed it outta town so that she could relax in the apt. i went to andy's for wednesday night. we met at the bars where he and his roommate were already a pitcher or two ahead of me. since we met early, this led to an early retirement, which actually was good for andy since he had to work on thursday. i couldnt sleep in on thurs morning since his couches suck. i was tempted to man sleep, but he was in the middle of his full size bed rip-roaring snoring. so i took the couch. after helping him do some moving, i headed down south to tim's place. we constantly tease tim about how his place is "in the ghetto." it would be a lot better if the city would buy some street lights. really, the only light on the street come from the liquor stores' beer signs, which are located every 4 or 5 blocks in the neighborhood. i visited one of cette liquor stores and it seems very interesting to me that they do not have 1/4 of the cheap beers that we had in college towns. this seems so stupid. of all my close friends in the midwest, tim, ozz, andy, and girly, all of us are still down to drink the cheaper beers and all of us are perfectly content with them, and we're all yuppies. andy is still in college, but is more yuppy than most of us w/ his suburban upbringing, and i'm gonna drag tim into yuppydom w/ his new job. kudos to him for being in the club. if i could, i'd organize a protest to bring keystone to the hood. truly a shame. the rest of the weekend involved a ton of video games, which was cool because i used the bears to put a beatdown on tim(colts), oz(chiefs), and andy(colts). not to mention, andy and i won the nba championship.

Shacking up
08/01/2004 06:42 p.m. so i'ts probably time to blog seeing that i've moved 1100 miles north to live with a girl, of all people. this makes me the first of my friends to do something as crazy as living w/ a chick. anyway, as for the trip up, i left at 9:00 straight from work at the evil empire to drive to the casa de chopper. this is about 975 miles, and the trip went great. no traffic, no off schedule stops, no anythings. i woulda made it all the way to indy on two stops, but since tim lives in the ghetto, there was no eateries next to his house. there is in fact a package liquor store very close though. anyway, i got to his place and we chilled out and watched tv and shot the shit, like we usually do. his place is quaint, especially for a crime scene, though he's already putting his touch on it as was expected because he is the only truely artisic member of the three muskateers. his living room is currently decorated like the white stripes, all white and red, w/ contemporary furniture, except for this coffee table, which is wood. he has hardwood floors that are kinda creeky, but when he gets a rug for the living room, that'll be a lot better. another cool part is a hidden basement w/ a trapdoor entrance.
anyway, after a short night of sleep, i left his place for chicago. believe it or not, my 2 worst traffic places were next to tri-county high school and next to highway 30 in merrilville, with waits of 10 and 30 minutes, damn indiana d.o.t. after, that, we got up to the apartment and had a flawless move-in w/ the help of one of my parents' buddies. after that, we sat and had a drink of water before sending them back on their way south. From there, it was unpacking boxes and setting stuff up for more than a day. this went really well with almost no damage over the 1100 mile move. at this point, it seemed to become official that i was shacking up w/ a girl, which is slightly crazy. after some short work, we have this apartment set up, and it is nothing short of really damn nice. all i can say is that i feel damn fortunate and almost undeserving of this nice of a place and setup.
one note about the drive, i saw only 1 john kerry bumper sticker and about a million W '04 stickers. i'm not sure if this means anything, and i did drive through the heart of george country, but at the same time, i would like to think those states arent that lop-sided. i guess it's probably just a function about how good an republican encumbent can fundraise and distribute.
friday, becky came to visit. we went out in old time, but it was a pretty low key night on the whole. saturday was spent shopping and picking up the promised one from the airport. airport trips are usually pretty easy now-a-days w/ cell phones, but traffic and a lack of cell phone use made this one much more difficult. also, he flew into o'hare, which makes things 15 times harder than flying into midway. after some stress, the girly and i ended up getting on a train and getting outta dodge because the flight was so delayed. she then went to work, on saturday night. this is just one example of how much her schedule can suck ass. so i spent saturday night watching tv and doing laundry in the city. things should be a lot better next weekend as i plan on road tripping it. anyway, that's all i have to say about that.

I'm spread, So thin, I don't know who I am. Woah! Yeah!
07/22/2004 11:02 a.m. Well, we're all set for a move. Next week, dad flies in one way, we fill up a Uhaul truck w/ all my junk and we drive north. this is not news to most. however, it may be news to some that i'm getting tired of moving. i counted all of my dwellings of at least a month for the past 5 years, and its around 10. the first few were easy moves since I didnt have any junk, but now, it's getting old. i'm not a person that sweats most things much, but i have been getting very stressed thinking about the different move possibilties. it has actually had some effects on my body, draining me down physically. also factoring in is the ensuing job uncertainty and about a million other things.
also many of my friends are making life changes as well. i made 5 good friends while down here. one is in kenya hating life. one is in england. one got his girl knocked up and is now married and moving to philly. one is moving to west palm beach pretty soon, and one works most evenings and is the only one staying in the area a year after we all moved here. not sure what that says about me and my friends, but i guess we're all apt to move a lot, but then again i'm the one bitching about being tired of moving.

Anniversary
07/10/2004 01:38 a.m. OK, so I know it's a few days late, but I recently celebrated my 1 year anniversary in Florida(7/3/03) and at Lockheed(7/7/04). This normally would seem cool and all, but i spent my 1 year anni of living in florida in my chicago apartment and my one year anni of working at lockheed by turning in my letter of resignation, both in fact on the exact day. the apartment at chicago is already looking great so far. we have a rug now that covers the living room area, as well as some cool shelves and a futon. when i showed up, it very much looked like a complete empty space, but by the time i flew back to florida, it was much improved. i'd like to think that i put my touch on it, but it was probably more likely that it was the girly's touch with my motivation.
As for my resignation, for those who haven't quit jobs before, it is awkward. everyone was sympathetic, but at the same time, i felt like i was letting them and myself down. however, as one of my several bosses told me, "you have to look out for yourself because no one else will." so that's what i did, and i now have only 12 days left at lockheed, ending on the july 28, and on that day, i'm leaving before noon. some friends have suggested leaving hella early every day, but i think that i'll only take minimal personal time because i dont have shit else to do.
speaking of that, i'd like to say that i'm disappointed in my ability to make new friends and merge into a new environment. sure it's disappointing to be leaving a city after 1 year, but i'd like to think that that was a result of an extenuating circumstance. however, not establishing a large friend group is a disappointing. tonite, i spent the night watching tv and reading. while this is fine because my body is kinda worn down, i wish i had more friends so that if things broke down, i wouldnt have to be solitary. part of the problem is that 2 of my best friends down here are in england and kenya, and another just got married to his pregnant girlfriend and is now in new york, but oh well. w/ chicago, in addition to new challenges there, i'll have new beginnings. the bottom line is that it's hard moving somewhere completely new, and it requires a resolve. it has definitely given me a different perspective that i could not have gotten otherwise.

weekend in chitown
07/02/2004 03:06 p.m. so this weekend, i flew up to chicago on my own coin to meet w/ a couple companies. i've found that the job market in chicago is tighter than other markets like florida, san fran or southern cali. i think this is because so many telecom engineers were displaced in the early 00's here. at any rate, on thursday morning, i woke at 5:55, got dressed up, drove the girly to indiana and set out for an hour and a half plus commute from there to the northwest burbs, incidently where both my interviews were on thurs and friday morning. the first interview was with northrop grumman. they are a company very like lockheed in many ways. i find this a little exciting and and a little discouraging. opportunities and great work exist there, but a mediocre assignment can make things difficult. they also would encourage achieving second degree and that would be a.o.k. w/ me as school has always come easier to me than work. this is not a knock on the real world, but i have always really enjoyed school. i was well prepared and we chatted about stuff like software process, bombs, and targeting systems. i sure do know a lot about bombs. anyway, the whole thing went as well as i can conceive. so if they have a requisition, i think that i'm a very likely canidate.
the next day, i made the same trip to motorola. this is a job that has opened up to me through mj's buddy dave perenic. anyway, they have this really cool development group that makes new things in small quanitities for deep-pocketed customers. it seems like a really cool job. the interview went well on the whole. there were some things that I wish i could have done better. first of all, i showed up in a coat w/ tie and my resume sporting all of these buzzwords, which i think is important to get noticed. this group definitely was more casual than i expected, some wearing jeans and running shoes. at any rate, the interview lightened up and went pretty well. the group was very young on the whole, which would be great to work with. to northrop's credit, the people there werent near as old as the average at lockheed orlando. i think lockheed's age is due to people who love to live and retire in orlando. so once someone hits 35 in orlando, they look to stay till 75. as for the actual interviewing, there were some digital things and some intricacies of embedded programming that i had forgotten or dont have exposure to that came up, but i dont think that there were any impasses and i'm hopeful abut the job. eventually the interview evolved into me asking them hard interviewing questions that i've heard in the past. this was cool because it gave me a chance to relax my voice, but most because it showed that this group of people enjoyed a puzzle or two. also think that it showed a little blurring of the line between employee and boss. it's funny how subtle things from an interviewer can show a lot about him in addition to subtle things about a company tip their hand as well.
on the whole the job search went well. both jobs would be good "computer engineering" jobs, which i would favor over a straight developer job. we'll see what the future holds. i'll blog later about the visits from my and the girly's families.

loose lips and icebergs sink ships
06/28/2004 10:06 p.m. so i'm on a new program, JASSM, which is a cruise missile. a cruise missile is a long distance bomb that flies a long way on its own and hits a target, hopefully right on the target. i was watching a speaker give an overview on how important our work is. he told a story about a marine in afghanistan who was on a horse and being sought after by 200 taliban members. so he uses his satellite phone to call in the help of our cruise missile. sure enough, JASSM comes to save the day and takes out all of the enemy. then the speaker says, "it's good to know that our work made a difference in one man's life." my comment, it seems like it made a difference in about 201 people's lives, but that's just me.
i had my first day of work on the new program today. i had 2 meetings that were run absolutely terribly. both consisted of 2 guys doing all the talking without saying really anything. my former program had meetings that were frustrating, but few were near as pointless as both of these. on the latter meeting, we were going through statuses of tasks on a prototype of the software that is eventually going to be developed. so many of the line items on the schedule are incredibly simple, yet somehow people have been working on them for weeks w/o finishing them. so instead of just statusing them, suggesting a few solutions and move on, the boss just pitter patters for a bit and then decides to split the already simple line item into 2 items, one at 100% and the other at 0. by the way, i dont have a computer or any work to do on the project and wont for several weeks. this means that i'll have no problem telling these jokers that i'm out. in a perfect world, i'd get a job offer, and then lockheed would let me go before the 2 weeks for sure becuase i'll have no contribution to this project for a while. on teh bright side, there is a sign at work that says, "loose lips and icebergs sink ships."
by the way, i might have another interview in chicago. it is w/ allstate. it seems to be a lame job out in the 'burbs, but right now, i'll take anything for a decent check right now.

Worse than Ever
06/21/2004 10:27 a.m. So I got to work today, once again, with nothing to do. Not only that, but I'm greeted w/ a phone call telling me that there is no room for me on the new program that I was supposed to go to. So, if I was going to stay here, that would be a big deal. however, w/ my impending leave, i'm so so tempted just to go talk to my boss and lay my shit out on the line and hope that they offer some type of package where they just let me go and pay me for a little of the interim. This way, they would not waste their money w/ me starting on a new program and i could use it to get outta here as soon as possible. However, I don't have the kahunas right now because there is still 6 weeks until the end of July, but ultimately I am more unhappy in Orlando than I've ever been because I just want to get outta dodge. I guess this is a consequence of seeing the end, just having the girlfriend down here for a while, and the fact the florida is now hot as hell. it is in fact too damn hot to walk oustide from 11 to 5. If I had any certain assurance that moving up to chicago would help me land either of my current prospects up there, i'd just pack up my shit and head north.

God Bless America
06/11/2004 1:53 p.m. So last Wednesday, the girlie and I went to the grocery store to buy a 12 pack of my favorite beer, Keystone Light. There were only 2 12 packs left, and they were both in terrible shape. I took the best one home and proceeded to drink the skunkiest keystone of my life. Now I've been on the brewery tour twice, and I know all about Rocky mountain spring water and the choice hops, barley, and rice used for Keystone, but the key to a good keystone is freshness, and this beer just didnt have it. on top of that, one of the beers was empty, apparently punctured. I didnt know what to do, but the girlie and Timmy told me to call and bitch, and I did. I had no idea what to expect, but I was greeted by a kind, caring customer service lady who listened to my complaint, in which I used the words fresh multiple times and even threw in a "taste of the rockies." clearly she could tell that I was a faithful customer. So she is sending me a check for 7 bucks so that I can go get a better 12 pack next time. I think that is really damn cool. What a great company that will give me back 7 bucks cash just so that I can be satisfied. I found that so refreshing that they actually cared about my sastisfaction. It saddens me to think that I work for such an evil company when companies like coors are in one business, and that is making us happy.

from 'lando to a condo
06/08/2004 10:59 p.m. last weekend, the old lady and i flew to chicago to find a place. basically, we had a ton of appointments set up, and we visited about 15 properties on the south side of chicago. this area used to be more ghetto than ghetto, but with the wonders of gentrification, the bad people have been moved up and out. so now, the area is full of millionaires, but if you go further south, some of the bad people are still there. the whole area is full of 300,000+ dollar condos and million dollar town homes. unfortuneately, the businesses have not filled in on the south loop area like they have on the trendy north side. anyway, our search came down to a few places with the major deciding factor being how much we want to spend. after some debate, we went with the cheapest place that we saw, which is still very luxurious apartment at 1845 south michigan avenue. it costs only 1300/month, and for living in a 2 bedroom in the city, you pretty much can't beat that w/ a stick. it has a fireplace, wood floors, a cool layout, a few modern looking concrete walls, and a washer/dryer. so now, i have to get a job, and then we'll be all set.

trip to chicago
06/02/2004 04:06 p.m. So not much has been happening down in florida lately. i went down to palm beach to go to mercedes's graduation party. it kinda sucked because kristin ditched me. anyway, she went to boston, but now has came back. so i go to work and make money while she stays in my apartment and reads books. this next weekend, we're going up to chicago to look for a place. we were originally looking in lincoln park, which is hte "in" place to live, but that will be too far for her to commute. this raises the question, "what are the odds that our apartment isnt going to be too far for me?" i dunno. so now we are looking at some places in the south loop area possibly in the printers row or central station areas. from everyone's descriptions, printer's row is a pretty happening place w/ reasonable prices and a half hour commute for her. also, it is very centrally located, which hopefully will make it easy for me to drive to teh job that i have no certain assurance of finding. anyway, while i am still worried about that, i am certain that we will find a nice apartment at a fair price.

fun fact
05/23/2004 11:36 p.m. with no desire to tell stories of a boring weekend, i'd like to drop a fun fact on y'all. Did you know that Shel Silverstein (author of the children's book, "where the sidewalk ends") also wrote that song "cover of a rolling stone" and "boy named sue." i think that's pretty cool.

random rant
05/14/2004 1:35 p.m. alright, so work is slow. so i'm going to waste time by writing a rant blog. first of all, I'm listening to dan patrick on espnradio, and I would like to find the person that made the word "old school" appropriate for grown-up conversation. I dont mind it being used in the slang sense, like "damn (sic), that dr. j jersey is old school fo' real." however, the fact that well-spoken individuals use it on network and especially espn media(tv, print, radio and interweb) pisses me off. also, i'd like to add that in my opinion, dan patrick is tied for "the biggest sycophant on TV" with one carson daly.
next on the hit list, at the wedding that I attended, the song for the last dance was "good riddance" by green day. now, while i like this song, it should never be played at weddings because it is about a breakup. it's in the title, good riddance. does this sound like a wedding song to you? this sparked a particular memory for me because i once thought that it was a sweet song before I had my own little epiphany and actually read the title. imagine that, actually reading the title. luckily the song that they played as we left was the version of "what a wonderful world" sung by a hawaiian dude while playing the uke, which is the perfect song to be played last and should be played at every wedding.
finally, i'd like to add one quick note about how it pisses me off when people blame the media for steering public opinion against the war. I am the first one to admit that the media has a liberal bias on the whole, but I dont think that it should really take much to convince someone that war is a bad thing. seriously, i was pointing out to a co-worker how we are the aggressors in this war. when saddam rolled his tanks into kuwait and when hitler rolled his shit into poland, they were aggressors, but now we are. i am not going to try to say that our intentions are near as malicious, but let us never forget that the history books aren't written by the people who lose wars (i also miss rage against the machine). all that i'm saying is that if the middle east was a race car, it's tachometer would be in the red, and you dont drive a race car in the red.

going to the chapel and going to get married
05/11/2004 12:03 p.m. so this last weekend, i went up to boston for a wedding. i accidentally booked a bad flight for the friday out there. so i had to fly standby to get out there early on friday. this means that i had to get up at 5 a.m, which is especially early when you are spending time every night to find a job. so since i cant sleep much on planes, i was very tired friday. unfortuneately, that also carried over to saturday. friday nite, i went to the rehearsal and reception dinner. this was kinda awkward because I didnt feel like I shoulda been there, let alone at the head table for dinner, but it didnt turn out to be that bad. the meal was very very nice equipped with drinks, appetizers, salads, main course, desert and coffee. afterwards, we had some drinks back at the grandparents and then to bed. the wedding started at 11am, with the reception starting at 12:30. the service was tiny and quick, which was alright in my book. the reception was in a super nice place with super nice food, which is also cool. the dancing was nice with one exception, the chicken dance, whcih they stuck in there at the end. after that, another family shindig ensued. once again, i drank a few beers, but not enough to really get any momentum going. later that night, we watched a movie back at the house, but once again, not enough to get a rhythm. i think that i was actually kinda sick on saturday for some reason. anyway, on sunday, we went to salem, mass, which is where they burned witches. every time that i go to boston, every building that i go into, i say, "this is so new england." this is cool becasue i'm used to midwest architecture and somehting different is always nice to see different stuff. after getting a beer at a local brewpub, k dropped me off.
another random interesting note is how google sometimes finds our pages. the other day andy gets an email from some random who stumbled upon his page by googling "cactus tines leg." his page came up 2nd when i tried it. anyway, the person went to his webpage, saw my vacation log and then checked out his resume and offered criticism. this is pretty cool realizing that bullshit that we write can be read by people all over the over, all over the world, all over the world. even stuff like bullshit about a drunk friend getting cacti in his legs when he is trying to pee in the middle of nowhere.

we dont need a stinkin' bass player
05/04/2004 11:23 p.m. well, lots of stuff has happened since the last blog. probably most importantly, the girlfriend accepted her job in chicago. this is pretty monumental. so now if i find a job in chicago, we can use our plane ticket money on other things, like furniture, which will be nice. we've already started planning looking for an apartment. this is significant because we are looking for one apartement, not two. i'm not sure if everyone else is ready for it, but we're young and we think that we know it all, and this is what we want to do. it also a wise financial decision and will tell us how good we really are for each other, which is pretty exciting.
so this past weekend, local h rolled into the dirrty south. the opening band was called "detachment kit." they can be characterized as screamo similar to the used or someone like that. this is not a good thing, though weezer is emo and i like them. the venue was a place called will's pub, which is the best place that you could see a band. it is a complete dive, equipped with pool tables, darts and pictures of naked ladies on the walls next to neon signs. it also featured many beers and 2 dollar 16 ounce PBRs. unfortuneately, i had to drive to the show. anyway, the stage and venue was incredibly small, but even though it was a capacity nite, it wasnt crowded. i suspect that this is a result of that great white show where people died. anyway, the show was only 10 dollars local h's performance is in my top 5 shows ever. their new cd kicks ass, and their old material is all good. the band only has two members, a rocking singing guitar player, and a drummer with long curly hair, who can flat out beat the skins. as a bonus, if i moved to chicago, i could see them regularly because they are just north of chicago. despite everyone begging them to, they did not play freebird, unlike the last time that i saw them. people were also begging them to play "school." the singer responded by saying, "why dont you start a band and play a show, and i'll come and watch you play 'school.'" if you think about, this is probably the smartest thing anyones ever said because everyone should start a band and play that song. god bless america and rock and roll.
so monday nite, smyth and i went to monday nite fights at a local club. this club is completely decked out and also featured naked ladies on the walls. we went to scope out the possibility of smyth fighting. basically, if you're dumb enough, you volunteer to fight anyone else in teh crowd within 5 pounds of your weight. then you fight 3 minute and a half rounds w/ gloves and helmets. watching this makes you realize how much effort it takes to fight for that long. i've did a some of wrestling in my day, and it is freaking tiring. if you win, you get a 50 buck bar tab, and if you lose, you get a 20 buck bar tab. so this is pretty much not worth it. anyway, it was a good time nonetheless, and we returned knowing that you'd have to be an idiot to volunteer for that
Also, i checked mj's site today and linked over to his old roommate's site, perenic. it is pretty sweet and gives me ideas. it really has about everything you can ask for in a personal site. first of all, i need to get more pictures on the site. also, i want to add a comment feature because that is pretty cool. also, i'm looking to change colors. my site looks kinda cool, but i want a grown up website. so i'm going to try to start getting this stuff done the next week.
speaking of other stuff, i've been watching a lot of nba playoffs, and all i can say is that i dont want the spurs to win. the reason for this isnt just that they're boring, but that theyhave robert horry. basically, every year since 1994, either horry, steve kerr, or i have won an NBA championship every year. so since kerr has retired, if horry loses, it basically will be my year to win it. i hope the lakers win that series, and then the kings win the west, but i dont know if that is gonna happen. the spurs are freaking tough.
this weekend, i'm heading out to boston to go to a wedding in boston. i haven't been to a wedding in a while. in fact, the last wedding that i went to has already ended in divorce. though it didnt even last more than a year. the wedding is k's uncle paul, who is about 32 or so and incredibly immature. anyway, he's marrying a chick that is pretty cool. so i'm really looking forward to the wedding and ensueing parties because it'll be fun to party down w/ the twins and cousins and other folks.

the shift job
04/27/2004 1:48 p.m. so now that the girlfriend has one job offer, she now has a second one. This would seem like it is the best thing everr. However, there is always a catch. the catch is that her job entails some of the most grueling hours that i've ever heard of. it basically means that her shift changes every week with lots of work on the weekend and working at times that i dont know if it's legal. basically, it is ridiculous enough that i am advocating a boycott of suave and lever2000. so now there are 3 options out there: take the iowa job, take the ridiculous slave job, or take no job. i guess you have to take one of the jobs. so bascially, i did an analysis of it and i'm really not sure if i could see her more often if she lived and worked in bufu, iowa and i lived in chitown or if we both lived in chicago. it sure would be easier if things were just easier, but there really is no certain assurance that things will get better in the near future. i guess my hope was that she'd find what i consider a stable job for her so that we could set up in a city together with her as the anchor, but it may seem that I'll have to find something stable as well because girly can't work crazy hours forever.

the iowa job
04/22/2004 3:06 p.m. so I neglected to mention this in the last blog, but the other significant event in my life of hte past few weeks has been the constantly developing girlfriend situation pertaining to where she finds a job. long ago, when tim and I were discussing possiblities for his jobs, he brought up the scenario of the "iowa job," which is a job located in the middle of nowhere, but it is a full-time job with benefits and in your field. well as fate would have it, the girlfriend has found herself a card-carrying iowa job. it is actually in iowa, it is a very technical job in her degree no less, and it pays better than mine. so basically with no other offer at this present moment, she has to take the money. this however puts a pinch on me becuase the iowa job is not a good thing for me because it is not only hard for me to find an iowa job(it is a big state), and i dont really want to live in a Mississippi river city of 23,000, even if Mark Twain used to love this town 120 years ago or whatever. i didnt even read the real version of tom sawyer(i read a kiddy abridged version that was dumbed down and had the "n" word stripped, yeah censorship). so now we're waiting on a possible chicago job, but all this stuff not only puts stress on me and the girly, but also introduces a lot of pressure to make our relationship a permanent thing, and we all know what that means. so basically both of us are going to have to grab our balls and start making some adult decisions because the next 2 monthes will have a huge effect on the next 10 years of our careers and lives. it all kinda makes me wish i was still back at purdue getting up at 7:00 a.m. to play beer pong in celebration of a stupid go-kart race that I gave money to, despite my team always sucking. cheers to my homies.

everybody's working for the weekend
04/19/2004 2:09 p.m. so this past weekend was another one of my signatures indiana weekends. this means that I flew up to indiana for a 3 day weekend of visiting with old friends and going out to bars college style. One thing to note is that andy continues to drink and revel college style, which is weird because i think that i used to do that more than him, but now that he's stayed on campus, he is making up for a little lost time(he spent much of college un-single, which led him to restain from some of that stuff). since he's still living the college life, kristin and i stayed with him and his football player roommate. being around this roommate is pretty goddamn unbearable. now i am always a fan of a crude joke, but this guy is just stupid and i feel bad for andy. at any rate, you cant beat andy's as a place to stay, since it is so close to the bars.
anyway, the big news did not have to do with my travel plans. it actually had to do with cousin tim getting put on waivers by his employer. basically the situation is that upper management doesnt know how to make money in business. We all think that we can run a business, but until we put it into practice, there will be little way to know if we actually do, but it is pretty apparent that this guy is doing some things wrong. so now he has to let go tim, who was in his wedding for chrissake, which musta been a pretty damn difficult thing to do. however, hiring a friend is probably also a business mistake that he made a few monthes ago. I applaud May for his venture into entrepreneurship, but it sucks that he is failing. He didnt really screw Timmy over, giving him 3 monthes of money and experience, but without may, he woulda had to do what he has to do now 3 monthes ago, which is as the big lebowski said, "get a job, son." hopefully this lay-off will result in a greater good, and before too long, i expect tim to find a better paying job w/ benefits, we can only hope that is sooner than later. call it sadism if you want, but i also secretly hope that he takes a job with a defense contractor, so he can share my moral dissatisfaction with the man, whose checks clear every friday, unlike a darksyd check.

cool ass party
04/13/2004 10:04 p.m. so this past weekend, one of the dudes on my bball team is having a party to celebrate his leaving the area. word on the street is that his parties are really cool, so i get some boys from work and smyth and decide to head over. nick pusses out, so it's just me, smyth and wild bill. the theme of the party is a casino. this dude has rented professional dealers, real casino chips, and 3 blackjack tables, a roulette table, and a craps table. you pay 10 bucks and have access to a full bar, a keg, and get 200 chips. at the end of the nite, there is a raffle for a few prizes valued around 25 bucks where you get 1 ticket for every 10 chips. needless to say, the theme is rocking. one very cool thing is that this provides me a good opportunity to learn craps for free. the second cool thing is that everyone there is having so much fun that it is impossible to not have fun. smyth most of all is having ultimate fun. as for the gambling, i only lost 50, which i consider a moral victory. after the gambling, the party kicked in. lets just say that there a few chicks there with loose morals, and smyth is loving it. by the end of the night, stevo is making out with this chick in the hot tub. now he didnt wear a swimsuit, so he's in that thing with his goddamn pants on. then we have bill, who is waxing intellectual with his aunt on the couch. i call this girl his aunt because she is of that age. anyway, eventually we catch a cab home with smyth wearing soaked pants talking about his exploits in the hot tub, while wild bill is staying quiet in the back seat of the cab with this chica. after we drop the love birds off, we roll home to get to sleep by 4. damn i'm getting old for this.

Deep Sea Fishin'
04/08/2004 4:09 p.m. So last weekend, the main activity was deep sea fishing. when i signed up for it, I had visions of reeling in a huge marlin, as it's flipping on the open ocean, while people cheer me on. Let's just say that didnt happen. I did catch one fish, but it was about 8 inches in length and was so powerful that i wasnt sure if I had seeweed or a fish. honestly the best part of the day was when feezer, smyth and i tailgated, ate sandwiches and listen to bumps from the stereo before we got on the boat. it was a picture perfect day to sit outside and shoot the shit.
speaking of feeser, he just left for indiana for good. this leaves us with 1empty bedroom, which isnt bad because he is going to send a check for the remainder of his rent, I hope.
the main event for this weekend is going to be the GMAT, which is the entrance exam for business school. If you havent heard, B school may be the whim of the month for me. it costs 225 bucks to take this test, which seems kinda high, but i dont know. I am pretty confident and hopefully it'll go well. On saturday, a guy from work is having a casino party equipped with professional dealers and a full bar. it sounds like it's gonna be a saucey little soiree.
Also, I'd like to note how damn cool the mlb radio package is. For 15 bucks, you can get every major league game in the home, away, and sometimes spanish (even french for the expos). the coolest part is that you can get to listen to great broadcasters like vin scully, the dude from the cardinals, and the dude from the giants. kudos to the internet.

boring weekend
03/28/2004 1:06 a.m. So another weekend passes. Last nite was mostly beer, chess and darts. today, i woke up early and cleaned my bathroom, studied for the GMAT and got a bad haircut. tonite, i watched confessions of a dangerous mind and romeo and juliet, and finally spent a long time on a paris vacation blog. confessions was pretty cool, and I bought r and J because i think it is a pretty cool damn interpretation. anyway, i'm tired and really dont have much else to do tonite, but please check out hte vacation and let me know if there are any errors in my page.

I'm back baby
03/22/2004 4:58 p.m. Y'all, I'm back and it turns out that if you leave the country for a week that you are all the sudden really behind on work and life in just about every way imaginable. vacation blog is in the works. it should be equipped with picts. peace.
quick note: bushy had a big campaign kickoff event here the other day. i missed it on account of being in paris, but the word on the street is that we'll be seeing a lot of his and kerry's mug. this is different to me becuase being from indiana, I can't ever remember a presidential canidate giving a shit about my or my parents vote because indiana was always a shoe-in for somebody. i guess it's cool that i matter now, i guess. sorry about you tim, i guess you should vote for nader or kucinich. maybe their slogans should be "only for the vote that really doesnt matter."

really bored
03/10/2004 9:58 p.m. Yo, so i'm about ready to fly to paris at the end of the week. i aint taking the laptop, but i think i'm gonna blog it on paper. tonite has been a boring ass nite becasue i didnt do anything, and there hasnt been good reality tv.
also, i rented one hour photo last week. unfortuneately it wasnt quite the life changing movie that marques saw in passion de la christo. it pretty much didnt go anywhere and remained creepy from start to finish. i cant say i didnt expect that, but i assumed that there had to be more than it seemed on the outside. Guess not.
other than that, my life is pretty boring. i go to work. i eat the same shit for lunch. i come home. i eat the same shit for dinner. i watch simpsons, reality tv, family guy, talk to the girly, then go to bed. add in a little workout on tuesday and thursday and saturday. add to that an occasional beer. i need to figure something out. on the bright side, though my evening life still sucks, my work life sucks a little bit less than it did before. anyway, so if you havent heard, the plan to change that involves maybe grad school and maybe moving to a far away city.

are you ready for some football?
03/07/2004 9:11 p.m. so last saturday, i got up early to play ball w/ the homeboyz. we played outside and it was wicked hot. it wasnt that fun, but since we started so early, i was home by 11:15. after hittin' the showers, i was lounging by noon. i decided to go into work to suck on the corporate teat for a little bit. for all those whose who are paying taxes right now, thanks. for the evening, i had somem fellas come over to have a beer or two, then head to see an arena football game. my orlando preds played tim's indy firebirds. to spice up the rivalry, we put a little action on the game. tix were 15 bucks, but we coulda scored seats for 8 if we woulda got them early. so we walk in and first notice that everyone is getting drunk as hell. everyone you see is carrying around beers and alcohol galore. the next thing i noticed is that the crowd was the exact same as the nascar crowd, except there are girls all over the place and they're all dressed in mini skirts and hootchie tops. so when we get into the arena, it is no surprise that at the end of every play, the jumbotron is showing chicks on the big screen gyrating back and forth. the game was mediocre, but the fortunate thing is that with all the stuff and promotions going on, you only had to watch the football 20% of the time. so let's just say that the whole event is so sexed up. this culminated with a halftime striptease by some chicks who i believe were paying customers. we were pretty far away, but these girls looked like professionals from a distance. i'm guessing they were giving out business cards for the rest of the nite. as for the bet, let's just say that you dont come into "the jungle" and walk out with a win. as for arena football in general, it is pretty bushleague. so here are my 2 improvements:
1. i think they should require that one receiver on each team wear skates.
2. put trampolines on the 5 yard line to AMP up the action.
anyway, after that, we all went to alehouse to get some grub and a pitcher before returning home. sunday included taxes, pools, and workouts. all in all a pretty good weekend.

big daddy kane and the wonder twins
02/22/2004 8:35 p.m. So on saturday nite at 11:30, i get back from the dirtiest walmart ever, after waiting for 20+ minutes in the checkout line. smyth, the roommate has just gotten home from work, and he's like, "get ready, we're going to a party." so i'm like, well, it's late, but this should be good for a story. so we're going to a party on the other side of town, and smyth says he'll drive. so that's cool becuase smyth offers to drive. then he recants on that because he says i should drive, seeing that he has expired tags and no car insurance. so i'm like, whatever. i'm ready to go at 12:00, but we dont end up leaving till after 12:40, putting us at the party around 1ish. we go in one car, and the other car has these two twins that talk similarly to seth green in can't hardly wait and a guy named khalid, who i'll refer to as big daddy kane from here on. the reason i'll refer to him as big daddy kane is because he is on the supply side of "the business." so we walk into the house and there is psychadelic shit from floor to ceiling, culminating w/ a butterfly that is 9 feet in wingspan, hanging from the ceiling. so these fellas that live here have fully moved in with a bigass bar and all the fixings. so i know no one there, except for smyth, kane, and the wonder twins. within minutes i realize i'm in attendance of a party that i wasnt invited to in high school, didnt go to in college and have no need to go to now. so i walk around notice that the chickees there were looking a little on the green side. let's just say i saw some braces. this scares me all the more because we're in a residential neighborhood with a thousand cars on the narrow street. on top of that, the screwdrivers are being made with orange juice stolen from the neighbor's yard. this does have a certain charm, but at the same time, this party is asking to get busted. plus my eyes are blowing up from various smokes in the area. so i decide, i'm going to taco bell, smyth has 20 minutes, and if he aint ready to go when i get back, he is getting an alternate ride home. i go and get a club chalupa, which is excellent and return home.
so today i went to see the infiniti g35 coupe at my local infiniti dealer. it is pretty much my ideal car. it is small and sexy and it fits me. the problem is that it cost 30K, which aint bad, but i dont really wanna spend money, so i probably wont. the bigger part of the story is that my salesman treated me like a little kid. i said that i wanted to drive one, and he's like, "uh ok." then he says, "automatic transmission?" and i say, no manual. so he is like dreading letting me drive it, because "it puts too many miles on them." so we walk out to the car, and he drives it for like 3 miles, and lets me drive it for like 2. how stupid is this? i guess i'd rather drive the car for 3 than watch him for 3 and me for 2. no wonder they put miles on these damn cars. he also talks about how they cant keep these cars on the lot, even though they have at least 10, and i really dont see that many of these cars on the damn road. so in summation, i've hated pretty much every car salesman i've met in the state of florida, though that is only like 4.

taking care of bizness and working overtime
02/19/2004 9:51 p.m. so it is thursday nite, and i've already worked 42 hours this week. i know this isnt the hardest week ever, but still for a person who doesnt like his job, it is a pretty solid effort. i've spent this week integratin' a project that is gonna finish way behind time. we have ran ourselves a prototypical behind schedule, over budget project. we put all kinds of shit off till the end, let it slip, and then to complete the over budget part, we added a bunch of people at the end who cant really help, like me. so now we have all these people who cant work in parallel and dont know shit. last weekend, i was in town for vday. it was a good weekend. the trick is that since kris lives in a 2 man, i can stay over nite in her room, even though this is highly illegal in a sororitah. so i had to stay in the room from when we got there till noon. this is kinda tough when you've been out drinking all night. so, to complete this, i had to get friendly with a large cup, fun fun. i got to stay a nite w/ ozzy and timmy also, which was osme good tv watching fun. the only regret was drinking too heavy on friday, and having to go to bed at 10:30, but oh well. i also go to watch purdue play decent and beat a bad IU team. man, the big ten sucks. weird, and this completes the worst blog ever.

no affirmation
02/4/2004 11:34 p.m. So my favorite radio program is getting cancelled. yes, tony kornheiser is getting his radio show cancelled. the man at disney decided that they didnt like the fact that he didnt interview hacks, no-talents, and athletes all the time, like one dan patrick. that dude sucks so bad. he just nustles on the corporate teat and interviews retards that probably couldnt get a high school education if they couldnt jump through the roof or push up a million pounds. he also sucks because his opinions are retarded and he is cocky as hell. he also tries to talk bull-jive to the brothers and he's just sucks up to them constantly. i really need to look elsewhere to find a better radio program. i really need to start listening to something radical so i can get more crazy opinions. maybe if i listen to enough, i'll start voting for crazy s.o.b's like nader/laduke. i also appreciated tony because he always used big words, which i'd look up, which made me smarter.
other things that have been going on my life, i left work earlier this week and my goddamn tire was flat, so i have to buy that shit. it shouldnt be that bad because i have to get my oil changed too. so it shouldnt cost me too much time. i'm coming up north on the 12th and coming back south on the 15th.

back in business
01/31/2004 1:24 p.m. so in the past few weeks, a lot of stuff's been going on, and i havent taken the time to fix stuff. so i lost my interweb on the 13th, and sometime before that, my website went down for some unknown reason. so i couldnt really fix it, but after messing w/ some stuff, i finally got her back up and running. so that's kool and the gang. as for what's happened, i'm now in the new place and fully functional. last nite we went to this house party. we show up at the door w/ 15 bucks between us, and this huge black dude answers the door. so smyth axes to see will, the stoner waiter that he works w/. he shows up in a throw-back jersey and asks for 10 bucks a person. we're like, can he pay you back later, and the guy responds w/ the fact that they need the money now to get their friend outta jail. so i respond, "so this is a fundraiser?" he says, "well, yeah." so i think this helped out my street-cred. we leave though because no one is there and come to the agreement that most people are in jail for a reason, and that we didnt wanna help get that guy out. so i saw a dive on the way ot the party and we go there. it is the prototypical dive. they are playing aerosmith and people are drinking budweiser cans. i go to the bar and try to order w/ a credit card, but they didnt take cards. so i get cash and order a rum and coke, vodka and coke, and a beer, and the tab comes to 8.25, which is pretty sweet. we have a couple of drinks and take off. that's about it for the nite. we went home eventually to watch smyth play poker. yesterday, he won 80 bucks playing poker online, which counteracts the grand that he's probably lost over the past 6 months. silly roommates.

a little of this, a little of that
01/08/2004 11:24 p.m. so i had the most boring day ever today. i really dont know what to do about this. i axe for more work, but i don't ever really have anything to do. i keep telling myself that it'll get better, but it just doesnt happen. anyway, this makes me think about possible new careers and industries. i'm not sure what this means, but i've brought it up to everyone, and havent reached a conclusion. i guess this really sucks, and i need to figure it out.

Longest Vacation Ever
01/06/2004 9:54 p.m. So I started the vacation by flying into Indy. My vacation plan was long and far on account of the evil empire's shutdown. I've flown to indy, then from lafayette, to boston via st louis, then back, then drove to orlando to watch the boilers, then back, then flew back to orlando. i will say that by the end, it has probably been a bit much. anyway, it has been associated w/ holiday stress and all, but it is so nice to be with the poeple that I've known all of my life. I've had delayed flights, xmas shopping, lost credit cards, locked keys in cars, uncles w/ heart problems, lost IDs, lost sleep, long drives, jet lags, car lags, uncomfortable couches, a sore throat, lost cars, my murder of bambi, broken futons, hang overs, sick grandparents, and a football team that came all the way back from 24-0 to lose in OT. i'll tell you that i think the holiday season is one crazy thing. we take a big vacation to get away from the problems at work to make more silly problems for ourselves by spending all of our money on stuff that we dont really need. though the vacation was stressful and tiring, I can say that it at least made me want to move closer to the firends that i've had for lifetime. anyway, i am now back at work and trying to get back into the flow. i've already packed a shitload of boxes for my impending move. i guess i have a million things to write about, but i just dont feel like it, so i'm gonna just post this. merry f'ing christmas.
btw, ryno got jobbed. he aint a first ballot hall of famer, but he shoulda got voted in this year. i am pretty confident he'll get it next year though. i respect that the baseball hall of fame is hard to get into(unlike the nfl), but i do wish someone would give a little credit to the fact that the dude got like 8 gold gloves in a row. leather is cool too, right?

daddy lost his shirt and covets a new career
12/6/2003 10:18 p.m. So for the first time in my life, I went to a casino w/ the intent to throw some money around. i sit down at a texas hold 'em table. i am secretly confident because i know that my play for the most part is reserved, calculated, and decent. so i put 80 bucks on the table. what proceeds to happen is slow bleed. i won the occasional hand, but i couldnt catch good cards all goddamn night. i really dont feel like i made many mistakes all night, but what happened wasnt good. before i knew it, my 80 bucks and 20 more were gone, and the boat had 2 1/2 hours more to sail and 2 more hours of gambling. so i say to myself, no mas. basically, the difficult thing was that no one was really winning money. they say that if you cant spot the sucker at the table, then you're the sucker. i spotted 4 suckers, and i still lost 100 bucks. they lost money, but it didnt turn into my money, and this is unfortuneate. so that sucked. today i did a little shopping for xmas gifts. the most exciting of these gifts may be a possible trip to france w/ me and the old lady. going there would make uncle qbomb very happy. anyway, we'll see if i can make this happen. i'm pretty confident. people have chided me for being reluctannt to travel in the past, but i can say that i've gone a lot of places in my life, and i think that kicks ass, just like depeche mode.
moving on, i'm watching my beloved magic play tonite against the mavs. the magic are so inferior to almost any team that they play, it is sickening. this leads me to dream of my ultimate fantasy, to own a sports franchise. if i had a billion dollars, i'd take the first million and buy the wnba. next i'd shut it down. then i'd buy a team, preferably a baseball team. my role model as an owner would be a IU grad, mark cuban. he is so freaking cool. he throws his money around, he cheers, and he cares. these are some of the qualities that i'd have as an owner. i just started reading moneyball by michael lewis. for those who dont know, this is a book that basically says that billy beane is a bad mofo. for those who really dont know, he is the GM of the Oakland Athletics, my favorite American League team. he has had the 2nd most wins in the majors(braves) over the past 5 years despite being in the bottom 3rd in payroll consistently. he does it by sticking to mathmatical formulas that say how much a player is worth. he has perfected his system so well that he can consistently lose big money players and still wup the mariners, rangers, and angels in division play despite having a small budget. so all of this means that i would like some day to get into this business. i dont know how i could do this, but i think that this would just be the best thing ever. not sure how it is gonna happen, but i'd sure like to think i could do that.

End of a weekend
11/30/2003 9:13 p.m. So the thanksgiving weekend is finally running down. whenever people come here, there is always a big push to go out because i dont know what else to do in this town quite yet. things are getting better there, but still, i guess i guess w/ my old age, i dont really like going out every nite. so whatever. friday nite, mj and i went to an independent theater on the north side of town, which was awesome. it had tables and round chairs and stuff. they served good food and decent beer prices, 9 bucks for a big pitcher of rocky mountain spring water. we saw shattered glass, the story of some reporter who was a pathological liar and a kiss ass. it was very good in my opinion. the star was anakin skywalker, who wasnt great, but he is a better reporter than jedi. this theater shows cult classics on wed and fri nite in which they have even better beer specials. how cool is that? after the movie, we went downtown for a drink, and we then went home. saturday was spent tooling around and watching football. we went to a buddy's place and watched a movie, and then watched purdue win the great alaska shootout over fourth ranked duke. so that was pretty cool. sunday was spent watching football as well. tomorrow morn, dad and mj will shove off to the airport, but i'll see them all in less than a month, so that aint bad. hopefully next time i have company, i'll have better furniture to accomadate people. i basically have 3 weeks of work, and then i'll go on the longest vacation ever.

k's in town again and mj's in town and everyone else too
11/28/2003 3:44 p.m. so last weekend k flew in agian. we really see each other an obscene amount of times considerting that we live so far away. anyway she was sick, so we stayed in quit a bit. this wasnt bad though. we watched several movies including the italian job, frida, master and commander, and scarymovie 3. mj said that italian job and scary moview were both good. this actually istnt true. italian job is a shameless ripoff of the crime movies of the past 5 years. it turns ut that if you have charming criminals like lock stock or gone in 60, the movies i good, but marky mark isnt charming and i thought the movie sucked my ass. scary moive was one of the worst movies i've seen in quite some time. master and commander was ppor ass well w/ a stupid story line and lack luster action scenes. frida is an arty fartsy movie that just didnt do it for me. so basically, that means 0 for 4, and mj liked scary movie and italian job. the weekend turned out alright and on monday, i shipped her home. so tuesday and wednesday, my parents and brother came into town. wednesday we went to a tourist bar, and it kinda sucked. thursday, we went to the andersons. it was the best thanksgiving meal that i've ever had, but the day was kinda awkward because there were lots of little kids running around and i guess i'm used to be around my uncles and stuff instead of the anderson uncles. the funniest part of teh day is when cache (bob's brother) went on to rip 2 of his nephews (robbie and his cousin robert, weird huh?). he called them nephews and pretty much pussies. he went on to talk about how his parents are both are doctors and he plans to get a million dollars for free and stuff. this is really mean stuff. marques and i are convinced this uncle musta been ripped, though he didnt show the common signs of drunkenness. well, after all that shook down, mj and i drove back to orlando.

whew, another week bites the dust
11/20/2003 9:12 p.m. so you might ask what is bettter than cutting out an hour early on a friday? it's cutting out early on a thursday and not working the friday. so after today, thanks to a pretty sweet schedule, i'm going to work 16 of the next 47 days. that is hella tight if you axe me. the bad thing of all this shit is that the past week at the job has kinda sucked. i do have a meeting w/ 1 of 20 bosses on monday, and hopefully things will get bettter as the result of that. anyway, k gets here tomorrow afternoon around 3, and so hopefully it'll be a fun weekend, which leads to a fun week w/ mj and the fam. i also got my camera today and it is a pretty cool damn toy.

new crib up in you
11/17/2003 11:47 p.m. after a weekend of dispair for my fussball teams, the weekend finally ended. this means back to work where i did almost nothing today. however, i did sure up my purchase of a canon sd100, which is a super sexy digital elph. it is even smaller than mj's. i also went over to the frat boyz and negotiated myself an impromptu sublease. so pretty much, bryce is going to help buy me outta my lease and i'm going to take over his room. this is going to save me over 500 bucks a month, which means more booze and hookers for the qbomb. this means that if i had more vacation time, i could go cool places, but since i dont i guess that i can afford more sexy gadgets like tiny digital cameras and other less sexy gadgets like big tv's and stuff. anyway, that's that and before xmas, i'm going to move my shit over there so that i dont have to pay rent during shutdown.

surprise surprise
11/11/2003 10:47 p.m. so this last weekend, i made a decision by the seat of my pants and decided to fly home. i got a ticket for a decent price and decided to fly out friday morning. well, long story short, it took too damn long to park my car, and i had to change my flights and arrive a little late. so after k picked me up, we drove down to lafayette. that nite, we went to one of her friends and i started the odyssey(sp) that was a mad dog weekend. i drank 1 and a half of them at her friends before we shoved off to the bars. we didnt stay at jake's too long before we got a triple burger at XXX and walked back to the friends to watch the ref, booyeah. the next day, i bounced aroudn the tailgate scene. saw some people that were good to talk to and some that werent. snu had tons of beer and pork sandwiches for all, so that was hella tight. anyway dad and i eventually went and watched the boilers control the whole game and eventually beat the number 10 team in the nation. after much hastle, we met up w/ mom for dinner. everyone was tired, so the dinner seemed to drag a bit for me, but eventually we drove down to indy. then the maddog weekend continued w/ more md 20/20 for all. unfortuneately this night got outta hand for most of the people involved and the shit hit the fan. needless to say some regretable deeds were done by a few including me, which i apologize for and feel bad about. anyway after that got done, i got dropped off at the airport and then i almost missed my second flight of the weekend, but i made it for a long flight home. it actually wasnt bad , but the previous nights activities made it longer. at any rate, it is always good to get back ot the old apartment. the weekend was very nice on teh whole. i was really glad to see the ol' lady and the boys as well.

long time not much
11/04/2003 9:47 p.m. yo, i havent blogged much, but i havent done much either. i did go to tampa for a few days and get pretty crazy. i bought metroid for gamecube, and it is a really fun game. i has many homages to the original, which makes me want get the version for N64. anyway, eventually i'm gonna get zelda and mario kart, which will justify my gamecube purchase. i was a bit skeptical a while ago, but these nintendo classics are pretty fun on the cube. they are still basically jumping and puzzle solving, but that is enough to make me happy. also, i have been playing more poker and have been on a little roll, which was nice after getting cleaned out twice in a row. also, there was an incident at a bar involving a smack in the mouth, but rest assured, all was righted in the world by the end of it. that's all. nice to know quesopolis is finallygonna get back up, even though it aint up yet even after i got an email.

my house can be a very very boring house
10/23/2003 7:47 p.m. yo, so here is the story. i went over to play poker w/ the frat boyz. bryce is quitting his bullshit civil engineering job to take a 17 grand pay cut by moving to london at teh beginning of febuary. so this leaves 1 bedroom of a 3 bedroom open. he offered his room to me if i want it. the catch is that my lease goes for 6 more months. so he says he'll buy me outta mine if i want his. the following is the pros and cons.

pro: save around 500/month
con: can't crap w/ the door open
pro: don't have to live by myself
con: have to live w/ some people that i dont know real well
pro: it would make my lease go till august, which is probably a better time line for me
con: have to wear pants around the apt a lot more often.

so as you can see it is a very complicated decision. another factor is that he is planning on leaving jan 15th. this means that i could potentially move in then. i dont plan on getting back from xmas till around the 4th. this means for less than 2 weeks of couch sleeping, i can save myself a bit more change. this however is further complicated by the boilers, who are on a tear. basically this means that if they are in a central florida bowl, then i'd like to have my own damn place. so i guess i dont know. tomorrow i'm going to talk to the landlord and the boyz to find out what kinda deal i'm gonna be getting. i also think that i'm going to go to my first solo movie, lost in translation. not sure if i'm going to like going by myself, but the movie looks pretty sweet and it is also only 3.50 if you go to the first show. now i'm going over to a new buddy's place, nick. he is just outta college and seems like he likes sports, beer and lifting weights, which is what frat boys are supposed to do. peace.

you wanna kart?
10/20/2003 11:32 p.m. yo, for all those who have vilified me for buying the gamecube, i'm proud to say that the new mario kart is coming out for the cube. i saw some screen shots and i'm hoping that it is going to be hella hella tight. well, i'm gonna get it around thanksgiving, and since i'll be on the longest vacation ever, you be i'm packing the cube for xmas so we can bust out some 4 player action. we wont be playing on a 50 some inch tv, but it'll have to do. word.

let it bleed
10/15/2003 11:32 p.m. hate to say i told you so. will blog last weekend when i'm not so justified for being secretly skeptical. bernie mac can go to hell. that son of a bitch is a sox fan anyway.

beisbol has been very very good to me
10/06/2003 11:02 p.m. so in case y'all havent heard, i have come across, seemingly lost, and now have again tickets to the cubs game this weekend. so basically k had a quiz then didnt have a quiz and then had something more important than a quiz. so then she volunteered to just let me go to the game. so instead, she'll drive my car down to andersons and i'll meet her after the game, which i am going w/ cousin robbie. so anyway, that's pretty cool on her part because otherwise, those tickets were just gonna get sold to some other cub fan for like 120 bucks a ticket, and now i owe her pretty big i'd also like to comment that these florida marlins fans who dont go to a damn game all year and now decide to show up. well, screw them. they lose a few years and everyone dumps their season tickets. pussies. also, i cant wait till next year when kerry wood is pitching and robert fick comes up to bat. all i can say is that he's gonna get himself a fastball sandwich for his bitch move when he punked karros. if i was him, i'd switch back to the american league.

and so it begins
10/05/2003 12:55 p.m. so the other day, i have a meeting w/ a dude from the d.o.d.(dept of defense). it involves my clearance, which is just now gonna start going through. this is particularly intersting because i had to put my underage boozing arrest on the application. this threw up a flag because the man thinks that this is a bad thing. so i had to write a page and a half describing what happened and all. more interesting than that was that i had to explain why i would never do that again and stuff like that and i had to describe my current drinking habits. it is also kinda interesting that you can have a couple d.u.i's on your record, and so longas you confess to them and make similar acts of contritions for them, they are treated simliarly w/ no reprecussions. so if you get a call from them folks, make sure you tell them that i'm a social drinker on the weekends in extreme moderation. i dont think they'll call anyone though because i'm pretty boring and not worth a fuss. i also have no affiliation w/ osama, like saddam hussein. i only mention this because every day that goes by makes me more pissed off w/ bushie. it pissed me off when we went to war w/ iraq when he kept mentioning the terrorist shit. i was quiet about it at teh time because i thought bushie was privy to some information that the general public wasnt about these damn weapons, but it doesnt seem like it. so w/o that, it seems like we just picked a fight. so whatever this isnt good enough for me. now so much crap is suddenly unamerican if it is anti-war spending.

the 'knot is back in style, people = shit
09/02/2003 12:13 a.m. With Friday off, I had a 4 day weekend this weekend. this is hella tight because my next 2 weeks will also be 4 day work weeks. anyway, friday was spent drinking and playing poker. i'm definitely getting better. this week the stakes were raised and i came home w/ a little more coin. pretty soon daddy will have a new pair of shoes. saturday was a waste. i went over to the frat dudes and hung out w/ that crue, but everyone was tired and all because mike got his car stolen, and he borrowed bryce's, but bryce's car fucked up. after it got fixed, the shit was shot before we went to the bed. sunday we went to cocoa beach. of course we brought beer and started off the day right. however, after a few for me, i spent the afternoon sobering. this wasnt difficult w/ the sun and a meal, and by 3, i was sober and sun burnt, so i went to the andersons. basically, i hung out w/ the fam and watched tv for about a solid day. this went alright and movies were watched. however, it has become increasingly difficult to have a conversation w/ mercedes becauase her phone rings off the hook every 2 secs. moral of the story is that teenage girls act like teenage girls too often.
also this weekend, people ask me how is going. if the person is a peer or younger, i say, "it sucks." every one always laugh, and i respond w/, "it doesnt seem funny to me." anyway, of course i'm alwyas gonna be cynical, but at times i can get really mad at some people. so i feel like punching them in the throat or just rochambeauing w/ them, but i always go first. this work stress has lead me to an interesting revelation. i need to start listening to more pissed off music to vent these things. so i guess i need to put a little more over the top metal back in my life. i have grown into a rut listening to all this ben harper folky stuff and grunge, which i'll defend to to my grave, but i think blind rage and anger is due in my life. speaking of job frustration, hopefully this week mom will get a phat offer from purdue to work to restore some order to their database systems. she is excited about the opportunity, so that makes me excited for me. along w/ this coolness, a few radio stations in florida dedicated this weekend to playing 90's cool music, which made me happy. in addition, m2 is playing an hour of grunge, and sometimes you have to step back and acknowledge when something is cool, like eddie vedder and chris cornell in the same song. kinda like having your keystone and drinking it too. aint nothing wrong w/ that.

girly visit, work sucks & timopolis must be SARS infected
08/24/2003 10:13 p.m. this past week, my girly was in town. i did not take any days off work, but i did go in a little early everyday and leave about 2 hours early as well. k spent most days back at the ranch, w/ exception to 1 day when she drove me to work and then shopped all day. 1 day we did the beach. 1 day we went to a movie. i have a theater 2 miles from my crib that costs 4.50 for a student price for an evening show. we saw seabiscuit, which was alright, but there arent any choices w/ the summer suckfest. gosh, i remember back in high school, all the good movies were during the summer. tim, mj and i used to see about every damn summer hit, but they all suck. so they have either gotten shitty or we just used to be stupid. one nite we went to a restaurant that looked nice inside. so we sit down and the waitress offers us water. she says we can go w/ some frenchy sparkling water or this special water that is distilled seven times. so we look at each other and say we want tap water. the food was great, but we were a bit underdressed for this joint. we also went to wet n wild, universal's water park. it is like 3 miles from my joint and is fancy smancy to say the least. we went on a cloudy afternoon,so the lines were all pretty short. most of the attractions were pretty sweet, but to a degree, you can grow a bit too old for one of those places. the highlight probably was a slide that shot you down real fast into a toilet bowl, where you spun around 2+ time, then fall 6 feet out the bottom into a 6 feet deep pool. for 1 day, it is supposed to cost 32 bucks, but we paid 45 for a weekday annual pass. so that was pretty sweet. it was pretty scary the first time, but a pretty cool idea nontheless.
the last night, we went downtown to a comedy club. the first guy was one of those redneck comedians. he was pretty good. i would have liked him to be a bit more offensive, but you cant always get what you want. the headliner was a chick. so you can imagine how that went. why cant girls do that shit? seriously. she had been on leno or some shit like that, and her delivery was such a stereotype for the saps they usually have on late nite. she'd start her joke, pause, finish the punchline, and start the next sentence. then she'd pause in the middle of the that for the drunks to laugh at the last joke. fucking b. anyway, the mood was pretty somber for the nite because la chica was leaving the next morning. on the subject of the long distance relationship, it isnt bad in the middle of the streaks, but the time of the separation and right after, it sucks. on the bright side, the time together is made pretty sweet.
enough on that, i'd also like to suggest listening to espnradio on the interweb from 10 to 1 eastern time for all those 9 to 5er's out there. i know mj isnt at work for those times, but if you can, the tony kornheiser show is on. it isnt as condensed as pti, but it is nice because they bullshit more on nonsports issues, which i enjoy. i will say that work hasnt been the best lately. i'm kinda tired of getting blown off. i'm starting to develop a decent amount of contempt towards a lot of people. this week kinda makes me just wanna say fuckit and hit up grad school somewhere full-time. i imagine i'll have to make sure i get financial aid, but 1 year of work wont be a detriment towards me applying somewhere, and it may be a helper. i also think you can probably hook up a student loan the same way as undergrad college. also, i'd like to talk shit about tim, who has 1 update in the past month+. he has also been AWOL from instant messanger.

man, i needed this weekend.
08/17/2003 11:13 p.m. so, kris shipped in here friday, and thing have been going a.o.k. we've gone to the beach, bars, and various other places. we just went to an expensive ass dinner and returned to watch phone booth. i'd like to say that phone booth is as good as any movie i've seen in the past 6 months. i can't think of one criticism for this movie, and i am a man of criticism. seriuosly, if there is one thing i enjoy about a movie, it is pointing out a shortcoming, but my beer enhanced state does not allow me to find one for this movie. it came, it went, and now it is gone w/ its point made. well, anyway, for those who are reading this, you might wanna check the blog page because i worte one when i was feeling especially tired and lonely, and it may be of interest to y'all. 1 month anni (luniversary?) blogDelimiter 08/11/2003 2:13 a.m. blogDelimiter One might ask, why would someone be up at 2:13 on a work day. well, it is that i've been thinking too damn much. i just re-read mj's year anni blog and just glanced at schlut.com. anyway, so i guess after living out here on my own, i guess i can say that it is just so easy to fall out of contact w/ the people that are important to you. for example, i had been doing a pretty good job keeping up w/ tim on i.m, but as camp has started for him, i can say that we've definitely been lacking on the communication. i imagine things can slip pretty easily when you are busy, but in my case, it becomes apparent every now and again. that leads to the thought about who what when and where the future will take place for me. basically, i have mj, me and timmmer have been friends since forever and over our lives, we've varied in closeness, but on the whole, i think i can say that those 2 are the dudes that i would want w/ me if i had to make a life decision or if i wanted 2 buds to just hang out w/. i think it is well-known that we enjoy conversing and argueing and all that and i wouldnt trade it for the world. so now i'm here, mj's there and tim is somewhere else. i guess i didnt realize how signficant that was. seeing each other so regularly is less of a deal than knowing that you could take a day trip whenever to share a concert or movie or beer. so i guess i can say that someday i hope that the hopefully the three muskateers will again be re-united. i dont know if that could happen in seattle or naptown or whereever, but i know it would mean a lot to me. while i know we never say serious stuff to each other because we're dudes and all, but those 2 mean so much to me and i'd really like us to be located close enough together to stay part of each others' lives.
the thing is that these matters will soon be complicated by our lives advancing. mj and i have already started our careers and tim's will soon follow. more important than that is the matter of the girlies. while tim and mj seem to be trying to avoid the "really serious relationship," i myself have kinda fell right in one. right now, it has been 5 full weeks since i've seen kris, and i will say flat out that i dont like her not being here and the feeling is mutual. we have a year to worry about what we're going to do about that, but i really have no idea how or where this whole deal is gonna shake down because now you are going to have to throw her career into the mix as well. the point is that i going to assume that within 5 to 10 years, mj and tim will be worrying about these kinda things too. on top of that, the girl that i end up w/ may have people that she can't afford to let go of. on top of this, our parents and families add to this equation. pretty much the sum of this is that we have little control over this. if you want to keep adding to this equation, you can throw in the people that have meant so much to us during college and high school. i guess i really dont know what to do about this, but it makes me kinda regret turning down an expedia interview or not pursueing somehting in indy or not doing whatever. i guess after a year or so at lmc, i feel that i'll be able to move my career where i want, which is positive, but i wonder if i can move to the perfect location where everyone is? maybe this is all just loneliness fever setting in from 1 slow month after 22.5 fast years. not sure about that, but i am sure that i do miss being around everyone important to me. i guess this is the solution why so many people from high school never move away from home because if you never go anywhere, you'll never have to worry about important people not being there, but then again, how many people would we just never get to meet?

Blowing Up
08/09/2003 8:09 p.m. So, anyway, I was feeling frustrated after work yesterday, and I didn't know what to do about. So I went to ciruit city to fix that. After much debate and personal stress, I decided to buy a tv. So after much shopping and struggle, I am the proud new owner of a 51 inch sony widescreen projection tv. I got a pretty good deal on it because it is an open box item that is an out of date model and all. That means that next Friday two things that are very important to me are showing up. My TV is being delivered and my girlfriend is flying down. Anyway, I am pretty excited aobut both.
On another note, last nite i went out w/ the frat boys from purdue to the universal bars. After Bryce's purdue gf got her I.D. taken away(i had no idea she is only 20), we went to margueritaville, which is not a bad bar. we got in w/o a cover, though we were supposed to pay one. when the lady asked for a cover as we went in the exit, we just kept walking, which was pretty smooth. After a while of boozing, we returned home. It was a really low key night on the whole and precluded another pretty boring saturday. Fortuneately Roadhouse is on TBS, which is the saga of a missouri bar that brings in a ringer bouncer to cool things down. It features a mullet non mullet fight every 6.3 minutes. What could be better. she said i'd throw myself away blogDelimiter 08/06/2003 11:40 p.m. blogDelimiter So the Queens of the Stone Age show was tonite. They played a show at the Hard Rock Live for 10 bucks. So this is a good deal at a sweet ass venue. On top of that, it is MTV taping, which adds to the hype.
However, it didn't. So MTV chooses to leave the lights on so that it can show all the underage people who are drinking. The show was very disappointing. I would say that I am a huge QotSA fan. I would say that I put them up w/ bands like Local H and Foo Fighters, which are among the top tier of current rock bands. So their music is not quite as rockin' as Local H, but I was optimistic that they would rock it out live. It just wasnt there. The lights being on did kill the ambience, which admittedly is a huge part of live music. I just felt disenfranchised. I mean people were moshing to this music that wasn't moshable. Back in the day, we used to know when to mosh. Like when the singer says, "No bullshit, no slaveship, no mother fucking hootie and the blowfish," you fucking mosh. It really isn't a hard concept, but you arent supposed to mosh on songs that dont inspire such bad ass aggression. So whatever, they played all but 1 song from the last 2 albums w/ like 5 or 6 from R and a lot from Songs for the Deaf. I did appreciate the slide guitar, but I guess I wish they woulda amped up the effort and aggression on stage. The stage was decked out w/ corporate logos, so at the end of the show, olivieri busted his bass on a big AT&T guitar logo after Homme spray painted qotsa on it. Well whatever, give it a 3.5 outta 10 w/ a big deduction for disappointment. While I'm bitching about stuff, I remembered hearing Sharon and Jack Osbourne on LoveLine. A friend of Carolla asked Adam to ask them why Tommy Iomi(sp) used to tune down his guitar. So the Osbournes are like, well, you mean drop d? and adams says, "i dunno." So their answer is that they think it gives you more versatility to improvise. After a bit, they convince themselves that is the reason. None of this makes any sense to me, but I was just surprised that these two were so stupid to not know that Tommy used to just tune all his strings way down just so it sounds fucking dark and dirty. I have no idea how going to drop d could possibly give you more versatility. Damn, just thought that was a little disrespectful of dumb people.
Oh, by the way, I got my interim clearance today after just a few days after applying. This means that soon they may be calling anyone who may read this webpage. At any rate, I currently have clearance Clarence.

up and down weekend
08/02/2003 09:19 p.m. So on Friday, I went out w/ some phi psi's from purdue. 2 of them are from lawrence central bryce & mike, and the other is an ex air force dude that joined a frat after his service, steve. also, bryce had his girl in town who lives in naples (4 hours away) and stays here on the weekends. anyway, we boozed it up and then took a cab downtown. the older guy, steve was meeting a girl at the bar, which mike and i determined to be "the path of least resistance." anyway, this girl wanted to bar hop, but the thing is we had to pay 5 bucks every time we switched fucking bars. by the end of the nite, i was really drunk, bryce and his girlfriend had to leave because she was too drunk, and steve was going home w/ the girl. so when we go home, there is only 2 of us in the cab. this means that i paid like 14 bucks for the cabs for the nite because mike ran out of money. these things are frustrating for me because we all know that i'm a tight ass. on top of that, my new cell phone still isnt here, and i had to make phone calls this week, which means that my latest cell phone bill is gonna be huge. goddamnit. i've determined that i waste so much fucking money, which really pisses me off. however, hopefully pretty soon, i'll be getting rid of some money on a new tv, which may ease my pain.
also, this weekend, i went to visit uncle johnny, who is an 80+ great uncle. he is not in good shape, but when i thought about it, i know him much better than his bro, my dad's dad, and probably know him better than my grandma, who is still alive. not sure where i'm going w/ that but it is pretty sad to see someone so weak, though the man has been pretty frail since i've known him. it is a small miracle that he is still w/ us because his diet has always been poor and throw in some chewing, smoking, and hardcore boozing. well anyway, i guess i felt bad and good about going at the same time.

Hang Ten Mofo
07/27/2003 08:59 p.m. Anyway, so this weekend, I went surfing this weekend. I had never been, and it was a good experience. What put a damper on it was that I had to get up at 6:15 to go w/ the two guys that I went with. It is definitely work starting out, but if I went a bunch of times, I am sure that there would be more wave riding and less salt water swallowing. Also, I got smoked in the head by the board when consecutive waves messed me up and have given me a headache today. Anyway, one of the guys wants me to buy a board pretty soon if I am gonna do this, but since it costs at least 300 bones, I am going to put it off for as long as possible. This is not because of the money, but mostly because I don't know if I am going to do this a lot because I don't think it'd be worth it on a regular basis if I have to get up so damn early, and these boards may be too big for me to fit in the mystique. If i get a smaller board, I think i may be able to do it.
By the way, tim made a comment the other day how his blog is more story related and MJ and my blogs are more about bitching. Now, I'd like to think he bitches just as much as us, but I definitely think that this is simply of a function of living in your own apartment. From what I can tell, MJ is all about living in his own apartment. I guess it has perks, but I can say that I am not really a fan. This is definitely due to the fact that I am not hanging out with people on a regular basis, but even still, I think I would prefer a roommate. Also, Marques is a son of a bitch because I am still not on his webpage list of blogs.

there is no lust like blood lust
07/22/2003 10:19 p.m. so work is still going slow as hell. it has been 2 plus weeks and i'm yet to write a line of code. i have commented out some lines today in order to get some stupid program to compile. i guess they should have brought me in 2 or 3 weeks after they did. basically, the first job that i was hired for was embedded code, but that job got ixnayed well before i got here. so i got assigned to do this test simulator when the one thing i said when i was interviewing that i didnt want to do was testing. so it isnt testing persay, it is developing for testing but too damn close in my opinion. at any rate, i really wish that i could stay busy because work just moves too slow if you arent working. so with my time, i check news sites like msn a lot. today, i saw that the troops shot a missile at the two hussein sons and smoked them a new asshole. so i brought it up, and let me tell you, people i work w/ at lockheed are all about blood lust. i guess i like blood as much as the next and those two dudes were nasty, but people were remarking how they were gonna go home and move the two cards in their evil leaders of iraq deck to the dead or caught list, up to 35 now. anything to get rid of those rape rooms. now how cool is that?

dude, i'm not an alcoholic
07/17/2003 09:52 p.m. Yo, it is the beginning of my first three day weekend because of the 9 hour days. i would say that it is pretty sweet ass. anyway, the weekend is gonna be filled w/ movies. this is because we can rent 3 new dvds for 5 bucks from the evil empire movie club. it is the only thing that the evil empire doesnt turn a profit on. anyway, so now i'm checking out orange county. also, the night was spent talking on the phone w/ the family. anyway, i am curious, is it considered drinking alone if you're on the phone? from here on, i'd like to declare that not drinking alone. my main claim for that i don't want to be drinking alone too many times a week, so i figure that if i talk on the phone every nite, then i can get lit every night and never be considered an alcoholic.

Alien Ant Farm
07/13/2003 6:20 p.m. so i've found one more than that sucks about florida. if you open a bag of chips or cereals or almost anything, and you just use a chip clip to seal it keep it fresh, turns out that doesnt work. no, i'm not talking about the humidity, i'm talking about fucking ants. they invade that shit like no tomorrow. i'm going tomorrow to get some of those big tupperwares because i cant think of any other way to keep my stuff safe.

Getting Going
07/12/2003 1:20 a.m. Yo, fellas, just got some functionality going. turns out it takes a little longer than it should especially when you are pretty tired and have drank a few keystones. anyway, i'm happy w/ the progress for now. the rest of the pages should be cranked out by the end of tomorrow.

First Blog
07/10/2003 8:30 p.m. Yo, sorry for no updates on anything, but even though i have no friends, getting set up in my appt takes a lot of time. having no friends or roommates has its advantages such as: you dont have to wear pants, you can crap w/ the door open, you can eat cottage cheese without a bowl. you get the picture. anyway, if you havent heard, working for the evil empire sucks for the most part. hopefully it'll soon be better, but you can't always get what you want. so the moral of the story is to never listen to me when it comes to an important decision like picking a city or company. hopefully i'll get some functionality going in this site first, then get a new theme.