Home
Realyflatsoda!

> recent entries
> calendar
> friends
> Realyflatsoda.com
> profile
> previous 20 entries

Advertisement
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
3:46 pm
Been thinking about buying a house of some sort. I figure I can save a little over the winter and put some money down on a cheap shack of a place. I talked to a mortgage rep from Vermont Fed Credit Union about it. I was thinking something along the lines of a nicer trailer park kinda deal. I figure I need to start somewhere and being its just me (well me and Lisa), I could live just about anywhere. I was looking at the ones for sale right now and I think I could acually afford some of them pretty easily. I did some math using online calculators with the figures the mortgage person gave me. I ended up with mortgage payments a little more than what I pay now. The living costs here in VT are pretty high and I'm getting tired of paying rent to live in the middle of Burlington (biggest City in Vermont) and not getting anything out of it. Maybe I could get a nicer trailer and get a roommate to pay for most of it. btw, as I'm just starting out, I don't feel that ashamed of looking for a trailer. I'll feel weird if I'm still there in 10 years though. I think Lisa would like it if I had my own place too. The only downside is I wouldn't be downtown anymore.. well wait.. that could be a big up side acually. Well I need to get back to work.

(comment on this)

Thursday, September 18th, 2008
4:03 pm
Thursday, which means tomorrow is FRIDAY! This week has been very busy. We have the bigwigs from Miller/Coors here this week. I've had to bring my work home and design there to keep up. We had a fire outside the apartment yesterday. Some idiot set a dumpster full of dry house siding on fire. The flames were as high as the power lines next to it. I am surprised that the power didn't get cut because of it.

I'm fighting with myself over getting a wii. There is a used one at game stop for 200. T-Ray gets a discount there so I think I can get it for $175 after taxes. But.. I prolly should get a new cell phone first as this one is aggravating me with its messedupness. Then again, I'm going to bring it to Verizon after work to see if it can be updated/fixed. If my cell can be fixed I won't need a new one for a long while. Also, I may be going to Vegas in October. However that is getting less and less likely. In late October I will need to get Lisa a nice B-Day present. But thinking about it again.. Lisa's B-day present is late enough in October that worrying about the present now is kinda silly. By then I could easily save up for her gift. The trip is prolly off and my ma told me that she wasn't planning on it. Maybe I'll just grab a super cheap phone from the paper and just wait a month. Grr... decisions decisions... Can;t even get one for X-mass as there is a $20 cap on everyone this year... GRRRR

(comment on this)

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
10:06 am
Sore... So sore. Been running a lot lately. On sat I ran from my place to the river 5 miles, then walked most of the way back, then ran the last 1.5 miles home. Last night I went to the river and back again. Running 7 miles straight. Then walked 1.5 miles, and ran the last 1.5 miles back. Today... my legs hurt. I'm going to give them a break of at least 4 days. My shins hurt which means I over did it.

Last night I had red meat. I hadn't had red meat for over 2 weeks. I was craving it soo badly. It was def worth it. I've been living off of chicken. Chicken and salads.

The bike has been acting up. On my last trip to Keene I got some air in my clutch's hydrolic lines. That made the clutch not want to engage when the lever was pulled in all the way. When I got home I bled the lines. Then the clutch was way to sensitive. I'd just barely touch the clutch and the bike would immediatly lose power to the rear wheel. I took apart the master and slave cylinders. The slave was filled with all sorts of gunk. Then I re-bled the system. I change the bike's oil to a heavier non synthetic oil. The clutch is what you call a wet clutch as it sits in the same oil as the engine. I also changed out my coolant as I haven't done that since I got the bike. There was no telling what shape that fluid was in. Turns out it was fine. I'm thinking that the issue is with the clutch plates. I think switching to synthetic oil a little while back messed with them. So I am going to get a mechanic to help me replace them. The plates are about 65 bucks a set which isn't bad. However the clutch does feel better now after I worked on it and riding around town isn't all that hard. I wonder if the new oil will fix the problem for me over time.

I have been having a much more relaxing time without the store job. I feel a lot better too. I'm getting to bed at a more reasonable time. I am not surrounded by junk food anymore. I just feel a lot better. I bought a 5 liter box wine. Ha! How trashy is that! Here at bakers I am surrounded by wine salesmen. I have learned a lot about wine. My favorite bottle right now is a $24 bottle of Robert Mondavi Napa Valley Pinot Noir. The best value wine right now would be Koonunga Hill Shiraz. White wines can kiss my ass btw.

Well I should get to work. My pile of requests isn't huge but I should try to clean my desk off.

(comment on this)

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
10:29 am
I'm disappointed in myself. I'm disgusted with myself. I thought I could be an adult. But fuck! I got into it with a fucking 9 year old last night. Jesus!

Background:
I have had little patience with this little bastard all summer. He is a horrible kid. For example, this kid was walking around in front of our store throwing snappers at customers coming and going from the store. 90% of the time this kid, buys some 15¢ piece of candy, then throws his money on the counter. Even after I have told him to please place the money down as most of the time it goes scattering all over the place. I can understand if the kid can't count his own money. Well, hell my 8 year old niece has been able to do that for 2 years now. This is the kind of dumb shit kid this 9 year old is. His brothers aren't much better. One for expelled from school for threatening a teacher. The oldest is prolly the best one out of the three boys. But all three are very rude.

Event:
So the little fucker walks into the store yelling and caring on. I ask him to stop to the effect of "The only person who enjoys that is you, and there are other people in the store, please stop." He doesn't buy anything right away. He just walks around with his little friend then come up to the counter to tell me that he smoked this little green ball he found in his brother's room. I just ignored him and continued to cash people out. Then he comes up with dish washing liquid. (he has bought some weird stuff before, like a 10 pack of combs for no particular reason but I figured this is for his parents) Then he wanders around the store for a good 5 min.

So then he comes back to the counter with a 99¢ box of cheap ice cream. He again, tosses everything in his pocket onto the counter and expects me to count through it. Ok, again.. I've told the little fucker like 6 times not to do that. Its fine if you just take all your money out and put it on the counter. But he does it all gangster and makes a big arc so everything gets a big bounce. And its not like the counter is higher than he is. He's tall enough to reach all the way across the counter. And he complains that we need new cooler doors. I have yet to let on that I'm already annoyed with him.

So I toss him the penny change. No I didn't throw it at him, I bounced it off the counter to him and he was waiting for it understanding that I was going to do. He even had his hands ready to catch. This is prob what started everything down hill. He misses it, and goes down to pick it up off the floor. He finds 15 cents in the candy below so I said he could keep it as a tip. I figured it would all end there. I even said sorry for the bad toss. So he comes back up and tosses the nickel to me in much the same way I did to him. Ok, I get it, haha, playing catch. Then he pegs the dime at me. For some reason that crossed the line with me. I got pissed. The tossing of the change was I thought, in good spirit. But the little fucker pegged the dime at me with the intention of hurting me. Now a 9 year old pegging a dime doesn't hurt. I don't see how it could. But he doesn't know that. He's 9. But its really demeaning when your dodging a object thrown by a kid who isn't yours.

I have a temper. When I get too pissed off I tend to do things that most would claim to be irrational. That's not an excuse, its a fact of my life and I need to deal with it when it comes up. So I took the little kid's ice cream off the counter and walked to the door. Mind you its boxed and not that fragile. And for a moment I was going to peg it across the parking lot. But instead I decided to put drop down by his bike. Which was almost directly in the doorway its self. Really, now that I think about it. Its all not so bad I guess. I have done some way worse things when pissed off. But it was really wrong of me to even do anything other than smile at the kid and let him be on his marry way. It was inexcusable that I even got bothered by the kid.

Aftermath:
He leaves, then after a min he comes running in with a smile on, saying oops I can't go home with out this. And grabs his dish washing stuff. A few minutes later the kid's father comes in. Well not just his father, 6 people show up but the dad is obviously leading this march. Poor folks move in packs. A single one can't deal with a problem. It takes their combined energy. He seems mad as if I had punched the kid. So he starts yelling at me about how he is just a 9 year old kid. And throwing the kids ice cream is just ridicules.

Now I'm no good reasoning with children. But with adults, I can play them like a violin. I told him I must have higher expectations then him for a 9 year old and told him that I repeatedly have had to ask his son to stop bothering customers and that I wasn't going to put up with any more BS. I hop to his side of things and say, I knew he didn't put up with BS, that's why he was there in the first place. I know his type. If you bend a little they will go all white trash on you. So I stand perfectly straight up, no blinking with a pissed off look on my face. That way he thinks that I may have a reason to be as pissed as he is. And I told him, that I think we both are pretty reved up and that it doesn't help anyone when we are pissed off. He does the usual "I'm going to talk to your boss" This doesn't scare me much cause I don't really need to job anyway and had been planning on quitting within the month. So I told him that I don't mind if he talks to my bosses, either now or later. That's up to him and I understood why he was upset, and that I didn't think him and I should talk for a little while either till we cooled off. Obviously this was going to effect things and we should take our time with it. Next I asked him to leave. Ok, rather to keep my pissed-off-ness I told him to leave. Which he did, but still saying things about maturity. But the key goal was to make him go away which was accomplished pretty darn well. I also disarmed him quite a bit in that one minute which was also a goal.

So then I thought about it more and decided how I could fix the situation. There is no way for my relationship with this family to be fixed. They come in several times every day. That welfare family really don't have much to do but bug us at the store.One member still owes the store 50$ in IOUs. The store shouldn't have to deal with this. Its just a pain for everyone. This really was all my fault so I decided to just take myself out of the equation. I quit. Kinda takes all the wind out of everyone's sails. I'm not there anymore. So the dirtbags down the street can't complain that I wasn't punished. I don't have to work there anymore. Which means I don't have to deal with them anymore. And quiting was coming soon anyway, so I'm acually not losing much. Now I get more free time to devote to other things.

I called up the owners and told them that I needed to quit and that I was done. I would give them a few hours to get down to the store to cover. I told them I was sorry for doing it, but I was disappointed in myself and that I shouldn't be there anymore. They understood and they said it was OK and no hard feelings. We were fine and that they understood that I just didn't want to rock the boat for them. I'm thinking about telling them to just keep my last paycheck for the aggravation I may have caused. (its only like 15$ anyway)

So there it is. Now I'm at my regular work. Just going along. I acually feel a lot better about everything after writing it all down. I wonder if I will post this or not in a few min. I think the idea of posting thi sis to help me feel like its off my chest. Without revealing the embarrassing details to everyone. I really only care to explain it to Lisa as she is the one I go to when I have problems. Well, her and Joe. But Joe would think this is all funny. Actually, many of the males I know I believe would think its a funny story. Rather than an embarrassing one.

I'm sad that my temper got out again. I can't stand it. I'm worried that some time I'll lose my temper and wind up in jail. Fortunately up till now I have never ever had a run in with the cops. I think that's a sign that I have a better handle on my temper then some. I am a lot better than how I used to be. When I was younger I'd mop the floor with anyone who looked at me the wrong way. And just a few years ago my temper would flair up and I wouldn't be able to shut it off for a while. Last time that happened was when I was intoxicated. So I know that my temper can still really get the best of me if I am under the influence. Which makes sense. My hope is that in the future I will get better at controlling myself no matter what. Maybe I should wear a shock collar and give everyone I know a remote for it.

(3 comments | comment on this)

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
10:52 am
Heynow

At work.. again. Getting a lot done though. I'm amazed that its only noon. Doing a rebuild while I'm at work. I figure it can't hurt, and if they don't bother me it will make me a few extra $$. I miss my Lisa. I spent the long weekend with her. It was a great weekend. We hiked a mountain. We went out to eat. I got to gorge on DC food. I got to ride the bike down and back. It only cost me 22 bucks to ride down and back. That's amazing!!! It used to cost me at minimum, 60 bucks. But usually a little more. That and I'd always get food to eat while driving down, course you can't eat while riding. Now I just stop for a bite to eat when I gas up.

I have a lot of project at work. A few have finally started to start moving along.

My bike had some trouble monday. My clutch wasn't disengaging power, I think there is/was a air bubble in the clutch hydrolic line. I got new fluid for it and I'll either be bleeding it tonight, or tomorrow. I think prob tomorrow so I can go for a run today.

I thought about making a cake or pie later. But I think I should stick to eating healthy. Maybe I'll make some sugar free pudding.

Well I need to go get some work done.

(comment on this)

Friday, August 29th, 2008
10:23 am
Its Friday!!! I get to see Lisa tomorrow! All good things. I just want today to be over. I have a lot on my plate here at bakers. I want to go home, I want to skip Cap'n Cork. I want to go to bed and sleep till tomorrow morning so I can get going to see Lisa. I'm riding my bike down. This is gonna be fun. I think I'm going to go through Rutland as I will feel safer on those roads than being on the interstate. Well I have to go see the boss.

(comment on this)

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
10:02 am
There is this really annoying lady that works in my office. She is fat. She is a vegan. I know those two things aren't supposed to happen at once. I hear her everyday preaching to the other girls in the office about healthy diets and how they should all stop eating meat at the very least. Let me say again.. she is fat. She is hunch backed, pale and fat. Not just like, a little pudge. She has a gut. I was glad when the biggest lady in the office (who smells sometimes so even I wish she would lose a little weight so she could wash herself properly.) told her that she eats what she wants and fried BBQ chicken for breakfast made her happy.

I may be going to Vegas in October. My Uncle is going there and wants to rent the hotel rooms for anyone in the family who would wants to go with him. (I'm pretty sure he would cover Lisa too if she wanted/could go.) I just really really want to be back for Lisa's birthday which is on a Friday. My ma wants the trip to go from Sunday to Thursday. I think I would prolly just take the whole week off so I could get back on Thursday, then maybe beg Lisa to pick me up at a town about an hour away from Keene. If its the third week in the month I would be back in time for pumpkin fest, then on Sunday I can hitch a ride with Lisa's folks back to Burlington. All sorts of fun. At first I wasn't really into it, but now I'm likeing the whole idea of a vacation.

(comment on this)

Monday, August 25th, 2008
8:17 pm
Its monday. The weekend went by way to fast. I did some house keeping and did some work on the bike that I had been meaning to get to. I have no idea what I am doing this coming weekend. I could be in Maine, I could be camping, I could be at Keene. Who knows?

Did a laptop repair yesterday and today. I'm at the store right now. I'm bored. There has been like, one customer every 15 min. I finaly found the one healthy thing in the store to eat. Powerbars. I always figured they would be full of sugar and fat, but as it turns out they are pretty darn low fat. They have a little less sugar per bar than a 20oz bottle of coke. But its carbs are low (which is just a more complex sugar anyway) and a very low level of fat. I likey.

Well my new diet has been going on for about a week now. Its my super healthy, yet super cheap diet. Nothing but 99% fat free chicken, whole grain rice and as many whole foods as possible. It ads some time for cooking but I'm fine with that.

I miss Lisa. I'm still trying to figure this facebook thing out. It is cool seeing pics on there of all sorts of people I knew in the past. Its scary seeing people I graduated with with kids and stuff.

(comment on this)

Friday, August 22nd, 2008
11:32 am
Its Friday. Said goodbye to Lisa this morning. I was very sad. But I'm going to see her in a week which makes me feel better. I took the plunge and made a facebook account. My first friend was Nick, so nick wins! I know Lisa was on the road then so she couldn't be my #1 this particular time.

So a guy here at work is gone. I didn't notice that he wasn't around for over 2 weeks. ha. I want to take over his office. I want to stick the server and our rack equipment in his old office. One of my bosses said that I can look for a replacement sign person, then the owner wasn't so keen on the idea. I wish they would just make up their minds. We have had a girl here in our office training. Our other office is going to be "moving" someone down there who doesn't know that they are "moving." So I guess us training this person is supposed to be all hush hush. I wanted to place bets on who down there is going to be "moving" but the girls here wouldn't do it. I guess I'll have to wait till monday.

I rolled out 13 new handhelds to our Rutland salesmen. I didn;t get a single call about a defective anything. That was extra nice. Last roll out I had problems all over the place. But all these things have been working like they should.

I'm already missing Lisa. We went to the drive-ins last night. That was very fun. We watched Tropic Thunder. Finally, a funny Ben Stiller movie. Lisa was sick, but she has been feeling better. She still has a sore throat but its better than what she was. I'm glad she is feeling better.

Well, I should get back to work. Just a little while more before I can go to lunch. Yay!

current mood: lonely

(comment on this)

Thursday, August 21st, 2008
10:31 am
Thursday! Its almost Friday! Yay!

Lisa is going to school tomorrow morning. I'm not going to be able to go and drop her off. But, I will see her in 1 week. I'm going to be climbing the walls going crazy without her. Lisa really is my best friend. I hope this year is easier than last. But, there are some up sides to her going. I need to keep reminding myself of them is that is the only way to keep my self sane.
- Pumpkinfest
- Lots of free time to work out.
- Regulation of my diet.
- Reunions every 2 or 3 weeks.
- Saving money

Its going to be fun to come see her every once in a while and see how much her hair has grown out since our head shaving. Also, she is living in a much better place. Last year got kinda stressful because of a bunch of stuff, including her shitty roommate who would never go away. Well I should get back to work. Lots to do.

(comment on this)

Thursday, August 14th, 2008
10:10 am
Its almost Friday! :-) My hair is blue now. I went super blond Sunday night but I changed it to blue last night. Last year the kids got to do some shaving so I hope they get a kick outa the blue.

So I went to the eye docs yesterday. My eyes are healing correctly and my left is is perfect. My right eye still has a point and a half of astigmatism. It turns out that that is the toughest thing for the lazer to fix. I don't have any near or far sightedness in the eye. We are going to wait a month or two and see how the eye heals. If I want more done they will rescan my eye, then re-laser it for only $200. 1.5 points of astigmatism isn't all that bad but it still bugs me when I'm looking at something at arms length and I can see it fine in one eye and a little fuzzy in the other.

Work is starting to bug me again. I have all my signage stuff under control. But.. They keep giving me these projects that a team of people is necessary for, and I have no team. For example, we need to set up electronic payment for a few stores. I know nothing about banking, I don't understand invoicing or payments and I'm also not a database guy. I like jobs where I have the skills to do the job. Your PC is smoking, cool! You need this printer to work at your house while your at work, sure thing! But I'm not a manager so I can't just tell people what to do. I don't think anyone here is smart enough to help me anyway. What I think Bakers needs to do is hire a real IBM tech if not to just keep our system up to date and who also understands the database side of things. The company that makes our software has a service where they host everything at their building and you just connect remotely. They take care of everything. That would really be the best situation for Bakers. Because no one here acually understands what it is their doing. Everyone here just pushes button A, then button B, because that's what they are supposed to do, they don't know why, or what the buttons acually do. They are all very dumb...

For example... A lady in Rutland had a hissyfit about her new computer because she didn't have a floppy disk drive. She said she kept some important information on disks so there wouldn't be to many files on her desktop...Just wow.. how fucking stupid. Never mind that floppy disks have a huge rate of failure. Never mind that with just 3 little clicks you can have a folder to keep the files in. And that lady is in charge of getting our banking information into the system. That's just fucking scary.

One woman broke out crying because her desk couldn't face a certain direction. We couldn't change it because that would leave wires going across the floor and it would have been unsafe. She ended up quitting 2 weeks later.

I had one lady who was changing the screen resolution of her monitor every week to work on spread sheets. She couldn't fit the whole sheet on her screen when it was at a normal resolution. I taught her how to click and drag the windowed spreadsheet into the center of her screen. So though she knew how to enter in spreadsheet equations, the idiot didn't know that you could change the size of the window, or maxamize it to take up the whole screen.

Yesterday, I have had this girl complaining that her printer wasn't working after a lightening storm. I asked her if it was on and plugged into the PC. Yep she said.. I remote connected to her PC and nothing was wrong. So I figured there must be something wrong with the printer that it just notice. So I tell her to grab a spare printer and plug it in.. then she comes back to the phone and said that the cable going from the PC wasn't plugged into the back of the printer. And suddenly it worked. She hadn't had a working printer in over a week. I was surprised that she never thought to look at the printer in any detail at all.

I think I'm going to open a facebook account. Only for the reason that I can message with Lisa easier. Well I should get back to work. This post is already super long. Late

(comment on this)

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
9:54 am
Yep, Tuesday.... I wanna go back to bed. :-P Lisa is working all day today. Which means I may get to make her dinner. Yay! I have to do my laundry when I get out of work. I am either going to make myself a whole wheat pizza for dinner, or a whole wheat lasagna. I want something that is both good and bad for me. I hope it turns out alright. I want to start making more complicated meals. Just so I am familair with recipes For the future.

My eyes are feeling better each day. Though the constant eye drops is driving me nuts. My right eye is still weaker. It hasn't gotten any better in a day or two. I have a feeling that even though some people take up to a month to get their full results, that I'm going to need a second round of Lasik on that eye. I don't know how much that would cost, though I think it would be minimal.

So my phone is getting worse and worse. Of course this is just an excuse for getting a new phone. I already picked out the one I want. It costs quite a bit, but I really really want it. But I need to save my money. So I think I will tough it out for another month. Then I'll spend the money to get it.

Lisa is going back to school soon. :-( I am going to miss her a lot. This summer has really been interesting. We have gone through a lot. The second half has been really great.

We spent the weekend in Montreal. Our free room that Lisa/I won was very cool. It even had a jacuzzi! It was at the top floor of a 4 Star Hilton. We went to the casino a few times. Lisa won both times and I won the second time. And by won I mean like 5-50 dollars. It was really fun. We went out exploring and we found a park that had misty water shooting up from the ground. Then we got to watch the Olympics and took a nap. Then we went out and found a pub called the Mad Hatter. On our way back we got a KitKat McFlurry, Yum! Then we made it back to the room and enjoyed a nice bubble in the jacuzzi. I must have one of those in my house in the future. All in all, it was a very relaxing weekend.

(comment on this)

Friday, August 8th, 2008
3:53 pm
Yep, got my eyes lasered. My left eye is already 20/20 and my right is getting there.

Tuesday: Got up and scrubbed my eye lids with cleaner. Lisa drove me to the doctor's office and my ma followed. I went and paid up my bill and then was put into an examination room. The doc came in to checked my eyes over then left to prep the operation room. They gave me a small valum to help me sleep after it was all over. Then we put little booties on my shoes and a hairnet on my head. I was walked into the operation room and handed two stress bean bags. They introduced me to the doctors and they laid me down on a bed/chair. They taped my eyebrows up, covered one eye and put an eye clamp on that kept my right eye open. Then lined me up with the machine.

They told me to keep looking up at this blinking light. Then they place a tube on my eye and one doc said "Suction good" The other one repeated it and then something happened. Then they lifted the tube and one of them with tweezers or something brushed away this circle of skin from my eye. That part prolly freaked me out the most. Even though I knew about this whole process from the beginning. Then they tell me to keep looking at the blinking light and the laser started up. The machine makes a clinking metallic sound when its running. Then there was this purple light what moved over my eye. That light was the laser. After about 15 seconds of the laser over my eye it was over. Then they closed my eye flap, smoothered my eye out, removed everything, covered my right eye, then did the same thing to my left. After that they took me out of the chair and sat me down in a examination chair where they examined my eyes. They gave me the ok and I walked into the hallway.
I sat in a little room with Lisa and my ma getting some instructions and some eye drops. Then we walked out to go home.

Let me tell you.. everything was bright!! I couldn't see hardly at all. I had to have Lisa lead me to the car. When we got home I had to hide in the shadows. My eyes got sore and Lisa had to go out and get me some Tylenol. I love my Lisa. :-) I slept a lot and kept my eyes closed as much as possible. Ate the food my ma had made for us, then went to bed.

Wednesday: Got up and my ma drove me back to the docs. I wasn't as sensitive to the light this time. They tested my eyes and I got 20/20 with my left eye and 20/30 with my right. Took the rest of wed to get my license updated and got my new video card. I tried to take my motorcycle out but the wind in ym eyes dried them out to quickly.

Thurs: My right eye was still weaker than my right. But my distance was better than it ever has been, even with glasses.

Friday: My right eye is still weaker but I do think its going to get better. I have a appointment with the doc on wed so he can take another look at it. But I read that its normal as some people take weeks for one of their eyes to get to normal and I'm only 4 days into it counting surgery day.

My next post will be about what its like to go from glasses to this. Already I'm pretty darn happy. I could live like this and I know its going to get better. :-)

(comment on this)

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008
8:24 am
Off to go get my eyes fixed!

(comment on this)

Thursday, July 31st, 2008
3:00 pm
Less than a week now! I'm excited for my surgery. Its just 5 days away! Haven't made an entry for a lil while. I have been very busy at work. I'm trying to do my work as fast as possible so that when I'm gone for 2 days, I don't come back to a huge pile. Our coffee machine is fixed! That means I now have hot water for my tea again. Yay.

My Video Card is shitting the bed. :-( Can't play any video games for more than 1 min before the graphics go all screwy. So I ordered a replacement. I know I'm supposed to be tight on money but I figure I'll need a fix now to help with my boredom when Lisa goes back to school. My choices are limited as I am stuck with an old AGP slot for my graphics. There are no new cards for my interface aside from the expensive new 4X series ATI cards and that just may be a rumor that they even exist. I currently have a X1650Pro and I always go bigger when stuff breaks. I thought I had the best card available for AGP but I found a X1950GT for 75 bucks. It has faster RAM, memory interface that's twice the size (256bit over 128bit), 3 Times the pixel pipelines, and processes textures a math calculations 3 times faster than my old card. This should be yet another big boost to performance, and for 75$ I can't complain.

Well I'm gonna get back to work. I know.. an odd post, short for being away for over a week. But I got stuff to do.

(comment on this)

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
9:50 am
Wednesday... I wanna go home.. I'm sooo tired. I'm going to work at the drive-ins later, rain or shine. I want to finish that up and get paid. I decided to listen to Howard Stern today while at work. I'm lucky cause my sign printer is fairly loud so the ladies behind me can't hear. Howard has the Kielbasa Queen on right now. If you saw private parts, she is the lady that can take a 13 inch Kielbasa down her throat. She was talking about how she went to jail for prostitution and went gay in prison but now she's been out for 2 years and is marrying a dude.

I'm peeling.. I got wicked bad sunburn last weekend. On the plus side I am tan. Yay! Well tan on my arms and neck. Its all rainy today. Good thing I have my rain suit cause I rode the bike today. All I need is a clear tent that could sit on top of my head that drapes down over everything. That would really save me from the rain.

I only have 2 more sign requests to do today. Then I have 2 or 3 menus to do. Not much really. If I do one menu I'll be happy. But I am soo ready for a nap. I would have a tea or something but our coffee/water machine is broken. Grrrr.... I have 2.5 hours till lunch. I'm boooored and tiiirred and hungry...

Well I should go do something. I get so distracted from this while I'm writing it that it takes me a whole hour to do just on entry.

(comment on this)

Monday, July 21st, 2008
12:03 pm
Bill Cosby has a joke that everyone can't wait for the weekend. Then when it is the weekend, we totally destroy ourselves and can't wait to crawl back to the office on monday morning. I was kinda happy to be back at work this morning, though I still can't hardly keep my eyes open. I drove the truck today cause I thought it would be safer.

I worked in Rutland Friday. Got back here and checked in at the drive-in. Then went to work at the store. Sat: Went to the brew fest at noon. Much beer was had. Came home with Joe and ate a lot of pizza. Then I went to the drive-ins with Lisa to see Batman. Sunday, got up at noon. Went grocery shopping, set up a new paper towel rack thingy, played guitar hero, watched some silence of the lambs and made dinner for Lisa and Terry.

Lisa entered my name into a raffle Saturday and I won! Here's the funny part. I entered a raffle at brewfest. So when I got home, Joe and I were watching Beerfest and I got a call. I was a little more than mildly buzzed and didn't catch what it was I had won right off or by who. So I started thinking that I had won something from the brewfest. I text Lisa that I had won something and it turns out she had entered me into something with 92.9 at Contoise Music. I won a one night stay in a fancy hotel in Montreal. So thats where we are gonna go in a couple weeks. Yay!!

Well I should get to work. I;m taking a slightly early lunch today. Lata.

(comment on this)

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
11:23 am
Its Wednesday! Gonna go over to the drive-ins after work and test out the T-shirt Cannon. They are having the drive-in's 60th B-day party for the place Friday and a radio station is gonna be there. Pete wants to give away t-shirts and what better way than with the T-shirt cannon. I don't know what could possibly break on the thing, I'm sure its fine. I built it pretty darn tough but ya never know. I may want to paint it and change out a diameter changing sleeve as I remember the old one was pretty floppy. I can't remember exactly why I built it. But we have used it a few times and its always been fun. I usually wield it but I will be working so I will have to instruct Pete on the proper operation of the cannon. I remember building it and in the early stages Pete would be like, call me when you can hit the tree over there.. Call me when you can hit the tree behind that one, then call me when you can hit the house over there, and on and on... until it shot a tennis ball over a football field. Then we had the issue that when we launched T-shirts they would go wayyy to high and/or far.

Work is going well today. My box is nearly empty. And I am doing nerd stuff too. I got a PSU in yesterday and fixed a PC with it today. Lightning killed the old one. Go figure. Now I'm working on this program that uses this remote desktop program to piggy back secure file transfers. The kicker is that the program only runs on Win98 but I gotta get it to work on XP. I found that the remote desktop software is the issue, so I'm trying to fanangle a new version in its place. Registry edits everywhere....

Went to the Outback with Lisa and her ma last night. It was good. I had a pretty darn good night. :-) Lisa found a book at Barns and Nobel that I have been looking for. Yay! I like murder mystery novels. I can;t wait for lunch. I bought a pre-made meal from Citymarket, Meatloaf with smoked macaroni and cheese, potato slices and corn. Now maybe I'll bring my lunch more that I now have a book to read. I'm gonna get my bike when I go home for lunch. I hate this polypropylene (Fancy paper that comes in 36" wide rolls) I'm using for signs right now. My inks just aren't drying fast enough. I have to leave the posters for an hour before I can even think about touching them. I miss the nice dry winter air. I could acually grab the posters right off the printer while they are printing with no prob. I've gotten a few complements today on how good the posters are looking lately. I think I've almost caught up to my competition as far as looks go. Farrels (the other guys) have 3 full time people doing my job over there with a few assistants. I'm gonna try to go to Rutland this Friday. Just to replace one computer. I'm in really good shape here to there shouldn't be any problem.

Well, time to work some more.

(comment on this)

Monday, July 14th, 2008
10:01 am
Had a soso weekend. I'm in a blah mood. I'm not happy, and I'm not sad. Every monday on my Honda Shadow forum we have a "why are you happy post." I didn't have very much to write on it today. At least not yet. The only thing I could write is that I love Lisa Blankemeyer. Its prob cause I'm in a bad mood and/or cranky. I did get to see Miss USA trip last night. That was pretty cool.

I don't get to see Lisa again till tomorrow. :-( I'm working tonight at Cap'n Cork cause one of the guys needs to spend more time at home. His wife is sick so I'm covering for now. I'm not going to work 3 days a week there. Forget that. I've already been contemplating leaving so I could have more free time to hang with Lisa and to do stuff, but I like money. Maybe after my surgery I'll leave.

Saturday I installed Lisa's new stereo head in her car. 5 bucks says that its gonna get kicked and or punched within a month cause it can't keep a station. Then I went to my Aunts 50th B-day party which was alright. Hung out with the guys sat night but wound up falling to sleep in my chair rather early. Can't remember for the life of me what I was watching. I think it may have been CSI Las Vegas. BTW, Terry and I decided that we don't like cheap whiskey. Justin liked it though. Blah, Almost made me sick, and that's tough to do.

I spent some of Sunday fixing a section of fence at the drive-in. It was raining the whole time but we did a good job. Peter is an interesting guy to work with. He's the boss, but you have to tell him what to do. He expects you to tell him exactly where you want him and how to do stuff which is fine I guess. After that I did laundry & Hung out with Millie and Nick till Lisa got out of work. I tried to make a paper towel dispenser out of a curtain rod and some J hooks but wound up snapping the hooks as I tried to bend them into the correct shape. I guess I'll just get a real hanger.

Well this is long enough. I need to work some more. I already made up a new menu card for a local Outback Steakhouse. I think I did a really good job on it so I deserve a short break. OH! I just remembered Lisa gave me poptarts to bring to work with me today! Yay!!!!

Edit: Oh yeah! So I love Playing GTA Vice City for PC... Yes, I know its a old game. But its also one of the greatest games of all time. So this weekend I found all 100 hidden packages in the game.

And here is link to my menu. Here are my excuses if it isn't all that great. 1. I have never had any art instruction since 8 grade. I'm an IT guy, not a graphics arts guy. 2. I also only spent maybe 20 min on this and its still just a draft. But I like it. The empty space near the bottom is needed for a bend in the holder. Outback

(comment on this)

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
11:12 am
A pirate walks into a bar and the bartender says "Why do you have your ships wheel attached to your crotch?" The pirate says "Arrgghh, I don't know but it's driving me nuts!!!"

Today is almost half over.. at least at this job. Hmm.. What am I gonna have for lunch? I think I'm gonna trade my bike in for the truck during lunch. I haven't driven the truck since Friday night. And it wasn't till the monday before that, that I had either. It will be weird driving the truck after only riding.

Lisa got us lobsters last night! It was pretty cool, and tasty too. She had to show me how to clean the tail before eating it. The red and green stuff is gross. I learned a lot. I don't know how people eat those things in restaurants though. Kinda messy. I should go to Rays and just watch people eat. :-P I love Lisa.

So here I am at work. I wanna take a nap. I leaned back in my chair earlier and almost fell asleep. This coming weekend will be a sleep weekend. I will do all my chores and everything on Saturday so Sunday it is all about sitting in my chair doing nada. Maybe we can do a hike if Lisa is off.

I wanna get a new air filter for the truck too. My mileage in the truck I think has gone down. Though it may be just that I'm used to the bike now. I asked Jeff (my mechanic extraordinaire) to lube up the front suspension for me as well. I'd like to make sure the truck is in good condition for this fall and winter. There is still this really loud squeaking when I go over bumps coming from the front end. And the steering has loosened up. I know Lisa would say leave it be and I'm over sensitive. It drives me nuts to turn my wheel and not acually turn. I bet that I have a bad ball joint because that would cause both the squeak and the looseness. My check engine light also keeps going off. I know its the same emissions thing as it has been for the past year and a half. I heard that Autozone will hook you up to their computer for free to help you diagnose stuff. I would love to get the acually code so I can have Jeff finally fix it.

Well I should get going. I'm gonna take an early lunch today so I can have my truck here for Jeff.

(comment on this)

> previous 20 entries
> top of page
LiveJournal.com