So anyways...

...where were we?

Oh, right. Anyways, regarding my extended absence: My wife is currently working full time AND attending nursing school full time - one of the reasons for this is so we can "work less, live more" down the road. Part of the agreement is that I assume ALL the household duties while she's in school - so in addition to my full-time job and freelance work, I am doing all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. On top of all this, we are making a conscious effort to spend more time with our families, all of whom live between 90 minutes - 9 hours away from us.

So, yeah.

As far as the state of the blog, I am hoping to revamp the site in the coming weeks. A lot of the people who I view as "contemporaries" as far as blogging (in that we all started around the same time & watched each other try to figure all this out) have changed the name, look, and/or focus of their blogs to better suit them, and I am sorely behind in this area. While I would love to have the focus to produce an informative, up-to-date blog on a singular topic, I've got the attention span of a fruit fly and always have. I'm going to try to find a way to "compartmentalize" my posts according to my different hobbies/interests, and hopefully all of you will bear with my growing pains for a while...

Chillaxin'

Hey all. Not much to write about lately - to be honest, I've been doing too much "real life" socializing with friends & family to update the blog much, and I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. Hope everyone's having a good summer, I'll be back to regular updates shortly.

Express Yourself

Pumpkins Scream In The Dead Of Night

The way we roll:



Happy Halloween, everybody!

Hey Little Sister, What Have You Done?

So, the wedding's over - it went just like we hoped, simple but elegant, and we didn't have to take out a second mortgage to do it. Now I've been scrambling with home repairs, gardening, etc., trying to get as much done as possible before the wife starts classes next month... look for some project files soon.

Goin' To The Chapel

My early wedding present:


It's a Trek 7.2 FX. The only major additions so far are a Delta Post Haste seatpost rack & bag, Nashbar Rodeo pedals (clipless on one side, platform on the other) and the usual geegaws (bar ends, cyclocomputer, cages & bottles, etc). I'm meeting a guy tomorrow to pick up an unused Brooks B17 saddle I saw on Craigslist. Unfortunately, the trip I talked about earlier probably isn't gonna happen this year - money, time, & stamina are all in too short of supply. The plan now is to go on a few weekend touring trips this year, do GOBA next year, then see where we're at.

Otherwise, the wedding is a week from Saturday (that's the main reason I haven't posted lately - even though we're having a simple wedding and are both uber-organizers, there's still a million little details to arrange - we both kinda wish we had eloped at this point). After that's the honeymoon, so I'll see you in a couple of weeks...

Look For The Girl With The Sun In Her Eyes

My girlfriend & I were sitting on the couch - she was watching TV and I was playing on the computer.

GF: "Do you think he enjoys being such a douchebag?
Me: (looks up to see a Priceline.com commercial) "Who?"
GF: "William Shatner."
Me: "God, I hope so. He's certainly got the act down."

(Sorry, Bill).

My Homeboys Tried To Warn Me...

So, I work a lot of odd hours, including some overnights. Usually this is fine with me - a nice, uneventful shift, no traffic on the way in, no co-workers to hassle me about anything, etc.

That is, up until about a year ago.

Y'see, I work for a company that provides video & data services. At some point, we added a new state-of-the art videoconferencing center, and someone in management decided we needed a toll-free number for clients to call in on. Okay, that makes sense. The problems started when another company (who I won't promote here) misprinted their toll-free number on their catalog - they printed our number (and continue to print our number after many, many months). This company also provides a certain form of "video services" - although their products are of a much less, uh, savory nature than ours. Apparently they specialize in videos featuring African-American women, although it's a bit more specific than that. They specialize in videos featuring African-American women who are gifted in the, um, posterior region.


*Ahem*.


Don't get me wrong, I dig on a ghetto onion as much as the next red-blooded American male. And I'm sure all the actresses in these videos are lovely girls who are just earning money for grad school. But, as you can imagine, you have some pretty interesting conversations when someone calls at 4AM looking for their porn fix, and you have to tell them they have a wrong number. I've had everything from squeaky-voiced teenagers telling me "It's okay dude, you can sell to me, I'm not the cops!" to people cursing me out, to people who just plain refused to believe that I'm not sitting in a giant warehouse full of porno. But last night, I got a great one from a young woman:
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Me: "Good evening, (company name that doesn't sound remotely like a porn distributor)

Caller: "Yeah, I'm looking at this catalog you sent me.."

Me: "You have the wrong number, ma'am. The video company printed the wrong number on their catalog." (I've learned from experience to cut people off ASAP, before they say something embarrassing for us both.)

Caller: "Yeah, well, lemme ask you sumthin': How these girls get their booties so BIG!?"

Me: "...uh..."

Caller: "I mean, I don't see HOW it can natural!"

Me: "...I dunno..."

Caller: "I found a place up in New York City that says they can do it for eight hunnerd dollas, but I don't know how they do it!"

Me: "Um... implants, maybe?"

Caller: (laughs) "You a trip! I dunno dog, I'm afraid it wouldn't be healthy, y'know?"

Me: "I guess it wouldn't."

Caller: "So, what's the right number?"

Me: "I don't know - I think if you go to their website it has the right number." (info gleaned from previous callers)

Caller: "Ah, man, can you get on the website and look it up for me? Hook me up, dog!"

Me: I'm at work - I can't look up adult websites, I'd get fired."

Caller: "A'ight dog, I don't want you to get fired - you get back to work!" (laughs)

Me: "Allright, ma'am. Goodnight."
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So, how did your phone conversations at work go yesterday?

The first eleven things that turned up when I told the iPod to play 4228 songs randomly*:

Goodnight L.A. - Counting Crows
I like To Score - Moby
I'm Looking Through You - The Beatles
My Love For You (Has Turned To Hate) - Hank Williams
Day Dream - Smashing Pumpkins
Fucked - Ministry
Rhyme & Reason - Dave Matthews Band
The River - Bruce Springsteen
Big Rock Candy Mountain - Harry McClintock
A Million Miles Away - The Plimsouls
You Really Got Me - The Kinks

*The idea for this post was blatantly stolen from Neil Gaiman.

She Said Yes

Jaws Was Never My Scene

Goddamn, my legs are sore. I've been hitting the gym pretty hard lately - I'm officially in training. See, my best friend since age 12 & I used to be pretty active guys - camping twice a month, year round, for the better part of a decade, hiking, bicycling, all that stuff. Fast forward ten years and we're both a whole lot fatter and pretty inactive. We've been talking about getting back into more outdoor pursuits recently (he took the kids camping last weekend and has his eye on the Appalachian Trail) but I've convinced him to sign on to a harebrained scheme I came up with: We're going to get dropped off in Pittsburgh with bikes & gear, and make our way down the Great Allegheny Passage, across the eastern continental divide, and on to Cumberland, MD. From there we'll pick up the C & O Canal Towpath to Washington, D.C. The girls will meet us in D.C., we'll all spend a couple days there, and drive home. Overall it will be 316 miles by bike, camping the whole way, probably allowing 6-10 days travel time. Right now we're planning on August 2008, which is good, because I need to get in good enough shape to cover at least 30 miles a day on a bicycle and to accumulate the gear I'll need (like, um, a bicycle. Not to mention all that other stuff). I'm pretty excited, as it gives me a goal to work towards for the next year, and it sounds like a cool route with a lot of history along the way. Expect occasional updates regarding training & gear here, as the trip nears I'll probably create a separate blog dedicated to the trip...

Make It Shallow So That I Can Feel The Rain

The girlfriend and I took a couple of vacation days last week to unwind and visit her hometown, and to visit her mother's grave - she hadn't been there since the funeral, so she hadn't seen the headstone her father picked out. It was beautiful, but we were both surprised when we walked around and looked at the back of it:

Fresh Ink

How To Spend $1300 Without Really Trying

My weekend:

The girlfriend calls me Friday morning and says, "I need to talk to you when you get home". Of course, my first thought was "Oh sh*t, she's pregnant". I jump in the car and race home, and she says, "I think something's wrong with the TV". I turn it on, and the screen is just green wavy lines. I get down on the floor and start taking the grille off the front to inspect it, and it's wet. Her dog (which, I was assured when she moved in, was impeccably housebroken) took a leak on my 52" HDTV. Directly into the gun array (it was a rear-projection TV). For the second time in a month. She's hysterical and crying, thinking I'm going to take the dog to the pound. I calm her down and send her to work and go to bed. That night, we go out and she buys me a new 37" LCD TV - or rather, we try to, but the store declines her credit card (we called & checked the balance before we left). So, she has to stand there at the cash register and call the credit card company - of course, it takes her half an hour to get a real person on the phone, and they tell her that since she never makes large purchases on her card, it was flagged as a "potential fraudulent purchase". Okay, whatever. Card gets re-swiped and goes through, we take the TV home, haul it inside, and go to bed.


The next morning I woke up early and left to take the Motorcycle Safety Foundation advanced rider course. Of course the last two hours of that are in the pouring rain, so I get soaked to the bone (it was still fun, though - much better instructors than the last time I took it). On the way home I stop to get gas. As I'm getting out of my car, my cell phone slips out of my hand and lands square in the tub of windshield-washer fluid mounted to the trash can next to the pump. My immediate thought was "You gotta be f@¢king kidding me". I fish out my phone and it's shot. Go to the cell-phone place and of course they won't give me a deal since I'm in the middle of a contract, chalk up $300 for a new phone.


The next day I go to move the old TV out of the house, and as I'm pushing it into the kitchen from the dining room, I rub up against the kitchen door slightly - which rips the door off the hinges. I take the door off and look at it, seems the previous owner must have done this before, and repaired the edge of the door with cut-down paint stirrers and wood glue, then painted over it so you couldn't tell. I throw the door in the dumpster and get ready to throw the TV in, of course as I was doing that I smashed my thumb between the TV and the edge of the steel dumpster.


After that I went to meet an old friend from out of town for lunch - I told him my story, and he said, "Well, I was gonna show you my new car, but you're not allowed anywhere near it". Oh well, nowhere to go but up from here I guess...

Little Mac says 'Help me, Doc!!'

via xkcd.com

...so I finally broke down and ordered a Wii - I swore I wasn't going to be blackmailed into paying for a "bundle" where I had to buy six games with the console, but then the Dell store (where I have a credit card) got a bundle in stock that had almost all the games I wanted, so... there ya go. I am forcing myself to not open some of the games (Madden '07, Zelda) until the quarter is over in a couple of weeks, for I fully expect to lose a month of my life to those games.

One thing I can heartily recommend, even if your not a fan of video games: Wii Sports boxing. If you have any tension in your relationship at all, there's few things as therapeutic as KO'ing a cutesy 3D rendering of your significant other. It's like an episode of Cops without the trailer park or domestic violence charges. The only thing that's more fun is watching two people play Wii boxing, as they look like two people having epiletic fits with game controllers in their hands.

As I said, the quarter is over in a couple of weeks - from here 'till there I have three tests, one lab, one paper, one HUGE project, and a job interview (for a promotion at my current employer). I have the MSF course coming up in a couple of weeks, I might try to sneak my digital camera in there and document it for you all, and since the Wii plays GameCube games, I have an interesting project planned for my old GameCube that I hope to write up here. Stay tuned...

Take A Long Ride On My Motorbike

Hmmmm, seems like the only post I make anymore is the "sorry I haven't posted in so long" one. School is again kicking my butt, although in a good way (I am working on a very involved project that, for once, might actually translate into the real world - as well as give me a project I can put in my portfolio). Hopefully summer will be less hectic - I plan on only taking one (online only) class.

In moto-related news, I got lucky and snagged a spot for a Motorcycle Safety Foundation course in about a month. I must have caught a cancellation - I checked the web page on Sunday and all classes were booked until the end of September, I checked again the next day and there was exactly one spot open for a class at the beginning of June, so I jumped on it. This is actually a new class that they just started this year - it's an abbreviated one-day version of the basic class, for people who have been riding on a permit for multiple years or have been riding on-and-off for several years (sadly, that describes me to a "T"). I took the class about 9 years ago, it'll be good to get a refresher. Maybe I'll sign up for the advanced class next summer...

When She's Ten Feet Tall

Hey all, not too much new here. We did Easter at my place this year, my first honest-to-goodness hosting of a holiday meal since becoming a grown up (allegedly). It went really well, except we forgot that if you let a sixty-pound dog eat an entire hambone (which he can do in about five minutes flat) , he will wake you up by yakking on your bedroom floor at 4:30AM.

The GF's dad had peeling forearms due to having the Goldwing out all last week during the nice weather, and her brother even managed to get the ancient CD350 he bought off eBay last year out for a day. Needless to say, I felt like a slacker - I still need to make a trip to the BMV before I can get my bike on the road. I did show it to them and we resolved to get together for a ride sometime this summer, maybe head up the road to the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum. I'll be sure to take lots of pics...

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Hey all, lots of real-world stuff happening lately... I finally finished the classes that were kicking my but this quarter, and the girlfriend is moving in this weekend. On top of that there's been dealing with all the paperwork for the new car, tons of work stuff, playing referee between her pets and mine (don't ask), and some really nasty weather on top of it all. Some storms rolled through last night and actually blew out some of the support poles in my motorcycle shelter, so I had to take it halfway apart and get it set up again, but it definitely fired up my urge to go for a ride - hopefully I'll be able to post some reports soon...

-D_G

The New Whip

Hey all, sorry for my extended absence, but school has been kicking my butt this quarter. I'm struggling to maintain a low-"B"-to-high-"C" in my first programming class, and my other class is in the early afternoon, right in between two days that I work third shift - meaning I leave work, go home and sleep for three hours, get up, go to class for three hours, go to the computer labs, go home and sleep for a couple more hours, get up and go to work. None of this would be particularly fun even if I wasn't nursing a pretty severe sleep disorder in the first place. Thankfully, it'll be over in a few more weeks, and next quarter will hopefully go a little smoother.

The other thing that has been taking up a lot of my time lately has been car shopping. As much as I love the CRX, it was starting to show it's age of seventeen years, despite all the spit 'n polish. It was also less-than-ideal for road trips given it's small size, what with both mine & the girlfriend's families living an hour away. And she didn't find the spartan accommodations (power nothing, 5-speed, no A/C) nearly as charming as I did.

I drove an F-150 (I'm not a Ford guy, nor a truck guy - I've owned them in the past, but really don't have a need for one, plus the cost of gas woulda killed me), a couple Jettas (too small) a couple Passats (too expensive) and decided to look at a 2005 Impala at a dealer near me - I snuck away from studying for a few hours on Sunday and drove to the dealership, only to find I drove to the wrong one - they actually had two locations for used cars. The salesman told me he had a 2006 Impala, but no 2005's. This was discouraging to me, as 2005 was the last year of the cool round taillights ("Why would they do away with an Impala trademark?!?") I wondered. The salesman encouraged me to take a look at the '06 anyway and pulled it around: It was white. Probably my least favorite color for any car. I told it was out of my price range anyway, but he encouraged me to drive it, and to my surprise, I really really liked it. I even decided the white looked pretty good on it, especially if you tinted the windows. Even the new taillights were starting to grow on me a little bit. I had already received financing from my credit union and knew where I wanted my payment to be, so this car wasn't even a possibility. The dealership convinced me to let them run my info through their system, and they got me a rate two points lower than my credit union (which I just assumed would be my best option). Boom, $2k more car for the same payment. I yanked my stereo equipment out of the Honda and drove it home. (I originally wasn't going to trade the CRX - I knew I could easily get $2K for it, but only after I dropped $500 in it for new shocks & brakes, plus a whole weekend's work of detailing... I decided for a few hundred bucks difference, I would rather just be done with it. Of course, now my friends are coming out of the woodwork and berating me for not giving them first refusal rights). I give you the new whip:

(That's a stock photo of course - mine's already too dirty to be suitable for photography)

It's quite different to drive - remember, I've only owned one other car built in this decade, and that was a Jeep Wrangler with zero options. It has all kinds of power stuff and digital geegaws and doodads and blue LED's everywhere and a jack to plug my iPod into the radio. When the temperature dropped below 32 degrees tonight, it actually warned me that there could be ice on the road. Between that and the remote starter, I feel like Michael Knight. I'll probably get the windows tinted as dark as I can get away this summer, and might look into finding an SS spoiler for the trunk, but that's about it.

The other big difference was when I filled it up - $35.00!!! If the CRX was on fumes I might squeeze $15 into it. And that would last me a week (46 mile round-trip commute to work 5 days a week, plus 30-odd miles to school and back 3-4 nights a week). That's gonna take some getting used to...

Leaving Just A Memory

Something I noticed today: Every semester, for the past year and a half, I completely forget how to write batch files. I'm not retarded, I can write large chunks of code in various languages from memory, but for some damn reason I can never remember how to do a simple logon script.

On the other hand, I can listen to the metal station on satellite radio, hear a song I haven't so much as thought about since ninth grade (today it was Exodus' Toxic Waltz, last week it was Megadeth's In My Darkest Hour) and I remember every goddamn word. If I can ever cross-link the IT section of my brain to the hesher section of my brain, I'll be golden...