Eventful Weekend

Went to a “haunted woods” attraction in a smaller town, it was pretty good. Then went to a party the next night with the cast from the play Jessica was in. I forgot how crazy college kids get when they drink. The nothing happened last night. Now I’ll break it down for you:
Haunted Woods: Small little attraction on the side of the road, the only thing noting it’s existence was a small sign on the side of the road. It was only open at night, for atmospheric purposes, and it was five dollars a person. We went in a group of four, the leader was given a flashlight and we had to walk around the little dirt trail.
People would jump out at you wearing crazy masks, then they would follow you. They were dead quiet so you wouldn’t know they were there until you turned around. Someone riding a horse flew out of nowhere and scared everyone, nobody was real certain that the guy riding the horse was going to stop and it came within inches.
Then there was the last twenty feet, there was a little kid dressed up in a Chucky mask and outfit holding a big, fake, glow-in-the-dark knife. We all thought it was fake because he wasn’t moving, so we moved along and Jessica mentioned it was moving. I turned around and saw the kid beckoning for Jessica to come closer with his knife, she made a fist at him for some reason and that kid flew at her at lightning speed (I was surprised this kid could move that fast) and it scared the ever-loving bejesus out of Jessica and she took off running and screaming at the top of her lungs.
I laughed at that for at least an hour, it still brings a smile to my face. Then the next night we went to the party, I just kind of hung out by myself while Jessica mingled with her friends. Later on in the night some girls went for a walk (don’t ask me why, I thought it was weird) and came back and told the hostess there was a dead cat in the road so she went and checked it out.
It turned out to be this stray cat that they’ve been taking care of, so then she starts crying, the bearer of bad news starts crying, then everyone else started crying. The hostess changed out of her costume and went to some place she goes to when she’s sad and didn’t come back, apparently she fell asleep in her car. Then one girl gets extremely drunk and starts throwing up.
While she’s throwing up, she’s apologizing to everyone and laughing for no reason. Her boyfriend wanted to take her home, she couldn’t walk, so he decided to carry her. Then he tripped and fell right on top of her, she hit her head on the ground. Everyone freaked out, I was the only one laughing because I saw the humor in that.
She wasn’t hurt, she was still laughing and throwing up. Then everyone started leaving and Jessica and I came back home. Crazy college kids. Tomorrow is our two-year anniversary. Don’t have any plans, won’t be able to go anywhere or really do anything thanks to financial restraints. I’ll make it up to her when I get paid Saturday.
That’s all I’ve been up to this weekend. Oh, I’ve been trying to build this computer for a friend of ours as a surprise for his boyfriend (yes, you read that right, no I don’t care). It’s been two months and I’m almost done with it, it’s been a long journey.
First, the power wouldn’t work, come to find out there was a little cable I didn’t connect because it was labeled SB/Switch and I didn’t know what that was. Then the IDE cable wouldn’t read hard drives so I had to replace that, then I had to go buy an adapter for the power plug on the motherboard. Now I have to get a video card in it and I’m finished.
The video card that’s in there now is a 16MB card, not good enough to play games on and that’s why I’m building it. Luckily, I found a 256MB video card I can throw in there when I get home. Okay, that’s all I have for today. PIECE!!!!!

Multinational Lotteries

If I win any more of these things, I won’t have to work ever again. Last week I got an e-mail saying I won around 500,000 pounds. Today I get one saying I won 850,000 pounds. All they need is my name, address and phone number. That sounds legit.
Unfortunately, or forutantely, I’m not an idiot. But we can all dream, can’t we? I finished the fifth comic a week ago or so, I can’t really remember. I started on the sixth one the other day and got some more put on it last night. Jessica doesn’t really like the idea of what I’m doing with this one, but she also doesn’t really know the story, or the point.
But that’s okay, sometimes things just don’t make sense and somehow, life goes on. The point of the story isn’t really in the first seven comics anyway, it comes after that. That’s when the story really starts, the first seven are just filler for the brain, it’ll all make sense when it’s over.
Anyway, writing comics, getting certifications, winning lotteries in other countries, I’m a busy guy. Got a haircut last night and all it cost me was making a computer work for someone. Bartering is awesome. It’s a computer I wanted to build for one of my friend’s and couldn’t get it to work. Then, last night, I realized it doesn’t work because I didn’t plug in the power cable to the motherboard (it was labeled S/B switch and I didn’t know what that was for). Now I just need a hard drive and I’m done.
I could probably stand putting a better video card in it, I might have an extra one lying around, if not then another friend of mine has one I can use. If you took all the computer parts my friends and I have, you could probably throw together a few dozen computers. Which is a good thing because someone will have something if you need it and don’t have it yourself.
I started going through the Microsoft study materials, it’s easier than I thought it would be. That’s a good sign and I guess that only makes sense after messing with Windows for fourteen years. Thinking about getting a Cisco certification after the Microsoft tests. I’ll look into it.
I’m going to get to work now, have to go look at some scanners. PIECE!!!!!

Last Monday

I noticed yesterday that I made it seem like I was downplaying the birth of my niece after only giving it a short mention at the end of my post. Yesterday was a weird day and it seemed like my priorities were all shot out of whack. Needless to say, it was a stereo-typical Monday, complete with flip-outs and things that just didn’t go right.
Last Monday was a lot better, I spent all day at the hospital with my family as my sister was giving birth. Around 9:45 or 10:00am (I can’t be sure) my brother-in-law walks out of the surgery room wheeling his brand new baby girl and a ten mile smile.
Then we spent most of the day with my sister, making sure she was okay. Once we knew that mom and baby were going to be okay, I went home to spend some time with Jessica, who was sick and had things to do. My mom was also sick, but she was there for my sister.
Anyway, I guess I’m going to get out of here. I’m starting studying for my Microsoft tests, I can’t seem to quit studying. PIECE!!!!!

Long break

So it’s been a while since I posted anything, let’s catch up: Jessica switched her major to theater and the last month or so she’s been going out to college every night to rehearse, the show opened Thursday and ended yesterday. I went and saw it Thursday and yesterday, it was good, there were some laughs.
I got to meet the cast after the Thursday show at Buffalo Wild Wings, that was interesting. I got complimented on my beard, which has been trimmed down since then. Everyone was nice and stereo-typical theater nerd, but they were a good group of people.
Passed my Network+ and Security+ tests, but the certificates won’t be sent until I verify my information by logging into the website. I clicked on the “Forgot username/password” link and entered into a psychotic loop of “password has not been set” and “password is invalid” to the almighty “we’re sorry, this e-mail address seems to be in use by someone else” so that makes for a fun time for all.
Taking a break from studying to work on the site, but that’s a little tricky since my internet’s been cut off. I’m going on my lunch break to pay it so I can have fun internet time when I get home. Ate almost an entire pizza last night and woke up at 2am with unbelievable heartburn, but it was worth it.
Now that the show is over, I will have more time to spend with Jessica. Until she starts working again, but that’s a necessary evil. Since we got married in 2007, there hasn’t been a week we’ve been able to spend time together. So, technically, we’re still newly weds. The anniversary is coming up, hopefully we’ll be able to do something.
Work is crazy with all the reinterviewing for our jobs that’s going on, which is always fun. Not in this case, everyone’s mad that we have to reinterview for the jobs we’ve had for years now, which is understandable. Our company was sold to another company, the new company is dumping us on the company we’ve been working AT, not for, for years now and that company is making us reinterview, but that’s only for legal purposes, so there’s not much to worry about.
I finished the fifth comic, need to start working on the sixth and then the seventh and then finally the comic can take on one story, as opposed to seven different stories that are vaguely tied together.
I need to get together with my artist and get things rolling. She’s been really busy with her life, hopefully we can get it together and get this thing going.
I’m going to get off here now, I need to start studying again for the next batch of certifications I want to get, hopefully it won’t be too hard. PIECE!!!!!

I almost forgot, I became an uncle last Monday. My sister gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Marlowe Blair. Here’s to the new parents!

Writing Therapy

The other day I was completely overwhelmed with depression thanks to some weird dream I had. Those things are starting to get annoying. Later that day I get off work and go home, get Jessica and drive the thirty miles to her school so she can attend the rehearsal for the play she will be in.
I have to sit in the car since it’s closed rehearsals, so I usually take my study material and my laptop. I studied until the sun went down then broke out the laptop, brainstormed for a few minutes then began writing my fifth comic. Well, what do you know, I felt better. As a matter of fact, I felt so much better I could’ve classified it as being “happy”.
I’ve felt pretty good since then, which is kind of weird, I didn’t think writing would help that much. A couple of days pass and I get this headache that won’t go away, it’s not bad, just noticeable. I’ve been fighting what I believed to be a sinus infection so I blamed that on my headache. Woke up the next day and my throat was killing me, still is. Then I think I have strep throat, which wouldn’t surprise me since I’m a magnet for strep throat.
The next day I wake up, have loads of drainage, my throat doesn’t hurt as bad but I still feel kind of crappy. Have an idea of what it is yet? Yeah, that’s what I figured too, stupid allergies. So, to test my theory, I’m going to the gift shop at the hospital I work in and load up on Benadryl and if I start to feel better, then allergies it is.
If not, then I guess I’m going to go to the doctor and try to figure out what’s causing the problem, but I’m pretty sure it’s allergies. They’ve been getting progressively worse lately. Too bad I can’t write those away. Of course, that would be too easy.
Studying is going good, I should be ready to take this test by the end of this week if not earlier. But I have to wait to see if I get reimbursed from the first test before I can think about being able to take this one. Hopefully that’s not a problem since the company I used to work for was sold, then the new company dumped us onto the hospital. I’m not going to hold my breath.
My dermatitis started flaring up again, that’s getting annoying. It’s a catch 22; if I didn’t have my beard then you would be able to see the worst spots I have…then again, if I didn’t have my beard, I probably wouldn’t have those spots in the first place. It seems like it’s only around where the facial hair is. And above my eyebrows.
Oh well, it’s not that big of a deal, just strange. The weather outside is pretty cool: foggy, wet, cold. Just the way I like it. Then I get inside on my way to work, and everybody has their heaters on. So I’m almost sweating by the time I get to my office, my absent co-worker has the heat turned up but since he won’t be here today, I go ahead and turn it down…way down.
Hopefully by the time I’m done writing this, I’ll be nice and chilly. I can already feel the cool air coming in from his office. I don’t have vents in my part of the office, which is why I turned it down so low, so it’ll float into my part and cool me off.
Anyway, I’ve rambled on about nothing for long enough, I’m going to study some more and hopefully get this thing finished. PIECE!!!!!

Weine, weine meine haus

That means “Cry, cry my house.” I was watching some show on the Discovery Channel about haunted houses and possessions. This team went into the house and interviewed the family and they started looking around the house and found that phrase, in German, scratched into the floor of the closet of the person being tormented by the spirit.
Interesting show, but that phrase was stuck in my head. If I have one more night of extraordinarily bad dreams and wake up depressed, angry, nervous or scared, I’m going to stop sleeping. It’s not worth it to get rest when you wake up and can’t shake the feelings of dread, I’d rather choose to not sleep and just be sleepy all day.
Could be stress related, as someone mentioned. There’s a lot going on right now with my job (and everyone else’s in the company) so that makes sense. But this all started before the changing in my company started. Bad dreams have plagued me for years now and it seems like they’ve only started to get worse. Any more worse and I’ll have to go talk to someone, hopefully that’s covered by insurance.
Started studying for my next certification on Monday, should be ready by next week to take it. Which made for a really fast study period, but that’s a good sign. Hopefully I can take all the tests really fast so I can finish and get these certifications before Jessica’s finished with school.
She changed her major to Theater and she’s going to be in a play in a few weeks, so every single night until then she has to go out there (a 30 mile drive, not too bad but every day gets a little annoying) and rehearse. I’ve been out there with her every day this week since I’m not on call but I can’t go out there next week.
I usually sit in my car from the time she goes in until the time she comes out. I’ve gotten used to it. I study until the sun goes down, then I get on my laptop and play Solitaire or Pinball. I was going to brainstorm on my fifth book last night but she got out before I got into it.
I haven’t even started the fifth book, I don’t even have a solid story yet. I’d like to get these done in case the artist I have now decides to move on, I’d at least have this series done. I can’t wait until the end of the seventh book, that’s when the story starts going down a path that will keep it constant. Right now it’s a different character in a different setting with a different story every book and it’s getting hard to keep that going.
Today should’ve been my Monday. I woke up late, waited for my car to defrost, drove behind someone who thought it was fun to go ten miles below the speed limit. I couldn’t get over because all the other drives were going ten miles over the speed limit and traffic was thick. Finally get to my office and get my stuff from my backseat and spill my coffee on me. Get inside, put my stuff down, sneeze 27 times, go into the hallway toward the gift shop to get some allergy medicine and lock my keys in the office and called Security to let me in.
So, yeah, not all that fun so far. Hopefully I can get some good studying in before I go to lunch. I want to get this certification as quickly as I can so I can move on from this company and go on to the next one. I have some errands to run on my lunch break, I hope it won’t take too long. Anyway, I’m going to go do that. PIECE!!!!!

Mors Certa, Hora Incerta

For the language buffs out there, the title roughly translates to “Death is certain, but it’s hour is not.” It doesn’t apply here, but it’s a catchy phrase. What a weekend, what a weekend indeed. Did absolutely nothing, but it was still interesting.
Saturday I went with Jessica over to her friend’s place and made flash cards for an upcoming test while everyone else sang karaoke songs. I’m the life of the party. After I made all the flash cards I needed I was invited to play some games with the host of the party, something I don’t usually do but I decided to oblige him.
The first game we played was Left 4 Dead, I’m not very good at first person shooters with a controller (thanks Quake and every single PC FPS game ever made). So I just waited for a flood of zombies to come at me, held down the fire button and moved the analog stick left and right until they were all dead.
I finished every level killing over 150 zombies, the host only killed 60 or so. Then he decided to change games to another game. I don’t know what it’s called but all the game is is an avatar falling and you have to guide it through rings. I got first place 11 out of the 15 times we played it, Jessica got first three times. Two of the wins I got, I wasn’t even touching the controller which made me laugh.
So after being the awesome game player that I am, we decided it was time to go home. Got there and promptly fell asleep since it was 2:30am or so. Woke up and headed out to my parents’ house for lunch, which was delicious as always. Then we came home and I took a nap, Benadryl and tons of food don’t really mix and I was tired.
Every nap I’ve taken for the last couple of weeks have been weird, I’ve woken up every time thinking it was the next day. I guess it’s a good thing that I’m sleeping deep enough to not realize it’s been a couple of hours. Sleeping every night since the sleep study and that’s been awesome.
I tried to work a little more on my website last night, but the CMS is tricky and I can’t really do anything until I figure it out. Luckily, I have the developer manual and it’ll tell me what I need. Jessica went out to school last night for a rehearsal, so I had time to work on the site. Instead, I played some more Arkham Asylum, which is my new favorite game.
Still trying to get past Gears of War, which is incredibly short. What it lacks for in length, it makes up for in difficulty. Once I beat it, I’ll get rid of it and put another game on. I’ll probably take Arkham off and wait to really sit down and play it when I’m done with the other 34 games I bought and never beat. But that’s not very likely.
Anyway, there’s a meeting going on so I’m going to get to that. PIECE!!!!!

Fun? Yes indeed!

So yesterday I take an extended lunch break and go to the store and picked up a copy of Batman Arkham Asylum for PC. It was the last one they had so I thought, “This must be good.” Get home and start installing it, while waiting I went out and paid a bill or two and went back to check on the status.
The interesting thing is, it was the first day this game was out on the computer in this country, but there were a lot of updates that needed to be installed and I thought it was interesting that it was already at version 1.1 instead of the normal 1.0 and didn’t really take up that much hard drive space.
I checked out a minute or two of it, having played the demo I’ve already seen the beginning of the game so it wasn’t a big deal. Got something to eat and went back to work, left work and went home for the day and decided to check out more of the game. Apparently the demo was a very edited version of the first couple of levels, which I thought was pretty cool since demos are usually an actual level or two and the real game doesn’t have much changed from that.
Five hours later it was time for me to go to bed, but I didn’t want to stop playing it. In those five hours, I’ve only completed fifteen percent of the game. Surely I’ve done more than that, turns out that nope, I sure didn’t. But it was a blast to play anyway.
I can’t remember the last time I had that much fun playing a game. Need For Speed doesn’t count since all you do is hold down the button for gas and turn the wheel, but I enjoy racing games mainly for the racing and not the story. Shooters don’t really have much of a story anyway and RPG’s have too much junk that could be left out and the game wouldn’t suffer a bit.
This game was different, it was like Metal Gear Solid but with Batman. The levels weren’t too difficult and the Scarecrow was pretty freaky looking. I’m not very good at puzzles and every level is a puzzle, you have to figure out how to take out the bad guys without being seen and sometimes it takes a while to figure out the path that you should take, but it never gets annoying.
The graphics were also very impressive, especially when I got out of Arkham to cross the grounds to another building. It was huge and gothic and had a blur effect on it in the background while Batman remained in focus. The moon and a green hue on everything just made it look like a painting.
Tonight I go see Halloween 2 with Jessica’s brother, no doubt getting a couple of levels done before we go. I’m done studying for my certification test and as soon as the reimbursement approval goes through I’m going to get the voucher and schedule the test. Hopefully I’ll pass it so I can move in, I’m kind of tired of studying for network stuff.
Anyway, that’s all I did yesterday. I went to bed feeling nauseated and woke up a little sick also, but came to work anyway since it was just my stomach and not my entire body. If I can get out of bed, I can work. With all that being said, if you have a chance to get the Batman game and check it out on your console of choice, I highly recommend it. PIECE!!!!!

“Do you even like The Terminator?”

That question was asked a while back by my wife after we saw a preview for Terminator Salvation and I remarked how it looked like an interesting movie. After I made the comment, I heard that question. My eyes, and head, slowly turned to look at her.
After realizing that she wasn’t kidding (mainly because she didn’t snicker or laugh) I became confused. I thought about it for a second and then posed this question right back at her:
“Do you mean to say, do I like a movie that’s about A: A robot who is B: From the future that C: Is sent back in time and D: Kills everyone he comes across?”
I guess I never told her I liked violent movies about robots from the future who travel time with the sole intention of killing. That’s not just a yeah, that’s an OH HELL YEAH. First two were good, third one should’ve been burned along with everyone that helped make it, Salvation was good too.
A lot of people I know didn’t like Salvation because there wasn’t enough story or character development. I liked it because it was exactly what it should’ve been: A war movie with futuristic death machines. I mean, it’s a war movie, almost everyone you see on the screen is a potential statistic. You already know who John Conner is from the previous movies so there’s no need in a recap on him.
Anyway, change of subject. There’s been a huge boom in junk mail lately. Everyday I’ll check my e-mail and empty my junk folder but the next day there’s at least thirty new junk mails, it’s weird. It’s not annoying because I don’t open any of them so it’s not wasting my time reading about old friends or winning a lottery from a different country I didn’t play.
Those e-mail scams make me laugh, some of them are just incredibly stupid. It’s really sad that someone actually falls for that crap. Someone said once that if we stop falling for it, they’ll stop sending them. I tend to disagree, it’s the prospect of sudden wealth that drives people to respond to those in the first place.
It’s also the same exact reason they are sent out on an almost hourly basis. The only way those are ever going to stop flooding our junk folders is if the entire world suddenly runs out of money and only then they’ll stop when everyone’s internet gets cut off.
We could find the people that are sending them out and arrest them for fraud (assuming their country has laws against it, or we could extradite them back here, or we could just break all their fingers so they can’t type) but someone else would step up almost immediately to resume.
That’s the thing, I think, a lot of people don’t understand about crime: It’s NEVER going to stop. If you sit there and think about the day crimes will no longer be committed, share what you’ve been smoking because it’s an impossibility. Criminals aren’t going to stop, they’re not smart enough to, which is one of the reasons they resorted to a life of crime in the first place.
Or it was for the rush, or whatever but we can all safely agree that criminals aren’t smart. Violence begets violence, stupidity begets stupidity and it will never, ever go away. It just kind of annoys me when people talk about putting an end to crime, or if people were smart and blah blah blah.
Uh, I’ve changed subjects so many times I can’t remember what I was talking about. Anyway, last night, instead of spending time with the cats or playing video games, I did something more productive: I cleaned. I cleaned the living room and the kitchen and took out all the trash and did the dishes.
When Jessica came home she was pleasantly surprised and I responded with “Now you don’t have to do it.” Becuase I’m smooth like that. I finally got the developer’s manual for the CMS I’m using for my website, I’ll be going through that later today to see what all I can do with it. So far it seems to be working really well and it has a lot of powerful features I haven’t tapped into yet mainly because the site’s not ready for it all.
I also made some flash cards yesterday and went through those a little while ago. I’m going to get to studying now. I’m done rambling. PIECE!!!!!

Gloomy Weather

The days have been overcast lately, everyday this week has a twenty to thirty percent chance of rain but I won’t hold my breath. Yesterday morning I woke up and it was raining pretty hard, I went to get gas and by the time I got to the gas station it stopped raining. But it was overcast all day.
The thing that would make it better would be a twenty degree drop in temperature and fog everywhere, that would rule. Or if it actually rained everyday, that would be even better but, like I said, I’m not going to hold my breath.
Last night I put XP back on my laptop, Vista eats too much of the battery and Jessica wanted to take it out to college so she can have something to play around on in between her last class and rehearsals, which is around seven hours. She would come back into town but she doesn’t want to waste gas.
I would’ve put 98 on it, but the thing doesn’t have a floppy drive and I’m not 100% sure if the 98 disc I have is bootable or not, not sure if they mastered the bootable cd technology back then. That would’ve taken absolutely no battery power, but she’d have to use an old version of Office if she wanted to do homework on it and as much as I like nastalgia, I’m sure she’d prefer to have something that actually works.
I’ve been working on some content for the public portion of the website, just something stupid that hopefully will suffice until I can learn how to animate Flash cartoons. Ash is back in town, hopefully she’ll call me when she gets a chance so we can meet up and I can see what she’s done with the comic so far.
I’m more curious to see her work than anything else, a mutual friend of ours talks her art up and I’ve only ever seen a couple of tattoos she’s given him. They’re good tattoos, sure, but they’re not very good to guage her artistic skills on.
I should start writing the fifth book soon, I want to hurry up and get to the second part of the story so there’s some sense of continuity going on. I’m sure Ash would like it if we got this over with too, she’s more interested in the other stories I have with crazy creatures and nightmarish imagery. That’s more her style.
Anyway, I’m going to jump on this meeting real quick and then get to work. I’ve said enough for now anyway, PIECE!!!!!