Red Zeppelin

Lifelock Promotion Code

Red Zeppelin About Photos Sitemap | Brian Chris P-Chris Evil Mike Sam Amy Kathy

Archives: 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 11/03 - 12/03 1/04 - 2/04 - 3/04 - 4/04 - 5/04 - 6/04 - 7/04 - 8/04 - 9/04 - 10/04 - 11/04 - 12/04 1/05 - 2/05 - 3/05 - 4/05 - 5/05 - 6/05 - 7/05 - 8/05 - 9/05 - 10/05 - 11/05 - 12/05 1/06 - 2/06 - 3/06 - 4/06 - 5/06 - 6/06 - 7/06 - 8/06 - 9/06 - 10/06 - 11/06 - 12/06 1/07 - 2/07 - 3/07 - 4/07 - 5/07 - 6/07 - 7/07 - 8/07 - 9/07 - 10/07 - 11/07 - 12/07 1/08 - 2/08 - 3/08 - 4/08 - 5/08 - 6/08 - 7/08 - 8/08 - 9/08 - 10/08 - 11/08 - 12/08 1/09 - 2/09 - 3/09 - 4/09 5/09 - 6/09 - 7/09 - 8/09

Sunday: August 01, 2004 - New Apartment Ah. All settled in. Sort of. From my office window I have a nice view of Lake Ella and I haven't heard more than a peep from any of my surroundings. Where to start such a massively long update?

I left off on the 28th...all the fish in my tropical tank died except for two gouramis and Dr. Suck, who are all doing fine now. Their water is crystal clear and although I feel terrible that so many fish died, at least I now know how to transfer fish safely in the future. The past few days have been a huge blur so here are the random thoughts I can piece together. Matt and Joe came over and we moved all of the big stuff. We went to Lowe's to get the truck around 7pm and we got all of the big things out except for the large fishtank, since those fish weren't ready to be moved and I'd already had enough fish die. During the day, Kathy watched Chompy and we all ordered pizza that night. The following day (7/29), Jara and I stayed up until around 3am cleaning and getting the rest of my things out of the old apartment. I ended up staying awake until 6:30 dealing with the filter on the large fish tank, which was now in the new apartment thanks to the muscles of Matt Flynn. On the 30th, Jara came over again and with the help of Jamie, the three of us cleaned my old apartment from top to bottom. Earlier in the day, Jamie and I moved over the cichlids and they all are swimmingly happily in their new nearly-graveless tank. Yesterday (7/31), the Comcast guy came at 9am sharp to install cable. My phone wasn't working but that's another entry unto itself. After he left, Jamie and I set up my office desk and dresser and then I went back to finish scrubbing off the Soft Scrub from the kitchen floor in my old place and pick up the last few things. Kathy came over a couple hours later and she and I hauled the cinder block sculpture down via the finally-working elevator. I turned in my key and left the hell hole known as the Florida Towers Apartment Complex (in Tallahassee Florida) that is owned by Phoenix Management. They were terrible so hopefully people smarter than I searching online for places to live will avoid there at all costs. I repeat: AVOID LIVING IN THE FLORIDA TOWERS APARTMENT COMPLEX AT ALL COSTS. Anyway, Chris, Michael, Jamie and Jara came over for a small house warming party. Chris christened the place with seltzer water and Jamie contributed the first pot of boiled-over water onto my stove. Today I watched the New Cubs and set up this computer. If I didn't have so much more to do I'd write more. Alas. Happy August.

I hate Cribbage. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: August 02, 2004 - Out of Money Despite going to bed around 3am I woke up at 8 with no alarm. I think what did it was the fact there was no clock in my room so I had no idea if it was 6am or noon. I spent the morning setting up my office--the first stages anyway. I did the filing cabinets and filled my dresser with the hundreds of binders I've somehow managed to collect. I finished setting up the second receiver but discovered my computer only has one output. This afternoon I started on my living room before I picked up Abby to bring her to the vet. In true Ab-Style, she vomited repeatedly in my backseat before we arrived and I spent the next half-hour upon my return home cleaning the vomit-footprints. I sent out another 20 job applications today and hopefully something will happen soon. Tomorrow I hope to finish setting up the office and move on to the kitchen. It's useable right now, but it's so cluttered it really hard to make anything. I'll most likely be hitting up temp agencies on Wednesday in the hopes I can at least eek out enough money to pay my rent next month. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: August 03, 2004 - The Rest of Your Life Unlike yesterday, getting up with no clock did not work to my benefit. I woke to Chompy's hunger groans around 11:30 and finally gave her some grub. I spent the next six hours looking for more jobs and finishing off my office and bathroom. And wow--both look great. My office is like a real office complete with networked computers and is no longer a breeding room for crap. Around 5:30 I got down to business on playing a new game on the Homestar Runner website. I found it last night and thankfully sent the link to Michael. He already was further than I was (considerably further) and he gave me enough hints to get me through it. It's one of those games that you have to type what you want to do and it was my first experience with them. I don't know how people were patient enough to play those games. GET snacks. USE chompy. TALK jamie ABOUT backrubs. It was tedious and had it not been for the Master Gamer (Michael), I'd most likely be still sitting in the first level trying commands like WIN game or F@#$ you. This evening I made my own "culinary abortion" in the form of cajun chicken. I stupidly forgot the size of my new burners and I didn't realize there was a problem until the outside was black and the insides raw as I didn't have the meat over the burner. It was the worst meal I've made in a long time. Oh well. Earlier today I went to Publix since I had quite literally nothing to eat (but plenty of condiments). Before I left I set up Chompy's cage. She barked and whined the whole time I was gone and totally freaked out when I got back. She tried to escape by gripping two of the bars and squeezing them together, but alas, the hole was not big enough for her to escape. Tomorrow I'm heading to temp agencies with a dumbed-down resume in the hopes that less education translates to me spending the rest of my life in Tallahassee. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: August 04, 2004 - Where'd the cheese go? Where'd my day go? (Where'd the cheese go? I don't know.) I got up around 9am to dog noise and, oh that's right I remember now. I called temp agencies all morning. All of them required a resume to be faxed so I once I finished typing up the most contrite cover letter in the history of the world I jogged (not literally of course--no exercise for me) up to FSU to send them over. Even though I had proofread them a dozen times here I apparently didn't catch the fact I left out the word "in" in the second paragraph. Oops. Looks like it's factory work for me. Manpower called me back within the hour to schedule an interview for tomorrow. I mailed off a package to Kansas, the first batch of songs for publication and chatted Bryan Richards up for a while before heading off to the computer lab to rip the songs from our CD. Oh, but there's no ripper in there and you can't download anything. Fortunately the lab monitor was too engrossed in the Peasant Quest (see yesterday's entry) and I distracted him with hints about rolling in the hay and throwing babies while I secretly typed in my admin password to disable all the locks. While he was slaying Trogdor, I downloaded some ripping program, ripped my CD, uninstalled it, brought it into CoolEdit for some last minute editing and monoizing before I logged out then chunked the samples page together. I came home and made a surprisingly good sandwich. Why is that surprising, you ask? Because I used chili mayonnaise. I bought it on a whim and reluctantly tried it today and I have to say--it was pretty hot...for mayo. After lunch I worked on some more scores and kind of lounged around instead of cleaning. Steve and I tried our hands (hah) in online Euchre but the force was not with us. For dinner I had an overcooked pizza (stupid oven) followed by my creation of the gig page. Hopefully there will be a lot of new gigs and the calendar will stay full. I also was informed my parents will be visiting me next weekend for their once-a-year-check-up-on-the-first-born-child. The rest of my evening was spent in front of Finale. Stupid Finale that crashed and lost four hours of work. I know, I could have saved but I didn't.

The highlight of my day was leaving the computer lab. It was there that I encountered a real live blind girl, complete with white stick. She must have heard my footsteps because she shouted at me to come over and help her find an office. I had never heard of this "Dr. Fenton" but agreed to look at the directory. Once I told her where the office was it dawned on me that the information I had so graciously provided was most likely of no help to her for obvious reasons. She then grabbed my arm and I started taking her to Room 222. When we got there I noticed the plaque on the door said "Dr. Bakan". I was in a hurry to move my car from the breezeway before the tow truck guys came so I told her this was it. She knocked on the door and thankfully whoever's office it was didn't answer. She asked me if I could deliver this manila envelope to his box and I agreed. I turned to walk away when she latched onto my arm again and asked if I could get her out of the building. I cheerily did so and opened the big doors to the outside. She said she could take it from there but as I turned around to go deliver the envelope I caught her running into the cement side of the archway. Anyway, that was my good deed of the day. I felt so good about myself for helping the less fortunate that I called Jamie to tell her, apparently unaware that's her job. Yeah, so I felt great. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: August 05, 2004 - Mikepower Mikepower.

I went to Manpower today and they said they could get me a job. They were way too happy to see me but I don't care because I need money. Apparently I can make between $10-13/hr, which, for the time being, is fine with me. They need to get my stuff from when I worked for them when I was in high school. Hopefully that office still has my stuff or else I'll have to retake all their stupid program tests. Jamie took me out to the Olive Garden and it was good. Afterwards we got some coffee from Black Dog and I ran into the kid, Dan, that played drum set on our last recording. He saw me standing around with Ab and came over and we chatted it up while Jamie got our beverages. Once home, we popped in School of Rock. It's not a bad movie. It's dumb in a lot of places and there are a lot of things that are just completely unbelievable but the kids they got were really talented and they songs they wrote, I have to admit, were extremely catchy. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: August 06, 2004 - Manpower It seems the first employer of the Manpower/Mike sweepstakes will be the Florida Department of Education. I will be working there for one week. Hoorah. The pay is atrocious but it's more than I'm making right now. I went over to Jamie's parents' house for dinner...a microwaved baked potato and a salad. Mmm mmm! Alas, if only I had broader food tastes. After dinner I came back and worked on the song Summertime Blues on the guitar before heading to rehearsal. Things went really well and the balance was incredible. Although it won't be the same without our beloved Michael, I think it will go really smoothly. When I arrived home I discovered Chompy had destroyed any and all cloth material that was touching her crate. I really need to move that thing downstairs. Tomorrow I have to be at Jamie's house at 7:30am to endure graduation and a day of faux-family time. Oh la la. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: August 07, 2004 - All hail Snooze Why does this always happen? You wake up 20 minutes before your alarm goes off, blink a couple of times and think, "Wow. I feel great." At this point you look at your alarm and say to yourself, "Wow. If I feel this great now think of how much greater I'll feel once I sleep for twenty more minutes!" Convinced of this logic, you allow yourself to go back to sleep. *HONK HONK HONK* Your alarm wakes up you 20 minutes later but now you feel terrible. Really terrible. You drag yourself out of bed and curse not getting up earlier and attempt to figure out what on earth happened. Such was the case today--6:10am: feeling great, 6:30am: feeling awful. I managed to get up and make it to Jamie's house right at 7:30am. Ooh, apparently I didn't have to be there until 7:45am--another 15 minutes of valuable sleep lost. Her parents showed up around 8 and they took some pictures before trotting off to the Civic Center for graduation. I managed to stay awake the first half because my seat was broken and every time I started to nod off I would slide down and wake up. Eventually Jamie's sister moved and I took her seat, guaranteeing my snooze. I woke up about one row before Jamie had her 1.5 seconds in the sun and after hearing her name I fell asleep until the doctoral hoodings. We broke protocol and left early, although I have no idea why--Jamie had to wait until the end. After leaving the chaos that was the Civic Center we went back to her parents' house and I took a brief nap. We met up with Chris and Michael at this farmhouse in Havana. It wasn't particularly good but it wasn't terrible...except the lemonade. Anyway, we left there and Jamie and I took Chompy out before exiling her back into her crate for the rest of the night then moved to her house to do the same with Ab. We flew down Mahan to our gig location near Monticello. The party was overrun by children and our setup made hearing the other players nearly impossible. I think we could have made 2x as much money as we did but alas. On the upside, 80% of our info sheets were taken. After the gig, Jamie and I came back here to hang out with the dogs and to play some online Euchre. That lasted about a half hour then I crashed for the evening. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: August 08, 2004 - Sibelius Sucks Ok, it's a late update. I was so tired last night I had to sleep. Here's a brief recap of my day. I woke up earlish to go out with Jamie's family for brunch at Jacob's (in the Double Tree Hotel). It was particularly good except for the bacon, which was excellent. We came back here, changed, then went back to her parents' house on our way to the Matt Flynn Dog Party. It was a pretty fun party; there were lots of dogs and I discovered that one of Jenny's co-worker's husbands is a doctoral student in guitar who really like my music. He knew E.J. at Eastman and he seems like a really great guy. More importantly, he wants to a guitar/pan duet. He's a really amazing guitarist and I'd love to play with him but I'm hearing more of a double seconds or triples part to go with the guitar. I have so many good ideas for the piece it's unfortunate that my queue of pieces is already so long. Speaking of which, Chris came over last night to show off his transcription of Rosanna, which is already playable and just needs the markings. It will give me a chance to learn Sibelius since it doesn't convert well into Finale. Before I made some pretty gross soup he showed Jamie how to use Speedy Edit so now I can pawn work off on them. I still hate speedy edit, if for no other reason than I don't know how to use it well. I'm more of a point and click guy. I made a banner just for kicks and there it is. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: August 09, 2004 - First Day of Work I must have woken up a half-dozen times between 2-6am thinking I had overslept my alarm. The morning went smoothly and I arrived at work by 7:45, where I waited in the assigned office until people started showing up. By 8:05 there was no one there so I went to a different office who confirmed that there was no one with the desired-name. They called around until they found my proper location in the lower-basement. I tunneled down there and after a two minute explanation of the job I could have done in 5th grade I was turned loose. I really could have done it in 5th grade--I look at time sheets and type in certain categories into a program written in 1983. There is no backspace option, so if you make a mistake it's in there for good unless you catch it when you're in that field. The only good news is that no one bothers me. I think maybe a dozen total words were spoken to me all day yesterday and that's a-okay. After work Jamie surprised me with a nice dinner and then we hit PetSmart and Dairy Queen before I went to bed at 11pm. Zzz. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: August 10, 2004 - State Employee Sabotage I need to start writing more interesting entries. I say this for a couple of reasons. The first is that there seems to be more hits coming from bookmarked sites, which is fine. The second, and most important, is for some reason this is only a handful of sites that isn't blocked to me from work. Hence, I end up having to re-read my old entries because I get so damn bored with my job. I got there promptly at 8am today and decided to set a high bar for the number of time sheets I could do. I was told there is a total of 900. I'm not sure if that's 900 employees or 900 batches. It would seem impossible to do 900 batches in a week, though. This job is supposed to take one week, not less, not more. Apparently there are some secret implications if it is finished on a day other than Friday. My output has been pretty huge. One of my coworkers exclaimed excitement about finishing her fourth batch at around 3:30pm. By that point I was in my mid-20's. Here's where things get a little weird. If I didn't know better, I'd say my coworkers are trying to sabotage me. Today I was asked to rekey an entire batch (naturally the largest and most detailed) because "it wasn't in the computer". Ok, that's impossible. I know I did it because I remember thinking it was odd that a former ex-girlfriend's name was in there, complete with the weird spelling of her first name and I also remembered reading about someone's time off to run in some local election in Georgia. But where did the batch go? Since the program we're using was mad in the mid-1980s, there is only a delete database command. Hmm, how suspicious. After I blew 45 minutes reentering all my old work another mysterious problem--a database was locked and apparently I was in it. My supervisor comes over to give me the directions step by painful step and *bam*, the last step deletes it. So now I'm pissed as she shrugs and walks away after handing me another 100-some odd papers to redo. Now I'm mad. So mad that at 4:45 I missave the file I'm working on. And since I'm the last one there I can't ask for help, which means I'm going to get there tomorrow morning and get yelled about screwing up another file. Well, assuming the file is still there and it wasn't magically deleted.

After work I came home and played with Chompy while finishing up Flight of the Bumblebee. It's done but my printer still isn't duplexing which means I can't make scores (don't even suggest manual feed). Jamie, Chris and I went to Barnaby's for dinner. It was ok. On the way home we stopped at PetCo so I could buy Keanu Reeves (the fish) a new tank, since his old one was cracked in transport. Not that it was his tank before, but I figured he needs to stay in the fish-hospital now that I'm settled in to give his tail a chance to grow back. I also picked up some live plants and a poop-scoop. Once home, Jamie left me with a unsettling thought and I set-up the big tank with all the rocks and plants. I also set-up the new small tank but Keanu won't be moving in for at least a couple days while the bacteria cycles. He's currently in Baity Jr.'s 1 gallon tank that I bought for Jamie's birthday two years ago. Baity Jr. died of course, but I'm glad I kept his tank under my sink for just such an emergency.

Well, that should give me a little more to read while I work. Tomorrow I'm lowering my bar to ten 10 batches. At least then maybe I'll be left alone. I wish I had a game to play at work but without java, well, I'm just out of luck. Maybe you could do some fun searches for this page...every hour or so...please... [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: August 11, 2004 - State Work Man, Wednesday seems so long ago that I can't even remember what happened. At work, the batch they said was missing was there but hiding in another batch so I didn't have to rekey it at all. I worked a whopping seven minutes of overtime but got credit for fifteen. Hoorah! Manpower still hasn't sent me the job order number and they need to do that. Dinner was a humble potato soup. Bonnie also caused the shut-down of just about everything. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: August 12, 2004 - You call that a hurricane? You call that a tropical storm? It rained for a couple hours, never more than moderately and the wind never even picked up enough to reveal my comb-over. Now I feel dumb for having gone to Publix to buy Hurricane goodies. It was raining a bit when I left for work but I made it there with no delays (not that it mattered). All the servers were down so we sat around until 10:15am, hanging out and leaving for breaks roughly every two minutes. The internet was back on around 10:30 but the applications servers weren't online yet, so I spent my morning playing some Bookworm. I had just finished making the word "Mainframes" in all bonus letters when the game informed me that I couldn't make words over nine letters. Had I not spent the past hour and a half trying to get a bonus "F" into the word I probably wouldn't have been pissed but since I did spend that long I stormed off to lunch. I was told to take an "extra long lunch" so I did, a full hour for the first time. When I returned everything was back online, so I did my typing for the next three and a half hours. Somewhere in there I received another call from Manpower telling me they had another job at the Department of Education and it was temp-to-hire at $13/hr as a real employee-employee. Like, I could ask a secretary to make copies of things for me or to fax things out. So, if YOU need a job and you're willing to give up all of your pride for some money and work as a temp, come be my secretary. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: August 13, 2004 - More Hurricanes Sometimes living in Florida is no good!

Sucks to be in the peninsula of Florida. Hopefully everyone we know down in those parts has weathered the storm successfully. I had nothing to do at work today and, as if they sensed it from afar, Manpower called around 10am to tell me they had another assignment for me...and it started at 12:30. I hate being a temp because right when you master your job and your coworkers start to treat you like a human being you get moved to some new dump and have to do it all over again. This new job is off Capital Circle at a place that does soil and concrete samples for contractors. It pays well and I can wear whatever I want but their use of computers is terrible. Well, they don't really use computers and that's the problem. They're total technophobes and the woman I'm replacing is having surgery because she's in her mid-70s. They use index cards for orders and (get this) if they want to print something with a graphic they use paper that has the graphic already on it instead of inserting a graphic into a file. I suggested this and they acted as if I had suggested using an Oracle to predict sales futures. I assured them it was possible to embed a graphic into a word file so they wouldn't have to print pages 1-3 of a report, insert a paper with a graphic already on it, print it, then print pages 5-7. It's going to suck big time but the pay is almost $3 more an hour. As if Manpower hadn't irritated me enough by taking away four hours of do-nothing time today, the job I was excited about at the DoE isn't a real-real job. I'd be the executive secretary. Boo. What the hell do all the people in that building do? Surely I'm qualified to have some sort of real job that doesn't involve being someone's slave. Well, you would think so. Well, I think so. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: August 14, 2004 - Journal Slacking I've been a real slacker about my journal entries for the past week, writing them all, like, 12 hours later than I used to. Well, I'm really sorry. I haven't yet adjusted fully to the life of the working man and even though some really interesting things happen to me, I just have been too tired or swamped with other things to address them.

I have some guests in from out of town this week (for fun and profit). Matt Flynn rejected the name Abs of Steel but will undoubtedly be able to offer something truly outstanding...hah! Last night my brother, Naperville-Mark, Theory-Chris and Jamie sat down to some Texas Hold 'Em on Yahoo. Jamie was the big winner (surprise surprise) coming out $500 ahead and Steve and I both lost between 100-250 Yahoo Bucks. We all had a nice time zapping Mark about not loving the Cubs, especially Theory-Chris, who dished out some zing-zings. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: August 15, 2004 - America's Funniest Home Videos Why yes, that is a roll of brown packing/wrapping paper. Last night we were watching America's Funniest Home Videos, a show I hadn't seen since I was about 12. One of their new features was "Dogs Spinning from Ropes VS. People Spinning on Bats. The dogs spinning on ropes is pretty self-explanatory but for the bat part, you take a baseball bat, put it on the ground upright, put your forehead on the bat, hunch over and spin yourself around the bat while holding it to the ground and then, the best part, you run somewhere. The dogs were cute but the people with the bats just looked retarded. Not having been to any summer camps, I had never done this before and decided that anyone who would fall over had to be completely retarded. Jamie totally called me on it and we went outside with a roll of wrapping paper. The hardest part was spinning around the short little tube and trying to look innocent when cars would drive by. I eventually made it to six spins but wasn't dizzy enough to make it funny. Beardo was next and he spun around a good eight time pretty fast and ran towards the assigned flagpole but fell over after two or three steps. Once I had seen his spinning technique I decided to give it another go. Sure enough I keeled over onto my left side after a couple of steps but far short of the flagpole. True, whenever someone fell the other two people laughed but I don't think it should have been on America's Funniest Home Videos. It wasn't that funny. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: August 16, 2004 - Al Capone Al Capone, the mean South American Cichlid

Why hasn't Google updated my page yet? That's getting pretty irritating. Today was spent largely playing cards and talking to Visa. My credit card is very, very old and when I got it in 1996 my dad had to cosign for me. He said he'd call about raising the limit of credit because Visa apparently won't accept that sort of thing from a cell phone for whatever reason. He tries to do this and....*bam*, I've been rejected for whatever reason but since he's not me they won't tell him why. Long story short, they screwed up but it still scared me. When I called they approved me in under 20 seconds and my father was dumbfounded. I returned Michael's fish scoop and pitcher lid, which I've had for about thirty years. Possibly longer. Tomorrow my guesties leave and I trot to Pensacola to score my pan in time for a rehearsal tonight. Hooray. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: August 17, 2004 - Part-Time Work After nearly a year of waiting, my brand-new, bored, chromed pan was finally in my hands. My family left for the motherland around 11:00am and Jamie and I headed to Pensacola around noon. Due to my anal driving of the speed limit it took us the full three hours. Since we had a rehearsal at 7:30pm, we only stayed for ten minutes and then hauled back. Rehearsal was...well, it was...well, ok, it was pretty terrible. Lots of new bodies made for a generally uncomfortable feeling. After rehearsal things remained somewhat unsettled until Chris and I put on our gloves and punched each other in the face a few times. For those of you who aren't involved but are following the saga, you'll be pleased (or not) to know that everything worked in a very reasonable manner. I also received an email from Bentley Shellahammer about a job at FSU. Since I'm writing this entry a day late, I can confirm that a job has been in fact offered: teaching my old class and providing administrative support for faculty computers. It is a twenty-hour a week job. Oh, did I mention it pays $6/hr? If I'd said it once, I've said it a million times...go to hell, FSU. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: August 18, 2004 - Photoshop Tips Three important words: Remedial Photoshop Skills. I hope you like the banner I made for our upcoming gig at Kleman Plaza on Friday. We're only playing for an hour, so you really should hear us--we're really nothing like Mas N' Steel except for the fact, as Dr. Olsen would point out, we use the same drums. Sorry Jara, I didn't have a picture of you. Oh, Chompy and The Ab will be sitting in on congas and brake drum respectively.

My new job at Southern Earth Sciences suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. The people there are nice but a little too good ole boyish for me. I forgot that most professional people only have bachelors degrees. Here are these guys running nuclear tests with a BS from Southern Alabama University. While I've never been to SAU, I have rarely heard it referred to as the Harvard of southern Alabama. The only part of my day I enjoyed was when I was left alone in the office for an hour while everyone else took their 2 hour lunch break. During that time I broke out my custom Mp3 CD and rocked out with Black Sabbath before the Normal-Sabbath-Worshippers returned. My boss is a smart enough guy, really likeable (save that accent) but all he does is play Snood on the computer and bitch how much he hates computers. What KILLS me about him is that he keeps answering the fax machine. He'll pick up the phone part when it rings and then can't understand where his important faxes are. What's worse is this truly horrific filing system. There are no computer back-ups and, I kid you not, they hold onto the typewritten ribbons to check what was typed if a paper gets lost. See, this is fine for the woman who I'm replacing that has been working there for 16 years. But me, I have no idea where anything is. That being the case, there are four grown men digging around in these file draws for old typewriter ribbons trying to figure out what was typed in 1993 because some client is being sued. I tried to suggest keeping a back-up copy on the computer might not be a bad idea but they couldn't get past the fact that it is (in fact) possible to name files something other than the date. Apparently, they all name their files 08-18.04 (in one of the earliest versions of WordPerfect, I remind you). It doesn't matter if it's a resume or the results of a 28-day break of concrete, they have to remember the date they made the file and then flip through them all searching for the right one. So what happens if they do more than one thing on a given day? 08-18.04a Naturally there are letter names that go into the double-letter extensions. I'd really like to offer to just clean everything up but unfortunately the temp before me was truly incapable of inputting data into a spreadsheet so I have a huge stack of papers to flub through. Not that I'm doing a bad job, by any means, but to replace a woman who started working there when I was nine is impossible. They're all really good people, though and very smart despite their accents. I just wish they'd just throw everything away and start fresh.

Come to our gig. And bring friends. It's free. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: August 19, 2004 - I hate Mas N' Steel I guess it's that time again when college students return back to their stench-infested cells and start their re-education in all things worldly. I know this because I had 43 hits today...a number that reminds me of hit counts during last Spring. With schools in Nevada, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Illinois and Florida all contributing. I guess that means it's time to write longer entries again, since after a long day of class and making out with your fellow sorority sisters there's nothing you'd rather do than sit around and hear me bitch. Well, friends (both old and new), I will not let you down today...

2:50am: I finally fall asleep

5:02am: Are my tropical fish fighting?

6:15am: Oh God, I just had the worst dream ever. I was working in an office that was across the street from my parents' house in Naperhell. It was summer but there was about 10' of snow on the ground. I snuck out of work to go home and fell into a huge drift, which was somehow able to lop off my right ear and my nose. Bleeding profusely, I return to my office and beg someone to take me to the hospital. Jamie, who also works in my office, informs me she'd been cheating on me and her new boyfriend won't take me to the hospital. I beg her but she still says no. I return to my office to see it has been cleaned out (poorly) and someone informs me I've been fired (I am still bleeding). All my co-workers from the Department of Education are there and they are too busy making fun of my nose-and-earless-head to help. I return to my office where I run into a former student, Michelle M. who tells me she can't take me to the hospital but she'll give me a yellow scarf to tie around my face to hold my nose and ear against their respective holes. Once I attach the scarf, I discover that I do have limited breathing and hearing abilities. On top of that, no one can really see my face, so I get my job back. >< When the alarm went off I was totally freaking out because I thought someone was going to cut off my nose and ear. It didn't help that I still can't hear very well out of my right here and my left nostril was completely stuffed up. I stumbled into my office and petted Chompy while I checked my empty inboxes online.

8:10am: How am I late to work again? Why is the clock on my work computer about 40 minutes fast? And why don't I have the administrative requirements to change it. Work SUCKED again. The days go by so slowly...I know because there are four clocks around me, none closer than five minutes to another. Naturally with this set-up, it always works to me advantage. "Hey Mike, taking your time this morning?" at either 7:45 or 9:15am. "Nah, you've got plenty of time to finish up these reports" at either 4:45 or 5:30pm. Whatever. Tomorrow we have to send out the invoices for the past two weeks worth of work. I don't know what the hell I'm doing and no one can explain it to me. I was, however, able to do a little bit of good by embedding some graphics into files so they no longer have to use different papers for different print results. My boss was amazed that it only took me a half hour, but when he came out of his office the first time I thought it was because I should have been doing something else (which is true) but instead he just sat behind me and watched as I used the limited resources of MS Paint, Word 97 and WordPerfect 5.1 to get the images snugly inside.

5:10pm: Chris calls to give me the (p)update on what's going on with the steel band for next year. While the news was very disheartening at least now he and I can go back to hating FSU instead of each other. (I never really hated you!) We went to dinner at Ruby Tuesday's and despite not being hungry I ate a small order of beef while watching a two-legged dog on TV walk upright.

7:30pm: Jeff comes to rehearsal to give us the news officially. His quiet demeanor and well-rehearsed lines of Dr. Olsen-isms did not change my opinion of the situation. While he was very polite and outwardly helpful, his body language and underlying tone was that he wanted this crap to pass so he could just get on with his job, which is completely understandable. What irritated me the most about his talking is that he didn't really say anything. Moreover, he never disagreed with anyone and just reshaped their questions into off-hand comments while only elaborating on my poor choice of the word "infidel". Not that it was the wrong word but he seemed to stick on it way too long. I tried to stay on my best behavior but when he suggested leaving some of music behind I might have been a little more curt than I normally would have been.

8:30pm: We finally start rehearsing...our last rehearsal. Maybe it was just that mindset but we played exceptionally well. I was trying my hardest to mentally record our sound to keep in my mind's ear and I have to say that it worked really well...well, sorta. I have Vente Conmigo really clearly, which is good because we'd never played it so cleanly. By 9:30pm Dan and Janine were playing and the original chemistry was gone. Nonetheless, tomorrow is our last gig together in the current format and I'm going to do my damndest to make sure it's one to remember.

10pm: Jamie and I sit in the car quietly yelling. Not really yelling but anyone whose ever been in a relationship over a year knows the voice I'm talking about. This carries over into Instant Messenger later.

The question I really wanted to ask Jeff was this, "We will play the Provost Gig; take that as fact. Give me one good reason why we should after all this bullsh*t?" I just want one good reason...the only thing so far is that I feel like it's owed to Chris and Michael...hell, it's the least we can do. But from FSU's view...one good reason. You take away our instruments, rehearsal space, gigs, music and musicians and now you want us to do a long-ass gig for next to nothing where we will receive 0% of the credit for the infinite time? If Michael wasn't playing and it was just Matt, Jara, Jamie, me and Jeff I'd probably show up and just suck. Just suuuuuuck. The worst playing of my career. Or just not show up at all. But again, that's not an option so I'll have to find less obvious ways of protesting. On another random note, apparently we couldn't use the instruments all summer because we weren't students at the time. Oh wait....I completely forgot until after the meeting that I was a student all summer AND could use whatever the hell I wanted. What kills me Dale, is that you keep lying. Good thing I'm going on TV tomorrow, maybe I could set the record straight and send you a copy. Rest assured I'm going to leave the article from the newspaper under your door. Maybe a few copies for your archives....would it be ok if we posed with the schools' instruments? Or is that not allowed too? You bastard, thanks for helping ruin music. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: August 20, 2004 - Taxing Truly a taxing day on all fronts. On the bright side, when you hit rock bottom there's nowhere to go but up.



[Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: August 21, 2004 - I hate movies It's no secret that I don't watch many movies. In the past year I've probably seen a solid ten or so, which puts me on an Olympic movie-watching pace as far as I'm concerned. The best movie I've seen, out of these meager ten choices, has got to be Bad Santa with Billy Bob Thornton. Brian posted a nice review on his site and as much as I hate to directly copy his material, it's true--the movie is great. Throughout the movie you are just aghast that the things that happen. I wasn't as shocked at the actual doings of the drunken Klaus as much as the movie's director's take on the little kid in the main story and the director's just warped let's-not-do-anything-that's-supposed-to-happen. From the sheer retardation of the little kid and his talking walnut to the horrific murder of Bernie Mac, it was just a great movie. You saw things coming, of course, but never to the cruel extent that happened. Best of all, it's funny. Damn funny. Ok, there are a couple parts where the childish nut-kicking humor might have gone a slight bit too far and a lot of the back-and-forth lines could have been easily written by a schizophrenic Matt Flynn for their random collection of expletives but it doesn't matter because it's so over the top it's hilarious. Go watch it. Right now. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: August 22, 2004 - Milk and Cookies And thus, things return to utopia that was once Less N' Steel. There are few angries that can survive the full-out assault of milk & cookies. I personally can think of none. Jamie fed the homeless today while Chris, Michael and I put a Cuban in our respective mouths. The Cubs occupied my afternoon along with Cribbage and laundry. Chris and I had "the chat" (der chatten for our German visitors) and then Michael joined the party. Hell, we might even have a gig soon. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: August 23, 2004 - Nothing











[Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: August 25, 2004 - Southern Earth Sciences Yeah, I did nothing on Tuesday. Wednesday, though, what a Wednesday! I finally made it to work on time and immediately started preparing for the big mail-out. I had to go to the Bank of America on my lunch break and man, they are the least people-oriented bank I've ever known. I understand it's a bank and like any other bank, they want your money, which is fine. But if you're thinking of opening a new account, do it someplace where you're treated like a decent human being (NOT Bank of America). They were so unhelpful I decided to pull all my money out and move to Wachovia. Not that they're going to be hurting for money, but still, a bank should work for you if you keep your moola there. I talked to Jeff J. briefly on my lunch break and we said all the right things to hopefully ensure at least workable relationship in the future. It's been rumored that FSU has a number of gigs (five, by the rumor) already lined up. While I don't know any details and the information was passed on by a whole string of people, nonetheless I'm still pissed. I won't be pissed if the gigs aren't related to our previous gigs, though. If they, are, look out. After work I had my interview with WCOT. It took about two and a half hours and will air either next Friday or Saturday. Aside from the fact I probably sounded dull as hell and I had to play random notes on all the pans except for lead, Gil (the producer) and I got along very well. He told me where he gets his music and that I should contact them about doing some contract work for them. I might just do that. Now, though, it's bedtime.

==mini-(p)update==

I'm pretty sure I left out a crucial part of my day yesterday because I was so tired when I wrote this. I seriously sprained my right wrist at work. I was hoping it would be better today but it's not. Even typing hurts, which really sucks. The only good to come of it is now I have an excuse to not play well on Friday. I'm sure no one will believe that I legitimately hurt it and am just using it as an excuse but seriously, it is killing me. It's all because of this stupid embossing machine...I had never used one before and figured you really had to drive the top down in order to emboss things...but no, very little pressure is required. On my first one, I slammed the top down and bent my wrist upwards in a very shocking manner. Even worse, I had to hobble around the copy room trying to not to scream and/or cry. In other news, I also somehow did something to the effect of pinching the nerve (if there's even one) in my left pinky. I have almost no feeling in it at times. Friday is my last day at SES and both today (Thursday) and tomorrow the employee I'm temping for is working half-days, which means I'm either going to be reprimanded four hours a day for the next two days or have nothing at all to do. Good thing there's a TV that's constantly left on so I can get my daily fix of The Price Is Right and The Andy Griffith Show. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: August 26, 2004 - Jamie's Got a Blog I am way "two-tired" to write a good update. Get it? A bicycle? Two-tired? Well, ok. I found out that Friday is going to be my last day at Southern Earth Sciences. I really don't care for the job but I really like the people, so I guess it's good and bad. The good news is I start at the Department of Education (again) on Monday, working for the Florida Pilot Teachers program. I'll most likely be there for at least three months and hopefully afterwards they'll see I'm so talented that they'll hire me on with a little more responsibility. What's better is I'll finally be making $12/hr (within the promised range) for the first time. I worked about an hour of overtime yesterday, between my half-hour lunch and staying to finish a new form in MS Word, the bane of existence for my boss. I know how he loves WordPerfect 5.1, but with all the wierd things I had to do with page breaks, it just couldn't be done with that program. After work I dropped off Jamie's stand to the steel drum room before coming home to hang out with Dr. Chomp for a few hours. Jamie and I stopped at Subway on our way to the Provost Gig rehearsal but still made it by 8:20. Not that it mattered because we didn't start playing until around 8:50 because there were droves of Mas N' Steel students still in the room just sitting around for no apparent reason. The rehearsal did not go particularly smoothly. Between Matt's not bringing a couple of the songs, to my poor set-list choices, to Matt, Jeff and I sight-reading parts on some songs, we really had no choice but to make plans to rehearse again. In addition to that ,we didn't even know the exact times or location of this. I guess I need to email Dee Beggarly and find out. I'm hesitant about leaving info sheets at this gig. I get a really bad vibe about it. And so far all of my bad vibes have come horribly true, or are at least prepared to come horribly true. Ah, for want of being an optimist.

If my journal isn't boring enough for you (but it should be), Jamie now has one of those live-journal things. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: August 27, 2004 - Biotch Well, my time at SES is finally up. I have nothing but nice things to say about the people there. My boss, Mark, should run for office--he's the kind of guy that we really to be in charge. Sure, he's a staunch Republican but I'd vote for him. He's a quiet guy that just gets things done. Everyone does what he says without exception. He never gets pissed. Ever. One of the other engineers told me he had to beg him (Mark) to fire a couple of guys before he did it. He's a genuinely nice guy who just is in charge. Sure, he watches golf when there's nothing to do but I'm willing to forgive him for that. Anyway, he needs to run for something.

I was reading an article online a few months ago early in the morning. It was about a biotch company. Biotch? What's up, biotch. I kept reading and couldn't believe this was on the CNN page. I thought it was joke and was laughing hysterically throughout the entire article. I sent the link to a bunch of people and no one else even found it remotely funny. Like, not even remotely. Later that night I looked it up again to get a good laugh but, with my contacts in, I realized I had missed the "e" in biotch...stupid biotech. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: August 28, 2004 - Red Stripe Beer It's beer. Hooray beer.

The day started off great and, well, it was just an overall great day. Jamie got us some Dunkin' Donuts, which is never EVER a bad thing. We played some Euchre online and won most of the games (not that it's particularly difficult when your partner is in the same room and you can confer on what to call). At 3pm we met for a rehearsal/packing session and aside from the fact I couldn't find the damn gig book, everything else ran relatively smoothly. Without Chris, the chemistry was still a little weird in rehearsal and we never really found that "often sought, rarely achieved" (-Matt Flynn) groove but all the notes were there, which was the first concern. It seemed to take forever to load up and to get there but we made it with ample time. We played the first set well and the first break of Red Strip and delectable pita chips ensured we'd rock from that point on. And we did. The middle set was even better and after the second break of shrimp, chicken and fruit salad, we were seriously ready to kick some ass. And we did. The "often sought, rarely achieved" groove was there the last chunk big time. For me personally, everything came together when we played Magma. I don't think I could have imagined it sounding much better than it did. Both Jeff and Jamie ripped some awesome solos throughout the evening while Matt and I just kicked it back and let things happen. Michael was playing nice and loud the whole night, which, on triple-guitar, is like "aaaagh!" right in your face. God, it was great. Jara, the unsung member, was rocking as well but her parts aren't exactly conducive to getting as much glory as the rest of us. By the time we were getting ready to close with Car Wreck and Yumbambe, we were all in the energy-zone and just destroying the pieces (in a good way, much like how the word "bad" came to mean "good" a few decades ago). We also received the two F's for a gig: freed food and fifty bucks. We haven't had to talk about that in ages because, well, we've become somewhat accustomed to making $300/hr but still. Matt also classified my four moods by four catch-sayings. 1) Man, that's the best. 2) Man, that's the worst. 3) That's great. 4) Man, now I'm pissed. He didn't remember the fourth one until about an hour after the gig but he called to remind me. Also thrown in was the more explitive-ladden, "this is b---s----, motherf-----" complete with requisite hand-thrusting.

After the gig Jamie and I got some CFA and some booze and met up with Jara and Michael back at my house. Within about an hour and a half Michael had switched into his drunken-laugh, Jara was passed out on the couch and Jamie had to run upstairs to, uh, empty out. Since I had been drinking since mid-gig I was not be able to a) re-achieve a buzz or b) get up to my undergrad years level of drinking a case in a night, stopping at 10.5. In honor of us all being old, we played a single drinking game and by 12:30am, we were all ready to sleep. So we did. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: August 29, 2004 - Florida Department of Education I did nothing today. Tomorrow I start back at the Department of Education. Hopefully I'll be there for a while so I can make some real bread. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: August 30, 2004 - Grr..Dale Olsen It's only 7:03pm, but when you're unemployed, there's not a whole lot more to the day than writing journal entries, playing Cribbage online and making Photoshop collages to document your Cribbage greatness.

I woke up eager for at 6:30am and made it there by 7:45. I putzed around for fifteen minutes and then met with the woman from whom I was going to fill in. Everything was going really smoothly. Then her boss, my would-be-boss, came in and we sat down to a brief interview. She was an uneasy woman who now travels around Florida making sure the state holds onto its prestigious ranking of the 40th smartest state in the union. I thought everything went fine aside from the fact she was one of those people that tells you how blunt she can be and asks how thick your skin is because she's really so timid she has to make sure to talk a big game. Oh! And that was the case. After our interview she came out from behind the closed door to tell me that I didn't have the skills on MS Access to do the job. Uh, the girl going on leave told me that was almost 0% of the job... Gee, and thanks for testing me. In the interview I said of the sections of MS Office I was the weakest in Access, which is true because a) no one uses it b) it has about three functions and c) BUT my knowledge of it is still a solid 7-8/10. I'm sorry that I know how to do everything in FrontPage, Word and Excel. You stupid idiot, you couldn't even change your paper to landscape and you have the audacity to tell me that I don't have the skills? What else could I do? I left. I discovered I had a nearly flat tire when I made it out to the car. I talked to Manpower and told them I was "really, really pissed off". They kept telling me to leave the jobsite, even though I told them at least four times I was either in my car or at a gas station filling up my tire from 3 psi. Like I'm going to start punching? Stabbing? Poking? Prodding? Wounding? Slamming? Destroying? Slaying? What did they expect me to do? I've been a great employee so far and surely they must realize that although I'm moody as sin I'm not going to go on a killing spree. I made it home and took a nap. Jamie brought me a Sad Sundae from McDonald's after work but even cheating on Yahoo Euchre couldn't cheer me up. When she left for class I decided to play Cribbage against something other than Mark and the cards were unbelievable. I made a little flow chart of the events in one particular game. Note the cards in the upper-right hand corner are the best hand you can possibly be dealt. To put things into perspective for someone who knows only poker, it's the royal flush. Maybe I need to devote all my efforts to winning Cribbage championships. Too bad I wouldn't have the money to even enter one. Goddam you, Department of Education and Ruthe Henry. There's a reason all the schools you're responsible for only scored in the 23% percentile. Because you're a goddam idiot who jumps to conclusions because you know everything. Yeah, that's right you bitch, you know everything. Well I bet you don't know this, I'm keeping my damn parking pass so I can park there whenever I want. Take that, bitch.

Dale Olsen emailed me today and informed me that we couldn't use the steel band room to rehearse anymore. What?! I had no idea this was coming!! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: August 31, 2004 - Ah, Unemployment Ah, unemployment. I paid my overdue cell bill and Cingular was not at all concerned with the fact they had initially lied to me on how much it was going to cost. Or where I could make calls from. Or where I could receive calls. Cingular gets a big fat F in my book. I worked on some more scores for Virginia and spent my evening making a site for our band. It's still in the womb stage but you can get a general idea here. See, this is all you were waiting for. A tiny, Brianesque, update. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·