Red Zeppelin
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Friday: October 01, 2004 - Google Recaching
Semi-hooray. Google refound my frameless site after a month of not finding anything. It didn't find any of the attached pages, though. Why, I'm not sure. While I understand that >meta name="robots" content="index,follow"< is the default for crawling, I put it in just to be safe, but it did it follow? Nope. My clogged up nose gave way to coughing spells that revealed some of the less pleasant workings of my inner-body. From 3:30-5pm a guy named Spider Webb, owner of Webb Solutions, met with me about how to use our scanner. He could have answered the question I had in fifteen seconds over the phone but insisted on wasting both of our time with comments such as, "I know you already know how to do this but let's go through it". Once he left I received the consolation of my cubicle neighbors and we all had a good laugh at his story about how his claim to fame was his kid playing on the same team as one of the kids of a former temporary member of the Allman Brothers. Like, not Duane or Gregg...but someone who filled in while the real group was disbanded. Jamie was kind enough to come over and hang out with me even though I was sick and most likely contagious. The new page is almost ready but not quite. I'm still trying to decide what to do with all the archived stuff and, more importantly, if I brave enough to attempt to do some things with my basic (but growing) knowledge of Javascript.
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Saturday: October 02, 2004 - White Sox Suck
That's right, the Cubs are out of the playoffs. FSU won today, though, so I don't feel totally terrible about my teams. Regarding the quote, though, a) I'm too sick to drink, b) they're not my Cubs and c)...well, let's look at this next graphic.
As we can see here, the "suckiest bunch of sucks who ever sucked" would, assuming they were in the same league, be ahead of the hardly-beloved White Sox. In fact, even as the Cubs toil in non-playoff misery, they are six games "ahead" of the White Sucks. And while the subject is sucking, let's look at your division. Could it be our 2nd place team is only a half game out from your first place team? Could it be your team, despite playing in the worst overall division could only manage a paltry second place finish?
Now, I know what you're going to say. The Cubs payroll is so much greater, etc. Well that's because as fans, we support our teams by going to games. If people would show up to your games, perhaps you would find your GM taking some interest in developing a good team. Ah, but no. And since you're so miserable, the only joy you can take is watching the far-and-away favorite Chicago team lose. That in and of itself speaks volumes about the type of fan you are. Your team offers you so little that all you can do is root against the better team. But you can't root for the Cubs, oh no. Why? Because you'd like to consider yourself to be different. You spew this rhetoric about other reasons but Sox fans just love to think that they're this rogue group of true fans that won't give in to the corporate sellings-out of the Cubs. But really, you're just as sad as we are. Granted, it's sad in a different way. Ours is the healthy, open sadness that comes from confronting those things that make us sad. Yours is the type of brooding, self-loathing/everything-loathing that can only be defined as pathetic. So to you, dear White Sox fans, you are pathetic and stop wasting your time hating the Cubs because your team has plenty to hate.
Sorry, non-sports fans. My birthday is only a week away. Think of good gifts. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Sunday: October 03, 2004 - Tennis Pounding
Jamie did not bring me my racket this morning. Not that it would have helped me. Theory-Chris demonstrated his superiority this morning against my horribly out of shape body. He was very nice and didn't even complain when I'd pull a ball out of my pocket and then hit it into the net, though I must have done this two dozen times. Thoroughly exhausted I came back home and started a new piece, something I haven't been able to do for a while. It's weird--weirder than anything I've written and what I thought sounded cool-weird this afternoon turned out to be just regular-weird tonight. I talked to both Laura and Mary online today for the first time in ages. Both are alive and Laura is teaching at a huge high school in Georgia. Judging from their campus map, it looks like they're roughly the size of UWM or WIU in land size. Tonight Jamie and I spent our evening killing the houseflies that have overrun my house. I think they're attracted to the dog poop in the back yard and then they sneak in when I let Chompy in and out. Stupid flies.
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Monday: October 04, 2004 - 1024x768
Is it finished? Not entirely. Is it tacky? Definitely. Do you need to view it in 1024x768+? Yes. Well anyway, this is the new general layout of my page. It's still missing a sitemap and a version without the spinning selector at the top and the big Urizone link from the sidebar menu, but for the most part, this is as good as it's going to get. I'd like to separate the entries (like at the bottom) but I'm too tired to do that now. I had a friend at work help me with the spinning top but I'm proud to say it's mostly mine. What I really wanted was a mouseover that made it spin, instead of those buttons but we gave up. I found out that, compared to my coworkers I make nothing. It was very sad but I tried to play it cool. Tonight Jamie made me some soup since I'm still coughing a lot. My house is still infested with flies but not nearly as many. Hopefully they'll all be dead by Saturday, so everyone can celebrate my birthday in fly-peace.
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Tuesday: October 05, 2004 - JavaScript by Osmosis
How many masters degrees does it take to set an alarm clock? More than I have apparently. When I went to slide it into the "on" position last night, I guess I just pushed it far enough to light up the "alarm" dot without actually turning on the "play loud radio static" setting. Oops. I was only fifteen minutes late, which I made up after work. Today went by really, really slowly. The only thing that kept me awake was my constant coughing. There's no doubt in my mind that I disturb the whole floor with my severe attacks. I made tentative plans with my potential-work-friend, Ricky to play poker twice a month. First things first, though--my party on Saturday. I think I need to send out formal invitations or call people or something. Matt Flynn came by tonight and we hung out for a few hours. I hadn't seen Matt since the end of July so I'm really glad he came by to hang out with me. I think I'm ready to try one of those learn-while-you-sleep tapes. I fell asleep while watching some show on sharks today and was actively dreaming about them, so hopefully a tape that either teaches me javascript or tells me not to eat cookies in the morning in favor of bran would work as well. God, my entries are getting really lame. I'm sorry. If you can't figure out the present preview by now, you're in trouble.
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Wednesday: October 06, 2004 - My New Office
That's right--it's dirt. Not that you can really tell, but you can take my word for it. I finally received the dreaded news today--new office. Thanks to a corrupt file or two I got to spend my day doing nothing. And not normal nothing, like shopping on Amazon.com nothing. I tried to scan some things but quickly grew weary of it, so I just messed around until my computer was fixed. If memory serves, and it does, it was fixed at 4:55. Tomorrow I'm going to just sit at my new table, with no work to do. The boss-boss, Vicky, told them they needed to get me set up right away so I could start working on "a big project". No one knows what this project is, though. I'm guessing that the former webmaster is being moved to "a big project" so I will officially take over the production server and switch titles from Public Records Manager, Liaison to the Comptroller/Asst. Webmaster to Lord of All Things With Power Cords. Anyway, as I was sitting around I heard a lecture on the many uses of Fuller's earth, a type of clay found in Florida and Georgia. The IT Director (not technically his title since Vicky won't let anyone else have "director" in their title) used to work for the Department of Agriculture and he was listing all the foods and products that use this dirt. And my god, Chompy, it's everything. Candy bars and medicine and just about any processed food has this dirt in it. After being grossed out for most of the morning I met up with Chris for a long-long lunch. When I got home, immediately after taking Dr. Chomp out I fell asleep. I have no recollection of anything but I woke up at 7:35 thinking it was 7:35am. I was freaking out as I frantically got ready for work. I didn't notice that it wasn't bright enough to be the morning because I was in panic mode. In the middle of my morning routine is checking all the sites I have on my toolbar. One of them is the stats for this page. 28 hits already? That's weird. Then I checked my computer clock and realized my error. Oops, I did it again.
If you can't guess it today, you should work for the State. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Thursday: October 07, 2004 - A Man's Grill
Hooray for Jamie! I got my present early today, since "I would need it before my party". It's a grill. A real grill, not one of those Weber "I'm a poor college student" grills. Like, one with a big ol' propane tank. It also came with all the proper scraping, flipping and stabbing implements. Hooray! We had steaks on it tonight and they were delicious. I found out the "big project" at work was just the same stupid thing I'd been working on for the past two weeks and is all but done. What's worse is that I won't be able to get the information I need until diplomats from the circuit courts come next Thursday. Looks like another four days of making sure that every image (which will undoubtedly be changed later) has some sort of hideous rollover effect and every line of text has a marquee. Gag. It could be worse...I used to work at EcoLab, (the chemical plant) and my first job there was to follow employees around and time them. Time them doing everything. Yes, I was much-beloved there. My first employee was this old Hispanic woman, just a real bitch. Every time she'd cough or stretch she'd come over right in my face and say, "Did ya get that one?" Then she'd repeat the motion and say, "Howabout this one?" She made sure everyone really hated me. It didn't help that I was required to use a stopwatch. She had some mean nickname for me by the end but it was in Spanish and I can't remember what it was. Eventually I was promoted to clocking the mixing guys. That wasn't as bad because I had learned to look the other way and just pretend to work. This guy Clem, with a deformed hand from it accidentally getting caught in a chemical mix, and I bonded over the band Styx. Not that I could have told you a single song of theirs at the time, but when someone is shaking a gnarled limb in your face, by God, you better shut up and agree. I also recall eating in the lunchroom, by myself of course, when some random guy walked up to me as I was drinking my Sprite, put his hands on the table in front of me, leaned over and said, "Straws are for p*$$ies". And that's why I never use straws anymore, except for kiwi lemonade at Ruby Tuesdays. God, I hated that job.
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Friday: October 08, 2004 - The Joys of MS Paint
Honestly, there's only so much you can do in MS Paint. I finished my second draft of the 3rd Circuit Courts site at work then received my new assignment: update a bunch of pages as quickly as possible so that I can go back again later (for the third time apparently) and do it for real. I managed to fall down getting out of my car this morning, causing only minor damage to my thumb. After work Jamie and lounged around until we discovered people were coming over and watched the second debate out of procrastination. I personally wasn't impressed with either side, although I have to take points off of Bush for saying, "on the internets". There's no doubt Kerry is a much better speaker but some of his ideas are just ridiculous. I wish Brian were running for president. Illegally.
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Saturday: October 09, 2004 - Happy Birthday To Me
Happy Birthday me. What a great birthday, definitely the best I've had in Florida. Jamie and I went to some abysmal garage sales and didn't spend a penny. When came back to my house and she made me a breakfast feast. Mmm, feast. I then took a nap and went shopping. When I returned I came upon Chompy's gift to me--she had induced the pregnant fish in the hospital tank to give birth. 20+ birthday fish! Between the filter and other hazards, they disappeared in halves every time I looked at the tank; right now there are only six left. But still, birthday fish are birthday fish. Ricky came over halfway through the football game, just as Jamie was leaving to go to Emo-Matt's wedding reception. Around 10:00 Jara arrived just ahead of Matt. Soon thereafter Marty, Theory-Chris and Kathy appeared with Chris & Michael showing up about twenty minutes later. We delved into the cookie cake and chocolate pie. After sending ourselves into hyperglycemic shock with Chris' massive pieces of cookie cake, six of us returned to the kitchen for the featured event, poker. Matt, Chris, Michael and Jara settled into some Taboo while the rest of us battled for poker supremacy. By 1:45am it was down to me and Ricky and he edged me out for the modest pot. I then went to bed a tired boy...I mean man.
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Sunday: October 10, 2004 - Be A Man
Much like every birthday I've had since I turned 18, I had the internal "it's time to grow up and be a man" speech with myself. Sadly, I still feel the same so perhaps the age to be a man is 26. I spent much of the day doing things I had done when I was 24...namely, nothing. My goal for the year is to go to bed at a reasonable time, like 11:30pm. God knows I'm tired then but I continue to stay up really late, effectively forcing myself to nap the next day, putting my into the vicious nap-cycle.
The only productive, if you can call it that, thing I did today was try to learn about style sheets. I have the basics, so I guess I'll find out how much I really know when I start using them at work. I was surprised to find that I couldn't find a single example online of someone naming theirs doggystyle.css [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Monday: October 11, 2004 - Nesting Tables at a 12th Grade Level
After a mere two months I finally got to do something at work today. My style sheets were pretty remedial but I'm nesting tables at a 12th grade level. The day flew by for the first time because I had so enough to keep me busy. Even though I'm not in with the IT guys, because obviously I'm not really one of them, I'm slowly making progress. At 4:45pm I got an assignment by some woman from the budget department. As soon as she left, RB came out of his office and gave me the low-down on her and how everyone who doesn't work in our section is certifiably insane. For example, the boss-boss, wants the page to have a patterned background with text over the top (see below). It looks terrible but what can I do? That's right nothing.
You'll be pleased to know nine of the cichlid fry are still alive and doing well. After work I accidentally fell asleep for a while. Oops, I did it again. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Tuesday: October 12, 2004 - Keeping Busy
The best way to keep busy at work is to screw something up and discover it later. I got to have lunch with both Chris and Jamie--we had the slowest recorded service at Gordo's today, a new record even for them. The cichlid fry are doing fine. I have a consistent count of eleven and it's worth spending fifteen minutes three times a day to powderize their food. They're very grateful you know. God, my life has gotten boring.
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Wednesday: October 13, 2004 - Many Hats, None Good
Brian went to WVU. You redneck.
For as badly as I didn't want to give up my old cubicle for my exposed one, I shouldn't have complained. With no web stuff left for me to do I was exiled back to extensive scanning. Unfortunately my old cubicle is being remodeled for a new employee so I got stuck with the smallest cubicle in the history of cube farms in the middle of accounting. At least my new neighbors were nice. There's barely enough room to even turn to face the scanner so hopefully I'll be doing something new soon. The boss-boss came by today and I outright asked what I was supposed to be doing. She said she wasn't entirely sure but I'm apparently being prepped to do the following jobs (in prioritized order):
*Internet Security
*Website Content
* Records Management
* Law Researcher
Where do I even start? Like I know ANYTHING about security. I informed her that I could barely even spell the word security and she assured me that I'd be able to learn it. She said she needed a cross between a computer guy and an accountant. How the hell is that me? I didn't even start balancing my checkbook seriously until grad school. And of all the possible "computer guys" there, why pick me to do something that requires learning from scratch? I'm the least-learned there and there's no doubt in my mind they would all do a terrific job, but not me. As for the website content...why not let me design it and let someone good build it? Not that you could tell I have any sense of aesthetic ability from this page but it's in there. Big time. Granted, after seeing what she likes, I doubt we'd be able to agree on anything. The Records Manager is what I was originally hired to be but it seems like whenever I get assigned to do something else I come back to someone deciding that another 500-3000 files need to be taken care of. So now I have a backlog of nearly 10k files. When am I going to be able to do that? I no longer have my "underling" either. Not that I've had her for a while but I figured I'd get her back...maybe she could pull out staples or something. Oh well, it doesn't look likely. As for the last section, what do I know about the law? I am good at researching so hopefully a control-f will take care of all my work for me...either that or google. When do I get a raise? I'm not asking for $50k/yr...or even $40/k but surely people with this much responsibility are making at least $30k. I also found out as of right now I have a whopping two hours of leave time. Boo. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Thursday: October 14, 2004 - Data Entry Help
Another day, another job. About an hour into my day I was recruited to help with data entry. Why me? They would never pull anyone else off their job to do menial tasks that lazy employees screwed up, so why ask me to do it? I want my job description in writing tomorrow. It's not so much that I'd mind doing those things, but if I knew I was there to do assorted crap no one else wanted to do I would have stayed as a temp and waited for another job somewhere else where I could actually be used at or near what I'm capable of doing. Or I could have prepared myself mentally to have a horrific clerical job there. But being told one then and being assigned new things daily is taking its toll of my attitude. I really want to be a good worker and help out where I can but right now I feel like a Stem Cell Employee being asked to do any job that is the day's priority.
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Friday: October 15, 2004 - Scary Carrie
Carrie is the scariest movie I've ever seen. Usually when Jamie goes to the video store to get a scary movie it's Dude Where's My Car Again?! but not this time. Oh no, she picked a winner. I can't remember the last movie I saw that made me afraid to go to sleep. There's just something inherently creepy about overtly religious people.
Work was another drag, another eight hours of my life chiseled away doing menial tasks for menial pay. Since this site has had so many problems with the new look for the one-year anniversary I'm going to do redo it again, except not using FrontPage for anything. Google recached the site but it left off all the old entries again. It only managed to grab the useless Links page. Whatever. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Saturday: October 16, 2004 - Take that Thomas Jefferson
Take that Thomas Jefferson. Before the game, Jamie and I met up with her sister and her sister's friends to tailgate. They had been there since three but we didn't show up until 6:30. With bellies full of beer and hamburgers we galloped over to Doak to pack ourselves into the student section. Our section was particularly irritating, as there were about three people for every seat. This translated to having to stand and be facing sideways the whole game. Jamie was next to a particularly annoyed girl who was constantly involved with her poor, poor boyfriend. Nothing made this girl happy and we all secretly cheered when they left at half-time. Too bad they came back. The game itself was great--it usually is when you know you've won within the first ten minutes. The crowd was into it the whole time and the only time the stadium collectively bood was when Chris Rix came into the game. Hopefully Wyatt's performance will ensure Chris is our back-up from now on.
Before the game Jamie took Chompy and The Ab to her parents' house while I worked on scores. Apparently Chompy and Jamie's sister's dog, the much-hated Walker, got into a couple kill-fights for dominance. They're both ok but I was shocked to hear Chompy didn't win immediately. Granted, Walker is nearly twice her size but still.
The scores are coming along nicely and I should have them all done by Tuesday. Except for the parts. Stupid parts. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Sunday: October 17, 2004 - Roach in My Food
I know you're shocked. I was. It was only the second time I'd ever had Indian food. And this time there was no roach. Granted, the roach incident was long before I kept a daily summary of my life. Kathy insisted I try something new so we hit that Indian place up on Apalachee. I was about a quarter of the way through whatever I was eating and *bam*, there's this inch long roach, masterfully inserted into the middle of the rice. Honestly, the next couple minutes are a blur. I remember not screaming, though. It was one of those more shocked-and-silent moments. Kathy asked if I wanted to leave--I remember saying something to effect of "hell yes". As we were leaving, the owner insisted that it had crawled in and was not cooked with the rice. Liar! *And* Kathy had to pay for hers. They asked if I wanted something else. Hell yeah I did, a big fat lawsuit in my favor.
Anyway, a bunch of us went over to Matt Flynn's for Indian food. Chris made a surprisingly delicious chicken curry dish. I was able to ignore most of the vegetables and there was only one thing on my plate that I didn't recognize. It looked like a huge piece of candy corn. I somehow doubt that was it, though. And, needless to say, I didn't eat it. We had to leave in a hurry because Jamie was on her way to the John Edwards speech at FAMU so we gathered up the dogs and took off.
I got a lot done on my scores but I'm still not done. I did finally finish everything to a piece I'd really like to record. There's a midi version of it here. I didn't check the file size, so it might take a while to load. The bits at 1:06 and 1:40 are solo sections, not places where I gave up on writing melodies, although there's no shortage of that in other pieces.
I hate John Kerry. I hate George Bush even more. I've been informed by everyone I'm not allowed to throw my vote away, as I did in the last election, by voting for Ralph Nader. So what do I do? Why is that our voting system is "vote for who you think will screw up the country less"? And surely there are plenty of people to screw things up so why do we only get two choices? I certainly don't lean as far left as most people I know, but I'm certainly not going to fall into the Republican category anytime soon. Why isn't there a candidate for me? It's not really fair that I have to choose between someone who is living in a fantasy world where Canada will fork over their pharmaceuticals for a cheap price and someone who is incapable of thinking more than one-step ahead and says things like "on the internets". Maybe I'd like to vote for someone who went to public schools like me. And public universities. Is it so wrong to want a candidate that would keep the electric chair and guns but also allow abortions and stem cell research? I wish I could vote for Evan Jones. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Monday: October 18, 2004 - Summary
The new summary of my journal. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Tuesday: October 19, 2004 - Faster Car Wreck
Yes, I know--the entry is a day late. Honestly, though, yesterday was one of the busiest days I can remember. To my credit, I arrived at work (get this) a little bit early. With not a whole heck of a lot to do, I was assigned yet another new job: building cubicles. Now, you would think that it's pretty easy but no. My first task was to use this humming tool to find certain wires (live wires) before actually carrying the heavy panels down two flights of stairs with only the aid of a large elevator. Much to my surprise, one of the cubicles to be built was for...me. My desk-against-a-wall is now a desk-against-a-wall with a cubicle pad behind it and a couple of shelf-things perilously suspended above me. They wouldn't be so scary except that I decided to do them myself and I couldn't maneuver the cordless drill well enough with my left hand to make them really tight. But if they fall, oh well, workman's comp.
After work Alan Coyle came by and we went though the four-hundred trillion pieces that are slated for publication. He liked most of my stuff and only shocked me once--he said if Car Wreck were sped up it would be the new Sunset (and everyone would have to have it). He gave my pan a little tune-up (hah) while he was here, much to the enjoyment of my neighbors I'm sure (who wouldn't want hammers pounding into steel at 11pm?). Jamie brought me a present of a Wendy's Frostie before I went to bed.
I forgot to mention that Chris came by a few days ago and he was heavily promoted. He's now in charge of two of the labs and will be the first to discover...wait, I'm not sure it's a secret. I won't say, just in case. He also got a nice raise. Good work Chris! [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Wednesday: October 20, 2004 - Paranoid Personality Disorder
My paranoid personality disorder hit full-on today when I came home from work. I was outside with the dog and noticed the matchbox on the grill was open. And not just opened, but meticulously taken apart. Making it weirder was the fact the matches were still all in a perfect stack. I realize my backyard is infested with flies and smells like an outhouse, but why would one of my neighbors do this? What if they didn't know of my acute sense of...well, everything around me? Long story short, after freaking out for a while, it became clear that the rain over the past couple of days had loosened the glue.
I watched the Red Sox win tonight. I admit, I was rooting for the Yankees. I know, that makes me a terrible person. It's not that I don't hate the Yankees--I do. But I really hate Red Sox fans. Oh, we're so poor and pathetic. Oh boo hoo is us...we're cursed. No, you're not cursed, you just suck. You can't field, hit nor pitch. That's not some sort of cosmic hatred, it's that you're just not the best team. Hopefully this will shut their fans up. Not that it really matters since the Cardinals are going to sweep them in four games. Or the Astros. Whomever, it doesn't matter. I always root for the NL team and this year is no exception despite the fact the Cardinals and the Astros are the sworn enemies of my beloved Cubs.
I think I did about an hour of work today. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Thursday: October 21, 2004 - Poker Skills
Fear me and my poker skills. I wish I was still around Alex because he'd undoubtedly tell me how much better he was using some sort of crazy line, which I would then steal and use when he wasn't around. Nonetheless, I was still able to edge out Jamie last night during our poker game. If I wasn't late for work I'd write more. Tough luck.
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Friday: October 22, 2004 - Red Sox Suck
Isn't that what we all want to hear as teachers? I mean seriously. Like, you want to be tough but you also would like to show that you can relate to the kids, right? So thanks Ben, that made my day.
Work was work. I thought about paperclips and then the idiot boss told me to do some task. I spent a lot of time doing SQL tutorials online. I'm sure if you know programming it follows a very logical sequence and all the terms make sense. But to the novice, it's an adventure. I made it about 3/4 the way through the intermediate levels before I got hammered by one that took me 46 tries to get right. The tutorial I was using left out a key step. Well, not so much a step but a small detail and a single space threw me way off. I was up late making the site for Alan to download all the publishing things. Real late. Then Chompy decided to hate everyone and growl at anyone on this side of town who stirred. Good thing she's cute or she'd be glue.
If you hate reading about baseball stop right here.
I hate you, Boston. I hate your city, your teams and your traffic route patterns. I hate your universities, your food and your skyline. (I did, though, enjoy Boston Public very much.) Most of all, I hate you, Red Sox fans. First, you don't have a curse, you have terrible teams. There's no luck involved. Bill Buckner couldn't make a routine grab, there was no cosmic out-to-get-you. When a fan interferes, you can start yapping. Secondly, you were just in a World Series in 1986. Our last one was in the 1945! 1918 is nothing--we last won in 1908. We're a hell of a lot closer to 100 years of being awful than you are. Moreover, you're not lovable losers. I admit, the Cubs were hardly the model of maturity this season but our best hitter never threw bats at the umpire. Although, it's not your team I don't like, it's mostly your obnoxious fans. If you moved to anywhere else in the country, I would happily root for you. But not in Boston, oh no. Hopefully the Cardinals' fans will be just as mean to you as the Yankees fans. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Saturday: October 23, 2004 - UF Loses to Mississippi State
In good conscious, I can't really say that we won the football game yesterday. I think the best that can be said is that we didn't lose. The game reminded me of, well, just about every game-after-a-big-game I've seen in my brief Florida tenure. I thin k to win like FSU, you need to follow these steps: a) crush team at your level or slightly above b) wait one week c) play a team that's considerably worse than you d) go through the motions of practicing in preparation because hey, you already know you can beat the good teams e) when game time comes, completely suck for the first half; turn the ball over a lot, get tons of stupid penalties and generally look lame f) come out firing in the third quarter--score almost enough points to get back in but then inexplicably do something dumb g) midway through the fourth quarter take a slight lead h) do something retarded to give the other team hope i) intercept the last pass of the game and win j) promise you will never let this happen again k) do it again in a couple weeks.
On the bright side, UF lost to Mississippi State. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Sunday: October 24, 2004 - Theory-Chris Whomps Me Again
Hello friendly visitors from the University of Florida. Being from the north I was not born with an ingrained hatred of your school. Truth be told, I'd much rather have a doctor from your school perform a life-saving operation on me or defend me in court (sorry Mr. B). Please bear in my that my undergrad school did not have a football team so I was immediately drawn to the hometown kids here. Even once I was here I didn't have anything against you all (er...y'all) until two events took place. One: Steve Spurrier opened his yap. Ok, he was a great coach and did really well down your way but did he have to run his mouth constantly? Could he at least have toned it down to the point of telling the truth? Your school is better than FSU is so many areas, is it really necessary to blatantly lie? Secondly, for whatever reason, you were selected to hold the Southeastern Regional Society for Composers, Inc. conference. I'm not sure why you billed yourselves as "the premier music school of the south" but come on. Let's be honest, no one wants to go there to be a musician. Your campus is very beautiful and the city offered much more to do than Tallahellsee. That said, I too have had my moments of hating FSU. I would say a good 80-90% of the time I hated it. So while I wallow in your football misery, I still feel embedded disdain for the ol' garnet and gold.
In other news, Theory-Chris again demonstrated his tennis superiority. We had to pay a $2.16 fee at Winthrop. I'd never had to pay there before and thought it was a homeless guy in above-average clothes trying to hustle me for an easy 40oz of Old Milwaukee, but no. I could only scrape up $2.15 out of change from under my car seats but they cut us some slack on that last penny. Most likely my rugged good-looks. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Monday: October 25, 2004 - I Hate Steve Spurrier
The days are officially numbered for the once-beloved pool table. Chris, Jamie and I reassembled it with no directions and only the aid of Jamie's dad. It took a couple of hours, mostly because of questions about screw size. The first potential buyer came by, Bob. What a tool. He's a real estate agent here in town and I think he thinks he's a bad ass as pool. I should have offered to play him $1000/$0 for a single game right then and there. Too bad it was still in assembly-phase when he was there. The highlight of the night was when Bob had to move his car just as Jamie's mom's Bible Chat Group was leaving. Mr. B. informed Bob that the clan meeting was over and he'd have to move his car. I couldn't stop laughing. After building the table we left to pick up Michael and went to Bennigan's for a little grub-grub. .
My eyes really need to not be so dry for the first four hours of work. I'm sure I looked like I'm stoned since I can barely keep them open and when I do, they're all types of red and irritated. Maybe I should offer to take a daily drug test to assure them I'm clean.
I didn't get any hits from UF today after my kind message yesterday. Probably too excited about the return of the hated Steve Spurrier to read. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Tuesday: October 26, 2004 - Photoshop CS
What a great day I had at work. I now have Photoshop CS at my disposal, which is way better than 7.0, which I have at home (and indescribably better than MS Paint). I spent the whole day taking my sweet time making a new site for one of the circuit courts. If you happen to look at the very, very initial stage of it before I got to work, ignore that bottom graphic--I had a little too much time on my hands. My goal of the day is to not be late for work, so it's a mega-short entry.
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Wednesday: October 27, 2004 - Double Deuce
So the two guys I thought were in a fraternity that were coming to look at my pool table were really just two creepy, old, redneck, ugly bastards. The lead guy is apparently the "father" of a frat and I wouldn't not be at all surprised to see him on TV as a convicted pedophile. He told Jamie to wait inside...this was "man's business". The other guy wasn't so bad but, and maybe I'm wrong, but if you're 50+ you should NOT still be smoking pot. You just shouldn't be. These buttlicks insisted that my table was not level even though a level would have shown it clearly was. The creepier of the two, the one who wanted it, kept hitting the ball with enough english to qualify for the ESPN trick-pool shows. I tried to tell him that if he hit the ball dead center it would bounce off the rails straight. His friend followed my advice and hit a shot with only the slightest bit and his went straight but apparently that didn't count. They tried to tell me that they're both big pool guys but their technique was sloppy as hell. So, to you, old man that sells insurance, I give you the *poosh* double deuce.
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Thursday: October 28, 2004 - Preparing for Death
How is October almost over? I guess I've officially moved into career mode and my weeks just blur together as my soul prepares for death. I'm lucky to have a job I don't entirely hate but at the same time, I wonder how long it will go on before I get a real job description. I know, I know, no one likes to read about my boring job.
We had our first political "discussion" yesterday, three liberals and three conservatives. Although I really fall on the conservative side of being a Democrat, I was probably the most liberal of the group and felt obligated to defend the attacks from one particularly verbose opponent. The best idea I heard, which apparently everyone in America has heard but me, is that the loser of the election should be vice president to keep things from getting too partisan. What a good idea. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Saturday: October 30, 2004 - Flashback
Well, looks like it's time for a double update. Let's see...what happened yesterday....
...flashback...
I think I might have made it to work on time, but who knows. I spent most of my day planning an email to my supervisor to ask a number of questions...can I use 8 hours of annual in November? Is there a way to get more before Christmas? And, most importantly, WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE DOING HERE. While I like having the freedom to jump between jobs, I certainly do not like having to proactive about finding things to do because, well, if given an option, who really wants to do work they might be able to let someone else do? Ok, Brian, but other than Brian? Not me, that's for sure. I followed the norm of the office and wore jeans and nice shirt but was later informed that's a no-good for the future. With no clean pants and it being the poorest time of the month, it was going to be jeans even if it wasn't a Friday. Yesterday marked my one UC anniversary at the JAC. Rather than measuring my time in months or years, I've elected to measure in terms of urinal cakes in my favorite stall. On Friday the old one was finally pee'd into nothing, officially declaring my first section of work was done. I'm almost done with my work site...the only problem is that I still have no content and had to settle for filling the pages with tidbits of my personal life so it looks like something is there if (glord forbid) someone looks at it. I'm proud of all the images I made. I think it represents the circuit well. After work I thought about working on some scores, then played a game instead before I went over to Ricky' to help protect him against the roommate who he had to kick out (and change the locks on). Nothing happened and the rest of the night was clouded by my desire to sleep.
Today I did eight loads of laundry and finished a ton of scores. The sad news is that FSU is now out of the National Championship hunt. On a normal day, seeing Miami and Florida lose would bring me great joy but not today. It was a horrible game and we deserved to lose. Adding to hurt was the return of Chris Rix. I agreed that if we he was able to bring is back then I would not say anything bad about him the rest of the season. Even though he sucks and we lost, he didn't do anything really stupid. The problem now for FSU is the QB crap all over again? My beloved Wyatt or the Satan-incarnate Rix? Not that it matters, since we're going to be playing in the Circle K In N' Go' Bowl this year. What really sucks is that Bobby B. destroyed Wyatt's confidence by putting Rix in. Oh well. Time to root for my first alma mater...ish. On Wisconsin! The last time Miami, Florida and FSU lost on the same day was in 1978. That was a good year...most likely the year my parents decided to have me. Have a nice day. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Sunday: October 31, 2004 - Jamie's Rats
Oh man. Too bad I'm so tired. Otherwise I would have made my recreation of Jamie's ex-boyfriend's Matt's "art". We went to this Halloween art show down at Railroad Square and there on the wall were these two grade schoolesque drawings advocating robot government. Oh Matt, you're so cool. And creative.
In other news, Jamie's rat(s?) is still alive and doing well. Finally, Desperate Housewives is the best show I've seen in a long time. Hooray for soap-operas that come on during prime time on Sundays. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Semi-hooray. Google refound my frameless site after a month of not finding anything. It didn't find any of the attached pages, though. Why, I'm not sure. While I understand that >meta name="robots" content="index,follow"< is the default for crawling, I put it in just to be safe, but it did it follow? Nope. My clogged up nose gave way to coughing spells that revealed some of the less pleasant workings of my inner-body. From 3:30-5pm a guy named Spider Webb, owner of Webb Solutions, met with me about how to use our scanner. He could have answered the question I had in fifteen seconds over the phone but insisted on wasting both of our time with comments such as, "I know you already know how to do this but let's go through it". Once he left I received the consolation of my cubicle neighbors and we all had a good laugh at his story about how his claim to fame was his kid playing on the same team as one of the kids of a former temporary member of the Allman Brothers. Like, not Duane or Gregg...but someone who filled in while the real group was disbanded. Jamie was kind enough to come over and hang out with me even though I was sick and most likely contagious. The new page is almost ready but not quite. I'm still trying to decide what to do with all the archived stuff and, more importantly, if I brave enough to attempt to do some things with my basic (but growing) knowledge of Javascript.
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Saturday: October 02, 2004 - White Sox Suck
That's right, the Cubs are out of the playoffs. FSU won today, though, so I don't feel totally terrible about my teams. Regarding the quote, though, a) I'm too sick to drink, b) they're not my Cubs and c)...well, let's look at this next graphic.
As we can see here, the "suckiest bunch of sucks who ever sucked" would, assuming they were in the same league, be ahead of the hardly-beloved White Sox. In fact, even as the Cubs toil in non-playoff misery, they are six games "ahead" of the White Sucks. And while the subject is sucking, let's look at your division. Could it be our 2nd place team is only a half game out from your first place team? Could it be your team, despite playing in the worst overall division could only manage a paltry second place finish?
Now, I know what you're going to say. The Cubs payroll is so much greater, etc. Well that's because as fans, we support our teams by going to games. If people would show up to your games, perhaps you would find your GM taking some interest in developing a good team. Ah, but no. And since you're so miserable, the only joy you can take is watching the far-and-away favorite Chicago team lose. That in and of itself speaks volumes about the type of fan you are. Your team offers you so little that all you can do is root against the better team. But you can't root for the Cubs, oh no. Why? Because you'd like to consider yourself to be different. You spew this rhetoric about other reasons but Sox fans just love to think that they're this rogue group of true fans that won't give in to the corporate sellings-out of the Cubs. But really, you're just as sad as we are. Granted, it's sad in a different way. Ours is the healthy, open sadness that comes from confronting those things that make us sad. Yours is the type of brooding, self-loathing/everything-loathing that can only be defined as pathetic. So to you, dear White Sox fans, you are pathetic and stop wasting your time hating the Cubs because your team has plenty to hate.
Sorry, non-sports fans. My birthday is only a week away. Think of good gifts. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Sunday: October 03, 2004 - Tennis Pounding
Jamie did not bring me my racket this morning. Not that it would have helped me. Theory-Chris demonstrated his superiority this morning against my horribly out of shape body. He was very nice and didn't even complain when I'd pull a ball out of my pocket and then hit it into the net, though I must have done this two dozen times. Thoroughly exhausted I came back home and started a new piece, something I haven't been able to do for a while. It's weird--weirder than anything I've written and what I thought sounded cool-weird this afternoon turned out to be just regular-weird tonight. I talked to both Laura and Mary online today for the first time in ages. Both are alive and Laura is teaching at a huge high school in Georgia. Judging from their campus map, it looks like they're roughly the size of UWM or WIU in land size. Tonight Jamie and I spent our evening killing the houseflies that have overrun my house. I think they're attracted to the dog poop in the back yard and then they sneak in when I let Chompy in and out. Stupid flies.
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Monday: October 04, 2004 - 1024x768
Is it finished? Not entirely. Is it tacky? Definitely. Do you need to view it in 1024x768+? Yes. Well anyway, this is the new general layout of my page. It's still missing a sitemap and a version without the spinning selector at the top and the big Urizone link from the sidebar menu, but for the most part, this is as good as it's going to get. I'd like to separate the entries (like at the bottom) but I'm too tired to do that now. I had a friend at work help me with the spinning top but I'm proud to say it's mostly mine. What I really wanted was a mouseover that made it spin, instead of those buttons but we gave up. I found out that, compared to my coworkers I make nothing. It was very sad but I tried to play it cool. Tonight Jamie made me some soup since I'm still coughing a lot. My house is still infested with flies but not nearly as many. Hopefully they'll all be dead by Saturday, so everyone can celebrate my birthday in fly-peace.
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Tuesday: October 05, 2004 - JavaScript by Osmosis
How many masters degrees does it take to set an alarm clock? More than I have apparently. When I went to slide it into the "on" position last night, I guess I just pushed it far enough to light up the "alarm" dot without actually turning on the "play loud radio static" setting. Oops. I was only fifteen minutes late, which I made up after work. Today went by really, really slowly. The only thing that kept me awake was my constant coughing. There's no doubt in my mind that I disturb the whole floor with my severe attacks. I made tentative plans with my potential-work-friend, Ricky to play poker twice a month. First things first, though--my party on Saturday. I think I need to send out formal invitations or call people or something. Matt Flynn came by tonight and we hung out for a few hours. I hadn't seen Matt since the end of July so I'm really glad he came by to hang out with me. I think I'm ready to try one of those learn-while-you-sleep tapes. I fell asleep while watching some show on sharks today and was actively dreaming about them, so hopefully a tape that either teaches me javascript or tells me not to eat cookies in the morning in favor of bran would work as well. God, my entries are getting really lame. I'm sorry. If you can't figure out the present preview by now, you're in trouble.
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Wednesday: October 06, 2004 - My New Office
That's right--it's dirt. Not that you can really tell, but you can take my word for it. I finally received the dreaded news today--new office. Thanks to a corrupt file or two I got to spend my day doing nothing. And not normal nothing, like shopping on Amazon.com nothing. I tried to scan some things but quickly grew weary of it, so I just messed around until my computer was fixed. If memory serves, and it does, it was fixed at 4:55. Tomorrow I'm going to just sit at my new table, with no work to do. The boss-boss, Vicky, told them they needed to get me set up right away so I could start working on "a big project". No one knows what this project is, though. I'm guessing that the former webmaster is being moved to "a big project" so I will officially take over the production server and switch titles from Public Records Manager, Liaison to the Comptroller/Asst. Webmaster to Lord of All Things With Power Cords. Anyway, as I was sitting around I heard a lecture on the many uses of Fuller's earth, a type of clay found in Florida and Georgia. The IT Director (not technically his title since Vicky won't let anyone else have "director" in their title) used to work for the Department of Agriculture and he was listing all the foods and products that use this dirt. And my god, Chompy, it's everything. Candy bars and medicine and just about any processed food has this dirt in it. After being grossed out for most of the morning I met up with Chris for a long-long lunch. When I got home, immediately after taking Dr. Chomp out I fell asleep. I have no recollection of anything but I woke up at 7:35 thinking it was 7:35am. I was freaking out as I frantically got ready for work. I didn't notice that it wasn't bright enough to be the morning because I was in panic mode. In the middle of my morning routine is checking all the sites I have on my toolbar. One of them is the stats for this page. 28 hits already? That's weird. Then I checked my computer clock and realized my error. Oops, I did it again.
If you can't guess it today, you should work for the State. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Thursday: October 07, 2004 - A Man's Grill
Hooray for Jamie! I got my present early today, since "I would need it before my party". It's a grill. A real grill, not one of those Weber "I'm a poor college student" grills. Like, one with a big ol' propane tank. It also came with all the proper scraping, flipping and stabbing implements. Hooray! We had steaks on it tonight and they were delicious. I found out the "big project" at work was just the same stupid thing I'd been working on for the past two weeks and is all but done. What's worse is that I won't be able to get the information I need until diplomats from the circuit courts come next Thursday. Looks like another four days of making sure that every image (which will undoubtedly be changed later) has some sort of hideous rollover effect and every line of text has a marquee. Gag. It could be worse...I used to work at EcoLab, (the chemical plant) and my first job there was to follow employees around and time them. Time them doing everything. Yes, I was much-beloved there. My first employee was this old Hispanic woman, just a real bitch. Every time she'd cough or stretch she'd come over right in my face and say, "Did ya get that one?" Then she'd repeat the motion and say, "Howabout this one?" She made sure everyone really hated me. It didn't help that I was required to use a stopwatch. She had some mean nickname for me by the end but it was in Spanish and I can't remember what it was. Eventually I was promoted to clocking the mixing guys. That wasn't as bad because I had learned to look the other way and just pretend to work. This guy Clem, with a deformed hand from it accidentally getting caught in a chemical mix, and I bonded over the band Styx. Not that I could have told you a single song of theirs at the time, but when someone is shaking a gnarled limb in your face, by God, you better shut up and agree. I also recall eating in the lunchroom, by myself of course, when some random guy walked up to me as I was drinking my Sprite, put his hands on the table in front of me, leaned over and said, "Straws are for p*$$ies". And that's why I never use straws anymore, except for kiwi lemonade at Ruby Tuesdays. God, I hated that job.
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Friday: October 08, 2004 - The Joys of MS Paint
Honestly, there's only so much you can do in MS Paint. I finished my second draft of the 3rd Circuit Courts site at work then received my new assignment: update a bunch of pages as quickly as possible so that I can go back again later (for the third time apparently) and do it for real. I managed to fall down getting out of my car this morning, causing only minor damage to my thumb. After work Jamie and lounged around until we discovered people were coming over and watched the second debate out of procrastination. I personally wasn't impressed with either side, although I have to take points off of Bush for saying, "on the internets". There's no doubt Kerry is a much better speaker but some of his ideas are just ridiculous. I wish Brian were running for president. Illegally.
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Saturday: October 09, 2004 - Happy Birthday To Me
Happy Birthday me. What a great birthday, definitely the best I've had in Florida. Jamie and I went to some abysmal garage sales and didn't spend a penny. When came back to my house and she made me a breakfast feast. Mmm, feast. I then took a nap and went shopping. When I returned I came upon Chompy's gift to me--she had induced the pregnant fish in the hospital tank to give birth. 20+ birthday fish! Between the filter and other hazards, they disappeared in halves every time I looked at the tank; right now there are only six left. But still, birthday fish are birthday fish. Ricky came over halfway through the football game, just as Jamie was leaving to go to Emo-Matt's wedding reception. Around 10:00 Jara arrived just ahead of Matt. Soon thereafter Marty, Theory-Chris and Kathy appeared with Chris & Michael showing up about twenty minutes later. We delved into the cookie cake and chocolate pie. After sending ourselves into hyperglycemic shock with Chris' massive pieces of cookie cake, six of us returned to the kitchen for the featured event, poker. Matt, Chris, Michael and Jara settled into some Taboo while the rest of us battled for poker supremacy. By 1:45am it was down to me and Ricky and he edged me out for the modest pot. I then went to bed a tired boy...I mean man.
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Sunday: October 10, 2004 - Be A Man
Much like every birthday I've had since I turned 18, I had the internal "it's time to grow up and be a man" speech with myself. Sadly, I still feel the same so perhaps the age to be a man is 26. I spent much of the day doing things I had done when I was 24...namely, nothing. My goal for the year is to go to bed at a reasonable time, like 11:30pm. God knows I'm tired then but I continue to stay up really late, effectively forcing myself to nap the next day, putting my into the vicious nap-cycle.
The only productive, if you can call it that, thing I did today was try to learn about style sheets. I have the basics, so I guess I'll find out how much I really know when I start using them at work. I was surprised to find that I couldn't find a single example online of someone naming theirs doggystyle.css [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Monday: October 11, 2004 - Nesting Tables at a 12th Grade Level
After a mere two months I finally got to do something at work today. My style sheets were pretty remedial but I'm nesting tables at a 12th grade level. The day flew by for the first time because I had so enough to keep me busy. Even though I'm not in with the IT guys, because obviously I'm not really one of them, I'm slowly making progress. At 4:45pm I got an assignment by some woman from the budget department. As soon as she left, RB came out of his office and gave me the low-down on her and how everyone who doesn't work in our section is certifiably insane. For example, the boss-boss, wants the page to have a patterned background with text over the top (see below). It looks terrible but what can I do? That's right nothing.
You'll be pleased to know nine of the cichlid fry are still alive and doing well. After work I accidentally fell asleep for a while. Oops, I did it again. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Tuesday: October 12, 2004 - Keeping Busy
The best way to keep busy at work is to screw something up and discover it later. I got to have lunch with both Chris and Jamie--we had the slowest recorded service at Gordo's today, a new record even for them. The cichlid fry are doing fine. I have a consistent count of eleven and it's worth spending fifteen minutes three times a day to powderize their food. They're very grateful you know. God, my life has gotten boring.
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Wednesday: October 13, 2004 - Many Hats, None Good
Brian went to WVU. You redneck.
For as badly as I didn't want to give up my old cubicle for my exposed one, I shouldn't have complained. With no web stuff left for me to do I was exiled back to extensive scanning. Unfortunately my old cubicle is being remodeled for a new employee so I got stuck with the smallest cubicle in the history of cube farms in the middle of accounting. At least my new neighbors were nice. There's barely enough room to even turn to face the scanner so hopefully I'll be doing something new soon. The boss-boss came by today and I outright asked what I was supposed to be doing. She said she wasn't entirely sure but I'm apparently being prepped to do the following jobs (in prioritized order):
*Internet Security
*Website Content
* Records Management
* Law Researcher
Where do I even start? Like I know ANYTHING about security. I informed her that I could barely even spell the word security and she assured me that I'd be able to learn it. She said she needed a cross between a computer guy and an accountant. How the hell is that me? I didn't even start balancing my checkbook seriously until grad school. And of all the possible "computer guys" there, why pick me to do something that requires learning from scratch? I'm the least-learned there and there's no doubt in my mind they would all do a terrific job, but not me. As for the website content...why not let me design it and let someone good build it? Not that you could tell I have any sense of aesthetic ability from this page but it's in there. Big time. Granted, after seeing what she likes, I doubt we'd be able to agree on anything. The Records Manager is what I was originally hired to be but it seems like whenever I get assigned to do something else I come back to someone deciding that another 500-3000 files need to be taken care of. So now I have a backlog of nearly 10k files. When am I going to be able to do that? I no longer have my "underling" either. Not that I've had her for a while but I figured I'd get her back...maybe she could pull out staples or something. Oh well, it doesn't look likely. As for the last section, what do I know about the law? I am good at researching so hopefully a control-f will take care of all my work for me...either that or google. When do I get a raise? I'm not asking for $50k/yr...or even $40/k but surely people with this much responsibility are making at least $30k. I also found out as of right now I have a whopping two hours of leave time. Boo. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Thursday: October 14, 2004 - Data Entry Help
Another day, another job. About an hour into my day I was recruited to help with data entry. Why me? They would never pull anyone else off their job to do menial tasks that lazy employees screwed up, so why ask me to do it? I want my job description in writing tomorrow. It's not so much that I'd mind doing those things, but if I knew I was there to do assorted crap no one else wanted to do I would have stayed as a temp and waited for another job somewhere else where I could actually be used at or near what I'm capable of doing. Or I could have prepared myself mentally to have a horrific clerical job there. But being told one then and being assigned new things daily is taking its toll of my attitude. I really want to be a good worker and help out where I can but right now I feel like a Stem Cell Employee being asked to do any job that is the day's priority.
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Friday: October 15, 2004 - Scary Carrie
Carrie is the scariest movie I've ever seen. Usually when Jamie goes to the video store to get a scary movie it's Dude Where's My Car Again?! but not this time. Oh no, she picked a winner. I can't remember the last movie I saw that made me afraid to go to sleep. There's just something inherently creepy about overtly religious people.
Work was another drag, another eight hours of my life chiseled away doing menial tasks for menial pay. Since this site has had so many problems with the new look for the one-year anniversary I'm going to do redo it again, except not using FrontPage for anything. Google recached the site but it left off all the old entries again. It only managed to grab the useless Links page. Whatever. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Saturday: October 16, 2004 - Take that Thomas Jefferson
Take that Thomas Jefferson. Before the game, Jamie and I met up with her sister and her sister's friends to tailgate. They had been there since three but we didn't show up until 6:30. With bellies full of beer and hamburgers we galloped over to Doak to pack ourselves into the student section. Our section was particularly irritating, as there were about three people for every seat. This translated to having to stand and be facing sideways the whole game. Jamie was next to a particularly annoyed girl who was constantly involved with her poor, poor boyfriend. Nothing made this girl happy and we all secretly cheered when they left at half-time. Too bad they came back. The game itself was great--it usually is when you know you've won within the first ten minutes. The crowd was into it the whole time and the only time the stadium collectively bood was when Chris Rix came into the game. Hopefully Wyatt's performance will ensure Chris is our back-up from now on.
Before the game Jamie took Chompy and The Ab to her parents' house while I worked on scores. Apparently Chompy and Jamie's sister's dog, the much-hated Walker, got into a couple kill-fights for dominance. They're both ok but I was shocked to hear Chompy didn't win immediately. Granted, Walker is nearly twice her size but still.
The scores are coming along nicely and I should have them all done by Tuesday. Except for the parts. Stupid parts. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Sunday: October 17, 2004 - Roach in My Food
I know you're shocked. I was. It was only the second time I'd ever had Indian food. And this time there was no roach. Granted, the roach incident was long before I kept a daily summary of my life. Kathy insisted I try something new so we hit that Indian place up on Apalachee. I was about a quarter of the way through whatever I was eating and *bam*, there's this inch long roach, masterfully inserted into the middle of the rice. Honestly, the next couple minutes are a blur. I remember not screaming, though. It was one of those more shocked-and-silent moments. Kathy asked if I wanted to leave--I remember saying something to effect of "hell yes". As we were leaving, the owner insisted that it had crawled in and was not cooked with the rice. Liar! *And* Kathy had to pay for hers. They asked if I wanted something else. Hell yeah I did, a big fat lawsuit in my favor.
Anyway, a bunch of us went over to Matt Flynn's for Indian food. Chris made a surprisingly delicious chicken curry dish. I was able to ignore most of the vegetables and there was only one thing on my plate that I didn't recognize. It looked like a huge piece of candy corn. I somehow doubt that was it, though. And, needless to say, I didn't eat it. We had to leave in a hurry because Jamie was on her way to the John Edwards speech at FAMU so we gathered up the dogs and took off.
I got a lot done on my scores but I'm still not done. I did finally finish everything to a piece I'd really like to record. There's a midi version of it here. I didn't check the file size, so it might take a while to load. The bits at 1:06 and 1:40 are solo sections, not places where I gave up on writing melodies, although there's no shortage of that in other pieces.
I hate John Kerry. I hate George Bush even more. I've been informed by everyone I'm not allowed to throw my vote away, as I did in the last election, by voting for Ralph Nader. So what do I do? Why is that our voting system is "vote for who you think will screw up the country less"? And surely there are plenty of people to screw things up so why do we only get two choices? I certainly don't lean as far left as most people I know, but I'm certainly not going to fall into the Republican category anytime soon. Why isn't there a candidate for me? It's not really fair that I have to choose between someone who is living in a fantasy world where Canada will fork over their pharmaceuticals for a cheap price and someone who is incapable of thinking more than one-step ahead and says things like "on the internets". Maybe I'd like to vote for someone who went to public schools like me. And public universities. Is it so wrong to want a candidate that would keep the electric chair and guns but also allow abortions and stem cell research? I wish I could vote for Evan Jones. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Monday: October 18, 2004 - Summary
The new summary of my journal. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Tuesday: October 19, 2004 - Faster Car Wreck
Yes, I know--the entry is a day late. Honestly, though, yesterday was one of the busiest days I can remember. To my credit, I arrived at work (get this) a little bit early. With not a whole heck of a lot to do, I was assigned yet another new job: building cubicles. Now, you would think that it's pretty easy but no. My first task was to use this humming tool to find certain wires (live wires) before actually carrying the heavy panels down two flights of stairs with only the aid of a large elevator. Much to my surprise, one of the cubicles to be built was for...me. My desk-against-a-wall is now a desk-against-a-wall with a cubicle pad behind it and a couple of shelf-things perilously suspended above me. They wouldn't be so scary except that I decided to do them myself and I couldn't maneuver the cordless drill well enough with my left hand to make them really tight. But if they fall, oh well, workman's comp.
After work Alan Coyle came by and we went though the four-hundred trillion pieces that are slated for publication. He liked most of my stuff and only shocked me once--he said if Car Wreck were sped up it would be the new Sunset (and everyone would have to have it). He gave my pan a little tune-up (hah) while he was here, much to the enjoyment of my neighbors I'm sure (who wouldn't want hammers pounding into steel at 11pm?). Jamie brought me a present of a Wendy's Frostie before I went to bed.
I forgot to mention that Chris came by a few days ago and he was heavily promoted. He's now in charge of two of the labs and will be the first to discover...wait, I'm not sure it's a secret. I won't say, just in case. He also got a nice raise. Good work Chris! [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Wednesday: October 20, 2004 - Paranoid Personality Disorder
My paranoid personality disorder hit full-on today when I came home from work. I was outside with the dog and noticed the matchbox on the grill was open. And not just opened, but meticulously taken apart. Making it weirder was the fact the matches were still all in a perfect stack. I realize my backyard is infested with flies and smells like an outhouse, but why would one of my neighbors do this? What if they didn't know of my acute sense of...well, everything around me? Long story short, after freaking out for a while, it became clear that the rain over the past couple of days had loosened the glue.
I watched the Red Sox win tonight. I admit, I was rooting for the Yankees. I know, that makes me a terrible person. It's not that I don't hate the Yankees--I do. But I really hate Red Sox fans. Oh, we're so poor and pathetic. Oh boo hoo is us...we're cursed. No, you're not cursed, you just suck. You can't field, hit nor pitch. That's not some sort of cosmic hatred, it's that you're just not the best team. Hopefully this will shut their fans up. Not that it really matters since the Cardinals are going to sweep them in four games. Or the Astros. Whomever, it doesn't matter. I always root for the NL team and this year is no exception despite the fact the Cardinals and the Astros are the sworn enemies of my beloved Cubs.
I think I did about an hour of work today. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Thursday: October 21, 2004 - Poker Skills
Fear me and my poker skills. I wish I was still around Alex because he'd undoubtedly tell me how much better he was using some sort of crazy line, which I would then steal and use when he wasn't around. Nonetheless, I was still able to edge out Jamie last night during our poker game. If I wasn't late for work I'd write more. Tough luck.
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Friday: October 22, 2004 - Red Sox Suck
Isn't that what we all want to hear as teachers? I mean seriously. Like, you want to be tough but you also would like to show that you can relate to the kids, right? So thanks Ben, that made my day.
Work was work. I thought about paperclips and then the idiot boss told me to do some task. I spent a lot of time doing SQL tutorials online. I'm sure if you know programming it follows a very logical sequence and all the terms make sense. But to the novice, it's an adventure. I made it about 3/4 the way through the intermediate levels before I got hammered by one that took me 46 tries to get right. The tutorial I was using left out a key step. Well, not so much a step but a small detail and a single space threw me way off. I was up late making the site for Alan to download all the publishing things. Real late. Then Chompy decided to hate everyone and growl at anyone on this side of town who stirred. Good thing she's cute or she'd be glue.
If you hate reading about baseball stop right here.
I hate you, Boston. I hate your city, your teams and your traffic route patterns. I hate your universities, your food and your skyline. (I did, though, enjoy Boston Public very much.) Most of all, I hate you, Red Sox fans. First, you don't have a curse, you have terrible teams. There's no luck involved. Bill Buckner couldn't make a routine grab, there was no cosmic out-to-get-you. When a fan interferes, you can start yapping. Secondly, you were just in a World Series in 1986. Our last one was in the 1945! 1918 is nothing--we last won in 1908. We're a hell of a lot closer to 100 years of being awful than you are. Moreover, you're not lovable losers. I admit, the Cubs were hardly the model of maturity this season but our best hitter never threw bats at the umpire. Although, it's not your team I don't like, it's mostly your obnoxious fans. If you moved to anywhere else in the country, I would happily root for you. But not in Boston, oh no. Hopefully the Cardinals' fans will be just as mean to you as the Yankees fans. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Saturday: October 23, 2004 - UF Loses to Mississippi State
In good conscious, I can't really say that we won the football game yesterday. I think the best that can be said is that we didn't lose. The game reminded me of, well, just about every game-after-a-big-game I've seen in my brief Florida tenure. I thin k to win like FSU, you need to follow these steps: a) crush team at your level or slightly above b) wait one week c) play a team that's considerably worse than you d) go through the motions of practicing in preparation because hey, you already know you can beat the good teams e) when game time comes, completely suck for the first half; turn the ball over a lot, get tons of stupid penalties and generally look lame f) come out firing in the third quarter--score almost enough points to get back in but then inexplicably do something dumb g) midway through the fourth quarter take a slight lead h) do something retarded to give the other team hope i) intercept the last pass of the game and win j) promise you will never let this happen again k) do it again in a couple weeks.
On the bright side, UF lost to Mississippi State. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Sunday: October 24, 2004 - Theory-Chris Whomps Me Again
Hello friendly visitors from the University of Florida. Being from the north I was not born with an ingrained hatred of your school. Truth be told, I'd much rather have a doctor from your school perform a life-saving operation on me or defend me in court (sorry Mr. B). Please bear in my that my undergrad school did not have a football team so I was immediately drawn to the hometown kids here. Even once I was here I didn't have anything against you all (er...y'all) until two events took place. One: Steve Spurrier opened his yap. Ok, he was a great coach and did really well down your way but did he have to run his mouth constantly? Could he at least have toned it down to the point of telling the truth? Your school is better than FSU is so many areas, is it really necessary to blatantly lie? Secondly, for whatever reason, you were selected to hold the Southeastern Regional Society for Composers, Inc. conference. I'm not sure why you billed yourselves as "the premier music school of the south" but come on. Let's be honest, no one wants to go there to be a musician. Your campus is very beautiful and the city offered much more to do than Tallahellsee. That said, I too have had my moments of hating FSU. I would say a good 80-90% of the time I hated it. So while I wallow in your football misery, I still feel embedded disdain for the ol' garnet and gold.
In other news, Theory-Chris again demonstrated his tennis superiority. We had to pay a $2.16 fee at Winthrop. I'd never had to pay there before and thought it was a homeless guy in above-average clothes trying to hustle me for an easy 40oz of Old Milwaukee, but no. I could only scrape up $2.15 out of change from under my car seats but they cut us some slack on that last penny. Most likely my rugged good-looks. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Monday: October 25, 2004 - I Hate Steve Spurrier
The days are officially numbered for the once-beloved pool table. Chris, Jamie and I reassembled it with no directions and only the aid of Jamie's dad. It took a couple of hours, mostly because of questions about screw size. The first potential buyer came by, Bob. What a tool. He's a real estate agent here in town and I think he thinks he's a bad ass as pool. I should have offered to play him $1000/$0 for a single game right then and there. Too bad it was still in assembly-phase when he was there. The highlight of the night was when Bob had to move his car just as Jamie's mom's Bible Chat Group was leaving. Mr. B. informed Bob that the clan meeting was over and he'd have to move his car. I couldn't stop laughing. After building the table we left to pick up Michael and went to Bennigan's for a little grub-grub. .
My eyes really need to not be so dry for the first four hours of work. I'm sure I looked like I'm stoned since I can barely keep them open and when I do, they're all types of red and irritated. Maybe I should offer to take a daily drug test to assure them I'm clean.
I didn't get any hits from UF today after my kind message yesterday. Probably too excited about the return of the hated Steve Spurrier to read. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Tuesday: October 26, 2004 - Photoshop CS
What a great day I had at work. I now have Photoshop CS at my disposal, which is way better than 7.0, which I have at home (and indescribably better than MS Paint). I spent the whole day taking my sweet time making a new site for one of the circuit courts. If you happen to look at the very, very initial stage of it before I got to work, ignore that bottom graphic--I had a little too much time on my hands. My goal of the day is to not be late for work, so it's a mega-short entry.
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Wednesday: October 27, 2004 - Double Deuce
So the two guys I thought were in a fraternity that were coming to look at my pool table were really just two creepy, old, redneck, ugly bastards. The lead guy is apparently the "father" of a frat and I wouldn't not be at all surprised to see him on TV as a convicted pedophile. He told Jamie to wait inside...this was "man's business". The other guy wasn't so bad but, and maybe I'm wrong, but if you're 50+ you should NOT still be smoking pot. You just shouldn't be. These buttlicks insisted that my table was not level even though a level would have shown it clearly was. The creepier of the two, the one who wanted it, kept hitting the ball with enough english to qualify for the ESPN trick-pool shows. I tried to tell him that if he hit the ball dead center it would bounce off the rails straight. His friend followed my advice and hit a shot with only the slightest bit and his went straight but apparently that didn't count. They tried to tell me that they're both big pool guys but their technique was sloppy as hell. So, to you, old man that sells insurance, I give you the *poosh* double deuce.
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Thursday: October 28, 2004 - Preparing for Death
How is October almost over? I guess I've officially moved into career mode and my weeks just blur together as my soul prepares for death. I'm lucky to have a job I don't entirely hate but at the same time, I wonder how long it will go on before I get a real job description. I know, I know, no one likes to read about my boring job.
We had our first political "discussion" yesterday, three liberals and three conservatives. Although I really fall on the conservative side of being a Democrat, I was probably the most liberal of the group and felt obligated to defend the attacks from one particularly verbose opponent. The best idea I heard, which apparently everyone in America has heard but me, is that the loser of the election should be vice president to keep things from getting too partisan. What a good idea. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Saturday: October 30, 2004 - Flashback
Well, looks like it's time for a double update. Let's see...what happened yesterday....
...flashback...
I think I might have made it to work on time, but who knows. I spent most of my day planning an email to my supervisor to ask a number of questions...can I use 8 hours of annual in November? Is there a way to get more before Christmas? And, most importantly, WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE DOING HERE. While I like having the freedom to jump between jobs, I certainly do not like having to proactive about finding things to do because, well, if given an option, who really wants to do work they might be able to let someone else do? Ok, Brian, but other than Brian? Not me, that's for sure. I followed the norm of the office and wore jeans and nice shirt but was later informed that's a no-good for the future. With no clean pants and it being the poorest time of the month, it was going to be jeans even if it wasn't a Friday. Yesterday marked my one UC anniversary at the JAC. Rather than measuring my time in months or years, I've elected to measure in terms of urinal cakes in my favorite stall. On Friday the old one was finally pee'd into nothing, officially declaring my first section of work was done. I'm almost done with my work site...the only problem is that I still have no content and had to settle for filling the pages with tidbits of my personal life so it looks like something is there if (glord forbid) someone looks at it. I'm proud of all the images I made. I think it represents the circuit well. After work I thought about working on some scores, then played a game instead before I went over to Ricky' to help protect him against the roommate who he had to kick out (and change the locks on). Nothing happened and the rest of the night was clouded by my desire to sleep.
Today I did eight loads of laundry and finished a ton of scores. The sad news is that FSU is now out of the National Championship hunt. On a normal day, seeing Miami and Florida lose would bring me great joy but not today. It was a horrible game and we deserved to lose. Adding to hurt was the return of Chris Rix. I agreed that if we he was able to bring is back then I would not say anything bad about him the rest of the season. Even though he sucks and we lost, he didn't do anything really stupid. The problem now for FSU is the QB crap all over again? My beloved Wyatt or the Satan-incarnate Rix? Not that it matters, since we're going to be playing in the Circle K In N' Go' Bowl this year. What really sucks is that Bobby B. destroyed Wyatt's confidence by putting Rix in. Oh well. Time to root for my first alma mater...ish. On Wisconsin! The last time Miami, Florida and FSU lost on the same day was in 1978. That was a good year...most likely the year my parents decided to have me. Have a nice day. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Sunday: October 31, 2004 - Jamie's Rats
Oh man. Too bad I'm so tired. Otherwise I would have made my recreation of Jamie's ex-boyfriend's Matt's "art". We went to this Halloween art show down at Railroad Square and there on the wall were these two grade schoolesque drawings advocating robot government. Oh Matt, you're so cool. And creative.
In other news, Jamie's rat(s?) is still alive and doing well. Finally, Desperate Housewives is the best show I've seen in a long time. Hooray for soap-operas that come on during prime time on Sundays. [Comments: 0]· permalink ·
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Good Things Take Time...
-6 days until FSU Football (2010)
Random Picture...
Part of our drive back to Tallahassee through the mountains.
Part of our drive back to Tallahassee through the mountains.
Time Machine:
09-10-2009
· 09-10-2008
· 09-10-2007
· 09-10-2006
I took the day off blogging but only because I was thinking of you.09-10-2008: It seems like just yesterday I was dreaming about Dr. Spencer and the Corkasaurus. Turns out it's been a whole year. Last night I was talking to Chris Green and he's going to do a guest entry next week to catch everyone up on his life so get ready! Later in the evening I was thinking to myself that it would nice if a bunch of people would write "catch-up" entries so that we could find out all of the exciting things that have been happening since we interacted on a daily basis. Even the people that I've seen/talked to somewhat regularly, I don't really know the full-blown details of what's going on with their lives. Here's where you come in--you too can write an entry to catch everyone up. Send me an email and I'll give you a date from which to start. Then you can post on here in the next few days/weeks. Just think--between 150 and 200 people reading all about your interesting life! And to think I get to live that each and every day.
09-10-2007: Apparently Britney is back after performing at the MTV Music Awards over the weekend. Everyone railed against her out of shape body and poor performance. While I won't comment on performance (I didn't see it, although I'm sure it was a abysmal), she just had two kids. She's not a miracle worker, she can only look so good.
In sadder news, it looks like my mentally-vacating grandmother is headed for an assisted living facility. That sounds really cold but for the past year my dad has dutifully driven over there to attend to her every day and took a sabbatical from work the past six months and she apparently can't even remember that he visits at all. There's been some speculation that since she's lived alone for so long her memory deteriorated into nothing because she never really had to use it; she's at the point now where she can easily ask you the same question six times in ten minutes. It's really sad. I really don't envy the decision my parents have to make at all.09-10-2006: Chompy, what's this? jamie and I scored some tickets from her sister's husband's parents for the Troy game so naturally we went. The game even more horrible in person than it could have been on TV. FSU couldn't hold onto the football to save their lives. De'Cody Fagg was the only trustworthy receiver and there were no, and I mean no, trustworthy rushers. I wish I knew what went on in Lorenzo Booker's head. I bet it's something like, "'Lo, listen" (it should be pointed out that Lorenzo sounds strikingly similar to Alex) "don't dance this time. Just run straight ahead." Then he gets the ball and his feet take over. "Damn it, feet. Stop doing this, we've been over this a zillion times!" And that goes on like that every play.
Their damn band would not shut up. They played under our band the whole time since of course the eight members of the TSU band could not be heard over the Marching Dorks. They played when we had the ball...or Troy had the ball...or there was a timeout. However, the largest trigger to their playing was...our band playing. Which was funny because there were so few of them that you only realized this after FSU's song stopped and the Troy band kept going. Anyway it was horrible. Next week is Clemson and I'm going back solely to beat the shit out of their fan who kept tapping my head last time. I know Jamie doesn't believe it but after eight months of fighting at least twice a week I'm feeling pretty confident I could kick some frat-ass.
In sadder news, it looks like my mentally-vacating grandmother is headed for an assisted living facility. That sounds really cold but for the past year my dad has dutifully driven over there to attend to her every day and took a sabbatical from work the past six months and she apparently can't even remember that he visits at all. There's been some speculation that since she's lived alone for so long her memory deteriorated into nothing because she never really had to use it; she's at the point now where she can easily ask you the same question six times in ten minutes. It's really sad. I really don't envy the decision my parents have to make at all.09-10-2006: Chompy, what's this? jamie and I scored some tickets from her sister's husband's parents for the Troy game so naturally we went. The game even more horrible in person than it could have been on TV. FSU couldn't hold onto the football to save their lives. De'Cody Fagg was the only trustworthy receiver and there were no, and I mean no, trustworthy rushers. I wish I knew what went on in Lorenzo Booker's head. I bet it's something like, "'Lo, listen" (it should be pointed out that Lorenzo sounds strikingly similar to Alex) "don't dance this time. Just run straight ahead." Then he gets the ball and his feet take over. "Damn it, feet. Stop doing this, we've been over this a zillion times!" And that goes on like that every play.
Their damn band would not shut up. They played under our band the whole time since of course the eight members of the TSU band could not be heard over the Marching Dorks. They played when we had the ball...or Troy had the ball...or there was a timeout. However, the largest trigger to their playing was...our band playing. Which was funny because there were so few of them that you only realized this after FSU's song stopped and the Troy band kept going. Anyway it was horrible. Next week is Clemson and I'm going back solely to beat the shit out of their fan who kept tapping my head last time. I know Jamie doesn't believe it but after eight months of fighting at least twice a week I'm feeling pretty confident I could kick some frat-ass.