I’m thinking of becoming a weatherman. We were supposed to get 8 inches of snow today. They had the stupid ‘Winter Storm Warning’ thing scrolling across the bottom of the TV all day yesterday. Schools were posting delays and closings as of last night. This morning they say ‘Well, we’re not getting as much as we thought… maybe just an inch or two.’ I actually got to work early today (side-effect of taking a 4-day weekend, I doubt I’ll make it a habit) and it hadn’t even started snowing yet. An hour later, and there’s about an inch on the ground here downtown.

Well it’s been about 3 months since I’ve put anything on here, so this will probably be long. I’ll try to break it up a little….

School: One more quarter. I’m actually on Spring Break right now (Wooo! Party!!!) Last quarter was decent – one “A” and two “B” I should have ended up with an A in stats too, but I just ran out of love for that class and bombed the last few weeks. Oh well. The other B was a pile of crap too – almost the entire grade was based on a group project, and my group was stupid. One more quarter, and it should be an easy one.

Just got done with a few days off work – nice 4 day weekend. Work is annoying me, I’m be glad when I get a different job. There’s one lady here that is just a complete pain in the ass – she puts everything off until the last minute, then demands I help her out of the mess she got herself into, and get snippy with me when I don’t. This last time, she tried to complain about me (said I had a negative attitude) but just ended up making herself look stupid. Maybe one of these days I’ll tell the whole story, it’s actually pretty funny.

Season is about ready to start. My reserve is being inspected and repacked as we speak. (Well, maybe not exactly at this instant, but it’s in my rigger’s possession) I’m looking forward to it – it’s been since late October that I’ve jumped.

Black for the PS2 isn’t that bad. Rent it though, don’t buy it. And Resident Evil 4 was really good – I need to rent that again to finish it. I can’t wait for the PS3 to come out. I played a Xbox 360 for the first time awhile ago – damn it’s pretty!

Watched a ton of movies lately. Not much else to do here during the winter. Jarhead and Murderball are about the only two ‘must see’ movies I’ve watched lately. Cinderella Man is close to making that group. Saw 2 wasn’t nearly as good as the first, but still decent – if you liked the first one, you’ll probably like this one. Final Cut and 28 Days Later were both worth a rent too. In the Mood for Love is probably a good movie, I just wasn’t in the mood for it (pun intended). Pushing Tin and Mighty Wind I would call rent-worthy as well, along with Lord of War. In the “Mindless eye candy” category we have The Island, – long on Special Effects, short on everything else. I think my postman is taking the movies I’m trying to send back and watching them first. If I mail the movies back at my house, it takes 3-5 days for them to get it. If I send it from work, it’s there in a day or two. I’m starting to wonder if I upset him somehow.

Sorry there’s nothing too exciting here… life is fairly boring at the moment. I think I need a vacation…

… sue me.

Good news: I got an “A” in every class last quarter. I are smart. More good news is that I have the next month to do whatever the hell I want (after work of course) and not worry about catching up with homework on the weekends. I’ve taken this opportunity to catch up on sleep, TV, internet gossip, movies, and video games.

Sleep: It’s good.

TV: I had a CSI: Las Vegas marathon courtesey of Tivo last week. (By the way, you can get a 40 hour Tivo for $49 after paying for service here — put seth@wildbluesky.com in as the referring email address) The show still holds my attention better than the dozen other knock-offs. But, why did they have to make Brass the guy who shot the other cop? No one really likes the girl on there, it should have been her.

And Las Vegas… seriously, blown off the roof by a gust of wind?! You couldn’t come up with a better way to kill off a character? You’re already moving up the charts on Jump the Shark – maybe the writers were really trying to out do the poisonous envelopes, open elevator shafts, and one-armed doctors being crushed by helicopters. This show was good, mindless entertainment – I think it took the ‘mindless’ too far.

I still catch Survivor every week – I hope Steph wins. Lost still has me guessing. I didn’t watch the first half of the first season, but it hooked me pretty quick midway through. I caught a few episodes of Jailbreak too. I just can’t get into it, and now you have to wait until January to find out what happens. Meh. I think Grey’s Anatomy is either going to get better and be the next ER, or it’s about to tank. How I Met Your Mother is turning out to be a decent show, as is My Name is Earl. They’re fairly hit or miss, much like Family Guy – but when they’re hit, it’s hilarious.

Internet Gossip: Ok, so I don’t have anything really. The only exciting news I have is that Tivo announced they’re going to support “TivoToGo” on your Apple video iPod and Sony PSP – that would be cool.

Movies: War of the Worlds was a huge let down, and not just because of Tom Cruise’s antics. It just wasn’t good, didn’t flow, didn’t make sense in some places, and just generally left me confused as to what Spielberg was thinking. Layer Cake was surprisingly good. And unlike a bunch of other people, I rather like Punch-Drunk Love. Charlie and the Chocolate Factgory wasn’t bad once you got past the creepy Ompah-Loompa. I’m sure there was some others in there, but nothing that stands out at the moment.

Video Games: Call of Duty 2 didn’t seem to live up to the hype. It was ok, but I might have actually enjoyed the first one more. Same with Burnout Revenge – it was ok, but basically just the first one with a few changes and online play (and there’s hardly ever anyone online to play, and the ones that are have whatever super-mega-awesome car unlocked and leave you in the dust.) Gun was really fun. But it’s a “rent, don’t buy” kind of game. I finished the storyline and most of the side missions inside a week of light playing, and there’s zero replay value. Once you get your stats up enough, it’s almost too easy.

So, anyway, it’s 10 ’till 5 on a Friday… time to head home. I might stop by for some Shiner Bock though – did I mention we can get it in this crap-hole state finally? The only decent thing that comes out of Texas, and I finally don’t have to suck-up to morons like ‘Cakes to bring me some.

That last post was my 100th. Aren’t you thrilled.

I had a revelation this morning. I know, everyone seems to have revelations and epiphanies and whatnot… but this one was new for me:

I don’t want to work here anymore.

Now, I’ve often grumbled about my job and some of the people here, but this is different. I don’t know if all the planets were aligned just right or what, but out of the blue this thought just crystallized. It’s not really that I hate my job – I dislike it at times, and other times it’s semi-enjoyable. There’s a few people I could do without, but for the most part they’re decent. I hate driving downtown everyday, there’s no good part to that. Nope, I just don’t want to do it anymore. Maybe it’s a little burn out, maybe it’s the stack of work that got left for me because I took Friday off, maybe it’s because all hell broke loose this morning with one of the servers, or maybe I’ve just finally hit my ‘stupid quota’ and can’t take any more ignorant users. I’d be lying if I said at least some of it didn’t come from being away from a computer, TV, and out of cell service for most of the weekend. I mean really, how easy could it be to face a Monday in a concrete jungle after spending the weekend looking at this?

Evidently I’m about 10 years behind on starting my own bed and breakfast down there, it’s already saturated now I hear. I keep getting emails telling me I could make thousands working from home – maybe I’ll try one of those. Or maybe I’ll just take a few more long weekends someplace nice before the year is up, regain my sanity, and realize that they pay me halfway decent for my level of education and people skills. 🙂 There is the off chance I’ll win $250 million in tomorrow’s megamillions lotto too (those being 5 in 175,711,536) I give myself roughly the same odds of being here in another year.

I’m taking bets on how long they last. I’ve already had them for a few weeks.

They’re not dead yet, which is surprising.

Time now for another “Disturbing Trend I’ve Noticed” – Do people even listen to voicemail greetings anymore? How can you leave a message on the wrong person’s voicemail? Especially when it’s not even someone you know! Hoq does this happen? It’s one thing if the greeting is just “Mailbox 555 1212 is not answering” type things, no one really pays attention to those. But most people have a ‘Hi, this is so-and-so, leave me a message’ Do you just glaze over that?

Nevermind me, I’m in a hateful mood this week for some reason. I blame traffic. I should start a business out of my house so I don’t have to commute anywhere. Any ideas?

I’ve been a little down lately, but c’mon Amazon!

Really, sitting at work and the outlook notifier/snippet of email pops up in the corner and says “Amazon.com recommends Funeral and more.” I’m not sure how that makes me feel… Amazon thinks I should die.

20050930_JFTC_Jump4_02
Originally uploaded by sudsyfist.

JFTC Exit shot:
How cool is that?

… I mean seriously, a LOT. One place has sent me at least 3 things a week wanting to sell me mortgage death insurance or something. I’m really not exaggerating that – it been about 3 a week since I moved in. So, I decided to make some use of the postage-paid envelope they send.

This is the first one. I didn’t send the quarter, that’s just for reference. And bag of unraosted coffee from Sweet Maria’s is just a shamless plug for them. This one contained 15 pages of coupons from one of those local ‘magazines’ you get every other day. It also had instructions for a slip ‘n slide (sorry Val! I think you’ve got the hang of setting it up now though) as well as a dozen coffee beans.

Here’s the second one so far. Another dozen pages of coupons, a few that Krogers sent me (expired), the cardboard backing for a sprinkler nozzle I just bought, and everything to setup a Netgear wireless router – including CD, registration card, instructions, and the plastic it came in. You can see the CD is bent in half in the middle picture. I decided for giggles to write “DO NOT BEND” on the envelope too. The last picture is a top-down view of said contents.

Half the fun is deciding what all to stuff into the envelope. I mostly try to put other junk mail in it. Maybe I should write a note? I almost put a bug I just killed in there, but thought maybe that was too much. I might put an unopened condom in the next one… or maybe just an empty wrapper. I’ve heard one guy taped it to a brick and mailed that – that’s good thinking there. Or maybe a book of matches – hopefully the person that opens it will be tempted to burn the place to the ground.

Man I used to love baseball. I remember watching the Cubs play almost everyday on WGN during the late 80’s – Andre Dawson, Mark Grace, Ryne Sandberg… Rafael Palmeiro was drafted by the Cubs in the first round of ’85. I’ll even put Harry Caray in as part of the team. I remember watching the games with my friend Brian. He’d keep track of the stats himself for some reason, I’d sing along with Harey. After the game we’d go outside and play with a tennis ball — the street was a home run, hitting any of the apartment buildings was an out. We even collected baseball cards. We didn’t try to find the ones that were “worth more” we collected our favorite players. I still have boxes of the things… I might just put them all on eBay.

In 1990 I was living closer to Cinci and we had a tv – I watched the Red dominate and sweep the World Series. I was even one of those goofy people jumping up and down on the front porch with a Reds banner and a broom. (Today it’d probably be a picture of Bud Selig and a shotgun.)
Chris Sabo, Barry Larkin, Eric Davis (I think that was before he was all cracked-out) and of course “You can’t run on…” Joe Oliver.
Joe and Marty and their annoying Kroger commercials.
Every once in awhile my dad would get us tickets to the Reds’ games and I’d sit there with my glove on, hoping to catch a foul ball. I played little league and even a little into high school. During the winter I’d play video games about baseball.
I’m probably starting to make it sound like baseball was more a part of my life than it really was. I guess I was probably about average as young American boys goes.

Then the 94-95 strike happened.

I never fully recovered from that and I know I’m not the only one that feels that way. I still enjoyed the game – an occasional softball game/league here and there, creating my own franchise on the Playstation… I just never really watched it anymore.

Recently that started to change. I still haven’t intentionally watched a game in 10 years, but if I was someplace where a game was on I’d end up paying at least a little attention to it. I think it’s finally crashed for good.

I didn’t really care about Sosa or Mcguire – it was fun to watch ‘the race’. I know there was the whole creatine thing… but they both put up good numbers well before all that too. Then there was Bonds… I never really liked him anyway. And come on, who did you think you were fooling Barry?! You double your HRs in a season over the course of two years?? Yeah, 15 years into your professional career you finally learn how to smash the hell out of the ball. You’re a dumbass. I don’t care if your roid-rage causes you to kill me – you’re a dumbass.
I never liked Canseco either… but for other reasons I won’t get into right now.
But Raffy… why? I’m just at a loss for words. You’ve had a pretty good 20 year run, why mess with this stuff? Why sit there in front of congress and say you’ve never done it. It was easy to believe Canseco was full of it – he’s a media-whore schmuck trying to sell a book. But you… you were one of the guys that started my love for the game 20 years ago! You seemed to play with heart and class… now you’re just lumped in with the rest of the over-paid junkies.

And 10 games? Another problem with baseball. You fail that kind of test in other sports, you get banned for life. I guess I’ll just stick with Nascar – the worst that happens there is your favorite driver gets killed.

Raffy’s fall extremely bitter for fans

Anyone hungry? I have like 6 gallons of jumbalaya for myself. I guess I know what I’m eating for the next week. People at the office are going to love me.

Yup… still bored. Have a stupid research project I could probably get started on. Actually, I have about a hundred things I probably should be doing – I just can’t get motivated to do any of them.

In other news…. I was listening to “The Future of Rock and Roll the other day and found a new group that I’ll play to death until I get bored with them: Royksopp. Remind Me and Only This Moment have both been stuck in my head for the last few days. So has Gorillaz – Tomorrow Comes Today.

Here’s a link for all the old-time bbs’ers: bbsmates.com – kill some time playing BRE or LORD or something. Good times.

Meh… I’m going to go find something to do or something.

If you’re bored, and would like to make me a better looking favicon – feel free… mine looks cheesey.