2005 - February

Archive for February, 2005

Gray hairs means less work

2/17/2005

As I mentioned before, my pop may be transferred to another store. Today it happened. He was more or less forced to be transferred to another store in a location which is triple the driving distance he would have to do every day just to get to werk.

The whole thing is just plain sad.

He and I are discussing what to do about it. Most likely it will be that he’ll just have to find another job.. somehow. We both have high hopes that he’ll be able to find something suitable that is local and won’t cause any undue stress or make his life miserable. I threw a few suggestions at him and he’s going to look into them.

I am in the process of cutting unnecessary costs to help out in whatever way I can. Hopefully this transition will be a mild one and won’t impact life too harshly.

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Not California friendly

2/18/2005

I recently discovered something: Enter in a New Englander into a “California” conversation and it kills it instantly.

There are some message boards out there (mostly in California where the internet hippies live,) that state more or less “Everyone is welcome, come on in and post a message or two.” So you do. Then you find out that every time you post, almost no one responds to you even if your post was relevant, on-topic and just plain good. This is because you’re not part of that California-attitude internet hippie thing. It’s sort of like they have this unspoken rule that if you’re not of that ilk, no one talks to you.

On East Coast boards that I post on, everyone chimes in and responds to almost every post I make (and to my fellow New Englanders I thank you for that), but darn.. these Left Coast boards - I don’t know what the deal is there. You can write intelligent good conversation.. but all you’ll get in return is being ignored, followed by someone posting some dumbass thread like “let’s do mad libs” or “whore out your LJ blog” or something equally retarded.

And yeah I love it whenever I can use the word “retarded”. I fucking love that word. (haHA!)

My only solstice: Some of these Left Coast boards I’m on do have East Coast people in there. They talk to me. They know what it’s all about. Although they couldn’t say this publicly (for fear of being banned,) I’m reasonably sure the majority of them would say “You can take your California attitude and shove it up your ass.”

Bung.

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I hate my car dealership

2/19/2005

My truck was in for service this morning so I had to take a crappy ‘99 Oldsmobile Intrigue loaner car until they were finished with it. Here’s an actual shot of that car’s steering wheel, untouched (for real, it’s really like this):

Yes, “courteous” is spelled wrong.

The last “courteous” person who drove the car left me this little present:

I hate my car dealership.

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New press tags, coming to a show near you

2/20/2005

Mummy would be so proud. :-)

I finished up the design of the press tags (or passes or whatever you call them) for a band. They came out pretty well if I do say so myself. Unfortunately I can’t post the images here because someone will probably try to rip them off.. can’t have that. (grin)

I liked the way they came out. Simple to read, instantly identifiable. Took me around 20 minutes to get them done.

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Plan F

2/22/2005

Plan A: Pay all the bills, get back to zero (as I’ve mentioned a million times before), move to southern Connecticut.

Didn’t work. Reason: Had to buy a new vehicle. Old one crapped out. Back in debt again.

Plan B: Pay just the credit card off, figure out something later.

This won’t work either.. it’s not a plan, really. More like staying in a rut.

Plan F: Save together some money and move somewhere else, start over. “F” is for fuggit.

After a discussion with a friend last night I came to realize that..

a) We all got bills and trying to get out of them is a futile attempt, because once you pay one off there’s another right around the @*&#% corner.

b) Happiness is more important than money. At present, the happiness factor is low on the scale - that needs to change.

c) I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.. I really want to get out of here. After much thought, I don’t believe “there” (my destination) will be another “here”.

Time to execution of Plan F: Indeterminate, but I’ll let you know. ;-)

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Gaining weight

2/23/2005

Over the past few weeks I’ve put on a few pounds (about 4). Not good. The reason I’m gaining weight is basically because my job is stressing me out something fierce and I eat to calm my nerves - and I’ve been eating nothing but crap.. mostly chocolate. All junk. This has to stop.

It’s okay to have a candy bar every now and then, it won’t kill you. When you start having a candy bar every day (sometimes two or three,) that’s when it’s a bit out of control. I have to make a conscious effort to stop eating chocolate and sweets. Unfortunately there’s a vending machine less than 15 feet from my cubicle. Not good. Sometimes it’s really hard to say no to that machine when your day is full of nothing but stress (and that’s every day where I werk).

I’ve started doing a little overtime on the treadmill, and it’s working. I feel better and my stomach is starting to flatten up. There’s still a lil’ ways to go.. but as long as I stay on track, the pounds should drop off fast.

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ICQ switchover

2/24/2005

Is “switchover” one word? I dunno. If it isn’t, it is now. Anyway, I downloaded ICQ 5 last night and am actually very impressed with it. It goes back to the way ICQ used to be: small, light, easy. It is really easy to use. It also communicates with AIM users easily (ICQ and AIM both use the same network).

I was impressed with it enough that I switched over. I’ve put over all my AIM contacts on ICQ. For anyone who uses AIM to contact me, don’t use MarchingDare any longer - I won’t be using it. You’ll be seeing me appear as 103698 - which you can add to your Buddy List easily. You do it the same way as if you were adding an AIM contact, except you just put in the ICQ # that I just mentioned.

Even though I like gAIM a lot (and it does do ICQ,) it doesn’t have all the features of the ICQ 5 client. After using it for a lil’ while - it really does work well. It isn’t full of bloated crap like the 2002/2003 ICQ clients were. The interface is clean compared to previous versions that were really cluttered. I likes it. ;-) So I’m using it. Yee-haw.

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Car stunt of the year (so far)

2/25/2005

Check this out. I personally find it cool when people take crap-ass cars and do stupid things with them. This is one of them. Made me laugh out loud.. loved it.

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