Android Hell is a real place.

My poor smooshed car

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:54:15 GMT

So my car is 'fixed'. Or about as fixed as I'm capable of making it.

I ordered the rear brake light, and that came in the other day. I was worried that I might have difficulty trying to attach it, but it attached with a single plug, no wiring involved or anything. We popped out the backseat and I crawled into the trunk that way, after emptying of all the junk, including the ramps I'd just bought before the accident. Everything that needed to remove came off easily with your standard range of tools plus a bit of oil. It was kind of awkward maneuvering in the trunk, but the plug for the rear light was obvious, so that got hooked up pretty easily. Tested the light, works perfectly, yay!

I secured the light as best I could with duct take (gorilla tape!), and also taped up a bit of plastic in the areas where I was concerned about potential leaking. From there, I slathered duct tape all over the areas where possible leak areas, along with parts where the paint was completely flaked off. I still need to get a hold of some paint at some point, as the paint is peeling off of other parts of the car. Suppose it's less of a rush now, since the car is technically worth negative dollars and all, but I'd still like to see it run as long as possible (where "as long as possible" means "when I have a steadier income and can actually afford to get a new car"). I had been thinking about getting some black car paint to touch up places, and then I could do...something(?)...to make the ghetto-fabulous back not look so awful. Not sure what that is, though. I don't care too much though, I suppose. Car still runs fine, and that's all that really matters. I'll miss the use of my trunk, though.

Though, there is one good thing about all of this. The cost of getting the brake light plus shipping, plus the cost of the tape I bought? About $150. The amount of the check the insurance company mailed to me for the car? About $3000. I heart dollars.

"Divisible by 365 (minus those pesky leap years)" day, plus random ingestible media

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:54:09 GMT

So this is the part where I say goodbye forever to my 20s. Yee-haw. For my birthday, I would like an income and a drivers side rear brake light, please. Oh, and sushi. Mmm sushi.

I've recently discovered the joys of a magical manga series about cooking called Oishinbo. I don't generally get into manga for some reason, but this one is particularly exciting. Probably because it makes me really hungry, the food in it is drawn particularly well. Apparently they made it into an anime back in the 80s, but it was never translated into English. The manga started being published again this year, so maybe enough American types will get into the manga to make it financially viable to translate the anime into English (I'd be happy with either dub or sub).

Watched the Passion of Joan of Arc, which was made back in the late 20's, complete with intertitles and orchestra for sound. It was really good, and caused me to sit and read the entire Joan of Arc wikipedia entry afterwards. It also caused me to look up the history of breastfeeding. See, I found it interesting that, in the film at one point, there is a closeup of a baby being breastfed, nipple and all. And I'm not too knowledgeable about older movies, but as far as I knew, they didn't go in for nudity and such back then. So after a cursory glance on the internet, it seems that breastfeeding in public was pretty normal up through the 1940s or so, and then at some point after that it became seen as scandalous or something. It's generally considered legal to do now, but you can still get harassed by random people and asked to cover up and such. My brief poking encountered a case where someone was asked to leave a theme park for doing it in public, and another commented on the fact that she was breastfeeding in an area where children are present. Which is weird, since as children and all, it wasn't that long since they themselves were probably breastfed. And if you're gonna have your kids exposed to nudity, wouldn't that be a good way to do it? Since the kids are more likely then not already learning via semi-nudity from advertising and media and such that breasts are sexual, it seems good to also include opportunities for your kids to learn that they're functional?

And speaking of breasts, I've been having a fabulous last several months, in that the vast majority of my bras fit. As long as I don't get glued to the front of this computer for the duration of the winter, I will hopefully continue that trend. It's kinda useful to be really new to a place and not know much of anyone, well, useful in the lack of Christmas junk food being slogged at me, which I am generally more then happy to eat because it is delicious.

And on a final note, Nanowrimo is going more or less ok. Am at 13126 words right now, need to get to 15,000 by tomorrow night.

Halloween and Burritos and NaNoWriMo, oh my!

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:25:01 GMT

So Halloween was fun. I dressed up as a purple raccoon, which I think I've done for the last 4 years. See, I put some decent effort into making the ears and tail back in the day, and I would consider it a tragedy to not have continuous opportunities to wear said ears and tail. Aside from misc cons and clubs, there's only one day you can get away with wearing such a getup, that day being Halloween of course, so I feel the need to take advantage of it when I can. Maybe in a few years I'll get bored and decide to be something else, we'll see.

Drew was spectacular as a vampire: he wore khakis and gobs of glitter.

We went to the Nanowrimo pre-party in someone's basement, which was fun. Lots of niblets plus socializing and such. It took me most of the night to figure out I had "Harry Potter" stuck to my back. Started on the book at midnight, only to lose battery power at 1:00 or so (silly me didn't bring my cord). At just under 4000 words now, am a little closer to having a plot even if not all the way there yet.

Oh yeah, and we have a ginormous number of burritos. You know how Chipotle was doing their "Dress like a burrito, get a free burrito" deal on Halloween evening? We hit four Chipotles. Thus, 8 burritos. Unfortunately, they're not as good reheated, but they're still pretty tasty.

Chick-fil-a, snow, my car, and other miscellaneousness

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 05:07:04 GMT

For those not in the know, I had an adventure this past week. Drew and I, having entirely too much free time and no money to eat out, decided to camp out in front of a Chick-fil-a to get 52 coupons for free combo meals each. Incidentally, there was a blizzard going on at the time. It was....cold. And sometimes it was fun. I wrote a big ole description about it (plus a few pictures) at my food blog, and I've got the rest of the pictures available to view on facebook.

My car is still in the shop. The repair place called me the other day and informed me that it'll be around $3500 to fix the car. Which is quite possibly more then my car is worth. However, the insurance company should be covering it, so all is good. If they weren't, I'm pretty sure I would have heard back from them by this point. I've not really driven the rental car at all. Part of that is the blizzard, and part of that is that it's bigger then I'm used to and a bit clunky and currently covered in snow. Well, I can't really say "clunky" I suppose. It's clunky in the way that cars covered in doohickeys that are super spacious for larger people are clunky. So really, I'm just used to driving a cheap small car, and feel weird in this nicer large car. I also want more visibility. The Kia's got me spoiled on that, I just don't care for super-slanted windshields and rear windows.

Nanowrimo starts in two days. Need plot soon. Going to super exciting Nanowrimo launch party tomorrow.

Also, and this is important, if you dress like a burrito tomorrow, you can get a free burrito from Chipotle. You can just wrap some tin foil around your arm, it totally counts. Guess what I'm planning to eat for dinner tomorrow? And for the next several nights, if all goes well! Mmm, nothing tastes better then free.

Car goes crunch!

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:33:50 GMT

So Drew and I decided to go hiking with a meetup group last weekend. There was potential bad weather, but other people were gonna tough it out and go, so I figured we could as well. So we get there kinda late, and do the hike with a few other people who also got there late. Take lots of pretty pictures, like this one:

And these ominous clouds:

So we get down from the hike, and slowly make our descent off the mountain. I was driving slow, but apparently 20mph doesn't cut it in some areas, because I went around a curve, hit a slick patch, and drove into an embankment. Slowly though, so it was a nice fluffy 'thud', and as it happened I was dreading the possibility of having to get a tow truck to get my car out of said embankment. Then there was a crunch as the car behind me also hit the slick spot and plowed into my back.

It was a gentle plowing though, no injuries. Well, except to my poor car. It was unfortunate too, as the guy that hit my car was one of the people I'd just been hiking with. And as sad as I was about my rear getting crunched, I felt pretty bad for the guy, as he was feeling awful about hitting me. It was pretty minor though, I could drive home on it (slowly, to keep the back light from flying off).

So I've got this rental car now, and my car is in the shop for an unknown length of time, all covered by the guy's insurance. Rear panel needs to get replaced (if I remember correctly), along with the light of course. I'll miss my companion cube!

In other news, Drew and I are getting up very early Wednesday to go plant ourselves in front of a Chick-fil-a in Fort Collins in the hopes of being one of the first 100 when it opens. Ah, the joys of being underemployed.

Adventures in unpacking, future adventures in writing, etc.

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:51:44 GMT

We are 99% unpacked. This is an achievement, as we didn't reach that state at the last apartment until about 8 months in. I am super happy with Drew for being rather gung-ho about getting everything out of boxes and onto shelves and such. It also helped that we got a ginormous 7' x 3' bookshelf off of the free section of craigslist. It clears the ceiling by about a few inches. I'd love to get rid of the other shelves and just have a second shelf like it, it makes that corner of the apartment feel like a library (possibly because we're about 84% sure the shelf originally came from some sort of library!). We've got partial ghetto apartment going on, as videos are hanging out in shelves made of boxes, but we're working on that part.

NaNoWriMo is coming up in less then 10 days now, and both Drew and I are gonna do it this time around. I wanted book #1 to be out of the way before book #2 got started on, and I'm just waiting on proof copy #3 (the final one, at least it better be) to come in the mail. Assuming that's perfect, I can set the book for sale on Createspace and Amazon. Then comes the fun part of figuring out how to market one of these babies.

Shameless Plug + Yay, Jeans!

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 05:58:39 GMT

So I made bacon sushi. It was awesome enough that I feel this strange urge to cross-post the blog I wrote about it pretty much everyplace I can. There are pictures and details located here!

Also, thank you to whoever advised me try the Old Navy "Sweetheart" jeans. They fit and are really comfortable, despite how ridiculous their name is!

Snow! Plus bonus text message complaints!

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 04:02:56 GMT

It snowed here this morning. Super magical! Not too much, and it didn't stick all well, but it was still exciting. Look, I took pictures:

Poor flowers!

Yay mountains!

In other news, I no longer have any of my text messages. My phone randomly decided to display a message stating that I had no more room for text messages. So I deleted several, a few with pictures attached. This message still displayed. Forgot about it for a bit, then made googoo eyes at Drew until he called AT&T for me to see what was wrong. It's fixed now, and I can receive text messages, but in the process of fixing it all of my old messages were erased. Which is ok I guess, as it's not like I go back and look at them on a regular basis or anything, but still.

Here's some handy sexual assault prevention tips

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:22:26 GMT

1. Dont put drugs in peoples drinks in order to control their behavior.

2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!

4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DONT ASSAULT THEM!

6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8. Always be honest with people! Dont pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you dont communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.

9. Dont forget: you cant have sex with someone unless they are awake!

10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone on accident you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

(janked from here)

Whereupon I complain about grocery stores (again) and ramble about other assorted things

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:02:34 GMT

So for the past while now, I've done most of my grocery shopping at either Kroger or Walmart, with the occasional side trip to Ukrops. Now, all of these places have the same lid coloring on their milk. 2% milk is always dark blue, and skim milk is light blue. I am now in a situation where I'll be going to Safeway for the majority of my food needs. The problem is with Safeway's milk lids. Their 2% milk is light blue and their skim milk is dark blue. This is a cruel joke to play on those of us who grab the carton based almost entirely on the lid color. Skim milk is a sad, sad substitute for 2% milk. This has happened multiple times now, too. Maybe one of these grocery trips I'll learn. I even considered returning the most recent gallon of milk, but being lazy, I decided to postpone the trip until later in the day. At some point before that time, I impulse ate some cookies, looked in the fridge, and decided that watered down milk was better then no milk. D'oh!

Drew got me to watch the video for Genesis: Land of Confusion, and I now have creepy puppet people hanging out in my head.

I will make bacon sushi soon, and it shall indeed be glorious.

So I decided that Writaur.com needed a pm system. It's actually pretty easy to put together a messaging system when you have a good tutorial to work off of. Albeit, I could have figured one out without the tutorial, but it probably would have taken at least twice as long. Now I've got to figure how to go about sending messages to a set of users without the server deciding that I'm trying to spam people.

On a sad note, I seem to have left my sewing machine in Richmond. Problem is, my parents can't seem to locate said sewing machine either. I'm going to assume that there's some Heisenberg Uncertainty mischief going on here.

Cross country travel in a ridiculous vehicle, etc

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:47:56 GMT

So the excruciatingly planned last weekend seemed to turn out OK, minus the fact that we generally left places about an hour or so later then I'd anticipated. That, however, can be attributed to my being entirely too optimistic about how efficient Drew and I can be in getting things accomplished.

It was nice to see people and eat delicious Thai food Friday night, though in an ideal world we would have had more then just that evening for such things. Saw Carolyn & Todd's house, which is magical and full of penguins. Spent the night at my parents' place, got delicious Mexican for lunch the next day with both my & Drew's parents plus Julie. Next, headed off to Charlie & Tara's wedding, which was weddingtastic. Hung out with all sorts of OWP-related peoples at reception and ate/drank copious amounts of items (it is indeed possible for asparagus to taste really good, crazy!). Went to OWP Jason's afterward for continued OWP-related socializing. Then, off to Drew's dad & stepmom's place in Chester for sleeps. Get moving truck from Budget the next day, move items from attic into said truck, eat copious amounts of delicious seared tuna. Head back to my parents place, sleep. Get up next day and move my items into truck. Eat bacon, load up on travel sandwiches and cookies, hug Mickey the pigeon goodbye.

We left around 11:00am or so, taking 64W. The trip is the same that we took back in July, except this time in a giant bouncy truck (well, if you consider 10' "giant") that costs about $50 to refill the tank. Anyhow, the drive through Virginia was one taken many times before, and the drive through West Virginia is absolutely gorgeous. Giant mountains everywhere! West Virginia is totally underrated. We go through Charleston, which looks like a fun place to visit. Then, the long drive through Kentucky, where we end up in Louisville at Drew's aunt & uncle's place around 10:00 pm or so. Stay the night there, eat breakfast biscuits, load up on travel sandwiches and cookies. We drive for forever and a half the next day, all the way to Kansas, going through Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. In St Louis we switched from I-64 to I-70. St Louis also looks like a fun place to visit, what with their fancy arch and all. The worst state for driving through, for me, was Missouri, it was just long highway and terrain not dissimilar to other long highways in VA/NC/OH. I wanted to make sure that last day of driving wasn't Hell, so we pushed into Kansas, and stayed in Abilene at a cheap hotel, getting there about 11:00 or so. Or maybe 10:00 or so. Or possibly 12:00 or so. Our truck was on Mountain time the entire trip, my watch was on Central time, but my head was on Eastern time because I kept getting sleepy entirely too early. This continues, as for some bizarre reason I am typing this post at 7:30 am, and it's not from staying up all night!

Anyhow, we left at 11:00 the next day, driving the long haul through Kansas. Almost all of this drive through Kansas is farmland. The first 1/3 or so is full of lots of rolling hills, and it's really pretty. The rest is really flat. Everyone seems to complain about it being really flat, but I never really got tired of it. I kept looking around and being all like "Wow, it's really flat!" This fascinated me until we hit Colorado and I started getting antsy for mountains. Also, it was super windy, and tumbleweeds kept flying across the road. As you move across Kansas, it also goes from "hey, it's pretty green and farmy here" to "Hey, it's drier, but still farmy here, just with more cattle" to "gee, it's kinda brown!" and mostly ranches/farms with cattle/horses. Oh, and there are giant wind turbines at one point along the highway, which are really neat to see. I took pictures, and if I find any ambition whatsoever, I'll try to post them at some point.

So we get into Colo Spgs around 7:00, making good time, eat chicken, and decide to sleep at Pam's place for the night and drive the truck up the next day, to give Estha the cat one more day of sanity (she was staying with Pam for the week we were traveling). We've spent the last two days locating furniture, and today we get to take the truck back. The furniture has been an adventure in itself, and I shall post more when I have more ambition.

Grocery Stores, Delicious Juices, etc

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:22:15 GMT

Safeway is weird. The one in Fountain is all fru-fru, and our first visit there lead us to believe that grocery prices out here were godawfully expensive. But no, it was just that Safeway, as the Walmart down the street had the same prices as places in VA. So we're up in Arvada now, and after driving in circles for awhile last night looking for a grocery store, we finally came to a Safeway. Looked more like a regular grocery store and less like a magical fru-fru (frou-frou?) money sucking locale. Some of the prices were still, err, pricey, but they were for the most part reasonable. I'm thinking the disparity between the two is because in Fountain, there's that Safeway, and that's about it, unless you want to drive several miles away to the Walmart. So they've got the market pretty much covered, and make the store look more fru-fru as a thinky veiled justification for charging twice as much. My guess at their tagline is "Safeway: at least we're cheaper then Whole Foods".

We're pretty sure there are other grocery stores around here, thus why the Safeway here has cheaper prices. I want to find the local King Soopers. This is because "King Soopers" sounds like a completely ridiculous name for a grocery store. Also, because they're apparently owned by Kroger, and so I'm hoping they carry the Kroger Private Selection ice cream.

Also, I have finally been in a Whole Foods. $21.00/lb tuna, eek! Lots of free samples, though. And that aisle with all of the bulk food like Elwood Thompson has is useful. I'm not too keen on going back though: waay too expensive, and waay too much conspicuous consumption. Too bad there's not a Trader Joe's out here. I want chocolate granola bars and $1 garlic pizza dough, dangit!

Anyhow, I'm drinking $1 discount kosher grape juice from Safeway. It's pretty good, might have to go back and get more.

And here's a desperate question: where does one go to find women's jeans that *aren't* narrow in the thigh/knee area but are also lower cut? Lower cut pants fit me so much better then regular cut, but they all seem to be of the skinny jeans and/or stretch and/or boot-cut variety. All I want is a pair of pants that fit me and doesn't convert my thighs into sausages!

More Job Stuff

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:43:11 GMT

So I didn't get the sushi job. Which is unfortunate, as I was rather excited about the opportunity and felt like the interview went really well. Like, I felt like I proved my skills, that I interacted well with the guy I talked to as well as with a few people at the bar, I asked pointed questions, and just felt pretty comfortable and confidant with the way things went. But no go. It's gotten to the point where I feel like I have no gauge at all in recognizing when a job interview has gone well and when it hasn't. And I know that a lot of it is simply if I'm the most qualified person for the job, and that due to the economic climate, there are quite a lot of qualified people out there that are interested in the same positions that I am also interested in. But psychologically I still want to assume that it's something that I'm doing that's keeping me from getting these positions. I guess I feel that if it's my fault that I'm not getting anywhere, that it's also within my control to make the next time actually successful. I think I feel better with the idea that I'm simply not trying hard enough, rather then thinking about how I'm just another face in that sea of faces clawing on top of each other for that rare and elusive open position.

In any case, I should be grateful for what I do have. I've got a freelance job, which is good. And while it is a finite position, it will be another site on my resume to show potential employers. That, and I'll feel much more confidant regarding Drupal, so hopefully that will help propel me onward.

More updates on the following weekend

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:02:57 GMT

I am posting this link because I am ridiculous like that.

It's been cheap/free furniture time lately! We've got two desks: paid $20 for one, it's decent but definitely used. We got a second desk completely free off of Craigslist, it's a corner desk that all we had to do was disassemble and remove from the couple's house, it's nicer then any desk I've ever owned! Getting a microwave from someone today for $10. The larger furniture will have to wait until we have a moving truck. Speaking of moving trucks, we're getting a truck from Budget truck rental for 25% off the regular price: apparently this isn't exactly a big time of year for people to be moving. Anyhow, due to the distance we'll be driving it, they require us to have it for a week (and we're planning on doing the drive from Richmond to Denver in 3 days), so we'll hold onto it for the extra days and use it to pick up a couch and such from other unsuspecting Craigslist people. Yup.

And if none of the above makes sense, here's the dirty details: Drew and I are coming back to Richmond the 25th and leaving Monday the 28th with all of our stuff in a truck to go to the apartment in Denver (Arvada, technically) that we will have as of this Monday. Super driving party! And we get to fly on a plane on the 25th as well. I love flying on planes. Too bad it causes me to not hear properly out of my ears for several days afterwards. D'oh!

Hooray for work!

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:53:16 GMT

I'm working on a freelance job right now, building a website for a company that makes routers. I'm getting the opportunity to work with Drupal, which is useful. It's one of those programs where I wanted an excuse to learn it, but how do you learn something like that unless you have a website idea and a big pile of content? So much easier to let someone else provide the site idea and content (well, plus the dollars). In other news, I would like to own a router. They're super useful for carving pretty much anything out of pretty much any material, I'd just need to get the engineer plugin for my brain to be able to program and use it.

So the other day I came across a person looking for a sushi apprentice, and I emailed them about it to learn more. The position is located at a sushi bar at a club here, and I will hopefully be going in to talk to the guy about it this coming week. They're not specifically looking for experience making sushi (just food experience in general), but I provided images of the sushi I've made, so hopefully that will give me a boost over the competition. It would only be about 15 hours a week, but it would be at night so it wouldn't interfere with what I'm trying to do with web stuff (freelance or otherwise) in the day. Also, the club itself looks super-sweet, they get various international groups (Infected Mushroom is playing there the weekend we come back to Richmond!) and even have a Goth Night room one of the nights. So I'm hopeful about that. And, I'd actually get to learn how to make proper sushi!

Return to Richmond

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:24:28 GMT

So Drew and I got an apartment in Arvada (a town just outside of Denver). This means that we have a place to put all of our stuff, meaning we shall be returning to Richmond to get all out said stuff (along with attending Charlie & Tara's wedding). We got awesome tickets back (Jetblue, $100 total per person one way), if only the truck ride the other way would be as cheap! Anyhow, we'll be in Richmond from the evening of the 25th (Friday) to that next Monday morning. As we will be spending the majority of that time either dragging stuff down from our respective parents' attics and into a truck, and the majority of the rest of that time at a wedding, this doesn't leave much other time for socialization. So Friday, we're trying to coordinate getting dinner. The plan currently is to meet people at Elephant Thai around 7:45 - 8:00 or so (our flight gets in at 7:12, hopefully we won't be late as our poor Mountain Time stomachs will think it's 9:12 pm by then!). So, if you wanna come hang out with Drew and I and eat delicious Thai food, lemme know! Or, well, show up! Woohoo!

Monopoly City Streets: Load Time and Strategy!

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:36:37 GMT

I just happened to notice the launch of a new game today, Monopoly City Streets. It's Monopoly online using Google maps, and will run for four months. So I'm like "Yay! Another online thing to eat my time!" and go try to play. And wait for the page to load. And then I look up a street to buy. And wait for the page to load. And so on. Apparently everyone else had the same idea I did, and decided to all play this game at exactly the same time as me. Eventually I got it to work, buying a few streets, with an almost continual stream of "Our server is down" messages popping up.

In any case, I hope they fix that issue soon, as the game conceptually seems neat. You start off with 3 million, buy roads (I'm trying to buy the subdivision I'm currently living in in Fountain, CO), and then buy buildings, which earn rent with each passing day. Sometimes you get Chance cards, which either give you things to add to opponents' streets to mess them up (such as a bulldozer) or things to add to your own streets to keep them from getting messed up (such as a park). You can also buy and sell streets with other people. There's a whole lot of available roads right now, it being the first day and all, but I think it will be interesting to see how the game changes as all of the roads get bought up.

So I'm trying to figure out a decent strategy. So far, I can't see any reason to buy any building other then the absolute cheapest. It costs $50,000 and gives $25,000 in rent. All of the other buildings give less then half their initial cost in rent, and the cost/rent ratio only gets worse with the more expensive buildings. When all of the roads run out, there would be good reason to upgrade to more expensive buildings (as it'll be much harder to buy roads at that point), but I'm not sure if there's any point to getting the more expensive buildings at that point, unless they have additional benefits that I haven't figured out yet. There are definitely people on there already with far more money then I have any idea how to earn within 24 hours of the game starting, so I'm sure there's plenty I still need to learn.

I'm also curious to see if alliances sprout up as well, much as they seem to in other online games. There's the ability to have friend groups (not quite the same as alliances, as you can be bastards to your friends). Incidentally, I'm on there as ptocheia, if anyone wants to come play and be in my friend group!

Happy Salami Day!!!

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:52:18 GMT

Today is indeed Salami Day, be sure to eat some delicious meats to celebrate!

Quick and exciting game!

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:56:30 GMT

If you have 5 minutes to spare, you should totally go play this rather exciting game where you run and jump a bunch!

http://www.adamatomic.com/canabalt/
(or http://www.adamatomic.com/canabalt/mega/ if you have a widescreen monitor, for bonus excitement!)

Ramblings and such

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:44:39 GMT

I am downloading some Learn Hindi stuff. Once I have some spare time and spare brain space, I think it would be neat/useful to pick up some Hindi. That, and to get back into picking up the Spanish again. And maybe try to revive the dregs of my forgotten high school French. I would like to be able to plug things into the back of my neck and upload them, for greater efficiency. Then I could also learn Kung Fu.

Job hunt is still going as it has been. I am desperately trying to cram as much Cakephp as possible into my head, which is super fun. I also like cramming as much regular cake as possible into my head. If only I could combine the two.

If you have not seen Up, you should go see it immediately, as it is excellent and will make you cry.

I wish August was not ending, as I have a slight dread of the impending fall/winter. Part of this is because a large number of my warmer clothing is still in Richmond. Part of this is because of the shorter days, and how I desperately crave Vitamin D to be happy. My fear of the cold is balanced by my excitement at actually getting some decent snow for a change out here.

I've started using my netbook as a pseudo-kindle. I've got bunches of .pdf files on there, and it's super useful for reading in a car at night. I keep a text file to remember which pages I'm on in which books. It is also super useful for those lonely nights when I desperately want to play 92372034823 versions of scrabble or assorted games involving Tux the Penguin. Good times.

The best way to remind yourself of all of the things you don't know is to go job-hunting

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 03:16:01 GMT

Or rather, the best way is to fail at job-hunting. I've got quite a long list of things I desperately wish I had time to learn, all things that various recruiters or employers were looking for that I had a little of, but not quite enough. And while this is definitely a motivating factor in learning things (my javascript library knowledge is liberally expanding due to job hunt influence), it can be a demotivating factor in terms of becoming overwhelmed by all of the things you do not yet know. That, and you start to feel that no matter how much you learn, you'll always just be a little bit short of the amount of knowledge other people want you to have before they'll hire you. The economic climate only helps this (or hurts this, rather), being that for every job available out there, there exist approximately 892374892374 applicants, many of them who would be overqualified for the job in saner economic times. I do feel bad for those who have recently graduated college, and lack experience, as it must be particularly hard on them. In any case, I am trying to be positive about things, and view the 28372837448923 things I do not know as exciting opportunities to learn.

In other news, I've downloaded some CakePHP action. I'm not really sure what I'm getting into yet, but if it is to php what jquery has been to javascript for me, maybe it will help me more efficiently do some things on writaur.com that I've been meaning to get done.

On a final note, I would really like to go swimming with some stingrays. And they would like to go swimming with me as well. No really, they do, just ask them!

Random signs from around Colorado

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:45:41 GMT

Yay, photo post! I realized I had several good signs that were in dire need of being dumped onto the internet for all to see:

Magical Deoderant Plus Bonus Car Question!

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:44:44 GMT

First off, I would like to announce that my underarms smell like pina colada. I got a "tropical island" scented deodorant, and it makes me want to drink whenever I smell it.

So I drive a Kia Rio, and it has a 96 hp and a 28.1 LB / HP ratio. While I am not fully sure what these figures mean, I know for a fact that my car was much happier driving around Richmond then it is driving around in the foothills of the Rockies It struggles up hills and it's often really hard to make it to the speed limit (albeit, the speed limit out here is often 75, but still). I'm thinking that for my next car, I'll probably want to get something with a better engine. And then Drew and I were trying to figure out fuel efficiency for such things, and Google proved no help. So here's a question for anyone that knows about cars: would having a car with a higher horsepower give me better fuel efficiency for driving on hills? I'm sure that, if nothing else, it would make going up the hills more pleasant. However, I'm not really sure of the connection between higher horsepower (or a higher ratio, for that matter) and if you use less gas because of that (or more gas, for that matter). Or if the change in gas usage would be negligible. Any advice is appreciated!

Originally published at Ptocheia.net.

Free Underwear!

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:15:06 GMT

So in the past several weeks, two separate free underwear coupons have arrived from Victoria's Secret. Well, technically they said "free panty", but I think "panty" sounds kind of sissy, so I say "underwear". In any case, I used both today, bringing Drew along to satisfy the "one coupon per customer" requirement. The coupon also included a "$10 off" dealio for some bra line of theirs, but as they do not carry my size, this was a non-issue. So I got a black pair and a weird pastel blue paisley pair. This is because most of their underwear is ugly. I just don't go in for the faded earth tones and pastels with random teeny patterns thing. So I bolstered the freebies with a pack o' Hanes from the Wall of Mart, in nice glowing pinks. I appreciate tacky underwear.

Job hunt is still up in the air at this point. I just took a PHP test that I may have passed with flying colors, so hopefully that will get me to the interview step with a company in Denver I'm looking at. We shall see. Drew's looking around at various banks and various military places to make good use of his newly gotten Poli-sci degree + globs of BofA & Cap1 experience.

Movies! We've been watching entirely too many lately, some better then others. If you have a chance (and especially if you enjoy war movies) you need to go see The Hurt Locker, as it is excellent. It was only showing at independent theatres, but recently got picked up by some major theatre chain or another. I need to see if there is a dollar theatre out here someplace, as all of the movies I actually want to see arrived in one glob. At some point, I must see Bruno, District 9, and Ponyo! Albeit, I will generally have movies I want to see that I'll just eventually see on DVD, or I'll just forget they existed.

I justed downed an apple strudel. Satisfying and bloaty!

Clearwire!

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:31:53 GMT

So I have this two-year contract with Clearwire for high-speed internet, and I managed to move with 6 months of it left. Unfortunately, they charge a horrendous cancellation fee to the tune of $180. In the effort of avoiding having to pay this, I decided to pass off the modem and account to someone else to finish off. I thought that person was going to be one of Drew's cousins, but as he has gone completely AWOL and has not answered his phone the last 28489234 times anyone has tried to get ahold of him, it's time to try giving the modem to someone else. The service is around $38 a month, and the contract expires 01-10-2010. I'll give the modem away for free and cover the service for August if you (or anyone you know in Richmond) will take the contract off my hands!