Stealing A List
Jhianna posted a list on her blog, and I’m fresh out of ideas for my blog. I’m going steal her idea for a post today. I feel so lame about stealing an idea, but I’m just out of things to write about for now.
Anyways…. Here’s my list of things that you may or may not have known about me.
1. I used to skateboard back in high school, and shortly after high school. I was pretty good at street skating, but only somewhat decent at half pipe. I had too much respect for gravity to do the really big tricks on the ramps.
2. I used to have two ferrets: Mischief and Trouble. Mischief was more of Kiara’s ferret as she had Mischief before I arrived on the scene. Trouble was more my ferret since we got him for me. Trouble was deaf, but we managed to work around it by flicking lights on and off to get his attention. It’s amazing how trainable ferrets are for the minor things. They’re both in Heaven now, and I miss them from time-to-time.
3. I’ve been programming since I was 7 years old. Through the years, In no particular order, I’ve progressed through BASIC, Pascal, C, C++, PHP, Perl, Java, HTMl, Javascript, and shell scripting
4. I’ve tried marijuana a few times. Didn’t like it. It made me nervous and paranoid. The high that I got wasn’t any different than alcohol, so I avoid the stuff. Plus, my father is a pot-smoker, and he’s done nothing with his life. I don’t want to fall into that same pit. It could be unrelated to pot smoking, but I’m not going to take that chance.
5. I brew my own beer and wine. I’ve been lazy lately. I currently have a batch of Cabernet going, but I REALLY need to rack it into the secondary. I’m almost afraid that it’s gone bad. We’ll see when I bottle and drink it.
6. I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragon since I was 10, and many of the best friends that I’ve ever had, I’ve met through role playing.
7. I used to play hockey on a regular basis. Since I’ve started school, I haven’t had much time for hockey. I still have my gear, and I hope to get back into it someday.
8. Even though I hold a job as a software engineer, I have no college degree. It’s all self-taught skills that I use at work. I’m currently attending Regis University in an attempt to get my degree in Computer Information Systems. I have about two years to go before I graduate.
9. My arm was almost removed from my body in a nasty car wreck on 8-8-88. Yep. All 8′s. It took a great doctor about 3 hours to put me back together. I was in a cast for 2 months, and I still have lingering problems with the arm to this day. I’ll probably always have problems with it. It was my first experience with drinking and driving (I wasn’t driving that night), and I learned my lesson (the hard way) about that level of stupidity.
10. I was mostly raised by my grandparents. I stayed every summer with them as a child, and when I turned 12, I moved in with them full-time. I lived with them until I was 18, and moved out on my own. I sometimes claimed to have moved out of my mother’s house when I was 12 because it’s the truth. I just say it that way to someone’s attention. I’m tricky that way.
Got A Guitar
I was probably supposed to wait until I had been smoke-free for a month or so before getting a guitar, but when I went to Guitar Center, they told me that the sale ends Sunday. I also found out that they only run the sale every 6 months or so. I couldn’t help myself, so I got the guitar!
I was originally looking at the Epiphone starter kit, but I found a Squire starter kit that had a better guitar for the same price. I picked up the guitar starter kit. It came with the guitar, a tiny little amp, an electronic tuner, a cable, and a soft-sided “gig bag”.
I also picked up a guitar stand, and a book/CD/DVD set that is supposed to teach me how to play the guitar.
I cracked everything open last night, and got it all setup. I dicked around with the guitar a little bit, but even my untrained ear could tell that it was out of tune. I need a 9-volt battery for the tuner. We had one, but it was very old, very bloated, and ready to burst. That’s a sure sign that the battery is not safe to use, so I threw it away. I’m going to pick up a battery when I go into town today, so that I can tune my new guitar.
The starter pack that I bought came with a book on how to learn guitar. That’s nice of them. It would have been nice if they would have told me about that on the box because the book/CD/DVD set that I bought is the same book. Exact same pages, same photos, same diagrams, and same songs. I haven’t had a chance to check out the CD or DVD just yet, but I’ll get to it later on.
Now to learn how to play the damn thing.
PS: The not smoking is going fairly well. I’m using the patches, and they’re controlling the physical cravings. I still have the mental thing to break first. At work, I’ll get to a point where I finish a task. I used to reward myself with a smoke. Can’t do that anymore, so I get up and walk around the floor saying hi to people before heading back to my desk to continue working. It’s not quite the same, but it seems to be working.
Smoking Or Playing Guitar
I got a flyer in the mail last night from Guitar Center. I’ve been on their mailing list for a few years because I bought my little brother some guitar stuff a few years back for Christmas. I normally glance at them, and then toss them out. This time, however, they have a starter pack that includes in the guitar, a practice amp, a case, a DVD of some sort, and what looks to be an effects pedal in the photo. The price comes out to $200 for the whole thing.
I’m seriously thinking about buying it.
However, Kiara doesn’t want me to get a guitar, but I made her a deal that she can’t refuse. If I quit smoking, then she’ll let me get a guitar. I think it’s a good deal. I need to quit smoking, and I’ve always found messing around with a guitar to be relaxing. Maybe the relaxation that I get from smoking will be replaced by the relaxation that I get from plucking on the strings.
Today is my first day smoke-free. I bought more nicotine patches last night, and I put one on this morning. So far I’ve had minor cravings, but nothing too bad. I think I can make it through this day, and I hope the rest of the week. I’ve always heard that the first week is the hardest to make it through. I’ll keep you posted on how well things work out for me.
Now to call Guitar Center to see how long this sale goes on (the flyer doesn’t say oddly enough.) and to see how many of them that they have.
Shitty Day
Just as I was going to bed last night, my on-call work cell phone went off. I won’t bore you with the details, but I didn’t get to sleep until a little before 1 AM this morning. I didn’t actually get to sleep until sometime after 1:30 because I couldn’t get my brain to stop thinking about work.
The cell phone went off again this morning shortly after 7:00 AM. A code push that I had done yesterday fixed some problems, but created one other one. Dammit. I was in no mood to lose an hour’s sleep working before it was time to leave the house at 8:00 AM, so I rolled back over and went to sleep after telling the person on the phone that I would fix it as soon as I got into the office.
I get into the office to discover that the problems that I was told were going to be taken care of were still not fixed. Double-Dammit. I finally got in touch with the right person to get things taken care of. He said that they are fixed, but I have yet to see evidence of it. I’m stuck here at the keyboard checking for incoming files that are not appearing, and there’s nothing that I can do but sit and wait.
There is another problem that we currently have, and I’ve tracked it down as far as I can. I’ve emailed the appropriate people to get things resolved, but I’m still waiting for a response.
What a way to start a long day after a really short night. If this continues, I’m going to drink myself stupid tonight… which probably isn’t a good idea since I’m on call.
Time to head back to the grind.
PS: I fixed my code problem that created issues for my co-workers that I did yesterday. It’s not pretty, but it works.
OOTS Adventure Game
I bought the Order of the Stick Adventure Game last Tuesday, and we got together to play it Saturday night. We had Bobo, Kolvedic, Craing, Jhianna, Jasmine, and myself playing. I had read the quick start rules (actually, it was a comic, which was kind of funny), but that didn’t really give me a firm grasp on the rules. I read the rules while we were setting up the game, and we had to refer to them quite often. Fortunately, Bobo is a quick learner, and he helped with the rules.
We played the shortest game possible (supposed to run 3-4 hours,) but it took us close to 6 hours to finish the game up. I think this was mainly because we were unfamiliar with the rules. It didn’t help that the rules were a little convoluted, and hard to follow. About 2 hours into the game Kolvedic gave up on it and walked away. I don’t blame him one bit. I was about ready to do the same, but since I had shelled out $40 on the game, I wanted to see at least one game finished.
I had a hard time killing monsters without help. I was playing Elan the bard, and he really sucks in combat. The schticks that I started out with made me a great support character, but it wasn’t until the end that I really got to kill something to earn more schticks. By that time, it was really too late for me to try to win the game.
Bobo ended up killing Xykon the lich, and the dungeon started to collapse, so we all ran to the dungeon entrance (per the rules.) We all made it out of the dungeon, and counted up our points. I came in last (but only 4 points out of the lead, somehow.) Jhianna was next, then Craing. Bobo and Jasmine tied for first place, but then Jasmine recounted her Loot, and she came out 1 point ahead of Bobo. Go Jasmine!
When I got home with the game, I threw it into the closet with the rest of our board games, and it will probably stay there until the end of time. If I’m going to get together with my friends to play a card game, it will either be Munchkin or Illuminati. However, I will say that the game was amusing all the way through to the end. Rich Burlew did a wonderful job with keeping the comedy in the game. I was kind of worried about that. Regardless, the game is barely above average, and will probably not be played again by this group of people.
Running Dry
Life hasn’t been too exciting for me lately, so I’m running out of things to talk about here. I still intend on posting at least once a day because I’m trying to stay in mental shape for my true writing duties. I’m not sure if it’s a case of writer’s block that is cramping my abilities, or if there really isn’t anything to write about. I avoid posting topics about my home life, or my work life. That doesn’t leave much else. I suppose I could write a post or three about my D&D games, but I tend to forget details. This makes things very hard for writing about those. I’m not a big video game player, so I can’t really post about video games, or anything like that.
I’m really not sure what to post about next, but I’ll think of something. Maybe something exciting will happen this weekend. We’ll see….
Naked Girls
Here’s a dream that I had last week….
I woke up on a mattress in a huge pile of pillows of various size. The pillows were all long tubes of cloth stuffed with filling, but there were tiny little ones, lots of medium sized ones, and a few large ones. They were very comfortable, and I enjoyed laying in them.
Then the door to the room that I was in, and I realized that I was in a girls’ locker room back in my high school. I never entered the room in real life, so I’m not sure how I knew that it was the girls’ locker room. Anyway, there was a naked girl walking into the room. I’m not sure who she was since I didn’t recognize her from my history.
I suddenly realized that I was also naked in the bed of pillows. I was so afraid that I would be seen naked in the girls’ locker room, and be called out as a pepping tom, a pervert, or some other horrible thing. I was already an outcast in high school, and I didn’t need to give the upper crust a new excuse to treat me badly.
As the girl approached, I realized that if I couldn’t see her, then she couldn’t see me. So I closed my eyes. Yep. It worked. Even though my eyes were closed, I could tell that she couldn’t see me. I sneaked a quick peek out from half-closed eyes to see if she was still around. She was, but she was walking out of the shower with a towel around her body. Now that she wasn’t naked, she couldn’t see me anymore, so I opened my eyes all the way and admired the view.
I watched as she slowly got dressed, and left. As soon as she was gone, another girl, also naked, walked into the locker room, but she was not alone. This time a whole group of girls walked in. I was mortified again, so I closed my eyes in an attempt to remain hidden.
I soon found that I had fallen asleep in the pillows that were very comfortable. Suddenly, someone was calling my name out. I didn’t want to acknowledge them because I was afraid of getting busted in the girls’ locker room. The voice was familiar, and finally it pierced through my sleep who it was.
It was Craing. He was calling through the bedroom door in an effort to wake me up. Kiara had left for work early, and Shinto was taking the week off. That meant that Craing and I were on our own for carpooling that day. I had slept through my alarms, and Craing was trying to wake me up.
The dream quickly faded from my mind as I threw myself out of bed to get ready for the day. It wasn’t until later in the day when I remembered what I had dreamed, and I had to get it down before it faded from my mind all the way.
Election Results
I’m fairly happy with the way things went for this election. Most of the candidates that I voted for won. The only notable exception to this is that the Democrats won the gubernatorial race for my state. I’m not unhappy about that, but the guy I picked did win.
The voting went the way that I wanted it to in regards to amendments and referendums. This makes me very happy because there were some really good things that vote for, and some really bad things to vote against.
I finally found the local results in regards to a few petitions that were on the ballot. The three that I cared about were shot down. This upsets me a little bit. The ballot issue would have raised taxes to pay for a secondary high school in my area to alleviate overcrowding in the current high school. If we don’t spend our money on our children, then we have no future. Anytime there is a ballot issue that may raise taxes in order to spend money on the students, I’m all for it. I think these three were shot down because they were a little open-ended and poorly worded. People were afraid that there would be abuses by the politicians in control of the money. Maybe they’re right. I don’t know.
I’m just glad that it’s all over, so that I can go back to watching the news again without being bombarded by all of the horrible political ads that deluge evening TV just before elections.
Election Day
Before going to work this morning, I stopped by the local elementary school to exercise my right as a citizen of the United States by voting. The ballot was especially long this year. There were quite a few amendments, referendums, judges up for approval, and a handful of state positions open for election.
There wasn’t a line when I got there a little after 8 AM, so we got our ballots very quickly. Then we hit the little booths that are setup for the height of a midget. I’m glad I didn’t have to stand there any longer than I did because my back started to hurt after bending over as much as I did to fill in the blanks.
I did have the option of using an electronic voting machine instead of the standard paper ballots. I’ve heard so many horrible things about the electronic voting machines that I opted to not use it. I like the paper trail that I leave behind when I vote with a paper ballot. It’s somehow reassuring that if the scan-tron machine goes haywire and loses all votes, then they can re-run the paper through the scanner and re-tally the votes.
I voted for most amendments and all but one of the referendums. There were some hot topics on this year’s ballot, so I won’t try to start a flame war by posting which way I voted.
When I vote for people that are running for office, I always do some research on the people. I ignore the stupid political ads because they are mostly worthless when it comes to trying to make a logical decision. I don’t affiliate myself with any particular political party, but in the past when I’ve taken tests to pigeon hole me into a party, I always come out Libertarian. Go figure. I did my research and picked my people this year, and all but one of them were Republican. Maybe I’m becoming more Republican in my old age. Who knows?
As always, this voting experience was a very good one. No lines. Clearly marked ballot. Good pen to mark the ballot. No wait to shove my ballot into the machine. All-in-all was a good thing.
Identity Theft, Part Three
Once again, I’m a victim of potential identity theft through no fault of my own. I was notified last week that a government computer was stolen that contained personal information on over a million employees that work in Colorado. I never gave them my information. I never wanted them to have my information. I never even knew about them until last week.
I was part of a government database of new hires in Colorado. It was created to track down people that own child support. I don’t have a child. I’ve never had a child. I’ve never owed anyone any form of child support. I shouldn’t even be on the computer that was stolen.
This article states that they don’t think that the theft was motivated by identity theft. Bullshit. Why steal the computer if you don’t want what is on it? I doubt this computer will end up in a pawn shop. I’m hoping that the person that stole the computer will format it, installed Windows XP, and use it to play World of Warcraft or something like that. If they know what they have (which I’m sure they know by now) then millions of people are poised for having their lives ruined.
I’ve already posted twice [here and here] about identity theft, and the punishments that people should be given for losing vital information. My stance on this has become more firm now that this has happened to me twice in the span of 3 months. If someone else loses my data every month, then, eventually, someone will abuse what has come into their hands.
I think it’s time for me to write my congressmen (state and federal) to see if they can do anything about this ever-growing problem. If you feel safe and secure enough to not write, then do nothing. However, I guarantee that you’re not safe. If you have a job. If you have a Social Security number. If you own a house. If you have student loans. If you have children. If you have any form of bank account or credit card. If you have any of these things, then your financial future is at risk. Do something about it. If you’re not sure how to contact your legislature about issues, leave me a comment with your zip code. I’ll find the right people for you contact. I’ll do the leg work if you’ll do the writing.
