This site will look better in a browser that supports Web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.

Archive of October, 2006

1993
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
Su	M	Tu	W	Th	F	Sa
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31
November
December
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012

Creeeeeeeak

October 30, 2006:

I helped a friend move this weekend. There weren't many people involved, so it took most of the day Saturday and a little bit of Sunday morning.

Now, I just came to the realization that I'm in horrible shape so there was more work involved than I thought there would be. (As a side note, I'm notoriously poor at guaging how long something will take to complete. Hauling boxes and furniture, driving somewhere new, projects at work; it doesn't matter. Whatever time estimate I give you, triple it.)

My arm and leg muscles are tired and sore, and I actually managed to tweak the grip muscles in my right forearm somehow. And I'm only 30. One of the people who helped me move the last time was (I believe) 38 years old while schlepping my crap up two filghts of stairs. Dude was probably in his early 50s for a couple days afterwards, if how I feel right now is any indication.

At 30 years and a few days, is it too soon for me to start saying I'm too old for this shit?

Cue Sam Kinison Impression In 3... 2... 1...

October 27, 2006:

Well, I took a brief trip into emo yesterday. Sorry about that; I'll try to provide a little bit of rage before I'm done here to make up for it.

Usually, work gets busy when my life is calm and life sometimes messes with me when the workload is light. This is nice, all things considered, since I can use one to escape the other when the need arises. Well, work is definitely busy now: I've got one client I'm basically spending all day on while I punt many other things away, annoying the other people to no end. I don't like to make people wait, but the client I'm working on is the one paying the bills at the moment, so what they wants they gets.

I've been punching out "early" lately to keep from getting completely burned out. The problem is that home isn't much better.

The car, a.k.a. The Albatross, is acting up again, not two months after I dropped a grand on a new head gasket and spark plugs. The symptoms are basically the same as they were before, so my hunch is they fouled something up. Given that every time I've been there someone's come in to complain about shoddy service I'm not holding out hope that they'll do things right the second time. I'll have to wake up early and see if I can't channel Grandpa Sullivan a little bit.

So I may need a new car sooner than I thought. I'll still be leasing, but I may wind up with a new Civic instead of an Accord. No big issue; I'll only have to deal with it for three years. The problem will be financing.

I still have about $3000 worth of debts from the time I was out of work (that would be March 2002 through April 2003 if you're scoring at home (or even if you're alone)). With the IRS off my back (I screwed up my 2004 taxes and owed them a couple thousand bucks) I can pay those down quicker now, but it'll still take a couple months.

The car may die in a couple weeks if my luck continues.

Add to that the dipshits at Verizon. You may be aware that my internet connection (and land line now) are through the cable company, so you may be wondering what possible problem Verizon has with me. Well, it appears that they forgot to credit my account after they accepted my money for my last bill back in April of last year.

They sent a collection agency after me in July, more than a year after I concluded my business with them. I wrote back informing the agency that Verizon was mistaken, and to please verify that they had sent me to collections in error. I never heard back, so I considered the matter over and done with.

See, I've never been sent to collections before. I didn't know that I needed to double-check on the idiots.

So that's my anger at Verizon: They took my money, didn't credit me with it, and have been shitting all over my credit report for the last year and a half. I found this out when I was denied credit. And it's a good thing, because otherwise I'd have found out when I tried to get my lease agreement.

This is easy enough to fix: I called Verizon and found out where to fax the cancelled check. Then I called up National City (the bank the check was drawn on) to get a copy of the check. The lady I spoke with told me I'd have to get a statement first to get the exact date the check cleared, and that I'd have to deal with the bank branch directly since they have no way to charge me the $5.00 fee. At that point the branch was closed (4:00 -- yay, bankers' hours) so I called them this morning.

And instead of getting another helpful lady I got a heinous bitch. When I tried to explain the situation -- namely that I can't remember the account number 18 months after the fact -- she refused to help me at all, even considering that I had every other piece of information I could need.

Another call to the national customer service line armed me with more information and I was able to make my second call to the branch go more smoothly. I've already sent them a check to cover the fee and they'll send me the statement so I can send them another check so they can send me the cancelled check so I can fax it to Verizon so they can fix their error.

I'll be invoicing them for the $7.00 it's costing me to fix their fuck-up; what do you think the odds of them paying it are?

But until that happens I'll have a "serious delinquency" on my report which will affect my ability to do anything credit-related. All because some high-school dropout punched the wrong button more than a year ago.

Now if you'll excuse me, I hear a Guinness calling my name.

So Pathetic

October 26, 2006:

Last week I decided to see just what kind of shape I'm in. I opted for the old standard, push-ups. I know I'm in lousy shape; I wasn't expecting more than 10 or 15.

I managed eight. And they weren't "proper" push-ups, either, as my back wasn't straight. Apparently my back muscles have atrophied a bit, too. Well, that was disappointing.

But that wasn't the end of it; I still had to work my way down to pathetic. That was Saturday. After I got back from the Acme I put on my suit...

... Well, sort of. It turns out that my suit doesn't fit any more. The trousers wouldn't fasten, and the coat wouldn't button. So I attended the wedding and reception wearing an open suit coat and jeans. Just puttin' the ass back into class, I was.

So I'm an utter weakling and my clothes don't fit me any more. I'm 60 pounds overweight with a body-mass index in the "super fat-ass" range. I'd be angry if this wasn't my own fault. As it is, it's just really fucking depressing.

Dumb Things To Do

October 24, 2006:

I used to be able to drink. That has apparently changed.

After a quick Five Guys burger, I drove up to Cape May on Friday for Dave's wedding. I checked into the hotel, rested for a little while, then headed to the bar to meet up with everyone else as they came in. At that point I hadn't had any food in about 7 hours. That should have been a warning.

After a very strong gin and tonic, a good extra-dry martini, and a Maker's Mark on the rocks, I was feeling pretty good. Probably a little too good, as I seem to recall getting a bit loud as the evening wore on. I coasted for a while, then made my way back to my own hotel. I fell asleep without the room spinning. I thought that was a good thing.

I thought wrong.

It's been quite a while since I woke up as sick as I did on Saturday morning. After being ill a couple times I drove up to the Acme to get some ginger ale, which I then failed to keep down. Things were not looking good for little ol' me.

I made it through a couple slightly-more-than-a-burps, then passed on the hors d'oeuvres as I turned a lovely shade of green. Making my way into the reception hall, I was caught in a dilemma: I was still feeling not-at-all right, but I was also really hungry since I hadn't eaten in a day.

After a few tentative nibbles of salad and a few sips of water (which also hadn't stayed down earlier) it seemed like I was in good shape again. I finished off the meal in short order, having to give the stomach a couple minutes to calm down sometimes, but mostly feeling much better.

So following that horrible morning and early afternoon, I went to dinner feeling refreshed...

...and split a pitcher of Guinness with Bill. Apparently I'm not quite capable of learning.

Triple X

October 23, 2006:

I'm now 30. I'm pretty sure that makes me old.

I also got to add a couple states (Delaware and New Jersey) to my visit map and do stupid things, but that's tomorrow's entry. Meantime, I think I'll have some scotch when I get home tonight.

Weekend

October 20, 2006:

I'm leaving town at noon today to drive up to Cape May, NJ, to go to Dave's wedding on Saturday. That makes the reception, also on Saturday, two days before my 30th birthday. I fully intend to be dragged into my thirties kicking and screaming. Or, as I've told a couple people, staggering and slurring. Either one works.

This Is Why I Got Rid of My Phone

October 16, 2006:

A few weeks ago Cox offered to lower my bill if I let them give me phone service. Seemed like a good idea; I like spending less money for things.

They came by and installed the converter box (I'm guessing it's VoIP), gave me a new phone number, and went on their way. I let a couple people know about the new number; mostly people who live in the 703 area code and would save long-distance charges and people who call me on weekdays when it would use up my cell minutes.

That works out to be three people. Not exactly worth getting a new cordless phone for, but it's nice to have as a backup if I let my cell's batteries die.

In the last 50 hours I've been called by seven telemarketers and gotten four wrong numbers. I've (belatedly) added myself to the do-not-call registry (complete with b0rken secure certificate) and will now have to wait out the ~~blood-sucking, human-chaff-hiring con artists~~ telemarketers for a few weeks until the change circulates.

Bad-Ass

October 09, 2006:

Just how good is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter? Good enough to see the rovers and the tracks they leave.

Oh, The Delicious Irony

October 05, 2006:

Part of Countdown's show is a segment called "Worst Person in the World". Wednesday evening's winners were a mother and father who want a book banned from their daughter's high-school curriculum. Now, that's dumb and all too common, but what makes this particular dose of attempted censorship so fun is the book they want to ban: Farenheit 451. Something tells me they're not exactly familiar with the contents of the book...