FWD:

Ignore this....

It's that Birthday time of year again!

Every year, around this time, it starts to heat up. What do I mean? I mean birthday's of course. Yesterday was my grandfather's birthday. He's 74...note the significance of the 7 and the 4 on his plate. Tomorrow is my grandmother's. The day after THAT is my dad's. Three more days after that is MINE! See how hectic it is?

Anyway, I went to a job interview today and I have high hopes for this position, but for now, I'll just have to pray and hope. Wish me luck my dear faithful reader(s).

Oh man....

Sorry I have posted in awhile. Things have been kind of crappy around here. I've been jobless for about 15 days now. It really sucks. I was getting into the swing of things and starting to get used to going to work everyday and now I just can't seem to find another job. It's aggravating! All the damn tech support jobs are overseas or require helpdesk experience, but I can't get into a helpdesk to get the experience.

Anyway, I'm looking for a job, and the job hunt sucks, so I'll try to post more, but don't count on it too much.

Hmm...I wonder what the problem could be?

This computer would boot up, run fine for about two minutes and then the screen would freak out. Replaced the video card and letting it run overnight and we'll see how it fares tomorrow.

Resident Evil: Extinction

I went and saw Resident Evil 3 tonight. It was pretty good, all in all and definitely is an awesome zombie movie. I'm a big fan of trilogies and movies that add on the experience of the first movie, such as Spiderman 2 was better than Spiderman because they didn't have to tell the backstory of Spiderman, they could get down to the nitty gritty story.

Resident Evil is different because there have been several games made around this particular storyline. Umbrella Corp. is at it again, except this time, they're the only ones left and most of the world is a zombie. Umbrella Corp. is hiding in underground bunkers and testing on the undead population. Alice, from the first two films and a smattering of others from the second film, make an appearance and add some popularity to the story. The first Resident Evil departed from the games in that the opening scene of the game was the closing scene of the movie. The second was closer to the game, but still deviated somewhat from it. What's interesting to me is that this is the first time we see wildlife being affected by the t-virus. Crows are the villains in this, as well as your usual undead shuffling along. Crows, in fact, are responsible for a delicious slaughter not unlike the one done by Alfred Hitchcock. I find this interesting because normally, where there is a dead body, there are some types of varmints feeding on them. In a major city, I venture that pigeons would be the undead fare, but out in the wild, I would expect to see undead cats, dogs (even though these have been prevalent in all 3 movies, they've all been dobermans), birds, ferrets, skunks, etc.

The movie does enjoy the typical horror film scare, where the camera pulls in close to the actor and then bam, an undead or an AI is behind the character, or in one scene, hanging over the actor. I'm still curious how he got out of that particular entanglement. The movie has some interesting costumes as well. Alice wears a one piece pajama? and a tank top, and some very interesting boots, as well as a trench coat. The film listed her clothing company (I believe) as the provider of her costumes so that may be why they are so revealing. I'm just curious why all 3 have to have her naked. This annoys me and it seems to be a shout out to the geeks in the basement rather than an artistic take on the story. It's worse even, than the 300 scene with the doped up adolescent girl and her nipples bared all for the world (and the pedophile lepers...whatever they were). At least the nudity was contained, for the most part, but it was still there, and still bothers me. I'm all for naked women, but Milla Jovovich has nothing up top. I wouldn't want to see her with double-d's either, because that wouldn't match her body style and would make her almost appear like Seven of Nine's figure e.g., huge bosom, rail thin arms and legs.

Clothing (or lack thereof) rant aside, this was a good movie. The way the Doctor becomes true evil is interesting to say the least and his right arm would make a hentai porn proud. All in all, I give this movie 3 and a half stars out of 4. It would have gotten four if certain people hadn't died, who shall remain nameless, since I don't believe in spoilers, but alas, I'm distressed at the loss of two particular people, mainly because they were rather comedic and entertaining, both in the second movie and in this one.

My new coaster....

In case it's too fuzzy to read (which it is), this is my new coaster, an internet explorer 4 for windows 95 cd. Yay me!

Like that gas mileage?

That's a 12 gallon tank (reserve is about a gallon). I normally put just at 11 gallons in when I fill up.

Boy, this is funny....

Co-worker was setting up a laptop for a user that we had purchased from HP. It came with Vista Business on it and he set about wiping the drive and installing XP, since we have software that can only run on XP (Cisco call manager, etc). He starts the boot process and it takes 3 and a half hours for Vista to finish loading everything and show a desktop. Then he restarts, and the XP install stalls because it can't find the hard drive. Then, as he's trying once more to correct that issue, the os locks up because it can't load the scheduler. Talk about annoying. I'll upload a pic of the screen when it locked up here in a minute.

Notice something wrong?

Funny

Coworker was trying to put the side of a Dell 3U server back on and was hammering at it. Looked at it a second, turned it over and slid the side back on and screwed it down perfectly....I love my job.

Before the move...

I had light, and a screwdriver. Now I have no light, but I have plenty of screwdrivers!

Well, doesn't that suck....

The mechanic that pulled this tire off asked me how I made it to the garage. Little does he know that I've been driving for over a month with the tire at or getting to that condition.

Bored at Grapefest.

Sarah showing just how bored she is at Grapefest where we were waiting to get to volunteering. Grapefest, by the way, is for the citizens of Grapevine to get merrily drunk and the wineries in the area to push their wines to be the number 1!

Train car at Grapefest

Office desktop

Bree and Allie looking bored

The day of days...

Tomorrow marks the day I officially entered the United States Marine Corps. Technically, it was Tuesday, September 3 1996 because the second was Labor Day. What a long night that was. It's been 11 years since that day and I don't regret it at all.

A point of note to some people.

If you leave a comment on my blog and I have no idea who you are, please leave me some way of replying to your comment. That way, I can thank you for your comment and see who is viewing my page. If you don't leave me a way to contact you, well, that sucks for me, I guess.

GAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!! WHY! Why must it be so difficult?!?!?!



Just kidding honey, I love you!

Interesting.

I like this quote.

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.
- Frank Zappa

A few things.

I know my post from Sunday only has a blank line in it. It's got a video of Evanescence playing in it and I have to figure out how to get it from my phone to my computer.

Anyway, Sarah and I were driving around the lake today and we pulled into a previously flooded park area to look at the damage and as we were driving around it, she saw a snake with a fish. We turned around and watched the snake (a cottonmouth) try to pull the fish into the foliage surrounding the road. The cottonmouth pulled it about halfway and then gave up. It was really awesome watching nature work. The fish weighed more than the snake, but it was dead, so the snake was having to pull really hard, coiling it's body up and then pulling backwards. I think it got scared of us because it dropped the fish and went back into the grass. The first thing we did when we got home was look up snakes of Texas and it was definitely a young cottonmouth, with a dark pattern and kind of greenish and a big white mouth. This is the link to the page we looked at and it definitely looked like the snake. Also, you could tell where the water from the flooding had been up to, cause the ground was a pale white and green color and there was plenty of moss everywhere.

Job situation is getting kind of desperate. I interviewed for an IT place in Dallas on Tuesday and I'm still waiting to hear back. Supposedly they really liked me but they want to interview others so they get an idea of what they're looking for, or something like that. My old employer called me and I basically told him to go screw.

Crappy video from the concert

Even more interesting

I have two job offers on the table. One is a driving job, dallas to austin and the other is for a headhunter, contract to hire type deal. No matter what, I got a job waiting for me somewhere, which makes me feel better.

Went swimming today at my fiance's Mom's house, which made me feel like a little kid again. I love swimming, and just being in the water. I definitely have to get back into it.

My uncle came down because my grandfather was in the hospital getting an aneurysm fixed. I really enjoy when my uncle comes down because we get along so well, talking about computers, audio, car stereo equipment and sometimes, even politics. He was driving home and his fuel pump went out on him in Arkansas. He left yesterday and just got home today. Glad you made it home!

Interesting times...

Haven't posted in awhile. Sorry about that. I'll get more regular. Work everyday tends to take the creative juices out of me.

We have a "pet" spider in out front doorway. We've named her Charlotte, and she's a brown spider, most likely the common north american house spider. She's fairly big, maybe a quarter in size and her web is unobtrusive to our front door. She had to rebuild after a windstorm took it down, and today we noticed some rather large holes in it. However, we also noticed that she was actively feeding, and had several bugs stored in her web. We also think she's gonna have little baby spiders soon, but we aren't sure. Some pictures will come in time, but since she's mostly nocturnal, I'll have to see what I can conjure up. She's killing all sorts of bugs, so that's a good thing.

Anyway, the respective parental units are meeting each other tomorrow.....good times.

UGH!

On the phone with a client who complains that they've never had a computer work correctly for more than a day. This is the same client who wants to know where the happy place for her router is. I have to tell her exactly to double LEFT click on the IE icon. I have to tell her to LEFT click everything. She's a rich, snobby, snooty woman from NYC that has no clue how to operate her computer.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the day of days. That grand day when thousands of army men stormed the beaches of Normandy to secure Fortress Europe from the Nazi's. Remember those who served, and those who still serve.

Semper Fi!

Still not posting very often. Wish I hadn't broken the cycle.

Well...

I sure broke the cycle alright. It's been 5 days since I posted last. Lessee....what's changed? Not much really. Work is going good. Life is going good. I got a car, I think I mentioned that. Almost level 70 in WoW. Life is good....

Hmmm

Maybe I broke the cycle of posts every two days. We will see. Had some good calls today. Made the company some money. Life is good...sort of. Bank account is slowly (quickly?) dwindling, but alas, I have no control over that. The gods of oil and gas do.

Just took apart a hard drive that died a long time ago. I opened it up and looked at the shiny, pretty platters. It's kind of interesting to think that the ones from the 70/80's are these massive monstrosities that only held 640k and required ten platters and now I have (had? How would I type?) one in my hand that is an 80gb and it only has two platters. Very interesting.

Ok, I have to stop posting like this....

Been volunteering at Main Street Days in Grapevine the past couple of days. It's actually sort of fun, considering all I do is sit on my butt and watch people get drunk. Tomorrow, Sarah and I will go and get sloshed and walk around and stuff.

One thing I detest about large crowds is the insane idea that people can just stop walking and go, "hey, look at this!" I mean seriously folks, if you're gonna stop and look at something, go over to it and THEN stop. Don't stop in the middle of the walkway and look at it, decide you want to go over to it and then go over to it. We all know you're going to go up and look at it and ask a bazillion questions that have no real relevance over whether you're going to buy the item or not and then you'll end up buying whatever it is and then complaining later that you paid too much for it and then it will sit in a box in the garage and no one will ever see it and then you'll have a garage sale and sell it for 90% less than you paid for it.....

Anyway, Blizzard has released a new game and I am thinking about getting it. I have yet to play Starcraft, but I have played Warcraft 3 and Starcraft is supposed to be the better game.

This is wierd.

I'm posting like every other day. Crazy, I know, right? I got a new-to-me car yesterday. I put 3k on it and I pay 300 a month for 10 months. Good deal, right? What can I say? I'm lucky my girlfriend's dad is such a nice guy. More details to come later.

Still trying....

I'm still trying to get a car. This sucks. Maybe someone will have mercy on me and help me through this hard time by giving me the financing to buy a vehicle.

More stuff.....

Well, it just seems to get worse before it gets better. I got a call a couple of days ago that my grandfather (in Nashville, my dad's father) was in the hospital having open heart surgery and it would be a quadruple bypass. He's in his 70's, so it's not a genetic thing. Got a call yesterday, and my dad said he was going to be ok.

Got a call from an insurance adjuster from Allstate yesterday and I'm going to get more than I expected, by the tune of $4600. That just makes my day.

I will update more when I have more information.

Well, that's a relief

My mom got out of the hospital yesterday. She seems to be doing better.

It's awesome when your girlfriend's parents just hand you money for no reason.

Lots of work today, all in tarrant county, so I'll be local all day, most likely.

Good stuff....

Got my stereo equipment out of the truck today. Got my amp, speakers, stereo and xm system out of the truck, plus all of my odds and ends that had my name on them.

Insurance adjuster said the truck was totaled, most likely, so I'm in the market for a new car. Was looking at an Acura, but someone may be buying it. They also have a Chrysler Sebring. I might buy that, if I can get enough for a decent down payment.

Wow....

It's amazing what 35 mph can do to a vehicle when someone hits it. All of you wonderful readers may have noticed the picture I put up. That is a picture of my pickup, and a "very nice" lady hit it. She had a stop sign and I did not. She pulled out in front of me and since I was traveling at 35 mph, and didn't have a stop sign, I couldn't stop in time and she hit me. She wasn't even looking in my direction when it happened. Now I am in the process of trying to find a new vehicle, but I'm not sure how well it's going. I did get a nice rental car though.

SNEEZE SARAH!

I'm a silly Mofo, ain't I?