new living room!

Before:
After:

This last weekend was great for many reasons, the most important for my daily sanity being the re-stylization of my living room. On Friday Kristin and I went looking for frames for a couple of my black and white photos to put up. I was happy with that small change, but fate would lead to more changes on Saturday. We were about to go out for something or other and we drove by the dumpsters in my complex and we saw that somebody had thrown out some old furniture. We both noticed that there was a very sturdy looking bookshelf/entertainment center stand sitting out there so we decided to do the switcheroo and throw out my broken black entertainment center that took up my whole wall. I never really liked that thing, but I got it because it was $20. I broke it during transport and made it look even worse, but hey, I just got out of college. Nobody in college had good furniture, so I didn't think twice about it. Over the past year and a half I realized that all my friends with jobs and their own places had nice living room furniture and slowly, I became upset with how cobbled together my living room looked. It still isn't perfect. But now it is a lot better, that's for sure.

The new entertainment center is not nearly as imposing as the last one and it it relatively symetrical, which makes my eyes happy. Since there was a big open space in the wall where the entertainment center used to cover, I decided to hang my aunt's painting of a Grecian church and a painting from Jamaica in the blank space. Now there is a nice symmetrical triangle on that wall too. Yay for symmetry! Kristin suggested that I put the wavy mirrors I bought on the wall vertically, so we did that also. It left a big space over the couch so I printed out some digital pictures I had taken and framed them too. Problem solved! Now I am happy with my living room for the time being. The next thing I'll replace is that saggy futon I have. But that's for another day...

My friend James came into town this weekend also. So I went down to Chicago on Saturday and Sunday. I really enjoyed going back to the city. I'm also glad that it reminded me how much I'd rather prefer to stay in the burbs because of all the traffic and parking issues. If I didn't have to drive or commute 45 miles to work, I'd totally enjoy the city though!

Working from home

Let me tell you, working from home is great! Because nobody stops by your cube to bug you, you have the opportunity to work much more efficiently! After getting all of my work done I had the best cookie dough milkshake ever with Kristin. Oberweis ice cream may have milk fat added, but dang it tastes good! Fat is delicious!!!! I know I'm gonna have a major craving for it again but I'm going to have to work hard to resist.

Back when I used to work designing web pages back in high school I got adicted to cheese cake ice cream milk shakes. I had one at least twice a week. I gained 10 lbs that summer! It was crazy! So I guess you could say that milkshakes are my weakness. They taste sooooo good. And I can drink so much w/o ever feeling full for some reason! I even have a method of drinking milkshake followed by water to make more room. That's just how much I've drank at one time! mmmmm.

bad coworker...

From: co-worker
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 9:56 PM
To: Boss-type
Cc: Me; co-worker
Subject: Phone Consumer Trial


Sarah,

I got as much finished with the Consumer trials today/tonight as I could. There are 66 incidents left that need to be moved. I'm sorry I couldn't finished. [Me] was supposed to have been helping me and I'm not sure what happened. I had been trying to get in touch with him since about 2:30 and wasn't able to reach him, so I'm not sure what happened. I'll jump on this again first thing in the morning.

co-worker
UT Lead

First, She asked me to help out that day at 10AM, I moved about 10% between my other work because she never told me that there was a Friday morning deadline. She also neglected to mention while assigning blame that she had been sitting on those aforementioned incidents since July 3. She said she contacted me at 2:30 but it was really past 3:30 because I was only away from my desk 3:30-4:30. The only thing she didn't lie about was the fact that she tried to contact me multiple times. She IM'd me at 3:30, called my desk and cell phone at 4:00 and I came back at 4:30 and she was already out of the office.... boy that was some high priority stuff if she had to leave the ofice at 4:30... She left a message asking if I was going to finish it up last night... Finish up the work she should've finished earlier... The next morning, I IM'd her...

Me[10:12 AM]:
regarding the whole consumer trial confusion
Me[10:12 AM]:
I apologize my cell phone was off because i forgot to turn it back on after changing the sim yesterday afternoon
Me[10:13 AM]:
I saw the vmail notice on my desk phone this morning
Me[10:14 AM]:
I know you're busy, but please instead of putting the blame on others who were just assigned the work that day when incidents had been sitting around since the third of July, please try to avoid blaming others. That really made me look bad, but I didn't even know things were sitting around for so long or that the deadline was this morning exept in your voicemails.
Me[10:17 AM]:
After applying my full concentration it only took me 2 hours to move 75% of the incidents. I am not sure why more didnt get moved from July 3-19
co-worker[10:22 AM]:
no, IM isn't broken, I was working with Anastasia. she was in my cube.
co-worker[10:23 AM]:
I didn't blame you. You need to reread the email. I simply said I didn't know what was going on with you because I coudln't get a hold of you.
Me[10:24 AM]:
"[Me] was supposed to have been helping me and I'm not sure what happened."? that's not blaming me?
co-worker[10:24 AM]:
more didn't get moved prior because I've been working on 10 different things at once. I picked away at it. And I starte4d with 200 and got it down to 66 yesterday, so please don't think I left you do it all. I was working on it all day yesterday as well.
co-worker[10:24 AM]:
no, that's not blaming you.
co-worker[10:24 AM]:
I'm sorry you feel that way.
Me[10:25 AM]:
sounds like it to me, and the other people who read the email.... If they took it like blaming me, Sarah could easily take it that way too
Me[10:25 AM]:
it's not just me
co-worker[10:25 AM]:
Sarah needed to know why it wasn't all finished by this morning.
Me[10:26 AM]:
and I was the reason
Me[10:26 AM]:
accoring to that sentence
co-worker[10:26 AM]:
I told you to make it your number 1 priority, did I not?
Me[10:26 AM]:
right, still blaming me
co-worker[10:26 AM]:
again, i'm sorry you feel that way.
Me[10:27 AM]:
....If you needed this done, you should've been up front and told me they all needed to be moved by friday morning in the first place. I had planned on finishing them all during the day this morning because there weren't that many. And I did get them done. In 2 hours.
co-worker[10:28 AM]:
I told you to make it your number 1 priority. I didn't tell you to do it by Friday morning because I knew I'd be finishing it up last night.
co-worker[10:29 AM]:
I didn't think it was fair to ask you to do it all, nor did I think you'd have the time.
co-worker[10:29 AM]:
you got them done in 2 hours because I moved 130 yesterday.
Me[10:30 AM]:
I moved about 60 in 2 hours. They had been sitting as early as july 3. I'm glad you moved 130 on July 19.
Me[10:31 AM]:
I know you're not going to reword what you said in the email or make it seem like the blame isn't mostly mine as it appears in the email so the damage is done
Me[10:31 AM]:
the work is done now
co-worker[10:31 AM]:
FYI, Sarah didn't say she wanted them moved to defects until last Friday, and intern stuff blew up along with other UT stuff this week. That'w why nothing was moved over until yesterday.
co-worker[10:32 AM]:
Feel free to let Sarah know how you feel. I unfortunately don't have time to argue about this any more as there are other things I need to get done.
co-worker[10:32 AM]:
If you want to talk about this further, please schedule a meeting for Monday.
Me[10:32 AM]:
I'm done, don't assign blame recklessly

So she didn't tell me to finish everything by Friday, but in the email she was clearly blaming me for not doing enough as why it wasn't done by Friday? That hardly seems logical. If she wanted it done by Friday she should've said something or done something on her own from July 3-19...

I sent an email to my manager because what she did and her lack of accountability is completely unacceptable. Unfortunately, my manager is out of the office until Aug 1.

Last Weekend (and Monday)

I had a pretty fun-filled weekend and I really enjoyed it. On Friday, I went hot tubbin' I still can't believe I didn't know there was a spa in the club house all this time... I'm gonna use that thing like all the time now!

Saturday was a very busy day. I woke up at the crack of dawn.... well 7AM... so that I could get to the DMV to have class M added to my license. However, I was planning on going up with Kristin, but when she came over that morning, she forgot her course completion certificate (that you need to waive the written and riding test) so I decided that I'd just go on Monday. In the afternoon, Kristin, her sister, and I went to Lynfred Winery for a tasting and a tour. They gave us a lot of wine, and at first I was trying to drink it all, but eventually I asked for less in the glass. Kristin and her sister asked for a lot less after their first "samples." It was pretty fun though. After the winery, we needed to walk off all that wine so Kristin and I went to the local nature center and park and I explained the finer subtleties of milkweed and Kristin told me all about the park. After the enlightening walk, we both went to church and then met up with the church's youth/young adult group for a BBQ. Everybody was nice, but it seemed like everybody was just too nice and it made me a bit uncomfortable. I like it when people don't act all fake. Who knows maybe they're all just genuinely nice. I'm just not used to that.

2008 Chevrolet Camaro

But the day wasn't over! Next we went to see the Transformers movie. It made me want to buy the new 2009/2008 Camaro instead of the new 2008 Challenger. GM is doing a much better job keeping the Camaro on people's minds than Chrysler is with the Challenger. Chrysler is keeping the Challenger development pretty secret and most consumers know just about nothing about the thing except to expect only a high-end SRT version the first year and have the regular models come out the second year. Nobody even knows for sure if a manual transmission will be offered on the base models. If they don't that'd be sad and I think a lot of people would be upset that it was not an option on a powerful sports coupe. The Camaro will definitely have a manual option, which is what I'd get if I bought a sports car. If you can't handle the manual, you don't deserve to have a sports car :P But back to the movie, It was very action packed and it made me remember my childhood days. Kristin was right about it though, it was a guy movie. I'm glad she came anyway.

After all that fun on Saturday, I relaxed in the morning on Sunday and then Kristin and I went to a wave pool in the area and we relaxed for at least 4 hours. I have sunburn! I put tanning lotion on my lower arms, face and neck because those are the only tan parts of my body, so none of that is burnt, but I have a red patch on my body that looks like I was wearing a sizzling hot t-shirt. It's fun! After that, we went on a long bike ride around the area and we raced and Kristin won. Shhh don't tell anybody.

I missed lunch technically because we went to the water park around 12:00. So I was hungry at about 5:00. We decided to go to Bahama Breeze and eat some Caribbean food. I had the jerk chicken pasta and Kristin had a Cuban sandwich. I wasn't too impressed with either however. I could not taste any jerk flavoring on my chicken because it was sliced almost deli-style. But the food definitely had a good flavor. I just wanted jerk-flavor! Kristin's Cuban, seemed American, with it's salami and lettuce and tomatoes. It had plain mustard on it too, which I'm not a big fan of. I blame my dad for forcing us to eat it on our sandwiches as children! I love brown, spicy, honey, Dijon, and about any other mustard, just not the plain. After the restaurant we watched Arachnophobia. It was not as exciting as I had hoped it would be. By today's standards the movie was very slow and not very suspenseful. It really is amazing how much movies have changed since 1990. Back then, people thought that movie was awesome.

Since I didn't get my license on Saturday I decided to wake up at 6AM on Monday to make it to the DMV at 8AM. I thought I had read that they opened at 8AM. Well, they do on Wed-Sat. But after arriving at 7:40, I find that they are closed on Monday and they open at 9AM on Tuesday! So I still don't have my license. But I plan on going around lunch and getting it done for sure!

At work, they are starting to force people to get their new ID badges. I was trying to let mine completely fall apart before I got my new vertical-oriented badge. I mean it was only half peeled and the clip was holding together pretty well with tape. It still had a lot of life left in it! But now I like the new badge because it is all pristine and not warped or peeling :)

Work

Motorola S9

Work's been better than average the past 2 weeks or so. I got 2 cool new prototype phones that I could actually see myself using. That means that they will sell well, because I'm the final word of what's cool Everybody knows that! I also got a cool S9 Bluetooth stereo headset. Too bad Windows is too stupid to figure out how to use it. BT on windows can be a real bear to handle sometimes because each PC manufacturer seems to include their own variants of BT software/drivers and it is not very standardized. Maybe this is all fixed in Vista, but I don't know. My PDA is also too stupid to use the headset, boo! At least it works with cell phones! I bet it'll work with my Mac too. I have faith in Apple.

I also talked to my boss and he says that I'm on track for a promotion. This is good news because I had been thinking they'd forgotten about me. So this week I am not at all in a bad mood. Yesterday evening, a little bit, but the reasons for that are too complicated for me to type out today :P But really, life is good!

stuff

The 4th was pretty fun, I got to watch Disturbia and then see the local fireworks up close. It was a lot of fun. I also learned that my community has a spa! I thought we only had a pool. I have been missing out!

On Friday Kristin made a peach pie. My family came to visit on Saturday and they all loved her pie. It is very good. Saturday, my family and I went on a 3-hour cruise on Lake Michigan and saw the Chicago fireworks and had an all around good time. I really enjoyed that. Sunday was just a relaxed day and I didn't get very much done, but I did get to put chicken wire over my pot that some bird/rodent kept digging in. That'll learn em!

Today I feel oddly unsettled today. Something just isn't sitting right. I just want to get out of the office, but I don't know where I'm supposed to go. I'm probably just upset about the whole house buying expense thing. I don't want to be here or anywhere today. I wish I had a life fast forward button again today.

BFF visit!

Apple Pancake

Yesterday my best friend Brian came all the way from Korea and drove from Iowa to Chicago just to visit me. Now that's the type of dedication and commitment you'd expect from a 1st Lieutenant! It totally makes up for the last time we had the opportunity to meet over a year ago when he didn't tell me he was leaving. Grant it, we were both busy trying to get our own lives straight so we hadn't talked for a month or two...

We had a good night and we literally went bar hopping, staying nowhere for more than 45 minutes. Before that we ate huge meals at Famous Dave's and I finished all of mine. I don't remember the last time I ate so much. We also fit in a viewing of Super Troopers and a stop at Starbucks where the cashier so suavely asked "Are you guys... together?" when he was asking if we were going to pay for our drinks separately or not.

This morning we had breakfast at Walker Brothers with Kristin. I had a very delicious apple pancake that was about the size of a standard pie, literally. Good times were had by all and then Brian left. I said that I'd come out to visit this fall. I should do that, it'd be fun!

The time has come...

to change all my passwords!

I got a spam message in one of my Yahoo mail accounts that contained my generic password I used for, now that I count, way too many accounts! So I just changed 16 passwords to unique ones. Lets see how well I can remember all of them! dun dun dun! If nobody ever hears from me ever again on the internet, refer to this blog and call my cell phone because, luckily I don't have an alphanumeric password to access my voice mail!

Knocked Up

Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl Star in "Knocked Up"

I give this movie 3.5/5 stars. I laughed a bunch of times and it kept my attention the whole time. This movie lost points when I started questioning how could the guy be so socially inept. I mean nobody blurts out, "we're having a baby" to a bunch of kids at the breakfast table the first time they meet. And I don't get why they had that whole baby crowning scene. I don't think it added much to the movie, unless it was the director's goal to scare kids away from making babies because babies are gross. kidding. This movie is worth watching, but wait until it is at the dollar theater or rent it on Netflix.

All done

I'm completely done with my motorcycle class. I am not a proficient *cough* motorcyclist and I feel like I can do anything!!! woohoo! Actually riding a motorcycle is a serious responsibility and should not be taken lightly. Being a responsible rider means constantly riding with your full attention and most critical thinking to avoid hazards. So everybody who rides bikes should remember to be safe. The End :)

The days of gas station pit stops are gone

When's the last time you've stopped inside of a gas station to get snacks on a trip or to get directions? Well as a guy, you're not supposed to stop and ask for directions, so I rarely do, but I realized that in the past 10 or so years, stopping at a gas station for directions has become a futile activity.

If we didn't have web-enabled cell phones and in-car GPS, a lot of people wouldn't be able to find anything these days. The gas station attendents aren't much help either. In Chicago, it's just about impossible to find a long-term local resident working behind the counter. And if you ask whoever is there for directions, they'll be just as confused as you are. I mean there is absolutely nothing wrong with not knowing how to get everywhere if you're not from the area, but if you don't have fancy in-car GPS, or Google Maps on your cell phone, how are you supposed to find anything? Well, you can start at a large grocery store chain. They're almost as abundant as gas stations and you're pretty much guaranteed to find at least one local resident working there who knows his or her way around. So all is not lost, we can drive assured that if we get lost, we can still get help if we need it!

But another thing I have noticed is that you rarely ever see people stopping in to get snacks at gas stations anymore on their way to work or while doing their weekly fill-up. I think the reason for this is two-fold. For one, gas prices are about 200% as much as they were in 1997 when they were hovering around $1. When there was only an 10-13% per capita income increase in 10 years, you can easily tell that everybody notices this price difference. Right now it costs me about $60 to fill up my tank and I remember it costing under $20 (in 2001). I never bought $40 in snacks, but now I'm paying that much more at the pump, so why would I even stop in to buy overpriced snacks unless I was starving? The second reason I don't think people stop for snacks and drinks at the gas stations anymore is because of the proliferation of places like Starbucks and Panera. Why get gas station quality coffee and donuts when you can pay $5 more and get extra large granules of sugar on your muffin and whipped cream on your coffee???

Have you ever heard of "pay at the pump"? Yeah, everybody has. I'd argue that 90% of people under 30 use it and the majority of Amrericans use it no matter what age they are. That alone has to be a major contributing factor as to why people don't stop inside gas stations anymore. I certainly enjoy the convenience of swiping my card and not having to wait in line to pay for gas.

So today, gas stations are back to just being gas stations instead of that convenient stop to get your directions, snack, and gas filled all in one place. It seems to be a sad end of an era, but times do change.