I am my own best friend
Thursday, June 21, 2007
As often as I manage to prove that I am, indeed, my own worst enemy, I think it's time to present some evidence to the contrary. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I give the best purchases I have made in the past two years.
4. Baller Suit
Now that all these crazy people I call "friends" are getting married, I decided my single black suit that I've owned for 7 years wasn't going to cut it anymore. So I grabbed my nearest female fashion consultant (normally Ginger, but in this case my friend Mel) and headed to JCPenney. A dozen suits and half a dozen drooling middle-age women in the fitting room later, I only found one suit I liked which, unfortunately, they did not have in my size. So I followed the infinite advice of commercial advertisement and headed to the nearest Men's Wearhouse. My salesperson was a wee girl with a delicious Texas accent who immediately pulled out an espresso pinstriped athletic-cut suit that made me look less like a mid-40s professional business man and more like a 20-something baller.
3. MacBook
That's right, I made the switch. Am I any happier for the fact? Quite possibly. In the end, it's not that much different than a PC. "Blasphemy!" cry the Mac users around the world. Okay, so there are things that are better, which rhyme with:
- Form Factor: It's lighter, slimmer, and sexier than its PC counterparts
- Speed: Booting and waking it up from Sleep Mode take seconds instead of minutes
- MacOS X: built on top of BSD - great for Linux nerds like me
- No viruses/spyware: No need to install process-intensive programs to guard against these
It's not perfect by any means, but still very nice.
2. Comet, the Night Horse
Otherwise known as my Mustang GT convertible, Comet provides turns the normally tedious task of driving in Los Angeles into an adventure. There's something about the purr of the engine that's soothing. In fact, my favorite part of the day is often the point when I walk out of my office and get into the Mustang and start the motor. My next favorite part is when the 300 horses under the hood accelerate me away from my office with extreme prejudice. I don't know what their prejudice is against, but I assure you that it is extreme. Combine that with the feeling of the ocean breeze through my short spiky hair and I forget all about the dissatisfying job that made this purchase possible.
1. The Mattress from Heaven
I'm not kidding here. This mattress is from heaven, made from the feathers of angels. Not bloody angel feathers like the ones in the movie Dogma (Catholicism, OW!), but soft, clean, comforting feathers that invite you to the realms of dreamland. What am I talking about? I don't know. Incidently, this amazing mattress is sold at your local mattess store under the guise of a Simmons Beautyrest Pelham Plush. I went hunting for this mattress the morning after I arrived in California two years ago. Ginger and I had slept on an air mattress the night before which had a hole in it, and thus, we woke up on the hard floor. We tried out several mattresses before lying on this one, and within 5 seconds Ginger had instictively rolled over, put her arm around me, and fallen asleep. The salesman started writing up the order slip before I could tell him we would take it. The rest is history. Sweet, blissful sleep history.
Labels: Evidence for the defense, Helloooo nurse
Author: Goat » Comments:
A Case of the Mondays
Monday, June 18, 2007
We all use this phrase from time to time, usually in a joking manner to describe having to go back to work after an awesome weekend. But today it applied to my life in the truest of terms. I knew for sure when the IT guy killed my computer by trying to reinstall Adobe. How the eff do you kill a computer by reinstalling a program? I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the IT guy messing with Windows' registry. Even the stupidest Windows user knows not to touch the registry in Windows. And if you do, you effing back up the hard drive somewhere beforehand.
Add this on top of the fact that I had a hard time sleeping last night, I feel slightly sick after surfing in the pollution-infested waters of LA yesterday, and the fact that all my work must be done on a computer, and you have the reason why I went home at 2:30 this afternoon. I would have left sooner except that there was a meeting scheduled for 2:00, which was cancelled at 1:45. Awesome.
Count this as Exhibit XD for evidence for hating my job.
Labels: I'm surrounded by morons, work
Author: Goat » Comments:
Finding your average home
Thursday, June 14, 2007
There has been an inquiry as to how I was able to find my average hometown. Well, I'll you. It was no easy task. It took hours of mapping, calculation, configuration, and persperation. Luckily the software guys at Google Maps and Microsoft did all of that for me. All I had to do was:
- Make a list of all the places I have lived. My criteria was simple; I had to actually "move" there and live there approximately one month. High school summer programs, college dorms, and summer lodgings during college all count. Summer camps, band camps, sports camps, and vacations do not count on account of their short nature (one week). The one gray item on my list is Fairfax, VA, when I spent 3.5 living out of various hotels for my job. Since I wasn't living in my California apartment during that time, I'm counting it.
- Determine the latitude/longitude of each residence. This is where those sweaty engineers at Google Maps helped out. You can see a map here.
- Take a weighted average of the lat./long.'s. I determined how long (in months) I've lived at each location. I multiplied that number by the latitude and longitude for the location. Do it for all locations, add them all up, then divide by the total number of months in my life. The result is the average lifetime latitude/longitude. See the table below for the numbers.
| Location | Months | Lat (N) | Long (E) | Weighted Lat (N) | Weighted Long (E) |
| Woodreed Ct. | 48 | 38.32 | -85.51 | 1839.63 | -4104.95 |
| Highgate Dr. | 175 | 38.35 | -85.43 | 6711.36 | -14951.44 |
| GSA | .75 | 38.21 | -85.70 | 28.66 | -64.28 |
| GSP | 1.25 | 39.03 | -84.46 | 48.79 | -105.58 |
| Zahm Hall | 27 | 41.70 | -86.23 | 1126.00 | -2328.40 |
| Castle Point | 3 | 41.72 | -86.22 | 125.17 | -258.66 |
| Animal House | 12 | 41.69 | -86.22 | 500.37 | -1034.69 |
| Lafayette, IN | 20 | 40.41 | -86.89 | 808.38 | -1737.85 |
| Marina del Rey | 3 | 33.98 | -118.46 | 101.94 | -355.38 |
| Sheldon Chateau | 21 | 33.91 | -118.41 | 712.30 | -2486.64 |
| Fairfax, VA | 3.5 | 38.86 | -77.38 | 136.01 | -270.84 |
| TOTALS | 314.5 | -- | -- | 12138.67 | -27698.74 |
| AVERAGE | -- | -- | -- | 38.59 | -88.07 |
38.59ºN latitude, 88.07ºW longitude gives you Parkersburg, IL. See, I told you it was boring.
Labels: I'm a big nerd
Author: Goat » Comments:
Hometown Average
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
I got to thinking the other day that I've lived in a lot of places in my short but highly insignificant life. And then I wondered to myself, "I wonder where I 'live' if I averaged all those places..." Maybe you too have wondered this. Well, wonder no more! For I have toiled relentlessly and tabulated the results to find out that my average hometown is... (drumroll please) ...
Parkersburg, ILActually, it comes out to some cornfield about 2 miles northwest of Parkersburg, but who's counting? Interesting note, though, is that Parkersburg is not far from Highland, IL, the hometown of our favorite
red-headed falto. The longer I stay in California, the closer my average hometown will move closer to Highland and St. Louis.
This result actually matches up nicely with another highly scientific web-based quiz I took today that tells me what accent I have. What accent is that, you ask? BAM! Just look below.
Midland ("Midland" is not necessarily the same thing as "Midwest") The default, lowest-common-denominator American accent that newscasters try to imitate. Since it's a neutral accent, just because you have a Midland accent doesn't mean you're from the Midland.  |
| Click Here to Take This Quiz |
It appears that despite my love of my Southern heritage, all the evidence points to me being a damn Yank. Well, I'm here to say that you can call me that dirty name, but you'll have to pry my sweet tea, mint julep, and/or bourbon from my cold, dead hands.
Author: Goat » Comments:
Winds of Change
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Things are changing. A lot. At least, that's the way it seems right now in my life. Well, that's not entirely accurate. My life is actually staying pretty much the same; It's all the things around me that are changing. I guess that just goes to prove that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Or not. I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Booter moved out. Yup, our aspiring young actor has taken yet another step in furthering his blossoming career by moving closer to the source -- to West Hollywood. In a way, this isn't too much of a change since he was permanently absent from our apartment for about two months while rehearsing and performing in his show
Junk! A Rock Opera (which was quite entertaining -- Booter wears lingerie at one point). We didn't even think he was actually going to move out until a lot later. He kept
saying he planned to move out June 1, but had done seemingly nothing to prepare for said move. Then one he comes home saying he found a place and the next weekend his room is empty save his old teaching supplies and about a million dust-bunnies. For a guy who's allergic to damn near everything, he sure has no problems with dust. Alanis Morrisette finds that coincidental (which is weird because it's actually ironic, unlike most of the lyrics in her song). So I no longer have a roommate who will share a couple cold ones to blow off steam while watching an episode of Doctor Who or Brisco County, Jr. But fear not, he still visits from time to time after finishing up the day at his nearby office. And I've even ventured north of the 10 to hit up the bars in WeHo with the Boots. That's another story, though...
My sister is leaving Louisville. I guess John's company offered him a big promotion and raise -- the kicker being that he would have to move to Nashville. So, it's not like it's a HUGE move, but a 3-hour drive sucks in comparison to 30 minutes, as far as my parents are concerned. I know Mom and Dad are pretty bummed about this one, especially since I'm out here in stupid Southern California (you heard me). Empty Nest is really going to set in. I worry a little for Shannon, too. I know both her and John had a lot of friends in the area, and they're moving to a place where they know nobody. The good news is that Shannon graduated from nursing school just a few week ago! She's officially an RN and has already landed a job in Nashville (she had one waiting in Louisville before finding out about John's promotion). Yup, my sister rocks.
People are getting married left and right. Sweet crap, it's like an epidemic. I've already been to one wedding this year (Mark and Ellen Trandel), and have several others marked on the calendar (two in July, one in September). Mal & Lizett - maybe it's best you aren't having yours this year. I need to save some money somewhere. Needless to say, I
am not getting married anytime soon. Ginger's still got another year or more before graduation, so that's that.
Now that it's June, it's time for me to start a new rotation in my company. This is my last year in this rotation program and I'm finally getting to do work related to my graduate studies! It's a good thing, too, because I was beginning to wonder if I was going to stay with the company. Two of the guys in the program just left the company looking for better work. Luckily, I'm going to be working for the satellite-making branch of my company doing wireless communications engineering, so I'm pretty stoked about that. Plus, the office is only like 4 miles from my apartment so I'll probably end up riding my bike to work a lot. The only thing I'm worried about is that I'm going to be on a program whose employees get blacklisted from other select programs in the corporation due to some archane government regulation. That in itself doesn't sound so bad, but it turns out that the blacklist will block me from the wiki I founded and have been actively contributing to. Balls. The other problem is that I have no idea when I'll be transfering because the paperwork is getting tangled up in the bureaucracy that is my company. Hopefully it'll happen in the next week or two.
Change isn't always bad, though. It's just different. Booter is going to be replaced by our friend Kelley, who is definitely a lot of fun and will help keep Phil occupied. Booter's show got picked up for 6 weeks of performances at another theater. As for my parents, maybe this will give them a good reason to get a dog. I know that's a poor substitute for your children and grandchildren, but at least it's something, and I know Mom's been beating around the bush for years about getting another dog. Plus, maybe Shannon's moving will improve our inter-sibling communications since we won't be able to hear about each other's lives through the parents.
And now I'm going to go get some change for a buck so I can buy a Dr. Pepper.
Author: Goat » Comments:
That's right, I made the switch. Am I any happier for the fact? Quite possibly. In the end, it's not that much different than a PC. "Blasphemy!" cry the Mac users around the world. Okay, so there are things that are better, which rhyme with:
Otherwise known as my Mustang GT convertible, Comet provides turns the normally tedious task of driving in Los Angeles into an adventure. There's something about the purr of the engine that's soothing. In fact, my favorite part of the day is often the point when I walk out of my office and get into the Mustang and start the motor. My next favorite part is when the 300 horses under the hood accelerate me away from my office with extreme prejudice. I don't know what their prejudice is against, but I assure you that it is extreme. Combine that with the feeling of the ocean breeze through my short spiky hair and I forget all about the dissatisfying job that made this purchase possible.
I'm not kidding here. This mattress is from heaven, made from the feathers of angels. Not bloody angel feathers like the ones in the movie Dogma (Catholicism, OW!), but soft, clean, comforting feathers that invite you to the realms of dreamland. What am I talking about? I don't know. Incidently, this amazing mattress is sold at your local mattess store under the guise of a Simmons Beautyrest Pelham Plush. I went hunting for this mattress the morning after I arrived in California two years ago. Ginger and I had slept on an air mattress the night before which had a hole in it, and thus, we woke up on the hard floor. We tried out several mattresses before lying on this one, and within 5 seconds Ginger had instictively rolled over, put her arm around me, and fallen asleep. The salesman started writing up the order slip before I could tell him we would take it. The rest is history. Sweet, blissful sleep history.