| Monday, March 8th, 2010 |
| 10:05 pm |
Car window fixed
Rather than playing games and spending a bunch of time trying to find a good deal on a used window, we decided to just buy a new window. We're $200 down but at least I'm not freezing my ears off as I drive around. It's more than a little annoying that some jerk broke a $200 window to steal a GPS thats only worth about $30. |
| 9:56 pm |
Buying direct pros and cons
To those "in the know" about ebay one useful aspect is that their are a lot of sellers from China that list items very inexpensively. Example: a set a multi-meter test leads for $3 (including shipping), I couldn't find a similar set for less than $9.99 at a store here in the U.S. Or $24.99 for a Wii remote that costs $49.99 here. Unfortunately it's still not a perfect deal. For one, it can take an awful long time for items to come from China. Don't even bother ordering items using ground shipping. Waiting for something to come from China via a boat takes months. Air mail isn't that much better, I'm still waiting on those test leads I paid for on Feb. 8th. And in my experience the Q/C isn't that great, about 1 in 10 items tend to work less than perfectly. But as a whole a lot of money can be saved if your willing to wait. |
| Sunday, March 7th, 2010 |
| 10:07 am |
Blah...
Over night someone busted the drivers side window of my car and stole my GPS. |
| Friday, February 26th, 2010 |
| 10:26 am |
BeeZid is a scam
Please no one use this service, these are not auctions at all. In fact it's a lot more like gambling than an auction. It's more like buying raffle tickets, and the last person to buy a ticket wins the right to buy the item at a lower price. With each ticket that's sold the "auction" timer has 20 to 40 seconds added to it so no matter how much money you spend on raffle tickets you are NEVER guaranteed winning. The result, you can spend a nearly unlimited amout of money and get nothing at all in return for it. |
| Monday, February 22nd, 2010 |
| 2:46 am |
Their are Flares and their are flares
I recently ordered some flares thinking I was getting standard road flares like police officers use. A normal road flare burns 20-30 minutes and produces a brightness of around 75 candles. Unfortunately I didn't read the description very well. What I got was signal flares that burn for 1 minute producing a brightness of around 15,000 candles. In comparison a flashlight is around 150 candles, and the average brightness of a bright summer day is 9,300 candles. Seeing one of these flares at night is like looking at a miniature sun, and is definitely not good for the eyes. |
| Sunday, February 21st, 2010 |
| 9:02 pm |
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| Thursday, February 4th, 2010 |
| 9:51 pm |
Dam I'm tired
I mean so tired that moving my fingers on the keyboard seems like a huge effort, and not nodding off at my desk is a serious concern. Normally when I feel this way I'd give some reason having to do with being a chronic insomniac. Although not unrelated to the problem, this time is a bit different. I did have a lot of trouble sleeping earlier this week, and after 4 days of no more than 4 hours of sleep a day I chose to take a sleeping pill last night. The medication is Doxepin and was specifically prescribed to help me sleep. The problem is it works too well. I take it, and if someone doesn't wake me up I'll be out for 10 to 12 hours. Worse I spend the entire next day (that's today) feeling tired, groggy and out-of-it. As with so many things, it would be really nice to find a middle ground. |
| Monday, February 1st, 2010 |
| 12:13 am |
Want to make BOOM!
It's Feb. 1st, this means pyrotechnics training is still a full 3 months away :( |
| Sunday, January 31st, 2010 |
| 10:00 pm |
Things that make no sense
Why is it that every business in the world with multiple locations (retail stores, gas stations, restaurants...) doesn't offer downloadable GPS data for all their locations on their web sites? |
| 2:28 pm |
I hate migrains
Last night I had one of the worst migrains I've had in a long time. At least in the last year, maybe in the last 2 or 3. I ended up in bed around 7:45pm(after getting up at around 11am) because the pain was so bad even after taking 600mg of ibuprofen (400mg of which was the migrain specific veriant). And I stayed in bed almost all night. As a result I missed ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) exxcentrik_girl's birthday party, not to mention getting almost nothing done yesterday. On an up swing, I'm really enjoying playing Call of Duity: World at War on the Wii, and Little-Bit has gotten into playing Wii bowling. It's fun to watch him because he gets so over excited playing :) |
| Friday, January 29th, 2010 |
| 1:28 am |
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| Sunday, January 24th, 2010 |
| 11:25 pm |
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| 10:21 pm |
Liberty AND Death! wait... did I get that right?
Several things lately have got me thinking about what the real price of freedom is. It started with a "Law and Order" episode where a forensics tech who ended up in jail for falsifying evidence. She hadn't really falsified it so much as miss represented it. She would state that things were scientific fact (aka 100% true) that in reality were only "likely". Then of course their is the ongoing debate of whether or not terror suspects should be treated as common criminal or opposing military forces. Lastly I was doing some research on encryption and ran across this article having to do with a person suspected of possessing child pornography being asked to give up their encryption password. The conclusion I came to is that the price of living in a free society is being in a constant state of danger. ( Read more... ) |
| Monday, January 11th, 2010 |
| 10:41 pm |
Xmas II
Friday evening we loaded up the car, picked up little-J and drove to my parent's place. The idea was this was going to be a late Xmas celebration. By the time we got their Friday night it was rather late and it wasn't long before StrawberryTart and the kids went to bed. Dad and I stayed up talked until nearly 4am (keep in mind that he also normally works in the middle of the night). Saturday morning came all too early. I was up around 11am and was the last to get up. We watched TV and helped my mom start getting the cooking going until Kim and Lilly (my sister and niece) arrived around 2:30. Then the cooking went into full swing (my sister is actually a very good cook). I really enjoyed socializing with the family. Dinner was ready around 5pm and after dinner we opened presents. I got a very entertaining T-shirt and a gift card to Olive Garden. After gifts we had desert (pumpkin and apple pie) and then my sister and niece went home. It wasn't long after that before we were all off to bed. Sunday I woke up shortly after the kids. I ended up taking Little-J for a drive looking for a video A/B switch for my parent's TV only to discover that their isn't a store within 20 miles of their house that sells one... After we got back I prepared breakfast for Little-J and I. I was making ham and eggs for myself and I told him I'd make some for him too. Only to have him say that he didn't want it because he doesn't like eggs, and to say he didn't want the ham because it had touched the eggs. To add to the irony he happened to be watching Oliver at the time. At around 2pm Little-J, ST, my father and I started a game of classic Risk. However at around 2:15pm Kim and Lilly showed up so we took some pictures of the board to remember how things were laid out, and packed it up. For the next couple hours chaos was the name of the game as people simultaneously watched foot-ball on TV, had a major Nerf war, and played computer games (most of the family is addicted to Starcraft). I had to explain to mom that everyone being into Starcraft is really birdfigment's fault not mine since she's the one that got me into it. At around 4:15 we loaded the car and headed back to Minneapolis to drop off Little-J at home around 6pm. I actually arranged to have Sunday night off, and I'm rather grateful for it since I ended up going to bed early with a very bad headache that was still bothering me Monday morning. |
| Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 |
| 9:56 pm |
Huh???
I think my coffee made me more tired instead of less... |
| Monday, January 4th, 2010 |
| 11:19 pm |
What I hate most
If you were to ask me the one thing I hate the most about working nights, it'd be that their is never fresh coffee made when I get to work. |
| Thursday, December 31st, 2009 |
| 11:18 pm |
Alone
I know what it means to feel alone because their is no one their. But as I sit here knowing ST is only a room away sleeping quietly wearing the satin lingerie I bought her for Xmas, I feel infinitely more alone than I did when my bed was simply empty. |
| Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 |
| 10:40 pm |
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| Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 |
| 11:53 pm |
Wow am I pissed off
I got in to work today and found an email from my boss saying that due to my schedule I am not going to be able to work the New Years holiday on-call shift. I've been on our schedule to work this on-call shift for the last 3 months. Her concern is that Sunday night/Monday morning I would be both the primary person taking incoming issues and my own backup. This seems like a bigger problem than it really is. The reality is that although I technically have a backup analyst in case I get over whelmed with calls I haven't needed to use my backup in months and a holiday weekend is the time I'm least likely to need to. My problem is this, the bonus for taking a weekend on-call shift is $450 and the bonus for a holiday shift is an additional $200. That's $650 for being available just-in-case for one weekend. In addition for working the holiday I get a makeup PTO day I can use any time in January. So after having this on the schedule for MONTHS I am getting a $650 bonus and an extra PTO day taken away from me with 2 days notice. WORSE I am being penalized because I volunteered to work a shift that no one else is willing to work. I wrote my manager a rather stern response clearly stating that this is unacceptable. If she can't get this issue cleared up tomorrow I'm going back to working days. |
| 11:09 am |
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