Here I Am

Yesterday, the Great Decider justified his veto of the spending bill by saying that it would lead to a "cauldron of chaos" in the middle east.

• The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq issued a report last week that described a "rapidly worsening humanitarian crisis" in Iraq and a "breakdown in law and order."

• A report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said that seven out of eight reconstruction projects declared successful by the United States were actually failures, with widespread corruption among Iraqi officials a major factor.

• The State Department reported that terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 were up by 28.5 percent over '05, with 14,338 attacks claiming 20,500 lives, most of them in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• The month of April was the sixth-deadliest of the four-year-long war for U.S. forces, with 104 combat deaths. That was the fifth consecutive month in which the U.S. casualty toll exceeded 80.

• An active-duty Army office issued a scathing critique of his superior officers' handling of the war, an almost unprecedented show of opposition that reflects what the majority of Americans believe. 

I just got back from lunch and here's a pic I took on my car's thermometer. Of course, my car had been sitting out for a while, but still...

May 1st, 2003

Why is it that when someone is raised from the dead in the bible, it's a miracle; but if (and this is a big if) it happened in real life, it would be a zombie... Can you imagine, CNN would be all over that shit.

So, was Jesus technically the world's first zombie? Creepy...

If you have a Cingular 8125, aka, HTC Wizard, or the Cingular 8525, Sprint PPC6700, or any Pocket PC running Windows Mobile, these are some programs you should definitely check out. I have the 8125, so any observations are based on that model. I can't guarantee that these will work on every PPC.

Total Commander CE

Similar to built in File Explorer, but with more advanced features. Edit registry values, access ftp folders, change file properties. This one's at the top for a reason. Install it first and it will make your life alot easier. If you plan on installing programs, you'll see that they come in 2 varieties. One kind, a cab or arm file, is downloaded to your pocket pc and installed directly. The other, an exe or msi file, is installed on your pc and then ActiveSync will transfer the cab file the next time you sync your phone. If you choose to install via a pc and ActiveSync, it will be very easy to reinstall should you have to delete the program, or perform a hard reset.

If you install using a cab file, you will find that after installation, the original file will be gone. So you won't be able to reinstall without downloading the cab file back to your phone or sd card. There are 2 ways to remedy this.

Well, it's been almost a month in the new apartment. After the first few days of sleeping on an air mattress, my back started bothering me. I wasn't sleeping well, so I went and bought a new mattress. I still have to get the frame that I want from Ikea. My room still needs some more furniture, but a lot of my stuff is unpacked.

Last weekend, I bought a couch. It's surprising how much more homey it feels with that one piece of furniture.

What else is new...? Hmmm... Well, I've just been busy with getting the apartment together, work, hanging out with friends, etc. Things are good. One pain in the ass did surface last weekend though. My car started making a nasty grinding noise when I brake. So I will be taking my car in this weekend, which sucks.

So yesterday was the big day. I woke up around 9:30 and quickly showered. By the time I was dressed and ready to move my car into the driveway, Shane was awake and ready to go too.

Shane had borrowed Robert's TrailBlazer so we had more space, and consequently, less trips. We filled up our first load and headed up to our new place. We got keys, and took care of some paperwork. From that point on, we both worked all day moving boxes and furniture, heaping everything in the living room, in an effort to be efficient. It was hot and I was literally dripping sweat. We took 3 carloads with both vehicles and it was done.

We waited for the technician to come from Brighthouse to hook up our internet/tv. He was kinda creepy, and took his sweet time getting our stuff together. We were both starving and wanted it to be over with as quick as possible so we could go eat. While he was there, I tried to keep myself busy putting together a couple chairs and tables.

Afterwards, we went to Arby's, and then to Walmart. There's no shortage of things we needed, so we ended up spending a lot of money there. Then we drove the Blazer back to Robert's.

Hey everyone,

I've been super busy lately and haven't really been in the mood to post anything here. But I think I'm gonna start doing so once again.

OK, so I have been using a program on my Cingular 8125 for chat. I commented about how well it worked in this post. It worked perfectly, quickly, and had all the features I use. Then, one day it asked me to update. I thought, oh, how cool, it updates automatically. So I updated.

After opening the program I notice a string of characters labeled 'customer id' at the bottom. Agile Messenger never worked right after that. It would log me into my different accounts, and though it said I was logged in, no one on google talk could message me, nor did any of my contacts show up.

Agile Messenger updated again, which enabled me to connect to google talk again, but now anytime I want to talk to someone who has IM forwarding on, and is chatting on their phone, I get unrecognizable text instead of their response.

Then, to kick it all off, Agile Messenger now pops up a window when I log in that counts down the hours until they shut off my access. Uh, they want me to pay for this shit???

No thanks.

So, on Thursday, I had a date to go out with Alibi with a guy I had been interested in. We'd been talking online off and on for 2 years, and I'd met him once at Alibi, which didn't go too well, cuz I didn't remember his name... Since then we had talked online several more times, and I convinced him to hang out with me. lol

Jason came over on Thursday and we hung out at the house for a little bit before going to Alibi. I was having a really good time there, and saw a lot of people I knew. While we were there, Jason was talking about going to Wrangler's on Saturday. He asked me if I was gonna go, I said maybe. Then he asked how he could turn my maybe into a yes, I thought that was pretty sweet. So I did say yes... I saw Nick, who gave me a hug and was all friendly to me, even though we hadn't spoken on good terms since June. Jason spent the night, and we slept most of the day, since both of us had off for Veteran's day. We drank coffee and talked. Jason ripped a contact, so he went home.

I was in a really good mood, cuz we had hit it off, and it's been a while since that happened. I cleaned out my car and hung out around the house. We texted back and forth, and decided that we'd both eat, shower, etc. and then meet up later on to do something.

We eventually decided on going to Chambers, and Jason drove over to my house again. We watched a dvd and hung out before going out. Joe texted me and asked what there was to do on a Friday night. I told him we were going to Chambers, and he called and said he wanted to go. I offered him some gas money if he'd pick us up. He showed up, all late, as usual. His boyfriend was with him, so I introduced myself and Jason and we headed out.

I recently ordered a new processor/motherboard combo. For some reason I didn't catch that it didn't come with a CPU fan. When I got my package in the mail yesterday, I realized I needed to go get one. I could've ordered online, and paid shipping, etc, but, well, I really wanted to hook everything up and use my much faster computer...

I had planned on going after work yesterday to shop for Robert's birthday present with Shane. The only place I could get a CPU fan was at CompUSA in Clearwater. So, I picked up Shane and work and we drove together up to Clearwater. I had no problem getting what I needed at CompUSA. I love that store, I wish there was one closer to my house. Best Buy doesn't carry CPU fans (or a lot of things, for that matter), and IMHO is overpriced...

We got Robert's presents at Bed, Bath & Beyond. Walking in the door I had flashbacks from when I worked for one day at the one in Pittsburgh. I hadn't stepped foot in one since then. What a horrible job...

On the way home, I dropped Shane back at his car. Once I got home, I promptly started disassembling my computer in preparation for the new parts. Once everything was put back together, I plugged it in, and started it up... Nothing happened. :( I realized that I needed to upgrade my power supply. It wasn't providing enough power to the motherboard.

So, I ordered that today and will be, **Gasp**, without a computer for the weekend. I'll live.

On August 26th, I dropped off some photos at Walgreen's. I had never taken them there before, and I usually don't ever use regular film cameras. It was close to my house, so I figured I'd give it a shot. How bad could it be. The answer: bad.

I went back the next day to pick up my one hour photos. They weren't done. Strange. Their machine was broken, they offered me $5 off, which was fine. I then called the next day, and they told me the machine was fixed, only did one roll, and they would call me when my photos were ready. I proceeded to call every day on my lunch break until I went on vacation.

So I go to PA for a week and a half, get back and no one had called me. Still... So on Monday I went in and picked them up. I didn't look at them until I got back to my house, but was disappointed to see that they had printed all of my pictures as panoramas. None of them were supposed to be panoramic. It was Advanced Photo System film, which let's you choose the format of the printed picture.

The photo CD and index print were missing also. So on Tuesday I took the photos back. I simply wanted my money back. They had messed them up so bad, I just wanted to take them elsewhere. The gentleman assisting me in the photo department had no clue what he was talking about. I tried to explain to him about the 3 picture formats, and showed him how the tops and bottoms of most of my pictures were cut off. He just told me that they were supposed to be like that, and also told me that there was no way for them to make a photo CD using the APS machine.

I've never had problems like that anywhere trying to get film developed. Thank God for digital cameras, right. Anyways, I wouldn't recommend going to Walgreens to process film. If they can mess up what is an almost completely automatic process, then they don't need my business. haha

Anyways, so I took them to CVS, and they did a beautiful job. Yay!

So, I'm in kind of a surly mood today. There are a couple reasons...

Last Thursday, I went out to Alibi with Joe and his friend. I had a good time there. While I was there, a guy came up to me. I didn't recognize him, but he said hi to me and was really friendly. Until I told him I had no idea who he was. He said we'd been talking for 2 days and I should know his name. I didn't. I think he got offended when I had no clue who he was. He said well, if you figure out who I am, come talk to me. So, it did eventually occur to me who he was. But, first of all, I wouldn't recognize him from his pictures online, he was cuter in person. Secondly, I never did ask his name and it's not apparent from his screen name, like mine is. Third, he could've just introduced himself, it woulda made it a lot easier. Also, I was very drunk.

Anyways, now he won't talk to me anymore. I talked to him on Saturday, and he was really rude, and I attempted to talk to him today, to no avail. Blah, it sucks because I did enjoy talking to him and wish I had a chance to get to know him, he seemed like a pretty nice guy.

On Friday, Shane drove Austin and I to Chambers. I had a really good time there. It was really packed; more people than I have seen there in a long time.

On Saturday, Shane and I went to Chili's. I called Joe to see if he wanted to meet us there, because he had just gotten off work, and he said he wanted to hang out after that. He said he wasn't hungry, but he would meet us anyways. We waited and waited for Joe, only to find out that he had gone to the wrong Chili's. I called him and he got really pissy with me, so I told him not to bother. We finally got the waitress and told her that we weren't waiting for another person, and that we were gonna order.

Joe did end up joining us at Chili's when we were ready to leave, ate some of my food, and kept going on and on about how hungry he was. After that we went to the mall and shopped around, which is an annoying process with Joe. Everytime I'd pick something up, he'd say it was cheaper at Home Depot. So I ended up not buying anything I needed. Oh yeah, and then Joe broke a brand new neon light I had bought for my car. No apology, no offer to fix or replace it...

The evening, I didn't really feel like going out, but felt like I should go do something to celebrate my birthday. So after some debate, I decided that we should go to Alibi. Mike was offering to drive, but insisted that we take my car, as he poured himself a (mostly vodka) drink. So I had Shane drive.

We met Robert and Patrick there, who I was really glad to see. When it was time to leave, I told Mike and Joe that I was gonna go catch last call at GC with Patrick and Robert. I tried to say goodbye to Joe, because he said he was going to leave when we got home, but he kept walking. So when Patrick, Robert and I got to the house, Joe was still there for a little bit before he left for the evening.

Patrick, Shane, Robert and I left as Mike went to sleep. We went to Patrick and Robert's house, and I was finally able to enjoy myself in a drama free environment.

On Sunday, my birthday, I slept in, late. I called Joe when I woke up cuz he had sent me tons of messages. He started in on me calling me names and bringing me drama. On my fucking birthday. Excuse me; I think that I can hang out with whoever I please on my birthday, that means I have no obligation to do anything with you... Thanks... Especially after how he acted Saturday evening, why would I even want to?

So, I'm back in Florida. For the majority of my vacation/trip to Pennsylvania, I didn't have access to the internet. Well, I could get online on my phone, but I wasn't about to blog from that, especially with the painfully slow connection I had up there... It really surprised me how no one I know has internet. Most everyone has computers though, which is a change from last year.

So it was an interesting trip, I drove up with my roommate in my old car, stressed out over finding a new car, visited with my family and friends, and then drove back to Florida in my new car. ;)

I definitely need to write more about it, but that will have to wait. For now I do have photos that you can see here.

I got back to the house on Tuesday evening. I didn't have to work Wednesday, so I slept literally all day. It was great. During my trip I never really got to sleep in or relax. :( Anyways, I spent the evening unpacking, organizing, etc. And then I took a trip to Wal*Mart with Shane, where I cracked out on car accessories. $90 later, I had all kinds of new crap to jazz up my car. Yay

Yesterday was my first day back at work. I'll have to admit, it was kind of odd. Today is number 2, and it's almost over. Yay. It's my birthday weekend, so I'm formulating lots of entertaining plans. :-D