Ready to retreat, more every day.
Note: I started writing this blog almost a week ago and finally finished it today… timeframes referenced probably aren’t consistant!
So this morning I got up at 6am with my alarm clock, despite staying up until almost midnite last night. I kicked on the coffee and decided I’d do a little web surfing to start the day. Then I did something I shouldn’t have. I kicked on the Google News page.
With all the commotion going on about this health care reform, I foolishly took up an interest in its outcome. I watched the final stages unfold much as one would watch the end of a match between the worlds finest chess players. I get the basics of the game, but the moves are completely above my head and happening so quickly that it’s easy to see how people can feel that stuff like this is just being rammed through. Every move is so carefully calculated, planned, and countless unseen hands are pulling the strings.
I had initially had the intention that I was going to find out what the Health Care bill really meant, form my own opinion and take side on the issue. Of course nobody was talking about this story. It was about the “Story within the story”. Some jackball yelling “Baby Killer”, or isolated cases (yes yes, I realize of real people) from both sides that are supposed to convince me one way or another to be for or against the broad sweeping legislation that apparently all of a sudden has a deadline.
What further discouraged my already misplaced faith in the populous were the comments section in all of these news stories. After coming up dry on the real information I really wanted, I continue to read heated purely emotional discussions between ignorant people that have no intention of discussion. They’d just rather have the opposing argument eliminated. I guess it was disappointing because it was all so predictable.
1 John 2:15Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.
There are SO many struggles I face every day, trying to be more like Christ. But the passage above is certainly one of the least difficult! What a lot of folks see as interesting, entertaining, or desirable– All too often I see them as mundane, predictable, and empty. Six hundred shows on TV about nurses and doctors? Oh yay, a new greener car! TV Guy says: “Here’s something you didn’t know exsisted until just now but you HAVE TO HAVE IT!”
The term “rat race” seems all to literal. Running a maze to get some piece of cheese, only when you get the cheese you realize the maze continues for more bigger cheeze. Then you look around and realize everyone elses cheeze is bigger and tastier than yours… so you keep running. If only everybody knew that the race was voluntary. I mean I don’t try to be different for different’s sake, I just try to be comfortable in every situation… perhaps at times making the people around me somewhat uncomfortable, hehe.
Jenn blogged about Facebook today. It made me realize how far from the center I am. Not to say Jenn isn’t a unique person, far from it. But Facebook is top dead center on what is popular in today’s culture, and I really couldn’t have less to do with it. I’ve never been too social. Infact even back in school I always preferred my small group of good friends over being the popular one, or center of attention. So in that respect Facebook is a little overwhelming for me. I’m sure there’s plenty of others just like me out there, but we’re the weird ones.
So I’ve once again swore off Google News, and really the media in general in most respects. I’ll stick to message boards and a few niche websites. And if I just so happen to find out some major earth shattering event two days after it happened via the IGN Boards, so be it… It wouldn’t be the first time!
I’m back!
Many apologies for my serious lack of posting as of late. I’m just rebounding from being as sick as I can remember for quite some time.
The worst part about being sick, is that when you are sick, it is impossibly difficult to remember what it felt like to be well, normal, and just relaxed. I had a cold and fever for two days that left every muscle in my body tense and sore, and once that went away a pounding three day headache utterly sucked my will to do anything but bury myself in covers and wait for it to be over.
In the meantime there were birthday parties to attend, and work that had to be done. Calling in on Monday is one thing, but on a Friday the options are either “spend all day on the phone trying to explain how to do what it is you do to the people that just know you ‘take care of it’.” Or just go get it done and keep everything as low key as possible. So Friday I called and said I was feeling terrible but I was going to come in a bit late. I knocked out everything that was absolutely required, then retreated home for a breif rest before heading down to Wichita for a Nephew’s birthday party. The entire stretch was exhausting.
So now it feels like light is finally returning to my world and I can resume whatever boring and mundane goals I had before my brush with despair. I try to take a little something from every experience, and I think from this one I can truly be thankful for the health that I have, and the fact that I am RARELY ever really sick like that. I feel like I can be a little less than understanding of those who live with constant pain because I’m well so much of the time, but I really am thankful for what I have, because that constant discomfort really effects your attitude in a big way, at least it did for me. Perhaps I’m just a baby.
I just want bigger boots.
Well I’ve had a resolution for this winter to be better equipped to handle the weather. So a few days ago I picked up some snow boots and insulators to keep my feet nice warm and dry. Well I tried the boots on at the store, but I couldn’t try on the insulators unless I took them out of the package. Get home and boots + insulators = too small. No biggie. I’ll just take them back and exchange them. I figure a couple sizes bigger on both outta do it.
So last night we roll up to Orschlen’s. There were several cars there, but I wouldn’t say they were swamped. I grab the boots, insulators, and my original reciept and head to the nearest checkout stand. I’m not sure how exchanges work at Orschlen’s, but I explain to the guy that I just want to exchange these for the same thing bigger size. He says that’s fine and asks me to place my stuff in a cart right up front there and go get what I need.
We do so, and look around a little bit to see if there’s anything else we need while we’re there. After a while of just window shopping we head to the front with just the items I want to exchange. I go to the same guy I went to before (you know since I already talked to him about exchanging) even though his line was a little bit longer. As it would turn out, this guy is the Smokey Dan of Orschlen Farm & Home. So from now on, we’ll just call him Dan.
Dan appeared to be “training” someone. I use the quotes because the trainee seemed to be helping this guy make it through some snags in the computer system. It wasn’t the computer system’s fault. It’s just that you can’t do things like, type in a zip code, when there’s an error message on the screen saying you forgot the city “Please click OK.” Eventually he gets my old reciept scanned in, rings up my new items and says, “That’ll be $25.”
“Huh? I’m just exchanging this stuff for the exact same things. Same prices and everything!”
“Well you didn’t tell me that before,” Dan said.
“Sorry. I had both these items in my hands when I talked to you the first time AND placed them both in the cart you told me to put them in which looks like somebody else already hauled off.”
Dan sighed and said, “Okay.”
The next 8 minutes or so involved Dan trying to undo everything he just did. After many dings, and error messages he finally decides it will be FASTER to start over. Genius. So he trys to, I guess, cancel out the sale and manages to freeze the check out machine up. I don’t know how you crash a POS machine, but he did it. Meanwhile somebody is asking him for his override code for another register. OH, apparently this guy is IN CHARGE tonight! I can’t even ask if the manager is here! After giving the gal the WRONG code and her having to come back twice while he fiddles with the machine trying to figure out how to restart it he decides it would be FASTER to move to another register.
So for the third time I explain how to spell my last name, and give him my address and phone number so he can put it in again incorrectly a third different way. BUT FINALLY I have a receipt that says I can leave the store with boots and insulators and not owe them anything! HOORAY!
It was frustrating, but now I’ve got me some boots that will keep my feet and pants warm and dry. Good thing to as it looks like we’ve already got a good amount of snow overnight and more to come today. Bring it ON!
03.22.09Rollin’
Well we’re starting the process of painting Andrea’s car. I just realized I don’t have any pictures. So for historical purposes, here’s the before shots.
The paint really isn’t in too bad of shape other than the clear coat peeling off the hood, and the bumper spot. But it’s two different colors of red! That’s what a couple of deer will do I guess. This one should be ALOT less work than mine was, because we’re going to park it while we’re painting it. (Meaning I don’t have to put it back together everyday. ) And there’s not near the rust on it as there was on mine. But we’ll see. After it’s painted it’s going into the shop for all new exhaust and we’re getting new headlights since these are all fogged over and make it difficult to drive at night. She doesn’t even have to turn her brights off for oncoming traffic! Ha ha.
She wants black. Which is cool, but I warned her it shows any and all imperfections. But I’m sure there won’t be any. We’ll see what happens.
Hopefully it goes better than today’s automotive work did. I headed out to get the front end on my car finally fixed. Only to find out that I don’t have big enough tools to do the work! So I run to the hardware store to see if they have what I need. Heck they don’t even sell big enough sockets. So at least I leave without spending any money… But coming out to the parking lot I notice something hanging from underneath Andrea’s car. The tailpipe came loose from the muffler! Geeze! So I nurse it home and put it up on the ramps. Just pulled the rusty thing out and threw it in the trash. At least that’s one less thing that can fall off.
So back to my car I see if there’s anything I can fix with the tools I have. Front shocks? Nope, I have wrenches one size too big, one size too small. Not the one I need. How about just get the idler arm fixed? That was the part that had been scaring me to get out on the highway. I got my wrench on there… but damn it if my sockets aren’t big enough! GEEZE.
So I headed over to Harborfreight.com and scored (I think) everything I need to get it all done for about $60. Like all my projects on my car it looks like this one is going to end up about $200 over budget. Oh well, right. Still cheaper than a car payment!
02.19.09Well shucks.
For the first time in the 4 years I’ve owned it, my car left me stranded. It’s mostly my fault though. It was about 18 this morning when I went out to start the car. Pumped the pedal twice and it fired right up like always. Instead of letting it warm up like I should, I let it idle high for about 15 seconds and kicked it down and headed over to the My Town stores to do some computer work. That is only about four blocks away from the house, so the car still didn’t have time to get warmed up.
I go in and work for about 45 minutes and come out to leave, pump it twice again, and it starts, but stumbles. Pump it a couple more times to try to keep it going but it dies. In trying to start it again I pump it AGAIN and now it won’t start at all, just turn over. Pop the hood and you can REALLY smell the gas. Flooded. Damn. I let it sit for about 10 minutes, but she still won’t start. Took the cover off the air cleaner and there’s liquid gasoline on the choke plates on the top of the carb. That’s REAL flooded.
So I got a ride to work and will go try to start it again over lunch. That should be enough time for the gas to evaporate. As long as I didn’t kill the battery with all the cranking! Lesson learned. Should have let it warm up.
01.29.09Cox Kansas throttles internet service
This story popped up on my Google Reader the other day claiming that Cox will be trying to control their network traffic by slowing down “non-time sensitive” content during peak congestion times. They state things like file-transfers aren’t as critical as on-demand content like loading web pages, online games, and streaming videos.
At home, I really don’t have a problem with this. A majority of my time is spent surfing the net, or playing Guild Wars. But at work the core of what I do relies heavily on file transfers. I have over 10 hours of audio content that I have to transfer to our on-air computer in Hays, and a majority of that has to first be downloaded from another source. At the present rate it takes about 20 minutes to transfer one hour of mp3 audio to Hays at a measly 40 k/s. That’s ALREADY a P.I.T.A. I certainly don’t need it to take even longer.
Lifehacker also recently published a link to a set of tools to test what (if anything) is being throttled by your provider. I’m anxious to put this to the test and see what protocols exactly are being throttled and by how much. And if it significantly impacts my work, you can bet they’ll hear from me…as futile as my cry may be.
12.12.08Oh what a night
Well I got my first sour taste of the glorious “responsibilities” of being Program Director.
Last night I’m just relaxing as I usually do. I take a shower and throw on some comfy clothes and sit down and play a little Wii. I had some leftover Wii points that have been on our account for months, so I decided to go ahead and download Super Mario Bros. 3 for the virtual console. Yeah, I have my NES still hooked up and everything, but the virtual console is so much more convenient! So I’m getting ready to start the “angry sun” level in World 2 when the work phone rings.
The transmitter calls saying there’s an audio alarm. Of course the station it’s calling for I can’t actually HEAR in the house. I can just barely pick it up in my car stereo. Then all of a sudden I have ANOTHER call incoming from one of the other stations. WTF is going on? These stations are 60 miles apart with studios in completely different towns! But quickly they all come back and the alarms are cleared. Then seconds later the Hays station calls again. Welp, gotta at least go out to the car and try to tune it in. Nada. So I drive into the radio station so I can remote login to the computer in Hays. It’s about 11:45 right now.
I still don’t know exactly what happened. Either the satellite wasn’t feeding any audio, or the reciever locked up. But I had to sit and play an hour of non-stop PSAs before the satellite finally came back. I waited for a few minutes to make sure it was going to stay on and I finally get back home around 1 AM. I get all set in bed, but I can’t get to sleep. Then I realize I forgot to reset the log for the next day. I could just leave it, but I decide that might as well go back and deal with it since I can’t sleep anyway. That was my stupid mistake. So I get back home, still restless and finally fall asleep sometime around 2AM.
Then what feels like 20 minutes later, the damn phone rings AGAIN! I look at the clock and it’s 5:15 AM. This time it’s the other PD’s station. But of course, he’s on vacation. Luckily this station actual has a signal that reaches Great Bend, so I head to the living room to try to figure out WTF is going on. It’s a satellite morning show, and it’s supposed to play our local commercials automatically, well it isn’t. So I have to head back in AGAIN. Turns out that satellite receiver is locked up too. So I plug in some emergency music and reset the damn thing. Of course then I have to wait 25 minutes until the next break to see if its going to work. At least I get a few commercials for the weekend done while I’m waiting in my PJ’s.
So at about 6:55 AM I finally get back home. Just as I’m laying down in bed…the alarm clock goes off. And so began this day.
10.31.08Another one about sleep.
Yesterday I had a little bit different shift at work. I had to stay late and board a remote, so I didn’t go into work until 2 PM and left at 10 PM. Brought back memories of the old night shift days at Platinum. It was nice. I was able to sleep in an extra half hour, then get up and not feel rushed or anything. I played a lot of Guild Wars. Did some laundry and even got the dishes done and put away! It was quite the productive day. Then it was nice being able to go in to work and get straight to the show. I felt so fresh and excited having not been bombarded all day by work and…Dan.
I get home and relax as I usually do. But before I know it it’s 12:30 and I need to go to bed! Back in the real night shift days I’d usually stay up until about 3 AM and wake up at 9:30 AM. Next thing I know, it’s 7:15 and Andrea prodding me to get out of bed.
I’ve said here before that sometimes it feels like my body prefers to have an erratic sleep schedule. Usually for some reason when I mix it up, I just wake up feeling more rested. But today I’m WAAAY off. It was harder to get up than it has been in a long time, and I just don’t hardly feel like I slept that long. Funny thing it, my sleep schedule didn’t hardly change at all yesterday. But my work schedule did! Other than getting an extra 30 minutes of sleep, going to bed at 12:30 isn’t an unusual occurrence for me any regular ol’ day.
I guess what I’m saying is: I dunno what the hells going on, but I wish I were still in bed.
Damn uppity Target
Well we had a good time in Kansas City this past weekend. We carpooled with Andrea’s sister and her husband up to downtown KC and shared a hotel room at the “Q”. We get back to Wichita Sunday to pick up our dog and get headed home. We all pile in her car and get ready to hit the road before the sun goes down.
As she whips out of her sister’s apartment complex like a bat out of Hades we hear a CLUNK VROOOOOOM! Sweet! No muffler! It was loud. Like take it easy or we’ll get a ticket LOUD! We turn a few heads as we make our way to the nearest store which just happens to be Target. I take a look under the car to see what exactly we had going on. Sure enough there was the muffler hanging there. I didn’t want to leave it flopping around under there. It’d be our luck a raccoon would run out in the road and end up ripping the whole damn exhaust out from under the car.
I needed something to tie it up out of the way. I figured a coat hanger would do the trick. Surely Target has coat hangers. Hell yes they do, but they gotta either be freakin’ uppity wood hangers or shiny plastic iHangers. Or super thick plastic coated wire hanger. WTF! Can’t middle class white people hang a shirt on a standard wire hanger these days? You gotta have a hanger strong enough for an astronaut’s space suit or what!?
So I spend the freaking $7 on GD wire hangers. (Because of course the ultimate proof of status is paying twice what any sane person would pay for any given product.) And mangle it into quite the sturdy exhaust support. Luckily it looks like the pipe just slid out of the coupling and all I’ll need is a new exhaust clamp. And at least now I have some quality hangers to hang all my snazzy Burlington Coat Factory merchandise.
09.4.08Damn you, El Monterey!
One of my cheap food staples is El Monterey burritos. You could once upon a time get a 10 pack for less than $3.00. I probably shouldn’t, but I eat them 3 at a time. Anyway…they’ve been getting more and more expensive along with everything else in this world. But we’re in the store the other day, and I noticed they were selling for $2.95! What a deal, I thought!
Well today, I’m pulling the package out of the frezzer like I’ve done countless times before. It seems a little more compact than usual. The bastards didn’t lower the price! They just shorted me 2 burritos! They could have at least been straight with me. You know like a big banner on the package that says “Now with 20% LESS Burritos! Arriba!” Personally I’d be less offended if I were paying more for 10 burritos. I just feel like they tried to pull a fast one on me.
Let me tell you, El Monterey. Your burritos aren’t cheap enough, or good enough, that I can’t find a more faithful quick eats companion. Quick rice has my back.