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I swam yesterday – got in 27 laps again. I didn’t have as much energy as a usually do and I was running late when I finished up.

Work has been stressful. Can’t seem to make much headway – I keep getting derailed. And pretty much everything is making me irritated. I wish I could go home and take a “cranky” day. Don’t think it would work.

And I found out recently that our student assistant it leaving. She’s got to get a different job to fit her internship requirement and is running out of time. So, her last day is next week. I guess the timing is as good as it could be – we had just finished up a major project and had to yet to start her on a new one. Still, I’m bummed ’cause she was great to work with and helped us out tremendously. My boss is trying to get the rules bent on the qualifying job for her internship – but it’s not looking good.

The internet has been flaky pretty much all this week – something with our internet provider. It’s made the webteam a little cranky as well. Or maybe that’s just me.

Not much of a post, granted, but I’ll try to do better next time. Oh, and I’m working on an update to my cell phone rant.

later…

In cleaning out my basement (still/again) I found a small archive of dreams that I had written down in a small spiral notebook. The notebook is musty and in poor shape – I’ve decided to jot down the impressions and toss the notebook.

07/22/94 – Tori Amos stops into the SuperAmerica where I work and buys $14.68 worth of gas. She pays in change, ones, and the gold backs of earrings. I get her autograph.

07/27/94 – My grandmother cuts my hair and uses static electricity to make it stick out and easier to cut.

07/30/94 – I’m at a hot dog stand at the Westland mall in Columbus, OH. I buy a shirt for a friend who’s 10 foot tall, but the shirt is too small.

07/31/94 – Driving back to Ohio, the cell phone rings and Dad answers – but doesn’t know the code for the area so the signal is mostly scrambled. I try to answer, but I can’t hear and I’m mostly mute. Dad says it must be Blackford (?) Mom says, “Oh, he found the rat,” The song “Mr. Jones” by the Counting Crows is playing.

08/14/94 – I’m at Ball state helping my sister move into her room. I meet up with fraternity brothers and party at the student center. I goto Miami, FL and Maria from Biomed does not remember me. I end up living in a haunted house at the end of a street where all the houses are miniatures.

08/15/94 – I’m at a SuperAmerica in a Kroger in the mall. My sister visits during my break. She applies for a part time job at Froxx communications which is somehow connected to Zima. I’m suddenly back in high school and I’m being initiated into the Order of the Peach – which is a far less blood-thirsty ritual than the Order of the Kiwi Strawberry.

08/16/94 – I check my work schedule and go in for 2 hours – then, for some reason I go home and call them to ask if I’d been there and should I have been? The manager says I wasn’t and that I shouldn’t have been – and that I must have been dreaming! I’m next playing poker at my grandparents house and I lose. My aunt stops over and asks if we want to play a drinking game.

Spring 1995 Day ? – At my grandparents house, all the kids climb a raspberry tree and knock the branches off. We gather the branches and sing – like a children’s musical.

Spring 1995 Early April – I’m an agent guarding an African diplomat at the mall. 200 assassins come after him and using knives and a sword I kill them all with the help of another agent.

Yeah, I need help.

One of my co-workers challenged me to do 30 laps in the pool. So, I paced myself when I needed to and pulled out all the stops when appropriate – and did 30 laps today. Still felt pretty good when I was done and could have gone farther, but ran out of time. Now I just need to get though the rest of the day do I can go home and nap.

later…

I encountered pure evil over the weekend. Pure, concentrated evil.

In the form of a toilet seat cover.

See, these things had to have been invented by a woman. No two ways about it. First, it’s just something extra that’s supposed to “look” pretty, but has no purpose. No guy would do that.

Second, it creates a problem that wouldn’t affect women, but would affect men.

So, here’s what should happen – and then I’ll explain what happened in the presence of this evil.

A man enters the bathroom, raises the lid and the seat, and stands with feet at shoulder width apart. He extracts, by whatever means he feels comfortable with, that which needs to be extracted. With careful aim, he relieves his bladder and gives a slight shake. The extraction process is reversed and he flushes the toilet while he lowers the seat and occasionally the lid, then washes his hands and leaves the bathroom.

In this case, however, the fuzzy toilet seat cover prevented the seat from remaining in an upright position. Without support, the lid would most likely come crashing down during the operation and cause a terrible mess. Also, not lifting the seat would result in a terrible retribution from the next woman to use the bathroom.

In the past, I’ve dealt with this problem by using a bungee cord to force the seat into compliance, but none was available. So, with a little planning, I attempted the following operation:

I entered the bathroom and approached the toilet. When it became clear that the seat was going to be a problem, I extracted what needed to be extracted, then stood at an angle to the toilet. I also stood much closer than usual, then raised the seat. Holding the seat in place with my knee, I proceeded to relive myself nearly straight down – which, in the absence of a toilet is a good way to urinate on ones shoes and is thus avoided.

I worked quickly for fear that my leg would cramp up or that I would loose my balance. Task completed, I gave a little shack and lowered the seat, then reversed the extraction. Lid lowered, toilet flushed and hands washed – exit.

Each time I had to use the bathroom at this location, I had to repeat the same operation. I did a lot of swearing and I was cranky. And it was all so that the toilet seat would match the rug.

Evil, I’m telling you. Pure evil.

In other news… my room-mate and I don’t have any pets. Still, somehow, we’ve managed to acquire some music-related, feline-based humor. It started several months ago when he decided that the Enya song “Storms in Africa” had cats meowing in the background instead of the children singing that everyone else hears. Since them, we’ll both find ourselves quietly meowing along with a song, where it sounds appropriate. Yeah, it’s silly – but you’d be amazed at how funny it is. Last evening, while we were eating a meal, listening to music and I was telling a story – the song, “I can’t go for that” came on the cable music.

During the second chorus, my room-mate interrupted me and said in time with the song – “I can’t find my cat”. Totally matter-of-fact and perfectly timed.

You really had to be there and since I was, its a good thing I didn’t have food in my mouth since I most likely would have sprayed it out along with some braying laughter.

So, that’s pretty much it for now. Later…

Just got back from my swim. I was getting tired around lap 15 and figured I would just try and get 20 done and call it a day. When I got to 20 I thought, “well, maybe I can go ahead and get 23 or 24” – which had been my current record. When I got to 24 I was feeling pretty good and decided to do 25. I powered through lap 25 and decided to go for it and do two more laps – which put me at 27.

And, if my math is correct, is 3/4 of a mile.

Which is not too shabby considering that when I started back in December I was exhausted after 4 laps.

And now I’m very tired… 🙂 later…

The dremel was a complete success – I really shouldn’t have doubted it. The keyboard tray got installed with very little incident, though I did get a little sawdust in my eyes. I should have followed the instructions and gotten the safety glasses from my car. Actually, I should have gotten them because it would be funny – which is a much better reason for doing things.

I was swamped yesterday afternoon at work – I got a lot of stuff done, but it really wore me out. I think I got everything covered, but I thought I was going to have to stay late to get it all done.

It was raining this morning when I woke up – and it was really great sleeping weather. To the point that my plans of getting an early start on the day were disrupted by my inability to get my sorry ass out of bed. I was a couple minutes late for work as a result, though that was more caused by slow drivers and my need to stop for fuel on the way in.

Well, guess that’s about it for now… time to get back to work. Oh, I’m listening to Linkin Park right now – those guys must go through throat lozenges like crazy with all the yelling they do.

So, I’m in the locker room earlier this week and they’ve got the radio blasting over the P.A. system, way louder than usual. The song playing? “Hungry Eyes”

In an age of YouTube and video surveillance, it was not the most reassuring thing to hear. While I’m all for a bit of streaking and I’m not really shy – I’d really rather not end up on the internet. Do I seriously think I was being watched because of a random song on the radio? No. Did I look around for a camera in the shower anyway? Yes.

As I was getting ready for work one morning recently, I noticed that I had one substantial gray hair on the top of my head that would not play along with the others. And no amount of gel would have any impact on it. So, I pulled the damn thing and went to work – mildly cranky.
I’ve also recently discovered a surge in gray chest hair. Which is quite disappointing as I’m just starting to develop a chest. Again, cranky.

I played a bit of Pac-man world 2 recently – discount games rock. I was doing okay until I reached a level that required a bit of swimming. I acquired all the fruit in that area, they surfaced, got out of the water and tried to proceed. Except the camera refused to move to show me a forward facing view. I used up a lot of lives, but finally forced my way to the end by luck and guesswork. Except it wasn’t the end – it was the beginning of the level. I had gotten out of the pool on the wrong side and backtracked through the whole level. Which explains the camera and the need for guesswork. I got turned around and made my way back through the level and then later on I reached an area called B-doing – which I thought meant I’d have to fight giant bees or something. Instead, it’s a reference for the sound it makes when he uses a trampoline – of which there are many and of which I suck at using. There might be giant bees later on, but I can’t get past the opening area. For now, anyway…

I bought a keyboard tray for our student assistant two days ago since she was having some soreness in her wrist and arm. My mom had carpel tunnel and I wanted to avoid inflicting it on our SA. So, yesterday, we checked it out to see if it would work for her and what tools would be needed. I promised to bring in my drill today and get it set up. Except that my room-mate borrowed my drill – not realizing that I might need it. And he’s out of state for the rest of the week and weekend. We’re trying to work out something where I can pick up his drill from his secretary this evening. If she goes into his office and if she can find the drill and if she’s willing to bring it back to her house so that I can go and pick it up. If I can remember where she lives. I think I’m okay on the last part, but that’s still another delay.

So, I’m going to try to use my dremel to get the job done. It’s not the right tool for the job, but I’m going to try and make it work. Otherwise, I’ll see if I can find one around here – maybe with the networking dudes.

I guess that’s about it for now… back to work…

1 – the number of pairs of goggles I forgot today for my swim.

2 – the number of red eyes that I had afterwards

20 – the number of laps I swam anyway

It started with me looking for something in the basement. I can’t even remember what it was at this point, but it annoyed me that I couldn’t find it. So, on Saturday morning and on into the afternoon – I worked on cleaning out part of the basement. Mostly just sorting things and trying to put some order to the stuff there, but I did manage to fill the garbage can. This lead to sorting through video games and movies to resell – which is always a good thing. I also gathered together all the loose change in the house and between my room-mate and I, we had nearly a hundred bucks. Not too shabby – and we turned it into a gift card for borders at the coinstar location.

I also tried to play the demo for Overlord this weekend – it took multiple download attempts and an update to some software – and then change the display settings before it would run. Turned out to be a pretty cool game, but the computer doesn’t have the processing power to keep the frame-rate consistent and the lag is annoying. So, I won’t be buying that one.

Played a little tomb raider, made it through some really freaking evil puzzles. The “swinging from a rope while avoiding narrowly timed spinning blades” really sucked. Still, overall, a good game.

Watched some movies this weekend. “It’s Alive 2” – the sequel to the 1970’s “It’s Alive!” – and every bit as bad as the first. My room-mate got the trilogy (!) and we’ve been watching them as penance for going to the movie theater and spending too much money on popcorn.

I also watched the remake of “The hitcher” – which was pointlessly gory and dumb. I felt nothing for the characters. Live, die, didn’t matter. Waste of film.

Also saw “The Thirst” – a direct to video (I think) waste of a DVD. I couldn’t even watch the whole thing – even speeding it up to skip to the interesting parts put me at the end credits.

I’ve also got Brazil on DVD – haven’t seen it yet but I’ve heard good things about that one. It would have to be better than the rest of them I’ve seen recently.

I had a nightmare fueled by “it’s alive!” and a passing comment that my room-mate made over the weekend. The movie may have been lame, but the nightmare was a full-on terror ride. It was too disturbing to go into in detail.

Finally, I found a bunch of letters and cards that I had saved in an old box. I decided that I wanted to preserve those electronically and I went and bought a scanner at BestBuy. Got a pretty good deal and made it through the install without any problems. I think I want to start archiving these things so they don’t get lost or damaged.

Well, it’s Monday, so it’s time to get to work. Been trying to clear off one of our servers and I’ve just about got everything moved – hoping to wrap this up this week. later…

I went and saw ‘1408’ last night – based off of a Stephen King short story that I read a few years ago. There were some good jump-out-of-your-seat moments – and in some ways it was better than the book. There was also some cleverness and it wasn’t as obvious as some scary movies.

But, the ending was weak and a little too Hollywood. Still, overall, a good flick.

I’ve been playing Diablo II again at home, it’s still a fun game. I’ve been using a technique to increase the experience gain while making it more challenging. The landscape and the monsters are the same, but I’m still getting a thrill of the hunt.

Today I get to try out my Titanium Spork that I got from ThinkGeek. Never have I owned such a powerful piece of cutlery. It’s quite exciting.

Not much else new, time to get back to work…