Category: general

I want to send a big shoutout to Renice for her great Bush stickers.  I think we should plaster the quad (and everything else for that matter)! 🙂

Awww yeah, that’s right, I went to Prince last night at the Assembly Hall.  Now, I know you’re all thinking, “Why would he spend $50/ticket to go?”  All I have to say is that I got my 6 tickets for free from work.  Apparantly the show wasn’t sold out, so the athletics dept got a huge stack of tickets.  It was actually pretty fun too.  The short man really put on a show.  I don’t think the audio was setup properly, but that could be because of where our seats were.  We were in the nosebleed section, C26, row 13.  Colleen and I went, and then she invited a couple of her friends.  I tried to get Bree to go, but apparantly she’s too good for that kind of thing.

He invited people up on stage with him near the end to dance, and a few got to sing a few lines.  Talk about a once in a lifetime experience for those people.  The lighting was pretty good, but the sound, well, like I said earlier, wasn’t right where we were sitting.  The bass was turned up WAY to far.  The low rumble made it hard, if not impossible to hear him singing.  Also, as with the case with all concerts, it was too loud.  I wish artists and concert directors would get that through their heads.  Louder does not equal better.  Oh well, like I said, still a good time.

So, I didn’t go in to the shop early yesterday morning.  When they called me on Monday, I had said to go ahead with everything, so there really wasn’t much I could say in the morning.  So, I didn’t hear back, and I didn’t hear back.  The whole time, I’m thinking how incredibly pissed I’m going to be when I didn’t get my truck back by the time they close at 5.  Well, I get a call at 4:15, and my truck is ready.  Thanfully for both them and me, the truck was finished yesterday.  It was exactly as much as they said it was going to be, when I got there too.  After thet guy went through the reciept and everything that had been done, I said, “I don’t think I should be charged for towing.”  The guy started to bring up the fact that it wasn’t his fault, so I asked to talk to the manager about it.  Well, the manager was sitting in an office behind the counter with the door open.  He apparantly heard everything and just said, “Give it to him.” 

I don’t know if the guy helping me thought that I was personally attacking him this whole time or not.  He quickly because defensive as soon as I became irritated about the tow job, and when I asked for the refund.  However, as soon as it was cleared with the manager, he went back to being a nice guy.  It made totally no sense to me, but whatever.  I got the tow job off, and it was a fairly painless process.

In other car news, I’m glad that there are 2 latches on hoods.  As I was driving down the freeway, the first one came loose.  Talk about scaring the crap out of you.  Driving ~77mph and see the hood jump 3 inches and start flappying.  Needless to say, I just reclosed it and didn’t have a problem the rest of the trip.

Square One is all moved in, and for the most part totally unpacked.  The doors are on, and everything was set except for a few electical jack covers and finishing up the ethernet wiring.  All in all, it was definitely a productive 2 days.

So, I’m writing this from my Aunt’s Mac.  Yes, I won’t be coming home tonight as originally expected.  If I could, I probably would, but as of right now it is physically impossible for me to drive home.  Yes, that’s right kids, my car is kaput.  So I drove the 4 hours up here, no problem.  I happened to pull into my Aunts driveway right before her kids.  Needless to say, we needed to swap cars so that they could get out in the morning.  So, I’m pulling out, and I start to turn the wheel.  I hear this thunk, so, thinking I just hit her curb, I start to pull forward.  I hear this nice grinding sound, like I picked up something from backing up and was dragging it.  I get out and look, it turns out that I didn’t pick up anything, but sure enough I was dragging something…my left side tire rod.  Joy.  I don’t think I can explain the joy I was feeling at that moment.  Well, being that it was Sunday night at 7pm, I had to wait till this morning to call anybody.

This morning I call the car shop at 7:11am EST, 6am my time.  I haven’t seen 6am in about forever.  So, I tell them what’s going on and ask if they’ll be able to look at it today.  I kinda needed it, so if they would’ve said no, I definitely would’ve called someone else.  They said it wouldn’t be a problem, and that they’ll send a tow truck out in about an hour.  I’m thinking to myself, sweet, maybe this won’t be that big of a deal, and I’ll be able to head home tonight still. 

So, by 11:30 I hadn’t heard back from them yet, so my Aunt and I decided to drive by the house to see if the car was still there.  Sure enough, still there.  Joy.  I give the shop a call again, and they tell me that the guy should be there in an hour. 

I drive by again at 1.  Guess, what?  The car was still there.  Screw calling them, I drove down there and went in and talked to them.  They got on the phone with the tow company (a 3rd party company) and they were told there was a guy on his way right them.  Ok, so I’m thinking they’ll at least be able to look at it, and potentially start working on it.

I haven’t heard from them by 4pm.  What the hell?  I give them a call, and yeah, they haven’t even started looking at it.  M*ther F*cker.  So, I drive myself down to the shop.  Synopsis of conversation follows:

“Yeah, so I just called and found out that you haven’t even looked at my truck yet.  I called at 7 this morning asking for you to look at it as quickly as possible because I’m from out of town and need to drive home.  You told me it wouldn’t be a problem”

“Yeah, the tow company didn’t get around to getting your car till after 1.  We called them multiple times about it.”

I’m thinking to myself, “Right…you called 2x, because that’s how many times I bitched at you.”

“Right, but I called you and you said you’d take care of it, which you didn’t.”

“This isn’t our problem, you could’ve had someone else tow your car.”

“No, I specifically called you at 7am, and you said you’d take care of it.”

“Right, but it was the tow company’s fault.”

“Ok, then you have beef with the tow company.  I have beef with you.  You told me at 7am that you would take care of it.  After that point it was YOUR responsibility in my eyes.  It’s not like I could’ve called a different tow company after you had said you were going to take care of it.”

“…”

“So, now that you’ve made me stay an extra day, what are you going to do for me?”

Guy #2…the guy with SOME customer skills, “What exactly do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t feel as if I should pay for the tow job, and you guys need to make this right in my eyes.”

“After we check it out we’ll see what we can do.”

So, I head back to the office, awaiting my phonecall before 5 (the time in which they close).  At 4:55 I’m like this is pointless, if they thought I was pissed when I went in at 4, they haven’t seen anything yet.  At 7am they are gonna have one pissed off customer in their lobby.

5:05 they call back.  They told me the that left tire rod was busted (no shit) ($), and that the right tire rod was about ready to fall off to ($$).  They then tell me that while they had the car apart, they checked the spark plugs, and stuff.  Turns out that the electrode is actually coming out of the plug and there is significant charring on the end.  They recommend replacing those ($$$).  The belt that runs the alternator is severly cracked, and the rachet that autotightens it is broken ($$$$).  The transmission, brack, and differential fluid is about as thick as mud ($$$$$).  And, they saw the oil change sticker on my windshield that was over due ($$$$$$).

The damage…$1300.  Joy.  I tell them, might as well do all of it.  They say it will most likely be ready by 5 tomorrow.  Currently, I’m not holding my breath.  Needless to say, tomorrow morning, I’m going to stop by and make sure that a) they didn’t charge me for the towing ($60), and b) that I’m getting some other deal because they seriously screwed me over.  I’m sure I’ll get the same bs about it being the towing company’s fault, but once they said they’d take care of the tow, it became their problem.  It’s there job to then bitch at the towing company as to why it didn’t happen.  I just don’t see tomorrow going well, especially as well as it went earlier.  Joy.

I think this has lost it’s fun.  It seems so forced most of the time, and I think that’s why I end up not posting things as often anymore.  I barely have time to do this anymore except for the weekends, and then I’d rather do other things.  I come home from work, eat, then either go climbing or go to the gym.  Hell, somedays I do both.  Climbing is a great warmup before I go run and lift.  It’s way better than walking for a little bit before the run.  If I wasn’t going to help my Aunt and her company (Square One Design) move tomorrow and Monday, I probably would’ve headed down to Jackson today since it was beautiful out.

Today was Colleen’s first day working days (I know, it was supposed to be tomorrow, but it WAS, until they changed her schedule).  She gets the 1pm-11pm shift.  Plus she got a fairly substantial raise.  She’s definitely happy about it (as am I).

I’m definitely enjoying having all my speakers now.  I’ve been slowly going through all my DVD’s and listening to them they way they should be.  When I bought the center channel and the surrounds from the guy, I had mentioned that my HT system is pretty much done, except for a sub.  He said that when he bought his mains (which I’m currently using as surrounds…hehe), he was told he wouldn’t need a sub unless he wanted really low punchy bass.  I’m just listening to some music (streaming off my xbox from my mp3’s upstairs) in stereo (the way it’s meant to be listened to), and I can’t believe how punchy the bass is on my mains.  I’m used to stupid computer speaker setups with whimpy subs, and it’s insane how floppy they sound compared to what I’m listening to now (Sherly Crow – The Very Best Of).  When I was listening to the Matrix, the building entrance scene was intense.  I had to turn it down multiple times for fear of the neighbors.

So, for those of you that go to the University, you may see some flyers on the quad, and in various buildings about modding xbox’s and ps2’s.  Well, that’s Aaron and I.  We’re gonna print up a few fliers here in the next week or so and see what kinda interest there is.  Should be good times.  The fliers are actually all made, I just need to make a make shift website for it now.  Currently he’s going to be hosting it, but since his site is down quite a bit, it *may* get moved to mine.

OH MY GOD!!! I just saw a Jedi at the Steak and Shake on Prospect!!! What are the odds?!

Holy crap, I almost wore shorts yesterday when Colleen and I went to take a walk. This morning I woke up to snow. What is up with that? For the last week the students that work with us have been wearing shorts, and it SNOWS!?!!

Lets see, what’s new…other than the friggin SNOW!!!

I finally found out that the xbox wireless controller was released, so of course I ordered it 🙂 It should be here tomorrow and I can’t wait. I’ll actually be able to stream stuff to the xbox, and it’ll be great. Hopfully it’ll work well with my wireless network.

Yeah, so my receiver seems to always turn on in the middle of the night, and other times when we’re not using it. I’ve deduced that it’s the remote (after taking the batteries out of the remote it didn’t turn on!). So I’ve also ordered the new pronto remote. That should keep me busy for awhile, while I program it to work wil all my stuff. Hopefully that’ll come before Turkey Day too, but I’m not holding my breath.

Let’s all let the snow stop!

Phew, it’s been awhile since I last updated. I’ve been meaning to, just haven’t gotten around to it. So, this may be a little long (as if that’s never happened). We’ll start with the most recent stuff first, since those are the things I remember.

Well, I just bought an mp3 player today, a Rio Cali 256MB. It’ll be nice to have something when climbing and when Colleen and I join a gym. It seems to have all the features I want, and it has expandability, etc. It’d be a lot nicer if there was someplace you could go to get a comprehensive list of mp3 players. I really didn’t want a harddrive based one (ala iPod) because of the weight and the moving parts, but I also wanted something with at least 256MB of flash RAM. Also, the Rio has a pretty good menu system, according to the few reviews I actually saw.

Speaking of joining a gym, I mentioned in the last post about it. However, we just found out we can’t join till the end of December. Grr, I guess I’ll just have to wait a few more months. It’ll be nice, though, to actually start lifting again instead of running and climbing. Something to break up the same old will be nice.

Basketball season has started. We showed the student workers how to setup, etc today. Unfortunatly, I think basketball gameday is worse than football. Thankfully we should have wireless stats monitors this year, so we don’t have to run wires all over assembly hall before each bball game. The only bad thing with the wireless stats is that they don’t have their own wireless band, so we have NO clue how they’re going to work on gameday with the headsets, etc that are also wireless. And, well, when we tried them out today they didn’t work perfectly like they had when we initially tried them earlier in the week. Joy.

I know there’s tons of other stuff, but for the life of me I can’t remember. Oh well…

Why do I keep lying to myself about going to the bars in this city? IT IS NEVER THAT FUN. I swear, I can actually pick out the freshmen/sophomores while they’re waiting in line. At least fall classes haven’t started yet (i.e. you can MOVE in the bars). Oh yeah, and having to drive across town doesn’t help either. *sigh* Oh well, each to their own.