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The lazy days of summer...

Friday, September 11, 2009

Note: This post is going to be a quick recap of my summer. Repeat, this is just a gratuitous catch up post. There is nothing really deep here. I hope to revive my interest in this blog and trying to come up with more thoughtful ideas for it in the not too distant future, but until then, this will have to do. ;)

It always seems that even though I love the summer, I end up being pretty lazy for the majority of it. I end up sitting in the air conditioned splendor of my apartment and not wanting to do much of anything once I get home from work.

Even though it seems like most of my summer was spent sitting on my comfortable couch, with my girlfriend and our laptops, TV shows and books -- we did manage to do some fun stuff.

We went to the Seattle area for a week in the beginning of July to visit my girlfriend's brother, his wife and their son. We had a blast which involved a decent amount of fireworks, drinking, shopping, eating and attempting to stay cool. For a place that has the reputation of being drenched in an almost constant rain, it barely sprinkled only the last morning we were there. It was hot, humid and sunny the entire rest of the week. I learned that if a toddler says "I have idea." to make sure to hold onto the fireplace lighter that you've been using to light fireworks because it will be snatched out of your back pocket. Also, if said toddler comes down from upstairs with his hands behind his back, that there's probably something that he shouldn't have in those hands.

I also turned 30 at the end of July! It was nice and low-key, just like I wanted. My girlfriend cooked me a nice dinner on my actual birthday, her mother took me out to dinner at Brown's on the day after and my family had a BBQ on the day after that. So it was three nice days of birthday celebration, but nothing too crazy.

I purchased an Acer Aspire One 8.9" netbook as an early birthday present for myself and to bring on our trip to WA. It was nice to be able to check mail, pay bills, look for things to do, check plane schedules at the airport, and more all in a tiny, portable little package. I think it was well worth the money I spent on it, even though the battery life (with the 3-cell battery) isn't great and I tend to use my Dell Vostro as my main computer when I'm in the apartment. The display seems bigger and usable than the 8.9" size suggests and it's been trouble free, so far!

I also read some decent books. I picked up a couple books by Christopher Buckley (No Way to Treat a First Lady and Little Green Men: A Novel) after reading Boomsday last year. I recommend all three. They were all well written, funny and sarcastic. I also read Steve Wozniak's book iWoz, along with How Walmart Is Destroying America (And the World): And What You Can Do about It by Bill Quinn and Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy by Martin Lindstrom. I'm not sure if I'd recommend any of them to people unless they're interested in Apple and/or personal computer history, retailing or marketing and advertising, respectively... ;)

Last weekend we went to The Clark to see the Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence exhibit. There were a lot of interesting oil paintings, watercolors, pastels and collages there (between Dove and O'Keeffe) with one of the most humorous pairings being Arthur Dove's watercolor Happy Clam Shell next to Georgia O'Keeffe's pastel Slightly Open Clam Shell. The pictures linked above are from this review of the show by Judith H. Dobrzynski on the Arts Journal website. There is also another review for Wall Street Journal by the same author that was interesting.

I also spent some time last weekend doing maintenance on my car that I've been neglecting for a little while. I washed and waxed it and my brother and I put on Akebono ProACT ceramic brake pads, Centric rotors, McGard SplineDrive lug nuts, NGK Iridium spark plugs and NGK plug wires. Next it's getting new Bridgestone Potenza G019 Grid tires as soon as they are shipped to Firestone. (The size I need is on backorder.) The brakes are feeling good so far, the lug nuts are much higher quality than the ones they replaced and I seem to be getting a few more MPG with the fresh spark plugs and the reset computer. (Side notes: I didn't like the BF Goodrich Super Sport A/S tires that I put on last spring/early summer. They wore out extremely quickly and weren't worth the money that I paid for them. I also didn't have good luck with Gorilla spline drive style lug nuts. They only lasted one winter before the chrome was peeling off.)

I also decided to finally kill my MySpace account. I found that I hardly ever logged on and I decided not to keep it around for no reason...

There was some other fun stuff sprinkled in there but those were the big highlights... all in all it was a good summer.

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posted by Jeremy at 11:04 AM   0 Comments

Mass MoCA and The Clark

Thursday, June 5, 2008

The past couple days were spent on a mini vacation about an hour and 15 minutes away in Northwestern Massachusetts. My girlfriend and I left our apartment on Wednesday morning and headed to nearby North Adams, MA to hit up one of my favorite museums, Mass MoCA. I have been there a few times but this was her first time.

I have seen some exhibits there that I enjoyed more such as Robert Wilson's 14 Stations and Matthew Ritchie's Proposition Player.

The highlights of this trip for me were a few of the paintings in the Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape exhibition and Jenny Holzer's Projections.

I put pictures of a few of my favorites on my Mass MoCA Picasa gallery page.

After the museum we checked into the Holiday Inn in North Adams. It wasn't bad... but next time I think I'm going to spend the extra $30 and stay at Porches. The room we were in at the Holiday Inn had a nice view and was a nice size but it could have been a bit cleaner. The windows were filthy, the desk had some sticky goop on it, etc.

The guy at the check in desk of the hotel was very friendly, though, and recommended a few local restaurants for us to try so we walked around and ended up deciding on getting dinner at the Boston Seafood Restaurant on American Legion Drive which was about a block away. I had a Chicken Parmesan sandwich with steak fries and my girlfriend had scallops that actually looked so good that I tried a piece of one. (I don't eat any seafood aside from the VERY occasional canned tuna drowned in mayonnaise or the even more occasional breaded deep fried clam drowned in tartar sauce.)

This morning I woke up early and my girlfriend was already up... so we got ready to go and after a quick stop at Dunkin Donuts we hit The Clark. I had never been there mostly because I'm more of a modern/contemporary art guy... but I must say there were some nice paintings there as well as a ton of interesting silver and some amazing furniture.

I also put up a few pictures of some of my favorite pieces at The Clark on my "The Clark" Picasa gallery page.

After The Clark, I was wiped out and ready to head home to recharge for NYC tomorrow.

Next time we head out that way I think it's time to check out the Williams College Museum of Art.

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posted by Jeremy at 10:13 PM   0 Comments

First car detailing of the year

Sunday, May 11, 2008

** WARNING: Boring car stuff below. **

I stopped by my parent's house to see my mother for Mother's Day. We talked for a little while but she had some other stuff to do so I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather today to clean my car. I don't like to drive around in a dirty car... and my car was FILTHY.

I went to the car wash and sprayed off all of the heavy grime. Then I clayed the entire car with Meguiar's Smooth Surface Clay Kit. In very simple terms clay removes junk that gets stuck in your paint. This was my first time claying a car and it went pretty well. I was actually surprised how much stuff it actually pulled from the paint.

After claying the car I used my Ultimate Detailing Machine that my girlfriend got me for Christmas to apply Danase Swirl Abolisher I to smooth out the very minor scratches and swirl marks.

I finished up the paint with two coats of Danase Paint Sealant and then I moved on to the windows and interior. I conditioned the leather with a leather conditioner that I picked up quite awhile ago. I forget what brand it is but it works well and smells like new car. I wiped down the dash, plastic trim and rubber moldings with 303 Aerospace Protectant. The 303 Protectant is kind of like Armor All but not as shiny.

I still have to swap my winter heavy duty floor mats for the carpeted ones and vacuum the carpet. I ran out of light before I was able to finish.

Also, last week I picked up some new tires for my car. I decided to go with BF Goodrich g-Force Super Sport A/S tires in the stock size of 205/50/ZR17. So far, so good. They're much quieter than the stock tires that came on the car which wore out in less than 25K miles. The only bad thing is the person that mounted them chipped every one of my wheels in multiple places. Good thing I painted them myself so I have paint to touch them up...

I'm going to have to do that soon because that's another thing that bothers me... I'm so OCD when it comes to my car...

Anyway, after I finished up messing around with my car today I stopped to see my sister for her second Mother's Day. Her son, Alex, is getting so big! He's a funny kid, too! He's at the stage where he likes to "parrot" what you say.

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posted by Jeremy at 10:55 PM   0 Comments

Rosetta@home redux

Saturday, March 22, 2008

In my last blog post I talked about past hobbies and I mentioned that one of my past hobbies was messing around with computers. I was always updating my PC and working on computers for friends and family. In turn, I always had spare hardware and hand me down computers from friends and family kicking around.

In the tail end of my switchover to Apple a few years ago I had my last personal PC running Ubuntu Linux and the only thing I was doing on it was running Rosetta@home. Eventually, though, I ended up parting out that PC and forgot about Rosetta. (I know I can run Rosetta@home on Apple computers, too, but I don't really like to run my main computers all the time and I weeded my computers down to my day to day laptop and my iTunes library computer.)

Last night my sister gave me her old Dell Dimension desktop since she upgraded to a new laptop so she could get rid of her large desk setup in what is now her son's play room.

I updated her old computer to XP Pro and put Rosetta on it. I think the research that Rosetta is doing is a worthy cause and I really don't know what else to do with the computer right now.

If anyone out there knows of other worthy projects that I can donate some distributed computing time to please send me your recommendations.

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posted by Jeremy at 3:23 PM   0 Comments

My newest hobby.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

I was thinking about hobbies over the past few days and I came to the conclusion that I really haven't kept up on a lot of hobbies and interests from my past.

I used to find things to do that I really liked and throw myself into them. In my past I've spent quite a bit of time doing things like mountain biking, working on bikes, roller-blading, tinkering with computers, web-design, working on cars, etc.

Lately, though, I haven't really had too many outlets that I do on a regular basis. I tend to either be working or hanging around my apartment in various states of activity (or inactivity).

I have decided that this year I'm going to get into auto detailing. Last year I spent a few full days washing and waxing my car but this year I think I'm going to put a little bit more effort into it. (Plus, I'll probably offer to do my family member's cars, too...)

I decided I'm going to spend some time doing this because I love being outside, working on cars but a lot of times I'm too nervous to put a wrench to them in fear of messing up something instead of making it better. I've always done things like putting aftermarket intakes, exhausts, wheels & tires on my cars. However, I'm currently driving my first new car with a warranty so I'm even more nervous about doing something that will mess up my warranty coverage and/or make my car less reliable. I'll probably be a little less hesitant to do things to modify it once the warranty is up (and it's paid for.) For now, though, detailing will give me an opportunity to make my car look better and keep it's resale value high while also spending some time working with cars.

I'm starting to decide what detailing products I want to purchase for my car and to add to my product arsenal to work on other people's cars. (I have a feeling this is going to be an expensive hobby.) My girlfriend got me started with the random orbital buffer that I wanted for this past Christmas which was an awesome gift!

My brother said I can try out my new toy on his beater first. [How nice of him, eh? ;) ] The paint is black and badly oxidized and it can't really get much worse, so it should be a nice first car to practice on. I'm thinking I'm going to start off by doing a little body work on it and then working on trying to get the paint in better shape.

While I'm on the topic of cars: I also just ordered an AVO high flow air filter from RalliTEK for my car, too. I'm hoping that a clean air filter might help my gas mileage which has been suffering lately, probably from the E10 fuel that we have here for the winter.

I also have my eyes on some new 18" wheels and tires in place of my current 17" setup. The original tires are getting kind of scary. In standing water they hydroplane pretty bad. So I'm thinking of selling my current wheels to offset the purchase of a new set of 18" wheels and then just buying decent 18" tires for the spring - fall and getting 17" snow tires on my stock wheels which are still sitting in my parent's garage.

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posted by Jeremy at 1:46 PM   0 Comments

Apple praise (but more new gripes).

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

I have one piece of praise for Apple... but a few MORE gripes about my MacBook Pro (and one HUGE one about Apple in general).

First for the praise. I brought my MacBook Pro with the non-functional power adapter into the Apple Store for my "Genius" appointment on Friday night and I was in and out in less than 10 minutes with a brand new power adapter. The "Genius" I got wasn't one of the two I've seen in the past... but he plugged in the adapter, connected it to his MacBook Pro, said "Hmmm... that's not right... How old is your computer?" and went and got another one off the shelf after I said it's about 1 month old. I plugged my computer into his power cord and it fired right up so I don't think anything was wrong on the laptop side of the not charging issue. I was pleasantly surprised how quickly I was in and out. (Although they really couldn't argue that the adapter wasn't working... and it wasn't abused... the laptop has never left our apartment except for in it's original box for it's two previous (return/exchange attempt) trips to the Apple Store.)

Anyway, moving on to the new gripes, first I'll give you all some background: I was ripping a bunch of CD's into iTunes last night for my girlfriend's brother who just purchased a new iPod Classic but doesn't have a computer capable enough to house his iTunes collection. The plan was originally to use my old iBook G4 which is now my girlfriend's computer. I took all of her music off and copied it to a spare hard drive in an external USB case. (Hard drive space on the ol' iBook was a limiting factor.) We then started to import CD's. We were then planning on syncing the iPod, backing up his music library to another external hard drive and then putting her iTunes back together.

When I realized (last night) that she'd never have it done by the time he left to head back to Washington (today) I chipped in on my MacBook Pro. I created a new account so I didn't mess up my iTunes library and started ripping when the new gripes started happening. We'll get to those in a minute, though. The rest of the plan was that I'd rip until we were done, copy the stuff I ripped to a data DVD and then import them into the iBook's iTunes and sync the iPod on that as planned. I'd then delete the account on my computer that I created to do this task with all of the music and back up all of the music from the iBook to an external hard drive (again, as previously planned) just in case we ever needed to resync his iPod again.

Here's what I noticed:

1) If I tip the computer even SLIGHTLY off level while a CD is spinning it sounds like the CD is rubbing on something inside the drive and sometimes it doesn't stop even if I level the computer back out. A couple times I had to stop the import, eject the CD and then put it back in and start again. (For the sake of comparison, the iBook did not do this, I tipped it at a 45 degree angle and it didn't make any unusual noises. I miss my iBook... well I did until we get to number 4.)

2) While importing certain CDs in iTunes, iTunes was freezing while the CD spins up and down endlessly and wouldn't respond to attempts to stop the import or eject the CD. I had to Force Quit iTunes probably a dozen times last night on 2 CD's that I remember specifically. The first time it happened the last track wouldn't import at all after a few attempts. I ended up trying just that track in my old iBook G4 and it worked fine. The second one, after trying a few times, I noticed that it was scratched pretty badly which is probably the reason for all of the drama. I understand that CD's get damaged and I don't expect the computer (or any CD player) to read them properly, the issue I have here is that there was no error message, there was nothing to indicate that something was wrong other than the fact that the CD drive was spinning up and down, up and down but no progress was being made with the import. After waiting unsuccessfully for anything to happen I ended up having to Force Quit iTunes multiple times before the application actually quit and I could eject the CD which was just spinning up and down, up and down. I've VERY RARELY had to Force Quit applications on my two previous Apple computers.

3) A few times when I put a CD in it would get spit back out immediately and wouldn't stay in until I took it completely out, pushed the eject button (which made a noise like it was ejecting a CD even though nothing was in the drive) and then tried again. Sometimes this happened more than once with the same CD... I gave up on one and then went back to it later and it worked.

4) After all of the iTunes importing was finally done (around 2:30 - 3:00 AM this morning, since he was leaving to head back to WA today while I'm at work) I burned all of the mp3's that I ripped on my MacBook Pro to a DVD and moved the songs to my girlfriend's laptop as planned. To refresh, my girlfriend's laptop is my old iBook G4. My old iBook is still running Panther (10.3.x) because I never felt the need to upgrade to Tiger (10.4.x) which I have on my PowerMac G4 or Leopard (10.5.x) which is on my MacBook Pro. Around 3:00 AM my girlfriend plugged in the brand new iPod Classic and we were met with an error message that the new iPod wouldn't work with anything before some version of Tiger (10.4.x). Seriously, what reason is there to not allow a brand new ~$250 iPod to work with an operating system that is only a few years old? I know that Tiger and Leopard are good... I use them both... but my iBook ran great with Panther.

So sometime after 3:00 AM this morning I plugged in an external drive, copied all of the iTunes library off of the iBook, created yet another account on my MacBook Pro, copied the music from the external hard drive onto the MacBook Pro, realized that the music my girlfriend tried to import to her iTunes from the DVD I burned wasn't in the iTunes library, logged out of the third account and back into the second, shared the music folder, logged back into the third account and imported the music from the second account to the third. I then deleted the second account after making sure all of the music was in the newest iTunes Library on the third account and then finally somewhere around 4:00 AM I finished syncing the new iPod.

How user friendly was that ordeal, Apple? If I was a typical person with one slightly older iBook and no other computer in the household and I bought a ~$250 iPod and couldn't get it to work with my computer how do you think I would have reacted?

Do you think I would have run right back out to the Apple Store for a copy of Leopard? (Wait, it's 3AM the Apple Store is closed.) Would I have hit up the online store to purchase Leopard? (Wait, I won't get it for a couple days and then I still have to install a new operating system before I can get my new iPod to work.) Then what if I DID decide to upgrade to Leopard and purchased a copy but my iBook had a sub 867MHz G4 processor and the Leopard update didn't work? Do you think I would have run right back out to upgrade my fully functional computer (aside from not being able to sync a new iPod) to a new computer (A new APPLE computer?) after JUST buying an iPod and a useless copy of Leopard? (Mine was a 1GHZ model, so I would have been OK a few days later after I shelled out some more money for Leopard... but... come on!) What reason is there that the iPod wouldn't work with Panther?

I know if I didn't have other computers in the apartment I probably would have been PISSED! (As it is I'm not too happy even though I was able to solve everything that came up...)

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posted by Jeremy at 12:36 PM   2 Comments

Only 7 more workdays...

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

... until I'm supposed to start my new job.

I'm getting nervous and excited. I'm nervous because I am going to have to learn a lot of new things and wrap up a ton of old things in the next few days. I'm excited because it will be very nice to have a change of responsibilities and scenery. Everyone I've met that I'll be working with seems really nice and they have actually said that they're going to bring me up to speed before they throw me in so that'll be a really nice difference from my current job.

Not too much is new other than work being crazy this time of year. Trying to wrap up a ton of stuff on top of all the craziness has made for some incredibly busy days. I'm really looking forward to getting things wrapped up here and moving on to my new job, though.

I'm going to spend Thanksgiving with my family at my sister's house this year. Hopefully I'll remember to bring my camera this time so I can take some pictures of my nephew. The last time I saw him I couldn't believe how big he's getting.

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posted by Jeremy at 3:36 PM   0 Comments

18 more work days...

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

I have 18 more work days until I am to start my new job. My current boss wanted to keep me for even longer but my future boss and his boss agreed to let him keep me until the beginning of December.

I can't wait to get started in my new position. I've been pretty stressed out in my current job for awhile because I have a lot of things up in the air and I feel like I never have enough time to get everything done. I'm constantly interrupted with things that NEED to be done immediately and it seems like the other major projects I have going suffer... but my job performance is measured largely on those major projects.

I'm so excited to have a chance at doing something different, with set responsibilities that are more in line with my interests and education.

In other news I cashed in my credit card reward points for some Amazon gift cards to put towards things for the apartment in December. We've decided to stay in our current apartment for at least another year. All of the places that we've been looking at were right around the same price range but much smaller. The only things that other places seem to have over this one are the other perks such as indoor pools and stuff like that... but I don't think that I'd use those other things as much as I'd enjoy to keep the amount of space we have in our current apartment.

I got to see my nephew a couple weeks ago. As soon as I got there I was pissed that I forgot my camera. He's so adorable. He was dipping chips in dip and was SO NEAT that I couldn't believe it. He's not even two yet... It's amazing how big he's getting, though. I have to start spending more time with my sister and my nephew...

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posted by Jeremy at 1:44 PM   0 Comments

Apartment hunting & sister's house remodeling

Monday, September 10, 2007

This weekend started off busy but ended pretty quietly!

I took Friday off from work to look at apartments with my girlfriend. (Some of the places we wanted to look at first aren't open on the weekend.) We didn't find anything we really liked but we did manage to rule 4 out of the 5 complexes we looked at.

Two were too expensive and two were disgustingly filthy. The one left was only so-so. Both of the expensive ones were nice, of course, with hardwood floors and other neat features but the whole point of renting for another year or two is to try to not spend a ton of money, pay down debts and save up to purchase a house in the not too distant future.

After we got back from looking at that first batch of apartments (and meeting some interesting people who were showing the apartments) we started to make a list of other places to look at over the next few weekends. Hopefully we'll find someplace that doesn't stink plus have mold growing in the bathroom or doesn't have a rusty mini grill in the front lawn with one leg broken off and clover growing out of it but isn't expensive to the point where it doesn't make sense to rent.

Saturday I spent the entire day helping my father and brother rip out a wall of a back porch room at my sister's house and then re-frame it. We are eventually putting in a sliding glass door to a porch that still has to be constructed. Unfortunately Sunday was going to be the day the giant, heavy sliding glass door and windows went in but it poured rain pretty much all day. I spent a little while helping my father reorganize materials and stuff in my sister's basement while waiting to see if it would clear up enough to do anything. The rain didn't show any signs of letting up so I went home and didn't do much of anything for the rest of the (rainy) day aside from hanging out with my girlfriend watching previously recorded TV on the DVR and re-listing stuff that didn't sell on my last batch of eBay auctions.

I was pretty wiped out from working on my sister's house on Saturday plus helping to move some heavy stuff around on Sunday (including a washer, piles of lumber, carpet, flooring, etc.) so it was good to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing. My legs are still sore, though... I'm so out of shape.

I asked my dad about having a (vegetable) garden at their house next year and it seemed like he thought it was a good idea. We talked briefly about how we thought it would be a neat thing to get the family together around the garden and I reminisced about picking and eating snow peas and green beans from the garden my family used to have when I was little. Hopefully that works out...

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posted by Jeremy at 2:47 PM   1 Comments

Affluenza and more.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

First let me start out with a quick update to my last post: The scale at work is definitely broken. I might have lost a few pounds... but not anywhere near 15. I'm still trying to eat a little better and exercise a bit more, though.

This weekend was pretty good. I guess it felt more busy than it really was, though. I spent most of Saturday hanging out with my family and washing & waxing my car. (It was FILTHY!) I went to a BBQ at a friend's apartment on Sunday. Great food and awesome friends always makes for a good time. Yesterday morning we picked up our roommate from the airport and then spent most of the rest of the day relaxing for the most part. I read a little more of Affluenza before bed. I'm slightly into the third section which deals with ways to cure affluenza. So, expect to see some entries in this here blog thingy about that in the near future as I finish up the book. So far I've found it well written and funny. Most of the stuff they're saying makes sense to me but I'm hoping that they have some real ways to cure the problem written in the end. I'm afraid it's going to fizzle with no real solutions...

I was talking with my mom on Saturday and the topic of having a vegetable garden came up. She was saying that she missed having really fresh tomatoes after I mentioned that I don't like tomatoes anymore. I remember liking tomato sandwiches as a kid... but now I even pick tomatoes off my $0.99 Wendy's Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers. We used to have a garden when I was growing up and I remember picking and eating fresh snow peas, green beans, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and much much more. So, I'm trying to talk her into starting a garden at her house next year. My parents definitely have enough room for a decent sized garden there... I think the main issue that I'm going to run into is the fact that my father has been busy working on my sister's house the past year and they still have a lot left to go there. I know it's going to be a TON of hard work but it'll be good exercise and hopefully we'll get some good fresh vegetables out of it. At the very least I'll spend more time with my family and hopefully learn something about gardening, canning and cooking.

Also, I'm also in the beginning stages of a hunt for a new apartment. I have no idea where we'll end up as of January 1st... but we'll still be in the Albany/Troy general area. I'm taking Friday off to look at a few different complexes and I guess we'll go from there. Once we get closer I'm going to look into some private owner type apartments, too. I'm also thinking that we should try to negotiate with our current place to see if they'll lower our rent to be more competitive with other places that are including heat, hot water, plus cable and internet! I kind of like our current apartment but it's going to get too expensive once our roommate moves out in the end of December.

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posted by Jeremy at 2:40 PM   0 Comments

Books and eBay.

Monday, August 27, 2007

I finished reading "The Working Poor" by David K. Shipler on Saturday. I must say that it did end up being a somewhat depressing book. It was basically a collection of stories about the histories, circumstances and lives of people who were attempting to work their way off of welfare or who were forced to get off welfare. I was hoping that it would have a lot of insight into how to work your way out of the "working poor" trap but I didn't really find too much that was helpful (especially to me). The people in the book did run into some good people who helped but it sounded like the basic tenets of the book were:
* don't drop out of high school and go to college if you can (a degree is almost a necessity these days to get a "decent" job)
* vocational training should have less of a stigma attached (we're always going to need people who work in trades like plumbing and carpentry)
* don't do drugs
* health care shouldn't be so much of a burden for people with low incomes (but maybe making it a government responsibility isn't a good idea either)
* if you're poor don't get sick because you'll get poor care and if you're really sick chances are pretty good it will ruin you financially
* doctors who work with lawyers and case workers tend to get more accomplished in the overall situation of poor children. (They can sic the lawyers on the parties responsible for poor housing conditions and for denying aid to people who are qualified, etc.
* be a good parent to your children because if you're not you'll fuck them up for life and they'll end up stuck in the same trap
* it's extremely helpful to have a strong support system of friends and family to help out

Other than those obvious things I picked out of the book there really wasn't too much meat there... just a bunch of sad stories about people who were in horrible situations.

The next book I started to read last night was "Affluenza" by John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor. I think that I'm going to like this book a lot better than "The Working Poor". For one thing it's written in a sarcastic, funny style. I laughed out loud dozens of times in the first few chapters and I had to read half a dozen things to my girlfriend as I was reading them... but at the same time it has very serious information in it that makes you think...

Yesterday I put some CDs, a book and some random stuff up on eBay. I'm hoping to get some of my computer guts and other stuff on there tonight...

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posted by Jeremy at 8:56 AM   0 Comments

Work and headaches suck.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

I started to write a REALLY long blog entry about work yesterday. It was mostly about my current job and some of the reasons I dislike it so much. I decided it was too long and boring to post, though.

The summary is: Last week was a shit week. I was swamped all week with stupid tasks because my supervisor was on vacation and my reward for doing my job and hers was to get bitched at because I'm behind on one of my projects. I took my beating and then went to talk to the the newest of my 3 managers. I have a meeting with him on Tuesday where he's supposedly going to help to take some of my "roadblocks" out of the way and help me to enjoy my job more. Haha... we'll see. I'm going to polish up my resume and get that out there in the next couple weeks.

Other updates: I spent a few hours today going through some more old shit that I have stored at a house owned by my family that I used to live at before where I am now. I filled my car's trunk with shit to be thrown out and I have a new pile of stuff to donate to salvation army or goodwill. I'm going to see if my sister wants to take the stuff since she takes write-offs on her taxes and I don't (or can't).

Now I have another one of my infamous headaches so I decided to chill for a little while and then do some cleaning around my apartment. I have to clear some stuff out of here so that I have room to bring over some of the things that I actually want to keep.

I'm hoping to get some stuff up on eBay tomorrow, Monday or Tuesday at the latest.

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posted by Jeremy at 4:02 PM   0 Comments

Brazilian Chicken, gross out food TV and crappy sleeping.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

I went to dinner at a friend's apartment last night. It was our host, her boyfriend, our friend Jon and my girlfriend and I. Before dinner I talked with Jon mostly about cars and music. She made a dish she calls "Brazilian Chicken" which is made sort of like this and it's delicious.

After dinner we sat around and listened to the funny, random songs on our mp3 players and then watched some TV shows where the host goes to different countries and eats foods that look disgusting. There were snakes, bugs, fish sauce, civet coffee, and lots of testicles among many other foods that looked completely unappealing to me.

When I got home I was pretty tired so I got ready for bed, laid down and then I couldn't sleep. I laid there for probably close to 2 hours before I fell asleep and then my girlfriend woke up having a coughing fit... after that I tossed and turned again for a little while and then slept in little chunks for the rest of the night. Surprisingly, I'm not as tired as I thought I'd be after sleeping so horribly last night... I really need to find a new job because that's pretty much the cause of most of my stress. Which, in turn, was the cause of my crappy sleeping.

Tonight I think I'm headed to my old house again to go through more junk. I really want to put another dent in what I have to get done over there and hopefully find some more "treasures" to sell on eBay. I'm also hoping to dig out some of my old toys to clean up and give to my sister to use for her son until I have kids someday. I'm going to have to post up some pictures of Alex soon... he's getting so big.

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posted by Jeremy at 9:41 AM   0 Comments