Month: May 2001

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Likker

So Luke is all moved in, and he set up his “porta-bar” all on the kitchen counter. Personally, I think the idea of taking up all that valuable counter space on something that’s only going to be used occasionally is silly, but Luke disagrees. His counter to “Why don’t you get a cabinet for all that?” was “what would you put there?” to which I had no immediate response. I have a feeling that the response “anything but the liquor” wouldn’t have led down a path I’d want to go down…

Seriously, what’s the point of having it out? Is it a machismo thing? “Look at me, I own all this liqour!” It’s certainly not a convienence thing — “Hey, you know what would go great with this tv dinner? Peppermint Schnapps! Hey, what do you know, there’s some right here within arm’s reach!” Knowing Luke, he’s probably going to be making lots of things Irish, so to speak.

And of course, heaven forbid there’s an earthquake, or we’ll have the world’s largest mixed drink on our kitchen floor.

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$144.31

Never have I been so happy to owe the IRS money.

When you get an envelope from the IRS in late May, you get scared. the “A” word crosses your mind.

You start praying that it’s not an audit, just interest because you paid late.

It was interest, lucky for me.

Oh, and I found my DVD battery charger. Now I just need that damn cable…

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Ow ow ow ow

I need a vacation from my vacations. Quite a bit happend this weekend, this is gonna be a long post.

It’s a three day weekend, right? So Saturday I spend most of the time packing up my stuff in hopes of getting it out of my room; this is after I’ve moved over my comic books (side note: when a person’s comic book collection weighs more than they do, do they get a medal or something?) and my few of my old boxes from before so I actually have room to manuver around in. I get a few boxes moved over, mostly stuff that goes into the garage, get really tired and play around and eventually get suckered into dinner and karaoke.

I sleep in a bit and go to a BBQ on sunday and get sunburned (not too badly, fortunately, just enough to have people say “you got a bit of sun didn’t you?” but not enough for them to say “Damn, man, doesn’t that hurt?”) , becoming very grumpy due to some over-the-top antagonism on Luke’s part, which involved me taking out my frustration on some other people and going into the corner and sulking, and playing some weird San Diego mutant of baseball which doesn’t involve running, and we did it with a wiffle ball. Then band practice and crashing at home.

Sunday, I was planning on seeing Pearl Harbor, but was so dang tired from the days before that I didn’t feel like driving up the city. So I decided to pack some more. I tackled the messiest corner, and managed to get most of my magic/gaming cards packed into four medium sized boxes (18″x18″x18″ each).

If there’s anything I’m taking away from this weekend, it’s that paper is damn heavy. In hindsight, I should have traded off number of boxes for space efficiency, because each of those four boxes was so heavy I could barely lift them, they were 75 pounds each, easy. Yes, I’m fairly weak. I get three of them into my car (the fourth wouldn’t fit) and unload them into the garage. I then park the car and try to get them up to the third floor where my room is.

It’s about this time that I started fantasizing about Star Trek transporters, pulleys, levers… anything that would keep me from actually having to get those boxes up the two sets of stairs. I tried rolling one box up, but about the time that it got to the second floor, it started coming apart. I pushed it along the ground to the base of the second set of stairs and left it there. After a short rest, I managed to carry the second box all the way up to the third floor in one go. After a slightly longer rest I managed the same for the third box, but it took two stops.

It was about this time that I laid down on the floor and literally fell asleep. When I woke up about an hour later, I decided to just leave that first box on the second floor and left.

I’ve still got a ways to go, but I managed to throw away quite a bit of trash from my room. Another life lesson I take away from this weekend: When a box sits in your closet for three years and you only add stuff to it, you can most likely throw away most of it… at least the stuff on the bottom. And so I did. I threw away quite a bit of old computer hardware cards that is so ancient, it is antiquated by single chips. There was an entire AT memory expansion card the size of a letter-sized envelope that was ONE WHOLE MEGABYTE, and an 80-column card for an Apple ][e, and an Epson Printer Adapter for an Apple ][e… etc. I even threw away a 1.2GB hard drive.

One positive from this weekend: I found the driver disk for my webcam, so I can actually use that again. There’s still a few pieces of MIA equipment in my room, though.

Tonight, I pack books. In small boxes. *sigh*

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Pacific Bell, how we loathe thee…

So, we’re starting to move into the new place, and we want to get DSL set up. The landlord had DSL through Pacbell before, so we thought that we could just transfer the account over, without having to have a technician come out and set up the line again.

We thought wrong.

My conversation with Pacbell went like this:

Me: I’d like to transfer the account over to my name.
Them: We can’t do that, he’s signed a contract with us.
Me: Well, can he cancel his contract and we’d sign a new one, but not have to disconnect the line?
Them: No, it doesn’t work that way.
Me: Well, fine then, just make a new account.
Them: Have you set up your new line in the house yet?
Me: No…
Them: You have to have your line set up, then five business days later you can order DSL, once it’s in the system.
Me: Fine, can I do that now.
Them: Yes, let me transfer you.

And then I go and actually transfer my line. Yay. So as of tomorrow morning, if you call me at home, you won’t get me, you’ll get Ken and Luke… heh. But the only people who ever call me at home are my mom and telemarketers, everyone else uses my cell phone.

Now I get to play with getting the Cable service transferred… heh heh heh.

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DMV

Well, once again, I went to the AAA to pay for my car’s registration, and once again I forgot that, even though my car has a “May” sticker on it, it’s considered “late” after May 2nd. So once again, I paid a late charge. But not nearly as much as the last two years.

Also, since something has to go wrong every year (two years ago, my insurance wasn’t paid, last year I needed a smog check), I get to the AAA and realize that I hadn’t renewed my membership. Fortunately, this year’s problem was quickly remedied. Also, I’m very lucky, because I just wrote two checks today and they were the last two from the book. I could have sworn that checks came in packs of 75, why did this one just end on an ’80’?

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Etc.

So, SGI not only shipped the replacement power adapter right away, it came at 10am the next morning, which basically means that 24 hours after I made the call to customer support, I was up and running again.

But anyway.

I’ve been pondering a lot about my trip to Chicago. It seems that I caught some glimpse of something: there is life outside of California. It’s not just the weather, too. There’s subtle differences that make life in the Midwest unique. Little things that you Midwesterners take for granted that seem so foreign to us West-coasters.

Toll booths. Snow routes. Driving for an hour and actually being in a different state. Vacationing hundreds of miles away in the same place every year. The list goes on and on.

The concepts all mesh together into a feeling that seems to familiar. I could joke that it’s because I was born in Indiana and it’s in my blood, but it’s probably simpler than that. I’m the son of two people who grew up in the Midwest. It’s certain that many of their ideals were imprinted on me, in such a way that when I find myself in a small town in the suburbs of Chicago, I feel almost at home.

I’m not saying that I’d want to move back there. I’d be such a fish out of water it wouldn’t be funny. That, and I was in Indiana in December, so I know how bad it can be. I may have Indiana in my blood, but I can handle 110 degree weather much easier than I can handle -10 degrees. (That’s 110 with zero humidity, for those of you who want to comment that it can get pretty hot in the Midwest, too.)

I don’t think I’ve managed to get down in writing the feeling I have right now, but I think I’ll reiterate/summarize — I’ve started to understand how people can actually manage to live in the Midwest. There is life outside of California.

Meh. I think I’m going to bed now. God, I hope Luke stops snoring… I can’t wait until we move into our new place, at least there I’ll have a wall between me and his snoring.

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SGI and Anime Central

So, my nice new flatpanel monitor has been on the fritz recently, after some playing with it, I figured out it’s one of the power supplies that’s broken, not the actual monitor… so I call SGI this morning, and after giving them all my information I hear the following words:

“I’ll just overnight you a new one.”

Man, I am so happy. This is what Customer Support is supposed to be.

On another note, today’s MegaTokyo comic is very cool…. because I was there. You can even see the Vibrating Sheep of Death in my picture.

I love in-jokes that I get. Hee hee.

Also, I gave my 30-day (well, more like 45 day) notice at my apartment today… whee.

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New digs

Well, it’s official. Luke, Ken and I signed a lease at a new place…

It’s effective June 1, which means I got a whole month to move. The kicker is, it’s half a mile away, which means I can probably do without a moving van.

Also, funny thing is, Peto lives directly across from us, through some weird cosmic coincidence.

So now I gotta buy a bed and a dresser.

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Chicago

I just got back from Chicago for a weekend, for Anime Central and a Bat Miztvah.

And now I need to catch up on sleep.

I’ve got photos online. And yes, the captions were rushed, because people were looking at my page as I was updating it so I just wanted to get something in there.

Whee.

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The things that bug me

For some reason, there are things that I’ve done that stick with me.

I think that about a year ago, I gave a person incorrect directions, I think I directed them to the wrong golf course.

And I can’t forget that, it really bothers me.

Feh.