It’s in the jeans

It’s amazing how much morale is improved by the simple addition of denim into the work equation. Therefore, I think all employers should make Jeans Day a weekly thing.

I know that it would probably lose its novelty quickly, but it would still be more effective than the standard “Casual Friday” or shit like that. I mean, I can only get away with spicing up the office environment with a Hawaiian shirt so many times before it just gets old… or I get in trouble.

I know that I always feel better about my job when I get to come in and be more comfortable doing whatever it is I’m up to that day. And that comfort is a big X-factor: as the comfort level rises, the effectiveness margin increases, while the grouchiness quotient is minimalized; thus making me more productive and less likely to snap postal-style.

And that’s just one person. Multiply that by a couple of hundred people, and it’s starting to look like an actual, good idea. Well, at least to me anyways.

So, it’s either that, or we get to start drinking at work. And I’m pretty much good with either one.

D

How D got his groove back

Or back in the groove, really.

Sorry for the severe lack of posting. Again. Well, again again. I've just been into a routine like you wouldn't imagine. And you don't really have to imagine it, 'cause I can describe it to you:

-work
-gym
-TV
-sleep
-rinse and repeat

The weekends have been great, but pretty uneventful, for which I'm actually pretty grateful. That allows me to focus on the things that I need to and want to. But throwing the occasional wedding celebration in there with free booze and a bartender who "twists your arm" to do shots with him, doesn't hurt much either.

But, like I said: I'm back in my routine, and I'm really enjoying it. After being slack-assed for a couple of weeks, I needed something to kinda jar me back into things. How about an interview for your dream job, will that do? Why yes, that'll do marvelously thank you.

So now I'm focused on my next immediate goal that goes down in 3 weeks, and prepping for it. Now if I go a few days without posting (again again again, or something), you'll know why. Either nothing interesting is happening anywhere within my vicinity (or where I can Google it), or I just haven't gotten around to it. But eventually I will. Hopefully.

Hugs and kisses,

D

"Knock knock"

"Who's there?"
"Opportunity."
"Opportunity who?"
"I said Opportunity, bitch! Now open up the goddamned door!"
---

Opportunity knocked (well, called really) today. Sort of.

I got my interview. Unfortunately though, it's not for another month. But at least I have that to look forward to instead of just sitting around and waiting. And waiting. Aaaannnnnd waiting.

Yeah. So that happened.

D

Rapid Fire

While also the name of a kick-ass Brandon Lee movie, it's how I plan to update the Interweb on my various goings ons and rants and what have yous.

- A new Flash Gordon show? Well, Sci-Fi has a rather impressive collection of shows now, so yeah, I'll give it a shot.

- Staying with Sci-Fi: Kick ass! Battlestar Galactica returns in November, and looks just as good as the previous 3 seasons.

- Harry Potter good. Voldemort bad. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was great. I have only read the first book, so I've thoroughly enjoyed the movies without literary bias. This one easily became my favorite so far.

- A new werewolf movie? Skinwalkers is probably gonna suck lycan balls, what with it being PG-13 and studio crap and all, but I'll probably want to see it anyways. I'm really waiting on the high concept idea of Full Moon Fever.

- I hate moving. I hate moving other people even more. But that's what friends do. But good friends who enlist the aid of other friends to move all their shit for them know to supply said friends with free alcohol and food. Liz was polite enough to have a keg of Miller Lite and several pounds of spicy chicken nuggets waiting for me on Friday. And Saturday. That is why Liz will remain as "good people" and I'll help her move again. Probably.

- Sometimes it just feels good to throw a bunch of shit away, you know? Spent the better part of a day this weekend going through some of the stored crap I have, and decided that I had to hand out a few pink slips. It's both therapeutic and traumatic for me at the same time as two sides of me are at war when I do that: the pack rat and the OCD freak who hates clutter.

- I must borrow Liz's shop vac. It cleans so damned well!

- Bought some new toys for the Future Overlord. Saw that he really didn't have anything but his balls to play with (hee hee), and by that I mean the tennis, volley, soccer and foot variety. So now he has a squeaky cat, squeaky alien, and a fire hose toy... with a squeaky in it. Man, I'm an idiot.

- A talking, fighting, armored-up polar bear? Fuck. Wait for it.... YEAH! I want one.

- Quicken was like crack for me over the weekend as soon as I got it. Couldn't stop playing with it. I may have actually gone a little blind because of it. Although the hairy palm was totally just dog fur.

- The Marvel U rejects return. Bigger and dumber than the first time too. There's no Major Victory, but Mr. Mitzvah is my front runner for a favorite, not Hygena like you'd all expect. I could say I'm not gonna watch, but I'd be lying and you'd all call me on it.

- God of Making My Thumbs Hurt is more like it. God Of War 2 kicks so much harpy ass, I can hardly believe it. And yet there I have been, just ripping their wings off and eviscerating damned near everything on the screen. If you played and liked the first one, the
second will not disappoint. The cinematic cut scenes are almost worth the price alone (plus a voice cameo by Michael Clarke Duncan), especially when you borrowed it and didn't pay for it.


Wow. That's more happy horseshit than I thought there'd be. So I'll nip it in the extended bud for now and try to resume some sort of regular posting when I can.

D

Just go ahead and crown me

I’m the King of Over-reacting.

I rule over all of Jackassery, the province of Damnit, the northern territories of Whatthefuck, the shires of Awshit, and I even have a time-share in the south of D’oh.

So my outrage towards Walkallovaya has died down a bit. After hours of research I found something that helped to narrow the gap between their purported balance and my own. It narrowed it, but still left enough of one so that I can’t just waive it off despite my own self-inflicted shame.

I’m also still awaiting their response to my email, and I’ll give it a while to see if the numbers work themselves out; but I’m still not happy that I’ve had problems with them for 2 months in a row. Yes, I can make a mistake every once in a while; but I can always rectify it pretty quickly after digging through receipts and whatnot. I just don’t understand how they can keep making my simple math look like it’s been done by a lobotomized Yorkie.

Since this isn’t entirely all my fault, I guess this is really more of a "...D’oh?"

D

Walkallovaya

Wachovia's fucking me. I just know it.

There's no damned way that my basic addition and subtraction can be that fucking bad. Especially with the use of a goddamned calculator!

Last month I got hosed for $30. I emailed them with a request to look into it, as both my checkbook and my anal-retentive Excel spreadsheet said I should have a higher balance than what was on their website. Apparently not, according to them. So I bent over, took it in the ass, and went with their fucked-up balance.

Now, not even half-way through the month, there's a fucking $60 motherfucking discrepancy AGAIN! This is bullshit!

I passed all my math classes. I know how to balance a checkbook. I've had no problems with it for a long time, and now I'm all of a sudden incapable of balancing it? I highly doubt it.

I'm gonna wait and see what their response email says, and then I'm going to call if I don't like what they have to say. If they fuck up again, I'm changing banks.

Goddamned Walkallovaya.

D

TV= good again

Man, I thought this day would never come again. Actual, good TV is back on the air.

With the return of Dr. Who, Eureka, Hex, and Jericho; I finally have a reason to set the ol' VCR to stun, er, record. And also enlist the aid of Kelley's Tivo.








And here I was thinking I was gonna have to be all creative and shit with my free time. Ha! Not bloody likely!

D

Home Improvement?

So finally after months of bitching about the molding on my front door, I got some maintenance guys to come over and take a gander at it. I knew it wasn't going to be an easy patch job or anything, but I didn't think it would be quite as extensive a project as it turned out to be.

Guys had to take my friggin' door off, along with the frame and molding. And then they installed a new door, which is not the same color white as the rest of the outside or inside, re-framed the whole damned thing and pointed out what an ass the last guy to do that was and showed me how bad he screwed it up. I felt like I was on Jake's favorite show "Holmes on Homes".

So now I had a nicely sealed front door that still looks like shit when you look at it the right way on the inside. And that chunked-off molding is gone on the outside (I no longer really have any decorative molding out there). But there still was a slight problem with the back door.

Turns out (and I have no idea how I never noticed this before) that there were 2 little spaces on either bottom corner that you could see clear through to the outside with. So I guess that's where all those ants kept coming from and where a good deal of my air was going.

And rather than go through the trouble of asking that poor guy who busted his ass on the upper-90's for and hour and a half to fix that, I asked him for a simple solution. 1/4" weather stripping ought to do it he suggested.

So I went to Lowe's after work and got some. Heh. Anyways, I paid like $8 bucks for a whole roll of weather stripping, and only used like 3 inches of it. And I by no means did a professionaljob of it, but I think I did about as good a job as a Comm Arts kid could have done. So if it ends up helping me save money on the electric bill (along with the ton of energy efficient bulbs I bought), then I'm happy with it.

I'm just glad nothing caught fire when I was trying to do it myself.

D

iLike iChat

UPDATE:
Use the "Big, Dumb Email" to send me your AOL ID if you want to chat, with the possibility of coming pseudo face to face with me as well.

Last night, yours truly was astounded yet again at the marvels of technology that reside within his magical techno box that helps him connect to the internets.

I discovered the time and space displacer known to people as "iChat". But I have come to know it as "The Magic Window".

So far I know it works with one person who has a MacBook, webcam and an AIM account. Now I just have to try it out with other people. Anybody got a webcam and AIM account? Lemme know.

If this takes off, I may never talk to anyone face to face again.

D

My new love

I have a new favorite domestic beer:



It's certainly no Guinness, but it's damned good. And being a non-import, it's cheaper on the ol' wallet. Which makes my bank account cry a little less. And my liver cry a little more.

I raise my bottle to all my interweb friends.

Cheers.

D