LOL

Call me a geek, but it always puts a smile on my face when my bittorrent speeds break 500 KB/s for a single file… 😉

Does this get on anyone else’s nerves???

In balancing my checkbook this evening, I find that my checks are out of sequence because a check I wrote from a month and a half ago still hasn’t been cashed. This irritates me for two distinct reasons:

1. Now I have to keep a mental tab of this check’s value until I see it go through so I don’t bounce anything else instead of simply working off the numbers I see online.

2. And even moreso annoying, the check that hasn’t been cashed is the donation that I made to the Red freakin’ Cross for hurricane relief! So much for them needing anything that we’re able to spare for our fellow man if they couldn’t even get around to taking my offering to the bank – it’s reasons like this that make me wonder if some of the stories about these guys abusing “administrative funding” isn’t true as well…

movin’ out…

Today was a great day!

I don’t want to speak too much about it until the last of the paperwork has been signed and its a absolutely for-sure deal, but it looks like I’m probably going to be moving to the other side of town this fall after all. This afternoon I went up and looked at a very nice condo right smack dab in the middle of the area that I’m looking at – within my price range – and would you believe that before the day was over, my application for the place was approved and everything?! I went into it all a bit nervous because there was already an application pending when I called on it, but apparently the years that I’ve spent getting my credit score to a state of awesomeness were actually worth it after all!

I’ll go ahead and post some pictures when everything has been finalized (hopefully next week), but let’s just say that despite to slight shortcomings, it’s a really nice place and I’ll be getting a great deal for it. It’s officially 1/3 bigger than the apartment that I’m currently living in and just about every room shows it, including a full-size 2nd bedroom for my office, a really nice kitchen with an island, and a balcony about twice as big that’s barbeque-approved and everything! Each of the three rooms with windows in the place all face a conservation area, so no looking at an ugly parking lot…EVER…which was kind of a big deal to me because I’m a little spoiled with the view that I have now. The only less than desirable traits are the bedroom closets (which are tiny at best) and the bathrooms (also microscopic compared to what I have now, yet plural this time which is kinda cool), but I figure for a rental that I’ll only occupy for the next year or so…that’s less than five miles from the new office…it’s something that I can deal with in the meantime!

So pretty much its all good to go, but Monday I have to deal with my complex here to let them know that I’m leaving and get the notice put in…which should be interesting because technically 60-days would’ve been nearly a month ago. Nonetheless this was discussed around that time and I’ve had some beefs with the management that they’re just now getting resolved after eight or ten months, so it’ll be interesting to see if she still keeps her end of the bargain and lets me out without penalty after admitting that she couldn’t get me a better renewal rate from corporate. We’ll see – worst to absolute worst, I end up paying some extra money, but hopefully it won’t come to that and about a month from now I’ll be settling into my new home!

See…things are finally starting to come back around after all – like I told everyone at work, it certainly might not all happen in one day, but I still truly believe that good things happen to those who deserve them … here’s to hoping that this new project will tide me over until the next overwhelming bout of good news hits my unsuspecting doorstep… 😉

more automobile woes…

Today I had to take a day off of work because my car wouldn’t start this morning. A little irritating simply because it turned out to be just the battery again – the guy from the shop told me that it was pretty much because Wal-Mart sells crappy batteries…I guess you get what you pay for, eh? That was $140 down the tubes and now I’m stuck trying to get Wal-Mart to give me my money back for a defective battery – I took it in today and they wanted to give me “current value” for the thing, which would’ve subtracted five months worth of usage from what I paid, but damn it, today I had to waste an entire vacation day and a nice chunk of change to boot, so they’re going to have to do better than that. The CSM on duty gave me a number to call back on Thursday to speak with their Tire / Lube manager … but I’m just going to call corporate instead – just because your bosses are all in a meeting doesn’t mean that you can just brush away customer concerns that you’re too afraid to authorize yourself…

…plus, Mom tells me that shit flies something fierce when the manager gets a complaint call from Bentonville! 😉

But other than all of that nonsense, today was a good day…certainly one worth taking off for, I would say. I got a bunch of stuff done for upcoming comic-related projects, played clean-up around the house a little bit, and even had a chance to watch an entire movie! It wasn’t all that good, but hey – the time itself was nice!

So now I’m going to bed before midnight for the second day in a row … if I can keep it up through the weekend, I’ll be impressed! (It’s not that I don’t like staying up late, but you wouldn’t believe how much I got done this morning…before noon even!) I’ve decided that my Christmas gift to myself this year might end up being a MythTV box so that I can finally start utilizing my home theater system for MP3s and movies and whatnot – we’ll see how that works out…

P.S. one more irritant

Also, hands down the most obnoxious advertisements of the season are NBC’s promos for their fall line-up – its supposed to sound like we’re just listening in on a bunch of folks chatting around the water cooler about what’s on TV that night, but funny how they don’t ever even mention any of the other networks…EVER.

Sorry, but you can’t trick us into watching your latest crap – people are smarter than that – so just clue us in to who’s getting stabbed on Law & Order, which Friends knock-off is slated for the evening, and who the guests for Leno and Conan are and save us all the not so clever ruse…

random jollies and irritants for October 6, 2005

I like…

  • the new show Surface on NBC, which is surprising because they haven’t impressed me during primetime in ages…maybe it’s just something about sea serpents that breaks the mold?
  • where things are going now with the new Ink, Paint & Tears… strips and that we’ve managed to keep a schedule for nearly a month now; also, that Lori is actually ahead of mein comic production right now
  • that I can still go to bed at night and be proud of my overall work ethic in general, regardless of my assumption that it might not look as good if the majority of people weren’t selfish morons
  • winning one against the parking garage this week after learning that I don’t have to affix their stupid, new gate card right exactly where they want it after all … a simple victory, but I’ll take what I can get!
  • that I can finally download and watch video on my computer again! I’m never around to catch anything the first time it airs and HBO-on-Demand hasn’t been worth a crap lately, so it’s nice to have an alternative to missing out on all the new programming…I don’t really care for…
    • the traffic around this town lately and the fact that there’s been multiple wrecks on Hillsborough Ave. between my home and downtown damn near every day this week! I’ve had to change my route…again…because so many people are careless these days.
  • the conservative take-over of our country. Sure, it was fun to write about week after week…for a while…but it’s just plain depressing at this point to watch one mindless idiot play government with all of his friends, throwing money all over the place while the rest of us continue to pay $3 / gallon for gas. Don’t even get me started with this one…
  • the fact that I haven’t gone to Disney in such a long time. And I certainly don’t mean to point blame at anyone – I just miss it…like a lot of things that I haven’t done lately. I’ve thought about just going over by myself for an afternoon, but that might be weird – I don’t know… 🙁
  • the notion that my Dad still hasn’t recognized my birthday yet…over a month after the fact. Some say that it sounds greedy because I was looking to buy an iPod for exercising with his gift this year, but even just a card or a phone call would’ve been nice. Doesn’t anybody use calendars anymore???
  • that my stupid printer still isn’t working and I have comics to print out for our adoring fans. First priority when my weekend starts – I promise…
    • …right after exercising tomorrow night, that is…
      • …okay, probably not! 😛

thought of the day

“A lot of people manage to make it great distances in life simply by being horrendously spoiled, but no amount of money can buy ethics, courtesy, or common sense…”