Mundays

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If you ask me, I don’t know why we even have Mondays – I don’t think I’ve ever been productive on a Monday, so why not just abolish the damn things from the calendar altogether…

…

Hmmm, if we did get rid of Mondays permanently, would Tuesday become the new Monday or do you think things might flow freely after all???

checklists

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Sunday:

  • got somewhat of a grip on where I stand with the writing
  • played entirely too much Lego Star Wars to prevent any real “progress”from being made on said writing
  • baked gingerbread cookies – swear at self for trying to keep dough in line in the summer heats of Florida
  • watched new episode of Entourage when it first airs instead of relying on HBO on Demand…which has been down consistently when I wanted to watch it for the past three weeks 😛
  • grimaced with frustration as I realized that at the rate I’m going (about three pieces per day), the new photo mosaic puzzle that I bought is going to take roughly 47 weeksto finish…closer to 66 if I take weekends off… 🙁
  • …sighed and was just happy that at least I got some stuff done yesterday…Monday:
    • mail very, very late Christmas package to Uncle Robert
  • exercise as soon as I get home because according to the calendar, I only went oncelast week…oops…
  • spend some quality time cleaning up the atrocity that I left in the kitchen after cooking yesterday…including the stove top and the inside of the microwave, which gets cleaned maybetwice a year…
  • write columns that I’ve made myself a note for and proceed on to next batch to be tackled, striving to complete my backlog and get this website back online before the end of time
  • balance finances if 401k people actually update their website on-time for a change
  • break out some of that chicken for dinner that I bought last week, but somehow slid to the back of the fridge … barbecue, maybe?

Also…

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My checkout experience was almost comical…at least, it would’ve been if she hadn’t been completely serious:

Cashier: Are you interested in getting a Target Red Card?
Me: No thanks.
Cashier: Teeheehee … ummm, can I ask why?
Me: *glares* Because I don’t want one?
Cashier: Is it because it’s a credit card?
Me: Yep.
Cashier: What’s wrong with credit cards? I don’t see what the big deal is…
Me: *getting pissed* Spend the next six years of your life paying off $20,000 worth of credit card debt and you’ll figure it out.
Cashier: *blank look* Will that be credit or debit?
Me: …debit…

The girl couldn’t have been more than sixteen…at best…and for some reason, I see distinct financial problems in her future. Sad, really – I wish I’d have been more educated about handling money when I was a teenager…it would’ve saved me a whole lot of grief on down the road! 😛

…STILL more DHCP problems…

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Ok, so I’ve been playing computer all weekend, trying to bring things up to speed and fix every last little bother that I’ve been putting off lately. Address book entries from laptop have finally been copied over to my desktop, Google Earth, backup and other software previously disabled by the plethora of system restores are back to normal, but the same thorn in my side that I’ve been hating for three months now – DHCP – is still causing problems.

Now my laptop has no problems getting an IP that will connect it to the network (i.e. all shares are available), but it still can’t go online…which is weird because it was online just fine last night. I up’ed the number of available IPs within DHCP last night, even though that doesn’t make sense at all, but at this point I’m stuck just hoping that wiping the laptop and doing a fresh install will fix everything.

(Note that last night, DHCP assigned it an address automatically and it worked fine; today I had to manually request one and it gets to my network, but no Internet in sight. Any ideas??? Because I will father the children of anyone who can fix this damn thing once and for all and remove “DHCP” from my list of words that drive me insane…)

See, kids – this is why you’re supposed to keep your receipts for any electronics purchases! If I had, this thing would’ve so been back in Best Buy’s hands, like, two and a half months ago…

dance your cares away…

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  • Tonight was the first night I’ve exercised since the weekend…my legs feel like they’ve declared war on the rest of my body! I finished up my evening by watching an episode of Fraggle Rock that I got from my sister and putting together some legos from Mom. Also, I remembered why I’m not ready to give up hope just yet, and that makes me feel just a little bit better…
  • Tomorrow I have little plans for my birthday – probably just homemade pizza and a movie when I get home from work. I don’t expect anything else to happen, but if it does, I will certainly welcome the change…
  • And as for Friday, well, we haven’t gotten quite that far yet. One day at a time is my mantra for the time being – just get me through the day without feeling like I did earlier and the rest is icing on the cake. Let’s eat.

twenty-five years of reflections…almost

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So in a little less than 24 hours, I’ll be 25 years old.

If I’m lucky enough to live a pristine, monk-like-healthy sort of a life, that means that a quarter of it is now behind me, and as scared as I think I should be about that, I’m just not right now. I’ve got too much on my mind to be that forward-thinking.

It’s been a rough summer…hands down the very worst that I’ve ever lived out of all 25 of them.

I thought it would be over by now, and everything would be back the way it was. Hell, I thought it would’ve been over two and a half months ago, just in time to catch the 4th of July fireworks, but it wasn’t. It still isn’t, and I don’t know what else to do.

Only a few months ago, I had everything I’d never even known that I wanted out of life. I was so happy there were times that I felt like I was in a dream, and every now and then I feared that one day I was going to wake up. It was all perfect, and then on one cold Friday in May, I actually did wake up and my life hasn’t been the same since.

Just like the song goes, you really don’t know what you’ve got until its gone. It’s so hard to remember the good times and look positively towards the future when all that comes to mind is how much of an asshole you were when you were needed the most, but I’ve said it myself – some people just have to learn the hard way. Fuck…

Of everything that I’ve learned over the past 25 years, I feel like I’ve learned the most this year:

  • You’ll never know until you try. Just like that stupid poster in the breakroom at work says, you’ll miss 100% of the chances that you don’t take.
  • Love with the right person is worth more than anything else in the world – it’ll turn your life upside-down, make you beam the brightest smiles and cry the biggest tears. It sounds cheesy, but to feel incomplete without them is pretty darn accurate. Nothing compares and simply put, those who find it are the luckiest people in the world.
  • Enjoy the ride – you don’t have to try to change the world every single day. There’s too much to be missed if you don’t pace yourself.
  • When someone tells you that things could be worse, don’t be too anxious to ask, “Like what?” because one day you’re going to find out and you’ll suddenly realize that nothing else really mattered in the first place.
  • Tell people how you truly feel today because you never know when you’re going to get hit by the proverbial dump truck. Don’t walk away angry without giving her a kiss goodbye because you may never get the opportunity again…In a little less than 24 hours, I’ll be 25 years old…and of the one thing I want for my birthday more than anything else in the world, I know that the chances of my getting back what I once had are probably slim to none at best.

    I don’t know why I’m so down tonight, but maybe I’ve just kept it bottled up for too long. I know that you might not ever even read this, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry, Les. You deserved so much better from me when you needed it the most…

    *sigh*

    Here’s to hoping that 25 is better than 24…

I

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I now have a new favorite site – its name is digg.com.

Some of you may recognize this one as the brainchild of former TechTV host Kevin Rose – it brings bookmarking to a whole new level by allowing users to share favorite sites amongst the masses. This is where I’ve found some of my favorite links lately, such as:

apparently Northern Michigan is still trapped in the ’80s…

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Isn’t that about when garage door openers first came out, when they were “the next big thing”?

I came across this press release when I was working on an upcoming article and despite the fact that it’s technically a year old, it still frightens me just how behind in the times they are…

Mackinac Bridge Authority rolls out new “push-button” technology to further streamline commuter crossings

Basically, they’ve developed a transponder with a button like a garage-door opener to trigger and open the toll gates after crossing the bridge. Concept is – you pull up to the gates, press your new Mackinac Bridge garage door opener, and the gates open after the toll is subtracted from your account.

Call me crazy, but why go through all of the hassles of transponders if you’re just going to cut technology off at the pass at the last minute?! We have them all over the place down here – toll roads, apartment complexes, and even the parking garage at work opens off of a transponder that hangs from my rear-view mirror. If this is supposed to speed things up for commuters, why not remove the gates altogether and work them like SunPass works for us down here? You have cameras setup for those who choose to whip through without paying, and this way people can continue their 35 mph from the bridge right on through the toll plaza and back to I-75.

Or you could just give everybody garage door openers…whatever works for you!