Enough with the “free” cruises, already!!!

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There was another message on my machine when I got home tonight letting me know that I’d been selected to win a free cruise to somewhere tropical. This is like the 4th one in a month. Sorry guys, but I got the joke…

Did my name go on some kind of suckers list when I actually bought into the first one and even gave them a check to cover half of the administrative costs associated with that cruise? It just amazes me how a free cruise can end up costing upwards of $500…maybe I wasn’t paying attention in Economics 101 or something.

How much should a cruise cost if one were to pay for it up front, knowingly, that is???

Quite a good day in history, indeed…

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I learned over the weekend that I share my birthday with Sean Connery and Regis Philbin. Well, technically Tim Burton, too, but it’s hard for me to get excited about that one. Nonetheless, good site to waste some time at…

Back to work I go tomorrow – it was kind of nice actually taking my days off when they’re scheduled and I think I might start doing it more often in the future. Also, I wrote a check to another credit card company for $1300 today, which was a nice burden to lift from the shoulders…we’re getting there!

I was going to pick up The Bourne Identity out at Wal-Mart today, but heaven forbid they ever carry the widescreen version of anything I might actually consider purchasing! (…and yet they’re even carrying the TVs themselves now…) Anyways, I bought an old classic for half the price instead – Maverick, and the evening was spent watching Mel Gibson bob in and out of trouble and watching Jodie Foster bob in and out of that dress of hers…needless to say, a good time was had by all!

And last but certainly not least, I’m about a hundred pages into my new book now (the one that I’m reading, that is) and I still can’t get over how much of a comedic genius Douglas Adams was…such a tragic loss, that’s for sure. If I can’t get my hands on the other Dirk Gently book when I finish this one, I might re-read the “Increasingly Inaccurately-Named Hitchhiker’s Triology” instead. eBay, here I come…

No rest for the wicked…

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…until today!

After another 55-hour week, I finally decided to take the advice of damn near everyone around me and take a day off, and boy, what a difference it makes! That meant getting to actually sleep in on both days, and lounge around without a care in the world – it was great.

Although it doesn’t sound nearly as monumentous now as it felt in the store, I finally found movie poster frames at affordable prices (where else, but Wal-Mart – of course!), so I can finally get with the finishing of the home decorating…after only ten months! Oh well, I’ve already decided that I’m definitely renewing my lease here for at least another year, so no worries there. I spent a little more money than I probably should have over the weekend trying to spruce things up a bit, but after all of the overtime that I’ve worked in the past two months, it was certainly well earned…

The later part of my Sunday evening was spent over in Clearwater – I needed to go out for a drive and a trip to the book store across the bay seemed a little more appealing than just driving around Tampa. I wanted to get Wil Wheaton‘s new book, Just a Geek, but there wasn’t a copy to be found…I’ll have to order it online or something, I suppose. I did pick up an older Douglas Adams classic, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, which is one of the Dirk Gently books that I have yet to read, so at least I have something new to occupy my “free” time. I think Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the last book that I actually sat down and read wholeheartedly, and that was way back in January, so I’m a bit overdue!

Well, Monday is already destined to be quite the bustling day, as it has been confirmed that I’m moving to another team at work with the restructuring that is being done…which is actually something that I’m looking forward to because I was rapidly growing weary of my previous duties, so hopefully these new tasks will be a refreshing change of pace. Only time will tell…

Hey – what’s this button do???

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Still working like a dog lately, although I’m pretty sure that things are looking up at this point! I’ve actually been doing more and more of my work at home afterhours the last couple of nights, which is apparently something that I’m going to have to get used to as some new changes fall into place…but that’s a good thing…

Still trying to deal with the stress of it all, though – I’m not used to taking my work home with me, so I’m still learning where to draw the line. I am getting better, though…I think. Maybe I’ll make up some banana bread when I get home tonight; I haven’t baked in a while. Hmmm, banana bread…

$ $ $

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…coming out of day four of the great overtime struggle and boy, am I tired! I figure that I worked something like 26 hours of OT since Thursday night, not to mention my normal shifts for Thursday and Friday – RMG mentioned something about my working something like 51 days in a row, which I thought was a joke at the time, but now I’m starting to wonder. Next week will be more of the same…hopefully…although I think I’ll take this weekend off, or at least a good portion of it, just to give myself a chance to slow down. I like to idea of being able to pay off another credit card by the end of the month, but sheesh – they sure can’t say that I’m not working for it…

I watched fireworks this evening from the boss’s office at work – quite the nice view, I must say. I’d love to write more, but I’m just really exhausted at this point! This had better be worth it.

A Fishy Situation

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While we’re on the subject, there’s something else that needs to be brought to light – I’m beginning to think that I have a lazy fish on my hands.

Everyone remembers the stink that came about a month or so ago when I took on the task of establishing a second aquarium in my apartment and ended up having to fill it with distilled water from the store because apparently pretty fish can’t stand the “water” that comes out of my tap like my other fish do. Nonetheless, I bought jug after jug of water to fill this newly constructed tank, the inside of which I had gone to great lengths to make a pleasant environment for its future inhabitants. In one corner sits an artificial antique jug, much like one might find in a pirate ship at the bottom of the ocean – I purchased this because I figured that the Neons in this tank might appreciate something to hide in should I opt to walk around my apartment naked on any given day…

If anyone’s calling PETA right now – that was a joke.

However instead of providing a place for these smaller fishies to frolic and play, this artifact now instead plays home to my lazy plecostomus who’s never cleaned that tank a day in his life! He could spend at least a couple of hours during the afternoon making the tank presentable for when I come home, but no – my filter is left to do all of the work and he just lays there and eats. One of these days he’s going to get so fat that he’ll get stuck trying to get out of the jug, and then myself and all of the other fish will laugh…

Of course, until then we’ve still got a filthy tank on our hands / fins – I might consider getting snails or something, I don’t know. Remember that time when fish used to be dependable pets?

A Weekend Recap…

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My absence over the past days can probably best be blamed on the fact that I worked the last ten days in a row without any time off. That streak ended last night, and there was much rejoicing.

Walked down to Channelside Friday evening after work for dinner and a movie with Kurt and Nikki – a pricey night, that’s for sure, but it was nice to go somewhere other than straight home after work! Another of my many desired “tourist stops,” I’d never actually been down there before, so it was kinda neat to see what all of the fuss is about, between the shops and the street performers and the live music – pretty cool. Of course, the main draw for the evening was an opportunity to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban…

And what better place to see such a beautiful movie than at an IMAX theater, right?! Wow – the scenery in this latest episode truly was amazing and I think the five-story screen really played a huge role in helping to portray the setting…no pun intended. I even found myself agreeing with the critics on this one – not only was this the best Harry Potter movie to date, but I think it was the first one that I’ll say was accurately transferred from paper to film – they really did a good job with this one. Did I mention that it was an IMAX film???

Today was just one of those days best spent sitting around the house playing video games and writing because tomorrow is going to be one of those days where I have to drag my ass out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn on a Sunday to go in for a meeting at work where we’ll all be treated like grade schoolers for a period of three hours. Topics of discussion are said to include how to dress for a business environment, how to clean up after yourself, and how to get your lazy, border-line unemployed ass to work on-time – should be a good time for all!

Not that I’m at all bitter about it – we are being provided with free bagels, mind you…

Real Cool

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The Internet has finally reached a first that I’ve been waiting for now for a long time – streaming video…

…but not just 2×2 inch squares of the local news, mind you. No, we’re finally to the point where you can download full-length, feature movies over the ‘net – legally – and actually be enjoying the movie in less than an hour! No more un-raring archives and begging for posters to resend missing pieces; no more finding an FTP server with everything you could ever want and later learning that it’s being hosted by some fourteen year-old with dial-up; no more videos that cut out halfway through, or have obnoxious watermarks, or Arabic subtitles…well, you get the idea.

Just last week Starz! and Real Networks rolled out Starz! Ticket which allows broadband users to download from a weekly-changing archive of 100+ movies for unlimited viewing at only $12.95 a month (with a 14-day trial, no less). Each movie comes with a specific license that allows it to remain on your computer for a set period of time, after which it gets automatically deleted, so the pirates are stopped dead in their tracks, at least for a while. I watched The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl tonight and was pretty impressed – the video itself weighed in at around 700 MB and was complete in about 40 minutes, which translates to something like 300 KB/s…a speed that I’ve never seen pulling downloads from anywhere else! The video was arguably DVD quality – I’ll find out more when I run the next one through my home theater system, but seriously, this really is the lazy man’s dream…

Sure, I know it’s pretty much the same idea as the movies on demand that I get with digital cable, but just the idea of doing this online is something that I’ve been waiting for for a long time! I’m sure it’s too early to know how popular this is going to be, but hopefully it’ll be enough so that Blockbuster or one of the other large chains will come online and begin offering rentals for a similar plan as an alternative to NetFlix – as opposed to $22 a month to get DVDs by mail, I think I’d be willing to pay ten or fifteen to be able to stream from a library online that would be ready for our enjoyment by the time I get back with the pizza. Until then, though – Starz! is swapping out about 20 movies a week…it’s almost like getting digital cable for the first time all over again!