Insane Random Ramblings

I really did. At first it wouldn’t load and then when it did I kept getting the “blue screen of death”. Not good at all. This went on for two or three days. Finally I hit some sequence of buttons (I still don’t know what I hit) and the computer started up. I lost the entire laptop memory. I mean everything.

I kept looking at my computer wondering why it looked different and I realized that it only came installed with IE6. So I had to re-install IE7, update Java and my anti-virus software. It was a nightmare since I was without a computer for 3 full days. All I kept thinking was that I didn’t have enough money for a new computer right now.

I’m glad it’s working but I keep thinking that I need to start saving to buy another computer. I’ll save slowly and hopefully it will last until I have enough saved up. But we all know that Mr. Murphy doesn’t work that way.

It’s not abnormal and it doesn’t require some crazy restrictive diet. If I cook I’ll learn how to lose weight because my cooking stinks. Today I cooked a smothered chicken dinner. It was one of those boxed dinners where you add your own meat. I cooked the chicken which came out fine. Then I added the rice and water mixture and stirred well.

I went into the livingroom and came back 5 minutes later and re-stirred the mix. Another 5 minutes passed and I went to stir it again and it had started burning and sticking to the pan. I took it off of the heat early and just let the water absorb into the rice.

It didn’t taste bad at all. But I knew it was burned. Every once in a while, you might get a crunchy scoop. Ooops hehehe. The next time I won’t season the chicken since that’s what cause the mixture to stick and burn. The rice is already flavored so it shouldn’t taste bad.

And my mom wonders why I don’t cook!

Five reasons I’m glad it’s summer:

1. I love the warm weather. I don’t like when it’s hotter than 85 degrees but anything up to that is perfect.
2. Cookouts. Mmmm I love grilled food and everybody grills in the summer. I can go downtown during lunch and get grilled chicken every day.
3. Summer usually means vacation time. I’m not exactly thrilled with my job so I can’t wait to have a whole week off. We’re not going anywhere this year so that’s a bummer.
4. Summer hours at work. We get an hour off every other week. It’s not much but I do appreciate it. Nothing like getting a early start on the weekend.
5. Baseball! You didn’t think I’d leave that out did you? I love baseball and I watch as many games as I can. If it’s a lazy weekend and I don’t go anywhere, you can best believe I’m checking out a game. It usually doesn’t matter who’s playing because they’re all good games.

Unfortunately summer is a short 3 month span but I plan on taking advantage of every day I possibly can.

A Parental Nightmare…

A father passing by his son’s bedroom was astonished to see the bed nicely made up and everything neat and tidy. Then he saw an envelope propped up prominently on the pillow. It was addressed, “Dad”. With the worst premonition, he opened the envelope and read the letter with trembling hands:

Dear Dad,

It is with great regret and sorrow that I’m writing you. I had to elope with my new girlfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with you and Mom.

I’ve been finding real passion with Joan and she is so nice. I knew you would not approve of her because of all her piercings, tattoos, her tight motorcycle clothes and because she is so much older than I am but it’s not only the passion, Dad, she’s pregnant.

Joan says that we are going to be very happy. She owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood, enough for the whole winter. We share a dream of having many more children.

Joan has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn’t really hurt anyone. We’ll be growing it and trading it with the other people in the commune for all the cocaine and ecstasy we want.

In the meantime, we’ll pray that science will find a cure for cancer so Joan can get better; she sure deserves it!

Don’t worry Dad, I’m 15 years old now and I know how to take care of myself. Someday, I’m sure we’ll be back to visit so you can get to know your grandchildren.

Your son, Chad

P.S. Dad, none of the above is true. I’m over at Tommy’s house. I just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than the report card that’s in my desk drawer.

The Yankees won 10-0. Joba pitched a great game and lasted into the 6th. There were so many Yankees fans there that he got a standing ovation when he left the game. It wasn’t a huge ovation but it was large enough that he noticed it and did a slight wave to the crowd. You had to really be watching because the wave was very subtle.

Today is the last game of the three game set here in Pittsburgh. It was raining when I left home this morning and I was kinda hoping for a rainout so they would have to come back again. Not very nice of me was it? I know but I was thinking that some of those people wouldn’t be able to come back so I could get tickets and go to a game. There are tickets for today but they’re standing room only. Ummm no. I’ll sit in the comfort of my living room and watch the game.

Today is Jeter’s birthday too. Happy Birthday Jeet!

It wasn’t even really that close. They were losing 12-3 in the top of the eighth when Bobby Abreu hit a 2 run homer. But it was still a good game. I thought some of the Pirates fans were going to have heart attacks because there was so much action. I kept thinking that I hope they had gotten extra life insurance before the game. There was so much hype surrounding the game which made for a really fun night. I just wish I could get tickets to tonight or tomorrow night’s game. The only seats they have left are the standing room only seats and I’m not about to buy those.

The game was a sell-out with over 38,000 people in attendance. There were empty seats but I think the sro people made up the difference. Most of those empty seats were scalper seats. They were out in full effect before the game trying to unload their tickets. One guy had a huge stack of tickets and most of them were decent seats. That really burns me up. I don’t care about people re-selling seats or even buying them to sell later at a profit. But when you have more than 10 seats, that’s just wrong. I hope they all take a loss. There are plenty of people that wanted to go but couldn’t get seats because these guys were hogging up all of the seats.

Whew! Enough ranting. It was a fun time and I can’t wait to do it again. Hopefully I’ll see the Yankees at least 1 more time before the summer is out.

I was really bummed for a long time about this series. The Yankees are in town for 3 days starting today through Thursday. I’ve wanted to go to these games since last year when they announced that they were coming to town. The Yankees haven’t been to Pittsburgh in 48 years so it’s a pretty big deal around town.

When tickets went on sale they sold out in 10 minutes and I wasn’t able to get tickets. At first I was upset about not being able to go. Then I got mad when I saw all of the tickets on Ebay, StubHub and a couple of other auction sites. I knew that the reason the seats went so fast was because scalpers had them and were selling them at outrageous prices. I mean a $9.00 cheap seat was going for almost $40. That’s just ridiculous but I guess people were willing to pay it. I was bummed because I wasn’t spending that much money. No way no how.

Then yesterday I went on the Pirates site just wishing and hoping. I saw that they had tickets available but I had a gift card that was at home. After work we went to WalMart and did some shopping. Once we got back home I mentioned to John that I had saw the tickets. He’s a Yankees hater so I didn’t think he would want to go. He told me to try and get seats. I went on and most seats were sold out but there was a 7 minute delay while people decided on the tickets that they had. After about 10 minutes, I got seats!

I can not wait until tonight! I just wish I had gotten a camera.

Do you think you see traffic from it? I have the widget on this blog. I can count on 1 hand the number of times I’ve seen my blog on other peoples widgets. I don’t know how it’s determined what headlines show up, but I don’t see any benefits to having it. I do know that they give you credits and according to how many credits you have is how often your blog gets seen.

Well I have to be near the bottom of the heap. I’ll probably keep the widget for another month or two. If my stats don’t pick up then I’ll remove it. At this point, it just seems to be taking up real-estate on my sidebar.

I have been so tired lately. Yesterday was our final and it was very hard. She did the same thing she did on the mid-term, she picked some of the most obscure terms to make our matching/id questions. There were many more topics that were relevant that she could have chosen from. It seems like she took the things we talked about briefly and made those the terms. Things we discussed in-depth were not on there at all.

By the time I got finished taking my exam, I couldn’t even read the 4×6 card that she let us have. We could use one card and write whatever we thought was important on there. Everything was jumbled and hard to read. I had stuff like KVM, SSA and TVA on the card. I had to try and remember what each term meant, how it was significant and how it related to the other term that I picked. The thing I feared happened. I knew all of the terms on the right side and vaguely knew the terms on the left. You had to pick one from each side. No matching terms from the same side.

While I know I did well on the essay, the id terms could pose some problems in relation to my grade. I think I got a B on the final which would give me a low A, high B. If you add in my class participation to the mix, I believe I have a solid B in the class. After last semester I am extremely happy about that grade. I’m even happier that the semester is over.

I’m glad I live in an apartment most days. I have very little maintenance besides cleaning the floors and bathrooms. But most of my friends that own houses are spending a ton of money with upkeep. Things like painting, deck staining, patch panels upgrades and the like are very expensive. One of my coworkers is using her income tax for her various projects.

I know a home is your most expensive asset in most cases. I’m just not convinced that home ownership is for me. If I do decide to buy something after I’m done with school, it will be a townhome or condo where I pay maintenance fees. I would rather pay someone to do that stuff for me than do it myself.