Never been one to let the carrier drop

So I got a email from someone with their life rankings, which were considerably higher than mine, and I’ve oscillated between several reactions.

The first is that I feel like they’re poking at me a bit, since they do not follow the same life path as I do at all.. ‘see, if you’d follow my path instead of your own, you’d have higher scores’.

Actually, emailing me and me alone with their scores rather than posting them in their journal seems to me to almost be a act of attempting to rub my face in the fact that their life is going better than mine. And yet, I would hate to be so petty.. I mean, I should be happy for my friend. They’re on a good spot, and that’s great, and I shouldn’t be at all annoyed that they’re emailing me about how good things are..

On http://www.google.com/technology/, they talk about “low cost PC’s”.

I’m unclear on why that gets a apostrophe. I agree that when I type PCs, it’s tempting to put a apostrophe there, but under what rule? I thought apostrophes either indicated possessiveness (and clearly the PCs don’t own themselves) or the contraction of multiple words (and again, not relevant). There’s a third usage – plurals, and that seems the most likely, since there are indeed many PCs, but then I looked up the rules.. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_spelnoun.html .. and it didn’t seem like that was the reason either. Of course, purdue.edu might be incorrect, and I do think the common usage is PC’s, but.. odd.

Before 2004, I didn’t *have* any debt. At all.

I suppose in some ways it’s good.. when I’ve paid it all off, I’ll have a record of having paid it all off, which will mean I can qualify for a car loan – which I will get, and then pay off the next day, so I can then qualify for a home loan – which, after I’ve saved for about two years, I’ll have enough for a down payment and $BANKING_SYSTEM will then own my soul.. wait a second, do I really want to do this…?

I’m undecided about home “ownership”. Among other things, I wouldn’t actually own it until I’m 50, and in the meantime it would be one more thing for $THE_MAN to hold over my head. And even if I owned it outright, the government could decide they want to seize it – right now they only do that for drugs, but how long before they do it for saying the wrong things? I mean, yes, that’s paranoid, but..

On the other hand, if I owned it, I could modify it to my tastes without worrying about a exact ‘undo’ procedure for when the landlord got it back.

Third hand, though, I’d like a bigger house than I can ever afford in Orange County.. but I really like California..

Hm. Maybe I’ll win the lotto.

So, for the first time since the middle of 2005, I am paying a credit card down to $0.

Not only that, I have high hopes to repeat this feat in two weeks, and again two weeks after that.

Partially I have to credit Kayti, who is much better at organizing financial matters than I am [I suspect she’s already saved me $500+ in overdraft fees, overdue bill fees, etc]

I’m still not – as you all noticed from a earlier post – exactly well-organized in my finances, but they’re slowly becoming less overwhelming.

My prior landlord chose to sit on a check for four months, and my somewhat less than organized accounting system let it fall off my radar. When deposited, it drew my account negative, and as a result, I got charged two overdraft fees.

These fees.. $34 each.. were for moving bits around in a register.

I’m sorry, but I feel like I’m being taken advantage of here. $34? I could understand $10, but $34? What if I were paid minimum wage? That’d be like five hours of work.. for something that a computer did automatically.

Face it – capitolism is a tool for the evil side of the fence, not the good one.

I posted the pictures from my trip to NZ – they’re at http://gallery.sheer.us/main.php?g2_itemId=3652 if anyone wants to see them.

I’m currently listening to SkyCriesX’s ‘My Broken Dreams’ for about the tenth time this week, and musing about how I need a subwoofer that will fit through my office door (yes, it’s too narrow for my 1801s) – there’s something about the shape of this room that simultaneously eats all bass and makes anything I listen to audiable throughout the entire house (and for all I know, the entire neighborhood)

Kayti wrote this parody for me because when I’m working really hard I say that I’m working my paws to the bone. Obviously it goes to the tune of “Bad to the Bone”:

—

Artist: Ecccentrick Kayteee
Song: Paws to the Bone

On the day I was born
Saw gadgets all strewn around
And I gazed in wide wonder
At the joy I had found
That’s when I spoke up
Said, “Everyone leave me alone
“Because starting today
“I work paws to the bone.”

Paws to the bone
Paws to the bone
P-P-P-P-Paws to the bone
P-P-P-P-Paws
P-P-P-P-Paws
Paws to the bone

Replaced a thousand parts
Before I met you
Replace a thousand more, baby
Before I am through
I wanna write more scripts and apps, babe
Reems and reems of code
I’m here to tell ya, honey
I work paws to the bone

Paws to the bone
P-P-P-Paws
P-P-P-Paws
P-P-P-Paws
Paws to the bone

I make restoring go fast
I’ll make some COBOL seem fun
I’ll fix a database crash
And make a Windows box run
Built a mighty sound system
Which to raves I loan
I’m here to tell ya, honey
I work paws to the bone

P-P-P-P-Paws
P-P-P-P-Paws
P-P-P-P-Paws
Paws to the bone

And when I drive the streets
Past stalls my Tango slides
Every car that I meet
They all stay ‘lectrified
I wanna tell ya, pretty baby
Well, ya see, I made my own
I’m here to tell ya, honey
I work paws to the bone

Paws to the bone
P-P-P-P-Paws
P-P-P-Paws
P-P-P-Paws
Paws to the bone

Well, I survived my trip to New Zealand, and yet another busy day at my main client. I’ve been enjoying listening to the pile of CDs that I brought back from NZ – I’m going to have to stop by the Trance Cart at the spectrum again and buy some more CDs, though. I just can’t get enough.. 😉

I’m trying to get up the energy to make some major architectural changes to one of the peices of software I’m maintaining. I need to have them done by Wednesday if I’m going to do them, and they’d make significant performance improvements if done – but, they would mean basically ripping out a whole bunch of code and moving it to another module, plus adding even more thread management stuff than I already have. I don’t know what I’ll end up deciding to do..

I’m about to leave for home.. things have pretty much wound down around here..

The NZ trip was extremely exhausting.. I felt like I was always ‘on’ every minute I was awake for the entire trip – we got tons done though, and I’m now all set to write the backend. If I can ever find time between all my other jobs.

I sent copies of my bank statements as captured from wamu’s web site to my lawyer.. hopefully I’m getting close to having all the neccesary paperwork in for that process to complete..

Well, work has again taken me to exotic locales – this time, I’m in New Zealand, working with a offshore development firm here. These guys are amazing user interface experts – it’s really fun working with people who actually know more than I do, so much to learn.. 😉

Other than that, NZ is nice.. the 12 hour flight was made bearable by really good sleeping drugs and lots of external batteries.. (For those of you who haven’t seen them, APC sells external laptop batteries.. 65 wh each. They give me about 2.5 hours of runtime each, plus the 2 hours on the internal battery is 7 hours of computational fun.. they were about $75 each at CompUSA’s going-out-of-business sale)

One fun thing about my life is that I had almost no jet lag going to NZ, because 9 AM here is 2 PM at home, so I’m only waking up a hour than I usually would be.

Also, the place we’re working at has a kickass automagic coffee maker.. this thing is beyond cool. Press one button on the front panel and it grinds beans, brews a cup in about 30 seconds. Press another, it adds milk. Only thing it won’t do is put the suger in for you.. (but see next year’s model.. ;-))

I’m also getting in lots of walking.. it’s about a klick from the hotel to where we’re working, mostly uphill 😉 – so there’s some chance I will return lighter than I left, even though the food is definately on the yummy side.

I got a new digital camera (well, actually, it’s a shared purchase) which I’ve been having all kinds of fun with – it’s the first fully manual one I’ve had, and it’s sooo nice having all that flexibility back. (It’s the first time I’ve been able to afford a fully manual one – it was less than my first digital camera!)

Of course, there are the obligatory long-exposure night shots – I’ll post them when I get home..