Daily Chino

I am adding a new feature, cuz I feel like... Daily Pic of Chino

Saturday

So it's another fun filled Saturday in GopherLand. So far today I have cleaned, made dinner and ran some random errands. Not all that exciting.

I still have some cleaning to finsih up on, but I can do that later, I'm busy trying to learn to play Heros of Might and Magic III, all and all not a bad game.

Peace.

Holy Jeebus...

I've been awake for like, an hour tops, and I glanced down at the weather thing next to the clock and it said 99 degrees. I thought, that's not right, so I refreshed it. No, 99 was wrong, it's 101 with a heat index of 109. Guess who's not going outside, me!

Last night I drug C-bob around town in a vain quest to find me food. We also stopped at Target to get some stuff and I put gas in the car. Ended up having dinner from McDonald's, nothing too exciting.

I'm house sitting for my brother again, which is cool. He has cable TV, he left me food and he left two baseball tickets for Monday, which is awesome.

Solitaire

So I was playing this solitaire game last night with my new desk of cards (not klondike, but a different game) and I realized that it is sometimes more fun than playing it on the computer. For this game I felt more able to see my moves and figure out a strategy as opposed to just letting the computer show me what I can do. The biggest problem though was I kept screwing up, mainly because I was tired, and basically ruining one of the games. Overall it was nice to stretch out on the floor and play a non-electronic game for a change. I liked it.

Oh yea!

I forgot to mention that I stopped at Target before getting the nachos. I went to buy a CD-player cassette adaptor and I CD. I ended up buying two CDS, and yes, I really do buy CDs. I bought The Ataris and Unwritten Law (who doesn't get a link because their website sucks). But that's not the cool part I wanted to mention.

I was looking at games in the toy section and found Transformers' playing cards. It's not the new, stupid transformers either, it's the hella cool old school transformers. It even had a picture-change sticker on the pack, I opted for the one of Optimus Prime. They are just plain playing cards, but I needed some anyway, so why not have really cool ones?
(I just opened them, they look cool, but they smell weird.. it's probably the plastic coating, but.. ick... )

Ambition

I am just brimming with ambition now, it's pretty awesome. I went to the library and got some books on Flash. I am fully intending to master the craft of flash animation, no matter how long it take. I forgot just how much I love doing design work. I truly enjoy myself when I'm working on websites, even when I'm frustrated because things aren't quite doing what I want them to do. I'm just really excited by the prospect of learning something new and cool.

The thing about flash that has been harder is that I haven't really been able to just pick it up by playing around with it. That's how I learned Photoshop, just messing around, and that worked great. That's also how I have been with Dreamweaver, but flash I haven't quite figured out. I'm guessing in the weeks to come there will be a lot of, check this out!, type links.

On another note, the Amigos at 48th and Leighton is open now, it opened today. We thought it was never going to open. I stopped and got nachos on my way home. It was funny, I know the people there are new, but the poor girl behind the counter was trying so hard but having major issues. Should couldn't find my order on the register (large meat nachos) and asked me to wait until the training lady came back. As I stood there waiting, she thought she got it, rang me up and I paid. The trainer came back and it turns out she rang up the wrong thing, so I got the meat nachos for the price of a regular nachos, I'm not complaining. Then the trainer had to tell her what to do with a to go order once it was ready.

Now I was super patient, and I understand it was her first day, but still. First off, if she wasn't ready to work alone, the trainer shouldn't have left her there alone. Second, anyone that has ever been to an Amgios understands the basic process they use to give food out once it's ready. I can understand not being able to find it on the menu, being it was her first day. I've never worked fast food, so I can't speak from experience, but I really question how steep the learning curve is for a job like that. I am giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming she was just nervous. She was super nice though, so she should do fine, once she's comfortable being there.

Well I got some reading to do and what not.

Peace!

Only 8:15

So I am sitting here at work and unsure what to do. There is only one person in the lab at this time, but normally no one gets here until about 8:30ish. They are doing an interview in the conference room just past my desk. The guy, I call him Gimp4, seemed pretty nice, and I think I've seen him in here before. Apparently he is a graduate from UNL, so that's not surprising. They have another interview this afternoon and two more tomorrow.

Nick has his interview tomorrow; I hope it goes well for him. I think we would do a good job here but the competition is stiff. Hopefully he can just relax and do a good interview. He has worked here before, back when he was a student, so he already has a basic understand of how things work.

Well, I guess I'll go find something to do. I kind of miss the old days when there were other people awake to chat with in the mornings, but I'll live.

(side note: when I ran the spell check, it suggested replacing UNL with UNHOLY.... interesting...)

Let's go crazy Broadway style!!

Anyone else remember the Simpsons' episode where Bart finds the twenty dollars and goes into the Kwik-E-Mart and orders the Squishy made entirely of syrup? Well they made one mistake in that cartoon, they showed it coming out really thick, so thick it wouldn't go through the straw. Let me tell you, a slurpee drink of entirely syrup is just that, syrup. Why must I bring up this detail? I shall tell you.

Went to Sam's Club tonight to get some stuff, food and what not, and ended up getting a 32oz Icee drink (cherrie) before leaving. As I'm walking out I realized that it's not icee at all, in fact, it was all syrup. My mom thought that meant it was ruined, but I was like, no mom, this is great! Man, so much sugar, now my head hurts.

Boots

I forgot to mention, since I bought shoelaces yesterday, I was able to wear my boots again today! This makes me happy, I like my boots a lot. :)

Bored? Wanna listen to some music? Check out Songs for Dustmites, album by Steve Burns online!

Websites

I've been working all afternoon on web design stuff again. It's fun but I get frustrated when I hit a point at the edge of my skill level. I am trying to learn new things and not let it bother me, since I will never learn anything if I keep giving up. I do think it's important to take breaks from time to time though, so that I don't get overwhelmed.

Thanks to everyone who has given me feedback about the site, I am taken it all into consideration and working on it still.

Erm

I seem to have problems whenever I go to edit a post. It doesn't seem to want to actually publish the update so I can view it on the webpage. Sometimes adding a new post seems to help, but that's really annoying...

Dreamweaver

I have been playing around with Dreamweaver the last couple days, and I have to say I really like it. I think now that I am finally getting a hold of how to use it; I will be using it more to do web design work. I am really enjoying creating webpages. Currently I am working on a fan site for this band, Jive Pistol, take a look at it if you want, Jive Pistol Fans I am actually really happy with the results.

I was working this morning on doing some redesign work with quarkstar.com and came up with this: Quarkstar.com Redesign. While the redesign is interesting, I was looking at the current page and realized that I like it a lot, so I don't think I'm going to change it, unless it's to something I like even more. I like the simplistic feel that it has now, and I really like the text parts.

What I really need to work on learning is the more advance web scripting and some flash stuff. I am still bewildered by flash, but I am trying to learn it.

Errands and such

After work and lunch at BW3s, I decided that I needed to run some errands.

First I stopped at an ATM to pick up some cash, and it just happened to be over by ShopKo so I stopped to get some shoelaces for my boots and some other junk. After that I went over to Hollywood to rent some movies. They didn't have the movie I was looking for, but I found a couple others instead. I rented Mallrats and The Atomic Cafe. I've seen Mallrats a few times but the other one seemed interesting so I picked it up too.

After the video store, I went to the library, paid off my fines and picked up some more books. I got a book about Dreamweaver so I have plans to really learn how to use that. On the way home from the library I decided to finally take the ol' Buick in for a tune-up. Got its oil changed and they vacuumed it out, seems to have made the car happy. I'm glad I finally got the car in there, my dad has been bugging me about it for a couple weeks now.

Not much else to report, probably just gonna lay around and watch movies tonight. Message me if yer around, I should be here.

Lates!

Awesoma

Tonight was totally awesome. C-bob and I ventured out to the Northern League Allstar Skills Competition at Haymarket Park, where my beloved Saltdogs play. My brother gave me tickets in exchange for another round of house sitting, so that part was awesome too.

So the skills competition was the different players competing in different things, with the winner getting a trophy and some cash. There was a few hit the target throwing competitions, a running the bases competition and the ever popular home run competition. The funniest one was the mascot base running competition, it was fun to watch them goof around while running around the bases. Of course hometown mascot, Homer, won. Homer is awesome though, so he deserves to win.

Soon after we got there I bought myself a hot pretzel and a soda. The soda came in this cool cup that has those magic change pictures on it when you move it around. We also went to the souvenir shop and I picked up a baseball and pennant. I'm not sure where I am going to hang the pennant yet though.

The cool part was during the competition when the Wiener Schlinger guy came around. What this is is basically an air-powered cannon that shoots hot dogs. I have seen it before at Stars' games but this is the first time I've seen him at Haymarket Park.

So Homer the Mascot was out at one of the bases, horsing around, and the wiener schlinger dude shoots a hot dog at him. So of course he had to do the required rolling around injured schtik, then he gets up and pretends to eat the hot dog. After that he tosses it into the crowd, where it some how came to rest near me and I scored a free hot dog. It was pretty good, especially being that it was free. Yum.

I almost forgot the coolest part of all. After the competition was over we were treated to the "Fabulous Fireworks Show" It was really cool, I think my favorite fireworks were the really loud ones, I'm not sure why.

That's about it for my evening, it was really great. I kind of wish I could go to the all-star game itself, but I don't have tickets. Oh well, I am totally going to the last game of the season on my birthday, it'd be awesome.

More Message Board News

I have been adding more boards to the forum this morning.. you can post about music, movies and projects you might be working on, along with the other things there... please come check it out, the more people, the more fun, eh?

Quarkstar.com Message Board

Joyo

I have not been to the Joyo Theatre in Havelock in a long time, and I think it's time that changed. What I really wish is that they would have their schedule listed on their webpage. I would probably go there more if I knew what was happening. C-bob and I saw Revenge of the Nerds there a few years ago, and that was awesome. I'd like to go there and see more things, really support the renovation project. It is such a nice theatre; I don't know why I don't go there more.

They have a 24-hr movie line, maybe I will give that a call and see what is happening over there. They play second run movies sometimes, but I really hope they are playing some older movies, that would be awesome.

I would love to see some bands play there to sometime, because according to the web page, that sometimes happens. I'm not sure exactly what that would be like, but it would be worth the experience.

Rage...

So I meant to post about this earlier but I forgot. I was driving around yesterday and I realized that my rage has pretty much become non-existent. Things that used to make me irrationally angry just seemed like mild annoyances that I just shrugged off. I feel like some kind of pressure has been lifted and I can just sit back and enjoy life. I don't have that constant feeling like I need to strangle something any more. I hope that overall I'm becoming a person that is easier to be around, that seems to be my goal, in part. It was an interesting changing point I thought was worth mentioning. It just complete supports my decision to quit my job and move on. This is a much healthier situation for me, by far.

Sunday Night

I joined C-bob at her new Sunday night hangout, Duffy's, and listened to some bands play. I really didn't pay enough attention to catch what the names of the bands were, but I really enjoyed the second band that played. The last band wasn't bad but it was just music to me, nothing that really moved me one way or the other. At a couple points ice was thrown into the crowd, which was really annoying to me, especially the one that hit me in the face. I lived, but overall it was an interesting experience.

I'm not as tired this morning as I thought I would be, but I just barely made it to work on time. Not that anyone would notice anyway though. I was still the first one here.

go go go

Motivation is totally not my middle name. I am only writing this in the hopes that once I get to the end of it, I will be motivated to get going and get something done today. I get super lazy on Sundays, even though I know there are things I have to do today. Ah well, if I get out of here soon, it will be all good.

Laterz.

Hi!

Not much to report for yesterday as I really didn't do that much. I returned some movies, picked up a package from my parent's house and got dinner. After that I talked to some people on AIM and then ran off quickly to BagNSave for some cheap soda. They have 7-up products for $1.66 a 12-pack, so I got some. I also bought some more peanut butter and string cheese. Not the most exciting shopping trip, but I learned if you go there near close there is hardly anyone in the store.

The idea of BagNSave closing is still strange to me. I am used to 24-hr grocery stores, as most around here are. There seems to be two types of grocery stores (possibly 3) in town. Those that stay open 24-hrs are usual large and unfriendly. They lack the feeling of a small market but feel more like a warehouse for food. Those that have limited hours tend to feel more market like and thus friendlier, to me. It seems that the less hours the place is open, the more market like it is. Just an observation I had.

I stayed up all night reading a book last night. More Than You Know, by Beth Gutcheon. At first I wasn't really drawn into the book and wasn't sure if I was going to like it. The more I read it though, the less I could put it down and realized that I wasn't going to sleep until it was finished. It's a mix of two story lines that somehow connect but you aren't really sure how. There are some slightly spooky parts as the house one of the characters lives in is haunted. Overall, this was a good, quick read and I think if you like books with a bit of history and some element of spirituality and ghosts, you would like this book.

I have started reading Empire Falls, by Richard Russo. I have not read very far into it, but it seems like it's going to be a good book. It is one of the finalists here for the One Book One Lincoln project. If I knew that before I got the book, it was subconscious, because I wasn't truly aware of that until C-bob told me.