July 2005 Archives

Okay, so I like the concept of the weekend. The notion that I dont have to do anything till Monday is a great euphoria to have. I have spent the entire week trying to come up with things to do. Well now that wont have to continue on until next Monday, cause today is Friday, and I hardly do any work on Friday's to begin with. It is great.

So last night I spent some time to sort out some of the pics on my computer, only to discover that in the 5 years I have had my camera that I havent taken many pictures of myself. Really the only pics of me that I had were from a trip to Savannah, GA for St. Patrick’s Day in 2004. Two of the 5 or so pictures were of me sleeping in the back seat of my friends car taken somewhere in GA I gather from what is outside the window.

Well my hopes of finding a good picture to add to my profile was once again foiled for another day. Maybe I will come across some thing and get it included before to long.

With August fast upon us, I am anticipating and dreading the return to Provo for school. Spending the summer away from there has been a refreshing experience, but I guess I get to move back down sometime middle of the month. It wont be too bad I dont guess.

I think the one thing that I haven't quite gotten over since coming to school is the lack of freedom that I once had. I missed being able to rent a 1-bedroom apartment for about the same price I am going to be dropping down for a private room in a basement. So I have had to store a bunch of my stuff in a shipping container at my parents place in Colorado, and every now and then I get to a point of wanting one of those items only to realize it is somewhere in this box 6 hours away from where I am. Mostly what I want is my lazy boy chair given to me by a co-worker when I got my first apartment. Yeah it is ragged and the fabric is ripped in several pieces, and it could be reupholstered, but man was it comfortable. There just wasnt any room for it when I came up this way. Trust me I have tried, but living in about 30% of the space my last apartment in Temple, Texas had to offer doesnt help my 'personal' space issues that arise almost continually.

But I am told this is all supposed to help in the end. 'Education is an important thing' was a great phrase all my friends joked about while I was back in Texas visiting. It just is too bad that I decided to get one 5 to 6 years after all my friends did.

Well...maybe this weekend I can get more work done on my profile and find a decent picture of me to post.

Until laters then...

So yes I have read the entire book, the entire series and have seen all of the movie to this point. I didnt get into the books until after I got off my mission and had this month of nothingness to do and had to occupy my time with something. Well that something ended up being the first 4 books. I sat down and read the first one, kind of thought it was cutish, truly focused on a younger audience. (Book 1 took 6 hours to read cover to cover)

Well I read through Book2 and found myself liking it a little more, and then I read Book 3 and I truly saw some potential into the entire series. I mean I felt that this could go somewhere. Then I read Book 4. See I hadn't heard any of the books at that point in time, I had just begun to read them. So I was reading Book 4, and let me tell you I became disappointed. Well, I sat there I cursed. See about half way through book 4 my younger brother called to ruin the book for me, and as I finished the book I realized that the story was a cookie cutter creative writing assignment only elongated over books. Because in book 4 she starts to wind down the story to be finished by book 7, and let me tell you, I was not to pleased at that.

Well like the rest of the world practically, I waited on book 5, more for the pleasure of ruining the book for my younger brother like he had done for me for the 4th book. In an honest admission, I was offered an illegal PDF format of the book 2 days before the release of the book on newsstands, which I took. I read the entire book, and spent the next month trying to get my younger brother to talk to me on the phone (he knew my plans somehow).

So I decided that I would want to wait on book 6, because I had been disappointed at book 4 and book 5 didnt do much for me either (although I did ruin the book for a couple people). Well the 16th came and I was busy saying goodbyes to friends as I was leaving to return to Utah the next morning. I was having a good time with friends when we ended up stopping by Wal-Mart to pick up drinks and snacks for the rest of the night (we got there right at 8pm) Well my friend's girlfriend went straight for the Harry Potter books to get herself a copy. As she picked up a copy, I was like hell, I might as well have something to read on the plane.

Well, I started reading it before going to the airport and at the airport. Let me tell you I gave the time it took to read book 1, well book 6 was read cover to cover in 3.5 hours.

Now I am obligated to say, I think this book did a lot to raise my opinion of the series, but at the same time I hated the fact that I was more reading a diary of everybody's life more than being pulled into a story like i was with the first 3 books.

Oh well that is my rant on the damn HP series...

Okay, it is Wednesday. It is the middle of the week, and still i have yet to accomplish anything. Well let me return to the comments from earlier blogs. I have returned this week to work after being out of town for 2 weeks on vacation. It is probably the hardest thing I have done all month, returning to work.
I am a dutiful person and tend to finish off projects before leaving for an extended period of time, so before i went on vacation I made sure that all of the assignments that I had were brought to a point that there was nothing more I could do on them until approval of current set-up was made. Well I have been at work 2 days (Monday was some holiday in Utah) and have struggled with things to do.
Good thing is that I have been able to work on the myspace.com profile, keep up with emails, and search the web. So last night I was playing one of my two newest addictions. I have this thing for RPGs and picked up World of Warcraft (WoW) back in March. Well last night I maxed out my first character at lvl60. Culim the pally is on the Bloodscalp server and has been a time sink in my life as i have worked ever closer and closer towards 60. Well I hit it. And now I dont have such a drive to play the game continuously as I have done what I wanted to.
Well to go on with that, I recently picked up on a game Pardus(see www.pardus.at) while i visited Texas. The only was I can fathom to describe it is a fun quick RPG that allows me to work on my economics skills as well as my desire to be a pirate. So yesterday and today, I have been working on getting to a point where I can think about expanding operations.
So then there is the one consternation in my life that for whatever reason it is I just cant get over it. I have this night job. (During the day I work down at BYU) Well it was a fun job, cause I was paid to play computer games for 3-4 hours a day. Well the owner recently desired to have someone become a manager. I knew I wasnt going to be selected as I am going back down to school in a few weeks. Well the owner picked the biggest goober i have ever met to be manager, and this despite the warnings by various people to the nature of the aforementioned goober. Well, I went in Monday to get my pay and to see what I was working only to discover that goober gloating at his new status.
I dont think he took it too well when I informed him that I just didnt give a damn and that I wouldnt care until the owner, who hired me, informed me of personal changes, and even then I was still not going to care. He took a power trip with me when I asked what I was working that week so I could figure out when I had time in the week.
So I have now had over 48 hours to fume about it, and the flippant response by the goober of 'oh i think you are down for Thursday or Friday' still angers me, but not as much as trying to get a hold of the owner to ask him what he wanted me to work and not getting any response to messages left with him.
So I am trying to figure out what to do next. Because I am aforementioned flawed with the notion that I have some odd form of loyalty or respect for the owner that I should stick with a commitment to work for him, but at the same time I have this feeling of utter disdain for the goober and dont want to have anything to do with him beyond what I have to. So I am undecided if I should even try to work there at all or talk to the owner about it or what...

So I recently have returned from a two week vacation that was long overdue. It had been several years since I had taken off for two weeks and done absolutely nothing more than what I had/wanted to do.
So let me give a quick glimpse of the vacation.

July 8th I flew out of Salt Lake City bound for 'home' in Texas to visit friends, cause trouble and be a pain. The flight to Texas (never again will I take America West airlines if i can avoid it) was delayed in Phoenix, but they didnt want to list it as delayed. To tell the truth, the trip started off crappy. So after 1 hour 45 minutes waiting to get on the plane in Phoenix we were finally off and arrived in Austin about 11:30ish.

After getting to Belton where I would be staying for the next 8 days I was fed up with air travel and security. (But it still beats a 24 hour road trip from SLC to Belton, Texas). So in the week I was down there, I visited with some friends, participated in some fireworks, and had just an all around good time.

Then I returned back to Salt Lake. I learned that going cheapest cost isnt always the best. For a 6am flight you have to be at the airport at 5am, and when you are an hour away from the airport that means you have to leave the house at 4am. The real problem was is that I 'quatched' (is that even a word) with friends that i had been shooting off fireworks with until 1am so once i got back to the apartment and had my bags packed and ready to go it was 2:30 in the morning. I received no sleep what so ever.

Getting on the plane, I experienced my worst nightmare of air travel, behind me we two kids loaded with sugar, i was boxed in with an elderly lady who snored, and my batteries had run out. I felt the entire 2 hour flight to Phoenix.

An in all, it was a well deserved vacation and trip. I hope to be able to return to Texas again in the near future, but I am going to be paying more for tickets just so i dont have to experience that again.