Monday, April 30, 2007

Hooray! My birthday present showed up on Saturday! I exhibited what I consider to be a pretty remarkable show of restraint by running our various errands before hooking up the Wii. After it was plugged in, the rest of the night kinda just disappeared. I have to say, the games are taking a little getting used to with the new controller types, but it is a lot of fun so far. I haven't opened Zelda or Prince of Persia yet. Given my experience with the last iterations of those games, I will require several hours to get into them and then they will subsequently consume innumerable more hours of my life. Until I have that kind of time available (and am not using it for things like, I dunno, Oblivion), I've got Redsteel, which was really hard to get the hang of at first, but is a lot of fun as well now. Also, the new Sonic game is very Sonicy, but kind of hard to control since the moves are so different. Super Paper Mario, which I've only watched Emily play so far (yes, Emily likes playing with my Wii as much as I do - I swore I wasn't going to start making these jokes, oh well!), is incredibly awesome. I'm very excited about my new toy and all the fun things I can do with it (including surf the internet and make reasonably accurate dopplegangers of anyone I wish). Yay video games! I have to admit however that the various sports games are a lot of work for an out-of-shape video gamer, but are easy to pick up and something that would be fun for a group of people who had never played before.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Thus far, PVTs have gone somewhat better than expected. My birthday wasn't entirely ruined by them at least. I got home last night about 10:30, and much to my surprise, Emily was still awake. Sadly, there was no Robosaurus, strippers, or Bach. There was, however, a very cool Autobot cake that Emily made for me. Thanks baby! =) Plus, I got a lot of birthday wishes from all sorts of people yesterday, so thanks to all those people as well!
My birthday present hasn't arrived yet, but the good news is that Dave gave me the Oblivion expansion pack, so I'll definitely have something to do tomorrow with my day off. Thanks to PVTs, I have to work 9 hours between today and tomorrow, and I'll probably exceed that today alone despite coming in at 11. Which means no work for me tomorrow! Hooray! Also, I'll get to eat lots of my yummy cake tomorrow too. Though I think we're out of milk, so I might need to make a quick trip to the store.

Monday, April 23, 2007

We had a pretty busy weekend. I think we're finally done buying stuff for the apartment. Things look pretty put away. Still not 100% how we want it, but certainly a lot better than it looked on Friday. My parents come over (which provided a good incentive to get things organized) for lunch and to see a slideshow of wedding-related stuff. In case you didn't get the memo yet, our wedding is March 29, 2008 in Savannah, GA. Official notification will be coming along eventually. But Emily's parents have crashed a few weddings in the park and we just wanted to show my parents some of the pictures so they have a better idea what we're planning for the ceremnony and reception. Otherwise not too much going on. Just a lot of organizing and unpacking and so forth. This week is super hectic for me as I get to spend most of it at Lockheed, but hopefully that will translate into being able to take Friday off. We'll see. Not sure exactly what I'm going to do to celebrate my birthday (however belatedly) yet, but I'm sure it'll be pretty low key.

Friday, April 20, 2007

While today is virtually a world-wide day of mourning for those lost in Blacksburg, it's also a day of rememberance for another lost young student that hits much closer to home. 10 years? Really? It hardly seems that long ago that we were sneaking out of youth group to share a cigarette behind the social hall... Today's non-stop Sabbath and Maiden playlist is for you buddy. I still can't drive by Canterbury Woods without getting choked up, so for all of Hokie Nation, I can't tell you everything is going to be okay or that it will eventually get easier to go back to your dorms or sit in your classrooms every day. But I can tell you that you're surrounded by people who only wish you the best and I have faith that you will persevere. My heart is with you all.

Monday, April 16, 2007

At this point, it seems petty and pointless for me to post about anything as insignificant as my weekend when there's so much death and chaos swirling around Blacksburg today. I work in an office with a number of VT alumni, and, like the rest of us, they're in shock. Several have come by my office to ask if I've heard the latest casualty figures. When I first got wind of this story around 10:00 this morning, there was 1 dead and seven injured. By lunch time I was hearing 15 dead, and recently I've heard as many as 22, including the shooter himself. I've seen nothing establishing any sort of motive yet, but I'm sure that will surface eventually. But with the shooter unable to explain his actions, it will be an imcomplete picture as best. What a loss this is for friends, family, faculty, staff, fellow students, the Blacksburg community, Virginia Tech, and really all of us. I'm not going to go on a gun-control rant here (at least until more details of the incident are available), but let me just say that it's very difficult to cause this level of damage with something like a baseball bat, a broadsword, or even a crossbow.

That said, there are lots of other places in the world where more people die every day. Like when the beltway snipers were crusing around DC in a van or when that guy shot up the Westfields police station, it always makes more of an impact when it's closer to home. It makes the tragedy more real and makes us ponder our own mortality. No one ever wakes up in the morning and expects to die pumping gas, sitting in a classroom, or walking out of a police precinct. We are confronted with loss every single day and we have to find a way to mourn those we've lost, push past it, and continue on with our lives, or else we'd all just spend our lives in a constant state of fear and paranoia, wasting each day in a locked room of 12" thick lead vaults buried 100 feet underground. And when we finally die of old age and malnutrition, certainly we will have escaped the horror of being cut down for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but we will also have escaped living. I for one choose to live, even if it's a trite and ultimately meaningless existance for anyone other than those around me.

Therefore, let it not be said that I am not petty nor pointless. Things are going well at home. The apartment is coming together. We took a trip to Home Depot and I spent a good part of Saturday and Sunday putting in light fixtures, fans, and towel bars. Thursday I was hanging shelves and moving fishes into the wee hours of morning. Friday I got some new kicks (super-ultra-on-sale $80 Skechers for $15) and an entertainment center. My plan had been to play a lot of Oblivion while Emily was out, but I spent the whole night setting up the TV area instead. Oh well. Sunday we started hanging some things on the walls, but that didn't last long. Instead we just sat on the couch and talked. We haven't done that in a long time and it was really nice to just be together and not be doing a hundred other things at once. We talked a lot about the middle east and how centuries of bloodshed could have been avoided if Jesus had been crucified and subsequently ressurected or Muhammed had ascended to heaven someplace other than Jerusalem. Certainly, there would still be quarrels over modern-day Israel dating back to tribal feuds thousands of years ago. Ultimately, I think our only conclusions were that if getting everyone to just get along was solvable by two people sitting on a sofa, we wouldn't even be discussing the matter, and that we were hungry. So we finally tried out the Coyote Grille, which was pretty yummy. Then last night I slept horribly thanks to all the wind (so much for a short winter - thanks a lot, you retarded, ugly, badger wannabe) that sounded like my apartment was going to blow away and the subsequent dream I had about the ceiling leaking that made me have to get up out of bed at some awful hour to make sure that everything (besides the fish tank) was still dry. Also, interested parties (which probably includes you if you've made it this far) should inspect the March 2008 calendar on the sidebar and mark their own calendars accordingly. =)

Friday, April 13, 2007

Happy Friday the 13th! Isn't a bunch of weird stuff supposed to happen today? *shrug* I have yet to encounter anything out of the ordinary. In fact, all in all it's been a pretty boring day at the office. I'm ready to call it a day, especially as I have a whole slew of errands to run, though that's hardly an unusual occurance. Nice try unexplainable phenomenae! Speaking of which, is anyone else excited about Eureka coming back this summer?

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

They restocked the snack machine today and there's no Twix! I should write a complaint. In related news, PVTs got scheduled for April 24-26 from 3 pm to 11 pm. Whee. Nothing makes me happier than spending my birthday running government-witnessed testing at Lockheed all night.

Monday, April 09, 2007

Meet Daphne! She's our new three-month-old mosaic female chinnie. =) She's still pretty little, but compared to the last time we saw her, she's grown a lot and her fur has evened out.



So sleepy...

I picked up our new chinchilla on Friday. She's so cute! Severn isn't really all that far away, but it's just far enough to make me feel like I was in the car forever. She was very skittish most of the weekend, but she's starting to warm up to us, especially now that she has a name (Daphne). The apartment is starting to look pretty good. There's still a bunch of unpacked boxes, and nothing is hung on the walls yet, but it looks so much better than it did just a few days ago. Cox still sucks, but I think everything is squared away for now. It's gotten cold again, which I'm not very happy about. And apparently we got an inch of snow on Saturday morning, though I'm not sure where that was measured. Perhaps someplace slightly farther north, like Canada. It looked to me like we just got a dusting on the grass. In any case, it's cold and icky and I want my spring back, even if it means the pollen that comes with it. I'm tired of wearing sweaters to work. *sigh* We had a nice Easter dinner at my parents' house last night and had an egg hunt (I think Emily won). Mmmmm, ham and mac and cheese. Also, I had the strangest dream last night where in my dream I was really tired and kept having trouble keeping my eyes open. Apparently I was so tired last night that even my dreams were tired...

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

I HATE COX!!

Apparently, they have to change our phone number because when they "fixed" our home phone they disconnected someone else because they're morons and gave the same number to two people. If that wasn't bad enough, I got a bill in the mail today from them for $300+. It's got almost a $200 "AUTO ADUJUST TRANSFER FROM" fee. I have no idea what this is for. I paid my regular bill on 3/20, so it's not a carry over. Sounds to me like an account transfer fee which I was assured by the Cox representative I talked to to move my account would not exist. Of coutse he also gave me an incorrect phoen number, told me that my phone would work right away, and that I'd be getting a free trial of HBO and Cinemax for 3 months. The movie channels I couldn't care less about, but since they don't work, if I ever see them on the bill, I'm going to absolutely lose it. And I swear I'm going to raise hell tomorrow about the other stuff. The first words out of my mouth when I get a person on the line are going to be "go get your manager." Anything less than having all my problems 100% fixed by the first person I call and whatever this $200 bullshit fee is removed from my bill and at least the next month of my entire cable services free is going to be completely unacceptable and met with a complaint to the BBB. I wish I was a monopoly so I could treat customers like crap and they'd still give me gobs of money.

My new car isn't "new" anymore. It rolled over 1000 miles during the moving process, and I am proud to report that yesterday on the way to Lockheed it hit 1K miles. ;) Yes, I'm going to make a big deal about things like 2048, 8192, 16384, and 65536 as well. I also put a couple scratches in it during the move, but as I found out today, it's only in the clear coat, so that should be no problem to buff out. Now that the break-in period is over, I haven't had a chance to really open it up yet, but maybe on Friday when we go to pick up our new chinchilla. Last night was Sonja's birthday, but we forgot to give her her card (which is just another chew toy as far as she's concerned). Also, while I'm thinking about it, happy birthday to Kristin!

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Oh no! I just took the last Twix from the vending machine! Hopefully this is the only night I have to go to Lockheed, otherwise I'll have to find some other snack. There's Milky Ways that were behind the last Twix, and there's a handful of other good things, but I'm really going to miss my Twix if they don't restock it soon. Especially if we're going to potentially start running PVTs next week (Hooray - 4 pm to midnight shift! Or maybe even midnight to 8 am! I'm excited...).

The apartment is starting to come together. We have a functional kitchen and bedroom and a mostly functional chinchilla/guest room and quasi-functional living room. There's still boxes of stuff everywhere and furniture strewn about randomly. Hopefully we'll be able to get some more stuff done in the evenings this week. In other news, the girls got to play finally last night. Emily helped me builds wall protectors all afternoon before we went grocery shopping. It was actually really funny the way they interacted with their new surroundings. They were very confused about where things were, and after they went back in the cage they went around to every shelf and every toy, examining things to make sure their cage hadn't also changed while they were gone. It was pretty cute. I've never seen Zoey look so helplessly lost. My commute also was pretty easyt this morning. I can make it door-to-door in 15 minutes if I hit the light on Hermosa at the right time. Considering that it used to take almost that long to get to work from my old place because of the additional lights and poor light timing, I have no problem with living farther away now at all. I'm sure I've mentioned my hatred of Cox before. I don't know how they continually "rate highest in customer satisfaction." Actually, that's not true. How they do it is to wait 3-6 months after you move or make a service call, then call you back to ask about their service. In case you haven't forgotten how awful they are by then, they ask you questions about how your service has been in the last 60 days. 99% of people will have no problems once everything is up and running, so they get rated very highly. The guy who came to install my digital telephone was unprofessional and had to borrow my cell to make a phone call because he left his in his truck. After he was long gone and I realized that I could call out but any incoming calls were being routed to some other person's phone, the guy I called at Cox asked if I had talked to the person at the other end. It's amazing the next words out of my mouth weren't: "Go to hell, sir. And while you're there, find me your manager." He basically had no idea how to help me, so he wrote down all my information and passed it along to get fixed. In fairness, I got a call within 24 hours later and the problem was fixed. But shouldn't testing outgoing and incoming calls be part of your standard installation? And that brings us to the internet, which didn't work because of their POS digital phone converter. The guy I called for that didn't know how to transfer me to the digital phone people, and he offered to send a tech and bill me for a "failed self-install." Listen you stupid bastard, I know how to screw in a coax cable, and when the green light comes on, it means the cable modem is talking to the cable network. You said yourself that you saw my modem come up and then go back down without me doing anything to it. If it can find your network at all, the problem is not with my modem, it's with your crap. In this case, it's because their digital phone box is the lossiest piece of junk I've ever seen and moving the modem upstream of it solved all my internet woes. I certainly don't need a tech to come out and try different combinations of how to hook things inline with each other. Especially when you're going to try to charge me for something I am more than capable of doing myself. I hate Cox so much. Fortunately for my blood pressure and for their corporation, everything was working last night. Why moving and getting stuff set up should be so difficult is far beyond me. I hate Cox.

Monday, April 02, 2007

We made it! Are we're still speaking to each other so far. We've both moved out of our respective apartments and into our new apartment. Currently is looks like only slightly less of a disaster area than it did 24 hours ago, but we're making progress. All the animals made the trip with no huge problems, although getting Zoey in her carrier was a bit of a challenge. I'm takign tomorrow off as well because there's just so much that neesd to get done still and so far everything has taken longer than I expected (except, strangely, the actual physical moving). We had a lot of help on Saturday, so even though I'm exhausted and sore, I'm not seriously injured and we're not still moving boxes like we would have been without any help. We've both decided that next time we move we're just going to hire movers. I'll post some pictures once things start to look less like a poorly managed land fill and more like a livable domicile.

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  • I'm Rev. Adam
  • From Oakton, Virginia, United States
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