I’ve been having this weird problem with my iPod for a couple of weeks now. What’s been happening is songs have been cutting out in the middle of playing… it was really quite annoying. I traced it back to my 200gb hard drive from hell. The one that works but it is really having data integrity problems. I’m thinking about RMAing the sucker. I don’t know if it’s the drive or the SATA card it’s plugged into. It’s rather annoying at any rate.

When Rednecks move….

Flipped down to Phoenix this weekend to help Curtis and Kristina move into their shiny new house that is as old as me. So compared to my house it’s way new (theirs was built in 79 mine was built in 66) Wow my house is going to be 40 years old next year… that does not make me feel good. Anyway… I go to Phoenix thinking that their is going to be 4 of us and three trucks… well Matt bailed on us… (thanks alot Matt… bastard ) Don had to work(slacker)… I will cut him some slack on that one but not much. So it’s Curtis and me… all day… in Phoenix… in June… We did 15 round trips between the two of us. We started at 9A.M. We officaly finished and had dinner at 10P.M. (thanks Bev)

Lets just say the only thing missing from the whole affair was bailing wire and duck tape. We probally could have used it in a few spots.

So congrats go out to the Krissy and Curtis on their new house

When I’m in Phoenix I do like to listen to the radio since they more of a selection then we have here in Hell. Curtis turned me onto one station 103.9 it’s a locally owned station (read as not Clear Channel) they actually play music. Which is always a good call for a radio station. They also have a Ska-Punk show… actually it’s more of a underground punk show. Anyway it’s a god station.

They had this one band on called “The Network” that I decided to play $10 on iTunes. I’m actually rather digging it. It’s almost a new wave type of punk… it’s diffrent and yet still good I think this one is going on the to burn list for a few friends.

On a whim this week I picked up Coldplay’s new CD. I like harder stuff but, every now and again it’s good to plug in and find out what the rest of the world is listening to. I gotta say I like it… very mellow and flows together nicely and at the same time it has moments of being much rougher. I’m digging it. Who knows maybe I’m mellowing in my old age.

Anyway with new truck ownership I’ve now begun to collect the assortted things that no truck owner should be with out. Most of which I already had since this is my third truck. It’s going to take a couple of weeks for my dash mat to get here but I can deal with that. It’s still a new truck style and they aren’t exactly having problems moving these things off of the lot. I did however invest in a Mr. Clean auto dry thingy… you know what it works as advertisted…. one unit that holds the soap you actually wash the vechile with a sponge or washing glove of some sort and then dry it with with the the ionizing dry thingy…. It didn’t spot at all so all I have to say is I may just be a believer in this product. I’m going to give a few more tries before I go to the dark side that is the Mr. Clean autowash thingy…

Come with me as I shit in the woods why don’t you…

I think that is the style of writing a blog is supposed to be… I’ve never found it very intertsing since the day to day existance of a person is not that much diffrent from one person to the next. It’s the neurosis and pet peeves that make it all so very intersting. I think that is my favorite part of reading other peoples blogs and the such. It’s a very female thing from what I have noticed very few guys who blog write about what is going on in their head. And when they do it does tend to be a bit more cryptic then most would care to admit to.

Me… maybe I should change my style to the come with me as I shit in the woods style.

I recieved a rather “threating” letter this evening
———————
Curtis
to me

You are putting entirely too much time in between you blog updates.
You can’t tell me there isn’t anything to talk about. We both know that is bull.

If you don’t make a post I will be forced to take drastic measures…. and we neither of us want that to happen.

-Lenny the Terrible
————————————

It appears that the fans of drivel are still out there and apperntly they are capable of being vocal. Who knew? I actually looked at this email for 10 minutes on and off trying to decide if I was going to update or not just to see what good ol Lenny would do. I guess we will never know.

Anyway not a whole hell of a lot going on. Pretty much the same story as always video games and beer. I really need to expand things out to include women…. Things to work on. At this point I’m happy I can talk to people.

Any I did spend memorial day weekend in Phoenix with the Kinney’s (how weird I now refer to Lenny and Kristina (aka the Spatula Queen (if you don’t get the joke tough luck) as a singular unit). I went down looking to spend a nice quiet weekend floating in a pool and helping ol Lenny get into a new car.

Yeah Lenny got a new car… and so did I… hey I can’t help it that I fell in love and had two engineers along with me :). Lets just say when Don and Lenny were done with the salesmen their heads were spinning and when I went Psycho on them that pretty much sealed the deal. I was very happy with the deal I got. And a good portion of the credit goes to Lenny. Who actually made out pretty well himself.

I’ve been debating on whether to post a picture of the new truck or not and since 99.9% of the people who come here have already seen it I will post it for the benefit of the the .01% who have not.

Saw this on CNN this afternoon

NIN leaves MTV show over Bush image

I just saw this and remembered fondly when once upon a time in my mind MTV would was a breeding ground of anti establishment imagery. I’m pretty sure that this just comfirms that thought was almost entierly in my own head.

I now return you to your normally scheduled drivel.

It’s interesting what some people find cathartic for getting stress and bad feelings to go away. Some people drive, some people paint, some angsty teens write really bad poetry, and others blog.

What do I do? I plan for all things to the point of “Are you serious?” Hey we all relieve stress in our own ways I just happen to be a little freakier then the rest of you 🙂

I’ve only seen Revenge of the Sith once… I know I will see it again. Overall I liked it very well. Hands down best of the second trilogy. In the grand pantheon of things though I think time will tell where it lands in the over all order of star wars films. I think it will probally be fighting with “Empire” for the top spot. I personally still think Empire is the best.

My only real disappointment in Revenge of the Sith was how Mace Windu went down. That was a bit anti-climatic but what are you going to do? As for the other Jedi I thought the clone trooper wipe out was a very effective method of portraying the demise of the Jedi order.

I was really happy with the Obi-wan/Darth Vader fight. It lived up to all of my expectations. The Yoda/Darth Siddious fight was almost laughable again… I’m sorry Yoda is not supposed to be a fighter he is a thinker… and when he fights he looks like a freaking super-bouncy ball.

I guess my real question in all of this is why did Vader not think to look for his child in Tatooine? More questions for the ages. And it seems like at some point in the first trilogy that Palpatine didn’t know about Vader’s child until half way through ewok picnic. Why wasn’t old palpatine scouring the universe for the child of vader.

Finally… with all of their wonderful technology in this galaxy far far away a long time ago. How come they didn’t figure out that Padme was going to have twins until she was about to deliver? Sure lightsabers are a ancient weapon of the Jedi but they haven’t developed a good ultrasound machine?

Some things will always bother me about Starwars and I guess that is why I love it.

4 Days to the new star wars movie… I’m exictied to see it. No real narriative shockers in it… Anakin goes to the dark side… the good guys win and foster a terroist movement that will displace thousands of innocent galactic citzens under the guise of a “rebellion”

LONG LIVE THE EMPIRE!!

I broke out my copy of Attack of the clones the other night and watched it. I still think it’s better then Return of the Jedi and A Phantom Meance. It ties for A New Hope for second best Star Wars film. I still think Empire is Best.

That is just me though.

This last film has also got me thinking about when Phantom Menace came out and what I was doing at that time. I had just moved to Flag to start NAU. That thought took me back because it’s been six years since I started NAU and June 1 will be 4 years since I got it and 4 years since I came back to Kingman from my 2 year break. It doesn’t seem like 4 years but it has been. Bought a house… 2 somewhat serious realtionships… so many people crashing at the batcave… 4 weddings… 2 births.. 1 total meltdown. It just doesn’t seem like that much. But really it has been that long. I just find it hard to belive.

And I’ve been blogging through it all. Very rarely about my own life and more on the random thoughts and ramblings that go through my head. I know it doesn’t make much sense and it never does to me. Hell it very rarely makes sense to me even when I read it some months later. There are 2 posts in the last 5 years that I can tell you exactly what happened when I wrote them. I like to remember one of the events the other event I keep there to remind me how badly I screwed up.

That is about as personal as this is going to get for a while.

The more things change, the more they really don’t seem that diffrent when you look on them through time.

So about a week ago I decide that it’s time to start looking for a new cell phone. The one I have has served me well but it’s starting to take on more then a bit of wear and tear. It’s also a pretty basic phone and I would like to start playing with the some of the cool new stuff thats out there like pictures and bluetooth. Mainly bluetooth though.

Earlier this week I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new phone. And since I haven’t been under contract to Sprint for well over a year now I decided to re-up my contract while I was at it so I could get the discounts on the nice new phone. I order the phone I want from Sprint off of the internet. And they send me my order confirmation email. Not a problem phone is on the way.

Next day I get another email.. I have a new cell number… wonderfull. I don’t want to give up my exisiting cell number because everyone I know has it and It’a a real pain in the ass to change. Nevermind the fact that it’s listed as my primary contact number on I don’t know how many resumes and job apps that I’ve randomly done in the last couple of months. The point in staying with Sprint was so I could keep my number. Their service over the last 6 months has been less then spectacular and it hasn’t been just me who’s noticed.

I decide to send the phone back as soon as I get the email.

Later that night I’m surfing the internet and decide to check out some cell phone boards to see if anyone else has gotten the same kind of boning as I did from Sprint. I do find a couple and they all descirbe how the person called up said they wanted to to keep their old number but move it to the new plan. Hell I think it’s worth a shot.

So the phone arrives today, I call up Sprint. I tell the first woman that I talk to that I want to move my exisitng number to the new line of service and keep the exisitng phone number. She says it’s not a problem they will cancel my exisiting line of service reserve my number and I call and activate my new phone tommrow and ask for my old number which will be reserved in my name.

COOL! she just need so to send to one other department before it can all happen.

After about 5 minutes of silence I get someone else. The previous lady has already explained the situation to her. The new lady says it won’t be a problem. Cool!

her “Did you buy your new phone off of the internet with the online discounts?”

Me “yes”

Her “you have to keep your new number for 3 months in order to recieve those discounts, if you take your old number to your new account you will lose the discounts and we will charge your account $180 to replace the discounts”

Me “Ya know I think I will just send the new phone back and cancel the new account”

Her “Ok”

So the new phone sits on the table awaiting the box to be sent back to Sprint. I’m not real happy with sprint right now. Their quality of service has gone down in Kingman and do something nice for a customer is apperntly way out of their way.

I would have happily signed up for a 2 year agreement and not worried about it. But instead sprint is about to lose a customer because of fine print.

I think my number and me are going to go check out T-mobile and Cingular now.

Sprint might win me back but it will have to be pretty amazing for them to do it at this point.

New Star Wars movie is out in less then 3 weeks… WHOOOO HOOOO!!

Yes, I’m a Starwars geek… not like you didn’t know that if you’ve been reading this little piece of crap for a while. I’m sad to see the movie come but I think it will be a very cathartic experince and it will hopefully bridge everything very nicely. I wonder about the younger generation though… what will they think of the second part of the trilogy (ep4-6) Will they think more highly of the second trilogy (ep1-3) then of the first. I don’t know, and it takes a while for things like loyalty and the dust of time to settle on things. To me starwars will always be “A New Hope”, “The Empire Strikes Back”, and “Return of the Jedi” aka “Ewok Picnic”.

At the same time though Starwars also has a very healthy expanded universe that is drawfed by only Star Trek. And lets face it Star Wars is much cooler then Star Trek. And I like both of them.

As Sci-Fi series go Babylon 5 blows Star trek out of the water anyway. The trick to Babylon 5 is that you need to watch it from episode 1. Which is rough if you don’t have the box sets.

I guess my question in our marketing happy company is where in the hell is the Star Wars Return of the Sith ironing board? I mean really there are enough home owners out there that would kill to have one of those things. OK maybe not alot but a sizable number. Alright fine… Curtis, Kristi, and I. 3 out of 300 million is not that immpressive of a number.

Can you tell that I’ve been watching just a bit of Television lately?

Sometimes living alone really warps the mind.

Dear Wal-Mart,

I find that I often shop at your fine establishments where ever I may travel I know that I will always find the products that I need. Though they may be of questionable quality I always get what I pay for. However this letter is not about your quality of product or the quality of your employees.

Rather this letter is about the quality of your customers. I recently was shopping at your Wal-Mart Supercenter #205 (Kingman Az) and was treated rudely by more then a few of the customers. One female customer, who might add didn’t know where to find any of your reasonably priced personal hygiene products, cut in front of me at your automated check out. It was bad enough that I used to be belittled by the employees of Wal-Mart but now I’m belittled by the customers too? Where will it end?

I suggest you start somesort of customer appreciation program to teach customers how to be nicer to one another. And in the process maybe how to put on clean clothes, refrain from using their celluar phones in a inopportune manner, and proper hygiene and grooming for being out in public. Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world so I know you have the resources to do this program since you already pay your employees next to nothing and provide them with minimal or no health insurance.

However if you do find that the methods you currently have in place for customer training are not sufficient. Let me suggest a few more methods that might work for you a bit better.

1. Use the Wal-Mart TV network to send out a hypnotic pattern that will subliminally send a message to the customer. This is the most effective way to reach a good majority of your customers.

2. When ever I walk in to a Wal-Mart I always have a 1984/Soylent Green/Mind Fuck America feeling when I hear the over head annoucments. How about using the annoucments to train your customers

“Bathing is good”
“deodorant is not the work of the devil”
“Tube tops should not be worn by fat women”

3. Beat customers, inevitably you will have several customers where the first two methods do not work. I suggest you beat the resistors. That will bring them into alignment.

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter and I look forward to assiting you in your new customer training program.