Currently Listening Underclass Hero By Sum 41 The Jester see related

Friday night!  Xang.

Xanging on a Friday night might not be the coolest use of my time, but I'm not totally lame because I went out last night (work night, who's a badass?  I am).  It was stop day for Cristin and the rest of those still at KU so I went up to Lawrence to celebrate at one of those drinking bars.  The real accomplishment of the night was driving Cristin's stick-shift home afterwards.  I probably have 1 hours logged driving on a stick shift, and in that hour I have probably stalled the car about 50 times.  So you get the picture of how competent I am at this.  But last night I only stalled the car once during the 5-6 mile drive home, not counting the 5 times I stalled it in the Taco Bell parking lot.  File that one under "badass accomplishments."

To refer to the last post... my parents didn't figure out when my birthday was until one day late.  And apparently the only way they figured it out was I had left my email up on their computer and they saw a bunch of facebook emails saying someone wrote "happy bday" on my wall.  Haha  Best part though: they ended up giving me some cash for my birthday because they hadn't gotten any presents, except that my dad had been telling me for weeks how cool my present was.  So after I got the money I asked him about the present and he was like "Huh?  Ohhhhh yeah! ... Give me that money back!"  I kept the money and the present = jackpot.  The present by the way is one of those replica lightsabers, which IS really cool other than I feel like I'm in 8th grade when other people see me bust it out.

No progress of note on finding an Oregon job.  That'll work itself out... right?

Getting married in less than two months now.  Don't worry, I won't get all "mature" and be an old guy.  Eff that.  Check back with me in 5 years.

I made a rap last night and I want to remember it: 
I'm angry... and I'm non-chalant,
typin' right-to-left in my Arabic font

That's it.  It sounds better with a beat behind it, and is even better when you think about how Arabic actually reads right to left and how that's different than normal.  And then think about someone who is angry and non-chalant.  I come up with stuff like that when some rap song is playing at a bar, and most of it sucks.  But some of it sucks in a good way, like this one:

Do you know... do you know what time it is?
I tried to tell you, but you did not know what it was.
Are you stupid?  Do you need to go to school?
Maybe try that instead of always going to the pool!

Haha there was more to that one but I forgot it.  I hope the way this reads is the same way it sounds in my head, cuz it's hilarious.  Ok I really need to stop, I'm embarassing myself unnecessarily at this point.  Time to watch the episode of The Office that I missed last night.  Later xangers.

Currently Watching The Office - Season Three By Rainn Wilson, Steve Carell, Jenna Fischer, John Krasinski, Ed Helms see related

I just made myself lunch for work tomorrow... er today.  The main course is peanut butter & jelly which is probably says something about my level of maturity.  But I don't care, it's delicious and easy to make and neither peanut butter nor jelly will go bad ever as far as I'm concerned... so the ingredients are there for me on the rare occasion that I actually make myself something.  It's not that I'm lazy, but more that I'm just unorganized, forgetful, and free time is sparse.  That's why I stay up until 5 in morning!

5 in the morning may lend itself to being random and incomprehensible, but I always feel better after staying up this late.  I never know how frank to be in these things... looking for that middle ground between emo and superficial.

Emo:
I can't be that emo since 1) I have a pretty good life and 2) most things I would want to be emo about I couldn't write on this anyway... actually eff it, I want to write this. 
So I'm stressed out about the future of my career.  My dream job for as long as I can remember has been to do computer graphics, specifically special effects for movies.  However, in order to ensure that I could get a well-paying job if my creative skills fell through, I majored in computer science instead of a more artsy degree.  No regrets there, but now the burden of proof is on me to show any potential employer that I have artistic skills.  Meanwhile, my current job is a good job, but marginally artistic at best.  I could probably do this for the rest of my life and be happy, but it feels like I am settling for something lesser.  The thing is though, I can't do this job for the rest of my life anyway because I am moving away.  No one at work knows this.  I can't tell them yet because I need this job for the next few months and they might fire me right away if I tell them I'm leaving.  At the same time I don't want to screw them over and I feel like a jerk for hiding this from them.  This also makes for some awkward conversations on the topic of "where's cristin going for grad school?"  Real answer: "OREGON!  I'm going with her!"  Answer I give: "She doesn't know, KU probably."  Blah... 
Anyway so our destination is Oregon, we passed on going to berkeley, CA even though cristin got into school there.  This may have been an epic mistake.  Just about every single one of my dream jobs can be found in the San Francisco-Berkeley area, versus Oregon which has no entry-level graphics postions from what I can tell so far.  Now sure, I can get some kind of job out there but every year that I am out of college and not getting any graphics experience is a year that my value to graphics companies drops.  Spuh.  It might all turn out ok, in fact I may eventually find that I hate special effects stuff and I find something I like better in Oregon.  Or maybe I can take classes out in Oregon to build up needed experience.  I don't know, I'm out of gas on this topic.  This concludes the emo section.

Superficial:
So after a recent stop at the parents' house I noticed that on their calendar they had written "Mark's Bday" on march 24, 3 days after Mark's actual Bday.  This has the potential to be awesomely funny, I'm just hoping they have really forgotten my birthday and not just mistakenly written it on the wrong day.  Grammar be damned it's 6am.  I'll keep you posted on this one.
I'm trying a new approach for my March Madness brackets this year.  I loaded every song on my computer into one Winamp playlist and I'm playing them all on random.  Then, for each match-up, I press next song and choose the team whose name is closest alphabetically to the title of the random song that just came up.  I feel like I'm awesome for thinking of this.

That's all I've got, time to decide whether I should sleep for one hour or just start getting ready for work now.  I choose sleep.

Currently Listening Thing a Week Three By Jonathan Coulton see related

This post rated X for Xanga.

The purpose of this post is basically to make sure I don't forget about this guy: Jonathan Coulton.  He's an ex-Software Engineer who quit his job to write music and does not take himself too seriously.  I've actually only heard one of his songs: "Code Monkey," but even if the rest of his songs suck I gotta admire this guy for his gumption.

I don't think I'll ever follow in his footsteps, but I hope I have that gumption to leave a sucky job if I ever get stuck in one.  I get the impression that there are a lot of sucky software engineering jobs out there, but I have one of the good ones right now so I consider myself lucky.

This post is also proof that I can still stay up past midnight during the week.  Let's pretend that that is admirable.

Xanga ya later!

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Currently Gaming Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare By Activision see related

Wow look at that.  Last post April 2006.  What happened to 2007?

A lot has changed since spring '06.  Where to begin?

Well to stay on topic with the last post I have a new WIRELESS keyboard now.  So typing this post is kind of like "blogging: UNCHAINED."  I'm gonna go type in my bed, look out!

The best part about having a wireless keyboard is that I can change songs on my computer from bed.  The worst part is that I can't really see what I'm typing..  Like I'm not sure if I just typed one period or two.  Kind of spices things up a bit huh?  I'm not going to backspace anythning that I type because I have no idea how many backspaces I would need.

Ledt;s do a quick recap of the difference3s between Mark of 2006 and Mark of 2008:  Not in college anymore.  I have a full time job now, which means I also have money, which means I also have an xbox 360 bow, which meansI waste a lot of time.  But that's not really different from Mark 2006.    Mark 2008 still stays up til all hours of the morning to update xanga.  Or a tleast I update xanga when I happen to be awake at 5am and there's nothing better to do.  This is different from Mark of 2007 who never updated xanga.  We will shun him.

Seems like there are two directions I can take this post from here.  Either try to be deep and talk about what is really going on in my life, or try to be funny and talk about all the ridiculuous happenings over the last 1.67 years.  Maybe I can do both.

I'm trying to avoid the post-college depression of "the best days of my life are opver" mentality.  It's a little hard when most of your friends are either still in colege (I knowthat was spelled wrong.  COLLEGE) or a t least still going to school in some way (gradschool, law school, med school, highschool).Bweing out of school is defintiely different and I am still adjusting to it.  I think it's all about time management.  Ok it's hard to be deep when I can't see what I'm typing.  Back to the desk.

Basically once you are out of school your life is just what you make of it.  This is also true while you are in school but at least in school you have some kind of fall-back purpose to life:  get a good grade, finish the semester, work toward graduating so you can get a good job.  I am now to the point where I have done all of that and gotten a job I like, so what do I do now?  I don't know.  Well my next step is getting married and supporting my wife-to-be on her quest to make way more money than me as an optometrist.  On a related note, Commander Cristin has been promoted to Fiancee Cristin, which is not an alliteration.

But as for now I'm at work for 9 hours a day and then I have 5:30-midnight to make something of my life and I usually don't .  I used to think once I graduated I would have all this free time but you'd be surprised how fast the evening can go by without really getting anything accomplished.  On nights when I don't sacrifice sleep to do something, I normally just figure out dinner, play a little bit of xbox/surf the internet, talk to Cristin on the phone and then go to sleep.  Laundry gets delayed for weeks due to bad time management skills.  When I start having to wear the socks that go halfway up my calf, the pants that I colored with sharpie to cover up bleach spots, and the underwear from the back of the drawer (you know, the emergency underwear that you don't wear unless you have no other choice) then laundry quickly moves up to the top of the priority list.  Considering that this paragraph started out as being about making something out of life and ended up talking about laundry, I think that should tell you something.

Dang I guess I have a lot to say.  Even if no one reads this far it feels good just to write it all.  Guess I kind of skimped on the funny happenings but there's time for that later.  I would normally stop here but it's now 6am, still not tired and still nothing to do.  Onward.

I play ping pong every day at work.  This is not an exaggeration.  Every single day.  I think I want to start playing in a club or league or something.  I'm kind of in this spot where I can usually beat people at work but I get owned when I play in tournaments.  The worst was when a I got beat by this 80-year old guy with all the agility of a tree.  David got owned by a very matronly middle-aged woman. It's funny how people like me can think they are a badass at ping pong and then go to a tournament and get bested by the worst people there.

Recent achievement:  I got 3rd place in the "Buffalo" (B) division in our ping pong tournament at work.  The divisions were Alligator, Buffalo, Camel, Dolphin, and Eagle to denote A, B, C, D and E, A being the best and E being the worst.  Each division was 10 people so getting 3rd in the Buffalo division is like saying I'm the 13th best player.  I wanted a trophy with a ping-pong-playing buffalo on it, but was sadly disappointed.  Maybe I'll make it a t-shirt:  Garmin Ping Pong Tournament, Winter 2007.  3rd place champion: Buffalo division.   Haha.  Third place champion.  I am the champion of third place.  Of division B.

I'll tell you what's not an achievement:  cleaning my room.  That's been my default purpose to life.  I could do it everyday because that's how fast I mess it up after I clean it.  I usually get some kind of sense of accomplishment out of it, like I am improving my quality of life or something.  Not today though.  That's not going to cut it.  Which leaves me with 11 hours between now and the KU basketball game with absolutely nothing I need to accomplish in that time.  I don't need to sleep because I slept from 7pm to 2am.  At first I thought that was 5 hours but it's actually 7 hours.

I have this great idea to customize my Garmin GPS.  Instead of a magnifying glass icon and the words "Where to?," it will have Darth Vader's head and the words "Thy bidding?".  Also instead of the map icon and the words "View map" it will have a picture of the death star hologram and say "View the plans".  The second idea is not as awesome so if you have a better one please tell me.   Picture it: http://www.orbitcast.com/archives/garmin-770.jpg

Fuh buh duh.  I grow loathe of typing and if you have read through this whole thing and are still reading then you should probably go do something else now.  I hope I update this in less than a year because it's a lot of fun to go back and read old posts.

Later.