youresostupid's Xanga

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Sat, 10 May 2008 03:31:22 GMT

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.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:13:06 GMT

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.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:08:50 GMT

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!

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:04:53 GMT

Here's MY point: Steak.
- Sonic commercial

Those guys are great.

David and I are going to continue working on a new music video. I'm hoping that if I write it in here then that somehow makes it official and I won't slack off. We'll see.

The Super Bowl is this Sunday, and I am pretty excited to watch it but equally if not more excited to see the new Garmin Super Bowl commercial. This probably says something about me either being not manly or being brainwashed by my company but it's the truth.

I wanted to make this picture my facebook profile picture, but it's horizontal instead of vertical. So Xanga gets the leftovers: http://bbs.wiredminds.org/images/user_files/421b39e442220a229f04a.gif

That's it. Nothing profound. I'm having a good day.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 11:54:46 GMT

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.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 05:08:42 GMT

I found the "8" key. Everyone resume your normal daily activities. At least everyone who reads this. Which is only me. So I'm gonna go do that now. Ok bye.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 06:30:56 GMT

I still can't believe it's not butter.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 06:56:31 GMT

ZZZZZZxanga! That sounds like the name of a pokemon.

I obviously have nothing of significance to say. That being said here is a very bored and stupid post:

When the salsa gets to the point where you have to reach your hand all the way in the jar and get salsa all over your knuckles only to have the chip break off inside the jar, it's time to throw that salsa in the trash. But ever the guy-who-doesn't-take-his-own-advice, it's still sitting here next to my keyboard.

Speaking of keyboards, I was cleaning mine the other day for the first time ever. First, imagine the kind of nastiness it would have to be to actually motivate me to do such a thing. Anyway as I'm removing each individual key with my screwdriver (that's how you do it, right?), the "8" key on the numpad flys way up in the air. I hear it land behind me, but turn around and it's gone. One month and still no sign. I can only assume that this is David's fault somehow.

I am a bad Catholic because the only Lenten friday that I successfully observed the no-meat rule was over spring break. And I only succeeded because David was there to stop me: I go down to the fridge looking for something to eat and jackpot! there's some leftover Popeye's chicken. I take it up to my mouth and just as my teeth touch it David is there to yell "NOOOOOOOOO!!!!" I froze in confusion with the unbitten chicken in my mouth.... until he says "it's lent friday" or something. Close call... but man I was really looking forward to that chicken. At least I reserved that piece by getting slobber all over it.

I finally bought myself a digital camera, but it's been delayed in shipping. Soon... soon.

Any fans of Aqua Teen Hunger Force should check this out. A bunch of commercials for the show and stuff. "Shake 1" is my favorite (Habeese! Habaas! Haboose!).

I might have complained about this earlier, but Probability and Statistics class really sucks when your professor can't pronounce the word "probability." That word only comes up like 50 TIMES EVERY LECTURE. "Probulty". It drives me nuts.

In light of the test I have in that class tomorrow (and the two other tests this week). I have been staying up rather late and getting rather little sleep rather. The only positive effect I've seen so far was a very comical failed attempt at getting my Chef-Boy-Ardee out of the can. I don't know what exactly happened but the fork flew out of my hand, the can dropped to the floor, and there were ABC's and 123's all over the kitchen within a 10-foot blast radius. Woooo! College!

Ok I think we're having too much fun. Time to go lkadjflkjadf.

Stay classy.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 05:39:11 GMT

So... it's been awhile.

I recently got back from visiting all of my elder cousins in Oklahoma and had a blast partying it up for Cathy's 21st. I saw my cousin Christy for the first time in so many years, had my first real party with Paul, and got to hang out with Cathy and Annette and their Oklahoma friends. Cathy took us flying which was really cool, but I was a definite motion-sickness wimp after a few dips and turns and had to be returned to land (go me!). Other weekend highlights include eating ribs, TP wars and throwing limes at ceiling fans.

Back in Kansas, I just got this burst of motivation to start doing stuff. This mainly includes doing homework ahead of time, which is a big step for me and probably a necessary one if I want good grades this semester. We'll see how long this phase lasts.

Umm, something funny to close this out... umm. Ok: Annette after trying an Irish Car Bomb drink (which I think are tasty by the way) - "Blech! What is this?!?! You guys are gross!"

I'll try to update this a little more often.

Friday, September 16, 2005

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:14:39 GMT

I just wanted everyone to know that I just took a 15-hour nap. That's a long time. In fact I'd like to call it a 15-hour coma. I fell asleep around 6pm and woke up very confused at 9, wondering why it was light outside. After confirming that it was indeed the next day, I sat down and watched three episodes of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon while eating Apple Cinnamon Cheerios. Yay college!

Why 15 hours you say? In the previous two days I pulled one and a half all-nighters in a vain attempt at finishing my programming project. What I realize now is that it was an evil project never meant to be completed by any mere mortal. I don't want to get into details but the basically the program was supposed to differentiate and simplify equations. My program derived stuff ok most of the time and never simplified. What it did do though, was print random parentheses all over the place. I tried to get it to the point where I wasn't embarrassed to put my name on it, but didn't quite get there.

In other news, the war on spiders is going well. The despicable spiders use dishonorable hit-and-run tactics, and often I wake up with strange bites in strange places... like my foot. However, despite the misgivings of my roommates, I was able to employ weapons of mass destruction against the scum.

On September 6 around 2100 hours, Commander Cristin and I were watching Shaun of the Dead in my room. 3-4 baby spiders descended from my ceiling, disrupting my movie-watching experience and thoroughly freaking me out. Another larger spider was spotted by the window. Commander Cristin gunned down the larger spider and the baby spiders disappeared to regions unknown. I had no choice but to immediately go to Wal-Mart and purchase Insect Foggers (aka Bug Bombs (aka I hate spiders a lot)). As these bombs are highly lethal, I closed off my room and then detonated the bomb, leaving the spiders to die a nasty and gruesome death. No spiders have been seen in my room to date.

On September 10 Commander Cristin and I made a perimeter around the house hunting down more spiders. This mission was sparked by the spotting of a really big effing spider (designated as King Spider) outside of my window, just waiting to get inside. I armed myself with bug poison spray and Cristin armed herself with a stick. We had the element of surprise and drenched King Spider in poison, and smushed him with the stick as he writhed in agony. We continued this procedure and by the end of the mission we had killed upwards of twenty spiders and destroyed even more of their webs.

Class starts in 17 minutes and I haven't brushed my teeth or shaved yet. I think I'll take my chances at being late and observe good hygiene today.