What's going on with me?

6-27-05 - Recently, someone by the name of Nicole signed my guestbook, but I know like 8734534 Nicoles, so any clarification as to who did it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I had my first payday on Friday. All I have to say is that seeing the number in size 18, Times New Roman font on an official piece of 20 lb. paper was quite nice.

I don't know what spawned the list of similarities between me and Saddam Hussein last Monday, but I still find it humorous, even though it's dumb. Much to my surprise, less than half an hour after I posted it on here I had someone IM me saying that she and one of her friends thought it was hilarious. That made me smile. It's kinda something I wanted to start doing on here for a while, just making dumb little things like that. The praise kinda sucks, though, cuz it'll almost kinda make me feel like I have to push myself to get more out. I'll try not to let it happen.

I still know very few people up here. I had Wes and Peter over to play DDR today and much fun was had by all. Besides them, I have a few friends up here, and one of them has invited me to a couple parties and I met a few cool people that way, but I'd like it if I could meet some more friends-of-a-friend in the near future. There are still a few people up here that I'm surprised I haven't seen yet. One's someone I've known since my first semester at Tech way back in the day, another's someone I've known for almost a year, but we didn't really become friends until the very end of the school year thanks to Facebook, and the other's someone that I just met in March through one of my rare "I'm gonna talk to someone I don't know" moments). I can't wait to see them. Yay for friends. I could use some of them up here. Things are kinda lonely. I just don't know how to meet people. When you've got school and the dorm to help you out, it's a lot easier. Maybe if I could find a place to do plays that would help. I oughtta make some calls and discover a place looking for someone like me, huh? Hopefully my reputation won't precede me or they'll never let me in! :-D

Other than not knowing anyone, I can't really complain about things up here. I'm enjoying not having to drive more than half an hour to get to a decent store. Now, it's closer to half a mile. Yay for Kingston Pike.

Ok, so for the past month, I've been having a problem with music and videos on my computer stuttering. It started the day I got back from Colorado. I tried a million things before asking anyone for help. Since none worked, I asked some people I know online for some help. Nothing. I then resorted to Tech Support. They suggested some things that I hadn't thought of; but, unfortunately, none worked. The last thing they suggested was to redo the thermal conductivity on my CPU. I knew not what this meant. Heck, I'd never even taken off my heatsink to see the CPU before. So I looked up what it entailed and I went to work on it. I went in to take off the heatsink and it resisted, which did not make me feel good. Any time I have to force something with any deal of intricacy, I get an uneasy feeling. Going against my better judgment, I pulled anyway. When I finally got it loose and off, I looked down at the CPU...well, where it should have been, anyway. The two pieces were stuck together. Not wanting to ruin anything, I took it to the Geek Squad (who are available 24 hours a day because, apparently, they "can't land dates") and they said it's becoming more common, so I bought some new thermal paste, came home, popped the CPU off, bent the 4 pins that weren't crooked back into place (they bent when I pulled it out of its casing on accident while the bar was still down, holding it into place), applied the new thermal paste, and replaced everything. Of course, it still doesn't work, so I'm open to any and all suggestions.

That was a long, boring story with no point or conclusion of any kind. For that, I apologize. To get a refund of your time, please send a check for $50 to me within the next week and I'll get right on that.

6-20-05 - I ended up having to stay half an hour late at work today. I didn't think it was any big deal because even though I don't get overtime unless it's 5 hours in a given week and it's approved, it shows that I don't mind working a little bit more than is required. Regardless, even though it wasn't a big deal, I just wanted to come back to my apartment and just relax. The past couple weeks at work, I've been thinking about how much I need to bring an umbrella to have just in case it started pouring when it was time to leave. Well, had I left on time today, I would've avoided the somewhat long trek back to the parking lot from my building in the incredibly cold rain. I don't mind getting wet, but it was very cold. Well, it turns out it was good that I stayed a while longer. The parking lot at my apartment complex flooded because one of the drains got clogged and several cars got 4-6 inches of water in the floorboards. They had drained the parking lot by the time I got back and all I saw were some piles of hail and lots of leaves.

Today, I read that Saddam Hussein's favorite cereal is Raisin Bran Crunch. That is also my favorite cereal. I have decided to list the other ways that I and Saddam are alike:

-we both wear underwear
-we both really like Doritos (though I suspect he likes them more)
-we both think we're still president of Iraq
-we both have gone longer than we should have without shaving
-neither of us possess weapons of mass destruction
-we both support baths (Ba'aths)
-we both had important moments in our lives in 2003 (my 21st birthday, his capture)
-we both make crappy lists that aren't funny

6-12-05 - R.A.T. - Random Acts of Tourism

I was a tourist today. I'm not wholly ashamed of myself, but I'm not proud, either.

As some of you may know, there's an episode of The Simpsons in which Bart, Nelson, Milhouse, and Martin go to Knoxville. One of the places they visit is the Sunsphere, which was built for the 1982 World's Fair.

I saw the Sunsphere today! Woo-hoo! I am the master.

6-11-05 - Stupid ComCast. The internet is nice when it works, but I'm sitting at about 40% down time since getting it hooked up. The kicker? It has nothing to do with outages. It's just my modem or my location or some crap like that. Blah.

I'm done with my first week of work and so far so good. I don't have a computer yet, but I'll live. They've got me in another cubicle for the time being and I'm doing fairly well so far, I guess. We'll see how things go a little bit further down the road.

I'm still looking around for a place to do plays or the like up here. I haven't been looking too incredibly hard just yet, cuz I wanna get used to things for a while and not cram as much as possible into my first couple weeks up here. I think that things are going quite well up here for now and I'll leave it at that for a bit.

D'oh, it seemed like there was more going on in my life. There's not. My life is boring.

P.S. - Is it wrong that I still love Lisa Loeb after all these years? Nah.

6-4-05 - So today I went with my friend Anna to the birthday party of some chick named Juliana. It was a lot more fun than I expected and I'm very glad I went. I met a bunch of people there, none that I know if I'll ever talk to again, but it was still mucho fun.

So every night I've been here, with the exception of the night that I moved into the apartments, I've been making use of the fitness center in the "Clubhouse," as they call it. Being a true American, I usually drive to the fitness center (of course, since it's small, I prefer to go late at night when I know fewer people will be there...it's probably safer that way because of that fact). I was gonna hit my apartment at about 11:30 and I figured while I was already out, I'd just go ahead and work out.

When I got to the Clubhouse, I saw a million cars parked outside, but I didn't fret, like I did last night. I realized that a lot of the people that belonged to those cars (I know I worded it wrong...that's just what Mr. Brown always said) were swimming in the heated indoor pool. Swanky, eh? So I went in and walked past the pool and walked up the stairs and saw that the fitness center was completely empty, a first for me. Woo-hoo! So I started with some bicep work and just about pulled my left bicep cuz I'm dumb. It feels fine now, though. I learned my lesson.

I moved onto other things and at some point, my right fingers started feeling numb, which was odd, since I hadn't been doing a whole lot of weight since the bicep thing. Since I'm working out every night, also, I'm doing less than I normally would since you're supposed to do it every other night.

Anyway, after a few minutes, I started doing butterflies when this dude walked in. "No biggie," I thought. I was just gonna hurry up and finish and leave, but no. It wasn't as simple as that. So Paul walks in (yes, I know his name, if that's any indication of how things went *rolls eyes*) and says "Wow, you guys have a weight room too?" and I said "Yup." Not ten seconds later, Paul invited me to a party on the East side of Knoxville. I told him I'd never been out that way, as I'd only been in town for a few days. I had to tell him that a few times before it sunk in.

As soon as he invited me to the party, I assumed it was a church thingy. He said the party was for some youth football league, which made me think "Hmmm, I was wrong." To get out of saying "Sure, I'll go," but to continue feigning (good word) interest, I again said that I had no idea how to get anywhere over there. He said to just watch the local news or consult any major church in the area. I was right after all. He said something like "I don't know if you go to church, but they all know about it." That was my cue to say whether or not I went to church so he could continue talking about god and what not, but I figured my only way out of it was to not respond either way.

I was wrong.

He then started talking about how much he loved church and all this and how he gave his life to god a week ago Wednesday. God had provided him with a way to organize this non-profit youth football league which will give 95% of its profits to charity. I assumed it was a local thing, until he started talking about how he wanted to call it the "International Football League," but that name's apparently taken. I've never heard of it, but I don't follow sports, so who knows? Then, by some stroke of genius, one of his friends told him he should call it the "Global Football League." His face just lit up when he said it. What a goof.

He then started telling me about his plan to get a bank loan for $250 million to buy the 49ers. After he talked about it for a while (notice I keep saying that he was talking, cuz I responded and contributed very little to HIS conversation), I said "Man, that's a heck of a goal!" and he said "It's not a goal. It's done!" All suspicions I had of his being full of it were then confirmed. He said that when he went in to get that loan, the bank teller that he was talking to said she herself would loan him $10 million (because lowly tellers hold that much clout in any given bank), but he needed to bring a business plan with a tax number and everything in front of a panel to get the rest, which I assume went well because it wasn't a plan - it had already happened.

He told me that to start off, he was gonna own the 49ers, the Cardinals, and one or two other teams I forgot cuz I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He said that he was gonna end up owning the NFL and then, possibly, the NBA. He'd call it quits after that.

I was at the water fountain for what I said in the last paragraph. I went to the bench press station and after he'd said his name a million times in one of his stories, he said "My name's Paul, by the way. I didn't catch yours." Of course you didn't, you freak! I didn't say it! Of course, I told him my real first name, but if he asked my last name or apartment number, it would've been incredibly phony. He asked how long I'd been living here, to which I, yet again, replied "only a few days." Somehow, the topic of school came up and I said I just graduated last month and he got all surprised and said "Really?" He then asked if I was looking for a job and I said that I was starting at Y-12 in a couple days.

His eyes lit up and said that though he had a couple corporate sponsors for his Global Football League, he could always use a couple more. Hmmm, I left something out. Rather than go to its proper location and put it there, I think I'll just stick it here. Early on in the conversation, when he was telling me exactly what the deal was with his football group, I made the comment about it being like the XFL. He couldn't see my face, and I'm glad he couldn't. I was laughing at myself and this guy scared me, so I didn't want him to know I was making fun of him to myself. He said, "Yeah, kinda like the XFL." Right around the time he said something about acquiring the NBA, he said that he already had control of such-and such, the XFL, and the AFL. I bet Vince McMahon was more than happy to sell him a football league that was never popular and has been obsolete for 4 years.

Anyway, back to sponsorship: he said that if I could get Y-12 to sponsor him, I'd get a good cut in the benefits of it. I told him "I haven't even started, I wouldn't know who to talk to," just playing along and still feigning (still a good word) interest. He said that I'd have plenty of time because I had to wait until it hit the national media. He said "Wait a week or two after you see it on the national news and then tell them that you met Paul, the CEO, and they should jump at the chance." He said something about how Y-12, which he thought was a credit union, would be a great benefit to his company. I told him I didn't think that they did that sort of thing since they're a chemical processing company. He said "Oh, they will if they want the money to pour in." I told him they were contracted by the government and that they had all the money they wanted. Well, he still had it in his head that they were a credit union.

It was at about this time that he got up and moved from the last station I needed to use before I would call it quits. He'd been at that station the whole time he was in there. I got there and I was gonna do my 3 sets of 10 reps and get out of there. Well, he then asked me what my major was and I told him chemical engineering. He about crapped himself saying that he loved chemistry in high school, but when he got to college he just didn't apply himself and now he was a 34 year old guy that had five years of school, but no degree, under his belt and he only had 75 cents in his pocket and he was in debt but he didn't care because god was taking care of him. Shouldn't he be rolling in the dough if he owned the 49ers? Hmmm...maybe not, with the recent training tape scandal. Anyway...

He started asking me all these chemistry questions like what a joule and a watt and an erg and a dyne are. We talked about the ideal gas law and what organic and physical chemistry classes cover. He wanted to know the relation between a joule and a calorie, etc. The topic of thermodynamics was then brought up by me and he started rattling off what he thought were the laws of thermodynamics, though only one of them was (entropy). The other two were from Newton's laws of motion, but I didn't argue with him. This guy was quite assertive and still kinda worried me. He said that because of entropy, he didn't believe in evolution, and then he started down that road again. I just patiently listened. By then I was done. I did about 5 sets with long breaks in between, because I didn't mind talking about stuff that I could actually talk about!

Once he started witnessing again, I got up to get more water and just stood there taking more drinks, waiting for him to start another set so I could say goodbye and run out without worrying about him following me. I left out at some point about how he worked at a Knoxville paper until very recently (he got fired because the manager thought he was trying to take her job or something). Now how he could do that while living in Colorado on the border of Utah, I'll never know. He was in town visiting his soon-to-be ex-wife and his kids.

This was my first runin with a big-city weirdo. I'm glad it went as smoothly as it did and I'm glad I'm intact and uninjured.

6-3-05 - Lots of junk has happened in the past few weeks and I'm sorry that I've not updated anything on my site in that time.

I am now in Knoxville. I've got all my utilities and junks set up and all my stuff is in my apartment. There's a big pile of stuffs in the middle of the living room. I'm making slow but sure progress on putting everything away.

I was in Colorado for a while towards the end of last month for the Odyssey of the Mind world competition. We ended up getting second place in our division for our problem, which I wouldn't think is bad at all for a team of rookies. The team that beat us was from Canadia [sic] and had years of experience under their belts. Actually, the guy on their team that designed their cars used to be a judge for the Odyssey of the Mind car problems, so he knew what they were looking for in scoring. Because of all that crap, I'm happy with the place we got. We had lots of fun in Boulder and I took a million pictures. Woo-hoo!

Why do I use the word "thusly" so much? I doubt I even use it correctly.

A couple weeks ago, I was watching "Super Password" on the Game Show Network. The host was introducing the contestants and the guy said "Hi, I'm So-and-So and I go to Such-and-Such College and I major in this or that." And then the woman gave a little blurb about her life and said "Hi, I'm Madam Skanks-a-Lot and I work with computers." Hahahaha, "I work with computers," she said. Yeah, youngsters, that used to be impressive.

"Entertainment Weekly"? More like Weakly entertaining. (Sorry...I was just trying to match the type of sophisticated humor located in the Shaw Report.)