Wake Me Not (aka: LONG ass post)

Monday, February 19th, 2007 | Life

Ok so I can’t sleep. I can always sleep because I am very good at focusing on sleep and nothing but sleep. There is of course a normal exception: Alcohol (Aka: The cause of AND solution to all of life’s problems). Tonight however that is not the cause. In fact I got to sleep just fine tonight. Yet I am up.

It’s simple really, sometime in the middle of the night a noise outside started that was so loud that it woke me (a very sound sleeper) and made me grab my keys to go out and see if it was my car or rob’s car making the noise. This piercing noise was that of a super loud car horn just held down solid. It was not our vehicles but somebody down the street! In fact this noise did NOT stop for nearly 15 minutes. Ok so perhaps it was a super effective car alarm, but even a newbie car thief would have either run when alarm went off or pulled the battery terminal moments later.

..:Sigh:..

Well no matter, it got me to write some BS right? Perhaps this was the hump I needed to get over to work on my site again, a crazy annoying piercing noise to cut straight through my bullshit excuses to write some bullshit…

So me: I’ve been busy… Ha, whatever, I’d like to tell myself that but I haven’t done jack all year. Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed only doing the bare minimum to get by, it’s hella fun, and that’s all we really want out of life right, to enjoy it and not despise existence.. Everybody says they want money, but y? Just to buy things that make us happy and pay for bills and things to make us not stressed out, and then to buy stuff to: Make us happy

Things in life that don’t make me happy so I have been ignoring:

Car:
My car looks very ugly because not only is my paint job still fucked up from a stupid car wash, but having had a window replaced the people did a shitty job and the molding strip on drivers side blew off or something and they said they would order and replace it, which they haven’t done, nor have they even contacted me about it. Tomorrow I will dig up their number and make sure they are on it, and if they are not I can report them for insurance fraud (for 1: guarantee 2: misreporting their time from 1 hr to 3.1). I was supposed to meet with a guy who helped paint cars for The Fast and the Furious at the bar the other day, but I forgot to show up until it was too late. I will talk to the bartender girl that was going to hook that up again on Tuesday so I see if he can work on mine. Because despite having good street credit he supposedly does side work for dirt cheep.

Music:
Maybe not really part of the “doesn’t make me happy” category, but at least part of what I have been ignoring. I have always needed a huge supply of new music constantly changing, and always on shuffle. Yet for some reason in 2007 since I got back from my trip I haven’t downloaded ANY new music, and am not even listening to much of anything. If i’m in the car I have xm comedy station on and winamp isn’t playing all that much on my pc anymore. It is right now while I write this post, but otherwise I have created a strange void where music used to be, that I need filled up again. So if you know of good music that has come out this year, tell me and I will try to fix what seems like an oddity for somebody like me who has always had various music playing.

Broken Stuff:
So I rearranged the entire living room awhile ago, the design is way more efficient, but in the process broke my giant piece of glass that I have used as a computer desk forever and had to replace it with a random chunk of white colored wood I found in the garage. The way the glass broke was funny if you know my tendencies since I got fired from US Cellular for breaking a piece of glass for leaning on it and hopping over, well this time I leaned over glass to grab a cord, and go figure… broke it. This glass has traveled with me since my house in Fort. Oh well. Well that wasn’t it, seems I broke one of my speakers for my computer as well. not sure how that happened, but it was all during the furniture moving, and I had to buy new pc speakers. I didn’t want really nice expensive speakers, since most of the time the audio is getting outputted to the stereo anyways, but needed something. The ones I got I bought for sound quality, however the volume control is on the speakers and not on a remote or separate break out box like I have had in the past, so I can’t embed the volume control in my recliner, and have to either rely on using the mouse to increase volume or……. putting the footrest down on chair and leaning over to turn up volume~!!!!!! Ok it’s not a big deal, just not as cool as having chair operated volume control.

Dog:
I am not a fan of the dog that lives in this house. It’s a hound and likes to howl at the neighbor’s from the backyard. It sinks…. Bad, and after convincing owner to give it a bath once (dog grooming place said they gave it 2 because it stunk so much), it immediately went outside and rolled in the bushes, dirt, and it’s own feces, once again stinking. Owner hasn’t been willing to give it a bath since, and it doesn’t seem to bother him at all. It’s a puker. Yep, just like my sisters cat, it likes to have a good second look at the food it’s been eating. Bleh. It stares, yes I mean just what I said… say you are eating, now sure all dogs want your food while you are eating, but normally you can shoo them away. This one goes back, and if you keep waving it away it goes further back, till it goes outside… problem solved? no, it keeps staring at you no matter where it goes, it can be 90% across the yard but it will keep that mopey look and star at you through the door, window, whatever…. weird…

Friends & Family:
Wow, am I ever an ass to write this, knowing that only my friends and family read this. But lets be honest here, I love my F&F, but you all have your own problems that I am unable to really help you with. If I thought of a great way to help I would do it, but I figure we are the masters of our own lives and only we can fix our own shit. I don’t believe in pity for the sake of pity so I just choose not to empathize so I can sleep at night (oh, the irony). If you want my advice, you will ask it. Otherwise don’t feel offended if I seem to be ignoring you, as I believe it’s better NOT to focus on your problems because if you do, that’s all you see is more problems. Since I have had nothing better to redirect your focus towards, I just tend to keep to myself.

Work:
See this shouldn’t be an issue for me, I am good at whatever I set my mind to doing. I am a great salesman and can sell myself into a job or work whenever I need. But perhaps that’s the kicker, need. I work best out of need and am very good at not needing shit. I could be designing a couple websites a week easy, but alas, I haven’t felt like designing websites all bloody year~!!!! I mean look at this one, I started my fantastic idea of expanding the site with pure knowledge, and new articles that I myself would be writing. I have tons of ideas for the articles, but I go in streaks and at times I just don’t want to work on websites. I can’t fix computers for quick cash either because I’ll end up getting sued, so that leaves me selling credit repair information on ebay. I can easily get a job. In fact I can get one at GoDaddy where I had originally planned to go when I moved down here. The jobs and things I can do are limitless, but I haven’t wanted to get one. I enjoy my freedom too much. I will probably go design a quick website or two to fix the problems with my car, but still only the bare minimum to do what I need to do. So work is still a thought process. I will probably cave and get a normal job because of the next category.

Taxes:
Contractor, deductible expenses. Woohoo…. Right? Wrong… I did a real quick estimation of my taxes and I will need to come up with a shitload of expenses above and beyond the 40k miles I have put on in the last year if I don’t want to have to pay a megaton in. This is the hang up to working for myself and not working. It is SOOOO easy for me to go out and get website design work, so if I can psych myself up to do this, everything will be peachy. If I can’t, the little things I do won’t be enough to pay for this. This is above and beyond the easy to get by margin.

What the hell are you doing about all this?

Nothing:
Ya know there is something liberating about not worrying. Of course I think of the above things, but I don’t dwell on them or worry about them at all. Y? Because life always works out. It goes in streaks, kicks your ass for awhile and then gives you tons of good stuff down the line. Don’t believe me? I have lived in very nice places and paid very little rent for the past several years. Just when I think my housing couldn’t get any nicer and cheaper, it does. I own a very nice car, albeit it’s not looking super sexy these days, it will get fixed and once again be a super nice car. I had to put up with some shit to get it, but because of that I have very low payments on it and can keep it even in my current state. I am currently doing, NOTHING. Yes I know that is what I am discussing, but if this isn’t proof enough that life works out, then I don’t know what is. Lots of people have expectations for me. What should James be doing with his life? Why isn’t he doing X when he’s fully capable of it? Why indeed, because I unlike many people am fully capable of NOT doing anything. But again, to stay sane I decided long ago to live by what I believe I need and not what other people believe I need. Again, all I have to do to survive is be happy, it really is just that simple. When I need and want more from life I will go out and get it, and then I’ll let you know.

How about things that don’t suck?

Free Massages:
I ran into the 21 year old chick who does my deep tissue massages awhile ago, and she felt bad for blowing off a couple of appointments back when she started another job. So being a good person who sees the error of her ways (loosing a customer who gives her 50% tips), she called and offered me 2 free massages. I have had one of those so far, and she even refused to take my tip money then. Now that’s service folks.

Disaronno:
Wow, I just stuck an expensive bottle of alcohol in the not sucky category, but I am thankful for this stuff. I drink it on the rocks all the times, and it has replaced Brandy as my favorite drink. True, I miss having absinthe around, and should order more as that stuff has the best effects, but Disaronno, that has the best taste and I don’t get sick on it. True, I should learn to like a cheaper brand, perhaps by buying it and putting it in the Disaronno bottle (come on it’s got the coolest spin off lid ever), but this will either not change or i will not have enough money for it and then it will change ; )

Guild Wars:
Yes, that’s right I have filled much of my days with a computer game. I started this after visiting my friend in Houston, where he was playing it a lot. It looked fun and there was no monthly fee. Still too cheep to buy it I asked my friend Ken if he was playing his copy since I remembered him having it as well, he was not, so he ended up giving me his. This was awesome. Now if I didn’t like it I could just not play and would have lost no money at all. However I ended up liking it and bought an expansion to it. I am kind of the exception to the way most people play this and other games like this. It’s an online game, so you are supposed to interact with a bunch of people online and make a bunch of new nerd friends this way. Then once you do that you can play PvP (player vs. player) and try to kill each other off for points etc.. Well I don’t do that AT ALL. I play this big ass game more or less as a single player game. I mean if somebody asks me a question, I will answer, and I help people out sometimes. However I have grown to like playing the game itself without really interacting much. I tend to keep the various chat channels turned off and just fight my way through the story (until I need money and then I can just sell a bunch of shit to random people for far more than the merchants give me for it). It’s keeping me entertained and that’s all I really care about.

My Computer:
So yeah, this computer has run like a top since the day I built it. The last one gave me problems, but I haven’t had one problem with this computer, unless you count my external terabyte, which was having problems long before this pc. Well actually I just fixed several of those problems. I kind of ran out of space on the 1.5tb that’s inside my computer, so I needed to use my terabyte again. I managed to fix the bad sectors it had with a hardcore process I created where I shuffle the drives around inside the raid, then do a low level format, then a magnetic sector scan. I did this a long time ago and it took a couple weeks to do, but I didn’t want to loose 1tb of space that I paid 1k for. Well this was great, however the drives are still unstable since they crashed so many times before from when my pc had bad ram, but I trust my long term storage data to it. Well the usb plug broke off… Doh, so I soldered it back on, and then it broke again… y? Because I could only solder on 2 of the 6 pins safely 4 of them were tiny and super close together and my soldering iron isn’t pin thin. So I was relying on them touching from the other 2 connectors, which works for a little while but not long. Well, I found a new way to work the drive. Firewire. The drive’s firewire has never worked, well that’s not true it worked on day one but not on day 2 (yes, even a computer guy can shove a cable in backwards if they are too cocky to bother looking at it when they are doing it) due to what I can only assume was a short.

I tried to order a new circuit board for the connectors from LaCie, but they said they won’t sell consumer’s the board and it’s not under warranty any more so I was SOL. Not happy with that I went and bought a firewire 800 card for my pc. This is different than the normal firewire that everybody’s pc has, firewire 800 is typically only found on Mac’s, and the firewire on pc’s is firewire 400. My 400 was broke, and so was my usb most of the time, but I figured the 800 might still work, and alas; it did~! The terabyte is actually in pieces now, it’s spread eagle like a thanksgiving bird (at least i didn’t say like a $2 whore right), but it works, and is stable~!

My Facial Hair:
I have never had the patience to grow a beard or anything for more than a week. Well now I have beard and stash and it’s not that bad. It ages me a lot though, not sure if that’s good, but the ladies at Chuy’s thought I should keep it. I probably won’t keep it too long though, I will get sick of it, but I will also make sure I take picture of it before I shave it off, would now but I have to steal roommate’s camera to do it and he’s kind of sleeping like most people.

Old Blog Design:
Screw it, I was going to merge the silver design with the site and have random artwork under it and the main menu bar above it, but I keep not doing it so I am going to go back to old blog design. I never got rid of it, just turned it off, and old design was better.

In conclusion

I’m still awake, Me thinks I woke myself up more by writing this. Oh well, what does it matter when I go to sleep now. Not like I need to get up. };->~

P.S. Hey Dan, I am currently listening to Rondo Veneziano, something only you, me and perhaps your mother while she is doing chores could appreciate.