Computerjargon.com

Saturday night I had a late night shift to cover at work. We have a big “All-Stars” event going on all week and being the new guy I drew the sweet shift of covering from 9pm to midnight on Saturday. Courtney was out on the town with Tina and Elizabeth for T’s bachelorette party. Seeing as the ladies better-halves had congregated around a fire as well I figured I would swing up to see what the crew was up to.

Just before the end of my shift I received a phone call from Courtney. She was cookin’ up a plan and needed my assistance. Since I had the luxury of working Saturday night while all my friends whooped it up, I was the soberest one of the bunch (My soberity was relative. I had drank 4 cups of coffee in 3 hours and was having a hard time keeping my eyes straight). She called for a ride home…just not yet. She wanted to wait until bar close.

So, after work I moseyed up to Aaron’s. About an hour later I received the “cabbie” call and I went to pick up my wife and Elizabeth. We played a game of clown car seeing as my passenger list had grown from 2 gals to 4 gals. Luckily for all of us, the Mazda had room in the hatch for the car seat. Trying to do the rider math at 1am with 4 drunk ladies was a challenge, but quite amusing. We got back to Aaron’s where we continued the fun.

Court and I strolled into the house at 3am. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the lighter half of 3am. My 3am’s have typically consisted of late night stumblings trying to soothe a crying child. It was so late that even our local Taco Bell was closed, much to our dismay. We crashed and tried not to think of having to get up in the morning.

3 1/2 Hours later I was wide awake and trying to figure out how to get back to sleep. I had nothing going for me so I just got up and headed for the kitchen. Crazily, we got our act together and were out the door to get our son by 11:30am.

I write this to let you know a few things:

1. Even given a crazed 20-somethings evening, we still are responsible parents and were quite excited to get to see our son in the morning

2. 3am is not a good time for me. I don’t like that time of day

3. 4 cups of coffee in the evening is a very bad idea

4. If you want me to haul you someplace, just let me know so I can remove the child seat. Preferably let me know before 1am.

There’s been someone in the bathroom all day. I don’t mean standing there either. He’s been in the stall all day. I’m pretty sure it the same guy. It seems to be the same pair of shoes. I thought about knocking just to make sure he’s okay but I thought a turd burglar stunt might make for an awkward moment. I hope he’s not dead. I’ll leave it for the cleaning crew to figure out.

Tim Armstrong, of Rancid fame, recently released A Poet’s Life . It’s been almost 10 years since I picked up a new ska album. I was quite happy that he’s still carrying the torch. It’s more Joe Strummer than Less Than Jake, with the standard reggae beat throughout the album. The album is great for the summer time, perfect timing. The third track, “Into Action”, requires the stereo cranked and the windows rolled down.

With the new job I am now traveling a bit further than I’m used to. It’s not much further in miles, maybe an extra 5-8 miles, but unfortunately it’s on one of the heaviest corridors in the Twin Cities. I get to jet up and down Highway 169 every day. In the evenings it’s not unusual for me to spend a good 40 minutes in traffic.

Lucky for me we just finished paying off the truck. While I love the truck, it’s not great on a daily commute. It isn’t built to handle stop and go traffic. The brakes complain with every stop.

So this weekend we went car shopping. I had a fairly good idea what I wanted. I have wanted a Mazda 3 hatchback for awhile. We found a used one that met most of the criteria and were able to pick it up for a fairly decent price. It’s 2005 with 29k miles on it with a sunroof. The best part of it is the engine — Its quite snappy. It’s got a lot of “go” on it, or as Mazda would tell you “zoom, zoom”.

I had crunched all the numbers before we went shopping and I knew this one was within our price range. I knew that if I got a 5 year loan and an decent interest rate that I could get the car for $300 a month, I just needed to squeeze the price down by $1000. I’m not much of a haggler so I wasn’t too sure how it would go. But I figured if they didn’t want to sell me the car, then I would find somewhere else that would be willing to sell me it. While I was in love with the car, I wasn’t in love with the process.

Our sales lady was nice but she played the ditzy card too many times. I think it was in an attempt to get me to budge. She was a little put off by the fact that I had everything lined up. I knew about the 4 square and I knew what numbers they could play with. I gave her two outs, one of which i wish I hadn’t. They could either: 1. Drop the price by $1000 OR 2. Give me a stellar interest rate — well under the average rate for a used car. In the end her finance guy saved her by getting me an awesome interest rate. The price of the car was only dropped by $500. In the end, though, I got exactly what I wanted.

They did take 2 hours to come to the number which was the sucky part. Although this time I feel like I did my best. I don’t feel ripped off and I think both parties got something out of the deal. At one point Courtney looked at me and said, “Do you think they hate people like you?” I said, “Yes, yes they do.”

I recently informed Courtney that I needed to start budgeting for a new item: coffee. I’ve never been too particular about the type of coffee I drink. Most places I’ve worked have had terrible coffee, but the new place takes the cake on “worst coffee ever”. Luckily Riles convenient daycare situation saves the day, it’s located near a Dunn Bros. coffee shop. Each morning I swing in for my $1.81 medium French roast to power up my morning. So I told Courtney that I will now officially budget 10 dollars a week for my coffee habit. It just can’t be any other way.

I found this via Digg: Last.fm Mainstream-O-meter. It’s a website that uses your Last.fm playlist information to determine how mainstream your music taste is. I came in at a strong 54% mainstream, which is what I would have thought. Finally, the validation I so deserve for my elite music tastes!

Incidentally, I just started using Last.fm with my iPod a few days ago. I struggled with Last.fm for a long time. I didn’t understand why I would want a music player that randomly plays music close to what I want to listen to. If I want to listen to We Are Scientists, then dammit, that’s what I want to listen to. Last.fm plays stuff like We Are Scientists, but not the actual artist. Then I finally figured out the iScroggler, an application that sends recently played tracks from my iPod to Last.fm. Once on Last.fm, it rates, ranks, charts, displays, and ultimately creates a custom radio station for me. The more data Last.fm has the better the radio station. So now I’m psyched to use it. Now I will finally figure out just how cool I am.

The Past

As I’ve been running through all my old posts from 2000 tagging I realized that I used to post about 2 things:

1. Lots and lots of nerd talk about computerjargon.com

2. Lots of lyrics

My attention for blogging has shortened over the years. I still do enjoy keeping friends and family in tune with my life. But I’ve come to realize that not even I care to remember in 4 years what I ate for lunch today (BTW - It was animal crackers and Diet Coke).

The Present

I recently started a new job. I left the company I’d been with for the last 5 years or so. Over the 5 years I saw many changes. The changes over the last year, though, were the final straw. It’s bitter sweet for me. I would have loved to have felt there was a place for me in the future, but realistically the company wanted nothing to do with IT.

So I’ve started a new job. The new place has gone through the same type of transformations that my old company has gone through, which came as a surprise to me.  I didn’t expect to see the same type of issues here as I did there. Luckily, though, my new job is much more technology focused. I’m excited to dig my teeth into something good.