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Project project project...and some wacky shit

2004-12-06 - 7:32 p.m.

So I'd been done with the analysis of my project data and most of the write-up. Unfortunately a few nixies got into the pie-mix of that ideal picture:

1) We have to embed our data graphs in our Word documents. Now, that may sound easy, but I've never really done that before..and after having spent the better part of an hour and possibly more trying to size two side-by-side graphs to be the same, well shit, I'm as exasperated as you are from reading that paragraph.

But I did it.

2) I need to do a few more analyses I hadn't expected. This only requires Excel. Thankfully. If I had to spend any more time in that Godforsaken wasteland that they call a psych computer lab, I'd scream. I mean I can take being alone pretty well, but 3 straight days of it was fucking unnerving.

I'll get the whole thing done tonight, maybe have some time left over to start studying for the final, then meet with the TA tomorrow to see where/if I fucked up.

Yeah, it's not chicks-with-dicks on dog on gay poltergeist action, but this is my so called life (rings the 'dated' bell and reminisces about MTV dramas he saw once or twice).

I am starting to get a little restless and burnt on this studying-all-day-except-to-eat-and-sleep-and-walk-to-and-from-class thing. Only a little. I love my discipline, I admire and deeply respect my adviser, I even enjoy stats (most of the time). But let us face facts:

I need some real rest. I haven't had a day off since the beginning of the semester. Closest thing was Drunk As Fuck Thursday way back when and that was for 7 hours. Yup, there hasn't been a single day where I've just done something else entirely. Allegedly other grad students have, but I'm not other grad students.

I stand a good chance of getting all A's for the first time in my life, though. Besides looking good to fellowship review panels, I feel like this is an important personal goal. Not life-threatening or shattering, but it's something that I can do and I want to do it.

* * *

Wacky Shit

Oh but my life isn't ALL studying. There's been some amusing, slightly weird crap that's happened.

Take my car for instance. Now, the Buick got to Madison with relatively little worry. Sure there was that whole dying by the side of the road in the middle of fucking nowhere Colorado near Nebraska, but besides that and the transmission doing weird shit...we made it here. The Buick, though, it has been a ailin' these last few months. I know because at the beginning of the semester, it used to start kinda clunky, but then pushed out over the top and started.

About last week, it stopped doing that. It'd just click-click-click when I tried starting it, or it made that really weak whir sound when you have next to no juice left and your power door locks barely work.

So here I am, no more toilet paper, barely any conditioner, almost no kleenex (the substitute), and my car doesn't work. Thankfully there's a grocer's down on The St. St. that had the bare-ass essentials.

Still, that left me wondering what the hell to do about my car. So this past friday, I decided to fix the problem. I called AAA. I had my car jump-started. I ran it for 15 minutes. I rushed up to get my checkbook (for a reason I'll get to). Rushed back down. Battery was dead again. Called AAA a second time. Got the guy to jump-start it. Hauled ass over to the Jiffy Lube where I'd gotten the Buick repaired last time.

I was surprised, but one of the guys recognized me, coming over to chat as I put the beast in park. I tapped around my stats project while he and some others checked out my battery. I had a green eye, but they weren't sure what was wrong--until they checked out the battery terminals and the connectors.

Holy Shit. The amount of corrosion on the connectors was obscene. I mean obscene. It looked like 2 inches of this dead-man blue color of chalky crap was built up onto this tiny sliver of metal. The thing had been 3/4's eaten away. No fucking wonder my car had been getting progressively harder to start.

So the guys cleaned that shit for me--something they don't usually do, but I'd "had alot of work done" there. After 10 more minutes of me waiting, though, he came in to say that the battery was crap. Only got 12 volts and was jerky. I was inclined to agree. He said I should get a new battery. I was inclined to agree.

So I headed over 7 blocks into already way too rural Wisconsin and bought a battery. I had no idea what in the hell the guy was saying when he gave specs for these two different units. All I understood was: price difference, 10 dollars. Years under warranty difference, 2. Sold.

So I had that shit installed. And the car runs beautifully now. So I can go to Michigan to GET THE FUCK out of Insanity, Wisconsin for awhile.

* * *

The other amusing tidbit is my Washington Mutual (WaMu) debit card. Check this shit out:

About two weeks ago, I try to withdraw money from an ATM. It says my card is invalid. I call WaMu. I get nowhere. I e-mail WaMu and find out some amusing shit:

1) My card had been accidentally cancelled.

2) My replacement card had been sent out to my address here, but was cancelled because I hadn't had this address registered for 30 days and it was a security risk on my part...to have my own card...sent to my own address...that I inputted...

3)(now on the phone with a young woman WaMu representative around my age) I couldn't get them to send me a card under any circumstances.

4) To get a new debit card, I'd have to drive to a WaMu financial center. There are three in Wisconsin. None are near Madison.

5) None of the locations show up on the WaMu website.

6) The only thing I got were addresses from the representative.

So I mapquested these things, and apparently there are two locations only an hour and change away. Considering that I can't get confirmation if they even exist, though, I'm hesistant to waste 3 hours to go get a debit card.

Solution to this fucking madness: I can pay off my credit card online with my checking account..and just use the credit card. This is fabulous, since I'd been using my credit card to pay for all my meals...and right as I figured out I could do the above thing, I had only 18 bucks of credit left.

"Whew" doesn't come close.

So now I have all that life shit taken care of.

* * *

Right now I'm talking to Nicholas about getting to Detroit come the 17th or 18th. He's close to moving into his new apartment downtown. That screams photo ops to me. That and knife.

There's also a lab holiday party on the same day as my first and only final. May or may not go. Haven't decided.

I better get onto Whole Foods and get my soap and conditioner and all that. Deoderant and Shampoo suds only go so far to anti-French a dude.

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