the soupmenu

movin

2006-03-19T12:23:00.000-08:00

well i'm growing up in this online world...so i finally got my own domain in an attempt to consolidate everything.

i have moved all of my archives and have kept my soupmenu name. now, all things pete are located at:

www.pete3.net

if you would like to link directly to the blog...

blog.pete3.net

everyone please update all links and bookmarks!!!!

the number you have dialed...

2006-02-18T15:44:00.000-08:00

alright...storytime

i was out with a bunch of friends getting some wonderful beer and steak at hops (their winter ale is delico.us) While there, my friend dan steals my phone for 10 mins. He enjoys sending lude txt msgs to my friends from my phone. everyone gets a good laugh at it and no one gets mad. I finally get my phone back...see that he sent the msg 'call me in 20 mins....i'll be nekkid'

but i can not tell who he sent it to.

later in the night i get a few calls from friends laughing.
fastforward to the next day at lunch..

i get a call from a number i don't know.... i pick up.....

me...hello ?
lady...hi...i want you to stop txt msging my 10 year old daughter, or
else i'll call the cops.
what are you talking about?
did you txt msg my daughter?
when?
just now?
no...i haven't sent any msgs in a while
did you send any in the last 24 hours?
nooope....haven't sent any in a while....maybe the system messed up.
what did the msg say?
something about being drunk and balls
(holding back laughter) oh yah ?
this is very unappropriate for a 10 year old to read and i want you to
stop sending them
i didn't send anything...i don't know what you are talking about
so you don't know anything about this?
nope....i don't even have this number in my phone.
well that's because i'm calling from a different phone
oh...well what is your daughters number
oh...so you are saying you know something about this
no....i know nothing about this
is your number 386.2xx.2xxx?
yup
you either know something about this or someone got ahold of your phone
there's a chance someone got ahold of my phone....what's the number
i will only give you the number if you admit that you did this.
i did not do this.....give me the number so i can take your 10 year
old's number out of my phone
admit taht you did it and i will give you the number
listen...i can make sure this doesn't happen again if you give me the
number...otherwise.. i don't care
i don't want these vile and disgusting things sent to my daughter! i'm
going to tell the cops about this!
go ahead.

i was kinda an ass cause i thought dan was playing a prank on me...by
having a coworker call and harass me....but after discussion with
him...he only sent out txt msgs to 4 people....two responded last
night, one i know i have the right number...and one i haven't talked
to in over a year..... :)

new motto

2006-02-11T11:40:00.000-08:00

i know myself
i want to find the world

l day

2006-02-10T15:52:00.000-08:00

i'm just going to make some lists for the next few posts. should be more interesting than me whining about taxes and work.

things i have saved as notes in gmail...

link for a flight to illinios for $150 'out the door' (didn't book the flight in time)
list of food items i need to serve at my restaurant (in 15 years)
list of words and phrases that need definitions
link to a video of a kid in a pac-man costume running through a library
plain word resume
pretty graphic resume
pictures of me jumping on the interstate

somewhere to live

2006-01-26T19:01:00.000-08:00

rick - 'so this girl broke her head'
me - ' what...just like..poof....now it doesn't work'
rick - 'hehe...no.....she broke her windowshield with her head'

i really didn't think i would get more crazy work stories from my brother after he left working at universal....but then he decided to work at an ER. while he hates the job...at least i have good stories about coked out private school kids, and people trying to con a hospital.
-----------------------------------
updates:

still here in orlando
still about 45% liking my job
job is good...just everyday i think about how i need to be doing something more interesting
my young heart needs to travel
haven't heard back from 5 takes...only have a few more days until that idea is dead
i'm basically chillin here until i can semi-plan out a crap job somewhere where life would be different

maybe i can find a job working on a crew on a yacht.......i heard a speech from a vp of disney a few years back. he talked about how he dove for pearls for a year when he was younger. his whole speech was about doing something interesting and unique to really learn about life. finding these jobs is the hard part..

so feel free to send some inputs my way

until then i'll just have to look forward to chipotle friday!!!
wooohoooo

office ticks

2006-01-12T20:18:00.000-08:00

i think one of the part-timers brought it in.

hehehe....just kidding.

while in an office job, your brain begins to die. to keep your brain from doing this, one begins to observe every little insane trait of your coworkers. these things i like to call office ticks. not just because they are tics similar to someone with ocd, but they also bury into your skin and make you want to claw your eyes out........here's an example:

my coworker raj..... has a computer tick. usually when i ask him something, he must look it up on his computer. anytime that he is doing anything on his computer he has to go through a small process. before doing anything he must view the desktop, then refresh the desktop. yes.....refresh the desktop, as if a present is going to show up once it's refreshed. now this alone would not drive me crazy.....but he does this 50 times.

the first time i witnessed him doing this, I thought he just did it on the desktop......oh boy was i wrong. i mean....operation enduring freedom wrong. he refreshes EVERYTHING. constantly.

it's quite bad. i actually believe that his refreshing of his computer might actually stop him from getting any work done. he highlights something...then refreshes....he opens a folder....refreshes....breathe....refresh.

oh office job

nice to meet you

2006-01-07T22:44:00.000-08:00

i love drunk people....

i meet up with friends at bennigans...everyone's drunk.....i have not had a drink in days. i sit down and a girl i have never met starts talking to me.......

girl - 'hi'
me - 'hi'
girl - 'how old are you?'
me - 'what ?'
girl- 'how old are you?'
me - 'why are you asking?
girl - 'how old are you?
(leaning over and sluring every 1.4 words).
me - 'how old do you think i am ?'
girl - '23...how old do you think i am ?
me - 'i don't know...why are you asking me this?'
girl - 'how old are you ?
me - 'do you ask everyone this when you first meet them'
girl - 'you have big teeth'
me - 'wwhhhhaaaattt ?
girl - 'you have BIG teeth'
(one of my friends overheard this and her eyes almost pooped out of her head)
me - 'umm....thanks'
(awkward laughter from everyone)
girl - 'it must really suck......to go through life with big teeth'
me - 'what ? are you serious?'
girl - 'hey....i have chicklette teeth'
(she leans over and points at her teeth)
girl - 'hey...it's just a joke....just a joke'

there was another awkward minute and then her and her friends were leaving. she hugged me twice, said 'it's just a joke...just a joke', and then left.

misplaced proverbs

2006-01-05T19:59:00.000-08:00

it all started with an email from bob.....

"One of the other guys I worked with got a bagel with butter (yuck I only do cream cheese) and opened up the packet of butter only to reveal it was mostly empty with a very small dab of butter at the bottom. The big guy looks at it and says 'Supply and demand, supply and demand.'"

supposedly this guy always responds to situations with misplaced proverbs. we really like the idea of doing it back to this guy to poke fun at his insanity so we created a new game........

now we try to think of as many odd situations and what proverb or saying one could say that would make completely no sence.

here are some good ones
when asked for computer help......respond with....."Well, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,"

when asked for directions.....respond with.....'early to bed...early to rise'

when asked when a project will be done....respond with...'one if by land...two if by sea'

that time of year

2005-12-27T20:19:00.000-08:00

ever since i moved to florida, chistmas just isn't the same anymore. you'll always find me complaining about the warm weather this time of year, but throughout these last 5 years i've learned there's a lot more to the holiday seasons than cold air. i remember so many little things from earlier years that now i realize have so much to do with the holiday season that i just don't find down here. things like people all bundled up in jackets running to get inside as quick as they can...but still willing to brave the cold a few seconds more to hold the door for you...or seeing everyone turn quiet in a room to listen to the weather report to see if there's going to be a fresh snowfall in time for chirstmas day...everyone with red noses and sniffling, with a big smile on their face. even a swift cold breeze in fall would give you a quick reminder that chirstmas is on the way, creating more and more anticipation for the season. don't get me wrong, my holidays have not been horible by any means. there's just a definate differance between a great christmas season and just another christmas. a major area that has been altered for me is that chirstmas is much more about going home than anything else. the feeling of walking up to your house and turning the doorknob just right so it opens on the first turn...thinking about how many times you've opened it before. taking that first step into the sights, sounds, and smells of your home during the holidays. when you take that step, you are completely taken in by the holiday spirit. you forget about all of the stupid annoyances of day to day life and you just enjoy the good things...friends and family. my family has morphed and changed since my highschool days, but i would love to have that feeling again.

this season used to be my favorite time of year, but it really has become the time of year when i reflect on everything. with everyone else leaving town to visit their homes and families, i am left to become very lonely and to reflect. while difficult, it has become very interesting how every year I take this time to sit back and think about all of the things in my life and hopefully adjust for the better.

i was at the neighborhood market. i was holding a case of towlette paper and some garden vegetable cream cheese and trying to decide what cat litter to buy. i noticed a pallett of special kitty cat food and was imediately sent into a flashback of my first job at wal-mart slinging those bags around the store. i fell into a daze just thinking about all of those memories. the bags of cat food were sitting on top of a bright blue pallet that was property of a company that i interviewed with last week. I thought about how many hours i possible would put there and what kind of experiences i would have. there's some sort of circular connection there. then it hit me how extremely boring this was. neither past nor future had the thril that i desire. there's nothing exciting or interesting about any of this. i really need to find something that is exciting.

social networking

2005-12-24T20:27:00.000-08:00

in facebook
you can now put how you know people
and if you've hooked up with them or not
so you can now sort your friends by who you've hooked up with
this is a great way keep track of who exactly you gave herpes

the travelers heart

2005-11-20T23:44:00.000-08:00

you might have noticed from my 10 million road trips....i love to travel. after returning from the shortbus trip, i still definately had the traveling bug. I've done a decent job in the last few months of suppressing my urges for travel in favor of gaining 'responsibility' and 'experience'. well tonight i finally sat down and caught up on some of my favorite blogs. one of which is by a guy who went on a two month journey around the us and to austrailia, fiji, and new zealand.

http://mrbluethc.blogspot.com/ <--please read

all of the uges have just been flung back in my face full force. if i could jump in a plane tonight and fly to another continent...i would. traveling is so great. it really makes you live life and not be excited for things like 'novemeber birthday's' at work.

while my urges are back, I should be fine without travel for a bit. I am finally getting close to committing to a two year plan with life, and according to it, i'm only a year away from hopefully being able to travel for a few months solid.......i can't wait.

race to bed

2005-11-13T23:59:00.000-08:00

now that i have delved into the working world, i'm having all of the sucky realizations...here's one. I've caught myself on numerous nights on the way home from wherever thinking to myself 'i have to go home, do this, eat that, read this, and then i can be to bed by ____ and get ___ hours of sleep before work'. It's a not-so-much fun game where you race to do what you need to do and still get to bed early. the only reason to do this is in hopes that if you get yer required 7 or 8 hours of sleep that somehow you will not be tired or in a bad mood at work the next day. Nowadays I really do not believe there is any relation between amount of sleep and happiness the following day yet, I still find myself doing the race to bed almost every night. In the not so distant past, i remember playing a different game. in the old game you try to find as many stupid things to do to keep you up as late as possible. thing such as write blogs, play atari, and try to find the perfect food to make out of what's in the cubbard at 4am. This game is much better. if you are good at it, you wake up the next day and say to yourself....holy shit...i got a lot done last night. if you suck at it, you just go to bed and are in better position to try again the next night.

oh...i have two minutes left before midnight...looks like i got my blog post in and will still get 7 hrs of sleep. lets see if i yawn tomorrow at all...

olfactory

2005-11-01T21:38:00.000-08:00

since i basically live in my car.....

4 smells from my saturn....

mcdonnalds fries
dried asphalt tape
raquetball socks
wint-o-green lifesavers

you might have noticed some graphical madness in my sidebar. i have finally chosen flickr as my next photoblogger. make sure to check it periodically. i'm going to do the same thing that i was doing with the fotolog and only post my favorite pics... and pass on all of the unfocused sidewalk pics.

ding dong....your getting old

2005-10-18T00:20:00.000-07:00

next sign of old age. friends get married. i've received the first invite to a wedding so my friend doesn't look like a lesbian by going with a girl.......

abby: will you go to a wedding with me?
me: when is it ?
me: how much do i have to dress up?
me: and how christian do i have to act ?
abby: hahahah
me: if i can't cuss and belch...there's really no reason for me to be there

so this should be the first in the inevitable line of weddings that is going to bombard my singlehood in the next few years. better start practicing the chicken dance....i haven't done it since high school honors english class. (miss ya scharf)
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is it bad that the project that i have the biggest concern for at work is getting a table to put in the middle of the pit so that we can play fake beer pong from our computers ?
-----------------------------
zoom zoom around the world.....by pete and chuck

professionally trained

2005-10-14T21:13:00.000-07:00

it's great seeing your friends become qualified. lets face it, i'm not a real writer. my writing is similar to giving a rambunctious little 7 year old one of those huge pencils and then letting him scribble something out that kind of looks like a man with a triangluar face and those feet that go out straight to the side. the other day i received an email from my friend ryan. he is a creative writing major and has indured 4 years of jokes from me due to it. the email was just a simple paragraph about an article that he found online. even in this short paragraph one could tell how amazing of a writer ryan is. something as simple, and unprofessional as a link email can make my writing beg for forgiveness. i realize there's a huge style difference and the writing i hope to do someday is quite different than what he will do soon. it's really cool to see how he's become professional in these 4 years.

if you're reading this ryan......go get em tiger

tell your family you love them

2005-10-11T00:51:00.000-07:00

scariest moment of my life.

so i don't scare anyone else....i'll tell you now that everything is okay. my brother wanted to get some nachos for some reason tonight so we headed over to ale house. we order our food, he gets the huge chicken nachos and i get some crazy steak salad thing. (sounds like something i would invent doesn't it). after waiting a bit, our food comes out. we start eating. after a little bit my brother stops eating and is holding his napkin over his face. i ask if he's okay and he says that he ate a chip sideways. i continue eating. after another minute he's still not eating. i ask again if he's okay and he just says it hurts, but is fine. after about another minute...all of a sudden he faints and falls to the left and hits the wall. i rush over to his side of the bench to help. he starts having slight convusions. i pick him up so he's sitting upright and keep on saying his name. he stops convulsing but is just staring off. i keep on saying his name and he finally comes to. he was in a warm sweat and still slightly out of it. we call for the check and head home. everything happened so fast that no one else in the restraunt really knew anything had happened. after talking to my dad, he said that he probably just choked on the chip. I did not know this, but if you choke it's natural for you to faint due to no oxygen and then your body will convulse to try to get whatever out. my brother said he was in a weird dream like state and didn't remember really falling over and just remembers me saying his name the last few times. he said the first thing he wanted to do was to punch me. (shows he's back to normal)

we still don't really know what happened and why. it could have been the chip, but he had eaten the chip a little bit before and one would think that it would have choked him and he would have grabbed his neck. he was drinking mountain dew and he hasn't had caffiene in a while. he did say that he's felt odd before, but has never fainted as such. he is going to talk to the nurses at work tomorrow to see if he should get some tests. hopefully it was just a chip and nothing else.

i'm going to be sappy. this was the scariest moment in my life. i love my brother with all of my heart and to see him all of a sudden collaps and shake scared the shit out of me. i remained calm, but i honestly do not know what i would do if anything ever happened to my brother and best friend. my father lost his brother at an early age and it has to be one of the worst things in life to happen. as i said, he's okay now and i pray that it was nothing more than a chip. tell your family and friends you love them and let them know how great they are. life is dangerous and can change in an instant from as little of a thing as a chip.

movie, bathroom, dragons

2005-09-29T12:43:00.000-07:00

starship troopers
-------------------
there's campy...and then there's starship troopers. for some hugely strange reason, i really love this movie. perhaps it gets the best worst movie award in my 4 hour long awards show. to accept the award, the movie would probably set up something to blow up while they were on stage and have bug guts splatter on the guests gallagher style...and i would also like that.

i don' t know why i like the movie. it's really just horrible, but there's some kind of unspoken beauty in it. it's great seeing the blend of semi-famous actors in a futuristic world where you fight bugs for citizenship.....and everytime you watch it, it gets better.

there is no reason that this movie has to be so bad. it was made in 97 along with other movies that did not include 70's style campiness. they did have money to make it. it just seems to be a sci-fi flick that they 'tried to do something different'. i'm not complaining though. how could you not love this movie with lines like..................
'you kill bugs good'
'You see a bug hole, YOU NUKE IT.'
'You're some sort of big, fat, smart-bug, aren't you?'

i am really fortunate that someone out there in the television programming world also loves this movie. starship troopers shows up, somehow, on tv about every other month. i catch it...always. i can't stop watching it once it's on. i must see the drama between the young kids from the BA(the cool futuristic name of buenos aries), i must see the infomercials for the armyand 'doing your part', i must see the troopers stick a nuke into a huge bug with a mouth that looks like....well let's just say amish wouldn't approve of it. i think the tagline sums it up "A GUNG-HO SCI-FI EPIC..."my friends hate me now for making them watch it whenever it's on. my kids are going to hate me in 35 years from now, when i make them watch it until they can recite lines with me.
--------------------------------
everyone has bathroom stories for some reason...here's mine.

i head to the bathroom at work. right before going into the bathroom i noticed an old, fat man moving in a snail-like fashion to his car. he wasn't really fat, but he was extremely round. a person that would not lose much speed to friction in a downhill race. So i go to the bathroom and get situated. all of a sudden i heard the door to the bathroom slam open...

cough..hack..hack....cough...uggghhh...guuuh....hack...sniff...hack...snnnuuuuffff.

i have no clue how he did it, but he really managed to make all of the sounds of coughing, hacking, snorting, and wheezing at the same time. i freak out. from the stall window (that crack that is always there so that you can time grand exists) i can see the same guy from outside moving across the room. he of course lands in the stall next to me, continuing to make the same ensemble of flem sounds. i'm concerned.....not for his health, but for my sanity. after a long day's work i really could not deal with making a statement to the police about all of the sounds that this creature was making while rolling to the bathroom for solice. i put a rush order on my delivery and book it out of the bathroom before something explodes and makes a new hole in the creature.

here's my statement of the day....all bathrooms should have smooth jazz being played loudly in them. NO ONE really wants to hear any sound that happens in or around a bathroom. If there was a way to mute my hearing I would do it when i'm about 50 ft from a bathroom and wouldn't turn it on until i'm at a safe distance from the warzone.
------------------------------------------
call from grandma.....

gma->"hi...thank you for your bithday wishes...but it didn't help me find my pants"
me->"you lost your pants?"
gma->"yah, they were here...now i can't find them anywhere...your dad says they are here, but i think the dragon took them"
me->"i don't know what a dragon would do with your pants"
gma->"i don't know either, but if you find them, give me a call, and if i find them i'll give you a call"
me->"deal"

Sunday threeway

2005-09-25T19:10:00.000-07:00

howl at the moon is open again!!!! Wooohoooo. The old one that was in Orlando closed down a few months before my 21^st birthday so I was never actually able to go. I was able to go to the howl at the moon in New Orleans and had tons of fun with their ability to cuss and make fun of people. I lucked out, and a friend’s roommate actually nabbed some passes for the grand opening of the new howl at the moon. After waiting about 40 minutes to get in, we were finally allowed in when the drinks were no longer free. The bouncers were acting like the place was at capacity, yet once free drinks turned expensive, the bar got surprisingly more packed. The place is huge and is very warehouse-ish. I love any area with huge ceilings. Warehouses, churches, and stadiums all rock. Since they did provide two hours of free drinks, once we sat down we saw many super-drunk old people. In my normal paths in life, I really don’t come across many old drunk people. So when I get to go out and see older people acting like college freshmen…I get a little twinkle in my eye. The night’s apex had to be when they pulled out the keytar and played a super medley that included 50 cent, Journey, and Van Halen. I always think of the dolphin show at the Brookfield zoo when I hear the song jump by Van Halen. I love childhood memories.

I hate rock radio dj’s. They are the most obnoxious, immature, and disgusting people on the earth. For me to call someone immature is a huge thing. I usually try not to hate on people, but the radio dj gene needs to be singled out and destroyed from the pool. There was one at howl at the moon and I wanted to slice his neck with the free cup that his ‘mix 107 cuties’ gave me. The guy was running around the whole bar, doing an obnoxious, I’m going to bump into anyone within 15 feet of me, dance, and screaming with his raspy, old, I’ve yelled woooo longer than you’ve been alive, voice. How can you get so excited to hear ‘come feel the noise’ for the 10 millionth time in your life? Of course when he went up to the stage…he did nothing but scream and yell about how the crowd wasn’t yelling loud enough for his middle-aged, balding, overweight tastes. I’m sorry bud, I just don’t get pumped up when some guy who hasn’t matured since 7^th grade calls me lame because his ears aren’t bleeding from the sound of a screaming crowd. Hopefully satellite and internet radio end these people so they have to get a job where they are required to sit in a room by themselves until they know how to act in public.

UCF tailgating will never be the same. I was talking to one of my friends next to a truck while tailgating yesterday. All of a sudden, a husband and wife carrying a 1 year old child come running at us. They ran next to us and ducked underneath the truck. They tell us that someone has a gun. We duck down and all huddle around the child. Just as we duck down we here three shots. I still didn’t believe it was an actual gun. Since I didn’t grow up in the projects, I didn’t know that gunshots sound like fireworks. (So anytime you hear fireworks and think you might need to run towards the sound to join in the festival of light and sound……don’t) People started running everywhere. The family stayed for another minute to wait for things to calm down, and then took their baby home…they had their fill of UCF Football. After talking to some drunk kids, the story I have is this… A undercover cop tried to stop a fight. He taised a kid…the kids friends immediately jumped the cop, not knowing he was a cop. After being surrounded by drunk kids, he pulled out his badge and gun and shot two shots into the air. A uniformed officer who was near saw the undercover cop shoot in the air so he immediately shot the undercover cop three times in the back.

Cops showed up from everywhere, girls who saw the incident were crying, and a huge chunk of the tailgating area was crime scene taped off. Instantly the scene went from a fun Saturday tailgating in the sun, to a very chaotic area where everyone knew that something big had just happened. It is really a tragic event with many questions that need to be answered such as….why would any cop pull a gun in a crowded area with drunk kids…why would another cop immediately shoot without yelling to check the situation first? It will definitely be interesting to see how many ways everyone will spin this incident and what the long term ramifications of this even will be. One thing is sure, this is the last thing that UCF and Orlando needs right now.

poop phone

2005-09-21T23:09:00.000-07:00

no...i'm actually not going to talk about how horrible my cell phone is and how friends have threatened to send my phone into the gulf so that I purchase one that will actually hold a call for longer than 5 minutes.

i am going to speak about a new phenomia. it's happened to me a couple of times, and i'm still not really sure what i'm supposed to do. in the middle of one of my breaks at work, i headed to burger king to use their wonderful bathroom facilities. just as I'm walking in, my cell phone rings. bathrooms are really good at two things.....providing a safe haven for tornados, and causing any small sound to echo like crazy. if you drop a pin in the bathroom, it sounds like a 747 is landing. i immediately turned red and booked it out of the bathroom. turns out no one was even in the bathroom, but how am i to not be embarrassed and ashamed of the bellowing cell phone ring for all of the bathroom users to hear? If i had tried to pick it up, the phone probably would have either slipped out of my hands and into the toilet, or it would have slid across the grimmy bathroom floor and directly underneath another stall. Good thing that i wasn't situated yet, because removing a cell phone from bunched up pants is as easy as getting people to watch arrested development. Maybe i'm wrong on this one. Maybe i should have picked up the phone and had one weird conversation for everyone to hear....

'yo'
'hey...what's up'
'not much...what you up to'
'ummm...crappin'
'oh yah...cool....how long you going to be doing that'
'ummm....wait...umm.............yah...i'll be here a while'
'soooooooo........you at home?'
'naw....burger king'
'you pick me up something?'

yet again i miss the days without cell phones....when there were not these extremely awkward situations, and no new areas for manners to arise. life was simple.

A Tale of Two Games

2005-09-18T20:21:00.000-07:00

Last week I was fortunate enough to get tickets to the swamp and visited a UF game. This week I got tickets for the first ever UCF/USF game in Tampa. I was extremely excited for both of the games. Fortunately both of these games did not fail and two fun, yet extremely different, weekends of college football were had.

I headed up to Gainesville early on Saturday. The whole way up on 75, I passed many a gator. I tried to do the chomp for them, but it’s surprisingly hard to chomp while driving a car at 80 mph. I would like to attempt a mini-chomp with only using one hand. (similar to one hand clapping) but I was afraid that my road neighbors would think that I was making fun of the chomp and then they would be forced to run me off the road. Anyways, once in Gainesville we traveled to Chelsea’s friend’s place to park the car. The house was the kid’s grandparents house. The only reason this house was constructed was to worship the glory that is UF. This house was located in a vortex where blue and orange are the only colors that exist and alligators always have their mouths open. We began tailgating. It was wonderful to be under actual shade while tailgating and at a traditional university. There was the usual tailgating scene with beer pong on folding tables, people yelling as they walked by, and footballs hitting many cars. My favorite part had to be when we walked over to the library while drunk to use the bathroom. We were quite loud to the two students at UF who do not like football. After some shots at a bar, we finally headed to the game. One word…..INSANE. The swamp is everything that college football is supposed to be. We packed into the student section and started yelling. I don’t think I stopped yelling until I got back to Orlando. One kid somehow was so drunk that he was able to fall asleep while laying on a friends butt. Here are some pics and vids from the game.

Videos-
Loud
The Wave
Orange

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After a few setbacks, we packed into the car, grabbed some Wendy’s, and headed for Tampa. I say packed, because in Abby’s little Hyundai we had 4 people, their bags, and 2 dogs. Few things are finer than a two hour drive with two dogs running around a car. Due to the ‘go knights!’ window paint, we got a few honks from fellow UCF-ers making the I-4 migration. In Tampa we met up with Abby’s brothers and began drinking. They are great guys that are a ton of fun. At the stadium you can not tailgate before 3 hours before the game. So while that fact stunk like bullshit, we were able to tailgate in a lot right next to the stadium. While we did not have grass, we did have all of the usual tailgating joys. It was a great environment before the game. Everyone was excited. There were tons of both UCF and USF kids running around. There were many mixed groups running around. You would see three kids wearing UCF shirts in the same group as 2 kids wearing USF shirts. I believe our group was split 50-50. There was a lot of talk before the game, but I believe it was all in great spirits. We of course got our asses handed to us, but I hope they continue this rivalry in future years. It’s fun for all ages!

ill - final

2005-09-13T22:07:00.000-07:00

i'll try to sum up my trip to illinois and indiana....better late than never..right ?

after indiana we were able to go up to my beloved chicago where we only had one day to look around. we hit up the normal sites and just walked around the city a bunch. it was so great to be in chicago in the summer.....even with all of my travels...i think chicago in the summer is one of the best places on earth. i felt bad for dan, because i know he'll love tons of things that the city has to offer, but we simply did not have time for it. That night we met up with some more illinois people and tried to go and party at northwestern. we had a great night of acting stupid and getting lost, but the party scene at northwestern leaves something to the imagination. they only had three bars. In NW defense..i believe that we were there the weekend before school starts. bright and early the next day we left for home. we made sure that we picked up white castle's one last time before heading too far south....and a whole crave case. the hurricane was hitting while we were driving through georgia...and it gave us one of the most interesting sky's i've ever seen. the sky was pitch black with dark grey clouds all over the place. the grey clouds were quickly moving southwest. with knowning where the clouds were going it was definately an interesting sight. we made it home bright and early on monday with my car smelling of jerky and white castles.

one of my favorite things about the trip is the wide-eyed enthusiasm from dan. since he had never been north of georgia, (sans east coast) the simplest things were amazing to him. he would see a grain elevator...and ask me what it was...then take a pic. he would just stare at the miles and miles of corn. and perhaps my favorite...he called everything a mountain....even the smallest hill. i'm quite glad that we were able to go...(even with our weekend probably totaling more hours in the car than in illinois) there's no place like home.

i'm going to say it again.....get out there and travel kids.

hot cat on cat action

2005-09-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

so the two cats that share my living space (and bathroom) were both sitting on our folded up pompison chair cushion. this is a rare occurrence for both cats to be out from under the couch and sitting on the cushion. I made sure to make the most of it and took a picture (after i put on cat on top of the other) and submitted it to http://www.stuffonmycat.com/ it's a fun site. i need to put more stuff on our cats.--------------------
it's the little things that are great......
as i was coming home from publix i saw a few things that made me smile... i'll share
-a girl in the car behind me singing to a song and then letting out a huge yawn in the middle. her mouth matched the music i was listening to
-a big construction worker with a safety vest on, where the vest was too small, but he still tied the ties on the side of the vest.
-a crossing guard who was basically constantly spinning around in circles so that she could smile and wave at every car that passed her.
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so tomorrow i'm heading up the road and hanging out in gainesville. I'm going to go visit niz and see my very first UF game. It's really pathetic how i've been so close to UF, FSU, and Miami for the last 4 years and have never been to any of their games. Well i finally got off my butt and bugged niz enough so that she got tickets. I'm quite excited and i'm sure we'll have a great day. The next weekend i'm heading to tampa for the first ever USF v UCF game. It should be a different experience...but i'm extatic to make fun of some ybor junkies.
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two for the price

2005-09-07T19:38:00.000-07:00

i love these pics

pics are property of: http://msittig.blogspot.com/
thank you for letting me post them.....if it is okay :)

videophile freaks out and destroys bbq

2005-09-07T11:29:00.000-07:00

This situation has happened to me so many times that i have to scream about it. i went to a bbq yesterday to hang out, drink, and watch the fsu/um game. I step inside the house, grab a beer, and go to sit down in front of the big screen. I look at the screen and a tear falls from my eye....not from sadness...not from a graphic image on the screen...not from sitting on my balls accidentily.....no this tear came from the horrible video levels on the screen. the tv was not adjusted properly at all. this tv was sooo far off that there was a good 1/5 of an inch red bar around the right and bottom edges of the screen. All onscreen text was blurry and barely readable and the overall picture looked like the camera had the resolution of the camera used in metropolis. It’s really a sad state when people purchase a nice big screen and can’t even take 2 minutes to adjust it properly. there are even numerous dvd’s out there that tell you specifically how to do it. I couldn’t take it anymore…so I went and ate some homemade salsa and watched the game on the 19 inch tv in the other room. for the love of technology...please adjust your tv's.

illinois recap #1

2005-09-04T03:13:00.000-07:00

it's been a week since i got back from my wonderful random trip to the midwest. i've just been trying to relax and catch up with my strenuous life of sitting on the couch, but now i'll finally write about the trip.

i got home from work around 9 and was supposed to be at dan's to leave at 10. i quickly showered, ate, and packed. i walked outside to grab a comforter from the bus to find something missing......the bus. so here i am..about 5 mins away from leaving the state for 4 days and i realize that my bus got towed. i called the property mgmt company...they acted like they knew nothing...i call the towing company...they said the property mgmt company called them out there. i call back and scream...they finally own up. Turns out one of my wonderful neighbors had been calling in complaints to the property mgmt company for a week and a half, yet they could not one bit couteous and CALL THE NUMBER ON THE SIDE OF THE BUS! i would have moved the bus in one day had that mystery neighbor been a normal neighbor and had called me personally. it's not like it was a mystery who owned the bus...my number was in big numbers on a for sale sign. anyways...after being on the phone with various people for 30 mins I was finally able to go over to dan's and leave. we left around 11 at night and headed north. dan made a 'I-75 or bust' party mix which was fun. It's a little more pop punk than i'm used to, but i like listening to other people's music for the change. We drove through the night and dan realized how much georgia stinks to drive through. Outside of chatanooga I decided to take a nap as dan was driving. i woke up and dan was going 50mph. turns out he was barely awake, but he didn't want to wake me up. luckly we didn't send the saturn into the back of a semi. I yelled at dan and told him i would drive. I realized that I'm extremely conditioned for driving long distances. After driving to illinois and back about 10 times, two roadtrips across the nation, I've had my fair share of driving while tired. This was the longest dan had ever been in a car. It was quite funny when we got to kentucky because it was like he was drunk. He couldn't sleep in the car so he was just so tired and out of it, and basically everything that came out of his mouth was nonsence. The hillarity kept me awake. It rained the whole time we were in kentucky, but we finally got to louisville. After taking the wrong exit we were finally able to make it to beth's house where we took naps. After the naps we jumped in the car again and headed towards bloomington. Again dan was hillarious, since he had never been north of georgia, he called everything 'mountains'. So all of the hills in southern indiana were 'mountians' according to dan. On the way to bloomington a wonderful police officer pulled me over and gave me a sheet of paper saying i'm dangerous in my saturn. It really stunk because i saw the car and said outloud 'i don't trust that car' as i was slowing down. For some reason the cops in indiana have the most advanced radar guns and they were able to tag me goign 75 before i slowed down at all. They even showed the gun to me and bragged about all the stuff it could do. Oh well...the ticket is actually cheap compared to florida tickets. In bloomington we got some good food adn then went to the store to stock up on booze for the party. Beth made sure to go to the self check-out so that she could practice her spanish before the trip. The booze store in bloomington was crazy. we had to show two id's and answer questions just to get in. I have an easier time when i sneek around the backlot of universal. They made dan spell his initials backwords. I think there should be a course in college where you just practice spelling things backwords. i really think you will have an upper hand on the world if you can spell anything backwords quickly. At the store i saw some cherry wheat unibroue that i had never seen before. i grabbed it and ran for the door. Also at the store i realized why IU gets ranked as the number one beer drinking school. There were about 6 guys there taht all had at least 6 cases of beer. You just don't see that that much in orlando. The party was fun with some good drinking games. As usual for some reason only the most annoying people stayed until 4 a.m. Including a really manly girl who acted like arnold when i shook her hand. I don't think i got an erection for a week after her manly crushing of my hand. Perhaps the most unfeminine thing ever done to me. There was the classic drunk girl at the party. You know...the girl that is sooo drunk that she can't feel anything and yells constantly. This girl actually proved taht she couldn't feel anything as she feel down and cut her knee open and then wouldn't let anyone put a bandaid on it. So anytime somone would walk into the room she's in...they would try to help her...and she would scream. I sat back and laughed. I was able to get dibs on the leather couch (although i was about 2 feet too long for it) and I stole someone's blanket so i was set for the night.

this post is too long so you'll have to wait for the next installments.
goodday

flying high

2005-09-02T16:10:00.000-07:00

so since i've recently gotten obsesed with jumping pictures, my collection has grown. last night i sat down and made a collection of them just for you guys to enjoy.

http://www.shortbusroadtrip.com/jump/

the trip to illinois was amazing. i'm feel that i will type up an entry about it tomorrow. as for now i'm busy working on some possible companies and possible movies. it's a rainy day in florida and i love it.

enjoy it!

random pete strikes again

2005-08-25T20:22:00.000-07:00

i'm going to indiana and illinois this weekend

yet again...a roadtrip has been started on a whim. earlier this week i got an email from beth, a super indiana girl, about her going away party on friday. i thought to myself....i wish i could go...then i relized... i can! after scouting out friends to find a copilot for the trip, we are good to go!

dan and i are leaving tonight....should be in bloomington by noon tomorow...then party friday night...then hit up grossburgers on the way to champaign where we will most likely do nothing but eat and drink until sometime sunday when we will have to jump in the car and book it back to orlando before dan's 3 o'clock class.

i'm sure these plans will change...but it's all about the adventure. we are goign to try to do some stupid things like take jumping pictures at each state line. or maybe always wear weird hats for the whole trip. don't know...we'll see.

have a goodweekend!

plate techtonics

2005-08-24T11:41:00.000-07:00

my brother came home last night. he tells me....'look at the back of my car'. i look.........somone stole his license plate. i laugh until my eyes water. my mind kicks in and I get really confused. who steals a license plate ? was there significace in the plates numbers that are an inside joke? did the person already steal an identical white VW and they needed a legit plate? (that is until my bro reported it stolen) whoever stole it actually went and completely unscrewed it. they took time, and care i could tell. is this a new teenage thug game? like yer cool shit if you can collect enough licence plates to spell something out on your wall ? i don't know. i'm confused, yet i laugh about it everytime i think about it.

land on all fours....sometimes

2005-08-20T03:42:00.000-07:00

i'm being the super-bum that i've turned into these days.

i currently am:
sitting in a lazy boy
on my laptop
playing poker online
talking to ppl in aim
browsing facebook
petting a cat that's on my lap
and watching oblongs on tv.

well a few minutes later the cat decides to leave. he moves over to the window sill next to me. he starts to look upwards at the top of the chair. i know what's he's thinking...he wants to jump and sit on the top of the chair. this is fine by me...he does it a lot and it seems like a comfortable place to sit. he makes the leap.

(panic-ed skratches)
thud

i belt out a huge laugh fit at 3:30 am.

i know he's fine...i can tell he's more embarassed than anything. i tried to pick him up to put him on the chair and he ran away.

you could tell by the sound of the thud that he didn't land on all fours like science books will tell you.
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unrelated..... huge m+m's are awesome. you grab the same handful that you have for years, but you get about 3 times the amount of chocolate.

it can be dangerous for cavities and caffine rushes.

bumps

2005-08-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

well it looks like i got into something. i'm like the family dog that runs away for 10 minutes and comes back with ticks. no one knows where i went...no one knows what i did... and no one knows how i got them.......well i don't have ticks, but i do have bumps. at first i though they were ant bites..but i checked my journal and I didn't have any entrys about running through an ant pile in search for gold. after a day or so the bumps multiplied and have spread. they are now all over my feet, some on my legs, and some on my elbows (i have no idea). by this time tomorrow i might have a new nickname. i think the forerunners are bummy, lumpy, or rash mc. poxinstein. it's the mystery of the week. i do not remember jumping into a patch of weird leaved plants, i do not remember slathering new-age soap over my feet, nor do i remember rubbing against a person with skin that resembles the appalacian mountains.

the thing about the bumps is that they just piss me off. bumps are the best thing in the world for putting a person in a bad mood. they are all itchy and red. they have no true purpose other than to piss you off. and bumps make you feel like a complete outcast. you will see people walking down the street with smooth skins...and you are just like 'why me?!!" I even have some on the bottom of my feet so every step I take I get even madder, yes madder, about the bumps. and of course it is driving me insane that they are just showed up at random. like a relative that shows up at your door, with no reason to be there, no anticipated departure date, and no giftbasket.

so i sit and sulk and i lather myself down with hydrocortisone cream and wonder how long it will be until Ripley's comes by to film the bumpiest man alive.

piggggg

2005-08-10T10:05:00.000-07:00

draw a pig and find out what it means about you!

zoom with me

2005-08-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

so mazda's doing a performance driving thing. they will probably want tons of input and will try to sell you cars....but hey...it's a chance to drive like the banshee that you are. the car's not yours...the transmission's not yours...and surely the tires are not yours...but the mile of rubber that you left on the pavement is yours. i signed up for the 9th at 1. sign up and come and race me.. if you think your foot has a higher concentration of lead in it than mine!

http://www.zoomzoomlive.com/

poker karma

2005-08-02T00:50:00.000-07:00

it took a long time. many nights were spent with a measly pile of white chips in front of me and the only movement was that of me fligging cards towards the center of the table like they were nothing better than peanut shells. i have been in a poker drought longer than the war in iraq it seems. finally tonight the poker gods have shed some light on me. don't get me wrong...i was short stacked (losing...in poker terms) for most of the night. while i kinda like to be short stacked because i play a wonderful tight game, it gets old losing sometimes. as tonight lingered on I finally started picking up some good cards and making some good plays. before i knew it almost every hand was a winning one. I quickly took two people out...then a third...and then took the final friend out in a quick 7 hand heads up game. it was good to finally walk away up a lot of money on the night. it probably won't happen again for a long time so i shall sit back and snuggle up to my money and dreams of swimming around in poker chips like uncle scrooge in duck tales.

ode to the bathroom ant

2005-08-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

i see you every day little buddy. as i walk into the bathroom i see you scatter around like i'm going to destroy every inch of tile around you. you scatter around like you just found yourself a nice pile of pcp and ate 8 times your body weight in it. i find this reaction somewhat shocking. i understand you have next to no mental capacity, but i've seen how smart you ants are on the discovery channel with your nests and bridges and whatnot. so what i don't understand is why you scatter at all. you've been living in my bathroom for over a week now and I have not made any attempts to kill you. I have not made any attempts to relocate you somewhere else. In fact i have even changed my walking path so that i did not squash you, my little friend. You always come out to greet me when i come into the bathroom and then do your little crazy ant dance. even when i'm drunk and coming in at 2:20 in the morning you do your little dance for me...and i appreciate it.

the photo's in the mail

2005-07-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

i've been snagging as many free photos as i can get from online printers to complete my wall. this is a new joy in my life. getting photos in the mail is a super gift all year long. it makes going to check the mail thrilling again. you order the prints and are not sure when you'll get them. so far i've been lucky and have gotten them quicker than expected. so i'm having a poopy or just a boring day, and then check the mail and get a gift. you have to check the pictures for the picture quality which is just another excuse to look through all of the pictures of your friends or of pretty trips. just puts a smile on my face.

it would be amazing to set 365 pictures from your own collection and have one mailed to you every day...guaranteed smile once a day.

who will protect this mouth ?

2005-07-21T17:31:00.000-07:00

i should have played more Tooth Protectors

it happened today. i pissed off the dental gods by being a good 40 minutes late to my dentist appointment. It's a good thing that most of my family goes to the same dentist and sees the same hygenist and we all talk to her. we love her, she cleans our teeth and puts up with our whinning...it's a good relationship. she saved the day and let me be cleaned even though i was superduper late. so as she's scraping away at my teeth she lets out a nice 'uh oh'. i'm like 'WHAT'. she found cavities.......yes that squirly thing at the end of that word is a S which makes the word plural. After going almost 23 years without a single cavity, it looks like the plaque carnival had a stop in my mouth and left a few cavities to haunt me. i'll be honest...i've always felt proud....well godlike actually....in my ability to sustain a minimal level of anal retentiveness with my teeth and still have strong teeth with no cavities. i guess that party in my mouth has stopped and only bacteria are invited. enough jokes...i just feel juvinille...pathetic...and unhygenic. the only thing that will make me feel better is a nice box of chocolate.

taco date needed

2005-07-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

tacos are the best food to cook as a date. it's simple, hard to mess up, and there's stuff for both people to do. fun times. there's not a better date food.

i saw three commercials in a row about massage theorpy schools....my back has been hurting ever since.

pete's email to marcel

2005-07-17T16:13:00.000-07:00

"just wanted to tell you that dusty's new post on diaryland is a complete tear-jerker. but if i were you...i'd save it for the middle of the day at work. then if yer ballin yer eyes out..yer boss might come to you and say 'hey kiddo...what's wrong'...and you'll just be like 'it's soooo saddd' and then he'll be like 'maybe you should take the rest of the day off and go and get some ice cream' and you'll be like 'but no...my work!' and then he'll be like 'forget the work...your happiness is more important than our silly work' and then you'll leave work and call me and we'll go to a waterpark and laugh the day away."

boring post

2005-07-16T12:42:00.000-07:00

well the boredom is setting in. i'm finally moved in and have everything set up at my brothers place. I'm content with everything and I only have a few things that just need to be picked up by people from free cycle. so i really do not have much to do on a day to day basis. I've been staying somewhat busy by going to the beach and hanging out with friends, but that just keeps my nights interesting. I'm still just waiting to find out more about contract work. I really want to do the work for financial reasons and to get me out of the house for a while. it's been nothing but a strand of 'we should know more this day' and then that day comes around an we know even less than we did before. i'm still optimistic for it, but this waiting game really sucks, especially since I know if anything does happen, I will have to up and leave within a day or so. So when the contract does come around everything could change very quickly. I have looked for real jobs a little bit more, but I do my usual hour search on monster and then get fed up with it all. I've also looked for more international positions or various programs. I still have not found any in particular that I really think are solid programs. there's a surprising amount of programs where either the work is bitchwork, or they actually want you to pay them to go and work for people internationally. The more I think about it, I do really want to do something unique that involves travel, but as I said nothing is catching my eye as a great opportunity. I do believe I'm really going to try to do the transatlantic cruise for my next trip. there's just something peaceful and romantic about doing the same journey as the great explorers. although the conditions are much nicer, I still think it would be an interesting experience that not many people do. someone brought it up to me that I would have been on the titanic had I been around back then. I agree. So for the next trip I want to start it off by doing the 14 day cruise across the big pond and then hopefully spend at least a month traveling europe. I know this trip will be expesive, but either i can produce enough funds before, have some sort of company up and running to fund it, or will pick up random jobs in europe to pay for it. I've heard more random stories of people traveling and working intermittently to pay for their travel. I think i could do it.

buzzkill

2005-07-12T00:21:00.000-07:00

last week we went to a small place in orlando called the peacock room for drinks. it is a stylish, indie-ish, martini-ish bar on mills road. while there we looked at their flyers for upcoming shows. we see that on the next thursday jim o'rourke is playing a show. we freak out. me and my roomates love wilco and jim o' rourke's solo work. we kind of wondered why we hadn't heard about the show, but we just figured that jim is fairly odd and might just want to play a small show at a small bar. fastforward to thursday. we are all excited for the show and jump in the car and ride out to the peacock room. once there we ask when he's going on and they tell us it's going to be a late show since the dj was going to play until 1030, then an opening band at 1030 until probably midnight when jim would come on. we sit and wait. the bar is extremely too cool for us and smokie. the opening band was horrible, but we sat through it in anticipation. of course the show was running late and it wasn't until sometime after midnight when people started setting up for jim o' rourke. we looked around and didn't see anyone who looked like him. we weren't completely sure of what he looks like, but we had seen him on a dvd and had an idea. we don't see anyone close to him and we start to get worried. the band started to play. crap. they introduced themselves as the 'filfy criminals'. after the first terrible song we hear a guy say 'hey jim' to the lead singer. a 40 year old lead singer with a bad voice. unless jim was part of an ageing and sucking experiment, we'd been had. we go out to the doorman, a young kid who loves to talk to everyone for hours at a time.....

us -> "isn't jim o'rourke playing tonight"
him-> "yah...he's playing right now"
us -> "um...jim o'rourke who played with wilco?"
him-> "oohh...jim o'rourke of sonic youth fame?"
us -> "yes"
him -> "HA....NO"

so just because you see a flyer that has the name of a musician that you think you know, doesn't mean that it's not some local artist that thinks he's the shit and promotes his show as a recognizable name from famous bands.

To the real Jim O' Rourke -> If you play a show in Orlando either pitch it as Jimmity O'Rourke or just give us a call when yer coming.

To the fake Jim O' Rourke -> I don't go around writing operating systems as bill gates, or starting wars as george bush so don't go around playing shows as jim o'rourke....use your bandname.

return to sender

2005-07-08T00:38:00.000-07:00

i'm back.

I have been back for a while, but have not been posting. After writing a bunch with the shortbus blog i've kidda just wanted to stay away from blogging for a little bit. I would really like to keep the quality of posts high and have this be not just a blog where i bitch about day-to-day events. We'll see if i can achieve this mission.

Here's my general life update:

job: no

school: no

home: rick's condo

money: doing okay

excited about: finally having something concrete happen.

Here's my story of the day:

i was on my way to titusville to visit my mom. It's been over a month since i've seen her so I was just going over to visit. I was on the road just minding my own business. I was in the right lane and there were some cars in front of me. The natural florida road pattern was occurring where each lane is equal and it's somehow okay for cars to sit in the left lane and travel at the same speed as the vehicles in the right lane. This fun vehicle pattern creates what i call 'the moving douche. Anyways, next to me in the left lane was a truck that had skyscraper envy and was lifted a few feet above the road. So i'm chilling in my lane and this truck just starts moving over. Now it wasn't completely trying to change lanes nor was it just going to stay in it's own lane. I figure the drive just heard the results of a nascar race and he accidentally knocked over his bowl of grits and had to make sure the grits didn't stain his boots. the silly thing is that this truck probably would just fall on it's side if you actually tried to go off road with it. I'm watching this truck move dangerously close to my car and i start to slow down and prepare to do a new york wave. There was room for him to squeeze into my lane if i slammed on my breaks and drove off of the road. So the truck moved over...then acted as if it was going to return to it's original lane, but then quickly decided to aim directly for my car. I snap. I need my horn to portray my anger at this horrible driver. So i hit the steering wheel anticipating loud noise to show this truck how stupid he is. What do i get ? Beep. Not HONK...NOT EERRRRRRRRR... NOT HEY...GET OUT OF MY LANE YOU STUPID TRUCK!! so the only response to this huge truck that thinks nothing of my existence is....beep.

The one time i actually need my horn to be loud and obnoxious...it gives me the wimpiest beep that would only scare my brother's cats. From now on, i'm installing air horns on all of my cars.

away i go ! ! !

2005-06-01T18:50:00.000-07:00

alright kids. i am going to leave this blog to rest for a while. while on the roadtrip i will be posting all pics and stories up on the blog at:

http://www.shortbusroadtrip.com/

this will be the definitive site for your pete updates. so bookmark the site and we will try to update as much as possible. it should be a great trip and i look forward to input from everyone out there in cyber-space!!!

trying to not explode

2005-05-31T17:31:00.000-07:00

i did it again. i made the mistake of going to our lovely neighborhood walmart. while i don't mind walmart and still remain passionate about my first place of employment, our local walmart in orlando is actually satan's little nephew. let me explain, our walmart on the east side of orlando is a super-duper-biggerthanmost3rdworldcountries-supercenter. I believe it officially is one of the busiest grocery stores in the world with like one septillion dollars of food flowing through it monthly. (had a grocery manger in one of my classes). orlando has this thing where the small towns around orlando don't allow certain things to be built...such as walmarts. so this one magical walmart quite gracefully serves the entire east side of orlando. so i go to walmart to pick up some stuff for the roadtrip. it's just utter chaos there, but i'm really good at detaching myself and just looking down and walking fast to avoid running over families and old people. but here's the part where i feel the need to blog. i go to get batteries for my camera. there's a couple in their 30's looking at all of the rechargable batteries. the husband is on the floor looking deep into the price tags while holding a recharger in his right hand like a mellon. i think...okay... since they are taking up the whole area and i don't feel like looking over their shoulder to pick out my battery's, i'll just wait..they won't be that long. i walk to the music dvd's and act like i care that 311 has a live dvd. the couple sits there. the husband keeps talking the whole time...'should i get this? how about this? well this one has 6 batteries...and the other has 4...but this one is $20 and the other is $18' the whole time the wife was looking down at him, but i think she was actually trying to look through the walmart floor and down to hell where there might be someone who could help her out of this situation. she was doing the standing thing that i love, where a person is standing, but every single joint in their body is trying to be relaxed while still remaining standing. if you are in the position and sneeze you completely just fall flat on your stomach and look like a whale. this standing position is only made when you know you have to stand so that you don't get yelled at by whomever is near you, but you truly want to be laying on the floor because you don't want to put any effort in being where you are. so the husband just kept on comparing products and matching chargers with batteries in a cycle of wastefullness. they did this for about 15 mins until i couldn't take it anymore and just walked up and grabbed the prettiest batterys and ran to the checkout. it's really crazy how there is soo much selection that people busy themselves with the minute differences in price and product. wouldn't it be strange if people had to use their time on earth maybe for something like survival?

i went to the front where an old cuban woman was cussing because the 10 items or less lane couldn't take debit. wal-mart was out to get her. nothing like the orlando wal-mart. there is no such thing as a trip to walmart without a corresponding blog entry

man loves lists

2005-05-26T13:33:00.000-07:00

it's happened again. time magazine has created a list of the top 100 movies of all time.

http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/the_complete_list.html

I'm not going to debate any of the picks in depth. here's some of my two second observations:

gone with the wind isn't on the list---plus
barry lyndon is on the list--plus
invasion of the body snatcher is on the list--minus
it's interesting how they cheated and grouped all star wars and all lord of the rings together, while only having godfather I and II count.

I really am fascinated on how humans everywhere need lists. i truly believe that list making and reviewing is such a necessity to everyone. I understand the benefits of creating easy topics of conversation and debate as well as a method to place various levels of importance upon items of interest. still everything does not seem to completely add up to me. humans just seem overly-obsessed with lists. for some reason people seem to almost get insecure without lists by which they can express their opinions about what they are interested in.

no matter what i will always think back to my old roomate who was the master of lists. at any point in time he had perhaps 5-10 different lists of his favorite books, movies, or just experiences. yes he would write these lists down and yes he would update these lists on a daily basis. definately an interesting guy. it made him happy.

back in town

2005-05-24T23:51:00.000-07:00

so i did a cute thing again. i wrote out a blog post on the airplane ride up to illinois. i think it was a good one. i have not read it yet, so i might just have typed up a bunch of junk and i haven't realized that i was just high off of the oxygen in the plane. anyways i left the notebook with the post in my brother's car. i might swing by tomorrow and pick it up just so i can post it and put a fake timestamp so no one knows how late i am to post it :)

i will post other fun watseka stories including classmates being prostitutes, walking down mainstreet drunk (and being the only people on main, fun encounters with people with babies, and of course the usual observations about going home after being away for 2 years.

so i'm heading out for the huge road trip next thursday. I am going crazy with all of the planning, arranging, and making sure that i am able to leave for a month without my life blowing up here. it will be quite a releif actually when we get everything ready and are simply on the road. once on the road we basically have no official obligations. we have our account set up for the website and hopefully in the next few days i will have a basic site up and will of course give out the address to everyone for everyone to enjoy...and spread. :)

here are the only plans so far:

June 2nd -> fly to dallas...amtrak to oklahoma city
June 3rd -> purchase bus, stock up on supplies
week later -> make it to san fran
week later -> make it to austin
week later -> make it to New Orleans

basic order of cities.... oklahoma city. denver. salt lake city. san francisco. las angeles. tuscon. roswell. austin. new orleans.

here is a late night drawing of our driving path....just wanted to make it to see if it formed anything...it doesn't.

2005-05-24T23:50:00.000-07:00

map1

another trip

2005-05-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

off i go again. today i'm going back up to illinois. i have been commissioned to drive my step-grandma's car back from illinois. i am completely excited. it's been two years since i've been in watseka and the whole trip is freeeeee!!!! i have contacted a bunch of people whom i haven't seen in ages and i have planned out to eat a bunch of food that i haven't digested in ages. i should be even able to stop by and see my favorite indiana girls for a night! should be good.

when i get back, it's going to be chaos. I will be getting my new laptop in the main. (and hense will have to customize it) then i will be finishing off planning for the huge road trip (still unnamed). and i believe i will have to move out of my house since i will not be back before our lease ends. i have to do all of this in a week and a half!

update on the roadtrip: we should be putting a deposit down on the bus this weekend. we should be arranging our plane flight this week. So far our itenerary follows: oklahoma city to denver to salt lake to san fran to LA to roswell to austin to new orleans to home. we know it will change a bunch as we go.

i'll be back with illinois pics soon!

plane thoughts

2005-05-17T14:24:00.000-07:00

i just got done reading an article on Chicago. the writer went to chicago and to all of the classic spots. while his writing and attitude were not to my liking, i really enjoyed the article and it really made me excited for sometime in the future when i will be able to finally go and see all of the classic chicago spots that i have never experienced. but alas it will have to wait until after all of the traveling that i have on my plate. the whole issue of 'spirit' (may 05) by southwest airlines was great. i found out about some fun festivals that i'm going to try and integrate into the roadtrip. i saw an add for 'pete's dueling piano bar' which is supposedly the 'original rock piano bar'....i'm definately going to have to go and see how my beloved pat o's lines up to it. i just saw a lear jet fly by my plane...sooo fast...made our speed of a couple hundred miles an hour look like a turtle in the air. i also read an article about a technology-interaction project in cali where a team made a garbage can with a projection system that would project images of what has been thrown away rotating around the can. i really love this kind of multidisiplinary technology work....i need to continue to create my own porjects and just continue to think in a design manner..even if i'm not officially in the field. i really am thinking about teaching english in asia for the time being. i really have the need to travel and i know that i would be completely fascinated by all of the differences and nuances of their culture and society. not oldy observing thier lives, culture, and technology, but also being a part of it would be such a great experience. life is too short to not do this and i am at a wonderful position where i am flexible enough to just up and leave for a year without major recourse. i really do appreciate, thank, and love my entire family for their suport and enthusiasm towards this. they really are a vital part in setting me up so that i am able to do things like the roadtrip.

south carolina #1

2005-05-16T18:33:00.000-07:00

alright..more stuff to write about and no time to do so.

i had my trip to south carolina. it was great. i really love the mountains (or anywhere that has higher elevation than florida) and it was great just to be able to drive on a slope even if it was only for a few days. trees are also much better up north. i really dislike florida trees...something about them just makes them ugly...or at least not as cool as northern trees. here's the first carolina story:
----------------
we got to the place around midnight. it's a gated community so we checked in and got our key. the security guard with the best southern accent just kinda handed us a map with a highlighted path that turned into a big highlighted circle of perhaps the area in which ryan's condo was at. as we pull away my low fuel light comes on. we drive up the steep mountain barely seeing any turn in front of us. we get lost. after about 4 u turns and a lot of yelling and throwing the map around we finally find the place. the place is huge. it's a 3 story house. the garage light is on. we are not sure if it's the right house or not. we aren't really sure if we are in the right state or not anymore. we go and try to open the back door. the key does not move. we try the front....does not move....shit. we go back to the back door. the key kind of moves a little bit. but now we think we are going to break the key. time for the front door...still nothing. back door again. (this sounds like a bad porn) finally we get in. now everyone has seen scary movies...and this was one. the three of us slowly walking through the house turning on lights...not knowing what we are going to see around every corner...trying to make as much noise as we can. so if there are monsters, ghosts, or naked people in the house they have time to hide so they can scare us when the time is right. it takes a while but we open every door in the house and it's clean.

on to the next day. we get up and leave. we barely find the exit to the community. now it was decision time. we needed gas. i remembered that there was a gas station on the way to the place...but i couldn't remember how far it was..maybe 20 miles. we neeeded to go in the opposite direction to get to the park, but we had no clue if there would be a gas station or not. we figure......hey...it's a road trip...lets go into the unknown. well the unknown was not cool. we get around 15 miles down the road...nothing. as i see the gas needle caress the E line i see a sign that says 'north greenville college next left'. me being supersmart says...hey...a college must have a gas station near it. we turn. the road gets smaller...we are going down a classic country road. nothing but small houses and fields around us. another 10 miles down the road we get to something that resembles a town. we are looking and see no gas station. finally we look over to the right and see about 10 buildings with a sign out front that says 'north greenville college'.....crap. we found a nice country college with an enrollment of 1000 none of which own a gas station. we hit the one light in the town and turn right. a little down the road we see a firestation. yet again my smarts kick in and i say...'hey...lets ask them where the nearest gas station is!' we pull in...dave runs in. the guy tells him 'take a right at the light...then a left at the fork in the road and about 5 miles down is a willis' ' we are excited...whatever a willis' is, it is only a few miles away and has gas. we start heading down the road. I pass a small fork in the road...say oh shit...then turn around and go down the fork. the road gets smaller...the houses get even farther apart. we drive on the road for 10 miles.....no willis'. we start cussing up and down about how stupid the fireman is and how he couldn't put out a fire on his forehead. so we make u-turn #17 and head back to the main road of the small town. another decision time. we figure we are deep enough in that our only choice is to go deeper. we head further down the road with little hope in sight. then finally....we see another fork! we almost get hit by a pickup truck when we turn into the fork. we head down the road for a while and low and behold we go over a small hill and see a citgo with 'W. M. Willis #3' in neon lights above the door. we made it to the promiseland! i don't know how my car made it so far on fumes, but i'm quite happy we did not get stuck in the backwoods of south carolina. while getting gas we got to see two old farmers in overalls sitting on a bench outside of the gas station and a loud southern woman yell about her children on the way out to her car. we drive 30 mins back to our original road and head off to the park.
-------------------------------------------
i like lists. and lists are even better when they are of positive nature...so here's a really good list:

things that i am excited about:
going back home...seeing people i haven't seen in years...eating all of my favorite food
seeing a movie at the lorraine theatre
getting a laptop
picking a theme and making a webpage for the road trip
going on the large road trip
finding something to do next year including working and traveling
pat o's with an interesting furman girl
depositing graduation money...then blowing it on items listed above

as one can see i have a lot of stuff on my plate. one would also see that job searching has dropped off of it. i am still job searching. but to my family's dismay i am really enjoying the fact that i can stand back for a little bit and really try to get out and enjoy life as much as i can without anything holding me back. i really have very few obligations right now, and as a cute furman girl would say...great things happen when you are flexible enough to let them happen.

2005-05-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

the kicker with the story....the next day we went left and were only 7 miles away from a gas station.

here's south carolina pics

rocks and water

triptastic

2005-05-09T01:19:00.000-07:00

well i am free of all binding things...things such as tests...things such as tuition...things such as underwear...things such as the title 'student'. i'm now one of those old alum things. graduation was good. it's a very interesting experience i suggest as many people try to go through with it if you haven't yet. college graduation comes up so fast. me and abby were walking into the auditorium and really just freaking out thinking about how it seemed like yesterday that we were in orientation and asking where buildings were. there was so much excitement and anticipation in the ceremony, yet the ceremony had no real substance to it. the ceremony serves only the purpose of show and officially i was no different before or after....yet while in the ceremony you could feel the anticipation and excitement of all of the graduates. i still think my favorite part was hearing the announcement of the graduate 'steve action jackson'. i am still wondering what phonetic(ironic how it's spelled that way) spelling mr. jackson put down. act-on. AC-shun. ax-on. following this post will be some random graduation pics. i have more, but will not clog the blog with too many of them. i really wish photolog would work better, but they are doing upgrades and the service is lagging. on to other topics

happy mother's day. this day is great and really makes us snot-nosed kids act correctly towards their mothers and every other female figure in their lives. maybe we should have mother's day more often. maybe quarterly....i couldn't do monthly...but i think quarterly is reasonable.

so this summer is filling itself up with traveling fairly quickly. I am hopefully going to south carolina for a mini-road trip with little dave and maybe pennington. we will only be gone from tuesday(leave after interview) until friday(return before party) but we will hopefully get to see some attractive mountains and maybe do some activities such as hiking, climbing, or rafting. yet again...pics will be posted. then today i found out that i get to do a service trip up to illinois. my step-grandma is moving down to florida and i have been commissioned to drive her car down here. this works out perfectly because next week there will be tons of watseka-folk back in town and i should be able to run up to watseka and have some fun with old friends! then there's the mother of all trips...mexico. me and big dave are in the very early stages of plotting our mexico trip. i'm really excited for this one and really hope we can pull it off. if anyone wants to give any suggestions of places to go in mexico or ways to raise money for the trip...please email. :) i am glad that i should get some traveling in this summer, but planning out traveling hinders my job search. as long as i don't get myself trapped in a corner financially by the end of the summer, everything should be alright.

grad3

2005-05-08T22:14:00.000-07:00

grad2

2005-05-08T22:12:00.001-07:00

twins

2005-05-08T22:12:00.000-07:00

group

2005-05-08T22:11:00.000-07:00

grad1

random update

2005-05-04T15:53:00.000-07:00

i need to update more...but as with most things in my life i am really moody when it comes to posting. just like how i want my mood to match the music i'm listening to...the food i'm eating...i also want my mood to match the content of my blog post. this is why i keep on mentioning all of these different topics to talk about but never actually post them. the thing is though, that i really do not want to change this. (i get this trait from my lovely mother who would not do anything unless she felt like it...hehe.) with everything when your mood matches it...it just makes it so much better and it ends up working out for the best. steak tastes great when your in the mood for it...radiohead is amazing when your in the mood for it...and posting about spring break is great when you are in the mood for it....if you are not in the mood and try to force it, it just ends up like a bad prom night. anyways.. it's finally a rainy day in florida...which is my favorite kind of day here. most floridians get really mad, but for me it's a needed change to the constant heat and sun. and yet again...if the rain matches my mood...it is great. so even though the rain messed up my plans for the beach. hopefully the rain will make our grass grow so we don't have the worst lawn in the subdivision and get chased out by the homeowners mob. i am enjoying the rain completely, as long as it doesn't hurt the plans for tonight. so tomorrow is the big day. i graduate. if finally hit me today as i was washing the shirt i'm wearing tomorrow that this is finally happening. i actually lost my tickets to graduation for about 45 mins today...had about three heart attacks and dug through a can of garbage...and then i ended up finding them underneath some underwear. i find the irony in that i couldn't find them today because i cleaned my room yesterday. so cleaning my room actually had a negative effect on me finding what i need. had i not cleaned my room, i wouldn't have moved the papers near the tickets which made the tickets fall to the floor where they were covered by underwear. so this is my parting lesson to you kids....never clean your room.

here's random pictures of my house right now.

2005-05-04T12:53:00.003-07:00

sink

2005-05-04T12:53:00.002-07:00

rain

2005-05-04T12:53:00.001-07:00

closet

2005-05-04T12:53:00.000-07:00

room

2005-05-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

band

sentimental man

2005-05-01T03:41:00.000-07:00

i had a great night. hanging out with friends...going to pat o'brians and singing our hearts out..going to a party...then finishing off the night with lazy moon. i'm going to be sappy and just say that i love all of my friends so very much. soo many memories of soo many fun times. i just really want to say that i appreciate and love everything that all of my friends have done for me over time. good friends just never get enough recognition and thanks. if i end up moving sometime soon, i will miss you all so very much and the hardest thing will be to be away from you all.

thank you

fun with gmaps

2005-04-27T00:37:00.000-07:00

why is it soo much fun to play with google maps? map sites have been around forever. satalite sites have been around forever. there's just something about google maps where you send someone a link of something and the next thing you know, you are trading links of satalite images of all kinds of different stuff.

this pic makes me sad...makes me miss home....isn't the corn so cute ? doesn't this small town look so nice and quaint ?

watseka illinois (this picture is (c) google inc.)

i always think of such great heights when i see satalite shots of the midwest, where ben gibbard speaks of 'patchwork farms'...it's truly the best way to describe it. i remember flying from seattle to chicago last summer and just being amazed at the view of farms in midwest..so pretty. sometime soon i think i'm going to post about all of the things that are different in illinois and florida. and maybe some stuff about what i miss about illinois and what i'll miss about florida.....but not tonight. wow..i'm really good of thinking about blog ideas...posting them...then never writing them out. i guess it's an area for improvement. enjoy the pic...have a great night.

firefox

2005-04-24T22:03:00.000-07:00

here's an interesting thing....a friend actually did not want to talk to me, because she was able to catch up with what was going on in my life via this blog. therefore we had no reason to talk on the phone. quite interesting how i'm getting neglected by having a blog. hehe.

firefox
i'm not sure if i really need to go into the full firefox rant. i believe i have told most everyone about the program and why they need it. but here it goes again.

firefox is an open-source browser that is built off of code originating from the mozilla project (which can actually be traced back to the university of illinois). while i have been using firefox for a while now, it has reached a level where anyone can feel safe, secure, and at home with firefox. the interface of firefox without a new skin is very similar to the IE interface and many parents have found it easy to use :) Just some of the reasons to get firefox are that firefox is faster than IE, better at popup blocking than IE, faster with security updates than IE, and totally customizeable. while you may not see the need to switch over, by people simply switching over microsoft has finally sped up the development of IE. so at the very least everyone should be downloading firefox so the development of IE actually moves forward as opposed to the current path of the software. i'm talking about ie too much...back to firefox. tabbed-browsing, keyboard shortcuts, and live bookmarks make firefox so much more efficient than other browsers. after you install firefox, you must look for the themes and extensions to make firefox the best browser for you. this is where firefox is truly amazing. the range and quality of extensions for firefox make the program so much more than a simple browser.

here is my list of essential extensions..
1)auto copy - this makes it so that whenever you highlight text it will automatically copy the text to the clipboard. i'll admit at first i thought i would hate this. after using it it has become the most usefull plug in. this plug in makes copying text back and forth between websites and documents a million percent faster. if you ever need it not to copy, simply click the icon in the lower right and it will disable it. no commitment.

2)gmail notifier - simple plug in that sits in the corner and will alert you when you have new mail in gmail...small...simple...great. one click and you will be in your gmail inbox and reading the new msg.

3)fireftp - most recent addition to my plug-in list. this is a full-featured ftp client that opens up in a new tab. it's wonderful to have a normal ftp interface (not IE drag and drop) right inside of your browser.

4)ieview - i won't lie. some pages are designed for IE and will not let you in without using it. but for that one page out of 10000, this plug in makes it easy to use IE. this creates a 'view page in IE' command for the right-click menu. works wonderfully. you can right click...see the page..and close IE in seconds.

5)bettersearch - this plug in makes it so that whenever you search in any major search engine, that when the results page pops up you get small screenshots right next to the link of the result. this makes searching much more efficient since you can see what type of page you are going to visit before even clicking a result

6)nuke anything - this one does what it says. it makes a new right-click command where you can remove anything from a webpage. if you are sick of an ad, or do not like a certain text box or graphic...simply right click and remove it from the page. don't worry...if you refresh the page everything will go back to normal.

7)stumbleupon - the last one...but the most fun one. stumbleupon creates a new toolbar where you can give any webpage and thumbs up or down. as you search stumbleupon creates a profile of what you like and are interested in and then compares it to other people with similar interests. at anytime you can click the stumble button and be taken to a random website. i've found many interesting websites this way that i never would have found.....great times.

as for theme's i'm currently using Pinball by david james...it's sleek and smooth...i like it a lot. my other favorite is 'noia 2.0 extreme', it's really cartoony, but really attractive. Here is a screenshot of my beatiful firefox....how will you customize yours ?

some other time i will get into some of the wonderful shortcuts contained in firefox!

cyber spring cleaning

2005-04-23T13:39:00.000-07:00

so my ideo project is submitted. everything came together quite well in my opinion. now we just wait and see. the whole experience of putting everything together and working with everything to get it developed and edited was great. enough about that though. i now finally have some time again. no more trips. no more presentations. the only thing i have left with school is one final that is a week away. it was really odd having my last week of class...really sad. i know i will be back for grad school, but its just the classic feeling of turning the page on a period of life that i will never fully return to again. as you probably can see since i have time i've gotten back to nerddom. i have updated the template on this nice little blog. i think this looks more attractive. i will try to do some more edits to it to make it different and more personalized, but i need to refine my html and css knowlege in the process. i have added a bunch of links...i tried to put a lot of the links i visit regularly or links of significance. yet again i will try to write more spring break and illinois stories...but they are coming along slowly. i need to do it before my memory fails me though.

i really enjoy the fact that i graduate on 05-05-05. easy to remember. the night will be fun being the cinco. and it adds up to 15. (sidenote: it's really interesting how through school and just society in general we always must put things in three....every kind of list must have at least three things, essays with three reasons, oh no...i'm doing it again. it just seems engraved that that's how you talk/write....'i like/mean/want this because of a, b, and c.' i wonder if there's any cultures that are build on 5...where you always have to list five things...that would be rough) i still somehow am enjoying the uncertainty of my life coming up. i am just over a week from graduation and have no clue where i will be in two months from now. big dave keeps on pitching the idea of traveling this summer. i am warming up to it more and more. if the graduation fairy puts a few quarters under my pillow i might just book a flight and go. wherethehellismatt.com would be proud. i like this post...so i will stop here.

link of the day:
hp has paper that you can print on...and then peel and stick it on your ipod. basically it's a removable tattoo for your ipod. pretty good idea considering how crazy people are towards a) the look of their ipod, b) ipod accessories, and c) stickers

http://zmamgmwspro05-f.tay.hp.com/activitycenter/us/en/music/tattoo

i'm not sure what i'd put on mine. i would have to buy an ipod first. but maybe i'd put a picture of a cornfield...maybe a picture of some food... or maybe something that looks like the inside of my pocket(camo)

next post:
firefox and essential plug-ins: why you need firefox...and what plug ins make it one of the best software programs out there right now!

busy busy busy

2005-04-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

it's been a while

for perhaps the first time this semester, I am truly busy. I have been basically non-stop working on my IDEO project ever since I got back from Illinois. The project seems to be coming together fairly well. It should be sent out by the end of this week. I still need to finalize soo many small decisions. I hate that part of the application process...the small details. Sometimes it doesn't matter....sometimes they mean everything. It'd be nice if we could just us osmosis and pour some water on my head and then you'll be able to tell exactly what i'm thinking and then determine if you should hire me or not. That would be a great pool party.

Illinois was great. A lot of great food. A lot of drinking. A lot of good friends. I really couldn't ask for a better trip. While there were people i did not get to see, the people that i did see made up for it. I am soo glad I finally got off my butt and went up there. It was soo interesting to be back home...but to have home feel so different. I imagine it will be strange again in a few years when i come back to florida after leaving(hopefully). I really enjoy it though. As with everything I love to analyze how places can make you feel. I think people take it for granted. I will always get a certain feeling when I'm driving down a country road and see nothing but miles of corn and there is no way to replace it.

it's the last week of school....s c a r y....I keep on running into people who claim they are jealous of me graduating. My only response is that it is quite scary. Don't get me wrong, I definately feel prepared, and I am ready for the real world....but it's just scary to actually be there. College delays that whole growing up/gaining full responsibility thing. so here i come insurance payments and 40 hour work weeks.

anyways, I'm going to cut this post short. i still have tons to write about, but until the job searching slows down I am keeping everything simple. I downloaded some great firefox extensions and I'm going to play with them then get to bed early so I can have a full day working on my project. gnight.

pete and design

2005-04-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

well it's happened again. This time...i think it's serious. If you have known me for any period of time you've heard me rant about a little company called IDEO. IDEO is the world's largest industrial design firm. Companies come to them with an array of products, buildings, or environments and let IDEO redesign it. They take the product apart and analyze it from every angle to come up with the most innovative and revolutionary product that is truly based around the people who use it. I have always loved their work and the entire philosophy and environment of the firm.

So what i've been doing for the last maybe 6 years is i read about IDEO and get completely motivated to try to work for them. I really think it would be my dream job to be able to work with creative people on a vast number of products and be able to redesign all of the products for the better. Truly a Modern Day Inventor. So i'll get motivated to work towards positioning myself to work for them, then after a few weeks i hit the sad reality of my current path in life as a business student and force myself to push my ideas back in my brain and focus on more feasible paths. As i said, i've been going through this cycle of getting really ambitious, then backing away.

well i'm ambitious again. but this time...stuff is going to be different. It's the perfect time in my life to just put my balls to the wall and do it. So i'm not backing down anymore. While it still is a long shot to get a job or even an internship at IDEO, it is worth my time. It's really good to have something to work towards that i'm really passionate about. The more I think about it, the path of working for ideo and moving to california or chicago would be the best change in life that i can imagine.

So while it is going to be bad to not be applying for other positions, my time will be spent composing the best application package that I can provide. I am creating a full design project for them, creating an upfront and honest cover letter depicting my passion, posting all elements on a well-designed website, and then actually giving them the link to this silly blog. (Hi...if anyone from IDEO is reading). Hopefully i will have one instant of good luck..and this be it. I'm doing this. It's going to be fun!

pre-post loss illini party

2005-04-05T01:46:00.000-07:00

it's the night before my trip to illinois. it's finally hitting me that i'm going. I forgot about it for most of the day. i've had quite a productive day, i just checked my list of stuff to do and i did just about everything on it. really makes you feel productive. I've gotten some good work in on my ideo project and i've gotten a few more ppl on board for help. But there is soooo much more to do to really make an amazing project. and it will be hard to do while in illinois. But i'm going to try my hardest and we'll see what comes from it. I really need to nail down some stuff about myself which is perhaps the hardest part of the project...self realization. I went and spoke with my great professor friend. I only was going to talk to him for 30 mins and we ended up talking for two hours. we have such great conversations, i really will miss him when one of us moves. It's almost a race to see who gets out of here quicker. everyone, except my brother, has been really optimistic about this project...it's good to have ppl behind you. i thank you all.

i watched the video from spring break....it was great. i really had a good laugh...you know the kind of laugh where your stomach hurts for a while afterwords. it really was good times and many years from now, i'll think back to spring break and smile. the stories you'll still have to wait for me to type up....it probably won't be up until after i'm done with my project.

speaking of the project....back to it. Have a great night. I will blog some great hometown stories when i'm back!!

another quickie

2005-04-01T13:10:00.000-08:00

good day.

i still have not really caught up with stuff so the first thing that's going to get neglected is my new found love of blogging. I am going to drop this short post up now in hopes of a brighter day when i can fill in gaps.

i started typing up blog entries for my spring break trip...and the first two days took a full page each. the stories aren't completely crazy spring break stories, but i had such an amazing time that I at least want a nice journal record of spring break to look back upon and smile at. So hopefully in the next week or so I can finish all of that and post it.

now here's just some random stuff:
-i had to drive to daytona the other day...it was a beatiful day and i put in pinkerton and screamed my heart out to it the whole way up there...it was GREAT.
-i think the next time i'm at pat o's i'm going to try to get them to play either el scorcho or kiss him goodbye....both would be great piano bar songs.
-I've finally applied to a couple more places for jobs...but eh... i'm never too optimistic with no real skilz (nunchuck skilz, computer hacking skilz, bow skilz).
-One of the jobs was a business development position at yahoo...which i would absolutely LOVE. It was actually dealing with RSS and Blogging, so it would be a great mix of working at a company that I love and working on a new technology that has significance that I love. SO if anyone is reading this from Yahoo...please hire me. (i'm not against begging in blog-form)
-I head to illinois next week for 5 days of chaos at U of I will all of my watseka peeps. I am extremely excited and I will make sure to journal the chaos on here as well.
-for anyone who actually likes my commentary posts...i have a couple more in the works, and yet again...i should hopefully sit down and get them online sometime soon. There is also blog-modification and marketing that i need to do...but i think i need to find a job first.

that's all for now!

quickie

2005-03-22T22:39:00.000-08:00

this is just a quick update. i've been wanting to blog for a while, but stuff has been crazy the last few weeks.

here are just random thoughts for now:
keys are amazing
old friends are even better
two spring breaks are great
15 page papers are not

i need to be job searching...but i'm too busy planning trips
it's great to see watseka people out of watskea
teachers drink a lot and are fun to dance with
i love people
life is good

what a day

2005-03-08T00:49:00.000-08:00

personal post

so i had a few different ideas for good posts for tonight...but those are going on the backburner. I'm really tired, starting to get sick, and had some stuff happen today so i'll address that now.

so yah...(if you know me, you know i say that a lot...perhaps too much)...

i lost my job today

poof...where'd it go ?

hehe..actually i knew it was coming sooner or later. The company is basically going down the shitter, and i'm the at the bottom of the barrel so i go first. So here i go...starting my wonderful working career by being downsized...i guess it's fitting though. (you decide how)

I think the only really annoying thing about it is that i've seen how ridiculously wasteful companies are, and yet when they start to go they cut the last places that they really need to. Here's some stats:

These are how many hours i could have gotten paid had they not spent what they did on each item:

(assume my intern level of 23 hrs a week)

New Website = 2777 Hours = 120 weeks
New Stationary= 555 Hours = 24 weeks
New Lawyer= 1667 Hours = 72 weeks
My Boss' Salary(9 times that of mine)= 10000 = 434 weeks

So that means that if they had me make the website for them, they could have employed me until July 2007.

fun stuff is math. It's kinda interesting how i've been reading about people losing their jobs due to blogs, and i'm kinda happy that i can state whatever i want about the company now because it doesn't matter.

other stuff.......................................

i better not sick....visitors in three days!!...spring break next week!!!

here's my cold prevention mythology...

three different half gallons of juice...apple...cran/raz...orangeblend of some soft

wonderful 800mg tablets of ibuprofen from dad....every 4 hrs

generic cold medicine (all cold medicine is made out of the same 3 drugs) every 5 hrs

i find pretty good success with this treatment schedule...i'd like to think i only get sick 25% of the time if i start this schedule on the beginnings of feeling sick.

alright...everyone stay healthy...don't spend money at work, cause then the intern will go by by and you'll have to make your own coffee....and have a goodnight

bloglovin

2005-03-07T02:07:00.000-08:00

It’s happening…..

I’ve known about blogs for a while, and I really have tried my hardest to not get pulled in. I’ve mocked my share of livejournal fights, and I’ve laughed at the notion of posting personal thoughts online…and now look at me. I’m not just talking about the posting though. I’ve always enjoyed writing commentary and have known that I’m arrogant enough to enjoy having a place to put my thoughts to the public. The area that is shocking me is the reading of blogs. I started with the wonderful wherethehellismatt.com which is a blog of a young man traveling the world. Now I’ve moved onto the company blogs. I’ve found some really interesting blogs from people working at Google, Microsoft, Delta, and State Universities. All of these are extremely interesting to see what these people do, say, and think on a daily basis. This of course translates into another theory of mine….

While people have always had a voyeuristic nature where they are interested in how other people’s lives are, technology and mass culture has recently adopted this and amplified it further. It seems like this voyeuristic nature is getting deeper and deeper, or perhaps just more public. I understand that throughout history items such as biographies and interviews have always been popular. While people like watching or reading about other people to make sure that they are ‘normal’, it seems increasingly that people like to watch people to see how their lives are on a daily basis and to live vicariously though them. I know personally that the ability to see life though someone else’s eyes would be the first thing I would ask for from a genie. I think I’m more extreme than most people with this urge though. The popularity of voyeuristic entertainment makes me think otherwise. We have all of the wonderful aspects of reality television including everything from ‘it’s good to be..’ to ‘the real world’ to ‘elimidate’ to ‘survivor’. Not to mention the many shows profiling lives in bibliographical style. Now with blogs we get a step closer. The technology allows us to sit back and get pretty close to the actual workings of an individual(depending on how much filtering they do), and not just rich or popular individuals, but common everyday people. Just like the videos of babies watching babies, a big theme of the human race seems to be how much it likes to watch itself. So as new technologies arise I think we will continue to try to get inside other peoples minds. Maybe there is a 8^th ½ floor where you can step inside of John Malkovich.

As for now I will slowly turn into a huge blog-addict so I can catch a glimpse of what it’s like to travel in Kenya, to be a flight attendant, or to work for big bill. Even though there’s a huge time commitment, I think there are millions of positive aspects to blogs, and while you can not step completely inside of another’s brain, you can possibly gain a little understanding about some area of the life they live and perhaps become somewhat more of a renaissance man. (oooooohhhh…he brought it back!) goodnight.

freamtime

2005-03-05T06:45:00.000-08:00

Poopycock

(hahah…word just automatically capitalized that)

So it’s 9 am on Saturday…a time I normally do not exist. It’s been years since I would actually on my own wake up at this time. It’s really messed up. I work three days a week, yet somehow after only three months of working, my body has trained itself (against my will) to wake up at 830 no matter what. I don’t understand why this has happened. It’s only three days out of seven that I have to wake up. There’s no other reason for it, I went to bed at 3 am, my room is still dark, my house is quiet…I should be able to sleep until noon at least. But here I am. I did a fun thing after I woke up. I was laying in my bed trying to go back to sleep. And it wasn’t really a dream..but it wasn’t really anything else. Lets call it a fake dream…or Fream I started thinking about The Ring II. I dreamt (kinda) that I went to the movies with one of my friends to see Ring II. I liked the first one and am pretty excited for the second. The fun thing about this fream is that I haven’t seen The Ring II so I had to make it up. So my fream starts and I’m on my way to the movies and I’m all excited and such. But in my fream I realize that since I haven’t seen the movie that my imagination is just going to have to step in and make it up. I realize that since it’s 9am on Saturday, I’m okay with that. (That’s where it makes it not a dream, when you realize you are in this weird state and you make decisions whether to continue or not and what to do….like a choose your own adventure book). So I let my fream go. We start watching the movie….at the theatre me and my friend and like laying around like people would do on a couch…so there weren’t normal theatre seats…but it wasn’t like a couch….it was like a church pew with cushions. Anyways, we’re watching the movie…my fream didn’t really get to a scary part…it was more just me being excited to be scared. I think in my older age I’m forcing myself to be scared more. Getting scared is a lot of fun. Traditionally I’m way too observant and usually can anticipate scary movie tactics. Recently though I’ve let myself pay less attention and get scared more in hopes that I get the great feeling of my heart skipping a beat. So back in my younger years I would never get scared….but now I’ve been known to jump and loud sounds in recent scary movies. Good times. I guess this is where the story and post all fall apart. I can’t tell you about the movie…my imagination only created maybe 15 mins of it, and since I don’t know the real plot…what my imagination created was kinda without direction. So I quit the fream and started thinking how it’d be a good soup post. And here we are. I’m going to stop this and put up some wonderful links that I’ve been meaning to do. Enjoy the links, have a great weekend! Let yourself imagine The Ring II…two thumbs up.

-

2005-02-28T22:26:00.000-08:00

Look at me, I finally start a blog then I immediately turn into the deadbeat blog owner. I’m sure it happens a million times a day where people think a blog is a cool thing…sign up…then never even remember their password. (it did take a couple tries). I haven’t posted though, due to me wanting to keep the quality of posts high. Life is going to be interesting(hopefully) in the upcoming months, so at the very least I’ll probably use this just to write and get my ideas out of my head at least temporarily. We’ll see how scary that will get…

Anyways, I’m down to 7 hrs of sleep before work and have been ‘job searching’ for the last two hours. I put the ‘rock quotes’ there because job searching is simply the phrased used for the activity of mindlessly looking at listings on monster while you are pondering within yourself why someone would ever set out to have 10 years experience in retail pricing or 15 years experience in typing with your feet. It’s bad enough sifting through all of the ‘inside sales’ and ‘marketing rep’ positions, but coming to all of theses descriptions that are completely asinine really makes me think this is some huge joke by the whole field of HR. (Since they don’t really do anything I guess they fill their time with comedic job descriptions) So once you find a job you might be interested in, you get pretty excited…only to find out a couple pages further in the search results that that company is hiring a million people because they are ‘doing so well’ or that that position is actually an elegant description of intern.

So we get to the fact…job searching sucks.

It’s actually a sub-fact of graduating college sucks.

All of these lead to me procrastinating and making everything worse by being less prepared. I’ve realize my problems though (two of them at least). I truly want to be a modern renaissance man. I feel everyone is becoming way to specialized, and while there are advantages to that….i personally do not want to be specialized. I want to be worldly, I want to be knowledgeable on many topics, I want anyone to come up to me and ask me any question because they know that I have not specialized and that I can help. I’m fighting an uphill battle against the world on this one though. My second problem is how I simply want to be passionate. Good quote from adaptation “I guess my only passion is the search to find something to be passionate about”. It really hits home right now. In my business thought I’ve really realized that’s the key to the type of company I want….passion. In my normal day happiness, it’s all I need….passion. But of course as with anything…the time that you most desire something, that’s when it’s the farthest away. I can not create passion. I can not fake passion. I can not have a one night stand with passion. So I sit here and figure out how I can fake 7 years of experience typing with my feet.

This post is terribly detached…I’ll stop it now before I go on more tangents…but I’ll throw it against the server and see if it sticks

car flirt

2005-02-23T21:31:00.000-08:00

I think I forgot to lay down some common themes

I can’t spell

I ramble….a lot. But whatever I bring up, I will go back to it

I apologize now for wasting time with boring entries

I love stories. I tell a lot of them. Some are good, some are bad, but hopefully everyone will get something out of all of them. Usually though they just make me go on huge tangents that might someday come to an interesting point.

Story one: car flirt

Driving home from work. Now one thing about me recently is that I’m constantly looking at other people in their cars…I mean CONSTANTLY. I’m kinda afraid I’ll hit something sometime because I was starting at some girl who was really cute from the neck up. (cars are one of those deceptive things that makes girls look cuter than they ma be. . .(examples: floppy skirts, puffy sweaters, and distance)) I find people in the cars really interesting. Most of the time they look like zombies, but if you ever see a couple flirting, people singing, or a family talking…..it’s great. So my obsession with looking at people has never really impacted anything that much….just simple enjoyment to me. Today as normal I was almost home and pull by a bunch of cars who were stopped and stare all of the cars down. Right as I stop I notice a cute girl in the car to the right. I look as I stop and she is looking at me. We both look away. 60 seconds pass. (can’t look back right away..that would mean that yer staring, but you have to check to see if they were looking) I look back…oh shit…she’s looking at me….we both look away. Now, we both caught each other looking at each other twice in a row at the exact same time. What do you think would happen next? We both drive forward. My lane goes faster…I’m saddened. My lane stops. . .i look slightly to the side, without doing a full look around…there she goes! Driving past…..MAKING A FACE…..aweee. (this is where the movie theatre laughs in that light-hearted ‘awe’ style) Now I’ve seen a lot of cute faces, but wow…this face was cute…almost darling. Maybe it was just the fact that she was going to have fun with the whole situation that made it so cute, but I’m not picky…cute face is cute face. So now we know the girl is fun. But now she is 6 cars ahead of me. But then traffic stops….in her lane. My lane goes…and fast. I’m gone. I continue looking back. Then my turn comes, and I get into the left lane. She’s real far back now. Eventually she pulls up and goes in the right turn late. My eyes are locked, sure enough…she looks back. I’m ready. I shoot her the smug-smiling wave. She smiles. We both get green lights and drive off into the distance. End scene.

Thank you car flirting girl. You were cute and not a zombie in your car. And you are as big of a dork as I am with watching people and making faces. People like her though really make me enjoy….well…people. Just when you think everyone is boring and doesn’t do the stupid things to make life fun, you run into another crazy like you…then you feel ok.

switching costs

2005-02-22T21:20:00.000-08:00

*semi-boring, yet interesting business post

So the bad habit begins. I could be doing research for my upcoming industry analysis paper on the candy and confectioners industry, but it’s too easy to open up a new document and type away. It brings up an interesting change in things these days. I guess what I’m going to talk about all falls under the notion of ‘switching costs’. Since the new fangled internet thing we have seen the importance of switching costs fall off of the face of the earth.... I’ll describe further …in pre-computer times when you were going to go purchase an item you would go to a store. While in the store if you were not happy with the price you could choose to leave and switch to a different store for a different price. But alas, that other store is on the other side of the railroad tracks, you already tied your horse up on the post right next to the door, and the storekeep always smells like 5 day old fish. Not to mention that this store is right next to the saloon. . .location location location. So slap that scenario next to the environment of today - Online purchasing. With a simple ctrl + L and a few keystrokes you could be at the register of a whole new store. With no consideration of costs, whether it be location, price, or horses.

So now, back to what I started. The idea of switching costs can be transferred to computer action. With a vast array of programs on everyone’s computer and those programs only being a few clicks and a splash screen away, there is no consideration towards if you should not do something because of switching costs. Hence when I got the notion to write to the blog it was too simple that there was no reason for me NOT to do it. So this case holds up with my procrastination, but I believe it creates both efficiencies and inefficiencies elsewhere. In work it’s wonderful to be able to think of something and do it instantly without any switching costs…it allows things to get done right when they need to be done. The flip side of course is with work procrastination. It’s soooo easy to check your personal email 30 times a day at work, cause it’s only a shortcut away from the work you are already doing in firefox.

So where is this going? When is easy going to be too easy? I wonder if things will turn around to keep people more focused and on track. Perhaps we’ll start making operating systems where you can only use one group of programs. Perhaps we’ll put timer limits on opening numerous things so you won’t be temped to check google news because it will take 5 mins before you will get access to load the page. I know I’m getting extreme, but the average attention span seems like it will be 10 seconds in another few years, simply from tons of options and no switching costs.

In fact, I bet only a few people read the menu this far.

Welcome

2005-02-20T18:52:00.000-08:00

I did something!

it took a few weeks, a few rough decisions for names, and for me to be procrastinating for a test, but i finally created it. I know it's nothing big, millions have been bloggin since i was still on 56k, but for me i'm pretty excited to ranble on a global level. So what should you readers expect with this blog ? I'm really not sure yet. A good business person would have goals and objects set up into a mission statement....but i seem to like going with the flow. I believe certain times i'll post obeservations about people in general, sometimes I'll stand on a soapbox and post my feelings about business or politics, or I just might post links and not create anything myself. Hopefully this won't be trainwreck.

just go slow, it's my first time