This is the picture post. But it isn't at the same time.

I was seriously intending on posting a whole bunch of pictures- of my work, of my truck and of my hat- yesterday. I had taken them all. I was quite pleased with myself. I merely had to upload them to my computer, edit out any identifiable information from [AwesomeCo] and upload them. It was going to be wonderful. It was going to be marvelous. It was going to be simple, and yet it was going to be so satisfying.

Then... the camera cable or the connector in the cheap camera I use to upload the images from had... "issues". Issues that caused it to loose power while connected- several times. Connection issues that caused it to literally ERASE all pictures on that 512 MB card. And so... all of the pictures are gone. In case you were wondering, the above picture was an interpertation of what I felt like and probably what I looked like when I found out all the files were gone. If I was a girl.

But, since I told you all I would have pictures, here you go:



I am a man of my word.

Saga of this week (As oppposed to the Sega of this week, which would be promptly replaced with the SNES of this week)

Greetings, one and all. Some people claim that all my sister and I do is collect comments that beg for updating. To you I say... well, I mean hey, everyone needs a hobby, right?

The last week or two (its hard to tell where one ends and the other begins now-a-days) have been intense. Not all great, not all bad, just bigger. More stress, but more fun. And less sleep.

Monday
Ahh, Mondays. Technically, I don't work Monday. Its a little weird. I work Early (1 AM) Tuesday morning. So Monday is supposed to be the day I adjust back to my weird work hours. I've tried a few different ways to do this- take a nap at a certain time is a popular choice, and I've tried it. But most of the time, if I have not been deprived of sleep, I won't be able to take a nap. I end up just lying their, in my bed, waiting to go to sleep. Bo-ring.

The approach I've recently taken to this is based upon a proprietary theory that I have dubbed "The Sleep Deficit theory". I believe I have enlightened most of you about this in person; if any of you want further explanation on the details let me know. But the point is, it has served me well recently. This week though, I had more sleep deficit then I bargained for.

Monday I purchased a truck. I bought it from my friend, Mr. L. As part of the deal, he paid for or deducted from the price all the repairs needed to make the vehicle return to tip-top shape. But when I drove it out of the mechanics to close the deal, the blinkers weren't working. I brought it back to the mechanic that night who said that he had noticed that issue but had forgotten about it. Apologetically, he said he'd do the deal with out labor costs. He thought he found the problem- the switch. This is the rocker arm that you use to control the blinkers and the windshield wipers. Yay. He would have it the next day, if I could bring the vehicle by. I said I'd be there, considering I had been resorting to using hand signals. At night. On the highway.

Tuesday
I got home from work at about 9:30 as usual. I ate. I called up the mechanic and he told me he hadn't the part yet, but he would call me "as soon as it walks through the door". Meanwhile, I called town hall about a mistake I had made on the title and how to fix it. Four seconds after I hung up with them, the mechanic called me to let me know the part had indeed waltzed in at that very moment. I drove to the shop.

By this time I was a bit tired. I had gotten there I think around 11:00, and it was supposed to be a quick (20 minute) fix. 30 minutes later the mechanic comes in and says "Its not the switch. Only thing I guess it could be now is the flasher..." and got on the phone to find one. Meanwhile, I was sitting down taking small several-second naps. I'd just sort of zone out and then wake up. Judging by my surroundings, I had barely slept- A few seconds at most. But hey, I'll take what I can get.

Long story short, it wasn't the flasher module either. He sent me to go get it down at Auto Fair on south willow, but it wasn't the problem. He took awhile looking at some schematics and then started doing some more probing with a meter. Finally he said the problem was some of the wiring between the fuse box and steering column. He ran some new wire as a work-around for the short term so I could get back on the road and he'll fix it up proper when I bring it back to get state inspected.

Waking hours with out sleep at this point: About 28.

Unfortunately, the truck work left me at home by 1:50ish. I had to be at Agape by 3:00- Tonight was movie night at the Gs and I wanted to get their earlier so I could exchange gifts with Kiaya, who sadly wouldn't be able to come. I talked to mum a bit, then I went to sleep for about 20 minutes. I got up at 2:34, and sped away in my shiny (sorta) yellow truck.

I arrived at Agape at 3:00 on the dot. Sadly, it became apparent that I had missed Kiaya by mere minutes. I saw Anders playing soccer outside like old times and I talked to him for a bit. I then went in and roamed the halls of Agape, which were almost vacant because of the time. I felt like a ghost, haunting my old romping grounds. How so short a year made so large an impression on me I'll never know. But it was good to be there, even if there hardly was anyone left. I was welcomed warmly by Mrs. Woodman and Pastor Gary, which was great. Actually everyone I ran into was kind, as usual.

I ended up sitting in on Mrs. G's class. They had an amazing guy there named Ramses who was sharing his testimony. He was really cool. Then, class dismissed and I hung out with everyone. I opened H's gift for me their, which was an awesome great big Z with all my names and aliases. It was full of inside jokes, like references to my mispelling of the blogger name and such. So yeah, it was "basically awesome".

I then opened up Kiaya's gift. She made me the most AWESOME wearable piece of art ever- a full size Cat in the Hat style hat made out of red and white duct tape. INCREDIBLE. I'll have to post pictures later. The thing fits me great and is such a blast to wear. I've done the rest of my Christmas shopping in it and the reactions you get are so great.

Anyway, the whole lot of us (sans, sadly, Kiaya) went to H's house and we watched "A white Christmas" and "A Christmas story", the latter of which I had never seen before. We also just hung out and chatted for awhile after that. Me and Mrs. G got conversation about where all the plastic packaging we generate ends up (a land fill or the ocean for the most part, sadly) and recycling and what we can do about it. We left at 11 something o'clock.

Waking hours with out sleep at this point: 38.

Mrs. G had given me directions, which I followed well up to the 495 part. Mrs. G hadn't specified which direction to go on 495, but I surmised that since we were in Mass. and we wanted to get to Derry, we wanted to go North, naturally. Well.... We never got the chance to get on 93. We only had the option to get onto 95. I took it.

I was a little bit concerned because of the hour and my uncertainty with the route, but I did know that I wanted to go North. Eventually, I figured, we would get to a place that either I would recognize or could transfer to 93. We drove a long time and didn't see it. What we did see were exits for Portsmouth passing us. When I realized the last exit for Portsmouth was coming up and after that I'd be in bloody MAINE, I got off the highway.

Now, I've been around Portsmouth before, but as a passenger, not so much as a driver. I recognized where I got off- it was the Portsmouth traffic circle. I went around it maybe three times. Finally Abi spoke up and put her vote in for the Rochester/concord turn off. That made sense to me- concord was at least in the right direction. I think.

Well, shortly after taking that turn off (which was onto 16/4 and some other highway) I saw blue lights in the rear view mirror. I pulled over. The cop came up and started the whole "Where did you come from, where are you going tonight?" questions. When I told him I was trying to get to Exit 4 on 93 he looked at me like "Are you serious?" and said "Your not even close."

"Yes, yeah, I know- I was going north, I knew that was important but I wanted to get over to 93. I couldn't find where to get over..." He asked me what I had in the bag in the back.

"Some presents, and OH- can I get out to show you?" he said I could, so I got out, pulled the seat forward and continued "Tthis really cool Cat in the hat hat...my friend made it- out of Duct Tape!"

He was quiet and a little confused for a second, but quickly regained his composure. "So thats not 5 pounds of dope in the hat?"

"Nope, just a hat."

In truth I had been tempted to make a joke back, saying something like "Five pounds? Ha, thats ten at least!" But in the end I decided against it. Probably one of my better choices.

He took my license and registration (the latter of which I had to explain was not in my name yet because I had just bought the vehicle) and went back to the cruiser. Abi noticed that another one had pulled in behind me with its lights off for backup. She looked in the mirror.

"I think their laughing."

The first cop probably told the newcomer where I was trying to go. See, I'm good for a laugh even for cops on the beat. While we were waiting I said "Abi, I don't think I was speeding." She said that she was pretty sure I wasn't and that maybe they pulled me over for swerving around while I was trying to find out where to go.

Finally the officer walked back up to the truck and handed me my stuff back.

"Do you need directions?"

I consented that I did and he gave me them. Before I left, I asked

"Officer- why was I pulled over? I wasn't speeding was I?"

"Yeah you were. Its 35mph right here. You were doing 65."

Surprised, I asked "But- isn't this part of the highway?"

"Technically no. Its an in-between, and its residential. There are some houses over there, but its right between highways so its sort of confusing. " With that, he let me go. Thank God. If you had seen it, you would be utterly confused too. It looks (at least at night) like part of the bloody flaming highway. Double the speed limit is not good for your record. Yeesh. My guess is that he only used that as an excuse to get me over so he could see what I was up to. He didn't even give me a warning- I don't think he cared. But crazy, nonetheless.

Wedensday
The officer told us it would be over an hour to where we wanted to go. At this point, it was already about 12:30. Great. I needed to call work to let them know, so I went for my PDA but I didn't have it. I had left it at the G's. Double great. I had to call... so, I called my dad and woke him up we told him what was going on. He looked up the number for me and I called it to tell them I had just gotten un-hopelessly lost and wouldn't be there till later.

From their, I drove on for a very long time. I was quite tired. Though I tried to avoid it, I blinked out once or twice. I got a latte at one of the junctions, and that helped a bit. Abi got dropped off at 1:44. I then turned right around and hightailed it to work to arrive at just a little later then 2. Dan said "I can't believe the governor got lost in his own state." Ha.

Work that day was very tired. After running in and making sure nothing major was dying, the first thing I did was make a cup of dark coffee. I would be back to the cafeteria often during my shift, but they didn't do much. One thing I had to do took a little longer then normal because I kept waking up in the middle of it and had to double check what I had just done. I couldn't dare sleep longer then a few seconds though- I'd usually wake up to Dan or Tony chuckling. I didn't want to know what they would do if I fell asleep for longer then a minute. Glue me to my chair, most likely. Maybe staple my pants to the floor. I couldn't risk it.

After what seemed a very long time, I arrived home at 9:20ish.

Waking hours at this point: Over 48.

I was a little tired. BUT. I had an appointment. I had rescheduled a little get together with my friend Brandon to Wednesday after I couldn't make it at the last second before. He needed a monitor and a crossover cable and some help installing stuff. I went over and worked on it with him till about 12. Or maybe I got home at 12. I dunno; it all gets foggy there. Either way, when I finally gone to sleep I had gone about 50 hours with out serious shut-eye. Ahhhyeah!

Suffice to say, I slept pretty good. I woke up at about 9:24pm- which was great. I got up and went to work.

The more observant of you will be realizing that I don't normally go to work so "early". That is true. My boss's boss was bringing in a little Italian food as a thank you to the night team, and he said anyone that wanted to have it could come in at 10:00. It would be overtime. How sweet is that? Paid overtime + food. Y to the UM! I ate food, and worked into Thursday morning.

Thursday
After I got home, Abi called. Operation "Escort" was a go. I asked her when I had to be in the parking lot.

"1:45."

"I'll be there." I said as I hung up the phone. Since it was already 10:30ish, I decided to stay up. I shaved, freshened up and figured I could get some last minute holiday shopping in then come back, get some stuff and go to Agape. "Hmm, better bring Kiaya's gift just in case you don't have time to come back" I thought to myself. By the time I parked at Wal-mart, I realized I had grossly estimated my time. It was 12:20- I should be leaving now. I got back in the truck without entering the store, and quickly made my way towards 93. After I had gotten on 93 for a few miles, a sudden panic shot through me. "The gift!" I realized as I searched frantically in the seats, "I left it by the door!"

Sadly, I hadn't a cell phone. All that was to be done was for me to rush towards home. I turned the truck around and doubled back. I got home about 1:20, rushed in, found the gift and called Brad's cell. I talked to him for a sec and asked if I should meet them at the airport directly. It was funny; I talked to him and Abi for a few minutes and they talked entirely in code. First brad was like "The eagle hasn't left yet." And later Abi said something about "The mustard seed is departing." Anyway, it ended up that I was able to make it to MHT on time. Brad, Hannah and Abi were waiting outside the airport door for me very nicely. I had my hat on.

"Take that off! We have to sneak by them up to the food court." I did as I was requested and obscured the hat to the other side of my person. Kiaya and her brother were still checking in, and we exploited the distraction to get ahead of them and into position. Now, we waited.

Kiaya and fam came up pretty soon and she was apparently totally surprised. It was great. We hung out and chatted (Though I stayed in a McDonalds line for far to long only to find out they had totally forgotten about me) until she had to leave. We did our families tradition of stalking the person to the last possible moment. Then the rest of the Core went to Agape, and I headed home. But I stopped at some stores first (Christmas shopping). I roamed the halls of wal-mart and the mall with my huge cat in the hat hat (CITAH from now on) and I enjoyed the responses. Some people would do a sublte double take, not wanting to look stare. Others would turn a corner and start laughing mid sentence. Alot of mothers out with their little children would point up to me like I was a show in the circus. "Look honey, do you see that? Is it the cat in the hat? Yeah!" To which I would smile, and tip my hat. One big guy I almost ran into turning a corner just had this look of awesome admiration and said totally seriously "Cat in the hat- how ya doing?" to which I replied fine. I felt that the gift itself not only was "Kiaya" in the design, but continued to express herself through it. Maybe its the lack of sleep talking, but I could see her getting a kick out the reactions.

That was the good part, but when I'm tired, I get cranky pretty easy. I didn't get hardly anything, at the stores and one of the only things I did get I was growing anxious about, wondering if it was any good. I thought maybe I had been pressured into making a last minute choice that no one would admit to not liking even if they truly didn't care for it at all. Then I got home, and waited a bit for dad to come home so I could talk to him about truck stuff... only to find out he was going to be running errands late. I went to bed finally at 6:00pm- way to late.

Friday
I woke up to my dad's voice saying something. It was saying alot of stuff before I was coherent. I was trying to figure out why he woke me up. I looked at the clock- 1:39. It took a few seconds to register. Finally, my dad's voice came in clear:

"Tony called and wanted to know whats up with you. Your supposed to be there."

CRAP. I looked up at my dad and held my little brothers alarm clock.

"Dad, I brought two alarm clocks so this wouldn't happen. TWO!" I said in frustration as I jumped up and got dressed. It turns out later that someone must have fussed with the switches on my main alarm- it was set to radio, which doesn't work. I don't know why the other one didn't work.

I was at work by 2. Stupid eewah... sleeping in. Between this and the Portsmouth incident, there goes most of my overtime. This time after I got home and ate, I slept.

And that, my friends, was my week.

Oh, and by request: "Merry Christmas" gosh!

Yeesh!

Pictures next post guys.- Honest. :) Hold me to it.

Pirate ducky and the amazing update

Hello everybody. Popular mob opinion (according to the Zogby Mob opinion survey) states that I should update. And so, since I love you guys (and my life) I shall.

Things have been fun and crazy at [AwesomeCo]. The program that I got hired to support is starting to come online, so I'm finally getting a taste for what I'll be doing. Since I'm getting in on this at the very beginning, it should be alot easier then the stuff I've had to learn so far. With this new program, I'm seeing the checklist being made and fixing stuff thats wrong with it. And I'm starting with just one client- its going to be sweet. I'm sort hitting my groove on the rest of the stuff I think, too.

Oh and I found out the other day that we had a crusher. I thought it was a dishwasher because I think its a Kenmore, or something that looks like a Kenmore. But while waiting for a bagel to toast one day, I took a closer look and found when I opened it up it was full of mostly soda cans and a few peices of carboard. And it was all crushed. Amazing.

I talked to one of the guys on nights here and asked him what we do with them.

"Nothing!" he said, chuckling. "Its like a big joke- we just through it out. People think that we're recycling but we aren't right now."

"Dude-!" I said, seizing the opertunity. "Can I take the crushed cans?"

He told me I could. "Sure! Were not doing anything with them!"

So yeah. Thats pretty cool- I guess I should be getting a small but steady stream of compressed UBC from now on. I'm stoked. Thats awesome!

This is a short update, I know. But I've been(am) busy.

Oh, one final thing. Alot of you have been asking for pictures of the cool mission control set up here at work. I shall do what I can- talked to my boss today and he says its fine.

Happy Ivory Coast National day (the most generic sounding of holidays ever!)

Mondays are a very bad word

"But is this not a Tuesday post?" you ask.
"Yes. Sorta." answers I.

You see, I work in the twilight blurry spaces between the definitions of actual "days" as normal people call them. I make up my own hours of sleep and waking- nature be darned. With such a chaotic schedule, you think Monday’s bad fortune would not be able to find me. You'd be wrong.

I did give it the shake for 2 weeks, I will tell you that. But I couldn't run forever. Shortly after buzzing around and causing general Mondayness for the Green Dragon Rider, Mday flew its horrid destructive path to me. Heres how it went down.

Actual Monday day: A very good experience. It buttered me up like a fool. I went to the Marzolfs and played the cash flow game, Jessica H. came over and joined us, I had a crazy multi layer ice-cream cake desert that Lyndsi had constructed- twas beautiful. Twas bliss- nay, twas ignorance my good friends.

I should have caught on that something was up. Its obvious now- Monday was laying it on so thick it was ridiculous. How thick? How bout this: After leaving the Marzolfs, I actually heard none other then Mute Math ON THE RADIO. It was on the indiest of indie stations, 91.5 FM, and it was crystal clear. I got to hear most of the track "Noticed", a song among my favorites of all time, on the radio. It was good. It was too good.

But the even Monday grew tired of the sickening sweetness. I got home at 10:00 ish. So- think about this- is it possible for me to go to bed at 10:00 and wake up at 12:20? What is even the point? Monday decided to show me the futility. Basically, I layed in my bed waiting for it to be midnight:twenty. I got up. I read some online comics. I went back to bed, and waited again. The second the alarm beeped I snapped up and turned it off. Enough of this, I thought to myself, lets stop pretending to sleep and get to work already.

I got up and turned the coffee on for my folks and myself. I thought it a nice thing to do. I waited. It wasn't coming out. I looked at the time. It was 12:27. That coffee better start coming out of that darn whole soon, or I'm not going to get any. 12:29. I look behind the machine. Oh RIIIGHT... its unplugged.

Right before the coffee was done brewing, I remembered that I wanted to email myself a file at work. I ran down stairs and did the deed. When I came back up, it was about 12:37ish. Dad had risen. That was good. I didn't want to have to wake him- it was nice enough of him already to wake up and drive me to my work at 1am. I poured my coffee and we were out the door by 12:40. Perfect! I thought to myself, Today is going PERFECT.

Somewhere in a dark corner, Monday laughed at me. But it didn't protest my bliss. It knew that my fall was soon. It knew I wouldn't be laughing then.

We arrive at the door of [AwesomeCo].

"Love you dad!" I say as I give him a hug goodbye, "Thanks for driving me."
"No problem. Goodnight!" he answers, and climbs into the big red Ark. Just before he closes the door, I fall to the ground, struck to the core by a horrible epiphany.

"Nooooooooooo......" I whimper.
"What?" My dad asks, but then answers his own question before I break the news. "Let me guess- I.D. Badge?"
"Yeh-heh-hesss..."I fane cry. "MaaAAN!!"
"You'll have to have someone else let you in now; its too late to get back."

I knew he was right. I pulled out my PDA, and he through me his cell phone. I started digging through the numbers. I found my desk phone. I called it. I then got the number for the lobby and called it. As I was making this call, I caught the eye of one of my co-workers. He saw me and made a strange face, then nodded and started walking my way. I hung up the phone, and told my dad I was good. He bid his farewells once more, and drove off into the distance.

Big D., the co-worker who opened the door for me, answered graciously my apologies. "Everyone does it once or twice." He buzzed me through the few doors I need to get through to get to my desk. I felt so lame.

Our business has a laid back, friendly atmosphere. But that doesn't mean we take security lightly. Its an important company, and in every zone of the building you have to buzz to get in. You can leave, but you can't get back in without using your I.D. Badge. I can't go to the bathrooms and comeback with out using my card. I had to sheepishly use my co-workers once or twice. I combined trips.

Then I get on my computer and start checking through my email. A subject caught my eye and hung on the screen ominously. That CAN'T be for today... I thought to myself. It was.

Apparently, my co-worker T., the one that shares my shift, wasn't coming in today. Car trouble. What’s the big deal you may ask? Oh, nothing much. Only that he was GIVING ME A RIDE HOME.

So here I was. No ride home, and no I.D. Badge to let me roam around freely in the building.

Not that I had many roaming minutes anyway. Today everything happened at once. One of our most reliable servers didn't get its files on time. We waited till they were supposed to be in, then we got on the phones to call the company. The contact field in the call up sheet was blank. We had never had to call this company for this file- it usually completed first, so no one really knew off the top of their head the number or contact name. D. looked for a long time and couldn't find it. He decided he'd have to wake up one of our guys on call. But first he went outside to take a smoke. When he left, I opened several search windows and a few internal web sites. In 6 minutes, I found numbers and contacts for the company in another document. When he came back, I casually showed him the list. "Where'd you get this?" he asked. I told him. He kept looking at it and shrugged his shoulders. "Well, operations... lets call them. Why not." So he called them. I overheard his conversations while I sat and logged down some other server jobs. He got someone, but no one was sure they were the contact he wanted. He had to keep spelling out the file name. "Yes, you send us this file." he kept saying. "Yes, normally- every day, 2am. This is the first time its not been here." They'd say they’d call him back.

Every time they'd call him back, it would be another person, but they would ask about the file name and not know if they handled it. It was frustrating D., I could tell. Finally a big higher-up called him back and asked him what was going on. He explained it, and the guy knew what it was. "Okay, thanks. We'll try to get it out to you... otherwise...well, I guess we'll just do with out [service name] today...".

He called us back later saying he "Thought he might have found it." D and I joked that perhaps it was under the bed all this time. The file was supposed to be in at 2. It came in at 6:50something.

That was just one of the issues today. D was working the phones much harder then I was with a few other companies that were having issues. Something confused us because our servers processed a file earlier then we thought possible. The lightened holiday schedule apparently caused the mainframe to come back up faster then normal to process the files, and it took them. Our monitoring software wasn't even watching till 8, and it had already finished at 7:08. This little issue caused much confusion.

By 8, things were back on course. The late late file was finally processed and that basically finished what I had to do. My friend and fellow brother in the Lord, R., gave me a ride home- even though he was going the other way. So it all worked out. And now- I'm going to make some calls and lay my head to sleep.

For I have faced Monday, and I have overcome. Now I must rest.

Thanksgiving

Today is thanksgiving.


I should know, I've been checking it out since 12:20Am and I can say with total confidence that it is legit. So, act accordingly. Eat turkey and stuffing, eat cranberries and pumpkin pie (or Blueberry, if you so please). Spend hours in conversation with your friends and relatives around a common feast. Hang decorations if you want. But most importantly, reflect to yourself and others what you are thankful for. If you live in this country, you shouldn't have to look to far.

Inspired by my friends around the homeschool blogosphere, I present to you a list- inferior, but similar, to theirs. In no particular order of, I am thankful for

1. My family, whom I will expound upon later
2. My wonderful job that has been given to me as a gift in spite of myself
3. Agape and all the lessons learned, both in and out of the classroom
4. Hannah, who evangelized Tim Burton to Abs and I, and for always having a new post, layout and music video on her blog. :D
5. Kiaya, who writes like other people breath and is never short of good conversation
6. Mr. and Mrs. G, who feel like family after one short year, make excellent Mexican food, coffee and forgive me cookies (even if there was nothing to actually forgive), and do amazing big bird impressions and play some mean jazz (but not all at the same time).
7. Brad for being the coolest, most stoic friend yet still being crazy, and for realizing how awesome musicals are and for inviting us to stuff.
8. Leah for being cool, being fun to work with at church and for having a dad who has an amazing truck I want to buy
9. Living in a country with freedom of religion
10. Living in a country with a free market
11. Living in a state with such low taxes and such good people
12. Being able to do conduct whatever buisness I want to (within, sadly, certain legal bounds)
13. Craigslist
14. Aluminum cans
16. Large transformers and their copper, but not their bloody thick iron
17. Turkey
18. Stuffing (the mix of cornbread crumbs and other ingredients put into fowl on special days)
19. Stuffing (The action, done to ones face, often with the above noun, also on special days)
20. Poetry
21. Cranberry sauce
22. Cliches, Making fun of
23. Cliches (that are actually true)
24. Online comics
25. Eisley- the band, the family (seen here with the producer in his backyard), the blog
26. Google (Whom I love irrationally)
27. My office computer, with its freshly christened dual LCD screen glory
28. Blogging
29. The funny pirate ducky on my desk (Its a ducky with an eye patch- its funny!)
30. Lists
31. The postal service (The band- I could do with out the actual system)
32. Pandora (the site, not the notorious box of ill-repute)
33. Optimism
34. Optimists
35. Being able to see all the sides of an issue
36. 88.9, WERS radio
37. Hours spent waiting for a manager to call work so you can populate thanksgiving lists
38. Abe, for being a genius and for his current obsession with satellites and the International Space Station
39. Joy for her never ending enthusiasm and never ending theatricality
40. Spelling theatricality right on the first try
41. Moriah for her quiet charm and wit, and for being deep
42. Abi, for being so mature and still crazy-random, and for getting along with me despite our attempts to kill each other a few years back
43. Jennifer for being such a role model to me, for the conversations we had last time she was over, and for introducing me to Regina Spektor
44. Josh for being a solid good brother, for pushing himself so hard and becoming teh mast3r of kung fu and for being the baddest baldy ever
46. Mom for being such a staple of love and affection all my life, for bringing me up and keeping her humor despite us all, and for the little bit of Streeter she has imparted into me
47. Dad, for all the priceless experiences he has imparted to me- working, camping, sanding, doing business and talking politics together. I've learned more from him then probably either of us will ever know.
48. Coffee so strong it can retard your very tongue
49. Coffee brewed so fast it can retard your attention spa- Ooh! I love this song!
50. Puns (No matter how ostracized I become from society for them, I still think they are hilarious)
51. Bosses that actually call so you can stop populating thanksgiving lists
52. The diverse and hilarious cast of characters that make up my work, all of which you could easily incorporate into a comic strip
53. Readers of this blog that sprinkle the globe and span the country (who ARE you guys?)
54. 42, for confounding us and creating the second question- what is the ultimate question?
55. God, for never being fully understandable, but always there. Because his mercy his greater then his judgement. Because he loved a wretch like me- to the point of his death, even death on a cross.

A small list I know, but there is of course a never ending supply of entries and I had to stop somewhere.

On number 53- honestly, this is crazy. I've seen a viewer from Australia last month and I get regular hits from North Carolina. Thank you for reading! Please don't be shy in the comments; if you enjoy anything or disagree or are even alive, let me know. I'm curious who reads this.

Have a happy thanksgiving everyone!

A low quality update

A gap in the site
Has been closed at last
Other worldly might
Hath brought it to past

Another random post here.

I switch shifts next week- on to 1am to 9am. Hurray for weird hours!

Today was great. It actually got wicked busy for a bit- its Friday and since there is no trading on the stock market tomarrow, Fridays are often slow. But we had technical issues tonight. I probably can't go to deep into them, but it was great to see how [AwesomeCo] handeled it. A job "blew up" (a term we use around here that just means it didn't go through- but its more fun to say) and when we started trouble shooting it we realized it lead to much bigger issues. It was a flurry of activity for awhile- all on call techs were woken up, the day time I.T. and network gurus were brought in. I felt weird not doing anything- though I haven't administered a network quite of this scope, I still felt thats where I should be and it was hard to sit their and let them do all the troubleshooting. Not that I could have been much help- I don't really know the first thing about the way this network is laid out. Anyway the issues were resolved probably within 2 hours. It was impressive. After that, the only noticable difference for the evening was that one server had its jobs an hour late- which is not biggie.

I also got an official nickname now from D at work. D is a character- a master of colorful language and an artist of sarcasm. I believe he was a truck driver in his past life. I kept asking why we couldn't do things this way or improve efficiency by turning on more notifications that way.

"Its like your first frick'n week here, and your already trying to run everything Governor!" came the jesting reply. And from that point on, he would occasionally address me as The Governor. He made it official tonight by putting it on the white board. Funny stuff.

Break for random-

If time is currency of affection
What is the decider of its direction?
Trying to refrain from past mistakes
Eating my words with land o' lakes

Haha, okay so I guess I was to lazy to try and make that one work. Maybe later.

Oh- heres a funny thing. My friend's Jake posted a peice about going to a concert with a friend and not understanding on his life why anyone would want to pay money for a concert and not at least react to it- a head bob, a finger drum- something, anything! I mentioned to him that I am the same way, but I have a friend (meaning B rad) that is stoic as they come, and yet still enjoy music as Bloody flaming awesome. He replied back, saying "Yeah I guess, but bive bucks he dances in his room like a little girl" or some such. Well. I thought that was funny, but never would I have thought it to be so.

Then what to my wondering eyes should appear- but Brad himself admitting to all that was theere. There. *cough* Anyway...

He testified plainly on Hannahs blog to having random outbursts of singing and dancing.

I'm glad I didn't take you up on that bet Jake, or I guess I'd be out 5 bucks.

Totally uncalled for.

Okay. Here it is- my story of employment. About 3 billion years late in coming, I know...

I don't want to rehash anything much about the whole Agape thing, because really I can't say much and its all behind me now. But it is important to appreciate the full scope of the following stories impact that I simply remind you that I was pretty miserable for a bit after I left. Agape and its people mean alot to me. And so even though I decided to "make the best of it" and I trusted God would eventually birth something from this, I had absolutely no suggestions for him. I had screwed things up pretty badly.

To compensate academically, my parents and I eventually worked out a more aggressive education plan at home. This will probably prove to be another wondrous work of Gods will; I ended up getting more organized and completing school faster as a result of leaving one. Odd.

While doing school on a Tuesday, I got a call. I picked it up and my friend Tim C. who used to go to my church was on the other line. I talked to him for a bit asking him all sorts of questions- he had just got back from Peru and was engaged, so I had a few for him) but eventually he told me "Hey, Zeke- actually, thats not the reason I called you. You remember my brother, Mike?"

I told him of course I did. I had met him on occasion and thought he was cool, but I had never really been friends or known him very well. Tim continued,

"Well, he works for a company, [AwesomeCo]- not sure if you have heard of it- doing I.T. stuff there, and there is an opening in the company right now. He thought of you and asked me if I could touch base and see if you were interested. It pays around such and such a year and is a full time job. Its in Salem. Are you interested?"

I asked him a few more questions, but of course I conceded that I was indeed interested. He gave me his brother's email address and I dropped him a line with my resume attached.

Mikes reply was short:

Sounds good man, when can you come in for an Interview? Are you free tomorrow?

Let me know. What are you looking for as far as salary is concerned?

I was dumbfounded. I talked to my parents, and then got back to Mike and set a time and day for the interview. My dad was a bit skeptical at first- he is, wisely, concerned that about me being able to finish my education. But this job's hours were 2nd shift- 3pm to 11pm- which is ideal.

After my dad was on board, which didn't take to long, he suggested that I try to make the best impression possible. We literally went to JC Penny and invested in some nice clothes, including a suit jacket and a TIE. Yeah. It was pretty funny. For the first half of the shopping trip, I just couldn't take it. It was too foreign to me- I am a WalMart-by-choice shopper. I bawk at even the most severe of sales at JC Penny's. But in the end, my dad knew it was important and he was fronting the cost. It took me awhile to get over that and the general sticker shock and actually look for something. Once we did, it still took a bit to decide what I wanted. We were looking at ties for maybe 10 minutes, having a conversation between us and the sales guy that went something like this:

Dad: "But now does this color go with that shade of blue? It doesn't clash with this, does it?"
Me: "I like this cause it really makes the colors pop. But its so clear, it almost makes the outfit look top heavy..."

Then we looked at each other and gave out a nervous laugh before I finally yelled "What are we DOING??" It was a strange but hilarious moment.

I went to the job interview and learned more. The people there were really nice and I got to know a bit more about the company and what I would do. I went in with the mentality that I had to fight to convince them of my technical ability. We ended up, however, not focusing on that very much. They seemed confident in that (for what reason I do not know) and instead talked more about the hours, what I wanted out of this job and so forth. It was good; I informed them that 3 to 11 was fine, (ideal, actually) and let them know that I was interested in this job because it would be a steady income but still give me the opportunity to learn some new things.

Days passed and I came in for another interview. Long story short, they hired me.

Now sit back and look upon this for a second- God took me out from some amazing people for awhile to deal with some things. But it left a void of fellowship and other things. Not only did he fill it, he gave me a job that makes me more money a month then I did on my own self employment all of last year. There is no way I can boast in this. I didn't even look for it. It came to me. And the people here are really great, too. Its amazing. This blessing was totally uncalled for.

So that is that. I have a full time job. But what exactly do I do you ask? The official job title is Batch Production Controller. But what does that mean?

Well, to understand this in context you have to realize what [AwesomeCo] does. [AwesomeCo] is a huge company that was actually started by [Awesome Oil Co] during a slump in the oil market, but now it has grown into a company that manages 15 TRILLION dollars of assets. Our division is a big part of that.

We're called [AwesomeCo] finance and we are an acquisition. Formally called [JustAsAwesomerCo], the founders of this company (most of who are still working here) found a great niche market- the overnight accounting for the stock market, basically. Every night, companies drop files on our servers that have all their trading information for the day. Every night, we run it through our systems- over 20 top of the line Power Edge servers and a Tandem mainframe- and spit it back out to them before the market opens so that they can trade on it. Over 90% of the securities exchange market goes through us. We are a relatively little company with a huge impact- if we went down, so would the market the next day. Because of that we have totally redundant servers in a different part of New Hampshire that will take over in the event this one goes down- complete with battery and generator backup.

Because it is imperative that this data get out every morning, there is a night shift that exists to babysit the automated system. I am training with them right now- every night, they monitor the system and check everything. We actually have a checklist where we go down a list of commands that are supposed to be run and make sure they were. If any of them are held up, we find out why. Sometimes its because the client hasn't sent us their data. Sometimes its a server glitch. Whatever it is, if it goes wrong, we have to get on the phone and get it resolved.

Right now, the department I am in supports three or so different applications. Their is the main one I told you about that does the data for most of the market, another one that is just for broker/dealers, and a brand new one which has come about because of some new regulations for the industry. The company has another program they are rolling out soon that has to get approved by all the regulating bodies. Once thats done, I'll move from the night shift to my 3 to 11 position. Right now, I'm on the 10pm to 6am shift. I'm cross training on backups and some other stuff. After a week, I'll move to the 1am to 9am position and train there. By the years end, the new program should be rolled out hopefully, and I will head up supporting it on my own shift. I'm pretty excited. Its cool stuff.

The greatest thing about it here is the environment. Everyone has been really nice and its pretty laid back. They have catered food every day for the people on the more sane shifts, and because I'm working after that they slip an extra 8 dollars a day in the salary for meals. They also have those awesome little individual serving coffee machines and a huge plethora of roasts to choose from- including such amazing flavors as blueberry and my new personal favorite of the season, pumpkin spice.

You do work here, but there is alot of in-between time when your waiting for files or stuff just isn't breaking and there isn't much to do, and thats when you get to utilize the broadband and blazing fast computers. Intel and I have had our differences in the past, but I am happy with my Pentium 4 hyperthreading system with two- count 'em, two! gigabytes of memory.

There is quite a bit more about my job that I'm sure I've left unanswered. But you get the gist. I waited for a bit to post this anyway, because I wanted to get a good feeling for what I'll be doing, but I figured if I didn't post it soon it would be pointless. If you guys have any questions though, feel free to ask them in the comments. I'll probably blog more about work in the near future.

Till next time everyone!

Edit:

Self-censored content:
My apologies to my new employer [AwesomeCo], who is amazing. Three days after I posted this, they called me because their web-crawlers flagged it for getting to close to revealing operational stuff and the company by name. They were really nice about it and simply let me know what I needed to change. All is well that ends as such.

---Z

Poetic musings

Free Fall

Life starts in the womb
A tower so strong and so tall
And from birth to the tomb
We are all in free fall

We all fall different
And we all fall the same
We fall in unique and predictable ways

Depending on season
And our number of days
Sometimes our life falls together
Sometimes we fall away

But we all fall-
This is the one "Same"
Sometimes we think we are static
But it is never that way

-_---_-__-

Mental Vental Beta

A breather from the triumph
A lull in the break-neck pace
I need to take my doughy lumps
Less the soup be to sweet to the taste

But sour I can not make the soup taste
Even if I tried, I can't wipe this grin off my face
And no one would for this show me hate
But I shouldn't be reckless and cause an opposite state

I watch and read the lines alive
With unspoken meaning they ebb and dive
Like the waves of a dangerous ocean
Taming with meanings not yet spoken
A rough yet true field where hearts are broken
From nebulous meanings bestowed in token

Sit I there with a distracted concern
Not quite sure of what I've learned
But knowing still that trouble lies
In the admiration of innocent eyes

Sit I again with face aglow
From phosphorus light I do well know
Reading posts and drinking in
I feel attached but distant from my kin

Reading and weighing whats before me
I choose to pass on a possibility
A possibility to do good but with high risk
Of commiting greivous error if I miss

For my words are not arrows trimmed so well
They fumble in my hands my friends will tell
They sometimes maybe hit the mark
But but are dangerous enough to kill from afar

And this reason I choose to wait
And air my words at a later date.

(The post is crud; I know it well
but please do not to the world this tell.)
---_--_-
Eighh... so the mental vental is just a sort of random thoughts and reflections on things thinly veiled in crude poetry with sloppy composition. It was fun to write though.

Free Fall was inspired basically from the talks around K's blog about the deep questions and what not, especially as I've felt a sort of subtle transicion myself as of late.

And yes all; I WILL blog about my new job soon. I kinda want to average out a few days of what its like so I can more accurately tell you what its all about. Its for the good of the content here, folks. Honest.

Heh.. maybe I do take these posts to seriously. Anyway... It is a fun job I'll let you know that and I love it so far, but it does keep me a bit busy. Allegedly though, when I get into the routine, it slows down quite often which means I might have actually MORE time to blog and what not. We shall see.

More later.

(And by later, I mean an undetermined, non-defined stretch of time.)

A neglected copper mine

This really looks unimpressive, but I swear its just a bad photo. Forgive the light quality, and trust me- this is actually very cool. React with oohs and ahhs accordingly.

So, as most readers of this site know by now, I currently going through a sort of scrap metal/capitalistic recycling phase right now. I dismantle and destroy things to sell their metal for money- especially copper and aluminum.

With this in mind, I have been trolling the nh.craigslist.com free ads for anything that might be fun and profitable. A while ago, I posted a listing in the "Wanted" section saying that I would pick up dead or dying UPS (Uninteruptable power supply systems... those things that power your computer and stuff when the power goes out). I advertised "dead battery, bad battery or no battery" because all I want from them is the copper in their large transformers. Maybe two or three pounds. A week went by, and all I got was someone asking $20 for a perfectly working unit. "I'm sorry, but thats not how we play this game" (I know only two people perhaps who read this will get the Paul Shanklin reference, but that's OK.)

Meanwhile, I answered a listing from someone who said they had a few monitors they wanted to get rid of. It was a phone number only listing. I called.

"Ages and stages?" The person said on the other line.

I was a bit confused, but I had the right number... Turns out, they asked for donated computer equipment for their preschool and they got more then they bargained for. Everyone dumped their computers on them. They kept the best and it looked like someone took most of the actual systems- but they had about 15 monitors left over. Most of them, as she told me were "still working as far as I can tell". I told her I'd take them all and that I'd call back shortly to arrange a pickup.

Meanwhile, sometime around the next day, someone finally answered my listing for old UPS systems:

"I have one ups system that I'm just waiting for the word to remove it. I think it was made in 1990 but I am not sure. It is BIG so you will need a pick up truck. Is this something you want?"

He said he was located around Exeter, which was a bit far for me but I conversed with him for a bit through email and he sent me some pictures of the beast that made me feel it was a reasonable risk to take. Plus, it wasn't very far from the monitors so I'd be combining the trips. I felt pretty good about it so I told him I'd pick up the unit and asked for the address and when I could pick it up. He wrote back:

"Hours of pick up are 08:00 to 14:00 ... My name is Sgt. Dave ..."

At this point my eyebrows were raised. Was this some military base I would be going to? I felt a bit nervous. I read on:

"...Upon your arrival you will need to call me a 2nd time so I can let security know. You will be going to a corrections center so NO firearms!!!"

A corrections facility? Wait isn't that like... *gulp* a prison??

Yup. Sure was.

Somehow I roped my good friend Jim into going with me. So here we are- two guys, driving up in a van loaded down with 15 computer monitors into a prison facility (complete with barbed wire fences stretching to the heavens), sitting in the parking lot by the sheriff's cars, suspiciously rocking the van back and forth, trying to get a cell signal to call the good Sargent out.

But it all turned out all right. In the end we made contact with him and he walked us to the loading dock (a secure facility mind you) whilst once making a joke about "not getting shot at". Which was great. Because even though we were honestly a bit concerned, having a guy be able to joke about it is fun. Anyways, if I did exit this life then, I would have wanted it to be while laughing. Sargent Dave was cool.

The Sargent called two guys from the maintenence team and together all four of us hoisted the big sucker into the van. It was ridiculously bottom heavy. Even with out the batteries.

Yeah, the batteries were gone. Luckily that wasn't our main focus anyway: Our main focus was the copper in the transformers. And... well, I'll let you decide:

This is a little more then half of the second smallest transformer windings. Yup, that is some fat PHAT copper wire of epic proportions. No, the picture doesn't do it justice. You have to examine this thing for yourself and feel the weight. Plus the low light conditions couldn't have helped.. This is the one Jim Sawed away at for about 40 minutes. The matching half to this- which is a bit smaller- is worth by itself 10 dollars. With that one transformer, we broke even. It will pay the gas money and then some. All together: Over 65 pounds of copper, as told by the bathroom scale in this picture:


I like this last picture; for some reason the copper stacked up like that makes me think of something out of a Doctor Who episode.

So... 65 pounds of copper times $2 per pound. I got $120 greenbacks in just copper, not counting the aluminum and wire (which I will also sale).

In the first picture, you'll notice behind the block of copper a big aluminum heat sink with several devices attached to it. These have copper inserts for getting rid of the heat. Copper then aluminum, smeared together with thermal paste. Whatever these were, they must have ran pretty hot. I was looking at the copper with a greedy eye. My dad stopped me.

"Before you cut into that thing for copper, let me look up the part number".

I shrugged and told him to go ahead. Dad was great. He kept coming in when our dismantling of doom was at full fury and impart small words of wisdom. He would say something like "This transformer here looks like the top has just been tack welded on... I'm willing to bet that if you could cut through that, the rest would chisel right off." Then he'd leave. And sure enough, it would be as he said and save us untold hours. Jim, who did basically did all the copper removal work (thanks Jim!) got really fast after using this method. He then used the blocks he removed as stands to elevate the transformer up as he pounded the copper out. He got pretty fast at it. The last few went by in probably less then 10 minutes a transformer- quite a feat.

Later my dad came down with the spec sheet for the chips he looked up.

"Guess how much each of those is worth."

"Five dollars?" I guessed.

"Twenty?" Jim chimed in.

"If you wanted to buy them online right now, they would cost you 320 bucks a pop."

So yeah... there were about 4 or 5 of those on one side. I doubt we can get that much for them, but they should be worth a bit more then their scrap value, thats for sure. I just have to get someone to buy 'em now.

Okay, lets see. I've told these stories so often I've gotten bored of them, heh... But. I didn't mention the 15 monitors. I got to utilize my handy dandy trusty wusty (sorry) Pocket PC:

I was pretty proud of this. It was raining very hard last Saturday, so I backed the van into the garage and threw a computer in the back and set it up as a test box. I then started taking the monitors and testing them one by one. I'd put a piece of tape on it, give it a number, then hook it up and see how high a resolutioun it would take, what size it was and how high the brightness and contrast had to be turned up to order to look good. I put in all this info in on the fly with my pocket PC. I felt very geekish. Thank you so very much Pip. This thing rocks.

Oh, and you have NO idea how hard it was to get that picture of the Pocket PC clear. I must have taken ten pictures of that thing. I'm almost more proud of that picture then I am of the whole copper thing. I'm not going to show you the monitors; you all should know what they look like and the shots were really low-light, ghetto quality anyway.

So I have 6 monitors left. If you want one, come and get it. I'm open to trade, cash or begging. I'm trying to sell them but monitors are a dime a dozen these days. Except for the 19 inch, $10 a piece is probably all I'll get for them. Which is fine.

All in all, this was a pretty encouraging Saturday for me, and I think for Jim too, who is also getting into the spirit of capitalistic recyling (busy though he be). This was certainly a high yield. Its funny; all this momentum in the scrapping business and I'm about to start a full time job. But I'm going to keep at the scrapping stuff. Its just to much fun. And I think there's a good business to be built around this.

"Whats that, Zeke? A full time job??" Yeah. I'll post about it later. Quite crazy, actually. Until then, have some more pictures.

Jim and Dad confer over a big HOG transformer that has just had its lid removed.

(Click to see full size and read text)
Imagine seeing the whole world like this; little mental price tags on everything. That's pretty much where I am right now... Twisted, I know.

Small disappointments

Well, my last entry or two have been all about happyish things. So I figured I'd pop the collective cheerful outlook balloon now, and metaphorically rain on any parades that might be passing. Ladies and gents, with out further ado- a list of things I am disappointed in.

First, lets deal with things close to home. I am disappointed, not only with myself but in all of you for not realizing for over a stinking YEAR that I spelled "Reepicheep" incorrectly with as "Repicheep".

A) To say I am a Narnia fan is an understatement close in kin to saying that "the Beatles were stars" or "Being dipped in hot oil stings a little". So I should know these things. Furthermore, Reepicheep is one of my favorite characters in all the series if not THE favorite character. How could I do this to such an honerable beast?
B) I am literate for crying out loud!

In my defense (for what its worth) my first instinct was to go for "Reepicheep". But something gave me pause, and I SWEAR I rememer looking it up somewhere online and thought that I was wrong, and therefore thought I was correct in spelling it "Repicheep".

And now I have had this name for about a year or more on blogger. Flash forward to about a week ago- I went to a surprise party for Jim (which, I must say , pWnd! Props to you, Steph. and fam for pulling it off). The person's house who hosted the party also had FIOS (which is an amazing high speed internet running on fiber all the way to the house, but thats a topic too happy for this post). So to try it out, and for a little shameless self-promotion, I go to this very website. Right away Steph says "Thats great, but you've spelled Reepicheep wrong". To which I get all defensive and say "no no no, I thought so too but look it up" and I triumphantly bring up wikipedia....and fall flat on my proverbial face.

So that was rant number 1. Its fixed now, but I can't believe I went so long with out knowing my error and I am saddened at heart to know that no one else corrected me.

While I am still complaining about this community, it also saddens me that no one got the obvious coded message in the previous post. What do you all have, lives or something?

Thats actually about all I can manage to be dismal about. I'll tell you one thing I am NOT dismal about right now: GreenDragonRider's upcoming story about What happened to Susan. I am so excited about this project you have no idea. Everyone go over there and show her love in the comments so she gets encouragement and all that stuff.

Oh, and here are the only two photo's from the computer smashing party that wasn't:

Shinyish pile of metal and wire on the end of the table closest to camera is copper. Its a bad picture; I know. You see it was stuck on Black and white and I couldn't fix it, and on top of that the memory card filled up after I took two pictures. Bummer.

From left to right: Mr. Sledgehammer, partly concealed by Mr. Dead and Dying Monitor Tube. Far right and off picture: Mister and Misses Plastic monitor shell and their two kids.

"Who are you guys?" and more scrap stories

The last post really seemed to bring some readers out of the woodwork. Thank you all for reading, I appreciate it oodles! But- who are you guys? I think I've identified most of you by now through tedious deduction and case files, but there are a few of you whom I have only cold leads. I would never demand a full name from anyone, but if you could give me a name- even if its a first name, a fake name that sounds like your name, an inside joke- anything! I'd be a much happier person.

Not to say that I am not a happy person normally. I must say; as of late God has been spinning my story in positive ways I could not have imagined. Even reading Book the 13th in A Series Of Unfortunate Events didn't bring me down more then it intrigued me. In fact, in honor of this fact, I was seriously contemplating doing this post entireyly in the Sebald code. But that woold take to long, and there are probably better means for such ends as a codud messages.

So I had an awesome idea: I would make going through computer scrap into a party. A computer and other electronics destruction party- or CAOEHDP, I suppose. Anyway, I figured afficiency would go up since we could invent a sort of disassembly line, and I figured it would be a lot of fun, because, come on- who wouldn't vant to tear apart and smash computers with heavy tools? The idea of putting a sledegehammer through a screen alone has had strange effects on all my friends. I can understtand it.

I had this idea floating around my head for awhile, and I wanted to get moving on it before the snow ruined everything. Soo after I got the idea cleared with the parents, I sent out an email to my geek friends and told others that I forgot wherever I could. But I only gave them 2 days notice. Yeah, I don't kmow what I was thinking.

Anyway, some people wunted an update and wanted pictucres. Basically, I had a fun time, but it was just me and Anders. For awhile. Then we picked up N and that was fun too, but we only went through 3 monitors and a scanner.

On the way back home after picking up Noah, we passed the American legion building. Outside was a sign that said "Free yard sale". I had never heard of such a thing, but instantly I knew it was for me. I pulled into the nearest place I coulhd do a U-turn and checked it out. Apparently they decided that since thteir yard sale fundraising thing was over, everyone could just take what they wanted for free. Being in a scrap mood, I looked around. I saw a table saw. It would have been to heavy for me to get in the van probably. I saw a miicrowave. I took it. Microwaves are high in copper and low in fat. This one especially, because it was ventilmated which means there is a deceent size motor spinning the fans. w00t! While looading it I met a guy who has been in the scrap businness for 17 years. He was a colorful fellow full of merriment and boisterous swearing. He had seen this place and pulled in, but he had onlyy his car with him and so could take only smaller things. He did have his trusty crow bar with him, so he toook what he could. What he could was the cast aluminum in a propane grill. "Here, do you want the rest of this f___n grill? I'd take it myself man, but I've dun't have the f___n truck. But there's some aluminum here, this might be steel but it could be aluminum, got some wire here for the igniter- the fittings are all f___n brass. Here, take it!" It was a genrerous gift. I threw it in the back, too.

I carried in the microwave like a slain beast I brought to a facilhitate a table of plenty. I dropped it on the ground dramataically.

"What have you got there?" my dad asked, and I told him.
"Wait wait wait- before you take an axe to that thning see if it works."

The thing had no proper cord- just three wires coming out. It was apparently the type you install in your kitchen. I didn't think it would work, but I shrugged. Why not? I pulled the power cord out from a monitor and plugged the wires into it. The unit's clock came on.

Well, so far so good. After fiddling around with the menu, we got it to try and cook. The light turned on and it sounded like it was running. "How can we be sure?" someone asked. "Get some water" my dad said, "Get some popcorn!" others chimed in. I ran into the housse and grabbed some grapes. We threw them into the nuke and turned it on. They sparked and popped- it worked! We later proved that the motors worked too. This is all cool, but we don't need another microwave. And even though its outside dimensions are bigger, its pretty small inside. Does anyone out there want a microwave? If so then thats cool, I have an extra. But otherwise its going down. To much copper to just have it sit there, all intact like but not doing anything.

Oh- one more thing. Remember the table saw I saw? Well I planned on telling my dad about it to see if we should go get it later. But I forgot. Sunday I remembered, I think during our youth group thing- we all went to Macks Apples and made pies from picking to baking. It was a lot of fun. But on the way back home, dad asked me where I saw the table saw. We pulled in, and sure enough, it was still there. We decided to take the sucker home. That was a challenge. That sucker is HEAVY. Once we finally got it in the house though, we surveyed what we had found. On one hand, their is probably 70 pounds of steel on that thing and a good deal of copper in the massive motor, so if it didn't work, its no problem. But having a working table saw would be awesome. While plugging it in, we discovered the cable was badly damaged. We plugged it in and- nothing. After looking all over for the switch, we found it. The machine roared to a life. Dad and I started laughing the almost evil type of laugh when you get something very good that by all accounts you shouldn't have got. I turned the device off and quickly fetched a face shield and a scrap two by four. I spun the beast up once more and fed the board through. It cut like butter.

I'm pretty psyched about it. The blade is even in good condition! Soon, I hope to buy a cut-off blade to cut through the iron surrounding the copper wire in the transformers. Should make the work a lot easier.

Thanks for reading- and those of you who comment, remember to tell me who you are! :D

Free flowing mind patty melt

Hi everyone.

First of all, I'm so happy (blessed?) to have a few cool friends care about if I post or don't. The truth is, I just haven't been in the mood to blog recently. On the one hand, I really wanted to have a nice big and really good piece for the next post. But on the other hand, like Kiaya said, it doesn't have to be profound. But you see I was (am) on the verge of such a great topic. I am on the verge of a potentially major-life-style-changing sort of post, and so I wanted to see if that pans out. I'll probably know in a week or two. Then I'll really have a post. Or not. We'll see.

But as for this one, I think I'll just do a rambling/stream of conscious cop out. Forgive me, for I have no creativity and am slightly cranky right now. Here goes:

I had ALOT of fun at the hike. What can I say, I just LOVE the crazy cool ilk that Agape seems to attract. I had some great conversation and alot of fun times.

Some times in the past, things I'd see around me would lower my hope for humanity and dreams I'd see inside of me would raise them. Now, things I see in people around me raise my hopes and respect for humanity, and things I see within myself lower them. I don't know exactly how to take it. Its not a witty nugget of wisdom; its just a reflection.

Salvation- once saved, always saved vs. Worked out by faith debate. Ageless, endless and yet ever so pressing. This topic came up at the dinner table strangely enough, and I avoided answering for awhile, mainly because I disagreed with myself. By my sense of justice, I would say that certain people shouldn't be forgiven, or that at least, if they were forgiven and then got worse later the grace that was extended to them would seem to be void. For example, I can grasp God ransoming someone who killed others, I can understand that person being reformed and forgiven (Like Paul), but someone being ransomed by God and then going out and killing, I just sort of have this kneejerk gut reaction against them being still "saved". Not that my instincts make it right.

Perhaps it makes sense to think of the free gift of salvation as not a one time use gift- maybe something like a beverage. Maybe an antidote; yes that works. So if you accept this antidote for a year or two for free, you're great. But you can take the gift and then not use it for awhile, at point your in trouble. In this way of looking at it, it is simply a matter of USING the free gift.

I know, there were zilch scripture references in that, which I suppose makes it a large bunch of pointless speculation. Very well, treat it as such. I really am just wondering things out loud.

Uhh, what else.... I have discovered some music recently that I really don't like. That, no matter how much I try to find the cool artistic intent behind it, I can't think of anything good to say. Yes, it was on the radio.

Cliche ahead warning: When God shuts a door, he really does open another. Its almost like he's trying to lead me somewhere (Mock sarcasm: NO! rEEALY?). But its true. The Agape thing (disclaimer: even though basically my fault) really broke me for a bit, but I bounced back from it for the better. I hope that all can do the same. Its ironically enough gotten me on a better path for finishing up my education and POSSIBLY even- oh right, that I was going to save for later if it panned out.

Uhh... Speaking of pans. Bed pans make me think of oil pans, or actually vice versa.

I think we should turn some of our frickin huge amounts of coal into artificial Gasoline and stick it to our enemies over in good ol' midEa. Having your enema hold the purse strings to your economy is basically stupid. If you allow major opportunities to regain control of the purse strings, possibly even treasonous.

I do believe in Bigelow- I do, I DO!

Is

Update:I just posted this by accident. I think it was a sign. I am tired, I am through. I am tired, how bout you?

You want a post, wise guy?

Zeke is not dead.

---Someone who should know

P.S.: More at eleven*.


*does not guarantee or designate actual time.

A short scene from my life

So my mum brought the mail addressed to me down to my lab... I look through it- Credit Card offer, personal note and an army recruiting brochure.

Me: The army wants me, mum
Mum: Oh?
Me: Yup... and they say they'll give me this great gift- a messenger bag.
Mum: *laughs* For what? Signing up?
Me: No, dying.

At this point, my Mum stares at me with strange expression for an uncomfortable second or two.

Mum: Well... I could really use that messenger bag...

Of ROC, humanity and suprisingly light metal

I think I am lowering my standards, and allowing my blog posts to wander and ramble to topics completely unrelated. So litigate me.

Its time to ROC
Everyone! I can not believe I have been this slow in telling you all. I have a new blog that I am doing with a couple other friends. Its all about Random Obscure Culture- and ergo, is called SpreadROC.blogspot.com. I encourage all of you to check it out, look around and comment. Suggestions, criticism, rotten tomatoes- whatever you got. Oh, and be sure to read my proudest of stories: English Jack- a hermit who lived in the white mountains. Now you don't want to miss that, do you? So quick! Head on over!

Very light iron
Recall this pile of computer carcasses?

All the stripped cases (the big metal things on the back) are gone now. I took them to a scrap metal dealer. I had to get rid of a fridge... and due to very troublesome freon issues, I couldn't take the scrap copper (I approximated $30 dollars worth) out and sell it myself. We had to pay them 20 dollars to take it... Its frustrating, but its the cheapest option. The Londonderry dump will take it for 50 dollars. I could have an HVAC guy come and "reclaim" the Freon with special equipment, but that's $79 per hour. In the end, I just had to admit defeat and let the scrap yard get all the profit.

Because of the computer recycling project, I've been calling around a whole bunch of scrap metal buyers and checking rates. They weren't the best deal on anything but the fridge, but they were close, so I took the steel computer cases there. This grade of steel is called "light iron" for some reason. Perhaps its because you get so little for it. I turned those cases into $1.75. Yeesss!!!

One of the workers just told me I was "all set, you can go now." But I protested- I wanted my money. He must of thought I was daft, but dang it, that's the hardest buck seventy-five I've ever earned.

The scrap yard itself was really huge and impressive. I think everyone should see it- its that cool. Definitely my little bro will have to- he would go bonkers.

There are HUGE piles of metal everywhere, separated by large dirty gravelish roads. When you drop off stuff, you're actually right in the thick of huge dump trucks, little Bobcat vehicles scampering everywhere and huge, two story clawed juggernauts on wheels. I actually had to stop to let this giant CAT claw-mobil pass me. Another one was crunching up metal in the distance. Its so active, so abuzz with activity and alot of man power. It struck me as a kind of outside factory- metals in various states of sort and crush, people moving about, heavy machinery everywhere. Words don't do the fun it was justice.

Seemingly deep random thinkings:
Humans are so frail. We think we aren't, but our lives teeter on edges never seen until it is to late. Amazingly small things can trigger horrible events. People can ruin lives by a few ill planned words. No matter who you are, no matter what you've done, your life is delicate and can be de-railed. As sad as it is, it is profound:

"...All the tears we cry tell us were made the same... We build our different lives, but they all break the same." ---Mute Math

It is truth.

Incredible video
Okay, on to quite probably less deep thoughts. I've found out how to embed video and I have to show it off with this absolutely amazing animation for a song by a band called "The Real Tuesday Weld". No, serious.

The Real Tuesday Weld - Bathtime In Clerkenwell

Mah tooph ith out

Before I get on to this post, I just have to say a few words of thanks.

I have amazing friends that I don't deserve. Everyone has been so kind to me. To everyone who IM'd me, left me notes on my blog or expressed their sympathy and best wishes in some way or another, thank you SO much. Really, I am humbled. Thank you, you guys are "pretty much awesome". You've been so kind that it hurts.

Okay, now to the post. I just got back from camping/little family vactation and its pretty fun stuff, so I'll probably post about about it next. But I was almost done with this story about my tooth getting pulled out, so its first up to bat.

Friday I went in for a tooth extraction- well, more like whats-left-a-tooth extraction. Yeah, I might as well level with you all: My dental health ain't exactly going to win me any Crest scholarships. I basiclly had a muller that had rotted so badly that it broke once upon a peanut M&M about, oh, I'd say a month ago. I fetched the tooth out and kept it around for a little while, hoping that (since it was in two peices) I could con the tooth fairy into giving me double, but instead I got nothing. Apparently shes a pretty smart dame or she stopped making house calls , but thats another story.

Back to the extraction. So, we've recently changed dentists. And man, I'm a generally easy going guy and don't readily fault professionals but now that I've been with the new people (Aspen dental, if you'd like to know) I can see how much better they were then our old dentists. These guys are actually FRIENDLY.

These are all the pre-concieved notions I have going into the dentist's today. With all that being said though, I was a little nervous once I started watching the oral surgeon who was going to pull the roots out from underneath my tooth. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

He was an older gentelman- a nice fellow. He made friendly banter while going briefly going over my file. At one point, he stopped his activity behind the operating chair and turned back to me. He had noticed the Sarcoma in my health record. He asked me about the details. I told him my story.

"Your very lucky... very lucky. Sarcoma is a pretty bad dissease."

I could tell that he had a story. I was curious, but I stopped myself from asking any questions.

"Your very lucky." he echoed again.

Then he went ahead and shot me up with novocaine. He told me his name I'm sure, and of course I forgot it. But it doesn't matter- I know his name. His name is Shaky.

Probably not the best nickname for a dentist, but its true. His hands were shaking. This is what gave me second thoughts. Watching him work was akin to the scene in Toy Story 2 where the toy doctor fixed up woody. The old man could get the small stitches into woody-he just had to time his moves against his shaking hands. I'm guessing this is how it was for my surgeon, Mr. Shaky.

I kept telling myself that they wouldn't have let him work if he had lost his ability. And lo and behold, he hadn't. His hands moved like mine after 5 big mugs of coffee, but he had some mad dentistry skillz. The pain when the needle for the novocaine went in was very minor. This guy was good- but he wasted no time. He was one of the fastest dentists I've been underneath. And man, I am so glad for novocaine- all i could feel was the tension on my mouth, but I could tell that he was really REALLY torqing my mouth. It was kinda scary. It took him a long time to pull the roots out, then he had me bite down on some gauze and told me to keep it there for the next hour. He gave me a perscription for a speacial kind of pain killer that actually binds to the pain receptors... pretty crazy stuff. Then he looked at me and said very seriously

"Make sure you take the first pill BEFORE your novocaine wears out."

He didn't have to tell me why. I had felt the raw force he had used in prying the roots out of my mouth. Even with the novocaine it still hurt a little.

On the way home, it started to hurt more, but I had to keep gauze on the part of my mouth sence it was bleeding slightly- which meant that I couldn't swallow the pain meds till I was finnished with the gauze. The first day hurt pretty bad, but I took me a nap and later that evening we headed out for a vacation. All in all the surgery went probably as good as could be expected...my only regret was that I didn't get to see the mangled tooth they had pulled out.

More stuff later.

BTW today is my birthday, or so they tell me. I don't really remember it.

Circumstances make me a liar.

Well... this will probably be the hardest situation I have ever faced.

I have to work through some things and I can no longer take regular classes at Agape. There is the remotest of possibilities that I can rejoin in a few weeks time, but I have convinced myself not to hope against hope as it has proven to me in the last week to be a fool's strategy.

Forgive me- I told you all so optimistically how much I looked forward to seeing you every week. It was true, and I wish I could. But these circumstances- curse them! They make me a liar. Forgive me.

Harder still is that the total reason can not be disclosed, much to my dismay. I feel I owe it to you all, my core of friends at Agape that visit this site frequently and many of you who don't. You ARE my friends, don't I owe you a simple or at least clear reason? Know this: its not my decision that these things remain totally concealed. I have done the only thing I could: make a stance to at least tell no tinted half-truths (which has been suggested), convenient as they may be. I owe you all better, even if it means leaving more questions then answers. At least the answers won't be some rot I can't live with.

I have the strangest urge to tell the truth. Though I perhaps would loose a few friends and I most certainly would not come out unscathed, I feel that the Truth, or heck- even just a small dose of simplified truth- is the only thing that can make this finished.

"...and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free." -John 8:32

I'm not saying I would be vindicated or proven clean or anything- there would be no clear cut victory; for the blame for this situation follows a winding trail that has entry ramps at my door- but at least it would be over. The knot in my stomach would be able to die. However, that's not how people are telling me to play it- and I understand there reasons. They aren't even necessarily wrong. Its just....URGH.... This whole situation has frustrated me to know end.

I love you guys. Everyone at Agape- from the toddlers to the teachers. It really felt like one big family.

I suppose this is it. I wish everyone at Agape the best- and I mean that. Every single family- I leave with no grudges. Just a large knot in my stomach and some regrets.

I'll see you all around.

Long live Mrs. Woodman!
Long live Agape!

...Z..ek..e..

(..Wanderer...)

My next hair brained business plan. Or: an unlikely gold mine

Okay, now for a real life post: no this is not a dream. I suppose I should apologize for that last one, but hoho baby, I am not sorry. That worked even better then I thought. And honestly! It was a real dream, haha... suuckaahs!

So... what have I been up to?

Life for me has been louder- the highs are higher and lows lower, so that the contrast is much sharper and abrupt sometimes. This is life more, well, lifelike. If I had to choose between extremes and a dull semi eventless life, I do think I would choose the extremes. Not that I enjoy my mistakes...bah, but enough of theory. Lets get into it, shall we?

Here's an outline:
I went to soulfest and it was great
BTW my birthday is coming up
Heres my wishlist, fam.
I like various music
I'm sort of on a diet
My little bro is cool and I have gold-fever.

(some items removed for brevity's sake)
(Update- and since I know some of you have short attention spans, I'll put the topic in bold so you can skip right to the one you care about. There, ya happy?)

I went to soulfest and it was great
It was an amazing event, but by now I've told some of these stories so many times that it seems stale to re-hash them so maybe I'll take this a different route and focus on the volunteering.

This year, I volunteered part time at the festival in order to get a discount ticket. I got there under the assumption that I was going to work in IT (information technology- computers, networking, etc.) because, well...thats what I was told I would be working in. Instead, the scene I arrived at was something like this:

Everyone was friendly, but everyone was busy. They were understaffed by about 200 hundred volunteers and no one knew what I.T. was. Finally a light bulb came on in the leader of volunteer's face and she said "Oh! I know where you go!" or something to that affect and much merriment was partaken of by all.

Until I got there, and the leader was utterly confused.

"Uhh, no the networks... the network was set up like, 2 weeks ago... were good- but thanks! Thank you for singing up, we uhh- if anything goes wrong, we know where you are!"

Hah, I got it. Someone made a booboo. I'm okay with that- they didn't need me there, but they DID need someone at the yurt.

"What is the yurt!?"

Well, since you asked...

The yurt was a special dome that was set up inside of the backstage/secured area. But when I say secured, I use the term lightly. Even with the shortages, there were about 350 volunteers or so and almost all of them could get backstage.

Anyway, the yurt was basically mission command- the temporary office of all divisions. The leaders all had their seats in their: Two people who basically ran soulfest this year, EMT, gunstock staff, people who coordinated transportation for all the artists, drivers, security, etc.

My job was sort of half secretary, half bouncer. I checked in and out radios, charged batteries and guarded the gates with my life from unauthorized personal. It wasn't bad- I enjoyed it actually. There was one other girl on shift with me, Priscilla (I recall this because I think it was the coolest name I heard at the festival) and the lady in charge...whom, lord forgive me, I cannot recall the name of. It went pretty good and even had it's emergencies to keep everything fun- there were not enough radios to go around, and we had to allocate them and try and make all the departments happy. On top of that, some were malfunctioning. On top of that, we had the weather to deal with- someone was tracking it on radar and was letting us know how many minutes off it looked as the staff tried to call when to shut down certain things and when to keep going.

One of the most exciting things to happen at me during the festival occurred right in the middle of all this: an environmentalists guy jumped the chain and tried to confront the girl who was heading up the festival on them not having recylable bins out everywhere yet. I was still new and he just came in like he owned the place and got past me. Luckily, the lady was a tough chick and firmly, but as kind as possible under those circumstances, escorted him out the door.

Yeah...Uhh, sorry- oops.

Well, you know I said I wasn't going to talk about soulfest much, but hah! yes I did! Hopefully it was a story you hadn't heard yet.

BTW my birthday is coming up
So... My birthday is coming up. That's cool, I guess. But I'll be honest. I don't want to be 20 right now. In a year or two, I'd be fine with it. But not right now. It scares me. I never planned on being in school right now... I forget what wonder job I was going to have, but I recall that I had planned I was going to graduate at 16 and basically get out and start adventuring from a converted van. Such is not my life as of yet.

My little bro is cool...
Let me just brag on my little brother here for a second. This kid I think must be like what my dad was at 7. He's more technically intuitive than I will ever be and shall easily surpass my skill in things tech, quite possibly before he turns 16. Some kids bug their older brothers about getting a toy or giving them the bigger piece of something. Littleman bugs me to help build a computer.

He came up the other day with everything he figured he needed to start off with: a case, a keyboard, tape, and a remote control tank. He taped the case onto the tank so he could drive it around. Alas, it was to heavy but it is the thought that counts. I mean, that's an awesome idea, isn't it? It's like the ultimate computer couch potato. You don't even have to go to the PC, the PC can come to you!

Anyway, he had asked me questions a few weeks back about how computers worked and this kid sat through me explaining everything I could on a very technical level of how the hardware works to do things, and I daresay, I think he retained over half of it. He keeps coming up to me and saying

"I have the, uhh, RAMs, the muvverboard, the disk drive and the- whats-it-called? Professor?"

"processor?"

"Yeah, wight."

I'm just geeking out about it. My friend Jim was over the other day and prophetically declared that "He's going to pwn us all. He'll be a crazy modder- he's going to pwn. You better keep an eye on him." I told him that so far I'm on his good side and I plan to keep him there. So that's what I'm going to do: I'm going to help him build his own computer from spare parts, and I'm seriously thinking about teaching him the command prompt. I think he's ready. He shall be the smallest hacker ever, migets aside. (Are there midget hackers?)

...and I have gold-fever.
And now for the content that the title teased: My hair brained gold exploiting business idea... No, a new one!

Those of you who have been to my lab know that I have ALOT of computer stuff. Most of it pretty much junk. I mean there is spare parts, but you only need so many pentium pro's with 64 mb of ram. If you think I'm bad, you have no idea.

A long time ago (perhaps 6 months- probably closer to 2 years ago) I decided to totally clean out the basement. What better way, said I, then to remove everything from it, resort, then replace? And so, I hauled out one weekend, about half the contents of the basement outside. I placed it on palates and sorted stuff in the basement. Come dusk, my dad warns me:

"You better put those in plastic bags and put a tarp over them, just in case you don't get them done soon and it rains."

Oh shoo, I think to myself, I'm going to be done tomorrow. But I obeyed anyway. Ha, glad I did.

Dad and I just took the tarp off yesterday and started going through. I had 16 computers in there.


Read that: 16 MORE computers then the ones in my basement. Some of them are a bit rusted, as you can see. Some are a lot rusted:

I've never had a rusted screw holding back an expansion card before, so this has been an interesting life first for me. I encountered these on occasion while sifting through the hardware and pulling things of any value (PCI video and network cards, etc.)

After I had vultured over them myself, I called my friend Jim. I had two questions for him.

"So, I have these systems over here and I know you like shiny coiled wire for your crazy projects. Want to see what you can get out of these power supplies?"

...to which he replied "Sure." and came over. My other question was

"So Jim...how up are you on your alchemy?"

To which he actually knew what I was talking about. You see, a while ago while he was in high school chem, he was talking to me about the process for extracting medals out chemically and electro-chemically. (I might have just invented that last word up, but its cool and makes sense so lay off) People do it for gold recovery from plated jewelry. They also do it to recover gold from computers.

Gold is a really good conductor. It doesn't corrode either. And so things that are important are plated with it- CPU's, motherboard pins, connectors for expansion cards, etc. If you can pull it out, its worth alot in the right volume. An old 486 chip has about 0.015 ounces of gold. Not much, say ye, right? Well, do you know what that's worth right now?

$9.36. Gold is floating around $620 an ounce right now. Newer chips have less gold, but they have it. And the beauty is this: Supply.

Computers are rarely recycled. Some companies are just now starting to begin programs to recycle them, but they cost money for the consumer ($30 shipping for HP's, which is the most successful large recycler). You really shouldn't just throw them away- they do contain some chemicals that hurt the environment, but none the less, some landfills are filling up with them. They call it e-waste.

Now you know I'm not the bleeding heart save the world type. I'm the free market lets make some money type. But it seems here that we have a beautiful synergy of the two here- or at least, a very good marketing ploy for all those bleeding heart types to give me money. I won't complain.

And it's not just gold. Silver is used in chips as well and hard drive platters nowadays are coated with a cobalt-platinum alloy. Then there are the non precious metals: casings of drives are often aluminum, and the case is steel (sometimes covered in plastic). Those won't fetch much, but they will fetch something. And so it has begun- my little brother and I spent today taking this:


And turning it into this:

Little man was a huge help with me on today's project... he got right in there with his screwdriver and helped me rip out power supplies, drives, LED's, plastic shells and everything else.

We stripped these computers down further then I have ever before. I basically reduced the cases to about 80 pounds of steel (which I plan on selling) and the useless plastic inserts and such. I removed every motherboard (which is quite a chore on some of the boxes) and tried to "leave not a rack behind." They are clean. After we were done, the pieces were a mess and so we had to resort them. Littleman is amazing at this sort of thing:

Behold his handy work. I came to him with another power supply while he was sorting them and he said "Oh, phew! Good. Now I will not have to make three stacks with one more in the middle then on the sides cause I can just do two piles of six. Thanks!" I told you this kid was good.

So now the next step is to call scrap yards and get the per pound rate on steel. That should be easy. It might be $5 for all of it, but hey, its something. Some of the small stuff like LED, switches, cables and system speakers I might try to sale in a big grab bag type of lot(s) on ebay. "Here! Its a lot of crap- theres nothing good, but theres lots of it so that should make up for it!" I think maybe that's the exact wording I'll use.

Then...and heres the fun part... Jim and I get together and start mixing chemicals and electricity like mad scientists. The idea is that we are "reverse electroplating"- in other words, we "plate" our anode with the medals were extracting. This is way 1 of 2- the other one involves just using chemicals. We will probably experiment with both of them.

I'll keep you guys posted.

(To long, I know. But understand this: I cut out three things or so from this blog to make it shorter. No, seriously).