Category: Uncategorized

Another night, another crazy dream though I can only rememeber a few details from this one. Basically, I was a spy and my boss was the developer lead for my team. My first task was to assemble a disguise that would let me infiltrate the ranks of my target. It required some sort of black cape, weird black boots, a wig and makeup to look like an old woman and four old, silver coins. I started to assemble this disguise and eventually realized it would not work and came up with a different one. I had on tight black pants, black dress shoes, a beige collared sweater (sort of like this one but with a collar) with the collar up.



Now that I had my disguise (if you can even consider that a disguise), I had to infiltrate the target location. From my surroundings, the locale was possibly the city of New York, but checking my maps showed St. Petersburg. So, yes, I was infiltrating a Russian installation. From here, the rest of the dream is very fuzzy. I do remember getting onto an elevator and having a woman roll her eyes viciously.



I do remember some of the emotions that I felt. When I was performing the first task, I knew that I was taking shortcuts and that my boss would be upset if he found out. I believe the same thing happened when I was actually on my way to the base. I was using some sort of device to track my location (probably a Windows Mobile powered device, naturally) and that was against the rules of engagement.

So in the past two weeks of flag football, my team has lost 58-0 and 28-2. Last week, my QB didn’t remember how to hand off the ball and I plowed into him. The starting QB and the starting RB, plowing directly into each other. Too bad I was the taller of the two as my nose connected to his forehead. The blood started flowing immediately. This week, I jammed my middle finger on my right hand before the game started. That wouldn’t have been that bad but I was starting QB! I couldn’t feather out my floating passes like I wanted to and the team can’t catch bullet passes. I gave up five interceptions, I believe.

I just realized that I have never attended class drunk. Oh well, there is always grad school!

EMusic.com is changing drastically. Gone are the days of 2000 downloads a month for $9.95 (well, $14.95/month for 3 months). I had a subscription and I’m now glad that I cancelled it. The new plan is $9.99/month for 40 downloads or $14.95/month for 65 downloads. Given that Emusic.com mostly carries indie, most of my downloads were hit-or-miss. I’d try something out just because they suggested it and sometimes it was great but more often it was deleted. Now that the downloads are so restricted, usage patterns are going to be changed drastically as well.



The site should be euthanized.

Wow, the Wings season begins tonight! Being out in WA now, I’m curious as to how many games I’m going to be able to catch. Tonight’s game is on ESPN2, but I have flag football practice at 6 PM and the game starts at 4:30 PM (PST). I’m curious as to how the goalie situation is going to work out and how Hatcher is going to fit in with our team. I doubt we are going to win the cup, but I’m still going to follow the Wings heavily. Since Seattle and even WA doesn’t have a hockey team, I’m completely allowed to root for the Wings!

I’m remembering at least portions of my dreams every night this week. Last night I know that I got stung by a bee on the left side of my torso, but that’s all I remember.

I can’t find my favorite Windows Media Player 9 visualization! For some reason, I’m almost positive it was just like Battery:sepiaswirl but with color. Gah, something so simple yet it’s driving me nuts! I guess Ambience:warp will have to do in its place.

Ok, so in light of the car rental fiasco, I decided to add car rental coverage to my insurance. I got a bit curious as to what my insurance rates would have been had I purchased a different car. I used Progressive’s online quote service and got some interesting numbers. Note, the quote I got for my car was $1,439 while in all reality I pay about half of that. For comparison purposes, I’m going to take $700 from each of the numbers I got. That should be more realistic:

$739


$807


$854


$939


$1,073


$1,105


$1,109



So let’s see. If I had actually purchased the Evo, my monthly payment and insurance cost per month would have totaled about $800. In contrast, I’m spending about $520/month for the Focus. That is $280 savings per month on just basic costs, let alone the additional cost of premium fuel and speeding tickets had I chosen the Evo. Since I started keeping track of how much fuel I use, I’ve gone through 126.23 gallons of the stuff. That’s only a $25 difference if I was using premium instead of regular. Maybe I should have gone with the Evo…

Ok, let’s play with some numbers. Here are the current WRC standings:

(57 pts) Richard Burns

(55 pts) Sebastien Loeb

(53 pts) Carlos Sainz

(48 pts) Petter Solberg

(43 pts) Markko Martin

(38 pts) Marcus Gronholm

Burns is on a downward slope. If his performance in Italy is any indication of his desire to win the championship, we can all but write him off. Expect Burns to score maybe 8 more points over the last three rallies. Loeb is hot now, but he is also inexperienced. His car is sick, so if he can avoid a major retirement in Britain he is going to pull down at least 15 more points. Sainz is too experienced to drop out of this championship without a fight. He won’t partake in any major gambling, but he will be consistant. I’ll give him 12 points. Petter knows he needs to score some serious points to vault into the championship, so he will twist his natural talent into desperation. At least two early retirements will keep him below 8 more points in the final rallies. Markko is going to destroy the next two rallies. Expect a first and a second place finish. The final rally in Great Britain is going to decide this championship. Gronholm has retired from the last three rallies. Expect another two retirements with a third place race to finish off the season. The final standings and points:

(70 pts) Sebastien Loeb

(69 pts) Markko Martin

(65 pts) Carlos Sainz

(64 pts) Richard Burns

(56 pts) Petter Solberg

(44 pts) Marcus Gronholm

You heard it here first.

Deciding to change my own oil may have been a bad call and I haven’t even done it yet! After calling around to four different oil change shops in the area, I decided to do it myself. The cheapest I found was $25 and that was at a place I wouldn’t trust. I ran to Napa auto parts and purchased six quarts of Mobil 1, oil filter, filter wrench, funnel, shop rags and wheel ramps. $70 in initial costs and an estimate of about $31 per additional oil change means I’m going to spend more money to do it myself! Granted, the prices that I was quoted for an oil change was not for synthetic oil. I guess it is more respectable to change your own oil… nah, I screwed up.