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A Crazy Moving Weekend Ahead

July 3rd, 2008 | 2 Comments | Posted in Daily Life, Lifestyle, My Life, Technology

Yes, I know tomorrow is the Fourth of July, Independence Day here in the United States. And yes, I know it’s probably foolish to move the day afterwards. But gosh darn it, I’m excited about being in my new house.

Verizon sent me the wrong modem. They were supposed to send me a wireless router modem, but instead they sent me a plain, one-port DSL modem. Oh well. My roommate is giving me his wireless router DSL modem, so I’ll probably use that.

Satellite should also be a breeze - I’m just packing up the satellite boxes and taking them with me, the installer will be there on Monday to put the dish up on the new house.

I’m picking up the U-Haul on Saturday morning, and we’ll move everything then, and then probably need to come back to the old house to clean Saturday evening and maybe Sunday afternoon.

A four-day weekend is nice, but it’d be nicer if it wasn’t already planned out with tons of stuff to do! I don’t like moving, but it’ll be nice to get it all done and over with. I am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed in my own house, and spending my evenings after work for a while unpacking and finding places for things.

Maybe I’ll even get to paint in the next month or two. I’m thinking about deep navy blue for the living room with white trim. I need more wall art though. So far I have one painting and just a few posters to decorate with, along with some framed family photos. It’s weird to go from apartment-sized living to a whole house to fill. I will have some furniture, but not a lot. Enough furniture for me, for now at least.

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The Tech Wishes He Had a Place to Rage

June 30th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Daily Life, Lifestyle, My Life

I’m not really angry about anything. My brain just hurts. Today is one of those days where I just didn’t get started out on the right foot, and every step after that seems slightly off.

This morning I woke up at 7:18 to get ready for work at 8am like I always do on Monday mornings. After I got out of the shower Kylara called to ask me to bring her some files she left on my computer at home. I wasn’t able to, and I felt bad not being able to help her.

When I got to work, I set down my stuff and called her to let her know I was downstairs in the call center, and she said she’d come down later. Then my coworker reminded me I didn’t have to be there until 10:30am, because I was staying late until 7:30pm. Great, grand, wonderful.

I went up to take her the files at that point, and the door was locked. I had to call her to come back towards the stairs to let me in. I told her what was going on. I felt sick to my stomach and head. She then let me know her project in GarageBand was broken because a nightly script wipes the drives on the iMac she was using. I went and got the Digital Media Director to come over and help her. I stayed for about an hour trying to help anyway I could. I finally just had to leave, my stomach hurt so bad.

I went home, let my stomach settle, ate some breakfast, and then came back at 10:30am. I got to go update the director’s iMac with the latest VMWare Fusion and fix another couple of issues on it while I was there. That’s always neat when you get to fix things for the big bosses, so not everything was so bad this morning.

There are more issues with the DNS servers at work again today. We have a small percentage of users whose DNS settings aren’t automatic, and so when the first server fails, they don’t automatically fall back to the secondary and tertiary servers. In layman’s terms, about 30-40 calls for each technician where someone can’t access some websites, but can still get to others.

In house news - Country Classic real estate, one of my past landlords, are holding up my closing on the house because the one guy authorized to return the rental history form to the bank is out of town on vacation until Wednesday.

Apparently they “lost” the first one sent to them three weeks ago, so when my banker sent them the form again last Friday they said it’d be Monday or Tuesday. But now it’s going to be Wednesday before they can fax it in. Which means we can’t order the appraisal until at least Wednesday, which means we probably won’t be able to sign the contracts until another week out.

Then it all has to go off to the headquarters at the state capital, where they’ll either finalize the approval or reject it, and then I can close. So I won’t officially own the house for probably another two-three weeks from now.

I’ve got to pack things up pretty much every night this week, and then I move out of my rental on Saturday and into my new home - since I know the owners they’re letting me move in and rent the house on a weekly basis until I can close, so that I don’t have to keep paying my current landlord rent. I’ve got DSL and Satellite scheduled and all that’s left to do there is to switch the power and water once our closing date is firm.

My life, it is crazy. It’s good, but it’s hectic, and I think I’m stressed out a pretty good bit today. Thankfully, all the callers while I’ve been on duty this morning have been pretty nice people, and I think God’s giving me patience with them.

Oh, and official GMAT scores came back: I got 590 (out of 800, 65% ranking) on the Verbal/Quantitative sections, and 5.5 out of 6 on the Analytical Writing (83% ranking), so - not too shabby, statistically doing better than the average GMAT test-taker. Waiting now to hear back from the Grad School about whether or not I’m in the program.

That’s all for now. At least today’s pay day.

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So Now Do I Get Super Powers?

June 17th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Daily Life, Lifestyle, My Life, Uncategorized

It hit me this morning - I have had recurring nightmares for the last year or so about my dad dying suddenly, and then getting a phone call from my mom and having to come home, etc. It was a terrifying nightmare, and I’d wake up feeling like a bad omen was over me.

I thought this was my worst nightmare, that it would hurt so bad to lose him, or my mom, either one. I couldn’t imagine the pain, or dealing with it at all. I saw myself walking down a street as an older man, more mature and sort of… tamed.

But now - here I am. He’s passed away. Yes, I was devastated, and yes I miss him. But I know he’s with Jesus. The whole thing was not nearly as unbearable or life-altering as I thought it would be. My fears are relieved, because I know he’s better off now. We’ve (my family and I) been in the comfort of God’s hands this entire time.

So, now that I’ve been through and survived my worst nightmare so far, am I going to have an even worse nightmare, or do I become invincible like in the comic books? I don’t know if that actually makes me fearless, or hardened, or anything at all. But still… it’d be awesome to have super powers.

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Maybe a Home Owner After All

May 28th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Daily Life, My Life

The house I was looking to buy the other week, but decided not to, actually went down in price. The owners decided to make an offer to me that was significantly lower than the market listing. I’ve since gone to my Mom’s house and retrieved last year’s taxes, and I have my two pay stubs to take to the bank. I made the appointment for Thursday afternoon, and then it’s do or die. I either get approved or I don’t.

I’m nervous, because I might not be able to get it still. Then if I do get it, there’s closing costs and things. The bank said they would probably cover up to $1,000 of the closing costs. Everything after that will have to come out of my pocket. At least if I don’t get it, I’ll still have a good assessment of my finances.

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A Great, But Hard Weekend

May 26th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Daily Life, Family, My Life, Weekend, sleep

Last weekend I went back home to my folks’ house 5 hours from here. The primary purpose of the trip was to pick up my girl from her trip to visit her best friend, but also to visit my family for a short time over the weekend.

I arrived late Friday night, talked to my mom shortly and then passed out while fixing her desktop computer. It was  busy updating to Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, and it failed out because she has a 10 gig hard drive that filled up.

Saturday, I woke up late in the morning, went to Bojangles with my mom, then went to see my dad at the nursing home, and then went back to the house to wait on my girl to call. She and I and her friend Rachel went to IHOP (I wanted to write iHop there, I really think Apple has done something to my brain). After lunch/dinner, we went to the mall where I followed them around while they shopped.

Wound out the day by hanging out at her friend Rachel’s house, watching TV until late into the morning hours. I was supposed to return to my mom’s house after SNL (Saturday Night Live) was over, but me and my lovely girl got into a pretty crucial conversation that required attention, and I didn’t get home  until around 3:30 a.m. My mom was not pleased, and I apologized profusely for making her miss me all night. I got into bed around 4 a.m.

Sunday I was up again at 6:00 a.m. with a stomach ache and runny nose, and it was time to get ready for church anyway. I got ready, we left for church at 7 a.m., and I was completely sans-energy. I chugged an energy vitamin drink at breakfast as well as a diet Wild Cherry Pepsi (a side note: these are delicious! We don’t get them in my area, only the non-diet version, so I have to get them when I go home to visit). At church after the morning services, I stopped by the church’s coffee shop (yes, we have our own mini-Starbucks, serving actual Starbucks espresso) and got a mocha latte.

I was pretty awake finally by lunchtime. My mom took my grandma, sister, and me and my girlfriend-equivalent to Applebee’s and we all hung out. Then we left and went by the nursing home to see Dad on the way out of town. About six hours later we arrived at my house again, my body aching from no sleep. I almost completely passed out, but still stayed up till about 11pm watching TV. Kylara seemed to enjoy her presents that I got her while she was gone. I have my girl back for a while :-)

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