New Toys


Its been a good couple of days, toy wise. GTA San Andreas came out today, although those of us with a pre-order got it last night! ;-)
The line of people waiting to pick this game up seriously went around the store and out the door. Fortunantly I knew someone who was about 6 spaces from the front, and managed to get my copy without having to stand in the line for two hours.
The game is pretty damn cool, although the controls seem a little more difficult then they were in Vice City. Still, I'd been waiting about 6 months for this game to come out, and am certainly not dissapointed.

Before the excitement of the new game had even settled down, my next toy was delivered! My laptop arrived today! I haven't used it all that much as it doesn't have any of my programs on it, but so far from what I can see, I'm liking it a lot!

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TV Dinners II


This is probably no longer blog-worthy, but I did that thing where I pre-make a meal again. This time its roast beef over mashed potatoes with green beans on the side. I also made gravy from scratch!

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Crossfire


If anyone here hasn't seen the now controversial Crossfire with Jon Stewart, you really need to. It was quite possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen. The transcript doesn't really do it justice, so if you want to see it, please let me know and I'll get you a copy...
That being said, here are some of my favorite moments from the show:

STEWART: And [say] something [nice] about President Bush.
BEGALA: He'll be unemployed soon?

STEWART: Now, this is theater. It's obvious. How old are you?
CARLSON: Thirty-five.
STEWART: And you wear a bow tie.
CARLSON: Yes, I do. I do.
STEWART: Now, listen, I'm not suggesting that you're not a smart guy, because those are not easy to tie.

CARLSON: You had John Kerry on your show and you sniff his throne and you're accusing us of partisan hackery?
STEWART: Absolutely.
CARLSON: You've got to be kidding me. He comes on and you...
STEWART: You're on CNN! The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls!

STEWART (TO CARLSON): You know what's interesting, though? You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.

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Ugh :-(


Well, its been officially announced. Eschelon Telecom is buying Advanced Telcom.
Employees of Advanced Telcom will become Eschelon employees when the deal goes through around the first of next year, however, I don't think we'll be around for more then say, 4 months after that. Eschelon already has a centralized operations center based in Minneapolis, MN, and as soon as their people learn our systems we'll be made redundant.
Pending any amazing job offers coming up, I'm going to stick it out and at least get a severance package out of it. Besides, who knows? I suppose there is a very minute possibility that I'm wrong and I'll still be here a year from now...
Read more about the buyout here.

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Google Placement


Currently, if I do a google search for "kissthenerd" it brings my webpage up as the first listing. However, if I search for "kiss the nerd" I'm 6th! This is unacceptable! You all realize what this means, right? I need links. Now.

Make it so.

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Blog updates?


I'm kinda excited about the prospect of creating an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed for my blog. Not really sure where I would use it, or even why I want it, but it would definantly be an interesting experiment... I'll probably start work on this in the next few days here.

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Dell Coupon


A co-worker alerted me to a coupon for dell.com today.
ZD5$P0NS954P16 $750 off a $1499+ Laptop Purchase (expires 6:00am tomorrow).
Despite my better judgment telling me that I could survive without a laptop, I went ahead and ordered one. I've wanted one for a long time, and this is the best deal I've ever seen. I ended up getting an Inspiron 5160 with several upgrades including an SXGA screen, 64 meg video card, half a gig of RAM, an 80gig HD, wireless network card, and more. All in all it came to about $850. I'm sure the buyers remorse will kick in soon, but for right now, I'm stoked!

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TV Dinners


I'm turning into my mom. Last night I cooked up a bunch of food, but instead of eating it, I put it in Tupperware containers to be eaten later... Kinda like homemade TV dinners. It's not like I've never done this with leftovers before, but this is the first time that my entire goal of cooking was to fill these little plastic containers.
The teriyaki pineapple beef meal I made smelled really good last night... Kinda wish I had some right now.....

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Job ethics


My company makes no sense when it comes to things like awards and recognition.
Tonight, for instance, I had a customer call literally a couple minutes before I was off. He was freaking out because he had pointed his domain over to us, but had neglected to place an order with us so we could setup the zone file, email, virtual host, etc. As a result of this, he would soon be losing email and have customers unable to visit his webpage. I ended up staying past the end of my shift and busting out everything he needed in a matter of 15 minutes. I was doing this so fast that I amazed even myself. I ended up having to open three terminal windows because the computer couldn’t keep up with me!
In my humble opinion, this is exactly the kind of thing that the incentive program was created for, but will I ever get so much as a thank you for it? Highly doubtful. It’s not really my company/managements fault though. They have no way of knowing that it even happened.
A couple weeks ago, I got nominated to receive one of our $25 bonus gift certificates for going “above and beyond”. What did I do, you ask? I talked to a customer who asked us to change a setting on his phone line. Now, I didn’t change said setting, I simply created a trouble ticket and sent it to another department asking them to change it. Sure, I could probably have taken care of it myself. Would have taken about 3 minutes. But either I was too busy or too lazy to want to bother at the time. After I got off the call with this customer, they called back and reported to whomever they spoke that “Brendan was exceptionally knowledgeable and helpful”. This gets passed on to management and boom! Award.
I’m not complaining. I figure it all evens itself out. But it really does strike me as ironic that I get rewarded for not doing my job, and ignored when I do more then I have to.

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a technicality..


StrikerBB: you didnt tell me margie was voting for bush!
smashdance02: WHAT!
smashdance02: She is NOT
smashdance02: oh my god
smashdance02: no
smashdance02: we can save her
smashdance02: she doesn't know what she's doing, poor girl


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Curious?


strikerbbb: I should blog that
junedyz83: YOU ARE NOT BLOGGING THAT!!!!

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Updates on Halloween


The party is confirmed and evites have been sent out. If you haven't recieved one, and feel you should, it's not too late to add your name to the mailing list! Party will take place the day before Halloween in Sebastopol, CA.

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Ashley's Over-the-counter crack


Caffeine has never had much of an effect on me. I remember one incident in particular when I was driving down to San Diego with my old roommate Adam. We got up early in the morning (something very rare for the two of us) and started the long drive. On the way we stopped at a convenience store and bought a couple cups of coffee, some red bulls, and a bottle of no-doz. All were gone within 2 hours, and I was still falling asleep at the wheel. More recently a co-worker, Jory, bought some pure medical grade powdered caffeine. For about a month we added this to everything from water, to pizza, to coffee, to carrots. Other then making all the said items bitter, there was no noticeable effect.
At this point I was fairly disillusioned with the concept of being kept awake with artificial stimulants, but about a month ago Ben’s wife, Ashley, told me a story about something she had taken one night. She had gone into a vitamin store and asked for “over the counter crack” and walked out with a fat incinerator. Apparently she had taken double the suggested dosage and ended up being wired all night long.
Now, normally I would be hesitant to believe that anything can have as big an effect as the one Ashley described, but I’d seen this chick hold her liquor, and I figured if anyone was as resistant to drugs as me, Ashley is probably going to be it. At the time I had asked her what the name of this amazing stimulant was, but she had been unable to produce it for me. Tonight, however, she picked up a couple more packages of the stuff, and reported it back to me as Redline. Better yet, she has promised to send me a sample so that I might experience the wonder for myself!
Feel free to harass her until she sends it, because when it arrives, if it works as well as promised, it should make for some entertaining blog entries!

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Bar hopping


Dom, Steve, Nick, and I spent the last few hours driving around from bar to bar. We started off in Cotati where we went to a bar called the 8 ball. After a drink there, we wandered around a couple other places, but didn't stop for a drink anywhere. We continued to Rohnert Park where we looked into a small pub with a name that currently eludes me. We didn't like it very much, so we continued around the corner to a pizza place with various beers on tap. As the pizza place was dead, we continued our trip to Santa Rosa where we stopped at the cantina and had another drink. After mocking their pseudo techno/reggae music, we crossed the street to Tex Wasabis where I had a mango-colada. After they announced last call, we quickly drove to the Bel only to be turned away at the door as they were not letting anyone new in for the night. Ended up back at my house where I took advantage of my semi-intoxicated state to play Karaoke Revolution.
All in all, a good night.

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