5 1/2 hours

The sunlight difference between the shortest day of the year and the longest day of the year, in Colorado.

5 1/2 hours is a lot.

Tuesday (cough, cough)

Was fallout 2 really published in 1998? That makes this a 10 year wait. I guess I hadn't noticed.

Anyway, I didn't really call in sick. I just stayed home. They don't really care if I'm there or not, as long as I make my monthly billing. I do that and then some. It's nice having that kind of work flexibility.

OK...on to an install and a day of fallout 3, at least until tonight when the girl shows up.

gift exchange

Come to the last wine party of the year! Bring your favorite wine of 2008, red, white, pink, blue, or any other color you fancy. Also, bring a white elephant gift and we'll do a gift exchange.

7PM, Broomfield, Saturday December 6th, 2008.

You bring: wine, white elephant gift, some food to share.
I have: toe licking dogs, space.

FYI a white elephant gift is just something you want to get rid of. Think 're-gifting'. Think 'I can't believe someone gave me this thing and how do I get rid of it now?'

Make sure the gift is wrapped.

Fallout 3 -- 28 October release date

I may be sick tomorrow. I should definitely stay home and be close to the computer.

Cocteau Twins - Bluebeard

Yes, I am a fucking idiot

Chris left the country to help pay his debt, not to avoid it. But when that didn't work out, he saw his foreign address as the only way to escape.

Chris (who doesn't want his last name used) graduated with about $160,000 in student loan debt with a master's degree in music.

"At the time I thought I could handle it. I thought the most I'd be paying was $600 a month," he says.

But his payments were $2,400 a month. So Chris started looking for jobs overseas. He thought he'd be able to earn more and pay off his loans. But it didn't turn out that way. His salary was even less than what he was making back home. He realized there was no way he could make his payments, so he changed his address.

"They think I'm living somewhere in Arizona," he says. His last payment was a year and a half ago.

"I am upset at myself. I could have gone to a cheaper school," Chris says. "But I'm most angry at the fact that for anyone who has debt that's not student loan debt, there's relief. You can get into $150,000 worth of credit card debt and you can declare bankruptcy and you can go on with your life. But with student loans, you're being punished for being a better person."

--are you fucking retarded?
--CNN

Are you ready to rumble?

Dow futures stopped out at -550 as pre-market trading limits are reached.

This could be interesting.

--update...I guess it was just gas. Nothing interesting to report at all.

Router weirdness

I've been playing a MMO for a couple of years now. Lately I've been having connection problems. The client will time out, things take forever to load, etc. Previously, I had configured my router to forward the game server IP packets directly to my computer. There is also a quality of service setting which is supposed to prioritize the game server traffic above all else.

After looking into it, it seems some settings were no longer correct. I fixed those, and now everything is back to normal.


Somehow my destination IP for forwarding was wrong, and my incoming IP for quality of service was wrong. I have no clue on what changed or how.

Aptera

Dream of Californication

The world spins wildly;
I pass between you and take no part.

Will today be any different?

Quiet

It's Sunday morning...early. I was fairly convinced that I'd wake up to snow this morning, but instead it's just cold and quiet out. In the summer you awake to the sound of lawnmowers, birds, and people out and about doing their thing.

Fall and winter are different. Instead you wake up to almost nothing. In the depths of winter you might hear the wind blowing ice crystals up against your bedroom window.

Yesterday I helped Jeff and Mel move into their new condo. It was cold and rainy out, but we had quite a bit of help loading and unloading the truck Jeff rented.

The place is cute, but up in Longmont. A little farther up the road, I guess.

Entropy continues it's quiet little dance. 20 years ago I'd wrestle the furniture up the stairs without much consideration. Things are a little harder now. You have to be smarter about it. In another 20 years someone else will probably be doing the lifting.

It's easy to watch life change around you and forget that you're not the constant in the universe. You're a part of it too...on your slow march toward oblivion. Such is the way things are.

Tanking

As US and world financial markets continue to tank, my vision is of a couple of unrestrained auto drivers being ejected onto the highway in slow motion.

It won't be pretty.

In other news, Brittany Spears is ready for a comeback! Whooo! Go mainstream America!

Wed

Yesterday I was freezing my ass off on the motorcycle, so I stopped into Colorado power sports and bought a riding jacket.

Basically it's money I don't have right now to spend, but I was tired of being cold.

I've spent the last two days trying to get out an appeal brief. Basically my office floor is littered with failed attempts to make Brett happy. After a while I can't even hear what he's saying.... I scribble down a few notes and hope magically the next version will be good enough to file.

It makes me want to quit and go back to something I'm actually good at.

Maybe he notices that. I can't tell. Either that or he just gets tired of reading the same sad excuse of an argument written badly 45 different ways and gives up.

One cold Tuesday morning

I think it's somewhere in the 30's outside right now. I had the fan in the bedroom window last night, and woke up to a couple of dogs burrowed under the covers....because it was fuck all cold in the house.

I think we're supposed to have frost later this week. I guess winter is close.... I'll have to pull in a couple of house plants, pick whatever tomatoes are worth having, and pull out the garden.

Yesterday morning was sunny, but cold. I only got a few blocks down the street on the motorcycle before I came back and got in the truck. It was just too cold to ride.

Today might be better. It's hardly 40F out now, but maybe by 10am or so it will be warm enough.

The good, the bad, and the confused

The good: I hit the record button on my DVR and tape/watch a show on TV for free.

The bad: I forget to hit the record button and instead download it for free from the pirate bay.

The good: I forget to hit the record button and instead down it for some fee from itunes.

The confused: and the difference is?

Nehalem + x58 chipset cock up?

"Intel is adivising mobo-makers and memory vendors alike about their new X58+Core i7 combo and to abide to a strict 1.65V limit on memory voltages, beyond which there is the risk of burning out the CPU."

The fun part is that almost all decently fast ddr3 memory currently on the market is already way over this voltage. While reasonably fast ddr3 memory at 1600mhz needs about 1.9v, you're on the short bus at 1.65v with 1066mhz memory with the new chipset/processor combo.

Friday

Well, I've been home the last two days watching a couple of people paint the outside of my house. I found them on Craigslist. Day 1 they kicked butt. It's a mom + son setup, with a lot of tattoos.

Day 2-4 has been a gradual decrease in productivity. They said it would be 2 days, and we're on day 4 without being done. I'll probably have to give up until spring, or finish it myself.

I think I'm up to about $700 right now into them. Not exactly what I was planning on.

I had to lock Thomas and Jerry in my bedroom, lest they bark their fucking heads off all day. Jerry was nice enough to pull all the stuffing out of my comforter. He's just so cute that way.

House passes senate bailout plan 263 to 171

Aparently all you need to do is lube up a bill with enough lard and even the house will take that $700B cock right up the ass.

90 minutes of her actually saying nothing at all

The girl got skill, that is for sure. God forbid you actually respond to a question in a meaningful way.

MODERATOR: Sen. Biden, you voted for this bankruptcy bill. Sen. Obama voted against it. Some people have said that mortgage- holders really paid the price.

BIDEN: Gwen, what we should be doing now -- and Barack Obama and I support it -- we should be allowing bankruptcy courts to be able to re-adjust not just the interest rate you're paying on your mortgage to be able to stay in your home, but be able to adjust the principal that you owe, the principal that you owe.

That would keep people in their homes, actually help banks by keeping it from going under. But John McCain, as I understand it -- I'm not sure of this, but I believe John McCain and the governor don't support that.

There are ways to help people now. And there -- ways that we're offering are not being supported by -- by the Bush administration nor do I believe by John McCain and Gov. Palin.

MODERATOR: Gov. Palin, is that so?

PALIN: That is not so, but because that's just a quick answer, I want to talk about, again, my record on energy versus your ticket's energy ticket, also.

I think that this is important to come back to, with that energy policy plan again that was voted for in '05.

When we talk about energy, we have to consider the need to do all that we can to allow this nation to become energy independent.

It's a nonsensical position that we are in when we have domestic supplies of energy all over this great land. And East Coast politicians who don't allow energy-producing states like Alaska to produce these, to tap into them, and instead we're relying on foreign countries to produce for us......

Day 383

Day 383, or so. The new career is OK, but not fantastic. I'm still down about $2000 a month, income wise, since I switched to patent law and gave up engineering.

My salary is related to billing, and I just can't seem to kick it to the next level. The truth is, I could put in a lot more hours. The problem is, I don't want to. I still need a life.

My financial well being goes from 'I'm good' to 'I'm fucked', depending on what bill needs to be paid next.

It's definitely annoying.

18 hard days at work

The award for briefest tenure goes to Fishman, who took the helm at WaMu in early September as the bank's credit rating spiraled downward thanks to a portfolio of bad mortgage loans. Two and a half weeks later, the government seized WaMu, the nation's largest savings and loan, and sold it to JPMorgan Chase for cheap. Fishman, the former president of Sovereign Bank, snapped up a $7.5 million signing bonus and will skate out with more than $6 million in severance, according to an SEC filing.