Yes There Are Stupid Questions

I mostly agree with the statement "there's no such thing as a dumb question", but today I heard one that made me mad because it was so stupid.

We had an all employee meeting at work. Someone actually blocked out time in the agenda to tell us about the "new" recycling bins, and how to use them. First of all, recycling has been around since I was little...so I think we all know how to recycle. Then, somone actually raised their hand, and said "Excuse me, but I just wanted to point out the slots in the recycling bin for paper are small...what do we do if we have larger paper, say 11x17 or a drawing? Can we get something done about that". I looked at Paul beside me (not you, Paul Hart) and said "You have GOT to be kidding me...did he just ask that?".

Apparantly some people don't know that you can do this thing with paper called tearing it. It will go from one big piece, to a lot of little pieces, hence it will fit in the small hole.

What a waste of time. So later this afternoon I was drafting and Paul walked up with a big sheet of paper and said "Dave, this is pretty big...what should I do with it?". HA!

Sometimes work actually feels like "Office Space"

Mystery In The Abbey

At Alex's tonight we played a game called "Mystery In The Abbey". It's very similar to "Clue", except you just have to figure out "who done it", not with what, or where. The only catch is it was a monk who did it, in a monastary, and there are 24 monks to choose from. There were 6 of us playing. It was getting close to the end, and Dan was very close to winning. However, someone answered a question and he yelled out "Damn! - now I have everyone crossed out...I did something wrong". I just smiled because I only had one person left - Brother Charles. Sophie yells out "someone made a mistake, because I also have everyone crossed off, so I'm just going to guess". So she guessed, and got it right, and it was someone I had already crossed off. So everyone looked over at me and said "Great Dave - you messed us all up". I did mess them up. For some reason in those murder mystery games I mark people off way to liberally. I'm not sure if I just have this gut feeling that they're not a killer, or what. It was fun either way.

I joined a small book club at work. We have our first meeting next Wednesday after work at someone's house. It's supposed to be very informal and fun. So I have a book to read before next week.

Cereal

I'm eating this cereal, that's very brittle, so much in fact that it almost cuts the roof of my mouth when I'm eating it. I just thought to myself "this cereal is way too crunchy...I don't like it". Then I look at the cereal box and realize I'm eating Captain Crunch, because it was on sale. So nevermind!

An Explanation of Sporadic Posting Is at the Bottom

Walter was invovled in a small fight at the dog park yesterday, but it was completey not his fault. It was a stupid beagle, who for no reason, bit Walter's neck (although all he was biting was loose skin) and started shaking him around. Walter didn't fight back at all, he just stood there shocked. It was the first time any dog has ever shown any agression towards him. He was fine though and the owner of the beagle corrected him.

I decided since it was so nice out this weekend (by nice I mean sunny and in the low-mid 30's) I would take Walter for a long walk after the dog park, to get him super tired. We walked about 3 miles roundtrip and he got very exhausted, which was nice. Last night I went over to Dan's house to watch Garden State. I haven't seen that movie in about 3-4 years so it was good to see again.

Oh, and I forgot, the real estate agent that showed us houses last weekend sent me another list of houses. One just came on the market in Plymouth that is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath ranch house in a really nice neighborhood. It has a full basement and a detached 2 car garage. It was completely updated in 2005 and looked very nice from the pictures. I drove by it yesterday and it looks very nice from the outside. It's on an amazing lot, at the back of the subdivision on the cul-de-sac. I want to look at the inside of the house sometime soon. The price is very reasonable too. Plymouth's real estate values still remain very high compared to other parts of the metro area, mainly because Plymouth is considered "trendy" and has a neat downtown. It's ranked as one of the safest cities in the US and Plymouth Canton has a very good school district. Another bonus is that Plymouth is next to Northville, where I work, so the location is great.

I've decided I will go ahead and get pre-approved for a home loan to see what price ranges I can afford. Based on my calculations, the house I like in Plymouth would only be about $500 more a month to own over what I currently pay for rent - and that's including all of the taxes and insurance on the house. I'm so sick of paying some investor close to $800 a month to live in a 800 sq. ft. apartment. I'm getting nothing out of it equity wise.

So that's a big decision, but now is an excellent time to buy because the values are lower right now. I'll seee what happens/pans out over the next few months.

Dan from work went to chruch with me today. It was a good service about what Heaven is like. I didn't know, but Heaven is apparantly 1400 x 1400 square miles (Revelation 21). It also has Japser walls that are 200 ft. thick. We were wondering why you need a wall 200 ft. thick, made of Jasper of all things. The units ofcourse were in Cubits and Stadia, so as soon as I heard the pastor say the values I went to the conversion table in my Bible and started to convert things to inches and feet. Dan did the same. We realized after the service that we're nerds and typical engineers to be doing math/conversions during chruch, but we had to know.

Katey was able to come over today before she had to go to work. I'm glad she stopped by, and she said the reason she did was because we needed to talk about "us". That was scary at first to hear, but she said she is ready to say we're officially dating, and to use the label "boyfriend/girlfriend" now. So we're not friends anymore (well, we still are friends) but now I can officially introduce her to someone as my girlfriend. So that's good. I'm glad it's official now because it was weird explaining it to people when they'd ask. Oh, and I'm happy she's my girlfriend now too.

So I guess that's about all. I talked to Kiki the other day and we talked about how my posting has been slack a little. Maybe you're disappointed, but it's because I have more of a social life now that maybe a few months ago, so I actually go out now after work and on the weekends - hence the sporadic posting. I hope you understand, so when you log on to read a post, and there's nothing, just realize I'm out having fun and you'll feel better.

Good Friday for Somebody

I'm really, really tired tonight. This week has gone by so fast. I started German language training at work Tuesday. It's a blended class with online learning and 2 hours every other week with a German class instructor at work. We're expected to do 90 minutes of class on our own a week, and score >80% on all the exercises. I did well the first class, but German is much harder than Spanish. I have a very hard time pronouncing the German words.

Katey and I went to see U2 3D last night at the Henry Ford Imax. It was pretty good except for Bono's Coexist agenda. I just wanted to see the concert and hear the music and not get into the whole political agenda, but it was still good.

It started to snow tonight. As I was out tonight I thought to myself how nice it was to see the actual ground, but now it's going to be covered up again with snow. It's ok, it was a nice break.

I'm going to bed now, I need my sleep.

Let Me Catch You Up

Wow, half a week since posting. I've been pretty busy lately, so that's my excuse. It's a good one.

Mom and Dad came this weekend to visit. I really enjoyed having them. A strange thing happened with the weather...it was clear and sunny. It was still cold, but you could actually see the sky and the sun. That never happens in the winter here, or, if it does, only for a few minutes.
We took Walter to the dog park, and Saturday afternoon we went to look at some houses in Plymouth, Canton, and Northville with a real estate agent. The houses in Northville were close to $200,000 for something smaller than a trailer. The houses in Plymouth and Canton were nice. I think Plymouth/Canton is where I would like to buy my first house. I found out Plymouth/Canton is the largest school district in the country. Apparantly there are 3 high schools on the same campus, so students actually go to different schools for different classes...a lot like college.

Katey spent the day with us Sunday playing cards and being lazy, which was nice. It was pretty wet out yesterday. Today I woke up at 4:30 to get them off to the airport. Since it was such an odd time after I dropped them off (around 5:30) I just decided to go to work. I went to the gym at work and exercised for about 45 minutes, then took a shower, and actually got to my desk at 7:00. It's nice to go in early on sometimes before everyone.

Tomorrow is Friday, but Really Thursday

I found out yesterday that I can get a really good discount on Subaru's. Today after work Dan and I went to the Subaru dealership and test drove a 2008 Impreza. It was a nice car. It drove so-so, nothing really spectacular. The best part about the car was the all wheel drive. We took it down a neighborhood road with lots of snow and it handled very well. That is one thing about the car I really do like.

I think I will still go with the Civic though since it's cheaper and gets better gas mileage, and Paul doesn't like it so it will be fun to spite him. Sorry Paul.

Tomorrow is Friday for me, even though it's really only Thursday because I have the real Friday off. Mom and Dad are coming Friday morning for a long weekend. It will be nice to have them here. I think it's supposed to snow again on Friday. We already have about 7 inches on the ground right now.

Last night Katey came over and we watched "Little Miss Sunshine" and then "The Office". It was a lot of fun. While she was here it snowed about 3 inches though. I was trying to think when the last time I saw the actual ground was...and I think it's been about 2 weeks?

The Ski Trip - and Monday

Now I can finally write about the ski trip to Canada. It was amazing, and one of the best weekend I've ever had. It was so much fun to rent a huge house for the weekend with 15 of your co-workers and have a good time.

We left work Friday around 3:00 and got to Collingwood, Ontario around 9:00. There was so much snow in Canada it was crazy. There was about 3 feet of snow on the ground at the house we stayed at and the snow banks from plowing the roads were huge. Friday night we had a really interesting party that lasted pretty much all night. I didn't go to sleep Friday night/Saturday morning until 5:30 AM which I never do.

Skiing Saturday was hard because I was exhausted from the night before. My ski pass was good until 10:00 PM but a few of us ended up leaving around 4:30 PM to go back to the house and shower and relax. Saturday night was much more low-key.

We decided to leave Sunday pretty early, around 9:00 AM to get back earlier and because we didn't know what the roads were going to be like. Sunday was literally blizzard conditions. Driving was really hard and there were points where we just had to stop in the middle of the road because we couldn't see the hood of the van we were in. The snow was blowing like crazy and you couldn't see the road or anything. We drove south to Toronto and got on the 401 back to Windsor. The 401 was actually closed in one area because ofa weather so we had to take an emergency detour route around the closed area. All said and done, it took us almost 8 hours to get back because of the weather. We got lucky though, 2 other cars of people we were with actually had to stay in Canada because they closed all the roads they were travelling on and forced them to stay overnight because conditions were so bad. So I am glad we made it back last night.

I'll have to post some of the pictures I took from the weekend, but I'm going to get ready for bed now.

PS...I love my new computer! It's my first blog entry with it and I really love the way the keypad feels. Vista is nice too so far, I like the user interface. So far so good. Did you know today's high was 11 degrees!

Canada Was Amazing Eh

The ski trip to Canada was amazing, and one of the best weekends I've ever had. I will post more tomorrow, followed with the updated Pokemon of the week. Sleep is important right now.

I Have The Weekend Off

There will be no posting this weekend, because I will be in Ontario, Canada skiing at Blue Mountain (www.bluemountain.ca). There's 17 of us total going from work. I'm excited because I got to practice my skiing last weekend so I'm ready to go. Supposedly last night it snowed 20 inches there so that should be exciting as well.

What else...oh I bought a new computer. I completely was not planning on doing this for another few months, because the laptops I liked were over $1000. Tonight though I went to Circuit City to check some out in person I had been looking at online and found what I think is a really good deal (Jay thought so too). I ended up getting an HP with a 15.4" screen, 2 GB RAM, and a 160 GB hard drive. Those are the same specs I wanted in the Dell but it was $1080. I ended up getting this HP for $620 after rebates which I think is a good deal. It's better than the $1080 and I like this computer. It's about the same size (l, w, h) as my old Thinkpad and weighs a little less. I'm happy with it. I bought it sort of on the spot, because the rebate ended Saturday. So I made the decision fast.

I'm going to wait until I get back from Canada to even boot it up. Actually I'm going to ask a guy that is in IT at work to just wipe it clean and start fresh with XP. I guess I would like to try Vista, but I want to get all that garbage off the computer that the manufacturer puts on. Hopefully he can get XP for me.

Katey will be watching little Walter and my apartment for me this weekend. She said she's going to take him to the dog park Saturday and I left her some money to spoil him with. I know he'll be just fine.

So...everyone have a nice weekend, I'll be in the great white north.

I'm a Raggamuffin

I don't have any heat so I'm in my apartment under blankets and in a sweater. The thermostat said 40 degrees in here when I got home. I have no clue what's wrong with the heat, nor do I care, because I pay for others to care. If it were my own house, then I'd care. I'm waiting for maintenance to get here to fix the heat...but it's been about 2 hours now so I'm cold.

Even Walter, who NEVER wants to sit on my lap started to cry and jumped up on my lap, curled up, and went to sleep. He's cold too. The weather got really bad today after lunch. This morning it was a little icy, then at lunch it started to sleet, then the temperature dropped quickly and snow covered the ice. The roads were a mess on the way home so it took me about 45 minutes to drive the 6 miles home. The traffic was bad and intersections were nasty.

Too bad tomorrow can't be a snow day. Oh and Kiki called today. That was a nice treat, I haven't spoken to Keek in a long time (Hi Kiki).

The One Good Thing About My Dead Laptop...

is that I am now 100% positive I will never own an Apple computer as my primary computer. Their "cuteness" can't cover up the fact that trying to do practical, everyday things like make spreadsheets is horrible with their application. Oh, but wait, you say you can run MS Office on a Mac? You're right...but doesn't that negate the whole point of even owning an Apple product...because you want to be innovative and new and different?

Can you tell I'm sour? I'm trying to make a spreadsheet to compare laptops I like and it's taking 10x as long as it should because I can't stand Apple's spreadsheet formatting. I guess if you like playing with widgets an Apple is good.

Anyway, I had Best Buy check my hard drive and they were able to power it up, but couldn't get anything off of it. I think I'm going to just forget about trying to do any data recovery since most places will charge around $200, and the data I lost is not worth $200 to me. Two of the laptops I really like are the IBM Thinkpad X61 and the Dell XPS M1330. Both have 2 GB RAM, 120 GB Harddrive, and smaller screens (12" and 13" respectively). The only bad thing is they are both around $1100. The Dell does come with a 3 year warranty and the IBM only comes with a 1 year warranty. I like the idea of the 3 year warranty. They are both considered "ultra thin" laptops which I really want in a laptop, but the packaging scares me since everything is so close together.

I like being that boring guy in the Apple commericals... I can get my work done faster.

A Part of Me is Gone

After 6 years, 2 deaths, and 2 re-incarnations my IBM Thinkpad laptop is dead. For the past few months I have had to slam my fist above where the hard drive is located to get it to start working again after pausing like some person who just woke up from a seizure. Tonight my method of slamming my fist on the computer didn't work, so I just applied a constant downward pressure with my fist until felt a vibration followed by what sounded like a card on bicycle spokes, then silence followed by heat on my fist. I'm assuming something got rubbed together and fried. It felt good. The only thing I will miss is my pictures. I need to find out if there is a way for them to be recovered. If not, all my pictures (about 3 years worth) are gone. I don't care about the music or the documents...but I want the pictures. Jay thinks they are gone forever. If I try to turn the laptop on I get a screen that says "0200: Disk System Failure". I'm assuming that's like the oil warning light in your car - you're screwed.

You're probably thinking "What were you doing David, when you're computer died?". Well, I was about 45 minutes into preparing my tax return on Turbo Tax. That's a good time for a computer to lock up and be killed, isn't it? You might also ask "If your computer is dead, how are you writing this?". I have an iMac G3 I bought for $60 that works, so I can have internet access. It sat in my closet and I brought it back out just now so I can use a computer.

Well, my Civic fund is going to be short about $1000 now for a new laptop. Laptop is dead, now the Saturn needs to go (not die, just go away) so I can get rid of the two things that pester and mock me.

I remember an episoe of Sex and The City when Carrie's laptop just died, and she lost all her columns, about 4 years worth. That's what it feels like. I had about 6 years worth of things on my laptop and I'm assuming they're gone forever. All my baby pictures of Walter, all my vacation pictures, and all my pictures from Clemson will be missed.

Murder, She Wrote

I went skiing last night at Mt. Holly, between Detroit and Flint with some friends from work. It was hardly a "mountain" but it was a really nice ski area. I can't believe I remembered so much about turning and stopping. I went right to the advanced hill and went down that all night.

Walter has such busy weekends. He spent both Saturday and today with other dogs playing. He absolutely loves other dogs and people. He's a little social butterfly.

I got a lot accomplished today:
- 3 loads of laundry
- clean apartment (heavy cleaning)
- balance finances
- do taxes

I haven't done my taxes yet, but I'm about to start. I don't think it will take very long. Afterwards I will hopefully be a couple thousand dollars close to my new Civic.

Murder, She Wrote has been on all day on the Hallmark channel. I never knew Angela Lansbury was such a fiesty smart mouth. I'm suprised she wasn't killed the way she talks to some people, who are in fact, murderers themselves.

Manana

Work today was very long, and very boring. It was very relaxing though and quiet. We had about 6 inches of snow on the ground/roads this morning so a lot of people didn't even come into work.

I'm taking it easy this Friday night. I bought some ski pants tonight for my upcoming trip to Canada next weekend for a work ski trip. I have so much laundry to do. I have vacuuming to do. The floor is filthy with salt and snow-melt pellets.

Katey and I are going to take Walter back to the dog park tomorrow to play. Then, Katey works in the afternoon and I think I will be going skiing at a local ski slope (a local ski slope is actually a land-fill). I'm not sure if I will be going skiiing yet or not actually. My stupid Saturn is deciding to be retarded and leak coolant. I might go to my manager's house to use his garage and try to track down the leak. My windshield wipers also just stay on, and go off whenever they want to, not when I tell them to by pressing the stalk. I just don't even care about the Saturn anymore. I used to be so attached to it, but I want a divorce. I will have owned it for 6 years in 9 days. That's long enough, it's time to move on to bigger and better things, like a Honda Civic.

So dog park for sure, afternoon tomorrow is up in the air. Sunday I'm supposed to meet this person from Craigslist who has a Shar Pei and wanted Walter and her Shar Pei to meet each other. I guess I'll try and do that. It's only 10:00 and I'm so tired. I think I'm going to get in bed and read until I fall asleep.