So, my big excitement, so far, this year, was the day my facebook got hacked. I don’t know how, and since they didn’t change my password and lock me out, there’s no place to report it to facebook staff, and apparently no action that they’re going to take to try and figure out who this person was who started chatting up all my friends about being mugged while in London and needing money for a hotel bill. So I changed my ancient password… on facebook and several other web-based email accounts and social sites… and I guess I’ll just hope that it doesn’t happen again. I’m sure facebook could at least get an IP address that was signed in when all the messages were sent, but they seem uninterested. The fun part was that I was notified by facebook messages on my phone. I logged in from my phone to check it out… and I managed to change my password and temporarily deactivate my account… all from my phone. I never would’ve been able to do that, before. I love my phone. Also, I set up latitude… you’ll notice a little map with my face on it, in the right column of fashiondisaster.org … no more wondering if I was really mugged while on vacation in London. Did I mention that I love my phone?
Winter. This is my real downtime. The holidays are over and work doesn’t start up again for a few weeks, unless we hire new people and have to train them. I usually entertain myself with a video game addiction at this point in the year, and this year is no exception. Sarah and Frank and I are all addicted to video games. Sarah is still spending most of her time on the Uncharted 2 multiplayer, and I’m almost finished with the The Saboteur. I could go back to Ghostbusters, if I finish it, I guess… Ghostbusters is fun, with all the cast voices in there, but The Saboteur is a way better game. I also have Brutal Legend to finish… and probably some others that I’m forgetting about.
My new favorite naming convention for businesses/shopping plazas is the combination of the street names it resides at. We drove by “Scharrington Dental” tonight, which is near the corner of Schaumburg and Barrington roads. I go by several on my way to the teams course in Northbrook: Waukdee plaza, at the corner of Waukegan and Dundee; Dunsten plaza, at Dundee and Pfingsten, Dunhurst shopping center, at Dundee and Elmhurst. Is this a Chicagoland thing? I don’t remember such lazy and non-creative (lazative?) naming conventions anywhere else that I’ve lived. It makes me chuckle.
BTW our holiday schedules have changed a bit: here at home, Doug is spending some time in the hospital dealing with an infection. This may delay our Christmas dinner and gift-opening to another day… maybe even next year. Out east, we’ve shifted family days around a little and I think Tuesday afternoon/night and all day Wednesday are still free, if you’re looking to hang out with us, while we’re out there.
Shoveling hasn’t been too bad, so far, this year… a couple light ones and a couple heavy ones. I don’t have a feeling this year about whether this is going to be a “heavy” winter, like last year was. I really hope we can avoid the storms on the day we’re flying out this year, though. That was a little too stressful, last year. Good job, those of you who claimed days… 12/28 (evening) through 12/30 is still available, for those of you who haven’t (or just want to leave it up to chance). We’ll be tempted to make a trek down to NYC to see the Tim Burton exhibit and maybe catch up with whoever else lives down there and might want to tag along… unless those days get claimed by people in the MA area.
I managed to get through the balances on most of the gift cards that were haunting my wallet… in a related note, some of you are getting christmas presents from me for the first time in years… or ever, maybe. I managed to avoid most of my impulses to buy things for ourselves that we really don’t need.
I’m getting very comfortable with my new phone; I’m happy with my choice… no regrets. I have a new number that sort of forwards to my old number, by the way… so, if you’re on Verizon, it’s cheaper just to call my old number, but if you’re not, lemme know and I’ll get you my new number.
I finished Mini-Ninjas, though I might just play it again on Hard. I am looking for a new game to become hopelessly addicted to during my break from work. If you have suggestions or games that you like to play online that we can play together, hit me up.
I’m bad at using gift cards. I’ve dig through my wallet several times in the past year and piled all my gift cards up and went to each website, one by one, to find the value of each card. The I try to use the cards… food-specific cards are the easiest to use. Store cards (especially Target, for some reason) stay in my wallet for years. And those visa gift cards are really the worst; I use them until there’s a dollar or two left on them, and then forget how much is on there, and never use them for the small purchases that might not put them over their limit. By the time I remember to try and split a purchase into whatever is left on the card and the rest of the balance on some normal card, the card is more than a year old and some maintenance fee has wiped out the remaining balance. The exception, of course, was the stockpile of Apple gift cards that Sarah (and her mom) gave me over the past few years. I had no problem spending them, all at once, on the macbook that I happen to be writing this post from, right now.
I’m genuinely worried about the two $100 gift cards that I put into my wallet this week. One is an American Express card that I only paid $50 for at their Daily Wish site, and the other is a rebate from Verizon. Regardless of my extensive and ridiculous wishlist
, I like getting gift cards. They make things easy, theoretically, but I’m still bad at using them.
In other news, we got that tree up, and got lights and ornaments on it. Peanut helped untangle the lights.
The Droid has been pretty awesome, so far. The phone works. I just got my Google Voice invite, so we’ll see how that affects things. It should, at least, open up some cool voicemail options. The web works. The apps work… though, the web apps still seem redundant, with such a good browser onboard. With the push gmail, I get notified on my phone before I even see it on the web; It’s creepy. The navigation does the job. It does need some more options and features built into it… ability to customize routes or at least request shortest vs fastest or non-highway routes would be nice. The audio part is surprisingly functional. I miss the Sound Check and the ability to shuffle by album that I have on the iPod and I don’t know if it has the battery life to use it the way I did on the trains all summer and since it also has to stay on all day as a phone.
This is the month where work usually wraps up… and that leads to the month when we wrap presents… and it will all blur into a month I will call Wraptember.
Those of you who plan on seeing Sarah and I when we’re back east, claim your days now.
My mom found this. It was somewhere in her house, probably in the basement with a bunch of other old mail. I definitely played Freeway, a lot. Like any good addictive game, it would still be there, long after I stopped playing, when I closed my eyes. Seeing the picture and screenshot in the “Summer 1982 Activision Video Game Cartridge Catalog” made the memories come flooding back. Now I have to figure out what I should put the patch on.
The text of the letter:
Dear Fan of FREEWAY™ by ACTIVISION:
Congratulations! You guided your chicken through traffic at least 20 times, which qualifies you as an official member of the Activision “Save the Chicken Foundation.” We are pleased to reward your traffic dodging achievemets with the enclosed patch.
Your name has been added to our mailing list and we will keep you posted on new Activision game cartridges as they become available.
Thank you for sharing your accomplishment with us. We hope you’ll try other video games by Activision and write us about your experiences with them.
Yours truly,
Jan Marsella
Customer Relations
JM
Enclosure
PS. Please read the enclosed Heat Seal Instructions carefully. Children should not attempt to heat seal the patch to clothing. Improper use of an iron (or related appliance) may result in damage to clothing, or bodily harm. This patch may also be sewn to any fabric.
Also be sure to check out the scans of the Activision catalog at flickr.
I found out, today, that Andy Jones died. I don’t know any details. I don’t know how to feel, yet. I have good memories of Andy Jones from high school. He was a talented dude. He had the ability to do whatever it was he chose to do, very well. He knew how to be excellent. He’ll be missed. I dunno if I have a favorite Andy memory. The first thoughts about him that came to my head were about the band he was in called Split… and then about high school… show choir trips, nights in the barn … and then I remembered running into him once at UMASS … and then the last time I saw him, at a company christmas party a couple years ago, for a company that a couple of other friends worked for, including Drew. What kept popping into my head was how he had an almost word-association type reaction to certain bands. If I mentioned the Pixies, he’d say, “Man, whenever you mention the Pixies, I immediately think, ‘Cariboooooooooooooou…’ and whenever the Dead Milkmen came up, he’d say, “I have nothing against the Dead Milkmen, but there was this kid back in Indiana, and he loved that song Takin Retards to the Zoo, played it on repeat a lot, kinda turned me off to them…” There were so many in-jokes, ridiculous phrases and stuff that have absolutely no meaning, now, rattling around in my head…
I’m not sure if it’s sad or not, but this news totally distracted me from the fact that it’s been four years since my dad died. I think I would have gone the whole day without realizing it, if Sarah had not mentioned it. I’m not sure I realized it last year, but I think Sarah’s mom might’ve mentioned it. The Dad memory that came to mind tonight, as we were driving home from our friend Jessica’s housewarming party was about Dad giving me directions. It was one of those first trips that I took from Woonsocket to my parents’ house. I was going to head back the way I came and I mentioned that there’s probably some other road I could take that winds through Connecticut. Dad suggested a route. It was a couple windy roads that did exactly that. The best part was that he said “and you’ll be on this road, and just about the time you say, ‘where the hell am I?’ you’ll hit Route 44.” And that is exactly what happened. I think I even said it out loud… not realizing that I was fulfilling his prophecy until the moment it happened.
I dunno what is more saddening… but the coincidence is morbid.
Today, I fixed a leaky bathtub faucet. I don’t think I’ve done much in the way of plumbing ever in my life… maybe taken off a faucet handle and then decided the job was too much for me or finding a leak, but then calling someone about it… or pouring drano down something. This was certainly the first time I ever actually fixed a leaky faucet. It was painless enough, even made me feel sort of accomplished.
Every time I see my prescription, specifically, the bottle with my last name on it, I think about my Dad… not some random thought, but something like “is that my Dad’s bottle?” or “Why is one of Dad’s prescriptions out here?” … defying any logical thoughts about Dad being gone for several years now, or the fact that I haven’t lived in the same house as my Dad for eight or nine years. My brain just can’t see a bottle with my name on it and think that it’s mine. Will I ever get used to having a prescription?
The ongoing health issues have prompted lots of discussion about health insurance and Sarah or I needing jobs that have real benefits. Drama being what it is around here, the discussions have often turned into fights or bouts of silent treatment. The whole thing has got me looking back into tech jobs. I cruise craigslist on a daily basis and send an occasional response to interesting looking positions; Haven’t heard anything back from anyone, yet. It’s not something I want to do. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t take another desk job unless I was being paid substantially more than I was in Marlboro… but I was probably overpaid, given my technical qualifications, at the time. Either way, I was not healthy and not happy and I don’t know what the consequences would be if I were to take such a job again. I don’t want to sacrifice my mental well-being for the chance at better physical well-being. It makes me actually take some interest in this health care reform political stuff. I guess there isn’t a chance that we’d have a universal, free-to-everyone system like the rest of the civilized world has, but it would certainly ease my mind of this issue, if we did.
The Palm Pre is out of the running; I got to feel one at work and the keyboard is just too small. I’m a texter with big thumbs. So, it’s back to a waiting game… wait for that first android phone’s price and date to hit Verizon, the phone should be a Motorola with that spiffy new Motoblur UI slapped on top of Android … or wait for the Nuvifone, which isn’t Android and doesn’t have a release date or price yet (or carrier, officially), but will almost certainly have the best GPS and probably handle gmail without any problems, at least. Or give in and get an iPhone; It’s so tempting.
In other news:
Work starts back up soon, one meeting next week and then officially back to a regular schedule the following week. I think we have Fridays off this season.
Got the annoying clicking noise the rear wheel(s) of my car were making fixed… it took three tries, but we got it done. Now I hear every click and creak the car makes when I hit bumps and stuff… still need to do whatever needs to be done about the little ding in the windshield.
And we’ve been using our game consoles a lot over the break… picked up the X-Men Origins: Wolverine for xBox 360 and Fat Princess for PS3 … and I might dig into our most recent purchase, Mini Ninjas during this last week off. Fall TV season be damned, we’re playing our video games!
Getting some stuff done in my seasonal break… including some stuff that’s been on the list for a while. I upgraded wordpress to the latest version last night. Seems that all the other social media sites have made the blog one of the last things I focus on, but it’s nice to be up to date. Still got some car stuff left to check off… and of course the stuff to buy section of the list, which includes a new wallet, watch and phone. Anyway, still enjoying my time off, even if I have gotten on a productive kick here and there.
In case you missed it. I made a silly, random tumblr called backsofpeople.tumblr.com and inserted it into the bottom of the right column of fashiondisaster.org. I made it open to submissions, too. I figure that I’m not the only one who goes through my photos and finds a bunch that I’d put up if they weren’t so monopolized by a view of someone’s back.
I was also approached by a band on Bandmix that needs a bass player, but the audition songs make me thing that I would not like playing in this group… it’s basically country. I thought I specifically said that I’d prefer not to do country in my profile somewhere, but I guess they can’t read. I should’ve known when they mentioned a Wynonna Judd song but said it was by Winona Ryder.
