The Cat's Nuts

Okay... so it's not an exotic local like Mexico, but at least it'll get my ass out of New York City for a few days. I'm going up to Buffalo in a few hours to work at some Democratic state event. I am not one to have strong political ties, but I just know a guy and he needed the help, so I'm heading up there.

Edited away to preserve anonymity. Had posted regarding photo web page.

Anyway, I don't have all that much time, but I just wanted to throw that one out there. It's been a good memorial day weekend, and I had a great time with many burgers eaten.

Posted by Michael at 06:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I don't know if anyone else in the blogging community has experienced this, but have you ever written a whole blog entry, and just don't click the damn submit button. You get to doing something else and just forget about it till the moment that you click the damn 'x' to close out the window. And BAM. Your whole entry is gone. Ugh. I hate it. I must have done it around 3-4 times. I used to write my blogs in Word so as to protect against that, but I've gotten out of the habit, so I suppose it may be a good time to get back into that practice.

I'm back from the trip to Mexico, and I have to say...it was fucking awesome. Laura and I had such a good time. I won't bore you with the details, but there were a few highlights:
1) All-Inclusive... yes, it's the poor mans way of things, but it turned out to be the best deal we could find. Not to mention that the food was good (especially the breakfast) and we didn't get sick so that's always a plus when visiting Mexico.
2) We went Scuba Diving. That in itself was just the most amazing thing. To be able to breath underwater is just such a strange feeling. We went down around 40-50 ft. At the start of the dive, you look up and see the other people following you down the line towards the bottom. Once you are down there, it's just amazing. I can't even really begin to describe how exhilirating it was to be down there. That was awesome. I think that it may spur Laura and I to get certified so as to be able to use scuba diving as a reason to go places. Apparently there are many places that you can go that have rather cheap accomodations and you can dive 2-3 times a day. That would be just awesome. So we'll see how that comes along in the coming months.
3) Laura and I got along and had just a wonderful time together. "They" say that traveling with someone is the best way to see if there are going to be problems in a relationship, and things couldn't have gone better. Laura and I just had such a great time, it was nice to have that time together away from the problems of life.

Click for larger image (If it doesn't totally show up, right click and select "view image"

So now that I'm back, I have exactly one month till I start at my new job as a "Business Analyst", so I've got some time to burn. I decided that I wouldn't go into work today. Which was nice, because well... I didn't feel like it. I went into the recruiting agency yesterday (where I work) to see how things were and to see what my "new role" was going to be during my last 3-4 weeks there. I was told by my boss that I would have a different role in my position there. I figured that I would just be manning the phones or doing menial work, but no... they have me updating a HUGE fucking list of people that have interviewed at the firm in the last two years. Somewhere upwards of 2000 people. It's not going to be fun, and it's going to be rather boring and tedious. Oh well. At least it's paying the bills.

As it stands, I'm in pretty good financial shape, so it's not like I really need to work for the next few weeks, but at the same time, I'd just be sitting around blogging anyway, so I suppose that working will help to pass the time. Working along with studying....yes...that's right. I said studying... I just got an E-Mail the other day telling me that I'll be getting a packet of materials to read and review before my training starts.

During the first two weeks of my employment at the consulting firm, I'm going to be doing training with classes titled: "Systems Analysis" "Data Modeling and Analysis" "Process Modeling" "SQL Introduction" and so forth. I have to go out and get myself a copy of some textbook to help with the process. It's funny that I just graduated and now I'm going to be shoved into another study session. As dorky as it is, I am actually looking forward to having some computer classes. Should actually be interesting and more up my ally than learning about politics.

This little guy swam around our feet in the "Lagoon" at the resort...he likes bread.

Now that it's the summer time, Laura has quite a few more friends that are spending time in the city. It's going to be nice to have a few more people to hang out with. It's not that I don't have a lot of friends...don't get my wrong...but it's nice to meet some different circles every once in awhile. Tonight we're going out with one of Laura's friends that did particularly well in law school during her first year, so she was able to score a great summer internship at a quality firm in the city, so that's great for her, and should provide for some interesting evenings.

Well, now that I have pretty much re-typed much of the same things that I had in my last post, I'm going to quit before I get too ahead of myself and end up deleting this post too.

Posted by Michael at 07:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's funny. Not too long ago, I was sitting at my computer, watching the clock, knowing that in a few short hours, my time would be up and it would all be over. I kind of feel like that right now. It's 12:45, and Laura and I have to be up at 4:30 to leave for Mexico. We're totally excited about it. I can't wait.

The bags are all packed and all the electronics are charged and in their spots...all except one. I have an Archos Digital Video player. I couldn't care less that the thing plays video, but what I do like about it is that it has a nice little adapter that allows me to dump my digital camera images onto it. Well... I don't know where the fucking thing is. Of course I waited till the night before we leave to find it. So as of now, I don't know where my expensive little harddrive contraption is. My only hope is that I can stop at an airport store and get myself another memory card. I figure that if I were to get myself a Gig card, I will be okay for the duration of the trip. Maybe I'll be lucky and there will be a 2 gig card under $100, but at an airport store I highly doubt it. We'll see.

Anyway, it's time for bed, so off I go. Hopefully I'll be able to make a few posts while I'm away, but I don't know. We'll see.

Posted by Michael at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

About two weeks ago, in the middle of finals, I decided that it would be a good idea to start looking into upgrading my computer. I figured that I could really use a nice dual monitor setup. Figured that it would be a nice way to really spruce up my computer and make it easier to use... well I found myself a little 14" LCD Display that works out just fine. I've come to the realization that...well... I don't need it. What I really need (I love how need becomes synonemous with "want" when I think about computer componentry) is a nice 24" monitor from Dell. I've been browsing their stuff for awhile and I could get one for like $700....ahhh but alas. I haven't even started my new job yet, so I'm thinking luxury items such as swanky monitors are a little out of my price range at this point.

Okay, realization number 2. About 6 weeks ago, maybe longer, I decided that I really wanted to try and run a dual boot sytem where I would have Linux running on one drive and Windows XP Professional running on the other. That was a swell plan and it went off without a hitch. If you ask me now how much I use Linux, I'll tell you...it's not much. It's not that I don't like it, because I do. It's much easier on the eyes, and I think that it's overall a better and more intuitive way to go (I use Ubuntu). I've found that there are only a few things that I really do on my computer: 1) Blog...with pictures, thus needing Photoshop 2) Play video games.... 3) Watch movies and download stuff...

Okay, so what's the problem then? Well... Photoshop runs like ass on Ubuntu because I have to run it through an emulator, so that sucks. Additionally, I can't access my Linux drives from Windows, so that makes for downloading and saving photoshop stuff worthless. Additionally, games don't run well at all. Especially the newer ones that are all snazzing graphics and all that shit. And Media, while it works, it just works better and easier in Windows. While at some point I'm sure I'll finally kick my Windows to the curb, it's not going to be any time soon.

So a few days ago, I had sent a letter to my boss telling her that I was pretty much skipping out of work for the remainder of the month. As expected, she was less than pleased. I spoke to her this morning and she delicatly told me that my job was no longer available and if I wanted to come back for three weeks in a different capacity, that would be fine, but at this point, she didn't have a need. Which is total bullshit in my opinion, but even I don't weigh my opinion very heavily, so I suppose she shouldn't either. Anyway. I've been working at my old lawfirm and just found out that they are going to be paying as a 1099 worker, so that's outstanding. Seeing as how I can use every extra dollar and considering how I wish that I would never have to go back to the recruiting firm, it would be nice to make enough just to walk away.

Tomorrow is the first of two days of my graduation ceremonies. I can't say that I'm "excited" because I'm really not. I know that I have graduated, and I know that it's all done, but my grandmother is coming down, and my parents are coming down, so it's going to be a big hoopla that I have little interest in participating in, but means a whole lot to my parents. Oh well, I suppose that's just the sort of thing that you have to do. I just hope that I don't butcher my face shaving like I did over the weekend. Took me a solid hour to get the bleeding under control. Miserable. Last time I ever shave without shaving cream again. Bastard razor.

Posted by Michael at 04:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm what you would call "tuckered out" if I were a 5 year old. Had an excellent weekend up at my parents house, spending time with family and really just relaxing. It was quite nice, I have to say. Drank a bit much last night, but that's okay. I didn't have anything going on today, it's not like I had to study.

The plan for the upcoming week is pretty simple. Tomorrow, Monday, or I suppose....later today, I'm going to go to work at my old law firm, and made some more money. Then on Tuesday, I've got a graduation ceremony, but nothing really other than that. I should make it into the law office a little bit to see if I can't be productive. My plans are pretty much the same on the following day, Wednesday, and I'm pretty okay with that. My parents and grandparents are going to be coming down for the festivities, but we don't have any major plans or anything, so it should be fairly low key.

Then on Thursday, Laura and I are flying to Mexico to collect some skin damaging UV Rays. It's going to be awesome, and I really can't wait. Well... I mean I can, but I'm excited non-the-less. It's just so nice to know that I'm finally done with school and now that that's all taken care of, life should just breeze on through...

I left my boss at the staffing agency a message at work telling her that I'm just not going to be into the office until at least June 1st. She didn't reply to me. So I guess it's okay. Worst case scenario is that I she says that they hired someone else and I'm out a job for the three weeks in June that I was planning on working. Ha... I would cry ;)...kidding there. I'll be so happy to walk away from that place. I can't wait.

I've been wanting to experiment a little more on Photoshop, so these are two of the first ones that should be coming in the next few weeks. I'm looking forward to unleashing my creative energies into something a little more fun than school work, so I figure that Photoshop is a decent enough outlet.

Anyway, it's about 1:00, so I think I should get to bed. I'm damn tired anyway. Last week of Columbia activities coming up. I'm going to need my rest.

Posted by Michael at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That's right. Not only did I successfully navigate my way through my final semester of college, but I did so with a higher GPA than I've ever gotten at Columbia. I managed to get a 3.667 this semester, landing me Dean's List for the first time ever. I managed to get a whopping A- in my Executive Leadership class, so I suppose the last minute changes that Laura and I made to my paper were well worth it.

This weekend I'm up at my parents house having a graduation party, so I'm going to be pretty shitty about posting.

So two days ago, I sent an email to my boss. Telling her that I graduated and that pretty much, because of the various things that I have going on, I'm not going to be into work until about June 1st. Which, is still pretty far away. And to top that off, even when I do come back, I'm going to be there for a massive three weeks before I go and start my new consulting gig. I'm half expecting for her to tell me just to stop in to pick up my stuff. Since I've been working for the past few days at my old law firm, making some good change doing this document review, I've been less and less anxious to get back to the recruiting agency. I just hate it there, so what's the point if I have the money to wait? I dunno. So we'll see. She's yet to get back me about it, so we'll see. I'll take it as it comes. Maybe if that happens I'll just set up an ebay account to sell some stuff online. You know...to make ends meet ;)

I was on the phone with my mother the other day, telling her how I wanted to go on a vacation and was worried about financing it, and she pretty much told me "you know you'll be getting some money from graduation, so just go..." So I am. Laura and I booked a vacation for Mexico on the 18th through the 24th, so I figure that I'm going to be a period of time that I'll not be blogging, so be prepared, but I can assure you that once I get back, I'll be in full swing again, and have a nice fresh supply of pictures to post.

Anyway. I gotta run. Party prep must be done.

Posted by Michael at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's currently 8:17am on the last day of my education at Columbia. I have to say that I'm a little excited. Besides graduating and all that crap, I just can't wait to never have to take the damn subway up here... I mean really...who puts a school in the middle of Harlem? Even Battery Park would have been better. Oh well, hind sight is 20/20.

Today is pretty much the "don't fuck up day" because later on (noon) I have my Terrorism and Counter Terrorism final. That's the only one of the three that I have that I'm concerned about, just because I didn't do well on the midterm. It was takehome and fairly difficult, but it's really hard to judge how hard the test is going to be. We covered so much material in the class, and there were hundreds of readings, it's hard to tell which were the important ones. But I did a good bit of studying and I have two more hours after my 9:00 exam to finish studying and prep myself for the final one.

Tonight Laura and I are going out to Dylons Prime to celebrate my finishing school. I can't wait. I'm going to be awesome. Oh...another fun thing... I got back my paper that I wrote on Mithraism and how it's possible that it contributed heavily to Christianity... apparently those in the religion department that graded it thought that it was pretty good too, and gave me a 96% on it. Pretty snazzy if I do say so myself. Nothing like throwing in a few bible versus to make the TAs melt in your arms.

So, here are some things that you can look forward to in the coming two months:
1) Updated theme...I know.. This one sucks. I'm going to fix it....really. I've just been busy.
2) I'm going to be more religious about putting up pictures. I started to do it. It's easy and quick, I just gotta take the time to do it. I have 15,000 pictures on my computer. It takes some time to find my favorites.
3) Content that is NOT school related. I'll get back to my ramblings about technology and all that fun stuff...moving away from terrorism and earth processes. I know. It's been bad, but that's been my life, so deal.
4) I'm going to try to start up another web page to go along with this one that is an online catalog of my pictures so that there is a good supply of them out there. Thus forcing me to go out and take more. Also, they'll be in flash so that I am again forced to learn something that I'm not all that familar with.

I think that's enough. I have about 100 other things that I'm going to get around to doing, but I won't bore you with talk of my beer bottling, cleaning the house, and losing weight... that's for a different post... :)

Posted by Michael at 08:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've not got the time to actually insert these videos into a streaming format, but I figured that I would post them up for fun, so here they are.

Video 2

Posted by Michael at 09:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been pretty busy recently with school, but I wanted to post up an interesting little clip from my terrorism readings:

Ramzi Yousef: “You keep talking about collective punishment and killing innocent people. . . You were the first one who killed innocent people, and you are the first one who introduced this type of terrorism to the history of mankind when you dropped an atomic bomb which killed tens of thousands of women and children in Japan and when you killed over 100,000 people, most of them civilians, in Tokyo with firebombings, you killed them by burning them to death. And you killed civilians in Vietnam with chemicals, as with the so-called Orange agent. You killed civilians and innocent people, not soldiers, in every single war you went to. You went to war more than any other country in this century, and then you have the nerve to talk about killing innocent people. And now you have invented new ways to kill innocent people. You have so-called economic embargo, which kills nobody other than children and elderly people, and which, other than Iraq, you have been placing the economic embargo on Cuba and other countries for over thirty-five years. The government in its summations and opening statement said that I was a ‘terrorist.’ Yes, I am a terrorist and I am proud of it. And I support terrorism so long as it was against the United States government and against Israel, because you are more than terrorists; you are the one who invented terrorism and [are] using it every day. You are butchers, liars and hypocrites.”

Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy then replied-effectively telling Yousef to take his nihilistic rage and shove it: “Ramzi Yousef, you claim to be an Islamic militant. Of all the persons killed or harmed in some way by the World Trade Center bomb, you cannot name one who was against you or your cause. You did not care, just so long as you left dead bodies and people hurt. Ramzi Yousef, you are not fit to uphold Islam. Your God is death. Your God is not Allah . . . You weren’t seeking conversions. The only thing you wanted to do was to cause death. Your God is not Allah. You worship death and destruction. What you do, you do not for Allah; you do it only to satisfy your own twisted sense of ego. You could have others believe that you are a soldier, but the attacks on civilization for I which you stand convicted here were sneak attacks which ought to kill , and maim totally innocent people. . . You, Ramzi Yousef, came to this country pretending to be an Islamic fundamentalist, but you cared little or nothing for Islam or the faith of the Muslims. Rather, you adored not Allah, but the evil that you yourself have become. And I must say that as an apostle of evil, you have been most effective.”

Taken from The Lexus and the Olive Tree

I just thought that it was an interesting interaction. Not going to throw my political thoughts into it, I just thougth that it was an interesting exchange worth reading. For those that don't know, Ramzi Yousef has been tied to both the 1993 World Trade Center bombings and has major ties to Islamic radical groups.

Posted by Michael at 02:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As of yesterday at 4:00, my paper is no longer in my control. I handed it in yesterday. At the time I was running on pretty much just pure hate. I had gotten an hour and a half of sleep that night. I finally crawled into bed around 7:30am to sleep till 9:00. Ugh. That’s the first time in my college career where I’ve had to stay up all night working on a paper, and fact of the matter is that I blame Laura.

If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have, at midnight, decided that my paper’s layout was wrong and that it needed to be totally overhauled. But, I have to say, that after it was all said and done, the changes that were made were awesome and really made the paper much better, so my praise goes out to Laura for that. Not to mention that she stayed up with me till 6:00am when she had to be to work the next day. What can I say? She’s awesome.

So now I’m all done with writing papers at Columbia. I have three finals that all take place between 6:00pm Tuesday through 3:00pm on Wednesday. Sucks because they are all butted up against one another, but at the same time, I’ll get it over with fairly quickly, so that’s a good thing. Could be worse….the subway could be not running like it was for finals last semester when I had to bike my ass the 11 miles to school in the cold. That was miserable. Kind of fun, but miserable.

Tonight Laura and I are going out with some of her friends for dinner, so that should be nice. We’re going to come back here afterwards, have a few beers, and just relax. I’ve gotta get into study mode, because starting tomorrow I have a massive three days to study for my finals. Seeing as how I have about a 99 average in my Planet Earth class…and well…come on…it’s Planet Earth. For me seminar…yes..the one that I wrote that terrible paper for… I have a fucking final in there too. I guess it’s to test if we read the books, but I mean, hell…we went over them in detail in class, so if you took notes, you’ll be fine. And we have the one essay question that’s going to be asked, so I can prepare for that fairly easily. The only final that I have of any consequence is my Terrorism and Counterterrorism final. And I have a good bit of that already taken care of, so I’m in good shape. Not looking forward to studying, but in good shape nonetheless.

I promise that once I’m done with school, I’ll be posting more interesting posts, but well…I’m just so involved with it right now, that I don’t have much more to talk about.

Oh… I just remembered what else is new. I got a new monitor for my computer. It’s a snazzy 14” LCD display. I think that it was made in 1997. I was able to plug it into my computer through the second port on my video card. It’s a DVI port, so I got a converter for it and it works quite well, so I’m happy. I got the monitor from a girl on Craigslist for $20. The adapter cost me $10 online. I went to Mikey’s Hookup that’s just down the road and they wanted $30 for one, so I sucked it up and waited the three days that it took for my $5 adapter +$4 shipping to come. Ahhh..the miracle of the internet.

Posted by Michael at 06:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I hate him and everything that he stands for and more than that, I am utterly sick of writing about his pathetic life. Die Pullman...die.

Posted by Michael at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As I sit here waiting for my 44 pages of Pullman paper to finish printing, I'm thinking of the future. Mainly the future of my efforts on my computer. I currently have a little 30 gig partition of my 2nd drive that's devoted to an install of Ubuntu Linux. I'm in the process of really learning how to use Linux, but with school going on, it's been a bit longer a process than I had originally hoped. But it's coming along. Once the newest distro comes out "Dapper Drake" I'll install that finished version on and really go to town.

So I've really been thinking that I need to update my blog layout. I currently use Movable Type, but am seriously considering moving to WordPress. My service provider does free setups (not that it's hard to set up) but I could in a period of 5 minutes have it up and running. I actually did a test install of it here I personally like the look of WordPress more. I figure that I'm just really used to using Movable type. The problem with Movable Type is that anyone that uses it is really a quality programmer type person, and well...at this point, I'm just not. There are hundreds of great templates out there for WordPress while I struggle to find one solid Movable type template that's not going to cost me money.

I dunno, at this point I'm seriously considering it. I spoke to my provider and found out that, since Laura and my web-pages are on a shared domain, my domain is actually a re-direct to hers. I have a feeling that's the reason that I've been having problems getting put onto Google. Laura harasses me for wanting to be listed on Google, but I figure that if I have this damn blog, and I work on it fairly often, then why the hell wouldn't I want to be in there? I dunno, it's just been a major hassle.

Anyway, I have to restart my computer now because my fucking printer sucks ass. Ugh...

Posted by Michael at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I suppose it's more of a "tick-tock" than a click clack, but if you too have seen those terrible Nike commercials they have been playing recently, then you'll know what I'm talking about.

It's currently 2 hours and 40 minutes away from being done with classes at Columbia. So that's pretty damn exciting. I brought my camera to school today to take some pictures, and it's beautiful outside, so that helps a bit. Makes picture taking a little easier. It just sucks because they have these huge tents set up on the main lawn, so it's kind of messin' up my picture taking. Grrrrrrr... Oh well.

Yesterday was a flop in terms of getting work done. Granted, I finished up my analysis on the relationship between Mithraism and Christianity (what fun!) and moved onto the Pullman paper again, but I just couldn't bring myself to work on it any last night. I had spent the whole day working at my old law firm doing a document review and then went to the New York State Democratic Counsel Spring Gala. Saw Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer speak. I'm not really into Politics and neither of them said anything that was really all that interesting, so the night was kind of a bust. Got home around 9:00, and by the time I finished my religion paper, it was 10:45.

After class today, I'm going to head home, wait for a call from Laura, go for a run, shower, pick up around the house and then proceed to kick the ever living shit out of the memory of George Pullman. My paper is approaching the 45 page mark, which is getting into the danger zone in terms of being acceptable. Considering how the paper is only supposed to be 30-35 pages, I may have a bit too much information tucked into it. Hopefully Laura will be able to help me trim the fat at some point.

Speaking of trimming fat, prior to Laura going over to Ireland (that's where she is right now), we talked about living a bit healthier, so I'm getting on track today. I had a hard time falling asleep last night because well... I felt like a fat bastard. More than that, I just feel unhealthy, ya know? I just know that I'm not doing the right things for myself, and I know that I need to live a healthier life, so pretty much from now till....well as a goal kind of thing, from now till I start my new job, I want to shed some pounds and get into some better health habits.

Anyway, It's about time I head to my last class. I'm pretty excited about it. I think that I'm just more excited that I don't have to take the damn 45 minute subway ride up to Campus 3 times a week anymore. :) Adios.

Posted by Michael at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)