Ugh, there is nothing worse than waking up on the morning of Memorial Day and just having grey gross overcast skies. Not that that’s all that bad, it just takes away from the typically festive atmosphere. Granted, I have absolutly no plans for this Memorial Day, I was just speaking my mind.
I did just realize that my car is still missing the windshield wiper (passenger side) that some bastard stole off my car. I don’t think that I ever got into this story, but the long and short of it is that I parked my car on the street with my brand new set of wiper blades, gleaming in the sun, and at some point during the evening hours, someone decided they needed an RSX passenger side windshield wiper,so now I am without. My whole car needs to be washed anyway, but I think that I’ll leave that task for next Friday before Scott and I start the drive down to Atlanta.
Speaking of my car and the problems that it has been having recently….
My car actually made me feel quite stupid the other day, and tricked me into buying it a new stereo. How did it do this? Well… on my way home from the airport, a wire came unplugged from the Amp in the back. I stopped to plug the wire back in and a spark jumped off the wire to the power wire. From that point on, the stereo in my car ceased to exist. I checked fuses and everything seemed to be fine there, so I figured that I must have fried one of the Bose Pre-amps that are in my car or the head unit. So I ripped out the stock stereo, and plugged in he new one that I bought, and needless to say (that would have been too easy) the stereo still didn’t play. I figured that I must have blown out the amp, so I proceeded to remove the front passenger seat and start to bypass the amp with these little wire bridge things. As soon as I bridged the first two wires, one of the speakers started to play. I was in awe of my amazing electrical troubleshooting prowess. It was at that point that my father walks over. I explan to him all the trials and tribulations of the past two hours or so, and he asks me “Did you check the fuses?”
“Yes, I checked. The 7.5amp fuse for the stereo is fine. Go and check it yourself.”
So my father squirms into the small space under the steering column and takes a look at the fuses.
“Hey Mike, What’s this 20amp fuse labeled ‘Bose’?”
Yeah, it was just a blown fuse. I suck.

Damn, I can’t really believe it, but it’s been two years of blogging as of yesterday. Shit… a whole lot of stuff has happened in my life. Seems like forever ago that I was living up in Inwood, working at the law firm and fumbling around with my webhosting provider, trying to set up this blog.
In the most recent months, I’ve been really bad about posting, but that’s going to change pretty shortly. Next weekend, I’ll be driving my car down to Atlanta with Scott, my brother, and going to collect my belongings from the back of a tractor trailer. I’ve got my nice little one bedroom all set up to move in, and it’s going to be an exciting time. I have this feeling that i’m oing to be scouring Craigslist.org quite a bit over the next few weeks,trying to outfitmy apaerment in a farily cheap way. As much as I would like to just hit up Ikea or Pottry Barn and blow $2K and furnish my apartment, it’s just not what I should be doing with all my savings.
Anyway, I just wanted to post because, well… it’s been two years and I had to say something about that.
Adios.

Tomorrow, being Thursday, is the second to last time I get to fly to New York, from Atlanta, on my company’s dime. On Friday, I am packing up all my stuff that I have in storage, loading it onto the back of a tractor trailer, and shipping it down to Atlanta. Normally, I wouldn’t be concerned, but just this week I had an incident that caused me some alarm.
Sunday night, I decided that I would pack up all my work clothes and a bunch of other stuff in preparation for moving down here. Figured it would be good to get as much stuff down as possible. I grabbed this huge green duffle back and put every work shirt in there, a random assortment of short, t-shirts, and ever pair of black socks that I could find into the bag. In addition, I also packed in there my brand new Gui for the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class that I just enrolled in. The next morning I grabbed my bags and headed to the airport.
When I got to the desk to check in my bag, I was pleasant to the airport worker, checked my bag and took my boarding pass. As I was walking away, I realized that I didn’t have the boarding pass to my connecting flight. I mentioned this to the woman at the counter and she replied:
“Oh, I’m sorry. I figured that you just purchased an extra seat on your flight to Orlando…”
“Mum…no, it’s just a connection…umm… did you tag my bag correctly?”
“Oh, don’t worry about it…. I’ll go back and change it.”
Well, needless to say, that was the last time I saw that bag. I calculated it out and there were roughly $1400 worth of clothes and various things in that bag. Somehow, I don’t think that the airline is going to reimburse me for the total losses, but I’ll see what I can get out of them. If anything, I’ll be bale to get a good piece of it back and get some new work clothes. Seeing as how I now have a total of 4 shirts for work, I’m going to go out this weekend and pick up some more.
Because of the lost bag, I no longer have flip flops, any socks, or my workout stuff, including my sneakers, so this week has been a total wash in terms of working out or doing anything productive outside of work. That being the case, work in and of itself was great this week. I got so much done, learned a ton about the reporting tool that we’re working with and generally did some good work. My director level co-worker has been pleased with everything that I’ve been doing, so that’s always a good thing.
Today, I initiated a conversation with some of the VP’s of the firm in order to find out if I could put myself through some training on Siebel to become a Certified Report Architect or some other fun title like that. The courses run upwards of $2000, so that’s a bunch of money and in addition, it’s 4 days where I’ll be off client site, not earning revenue for the firm. Hopefully, they will approve my request and I’ll get to take the training. That’ll be a nice boon in my favor, showing initiative and allowing my company to bill me out at a higher rate. I’ll also have that skill set under my belt, so it’ll give me a little bit more bargaining power in the open market when that time comes.
Speaking about “that time”, I’ve decided that it’s not going to be for awhile. At this current point, I’m happy with what I’m doing, and there seems to be lots to do all the time, but not so much so that I am having to stay in the office to all hours of the night. It’s actually quite the nice situation. I think that as the year rolls on, I’m going to look into taking the GMAT, and see how well I can do on it. I’m in no rush to go to grad school, but I figure that if I can study my ass off for it, and score well, then hopefully I can get myself into a good school. The schools in the Atlanta area, mainly Emory and Georgia Tech, are decent (MBA programs are ranked 14th and 19th in the country), but at the same time, Duke and UNC offer weekend executive MBA programs, and that’s only a 6 hour drive…I say only, but we’ll see. I figure that if I am going to spend the money going to a grad school, it better be something that doesn’t tarnish the credentials on my resume, and actually will be a worthwhile experience. Realizing the fact that the main purpose of going to grad school is to go crazy networking with people, it also benefits going to a better school.
Anyway, I’m sure that once I move down to Atlanta and actually have my life back together I’ll be writing a bit more and on a more regular basis, but I think it’s about to end this one.

Ever since I’ve gotten this long term hotel down here in Atlanta, I’ve just been falling off on my blogging, and I recognize it, but that’s just something you all (Brad and Laura) are going to have to deal with. Oh my god… I just wrote you all….I don’t even say it but I thought it… that was totally unintentional. Anyway.. .
I’ll start from tonight and move backwards, seeing as how I have the worst memory in the world. Tonight, I ended up heading over to a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) Academy in Sandy Springs, which is around 10 minutes from where I’m going to be living. I’d never done BJJ before, so it was an interesting experience. Pretty much, it’s wrestling, but the goal is to either break their arm, or to render them unconscious. It was a good time. The place is fairly expensive at $125 a month, but I figure that if I just suck it up and go 3 times a week, that’s only $10 a day, and I can easily swing that. I had a good session tonight, and was able to sweep a few people off me and pass on their guard, so it was a good time. I’m sore as hell, and I expect that tomorrow I am going to feel like Rodney King after a certain drunken driving incident…well, maybe not that bad, but you get the idea.
Hmmm… this past weekend was fairly uneventful. I’ve been reading a bit more and just finished up The Kite Running, and frankly, it’s in my top ten books of all time. The story was good, the writing was good, and every chapter end just left you sitting there with your jaw on the floor, and I enjoy reading books like that, ah-la the Divinci Code… although, to compare those two is utter crap, but that’s the kind of chapter ending stuff that was going on.
On Friday night, I went out in the Virginia Highlands with Jason, his roommate and his girlfriend. We went to this Thai restaurant that is run by a single guy. He seats you, gets your drinks, pours your wine, cooks your food, and does everything else, including serve up you an un-Godly number of Saki bombs. Jason, as per his weak stomach, vomited his back into his glass, which was lovely as you can imagine. Luckily his dinner stayed down.
Near the end of the 2.5 hour meal, one of Jason’s friends from school showed up, and hadn’t eaten dinner yet, but it was too long a process for him to get something there, so as we’re sitting around chatting, this group of girls leaves. Well, one of them happened to leave their take-home container. So this guy turns, and is like.. “should I?” and of course, us being drunk are like “sure”, so he turns around, grabs the container and starts to dig in. Needless to say, the girl comes running back into the restaurant. I am thinking that she must have been pretty drunk herself to not notice that he was eating her food, but it was so tongue in cheek when she walked in, we all just got bug eyed and tried so hard not to laugh… good times.
Hmmm, so what else have I done… I think that’s really about it, and if there was something else… I can’t remember. Anyway, hope you enjoyed your once monthly installment of “my life”.