Being that it’s a Monday, the weekend is officially over. That being said, I have to say that this past weekend was quite a bit of fun. Melissa came down and we got to hang out from Wednesday through Monday. Not that we did anything all that special, it was just nice to have her around.
Having company entails certain things, and of those, comes a general disrespect for my body. We had Mexican….twice. Chinese food once, burgers once, and just generally didn’t eat all that well. By Sunday night, both Melissa and I were feeling rather crappy. We ended up hanging out on the couch, watching some TV, which was actually quite nice.
One of the random perks…well… I suppose you could call it a perk, is that I have some crazy neighbors across the way from my apartment. There is an Asian couple that lives across the way, and they fight practically ever single day, and we’re talking screaming so that I can hear them from inside their apartment. As bad as it sounds, it kind of makes me happy to see how much better my life is. Yes, I realize that sounds very terrible, I just can’t imagine being married to someone and fighting all the time. It probably doesn’t help that the wife’s mother is constantly over at their apartment. Oh well… I’ll keep everyone up the date with any fun stories of my observations.
Work is going well, and annual raises just came out. I scored above average on my review, so that entitled me to a whopping 4% raise, which isn’t all that bad. It was what I was expecting, so that’s good. Doesn’t amount to a whole lot in each paycheck, but it just makes living that much easier. With the merger of my company with the larger one, things have worked out so that I’ll be getting another raise come January, so that’ll make things even better. I don’t think I’ll see another 4%, but probably 1/2 that. Considering how I’ve taken my first of two Siebel Analytics courses (Application Developer), that should weigh in a little bit in my next review. I am going to be traveling up to Boston in two weeks to take the advanced part of the course and barring any issues; I should be able to take and pass the exam and get a certification, which is always a good thing. I don’t know how willing the new company is going to be to keep shelling out thousands of dollars to get me trained, but we’ll see.
Jiu-Jitsu has been going well. I haven’t been going as much as I would like, but I plan on hitting it up 4-5 times this week, because…well… I need to get my ass back into gear. I think there is a tournament coming up at some point, so I would like to be prepared and able to drop to whatever weight classes are around so as to not end up going in the heavyweight division. Perhaps if I do well, I’ll be allowed to test for my blue belt. Wouldn’t that be snazzy? I’ve still got lots to learn though, so it’s good. Having a huge learning curve helps to keep things interesting.
Two weekends ago, Joe stopped by on his way to moving to San Antonio. Along with spending the night, he asked me to help fix his computer. After tinkering around, I was able to format his drives and reinstall his OS (Windows XP). I didn’t have time while he was here to get it all done, so I ended up having to ship it off to him. He left me $40 and I went to the post office to ship it. Well, the shipping was around $25, and I thought to myself… hell… I might as well put insurance on it. Glad I did. Apparently, the box got all fucked up and the laptop was non-functional when Joe got it a few days later. The post office admitted fault and told him to bring the receipt and proof of how much the computer is worth. Hopefully he’ll be able to get the full $500 of insurance that I put on it.
That’s about it in my life. There’s some shit going on at work, but frankly, with me being the low level Peon that I am, it’s really out of my control as to what the directors are doing and what’s going on in the internal power struggles. I’m just working my butt off to learn the software that we’re using and to develop reports as best as I can. Things are going well at work, so I really can’t complain. I work with a bunch of good guys and the client really likes us. Additionally, I don’t have to travel at all, so that’s a definite plus. I figure that I’m going to be working with this client for another year or so, so I have plenty of time to really get in some good training and to develop myself as a quality Business Intelligence consultant. Hehe…sounds much fancier than it is, but it’ll work out well if I ever decide to leave. Another plus is that the company that I am working for is upgrading to the latest and greatest release of the software platform, so I’ll get to be working with the most updated version, always a plus in terms of staying ahead of the curve.
Anyway, it’s getting to be late and I should get going to bed pretty soon.

A University Chairman at the private University Roger Williams busted out the “N-Word” during a board of trustees meeting. He later went on to tell the media that “The first time I heard it was on television or rap music or something…” He originally used the slur after getting riled up over the difficulty of finding candidates for the board of trustees that would “enhance” its diversity.
Here is his picture:

Okay, so the guy is 80 freaking years old. That makes him born around 1927 or so…. and he’s telling me that the first time he heard the infamous “N-Word” slur was in rap music? Are you kidding me? I’m sure that when he was growing up in his plantation, drinking sweet tea, he had plenty of indentured servants running around in which he routinely verbally abused. I mean look at the guy….can you picture him rocking out to the smooth beats of Tupac or 50-cent? No? Me neither…
Ugh… people are stupid.

Fairly quiet today. Not a whole lot going on. My co-worker that’s staffed on this project just walked in the door around 10:00am, so now we can get to work.
Last night I stayed up until around 1:00am messing with some photos, and here are two that I liked:

Anyway, I’m at work, so I shouldn’t be blogging to begin with, but figured I would post those up there quick.

I got talking with Melissa the other day about how I really need to change the banner of my blog to represent Atlanta or at least just change it to something non-NY related. At first I decided to put up a picture of Saranac Lake that I took, but quickly decided that that wasn’t really all that ideal, so thus spawning the creation that you see.
Sitting up there is Seven and Pud all cuddled up and well….nuts.
I’m not going to lie…. I did search for a picture of cat nuts, but only found one and then quickly decided against it. I just wanted to share the fruits of my search in all their fleshy glory.

Enjoy!

Last night was an interesting experience for me. A few months ago, I met this guy, Blake, when I was looking for a roommate. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Blake was Gay. He’s cool guy, so I’ve kept in touch with him now that I moved to Atlanta. Last night, being Saturday, I decided that I was going to find people to go out with. I ended up hanging out with Blake, his boyfriend and three of their friends.
Initially, we went out to this bar called Hoedown. When I first agreed to go there, I didn’t know what it was, but that quickly changed when I read the reviews at Atlantaboy.com. Turns out that it’s Atlanta’s only Gay Country Bar. I figured what the hell and met up with Blake and Company around 8:30. It happened to be pretty dead, so we didn’t stay for more than 30 minutes, so there really wasn’t all that much going on.
After Hoedown, we headed over to a sketchy part of town, which happens to be about a mile from where I live, to go bowling. Overall, the night was good, and I impressed myself with my outstanding bowling abilities. I typically break 100, but usually by not very much. During the second, and last, game that we played, in the 8th, 9th, and 10th frame I achieved the impossible…. three strikes..a Turkey. My amazing late game play gave me a whopping 149, which is far and away the best bowling score I have ever gotten, so I was pretty pleased.
This weekend has been pretty good as I have been able to get lots of stuff done. I finally set up my Nokia 770 Internet Tablet to stream Internet Radio to my stereo, and that’s working well. It’s nice to have constant music playing that’s all different. I also finally plugged in the antenna for my car’s stereo, so I finally have radio in my car again. It’s been months without it and I was really getting a little bored with my music that I have in the car, so that’s good.
Other than that, things are pretty quiet. This week we are starting the testing phase of another release, so that means I’ll be traveling to Midtown each day. Not really the greatest thing ever, but whatever, it’s gotta get done.
For the rest of my weekend, I really have two goals. I am going to write up a first draft to ABF Freight U-Pack shipping, explaining to them how if they don’t cover all the goods that they damaged in my 6,000 mile (originally supposed to be 900) move, I’m going to be forced into going to small claims court, writing a letter to the state Attorney General and reporting them to the BBB. Do I want to do all that stuff? Nope, not at all. Do I really need to money? Nope, not at all. Now it’s just a matter of principal because it was totally their fault and they didn’t do anything to rectify the situation, and that angers me as a consumer. Additionally, I will go around the internet and post as many negative reviews about them as possible. I’m hoping that they realize that they will lose more than the $1500 they owe me in damages by going my proposed route, but we’ll see. Because I don’t really need the money, it’s more of a game at this point.
Anyway, that’s about all I have to say that’s of any interest, so off I go.

Whew…what a week. Thank God it’s almost over. Well…. the fictional character known as “God”…. but anyway, yeah, it’s been a long week and I’m very glad that the weekend is here.
I don’t really have much planned for the weekend, but there certainly are things on my agenda that have been calling my name for about a month now, and I figure that it’s about time I get them taken care of. Number one on my list is getting Georgia plates for my car. As of last week, I am officially breaking Georgia State Law because I didn’t register my car here in the first month of residency. Ugh… all I can say is that I hope the DMV down here is better than it is in NY.
Other than the plates for my car, there are a few other little things that I want to get done, but none are quite worth boring you with. The one point of technological excitement is that I should soon be in the possession of an Upconverting DVD player made by Oppo. Yes, it’s an off brand, but it kicked the shit out of all the other brands on the market, so whatever. I’m all about it. Apparently, the processing that it does for the upconvert is just amazing…I’ve yet to see it, but I am waiting in breathless anticipation. Dork? I think so.
Next week, Joe is driving his car from Florida to San Antonio, so he’s going to make Atlanta his mid-point stop, so Tuesday night of next week I’ll have Joe as a house guest, so that’ll be good. Other than Melissa and my brother, I’ve yet to have anyone else in my house, and neither of them actually saw it when it was all set up, so it’ll be nice to finally show off my fine decorating skills. Dork? Yep.
Speaking of decorating… I need to get on that. I have put up a few things here and there, but I really need to get onto Kodak’s web page and print out some nice 8×12 prints so that I can refill my picture frames. I’m in search of a good place to get a panoramic frame, because I have quite a few good panos that I would like to hang above the couch. We’ll see if I can find something that’s reasonably priced because well… yeah, I’m cheap, what can I say?
Once all my pictures are up, things should be looking pretty good. Anyway, I should try to get some work done. The system is currently down, so we can’t do any work yet anyway, but I can probably find something to do.

Something that has become apparent to me in the past few days is that when I wake up for work at 8:00, and don’t have to be there until 9, and I am only a 5 minute walk….yeah, I have quite a few minutes in the morning to ponder stuff and to work out anything that’s on my mind for the day. It’s kind of nice actually.
As I was saying the other day, in the past, there have been things going on in my life that I’ve not put on my blog for fear of hurting people’s feelings or just generally upsetting people, well, as of yesterday, that whole set of worries disappeared, so from this point forward, I’m going to be blogging more straight forward and openly talking about pretty much everything in my life that’s of note. I’m kind of relieved when it comes down to it, so it’ll be good. Perhaps it’ll give me the kick in the butt that I need to do a bit more blogging and get back into the habit of it as I have been pretty bad for the past 6 months.
Anyway, I have 9 minutes to make it into work, so I am going to pack my stuff, brush my teeth and head out.

Not going to lie… I kind of feel that i’m in a funk today. No real reason, well… there are, and frankly, this is the first time in a long time that there’s been personal issues too personal for me to put into my blog.
it’s pretty much a little bit of everything going on that I don’t feel is really something that I can write in there. Health, personal issues, relationship issues….you name it, I’ve got it going on, so I’m going to keep my update here pretty topical and only really get down to the fun things that are going on.
Just got back from a week up in NYC and the Jersey Shore, so that was a good time, uneventful, but a good time none the less.
I ordered myself some B-stock speakers from svsound.com and they came in while I was gone. I treked home over my lunch break and picked them up from the leasing office and they are quite nice. Didn’t really get a chance to test them out all that much, but I did pop in a movie and it sounded damn good. I think that my old center channel speaker is pretty beat. I’ve had it for 6-7 years now, and it was used when I got it, so it’s probably upwards of 10 years old… time for a new one, so I got one.
Hmmm… going to class tonight, which is the furthest thing from what I want to do, but I need to do some form of excercise or I’m going to fall further into this funk that I’ve gotten myself into.
For the rest of the week, I’m going to work on getting my apartment into shape. I ddid the basic unpack, but realized that I am missing somethings like curtain hardware, and my pictures need to be changed before I can go about hanging them all up on the walls. It’ll actually be pretty nice to get some different stuff up considering how I’ve had the last stuff on the walls for over a year at the place in Brooklyn.
Work has been going well, and I think that I’m going to get pretty boring here for a little bit. Should give me some time to start up drafting a white paper that I volunteered for about a month ago.
I’m pretty excited because at the end of the month (2 weeks), I get to take two days off to sit at home and do some training for Siebel. It’ll probably be damn boring, but I’ll get to get a better understanding of the program and I’ll be one step closer to being an Oracle certified application developer, which is always a good thing. Anyway, I should get some work done.