Just Another Day in the Life

Today I got to do some more troubleshooting for the Novartis SAP accelerator. Keith and I ran through every test that had passed at some point to make sure more problems had not arisen. Lo and behold, we encountered failures in components that worked perfectly fine in previous weeks. It's such a load of crap. I was informed by Kim today that I may be featured in an upcoming project for Siemens in Philadelphia starting next Monday and lasting the month of October. I suppose that would be alright, though Philly has the worst airport in the fucking country and I do not look forward to the flights in and out of the city. I played some more Sphinx, and I think I'm getting damn close to the end of the game, but I could be entirely wrong. I am really enjoying the mummy puzzles. I love the fact that no matter how clever they are, it's pretty clear what you need to do to progress in the level. I didn't think I'd end up liking Sphinx that much, but you can go ahead and color me surprised. I ended up going to lunch with Neil and Kyle for some 25 cent chicken wings (a dozen for $3.21? Color me satisfied!) where they gushed on about Halo 3. We made plans for the evening involving going to Neil's place and frittering the night away by killing endless waves of Covenant and Flood. Now, I can't honestly say I'm that big a fan of Halo. As far as FPSes go, it's way too slow for me. I need a twitch game like Unreal Tournament to keep my interest. However, in the time I spent playing the game at Neil's, I can't deny that I had a fun time with it. We had a hell of a time getting on XBox Live and Kyle repeatedly broke Neil's internet for which he was ridiculed with respite. Nubs and I stayed for quite awhile, until nearly midnight, when he decided he needed to go home and get to bed so he'd be ready for work. When we arrived back home, Jim had a story to tell about a woman he met at the Cincinnati airport who seemed particularly interested in him. Unfortunately, she had a child, and Jim was not okay with that at his age. I don't blame him, I'm not okay with that either. Having kids is for the birds, I'm not even gonna think about trying to do that until I'm about 30. It's now 3AM on Wednesday and I think it's time for me to play some Sphinx in my bedroom!

One Beer Under God

Yesterday was pretty routine, did the usual hanging around the house and all instead of working. I played some Sphinx and made some progress, got Jim to demo a Shadowrun battle for me, and now that I think of it, actually did do some work. Monday is Brew Works night, and also a small goon meet. Nubs and I arrived around 7 and quickly found Nick and Adam at the bar. I was attempting to sit down when a fellow goon, Drew, noticed us and asked if we were "from the internet". After getting his expected affirmative response, we grabbed a table and a few pitchers of beer and had a grand old time getting blasted. We sat around and BSed about a little bit of everything, and I think somehow plans were made to play some video games and do some drinking at my apartment amid the turmoil. Adam got increasingly drunk and loud as the night went on and somehow ended up breaking a glass at the end of the night. Eugene loaded up a video on Adam's iPod of a Burger King ad in which a guy acts like a snake and swallows a fucking triple Whopper in one bite. This got us on the topic of Asians in CMU somehow, and allowed us to riff on Alex a bit. We found out Drew and Eugene went to PTI as well and managed to do their time and grab some web development jobs. So after much merriment and a busted glass, we headed out. I was a bit tipsy on the drive home but definitely able to drive, and did so with no problems. I arrived home, got berated as usual, and went to bed right before midnight. All in all a fun night.

Drinking and a Hootin' an' Hollerin'

Yesterday was interesting. I woke up late. I was supposed to pick my brother up and head to my grandparent's place at around 12AM. However, I had stayed up till about 4 the night before so I woke up to the sound of a voice mail vibration on my dresser. I called my brother and he decided he'd just drive to my grandparent's place and we would meet there. He beat me there, as I figured he would. I walked in, said hi, and proceeded to watch the Steelers game, all the while discussing my sister's situation. You see, my sister is retarded and won't stay off drugs or stay away from the people who often do drugs. The worst part about this is she blames everyone but herself for her horrible decisions, which, ya know, isn't fucking true. Anyhow, we discussed that crap and watched the game. The Steelers, well they whooped some cloven hoofed ass. The Bills didn't have a leg to stand on, even after they got two lucky breaks with the "non-reviewable" plays, whatever that means. I always thought almost any play was reviewable. We also watched Cleveland seal the deal against Cincinnati, something rather surprising, with a high score game. Browns win, 51-39. After this my brother decided enough was enough and headed home. I stayed about an hour after and talked with my pap about Matt, the football game, and even a little about the war in Iraq. He believes, as any sane person should, that we should get the hell out of that place. I decide it's time to head back to my apartment, bid them adieu, and drive off into the sunset. Fucking sun. When I arrived I was inundated with greetings of an offensive nature, a normal occurrence. Then we began the drinking. We busted out the Mad Gabs and had quite a laugh all the while chugging down some delicious stuff. When I drink I like to smoke, so I ended up snatching quite a few cigarettes from Cheryl before the night was over. I think I also grabbed her boob. I went into my room to play some Guitar Hero 2, beat a few songs while more than a little buzzed, and finally went to sleep. All in all, day rated as a B.

Wow I am extremely bad at this

I knew this was gonna happen, I just can't keep enough focus to even keep a goddamn blog updated.

Boring Day to Party Day

I am actually writing this the day after I should have, on account of drinking yesterday and not feeling like typing a long and drawn out blog post. Yesterday I stumbled out of bed around 9AM. I had 2 bowls of Lucky Charms to go along with the usual web browsing of the morning. I do not recall doing anything of particular importance during the afternoon, though I do remember running the F-28 transaction with new data and got it to pass. Around 4:30 I got a call from Levi. He told me that Chris was having a birthday party and I was invited. I had originally made plans to go to Dom's place and visit with him and Cliff, but considering I hadn't seen either Levi or Chris for quite some time, I decided to go to the old nostalgia hub of Clearfield road. Before leaving I got a message on MSN from Ben asking if I wanted to go with him to get wings. I had to decline his offer, but mentioned that Sean would probably show up this weekend and he was invited if that was the case. I waited till around 6, jumped in my car, and left. Thankfully there wasn't an obscene amount of traffic, just the usual congestion on 279 and 28 that I am used to seeing. There was a guy in a big ass GMC truck with dualies that seemed very lost, and when I was along side him, made me very nervous. In the end he got where he needed to go as far as I could tell, and really couldn't care less if he didn't. I drove through all the fucking construction along 28 without incident. Actually, I drove the whole way to Levi's place without incident. I got out of my car and made my way to the door, Boo howling away in the background. Levi got the door and offered unto me some scrumptious victuals, namely tater tots and hot sausages. I scarfed some of that up, then we meandered over to Gary and Kathy's place. There I was greeted by Christopher, the man of the hour, his cousins Justin and Sarah, Kathy, Rayya, and Gary. We exchanged niceties and then proceeded to do some drinking. We discussed various issues and situations in life, and after awhile decided go to for a joyride in Chris's Jeep. He blasted some Ozzy and we headbanged our way up and down the road for a little while. After this joyride we stopped back in at Chris's place and we decided a trip to the T-bar was in order. We loaded up in Chris's Jeep with Chook as the driver and headed over, standing up and screaming at the top of our lungs the whole way. Tonight was to be a good night. We got to the bar and... well, typical redneck bar, only no karaoke that night, at least not officially. I bought the man of the hour a drink or two, bought a few for Rayya, even bought one for Kathy. Heather was bar tending and made a wicked mean drink called a Screamin' Betty. Those shits we're great. I probably chugged down 5 or 6 while we were there. The whole time I sat around conversing with all my old buddies from the area, talking about my inadequacies with women and plans for the future and whatnot. Then Rayya, Chris and I got into a discussion about his failed relationship with Jess. We helped him open his eyes to certain aspects of her personality, and he finally accepted (I think) that he was better off without her. We rode home, Chook at the helm, in a more somber mood, and I crashed on Chook's couch. I woke up the next day at about 5AM and fought the morning traffic to get back into Pittsburgh before my conference call at 9AM.

Labor Day After

This morning I woke up. Probably about 3 times. I set my alarm clock for 9 but my phone for 8, and in the end I woke around 10:30AM. I checked my work email, saw nothing, and shot an email to Keith. He basically told me that nothing was going to be happening today, on account of Phil being sick, so I slacked off most of the day. I played some Knytt Stories, beating the levels I hadn't yet played. I also read my usual sites, checking Something Awful for replies to some of the threads I was interested in. Keith found a little work for me after a few hours, which involved running the F-28 and F-30 tests. Both ran to their respective transactions and failed, so I made a few step by step screenshot based Word docs for Hien to look over. I'm not sure that Keith did anything with these, I sent them to him but he didn't respond to any of my messages. I also finally got the Otakon pics from Adam, and began uploading them to Photobucket (pics can be found here). I sent a link to my Otakon album to Alicia, but I don't think she's looked at it yet. Nubs got hungry and was going to eat some cereal when he noticed there was no milk, so we made a plan. Garbage run then milk run. We were rounding up the garbage to take to the dumpster when Derek arrived. We ended up loading his car with the garbage and taking it to the dumpster. Nubs was responsible for one bag of trash and he totally overshot the gaping maw of the trash compactor when he attempted to throw his bag in. Bottles broke and a loud ruckus was created, but we had business to attend to so we left it as is. We met Michallynn at Half Priced books where Derek thought he would be lucky enough to buy a few volumes of manga for cheap, but his hopes were dashed when he looked upon the manga roller cart. I found a CD with 80s bands on it, with the font all in Iron Maiden style, but lo and behold, not a single Maiden song was to be found on the track list. I was disappointed. From there we stopped at Uncle Sam's sub shop and I snatched a sweet steak sub with a cup of sprite. After this filling pit stop, we headed to Giant Eagle to get a few groceries. We ended up seeing one of Ben's friends, Johanna, and did our best to avoid her, mainly because none of us knew what to say to her. Nubs was originally going to buy the milk this round, but Derek ended up throwing it on the belt when he was checking himself out and got it added to his receipt. This trip, too, had an end, and we headed home. When we arrived we felt in the mood for some UT2003. This time Jim got involved for a few maps. Nubs somehow got a reputation for dominating, which pissed us all off, especially when we played the map set in hell. That fucker repeatedly spammed the shock hammer at me to get a few cheap kills and a full flack cannon shell to the head did not phase him in the least. This frustrated Jim to the point of quitting to play some more Persona 3. Persona 3, folks, is a fucking strange game. Your character must shoot himself in the head with an "Evoker" (looks more like a Desert Eagle) to enable a spirit to appear and fight for him. Though strange, it also seems like it'd be fun to play, so I'll probably try it before Jim sends it back to Gamefly. Nubs wanted to head to the gym tonight, and I figured I would go to, so we went. There was only one other guy when we arrived around 11PM, a black dude who looks like he really doesn't need to come to the gym much anymore. He seems to enjoy looking at himself in the mirror though, whatever floats your boat, bub. I did some treadmill running for 20 minutes, jumped off and cooled down, did some arm exercises, and realized I was really fucking tired. The walk back was extremely humid, and seemed to take just about forever, but we arrived at the apartment without incident. I got in, chugged a few glasses of water, and watched Derek create a forum banner and Jim play more Persona 3.

Today is Labor Day

So today is Labor Day. That really doesn't mean much to me, considering I didn't do anything special to celebrate it. I woke up at 1:30PM and went online, checking the usual websites and such. I read some Achewood strips and found a website which details how to fight with a stick. I really liked the art on this site so I made a buddy icon out of one of the images. Adam asked about it and I explained its origin, then he proceeded to show me screenshots of Eve, which I honestly have little to no interest in. I've been waiting for the Otakon pics, so I harassed him for them, and finally they came through. I told Alicia I would show them to her, but she ended up going to bed before I got them. I still need to upload them to a web server. I went with Derek to Michallynn's to grab his wallet and ended up staying to watch her play some Guitar Hero. She offered some spinach stuffed tortellini which I snarfed down with gusto. Derek and I then provided her with some pointers as I played with the cat in the meantime. He looks like he was trying to headbutt a concrete block and I think I mention this every time I go to her place. We talked about the strengths of each other's glasses and offered to take out an unused TV stand. Derek and I left it to the side of the dumpster and drove away, passing a white vehicle which supposedly never moves from its designated corner. When we returned we did not know if Jim and Nubs would still be friends, for there was a bit of a scuffle on Friday, but it turns out they worked through their differences. Jim installed UT2003 and we fragged for a map or two, then Derek turned into a pansy and quit playing. At this point I loaded up and played some Smash Bros. Melee just to see how bad I really suck at it (pretty bad, as it turns out) and attemped to increase my skill level with some luck. In the meantime Derek loaded up some crappy old ROMs such as Bayou Bill and Nightmare on Elm Street until he felt like going to bed. I copied Jim's Smash Bros. data to my card as to not need to unlock everything again and played a bit until I got bored with it, then loaded Fark and checked some stupid news. Then I realized I should make my post for today, and this is it. I think this blog may also help me increase my memory capacity, as I will mention every trivial event I can possibly remember each time I make a post.

Discipline Mechanism

Starting today, I plan on writing at least one thing in my blog to try to help myself get into some sort of routine. It will mainly consist of trivial things done on a day to day basis, but will hopefully help me get motivated and disciplined enough to start doing other things which require motivation and discipline. I'm not really gonna try writing this for it to be read, I'm just going to write it for myself.

Today
Day before Labor Day

Went with Derek to Michallynn's, Toni's friends were there, we felt weird and left. Went home, played UT2003 until Derek's goddamn computer froze up. Played some FFXII, beat 3 hunts from Nalbina then went to McDs to get free nuggets from Nubs. Talked to Kyle, agreed with him that Bioshock, Supernatural and 70s-80s rock soundtracks are amazing. Thinking about cooking out tomorrow, gonna ask potential guests what they wish to bring out of a selection of food or alcohol. It's 6AM and I'm tired.