So, with the new year comes resolutions.
Like most other people, I’ve used the beginning of a New Year to try and turn over a new leaf.

For starters, I’ve decided to eat healther and to try and drop down to a weight of 180lbs. It’s gonna take some time but I can do it. Right now I’m “training” myself to only eat during meals and elimate snacking from my life. I’m not too concerned about acutally losing weight right now, but I figure most diets fail because people try to jump in to one all at once and can’t manage to change themselves so suddenly. After I tackle this stage I figure that eating less will follow, followed by eating healther and around the spring time some good exercise will come into play. I’m going to start a bit of a routine now just to get myself ready for when I start more rigorous stuff, but nothing too strenuous for now.

Mike got a book for Christmas called “This book will change your life.” The idea behind the book is that there are 365 activites (obviously one for each day of the year) that you will perform and it will lead you to many things, such as realizing who you are, gaining confidence and trying new activities.

The first day was really simple. It had a list of about ten different things and you had to choose one and do it. The second day was to look at everyone as if they are your future mate (or something to that extent). That yeilded some strange looks. It was kinda hard because working fast food you see a lot of people everyday, many of which you don’t want to look at in that way. (For reference, no, I did not do this with any males.)

Saturday was pretty rough. The activity was to throw something away that you love. I got rid of my lava lamp. I love(d) it. The only problem was that it had just been sitting on a filing cabinet in my room, doing nothing for a year now for multiple reasons, mostly because I don’t have much room for it. I wanted to keep it because I had no reason to throw it away, but now that it’s in the trash, I don’t think I’ll miss it.

Yesterday I was supposed to take a world map and color in the countries I’ve been to, the countries I want to go to, and the countries I don’t want to visit. That was kinda different because for a while I’ve been wanting to do SOME sort of travelling, thinking of all the place it would be fun to go, but when I really thought about it there are tons of places I really wouldn’t go near without some REALLY good reason. Surprisingly, I decided I’d like to visit russia. I don’t know why, but I think it would be fun to visit some of the monuments and historical “treasures” they have from the cold war.
Here is my map:
Map

Today I have to place an “Out of Order” sign on something in a public place, in example, and restroom. I’m going to Olive Garden later, so we’ll see how that goes

Not much else has gone on. No reason to really try and recall all the events since I last posted because nothing TOO exciting has gone on, but now that I have something to post about everyday I think I’ll be doing it more frequently.

See ya.

Today’s activity is “Today, write the first sentence of your debut novel.”

“Never trust the guy who seems like the only person you CAN trust” That’s the advice given to me that I should have listened to when my mother told it to me 16 years before the event that showed me why, and if I had paid attention, my life wouldn’t have changed for the worst because of it.

Yesterday’s activity seemed to go well. I don’t know how it turned out though. I wonder if the people at Olive Garden are wondering why the toilet has an “out of order” sign on it

So the task for today probably shouldn’t be mentioned on here, but I don’t know who reads this. hah.

So, yeah.

Last night was kinda fun. Joe, Mike, Micheal and myself went to BW-3’s and had some food, then came home and played Monopoly…. and drank. Micheal and I more or less gave up towards the end of the game because it was stupid. We had a combined total of 8 properties from the get-go, and somewhere in the middle I had the light blue and he had the dark blue… but NO ONE was landing on our properties. Basically, we got shafted the entire game and it wasn’t fun because we had no way to compete. It wasn’t even like we made dumb decisions that put us under, we just didn’t have any income and damn Mike had houses on the yellow by our third or fourth time around the board. He had like, 12 properties and somehow managed to erect houses after paying for that. I think something was fishy there, but whatever. Micheal and I basically just banded together, paying off each other’s debts and putting hotels up for each other and stuff just to piss off Mike and Joe, who had the onyl chance of winning. I don’t know who even won in the end, and I really don’t care.

So yeah. blah blah blah about work, no one cares.

See ya tomorrow.

Over the past week I’ve had some good tasks.

-Waking up at 5AM and seeing what is on TV (old music videos and Tom and Jerry. Neat.) I did have the option of calling someone at that time and wondering why the hell they weren’t awake, and I figured I’d be a prick to Mike and call him, but then he wouldn’t tell me any more tasks. (I didn’t know the task until later that day, so I had to do it the next day.)

-Writing a letter to a serial Killer (I chose Ted Kazcvycuadshfoski) I havne’t sent my letter yet, but thinking about it now… didn’t he hang himself with his underwear or something?

-Today I was supposed to flatter someone and see if it get me anywhere. The waitress at Gold Star seemed to be friendlier, but I wasn’t able to make anything of it at work (probably because I do that anyway, but ya’know..)

-One day was just a snipet to be read. whatever.

-Another day was to choose your ideal type woman, so if you ever get drunk you can easily remember… I chose the smart brunette, or something to that effect.

I forget the remaining day. Ah well.

Life change percentage thus far… we’ll say 1%.

I’m going to finish up Mike’s page tonight so he can post about his too.

Holy crap wow.
Where have I been? It’s been well over a month and a half since I posted but it seems like just yesterday to me. There have been some major changes to my life and none of them are in regards to the book.

I’ve pretty much quit that because it was hard for Mike to get the task of the day to me. It was fun while it lasted, but oh well. I still get a chuckle out of it every now and then when I see Mike and he tells me what the task was of some previous day.

Right now I’m excited because in 17 days I go to Myrtle Beach. Being able to go is another story in itself, which I’ll get to later.

So right now it’s 7:35AM, and I just had a shower and breakfast after work. Yeah, after work. I guess the biggest change that has happened lately is that I’m now working with my dad (technically with him, I suppose) at a place called Cast-Fab in Cincinnati. No more Wendy’s! As the start of a new term at school approached, the info for my financial aid hadn’t been processed and I knew I’d either get stuck with crappy classes again or not be able to go back at all. That would just be flat out dumb, because I’m NOT going to waste money taking classes that suck. So it just happened that as that whole “ecomony” thing started to pick up, so did Cast-Fab. My dad had been searching for help to do all the work that they had, and offered me a job. I figured as long as I was going to be off another term, I might as well make it worth it. So I’m working third shift on the Melt Deck right now. If you don’t know what that is, it’s okay, I’ll explain later. I’m making GREAT money, getting AT LEAST 40 hours a week and I’m caught up in my primary bills (school loans not included.) I’m starting to get a good amount of money in the bank too. The whole third shift thing kinda sucks, but it isn’t bad. I don’t have to worry about traffic, and I can easily sleep in the day because most days no one is home. The only BIG downfalls are that it kills my already small social life, and that I’m usually asleep while everything is open during the day. So if I gotta go to the bank I either have to wait to go to sleep for a few hours or wake up early.

The job itself, again, isn’t bad. For those who have no clue what my dad or Cast-Fab does, they are an iron foundry. They do a bit more than just make things out of iron, though, as I saw today. Bust mostly during my shift, we melt iron and pour it into molds that were made the during the day. I have no clue what the things are used for, but from all I can tell is that most of them are machine parts. They are usually well over a ton or two, and I’ve seen one as big as 45,000 pounds! But my part in this is minimal. I actually work in a lab.

As the guys on the melt deck get the molten metal ready, they need to check the content of the iron, because it’s not 100% iron. It actually contains a good amount of carbon, silicon, and small portions of things like copper and magnesium. I’d imagine that some of these things help it cool properly or make it stronger or whatnot. I’m not too certain. Anyways, when they need to check the content of the metal, they give me a sample that includes a coin-like piece and a pin. I break those away from a base, then I smash up the pin, and sand one side of the coin until it is shiny and flat.

Then, I take the coin and put it in a spectrogram.. or spectrograph.. maybe it’s a spirograph… ehh.. we just call it the “spectro”.. anyway, this burns the shiny surface of the coin and (I assume) based on the emissions can determine the content of about 30-40 different metals.

Normally, I would put the pin in a machine that we call the “Leco” (called so because of the manufacturer of the machine.) and that melts the pieces of the pin that I weigh out. The emissions from the pin are tested, then based on the weight the Leco will calculate the carbon and sulfer content. However, the Leco was the devil and was broken every other day, so we are either getting rid of it or getting a new one. It’s being shipped out today. The Leco is more accurate in determining the sulfur and carbon than the spectro, which is why we used it in the first place, but now we have to rely on some other sources to know if the spectro is coming out correct.

Anyway, when I get the info, I pass it along to the guys on the deck and they take care of the rest. Then I get ready for my next sample. I have to take samples both before and after they pour the iron. Like I said, the job isn’t bad. The place is a bit dirty and I come home with my hands dried out and covered in crap, but for the money I can deal with it. The downfall here is that it is entirely male workers. Come to think of it, that REALLY sucks.

But yeah, as far as Myrtle Beach goes, I was pretty scared to ask my boss for the time off. I mean, when you are working a job for (as far as anyone knows) 10 weeks, asking for one week off probably isn’t too good. Factor in that you were hired because they started getting pretty busy, and that your dad is the plant manager and you don’t want to spoil his reputation in the slightest. There were 2 real reasons I asked against those “odds”. For one, I figured that giving me the job was as much of a favor for them as it was to me, as they needed the help enough for my dad to consider me and have a tough time keeping employees. Secondly, I haven’t been out of Ohio (save for a few family functions just inside Kentucky) in about two and a half years. Uggh. I needed this vacation, so I asked.

When I asked, much to my surprise, my boss said it probably wouldn’t be a problem. See, since it was only a ten week position, they knew they’d have to replace me soon anyway, and that same day my dad had already hired my replacement, which I wasn’t expecting to happen until the week I was gone. (which the reason of “me having to train my replacement” wasn’t as big of a reason that I wouldn’t have been able to go as the rest.) But he started last Tuesday, and I’ve managed to get him ready to the point where he could probably keep up on his own if he had to. Which is good, because now, short of him quitting, there is no reason I couldn’t have the time off. :) :)!!!

I’m so excited to go to Myrtle Beach. Mike and I have watched the tapes from last year’s trip (which if you recall, I didn’t get to go on because of another temp job [the great oaks co-op]) and have been getting antsy to go.

So yeah, up until this point I wrote the first part of this and then saved it. Cause I got really tired and didn’t want it to get lost in my tiredness. It’s now 12 days until Myrtle Beach.

I spent the night at Mike’s last night. No reason in particular. But it seemed like everything we talked about ended up coming back to something about Mrytle Beach. We’ve been talking over some of the specifics, mostly about when we leave because everything else will just be a whim of the moment sort of thing. As it stands we will be leaving sometime around 6:30 on Saturday the 20th. Mike said last year it took 10 and half hours to get there, and if that is the same this time, we should be there just in time for dinner.

SO yeah, other than Myrtle Beach and Work, there have only been a few things worth dragging out and talking about again.

Sarah got Married on the 27th of last month. Two weeks before the wedding, her brother Jared was supposed to be hospitalized for a month. So she asked me to take his place as a Groomsman. It was pretty sweet because all the girls said I looked so good in my tux, especially with my beard. The entire night was a good time, and it put a smile on my face to see Sarah happy… not only that but all the bridesmaids looked hot

But anyway… I suppose I’ll go ahead and post this before I wait another day to update the site.

I just got home from work. It’s Saturday morning, my hands and face are tinted black from the dust and dirt from work and I’m waiting for Joe to get out of the shower.

So Myrtle Beach was a blast. It was so relaxing, even though there were some things that sucked. Omega was obviously one highlight of the trip. I miss Omega. I have a small selection of pics, but I’m too lazy to get the link. Maybe later.

At work, things have gotten a bit cooler. Since my replacement can handle the lab by himself, I’ve been working out on the deck, doing some work that is actually challenging. I won’t bore you with the details (yet) but basically it’s melting the metal, adding alloys, cleaning the metal up, getting the samples, taking temps and then starting over. It’s really wearing me out. I can feel myself getting stronger from the lifting and crap I gotta do. That’s a good feeling.

Anyways, I’m done with Cast-fab in a week. I wouldn’t mind hanging around and helping out where I can, but I got an amazing 21 credit hours for school next term, and I just wanna find a job somewhere that I can work like, a night or two a week and on the weekend, just to have gas money and money for my car payment. I have a healthy amount set back from working at Cast-Fab, but books and tuition are likely to destroy that.

So why the hell did I schedule 21 credit hours? Well, I was anticipating classes being cancelled, but they weren’t… but the good thing is that a review of my status at school shows that if I finish all of these classes, I’ll have only 4 more left, then two co-ops. I don’t remember if those 4 includes the final project. So if I bust my ass, there is a chance I could graduate by the end of the term. MAYBE, I could get a co-op for the summer term and take two classes at night (uggh) then do the same thing next term and be in a very good spot. I’ll worry about that in a little while though. Gotta focus on the right now until I get back in the groove of school.

So yeah, since I don’t plan on working too much I’ll have all (or most of) my nights open, so if you want to do something, lemme know.

Anyway, Joe is out of the shower and there is no sense in me sitting around being stinky, so I better go.

Saturday night I was playing baskeball with my cousins at my Grandpa’s 75th birthday party. I fell over, but my foot stayed in place until I hit the ground. It felt fine at first, and I went to work afterwords. Around 1 or so it really started hurting. I finished out the night because I knew it wouldn’t go any later than 3 (which because of the time change was actually 4, but there wasn’t a change in the hours worked so whatever.)
I could barely drive home. It was killing me. I got home, hobbled upstairs, took the most half-assed shower ever. Then I popped some asprin, went to bed. I woke up and it still hurt like hell.

So I spent the day in bed watching movies with ice on it. Then I did the same thing yesterday. It was feeling a bit better, but I had to call off work because I know it would have felt like hell if I stayed on it all night. So when I called off, my dad insisted that if I was going to call off work for it, I was going to the doctor for it.

Basically, I agreed to go just to make sure it was nothing worse than a simple sprain. They took an X-Ray and noted some bruised bones, but nothing was broken. The doctor told me to use heat, as opposed to ice, and to soak in warm water with epsom salt. I don’t have a clue what that does, but it must be doing something because today I am actually able to stretch my ankle. It hurts when I go too far, but as opposed to yesterday, it WILL move.

Well, I’ve had all of my classes at least once and things seem like they’re gonna be all good. I’ve spent $200 on books so far, $50 for a parking pass, and I still have about $150 to spend on more books

So I was hoping I could get by this term without working, but it looks like there is no chance of that. My dad will probably pick up my last check from Cast-Fab tomorrow, which will promptly be spent on bills. :stress:

Any remainder will go towards the rest of the books I need, which sucks some big ones.

The scholarship I got from the AFS turned out to be $600, written directly to me. I think I’m going to try and invest that somehow… not necessarily stocks, but I think since most student loans don’t accumulate interest until you are out of school, it would be worth my time to see if I can pull off another $50 out of that. Rather than spending it right away on tuition.

As far as my classes go, they seem like they will be pretty easy. I have Adobe After Effects with Jason, so that class shouldn’t be hard.

I have Director with Dave and although I don’t really have a problem with his classes his projects always end up being very limiting and a pain.. but learning the program itself doesn’t seem like it will be too hard. I was supposed to have Director today for the second time, but David was sick, so I won’t have it again until next Monday, which kind of sucks because that means we’ll have a lot more work to do next week.

I had my first Accounting class yesterday and the Instructor was an hour late. Apparently she got the times of her classes mixed up… To be honest, sitting there staring at the walls waiting for her was more exciting than that class. That class is like going to the bank and reading all the literature that have sitting around. It sucks. It should be easy, but the lady seems like she’s trying to worry us about the comprehensive final. You can’t pass the class if you don’t pass this. Who knows though.

My Public Speaking class and my Technical Writing class are easy as pie. PS is like high school speech all over again, but without a rotting old skeleton woman for a teacher. Technical Writing is basically how to write memos and emails. Whoopdie do. Breeze classes.

My American History class seems simple enough. All stuff I’ve heard in high school. So far, in two days we’ve covered prehistoric times until the Europeans came to America. Moving right along. The very major downfall to the class is the instructor. I’m not trying to knock him, but he’s pretty much straight out of Africa. Not saying that in a racist way, but he has a thick African accent, is very stern, and very uptight about things. The guy is huge, too. He scares me, so I just take notes and hope everything goes okay. He seems like a great teacher, but he hasn’t given us a syllabus, hasn’t told us anything about testing, brings only hand-written notes to class to teach from and will apparently only do things his way. Very strict, but I don’t think I’ll have a problem in there.

I haven’t seen kitty at all this term That kinda sucks. Seeing more of her would defiately be a good thing.

I have to do my taxes tonight. Yeah, I’m lazy. No surprise there. Then I have some homework. I’m thinking about renting a movie, too. I should probably get this stuff done, so I’m outta here.

So after my first complete week of the new term, I went home Friday excited to go to OU later on. Mike had asked me to go Tuesday and somewhere between then and Friday Doug and Kristin decided to go, too. Carrie, one of the girls we met up with in Myrtle Beach, had her 21st birthday this past week, so of course no college student’s 21st birthday would be complete without a party.

We got to OU about 6.. or so… and met up with Brownie and his roomate Ben (who I knew from high school, but had never really talked to) and we wondered around OU and downtown Athens for a bit before going to the Carrie’s apartment. The entire campus and surrounding town is goregeous. I’ve never seen anything as lively and exciting as it. It really makes me wish I had gone to a place like that, but I suppose I’m content with my awesome 2-building college. :-\

So anyway, Carrie’s party was pretty fun. I didn’t drink much because I had so much to eat beforehand. The police showed up and told us to quiet down, but no big deal, really. Mike said that he was taking a whiz in the laundry room down the hall no more than 10 seconds before the police stepped off the elevator. Shortly after this, we left and went downtown again to a place called Goodfella’s pizza. Downtown Athens at night looks like the crowd at a concert. The sidewalks are filled with students loaded with alcohol, police stationed looking over, and lord knows what else.

Afterwards we decided to call it a night. Mike stayed in Brownie’s room (which probably couldn’t fit more than a few people) and the rest of us stayed with Betsy. I laid in bed from about 2:30 until 5 or so, not able to sleep. I woke up at least every 20 minutes until I noticed Betsy wake up at 10 or so. Then I figured it was time to get out of bed.

After we got ready, we met back up with Brownie and Mike, caught a fair breakfast at some quasai-ghetto cafe place and soon thereafter went to play some frisbee. After playing frisbee for a while, we went and grabbed ice cream. By the time we were done there, it was somewhere in the area of 3 o’clock, Doug was supposed to be to work at 5, so we figured we better get going.

We got back some time around 6 and me and Mike just hung around his place for a bit. We made plans to go to see Kill Bill vol. 2 with Joe, but beforehand we stopped by Best Buy to poke around for abit. I managed to show some restraint and only bought an album by the Balck Eyed Peas. So yeah, movie, home, then bed. I don’t think I could have stayed awake to save my life.

Today has pretty much just been boring… but in a good way. I gave Casey a haircut, took a nap, went to dinner, and now I’m on my computer. Weee!

So yeah, all in all, my weekend was relaxing. Which is good, because I imagine things are gonna start to pick up at school this week. I guess I should probably do a bit of homework tonight, but I think I’m enjoying being lazy for now. Oh well. See ya.

I can’t believe tomorrow is Friday already. Not only is it cool because it’s Friday, it’s cool because Friday is my short day at school. only 3 classes, 3 hours.

Tonight and Last night was learning some new things about XML and W3C standards, and revising the code of my site to comply with it. Why? Dunno, really. I think it’s just time I learn something new about web languages. So if parts of my site look a little funny for a few days, it’s because I was messing with the code and haven’t figured out the compliant way to re-write it. This news script has the most problems with it, so I figure I’ll either say screw it and fix everything but it, or see if I can easily fix things by editing the code for it. The only problem is that news already created won’t be edited, so I guess I’ll have to make a few lame daily updates to bump the old news into the archive.

Anyhow, it looks like my weekend is going to be pretty busy. I have a project to finish in After Effects. So far the material for it is looking pretty ace, but putting it all together is going to be tedious and time consuming. I’m going to try and get that started tonight so that when I’m slacking off tomorrow I can worry about it, Saturday I’ll open it and forget about it, then Sunday I’ll actually do it, long before my deadline Tuesday morning.

I have to draw up sketches for my first Director project. (It’s kind of our second, because the first is just doing activities from the book.) I’d go through explaining it in detail, but you don’t care, so I’ll just same we gotta do a cheezy promo site as if highlander is going to be aired on some phoney tv station. The requirement are minimal, but incredibly limiting. I think I have a bit of an upper hand because I watched one class present this project a couple terms ago.

That’s all for now I guess. See ya.