Category Archives: Rants

Whether they be regarding Immigration services, or the suggestion that apples aren’t juicy enough anymore, if it’s a rant, it’ll be in here.

Seriously?!

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So, I was surfing around this morning, looking at free/cheap stuff (as I do..), and noticed two things that reminded me once again how stupid the human race as a whole is.

Now, I caught up with the whole Kanye thing yesterday, and to be honest I think it was rude and uncalled for. Unless of course, it was a publicity stunt, in which case it wasn’t a very good one. I heard rumors last night that he’d offed himself, which again is another stupid facet of the human race. More on that later. Maybe.

Yesterday I also read that Kanye had written all kinds of apologies to people, and this is where I get confused and frustrated (and to a degree, hypocritical). When someone does something wrong, and they apologize for it, and have been punished by the appropriate authorities, I believe that should be the end of it. This is where I have a problem with capital punishment too, because if anyone believes the United States is a Christian country (which I don’t believe it is or should be, by law at least), then by Christian nature we have an obligation to show forgiveness to those who have sinned against God and against us. That is, if I kill your daughter, and I’ve served my required prison sentence under law, and I’ve shown regret, apologized and asked forgiveness of both you and of God, then our religious obligation is to forgive and forget. Anyway, getting off-topic.

IF Kanye had messed up, realized, regretted, apologized, and we’d all said “OK, don’t do it again..”, all would be swell. But that’s not what’s happening. In my search for cool cheap stuff this morning I came across two “one-day-only” deals for T-shirts. Let me show images, because I doubt the links will work too long into the future..

kanye1kanye2These two shirts are the epitome of my dislike for todays societal culture. Sure, one of the side-effects of being famous is that everyone sees everything you do, and they all get in line to either crucify or congratulate you. And commending is fine, everyone needs some love, crucifying also has it’s place – noone likes the stuck-up people who are never wrong. But I mean, really guys. Are T-shirts professing your ‘hatred’ for someone you’ve probably never met necessary?

Just for reference:

From Dictionary:

v., hat·ed, hat·ing, hates. v.tr.

    1. To feel hostility or animosity toward.
    2. To detest.
  2. To feel dislike or distaste for: hates washing dishes.

v.intr.

To feel hatred.

n.

  1. Intense animosity or dislike; hatred.
  2. An object of detestation or hatred: My pet hate is tardiness.

[Middle English haten, from Old English hatian. N., Middle English, from Old English hete.]

And from Thesaurus:

verb

    To regard with extreme dislike and hostility: abhor, abominate, despise, detest, execrate, loathe. Seelove/hatred.

noun

  1. Extreme hostility and dislike: abhorrence, abomination, antipathy, aversion, detestation, hatred, horror, loathing, repellence, repellency, repugnance, repugnancy, repulsion, revulsion. See love/hatred.
  • An object of extreme dislike: abhorrence, abomination, anathema, aversion, bête noire, bugbear, detestation, execration. Informal horror. See love/hatred.

    • Now, many people might say “THAT’S HOW I FEEL!” and this last point is aimed at you (although I doubt you’ll get it..):

    “Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.” — C. S. Lewis

    Today is Boring.

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    Really. It is. You probably don’t even want to read this, because it is only going to be boring.

    I received an email from my potential employer pretty much saying I have a job. I am going in on Wednesday to do paperwork and generally hang out. I *do* need to get documentation from my former “employers” regarding number of hours working with children. If I can’t prove 1000 hours then I’ll be an aide rather than a leader, and the pay rate drops accordingly. But hey, a job is a job.

    I also have 2 Saturdays coming up working high and low ropes at Camp Horizons for two larger groups. That’s an extra $70/day too.

    The only other “excitement” today involved getting lunch at Subway. I won a free 21oz. FUZE Tea, and a scrabble letter. Other than that I’ve been sitting here watching nothing happen on TV and watching facebook. I guess I could do some programming stuff, there is an outstanding bug in my ticketing system that is to be fixed, and I have an idea for fixing my service detection system reading false positives. I should also work on expanding the system and stuff. Maybe a website? Could be a good moneymaker. Who knows.

    See? Boring. If you made it this far, congratulations. Have a nice day.

    Get-Out-Of-Debt Quick Plan

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    My apologies to all who find this to be boring crap, obvious crap, useless crap, or otherwise crap.

    For the last 12+ months my wife and I have been in rather large debt, primarily owing to her student loans, but also loans to pay for immigration forms and some credit-card stuff, and now our new car is on that list too.

    It got so bad we moved back in with her parents, where we’ve been since November last year.

    But, things are looking up again. She now has a full time job, I have the promise of casual work and possibly a permanent part-time job at an after-school program (will hear from them tomorrow, hopefully). We have a budget surplus of around $300/mo after all the income and most of our outgoings are paid for. If I get the part-time job then our outgoings increase slightly (gas, mostly), but our surplus will increase to around $800/mo. Now, we need to save something, in case of emergencies etc, and $800/mo isn’t really enough to comfortably move out again. My plan for us to change our circumstances doesn’t come from moving out and then paying off debt, it comes from paying off debt and then moving out.

    See, right now we have two credit cards, one of which is more than twice it’s limit, the other we are trying very hard to keep below the limit, and as close to $0 as possible (so far we are succeeding). We also have a couple of loans that are either small or rather annoying which we can get rid of fairly quickly. My solution is to take about $400 of our surplus per month and put it towards a single loan.

    For example, the over-limit credit card charges us about $50/mo. If we add $400 to that, we can pay $450/mo until it is paid off. That will take roughly 3 months. Then we can take that $450 and put it towards something else, like one of our smaller loans that is $65/mo, so we’ll be paying $450 + $65 = $515/mo until that is paid off. A third smaller loan is about $75-80/mo, so we can take the $515 from our two previously paid off loans, and add it to the $80/mo, and be paying $595 on an $80 loan payment – how fast do you think that loan will go away? I think fairly quickly. And all it costs us extra per month is the $400 we put in to begin with. Once those three payments are knocked out, we could take our $400 back out again, and we’ve just found an extra $195 a month, bringing our budget surplus up to nearly $1000 – we’re getting closer to being self-sufficient now. The other two loans we have are $138 and $159, and I haven’t done the calculations based on how quickly these would have an effect on our current loan balances, but I envisage we could be fairly debt free (one loan has a huge balance) within 24 months.

    Buying a New Car

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    Just when I was getting to thinking that buying a new car would be easy, I was hit with a sharp burst of reality.

    I went around 4 used car dealers on Monday, and got good prices on several vehicles that would meet our needs. Today, I went to the bank and got information on our loan options. Next, I need to talk to Kelly and confirm the vehicle selection and have her speak to the bank officer handling our loan with regards to income confirmation. This is where it goes pear-shaped, because the next steps are all specific in what needs to be done when. I need to see the dealer and actually make the purchase, I need the bank to write a money order for the loan, I need to see the DMV with regards to title and registration, and I need to see the insurance company about taking out a policy for the vehicle.

    The good news is that we will easily be able to afford the vehicle we want/need. The bad news is that we may need to stretch a little for the up front costs, as well as questions looming over the new tires that the vehicle needs. We also need to deal with proof of income as today was Kelly’s first day of full-time work at her new job.

    Hopefully this all works out and we’ll have a new car this week..

    A Series of Unfortunate Events

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    I’m told bad things always come in threes. Well, yesterday the third one finally showed up. (Locations censored until the right things go to the right places).

    I’ve been sick since Friday night when I finished my last paid day at Highland for the summer, and am still recovering with headaches and congestion – we’re getting there. The second thing was that Kelly is supposed to start her new job at the day-care on Monday and has been called up for jury duty Monday-Wednesday. The employer is fine with it, but it’s annoying.

    The third one is big though. We drove from Broadway into Harrisonburg yesterday, about 15 miles all up, to get some paint and (Kelly was hoping) some wallpaper for a dresser we bought really cheap at Goodwill a couple weeks ago. The car has been doing some strange things when started cold recently. It’ll violently shake until it gets up to temperature (and then it’s fine). It did that when we left Broadway, was fine by the end of the street. Was fine all the way to [Censored], where we got paint. Couldn’t find wallpaper, so we went over to [Censored]. They don’t carry wallpaper either, it’s all special-order now. So we leave and get in the car, turn the key and.. vroom-vroom/click-click/vroomclickvroomclickvroomclickvroomclick. I shut it down, thinking there’s something stuck in a fan blade or something (that’s what it sounded a lot like). Lift the hood, find nothing obviously out-of-place, get Kelly to start it again, and the whole engine is vibrating, and it seems to be in sync with the vibration as if it is the engine that is knocking something, although I couldn’t see what. Shutting down again, I checked oil and transmission fluids as last resorts, and both are fine.

    We resort to calling Randy, Kelly’s dad to see what he thinks. He and Kelly’s mom come in to Harrisonburg in the van and he takes one look (and listen) at what it does and says he thinks it’s misfiring (at least) one of the cylinders and that we will have to leave it overnight and get Sonny (his mechanic of choice) to tow it in the morning. So we removed everything of value, and leaving a single key hidden inside and the drivers door unlocked, we let [Censored] staff know that it was there to be picked up in the morning, and rode home in the van.

    Kelly called Sonny this morning, and he was intending on picking it up and looking at it, and would contact us and let us know what we were looking at in terms of damage and cost. We’d decided earlier in the summer that a second car was needed sooner or later, both because of break-downs as well as our needing to go two separate directions in motorized vehicles (and Randy’s truck isn’t always going to be available).

    We basically came to the conclusion that if it’s minor engine, we’ll consider it. If it’s major engine, we’ll probably get another car and get it worked on over time, if it’s transmission, we’ll get another car and consider options. Kelly has a real attachment to Juanita, as it was her first big purchase on her own, and for that reason I’d like to keep it going as long as we can. We’ll just have to cross-match the desire to keep Juanita vs. the economics of maintenance.

    ===================================

    Update:

    I had a call from Kelly around lunchtime. She’d heard from the mechanic. Juanita is toast. This is makes decisions easier.. We’re looking for a new car. Anyone who is aware of a good-working Sedan, Station-wagon or SUV for sale in the Broadway/Harrisonburg area (or up to a reasonable distance away) for up to $5,000, please let me know.

    Toleration

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    This will be short, I’m on a computer where the s key, and the d key are both not working at all (cut and paste ftw..).

    I’m at the beach this week, and so far I’m having a great time. I’m with cool people and doing cool things, but I have this overwhelming feeling that I’m tolerated a lot more than I’m liked.

    It’s not a fun feeling at all. I have it far too much. With friends, with family, it’s like I’m in the third tier of friends people will hang out with. That is to say, if their tier 1 friends are there, they get all or most of the attention. Otherwise, it falls to the tier 2 friend, and failing that, well, there are those guys we spend the rest of our time tolerating. Guess they’re good for something after all, right?

    I’m well aware that I’m somewhat paranoid, and that alot of the time this feeling is completely unwarranted. This time Kelly says she is feeling it too. Not cool.

    It’s still an awesome week, hopefully it stays that way!

    Dear Bebo Spammers…

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    I keep getting friend requests on Bebo that I could probably block with a simple Regex. Names that don’t have any similarity to the users username, and a username that invariably is a name, a capital letter, and several digits.

    It’s about all I get emails about from bebo anymore, and I see no real reason to log in except to decline all these requests.

    There are at least 2 a week, usually more. I get similar spam followings on Twitter too, but it’s not quite so bad.

    So maybe this should be addressed to Bebo, to clean up your site. And to the spammers, give it up. I’m not going to befriend your profiles, nor am I going to click any links therein.

    Disappointment

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    This is partly to test WordPress’s new Blog-by-email. We’ll see how it works.

    Yesterday I received a phone call from Rackspace, with a variation of that dreaded message. “We’ve decided to move forward with other candidates.”

    I felt kinda like some of the people on Millionaire must feel when they’ve been going for the million dollars, and got the answer wrong and going home with $25,000.

    Let me explain. What I had were two options, I could work at Rackspace for ~$45k/yr doing something I would really enjoy or I could work at a camp doing something I would also enjoy for the summer making ~$150/wk. I had 2 really great interviews at Rackspace, even they said the second one went really well, but apparently not good enough.

    I’m trying to keep positive, I’m still applying for 2-3 jobs including one at JMU, and working at camp will still pay all our bills (and let us catch up on the ones we’re having to skip this month) along with Kelly’s summer job. I’ll just have to start applying again as summer comes to a close.

    I’m particularly looking for IT work within VA, and I don’t mind commuting up to 2 hours each way in order to take a job worth anywhere from $30k up (So from the DC Metro area down to Blacksburgish, and out to Richmond. I’m in the Harrisonburg/Rockingham County area right now). I intend to relocate if the job is at the outer reaches of that range along with my wife and puppy. I have reliable transport, and while I have no formal computing qualifications I have professional and personal experience with PHP/MySQL, computer hardware testing, computer software installation and general computer troubleshooting and problem solving. I’ve worked on a service desk (Level 1 and 2) for a 5000 user organization supporting Novell Netware and Active Directory (on the same network) as well as Alcatel based PBX systems. I’ve also been administrating Linux servers for several years. I’m happy to take an entry-level position (Helpdesk, Desktop support, etc), though I’d like a company with good promotion paths that will allow me to progress beyond, as I’d like to move into server administration, and possibly network administration also.

    So while I continue to look for work, if you or someone/an organization you know is looking for an IT worker, let me know about them, or let them know about me!

    3 Out Of 50 Ain’t…All That Great, Actually.

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    Over the last 2 months or so I’ve been scouring ads online and in papers for jobs. I’m looking for something entry-level IT so that I can gain real and valuable experience. Mostly this means Level 1 Service/Help Desk positions. 2 huge negatives against me are a lack of college education (I might explain that in a later post) and lack of US Citizenship.

    This means I’ve been able to apply for about 50 jobs, from DC to Richmond to Blacksburg in Virginia. [It just got more complicated, I’ll explain that in a paragraph or two]. Of the 50 jobs I sent applications to I received exactly 3 responses. I don’t know about anyone else, but I was kinda hoping I’d have had a few more rejection notices rather than just being ignored.

    The first application I got a response from was James Madison University. They’d advertised a User Support position, and I applied within 30 minutes of seeing the ad in the paper. A few days later I received an automated email saying the position had been filled.

    The second application I got a response from was Highland Retreat, a Christian Camp about 15-20 minutes drive away in Bergton, VA. I just got a call from the director there, who reminded me how complicated my future employment status is just with a phone call to update me on how well things are going with that application.

    The third application I got a response from was RackSpace, an IT company with several ventures including MailTrust (Mail services) and SliceHost (a VPS company). I applied for a Datacenter Operations Technician position which would involve building servers, installing OS’s and diagnosing hardware and OS faults on servers in the datacenter. I have a phone interview with them tomorrow at 4pm, and I’m kinda nervous.

    My biggest worry right now is that I’ll jeoperdize one position and the other will fall through, primarily the camp one. The camp job is looking very certain, they’re waiting contact from the camps in NZ that I worked with so they have a NZ camp reference. The RackSpace job is a much better option in the long term though, but isn’t guaranteed. The fact that they had 5 positions listed on their careers site makes my chances of getting one of them that much bigger, but I don’t want to commit or decline Highland’s offer until RackSpace offers or rejects me, because $160/wk is better than nothing at all.

    So that is my complication – I want both jobs for different reasons, but the one I want more may not want me, and is moving slower so I may have to turn RackSpace down prematurely. I REALLY hope I don’t have to, a rejection I can handle, I’d much prefer that to having to say “well, you took too long and I’ve decided to work in a camp over the summer…” It’d be one of the most illogical things I’ve said in a long time..

    That’s my dillemma, suggestions from people who have been in a similar situation would be helpful!

    Ouch.

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    Yesterday was a long day.

    It involved a 1.5 hour interview for a summer job and around 8 hours of birthday party, both back to back (seperated only by the half hour drive from the camp back to the house).

    Kelly was particularly stressed as she’d expected at least a one hour gap between our return at around 4:30 and when people started arriving, and the first people arrived at about 4:35.

    The fire was fueled further by the fact that among the first people were two rather unusual characters who didn’t fit in with our group very well but managed to set the tone and mood for most of the evening. Several people had their parts to play in them being allowed to ‘crash’ the party, me included, but I don’t think any one person can (or should) take the full responsibility for it.

    Those two aside it was an awesome time with everyone together and hanging out. Crash and Bella had a great time playing, Crash ate a whole lot of hot dogs and demonstrated that he really can lay down on command … if you have food.

    The mood of the party finally changed at around 9 when the weird people were taken home (at their request, I believe), and we were all able to relax again. Ethan helped me out getting the fire started, which was still going strong at midnight, and about 2am when I went to check on it before sleeping it was still rather emberous. I doused it with several large cups of water, and it looked like it was almost completely out, but when I took Crash out to pee this morning (wow, I didn’t remember that part..) there was a lot more ash than wood left and it had done what I wanted it to do – burnt itself out.

    So now it is 12:00pm. I’m laying in bed with a massive headache, if it’s from lack of sleep catching up or too much sleep while trying to catch up, I don’t know. Crash has been amazing despite being in his crate since about 8 or 9 when I refilled both sides of his food bowl (it’s one of those double-bowled bowl things) with water. I really need to get up and let him out, we’ll probably play outside for a bit but that will last entirely based on how I feel. So far the prospects aren’t looking too good.