So, we're back. Earlier than I had expected, too - we had made preparations to be away until Saturday or Sunday sometime. I also made only one PhonePost to LJ while I was out. I tried actually reading my friends' entries from my phone, too, but this didn't work too well - I had to constantly scroll left and right since the page didn't fit on that little TFT screen. I probably should have borrowed my bro's PDA phone for that...
We ended up spending the entire time up there at my grandparents'. Their little place in what I believe to be a retirement community consists of one main room, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. You can imagine how boring a place like that can get. ^^; Once again, my mom refused to let me drive up on my own, so I couldn't go visit a few places I wanted to go and see some friends I never get to see.
My cousins from Massachusetts drove down. That's a longer trip, she drove down the entire way, and she's like four years younger and hasn't been driving nearly as long as I have. It's safe to assume my cousin that lived a half hour away from my grandparents' also drove over.
Yeah. That was quite annoying. I bet I won't be allowed to drive up next year, either.
Eventually, the other cousins came over, and we all ended up sitting down and playing a game of Risk. Somehow, we always end up playing when we're all together. This was my second or third time, and once again I lost horribly. I never liked war, anyways. =P
One of my cousins had to work on Black Friday (I had narrowly evaded fate this year - but she actually wanted the hours), so that set of family went back home shortly after dinner. We stayed overnight, and left for home this afternoon. On the way, we stopped at the Prime Outlets at Perryville, and I finally got a new pair of running shoes. Didn't have time to run around and look for a jacket like the one we got there years ago, but got stolen while on campus. I really liked that jacket, too. x_x
Got home, and, naturally, we still have no water. One of our neighbors came over, and it looks like either the well dried up (which is very unlikely considering we've had a ton of rain lately) or something's wrong with the well pump. Someone's coming over tomorrow to investigate the pump.
Well, that's about it... since I have the rest of the weekend off, I'll likely actually finish off this batch of work so I can get the invoice in quickly - as I'm going to need a lot of money in a very short period of time. Argh.
And thus, my trek starts. We're heading up to New Jersey for an undetermined section of the weekend. I might or might not PhonePost over at LJ, since I could with that paid account I so spontaneously got.
We also inexplicably have no water in the house. Good thing we didn't have the relatives over here this year - no water and relatives over would have meant incredible disaster. I found this out a few hours ago, tried in vain to find a fix, then gave up and started packing.
And no, I haven't slept yet. --;;
And yeah, I copied this entry over to LJ, just because.
So, a little over an hour ago, I ended up forking over $25 to LiveJournal, and getting a year's worth of paid service. The first thing I did was to make a silly little PhonePost which made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Now, I'm trying out syndicated feeds, kind of like Phrekwenci did. Of course, I borked it already. But here's a test entry, with an extended segment because I need to test to see if that works.
Update: And nope, didn't get it working the way I quite wanted it to. I'm not even sure if LJ would process LJ-cut tags from within a syndicated stream, even if I managed to encode it properly (which I probably can't since extended text is a separate tag). At least I managed to get something that tells you whether extended text exists or not, and a comment counter.
If you're wondering, the LJ syndicated stream is located here. I wouldn't add it to your friends' page yet, since it just grabbed the most recent 25 entries or something and thus will fill it... so wait a few days for the digest to go away. ^^; I will eventually like to have people add it, if not to reduce the syndication cost. Though, the cost really isn't a problem for most paid users...
Read more...So yeah, I got DDR UltraMix in on Wednesday, tried Live! on Thursday for a little bit, spent significantly more time on it after work on Friday after having picked up the ver.2 Live Starter Kit (with the communicator), played some on Saturday too, etc. It's pretty fun playing online, once you get used to the game's wonky timing windows.
Also finally got to get the car to the mechanic today. Aside from the long overdue oil change that we're too lazy to do ourselves, other issues included a brake light failure due to the bulb compartment getting flooded, a front position light failure of unknown cause, and the car's alignment not being right and causing it to drift to the left constantly. Yet another problem was found as well - the brakes were once again worn down to almost nothing, and need immediate replacement. Looks like all but the alignment issue can be fixed by 1pm tomorrow, but our mechanic has to take the car elsewhere to get the alignment fixed, and that will take an entire day. So, it'll probably wait until just before we leave for New Jersey, when I'm not going to be driving the entire day.
I want more Infinite Ryvius. x_x
Wascy is coming back tomorrow. He has a lot to catch up on, too. That's going to suck for him.
I'm debating on whether to work on more Gravion (I'm finished with 3 of the 5 scripts I have available to me right now) or play more UltraMix. I might just do both. I can't do either constantly without a break, after all.
So, yeah, I'm already pretty far into new project, despite the show being horrible - but at least it has JAM Project music, so I haven't gone completely insane.
Jasconius isn't around for quite a while, meaning people aren't going to stop asking me about Bottle Fairy until he gets back. It already started... on Saturday morning, even. I suppose if I get -really- desperate I can call Anthony and ask to see if he got a better Internet connection from where he is...
Looks like my last day of work is most likely the day before Thanksgiving. So, I don't have to work on Black Friday. Now, we also have to go to visit Mom's side relatives in New Jersey that weekend, so I would have insisted on the time off even if I wasn't quitting. I actually had to miss several family outings due to this job that pays like a dollar less than minimum wage in most states. I'm going to miss the stable income, but I'll manage, especially since I did finally get new project. (Which is why I'm trying to blast through it.)
Yep, I'm too busy, and I -really- don't want to be a full-time student next semester. Argh. I don't think I can do the whole student thing at this point.
And yes, I still have a ton of gallery updates to do, which remain undone, and in fact I've almost filled up all three of my CompactFlash cards from not having the time to dump all the photos to the PC.
You also probably noticed that this is the exact same entry on LiveJournal, except I'm not putting the results of the quiz that I actually had to launch IE and place the site in Trusted Sites in order to run properly. It's really dumb too, since it's completely randomized, and you could get 2 seconds or 2 minutes by holding down one arrow.
Running off to VT now, somewhat like planned. As usual, leaving just a tad late, though this is after delaying the entire trip until the morning by having to work to close last night. ^^;;
As for that last image? Well... it probably means I won't be going broke next month after all, but it probably also means I'll be losing a bit more hair next week. x_x
Let's see how well I can drive on 3 hours of sleep... at least I only have to drive to Kevin's and not all the way to VT...
Well, not a whole lot has happened, so not really much to post about.
So, yeah, there are more pointless search queries in the log. Yes, it captures the requesting IP, so I know exactly who did what. I can probably implement bans for some of the not-so-respectful IPs too.
So, on Saturday, I ended up sleeping in much later than expected, and after going out to get gas for the lawnmower, it was already getting dark. I never do get used to the time change easily - I had expected at least another 2 hours of daylight. Can't mow the lawn after sundown, so ended up just leaving then to pick up Josh and run to Anthony's house. This time I finally remembered to bring his Hysteric Blue single back to him =P
When we got there (Sheetz food in hand), Anthony was playing the newest incarnation of Tony Hawk in 720p glory. Goddamn. Our HDTV isn't exactly old, but I want a new one now. Aside from the jaw-dropping visual quality, the game itself seemed... hard as shit. Definitely the biggest reminder of why I don't play skateboarding games.
After that, we ended up playing SC2 on his X-Box (also at 720p), SSX3 on his PS2 for a bit (the 480/525p mode on that doesn't look nearly as good), watched an ep of Twelve Kingdoms, watched some of the HD WMV9 demos from his PC via the DVI input (it was like watching something in a small IMAX theatre), and then watched Anthony play Max Payne 2 (holy shit that looked damn good). Not necessarily in that order.
Ended up sleeping around 5am (though Josh didn't seem to get much sleep at all, despite getting the bed). Next day was cut somewhat short as I needed to get home fast to actually mow the lawn. Damn lawn. =P
After mowing the lawn, ended up running to Best Buy with Josh (while rushing there to get in before they closed at 6, only to realize that in November their hours extend to 7 instead) and picked up Haibane vol.2, before finally dropping him off back home. I got home, showered, took a nap, and watched Haibane after everyone else went to sleep.
Yep, that was about as interesting as it got the last few weeks. I've been working a lot, and it looks like I'll probably be working every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday for a while. I'll be mad if I have to work Thanksgiving, though. I'm still thinking about Frank's offer for an opening position - the money would be appreciated, but I would probably have serious problems waking up in time for an opening shift. x_x
I tried to change around the template a little to fix a problem with IE not letting you scroll down past the length of the sidebar. That broke the site pretty well, so I ended up not doing anything. This site may be a hack of the template MT came with, but if anything's breaking it, it's probably IE's broken implementation of CSS. Needless to say, I haven't used IE in quite some time, so I had forgotten about the problem, as it doesn't occur at all with Firebird or other Mozillla-based browsers I've used.