Na-na na-na-na na na na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye!

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While I have no offi­cial ties to my for­mer employer, a lit­tle birdie told me a cou­ple of inter­est­ing facts:

  • they’re offi­cially clos­ing the Iowa office on 9/29.
  • they sold the com­pany (or at least part of it) again.

The CLB was quoted as say­ing: This is an excit­ing day. I am thrilled for all of us… After run­ning his state­ment through the real­i­tizer bull­shit remover, we found his real mean­ing was : This is an excit­ing day. I am thrilled for all fat loot I just made by screw­ing all of you over (again).

Good luck to all you still stuck work­ing for that place!

People need to learn to drive!

Posted by | Filed under Life, Rants

I don’t know if it’s because I was extra-tired & cranky this morn­ing but it seemed like every­body for­got the basic safety rules of the road today. Let’s start with the bicy­clist who cut me off. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for shar­ing the road and I know cycling myself, but I also know it’s sui­ci­dal to cut off a car with my bike. But that’s exactly what this lady did. With­out even look­ing she rode right out into the street, cut right in front of me (forc­ing me to slam on the breaks to avoid run­ning her over. Then instead of get­ting over to the side road like a cyclist should; she just kept going right in front of me just slowly enough so we both got to the stop light as it turned red.

After get­ting past Ms. Bik­ing­With­ADeath­Wish, I headed down towards to the inter­state and into heav­ier & heav­ier rain. I got about halfway down the high­way when I got stuck behind some giant, red Ford pickup. I don’t know what was going through this driver’s mind but I do know it had noth­ing to do with his dri­ving this morn­ing. Slow to stop at reds, slower to start at greens and an almost total lack of accel­er­a­tion on the ramp lead­ing up to the inter­state. Then after finally get­ting on the inter­state, I was able to get past Mr. ImDrunk­At­Sev­e­nAm and on with motor­ing up the inter­state to get to work.

Most of the way up wasn’t too bad, though the rain did get pretty unpleas­ant at one point. On the other hand the rain was also nice & sooth­ing; unfor­tu­nately, I was tired and did not need any sooth­ing this morn­ing. *sigh* Any­way, I finally made it into town and was work­ing my way past down­town through three-lane traf­fic with the rain pound­ing down. And what do I see before me as the traf­fic hits the 55 MPH zone? Why wouldn’t you know it, it’s another giant, red Ford pickup! This one had a few more of the extras installed and was an even worse dri­ver. I first noticed him tail­gat­ing a vehi­cle in the lane to my right, but then I got my own taste of his brand of “dri­ving”. When I was only about 2 maybe 3 feet back from this idiot; he sud­denly decides to cut over into my lane (with­out sig­nally) and go on to cut over to the far lane where he could pound down the gas pedal as he headed into the slower sec­tion of the interstate.

That pretty much cov­ers the worst offend­ers on this morning’s com­mute. Now I just have to look for­ward to the insan­ity of dri­ving home tonight. Wheeeee!

Update: Actu­ally, it turns out I got to wit­ness some extra fun insan­ity dri­ving over lunch. I real­ized at lunch time 3 things:

  1. I was totally out of the trail mix emer­gency rations I keep at my desk.
  2. I’d packed a small lunch today.
  3. I was really hungry.

So I made a quick trip down over to a nearby Tar­get to pick up one of their con­tain­ers of trail mix1. Then I drove back to the office but I didn’t even make it out of the park­ing lot before I had encoun­tered both idiots.

Idiot #1 decided to start walk­ing in front of me on wet pave­ment after I’d started mov­ing for­ward from the stop sign. If I’d been dri­ving our old car, that pedes­trian would have been road pizza.

I had just about made it out of the park­ing lot when idiot #2 showed up. Oddly enough, it was another red pickup truck; though I’m not sure if it was a ford. In any case, I was head­ing for the back/side road access as it leads to a stop­light mak­ing it much eas­ier to get back to my office. That’s when this idiot came tear­ing into the park­ing lot with­out slow­ing down at all and tried to turn to fol­low the curve of the “road” in the Tar­get lot lead­ing to the park­ing area. The main prob­lem with this “plan” of theirs is we’ve been get­ting rain all day today and the pave­ment was wet slick. The idiot lost con­trol of his pickup and went into a slide/skid/spin/whatever that missed hit­ting me by mere inches. He didn’t quite pull off a full 360° and he did pull away shortly so I fig­ured besides being ter­mi­nally stu­pid; he’d be ok.

But I really have to won­der, what the frak is up with peo­ple who drive red pick­ups? I mean that’s 3 of them in 1 day that all were dri­ving recklessly!

1 They’ve got sev­eral fla­vors sold under their house brand, “Archer Farms”. And every one I’ve tried is good stuff.

Feelin’ Giddy!

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Before I explain why I’m feel­ing giddy, I’d like to thank one of my read­ers by the name of Robin. Yes, you Robin. I didn’t reply to your email before now as it got acci­den­tally caught by my spam fil­ters. Sorry about that. When I read your offer to advise my wife & I; I was totally flab­ber­gasted that a total stranger would offer to do that for me. Unfor­tu­nately, I didn’t see your offer until after things have been set­tled upon. So thank you very much for the incred­i­bly gen­er­ous offer of your time and expertise!

Which brings me back to why I’m feel­ing so giddy today. Ariesna & I made an offer on the house we’ve been look­ing at and the offer was accepted! We take pos­ses­sion next month1 and begin our jour­ney as first-time home buy­ers. The house is a charm­ing, older home in a great neigh­bor­hood. Hard­wood floors, cen­tral air, a base­ment (pretty much required if you live in Iowa), ceil­ing fans in most of the rooms2 and the neigh­bor­hood is loaded with mature trees. We were at the house today tak­ing a final look through before putting in the offer. The a/c was off but with the win­dows open and all the trees in neigh­bor­hood; it was per­fectly com­fort­able. Com­pare that to the apart­ment we’ve been liv­ing in for 8 years with a win­dow a/c unit stuck into the wall of our liv­ing room and with all of our win­dows fac­ing to WEST. It’s going to be heaven once we’re moved into the house. As an added bonus to the house, my daily com­mute to work will drop down to about 15 min­utes. Sure that’s not as good the 5 minute com­mute I used to have with the old job, but it’s mas­sively bet­ter than the 30–45 minute com­mute I’ve got now. Did I men­tion how the neigh­bor­hood is loaded with trees? I just love that part. :D

1 Tech­ni­cally, we’re set­ting up an appoint­ment with a house inspec­tor for next week­end to check over the entire house for prob­lems. How­ever the house has been very well main­tained, so we do not expect him to find any prob­lems that would kill the deal.
2 1 in the liv­ing room, 1 in a sit­ting area on the top floor, 1 in the kitchen and 1 in each bed­room. Though the one in the mas­ter bed­room will have to go, as the ceil­ings are a lit­tle low in there and I can look directly at the blades of the fan with­out stand­ing on tippy-toes. Some­times being tall can really suck. :p

NBC’s Treasure Hunters: Additional Questions

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Between post­ing my solu­tion to chal­lenge #8 and finally get­ting a chance to sit down & read me email this evening, I got hit with 6 emails and a few com­ments about it. Rather than try­ing to reply to all of you indi­vid­u­ally, I’ll just post my answers here. Sorry this comes so late, but I’ve been swamped today.

Krys­tal wrote:

I am hav­ing a hard time with the lat­est Trea­sure Hunters Challenge…When I pick up the Gold Dabloon (sp?), all I get is either an extra pair of gog­gles or Laird’s wal­let. I took out the busi­ness card from the wal­let and typed in “Emer­gency Sup­port” in the Visa “depart­ment” line, it says I do not need emer­gency sup­port at this time. Can you help me??…I’ve been putting Library of Con­gress also and I haven’t got­ten any­thing like that either :(

As I recall from last night, there were 3 items on the river bed: a wal­let, a boot and the dou­bloon. First, empty your web browser’s cache and then restart your browser. In the IRC chan­nel I had been hang­ing around on last night, that seemed to clear up most of the really weird stuff. If that doesn’t work make sure you are fol­low­ing my instruc­tions step-by-step. If you get stuff out of order, things may not work right. If you’re still hav­ing prob­lems and want more imme­di­ate feed­back, try going to NBCTreasureHunters.com and fol­low­ing their instruc­tions for con­nect­ing to the IRC server & cha­t­room they are using. It’s a really good resource for get­ting help with the puz­zles. If all that fails, leave a com­ment on this post with a detailed work­flow of what you’ve tried and where you are get­ting stuck.

san­dra r. wrote:

i need help week 8 is there any help for me

on dis­abil­ity need money so bad please help me

Hmm, well there’s the help I spelled out in my solu­tion to chal­lenge #8. There’s the NBCTreasureHunters.com web­site (and their instruc­tions for get­ting to an IRC server where you can chat live with other hunters. How­ever, you should keep in mind even if you solve all the puz­zles cor­rectly; the offi­cial rules state “the Admin­is­tra­tor will select ten (10) Win­ners from all eli­gi­ble entries in a ran­dom draw­ing.” This means there’s no guar­an­tee you’ll ever get any money from play­ing along with the NBC Trea­sure Hunters online game.
Beyond that maybe one of these web­sites can assist you:

neil wrote:

what is the com­bi­na­tion for the final clue? I dont have a printer to do the fold­ing thing.please help! thanks

Check out the foot­notes at the bot­tom of my solu­tion to chal­lenge #8.

rob wrote:

any luck with the 8th chal­lenge, i got the coin and things but when i get back to the boat the seag­ull knocks the back­pack into the water. was not sure if it is some­thing i am doing/or not doing.

Check out my solu­tion to chal­lenge #8 start­ing with step #14.

Tris­tine wrote:

Hi, can you please help me with the order for the final puz­zle? I have the cutout of the star and have entered all the pos­si­ble com­bi­na­tions that I see (“feather sym­bol”, sun, door with “c”, hands, book, arrow, other door) and I can­not get it to work. Please help! Thanks!

Check out the foot­notes at the bot­tom of my solu­tion to chal­lenge #8. To be per­fectly hon­est, I had my wife do the cutout thing for me, couldn’t fig­ure it out and relied upon the kind peo­ple chat­ting about the puz­zle in the #steeple_media IRC chan­nel on Acces­sIRC. You might also want to read one of the com­ments on my post cov­er­ing my solu­tion to chal­lenge #8.

ben wrote:

how do you arrange the puz­zle pieces? it looks right but the fire­place is not opening.

Make sure your pieces on the game­board are arranged in exactly the same method as shown in the image on my solu­tion to chal­lenge #8 post. If you’re still hav­ing prob­lems, try clear­ing your web browser’s cache, restart­ing your webrowser and try­ing again.

It’s the strangest thing

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First off, the lack of recent updates is due to 2 factors:

  1. I’ve been busy with the new job and I don’t really talk about such things here.
  2. Ariesna and I have started some seri­ous house hunt­ing. Well, to be per­fectly accu­rate we’ve seen a house we like and now we’re mort­gage hunting.

Still, while I won’t dis­cuss who I work for or what exactly I do for them on this site; I do have to share some thoughts that occur to me at the office. Which brings us back to the title of this post, it’s the strangest thing how dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies treat office sup­plies. In my old job, there was one sta­pler pro­vided to each depart­ment and it was always jeal­ously guarded. In the new job, I got a sta­pler given to me prac­ti­cally as soon as I walked in the door. In the old job, the newest com­put­ers gen­er­ally went to the peo­ple with the most senior­ity. In the new one, I got a brand new machine my first day while a co-worker who’s been here a while is still wait­ing to get a new one. In my old job, if you needed things like paper or pens or what­ever, you had to go ask one of the sec­re­taries to get it for you. In my new job, I was shown where to find things in the sup­ply closet on the first day.

Cor­po­rate cul­ture is really weird some­times, but at least here it’s weird in a good way.

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