The Language Barrier

Don't mind me, I'm just: tired
Hey, that sounds like: Monster Magnet -- Crop Circle

• Busy weekend coming up: tonight is Bo-topia (a.k.a. wurdsome's birthday party) which I'm leaving for straight from work, then tomorrow evening I'm off to see Testament (and several other metal bands I've never heard of) as part of Powerfest 2008 in scenic Mokena, IL. And Sunday I'll spend doing the chores I should do Saturday, but won't because I have the excuse of the concert.



• My BushBucks have arrived! And it looks like I'll be stimulating the economy more than I thought. I decided to spend some of it on new books and somehow that turned into a $100 orgy of expenditure last night at SFBC.com -- they were having a sale, $9.99 per book after you buy two at regular price. I'm getting A Canticle For Leibowitz (which, inexcusably, I haven't read yet), World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, and the first six (!) books in Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series, which is projected to run to ten.



• And while I was being frivolous, I also spent another hundred bucks for a ticket to the Metal Masters Tour in August. Actually, make that $45 for the ticket, $30 for parking, and $25 in various fees and fuck-you charges. The headliners are Judas Priest and Heaven and Hell (which is basically Dio-era Black Sabbath, minus Bill Ward, plus Vinnie Appice) and the opening acts are Motörhead and Testament (again!) In a way this show will be me coming full circle in my concert-going history: the first concert I ever attended was a Judas Priest / Megadeth / Testament show at Rosemont Horizon in 1990. But to be totally honest, the thing that clinched it for me is "how many chances am I going to get to see Motörhead?"



• For those of you who are going to the Cubs game on 5/17 -- and neonhummingbird, I'm still counting you as a "yes" because stankow has volunteered to cover some of your ticket, so please let me know if you weren't aware of that and have made other plans -- and have been wondering how to reimburse me, I haven't been able to think of an easier means than PayPal to take care of that, unless you want to bring a personal check with you.
  
  Accordingly, my PayPal account is under exaustinite(at)hotmail.com, and the ticket price is $52.00, so whenever you're ready, willing, and fully-funded, let 'er rip. I'm covering all the taxes and fees and whatnot, to apologize for the crappiness and priciness of the seats, so don't worry about that. If you would prefer to send a personal check or something through snail mail, send an email to that address instead and I'll give you my meatspace coordinates. :)
  
  (Oh, and there's still one ticket left, by the by...)



• What else? Ah, yes. Those of you who were privy to my red light violation post back in March may be interested to know that I did go ahead and contest it by mail after all, but I ended up having to pay it anyway, as many including myself suspected I would.
  
  On the other hand, I also got a notice from the IL Tollway Authority a few days afterward, demanding $220.00 in unpaid tolls and fees, which I managed to deal with over the phone without having to pay a single cent for. Turns out the expiration date had run out on the credit card I had tied to my I-Pass account, and I didn't realize this for about a week. When I updated it, the account still showed a small balance, so I figured I'd gotten lucky, but alas this was not the case. The gentleman I spoke to on the phone was very helpful and waived all the fees -- as well as the unpaid toll charges, which turned out to have been paid automatically as soon as I corrected my info on the I-Pass Account. So thanks for the pointless scary mail, IL Tollway Authority.

• ( Kitty progress report. )



• ( FTD's feckless floral follies. )



• Today is the 10th anniversary of the day I quit smoking: July 1, 1997.
  
  (It's also the 10th anniversary of the day Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese. No, I didn't quit as a symbolic protest -- it just happened to work out that way.)
  
  In an unfortunate coincidence, my good friend dogofthefuture recently revealed that his mother is about to undergo a difficult chemotherapy/surgery regimen to treat her lung cancer, caused by years of smoking. She's one of the lucky ones who is treatable, and thank goodness for that.
  
  As an ex-smoker, I've never been the kind to lecture people about smoking or complain when they want to do it around me. I know how harrassed smokers feel today, and I have better things to do than pile on, especially since my other good friend manda_x is better at it than I'll ever be.
  
  But if you're my friend, and you're reading this, and you're a smoker, and you're thinking about quitting, please do. It's hard, but not impossible (otherwise, how could a lazy-ass like myself do it?) and it improves your life almost immediately. And not just health-wise: major brands were $2.25 a pack when I quit ten years ago -- and $1.50 when I started. How much did you pay for your last pack?
  
  (Besides, this is now a Permanent Livejournal account and I don't want to be blogging in two or ten or twenty years about how you are starting a series of painful and debilitating chemo treatments.)



• About three years ago, I loaned $900 to a woman I knew only through the internet who desperately needed it. (More than I did, anyway.) I received a check in the mail on Thursday for $900. And as a thank-you gesture, she's offered to fly me out to Washington D.C. this summer so I can sightsee, and let me crash at her place three blocks from the Capitol.
  
  The lesson here is that not everyone on the internet with financial trouble is untrustworthy, and that what goes around often does come around. Unless it's those guys from Nigeria. Those guys can ES&D.

Don't mind me, I'm just: stoked!
Hey, that sounds like: Danzig -- Firemass

PROCRASTINATION:
Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now.

--Despair.com, my favorite company in the whole wide world.

Don't mind me, I'm just: positive
Hey, that sounds like: Blind Melon -- St. Andrews Hall

1. It's in our service area (allowing me to continue to get free cable).


2. Pets are allowed.


3. There are vacancies on the first floor.


4. It has a few nice amenities, e.g. a dishwasher, vertical blinds on all the windows, and a 24-hour laundry room in each building.


5. The complex is under new management as of May '06, and they did a massive refurb project on all the units, so all of the appliances and stuff are brand new.

1. It's $20 more a month for significantly less square footage than I have now.


2. It's 10 minutes farther from work and everything else of interest (the city, my parents' house, etc.)

Don't mind me, I'm just: nerdy
Hey, that sounds like: Ozzy Osbourne -- So Tired

"You have a MacNamara-like grip on your grocery statistics."

--scottydont, in #predicate.

Don't mind me, I'm just: blah
Hey, that sounds like: Tsjuder -- Possessed (SnakeNet Metal Radio)

• Had my annual review yesterday. I got a solidly average review, same as I got last year, because God forbid they waste an "exceptional performance" bonus on a peon like me. (But considering how much I slack off, I can't really bitch too much.) The most amusing part of the review is that I got above-average marks in things I really hate doing, avoid doing, and could probably do better when I can't avoid doing them -- dealing with customers, mostly -- and slightly below-average marks in things that aren't my fault.
  
  F'rinstance...the reports that I came up with basically out of whole cloth, that allow management to neatly quantify performance in a number of areas, don't quite match the numbers that Corporate produces. Because nobody up there will tell me how they come up with them. Clearly this is all my fault, because my boss has told me several times that he wants them to match, and they still don't match. Leave aside the fact that I'm far more confident in my numbers, because Corporate's reporting has been iffy ever since I started here -- it's obviously more important to get the same answer they get than to get the right answer.



• The result of the solidly average review: a 3% raise, which kicks me up over the $30,000 mark for the first time in my working life. Also, I can expect a profit-sharing check of $700+ (which means $500+ after taxes) in mid-April. Which is also when the raise goes through. Which is also a 3-paycheck month for us. April's gonna be a good month in Ajax-land -- I might take a couple vacation days and go down to Austin to celebrate being so flush with cashola.



• Remember on Wednesday, when I posted that I felt OK about taking a second sick day because my boss was going to be in Denver? Well, turns out he didn't go to Denver after all, and was a little peeved that I'd called another supervisor instead of him to let them know I wasn't coming in. But whatever -- it's not like I was in a position to know that he was in the office, or anything.
  
  And the reason he didn't go to Denver? Because he gave two weeks notice instead. That's right: my boss is quitting. Just when I'd finally got him broken in! Whoever replaces him will be my fourth direct supervisor in the 2.5 years I've been with WOW. And since the company has yet to hire a single person for upper management internally, no doubt I'll be given the task of teaching the new guy about all the procedures we have in place -- just before he decides to make his mark by changing everything to suit the way he used to do things back when he worked with one of our V.P.s at another company 15 years ago. (And yeah, I am assuming it will be a "he" -- we do have female execs, but almost none of them have worked in the Technical Ops department, where I work.)



• I still feel sick and don't wanna be here today. Thank God I've got all my major deadliney stuff finished and can finally waste some time on livejournal. C'mon, 6:30...

Seth Radwell, The Science Fiction Book Club's president recently sent you a letter asking for comments on how we can improve the club. This letter was intended to be mailed to members who had not purchased in a long while. In error, this letter was sent to some of our most active and valuable members like you.

We would like to apologize for this mistake, and thank those of you who sent in feedback on how to improve The Science Fiction Book Club experience.

stankow

ericrapp

manda_x

cassandrasimplx

Don't mind me, I'm just: optimistic
Hey, that sounds like: Megadeth -- Killing Is My Business...

• CRAZY HORSE 94 - THE STAR-CROSSED LOVERS 25


• HELLS KITCHEN 43 - EXPLODING SEAMEN 114


• BAD MO FO 74 - PLAYERS 63