Yay for time off

I'm enjoying my first day(s) off of work since Christmas. I've been working on a presidential campaign site that had me working both last weekend and New Year's weekend (yes, that sucked big time). Now that I'm off, what do I have to do? Work on two desktop PCs, one laptop, and one Xbox (I mod Xboxes to run SNES/NES/N64 emulators). It seems like I have either no personal work, or a ton.

After I finished working last Sunday, for some brilliant reason I decided to trash my back/legs... er, I mean tear the roof off my garage. It took me five hours to tear off three layers of shingles using my hands and a foot long pry bar. I then spread two 29x19 tarps and nailed down four foot sections of strips to hold it all in place. Did I mention it started raining halfway through the process? Fun! I called a roofing company on 1/8 and am still waiting for them to put on a new roof (they refuse to give a date, and other asshat roofing companies won't even bother to return calls for quotes. Nice eh?).

It's that time of year!

I went on my annual excursion to Canada the 20th through 22nd. Woohoo! It was probably one of the best trips I've taken there; for many reasons. For starters, an hour before leaving I received a generous Christmas bonus that pretty much covered the trip. As if that wasn't enough, I also received a 6% salary increase. My job rocks ;) I was also there with my favorite person in the whole world (girlfriend dummy). I took some pictures, but they're nothing most people haven't seen before. All the really good memories I keep up in my noodle ;)

The only thing that almost put a damper on the trip was some asshat hotel valet decided to finish off a loose door sill cover on my car (read: he broke off a piece of my damn car). Thanks to the raise/bonus, I broke down and drove straight back to Cleveland and ordered a new sill cover from the dealership. If you're wondering why I didn't make the hotel pay for it, the answer is simple: it was somewhat broken to begin with. They'd just waste my time and argue that it's my fault and I should have warned them about it. While that may be true, just handing my car back to me with the piece completely busted off like nothing happened is not cool. What's done is done.

"In west Philadelpha born and raised"

"..on the playground is where I spent most of my days!"/Fresh Prince. I went on a single day trip to Philadelphia on Saturday and feel like crap (click the picture to the right for a few pictures). A guy there was dismantling two cars that are the same as my model, so I decided to go score some cheap parts. Unfortunately, aside from two parts I did pick up, he wanted to pretty much sell me stuff that might not work on my car (heated steering wheel), or overcharge (i.e. one rim for $75.. I've seen a set of four go for ~$125). I ended up just buying a window shade and rocker panel (which was fun transporting back... ~7ft long, L-shaped, riding shotgun between a friend and I for ~450 miles.

We went and visited a "unique" part of town on South Street that can be be described as a ten block version of Coventry (pawn/consignment shops, salons, art & occult stores, etc). I got to eat an actual Philly Cheese steak from a place so popular the line never went below thirty people deep, even at two or three in the afternoon. It was good, but not "let's drive 450 miles to get another one" good.

One last bit... Dallas driver's don't have CRAP on these mofos. Holy F'ing crap. I've never seen people park and drive more jacked up than I did on this trip. Parking in the middle of the street (literally), double parking, blowing red lights, you name it. Some stupid b*tch almost rear ended me doing 60mph on the freeway. I swear if I didn't lunge my car forward a few feet, I'd be writing this from a hospital in Philadelphia.

525i, wheee.... or not

I had to take my car into the dealer today to get a leak checked out. I swore it was oil, but it turned out to be a coolant leak. Oh well. Yay for extended warranties! While my car was in they gave me a 2007 525i as a loaner. The thing looks sweet inside and out. I hated the interior style at first but it's growing on me. The only thing was the ride was smooth, but it really seemed to have no pickup. For a 2007 BMW 6 cylinder with barely 2000 miles on the odometer, I expected a hell of alot more oomph. Oh well, I've still got four years left on my current car :)

Here are a couple of shots:

• Interior Front
• Interior Back
• Exterior Front
• Exterior Back

Neat-o Javascript

Surfing around the various forums, someone posted this groovy ass javascript. That's so cool for pretty much a single line of code! It works for pretty much any website. Just browse to the website you want to do it to, then paste the following code into your browser address bar:

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.getElementsByTagName('img'); DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=(Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5)+'px'; DIS.top=(Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5)+'px'}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void(0);

I heard it doesn't work on Firefox, so if you use that browser... Jimmy crack corn, and I don't care. Serves you right.

Credit cards are the devil

I hate credit cards and the companies behind them. I opened an American Express account a month ago and did a balance transfer in at 0% for 12 months. All I had to do was spend $100 on their card within 90 days. No problem! Done! Next thing I know, a month later I get an e-statement saying payment is due... IN 5 BUSINESS DAYS. Oops! Didn't get payment there fast enough! Darn! Rate went to 15% overnight. Screw them. I am pulling out every dollar I owe on it out of savings and paying it off next week. They will never see another dime of interest or fees from me. In fact, I plan to fully abuse the card priveleges by using it then paying it off in full every month and getting the cash back on purchases.

To top it off, on this very same day, a new credit card with a $10,000 limit shows up out of the clear blue sky from another company. Who? What? Come to find out some store branded card I had like five frickin years ago dumped my info to this company who then jacked up the rate and available credit and issued a new card without even asking if I wanted it. It said "you can dispose of your Marta card!". What the HELL is a Marta card?!?! I told them they can cancel the store card AND this new card and asked for proof of cancellation in writing. I don't care what closing accounts does to my credit score... I hate having open accounts that I haven't touched in 5-10 years (long forgotten by me) floating around on my credit report.

Yay! Mrs. Pac Man!

Woohoo! I just won a Mrs. Pacman Tabletop on eBay! Damn straight it's a waste of money. I collect those things and think they're freaking sweet for some reason. For $55 bucks shipped I can't go wrong, considering the average price for the damn thing is usually $75 plus shipping. I just couldn't resist. Yah I'm a computer nerd/dork, so what?

In other news, I took an Ohio Carrying Concealed Weapons course, passed, and received a valid permit. Since I haven't lived here for five years consecutively I had to pass an FBI background check first (which I did). I find it amusing (annoying?) that after spending ~$150 in courses, ~$100 in equipment, and ~$70 in government fees that they provide a permit that bleeds ink and must be kept in a paper sheath! Are they serious? I almost want to email them a link to websites selling Eltron printers for under ten grand. For the uninformed, Eltron printers are the same style/brand used by the DMV to print drivers licenses.

At work, I've been instrumental in refacing an NRA website (which as of this writing has yet to go live). I'm also in the process of migrating a major client's site from Microsoft .Net v1.1 to v2.0 as well as a graphical reface. It's been fun considering it's my first full blown v2.0 project. I'd mention the client by name, but they're supreme court lawyers and I don't know the legality of doing so... so... yah ;)