I have successfully moved into my new apartment, and I am pretty happy with it so far. The only problem is that with larger living spaces comes greater feelings of loneliness. I don't really understand it, but it's just a part of the human mind, I guess.

I have found myself just wandering the apartment for no reason, and I think deep down inside I have been hoping that there would be some sort of companion(roommate or otherwise) sitting in front of the TV when I got out of bed in the morning. What's funny about that is the fact I love my privacy, and I love not having to work around someone else's schedule.

<creepy_schizophrenia> This evening I was on my way home from a friend's place, and for a split second I saw a woman sitting next to me in the car. When I took a second look though, she was gone. Is this my body, my soul, crying out for a life partner? If so, where the heck do I even start? If not, I suppose I should be calling the local psychiatrist and scheduling an evaluation. </creepy_schizophrenia>

It's just so confusing right now, and I don't know what to do about it. I guess I'll just keep on what I do every week: This.

The temperature dropped like 50 degrees in only a few hours, and now it's incredibly windy. Now that I have power and internet in the new apartment, the wind is causing the whole block to go dark every so often. How frustrating!

Before I go into this rant very much, I should probably let you know what's been going on over the last 4 days.

Friday evening, I spoke with the landlord about moving into the larger apartment next door. It wasn't a huge move, and they were more than happy to modify my lease accordingly. I spoke with the utility companies (Duke Energy and Comcast (Comcast just bought the previous provider, Insight)) about transferring the service. Neither company seemed like it would be an issue. I spoke with my sales representative at Comcast on the phone last night, and he took down all the information and said the transfer would all be done today.

This morning I went to the Duke Energy office and took care of that transfer. It was quick and painless. Shortly after I got back to the office, my cell phone rang. It was the technician from Comcast, who just wanted to make sure he was going to the right place to do the right thing. He said it would all be done by the time I got home, unless there was a wiring issue inside.

Sometime around 4:00PM, I looked in one of the chat rooms I'm always signed into, and I was still signed in from home. I thought "WTF? Do they really suck THAT bad?", but I went about my day. When I just got home a little bit ago, I fired up the TV in my bedroom: Nada. I then tried the TV in the living room: Same deal. This brought me to where I am now; leeching off my own wireless that's still connected in apartment #5 (the old apartment), and wondering what the heck (didn't) happen today, and why.

Ugh. I e-mailed the sales rep and explained my frustration to him, and that I need to be completely out of the other apartment by Wednesday morning, including my network equipment. Let's hope I get some sort of productive response and/or compensation.

CAUTION: This video does contain some language and lots of animated violence.

Ugh, I hate tax time. I have paid over 15% of my gross income in state, federal, and local income taxes this year (which may not seem like a whole lot), and yet they want another $200 out of me! What good is that extra $200? I mean, when you think about it, for what they pay the IRS staff, the cost to process this payment, and all other associated expenses, they will only receive maybe $20 from it. Why not just mark it off as paid, and move on?

I just really hate this part of being employed in the USA. It's so stressful. :(

I now remember why college was so stressful.

For a couple projects at work, I've had to re-learn Microsoft .Net, and it's been a rather harrowing experience. The language is so bloated and inflexible, and the documentation is too abstract to actually mean anything.

I don't know what people are thinking, but the claims that the .Net development community has generated more documentation resources than the PHP community are absolutely ridiculous.

I think I may see if I can get some books through work so I can learn C++ at a more advanced level than I previously knew, and just say to heck with .Net.

I've found that the majority of these attacks happen within 2 hours of going to sleep. This one was almost right at the 2 hour mark

This is one of the worst ones I've had in about 2 years. When I woke up, had this feeling as if I had died (or come really close to it), but an attempt at reassuring myself that it was a panic attack just seems to make it more apparent that it wasn't a panic attack (though I'm relatively certain it was), and that I need to be worried about it.

I'm hoping this will stop soon, because I'm really tired and I want to get back to sleep.

I'm still mad at UPS, but I do have my new computer. Check this out:

root@ubuntu:~# free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 2026 545 1480 0 80 318 -/+ buffers/cache: 146 1879 Swap: 0 0 0 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 15 model : 107 model name : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ stepping : 1 cpu MHz : 2211.388 cache size : 512 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 2 core id : 0 cpu cores : 2 fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8legacy 3dnowprefetch ts fid vid ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps bogomips : 4425.18 clflush size : 64

processor : 1 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 15 model : 107 model name : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ stepping : 1 cpu MHz : 2211.388 cache size : 512 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 2 core id : 1 cpu cores : 2 fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8legacy 3dnowprefetch ts fid vid ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps bogomips : 4422.67 clflush size : 64

I'm only running Ubuntu right now because I didn't have time to install Windows just yet. I'll be powering down as soon as I post this so I can run back to work for the meetings, then I'll be coming home and playing. :D

Ugh... Now they're not showing any tracking detail other than "Billing Information Received". Please tell me I don't need to contact the BBB...

• Stop making excuses
• Stop procrastinating
• Find a church
• Stop being stupid with money and stick to a budget
• Buy groceries regularly
• Lose weight
• Clean the apartment weekly
• Visit old friends
• Take an out-of-state vacation
• Finish started projects
• See a doctor
• See a dentist
• Clean up files on computers and servers
• Get a new bike
• Sell the old truck
• Get the headlight on the car fixed

So I contacted UPS about this, and here's the response I received:

Dear Tim, Thank you for your email. Unfortunately, our tracking system does not indicate the reason for the delay. Our records show your shipment is currently in transit to its destination, and has been rescheduled for delivery on 1/7/08 by the end of the day. For the latest tracking information, please continue to track your shipment at the following link: http://www.ups.com/tracking/tracking.html If you do not receive a delivery attempt by the rescheduled delivery date and your tracking number does not contain any further updates, please contact your shipper to initiate a shipment investigation. I am sorry that your shipment has been delayed, and I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience associated with this delay. Please contact us if you need any additional assistance. William Miller UPS Customer Service

I'm appalled at the quality of customer service here. No offer to correct the situation was made, and I was essentially told to go check the tracking for the package myself. GRR!

What's wrong with the following picture?

Here's a situation for you:

You have a married couple next door, and a married couple downstairs. They frequently argue and fight, sometimes so loud that you have to turn up the television (at 11:30PM) to keep from hearing them.

Do you:

a. Just put up with it b. Confront them directly c. Confront the landlord d. Confront law enforcement personnel

It's just a hypothetical situation...

...that is going to make it hard for me to sleep tonight...

The week prior to Christmas, I had the pleasure of catching a cold that was going around the office. It lasted almost a week, and made me feel miserable. After it was over with, I felt great.

Well, here we are, just a bout 2 weeks later, and I can say with a fair amount of confidence that I have contracted the flu virus. It came on so sudden, and I feel like complete and utter Hell because of it.

It started yesterday. I went to the bowling alley to get my ball re-drilled, and bowl a few games. Towards the end of the first game, my hands were hurting really bad. I just assumed it was arthritis, and that the weather was changing, but a few hours later I was proved wrong.

I had the desire to have a drink at about 7:30PM, and I discussed with a friend that I wanted to find some Skyy Blue. He said that the grocery store near his apartment had it, so I went to get some. Well, I got to the store and found no such product, but I was trying to decide if I wanted to leave there with something or not. The final decision was to grab a bottle of Bailey’s Mint Chocolate Irish creme. On my way back home though, my sinuses started hurting, just like they did a couple weeks ago.

I got home and mixed 1/2 cup of the Bailey’s with 1/2 cup of skim milk, and started sipping on it as I was typing up some things for work. The farther I got into that cup, the worse I felt, and the worse it tasted. I ended up dumping the remaining 1/3 of it down the drain, then I went to bed. I was so tired and my head was hurting so bad, so sleep was the only conceivable remedy.

I slept from 10:30PM until about 2:00AM, but I woke up feeling absolutely miserable. It was almost as if the arthritic pain from my hands worked its way around my body, because my back and legs were so sore that I could barely touch them. I got up and grabbed a drink of water then tried to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, I didn’t sleep at all until about 10:00AM, for just 15 minutes or so. Off and on during that time that I couldn’t sleep, I would get up and go to the bathroom, then check my temperature. The highest I saw was 101-point-something, but it held steady around 100 the rest of the time.

Sometime around 7:00AM, I went to take a shower, thinking that would help me to cool down and sleep. Unfortunately it didn’t. All I got out of it was a little bit of cleanliness, and a nasty sinus headache from the scent of the soap. Even still, I can smell that soap rather strong, and it makes me so nauseous.

I have been able to get some sleep throughout the afternoon so far. I did get up and go to the store for a little bit to grab some orange juice and Sprite, but the rest of the time I have spent passed out in front of some sort of television show on the computer. Matter of fact, as I am writing this, I have just awaken from about 20 minutes of sleep, my temperature is back near normal, and I have the headache to end all headaches.

I have tried to get a hold of my boss to arrange working remotely tomorrow, but he has yet to respond. I don’t want to call off work because I took 2 days off last week. Sure, I’m salary, but it hurts the company when I do that.

I just want to get over this stuff. I have had this sort of flu before, but I had people to help take care of me. Now that I’m living alone, I have to try to take care of myself, which is no easy task.

I don't suspect I'll be taking part of any alcoholic beverage for a long while. I felt so horrible after just a little bit of that Bailey's last night, and thinking about other drinks that I have had and liked just makes me want to vomit. I think water and fruit juice will be an adequate substitute. I have already offered the near-full bottle of Bailey's to the friend who told me where to find what I wanted.

I am getting rather tired of making these entries, but I guess it's what I get from having old hardware.

At any rate, the machine I replaced my old computer with is now on the fritz. I was in the middle of watching a movie tonight after work, and the stupid thing rebooted out of nowhere. After it power cycled and came to the POST screen, it said "CPU is unworkable or has changed", which leads me to believe that the pile of crap Pentium 4 has kicked the bucket.

After shuffling through the spare parts I had laying around from the old computer, I found that I have nothing to replace it with now, and that I must limp by with this stupid thing rebooting all the time. Yes, I could use my laptop, but if you've ever worked on a laptop much you know how inconvenient that is. The lack of screen size is an added inconvenience.

I have to say, I have been rather displeased with this Pentium machine. It's the second one I've used and I find it to be incredibly slow and unreliable. I will never purchase another Intel system again.

But as with last time, if you're interested in helping me out at all, PayPal donations are more than accepted. Or if you have a newer machine laying around with an AMD processor greater than 1.5GHz in speed, let me know. I may be interested in purchasing it from you.