Whoops, forgot the text...

ANYHOW! I just got done with one of the longest days of my life. I woke up early because my sholders hurt from working in the pit this last (busy) week at the shop. I woke up around 3:00 because I couldn't get comfortable and because my neck and shoulders would ache no matter how I laid.

I decided I had enough tossing and turning around 8:30AM, and decided to get out of bed. After a few minutes of playing with the dogs and spending time with the 'rents, I decided to get dressed and go for a drive to Lafayette (the "big" town to the south). About half way there, Mom called me on my cell phone and asked me to meet them at some place in West Lafayette (very close to Purdue) for lunch. I got there about half an hour or so before they did, but decided to wait for them. Finally they showed up what seemed like an hour later. We walked in to the resturaunt and Mom stood there looking at the minimal menu, then deicded she wanted to eat somewhere else on the other side of town.

We got in our cars and made the journey through Lafayette to the Olive Garden, and ate a meal consisting of some sort of salt and butter laden pasta, merged with cooked, tail-off shrimp. After eating our $12-per-plate meal, Mom asked Dad if he wanted to go with me while she went on home. No big deal, I enjoy spending time with Dad, but I did kinda have plans to stop at a friend's place while I was down there.

After we got done eating, Dad and I headed over to Best Buy to look at car stereos. I had already made up my mind that I was getting either a Kenwood or a Pioneer, and that I was limiting myself to $160.00. Having such filters in place, shopping went rather quickly, and I decided on the Kenwood KDC-MP232, which had MP3/WMA/CD-RW support, RDS, and was Sirius ready.

The half-witted "tech" from Best Buy took about 10 minutes to retrieve a retail unit from the shelf directly above the display unit, then asked if I needed a wiring harness or installation kit. I informed him of the year, make, and model of my car and he proceeded to lookup the part numbers I needed in his compatibility book. Midst-sale, another tech came along and informed him that he had the wrong part numbers, yadda yadda yadda, and took over for him. He ended up getting what was supposed to be the wiring harness to fit my car, taking nearly 10 minutes to do so, then asked if I wanted them to install it which was free for purchases over $99.99. I asked what the next available timeslot was, and ended up waiting another 10 minutes for him to look it up in his appointment book in the shop. When he came back and told me that the soonest they had available was 2 hours away, I told him I would handle it myself. No problem, I headed up to pay for the unit and harness, and I was on my merry way, $187 poorer.

When I got home, I opened the packages and started soldering up the harness, and did a wonderful job at it if I may say so myself. Heatshrink tubing and solder made for a professional-grade harness. I then removed the trim panel from my car, removed the stereo, and prepared to plug in the new wiring harness and stereo. No go. I was PISSED. The $20 harness the cocky technician at Best Buy sold me was the wrong harness. I went to Wal-Mart thereafter and looked up, for myself, the proper part number. Turns out, they didn't have it.

I decided to grab a very similar harness and a previously opened installation kit and came home to try and cobble something together. The plug on the second harness was correct, but the pin arrangement was slightly different. I went ahead and soldered up the wires and used what little heatshrink tubing I had left, and went about the process of correcting the pin arrangement. As it were, I only had 1 pin out of place, but it was an important one: The "key-on" power lead. On the harness I purchased it was in slot B2, but on my car it was in slot A6. I simply moved the pin and all appeared to be fine.

I decided to make sure everything was working properly on the unit and began fiddling with the balance and fader controls. Apparently the harness I purchased is set up for the front speakers to be where the rear speakers are, and vice versa. It's no big deal to me, so I just left it as-is.

Dad helped me get the stereo mounted and the dash put back together, and everything was fine.

I'm quite disappointed with Best Buy's tech staff. Having worked with cars myself on a routine basis, I know where there would be issues with certain things, and I know to let a customer know about them when they mention performing a service on their own. The Best Buy employees didn't do this, and essentially left me hanging. I informed the one tech that I would be unable to return this evening because I lived an hour north. Apparently it meant nothing to him.

Also, the first tech was looking at the Scoche products page in his book, but the second tech informed him they don't carry Scoche products. I didn't pay any attention to it until I had to go back to Wal-Mart and I saw the packaging and logos, and I realized there was a display full of Scoche products directly to my left when tech #2 said that. Rather than selling me a $10 harness that I didn't need, he sold me a $20 harness that I didn't need. How can you put that other than "screwed"?

I'm now stuck with a $20 harness that I'll probably never need. I'm considering selling it on eBay, but I'll never make the $20 back that they charged me.

I posted something along the order of this last year, but it's occuring again this year, and I still feel the same about it.

Every year since 1776, the United States has celebrated its freedom. Typically, this celebration consists of illuminating the sky with massive quantities of Asian-made explosives, otherwise known as fireworks.

The report made by these explosives can normally be heard for a long distance. Tonight, I hear it loud and clear.

The colorful display made by these fireworks may be visually pleasing, but the sound they make seems all too real to me. I hear the explosion off in a distance, knowing full and well that it is fireworks to celebrate the upcoming holiday, but the sound seems too eerie. I can't help but think of the countries struggling for their freedom, as we are, or what could be happening, had we not our defense system and armed forces.

I know, this looks like one of those "warm and fuzzy" moments. Rest assured, it's not. It's something I CONSTANTLY think about. It's just too easy for me to mention it this time of year. With what our country experienced a couple years ago, it's apparent that there are other countries and other people who don't necessarily agree with our freedom, and there are even others who find it easy to take advantage of for personal gain. The things they may do to thwart the efforts of those who strive to maintain our freedom could be more like what the other countries experience on a daily basis.

Okay, I've been blathering enough about this long enough and I'm getting repetitive and sidetracked. Just remember your freedom and those who worked for it. Be thankful for it and do what you can to thank those who earned it for you.

I was going to post something, but I'm too freakin' tired to remember what it was.

Therefore, I will post the following:

Toothpicks.

Enough said.

...the boss asks you to fill out a review form for a fellow employee and you code your own performance review system to generate a better looking form.

For about the last week I've been feeling a bit "down in the dumps" over nothing. I'm getting sick of it. It seems like everything is on my bad side. I've never enjoyed this kind of feeling. I don't know if I'm just overwhelmed with everything right now, if I need a vacation, or what.

I love my job, but I don't want to go to work. I'm enjoying being single, but the "looks" and such that I get drive me insane. I'm not a hermit by any means, but I don't feel like being around people. I have to force myself to eat. I'm not sleeping well. Nearly every song I hear puts me close to tears.

I reall hope all that's causing this is the medicine I'm taking for my foot. I don't remember seeing "may cause depression" in the side-effects for it, but meh, who knows. I just wish it would hurry up and get over with, because I need to be me again. I need my energy. I need to feel good.

After a year at the quick lube, I've become rather comfortable in several areas, including general business, customer support, and business management. While I've not done everything there is to do, I've done a lot of it.

I love my job right now. I have the best employers anyone could ask for, and I learn new skills every day. However, I can't see much farther past where I'm at right now. There's a little bit of room for me to "move up the ladder", but nothing that will really be beneficial to me in the long run.

As a result, I've decided that 2007 is the year I move on. This is a tough choice that I've made, but I had to make it. I will begin the search for a new job, and if it is deemed a necessity, I will move out of state. I have to further myself in life, and I can't do that in Hickville, USA.

January 1, 2007, I am going to begin applying for jobs outside of my local driving area. I'm going to do this in hopes of finding the "dream job" doing something I will love.

Now I just need to find a way to explain this to everyone...

Things are going to be changing around big time at the shop. I can't really say too much right now, but come August 1st, I'll be working a lot of hours for probably a long while.

This next week I am scheduled to work 46 hours. That might not seem like a whole lot to anyone, but keep in mind that I work 10 hour days (except Saturday) in the sweltering heat with vehicles that just came in from the highway. Add to it the fact that I'm taking some medicine that "may cause tiredness", and you've got one worn out Tim.

I'll be trying to keep up with my semi-regular posting here, and I'll be available via e-mail. If you don't have my e-mail address, use this form [stormchasertechnologies.com] to get a hold of me. In cases of extreme emergency, you can drop me a line at the shop.

Otherwise, expect me to be around after 6:30PM (GMT-0600) each night, but no later than 10:00PM. I may be available other times outside of that, but I'll make no promises.

Here lately I've been bombarded with remarks about how I need a girlfriend. Some comments have even gone so far as to suggest that I pay to sign up on sites like eHarmony and Match.com to find someone I'll be ultimately "compatible" and happy with, based on detailed levels of my life and her life.

I'm not against making such a move. However, I am not comfortable spending my money in a manner such as that. Sure, eHarmony is supposedly tried and true, but I can't see spending money for something like that.

I've decided that if anyone really wants to see me get "hooked up", they'll be willing to put some effort into it. Hence, a button:

Donate money to the "Find Skudd A Girlfriend" fund. All proceeds will go directly towards an account on eHarmony.com, and all results will be documented.

I worked from 10:00AM to 6:00PM today.

When I got there at 10:00, there had only been 6 cars through the shop. When I left, a total of 40 had passed through. The average car count per hour was 4, for the 10 hour period, but for the afternoon (12:00 onward) it was 4 2/3. Figure about 12 minutes per car and you can see that we were very grateful for any bit of breather time we could find.

The shop record is 40 cars in 6 hours, which works out to 6 2/3 per hour. When we did this, we had 3 people working, and one of them was working for his first day at the shop. I personally don't remember the day at all.

As you can see, the ticker is seemingly functional. I've decided to halt production there, though, due to several issues with the blog.

Since the source is freely available for SkuddBlog, I find no sense of worry (about this particular install) due to my divulgance of these issues:

- Form If you look at the source code, you'll see that there's so much "crap" going on that doesn't need to be, and that there is a better way to do nearly everything.

- Modularity Is that even a word? Hm. Anyhow, nearly everything the blog does is in system/page_functions.php. This is a very stupid move on my part, but it is something I've learned with experience.

- Security The way the user-input data is being filtered is less than admirable. While the individual concepts are good, the way they're all butchered and hacked and glued together is ugly and far from bulletproof.

- Upgradability Due to the above, there's virtually NO way for any future enhancements to take place. I pity anyone who has tried to create custom add-ons for it.

I don't know if anyone is aware, but this blog was pieced together in right about a day when I used Macromedia Dreamweaver for the first time. Now that I've got a couple of years of experience under my belt, I want to do this all over again. There comes the issue of time, though: I have none, and when I do, I have no desire.

I'll be taking a week of vacation in mid to late September this year, and in that time I will pick up on a new version of SkuddBlog, throwing all the existing codebase aside and starting fresh. Until the product is finished, I will continue using this blog for my personal ramblings.

If anyone from the central Indiana area happens to find this, hit me up...

I'm looking for a list of songs that were played on 95.7FM WGBD back when it was "Modern rock for the 21st century."

If you have anything to contribute, send it to wgbd@skudd.com

"Blog Ticker" I'll be using this little tool to spew my worthless bouts of random thought and text. All entries are going to be truncated to 255 characters, so they will stay short.

I will probably work up a form to use for posting there later on, because it's too hasslesome running a query every time I want to spew. When I do, however, I'm not sure how I will restrict access to it, or if I even will. I just fear what Mother Clover will do to it...

Ya know, there's one thing I can't stand: One or more persons labeling another as something traditionally reserved for derogitory comments.

Certain people I know seem to think it's funny to constant referr to me as homosexual, gay, or other related names. It's such a juvenile act, and it gains nothing for anyone. The opposing party could better benefit by calling the individual a thief or something of the sorts, not that I would encourage such a practice.

I would like to note, for the record, that I am anything but gay. I am a male human and while my closest friends are likewise male, I have never and would never entertain the thought of sexual relations with another male. I don't "look at" other males; I look at females. I don't gawk at other males; I gawk at females. I don't want to spend the rest of my life with another male; I want to spend it with a female. Do you notice a pattern here?

I don't appreciate being called names, but being called gay, a fag, or homosexual is not something I will tolerate at all. The next time it occurs, the REAL LIFE names of the individuals at fault will be posted here.

I'm so sad and distraught. I am being oppressed because I am of German heritige. I am persecuted day in and day out for it. I want my rights as a human.

Note: The above is just a bit of whiney text to slap in the faces of the whiners. I'm not actually thinking that.