Shim!

What the hell? A post from me? Yeah it's been a while. Some stuff has gone on since you last heard from me. I turned 23 on  the 20th of July. Not too much happened, honestly. But, I did get a new phone, the Motorola RIZR Z3. It has expandable memory and easy USB connectivity to my computer, unlike my other phone. So, no more paying out the ass for ring tones or games from T Mobile.

Also, I got a new job. No more Meijer for me! I'm now at Office Depot, and its pretty nice so far. A little bit better pay, so that's good.

Near the end of August, I moved out of my apartment, and moved to a house in Champaign. I share it with three other guys, and its a really good time so far. I'll get pictures up soon. My room is a bit smaller, but the house is actually pretty nice on the inside..

Last but not least, my car died. I was driving down I-74, when I noticed smoke coming out from the back of my car, and soon into the cabin of my car. I stopped the car, and noticed that the temperature gauge was near the middle like usual. It turns out that my transmission finally died. It had been giving me quite a bit of trouble lately, and we found out it would be about 2,500 to replace it. Since my car was a 93 model with 220,000 miles on it, it so was not worth it to fix it. It cost me $175 to tow it from the interstate to the front of the house. So, this weekend, my parents and I went car shopping, and found a great one. It's a 2000 Toyota Camry Solara. It's the V-4 model, so its good on gas, and it puts out 135 horsepower, so, it can go at a decent speed, but its no speed demon. It has 79,000 miles on it, and hopefully I can put on at least another 150,000.
So, without further ado, here's some pictures:
The old car, Muffin. We're gonna junk her soon.

The new one. Haven't come up with a name yet.


So yeah that's about it. School's started, so I'm busy with that, but once I get time, I'll post some pictures of the new place.

So yeah....I was sitting at my computer at about 3AM last night, when I see a guy put a computer and a monitor over by the dumpsters. He sees me, and yells "Hey buddy, want a computer?". I say hell yes, and I head on down. Its not too bad, an eMachines 1.4 GHz Intel Celeron, 40GB HD (switched it out for a 120GB), CD-RW drive, 56 kbps modem (whoo hoo), and integrated LAN and video card (meh). Also, a 17" CRT. I already have one, so I may give this one away or sell for cheap.

So, first thing I did was I plug it in. I hear a wierd sound from the PSU and smell something not so good. So that's why they through it out I guess. PSU went bad and they though the whole thing was bad. Luckily I had an unused, lightly used one. It was a fucking pain in the ass to get in. Goddamn microATX cases! So, after getting extremely frustrated, I got the thing in, and it powered up absolutely fine. Unfortunately, the previous user had XP on there, and had password protected accounts. So, I popped out the hard drive, and stuck in a blank 120GB one. I installed Windows 2000 Pro on there. I dont think it can handle XP well.

I then put the old hard drive into a USB enclosure, just to see what of any use might be on the hard drive. But first, I had to do a virus scan. Luckily I have Kaspersky (usually rated #1 or #2 among all virus scanners). The fucking virus scanner caught like 172 viruses on the thing! No wonder the old users wanted to get rid of it. So, once I deleted those viruses, I recanned it twice, then scanned my computer. Unfortunately, nothing of use on the hard drive. So, I formatted it, and I'm gonna use it for...something. I have no idea. Maybe I'll install a 3rd OS on that, like Vista or something.

Well, I finally got my last final mailed to me. It was a math course. I looked at what I put down, and man...I guess the stress of finals was getting to me, cuz look what I put down:

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( more after the cut )
:-P

So yeah, there's a shit-load of snow, up in here. Plus, it's really windy, so there's some really high snow drifts. They cancelled classes today, and they might even tomorrow if it keeps up like this. Oh, and someone's car caught on fire right infront of my apartment building. I guess it overheated or something like that. Here's some pics:





So yeah, pretty interesting day. And hey if it snows again tomorrow, I'll actually have a good excuse for calling off of work :)

oh, and happy valentines day!

Hey so I got a new toy, named "Baby Blue":

It has 4GB of space. A little smaller than the 5GB I had with the Zen Micro, but I can manage :)

I'm getting used to using iTunes to manage my music. Apparently I can still use Winamp to get music to and from my iPod, but I'd rather stick with the software it was designed for, even though it sucks. But still, now that I have the opportunity to get album art for all the music I have, I'm more motivated to organize my music and fix the tags for it. I've also deleted a lot of crap music that I had lying around. I'm down from about 3000 songs to 1407 songs that represents 3.9 days of music and takes up 7.70GB as opposed to the 13GB or so I had before.

Well, I have a 4-5 page paper due in less than 12 hours. I havent started yet, and I dont have a concrete topic yet. Shit.

I'd better get on that.

what.the.fuck.
Taken from Something Awful's Awful Link of the Day:
Cars Slash Livejournal Community (thanks Full Metal Miku) - There's an old Internet urban legend about a TV show or movie that didn't have any fan fiction or erotic art inspired by it. Some say it exists, but nobody has ever seen it. Well, if you thought it was the Disney/Pixar animated movie Cars you are wrong like you always are.

“Can you blame me?” Lightning cried. Chick reared back, failing to hide the pain in his eyes. But Lightning was too busy ranting to notice. “I mean, you’re no sports car!”

“You didn’t seem to mind on Saturday night.”

“Like you would have cared if I minded.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“What I mean, is, you care nothing about my say when it comes to taking what you want. You practically rape me every other night!”

“Rape you!” Chick shouted. “What the fuck? You’re the one always moaning ‘Oh, don’t stop, Chick!’ the whole time!”

“Whenever I’m not in the mood, you always go ahead and take what you want from me anyway. If that’s not non-consensual sex, I don’t know what is.”

“How can you not be in the mood? And I thought you liked the sex!”

“If I only wanted sex—like someone—I could easily find someone just as willing and twice as nice. You’re such an asshole, Chick.”

Keep in mind these are supposed to be computer animated cars. This Cars Slash Livejournal community is your one-stop shop for all your erotic Cars needs.

More randomness:
I rented 'Bully' for the PS2 on Friday, and I must say, it is a great game so far. It's by Rockstar games, and uses basically the GTA engine, and you're a boy in a boarding-type school, where you've gotta avoid (or cause trouble), and make good with the different groups of students. The story is excellent too. Apparently when the game was first announced, all these groups got all over it, including the jackass Jack Thompson, saying it was a 'columine simulator'. Not only is there no guns, but the game is tame enough to warrant a T (Teen) rating. The weapons include a slingshot, stink bombs, eggs, marbles (to make people trip), and firecrackers. Hell, the only remotely controversial thing about the game is that your character can kiss other males. Oh noes!! (plus, it's always nice to beat the hell out of jocks, even if it is in a video game)


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My roommate's cat decided it was a good idea to steal my bed while I was playing this, though :(

He was camping out infront of the ToysRUs in Bloomington, in hopes of getting a PS3 pre-order. Unfortunately, he was one away.
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Oh and my car is finally over the 200k mark. yay.

almost there!

aaah finally.
it was interesting taking that picture while doing about 70 down the interstate. Luckily, I was able to hold the camera steadily while staying in my own lane (mostly).
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I'm kinda stuck on what to do for Halloween. I'm pretty broke, but I don't really want to stay home and watch scary movies if I can help it. And damnit, I spent $10 on an uber-generic costume from Meijer! I want to wear it!  Maybe we'll make a trip to the Canopy, since Rach is 18.
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well that's all for now. I've gotta run and do some errands, then head to work. lataz

Hey LJ buddies, get a client that supports Jabber (like gaim, trillian pro, or miranda im), and IM me. Info on how to log on is at: http://www.livejournal.com/chat/ .

Or get on AIM or yahoo and IM me. I be bored :)

T Mobile just came out with a kickass plan that may intice me to switch from my current one (1000min/free nights/weekends,$40). It's called myFaves, and for $39.99, you have 300 minutes, free nights and weekends, and you get to call any 5 people for free. It doesnt matter if they have another carrier or it's a landline or whatever. I know for sure that I spend most of my minutes calling the same damn people, so this may be interesting. Plus, since I'll be getting a new plan, I can finally get a new phone for cheap, or free, like the one I'm considering, the Samsing t609. I'll probably have Rachal, my Home, my mom's cell, David, and maybe Neil on my list. And it can be changed once a month. w00t!

And, no. I don't work for T-Mobile. :-P

I found this incredibly amusing:
Male Restroom Etiquette
And no, just because I find it funny does not make me a homophobe. I just have a sense of humor.

I do shit like this, and post comments on people's myspaces instead of typing a paper proposal for my Educational Psych class or studying for my CS midterm that I am certain to fail miserably.

I really need to get away from it all: school, work, a problem with a certain girl, money problems, parental problems, etc. I dunno, I've been thinking about just leaving everything at least for a little while. I know it's irresponsible, but I need out. But that's a topic for another post, provided I'm willing.

Well, it's down to 42 degrees here in Shampoo-Banana! I'm pretty sure it was hot enough last week to warrant running the A/C. Ah, gotta love erratic weather. But hey, my only problem is that I have to stop wearing shorts. I dont know if I have many pairs of pants at the moment, so that's just another purchase.

Unfortunately, I have my Discover Card, electric, and cable bills due within the next 6 days. If I pay them all in full, I've gotta pay out $220. But, I'm going to have to work out some kind of payment plan or something for the cable bill, since I've got like $100 balance transferred over from my last address.

I finally got the wheel-locks taken off of my car today. A while ago, I got new tires at Wal-Mart, and they never put the key for those locks back into my car, or if they did, I have no idea where they put them. I ended up going to O'Brien Toyota, and they fitted Camry lug-nuts, but they were unfortunately $6.75 per wheel. Bah.
My odo is nearing 199,000 miles, and I realized today that I really need to take it easier on my car. Yeah sure it still runs great, but I push that thing hard. I guess my turning point was tonight, when I was racing to make the light to turn onto Cunningham from the exit from I-74, as my car's ass was sliding sideways doing 40+ through the right turn. But meh, I like to drive fast, and I'm a person who is perpetually late to things.

Microsoft recently let people download the latest release of its upcoming OS, Windows Vista. It's currently in RC1 or Release Candidate 1 status, which means it's nearly feature complete, and there are just mainly bugs and compatability issues to worry about.

So I'm trying out the 64 bit version, and things are aight so far. I've had some graphical issues whenever the desktop resolution has to change (like for a game), and when playing Guild Wars. But, almost all of my drivers installed flawlessly when I first installed the OS. The only one I changed was the video card one, since it was not completely current. I havent been able to install my favorite anti-virus program (AVG Free) or firewall (Zone Alarm Pro), but I'm behind a router, and I dont download shady stuff, so I should be good in the short term. Plus, I can switch back to XP on my other hard drive, and do a virus scan on all the hard drives.

The new OS is very pretty. But all this eye candy and everything else is definitely resource intensive. The OS even suggested that I should get more RAM. I have 1GB! I didnt ever think that wouldnt be enough for just the OS. Usually with minimal applications loaded, 65% of my RAM is being taken up. In one of my screenshots, 87% of my RAM was being used! I've also been running into some performance issues because the OS is installed on my backup hard drive, which is not a nifty-fast SATA drive, but an old old IDE one. Regardless, I've compiled some screenshots. Enjoy, bitches:

Showin the gadgets that can be added to the sidebar, and the new system info/performance screen.

Nifty control panel options, as well as slightly different start menu. Oh yeah, and the new lookin file explorer. As you can see, I'm getting into a situation where I need a new hard drive badly.

The new welcome center which starts up whenever Vista starts up. Thankfully this can be turned off. Also, there's a cool program that does a diagnostic on your computer, and shows all the things that are wrong and may be affecting system performance.

One of the cooler new features, the window switcher. Click it, and all your windows arrange into the above formation, and you can click on the one you want to switch to it. I dunno, I guess it doesnt sound all that cool, but when you have a bunch of windows open at once, and you need to switch to another one, it helps.

I just found out the high school I went to (Hinsdale South) is ranked 642 in the nation, and 12th in the state! Hinsdale Central, the other HS in the district is ranked 146 though. They're a bunch of rich bastards over there. I also found out that hinsdale south has free wireless, and the students are now allowed to bring fucking laptops to class to take notes! Oh man, I'd just be spending the whole day surfing the web if I was allowed to do that back in the day. Although, I'd imagine that they have some kind of web proxy that doesnt allow access to outside sites.
See your high school's rank here.

Blah blah so I took Lucy back. I'm gonna go look at a bunch of cats at CATSNAP's Adoptathon on Saturday morning at Petsmart, so I may pick one up then. I dunno though, these last couple of weeks showed what little free time I have, with school and work, and trying to lose shape. Whenever I'm home, I'm usually tired, and want to either study or just chill watching some TV or playing some video games. I really don't have time to train and give a kitten or cat the attention it needs. Maybe I'll wait to get better into the groove of this semester.

Also, if anyone local wants a 256MB Micro SD card for their cellphone for $12, let me know!

5 years since the horrific terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. I remember I was taking a quiz in 2nd period Psychology, during my senior year of high school. We didnt really realize the magnitude of the event yet, since we just continued taking our quiz. Third period was AutoCAD, and we were allowed to access the internet. It was then that I realized how huge this thing was. I remember being scared that the Sears Tower might also be hit and fall down, since my dad was working in Chicago.

A lot of shit has gone down in the name of the victims of these attacks, but one thing is clear: we must capture or kill the people behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

My friend's older Monsur lived just 4 blocks away from the WTC. He took a bunch of pictures that day, but was only able to save a few, due to a hard drive failure. Here's a link to his photo album. There's some really incredible and touching pictures in there, so I'll share several:


"The sun breaking through the smoke, again highlighting what a beautiful sunny day it was"

"Looking east towards the fire burning at the WTC site. The bright orange of that blaze against the stark gray of the surroundings is forever etched in my mind."

"The most harrowing image of the day."

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Unfortunately, Lucy and Bitzel have not been getting along. In fact, they hate each other. So, I'm going to have to take Lucy back tomorrow, and we're going to try our luck with a young kitten. Here's the page for the new kittens. I'm partial to the white and black one.

I'm real sad that we have to give her up, I've grown quite attached to this little cat. Such is life, though. I leave y'all with some pictures of Lucy:

Lucy hogging my pillow. It's okay though, since we share it when I go to sleep.

This was supposed to be a close up of her sleeping. But my autofocus light woke her up.

Lucy sleeping on my pillow again. But this time, I put a blanket over her! She didnt seem to mind.

As usual, Lucy's distracting me from my work.

I've gotta say, I LOVE the fact that I can take my firefox, complete with preferences, bookmarks, extensions, etc. wherever I go! I'm visiting home right now, and it used to be the most annoying thing about using my parent's computer was having to use their IE with at least 5 different toolbars. Even using the campus computer labs was annoying. They had firefox, yes, but it just wasnt tweaked to what I wanted.

But, the mozilla forums came to the rescue! I cant find the link anymore, but here's the instructions on how to run firefox from a USB flash drive or any other removable media.

( cut y0 )
Sorry for the nerdy post!

Okay, so I found this video to be funny. But some people were just so damn uptight about it! I mean cmon! It's just a dad playing tricks on his daughter! What's the big deal. I mean what's the point of having kids if you can't fuck them up in the head? Maybe that's a sign I should not have kids...

Check out the dude's other submissions as well, they're pretty good.

well, I hope the apartment pictures can wait a little, cuz I got myself a mother fuckin cat!
Her name is Lucy, and she's a year old. She may not stay, because the first introduction with Bitzel didnt go so well. There was a lot of hissing and some chasing. We'll try again later. Lucy is also quite a stinker, but I'm hoping that's just an initial thing, what with pheromones and marking of territory. There's some water-less shampoos out there too, so that's always a possibility.
Of course, I have pictures. And a video:


Lucy gettin some food! She looks kind of pissed off in this pic.

Lucy hanging out on one of her favorite spots, my window sill.

Yet another window sill shot, and another side shot. I had a hard time getting one straight on.

Still not motivated to take pictures of the apartment. Maybe tomorrow night?
Classes started on Wednesday. They seem aight so far. I'll usually have a 2 or 3 class batch in the morning/noonish, then a 1 or 2 hour break, then one class. So, what I'm planning to do is take the bus to and fro the first classes. Then, I'll grab lunch or whatev at home, and drive to the last class, and park at the meters using my nifty new Cash Key.


I woke up the other day to find this above me:

She scared the crap out of me, but she was cute nonetheless, so it was all good.

Oh, and Rachal and Matt kick much ass for getting me some belated birthday gifts. They got me Mario Kart DS, and she made me cupcakes!!


That's all for now. I'll be back soon!

So, I'm all moved out of the hellhole that was my apartment. I guess it wasnt that bad, it was just a depressing place to be. But anyways, my lease ended on the 14th by noon, so I had to get my shit out, and get the place spotless. I'm all moved into my new place, which is in Urbana, just off of Cunningham, by Ned Kelly's Steakhouse. It's a two bedroom that I'm sharing with David, and his cat, Bitzel (I have no idea how to spell it). It was freaked out by the move, since the new place is different and smells different. It was hiding under the bed for the first couple days, as you can see below:

(Big)
But last night, and today it was out more, and is definitely exploring, and getting used to its environment. It even went up to our dining area window, and meowed at some neighbors in the courtyard below:

(Big) (and yes, those are banana boxes at the bottom of the picture. We got tons!)
I'm planning on getting a kitty within the next couple of days. Firstly, I've always wanted one, but until now, havent had the room to support one, and secondly, Bitzel was raised around other cats, and will probably go nuts during the day when no one is around. I saw the most adorable kitten at Petsmart named Nessie. She is so cute, and cuddled up on my chest! Here's a link to her, and a picture:

So small! Anyways, I'm almost done cleaning/organizing my room, so here's some pictures of it:

My book and random shit collection (Big)(Full)

Sort of view into my closet.(Big)

What you see when you enter my room. Futon on the right, TV on the left. (big)(Full)

My little media rack (got it for $10 woot). My legally owned movies are on the top, along with some illegally obtained ones next to them, and my PS2 collection (minus GT4) is on the second shelf. (Big)

My other media shelf thing. TV series and my battery charger on the top. PSP, DS, GBA, and random PC games in the middle. Music CDs, blank media, and computer software on the bottom.(Big)(Full)

My nice 27" TV, along with PS2 w/controllers. And my nifty PSC 1510 on the right, and my backup motherfucking heavy beast of a computer on the left. (Big)

Mah computah desk, complete with dual monitors. And yes, there's about 175 disks worth of pirated DVDs/CDs in the spindles on the floor.(Big)


That was probably more detailed than it needed to be. Oh well. I'll take pictures of the rest of the apartment soon, whenever we finish unpacking everything. I really like the place, except for hte fact that our A/C doesnt work, and cable can be a little spotty.

I've been on a No Doubt kick recently. It all started in the beginning of summer. My car has a 6 CD changer, but unfortunately it's in the trunk. So, when I swap out my CDs in the unit, they're usually going to stay there for a while. Anyways, I decided it was a good idea to get some summer-y CDs. The first CD that came to mind was Tragic Kingdom. (I also picked a Goldfinger greatest hits CD, and Green Day's American Idiot). Then I dug up 'Running' from the depths of my hard drive. And today, my good friend Rachal copied the CD 'The singles 1992-2003' for me, and I discovered even more No Doubt goodness. Then I got kinda depressed that I would never get to see them in concert, or hear a new CD from them.

But then, I scrolled to the bottom of their Wikipedia page, which said:
"With Gwen Stefani's blessing Tom, Adrian, and Tony are currently in the studio writing until Gwen is settled in and ready to record for the band's next album release rumored to be out in 2007.

Recently, it has been released that Gwen Stefani will be scrapping her sophomore album and returning to work with No Doubt for an album due to be released early 2007"

I know I can't trust Wikipedia 100%, but I know that the band members are still real close, and if this rumor is true, FUCKING SWEET!

Uh, in other news, I saw Clerks 2 for my birthday with some of my buddies. It was the best movie I have seen so far this year (XMen 3 is in second place). A bunch of critics and people were offended and appalled, especially by the 'interspecies erotica', but what the fuck, if you've seen Clerks, or any Kevin Smith movie, you know what you're getting into. I really want this poster:


Lastly, on Sunday, I'm heading to Six Flags in St Louis with my buddies David, Rachal, and Tom!!!!!!!!!!! It's going to be awesome. We're going to stay till Tuesday. I have to work for the rest of the week, straight, but hell, it's worth it! I'll make sure to take my camera, so I'll post some pictures sometime next week.

I leave you now with a picture of the absolutely stunning Gwen Stefani:


Bye!