Z.Monkey’s Blog

As no one can read this right now. Isn’t 100Mb a month a little meager? Well I guess that’s why on want to setup something else and start posting there. Of course now I just have to figure out how to transfer my old posts over there, setup user logins, define a way to create new accounts, post ads (thank you google… now what is my adsense password?), create a new CSS and other such junk. I’ll try to work on that tonight. On a side note, I’m playing around with using del.icio.us to keep track of my bookmarks (and using direc.tor to actually look at them. Web2.0 is cool). I’ll probably try and add a way to make these links publicly available. There is so much I can play around with on the new site! Now I just have to find the time… perhaps tonight?

To clarify a hockey rule, the post is not in the net. Sigh.

Right now I don’t make minimum wage and have not since I was 16 (15?) when I work at BM. But I am in favor of an increase because it will eventually mean that everyone is paid more (mostly because of the ‘I’m that guys manager and he makes more than me?!’ problem that will arise). People should be paid a living wage. Now someone put together some maps illustrating which states have higher than the federal minimum wage (which is %5.15 by the way) and which don’t. I found it amusing.

More information on minimum wages by state can be found on the DOL site.

So I finished the last supervising class (the one I told you about before. I setup trackbacks to them but I’m not really sure what that does). The morning of the last session we had presentations on the FMLA and the ADA. I pretty sure the most useful thing I found out was that voyeurism, pyromania and kleptomania are not recognized disabilities. Now I can finally fire that pervert without worries. After a fairly nice lunch we were all required to make a 3 minute presentation. I panicked and brought mine to an abrupt end, fleeing the stage in tears. Sigh. You’d think I’d have gotten better at that sort of thing. It all ended with an awkward hug, which was given to me (and everyone else) by the lead presenter when we were presented with our certificates. As a plus I was rewarded with a nice new mug (picture below). After my ride in I rewarded myself with a nice warm mug of freshly made (bad) coffee topped with excessive amounts of whipped cream. Ah.

Now, I ended up riding my bike into work today because we needed to get the wire that connects the gas tank cover (in the back of the car) to the lever (in the front of the car) replaced or fixed. (This will probably take the mechanics 30 or possibly 45 seconds to do and we’ll probably get charged for 2 hours of work) I packed up a bag and had a nice slow ride in. The weather was gorgeous. I mean really nice. Well the only issue is that I forgot my god damned sandals at home! Now I get to sit around until the guy with the bag full of sandals shows up to work. I figure I can buy a pair off of him and leave them in my office for emergencies.

I’m glad that I did not buy MLBTV as it would have been a waste of $80. We get just basic (really basic) cable because we don’t feel that spending $40 more dollars a month for shit we wont watch just to get NESN, ESPN, and a few others is worth while. I had thought about picking up MLBTV and some hardware and just stream the games to our TV from the Internet via our computer. Problem solved! Money saved! We never ended up doing this (because I’m lazy) and it turns out that’s a good thing because I’m in the home market of the Red Sox and MLBTV would have blacked out all Red Sox games. MLB you are dumb fucks.

Ah, my sandal dealer has arrived. Now my day can begin.

[I’m glad I saved this post in a text doc as Eponym decided not to save my post. Jerks.]

Right. So here is an article on game console power usage. According to the author, you could spend more than $2 a year just by plugging in your XBOX360. The wii’s not up on the list (as it doesn’t exist yet) but I have a feeling that it will also be up there in cost as it will have the ‘always on’ functionality. Not sure how useful that will be but…

On another note, I turned on the TV this morning to see if the World Cup had started for the day (no, damn it) and came across a televangelist name Pastor Benny. He was trying to raise money for his ‘Miracle Crusades’. Crusades? Here is the definition for crusade that I got off of Answers.com.

cru·sade (krÅ«-sād‘)
n.

1. often Crusade
   Any of the military expeditions undertaken by European Christians in
   the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries to recover the Holy Land from the
   Muslims.
2. A holy war undertaken with papal sanction.
3. A vigorous concerted movement for a cause or against an abuse. See synonyms at campaign.

intr.v., -sad·ed, -sad·ing, -sades.

To engage in a crusade.

Now I may be wrong but this he is (1) probably not Catholic, (2) most likely without a papal sanction, (3) not murdering people (one hopes), (4) not fighting an abuse, and (5) he is not a movement. So why use the word crusade? Beside it has bad connotations. Generally, though I think this is another children’s crusade (only he will be taking people’s money and not making money by selling people’s children into slavery (one hopes)). I mean he straight up asked people to give him money so that he could bring his ‘Crusade’ to the world! I wonder how much he charges at the door to these events? I bet he doesn’t lose any money. I mean how else could he afford to use the Banknorth Garden? Here’s an article on his scammery. These people just make me angry.

Also, if you want to see Pat Robertson leg press a ton click here. But that’s a completely different ballgame.

Had fun this weekend but I’m not looking forward to this week (I’m sick of this place) with the following exceptions: Hockey tonight (can I score more goals?), Softball tomorrow (against Zoology which should be funny) and Thursday, and Heidi finding out the details on her (possible) new job. Crap, I have the last supervising thing tomorrow and I have to do a presentation.

Fuck you people. Why are you wasting our time by passing stupid laws. Try making laws that protect us or make our lives better, not laws that make us fearful bigots.

• Fines for indecency raised by 10x. Parents we are protecting your children from your own bad parenting.
• Flag burning amendment. We need to stop people from have the right to make a symbolic statement.
• Of course there was/is (stupid House) the gay marriage amendment.

My stupid mail program decided to stop working so I trying to switch from using POP to iMAP. Nothing going so far. I guess that mean I can just stop responding to email. I hate email programs. I should have started using iMAP years ago so I wouldn’t have to worry about back up my email or configuring folders and such on new computers. Sigh. Whatever.

How about a summary of what’s happened to me lately. I apologize in advance for any bad grammar you may see.

Saturday: Fussball. Went for a run in the rain and then some other stuff. I’m not sure what.

Sunday: Fussball, then over to Jeff and Jared’s to drop off a lasagna, then hung out in front of the coffee shop reading and listening to all the fuck faces driving around (but only after we watch Ortiz’s walk-off homer). I’m still amazed about how many people like yelling at pedestrians while driving in their automobiles. Would you say that if you were walking past me? If not then you should shut the fuck up. Then back to Jefred’s (Jarf’s?) place for some lasagna and some baseball watching… there being a doubleheader on. Then back home.

Monday: Went to work but was able to ‘watch’ the US v. Czech Rep. game with the MatchCast thing (found on the yahoo worldcup site). Work was kind of (mostly) a pain but I made it through til 4:45 when Jared picked me up and we had PBR’s and Dublin nachos for dinner (thank you Pabst for validating me… you don’t know how good it makes me feel). It was kind of romantic. This was followed by Softball. Well, sort of. We had batting practice but then only one guy from the other team showed up so we split our team in two and scrimmaged for little bit. Fun but not as fun as a actual game would have been. Then back home to watch Jeopardy and consume fluids, then a short trip to the library to pick up a book (just some tripe, but I’m thinking of reading ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ next (translated version). Anyone read it?) on the way to the Arena. Hockey.

Hockey is fun. I ended up only playing center for one or two shifts (my face-offs are better) then got relegated to left wing where I was thoroughly unproductive; only two goals! Jared being the cause of both of these (to give props where props are due). Plus I had some really good passes to spring Jamie and had a couple of other scoring chances. Yeah! We ended up winning 3-0 with Jeff scoring our other goal. He put it in and was so surprised he took out the net; I thought he hurt himself but he’s okay. After the game it was off to the smoke-free (yeah) Barley Pub for a celebratory beers. I only had a 7-Up because a stick to my throat towards the end of the game had made it difficult for me to breath and painful to swallow, plus a little woozy. Finally we went home and I was forced to take a shower because I smelled like dead.

Tuesday: Woke up and did a little reading, took a shower and got dress. Jumped online to check my email and check out what time the train was leaving for Boston and get my reservation number. Lucky me, I missed my train. Fucking waste of $30. I hate it when I ‘m stupid. I ended up driving down to Revere and taking the Blue Line into Boston. Why was I going down to Boston? Well, I had an interview. Which reminds me my phone is in silent mode. I got down there a bit early so I walked around and found a pub that was showing the world cup (and full of Europeans, Brazilians and Japanese, which made lunch more interesting). The food was really good too and it only hurt a little bit to eat it! After that it was off to the interview, which I think went well. The build is beautiful, the people are nice, it’s in a really nice location (right next to the Fenway) and it would give me a really nice thing to put on my resume (plus they’d pay me more than $13/hr). If I do get offered it’ll be difficult to say no, though it will fuck up thing at my current job quite a bit. Then I went back home but first a rant:

Ahem. Fuck the MBTA. They forced me to buy a ‘CharlesTicket’ (minimum $5) to get on the T at Wonderland. But not one stop on the Green line between Hynes and Gov’t Center accepted the so called ‘CharlesTicket’ (I stopped at everyone) so I was forced to buy a token (after walking like 30 feet to find the nearest ATM). Bastards. There were several people standing next to the sign saying ‘This stop does not accept ‘CharlesTickets” holding tickets and looking confused, couldn’t they tell us ‘If you buy this ticket you will be fucked later. We hope you come back to Boston so you can use up the money we forced you to put on this ticket’. In case you were wondering I looked angry.

There were cows all over Boston for some reason (Merrill Lynch?). This was my favorite one:

Wednesday: What? It just started! Crap.

[Update] - Found out why there are cows. It’s a Jimmy Fund thing. There will be an auction in September if you want to buy me that COW!

I was reading through some news this morning and I can across this article on a new type of battery that will possibly recharge in seconds and never have to be replaced. This is good because it means that more people could end up using them and stop throwing away all those heavy metals (disposable batteries). Plus I could recharge my DS in seconds. Woo! I wonder if the weigh will be comparable?

I sent this link to Ack over google chat but forgot to post it yesterday. I is nice of google to save our conversation… or is it? If you like Hockey I’d recommend clicking on the link (and watching November, January, and February).

It is almost the weekend and I am excited for it once again.

and not a jacket.

Alrighty, so Heidi is out tutoring and I should be watch Hockey/Baseball* but I decided to play around with what I was working on at work. Loser, right? Well, I have an interview on Tuesday at a place that (I think) is wicked cool (I’d link but I’m too lazy and there is something to be said about privacy (at least from your employers)) and I want to finish up a project that I am working on to show them that I do good work. Perhaps when I finish up with it I’ll show everyone (I cannot right now because it is hidden away on our development server). Look it says ‘Loading…’! Ah. Javascript and DOM are cool.

That reminds me I need to respond to Ack’s comment. ‘Ass, but you are right. I’m drinking and working right now and it’s pretty okay.’

The horror! There is a Prairie Home Companion movie coming out. Glarhffffdle. If there is a movie I never want to see it is that. I’d watch anything else to get out of that (assuming I could not get away with murdering the person try to force me into the movie theater).

*The Redsox Yankees game has been rained out.

For some reason my head and ear ache this morning (my right if you must know). I’ve drank some water and taken some Advil but to no avail. Normally, I’d say ‘fine, I’ll just struggle through today, go home and be a bum tonight’ but we have another softball game tonight, so I guess I need to suck it up and try not to feel crappy. Last night’s hockey game was a little rough, but hopefully our team will figure out how to play together and everything will end up okay. The score was 4-1 them. I had a pretty good game but I don’t I was getting back fast enough helping out the D.. Skate harder! Someone had their first goal last night but I will not say who (don’t want to steal any thunder!).

I’m going to try to have a positive attitude today. I think there is something in ‘pretending everything is okay makes everything okay’ idea. Stupid work. Great off to a great start!