So it seems that to some people that I am just a wealth of computer knowledge, everything from support to programming. I will say that there is a decent chance that I can answer a lot of computer support questions, and on an off chance, I can also answer programming questions. I am by no means a programmer, so I was a bit surprised when I was woken up at 1:40 the other night by my phone ringing. I figured since it was Amy, maybe it was just a call to say hi or something. To my surprise, She asked if I could help one of her friends with a problem he was having with a C++ program. I really haven’t touched C++ since the spring of 98, so I was a bit in the dark on the whole question, and in my half sleepy daze gave some half assed off the wall answer.

I brought another roll of film in to be processed at Walgreens. I know this might seem strange to some, but it was another real roll of film, and I brought it is for the standard next day developing. Little did I realize, 1 hour processing is cheaper than next day, even though I asked, and the girl never responded about the difference in cost. And even more surprising, is the fact that it is cheaper to print 24 digital prints at Walgreens, than to develop a 24exp roll of film. Though out of the whole deal, I was able to find out that Dad’s old camera will still take some fine pictures, and it is worth getting a new case and having some fun with it. I will just need to get my hand on a scanner next and take some of these photos and digitally play with them.

I was finally able to make the Check Engine light go off after cleaning the EGR valve, so that just about made my day. Rotation my tires yesterday also brought me to the conclusion that I really should pick up a 2 ton floor jack, because that little jack in the trunk is pretty useless. My compact spare was nearly empty as well, I still havn’t filled that up, but I figure is i really need some help, thats what AAA is for. I aslo figured out how to adjust the headlights and how to change the foglights, so that was a nice experience, I will finally be able to put in the SilverStar foglights that I have been wanting, I also see that Sylvania might make the cornering lamp I need in the HID color temp. So after this week, I will have fixed the problem in the rear of the car with the leaky back lights burning out, got that idiot light to stop lighting up, and finished the conversion over to the HID bulbs, as well as rotating thte tires and standing on my head.

So last night, I met up with Jason, Darrin, Jenn, Deanna, and Amy at Billys for to watch Grasshoppah play. They really are a pretty good band, and the Mandolin player can certainly rock the house. In addition to the Mario music, there was the Simpsons theme, and a cover of Wheel in the Sky, all of which were awesome. The band put on a pretty lengthy show, and it was well worth the $5 cover to see them. After I got there I was surprised by a tap on the shoulders and a kind word from Lori, I haven’t talked to her in a while, but it was definately nice to see another friendly face. The waitresses were pretty attractive, and so was a good deal of the crowd. I did notice there were a few girls wearing low rise pants, that shouldnt have been, they kept falling down, and I just don’t find that very attractive. There is really only som much of a body that you should see, and when part of it is falling out of your pants, maybe thats a cluse you should change something. But there were so many attractive girls, maybe I need to get on the floor and dance sometime, but not that night.:???:

Tomorrow I get to go down to SouthHaven and see my Aunt Cindy and Uncle Bob, and just got chill out at the beach or something. I really don’t know, but they called and asked. I had nothing better to be doing with my time. I guess I will enjoy that and other things. I will need to make another stop at the Nextel place and see what they have to say about my phone rebooting all the time. I am really tempted to get a new phone, maybe the i530 or the i305. I like the features of the new phones, and I like the better speakers they have in them. If I do go with either of those, I will at least be able to get my 33% discount on the phone, which really ought to help out.

Not that it really matters to my life nor really anybody else that I know, but today ended the 2004 Tour de France. Not surprisingly, Lance took the Yellow Jersey from the Alps to the Champs Elysees, and finally the race is over. It was a good time to watch, and good to talk about. I see that several people follow this just because it is a sport, but not really that many that are that interested in cycling at all. I really do feel that this is probably one of the hardest sports out there, there really isn’t much out there that would be harder than riding a bicycle for 21 days, over 2100 miles around a country, and posting an average speed of 40.5 km/h.

Other than that I am happy to be done with another week of work, not that I really have anything to look forward to in life anymore. Working weekends takes away going out and enjoying time at camp or anything else like that, I can’t really even go out and have a good time like we used to on Friday nights. I can look forward to getting full-time employment somewhere to at least have something more to do with my time than just kill time while not at work. I need to pick a hobby back up, or better yet, go and get some exercise. My lower back has been killing me for a while, and its just getting worse, I suppose if nothing else I should figure out how to strengthen the back.

Work has been relatively uneventful, as of yet there is still no word on who will be replacing Bill. I still do not have that full time job, and it seems that I may be destined to live like this for a while. I am half tempted to check out a lead that a friend was willing to give me for parks department work, if no better than Cook County for now. Working first shift during the week in the NOC, I really don’t know what I am supposed to do to keep busy because the NOC duties certainly don’t keep me busy. The phone was also very quiet again over the weekend, I wonder if they ever published that we provide support on the weekends, today’s 8 calls was a bit slower that I would’ve liked, but I was finally able to finish off Lost Moon. And hopefully I will never have the experience of seeing Catwoman, other than the skin, and that is barely anything, I think the film look horrendous and I hear nothing better on reviews.

Well this past weekend was an enjoyable time, after clocking in a short work week last week. I put in some serious time in the office, 7 hours and 53 minutes in the saddle on Saturday, and some more great time moving my parents to their new home. The Holland Hundred this past weekend was an enjoyable ride, but unfortunately I had to take the ride alone for a third year in a row. I have now had my riding partner pass me by for 2 years in a row, but at least I didn’t post my worst time on the ride either. I would really like to find a riding partner up here in this area, rather than having to rely on a friend from Chicago to come and join me. After this year and my 2 biking events out of the way, I would definately like to pick up some more events to enjoy, possibly even a few fund raising opportunities. I would also like to pick up a group of people to enjoy biking with and a big plus would always be finding an attractive girl to join me on some of this. There were so many attractive females riding the LATE ride, and surprisingly a few riding the Holland Hundred, though I believe that they were just doing the 67 mile option. I would bet there were even more taking the 33 mile route, which didn’t parallel the longer routes for too long.

After the ride, I was a lot less sore than I have been in past years, I will attribute that to the shorts, since I have not been training this year at all. Just the 25 mile LATE ride warmup. Some dinner and discussion of business plans with Tod at Hooters on Saturday night, then the long night of sleep. A nice continuation of the nap on Sunday at work, and the trip to help my parents continue packing and get ready for the movers to show up on Monday morning. Some nice dinner at the Northwoods Lodge, followed by a trip out with Al, Tiny and Laura to celebrate her 21st birthday.

Monday was mostly just spent watching the movers move things and some gathering the rest of the loose stuff in boxes and helping out wherever possible. By 5:00 all of the stuff that the movers had packed up into their truck was unloaded into the approximate rooms that they belonged in. Some time spent moving things to the appropriate areas and then some dinner. After dinner, we got the last remnants of stuff from the old house and did some final reminiscing about the times we enjoyed back there. I only got slightly misty eyed, maybe I already dealt witht he fact that the house was disappearing, and everybody else was just ignoring the fact. After that was done I headed back for home and had to stop at a rest stop for an hour and a half nap before going the rest of the way to work. After surviving the day at work, I was able to get home and flipped on the TV and then crashed out.

Today was nothing too terribly exciting, I was able to watch le Tour de France and see the individual time trial, and watch Lance in the yellow take his advantage over the rest of the field even father, taking the stage by 61 seconds. I believe I found the EGR valve in my car, though I was not able to figure out how to take it apart to clean the valve of the carbon deposits. I would like to just replace the valve but, I do not really want to spend that much money on it right now. $154 for the new part just seems to be a bit excessive, and if that was indeed the EGR valve, I have no idea why it would have cost $75 in labor to install the part. Just a plug and 2 bolts, don’t have to take anything else off or move anything to get to the part. In any case time to end this post. I will need to post some pictures soon from the weekend.

Well over a week since my last update, not entirely that much happened. Things of note I suppose would be clocking in 46.5 hours at my part time job last week, part time my ass. Actually this week I only had 17 hours of work, but I’m back to 42.5 for next week. On the plus side there should definitely be a full time first shift position opening up, so I hope to be eligible for that. Bill has told his superiors at his exit interview, that they should really think about filling new full time positions with the part time folks, as he understands that part time isn’t the way to keep employees around. But I don’t know what that will do, since that is on his way out. Hopefully they take him at least somewhat seriously; I would really like a job with benefits. First shift would also give me my weekends back since it would be a rather standard work week.

Saturday night last week was the LATE ride, I performed that feat again with Todd. It was a great time, contrary to the fact that there are so many stupid riders in the Chicagoland area. I am really surprised that noone got smacked by a Taxi while riding this little ride. The change of route this year back through Lincoln Park and Old Town, was a mistake in my opinion, passing the bars around last call was a nightmare, all the drunken people piling out into the streets and further disrupting the bike traffic. Though there was a lot of wool walking around bar hopping and heading back to cars and apartments. We even got the treat of one girlie flashing us. But all in all it was a great time seeing the great numbers of riders, and the great scenery traveling with us, the pretty girls in spandex, what more could a guy ask for, well aside from watching the sunrise with a pretty lady rather than your buddy. There are pictures of the sunrise in the Gallery.

Sunday was a strange day, random sleeping hours, some packing, some chatting it was a great time. I also had the pleasure of hanging out with Al for a while this week. The week was spent catching up on sleep packing, and just hanging out with some people I don’t get the opportunity to all the time. Seeing Todd and JB was great. Some good times at the old pool hall, though I really like the new place in Crestwood, they have a liquor license which ought to make playing there more fun, and hopefully more selective to keep the riff-raff out. I got to hang out with Dad for a while and that was great. Got to get a sneak preview of the house, as the back door was unlocked when we drove past.

And finally and possibly least important, The Tour de France has been playing out, while Lance Armstrong held tight to his 6th place overall standings through the past week, today was his turn to make a move. During the first real stage of racing through the Pyrenees, he finished second in the stage, putting him second in the overall classification as well. During the final ascent he was able to reach deep and pull ahead of Ulrich and Hamilton, I believe putting about two minutes between himself and his main competition in the GC. As the final week rolls around I am very interested to see what happens, (in my best Superfan impression) and we will see if Lance can accomplish what no other rider has and pull off the six-peat.

So after some work yesterday I went to see King Arthur with Jason. I really enjoyed the movie, it was much contrary to the tales of Camelot and the Sword in the stone. Though several of the ideas were brought into the movie, I suppose everything from legends and stories isn’t made up, but on the other hand I believe that not everything in the movie was factually based. It was definately nice to see the different aspect and ideas about King Arthur. This did bring on a lot of aspects that were covered in the history channel presentation, though I don’t know how much I believe about Gueneviere being the warrior princess type. I prefer to think of Xena in that position, but she does make a rather attractive female lead, and what more do we need out of a female lead in an action/war film. Though her choice of attire when going into the battle scenes was less than believable. Somehow I doubt that a few bands of leather and strategically placed pieces of cloth would be enough to protect anyone against anything in a large mele battle, even against the ranged weapons nothing would really protect them. The role that Merlin took in the film was also an interesting one, far removed from that in Legends, but good nonetheless. I would highly reccommend the film to others and I think that Clive Owen may have a deccent future in this type of film, and I think he would make a pretty good Bond.

After an exciting holiday weekend of work, and some celebration with the family, it is again time to dip back into the working world. Aside from a pair of problems on Sunday the phones were dreadfully silent. I was left to the web and DVDs to keep my sanity of a full day of work. After getting out of there, I headed to the family gathering for some fireworks and BBQ. I over cooked the steaks a bit, they were well done, I blame it on the fact that I’m not used to cooking on the big grill with so much charcoal. Contrary to the last few years, the neighborhood was bustling, and there was activity all around. The neighbors we actually liked were great to spend one last holiday with, and the neighbors we hate, were out of town. I did end up in rare form Sunday night, which took a while on Monday to recover from. I did attempt to capture many of the arial shell fireworks on the camera, I think they were alright, I even attempted a lot of shots with the Star cross filter on.

The rest of Monday was spent cleaning up and getting ready for the big move, lots of packing and throwing stuff out. I really don’t know if I can shove this 12th lb of stuff into my 5 lb apartment. I was unfortunately not able to keep up as much as I would’ve liked with the Tour, but I hope to get more time to pay attention to the upcoming stages. I did have a good time with Al last night. For a change we didn’t go out drinking, just some conversing at the coffee house, followed by an hour of billiards at Pockets, the new pool hall. That was a good time, and something much different than the ghetto of Pro-Tyme. Some food to end the evening, over at The View, I was a bit disappointed at the lack of chicken soup, but the French Dip was delicious.

Today was a long day of driving, I grow weary of the long drives and gas prices. More troubling was the Service Engine light that came on Last night. I will try to figure that out tomorrow on the day I don’t have to get too much done, except work at 6. I come to find some interesting news awaiting me at work, my manager has apparently turned in his 2 week notice, I wonder what will come from this, will it be a merger of the NOC and TSC as we all seem to do the same jobs. I hope that whatever happens that I might gain a full time job out of the deal. Otherwise I was essentially working the TSC alone tonight, as I’m sure it will be most of the week, as Lon is here but only working until 8 in Darrin’s absence. I am definitely sliding into the groove of things here, and I have to look up less and less, just mostly trying to remember all the passwords.

Time to finish listening to le Tour coverage, and hopefully catch the beginning of the Sox game on the GameDay webcast. Maybe even make some sense of the Antenna theory of loop antennas for the AM band. I would really like to be able to listen to the Bears and Sox games on the Radio when they aren’t televised. Webcasting text just doesn’t cut it.

So for those of you whoe haven’t noticed, I have made a change to the site. Mostly on an end you don’t see, but I know that at least 1 person has noticed the change. Comments are still accepted on the site, they are now just moderated. I actually have to approve every comment that comes in before it goes up. I realize that someone missed this and submitted the same text 5 times today, but oh well, if it doesn’t get posted once, it will not get posted several times. Basically I am getting sick of all the SPAM comments on the site.

Yesterday I was not able to tear myself out of bed until shortly before I had to be at work, which was fine. I didn’t need to be at work until 2:00p. Everything at work was going along swimmingly, I was able ot follow up on some things, get all the work done, catch up on things from the day before and even catch the score of the ball game. I got to see Darrin off from USF, I hope that he enjoys his vacation. I would’ve loved to have joined him fishing up in Canada, but alas I could not this year. I hope to have the opportunity some time in the future, even to just go out with Jason and Darrin for a weekend camping and fishing and whatnot. As my shift was ending, I was waiting for Jow to show up, at 10:30 when I was supposed to leave, he still was not there. I then had to go ahead and call the boss to see what the next course of action was. I ended up still at work until midnight before Bill showed up. I tried to explain things to him, but I just ended up staying around until Bill was able to get Jarred to come in. At 2:00a I was finally able to go home.

Today was another day of not too much exciting, I went to check the status of a job application. Apparently I need to reapply again, I harassed Tyler at work, and then got to spend some time with him and his parents back at his place. After just chillin and talking for a while, Tyler his mother and I went to dinner, and then back to his place. After some more TV I headed out to meet the guys downtown. I met them at the Black Rose, we headed to Tini Bikinis, which was no less than a softcore strip club. I was disappointed by this development, as we Jason, so after a little bit there (enought to justify the cover), we headed back to the Black Rose to meet Rusty. After meeting Rusty, we chatted and hung out, then Jason and I had a bit of time to talk. That was enjoyable. I came home and found my shutterfly pictures waiting for me. They turned out awesome. I would post them online, but they were just a test of some pictures that were already posted online. Now I should really be going to bed before I have to be at work in a few hours. Hopefully, it will just be an 8 hour shift, I want to get out and see some fireworks tomorrow night.

Happy Birthday Jon. And good luck in the 2004 tour de France, Lance.