Darrin, your post was amusing. I took the little quiz and here are the results.

I’m Bridge Over Troubled Water!

Which Simon and Garfunkel album are you?

AlterNet: EnviroHealth: Can’t See the Forest For the Towers

While Browsing the web this morning I came upon this article, it brings a few interesting things to light, and makes me bring more of a question up of whether I would want to work nor the Park Service. It really is a shame that there are cell towers popping up all over the place and ruining some of the pristeene views that we have left in our country. I just think about some of the photos I have from the BWCA and Philmont, just imagine those polluted by a obtrusive cell tower poking up in the middle of nature’s goodness. I agree that safety is a concern, but not so much that these drastic changes need tobe made, I personally believe that if you can’t make it out there, you shouldnt be there. That applies to old people, young people, handicapped people, everyone. Part of the freedom that we have come to know and love should be the ability to explore ourselves from within and find our boundaries that dont infringe on other people’s god given rights. I recall being promised the “pursuit of Happiness” s omewhere along the lines, and this kind of pollution of nature damn near does infringe on mine.

Just a shout out to all the ladies in my life that have been experiencing birthdays lately. I will start out with some love down to East Lansing for KT for her birthday last Wednesday. Sunday was some love out to Colorado, for the temporarily displaced Abby, She is back in town now, and we will have to go out and celebrate her getting still older. Monday Jen gets the birthday wishes over in Livonia, maybe we will have to celebrate as well. Tuesday was mom’s big day, and now she is officially old. I hope to find out when her party will be. Last but not least, some love down to Chicago to Kelly on this her 22nd, and golden birthday. I hope all have enjoyed their respective celebrations, and let me know when we will celebrate.

So After another decently long week, I have had the opportunity for a bit of time to relax, and what better way is there to do that, then to spend some time with the family. I was eased into some more things at work on Weds, and got some more detailed explanations of some things going on. Thankfully Jeff was around to ask some questions of, and get some short, sweet, to the point answers on. I was also able to take a lunch which I was not able to do on Monday due to his absence, which was repeated today, though I asked and Tom told me to take lunch from 4-5. But anyhow, after Jeff took off, it left Stacy and I alone here to handle all of the world’s problems, well all of USF’s problems anyhow. There was a bunch of problems that seemed to peak through and cause some issues throughout the evening, and I was unable help everybody, but I was good enough to get those calls logged and someone resolved them.

Wednesday morning also provided me the opportunity to take young Abby to the Airport in Lansing. That was a long day, just having had to get up at 6:00 to get to her house by around 6:30. But it all worked out and I even had some opportunity to clean my apartment.

Thursday was a nice change almost to get back to being lazy over in the NOC. There was really not too much to be done or said. Tom asked how things went the first few days that he was out of town, and I was easily able to tell him the truth. While working the NOC I was bored off my arse, and got through the mail and the Nextel phones in style with plenty of time left after 5 to help Darrin out. I was still providing Tod with some support for his PC that bit it the week before, mostly getting WinXP installed on the new hard drive. I was successfully able to slipstream SP2 onto a XP disc for installation on a large hard disk. That made me happy, I think eventually we got pretty much everything that Tod needed up and going, and eventually got his outlook data restored and all. I bite to eat and some beverages with Darrin after work on Thursday provided a nice opportunity to relax and just kick back a little bit.

Friday was mostly spent cleaning up the apartment, getting some food, and relaxing. After a while I gave dutch a call and we went shopping to get me some new clothes. Yes, I had to take advantage of his style to help me get some new duds for work. And best of all I like the stuff I got and it makes some nice combinations of shirts and ties. After that we headed back to wherever they live, and did a little wine sampling. That was an enjoyable time, the stuff that Jason’s parents bottled. After that I headed home to do a little more cleaning up, and then a bit more shopping for my mother’s birthday. I hope she liked what I got her, she seemed happy when she opened it on Sunday, but I don’t know, she is so hard to buy gifts for. Anyhow, after that I went and met up with the gang over in East town for some beverages and Dogs. It was a nice relaxed evening and I was able to just kick back and enjoy myself. I accidentally tipped the waitress a little too much though. I thought I gave her a $5 for a $3 drink, but it ends up it was a $10. She was very thankful and I even got a little peck on the cheek for it. Contrary to popular belief, that was not the goal of the tip, but really just a mistake.

Saturday was a quiet and quick day at the office, again doing the NOC stuff. After work, I was able to meet up with my parents at the Kirby Grill in Grand Haven, where we wandered around a bit, then headed to Old Boys Brewery for some drinks and food. Both were excellent, we next hit Meijer for some wine, and then headed to the GV football game. We tailgated for a little while, then headed in to observe the near shutout of the Ashland Eagles, unfortunately GV let down their guard in the closing seconds of the game and allowed a TD. After the game and low fireworks, the parents checked into a hotel and then we hit the Pub for a nightcap. Sunday was a celebration mom’s 50th year, as well as a trip to the Meijer gardens and the Amway grand for the end of the Bears game. Who would’ve thought that the Bears would be able to pull through and beat the Packers at Lambeau. Which after some laziness brings me to today, I have spent a good deal of my time here in the office on the phone, and did’t even get my full lunch hour. I have touched around 30-35 tickets, counting phone calls and ATGs, which I believe should top what some of the day shift folks had, and it is still 2.5 hours left to the shift.

I want to get out and get some more photos, both with the SLR and the UZI. For the time being my time is not budgeted best for doing those things. The lack of a couple days in a row off, and the weekdays that I do have, keeps me at bay. I want to get back to the Gardens to take some SLR photos of the beautiful flowers, as well as get some photos of fish jumping if possible down at the fish ladder. The fall colors will be coming soon, and if I have the time I would love to head up to the UP to the copper peninsula for some spectacular photos of the changing colors. But for now I weary of typing here, there will be photos to come from the game, and maybe even some from the gardens if I get my hands on the photos I took with Dad’s camera.

Well it is official. I came in to work today and sat down at my desk and fired up the PC. I have finally gotten my own desk in my own partial cubicle, a PC with lots of problems, and a phone with voicemail. I will need to personalize my cube, as it looks like a desolate wasteland right now, with just a phone, a PC, and a VT(which doesn’t belong here). But it is nice to be back into the swing of working 40 hours a week and, soon to be getting the pay checks that show it. After getting here it was a bit of work to get things configured correctly on the PC, and required the assistance of Dan, so that was awesome to get going. I also realized that I would not be able to take calls tonight without talking to Tim and getting me set up to log in to the Cisco Unity software on my personal extension. I had to make bit more difficult and let him know that I still needed to be able to log into the NOC phone for th 3 daysa week that I will be working that shift. So after a bit of work by everybody, I was all set up and ready to help people on the phone, but I did not know how to answer several of the daytime support questions, nor how to deal with all those ATGs.

I guess lately it has been exciting to know that I will be getting full time and I have been mentally preparing for that. Otherwise I have gone ahead and taken another step forward into the new millennium and I now have a subscription to Sirius satellite radio. That is a cool device and I am very satisfied with the programming at this point. The whole NFL Sunday Drive is a cool feature to allow you to listed to the NFL games on the local broadcast of your choice, only problem was the delay in broadcasting. But the other selections of music and entertainment and news are excellent. I don’t think that I will be disappointed with this. I will just need to figure out how to mount the cradle in the car and how to mount the antenna outside of my apartment.

I still need to go and replace my cellular telephone, and my EGR valve, and tires. But all of that will come in time, I cannot wait to have my weekends back so that I will be able to go out and visit some friends on the weekends when they actually have some time away from their normal schedules. But for the time being I will keep on truckin and enjoy knowing that I am now insured. For any people interested, I have been in the process of converting pictures from the pictures page over to the gallery, and I added some photos from the Labor Day weekend to the gallery as well.

Rusty passed this link on to me yesterday. After I finally had the desire to read through it, I was thoroughly amused by the whole concept of it. Why don’t you check it out and see what you think Dating to Save.

Well to start off, the beginning of the week was boring. there was not much that I did. I sat around watched TV and caught up on some sleep. I also had some time to catch up on my bloody marys. The guys were all involved with classes and work, so I was not really able to go out with them, they were not up for it. Wednesday I did get to go out for a bite to eat with Abby and Erin, what a couple of cuties. After eating and wallowing in the lack of being gainfully employed, I helped Tod resolve some of his computer issues and a bottle of wine later, I was back on my way home.

Thursday I dragged myself into work at 2:00. I was happy to see that paycheck waiting for me on the desk. After a decently lengthy meeting about new EBR procedures, we apparently have some actual NOC-like work to do. I was pulled aside by Tom K, he explained that there was going to be an full-time opening in the NOC. He also explained that he considers me to be the prime candidate for that position. There was only yet to be discussed the issue of pay and hours. I explained that I was primarily interested in getting my weekends back and gaining a full time position. That was next followed by Tom M pulling me aside to offer me the full-time TSC position that I applied for. That would be great and put me at M-F with a semi-normal schedule, full time pay and benes. That was just absolutely wonderful news. This was somewhat celebrated with a trip to Brann’s with Darrin.

Friday was a painfully early day. After recieving about 2 hours of sleep following work and drinks Thursday night I had to be back at the office by 6am. That wasn’t such a bad way to work, to get all the hours together like that to get bigger chunks of time off. After working with Tom on a potential schedule most of the day, I discovered what appears to be an Arabic website, registered to someone in Iran. There is a direct link to my pictures page from a post on the site, the link is the only thing that I can understand on the site. Following work, I headed to gather my camping stuffs and headed up to OSR for the evening of fun and activities up there. This was fun and I even got some fishing in, but it has turned into a rather long day. It has truly been a while since I have been able to survive so long on so little sleep. It has been about 2 hours of sleep in 60 hours. I wanted to sleep this morning at work, but everytime I felt like I would be able to, there was a phone call to keep me up. All in all there were a lot of calls today, more so than I have been recently dealing with on the weekend. I was able to catch up on the ending of Season1 of 24. I was also able to go out with Abby and have dinner, the first time I have ever dined at the Macaroni Grill. It was delicious, now I just want to get back out to camp to enjoy the time I have remaining out there this weekend.