It just got worse...I totally forgot that I had the phone number and access code for the conference on my work laptop, which was all the way at work, and I had no other way of getting the info. SO I drove back to work anyway, for the 3rd time today. FML

The morning was actually pretty fun and interesting, but wow did it go downhill from there. Most recent development: I have a teleconference tonight with our China plant, and although it's supposed to be at 8:00, the meeting organizer scheduled it for 7:00 on our work calendars, so I drove all the way back to work and got everything set up, only to find out I'm an hour early. I only drove in because I didn't want to use my minutes on my own phone for this conference, but when I drove back home and checked my minute usage, I found out that I use, like, none of my anytime minutes. I have 450 anytime minutes (basically the minutes that get charged if it's not 9:00 PM or it's not the weekend), and last month, out of those 450 minutes, I used 31 of them. So I drove all the way back to work and went through this whole debacle because I didn't know I still probably have about 400 minutes to use up. LOL. AHHHHH!

And we had a happy hour today for work, and I didn't go because I thought I would be going back to the office for this teleconference! We're not allowed to go back to the building if we've had anything to drink, and if I called in from home it would be totally fine. W. T. F.

At least this morning was cool. My company was the sponsor of an Equity and Diversity breakfast at the University of Minnesota, and as a U of M alum, Rosemount chose me as a delegate for this thing, so I basically got a free breakfast and socialized at the MacNamara Alumni Center all morning and it counted as work time. And good old Bobby Bruininks was there too and gave a big speech! I still think he looks like a duck. I think it's just that his lips stick out more than usual, which makes me think it's a beak, thus duck. That probably makes no sense at all, but I don't care, I just want this ridiculously long day to be over! But I still have to talk about process capabilities and Mann-Whitney tests before I am allowed to sleep. More like Snorefest Sleepabilities and Yawn-Snoozney tests, AMIRITE!? lawl.

That's right folks, it is almost time for Nogfest 2009 to begin. Some of you may have been a part of Nogfest 2008, and I think the final result of it was pretty decent. I still think the recipe needs work though, and I aim to fix that this year!

So for those of you who don't know the story, my Grandpa used to make awesome Tom and Jerries (which is basically egg nog + booze) every year for Christmas, and I want to keep up the tradition on his behalf. However, I have a lot of work to do on my recipe, so I dedicate a season to perfecting it. And I need taste-testers! So if you enjoy booze, as well as the company of The Waller (and possibly others!), then you should totally be a part of Nogfest 2009.

I had my recipe all typed out and everything, and now I can't seem to find it...I think I remember what I did last year though. Powdered sugar. I mixed, like, a pound of powdered sugar in with about 12 eggs and added some nutmeg and cinnamon, along with the standard rum and brandy. It needs to be spicy, but it should also be sweet. And hopefully you don't really notice the fact that you're basically drinking raw eggs. That may sound gross, but seriously, a good Tom and Jerry is amazing.

Are there any closet Tom and Jerry makers out there? I need advice!

Wow I am now complete...I have finally personally witnessed the glory that is the needlessly heated community meeting. Tonight was the night of our condo association's annual meeting, and since I haven't made any of the meetings yet, I figured it would be good to attend. Now first of all, I was by far the youngest one there...there was one other guy who is probably in his 40s, and everyone else is basically almost retired or definitely DEFINITELY retired. At first there wasn't a whole lot of fanfare, but then we opened up the gaping wound of discussion topics, the topic that people can't even think about without their blood pressure hitting 200 over 150...yes, that's right people, I'm talking about the topic of having to move your car when the garage gets cleaned!!!

Now most of the people in this meeting thought the same way I did about this, and that is this: it's really not a big deal to move your car, especially if there are signs up all over the place weeks ahead of time, which there were. However, out of 100 or so parking spots, 22 cars were still left in their slots on the day of the cleaning this week, so we started talking about the possibility of fining people who leave their cars in the garage on cleaning day. And then (and this is where it all went downhill), the 40-something guy informed everyone that he purposely didn't move his car because he thought it was perfectly clean in his spot, and it's his property which he can do whatever he wants to with (which isn't true, it's half-owned by the association), and plus, Wednesday is just not a very good time for him to move his car. Oh man, people were SO MAD. I really wish I could have taped the meeting after that. The lady behind me kept making frustrated "OHHH!"s all the time, and at one point she finally said to the guy, "YOU'RE OUT OF LINE!!" Seriously, she said that. I never thought I'd actually get to see someone say that at a simple meeting like this, but it happened. Awesome. And then he fired back with "Oh you think you're so smart?" At this point, the president had no choice but to hammer her gavel (or, more accurately, can of Diet Coke) and bring the madhouse back into order. We ultimately decided to table the discussion, much to my extreme disappointment. A few people had already walked out of the meeting, probably because they were trying to figure out why they were listening to this when their couch was, like, 50 feet away.

I really can't get over that guy's argument that Wednesday just isn't a good time for him to move his car...guess what, there's this thing called Tuesday which usually happens before Wednesday! Maybe you could use this "Tuesday" to move it ahead of time! It's not like there's no room for our cars...there's an entire outside parking lot for our building for crying out loud!

Anyway, this was just too awesome for me to call it a waste of time. I don't think I'll go to another association meeting, but if I do, I'm totally sneaking a video camera in there next time.

I'm feeling much better today, mainly because I was finally able to sleep through the entire night last night. For the last 4 or 5 nights I was waking up every hour or two and actually sleeping for maybe half the night. I think the fever is completely gone now, and all that remains is all the junk in my lungs and my nasal passages. I guess that counts as pneumonia? Having crap in your lungs? All I know is that I haven't been this sick in YEARS. Usually I'll get a bad cold that really hits me for a day or two, and then I feel fine again. But this time around, it lasted a lot longer. I dealt with some nausea too, but on an empty stomach. It was more than likely H1N1, and that thing is nasty.

Anyway, enough gross talk about my health. When I go back to work tomorrow I'm going to have a million things to take care of. I just ordered this new soldering station which resulted from a project I had been working on ever since I started my job. Part of the reason it took this long is because at one point, a couple of engineers left the company at the same time and the rest of us left were spread pretty thin, so I was told not to work on this project for a while. The other part of the problem was that my project was to fix an unfixable process. After many, many hours of testing, I finally realized this, so I wrote up a big long report detailing all of my evidence and sent it to my boss and asked her for a bunch of money to buy something else, lol. She let me do it, and the new equipment I ordered was supposed to be here on Friday. Now I'm all ready to get back into the swing of things, and this will get me back in the groove quickly.

Anyway, thank you all for the well-wishes. I'm sure glad this didn't happen LAST weekend...what a disaster that would have been!

I've come down with a fever and all the stuff that accompanies the usual sickness...I had to go home on Wednesday at noon and I haven't made it back to work yet. I feel better today, but my fever is still at 101.9, and I'm not sure what it was before that since I just bought a thermometer. And speaking of that, the directions on the thermometer say that you can take it either orally or rectally....uh good to know I guess! Who would honestly think it would be easier to stick that thing up your hoohah?

It was funny...when I was driving to Target to buy this thermometer, I started feeling really hot and started thinking, wow, this fever is really bad! All I do is move around a little bit and suddenly my body temperature goes way up? I was starting to worry about it when I noticed that my car heater was turned on high and I didn't even realize it. Yeah, typical Dan moment.

I also picked up The Dark Knight for my viewing pleasure while I am sick. I was hoping to find Braveheart and Sunshine too since I've been meaning to buy both for a while. Why didn't I think of that before my birthday? D'oh.

Now a totally different topic...is anyone going to watch the Seth MacFarlane comedy hour thingy tonight, or whenever it's on? Now Family Guy is a really funny show, but this guy is just going nuts with everything associated with Family Guy. Yes, it's a novelty to see people on a cartoon show in real life doing the voices of everyone. But is that going to continue to be funny after a couple episodes? Family Guy is not as funny as it was, partly because I think Seth MacFarlane has spread himself too thin. The Simpsons never had any spinoffs, and that's part of the reason why it continues to be funny after 20 years. Actually, it did have one spinoff; it was called Family Guy! OH BURN. I did like Family Guy, but Seth is just selling himself out now, in my opinion. Not too long ago, he pulled the "don't you know who I am?" line at a club when he wasn't let in, which is kind of the ultimate in douchebaggery. I think I've lost a lot of respect for him since then.

Anyway, my brave soul of a friend Matt is coming over to my place tonight to hang out, which is a very good thing. I can only stay isolated from humanity for so long.

And of course, happy birthday to myself! Before I head out for the evening, may I share with you what the first Halloween was like...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8Rp9FZUkNI

I just heard that Andrew Lloyd Webber has prostate cancer. Damn it! Andrew Lloyd Webber is the man. He's the guy who wrote The Phantom of the Opera, a musical I didn't see until only a couple years ago and it was one of the greatest experiences ever. I purposely didn't watch the movie when it came out, even though I knew nothing of the story, mainly because I heard the movie was pretty bad and I wanted to see it live instead. I saw one hell of a live version too...I saw it in Las Vegas when I went there, and I can virtually guarantee that of all of the young 20-something guys that have been to Las Vegas, I am one of, oh, eighty bajillion guys who went to a musical when he was there.

Seriously, what an amazing show. I'm not ashamed to admit that I loved it, even if I lose a bunch of man points for saying that. I was actually at lunch once where a Phantom of the Opera song was playing in the background, and I said "hey isn't this from Phantom of the Opera?" and one of my 93X-loving coworkers said "shouldn't you not know that?" Ha, kiss my rear end, foo.

I just came back from watching Paranormal Activity, and yes, it really is only 1:30 in the afternoon. Saturday morning might be the most unscary time to watch a movie, but dayummmm, this was definitely a scary show. I've been trying to think of movies I've seen that genuinely scared me, and I think this one ranks up there. On top of the list is definitely The Exorcist, which I would say is definitely the scariest movie of all time. I remember being really scared by The Mothman Prophecies a while ago, but I saw it again recently and thought it was incredibly lame. But there's something about the whole "based on a true story" thing that gets to you. The Exorcist is based on an exorcism case in St. Louis back in 1949, though Paranormal Activity isn't really based on anything besides general paranormal creepiness and stuff like that. The Mothman Prophecies is heavily based on true events, though, where a whole community of people are convinced that they saw this creepy moth thing in their town.

So now I'm genuinely curious...how real are these things? Stuff like demonology, ghost stories, etc...is it real? And what a perfect time to be talking about this, since it's almost Halloween! But really, nothing is scarier than turning a quarter century old, AMIRITE!? I've never really bought into the whole "Halloween is scary" thing because my birthday isn't scary, though as I get older, that becomes less true, lol.

So let's talk about ghosts, demons, and all that scary stuff. How much of it can we really brush off as a squirrel stuck in your wall making that scratching noise, or that people were really just dreaming or hallucinating when they saw something unexplainable?

For starters, something less scary, an out-of-body experience...there's a story of a woman named Pam Reynolds who underwent a surgery that required her body temperature to be lowered to 60 degrees, her heart stopped, her breathing stopped, and all of the blood drained from her head. i.e. she was, for all intents and purposes, dead. During a surgery like this, it's not possible for her to perceive anything at all. Yet when she awoke from the surgery, she was able to describe everything that happened and even drew a detailed picture of the bone saw used to cut her head open.

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence01.html

Or how about the scarier story of a real-life exorcism...the lady in this article is not named, but while she was possessed, she would actually float about a half a foot above the air. She was able to speak Latin and Spanish despite not knowing the languages at all. She knew details about people in the room with her performing an exorcism on her, including the manner of death of one exorciser's relative. She was also able to move random objects in the room.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=58835

If I wasn't lazy I might look up some more stuff, but I encourage you to visit www.yourghoststories.com to get a good taste of all of the ghost and demon stories out there. Another particularly scary story from that site...there's a ship called the Queen Mary, which was in service during World War II and saw about 50 deaths on the ship. Since then, the ship has become extremely haunted. One little girl who was on the ship back in the day was riding down a slide in the pool area of the ship when the ship suddenly struck a wave, and she fell off and broke her neck and died. People supposedly see her wandering around the pool to this day. Oddly enough, for some reason there was also a cook who was thrown into an oven because the sailors hated his cooking, and you can still hear random screams coming from the direction of that oven. You can tour the ship these days if you'd like, and you can even SLEEP on the ship. Get this: one guy who stayed there one night paid a steward to find him a willing female companion to stay with him that night. He got his female companion, and in the morning, the man was nowhere to be found, and the corpse of his female companion was all that remained. Maybe he was just a psycho who wanted to scare people on this ship, but still...weird.
What do you think of all this? Do any of you have any real ghost stories? Personally I have none, but there is no better time than now to share yours!

Wow, only 2 posts for all of September....honestly though it's because I was putting off what I said I would do in my 1,500th post, and I've changed my mind about that. I said I was going to go through every year of my journal and pick my favorite post from every month, but damn if that's not a huge undertaking. That is about 1,500 posts to sift through, total. I don't want to go back on my promise, though, so I will complete it soon. I've just been really lazy about updating this thing, and now that I'm writing in it again, I realize how much I've missed good ol' livejournal! I've taken too long of a break from this.

So what's new in my life? Oh, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, etc etc etc. I'm loving the new condo and loving the fact that traffic is a thing of the past. There's literally no traffic I run into when I go to and from work. Me likey. The extra space is great too, and so is not throwing away all my money every month!

Well I don't know about you, but I'm really really glad that it's fall. This weekend was the first time that it felt cool outside, like genuinely cool, and it was great. It's odd how I can barely handle 80 degrees, yet I love 20 degrees, or even more. At least you have options when it gets cold outside...put clothes on! What do you do when it gets hot? Take clothes off? Well ok, I guess there's nothing wrong with that, but you can't exactly do that everywhere. Since I'm a cheapskate, rather than running my AC when it gets hot, I just sleep with 1 sheet and leave the big blanket on the floor. But that big cozy blanket is awesome! Now that it's cool outside I can finally use it again. Oh yeah, plus, there's football. And a bunch of holidays (including my birthday!). Yeah fall is awesome.

I've started reading a series recommended to me by Mr. Mark Olstad, the Song of Ice and Fire series, which it turns out is pretty amazing. I'm only 100 pages in so far but I feel like I've read so much more than that. I've read such dumb garbage books for too long, and I finally wanted to read something with some depth. I'm thankful for the appendix in this book because the cast of characters is HUUUUGE. I guess I'm just used to there being 5 or 6 main players in the story, not like 6 full families of people. But I love it. I'm so happy to be reading something worthwhile finally. Thanks Mark! Apparently this series is so good that it's becoming an HBO miniseries too, which is pretty sweet. And one other thing, if you want another reason why livejournal is awesome, maybe you should read the Song of Ice and Fire's author's LIVEJOURNAL. Which he updates REGULARLY.

grrm

Anyway, that's all for now. I'm off to Mark and Brigitte's place to watch the Season 4 premiere of Dexter, wooot!

Let's continue!

January 19, 2005 - True story
One of the downfalls of being an engineering major.....

February 8, 2005 - A really vague post
A post that made me laugh, as did the comments below.

March 28, 2005 - Hey dude, YOU ARE AN IDIOT
Nothing beats a good awkward bathroom story.

April 20, 2005 - Job interview
At the time, a bunch of people on livejournal were doing this lame, sappy thing where if you commented on the person's journal, that person would give you a compliment. I decided to do the exact opposite and promised to insult everyone who commented on my post. And I lived up to the promise!

May 10, 2005 - A tetris-themed livejournal post
This is one of my favorite posts of all time. I related everything going on in my life to the game of tetris which I had just recently started playing again. It kind of makes me want to play tetris again, actually.

Honorable mention: May 6, 2005 - Cleaning out the picture folder
I couldn't not include this one. Or if you want a non-double negative version of that, I had to highlight this somehow. Many props to Jessica Cass for her photography skills that made this post possible.

June 6, 2005 - I have an important announcement.
For those of you who have no idea what this is about, there was a weekend where my friend Dave was randomly saying the name of a bunch of countries with a deep, dramatic voice, and somehow Spain was the one that stuck. We still say it, years later. (this isn't really much of a post, more of a tribute to one of my favorite inside jokes of all time. Ben's LJ hacking is pretty funny though)

July 17, 2009 - Now I've done it!
If you want to know what I look like without any facial hair, this is your chance!

August 23, 2005 - In case you missed it...
This is actually just a redirect to another post by Sarah, a post where Dave, Jason and I commented 100+ times. It's easily my favorite collection of comments for one post in my whole history of using livejournal.

September 19, 2005 - Four days, almost
Some statistics that explain how much of a nutcase I am about one of my favorite bands.

October 9, 2005 - Random thought of the evening
One of many one-sentence posts (well ok, this one is 2 sentences, but only the first one matters).

November 14, 2005 - You know how I know you're gay?
A hilarious conversation between my ex roomie and I.

Honorable mention: November 29, 2005 - Here's one that's livejournal-worthy
Feel free to use this wherever you want! I haven't used it in a long time, and I should!

December 6, 2005 - A classic picture that is now even more classicer
I have a lot of "my favorite _____ of all time" from this year...well this is my favorite picture that I posted on my LJ of all time. It's partly inspired by Matt, too. I can't remember where the original, unedited version of this picture is, but this one is far superior to it anyway!

Honorable mention: Also December 6, 2005 - I should be a politician
I guess December 6th was just a good day for picture posts.


Stay tuned for more!

Something I definitely have to share...this guy used the songwriter on Mario Paint and made it play a bunch of well-known songs. Here's Thriller as an example:




Uhhh...that embed didn't work very well. Doh! I'll fix it later.

I promised in my 1,500th post that I'd go through all the archives of my journal and pick my favorite post from each month of every year. So allow me to fulfill that promise! Here's the best of 2004, back in the golden age of Livejournal where the likes of Unspar, Paal, my brother, Erika and many, many more were around.

January 30, 2004 - Houston County News Excerpts
My hometown newspaper in all of its glory, along with one of the best letters to the editor I can remember.

February 24, 2004 - WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT!?
I talk about how awesome 24 is, and an interesting string of comments ensues. I also doubt Mark would think the same thing now....

March 19, 2004 - Old stuff
I found a big book of essays that we wrote about each other back in 7th grade and dug up a lot of hilarious details about my old friends. If you don't know any of these people, at least read the one about me.

Honorable mention: March 25, 2004 - Some useless, unimportant information
Short but funny, thanks to Unspar's contribution.

April 17, 2004 - Man, if only she was 30 years younger...
Word of advice: don't walk back from a shower in the dorms when a whole tour group is coming through.

May 16, 2004 - Oil's well in the world of working! or not...
126 comments. EPIC! Half of it is some completely inane conversation between Mark and Christine, and the other half is a very heated debate about terrorism. I don't know how that happened, that there could be 2 huge conversations that are totally different in tone, but I've never come close to having that many comments in my journal since then.

More than just an honorable mention: May 7, 2004 - Awwwwwww! NOT!
It's the famous Rainbow President thread! Still one of my favorite threads in my journal.

June 21, 2004 - Hometown reminiscing
A cute story about when I was working for the city, followed by my personal tale of unfulfilled vengeance!

July 27, 2004 - Crazy kids!
A couple of random things, including another story about working for the city, my dad being a news anchor back in the day, and some dude named Barack Obama.

August 2, 2004 - The war in Iraq
Commentary about...you guessed it. It's not as anti-war as you might think, and it still sums up how I feel about the whole situation. It's a little lengthy but well worth a read.

September 23, 2004 - What the hell!
I mainly picked this one because Mark's comment made me laugh, and all I did in September of 2004 was complain about not having internet in my dorm room.

October 16, 2004 - Facebook explosion!
I just signed up for this thing called "The Face Book"! LOL

November 29, 2004 - New York City Pictures!
My family went on vacation in New York, and these are all the pictures from the trip.

December 24, 2004 - A political rant?
This is around the time when I started being a more realistic liberal and not so "OMG REPUBLICANS SUCK LOL". It's my thoughts on why Democrats lost the election in 2004.


More to come!

I am way overdue for an update, so here is a full tour of my new condo! Disclaimer: my camera sucks, so that's why these pictures are not the clearest.

( Tour time! )

Well I suppose you want to see what my new digs look like! You may have recalled that this is what the wall in the living room used to look like:



I have now un-girly-fied the wall...here are the results! I only have pictures of the living room and the kitchen at the moment, and I still need to hang up all my pictures and what not. So this is just a sneak preview.


(my camera sucks a lot...this was the least blurry shot I could get)







How far do you think I should go with the red? I kind of want to keep it going around the room, maybe make the whole living room red. This picture makes it look brighter than it is, too...it's actually a little darker than this. It's a more subtle red.

More pictures to come!

There's a headline from CNN that says this: "woman with baby cut from womb claimed pregnancy". Am I missing something? Or is it really that surprising that a woman who had a baby cut from her womb claimed to be pregnant?

There's been a lot of construction going on at my apartment, and it doesn't look like a disaster area anymore. But right now the construction zone is all closed off, and for some reason our apartment managers have put up an advertisement on the wall blocking off the zone. It reads "Park Glen: where luxury meets serenity". And this is with the giant construction zone / disaster area behind it. Really? The luxury of losing all of your belongings in a fire, and the serenity of the constant noise of hammers and tow trucks. It fits perfectly.

Yeah, or it doesn't fit at all. At least it's funny though.

I got a cashier's check today because I need to bring it with me for the closing on Thursday. If you don't know what it is (and I still don't really know what it is...), it's some higher form of check that you basically just write to yourself. It deducts the amount out of your account, and it can be endorsed right away, i.e. endorsed by the bank at the closing appointment so that they actually get their money during the appointment.

Here's what I'm "what the hell"ing about. I checked my account online tonight to make sure nothing screwy happened, and I discovered that something extremely screwy happened. For some reason, the bank thinks that I wrote out my check for $1,800 more than what I was actually given! So apparently, $1,800 has up and vanished! WTF!

However, when I called up the bank (which was milliseconds after I discovered the issue and a few moments before my cardiac arrest), they said that the dollar amount can sometimes look wrong when the transaction is still pending, which it is until tomorrow morning. See the thing is, the amount that this check was written out for is the same number as the check itself. You know, how it's like check #1101 or whatever. That number and the dollar amount are listed as the same thing. So either the pending transaction has given me an unnecessary heart attack, or the lady at the bank who gave me this check and wrote the check number in the dollar amount box is going to find out what a fist to the face feels like.

I just saw Harry Potter tonight and it was awesome! I've never read any of the books and have no clue how this will all end, so I am now eagerly anticipating the 7th!

And I can't believe that Dumbledore..........( SPOILER ALERT! )

A prisoner dug a hole through the ground and escaped at a preschool playground. When he climbed out he yelled "I'm free! I'm free!" And a little girl walked up to him and said, "So what, I'm four."

Thank you I'll be here all night