Sunidesus Speaks

Solly wants to know who influences your humor?

Wow, that's quite a question. He said they're not supposed to be "direct" influences, i.e. family, friends, co-workers, but I'm going to risk it and break the rules a little.

It can be hilarious, and heart-breaking.
It is important, and meaningless.
It can make you smile, or get mad.
It is intensely personal, and excedingly public.
It can make you friends, or enemies.
It can push you, and hold you back.
It can make you jealous, or help you give.
It is ever-changing, and always the same.
It is everything, and nothing.

It's a blog!
And this is my 1000th post!

These are just adorable. It's a duck with a memory! And it glows in the dark! That's just nifty.

Found at Neil Gaiman's Journal Or more technically off his RSS feed.

Just having fun with my new camera. Here's a tour of the control room at work! I have a bigger version, but it's humongous and I don't have that much space on my web host at the moment. (right-click, save-target-as, please)

If you're curious... the camera is Sony's new F828 SLR. I found it on eBay for just more than half what it retails and got a 2.2 GB microdrive along with it. Wheeeeee!

It took a bit of doing to get it compressed, but now it's done and I'm hoping it works for everyone. Just a heads up, I had to download the newest divex codec to get it to play the video portion. Not sure if that's going to be true for everyone or just some. Enjoy!

A couple of meme type things I saw at Michele's the other day. Why? Because I feel like it!

First up:

1. Grab the nearest CD. 2. Put it in your CD-Player (or start your mp3-player, I-tunes, etc.). 3. Skip to Song 3 (or load the 3rd song in your 3rd playlist) 4. Post the first verse in your journal along with these instructions. Don’t name the band, nor the album-title.

Here's the third thing off my (admitedly quite small so far) playlist.

I just want to feel
Safe in my own skin
I just want to be
Happy again
I just want to feel
Deep in my own world
But I'm so lonely i dont even want to be with myself any more.

And up second:

GRAB THAT BOOK Via half the Internet, it’s the latest crazy random words game: 1. Grab the nearest book. 2. Open the book to page 23. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Here's mine.

If we put the first four in there and let the word get out that we had, we might be able to put a damper on losses in that area until the others are ready for deployment.

So there ya go. A couple of memes for your enjoyment.

My boss rocks. I just had to share that. I went and talked to her today about stuff, and she was extremely cool and understanding. Really easy to talk to her and explain myself.

I could do without the sound, but the last couple hours someone has been mowing the lawn outside the station and it smells wonderful. Spring has definately arrived!

Hey Syn! Remind you of anything? Like a certain e-mail about a certin weather guy?

I saw that and just couldn't resist sharing.

And one for Mom! Switch the kid and the mother in this one and it's me and you "trying" to clean/organize my apartment!

(click for readable size)

I just caught the beginning of this show Made on MTV. I was clicking through the channels and watched it for the first couple minutes.

They've got this girl in a high school that's just kinda average. Really funny, lots of fun to hang out with, but a little pudgy, not really caring about fashion or makeup. Of course the high school is one that's more preoccupied with looks and all of that nonsense than your normal high school, and she gets picked on pretty badly. So what does MTV do? They say they're going to turn her into one of them! What the heck?!?!?

How about punishing the kids that are being nasty? Or helping her to realize that she's fine just the way she is. But, no. They have to go and make another superficial airhead instead of supporting this girl that has a brain and thinks for herself.

I have major problems with that. And needless to say, I changed the channel pretty quickly.

This is very similar to the book and music meme's that I had earlier this week. First off, the rules!

1. Go into your blog's archives.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

It's a whopper value meal w/a coke, McDonalds fries are better, but I really wanted a whopper so... I'm stuck with BK fries!

It's gorgeous and sunny out. I'm gonna go take pictures of random stuff. Yesterday was all grey and cloudy, so I'm going to take pictures and then do a couple errandy things. There's also a couple sparrows that have been fighting in and around the tree right outside my window. I keep trying to get a decent shot of one of them but haven't succeeded yet. Maybe today will be the day!

Strongbad style

Link from Syn

Remember the Spirit of America blogger challenge from a week or so ago? Well here's the kind of things that SoA helps to make possible.

I picked up my laundry on the way in to work today after dropping it off yesterday on the way to work.

I absolutely hate doing laundry and it ends up taking up so much of my mental energy that very little else can get done. I discovered that there are "wash, dry, fold" places here, so I figured I'd give it a try. It costs about twice as much as the laundromat, but that's still not very expensive. And it saves me the entire day's worth of frustration and annoyance; to me that's well worth the extra money! I'm definately doing my laundry this way from now on!

Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there!

Mine isn't somewhere where I can call her today so this'll have to do for now. I'll have to get her to come read it after she gets back from her retreat.

So Mom, I love you. I can't imagine how screwed up my life would be without you. It amazes me how much you've done for me and what you've put up with from me! I LOVE YOU!!!!

And Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms of the Blogosphere too!

Yes, I realize there's lots more moms than that, those are just the ones I knew off my blogroll. If I forgot anybody please let me know!

I managed to make it last time around, but the next three hours are going to be difficult!

I'm working so I can't sit and watch the Survivor finale. This is complicated by my working at a CBS affil. So half the monitors in the building have it on. When last season ended I successfully avoided finding out who won until I got home and could watch my tape. I'm hoping I'll be as lucky this time around!

[Update:] Aarrgh! I won't be as lucky. I just looked at the 11pm rundown and there's a vosot sluged "winner sound" in it. So half-way through the A-block all of my Survivor avoiding will be for naught. Grrr!

It would appear that Blogger is at least attempting to offer comments. I've been waiting for Halley to get comments since I first started reading her. They're not quite working yet, but once they are... watch out!

It sounds like someone is running a frelling generator outside my window. It's 2 in the morning people! What the heck are you needing to do that's so blasted noisy?!?!?!?!?

I wasn't sure if I wanted to post about this or not. I've finally decided that yes, I do.

The beheading of Nick Berg is disgusting and horrendous. I can not imagine what makes a person think that this is a justified action.

And already people have figured out ways to blame the U.S. How about we blame the people who are actually responsible? The criminals that kidnapped him. The murderers that killed him. They are the ones that should be held reponsible, they are the ones that should be punished.

It's my day off so of course I'm giving in to the "answer random memes" urge. This one came from James

Then do a little something good. Help send the Tom kids to college. Read the article and help this amazing mother give her kids an education.

I am so incredibly frustrated I don't even have the words right now.

I had Wednesday and Thursday off of work. Great! Time to catch up on my blog-reads, take and post some new pictures, do general internet browsing...

Wednesday all went according to plan, but come Thursday nothing will connect to the internet. Not IE, not Trillian, not Thunderbird, nothing. I have reset both cable modem and router multiple times, restarted the computer more times that I can count. Nothin' doin'. Also ran my virus scan (I'm running Symantec) and it didn't come up with anything. Tried the system restore thing all the way back to the beginning of the month. Still nothing.

A guy at work said when he had the trojan virus it didn't show up on his Norton scan and it wouldn't let him access the internet. Could that be what my problem is? In which case how do I get rid of the stupid thing?

Argh! Ack! And Phooey!

I'm at 5 weeks and down 11! Woot!

I still can't get on-line at home. It's driving me nuts!

And I think I've made my computer worse while trying to fix it. Grrrr!!!!!

To top it all off I did something I should have done earlier which makes me think the problem was never with my computer in the first place! I tried to get on-line with my laptop and that didn't work either. It gave me the "Associating with access point but can not find the internet" thing.

I realize I should have done that sooner, but I didn't. So now I've screwed up my computer, still can't get on-line, and it may have all been for nothing. Ack!

[Update]

Just got off the phone with Cox (yes it's pronounced that way, yes we make fun of it constantly) and they said that the modem appears to be on-line but they can't detect an ip from my router. Could the problem have been with my stupid router the whole time? I wish I could go investigate right now instead of having to wait till I get home after work.

In just over three days Command Post and its readers have raised $15,000 for the Tom Family Education Trust! How cool is that?

There's still good things happening. Even though there's a lot going on in the world right now that's horrible and disgusting, there's still good people! And good deeds.

I have managed to get on-line at home! It appears that the problem was with my router and not the computer at all. Which means I screwed my computer up for nothing. I've got the computer going straight to the cable modem at the moment. I'll get the router figured out later.

I got partway through the mamoth task of un-messing everything this afternoon. I was pleasantly surprised to find that some of the programs were still working (e-mail, rss, trillian) others are installed but need to be set up again (winkey) a couple seemed to need to be re-installed, but once I did they remembered their old preferences files (walleyes) so I didn't have to go back through the humongous task of setting that up all over again. Re-installed Exel and Word. I loaned my copy of PhotoShop to a friend so I'll have to wait till I get the disk back before I can get that back up and running. But for the most part it seems that I didn't mess it up as badly as I feared. Which makes me a very relieved Suni!

(click for readable size)

Hey Syn! Remind you of anyone? She ended up in the kitchen yesterday.

It's 8:30 in the morning and I'm just about to finish my breakfast and then head to work. I will be there until 11 tonight. (same thing tomorrow too)

We're training on the new switcher this week, which is a Very Good Thing, however it means being at work at 9 in the morning and then pulling doubles to do the nightside shows. I'm not sure if my brain is actually going to be working by the time the 10 o'clock show comes around!

Blogging therefore has been and shall continue to be a little on the light side. I might get some in tonight at work though, I'll have to wait and see what happens and how busy I am at work tonight.

On the bright side... I'm less than 7 days from going home for vacation! Yay! Woot! Yipee!

Finished the second of two double shifts a couple hours ago. At work from 9am till 11pm on Thursday, and then 9 till midnight Friday. I only got a bouple hours of sleep last night because whenever it needs to, my body refuses to sleep. Very annoying.

But that should be it for the insanely long days. *crosses fingers* And it's only a few days till I leave for home! Yay!

Maybe tomorrow I'll actually be able to read some blogs.

At work. (again) But at least it's a normal shift this time so I actually got to sleep last night.

It occured to me that I started my blog at the end of May two years ago and my blogiversary must be coming up. I went and looked to find the exact date and lo and behold it's the 27th. So my two year blogiversary will be the day I get to go home! I find that really strange and just kinda random.

4 and a half days!!! (can you tell I'm excited?)

Less than 3 days!

I'm soooo very excited to be going home. A friend from work is going to follow me home tonight since she's going to be taking care of my critters while I'm gone. The apartment is something of a mess at the moment, but I'm planning to clean tomorrow evening since I'm off work at 6. I'll be able to spend all evening taking care of stuff.

And one more thing...
Week - 6
Down - 12

I just cleaned Dolce's cage.

Jiggling it made his bell ring for the first time since he's been gone. I miss hearing it. It was what he did when he wanted me to come get him. He'd grab the top of it and ring it.

I miss him so much. I miss his beautiful sweet chirp.

This wasn't supposed to happen this soon. He was supposed to stay with me until I was in my 30's at least.

I miss the pure exstasy on his face when he got a head scritch. I miss his snuggly little self. I miss him leaning into me and falling asleep. I miss flipping him upside down and playing with his little toes.

I saved a couple feathers out of the bottom of his cage. I don't know what I'm going to do with them, but I wanted to save them. I wanted something tangible.

I'm working on packing at the moment. Just a couple hours until I leave for the airport. Wheee!

I've decided that I'm going to call a taxi to get there. Parking in long-term at the airport would run me at least 100 bucks for a week and a half! A taxi both ways is much cheaper. I'm thinking I'll be mobloging most of my way home (or at least the times when I'm not on planes, since they tend to get a little annoyed if you use a cell phone on board)

And not only am I going home today, it's also my two year blogiversary! Very cool.

OK, I'm off to finish packing.

I just called a taxi to come get me and take me to the airport.

I'm all packed and everything is set for Marie (who's taking care of the critters).

I just need to find my shoes and keep and eye out for Mr. Taxi Driver!

Home, Here I Come!

I've been home for a few hours. Hugged the parents :) Very happy to be here. Hugged and talked to Syn for a while. Very excited Suni on your hands here!

In case you missed it, I mobloged the trip home. It was quite enjoyable. I haven't actually looked at the pictures full size yet, I'll have to do that later. Took TONS of pictures with the new camera too. I'll have to sort through those. Syn and I expect to be doing a bunch of Geocaching while I'm home. And of course there's all kinds of relatives and friends that want to say hi.

Hi!

*yawns, stretches*

Just woke up a bit ago. Slept wonderfully. The guest room at home has, quite possibly, the best bed ever in it. I've always loved sleeping down there.

The flights and everything yesterday were quite uneventfull. I slept the entire way from Providence to Chicago. Of course I hadn't slept the night before so that explains my amazing ability to sleep in a tiny little coach seat. On the flight from Chicago in to Minneapolis the lady I was sitting next to wanted to talk; I wanted to sleep some more. She did eventually shut up, but I never slept. That flight's only a tad over an hour though so there wouldn't have been much time anyway.

The parental units were waiting for me at the airport :) Yay! Somehow my eyes slid right past my dad. No idea how that happened. He had to call my name! He hasn't changed that much in 7 months! Although he has lost quite a bit of weight. (Go Dad!) I might have come from one of two doors so one of them was at each. We grabbed Mom from the other door and headed for the drive home. We talked the entire way.

Had a wonderful "Mommy Food" dinner. Why is it that food tastes soooo much better when you don't have to cook it yourself?

And Syn came over and we talked and hugged and babbled and were silly for a good hour and a half before she had to go back to work. We're thinking I'll go over to the station tonight for the 10 to see everyone and then all go out afterwards. Dad was watching the 10 last night and I didn't watch it, but I could hear it and it was so strange hearing all those familiar voices again.

It, quite honestly, feels like I never left. It just feels comfortable and right. I'm already kinda dreading leaving. Not that I dislike where I'm going. I really do like my new job and new people and new apartment (and I'll be needing to see the critters) I just don't like the leaving part.

And I really need to catch up on my blog-reads! I'm going out w/Mom now though so I guess it'll have to wait just a tad longer.

Jack in the Box refuses to hire Deaf cook

And now they're getting sued for ADA violations. Gee, ya think that might be a violation?

People sure can be stupid sometimes. The guy's Deaf, so? What part of flipping burgers requires your ears? Last time I checked the flipping is mostly a hand/arm kind of thing.

And he has since been hired as a line cook elsewhere and is "doing well". So Jack in the Box lost an employee and they have to deal with a lawsuit and bad publicity.

Link from Chiromeme

I know, I haven't been blogging much the last few days. I've been busy!

Mostly I'm just enjoying being home. Hanging out with Syn and being goofy. Saying hi to people. Getting hugs whenever I want them.

We've been geocaching our butts off. 7 found so far! Anyone know where Syn could get a cheap GPS receiver so she can do this when I'm not around? We're planning to start a travel bug while I'm here with it's goal being to make it out to me in Rhode Island.

So I've been actually doing stuff and not just sitting in front of the computer. Although I have been doing a healthy amount of that too. I just checked and I've taken more than 600 pictures since leaving my apartment Thursday morning! How nuts am I? Wait, don't answer that.

I'm just really enjoying being home where everything's familiar and comfortable.