Saturday, 04 July 2009

  • Happy 4th of July everyone.  I'm blogging from New York City, where due to my habit of not making my plans openly known to everyone I am staying at a $100+ a day hotel instead of at my sister's apartment (I forgot that she still had it).  It's been a little bit of a "do it to say you've done it" rather than a "do it and actually have fun" trip.  It's the sort of thing where when you look at it, I would have better enjoyed coming home for the 4th of July and it would have cost less, but on the other hand I wasn't planning to go on pass at all until I was asked by some of my fellow soldiers to show them around New York (since I've been there before and everything).

Thursday, 16 April 2009

  • I find myself wondering "what was I blogging so much about a few years ago" but I guess I'm too lazy to look and see.  As far as I know it hasn't been anything incriminating.  Maybe I should double check that.

    Unlimitless is a funny word

    had got vs. had gotten.  I prefer 'had gotten' in virtually every instance.  My brother says 'had gotten' should be used in the sense of 'had become' and that 'had got' should be used in the sense of 'had obtained'.  Though if that's the case I would think 'gotten' in the sense of received and 'got' in the sense of taken.  Apparently British people never use 'gotten', but the reason Americans use it has something to do with puritans and the KJV bible.

    Something also interesting but not as wrought with controversy in my mind is that if you use 'have got to' in the present tense it means 'must', but if you use 'had got to' it implies a lucky event.  But even in that instance I think 'had gotten to' is more how I would say it.

    I had got to go first that day.

    I had gotten to go first that day.

    Definitely gotten.  It's funny that I feel like it's that important though.  English hasn't been formalized under committee the same as French, so it's really not something that I can say aside from my own feeling of what sounds correct.  It's just that the first sentence I would have to look twice at to understand, but the second reads correctly to me.  I'm sure if I read 'had got' in sentences a hundred times while enjoying ice-cream it would trigger positive response mechanisms and I would become a big 'had got' supporter.  But as it is I'm a red blooded 'had gotten' speaker.

    When I was looking at discussions of this online, it's funny how much people bring up 'have got' and just simply 'got', both of which are correct depending on the situation.  Though now that I think about it, you have got to and you have gotten to have that interesting element from the previous paragraph of having an opposite connotation of requirement vs privilege.

    In case you're worried at this point that I'm writing coded letters from captivity at this point (after all, who really cares about 'had gotten'?) I'm not.  I'm perfectly fine aside from the fact that I care about got/gotten.

Monday, 06 April 2009

  • I'm doing well right now.  I finally fixed my brakes and feel like they are all in good condition at this point.  I could probably get my car to pass safety and emissions if I had to.  You know, I recently drove cross country on a couple of new rear brakes (brake pads to be specific), and one of the brake pads fell apart while I was driving.  My brakes had totally failed by the time I reached home, and when I got around to checking them out, there was a little melted slab of metal wedged between my brake disk and the disk cover.  It was all that was left of the brake pad.  But that was several days ago.  I had put back on the old pad which had worn down to the metal on one side, but which at least was in better condition than the melted slab.  Today I replaced that with a new brake pad, and also reconnected my emergency brake which had come loose when I had my car shipped (it worked fine before, but I guess someone yanked on it too hard).  So now I have good brakes and my hand brake works too.

    Yes, I drove across America with defective brakes and no emergency brake, but I figure if anything really bad happened as a result I could just gear down and shut off my engine.  Though my clutch has a tendency to lose pressure sometimes (I keep a bottle of spare fluid in my trunk for those occasions).  It's a good car.  I hope it lasts long.

Sunday, 08 March 2009

  • So I don't say much on my blog anymore.  I am keeping a journal more regularly nowadays though.  Today in church a guy was talking about another guy he knew who was graduating with an MBA and didn't have any job prospects, and I was thinking "huh, in that case you need to set your sights lower in terms of what you're willing to do" but then the guy said that the other guy was considering going and selling security systems.  So I guess he already thought of setting his sights lower, huh.

    Anyway, times seem rough.  I should probably work more hours come to think of it.  I mean, yeah it's nice not to get into the habit of being obsessed with work, but on the other hand, it's no good to only do the minimum required hours when I have no reason not to do more.  I mean they do pay me for my extra hours after all.  But anyway, I'm very grateful to have this job at this time.

Sunday, 01 March 2009

Monday, 09 February 2009

  • You know, now that you can buy 1tb drives for $100, hard drive space is roughly comparable to dvd space for price per gb.  That is if you buy blank dvds from the store.  If you go online you can buy 100 dvd cakes for $20 (so just over 4 cents a gigabyte).  But 10 cents a  gigabyte for hard drive space, that's pretty nice.  And 1tb on a 3.5 hard drive is easier to carry around than 200 dvds.

Friday, 23 January 2009

  • There's a funny show some friends of mine were telling me about a while ago, but it turns out that it's much funnier to actually watch it.  That's always how it is, but I know I always try to tell people funny parts of shows I've watched (and always feel like a dork immediately after doing so).

    I don't know how many of you do much transcoding, but since mp3 players nowadays all play videos I guess it's more common.  Here's a good program for turning videos of one type into videos of another type :http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

Monday, 12 January 2009

  • I had a good day today.  I got a phone bill for over 3 times my monthly rate and thought "huh, I'm not nearly as flustered about this as I'm imagining I could be."  But then, when I checked it out, it turned out what I was seeing was in fact a phone bill for roughly 3 months of service plus activation fees.  Apparently I forgot I've never actually paid my phone bill.  Ha ha ha.  I don't think they even charged me a late fee either.  Lucky.

Sunday, 04 January 2009

  • Did you all have a happy new year? I haven't had to write 2009 yet, but I think when it happens I'll probably mess it up.

    My life is so extravagantly cushy.  Even though my car is in the shop and I rode the bus today, still, the bus is pretty cushy.  Not having a car isn't so bad.

Tuesday, 30 December 2008

  • Ants!  Tiny little ants!  Fortunately I've got a bottle of window cleaner that seems to kill them instantly.  I'll probably get some ant poison sometime.  I could do that tonight but I don't know if I feel like it.

    Happy Y2K9 to you all!  Not yet though, but when the time comes, I hope you'll remember that I said it first.

    Y2K9!


    edit.

    For those of you on facebook, I'm positive that they have better ways of tracking whether or not you are active THAN BY WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE FORWARDING SPAM CHAIN MAILS!!!

    Giving it any more attention than it's already taken of me is unnecessary, but I guess it does make me snicker a little.  "Facebook is too crowded.  Your account will be deleted for inactivity if you do not forward this warning to 10 people."  I put it in quotes, but really I'm paraphrasing slightly.

    I also think that Xanga's way of automatically putting up a post saying "I'm bringing back Xanga!" is funny too.