Derick's Life, Fitness & Code

I woke up this morning earlier than what I had set my alarm clock (I hate when that happens). Today is July 3rd; it also happens to be a Monday; and it also happens to be a working day for me– but just for me. Turns out–and I was warned beforehand–the entire State has pretty much taken today off. But not me. I’m working.

As I was saying, I woke up before the alarm. The bright “eye of summer” snuck through the chinks between the shades and took possession of the room. Yet, that’s not what woke me. The comforter on my bed is heavy and warm–too warm–yet not having a comforter over me feels wrong. The early morning sweat on my brow, the heavy dehydrated breaths, was still not what woke me. The sound of a bird perched outside my window, chants a melodious chirp, repeatedly, and in perfect spacing of pause. The bird would stop, and start again, after a precise 4 beats. And I heard this chirp repeatedly, until I started to chirp this same tune mutely in my own head. And it kept chirping, and I kept chirping, and I couldn’t sleep. It felt like this bird was boring a hole through my skull. And I couldn’t sleep. I was losing it. You never realize how thinly-stitched your mental faculties are, until you hear a bird outside your window, nefariously gnawing through your skin.

Eventually, I hastily threw up the comforter, and bickered to myself with incoherent grunts, and followed myself into the shower… to go to work.

Nothing worse then when you can sleep more, but can’t sleep more- and it’s a Monday, and you have to work. And we “wonder” why the NRA can be so recalcitrant.

Other than my roomate [laboss], I didn’t really bore anyone else with the details of my last semsester of classes.

You know what; let me back up a little and mention what led me to even write this post. It all started with Google Personal Homepage. What? You never heard of that? …Well, it’s only just THE COOLEST THING EVER. Okay, maybe not. But the thing I like about it is that it displays random things on there, which always diverts me into welcome distractions that I would never have explored otherwise. For instance, one section on my homepage is called “The How-To of the Day” and today’s how-to (it’s misleading, but they give three at a time)..

1. How to Run up a Wall and Flip
2. How to Make a Soda Bottle Volcano
3. How to Begin Woodcarving With a Utility Knife

Then.. there is the “Quote of the Day”, my Favorite. Today’s quote is:

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say “I want to see the manager.”
– William S. Burroughs

But it was yesterday’s quote that struck me so pointedly, and moved me to write this post. So, in keeping with the spirit of an old Episode of South Park that I watched the other night, entitled “Cartman’s mom is a _______ ” ( in which the identity of Cartman’s Dad was to be determined through a DNA test), I will continue this post later in an “All new blog entry to follow in just 4 weeks!”

I (LaBoss) have taken the internet by force and purchaced LaBoss.net. I almost bought LaBoss.CA and invaded the Canadian portion of the World Wide Web, but decided that not everyone would get the joke (and it cost more then double then my .Net). So, If you a interested in the coolest site ever, then click on over to WWW.LaBoss.Net

Now isn’t she pweetty!

It’s spring (I’m sure you noticed), so I’ve been cleaning out a few things like: my cube [my cell], my room, my bathroom, the desktop icons on my computer–and my desktop was quite the disaster.In the end i decided to hire a person to help me and it turned out as a bad ideea.Please make sure you always use a certified carpet cleaning company.

I have a tendancy to throw everything on my desktop. When I find something neat online, or some quote or word, or anything textual that I’d like to not forget, I’ll create a quick “text” file on there and type it out. Ironically, as soon as I do that, the next day, the next month, the next few months, I forget it’s even there–true avouch to the notion that if you want to really hide something, put it right in front of you.
Anyway, here are somethings I dug up today from my desktop:

This is a dilbert cartoon I saved.

A Walt Whitman Poem I really liked:

Walt Whitman
When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Quote from Orwell I read somewhere:

Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket. – – George Orwell

A word I never heard before, but liked:

mendacious: given to or characterized by deception or falsehood or divergence from absolute truth

…and the rest of the stuff is SQL code, batch scripts.. random .css files. All being cleanly recycled 🙂

Hi,

It’s Derick here this time.

I know, I know, It’s been quite the hiatus, and after reviewing my roommate’s last two posts I’ve consequently rescinded his authorship privileges on account of one (1) libelous remark regarding “sex and the city”.

Any case, I’m starting to get the reins back on my life, meaning: I’ve been in a complete lazy-rut for about 4 months now. Actually, lazy is too harsh; I have been taking classes (showing up for most of them) and working pretty much around 50-60 or so hours a week. But then again, those are excuses, and I know you don’t care either about the excuses or the minutiae that is my life– fair enough, I’d feel the same way on the other end too.

For Mardigan, Laboss, and Mills, who actually still read my website, I assure you, I’m going to start posting things on my blog a little more frequently. We need to get Laboss his own blog. And eventually resurrect Mardigan.net from…somewhere. Remember Mardian.net, in it’s heyday, with the oh-so slick animated construction worker, with the banner reading “under construction”. It kind-of reminded me of Boston. But then again, Boston was eventually finished.

As for my website in a whole, I’m still a little behind on maintenance:

• I need to update to the latest WordPress.
• Hopefully figure out a way to thwart these spam-bots from commenting up my website.
• I got a new hosting provider, which i need to eventually switch to. Benefits? Asp.Net / Sql Server –means nothing i know to everyone (aside from Mills). But with my new host, I’ll be able to actually publish my own .Net web-apps to something aside from my local network–again another empty sentence (to everyone aside from mills)

I’ve been doing a lot programming-for-fun lately (it’s kind of sad). I actually bought my own copy of Visual Studio .NET and hung the posters up on my bedroom wall. And as soon as the last one went up, I said to myself–no joke–in a breathy sigh, “wow [sigh,] this isn’t going to help me pick up chicks”.

This week I discovered the wonder that is: freeze-dried coffee; and it has completely changed my life.

What else. Oh, I’ve been meaning to read the The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe for a few weeks now. I finally have the book, but I keep telling myself that I don’t have the time.

What else, ah my tooth. This requires a little bit of a preface:

When I was a boy, I was in little league. One day a baseball smacked into my front-tooth, and it landed in my hand—the tooth that is. This was my second front-tooth, and I knew God wasn’t going to give me another. Nervously, my Dad drove me to the dentist and they called it an “emergency session” (I think the dentists were excited– they never get emergencies). Eventually they did a root canal on it (whatever that means).

Now, 9 years later, that front tooth has started to lose its color– let me not mince words here, it’s turning black. I got scared, and I was afraid my tooth might make me start looking like those bums outside my work that routinely ask me for change, or like some witch, or some Ferengi, or lil’Jon. I don’t want to be Lil’Jon. So this week, I’ve been getting my tooth bleached and insurance is calling this “cosmetic”? Cosmetic! Is preventive care from looking like Lil’Jon “cosmetic”?

Long story short, this is going to cost me a fortune. Don’t expect any great gifts from me this Christmas.