I caved in an bought a 1GB Compact Flash card at Wal-Mart. I wasn’t traumatized too much in the process, but it did cost me $95. Yikes. I feel pretty bad that I really just want to use it for 2 weeks and then return it. Something about that just feels very wrong, so we’ll see if I do it. I also feel pretty bad for paying so much. I’ve seen 1GB CF cards online for $50, so it would be quite a savings to return this one and buy another online.

There was supposed to be the first West Wing episode of Season 7 tonight. I’ve looked in the normal places for torrents, but have as of yet to be able to find it. I guess that it’s going to take a couple of days for it to show up online.

We’ll see how much I post while I’m away… like I think that I said before, email and phone are your friend if you need/want to contact me… the exact same methods as if I wasn’t going anywhere…

Oh, and Marc, very nice pics from the vball & soccer games. Very professional.

I guess that I will make this one and the same post with the photoblog.

I meant to go to Wal-Mart to find some cheap 1GB compact flash cards, so that I could have one before I leave on Monday. But the ones that they had were around $80, which was more that I was planning on spending, so I roamed around a little. I guess that they put the electronics in the back of the store for the same reason that grocers put the milk and eggs in the back of the grocery store. So, I had to walk by the lamp section. Which I had walked by before but had resisted the impluse to buy better lighting for my apartment. So, weak willed as I am, I bought two. Up until today, neither the living room nor my bedroom had lighting. The dining room and kitchen have some, so that has sufficed for the other rooms at night. Well, that and the closet light. So, I bought some light bulbs only to realize when I came home that the lamps were the three-way kind, and I had only bought regular 60w ones. Oh well, better luck next time. I did splurge on an extension cord, as I didn’t yet know where I was going to put them. I think that I overspent when I paid 77 cents for one. :) So, now I’ve got a little better lighting for myself and I have use for the lightswitches that only go to plugs on the wall. And, unfortunately, it looks like Fry’s doesn’t have much better of a price than Wally World, so I’ll probably just have to go back and deal with the incompetance that is customer service in the United States to try and get them to sell me my compact flash, instead of spending the time and gas to actually find and get to the Fry’s that I don’t even know where it is in Atlanta, only to save myself like $10.

Looks like I need to clean up the apt a bit.

This is hilarious. As is this.

Thanks Ames for checking out the photoblog and commenting. I really appreciate it. :) At least I know that somebody’s listening. Also a new shoutout to my newest commenter, Ethan. What’s up, bro? Thanks for stopping by.

Well, I paid off my washer and dryer a couple of days ago. My how quickly Sears can cash a check. I’m looking to have a bigger buffer in my checking, so I think that I’ll be working as much overtime as I can stand from here on out. It won’t be a whole lot of extra money, but every little bit helps, you know?

Also, I’ll be traveling on business starting next Monday. I’ll still be reachable through every mean that I am currently, save probably AIM. And even that I might be on and off. Email and phone will be your best bets.

Watched Sin City and Bad Boys. Both were ok, I guess. Sin City was good in its own way, but not much to write home about. I’ve probably seen Bad Boys before, but couldn’t really remember, so I got it. It was pretty average, I’d say for a Will Smith action movie.

Traveling might give me some opportunity to take some pics, but we’ll see. If I am going to do that, then really I’ll need a bag, a memory card, and a tripod. Things that I’d rather not spend money on right now.

My sisters both got back from their vacations with their husbands. I am told that they had good times. Laurie and Edward on their honeymoon to Hawaii, and KB and Clay on a cruise. Yay for them.

Enough for now, and I’ll try and post another photo to the blog.

I finally today got in my new money pit… er toy, a Canon 300D Digital Rebel. I bought it from a guy in the Company, in Cali. It’s not the absolute best price in the word, but it’s cheaper than I can get it online, so that’s something. I’m getting a little worried that I can’t seem to hold on to my money… I guess it’s just that I figure that I want all of this stuff, and there’s not a whole lot standing in my way of getting it. Especially when plane tickets are anywhere from $300–600 a pop, money goes fast. That may be where a bunch of money has been going, trips back to Texas. Now, don’t get me wrong, because I did buy the fibre channel array, a couple of books, plus this new camera. Maybe I’m just trying to justify these purchases to myself… I dunno. I try to tell myself that this camera will help me get out of the house maybe a little bit. I already have some pictures in mind, but like any good money pit, I already “need” to buy an accessory for it, in the form of a 1GB Compact Flash card. Maybe that’s why overtime seems more and more appealing. Either way, check out http://chobas.com/photoblog/ in the coming days and weeks for cool pics from Atlanta.

Nice title to a piece of spam email that I got. I tried to get a bunch of sleep this weekend as I woke up on Friday with a little dryness/raspyness going on in my throat. Seemed very similar to something I caught a couple of weeks ago. So, I slept in a lot, and took some naps whenever I could. Taking some Advil Allergy/Sinus stuff. Works ok. Cleaned up the apt a bit today, including the toilet, which really needed it. Finally got around to doing some overtime today. Wishing that I had more money so that I could spend it on stuff that I don’t need… Also wish that I was more of a machine and could work OT without blinking…

Apparently I’ve kept a broken DVD for 2 weeks now. I didn’t realize that it was broken until today. Yay for Netflix time/dvds wasted!

A good read…

Why are companies being demonized for giving us ultimately what we want? We love Wal-Mart for their low prices, yet we loathe them for the practices they use to obtain those same low prices. We love McDonald’s for their cheap, crappy food, yet we sue them for making us fat. When are we going to stop blaming other people for our own lack of self control and our desire for instant gratification? We have decided to a cheap price now. A cheap price that overrides the ultimately much higher cost of the long term price. You want cheap goods and you want a fare wage? Well, then those goods aren’t going to come from the work of your hands. Cheap goods don’t grow on trees.

</soapbox>

I hope that everybody saw the comic that Marc sent. Essentially the classic line from “When Harry Met Sally”. It is especially pointant today as I have recently been thinking about how I am sure that it is going to be a while before I wind up with a girlfriend. For you see that I have been convinced that I simply want it too badly. And, as such, “me” doesn’t communicate at all to any girl that I’m interested in. Added to that their ability to smell how I am ultimately not ready…

As I think that I have mentioned here before, this cycle or game of trying to exude the fact that you’re ready because you’re not interested in dating. So, I say that I understand that things aren’t going to work out because I understand that I need to be much more comfortable in certain situations. So I become disinterested in dating because I know that I’m not ready, only to realize that my disinterest leads to dating, which leads me to realize that I’m not ready, which leads me to realize that I am, etc.

If that nonsense made sense to anyone, then you get a cookie. If you are one of these lucky/unlucky people, then please see your nearest fish for your cookie, courtesy of Bernies and their parents.

While looking through pictures from the actual hurricane, as well as its aftermath, I can only think about how life is too short. Such power and devistation. I also makes me think that there is little that we really can do with this big hunk of rock that we call home. I can only imagine that the environmentalists will proclaim that these hurricanes are getting worse and worse because of the 1 degree increase in average temperature that we as humans have caused, or some such propoganda. Last time I checked, I don’t think that we had anything to do with the last ice age that we had, nor the enormous asteroid that killed the dinosaurs so long ago. I think that the more that we screw it up, the more that it’s just going to push back. Shit happens. The earth can do more to us that I bet we can do to it. It was around long before we were here, and it will be here long after. There’s a reason that we have big brains and I think that we’re supposed to use them to use this earth’s resources. I guess that we can all agree that we don’t need to kill the planet, and at the same time we need to use its resources. Contention arises when what exactly defines reasonable use and the extent of conservation. But you can’t really avoid the inevitability of the sun engulfing us in X million years and all of this becoming moot. Put that in your pipe and some it, you tree hugging hippies.

I want my blog to be a cool and random as this chica’s blog. I wonder if I can pull it off?

Did anybody else find it offensive that they skipped from mini to nano. I guess that I’m confusing my prefixes a bit, ’cause I was mixing up mini and milli, but that’s neither here nor there. If they go to nano, why not pico or femto? Or is that just too high brow? Can any engineers out there back me up on this? I totally think that micro gets the shaft. I leave it as an excercise to the reader to figure out what femto means, and the other metric prefixes.

Well, I’ve had no internet for something like the past week. Several people noticed that I wasn’t online, and a couple of them called. I didn’t fall off the face of the earth, just off of the internet. The dullards that host our internet here finally fixed it today, after much gnashing of teeth. I considered posting stuff separately, but I think that I’ll just make one post that spans the entire time.

I dunno about you guys in Texas and what help you have seen going towards LA. I thought that seeing convoys of cherry pickers going towards the aftermath of a hurricane or two that we or surrouding states has had so far was surreal, but seeing a convoy of moving equipment that I can only guess was going towards LA sort of blew my mind. Then later I saw the remnants of a military convoy as well. It was definitely a surreal thing in my mind. I don’t have cable I’ve been a little out of the loop in all of this, so I don’t see it on the news 24/7. Probably good and bad.

Gas prices aren’t too bad. I’ve paid like 2.89 or 2.84. Governor axed taxes on gas for the month, so it should be ~15 cents cheaper.

Unfortunately, that may be it. Since I didn’t have internet I was a little more bored than usual, but not too bad. I did a little reading, but mostly watched what I’ve got downloaded. Chad had me get a TV show called Arrested Development. Watched about 6 episodes of the first season and think that it’s pretty good. Definitely watch some more. Also watched Full Metal Jacket, which is why I answered the phone the way that I did when you called me, Ben. And btw, Mindy this is Ben, Ben this is Mindy. I don’t know if you guys have met or not, but he’s an 06er.

Anyhoo, enough for now.