To the residents of the Bayview apartment complex…

…I’m not a fucking charity; buy your own damn dryer sheets from now on. I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, initially, but I am physically incapable of consuming 40 dryer sheets in one month.

Maybe instead of removing them from the laundry room I’ll tape a little sign with a stick man being violently beaten and the phrase “hands off you little ass-goblin” underneath. If nothing else it would be an interesting experiment.

I ain’t got no time for the jibber jabber

I feel obligated to post on this site and fill the void that is the inactivity of Norm. He said he was working on a new look for the site, then he disappeared for months (days). This happens every so often, and one time I actually tracked him down. I found him on a Putt-Putt course in his boxers with a nose full of Columbian Marching Powder. Yes, sadly, that is our friend (son, nephew, whatever)- a junior executive from the late 80’s.

A bunch of people are going to Philly next month to visit Darth and his woman. (I just like saying “his woman” because I’m pretty sure Darth is the woman (not that Sarra is manly or dominant, but because Darth ref’s soccer) so this is a constant joke on Darth which I will get away with until he Judashi-Kendo’s my ass and/or reminds me that if he said “his woman” referring to my woman, he would be referring to the most effeminate thing I own which is absolutely nothin’ ’cause I aint gay.)

Norm does coke.

You know you’re in trouble when…

…your professor – while demonstrating a proof for advanced number theory – routinely uses the phrase “and if God is just…” as his closing argument.

All things considered, though, things aren’t going too badly. My classes are keeping me busy, which is a (surprisingly) pleasant change from the first half of the summer. In my case, idle hands aren’t so much the Devil’s workshop as they are a source of angst. It’s kind of ironic, really; when I’m busy I wish for days off and when I have days off I wish for things to do. I suppose that normal, though.

As Pat indicated below, I am, in fact, working on a new design for the site. Unlike the others, however, this should prove to be more than just a cosmetic adjustment. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I wanted to bring on a small number of regular posters to help me maintain this place, but unfortunately the current template (even in its adjusted form) isn’t really suited for a multi-user environment. Multiple authors have been a focus of this new design, in addition to a better use of screen real-estate and minimalist ideals. Who knows if I’ve actually succeeded in those goals, but goals they were.

I’m not quite ready to unveil things yet, but I’m hoping to have a preview up in the next week or two. The actual switch will wait until I’ve (gasp!) actually finished implementing all of the features and content.

In other news: Nick, I see your kitsch and raise you awesome. That is all.

Karma loves me.

Caution: F-bombs below!

So I got a flat tire last night getting off the highway….at 1AM. Then my car told me to fuck with the hubcaps to get the lugnuts free (they were some serious kind of stuck…I was flexing the metal tire iron and not budging the nuts.) The whole “fuck with the hubcaps” thing turned out to be a joke SAAB plays on customers with flat tires.

Then, a tow truck stopped and the guy said “Oh, you’ve got a Saab. Yeah, you’re fucked – those are hard,” and drove off.

Then another tow truck saw us and also stopped…took a very large man literally stomping on a 4-way tire iron to get the nuts free. Fuck Firestone…they put them on last. So much for 80-90lbs. of torque.

So then I parked at a meter that was free till 8AM; I was planning on getting up in the morning, putting a half hour of change in the meter, showering and then heading out to get the tire patched.

I got up, trudged down to the meter and put in my 30 minutes of change and trudged upstairs where I looked at a clock and discovered it was 7AM, not 8AM. The meter was free till 8, remember.

Later, when I had to get up and put even more change in the meter at the real 8AM, I locked myself out of my apartment.

Then when I had to call work to tell them I would be late, I called the wrong judge.

And finally, they can’t plug the tire because the hole is too big. But I sure hope I can still pay for the attempt.

Also, my spare tire is low on air.

Cruising along.

My e-mail has been down since the twentieth while my wonderful host moved everything to a new platform. Theoretically faster, more stable, blah blah etc. Very little of it impacts a low-traffic site like this one but it’s nice to know they care. In any case, if you e-mailed me anytime between Friday and this afternoon know that I’m not ignoring you – I just haven’t seen it yet.

Classes continue more or less as they have been for the past few weeks. I seem to have an almost supernatural ability to schedule classes that appear to be very easy but end up being a ton of work nonetheless. This is definitely the case for my technical writing course, mostly because it’s taught by a brand-new professor going into her second year here. She’s still idealistic and thinks that she’ll be able to single-handedly combat the systemic grade-inflation problems by marking us harshly in a class most people didn’t want to take in the first place.

That last sentence probably sounded bitter, but I can assure you that I’m really not. For starters, I certainly agree with her basic premise: engineering schools like MTU have let their writing standards slip so far that most graduates can barely compose a coherent sentence let alone craft a formal report. There’s also the fact that, so far at least, these “harsh standards” have impacted me to roughly the same degree as all the other harsh writing standards I’ve run up against here (i.e. it hasn’t).

As it stands now I’m up against the first real crunch of the summer term. Unfortunately, given the compacted nature of summer classes it looks like the crunch may last all the way up to my Philadelphia trip in August. Not the end of the world, to be sure, but after a week of busting my ass it’s a bit disappointing to realize that even after my mid-term tomorrow I’ll still be doing so.

This must be what the real world feels like. I can scarcely contain my excitement!