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Well, not a lot has happened since my last post.  The latest in the string of annoyances is that when they switched my coworkers and I from salaried to hourly, they had to reset our benefits. Well the dental provider got the termination notice, but not the renew notice.  I found this out yesterday when my dentist called and said that deltadental was refusing to pay for my recent filling.  So I called and yelled at benefits, and they said they would call me back, but they haven’t yet.  I get really sick of having to fight for the things around here that I am supposed to get by default.

In other news, I have officially hired a Realtor (finally, yeah I know), and am really starting to look for a place.  I got pre-approved last week.  Its kind of exciting I guess.

My mom got some of these topsy turvy things, so for mother’s day I got her $23 worth of tomatoes and dirt.  The place she hung these things, I don’t really think they will grow, its right behind a tree, and I don’t believe there is much sun there.  In fact, the tree blocks from the North and West, and the house blocks from the South and East.  She may as well have hung them up inside, but we’ll see I guess.

So funny story.  A week ago I was invited to go to my brother’s girlfriend’s graduation lunch out in Chesterfield, MO.  At first it was supposed to be at Olive Garden (OG), but due to threatening weather, they moved the graduation to later in the day, so the lunch got changed to brunch. So my sister the social coordinator for our bunch called to let us know that the event had been moved to IHOP. Now don’t get me wrong, I like IHOP (a lot more than OG), but I thought it was a little strange that it would be moved from OG to IHOP.  But whatever. so I drove out to Chesterfield, and was sitting in my car at the IHOP.  I of course was really early, I always am.  But I started getting worried cause I didn’t see anyone I knew after a while.  So at 10 minutes before the thing was supposed to start, I went inside.

I still didn’t see anyone I knew, so I asked the host, “hey I’m here for a graduation party, lots of people.” He said he hadn’t sat any parties, and wanted of course to know how many.  So I called my brother and was all like,

“So, where are you guys at?

“Where are you at?”

“I’m waiting for you guys here at IHOP, if you know how many people there are going to be I can get a table…”

“Why the hell are you at IHOP?”

“Uh…cause I was told this thing was moved from the OG to the IHOP.”

“Who the hell told you that?”

“Amy.” (that would be my sister)

“Heh, no, its at the pancake house, not IHOP”

“Uh..whats the difference?”

“The place is called ‘the original pancake house, its just down the street.”

“Oh, okay, I’ll be there in a few.”

So on my way out to the car, I called my sister, who had been going crazy trying to get ahold of my parents cause they were supposed to pick her up, but she didn’t know if they knew they were supposed to pick her up. But of course my parents don’t actually carry their cell phones with them, instead they generally just leave them at home.  In any case, I let my sister know we were not going to IHOP, but instead the pancake house, and should she ever get picked up, this is where we would be.  The pancakes were pretty good, I would definitely recommend going there if you like pancakes or omelets.

Afterwords we all went over to my sister’s boyfriends house for a little while.  It was a nice place, but what do you expect for Chesterfield? After a while my parents and my brother left for the graduation ceremony, and my sister decided she wanted to go to the Butterfly House and she wanted me to come along.  So I did.  I had never been there before, so it was interesting, though honestly, not worth the $6.  You can check out some photo’s my sister took while we were there.

After that, my sister’s boyfriend, Neal, wanted to show me this bbq place called Annie Guns.  It was a neat place I guess, but honestly, it is just a store where they sell food. I don’t really care all that much.

Well, I think this post is long enough now.

So for Christmas, my siblings and I decided to refresh/redo/whatever our parents bathroom.  I wish that this idea had come up in October or September or something, so that we would have had some time to think through and plan everything, but no, we came up with this on Thanksgiving.  As a result, now we have to hustle a little bit to get done with everything.  I guess on Christmas day we will just put a big piece of wallpaper over the door or something, and make my mom tear it down.  I don’t know.

When we started out we were just going to: replace the lighting & fan, remove the wallpaper, get a new towel rack, tp dispenser, shower curtain, etc. You know, we were keeping it minimal.  It has ballooned a little. Now we are tiling 3 walls (there are 10 walls in that bathroom), and running the tile border around the rest of the walls (I don’t know how bad that will look), removing mold from, priming, sealing, and painting all the walls.

Don’t get me wrong, I am always up for a challenge. But some of this stuff, ok well most of this stuff, I have never done (or even attempted) for that matter. Tiling for example, I don’t know the first thing about. I have always wanted to learn, and this will be a great learning experience for me, but reading about it online, and actually doing it are generally two different things. Luckily, my friend Jackie, has a plethora of information on this topic, and actually wrote a blog entry about tiling.  Hopefully that will be enough to steer me in the right direction.

I have already started with the removal of the wallpaper. Got to get going here if I intend to finish before the big day (I should probably do my xmas shopping soon too). I will be adding pictures to my photostream as work continues.

I want to tell you about how the Gefen USB to DVI adapter has changed my life. No not really, but still this thing is really cool. I will let you read the real reviews here.
So I got this thing because I do a lot of communicating at work through email and instant messenging and I was getting a little stressed out, with windows popping up all the time, while I was trying to work. A couple of years ago, I added a second monitor to my desk, which was totally awesome. If you have never tried 2 monitors, you really need to give it a shot. All of the extra screen real-estate is very helpful. It allows you to not necessarily get twice as much done, but you do seem to work more efficiently because you don’t have to juggle everything.

If you know me, you know I have a tendency to have several windows open at once. In fact, I have 12 windows open right now. In addition to that, I have 2 different IM applications going, which puts me on 8 IM networks at any given time, plus twitter. I have dreamed of what it would be like to have more than 2 monitors. I think anyone who saw the matrix probably has. But how do you do it? Well, if you have a real computer, you can just get more video cards, and interconnect them. This is obviously extremely expensive, and is not really an option on a work laptop. So you can imagine, when I saw this USB to DVI thing I was like whoa! But I was skeptical as well. There’s a lot of data that has to be sent for video, and I didn’t really think a little usb device, would have enough bandwidth to handle it. There is at least one review that shows some video, where they dude is moving something between his usb screen and his normal screen. You can see a little lag in the video. I was a little worried about this, until Jeff pointed out that the computer in the video is an intel celery processor. So I got one.

And it has blown me away, I mean changed my life. Eh whatever. It’s really cool. It plugs in usb, has a little tiny driver, and its good to go. The biggest monitor I have is 1280×1024 and I was able to watch full screen video on it without any problems. The monitor shows up in the Windows display properties just like any other standard monitor. Now of course I have to cheat a little. I found this program a little while back called UltraMon. It is for computers that have multiple displays. It allows you to setup profiles, and setup screen savers and wallpapers and stuff for multiple monitors.

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I got Heroes Season 2 on dvd last night.  In addition to all the episodes, it has an alternate ending to season two and a behind the scenes for season 3.

Apparently the Olympics are over.  Its strange because I thought they went on longer.  I thought that they were on at least until the end of the month.  Do you know why I thought that? Because over the last few weeks, the only thing I have seen is the swimming.  Just watching NBC, you would think that Phelps won at least one gold medal everyday.  What is he up to now like like 30 gold medals?  Listen, I’m not trying to say anything bad about him. No, I’m bitching about the coverage.

I think its great that Phelps won more medals than anyone else ever.  Awesome.  But, I bet someone won some medals in fencing.  Was that on tv? I didn’t see it.  I assume someone won at archery, and rowing, and all those track and field events.  Were they on tv?  I didn’t see them.  I have seen Phelps touch the metal sensor 1/100th of a second before the other dude like a million times, but I can’t tell you anything about the ping pong, or the tae kwon do, or anything else.  Why?  Because the coverage only recaps the events of the day.  There is a reason people go to sporting events, its because they want to see the whole thing.  But for those of us that can’t fly half way round the world, you aren’t doing us any favors just showing bits and pieces.  I would have loved to see some of the other events.

I have satellite, and during the opening ceremonies, they were flashing at the bottom of the screen that several extra channels were being set aside for additional olympic coverage.  I thought that this meant that I would be able to see the Olympics at any time, just turn to one of these channels.  But no, that’s not what it meant.  It meant that after the prime time coverage, they would replay this same damn thing on these channels.  Don’t the other athletes, in the other sports deserve the some tv time too?