Well...
Well, it has been a while, hasn't it?
First of all, let me thank you all for your ongoing support as I struggle with my recent diagnosis. All the flowers and free hugs! Okay, I was only joshing. No such diagnosis. I don't have any life threatening diseases, God willing. What I do have, however, is a new iPod. Irony has reared its beautiful head in the form of a holiday party raffle ticket at our annual Christmas fête at work (held in January). I held the winning ticket for the 'Grand Prize' iPod Nano. What makes it ironic is I had just purchased the 30GB iPod Video for Katrina for Christmas. And upon opening the Nano package, she fell for the thing and the 30GB was bequeathed over to me. That makes three iPod children in the family. It's true, you tend to forget about the old, boring kids when a newer, more beautiful one is born. I recently labled my original 2003 iPod as "Clint's Old But Still Useful iPod" in iTunes. As my boss loudly and publicly remarked when I held aloft the winning ticket, "Hey! This guy's got three of these things, now!"
On the other end of the lame-to-cool spectrum, I recently had to endure a defensive driving course for a speeding ticket I got a while back in Galveston County. I opted for the course so as to wipe the thing off my record, and it was a little cheaper than actually paying for the deferment. There are several ways to do this: One option is to find a class and attend it. Another option (I learned about from a girl at work) is to rent tapes and a special VCR that records your test scores from a video store. Finally, there's the online course - which is what I chose.
It totally sucked.
For six hours I was a slave to the PC. And no, you cannot let the thing play for six hours while you sleep. If it idles too long, your course is terminated. If you answer too many questions wrong along the way, your course is terminated. And if the program suspects any cheating at all, your course is terminated. Generally, you get a page of text to read with the occasional embedded Flash animation or cheesy video. And at the bottom, there's a timer with, let's say, 00:01:30 on it will count down before you can advance to the next page. No matter how fast you can read, you must wait. Then, there might be a non-relevant question to make sure you watched the video. "What did the boyfriend say to the girl when she asked for the keys?" Shit like that. As I am not severely mentally retarded, I passed with flying colors.
But after I completed the course, I became ensnared in a catch-22 where in order to get my Certificate of Completion, I needed to fax in a notarized "Certificate of Assurance" claiming I took the test myself with no third party assistance, but had no picture ID to get the thing notarized since I had to surrender my Indiana license when I went to the license branch and applied for my Texas driver's license (which takes a month to come in the mail) which I needed to apply for a copy of my Texas driving records to mail to the court along with my (unattainable) Certificate of Completion. Driving records, mind you, that I couldn't possibly have accumulated since, up to that point, I had no Texas driver's license, just an Indiana one which I had to surrender, leaving me with no picture ID to get the Certificate of Assurance notarized. Something like that. It's late, and I'm not even going to attempt to proof-read this paragraph.
Luckily, I happened to casualy mention all this to my boss, and he literally produced a notary stamp and ledger from thin air like he was David Copperfield or something. Who knew this guy was a Notary Public?
Again, I don't recommend the online course. I've even heard from two separate co-workers that you can actually go to a comedy club to take the course for the same price, lunch included. Okay, sure, so you can do the online thing in your underwear and all, but I'd rather get out of the house, you know? I guess I'm old-fashioned like that. Besides, If you ask me, underwear is overrated as leisure apparel.
Oh, and I'm now a member of Netflix. It's handy for several reasons. No, not so I can rent scratched, fullscreen pan-n-scan copies of White Chicks and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. Now, I won't be giving another dollar to the criminally overpriced Blockbuster Video or the despicably ghetto Hollywood Video. And Netflix carries titles which are fun to watch, but not necessarily fun to buy that most video stores won't have. There are two family-owned video stores in town, Audio/Video Plus and Cactus Music & Video, which I will still regularly and proudly patronize for the inevitable impulse rental and oddball title.
First of all, let me thank you all for your ongoing support as I struggle with my recent diagnosis. All the flowers and free hugs! Okay, I was only joshing. No such diagnosis. I don't have any life threatening diseases, God willing. What I do have, however, is a new iPod. Irony has reared its beautiful head in the form of a holiday party raffle ticket at our annual Christmas fête at work (held in January). I held the winning ticket for the 'Grand Prize' iPod Nano. What makes it ironic is I had just purchased the 30GB iPod Video for Katrina for Christmas. And upon opening the Nano package, she fell for the thing and the 30GB was bequeathed over to me. That makes three iPod children in the family. It's true, you tend to forget about the old, boring kids when a newer, more beautiful one is born. I recently labled my original 2003 iPod as "Clint's Old But Still Useful iPod" in iTunes. As my boss loudly and publicly remarked when I held aloft the winning ticket, "Hey! This guy's got three of these things, now!"
On the other end of the lame-to-cool spectrum, I recently had to endure a defensive driving course for a speeding ticket I got a while back in Galveston County. I opted for the course so as to wipe the thing off my record, and it was a little cheaper than actually paying for the deferment. There are several ways to do this: One option is to find a class and attend it. Another option (I learned about from a girl at work) is to rent tapes and a special VCR that records your test scores from a video store. Finally, there's the online course - which is what I chose.
It totally sucked.
For six hours I was a slave to the PC. And no, you cannot let the thing play for six hours while you sleep. If it idles too long, your course is terminated. If you answer too many questions wrong along the way, your course is terminated. And if the program suspects any cheating at all, your course is terminated. Generally, you get a page of text to read with the occasional embedded Flash animation or cheesy video. And at the bottom, there's a timer with, let's say, 00:01:30 on it will count down before you can advance to the next page. No matter how fast you can read, you must wait. Then, there might be a non-relevant question to make sure you watched the video. "What did the boyfriend say to the girl when she asked for the keys?" Shit like that. As I am not severely mentally retarded, I passed with flying colors.
But after I completed the course, I became ensnared in a catch-22 where in order to get my Certificate of Completion, I needed to fax in a notarized "Certificate of Assurance" claiming I took the test myself with no third party assistance, but had no picture ID to get the thing notarized since I had to surrender my Indiana license when I went to the license branch and applied for my Texas driver's license (which takes a month to come in the mail) which I needed to apply for a copy of my Texas driving records to mail to the court along with my (unattainable) Certificate of Completion. Driving records, mind you, that I couldn't possibly have accumulated since, up to that point, I had no Texas driver's license, just an Indiana one which I had to surrender, leaving me with no picture ID to get the Certificate of Assurance notarized. Something like that. It's late, and I'm not even going to attempt to proof-read this paragraph.
Luckily, I happened to casualy mention all this to my boss, and he literally produced a notary stamp and ledger from thin air like he was David Copperfield or something. Who knew this guy was a Notary Public?
Again, I don't recommend the online course. I've even heard from two separate co-workers that you can actually go to a comedy club to take the course for the same price, lunch included. Okay, sure, so you can do the online thing in your underwear and all, but I'd rather get out of the house, you know? I guess I'm old-fashioned like that. Besides, If you ask me, underwear is overrated as leisure apparel.
Oh, and I'm now a member of Netflix. It's handy for several reasons. No, not so I can rent scratched, fullscreen pan-n-scan copies of White Chicks and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. Now, I won't be giving another dollar to the criminally overpriced Blockbuster Video or the despicably ghetto Hollywood Video. And Netflix carries titles which are fun to watch, but not necessarily fun to buy that most video stores won't have. There are two family-owned video stores in town, Audio/Video Plus and Cactus Music & Video, which I will still regularly and proudly patronize for the inevitable impulse rental and oddball title.
posted by Clint at Thursday, January 12, 2006
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