confusion

Oh yea [gsfc.nasa.gov]. The wind is a blowing. And the rain is falling (sometimes down, sometime other directions!) Isabel is here!

Been a long time since we had a hurricane come through. I was at work when it started to rain this afternoon waiting for my boss to finish his demo of my system on the west coast. As soon as he called to say all was well the last few of us who where at work headed out. In good news the demo did apparently go well. Yea, all those long hours I’ve been putting in pay off. Not that it has not been fun or that there is not a lot more work to do, but hacking sendmail for fun and profit has been fun and should be profitable.

Back to the storm—oh, power just flickered!—I talked to my mom a little while ago and the projected path of the eye of the storm is only a mile or two from my parents house. While I was on the phone with her the giant tree in the front yard came crashing down and destroyed her car—flattened it! Yikes. At least it fell on the car, if it had gone the other way it would have taken out the house.

Not much other than that. Probably have tomorrow off. Was going to take a half day anyway to get finished packing. I move in two days! Just heard the worst of the wind and rain is supposed to come through between two and six am.

Blow baby blow!

Happy birthday to my love. I wish I could be in Switzerland to take you out and and throw you a party. But that will have to wait till I have a chance to come see you. Till then happy birthday, I hope you are having fun. Love you.

I picked up my truck from the dealers today. They said that they managed to get it to die on them—which is good because they said it started right up for them the first time. But when they hooked the computer up to the diagnostics it printed out a list of codes pages long. Turned out (at least they say) to be a frayed ground wire or some such. Well, it works now. I just hope it still works in a week.

So yesterday I go to get in my truck to pick up Sherman (who is now in Alexandria, living in a hotel for a week till we move in to our new place,) and the truck starts fine, but then 100 feet down the road it stalls… and here we go again! I was on a down hill to I rolled the truck into a little drive way (and the people who owned that driveway showed up some time later and after much discussion and dirty looks parked on the street. But they turned out to be nice guys.) I called roadside and was on the phone an hour (starting at 6:40ish—thats important, remember it) while the guy calls all the contracted towers in the area. Well, none of them pick up the phone so after that he tries the non-contracted (you know the ones you have to pay but roadside will reimburse you for) ones. So since I’m on a cell phone the guys says he will keep trying and that they will call me back. Ok, I tell Sherman to take the metro in and called J███████ to say I would not be coming out to Vienna.

An hour later Sherman shows up and I’m on the phone again with roadside. They cannot get a tow truck so they are going to call the police and have one sent. So they tell me one is coming. Two hours later I call them again. They call the police again and say a tow truck is coming again, but this time they give me a phone number to call and a name. So I wait 45 minutes and nothing. I call the number and the DC police say that they ‘can not and will not send a tow truck.’ They can send a patrol car. Well that does not do me any fucking good.

At this point it was 11:00 so I said fuck it. Sherman and I went to get a few drinks. We had a good time at Larry’s Lounge. Met a guy named Joseph and talked till like 2 in the morning. Guys seams cool and we are going to be living 3 blocks from him after this week. After that, Sherman and I got a slice of pizza and he headed out for the night. I headed back to the truck. I called roadside again and… to make a long story short and to keep from repeating myself lets just say that at 6 am they finally got a hold of a tow truck in Louden, who said they would come in and get the truck. But, it would be between 9:30 and 10:30 before they got here. So at 11 am I called again and got a different tow truck. At 11:30 two tow trucks showed up. Boy that was a fiasco. But the truck got towed to the dealer, and tomorrow I’m going to call the mechanics who ‘fixed’ it the frist time and tell them I want my fucking money back. Right after I figure out how to get to and from work again without a car.

First off a little bit of non-drama; It’s September sixth and the year and a half anniversary for me and C███████. In one sense time has flown by and in many others time has crawled by at an excruciating pace. I have not seen her in a long time, but we talk all the time and I feel that the relationship is a strong as ever. I was hoping to go to London to see her this month but that is not to be for various reasons. Love you babe.

And now the drama. It was another long week. I have been working 12 hours a day this week again. Deadlines looming in a few weeks. But it’s been ok, I am writing c code and feel like I have gotten something really accomplished for the first time in a while. I don’t know what it is but programming in Java or C/C++ just leaves me feeling like I have actually been working. Working in PHP and with web based stuff is frustrating and I don’t ever feel like I have gotten anything done no matter how much work I do.

Anyway, on Thursday I went to dinner with Rachel. Haven’t seen here in a long time, since just after I got back from England in fact. She’s doing good. We had a long dinner and talked and laughed about a lot of stuff.

The big drama is of course my truck. I spent several hours on Wednesday getting the truck towed from the mechanics to a dealership because they told me that after they put in the new fuel pump the truck starts but after 30 to 45 minutes it ‘winds down.’ So I had it towed to a dealership out in Vienna. The dealership called me on Friday afternoon and told me that they could find nothing wrong with the truck. So today I picked up the truck and drove it to work. There was one time while I was driving to work and twice coming back to DC that the truck bucked like it did the night before it died on me. Now if it dies on me again I’m going to give up and move to Ulan Bator.

Also; I saw an ad for some new ABC show called “Threat Matrix.” Now the show is supposed to be about people who deal with terrorist threats to America but during the add they say “their authority is unquestioned” and “their methods are unconventional.” Now unquestioned authority for a law enforcement/defence agency is a bad thing. You know that whole checks and balances thing? And the unconventional methods? In the ad they say it while they show a man chained to a chair and a woman says “tell me what I want to know.” Excuse me? It doesn’t matter what a person is accused of law enforcement can’t use torture to interrogate them. I don’t know, but it just looked like the show plays into the whole ‘fuck civil liberties and rights just get the terrorists” attitude.

Ok, it’s late, I’m going to bed. Ciao.