With school ending only a few weeks away, I’ve been trying to start reading more when I’m not working on the job hunt (more on all of that on Monday, I think, if I feel like talking about it). And right now, I’m in the midst of Lewis Black’s Me of Little Faith with Keith Olbermann’s Truth and Consequences lined up right afterwards, followed by Maggie Jackson’s Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. From there? We’ll see what crosses my hands.

And with that, I’ll ask another question, as I’ve come akin to do on Saturdays:

And that reminds me… I need to put a Last.FM widgit somewhere on my page, and maybe I’ll add a “now reading” one too…

This is the first night in a long time that I’ve actually pulled an “all nighter.” Not with much purpose or much completed from it, I found it a bit interesting all over again. After working as a RHAP for as long as I did and having the all nighter a second part of my nature, to force myself to pull it off now was almost too much for me.

I guess that’s what happens when you get a little older, you can’t do what you used to.

Guess I should get my wonderful wife up and get her out the door for work (on her Birthday, of all days), and get myself some sleep… Sweet sweet sleep…

With a title like that, you wouldn’t expect a post about my cell phone of all things, eh?

Last night I had one of my last two finals of my undergrad collegiate career. Cool, huh? Well, to get to campus I usually use the shuttle service that’s provided for some of the off-campus areas. Instead, I decided that I’d walk to campus.

Now why would I do that, and why would I leave at 3pm? Well, this weekend on Saturday and Sunday, I’ll be taking a First Time Mediation Training through the UCF Dispute Resolution Services–two day seminar from 8:30a-5p. I thought it’d be nice to add to my resumé, as well as just in general it’d be good to undergo before even wanting to be a manager one of these years, as I’d like to eventually be able to attain.

So I leave home and along my way while I’m on an open stretch of road, it starts to rain with heavier drops. Fairly spaced out, but still heavy enough for me to start getting wet. And then, it really picked up.

For folks who aren’t from Florida, you might not understand the idea of “sideways rain.” We see it all the time over summer. Its that really fragrant and fresh rain with the heavier drops that instead of normal rain that seems to fall from a 90 or 75 degree angle (i.e. straight down, slightly from the side), you’re talking more like a 40 degree angle. And that’s what I faced.

With no shelter to even duck by or behind, I was drenched. My jean shorts were soaked through to my boxers, and my shirt was a wet mass that I was wearing that started to droop. I was thankful that my bookbag was waterproof, or so I thought, but more on that in a bit…

But in my pants, I had my cell phone, wallet, keys, pens: the usual for me. And my phone seemed alright, and I got to the parking garage and flipped open my phone and read the text that Sarah had sent me. I had made it to campus in about 30 minutes. Not bad.

Not bad? No, my phone got it bad. I went to reply to my wife’s message and my phone started freaking out as if I was adding spaces right after letters. Just horrible. It’s 3:30, I’m soaking wet, my phone is acting up, and my final is at 6. Things weren’t looking good for me.

I started looking at my phone (a Samsung m510) better. I noticed that it was primarily a few buttons that seemed affected: 3, 6, 9, #, and “Back.” Now, while that might not seem too bad, well, Sarah’s phone number was saved to speed dial on 9, and I text message a lot and that means that I’d have issues with: d, e, f, m, n, o, w, x, y, z, and “space.” Ten out of twenty-six characters. Damnit.

I couldn’t turn my phone off right away. I left it on and brought it to a bathroom and tried to use hand dryers to dry it out a bit. It mostly started to seem like it cleared up. So I called up Sprint’s customer service because *2 wasn’t affected. The gentleman I got was extremely helpful and gave me the number that I’d need to call to do a warranty replacement. Of course, that’s $50 to do that, which sucks, but still not bad. Of course, I have to run this by Sarah.

Now, its about 4ish at this point, and its still a bit frustrating and it seems to get better. If I push the 3, 6, or 9, it automatically adds a # after it. So texting is out of the question. Seriously, have you ever tried to text without using 5/13ths of the alphabet? Yeah, doesn’t really work all that well. I was able to get off “Call me” from the preset messages in one text, and then “ASAP” to Sarah, but because of the way my phone was acting up, it turned out more like–and I kid you not because I’m transcribing this from my sent messages–”Asap pjfox e o-w fox dozenyfowemen-yene my book for youfox.” Mr. Bush and Homeland Security: I swear to you that its not an encoded message and that it has no meaning. I may be critical of my government, but I’m no terrorist.

Needless to say, I finally get ahold of Sarah and she says to just wait it out and see what happens. I’d say that I agree with this, but if you know me? You know I’m addicted to my phone and I do almost everything on or with it. But seeing I can go to recent calls and access her number to call her, and any/all calls that I need to make, I can always use my GrandCentral account as a dial interface to make my calls. And because I can still receive calls, its not too bad. I could always use my wireless backup to add new numbers to the phonebook to make calls if I need to as well.

Still, I’m frustrated.

So at about 6:30 after calling Sarah after my final, I turn my phone off and leave it off. When we get home around 7 after getting dinner, I take out the battery and the memory card and let it sit on a paper towel. I powered it on last night and it seemed to be doing a little better, but still messed up. I then turned it off and re-divided up the pieces.

This morning, I turned on my phone and I crossed my fingers… And honestly?

It works.

Now, I’m not going to be like “omg, perfect like before!” I do notice that there are some differences. For one, the # key seems to falter 1 out of 7 times or so, give or take. Meaning when I’m typing messages, sometimes it doesn’t recognize when I push space all of the time. And there’s one other problem. The backlight for the keypad? Is dead. So there’s a little more battery saving right there…

All in all? I think I lucked out on this one. But if I ever text you and I’m missing a space? Yeah, now you know…

let a cat lick them!

For this sunday’s Sunday Share, I thought I’d share a little video clip that I took this Thursday with my cell phone. As you can see, that’s my cat Cassandra licking my feet. So to all fathers out there? Kick back your own feet and relax and have a great Sunday there.

Thank you ever so much for making something as awesome as your Chai Hai energy drink. While I had one yesterday to compliment the double strength Rock Star from that morning and the Sugar Free Rip It A’tomic Pom from that afternoon, I’ve got two more in my fridge and even though I just finished another A’tomic Pom, you really sound good right about now as I’m finishing off my second Wall Street Journal assignment for Capstone.

You see, my dear Chai Hai, your caffeinated goodness of doom is what will be helping me get through these next few days. With a paper due in my International Management class on Thursday, the WSJ assignment due tonight, a mid-term to do before Friday in Capstone, and a paper to start assembling for Capstone for next Tuesday? This week is perfect for your assistance.

P.S. I might have to call you up again next week, my dear sugary and milky tea energy drink friend: I have two presentations and a final exam next week, and I know that you of all things will assist me. In this modern era, why should I be concerned with this thing we call “sleep” and “well-rested” when I can find my joy contained within your 16 ounce cylinder of recycled aluminum.

P.P.S. Don’t feel bad when I cheat on you with a Rockstar Juiced when I’m on campus. They just don’t have you, my friend… They just don’t have you…

I was laughing yesterday when I started talking about upkeep and housekeeping around here because lord knows I need to do the same thing on my computer. Since a reinstall of a number of things and a complete wipe by a friend a few years ago, my old Gateway desktop has not only a 40gig drive that it came with, but a 150gig drive that he put in for me as a “data drive.” So all of my music sits on a 150gig drive with my documents, raw waves, movies, etc. All of that fun stuff. The truth, though, is that I’ve been running out of space. See, I don’t have a DVD burner, just an old CD burner on my computer. Add to that the fact that I have 15,698 songs on my computer, and most of them are in multiple formats from when I converted from WinAmp to iTunes and iTunes then converted over my collection. So I’ve got 2-3 versions of the same song on my computer.

I have two weeks at the end of July that I think I might need to go through and find all of these extra files and get rid of them. Why? Well, I had 44megs free on that drive last night. I deleted some old backup wav files from music that I had recorded and already mixed down, but I was only able to clean up about 8gigs worth of space.

So come those two weeks in July? I think its time that I get a DVD burner and burn off some of the movies I have, then clean up these duplicates, and maybe get a bigger external drive to backup stuff onto. And probably delete some of the music that I have that I don’t need. I mean, who really does need to have Milli Vanilli on their computer? My point exactly…

I didn’t really think about it too much, but back in February, I marked the start of another year of blogging. I originally started blogging in February 2002 on LiveJournal. While I’ve only been on my own site for a few months now, its interesting to think about how blogging is so accepted and widespread.

If you’re not on a site like LJ or DeadJournal or GreatestJournal, you’ve got other sites like Xanga, Facebook Notes, and MySpace Blogs. Celebrities and TV shows have them. You just add them up to your RSS feeds and you’re good to go.

So that’ll leave you with a question on this Saturday: What fun blogs do you read?

I’ve got about 30ish feeds, give or take, that I have on my reader… I’ll start sharing a few of those soon…

Morning… Earlier than I usually post, but this morning is different. See, I hitched a ride out to work with Sarah this morning so her father could teach me how to drive. Funny sounding, I know, but when you can’t drive a manual transmission and your wife’s car happens to be just that? Well, lets just say that I should learn. About darn time…

Its funny, I find myself not playing that much guitar anymore, and folks still know me for it. And I’ve talked about recording one album or another, and well, I just haven’t yet.

Why? Well, its due to a few things.

Whenever I record, I want to take more time to ensure a higher quality. I just haven’t because it involves setting things up, kicking the cats out of the area that my computer is in, and just having the time.

Time is a big thing too. Between classes and the on-going job hunt, well, it wouldn’t be right for me to take an 8 hour day to record 3-4 songs and get them right.

Next up, I just don’t have the drive to do it. I enjoy playing and I do play maybe an hour or two a week, but just not all that much because of homework and trying to keep up with the news and stuff around me.

As a whole, I remember growing up and spending 2-4 hours a day playing guitar, playing sets, practicing techniques, and now? I’ll maybe pick it up for 10 minutes a day for two to three days a week. Not much at all.

The fact of the matter is? Life happens… And soon, I hope to talk more about how I record and what I’ll be doing on a new album that I’m slowly finishing writing and working on…

My apologies. This is just filler today, you could say. There’s a lot of things that are on my plate currently that I’m sorting through.

I’ll have more tomorrow, with a bit more information as to why today is so cryptic. But well wishes are more than welcome, and I’ll reveal all tomorrow.

Believe me, I’d love to say more. Between Edwards endorsement of Obama (which I called on May 9th), Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment last night, President Bush’s Nazi remark against Obama this morning not two hours ago, my classes, and what I’ve got on my plate that Sarah and I are working on now? I have weeks worth of crap for sure.

I promise. Tomorrow.

I nearly forgot that I had responsibilities. All of this week, I found myself watching at least 5 hours of MSNBC a day. Sort of addicting, even if it is the same stories. But I like the personalities that the network has, so I put up with it.

And as they talked about Mother’s Day, I thought I’d throw a question to my audience once again, seeing tomorrow morning marks what I’ve heard is the 100th anniversary of celebrating it as a national holiday or something of that sort…

What are your plans for Mother’s Day?

For me? Well, I can’t talk about that until after the day. You know, in case one of my three mothers stumbles across my blog. Ah, the perks of having an amazing mother and two wonderful mother-in-laws…

And folks who know me know that I’m usually on top of things musically. And here’s why. Yup, every week, I check that site, just to see what new albums might be coming out and I’ll google artists and see what’s what with them. Sarah came to my computer the other day and actually asked me “What the hell is Hercules and Love Affair and why were you searching for it?” I had to explain to her that it was a band name I saw and that because it was dance music, I wasn’t interested. That made for an interesting conversation.

So, I have a sad confession to make. I also find new music from The Hills. Shoot me now. Seriously. Sarah likes to watch it, and because of that, I’ll usually watch with her. I mean, heck, she watches Countdown with Keith Olbermann with me, so I can at least return the favor for half the amount of time. But what I do like that MTV has been doing on that show and other shows is that they (1) pop up the artist name/song name during the episode while it plays and (2) post all of the artists and songs names on their website after/during the show.

Oh, and even though I don’t like the show? Spencer sucks. Well, they all suck, but especially Spencer…

Never ever is easy. While I wasn’t as unfortunate as my lovely wife was to have to return to work, I still have a good long list of stuff to do. Between cleaning things up around our apartment, laundry, and pre-career fair research? Yeah. My list is full…

Before really getting down to things, I’ve been watching the news. I just hit pause at about 8:20 on MSNBC and I took care of some internet stuffs with e-mail, banks, social networking sites, all that fun jazz, and came back to it. And at that point? I’m about an hour behind. As I speak now around 11am, the time on the ticker is about 50 minutes back, so I can fast-forward the commercials, skip sections I don’t want to hear, and all of that fun jazz. Its honestly the best way to get the news in full each morning, and now that Sarah and I are getting up earlier, I get about an hour of my Morning Joe too. Love that show when I have a chance to watch it.

I’ve got a lot of built up rants for when I really start writing this week, but I’d better stop procrastinating on my cleaning now and get that done so I can really enjoy my break before classes start next monday…

The thing about vacations is even when you get back? You’ve got that “jet-lag” where you still want to be on vacation. But now, you need to get food for your place, spend time with your animals, clean off the DVR (which we put a small dent in yesterday) and get ready for work and other mundanes of life from before you left…

I’ll be back with a Sunday Share tomorrow, but I wanted to get in a filler today… I’ve had too many of those recently…

Well folks, I’m just going to make this one brief because Sarah and I just got in about an hourish back, and we’re dead tired and after about 10 hours on the road today? Yeah, I’m just looking forward to a simple night watching the DVD we rented and cuddling. But I’d like to thank the guest writers in my absence, even if they didn’t get around to posting anything. Just putting up with me is a challenge, and next time I’m out of town, you’ll be seeing their faces again if they have the time and such…

Alright, I’d better finish up some internet stuffs and get the heck out of dodge… Back later to usual posting…