Scirocco's Vroom Vroom Journal

10:53 pm - One Hundred Pushups

Today was day 1 of the challenge (http://www.hundredpushups.com/) and my arms feel like Jello. That was MUCH harder than I thought it would be. Geez, I hope I survive this. :)

Current Mood: tired

03:25 pm - Ganked from sahara_harp, how I spent my summer vacations.

What did you do for a summer job when you were in high school/college?


1: Busboy at Bailey's Ice Cream - This was disgusting, picking up drooled-on place settings left behind by all the octogenarian folks who frequented Bailey's regularly. Definitely a $MINWAGE job.

2: Cook at Bailey's Ice Cream - A promotion! No more cleanup! This is also where, if I was smarter, I would have become rich. I INVENTED Bagel Chips here, being hungry one day, and having only a stale bagel, some butter, a grill, and a meat slicer. Yeah, they were awesome, and if only I'd thought to market them.... Anyway, I was making probably $6/hr here, a big bonus from $MINWAGE.

3: Cook at Bel Canto mid-scale Italian restaurant. I learned a fair amount of cooking skills here, and also spent almost 6 weeks doing nothing but making pesto out of basil and olive oil. I STILL love Pesto to this day. (I also acquired two cool-looking scars on my forearms the first week I worked here, not having been around pizza ovens before.) I was paid, I think, $6 something/hr, totally under the table.

4: General assistant-type-guy at International Bicycle Center. This was pretty much my dream job, and I was eating, sleeping, racing, and dreaming bicycles that summer. Sadly, the owner was a putz, and I left after that one year there.

5: Random data-entry at Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School - This was hilarious because they had BOXES of data for two of us, myself and my friend Leland, and they expected us to take months to input it all. We finished the data-input in about 3 weeks and spent the rest of the summer writing up little computer programs on their hardware. I remember it was all air-quality data from surrounding towns, that the doctor was very nice, and I also remember dragging home the first compaq portable "suitcase" computer to do some of the work at home, and also to create programs for games we were playing. I think we were making somewhere around $8/hr, which I was tickled pink with!

6: Private Computer Consultants - By Junior year, myself, Eric, Leland, Jeremy, Charlie and Aleks had a real private computer consulting company going, with real customers, and making real money. We were actually contracted to move all the data from an opthalmologist's PDP-11 minicomputer to a new PC-based system. We were making $25/hour doing that, and let me tell you, that bought me a lot of bicycle parts. We also contracted to a local typesetting shop for doing some configuration work for them, and we did private work as well, including Brookline High School's English Department PC configuration.

7: Final "HS" job - In the year I took off between HS and College, I had a full-time job downtown in Boston at an investment banker firm doing PC support. I felt all grown-up, commuting downtown via the T every morning in my slacks, shirt and tie with all the business folks. I was making, I think, $12/hr, worked in an awesome building, the bankers were actually pretty nice folks, and got to go to some pretty swanky parties and outings in and around Boston. This is also where I decided I never wanted to have a career in computers. (Ha ha ha)

College Jobs

8: More data entry work at Harvard Med and SPH.

9: I spent one totally unsafe summer with some other guy replacing all the old thicknet cable with Cat-5 ethernet at the Natick Army Labs. This involved getting a security clearance, time spent unsupervised at the top of 30-foot cranes in giant warehouses, and getting to sample proposed army rations! I still can't believe we didn't get hurt, with all the crap that fell on us out of the ceilings, but we survived.

10: While in school, I worked in and eventually co-directed Clark University's Sexual Information and contraception clinic. Yup, I sold Condoms. LOTS of them. I also got to hand out advice and information on sexually-related matters, pregnancy, STDs, etc. If I'd been a meaner person, it would have been a great place to dig up dirt on fellow students. (this didn't pay anything, since it was a volunteer gig, but it was still a job)

12: I drove the Clark University Shuttle Van to and from Boston on weekend-night trips, so my fellow students could party and get liquored up and not die driving back to Worcester. I liked driving anyway, so this was a no-brainer for me.

11: I also worked in and eventually directed the Clark University Computer labs, as a work-study job. Not much to say about this, it was a lot of fun, I met a lot of cool people, and eventually led to me getting a lead to my first real job.

13: Senior year, I took on an internship with Banyan Systems, the lead I mentioned above having come from a guy who worked with me in the Clark labs. I worked all senior year while finishing up my classes, and as my classes ended, they offered me a full-time job testing software! I ACCEPT!

Current Mood: accomplished

01:14 pm - Morning travels?

Guess what we did this morning?

Yeah, went and picked more strawberries. Probably only another 12lb or so, pickings were a little slimmer, and it was very foggy/misty out and not very warm. Still, MORE FRESH STRAWBERRIES!

Current Mood: crazy

01:56 pm - Rock Band Accomplishments

I finished my first Rock Band song on EXPERT with a 100% score. I am now officially able to stand in, should the lead singer of The Pixies lose his voice while singing, "Wave of Mutilation." Ahh, another life goal accomplished.

Current Mood: chipper

08:20 pm - How to start off your morning with Adrenaline

Warning: This stunt was performed by a trained professional idiot , do not try this stunt on your own.

I pulled out of my driveway and got maybe 200 feet up my residential street before I saw a skunk, walking up the middle of the street, heading for my car. I slowed down, and it didn't make any move to get out of the road, wandering back and forth from side to side. As I got closer, I saw that it was a pretty small skunk, and had a YOGURT CONTAINER (single serving) wedged on its head up to its neck. It was totally blind, and wandering in vague circles in the road.

I pulled over to the side of the street, and started trying to call my town's Animal Control officer, only to discover that we didn't really have one. I spent five minutes calling around through a few city offices, failing entirely to reach any human beings. As I called around, the skunk continued to wander in vague circles down the road, ocasionally bonking the container on the ground and seeming to startle itself. A few times, a car passed us, and the skunk froze and arched its back, but had no idea really what was around it.

Finally, I realized no one was going to be able to help this skunk in any official capacity, and that if I left it the way it was, it was either going to be run down, or most likely suffocate once the temperature got up into the expected mid-80s. That left... hmm, yeah, me.

I turned the car off, closed all the windows, and got out. A woman across the street in a house saw me and came out and I stepped out of the car, asking, "Are you going to pull it off its head?" "That's my plan!" I replied. "Feel free to laugh if it sprays me."

I positioned myself very quietly in the path of where it's next circle was going to take it, and when it got about two feet away from my foot, I reached down and YANKED the yogurt container off of its head, and started RUNNING the other way!

Looking back, I saw the Skunk STOP, watching me, and then realizing it was free, turn tail and start gallumping off into the neighbors yard and some bushes.

The neighbor applauded while I walked back to my car, crumpling up the yogurt container to throw away later. I think I waved. All I know is my heart was thumping pretty good, I had that cool adrenaline high I love so much, and I figure I've added a few points to my Good Karma account. Besides, skunks are cute. :)

And I wasn't even late to work.

Current Mood: happy

04:53 pm

( Superhero Meme under here! )

10:30 am - Zombie Fight Meme

A meme borrowed from enochs_fable

You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:

1. one weapon.
2. one song blasting on the speakers.
3. one famous person to fight alongside you.

Weapon can be real or fictional, you may assume endless ammo if applicable. Person can be real or fictional.

1. Jesse "The Body" Ventura's Minigun, from Predator.
2. Stealers Wheel, "Stuck in The Middle With You"
3. goldispikes Who else better to slaughter zombies by the truckload?

How about you?

Current Mood: curious

04:51 pm - Oh, my Doctor, he's so funny.

When I was sick a few weeks ago, I went to see my doctor. (Let's not even get into the fact that his name is Dr. HO.)

I was feeling poorly with whatever illness I had, so he checked me out, gave me my "annual" physical and said that I had no overt symptoms of anything serious, but that he could do a blood draw to check for anything more exotic. Fine, says I, poke away. He pokes, blood comes out, off it goes to be tested.
A week passes. I get a message at home to call the doctor's office. Today, I call. I get Dr. Ho himself. Him: "Hi Wiley! Yeah, I have your blood results here. I didn't find anything really wrong with you. Kidney function's fine. No Diabetes. No Anemia. Cholesterol is really good (128, with an HDL of 66, which he called EXCEPTIONAL). Me: "Well, great!" Him: "Yeah, the only weird thing was a slightly lowered white-cell count. You know, those cells that fight infection?" Me: "Uh, yeah." Him: "There are sometimes cyclical lowered white cell counts in certain ethnic groups, such as some Asian and African-American groups. Anyway, I'd like to recheck you in a month, just to make sure you don't have some kind of cancer that would be causing this. OK, see you in a month!"

My doctor. He's so funny. Ha. Ha ha.

Current Mood: amused

01:28 pm - Wife/Husband Memes

87 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

Current Mood: amused

08:24 am - Baked Mommy

Ha ha, my Mom's going to be COOKING. :P

http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=roswell,NM

08:20 pm - SO tired of being sick now

Okay, after resting quietly all DAY, I expect to feel better. But no, at 6:30pm, back comes the fever. Fecking marvelous. Guess I might as well get the hell up and do some stuff, lying around like a slug didn't help.

Current Mood: aggravated

11:38 am - Something must be wrong with me....

I must be losing my powers. This is the second company in a row where Stock options I had have matured and are worth REAL MONIES. *CHA-CHING*

Current Mood: content

10:13 am - HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIERCIA

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my siercia! I love you!

12:50 pm - Insidious Rock Band!

I've noticed a strong disposition for a lot of the radio stations I listen to these days, both on-air and network-streamed, to have a LOT of the Rock Band playlist songs in rotation. While it's good that I can practice singing them to myself, it's also mildly distracting. :)

I can't think of any other games that have influenced the radio media so much. Can anyone else remember something else that's affected playlists so much?

05:04 pm - TEN! TEN YEARS MAN! TEN!

Wow. Happy 10-year Anniversary to my lovely bride, siercia. We're going out to burn the town down tonight, so don't bother looking for us, unless you like flames and carnage. :)

Oh, and don't ask me for advice on being married for 10 years. It just kinda happened. :P

"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans."

08:42 pm - State of the Rock Band News from ME

So, yeah, playing a surprising amount of Rock Band for someone who doesn't actually own the game. There's a bar in Davis Square, Orleans, that runs a Rock Band night every other Sunday night. They give us the huge projection TV to play on, and broadcast us on the main sound system throughout the entire bar. It's surprisingly fun, it's like Karaoke++.

New favorite song? "Simple Man", by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I can rock that song pretty hard. I'm also moving up to hard level on the drums now, which has taken me some time, but which I'm pretty happy with.

So... anyone out there around the Boston area wanna come and play some Rock Band?

Current Mood: accomplished

04:11 pm - You try to help....

I must be getting cranky. For three years, I've been the primary responder on my company's customer forum. Today, however, I had a customer respond to a question I attempted to answer (where my answer started with, "It's entire possible that....") with the response of, "I think that's a Cop Out. That could never happen."

Well, since the customers now have all the answers, I guess I don't need to be answering their questions anymore.

Note that I'm not trying to be petty, and I'm not being vindictive, but the tone of the forum overall in the past year has gone from "helping hands" to "bitchfest/slam the company" and I'm not real productive in a situation like that, so I'm taking some time off from the forums before I get myself in trouble. It sucks that I feel I have to do that, but I have a LOT of other things to be doing here at work aside from being the customer pinata.

11:12 pm - Beer Part 3.

Bottled. Happy. Now to sit ANOTHER three weeks. Almost no sediment. I'm getting really good at filtration. :)

08:19 pm - For all my currently pregnant friends and spouses

This is for whuffle and halleyscomet, gala and hoo, picture_kept and stemware. (and if I forgot anyone, I apologize)


http://www.xkcd.com/387/

Current Mood: silly

02:52 pm - *BLOOP*

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating