laptop blues

sending your computer off to the manufacturer to get repaired is a terrifying thing.

has anyone else done this?

i feel like i'm sending my kid off to summer camp for the first time, and i just KNOW something terrible is going to happen.

the bottom line is that HP is willing to fix my problem for free and it would cost me an arm and a leg to get it fixed in town. i'm hoping for the best, but i'm mentally preparing myself for such horrors as:

- the laptop getting lost in the mail
- HP erasing my hard drive and losing all my data (that i didn't backup ever - FAIL)
- the in-warranty service somehow being out-of-warranty and i still pay an arm and a leg
- this whole process taking 2+ weeks

also, i'm slightly embarrassed, because i use a desktop wallpaper shuffling program, and i'm like 90% confident that at the time of the crash, the wallpaper was a scantily-clad suicidegirl. what can you do? hope that the guy/girl fixing your computer has an appreciation for photography of tattoed alternative/punk pinup girls!

fuck the kids

CALLING TEENAGERS IS NOT FUN.

IF YOUR BOSS OR SOMEONE IN AUTHORITY GIVES YOU A JOB OR TASK TO COMPLETE AND IT INVOLVES CALLING TEENAGERS, QUIT YOUR JOB.

ugh.

UGH.



okay, phew.

breathe in.

so my task for the last two weeks has been to call hundreds of teenagers who entered this stupid online contest and let them know they won. what is the prize? some stupid portable personal communications device sorta like a t-mobile sidekick, except it's not as cool and no one knows what it is.

why am i calling? why didn't we e-mail? well.. we did e-mail. 3/4 of the kids didn't respond. why didn't we collect their addresses when they entered? we wanted to protect privacy. so now, i'm stuck calling all these fucking kids asking for their mailing address.

so, today's generation of teenagers, raised on the internet and victims of spam, spyware, telemarketing, and reality television... THEY THINK I AM TRYING TO SCAM THEM.

you see, when i call, their defenses are already up. they're like "who the fuck is this guy and what is he selling?" not to mention if a PARENT answers the phone, it's like that but 10 times worse, because i just called their house asking for their child in junior high.

so anyway, i have to FIGHT to convince some kid to let me send him a stupid electronic device that is worth $299, that at a bare minimum he could throw up on ebay and turn a sweet $200 profit at least.

i have made like 200 calls. there are 200 left to go.

it's just not worth it.

damn you, kids of america.

damn you all.

a very missed connection

craigslist "missed connections" in richmond is a daily read for me. first off, it can be hilarious, and then of course, everyone wants to find themselves or a friend listed within.

today i found this one:


it first grabbed my attention because, like me, someone broke all the bones in their face. total bummer.

but then i re-read it and read that THE DUDE IS IN A COMA. what is the point of this missed connection if the person it's meant for is literally unable to check craigslist, let alone wake up.

c'mon people. start blogs if you want to rage. or at least make sure the recipient of your missed connection could actually potentially receive it in some way.

/end rant

scary robot baby

i don't have speakers on my laptop, so maybe this video isn't scary at all with sound.

but when i watched this video on mute, it made me want to curl up in a ball and hide.

"fuck you" vs. "fuck yeah"

i would like to send out a big "fuck you" to the following:

- my laptop which arbitrarily decided to no longer boot up, requiring me to put it in a box and mail it to Hewlett Packard.
- Hewlett Packard for making shitty laptops.. and a bigger fuck you in advance because i know you'll take half a month to fix my laptop.
- my shitty verizon cellphone for not getting any service in my new apartment
- 100 degree heat outside. fuck you, summer!
- our landlord for still not having things fixed in our apartment
- the person who invented wiring the jaw shut

i would like to send out a big "fuck yeah!" to the following:

- the inventor of big gulps
- air-conditioning
- steve jobs who is going to announce the new 3G iphone tomorrow (and more importantly where and when i can buy it)
- brunch
- grand theft auto four

boredom

this day is dragging so much.

if i was any more bored, i'd slip into a coma.

the good news is.. my co-worker is sending me videos of dogs acting out scenes in classic motion pictures.

pardon me while i stab myself with a pen.

thursday vs. ebay

so, rewind five years ago to 2003. fresh out of college, i got a dream job working for universal music in the washington dc branch. i was convinced i had a long career ahead of me working in the music industry. funny how things change, right? i quit that job to record an album with brand new disaster and go on tour and the rest is history.

at the time, one of my favorite bands was thursday. out of all the bands i listened to at the time, they were the first to reach some degree of mainstream success. they signed with island records (unheard of at the time) in 2002 and i was excited that, through my job, i was going to play a role in helping one of my favorite bands.

i got a chance to meet them at an acoustic in-store in philadelphia. i was unbelievably nervous and young and kinda silly about the whole thing, but it meant a lot to me. i had a brief conversation about my aspirations in music with the singer, geoff, and he was really encouraging and friendly about the whole thing. i was so excited that i had talked to this dude who i considered to be somewhat of a hero of mine. he was really encouraging and friendly and told me to pursue music. looking back, it was a big catalyst to get me to quit the job and pursue music full-time.

i always took that experience with me as i continued along my path in music. once i had been in bands for a few years and talked to a lot of kids in the same way geoff talked to me, i realized that geoff was just a dude in a band and probably felt the same way i did. but for a bunch of kids, he was totally inspiring. i made sure that whenever a kid wanted to talk at a show, i would go out of my way to be friendly and encouraging in the same way that geoff had been to me, on the off chance that it might have the same kind of impact that my conversation once had.

anyway, the guy who orchestrated my trip to philly and meeting the band was this dude named todd, who was the island records rep at my office. he was a completely solid dude and was one of my favorite co-workers. almost two years after leaving universal, i got a surprise package in the mail from todd. it was this giant 8 ft. x 8 ft. thursday banner from the in-store we went to that day. i'm sure as tower records closed, they were getting rid of all that stuff and todd got hold of it somehow. i was really impressed that he had remembered! it was a really thoughtful gift.

by that point, my love for thursday had kind of diminished. still liked the band, and still listened to them regularly, but i didn't have quite the love for them that 2003 phil had. at least not the level of love that required hanging a gigantic banner in my house. so it stayed in a box. every time i'd move, i'd rediscover this gigantic banner and kick myself for not doing something with it.

when i discovered it again this time, moving into the new apartment, i promised myself i would find a way to get it to a thursday fan that would be able to do something awesome with it. i posted it on ebay and then posted about it on a few thursday messageboards. i've never sold anything on ebay before, so this was a totally new experience for me. i've already got 9 bids and the thing is up to $40 which is right about where i was hoping it would sell for. it's still got a few more days left, so things could get crazy.. who knows, i might get way more than i was expecting!

it's a little sad to sell the thing off, but it's even more sad to keep it in a box when it could be someone's favorite piece of memorabilia.

the original purpose of this post was to talk about how fucking awesome it was that i figured out how to sell shit on ebay, but i guess i dropped some nostalgia all over it and now i don't know what the hell to make of this post. if you've made it this far, feel free to leave me a comment telling me that i've wasted a good five minutes of your time.

new sticker for my bike

photographic evidence

so about a week ago i made a post about all the things about my face that i'm not happy with during this long healing process.

i decided to document my face in photos - to show that i'm really just blowing things out of proportion and my face looks just fine.

1. my black eyes: as you can see, my black eyes from where they made the incision are barely noticeable anymore.


2. my jaw wires: clearly i'm overreacting about my jaw wires, because they are barely even visible in this picture and my teeth look totally normal.


3. my lip scar: my lip is healing up GREAT and you can't even see it anymore really.


okay, so obviously i'm joking around. i just thought i'd poke a little fun at myself for being all melodramatic earlier.

the fact is, my face is healing up really well. even since my last post, the black eyes have diminished even more and my lip scar is getting less and less noticeable. once my jaw wires are off, i think i'll be totally back to normal.

and just for those who are curious, this is really what i look like right now:

things i have spent too much money on

i think any time you move into a new place, you tend to find yourself spending massive amounts of money getting all the odds and ends that you need to settle in. money you never think to plan ahead on spending. things like cleaning supplies, shower curtain holders, boxes of kleenex, and everything else under the sun.

i have been doing that and more. thank god for credit cards and impulsive decision making!

the worst offender: $350


and of course: $60


then i had to store all my dvds somehow (and future xbox games!): $83


then i needed to POWER all this new technology obviously: $20


then i had all kinds of trash and cardboard from all this new shit i bought: $15


then i decided the walls were starting to look pretty empty: $25


and of course, i am gonna have to frame it: $20


phew. moving is expensive. and i need to get a second job to pay off all this shit.

this is why i love freddy

i'm sitting in my room last night and i get a text message from freddy.

except it's not a text message. it's a video. totally unsolicited.

the video caption simply says "this is how you make a house salad at applebee's."

i will repeat what i wrote in the title: this is why i love freddy.



i don't think i was previously aware that the salads came from bags.

you learn something new everyday.

ichat at work

we do this pretty much every single day.

when you think you have it bad, remember... it could be worse.

people i miss: youtube version

i've been nostalgic for tour recently.

i miss these dudes badly:



and these canadian dudes:



and while we're at it, these dudes:

oh my god it's almost over

so saturday, we moved in to the new place.

the move itself went surprisingly well. i was basically in a state of panic for the 24 hours preceding the move and ended the experience feeling very relieved and happy. i won't bore you with the details, but the people who showed up to help made things so easy and we were finished far sooner than i expected. so THANK YOU, moving friends.

once the dust settled and the celebratory lunch at perly's was finished, i began the daunting task of unpacking all those boxes. to complicate things, jenny was in town all weekend, so i was constantly torn between my OCD desire to finish what i started and the desire to hang out with a beautiful girl all day. i found the perfect balance, getting my room more or less finished by sunday night and spending an amazing sunday afternoon relaxing at the river. jenny was super understanding, only getting slightly annoyed at the end of the weekend, when she needed to go to bed early, and i'd taken the entire bed over with huge stacks of cds in need of alphabetizing. two hundred patience points awarded to jenny.

kenny and i started getting our den put together. the next daunting steps are the bathroom and the kitchen, and of course, hanging all of our various artwork. we've got a lot of walls and a lot of artwork between the two of us. we need to have a meeting of the minds and decide what goes where. i think kenny's got a better eye for it than i do, so i think i'll let him take the lead.

perhaps the most annoying and frustrating thing about the weekend was the fact that we had NO AIR-CONDITIONING. thanks realty company! we told them we didn't think the a/c worked on MONDAY of last week, and he waited until FRIDAY to get a guy out to look at it. of course, as always, a part needed to be ordered, which means no a/c till monday. as of right now, it's 4:45pm on monday and i have yet to receive a call. if this is the way things go with the landlord from here on out, we could definitely have a problem on our hands. that problem being me calling them five times a day asking for updates. i have absolutely no problem being annoying when i don't have air-conditioning.

along with the air-conditioning are a few other super-annoying little detail problems that, no matter how closely you look at a place during the tour, you never notice them until you're actually moved in. for instance, i have an outlet in my room that is tied to a light switch in the bathroom. how in the fuck does that make any sense?

i promise i'll calm down once they fix our a/c, bring out the maintenance dude, and i clear out all these half-empty boxes. until then i'm taking deep breaths and enjoying the a/c while i have it here at work.

A/C UPDATE ALERT: 4:53pm! according to kenny, the a/c dudes just arrived. this is like the realty company throwing the basketball from mid-court in the last seconds of the game and actually making the shot. well done, realty company. they must be reading this blog and knew they had to step their game up.