Monday, June 30, 2003

This weekend flew by way too fast. Saturday morning I got up and went to jail for a nice 8 hour shift. I spent Saturday night working on cleaning out the bathroom of everything but the bare essentials. I worked on doing the same in the kitchen. I got a whole bunch of linen's and other items I will not use for a few weeks and loaded them into my truck and moved to my new house. I did not get to bed until about thirty after midnight and my alarm was set to get me up in the morning so I could go to jail again. I worked for 8 hours, it was pretty uneventful. After work I went to my softball games. I have Co-Ed games every Sunday evening. This night we had two of them. It was hot and pretty humid. The first game was not all that good, but we won. The second game was against Mike's team. That was the one game I wanted to win. We lost. It was so disappointing. I started pitching, and we were tied 3 to 3 in the 4th inning, and then I was pulled from pitching. I was put in at catcher. Mike's team then tee'd off and socred 7 quick runs. Grrrrr. I was very mad. We ended up losing. After the game we went to Zepoz. It is a local bowling alley, bar, and arcade. We had a few beers and then I went home and went to bed. I should have probably went and packed some stuff, but I did not. So, Monday and Tuesday I will really have to make up for some lost time.

Friday, June 27, 2003

Ah! It is Friday. It should have been a great day, but it was not the best.

[OPINION]
If you live in Pullman or Moscow, do not rent from Apartment Rentals.
[/OPINION]

I have been living in the same apartment since the summer of 1997. In that time there was a pipe that broke that flooded my apartment, and I have went through 3 roommates. Most recently I have been living by myself. I have a cat. I have had a cat for a long time. I had to pay a 200 dollar non-refunable deposit for the cat. So, my apartment, like many others have the cat urine smell. I don't notice it, but some of my friends have mentioned it. It does not bother me all that much, and even my friends who have apartments with that cat smell, they don't bother me either. So it has never been an issue.

The apartment people need to have some time to paint and what not before the new renters move in. However, they can't do that until I move out. So they want me to move out early so they can do their stuff. The apartment manager called me and asked me to call her back. I called twice that day, leaving a message both times, and I called again the next day. I left a 3rd message. I never heard back from her, so I stopped trying. So, I got home from work last night and on my door was a sign saying that I broke a rule on the contract, due to the pet smell. I have 10 days to kix the smell or I will be locked out of the apartment. I don't think I can be totally moved out in 10 days, since I will be working all this weekend and all next weekend, with no days off between now and then. I will only have a few hours at night. I guess I could call in sick, however I am not like that. I have never called in sick to work. I don't plan to start now.

Anyhow, I was pissed, but I figured I would do what I could. Then they pissed me off today, and now they have started a war. They called the police and reported that I was not treating my cat well. So, I had an animal officer visit today. I was not at home since I had a big set of plans that have been in the making for the last few weeks.

The Apartment Rental's people decided that to get my apartment back they would kick me out. That was bad enough, and now they called the police. I was going to give up and just move out. Now I am going to work my ass off to get the smell out and stay to the end of my lease. They tried to screw me, now I *WILL* screw them. It feels good.

So with that stewing, I am supposed to fulfill my plans that I had for the day. I have a boat and I have invited several of my friends to come along and go water skiing and tubing. Even with the above problems, I did not feel I could cancel on all of them, so I went, and that was on the back of my mind all day. I did spend time before and after packing and moving some of my belongings from the apartment to my new house.

So we are at the river cruising on the water. It was a lot of fun. In fact I am sitting here now and it feels like i am still on the water moving up and down. It is nice. I have a nice burn to go with it too. We met up with Brandt and Steve who went boating with me two weeks ago. We got everyone on the tube. Kristine was a mad-woman. She wanted me to whip her around and hit the wake that would make her jump. Brandt is also a madman. I was about to let him off the tube at Granite Point, and two huge jet boats go by. They were Snake River tour boats. They were leaving a huge wake. Brandt wanted to jump off of them, so I went speeding back to the wake. I had Brandt jump about 6 to 7 feet in the air, enough that I was able to read the bottom of the tube. When that was done I dropped Brandt off and Kristine, Russell, and Dan went up to the rock and jumped into the river. At Granite Point there is a rock that stands about 30 out of the water and people go jumping off of it. They loaded up in the boat and we headed back to Pullman since Dan was covering my fire department shift, and he had to be back in Pullman by 6 pm. I got him home and then I went to Russell's apartment and we had some hamburgers. Now, I am off to my new house in Colfax to unload my truck and hit the sack since I am working at 8 am tomorrow morning.

I spent a fair amout of the day today working on a couple new computers for the county. I was getting one ready, and then I made an image of it so I could have the other computers up and running in no time. Imaging hard drives rocks. As I had one of the images running I decided to check out e-Bay and see if I was winning my auction. I am going for an old magazine. It is a magazine that features these twin models. I have 9 hours to wait, and as of right now I am winning it still.

I head out of work a little after 5:30 and headed home for my softball game this evening. When I got to my apartment there was a note on the door saying I had violated section 9 of my lease, and I had 10 days to fix the problem or I would be thrown out. This is funny timing on their part since my lease it up at the end of July. They had expressed interest in me moving out early so they could have time to get it ready for the people moving in August 1st. That is understandable, but the crap that they are pulling now is making me mad. They are being sleazy about this whole thing now. So that cause some stress for me.

I got to My Office Bar and Grill and had a few beers and some chow. I hung out with the team and with shot the breaze for a while before the game was going to start. At game time we headed to the field and I was going to be pitching again. The team we were facing was the Tax Dodgers. They tend to let their bat sit on their sholders without swinging at that many pitches. This is softball, a hitters game, so it suck batters sit with the bat on their sholder. We ended up winning by a socre of 14 - 13. Here is the writing on my website about the win.

The rivalry between Tax Dodgers and My Office has been long standing and very competitive. This year is no exception. Playing in the 3rd meeting of the year, 2nd in league play, My Office knew Tax Dodgers would be up for this game. This game did not disappoint the fans who came to watch. Tax Dodgers took an early lead over My Office, leading 4 to 1 in the second inning. That is the most lopsided the game would get, as My Office played catch up in the 3rd inning, pulling the game into a 5 to 5 tie. In the sea-saw battle back and forth, My Office never took a lead, but would score enough runs in their half of the inning to get the game tied up, or a small 1 run deficit. Defense was again a big factor in the game. Steve was part of several difference making plays, including one where he came behind 2nd base making a diving stop of a hard hit ground ball. He stopped it, but he lost control of the ball long enough for the base runner from 2nd to attempt to make it to 3rd base. Steve came up with the ball quickly and fired a strike to Justin at 3rd base who applied the tag for an out. Joey showed off his speed by moving from shortstop to shallow right field to make a catch on a pop up. The base runner from 1st base did not realize Joey would be able to make a play on the ball was on his way to 2nd base. Joey, make a good throw to 1st base for a 5-3 double play. After the game was over, both My Office and Tax Dodgers shook hands and congratulated each other on the game, a game that could have gone either way.

We ended the night where we starteded "My Office Tavern". I had some pop, and some ibuprophen and then I headed home for bed.

Thursday, June 26, 2003

I got off work at 5:30 last night and then headed back to Pullman from Colfax. A short 16 mile drive. I had an interview to do, and I needed to get some stuff ready. I was also on call at the Fire Department. I am a reserve firefighter/EMT. I am on call from 6PM to 6AM on a Detroit Modified Schedule. While on call I can do other things, it just means I have to respond to the station and head out on the Rescue or Engine. I get paid while I am on a call, but the rest of the time I get no compensation. That is the life of a reserve in the City of Pullman. My interview is for a room at the fire station. I am very doubtful about getting the position for several reasons. I had even heard stuff the last few weeks which lead me to believe the decision was made, and the interview process was simply a farce. I went ahead and interviewed anyway, because I felt that by not interviewing I have 0% chance of coming in, and that with the interview, it might still be a 0% chance, but there is the possibility that it could be higher than zero.

I got ready for the interview and had to find my tie and nice shoes. My black socks were equally hard to find. I tend not to dress up except for funerals and job interviews. So, I don't always have everything ready to go. I went to my office and worked on the softball stats for my softball team. I also got the web site updated. I had fallen behind on it. At about 7:45 I left my office and headed to the interview site, which happened to be the fire station.

After the interview I went back home and got out of my interview clothes and headed to Ryan's apartment. I had dinner up there and we played domino's. It was my first time playing. That is not too bad of a game. We hung out and played until about 11:30. Then Kristine called and wanted to go to Denny's for a cup of coffee and to talk about some stuff. We sat down there for about an hour talking about relationship problems. I don't think anything was settled, but at least we were able to talk about stuff.

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

Last quick update from yesterday's softball games. We won both, by a total score of 43 to 6. Our first game was a 20 to 3 victory followed by a 23 to 3 victory. I pitched both games, and our defense was as strong as usual. In 13 games we have allowed only 87 runs. The next best team has 146 runs allowed. This is due to great pitching and wonderful defense. Our last and final regular season game is this Thursday. We will play the Tax Dodgers. They are my favorite team to play because I know some of the players. They beat us earlier this year for 1 of our 3 losses. We are currently in 2nd place behind Green's Cleaners. They have 2 losses. They play the worst team in the league on Thursday, so barring a huge upset, Green's Cleaners will take first place and we will end up in second.

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

Over the last week I have been waiting for an online friend, Alex, to sign on so I could ask him about getting an account on livejournal.com. It turns out he was unable to help me, so I came here to join up. I spent some time getting things set up and chatting with Alex. I am listening to Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville as I type my blog entry. I am at work, making a living working on computers. I provide desktop support to people with varying degrees of computer savvy and varying degrees of gratitude. I have found that I can work my ass of for some people only for them to have some complaint in the end. I guess you can't please them all, however, I certainly try. That sets me up for a fall, but I take pride in my work, even though at times I wish I was not here. But, when the sun is shining and my boat is sitting at home instead of carrying me and my friends around the water ways of Whitman County, I do tend to get a little disgruntled. I have time to do this blog since I am here waiting for Power Quest Drive Image to finish imaging a drive that may or may not be going bad. But I always error on the side of safe rather than sorry.

I try to not let people piss me off, but it is hard these days. What would have rolled off my back last year at this time really gets under my skin. For instance I have someone who wants me to change a laser printer from being a networked printer to being a local printer. That is not a big deal, except for the fact, this will make the 3rd change in the configuration of this computer/printer set up. So, this final time of doing the change, I take the Ethernet cable from the printer and use it to supply the computer with network access, as per the request. That took place last week. Yesterday I get an e-mail from the user who made the request, and she claims the computer is not on the network. She sent this claim in an e-mail to her boss, her department head, and me. So, in frustration, I e-mail her and the others and explain the network was working just fine last week, and nothing had changed between last week and today. She comes back with an e-mail and claims that she is unable to reach a share on the server, therefore, it is obviously not networked. I take a few deep breathes before I scream. Just because you can not reach a share on the server does not mean the computer is not networked. When things like this happen I chalk it up as a PEBKAC situation and smile.

Power Quest is sitting at 43% now, and I have to get running soon. I am off work at 5:30 tonight, then I have a few softball games tonight, one is a make up game and the other is the regularly scheduled game. Our team is in the “B” league and right now we are in second place, 1 game back. I have a website for the team at http://www.softballteams.org/myoffice. It is a fun team, we all go out an drink beer before and after the game. We are a close knit group of guys. We hang out and party, boat, and camp with each others’ family and friends.

There is a little bit more of an insight in to me. I am a computer worker who is becoming more and more jaded. I love softball. I believe that Softball is Life.

Flash Back!
This is from a Journal Entry on June 1st in 1995-
060195-- Today I met up with Ron and Steve and a few other people at Liberty Park. It was about 12 midnight to 1am, and we decided to play Hide and Seek in the park. Ron was it and he was chasing after me. I was running as fast as I could and I hit a divot in the ground. I tweaked my back out and Ron tagged me. So I was hoping the pain was temporary. I waited a few seconds, then had to lay down. As I laid there counting I was in a lot of pain. I got to 100 and said “ready or not here I come.” But I could not get up. So I waited a few seconds and tried again, still could not get up. After about 1 minute, someone yells “you can’t guard base, you faggot!” Then I said, after a long pause, “ally, ally oxen free!” The people slowly made their way to where I was. They saw I was in pain and did not realize how bad it was. Most everyone left, then Ron said that he would bring his bug (V.W. bug, his car) over and would give me a ride to my moms van so I could get home. Then we decided that I could not drive, so he was going to drive my moms van home with me, and Steve would follow us up there and Steve would give Ron a ride back to his bug. So Ron drove my moms van onto the grass over to the jungle-gym that I was laying on. When he got there he tried to help me up, but it hurt too much for me to even get in a sitting position. So I slowly worked my way over to the side of the platform closet to the van. He then helped me sit down in the van. When we got over by his bug, we were waiting for Steve to get back from Texaco (he was getting some pop.) As Ron and I sat there, he asked if I wanted to go to the hospital instead. I said “yes.” So he drove me to Valley Medical Center. The E.R. room brought out a rolling bed so they could get me in the hospital. While I was there Ron called my mom, and then waited for me until my mom got there. When she got there I was out of the hallway, and in a room with a doctor and nurse tending to me. I got a few shots, and took some pills. Then my mom got a prescription filled for me and we drove home. On the way we stopped by Chucks Donut Shop. I got home, laid down, ate some donuts, took some more pills, and the went to sleep.

You think about what word you should start your first blog with since the first impression is everything. I was thinking about it too. I was going to say "Well, this is my first..." Which starts me talking to the world with the word "Well". That is not necessarily a bad thing. Ronald Reagan was known to say "Well" from time to time. It would not hurt my feelings to be mentioned in the same sentace as President Reagan. However, that is not what I am looking for. I do not want to be compared to President Reagan, nor President Lincoln. I would like to be compared with no one but myself. As such, it is important for me to get across from the begining who I am, and what I am about.

If I just start off, you will not know who I am or why I do certain things. Over time you will learn more about me, but you will be lost early on. That is not a good way to do business. At the same time I don't want to bored someone with the typicall 411 stuff.

I don't think I will tell everyone, everything. I think there are some things you will have to learn on your own, and you will have to put two and two together from time to time to figure out some things. I will treat my blog like my real life. I will not tell people things on here that I don't tell them in real life. Will I be more open with my personal thoughts? Heck yeah. That is what this is all about. Who cares that I wake up and go to work each day? No one. What I care about is what made the day special. What it was that I got out of the day. I traded a day of my life for today, and I need to make sure it was worth it. To you, I want you to be put into my shoes and see what I see, feel what I feel and think what I think.

If I am able to accomplish that, then I feel good. Only time will tell how things go.

This is Scotty, have a good day.