Ramblings of a retired web developer
I went out last night with my friend Armando (so cute!) to see Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Needless to say, the movie was pretty fucking awesome, excluding a few minutes here and there of ultra cheesy scenes that I could have done without.
Other than that I haven’t been up to much other than work, Halo, a cute boy, and well… Yeah, that’s pretty much it.
So for the past few months I’ve had random friends deal with issues relating to the Xbox, primarily with red rings, etc. I didn’t know if my console was still under a warranty, but I didn’t really think much of it–until today, that is.
I turned off the console, and decided to boot it back up only to get a red ring, with the error code E 74.
Needless to say that I’ve tried the troubleshooting for it, and it’s still unresolved. My warranty expired apparently, so the Xbox repairs would be out of my pocket. I’m not sure what I plan on doing, but I’ll probably end up dropping out some cash for a new system on Tuesday.
Hopefully I can get my sister’s friend to let me borrow his system for the time being. And oddly enough, I’m surprisingly calm about it right now.
When I first started driving back in 2002, I used to pay no more than $1.15 for a gallon of gas. It was awesome because my car only had an 11 gallon tank, and it would be under $13 to fill up my car. Typically that would last two weeks, since I usually only drive to school at that point. Or if I did drive around, maybe I’d spend $25 for two weeks of gas!
Today the $4.00+ gas finally made its way from downtown [Chicago] to the outer suburbs. It’s been skirting around $3.90-99 for the past few days, with hopes of it going down. On my way to work, I paid $3.88 at Shell (which in the past, used to be the last place I’d ever go to!) with a $25 gift card that my grandparent’s gave me for my birthday.
While I was on my way home, the gas station two blocks from me is now at $4.07. What. The Fuck?! It’s not even Memorial Day, and it’s so typical for gas to shoot up .25-50 cents more around that time. I’m going to cry when I start paying $4.50+ for a gallon of gas. Namely for the fact that I currently drive on average about 35-40 miles a day for work. That’s 5 days a week. Ughs.
Other than outrageous gas prices in Illinois, I celebrated my birthday in style by going out to dinner with my family (and my best friend Amy) and then out to Durbin’s (a bar) for some good old fashioned drunk fun tiemz. Didn’t party too hard since I had to work the next day.
Speaking of which, work has been going along quite well aside from having to work with ASP/.NET. Really, I’ll take PHP/MySQL over that stuff any day. Especially with the client I’ve been working for right now. Their site is.. well, let’s just say there are inline styles, 59 “template” pages, and a database we can’t even use for development. Oh, did I mention we got the project on Friday morning with a due date of Tuesday, with Wednesday for bug fixing? Yeah. :'(
Week one of work is officially over. It went very smooth, as as anticipated, I enjoy the work. The one thing I wasn’t sure about at first was the drive, which is 30 minutes one way, but surprisingly I don’t have to deal with traffic. I had expected the drive in the morning and night to be pretty horrific, but it’s actually a breeze! It also helps that it’s nearly a straight drive North, rather than dealing with random turns all over the place
My days involve me waking up at 7am, taking a shower and getting ready. I leave at 8am, and typically waltz into the office around 8:45am. I have my own cubicle to work in, although the section I’m in only has three of us. At least in our “hallway.” It is interesting getting to eavesdrop on other people though, especially the ones that are on the other side of me. The other day a lady was talking about how a mouse got into her box of Splenda, and proceeded to hope that it got cancer from it. 😛
I’ve got a bunch of projects on my platter right now, so I’ve been trying to get those done as quickly as possible. I like that I sit around all day coding up websites. Honestly, the day seems to go by really fast. Yesterday I started at 8:45am, and by the time I looked at the clock, I realized it was already 11:30am and my tummy was growling.
I think my personal favorite of the job thus far is that everyone uses IRC to talk to each other. Although I have to admit that when I’ve got a few questions I feel weird PM’ing him in the #chan, because he’s literally diagonal to my cube.
In other news, my birthday is in five days and my Kentucky Derby pick (Gayego) was a failure as it normally is.
Well, the interview I had on Monday went spectacular, and of course means I am now officially employed again. Although I still retain the label “freelance designer” I am no longer of the “unemployed” group. I was originally scheduled to start work on Monday the 29th, but the guy putting together my [webdesign] work got sick with strep. Now I’ll start on Thursday May 1st. Not bad at all.
Although this job came at a perfect time. I’ve got a hefty bill that I have to have paid by May 31st. I think it’s a bunch of bullshit, but it’s of my own accord, so I’m dealing with it. My 2 year old cell phone finally took a shit on me. It’s a Samsung D807, and somehow the inner LCD cracked and leaked. I’m not sure how it happened because it didn’t drop once during the day it happened. As such, I ventured out to eBay for a new phone. I was 6 seconds away from winning a Blackberry Pearl for $80, but some little nasty bugger decided to snipe me.
That’s okay because I ended up winning a perfect Blackjack with extra accessories for about $130 (including shipping.) I was skeptical to spend that much on a phone, but with my new job, it’s a necessity. I need to be able to access emails on the go, sync up, and of course, have a phone I can *use.*
Other than that I’ve been trying out for a Halo 3 clan through Army of the Republic. Yes, you read it right. I’m still a fanatic for Halo, and it won’t ever stop. Outside of actually having fun with the game, I’ve met so many awesome people through it, that it’s the one reason why I enjoy it the most. Of course, some of the other websites I’ve come across, like halo3.junk.ws, have also been reasons why I play this game over anything else.
Since I’ve got a few more days until i won’t have much time for myself, I figured I’d spend my hours trying to come up with some decent WordPress themes. I don’t know if I’ll actually create them for free or as premium, but I’m sure something will happen. Oh, and maybe a new design for here.. 😛 Yeah, we’ll see!