Oh Xbox, how you have failed me!

Gaming

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.

$4.07 for unleaded gas, and climbing

Personal

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. :'(

I can has updatez

Personal

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.