Po Po ..

I swear there are no routes for me to speed to/from work anymore .. since i've been pulled over twice on US 20 in past 2 months , I thought I'd try US12 instead, well on the way home tonight, I got a flippin escort the whole way home. I saw him sittin in the median and he pulls out behind me and proceeds to follow me for 6 miles until i get to a stop light where he proceeds to make an illegal u-turn in the intersection (during a red light no less) to return to his little strip of US 12 that he patrols so vigorously.

So we did a fundraiser for www.friendsofallie.org on Saturday at the world famous Popcorn festival in Valpo. The whole thing went so much smoother then I could have even imagined. the first 10 hours of the day flew by as well.. it was those last 3 that got a little rough. As with any festival, atleast in IN; there is no shortage of interesting people to look at. Here are some of the Tshirts I remember..

- I put the laughter in Slaughter ..
-So... what is ur sister doing later ?
-Ya, I smoke, so f**k off (it wasn't bleeped on the shirt and it was worn by probalby a 15 yr old girl)
-Let me drop everything and work on your problem.
-Got Dork ?

There were better ones but of course i can't remember.. all in all it was a good day - we signed up some walkers and sold some bears and some bracelets and gave out lots of balloons !!


So I got something from the County Prosecutor's office today. Like Illinois, Indiana has a cute little way to "get out" of your moving voliations, all you have to do is pay them $242. $242 dollars ???!! In IL its like $85 and you have to sit through 3 hrs of online traffic school. If I actually had any money, maybe I would appreciative of the idea that there is no traffic school.. but i don't .. so I"m not. Since I haven't had any tickets in Indiana in about 5 yrs, I'm not to worried about what it will do to my insurance and points on my license. I was only going 62 in a 45... hopefully the fine will be much less then $242.

Sometimes.. I swear..

I started my new job and things are going well -- I had a close call of almost missing my train on Tuesday , which would have resulted in me being late for my first day as I can not drive into work with my car because one of the front tires is completely bald. It turned out the train was 5 minutes late that day so it all worked out. The next day, I was driving to the train not in a huge rush, but somehow managed to get pulled over for doing 62 in a 45 -- the officer wasn't as respectful of my "clean driving record" and gave me a stinking ticket. However, I still made the train.. (it was running late , again). I always seem to get pulled over when I'm not paying attention. I have never been "consciously" speeding and actually gotten pulled over.. Its those times that I am driving and my mind is elsewhere that I always seem to get caught.

The job is good -- its taking some getting used to getting back into a regular work environment, you know, the kind where people actually talk to each other. But otherwise things are good and I 'm learning all sorts of new stuff so I can't ask for much else after 4 days.

FFF Part 2

Wow 2 days in a row.

Back in May I complained about the furnace filters I installed in January.. Well the furnace filter I installed in May was actually a very cheap one that is supposed to last like 2 weeks or a month. Well I haven't changed it since May. Pretty smart I know. I am goind to change it now. BRB. Ok I'm back. That was disgusting - I went to pull the filter out of the slot and .. it was gone. No wait - it wasn't gone, it was just blown in or sucked in I guess. Once I was able to pry the mess out of the furnace I noticed it was soaking wet. I dont think that is good. At any rate I put a fresh clean filter in there and I am going to setup a Google Calendar event to send me an email to remind me to replace it. BRB. Back - all set. Thanks to my sister for reminding me about the Google's Calendar !

Speaking of past posts, back in the day I replaced the sensor for my lampost in the front. So it would shutoff during the day and stay on at night. It was like $15 and came with a 12 yr warranty. Wow that is a long time. However, it broke in July. Of course it broke right after I cleaned the garage and found the packaging with the warranty info. I said to myself, well if they warranty something for 12 yrs there is no way its going to break anytime soon - so i will go ahead and throw it out. I am pretty sure that the sensor stopped working about 3 days later, after the trash had been hauled off. I was so irritated that I attempted my car fixing technique of "give it some time, it will fix itself." After about a month of waiting with no results, I actually went out there and opened up the lamppost. Thanks to my previous blog, I knew that the breaker was #15 so I didnt' have to spend any time figuring that out. I tightened all the wires and sure enough, nothing happened. So we went out and bought a new one - a different brand but it has a 12 yr warranty too. ( I guess that is standard in the lamppost-solar-sensor industry). Its working now, but I have no idea where the receipt for the thing is... but I'm not worried since it has a 12 yr warranty there is no way it is going to break anytime soon...

So this is a blog...

Its been so long since I've posted that I forgot what exactly to do. I think I am supposed to type stuff about me.. Well - I suppose the big news is that I got a new job. I know no one wants to read about computer sort of things ( i have a whole different blog that I dont update for that). So the details are like this: at my old job I was responsible for everything. At my new job, I'm only responsible for a teenie tiny part of things and I'm part of of a team that is responsible for that same teenie tiny thing. So things should be a little easier and maybe I'll have more time to blog :)

People have asked me often why I am leaving my current job since I seem to do pretty much whatever I want, whenever I want. Thats a really good question -- I think I could have done that job for the rest of my career and not gotten too bored. Working from home, making my own hours, choosing what projects to work on.. I was the IT manager and reported to the CFO - who is non-technical, so pretty much anything I said was taken as the law. Those are freedoms that I just wont be able to find anywhere else. I felt like I needed to give them up in order to have the opportunity to advance my career. The sad fact is that the company I was at is shrinking, in fact it is almost half the size now as it was when I started back in the beginning of '03. They have chosen not to replace me or another guy that is leaving and they will divide our duties up amongst a few people. Basically as far as IT infrastructure goes, there was absolutely no where else for me to move to in the company, so I had to leave if I wanted to move up in the world. My new position is not exactly a lateral move, but I am confident (perhaps i'm just naive) that I will be able to stand out and take advantage of new opportunities inside the company. Not to mention the fact that the new job is located in the building attached to my train station ! So no more 15 minute walk each way to the office !

Thanks Tracy, btw for the well-wishes.

So now that I have that off my chest back to important things... I was thinking about things to blog about in future posts so I will list them now and I can refer back when I'm stumped as to what to say.

-- talk about how with this new job, I'm turning over a new leaf.. more exercising and blogging and less eating and spending.. ;)
-- have the first annual "Kids TV that adults end up watching" awards show ..
-- Divulge my master plan to buy myself a sports car
-- Talk about the pick-up truck I saw towing a U-haul trailer that pulled into the Adult book store parking lot
-- Talk about how not only is my car's glove box exposed to the world, but the insides of the one tires is as well.
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