June 2003 Archives

Alright, well, I'm at work, so it's time to finally update. See, with no school in session, it's very hard to find time to update, what with all the video game playing, and tv watching, even simply talking on AIM with friends. Because of course during the school year, we had an endless number of opportunities to put off homework and visit the website for an alternative source of entertainment. And I know you're saying, well John, shouldn't work be an alternative to schooling providing plenty of opportunities to update? Not for me, exactly. See, when I have a job I like to work, and I like to work hard. So what actually ends up happening is the opposite. I update from work only when there's nothing to do, and I need to pass some time. This particular morning is somewhat of an extension of last Friday. I finished my work around 1:30 and was surfing the web till four, waiting for the boss to finish analyzing the data I was done with. Now, Monday morning, he still hasn't even looked at it, and I've an excellent window of opportunity for some posting. So on to what's new.

The job is fun, I guess. I spent most of last week programming. The heinous amounts of work Makinde left me (and props to him, I probably would have done the same) is finished now, this is the date I'm wating for my boss to look at. My boss is great, he's something out of office space, simply because he says "touch base" 4 times a minute. Makinde warned me of this when I first came, and the next time I talked to him we were hardly into the conversation and on about the third "touch base" I nearly burst out laughing. I had to bite the inside of my mouth to restrain. Anyway, I have a work phone finally, so if you're looking to call me anytime during the weekdays this summer just ask me for the number.

Anyway, it was tuesday or wednesday night, I'm thinking tuesday, but who knows maybe it was even monday. But this fact is pretty irrelevant. We're on our way home from dinner, and the younger brother suggests that we rent Harry Potter 2: Chamber of Secrets that night. My mom says not that night, she'd watch it the next night, though, and I inform the little one that I was planning on purchasing the dvd anyway. So leaving the restaurant around 8:30, with a quick stop at RiteAid, we leave the house at 8:47 with about 13 minutes till the store closes. I get there in 7 :-P. Heh. On the way over, we had been discussing how we needed a new Xbox game, but Xbox was a little lacking in the game selection lately (but oh man, this christmas, look out!). So I walk into the store, straight up to customer service, fill out a few forms, and I get approved for an 1100 dollar credit line for a best buy credit card. RAWK. Walk over to the video game aisle, and pick up a gamecube (black), extra controller (black), wavebird (wireless controller, gray), extended memory card (black), Zelda: Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, and a product replacement plan (oh, and harry potter 2). The total came to 350, and I was home playing some ZELDA!

So yeah, pretty spontaneous, and pretty surprising. I mean, I know! I'm such an Xbox buff, what gives? Truth is I've alwasy loved Nintendo. I've had every gaming system they've ever put out, except this one. And I didn't want to stop here. Plus, ZELDA!!!!! CELL SHADING!!! SO GORGEOUS! Metroid is great too. Problem is I realized when I'd gotten home that I bought extra controllers when I didn't buy any multiplayer games. oops. (I had forgotten that Metroid wasn't mulitplayer) But wow, Zelda rawks my world. Ok, so why the Best Buy credit card? I mean, I've got a job, and a decent amount of money ($500) I could have paid for all that immediately with the debit card. Well, you see, this way, I build credit! When they send me my first statement, I'm going to pay it off in full immediately. No late payment risks, no interest, just get rid of it right away. This way later in life, although I hope I never need it, I'll have good credit. Personally, I hate credit cards, I think they're a trap. Debit is so brilliant because it forces you to only spend when you have the money.

Well, other than that, things have been semi normal. I saw Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle with Grant, Joanna, and Ashley, and that was pretty funny, possibly even more so than the first, simply because of how absolutely ridiculous it was. But this was Grant's last night out for a long while, he leaves, probably in a few hours (bye grant!) for the naval academy to start training till fall, when his classes will start. CRAZINESS. So that put a semi-damper on things, but this is not the end, but the beginning (or some cheerful crap like that). He will be loved and he will be missed. Alright, sorry, I'm done with the corny crap. JEEZ! I'm bored, I hope they give me some work to do soon, or else I'm leaving early. I know getting paid 11 dollars an hour to sit and surf the web sounds nice ... and ... well ... it is ... but I swear your conscience gets to you.

Well, this is all for now, I think one other thing happened worthy of an update but I've forgotten. Oh well.

Spork.

John,

I tried to post this, but wasn't able to, so I'm just going to put it here and trust you to move it for me. Ok, so, does this poem sound familiar to anyone? I think I read it in Dr. Morehead's class last year, and I really need to know. Like really. If it does, e-mail me. Thanks.

--Christine

Outlaw: A Love Story
The grocery store is overcharging again and I'm hungry
not poor- or sad-hungry, just itchtwitching for a little snack,
none of that vending machine bullshit, crushed Doritos that crumble
in the package and leave dirty cheese-film on fingers,
I want a peach.
A fuzzy runny sweet peach, and this one is perfect:
maybe I'll see you on the street and we'll share.
But the grocerboy shakes his head and I peachesandcream it,
such a nice smile: peachy keen? with peaches on top?
Still no, cause I have fifty-five cents in my palm,
and the register registers seventy-one.
Fuck That, I think, and A Man's Gotta Do,
and quicktrick: slip it into my jacket pocket
and trust the produce aisle (shhh) not to tell.
The bulge and I swagger outside (OUTSIDE!): GRIN WITH PRIDE,
shrug scolding angels off my shoulder now I have
FREE WILL and I am HUNGRY and I SIT
in the middle of the SIDEWALK and eat my prize.
A little girl in a blue hat, eyes like mine,
walks by and stares at the sticky juice on my chin
I want to offer her a bite, watch the juice
run down her chin too, pull her close, whisper:
IT'S STOLEN!
I want you to see me then, a little girl
in one hand and a peach in the other
and I would break laws for you, too.

Alright, my pictures are up. You'll find them in the Vietnam-Cambodia directory.

DISCLAIMER:
I didn't go through and add comments yet, this will come later
I also need to group the pictures by event/date because there are SO MANY (100+) and it's confusing with the navigation.
I may also create a button that I'll place below each actual picture that will say "go to next picture" so you don't have to keep hitting back and clicking the next one.
I have not yet deleted blurry photos that are pointless to keep, I meant to do that on the plane ride home but my battery ran out.
Some pictures only work well when you zoom in on them (the hq's are 5 megapixel images at full quality, so you can zoom fairly far).
I was not going for art with these pictures, simply half snapshot, half color, and a third half (?) documentation.
I still hold to this day that it is possible to do art with digital, contrary to some belief.

The ladies' favorite: Matt Schauer hot and sweaty

ENJOY, maybe if we're lucky I'll scan all the color film (as opposed to color digital) pictures by the end of the summer.

Spork.

It's my first day of work with my new job, it's 5:50 and I'm STILL HERE! My dad decided that for my first day he would drive me and take me into the necessary place I needed to be. After all, this is his office building. But my day pretty much ends at five and he still hasn't come by to get me. I've tried emailing him, calling him on both his cell phone and office phone, and no response. Everyone in my department has left and all the surrounding cubicles are EMPTY.

To top it off, I don't think I like my job. It's grunt work. But not only that, I mean, I don't mind grunt work ... but it's INEFFICIENT GRUNTWORK. The algorithm slash process, if you will, for what I'm doing was laid out by my boss, this guy named Donovan (I think), and none other than Makinde Adeagbo. Not that they are bad people or anything, even makinde is cool in my book, but I guess the three heads just didn't think this one through for the last three weeks. So they're going about it as slowly as possible and as confusingly (word?) as possible. To top it off, Makinde left me the largest of the work because he knew he was leaving this week when I arrived. He also said he didn't care if he made any mistakes because he knew I'd be doing quality control and fixing them. GREAT! Oh, and also, supposedly makinde didn't start to understand the project until just last week, and he'd been here three weeks. That means it's going to take me three weeks to understand when I think this is due in three weeks. GRR.

Alright, I've steamed enough, I'm gonna start playing internet games here I'm so bored. And don't think I'm not writing this down on my time sheet.

Spork.

PS - Murphy's didn't call, which means they either still haven't found my film or still haven't started looking. I called yesterday and the guy had forgot it seemed.

OK, I'm back.

Yeah, I was back last wednesday.

It's taking a really long time to get my pictures developed because:
(1) my color film
(-) Murphy's lost one of the five rolls, they're working to find it
(2) my black and white film
(-) Developed 15 rolls, 13 remaining
(-) haven't had chance to make contact sheets
(3) digital pictures
(-) They're up and in my images directory, but please do not look at them! they have not been compressed yet! They are MASSIVE FILE SIZES (up to 2 megs each!) and my server can't handle that bandwidth!
(-) I've been too lazy to compress them

I start my new job tomorrow, wish me luck. Actually, I doubt anyone will read this by the time I start. Oh well.

WE GOT RADIOHEAD TICKETS!!! My parents ok'ed it, too, tickets are bought (row HH, left center), and the rents don't care if I want to take the next day off work and just crash in St. Louis or if I want to drive back.

That's mostly everything, if I think of anything else I'll post. Ciao.

Spork.

Alright, well, today is our last day of this amazing vietnam/cambodia adventure. Our last day in Vietnam was Saturday, we spent a full day at Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat yesterday, and today it's been more temples and such. The time here is 1:50 in the afternoon, and I'm really upset it's almost over. I'm also really upset because yesterday I loaded a roll of flim into my camera, it didn't catch onto the leader, so I wound it back up but went too far and wound the film into itself. So, I didn't have a film retriever, so curtis said he'd switch the film out for one of his. So we did, but I forgot to put the roll he gave me back into the camera. So, we then went to Angkor Wat and I probably shot 45 pictures before I realized that I had shot too many shots for a normal 36 exposure film, opened the camera and realized I had no film inside. SONUVA! So I didn't get any shots at Angkor Wat (only a few with the other camera). I was mad, so I sat down and talked for half an hour with two buddhist monks a year older than I. Their english was really good. They were very nice.

So, I'll give a real full and complete update about Vietnam and Cambodia when I come back, until then, keep it real, keep it like a secret, and always brush your teeth.

Spork.

Alright, well, I haven't read Joanna's Vietnam Day 1 Post yet, but that's cause I'm in vietnam as well! and so i'm just going to make the following statements:

1) read joanna's post to get an idea of what i've done
2) I watched phone booth, confessions of a dangerous mind, how to lose a guy in 10 days, repli-kate, national security, and played a bunch of zelda.
3) the plane rides were 2 hours, 7 hours, 11 hours, 2 hours, and 1 hour. WHOA. We were totally tired.
3a) the coolest thing were the flight attendants on the singapore airlines. they're all these gorgeous asian women wearing these elaborate singaporian dresses and they never lose their smile and they are so nice. it's like flight attendants back in the day when you had to be good looking in america to be one. same thign only it's 2003.
4) when we got to saigon, we went to lunch, and it was really really good.
5) we then toured for about 3 hours and then got on another plane and flew to danong.
6) we passed out on that plane, and passed out on the 40 minute drive to hoi an, which is where i am now
7) we passed out at the hotel for twenty minutes, then just the guys went to dinner and had great food, then went back to the hotel and passed out
8) I thought my digital camera was broken, then I realized that you have to have a key in this slot to get power in your hotel room. phew
9) I've shot about a roll and half of film, i've got 20 rolls for 13 days, let's see if it'll last
10) I love you all, if you need to email me send it to (update: in an effort to remove my email addresses from public websites (yes, even my own) I have decided to write it human friendly) j dash hanauer at northwestern dot edu. because at the moment I can not check my pop3 mail.

thanks, love you all,
bye

Spork.

yeah, I know, I need to update ...

got a digital camera

I have new ideas for a new layout for the site

I leave for Vietnam tomorrow and to be honest I'm not quite sure the exact day I come back

There, that's basically it ... I'm grajeeyated now, so rawk out.

Spork.