I am southern! (sort of)

Welp, went out to the DMV durring lunch today and got my very first ever non-MI drivers license (nope, never got an OH one). Kind of cool and exciting for me. Personally I view and as my deciding to settle here. While there were a few decent reasons not to change when I was living in OH, I mostly never got a license there because I never really intended on staying in that state for long. In fact I played it exactly how I thought I would, worked there a couple years, built up the resume experience and moved on. Now I am much happier, and actually really excited with the prospect of starting a life here.

In related news, the current employer has informed me to except a 10% raise or so in August. I can't beleive it, it's totally amazing too me. The best the previous employer ever did in 2 years was just a tad over 6%. Now lets consider that I was a fairly solid programmer, I constantly liked to make systems better, I had more experience and time there than any other actual programmer at the time I quit (beaten only by the programming dept manager that left the company at the same time) and really liked helping out others as much as I could. So, yay for NC and my new job and the new life I'm starting. :)

Princeton Review...

Well.. I read brother bear's blog about his quest for a new career, and thought hmmm... That Princeton review thing sounds like fun... To be honest I'm happy with the idea of being a programmer, though I do run into some of the same fustrations as brother bear. The part I like is those few times you get to architect a new system. Though it doesn't happen everyday, it's fun when it does. Well, at any rate, here are my personality results.

My Interest color is Red:
People with red Interests like hands-on / problem solving job responsibilities and professions that involve practical, technical, and objective activities. Red Interests include: building, implementing, organizing, producing, and delegating, which often lead to work in manufacturing, managing, directing, small business owning, and surgery.

My usual style is blue:
People with blue styles prefer to perform their job responsibilities in a manner that is supportive and helpful to others with a minimum of confrontation. They prefer to work where they have time to think things through before acting. People with blue style tend to be insightful, reflective, selectively sociable, creative, thoughtful, emotional, imaginative, and sensitive. Usually they thrive in a cutting edge, informally paced, future-oriented environment. You will want to choose a work environment or career path in which your style is welcomed and produces results.

I guess I'll let y'all decide if it's accurate. Oh, and I've also decided to throw in the occasional southern word here and there because I'm pretty much 100% intent on settling here :)

Flowers = good birthday present for gfriend :)

Well, after going through the whole 1800flowers catalogue, I finally found a nice bouquet of flowers + squishy teddy + chocolates that Kathy loved! :) In fact she and her mom apparently think it was one of the most beautiful bouquets they've ever seen (her momma and sis went to visit her). So I'm feeling all happy with myself right now, I really like making her feel special and loved and such.

Here is a link to the bouquet

I'd link directly to the teddy and candy, but apparently Boone NC is little, and there were actually no guarantees made to me as to what specifically she would get. I asked for chocolates and a cuddly bear, and the best they said they could do were "sweet treats" that *might* be chocolate and a "cuddly plush" that could be any cuddly plush thing apparently. Fortunately they actually came through and got what I asked for though, and she liked it :)

Pic of kat

Well, I've decided to post an older pic of kat to the photo blog, since it's probably going to be a bit before I get to visit her (not next weekend either :( ) So for those of you who've been wanting know what she looks like, there ya go :)

Vista is broken

Well, turns out Windows Vista is indeed seriously broken. It's commited suicide on me twice so far. I want to get rid of it, but due to the fact that the Windows XP installer is a cheap peice of junk doing that is going to be a pain. How is it a cheap peice of junk? Well, turns out some moron at microsoft decided that everyone owns a floppy drive, so in order for the installer to recognize an IDE controller it doesn't already know about (like my nForce 4 SATA controller) you *must* put in a *floppy disk* with the driver for the controller. I don't own a floppy drive any more, there for I can't put in a floppy disk, there for the Windows installer can't see the disk windows is installed on (to get windows there I tempoarly stole my roommates floppy disk drive so I could make the installer see my SATA controller). ::sigh:: The vista installer is much nicer because they **FINALLY** came to the realization that assming drivers come on floppy disks is **BAD**. In fact assuming every one has a floppy drive is **BAD**. Grrrr.... Oh well, I'll just live with 50GB gone and the Vista bootloader till I decide if I want to get rid of vista or try and save it again. ::sigh::

Curious George....

Was looking around for an Atom Films video worth posting, finally found one... Yes, just one. But a good one.

Curious GWB

Home again this weekend

Looks to be another boring weekend for me :P

Not quite as bad as Kat's is starting out though... Reason why I'm staying is because she got a migrain this morning, after already suffering an attack earlier this week :P Some seriouse not funness for her. So every one send her good luck getting your head to stop splitting it's self in two juju's ok? :)

Besides that rather sad bit of news?

Well, I finally went ahead and bought F.E.A.R (First Encounter Assult Recon). Aside from the fact that some people were seriously stretchng things to get that acronym to work, and some generic lines in the game, over all great game. I'm really getting in to it, but freaked out first person shooters tend to grab me. I don't know why, maybe I have some deep rooted desider to fight a hopless fight against demonic forces... who knows... But it's super fun! The game features a super freaky 8 year old demon girl that seriously reminds me of the girl from the Ring. The intersting part is the game keeps you guessing as to which side is really the good side. The "bad guy's" you're after (who are following the demon girl) or your side. I'm still at an early part in the game, can't wait to get farther... Oh well, enough of that.

Next on this weekends agenda? Well, I downloaded Windows Vista last night, and got it burnt to DVD today (installer is like 4GB). So far I have yet to figure out how I'm going to get it installed. Problem is that the Vista installer doesn't seem to be able to recognise the promise IDE controller that the extra hard drive is installed on (this sucker is like 6 years old). I tried moving that hard drive on to my nForce IDE controller (Vista is nVidia happy out of the box), but it turns out my Windows XP can't boot with the drive there any more because my page file is on that drive! I guess it needs the disk to be right where it is in order to be able to find the page file... Ahhh, the joys of playing around with modern computers. Oh well, I"m sure I'll get this thing installed eventually, other people have asked about the promise controller, and seem to have drives.. Though with my luck they were able to get away with 32bit drivers which I won't be able to. :P Oh well, Glass prettiness will have to wait for another day.

Other than that? No idea, I'm thinking about calling my friend Melly, she's a lot of fun. And I've only hung out with her once since getting down here. So that would be coolness. Gotta watch how I spend though, I want to have money to visit kat one of these days darnet! lol!

First blog on the new hard drive...

No, I didn't sit on my new hard drive, but I just might sit on the old one ;)

Anyway, after fighting with my computer for 3 nights I finally got my new hard drive installed and working happily late friday evening (technically sat. morning). It's nice to finally have this project wrapped up, even though I have found that the new disk is quite about noisier than the last one I had. But it's cool, I finally have an SATA drive, with lots and lots of space... Hooray!

Other developments...

Girlfriends family recently ended up needing to store one of their (very nice) recliners some where as they are currently a little tight on storage space at their house... And they asked nikki and I if we were interested in "storing" it for them... Well, me being the nice boy I am decided that I would try and find some space somewhere in my crampt little apparetment to keep it... It's errr, a huge sacrafice let me tell ya ;) Between that and the new chair nikki picked up for $5 I think our place is all set up. Fortunetly banshee only seems interested in scratching the wall to get my attention as kind of a game, so everything should be safe :)

Well, I'm done for tonight, was going to post stuff to the photo blog, but I'm feeling increably lazy. talk to y'all later :)