That dude's Livejournal

23:12 - Flaming couches and other stuff
Just drove by a flaming couch at the corner of S. Bouquet and Bates Street in Oakland. Actually, I drove around the flaming couch, trying not to run over too many partying Pitt students who were dancing around it. Quite the inconvenience... as driving around it (Bates and S. Bouquet is a tight intersection) probably wasn't that smart as I could feel the heat inside my car...

Spent the day with family up in East Liverpool Ohio (about an hour from Pittsburgh) gorging on the usual 4th of July barbeque fare. Nice to spend some time with family as I bid farewell to the folks (heading back tomorrow, but staying overnight in E. Liverpool with the uncle/aunt).

Not much else... just glad to be off work and not in class.

10:29 - So here's to life, liberty and the pursuit of inhibited selective serotonin reuptake
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/29/weekinreview/29LELA.html?8hpib

00:10 - Rob Jefferson, eat your heart out
http://slate.msn.com/id/2084862/

19:51 - All alone at the station
Rob's out of town. I'm on the air until 10PM. Call in with your favorite metal requests (Power/Black/Death Metal 8-9PM, Grindcore 9-10PM). 412-621-9728. or AOL IM WRCT883. Listen at http://www.wrct.org or 88.3FM in Pittsburgh.

03:32 - Some weight off my shoulders
Much to my relief, I had my last class of the first summer mini semester last night. I now have no outstanding homwork, and I'm in the free and clear for the next 7 days before the tormet continues with mini 2. Unlike the first time I took 3 classes at a time, this mini kept me a bit busier and upped my weekly homework hours to about 10 to add to the 9 hours of in-class time. Still, taking 3 classes isn't the end of the world, and doing it for 2 more minis won't kill me.

For reference, my outside of class work hours broke down as follows:
Contract Law: 16 hours reading stuff, 9 hours taking notes for the final exam = 4 hours/week of out of class time
Management communication: 6 hours preparing and following up on each of my 2 20-minute presentations, 2 hours preparing/working after my 1 meeting, 3 hours reading the relevant textbook = 3 hours/week out of class time
Distribution and Logistics: 4 hours working on 2 homework assignments (each), 4 hours preparing slides for a final presentation, 5 hours determining a solution to a street cleaning problem & presentation, and 5 hours working on a group warehouse optimization problem. = 3 hours/week out of class time.

In retrospect 19 hours/week isn't too ugly of a time commitment to allow me to finish off the MBA a semester early. In retrospect, going part-time and finishing in 2 years 3 months was definitely better than finishing in 2 years full time. Had I gone full time, I would have been bored stiff.

All is now well, except... my parents are flying in tomorrow so I'll have a few commitments for the weekend and next week and will need to do some laundry and a touch of apartment cleaning before they drop by. I think after graduation in December, I'll try to block off a week (take off a week around X-ma.. what am I? nuts?) so I can get lost in the wild. It wouldn't have to be somewhere warm, just somewhere I could sit around and stare into space. Skiing is kinda good for that sort of thing and so are beaches. Some time alone to reflect on what I want to do with my life would definitely be a good thing.

Otherwise, I still have 11 vacation days left to use, but figure I'll just space 6 of them over the fall since taking off for more than a week would be dangerous.

In other news, I decided to renew my lease (buying a house right now is more responsibility than I really want) so I'll remain in my apartment in Oakland (fifth-neville) for another year or so.

19:01 - Shelter
Final exam tomorrow for my contract law class. The ENTIRE grade comes from the one exam so I'm hoping that I don't mess up too badly and will put in another 7 hours this evening studying. Still, I think I'm going to give up on the 4.0 this mini since I know that I'll be lucky to get an A- in my management communication class, and figure that a classmate could make better use of any merit money awarded at the end of the summer.

In other news, given that I'll need to renew my lease in the next 10 days, I decided to do a quick online house search to see if anything looked interesting and noticed that most houses were being listed at 2x their property tax assessed values. Ugh... I guess low interest rates are encouraging folks to overspend on houses.

Still, given how many of the folks who are listing their homes for those insane numbers have appealed their property tax increases, I was kinda considering lobbying the city to pass legislation that would force anyone who is contesting their assessed property value to sell their home for 25% above the assessed value to anyone who offered. It would probably get most folks to pay their fair share (instead of me having to pay more flat taxes) and could raise a buttload of extra revenue for the city by assessing at real values.

Too bad there isn't enough in-town new house building to get the market back into whack. I guess I'll just have to wait until everyones ARMs shoot up in another year and folks start defaulting on mortgages to bring the market back to reasonable levels. I'm still unsure how long I want to stay in the city so postponing a buy right now might not be a bad idea. Given that my rent is going up to $685/month for my 600sqft apartment with an indoor parking space in a prime location, I'm probably better off just renting and not having to worry about property taxes and maintenance.

Long term, I'll have to think more about getting a house and might be better off just finding a nice plot of land and building something nice.

00:32 - Quote of the day
From http://espn.go.com/sportsbusiness/news/2003/0619/1570581.html

"As long as I know that they belong to me and I can rub it in to my brothers that these are mine, that's just fine with me."
- Spawn Creator Todd McFarlane on bidding for Barry Bond's 73rd home run ball to add to his collection of McGwire's 70th and Sosa's 66th

00:00 - When the online world meets the real world
Had my first encounter with an online-only friend in from San Francisco this evening - dactyl - who despite media hype to the contrary failed to kidnap me, chain me up in an old abandoned dungeon to make me her sex slave, and then hack me up into little pieces. Oh well...

We seemed to get along well, and she definitely was as interesting of a person in real life, not entirely unlike her projected online personna. We hung out for about 2 hours and it kinda felt like hanging out with an old friend as many things didn't need additional explanation. I'm sure we'll do it again in another 2 months once she descends on the 'burgh for longer periods of time.

Glad she found an apartment.

In other news, I'm polishing up one project for an ops class due tomorrow evening but should try to get a reasonable amount of sleep this evening.

18:45 - Killing time
After a search through my metal collection failing to find more than one artist (Meshuggah) that I bought 2 or more CDs from (as I've mostly been filling in missing gaps from the station), I noticed that the overwhelming majority of my music collection is single albums by interesting artists. Still, there have been a few bands I've dug deeper into the back catalogs for...

Artists I've picked up 2 or more CDs from... (number)

Rock
Fiona Apple (2)
Barenaked Ladies (5)
Beatles (3)
Beck (2)
Ben Folds/Five (3)
Bush (2)
Cake (3)
Tracy Chapman (2)
Chumbawamba (3)
Cowboy Junkies (2)
Crash test dummies (2)
Dave Matthews Band (2)
Don Caballero (2)
Bob Dylan (2)
Everlast (2)
Hum (3+Glifted & Centaur debuts)
Jewel (2)
Karl Hendricks Trio (3)
Living Color (2)
Looper (2)
Sarah McLachlan (3)
Modest Mouse (2)
Beth Orton (4)
Radiohead (5)
Red Hot Chili Peppers (3)
REM (2)
Semisonic (3)
Smashmouth (2)
Sugar (2)
Toadies (2)
Verbow (3+Jason & Allison Disc)
Verve Pipe (2)
Wierd Al (5)

Country/Alt Country
Johnny Cash (2)
Mark O'Connor (2)
Wilco (3 & Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne)

Industrial
Front 242 (2)
KMFDM (10)
Tool (3)

Metal
Meshuggah (2)

Punk
Bad Religion (9)
Boysetsfire (2)
Descendents (2)
Fugazi (8)
Millencolin (2)
Moneen (2)
Offspring (2)
Pulley (3)
Ramones (2)

Electronic
Chemical brothers (2)
Moby (2)

Hip Hop
Beastie Boys (4)
Mos Def (2)

Jazz
Count Basie (2)
Miles Davis (2)
Lionel Hampton (2)
Woody Herman (3)

Classical
Mstislav Rostropovich (2)

01:51 - Stalling
I have most of my presentation writeup done, but I just don't want to spend the extra 5 minutes polishing it up. Feeling particularly unmotivated tonight after contract law and some walking around Squill. At least the family guy was pretty good on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.

Looking forward to putting a voice/body to dactyl tomorrow if time works out.

Diet Journal:
Weight this morning: 230
Lunch: Small chicken parm sandwich & 12 oz chicken soup (500 calories)
Dinner: Subway buffalo chicken sub (850 cal)
Snack: Goetz carmels (150 calories) & lots of gum (50 calories)
Exercise: Walked 2 miles w. techstep - ran into buoren who indicated that he is still up for some quartet work if I can dig up a cellist

00:25 - Semi-productive day
Got through my operations group project this evening, I'll do my legal reading tomorrow at lunch and my communications writeup tomorrow evening. Sink is almost empty, my apartment is moderately less cluttered, and I've filtered through most of the mail from the past 3 months on my table (thank-you automatic bill pay).

Not a bad day.

Diet Journal:

Lunch: Budget gourmet frozen ziti - 230 calories
Snack: Container of 1% cottage cheese - 240 calories
Dinner: Tuna Melt - bread/cheese/tuna/miracle whip (180+160+180+50 =) 570 calories
Romaine salad w. basalmic vinagrette dressing & bacon bits - 200 calories
Exercise: 30 minutes on the bike
Weight: 230

22:49 - Headcold <> SARS
Bummer... looks like the incessant sniffling and the sneezing aren't signs that I've come down with the latest and greatest media darling virus over the weekend in Toronto. Should have licked more dirty toilet seats (as my uncle Michael used to say). Oh well.

Glad that the national spelling bee finals are coming up tomorrow to distract us from the impending stanley cup and NBA finals.

20:21 - Voyaging through the SARS infested city streets of Toronto
Just got back from the location of the next filming of "Outbreak 2" to spread the germs further south. I avoided the north-east corridor of the city (where a few cases have sprung up) and had an otherwise good trip. Managed to spend some quality time with the sister/brother-in-law/cute, cute, cute nephew, and took my grandfather out to dinner last night for his birthday.

Hit a bunch of the typical Toronto things, including the skydome tour (got to stand on the field!!!), the Royal Ontario Museum, and did some wandering through Chinatown and the harbor. Also, when I was in Waterloo, I managed to take a quick drive around town hitting my primary, Jr. High, and High School, along with a few other familiar sites. Hopefully the family stuff didn't bore Allen too much.

The hotel downtown was nice (Sheraton City Center) but it would have been nice to spend a bit more time exploring more places. Still, good to get out of the country for a day or two.

20:42 - My faith in humanity has been restored
... as BMG promptly replied to my inquiry about the missing CDs from my order and sent me replacement product. I guess I wouldn't exactly say that my faith has been restored (as I'm guessing that the first delivery was stolen), but am glad that things can still work out in the midst of inhumanity.

I love that special feeling you get when you peel off the shrink-wrap of a bunch of new CDs knowing that the stuff inside is going to be interesting. I'm listening to the ministry's greatest fits right now (stigmata... mmm...) tracing the history of Al Jorgeson's gradual descent into full-blown junky status. Can't wait to give all of the rest of it a listen (esp Cowboy Junkies, J-5's power in numbers, and Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots). I just have to reattach my CD changer to my trunk tomorrow before embarking on the trip up to Toronto so we'll have a few hours of stuff to listen to on the road. Given that Allen sticks to mostly X-rock and old-school rap, it might be a sore point during the trip, but I'm sure he'll like the J-5 and might go for Springsteen's The Rising.

23:37 - Stupid things
Went to contract law class this evening and despite using my laptop to take notes with word, I also engaged in the guilty pleasure of surfing for about 10 minutes of class time as we were going over the intricacies of "consideration". I didn't miss too much, but feel guilty in retrospect. I think I have a good handle on offers, acceptance, and consideration, but still feel stupid about it. I should do some communications homework now (first "meeting" is wednesday but I'm not presenting).

Looks like I'll be heading off to Toronto over the long weekend (holiday weekend here, but not there) with a former college buddy Allen, and maybe Matt (waiting to hear back tomorrow). We'll hit Canada's wonderland to up Matt's coaster count (I think he is getting close to beating me now after going a bit nuts last summer) now that I'm almost over my self-imposed headbanging whiplash, and do some random Toronto stuff while I'm in town. I suspect that given my summer schedule, it'll be likely my only coaster trip and given the state of the Canadian dollar, it might be a bit more pricey than expected. It should be fun nonetheless.

I'll also drop by my sister's place (to visit the nephew) for Saturday night and likely try to bum a room off the Grandparents on Sunday. I'll also be able to drop off a gift for my Grampa's birthday. Always nice to sneak in a visit with some family when I can.