Sorry to those of you who may have been welcomed by a dns error or something of that nature over the last couple of days. Obviously, I have some of the best hosting around. Actually, this time I guess it wasn't really something they could control. A hard drive went bad on them, and I definitely know how that feels, so I can't complain.

Anyway, I don't have much to say other than you might be met with a figurative "DNS Error" message when trying to contact me over the next couple of weeks. It's time to hunker down and grind out my thesis work to try to meet that Nov. 5th deadline. In between talks with my advisor, I tend to get discouraged and start to feel like there's no way I'll get finished. Then I'll talk to him about stuff and things don't seem so bad. Then, of course, there's always those chats with my other Advisor. I'm pretty confident He knows what's up, and things will work out the way He wants them to anyway. I just gotta keep doing my thang. Straight up.

So with that, basically a warning that I may be silent for a while, I feel like I can only end this one way and that's leaving you with this gem of a quote ...

Last year, [Washington] spent millions to build a rainforest in Iowa. I like rainforests, but in Iowa?. Come on!
Video: Bowles 2004 'Common Sense'

(You have to watch it to get the full effect).

I bid you farewell, my friends. Except for a quick blurb here and there, I'll be 'gone till November'.

This is just another example of why people hate Americans. And quite frankly, this makes me hate Americans too ...

People Complaining About Oprah's Free Pontiacs

You know what, I'm not the biggest Oprah fan, but if she continues to give free stuff away after this (and I'm 99.9% positive she will) then that just says a lot about her character. Regardless of how much she actually has to pay (word is that GM paid for the stunt) or how miniscule that is compared to her wealth, it still takes a pretty cool person to put together something like this. And for people to raise a stink like this, it just makes me sick.

Oh and if you'd like to offer a rebuttal and ask if I would be able to afford a $7,000 jump in my income taxes then I'd probably say 'No', but rather than complain about Oprah, I might complain about the income tax system or just NOT ACCEPT THE CAR! Maybe they don't have the luxury of knowing about the income tax hiccup before they accept the car ... so sell it, minus the 25% off-the-lot depreciation and after the $7,000 of income tax you made $14,000 which (and I'm sure I'm wrong here) you already paid taxes for. Suppose you still have to pay taxes on that, at 30%, and you still made almost $10,000. Not a bad down payment on a lesser car. Am I wrong here? Please, tell me I'm wrong.

Edit: The last paragraph from a CNN article regarding the matter only strengthens my point ...

The Harpo Spokeswomen said winners had three choices. They could keep the car and pay the tax, sell the car and pay the tax with the profits or forfeit the car.
Source: CNN.com

Let's talk a little bit about university supported onlineemployee recruitment systems - more specifically systems that allow employers to screen for specific applicants based on degree. First, the run down. Basically the way this thing works is an employer posts a job and then they have the option to only accept online applications from students with a certain degree in their profile. On the applicant side, we have two degree sections in our profile, "Prior Education" and "Current Education" or something like that. Naturally, I have B.S. Industrial Engineering as my prior education and that I'm currently on schedule for an M.S. in IE in December 2004.

Simple enough. Or not. I tried applying for a job where the degree requirement listed was B.S. in IE and just like you'd expect, it wouldn't let me. I emailed the support team and they came back with some goofy "modify your profile to apply for the job and then switch it back once you're done. The system doesn't look at prior education" response. Then why have it? Maybe it helps when recruiters are just looking at account profiles, but would it really be that hard to implement a check of prior education? And why doesn't an M.S. in IE qualify you for B.S. IE jobs anyway? Come on, we can do better than that.

Talk about doing better. You may have heard Nelly's collab with "Xtina" (Aguilera for those not in the know) on the radio already, but have you heard "Over and Over" featuring ... TIM MCGRAW!?! (Cue Beki and her, "I'm a huge Tim fan and I knew about that months ago" comments). It's a pretty cool song. I think what I like most is that the use of Tim is subtle ... and he doesn't rap.

And while we're on the pop-culture kick, how about the new star of tonight's episode of The Apprentice. That's right, red velvet gelato ice cream! That little plug at the end to "go on Yahoo! to catch tonight's flavors" was definitely aimed at people like me, and judging from the little bit of downtime for Ciao Bella's website, I wasn't the only one.

Oh, and a bit of warning. GM R&D apparently won't touch Master's graduates with a ten-foot pole. I won't say I was qualified, I mean she made it very obvious they were looking for PhD's, but based on her reasoning, I'd say I was really only a couple of hard-core probabilty courses and maybe some name-in-print papers away from being qualified. Lucky for me I only heard about this yesterday, and therefore wasn't expecting too much from it. Oh and I didn't really want to move to Michigan anyway.

On the heels of an inspiring vote of confidence from my thesis advisor in the form of a "You will finish by December", I have decided it is time to start seriously considering career options. So far I've begrudgingly given up on the possibilities of singing or playing musical instruments for money (since I can't sing or even play the recorder) or working on Scribnotes full time and making money off of it (umm, if anyone out there would like to pay me to do either of these, please, speak up now). Instead, possible options might include: supply chain management (SCM), SCM software development, general software development (though I'd require more training), web development (uhh more training), general information technology support, logistics management, or perhaps some form of inventory management/control. I'm also not ruling out used car salesman, you know, just until the market picks up.

So, if you have any suggestions, recommendations, or kind words of encouragement to offer, feel free to share. Or if you just want to share your own job hunting nightmares, say your piece and be heard. Maybe you'll scare me into trying to just live off my parents for the rest of my life. Or even worse - maybe you'll scare me into the PhD program!

If I hadn't just spent Saturday night hanging out with him and didn't know for sure he doesn't have kids, I would swear this guy was Dan.

Do you ever catch yourself saying something that you realize right before you say it that you're tired of hearing people say it?

Say what?

Exactly.

Ok, that wasn't a good way to get my point across. Example: I was going to write something along the lines of, "if I had a nickel for everytime I emptied my basket of clothes on my bed forcing me to put them away and then just shoving them right back in the basket before bed, I'd be a millionaire."

Then, of course, I was going to go on to explain, "Every week, after I do my laundry I empty my basket of clean clothes out on my bed so that it will force me to put my clothes away. Well when it gets around to bedtime I just shove the clothes back in the basket and plop down on the bed and sleep. Then the next day, with slightly more resolve, I'll dump the clothes back on the bed again and the process repeats. And basically this goes on until there's like one sock, an undershirt and some gym shorts left to put away."

But before I could tap furiously at my keyboard I realized that I'm beginning to hate this whole cliche whacko scenario where someone, some stranger, randomly gives you a nickel for repeatedly doing something stupid. I mean is this like the nicest person in the world who coincidentally happens to have a lot of spare nickels lying around? And then I got to wondering how much money I'd actually make. Would I, in fact, be a millionaire?

Let's do the math. Typically, I try to limit laundry to one load a week, but every other week it's two. For simplicity, we'll stick with just one. And let's say I dump, collect, re-dump, collect, etc. a total of 4 times per load (sadly, a very realistic average). And just for good measure, we'll say this has gone on for the last 5 years. So that's 5 years x 52 weeks x 1 load x 4 empty/pickups x .05 dollas. Grand total: $52.00. Fifty-two dollars after 5 years of work! So not only is the cliche annoying, it's not even close to accurate!

Anyway, while it would be nice to play more math games with you and watch even more imaginary money just vanish into thin air, I have to go clear the clothes off of my bed so I can go to sleep.

Continuing with the theme of relying on other people's comedic brilliance to keep my blog alive, a quote from Autoblog regarding some sketchy mileage estimates of increasingly popular hybrid cars:

The Big T and Big H refuse to change their numbers, saying that their averages are attainable if your hybrid is equipped with ice cubes instead of wheels and you only drive (well, slide) across Teflon roads in a frictionless vacuum that itself represents a rift in the space-time continuum.
Source: Autoblog

Oh the hilarity.

As an Industrial Engineer (no longer in training, more like "perfecting"), I should find it incredibly interesting. I should coo and caw in amazement. I should thank the forecasting gods for their grace in blessing us with such technological know-how. Heck, even as a consumer, I should be grateful for the seconds - perhaps even minutes - that it will save me, time better spent working on background stuff.

But as a cynical, laugh-at-myself-and-you-too-for-being-too-impatient do-gooder, I will make it my goal in life to make it impossible for this thing to ever know what I want to eat before I order it.

I've found myself inextricably bound to two songs by two different artists the last couple of days. The first, "Fool LIke Me" by Nathan Davis is a amazing and I feel guilty about only listening to the free version I got off his website. The problem is I don't really like the version on iTunes as much. I might buy the album on iTunes, though, so that would solve that problem. The second, "Keep Singing" by MercyMe, I did buy on iTunes (when I purchased the album Undone). My only complaint is that, at 2m51s, the song is about 20 minutes too short. Ok, well maybe that's an exaggeration, but I just love it.

Since I've got money burning a hole in my pocket, I'd love to hear what you've been spinning lately.

I would have just linked this, but I'm not familiar with weather.com's archiving capabilities so I'm just going t quote it all. This must be the most beautifully written hurricane report I've ever read in my entire life. Now I know what it takes to become a Sr. Meteorologist.

Frances continues inexorably toward U. S.
12:03 P.M. ET Wed.,Sep.1,2004
Buzz Bernard, Sr. Meteorologist, The Weather Channel

As autumn draws nigh and we prepare to celebrate the waning days of summer, our thoughts typically are drawn to the pagentry of football and foliage. Pass routes and falling leaves. Yet this year it may be evacuation routes and falling trees. Autumn will not come gently. Frances the Fierce will see to that. Dangerous Hurricane Frances is swirling into the Turks and Caicos islands this afternoon on a relentless course toward the southeast U. S. Frances, a category 4 monster on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, is expected to smash through the southern and central Bahamas tomorrow and into the northern Bahamas tomorrow night. After that, the southeast coast of the U. S. will bob to the top of the target list, but as yet there is no consensus among guidance tools as to where (or when) Frances will thunder ashore. Thus, prudence would dictate residents all along the coast (and even some distance inland) from the Keys to Cape Hatteras make at least preliminary preparations for a strike from a major hurricane. And, unless Frances throws out a sea anchor soon and begins to slow in its forward speed (as most models suggest it will) landfall could come sooner rather than later. Hurricane watches may need to be posted for a portion of the Florida east coast later today or early tomorrow. Best advice: get ready; pay attention. And keep in mind that tropical storm force winds and building surf (especially along the Carolina coast) will precede the approach of the hurricane by quite some time.

Meanwhile, in the eastern Pacific, Hurricane Howard appears to be growing stronger about 500 miles south-southwest of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Howard is expected to move northwestward, however, and remain well off the Mexican coast.

In the western Pacific, Typhoon Songda (145 mph) is sweeping WNW from the northern Mariana Islands into the Philippine Sea. Songda is forecast to churn through the Philippine Sea in the general direction of Okinawa, but wouldn't be a threat to the island for four or five days... if then.
Source: Weather.com 09/01/2004