My buddy Darrell is graduating from Portland State University at age, what, 31 or something, and he’s leaving for Japan for a short-term contract. He had his graduation party tonight and I was the only one there (beside him, actually) who wasn’t wearing black. I was probably the only one there without a tattoo. It was OK, until my ex showed up and was being a bit unfriendly. Well, friendly enough, but you know how it is. I have issues.
In addition, it was St. Patrick’s day. Fortunately, it wasn’t so nutty downtown. I just feel espeically stupid right now. Maybe I can watch enough TV that I feel normally stupid.

Yesterday, I had a headache and went to sleep early. I thought I got enough sleep but kept falling asleep at work which, of course, is a fireable offense. Fortunately, I was able to go home, take a nap, and go on to do some work. I thought it would be a short nap, but it was TWO HOURS LONG. I think I’m not sleeping as well since I’m in an unfamiliar environment, and maybe it’s a little chilly at night. Who knows?

The only drama I have for you is second-hand. Someone I know, in a service industry, told one of his clients that things weren’t working out and that he couldn’t work with their poor attitude. Well, apparently, this didn’t go over well with this person’s fiancee, and my friend got repeated threatening phone calls to his place of work. All sorts of nonsense alleging gang ties and how this person’s nephew would be right over with a baseball bat. The client was a 27YO female, and her fiancee is a 67YO man who thinks he’s a gangster. Yeesh. I hate having to deal with nutcases, even secondhand.

Well, I brought over some stuff where I’m housesitting. What would you think it was? My laptop and a wireless gateway? Of course! And of course I don’t have the sense to go to sleep early, like I should. I’m up late watching TV. Why did I find “The Closer” on? I can’t stop watching that show.

Housesitting here is always quiet. The basement has the TV and the spare bedroom and I doesn’t feel like I’m intruding. Now if the bus would quit driving by so early in the morning, it would be perfect.

Well, I finally read enough bits on the intarweb to figure out that my phone was not quite as busted as I thought. Now I have my custom ringtone that I stole, er, found on the web. My sister BOUGHT a ringtone and now she thinks she’s the “Genius of Love.” Funny thing is, my ex also had that ringtone. (I found that out when I had to give her a ride 30+ miles out of town AFTER we broke up. Oh, well. At least she bought me lunch.)

Now for my next trick: wait patiently for my MacBook Pro (hah!)

OK, so most people don’t leave their computers on all the time. I suppose my Mac doesn’t need to be on all the time, either, come to think of it, but it is. It used to be fine that way, but now iTunes seems to be crashing it all the time. DO YOU HEAR THAT STEVE JOBS? ITUNES IS KILLING MY COMPUTER. OK, so he doesn’t care and neither, probably, do you. Just keep my sister’s weird semi-knitting-blog up and everyone is happy.

I spent the day with all sorts of excitement: reading and playing with fiddly bits of paper. Finished my taxes, got a deposit ready for the radio club. Hams confirm their radio contacts by exchanging postcards. Well, it USED to require postcards, but now you can do it online. What’s the fun of that? I want a postcard from Tajikistan, not some checkbox on a web site. Anyway, to cut down on postage, cards are often aggregated and mailed from national club to national club. We do the cards for much of the western US, so we get postage payments from individual geeks hams in OR/WA/ID/MT/NV/AZ/NM and I have to deposit a lot of checks for $1.50. I guess I volunteered for this.

Well, it’s almost working. I got it back to thinking it’s a cell phone and I can send text messages and receive pictures. But it doesn’t seem to let me set the ringtones. Fortunately I had most of the phone book backed up and so that wasn’t completely lost.

Went to dinner at “La Villa” again. My sister couldn’t say “Lebanese/Brazilian Restaurant” and kept saying “Lesbian Brazilian Restaurant.” Whatever. Got to meet Carolyn’s cousin who travelled to Portland for some reason I can’t imagine. Just likes traveling I guess. I like traveling, too, but for me it seems like that just means I’m watching TV in a different time zone. Same shows, different time. Oh, well.

Was it the sushi? Was it the gin and tonics? Or was it that I was at the GENTLEMEN’S CLUB tonight?

I was told by a female acquaintance that the gentlemen’s clubs are tame compared to the WOMEN’S CLUB. Men are required to sit quietly. Women, on the other hand, are are allowed to be a little wilder. Or so I hear. The only club I’ve been to with men stripping had men watching and were more tame. Er, I mean, I HEARD that the clubs with men stripping and men watching were more tame. Heh.

Anyway, I don’t remember exactly what my point was and I’ve destroyed my cell phone again. It won’t ring. I guess it’s time to see if I can restore the silly thing.

On the way to the gym I heard a senator use the word “unanimity” on NPR. I thought it meant the opposite of what it really means, so I was confused. I asked TWO Stanford grads if they knew what the word meant and neither did. They though I was thinking of anonymity. Yeesh. I think I was really thinking of ignominy because, well, we are talking about a senator here.

I’d post some pictures of the snow but I’m too lazy to walk downstairs to get my camera. There’s a chance I’ll insert them later.

A woman came into the gym who was not unattractive until she did something that made her that way. She changed the TV to Fox News and the O’Reilly Report. I thought about what else could be worse. CMT? A religious channel? I think she probably picked the one, though.

Well, I’m almost buried in work again at Megacorp, but that happened late in the afternoon. That’s a good thing because my friend Megan launched me on a rather annoying adventure that took all morning, half of the afternoon, and my whole evening.

Megan sent me a picture of her friend Melissa’s new baby. The fact that I know that means that even though the geniuses I talked to today pretty much destroyed my day, my cell phone works. And I just fixed it just now, at 11:25PM.

So early this morning I tried downloading the picture from Megan, a multimedia text message on my cell phone, and had no luck. So I called Cingular, who hopped right to it after seeing “MEGACORP” in their caller ID. They tried several things but since the phone was purchased from Amazon and not a Cingular store, they couldn’t figure it out. They had me call Motorola and even gave me a number to call. The Motorola dude took my information and then told me, flat out, that a phone purchased from Amazon wouldn’t work and I was S.O.L. That didn’t make me very happy.

So then I called Amazon (google for the customer service number, it’s out there and not on their web site) to find out if they knew anything, and they said the phone should work with any network. They tried to get a replacement for me, but the phone was purchased too long ago (3 months!) and they couldn’t do anything for me but give me a different number for Motorola.

So I tried Motorola again and the woman was much more informative. I guess there’s special software downloaded into the phones (which can be edited by programs you find on the web, I now know) for each network. My phone is some weird international phone and didn’t have all the special Cingular bits. She didn’t know how to get me the bits and all the Motorola Service Centers are far, far, away from Portland, OR.

Next I tried to get Visa to help. This was a long shot, no dice since the phone didn’t get dropped into water within 90 days of purchase while being on fire. Don’t ask me, that’s just what I got from the Visa people, and I had to call two different Visa companies to get that odd explanation.

A co-worker told me to download the software for hacking the inner bits, so I knew I could give that a try. I worked late (after getting work to do, finally) and got home for several hours of trying to monkey with the inner bits. I’m sure I could get it to work after a lot of fiddling, but luckily I found another solution.

I found a weird site for migrating AT&T phones to Cingular, I think. The web site may not be up for long, but it had a link to set up my Multimedia mail by just sending me a text message. The website was https://secure.mouse2mobile.com/clients/newcingular/ota/mms/3phone.asp and it sent a text message to my phone that set up some weird stuff and I was able to download the picture from Megan and a test picture that the Cingular guys tried to send me earlier. Hooray!

And that was my day. Sheesh.

Well, I went and ordered my new Mac today, since an acquaintance had a spare developer discount and it was more than I could get by using my Megacorp ID. I spent a bazillion dollars on a MacBook Pro and that just makes me wonder what I’m supposed to do with my old computer(s). I have to get rid of some of them, especially the old boring ones that aren’t even put together.

This also reminds me that I sent another three emails to unsuspecting women on fastcupid.com. As usual, they matched me with five stars and I knew they really weren’t looking for an Asian guy, so I sent them random, but coherent, emails. I think one person got my description of Little Giant Ladders, and another got a description of how many books I had checked out from the library. That probably makes over a dozen women I’ve sent emails to on fastcupid.com

I sent less random emails on match.com and on okcupid.com (and I think friendster and orkut) and you can guess how many of them wrote back. Goose egg is the operative term here.

Ah, well. I just remembered that when I first moved to Japan, I’d send out a couple letters a day and most of those people never wrote back, either. Bastards.

There’s a chance I’m getting a new Mac soon. Discounts, you know. But other than that it was just another day at work. You know how Mondays can be.

I could have been hung over today, but I doubt I’d feel THAT bad. I only had four drinks over four hours, so I’m guessing that the headache, upset stomach, and chills were something else. I did take two enjoyable naps today.

And that’s about it. Nice, huh?