Xmas Vacation!

12.18.2009

Today after work (which I'm hoping will be about 3:00) I start my Xmas vacation. If there are no emergency calls, I won't go back to work until Jan 4.

I wonder if I can remember to go back :)

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Teaser for Jer

12.10.2009

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Final-ly

12.08.2009

Today I took my Accounting I final exam. It wasn't really a "final" in that it didn't cover the whole course, just the last 3 chapters. It was also weighted the same as the other tests. For some reason, I've been stressing and worrying about the content of those 3 chapters because some of the terms just weren't sticking in my head. I was putting way too much importance on this test because:

• It really was just 17% of my grade.
• If I made a 0 on the test, my class average would by 79.3.
• I needed a 60 on the test to get an A in the class.
• This is just a class I'm taking as a prerequisite for the masters program I'm theoretically aiming for, over a year down the road.
• There are other things I'd rather be doing, and some of those I probably should be doing.

So after a 12 year break from school, I'm focusing way too much on getting an A. I think I made at least a 60 on that test. There were 3 spots where I know I was getting the math right but had to make up the account names because I just couldn't remember what they were supposed to be. But at least now I'm not worrying about it. I didn't even go look up what the account names should have been after I got home.

Now I've just got 8 more work days until my Xmas vacation begins. That I'm looking forward to. I may have to make a list of what all I want to do to make sure I optimize my play time.

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Air in tire GOOD!

11.22.2009

About a month ago I got a bicycle and was amazed at all the advances in the bicycle sciences over the past 20 years. Disc brakes, shocks, GPS, and there's probably heated seats out there somewhere. It came time yesterday, after trying to take a ride around Matt's neighborhood, for me to air up the rear tire. I'm paranoid about tires and wheels since that's where all my weight's going, so I pay special attention to those first couple of hundred feet of a ride. Yesterday, I heard the distinctive noise of too much rubber under low air pressure on the road. As such, my ride was almost a minute long before I loaded up and came back to the house.

One of the accessories I got was an overly complicated air pump. The tubes in the tires have a Presta valve, which I had never heard of before getting the bike home and trying to figure out what that funny looking valve stem was. So, I hooked up the pump to the tire, pushed down, and not a damn thing happened. I had gotten a spare inner tube on my last trip to the bike shop, and I could inflate it fine. What was I doing wrong?

Thanks to Al Gore's Information Superweb and Yahoo, I found that I needed to unscrew a tip of the valve that I didn't even know was there. Afterward, I was able to pump up the tire to the recommended 40-65 psi (I picked 60!), up from the 30 psi that I managed to get down to. Part of that 30 was probably me letting air out while fiddling with the valve stem trying to figure out how the silly thing worked.

So now I have properly inflated tires. It's raining and I probably won't go for a ride today. I'm ready for tomorrow, though.

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Gift Card Deposited

11.21.2009

Last week I got an email from Amazon asking if I would like to trade in any of my movie purchases. I scoffed at the idea of course. The next sentence said I could also trade in video games. I started to scoff, but then remembered the cache of Playstion (1 & 2) and Xbox games that have been sitting in a closet for years. Next I remembered how I finally traded in VHS tapes a couple of years ago that had just been sitting in the garage taking up space. Although I could go trade in games at the local video game store, with Amazon I get Amazon credit. And I loves me some Amazon credit!

I got stacks of games out of the closet and began to see what I could trade in. Some games didn't exist for trade-in (like Warhawk for the PS1 - one of Jerry's favorites). Other games I would rack up 50¢, $1.00, and sometimes $1.50 in credit. A lot of these games were still in the shrink wrap from when Sam Goody closed. to file under "things to make you laugh" I saw where the Terminator 3 game cost $8.09 and I hoped to get my moneys worth. I traded it in for $1.50 still in the shrink wrap. I think I came out on the short end of that one.

Now I have some Amazon credit to play around with. Christmas is coming up, and I'd like to say that I'd spend it on others, but the odds are good that it'll be spent on some frivolous electronic doo-dad by the time you, the internet, read this. Hopefully I'll have not used it to buy another copy of Terminator 3 for the Xbox.

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