Psychotomy

Jesus. applied for a home equity loan near the end of july, b/c we decided we needed to clean up our finances, lower monthly bills, etc.

basically every freakin’ step has involved me callin a bunch :/ just before vacation i got them to say that we were preliminarily approved, pending a evaluation of the home coming in high enough. ok, no problem. they’ll call and we’ll schedule the appraiser and stuff. except no one called before we left (ok they only had that week, but).

then no one called while we were gone. so i called, and “oh, yeah, the appraisal came back good. now we just need a credit card statement (for the one you’re closing) and the insurance information” … b/c we couldn’t've called and left me a message saying that? oi.

so i send that stuff, and while talking to the insurance, they inform me that the credit union will have to call to get added as the second mortgage. ok, no problem. talk to the CU people, tell them that. then nothing.

call them ~10 days later and … “they haven’t sent us anything” … oh, and “the lady you’ve been talking to for most of the last month was on loan to us, and she’s gone back to her department. so i don’t know anything about what you’ve talked to her about with this and the insurance ,but we need the insurance information.” … oi.

so i call insurance, give them ANOTHER number to fax to. b/c apparently the one THEY provided was wrong :o don’t hear from cu in a few hours, call. “i don’t have it yet, but they haven’t brought by the faxes lately.” oh and “i’m going on vacation. you can call (a) or (b) while i’m gone.” … b/c they’re gonna know anything about this?

so call this morning. don’t remember a or b, so i ask the operator to transfer me to someone in that department. i mean, the people i know the names of AREN’T THERE anyway. talk to the nice lady. she goes to find my file. she comes back, asks for more information, goes to look again. comes back, asks me for my # so she can just call me back when she finds the damned file. it’s apparently MIA. jesus.

called back ~5 minutes later. someone else, about scheduling the signing and stuff. apparently they got the fax. i tell her she should tell the other nice lady, but that’s apparently who brought the file over. OK great. now she needs to ask me a bunch of questions about the property (uh? who’s name is on the title? is it leased from the county? is it a mobile home? shouldn’t someone’ve asked this EARLIER somewhere? jeeeesh).

so we’re scheduled to close this week. so hopefully we’ll have the money by next week when we have to pay the contractors who are fixing the bathroom. the contractors we contracted in … uh … may? yeah. maybe i can pay some of the blasted bills i was holding off waiting for the loan to pay them out, too.

*igh*

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got an interview for tuesday, for a dba position. this is through a recruiter. who contacted me initially at the end of july or something. month and a half to get an interview, and i’ve come to think that i really don’t have much interest in doing dba

but its like a 10% overall increase (so including her salary, which if i leave she probably would too), so i could live with it for a year or two. esp since i think it’d get me a clearance. ooooh

but, the interview is downtown (DC). and my wife and m-i-l both say i should wear a jacket and tie. *sigh* which brings me to one of those things i always see on the job stuff. well, not the “how to get the job” but in the other stuff. dressing up to be someone i’m not in order to get the job … means they want the person i’m not to be hired, not actually me. which means i get to be unhappy at work :/

i realize that they’re telling me to dress up so that i put on a good show, since i don’t know what the dress code would be (and it’s contracting to a major govt’ agency in DC, so suit/tie isn’t entirely unbelievable), and its better to overdress and be able to back down than underdress and not get the job.

of course, since i don’t even know if i WANT the job … mind, i haven’t gotten any otehr hits, but i just put out some resumes last week too for security gigs. but who knows how long i’d be waiting for those to come up with pings :/

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CNN Pipeline offers real-time stream of 9/11/01

OK, first off, let me say: i have no problem with people remembering 9/11. the movies are a bit meh of an idea in my opinion, but whatever. and the video from that day helps remember. helps us keep up our fighting spirit. helps us support the war in iraq b/c … uh … they … didn’t have anything to do with it?

whatever. ANYWAY. it’s from 2001. it’s 2006. I assure you, it’s not real-time streaming. It may be streaming. and it may have BEEN live real-time video. but five years? it loses “live real-time” somewhere in the first … uh … hour? a 5-minute delay loses “real-time”. an hour kinda loses “live” 5 years? it’s ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE !!! oi.

(just read the bit about it on CNN. apparently they’re showing starting at 8:30am. so the stream is supposed to be happening at the exact moments and showing the exact footage from cnn, that was on CNN-TV 5 years ago ; so i guess they can kindof claim real-time)

there was more, but i don’t see them offhand now :/

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so, it rained heavily on thursday evening and friday (ernesto)

rained a bunch on saturday, so we skipped going to renfest with some friends.  i don’t much like trudging around in the mud.  apparently the faire didn’t get that much rain, so the straw and mulch chips everywhere was enough to keep feet dry and unmuddy.  oh well

sunday was cookout with my parents, but again due to the amount of rain that had made our area all muddy and wet, we left K at home.  i mean, its’ not like he was all depressed about it or antything anyway :)  but we get down and they’re asking where the puppy is.  everyone else, as they arrive (ok two people) ask where the puppy is.

see, there wasn’t that much rain there.  and instead of pouring down it kinda drizzled and moistened.  so the ground got watered but not drenched.  heck, even the puddle at the side of the house, which fills up and swamps that side after a little rain, was drained out and reasonably unmuddy.  oh well.

yesterday was OK.  today it’s pouring rain again!  there was a sports bottle in the carport, so i set it out where it would get rained on while I took k to the vets for his  shots.  in the hour i was gone, it got ~1.5-2.0 ” …  that is a lotta rain for an hour!  :o  but apparently it only rains on our house :)

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so i’ve spent the last month or so trolling baltimore-craigslist, washington post, and monster. finding jack all in computer security. mostly finding entry level monkey positions or management. i’m waaay past the entry level (where were these when i needed an entry level job???) and monkey bit. not raelly interested in management, and no experience in it, so i wouldn’t necessarily qualify for those.

a lot of positions that look promising require top secret or better clearance. before applying. as in, your current employer got it for you and we want you to jump ship. which is the clearance way here in dc i guess, to be fair.

then i checked sans and giac. giac took down their listings, doh. sans i found a link to a couple companies that the instructors work at, but couldn’t find any hiring information (not too surprising, since they’re small and do consulting work)

then. after a month. THEN it FINALLY occurs to me. “duh, who does the cyber crime stuff?” (i was looking at a position on monster doing homeland security stuff, but not for dhs). so i hit dhs. no, apparently they don’t do much with computers according to their site. oh, fbi cybercrime. the guys who prosecute cross-state attacks! so i’m there, fishing around.

and it finally hits me. down the road, like 5-10 minutes tops. there’s a big black glass building. lotsa guards. it’s another tla. not dhs. fbi. cia …. DUH! N FREAKIN’ SA!

The No Such Agency people have lots computers, lotsa security stuff, cryptography!

so now i’m gonna tweak up my res and put in for some fbi and nsa jobs :) wheee, moron!

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ok

when have potatoes ever tasted like meat? i mean, i always thought potatoes tasted like … what is it again … dammit on the tip of my tongue …. p … o …. t … a …. t … o …. yeah. POTATOES

but apparently mcdonalds has special meat-grain-milk flavoured potatoes.

[quote]
natural flavor (beef, wheat and dairy sources),[/quote]

uh? that’s the third entry (of FIVE!) on the french fries.

and then they’re cooked in vegetable oil(s).

[quote] Cooked in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (may contain partially hydrogenated soybean oil and/or partially hydrogenated corn oil and/or partially hydrogenated canola oil and/or cottonseed oil and/or sunflower oil and/or corn oil).[/quote]

that’s six freakin’ oils! five if you notice that corn oil is listed twice under different “variants” …

what, cook comes in and brings a bottle from home of whatever was on sale at the grocery?

[quote]our suppliers informed us
for the first time that hydrolyzed milk and hydrolyzed wheat are ingredients in the natural flavoring used[/quote]

just noticed this on the allergens page. so apparently the wheat and milk weren’t listed before. which means the “natural flavor” was … meat? with nothing else? b/c it only says three things, and two of them were “news to us!” …

at least their website FAQ has changed to “we accomodate special requests for vegetarian or allergen restrictions, but we do not represent any of our food as vegetarian and cannot garauntee that the preparation will not come in contact with allergen foods you wanted to avoid”

it’s better than a few years ago when they said the fries were vegetarian b/c they were cooked in veggie oil. ignore the natural beef potatoes :o

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this evening i decided to set up the sewing machine again. i was going to try making a dress or something out of one of the cheap fabrics, for a trial run.

then i remembered we had the ez-sew quilt kits. which we started back in like september/october when we bought the sewing machine to begin with. we’ve done 2 rows out of 9. oops :o

so i decided I’d work on that. except first i had to find the rows that were already done so i could figure out which row i was working on. found them, but i seem to be missing the power cord for my sewing machine.

what! the! fuck!!! I have this expensive fucking sewing machine [b]and i can’t find the fucking power cable????[/b]

look around the sewing desk. nada. well. no. lotsa da. but no cable. crap. so i went up to the bin by the front door where i had put the stuff after my course last november (when i got so sick and shit and probably coulda forgotten it or something). da, but nada.

FUCK!

grabbed the botttle of vodka and a glass to “water down” my soda, and proceeded to tear the basement the fuck apart. and by that, i mean “grab things and throw them across the room b/c they weren’t really helpful to me since they weren’t the power cable i wanted dammit”

found the cable, hooked up the machine, and did two more rows before I couldn’t get the quilt squares to line up reasonably anymore. between throwing things around. the fact that it’s felt. and the fact that i had ~100-150mL of vodka (and a can of coke). just wasn’t getting it lined up on the first try and moving it the inch is a PITA.

so i gave up and went upstairs to surf the net some.

maybe i should actually CLEAN the basement this weekend.

where by “this weekend” i mean “monday or something” since saturday i’m doing renfest and sunday is my parents cookout :o

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today i gave my site profiling/google hacking presentation. i had to write this presentation when she said this was the one she wanted me to present :o

apparently there were 140 people there, according to the webmasters head who was, i guess, counting whilst i talked :o

went over well. got a lot of people telling me after how they liked the talk etc and it was really enlightening. i’d think they were being polite, but even my peanut gallery said it was good and they learned. i mean, i expected them to heckle me irregardless of what i said or what they thought. and they DIDN’T??? i was so confused and lost :o

and the “live demo” (i ran my script yesterday to find good results to demo today ; but today was live. just with preselected choices) was apparently REALLY eye-opening. b/c two sites on campus (and who had people in the room) showed up on my 3 examples :o heh. one of them scurried off without the free food to go fix it :)

maybe they’ll let me give the other 4 i’ve prepped. although i should go back and fill them in. 20 slides is ~30 minutes give or take, and most of the others are only ~15 slides. too short. and less “live demo” ops. i can do pdfs of examples, but i should embrace and extend my topics some :)

(oh, and maybe i can get them to give me a job too … civil servant, or contractor with security clearance … i’m not picky. just greedy :)

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52614 words Congratulations! You scored 162!

You scored as knowing approximately 52614 words and word meanings. This officially qualifies you as “loquacious.”

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