One way you can tell you're in a city like Omaha is when there seems to be a desparation to find news-worthy topics. Since I've lived here, I've noticed that one channel in particular loves to interupt regular programming for extended periods for what is really much ado about nothing. Several times I've been watching tv on this particular channel when all of a sudden, "breaking news" happens. What kind of breaking news, you ask? Well, once there was a city council meeting regarding a proposal for a new baseball field. And apparently, the station thought I just HAD to be immediately informed about it. Since then, it's generally been about thunderstorms. THUNDERSTORMS! Are you freakin' kidding me? They happen all of the time--especially around here. And the kicker is, before interupting whatever show that's currently playing, they usually run several minutes' worth of scrolling at the bottom of the screen telling you the same crap they intend to interupt the show about. A simple weather advisory scroll on the screen is more than sufficient. I'm pretty sure that I can discern whatever else I need to know about a local storm by looking out my freakin' window. But no, according to this station, I also need to see video footage of all of the local outdoor events going on in the area that may be affected by the storm. Again, easily informable via a scroll at the bottom of the screen. I just checked the station again, and the news interuption is still going on! It's been over thirty minutes now. What makes this even more annoying is that they do this even though their regular news show is less than an hour away. Can it not wait till then? Now, there are really two things that piss me off about this. 1. I don't like my shows to be interupted for bs. 2. I hate the desparation with which media outlets act in order to get attention by making a big deal out of nothing. Leave me alone! Tell me what I need to know, straightforward, via the most non-intrusive channel possible and move on! Yeah.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
Some good news and some not so good news.
First, the good. I got my new notebook! But it wasn't the one from Dell that I had written about in a previous blog. They delayed my order, so I canceled it. Then, I found an even BETTER one by HP, called the Pavilion HDX. It's an entertainment laptop, which was more what I was looking for. Something to kind of be a media center for all of my music and media. It's got a 20" true-HD screen, and plays Blue Ray. It also has a 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 640 GB hard drive, 4 GB RAM, a 512 MB Nvidia video card, and four high-quality speakers with sub-woofer. Not only that, but it has a built-in tv tuner that allows me to hook my cable up to it and record programs, and a small nifty remote control that fits on the console next to the keyboard. The coolest thing is that it has a fingerprint reader, so instead of entering a password at login (though I have the option to enter one instead), I can just swipe my finger on the reader and voila! Yeah, it's pretty sweet and I'm very happy with it. It is a behemoth! Plus, I got a 32% discount on it thanks to an online coupon I found. I just received it last Monday--two days before it was even scheduled to be finished being built! So it seems that HP is much better at customer service then Dell. But I digress...Oh, and it has Windows Vista Home Permium (64 bit edition), and I have to say, I've had a very minimal amount of trouble with it. From all the buzz I was hearing, I was expecting to be running into problem after problem with it, but that hasn't been the case so far. The only gripes I have are that, even though you set your user account to 'administrator', that account still is not the actual administrator. There are some function it won't let you do. I had to look up online and find out that you have to activiate the REAL administrator account in order to do some functions, and I found that to be a little confusing and irritating. But I've dealt with it now, and it's no longer a problem. Visually, I have to say the Aero setting is pretty stunning.
Anyway, now for the bad. I dropped my Beatles class. Why's that bad? Because it completely throws off my schedule for getting my degree in December. Also, it screws up my catalogue because my school is changing their curriculum for that particular type of class requirement. This was the last session to take advantage of the previous catalogue requirements. Because of this, the eight out of twelve credit hours I have already completed for them (the beatles class was gonna be the final four, rounding out the twelve total required credits) may not count for anything, and I may need to take a couple of extra classes now to meet the new requirements. This may not be all bad, though. It actually presents me with the opportunity to score A's in a few more classes, raising my GPA a little higher. However, it also extends my projected graduation date to next May (at least, I hope it will only be extended that far). Which means I will not have my degree by the time I separate from the military, which could hurt my job prospects. I still have options, though. I could: 1) go home for a few months after my discharge, collect unemployment and stay with my parents, working for them a couple of times per week to pay for my rent, simultaneously searching for a job and finishing up my schooling; 2) get lucky and find a job without a degree, resting solely on my clearance and finish my schooling while working at my new job; or 3) extend my enlistment for a few months for another deployment (if the Air Force agreed to do so), allowing me to save more money, search for a job, and charge another semester's worth of school to the Air Force. At least, those are the options I've come up with so far. So it'll be interesting to see how it all works out.
Oh, and Calculus is KICKING MY ASS! I haven't taken a math class in so long, and it's killing me. Lordy, lordy...At least my animal class seems to be going swimmingly.
One final, unrelated note. I just saw Get Smart, and I thought it was pretty good. I remember watching reruns of the series when I was a kid, and it was such a fun, goofy show. The movie didn't really spark the same type of feeling in me--it felt completely distinct from the series--but it was still a nice break from reality.
Reading: The Serpent and the Swan by Boria Sax
Anyway, now for the bad. I dropped my Beatles class. Why's that bad? Because it completely throws off my schedule for getting my degree in December. Also, it screws up my catalogue because my school is changing their curriculum for that particular type of class requirement. This was the last session to take advantage of the previous catalogue requirements. Because of this, the eight out of twelve credit hours I have already completed for them (the beatles class was gonna be the final four, rounding out the twelve total required credits) may not count for anything, and I may need to take a couple of extra classes now to meet the new requirements. This may not be all bad, though. It actually presents me with the opportunity to score A's in a few more classes, raising my GPA a little higher. However, it also extends my projected graduation date to next May (at least, I hope it will only be extended that far). Which means I will not have my degree by the time I separate from the military, which could hurt my job prospects. I still have options, though. I could: 1) go home for a few months after my discharge, collect unemployment and stay with my parents, working for them a couple of times per week to pay for my rent, simultaneously searching for a job and finishing up my schooling; 2) get lucky and find a job without a degree, resting solely on my clearance and finish my schooling while working at my new job; or 3) extend my enlistment for a few months for another deployment (if the Air Force agreed to do so), allowing me to save more money, search for a job, and charge another semester's worth of school to the Air Force. At least, those are the options I've come up with so far. So it'll be interesting to see how it all works out.
Oh, and Calculus is KICKING MY ASS! I haven't taken a math class in so long, and it's killing me. Lordy, lordy...At least my animal class seems to be going swimmingly.
One final, unrelated note. I just saw Get Smart, and I thought it was pretty good. I remember watching reruns of the series when I was a kid, and it was such a fun, goofy show. The movie didn't really spark the same type of feeling in me--it felt completely distinct from the series--but it was still a nice break from reality.
Reading: The Serpent and the Swan by Boria Sax
For anyone who’s ever laughed at me for...
...refusing to send my food back at restaurants when the meal was not quite prepared as ordered. Score: 1 for paranoia!
Listening to: Vampire Weekend by Vampire Weekend
Ex-cook pleads guilty to putting hair in steak
WEST BEND, Wis. (AP) — A former restaurant cook has pleaded guilty to a food-tampering charge alleging he inserted hairs in a steak before giving it to a dissatisfied customer. Ryan Kropp, 24, of West Bend, was fired along with another cook after the incident Feb. 23 at the Texas Roadhouse restaurant.
Kropp was charged in Washington County Circuit Court with a felony of placing foreign objects in edibles, carrying up to 3 1/2 years in prison.
After his guilty plea Thursday, Judge James Muehlbauer scheduled sentencing Aug. 12.
The criminal complaint said that when a manager asked a customer how his steak was, the customer said it was somewhat overdone, although he had almost finished eating it and refused an offer of a new steak.
But the manager insisted on having Kropp prepare a new steak the way the customer wanted it, medium rare, so that he could take it home.
The customer called the restaurant and police after finding hair as he was eating the steak the next day.
According to the complaint, a second kitchen worker told police Kropp had put a slit in the cooked steak and pushed something inside, then stated, "These are my pubes," referring to pubic hair.
Kropp told police he put a few of his facial hairs on the steak, saying he was angry the customer sent the other steak back and thought he was "just trying to get free stuff," the complaint said.
A phone number for Kropp had been disconnected when The Associated Press tried to reach him for comment Thursday night.
Listening to: Vampire Weekend by Vampire Weekend
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