Friday, early evening

Deciding to drop a quick blog at the beginning of the shift, rather than at the end when I'm dead on my feet. My hotel room rocks, nice view of the beach, and on the 8th floor. I'm pleased. 2 beds, would have prefered just one, but two works for.. well the second one holds on my stuff.

Took a nice little run on the sidewalk by the beach. It was freaking awesome. The wind was pretty intense going west, coming back it was nice.. wind at my back, but then the sweat was just dripping off me. I can't wait to get my bike.. the wind will make a good work out one way, then it'll help for laying it all out when I come riding back. I'm not sure if I want to ride on the sidewalk, or brave the incredibly busy roads. I guess I'll just have to wing it.

Started reading Fast Food Nation, feel a little like Sean, though i'm not becoming a dirty hippie. It seems good. I'll probably take a big chunk out of it tonight since I forgot to bring any of my movies. I plan to watch Cowboy Bebop in it's entirerity, maybe Lain also. I wish I had all my Family Guy episodes, but they are somewhere else. I've got plenty of movies to keep me occupied, and I can always get more. Got the latest Palanuik book back in my room, looking forward to digesting that. Always a trippy read.

Well I'm going to go and see what Eric Schlosser says is wrong with fast food, other than everything.

Later

So incredibly tired

Yeah, the title pretty much says it all. I'm going to go back to the hotel and crash. Might not even run this afternoon. Though I probably should. Need to work out, it has been nearly a week since I've worked out.. and honestly, that is unacceptable.

Later

Back in Texas, again

So I'm back in Texas City once again. I'm actually excited to be here this time. I've brought a much more positive attitude this time, plus all my work out equipment, and my bike is on it's way. Hopefully it'll get here before the weather gets worse. I think it is supposed to get into the 70's next week. That is just way too cold to right. :-)

I think it has been in the 90's lately and that'll be perfect for running and riding. Going to get the biker tan going on again, or at least I'm hoping that I will. Got a different hotel, and it is right on the beach. There seems to be a nice little running path that runs the entire length of the beach, so I'm thinking I'll be hitting that a lot with my running shoes. Not sure if it is long enough to get any good rides in. I might take my bike up to some frontage roads outside of town and ride my miles up there. As I've said before I want to get in lots of running miles, so I think that running will probably happen at least 5 times a week. That will be fun, especially running near the beach all the hotties on the beach will have to pay attention.

What else is going on.. still looking into getting an apartment down in the Rock. But since I'm staying in Texas for an indefinite amount of time, I'm not really all that worried about it. Maybe if I can stay here for a while then I'll be able to get an apartment downtown, there are some opening up in the next few months, just none are ready right now. Maybe I'll get a really cool apartment, get it all swanky, lots of triathlon stuff, all my bikes all over the place. Oh man, that would totally rock.

I've been talking with Pip, he is helping me get a good workout plan going. Found what appears on their website to be a really nice gym. One big selling point is they have a lap pool. I need to swim more, and I think this assignment will allow me to swim to my heart's content. Maybe get off work, and go swim for an hour or so. Then grab some breakfast, I should have a fridge in my room, get some ceral and milk. Eat breakfast. Then get to sleep. Wake up about 4 or so, run for an hour, then hit the gym and lift for an hour or so. Hit the showers, head back to the hotel for more healthy food, then off to work for 13 hours. Then repeat. Of course on days that i'm not lifting I'll probably be biking for 2-3 hours, working on that tan and really getting to know how flat this part of texas is.

I've got a lot more to say, but I'll talk about it later. I'm having trouble concentrating at the moment.

Later

Subtle Hints

So yeah, last couple days have been very interesting. I'm still trying to get into a normal sleeping routine, but I passed out in a chair at Stuart's last night and slept for like 3 hours. Then went up to my bed, and sleeped until 5:30. Then couldn't for the life of me get back to sleep. It has been very crazy lately. I also didn't eat dinner last night, which is totally crazy for me. I've always eaten constantly, so I don't know what that means. I'm going to try to eat EXTRA today to make up for it.

I'm hoping to run up to The Ride and pick up my road bike and get my pedals off my Roo. I'm not going to get the Roo just yet, going ot wait till I get a place where I can keep it indoors, and I don't want to just sort of leave it laying around in Stuart's garage. I'm hoping to get in some miles today, then do a 60 tomorrow with the guys. Haven't seen much of them lately.. so that should be fun, though i'm thinking it is going ot kick my ass since i haven't riden in 3 weeks. Oh well.. always gotta get back into it. I don't think I've not riden in three weeks, shoot, since last winter... crazy.


Here is a picture of what happened to my car yesterday at work. One of my bosses backed straight into by car, twice I believe with his huge F150. If I was more attached to my car, I'd probably care, but I'm just hoping I can get it fixed without it being too much of a hassle. Just more of an inconvience than anything else. Though I'm thinking this might be a subtle hint from him about my current employment.

Yeah Amanda, in reference to my last post, I'm sorry my cubicle looks stupid, but just wait till I get a bunch of triathlon posters and stuff around. Maybe I'll hang up all my racing pictures, and a picture of my bike so I recall what I'm working for, and why I have to eat Ramen noodles every meal. ;-)

I should get back to work, they really shouldn't allow me to be able to do fun stuff on the web while I'm supposed to be working. But yeah, I should get back to it, since pollen won't count itself.

Later

Ok, I've now completely figured out how to post pictures. This is a picture of my cubicle. Sorry for the poor quality, I had to use my camera phone to take the picture. So yeah, notice "The Ride" nalgene bottle to the left of my laptop. Gotta represent the local bike shops. Later

Yeah, so this is a picture of my bike. Well I don't have the HED 3 wheels, and my set up is a little different. I have a different cockpit set up, with Vision bars rather than those Syntec bars.. Though I wish I had those wheels.. those wheels are sweet.

PICTURES!

This is a spider I saw when I was down in San Antonio under a train bridge. I'm just trying to post pictures at the moment. And it works.. so I'm happy now. Now I'm going to have to start publishing all the cool pictures of train wrecks and the such. Excellent.

Back to work...
Later

Back home, well sort of...

Well they let me come back from Texas yesterday. I'm very glad that I don't have to work nights anymore, I mean, it was fun to just surf the net for 13 hours a day but I honestly was getting tired of it. So I'm back home and really glad to be back. Going to be moving here in a few days, if I can find an affordable apartment, until then Stuart has been nice enough to allow me to crash at his place. So that is going to be nice, now I don't have to spend over 2 hours of my life driving to work everyday.. oh man, I don't know what I'm going to do with that extra time. Actually I'll probably just end up working out or something, but you know, it is better than sitting on my butt driving to work. What really is going to suck is not being around the gang of triathletes who I've become really good friends with. But with it being the off seaoson I guess it is ok, and I'll get up there a lot next season, maybe even move back up there.. but we'll see what happens.

Work is really slow today. Just a lot of crap going on. Lots of people's realatives dying and the such. I'm currently trying to figure out pollen counts from years back, and it is incredibly frustrating. I'll figure it out eventually. It is just frustrating that all my Googling is giving me the answer. I believe the frustration arises from the fact that I whole-hearted believe that if I could merely word the question perfectly that I would find what I was looking for. Curses. If anyone knows how to find an archived list of pollen counts over the past 5 years for Hattiesburg MS I would really appreciate it.

I should probably get back to work, but you know, I don't really want to. My boss isn't here, and I'm all about not really doing any serious work. I got all my crap together, moved to my new desk and office. Going to put up my little name plate here in a minute. Trying to drink lots of water, feel that i'm coming down with something and I don't really want to be sick. So, water and vitamin C is flooding my system at the moment.

Tonight, I don't know what is going to happen tonight. I might go play poker with some guys from school.. if I do, I really hope to kick their ass. :-) Math majors in the house!!

Ok, I'm gone, going to go call some allergists.

Later

Stupid work

It appears that I might be here for a few more days. I was supposed to be relieved today, but much to my dismay, I've been recruited for tonight, and most likely tomorrow night also. It all depends on who is going to be coming in to relieve me. If it is someone who has been here before, then I don't have to stay. If not, then I have to sit through an entire shift with them and hold their hand.. much like what Zach did for me on my first night. So hopefully it'll be someone who knows what they are doing so I can merely go home and forget all this hassle of Texas.

Not much really happened tonight in the way of work. Just sort of sat around. Started reading Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson, who by far is one of my favorite authors. I'm really looking forward to this reading experience. I hope I can find lots of time to read amongst all the other activities I have planed for myself over the next few months. I read a lot this summer, and I had forgotten how good it felt just to read for fun for hours on end. I'm still debating the issue of a TV in my apartment, hopefully I will just move in, and see what happens by not having one. I've just always lived in a place where there was a TV to watch, I honestly can't remember a time, except for some of freshman year I guess. But that doesn't count since I never spent any time in my room anyways. But yeah, I would really like to get away from the norm of everyone having a TV. I don't know, we'll see what happens with all of that.

Talked with Stuart for awhile tonight. That was fun, mocking the idiots of the nation in our continuing futile attempt to understand the average individual. Honestly.. most people are just idiots. I don't want to offend, though I'm guessing the 4 people or so who might actually read this won't care. Yeah.. people as a whole are just freaking stupid. Very annoying.

Ok, I'm going to sign off now before I start talking about why I hate stupid people and what I believe should be done about the problem. So yeah, hopefully the next time I get online will be in Little Rock, and actually I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get online as regularly anymore. I know I won't be surfing the web 13 hours a day, that's for sure.

Later

EXTRA EXTRA

I was just informed by Joey, that if the Yankees suck cock, he would play for them. I hope they see that.. since I would love to see Joey try to play baseball.. wouldn't enjoy all the cock.. but.. man.. Joey playing baseball. It would be freaking hilarious.

Fried food is disgusting

I hate fried food. I despise everything about it. Nothing healthy is ever fried, unless you think that catfish and chicken are healthy to begin with. But, I guess some healthy things can be deep-fried, but then suddenly they become instruments of obesity. For dinner tonight, I was forced to choke down fried catfish and chicken. Now, I normally wouldn't have eaten such terrible things, but those are the only options that I have sometimes. Larry goes out, and buys fried food. Dave needs to eat, so he eats it. Sometimes I curse my body.. having to constantly devour food to stay active. I guess it could be worse. I could be overweight and disgusting. Oh man that would suck.

Luckily it is the off season and I don't really need to worry about what I eat. Not that I normally do, but I'd like to think that I eat reasonably healthy. I stay away from fast-food as much as I can, though I occasionaly love having a nice sandwich from subway. I mean, one needs to indulge one's self every now and again. I guess if I really wanted to be in peak fitness that I should probably eat better, but I just like food way too much and use way too much energy to try to survive off completely health foods. I guess I eat a lot of fruits and veggies.. but I do indulge in candy and sweets all the time. I realize that high fructose corn syrup is the devil.. but man, skittles taste so freaking good sometimes. But yeah, I guess I'll never be 100% due to my diet.. but at the current moment, I'm not going to be running in the olympics, and I mean.. triathlons are sort of a hobby, not my life. Maybe when I start being able to live off racing (doubt it'll ever happen) but at that point I'll start eating correctly. At the moment.. I just eat what I want and enjoy it. Never really been able to gain weight.. though i bet that'll change one day too.

But yeah.. off-season time. I want to get in great shape in the next 5 months or so. Run some 5k and 10k races, swim a lot, hit the gym like I'm some sort of maniac, and really just whip myself into a good racing shape for next season. I'll probably hit it really hard come March.. bump up the training and get ready for Memphis in May.. I think that'll probably be the first race this season. I also want to see if I can get out West and visit the family as well as run some races out there. I've always wanted to do the Death Ride, or Escape from Alcatraz.. though maybe I should train more before doing any big races like that. Maybe 2006.. who knows. But yeah, I want to get stronger legs.. never been completely happy with my bike splits. I feel they could be much much better.. I just haven't been riding long enough. I think with a good few months of training I could really knock off the minutes. Erik says it is just all about experience.. so maybe I just have to be patient and continue training. With the new bike.. I feel I need to work harder so as I feel that I deserve it. Ahh.. I'm looking forward to the winter. Now without school, though work might mess it all up, I'll be able to train. I don't know.. we'll see how it works out.

Oh yeah.. Yankees suck.. stupid Yankees. I bet I could have a really good ball club if I had hundreds of millions of dollars. Of course, then I bet everyone would hate my team too.

This post has gone on way too long. I should probably run. Enough rambling for one night.

Later

Hockey Fan Fiction

Thanks go to Joey for showing me this.. uhh.. interesting link. Beware, not for the weak at heart. Joey and I had fun mocking the individual who wrote it, then I began to think a little deeper. What causes a woman to write slash? I mean, I guess guys could write slash too, but I don't imagine it happens nearly as much as women do. I don't understand why some of my friends even, who shall remain nameless, enjoy such slash as that from LOTR and Harry Potter. I don't understand why anyone would want to read about guy on guy action, espically that of 14 year olds. Just seems sort of odd. One girl told me once that women want to see certian male individuals in a sexual situation, but can't imagine them with a woman, so they just throw in another male character and viola, crappy, disturbing, homoerotic action. No offense, but that is just freaking crazy to me. I think portal of evil has lots of good sites, or eventually. They find all sort of wierd things. You can find them here, they are a really good site for entertaining oneself while not at work.

Let's see, it has been raining like crazy here. Very annoying for those that had to go out in it. One of which wasn't me. I took it upon myself to rise above actually doing much real work tonight and delegated completely to the damn co-worker who I don't like at all. He had to walk through so much rain today, ahh it made me feel good knowing that he was going to have to suffer. I was tempted to make him randomly go out into the rain, just to do stupid shit.. but I thought that would be almost too evil. Plus, I was busy surfing the web, and chatting with friends.

Talked with Pip a lot tonight.. I really miss hanging out with him. So many good memories, at the gym, playing video games, getting kicked out of the Hilton. Man, those were the days. Hoping all the advice he gave me works.. if anyone knows about that sort of thing, it is Pip.

Joey almost had another "bottle of wine night" but he never picked up a bottle of wine. Which is probably for the best since there were times during the last "bottle of wine night" I had trouble understanding what he was trying to say. So it was freaking fun. I talked with amanda tonight, and she said Joey and her were going to be getting drunk together sometime in the next few months, should joey ever come and visit. I'm definitely going to have to try to be there when that happens. I imagine the absolute craziness of drunk joey, and well.. amanda is crazy enough as it is... so I'm curious to see what happens when both drunken individuals get together. Absolute craziness.

Three more nights and counting. I'm really ready to be out of here. They should start off-loading the tanks next week, but honestly I don't care since I'm not going to be here. It is time for this damn project to be over. Naw, it has been fun.. I've been getting paid to sit around, read, watch movies, listen to music, catch up with old friends. It has been lots of fun. But, 13 hour days, everyday, without a break, and without any friends out here is starting to wear thin. Soon, I'll be back in Little Rock and I can start looking for an apartment.. somewhere to live.

Ahh, I think I need to start making my reports.. well, not right now, but I'm going to start printing off the maps.. then I'll start making the reports at 6:30. So stupid.. nothing happened tonight, no hits.. just.. crappy.

I'm off.. take care all.. don't read any fan fiction.. it is bad.. espically when it involves furries.

Later

Holy Crap

I would have to say that tonight has been one of the worst nights working here. It has been a compliation of being tired, having to work with assholes, and just plain being bored with everything that I've been doing here. I love the internet and all, and not in a sick, wierd way, but more in the way that I love riding my bike.. only not nearly that intense. But I've usually enjoyed the internet in small doses. Like, catching up with e-mails, looking at some news, humour, reveiw sites.. etc. But I've sort of gotten tired of staring at the screen, and playing stupid games, and writing e-mails to people who I know will never respond. It is wierd. I've sort of become burned out on it I guess. I need to get out of this room, I need to run, swim, bike.. something. I've determined I need to purchase a set of stretch cords or something, something so I can swim in the tiny ass pool they have at my hotel.. and I need to remember to always pack a pair of running shorts and some running shoes. Very important. But, there are all things that I've learned and hopefully my next 2 week trip somewhere will be slightly more productive.

Tonight also sucked since around 12:34 pm (yeah, that is the middle of my "night" in case you were curious) my boss called. I don't know why he called.. since I was sort of asleep when i answered the phone.. but I know that a few minutes later he was asking if I was willing to stay in Texas a little while longer. I'm pretty sure I said no... I hope I didn't say "NO FREAKING WAY"... yeah, so that was that. I'm actually sort of pissed about it. I know he knows that I'm working nights, so that means he knew that I was sleeping, but he called anyways. I don't know. Sort of ticked off about that. So that woke me up, and then I had an even harder time getting back to sleep.

I also had an odd urge to talk to people tonight. I tried calling just about everyone I knew to talk to them. I ended up talking to three different people tonight, and even leaving wierd messages on some phones. I was surprised, but some people mailboxes were full.. I didn't know this could happen. But now that I know.. I think I'm going to start calling people in the middle of the night and leaving long rambling e-mails.. maybe I'll find a random manual for one of our monitors lying around around I'll just start reading out of it. I'm sure everyone is curious how an AreaRAE works.. I know I am. Or how one changes out the sensors on a multiRAE.. ahh fun times indeed.

Joey won an iPod tonight.. all since he knew who Steve Jobs was.. lucky bastard. I totally would have won it had I been there, but no.. basically this job stole an iPod from me. DAMN! Feel free to check out joey's sight and watch him gloat all about his brand new apple toy. Lucky lucky punk.

Hmm, what else is going on. Oh yeah, the blast wall. For some reason, in the area of the plant that I am in, there is a huge 20 foot high, 3 foot thick wall encircling most of the area. There are also huge doors that look like they could be swung shut. Now, I don't know if I should be scared that they think they might need this huge doors, or happy that if a zombie revolt comes while I'm working here I'll be extra safe. I mean, I have huge ships docked to my rear (the ships are those scary kind that are really big. Like a floating city, but no that scary scienctologist one) and pratically invulnerable walls for safety. I'd be a little worried about food supplies.. but we have rail access... and I think a train engine could make quick work of many zombie hordes. So, two possible escape routes, saftey, and lots of chemicals that we could use to burn the zombies should the need arise. I think there is some nasty acid in some of these tanks, and I've always been curious if 800,000 gallons of acid would kill a throng of zombies, or merely melt off their flesh and make them scary skeletons. Yeah, can you tell that it is 5:30 in the morning and I'm tired as all get out. Damn needing sleep.

Coworker has been decent today.. and I mean he has only tried to start talking with me a few times. Conversation topics of this evening: Hooters, Strip Clubs, and why Windows 98 is better than XP. I understand the first two, but why the need to talk about them eludes me, but the last one. There is the wrench, it is big, and I think it is going to be going on a magical journey to this idiot's knees. Then we'll see what is up.. HAHAHA

Ok, I should go. Maybe I'll play some annoying music and see if I can't get him to leave the room. I can't wait to get the hell out of here.. so much that needs to be taken care of in Little Rock. So much that I've missed out on, and so much more that I'm missing out on as I type this. Curses.

later

Chocolate Love Bunnies

Tonight was just another night. Nothing really exciting happened, 'cept for all the monitors going down simultaneously, and then not wanting to work the rest of the evening. That was sort of hectic. Talked with Jessica until my cell phones battery almost went dead. That was a lot of fun, catching up with friends who you've lost touch with seems to be a very rewarding experience. Though I have a feeling that if some people I remember from high school randomly called me and wanted to "catch up," Well I'd probably set a world record for how far I could throw my cell phone. Hopefully no random individual who used to know me is going to stumble across this website. That would really be wierd. Also chatted with Pip for a bit, before dumbass coworker took my internet. Gotta get back in touch with with good friends from back home. Also gotta make it out there for a vacation sometime soon.. too many peeps there that I need to hang out with again, and hit the gym with again. Ahh man Pip, so many good times hanging at the Y.. those were the days. Easy ass school in the day, and the gym all afternoon.

So what else is going on, not much. Once again I must state that American Express sucks.. I know I don't have credit.. but I need a larger limit. I don't understand what the problem is, I guess I'm probably just a risk for them. But I'm not.. maybe someone at American Express will read this and approve me for unlimited credit. One can only hope.

Joey's plan to mess with random camgirls isn't coming along as well as I hoped. I believe tomorrow night I'll have to place another comment on her page.. and I think Joey had some good suggestions, over-the-top is far superior to sane comments. I mean, we are messing with them and not trying to get to know them. Sometimes I wonder if messing with people is wrong, since i know I'd hate it if someone did it to me.. but then I realize I don't care about crazy people who post crazy things on Joey's webcam page... man joey.. how do you attract those crazy bitches. Like, are you wearing crazy bitch attracting cologne or something? Is it called Aqua Bitchla or something? Just wondering.

Alright, time to copy and paste some data, mess around in SigmaPlot (which is like Excel on steriods with as many arms as a hindu god, all constantly doing scary shit with graphs) use up all the ink in some ink cartridges, and then hit the hotel for hopefully waffles... oh I forgot to mention, I've been eating waffles every morning. The hotel has this really badass waffle maker, one downside is that it makes the waffles in the shape of texas, but the waffles are really good. The last two mornings, the waffle maker has been GONE! The BASTARDS. Apparently some idiot broke it, and now I'm forced to eat healthy stuff for breakfast.. WTF? Oh well. Oh yeah.. I found this cool site with some funny flash shit. Check it out if you are bored, like I always am. They also have some cool movies of a guy playing mario music. I'm sure I got the link from another site, like Anticlown or something, but whatever.

I'm outta here..
later

Messing with Co-worker

Ahh, this morning was excellent. Larry (good co-worker, not the idiot) and I were concerned that idiot co-worker was going to fall asleep out where he was watching a crew do work. So we called him up on the radio and asked that he go check out one of our monitors and make sure it was working. Well he goes and is looking at it, but on my computer it shows that it just went offline. So Larry and I are racking our brains trying to figure out what the hell he did. I get on the radio and ask some questions, like, what are the lights doing, what switches are where.. etc. So we figure out he did, but we wanted to mess with him a little more. On our tranmitter, there are little lights that flicker every time they upkeep the connection with the host here in the office. So they are flickering pretty fast. So I ask him to count how many times it flashes in a minute. Larry immediately starts cracking up. There would be absoluetly no reason for needing to know the number of flashes, just that it was flashing, but the guy is an idiot so I didn't care. And he doesn't wear a watch, which made it even more fun. So, every 10 seconds or so I'd radio him again asking for the current number, knowing that would mess with his count.. oh yeah, by this time the monitor was back online. So finally he got a count of 42 or something.. not really important. And I'm all, "good, since if we don't get 39-51 flickers per minute the machine gets overloaded and stops working. Larry all the while is practicly on the floor he is laughing so hard. Now Larry is asking him to walk around and check to see if the units are transmitting the proper numbers back here. Oh man, just a bit of advice for all of you.. don't ever be an idiot at work, it'll just lead to trouble.

Anyways, I'm out, gotta go start making some reports. Take it easy everyone. And feel free to argue all you want. I'm mainly saying this to allow Joey and Amanda to continue posting wierd messages all over the place.

Later

Occupying Time... aka My Day Thus Far

Hidee Ho everybody. How y'all doing other there? Hope every is having as good of a day as I am. Actually today has been just like every other day, sleep, work, find out that Wal-mart doesn't sell stamps. Watch annoying co-worker attempt to read supermarket novel and laugh as he fails and tries to sleep in the world's most uncomfortable chair. Ok, so that is an exageration, I'm sure there is a chair out there in the world that is more uncomfortable. I imagine the chair would have spikes on it instead of cushions, and everytime you sat in it, the chair would eat part of your soul. And if you stayed in it too long you'd be forced to eat a kitten. That chair would be far less comfortable than these but none the less these chairs are completely uncomfortable.

So work today has been uneventful. Rain threatened, so I had to wrap the stupid monitors in ziplock bags or garabage bags.. then there was a problem since when I sent coworker out, he let the bag go over the intake, so I was getting pump faults all over the place. Just goes to show that one should never send a completely idiot out when a trained monkey would suffice. I swear, I'm guessing most people would have listened to my explanation of what not to do with the bag. I told him quite explictly not to allow the plastic to cover up the inlet, but no.. apparentely that didn't get through his thick skull. Actually I'm surprised he didn't end up sufficating on the plastic bag. I can just picture myself, standing over his body.. contemplating giving him CPR or not.. all the while remembering the total pain in the ass that he has been. Now, I know some of you are thinking, "but Dave, every life is precious.." and I completely agree. But i also believe that if you are a complete waste of space and organic material, that there should be a serious reconsideration over whether or not what he had should really be considered a life. But enough of my crazy sadistic thoughts.. on to more cheerful things.

Joey sent me a link last night, to a comic that I've really fallen in love with. It is www.toothpastefordinner.com. A very fun site that I've been reading a lot of over the past 24 hours. My current favorite at the moment is this one. Man, I totally would save that account. Ahh, polar coordinates, brings back memories. I really hope Stuart sees this one... I think he would enjoy it too.. not nearly as much as he enjoys NOT WORKING *cough* slacker *cough* but still, it is funny. Check it out.

Enough of fun happy facts. At the plant this morning, the power went down. Honestly, totally freaky. Alarms start going off, I'm afraid that tanks are going to start exploding and ruining my shit. But nothing serious happened. The power came on 5 minutes later and everything is fine. But as I'm walking out to the car to drive back to the hotel, I look across at the other side of the facility (keep in mind the facility is huge!!) and there area huge towers of flame coming out of a bunch of release pipes. I'm talking, maybe 50 feet high, and billowing thick, black smoke. I believe they were burning off excese gas from their holding tanks. I thought it was a little odd, since normally I don't think they are allowed to do that, so I continue on and start driving. About 2 minutes outside the plant, I notice a thick haze hanging over the ground. Then I notice a new smell that I hadn't smelled on the plant since i got here. So I immediately started the AC on recirculate rather than pull in fresh air and just continued driving. About this time I noticed a bunch of vehicles on the side of the road from the Texas Department of Environmental Health, and they were using all this really fancy air monitoring devices. That is when I sort of start to get wierded out. But I just kept driving, through a haze for about another 10 minutes. So, that was the strange incident of my last 24 hours.. well that and the coworker not killing himself on a garbage bag.

Ok, this has rambled on more than long enough.. I must go change some batteries and pretend like I am working for the next... crap.. 5 hours. Night is going by incredibly slowy tonight. And Joey just signed off.. crap. No more interesting conversation from the man in AZ.

later

One more week

One more week, that's the word floating around the tank farm, along with a bunch of deadly gases and scary smells. Hopefully they'll be done circulationg the tank by then and I can get the shit outta Dodge. That is what I'm now calling this horrid place. But Amanda called me this evening, as well as Michael and one wrong number, so tonight has not been so bad. I've dominated the internet from the idiot Ashley, and at the moment he is off sulking or something out of the office. Go me.

Well I don't have much to say, I need to go calibrate a few monitors and get them working and ready to go out into Dodge. Ok, maybe calling it Dodge is sort of stupid. Maybe tomorrow I'll call it something different. Like "armpit of texas". I actually considered calling it that, but then I figured no one would know which part of Texas I was refering to. Oh, two points for messing with Texas. Once again proving that bumper stickers can't control your life.

I'm going now, some music, movies and literature await the rest of the evening. I'll try to post again and leave a little update on, well nothing imparticular. Oh yeah, American Express sucks but that is a story for another day. And why is it when you are buying 300 dollars worth of batteries people look at you strangely? I thought my excuse of "my car runs on batteries" was pretty funny, but people didn't believe me. Then I just said my girl friend is lonely when I'm at work. People apparently didn't get it since they just smiled and nodded. Go figure.

Enough.. I'm off.
later

Co-worker

Just finishing up my shift here and I've got some terrible news. The company that is doing the HAZ-MAT here, HMHTTC, just switched workers here. There is one cool guy that has been here since the beginning, Larry, he is fun to work with. He keeps to himself, we talk occasionally, but mainly he just leaves me alone. The guy who just left today, Kieth, was also pretty awesome. He was from Jersey and was crude, rude, and hiliarious. Unforunetely the person they replaced Kieth with is a freaking moron. A farm boy from Pennslyvania, he is quite stupid. He really hasn't ever been on a job like this, so has no freaking idea what he is supposed to do. So he has taken to sitting in the office where I'm forced to stay, and just sort of talking. He took over the internet for about 6 hours tonight, playing this stupid golf game. I want him to be like the other guys. Who wouldn't sit in here. They would go sleep in their trucks and just sort of let me do my own thing. But no, this Ashley (he even has a stupid name) just sits and tries to make small talk to me while I'm reading. That really gets me. He won't leave, won't sleep, didn't bring anything to entertain himself with, and complains about everything. Yeah, I know it smells here. Yeah, I know the night shift sucks. Yeah I know you are a freaking idiot. He watched the scrubber screw for about an hour at the beginning of the shift, and he said he slept for most of that. It just irratates me that he is going to totally make these shifts that much harder. No more pushups, no more movies, and no more constant internet. Just, I was making due with this shitty assingment, figuring out how to make the 13 hours pass with only minor boredom. In fact, he is trying to talk to me about rewinding DVDs as I write this. I can't stand it. Going to have to talk to Larry and get this problem fixed.

Ok, the rant this rant is done, and maybe he'll figure out that when I'm completely ignoring him I don't want to hear about his ideas about fucking with people at video stores by putting rewind stickers on DVDs. God, he won't shut up. OH GOD, I'm thinking about destroying my eardrums with the spork from dinner. He won't shut up. Only crap.

Ok, yeah, something is going to have to change here, real quick. Real quick, or Dave is going to be sent home due to beating this fuckhead to death. He just graduated college, or so he is saying now, and I fear the college that would allow this dumbass in. Finally he is leaving, rarely do I wish death on people, actually no, that isn't entirely true, but I'm really hoping he falls into a tank of something terrible. Yeah, like ACID! I think Joey suggested that I tell him the acid is Jell-o and for him to find out what it tastes like. Ahh, fantasies.

Well, I guess this entry entired consisted of me bitching about this new guy and about how I want to ruin his shit with a sledgehammer. Ok, I'm off now. He is gone, and I can put on some music and read my book in peace. At least for the half-hour I have until something needs to be done. *Sigh* an entire evening of good reading and push-ups down the tubes because of a new guy. His death, I've just now determined, must be slow and excruiting.

Later

Water

Well, got another shift just about the wrap up here at the wonderful Stan Trans facility in Texas City, Tx. It has once again been an incredibly boring evening with my exciting moments happening when I realized that I couldn't balance chairs on my nose, and the subsequent injuries resulting from such attempts helped occupy my time.

Actually, as most of you know, I like to drink water. Now, it was sort of a joke last time I was onsite in California, I was constantly drinking and staying hydrated. So I have continued the tradition here in Texas. I've been drinking drinking drinking, and then I drink some more. Though I am using a different Nalgene bottle, but it is all good. Anyways I was curious about how much I actually drink in a night of working, so I started logging the times of when I finished a bottle. Now keep in mind, this is a 1 liter bottle, though not completely filled up, but probably 97% of the way. So here are the times:

1 - 2130
2 - 2231
3 - 2342
4 - 0009
5 - 0150
6 - 0345
7 - 0537

Yeah I was pretty surprised that I was downing a liter of water an hour there for a second. I had dinner around 11:30, which would explain the drastic increase in fluids. Now, I'm wondering if drinking 7+ liters of water is dangerous. I mean, they say what.. to drink 8 8oz. glasses a day. So, like 2 liters is that right? So I'm drinking, 4 times the requirement in 12 hours. Does this screw up my system, I have to wonder. I eat a lot of food, all you people out there that who know me know that, plus I'm constant nibbling on salty snacks and the like. So, yeah that was my random deep thought of the night, can a person drink too much water. Maybe I'll go back to the hotel and eat a few spoonfuls of salt just to be on the safe side.

But, if anyone ever has to work a 13 hour shift which is pure boredom, and needs to find a way to stay awake, drinking lots of water helps. I'm constantly having to get up and take a leak, which forces me to stay awake. Work ain't so bad when I'm spending about 2 hours of my time here in the john. Sometimes I start to get drowsy, then I realize I need to pee really badly, getting up and walking around helps keep me up. And it definetely speeds up the drive back to the hotel.. sometimes it is a near photo finish.

Well everyone, I have not much else to note tonight. Played some of these game called "Evil Genius".. seems fun, but then my alarms had to start going off, so I didn't really get into it. While I was away trying to "save lives" my evil mastermind got killed. Made me very unhappy. But still, I'd suggest checking out the game if you get a chance. The demo is pretty nice.

Let's see, what else. I'm hoping to get some good Star Craft single player action going on tomorrow, I've got it all installed, so that might be most of my time tomorrow night. I can't remember a time that I just sat down and played good ol' SC for fun single player. Hours of good multi-player action have taken up countless hours of my life, man those were some good times. *Sigh* Someday maybe I'll find some cool people to play with again, who knows.

I'm out of here, need to make me some reports and print out a crap load of paper. Take it easy world, and keep drinking that water.

Morning.. though it feels like my night

Ahh, working nights rocks.. who else is up and feeling awesome at 4:55 am.. well Joey and Jessica since they both just signed offline after keeping me company all night long. Other friends, take note what true friends are like. TAKE NOTE!

Joey and I had a great conversation concerning zombies. And we made lists of how we would have to section off individuals in a post-apocalyptic zombie nightmare. No, not like listing names, but more along the lines of picking groups of people who would be the first to go, etc. I made the novice mistake of forgetting about the underground slave mines, crucial mind you to a pos-apocalyptic future (not even necessarily zombie infested), but such a mistake made me take heart to my current list. I would publish it here, but I fear retribuation when the undead hordes come. I trust some individuals, but I fear that other groups might be offended and take action. I would hate to be left in the street with broken limbs with the shuffling masses approach. So take heed, if for some reason you fall into one of my categories, I apologize now, for the future is not for all, espically those that would slow me down. :-) Ahh the joys of conversations with Joey while he is on his "bottle of wine night." Good times, good times indeed.

Ok, so I haven't been posting enough, but I'm going to try to fix that. Even if it is a stupid post about nothing other than what I've done work-out-wise, I'm going to post it. Maybe I'll even start putting up pictures.. tomorrow.. I'll do that tomorrow night. I'll invest at least part of my 12 hour night to figure out how to put up pictures, so I can be cool like all the other blogs. BLOGING ROCKS.. or would it be blogging.. I'm never sure. Since it has a vowel... but..... nevermind.

I'm outta here.. take it easy world.. and remember, edged weapons never need to be reloaded.