matt

I was bored last night and was wasting time while I waited for Marissa to finish up what she was doing and I found myself reading my old blog entries on Xanga. These blog entries were from 2004 and 2005 and quite honestly, I found them to be pretty entertaining. It also got me thinking that I actually wrote interesting things back then and now I feel like what I write is rather boring. Not sure if it's just re-reading things of how I felt 4-5 years ago and feeling nostalgic has to do with it but I just felt like I put more effort into what I wrote back then and it had an edge to it, while now I feel like my writing is like something out of an operation manual (step 1, step 2, step 3, et al).

Last night we saw Pineapple Express and it was really boring! Half way through I turned to Marissa and really contemplated stopping the movie and doing something else. I stayed with it and it was okay but overall I didn't find the movie funny really. Towards the end there were some decent gags but generally I found the film boring and the jokes dumb (yes, even too dumb for me). I'll add Pineapple Express to the list of over-hyped movies.

Yesterday ended rather poorly for me. We went to the gym after work to workout and subsequently cancel our gym membership. I qualified for a complete refund because I came at least once a week for the last 4 weeks but Marissa missed last week due to her being sick so she didn't qualify for the refund, which I was willing to handle. The issue is that since she didn't qualify for the intro month refund thing, she is treated like any member who cancels and the stupid gym requires 60 day cancellation notice, so not only do I have to pay for her first month, I have to pay for 3 months of her before she'll actually be able to cancel. So Marissa has a nice membership at the gym through April 20th even though she wants to cancel today. It's quite dumb.

Adding to the frustration was as I was getting out of my car when I got home from the gym, I dropped my work cell phone and it's basically broken. The thing tries to turn on and then just goes black and tries to restart again and it just goes in an endless loop. So when I actually got home, I was really frustrated between the phone and the gym. I'll never understand how sometimes I can be so dumb about these things.

Yesterday the parts for my computer finally arrived and I was set to put it all together. As I began putting it together, I quickly ran into quite possibly the dumbest problem ever. The case that I ordered only came with 3 screw standoffs (the little brass things you use to mount the motherboard to the case)! Usually you get like 80 of them but I only got 3. After throwing a temper tantrum and wasting my time driving to wal mart to find some, I managed to mount it with just the 3 and get the PC running. The rest of the setup went flawlessly and my PC is up and running! I've only had time to install a few applications thus far but I'm excited to really test it out by seeing how it performs in a game of mine but I'm expecting some pretty bad ass results.

At lunch today, I went to a PC repair place and picked up some standoffs so tonight I'll remount the motherboard (properly, might I add) and try once more. Aside from the standoff snafu, I put the whole thing together in record time. In fact, of the 3 or 4 machines I've now put together, this was by far the fastest time it took me and best I can tell it works fine. I left it on overnight and came to it this morning with no problem and I've been able to remote a few things to it without a hitch. I'll still knock on wood but it looks promising!

After work today I'm going to the gym since I put it off yesterday. I'm going to go and then after my workout, cancel because it's too expensive. It's too bad because it was a pretty nice gym. Next on my gym list to try: Planet Fitness.

One thing I've never understood about living in Florida are people who catch colds in the winter time here. Back up north, it's cold outside and it makes sense that one would catch a cold and be all sniffly and congested...it almost goes hand in hand with the bitter winter weather. But living down here and being all sniffly when it's 70 degrees out just doesn't compute to me. It's like having the flu in the summer time. Frankly, I don't think these viruses are native to here, it's just the tourists that come down from the north and bring the germs with them.

We saw Tropic Thunder last night (thank you free Redbox code on Mondays!) and I was utterly disappointed in the movie. Like Get Smart, this was a movie I had expectations to that it would actually be funny. But it wasn't! It was lame and there were some jokes that were mildly amusing, but overall I felt like the film just was not funny. The premise and everything was good and seeing Tom Cruise in that absurd character was fun but there just weren't any good jokes in it. Do yourself a favor and skip it because there are far better choices out there.

According to the UPS website, my computer parts are on the truck and out for delivery and I'm uber-exicted. I even re-arranged my gym plans for the week and am coming straight home so I can start putting together my new PC. Few things can get me as excited as I get like when I get to put together a PC. I've been doing some reading and research to ensure I'm ready for when it arrives (I even read the manual for the motherboard!). I guess I'm excited because it's a new challenge for me and also because it's a new toy and I love my little toys (look no further than my Blackberry).

Speaking of toys, Marissa and I need to go to Verizon to fix our cell phone situation. Right now we have two seperate phone plans and I'm sure we are overpaying. Plus, Marissa needs a new phone and she is eligible for an upgrade. Our initial plan was to get some sort of family plan but I'm wondering if I should just end my plan and use my work phone as my personal phone. It could save us like $50/month and work has said I can use my work phone for personal calls, provided I don't go over my monthly limit of like 400 minutes. The negative to my work phone is I don't get text messaging. I think I will still get a phone (or port my phone over) but I'll do it on the cheap since I have my work phone to really use. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Another weekend has come and gone and I'm back to the grind of another work week. It finally heated up this weekend and yesterday was gorgeous. This week is supposed to be pretty hot, with highs in the 80's tomorrow and Wednesday. This is in sharp contrast to last week's weather where temperatures never got out of the 50's.

Last week I did some reading online about a sect of Judaism called Karaism, which is a bunch of Jews who reject the Jewish Oral Law. Basically, their motto is if God didn't say it, then it's not a law and I happen to find a lot of truth in that. Many traditions and rules are basically "man made". Some Rabbi hundreds of years ago decided these and it's become the rule, but my position is if God didn't say it, then why are we doing it? Classic example is during Passover when we are to not eat "leavened breads" (i.e. pasta, bread, etc). That makes perfect sense, but then there's rules that also say we can't have things like rice or potatoes and I think that's ridiculous. When the Jews were fleeing the Egyptians, they didn't know what a potato was or a number of other "new world foods". If it wasn't important enough for God to convey to Moses when the Torah was written, then we ought to not bother with it. Anyway, we'll see where this takes me.