Bah...

I cant count. Fine...heres post 186.



Whatever. Im off to party...by myself? Weeeee...

Happy New Year!

Oh yep. 1 more post than my previous high. Next year gotta top 200 :)




Have a happy new year, all. Im off to florida until the 6th!

New Car!

Well, 4 years have come and gone with the Equinox....barely. It would have been up on good friday, but i got a notice in the mail that GMAC would waive 2 of my last payments if i turned it in now...so on friday, i went to look and see what the new Equinoxes are like....and i walked out with a new one!

Here are pictures :D


Navy Blue Metallic!



Dashboard



Passenger Side - with sunroof :D



Back Seats



Console - including built in XM!




More info once i get to drive it a bit more :) Nice to have a car without a window crack, doesnt smell oddly like smoke and where all windows function correctly!

Kickin Ass and Taking Names

30

Looking for payday loans?

Stick a fork in me...

Yep...90 minutes and im out of here. No more work until 1/7/08. Cant wait.


Next week, doing the christmas thang with the family, then spending the rest of the week having some SIGNIFICANT "me" time and relaxing the work stress away. New Years Day, Mom, Dad and I are flying to Florida for a nice relaxing week at the timeshare. Pool, maybe some sea world, some disney....just going to let the stress ooze out of me.


I have to say, though...having nieces makes christmas fun. I had such a blast shopping for them and finding toys i thought they would dig. I cant wait till the 2 of them are a little older so i can spoil them rotten :D


Oh, yeah...and im back playing WoW again. The hell is wrong with me?

Pro Bowl? More like Bowl of Sh....

So, i know the bears were a flop this year, but good lord, the pro bowl selections are pretty bad.


Hester is a gimme. Brendan Ayanbadejo is a gimme. Tommie Harris....meh. Decent. But Briggs over Urlacher? I dunno. Maybe i need to look at numbers, but no Urlacher. Thats some rough shit.


Also...11 Players from Dallas? Man...get over them. I even think GB were under represented.


Lofa Tatupu? What? Other than being my new nickname for my cat...that guy doesn't deserve to be in the pro bowl. URLACH GOT ROBBED.

Lazy Friday

Tim: i'm browsing the blu ray release list
Tim: checking out reviews
Tim: planning future purchases
Me: im flipping my pen at my cube wall
Me: and they say the american work ethic isnt what it used to be.
Tim: i know right

Whats worse than having nothing to post about?

Having something to post about, but not being allowed to. Some interesting(good) things going on at work, but im not going to post about it until they are official. Could be a while, so well see.


Otherwise, nothing much new. COOOOLD. ICCEEE. SNOWWWW. Winter is here, 10 days till christmas.


2 weeks of vaca coming up, including 1 in florida. Cant wait.


Have a good weekend.

Ha. HAHAHAHA>...

Slashdot sez:

Microsoft has made available the release candidate for Vista SP1, after a limited beta begun last September. Informationweek points out white papers telling business users that if they were waiting for SP1 to solve application compatibility issues, they needn't bother waiting: SP1 won't solve them, and in fact might cause applications to break that were running under Vista. Techworld outlines the hoops users will have to jump through to get SP1 installed.

BWAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!

WEEPING ME.

I kinda want to cry.


Orton to start next Monday night in Minnesota - Chicago Bears

So Much Win....

Cant wait.

ARRRRRRRRGH!

FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME!


REPLY IS NOT THE SAME AS REPLY TO ALL!


IT HAS REPLY IN THE TITLE, BUT IT IS MUCH DIFFERENT!


CUT THAT SHIT OUT!

Mid 20's Dating for the Non Barfly - Part 2: The Inevitable End

So...one of the touchiest subjects when participating in internet dating is exclusivity. Most people who use internet dating never had huge success in the bar or club scene, so the availability of a large potential dating pool has people with poor self control foaming at the mouth. Take this example.

Mid 20s female. Moderately attractive, smart, successful, socially awkward. Probably never had a lot of luck with men in high school or college because most guys looking for women were going for the slutty hotter women or they couldnt find someone that matched what they were looking for in the crowds they were limited to with their schooling.

Bring on match.com or eharmony. Suddenly, these girls rise above and are exposed to hundred if not thousands more potential men. I hate to use crappy analogies, but it becomes essentially a buffet. Since in these kinds of situations, the women have more of a choice over the men, it becomes a suitor situation. Next thing they know, they are balancing multiple men without really having the know how or skill to do it. Suddenly they get mixed up in a wave of emotion and cant control whats going on. It can only go downhill at that point.

Im not saying that men dont do that. I have worked pretty hard to be careful when dating to always respect the person i am "dating" to not make them feel like they have to compete with other people. If i decided to date someone, i make them the priority. Does this mean initial choices? Yes. However, life is full of choices. Some people are afraid of choice and how it affects people, even if its better to make those choices earlier than longer down the road.

One of the other MAJOR issues with this is how a person lies or "excludes truths". As someone who has been burned by dating habitual liars in the past, i possibly could just be extremely oversensitive to this issue. Some people think that lying isnt bad if they think it is justified. I guess i have no tolerance for it. Even if its hard to hear or tough to say, id like to know the truth of what is going on at all times. I hate feeling like i have been duped or that i had been looking like a total fool.

Honesty. Key ingredient. Have i gotten burned? Yeah. Am i trying to turn this into a learning experience? Of course.

Is it disappointing? Of course. Im sick of this sort of stuff happening.

*relaxing*

Call me a dork or whatever, but listening to Harry Connick, JR at work makes crappy stuff more bearable.

Less unbearable?


Makes things better.

Redonkulous.

Kid is amazing.

Frigging amazing to watch.

Contender for Quote of the Year

Coming in with just a month to go...



[09:45] Jason Likert: doing 35 Mb/s at our production site
[09:45] waggoner98: psh
[09:45] waggoner98: i do that at home
[09:45] waggoner98: crank that shit up
[09:45] Jason Likert: it would be faster but i'm torrenting the golden girls

Ghostbusters Gameplay

Actual gameplay video from the upcoming Ghostbusters game.

Holy crap this looks awesome.

G4 - The Pile

Soap Is Dumb

Man i love these nivea for men commercials on the radio.

Mid 20's Dating for the Non Barfly

So, since my relationship meltdown of a few years ago, i've had some seriously interesting experiences in dating. Dating as a single, professional who isnt into the bar/party scene can be kind of rough. I did the whole bar/party thing in college, especially during my more rebellious, "single" times and had my share of good times. There is alot of risk there, but id have to say that 9 times out of 10, most women that you meet in college arent even thinking past that year...let alone long term. Some guys are cool with that. Some arent looking for relationships or looking for committment. However, if you are...post-college, the game changes a ton.

For me, i cant say im a huge socialite. I have a small, tightknit group of friends that are spread all around the country. Omaha, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, LA, North Carolina to name a few. Notice...none of those are here in Chicago. When i lived in columbus(for the 3-4 months i was "single" before i moved back to Chicago, it was a bit better. I had friends there from college, from work, etc. Had mutual group activities where i could meet people and the company i worked for seemed to have a younger, hipper workforce. Alot of that changed when i moved to Chicago. Sounds the opposite of what you would think.

Chicago is so big and so diverse, it can almost be threatening. Where do you start? Do i try to date people i work with? Do i do the internet thing? Do i join outside clubs and activities for the sole reason of finding someone to date? All of these are tough questions. I decided not to date anyone i work with, despite finding one incredible person. I dated people i worked with in college...it tends to go nowhere good. While i like to think that i am significantly more mature than i was in college, i think the dangers far outweigh the benefits of that kind of relationship. Additionally, my company isnt a real hotbed of young professionals, especially female. That decision being made, lets move on to some more decisions.

Clubs? Professional organizations? Sure, there are a ton of them in a large metropolitan area. However, id have to say im in a good comfort zone with what i do in my spare time. I dont feel like joining something like that as my only intention to find women. Seems real sleazy to me. Also, organizations/clubs like that function alot like work. Lets say i found someone, dated for a while and it ended ugly. What do we do now? We are part of this club, gossip will spread and we will have to face each other in some kind of semi professional environment. Echos alot of the issues about dating at work, except im not getting paid. Verdict? No thanks.

Internet dating. Thank the internet for bring people together. While in theory, it sounds like a good thing, you cant treat internet dating like conventional matchmaking. Its something that can be pretty difficult. Take match.com. That is the equivilant of going to a bar online. Search for people, go after people you find attractive(physicaly or mentally based on their profile). Sure, you can sit back and let them come to you...but like i said, its essentially a bar without the smoke and loud cover bands. There are services like eharmony that do the matching for you, tell you important bits about them that you might find interesting and lead you through a guided process before there is some kind of open communication. I particularly liked this route. It basically weeded out the initial impulsion of "HOT OR NOT" and it was easy for me to tell if they were willing to put the work in or not. Trying to actually GET TO KNOW someone rather than gut reactions to their profile picture shows alot. Dont get me wrong. Initial attraction based off appearance does matter, im no dipshit. But as with transformers, there is more than meets the eye.

So sure. Ive balanced a few matches at once. Have i ever "dated" more than one woman at a time? I wouldnt say so. Maybe its mincing words, but i wont go out on more than 1 date with someone if im seeing someone else casually. I tend to let the women make the rules since there is such a bad association with internet dating. I want to make them feel as comfortable as possible. Some may see that as me not being in charge enough, but if thats the case, im ok with that. When dating through internet means, its important to realize that for the most part, the general dating pool is NOT THE SAME as it would be if you were dating at parties or clubs in college. These are not socialites you are matched up with. For the most part, people using internet dating sites are using it for a reason. They have some issue with meeting people on their own. Im sure on both sides of the coin, men and women, there are tons of withdrawn nutjobs out there that make this particular kind of dating a serious minefield of sorts. Here is a fun rundown of some dating mishaps ive had.

1. A woman who invited me over to her place for our first date. Talk about obvious. (no, i didnt go)
2. Someone who was too absorbed in the Cubs to ever meet up on anything other than her terms or schedule.
3. A woman who told me she wanted to talk on the phone to get to know me better, yet would always put me to voicemail.
4. A woman who dated me for weeks who eventually(after almost 2 months) told me she isnt going to date anyone who doesnt have the same VD that she has. I politely moved on.
5. Women(multiple) who have become 1 date wives as i call them. One date and then begin to try to weave themselves into your life without you even know it. Taking little time to get to know you, just looking for a 1 stop husband. Not good.
6. A woman who showed up at my apartment not knowing when i was coming home to confront me about why i wouldnt date them anymore.
7. A woman who quietly required a daily phone call, yet never wanted to get together for some reason or another. The entire relationship was spent on the phone or instant messenger, but when it came to getting together, it was never possible.
8. Assorted women from other countries who were obviously looking for easy green cards.
9. Dated a girl who i mistakenly invited out to meet my parents. She spent the whole time knocking me and making jokes at my expense in front of my parents. While i dont really give a shit about that stuff...not a good way to win parental support. Especially when afterwards she said "Man, i think they really liked me!" Poor perception for the lose.
10. Being "dumped" by getting blind copied in an email to all of the guys the girl was currently dating, citing the fact that her friend is having a hard time at work and its too stressful for her to be able to balance dating multiple men. Classic.


As of right now, ive muddled through alot of bad matches and found a really good one. Been a month and things seem to be going pretty smoothly. Who knows, i could jinx it.

More on this topic later.

Ok, now im SERIOUSLY pissed.

Can we seriously end this strike already? I dont think they understand how much money they are going to lose if this SERIOUSLY impacts already tired TV viewers.

James Hibberd - Fox Shuffles Schedule, Postpones ‘24’ - TVWeek - Blogs