That’s right folks 34 hours in the bank and only 4.75 more to go!  That’s the work work.  At 1pm tomorrow I will be volunteering at Bromenn as an escort.  I’ve been in the building once so this should be interesting at the very least.  Then the week is REALLY over and the fun begins.  The Jamie and I will be driving up to mi casa for a weekend of fun.  Her friend Darren accomponied by his roommate Mike will be meeting us there and we will be living it up at Six Flags Great America all weekend!  Tomorrow night, however, we will be celebrating my birthday.  For anyone that is any bit at all familiar with birthdays in my family you’ll know that that means PIE!  My grandparents buy everyone their favorite pie for their birthdays.  It’s a tough decision (choosing between French Silk, Oreo, Strawberry, and Coconut) but this year we will be feasting on Strawberry!  There will also be freshly baked cake as well as brownies from Lovin’ Oven!  Mmmm….tasty!  Me going home also means something else.  Something my father is always excited to hear.  Sphagetti.  It’s pretty much a given that when I go home my mom will make a huge pot of it.   More tasty!  So the four of us and my small little family will be celebrating a week early but that’s ok with me!  Anyway, that should be my weekend in a nutshell.  Who knows what kind of crazy shananigans will come up in between all that but you can bet they’ll show up here shortly after.  Until then I’m out!

John

I’m oddly content with life right now.  We’ll see how that changes as school/work gets closer but for now I’m a happy camper.   The summer has been going extremely well with a few pleasant suprises along the way.  Although it’s flying by a bit too fast for my liking there really isn’t anything I would want to go back and change.  I guess that’s where the content part comes in!  Anway, I’m going to take my happy little butt to bed because there’s work to do tomorrow!

John

PS - Great America this weekend…
       _____ next weekend…still not really sure about that one… :-/

It was in the lobby when I set my sights on you.
Should have kissed you in the elevator.
But I was too scared to.
It was in the morning when I made up my mind.
I want you staplegunned right to my side all of the time.
Whooa.

Do I have to spell it out for you?
Or scream it in your face?
Oh the chemistry between us could destroy this place.
Do I have to spell it out for you?
Or whisper in your ear?
Oh just stop right there, I think that we’ve got something here.

Two rather slightly related stories follow.  I feel as if both fall under the aforementioned subject title and thus have at least a slight connection .

Earlier today Mr. Bolton and I attended a showing of the movie The Island.  I will not get into a review of the movie because that would definetly not make any connection to my second story but will instead talk about commercialism in America.  Back in the day, I say this as thought I’m much older than I really am, you used to be able to sit down to see a movie and maybe watch 3 trailers before the movie started.  Today I paid $7.50 and got more than just a movie.  The commercials seen in the beginning were the following:

• Pepsi
• Pepsi
• Verizon V-Cast
• Sony Ericsson
• Air National Guard

These were then followed by the following movie previews:

•  Supercross
•  Stealth
•  The Dukes of Hazzard
•  Just Like Heaven
•  Domino

The gross commercialism didn’t end there!  Once the movie started there was shameless product placement throughout the entire 2 hour movie.  Which didn’t start at 8:10 as advertised due to 20 minutes of commercials.  Anyway, here were the things shamelessly promoted throughout the movie:

• MSN Search
• Cisco
• International
• Mack Trucks
• GM (Cadillac, Chevy, and GMC)
• Ben and Jerry’s
• Puma
• Amtrak
• Michelob Ultra
• Budweiser
• Johnny Rocket’s
• Aquafina (a Pepsi corporation)
• XBox

Now keep in mind these weren’t just casual “go out of your way to notice” promotions, these were front and centered nearly everytime.  Sometimes several times.  Funny, I thought I was paying to see a movie not a commercial!

Slightly later in the evening I was continuing work on my family website.  The page is finally set up and ready for content so that’s what I was working on.  In order to keep all the links from breaking I wanted to come up with little splash “Coming Soon” page.  Well, it being a family page and all, I thought it would be cool if the image on the page was of a passport stamped with Coming Soon on it.  Simple enough except I don’t have my passport here and no one around or awake had one to scan for me.  So I began searching for an image online of just a generic blank open passport.  Keep in mind these pages contain no personal data and really aren’t that special.  So I figured I would hop online and ask a few people around the message board I frequent.  Apparently requesting a scan of a blank passport isn’t cool to do these days.  These were the subsequent responses to my simple reply:

• What do you want it for, exactly?  (high level user)
• Yeah, that’s the kind of question that gets the FBI knocking at your door . . . (regular old user)
• While none of these seem to be completely blank, it seems like it wouldn’t be too tough to clean one up for your purposes. (regular old user)
• I’m sorry, but I can’t allow this request. (moderator closing the post)

It’s nice to know we live in a country that is so paranoid that a shmuck like me can’t even get a picture of a passport.  There are plenty online but they are all stamped up.  If you click the link in the third response you’ll see that that idiot posted scans of almost every document he has, complete with drivers license, transcripts, diplomas, and passport.  The big thing a few years ago was that “We can’t let the terrorists win.”  It’s too late for that, they won long ago.  The security and paranoia in this country is unbelievable and has everything to do with terrorism.  It’s because of this that some dumb admin has decided that I’m not allowed to ask a few people for an image of a passport.  I’ll be waiting here when the FBI comes knocking to ask me why I posted my own passport next week.  Good grief!

John 

Here are a few little bits of information I thought I’d share with you!

1. Last night my dad called me and told me about his trip to Camp David.  I guess it was built in a manner that would keep even close passer-by from realizing it was there.  This of course makes sense because it is where the president of the United States frequently retreats to.  I wish I had some pictures of it to see and share but he didn’t feel like having his camera confiscated on the way in.
2. After this conversation instead of napping I decided I was going to work on the Keippel family website.  It’s been sitting there for awhile and I haven’t given it any love in a while.  I finally had the motivation last night! 
3. After tinkering for a while Karen stopped by to request my services.  She accidentally left the doors to her car unlocked the other night and her cd player up and left.  So she purchased a new one and I agreed to put it in for her.  As I’m sitting there, both front doors open, shit spread out everywhere, legs hanging out of the car I hear a man say “How you doing tonight sir?”  Thinking this was a conversation between the guy that walked out of the apartment moments before and a friend I ignored it.  “Sir.”  I look up.  There stands a Normal police officer.  He asks me if the car I was presently in was mine.  I say no and tell him that it’s a friends.  He explains that people have been reporting of stolen stereos and that someone in the area called me in because of “suspicious activity.”  I explain to him that the stereo that was once in this vehicle was one of the ones that walked off and that I was replacing it.  He says alright and heads out.  Really now, I’d like to know which idiot in the area saw what I was doing as suspicious.  Now I know that some criminals are real dumb asses but seriously now.  I had both doors open, lights on, and I had been there for a good 20 minutes to a half hour at that point just crimping wires and such.  Not the best way to start out my criminal career if you ask me.  The good news was everything worked and fit in place nicely.  Hopefully I won’t be installing a third stereo in her car anytime soon!
4. After installing said stereo I had planned to head inside for a nice shower.  I had warned Karen that I had been putting off showering all night on account that I was just sitting in my apartment alone and there was no one around but me to witness my ripeness.  She didn’t care and requested that I help her anyway, so I did.  By the end of the installation process she agreed that I needed to shower so that’s what I was to do.
5. Or not.  Dreamweaver, Photoshop, IE, and FF were still open and I got suckered in to working on the website once again.  Hours later I had solved one of many compatibilty problems with IE and still needed to do my final fish feeding.
6. If I had done this alone I would have just gone.  But I invited the Jamie to come with for a short trip and wasnt about to subject her to myself.  So I FINALLY showered.  We then drove over to Kelly’s apartment and fed the fishes.  I dropped her off at her apartment and came back here to work on solving the ever growing list of problems with my website.  I feel as if I must tell you that these problems do not stem because of the fact that I’m an idiot and have no idea what I’m doing.  In reality the problem is much greater than that.  The people at Microsoft don’t know what they are doing.  I can have a nicely made website that looks perfect in FF, which tends to render pages much better, but looks like shit in IE.  At one point the site looked fine in FF but in IE the header was below the footer.  I don’t even understand how that one happend.  The difference between a good website developer and a bad developer stems from these problems.  A bad developer will crank out a website in 5 seconds that looks perfect in IE but looks like shit in just about any other browser.  They will then block that site from anyone not using IE or place a “This page works best in IE” disclaimer at the bottom.   Now I don’t consider myself a good website developer by any means but I’m just crazy enough to sit at my desk for hours on end pounding away at a problem until it’s solved properly.  And that is just what I’ve been doing.  I now have valid XHTML and CSS running on my site!  w00t!
7. What else…
8. I think that’s about it for me.  Ooh!  My birthday is in less than two weeks!  That’s kind of exciting stuff I think!
9. Done!

John

Fate is an elegant, cold-hearted whore
She loves salting my wounds
Yes, she enjoys nothing more
I bleed confidence from deep within my guts now
I’m the king of this pity party with my jewel encrusted crown

The other day there was an answer but no question.  Today there was a question and really will be no meaningful answer.  Life’s really just that crazy around here!

Anyway!

Today the Jamie and I joined the Rebecca and Neil for a showing of the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  For the most part there aren’t too many huge changes.  Except for the fact that Charlie doesn’t really find a Golden Ticket, it’s pretty much the same thing with new people! 

Ok, so it’s not really.  The changes/additions are all very good, and, as far as I can tell, the movie is more true to Roald Dahl’s book than the previous version of the movie.   The movie is also very Tim Burton and even features several actors from his last movie Big Fish.  Speaking of, you may notice that Mr. Soggybottom is now an Oompa Loompa.  Correction.  He is not an Oompa Loompa, he is the only Oompa Loompa in the entire movie!  In the end it was a very good movie with Johnny Depp playing a very odd role occassionally freaking me out along the way.  I would go on but I need sleep!

John    

Yes, yes it was a fun night.  A simple, kind of random, no worries evening.  First to Anderson park where we scooped around in the sand on little back-hoes, then to the swings.  We then surrendered our seats to a group of younger kids and left.   Onward to Clearwater park where we goofed around a bit, learned about states, animals, and maple syrup, made dinasaur and bee noises and had much fun. 

Not to end there it was off to Culvers!  We’re all about the firsts around here.  A good time of course. 

And to end the evening we decided to drive out away from the lights that are Bloomington/Normal to look for stars.  This quest took us to the middle of Hudson Road where we realized (after pointing it out several times earlier in the evening) that the moon was much too bright and was over powering the very stars we were looking for.  Although unsuccessful in that regard, again, we enjoyed the trip. 

Now I’m back to Normal and this is where our little story ends.  Night night!

John

Watching years of CSI, Law and Order, House, and numerous other shows and movies involving some sort of investigation I’ve learned that the bad guy (I don’t really consider myself that kind of bad guy, but we’ll get to that in a minute) always makes a fatal mistake.  He succumbs to greed and deviates from the original plan, leaves behind some teeny tiny particle which has just enough DNA on it, or is tracked down through financial records.  How funny!  It’s story time folks!

This story starts back in 2003.  Well it doesn’t really HAVE to go back that far but I’m the one telling the story and that’s where I feel like starting!  Anyway, in 2003 I applied for and received my first credit card.  My wonderful Discover card.   It started out transparent blue and was really quite stupid looking.  At the end of 2004 Discover decided I was a good debtor and bumped my spending limit up and moved me to Discover Platinum.  A short pause while you finish OOOOHing and AAAAHing.  Ok, so it wasn’t really all that impressive but it meant that I got a new card.  This card wasn’t anything like the blue transparent one and instead was a wavy American flag.  Very cool, except it looked just like the Discover Platinum card my parents gave me back in 2002 when I first headed to college.

I made it a while without switching them up but still decided that I wanted a different design.  A few days later I received the soccer card which, as you may guess, looks NOTHING like an American flag.   Problem averted.  Or so I thought.

Fast forward to July 10, 2005.  Quite a few people know what I’m referring to at this point.  It is at this point that I make my fatal move. 

In the excitement that was our skydiving trip I slipped up.  I reached into my wallet and whipped out a credit card.  I handed it over without even glancing at it.  Little did I know. 

Turns out that I didn’t hand over my pretty soccer themed credit card, but instead handed over wavy American flag card.  If you’re short term memory is any good you’ll recall that that very card was attached to my parents credit card.  If you know me at all you’ll know that I told next to no one about this little excursion and felt it unnecessary to worry others even though the occassional tandem skydive is much less dangerous than things I do everyday. 

That’s the end of story time!  And just to make story time just as fun as it was in grade school I’ll turn the book to the audience so they can see the pretty picture!

John

Oh life.  You confuse me so.  Well, for the most part life doesn’t confuse me.  The people that make up my life manage to confuse the hell out of me though.  What else is new!  Yeah, I’m always confused.   Life marches on!

John

You can’t turn off, that you’re dead
You just deal with (deal with it) I
Thought I was dreaming
When my heart stopped beating
But I’ve got this feeling