After so many years

Microsoft still hasn’t redesigned the “install a new font” dialog…..

When will they learn?

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Think I found my future car

and its a 2007 Scion tC…. I’m overly impressed with this car. Hopefully I can drag Cam tomorrow to test drive it.

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Hot Butter = Skin Burning

Ok Ok… I am pretty much to blame for this even though I made futile attempts to blame others (Cam or my mom). Yesterday I managed to give myself some pretty hefty burns on my left arm. Mostly 1st degree but plenty of 2nd degree spots (according to the definitions of degrees by WebMD). Other areas affected are my face (left side) and left leg.

So what in the world did I do? Well I was preparing myself dinner, like any responsible living on your own individual would do. My mom told me the best way to pan fry a steak is to have the stove set to high and then put in butter at room temperature. I had done it before successfully so this was my… 6th or 7th time doing it. However this time there were two variables different. The first variable would be the pan I was using. I wasn’t using the pan I used prior. The second variable is that while the butter was getting all brownish the phone went. When the phone went I turned down the temp of the stove to medium. Answered the phone and talked to Cam for about 2-3 minutes. Hung up and raised the temperature back to full. Well in the mean time the butter had blackened. I thru on the steak and thats when it happened. Like jumping jelly beans the beyond boiling butter can literally sizzling out of the pan and did a full circle spray and I was at least covering 20% of this circle. My reaction was to put my arm in front of my face. Thus my arm got most of the butter and so did the side of my face and leg (since gravity causes the butter to go downwards).

I washed off the butter and it didn’t hurt. So I didn’t think too much of it. Instead I finished up. Took out my tator tots out of the oven and ate my entire meal. When I stood up thats when I started having shivers (like having a fever). At this point I knew something wasn’t say… right. I looked at my arm and the places were the hot butter landed turned red. Slowly my entire arm turned red and some parts started peeling. I called Cam who told me to keep it under cold water. Cam called my dad who came over right away. My dad said that it wasn’t overly bad but that I definitely gave my body’s nervous system a run for its money as pain like this in many areas can cause it to go haywire. So now I have an arm covered in red spots and my left side covered with 4-5 red spots.

So what did we learn here today? Well never leave the kitchen when dealing with things that can go explode. I have definitely learned my lesson :-).

Yvo

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Stargate SG-1 Cancelled !!!

The future of Stargate is in question today, as SCI FI Channel has cancelled the long-running Stargate SG-1, Multichannel News reported today and a GateWorld source has confirmed. The news regrettably follows the airing of the show’s milestone two-hundredth episode on Friday.

read more | digg story

Yeah umm…. what the hell? They just had their 200th episode this last Friday and then they pull the plug. Interesting to say the least since there are 400+ on the gateworld forums right now expressing their pissyness. I truly hate the Nielsen’s Ratings. Why? Because it relies on a very very very small percentage of the population and doesn’t factor in DVR records and what not? Why would it matter. Well lets see… Scifi is generally seen as something seen by the geeks & nerds… the same people that are always on top of technology. The same crowd that probably owns 1+ DVRs.

Oi….

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So its been what… 3 years but still no education.

I am looking back at my history over the last 3 years and looking back I am just completely unsure at how I got here and I mean that in a good way.

Let me elaborate. When I graduated Kentridge in June of 2003 I was just going to have fun during the summer and start community college in the Fall. All that went according to plan. I even picked up a part time job at Fry’s. However in November 2003 things changed. I was promoted to Computer Sales, a full time position, and thereby dropped school. From that point on things became… rocky. At least for a good year. For months I worked at Fry’s, earned a damn good wage; however I was incredibly unhappy. I felt like I had reached a dead end in my life. In February 2004 I decided to go to Holland in April for a few weeks as there was a family reunion and I hadn’t seen most of them in almost (at that time) 7 years. As fate would have it, Fry’s didn’t accept the fact that I wanted to leave for so long and forced me to quit. I came back expecting a job there (as they had promised) but that never happened.

This is where my personal life got all jumbled because at this point I still wanted to go back to school and get a BA in Computer Science. Only this time back in Holland. I was quickly accepted into their program even with my crappy grades. Reason? Dutch citizen with an international background gives the school something to gloat about even if the student had crappy grades. So yeah… personal life. I was working as a Verizon customer support rep at Livebridge now but in my personal life things started… well getting complicated. Started dating a girl named Breanne which was great at first and really made me feel a lot more comfortable around girls and I was truly in love with her. But it quickly turned into something overly complicated and the shit literally hit the fan. Looking back I see my errors but I have no regrets.

I probably would’ve had regrets if it had gone a different way then it went. See during this same summer of 2004 I met this girl named Cam. I am still with this girl today. She is probably the one that saved me from a lot of pain. Not only was she patient with me and willing to wait for me to come around because of what happened only weeks before with the whole debacle. At that point I switched jobs and eventually landed a job at Speakeasy where I worked for quite sometime. I was starting to get more experience in help desk type situations and also learned the ways of a Mac.

While at Speakeasy I submitted my resume for a job at digital.forest where I continued to build up my experience. Now in the end I work at a different job and somehow I am earning far more then the average person makes when they graduate with a 4 year degree. However I am still not proud of myself. Like previously, I made life altering decisions to avoid school and whenever I tried getting back into the system, something came up. However this is the first time where I can’t see anything come up. It is funny though. My brother is going to WSU and is literally poor. Yet he is only a year younger then me and here I am able to sit in my own condo looking at my own computer and say “Wow I am not doing to shabby” yet I want more. I suppose its a good thing in one way but a terrible thing in another.

Do I regret any decisions I made in the past few years? Yes I do, but I can’t do anything about it and at the same time they allowed me to become a better person. Everything in the last 3 years doesn’t seem like it was for nothing. Going back to Holland got me away from Fry’s and out of this bad rhythm. The many jobs I took allowed me to get where I am today. Dating Breanne allowed me to date Cam and become a better person to Cam and not making the same mistakes I previously made. However at the time I thought those were all bad decisions after I saw what happened when I made each decision (going back to Holland, taking on different jobs or dating Breanne and then subsequently hurting her feelings). The only real decision I truly still regret is not finishing up school. So I am going to do something about it. I am taking a real hard look at Cascadia Community College as its close to where I work and literally my bus stop is there. It shares its campus with UW Bothell, so it’ll make an easy transfer as well if I get to that point.

We shall see what my future holds!

Yvo

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Save the Internet!

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Ganked!

This picture is *absolutely* hilarious.

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AJAXified Live Archives

Welp I have enabled Extended Live Archives and damn I have a lot of articles.

Take a peek:

http://www.disgruntled-dutch.com/archives/

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Teamwork, the demotivator.

Matt (my colleague and “boss” as he would put it) sent me this since we are sharing an office now.

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The happenings in the last 2 months…

Alright for those interested… some things have happened the last 2 months.

First of… here is a good summary of events

1. I am no longer working at digital.forest
2. Working for any hosting or data center equals dealing with customers on the front line
3. I now work for McGraw-Hill Education (currently as contractor but definitely has potential to become permanent). Yes thats the the company responsible for most of our education in K-12.

I work as a Systems Administrator for MHE and so far its been great. The guy, who is supposed to be my boss, treats me as an equal and doesn’t have to pull title on me (unlike other bosses I have had in the last 12 months) nor does he have to use big words to tell me what I could improve on. A definite step in the right direction. Not to mention that the pay is about 50-60% higher then my last job. Only bad part is that its in Bothell (on 120th Ave NE), so two (or three if its raining because I dont want to walk the last part) buses and I am at work in about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Cam and I are still doing great. We have been doing some fun things the last few weeks (Bite of Seattle, Seafair, just relaxing). Not to mention that we have also rescued a dog from the Animal Shelter (she was very sick when we got her) but a few benjamins later and she is up and atom. Her name is Maya. I’ll post a pic of her after I repaired my gallery.

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