Who Likes To Rock The Party?

New Zealand of course.

I forgot to mention one more crappy part of the trip...

On Horizon Flights they are supposed to give out free wine or beer to passengers old enough to consume it. On both of our horizon flights they claimed it was too bumpy for a drink service! And guess what... it wasn't bumpy at all! Cheapos!

BUT on the good side, we got our McCormick and Schmick gift certificates again... All 4 of them.

Just a compliment about your beard being good.

Just a catch 'em up post since I haven't written in something like two weeks. In honestly, this is mostly a post for Tim because most likely he will be the only person who reads it. So, Hi Tim!

I am sad to report that Oregon wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. There were no major meltdowns between me and the fam or Kyle or his fam and it snowed quite a bit. So not too much to complain about.

The only bit I could complain is our journey there: we get up at 445 am Super Shutter comes at 530 drives us around until about 615 then we fly 5ish hours to Seattle and then another 40 minutes to Portland. After that we get our luggage and are driven 4 hours through Oregon to Sisters. So for those of you keeping track, that's approximately 11 hours of travel time in 4 different moving devices. Oh and did I mention for that 5hr flight we had seats that don't recline due to emergency exit protocol.

The trip home was about the same just in reverse and that time we got home at 1130pm EST.

The good parts were:

-Got to see Cole and Meghan and my family
-Got to sit in a hot tub for hours while it was snowing
-Got to sled and make a snowman
-Didn't cook or clean once or spend money
-Got presents

It is nice to be home though, but I definitely miss the snow and hot tub and large house. But of course, nothing replaces being with my Bucky again.

The Bleak Squad

I am at work right now and I'm pretty sure my old CRT monitor has a migraine. I can tell this because the picture is quivering in pain along the edges of the screen.

With that being said the monitor could explode at any moment and I may die from the impact and then again from the mercury poisoning. KABLOOEY!

On with the story...

Last Tuesday after my insurance bonanza I decided to subject myself to more torture and take my laptop to Geek Squad to see what they could do speed it back up. As of last Monday playing solitaire was a difficult task for this machine.

I promise some tremendously funny things happened while I was waiting in line to hand in my laptop but I will skip to the important part.

This kid took my machine told me that I would be getting a call from them in 24-48 hours about whether I could come pick it up or if it needed to be "sent in" (which I think is code for bashing with a large object).

Needless to say I never received a call. So today, exactly one week later I called them and asked about my poor laptop. This kid said "Oh we were just about to call you"... my fat ass.

I asked him when they actually did the diagnostic he said last night. Keep in mind, this was supposed to happen Wednesday or Thursday.

But the good news is that he said my poor 4 year old HP failed the stress test and something else and will be sent in for 3 weeks to get rebuilt! The bionic laptop! We can rebuild him... oh wait that's the $6 million dollar man.

Keeping Up With the Jones'

I think when I went to school and actually, up until very recently I was under the impression that the school I pay exorbitant amounts of money to attend should be a) looking out for me b) do everything in its power to help me, at least while I am in attendance.

Tuesday I went to the school medical center for a yearly check up. After filling out extensive information that I'm pretty sure is getting sold to the Government for census stuff I filled out a separate paper for all my insurance information. (I have private insurance, not school issued.) After I came out from the exam room and handed my sheet to the receptionist she says to me, "Okay that will be $90". I replied with, "Are you on crack?" I let her know that I've NEVER paid more than my co-pay of $15 dollars for an appointment at her facility and I wasn't intending on paying anything more than that this time.

She told me that times had changed that she would bump that number down to $40. I continued to have a shit fit and finally paid the bill. I kept asking her why my insurance wasn't going to pay for it and she finally told me that AU doesn't bill insurance anymore. And if I want to learn more about AU's new policy go to www.shove it up yours.edu or something like that, nice. As I turned to leave I made an off-handed comment to another receptionist how I was going to keep my credit card receipt and try to write off the appointment. The first receptionist stops me from leaving and says, "Oh, do you want the form so your insurance will reimburse you?" I'm pretty sure I laughed in her face.

You would think after me pleading with her about the price and my insurance and showing her my insurance cards and filling out insurance information that would've been the first form she had given me to shut me up. But no, just a stroke of luck I walked out with my $40 reimbursement magic paper.

As I left the medical center I decided I would just accept the fact that AU is lazy and won't hire any clerical people to work and file or whatever else has to be done to get their greedy asses paid.

But then I went past the new dorms that were built last summer and saw that AU is landscaping a massive area (which would be a lovely grassy area for Frisbee, reading or sunning), but it just so happens that this grassy area is right on Nebraska Ave. and god forbid something that can be seen from the road looks bad.

I think it may have been that moment that I realized that I have been going to the wrong University. I am going to a school who cares more about the 2 parents weekends we have a year than the thousands of students who actually attend... And I am very thankful I will be done soon.

Global Warming Hard at Work

Right now I feel extremely uncomfortable. Why? 1) It's Dec. 10th and I have to wear a tank top because it's so warm and 2) There is an unprecedented number of beetles in our apartment.

As I've mentioned before beetles only come out.. or in I suppose, when it's warm out. So since it was 50 or so degrees in December they have decided to relax in my abode.

There are two in the kitchen and one in the living room on the wall about 5 feet from me. And yes, that's too close.

This beetle situation makes me think... how many other beetles are there in other apartments. And how many beetles are in my apartment and I just haven't noticed them yet.

Grumpy Old Men

As I was walking to school a few minutes ago I was at the finish line (crossing the street to actually be on campus) when I noticed an old man driving across the crosswalk while people were crossing (with the flashing white man telling us we had 30 second left).

He was traveling through the crosswalk a little too aggressively for my liking so I was very tentative when I was crossing near him. As I was watching him when I was walking to make sure he didn't run me down, he started flailing his arms at me and yelling something. I was blown away. I did a double take and he started making even more nasty gestures at me.

Despite my usual rule that I am always nice to old people I yelled at him that "we had the crosswalk" and I pointed to the little white man telling me how much time I had left to cross.

I realized in that moment that old people don't necessarily mean sweet old people. I guess I have been spoiled by the old people in my life into thinking that you got nice when you got older.

Teaching vs Training.

As my time at American University is coming to an end I have been forced to start my career search. The problem that I and some of my colleagues have run into is that we don't feel qualified for any jobs in the field that we have been studying.

Now this semester one of my Professors has somehow gotten my school to allow us to get certified in a few different Microsoft Office products. Apparently this was no easy task. From what I've heard from my other Professors the argument that AU is using to keep us from receiving the chance to get certified is that there is a difference between teaching and training. And it is NOT AU's job to train us for the job world.

Of course I disagree with that; my parents are not paying $10,000+ a semester to not have me prepared to have a job when I graduate.

But let's say I did agree with that statement. I am a business major, not a philosophy major, in this area it just doesn't cut it to read books and write papers. Sure those things help but for us Business people, it's all about real experience.

What do you think my or your schools role is? Is it their job to provide the opportunity to get certified in things that will get me ahead in the work force?

Orkin Cat is Fired!!

While I was writing a paper a few hours ago I had another beetle encounter. I included the following in my paper:

Dear Reader aka Professor, I would like you to know that the entire writing style, state of mind, and ability to write this monster blog post has been altered by another beetle situation. About 10 minutes ago a beetle dropped in mission impossible-style onto my monitor. Since then my cat has been wandering my desk in search of it and now it has gone missing. As I write I will be on constant notice of a beetle walking possibly near my hands, across my monitor, or, god forbid, flying into my face. With that being said, please enjoy my possibly spastic analysis of what makes the better blog.

During this time, which was a few hours all together, I screamed or as Kyle refers to it "yelped" about 5 times, jumped up from my chair at least 2 and called Buck over dozens.

In the beginning the beetle went from my monitor to my desk to my desk lamp back to the monitor down to the desk behind the docking station, crawled across the USB cables and onto my graphing calculator. At that point I put the graphing calculator on the floor and called Buck (once again) over to take care of the situation. But Buck as I mentioned before is farsighted and perhaps going blind because he could hardly notice a beetle that I could hardly take my eyes off of. When I got back in the work mode I began to type once more and as I was looking up some info I felt something on my hand, I immediately screamed (or yelped) and leapt out of my chair *yes Tim, with one hand on my chest* The beetle was ON MY MOUSE!... from the floor to my mouse in like 1.2 minutes, is that some sort of beetle record?! Well if it's not it is certainly some sort of infringement of personal property/space that must be illegal somewhere.

At that point I went into full blown panic mode with crazy gaspy breathing, gagging and wiping my hand off on my pants to rid myself of the icky beetle-y spiny feeling. Kyle finally calmed me down by taking the beetle (on a piece of paper) across the apartment and directing Buck to it.

Now I do not know where this beetle is and I am possibly more disgusted than before. BARF!

Hands Across The.. web?

Remember the 80's? Hands across the world or hands across America? Remember how successful they were? Yeah no one does, because it wasn't.

Now instead of holding hands across land, web entrepreneurs are trying to get us to hold hands across the web on a few new social good, social networking sites.

I'll feature Razoo.com in this post because it's the site I know the most about. This is because (as I have probably mentioned) my beau Kyle with his company Viget Labs built their website.

Razoo incorporates every feature possible of every social networking site possible. For example instead of joining a group to say that you're attending so and so's 21st birthday blowout, you join a group saying that you will perhaps carpool for the next 50 years of your life or recycle everything you can see.

Razoo is extremely lucky to have huge financial backing keeping it afloat in these uncertain periods of growth (both in site components and in users)

A few months ago I attended one of their Brewing Good events. Besides everyone drinking as much as they could handle, the gist of the event was to meet some leaders/creators of nonprofits and charities, hear their story, and vote on which was worthy enough to win $500 for their 'cause'.

While almost everyone who attended that event was interested in social good and doing all they can for the less fortunate, what about the rest of the population? More importantly what about the population on all the social networking sites; are they willing to commit time, money, or brain power to causes? Most people may say "yeah I'll do something", but I have a difficult time believing them.

In terms of Razoo's future profitability or growth potential I worry. I worry that the percentage of Social Networking users who care to join sites like Razoo and actually participate is minuscule compared with the entire percentage of users.

My suggestion would be to take these sites to Canada, Australia, Sweden and any other country that has more social programs than the U.S. Because unfortunately most of the people of the U.S. are raised to only care about #1 (and I don't mean Jesus!) and I can't see this concept taking off in the U.S. unless huge changes in mentality are made.