My ramblings...

Cancrine

2006-02-07T16:04:00.000-05:00

cancrine (KANG-krin) adjective

1. Reading the same backwards as forwards, palindromic. For example,
  "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama." (letter cancrine)
  "So patient a doctor to doctor a patient so!" (word cancrine)

2. Crab-like.

[From Latin cancr- (stem of cancer) cancer + -ine.]

J.S. Bach's Crab Canon is an example of cancrine music:
http://www.derek-hasted.co.uk/takeaway/free-guitar-music-gifs/crab.html

Ladies Night:

Wednesday as you all know is ladies night. Well I got an invite to go this last week to Durty Nelly's with three beautiful women. Here is a picture of me with Tessie, one of the three.

I got there shortly after 10 and ended up closing the bar down. I had a great time.. lots of people though. I didn't drink much, as a matter of fact it has been way too long since I was totally drunk.. maybe this next weekend.

School:
My software engineering class is picking up. We have the first iteration of the program due in about 3 weeks. Getting the group to communicate with each other seems to be slightly difficult. I did sign us up for this online project management site. We get our own webpage and have a discussion section and everything. I think it is kinda' cool, I just don't know if we will actually use it.

6 Degrees of Francis Bacon:
So, I worked all day Friday and Saturday. Unfortunately the internet was down all day Saturday. That gave me nothing to do, I couldn't even work on homework that I had planned on doing that day. So, I ended up spending the day watching TV between calls. I am a fan of the
History and Discovery channels and can watch them most all the time. Most of the day was fairly typical Modern Marvels and Mail Call. But there was one show 6 Degrees of Francis Bacon. A little history of Sir Bacon, he is thought of as the father of modern science. He
introduced and was the first to practice and propose science using empirical and inductive principles. So, long ago he was a big wig in the science community credited with our current thought process. Anyway this show uses his principles and theories that all items have
a direct cause and effect. This episode showed how the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope was related to the woolly mammoth. In case you didn't know when the Hubble was launched in 1991 it was screwed up. They was an error in the main mirror of Hubble making all of the
images blurry. This show showed in "6 logical steps" how these two items were related. This might get a little long but I thought I would share.

We start with the wooly mammoth (#1) and the ice age. We all know about the ice age and how the cavemen (and women) were initially gathers and as the ice age developed gathering was not an option so they started hunting. The glory prize of the hunt was the wooly mammoth. This hunting change led to the development of new weapons specially the harpoon. The harpoon (#2) was used by the whaling industry. The whaling industry was interested in harvesting whale oil (#3) used in those days as a fuel source for lights. As the whale population decreased and the harvesting of whales declined and became illegal the need for lights arose. This drove Thomas Edison to the lab and ultimately developed the light bulb (#4). Now, light bulbs have filaments sealed in a vacuum (the absence of air). Edison noticed something (the electron, although he didn't know that since the electron had not been discovered) was collecting on the inside of his light bulb and decreasing the light produced. He found that if he put a small metal plate in the bulb and charged it that the stuff collected on the plate rather that the glass, there by clearing up the glass. What Edison created was the vacuum tube (#5). Vacuum tubes were used extensively until transistors were developed. I actually missed part of this last transition but the vacuum tube led to the understanding and ultimately the development of the space suit (#6). My idea is that the vacuum tube was used as the computing power used by NASA in the early years to develop the suit. With the suit, astronauts were able to exit the shuttle and work on the telescope. Once this occurred they could repair the Hubble.

I thought the show was interesting. It took way to long for them to develop the connections but found it interesting how someone could make the connections. I think it was a stretch and you could probably do it with about anything if you tried hard enough. What killed me was the phrase "6 logical steps" because I didn't think they were that logical. Anyways, I am tired of typing and should probably be paying attention to the teacher anyways.

I do have some Medieval fair pictures to post that I will try and get up this week.

- Larry

Anachronism

2006-02-01T22:09:00.000-05:00

anachronism (uh-NAK-ruh-niz-uhm) noun

1. The error of placing a person, object, custom, or event in the wrong
historical period.

2. A person, thing, or practice that does not belong in a time period.

[From French anachronisme, from Latin anachronismus, from Greek anakhronismos,
from ana-, (backwards) + khronos (time).]

I know I missed my update window on Tuesday. I got out of class really early and decided to leave campus. So, while I would have normally been sitting in the lab with nothing to do except update my blog I was driving my roomate around to get some blood work done. She apperently let something sneak up and bite her, and I though James had all of his shots. Anyways, I guess she will find out soon what the hell is wrong with her and perhaps they will fix her. Well below is my post that I should have wrote yesterday.

Stupid people..
We all know and love them right!!!
My story begins like this, it was a bright and sunny morning. The crusties were thick in my eyes since I only had about four hours of sleep. The alarm sounds and I spring from my bed. The day before I had placed a call to the local Dodge dealership where I purchased my truck very recently. I was to have a trailer kit installed as part of my purchase and it had yet to be scheduled. I spoke with the sales manager who called parts and the service departments to make sure that everything would run smoothly when I brought my truck in. I made my way out the door that morning expecting to only be at the dealership for a couple of hours I mean how long could it possibly take. I arrived at about 0845, a full fifteen minutes before my "appointment". I walked in handed the guy (Brian) my keys and told him that I was there to get a trailer hitch installed. Now perhaps this was my fault I will get back to this in a few minutes. I also had a complaint about the way it was detailed... IT WASN'T. So all of this was to be done on my truck. I walk into the waiting room and settle in for my 2-3 hour stay. A little after 11 they come tell me that my truck is done and tell me how much it is going to cost. I look at Brian and tell him I have already paid for it. He gives me a puzzled look and says "you have?". I tell him the story and that it was part of the purchase. He then looks back at me with the same puzzled look and tells me "I don't know anything about that". I tell him that we should go find David (sales manager I talked to). He agrees and off we go. David tells the kid what to do.. Brian looks at me and says that he will go take care of the paperwork and come get me in just a minute. I sit back down after standing for a solid 15 minutes, expecting him to come get me. He finally reappears and hands me the keys, he walks out to the truck to see if the detail was done to my satisfaction. I open the door and promply tell him that it looks the same damn way it was when I gave him the keys this morning and pointed out the trouble spots. He takes the keys again and I retire to the comfort of the waiting room. Brian appears again this time after noon, tells me the truck is done again and I am relieved. I had several things on my agenda to do before I went to work at three. I got in and it looked much better. The probablly only cleaned the spots I pointed out.. but atleast they cleaned them and not me. I get in the truck crank it and am about to pull out when I think about the hitch. How could they screw that up I think to myself. The hitch looks great... but there is no freaking wiring harness to hook trailer lights to!!!! Oh I am livid at this point. I walk back into the office and throw my keys at the guy. He looks back at me with that same puzzled look I had become familiar with already. "What is wrong?" I explain the lack of wires that should be visible from the rear of my vehicle. At this point the service manager chimes in. "I thought it was strange to be getting a hitch and not a harness too." I glare and he tells Brian to get my truck back on the rack. Once again I retire to the lovely waiting room. Almost two hours latter that have finished my truck.. really finished this time. The manager brings me the keys and I ask "You guys are faster with oil changes right.. cause I bought the maintainance". He assures me that they are and he asked Brian if that was correct and to come check with me while the truck was still on the rack. I glare again and get in the truck and drive off. By now it is 2:15 I am going to be late for work, I haven't had lunch and I didn't get any of my errons done. It was not a good day!! I was in a really really crappy mood all day!

That was my rant.. now I have to get ready for my evening. It is ladies night... ladies beware!

- Larry

Hesternal

2006-01-24T14:17:00.000-05:00

hesternal (he-STER-nuhl) adjective

 Of yesterday.

[From Latin hesternus (of yesterday).]

There's an equivalent term for "today": hodiernal.

Oh yes, the fast pace weeks I am almost forgot about have returned. I only wish I could hit the pause button every once in a while. I really have no idea what happened to the weekend. I did buy the truck but that was only one day and only about 1/2 of it. Now it is already Tuesday and Wednesday is close in sight. What sucks even more about that is that I have to work late and get up at the crack of dawn. I couldn't tell you the last time I sat at my computer and chatted with any of my online associates. I have over due emails to answer and a ton of stuff to do at work. I am still not sure what I am suppose to be doing in my two classes. I can't wait until the summer... I am not even considering taking classes!!!

I do love my truck though. I have a little buyers remorse but I think that is associated with the cost more than anything else. I am sure I will make ends meet but it will be tough. I also decided that it was time I spent some money on something I wanted and a truck is something I have wanted for some time now. Now I need to get a kayak rack then I can pick up and go whenever I want to.

I am about to release my trainee.. which means I have to figure out what my new work schedule will look like. I have a part-time job offer to help a guy with radio equipment instalations if I ever get back with him. That will help the money situation but absolutely eliminate all of my (what little I have) free time. So, I haven't decided if I want to do this considering the large group project that I have this semester in software engineering. Speaking of which.. starts in just a few minutes, damn it is so tempting not to go!!!

- Larry

New Truck

2006-01-22T21:43:00.000-05:00

So, I decided to go ahead and get a new vehicle. I went to the dealership yesterday and came home with this...

A 2005 Dodge Dakota QuadCab.
More latter....

- Larry

Rident

2006-01-10T14:33:00.000-05:00

I am going to work on improving my vocabulary and I think you should join me. So, what I am going to try and do (don't hold me to this) is post a word as my title and then the definition/usage in the first part of my message.

rident (RYD-uhnt) adjective
Laughing; cheerful.
[From Latin ridere (to laugh) which is also the source of ridiculous, deride, and risible.]
"Mamma was gracious and happy. Hetty was radiant and rident." William Makepeace Thackeray; The Virginians; 1859.

Yeah school has started back. I am currently between classes and had nothing better to do. I have worked from campus burning up my cell phone minutes and digesting my lunch and yet I still have almost an hour before my next class starts. I got out early from my first class otherwise the wait would have only been about an hour. Anyways, so far I will be busting my ass learning the stuff I have forgotten from Calculus four years ago. Basically my Numerical Analysis class teaches us how to program some of the complex mathematical formulas such as derivatives and logarithmic. My other class Intro to Software Engineering should be a rehashed version of all my CISE classes so far. More to come on these as the semester rolls on.

I got very little accomplished this weekend. It was nice! I did go and talk to my insurance people. Almost $2000 in damages. Luckily I do not have a deductible! I cleaned my room, got everything ready for the semester ahead since when it starts I don't usually stop. Sunday was cool, went and got my textbooks, cooked dinner and ginger bread cookies. Ruth and Andy stopped by to pick her car up, but unfortunately it wouldn't start. Poor Ruth.

Monday came and the flooring people finally showed up. It looks great. I am glad to see it has finally happened. Now Heather will leave me alone about it. =) They got finished and then it was time to get ready for work. I am working all this week and possibly next 1800 - 0200. Sucks when you have stuff to do during a despite like communicate with normal business people, but there is NO brass what so ever there that late.

In other news...
For those of you who don't know I broke up with Janet the other day. Not the best of separations I have had and something I could have controlled but it is done and over now.

Karma...
1. The total effect of a person's actions and conduct during the successive phases of the person's existence, regarded as determining the person's destiny.
2. The effects of a person's actions that determine his destiny in his next incarnation

If you read this it has very little to do with how one event leads to another. Cause and effect type situation which a lot of people use as the definition. But Karma is actually a long term cause and effect not because you did this mean/bad thing then the next mean/bad thing that happens to you was a direct result of the mean/bad thing you did.

Sorry, about the aside. I heard someone use it the other day and of coarse it was used incorrectly. So now we all know the official (Dictionary.com) definition and can use the word correctly.

Still have half an hour but I have run out things to type about. So, until next time.

- Larry

No good deed...

2006-01-07T12:23:00.000-05:00

Goes unpunished. I really wish this wasn't the case. I like doing good deeds. Thursday, my trainee had to put her car in the shop over night. She thought she had worked out transportation home but it fell through and she didn't know when she was going to get home. So, being the nice guy that I am I offered to take her home. It was out of my way but I figured what the hell. Off we went. I dropped her off and set out for the interstate so that I could get home. Well I rounded a corner and what is standing in the roadway, Bambi. I wasn't going super fast and I did have some reaction time so I managed to avoid serious damage but still ended up with quite a bit. I just called my insurance company, I will be meeting with them soon to see how much they are going to give me. I doubt it will happen but the guy I talked to said they might total my car since it doesn't have a high resale value. If that is the case then I have to go car shopping and will end up with another car payment that I really don't need right now. Time will tell, I really don't expect them to do that since I don't there is $3000 worth of damage, but we will see. There are some pictures below for your viewing pleasure.

- Larry

If you look closely you can see my car's new eyebrows.

Oddly Enough

2006-01-03T17:17:00.000-05:00

Study Oportunity

I think I need help with this study!
I didn't realize that there was scientific evidence to be gathered either. I really don't think 4 hinnies is an accurate population sample.

Stupid Criminal
Alough this guy isn't as dumb as some of the folks I have delt with or read about he still ranks up there pretty high.

Exotic Pet
If any of you are interested in adding this guy to your collection of exotic pets you might want to head over to eBay very soon. I checked and as of this posting he hadn't made it there yet.

Not much going on, just thought I would share.

- Larry

I'm back

2006-01-02T14:23:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I suppose I will end this two + month sabbatical I have been taking from the blogging community. It has been a really really long time since I have even logged into Blogger. I got slammed at the end of last semester with some massive projects for school. I actually have one of them still online and operational incase anyone is curious. I really don’t have an excuse since school ended. I really don’t have an excuse for my departure since school ended other than I am currently “involved” with someone. Well then without further a due lets get on with my babble.

Since October, hmmm.. what has happened. School did finally end (about the first week of December), I ended up with an A, B and C. I started seeing Janet (first or second week of November) more on this latter. November and December were fairly uneventful otherwise. I did have Thanksgiving and Christmas both with the family. Christmas was cool, some neat presents, my parents actually got me the same digital camera I got Heather for Christmas. My brother (Steven) asked Tessa to merry him. She seems like a good match for him. It will be interesting, more on this in the future I am sure.

More recently, Heather and I were invited to a New Year party in Cape Coral sometime back. I had mixed feelings about going, we all know I don’t like people and parties have never been my thing especially when there are only going to be three people I know there. I ended up going although I had to take a day off of work (since it was actually on the 30th). I didn’t really go for the party but so Heather wasn’t driving 4+ hours by herself. As it turned out I actually had a decent time. Poor Heather though, Ruth got sick so she was the only female our age around. It got a kick out of the host. Chris, if I remember correctly, ( I don’t know if I can say this without getting in trouble, but he and Heather had a fling several months back ) had no idea who I was and here I am showing up with Heather at his house! We made our rounds with Ruth and Andy getting introduced to the folks our age and the parents. I guess somehow I got missed in the introduction to Chris, because it wasn’t long and he walked up to us and said “I don’t think I know who you are”. I gave him my name and hand, and I guess he missed it but Ruth told him I was Heather’s roommate. The night progressed and since he was the host he didn’t hang around for long but Heather, Ruth, Andy and I stood in the corner of the room and chatted, and before too long the younger crowd had migrated our way as well. What killed me the most was when Chris would come around or I would return he would always keep his back to me as trying to exclude me from the conversation. I guess he finally gave up when he realized that I wasn’t going anywhere and not backing down because he never showed back up in the circle of youth while we were still there. I ended up sitting with three of his close friends drinking and talking about school, politics and of coarse the meaning of life. It is amazing how chatty I get when I have a buzz. Haha.. I intimidated the rocket scientist. We said our goodbyes headed back to the hotel to sleep off the alcohol. We started our trek back on New Year’s Eve, made better time, not as much traffic.

New Year’s Eve we did a sorta’ double date thing. Heather and James went to the Ice Palace to skate and as hard as Janet tried to get me to go I held my ground. After talking to Heather when she got back I am glad I didn’t go. Since we are having a warm start to the new year the upper layer of ice was melting and there was standing water on the rink. We then all headed over to TGI Fridays for dinner, little did we know that they were closing at 10. Needless to say we ended up being some of the last people in the restaurant. The plan after that was to go to a club. Now, since I really don’t like clubs I was not thrilled with the idea. Janet wasn’t sure and only wanted to go for a little while. I finally talked her out of it and we went back to my place and watched the ball drop in Time Square. Since I woke up at the ass crack that morning (every time I get drunk, sun up so is Larry, about as bad as someone else I know, except I don’t go looking for cereal) and had at this point become motionless, I was getting very sleepy. I barely made it to midnight.

The next morning came and I didn’t feel like doing a damn thing. The last thing I wanted to do was try and entertain someone. I was kinda’ feeling it the night before and actually wouldn’t have complained too much if the PD would have called and said I needed to come in. That morning I really wasn’t interested and tried to make that point known with Janet. I tried to tell her that I had laundry and I needed to work on my car. Neither one of these are lies, I just didn’t have any plans on doing them that day. I might have actually got some laundry done but I planned on vegging most of the day away. As not to seem like a complete ass I asked Janet (when we finally got out of bed) if she wanted to do breakfast. It actually was more brunch since it was about 11 when we got to IHOP. We got back to my house and she then decides that she wants to do something outdoorsy. By this point I am starting to get aggravated, I have tried nicely to get rid of her and it just isn’t working. So, I tell her if she want to go somewhere and do something then she had to decided what the hell that something was. I told her about the various state parks in the area and we finally agreed to go to Payne’s Prairie. The park is pretty nice, good for biking or horseback riding the trails. I will probably visit it again soon. We walked around for a bit and left after about two hours. Then came what I was dreading... our plans for the evening. I agreed to dinner and a movie. I took her to see Narnia as she had not seen it yet and expressed an interested when it first came out. After dinner at Chili’s we went back to her place. While sitting on the couch I got a call from the other Janet. Apparently she is ill and would not be making it to work this morning. Since Casey was leaving town that left well me to cover the shift, so I left her house and went home to put my happy little ass to bed. It really would have been in her best interest to have left me alone yesterday! Not only am still in my slum but I now have to try and play catch-up since I didn’t get anything accomplished yesterday.

Anyways, here I sit on my day off, and since I had nothing else to do and so I will stop being harassed I decided to update. I make no promises but I will try and stay on top of it.

Wow, so I started writing this some time ago.. then all hell broke loose. Well I think I am done anyways, until next time and I promise it won’t be 2 months.

- Larry

Top 10

2005-10-18T19:30:00.000-04:00

For those of you who have never had atleast a physics class some of this will make no sense. I seen it on the back of a shirt in class today and thought I would share.

Top 10 reason to date an engineer:

10. Projectile Motion: Do we need to say more?

9. Trained to do it right the first time.

8. Specialized in experimentation.

7. Have significant figures.

6. Know all the dynamics of relative motion.

5. Accustomed to pulling all-nighters.

4. Know the benefits of friction and viscosity.

3. The world revolves around us... we choose the coordinate system.

2. We know the right hand rule.

1. We know its not the length of the vector that counts, but how you apply the force.

- Larry

Another week

2005-10-06T22:56:00.000-04:00

Finally another week is coming to a close.
I am not sure why I am celebrating, I have to work on Saturday and I have a test next week to study for. But at least I was around long enough to see another week pass by, something to be celebrating.

I get blamed for a lot of crap. Which is fine, I have big shoulders. I also know that most of it is in jest. To that regard, when I seen this comic the other day I had to save it. I thought I would share, so next time you blame me for something just remember Garfield's closing remark:

Life otherwise, more drama at work.
Not really at liberty to discuss the details, but this is the biggest change in quite some time.
Training is progressing, I really wish I didn't have to do it though.
I did do something extremely ballsy the other day. Last Thursday I got a call while in between classes concerning a decision/policy I enforced. Well I thought it was all behind me when it came flying up again. I got pissed. It was the second policy I had enforced that had been questioned just in the last month. So, I dealt with what I could on Thursday and decided to write the Chief an email (since I was out sick Friday) expressing my discontent with the situation. I basically gave him an ultimatum and said you can support my decision or I would set down from my position as the policy enforcer and someone else could take my place removing my say in the matter. Those of you who know my Chief, the reply I got was more 'fartherly' than anything else. I suppose he decided to support me, his response was just over a paragraph long compared to my page and a half rant to him. Enough work though..
I have finished one of my three classes. It was only 6 weeks long. I should find out soon what I got in the class. As I mentioned above I have my first test in one of my other classes on Thursday next week. It worries me a little, I have a lot of material to review. I am ahead on my project (already completed it, actually had it done last weekend) so I can devote my entire weekend to studying.
I am still single. I have given up on Laura/Amy.

I know it is a short update but not much excitement yet.
I feel there will be more this next week.
I am going to close with an email list I got the other day on, of all places, a class mailing list.

* How to Please Your I.T. Department... *

- When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children's art. We don't have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.

- Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from here.

- When an I.T. person says he's coming right over, go for coffee. That way you won't be there when we need your password. It's nothing for us to remember 700 screen saver passwords.

- When you call the help desk, state what you want, not what's keeping you from getting it. We don't need to know that you can't get into your mail because your computer won't power on at all.

- When I.T. support sends you an E-Mail with high importance, delete it at once. We're just testing.

- When an I.T. person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.

- Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.

- When the photocopier doesn't work, call computer support. There's electronics in it.

- When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on an I.T. person's chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem.
We love a puzzle.

- When an I.T. person tells you that computer screens don't have cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.

- When an I.T. person tells you that he'll be there shortly, reply in a scathing tone of voice: "And just how many weeks do you mean by shortly?" That motivates us.

- When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.

- When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all
68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.

- Don't learn the proper term for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean by "My thingy blew up".

- Don't use on-line help. On-line help is for wimps.

For those of you I work with... keep these things in mind!!!

- Larry

2005-09-26T00:25:00.000-04:00

It has been an extremely long time since I sat down to write one of these updates. With school and work sitting in front of my computer is one of the last things I want to do. So what have I been up to... not a whole hell of a lot.

Let me go ahead and get the subject of work over with:

AGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Ok, now we can proceed. I ended up with the new guy. This means that for the next 6 weeks I will be training and putting my other responsibilities on hold. It also seems that the supervisor has started her backwards slide again. I was slightly upset last Wednesday when I got to work and found out that she wasn’t there and that the new guy started. The latter came as a complete surprise to me since the week before I talked with my LT and he didn’t even know at that point when he was starting. Anyways, I am still collecting a paycheck so life goes on.

Social Life\My weekend:

I spent the weekend doing very little. Heather went out of town this weekend so she wasn’t here to bother me (:-p). I had planned on going to the air show that was here in G-ville this weekend. I didn’t make it. I called Laura (the blonde) on Friday to see if she would like to go with my but unfortunately she was working. So, having no one else to go with, I went to work on Saturday. Now, I had to work anyways, but the plan was to do the air show and work on Sunday. Saturday night I came home and did my homework, took me a total of about an hour (which means that it is probably wrong). After that I decided to go get something to eat and headed to Fridays, since I was by my self and it was a Saturday night I sat at the bar. And since you can’t sit at the bar and not drink I had two Long Islands. After leaving there I headed to the movie theater to see 40 Year Old Virgin. I know I don’t have to worry about being 40 to loose my virginity but at my current pace I will be 40 before I have sex again. But that is another topic and one you should ask me about after I have had a few of those afore mentioned drinks. I would encourage you all to rent (not that good that you have to go to the theaters) it when it comes out, it was funny. Today (what is left of it) I spent running errands. I had to go grocery shopping to restock my pantry at work. I also had to take my chair I just bought back. For some reason it had a large hump in cushion. It was fine so long as you sat in the chair perfectly, but since none of us do that (me especially) it had to go. When I got home I finished my laundry and cleaned the house. I did go have dinner with my family, that was nice. That about sums up my weekend. Not much else has been going on socially for me. I really wish I could remedy this sometimes.

Dating quiz:

Several weeks ago I took this dating quiz thing online. Needless to say I failed miserably. I got a 63 out of 100. I have been meaning to post this for some time. You will find it posted below, I have italicized my answers (to the best of my memory). Perhaps there is no hope for me.

Well, I have managed to sat awake after midnight which was the goal. This means that I should survive tomorrow night when I have to work until midnight.

- Larry

Dating Quiz

2005-09-25T23:55:00.000-04:00

Your dating skills are BELOW AVERAGE!

You scored a 63 out of a possible 100 points. Your skills with the ladies need some work!

If you’re like most guys with below average skills with women, often times you are intimidated by attractive women. There are many women out there that you consider to be “out of your league”.

Often when you see a woman you are interested in you don’t know how to approach her and start a conversation with her.

Have you ever felt insecure because you're not tall, handsome, young, rich, famous, etc.? Do you feel like attractive women wouldn't be interested in you?

There have probably been several times in your life when a woman lost interest in you, and you just couldn’t figure out why. Maybe she gave you her phone number and then didn’t return your calls, or maybe you went out on a few dates with her and things seemed to be going good, when all of a sudden she became mysteriously unavailable.

These are problems that many guys have, but very few know how to actually solve.

The good news is that you CAN learn to be more successful with women and dating, and get this part of your life handled for good.

The answers...

1. Three attractive women are standing a few feet from you at a local bar. You want to start an interesting conversation with them that gets their attention. What's the best way to start it?

A. Ask them what their astrological signs are.

B. Say "Hey, you are the three most beautiful women in here,
can I buy you a drink?"

C. Tell them you need a woman's opinion, then ask them whether they
think it's cool for older men to get together with younger women,
like Michael Douglas with Catherine Zeta Jones.

D. Walk straight up to the most attractive one and say "Can I have
this dance?"

The Answer:

Even if you don't have a lot of experience approaching women, you can guess that most have heard lines A, B and D dozens of times before... and probably dozens of times that night.

The best answer is C. Asking their opinion about a current relationship trend is original, andshows them that you're in touch with what's going on.

And most importantly, it opens up the floor for all kinds of great conversion.

In fact, after approaching a group of women with this topic, I'd be surprised if any one of them let you walk away without giving you her opinion on it.

Use it.

2. You're out on a date with a woman that you feel really attracted to. You can't tell if she likes you or not. What's the best way to find out?

A. Ask her outright "Am I your type?".

B. Kiss her.

C. Put out one of your hands and see if she gives you hers.

D. Say "You really have the hots for me" in a playful voice, andsee how
she responds.

The Answer:

While Answers B and C aren't bad, D is clearly the best. Joking with a woman this way says all the right things, and instantly lets her know that she's dealing with someone who "gets it".

"Am I Your Type" is a question you should NEVER ask a woman... because as soon as you do...

You're not her type anymore!

Asking a woman a question like this tells her that you have ZERO confidence in yourself.

Think about it... would a confident, successful guy ever ask a woman if he was her type?

Absolutely not... because he would already know the answer...

It doesn't matter!

The only thing that matters with a woman is whether or not you can create that gut-level feeling of attraction inside of her.

When you know how to make a woman FEEL ATTRACTION for you, it doesn't matter if your short, fat, bald, etc... she'll pick out the things she DOES like about you... and ignore the rest.

And here's the good news... making women feel attraction is a skill that ANY guy can learn.

Read on.

3. You're talking to a cute girl that you just met in line at the bank. She's funny and playful with you. You want to get her phone number. Which is the best way to do it?

A. Ask her if she'd like to go out on a date with you sometime.

B. Glance at her bank papers to find out what her name is. Later,
look her number up in the phone book.

C. Ask her what her favorite restaurant is, then offer to take her there.

D. Say "Give me your phone number... here's a pen".

The Answer:

Getting a woman's phone number is no big deal, and there's no reason to make it so.

You don't have to offer to take her on a date... and you don't have to "bribe her" by offering to take her to her favorite restaurant.

Here's the deal...

An attractive woman can get a free dinner any time she wants. But finding a confident and powerful man is an entirely different story.

So be a man. Tell her to give you her number.

Oh, and if you ever get the urge to look up a girl's number in the phone book, do yourself a favor.

While you have the book out, turn to the "Psychiatrists" section.

There are people you can talk to about this. Really.

4. You're out with a woman for the first time, and you're having a cup of coffee with her. She looks at you square in the eye and says "So, what kind of car do you drive?". What's the best way to answer?

A. "I drive a 1976 Ford Pinto station wagon. Yellow. Why, what do
you drive?"... all in an overly-serious, sarcastic tone.

B. Tell her what you really drive.

C. Say "Can't you think of something more interesting to ask me? What
is this, an interview?"

D. Laugh and say "I don't drive... my mom gives me rides everywhere".

The Answer:

When a woman asks you a "routine" question like this, it's the PERFECT opportunity for you to separate yourself from every other guy she's met.

Many guys would take this opportunity to brag about what kind of car they have. Others might show a lack of confidence by acting apologetic about driving a car that's not "hip".

By throwing a sarcastic answer back at her (Answers 1 and 4), you show her that you have a good sense of humor, and you avoid coming off as an insecure guy who actually cares what she thinks.

But... with Answer 3, you can REALLY take it to the next level by calling her on asking you a routine and boring question.

Doing this clearly demonstrates a few things:

1. You don't "seek approval" or try to impress women

2. You aren't impressed by material possessions, and you subtly look down on her for judging people by them

3. You date a lot of women, and don't have time for a woman who is anything less than exceptional!

Most importantly, this subtly communicates that YOU are the selector, and YOU are the one who is sizing HER up and deciding if you're interested in pursuing the relationship.

This type of communication shoots straight to the pulse of a woman's attraction mechanisms, and lets her know right away that there is just "something about you"... and she'll stop at nothing to find out more.

Now that's what I'm talking about...

5. You're on the phone for the first time with a stunning model that you met through a friend at a small party. You've talked for a few minutes, and you want to ask her out on a date. What's the best way to do it?

A. Say "Hey, I'm busy today and tomorrow, but let's get together for a cup of Starbucks on Wednesday. We can meet for fifteen minutes, and if
you're psycho, I can run away".

B. Tell her that you really want to take her out, and offer to pick her up
and take her to one of the nicer restaurants in your area.

C. Ask her in a friendly, casual way if she's be interested in going on a
date with you, then, if she says yes, invite her to have dinner with you.

D. Tell her that you've been thinking of her a lot since you met her, and
ask her if she's been thinking of you. If she says "yes", ask her if you
can take her to dinner sometime soon.

The Answer:

First of all, before you take a woman on a "date", I think you should ask yourself WHY you're thinking of taking a woman on a "date".

When you ask a woman out on a "date", it says a lot of things all at once...

It says that you've already made up your mind that you like her, are interested in pursuing her romantically, and are willing to invest your time and money to demonstrate that to her.

Even worse, most guys ask women out on dates because they feel that they need to offer a woman something in exchange for her time and attention. Asking a woman on a date is usually a way of MANIPULATING a woman into going out with you. It's basically saying to her "I'm not confident that you'd enjoy spending time with me just to spend time with me, so I'm going to throw free dinner into the deal, hoping it will persuade you". This is a form of giving your power away, which, as I mentioned, is usually a fatal mistake.

I really believe that until you have learned how to keep your power for yourself with new women that you meet, it's best to stick to coffee or tea for "dates". When you say to a woman "meet me for a cup of tea and some conversation", it communicates a very different message. It says, in effect "It's just gonna be you and me and our conversation".

Now, if the tea and conversation is enjoyable, and you want to spend more time with her, ask her to go shopping with you. I think that malls, alternative "hip" areas of town with lots of shops, and outdoor markets are FANTASTIC places to go with women. There's a lot of variety, and the conversation is almost built in. There are lots of chances to laugh, have fun, and enjoy yourself... which is what women want far more than free food.

6. You're walking down the street, and you come to a street corner where a beautiful woman is standing. You really want to talk to her and see if she's single and interesting. What's the best way to do it?

A. Tell her you're lost and ask for directions.

B. Compliment her on her looks, then ask her if she is married or has
a boyfriend.

C. Say "What's a beautiful woman like you doing in a place like this?".

D. Casually say "I realize that most men probably judge you on your looks and think you're unapproachable... but I thought I'd give you the benefit of the doubt and see if you're friendly".

The Answer:

A lot of guys come to me and ask "How can I approach a woman without her thinking that I'm trying to pick her up?". Of course, I always shake my head when I hear this kind of thing.

DUH! Give me a break... like any attractive woman you talk to is going to think ANYTHING other than "He's trying to pick me up". Cummon.

What most guys never realize is that most of the other guys who have approached that attractive woman did basically the SAME THINGS... and that those things didn't work. In other words, probably 300 of the 300 guys who approached her in the last week tried some corny pick up line, asked her if she had a boyfriend in a "you're so beautiful and you'd probably never date a loser like me" tone of voice, gave her a compliment about her looks hoping that she'd ask THEM out, or some equally vomit-able lame technique.

So do something COMPLETELY different. Approach her with the attitude that YOU are the one giving her a chance to prove herself, as demonstrated in Answer D. There's no better way to immediately set you apart from the rest of the loser guys she's met that day.

7. You've been out on a first date for three hours with a woman that you feel very attracted to. You think she likes you, but you can't quite tell for sure. You want to kiss her, but you're not getting any "signals". What should you do?

A. Ask her if she would mind if you kissed her.

B. Say "Are you as attracted to me as I am to you?".

C. Reach over and stroke her hair, see how she responds...
if she seems to like it, kiss her.

D. Tell her to close her eyes, and then kiss her lips gently.

The Answer:

I used to have no idea if a woman was ready to be kissed.

I could be sitting there talking to her, thinking to myself "Wow, her lips really look nice..." but I didn't know what to do next. This would often leave me kissless, and many times kissless for good, as I didn't get another chance.

Here's what I do now:

If I've been talking to a girl, and I want to know if she's ready to be kissed, I'll reach over and touch her hair while we're talking and make a comment about it. I'll say "Your hair looks so soft" and just touch the tips of it.

If she smiles and likes this, I'll reach back over and start stroking it again, but this time I also glance down at her lips and back up to her eyes a couple of times. If she lets me keep touching her hair, I know that she's ready to be kissed.

By using "The Kiss Test" I've been kind and complimentary, but by being very SUBTLE about it, I haven't given her anything she can object to. I now have a way of knowing if she's ready to be kissed that NEVER gets me rejectedÑand I know within 5 minutes what it used to take me hours or days to figure out...

8. You've just met an attractive woman at a local coffee shop, and she gave you her number and email address. You really thought she was beautiful, interesting, and funny. How should you follow up with her?

A. Call her a few hours later on the phone and tell her how much you
liked her, and then ask her out for later that evening.

B. Wait a day or two, then call to say hi. Talk a few minutes, then
tell her you have to go. Hang up without making any future plans.

C. Call the number right there in front of her to make sure it's real.
If it is, call her a couple days later with your Caller ID blocked so she
doesn't know it's you, and when she answers ask her out for a drink

D. Wait three days, then call and ask her out on a date for the next night.

The Answer:

If you answered A, you just might be scaring off women by coming on too strong with them.

If you answered C, you need to realize that women these days just don't find "stalker-like" behavior to be cute.

B and D both seem like solid answers, but one actually ten times better than the other. Read on to find out why...

9. You had a first date with a woman. It went well. At the end you kissed her for a few minutes, and there was some chemistry in the air. She had to get to bed because she had a meeting at seven the next morning. How should you follow up?

A. Send red roses to her work, with a note that says "I had fun last
night, you are a very special lady".

B. Call her the next morning early, to make sure she's awake for her
meeting... and tell her you had a good time. While you're on the phone,
ask her out on another date.

C. Wait until the next night, then call her to say hi. Talk a few minutes,
then hang up without asking her out again.

D. Wait three days, then call her. When she answers, say hi, talk for
a few minutes, then ask her out on another date for the weekend at a
nice restaurant... to show her that you're "seriously interested".

The Answer:

Ya know, it pains me every time I hear about a guy doing something along the lines of Answers C and D. That's because usually when I hear about it, it's from one of my female friends... who's asking me for advice on how to get rid of him.

These are both great examples of how guys can screw up a good thing by coming on too strong. People are attracted to what they can't have... and this is especially true when it comes to attractive women.

By "bulldozing" her the next day with roses, or even a phone call and a date request, in her mind she's "got you"... and you're automatically classified with the rest of the "loser" guys who are lined up to drool over her.

On the other hand, if you make yourself a challenge, you'll completely stand out from the crowd... and believe me, she'll take notice.

Now, a lot of guys are very good at "faking it"... that is, "pretending" to be a challenge when in reality they are completely crazy over a woman.

Well guess what?

Attractive women have SO MUCH experience with men that 9 times out of 10 they can tell exactly when you are faking it and when you're not.

This is getting a little deep here, but bear with me...

Take Answer D for example. A lot of guys will wait it out for 3 whole days before calling, because they want to "play it cool" and not seem too interested.

Nothing wrong with that... but... then they'll do something like ask her out to a nice restaurant to show her that their "seriously interested".

What do you think that says to a woman?

It tells that you waited 3 days JUST TO WAIT!

It tells her that you really are interested, but you tried to manipulate her into thinking you weren't by waiting 3 days to call... and then you go and blow your own cover by asking her out to a nice restaurant.

I know this sounds a little complex, but not to women. They are masters at these situations, and they always know exactly what's going on.

So if you're gonna try to fake it, don't do it the same way every other guy does.

So what do you do instead? Try Answer 3. Call her a couple of days later, say your hellos... then end the conversation WITHOUT asking her out again.

Doing this will build MASSIVE curiosity in a woman. On one hand, she'll think you're interested because you called. On the other hand, she'll wonder if you really are interested, because you didn't ask her out again.

And she'll keep on wondering until she talks to you again.

This is a guaranteed way o build up powerful feelings of anticipation, excitement, and ATTRACTION in a woman. And that's a good thing.

10. You met a girl in line at the grocery store, and your conversation led to her joining you for a cup of coffee right then and there. The conversation was interesting and fun. You called her the next day to say hi, but you got her voicemail, and she didn't call you back. It's been two days since then. What should you do?

A. Blow her off. A woman who doesn't return phone calls is flakey anyway.

B. Call her again, and if she answers, don't even mention that she never
called you back. Proceed as you would normally, and proceed to ask
her to coffee again sometime.

C. Call when you think she won't be home, and leave her another
message asking her to call you.

D. Call her in the evening when she's likely to be home, and
ask her point blank why she didn't return your call.

The Answer:

I used to blow women off if they didn't call me back after I left a message, but now I usually give them one more chance.

Here's why: Women are flaky. Not deliberately... they just don't consider flaking on a date or not returning a phone call to be outside the bounds of common social courtesy.

And unfortunately, it's going to happen to every guy once in a while. (There are things you can do to decrease the chances, but that's an entirely different issue).

The important thing here is that when you do call her again, DON'T EVEN MENTION that she didn't return your first phone call. Mentioning it shows that you CARED that she didn't call you back... and women will look at that as a sign of neediness.

Not good.

Instead, try her again a few days later (not that same night, jackass). When she answers, play it cool, and proceed exactly as though nothing happened. Because to her, it wasn't a big deal that she didn't return your call. So don't make it one.

Now, knowing what to do when a woman doesn't call you back is only a small piece of the puzzle.

You obviously need to know how to get a woman to be interested enough to give you her number in the first place before she can NOT take return your call!

Blind Date

2005-08-28T11:31:00.000-04:00

As some of you know I had a blind date last night. Needless to say it was probably one of the worst I have ever been on. There was clearly no chemistry there. In the past I have always enjoyed myself and then question if she has done the same. I then struggle over the question of calling her again for a second date. Well there is no doubt about this one. I tried all night to have a good time, I even had 3 adult beverages, but it just wasn't happening. Some of you may think that I was too worked-up over the whole thing and there was no way that I would have had fun no matter how much alcohol I consumed. This is not true for some reason I stress an exuberant amount before the date but once I am on it and the evening is progressing I find a large dose of calmness and try and make the most of the evening. Unfortunately it seemed nothing I did made this evening go any better. Ok, so I know I have to give at least some details, so I might as well get on with it. I will start all the way at the beginning with how this actually came to pass. While at City Hall the other day Tracie asked me about this blind date option. She actually started asking me questions from a survey that Jessica (blind dates name) had already filled out. Tracie knows her from the Jr. Women's Club and dealing with her in the sense of her utilities. So, I agreed to allow Tracie to inquire about a date. Tracie even extended the offer of a group date if she did not feel like one on one. Well she agreed and Tracie provided me with her email address so that we could communicate further. I sent her an email with my phone number in it and later that evening she called me. I was still at work and only got a voicemail. So I waited about an hour and called her back. We talked for about 10 minutes she told me she had some training yesterday and would be done around noon. I asked her if she wanted to do dinner and she agreed I told her I would call her Saturday after her class with some specifics. Heather and sat down and tried to figure out good first date items to do in Gainesville (there aren't many). Heather came across Coconut's, a comedy club here in G-ville. Terry had just been there and said that she had fun so I figured why not. I had never been to a comedy club and from the encouragement I got it should have been a first date to remember. With the evening planned out it was just a matter of waiting. I called her at about 1-1:30 and we agreed upon 7. Heather and Ruth were at the house when I was getting ready so I had to have their approval before I left the house. I started out with one shirt... then two... then three. I had to try on the latter two and my first pick was tossed. When it was all said and done they both encouraged and tried to reassure me. I received my accolades and off to Williston I went to pick her up. I was extremely early so I stopped by the PD. I experienced some addition words of encouragement and said there nervously twitching. Time finally came and I headed to her house. I seen her walking down the road with her dog. She is an attractive women, this is a picture she told me existed on K-Country's website from the 4th of July parade in Williston. (Click for larger version)
Anyways, I parked and headed in her direction. I asked just to make sure that she was my date. We greeted each other and she took her dog inside and invited me in. She gave me a quick tour of her house and we were off. I told her were I was planning on going for dinner and said if she had another suggestions I would entertain it. She did, we went to La Fiesta a Mexican restaurant. Turned out to be good food. We both had a margarita over dinner. Conversation was not very personal. We talked briefly about family and our tentative futures but for the most part it ended all being about work. I did not bring it up... she started that conversation. She also told me over dinner that she was not interested in dating just meeting people and making friends. I swallowed and keep on with the evening, which was probably the end of the evening for me. I had to finish it out just as a formality. I told her the plan for the evening. She told me she too had never been to a comedy club and seemed excited about the idea. We left and while en-route she told me she just came out (April) of a long (3 year) relationship. And the fact that she started seeing someone about a month ago and they quickly agreed that it wasn't going to work. We arrived at the comedy club and took a position at a high top in the back of the room. We both ordered drinks and waited for the show to start. There was some additional conversation, what it was I really couldn't tell you but we also just said in silence. Time finally rolled around and one guy got up on stage, the MC he really wasn't that funny at all. The next guy a black comedian was funny and they the headliner. He was an impressionist and was pretty good. Some of his material was a little outdated (Clinton jokes). All in all though he was a decent comedian. I keep looking over and she wasn't laughing much. Well the night was coming to a close and my phone starts vibrating. I flip it open and read what is on my screen. A text message, I am trying not be rude as I am still sitting at the table with her. I read briefly and see "And if not booty cop a feel!!!" Quickly I snap the phone shut and go on with the evening. I was slightly confused since it seemed to be part of another message but I was not in a position to worry about it then. Moments later my phone buzzes again. At this point I just silence it. The show ends and I am waiting on the check when she gets up to go the restroom. I seize the opportunity and look at the message again. The second buzz ended up being the first part of the message. I read it and couldn't help but laugh. Not only because of what it said but because of the route the evening ended up taking and how slim my odds were on getting some booty or even coping a feel. I knew at this point that the evening was over and didn't offer to extend it any longer than it had already gone on. So back to the car and to Williston. By the time we passed the PD she had already fished into her purse and pulled out her house keys. I pulled into the drive and walked her to the door and she said "Well if you want to hang-out sometime give me a call." I said sure and turned to walk away. Got back in my car and headed home. So, correct me if I am wrong ladies but I would say there is no second date in my future.

So that was my evening last night. Hopefully my next blind date will be better. At least this one called me, unlike the one Stoker tried to hook me up with.

Gotta go look at Heather's car now. Lots of stuff to get done today.

- Larry

2005-08-18T10:29:00.000-04:00

Eight o’clock is just way too early for people to be at work. This really sucks. I have been dragging ass all morning and don’t expect it to get any better as the day progresses. It has been a really long time since I have sat down at a computer and felt like typing anything. I apologize for that. I am not sure how long I will last on this post but I will try. I have to make it look like I am doing something while I am waiting on this computer to be rebuilt. For once it isn't one for the PD, although I have two that I need to rebuild. Where did I leave off.. I am sure I will forget some of the details from the last two weeks but a good summary none the less.

Kellie went back to Indiana
Classes ended
Larry got drug to a social event kicking and screaming
Spent the week working
Went kayaking last weekend
Released Saffron
Had to be at work at 0800

Ok. That about does it.
I will elaborate on some of these.
I did get an A in my class. I was in desperate need of it to try and recover my GPA.
We all know Larry doesn't like people. Yet Heather feels the need to drag me to these outing. I met a new study mate of hers and her boyfriend and they are decent people. I didn't mind the evening we spent playing pool and cards. But, it seems he is leaving to go on an internship. Well his last weekend Ruth asked Heather to join them in the celebration. Some how I got involved as well. Now had just been Ruth and Andy not a big deal, but it was 4 other people as well. Including Heather's I mean Hillary's new boyfriend. Needless to say I did not enjoy myself that evening.
I did manage to squeeze a kayaking trip in this break. Headed down to the Tampa area. I have some pictures I will post and more on this trip latter.
Saffron is done training. Last night was her first and my phone never rang! I hope I have given her all the tools she needs. Good luck Saffron.
Will this day end already!!!!
I am tired and my big toe hurts. I am walking around here like our mayor does cause it hurts so bad. Well it looks like this computer is waiting on me so I will close. I promise the pictures sometime this week.

- Larry

2005-08-02T14:48:00.000-04:00

Isn't it interesting the fact that you don't realize how much you have missed someone until you see them after a long separation. Kellie is down for a visit. Not sure how long she will be around but I finally got to see her last night. While at work, on my day off, she dropped by and wanted to do dinner. I really do miss her. Big news, she is pregnant again! Mark, her husband, has enlisted in the army and is currently at boot camp. We spent a few minutes catching up over a brief dinner then parted ways. While in Florida she apprently plans on getting as much sun in as possible. She headed over to St. Augustine today and will be there until Thursday. It is ashame she could have waited another week to come down after class was all over with. I have put in for leave on Thursday and Friday so hopefully I can spend some more time with her this week. Look for more to come on this sometime this weekend. It was nothing but a flood of memories as we sat there and talked. Several inside jokes resurfaced, we caught up on the basics last night, I can't wait to catch up on the detail since thoes are usually more interesting.

Luckily Thursday is my final, which I have to take. I am 8 points from an A in the class. I am not sure how much I need to study for it. Whatever my grade on the final is will repace 3 of my lowest quiz scores. I know what two of them are... a zero and a nine (out of 30)! So I really don't have to do much to improve on that. But at the bear minimun I should get a B+ in the class. I really need the A to help pull my GPA back up. I don't really see it being an issue for me to get the A, but the instructor insist that the final will be dificult. I think I have retained enough knowledge that I don't have to stress over study time. This is good since I will have very little time to study. I expect I will be at work again for some extended period on Wednesday when the Dell tech. shows up with my parts.

More to come later this week or weekend I am sure.

- Larry

A diversion

2005-07-29T12:07:00.000-04:00

We have all heard the Bud Light commercials. And although I do not drink their beer I still love some of the commercials. Since I had nothing better to do this afternoon I decided to set out on to the internet and find some of these commercials. I didn't realize there were this many! Since I don't really have anything else to talk about I will share some of the better (at least I think so) with you guys. If there is one you guys know about, I probably have it. Let me know and I will post it as well.

This one is for Heather... All we have to do is change the Mr. to Mrs.
A mental image of Larry on the beach! :0
Some of you may recognize this fellow as someone we work with.
A personal favorite of mine.
A moment for me to shine!

Hopefully you found those enjoyable. Gave me something to do this afternoon and now I have some 60 of these files.

- Larry

A birthday

2005-07-27T23:18:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday to my blog happy birthday to you!

Yep, yesterday my blog turned one year old. It all began with this post!
Bear with me as I take a trip down memory lane.
Over the year I have wrote some interesting post including one on Men & Women, some of my dating escapades, some drunken attempt at post, and the time I almost died!

All in all I have to say it has been a fun year and I would like to say thanks to all of those people who help make it that way.

So, I spent a week in Daytona at this training class for work. I still have yet to even touch on the list of things I need to address. I will be done with my trainee, Saffron, on the 17th, unfortunately I have had zero motivation to actually train her. I suppose if I am going to release her in less than two weeks I should get off my ass.

Enough work...
Exciting news, for me at least, the space shuttle Discovery finally returned flight. It has been over 2 1/2 years since the US has put a shuttle up following the Columbia incident. I guess it is good, for this launch and I guess all subsequent, they added some 30 more cameras to watch the flight and check for debris. This is good but it could also be bad. Things that happen regularly as part of the launch process are now being noticed since there are more eyes watching. What do they expect, some things are going to fall off when you have to force that is necessary to send that thing into space. Anyways, I am glad to finally see is return to space.

A really good video of the lauch if you missed it.

I am going to close with that, it was an early start with very little sleep.

- Larry

Larry's Life Live

2005-07-11T11:31:00.000-04:00

Live from apartment J102 it is Larry's Life Live!

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to another exciting installment of your favorite mindless entertainment. I am writing to you today from what used to be the luxury of my apartment. This is not so anymore as the air conditioning unit has deemed me not worthy to be serviced by it any longer. I have tried to reason with it, offer it gifts in hope that it would continue to provide me with hours of glorious cool air however nothing has worked. After all of that I decided to use some persuasion and I proceeded to kick the crap out of it. To no avail, I have placed a call with (insert dramatic pause) maintenance! Hopefully before the day is over I will be resting comfortably with cool air blowing once again from the small orifices scattered throughout the apartment. I would venture outside the security of my abode and find something mindless to do like wander through a store for hours on end (hopefully not buying anything as I am broke), BUT I would like to be present when the repair man finally arrives. I have plans to hold him hostage until this issue is resolved!

In other news....
1) I hate obnoxious people.
2) I need a camera phone.

The story you are about to read is true, the names have been changed to protect the innocent. These incidents occurred on separate afternoons on the campus of the University of Florida.

While L.. Jim was riding from class to his car on the public transpiration system RTS bus number 2340 he noticed three people board the bus. These three people boarded the buss at Museum Road and University Avenue. Once onboard the bus the three took their seats, leaving at least one open seat between each person. It was obvious the three were familiar with one another as the carried on their conversation that had begun outside of the bus. What bothered Jim the most about these three people was the level at which they were speaking. Throughout the entire conversation the trio used a voice level that would have made you think they were outside half a football field apart. All on the bus, including the people in the back near the motor, were subject to their entire conversation which was pointless and completely uninteresting. Luckily they parted our company at the next stop so the torture did not last long.

Being a UF student Bob was accustom to seeming many staring sights. Piercing in places that aren't natural, people that look unnatural, and may other oddities. Since he was a student he was also very accustom to walking all over campus to get where he needed to go. While on a hike back to his car Bob looked up into the road that he was walking beside and sees an alligator crossing the road. Now, the area that he was in was known to have some alligators in it. Bob had seen them once before in the swampy area that he walked by to get to class. So seeing the alligator wasn't as interesting as seeing him try to cross the only four lane highway on campus. The gator appeared to be about 4-5 foot long and about 10-12 inches around. Well, the gator got out into the middle of the road and must have got scared, 'cause he just stopped. At this point Bob was only about 20 foot from where the gator was trying to get to. Traffic had slowed and were yielding the right of way to the gator. This was not sufficient for a bus driver. When the bus pulled up next to the gator he honked his horn. By now Bob had made it to the exact spot the gator was headed. As the horn cried out the gator leaped to his feet and started running straight for Bob. Luckily another car came into the travel lane blocking the path between Bob and the gator. The gator finally gave up and proceeded back to the small stream he had emerged from. As Bob crossed the road in the same direction as the gator he thought to himself I would have been great to have had a camera phone so he could have shared the pictures with the world on his blog. Perhaps someday Bob will get that camera phone, until then his readers will have to use their imagination.

**No animals were harmed in either of these stories. **

Ok, so...
I have whole 'nother post to do about movies that I will try and get to today. If not please keep checking back, there are some interesting movies coming out in the near future I would like to tell you all about.

-Larry

Rain, Rain go away...

2005-07-01T13:55:00.000-04:00

Seems like all it has been doing the last couple of days. It doesn't look like it will be slacking up anything soon. Perhaps that is what has me in the slump I am in. For several days know I have been in this blah phase and I can't seem to get out of it. Nothing major has changed in my life, no drama, tragedy, or other unusual casue that I can think of. Perhaps this part of the problem, nothing has changed.

Ok, I started this post over half an hour ago and this is as far as I have gotten. I think I will have to try this again another day.

- Larry

Briefly

2005-06-23T01:15:00.000-04:00

Well is it officially Thursday. I have taken the next couple of days off from work. Not really sure why, I don’t have anything planned. I am off from school this week and I think I was just looking for some time off. I have been working oodles of OT the last month and will have another large amount (would have, had I not taken the time) this next week. Although I do not have anything going on it is nice to have the time off and not have to worry about anything.

Started reading Chronicles of Narnia. So far an interesting book, I have completed the first story and will start The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe sometime after I wake up.

Not much else going on. Talked to an old friend last night for sometime. It had been a while since we talked and hopefully it won’t be so long before we talk again.
I am off to bed now, I will have to chat some other time when I actually have some more stuff to say.

- Larry

A change...

2005-06-19T02:37:00.000-04:00

So.. while trying to finish this computer.. I started looking for new blog templates. I cam across this one. I kinda' like it. I might change the picture, but let me know what you think.

- Larry

2005-06-19T01:26:00.000-04:00

Hello boys and well primarily girls. Several days have passed yet again. Even though it has been so long there is very little for me to discuss.

I finally finished the class at Marion County, well almost, I go back on Friday to take the test. With that out of the way I can catch back up on my computer org. class. I took a make-up quiz last week and totally bombed it. I really am not impressed with my teacher.

I have gotten myself in to a little bit of trouble with several of you. I think jokingly in trouble but trouble none the less. It goes to show the differences in thought patterns between men and women. I am not going to go into details but I also pissed off my cuz the other day too. What killed me was the fact that she couldn’t remember the conversation that I made the comment in.. just that I made the comment. I hope she knows that I was joking with her.

My trainee seems to be doing well. I was going to take a couple days off this week since I am out of school. I have not decided 100 percent on that, I could use the OT, and I did kinda make a stink while in a meeting with Chief the other day about short notice on leave.

In the romance department not much activity as usual. I did meet someone that sparked a slight interest. Not sure if there was a return spark. She is one of Marion’s new hires. We talked last week about headsets and I offered to help her in finding a vendor (one we just used). Well I finally composed the email and sent it to her yesterday. I tried to leave the email casual and bordering on the professional side. I included an invite for lunch and if she needed anything further she could call. Well.. it would be just as easy for me to let you read the message.

Hi Kim,

Here is the information we talked about on the headset supplier. I have linked their general website as well as the headset I would recommend. I don't see why they wouldn't give you the government rate since this for your job. I would tell them that you are with the SO and just ask to pay with a credit card or something.

I hope class/training is going well. Saffron and I will be back next week to take the test with you guys.

If you should need anything else or would like to do lunch sometime give me a call. (352) 5xx-xxxx

Haven’t heard back from her yet, and I won’t be heart broke if I don’t. I am not even sure if she is ‘involved’ with anyone at this point. But, hey it was worth a shot right!

Well, I am going to finish fixing this computer and go to bed.

- Larry

Untitled

2005-06-04T18:18:00.000-04:00

I wondered how much longer I was going to get away with not updating. I thought the other day, wow, I am surprised I haven’t gotten a nasty gram telling me that someone actually does read this thing and demanding an update. Well it happened!

Isn’t life great. I haven’t stopped in the last two weeks!

I take that back, I did go the beach last weekend. I am still trying to recover from that adventure. School, work, then school for work! It is great I would really like to just take a week off. I get to train our new dispatcher, well I opened my mouth some time back and told chief it would be a good idea to send them to a larger agencies class room training so that they at least had a basic understanding before they sat in the chair. After a quick call to Marion county it was arranged. I also volunteered myself to go so that I knew what they were teaching her and could correct and modify it need be. So all this last week and all of next week I will be in this class and missing they one I am paying for at UF.

Speaking of the one I am paying for at UF, my teacher is very young and I think I told you guys that already... anyways, our first project is due on Monday. Well, I decided to do some looking around on the net and happened to come across the solution for the homework. This proves that the teacher isn’t that competent as a teacher yet, he used the same problem that was given to the same class at UF in the fall of 2003. A quick Google search revealed the solution! Now I have no plans on turning this in as my own work, I do plan on using it should I get stuck. My point is the solution to this damn thing is 19 pages long! Perhaps I should have started sooner than today! Granted some of that is debugging code and comments and not part of the actual solution but still 19 freaking pages! Perhaps it will rain all day tomorrow and the cops will leave me alone long enough so that I can get most of it done.

I have sooooo much I need to be doing and get done of the next couple of days that it isn’t even funny. I would stay up later and do some of this but I am getting very little sleep anyways.. and this getting up at 0600 SUCKS!

Ok, so this is more like a mini rant than an actual update but it will have to do.

I really don’t have anything fun and exciting to tell anyone about. Life is continuing. I gotta clean the comm. center. Maybe latter this week I can give you a more appropriate update.

- Larry

Long awaited?

2005-05-12T23:08:00.000-04:00

April 28^th, that seems so long ago. I suppose that is because it was so long ago. That was the date of my last update. Many things have happened since then some significant most very insignificant and not worth the time to update you all on.

Things that have happened:

- Recovered from my slightly intoxicated state with out issue.

- Celebrated Heather’s 25^th birthday, returned to intoxicated state (time 10).

- Scrubbed kayaking trip on count of weather and conflict with worshiping schedule of the porcelain god.

- Assisted Heather in all things necessary as she decided the throw her back out.

- Unbenoucded to me (at the time) caught Heather’s cold.

- Celebrated my birthday with my family.

- Ventured to Earth Day Birthday 12 in Orlando as part of my birthday plan from Heather and had a blast.

- Cold that I caught from Heather mutated into full blow FLU!!!!!

- Spent Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and oh Today trying to recover.

- Stated class on Tuesday.

- Thought I was going to die Wednesday.

- Woke up feeling extremely better than I had been all week.

Ok, I think that about sums it up for me. With my recent illness much beyond a couple of days ago is a light blur. I do know that I drank way tooooo much when we went out for Heather’s birthday. Got to see several bands in concert at Earth Day Birthday, wow at the people! I was certain I was dying this time yesterday. School sucks but what is new. Oh.. I did get a new book. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, same author as the Da’ Vinci Code, and actually one of the same characters (it is a prequel to the Code, although no direct bearing on either story). I am almost done with that. I think I bought it on Thursday. I plan on finishing it tonight so this will conclude my post. I do apologize for my absence and will do my best to make it up to you in the not so distant future. This is the first I have been able to sit at my desk long enough to type. And I really hate to admit in... but the longest my computer has been on all week!

Till next time...

- Larry

2005-04-28T22:33:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone. I want to warn you now, I am slightly intoxicated therefore some of these sentences may not make a lot of sense. Please forgive me now; perhaps I will be able to clarify things for you if you should need it in the morning.

Ok, so what do I need to tell you, I am done with my final. I totally did not do well.

I have other stuff to tell you but I think it will have to wait until tomorrow. I don’t know why the hell I even started this.

2005-04-24T22:26:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I lied.. no long update tonight. There is no way I could have posted a significant update between all of the damn tags I have been running all night. I swear any vehicle that drives through the city he runs the tag, just to run it!

Anyways, I spent the evening looking at technical forums trying to figure a couple things out. I did come across this interesting statement/quote that I will share.

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots.
So far, the Universe is winning.

I guess that means I will have a job in the future at least!

- Larry

Promotion

2005-04-24T11:05:00.000-04:00

That is right... my promotion is finally happening. It has been approved for almost a week now. I am not sure what has kept me from updating for so long but here it is. I probably wouldn’t have updated this morning but I was awakened before the alarm went off. Anyways, not sure yet what the official start date is, but in the very near future I will be the FULL-time system administrator for the entire city. Initially the position was only supposed to be part-time. Coleman (the city manager) presented it the city council on Tuesday and they approved a full time IT position for at least this budget year. I will still have to fill in the comm. center from time to time on emergency situations but I won’t have a regular shift. I honestly didn’t expect him to create the full time position. My interpretation from our meeting was that he was going to pull me full time to get the city caught up. Once I have things running and up to par then I would go back to my part-time status. I am excited. We are discussing pay now so I am not sure where that will land but I will be getting at least some sort of raise out of the deal. I do fear that I am going to miss the comm. center. The trill and excitement of sitting there doing absolutely nothing to working your ass off. I know I am going to miss working with some of my co-workers for hours on end... staring at each other, just to have something to do. I guess that is why I don’t mind being on an as needed basis in the comm. center since as much as I bitch sometimes I really love the work. Key words here... ‘the work’ not just ‘work’.

Speaking of ‘work’ it is getting close... gotta’ put some clothes on I suppose.

Perhaps a little more latter today.

- Larry

Monday

2005-04-18T17:36:00.000-04:00

Where did I leave off...

Well, I never heard from the girl (Megan) that Stoker was suppose to be hooking me up with. Her loss I suppose. =) Kinda’ surprised me the way he was talking it up that we needed to get together. Life goes on!

I am eagerly waiting for this semester to end. I have one more class meeting on Wednesday then a final the next week. I have taken two weeks off from work which will be a blessing considering the recent stress associated with that of recent. Hopefully by the time I come back my IT position should be created and I can transition into that.

I really don’t feel like a long update right now. I know there was something else I needed to tell you all about, but can’t remember what the hell it was. If I think of it or feel like typing more you can read all about it right here!

- Larry

A chance encounter

2005-04-13T17:03:00.000-04:00

So, it would appear that cow tao happened to stumble upon my blog. Actually he/she yahooed it and low and behold there is Larry’s blog. I posted a comment on his/her blog and posed the question how they came across my post. You will find below the reply as well as a link to Yahoo. I just had to search it for my own curiosity.

Cow tao said...

Funny thing, I write songs and dabble in poetry -- I woke up this morning with a line from "Oh Brother Where At Thou" where (is it Tommy Lee Jones?) Who says at one point, "...sweet...summer...rain." I thought, what a great idea for a song lyric. I did a search on Yahoo and saw your post -- and there you have it! - T

12:42 PM

Yahoo Search Results - #3

- Larry

Thank you and The Phone Call

2005-04-13T15:15:00.000-04:00

Welcome to another issue of My Ramblings. I have several items to update you all on but before I get too far into it I would like to thank cow tao whoever you may be. For those of you have no idea what I am talking about I will explain a little bit latter on.

On to the info about the chick. I finally got her phone number from Stoker, who the whole time hadn’t gotten that yet. He got the number for me on Monday and well all day/night Monday I stressed over making the phone call. I didn’t and was advised not to call on Monday as that would look too desperate or eager. So, I waited, I called her yesterday about 1:30ish. She didn’t answer and I got voicemail. Well I left her a message something to the degree that my name is Larry and I got your number from Bryon Stoker who said you might want to go out sometime, so if you would like to give me a call back and provided my phone number. As of yet, I have not heard anything from her. I think I have come to the conclusion that she is not going to call. If she does call then all the better, but if she doesn’t then no loss on my part either. I am not sure why this sort of thing stresses me out so much. Heather and I were having a similar conversation earlier on Monday. We were talking about the various things that stress us out. She stresses over school and not as bad as it once was but little things. I on the other hand stress over very, very few items. School doesn’t bother me, work gets under my skin every now and then but other than that I can’t think of many things that do. The one thing that has been proven to instantly stress me out is this whole dating thing. I know that my blood pressure goes through the roof when I have to deal with something related to it. I have yet to find a way to deal with it effectively. A point was made on the ride home Monday night that I really don’t like admitting but know that it has a lot to do with my stress level and apprehension when it comes to dating which was my self esteem and fear of rejection. Now I know we all have a fear of rejection and this fear is in various degrees I guess or we all have better ways of controlling it. Which it is I am not sure, but my fear is strong and leads to my desire to not socialize with people. Now don’t get confused, I still don’t like people, and with the exception of the few close friends and well known associates I don’t want to socialize with them. But, the ones I do decide to socialize and specifically in the dating situation I struggle with. Now, once I get comfortable in a situation it is sometimes hard to get me to shut up, this also happens with alcohol. Getting to that point however can take considerable time and in the mean time my poor heart is working overtime and beating way more than it should. Yesterday before I called her it was unreal the stress level I was experiencing. You would have thought it better after I called her and left my message, oh no, it was probably worse. I cleaned the whole house that afternoon and spent at most about 15 minutes sitting at any one time. I suppose sometime in the, hopefully near, future I will learn how to manage this, if not my heart is liable to explode.

Ok, so got an interesting email this morning, I got an email advising me that a comment had been posted to my blog. Now, very few people have my address so unless someone came across it on accident then I pretty much know who reads it. Well I didn’t recognize this username cow tao and couldn’t figure why they were commenting on my blog. At first I wasn’t sure where the comment was, one would have figured a very recent post, like the Smart Water or something close. Nope, this was on a post from August 2004. In August I wrote about an experience I had when I got caught in a rainstorm. I was intrigued and has been on my mind all day trying to figure out who this person is since there is no info in their profile. My first assumption was one of my close poet friends (Heather or Bonnie) but quickly ruled them out because of the time stamps on the email comment and their post. The extent of the comment was: See comments at http://cowtao.blogspot.com/. I have to admit I was a little skeptical when I first seen this and was hesitant to click on the link. I did and it would be a good idea for you to click on it before too much longer. Oh, here is my original post; that they ‘modified’ for me. I have to say that I am very impressed with cow tao’s skills to take my random experience and turn it into a work of art. So, I am not sure who you are or honestly what possessed you to do read my blog but thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing what you did to my words and experience. I think what surprised me the most was that I posted that so long ago, so you either had to be familiar with my blog or skimmed/read all of my post. Whatever the case I was flattered. So, thanks cow tao.

Well, I think that is all I have to write about right now. I am going to go sit on my patio and enjoy the beautiful day.

- Larry

A revolutionary new product

2005-04-10T19:17:00.000-04:00

Smart Water

Ok, so I cam across this the other day while shopping for goodies for work. I couldn't pass it up after I started reading the label.
On one side of the bottle is a scale which tells you how much water is left in the bottle and how 'smart' you have gotten.
Since I am a optimist I am going to look at it as the bottle is x full.
3/4 full - Capable
little less - kinda arid
5/8 full - elctrolytes flowing
1/3 full - clever enough
1/2 full - getting there (nice and moist)
3/8 full - witty
1/4 full - 85% hydrated
1/8 full - genius (mensa material)

Not only is this scale just wonderful but there is a disclamer and possible side effects.
Side effects may include being calld nerd, dork, geek, dweeb, brainiac, know-it-all, smarty-pants, smart-aleck, bookworm, egghead, four-eyes, enstein or being mistaken for the IT guy.

may induce sudden and inexplicable aversion to all less intelligent forms of water. apply liberlly and frequently to dry people.

Just tought I would share. I think I am going to be taking stock in this company.

- Larry

A decision....

2005-04-09T00:03:00.000-04:00

Finally a day I didn’t have to go to work. I did have school but only one period. I have spent the day sitting here at my computer contemplating how to do my program. I cooked dinner and cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom on a Friday night rather than going out and parting and getting drunk like any responsible college student would do. Which I guess is even more of a reason to try this date with Megan (the girl Stoker has found for me). She is definitely cute, she however young too. Granted 19 may not be that bad, and I would imagine she is quite mature since she has been living on her own for sometime now and apparently already has a college degree of some sort. So with all of these factors weighing in on the positive why can’t I just accept the facts. If dating/getting to know someone was not so damn difficult this would be an easy no brainer. I just can’t get over the dreaded first date, the subsequent phone call (be it 3 days or whatever) and all of the joys that go along with that. There is always the possibility that it goes horribly and well in that case I don’t have to worry about the rest of it. But, that doesn’t relieve the stress from the first date.

So, I guess I have decided what the hell! This isn’t going to get any easier, no matter how many first dates I have, so I might as well get some experience under my belt. Now I just have to come up with some ideas for dates. I am completely open for suggestions.

I assure you there will be more on this topic in the very near future.

- Larry

A question for you all...

2005-04-06T22:55:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I had planned on doing this nice long update, then I remembered that I had to work first thing in the morning. Now 0645 may not be that big deal for most of you, but when you are used to getting up at 0800 at the earliest, it is very rough.

So, instead of the long post, which I am not sure yet what it was going to contain you will all have to settle for this smaller post. What do I need to tell you about? Life is continuing, this is a good thing! No major advances or changes in the past week. School is about over for the semester. I got my grade back on that test I was stressing in the last post. I got a 69 (haha... don’t I wish) anyways, not the best grade in the world. I was pulling my low B, well that is now down to a mid-C. I did get some good news today though, the teacher is going to drop the lowest project score, and had offered some extra credit on the last two projects. I really hate the end of the year because it never fails, all the teachers try to cram a months worth of work in the last two weeks of class. I have 3 or 4 more projects for Tech Writing still. Two of them are group projects and we have yet to meet to discuss them. I still have yet, like my cuz, to come up with a viable schedule for the fall semester. I will only be taking one class this summer and the way things are looking as of now, only one this fall.

On the work front, I went and talked to the city manager yesterday about the IT position that has been in limbo forever and a day now. Well, the ball is officially rolling, by the first of May I should be in my new position making more money $$$!! It is amazing that was all it took, I spent 30 minutes in his office and things are finally happening. I really am not looking forward to going in tomorrow. I have been there everyday since Sunday when I worked that 0700-1900 dayshift. Let me tell you that was fun, 0545, I don’t know how you do it Erika, there is no way I could be at work at 0500. Half of that was my dumb ass fault when I decided to delete our internal website, but we won’t go into all of that. The OT is great, I actually plan on taking it as comp time and use it towards my two weeks I am taking off when this semester ends.

One other topic that has some relation to work then I will leave it alone. I am going to lay this out there and will entertain any comments you guys may have on this subject matter. Stoker (one of my cops) was talking the other day about one of his wife’s co-workers. Well he was referring to her in the context for one of the other officers, in the discussion her daughter came up. Well, me being who I am chimed in and told Stoker to hook me up. I was joking, then I find out yesterday that he took me seriously and this girl wants him to give me her phone number and address. She is apparently interested in meeting and even went so far as to make a comment that she has handcuffs and would use them, oh what exactly did he say, I don’t recall exactly but it kinda’ disturbed me. I understand it was possibly a joke, but WOW. Not exactly something I would say to someone to pass along to a prospective blind date. Well, today Stoker came in and I have slinked my way out of it at least temporarily. I know I need the dating experience, but there is the logistics problem of her living in Ocala. I have very little time as is, let alone spending an hour to go on a date, plus what is there to do in Ocala? So, what do you guys think, should I call her (gulp!!) or leave it alone and continue on my search a little closer to home.

I think I am going to leave this entry on that note and head off to bed. I will try and update again later this week.

- Larry

A much needed update

2005-03-29T12:59:00.000-05:00

Where to begin? I am not sure I remember all of the stuff that has happened in the last two weeks. I stay so busy with school and wonderful work that there is little time for anything else. I have a test on Friday and my knowledge of the material is shaky to top it off I have a low B average in the class already. I shouldn’t have a problem maintaining that, but I am worried about this test. As soon as I am done with this entry it will be all about the studying. I find it hard to believe that this month is almost over. I have exactly one month left of class, then a week off and summer starts. I haven’t completely decided yet, but I think I am going to take just one class this summer. I haven’t really investigated all of my options yet, but I have reached the point that most of the classes I have left are time intensive and would be difficult to take two of these classes in the same semester.

I did get out and see a movie the other night. We (me and Heather) went and seen Ring Two. I have to say that I was extremely disappointed. The Ring had so much to offer in the way of suspense and flat out scaring the beegeebers out of you. Ring Two had some suspenseful parts but no jump out of your seat scary parts. They would build you up for a scary scene and then it was over, no scare factor. I don’t think they will be making another movie from the way that one ended but you know how Hollywood is.

I was sick on Saturday, I think I got some bad coleslaw at Beef O’Brady’s on Friday night, so I was unable to make it to work. I felt really bad about this! Ok... enough feeling bad.

Sunday, I went and had Easter lunch with the family then off to work. I spent most of my shift trying to figure out the homework that I had worked on all day Saturday and had started Friday afternoon. As of midnight last night I still hadn’t had any revelations that would have pointed me in the direction I needed to go. So I uploaded what I had and hope I can get at least a few points for trying.

What else do I have to update you all on....

I finally made the crème brulee that you all had been hearing about. I thought it was great, I only made half a batch which is very good since I had to make everyone eat it with me. Heather tried it (go Heather) but decided it wasn’t one of her favorites. So I took it to work, where it went very quickly. I know some of you didn’t get to try it (Bonnie) but I can’t help it you decided to take vacation. Perhaps I will make a quarter batch at some point in the future. I got to see the very pregnant Erica last week. Four months along and she already has a basketball. One day soon I am going to have to take a trip down to Citrus county and see Andra. I finally got to talk to her online briefly the other day. So, plan on lunch and maybe a ride-along. I would be nice to see how a real agency works.

...anything else, I honestly can’t think of anything at this point.

I will try and update again this week, no promises though since I have that test coming up. I will be playing around with my layout and colors so give me some feedback on any changes I make. I know I just changed this one, but I am not sure how much I like it. That’s all for now.

- Larry

Very Briefly

2005-03-29T00:02:00.000-05:00

Ok, so it has been over 2 weeks since my last update. I know that is a really long time for most of you to go without hearing about the mundaneness my life consist of so I will provide you with a brief update for now and hopefully a more complete one tomorrow. I was going to post the lyrics to one of the songs off of Ladder 49. I rented the movie last week some time and loved the songs on it... so off to Best Buy I went the next day. Since posting lyrics isn’t apparently something I do very often, Heather beat me to the post of the lyrics. So if you want to read the lyrics you will have to go to her blog as I refuse to post them now. I can however provide you with a small clip of the song (Shine Your Light) for those of you who haven’t heard it. There is another song I loved on there called As I Am Leaving. I was kinda’ disappointed as there was only one strictly instrumental song, A Call to Courage (sorry no clip). All in all though a good soundtrack and I am happy I now own it.

Anyways, I am sure I have lots to tell you all about, most of it just basic crap. I am really tired tonight though and bummed since I didn’t find a solution to my homework that was due at midnight.

Before I close, I hope you all had a Happy St. Patrick’s Day and a wonderful Easter. Heather I am proud of you, day 3 and still going strong. Happy Birthday Bonnie. Hope you had fun with your family this last week.

I will have more for you tomorrow. I promise.

- Larry

Back to the Grind

2005-03-11T10:16:00.000-05:00

Friday has finally come. This is the conclusion of my first week back to school and work since break. I do have to work this weekend which I am not looking forward to but I need to get paid therefore I need to work. I sat down yesterday to work on my homework, more specifically my programming homework and spent most of the day staring at a blank computer screen. I suppose I will try again today, being out of the doing homework every week think I feel I may have lost my edge I had just developed. I will probably regain it about the time the semester ends. The countdown has begun and I only have 48 more days until my last final and only 18 (I think) are actual class days. Wow, that is kinda’ surprising. I started looking at my summer and fall schedules the other day. I haven’t decided/figured out if I can take two classes over the summer or not. I have to watch my classes as I have several still to take that require massive amounts of time outside of class. I really hate making new schedules ever semester, it becomes a royal pain in the ass when you have been doing it for the last…. 6 years.

I wish I had some drama to update you all on. Recent post of friends have reveled several rants and dramatizations. I have or at least don’t consider the things I have noteworthy. I seem to live a fairly simple life and let very few items bother me. The thing that bothers me the most of recent is work. But, since most of my readers are co-workers I refuse to delve down that path as I am sure none of you want to hear about the crap that comes from there. Those of you I work with know what I am talking about and I am not specifically referring to any of my readers.

What else could I tell you about, I am trying to come up with stuff to talk about as I still have over half and hour before my next class starts. My tech writing class is very laid back and well we canceled class again today. I probably would not have came to class anyways but I am trying not to be negative about coming to school and have tried very hard not to, shall I call it, whine about coming to class.

My roommate/best friend is going through some changes, I am not going to get into detail on this as it is her story to tell. I will comment on her bangs. I love them! While talking over dinner last night we discussed several ideas for change. One that applied to me was my people skills/shyness. This is something that seems to be a big barrier in my life and I have been trying slowly to work around it and become more open. I have on several occasions held conversations with members of the opposite sex. Some of them have been forced socializations like my tech writing group, but even those situations are difficult for me. I have walked and talked with one of my other classmates back to the main part of campus while engaging in conversation. Closer to home, there are several attractive females that live in the same building as me. One of which happens to be the manager of the complex. While walking Draco the other day I finally got to met another one. Her name is Lisa (aka the Bug lady, she drives an old cherry red VW Bug), I conversed with Lisa for a few minutes mostly the formalities but she was applying Rainx to her windshield so that gave me something else to talk to her about. We said our good byes and I brought Draco in. Well Heather tells me the other night that she talked to Lisa again, this time my name was mentioned. Although the mention was short (at least from the story I was told) it was still a mention about I seemed like a nice guy. Ok, I could go off on a tangent about the whole nice guy thing and the fact that my chances now are slim to none, but I will refrain. I think I have walked that path before. Well I was presented with an opportunity to speak to her again yesterday and completely let it pass by me. It was not long after I woke up that I started working on my homework. I was still kinda’ in that blah state and I went out to get my backpack out of the car. While on my way back she came ridding up on her bicycle as to park it. She passed by me, I smiled and nodded, and she smiled back. I then proceed into the apartment and didn’t say another word. After I closed the door I commented to myself (out loud) ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’. I hope she did not hear me as the tie-down she uses is not far from our door and I was still standing the with the door knob in my hand. I am not sure why I did not speak, I know I really wasn’t up for conversation especially conversation with a stranger. I need to figure out how to pull my head out of my ass and start talking to people. If any of you are willing to help pull on my shoulders I would appreciate it. Every once in a while I will come out and take a breather and do something crazy like dance or actually talk to someone. But, those situations are so few and far between that I have almost suffocated myself by the time they occur. If I were into the club scene perhaps I would go more often, like tonight. I really don’t think the club is a great place to meet people but I guess it wouldn’t hurt to start there. Instead I think I will sit at home and do my homework that I could work on at any other point this weekend. I have a massive task ahead if I plan on fixing/overcoming this, if I ever do.

I think that is enough for now. It is getting close to class time anyways. I have more to say on different topics but really don’t feel like typing anymore here. Perhaps that is what I will do instead of homework!

- Larry

Sunday... Already!

2005-03-06T14:27:00.000-05:00

Wow! Where did the time go? I know it has been forever since I updated, while I have been on spring break I haven’t really spent a lot of time at my computer. So what have I been doing you ask. Well not a whole hell of a lot. We had planned on going kayaking last weekend however the weather decided not to cooperate with us. The week before it was a beautiful week and would have been great for kayaking but the minute we try and go it is rainy and cold. So instead of being able to do something outside we had to find something inside to do. Since you can only watch so many movies we (me and Heather) made a purchase. We bought a PlayStation 2. This was a mistake the first 3 days we had the thing the only time it was off was when we were sleeping. We bought 4 games total and we have already beaten two of them. One we beat in a sitting, didn’t go to bed until 6 am but we beat the game. Let’s see... what else. I think on Tuesday I started coming down with something. I had a fever and my throat was starting to get tight. Well the next morning it was verified my throat was killing me and I could bearly talk without pain. Off to the store I went to get some drugs. I also made another purchase for us, I bought a mixer. Ok not that big of a deal unless you like to cook and don’t have one. The whole reason behind the mixer was so I could make my New York style cheese cake. Although I was starting to feel like crap I decided to venture on and make my cheese cake. The actual process of making the cake is easy.. the baking of the cheese cake, that is complicated. I was a little nervous as it was my first one and had read that the biggest problem is splitting of the cake. Well mine came out with out any problems. The surface of the cake got a little doner than I would have liked to seen it but by no means burnt. No cracks and no imperfections otherwise, and let me tell you it is absolutely wonderful. I wish it was possible for all of you to try this cake as it is out of this world. Several of you got a chance and hopefully at some point in the future more of you will get the chance to try it. I also wanted to make crème brulee, thus far I have not tried this recipe however it will have to be sometime this week as I have all of the supplies already in the frig, perhaps after the cheese cake is gone. Thursday came and passed and the weather was crappy again. Heather had to work both Wednesday and Thursday so I had to entertain myself both days. Wednesday wasn’t a big deal as I was working on the cake and dinner. Thursday on the other hand, I was really feeling like crap and had to go out to Williston and drop some stuff off at the parents house.

The real fun came with the last two days. Friday by some miracle I was feeling much better which was good as we had planned on going to Universal for the afternoon. Off we went and ran into some nice construction on the turnpike, what fun. We finally got down there and to our benefit lines were almost non-existent. We rode everything we wanted to multiple times and waited no more than 15 minutes. I could tell that I was still recovering from my illness but was still having a good time. After we were theme parked out we headed out and were going to see a movie. White Noise was what we were looking for and since neither Heather or I had been to the movies in such a long time (with the exception of Constantine earlier in the week) we didn’t know if it was still playing. We tried at two different huge theaters in Orlando and it wasn’t playing at either so, we watched The Pacifier. That turned out to be a really good movie. Not one I would tell you that you had to go see in the theaters but you should definitely put it on your movies to rent when it comes out. Anyways, back home we headed in preparation for what turned out to be the most fun I have had in a while. Saturday night Bonnie came over to chill with us here in G-ville. Well I had to cook, just cause! Heather and Bonnie played the PS2 while I slaved in away in the kitchen. After dinner and cheese cake we headed out to play a round or two of pool. A round or two of pool turned into going to a club and (brace yourselves) Larry dancing. I know, I know, normally I would have never done this but I had some lessons a couple months back on one drunken stupor night in Chiefland. Interestingly enough there was also alcohol involved last night and had it not been for the two shots of Gold Slauger(sp) and the two or three (I have lost count) Crown and Cokes I probably would have been a little more resistant to the idea. I got out there nonetheless and had a good time. As I was the DD it was a good way for me to burn off that little bit too much alcohol I had in my system. Before I knew it, it was 2 am and they were kicking us out of the club. Back to the house we headed, I had two extremely intoxicated ladies that I had to take care of. Needless to say it is an evening I will not soon forget, I will not go into the detail of the evening as that just wouldn’t be right. Ladies I will refresh you memories on anything you would like on a one-one basis as I doubt you two remember much. The night finally ended and the morning/afternoon emerged. And that brings us to now, I am trying to get the house back in some order and wash my cloths for the coming week ahead, ah back to school and work!!! What fun, until next time.

- Larry

Monday

2005-02-21T21:30:00.000-05:00

Well it is Monday, at least for a couple more hours. It is the beginning of a week I am ready to be over already. I have a major project due on Wednesday (group none the less) and my first test in my other class. I am slightly worried about that test as a big chuck of the questions will be to develop code while in class. I wouldn’t be such a big deal but it is a 50 minute class. There will be 3-4 questions and only 50 minutes to complete them in. I need to be studying for that now but have no motivation to start that. Perhaps a little latter tonight. I am scheduled to work tomorrow but could really use the day off so I can study. I guess depending on where I get tonight I will make a decision in the morning. I am totally looking forward to this next week, no school, no work, life will be great. I got a good laugh tonight when my supervisor called to ask me to work for her this weekend. My response... NO. I worked last weekend for her and I don’t plan on stepping foot in that station for the almost 2 weeks I am going to be off.

In other news, I got a Gmail account. It’s great, for most of you this means nothing. But it is a supped up version of Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. Powered by Google so that makes it that much better. Currently they are still in testing phase. I signed up to be part of the beta test sometime back, at least 6 months or so, probably even longer. It took them forever to send me an invite, currently the only way to get a gmail account. Most of you will see a similar message in your email soon telling you what the address is.

Not much going on otherwise. Just thought I would give everyone a quick update. Since I got back in school it has been harder to keep this updated as much as I used to. I am also running out of topics to talk about other than the mundane occurrences in my life. So, if anyone has a suggestion let me know.

- Larry

Quite Places

2005-02-17T00:10:00.000-05:00

Thursday, and all is well in the world of Larry. Valentines day came and passed with out incident. I was not familiar with the tradition of buying those around you gifts. As I am currently single I let this holiday come with out any preparations. I also blame part of this on the fact that I am a guy, and that really isn’t something that guys are very intoned too. My cuz bought me this print that you see above, I tried to take a picture with my digital camera but could not get the lighting conditions correct to do the picture any justice. Unfortunately all I could find online was the small one you see here, though it small it is still better than the ones I was taking. You can’t read the caption/phrase that accompanies it so here it is: “Quite Places The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”. I have to say that she did a great job picking this print out for me I think that it fits my personality quite well plus I love being on the water in a setting as the one depicted. I have it temporarily hung with a couple of tacks, I can’t wait to get a frame and hang it on the wall. I have chose a location over my bed, which fits nicely in the room. Other than feeling horrible for not having a gift to give in return it wasn’t that bad of a day. I relished in the fact that I didn’t have to try and impress a girlfriend and contend with all of the other guys that were trying to do the same.

Other news, school still sucks. Big group project we just started working on. We have to type a 5-10 page proposal on well just about anything. Data structures, I am starting to get back into the grove of programming. I actually just finished my homework that is due Friday night. That really surprised me since I thought these programs were going to give me the hardest time. I still have to put comments in and answer a couple of questions about the code itself but other than that I am done. We have our first test coming up next Wednesday, which should prove to be very interesting. I can’t wait until next week is over with, Spring Break officially begins on Friday the 25^th. Not really any concrete plans made yet, I definitely plan on getting in the kayak at some point over that week. I am sure that a theme park will also be visited. All of these will be solidified and whenever possible photos taken of the activities to share with you good people. I do have one photo I will share before I close. I found this leaf while walking Draco and thought it was really neat. The changes that are occurring on the leaf and just the coloration caught my eye. Well my bum is soar from sitting here for the last couple of hours straight so I am going to put it in bed and sleep the better part of the morning. Enjoy.

- Larry

The Larry Show

2005-02-11T22:55:00.000-05:00

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen. We are coming to you live from the bedroom of Larry. There is very little in the way of excitement going on here. We just figured you were getting tired of commercials so we thought it was time for an update.

School sucks!
I was extremely happy this afternoon. I completed my programming a full 8 hours ahead of the due time. I actually just finished tweaking the code a little to run more efficiently. I have another group project that is due of the next couple of weeks. I really hate having to work with other people on something. Most of the time it proves to be a bigger waste of time than an advantage. I will have a test coming up soon in data structures that I am not quite sure how to study for. I suppose that is something for a future rant.

Home life – great.
I fixed dinner tonight, not what I planned on fixing, but my roommate is a Catholic she can only eat fish as a meat today and forgot to mention this prior to me making plans. So, I put previous dinner plans on hold and ran to the grocery store again. She made a very good point tonight, for as much as I love to cook I really haven’t cook a lot of common items. This was the first time for me frying fish. I have helped in the process plenty of times, but never been head chef when it came to the preparation. I had to make a phone call to the wonderful little grandma to seek ‘professional’ advice. Dinner turned out to be great, fried flounder, tater-tots (per request), baked beans (vegetarian, no pork products included), grits (for me) and mini cornbread muffins.

Love life – non-existent.
Not much else to say here.

I am off to bed.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program already in progress.

- Larry

Exciting Weekend

2005-02-08T01:37:00.000-05:00

Monday is finally coming to an end. I hope you all had a good weekend. Mine was absolutely awesome, I got to spend time with two close friends and take some time out to have fun. As you read in previous updates Riverdance was this weekend. The show in and of itself was wonderful but to top it off I was escorted by two absolutely stunning women. Bonnie met us here at the apartment where she finished getting ready then we went off to dinner at Carabba’s. Before we left I made the ladies pose for some pictures. (Me and Heather, Me and Bonnie, Heather and Bonnie) During dinner we sat at the kitchen bar (area overlooking the kitchen) which was very interesting. We got to watch as they prepared all of the specialties that they offered. Dinner was excellent as you might imagine from a place like this. It was nice to sit and relax for a while in good company I was thoroughly enjoying my evening already. As time neared we made our way to the Phillips Center to watch the show. If you have never seen one of these performances you need to go at least once in your life. This is my second time seeing Riverdance and I plan on going again if the come to our area again in the future. There are no words that can accurately describe the show so I am not even going to try; it is something you have to experience first hand. After about two hours we were on our back to the apartment. Bonnie left our company unfortunately, and Heather and I went off to play a couple rounds of pool. I am not sure who ended up winning, it never really matters we just go to have a good time. There was a young lady there that caught my eye that I never pursued. I did however, make and hold eye contact with her, something I very rarely do so perhaps I am making strides in the right direction.

Sunday morning came all too early; Heater and I were off to the Hogtown Medieval Faire. I had never been before and enjoyed it, I was not sure what to expect. There were gypsies and knights; lots of food and a plethora of vendors pedaling their wares. I fell victim to two of them and bought myself this really neat mug. I also bought this rope puzzle that some of you should expect to try and figure out in the future. Heather also fell victim, since she is a ‘princess’ she felt the over whelming urge to purchase headdress that only solidified her claim. Heather and I watched several performances that were going on, she even got to participate. I can’t post too many of these pictures as I am sure she will kill me, but she got pulled to learn how to gypsy shake. It was quite comical. We also watched actual jousting. The squire the knight pulled from the crowd kept getting in the way of my pictures but I did manage to catch a couple of good shots (another one) minus the fence. It turned out to me a wonderful afternoon, and I even got a little bit of a sunburn. When we finally left I had to get ready to go to work. I did go and have dinner with the family which was nice before having to deal with Super Bowl traffic. The night proved to be fairly uneventful, we did end up with one arrest but nothing more.

Today, not much today, I cleaned my room and tried to do some homework. Heather spent the day studding as she has her first statistics test on Wednesday. Other than that not much going on around the house. We stayed busy all weekend long, just in time to start the week all over again. Until next time.

- Larry

For the Blog's People

2005-01-30T18:27:00.000-05:00

Once long ago in a far away place lived a guy by the name of Larry. Larry led such an interesting life that one day he decided to create a blog to allow all of his friends to keep track of his day to day activities and all of the excitement that went on in his life. Time came and went and Larry updated his blog on a regular basis and all of the blog’s people were happy. It came to pass however that Larry’s life became extremely busy. He started attending school again, had to cook his own meals, and even wash his own laundry. With all of these changes in Larry’s life he had very little time to update his blog. This angered the blog’s people and they began to protest Larry, begging for an update. This is the story of that update.

Ok, so I felt a little creative to start off with. I wish I could say that I have developed a life and just haven’t had the time to sit down and type. Something like going out on the town every night flirting with all of the beautiful women in this world and never brining the same one home. I really wish that was the case unfortunately I just really haven’t had time to sit down and type anything out. When I am at my computer I am either trying to beat Dungeons and Dragons or I am trying to figure out my homework and write some stupid program for my class. School has been the biggest burden thus far. I am still having trouble with some of the concepts that this class covers. Not only do I have the programming language to re-learn up also some concepts that I really didn’t understand from another class. I did complete my assignment for this last week and was completely ecstatic. I spent several hours trying to figure the damn thing out and it finally paid off. It is getting to be a pain in the ass as these assignments are due every Friday at midnight. That is an update on the one class, now onto the poet trying to teach us technical writing. He was sick most of last week; we only had class on Friday. We have a group project due on Wednesday; our group hasn’t even met yet to start the project. I grabbed most of my members before we left class Friday. Unfortunately most of them have lives so this weekend proved to be a bad time to meet. That was only complicated by the fact I had to work. So I am not really sure when we are going to meet to work on it, perhaps Tuesday the day before it is due. I do have an individual assignment also due on that day, perhaps I will start that after I am done with this entry. I think that about sums up the school aspect of my life.

Love life... there is nothing to put in here. I am still single and apparently looking in the wrong spots.

Personal life otherwise. I am still making the adjustment into living on my own. Me and Heather split most of the stuff that has to be done around the apartment. And when it comes to cooking we rotate off, I am not sure we have a set schedule but neither of us do all of the cooking it is split almost equally. I would have to say that I am enjoying living in Gainesville; I do know that my family misses me and I try and spend some time with them whenever possible. I spent about half of a day with them last week which was kinda’ nice, I even got fed out of the visit.

Other happenings, not much really, I am looking so forward to going to Riverdance next weekend. Not only will I love to see the show, but I have two very attractive females as my dates. It’s ashamed that one is now engaged and the other one is my cousin, but the general public isn’t going to know that when they see me walking in with one on each arm. :)

Work could be better, but what are you going to do about that. I have finally released my trainee and she is flying solo. I haven’t really heard any horror stories yet so I guess that is good. I guess they have decided to have an extra patrol on Super Bowl Sunday involving two additional officers working with the sheriff’s office. So far she (the newly released trainee) is the only one working. I am curious to see if my supervisor is observant enough to pick up on this and have someone else in here with her. I really don’t want to work, but I have no interest in the super bowl and could use the money. I am not going to volunteer though; she is going to have to ask me. With each day my discontent with this place grows. The gossip is probably what kills me the most. Things spread like wildfire, people make comments they have no business making and then there is hell to pay to try and clean up the mess. Personally I have no tolerance for it and is one reason I have adopted the bubble syndrome. However, people continue to tell me the happenings with doesn’t bother me, but as soon I am directly involved things get ugly. I only talk good about my co-workers and defend then whenever I have ground to stand on. I really don’t want to get into this rant right now so I think I will leave my thoughts and close.

I think that is a sufficient recap of my life over the last week plus that I haven’t updated everyone on. I am sure by now you are all tired of reading anyways and won’t check the site for several more days, so hopefully by then I will have updated it again for you.

- Larry

The weekend...

2005-01-18T05:10:00.000-05:00

So it is Monday, well almost Tuesday. Had busy weekend with two close friends. We went to the Highland games in Orlando. We still had a blast although we were all tired as hell. Bonnie worked all night, Heather worked until almost 3 am, and since I am used to working nights I was awake until 2:30 am. The weather kinda’ sucked, it was overcast, cold and drizzally all day long. Although all of these factors tried to ruin the day for us we still found that just getting to hang out together overcame all of the conditions set against us. We did have a blast and hopefully I will post a picture or two tomorrow. We left the park and went to check into our hotel and try and decide what we were going to do. Not much gets decided when you have three undeceive people trying to make decisions. We finally agreed on dinner at Fridays and off we went. We enjoyed several adult beverages, since I was the DD I had to enjoy them responsibly. After we left dinner none of us were up to parting much at a club or something on that manner so back to the hotel room we headed, after making a stop at the local liquor store. Since Heather is a bartender in real life she made us drinks and we played some rummy 300 (the shortened version since I was falling asleep). The ladies had to wake me up when it was my turn as for some reason I was extremely tired. I think I lost my ass on that game. I really can’t remember at this point, and I am sure that I really didn’t care back then. None of us sleep exceptionally well that evening for some strange reason but we arose none the less that morning to set off on the return trip home. Bonnie took a nap while me and Heather went grocery shopping. I got to show off some of my culinary skills as Bonnie had dinner with us before she went off to work. I was indeed a wonderful weekend ant the first one I had off in three weeks. I look forward to us being able to do something similar in the not too distant future. Hopefully Riverdance will be as enjoyable, I know I am excited about it and it is almost a month away.

In other news, I had lunch with “my” babies momma today. That was nice, it had been a while since we touched base like that. I have been told that “my daughter” is growing unbelievably and is moving and squirming all over the place. I had to make mention of the of Jayme since I caught heck from Erika for not mentioning my baby on my blog. Erika did tell me some more interesting information. It would seem that she is pregnant again. I can assure you this one is not mine. It has been longer than 6 weeks since I was in Chiefland last. Granted the facts of 6 weeks ago are a blur but I am 99% sure this one isn’t mine.

I have one more night shift to go, then I finally get to the swing shift. I thought that I was going to have a long blog rant to write to you this weekend about that issue but everything has worked it’s self out so life is again good. I really don’t want to get into a lot of the details here since most of you are co-workers and in some ways it would violate the supervisor/subordinate rules. So, I am done with my trainee this Wednesday and will begin to actively push my computer position. I think I will go home early tomorrow night too.

I think that about does it for me.. it is just after 5 and I have half a dozen things I need to do some actual work.

- Larry

Friday??

2005-01-14T10:30:00.000-05:00

Ok will I catch as much flack for posting:

Happy Friday!

I know I might from one of you as this is technically your weekend to work. But think of all the fun we are going to have in Orlando tomorrow. Well it is like 10o’clock. I am sitting in the computer lab on campus with absolutely nothing to do with my time. It seems as if my crazy poet teacher wanted to have a longer weekend so he canceled class for this morning. This did me no good however since I have another class starting shortly and had to bring my cuz to class for her 0930 class. I wanted to just skip out and sleep as the rest of my day looks fairly ruined. I am not sure if I will have time to get into all of the details but we will see. Anyways, she wouldn't let me skip which really sucks since we are so fresh in the semester that I could have afforded to skip out on one class. I do suppose it is for the better though, so long as I can keep my eyes open.

Damn time has slipped away from me. I will try and update this afternoon/evening. There is a good possibility it will be more along the lines of a rant.

- Larry

An update from the BRAT

2005-01-11T01:32:00.000-05:00

Well I guess my Happy Monday comment didn’t go over very well seeming as I got called a BRAT twice. I really don’t have much of anything interesting to talk about. Life is at the moment just plugging along. Classes should be interesting I told you about my technical writing teacher. It should be a very interesting semester with this guy as while going over two chapters he flipped the pages and said “blah blah blah, does anyone really want to learn about this”. So that class besides me having to write my ass off and work in groups on projects shouldn’t be that bad. My other class Data Structures and Algorithms just sounds like fun doesn’t it. It has been so long since I had a class that focused on the stuff we will be doing in there. I have a lot of re-educating to do. We were talking about time and processing complexities today, something I never really grasped a year and a half ago when I took the class. I since then have not had to deal with these orders of magnitudes so I have not learned the material any better than I did back then. Ok enough about school.

I have a ton of things I need to get done tomorrow. I always make this long list for myself and only get to a few of the items on them. The roommate tells me tonight that she wants to put new tile down in the kitchen. Not a big deal I guess.. I have to behave she is going to read this in the morning. It won’t be a huge expense but a pain in the ass especially if we have to take up the existing linoleum. Anyways, I think I am about done. Not much else going on, still single (this is a hint to those of you who are suppose to be looking for me).

- Larry
a.k.a. BRAT

Monday

2005-01-10T06:42:00.000-05:00

Happy Monday

I will try and update tonight.

- Larry

2005-01-06T01:57:00.000-05:00

Ok, Ok, I know I have not updated in a really long time and I am sure many of you are expecting a long update. I really hate to disappoint you but this will be somewhat short. I am really not in the mood to update but I also have been catching a lot of flack about not updating.

I really haven’t had a ton of stuff going on since my last update. Classes started today/yesterday. I have a writing class, so I will be typing plenty of papers by the end of the semester. My instructor is a grad student who is majoring in fine arts. To put it simple he is a poet and he is teaching a technical writing class for engineers. To put it in his words we “... are fucked!”. My other class is a “bottleneck” class meaning that it is a prerequisite to all of the other computer class I will be taking. To top it off it is a programming class using JAVA. I have not programmed with JAVA in about 1.5 – 2 years. So step one will be to relearn JAVA.

Finally got our internet working. We got our DSL modem the other day we also went and bought a wireless router from BestBuy. I got the modem hooked up the other day directly to my desktop tring to be the tortoise and not the hare. I wanted to get and know that we had a connection before I tried the router. Well, got and made the connection no problem. Today I was going to hook the router up to the internet so that Heather could get on the net with her laptop. Got everything hooked up and no internet connection. I tried for some time and finally broke down and called tech support. I of course got India and talked to Habeeb. He had me go through all of the things I just tried and to no avail. He then proceeds to tell me that I have typed in the username and password incorrectly or I am not using the correct username. Not two minutes earlier I reconnected the modem to my computer and using the same username and password connected to the internet with out a problem while on the phone with him. I then ask him about a encryption requirement. He puts me on hold and comes back to tell me that it is my username and I need to contact my ISP. I asked him for his supervisor. After talking to Habeeb 2 and doing several different things with him he decides to elevate my call to level 2 support and those guys are suppose to call me in the next 24-48 hours. Hopefully English will not be a second language for them.

Well that is about all I have to say for now. I will update some more tomorrow perhaps.

- Larry

Some Normalicy

2004-12-23T22:14:00.000-05:00

Well it is Thursday and I have finally gotten my world in some manageable order. Still have half a dozen things to get straightened and organized the way I want them but for the most part I am moved. Heather still has quite a bit to do, although her bedroom has been in order for several days now, she still has to move all of her cloths. Christmas is in a few days, I think I am ready. If not I am as ready as I am going to be. It was a light Christmas for me; I have already informed my family of this fact. I have to work Christmas Eve, day and the day after so I will be extremely tired this weekend. I would say that I can at least look forward to partying my ass off on New Years but I also have to work that weekend. Oh well, it will be much needed overtime. I know I promised an update today but I am extremely tired for some reason. I am going to leave you all with lyrics to a song that I have a particular fondness for. I hope you enjoy.

- Larry

Green Day
"Boulevard Of Broken Dreams"

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I'm the only one and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone

Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Aaah-ah,
Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah

I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone

Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone

Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Aaah-ah
Ah-ah, Ah-ah

I walk alone
I walk a...

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone...

What day is it...

2004-12-21T23:19:00.000-05:00

I send you salutations from my bed in Williston. I came back to the Grandmother’s this evening several things I need to do here in town including wrapping all of my Christmas presents. I would have wrote this post from G-ville however my desk is currently in the living room and my computer is not hooked up. Plus it seems while I am there I always have something to be doing like moving the entertainment center for the third time (Heather j/k). Everything is finally starting to take shape. I can’t wait until Thursday when my dresser, bed and our living room set get there. That will finally complete the move. I have not taken a camera up there so I have no pictures to post. I will try and remember to take one with me tomorrow when I go back up. Hopefully I will post them Thursday night as I plan on hooking my computer up as soon as I get my room arranged. The hell with the cloths, a geek has his priorities, I could live out boxes for a week so long as I had my computer. I am going to close this entry as my neck is starting to kill me from laying on my stomach and typing on the laptop on the bed.

More to come on Thursday I promise.

- Larry

Santa Clause

2004-12-16T06:29:00.000-05:00

Poor Santa Clause...

Hope you enjoy!

Click me!!!

- Larry

2004-12-14T19:29:00.000-05:00

Maybe this is why I am still single.
I thought it worked that way too!
If only it did...

- Larry

Tuesday, 12/14

2004-12-14T18:46:00.000-05:00

Ok, I am not sure why I catch so much flack about not updating but I can handle it. Is my life just that much more interesting? I wish I could figure it out...
Anyways, I want to start with another set of congratulations for two very important people.

First of all, Heather, you did great in school and have finally graduated. I am very proud of you, and the 4.0 thing, are you trying to show me up? If so, way to go, I really hate being the “good” one all the time! Bonnie, congratulations to both you and Jeff on your engagement! I wish you the both the best of luck and a wonderful life together.

Now that all that of that is taken care of, the countdown has begun. Although Heather has been counting for the last several months, I just started. We have finally secured an apartment and will begin the move in process starting on the 17th. We are both excited, I am sitting in my room with boxes piled all around me. Tomorrow I will probably break down my computer and move my desk so updates might be even scarcer. I do still have my laptop so I will try to update as much as possible. Look for some move in pictures in the future. I don’t get the my bed and dresser until the 23rd. That poses some problems for me moving in all my crap, but I will manage I am sure. We also get our couch, loveseat and chair on the 23rd. Until then the living room will also be slightly bear. I established power and phone service for us yesterday. I will as I am sure Heather will send out an email with our number on it.

Other than that, not much else going on in life, got most of my Christmas shopping done, scratch that one off too.

- Larry

Friday

2004-12-10T02:51:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Friday boys and girls!
Sorry I haven’t updated in a while. I have been working and since I have a trainee there is very little time for me to update. Besides that I really haven’t had much going on. I am still single and it looks as if I will be for the holidays, one less present I will have to buy I suppose. Heather’s graduation is today, congrats girl; you have worked very hard the last couple of years. I have taken tonight off so that I might attend the ceremonies this evening. I have about a thousand things to do before Christmas, one majorly important one would be my Christmas shopping. I have yet to accomplish any of it. I have some ideas but am void of ideas for the most part. That is probably the thing I hate the most about Christmas is trying to figure out what the hell to get people. I did start putting up my tree this afternoon. I got it in place and the lights put on it, so all I have left to do is put on the ornaments. In addition to all the Christmas stuff going on I also have to worry about moving in hopefully a couple of days. Heather called the complex today to get a definitive answer but no one got back with her. I will try tomorrow too and maybe they will get aggravated enough to get us an answer. Next week is so going to be here before I know it.

- Larry

The conclusion

2004-12-04T16:37:00.000-05:00

Hello boys and girls. One major topic to discuss today. I do kinda’ think this one will be a long post so allow your selves some time to take in all of my babble. I had to do a lot of thinking about the chick with the kids situation and I am going to try and present my thought pattern to you. I am not sure how successful I am going to be so if you have a confused look on your face when you are done reading you can’t say I didn’t tell you. Besides when you try to understanding the rational of a mad man there is a very good chances that it is not going to make sense. Where to begin? So I returned Pam’s phone call. I didn’t get her and left her voicemail. I half expected her to call me before she went to class that evening but never heard from her. She did call me shortly after 11 which would have been after class. I am going to tell you about the phone call and then try and explain some things. So I talked to her for a while, mindless chit-chat for the most part about the academy and such, I was at work so that was topic of discussion. The conversation proceeded she asked me if I would like to attend Ocala’s Christmas parade today with her and her children. I respectfully declined her offer and advised her that I could not as I was seeing someone at the moment. Respectfully declined, how the hell is that possible (****WARNING: Digression in progress!****). How is it possible to reject someone nicely. That is one of the most horrible feelings to deal with is rejection. Perhaps the reason I have not dated much is the sheer fear of rejection. I really hate to hurt anyone’s feelings and would almost rather me get hurt as to harm someone else. I guess this goes back to my general good naturedness. Ok, back to the phone call. She was understandably shocked and hurt. She apologized and said that she felt like a complete ass or stupid something along those lines. I tried to tell her not to worry about it. She asked me how long I had been seeing her I responded with a couple of months. She asked me why George didn’t know, I told her that we don’t talk very often anymore with both of our typically busy schedules. We continued that discussion for several minutes and I told her that I would love to be able to accept the offer. I am not currently able to recall my exact words but I assured her under any other circumstances I would have said yes and loved to have gone on a date. There of coarse was an uneasiness on the phone after that. We talked for another minute or two and told me that if things didn’t work out and I wanted to give her a call in the future not to hesitate. I thanked her for the offer and we concluded the phone call.

Ok, on to the fun part. I had decided that I was going to go on a date with her. I know that is completely opposite of most of the advice I received but I decided what the hell. You only live once (right Heather) and I could really use the dating experience. So I came to the conclusion after some additional consult with trusted officers. That so long as it was one on one dating and not lets go to the park so the kids can play I would go. As soon as she said the parade with the kids I knew I had to get out of there. So I told a lie. Even though this chick has no clue who I am and I have no responsibility/commitment to her I still felt like crap afterwards. Why didn’t I tell her it was because of the kids? Why didn’t I just tell her the truth? This goes back to those little white lies that are sometimes necessary to protect people. She is a single mother, I have no experience with this personally but from my dealings with people otherwise single moms don’t get a lot of dates just simple because of the kids. I didn’t want that to be the reason she heard from me. As I mentioned I would not have a problem taking someone else’s kids in if I got involved in a serious relationship with a women who had kids. I do not want them now which plays into one of the negatives about this whole thing. But, I didn’t want her to look back on this and say that no one wants to date her because she is a single mom. I would have rather fed her a lie, which she might see right through, than to out and out say that the kids are the reason. So what was going through my mind yesterday? I was trying to deal with this without over analyzing which was one reason I decided that one date couldn’t hurt and planned on accepting. Several things. A big factor was the kids. Like I said above I would not shy away from a relationship with children already a factor at some later point in my life. That however is not what I need to try and deal with at this stage. So this factored against the date. A positive factor, I was really looking forward to having a first date and getting some more experience in the dating game. I was trying to break out of the shell a little and experience some aspects of life I have little experience in. Ok, before I say my next sentence you might want to hold on to your chair or just go ahead and sit on the floor. The idea of getting laid also appealed to me. Why wouldn’t it right, I am still a guy after all, one with some restraint of typical guy things but still a guy. I gathered more information as to my possibility of getting laid at a latter conversation with George after I turned Pam down. I will get into this a little later on. Besides these issues I had some personal ethical/moral issues that I was trying to combat and deal with on this subject. I would imagine single moms with small children are always looking for father figures that they can try and incorporate into their lives. I guess I fit her profile of someone she would trust and love to see raising her kids. I really can’t say for certain that this is the case but the idea of bringing her kids on the first date kinda’ led me to that conclusion. It is a possibility that she was using them as a buffer for the first date to eliminate some of those uneasy and awkward silences. In any case I too feel that kids need a father figure and since there are a lot of single moms out there the good ones are hard to find, this is just as hard to find for the women who do not have kids. In fact, you ladies that do not have kids should be outraged. Here is the woman who is trying to take from your selection of men (not me in particular, more of a general statement, ok wait, me in particular ;-) ). I am also troubled by the fact that I would be mommy’s boyfriend for a month or two and then not be around anymore. There has got to be physiological research that says that this screws the kids up even more than not having a father figure in their lives all together. One minute mom is seeing this guy and the next she has another bo’ in tow. Now I am sure that there are plenty of other guys out there that will jump in and fill the vacancy that I left and not even think twice about the ramifications. But, personally I think I will sleep better at night knowing that I was not a contributing factor to the way these kids are going to end up. You can argue the reverse point to this as well, what will the kids end up like if I had been in there lives even for my brief stint. After all is said and done I am happy with my decision. In my latter conversation I found out some more information that I thought was interesting. I learned of some of Pam’s promiscuity which played into two different aspects of my decision both a good and a bad. That would have made it easier to have been a tag it an leave it relationship playing into the shocker above. That would have been nice, but I was advised to “double bag it” if I decided to pursue it any further. This also plays into my past point of many boyfriends and possibly daddy figures in the kids lives. As much as it would have been nice to been in a tag it and leave it relationship I will wait for one that does not have so much attached to it. I have noticed I have reached to two page point so I will close and perhaps update more this weekend. Please don’t hesitate to tell me your opinions on this situation. Keep in mind that I am still looking for single females without children as I am NOT currently seeing someone unless she has kids and wants to bring them along on the first date.

- Larry

Ok, not what I expected

2004-12-03T06:40:00.000-05:00

I figured I would catch some heck about my last post. I suppose there are things going on that I could have told you guys about, just really didn’t feel like writing anything. I have had very little in the way of things to do the last couple of days, but I do have a story to tell you all. On Monday I decide to go and get my hair cut. I had tried to get in touch with a friend that is currently attending the police academy (George). I apparently missed him and he was already in class prior to my call. I decide to finish my running around and get everything accomplished I had set out to do while in the big town of Ocala. When I finally fished it was about quarter till ten, so I decided I would venture over to the college and catch George as he came out of class. I caught up with him and met a few of his classmates. I did not plan on staying long as he was on his way to a study group with them. While standing and talking to him, two other classmates of his came out, both attractive females. We talked for a few minutes upwards to 10 plus then one of them left. The other stayed (Pam) and talked with me and George for another 15-20 minutes. She finally departed and I was going to leave George to his study session. He commented that she must have liked me since she does not socialize with him much otherwise. I dismissed his comments and continued with our conversation and we parted ways. While at work last night George called me on my cell (since we can’t make personal calls from work now). George was telling me that I apparently had sparked an interest. She had discussed with George the fact that she found me physically attractive and provided George with her phone number to give to me. Ok, so I was shocked as hell, though he was trying to play some really late practical joke on me. After some time I finally accepted that facts that he was providing. We were supposed to discuss some other topics about Pam as he has been attending class with her for several months now before I made any decisions. Now I know this all sounds too good to be true, and believe me it is. In my short conversation with George I have learned that she has two children. Now most of you that know me know I would not have a problem taking someone else’s kids in a relationship. However, at my currently location in the game of life that is not what I am looking for. I could not see my self filling the role as it stands today. Now, had Pam not had children I would have jumped at the opportunity and pursued a date. Considering the child situation however I am extremely reluctant. I have been told to “tag it and leave it” however I currently lack the gene that would allow me to do that. I may be a male but that does not mean that in my current mental state I would be about to pull off a tag it and leave it relationship. Hell, look at the last one that should have been a tag it and leave it. I fear that I would want to “be the hero” in the situation and would put myself in a situation I do not want to deal with at this point. I know I need the dating experience and I am not going to argue that fact. I do not want to be in a position of either myself becoming attached, her becoming attached, or the kids, could you imagine that!! At this point I have came to the conclusion that I will not initiate with Pam or even attempt a first date. Should something change I am sure you guys will know about it, but at this point that is my decision.

That is one of the many topics I was told to discuss in the comment on my prior post. I figured that would be the one that sparked the most interest when you guys seen it so why not go ahead and get it out of the way. What else was in there. School, I am just thrilled about that starting back. Moving, I am excited about that. I have to call the complex tomorrow and see if they have a final apartment for us to move into and a date, the sooner the better. Heather is graduating, this is a good thing. I am very proud of her. She has worked very hard since she has been back in school. Christmas, ba’ humbug! And that is all I have to say about that. Jennny where are you Jennny?

Ok, so there went my mind set. While composing this entry my phone rings. A number that I do not recognize comes up on my caller ID. The first thing that comes to mind is that Pam is calling me and apparently George has given her my cell phone number. Since I suspected that it was her I decided not to answer the phone. Shortly there after I decided to check the voicemail and lo and behold I have a message from Pam. She tells me to give her a call back if I would like and provided me with her phone number and that she would be awake for several more hours. I trotted around the comm. Center thinking about this and what to do and weather I should call her back or not. I thought and pondered about this and as usual thought a lot about it. We got kinda’ busy for a little while, it allowed me to ponder this a little longer and decide if I wanted to call her back. I finally got a free second and decided what the hell and called her back. Luckily I got voicemail, so we are playing phone tag with each other already. I left her a message and explained that we were busy and she could give me a call back tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully she won’t wake me up!

I really am not sure why the HELL I did decide to return the call! Why must these things happen to me. This is probably the closest anyone has ever come to busting my bubble!

- Larry

Congrats

2004-12-01T17:39:00.000-05:00

I would first of all like to start out by saying congratulations to a friend. It appears that she has found her purpose and desire in life. Few people come to this realization I therefore applauded you. I would caution you to be patient as very few things happen over night. Hold on to your dream and don’t get discouraged when it takes longer than you had hoped.

On to my life, ...

That about sums it up. I will update you when I can.

- Larry

Oblade oblada, Life goes on...

2004-11-25T02:15:00.000-05:00

So I have been working on my social skills trying to stay out of the shell as much as possible. However, my hatred/fear of social events was re-enforced the other evening while attending a church function. Last night was our church’s Thanksgiving dinner. I probably would not have attended but, Grandma really wanted me to go, and if I wanted to eat then I had to go. Anyways, most of these people have known me since I was a small child as this is the church of my upbringing. There is a considerable number of new members and a big population that I don’t know at all. I would venture to say that there was at least 100 people in attendance last night. I can’t say that something bad happened, an awful experience just my absolute uneasiness as I sat there and tried to eat my dinner. I guess I still have considerable amount of work in the socialization department.

Ok, I am a very patient man, perhaps sometimes too patient but there is one thing that tests my patients. I decorated the exterior of my home today. That in and of itself does not bother me and sorta’ look forward to it each year. The thing that I can’t stand is when a section of lights is not working. I put up a considerable amount of the icicle lights this afternoon, some on the roof, and some in the edge of the hedges. Thank God that all of the ones on the roof worked with out a problem. These were the older lights, ones that had been used in years past, so I would have expected some problems. I did not test them before putting them up, which I will definitely do next year as I might have stapled through some of the wires. The new sections I placed in the edges of the shrubs I just cut the day before. There were 4 or 5 sections that were not functioning. I really don’t know how many lights are in each string but they seem to divide them into about 6 sections, each of which can and do function independently of the others. I had to go through each of these sections to find the malfunctioning bulb and replace them. Pull this one out, test it, put it back in, test the next one. It got really old after a while. I ended up replacing 7 light bulbs. An exuberant amount for brand new lights. I noticed as I was finishing up that there were several others out, but the strand was still functioning so I left them alone.

I responded to the email from Aereal. I keep it short, wished her well in her future and life in general. I did extend a listening ear should she need it. I am not sure if she will reply to the email, I did not ask any questions or have any statements that would require a reply, but unless she ask a question or wishes to have a reply I have no intentions of responding if she does reply. Well my power is flickering from the impeding storm so I will rap this up. I hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

- Larry

What to call it.. too many topics...

2004-11-23T01:19:00.000-05:00

I would like to begin with an apology. I have to apologize for not providing you my wonderful constituents with an update in such a long time. I have quite a bit to talk about but really am not motivated to write this evening. Where shall I begin. Well lets start with the reason I haven’t been on my computer much. Friday, after not sleeping all day long and spending the day finalizing plans for the apartment (oh, have to tell you about this too) I decided to go to a book store and browse around for a bit. Now, I am not sure what has prompted my sudden desire but I decided that I wanted a book to read. I am not sure how describe Larry walking around Borders. Needless to say I was approached on several occasions by employees trying to figure out who the hell let me in the damn store. Anyways, I bought a book, The Da Vinci Code. I had heard in the past from several sources that it was a good book, so I decided why the hell not. I am somewhat of a history buff and although it is supposable fiction it gives me something that I also have an interest in. So I have been nose deep in this book since Friday evening and haven’t have my computer on for no more than about 2 hours since then just to check emails. I am about done with the book, which is a very impressive feet for me. I am currently on page 393 of 454 pages, I should finish it tonight (assuming I actually finish this blog, knda’ tired) or first thing in the morning. I will go more into the book when I finally get it finished.
Friday, so I worked Thursday night, which means I got off work at 0700, I came home, tried to sleep and failed miserably, I finally decided that I wasn’t going to sleep when 0930 rolled around and I was still wide ass awake. So I got up, I had some running around I needed to do, I stopped at the PD and Heather decided that she was going to come with me and skip out on the rest of her day at work. So off we went to Ocala to look for furniture and get my hair cut (which we never got to). We found a living room set we could both agree on, that wasn’t an exuberant price. I found a cheap bedroom set that I could live with and a mattress set that wasn’t going to kill me but sill allow for comfortable sleep. Heather thought we should try and secure our lease that afternoon, so back to Williston we went so she could get her car, and then off to Gainesville. We did sign our lease and should be moving in the last two weeks of December. I am fairly excited at this point and can’t wait for it to get here. Although the closer it gets the closer Christmas gets as well as starting school back.
Saturday, I had to help my grandmother with this program she runs, it requires me to get up at the ass crack of dawn, but I figure all she does for me it is the least I can do. After that was all taken care of I went back to Ocala to actually purchase my mattress set. With all of that out of the way it wasn’t long before I had to go into work. I only had to work for 4 hours so that wasn’t bad. I finally got off work and Bonnie finally let me leave :-) I came home and got ready for bed. It seems that my sleep patterns are all screwed up, I am not going to have to wait until I come back to be tired.
Sunday, not much this day, I went to church with grandma, came home and read my book for most of the evening. I did receive a slightly panicked call from my cousin who was having problems with homework. I had to drop every thing I was doing (not a damn thing) and go to her house and help her.
Monday, oh that was today, I worked in my garden most of the day. I did spend some time at work this morning when I went into town to get some bolts. Other than that, I worked around the house.
Work, that is an interesting topic; our newest dispatch trainee. When we first hired her I told the supervisor that I had no intentions on training her. I used the excuse that she had been one of my substitute teachers in high school and would not feel comfortable training her. Sounded good and I guess the administration bought it as well as the supervisor. So, she agreed that she would train her, since she “.. trained me and I turned out to be a good dispatcher” she felt she could handle it. I questioned at the time how long or how effective she was going to be at teaching this women this difficult job. I shrugged it off and decided that the better figure out a way to survive with out me there anyways. Well, I as well as many of my co-workers have questioned the progress of this trainee as she has been there two months now, the typical time for training. There were many task she had never attempted or been exposed to. I was questioned weather she was just incapable of learning the material or if the supervisor was to blame for her inability to train (and lead for that matter, but I won’t get into all of that). So, the administration seeing that she has progressed very little since she started almost two months ago has made a decision to put her with me. Now, that slightly pissed me off, I really didn’t want to train her and now I am being forced to train her. At this point I really don’t give a shit, I get paid the same one way or the other and if I can get her through the training program with out washing her out or stressing her out too much then the sooner I can get out of the comm. center. I can see myself being a little stricter/harder on her than with people I have trained in the past since it seems that it will be necessary. It also aggravates me that she has not put forth the effort and made the supervisor train her. Why hasn’t she asked question and required her answer them instead of playing the games and imitating her behaviors. I am sure there will be post on this topic in the future. Perhaps I should go to the liquor store now and start stocking up.
Love life, lack there of it the title for this section. I appears that Aereal has too much going on in her life at this point. I talked to her through email (the modern day Dear John letter) and it appears that “I just need some time, if you don't mind?”. So, sa la ve (I really have no idea how to spell that, perhaps it needs some accents somewhere) don’t get me wrong I did enjoy the time I spent with her and I of coarse wish her the best of luck with everything going on in her life. I am just not going to sit around and wait for her or play the I want to see you this week but not next week. I plan on responding to her email, wishing her well, telling her that I will be an ear is she needs to vent and then not contact her again. If she wants to talk to me then so be it, she can call/write to me. I do not plan on sitting around and waiting for her to email or call me though. If I am still single (which I probably will be) then so be it, if not sorry about your luck. So, be fore warned I am on the prowl again so if any of you know any single white females please let me know.
I am going to close now, I have just realized that I am into my third page (I type my entries in Word first so that if anything happens to the internet all is not lost). I am sure you are all tired of reading this by now plus I am kinda’ in finishing my book. Until next time, hopefully it won’t be so long next time. It would appear that I found some motivation at some point through this entry.

- Larry

A breaking point

2004-11-17T02:39:00.000-05:00

I guess yesterday proved to be a breaking point for me. As many of you are my co-workers you will have knowledge of what transpired. It seems there was a major crisis with the schedule and all the crap that my supervisor is dealing with. Unfortunately, a supervisor I am rather friendly with was given the task of creating a schedule for the comm. center. After dealing with co-workers over the issue, it was determined that Larry was pissed off. I am not sure where this came from as the schedule that was made didn’t affect my days in any manner. So I called the supervisor up (the one that made the schedule) and started talking to her about the whole deal. I guess I had dealt with it enough at this point and well told her how I felt, with out holding anything back. She made the schedule with out consulting the person that was going to have to work most of the shifts. Ok, I don’t care who you are, what you do, if somebody puts you on the schedule to work what would have been your days off with out consultation you are going to be slightly pissed, well she was. Now, I really don’t know what transpired that day, what everybody had said, how much of the story I was hearing or anything to that degree at this point I really don’t care. I merely stated my view point that fewer feathers would have been ruffled if there would have been more evolvement from the people she was scheduling. We all know that hind sight is always twenty-twenty and she was trying to do her best. I don’t fault her with this; in fact she shouldn’t have had to deal with it in the first place. I could get into a lot of crap that I probably shouldn’t put in writing about my views on the comm. center and the way things are running. I am not going to do this, but know that I would keep you hear for some time if I started that rant. There was no yelling, or throwing of objects. I simply made my point. Yelling doesn’t usually accomplish much except to hurt more feelings. I hope that it doesn’t come to that as that would mean that I have reached the “boiling” point. If this does happen I would advise as many of you as possible to vacate the area as fast as humanly possible. Very few people have seen it, but when it does happen you don’t want to be close. I usually say things that I would not other wise say. If it does happen then I will probably be looking for a new job.

Anyways, life otherwise, I slept all day this afternoon. I awoke several times to the dog, phone, what ever, but ended up back in the bed until 5 o’clock rolled around when I sprang out of bed realizing that I got absolutely nothing accomplished this afternoon and the fact that I would still be awake come 3 AM. Sorta’ talked to Aereal today (email) I think the ball has finally started rolling on her moving. This is good.

I have got to figure out how to make to body stop... I need to sleep!!

- Larry

Finally an update

2004-11-15T03:02:00.000-05:00

Well I guess it has been a while since I updated last. I looked at the date and it was last Sunday. Sorry about that I really haven’t felt like updating and really don’t have a lot to tell you all about. I seem to have caught some cold bug this last week. I have been battling that and have felt miserable for the most part. It doesn’t help that this is my long week and I have to work an extra day this weekend. I guess it will all work out since I will be off 4 days next weekend. Anyways, not much else going on in my life at the moment. No major developments on the love life front. I thought earlier in the week that it had taken a turn for the worst. I would like to direct your attention back to that last sentence and explain what happened “I though...” that seems to get me into a lot of trouble. I wish there was some way that I could prevent or stop my self from over analyzing, reading too much into something, or just plain thinking about something too much. So far in my life I have been in several situations where if I could have stopped the logical thinking and over thinking life would have been different. This last week was just another notch in that belt. I am not going to go into all of the details at this point but it had to do with an email I got and her current ‘home life’. There are a lot of issues there that she is dealing with which she doesn’t need to have at the moment. As with most of us we all have issues, some big some small. Unfortunately I think Aereal has been dealt a double helping of nothing but big issues. Her personal issues as well as the ones she has picked up from this house are starting to wear on her. Luckily she has realized this and is trying to get out of the situation and into something that is a little more mentally stable. I am sure that I will have to battle more of these issues as the relationship progresses I just question if I want to deal with all of this, is it worth it?

- Larry

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2004-11-07T15:04:00.000-05:00

I guess it has been a while since I updated... sorry about that guys. I really haven’t felt like typing anything the last couple of days. My last two nights at work almost killed me, they drug sooo much ass that it was almost unbearable. I really don’t fell like writing anything today so this will most likely be short. I guess I have caught somebody’s nasty virus and it is starting to kick my butt. It always seems to bother me the most when it is first taking hold. I could tell I wasn’t felling all that great last night because my throat was bothering me; but by the end of the evening I had enough alcohol in my system that it really didn’t matter. I did see Aereal on Wednesday other than that and my adventures yesterday not much going on. Yesterday me and Heather set off to try and get a little closer to moving out. We wanted to look for houses and try and find some furniture, specifically a couch and chair(s). We found several houses/condos most of them available now and ready to rent. The other ones we found were slightly out of our price range. After driving around what seemed like most of Gainesville we decided to start furniture shopping. We found this huge couch at Rhodes that would have been perfect. Since this was the first place we stopped we decided to look around at several other places before we bought it. By the time we finished looking and made it back to the store they had sold it. So, we officially got nothing accomplished yesterday. We did go to Wallyworld and Target and bought some accessories. We have these really cool black and whites pictures that we bought as well as a couple of floor and table lamps. After all was said and done we headed off to have a megarita at Ashley’s. We had discussed going to see a movie but the selection that is currently playing didn’t appeal to either of us. So off to the pool hall we went. Poor Heather, I kinda kicked her butt; I don’t have any idea what the score was though. I laughed since she was the one that got me hooked on playing. I still am no expert by any measure but getting better. Anyways, I am usually the DD well Heather took care of that by getting me drunk. I know I was quite intoxicated and haven’t been that drunk in some time. There are even pictures... /evil glare Bonnie. I had to go to the PD since that is where my car was and sit for over two hours before they would finally let me drive home. Almost as quickly as the feeling came over me it was gone. That was my last couple of days, I think I am going to crawl back into bed now, I really hate being sick!!

- Larry

Awake

2004-11-03T03:58:00.000-05:00

Ok... I have decided that my current work schedule has totally screwed up my normal sleeping schedule. Most of you are sound asleep while very few of us are conscious. I have been trying to sleep... it hasn’t worked!!! I have been lying in my bed tossing and turning for he last hour and I am still wide ******* awake. Today was Election Day, I hope all of you got out and made you voices heard no matter who you voted for. I have been watching the news while they try and figure out who has won. It is almost 4 o’clock now... and they still have no definitive answer. I guess when you all are reading this the decision will have at least been made (pending a lawsuit, at least it won’t be FL this time)... I will hopefully be asleep by then. I talked to Aereal tonight; I am off tomorrow and was trying to figure out what to do tomorrow with her. I was unable to come up a single solitary good idea. It has to be something that requires little planning since well it is in a couple of hours. If anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it. I think I am going to try and lie back down and see if I can sleep.

- Larry

Monday

2004-11-01T22:58:00.000-05:00

So it’s Monday, at least for a little while longer. Not much going on in my life at the moment. No new developments or changes with me and Aereal. I talked to her briefly Friday night and again this evening. I would love to take her on a kayaking trip before it gets too cold to go out. There is just considerable planning involved in making that happen. Not only do I have to figure out where we are going, which I really haven’t been to anything local. Then I also have to figure out how to get at least her a boat and then transportation for mine. Hay Heather, want to do a double date kayak trip… that adds another degree of difficulty. Along those lines I was surfing the net this weekend for Florida kayaking and came across a couple of books that I ordered. They will give me a better idea of good spots and what to expect when I get there. I thought about the Silver River paddling up to the spring and around. The current is not supposed to be very bad on the Silver River so beginners shouldn’t have a problem. I do know that with all the extra water from the hurricanes that all of the currents have sped up a little bit. Santa Fe river is also supposed to be nice, but the current is considerably stronger… thus it would be a down stream trip only… enters another problem, transportation from take out location. Anyways, I guess if I am going to do this I better get the ball rolling. I have a problem reading her at times, but I guess she is female so it is suppose to be that way. I think she likes me but doesn’t want to. If that makes sense.

I really don’t feel like typing so I am going to call it a night, oh, I did update my profile picture, take a look.

- Larry

2004-10-28T03:38:00.000-04:00

This is the me I want every one to see! Why can't I ?

The Lunar Eclipse

2004-10-28T03:14:00.000-04:00

So tonight was the lunar eclipse. I hope you all got a chance to go out and look at it at least once tonight. I spent the evening with my cuz looking at the moon, both of our dates backed out on us. It was knida’ cool though we haven’t spent any good quality talk time together in a while. I fixed dinner (which was excellent if I have to say so myself) and she brought her trig homework and we worked on it until about 9:30. After getting most of that done we went out and looked at the moon. I tried taking some pictures which you will see posted somewhere on this blog. They aren’t bad but not the best in the world, digital cameras will only do so much. I got several as it was going into the eclipse and almost totally eclipsed. The early stages it was just too bright for the camera and the moon was just a large white blot on the screen. Anyways, you can see the changes in the pictures I have posted and it gives you a good idea if you didn’t get to see it first hand. I was most definitely an awesome sight and depending on where you were and how long you watched you should have seen several shooting stars. I couldn’t even tell you how many we seen, but we were also under them for over 2 hours.

I guess I should clarify slightly some of the thoughts I was having yesterday. I really don’t want to be the ‘typical’ guy. What I want to do is allow myself to be the me that many of you know and love. I want to allow the "manly" (to steal Heather’s terminology) side that few get to see. The guy I was while camping they one that doesn’t come out very often. I am not sure how to let him show, how to come out of the shell. To be able to shed the shyness that I seem to be inflicted with would make a world of difference I believe. I have yet to learn how to over come this. I have gotten better over the last couple of years but still struggle with it around people I am not completely comfortable with. I do not talk much but if I get in the mood (or drunk) you better watch out I will talk your ear off. Even Aereal has commented that I don’t talk much, I can carry a conversation but starting one out of the blue is very rare. I guess I will have to try and work on this some more. Force myself to socialize maybe to overcome this flaw in my personality. Until then I don’t know how to make Aereal see this, as I carry a different persona for the different environments I am in. My home person is different from work, which is different from the dating persona. We all have these differences; I just feel that mine sometimes are extreme difference. How do you show someone another side when you can’t figure out how to bring it to the surface? Something to ponder…

Till next time

- Larry

2004-10-28T02:36:00.000-04:00

Moon shot 3, Umbra phase, as the moon is almost completely eclipsed. Not high resolution pictures but the moon wouldn't come any closer.

2004-10-28T02:34:00.000-04:00

Moon shot 2

2004-10-28T02:33:00.000-04:00

Moon shot 1

Wednesday, 10/27

2004-10-27T07:24:00.000-04:00

I guess it is about time I update, got several things to talk about nothing major but updates with me and Aereal. So we went to Busch Gardens on Saturday, I personally wasn’t impressed with the park itself, but we still managed to have a good time. We went into several houses and the last one was the best but still very predictable. The scare zones had little to offer, but we did get to ride several of the coasters. All in all it turned out to be a good night. We were suppose to watch the lunar eclipse together tonight (technically) however she had to cancel on me. I guess something has come up, but there is still the possibility so that will have to wait for another entry.

I guess I really need to work on my ‘bad’ image and let it emerge more often. I am not sure how to let this happen, but I need to figure it out. I guess I appear too perfect, which is far from the truth. I am not sure how to describe this or exactly what has been said that leads me to this. I was communicating with her in email earlier, she sent out a pic that she drew and I commented that she had more patience than I did and that she did a great job. Well her reply, "You are sooo sweet! Don't let me corrupt you too much!". Ok, we all know that Larry is no angel, it doesn’t happen often but I can be an ass and well a typical guy! I am going to have to work on taking some of the polish off. Maybe put a few chips in the surface, it just isn’t natural for me. I know that I am not perfect, I know that I can be a typical guy, but how do I bring that out while on dates. I guess the first couple of dates were supposed to be polished and on my best behavior, but how do I show her that is not me all the time. I seem to lack spontaneity and forwardness at times. Case in point and she pointed this out, kissing, holding hands, basic signs of affection, I initiate very few of this items. As bad as that sounds it seems to be the truth, I am getting better, and I really can’t believe I am typing this for all of you to read. I suppose this all goes back to my lack of relationships and involvement with females outside of plutonic relationships. Perhaps that is also a problem, I have been involved in so many of these friendships that I have learned the desires of women and have perhaps subconsciously adapted to this. Granted a lot of my ideals have remained with me from childhood but maybe I have learned too many qualities of the "ideal" man. I really have no idea at this point, but I have to be come less innocent!
I really didn’t plan on writing that much, and really didn’t plan on writing what I did. I am going to close now that I am done analyzing myself and writing one of the most personal/deep blogs in a very long time if ever.

- Larry

My Geekness

2004-10-22T23:39:00.000-04:00

Ok, I am a certified geek! There is no denying it this time, not that I ever have. I had to place an order for some computer parts the other day for a computer a co-worker has asked me to work on. Well while placing the order I decided to do some shopping for myself. I bought a new video card, so I can run dual monitors with easy and I bought a new keyboard. Big deal right, sounds like fairly standard stuff. Most of it is with the exception of the keyboard. Number one it is a mini keyboard, about the size of a laptop keyboard (something I didn’t realize) but more importantly it is illuminated. That’s right my keyboard glows now. The keys are frosted/transparent and with the push of a button I can turn on the lights under the keys. Well, it just came in today and as soon as I got home I started looking through the box for this new keyboard. I had to hook it up and give it a try. So, what do you think, can you tell a difference?? That is right; I hooked it up and typed this blog entry. It is kinda nice, now I can see the keyboard without having to have light on close to my desk. I do wish it was full sized though, I guess I should have read a little closer.
Anyways, going to Busch Gardens tomorrow. I am really looking forward to Howl-o-scream; I hope to have a good time. I have to go to bed now, have an early start in the morning and a long night ahead of me tomorrow. I just had to try out my new keyboard.

- Larry

2004-10-21T03:11:00.000-04:00

A lunar eclipse on May 15, 2003, photographed by Loyd Overcash of Houston, Texas.

2004-10-21T03:03:00.000-04:00

I have finally passed the half way point of my night, this night has drug some serious ass. I haven’t had anything all night long and at best have will pull ten case numbers by sunrise. Anyways, onto life, I really have no complaints at this point. I have heard from Aereal, talked to her yesterday and very briefly today as well. I actually ventured over to Chiefland yesterday to see her. Unfortunately she got sick again after our last date. She was not completely over it when we went out and I guess the cold damn air of the beach didn’t help. I talked to her for sometime on the phone and could tell that she was bored out of her mind. I went over and we watched a movie called Equilibrium. I had never see or heard of it but it proved to be interesting. We finished the movie and chatted for a little while then I was off, she had to up early in the morning. We are going to Busch Gardens on Saturday; I am really looking forward to it. Not only do I get to spend time with a beautiful woman, but it looks like Howl-o-Scream is going to have something to offer.
On another subject, this next week we have a full moon coming up. Now this in and of itself is typically not that impressive; however, this full moon is also going to be part of a full eclipse. According to folklore Octobers full moon is also know as a Blood Moon. This was apparently derived from the hunters who tracked and killed their prey by the autumn moonlight. We know that the red tint is from the gases and pollutants in our atmosphere. This could prove to be a very interesting eclipse for this reason as well. Typically the moon will “change” colors during an eclipse this time it should be a brilliant red color. The eclipse is on Wednesday and should be clearly visible for all of us. The moon should be at its maximum coverage around 11pm Wednesday night. You will find times as well as the various phases the moon will go through on Wednesday night courtesy of the US Navy’s Lunar Eclipse Calculator. You should be able to see visible signs starting at about 9. I would strongly suggest that unless you have something supper pressing to try and get outside and see this. Wednesday will the last total lunar eclipse until March of 2007!! I know I plan on being outside to see it, hopefully with Aereal! :) I have put two links here one that has a lot of information on the eclipses in general and the other specifically on Wednesday’s event.

- Larry

General Info
Wednesday Info

Total Eclipse of the Moon
WILLISTON, FLORIDA
Eastern Daylight Time

Moonrise 18:37
Moon enters penumbra 20:05.5
Moon enters umbra 21:14.3
Moon enters totality 22:23.4
Middle of eclipse 23:04.0
Moon leaves totality 23:44.6
Moon leaves umbra 00:53.7
Moon leaves penumbra 02:02.7
Moonset 08:05

Monday

2004-10-18T23:08:00.000-04:00

Happy Monday,
It’s actual coming to an end but you get the point. After sleeping most of the day I got up and headed to Gainesville. I needed to go see my counselor and figure out what I am taking this next term. I really don’t have a lot of choices most of the classes I need to take have a pre requisite that I haven’t met yet. So, that will be one of my classes. I got all of that out of the way and I can register the first of November. I am not looking forward to starting back but I need too. I am only 26 credits away from graduation. If I could take a full load that would be one year.

I did call Aereal today, she wasn’t home however. I left her a message and hopefully will hear back from her tomorrow. I did forget to mention that she gave me a rose the other night. A glass rose, “one that will never wilt”. I think that I will make the suggestion of a theme park this weekend. I haven’t decided which one to go to Bush Gardens or Universal. My head is killing me and I am actually a little tired. So, I will close and perhaps update again tomorrow.

- Larry

The details

2004-10-16T01:29:00.000-04:00

The second date, I am sure you are all ding to hear the details. Once again I had and so did she a great time. For some reason I keep getting home later and later with each time we go out. Anyways, I got over there and she was running late, only like five minutes so not a big deal. Plus, women can be late for dates, it is the guys that cannot! So I pick her up and off we head to Crystal River. We ate at this place called Crackers, not bad the service had something to be desired. Once we left there we headed to this little park/beach. They have this boardwalk/fishing pier that you can go out on that takes you some distance into the water. We went and stood on that for a little while and looked at the stars. There were several folks fishing on the other end so at time not the most romantic environment. We finally left the pier and headed for the beach area we had to walk through this small wooded area to get there which gave her reason to hold on tightly to me as she was startled by an unusual noise as we walked thorough. We kicked off our shoes and started walking along the waters edge. Since it is the Gulf coast the sand has something to be desired and was actually muddy at times. Aereal apparently could not handle the mud any longer so we ventured up the beach and rested on a picnic table. We sat and talked for several hours there listening to the waves. It was cool last night and as always there is a breeze on there water. This provided for several cuddling for warmth situations. I was going to bring a jacket, had every intentions on it but ultimately I forgot and she didn’t have any sleeves her self so I got to hold her on numerous occasions. We finally left and headed back to her house, her roommate was not home so that wasn’t an issue. We sat around again and chatted until the wee early hours of the morning until I had to leave before I fell asleep. I did get a kiss but as far as any more details are concerned you guys are out of luck. I don’t kiss and tell. I do know that there will be a third date and I am sure more after that. I decided to go ahead and take the second and date. I said what the hell, you only live life once. I know that she has/had a wild streak, and I am void of this, but maybe she will bring about a side that I didn’t know where was. I look forward to the next date.
- Larry

A Second Date

2004-10-13T20:03:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I actually have news. I finally personally talked to Aereal; I talked to her yesterday afternoon prior to going to work. I thought I would give Erika a call so I did and well she tried to set-up a second date. I then told her that why don’t we go ahead and get you out of the equation and just have Aereal call me directly. I figured if she wanted to go out a second time bad enough she would finally give me a call. Well she did shortly after talking to Erika about it, we talked for a few minutes and got the formalities out of the way, what have you been up to and the such. After that we started talking about this second date, once we finally decided on a date she mentioned her desire to go to the beach before it got cold. Well the first thing that came to my mind was sunbathing and swimming in the ocean. Ok, I like the beach but I really don’t like doing either of the above when I am there. After expressing my concern we talked for a few more minutes about it and that wasn’t her plans. She was referring to a nice romantic walk along the beach at night. This I can handle and I absolutely love walking along the beach. So it is set, tomorrow we go to Crystal River for dinner and a walk. You may be wondering why Crystal River and not the Atlantic side since it has a tendency to be prettier. The main reason is location; Chiefland is so much closer to the Gulf and for us the Atlantic is just as close and we all seem to prefer it. Perhaps I will try and go to St. Augustine prior to the cold on a future date. Once again I am overwhelmed with excitement and nervousness. I am not as nervous as I was the first time, but this still isn’t a cake walk for me.

Oh, almost forgot, I got a card in the mail today. It was from Erika thanking me for the dinner we had the other day. Along with this was also a note from Aereal. She thanked me for the evening and is "so looking forward to going out with you again!" She went on to appoligize for not calling me and the lack of communication but wanted to set something up.

I would write some more but I have re-typed this entry three times now. I hit the power button on my battery back-up! Maybe some more tomorrow before the date.

- Larry

2004-10-11T14:54:00.000-04:00

Words we can all live by from the wonferful Ziggy!

A dilemma...

2004-10-08T23:29:00.000-04:00

Well now I am faced with a dilemma. I found out earlier this evening that Aereal is interested in a second date now. Do I accept and say the hell or do I just avoid it like the plague? I had decided that she was not going to want to pursue a second date so I closed that chapter already. When I called Erika this afternoon for something totally different, I wasn’t even going to bring Aereal up, she told me of her interest in a second date. She has apparently had a sinus infection and not been feeling well for the last week or so. So now what??? I really don’t know, I did have a good time but then again we are looking for different things in a relationship. Has she changed her mind? Should I go just to make a new friend and be an occasional date or just cut my losses now and get out while I am ahead? If I do decide to go, then I have all the decisions of where to go and what to do? How do you top an awesome first date? Now I have to try and go to sleep tonight with all this crap whirling around in my head.
- Larry

Friday, Oct. 8th

2004-10-08T15:25:00.000-04:00

Well it is officially Friday. I have just awakened from my slumber; I really slept too long again. Although it is Friday and the start of the weekend it might as well be the middle of the week since I have no life. I was going to mow the grass but just as I started outside and I could hear the rain a falling. Now it sounds like it has stopped, or course I have geared up to do inside work now. Anyways, I know I haven’t updated in a couple of days, work was actually busy and when I wasn’t busy I was trying to pick up the slack from when Ben left. Since I did work the last two days there wasn’t much going on in my life besides sleep and work. I am on a shift now that is slightly more productive than the one that just left me, but there are the personal aggravation issues with some of the guys I work with. I am not going to get into all of that since we seem to be getting along fine recently. In other news, you have all heard the phrase “Space the finally frontier…” if you haven’t if is from StarTrek. Anyways, civilians have officially conquered this frontier. The X-Prize was won the other day by StarShipOne. Some of you, well maybe most of you have no idea what I am talking about do you? The X-Prize was a challenge established world wide to see what privately funded company could send a pilot into to space return safely to earth and then re-launch the same vehicle within a week. This vehicle had to carry the pilot and have room to carry two additional people (sandbags were used to simulate the weight of two people in testing). You may ask what is the significance of this, well this could very well usher in the space tourism industry. Russia did a little bit of this to fund their space program a year back, but this would be private entities like Carnival cruise lines for space (they wouldn’t be that big, at least not yet). Now these guys did not go as high as the space shuttle they did not enter earth’s orbit but they did experience weightlessness. They built a glider basically with a rocket engine in the back of it. They used the same basic principally as the first jets used back in the 40’s. The carried SpaceShipOne underneath another plane and then launched it from some 40k feet. That is probably enough of all this, you guys are I’m sure struggling to stay awake, so I will close. Just thought I would give you the heads up on things to come.
- Larry

Monday, Oct. 4th

2004-10-04T23:49:00.000-04:00

Hay guys,
I said I would update tonight, well what is left of it. Didn't get much accomplished today but I never really do on my first day off. I did go get my hair cut, something that I have been trying to get done for the past week and a half. I had lunch with a friend and went to the man's mall, Home Depot. For some reason time slips away from me so quickly in there. I wanted to go and pay my car off, since I only have one or two payments left but I didnt make it to the bank in time before they closed. My dad asked me to go to south Florida for him tomorrow. I really don't mind but it is a long drive especially by yourself and pulling a heavy load. I guess I will go just to help them out. I need to finish my storm clean up and light my piles to burn but perhaps I will get some of that done when I get back and on Wednesday morning. A quick survey of my garden today revealed that I have some of my crops already coming up. I should see more over the next couple of days. I checked online today to see when registration for spring starts and found something very interesting. Well registration opens the last week of October, I currently have no holds (surprising) and well I don't have a registration time. UF assigns everyone a time that they can start registering. The more credits you have the sooner you can register, well I didn't get a time, only instructions to call the Registrars office. I hope this does not turn out to be a nightmare for me. Well part of the stipulation for me updating this evening was if I had anything interesting to say and since I have run out of things I am going to bed. I will leave you with a quote that I found and fell in love with recently, some of you may already be familiar with it but it provoked my thoughts when I read it. Until next time...

- Larry

"Not all who wander are lost."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Finally Friday

2004-10-04T05:53:00.000-04:00

My day is finally coming to an end and it is Friday, at least for me. I have just over one hour left in my shift and I realized that I had not posted an update to my blog. I really don’t have much to update perhaps that is why I haven’t. Still no new news on the Aereal front, I will probably call Erika sometime this afternoon. Other than that there I haven’t had anything going on. I did finally get my garden planted. Now I have to go and finish storm clean-up. I rode around the property today and realized that I had more trees down than I thought. That should occupy most of my two days off and perhaps a big chunk of my next weekend. Oh the excitement in my life. Anyways, gotta go, still have a few things to do so I can go home on time. I will try and update this evening if I have anything interesting to say.

- Larry

Blah!

2004-09-30T01:14:00.000-04:00

Blah!It has been one of those days. I don't have many days that I am in a depressed state; typically I am upbeat and very optimistic. Today has been one of those exceptions. When I get like this there is very little that will bring me out of it. I still haven't figured out what brought it on, perhaps tomorrow will be better. I went and met Erika in town for dinner. Dinner sucked but the conversation was good as usual. We did talk about me and Aereal and where that is going or isn't going. Theories have been confirmed and speculations squashed. The one theory I posted about her being scared is partially correct. She did have a good time and thoroughly enjoyed the evening, but is hesitant to have a second date for fear of having too good of a time. She is also still trying to figure out what she wants out of life. I have been told that she is still in the rebound phase, perhaps this is also true. She did come out of a relationship that was serious and is at this point trying to meet new people and new personalities. I have no problem with this and would encourage her to do that, but I don't think I want to be one of her test subjects while she tries to figure out what kind of guy she wants to date. Now, I am not looking to tie someone down at this point, I don't want marriage or kids at this point in my life. Is it something I want in the future, yes, but right now I do not have the time to commit to something as major as the above mentioned topics. She is interested in dating me, but she is also interested in dating other people at the same time. I don't have a problem with it; people do this all the time. I just don't want to be one of those people. If I am going to date you, you will be the only one I date. If she wants to see other people then more power to her, she needs to experience life since she lost a big chunk of hers early on. So, if she thinks that she will become attached to me and that is not what she wants then she doesn't need to call me back. According to her sister she has been out with three different kinds of guys, type 1) the party type. The guy that most chicks fall for anyways, but with no worries loves the night life, lives just to have a good time the hell with responsibility. Type 2) the guy that is ready to settle down, have kids and get the family life started now. This of course would scare her away with out any second thought as it would most women. Type 3) this is the category I fall into. The kind of guy that is a mix of both type 1 and 2. I have the ability to have fun yet retain enough responsibility that life continues. She told Erika that she wants to date me but doesn't want to like me. Doesn't sound like it makes a lot of sense but if you go back to that theory that she doesn't want to get involved with someone on an emotionally committed relationship then it does. Once again one of the many complex and complicated facets of women. Armed with this information I have decided that I really don't care if she calls me again or not. That sounds kinda' mean because I did have a great time but it is something I have resolved. I had made this decision on my last post, but it is now concrete. If she decides that she wants to see me and see me solely then perhaps I will give it a second try, but as it stands I am not sure I would even go on a second date. Perhaps my feelings have been hurt, but I really don't think so. It has been confirmed that she had a good time and would love to do it again, so as far as I am concerned mission accomplished. There are very few guys like me out there (at least that is what I am told), so long as I know that I held up my end of the bargain and she enjoyed the evening then I am satisfied. It is now up to her to decide if she wants to continue dating me. Poor Erika, I think that she wanted to stay out of the middle of this but she can't. We talked extensively about this and I told her my feelings and opinions. She said that she would take the relationship information and the fact that I am interested but want to me involved in a monogamous relationship. I guess I will find out more in the next couple of days. Don't worry you guys will be able to read all about it right here. Till then...
- Larry

My kind of site

2004-09-29T04:18:00.000-04:00

Quick post, I found this site/blog while I was playing with my test blog. I will so be checking out some of these recipes. I love the way the instructions are presented.

- Larry

Cooking for Engineers

2004-09-29T02:53:00.000-04:00

Well it is finally over. Hurricane Jeanne has come and gone. I had to work of course, but I really enjoyed myself, after the chief left. It was Ben’s last night and I think we all got along the best any of us ever have. It was fairly uneventful at work, we didn’t even loose power long enough for the emergency generator to kick on. Unfortunately I was no so lucky at home. I am still without power and have no phone service. I am actually writing this at home, generators are so wonderful, but I will have to post it at work. I still have not heard from Aereal, I am not sure what happened there. One theory that was given to me was that she had too good of a time and perhaps that scared her. She wasn’t expecting to have such a good time and since she is just now coming out of her divorce having a great time on a date scared her. This is an interesting theory and I suppose it is plausible. Even if that is the case I would have thought I would have heard from her by now, it has been over a week. At this point I have given up hope that she is going to call me back. Perhaps I shouldn’t but now I don’t have to worry about it and if she does decide to call me then it will be a surprise. I am having dinner with Erika tomorrow night maybe I will be able to find out a little more. I thought the date went extremely well, I don’t know what happened. Of course the is a women involved, and to date I have been unable to figure them out. That isn’t going to stop me from trying, but it seems when I start making headway something throws me off track completely. Anyways, not much else is going on in my life at the moment. I have one more night of work, then a much needed two days off. Not sure what I am going to do, perhaps I will finally get my garden planted. Only time will tell…

- Larry

Thursday, September 23rd

2004-09-23T19:45:00.000-04:00

Its Thursday, not much going on today, I don’t have to go to work until 11 so I have some time to kill. I really don’t feel like doing anything but sitting here is driving me crazy, does that make any sense? Anyways, I talked to Aereal very briefly yesterday. I was talking to Erika and she stopped by to see her for a minute. She was working so it was very short. I was kinda’ interesting yesterday, I would be thinking about the evening and would notice a smile come to my face. I guess I truly had a good time, that smile was a nice feeling too. I really am not sure at what rate this is going to progress, so I don’t want to get too excited. I know that I don’t have a lot of time and that she is not looking for a serious relationship at this time. With all of that in mind I don’t really expect us to be going out on a very frequent basis, at least for now. I am looking for a monogamous relationship but I haven’t figured out if she is. She is just coming out of a mentally abusive marriage in the fact that she was not allowed to socialize outside of her ex-husbands reach. After coming out of that she is currently interested in just meeting people. This makes me slightly hesitant to pursue this, even though I am not interested in a serious long term relationship I do want one that is monogamous. I can tell that I am really starting to over analyze this. I think I need to stop and just let things happen. With that in mind I will close.

- Larry

The date

2004-09-21T22:49:00.000-04:00

So, my date, I know that is what you are all waiting to hear/read. I would have updated sooner but I have been busy this afternoon. Anyways, I picked her up at Erika’s house at 5:30; I got there a little early so maybe 5:15. After chit chatting a while and adoring the baby we finally got going. We discussed dinning locals while at Erika’s so I had an idea of where that was headed. She loves Italian so Caraba’s (sp) seemed like the most logical choice, so off we went. I expected the car ride to be awkward and long, but surprisingly it went by very quick and we engaged in conversation the whole way up. Come to think of it there weren’t an moments that I felt majorly uncomfortable in. When we got to the restaurant we were immediately seated, after ordering I made a comment about sitting at the bar that they have around the kitchen area. She asked me if I wanted to sit up there and I agreed. I think that helped a little break-up the formality of it all, we weren’t sitting at table staring at each other. It gave us something to talk about if we ever ran out of topics. She made a recommendation to me about an entrée off the menu that I of course tried. She is apparently a big wine coinsurer, so we tried two glasses of wine with our dinner. We split a desert which was just wonderful and she fed me the strawberry off the top :) I think I commented about here that dinner was wonderful, she agreed, she said both the food and the company was great. After dinner we made our way to the movie theater. We were hoping to see The Village, but we missed the current showing of it and the next one didn’t start until after 10 (it was currently 8). So, she seen Resident Evil and asked me if I had seen it, I hadn’t so away we went. After the movie neither one of us wanted to end the evening so we went and played several rounds of pool. I couldn’t tell you who won, I didn’t care, I was having a great time. After we had played several rounds we sat down and started talking again. She made a comment about a place that she likes to go and just relax, look at the stars and such. Sounded like a good idea to me since I love the night sky, so once again to the car we went. This area was back in Chiefland so it put her close to home but it was a long ride to get there. In keeping with the evening thus far we continued our conversations. I really couldn’t tell you what all we talked about, her life, marriage and recent happenings, political and religious views, school, you name it. I found it surprisingly easy to talk with Aereal, such an attractive female. We sat on the back of my car and stared at the sky for hours, thus the reason I didn’t get home until 5 AM. Neither one of us really wanted the night to end, but I had to get up early in the morning and well, she got a call from nature. So, I took her home, got a goodnight kiss, ok more like a peck but at least it was better than nothing. I am almost certain that there will be another date, I kind of’ left that up to her (I don’t have her number). She had a strange stalker situation with a guy she was dating not long ago, so I don’t want to come off like that so I just left it up to her. I know that is so backwards but maybe it will work out in my favor. Aereal made several comments throughout the evening implying that I left a very good impression on her. During our stargaze she said that she had a great evening, at this point I must have been very comfortable with her. My reply was that I was glad to hear that I told her my fear that she would not have. She assured me that she had and said that it was one of the best nights she has had in an extremely long time. Some comments otherwise, she is a smoker and perhaps a little wilder that what I would see myself with, but maybe that is a good thing. She has had a rough past but is trying to recover from it and start a new. I truly had a great time and am still fining it hard to believe that I spent 10 full hours on a date. I look forward to hearing from her, I might have just jinxed myself but I can hope.

I hope this was all the dirt on my “love” life you all have been waiting for.

Till next time,

- Larry

2004-09-21T04:52:00.000-04:00

It is almost 5 AM, I just got in from my date. I had a great time and so did she (breaths sigh of relief). I am going to bed now; I have to get up in just over 2 hours. I'll update you tomorrow.

2004-09-20T15:20:00.000-04:00

t - 2 hours 10 minutes
This really doesn't get any easier the closer I get to it.

- Larry

Countdown

2004-09-20T03:20:00.000-04:00

The countdown has begun, just over 12 hours from now I will be on a date. I have spent the last two days running this through my head. What to do, what to say, where to go and I still have no solid answers. My poor stress ball, it has been beaten and tossed against the wall so many times that I am surprised that it hasn’t busted yet. I really have a headache at this point. I doubt I will write much more, plus I have plenty more bouncing to do. I really don’t know how tomorrow will go, I guess I will just have to wait and see. I’ll let you know, until then.

- Larry

t-14 hours 10 minutes and counting

I got the call!

2004-09-18T04:26:00.000-04:00

I finally heard back from Erika. I expected her to call yesterday but never heard form her. So, when I came into work today I decided to call her. Well, she finally called me back. It’s official I have a date! I was thinking something next weekend, then Erika sprung Monday on me. I fell out of the chair, after I finally sat back down I said that would be fine. So, on Monday at 5:30 I will be in Chiefland picking up Aereal. I really don’t want to do the standard first date dinner and a movie, but I really don’t have an other ideas at this point. She apparently has an outdoor streak, since I guess she expressed an interest in my kayaking love. This prompted Erika for the idea of a picnic, but I work Sunday and picnic would not work since it would be geared around lunch. Perhaps I will save that for a future date; if there is one. I figure the movie and dinner is probably my safest bet at this time, now if I could figure out what to see and where to eat. I will play the movie by ear, dinner I might have to play that one by ear ‘till I figure out what she likes to eat. I am sure I will over analyze this as the days pass, since that is what I do and I have two more long days at work to think about it. This should be fun… what the hell did I get myself into!

- Larry

A long talk

2004-09-16T02:13:00.000-04:00

I am finally home, it is well after 1 a.m., some may ask where I have been. I went over to Chiefland, where Erika and Aereal reside, and had dinner with Erika. Me and Erika needed to catch up with work and life in general and I wanted to talk to her about her sister. And I know that is what you all want to know about. Some of you were expecting an update when I came in, but I didn’t figure you wanted me to wake you up. Anyways, we all know how shy Larry is right? You should all be shaking your heads vigorously! Well that doesn’t help the whole getting a relationship started aspect of things. I will use the term ‘relationship’ loosely since I can’t put labels on things. So, when I say relationship it could be something as simple as a single date or a whole series of dates. I don’t know where this thing is going, if it will go anywhere at all but I wanted to make that point clear. Back to the story, we discussed several other topics before getting into the sister issue like life in general and the last couple of days since we seen each other. But when it came up she asked me if I could date her sister. My response was of coarse yes. The conversation continued and we talked about Monday night when she came up there and things that were said while she was there and after the fact (on both sides). I must radiate shy, she apparently picked up on that right off the bat. This was something she pointed out to Erika on their ride home. Erika assures me that I should have no problems carrying on a conversation with her and I should be able to let loose the shell a little bit. She asked me how I wanted to do this, weather I just wanted her phone number and I could call her, or if I wanted her to test the waters a little bit more and possibly play match maker. So, which one do you think I chose? You guessed it, she gave me an out, and I took it. I should know something probably tomorrow; she was really excited about the idea and said that she might call her after I left (12:30 at night). I did have several questions for Erika, since we did work so close together and became friends out side of work I got to know some of her family matters. My memory had Aereal married, which was correct, she apparently got divorced recently and is not looking for another ‘serious relationship’ at this point. This is good, since I seem to stay very busy, even when I don’t have class. I found out a little bit more, Aereal is the youngest of the sisters (which I knew, 20 just in case you were wondering) and is a writer. I also found out some details only a big sister would know that I am sure Aereal would kill Erika for telling me, these will not be disclosed of course (sorry guys). I guess I will find out more in the next couple of days, and I am sure you guys will be hot on the list to find out after I do, so don’t worry. Even if it doesn’t it was nice to catch up with Erika (and hold my baby), we spend 6 solid hours talking tonight. Thinking back on that that was a long time.

I am off to bed, I hope you enjoyed the read.

- Larry

The ass and the prospect

2004-09-14T04:03:00.000-04:00

Once again you are all sound asleep. This is getting kinda’ old. I at least have a good reason this time, I am stuck at work. I actually have something to talk about too… you can start breathing again. I need to vent for a few minutes and I have a prospect (once again, please continue to breath).
On to the rant, I got news today that a fellow co-worker put in his notice. It seems that he has had enough of working here. Honestly I think we will be better off with out him here, he seemed to be the cause of a lot of stress in our small world. But, this so screws my plans for October. Once again Larry is getting screwed. With Ben (might as well use his name, most of you know who he is) leaving that puts us one person short. So, now I have to wait until someone is hired, which will be October 1st if we are very lucky. Then tack on two more months of training, which I really don’t want to do. I am tired of putting a lot of effort into what I do just to turn around and get burned. I have trained more than I care to remember and none have stayed her for any extended period of time. Anyways, I am just upset that I get screwed once again, maybe if the Best Buy thing works out I might go full time. I suppose only time will tell, don’t worry I am sure you will get to read about it here!
On to more interesting news, a former co-worker (one I also trained) came by this evening to see me. She brought her new baby by so I could see her. The standing joke is that it is mine, but we won’t get into all of that. But, along with beautiful little Jayme also came Erika’s little sister Aereal. I am not sure what their parents were doing right but all four of those sisters came out beautiful. I have now met two of them, the other is Erika’s older sister which all of the cops drool over. Erika wasn’t shy about trying to hook us up. I was standing in the common area with all of our patrol guys close by and they were all chiming in. There were actually three of us guys in there that were single. All kinds of comments were being made in-front of both of us. Erika even made the comment that she would allow me to date her. That sounds backwards but the context and story behind it would make sense. Now enters the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and all of the excuses I can come up with. And believe me after sitting in a small room all by your self for ten plus hours you can come up with some excuses. Why can’t this be easy? Why does this have to feel so awkward? Why the hell am I even worried about it yet, I haven’t asked her out! Oh yeah, that challenge of actually calling her up and taking the first step. Perhaps I should go this counseling session on Thursday and talk to the doc. about this. I really wish this feeling would just go away! I really don’t know what to do at this point, I would love to pursue a relationship, (there is a label!) but I don’t want the hassle of getting into one. Once I am in, I am fine… it’s the getting to know each other phase. I really hate socializing!

Any suggestions??

- Larry

Monday, Sept. 13th

2004-09-13T02:14:00.000-04:00

Well it is 2 a.m. most of you are sleeping, I would imagine. Now, ask me why I am not. Besides the fact that I am a night owl, my wonderful job requires me to stay conscious all night long. After I came back from vacation this was very difficult. Since then my body seems to have adjusted once again. So I sit here staring at my computer with very little to do. I really don’t have much to say… read my previous post, not much in my life at the moment. I did go shopping to day for stuff for the apartment. We got bathroom stuff out of the way and the start of our living room furniture.

It looks like Ivan is going to miss us. We can’t breath that sigh of relief just yet, these things have been known to change paths overnight, just look at Charley. In any case I am sure I will have to work at least one of my days off this week. Which is cool I need the OT especially considering how much I spent today, but I really don’t want to be there. Oh, I called Best Buy… that was a waste of time. Sorry sir, there is no one at the store that can answer those questions. You will have to wait until your application clears corporate which usually takes about two weeks. Well, we are approaching the two week mark now, so maybe I will hear something. Then I sit here and think, do I really want another job to have deal with? Oh well, the story of my life, one question after another.

I am outta’ here… gonna’ try to go to bed now.

- Larry

Finally, an update

2004-09-10T01:58:00.000-04:00

Hello again, it’s been way to long I know. As most of you are aware I have been extremely busy with these small things they call hurricanes. Now it appears that Ivan is coming our way as well. At the rate these storms are coming in I will have a massive increase in my salary this year because of all of the overtime I am working. I do wish that my power company would get off of their ass and get my power hooked back-up. I am not as bad as some thanks to power provided by a generator but I really want to run the air conditioning, especially on days I have to work.
I am not going to bore you guys with this since most of you have experienced it with me. What I will do is bore you with what I call my life. Let’s see its been over a week since I updated, there has been a little bit of nothing going on in my life. Ok, that was a short post! Just kidding. Let’s see if I can remember back a week ago and catch you up. I applied for a second job. I haven’t heard anything yet and since I haven’t had phone service I haven’t called either. Perhaps I will do that in the afternoon. As much as I would love to have the extra cash I am not sure where I have the extra time. My green thumb has started itching again. I have in the works my fall garden and this will soak up what little time I do have at the moment. I am also trying to get a lot of crap done around my grandma’s since I will be leaving soon. I really haven’t had a lot going on since my last update perhaps that is why it has been difficult to sit down and type this out. Still single, but that is nothing new. I really have no prospects either, of course I guess you can’t find any sitting at home. I haven’t gone anywhere expect to pick up a few things for the apartment since my last writing. My cousin is working a second job and now has a romantic interest so I really don’t have anyone to hang out with. Which is cool, she is a) really looking forward to the move and wants some extra cash (good idea) and b) it has been a while since she has been in a relationship and could use a “good” boyfriend, which this guy seems to be so far. I really need make more friends, boy I wish that was easy.  Perhaps I should have taken classes, and then I wouldn’t have these problems. I think I am going to close… I am starting to depress myself. I still have six hours to go, I can’t do that now.

‘Till next time.
- Larry

Tuesady, Aug. 31

2004-08-31T17:17:00.000-04:00

Hello again, it’s mid-afternoon spent most of the day sleeping as I have to work tonight. I haven’t gotten my body back into the swing of the staying up all night and sleeping all day yet. I was wide awake today by 3 o’clock, which is almost eight hours of sleep but, it would have been nicer to be waking up now. Not really a whole lot going on in my life at this point. I don’t have much of a social life anyways and with not taking classes I spend most of my day at the house. It is nice not to have to worry about homework and classes and all of the grief that goes along with it. I am really glad I decided to take this semester off. Getting excited about the move in January, I have a lot of stuff that I am going to need to buy. The problem with this is that it requires money to buy stuff. I really should look for a part-time job as well, but with my schedule it is hard to find something for me to do. I need to call around Gainesville to several realtors today but I didn’t’ think about it until now (after they are all closed).

Anyways, I did go out with a couple of friends the other night (Sunday). I went and seen The Manchurian Candidate. If you have a big brother paranoia that the government is watching us and can control our minds then I would encourage you NOT to watch this movie. It will only feed your paranoia which is never good. But, for those of you that are ‘normal’ it was a good movie. It has Denzel Washington in it, who typically makes good war/military movies, this one was no exception.

I think I will close, not much more to say. Perhaps I will write more tonight.

-Larry

The Phone Call

2004-08-27T05:17:00.000-04:00

Well it is another day, officially. All of you are sound asleep as I type this post, enjoying the comforts of your bed while I am stuck here at work. I was informed that I had to update my blog today and I spent a good part of my shift pondering what I was going to write about. I scanned countless news articles looking for something that truly sparked my interest but to no avail. It wasn’t until I answered a call from a former girlfriend that I had something to write about. I was even reluctant to post it in such a public forum. This was going to be one of those topics that I buried and possible never even discussed. But, I decided to post and chose this as a topic since it surprised me.

I actually talked to her twice, the first time caught me off guard. She claims that she was bored and knew that I would be awake for her to talk to. As most of you are aware I do not spend much time on the telephone with those of you that I enjoy talking to so the half an hour I spent on the phone with someone that I would rather have not talked to was shear torture. This conversation was for the most part the unpleasantries (not sure if that is spelled right, neither is Word) that you have with an ex since you talked last. How are you? How have you been doing? What are you up? The usuals I managed to make it though these with little problem when the opportunity finally presented itself I terminated the call (unfortunately not soon enough). I was a little befuddled by the call but not nearly as bad when she called back again about 10 minutes later. I thought the first thirty minutes was hell, boy was I mistaken. This time she wanted to talk about us and our former relationship. I knew I was in trouble when she said “I have a few questions I want to ask you” (guys, if this happens… RUN as fast as you possibly can). Question one was why did we break-up. I stuck to my original story that I told her in the fact that I didn’t have feelings for her anymore. I also tried to explain (looking back on it not sure why I bothered) my philosophy on relationships. I told her that I refuse to stay in a relationship if I cannot see myself with that person long term (5, 10+ years or married to). I told her that I didn’t see us being together in that capacity, which of course prompted another question, why not. And then the comment that we weren’t together (in her opinion) long enough for me to make that determination. Anyways, after that whole discussion she asked if we could try again. UUUUUUHHH… NO!!!! Sorry about your luck, I obviously didn’t like you enough then and not much has changed so… NO!!! My official response was something to the degree that my thoughts have not changed and would do no good to even try. She then proceeded to tell me that she had been thinking about me and trying to figure out what happened between us and her uncertainty in the way it ended was the reason she had not seriously dated since we separated and blah, blah, blah… still a NO! She asked me if I still had feelings for her (uh... NO) my response “Nothing beyond concern for your welfare” (which I have for most humans). This of coarse was not the answer she wanted to hear and asked if I had feelings for her then. Once again sticking to my guns I said I am not sure but the conclusion I came to was that I did not. Once again not the answer she wanted. I also had to deal with the typical questions like “Did I do something wrong?” and other routine break-up questions. I am sure there were more relationship (pointed) questions in there that I can’t recall at the moment… I am still in a slight state of shock. She then tried to change the topic of our discussion and have a normal conversation with me. How in the hell did she expect to carry on a normal conversation after those types of questions. We all have the ability to relay our emotions though the tone of our voice. Apparently my voice was that of someone aggravated/agitated. She picked up on this (congrats for her) and asked if she had aggravated or pissed me off. Uhh.. lets think for a minute, an ex calls you up and ask you questions like those above, would it aggravate you? I told her that she was walking very close to that line and then we proceeded to terminate the phone call (thank God).

Why can’t I just be the typical male ass hole? If I could have filled that role this would not be an issue. Still in this conversation I couldn’t do it. I guess I will have to work on selective good naturedness. I am going to rap this up, I was just shocked my the conversation and the fact that she wants me back (that is an interesting feeling, even though I do not share her feelings). The question is why can’t I find someone that I could have the same feelings for?

Just as an aside for you grammar and spelling nuts, I am sure there are quite a few spots in here that you will cringe at. I think I might have even made up some words as I went along (since word doesn’t like a couple of them) but you will have to forgive me, the words came quickly as I typed.

Wow… that was fun. I almost wish that would have been on a recorded line!

- Larry

The Ad...

2004-08-25T00:06:00.000-04:00

I am going to venture down the political path for a minute. Now that I actually have some time to watch the news and read some articles you might expect some more of these Larry Commentaries in the future. I want to vent a few minutes about the Kerry/Bush election that is coming up soon. I would consider myself a republican (although I am registered as a democrat, just haven’t changed it yet, I had no idea at age 18 what I was or what the difference was) not far right but I really don’t stay in the middle. I suppose I walk just right of the fence, sometimes crossing over. I also will admit that I am a pro-Bush supporter, I might not approve of all that he has done, nor is he the smartest of guys but he gets the job done.

Anyways I want to talk about the controversy over the TV ads and Kerry’s war record. If you haven’t been following the news let me catch you up a second. Apparently there was an ad run by a group of veterans that criticized Kerry’s performance and the three purple hearts that he has. You can read the whole article (actually from a local newspaper) below, I will highlight a few of my peeves for you, you can read over it and make your own opinions and if you don’t like mine… then close the browser! This ad apparently ran in about three states for a week and accused Kerry of inflating his Vietnam War record. I am not in a position to question what the man did 30+ years ago. There are very few people that can remember the exact details of something that took place that long ago. I am not even going to touch on the subject that he might have and will just let him have his three purple hearts and leave it at that. President Bush came forward and criticized this commercial and all other commercials like it saying that “…they’re bad for the system”. Bush also commended Kerry on his service and said that he should be proud of his service and record. Way to go Mr. President. There is enough mud slinging that goes on when election time comes around just between the two major parties that we don’t need little independent groups joining in. Now the President was criticized for not condemning this ad while it was running. Many of the democrats felt that he should have condemned it shortly after it started airing rather than after it stopped (stopped on 8/12). What killed me the most about this article was the fact that President Bush has been slammed with so many ads by private groups with no one putting the pressure on Kerry to condemn these ads against Bush. This quote is found about a quarter of the way through the article…

"The moment of truth came and went, and the president still couldn't bring himself to do the right thing," Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards said in a statement. "We need a president with the strength and integrity to say when something is wrong."

"Too little, too late," added party chairman Terry McAuliffe.

Keep in mind that this comes from Kerry’s running mate and possible our next vice-president. Farther down in the article (an advantage for conservatives, something not seen in today’s media) the writer points out the fact that while ads ran and still continue to run against Bush by independent groups Kerry has not condemned these ads although he demanded it from Bush. I love the fact that we need a president with the strength and integrity to say when something is wrong, but Kerry can't even do it himself. Bush has at least said something about the ad, that's more than Kerry can say.

While Kerry and Democrats have demanded that Bush condemn the attack on his war record, the president has been targeted by an estimated $60 million in commercials by outside groups since the campaign began.

Kerry has declined to call for an end to those ads, which helped him at a time when he did not have the funds to compete with Bush' campaign advertising budget.

WOW!!! How one sided is that? Kerry couldn't afford to run his own ads (smear campaign) so he let someone else do it for him, 60 million dollars worth of ads. Then when someone decides to run an ad against him the democrats get their panties in a bunch and demand Bush to criticize these ads that is hurting their candidate. Why didn't they get upset when the same type of ads ran against Bush?

One last point to make then I will close. At the very bottom of the article they accuse the GOP of creating this ad. Tell me something if you are anti-Kerry wouldn't your views lean more to the GOP/Republican party? So, if you made a commercial, don't you think that it would too reflect some of these views?

- Larry
The Article

P.s.: I have included a joke I got today that I just can't help sharing.

On a tour of Texas, the Pope took a couple of days off to visit the coastal area for some sightseeing. He was cruising along the sea wall on Galveston Isle in his Pope mobile when suddenly he notices a frantic commotion just off shore.

There was John Kerry struggling frantically to free himself from the jaws of a 25-foot shark. As the Pope watched, horrified, a speedboat came racing up with two men aboard. One of the men, President George W. Bush quickly fired a harpoon into the shark's side while Dick Cheney reached out and pulled the bleeding, semiconscious John Kerry from the water. Then using (autographed Round Rock Express) baseball bats, the two heroes beat the shark to death and hauled it into the boat.

Immediately the Pope shouted and summoned them to the beach. "I give you my blessings for your brave actions," he told them. "I heard that there was some bitter hatred between President Bush and John Kerry, but now I have seen with my own eyes that this is not true."

As the Pope drove off, President Bush asked Dick, "Who was that?"

"It was the Pope," Dick replied. "He is in direct contact with God and has all of God's wisdom."

"Well," President Bush said, "he may have access to God's wisdom, but he doesn't know squat about shark fishing. How's the bait holding up?"

2004-08-23T23:37:00.000-04:00

Niagara Falls - USA Side - From observation tower

Brief Synopsis

2004-08-23T19:42:00.000-04:00

Just a quick overview of the events of my glorious week away from here. We left out of here on Sunday afternoon about 3 p.m. after my dad got off of work. In total we were looking at about 1200 miles. Our plans were to drive all the way though and get there sometime Sunday afternoon. The drive up was fairly uneventful; we did have to stop about every hundred miles to refill the water in my dad’s truck. It has a large crack in the block which causes it to leak the water, which he couldn’t get fixed before we left. Other than that it was a long drive, we all rotated the drive time between the three of us. We goy up there at about 1 or 2 Monday afternoon, which wasn’t bad time wise. Once we got up there we spent the day unloading and trying to patch the truck as best we could. That evening I seen my cousins that I had not seen in sometime. We ate dinner then played some cards and off to bed. On Tuesday we went and picked up the kayaks, this proved to be a very aggravating experience for me. I had forgotten how bad my mom can get on my nerves. Perhaps it is because I have gotten older and understand more of what is going on but she finds that one button and continuously mashed it the entire time I was there. It got so bad that I decided not to give any input as to what was happening or going on while we were on our trip. Got myself in trouble a couple of times with my wise-ass comments, so I decided it best to keep my mouth shut. I will get into more of how my mother jumped on my nerve latter. That could be a long, long blog. Anyways, we put the kayaks in the water later that afternoon at Sylvan Beach. This was a little stream that emptied into Oneida Lake. From my point of view it wasn’t all that great. It was flat water with very little current. It did however provide my parents a good learning experience. They had never been in a kayak before and was a good starting place. We finished out our little trip and went back to the house. Wednesday we headed up to Salmon River. This had some white water something that we had never done before. We stopped and looked at the river and it didn’t look bad so we gave it a shot. It was shallow in quite a few spots which made it difficult to get over some of the larger rocks. Me and Heather made it down it down without incident. My parents flipped their kayak once but we all had a blast. It was a long ride, took us about four hours. Not really sure how many miles it actually was, I haven’t broke down and bought a GPS yet. We packed up and headed back we were suppose to meet my cousin at his house for dinner. Thursday rolled around and the weather wasn’t looking all that great. We were supposed to take the kayaks back before too late so that we could head out for Niagara. We decided to kayak a small creek that was close to the house. This was Chittenango Creek and will constitute an entire blog entry in and of its self. This is the one we suffered some injury on after flipping and floating down stream for some time. Perhaps I will write more about this tomorrow. After that fiasco we went back to nurse our wounds while my father and uncle returned the kayaks. Once they got back we started the three hour drive over to Niagara. Once we finally got over there and found a hotel and ate we headed to the boarder. We crossed over and viewed the falls at night with their colorful illumination. It was a good little hike especially with banged up knees and shins. As always the sheer power associate with all of that moving water was absolutely impressive. I had been there before and it was still amazing. After walking all the way down to Horseshoe Falls (the big one on the Canadian side) we turned back around and headed to the hotel (more on this in the aggravating mother story). The next morning we headed out, we had to do the souvenir thing and we wanted to go back to the falls for a couple of hours. This time we didn’t cross the boarder and stayed on the US side at the national park. Needless to say this was another impressive day just looking at that falls; I got some really awesome shots of the US falls and the river. After having our fill of everything Niagara had to offer we headed back. We stopped off at this huge outlet mall; I spent way to much money but got some much needed clothes. We finally got back and then started getting packed for our departure Saturday. We got loaded and were ready by about noon. I needed to go to Radio Shack and pick up a piece for my headphones. We stopped and got my part and then ate lunch and headed for the interstate. We had planned on stopping for the night but decided to go ahead and drive all night long. The patch that my dad applied to the truck held and helped to speed our return trip. We did make an unscheduled stop at my grandmothers which kinda’ aggravated me (another mother incident) but she hadn’t seen her in about 3 months and she isn’t doing too hot right now. We were back at home by noon, which was really good time. All in all I had a good time with the exception of my mother it was a great trip.

More to come…

- Larry

I’m back…

2004-08-22T13:20:00.000-04:00

I have returned from my vacation. Had a blast… plenty to talk tell you about. I might even post a few pictures. I won’t bore you with all of the details of our trip but merely highlight some of the more interesting occurrences like Chittenango Creek. That hurts just thinking about it. Anyways, more to come latter, just wanted to let you know I had returned.

- Larry

Huricane Charley - 2

2004-08-14T01:03:00.000-04:00

Caution: Extreme rant included. Read with care.
Lots to talk about and a really tired author. I finally got off of work at about 10, Charley changed his mind and decided not to visit our area. I found out something really interesting this morning as I was about to leave work, our back-up generator didn’t work! It seems that our voltage regulator died and would not power the building. I hung around this morning to make sure that got started in the repair. We finally found a part for the generator and it was fixed (all while I was soundly sleeping). I only got about 5 hours of sleep this afternoon and went back into work shortly after waking up. By this time Charley had changed course and was suppose to miss our area. I headed in and wanted to personally check the generator since I was going to be the one sitting in that little box without lights if it didn’t work. I also had to adjust the sensitivity of our battery back-ups so they didn’t run all the time. After getting all of that done it was time to settle into my shift. By this point I had decided that nothing was going to happen and was preparing for a really long shift. They finally decided to let us go, patrol got to leave at 9 but the phones were still kinda’ busy so I had to hang around until 10. Before all of this happened while I was still there this morning, my partner for tonight called and talked to the supervisor. He wanted her to call me, while I am suppose to be on vacation mind you, and ask me to cover his shift tonight because he didn’t want to leave his wife. This was before the storm changed its path and was suppose to come right across our area. I really can’t stand her and I guess she convinced him to try and get the night off. I hit the roof, what baffled me the most was that the supervisor called me into the office and asked me about it. I looked at her and said I am already working tonight, what am I suppose to work by myself. I could not believe the audacity he had to call and want to call me in from my vacation to cover his shift just because he or his wife was scared about this storm. This women is 35+ years old and is worried about this storm… she could have gone to a shelter like everyone else that was concerned about the storm. But, I guess she couldn’t have brought there farm family, 20+ dogs, ferrets, and whatever the hell else they have to the shelter since they didn’t allow pets. I was so hoping he wouldn’t show up, that would have been an almost automatic termination. I think I am done ranting, I have vented already, but if I had a computer when it happened you would still be reading about this bitch (which one you might ask, both him and her). /Rant off

Other than this freaking storm there hasn’t been much else. Apparently my cousin told her mom about moving out tonight. That went over like a ton of shit, I am sure this will be an interesting couple of months before the move happens. My family (immediate) shouldn’t flip out like hers is/has. I still haven’t told my grandmother, but she won’t try and stop me from going. I have talked a little more with my dad about it, still not much of a reaction. They trust my judgment though and if this is something that I have decided to do then they will back me on it. They know as well as many of you that I don’t just make a decision without weighing all of the options pros and cons and usually a couple of times. I must have a really strange family; this should be harder shouldn’t it?

Got about a hundred things I need to get done before the trip to NY. All of which I am sure I won’t get done. I need to go get some things from Gainesville, clean the truck out and wash it, as well as pack still. I also have to remember that all though it is August for us (the hottest part of summer typically) it is the beginning of fall (a season we don’t have) so it is cold up there. Almost like winter for we natives up there. Mom called this evening and it was 54 degrees. This should be interesting, I am going to freeze my Florida Cracker ass off. I have got to get some shut eye lots to do in the morning.

-Larry