Archive for February, 2007

Snow’s back.

28 February 2007 at 4:24 pm
by Berck

Pontiac Fiero

27 February 2007 at 8:31 pm
by Berck

So, the windshield people replaced my windshield with the correct one for the originally agreed upon $147.40. Yay.

Also, have I mentioned that How I Met Your Mother is the best TV show ever?

The Streets Have No Name

26 February 2007 at 9:57 pm
by Berck

I miss the night. Staying up late meandering about the internet and listening to music has always been one of my favorite activities. When I’m a little sleepy, a little free, a little dark… what I want to do is write. I’m not any good at it anymore, mostly because I don’t do it. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

I wonder if, perhaps, I’m stressed. While I don’t feel stressed, it seems like I should be. Maybe I’m a bit anxious. My job is going to be gone in September, and I could have the same job for twice the money in a few months, or I could be totally out looking for work. The looking for work doesn’t bother me too much in that I can find something utilizing my skills that pays at least what I make now. But there’s Jonah. She doesn’t know what she wants, and as far as I can tell, this is the only job she’s had that she likes. To find another job, I’d almost assuredly have to move. For the first time in my life, I don’t want to move yet. This is new. If I did move, it would have to be to Alaska– where else?

What do I want to do? I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be a flight instructor forever. I grow restless with it– as though it’s time for something new. I wonder how long a change of scenery 60 miles south (where the scenery isn’t as pretty) would keep me content. I worry about making that much money– it’d be really hard to walk away from it. But when I die, I want to have done more than be a DA-20 pilot. I want to do something cool like fly an otter on skis, or a fire-bomber.

It’s almost as though I’ve settled back into the nether-world of not knowing what I want. The importance of having a goal isn’t important like so many people say it is, but it offers a certain sort of comforting distraction. The difference this time is that I’m happy where I am. It’s just that I’d rather be struggling toward something.

Perhaps I need something new to tinker with. Maybe it’s time to buy a cheap motorcycle– it’s just that I’m not ready to die, and buying a motorcycle is embracing death a bit more closely than I already do on a day to day basis.

I wonder how many times I can listen to this song before Jonah gets mad.

In many ways, I hate that I have a blog. I shouldn’t have a blog. I hate blogs. Don’t I?

It’s not spring yet, but I think winter is dead. Sadly, I missed the best it had to offer while wallowing around in the south. It was something of a mistake, spending so much time in the south. My mother tried to warn me, I should have listened. Not that I minded spending time with any of you, just that it was too long. If I was going to take a month off, I should have driven to South America or something. I felt guilty about having been so long without visiting family, but I think a much more sane policy will be that family can come to us if they want– it works better that way. Joanna and Sydney agree, at least.

It’s not warm out yet, not time for the hard tops to come off the cars, but it’s not winter either. The snow storms have turned into pathetic little tantrums that give into the sun before they even develop. I hate this nether-region. I want it to be cold, or I want it to be t-shirt weather. (But, please, please, not hot.) It’s February, but I think I would be okay if I never again experience temperatures greater than 75F.

Why should you read this? You shouldn’t.

I don’t mind living in an apartment, but I want a cat and a garage. And that means a house. Maybe we’ll buy a house if I get hired down south. There’s something fascinating about standing where I am, with a September deadline. The anxiety seems like it should be there, but there’s a morbid fascination with possibility. I see any number of possibilities for a year from now. I could be working and making money and paying off debt and living right here with little else being different. I could have a job for some crappy airline, commuting to work on airliners, getting paid nothing, but getting some precious multi time and invaluable experience while sitting in the right seat with someone who will keep death an arm’s length from the left seat. I could be desperate, out of work, broke. It’s all there, all a possibility. What do I want? Does it matter what I want?

We wait all day for night to come, and it comes…

The customer is a liar.

26 February 2007 at 3:43 pm
by Berck

I got one flight in this morning before the wind picked up. Since our second flight was canceled, a few of us decided to head over to Famous Dave’s for lunch. Shortly after ordering, my flight suit started vibrating.

(The following sentence for Sydney. To the rest of you, I apologize.) I retrieved my personal communications device from the zippered orifice in my flight suit, performed a bifurcation maneuver upon it, placed it to my auditory organ and coerced my vocal cords to say, “Hello?”

Joanna sounded upset. Yesterday, I’d given her the task of phoning through the book to find the cheapest auto glass replacement people and arranging to have them replace the badly cracked and sandblasted 16 year-old windshield in the red car. It seems that they had come over and replaced the windshield but wanted payment in cash or check only. She didn’t have a check with her, and certainly didn’t have $140 in cash. She asked if she could go get the cash from an ATM, I told her that would be fine… then I asked if they did an acceptable job. “Well, um, there’s this green band of tinting on the top of the windshield…” “Yeah, that’s totally unacceptable.” “Well, that’s what I told them, but then the manager started yelling at me, and said if I didn’t pay, he’d call the police, and…” on and on and on. The short of it was the guy was going to be there in ten minutes, so I got my lunch to go, hopped in my car and sped up to Monument. Of course the window people were not there when I got there.

I ate some of my lunch, and decided to call them. The conversation was long and drawn out. First, he tried to tell me that he told Joanna personally that the window would be tinted (he did not), and that cash or check was the only accepted form of payment (he did not). I fail to see how telling a customer that his wife is a liar is a good tactic. After he droned on and on about what happened (not at all the version of events Joanna relayed, but at this point, moot anyway) without letting me interupt him, I got to the point. “The point is, you’ve installed the incorrect windshield. The windshield you removed is clear, the one you replaced it with is not.” He then tried to argue that everyone in Colorado Springs replaces windows with tinted windows, no one wants clear ones. Whatever, not the point. Eventually, he demanded that I pay him $147.50 today, and tomorrow he’d send out an installer to install a new clear windshield for an additional charge of $60 because they were more expensive. The only places that mentioned a difference in price between clear and shaded when Joanna called said the clear ones were cheaper. I pointed this out, and he muttered. I told him that was unacceptable and that I wouldn’t be giving him any money until he installed the correct windshield. He responded by saying he would have the installer return with police escort and replace the tinted windshield in my car with my original windshield. I called his bluff, “That’ll actually be perfect, I assume they can do it today?” “Well, you realize we’ll still have to charge you for the labor.” “You can charge me all you want, but I’m only going to pay for the work I originally asked you to do, which is to install the correct windshield in my car, which you haven’t done. I’ll gladly see you in small claims court.” He then launched into a diatribe about he gets ripped off for thousands of dollars a year, blah, blah, blah. I pointed out that everytime I have anyone work on my car, I get ripped off, so I do it all myself, but there was no way for me to replace my own windshield. He then agreed, and launched into a sob story about how he’s getting ripped off by a transmission company. This sort of thing went on for a very long time. He eventually said that he’d send an installer by tomorrow with a clear windshield, and I’d have $147.50 in cash for him when it was finished.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

Time for some search phrases…

25 February 2007 at 8:52 am
by Berck

With my site being down for a month, my pagerank slipped from 4/10 to 1/10, so I don’t get as many hits anymore.

The 2006 Year Round Winner:

Beef Wellington was our #1 search phrase in 2006, with 103 hits.

12-201-121-177.client.mchsi.com was our #1 visitor for 2006, with 10,752 hits and 1018MB of bandwidth. Yes, Sarah, that’s you!

75% of our traffic went to Windows users, sad, but 15%.8 was linux, though I suppose most of that was probably… me. Macintosh came in third with 5.6%, BeOS 4th with 0.2%, then AmigaOS with 97 hits (you’ve gotta be kidding me!), a few WebTV hits, and even 2 Solaris hits.

But IE only accounted for 55.5% of our browser usage. Firefox at 35.4%, Safire, then NetNewWire (but that’s probably all DWP). Even 82 hits from lynx, but I’m guess that was probably me.

Our most popular time of viewing is from 1900-2000 Mountain Time, followed by 2000-2100.

Names have been popular lately…. If we’ve ever mentioned a name, someone searched for them and found them on our dumb blog.

But, mostly the ever-constant stream of nonsense. So many of them are so far from actual searches, they seem closer to random grafiti.

looking for song played while on hold with comcast
natalie portman and bra size
tomorrow comes jonah dalhart
i flunked my chemistry 101 midterm
odfjell babor cab
why is virginia for lovers
how to make someone pass out
does shiner sell beer in oklahoma?
how to send lougage in advance
bremer grappa glasses
horizontal book chart of jonah
sarah brenner texas
peppermint costume on martha stewart
blackchevy
weird european drunks get naked
driving naked i-65
lichtenstein shower curtain
is this peter fucking frampton?
choctaw apple recipie
this untamed fire of freedom bremer
sarah brenner blog
mobile college magnoli
meltdown bowl of meth
over-sized chairs norman oklahoma
odd and off the wall pictures and dumb stuff
who is the disenchanted idealist in othello?
i said what about breakfast at tiffiny s
how would you explain the operations of primacy and recency in students perceptions of instructors and opposite?
ups truck driving with open door
far out dumb shit
what clothes do they wereni poland
hidden camera in bathrooms for watching sisters taking bath
dumptruck work in va when it rains
how to build reverse bungee jumps school project
“answer there was a plane crash in the countryside. the plane was a small two-seater cessna 152 with only 3 people on board.. the plane crashed early this afternoon. search and rescue workers have recovered 300 bodies so far and expect that number to climb as digging continues into the evening. how is this possible and where did the plane crash.”
describe a wood fence which looks like crap
lake arrowhead dog barking constantly
good comeback insulting social situation
is sour cream okay to feed my cat
very pregnant teenagers wearing a diaper
want to sell house because neighbor smokes
what make s stones how do we wee them?
moab good cynthia. attached parenting
you got any boxes
sri lanka used wet panties
how to say house in izzle language