Traveling Thoughts

…it’s supposed to be Superbad. It should be super amusing. It’s the second Judd Apatow comedy to come out this summer, and if it’s anything like Apatow’s earlier comedy of the summer ‘Knocked Up’ we should be in for some laughter. The previews were amusing and made way for laughter. McLovin, now that was an awesome clip. “Ummm, Ok, I’m gonna need to see some identification” as he hands over his wallet, “Makes me feel young again” at which point he proceeds to get knocked out. Wondering what I’m talking about? Of course you are, you want to see what I think is so funny. I’d keep you hanging but the suspense of waiting to see what I’m talking about could cause an aneurysm. So I’m going to give you a couple choices. Will you choose:

Door No 1) Behind which we have Superbad Clips and you’d better be of a super legal age to access. It’s amazing to me what Sony has managed to do. I’m not sure how they did it in fact, but they have this amazing childproof digi-lock. It’s beyond me. But provided you can provide the proper identification, you can check out the Superbad Clips.

So you couldn’t get past the childproof digi-lock. Just not smart enough or old enough eh? It’s all good. Let’s take a look behind
Door No 2) Ah, here we go, a one way ticket to our favorite video site on the internet YouTube. There’s many more clips here on YouTube than there is on Superbad Clips and most of them you don’t have to be of age to view.

Or

Door No 3) here it is right here in front of you, something to view, for the laziness we wish to exhibit. For the pain it would cause to go to YouTube and check out the numerous vids, personally though, I’d go to the SuperBad section on YouTube because there are many more vids than any of the other doors I’ve offered you.

Whatever it is you choose, be it the official Superbad website where you can access vids, get ringtones and downloadables; Superbad Clips for exclusive clips; or probably the most widely known online video venue YouTube for various/numerous/and hilarious video clips? Pick your door and be prepared to be rolling on the floor clutching your stomach because it will hurt.

So, go ahead, you know you can resist it. Go watch some videos on YouTube

I’m sitting here watching Shark Week again on the Discovery Channel and it’s just totally cool. They’re casting them in fiber glass, dead sharks so that they can make replicas. One of my friends had a fish on his wall among other creatures and I always thought that they had stuffed the actual fish, but now as I sit here watching them cast this bull shark, I wonder if that fish were real as opposed a replica created by a taxidermist.

It makes sense to me because who really wants a stinky smelly fish hanging on their wall. I dunno. I’ll have to ask him. I vaguely remember asking him when I saw it and he said it were a real fish. But how do you make a stuffed fish not smell. I’m all kinds of curious now. I’m gonna have to do some researching. I wanna know now, how is a fish made wall ready if it’s not a fake?

…I turn around to look and see what I’ve dropped and he says “You dropped your smile :)”  I had to smile at that one, it was a cute pickup line.  But then he begins “I’m in a communcations class and we’re doing…blah, blah, blah…”

I already knew where he was heading, we’d gone over this the other day with the guy that thought I looked a nice girl.  I really had no desire to waste anytime with this guy.  I was just perturbed because there’s other ways for people to practice their communications skills besides doing shady business.  Am I going to get my magazines, are you going to turn in the money, do I really need to be asking anymore questions?  No, I’m thinking not.

So, I just put it out there on the line, “Are you one of those guys that earn points for people buying magazines?”  He responded honestly and then I was kindof bummed by my next move.  I should’ve just said, here’s $20, I want x magazine, and gone on about my day, but that’s not what I did at all.  I said I wasnt’ interested. 

Then I felt bad, and so I grabbed a $20 from my wallet and was going to listen to him do his thing but he was already on to the next poor unsuspecting person :(  At that point I did drop  my smile because if for no other reason, I should’ve supported him for being honest with me unlike all the other blokes doing the same thing but telling me no they’re not selling magazines.

I was perusing through the photos of my vacation to CA in May when I stumbled accross some videos (that were most likely inadvertantly taken mind you).  But of the 8 or so videos that I had on the one card (the 2 gig card, there was another 1 gig card that I didn’t even look at) there were two really cool vids.  I’m only gonna share one right now because I want to get some stuff together before I upload the other.

So, you’ll probably think this is totally lame, and it just might be because it’s only a second long, but hey, it’s cool looking. So here we go, a stringray at Seaworld in CA that I actually got to pet. They’re not slimy like one would think they are, they’ve got the smoothest skin, they’re cool feeling.

I’ve been watching Shark Week on the Discovery Channel for almost 3 hours now. I was way excited about staying at a house that had cable so that I could watch the various shows portraying the greatness of these sea beasts most people fear. Me, I’m crazy, I don’t fear them. I want to go to Australia and get into the water with great whites. I’ll be in a cage of course, because no one in their right mind would let someone that had only been on the otherside of glass from sharks out of the cage to interact with them.

Although, I must say that I would like to have a shark encounter, I would like to go in shallow waters to start with and get close to a shark in their environment and once I’ve done that, I’d like to go into deeper waters and have another shark encounter. I’m crazy like that but these creatures are amazing. They’re like the longest living creatures we know of. They rank up there with dinosaurs.

But, in the event that my shark encounter went horribly wrong, I can see the benefit of having medivac services at my service. In all the shows I’ve watched tonight help has been far away. I want help nearby, why on earth would I want to tempt death and not be able to get help immediately? You’re probably scratching your head and within good reason too. I want help nearby, I don’t want to have to take a 9 hr plane ride to get to a hospital. (Ok, that was the worse one I saw tonight) well, and I’d still have to possibly take a 9 hr flight, but it would be much nicer to take that flight in an Air Ambulance where the care I get in the air would be comparable to that I get on the ground while speeding along down the highway.

But at least in my acts of stupidity there is good help available.  And when in the ocean, all I’d have to do is get to land where they could get me quickly to a field where a plan can land and BAM! medical care in the air at my service.  Air Ambulance to the rescue thank you very much ;P

Ok, so maybe the  Air Ambulance isn’t meant for my active imagination and the crazy places it can take me; but what if 4 years ago when I had a meeting with death and had to be taken from one hospital to another via an ambulance because the hospital I was originally taken to couldn’t care for me, what if that hospital had been a couple hundred miles away…I’ll tell you what if, that would’ve been a good time for an Air Ambulance because while I was in the ambulance fighting to breathe and the tech telling me to breathe, imagine trying to drive that a couple hundred miles.  That would’ve so not happened.  I know because I was there.

So, while I’d much rather have the  medivac services for my crazy adventures there are practical uses for it to.  And of course those practical uses are probably much more probable uses. *shrugs*  Personally, I’d much rather have to use one thanks to an unfortunate shark encounter vs some unfortunate medical encounter.

he says as I walk towards GameStop the other day to buy a video game.  I knew exactly what it was he wanted, I knew exactly what it was he was doing.  I’d never seen them outside of school campus, and I always desparately tried to avoid them on campus.  “I’m in a communications class…blah, blah, blah…I have to get points…blah, blah, blah…would you listen to me and ask how I earn my points?…blah, blah, blah”

I was going to be nice, simply because he thought I was nice, and because I wanted to see if he’d be honest with me.  He tells me his spiel and I ask, “You’re one of those magazine guys right?”  He looks at me.  “One of those guys where if I buy magazines you earn your points?”  He responds, “no” and he keeps going, finally pulls out his cards with the magazine titles on them and the number of points he wins and keeps talking.

When he finally pauses to take a breath I tell him that I’ve got the magazines that I want and that they were just renewed and that I don’t need anymore magazines.  He tells me “you could’ve just said that you weren’t a nice girl, and walked away, I’d be less disappointed than I am now.”  And for as much as I wanted to tell him that if he had just been honest he probably would’ve gotten a buy out of me, I said “not a problem, I’m not a nice girl, and I’m walking away.”

And I walked away.  But I was irritated.  Why is it that guys just can’t be honest in what they’re up to?

…HD-DVD player, very likely.

I cannot express my general need to have the latest and greatest in electronics.   My newest fascination is with the HD-DVD players.  I think it’s well put when they say “The look and sound of perfect”.  I usually do all my shopping at Best Buy when it comes to electronics but every now and then I have to deviate from my loyalty to a certain store in the name  better prices and in online instances free shipping.  I went and did some price comparisons and BestBuy.com will give me the Toshiba Black HD DVD Player - HDA2  for $299 plus shipping, well guess what, that’s not good enough.  ABT Electronics will give it to me for $267 plus free shipping and there’s yet another bonus, I can get 5 HD-DVD’s for free.  That there is the sound of perfect.  And it just also happens to be music to my ears.

I’m really learning lately the importance of shopping around online because there are deals out there with online stores that aren’t my norm.  And for as much as I am a creature of habit, this creature of habit cannot resist a good deal.

ABT Electronics will be one of those sites that I now keep in mind when shopping for electronics and appliances because they have so much and at generally cheaper prices.  I went looking for obscure items as well just to compare and give my self a basis in terms of me shopping at Best Buy as a loyal customer or switching to ABT Electronics and the obscure item I settled on was trash compactor bags.  Best Buy has trash compactors but not trash compactor bags which is ironic in and of itself but it really just showed me what I was missing out on by being so loyal to Best Buy, I was missing out on great deals and greater offerings.

I guess it pays to “surf” shop (instead of window shop).

Tonight on Colleenie Weenie show the term blumpkin came up and Colleen couldn’t Google it due to being connected to the net through her work network so I googled it using Google define: to make sure I wasn’t wrong before I told her and because I didn’t want to sound completely stupid but I ended looking stupid anyways because google define: blumpkin returned the definition of oral sex.  So before I even read it, I’ve got it cut and pasted it into IM and was totally just dumb because I’m sitting there telling Colleen that I gave her the definition on blumpkin just after she says “Courtney, I’m waiting on you to define blumpkin, please get to a pornography site immediately.”  I had to laugh at that statement after I realized my stupidity of pasting the google def because pornography sites don’t define crap, they give you pictures and movies.  But I did find the definition of blumpkin on urban dictionary, and thanks to all my friends who have educated, I was right in my thinking blumpkin is getting a bj while taking a dump.

But the point of this post is that if using define on Google isn’t going to give us the proper definition of the terms we’re looking up there’s going to be a lot of people heading towards sites they wouldn’t normally visit in the name of defining terms they hear, oh let me think, on the radio, in conversations at school, etc.

I learned a lesson though, if google doesn’t sound right for terms that aren’t of the norm, try urban dictionary…

I blogged a couple weeks ago about the reason people become extremists and yes, I had a royal fit about not being able to get my drivers license and the loops that I had to jump through and it really pissed me off how each time I did what they told me to do it wasn’t enough.  But I finally got the letter that says, “you’re approved to get a drivers license” and I went and got my drivers license.  After a month of driving on an expired license I feel much releif to have a new one. 

What really gets me though is that they didn’t care one bit that it was expired.  It was like it was nothing to them.  I’m sorry, but it’s something to me.  I had to live in fear while driving that I’d get pulled over for having a tail light out or something stupid and the cop would ask for my drivers license.  I rarely drive in a manner that will get me pulled over to begin with but it would be something small and dumb.

But it’s been resolved and I don’t have to deal with this again for another 4 years.  Praise God!!!

I just graduated, and the program that I want to get into for my masters is not open until 2009 but in the meantime, I’ve got no desire to stop learning. In the computer industry there’s no room to stop learning, you’re outdated the minute you receive your education, there’s something new always coming along.

In the last two jobs that I’ve been in, the systems architecture has been solely based on Microsoft software. In regards to this, I think it would be cool to have MCSE certification training attached to any future resumes that I may have to put out, I mean it’s highly marketable as it’s recognized all over the world.

If nothing else, there’s many other certifications I’d like to obtain, the last certifications that I got were back in 2000 when I got the Microsoft Office User Specialist (MOUS) certs in Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, and Outlook. In fact, I had master certs in Word and Excel. But those are of course old and out dated. It has been after all 7 years. And not much has changed in the programs and I could become certified on a more recent version of the office suite, but you know what, that’s not so much what I care about.

I’m more into the programming certifications: .NET 2.0 Web-based Application Development would be great because that’s what I’m programming in at work. SQL Server 2005 would be beneficial because that’s where we’re headed, like i said everything is forward moving, and as technology progresses so do we in the workplace.

I can remember my first job, I was the trainer, and I was training people to get certified in the various Microsoft Office products and there was another trainer and he trained the people to the point where they could get their A+ certifications and I’d really like to be on the other side of that training. I didn’t need to be trained for my MOUS certs, I had the knowledge and just had to take the tests, but there’s a benefit to being trained. It would be fun I think.

There’s just so much to learn and being certified in anything can never hurt it can only help. So, it’s a toss up, do I take classes at the community college or do I get some of these program at PrepLogic and start learning so that I can worldwide approved certifications. It’s something worth thinking about since there’s a world of opportunities out there and I think I should be able to be included in them and capitalize on them as well.