malkav11

Two main developments in my life of late. Firstly, I think I'm going to have to switch ISPs. The problem seems to be that they can no longer consistently provide quality, error-free DSL service at the speeds (3 MB down) I'm currently paying for. And I can't face going back to 1.5, especially when there's cheaper, faster alternatives out there from companies I admittedly don't...
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So after a relatively trouble-free hardware install experience (I mean, yeah, it was a little complicated, but nothing went horribly, unredeemably wrong), after which Windows booted normally and everything....I just *had* to go and fuck myself by deciding to perform an upgrade install of Vista.

Well, I'm back. As of Thursday evening, actually, but I'm lazy and don't update this nearly as frequently as I ought to. I didn't wind up getting to spend as much quality time with my parents as I had maybe originally anticipated - nor did I really wind up helping them with the upcoming move, as their project for the week wound up being painting...
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Leaving in the early AM for Iowa, there to visit my grandparents and then subsequently my parents. It'll be the last time I see the latter in their current (lovely) house in Davenport, as my mother has been promoted to division level and will be moving to Cincinnati in another couple weeks. It may well mark the last time I visit them in their home...
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I was at the grocery store on Sunday and I decided that it wasn't good enough to just stock up on the sensible stuff I was there to get. I also needed to live a little. (A very little.) So I popped over to the candy aisle and picked up the two most unusually flavored premium candy bars I could find: Lindt's Excellence: Chili (dark...
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I have really got to avoid "worst X" threads. Both "best" and "worst" threads are generally fairly pointless, of course. But "best" threads will usually contain a bunch of commonly agreed excellence with a smattering of interesting choices and at worst the occasional thing someone just latched onto due to some quirk of personality that's not fundamentally all that great. This isn't terribly exciting or...
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I've had about a month with my new job now. It's definitely a significant adjustment - I am now doing essentially the sort of office work that so many other people do for their entire adult lives, as opposed to the hectic, mindnumbing repetition of fast food or shelving library books. I'd never before used such devices as fax machines or industrial-level copying machines, nor...
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The culmination of all that stuff from my last journal entry is as follows:

I have a new job. Finally, and at long last, I have one. I'm going to be a Clerk/Typist with the Ramsey County Child Protection Unit, working on the something-or-other special program they're doing with the U of M. It's not quite full-time, and it's two years only, but it's going...
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I've been looking for a full time job for over a year now. Until this past week, nobody had so much as acknowledged that I'd applied (except for the City of Stillwater, who politely informed me that because I had not redundantly enclosed my resume with the comprehensive application form I had sent in, I was not eligible for consideration. Since they'd never actually told...
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You know, I'm not Microsoft's biggest fan. In fact, I'm really more actively engaged in despising them, most of the time. Windows, don't even get me started on it. Office? Ick. C#? Bleh. Windows Media (Player, formats, all of that) - godawful. Internet Explorer? One of the worst browsers on the market, totally UI rearranged in version 7 for no good reason. DirectX? I have...
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