Well well well, my intarwebnet access was down yesterday so I couldn't update. Someone stole the Bush/Cheney sign out of our front lawn. Coincidentally, someone stole the Kerry/Edwards sign out of our neighbor's front lawn. Hilarious. I found out about this when I was in a big ol' corn maze.

Carved some pumpkins with Julie last night. I haven't done that for years, and I know why ... that pumpkin goop really makes me gag. That's some nasty stuff.

The Aria box is working pretty well ... I'm putting the DVD burner to the test right now by backing up a DVD. My 2.8GHz Pentium 4 owns the Athlon 64 3000+ in encoding, though ... the margin by which it owns the Athlon is frightening. The Aria box has been working on a DVD for about 40 minutes, and my box is already burning. Interesting. I guess the deeper pipeline of the Pentium 4 processor is good for something after all.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! I've got my zombie costume all ready to go ... found a turtleneck, and I'll be wearing my steel-toed boots. I mean, zombies don't wear New Balance walking shoes, right? ;-)

UPDATE: The neighbor actually took his Kerry/Edwards sign into his garage because it was windy. No word on where our Bush/Cheney sign is yet, though.

So I finally fixed my ma's laptop, and I built a new computer for my dad. The laptop has been upgraded to 512MB of RAM (from 256MB) and a 30GB 5400RPM hard drive (from 20GB 4200RPM), but I doubt my ma would particularly care about that because she's getting the Shuttle box. My dad's computer is an Athlon 64 3000+ (Socket 754) with an MSI K8MM-ILSR motherboard, a Seagate 120GB 7200RPM SATA hard drive, a Pioneer DVR-A07 DVD burner, and 1GB of RAM, all wrapped up in an Antec Aria case. I chose the MSI K8MM-ILSR because it has integrated firewire, which allows me to use the Aria's front-panel firewire port. The Aria looks mighty spiffy, especially with that DVR-A07.

I will probably be spending the evening setting those two bad boys back up. I have to modify the Shuttle's software content a bit. It doesn't need Hungarian or Spanish keyboard support anymore, since it'll be used for Quickbooks, e-mail, and web access. It'll need all the media players and stuff because my parents are into watching video clips online.

I've seen all of five minutes of the new South Park episode, and I love it. PETA = eco-terrorists ... win :-)

That, and the fact that they're ragging on the election is being parodied left and right makes it even funnier. I love cartoons that are on top of recent events. I'm guessing George W. Bush is the giant douche, and John Kerry is the turd sandwich. Honestly, that's some funny shiznite right there.

Now getcho big ass in tha pollin' boof.

Think above the belt for this next sentence, you little pervs you. I only have one head and two hands. If you need something from me, take a god damn number.

I have a great many forces pulling at me from different directions. My life is currently a high school physics problem; the only difference is that I hated high school physics, and life is a good thing. On one hand, I have school. This is my primary non-personal obligation at the moment. I have a case study to do for my financial accounting class, I will have homework for my microeconomics class, and I have an ongoing project for my virtual reality class. School only comes with commuting, which actually wastes a good 2 hours per day. My secondary non-personal obligation is work, at which I have even more forces pulling me in every which way, culminating today in a spontaneous release of energy (punching a large, inanimate object and causing my right middle knuckle to swell to three times its size). There are things I have to do, and too many other things are interrupting those priority items, which causes the people who are expecting the priority items to be completed to get upset and blame me. Is it honestly my fault that things are being thrown at me faster than I can handle them, and that my work in other areas suffers?

My personal life is suffering because of those pressures. I'm not making as much money as I did during the summer due to school so I can't do the things I want to do, which includes saving up money for future plans. The stress I gain during school and work carries over into my personal life, which negatively affects those around me. The fact that my work is expected to be done outside of work where I have absolutely no means of compensation is especially grating. Honestly, who wants to bring their work home and not get paid for it? It seems as if I wouldn't be able to get any work done unless I did it outside of work. Well that's not going to happen. I have little incentive to do it at work (do you think I get commission off of a website design?), so what would make me do it outside of work? ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY, ZERO.

Now, about the release of energy thing ... my right arm (and hand, of course) are killing me. Instead of punching large, hard, inanimate objects, maybe I should buy a punching bag and some boxing gloves, and stick them in the back of the store. This way, I can release my anger in a way that will not hurt me. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20, and now I have to deal with the fact that I have very limited use of my right hand. Yeah, I can drive and write but typing, opening doors, using my mouse, and whipping it out to take a leak are much more difficult. But I brought that on myself, so I can't really complain about it.

So now, at the end of this day one week out of the Presidential election, I shall go to bed a raging ball of stress with an aching right upper extremity. I love how my anger toward one main non-personal activity can simply dominate my thought process, causing nothing but stress and more anger.

LADIES, WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO DUMP ON JEFF? WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?

Oh yeah ... happy birthday, Vicky.