.:: Yolospat ::.

Being a college student myself, I know all about the cost education. At CTU my financial advisors were very helpful in helping me find the financial means to get my degree, but they pride themselves in working one-on-one with students. Not every student has this opportunity. Scholarships.com is a great place to find education grants and scholarships.

They have an extensive list of grants & college scholarship opportunities that you can search for free. You might even find the scholarship or grant you were looking for.

I’m always looking at new idea’s and good deals on upgrading our bathrooms and kitchen at home. Our house is a work in progress .. we didn’t buy it new and it was built in the 80’s. Some of our fixtures and cabinets are dated, some have already been upgraded.

I found some really nice Franke sinks at Shower Buddy for our kitchen. They have free ground shipping for anyone in the continental United States. Shipping for any product is always a killer, so that’s money saved right there!

They have a lot of high-quality products available, so check em out!

Over the last few years I’ve really wanted to get a mac. My husband is an avid mac user and he got one of the new 20″ iMac’s for his birthday. After seeing his, I was completely sold. Not only do I really really want one, but the geek in me says .. gimmie gimmie! Money is a little tight however, and there is no better way of getting paid for doing something I love. BLOGGING! I get paid for blogging by doing blog reviews by Pay Per Post.

I recently got to review and write about Stephen King’s upcoming movie, The Mist. I would have written about that anyway, but now I’m getting paid to do it! It’s also released me a bit from writers block, and I’m finding great deals all over the Internet. It’s so easy. This extra little change is what I’m saving up for my new 24″ iMac … it’s a geek’s dream

You can do it too!

It’s either I have too many, or I don’t have enough. I was toolin’ around and found a great deal on jewel cases. I always look for good deals on DVD+R DL and you can’t beat $1.89 a disk. They have everything from CD/DVD media, to computer hardware, to toner cartridges and the prices look really reasonable.

My favorite section was the iPhone deals! The have Silicone Skin with Free Armbands and of course, shipping is free all for $13.98 .. most silicon skin covers are over $20.00. They have iPod adapters for just about every situation and iPod speaks for $14.99.

Check out Super Media Store … great deals!

Gahhhh! I’m so excited. I was watching TV with the hubby the other night, and this trailer for an upcoming movie by Stephen King played. I’m a big Stephen King fan, and my husband has read most of his books 2, 3, 4 times a piece. Since we enjoy going to used bookstores, we’ve made it a quest to get everything Stephen King has ever written, but the catch is, the book has to be used. Anyway, I remember reading one of his books that’s full of short stories, and while I was watching this trailer on TV it came to me! The Mist!!!!! It’s my favorite stories (that really feels like a full length novel) Mr. King has ever written. Lookie ..

The Mist by Stephen King

The story takes place in a small town in Maine (one of Mr. Kings favorite locations to base his stories from). A particular mist starts to form over the lake and while the man and his son go to the grocery story little do they know, the mist takes over the whole town. What’s in the mist? What causes the mist? What horrible monsters are waiting for them in the mist?

Put that on your calendars folks … who’s going with me? Ready for another ride of horror by the master himself?

We have a new IT girl at one of our sites. She actually took the place of someone that had been there as long as I’ve been with this company. After about a week I’ve been noticing that her signature on her emails has been .. why don’t we say, growing. I always have to laugh at HUGE signatures on emails because people put so much energy into either having the best one, or trying to make themselves look as important as they possibly can. This girls, is a bit … overkill. Here is an example of what she has:

Name
(work email)
(personal email)
(back up email)
(home phone)
(work cell)
(personal cell)
(msn messenger)
(yahoo messenger)
(aim messenger)

Now, everyone in IT has an electronic leash, may it be a cell phone or pager or something. I’m fairly certain that this girl can be found wherever she is. I wouldn’t even give out half of that information. Makes me el oh el (lol).

For all the mac users out there, this site is for you.

I will have a mac, one day. Sigh.

These screensavers are so neat, especially the “Inferno” one.

I was talking to my friend Travis earlier this morning about storage solutions. When I think of storage solutions, what I’m really thinking about is data storage or data recovery. I have a lot of media of all shapes and sizes that I really really want to keep. You can call me an electronic pack rat of sorts. I’m sure that if I download something, I’m going to want to use it later. When I think of the company I work for, the whole spectrum gets even broader in terms of Safe Data Recovery. Where do you go? Who do you talk to?

I found this web site called Data Recovery Compare, and they make it simple. I’m all about tasks like this being simple. Sometimes I find myself researching out a special service and I end up finding nothing at the end of my quest. What happens when you pick a site or service and find out you’ve been scammed? That happened to me once, and it’s not going to happen again. You don’t want to be putting data in the wrong hands, and this site weeds out scammers for you. That’s hours upon hours and many emails and/or phone calls saved to where you can spend and devote yourself to something more important, like taking a walk outside in this beautiful fall weather. Anyway, check em out. They exist to make our lives easier!

So, over the course of the weekend I thought, wow. I would love a vacation. When I usually think of vacation I think of all the hassle that goes along with booking and planning airline tickets, hotels, food, etc. That’s almost enough of a nightmare by itself to NOT go on vacation. I’ve always wanted to go abroad and visit as much history as I could. If I can handle booking a flight across seas, then I already have the answer to cheap flights when I get there.  It’s like one stop shopping for traveling in Europe. You can choose plans for finding food yourself to going all inclusive.

I especially like that they specialize in last minute deals, for those of us that travel last minute. Anyway, head over to the European Vacation Experts … they have your vacation plans at the top of their list. The only thing you have to do is sit back and enjoy yourself.

I have to hand it to Mr. Jobs. He knows what his users want …

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers? hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers…..read more at the Apple Web Site

Lets face it. It’s either people are going to be hacking their way in to create third party apps (like what’s already happened) or Apple is going to make it easy on developers and hand them an SDK wrapped up in a pretty box with a huge bow. Steve is not only protecting his iPhone, but he’s making it better, because the moto is “think different” right? Why not …

I was just looking little wedding nick nacks since my friend Cam is getting married here soon and found this great site full of wedding favors. They have the MOST adorable things, like the personalized mint tins. I know they don’t throw rice anymore at most weddings, so what other options could there be? What about, wedding wands!!!

Had I gotten His and Her’s wedding flip flops, I would have died. Toooooo cute!!!! What creativity, I wish I would have found this site before I had my wedding.

I’m always looking for special deals and Online Coupon Codes, and I found a great site called NC Natural full coupons including Dell coupons. I used a Dell laptop for work. It’s an inspiron 6400 and let me tell you, it’s definitely stood up to the test of being banged around and being reliable. I travel with it every day, whether it’s to and from work or around the house. Anyway, check out the Dell coupons & discounts, we all like to save a few bucks!

Because of some ordering problems I had a year ago with BPAL I still had 6 imps that I hadn’t gotten yet. I completely forgot about this until last night when I’m going through my BPAL collection. I’m going to start making a list of ones I like and ones I don’t like.

One of them I really like is Casanova. Sometimes it reminds me of my Mother because she wears something with a similar scent, I’ll have to ask her what it is. It smells nice both going on, but when it mixes with my skin it tends to get a little sweeter. A few hours later the scent is nearly gone. I don’t like completely overpowering scents, but I do like them to last longer then a few hours.

These are the ones I’m getting in a few weeks:

Y’ha-nthlei - A great undersea metropolis located below Devil’s Reef. A swirling, lightless, effervescent scent: the deepest marine notes with bergamot, eucalyptus and foamy ambergris.

Thoughts: I’m excited about this one because my sign is water and having moved away from the ocean I’m feeling the distance. I love the smell of eucalyptus too.

Shoggoth - An amorphous, radiant, incandescent scent. Ever changing, protoplasmic and primordial: white amber, green coconut meat, iris, palmarosa, Chinese peony, lime, water lily, snowdrop, muguet, lemongrass, osmanthus, wisteria, glassy musk, and hinoki.

Thoughts: This one seemed smooth to me, with the coconut and iris and lily, etc. I’m curious how it will smell on me.

Lightning - Lightning slashing the midnight skies over the endless reaches of the ocean. The electric tang of ozone, marine notes, and a drop of sharp rain.

Thoughts: I love electricity, and I love the smell of ozone in the air during lightening storms. I’m curious how they are going to get that wonderful smell in an imp, but knowing BPAL, they will.

Ode On Melancholy - Beauty, joy, pleasure and delight: devastated. This is the scent of the hopelessness, torment and despair of love. Lavender and wisteria, heart-wrenching pale rose, desolate white sandalwood and thin, tear-streaked white musk.

Thoughts: I love lavender and I’m curious the scent mixed with musk and sandalwood.

Ouija - Lush parlor rooms draped in thick velvets and gilded in gold, unearthly whispering in the distance, fleeting flashes of wraithlike figures rushing just outside your vision, the chill of a phantom presence brushing by your cheek, the inscrutable knowledge that disembodied eyes are peering at you from darkened corners? this is the essence of Victorian-era spiritualism: rosewood, oak and teak notes with wispy blue lilac, tea rose, dried white rose and ethereal osmanthus.

Thoughts: I looked at this one mainly because I have a level 70 mage on Draka named Ouija, but when I read the scent, especially the blue lilac I was intrigued.

Veil - A quiet scent, soft, calm and enigmatic. A perfume of mystery, of whispers, and of secrets behind secrets. White sandalwood, lilac, gardenia, violet, orris, lavender and ylang ylang.

Thoughts: Seems light and flowerly, the lilac and gardenia mixed together.

Ok, I’ll make note of the other scents as the days go past and what I might want to give away or trade, just let me know.

I’ve been moving around my office a bit lately because I like change and I like my home office to have a nice gentle feng shui feel to it, since I spend half of my time here. After I moved my printer around the room to where I felt I like it, I went to hook it up and noticed that the USB cable I currently have is about 2 feet shy of reaching my PC. So, naturally I run out to the Internet to find the best deals on some USB cables and came across Technical Cable Applications (TCA) web site. Not only do they have great prices on USB cables for my printer, but they have extremely good prices on HDMI Cable (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) for connecting audio or video. These prices are well below retail.

Check em out! Isn’t the Internet great??

I’ve just been informed by my husband that when he gets a job, he wants to purchase this:

We watch Ghost Hunters, a lot. We DVR every episode actually. It’s what we do as a fun past-time. We’re always at the edge of our seat when Brian seems to fuck up (as he often does, sorry Brian but it’s a little funny, congrats on your baby girl!) and when he gets scared and runs (Dude Run!) or when there is something “strange” caught on EVP or Video.

Every episode of Ghost Hunters, one of the team is wearing their Ghost Hunting gear. This is one of the jackets they wear which can be found on Top Heavy Clothing.

So, Brendan my love, this too can be yours. You know what you need to do now.

I’ve been in Houston Texas since Friday. I’ve met my old sis Tiffany, her hubby Ossy, and my two little nieces, Sharon and Savannah. I’m in Auntie Jen heaven, but alas, I’m going home tomorrow.

I’m in love.

One paper down, 5 to go. I want to be caught up so I can enjoy my time in Texas. At the same time, I’m trying not to kill myself in the process. It’s a little slower in the evenings at work, and I snuck in a one page paper during that slow time. My advantage is I know all the information about these classes, I just have to get them down on paper in an organized fashion. Sometimes for my ADD mind, that proves to be difficult, but like I said, manageable.

The one thing I’m really enjoying lately is being off instant messengers. When I come in in the morning and when I go home at night, I don’t turn them on or off. I just keep them off. I’m not contacted, or bothered. I never knew such freedom. Although it’s a critical part of my job to be in communication with the rest of the company, the break is feeling way too nice to stop now.

Tonight I have a plan. I’m going to get done my 1-2 page paper about the client/server relationship, throw in a power point presentation for good standing and uber graphs and shit, then either go to bed, watch TV or read my book. I’ll try to get 2 papers done each day, and I might actually get caught up on ahead in school work. I can’t let that 4.0 GPA get away.

Brendan and I will be taking a small vacation on our 1 year anniversary next month. We’ve thought about different places to go, like the Georgia east coast, but we’re still tossing around the idea. Anyone have any suggestions? I took time off work and everything and it’s about time we had a formal vacation. Maybe California? Maybe Hawaii? So many options out there to toss around.

Oy, I gotta get started on this second paper. Oy. 

My friend Tom came for a visit this weekend. Talk about a great weekend and medicine for the soul. I’ve been stressed and anxiety ridden about lots of things, and he completely put my mind at ease and made me see a whole other view about things.  A positive view about them. He and my husband were like two peas in a pod since they have the same type of humor so by the end of the day my cheeks were in pain from laughing and smiling so much. I’m looking forward to a trip to Delaware to see him and his family sometime soon. I’m excited

I’ll be leaving to Houston Texas at the end of the week to pay visit to my long time dear friend Tiffany and family. I’ll be seeing my nieces that are so dear to me. It’s little Sharon’s Birthday this weekend. She’ll be four years old, not so little anymore. I’m so excited to be there for the party, and to finally meet Oscar, her husband from Holland. Tiffany and I were talking about it the other day, that we’ve known each other for nearly 10 years now. Ahhh, it’s going to be a great weekend.

I have so much homework to get caught up on. Oy.

I can’t believe I forgot to mention this. On that note, I can’t believe I haven’t posted pictures of my iPhone yet. I’m in love with it BTW and I don’t know how I ever functioned without it.

Anyway, of course I would be on the bandwagon of hacking my iPhone. I used iBrickr software (for mac users out there, it’s called Breezy) It was a very easy process. This video walks you through it step by step. There are many Apps that pop up everyday I’ve noticed in The exploit.org PXL repository. This is a picture of the normal layout of the iPhone.

On my iPhone you can see I’ve filled in the last row of icons. The NES emulator is my favorite app.

Sure, there are always bugs .. but, the payoff is worth it.

We’re being asked at work for things like, a current copy of our resume, and a task list of things we do day in and day out. We’ve been told it’s not because anyone’s job is on the line, or that we’re downsizing. It’s because the company is growing and they want to formulate an organization chart to identify and capture our talent pool of employees.

As with all progressive organizations, we need to be in a position to share our talent pool with potential clients and inventory our technical expertise as we continue to expand the business.

My resume I submitted was very rough draft as I didn’t have time to properly do it because of the pressure to get my task list done for not only last week but so far this week. That was pretty hard because it’s so busy I don’t write down what I do. I think, however, I should change that and keep a task list, or a daily log of what I do and how much time I spend on a project just so I have that information personally. It could only help me in the future. I might think about making a web-based form of this. We’ll see, I have a lot on my plate right now, adding something else might not  be a good idea.

I’m thinking again about installing Media Wiki and actually giving it a change to stop bugging out on me, altho that could be user error.

“You can’t go back and make a new beginning, but you can start today and make a new ending.”

Through my school experience, my husband is actually learning some things. I’m too nervous and paranoid to hand in my papers without them first being proof read. Who better to do that then my articulate husband who is practically a walking dictionary and grammar corrector. So, he’s learned about UNIX now, and a brief history of the Windows operating system.

I had a great call this morning, and it being a Monday I halfway expected it.

Idiot of the day: Hi, one of my supervisors is having problems with their email

Me: What is your supervisors name?

Idiot of the day: I’m not sure which one, I just know it’s one of them.

Me: Do you think you can find out this information and give me a call back?

Idiot of the day: (long sigh) I guess

I hope I didn’t make his day too difficult by getting his supervisors name.

I’m here at work till 8 tonight, or there-abouts. I’m going to try and sneak in some homework if I can tonight while it’s slow.

It was a long weekend since I had to work. Today our new guys were supposed to take over the job of manning the phones, but when I just tried making some test calls no one is picking up the phone. So, after took the phones back and send out a “who has the phone” email, I quietly thought to myself, not only will I have a day and a half off, but I’ll have two days off. This will give me a 4 day weekend.

:: blink blink ::

What is it about people and responsibility? The new guy knows that the phone can’t be ignored. We’ve already had one new guy go to lunch and not come back, is that the same thing that just happened now? When was it ok for people to not take responsibility for their actions? Unreal, and completely unprofessional.

I’ve been busy doing homework today. My UNIX class is so much fun, mostly because I can write up papers pretty fast since I know so much about UNIX.

One more 3 page paper to write before 1am….then I need to get Friday’s assignments started since Tom is coming this weekend. So much to do, so little time.

Ugh, I feel for the people in Jamaica right now. Lucky my sis is in Kentucky as of yesterday (her bday no less) so she got out just in time. I couldn’t imagine if she was in Jamaica right now. I would be worried sick. I’m already worried sick for her folks, and her friend DJ and and … ugh. I don’t know how she was able to make it through me going through Hurricane Wilma by myself. I’ve been watching The Weather Channel all morning with the latest on Hurricane Dean.

Keep yourself safe Jamaica!!!!

I keep thinking if I get enough energy drinks and coffee in me I’ll wake up. :: yawn ::

So, Awesome HR lady came into our office here to ask us how we were being compensated for weekends. We just told Awesome HR lady how it really was. We work a 48 hour straight shift on the weekends and either 1) get 10 hours of overtime pay, or 2) one day off the following week. Awesome HR lady asked me how long I’ve been doing that. I told her the last 2 years I’ve been here. Guess what? That was direction violation of work compensation. Never should I have been allowed to work more then 40 hours a week. I don’t know how to feel about any of this. Like a complete fool for putting up with it, or relieved that someone is actually listening to us now and won’t let us get taken advantage of. Awesome HR lady said there would be big changes in regards to that coming soon.

Guess what? I’m finally awake

I’m using Safari (Windows version) exclusively today. I haven’t really tried it out yet, being too busy with everything I’m too busy with. So far it’s working pretty good, except for a few things here and there. One thing I noticed right away is if you have gmail open, the tab usually shows how many you have unread in your inbox. Well, it only shows how many you have unread in your inbox when you first open the tab, it doesn’t update that number if you have gone through and read some of those new emails. That’s it so far. I can log into my class portal ok, and I can watch CNN video’s …. I haven’t tried much else yet.

I finally, finally finally finally finished Harry Potter - The Deathly Hallows. Am I the slowest reader ever? Well, no … not really. See, this is my problem when it comes to books. I’m a fast reader, and I love to read. The problem is, I usually read my books right before bed, so I now associate reading with sleeping. Anytime I pick up a book, no matter what time of day it is, I will fall asleep. Lately I have noticed how much of a huge problem it is. I don’t like it. My sis is just the opposite. When she reads, she becomes more awake. Now I have to figure out how to reverse this problem.

I don’t know how many of you watch “Ghost Hunters” on TV, but my husband and I find it interesting and sometimes humorous. When I went home for lunch today, we watched an episode he DVR’d about the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. Right away, I was excited because I’ve stayed in that hotel numerous times on different occasions. When I saw what Ghost Hunters (otherwise known on the show as TAPS) went through and their experience I recalled that I had similar memories of the place. For instance, in the middle of the night I would hear running down the hall, not adult sized people but it sounded more like kids, when at 2-3 in the morning I wouldn’t expect kids to be up. The Stanley Hotel had many hotel guests complain about that, but there weren’t actually any kids out in the hall so it went on unexplained.

Last night I had a guild run through Gruul’s Lair. Well, through some trial and error, we killed Gruul, everyone was happy and jumping all around and laughing and dancing. Then, something happened that I’ve only seen happen on YouTube and to other guilds. We had a new warlock that just joined the guild not too long ago walk up to Gruul and loot, EVERYTHING. Next thing I hear on vent was WHAT THE FUCK?!?!? I’m still confused as to what was going on, until I saw that warlock picked up not only the Tier 4 pants I was hoping for, but all the other items as well. A nasty blacklist thread went up over at the WoW forums. Screenshot or it didn’t happen right? Right .. here’s the screenshot. People can be such jerks.

Trying to fit 8 people in a very small, hardly ventilated area isn’t fun and results in panic attacks. So, I have a new temporary spot in the temporary main office. I’m sure tired of this office moving. I feel so scattered, more then usual. I haven’t even had a chance to set up my desktop PC yet, because what’s the point? I set it up only to move it again. When I went into the room where the new guys are, I saw that one of them was using my PC as their PC. Um, right. My boss has a habit of giving my stuff away … and he gets so defensive when I tease him about it (mostly because it’s been true in more cases then not)

Anyway, we’re supposed to be in our new office in 2-4 weeks. That means that we’ll have windows, our cell phones will work in the building, and I can finally unpack my boxes of stuff. Unpacking. It’s really such a great thing.

Today I turn in my last assignment for Web Portfolio Publishing. My next classes don’t start until the 22nd of August so I have a small little break. Next quarter I’ll be taking two classes instead of one. I have a strong feeling this will be cutting into my WoW time. Well, if that happens, it happens. I’m burnt out on healing anyway, and I haven’t been quiet about that fact. I’m dying to go shadow …. but, the guild officers say “noooooooooo” … sigh. Pffttttttt.

Brendan got his birthday present last night. After the unboxing, I was convinced that I’m going to sell off my PC and get an iMac. This sucker is so nice …

As I was walking through my office, more then half the people had some flavor of iPod, with apple ear buds in their ears. Nice.

Through extreme insomnia, end of class projects, work and WoW, I haven’t had time to catch up with the blogging world. I need to work on my time management a little more.

I’m still getting A’s on all my school assignments and pulling a 4.0 GPA. This is surprising for me, because I tend to get lazy a lot with homework. I never did homework in high school. I didn’t much like homework … I had the mindset that if I was at school I’d do school work then. I didn’t want it following me home. It’s amazing how things change. I’m actually excited to complete my homework and get it handed in on time, even if I sometimes procrastinate till the last second. Thing is, the class I’m taking now is cake. It’s “Web Portfolio Publishing” … not much of my brain matter has to be woken up to pull out great projects and papers on the subject. Things will soon be changing, because at the end of the month I’ll be taking two classes at once instead of one. Two classes is considered full time. Oy. So, that will be less time out of my schedule. I will adapt ..

Good things happening at work. We just brought on 2 more support guys, and 2 more are starting Monday. Brian and I have been told we don’t have to answer phones anymore, all the new guys will have to answer and we’ll help them work through and troubleshoot issues as a cross-training deal. It will also give me more time to work on other projects I’m not able to get done in a timely manner due to the constant phone interruption.  The only problem is we 6 people crammed into this storage closet. With 2 new people starting Monday, that means we’ll have 8 people crammed in here. We’re supposed to be moving to a different building at the end of the month, but it’s going to be more the claustrophobic until then. I’m really going to push for working at home, at least until we move to the new office.

The best thing about leaving the office is my drive home. I thought I would video tape it last night …. I never tried Windows Movie Maker .. and gave it a try. That’s some fun stuff! Now I want to record a lot of video and edit the shit out of it. Anyway, here it is…

A quote Mom sent me today … she’s right on target with this one.

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” - Dr. Seuss

Thanks Mom … Thanks Dr. Seuss

Cam said it perfectly, once again. We share this together, we’re both “the only child” and I couldn’t have said it as perfectly as she did. Go take a read of her entry called “The Only Child” …

I have so much I want to say about that, but I’m seriously lacking for time at the moment.