Category: Deep Thoughts

No Matter What

I will achieve a degree.

Starting school again has become a mini-series of drama in itself.  My past has finally caught up with me to make it hard to go to school.

I started going to Ivy Tech State College in the fall of 1999.  Here it is the beginning of the spring 2009 semester and I have only attained 3 credits towards a degree.

The reasons why are various and run the gamut.  The main reason why is because of opportunity.  Whether it be a job, or just a reason to leave.  I was sure to find it, and find it quick.

This is the 4th and last time I am enrolling in a particular math course, MAT050 – Basic Algebra.  If memory serves me correctly, this course wasn’t hard – but engaging the last time I took it.  This time, it’s almost an insult to my intelligence.  Our first homework assignment – adding negative numbers.  This course is so easy that you have to want to fail, just to fail.

School was never a good time for me, but the good time that I did have was while in high school.  I took my math courses at IU, the county school systems did not offer calculus or finite yet.  But since I never used those tools, they have been lost just like an angel’s share of whiskey.

This is where the drama comes in.  Since I have enrolled and withdrawn as many times as I have, I am on what’s called Financial Aid Termination.  Meaning I cannot receive financial aid, and since our household income is above some imaginary number that only changes when you ask for help, the state will not help either.

So this time, it has to come out of our pockets directly.  But there are specifics, I must take at least 6 credit hours (2 classes) and get a grade of C or better in both courses.  If not, I will still be on “termination.”  If I achieve this I will be switched to Financial Aid Probation because I have shown the college that I am trying.

I am also appealing this decision regarding financial aid.  This process includes counseling with an academic advisor, a letter to the college explaining all withdrawals and F grades.  Also giving reasons as to why this should be appealed.

Even after through all of this, I still want to go.

No matter what I will attain a degree, and the sooner the better.

Another Mish-Mosh

There have been many things going on lately.  With the holiday season and new years over, I’m reflecting on all the activities we’ve been pre-occupied with.

Christmas, as always is a very complicated time for us.  We went to 3 family events, my grandma Lawmaster’s on the 23rd, my in-law’s on the 24th and my memma’s on Christmas day.  We then had “after” Christmas get togethers for my daughter, who spent her Christmas with her mother.

Rachel and I finally stopped schmoozing off of my mother for our cell phone service and got our own plan.  We decided to switch back to AT&T, due to a 12% IU discount, and cheaper plan.  I finally got a smart-phone, a Samsung Blackjack II while Rachel decided she liked a red LG Shine.  It was very interesting to go through this process again.  We haven’t been officially on a cell phone plan for 4 years.  While researching how much this would cost us upfront, the difference in how much and where was astounding.

On the AT&T Premier website (dedicated to business & enterprise):  For the mentioned phones, we were looking at about $325.00 in up front costs.  We would receive a $50 mail in rebate in the form of a debit card.

For the same phones at Best Buy, $50!  I’m not kidding.  I was blown away.  The only difference is that we had to set up our IU discount separately, which just took a phone call.

We painted our bedroom finally, it’s a nice yellow hue.  When mentioning it to people I tell them that the color is what you would get if you mixed yellow and brown mustard.  It looks real nice, now onto the curtains.  Hopefully they will be nice.

I will be starting school next week.  I am entering the CIT (computer information technology) program at Ivy Tech.  Within a few years, I should have a degree in a field I love, which can hopefully help me attain some real employment.

Ban the Ban

Today on the Herald-Times website there has been a serious discussion regarding IU’s smoking ban which went into effect last January.  It started with a reporter searching the campus for smokers and placing updates on their website, she then spoke with administrators and wrote a full article.

The ban has not been enforced in any way, and as a smoker it bothers me on fundamental levels.  As an employee I could be terminated for violating this policy (which I try very carefully not to), while students face very slight (if any) consequences.

In my opinion, this smoking ban is going to be just like the ban on alcohol on IU’s campus, not spoken about.  I was blown away to actually find out that alcohol is actually permitted on campus for university events if students or others under the age of 21 are not going to be in attendance.

The online discussion on the Herald-Times website opened my eyes up to a few things that I hadn’t known before, and I thought I would pass those along to everyone out there.

All of these “smoking bans” that we see today can trace their roots back to 1930’s Germany.  Read here for more information.  It’s really shocking to me, and confirms my ideas about the subject since day one.

Did you know that over a lifetime, medical costs for obese and average people are more than that of smokers?  Read here for the article.  This information “threw a bucket of cold water” into what everyone thought.  I’m a firm believer that we have been sold on the idea that smoking is “more” unhealthy than it really is.  I’m not trying to say that there are no health risks – I’m just saying as a country I think we’ve been duped.

These two articles really opened my eyes regarding this issue that has been raging in this town for almost 15 years now.

I have been a smoker for more than half of my 28 years on this earth.  I know it’s not the healthiest of things to do, but I do it anyway.  I’ve taken chantix, nicoderm and the commit lozenges to try to quit.  The reason I have not succeeded in quitting is because smoking is part of who I am.  Without it I do not feel like myself, while that is “normal,” I don’t like feeling that way.

While I know it is a chemical addiction just like drugs and alcohol are, that does not bother me.  I have other addictions that I think are worse.  To name one, it’s my endless addiction to technology.

That’s a whole other story that I’ll leave for another time.

Scanning The Past

In the 90’s I was a big country music fan.  My love of this particular genre of music brought me to a vicarious situation in 1998.

My girlfriend at the time and I went to see Garth Brooks at Freedom Hall in Louisville, KY.  We got the tickets extremely cheap ($36 each).  They were almost the best seats in the house, 3rd row center.  If it weren’t for the drunk girl in front of us who lost her bladder control and the crazy guy with his extremely large cowboy hat, I think it would have been an amazing concert.

But the story only begins here.  While leaving the concert that night, I had a seizure while trying to merge into another lane of traffic to leave the parking lot.  Most of what I remember after that is quite hazy to this day.  I do remember several specific things though.  I came to in an ambulance in the parking lot, after leaving an area hospital we arrived by cab back to my truck.  I then had my unlicensed girlfriend drive us back home.

She didn’t know how to get back home, so I set her on a path and napped while I could.  When we got onto Highway 37 I told her to, “stay on this highway.”  Needless to say I woke up and saw Bedford Junior High School and she had a puzzled look on her face, not knowing where she was.

If you can imagine, this is the memory from just one night.  Imagine the memories I have held within the 500+ 35mm negatives I just finished scanning for my mother.  I recently asked her for the negatives and pictures from that night in question, as I have a blown up picture of the concert.  It is damaged and I want to replace it, but with a good quality piece.

Instead of just giving me what I had asked for, she gave me everything she has.  My mother hasn’t made the switch to a digital camera yet, she prefers a disposable 35mm for now.

To some people what I’ve done is just a waste of time, but to me I’ve just preserved the memories of an awkward time of my life.  It covers a time span of about 3 years, 1994 – 1997.

Once I’m done cropping and restoring I’m going to burn these to a DVD for my mother to keep.  I’ll keep what I want and  upload them to flickr.

6 Weeks

For the last 6 weeks, my main computer has been broken.  In that time, I think I have spent a lot more time with my wife than normal.  It has been a good thing, but we do spend entirely way too much time together.

I finally got my computer fully running last night, and what a mess that has been.  Let me outline what happened:

My motherboard crapped out – cooling fans failed leaving too much heat inside the case, a few capacitors failed.

While in the shop; power supply failed – still under warranty, they had to send it to the manufacturer and wait for another to come in – this in itself took 4 weeks.

Main hard drive failed – When I finally got the computer back, my main drive with all music and pictures crapped out.  I couldn’t access it.  Took it in and they were able to recover the data.  The drive still works and is in use now.  Nobody knows what happened exactly.

Then starts the issues I had to deal with once I got the machine back:

This new motherboard an ASUS model A8V-X would not recognize one set of IDE devices I had connected.  No matter which port.  I finally found out that both items were jumper-ed to be master devices, moving the jumpers to “cable select” fixed this issue.

My SATA drive, which is 500gigs seemed to be invisible to this system.  It would recognize it in the BIOS, but not in Windows.  When I looked further I saw that many people have had this same problem with ASUS motherboards.

It seems that ASUS has taken the cheap approach to using new technologies.  There is no SATA controller, it has been combined into the IDE controller.  The BIOS sees all SATA devices as IDE devices.  If you’re trying to use a SATA-II device, you’re out of luck.  This is what I was originally trying to do, and the system would hang at boot and if I enabled it in Windows, the system would freeze.

All documentation states that this is SATA-II compatible, but it isn’t.  I had to “jumper” the drive to change it to a SATA-I device.

Needless to say, I’m never buying an ASUS product again.  The only reason I strayed from Gigabyte, who made the motherboards on every computer I’ve had is because I couldn’t get another one for my AMD socket 939 processor.

I have one other problem to contend with, I’m getting some sort of interference in my sound card.  It comes out whenever my processor is performing tasks.  A minor problem, but still it’s an issue.

I have been working diligently to get everything back on my computer, but it will take me some time (about a week) to get everything back to the way it used to be.

Happy 200th! Not.

On a weird statistical note, this is my 200th post to this blog.  I really thought I had written more than that, but not.

The troubling part is the reason why I’m writing this entry.  Rachel and I have been trying to be closer, as we’ve been going through a spell where we are more like roomies than spouses.  It’s really bugged me, and I think it has bugged her too.  We have made some strides in our relationship, but as my dad famously says “almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”

I’ve been having some serious problems in the intimate department of our relationship.  It’s not that I don’t desire my wife anymore, I just can’t perform.  Basically at all.  It makes it hard to be close (in that way) when you know you don’t even have a chance to perform the duties you were designed to do.

I had my yearly appointment with my neurologist this week and I asked him several questions about possible side effects of the two anti-convulsant medications I take, Keppra and Carbatrol.  He told me that those two medications do indeed have sexual side effects and almost instantly offered to prescribe me my pick of something for “ED.”

It was almost like a knee-jerk reaction, and it kind of scared me.  I guess his adrenaline levels finally got in check and he ordered some labs for me.  Mainly my testosterone and thyroid levels.

I found out today that my testosterone levels are, “extremely low for a person of my age” according to my neurologist.  This has put me into a tailspin of feelings and emotions regarding my health.

Should a otherwise healthy 28 year old be taking Viagra?  It’s excluded by my insurance, which makes it almost non reachable financially.  I called the pharmacy to see what the cost of this would be, $144 for 12 pills.  With all of lifes’ expenses, this is one we can do without.

I then called to make an appointment with my General Physician, Dr. Bannec.  He’s a great guy, and I’ve seen him since I was 17.  Hopefully he knows of or can find a better financially suited treatment for me than these $12 a shot “happy pills.”

I’m not complaining about my neurologist as this isn’t really his field.  I’m actually happy he ordered the lab work so we could find the root of the problem.

I just hope life, especially my intimate life can get back to normal as soon as possible.

Squeeky Clean

This weekend Rachel and I cleaned our vehicles.  The weather was beautiful, and the vehicles were begging for it.

As a teenager I detailed various automobiles professionally for Royal on the Eastside.  The highlight of my career was when I detailed Bobby Knight’s car.  The exciting part was delivering the keys to him.  I had to interrupt an IU basketball practice session.

Back to the point.  Neither of us had waxed our vehicles for at least 3 years, and it was really showing.  I used to be very anal about the amount of wax (minimum of 2 coats).  I would spend a few hours every weekend maintaining the appearance of my ride.

As you can see, my truck has a big problem on the hood.  It’s a common problem with GM vehicles actually.  All in all I think it still shines pretty good for an 11 year old vehicle.

Rachel’s little Rio is clean and happy.  This car takes the brunt of our transportation needs.  Since we carpool, we take her car.  It gets great gas mileage, and you can put that car just about anywhere!  We’ve been talking recently about trading the Rio in on something more suited for our needs.

I plan on keeping my truck until it’s wheels fall off.  It’s good to have “the old standby” around, just in case you need a second vehicle.  Plus it helps with some of the hauling tasks required of a homeowner.

While my truck isn’t the most eco-friendly vehicle, it is only driven an average of 8k miles a year.  It also helps with getting around in the sometimes treacherous winters.

Deflated

Today the RCA Dome, better known to all as the Hoosier Dome was deflated.

This was done to assist in demolition, as it has been replaced by Lucas Oil Stadium (In the background).  The space occupied by the RCA dome will become yet another expansion of the Indiana Convention Center.

Many memories were made in the dome, but no more will be made there.  Rachel and I purchased a piece of that roof as a keepsake.  I highly recommend to buy one yourself if you have any fond memories of the dome.

I took this panorama picture the last time we visited the dome during ISSMA marching band finals.  We were there to see my niece Sabrina play the clarinet for Forest Park.

To get a better grasp of the scale, look at the 1/2 size version here.  I had to make the picture that much smaller just to fit within flickr’s size limitation.

Back in the day, J&B on the ROX did an episode based on the changing of the dome’s name.  It’s called “The RCA State” and definitely good viewing.

These are the changes I don’t really like to see.  I still miss Market Square Arena.

In these times, I’m really starting to hate corporate sponsorship of whats seems to be everything under the sun.  Can you believe that the Verizon Wireless Music Center’s (formerly Deer Creek) box office is sponsored by Taco Bell? 

Cha Cha Cha Changes

Many changes are in the works right now.  Like many Americans, the economy has affected the bottom line of our wallets.  It has been over a year since I’ve had a full time position, and it seems to me like I’m starting to be pigeon-holed.

I’m going back to Ivy-Tech, for the 5th time, I believe.  I plan on starting the spring semester of ’09.  For a while it’s going to be general courses.  I think my best bet is to get a degree in a technology field, such as CIS, or computer networking – the same degree my father has.

I don’t really want to go back, but it seems like I need to just to obtain real employment around here.  The other plus, the FSSA will pay for all expenses through the Vocation Rehabilitation program.  So I won’t be out anything but my time.

I’m going to actually bring my business activities down to a lull while in school.  I will still provide my memory saving services to individuals who are seeking them.  I’m just not going to be working at it like I once did.  There is simply not enough time.

Life isn’t that fun anymore, and I don’t have much else to say except for this update.

 

My Neurotic Tendencies

I have a problem, which showed itself in a bad way last night.  I can’t help tinkering with computers.  I need help.

Rachel had a meeting with My Sisters Closet after work, so I was home by myself until about 8:30.  Because of the current issues with our main computer, we only have the laptop right now.  When we purchased the laptop it came with Windows Vista Home Basic pre-installed.  Neither of us had any experience with this new (at the time) operating system.

After a day or so of tinkering and trying to figure it out, Rachel decided that she wanted XP on it.  I was fine with this, as she was going to be the main user of the computer anyway.  I wiped the hard drive and put a clean install of XP Pro on it.  Not til later would I realize that doing this would void the warranty on the machine.

I went on a hunt for drivers for the many devices a new laptop has and came up short.  When I contacted dell for help, that is when I found out about a interesting clause.  If you downgrade the OS on a machine purchased from them, all support is rendered void.

At first I didn’t care at all.  Since issues have occurred with my other machine, I’ve become somewhat paranoid.  I wanted to get the computer reverted to it’s original state.  I contacted Dell again, and they sent me a set of discs that actually re-imaged the machine to it’s original factory state.

Rachel and I had talked about this, she was very hesitant about the change.  Since I have some experience with Vista under my belt now, I feel much more comfortable with it, if  you didn’t know it’s just XP of a different color.

When Rachel arrived home last night, I was about an hour away from finishing this changeover.  She was furious and actually made me think for a minute that she was packing up to move out or something.  Over the years I have done several things to computers that have hurt her.  I deleted (on accident) a majority of her papers for her masters degree and other various files that were important to her.

The sad part is that I do this with out even thinking about it, like it’s just a everyday sort of thing.  The whole time I was doing this, I thought she would be happy when she got home.

I was wrong.