return void;

ok so this weekend. we had plans to visit crystal’s uncle in dallas. but there’s one detail that causing a major problem. i have no way of getting to austin.

my 2 ideas as of right now. rent-a-car or greyhound. greyhound is definately cheaper, but i could drive the rent-a-car to dallas instead of crystal’s new car.

i should’ve been planning for my car’s death. i should’ve kept my mouth shut about the mazda and just dealt with the frame damage.

a friend read this blog and has offered a possible solution, but i need more details before i can rely on it. they offered to lend me an “not-at-all awesome” truck. still don’t know what that means, but its a possibility. of coarse there’s the problem of what happens if i get pulled over or get in an accident… maybe a contract can be drawn for temporary ownership. maybe i can just drive less and more paranoid on the road. who knows.

i hate not having a car. jacob commands more respect than i originally thought.

the day i’ve dreaded has finally occurred.

my car died on my last night. it seems a hose broke, my cooliant has leaked, and it overheats very quickly. it sounds minor, but i started smelling burning rubber when i run the heater to cool the engine. from what i’ve heard, that’s an indication of serious engine block problems. which means the car will not feasibly be fixable.

this means i have to buy a car… about a year earlier than i had hoped.

so the worse news. i dont have any actual money to put as a down payment, and it’s unlikely that i will not get much from trading it in, if my parents will even allow that. so because i’ll have to pay more a month, i can’t afford rent AND a car payment. thankfully my rent contract is up at the end of august. so my best ideas thus far is to live out of a suitcase for a couple months, or until i know exactly where i will be for a while.

i need to call some friends and ask if i can stay on their couch, otherwise, i will need to live out of a hotel/motel. it gets worse. i have to make this decision by the end of this month (all 3 remaining days).

the upside, i have a woman who loves me unconditionally and will be marrying in jan. i also still have my health (yet no health/life insurance).

crystal’s step dad tells this story about how his rock-bottom was using a tree branch as a christmas tree which held one broken bulb. his dinners consisted largely of raw macaroni. a co-worked told me his bottom was living in a friends garage. so it could be worse, but it could be a lot better.

im tired of not having enough money and im tired of not knowing where i will be. the last thing i need is this pressure. my dad is also calling to tell me i have to be in town this weekend so he can drop me off some stuff and pick up the junk heap. i had plans to go to dallas and don’t intend on changing them.

being a child was so much simplier.

ok so this is the last post concerning the coarse, unless something major happens for the final.

i finished the code, support for newlines, truecolor and greyscale, infinite sized messages, you name it.

you can find the code here.

in that same directory you’ll find some sample images there.

the code is about 467 lines long (give or take). you can find the writeup about the project here. that’s what i’ll be presenting to the class (they’re guidlines).

i also told ortiz about how my group has done basically nothing, and he recommended that i send an email and let them know that they have to pull their own weight on the rest of the project. this could mean that 2 people dont graduate this semester.

oh well serves em right for trying to ride my coat-tails.

sidenote: i just finished disc 4 of Band of Brothers, and it’s an EXCELLENT show, highly recommended that everyone check it out. but dont get depressed about things all that much, that’s the way things were. war is hell.

i did care about the first one, and it is very likely i wont care about the second one.  halo 2 seems to be generating tons of hype and hubub.

microsoft’s latest attempt to attract attention is working.  there is apparently an actual name and phone number attached to that so-called business, but no one has ever been actually talked to.

apparently its all a media thing.  there’s a blog associated to this honey seller.  its rumored to be a setup however.  how do i know this?  well, perhaps this proves interesting.  its a cafe press store for the website.  checking the description for this shirt you’ll see this:

Get Yours Before the end of the World Aug 24th

notice the date is the same as the bee website.  look to the left, and you’ll see this:

“The end of the World is upon us! I wont be selling these items after Aug 24th due to the BEE’s.”

maybe bungie is plannin something for the 24th, who knows, who cares…

so this weekend will be a busy one for me. bright and early sat. morning, we have to go pick up a crummy washer and dryer from an old friend of crystals (the one that gave me the entertainment center). i bribed my brother into helping haul it from the apartment, and then down to San Antonio.

then we have yet another wedding to attend, hopefully this one will be short. i doubt i’ll know anyone at the wedding, so it’ll be another one of those “hi, my name is” type of events.

then im gonna be a lil romantic, and take crystal out on a date. no details because she might be reading.

oh, not to mention she’s going to a sarah mclauchlan concert with perhaps the dullest and most depressing person i’ve ever met. that’ll give me some time to do some things that i’ve been pushing back, namely my ind. study final report and the stat-even feature in the stego project.

i also need to call dell. crystal sat up too fast when she had the laptop on her lap and it broke the battery charger where it plugged in. i need to get that replaced. a co-worker of mine (michele) very kindly let me borrow her charger, so i’ll re-copy some of my anime this weekend. gotta love that philips

2 more hours of work. then i get to park my car on the highway.

i just discovered something interesting…

i logged into stats.blogger.com. first i noticed i was finally gettin more hits:

SUMMARY STATS
Page views today: 10
This hour: 7
This week: 17
This month: 65

nifty, im finally getting some readers, albeit most of them are probably real life friends.

also, i checked one of the referrers, yahoo canada apparently has my websites (my blog and my personal website) listed as 4 of the top 6 results for “anti thought”. thats pretty damn cool. in fact, if you search for that under the US yahoo server, you’ll get the same results.

searching for the same string will not yield any results, however, “anti-thought” will land me a few top 10 positions. it will also lead you to this site. its a retarded, pseudo-intellectual rant that i read a long time ago, which inspired the name of my site|blog.

edit: abiword seems to add tons of html for copy|paste stuff, perhaps its finally time i try open office for real…