The Bipolar Otaku

Now that I can see my search hits again, I can now tell you that my most frequently hit search is for "Seroquil". Sorry, can't tell you much except for that it seems to work for me. Also, I still get some stray hits for information on MIRTs or Opticon systems, even for the specific frequency of those systems. I still also get people looking for BitTorrents and other free downloads (mostly anime, but not all).

Other interesting ones were:
- "haibane dreistul discussion forum" which, unfortunately, got deleted from Anime Planet's forum because it was too old of a thread.
- "what kind of fish is dorie? finding nemo" and I don't know.
- "catholic chruch teaching on credit card debt"... um, I'm sure there are better source for that information than the Catholic Church.
- "why do i pace?"... Sorry, you gotta figure that out for yourself.
- "refridgerate tart warmers"... no clue what that is supposed to do.

And lastly, it seems my archives are much more frequently searched than my new posts. That might have something to do with me clearing out the manic shoppoing list, but who knows.

I was listening to a Simon & Garfunkel Greatest Hits album on the way out here. I couldn't get enough of the song Homeward Bound [lyrics].

The irony is that it's not that I want to go back to Troy. Actually I'm excited about being out here. But I do want to go to my new home more than anything.

- Strip malls aren't just for stores and offices. They may also have police stations and churchs.
- Construction cones are orange and black instead of orange and white, and they are much narrower, maybe 1/3 the width. But the truly amazing thing about traffic cones here in Brampton that you don't see in Michigan is what's behind them: people working!
- Redheads. It just seems like I've seen an unusually high number of redheads in the past two days. 4 working at Outback last night, 3 working at Baton Rouge during lunch, 4 working at Ikea, and about a dozen in downtown while I was doing a driving tour of Toronto.
- More stores: Indigo's instead of Borders, Future Shop instead of Best Buy, Roger's Video instead of Blockbuster... But overall it looks like the American stores are trying to make a new presence. In other words, Best Buy, Blockbuster, Home Depot, and a number of other US retail stores have built stores in the newest strip mall.
- Taxis have a special flashing light on the front and back, which allows the driver to ask other drivers to call the police for them, in case of some kind of hold-up or something.
- Esso (not Mobile) Speed Passes at the gas pump.
- Instead of dollar stores, they are "Dollar or two" stores.
- Artificial sugar packets expressly say "Use only if directed by a doctor." Geez, you might as well make a prescription for Nutrisweet...

The more I look, the more I find that this place is like Metro Detroit, but different...

- While you're on the 401 and doing 20 over, the police will pull up behind and tailgate you... but they won't pull you over, they just want you to know you're going to slow.
- All the reports of the cleanliness of Canada are over-done. Just as trashed as you would expect from, hmm... Farmington Hills, maybe.
- The store names are different, but they are still the same. Lowe's become Rona's. Barnes and Noble becomes Chapters. Google becomes Google Canada. K-Mart becomes Canadian Tire. Go figure.
- Staples and OfficeDepot? Nope, just Staples/BusinessDepot.
- New York Fries???
- A&P was never bought out by Farmer Jack. Not only is it open 24 hours, it's also on the second floor of the mall. In the food court of all places.
- Tuna in cans is plentyful. Tuna in packets is almost non-existant.
- All Detroit pizza places want to be Chicago style. Brampton pizza places? Boston.
- ATMs still exist, but no one seems to think drive-up ATMs would be useful, thus they are almost non-existant too.
- Sidewalks still exist on the sides of major roads, but the major diference is that people actually walk on them much of the time.
- Public busses are just as empty, but there are a hell of a lot more of them.
- There are taxis. They were driving what appeared to be sober people.
- Elections appear to be 5 months early.

I'm sure there was more, but I can't remember any more right now.

I went to church today. Last week was supposed to be Fr. Ken's last mass, but today, it seems, was his *last* last mass. But I missed last week, since I decided to work, so it was good thatt I got to see him one last time, for one last homily here at this church. I may visit him one Sunday a few months from now at his new church; we'll see.

But the homily was about discipleship. The 1st reading and the gospel were about people called to be disciples, but turned back and said they wanted to do one last thing before they go and follow the Lord, and how that made them unfit for the Kingom of Heaven. Kind of like how I wanted to work last Sunday to earn that extra $550 (before taxes) to make all the things I want to buy for my house just a little more affordable? Dedication? Commitment? A Jedi wants not those things... Wait, I think I've got that all wrong.

Perhaps I should be more ashamed that I spent a good portion of the mass contemplating how cute the girl in the row ahead of me was. Or perhaps that I haven't the balls to try to ask someone like her out.

In any caase, I still want to get more involved in the youth ministry program. I'll have to make some phone calls once I'm back in town. Also, I didn't realize they were doing the teen masses through the summer, otherwise I would have gone to that instead of the noon mass today. Guess I should have checked the calendar. Now I know (and knowing is half the battle...)

I've already got my basic pots and pans, which I paid about $450 for the 10 piece set (Calphalon One's - pretty nice). So next I've been looking for a good set of knives. I've been eyeing J.A. Henckels and Wüsthof, two pretty good German knife makers, and they have 15-26 piece block sets for $500-$1200. But I have wanted Japanese style knives, and I found one article that suggested Masamoto. Check out these knives! A mere $2900 for a "sashimi and sushi" knife! I guess I don't have expensive tastes after all...

Well, I'm not going to Toronto tomorrow. I had everything in place and I was all set to start driving tomorrow morning. But then I get a call at 4pm saying that I'm not needed there until Monday. I was looking forward to it... I've been doing way too much nothing here. Arggg... This is now the second time they've pushed me back... much longer, and they might as well not send me at all.

Yeah, a whole lot of nothing happened for the rest of the morning. It went alright, though, completely without incident. Luckily I had to run up to the tech center in the afternoon to have a wireless card installed in my work laptop; that took the rest of the afternoon.

And I got a Diet Slurpee, so that was good too. While I have had a number of Slurpees recently, it no longer is the quasi-therapeutic treat that it used to be. Pity...

Anyway, last laundry run before I go. I also have to try to clean up a lot of my stuff that's lying around all over the house. Also, I have clean out my car a bit because I'm leaving it in the shop while I'm gone. Yeah, my car has had it's Check Engine light on for several weeks now, but I decided I *had* to turn it in because the CD changer got jammed; gotta love my sense of priority!

its tuesday 10am. I wish my boss sent me out of town
yesterday, like originally planned. Instead i wander
aimlessly for something to do, but theres nothing.
Still, i have to be here tomorrow too. There kind of
conditions make me think i might become emotionally
self-abusive. Not yet, though. Not ever again, i hope.

its tuesday 10am. I wish my boss sent me out of town
yesterday, like originally planned. Instead i wander
aimlessly for something to do, but theres nothing.
Still, i have to be here tomorrow too. There kind of
conditions make me think i might become emotionally
self-abusive. Not yet, though. Not ever again, i hope.

After SiteMeter crashed, I kind of missed having a site tracker that would tell me all of the stupid search engine links that I was picking up, so I found a new one - StatCounter.com. So, on with the flood of hits...

I just finished Winter's Heart, Book 9 of the Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Yeah, after I read book 8, I did swear that I would never read another of his books until he finished the series. Well, he hasn't finished the series, though he has published book 10 and the 1st of 3 prequels.

I am glad to say that he appears to be back on track. After I read book 8, I thought it seemed evident he had a really bad case of writer's block and his publishers decided to publish a half-written book with a very big epilouge. And when I started book 9, his very big prologue made me think it would get no better. Worse, once I finally got into the main part of the book, it had been such a long time since I read books 1-8 that I could barely remember who all the secondary characters (particular nobles, Aes Sedai, and Asha'man) were, what most of the artifacts did, and the tiny little details of what has happened so far. Plus, during parts of it, I kept thinking "I read this part already, didn't I?" And trying to pick up clues of what I should already know is difficult, since he usually doesn't remind you until 200 pages after his first mention of it (like Far Madding being One Source-free, for example).

Well, whatever. In any case, I guess I should wait a bit before I read book 10, probably just long enough so I can remember little bit from this book.

Man, what a busy day... First, I had to work (I actually made it to work on time!). Then I had to help my sister clean the gutters and install gutter guards (I had to do the second story since she wussed out). Then I ran up my credit card at the Great Indoors outlet closing sale. Then I picked up a pizza (I gotta start back on my diet tomorrow, and I mean it!). Then I started boxing and packing stuff that I'll be moving to my new house into the garage. Now... I'm pooped.

I gotta work tomorrow too. It'll be another fun filled day, I'm sure...

i finally met the sellers, too. The wanted a house
closer to his work, which is in Troy. They found one.
Guess where! Its in my moms subdivision, less than a
half mile from her house...

i cant decide if i just earned $6500 or if i just went
$247500 in debt. But either way, im now a homeowner! Yay-ness!!!

I close on the house at 3pm. Then, I will have finally sealed the $262,500 deal. Two hundred sixty-two thousand five hundred dollars... More than a quarter million bucks... And I thought I was in debt before. I guess this probably gives me my first real pair of golden handcuffs; now I have to work the rest of my life to pay it off. And I start the process by writing a check for $17,076.95, which will be the largest single check I've ever written. On the other hand, my colleauges bought their cars with checks larger than that.

I wish taxes didn't take so much out; if I could funnel my entire paycheck to paying off my house, I could have it paid off in less than 2 years. But thanks to the democrats, I've got about 40% of my paycheck going to taxes. But now I get to use my house to shelter a little bit more of my paycheck; with all the deductions for mortgage interest and donations and such, I'll finally be able to have something bigger than the standard deduction.

But going through the paperwork was kind of interesting. I now know that the previous owner had a mortgage of $192,000 (80% of their buying cost, which is no surprise). The surprsing thing is that they still owe over $191,500... so in their 10 months of living there, they have paid off less than $500 of the principle! By comparison, I'll be paying more than $500 of principle a month... I can only guess that they took an interest only loan and were planning on paying more once they were further along in their home improvements. Ah, whatever...

And now that I'm moving out east of here, my sister is saying I have to find a house off to the west, closer to Livonia. She wants to hook me up with some girl from work. Seeing as she usually knows enought not to try to set me up, maybe it'll be a good thing. Except the moving west thing; I can't afford that yet... maybe after a few years, I'll be able to sell this house at enough of a profit to think about Bloomfield Hills or something... Eh, I think I'm thinking things a little to far ahead; I haven't met the girl yet.

Anyway, I should get some sleep. Busy day tomorrow.

Well, the next time I get to see my house, I'm going to have the actual keys. Until then, all I get is this one last time to walk around and make sure they left the house in the same condition in which I bid upon it. Everything seemed to be in order, except maybe that they took changed the mirror in the first-floor bathroom from one mirror that I really disliked to one that I will have to just dislike. I think I can let it slide.

But as far as seeing the house again, it served as a reminder that it has been a long time since I last saw the inside. The rooms aren't quite as big as they seemed to be last time. Like with the couches I've already ordered, I'm not sure if they'll leave room for a coffee table, and I'm not sure. any more, how I was going to arrange them to face the TV in the place I planned to put it. The room now seems to scream for a huge plasma screen, though before I was sure a rear projection could have worked. Can anyone say cha-ching?

So last week I had to be at work by 7am. This week I have to be at work by 3pm. Next week I have to be at work by 6am. The week following, I have to be at work by 6pm. And the week after that, I have to be at work by 3pm again. This is really going to suck.

I hate my voice. Its soft and wheezy and hard to hear.
Its high pitched and squeaky and annoying to listen
to. Its poorly annunciated and hard to understand.
Sometimes I can talk louder, sometimes I can talk
deeper, sometimes I can speak clearly, but its really
hard, even causes asthma, panic attacks,and mental
shutdowns sometimes. But theres nothing that can be
done, is there? Pity... Guess Ill just keep my mouth
closed...

There's this contractor at work... he has been working on this line from the initial design phases all the way to debug, where we are today. And he got kicked off a couple weeks ago because he has been getting more and more uncooperative. He seems to be a fairly intelligent person, but once he's made his mind up on how it should run, every other option becomes ludicrous or impossible.

So they threw me to fill in where he left off, and of course I immediately started making changes: wherever our standards don't specify what to do, I go by whatever make sense for the people working on the line. I've been intending on adding fault messages to pinpoint certain high-failure areas, making some sections of logic significant more streamlined, reversing colors on indicators when it made sense to do so, allowing certain portions to run asynchronous to the line when it made sense... things were working when we were running metal earlier in the week. With some portions of the line people were significantly happier.

But I'm not going to be there anymore next week, so they pulled him back in yesterday.

I think he realizes that he's going to have to swallow his pride on a number of things. But someone made one more request today. There's a feature that allows them to take a completed part off a side conveyor, and that feature allows ask for a type A or a type B, but if you request the opposite one at the same time, it cancels it. They want to be able to request a type A AND a type B, and give them that one part at a time. But it's impossible, it could never work like that. So I tried to explain how it would be quite easy to make it happen. It's ludicrous! But it's really easy to just change to make it work like that... He challenged me to do it. It will take me a little more time than I had available today, but I could do it... and in this discussion, he of course got more and more pissed off. But I kept driving it... I was so sure I could just open his eyes by explaining it... then he finally got to the point that he was really trying to make: he wrote it once, there's no way in hell he's going to write it again.

But I do have to say, even though I'm normally a very non-argumentative person... watching him get all riled up... that was fun!

adopt your own virtual pet!

oh, and a quiz too.


Furnulum pani nolo.
"I don't want a toaster."
Generally, things (like this quiz) tend to tick you
off. You have contemplated doing grievous
bodily harm to door-to-door salesmen.


Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Oddly enough, despite the fact that I have no intention of buying bread, I do have every intent on buying a good toaster.

I had another appointment with my psychiatrist today. I gave her the scoop about my house, about my work, and about life in general. As I talked about all of it, it seemed to me that things have been pretty stable. Even though I made some mistakes over Memorial Day weekend,, even that seemed to balance off pretty well afterward. And all the shopping around that I've been doing even impressed her as quite rational (although, I must admit that I didn't tell her just how high the total was on my list). As I talked, I didn't really remember any downturns, though I know I had a couple of minor dips. Also, she remarked about how good I look now that I've lost all this weight.

And then, of course, since every thing else seems to be going well with my life, she asked if I've had any romantic interests. I kind of played it off like I always do, that I'm happily single, that being single makes it possible to afford the things I want, that I haven't been looking, that I haven't been compelled to look, yatta yatta yatta. For the most part, I believe all that, anyway. But then she told me "Well, your days are numbered". Well, yeah, didn't I say that last week? But I was talking about my days left of working on day shift. She meant that one of these days, I will, even without looking, find someone that I will fall in love with, and that my carefree days of bachelorhood would come to an abrupt end. Of course I continued to play this off by recalling some friends' advice about buying all my toys now, before I meet someone.

So, I guess I must consider myself warned, that my days are indeed numbered, and probably in more ways than I've considered.

Originally, today was set aside to put my sister's dog to sleep. We didn't get the opportunity to do that, but I still took the day off and so did my sister. So I spent the day sleeping in, watching Harry Potter 3, shopping in Rochester Hills, driving to Madison Heights to pay my insurrance, driving to Yale for a wake, driving to Shelby for an impromptu cook out, and finally driving back home. Plus, talking with one of my old co-workers who is going through a divorce and driving around trying to find (successfully) and pickup (unsuccessfully) my sister-in-law who decided to walk home after an arguement I didn't want to get involved in. Here are various thoughts through the day:

- The new director made it a special point to make sure he showed one specific thing about the kids: that they are kids, not just students.

- While standing over the body, the only thing I could think was: Go find my dad. He'd love to play a game of golf with you.

- I should look into the legalities about foreign investment accounts where I can squirrel away money for a rainy day.

- I hope my brother and his wife are okay, individually and as a couple.

- Eating a hamburger out of a couple of hot dog buns works, but is kind of a pain.

- I should just admit that my diet is going to be screwed until I get back on afternoon shift.

- I should just admit that I'd be better off not getting any sleep tonight unless I want to be late for work tomorrow.

- I really really really really want to move into my house right now.

- Even if I moved into my house right now, I probably won't get a chance to "live" in it for quite some time.

I mean that literally. I have 6 more days now, and
then another 7 days later this month. Then it looks
like Ill be back on afternoons and evenings, both here
in town and out in Toronto. Itll probably be like this
well into August, or maybe even October... It might
make it easier to receive deliveries for my house...
Hope somoe usefulness comes out of it...

My sister's dog passed away today. It looked like a heart attack; it looked almost exactly like when my dad passed away... Except that the dog pissed on me while I carried him back in.


We dug a grave for him in the back yard and buried him in a blanket.

This past weekend, on a golf course in St. Louis, a friend of mine that I used to work with had a heart attack. He passed away this morning. In my old job, he was a customer of mine, probably the first one I had to deal with. He was the one who helped me pushed the issue to help me get a company car out of my old boss. He was supposed the retire by now. At least he had his heart attack while doing something he liked...