Missives From a Penitant

Youths these days

2008-01-04T04:13:27Z

None of my co-workers have even heard of Chernobyl. At all.

Test

2007-11-18T05:49:20Z

We are just a hedge. There is nothing to see here, move along, we are just a hedge.

A resumption of Previously Terminated Practices

2007-10-11T19:12:18Z

So, the exigencies of my life may have sucessfully changed.I may be able to resume my attendance at the Wednesday Ritual. There is of course an obvious question: "Does the Wednesday Ritual continue?" This I can not answer.

So, I turn to my friends list and ask.

booklegger @ 2007-08-09T16:06:00

2007-08-09T20:11:38Z

Fuck me. I just glanced over at the idiot next to me at the library, and she's typing out a letter to....

Dear Lord Jesus:

Yea, really. She even included her address at the opening of the letter.

The Value of Education

2007-07-16T19:50:51Z

This is why we go to school.

North Carolina, best state in the union.

2007-04-03T23:26:40Z

This is why I love North Carolina

booklegger @ 2006-09-06T20:45:00

2006-09-07T00:48:35Z

Joy. I have a 13 mile walk ahead of me. That's roughly 4 hours.

I might make it home by 1:00 AM

Note to self: check email more often.

booklegger @ 2006-08-08T16:08:00

2006-08-08T20:12:16Z

A letter I sent to my father. If anyone else out there thinks they can answer the listed questions, feel free.

Dear Dad,

I want your help understanding myself, and my current situation. Since you're genetically related to me, I think you might have some insight into some of these aspects of myself because you've seen facets of them in your own life and times.
    Why am I so afraid of asking for help?

    Why does my mother make less than 20k a year, but you don't pay alimony? (Yeah, I know, relentlesssly uncalled for cheap shot, but it's been weighing on my mind VERY heavily lately. Along with: )

    Why did you teach me so well to be as smart as I am, and then pay for just the one semester of college?

    In all fairness, why have I not gotten my act together to get back to college myself?

    Why didn't you MAKE me stay with you back in '93 to get my head screwed on straight?
— As much as I love Raleigh, and NC in general, I keep looking back at that decision to stay with Mom, and I know now that I stayed only out of fear of hurting her like you had. And I often wish I'd worried more about my future then and less about her present.

    Why am I so afraid of a job interview, or job application that I've spent 3 or 4 years out of the last 10 unemployed?

    That tends to make the following answer pretty self-evident, but for completness: Why am I (almost) 30 years old without owning a car or ever having held a driver's license?

    Under the principle that you knew her before I did: Why does my Mom not have any friends?
— I'm basically the only person she talks to anymore.

    Why didn't I ever respond to a single letter of yours?
— G-d, that breaks my heart. I still have most all those letters you sent, but I never even lifted pen to tell you anything about my life, excepting the game show incident.

    Why does the strength of will I have skip over so many particularly vital aspects of my life?
— I can endure situations with grace and equnamity that make most people throw in the towel, but I can't convey that willpower to the parts of my life that need the help.

    Why can't I write?
— I can see scenes in my mind; I can talk ideas out; I can't seem to sit at a keyboard and compose more than about a paragraph, if that.

    Same question ultimately expressed more generally: Why do I have little to no self-control?

If you can offer me any help and insight into why I'm such a broken husk of a person or suggest advice, or explain to me why my life is the mess it is that I might fix the problems, or just ... something, I need whatever I can get. Because on 23 September 2016 I need to be able to look back at the last ten years of my life and see something better than I see looking back at the last ten years of my life right now.

Hell, when you were my age, you had a 3 year old son. I won't pretend your life then was perfect, but without doubt it was better than mine is now. I guess that makes my final question:

    What did you do right that I'm doing wrong?

booklegger @ 2006-01-22T23:31:00

2006-01-23T04:31:18Z

For the record? The North Carolina General Statues suck. Horribly organized, and utterly impenetrable to a layman. See, I was curious as to the sentence structure for Armed Robbery. Why is neither here nor there, but I'd read somewhere that it was basically 45 years, been nice to know you, Period. So, wanting to verify or disprove my memory I went a huntin' for the answer. Now, the actual statue on Armed Robbery is nice and neat. The meat of the problem is in:

What in the seven seas is the penalty for a Class D Felony?

Now, the old penalty is easy enough to find, via Google. Google offers me a link to a NCSU public safety site that has the pre-1993 version of Article 14 on it. However, when you look at the exact same section in the current NCGA you get a notice that it's been repealed. Good luck finding what the hell they replaced it with. Oh, you can find the Session Law easily enough, but seriously HOW would know that that repealed section was the one you needed? If Google hadn't offered up the old version of chapter 14, I'd have had no notion that the definitions of a Class D felony were contained in that section of the law, so I'd have no reason to think that I needed to look up Session Law 1993-538. Not that looking at the session law helps that much. From what I can tell, for the answer I was looking is "2 years and 9 months, or so." The Question?

"If Jeff Reardon had committed his crime in NC, what would be the likeliest sentence for him, assuming that he wasn't credited with being temporarily insane."

Now, to add to all this, given the Blakely decision the sentencing structures given in S.L. 1993-538 are possibly now just guidelines that the judge may freely ignore. Blakely is an 'active part of the law' meaning no one really knows what the hell it means yet, certainly not some non-lawyer like myself.

Fucking Lawyers.

booklegger @ 2005-12-20T11:35:00

2005-12-20T16:35:12Z

There are just not words

There. Are. Just. Not. Words.

booklegger @ 2005-09-06T22:00:00

2005-09-07T02:00:41Z

So, Buy-Rite games is no more.

I was at the used book store in the same shopping center, and saw that the inside was all ripped out.

Well, thank G-d for that. I can only hope the owner spends some time in jail, or at least with an ankle bracelet.

Wherein Sean makes an alteration in his appearance.

2005-08-11T04:41:08Z

Ahh, haircut. The icon shows the new 'do, insomuch as a 100 x100 png can show anything.

I was asked by the cutter when the last time I had short hair was. Thinking about it, It might seriously be the 1980s. Maybe as late as 1991 or 2, but certainly I was an underclassman in High School. ha! Why the cut you might ask? See, my corner at work is hot, and I have a little fan that blows on my face to keep my cool. However, it blows from the right side, slightly to the rear, perfect for blowing my hair into my face, and thus being generally annoying. So, purely for the avoidance of this stray hair or two, I've cut off the ponytail I've had since at least 1994.

My instructions were simple. Cut it short; If I hated it, I was going to shave it off. This doesn't appear to be necessary.

I think every fucking idiot on the planet commented on it. Random Dude on Bus, the hospital's cafeteria workers, my co-workers (obviously), and random cashier at Lowe's Foods. Jeebus people, it's a haircut. There exists a possibility that I'll be less 'noticeable' now, but I'm not holding my breath.

jadestorm and baines got the mocking ball rolling. I invite any other readers to join in the fun, heck, Dan and Billy might continue the mocking here, but I care not. The fan no longer blows hair in my face, and therefore I win.

booklegger @ 2005-07-30T16:23:00

2005-07-30T20:23:02Z

Just won my first online poker tourney. Single table, Omaha-8 $5. Not a bad way to make $20.

booklegger @ 2005-07-16T01:41:00

2005-07-16T05:40:44Z

Just returned with book in hand.

First chapter vv. good. Tony Blair a lucky man, sorta.

booklegger @ 2005-07-15T23:25:00

2005-07-16T03:24:52Z

Quick update:

Just now getting ready to head over to Barnes & Noble after having slept for a few hours. Why was I asleep so early?
Because I had to walk for 3 hours to get home Thursday, after missing the last bus, and only thendiscovering that the phone is kaput.

Getting home at 0230 when you stopped work at 2100 sucks.

Needless to say, I'm sore, and yet here I am getting ready to become among the stupidly first to have a copy of the next HP. Last book I finished at 1400ish Saturday, so I'll have some thoughts up fairly shortly. heh.

Random Harry Potter note: the Wake County Libraries have a total of 480 copies of the book in the entire system, and a total of 904 requests waiting to be filled. So if you intended to borrow the book from a Wake Library, you may have a liiiitle wait.

Liu Bei gets the treatment he so richly deserves.

2005-05-23T03:29:04Z

From a DW Character Guide:

What is 'Eternity?'
Eternity is a manhwa (Korean graphic novel) by Park Jin-Ryong and Shin Yong-Gwan about Liu Bei (Yube), Guan Yu (Gwanu), and Zhang Fei (Jangbe) reincarnated in modern times. Only not with boobs, like in Ikkitousen (thank GOD). In this series, Guan Yu is a nerdy ladies' man, Zhang Fei is an angry hoodlum, and Liu Bei is a meek porn-freak. Heh. I've read the first volume and I like it, but it's definately meant for guys — lots of ass-kicking, panty-shots, and other shounen staples. I have to say, though, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei are pretty hot in this, so it's not a total loss for the ladies. XD It's being released in North America by Tokyopop.

[Emphasis mine]

Really, what more needs to be said?

Visa Check Cards, and their tendancy to not remain in my wallet.

2005-05-19T03:46:50Z

Lost my check card last Thursday. I think I lost it at the bus stop as I pulled my wallet out of my pocket. This is particularly convient, as the bus stop is right in front of my bank. At the time, I'd thought I'd lost the card at Primavera Pizza, but when I called Saturday, they said they didn't have it. So I call Bank of America to cancel the card only to be told it had already been canceled. My only guess is that someone picked up my card in front of my bank, and walked it in, whereupon the bank canceled it.

Which I appreciate and all, but now it means I've had to write some checks. I despise and loathe writing checks. I use the various online 'billpay' offerings of Bank of America, so that the only check I write each month is my share of rent. Well, today I got my PIN. No check card, but I gotta PIN! yea me! ....

*sigh*

only took me 4 days to get around to writing the first half of this post. That's an improvement.

A refund, a monitor of large girth, and some Playstation games.

2005-02-15T03:58:51Z

So, a productive weekend.

Got my income tax refund, bought a new monitor. 'Tis quite nice going from 1024x768 on a 14" to 1280x1024 on a 21". I'll be getting Roadrunner back this weekend. I tried to set it up online, but got an email back saying there were 'questions' about the previous account at our location. It further suggested that I needed to call the local office. I did, and presented the idea that 'there were questions'. The locals had no idea what that was, so they set me up. No clue.

Also picked up some PS2 games. The 2004 Sega baseball game, and Culdcept, a nominal cross between a CCG and monopoly. Interesting issue with the baseball game. Tried it on rookie difficulty, and it was, well it wasn't baseball. I used the Red Sox, and they scored 19 runs on 27 hits, with Manny knocking 3 homers. And Pedro? Well, he was 1999 Pedro. Ow. So I tried to up the difficulty to the next level, and I choked hard. So the first real goal with that game will be to find the happy medium, or just improve my skills.

Culdcept went much better. There alleges to be some multiplayer function, for up to 4 players, so perhaps we'll have a worthy successor to Top Shop. I don't know how the deck building works yet for that mode, so some experimentin' might be in order.

booklegger @ 2005-01-28T00:58:00

2005-01-28T05:56:08Z

So, I've been reading a good bit lately, including a pair of books by Mr. John Shelton Reed.

Mr. Reed is a student of the South, and all things Southern.

He wrote a quite excellent essay (collected in My Tears Spoiled My Aim) where he discusses the fairly straightforward question "Where is the South?" The answer is, of course, not so clear. He mentioned as a potential answer "Where kudzu grows". Being so 'fond' of kudzu, I chose that answer, and largely disclaim any others that he provides, despite their utility. Primarily I'd note that the kudzu line is relatively static, so if the boundaries of the South change, it will lose accuracy.

At any rate, I was reading Minding the South where Mr. Reed reports on coming back to the south from England, and noting what he missed about each. One of the things about England (or at least the particular circle he was in) was the more refined and practiced sense of irony. In particular he noted the words "Twee" and "Naff". He suggested that while the south had an abundance of both(and we do, sad to say), we'd not be likely to use either word owing to some class distinctions or something, I didn't really follow that argument very well. Furthermore, I want here to prove him a bit wrong.

See, Homeschooling as always bothered me. I've never been able to put my finger on it until I'd been ruminating on the subject of tweeness. Homeschooling is just plain twee. It's the mistaken belief that your kids matter and are special that bugs me. Sure, your kids might be learning better, but that's an indictment of Public Schools, not an endorsement of homeschooling. Plus, there is NO way that scales. And if that method doesn't scale, and it doesn't solve the problem, by the old saw isn't it part of the problem? I dunno, but there's no way around the fact that homeschooling is just plain twee.

So, I'm trying to find ways to increase my postings to the LiveJournal, and I believe I've hit on a winner. One of my problems has been that I have my good ideas when I'm at work say, and that's not good for posting. I can do it, but well, it impacts my paycheck, or at least my de facto pay rate. Thus, mini-outline posts that shame me in to fleshing them out. Worked tonight at least.

Oh, and I REALLY need to email my dad to discuss many random subjects, including: a thanks for introducing me to John McPhee's excellent books; asking him if Poppy was raised Catholic or was a convert (catholic and Scots-Irish? wtf?); and really, just random chatting. He's my Dad, and I don't talk or write to him often enough.

Musical non-sequitur.
I've listened to this album plenty of times, and for some reason it occurred to me today to question the first line of the first song today. "She was born in November, 1963, the day Aldous Huxley died." So, I looked up in Wikipedia what day that was. 22. November 1963. If the date seems familiar, that's because a President of the United States died too. I never knew that, much less that C.S. Lewis also joined the choir invisible. Busy day.

Wherein our Hero walks, stands, rides, stands, rides, walks, rides, and walks again.

2005-01-21T04:19:31Z

The Epic 19. Jan Traffic Jam of Raleigh

It needs a better name, but yea, it was epically bad.

Yesterday, I left work early, at 3:45ish trying to beat the rush. This was wildly unsuccessful. I chatted with some of the half dozen or more folks also waiting on the bus, and it quickly came out that one guy had been waiting since 1:00. This was all I need to know that the bus wasn't likely to come. So I resolved to walk to Crabtree along the #4 bus's route, so that I'd increase the possibility of getting a bus to come past me, and if the #4 did come, I'd be right there to flag it down. Plus, if I did manage to catch a bus from Crabtree it might be the 23c, which would have saved me a bus ride. The walk down was only moderately painful, requiring me to stop and rest my back only twice during the hour and half.

Arriving at Crabtree, the situation was not notably better. 30-40 people standing around, with no real bus in evidence, save for the 6c connector, which goes straight up Creedmoor. None of us wanted to go that way, really, and it didn't much matter, as the northbound lanes of Edwards Mill/Creedmoor were moving only a hair faster than my walking speed. I chatted it up with another guy who was headed to Green Rd. wondering after the forlorn 23c. Time passes, and several #6s go up the hill along Glenwood, and yet none have come back hmmm.

Now, this one #6c bus has been sitting here damn near the whole time, and around 5:30ish another one comes, and it too is another 6c. Well, Damn it. This guy turns out to be going back to garage, so he offers to take all of us down town, our numbers having dwindled to less than 30 by this point. As we're pulling out, several stragglers come along, from one of the #6's that went up the hill. Apparently, they got stuck. Lord have Mercy. The stragglers filled our numbers out to 31 (the driver had one of us count) As we drove in on Glenwood, the northbound lanes were quite clogged, but not as bad as Edwards Mill had been. The driver drove down Wade to Capital, and there we saw a true vision of hell. Capital was the worst road yet, bumper to bumper all the way into downtown. Since Mr. Green Road and I were going to try and ride on a #1 on that very road, it was disheartening.

Downtown. We don't hang around long before getting told that they've just plain canceled the #1. Something about a tractor-trailer. So, I'm obliged to take the #2 Falls of the Neuse. Mr. Green Road joins again, and we're off! to a traffic jam! This one started as we came in on Wake Forest Road, at the Snoopy's. At 9:30, we hadn't made it north of the Beltline yet, so we tried to hoof it. We were beating it for awhile, but I couldn't keep up, so I slowed down to a more reasonable pace, and the bus caught me next to the hospital. Feeling quite like an idiot, I got back on, and prepared to hurry up and wait. Hour and a half later, just before 11:00 I made it to Falls @ Millbrook, and the walking began in earnest.

One rather boring, but very tiring hour later, I made it home. My knees were dead, my legs trying to revolt, and my back plotted my assassination. Grabbed a lone hot pocket, too tired to cook anything else, and collapsed on the couch. My mom wouldn't get home until 2am. Her commute involved 9 hours in a car, and being obliged to pee on herself.

Didn't even bother to go to work today, by the time I woke up, I'd have spent 4 hours commuting to do 3 hours of work, plus my back was in too much pain. All of which really leads to one singular important conclusion. I'm incredibly out of shape, and need to re-join and attend to the gym very soon. I'm mind-numbingly embarrassed that I couldn't keep up with a brisk walking pace. Even if I had walked already for an hour, it's still shameful.

Apologies(Excuses) for Silence--Breaking Silence Where 'tis Safe--A Preview of the Future?

2004-11-08T05:48:48Z

I'm not sure why I've let this fine journal lapse quite so much as I have. I know in theory why some of the lapsing happened, I was unemployed, and quite ashamed of it. Plus, how many ways can ye say: "Sat around the house, and goofed off."

I note that no small portion of my posts from the past were work posts that I used as way to force myself to post. Without that weekly pressure to do something, anything, I let myself lapse into quiet. Of course, I can't speak the same way about the new job, since that would frequently consist of revealing Protected Health Information, which is potentially criminally liable. I wish to be extraordinarily cautious about that, to say the least.

And yet I hope I can tell some tales from time to time, such as the amusement I got from copying a kid's birth record, when he shares his birthday with mine. The sadness of seeing the really thick multivolume charts; usually a diabetic, or a cancer patient. The glee I get from copying attorney requests, because they want EVERY LAST PAGE, and I get paid by the page. The times I see a disease I've not heard of, and feel obliged to look them up, like Ogliodendroglioma. (Brain tumor of some description.) And of course, the sheer damn annoyance of copying dozens of Pain Clinic visits for DDS (disability determination service) because they want a discharge summary from every visit, and the folks who are on chronic narcotic prescripts rack up a visit every month or two. To top it off, DDS pays a flat $12 fee for copying records, regardless of page count.

As I am compensated strictly by my copying efforts, I theoretically have no clock to punch in and out of, but given the sheer volume of work for Rex, I'm going to be there 37-40 hours every week. But it's nice to be able to duck out early on Wednesdays, etc. I'm finding however waking up in the mornings to be extraordinarily difficult, as I am far too frequently up late, for various reasons, such as tonight, when I'm awake right now for no reason that I can recall.

As I try and 'catch up' on tellin' tales from my oh so exciting life, I'll announce the next topic ahead of time, and I think the next post shall consist of explaining just how an authorization to release PHI (protected health information) works, and yet how hard it seems to be for folks to comply with Rex's rather strict adherence to the law.

booklegger @ 2004-09-30T07:49:00

2004-09-30T11:49:29Z

So, I'm employed again. Again. Well, assuming I pass a criminal background check, which shouldn't be that hard. yay!

By my count, this'll make my 7th job in my life, 8 if you count getting fired and re-hired. Of those 7 or 8, I've been personally responsible for obtaining 4. That is by any standard a piss-poor record. Looking for work is not now, and has never been a strength of mine.

Clear Goal: Avoid adding 'and never will be.' to the end of that last sentence.

Wherein Sean writes some Perl code, and learns why that wasn't necessarily such a good idea.

2004-07-27T01:56:21Z

So, yea, I had an urge to write myself a program.

It was, more or less, a program to read a plain text copy of Puzzle Pirates shop emails, extract the number of hours worked by each employee, & sum them, pairing the Employees names with their work output in a hash.

It wasn't bad for my second perl program ever. There were, unsurprisingly some bumps along the way.

Lesson learned: Indices for arrays start counting from 0, not 1. D'oh.

Lesson learned: When you are testing a scalar to see if it exists before trying to increment it, you want unless not if.

Lesson remaining: Sorting a hash.

Sounds moderately evil. I cheated by dumping the text into a delimited file, and reading it into Excel. This does work pretty damn well, and I don't think I'm going to do much more to it now, but the super ultimate program would spit out the information into a table sorted by most to least work done. I think the most annoying part of it was figuring out how to get the while loops that read the filehandle to not run endlessly. The last command is your friend.

All this to be able to fire employees at the shop who don't contribute. It's remarkably hard to scan a list of names in the game window to see if they ever appear in emails from the last several days. I suppose it implies that the Shop emails should have a list of all employees who failed to contribute hours of labor. Easier for me to write code fixing my problem than waiting for the ringers to get around to fixing it with game code. heh.

Even if it would have taken them a LOT less time than it did me.

Wherein a termination occurs somewhat unsurprisingly.

2004-07-12T21:10:21Z

Congratulate me, I'm fired.

Lessons learned: Sean is not suited for telemarketing, and possibly not for sales in general.

Priority of this lesson: Low.

Priority of 3 weeks worth of pay: Highest.

The Job

2004-07-02T20:04:43Z

Source of personal amusement:

Today we were dialing businesses in Marion, SC.