Everything is just hunky-dory over here. Computer is just hummin’ away. Newsgroups are spittin’ out the files faster than I can burn the CDs. I love it. Absolutely love it. I love that I’m going to “bless” my friends with good games right now. Absolutely love nothing more than that!

We’re off to April’s 30th birthday party! We’re getting there! Let’s just hope we’re only 1/3 done. April, Happy Birthday (early)!!!

Shuttle Boxes:
I finally got everyone’s Shuttle boxes squared away. Demo’s, David’s, mine, and Michelle’s. Actually, ours need to have the Zalman chipset heatsink put on… I don’t like the chipset fan, as it’s noisy as hell. I finally sent back my DOA GF 4 Ti4600 card the other day…and low and behold, it came back to me, here at Ford! How crazy is that? FedEx forgot to remove or cross out the old FedEx label. Oh well. A phone call later and it was removed. I replaced the video card with the ATI Radeon All in Wonder 9700 Pro. What a gorgeous card. I can’t wait to install a game or two and play some…it’s been quite some time for me to play a game! Aside from that, I’ve finally got something like a Tivo in my possession.

Car:
I got invited to some VW sales event that is going on this week. Apparently, they are trying to give people incentives to trade in their cars (my letter said 1998). I wonder if someone with a 1999 got a letter inviting them? Strange, but it’s worth a shot. Most likely, they’ll offer me some heinous amount for the car, like 8k. Won’t happen though. I owe $11,221 at the moment. I can’t take any less than $10,500 for the car. I can’t stand to lose money… we’ll see. I’d love to get a brand new Jetta 1.8T, slap a chip in it, and that’s that… I guess I’m just sick of my car for a reason. Must be why people lease cars for two years at a time. Strange thing is, I have only had this car for a year and a half. Maybe becuase it’s a 1998, and the Cherokee I sold was also a 1998. I never moved into a “newer” vehicle.

House:
Two weeks until we get the keys to our house. I can’t wait…Michelle can’t wait. The downstairs tenant has young kids who like to hang out and play somewhat loud music for hours and hours. I think they had their stereo on somewhat loud from 4pm until about 1am last night. Good for them, their mom was gone…but, we won’t have to deal with this stuff when we have our house. :D

Another Shuttle Box:
I built my cousin, Demo, a Shuttle SN41G2 box. His sports a Barton 2500 processor, 512MB of Kingston HyperX PC2700 memory, a 120GB Seagate Barracuda V 7200 RPM hard drive set to “quiet” mode, a Sapphire Radeon 9700 Pro, an LG DVD/48x CD-Burner combo drive, a Samsung SyncMaster 191T Silver LCD monitor (like mine), and a Microsoft Wireless Keyboard and Mouse combo! The thing looks and runs excellent. Oh yeah, he also has the Logitech Z-680 DTS/THX Speaker system. These speakers kick some serious ass!

My video card grief
I have no clue why I am being plagued with having to use my LCD monitor with the analog VGA output that my Shuttle box has (GF4 MX)… I may have fried my first GF4 Ti4600 video card by 7-volting the cooling fine. Maybe it wasn’t secured onto the chip hard enough… not sure. So I finally got my replacement from NewEgg the other day. This card is faulty. It has permanent artifacts all over the place, and when it actually gets into Windows, the video actually comes in and out (turns on and off). I think it has some sort of syncing issue.

Meeting Tom
One of my older fraternity brothers is coming over tonight to pick up Michelle’s old computer and monitor. I think it’s a damn good deal for the both of us. I get to do a little “Spring Cleaning” of my PC stuff and Tom gets himself a machine that is pretty much bullet-proof!

Week one of three
We are taking Athena Lillian Samson to church on Sunday to have her receive her first of three-in-a-row communions! We are both so very honored to do this. Also, Michelle’s cousin, Stephanie, is having her first communion on Sunday! I guess it’s a religious kind of day this Sunday!

Car
Am I ever going to sell it? We let our tagged CTS go. If another one comes up, GM will let us know. The reality is that we probably should just keep my car until it dies… that would be the best financial decision… we could even go ahead and pay more on the payment each month to try and get out of having a car payment entireley…like Dino does!

House
3 more weeks to go!! It’s been fun to watch Demo and Cindy move into their house in Oak Park! It looks like it’s a good time, non-stop!! I cannot wait for this to happen for Michelle and I!!!

Pistons
Wow, they are 2-0 in the 2nd round of the playoffs agains the 76ers! Iverson choked last night and missed 2 free throws that would have probably won them the game! Tayshaun Prince was a rookie-hero for the Pistons last night! Maybe SOMETHING good can happen to a Detroit sports team this year!!!

What a very busy weekend we had!!!
Friday night, we saw X-Men 2. Very exciting movie, but we saw it at 10:15, and for some reason, I went back to my form of falling asleep periodicially when watching movies late at night. It’s been quite a while since I’ve succomed to this, but I did. Michelle kept nudging me the entire time. I felt bad for her, as I know it took away a bit of her enjoyment!

Saturday, we went horseback riding at Steve’s! It was an awesome experience! We rode the horses for 4 miles… took about 45 minutes or so, I’d say, maybe even longer. It took quite a bit of time to get “used” to the horse and how to control it. Man, these Arabian horses were about 1/2 second away from busting out into a gallop at any given moment. You constantly had to be aware of this and be ready to pull back on the reins and say “Whoa!”. It was fantastic. At the end of the day, I got mine to go into a canter, which was just fast enough to have my hat fly off my head. What a rush!!! These animals are breathtaking and powerful! I can’t wait to do it again!

Sunday, we baptized our first Godchild, Athena Lillian Samson! What an angel! She was tender the ENTIRE TIME! We just wanted to eat her up! I even had the privilege, for the first time ever, of having a bapy fall asleep in my arms. I’ve never felt so needed by something so young and innocent!

Computer Stuff:
Should be getting my replacement GF4 Ti 4600 card pretty soon. Getting pretty sick of analog VGA output, and could use my DVI… what a difference!
Instead of sending back my LOUD Western Digital 80GB Special Edition drive, I have decided that it’s the perfect size for a backup/archival drive. I’m going to pick up an external USB 2.0/Firewire drive enclosure for it today. What I can do with this enclosure is grab the pertinent data off of the 25GB drive I’m selling in Michelle’s old system Friday and then convert it to our permanent backup drive after that. I should be getting my Seagate Barracuda V 120GB drive on Wednesday, the same day I get Demo’s system so he can have his very own Shuttle box!

Pistons:
Yipee!!!! They won round one of the playoffs. They start round 2 tomorrow against the Philadelphia 76ers at the Palace. Let’s hope The Answer doesn’t school us up and down the court like T-Mac did the first few games of round one! Chauncey Billups was fantastic in round one!

Ick. Tried to go to Blogger’s discussion board…XML error. That stucks. Was curious to see how that shit was working out for everyone.

Just talked to Alex. He’s real proud of my Axim Users Dot Com site… hopes it continues to take off. He’s on his way home from San Diego this Wednesday. It’ll be good to have him back, for sure.

I guess I got it a little quieter…the SN41G2, that is. Further research leads me to believe that my “high speed” Western Digital hard drive whines!

So…if NewEgg lets me, I’m going to send back the WD and get a Seagate Barracuda V, which is much quieter!

Trying to sell my V-Dub. Thought a guy from Cheboygan would buy it, but he’s not interested. Oh well, let’s see what EBay yields me… auction ends tomorrow at 10AM.

I wanted to take advantage of GM’s 0% APR through April 30. Probably won’t happen.

Great weather. Ran 4 yesterday. Wanted to ride today…but my back tire needs a new tube.

I received my SN41G2 last week…what a beauty. I noticed it was kind of loud, so I started to find ways to quiet it down. I came here. I replaced the 80mm fan w/ a Vantec Stealth 80mm fan. Seemed to help. I first tried to put a Zalman 80A on my GF4 Ti4600, but quickly found out that it doesn’t fit. Oh well. So I 7-volted it. Seemed to be quieter…but not quiet enough. Must be the PSU fan. That’s next.

In the meantime, I installed SpeedFan 4.08. Wanted to see how this thing worked, since everyone on here seems to use it. Fired it up, but couldn’t get the fan speeds to go down… no biggie. I decided I’d deal with it today. Well…..

When I went to my XPC this morning, I noticed my LCD was black…no biggie, power savings. So I thought…

PC must have froze up in the middle of the night. I opened the case to make sure the Ti4600 fan was still spinning. It was. Made sure the PSU and heatpipe fans were still spinning. They were. So I figured I’d hit the reset button, no go. I figured I’d do a cold power cycle. No go. I pulled the PSU plug, waited, plugged it in, held Insert, and hit power. No go.

Damn thing…it won’t boot up.

Oh boy!!! I finally upgraded our computer room. We now both have LCD monitor and Shuttle SN41G2 boxes. Man, these things are pimp!!! I LOVE how they look and love how small they are!!!

Stay tuned. Busy getting everything nice and slick.

So I tried a new commute to work today. :) I took I-75 to I-94. Worked out very well. I think it was my fastest commute yet, considering I got onto I-75 at Rochester Road instead of just taking Mound down to I-696. I HAD to get my White Chocolate Mocha from Starbucks

Getting pretty excited about this whole house thing. Life is full of ups and downs, me guesses.

I can’t believe I’m getting my LCD monitor today. I just ordered it yesterday, thought it was going to ship on or before April 15. Didn’t think it’d ship on the day it was ordered. Dell is too BIG for that!!! Good thing they have a distribution center in Indiana!

Now I just have to sell my two monitors, and get the Shuttle boxes ordered!

Have a good day for now…it’s kind of early.

So, here I am, over two weeks into the new job, and LOTS of stuff is happening!

Michelle and I are buying a house, I’m trying to sell my car and my computer so I can “start over” in that department.

On to the house: Michelle and I close on April 21, and we should be moving in around the 2nd week of May if all goes well. Worst case, the sellers only have until May 21 to stay in the house as written in our purchase agreement.

On to the car: GM is offering 0% APR for 60 months! How could you pass up free money? I’d like to sell my car for what I owe and get myself a Saab 93 Vector. I didn’t LOVE the Saab Pepe had, but it was nice… this new Saab 93 is gorgeous. Of course, a test drive would be nice.

On to the computer: Michelle and I want to decorate our “office” first and foremost. How do we do this? We implement form and function. We get rid of our obnoxiously large computer cases and move into a Shuttle SN41G case. About a foot cubed, stainless steel look…very nice, very sleak, very futuristic. Also, I dump my two CRT monitors which are 19" and 21" and get an LCD, hopefully 18" or 19" that does 1600x1200. Michelle already has a 17" LCD that she got at valentine’s day.

That’s about it for now… still looking for an advertiser or two for http://www.aximusers.com

I have started the new job. It’s a little bit slow at first, but what do you expect…I’m getting trained and I’m sharing a cube and a PC.

I HOPE my request for a new PC comes through…if not, I’m going to have to fight hard to get some more memory in this thing, as it only has 128MB of ram and running Windows 2000. If not, I’ll have to install my own memory, as 128MB of ram is just WAY too slow for me.

I’ll feel MUCH better when the first six months is up and I actually get hired direct. Then…my life will be on cruise control, in terms of a job, I hope.

My attempts to get out-of-town this weekend were thwarted every which way I turned. First, I wanted to go to Phoenix, couldn’t. Tickets were too much, and the looming war scared my wife. She didn’t want anything to happen to me. Who’s to blame her? Second, I wanted to visit some of my friends in Chicago. One friend is probably still stuck in Denver (fun snowboarding for him, though!!!), and is booked all weekend, and my other friends are actually coming to Michigan for the weekend to visit family. Oh well. I’ll stick around here and “rest” until my work week starts Monday morning.

We’re back in the house-hunt again!!! We’re going to look at two houses this evening in a neighborhood we really like that is close to where we live and close to Stony Creek Park, where we do most of our running at during the summer. I guess I’m a runner, or part-time runner. We are going to do the Detroit Marathon this October 5, unless something goes awry. It’ll be my second and Michelle’s third. She has a goal to quality for the boston marathon. To do this, she has to run 8:20/mile pace. Me, I’d have to run 7:56 (not gonna happen) pace. I just want to best my 10:16 pace from last year, by, say…a whole 1:00 per mile. Hopefully, my weeks of weight training prior to the June 1 training start-date and my continued weight training during the early weeks of running will help me succeed in my goal(s).

Have a good day. Let’s hope this war in Iraq ends quickly, with minimal loss of life.

Oh boy!!! Finally! I got a job!!! Yippee!!! Six long months, and yes, they were very long. They were a little bit fun at first; I could stay up late at night, playing computer games, doing my “computer lifing” and all, sleeping in, etc. However, what I didn’t do during those first few months was hit the gym and hit it hard. I was lazy, partially depressed, if you will. I won’t, I never get depressed, but a man’s spirits get a little bit low when you find yourself in that predicament.

Now, however, things have changed. I’ve started working out, religiously, four weeks ago, so things are going well in the exercise and muscle-building area, and also, I found a job, with a very large company. I’ll be working for Ford as a contractor for six months, and then I’ll be brought in, direct, as a Ford employee. This is all part of their PreView program, designed to bring people into Ford, and possibly into their IT arena. I believe their new CIO wants to “bring in” a lot of the IT work that was once outsourced as a push to strengthen their core comptencies! Let it happen. Here I am, over here…here…here!!!

So, I go into this weekend happy as hell. My wife, Michelle, is THRILLED to death that she’s not the sole breadwinner anymore. We can continue looking for a house again, and resume where we left off on September 20, 2002. I am HOPING I start work on March 24 so I can have some free time to finally ENJOY my time off and go visit my friends out in Phoenix, maybe even get some sun!

Have a good weekend!

Here we are, at the beginning of March… ALMOST Spring… OH boy!!! With Spring comes nice weather, fun thunderstorms, and the beginning of outdoor season. What’s outdoor season? Well, it’s that season in Michigan where you can actually start playing outside, planning to play outside, and WANTING to play outside. Playing outside can be a simple walk with your lovely wife, a relaxing bikeride around a park, or even a grueling 6 mile run around that same park!

Spring can also be a time of renewal. A time for Spring Cleaning. And not just Spring Cleaning of your domicile, but also of your mind. Perhaps Spring Cleaning can be put to good use on our outlooks, on or aspirations, and our push in to the future. Maybve I’m just writing this nonsense because I’ve been laid off for FIVE FUCKING MONTHS, and it dosn’t seem to be getting any better. Well, it is. I’m starting to get a few calls from companies. You know, I was thinking about this job hunt business… all I want is for people to call back, write back (personally, not with an autoresponder), or write back with snail mail. At least this way, I know that some human being is actually LOOKING at the e-mail and snail mail resume submissions I’m providing. At least I can get potential interviews. If I could just interview once a week, and fail at every one of them, I’d at least have a chance to grow and build from my tribulations…and in time, have a triumph!!

Besides a wonderful wife, and a great marriage, one of the other things that has been going well for me is Axim Users Dot Com. I’ve got well over 600 members now, and the site has only been up for 2 months! I’m starting to consider advertising on the site, too. With some advertising, I can hopefully grow the site into something large, more useful for the Axim community out there. Stay tuned for that…

Had my final in Accounting yesterday afternoon. ARGH! Studied for a few days…even prepared a 3.5" note card which was about as usefull as a typewriter would’ve been on the exam. Sheesh, when you think you actually KNOW some material, and you can’t put it to good use, that’s when you feel like an ass. Well, I have my financial analysis project to redeem my grade (I went into the final with an A). I am going to analyze Dell’s 2001 Annual Report. Hopefully I’ll learn something about the company, about accounting, and about the economy in general, as well as get my grade up and safe into the B range.

Another fun weekend passed by, and we went to Blue Mountain again! What a great time we had!!! This time, there was tons of snow, no powder, but still, tons of snow.

We captured our memories here: Click 2003 Albums.

Still unemployed. Getting kind of old, reeeeaaaaalllll old!!