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My Almost-daily Journal |
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| About I love trying out new things, especially when it comes to internet technology. I never really kept a journal, but it's something that I've always wanted to do. Now, everybody will get a chance to look inside my twisted, and somewhat-warped mind.
I've also subscribed to Audio Blog, so a few times a week, I'll leave actual voice blogs. Very cool!XML Newsfeed  |
Monday, January 26, 2004
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
My Views on Homosexuality I had my share of heated debates on the topic of homosexuality, both productive and destructive. I'm neither for, nor against any gay rights, but I do have an opinion. Take Vic Tanny, for instance. From what I hear, that place is a buffet for homo-trollers. You can't even sit safely in the sauna without some homo-perv memorizing you and your body lines. My friend Mark works out there and in three years he's been propositioned a dozen times. Therefore, I'm going to lay my views out in the open... If you're 100% gay, you have no business in a same-sex locker room. If gays and straights are allowed to shower together, then I should be allowed to shower in the women's locker room. Is homosexuality a by-product of civilization? Is it a by-product of enviromental variables like upbringing or social trauman? Or is it genetic? These questions are still unanswered. If it's genetic, perhaps there's a cure. Why a cure? Because homosexuality is a contradiction of what our bodies were designed to do (either by nature/evolution or God, depending on your belief system). The question is do homosexuals want a cure? Equal rights? Not a question in my mind. All humans deserve equal rights... to a point. I cannot see a blind man flying a fighter jet, or a girl trying to become a Boy Scout. Some things just go unsaid. Gays sharing a locker room with me? That's another question. I should be able to shower with women, if gays can shower with me. posted by Dino at 1:48 AM (permanent link) Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Home Refinancing Myths and Urban Legends I'm dumb. Since the interest rate wars of 2002/2003, I didn't refinance my house. I was always under the impression that I would be buying a new house within six months. Every time I considered refinancing, I always thought I was moving. My current interest rate is at a plump 8.125%. Dumb people... I'm extremely prejudiced against them. "No closing costs", "No up-front fees", "Yadda yadda yadda", are typical things I've heard and read from every financial institution. Here's a free public service announcement from dinofilias.com: nothing in life is free, and there are no free lunches in this world. Point to ponder: closing costs and other "fees" associated with paying off your old loan, originating a second loan, title costs, appraisals, etc., are not free. There are several financial sales people out there with the brainpower of adolescent retards. Fact: if you refinance, the costs I mentioned will have to be paid by you, one way or the other. Either you pay for them out of pocket, or the fees get added to your principal. Free, no-cost refinancing is a myth created by dumb people, FOR dumb people. I'm Refinancing I have officially began the steps to refinance my home. I know that I may be moving very soon. Who knows... maybe three months, six months, a year, or a decade. At this point I am unsure. I can't keep this "moving" uncertainty from continuously funnelling money out of my pockets. My current rate of 8.125% is just sickening. I HAD to bite the bullet. Basically, I refinanced for 10 years fixed at 4.875%. The damn rates went up 0.125% this morning. Shit! Oh well. They may still keep going up. They may fall. Rest assured, I will be monitoring 10-year fixed loan rates. So what does this mean? Well, I'll be paying an additional $250/month. Yikes!? Not exactly. The decision was a severe no-brainer. I'll be paying an additional $250/month, but my loan term will be going from 22 years down to 10 years. Sweet! Furthermore, instead of $132 going toward the principal every month, with $700 being thrown away as interest, I'll now be putting $625/month toward the principal with interest being $425/month. So, to sum it up: 1) +$250/month payment 2) +$500/month will be applied toward the principal 3) 12 years will be removed from the loan It's a no-brainer. I can't believe I waited this long. I look at this as free money as in the end, I'll be up $250/month, plus the added bonus of removing 12 years from my loan. Sure, I won't be living in that house for ten more years, but each month, that principal will go down $625/month instead of $132/month. posted by Dino at 1:26 PM (permanent link) Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Time Time is the only unreplenishable resource on this planet. Once gone, it's gone forever. Think After a full day of work lately, I don't even want to think when I get home. My brain and my essence itself, hurts. Brainless Things Doing brainless things like capturing video or uploading photos is the only thing that keeps me sane. Frustration My fuse has run short. Candle is burning at both ends. After three hours of working on an Excel spreadsheet yesterday, it decided to crash. My frustration level was so high, that if nobody was in my office, I would have kicked a 6" hole INTO my computer. I was 49% on the verge of insanity. Furthermore, while on the shitter at work (I found a three minute hole of no phone calls in a ten hour period), I received six phone calls on my cell phone. I was only in there for three minutes, which means I was getting two calls a minute. Again, I entered a state of 49% insanity and I almost disintegrated the phone against the wall. I was ready to throw it so hard, it would have vaporized. Phone Calls Speaking of phone calls, here's my life right now: one conference call going on in the War Room with at least five people from three different companies and Decoma divisions, another conference call going on in Zenon's office with at least three people from three different Decoma divisions, one call on hold on the land line, one call on hold on the cell phone, and one phone call being carried out on the cell phone, while jumping between conference calls. Typical phone call(s) at work: 1) Someone wants something, 2) I'm being informed that a key date is getting missed or a late event will put my program in jeopardy, 3) The customer wants to yell and scream that dates are being missed, 4) A supplier is complaining that he can't proceed without a PO, 5) My purchasing agent is complaining that they can't issue PO's without three quotes, 6) Or my boss is wondering if I can take on more programs. posted by Dino at 1:38 AM (permanent link) Wednesday, January 07, 2004
Holiday Break I can't believe the holiday break is over. My last day of work 12/19/03 and I did not return to work until 1/6/04. Isn't that amazing? That's 22 straight days off! I slept when I was tired, ate when I was hungry, drank when I was thirsty... it was pure paradise. I mostly worked on my computer, tweaking and maximizing every aspect of it. I created a few DVD home movies from 8mm, and had fun learning the software a little better. Right now I'm just suffering from post-holiday withdrawal (the fact that I lived 22 days without ANY stress). I don't know what to do with myself. I'm too used to going to bed at 7AM or 8AM, and waking up at noon. My whole time clock is skewed. Josh spent most of his time cleaning and updating his saltwater reef tank. He has a whole plethora of new coral, snails and fish! I donated a hundit to his cause, just because I enjoy the peace, joy, and tranquility that a saltwater tank offers. I swear you can examine a saltwater tank everyday, and discover something new every single time. You can see some pictures of his saltwater tank here (2003) and here (2004). My supercomputer fun can be seen here (2003) and here (2004). That computer ended up costing me $1700 from Newegg, and additional $400 for the extra 1 gig of RAM from Microcenter, and the rollover costs for the video card ($399) and DVD burner ($250). Don't forget to add the fluff like CPU coolers, video card coolers, fan controllers, and extra fans, which ended up costing me around $50 + $40 + $30 + $30. Oops. I almost forgot I purchased an additional 200 GB drive ($199), plus the rollover cost of my carryover 180 GB drive ($159). So the grand total of beast is: $3257. That's not too bad for having the biggest and baddest computer allowed by a living mortal. Also, if you read Maximum PC, you should notice an article about the 10,000 RPM WD Raptors I'm using in RAID 0. Maximum PC rated them a "10", which they very rarely give out. Individually, my drives read as fast from their platters in normal mode as Special Edition 7,200 drives read from their cache in burst mode. And I have two of these striped in RAID 0, which makes them doubly faster. It is nice to finally have a top-shelf computer. I've been dragging my feet for years. Finally, in doing some of these video captures, converting 8mm to DVD, I've been doing screen captures of some of the video frames. In doing so, I've been creating new photo directories in my photo archives. This is a great thing because I've been on a kick to consolidate all my videos and pictures under one virtual roof. Right now, I have some videos seperated from my photo archives. I don't like having photos and videos in two seperate locations. I know that nobody really cares about this. I'm just jotting this down for myself. :) Work Work has been killing me. I've only been back for two days, and it feels like there are not enough hours in the day. It's a hardship for me: I've been used to 24/7 leisure time for 22 days. Now, I'll be lucky to get in three hours of leisure in any given day, since I'm not getting home until 8PM. It's really affecting my fun factor of life. I hate working. I wish I won the lotto. I would REALLY have fun. As far as my workload goes, I'm trying to fit a two-year program into a three-month block. Literally. It's tough. And it hurts. posted by Dino at 2:22 PM (permanent link) Thursday, January 01, 2004
Long Hiatus It's been quite a while since I've had leisure time to catch up on my blogging. My professional life has been a non-stop goat rodeo, and my personal life has been a tormented hornet's nest. I have found refuge in building my new home computer. I have even taken way too many pictures of the build, but at least I had fun documenting. Josh has also taken a renewed interest in his saltwater reef tank, and now he's even getting into saltwater fish. Both the computer and the saltwater tank can be seen live, on one of my webcams. The links to the webcams are posted at the end of this topic. To keep my mind occupied before and after the holiday break, I have been going 8mm-to-DVD crazy. I basically did it to capture some of the movies that Mitch and I created when we were on scuba vacations and while at school. I kick myself in the ass that I haven't been taking more high-quality movies over the years. I've been capturing movies via my Sony digital camera. Resolutions of the Sony digital camera movies are only 320 pixels, as opposed to 720 pixels that an actual camcorder can give you. Oh well. posted by Dino at 9:05 PM (permanent link) |
