Eh.

Bah.  I'm bored and restless.  

I wanna live a life of danger.

I wanna be a forest ranger.

This may, at first glance, seem like a stupid thing to just blurt out.  I can't honestly say that this is a lifelong dream; I only got to liking being outside a year or so ago.  It's been a pretty good year though.

I thought this big plan up while sitting in Valley worlds of Fun while the D was attending young Grace's birthday party.  I was minding my own business, drinking a fairly good cup of ninety cent coffee, reading a book when it came to me.  The book is A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson.  It's about a guy deciding to walk the Appalachian Trail, all two thousand-odd miles of it.  

It's a pretty good book.

Anyway, I was sitting there while Delia rode the crazy indoor carnival rides they have reading this book when I decided that the life of a forest ranger sounded pretty sweet.  I'm quite frankly not at all sure that I want to be working at a computer until my hands and eyes shrivel up from staring at the box, typing.  Being out and about sounds pretty good to me.

I looked into it today at work, and it seems to me that you can get a job with an Associates degree, which wouldn't be hard to obtain, assuming that past credits would still count.  They laughed at me at work when I said I thought it was a pretty good idea, and to be fair I don't know what it pays, but still.  Alluring, isn't it?

Catch Up

Well, it's been a while since I posted anything. The main reason for this is that there is Something Wrong with my PC. It's all crazy, having elected to not recognize the internet for whatever reason. The day it acted up I called the internet provider help desk, who had me drive across town for a new modem, only later to have a different guy at the same phone number tell me he thought it was my router. So I tried messing with it, must have done Something Wrong, and now nothing.

For two days I tried everything I could think of to fix this. I can think of a lot of things too, having been working on cranky old PCs at work for almost five years now, becoming one of the fiercest network fighters in the state in the process. Still nothing.

In a huge fit of frustration, I decided to just replace it. Oddly, I've never (until a few days ago) actually purchased a computer (not counting Tracy's laptop, which is what I'm using now). So it's more accurate to say that I've never purchased a computer for myself. I went to Best Buy, looked around (with the key word being "cheap"), found one and took it to the checkout.

Card declined. What the hell?! I call up the credit card people and ask, calmly I thought, why my card was suspended.

"You don't use it," they tell me.

"Well, I tried to use it just now," I say.

"No problem; we'll reinstate it. You can use it tomorrow," the guy says.

Well, shit. There I am with the computer on the checkout stand, where it will apparently have to wait until the next day. I ended up leaving, with the sole intention of going to Target. Target, you see, has a Starbucks. In the middle of the day after frustration Starbucks is like a massive alcoholic on the lamb finding an open bar in Utah, if you know what I mean. I needed a drink, badly, and it had to have copious amounts of caffeine, 'cause nothing settles me down like massive doses of boiling hot caffeine.

On the way to the Starbucks Tracy looks over at me. "It's an omen," she says. "You should buy a Mac".

So, the next day at work (a Thursday, on which my coworker and I have large spans of free time waiting for the work flow to catch up to us) I log on to the Apple Store, and find it. The Grail? No, not the Grail. But almost.

So now I'm sitting here waiting for a tiny "tower" to come in the mail. I would have liked a new display, nice little clean Mac keyboard and mouse-all the neat stuff. But the Cheap Bone (connected to the Wallet Bone, for those of you who did not take anatomy) prevailed, and I just ordered the brain of a Mac, which I will graft on to my PC monitor and keyboard and such, making a Frankenstein Computer with a hideous body but smooth and deadly brain.

Now I just have to wait a few more days and I'm in business.