2008 wasn’t ALL bad, but it was far from great. These are the personally significant events that I can remember from the past 12 months:
Aunt Ronnie died.
Ronnie was sick for a long time and her maker called on April 1. She was actually my great aunt and she was 96.
I met a bunch of local-ish Korean Adoptees through “Katch” by way of Facebook. Generally speaking I like the people I’ve met through this oddly-named organization, but I’m pretty sure that at least two of the “leaders” of the group absolutely can’t stand me! But these girls keep inviting me to shit because it is… and probably will always be… a very small operation. Hilarious!
My brother Pat and I took our Dad on the first annual Reliving-Our-Childhood fishing trip.
The venue was Edgerton, WI (which will probably change in the future) and the occasion was Dad’s birthday (that part will stay the same). It was a lot of fun but we couldn’t catch a single fish that weighed more than my hairy ballsack.
I met Kyle Orton at a Play for Life fundraiser.
But I chickened out on asking him to autograph my chest.
I sunk like $50,000 into a car I hardly ever drive just so I can keep driving it.
Yeah I know, I’m super smart. And it was closer to $2.000.
I bought an iPhone and started a mildly successful iPhone website, and then anothersite that I’m hoping will do just as well.
And then another, but just for SEO reasons.
I had three visitors from Korea: Suzanne, Grace, and then Lee Lee and I got fucked up with Clayton while the Bears won on MNF.
My partners and I pulled the plug on Naperthrill.com.
I still believe the site could have made it if we had the time and money to make it happen. Unfortunately seven years of being broke and usually busy is a recipe for failure.
Pat got engaged to Heather.
Are his-and-hers Bears jerseys inappropriate gifts for your brother’s wedding?
I went to Pat & Heather’s Halloween party dressed as an iPhone Douchebag
And while talking to Pat during a smoke break I stopped in mid-sentence to hurl on the sidewalk.
I donated any hope of getting a Christmas present to charity in accordance with family wishes.
I really don’t mind, but it would have been nice to have been asked instead of told about the plan.
And here’s what DIDN’T happen in 2008:
I didn’t get laid
But I jerked off like 20 million times
I didn’t go to the gym more than four times…
…despite paying for it month after month after month
I didn’t win any $$$ in any of my three fantasy football leagues Hmm, maybe 3 FANTASY FOOTBALL LEAGUES is why I didn’t get laid
I didn’t get kicked in the balls A little over 13 hours still remains in 2008 and I’m supposed to be “cruising for chicks” tonight with Mark (a “Katch” friend), so there’s still hope
Well today was my birthday… yay me, wheeee and all that. It was just another Day in the Life, but now I think I’m supposed to thank or somehow acknowledge like 20 people on Facebook for saying “happy bday” on my wall! Fuck.
Most interesting “birthday surprise” was last night when I opened what I thought was a collections notice from People’s Gas. I only opened it because it was from “Accounts Payable and Business Support” and I couldn’t believe I was behind on my gas bill.
I wasn’t. They sent me a check for $132.27, and the stub said something about my deposit + interest. Uhhh ok! I’ll take it.
Other than that, the highlights of my day were taking Terry for a really long walk, like 90 minutes or so, and having sushi for lunch. And I got a free PC game license from the makers of Lux Delux as a thank you for my review of Lux Touch on my iPhone App Reviews site. Maybe they’re expecting me to review Lux Delux, too? Yeah, not gonna happen, but I like the free game.
Today also happens to be the day after Obama won the presidential election. I totally meant to pick up a newspaper for preserving the headline in a vacuum-sealed plastic bag but I didn’t. Eh.
I almost forgot this piece of shit blog still existed until some guy named John (do I know you John?) left comments on a few posts.
So here’s the update from my August car nightmare… I bought my own parts and the guy at the shop estimated that I saved about $300-400. Not bad! And it was totally worth it. I bought the timing belt kit, water pump, serpentine belts, and a wheel bearing and gave it all to the shop and they put it in. The job still cost a shitload (6 hours of labor for the timing belt/water pump alone) but I’m no longer freaking out about my car self-destructing.
Only other “news” is that I started reviewing iPhone applications at iphoneappreviews.net and I’m getting some pretty good traffic… I’m on pace to hit about 35-40,000 pageviews this month. Why am I writing reviews? I dunno! Experiment, I guess, to see how much traffic a site like this can attract.
Since 2006 this car hasn’t needed many repairs (that I knew of at the time, anyway). Still, if I had a brain I’d dump it like a cheap skank and start slumming it with a Zipcar membership since I drive so little. Only problem is last week I had to blow $1,034.04 on new brakes all around PLUS two front calipers! Great, now if I try to sell the car I’ll basically be giving it away after deducting the cost of brakes from the sale price.
And now, after digging through all of the maintenance records I have for the past 65k miles (most of which were driven by my brother Pat when he owned it) I’m 100% convinced that the timing belt will ruin my day sometime soon despite Pat’s insistence that timing belts are never really the car-killing problem everyone makes them out to be. I want to believe that, but according to two different auto shops and this website:
The 2.5L dual over head cam engine is an interference engine. If the timing belt breaks in it, you will bend valve, break pistons, twist rods and crack heads. All sorts of catastrophes will be visited upon you. So, don’t play highway roulette with this one at all.
The 2.2 could lose a timing belt and just need a standard repair, but naturally I have the 2.5. And I’m planning to do 12 hours of highway driving in about two weeks! Sigh. Both over-the-phone estimates that I’ve gotten for a full timing belt job are around $1000. OMG. It’s not a Porsche, it’s a fucking 1996 Subaru Outback. And according to both mechanics, replacing JUST the belt is apparently a bad idea. Right, of course.
Well I guess I gotta do what I gotta do, but I’m not paying dealer retail ripoff for their parts. I’m gonna try to get the parts online and just pay for labor. The shop manager’s gonna start rolling his eyes when I show up with car pieces, but fuck him!
Will my thrifty little scheme work? Will I actually get the right parts and drive away without having to give up a kidney? Stay tuned.
Well super now I can blog about stupid shit anytime, anywhere! I knew Wordpress would come through with a free (and really well-done) app to make this happen. Too bad this blog is 100% pointless.
Here’s a picture of Terry the Dog’s mouth. And I did all this from my phone. Whoa.
Yesterday I was determined to get an iPhone 3G so I made some phone calls… everyone in Chicago was sold out… and I was about to give up until some guy at the Apple Store in Deer Park (a little north of Palatine) said they had just gotten an “extremely small shipment”.
I hauled ass to the store which took about an hour and, after waiting in a short line for about 30 minutes, a store employee was helping me set up my new white 16 gb iPhone! Sweet. I would have preferred black but whatever.
It’s great that the iPhone is basically a mini porn machine, but all the other bells & whistles are what make it so fucking cool. In fact this device is so cool that I kind of feel like a douchebag being seen with it in public! That feeling will go away eventually, but right now I can’t help but think people are watching me tap away at the screen and they’re thinking “omg that guy looks like a gigantic douchebag”, kind of how I used to look at people who walk around with a bluetooth earpiece on their head.
So far my favorite features are the GPS location mapping and all the 3rd party apps that can be downloaded directly on the phone from the App Store.
This is the free crap I’ve already installed:
Pandora - iPhone version of Pandora.com’s music genre player Facebook - Stripped down version of the site AOL Radio - Plays live radio from various stations around the country Last.fm - iPhone version of Last.fm’s music player Light - Just turns the screen white so the phone can be used to see things in the dark TapTap - Stupid game that will probably get uninstalled shortly BoxOffice - Finds local movie theaters and showtimes, and also has movie synopses Shazam - “Listens” to music that I’m hearing in the real world and tells me what song it is SportsTap - Tracks live sports scores from all the major sports Midomi - Basically the same as Shazam, so one will get uninstalled eventually Yelp - Finds local restaurants, bars, etc. from Yelp’s website Google - Google search tool made for iPhone NYTimes - News & crap eBay - iPhone-optimized version of the site YPmobile - Yellow Pages search
GPS assists some of these applications, such as BoxOffice and Yelp.
I definitely couldn’t get this on my old piece of shit phone
I’m not exactly known as Mr. Hygiene but I’m also not a fan of excess body hair, ie: the pubic jungle I just recently trimmed down. This rogue nosehair may be hard to spot in the video below but, believe me, it was there and it was proudly hanging out of my right nostril. And no, this is NOT a hint that you should get me a nosehair trimmer for Christmas. As you can see I prefer to get to the “root” of the problem even if it means a little suffering.
I kinda saw this coming. I got in line at 7:40 am behind at least 100 other people. About 10 minutes later some AT&T guy came out and told us they wouldn’t have enough iPhones to go around so we should come back later! Oh well. Better to get brushed off early than sit in line for 2 hours for nothing.
The bald guy in the gray sweatshirt below was one of the people I saw last night… turns out he showed up at 8 pm. DUMBASS!! I’ll gladly wait a day or three rather than spend a night sleeping on the sidewalk.
I was just out doing some late-night running around… drop off the rent check, return a movie at Blockbuster, score some crack, that kind of thing… so I decided to swing by the AT&T store to make sure I know where it is before I go there tomorrow to get an iPhone. It wasn’t even midnight and there were already two people waiting outside their door!! Geeeeezzzzzz. It’s just a piece of hardware.
I’ll try to be there when they open up at 8 am but in the very likely event that I oversleep and can’t get my shiny new phone tomorrow, I’ll get it later. No big deal.
This blog will bore you. There's also a very good chance it will offend and/or disgust you, and if you think I'm exaggerating just go look at my post from May 20, 2008. Seriously, don't let your kids read this blog unless you've got a good therapist standing by.
When you're done being grossed out here, go to my iPhone App Reviews site and tell your iPhone-toting friends about it ok? Super.
