Cameron's Thoughts

Yesterday I finally got hotel reservations setup for my trip to Mackinac Island this summer. I haven't taken any vacations anywhere in years and decided I should finally get around to doing that. I remember Mackinac Island being a fun place to go when I was younger, so I thought it would be a great place to take the kids. Got a nice room with lake-front view setup at the Clarion Hotel in Mackinaw City. Also purchased a package with ferry rides to the island, entrance to an indoor waterpark near the hotel, carriage tour on the island, and a ton of other stuff. Also plan to go across the bridge at some point, not sure what we'll do on the other side, but we will figure that out when we get there.

So, on Thursday, I finally went to see a doctor. But, this actually has nothing at all to do with my previous posts about seeing a doctor. I went to see a chiropractor. All week, my back had been killing me, and it was getting worse and worse. I wasn't sleeping well as I was waking up every 30-40 minutes in pain. I wasn't able to work very well as I couldn't sit or stand still for long periods of time and was just generally exhausted. It also sucked as I hadn't been on the computer much lately as I didn't even feel comfortable sitting at home in front of the computer for more than short periods of time. Thankfully, Kim is an awesome friend and realizes that I was going to put off seeing the doctor as long as possible, so she just found a doctor and scheduled me an appointment. I have now seen the doctor twice and it is amazing the difference it makes. I seen a chiropractor back in Charlotte about 5 years ago and had similar results. I only stopped going then because the insurance ran out. This time around, my insurance is very strange and this is going to cost me a ton at first. It's worth it though, as my back being out of alignment pretty much throws the rest of myself off and makes life miserable.

So, I have finally decided to go see a doctor. This is kinda major, as I have a distrust for doctors and the medical profession in general. A couple days ago, I had some more issues with depression, and this was worse than I have ever experienced. I realize at this point that I can no longer control this myself and I may need some counseling or drugs, or both. Additionally, sorry to anyone that I have been an ass to in the last couple of days.

I've begun to realize that my mind is really mostly in control of itself and just kind of does it's own thing. I am now to the point where I have mostly gotten away from depression (I am worlds better than I was a year ago), but it still pops up from time to time. And the odd thing is, it's often when I should otherwise be in a really good mood. Today was somewhat not a good example of this. I was really depressed pretty much all day long, and there was certainly a trigger that caused it to happen. Basically, I was left a message on my phone that was very misleading and it panicked me. I later found out what the message was really about and I should have been able to move on with my day no worries, but I wasn't able to. All day long my mind was wondering and I really couldn't focus on anything. I really don't think I got much done, and I feel bad for my co-workers if that is the case. What bothers me the most though is that I could not snap myself out of this. No matter what I told myself to try and make things better, it just didn't matter. Consciously, I knew I was fine, but subconsciously, I was a mess.
Anyhow, I now feel better once again, and I also am glad that I have gained much more confidence about myself in the last year or so. If anything, I think that has mostly helped me overcome my mental issues I have experienced. People who read this would probably noticed that I never wrote about these types of issues a while back, but that was because I kept it between myself and a couple of really close people that I trusted. Actually, only two people knew about any of this until recently, even most of my close friends did not. Anyhow, I now am to the point where I feel that either you can know this about me and be understanding, or I really don't care much about you. So, if anyone was wondering why I may have not seemed like myself today, this is why. I don't want any pity or sorrow from anybody, so please don't think that's why I am writing this. I just think that writing about it is another way I can try and get past these issues. I hope one day I can look back at this post and be glad it's over.

About five years ago, I had a slight tear in my rotator cuff. This should have told me long ago that I was really out of shape. I didn't realize what had happened at the time, I thought I just pulled a muscle. The pain never really went away though, so, after about a month I decided to see a doctor. If you know me well, you will know I can't stand to see doctors, so this was a big step. The doctor then told me that I had simply pulled a muscle and prescribed some pain medication. The pain wasn't really the main issue, I was just concerned that I wasn't getting better. This visit basically helped to once again solidify my feelings that most doctors are quite incompetent. Months went by and the pain did tone down a bit, but I never fully felt better. After about a year or so, I finally went and saw another doctor. This time, it was determined that it was likely a rotator cuff tear and an MRI was scheduled. The MRI confirmed this. I then started to do physical therapy which did help the day of the visit. I did this for a little while and then was left with doing some exercises on my own. I was very inconsistent with that. The one thing that always did help though was Celebrex. That medication did wonders for the constant annoyance of my arm. It was never a lot of pain, but just an endless annoyance that never went away. Over time, I basically got used to the irritation of my arm being sore, but the cold of the winter alway made it worse. Last winter I used up most of the Celebrex I had. I eventually ran out and this meant that I was going to need to see another doctor if I wanted more. I didn't have medical insurance for the longest time, so that plan was pretty much ruled out anyway. I do have it now though. The great thing is, now that I have been regularly exercising and lifting weights, my arm actually hasn't been giving me any trouble. It's quite great actually. Not only am I in the best shape I have been in the last 10 years, but the little aches and pains I've just accepted as normal are now gone. It's really nice now when people ask how I'm doing, and I can honestly say that I'm doing great.

I finally ordered all the parts I need to repair my computer. I got a nice deal on a Antec 650W power supply at CompUSA's going out of business sale. I also got a new case that Brian had suggested, a motherboard and a new hard drive. The hard drive wasn't really NEEDED, but it will be nice to have. My dead Seagate is covered under warranty, but I want to try and recover the data off of that drive on to a new one. Then I can ship the damaged drive back for replacement. If I go ahead a stick all my SATA drives into this new box, I will have a total of 2TB of storage. I'll probably actually do this as the motherboard has eight SATA connectors and the case has five drive bays. Since I have two 160GB drives that are currently in RAID0 setup, I think I will convert them to a RAID1 so I have some reliable storage space.
In other news, spent the weekend assisting in the production of a short film for the 48/5 competition for the East Lansing Film Festival. This competition involved creating a five minute short movie over a 48 hour period. There was a long long night of writing Friday night, filming all day Saturday and editing that started Saturday night and went through early Sunday. It was completed ahead of schedule today. I'd have to say I'm fairly impressed by how it turned out. I didn't end up being as involved with this project as I have in some prior film stuff I had done, but I did get to play as an extra in one scene.
Finally, I made some further decisions on how I am going to proceed with the future of this website. I was planning to do a full rewrite and had Jan 1, 2009 set as my goal release date for that. After thinking it over, I think I am going to put that on the backburner and further work on the current code. This includes adding more features that I have been wanting, plus rewriting things in their current place. This actually worked really well with my comment system rewrite. Also, about the comments, currently you need to login to my site to post them; this will not be the case in the very near future. I've always wanted the comments to be completely open to anyone, but this of course opens the door to spam. I was using Movable Types built in comment support for the longest time, but now I am running off of my own code. I didn't have everything in place to prevent spammers from posting so I had removed the option for open posting, but I now thought of a simple idea that I will setup soon.

Near the beginning of January, I bought myself a weight bench. I've been tinkering with the idea of getting into shape for a while now, but things I tried haven't really panned out. I was walking for a bit, but it takes a lot of time and I wasn't really seeing much results for all the time I was investing. Plus, due to the climate I live in, it's not really practical year-round.
Amazingly, I have created a workout program for myself and not only followed it, but in most cases exceeded what I set forth to accomplish. Based on past history, this is quite amazing. I often will try things and they will fall apart within a weeks time. At this point, I've been working out every other day since Jan 17th missing only a few days here and there for important events. Last week I had worked up to a full hour of weight lifting and tonight I got this up to an hour and fifteen minutes. I really didn't expect to notice anything for at least a couple of months, but I can already tell that I am in the best shape I have been since high school. Yea, I still have quite a bit of fat around the belly, but underneath there is some decent muscle at this point. I'm expecting much of this fat to slowly turn into muscle within the coming months. I hope to have some good follow up reports on this. Right now though, I am going to bed cause I am pretty destroyed at this point.

My mind is quite out of control for the most part. It's something that seems to disturb me more and more each day. I used to be someone who felt in complete control of my mind and body. At one point I was able to easily mentally block out pain and hunger and such. Then something happened and I have lost this control. Not only that, but I have had actual emotions and feeling overcome me in ways that I can't change. The worst parts of this seem to come about every six months. I remember quite clearly about a year ago having major depression issues and also again I had a couple of weeks of these issues over the summer. This also happened a bit in the past too. The problems seem to have returned this past week. Today is the first day that I feel more in control. It's hard to really explain what is going on, but I just get this overwhelming sense that I am worthless and alone. Then I start to become really paranoid. The worst part is, I am completely aware that the paranoia is unjustified and I try talking myself out of it, but it doesn't really seem to help. Nothing seems to help really. I tried sleeping it away, drinking it away. No help. Anyhow, this isn't meant to be a pity post or anything. I avoiding posting anything while I was being most affected as I didn't want to sound like an asshole or anything. I really just wanted to get my thoughts out in writing to try and help deal with them.

So, yea, it's 2008 now. I thought I'd maybe write some post looking back at 2007. Not a whole lot to say really. Moved out of my dad's again at the beginning of the year. Had a few pretty decent parties at my new place. Got a new job. Met a ton of random ass people. Basically drank a whole lot in between. All and all, was certainly a good year. Had few complaints. Really, at one point, not sure if this was 2007 or not, I decided that I really wasn't going to worry about where my life was going in the long term, I have been a much happier person. Not to say that I want to be a bum, or I don't want to achieve anything, but I used to always try to plan my entire next 10 years and base everything I did around that. All that caused was stress and a feeling of never accomplishing my goals. My new plan is to live until tomorrow. So far, it's gone well and I always can be happy to know I've done what I set out to do. There's been a couple times this last year where I almost didn't quite get to the next day, namely, the very first day of 2007. But, I'm still here. On that note, I really have no idea what 2008 will bring. Leaving Corecomm was really my only thing I really wanted to do last year, and that is done. I'm loving my current job, so I can't really see leaving it anytime soon. So, at this point, I'll probably just keep doing what I'm doing and hope things turn out well. This has turned out to be a really lame post about 2007. It's not even titled 2007. Blah...

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, I've been very well since posting that. Today I decided that I've going to take an entire week off from drinking any Monster. This will help me financially as well as it will cut some sugar out of my diet. I also think it may be a contributer to the panic attacks I've been having. I'm mainly posting this on here to try and give me more motivation to stay on this.

I don't understand my mind anymore. It seems to have lost it's balance. Today for instance, I woke up hungover and confused. Not so much a mind issue rather than a physical issue as a result of drinking. After that went away, I actually felt very happy and confident. For no apparent reason, I felt better than I have in a while. Only a couple hours later, I'm experiencing a panic attack. I went through a phase where I was having those almost every other day. Then it stopped for a few months. I had one a couple weeks ago though. And then just now. It's odd that I'm swinging from extreme happiness to these panic attacks where everything seems terrible.
I think this panic attack may have been brought on by some abdominal pain I've been experiencing. Not being a doctor myself, I'm having trouble determining what the cause of this is. Unfortunately, it's on my right side near where my appendix is. But, it seems to be further right and a little higher than where most diagrams are showing the appendix. So, I somewhat fear it may be appendicitis. At the same time, this started when I started doing sit ups, which I hadn't done in years. So, it may just be a muscle issue. My reasearch seems to show that appendicitis goes from painful to severe within about 12 hours, and this has been painful for about a week now. So, I have no idea, but it's certainly not getting any better.

Today I started the next level of my journey on becoming healthier. I've been doing fairly regular walks at least a couple times a week. Today I actually went jogging. This was probably a really bad day to start this as it was mid-90's outside. I did 45 minutes of jogging mixed with walking. I was close to passing out at one point. I'm going to limit this to 30 minutes in the future until I'm in a little better shape.

Amazingly, I've actually been keeping up with this walking thing I started two weeks ago. Just wanted to post an update as I'm kinda excited I kept with it this long. Also, tomorrow morning I start working in a new position and a new work schedule at the DPS. More great and exciting news!

People who know me, know that I don't really do any exercise. Today, I decided to do something about that and took a walk. Walked for over 30 minutes with the kids. Brett was all tired out, amazingly I wasn't doing too bad. I feel much better now for doing that, I hope to make this a daily thing.

I think I've determined that I'll probably end up being single forever. Seems the chances of me meeting someone that I can actually be with for any length of time is not very high. It has partially to do with the fact that I am somewhat picky with the people I associate with. I can't really handle anybody who is a conservative at all. Religion is another area that I just can't go for. I could handle middle-of-road people fine. I don't expect everyone to be a super liberal or anything. But, if you voted for Bush the second time around, there's obviously something fucked up in your head, and I just can't deal with that shit.
These things alone still leave quite a large number of people out there. But, I'm still just not much of a people person. I'm not that outgoing when first meeting people, and a lot of people can't seem to handle that. I've kinda grown contempt for most people in general. Then there is the intelligence factor. Probably something that bothers me more than anything is stupid people. There are just too many of these. And not to be sexist, but there seems to be a higher percentage of women that fall into this category. It could just be the ones that I know though.
I also really value open-mindedness. I would like to think of myself as extremely open-minded. I'm not really offended by anything. Nothing really shocks me too much. This pretty much is related to why I don't like conservatives. But, there always seems to be some hangup that people have. Either they hate homosexuals, or they are racist, or something along those lines.
There is also physical aspects. I am by no means the ideal male when it comes to this, but at the same time I am human and there are traits that I am attracted to in the opposite sex. Unless most guys, I really don't seem to have any preference when it comes to breast size. I'm not sure why, I think all sizes are nice. Weight isn't a big hangup for me either. I do have a thing for a pretty face though. That seems to be really important. A good smile and nice hair really does me over. Then there is a height issue. Being only 5'5", about half of all women are taller than myself. I can handle women being slightly taller, but anything more than an inch or so, and I can't really go for that. This is basically a confidence issue on my part, but that's just the way it is. The confidence thing may also stem from the fact that on almost all personals sites, women seem to want guys 5'7" or taller. Even women that are like 5 foot tall.
Then, on the rare occasion I do meet someone that I actually can stand and have conversation with, there always seems to be a problem. Once again, the lack of confidence that I have always makes me suspect the other person doesn't share the same opinion of me. This inevitably is usually true, only adding to the confidence issue. Otherwise, there always seems to be a breakdown of things to talk about. Maybe I am just not that interesting of a person. I don't really claim to be interesting. So, why exactly would someone want anything to do with me? This is my current conundrum.
Overall, I don't mind so much. I'd much rather be single the rest of my life than with the wrong person. But, I'd much rather be with the right person, than single. Huh.

Here I am. At work. Sick. Pissed. I went to bed last night at 4am. Somewhat later than usual as I was watching some good Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes and just couldn't stop. At 6am I awoke and went to the bathroom with stomach pains. I then ended up throwing up and feeling much better afterwards. I was hoping I just ate some bad food and that was that. I then remembered Nickcole said that my son Brett was sick Tuesday night and threw up every 15 minutes all night long.
I went back to lay down. Then the stomach pains returned. From 6am on, I went on a cycle of throwing up, feeling better for 10 minutes, feeling horrible stomach pain for about 20 minutes, then throwing up again. This was my day. Both Hailey and Brett were over for the night, so I had to utilize those 10 minute intervals where I felt okay to feed and clothe them. I was eventually able to get ahold of Nickcole and she came and picked them up around 10:30. I was still sick at this point though. When Nickcole came over, she also let me know that she came down with the same thing, and was sick every 15 minutes from like 8pm 'til 6am on Thursday night. I knew I couldn't work like this. Since I am point supervisor tonight, I have to actually find another supervisor to work for me. This leaves three other people. First guy I called was up north at Houghton Lake for the weekend. Next two guys went straight to voicemail. No return calls or anything.
So, here I am at work. Thankfully, the puking actually did stop at about 12:30. I still don't feel well. Had only 2 hours of sleep. Haven't eaten anything. And I'm at Corecomm, which makes me feel unwell on a normal day.

I have to say that I am quite the procrastinator. I'm not really sure where this came from, or why I am this way. It may just be a lack of motivation. I will only do things because at the last minute I HAVE to do them. This always seems like a good way to go as when I do actually get around to getting things done, I don't waste any time. Plus, the fact that every day leading up until the due date on things, I have the satisfaction of putting things off and slacking. The main problem comes with the fact that when this slacking occurs, I always have this guy in the back of my mind that's worried that I won't have enough time to finish what needs to be done. This guy has been slowly draining my resources and causing me stress and grief. One problem is the fact that I don't ever realize how much the stress is actually getting to me until the day after I accomplish what I have been procrastinating doing. I then notice how much of a relief things were. I do have satisfaction that the stress is gone, but I wonder how much better things would be if it was just never there. I also have to wonder how much my life is being shortened by needless stress that I bring on to myself. There's of course always going to be stress, but probably a majority of it is self-inflected. I wasn't really going anywhere with this, this has just been going through my mind today.

It's been a long while since I actually put in an entry on this site about myself. I used to pretty much do a majority of the work and entries on this site when I was at work. I used to just take calls at work and could easily multitask and do other things. My current work situation generally requires me to focus on what I am doing when I do actual work. If I'm not doing anything, I basically don't want to do anything else but sit and daze off. So, this site has been getting neglected. I did finally get around to building in a feature to allow myself to send picture messages from my phone and have them post straight to this site.
One big news item recently is that I finally moved out of my dad's place that I had been living for the last year since my divorce and got a new place with my friend Brian. It's a big three bedroom townhouse in south Lansing. I really appreciated my dad letting me stay with him, but I just have to do my own thing and being 25 living with my parents doesn't do a lot of good for self esteem.
So, at this point, I'm pretty excited about having my own place. Things this week haven't been going so well for me, but I have a feeling that for the most part only good can happen from here on out. I also have been looking into going back to school. I got registered at LCC and will probably talk to a counselor there I know about getting financial aid and getting a course plan. Anyway, that's all I have to say for now.

I think I have been behind on sleep for some reason lately. I always keep dazing off during the day and taking random 10 min naps here and there. Last night I actually went to bed fairly early and slept over 12 hours. Damn, I feel like a new person today. It's awesome.

Been a while since I posted anything. I seem to do this in spurts. I guess I haven't had much notable to say really. Kids have been doing great. Brett's been saying a lot of words recently. Hailey's been potty trained for a while, but now she doesn't even use the seat the goes on the adult toilet, she just holds herself up. She is getting so grown up. Her third birthday is in just over a month. Hailey and I went to go see Dora Live a few weeks ago. She had a lot of fun with that. Then we went to the zoo a couple weeks ago. Hailey wasn't as interested in that as I thought. She knows what many of the animals are now, but she seemed more interested in playing on the slides and swings in the park they had in front of the zoo.
As for myself, work is starting to get busy again. We are really short staffed now, but for the first time in about a year and a half, we have some new employees. It's about time. So, I will be busy with the training and such with that. Outside of work, my good friend Neil just graduated from MSU with a degree in political science. Patrick just bought a house and is all moved in now. Been spending a lot of time hanging out with Ian, JD, and Kim. They are a lot of fun to be with. Also been getting back into playing more video games. I finally managed to get SimCity 4 installed on my new computer. It was locking up on the second disk the first couple times I tried to install it. But, it's on now, and I can finally build as big as cities as I want with no slowdown. The box says it only requires 128MB of RAM. Ha, that is a joke. Maybe to initially start the game. I have 2GB of RAM, and I can now finally run it. I also got Counterstrike:Source. But, now for some reason my DVD burner won't burn a CD, it says no disk in drive. That is odd, so I shall finish this so I can reboot.

You might be wondering, "What happened to Cameron?". Yea, I haven't posted anything here in a while. I really don't have anything to say, I just noticed it's been going on three weeks since I posted. For some reason I have been perpetually tired for the last month or so. It doesn't matter how much I sleep either. I just feel tired all day and night. I think my health may be the problem. Anyway, this tiredness also has caused time to go by very quickly. I don't really remember much happening since Christmas. It's like everyday seems the same and in my mind they all just kind of blend together. Thus is life I suppose. That's all for now, I will be leaving work soon.

I thought, I should do a look back at the past year, and reflect back on it. This is a bad year to do so though. If I can say anything about thinking back at 2005, it's that I'm glad it's over and look forward to 2006.

I am normally a pretty positive person. But, this past year has probably been one of my worst years. The great thing about really bad years, I probably have only good things to look forward to. Basically, getting divorced was a pretty stressful thing. I didn't expect it to go well, but at the same time, I have never felt depression like I did after that happened. I didn't know that I could feel that bad and have a better grasp on how depression can really affect your life. I am over that for the most part now, but that lasted longer than I could have imagined. I normally have pretty good control over my feelings and emotions, and for the first time, I didn't. To top that off, while I knew my marriage wasn't going well, I didn't quite realize that Nickcole was so easily ready to end it. I really caught me off guard. Leading to the divorce, this summer we had some of the worst financial situations we ever had. I still don't know why we didn't have any money. But, we were broke. I went to selling things on Ebay to have gas money. I was scared for a while and that lead to a lot of stress having to worry about money so much. And now, my job is no longer guaranteed to last much longer. It's more of a question of when it will be over with, rather than an if. I will be laid off sometime soon, be it a month or three months. And with the current job market, I might have to settle for less pay or something. It's not making this year end all that well. That's the general bad crap that I can think of right now. It's the stuff that has affected me most this year.

Let's see, some of the good things about the past year. At the beginning of the year, Brett was not quite even three months old. Now he is running around, starting to talk and becoming quite an energetic little boy. My job also pays more and has become tons easier. At the same time, while my financial situation at one point this year was the worst it has ever been, I now am only working one job and doing quite well financially.
Knowledge-wise, I have been learning so much about web design. I completely rebuilt this site from the ground up. That was one of the biggest projects of my life. Seriously. It took about half a year to complete. In the process I have learnt about proper xHTML coding, PHP and MySQL databases. I feel pretty confident in using these now and hope that I will be able to do some nice web projects in the near future.
People-wise, being single has changed my social situation quite a bit. I didn't really talk to my brother much since moving out of my parents house back in 2000, but now we are probably closer than we have ever been. That's really cool. Plus, I have started hanging out with Patrick again. We have been friends for over 15 years, but for the past five or so, we didn't do a whole lot together. More recently, I have been hanging out with Paul, CJ, and Ben from work. We've been having LAN parties every couple weeks and that's been fun. While I have been lacking in relationships with women, hopefully that situation will improve sometime in the future. So, not everything has been bad.

That's my quick rundown of 2005. I feel confident that 2006 will be a great year. My goals for 06 are to start working out and to get a better job. I don't want to make my goals list too long, or I'll skip things. As long as I do those two things, I think the rest of everything else I want to get done will kind of just fall in place. Anyways, happy new year!

OK, things with life are getting better. As you may know, I am going through a divorce, that has been causing me to become depressed on and off. Then, I found out some things at my work that were bad. Can't really discuss them here as it's confidential type stuff still. But, today I found out that it may not be as bad as I thought. So, things are doing better for me. Just an FYI as my last post wasn't very descriptive.

See title

You fit in with: Agnosticism Your ideals mostly resemble those of an Agnostic. You are fairly ambivalent towards any religion or spiritual connection. You lead a very busy life and find that religion and spirituality are unnecessary to your life. 40% scientific. 0% reason-oriented.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Next week I will be on vacation, so if you leave me any emails I won't be responding, and if you comment and this site and get the message that it was moderated, then it might take some time before it shows up. Right now, I am sitting here with 15 minutes left to go at work before I have the next nine days off. I am excited. This is the first time I have gone on a trip since I went to Cedar Point back in 2001. The last time I went camping was my honeymoon back in 2000. Our family is going up north to Higgins Lake to go camping. I bet Hailey is going to have a blast because she is addicted to being outside now, and she will be able to do that all day long now.
But, before I go on vacation, tomorrow I am spending the day with Patrick. I am pretty excited about that too. We haven't done anything together for more than a couple of hours here and there in a long time. But, tomorrow we are getting tuxes for his wedding, and then we are going to golf. Something I have never done in real life. I have been playing Hot Shots Golf on the PSP non-stop recently, but I imagine the real thing is a bit different.
Anyhow, my night is now done at work. Yay! Here comes my vacation!

I am now the owner of a 2005 Scion xA. I picked up the car on Saturday and am loving it. Best car I have ever owned. That's all for now

It's been a while since I posted anything here. Couple weeks ago I was basically sick all week long. Took almost two weeks to completely recover. I had to work, but I didn't do much of anything else. Never extremly sick, just a non-stop cold that wouldn't go away. I am better now and back to getting things done. One thing that I have been working on for about the last six months and is nearing completion is a complete rewrite of this website. I have rewriten all the templates powering this site from the ground up. Using all standards perfect XHTML and CSS to the best of my abitily. Actually, the research started about nine months ago. I have been doing a lot of planning on this. I have a due date set for completion of June 22, which is the 2nd anniversery of Cameron's Thoughts. I have set a number of deadlines for things to get done, and so far everything is ahead of schedule, so that release date hopefully will actually happen.
Other than that, not much else going on. Brett started crawling a few weeks ago, now he is going really good at that. He can also sit up with no trouble and can pull himself up on things.
Also new recently, I did decide on the Scion xA as my next car. I ordered one and it will be in by the time my current lease is up on June 15th. Will be a step up from my current vehicle. It's a pretty similar size and engine and things. But this vehicle will have a built in Pioneer MP3 CD player with six speakers plus a subwoofer, power windows and locks, remote keyless entry, side airbags. Pretty much a ton of things my current car does not have. So, I am pretty excited about that, only a couple weeks to go for that.
I am going to end this post now though, as I started writing it about six days ago.

Your English Skills:

Spelling: 80%

Grammar: 60%

Punctuation: 40%

Vocabulary: 20%

Does Your English Cut the Mustard?

You Will Die at Age 70

70 You're pretty average when it comes to how you live... And how you'll die as well.

What Age Will You Die?

American Cities That Best Fit You:

70% Austin

65% Atlanta

65% Miami

65% San Diego

60% Honolulu

Which American Cities Best Fit You?

You Are 35% Normal (Occasionally Normal)

You sure do march to your own beat... But you're so weird, people wonder if it's a beat at all You think on a totally different wavelength And it's often a chore to get people to understand you

How Normal Are You?

Your Dominant Intelligence is Logical-Mathematical Intelligence

You are great at finding patterns and relationships between things. Always curious about how things work, you love to set up experiments. You need for the world to make sense - and are good at making sense of it. You have a head for numbers and math ... and you can solve almost any logic puzzle. You would make a great scientist, engineer, computer programmer, researcher, accountant, or mathematician.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

My next car may be the Scion xA. I had a test drive of this car on Saturday. I like it a lot. Drives almost exactly like my Toyota Echo, yet with a bit more kick to it. This likely due to the fact that it's running the same engine and under the hood it's pretty similar to my Echo. But, it has a smarter system that makes it drive a bit better, though the gas mileage is quite as good as the Echo. Still not bad though. I have been looking at a number of cars recently. I looked at the Pontiac Vibe, but, while not priced too highly, it's cost more than my current car, as was the priciest of all the cars I have so far looked at. I then looked at the Chevy Cobalt as I think that looks somewhat stylish and is the latest car from Chevy at a good price. Looking at the interior, I quickly changed my mind. Reminded me of a Corsica from the 80's. Just a really boring and plain interior. The outside looks nice, but I'm going to be sitting inside that thing for the next few years. So, that went off the list quickly. While I was at the Chevy dealer, I looked at the Chevy Aveo. Previously, I had not considered this as it looked way too small. But, looking at the inside, it seemed big enough and actually looked fairly nice inside. Took that car for a test drive, but the car just could do anything. I had trouble getting on the highway. I ended up with the pedal all the way to the floor, and the car not really making any effort to accelerate. That car is now also off my list.
The Scion xA is priced very nicely, even with all the standard features that my Echo doesn't have, such as CD player, power windows and locks, and a clock. To top that off, I can add a security system, key less entry, side airbags, and a subwoofer, and the car is about $30 a month less than I pay for my Echo. I currently lease the Echo, but I can buy this car for less. To top that off, I researched the insurance rates, it looks like the Scion cost less for insurance.
Like I was mentioning before, I took the Scion for a test drive on Saturday. I need to get back with the dealer soon as I need to get the order put in for the features that I want. He said it would take a couple of weeks to have the car ready. After that, I may actually have the car. My current lease doesn't end until June 15th, but the dealer said that he would be more than willing to buy out the lease early as it is only around $6300 to buy out the car, and he said due to recent demand for the Echo, he could sell it for $9000. Of course, he is making out quite nicely, and I would be getting out of my lease early, so everyone wins. Also funny, when I was taking the test drive, I got pulled over by a cop. Apparently, the dealer plate fell off of the car. Was slightly nervous at the time, especially when the cop started asking how did he know we didn't steal the car as there was no plates, registration, or insurance. The dealer didn't have a good answer and neither did I. Fortunately, I had his business card on me as the cop asked for that as proof, and the dealer didn't have one on him.
So, as of right now, I think I will be going for this car, unless I find a good reason not too within the next week.

Neil keeps doing these, so I keep getting curious what my results are.

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

20% Upper Midwestern

5% Midwestern

5% Yankee

0% Dixie

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Your Inner European is French!

Smart and sophisticated. You have the best of everything - at least, *you* think so.

Who's Your Inner European?

You Are 28 Years Old

28 Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

Just an update on what's going on. Basicly, not much. Haven't really had anything to post about since everything has just the same 'ol stuff happening. Hailey's getting big, finally is saying mama now. She can say just about everyones name, but would never say mama. She actually has a pretty big vocabulary now and is putting together a number of sentences. She's been saying "thank you" for a while, but now she is starting to say "please" too. Brett's getting big, over 15 pounds now. He is starting to roll over by himself.
But, that's about it, work has been busy, there will be some big changes happening in the near future that will make my job ten times better than it currently is. I just hope I don't lose it cause that is also a good possibilty.

Tommorrow morning, I am having my first ever surgical procedure performed on me. Yes, I am 23 and have never needed any type of surgury. I guess I should be happy that I have been so healthy. Actually, I am not in need if surgury still. This is just a want. I am having a vasectomy performed.  Not that I don't love my kids, I just can't be taking care of a whole load of them.  I want to be able to focus on giving them a good life, and since I have both a girl and a boy, what else could I want.  So, wish me good luck.  I will be online all weekend since I have been told to sit and do nothing.  So, I will be taking full advantage of my laptop and Tivo over the next few days.

Which File Extension are You?

Doesn't really seem to be me, but, whatever.

You are George Costanza - Jerry's paranoid best friend. Elaine Benes describes you as "a short guy with glasses...looks like Humpty-Dumpty with a melon hat."

Which character are you? Find out at Starlocity.com!

You're an Etch-a-Sketch!! You're the creative,
artsy type who doesn't need to actually utilize
a single muscle group in order to have fun.
Doesn't matter though, you're still cool.

What childhood toy from the 80s are you?

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Would you have been friends with Adolf Hitler? Dummkopf Hitler hates you. Even from his grave, he is sending you hate rays.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Dang, even hating me from the grave, that's deep.

Which OS are You?

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

I have been thinking a lot recently about what kind will be my next purchase. I still have quite some time to think about this since the lease on my current car won't be up until June of next year. I bought my 2001 Toyota Echo on a four year lease. It's a pretty good car, but I think I should be able to get an even better car for the same money I paid for that one. I bought it in June of 2001, and after Sept. 11 that year, with the economy going to crap, there have been TON better deals on cars. I have still seen deals much better than I remember back when I bought my Echo. Anyways, I really am having some trouble deciding what to get. I am a slacker, so I would like to be prepared once that June '05 date comes around. I won't be able to take my time then as I will need to have a replacement car ready to go. I saw my current dream car in pictures of the most recent Detroit Auto Show. The Nissan Actic. Though only a concept car, if this came out, it would be pretty cool. Looks a bit different, but it's kinda like something you might see in a movie of the future, like A.I.. Here are a few highlight's about this car that I like:

"The IT system boasts a 100-gigabyte memory and a portable wireless hard drive. The LCD roof panels provide the ability to use visual displays to change the “interior environment.” The Actic is the future contained in a rounded silver pod."
From North American International Auto Show website.

"Actic provides nearly unlimited opportunities for its users to explore and challenge the relationship between exterior and interior environments and to introduce elements of personalization by projecting video displays on a series of six roof-mounted flat LCD screens."
From NAIAS 2004 Highlights: Nissan Actic Concept.

Other than that, there are a few other cars currently on the market that I am looking at. I have kind of been thinking about the 'modern stationwagon' look of the Toyota Matrix and the Pontiac Vibe. I would probably go with the Pontiac though as my Dad works for GM and I get a discount for buying those cars. Another car that I like is the Mazda3. It's a sporty looking car with some nice features. I have also somewhat considered the Saturn Ion (another GM car) but I still have to look more into that. My mother-in-law just bought a brand new Hyundai, but not sure what kind. It was really nice with power everything, a power sunroof, and keyless entry. They were able to talk the price down to under $12,000. So far, these are the cars I am considering. I have also heard some commercials on the radio for Sundance (a somewhat local dealership) having Chevy Malibu's for like $190 a month and Grand Prix's for $220 a month. Those are some nice car's and for prices like that it might be worth checking out.

I haven't been to many states really, and Illinois and Missouri hardly count since the highway on the way to Texas just barely passes through them. I'd make a world map, but other than these few states I visited, I have only gone to Canada once, and that was for about 15 minutes.

create your own visited states map.

I'd say I didn't do too bad on this test. I think this is saying I am lustful, but damn, I'm a human, what can you do!
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

Mmm, I am Lemon Flavored. I am bitter and twisted. Expect from me acerbic humour and sharp commentary. While I may seem nasty at first, I'm actually quite good company if I like you, so long as you don't mind a bit of cutting to the chase. What Flavour Are You?

My inner child is sixteen years old!

Life's not fair! It's never been fair, but while
adults might just accept that, I know
something's gotta change. And it's gonna
change, just as soon as I become an adult and
get some power of my own.

How Old is Your Inner Child?
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You are Neo, from "The Matrix." You
display a perfect fusion of heroism and
compassion.

What Matrix Persona Are You?
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Actually, this is a post about nothing. Just thoughts. I'm supposed to be starting a job at CoreComm in East Lansing pretty soon. Actually, I was hoping to have already started it. A guy I know, Brian Oakley works there, and he is helping me get in. I have already had both required interviews, and Brian said there was supposed to be a job opening near the end of October/beginning of November. Turns out it didn't happen. I am now just waiting at the top of the list for the next opening they have in the tech support department. I can not wait though. Seems the bullshit that is McDonald's keeps piling up more and more each day. You would think mice are running that place. They might as well be. Nothing makes any sense around there and I think a group of 4-5 good mice could do a better job. It's almost embarrassing to be on the management staff there. At least I don't have any actually power around there. Things would be much different if that were true. The place would be run like at actual business with profit in mind, not a fucking kindergarten classroom. If the owner Joe Fix knew half of what went on there, he would go on a firing frenzy.
Well, I feel a little better letting that out now. Have a nice day everyone!!

My birthday is now over. It was a fine day. Not a whole lot went on. I had to work, so I couldn't go out and do anything. Nickcole did get me the movie T3 on DVD which is pretty cool. It's a great movie. She even made me a cake which I brought to work to share with them and everyone loved it.
Well, that's all for now.

I don't know why, but the last to weeks I have just felt like shit. Last Tuesday, I called into work sick, the first time I have done so in the last three years. I slept almost 20 hours that day. After that I felt pretty good for a couple of days. Now I'm back to feeling like crap again. I have been on a constant stream of aspirin that soon I will have no stomach lining left. I am thinking it's some kind of flu, so there isn't much the doctor can do, so I see no reason going there. Oh, well. I hope I start to feel better because it is a pain to get up early in the morning to feed Hailey when I am not feeling well.

Well, I've been extremly lazy updating this journal. A lot has happened in the last month that I didn't do any updates. I will just let all that pass as trying to catch up will only make me not want to type anything at all. Today I reserved the new game coming out for Gamecube, Mario Kart: Double Dash. I'm sure it will be great. I still play the SNES version of Mario Kart all the time. I also rented F-Zero for the Gamecube today, and OMG!!! The graphics are amazing. It almost feels like you are really driving at hundreds of miles per hour. The framerates are unreal. And the lighting and course designs have a lot of detail put into them. If you want to play a game that is not only fun, but can blow you away visually at the same time, I'd recommend this one.