I’ve been Tagged

Cel had me do this post, from her blog, which seems to have disappeared.

10 years ago today: I was nine, which was between the third and fourth grades. I don’t remember the exact day, but I was probably pretty excited to be moving up to the other half of the school. (Grades K-3 are at one end, 4-6 at the other.)

5 years ago today: Preparing to start high school. I don’t remember all that well, but I likely was doing some yard work, and some sort of craft–possibly a latch hook of some sort. Those are the main things I did over the summer. Also, quite a bit of reading.

1 year ago today: According to my calendar, which I started keeping on the palm Pilot I got for Christmas 2003, I worked from 9-6. Chances are, that was the only thing I did that day.

Yesterday: Got a haircut at 9 in the morning, worked from 5-10. Spent the better part of the day working in my room, moving stuff from one place to another, and resolving a situation where I was charged twice for my website. I have my site hosted on Honest Networks, which is a small company. They are new to the paid hosting game, and they have a few glitches now and again. But when something happens, you let them know, and by gosh, there’s someone working on it that same day. It turns out that they just made a mistake in how they set up my account in the billing program.

Tomorrow: Work around the house in the morning. Work 1-10. Not much else.
[Edited 7/30 because I had in my mind that it was Saturday when I posted this. It actaully was Friday.]

5 snacks I enjoy: M&Ms, Potato chips (Ruffles are better than Lays), Fast Break candy bars, peanuts, and Wheat Thins (some varieties).

5 bands that I know the lyrics to most of their songs: Tim McGraw, Brooks & Dunn, most country acts that were popular 3 years ago.

5 things I would do with $100,000,000: Definitely buy a house, and pay off my schooling, probably a decent car, donate some to charity, and probably set up some sort of endowment for scholarships.

5 locations Iโ€™d like to run away to: You know, I really don’t want to run anywhere, but I ‘ll try to answer the question anyway. New England, Washington DC (for a long while, but not permanently), Britain, France, and New Zealand.

5 bad habits I have: Getting flustered when too much happens at once, procrastinating, putting projects aside when I don’t want to deal with them anymore (kinda goes in with procrastination, but is for the longer term), thinking that I’m a computer genius and everyone else is an idiot, eating too many snacks while at work (hey, it’s a grocery store, alright.)

5 things I like doing: Reading, working on coding something for myself, Internet stuff (usually), and lots of other stuff. (Isn’t it sad that I can only think of two things I like to do?)

5 things I would never wear: One of those insulting type shirts (Make 7 up yours), a professional football player’s jersey, women’s clothing, a hot pink shirt (without a good reason), a pair of those multi-colored socks with sleeves for each toe.

5 TV shows I like: (can i make that like(d)?) Brat Camp, 8 Simple Rules, Jeopardy, an old game show called Distraction seen in re-runs, and Millionaire before Regis left.

5 movies I like: Somewhat hindered by the number of movies I haven’t seen, I like these ones: National Treasure, Anchorman, The Lord of the Rings series, Oceans Eleven and Twelve, to list recent ones.

5 famous people Iโ€™d like to meet: I don’t think that there are that many. We’ll say Pope Benedict,

5 biggest joys of the moment: Reading a good book (I like Tom Clancy, but I just finished his most recent one), getting comments on my blog (I’m not trying to provoke any comments here, honest!), listening to some music with a decent beat and tune, finishing a project, taking a great photo.

5 favorite toys: My computer, my camera, and not that many other things.

5 people to tag: Umm, you mean people that read my blog and haven’t already done this? Uh, I , uh, pick…you.

Update

While I have been blogging a lot in the last few days, I haven’t had a major update type post in quite a while.


I got two days off of work, so my mom and I went down to visit my Grandma for a day. We spent Tuesday night down there, which is part of why I didn’t post the last few days. We did some grocery shopping, and stopped in a consignment store where I bought two pairs of cargo shorts–I’ve never had any before, and I like the extra pockets. I discovered today that one has a small hole in the back, at the top of the pocket, but I think it can be fixed.

We also bought some new flannel to make into pajama pants. I had a pair that I wore most of the year last year, but I noticed one night at home that the seat of the pants was getting quite thin, and the next night, when I went to put them on, there was a huge split in the back. That was the end of those.


I watched Brat Camp again–as I’ve said, I like the show. Although at the rate that they are progressing, I think the show will be over before I go back to school at the end of August.

Which reminds me, I’m amazed how fast the summer seems to have gone. In exactly one month from today, I will be starting classes, having moved in the day before. I didn’t get on the move-in crew, so I don’t get to move in until the day before school starts–should be fun.


Okay, I’ve got another post to do, from Celtic.

Roommate Relations

I was browsing the blogosphere, and I found this rather humorous excerpt:

so my roommate has been leaving her towel draped over the shower instead of on her towel rack. i’ve moved it three times this week so that i can shower, and this morning it was there a fourth time. she wasn’t there, so i couldn’t say anything. instead, i put a post it on her towel that said ‘i’m lost,’ and another one on the rack that said ‘i’m so lonely.’ i told chris about it and i thought i was pretty clever.
i get home tonight, and sure enough, she moved her towel. then i went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and my dishes in the sink say ‘i’m lost,’ and the dishwasher says ‘i’m so lonely.’

i’ve trained her well.

Swiped from someone named Sarah.

How Dumb Can you Get?

About 20 minutes ago, a man came into the store, and talked to Troy. Troy then had Charlie take over for him, and told the man to “try and stall him while I call the cops”. He called, and there were shortly several cops congregating around the bank.

We have since learned that a man was trying to rob another man at the Riverview ATM, and was caught by the cops. But robbing a man at an ATM, during the evening, and just across the street and around a corner from the Courthouse (where the sherrif’s department is headquartered)? Dumb.

He was caught, but that’s all I know. More details as they develop.

Edit 7/22: To reiterate how close he was to the Courthouse, here is a picture I took after work that day.
The ATM and CourthouseThe ATM is in the yellow circle, and the white building just barely visible over the bank (red arrow) is the courthouse. The county jail is the pink arrow, just showing through the trees.

Brat Camp

ABC has a new show on to replace Dancing with the Stars. It’s called Brat Camp. The basic premise is that nine troubled teenagers from age 14 to 17 are taken out to the desert of Eastern Oregon, for a 40+ day camp. They don’t leave the camp until they have resolved their issues, whatever they were.

When it was promoed, it looked like ABC just decided to make Survivor:Troubled Teens, but it’ s actually a business that does this stuff on a regular basis. It’s called SageWalk, and they have counselors, and trained staffers in camp at all times.

I’ve watched the two-hour premiere, and the first episode this week, earlier tonight. I think that it will turn out to be a good program, and I will definitely keep watching. There’s a bit of drama added into the promos that doesn’t actually happen in the show, and they show several of the same clips over and over, but overall, I like it. You see the kids’ problems, and watch them begin to resolve them, or in some cases, watch as they avoid confronting their problems at great expense to themselves (Jada). I’ve actually begun to like some of the teens, despite their mis-deeds.

Liquor License

As I write the introduction to this post, I am sitting in a small courtyard behind A&J, on my last break for the day. I’m on the clock until 10pm, meaning that I have three hours left to go in what has been a rather busy day.

Among other things, we have been selling a lot of alcohol in the last few days. There is a large resort/conference center/hotel in town, Skamania Lodge. It used to be Dolce Skamania Lodge, but it was recently sold by Dolce. At any rate, when the sale became final last Wednesday, the liquor license that the lodge had (required to sell any type of alcohol) became invalid, for legal reasons I don’t understand. Depending on who you ask, either they simply dropped the ball, or the new license got lost in the mail, but at any rate, they are unable to sell liquor at all. So they’re sending all their guests down to A&J to buy alcohol. The guests don’t tend to be too happy about it, but then again, the alcohol we sell is probably a bit cheaper than the prices there.

We’ve also been short staffed due to two people that have become ill, one with a back injury, the other with a head cold. And the outrigger canoes were in town this weekend, so I’ve come home from work more or less exhausted, and not done much of anything else. But my break is over now, so until later,

–Nathan

Preferred Subscriber

I got a call today, below*.

“Hello, Mr. Oliver, this is name forgotten with Popular Science. I have a few questions for you. Are your magazines reaching you on time and in good shape?”

“They are.”

“Good. Are you enjoying your subscription?”

“I am.”

‘Good. The publishers sent out the renewal form with a price of $28, but we would like to offer you the price of $14.95. Since you are a preferred subscriber, and have been with us for some years, we would like to give you a discount. So we can give you this price of $14.95 for four years. No matter how much the subscription goes up to, you will still get this price for four years.”

“I don’t think I want to do that right now.”

“Let me assure me that you will not be billed until your current subscription expires, and that you won’t receive double issues, or anything like that. You keep your current subscription…

“I’m not going to renew right now.”

end of conversation

*Not an actual transcript, but the gist of things.

Within five seconds, I had located, on my floor, one of the many renewal/subscription cards that come in a magazine. It offers the price of $15.95/yr for one year, or $21.95 for 2 years ($10.98/yr).

Apparently, a “preferred subscriber” is someone they think has been subscribing for long enough that they will renew at any price.

Less more

So I was talking to my sister while I was eating dinner tonight, and all of a sudden, I asked this question.

“Why are you challenging that your brain is not less more than mine?”

Isn’t that absolutely clear what I was trying to ask? See if you can’t guess.


As soon as I post pictures of my room, I begin to rearrange it. The desk is now under the window, and the bookshelves have moved slightly. Not sure if I like this arrangement all that well. or not, but it will do for a while. The cord situation is a lot better than it was before, where they all hid out in a huge rat’s nest next to the desk. I can’t live with tangled cords for very long before I decide to straighten them, or rearrange the components so that the cords reach better.


Since I know that the quote is too strange to understand, here’s the background. My sister was complaining that after she came home from her summer job, her brain was all tired out. I claimed that I do more thinking ad brain work than she does. She said that she didn’t think so, and the topic got changed. A few minutes later, I decided to ask why it was that she disagreed, but ended up with the well structured sentence you see above.

Picture Post

[2008 Update: While th is post accurately documents how messy I was at the time, I would like to note that in the intervening years, I have gotten a fair bit cleaner. Not that I’m clutter free by any means, but this post is no longer representative of my living quarters]

I posted a request for pictures over a week ago, and received several requests from Celtic. At long last, here they are.

1 – your bedroom. Whatโ€™s the real Nathan like?

When taking these pictures, I made no attempt to clean my room, or anything, so this is the real Nathan, as messy as I can sometimes be.

My BedroomThe first thing you see when you walk into my bedroom. At the far right, you can see my dresser, which used to be my grandpa’s. I have the same jean quilt bedspread, and you can see where all the stuff accumulates at the end of the bed. Behind that is the closet, again, quite messy. The models on the shelf are from way back, when I had an interest in them, but that faded after a few years. (I never painted any of them, just assembled them, and as soon as we finally got paint so I could do the next model properly, I got tired of them. The red and black rocket was made and launched once in middle school Tech Ed, and has never been launched since.

My deskThis is my desk, again quite messy. I stole the monitor from the old family computer, which we didn’t use anymore, and experimented with a two monitor setup. It’s interesting, but not really all that great, at least for me. To the left of the desk, I have a TV tray set up so that I have additional desk space, something that is always at a premium when you organize things the way I do. ๐Ÿ™‚ To the left, under the window, is my bookcases, with my printer and a lava lamp on top. This is almost all of my books, but most of the shelves are stacked two deep.

Behind my doorThis is the area behind my door, where my bulletin board is. I never got in the habit of using it for temporary things,but have several newspaper clippings tacked to the board, and lots more under my desk, in a tupperware tray/container. Tools also belong behind the door, and you can see the clothes that I have hanging on the wall.

2 – the view out your bedroom window.

my windowmy window

My window looks out into the back yard, which is to the South. The basement is too low to see the river, but you can see the mountains on the other side, which is in Oregon. There’s a hanging fuschia just outside my window, too. In the second picture, you can see the swingset (now a bit rickety) and shed, both off to the right. The garden is just over the crest of the hill over on the left half of the picture.

3 – your favourite thing

Question MarkThis one is harder than it looks. I’m tempted to claim my laptop, or a book, but I’m not sure, and I’m not sure that I like either of those answers, either. So for now, I’ll post this picture.

4 – any pets?

dirtWell, once upon a time, at the elementary school carnival, I won a certificate for three free goldfish, as did my sister. So we went to the pet store, and picked one up. As goldfish are prone to do, especially ones that live in tiny bowls, they died. So we buried them. They had names, but I don’t remember them. This is the approximate location of their grave.

5 – tit for tat โ€” YOUR bathroom reading material stash ๐Ÿ˜›

magazines on toilet tankThis is the reading stash in the downstairs bathroom. It’s a religious magazine. Upstairs, it tends to be an old issue of Good Housekeeping, or some sort of women’s magazine, which occasionally contain articles of interest to me. I’m amazed at how many covers will have a story like “Lose Weight–The Easy Way”, and then the cover picture is of a chocolate cake, with the caption “18 Delicious Deserts, Inside!” I just don’t get that.