About 3 weeks ago, I opened my microwave for the 1st time and I realized something… it didn’t have a turn table. I’m like, they still make microwaves like that!?!? I believe all the microwaves my dad’s ever purchased had a turn table. By turn table, I mean there’s a dish that rotates inside when it’s microwaving so you dont have to stop midway, flip your burrito over and continue microwaving. Anyway, it looks like I’ll need to pull out my microwave from my storage room.

Random Crap:

Kids buy lunches with scans of fingers – Rome City Schools is switching to a scanning system that lets students use their fingerprints to access their accounts. In the past, students had to punch in their pin numbers. When did we get rid of lunch cards?

Telephone telepathy — I was just thinking about you – Each person in the trials was asked to give researchers names and phone numbers of four relatives or friends. These were then called at random and told to ring the subject who had to identify the caller before answering the phone. “The hit rate was 45 percent, well above the 25 percent you would have expected,” he told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. “The odds against this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one.”

I was driving this morning and on a license plate frame of the car in front of me, the bottom said “Not A Magician”. The font on the top was smaller so I had to drive up closer to read it, and the full sentence said:
I’m A Beautician
Not A Magician

Have you seen the new show on Nick Jr. called Lazytown? Isn’t Nick Jr for like kids 8 and below? Anyway, it’s about this bright pink girl that dances to techno music. Here’s some example videos:

• You’re A Pirate
• Bing Bang
• Take a Vacation
• There’s always a way

Police: Man robs bank to be ‘supported’ – Police said Gaetan Roy had just lost his job, so he came up with a plan: Rob a bank, hang around, then get taken to jail to be “supported.”

Cell phones found inside four prisoners – “Each one had a cellular with a number of chips,” Arevalo said, adding that one also had hidden a charger in his anal cavity.

Sodium Party (from /.) – I’d read about, and heard stories about, throwing sodium into water. It’s a classic thing chemistry students do in college, and based on the reports I have been able to find on the internet, they are often drunk at the time. What do you get when you purchase 3.5lbs of solid sodium metal (~$100), have your own private lake, and an experimental mind? KABOOM! Do check out the videos and pictures he’s posted.

So as I mentioned a few days back, I got a new desk. It’s labor day weekend and everyone got off early on Friday, so I came up and built this desk. It’s really pretty. With my new setup, I have so much more space. I guess before, all the space behind me wasn’t being used.

To build the desk, I first had to make froom for it, so the old desk and all the other crap were taken down and moved to the side. Yes, both my computers went down as well as my internet connection. Now, I’m also facing toward the window(s) instead of facing toward the wall. It generally feels more secure and like I said, I feel that I have more space now and I can even fit another table on the left of me.

Anyway, after everything was built and setup, I noticed I needed more furniture to hold stuff, like the networking crap in the corner and the rear speakers that are sitting on the floor. So since I didn’t have any plans today (besides sleeping in, which I did till 3pm, or was it 4pm), I headed over to IKEA to check stuff out. I made measurements on what I needed to fit nicely into my setup and also to give enough space for my Roomba to come in, though with my new setup, the Roomba’s bound to start eating up cables, so I need to figure out how to avoid that.

I decided I needed a bookshelf for the networking hardware and it’ll also hold my left rear speaker.
I needed a little box to house my computer and to put the printer on top of it.
I had some space between my desk and the wall and thought it be nice to have a drawer/cabinet type thing.

After getting to IKEA, it took quite some time to find what I needed, though choices were aplenty.

I ended up getting the KILBY bookcase for $19.99. The one I linked to is the larger version for $29.99 because I can’t seem to find the smaller one on their site. It was a bit wider than what I was looking for (would end up extending past an electric outlet), but I decided that due to it’s “cost” and I can always just not install the back panel, leaving the back through to the wall completely, it was worth it.

I ended getting the CORRAS bedside table to use as my printer stand. It was just right, had an internal height of 18″ (my computer was 17″ tall) and would fit my printer on top quite nicely. It did come with a shelf, but I didn’t bother installing it. This was also the most expensive piece at $34.99 (though the site says $29.99; did I get gypped?).

The hardest one to find was the drawer, because I only had 14″ to spare (or I could push my desk further away from the wall, but that seemed like a big hassle with all the crap already on it and setup. Then there was the price of ~$50 for a tiny drawer. That’s why I ended up with the FLÄRKE computer unit, though I wasn’t going to house any computer in there. I thought my trash can would fit nicely in there and I could hold some documents on the top shelf and on the top of it, I can put my scanner.

Welp, there you have it!

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BUT PROBABLY DON’T (from MS newsgroup)

Bolded were ones I found interesting
Italicized were ones I already knew

1. Money isn’t made out of paper, it’s made out of cotton.
2. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
3. The dot over the letter i is called a “tittle”.
4. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.
5. Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller.
6. 40% of McDonald’s profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.
7. 315 entries in Webster’s 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.
8. The ‘spot’ on 7UP comes from its inventor, who had red eyes. He was albino.
9. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents, daily.
10. Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.
11. Chocolate affects a dog’s heart and nervous system; a few ounces will kill a small sized dog.
12. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark’s stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
13. Most lipstick contains fish scales (eeww).
14. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn’t wear pants.
15. Ketchup was sold in the 1830’s as medicine.
16. Upper and lower case letters are named ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ because in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the upper case’ letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the smaller, ‘lower case’ letters.
17. Leonardo Da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time, hence, multi-tasking was invented.
18. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
19. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
20. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan; there was never a recorded Wendy before! turns out to be false: source (from HJO3)
21. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and silver
22. Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors. Also, it took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa’s lips.
23. A tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion will make it instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
24. The mask used by Michael Myers in the original “Halloween” was a Captain Kirk’s mask painted white.
25. If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar (good to know.)
26. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can’t sink in quicksand (and you thought this list was completely useless.)
27. The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law, which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
28. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.
29. Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. It’s the same with apples!
30. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying!
31. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
32. Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.
33. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages it.

This really started last night, so maybe it should be titled Extreme Days. I was at work trying to figure out why some desktop handles weren’t being released and left work around 11:30pm. I started making dinner and my sister calls me on the phone asking me how to convert coaxial to network cable (RJ45). I spend a good chunk of time saying that’s not possible, but she kept insisting that the hotel had internet access and that was the only thing available. After enough convincing, she believes me. I asked her if it could possibly be wireless internet access, but she says she wasn’t able to see an access points, and she’s wandered up and down the halls looking for a signal.

So after dinner, I took a big dump. A BIG DUMP. So big that it didn’t flush. This wasn’t the normal clogged toilets I usually deal with. Normal clogged toilets still trickle down. This did not move down even an inch when I woke up this morning. It did when I got home tonight at 12pm. So going back to the story, I have this weird plunger I got from Fred Meyers called the Master Plunger. It’s worked plenty of times before, but this time, it wasn’t even pushing any water away besides out of the toilet bowl.

The good thing about this whole incident was there was really only 1 big piece of poop so there weren’t any small floating pieces. And since I added Clorox Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner tablets, the whole bathroom smelled like bleach.

I had a bottle of Liquid Plumr (which I always thought was spelled Liquid Plumber) I purchased from Costco, but it specifically states for not usage in toilets. It’s because of the trap design on toilets. Liquid Plumber and Draino work by pushing down. There were also sites that warned that that once Draino started working, it got so hot, that it cracked the toilet bowl.

I began searching online for home remedies on how to unclog the toilet. Here were the suggestions I saw:

• Add liquid detergent
• Pour a lot of hot water
• Add Draino/Liquid Plumr and use plunger to push liquid past the trap

Adding the liquid detergent was suppose to make the poop easier to slide, but all I got was bubbles. It did make my bathroom smell like lemon instead of bleach.

Since the water line wasn’t moving, I wasn’t really able to add a lot of hot water.

So I tried the Liquid Plumr suggestion, though as an afterthought, that may have been a bad idea. First, this method did not work either, but since my water was mixed with bleach, I remember reading somewhere that mixing Liquid Plumr and some other chemicals may result in deadly gases. I immediately turned on the vent and left it running for sometime. I’m not sure if bleach + liquid plumbr = deadly gas, but I’m still alive.

I decided to give up at 3:30am and went to sleep. I decided I’d get a better plunger tomorrow. For some reason, this morning I had the idea that I heard the toilet flush this morning and was actually excited to come down to see a working toilet, but only to be disappointed that the water line had not moved at all. It isn’t like this is the only toilet in the house, since I have 2 other toilets which I hardly use (since they’re on the 2nd floor), but I just felt uncomfortable having a clogged toilet.

This morning, I had planned to get the rock chip on my windshield fixed. However there was some major accident on the 520 this morning: Truck Crashes Into Sammamish River. It took me 20 minutes to reach the traffic jam and 40 minutes to get through 2 exits. I was pretty pissed.

I had actually gone to this glass shop on Tuesday morning, but apparently someone took the resin and they weren’t able to patch it. They apologize for the inconvenience and told me to come back after 2. I told them I’d come back Wednesday morning. The place I went to was called Evergreen Auto Glass and they did a pretty good job filling the rock chip. I had actually gotten this on my trip back from Mt. Shasta, and finally decided to get it patch now. Another reason was that I found out we had Prime discount at this place, so the fix only costed $15 (vs $45 w/o Prime discount). The nice thing is I found out this repair comes with lifetime warranty, which I thought was nice. You could still see some scars, but I’ve seen what can happen to these rock chips if you don’t fix them.

Afterwards, I dropped by Bed Bath and Beyond to pick up a “toilet” plunger. Apparently, a regular plunger is for sinks since they’re flat and toilet plungers have this little extra pouch which gives a tighter seal on toilets. This plunger is amazing! It must be the special knob. Just 3 or 4 plunges, and my toilet was unclogged. Stupid Master Plunger, don’t you guys fall for it too.

Anyway, back to work. I was just working on some test code when suddenly my display begins to act funny by drawing weird stuff on the screen. I tried rebooting the machine and then it would freeze trying to log me in. I logged in as the Administrator and windows were missing titlebars. Opening display properties resulted in it telling my display driver was made for a previous OS and my current resolution was set to -1 x -1. I finally was able to log onto my account and then it tells me my profile was corrupted and they’re creating a new one for me. This all points to signs of my hard drive dying. I had a spare IDE drive, but as I found out, my computer only has 1 IDE port and 1 SATA port. The slot for the hard drive is also custom fitted for a SATA drive. They also only have 1 standard 12V power adapter which was used by my DVD-ROM drive. So I ended up unhooking the DVD-ROM drive and now the hdd is just sitting on top of my floppy. Installed Windows Server 2003 and everything seems to be fine now. Been busy setting up my machine for the rest of the day now that all my programs are gone. Good thing I could still access my previous hard disk and grab the data off it. A scan disk on that drive did end up freezing though, so I don’t think that’s a good sign.

I also got my review back today. The review is this thing that happens once a year at Microsoft where they determine your raise, stock award, and bonus. I won’t be saying any numbers, since I don’t think I’m allowed to. I forget what my lead exactly first told me, but it scared the bejesus out of me. I think it was something like, “So I tried…” The thing is, when I submitted the review, he had told me that I had done well and he was going to suggest/recommend X and Y. So when he started out saying “So I tried…”, I was like shoot, that means I didn’t make it. But turns out he was just going to mention what I did well and what areas I could improve. Honestly, I don’t remember what he first said, but that was the most tense 30 minutes I’ve been in awhile. He finally told me my #s and I’m happy!

My OfficeMax order also arrived today. One of the glass L desks I’ve been eyeing finally went on sale again: Pisa “L” Workcenter (normally at $150). I went searching around for a $30 off $150 coupon and thanks to some friends at B$, I got one. To fill my order, I purchased a lamp because the master bedroom currently has no lighting and I’ve been meaning to get a lamp. The lamp turned out much nicer than expected:

I haven’t had time to setup the desk yet. It’s still sitting at the bottom of my stairs. That thing is heavy. So it’s been a pretty extreme day.