Too tired for a real entry. So I'll leave you with this.

http://interstice.com/~max/disgusting.html

Tam and I had our first premarital counseling session with my pastor last night. It was actually fun; we got to talk about all kinds of things related to the wedding.

I was caught completely off guard when asked which readings I wanted. I guess I had assumed that these were set by the church. So, our homework assignment for the next session is to figure out which readings we want (one Old Testament, one Psalm, one gospel, and one epistle; sorry, Hokie, no Revelations :-P).

Viewsonic sucks. MBNA rocks.

Hm. My credit card was declined for the first time today. Odd. I always pay it off every month, and have a ridiculous credit line (almost half my yearly salary... yeah, as if I would buy a car and put it on my card).

Anyway, I got on the phone. Turns out their fraud detector was tripped. Interesting. The automated system starts listing off the problematic charges. Ok, the first one is fine. Um... no, I don't recognise those other four attempted today *at all*. So I press no, and am connected to a human.

Turns out that all five are from Viewsonic (I placed an order with them yesterday). I told the rep that one of them is fine (dollar amount matches my order), but the other four (one charge and three authorisations) are wrong. She quickly removes all of them, reactivates my card, makes a note on Viewsonic's file, and tells me to contact Viewsonic.

So I give them a call. First, I'm on hold forever. Then the guy who answers is a tad rude, and clearly doesn't believe me. He also insists that the billing attempts were accurate and standard practice. Finally, he tells me that the item I had ordered isn't even in stock.

After some arguing, I gave up and left it at that. If they're going to make it that hard for me to spend my money, I'll just take it elsewhere.

Kudos, though, to the AI fraud detection system that MBNA has in place. It zapped all of the suspicious charges before they could reach my account, saving me much headache later on.

Ok. I could understand being fascinated by this for an hour if I were a medical doctor. But I'm not.

http://www-medlib.med.utah.edu/WebPath/webpath.html

Whee! I have a new workstation now. It's a Blade 100, so not as fast as my old Ultra 10, but, eh. At least it has SunOS 5.8 rather than 5.6, and it's running in 64-bit mode, which is nice.

But they gave me a Unix style keyboard instead of a PC style one. Arrgh! And the repeat rate is too slow (and only root can change it on a Sun... sigh). Ah, well. I'd use my PC-style Sun 5 keyboard, but Blades need a USB keyboard. Guess it's time to place an order with Sun...

Heh. I check my friends list today to find an icon flipping me off. How... interesting. I suppose my day can only get better from here. :-)

So... it's getting to be that time of year again. The lease: to renew, or not to renew, that is the question.

First, the rent at my current place is probably going to skyrocket since property taxes took a huge jump. Staying at my current place will probably be out of the question.

Second, you can only get year-long leases in Pittsburgh. I'm not convinced that I can tolerate another full year here. I desperately want to head back to someplace west of the Rockies, preferably back to San Diego.

Third, the wedding is in October. And Tamara likes her job, and it's not one she can telecommute for. And she isn't terribly keen of going west of the Rockies.

So... I guess I'm stuck here. Now, as for finding another place to live... well, I'd like to stop throwing away money every month. But buying a place here? If the houses and neighborhoods weren't bad enough, the fact that it could collapse into an unmapped, abandoned mine at any moment and insurance won't cover a penny of it...


Oh, and I get to fly out for a friend's funeral on Friday. Yeah, I'm not in a terribly chipper mood.

In memory of Paige Blankenburg

>I wanted to let you know that my sister, Paige, passed
>away early this morning at 1 A.M. after a valiant
>effort to save her life.  
>
>My parents and I were able to be there and say
>good-bye to her.  Paige looked beautiful and peaceful.
>I know that your thoughts, prayers, and well wishes
>were hard at work, and I could feel them with us.

Goodbye, Paige. You will be missed.

Hm. It came to my attention today that I'm working in the skunkworks.

But it's nothing evil, sinister, or bad. Just confidential. Well, ok. Maybe a hint of sinister, as it will force engineering out of their comfort zone. But it's for the better good! Honest!

I've had my nose buried way too deep in work the last two weeks. I desperately need to come up for air this weekend. Maybe remind Tamara that I'm still alive. :-)

To whomever it was who decided that 64k was an acceptable limit for the size of Java methods:

You are an idiot.

I should put something here.

But I truly enjoy reading and replying to others' journals so much more.