Sick of the run around!

Are you kidding me?!
I understand the BGE run around, though I don't like it, it's something that you can at least prepare for when calling.
But a COMMUNITY POOL?!?!?!
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!
A small little community pool...
So, I'm trying to be on the ball and go at a slow time, there were only about 5 people there. I was sent to another location to get a pass.
So, I find the other location after several u-turns and there is a strict list of times posted. I talked to the guy, who had no other people waiting for assistance and was told to come back between 6am-1pm or tues 7pm-8pm (at which time I will not be free). So, I prepared to return at 6:30am after getting off of the night shift, all ready with my 3 forms signed and complete, so I can get my pass and crash into my fluffy pillow awaiting me at home. So, question 1, I'm only a renter? Well, our previous friend who was staying as a renter with our friend who owned a place in the community signed a form...what's the deal here?
Panic hit this older gentleman. The 2 forms they signed were no where to be found, and the paperwork was still in hard copy with no computer in sight. At least he took me to get a photo for the pass, but my friend, the owner would have to fill out a form with my name on it, call some lady, and make an appearance at the location.
ALL THIS FOR A COMMUNITY POOL?!!!
GIVE ME A BREAK!
But, the guy was a nice guy...sorry that he had to deliver the run around spiel.
If it's not one thing, it's another.
Especially after coming off the night shift, this was not the kind of thing I wanted to deal with.
You know those moments when you can actually feel your blood boiling underneath your skin, and you wonder if anyone can see smoke coming out of your head?
I think, in those moments, whoever does not have self-control, could use that as a moment to do something stupidly violent. You know the thought is there.
I'm aching over a community pool pass run around!!!!!!
AHHHHHHH!

Blizzard of 2010

While walking...trudging through the streets, literally trudging, the streets of baltimore, it was a delight to see so many locals out and about. At one intersection on Pratt street, while waiting to cross the road, the smell of salt filled the air from the highly salted, yet still covered in snow streets, and the sound of cars driving by made me reminiscent of being at the beach. As the car got closer, it sounded like a wave rolling up to the shore, while the seagulls flew above making their seabird sounds. The pish posh sounds of our feet in the sludgy snowing the road sounded like the sound of feet on damp sand after the wave has settled. If only video could capture the smell along with the sounds. It was a beautiful day after the snow stopped. Even though it was still b elow freezing, it was sunny and nice out. Like a cool day on the boardwalk.
Anyway, back to the reality that we are in a blizzard...cars? what cars? It's hard to believe that there are cars on the road and we are actually a "civilized" people. Coming home after being stuck at work for 23 hours was actually one of the stupidest things I think I've ever done. Thanks to the guys that helped me when I got stuck and pulled me out with a chain! Sorry to the people in the uhaul towing their van on the back. the van swung out and got stuck in a snow bank...but what can a tiny, recalled toyota do to help?
Once again, thanks to our 4 legged adorable friends, to whom their little snow trails saved me calories burned from walking 1 mile home from the parking garage, since the streets around my place weren't even touched last night. what a nightmare! the main roads were horrible and the thought of having gone through so much to get home and to be 2 blocks away and not able to get there...not even able to park anywhere near...my heart dropped.
yet, what a beautiful site, with the snow covering large portions of the trees with the street lights illuminating them. Sorry, didn't a drive by shot from the cell cam would do it any justice, and having walked 1 hour to get home after working a 23 hour shift with no sleep, getting the 10megapx for 1 shot....well....last night, it just wasn't worth it.
To the running guy on pratt, who took a pic on penn? street, what a joyful encounter! and then at the harbor...if i had run like you, maybe i would have been on my way back when you were! however, got some good shots also, nonetheless!
charmcitypix.com
http://www.charmcitypix.com/g/downtown

In a State of

waiting

The Sloan Auto Flush Toilet

So, is it just me, or is anyone else fed up with those automatic toilets that flush before you are done your business?
BTW, great toilet pic, hu!

r we human, or r we dancer?

onward bound...
the Killers are a little less appealing today as the dreams of yesterday are smashed up on the rocks. no, i'm not saying i like the Killers music less, just that the reason why it was so magical for me no longer exists.
and, life goes on, and we move on.
hark! hark!
the doorbell rings, the kitchen is filled with an inviting aroma and ...life goes on...

Lazy Sick Day

atleast i got a lot of rest today, but still not feeling even remotely close to 100%. will probably take one more day tomorrow as this weekend is, once again, filled with action.
wish i could have a lazy day with someone special.
funny how after such an incredible victory, comes that Elijah moment after Mt. Carmel, running for his life. think i actually like when life is hard, b/c i want to grow so much. it's hard to grow when there is nothing going on.
wish i had someone to grow with. is that the medicine talking?

it can't rain all the time

just a lil flash back from the movie that line came from.
a shower of wonder, soon it will be over. more memories made, living out a dream, soon about to wake. so, we had a small time of Camelot. after the madness, will there be peace? or is it the peace found within the madness that's so highly treasured?
man is like a breath, his days are a fleeting shadow...
so, for a few months, i got to live out a dream. i don't want to wake up, but i have no choice.
ramblings. so much on my heart. so many on my heart.

Check Your Passwords Against Brute Force Attacks

this is a cool site i stumbled upon from life hacker.
Hackosis' Brute Force Calculator.
Check my password!
here are the results of one of my favored passwords!
Your password is 11 characters long and has 1,411,670,956,533,760 combinations.
It takes 5,135.63 hours or 213.98 days to crack your password on computer that tries 137,438,953,472 passwords per hour. This is based on a typical PC processor in 2008 and that the processor is under 10% load.

2008 Presidential Election

OK, so we are down to the line with tomorrow being the day of truth for people to cast their thoughts in stone at the polls.
Above is an interesting thing i'd like to call opportunity? So, if i vote one way and put my money on another, guess it just calls me a gambler. the "what if" factor is the driving force...evil driving force behind this scheming. but what if McCain wins? at the present time that's $89/share! If this was as popular as it could be, we could get into a moral issue for this election. driving down McCains stock and voting for him to get a quick fattening of the pocket would be a sneaky underscheme if you ask me. but, could it be a trixy underground ploy for major investors? if someone invested $55,000.00 in McCain (which they would probably consider chump change) and McCain wins, they now gain $445,000.00, giving them a grand total of $500,000.00 in their ever expanding pockets! that's a little over an 800% gain! WTF!
you know what...my bad! it's cents! but, even so, it's still worth the effort. ok, so let's just go with an even $50k. that's roughly 8 shares per dollar invested. so...$50k*8=400,000 shares*$.89 increase/share=$356,000.00 gain if McCain wins. that's still nothing to scoff at!

!FREE CODES! McDonald's® MONOPOLY 2008

Here are 3 FREE MULTIUSER CODES for the online game:
(copy and paste is the way!)
I6L6V4N4T2
WN100KADAY
PLSC0M3BAK
______________________________________________________
Enjoy!


Above is a compilation of the actual winning pieces.
So, if you get one of these, Congratulations! You're a bonafide weener! getting the other pieces is the easy part.

Camera's in hotel rooms?

So, i'm up and paranoid, wondering if the smoke alarm, digital clock, wall picture or coffee maker are rigged with a hidden camera. i'm afraid the person watching would be grossly upset with the lack of action during my stay here, but i can't stop thinking about it when it's shower time or when nature calls. not that i don't want to sleep...i just finished working a 13.5 hour day and would love to be knocked out about now....anyway...
After having that nastiness on the sheets upon arrival, and this being a cheaper, but still catering to the working professional hotel chain, i'm not sure what to think. perhaps the free plane ticket i will get after staying here b/c i've been a recurring guest with this chain isn't worth this quality and will try a new chain w/another rewards card next trip.

sorry, i wasn't going to post that, but...hehehe...i actuall really like the pic, color and composition even though it's got the nastiness on the left and the towel i slept on so it wouldn't touch me in the middle, with the glorius glow of the MAC to the right. long story, but i have new sheets tonight!
Soooo, here are the suspcious objects in question:
Here is the alarm clock with a huge face
smoke detector with a huge hole...i got up on a chair and it is shiny like a lens. some articles said they can stuff up to 5 cameras up there to get a 360 view...
the hole in the framed wall art...like who framed roger rabbit, but no eyes will come out and knock a bottle over - hahaha!!! that scene cracked me up when that movie came out!
the innocent looking coffee maker!
and last, but certainly not least...the inocent mood lighting wall light. i haven't used it yet and i don't plan on it out of laziness. it would require getting out of bed to turn it off....and it's not a clapper (i just tried)...so, i have to live with the harsh Fluorescent glow...ugh.
well...that's that.

Vikings Pillaged for Wives?

After hearing this on a radio game show, it hit me deep inside and made me feel a strange compassion for these men, who were deemed as some of the most horrible people ever. However, it makes sense when you think about all of our needs collectively, as human beings...which disregards culture/perspective/location...etc. the desire for a family/companionship/status. All i can think of is...how strong was that testosterone?! They sound like they were a very passionate people with such a determination and display of eagerness to be suitably acceptable for a woman. It was said that the vikings held up women with much esteem, besides the fact that men had free reign and could do whatever he pleased. In our day and age, men use such things as fancy cars, impressive jobs or portfolios, talents, even cooking or domestic skills. a much more civilized way of setting up a love nest than taking human life, but are we still seeing the same marks of the viking culture in our men (and some women) today with regards to faithfulness/monogamy? However, is this all for personal gain....to say, i have a woman! and not for love? If this is true, then it's no wonder why we have so many divorces, as the marriage begins and ends on a selfish note, even though there was the beginnings of what could have been so beautiful.
The responsibility of the man is quite a heavy one, but when it all comes down to it, if you're truly in love, none of that stuff matters if you truly commit to stick it out to the end, no matter how you may or may not feel from day to day, your financial situation or your talents. i'd still rather be "happily" married to a poor penniless sitar player than a great big rich maharajah! [Moulin Rouge]
_________________________________________
During the Viking Age from the late eighth to the mid-eleventh centuries, Scandinavians tore across Europe attacking, robbing and terrorizing locals. According to a new study, the young warriors were driven to seek their fortunes to better their chances of finding wives.
The odd twist to the story, said researcher James Barrett, is that it was the selective killing of female newborns that led to a shortage of Scandinavian women in the first place, resulting later in intense competition over eligible women.Barrett's analysis of Nordic historical records found that Scandinavian men often served as warriors, frequently forming "military brotherhoods," until they were able to marry and establish their own households, which were key to prestige and power.
Full article

According to Barrett, honor and religious fatalism — the idea that the time and manner of death is predestined — also fueled the Vikings, helping explain why men were willing to risk death in violent battles and risky seafaring. The Viking religion held that "the cosmos began in the frozen emptiness ... and will end in fire with the last battle," said Barrett.

Despite the infanticide, he still believes the Vikings "highly valued" women. Aside from lavishing bridal prospects with plundered goods, they held solemn burials at sea for women. In fact, one of the most important known Viking Age burials, involved numerous goods and two female skseltons encased in a ship called the Oseberg.

Soren Sindbaek, assistant professor of medieval and Renaissance archaeology at Denmark's University of Aarhus, told Discovery News that the new paper "is very right in pointing out the inadequacy" of former explanations for the Viking Age.

For the full article click here.

Solar Cycle 24 - signs of a coming ice age?

This is the new sunspot officially marking the beginning of Solar Cycle 24.

Below is part of an article that talks about the technological effects that Cycle 24 can have on us, not to mention another mini ice age. When i first heard about 1 man fighting the world saying that we don't have to worry about global warming b/c an ice age is coming soon, it piqued my interest to investigate...which i put off until seeing this image on (shhhh) yahoo! So, if things are as they appear to be, perhaps switching to solar energy would be a smart move. [personally - If it continues to get colder and BGE (or soon to be Constellation - which i am slightly happy about being that this months BGE bill was $0! but who knows their plans once they take over), our heating bills are going to go through the roof!]
So, i'm interested in seeing how our modernized world will deal with this issue and how/if life as usual will be affected and how long it will take for it to become known. will a debate break off into global warming vs ice age groups? what about Al Gores efforts with An Inconvenient Truth: Global Warming Effect?
Anyway...

Here's part of the article:
The onset of a new solar cycle is significant because of our increasingly space-based technological society.

"Solar storms can disable satellites that we depend on for weather forecasts and GPS navigation," says Hathaway. Radio bursts from solar flares can directly interfere with cell phone reception while coronal mass ejections (CMEs) hitting Earth can cause electrical power outages. "The most famous example is the Quebec outage of 1989, which left some Canadians without power for as much as six days."

Air travel can be affected, too.[warfi!]

Every year, intercontinental flights carry thousands of passengers over Earth’s poles. It's the shortest distance between, say, New York and Tokyo or Beijing and Chicago. In 1999, United Airlines made just twelve trips over the Arctic. By 2005, the number of flights had ballooned to 1,402. Other airlines report similar growth.

"Solar storms have a big effect on polar regions of our planet," says Steve Hill of the Space Weather Prediction Center. "When airplanes fly over the poles during solar storms, they can experience radio blackouts, navigation errors and computer reboots all caused by space radiation." Avoiding the poles during solar storms solves the problem, but it costs extra time, money and fuel to "take the long way around."

Now for the good news: More solar storms also means more auroras—"the greatest show on Earth." During the last solar maximum, Northern Lights were spotted as far south as Arizona, Florida and California. Not so long ago, only visitors to the Arctic regularly enjoyed auroras, but with increasing attention to space weather and constantly improving forecasts, millions of people at all latitudes will know when to go out and look.

Here are a few good links:
Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United States
The Deniers: Our spotless sun this article has pretty cool information about how art and literature was effected in previous cycles that brought on mini ice ages.

slow destruction?

oy...if there was no hope, why even bother trying?

Bugs!

it's 3am and my roomate and i are preparing for the pigtown fest tomorrow....in a few hours.
i finally finished and am ready to crash, but then, as i went to turn out the light.....
zzzzzzziiiiiiiiiiiiiiippppppppppp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the dark blotch that i thought was my hairball darted acrossed the floor......
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
being that it was really big, i had to get rid of it before sleeping.
i tried to crush it with a glass bowl - my poor sleeping roomate under me - and it ran into my victoria's secret minibag.
as scared as i was, i quickly closed it with the weight of my entire body, holding a slipper as to make sure i wouldn't be too close to touching it. once i felt safe that it was trapped, i folded the opening like a present and sealed that bad boy with a wad of duct tape!
i could hear the lil guy runnin around in there. i'm hoping it will die so i can have my underwear.
i'm actually a little too excited to go to sleep after that action...knowing that i shouldn't yell at 3am....ECHO helped with that. atleast it wasn't a spider the size of a tarantua! that was WACK!
anyway...baltimore is jumpin with sirens tonight.
i hope that tomorrow will go well.
i hope to see some familiar faces tomorrow.
i hope everything sells!
here goes, the 1st show!

Random Thoughts

1) My hair is getting really long. i can't wait for it to get past my butt!
2) Do i really want to get a 2010 Camaro? I might get speeding tickets b/c flooring it to feel the torque will be irresistible!
3) I am flourishing on my bed. it sounds odd, and could provoke negative thoughts, but to me it makes sense, since i never slept as a kid and was advised by a medical professional to do whatever i wanted as long as i kept quiet while everyone slept. so, now, i think it seems an inviting place for me to relax, study, work and unwind. i have the exercise bands dangling from the top bunk, the geetar close at hand, the MAC and all its wonderful resources, and good ol' fashioned books all around. it is my entertainment center, if you want to call it that. i really enjoy my room!
4) this remote is great! i wish i could repeat just this CD. i'm feeling too lazy to program it to.
5) i hope i don't forget my cell phone tomorrow morning.
6) maybe its time to wear socks to bed. i'll try tonight to see if that helps with the morning issue.
7) will i be able to keep going to work at 6am, or will i have to wait to go in later with this new position? guess it won't matter, as i'll have to stay late anyway. we'll see. if i keep going in at 6am i'll get lots more overtime!
8) i want an 8 hour massage!
9) is my brain resisting new information? or just forced information? fickle thing
10) man, my hair is really long.
11) i hope 4 more classes won't take more than 1 or 2 years. i'd really like to start programming for money soon!

never can remember

i always have these (hehe) "brilliant" ideas, but then i forget when i get here...like...now.
oh well...i'll try again later.

CEO

i sit here looking gazing out the middle window. Far in the back, i see traffic racing back and forth on the ramp to 95 from MLK Blvd. techno is jamming and i have tissue shoved up my nose to catch the faucet-on-type drip of the lasting phaze of this crazed flu...which i dodged for about 2 years? so, guess this was pay up week!
so, i feel like the CEO of my own world, which can have limitless possibilities.
CEO of what? i'm not quite sure, but i feel it in my bones...like a calling. i don't care if i'm liked, yet i would like to have a few good friends/confidants. However, grateful for the current friends/roomates! and, of course, past roomates who moved onto receiving their permanent roomates.
the remote control for the A/C unit provides limitless amusement and brings about a regal satisfaction that i'm somehow special b/c i can be extremely lazy. lovin the cathedral ceilings that slant to a normal height and the spaciousness that could house a small family all in the quaint comfort of...my room.
Man...if only i was married! - side tracked thought.
somewhere out there...as i watch hundreds...thousands of people fly by my window in microscopic form.
the best is to see one of those viscious all-of-the-sudden storms from my 3 connected windows. how majestic to see over a large range of land and the great bolts of lightning so close.
i will continue to argue that life is so strange...

safe inside

got to remain within the realm.
got to hope and trust within the realm of safety and provision.
can't step out of the safe zone.
charm is sooo deceiving.
beauty is fleeting.
mans wisdom is beneath His foolishness.
i've been given so much.

alter of sacrifice
offer with joy - dead weight

whatever was my gain, i now consider loss

if i die

if i died, maybe i might be missed for a moment...then life continues as normal.
i wonder how many people think that.
And with the suicide rate being @2/week in Japan...i wonder.
everyone there that is looking for an easy, painless way out may have found it.
this is heart breaking. this is also highly disturbing.
sure, the thought passes my mind...but gotta take that bad boy captive!
that's a dangerous thought.
i wish i could say that it's not a powerful thought to the people who think it, but stories and reality would prove me wrong.
yes, life is rough and can be hauntingly sad...
but we have hope!
i could preach to you, but i'd rather you have a powerful encounter of your own.
i wish i could save the world from all the fear, pain and sadness, but it's already been done.
i wish i could bring people to that hope...
i wish i could do it where i am in baltimore, **hanover** and silver spring...wherever!!
**i wish i could bring it back to the underground**

however, knowing that i'm no longer cool and realizing that my life is not too successful - worldly speaking, and seeing how closed and self-preservant/protected-thick-skinned-wall-of-freakin-armor society has become
and the most important of them all
- i can't change anyone - AT ALL...
it's gonna take a bona-fide miracle :)
but you know what?!

I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES!!!!!!!