Not so sleepy town

Ok, so I live in a suburb of Raleigh called Fuquay Varina. Strange name, yeah, yeah... we've heard it a million times. Anyway, it seems if you plan to carjack someone here, you best beware--the locals fight back with frozen turkeys! It's a scary story with a good ending and a somewhat funny twist. Read about it here. Watch the video here.

Finally

After two years of living here, and an additional two years before that my community existed, my address can finally be mapped on Google maps, Mapquest and Yahoo Maps. It took long enough. The information is still incomplete, as their is a second street off of mine that isn't mapped, but at least you could get someone to the neighborhood. Now, I can get people to my door. Update your Garmins kids... I certainly will.

Addicted to Facebook

It took me a really long time to sign-up for Facebook because I thought it would takeover my life. And sense I'm going to school full time, and working full time, I certainly don't need any more distractions in my life than I already have. So I avoided it... until recently. I signed up for Facebook. Now I'm left wondering why. It is every bit as addictive and distracting as I imagined it would be. And now's not a good time to be distracted. Finals are here (my first one was this past week). This is the time of year where things get hectic... projects due and papers to write, which, I wrote two papers and completed a major project on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday last week. Crazy.

Fortunately, I'm getting the stuff done and still playing with Facebook, but I'm left wondering why I opened Pandora's Box?

Those who've been keeping track with my weight loss are probably wondering why I haven't posted lately. Facebook would be the main reason, the other reason would be I haven't lost any to post, in fact, I've gained... six pounds over the past three weeks! Eek. This is where I give myself a pep talk again and remind myself I am oh so close to my goal and need to keep forging ahead. I will, and I'll get there, it's just a stark reminder that once I reach my goal I'll have to work twice as hard to maintain that weight. Ugh. Why can't it just be easy?

The life of a Flyboy

I want to point out a fun link available in the right column QQFlyboy's Logbook. I've been keeping track of the places I've been since June, 2006 thanks to a free website called FlightMemory.com. The link takes you to my public page, which lists numerous facts, including how many miles I've flown, how many hours I've been in the air, how many times I've circled the globe and travelled to the moon (figuratively of course, based on miles flown). It also shows maps of the US and the globe, and the routes I've flown.


Fast facts
Miles: 946,150
Globe trots: 38
Lunar visits: 4
Flights: 670
Airports: 56
Countries: 25



What blows me away is all that was accomplished in a little more than two years. I wish I could go back and input every flight I've ever been on/worked since I became a flight attendant in 1999. The numbers, I'm sure, would be explosive. How about my co-workers that have been flying for 40+ years? It'd be staggering.

Although I can access the past three years of flight records, the information only includes flight numbers, not city pairs flown. Flight numbers frequently change and can be reassigned, so looking up flight # 2231 today would probably yield completely different city pairs than from three years ago. If I had an OAG guide, I could certainly do it, but that would be time intensive. Hey, if anyone wants to buy me an OAG guide for 2005 and 2006, be my guest!

Update: Where's the gas?

It seems the gas is flowing again, although outages are still noticeable around town. It's a good thing I run on regular -- SpyC and I filled up at Costco yesterday where there was no premium to be had. Surprisingly prices had plummeted to $3.39 a gallon there. Most of the Triangle is hovering between $3.59 and $3.69. Two weeks ago when I was in Nevada prices were $3.39. I wonder what they are now?

NC still has high prices compared to most of the country, perhaps a side effect that lingers while petrol continues to fill the Colonial Pipeline. Hopefully as crude continues to plummet our gas prices will too, and even better, we'll get below the national average, which is where we're used to be sitting. I don't like being on the California side of gas prices.

Happy Birthday to me!

Where's the gas?

Is this the 70s? Station after station I've driven by lately has plastic bags over the handles of their gas pumps, indicating they are out of gas. Apparently we have Ike to thank. This massive pipeline, the Colonial Pipeline, that runs from Texas to the Northeast isn't running at capacity thanks to hurricane Ike.

As a result, gas prices have been on the rise here, topping four dollars a gallon again. I was in Nevada and California last week and was shocked at how "low" their gas prices were... $3.39 in Vegas to $3.50 in Sacramento. I told my brother I never thought I'd be jealous of California gas prices.

I was happy to learn, upon returning from our week long west coast tour, that the pipeline is running full steam, the stations around here seem to have gas again and the prices are starting to fall. I still paid $3.79 the other day, but that's better than the four bucks we were paying before we left... that is if you could even get gas. Pre-trip it took me three gas stations to find gas one day, and it took SpyC five stations. How bizarre.

Autopsy of a Furby

Random? Yes. Fun? Yes. I was doing a little online research for a class I'm taking when I stumbled upon a website that describes the autopsy of a Furby. It's a sad tale of Toh-Loo-Ka, a young and innocent Furby who only survived three days,and the arduous examination that took place post mortum to determine the cause of his/her untimely death. Oddly, it's an entertaining read. Poor thing.

Read the official autopsy report here.

Christmas idea to beat the red

Argh, I know. I shouldn't even mention the C word, but, it's only three months away. I can't believe it either. Anyway, while surfing the information superhighway today I found a unique gift that anyone can feel free to get me for Christmas. It's called PhotoBlocker and is a spray that goes on your license plate. Why would need such a thing? Raleigh, and the surrounding cities/towns are littered with red light cameras. As I believe, and millions of others believe, they are unconstitutional. This handy little spray makes your license plate invisible (or unreadable) to the camera; therefore, no ticket.

Now, I don't have a history of running red lights. In fact, I've never been ticketed for running one. However, it's the idea behind these traffic cameras that upsets me. How can you cross examine a camera? Our Constitution tells us we have the right to confront our accusers in a court of law. These cameras don't allow that. Furthermore, last I checked the owner of a vehicle is not responsible for what others may be doing in their vehicle.

I don't often lend my vehicle to others, but when and if I do, I sure as hell am not responsible for their traffic violations. Ah, but these cameras think I am. They're wrong, wrong, wrong, and furthermore, most of these cameras nationwide are owned by private companies who get a cut of the fee the city/county/state assesses. Even more wrong. They've got to go, but until they do, we can fight back with a $30 can of PhotoBlocker.

Gas: National average now $4/gallon

Yikes! I guess I should be thrilled I passed a gas station yesterday where gas was only $3.82. But $4/gallon? That scares the hell out of me because I don't think the run-up is done yet. I suppose that's why I am anxiously awaiting news in the next few weeks on whether or not I'll get a pink slip (again). I was nearly furloughed after 9/11 and I may not be out of the woods this time either. The numbers should be out in the next few weeks. I guess I'll just have to wait and see. Fingers crossed!

Ain't No April Fool

Ugh, when it rains, it poors... really. Not only has it rained here for two days non-stop (I love it!) my technical life seems to have gone down the shitter. Several months ago I knocked my iBook off the sofa arm and it landed on a hardwood floor smack on its noggin. I knew instantly I busted the frame of the monitor, but it continued to work (love those Macs!). I also knew, however, that it wouldn't work forever and something would eventually give. It finally did.

Last week I had tons of school work to do, some of which I finished at home and other stuff I was planning to do on my layovers. I pulled my laptop out of the bag on my first layover, turned it on, and got nothing but a heaven-like white screen and nothing else. Even when I closed the laptop lid, the screen stayed lit. Shit. I went to the hotel's business center to use their computer... huh! 60 bucks an hour. Screw that. I called Beth and asked her to draft an email about my computer woes and send it off to one class, I managed to email another the next day using a co-worker's laptop. All is fine there, I am still catching up from last week but there shouldn't be any damage due to a couple late assignments.

Fast forward to yesterday when I wander upstairs to use my desktop to catch up on my school work. I turned on the computer to hear a series of loud beeps, a racing fan (that slowly speed up to an explosion-like crescendo) and a monitor that refused to wake up. Fuck. Now what? So I turn the computer off, try again and get the same result. Three times. Shit. Time to call Dell. Thank god I have in home warranty service on this thing, it'll be the second time I've needed it. After a quick re-seating of the memory cards and power-up, only to have the same result as before, the Dell tech ordered two new memory cards and a mother board, "Just to be safe." Great.

About a month after we moved here, my desktop had a meltdown in which the entire hard drive had to be replaced. I still have the old one with dreams of trying to get info extracted from it. There's nothing really important on there but there are quite a few pictures that I'd like to have. Fortunately I had backed up my files about a year before that, so I only lost about a year's worth of info. Not insignificant by any means, but not as bad as it could have been either.

Dell should be here tomorrow or Thursday to fix the desktop and I have an appointment at the Apple Genius Bar today at 4:30 to send my laptop off for a new head. My laptop is still under warranty as well, but something tells me dropping it on its head isn't covered. Whatever. I can't imagine the monitor will be real expensive to replace, but then again, I can imagine a new Mac Book Air, too. :)

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