It’s twenty ’till two in the morning as I sit and write this.

I’ve been up and down with the damn dog since going to bed in a stessed induced state of exhaustion almost four hours ago. I think the poor dog has some sort of bladder issue. Or pooping issue. Some issue at least. She’s had to go out at least once an hour, and then she squats and tries to do her business.

The stressed part comes from, among other things, a job-interview I had today. The place in question sounds like an excellent place to work; however, I have a feeling that while the interview itself went well, the technical knowledge needed is not there. Which got me to wondering if I even wanted it to be there.

I’ve been in the computer/Internet industry for over nine years now. It wasn’t something I planned. I never went to school for computer related classes, I never was a gamer. About the only thing I did was MUD. I knew the Internet before I knew a computer, oddly enough. Now, nine years later, I’m contemplating if it’s something I want to continue on with.

I’ve had a variety of jobs within this industry, starting with tech support and working my way up through the call center atmosphere until I moved out here to Virginia. A stint at development, and then landing where I am now in QA. Unfortunatly, I think this was the wrong place to land.

The problem lies in not only what other sectors to look for jobs in, but trying to find one where the pay will at least be comparable to what I’m making now. I feel as if I’ve trapped myself into a position where if I make a change in careers, it’ll be detrimental to my lifestyle. We’re having enough problems making ends meet as it is, what with mortgage going up because the tax assement went through the roof, or gas prices going through the roof, or kids expenses going through the roof, or vet bills going through the roof.

Because my dog has issues and can’t pee.

The reason for the slow progress of this site has been the continuing work on my other site. I had decided I wanted a drop down menu for the main menu bar, and spent way to much time looking around at scrips and such. Well, thanks to Xin over at YXScripts, I now have a drop down menu that works.

It’s composed of CSS and Javascript, but it loads quick, is easy to configure and does what I want. So I’m happy with it. I originally wanted a horizontal bar (like I have now) with a horizontal sub-menu, but my wife said it was too confusing to navigate. So I went for the straight drop down. You can see a preview here

Now, with this in place, my interface should be complete. I’m hoping that in between doing taxes and updating my resume, that I find time to impliment it this weekend, and put my site back online, especially after such a long hiatus. It’s even more urgent that I get it done ASAP now, as the weather is warming up as well. Once the weather is nice enough to ride, there’s no time for web!

Other Bits:
If you’re an Apple user, whether it’s Macintosh or iTunes, or a Pepsi drinker, (diet or otherwise , I’m sure you’ve heard about the 100 million songs Pepsi and Apple are giving away. My buddy Joe just came up from the cafeteria here in the building with an interesting tidbit.

You probably have figured out, if you’ve taken a glance at any of the bottles, that by tilting it at just the right angle, you can make out some of the letters under the cap. If you see the word ‘again’, you know you haven’t won. If you see a mish-mash of letters, you have a winner. Well, Joe noticed that when you pull the bottle out of the cooler, the kind with the florescent lights on the inside of the door, you can hold the cap to the light and see the letters a lot better than just looking up at the lights in the ceiling.

I haven’t tried this yet…but really, with a 1 in 3 chance of winning, it’s not tough. And I’ve won 9 songs so far!

Just got email that says our team needs to be around this weekend in case they need help in getting the latest client out the door. Guess my weekend, if it wasn’t shot by doing taxes and resume before, is now.

When I got to work this morning, I backed into my chosen spot, and then sat for a minute waiting for the song I was listening to to finish (Loreena Mckennitt’s The Highway Man). While sitting, another car pulled into the spot next to me. As the lady driving had pulled in normally, instead of backing in like myself, our doors would’ve hit if we’d open them at the same time.

She smiled at me as a way of greeting and saw I was gathering my stuff, so she hopped out and opened her back door, presumably to get her own stuff. I noticed she was on the phone while doing this. I put my hand on the door latch, ready to jump right out as soon as she moved, eager to get to work as I was (insert eyeroll here). For some reason, however, she decided that with her back door open (blocking me from getting out mind you), that she was going to stand right there and change her shoes. All the while gabbing along on her cell at 90 miles a minute.

How rude.

I’m not one to honk or say anything usually (usually….), so I waited patiently. She eventually noticed she was holding me up, gave a kind of sheepish “Oh, gee, were you waiting for me?” smile, and let me out.

Later on in the lab, the guy next to me was listening to music on his iPod. Naturally, he was testing sounds, so rather than take the earbuds out of his ears, he turned up the speakers on computer, so I had to hear every bloop, chip and beep that silly thing made at 10 times louder than I normally would.

It was quite the annoying day. At least tomorrow is Friday…

Well, obviously I’ve messed something up with my right side menu. Now it’s below all the entries. I was working on getting the comments to be viewed the same way last night. I had a friend come over, and when she got there, I neglected to wrap up what I was working on. Gail got home and we sat up and played some cards for a bit, and I totally forget I was in the middle of something.

Now it seems to be all screwed up. I guess my plans for tonight were just cemented…need to sit down and figure this out.

I’ve also been debating about whether to go with a “liquid” layout (as I have it now, where you can resize your browser window and the content expands or shrinks to follow) or a static, centered layout (See SimpleBits and Veerle’s blog for excellent examples).

Any thoughts?

Naturally, one of the main “hot topics” for today is Janet Jackson’s Peek-a-Boob “faux-pas” during the Super Bowl halftime show. Obviously, the media has had a field day, with all sorts of articles hyping on the “accidential” exposure that Justin Timberlake caused by ripping off the right part of her bodice.

What amuses me is that this was supposed to be an accident. This wasn’t staged, and everyone involved is apologizing up and down for it. But geez, wasn’t anyone watching? At the end, when Timberlake had his hand wrapping around Janet’s waist, and then slid up, grabbed the material and pulled? Sure, she looked surprised, but maybe she’s just a good actress. Or maybe Timberlake was seeing if it really was Janet, and not her brother Michael. Regardless, I have to think it was staged…mostly because most women I know don’t wear a nipple shield under their clothes. (Link is NOT safe for work, children, small dogs, etc…) You’ll also notice in the picture that the outfit Ms. Jackson is wearing has snaps in the bra cups. Convient, eh?

Oh, and she has a new single coming out as well…and according to the press release, it’s spreading “like wildfire”. Funny, considering the timestamp on the article shows that it was published even before the game was over.

Concidence? I think not. Staged? Most likely…

Other than that bit of excitement, the weekend over all was good. Aside from the afore mentioned Super Bowl party at Jeff and Marcia’s, the kids and I had a lock-in at the YMCA Saturday night with the Indian Guides (or, as known now, the Adventure Guides. Apparently, honoring the Native American way of life and reverance to all things nature wasn’t “politcally correct” so they had to change the name. Now, instead of “Great Spirit” it’s “The Creator’s…”. But I digress…). We basically had the run of the place from closing until the next morning. We swam in the pool (or the kids did at least), shot baskets in the gym, watched movies, and ran around acking like idiots. Good fun! As a bonus, Gail managed to have a “girls night out” with some friends. They went to dinner, and a movie and had a great time. She was so happy and relaxed when we got home Sunday morning. I’ll have to try and make sure she has more evenings like that.

One of the things I’ve decided I need to do is to follow through on some of my ideas, complete projects in a decent amount of time, and generally get things done. I’ve been wanting to try modding my own PC case, and have been reading forums and how-to’s, and I’ve even gone so far as to strip a case I had lying around down to the bare bones. But I haven’t ever bothered to start the actual work.

The reason I bring this up is because of a site I recently saw. The Mushroom House is the creation of a guy (strangly enough, named “Zube”) who came up with the idea in the late ’70s (ok, maybe not that strange of a name, considering the decade…). It’s an incredible piece of work, with detail that’s just astounding. The house itself, interior and exterior, reminds me of a hobbit hole, and the whole “nature” motif is carried throughout the house.

Obviously Zube (I love saying that name) must have had an incredible passion, for this took 22 years to complete. The only thing I’ve done for 22 years is breathe. I’d like to have this kind of determination and desire to have such a vision, and decide to do it, however out of this world the idea might seem.

I’m going to have to get used to writing in a journal/blog again. I kinda fell off of writing long entries like I used to, as it seemed the LiveJournal just wasn’t really the place for it all. I currently have my own account, but I’ve always seen LJ as more of a “see what I’ve got” as opposed to “here’s what’s going on in my life” type of stage. There are several others who use it to spill out the details of their life, and that’s fine. I will be keeping it, but I think just for the ability to post in other’s journals, as well as placing the odd link now and then.

Oh, and I like my LJ Icon, so I have to keep that too.

I’m still working on getting the site to look the way I want, as well as getting used to pMachine as a journaling tool. Then there’s the website I’m trying to do for my friend Marcia’s work. And my other website, Harleyroads (which is currently in the garage for a tune up, and has been for months now. How embarrassing…). I also want to try my hand at “modding”…I’ve been surfing the Bit-Tech forums for weeks now, and want to get my hands dirty.

And speaking of getting my hands dirty, everytime I watch American Chopper, I want to go weld/grind/build/paint/throw stuff around. I need a hobby that doesn’t involve computers, and something that requires using a welding torch sounds like good fun to me!

Ok!

Looks like Shad’s Pad is slowy coming back online here. I’m using a new journaling tool, and hopefully, it won’t get taken down as often as Greymatter did.

Throughout the next few weeks, the look will change as I play with the templates and css stuff. For now, this is the default layout.

So…welcome back!