Inbound, Election day.

So it has been a little while since I last posted which has made me think that I should write a new blog. Anyway life is progressing here in Saint Paul. I am on track to graduate in December, in fact I just finished up my gym requirement... yeah I know it sounds odd but UST requires that everyone take a 0 credit gym class. They recommend that you take it your freshman year but that has not stopped my from putting it off until my fifth.
Besides basic life stuff the only really interesting thing I can think of, that Emily has not already blogged about, is that the election is coming up.
To start, a brief history. I was way into John McCain for the whole start and lead up to the convention, then I was presented with Sara Palin and things changed. I really did not like her at all. First of all I feel like she shot down the "our candidate has experience and the other guy doesn't" campaign a bit, and secondly I really liked that McCain was more middle of the road and well she is not in the middle of anything, unless you count nowhere. The next major problem I ran into was the economic crisis and the candidate responses, I guess my problem here was that McCain's camp was hesitant to even discuss that there was an economic problem to speak of.
From there it was a down hill slide for McCain in my mind. Now, I do not mean this to be pro Obama because, well, I am not sure that I am. My dislike of McCain at this point has not lead to the overcoming of my Obama problems. I truly am not sure what I am going to do on Election day.
If I do vote Obama it will be because I want change, and while I am not sure what his "change" is I am starting to care less and less.

A relic from the past.

Well the blogger addon for my side bar did not really help the posting frequency; but here I am writing again anyway, several weeks later.

As the title of this blog suggests I feel like a relic. This last week I started up at UST again for the 5th year and after walking around, and sitting in my classes, the best word to describe how I felt, is, a relic.

The thing is, as I walk around campus the faces of friends I have made have come and gone. Sitting in my classes I see the excitement of younger students as they realize all of their friends are in this class too, just as I think all my friends have already moved on. Looking around I see faces that look so young, I know that is a little silly seeing as I am only 22, but they look never the less young. Common ground between me and the rest of my class is no longer there as it once was, I have moved on, both in age and in understanding.

I am not sure what else to write but I just can not help but feel, as I start out my last semester, that I just do not belong.

On a side note two things that I have been checking out recently that are pretty cool and worth sharing are Pandora which is a custom radio station that is free, you just tell it the name of one band or artist you like and it will go from there. The second thing is Google Chrome which is the new web browser from Google, it is nothing too amazingly new but I like its "homepage" set up and its combined search and address bar.

Now a movie quote, idea stolen from my beautiful wife's blog.

How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back.

Blogger Buddy.

So I just downloaded this thing called blogger buddy. It is supposed to let me write blog posts from my vista side bar without me ever having to open up the IE. Maybe that means that I will post more. Anyway nothing is really too new right now, Emily and I are in our new place and we are loving it. School is coming up soon; it seems like summer has been so short. Anyway with the new school year comes having to figure out if I am going to grad school, Emily starting grad school, and both of us figuring out jobs and incomes for the year... so yeah this is the end of the calm before the storm I guess. Really though I make it sound worse than it is, after all its just more school right?

Passed out.

So I passed out today, and not like you would think. I was at work, I had a pretty bad headache and I bumped my knee on my desk. Well it hurt pretty bad so I ended up getting up and walking to the far wall, hoping that walking a little might help it out... you know the old adage "walk it off". Anyway I get to the far wall and I braced my hand against it and the next thing I know I was being revived by my coworker. I got up and went to my desk and sat there for a bit. So I guess I passed out, and the strange thing is I feel like I had a dream or whatever in that time period of however long. Very strange. Anyway I ended up cutting out of work early to go to health services and then when I couldn't get in I set up an appointment and went home with the help of Emily.

So yeah that was my day at work today.

The summer goes on.

So summer is moving along now, it is July. Emily and I will both be back in classes in another 2 months.

I am not really sure what to right, summer has been pretty good so far, not too much to write about, and not too much to complain about. I have been able to pretty much relax a lot which has been nice. The downside of the summer is that Emily and I are going to have to move in another month. We need to be out by July 31st. The crappy thing is that we still do not have an apartment, we are working on it though. I will update when we know more about that.

I hope everyone else is enjoying the summer as best they can.

IRT

So I am working again... It has been about 2 months since I left Kohl's and I finally have a new job working at IRT at St. Thomas. I found the job through a friend of mine, Tom, that works at IRT. Anyway today is my second day at the job and its not too bad so far. I more or less answer phone calls and emails of people having tech problems with the UST network. Most of the calls are about password resets and whatnot, which is easy and I can handle but some of the problems require a bit more computer/network knowhow that I think I lack atm. The hold button is my friend though, and I am working through any difficult problems. Besides the stress of not knowing how to answer some questions the rest of the job is pretty good, in the down time I can surf the net, watch movies, listen to music... update a blog.

Overall it is kinda nice to be working again, I just have to get used to the early mornings.

All Night Long

Emily showed me this today, I guess she heard it on KDWB.

A night at the movies.

So last night Emily and I decided that we would go out and catch a late movie, we decided to see Iron Man since I was able to talk her into it. We invited Kendrick and Lindsay to go with us but due to some family dance stuff they were busy and in Coon Rapids. The original plan was to go to the 9pm showing at the AMC in Rosedale but we quickly found out, once we got there of course, that it was sold out. The 10pm show seemed a bit too late for us so we decided to head home. Ironically Iron Man was also showing at our local theater which is only a few blocks from our apartment. We decided to go see that one since it was showing, or at least I thought it was showing, at 9:45 which was a bit better. Turns out that the show time was not till 9:55, but we decided to see it anyway. So we in line to buy our tickets and when we get to the counter we find out that its cash only, which we conveniently forgot since our last visit (we saw The other Boelin Girl there, terrible movie), so we began the few block trek to the Wells Fargo so we could save ourselves the ATM fees. Anyway we walk there and back and on our return find a line out the door. After waiting in line for a good long while and finally getting our tickets we headed into the theater. When we got our seats the closing credits were playing and we quickly found out that we did not want to be in the theater yet because Iron Man has one of those after the credits scenes so we rushed out hoping to not have any of the movie ruined for us. Emily left her coat on our seats though to save them and after heading back into the theater we discovered that we could not find our seats because her coat was no longer there. She grabbed us some new ones and I went to try and find out if anyone from the theater had grabbed her coat. After waiting to talk to someone and finding out that the theater was short staffed so no one was cleaning the theater between showings, making it improbable that anyone from the theater would have taken the coat, I went back to inform my wife that her coat was probably stolen.

Anyway, we watched the movie and it was great, and RDJr. did an amazing job as Tony Stark, I hope there is a sequel just so that I can see him play the role again. Anyway we sat through the credits and saw the scene that we ran from 2 hours earlier and left the theater. On the way out we talked to the last theater worker we could find and found out that they did indeed have the coat, I guess someone turned it in because they thought it was left behind.

Moral of the story find out movie times ahead of time, know if you need cash or not, and do not leave your coat behind when you flee a theater.

With regard to Dell.

Okay, so I wrote my last post about how I ordered through Dell for my new PC; well I meant to include this conversation that I had through their web chat thing. I just find it funny:

Connected with XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian
10:18:49 PM Eric Peterson Hello
10:18:58 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian Welcome to Dell's XPS Sales Chat! I hope you are doing well and thank you for waiting. My name is Brian and I'll be your personal sales agent. How may I help you with your purchase today?
10:19:13 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian Hello Eric.
10:19:25 PM Eric Peterson I wish to know if the Windows Vista on the XPS I am going to buy is 32bit or 64bit 10:20:23 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian We only offer 32-bit OS here at Home and Home Office section since most programs formatted for home usage is engineered on 32 bit only and will run slow on a 64 bit OS.
10:21:13 PM Eric Peterson I have a question then; why do you offer 4gb of ram if a 32bit Vista does not read over 3gb?
10:22:13 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian A 32 bit OS can only see up to 32 numbers at once. When you translate the amount of memory into binary, the largest number that fits into 32 digits is about 3.5 GB. So the OS can only see that much memory. Supposedly the 0.5 gig's power will be used to run its own system and hardware for even better performance.
10:23:18 PM Eric Peterson I see, but there is no guarantee that the full 4gb is being used though?
10:23:53 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian It's 4 GB that is used on the system.
10:24:08 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian Are you planning to purchase a system today?
10:24:52 PM Eric Peterson I actually purchased one yesterday and wanted to know about which bit my windows vista would be since i could not find it in the system specs
10:25:08 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian Oh okay.
10:25:18 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian Is there anything else I can assist you with regarding your concern?
10:25:31 PM Eric Peterson no there is not, thank you for your help Brian
10:25:43 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian
10:25:48 PM System XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian has left this session!
10:25:48 PM System The session has ended!


I think it is strange that he told me that the excess memory is not for sure used and then told me that it is... It does not change my mind about ordering through Dell; I just think its funny is all. Oh and I only ordered 3gb of ram anyway.

New PC.

It has been a while since my last post regarding Jelly Belly jelly beans so I thought, with some encouragement from Emily, that it was time for a new post.

Spring break has just started for Emily and I and we are looking forward to relaxing a bit which will be nice coming out of a very stressful midterm week. Not really sure how to seg-way into this so I will just say it; Emily bought me a new computer because she is a great wife.

I ordered a new Dell PC the other day, after some trouble making the actual purchase, and it will be coming on Easter Monday. The trouble was that I had mis entered some number on the back of my card when attempting to buy it which did not let Dell run my information. After talking to the bank and finding out what error I had made I had to recall Dell. At this point I was informed that my account could not be used at the current time prompting me to call the bank again and find out that my card had been locked down due to perceived fraud. A long series of questions ensued and I was finally able to call Dell and authorize the purchase of my new computer. Moral of that story... when you see *** in front of you on the screen make sure you know what those damned asterisks are hiding.

Some of you might be asking why I decided to buy a PC from Dell instead of making one myself. The answer is simple. I went to Dell and built the perfect PC for me which cost like $1500, mind you this is not the PC I purchased. I then went to different online stores and after making my computer I found out that if I ordered all of the parts to make the same computer Dell would make for $1500 that it would have cost me $1350. In my mind the extra $150 would be worth the hassle of me not having to assemble my new computer and also having a warranty for it. This discovery made me realize that unless your really die hard about your computer buying a pre-made machine is not really that bad of an idea.

For those of you who may be interested below are my system specifications:

Quantity Item Number Description
1 223-2365 XPS 420, Intel Core2 processorQ6600 (2.40Ghz,1066FSB) w/QuadCore Technology and 8MB cache
1 311-7873 3GB DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz
1 310-7963 Dell USB Keyboard
1 320-6189 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
1 341-5334 320GB NCQ Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM) w/ 16MB DataBurst Cache
1 313-5656 Dell Resource DVD with Application Backup
1 420-6718 Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, English
1 420-7622 DELL SUPPORT CENTER 2.0
1 412-1054 Turbine Lord of the Rings Online,XPS
1 310-8030 Dell 2-Button USB Optical Mouse
1 420-7468 ADOBE ACROBAT READER 8.1 DIM/INSP
1 313-5829 16X DVD+R/RW
1 420-7616 Roxio Creator Premier for Inspiron/Dimension/XPS
1 313-2758 Integrated Audio (I have a sound card that I intend to move)
1 410-1184 McAfee SecurityCenter 15-month
1 412-0912 MS WORKS 8.5
1 950-3337 1 Year Limited Warranty
1 988-2217 Dell Hardware Warranty PlusOnsite Service, Initial Year
1 983-9470 Type 3- Third Party At Home Service, 24x7 Technical Support, Initial Year
1 960-8700 Warranty Support,Initial Year
1 310-8626 You have chosen a Windows Vista Premium System
1 420-7285 Datasafe Online 10GB,1 Year Free
1 420-7649 Adobe Premier Elements Photoshop Elements, and Soundbooth Software

Jelly Belly

Ok, in the grocery store there is an entire line of Jelly Belly containers, they are priced at like $5/lb. and there are a multitude of different kinds available. That is the background, now the question, is it okay to sample (sample meaning one or two jelly beans) one or two different kinds in order to discover which kind you wish to purchase?

Caucus '08

So yesterday was super tuesday and boy was it a hoot. Well neither Emily or I went out and caucused but we thought about it, well at least I did. Either way I have heard some pretty funny stories about how it went down this election cycle here in good old MN and wow is all I have to say.

From what I have heard there were so many people that went out that most people were writing down their choice of candidate on the backs of scratch paper and even receipts. Overall the system sounded like it was pretty chaotic but interesting to listen to in any case.

So, what do you all think of the caucus and how our system is working? Like it, don't like it?

D.C.

So Emily and I went out to D.C. to do some sight seeing and visit her brother Matt and his wife Laura. Overall the trip was really good, we got to eat at a lot of great local restaurants and see a lot of the sights; for more of a run down on what happened you can go check out Emily's blog. There is one story that I wish to mention though; one night the four of us were walking through Crystal City (Crystal City is the name of the area Matt and Laura live in) to go to Cold Stone, well we were walking through the underground mall like shopping structure that from what I gather makes up a large part of Crystal City. Anyway, in the halls of this subterranean labyrinth there were posters, or ads rather, all over the walls. Every other ad, it seemed, was the same gentleman wearing a kimono and brandishing a sword in the wilderness with the subtitle "If this is what he does in his free time imagine what he does at work". The add was for some rinky dink community college and was just overall very humorous. Most of the trip to Cold Stone we spent making fun of the gentleman in the ad and his general nerdiness but on the trip home we paid little heed to them seeing how we had already exhausted all we could say and more importantly we had delicious ice cream to eat. To all of our surprise on the way back we came up to a man and a woman standing in the hallway next to one of the aforementioned ads. The man was taking a picture of his lady friend with the ad. Why would the woman want her picture with the ad though? Could it be they found it just as humorous as we did? The answer is no; she wanted the picture of her with the ad because she was indeed out on a date with the infamous star of the ad. What can I say some chicks must dig kimonos right?

Some pics from the trip...

Gorram

So Em and I are watching Firefly now and I have to say so far I really like it. The story is good and the characters are very likable. Overall it is a lot better then I had expected. Bryan and Cindy are watching it also and have the other half of the season so we might not get to finish it before we have to bring it back to DC with us (Matt is loaning it to his family and we are brining it back with us when we go visit him and Laura this coming week). That is all I have so far; if you have seen the series let me know what you think.

Oh and to answer Greg's comment on my last post I have 2 primary characters a lvl70 Hunter and a lvl70 Priest.

WOW

So my wife recently wrote a post on her blog, viewable here about the game World of Warcraft; which I spend my fair share of time playing. In any case I just want to say that I agree with Greg's comment, viewable here , either way I think WoW is a social game; after all the image below would not have been possible without the team work of myself and 24 other individuals. Just my 2 cents on the subject.