Matt D's Blog

After my job interview, I went up to 18th street and visited Adorama. First, I almost walked by the place lol..Its much smaller than say B&H photo…The place is decent enough though…But the turnaround times on development are not quite what I thought - two days turnaround for slides, and 1 day for print film. I expected a bit faster than that, but it’s ok, I just had them mail my slides and prints to my house, it should get here on Thursday or Friday latest. I picked up some storage pages for negatives and slides, as well as some film..They were out of 2 different films I wanted to try, but..I bought some Kodachrome instead hehe. But I forgot to get a Kodak mailer DOH. Oh well. I must stop by B&H to see what they have at some point too…

Today I had a job interview in the city…It wasn’t difficult to get to, which is good point number 1. I liked the guy who would be my boss, Sam. (He told me to call him Sam, which I thought was nice, instead of Mr. Magee)..The place isn’t huge, which I like. The day to day operations didnt seem to crazy, which is always a plus. They have benefits, a decent amount of time off, and the only real variable is salary, and learning Oracle and some java stuff. The only real downsides to the job are the 1 hour commute to and from the city, and a bi-weekly on-call requirement. But, the on-call isnt so bad, Sam said only once in 5 years did he have to actually go in the office to fix something. So, hopefully things work out and I get a job, can start paying off student loans, and saving up for my 2001 Ford Mustang Cobra.

My car is being a major pain in the butt. The brakes are more messed up than I had initially thought, so there’s a bit more work to be done. Not fun. I can’t get one of the parts off that needs to be replaced, so it’s on hold until Tuesday. I have come to the conclusion, that after this, I’m not putting any more money into the car. I’m going to start saving up for a Mustang, which is what I really want anyway. I like my car, but I don’t want to have to fix stuff that breaks every two weeks.

In brief: A server went down at work..a nightmare to get back the data, but it was able to be done, thanks to a random person on IRC who just happened to have an Opteron based machine and was willing to setup our database software. Anyway, I went to Untermeyer Park today, and took some shots on Kodak EliteChrome 100EC Extra Color Slide Film with the Canon Rebel Ti I got for my grandmother – the thing is great - she can use it no problem in fully automatic, and I can do more creative things with it. I also shot some pictures on my Fuji camera..they’re in the gallery.

I’ve sent an email, since thats seemingly the most efficient way to get the point across these days, and basically said it’s over. I did it. There wasn’t anything there anymore. He obviously didn’t give a shit about me, he couldn’t even return my phone call, from the 22nd. It’s now the 24th. I don’t want to hear excuses. I’m moving on. My friends are there for me, and that’s what matters. Thanks everyone.

Friday kicked major butt! We went down to Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ. Took a while to get there cause of traffic, but it was worth the wait. We got to the track, and it was Ford vs The World..it was pretty cool…They also had time trials. Mike got to run two runs, and Ben ran once too. Mike ran a 13.0 the first run, Ben ran a 13.8 the second run, and then finally, Mike ran a 12.7 @ 111 MPH – Bogging off the line! The car pulls like mad now…It’s really nice. And I’m not nearly done tuning it yet.

Here’s a good shot of the burnout:



For a larger pic, click here

On Tuesday I had some quick fun with Mike…He was in his explorer, and me in my Nissan…Just a little friendly thing…I heard him start doing a brake stand…so I get ready to go of course…Nobody’s coming…and I’m saying to him, as the light is about to change…“No reckless driving here, sir”…light turns green, and I launch it perfectly lol….I have no idea how I did it . So I nailed the launch, and chirped sencond and third lol…He had no chance mwuhahaha…And thats when I calmed down lol. Drove the rest of the way home with no incident. Now fast forward to yesterday, the 19th. I go to work no problem. But, my warning lights for windshield washer fluid, tail light out, low fuel, and my brake lights are on. Now, I have a 1/2 tank of fuel…Fluid might be low, I have no lights out, and the brakes were fine….Sooo..we figured it was a short (these lights were all on for a few days, and would randomly go on and off by themselves - or so I thought it was random)…So I get home, and I needed to fix the routing of one of my spark plug wires which I did recently. I decided to move the car down the driveway a bit, because I was going to wash it afterward. Well, I step on the brake once, no problem. Move down a little. Hit the brake again, no problem. Hit the brake a third time..it makes a thump…and the pedal falls more. “Huh??” Well…I try pumping the pedal, still the same, but now I hear something…I hear air and fluid, from what sounds like the back. It turns out that as I kept pumping the brakes, I was losing more and more fluid…So as it stands right now, I have no working brakes on my car, and it’s sitting in my driveway again. I need to see what my uncle has to say, and see what needs to be replaced. Hopefully it’s just rubber hoses, which won’t be bad. If it’s hard brake line….I’m screwed.

I’ve come to the conclusion that when ever one goes to a TGI Friday’s, no matter what time of the week…they’re going to be slow. I went to Friday’s with Mike and Lana on Tuesday night, around 9 PM. You would think that it would be quiet on a Tuesday, which it was. It’s rediculous how long it took for a bowl of soup to come out – almost 20 mins. Anyway, the rest of the food was good, so that’s the good side. But don’t expect to get out of there fast lol.

I did get that grade finally..It was an A! So my GPA for the semester was a 3.67 My overall was 3.15, which isn’t bad for engineering. I graduate tomorrow officially..I can’t wait. I took this picture a few days ago, and cropped it in photoshop today…hope everyone likes…

It is official…I finished my last final exam today..What a feeling…It’s all over. I am waiting on one grade, being either an A or B…Which will make my semester gpa either 3.67 or like 3.58..either way…kicking major butt…I’m VERY happy. Now I just need a job, and all is well…Graduation here I come…Sunday…Party on next Saturday. Fun fun fun!

I got my car back yesterday, finally. It is not quite how I wanted it, but it will do lol…Bill was a bit higher than I wanted too, but, everything will work out eventually, so I’m not going to sweat it any more. I had the clutch changed, basically the entire exhaust system changed, new O2 sensor put in, I have a working speedometer, working emergency brakes…It’s nice. The car is pretty powerful too, as evidenced by my idiot uncle leaving a bit of rubber lol…Now I just need to fix the paint up a bit.

Serendipity has been upgraded to version 0.6…I also (myself) tracked down, and solved the stupid Postgres bug. It turns out that it was a two-fold problem..The layout I use - “Newspaper” was messed up, and the limit statement in the sql was backwards..Ie instead of limiting to 15 entries with an offset of 30, it would limit to 30 with an offset of 15…lol..no wonder it was messed up :-/

Ah well, it’s fixed, and I think I’ll submit a bug report and fix..how cool is that?

I had dinner with KP and two of his friends tonight. Then we all went to see “Connie and Carla” at the movies afterward…The movie was decent – funny at times, but overall it was ehhh…

Well…I got back from LI about 20 mins ago..had a good time…Had a wonderful ride on Metro North down to the city – got to actually see where I was (sun was still out…never had that before lol), got to Penn Station in 20 mins from Grand Central, got on LIRR, and made it to KP’s house. It was myself, KP, and three of his friends there. We watched Sopranos, which was decent, but depressing this episode lol..Then we watched the season premiere of QAF, which was pretty good…It’s getting better again hehe…Then we all BS’d for a while, then went home…Now I’m going to sleep.

It seems that I underestimated what school had done to KP… He was exhausted, and slept over a day lol…Hence why I couldn’t get ahold of him. At least I know he’s ok now. I have some homework to do and some errands to run, but might go see him tonight…