All posts by jason

General, Hollywood, Sports, Uncategorized

Beginning of the End

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Started my last week at UWO today. I feel remarkably normal about everything. Had a couple people ask me today if I was nervous about starting a new job, or excited to be leaving Oshkosh. Had to say neither. Maybe it just won’t seem as “real” until I start in MKE, but for the time being, I’m feeling fine about the whole thing…

I forgot to bring new coffee filters in for the second day, and I tried to make due with about 3 cone filters cut up and arranged inside the basket. That didn’t work, either. I put a ziploc bag full of filters on the steps so I won’t forget them on the way out tomorrow.

The steps are nice and clean, too; I had to give the apartment a nice little ‘once-over’ this evening, cuz my landlord is showing it tomorrow. It made me think about some of the shit holes that I’ve looked at while searching for apartments. I know that I probably won’t meet ANY of these people, but I really think you need to have some pride, a little self-respect, and try to make it look like you don’t live like a complete slob. Even if you do sometimes. So I did the floors, wiped the counters, washed all the dishes, and spot-cleaned the bathroom. Everything looks better.

Brewers won their 4th game in a row tonight. That’s also 12 out of their last 15. Pretty impressive. Still room on the bandwagon, folks…

I heard an interesting story over the weekend, wherein Steve Schrubbe’s car burned to the ground. That’s right– his car.

I also saw the third Spider-Man installment, and I’m giving it a 6-out-of-10: entertaining, but with some glaring holes/points of contention for the casual comic book geek (which I am). I’m a little too tired to chart the exact measures on a graph for you, but from the rough sketch below, you can see that some slight geekocity will allow you adequate background to enjoy the film, but as geekitude exceeds 50%, the issues with Spidey 3 rapidly approach infinity. I’d mark myself as about half-geek, so I guess the chart is skewed a bit through my perspective. But you get the idea (clicky for biggification).

OK, night-night time then.

lists, Uncategorized

Enumeration

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One of the things that goes along with getting my new job (and goes along with getting any state job these days, actually) is a criminal background check. The paperwork has been a little challenging for me so far.

I’m certainly not concerned about what will come up on this check, but the first thing they ask you to do is “list all addresses at which you lived in the past seven years. Continue on back, if necessary:”

Oh, and I continued.

What I thought was interesting as I made the list was thinking back to the days that I moved in and the days I moved out of all these places. I can remember each one. God-DAMN I have moved a lot in a short period of time. Seven years feels like it was a century ago. Here’s my list:

DATES STREET CITY STATE ZIP
7/1/06-present 661 Division St Oshkosh WI 54901
7/1/04-6/30/06 470 N Main St Oshkosh WI 54901
11/1/03-6/30/04 2080 Dickinson Ave Oshkosh WI 54904
6/1/03-10/31/03 2716 Woodridge Ln Waukesha WI 53188
1/20/03-5/31/03 606 Nelson Story Bozeman MT 59715
8/30/02-1/19/03 Johnstone Hall, Rm 4415 Bozeman MT 59715
7/21/02-8/29/02 3520 Shangri-la Rd Eagle River WI 54521
1/15/02-7/20/02 6140 S 18th St Milwaukee WI 53221
6/1/99-1/14/02 456 High Ave Oshkosh WI 54901

Wow. Maybe next place I go, I’ll try to settle in a little while.

General, Uncategorized

A Little Filler

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Now that I’m only going to be working at UWO for 2 more weeks, I have tons of stuff to do every day over there. I thought I had prepared to leave on the down-low pretty well during the course of the semester, but it turns out I didn’t think things through very much. Lots and lots to finish up.

In the meantime, why don’t you watch a music video starring Charlie the Karate Chimp?

General, Uncategorized

Schlemiel! Schlemazl! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!

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I’ve been keeping it on the DL, just so as to avoid a lot of questions, or to jinx it, but now things are set in stone.

I took a job in the financial aid office at UW-Milwaukee. This will be more or less a lateral move for me professionally, but with a slight increase in pay and it puts me down in the city where I spend a vast majority of my free time (for obvious reasons).

It’s nice to stay in the UW System, because my benefits and retirement will basically follow me. Also good timing because the lease at my apartment is up as of June 30, and that’s pretty much exactly 60 days from now anyway.

So, I’ve gotta get back to work and start thinking about all the crap I need to finish up around here in the next 10 working days. Gimme a call or an email if you want. I’m excited.

I leave you with an “oldie but goodie” photoshop:

Hollywood, lists, Uncategorized

3 Stars

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I was looking through my Netflix queue yesterday, filling in “rating” holes for movies that I watched but never made a call on (I know– really stressful, exciting stuff). But I noticed that a large number of these movies got 3 out of 5 stars from me. In the Netflix vernacular, this means “I liked it,” as opposed to 2 stars (“I didn’t like it”) or 4 stars (“I really liked it”).

I dunno, this is surely a case where my anal retentiveness and desire to over-quantify something as unimportant as a list of movies, is tripping me up, but I really wish there were half-star marks you could make on this thing. There are movies that I gave a 3 just because I couldn’t say “I didn’t like it,” and others that got a 3 just because I didn’t “really” like it. I mean those are 5’s and 7’s out of 10, respectively. There’s a net difference of a full star there, but the system doesn’t let me account for it.

Well, really, though, who gives a shit? On the Netflix scale, I would give this post 1 star (“I hated it”).

Climate, General, Uncategorized

In the Nick of Time?

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I thought it was an interesting coincidence that I was sent the following two articles, in this order, earlier this morning:
From Josh Schneider: Minneapolis Star-Tribune– disappearing bees means disappearing food supply, and human extinction
From Michelle: Astronomers discover the most Earth-like planet yet, a mere 120 trillion miles away

My brief commentary on each, respectively:
The bees— this shit should scare the crap out of you. Bees = pollination = plant growth = people & animals eating = successful ecosystem. You take out the first step in that process, and you’re basically boned. Big, big, big trouble.

The planet— very interesting discovery. Although it is, of course, impossible to ever visit this place (or the myriad other extra-solar planets being discovered), the fact that so many have been found in so brief a period of time is really exciting to me. It was only 10 or 15 years ago that I was reading articles in which prominent astronomers held a very “solar-centric” opinion: that our planetary system itself was unique and science would be hard-pressed to even FIND A PLANET ELSEWHERE, let alone one that might support life. It really lends a ton of value to projects like the California and Carnegie Extrasolar Planet Search, as well as SETI.

lists, Uncategorized

Distracted

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I’ve got a bunch of things on my mind this week, and it’s complicating my work and my blog. There’s also the fact that I’m out of coffee at work, and keep forgetting to bring in more. I get caffeine headaches now, which I never used to, and it’s quite a bummer when I’m off the stuff. But I digress.

So late last week, I ran the following numbers:
DATE I ENTERED UW-OSHKOSH AS A FRESHMAN: 9/3/1997
DATE I LEFT UW-OSHKOSH w/ A BACHELOR’s DEGREE: 12/15/2001
TOTAL ELAPSED TIME: 4 YRS, 3 MONTHS, 12 DAYS

DATE I ENTERED MSU-BOZEMAN AS A GRAD STUDENT: 8/26/2002
DATE I TRANSFERRED TO UW-OSHKOSH AS A GRAD STUDENT: 2/2/2004
TOTAL ELAPSED TIME SINCE GRAD STUDIES STARTED (degree incomplete): 4 YRS, (and very nearly) 8 MONTHS

One of my master’s program colleagues was in the office the other day to talk to my boss. He started after me, and he’s defending his thesis this month. That really sort of put some stuff in perspective for me and made me realize I need to quit dragging my feet.

So my plan for this week is to get done with the paperwork that needs to go through in order to start on my thesis. Rindo seems to think I could still get out even as early as the fall. Personally, I don’t know how that would happen, but spring suits me fine, too.

I’ve gotta get back in a writing mode and scrape some rust off my brain so that what I do in the fall is actually worth something. I’ve been so goddamn tired or making excuses for why I can’t work. I really need to kick myself in the ass.

There are some professional distractions hovering around my mind this week, too, and hopefully I’ll have more to say about that by next Monday. Things are coming to a head, I think you could say.

I also totally flaked on the Netflix subscription coming out of my bank account this week, so I’m goddamn overdrawn, and what that basically means is that the sandwich I had for lunch last week is gonna cost me 40 dollars. Stupid, stupid bullshit.

I gotta try to concentrate. If I manage to formulate a coherent thought, you mind get wind of it.

firing from the hip since 2002