Acceptably Lazy + Moderately Productive

Last night I went to World Cafe Live in Philly for the first time to see the guys of Jealousy Curve play.  They totally commanded the stage with their energy.  The new material is even more amazing than their last two albums.  I can't wait for the new release.  It was really cool to see them play at such a great venue.  I'm used to seeing them play at small cafes and smoky bars with terrible acoustics.  World Cafe Live is none of those things.  Smoking is not allowed.  Awesome.  They have two levels, both of which have their own stage + bar.  Sweet!  The acoustics are fantastic and the many tables + standing room makes it a very comfortable place to listen to great music and hang with friends.  I'm looking forward to going back soon.

I decided to dedicate today to being acceptably lazy and moderately productive.  Let me explain.

-I woke up around 8:30AM:  acceptable for the weekend.
-The first thing I did was start my laundry:  productive.
-Made coffee and played guitar for 2 hours:  lazy.
-Watched the Winter X Games while folding laundry:  lazy + productive.
-Prepared food for the crock-pot while watching the movie War:  productive + lazy.

4(lazy) + 4(productive) = acceptably lazy and moderately productive.

Good enough for me.

Video Retard

I'm pretty excited for all the climbing that will take place once I get to Germany.  It might take me a little while to find a partner I trust though.  Aside from that, I want to be able to share my experiences with all my friends back home.  Pictures are super cool but I have another idea in mind.  Recently I have taken interest in getting a video camera.  It will take some shopping around because there is no way I'm going to buy a crap camcorder.  I want to get a legit video camera so I can learn how to edit and make decent looking videos.  I'll be honest, I'm no audio/video/computer guru.  But I'm not technologically retarded either so I'm pretty confident that with a little bit of hard work and a few screw ups I'll figure it out.

WTF Comcast?!

Comcast is is a French bastard child.  They have deleted my email account of 8+ years.  FUCK YOU!  I used that email address for so many websites.  I recently moved to a new apartment so I had to terminate service at my old address.  Upon doing so some gene-ass decided to delete my account.  I fucking signed up for comcast at my new apartment!  Why would you delete my email account?!  I am mad.  Very mad.  Comcast is a red-headed step-child and they officially suck billy goat balls.

Happy Refrigerator

I'm so glad it's the weekend.  This week really whooped me.  It's a little relieving to know that I'm officially going to Germany though.  For a while I wasn't sure I'd make the team.  But I did so HAH!  I was so beat by the time I got home last night that I didn't bother to go out or look for something to do.  I got pretty comfortable in front the tv and that was it.  I was a bit more productive today though.  I was invited to visit a professor of mine from high school and check out what the engineering club was doing.  My friend Matt and I took all three engineering courses available while we were there.  By junior year we were finished all the courses so we decided to enroll in an independent study in 3D autocad.  Afterwards we proposed to the school board that they create an official 3D autocad course and that they purchase Autodesk Inventor.  The following year, they did.  So it's really nice to go back and see how far the tech ed/engineering department has grown.  They've got tons of cool stuff there now like a 3D printer.  We didn't even have one of those at Widener!

After I got home I decided that I had to go food shopping.  My cabinets were looking pretty bare.  Well lets just say that I spent $181.46 and that my refrigerator is happy.  I've got a few recipes that I want to try out.  Considering I don't cook often, this should be pretty interesting.  I've got a few crock-pot recipes and I'm pretty confident I can't mess those up too bad.  I'll post the verdict later.

Back to the daily grind?

The holidays came and went and to be honest nothing exciting happened.  I spent two days helping my old housemates clean up our house so that we could get the security deposit back.  Apparently we got it clean enough to get our money back.  I should be getting about $400 sometime early February.  I'm pretty surprised that we're getting it back because our landlord was a complete bitch.  She tried to get us to pay for an extra 2 months of rent because we didn't "notify" her by mail early enough that we weren't renewing the lease.  Well fuck her because the realtors didn't let her collect.  I'm not complaining though.  I'll be lookin forward to that 400 bucks.

Aside from spending Christmas with family and New Years with a friend, I was honestly just hoping to go back to work as soon as possible (I had off work between the two holidays).  Well work did not disappoint.  It started right on schedule and boy did it get busy.  Lots of pressure from the boss to "half-ass" a few projects just to get them done so I could move onto the next bs project.  Most of this week was spent sitting in day-long meetings and putting band aids on all the problems that stemmed from the boss's hasty choices.  As payment to those that sat in 2 days worth of meetings the boss took us out to Victory Brewing Co. for dinner and a tour of the brewery.  Man do they make some awesome beer.  I also staked my claim as a contender for the company's biggest eater when I put down a large pizza by myself that night.  Oh yeah...

This opportunity to work as a design engineer for a new product being developed at the German headquaters of the company is starting to look up.  When the project manager gave me a test to assess my "engineering skills" I got a little nervous.  I hadn't figured on taking some test.  Luckily I had time to take it home and put some work into it.  Today I got to sit down with Erwin (the project manager) and talk about the test.  Amazingly enough I did quite well and he was rather impressed with the rest of my work for the company.  It was a huge relief to hear him say that he wanted me on the team.  I have my passport so now it basically comes down the the bureaucracy of obtaining residency and a permit to work in Germany.  It's not as simple as getting a passport and visa.  The company will take care of most of that though.  All the paperwork could take a pretty long time so we're estimating on departing at the end of February/early March.  I better get a move on with that rosetta stone.