CaseyAndKelly.Com

That’s right, we finally have gas. The gas man showed up yesterday out of nowhere (neither Casey or I called him). He got a little dyslexic with the numbers at first and turned on the wrong one then turned on the right one and it still wasn’t labeled properly. But he was a nice enough guy that, even though he said the company didn’t give him enough time, he checked several of them until he found ours and just crossed the lines so that it would go to our apartment. We felt bad we couldn’t tip him since he did something the last guy wouldn’t do and was really nice about the whole thing. But we rarely carry cash so it wasn’t an option. He told us it would take about 30 minutes for the water to heat up so when we came back from Panda Express and the water was still cold we thought something had gone wrong. Casey went up to the roof to make sure the pilot light hadn’t blown out and it had so he relit it and I was able to take a bath last night for the first time since the Holiday Inn Express in Galup, New Mexico (December)! There’s still something wrong with the water heater or valve or something because this morning the shower wasn’t very hot but it was bearable. They’re also gonna need to come back in and fix the water going to the other bathroom because the shower won’t work in there at all. We’re happy with hot water and feel we’re on our way to a normal existence.

On a bad note, the final inspection yesterday failed. I waited in my car outside for an hour and a half while they were testing the alarms and trying to see if things work and when I came inside I was told they failed. 🙁 Why does this not surprise me? I’m hoping that they’ll be back out soon and have everything fixed. I told Casey he needs to call Adelphia and pretend he’s Peter (owner) so that we can get the cable box installed. Peter doesn’t seem to be making that his priority since I called him about this at the end of Februrary and it still isn’t done.

Casey’s taking tomorrow off after working all that overtime. We’ll both have a 3 day weekend and nothing is planned. We were looking at going to Vegas but waiting to book reservations until the week of makes the rates double. Casey thinks it’ll be too close to our stay in May so we’ll probably go again in July or August to spread the visits out. Rates are cheaper when it’s stiflingly hot outside.

This week is Spring Break but since I’m still in school it doesn’t feel like it. And we’re not going anywhere. Laughlin is supposed to be cheap but it ain’t Vegas. I think I got accepted into Cal State Northridge even though I haven’t received an acceptance letter yet because I got something saying where all my classes apply in their degree program. I checked the status of my UCLA application but the decision won’t be in until late April so I’ve still got time to sweat it out.

This weekend we went to Nicky’s for the first time in awhile (I guess Super Bowl). I made chimichangas for everyone which went over really well and we watched last week’s episode of Survivor.

On St. Patrick’s Day we went out with Megan (friend from work) and her boyfriend, Jason. We met at a bar across the street from work and had beers (maybe too many). We had a great time and went over to their house to BBQ again on Friday night. It’s nice to say, we have friends here!

My company is so crazy. I received a call yesterday from my boss telling me she was getting pressure from higher up the food chain because I was working my ass off to get my site up and running smoothly. They just don’t want to pay me for the 140+ hours that I have worked this pay period. I like my job and all, but this is just madness.

I’m dying without broadband, every Wednesday and Thursday I have to download the newest episodes of Smallville and Survivor from work on the slow ass DSL connection that we have here. Plus I’m trying to download the first episode of the new season of Sopranos so I can get into it. Grrrrrrr. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I received another call yesterday that I have the go ahead to get my gas turned on so I have made the necessary calls, so hopefully today or tomorrow I can have my first shower in my new apartment.

DirectTV will be releasing the HDTivo in April and I am hoping to score that when it is available, even though it will be about 700-900 bones. It will be super-sweet to watch Avs games in HD on my big screen.

Monday will be the start of the last two big sites that have to be migrated. So at 6 in the morning on Monday we will be in Long Beach and hopefully things will go well. We have been having some serious issues with our SCSI attached RAID 5 enclosure. We may require a new array, but hopefully not, because it seems to take forever to get new hardware sent out. And then because this hardware has been sitting for about two years, its REALLY OLD hardware. I mean because of the 22 servers under my control only 3 of them have new hardware (>1GHz PIIIs) the rest are old POSs. I mean my Powerbook is faster then half of the Dell servers that we have. The three file servers that are here are dual 700s with 1GB of RAM. Not much horsepower by todays standards.Ummmmmmmmmmmmm…… yeah nothing else.

James just told me about the most bitchin application EVER. Its call MusicBrainz Tagger. For all those people with large MP3 collections and not all of them named or tagged properly. It scans each track and generates an acoustic fingerprint for each track then compares it to an online database and then retrives all ID3 information. Its great. But alas only for Windoze. I knew there was a reason I kept my Windoze boxes around.

I’m still beat after the 21 hour day yesterday. And I have to get up at 5 again tomorrow to drive to Van Nuys and migrate the site up there. Now although I have not been getting paid for the OT that I have been working, it looks like my company might decide to pay me after all. They can read the daily status reports and see that the hours that I have been working are giving them a good rep with the customer. I wouldn’t mind seeing a nice fat check at the end of this month, ahhhhhhhh Canon Digital Rebel SLR.

Went down to Long Beach today to troubleshoot a server, and then went Seal Beach for lunch at this great little hole in the wall joint The Sea Side Grill. It had great hot wings, and nice size beers (didn’t have one, but next time…..), plus on the same street there are 3 Irish pubs and some assorted other pubs and restraunts. I really wouldn’t mind living down in that area if only I could be instantly teleported to work in the mornings. It would be 40+ minutes in the morning with no traffic, and then who knows how long in the evening. I just don’t think I could take being in the car that long.

I booked our stay in Hawaii today. I can’t wait to spend 7 days in Maui on the beach. Just lay my fat ass under an umbrella and sleep all day (I wish). I spent all but 925 of my Marriott points on the hotel room. But we don’t have to pay a dime for our stay. But airfare and car rental are another story, but I suppose that is one good thing about living in LA, cheap airfare to Hawaii.

I think its about time that I buy an Apple desktop. With the new 2.4 GHz G5s coming out soon I will probably wait but I really want a machine that I can work and play on. Eventhough most of the games that I like now will play on my Powerbook, SimCity 4 runs like a dog. And with rumors that Doom3 and Half Life 2 will be released at the same time for both systmes I want a machine that will handle the load.

I was looking at firewire RAID enclosures the other day. They are so damn expensive. I was pondering purchasing a 1394b RAID setup so I can boot from it and thus take advantage of the 100MB/s throuput offered by the faster firewire standard. I was thinking that a 7200RPM drive in a 1394b enclosure would be signifcantly faster then the hard drive in my laptop. I’m just dreaming though.

I really didn’t want to be at work today, it was about 85 out today, and would have been a perfect day to go and sit at the beach all day long. Maybe next month when my flex schedule starts…………. I can only hope……..

I saw Tom Cruise in Hollywood yesterday driving through an intersection! I was turning left and he was going straight in his convertible Carerra. I haven’t been doing too bad lately with the celeb spotting. See what you’re missing, Justin. By the way, I’d like to read your screenplay when you’re done with it. I have high expectations.

There’s two inspections on our building this week. This morning was for the sprinklers (if it passes we can get gas turned on). That means hot water! Don’t need the heat since it’s been 90 degrees the last three days. Then tomorrow there’s an inspection on the elevator (again). So hopefully those two pass and then it’ll be onto the final building inpsection. My parents are worried they’re going to have to get a hotel while they’re out here (in May!) because stuff is taking so long. Let’s all hope and pray it doesn’t take THAT much longer.

We made our reservations for our trip to Hawaii (Maui) for a week in February! We paid to upgrade to an ocean view so that should be nice. I’m getting more excited now that we actually have the room reserved. So now everyone else can make their reservations so we’ll all be relatively close together.

Not much else going on. Just going to my internship and waiting for Casey and James to get off at night.

Not too much new going on. We’re still waiting for our building to be completed – 9 weeks and counting since we’ve been here. They’re teasing us by saying we *might* be able to get gas turned on this week which means showers at home. But we’re not holding our breath. It’s always something with them. Cable modem couldn’t be installed last week when someone finally came (after not showing up and not calling twice) because there’s no cable box for the building so when we talk to the owner this week we’re going to have them make the call so we can get that going. I’d be going even more crazy if I didn’t have internet at work. What kind of a world does not have high speed internet access??

We went to California Pizza Kitchen on Thursday night and they were having the premier for Starsky & Hutch across the street (we didn’t know that or would have showed up at the beginning). From our table we were able to see the stars as they left, we were still across the street but we were able to see Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, and Snoop Dog. So that was pretty cool. At this premier they were letting people get pretty close up and when they’re leaving is the best time to go because the crowd has thinned considerably.

Casey’s been working crazy overtime lately. He hasn’t had a whole day off in three weeks. But that means extra money and vacation time (since they will only pay him a certain amount of overtime money). We had to reschedule our reservations for the Hard Rock in Vegas to see Howard Stern because they changed the dates. The bad thing is that it’s so close to when my parents are getting here to our vacations are going to be close together. The good thing is that it’s a little less money for these dates because I booked through hotels.com instead of directly through the hotel. We’re both looking forward to it as a vacation for all we’ve been through.

My internship is still going well. I think they were planning on hiring two interns for the morning and two for the afternoon but there’s only me in the morning and another chick in the afternoon and she plans on quitting. Ya know they could just let me intern for credit in the morning and pay me in the afternoon. We’ll see if that will work.

I should be hearing from colleges out here sometime either this month or next. I’m nervous to see which college(s) I get accepted to. Like I’ve said, everything is more money out here especially tuition. Speaking of prices, gas is averaging $2.20/gallon for unleaded.

I finally got my plates for the 4-Runner and have sent in the information for the car. After waiting at the DMV for 2 hours, when I had an appointment and it shouldn’t have taken nearly that long and as I was about to have a nervous breakdown from ALL of the stress, I got everything for my drivers license done. I had to go in there two days in a row because they made me wait so long past my appointment time that they were no longer administering the written tests. Can’t something go my way??? But at least it’s all taken care. Unfortunately, since they scheduled my appointment 3 weeks out from when I originally went in (and waited 3 hours to be seen without an appointment) I was not able to register to vote until last week and thus unable to vote in the primaries. I’m kinda disappointed with that since I haven’t voted in the primaries before but at least I’ll be able to vote in the election in Novemeber (haven’t done that before either). Did you do your civic duty and vote today?

We joined Netflix last week so that I’ll be able to get all the movies for my class without driving all over. We’ve also rented several other movies so we can keep up on new releases and classics that we’ve never seen. Saves a lot of money as compared with Hollywood Video and Blockbuster.

I went to the library last weekend and picked up a book for a different class and a couple of others. With nothing else to not a lot else to do I finished both of the books last week. For those of you that like chic lit: I recommend Maneater and Shopaholic Ties the Knot.

Well that’s all I can think to say for now.

Work is killing me. Today is the last day of the pay-period and I’m about to hit 180 hours. We have started migration from Win98 and Novell to 2K and AD. Loads and Loads of hours, its to bad I’m salary. Bleh.

Still no power or anything, we attempted to get cable modem installed but of course there was no cable run to the building yet. I’m just to damn stubborn to move again.

So here it is Sunday night, and I’m STILL at work. We were planning on going to eat soem sushi tonight, but that may change depending on what time we get out of here tonight. Perhpas In N’ Out will be our dinner locale tonight.

Not much else going on besides that, I have been to busy to post latley, and all of a sudden people are telling me they can’t create accounts. Well I think I broke the account creation module months ago, and just never bothered to fix it. Perhpas when I get some free time I will dive in and take a look at the code to see what is going on with it. But for now back to work…..

It’s been another one of those weeks. Nothing has gone right so far and I don’t see that things will turning around anytime soon. Keep your fingers crossed or pray (whichever you do) that things start looking up. I’ll update more later.

Sorry there haven’t been more updates. There isn’t a lot going on. James is in town and he and Casey are working a TON of overtime this week. By the end of tomorrow Casey’ll be at 80 hours for this WEEK. I’ve just been doing random things to stay busy. We still have no utilities but on Tuesday cable modem is getting installed and we’ll be able to be online again once the workers go home each night. That’s something to look forward to. My parking meter is getting ready to expire so I’ll update more next week.

I have 24 boxes sitting next to my desk right now, and I’m waiting on a Unisys tech to come out and fix my server. These guys just take their sweet ass time. I actually came in early this morning with the anticipation that they would be here and I could get everything back up and running but NOOOOOO.

The Howard Stern show is gonna be in Vegas in April at the Hard Rock, so Kelly and I booked our rooms there so we can go check it out. It should be a pantload of fun. Maybe her or I can get on the show and play one of the table games for 10K or so like they do multiple times over the three days that they are there. Plus it will be a nice break from here.

Hopefully I will be able to start my compressed work week at the end of next month. Ahhhh three days weekends for the next two years. That sounds great.

Gonna go check out 50 First Dates tonight, that should be worth a few laughs, and then hopefully find someplace to have a tasty dinner. I’m a SOOOO sick of eating out every night. What I wouldn’t give for some homemade spaghetti sauce.

I came home today to find a beautiful arrangement of flowers waiting for me in front of the door. I opened the car and cried because it was so touching to receive flowers from my best friend, Randi, to brighten my day! (Pictures are in the gallery.)

I drove 13 miles today to find a Wal-Mart. I do not foresee needing to go there again considering how long it took to get there. Besides, I’m a Target girl anyway.

February 4, 2003

In minor celebrity news, I saw Trishelle and possibly Frank (although it wasn’t a 100% confirmation) today in front of MTV Studios in Santa Monica. This marks my first absolute celeb sighting. The other was last Friday and was at an intersection in Beverly Hills. I’m fairly certain I saw Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston in their Mercedes boxy SUV thing. I can only hope but with sunglass it’s kinda hard to tell.

Another day, another inspection. The elevator was inspected again today and failed because the elevator guy made the fire alarm do the opposite of what it should. Friday they’re supposed to come back out again and install it the right way. We’ll see.

February 5, 2003

Thursdays for now, are all about Survivor. As a matter of fact, now that Friends has reached it’s last season and we’re going to have to download most of them, it is all about Survivor. We went to Nicky’s to watch the latest episode. Rupert is still in the game and for those of you who are still actively or sporadically (like me) playing HSX, I did see that you can buy stocks of who you think will get the farthest. I have to say I’m sad to see Rudy go and am hoping Jenna goes next. We watched C.S.I. tonight. It’s only my second episode and I’m not too impressed. It’s entertaining but not something I’d set TiVo for.

February 6, 2003

Today I spent the majority of it at the DMV. Now this DMV is like nothing you’ve ever seen. They recommend that you make an appointment and with good reason. I showed up at 10:30 (thinking I got there early) I had to wait 30 minutes just to get a number and then another 3 hours waiting to get called and then another 30 minutes to get my vehicle verification. I already have a valid Colorado drivers license but I have to take the written test AGAIN and show my birth certificate AGAIN. C’mon now. I can show them a military ID, a drivers license, and a social security card. Why do I need a birth certificate? Ugh. And three hours this is ridiculous, like everything else in this city. After waiting that long and finding out I couldn’t get my incense I also found out that to get the new registration for California, I needed to have Casey’s signature since he’s on the title too, which means I have to go back. This time I planned ahead and got the paperwork for the car. Well at least it’ll all be done on the 24th. What a way to spend your day off. I just renewed my registration on the 4-Runner in November and now I have to pay again and this time it’s 4 times as much from $27 to $101. I can only imagine what a new car would be. Last night we went to California Pizza Kitchen and got dinner then went looking for me a new coat. I’m in desperate need of one and L.A. has prompted me to get one. When Casey thinks I’m out of style, I KNOW I’m in bad shape. 😉

February 7, 2003

A day to sleep in and the phone wakes me up. It’s just like being in Colorado. Casey managed to get back to sleep but I stayed up and read my book – “The Millionaires”. It’s a review copy so I don’t know how different the final copy is but it’ addictive so far. We took the car to Midas to get the brakes checked out and after being worried for a month that they might fail (because they squeak so bad) we find out that they’re fine but the muffler needs to be replaced. Which we already knew since it stopped us from being able to get the SMOG certification on it. Fucking California and their rules and taxes! They don’t just screw you on one thing, they screw you on EVERYTHING. We had Mongoian BBQ while the car was being inspected, my first time. Although I was put off my the way it’s all mixed together the final product turned out pretty good and even though they received a ‘B’ it was worth going back except for the heartburn afterwards. We finally received all of our tax information today and wanted to get a start on our taxes. We had to go to Lulu’s and get broadband to get all the updated information before we could get started. After a tedious 3 hours it was done, at least for federal. It wouldn’t have taken so long if we hadn’t have had to itemize which seemed to be unnecessary considering the amount of the standard deduction. For now, we’re ahead but I don’t look forward to filing state taxes. We’ll have to wait for another day for that so we can do it online and get instant gratification.

February 8, 2003

We had a coupon for Coogie’s Cafe of Santa Monica so we decided to try that. We regret doing that, the food was palatable at best and the service was even worse. And I can complain about the prices even with the coupon. We had so much laundry backing up that we took it to the laundry mat and got raped on the costs. This place was nasty and infested with bugs and Mexicans. I can’t wait till we can use our washer and dryer. I finally got some Cold Stone and it was SO good. They have this new sinless ice cream that’s made with Splenda so it has no fat or calories. It’s Atkins friendly. Yummy! Randi called me back and we seem to be in similar situations with things not going our way. At least we have each other to talk to about it. We were going to go see a free screening tonight of the movie that won best picture at Sundance but it was “all the way” in West Hollywood and since we hadn’t confirmed by that morning we decided against it. We need to start taking advantage of those free offers.

February 9, 2003

I had to watch “To Kill a Mockingbird” today and it was just as painful watching as the last two movies I’ve watched for my class. I”m hoping that the films will get better as the semester progresses.

I searched the internet today for a site that listed upcoming movie premiers but couldn’t find anything. The only thing I found said that they were having the 50 First Dates premier in Westwood Village on Wednesday but didn’t list a date or a time. Casey seems to think it was last Wednesday but the movie doesn’t open till Friday so that’s kinda early. Since we don’t know for sure I wonder if we’ll be hanging out in the village to find out.