We’ve been married 6 months today. Things are good. We both started new jobs last Monday and we’ll start to make some headway into paying off that lovely wedding from however long ago. There will be more posts coming, but the important thing right now is: I love my wife.
I was in a pharmacy last week and I noticed something interesting — there was a drug called Cebocap (specifically the orange #3). On the bottle it said it was a placebo. Neat, I thought. I’ve never actually seen a placebo, though you hear about them all the time (don’t you? everyone I know talks non-stop about placebos). But there was something weird, a warning that essentially said to not take unless given a prescription.
I guess, you know, it could really make someone fly off the handle if given under the wrong circumstances. While Cebocap is a cool name I prefer Obecalp for my placebo needs.
Today I turned a quarter of a century. It’s downhill from here as there are many things I did in the first quarter that I cannot equal in the second. Examples:
So there you have it: a list with a total gamerscore of 120.
So I got an email from Xbox Live last week saying my account would be billed November 25th as per my agreement with them, blah blah blah. What was significant about that email? I had thought, for some reason (a vague email I didn’t read completely), they canceled my Live account.
After the arduous task of setting up a wireless router my father gave me, I was up and running (albeit, the Xbox was wired — pricey wireless adapter). But then we get to the hurdle — recovering my gamertag. At one point, I had set it up online to be tied to an email address … but that was at least 2 years earlier and I had only a foggy memory of doing it. So I tried, and failed, to remember the password.
Aha! But I knew what email address it should be because they emailed me, right? Right. So I checked my email accounts and recovered the password on that email address and I was ready! NOT. “We have no record of this gamertag being associated with the email address you provided.” Bite it hard. I gave up and went to bed. But not before sending off a support email!
The next morning, I check my email and, amazingly enough, they have already replied! Call Xbox Support. Shitty response. So I took Mrs. P to work and then decided to do what they suggested — call India. I had a very helpful agent and everything worked smoothly until I reconnected the cable from the router to the Xbox and nothing happened. So I tried fiddling with the connection for five minutes while my dear friend from Punjab was on the line until I finally asked him if I needed anything from him after this point or if it should all be working (we had already gone through confirming that I indeed was the rightful owner of Polerand and all his glory) and, after telling me yet again what all I needed to do, we parted ways.
I still don’t know what was up with the cable connections — I simply turned the cable around and plugged in the Xbox end to the router and vice versa and it worked. I go to the recover gamertag portion and it’s there that I realize if I had simply looked at the screen it says “Confirm with billing information” for the Y button. Doh. I could have done that the night before! So I start filling in the information with the lovely on-screen keyboard and I select the “Next” button with great anticipation.
FAILURE! It seems I have failed to provide sufficient or correct information about my own life. I try playing with the phone numbers (with/out area code, with/out spaces, different numbers +with/out area code +with/out spaces) and I am repeatedly assaulted with the failure message on the right hand portion of the screen — a nice little pop-up disappointment. So, in defeat, I call Xbox Support yet again (which is automated, if you’ve never had the pleasure — “Next. Next. Next. Next. No. Agent. AGENT. Next. Next. Next. Next. No. AGENT.”)
This time I receive a A) Less than helpful customer service technician or; B) Less than knowledgeable customer service technician. I was simply asking the guy what was wrong, if I needed to put in spaces, area code, what. After some pauses, and confirming my identity, he starts to reroute me to billing. OK, that’s fine. Maybe they can tell me what I need to be putting into the fields — afterall, I am confirming my billing information. I thought he had already routed me to billing but 3 minutes later he tells me he’s about to do so — which is why I believe he was new as he must have been looking up the extension. In the silence, however, I kept plugging away at my information.
I decided to go back to the name and try with/out middle initial and with/out th period next to the middle initial (which I’d done earlier, mind you) and I noticed I had two spaces between my middle initial and my last name. “Well, that’s dumb,” I thought. After deleting the space I try again and it all clicks. Meanwhile, the phone’s still ringing as I’m being transferred to the billing department. I hang up so I don’t have to say, “I figured it out. Sorry.”
All that for one measly little space.
So, we did indeed get married Saturday, October 20th (2007). And we went to Albuquerque, New Mexico for our honeymoon (there are plenty of pictures to prove it — nearly 650) where we, among other things, rode a hot air balloon.
There will be future updates regarding our stay, but in the meantime I must say — I have sucked her into the XBox 360 thanks to Alex’s suggestion of Viva Pinata which we have both enjoyed.
In the time between updates, you can view our reception pictures here.
Several weeks ago I had an interview in Madison, Wisconsin.
No fake. (That’s right, “No fake” — you got a problem with it?)
They flew me out there, paid for me to stay in the Hilton Monona Terrace and flew me back the next day after the interview.
The hotel was beautiful and the bed was luxurious. I also had a wonderful view of the state capitol, which was very striking lit up at night. I had an excellent meal from the restaurant downstairs, as well, though it wasn’t as excellent as they thought it was judging by the price (nor was their $4 Aquafina anything to brag about). After I settled in and paid for my one day’s worth of Internet connectivity ($10?!), I decided to explore.
I walked around Madison for about an hour and a half to two hours taking pictures and just checking things out. It was such an odd layout compared to Oklahoma City. OKC is snapped to a grid, whereas Madison is not. It also felt very compact compared to OKC (afterall, OKC is the “7th largest city in terms of geographic area”). Very pretty, however, and pleasant weather while I was there.
The only problem was, I had the vague notion that the thought police were going to tackle me if I even so much as looked at the grass as stepping stones. So I kept to the sidewalks as much as possible.
After the interview, I had to wait for a cab in the lobby (and they apparently forgot that the person who calls the cabs, since that’s only one designated person, was not there and I waited for an hour or so). I took the time to look around and a thing of note was The Pop-Up Book of Phobias – quite entertaining.
I got home at 11 or so that night after having to fly north to Minneapolis before I could fly south to OKC — the difficulties of regional airports.
Of note: In front of one of the government buildings not far from the hotel were golden poles near a building. The entire building had a 1920s feel — very shiny, metallic, art deco, sort of. Anyhow, on each pole was the word “Forward”, which happens to be the Wisconsin state motto. However, it looked more like installation instructions and I was tempted to try and sneak a glimpse of the side facing the wall to see if it said “Reverse”.
So Gin and I got a house to rent so that she could live in peace and quiet. We found a nice little house with a big backyard for Missy (dog) and it was in a decent neighborhood with already established friends as one of our next door neighbors. But the inside was very drab and the carpet smelled.
That’s when we decided we’d paint and rip up the carpets. Fan-tastic. It took us a few days just deciding what colors we wanted. First she wanted a red kitchen and then we decided to go white in the kitchen and red in the dining room, but then we had to make sure the colors for the living room didn’t clash with the dining room and that that color didn’t clash with either of the bedrooms.
Luckily I’m very visual and we managed to get through it and the results are very nice. However, the work to get the results was not so nice. Two coats of the living room color, a purplish-grey called “Naughty Neutral”, two coats in the green room, one a half in the blue master and three coats in the red dining room. Three. And then, with the assistance of her sisters, we ripped up carpet and tack strips and tried to pull up staples stuck in the hardwood floors. I say tried because once we got into the master bedroom we noticed they’d stapled the entire front half of the floor practically. Luckily that part of the room is mostly covered up by the bed now. We managed to do all that in a week and a half or so so that we could get Gin moved in as close to the beginning of the lease as possible. We missed it by a weekend, but we still did a pretty good job.
Aside: Sheesh, paint is pricey.
There’s plenty I’d like to get accomplished around here, but it’s expensive enough as it is without adding to the expenses, especially considering we’re merely renting the property, possibly only for 6 months. Still, there’s something nice about making improvements to something, seeing it through and enjoying the finished product.
It’s been a very busy month. A whole month. With getting the new house ready and working and still working on wedding stuff, I wish I had time for anything. But there will be posts. And they will be interesting. And they will be starting soon.
And then we may taper off into busy-mode again. I can’t see the future, after all.
Some things just don’t seem right. For example, jalapeno jelly. That’s right — jalapeno jelly. I saw some the other day at a Homeland in Perry. It was green. There’s a word that comes to mind that is similar — gross. And I love jalapenos. Jalapeno pepperoni pizza — fantastic. Jalapeno and cheese onion burger — fantastic. Jalapeno jelly and toast — not fantastic.
But I can’t say I’ve actually had the jelly, so it may be good. Right.
And what are they doing to Rice Krispies? Rice Krispies with strawberries? OK. Rice Krispies Treats cereal? Sure. Frosted Krispies? Berry Krispies? And now Cocoa Krispies? Come on, what’s the point? Rice Krispies are Rice Krispies. I guess they need to do something to energize the cereal because it’s always seemed bland to me (and horrible if it sits in milk for long) with the only selling point being the crackling.
Maybe that’s what gas companies need to do to justify these local record-high prices. $3/gal., out here, where I can drive to a refinery? Sure, OK, that makes sense — afterall, it’s new Chocogas. Yum.
It seems that even when I don’t have much going on I’m still fairly busy. I guess that’s wedding planning for you.
But what, other than that, have I been up to, you may ask? Nothing much. Just the usual things: signing a lease on a house for Gin to move into before we’re married, interviewing with an out-of-state company for a position that relates to my major. You know, the usual.