monkey nonsense

i’m looking to rent out rooms in my new house so i’ve been reading posts on craigslist to see what the prices are like out there… and i gotta say, if you don’t know the area very well, it’s dangerous to believe some of these posts!!!

example 1:

The location is great, just minutes from Tyson’s Corner and even closer to the Vienna metro station…. The townhouse backs up to Nottoway Park, which is huge and has all types of facilities available.

So Nottoway Park is ~5 miles away from Tysons Corner… so this post seemingly is accurate. but that 5 miles is on 123/Chain Bridge Road which is ridiculously traffic-y. Once, I had to get down to Beulah Road (closer than this apartment) and it took me nearly half a hour from Tysons!!

example 2:

3 bedroom/4 bath end unit townhouse… a 10 min walk to Dun Lorning Metro…. Knollside Ln at Andiron Ln

So googlemapping this address says that the Dunn Loring metro station is 1.3 miles away, approximately 27 minutes walking… maybe if you RAN, you could get to the metro station in 10 minutes!!

When I googlemap my new address to the metro, it’s about 1.1 miles away from the metro (22 minutes walking according to google maps)… should I claim to be walkable to the metro? i feel like that’s ghetto…

i’ve always complained about metro. i think i’ve ranted before that i think they should implode the system and start over again so that it can be better designed to handle all the riders of the system.

yesterday, there was a collision involving 2 trains on the red line. many people were injured and at least 9 people were killed. very sad

i just read a washingtonpost blog post about the lack of information about what was going on that day. i’ve always complained about this. the metro alerts are so vague and uninformative (and often times estimate the amount of delay completely wrong! yesterday, i think it told me a 30 minutes delay on the red line…) that i’ve begun to ignore them as spam. i agree with many of the commenters of that blog post… with more information, commuters would be able to make better decisions on how they can get home from work… there would be less crowding on the stopped train lines (if people switched to alternate transportation) and most importantly, people would be less likely to bitch and complain about the delays. if people realized the seriousness of the delay, i’m sure they wouldn’t have been as upset as they might’ve been… sitting on a stopped train for over a hour thinking “mechanical failure” was stopping them! there were some commenters who were like “stop complaining about the alerts! the first priority should be to save the people stuck in the collision!” and i wholeheartedly agree! but it’s not like ALL metro employees converged on the accident! the DC metro system is quite large and involves a lot of people. and the best way for some of the other metro employees (maybe those not close to the Fort Totten station or those who work in the corporate offices) to be helpful in an emergency like this is to help maintain the remaining lines from being overwhelmed and out of control!

metro has all sorts of problems. their alert system obviously isn’t their biggest concern right now. early investigation is saying that signals to prevent collisions have begun to malfunction and could be part of the cause of the collision… so yeah, definitely need to fix that. but improving their alert system would be nice too. and while they’re at it… MORE tracks!!

i’m living the american dream!

i’ll finish off one debt this month… while picking up another (bigger!) debt! woohoo. yippee.

time flies! it’s already june!

not much going on in my life but attending weddings. i think this year might be my last year of massive wedding attending. most of my friends are married now so it’ll probably die down. though baby showers will probably pick up!!

i found a $5 lot at work! so it’s now cheaper for me to drive in than metro.

people think i’m obsessed with flag football and some people seem surprised that i’m so into it. but really, it’s just another game and i’ve always been obsessed with games (spades, dr. mario, conflict, etc). tho i have to admit, usually i find myself uber competitive in non-traditional competitive things (who can drink a slurpee faster, who’s more annoying, who’s changed their address more times in the past 5 years, etc.) and for once, my competitiveness seems to be not as ridiculous and directed towards a more traditional competitive interest. i’m not sure what to make of it… usually people are just dismissive of my competitive trash talking, but now i’m a little afraid to trash talk because people seem to actually take it seriously!

i need to move again. i’m going to be homeless for at least a month…

Plan 1
so i’ve been preapproved for a mortage of X amount.

assuming i borrow the full amount of the mortgage to cover 80% of the house, i am “only” $10,000 short of the 20% down payment needed to pay for the house.

assuming I can save ~$2000 a month, in about 5 months (let’s say 6 to be on the safe side), i’ll have my 20% down payment.

then i can spend my ENTIRE life savings on one stupid house. so that i can start to make ridiculously high monthly payments on that mortgage - (a little more than 50% of my monthly pay check!)

THEN there’s the market i’m looking in… in the 6 months i’m squirreling away my money, i also need house prices to drop another 15% to bring the houses into my range.

sounds like a pretty good plan, eh??

Plan 2
Go rob a bank. That’ll give me whatever I need for a down payment! And if I rob more than 1 bank, I might be able to afford a house in the area I’m looking in!!

how do you balance showing people God’s love and being a pushover? if you try to imitate God and try to treat people nicely, even if they’ve wronged you, and try to forgive them… how do you avoid getting walked all over?

isn’t that what the simpsons are exaggerating with ned flanders?

too many decisions coming up.

too many things to do. and i’m too distracted to focus on things.

weekends are already crammed with stuff. can’t take any days off from work because i’m about to take a 2 week vacation with family in may. which is never as relaxing as it should be!! ’cause then there’s all this work to be done before i leave and then work to come back to. and then there’s the whole family part of family vacation…

i wish i were a little kid again. this time of year is my favorite time of year to play outside! i wish i could just play outside all day long and enjoy the weather. by the time, i’m free again… it’ll be all hot and humid. that’s only good for a water balloon fight. who wants to have a water balloon fight???

i’m looking for a lead singer for my guitar hero band.

we’re going to make it big real soon! email me to schedule an audition with the rest of the band.

we’re close to quitting our day jobs to begin touring so only serious singers please!!!

this past weekend, i visited psycholand for the very first time. i was kind of worried at first… how weird would it be?! would everyone talk like thaaaaat!? would the natives insist on calling it a land when clearly it’s just a city? not everything can be as cool as maryland!

to my surprise, psycholand is actually quite nice. i visited napersville, the ville of nappers, which was quite nice. we ate chicago style hot dogs, drank 50oz bubble tea drinks, walked along the riverwalk, napped along the main street (as i assume all the native nappers do), and ate deep dish pizza. on sunday, we drove a little farther to psycho’s church where on the way we saw the fifth third bank. hahahha, i wish i got a picture of that. and on monday, we ventured into the city. chicago seems like an awesome city to live in… so many things to explore!

but the best part of the trip was in psycho’s basement… she gave us a tour of her house and in the basement, the family has a bunch of family pictures. psycho and her sisters look pretty similar as little kids so it was kind of hard to tell who was who. except for this one picture….

the highlight of my trip!!!

many, many years ago… senior year of high school… i was lost as to what to major in in college. if u looked at the colleges i applied to, u’d see they were pretty split between engineering and liberal arts. i decided spring of senior year that i wanted to study computer science. this decision was based on little (basically NO) research and was not well thought out at all!

reasons why i thought i wanted to major in computer science:

• i always liked to press buttons… just ask anyone who’s ever had me in the front seat of their car.
• i hated math, therefore needed to avoid all types of engineering.
• i liked to play little flash based video games
• by senior year, the only class i wasn’t failing because of senior slump was my computer class
• i didn’t like working in groups… not that i was anti-social or anything… i don’t mind one-to-one kind of interactions, but large meetings and presentations were painful to me.

what i discovered after the fact:

• this wasn’t even really after the fact. junior year summer, i worked as a cashier at k-mart. i should’ve just stayed at k-mart!!
• computer science is apparently very math based. who knew!??!
• you don’t need a computer science degree to program flash video games. similarly… just because u have a computer science degree, doesn’t mean you’ll know how to program flash video games ’cause i sure dont know how!
• the reason why the computer class was so easy for me senior slump wasn’t because i was awesome at it (ha! far from it!!), but because i had an idiot of a teacher who taught us very little important concepts. all i remember from that class was creating a restaurant menu program with shruti for the International House of Veggies (IHOV), programming a poll for naming the moon, and watching angela demo her “Find Diddy!” program (”… so, you click on one of the doors. and hidden behind one of the doors, is Diddy. Oh! There’s Diddy!!!”). Yea… so I really didn’t get a good idea of what computer science entailed from that class…
• This week alone, I have 11 meetings!!! I actually have more, but I totally ignore the non-mandatory ones. What happened to going into computers because you don’t like interacting with people?! Whoever invented this “SCRUM” development crap ruined it for all anti-social software engineers everywhere!!!