monkey nonsense

been filling out a lot of change of address forms, switching over all my bills to my new address. also filled one out with the mail service so that any bill i missed will get forwarded to me at my new address… never had to do that before. i guess b/c growing up and in college, i never had to pay that many bills and all my other mail got sent home.

so my student loans… you’d think they didn’t want me to pay off my loans with the way they’re hiding/making it difficult for me to change my address. after searching the entire webpage, i couldn’t find the form to change my address! seemed ridiculous as i was able to change my drivers license, car payments, credit cards and bank statements (tho that one was annoying, they never showed me what my current address was! so i dunno if i already changed my address or whether i still need to!) all online. not wanting to waste any time staying on hold… i decided to use their “contact us” menu to reach them. so they have a feature where they call you back within a certain time period. decided to give that a shot since their online email forms seemed just to be for general questions. well… it’s been 3 hours and i’m still waiting for them to call me back. (my time frame was within a hour… guess they only use that time frame as a guideline or something)

AES… you suck! anyone out there considering getting their loans serviced by AES, i highly do NOT recommend them. besides making it exceedingly difficult to reach them (this is not the first time i’ve had problems reaching them… i’m just more annoyed than usual b/c a simple change of address usually does not require staying on hold for 30 minutes… it usually takes about 1 minute to fill out the form!), they also like making payments excessively complicated. THREE times, they’ve credited my payment to the wrong loan… and always to the lower interested, smaller amount loan… bastards! you KNOW that i want it credited to the higher interest, larger amount loan! how don’t you just make it easierrr?!?!?!

since i’m on such a cleaning spree (cleaning old apartment), i decided to be ambitious and try to clean and organize my cube at work.

i started noticing my cube getting more and more cluttered in the past few weeks… even tho in actuality, it’s probably been this cluttered since december. well today, they moved the build desktop into my cube and i set it up in the outermost corner of the cube, the only clear spot left. but bah!! the only outlet in the cube is on the innermost wall. with extension cords and some weird arrangements (the computer is angled 45% from the wall, towards me), the computer was able to plug in. but for awhile, i fretted because i was afraid i’d have to move the desktop to the innermost wall of my cube where approximately 2 feet of stacked paper (when i was doing the system test, i think i went through at least 2 reams of paper almost entirely by myself) currently reside.

today, i finally asked if i could throw out the papers. got permission to trash around 1′ of the paper but gotta keep the rest until after the next round of system test is run again (when another foot of stacked paper will be printed perhaps?!) and what do i do with the 2-3″ pile of coversheets (yes, just coversheets from the print jobs i had during system test) i’ve accumulated?! i felt bad throwing them out, but i can’t seem to use them up fast enough! too bad my company doesn’t recycle paper…

today’s commute to work was going pretty smoothly… mostly all green lights on reston parkway… i don’t think i even stopped at a red light until i was down in fairfax. after making a left at the final traffic light on my way to work, i finally hit traffic. came to a complete stop.

geese crossing!

… for about 5 minutes

read an article about a silicon valley developing in beijing, pretty interesting! most interesting fact i thought: China already graduates more English-speaking electrical engineers than does the U.S.

apparently there’s been a few other “scares” of other silicon valleys developing in singapore, japan, and france but they’ve never really panned out. china seems to be the latest place to be developing it. and it seems maybe they might be the most successful ’cause of a strong academic presence in the area, the large domestic market to set standards, and entrepreneurial spirit. the article is: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6448213/did/7915125/?GT1=6542

time to learn chinese!

Monday, May 23, 2005 Posted: 12:28 PM EDT (1628 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — A 140-pound bear wandered into a suburban neighborhood and took a dip in a swimming pool before being tranquilized and returned to the wild.

The female bear ambled into the San Fernando Valley’s Porter Ranch area shortly after 6 p.m. Sunday, bumping into doors and windows before taking a few splashes in a backyard pool, fire spokesman Brian Humphrey said.

Homeowner Maryam Salahael pulled her children out of the pool when the bear showed up, and she called 911.

“My dog began barking very loudly. I went to see what’s going on. I see a bear in my back yard,” Salahael told KTTV-TV.

Authorities cordoned off the area as wildlife officials tranquilized the bear, said Cindy Wood of the California Department of Fish and Game. The animal was then released into the Santa Susana Mountains.

“It looks like it’s possibly in heat,” Wood said. “She probably just made a wrong turn and ended up in a neighborhood. She belongs up in the hills and that’s where she lives.”

from: http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/23/backyard.bear.ap/index.html

ahh! i don’t know what’s going on anymore! 4 years of CMU nerdiness and none of it seemed to wear off on me, but one year of working (not even at a nerdy company!) has gotten me interested in nerdy things!

i was at barnes and nobles one day and suddenly found myself in the nerdy book section looking at nerdy books and thinking hrm… that’d be interesting to learn! THEN i started thinking of fixing up/building a new desktop so i could use it to learn the nerdy things! i guess i could try to spin it as relearning/brushing up on some of the technical skills i have on my resume in preparation for a job search… but i dunno!

luckily, i wandered back to familiar parts of barnes and nobles before i became too nerdy… saw a new calvin & hobbes collection that i had never seen before- Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat!

baaah! susan at comcast won’t return my calls!! so for the past few weeks, my new place hasn’t had internet. and the old place’s internet finally got disconnected today. so now there’s really no TV or internet!

i’ve been missing all these season finale episodes for tv shows!!! i heard the o.c. and alias were good episodes! top model and apprentice both ended. grrr

now i’m at panera’s using their free internet… and planning on going to my old apartment complex’s gym for the first time in awhile… i had forgotten they have a TV there lindsay lohan is hosting SNL

Currently Reading Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything By Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner see related

i never realized economists wrote about stuff other than the economy. been reading some interesting stuff by them lately… pretty interesting stuff! i started reading freakonomics at barnes and nobles one day. it’s been pretty interesting and kinda random. my kind of book i may even buy it!

another interesting economist’s writing- http://www.slate.com/id/2118313/?GT1=6443. pretty interesting to see economics explain religion.

pretty sour! pretty good!! it doesn’t lose it’s sour flavor very quickly (even with my ultra-powerful bacteria fighting saliva!)

it actually made my eye twitch this morning as i chewed it, but that might’ve been partially b/c i had a piece of candy (sugary) before it.

ditching the cardboard boat regatta… forgot i have a chinese school reunion that day (GO Li-Ming! jk, i’m not still obsessed with chinese school… no, not at all)

so now trying to make a boat outta pepsi bottles! anyone have pepsi product bottles? please donate

and anyone interested in making a boat outta pepsi bottles, please let me know i am not a boatmaker… so any help would be great!