I have 3,071 rollover minutes if anyone wants to use them.

Again, LEP fails to pay the bills, leading to a brief downtime. But it wasn’t completely due to incompetence.

Sometime last month, Bank of America was contacted by some company I’d used my check card at. The vendor thought some transactions may have been compromised, so they advised BoA, which reissued new cards to everyone affected.

Overall, I’m pleased that they did this rather than not. But it did affect any autopayments, and it’s taken a bit of time to take care of all the loose ends.

But even that has a plus side: I’ve eliminated $80-$100/month of payments on superfluous stuff.

$2.87 left in the checking account on Thursday night. Paycheck deposited on Friday.

(Fortunately, not a normal occurrence. A large bill and a preference to keep money just about anywhere instead of a checking account conspired to bring about this circumstance.)

As far as the theme change, Ye Olde Pirate reigns again because I felt the new look had readability issues. Work has prevented me from finishing the new, home-grown LEP theme. (The prior theme was Sliding Door.) EDIT: Pirate is gone for even more old-school theme.

• So the last three days have actually been interesting and different. Last week, I was in Miami, which included spending about 18 hours last weekend trying to setup a firewall. I failed, and someone else managed to get it to work. Not afraid to say I don’t have the best grasp of this stuff.
• A co-worker died over the weekend as well, and HR spelled his name wrong in the notification e-mail. (I only dealt with him sporadically, so it’s not as hard-hitting as it might have been.)
• On the plane ride back, had an interesting chat with a girl, centerpieced by…an AutoCAD 2009 presentation she needed to finish for today.

So I got home, about to relax when I hear someone bang on my door. 10 seconds later, I hear “HELP!!!!”. Rushing outside, there was a woman lying on the grass outside my patio, hands over her face bawling. A shirtless male was close-by approaching her, and she told me to call the police.

I ran inside to get my phone, and came back out to make the call to make sure nothing else was going on. As it turns out, Shirtless Guy had two of his friends with him, and as I dialed 911 they all surrounded me, telling me not to call police. (Shirtless Guy was well-muscled, a second guy “T” was significantly larger than me, don’t remember much about the third guy. Yes, I probably should have been scared ****less at this point.)

I told the guys I wouldn’t call police, and walked calmly back inside my apartment. THEN I called 911.

After the call, I ran back outside to see what was going on. The two friends weren’t around, but Shirtless Guy and the woman were across the parking lot. He was restraining her with a bear hug from behind; she was bent over trying to get out. At this point, I ran back inside with the idea of grabbing my cell phone to take pictures or grab video. I started thinking “Should I go back outside? Should I stay inside so they can’t see me?” By the time I went back out, they had separated, the woman walking away towards the gate to the apartment complex, still sobbing.

At this point, “T” came up to me, smoking, and asked if I’d called police. I responded affirmatively, and he went on about how she always exaggerates stuff, and it was a household matter that wasn’t any of my business. And of course, complained that he’d have to deal with police now. (He also referred to me as “nigga” every other sentence, much as a white guy might use “dude”.) I told “T” I had a responsibility to call police in that situation, didn’t really want to deal with them either, and if it was true nothing was going on, he shouldn’t have any problems. He still wasn’t happy, but oh well.

After 5 - 10 minutes of waiting for the police, I decided to go out to the gate by the main road since it’s not that easy to find. On the way, the woman was walking back still upset. I tried talking with her, but very little got through. She started talking about how I’d understand if I had a sister or mom who had to go what she did. It took a while to figure out she was pissed because she thought I didn’t call the police. I had to assure her that I did and was going to wait for them. She seemed to acknowledge, but just kept walking; I told she could wait in front of my apartment or whereever she wanted. Then I stood outside the gate to await police.

The first policeman arrived, and I brought him to the area of the incident. But it was empty, no woman, none of the three guys, none of the neighbors. A second policeman showed up a few minutes later. I explained and described as much as I knew. Then another neighbor came by–he was even driving his truck around the complex to find the woman, with no luck.

The police told me they couldn’t do anything if the woman wasn’t there to press charges, and that was that. I should have stayed with the woman until police arrived, but this whole incident just ended up wasting their time.

(As I side note, I talked with a couple neighbors afterwards who were observing from their balcony. Apparently, my vegetable garden has garnered some notice.)

I wanted to organize a big Halloween bash but Donnie was like “lolz halloween’s for sux0rs noob” and Mr. E said “Naw, man, I’m too old for that stuff.”

So was I stuck deciding whether to crash a party or pulling a trick and stealing the kids’ treats (haha, see what I did there?) Now I’ve only been in human culture for a year, so someone had to advise me that it’s not impossible I’d get “arrested” if things got out of hand. So I decided to just hand out egg-free food to local trick-or-treaters.

I needed to get a treat, so went to the store and bought a box of raisins. Unfortunately, I ate most of the box so there wasn’t very much left come evening, so each kid would have a strict ration of 5 raisins. Here’s an example of how it went:

Next year, I’m crashing a party.

Another excuse to use the “chess” tag. Click for biggie size.

So over the weekend my main computer died. It was an eMachines comp which has actually served quite well for the last 3 years. I was trying to upgrade the graphics card, which required a power upgrade from a measly 300W.

What I didn’t know is that eMachines comps often require a proprietary power supply. To my sorrow, I only deduced this after buying one, returning and swapping for another one, having that not work and finally testing an old power supply I knew was problem-free.

By that time, the motherboard was fried, so I had little choice but to get a new motherboard and CPU. Having little time to do research, I took one of Fry’s mid-priced combo deals, one which included the odd triple-core processor Phenom X3. I’d probably have been better off with one of Intel’s dual-core offerings. (FYI, few programs today take advantage of more than two cores. Oddy, I actually have at least one.)

The final stroke was the RAM. After spending a bit trying to shove my original memory sticks in the new motherboard, it dawned on me to take a look at what types of memory I was dealing with. Sure enough, I was trying to shove DDR sticks into DDR2 slots.

After 4 trips to Fry’s, 3 to Best Buy, and 1 to a local shop, I finally had a working system again.

It was a very aggravating day.

Recently, I realized it’s been almost two years since I broke up with my ex-fiancee. In that time, I’ve spent almost no time pursuing anyone else, except for muffing that one opportunity on an airplane. I’ve generally been happy with bachelorship. However, I’m 29 so maybe it’s time to get a move on. (And to finally sell that engagement ring, which is laying around here somewhere.)

There was an article with the premise that when you’re on the prowl for a mate, make sure you know what qualities you’re looking for and not settle for worse. It helps save time and heartache by preventing pair-ups with someone incompatible or inadequate.

So over the weekend, I figured out which qualities in a woman are most important to me:

1. Demonstrates kindness to people.
2. Not too hideous-looking.
3. Mentally stable.
4. Convicted of 2 or fewer felonies (optional).
5. Hasn’t had a sex change.

First, I should blame my parents for indirectly instilling the urge to undertake this: my dad for having me help with gardening growing up and my mom for making me more aware of the stuff I put in my body.

This weekend, I started what will be dubbed “The Fail Garden” (cf. the Victory Gardens of the World Wars). Primarily, this is due to my lack of expertise and I fully expect most of the plants to produce little to nothing.

I live in an apartment without a yard, but have the great advantage of having windows with a southern exposure. This makes an indoor vegetable garden a more plausible endeavor.

Empty milk jugs make for perfect plant containers if you don’t mind looking cheap.

As far as what to plant? I needed to plant stuff that could conceivably grow–and at the same time stuff I actually use. Some good candidates, like beets and radishes, I simply don’t eat enough to really want to grow.

I decided to go with 3 herbs (basil, cilantro, and spearmint) and 4 veggies (lettuce, spinach, carrots, green onions). Should have thought of tomatoes, too.

Mushrooms I cook with a lot, but as I try to go light on the A/C, the place is too warm for their optimal growth. Maybe this winter.

The tall one’s for the carrots

OK, so I’m already bored of writing this. To make a long story short, I had to go to three places before finding seeds filled up the pots and got everything sowed.

With the cilantro, I bought one of those “Herbs for Noobs” type packages where they pretty much have everything in one package; you just add water and you’re good to go.

Expectations are low: I expect the cilantro, one of the other 4 pots of herbs, and maybe one of the 7 pots of vegetables to make it.

The seeds I used, plus the herbs for noobs package

Water, feed, and hope

Yes, yes, the Wilson Gambit. Er.

A handful of weekends ago, I made my return to Houston and for the first time, went to the Houston Chess Meetup advertised by Tacticus every so often. It was at a Chinese buffet this time around, which generously offered the use of a room. We could pay for one meal and sit on our tushies as long as we desired.

Arriving fashionably late, I discovered people played not only chess, but a variety of board games. In fact, most people played other games while Glenn waited for someone, anyone else who was there for the chess.

That person…was me (a few others did show up later). After eating, we got down to business. Glenn has one of those 5-min clocks and we played a ton of blitz that afternoon. The first few games I thought way too much in the opening, always getting in time trouble. Even after getting “in the groove”, I didn’t have much success, as might be expected when an Expert plays a Class C. It was something like +2 -7 =2 (includes one sympathy win where I was dominant but only had a few seconds left vs 2 minutes. Glenn still resigned.)

Before leaving, we got in one last game. Instead of my usual Pirc, went Center Counter…and, oh man, that match is seared within my memory forever. In fact, I can probably recreate the exact moves to the final game. With little variation it can be replayed here.

To let it be known, I’m not ashamed of losing. I am ashamed of losing like that.

Growing up, our family had cereal for breakfast multiple times a week as many American families do. I don’t remember my mom’s or sister’s favorite cereals. Or mine, either; maybe Peanut Butter Crunch. But my dad would always have Frosted Flakes. This must have been why I had the misconception that Frosted Flakes was an “adult” cereal, and kids simply didn’t eat it.*

One morning, at the age of 7 or 8, I was sitting at the table while my parents were preparing breakfast. All of a sudden, I get a bowl of Frosted Flakes thrust in front of me. Subconsciously, “This is grown-up food!” runs through my mind. My eyes reacted by widening in terror and welling up with tears. “I don’t like Frosted Flakes…” I whinily muttered in complete intimidation (and even though I’d never even tried it before).

My dad irritatedly said I didn’t need to cry if I didn’t want it, and got some Cap’n Crunch. It was about 3 or 4 years until I had the guts to try it. Never found it that good.

What about you, dear reader? What was one of your bizarre fears?