OMGSTUFFS

Assorted things gone wrong

I'll just continue complaining about assorted things since various things continue to go wrong.
So this past Thursday I received a letter from Rooms To Go, which I assumed was for our financing of the new furniture that Liz bought. Instead the letter began with something like 'You made a wise decision to purchase Debt Shield...' which is some credit card insurance that will pay off some or all of your debt if you lost a limb or die (I don't think you get anything for less than losing a limb though). The worst part is it costs $.99 for each $100 of your balance each, so for $2100 in furniture they make a little over $20/month just to guarantee if my arm falls off they might pay some of that balance. This is of course something I had not agreed to, so Saturday I took that in with the lampshades (because they arrived with a ton of dents in them) and complained. Apparently it WAS on the credit application (which I didn't receive a copy of) at the bottom in a separate section that I didn't remember much about because I DID NOT sign that section after reading it over. Apparently not signing doesn't mean anything since they still signed me up for it anyways. Now I'll have to call and cancel something I never signed up for anyways.
So Friday after dinner we went to HEB to pick up some groceries so Liz could make a Bundt cake from her Weight Watchers dessert cookbook. The place is already overpriced, but at the checkout the girl asked Liz if she wanted any stamps. Liz told her yes (I need to send out some bills), and we were charged for them, but we never ended up getting any stamps. So much for that!
As for the Bundt cake itself... she attempted to make it on Saturday, but in the end it tasted very strange, like it almost tasted right, but then the aftertaste was like it was missing something, like maybe sugar. It was a bit worse than the chocolate mousse, which had a somewhat sour taste (from the sour cream in it), but at least that was edible after getting use to it.
So that's what went wrong this weekend. What went right was we had a good time Saturday night at Liz's co-workers house, and today we visited Adam and Dusty at Adam's pool. I managed to get a crapload of old junkmail and bills sorted into shred and toss piles. It's amazing how much paper piles up over a couple of months, specially for most of the bills that I pay online anyways.
Oh yes, as a reminder, I heard that if you originally registered your number on the national do not call list back when it started that will be expiring soon. You'll need to re-register your numbers again. Even though it wasn't that long ago, I still re-registered all our numbers just to be sure. http://www.donotcall.gov

Labor Day Randomness

So tonight Adam and Jen came over, we had some burgers on the grill, then after the rainstorm that came through we went out to the last Round Rock game of the season. It was Jen's first game there, and I guess my third. They were playing the New Orleans Zephyrs again, the same team they played at the last game I went to.
During I think the second inning there was a fly ball that ended up bouncing off the stairs next to our seats and hitting Jen in the leg. I guess it hurt quite a bit, but the ushers came by and took her up to get a couple ice packs and eventually also gave her a free shirt. Round Rock ended up losing tonight, and then we went to Dairy Queen and picked up some ice cream which we ate at home.
My cold seems to be mostly gone, still coughing a bit though. Hopefully it will improve overnight rather than get worse like it usually seems to. Maybe I need to get up a couple times a night and cough up everything that settles down in my lungs so it can't build up over the entire night.

Upgrade Time

Trying to upgrade to the latest version of this thing, since I use it so often and stuff. Maybe this time the result won't look like crap.

YAWN

So it's been nearly a year since I've posted anything on here. I'm amazed I remembered my password to edit stuff here. I was randomly Googling for myself and was thing remined that I actually have a blog of sorts, and I can post crap on here and maybe someone will read it if they're bored (I wonder if Copus still stalks this page). So I guess I can summarize the past year:
- continue work at NI
- 2 people in group leave company to go back to school
- boss #1 switches to another group
- I take over development of somewhere between 4 and 8 C-Series modules while the other 2 engineers left in my group work on single specific projects
- boss #2 arrives around February
- I continue what I'm doing, in June we finally get a new engineer in the group.
- Boss #2 leaves for another group
- Boss #3 takes over and decides the group should be reorganized.

So in the end I'm still doing what I was doing to begin with, but it's been pretty random as far as the management goes. In the non-work world:

- New kitty in February.
- Bought a house back in May.
- Been working my butt off all summer.

So that's about it really. I've been wanting to get back into doing some EE stuff as a hobby, but my new office at home is still a mess because I need someplace to store a bunch of boxes. Once I can get organized then I can figure out what exactly I want to mess with. Right now I'm thinking of something in terms of home automation, or maybe some crazy distributed set of sensors to track how well my AC is doing. I did buy a projector and installed that on the ceiling of the loft, but I still need to run cables for that so they aren't running across the floor.
This past weekend we picked out new living room furniture. That should show up on Friday. They had no interest till something like 2012 so no big rush to pay that off.
For the number of minutes I use my cellphone I decided to switch to prepaid with T-Mobile. I ended up getting a Nokia 6103, but sadly I discovered that at least the outer display is a very poorly designed piece of crap since within 2 weeks it developed a large crack that rendered it useless. This past weekend the crack managed to get worse. I can only guess that from it being in my pocket with my wallet that it got pressed on too hard, but I've never had a phone so delicate that I couldn't keep it in my pocket without damaging it. Heck I even still have my very first Spring PCS phone (one of the very first digital cellphones from '98) and that still works perfectly fine, but this crappy cheap Nokia phone can't even handle being in my pocket for 2 weeks without becoming heavily damaged.

Yes, hopefully Google will pick this up: Nokia 6103 = CRAP.

Well that's my rant for the evening. I have somewhat of a cold this weekend, and it happens to be one where we have Monday off. I always end up sick on the long weekends for some reason....

Nothing Exciting

Nothing real exciting to report this half of the month. Work has been pretty much the same each day. I was in training two weeks ago for VHDL, and this past week and next week I'm getting some work done before my next class, which is about 5 weeks long. It's NI's big digital design course that I need to do well on since people will look back on that when I want to move to another department, if I ever decide I want to do that anyways.
Things have got somewhat monotonous at work lately. I've been writing lots of VHDL code and testbenches to test that code. After awhile that gets somewhat boring. Now that I'm starting to get how testbenches should be written though it's become somewhat interesting again. Usually when I figure out how to write stuff efficiently in a new language I enjoy exercising that to get even better at it, so while it's a lot of the same it's becoming a bit more interesting again now that I've got over the learning roadblock.
This weekend we haven't done anything exciting. I sort of feel like doing something like building something new or taking something apart. They keep having these commercials for HD radio and I thought about getting a receiver for my car for that, but at $200 I think I'll wait and save my money.
I started doing the Lego mentor thing 2 weeks ago too. It's pretty much every Friday from 3-5, so that means no more Friday beer:30 for me while this is going on. It seems like the kids could use a bit more direction on some things too. The teacher involved doesn't really do all that much but give them a kit, give them a simple task and say OK go at it. While that can be fun to explore, I'd like to maybe have some general ideas that all of them could learn out of each task, like how gears work or how levers work. It sounds like maybe we'll be getting on that sort of track here soon though.
We still haven't found a church here either, and Liz isn't feeling good tonight so I guess we won't be going this weekend. Maybe we'll find one here soon though. I'd like to start something so that maybe we'd actually meet more people around here. Right now all I do is go to work, some home, sleep, then repeat. On the weekend I get caught up on website design stuff and maybe go do something random outside during the day that I wouldn't otherwise do during the week. So far I don't have anyone I'd just randomly call up and do something with though.

Free Dinner!

Liz wanted to try out the new Texas Roadhouse that's nearby and we weren't sure if it was open yet. We got there and there were a ton of cars in the lot so we figured it was open. We got to the door and found out they weren't technically open, but there was someone outside that said they wanted people to practice on so if we wanted we could eat there. We decided that would be OK since they were making Liz's chicken critters and I wanted something steak-ish anyways.
We got inside to find out that the food was actually FREE! The only thing we had to pay for was the margarita that I ordered (I wanted to find out if alcohol was free - it wasn't). They were taking donations for their charity that helps out employees in need so I gave some money to that too, but it was definately less than I would have had to pay for 2 full dinners plus the drink.
Then we went over to the mall because Liz wanted to look for charm bracelets. We found this one that was 14k gold that she liked, and tonight only it was 50% off, plus it was some charity night so if we gave them $5 we got another 20% off plus a $10 coupon for anything over $20, then another 15% off for opening a Macy's card, which I did (I'll pay it off right away anyways). So in the end I think we got somewhere around 75-80% off the original price.
So yeah a fun night of random free stuff and big discounts and charities. Yay!

Only in Texas...

Driving home last weekend we came upon this mega-huge 4x4 truck driving down the road. I'm not sure how it was considered street legal given its height and size, but I guess it was just one size smaller than a Bigfoot truck. All I had on me was my cameraphone, so here are some low-res washed out pictures of the beast:

Next to another regular sized car. You can see the tires are taller than the car.

It could have easily driven over the guardrail rather than be stopped by it.

We got up next to it right before the next intersection where it turned. Here's a close-up of the suspension.

And yes that is a for sale sign in the back window.

Dean Kamen's NI Week Speech

Well I was lucky enough to be here for NI Week 2006 and managed to get a front row seat to Dean Kamen's speech, "Inspiring Present and Future Scientists and Engineers to Innovate." The title is in a way somewhat misleading, because during his speech he describes how difficult it really is to be innovative on a given schedule, which so many employers expect. The speech was very entertaining, and while taking many shots at management he does have some inspiration to stand out from the crowd and be one of those innovative people.

I took quite a few pictures during the presentation. I was hoping NI would have the video of the presentation available afterward like all the other keynote presentations, but unfortunately this didn't happen. So instead of pointing to the video link, I'll provide my photos along with some narration.

Entering the stage on a Segway (I predicted this).

Getting things started. He first talks about his visit with President Clinton with the famous image of him in his balancing wheelchair (I didn't take a picture of this one).

He then shows a picture of Bush falling over when trying to use a Segway. His comment, "...You have to turn it on first..."

Innovation chart, illustrating why innovation is so difficult...

...leading to this suggestion.

Illustrating how difficult (or impossible) it is to innovate on a schedule.

Leading to another suggestion.

What he thought was his own definition of invention (later goes on to explain that an artist (Pablo Picasso?) had said something very similar in the past.

He also had various "Rude Realities" about the way things really are throughout the speech.

"To err is human... Unfortunately it's not company policy."

Taking a shot at procrastination and the reluctance to change design schedules until it's too late and most costly.

He then goes on to tell the story of a company that came to him asking him to fix the pumps in the common dialysis machine, which basically were tubes being squeezed by rotating wheels. Instead he wanted to change the entire product to make it much simpler. He went way beyond schedule and the company cancelled the project, but his company decided to keep working on it anyways. When it was finally done there was a celebration by the company that cancelled the project, and apparently on each table were cards that said the following:

He then talks about FIRST for awhile, and how young people need to be more interested in science and engineering in the US.

The speech ends with this quote.

The stage prior to the event.

The images and explanations don't do the speech justice, but at least you can get an idea of what it was about.

Graduation

I was just looking at some other people's graduation photos... makes me wish I could have been there. I think everyone forgot that I graduated too. Oh well guess that'll happen when a bunch of major events happen all at once.

Parents are visiting this weekend. Should have some fun going tubing, visiting San Antonio, and just relaxing around here.

Welcome back!

I haven't written in this thing for a long time, but I figure I might as well start again. I'm now writing from Austin where I moved back in April, and am now working for National Instruments as of the end of April.
Right now I'm working on quite a few different projects, which I guess is somewhat unusual for someone new. Usually I think a new person is a project to work on from start to finish, and that sort of happened then a few weeks later that all changed.
Well I guess I should start at the beginning. At first when I started usually people get training in the first week. Since I guess I started on a day that wasn't very popular with new people all the training for that week and the next had been cancelled. So I had to wait 2 weeks to actually get trained, which meant I spent about 2 weeks sitting at my desk just reading stuff and looking at confusing Labview VI's trying to understand what a IO Node is exactly.
Then training actually happened. I trained with all AE's (application engineers, or the people that handle customer's questions via phone, bulletin boards, email, etc). That was OK though since they were a good bunch of people. Most of them were interns and are probably heading back to school in a month or so.
So I learned a lot about Labview and how to get around in the program, but still not so much about stuff that my department does (I'm in the cRIO hardware development area - but I also do some software to blur the lines a bit more).
After training I got my first real project that was just being kicked off. I got to spend quite a bit of time getting familiar with a processor that would be used on the module I'd be designing the digital portion of. So I read over and practically memorized portions of the datasheet while spending some time writing some test code to see how well some of the peripherals operated. I then started compiling all my tests into a set of code that would actually work properly in a prototype module. I was able to get a evaluation module of the ADC, connect it up as well as connect the CPU to the cRIO backplane and write some simple VI's to communicate with the CPU and acquire back raw analog data from the ADC through the CPU.
Then I found out that the project had been put on hold since the analog hardware wasn't quite up to par yet. So I developed quite a bit of stuff for this CPU and now it's just sitting there on hold. Oh well maybe I'll get to use it again later.
Other than that I've been working on various aspects of quite a few different modules. Digital design on another one (that's quite simple in most respects, so not much effort involved) and working on revising a few other modules to solve some minor issues. So I've been spending quite a bit of time jumping around to hardware and software and getting back into VHDL and now just starting to figure out what a IO Node really is.
Work has been fun though. Every Friday at the end of the day the group gets together for a "meeting" where we just sit around and talk about whatever or watch the latest random stuff on the Internet, or even sometimes play Xbox360 or watch movies like Office Space. At the end of last week one of the managers decided to take some extra Coke bottles from a meeting earlier that week, get some Mentos, and experiment out in the parking lot making Coke fountains. So it's pretty much a variety of different work with other random things intersparsed, sort of like grad school I guess.

Other than work, we've spent a lot of time doing different things around Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. We've been to San Antonio 3 times now (Sea World twice, the riverwalk, Alamo, Ripley's believe it or not haunted museum, Guiness book of world records museum). We went to Houston to visit Matt and Lauren once so far. Around here we've been up to Lake Travis and a smaller lake that's near our apartment. We bought bikes, but then I got a cold and since then it's been around 100 every day so we haven't gone out riding yet.

Liz is looking to start a new business doing some advertising here. I just bought a new printer for her and helped her design a logo (which she liked). Right now she's working part-time at Cato, a clothing store that she likes.

Still working on the robot board a bit, well a brand new version of it actually. It's a much-improved version that may actually go somewhere (or at least I hope so).

Well that's a quick overview of the last 4 or so months I guess. I'll leave with one more though though that I made me want to get back and post things here. I received an ad from my insurance company trying to sell me what I guess would be identity insurance. For $25/year I can protect myself against identity theft. I think it's sad that I have to spend more of my money so that someone steals something that I don't even have control over or can necessarily check on every day for free (oh yes you have to pay to see your credit score and all that data too so you can't even check for free except once per year). So why do I have to spend my money to guard something I can't even see? And then if someone does steal it, it costs even more to get it back. I guess that sort of is like a real object, but the thought of insuring something virtual like an identity seems so different, or maybe that's just the way the 21st century is.

Where the Google aliens are kept!

Just got back from apartment hunting in Austin....
Go to http://maps.google.com and don't move the map around, but just zoom in. You'll find where the aliens are kept. The satellite image isn't very high res in that area, but it does look somewhat suspicious.... hmmmmmmm....

Waiting...

Well I thought I'd work on my thesis today, but I'm soo antsy about knowing if I'm going to get my last couple job offers that I couldn't really concentrate on it. So instead I spent all day working on website design for FEH, which was a little bit of graphic design and mainly a lot of coding to port the FEH student database over to a dynamically updated faculty page where everyone can log in and change their info. It's not really a hard port, but it takes time to make things not student-centric, change the account types to faculty, grad, and undergrad, and port it over to the secure site and use Shibboleth to login rather than my custom password solution.
So I got it to the point where the Personnel page is created from the database and am now just working on porting the secure stuff. That mainly involves changing a few include lines, variable names, and adding support for a few fields that didn't exist in the student version. I think I'll be able to finish that tomorrow.
Didn't really look at any houses online today. I shouldn't really spend that much time on it yet anyways since I don't know if I'll be going to Austin yet or not anyways. All that searching could be for nothing right now.
Alright, time for sleep and repeat it all again tomorrow. Lexmark should be calling me tomorrow, or at least that's the impression I got the last time I heard from them. Also I need to call Intel and let them know I'm not going to take their offer. It just doesn't make sense right now to work so hard and still not be able to buy a resonable house on that salary. Oh well guess I'll see how all that goes tomorrow.
Going home this weekend for my brother's birthday and to get my eyes checked finally. The eye doc kept cancelling at the last minute back at the end of the summer, so now I'll finally get there. Plus I guess I'll be wiring up my brother's new air compressor in his garage. That should be interesting of nothing else. OK time for sleep peaceout.

Breaktime!

So I'm back from Austin and now it's break time! Well sort of break time. It's more like time to get work done without having to worry about going to class or having some homework done by tomorrow. So I have time to work on my thesis, do some web development, and wonder where I'm going to end up working in about 4 months.
Well Austin was real nice. When we got in it was super cold (at least for them). So the roads were still a little frozen over in areas, and since no one knows how to drive when it's slippery then it was better to stay off the roads. So Liz and I went to our hotel room and hung out in that area for the evening Thursday. We went to Buca for dinner since it was right next to our hotel. Then Friday I had my interviews, which were easy. I had no trouble with any of the technical questions, including the one that I was told was considered an evil question to ask. It just involved creating a FIFO buffer out of a standard SRAM part. That's easily done with two pointers that keep track of the head and tail and special cases of when the chip is full or empty so the pointers don't overlap.
Then after that I went back to the hotel and changed, and we went to dinner at a tex-mex place I think called Mancino's. It was pretty good food. We also got to meet Austin's hotdog eating contest winner. He ordered 2 entrees (fish and then shrimp) while we were there. Of course he's a small Asian guy that you'd never expect to eat that much.
Saturday morning we got a tour of Austin, which was mainly just getting driven around in a small bus to see the area. It was still nice to do though. Matt and Lauren showed up after the tour and we went over to Dave and Busters (also right next to the hotel) for food and some games. Then we decided that since we hadn't seen any "normal" neighborhoods in Austin yet we'd drive up north to an area where I'd found some nice houses for sale online and check it out. We drove all around the neighborhood and found some places for sale along with a new area that was being developed. Matt and Lauren actually knew the lady we talked to there. Coincidentally she used to be the manager at the apartment complex they had lived at in Houston before getting their house. That was kind of crazy how that worked out. Then for dinner we headed down to a place called Jazz Restaurant which was again paid for by NI. That was really good food, and afterwards me and Liz met up with Matt and Lauren again at a bar down the street. We hung out there until the band started playing then at least me and Matt couldn't really hear anything so we decided to go somewhere else. The problem was no one really knew where to go so we ended up just walking up and down 6th street checking out all the bars from the outside. After awhile we got tired of that and decided to call it a night.
Sunday morning we met up with Matt and Lauren at their hotel for breakfast, since they had a Fridays in their hotel and it was on our way to the airport. We then headed to the airport around noon and managed to drop off the rental car and catch an earlier flight that was just getting ready to take off. So we had no waiting in Austin for our flight. We did end up waiting 3 hours in Chicago though, and they were asking for 10 people to volunteer to take a flight in the morning the next day since it was overweight. We just wanted to get home at that point and luckily enought people must have volunteered or didn't check in so we got to go.
Also in Austin they gave me a brand new '06 Pointiac G6 GT, or well almost brand new. It had about 6000 miles and still had the new car smell. It was my first chance to try out one of those manual shifter things that comes on an automatic. I wasn't really impressed with that feature compared to a standard manual though since there was no control of the clutch. Downshifting just resulted engine braking which I didn't always want to do immediately. Oh well at least I got to try it.
So I think we both enjoyed Austin, and I'm now waiting to hear back about a job offer on that one. I think if I were to get an offer from them then I'd take that, so long as it isn't too low of an offer compared to the others. I did get an offer from Dynetics on Friday for the same as Intel basically, but the biggest thing is if I can pick between working at a company with great job security that doesn't involved things that blow people up, then I think I'd have to pick that over Dynetics. That'll really be the deciding factor for me.
I did do some more looking online at houses and have contacted a realtor down in Austin so that's all ready to go if I do end up taking that job. Of course if things don't work out I'll have to get in contact with a realtor in Huntsville right after Christmas to get things going there instead. I guess that isn't a huge rush, but in order to get everything taken care of in 3 months I should be starting as early as possible.
Lexmark did call me yesterday to let me know I should be hearing from them later this week regarding an offer. If they pick someone else I won't be offended though. I have two possible good hardware positions, and a software position isn't my ideal job at least right now. Also it didn't sound like they would be able to offer me as much, or at least when I brought up the numbers I got the response that it probably wouldn't be possible. So I'm not curious how much they could offer, and that also makes me wonder what NI can offer initially too since they typically are a bit lower than others and admit that they usually are.
So with all that on my mind I'm trying to work on some website development and my thesis. It's real hard to think about other things though. I wish I just knew the answer and I could move on to other things. Guess I'll just have to try and focus though.
OK time for lunch mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Finals week

So the quarter is already over. And I haven't written anything on here lately. So I guess I should first do the job interview update.
Well last week was Dynetics and Lexmark on-site interviews. First getting to Dynetics was quite a headache. There was this cold/warm front coming through which meant lots of bad storms and gusty winds. Since it also went through Atlanta their airport had all their flights delayed which meant my flight from Columbus to Cincinatti was also delayed by 1 1/2 hours. This meant I would miss my connection to Huntsville. So I had to stand in line hoping to catch a later flight. Unfortunately when I got to the guy at the counter he said there were no open seats on any flights that night and I'd be on standby in Cincinatti. Since I was supposed to be up and at Dynetics for an interview at 8:30am I didn't see how that was going to work at all. So I called my contact at Dynetics and told her the situation. She called the travel agent and they said there were seats on a later flight that night. So I went back and waited in line again. This time I talked to another lady who seemed like she actually knew what was going on. She said there technically weren't any open seats on any flight, but she would make one for me. So I ended up on a flight out which got me there that evening. There were actually a couple more empty seats on that flight, but since there were no first class seats I think they left the adjacent seat on each side empty. So there were seats, but they just didn't want to fill them. Oh well tough luck. I got there ok though.
So the interview went well. I got to see a lot of things that were being worked on and the variety was really impressive. It looked like a real interesting job and something that would actually be fun to do. At first I thought it was going to be just making simulations in simulink all day, but it seems a lot more exciting than that. At the end of the day I had the manager talking like he was already ready to hire me, so hopefully all goes well and I get a job offer from them.
Flying back wasn't quite as bad. I did have my flight from Cincy to Columbus delayed because the flight attendant scheduled was late getting to Cincy from another flight. Go Delta! Plus on their other flights in the general area I had heard announcements for flights that were overbooked and they were offering Delta money or even an overnight stay to anyone that volunteered to take a later flight for those. I don't know how anyone overbooks that many flights. And one out of Huntsville was overweight and they were asking for volunteers to transfer on that one. Sheesh! I guess it's good they at least check that the flight may be overweight before taking off.
So Wednesday I had class. That was rather boring as usual. Thursday I drove down to Lexington and hung out with the guys that I worked with over the summer. We went to lunch at the Mariott. Then I just hung out with Rob that afternoon and got the latest gossip. That night we went to dinner at Applebees, then I went and finally checked in to my hotel. I then went over to Brian's house and played some card/strategy game called Cattan or something. It was pretty fun and everyone there was friendly. Then around 12:30 I went back to the hotel for a couple hours rest before getting up for interviews the next day.
Interviews went all day from 8:30 to 5. There were quite a few technical questions, and a lot of programming questions, since it was for a firmware design position. I'd rather have a hardware position, but that's all that is available right now. At the end of the day I did talk to another manager for an optics testing position. It involved hardware a bit more, but also a lot of optics which I know nearly nothing about besides the basics. So the positions aren't perfect for my skills or interests, but we'll see what the offer looks like.
This Friday will be National Instruments in Austin. Liz is going with me and we're flying out Thursday, I interview all day Friday, then we get to spend all day Saturday seeing the sights around town. Plus Matt and Lauren are going to visit! I guess it's like a 3 hour drive for them, but they want to see us and I figure we'd at least get to have lunch with them. Then we fly back Sunday evening.
So that's all in the job market area. Now that I have a better feeling for Dynetics, I actually like them better than I thought I would. It's still hard to decide which one I'd pick right away. Down in Texas it is closer to people that I know, but from what I hear NI isn't extremely generous with their offer. I'm sure it'll be enough to live off though. I do want to get a nice house for me and Liz though, with enough room for all our stuff plus some place for visitors to stay. I've been looking a lot and I've found some nice places for less than $200k, particularly in Texas and Alabama. I figure $200k is probably the upper limit, and I'm only figuring living off my income, so anything extra Liz brings in will also be nice.

The random event of the day involves my Paypal debit card. I received an email that said my debit card had been compromised and Paypal had cancelled it. I called the number on the back to verify that this was true since I get so many spoof emails, and it was true. They wouldn't give me any details as to who reported it or how this came about. The last purchase I made was in Kentucky at Applebees after making quite a few purchases in Columbus. So I don't know if that tripped some alert or someone else attempted to use the number online for something. I still have the card, so it's not like they could have used it at a store. And with my old card I cut it up and threw half of it away in one set of trash and the second half a couple weeks later after the trash had been collected.

Oh well, I had to request a new card, and 1-2 weeks I'll get a new one. It's kind of annoying since I was using it to make holiday purchases, but there isn't much money in it at the moment so I'm not really dependent on it. Without more info as to how they got it though I have no idea if they have any of my other information. I don't even use that card online that often, maybe once or twice. I guess I could go back and see what online purchases I've made with it to see who may have been compromised to get that info, otherwise it would have had to come from a retail store or someone just guessed the number.

Don't watch The Weatherman

So me and Liz went to watch The Weatherman this past weekend. I forgot to mention how horrible it was. I'm still not sure exactly what the point of the movie was. It was basically about a guy who wasn't happy with his life and was divorced but spending tons of time with his kids and sorta coasting through life. Then he got the opportunity to get the job of his dreams, which he did, but still wasn't happy because he still wasn't with his family.
So I got home tonight to see an email from Intel saying they'll call me tomorrow to give me a verbal job offer. So I guess I'll know how much they're actually offering me tomorrow. It's still sort of depressing because the cost to buy a place out there is insane. I'd have to get a loan for nearly $400,000 just to get something that's fairly nice, unless I get a doublewide or something, and even those can get up to $200k. Looking around online it seems like starting offers have been anywhere from $30k to $70k from unreliable sources. If I get an offer that low I'll almost have to say no, just because it doesn't fit in with my plans and hope for something better to come along. Of course I wouldn't actually say no, but I'd draw it out as long as possible to see what else came along.
It's just kind of depressing and exciting at the same time... I know I can do a lot of good work and hopefully get paid well for it, but what's it worth if I can't save a penny of it and end up throwing it all into a tiny place out in California? I dunno it's kind of depressing to think of it that way. I hope I'm not disappointed tomorrow though.