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I got a gym membership started again. I joined at the Oktibbeha County Hospital HealthPlex. It’s very close to where I live. Once I get home from work, I don’t go back out much and I definitely don’t want to drive back to campus to use the Sanderson Center. I also don’t like making the dog wait longer to be fed and do his business outside, so I go straight home after work. I’ll probably start tomorrow and try to go at least 3 days a week.

I went by there last week to take a look and find out how much it would cost. It costs $50 to start (January special, down from $100) and $29.75 a month. The monthly fee is cheaper than the Sanderson Center rate I believe. That’s a pretty cheap rate, but I still hate how much gym memberships cost. It seems like a deterrent to working out. You would think insurance would help with the cost as long as you visit a certain number of times a month. Working out does decrease your medical costs in the long run, doesn’t it?

The facilities at the HealthPlex aren’t the best in the world, but it is only temporary until I get the hell out of Starkville has everything that I need. One thing I could see was that when I went there were so many elderly people around that I felt like I was surrounded by death. There were 2 old ladies sitting around talking about how they like to cook cornbread. Maybe it’ll be different at the time of day that I do. At least I’ll have my iPod with me when I go.

It’s a new year and a good time to do a lot of things differently. It shouldn’t be too hard to beat 2008.

I hope everyone has a great year.

While I was in Jackson, I was thinking about some things I want to do in 2009. Maybe at the end of the year I’ll revisit the list and see how I did.

• I want to go somewhere, probably over the summer. This year I took time off from work mostly for emergencies and when I wasn’t feeling well, but I never took time off for a vacation. I think that was part of the reason why I felt burnt out the last part of the year.
• I want to watch all the DVDs in my collection that I haven’t seen plus the bonus features. I have so many DVDs that haven’t been opened. I want to go through all those this year. I’ve already done this for most of the TV shows I own, but not the movies. My collection is so small that I could probably do it this year.
• I want to finish watching Babylon 5. I bought season 1 last Christmas, but didn’t finish watching it until the summer. I watched all 7 seasons of Buffy in 2 months, so there’s no reason I can’t finish the other 4 seasons of B5 in 12 months.
• Once again I want to begin exercising again.
• I want to finish organizing my mp3 collection so they can go onto my iPod. For all the random mp3s I have collected over the years, I’ve been editing the ID3 information. Since I got my iPod in October, I’ve slowly made it to the Ls. This is annoying, but it’ll be worth it to me
• I want to reply to everyone that I’m following on Twitter. I follow a lot of people that I don’t ever talk to. I’m going to make an effort to talk to more of them.
• I want to start back cooking. I’m tired of eating at the same food places over and over again.

That’s all I can think of right now.

Christmas wasn’t as great this year as the past few years. People just didn’t have money to buy gifts and I just wasn’t feeling the spirit of the season. What did I get?

• Erykah Badu – New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)
• Calvin Klein cologne and body wash
• a nice shirt
• another gift should be coming

I didn’t realize that people who I thought would be used to animals would react so badly to having a dog around. I guess they like the idea of me having a dog as long as they don’t have to deal with him in person. He had to stay cooped up in 1 room most of the time and he kept whining to get out. This might make going home difficult. It got better, but still. Maybe next year I’ll celebrate in my own home.

Anyway, it’s good to have 2 weeks off from work. I’ve been getting caught up on TV shows that I recorded, movies, and gaming. I’ve still got another week to go.

Man, I’ve been neglecting this blog for a while. Whenever I think about updating, I get distracted by other stuff.

I figured I would update today because it’s my 30th birthday. It’s been a great day. I didn’t even mind that I had to work. Some of my co-workers decorated my cubicle. I was kind of expecting something, but I didn’t know for sure if it would happen. I got a card that everybody signed and even got some chocolate candy. Mostly everyone congratulated me and made jokes about my age. For a while I forgot about all of the stuff I’ve been bitching about on Twitter concerning so-called optional work-related social interactions.

I didn’t do much tonight. I watched the muppets Christmas special, put together some doggie stairs, and put up a coat rack. Very exciting!

This weekend I’m going to Birmingham to see Avenue Q. I don’t know what else we’ll do, but it should be fun.

Thanks to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday. I really had a great day.

I was so glad to go vote today. I’m ready for all this to be over with. I went to the polling place about 10 minutes before the door opened at 7AM. The place where I was assigned to vote was a retirement home just a little way across town. There was already a long line forming and there wasn’t nearly enough parking. I got one of the last 2 marked spots. I was finished about an hour after I got in line. There was only 1 person checking off names and 1 of the machines was broken, so I guess it could have gone faster. From what I’ve heard there’s been a high turnout all over the city. The polling place down the street from me (not sure why I wasn’t assigned to that one) had so many cars on the side of the road that it was hard for me to get back home to get ready to do to work.

Anyway, I hope everybody votes today and makes the right choices. And if you don’t know what the right choices are, then you’re probably helpless j/k.

Rob was here last week and talked about the possibility of George R.R. Martin not finishing his Ice and Fire series. The other night his office was broken into and a few items were damaged/stolen. He makes it sound like he barely missed an encounter with the thieves. So not only could he have had the manuscript for the next book in the series stolen, he could have been hurt as well. Thankfully, he still has hard drive the book is on and he is okay. Just finish the damn book, please.

I did something that I used to think I would never do. I bought an iPod. I’ve changed my mind on it at least 3 times in the past couple of days, but I finally placed the order today.

I’ve gotten the idea of getting an mp3 player in my mind several times over the past few years, but I always change my mind. I really don’t need one. All the stuff I can do on an iPod I can do on other devices. I can even do it better on other devices. However, the iPod has a convenience factor and a coolness factor. Although I am rarely in situations where I have to use the iPod, I’m sure I will WANT to use it once I have it.

At one point I thought that I would buy a Zune if I bought any mp3 player. I’m kinda anti-Apple lately. I changed my mine on getting a Zune after a friend of mine got an iPod. I’ve already ripped all of my CDs to my hard drive using iTunes. I still don’t understand why people get so excited over iTunes. It is something awful. I’ll have to get used to it I guess. I’ve also started organizing the mp3s I already had. I can see myself obsessing over this for many hours, but it’ll be great to be able to listen to any of my songs whenever I want.

I’m excited about finally making it into the 21st century in this area. It should be here by the end of the week. I think I’m going to buy some accessories today.

A couple of weeks ago I got an email welcoming me to OnStar and congratulating me on the purchase of a new vehicle. Since then I’ve gotten more emails from them like diagnostic reports, order confirmations, etc. The weird thing is that I’m not an OnStar customer and I got my car 3 months ago. The car this guy is driving a 2008 Cadillac GTS (He’s probably old. I’m just saying). Mine is a 2006 Nissan Altima. I love a good case of mistaken identity.

The email address that this is sent to has my first and last name in it. The person that these emails are supposed to be going to has the same first and last name as me, but his middle initial is different than mine. HIS middle initial begins with the same letter as our last name. My theory is that somebody entered the email address incorrectly.

I tried calling OnStar and explaining everything to them, but I couldn’t convince the customer service representative that I wasn’t this person and I don’t own the kind of car mentioned in these reports. Because we have the same first and last name, we had to be the same person, right? People don’t realize how common my name is. Finally, she agreed to take my email address off the account, but a few days later I got another welcome email and diagnostic report. I checked my bank and credit card transactions and I’m not being charged for OnStar, so I won’t worry about it anymore.

What else have I learned from the emails?
• He just purchased more hands-free calling minutes today
• His hands-free calling number is a Florida number (supports the old guy theory)
• He has 86% of his oil life remaining
• He has 1507 miles on his car
• 3 out of his 4 tires have low air pressure, but everything else on the car checks out okay
• He has XM Satellite Radio

I almost wish I had OnStar now.

Update, 09/30/2008
I got another email from OnStar yesterday asking me to complete my online account setup.

Someone from OnStar left a comment here asking me to call her to address this situation. I’m leaving it in moderation so it won’t show up here. She was in a meeting when I called here earlier this morning. I’m still waiting on a return call.

I recently made my way through Headcrash by Bruce Bethke. It was hard with the Olympics and dog stuff and whatever distractions I could come up with. Headcrash is a cyberpunk novel. The author is the person who came up with the term cyberpunk.

The VR elements of this book reminded me of Snow Crash. I liked this one a lot better, but I still wasn’t blown away. I guess cyberpunk just isn’t my thing. It’s a funny book and good satire. I liked how at the end it was making fun of authors like Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton, whose books I do like to read. Enjoyable book, but I’m ready for something else. Next I’ll be reading Watchmen.

• Headcrash, Bruce Bethke
• Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• Unshapely Things, Mark Del Franco
• Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson
• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• The Appeal, John Grisham
• Playing for Pizza, John Grisham
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• Playing for Keeps, Mur Lafferty
• The Night Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Twilight Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Final Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
• Victory of Eagles, Naomi Novik
• Lyra’s Oxford, Philip Pullman
• Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
• Elantris, Brandon Sanderson
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare