First Day in the Real World

Well, as some of you might know, I recently became employed. (Praise the Lord!) Monday was my first day on the job. I went to work and did NOTHING all day long. We are a new branch of the company so we have to start from the ground up. We had no furniture, no phone lines, no computers let alone internet connection. So there we sat, for many hours, getting to know each other. I was the only new person. They all previously had worked together. So, they got to know me in those many hours. And here I sit, on the third day of work, no furniture, but we have laptops (from home) and a phone line (installed late yesterday afternoon). Anyway, I thought you all might be interested in the job situation. : )

First Day in the Real World

Return by popular demand

Greetings all of Matthew’s blog followers! This is Amy here… There have been several requests about my missing blog. It is true, I have deleted it. BUT due to extreme (cough) popularity and demands for the return of the blog…Matthew has begged me to become a contributor to HIS blog.

So…. There will be a combo blog right here. You can read my thoughts as well as his at this address. It will probably be quite obvious who has written what. : )

I’m baaaaack….Amy

Return by popular demand

Grandma’s Quilt

So, about a week ago I got a box in the mail. I found this a little odd since all the computer parts I had ordered for the computer I was building to replace dad’s ~10 year old computer wouldn’t be coming in for another few days. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my Christmas present from Grandma had arrived!

This quilt is the second to last quilt in a long project that my grandma has been working on for her grandchildren (word is that her next project will be making quilts for her two daughters), and the only one (to my knowledge) made with pieces cut out by her sister Margret (so far).

Here’s some pictures!

This is on my bed (that my grandpa (dad’s side) made for me) on top of the blanket that my other grandma made for me back in 1989… my grandparents made me a lot of stuff :)

On the flip side is a little note saying when and by whom it was made.

Thanks for the wonderful quilt Grandma, I love you!

Grandma’s Quilt

Dad's Cancer and Dallas Aquarium

My dad has a new blog spot which he will be using exclusively to update his cancer info and other posts. Here's the URL

http://www.txbennett.blogspot.com/

Also his cancer levels have dropped to almost a third of what it was originally! Praise be to God for bringing the cancer levels down to this point! (also as an interesting side note, I find it interesting that people believe God heals people, but not that He first gives them (or at least permits it) the illness first.)

Amy and I had a fun date day going to the Dallas World Aquarium (Zoo). It's not too large, takes between 2-3 hours to go through, and is a blast for peoples of all ages! The one drawback is that it is VERY expensive (~20 for an adult). Mom and dad knew Amy really wanted to go see it, so for Christmas and her graduation they gave her two tickets for herself and a guest. Fortunately, Amy chose to take me with her!

We started our little date day by trekking over to a Chili's (courtesy of a chili's gift card given to Amy by her sister and brother-in-law for graduation) in the area where we discovered that they were out of hamburger meat and corn on the cob. Apparently, the New Year's Day parade floats had stranded the delivery truck on the wrong side of town! We were, however, able to manage and had a wonderful lunch. Then we headed a few miles down the street to the Aquarium were we had a TON of fun. Here's some pics!

Amy by the penguins

This was Amy's favorite bird there, it had a little mohawk that it could move up and down

They had baby toucans that you could feed a berry to. This little girl was brave enough to try it out, but she got her finger bit a little.

Amy and I liked this bird cause its tail looked like a heart.

BATS!

A random penguin that acted like the king of the little rock it was on.


A really great photo of Amy! If only I could get rid of the flash....

I got some really great photos of these jellyfish.

Some Mayans came out and did a little show (it was kinda lame)

Look out for sharks!

Amy, I just said to look out!

I liked the way the seahorses tails wrapped around the coral like little sea cowboys had tethered them outside a saloon.

Amy and me at the aquarium!

Lazy cat!

Amy doing an EXTREMELY cute flamingo impersonation.

As we were leaving we ran into a parade. Amy was so excited that when she noticed it she RAN to see it!

See how excited she is?!

Thanks for the awesome date Amy!

Dad's Cancer and Dallas Aquarium

Graduations, End of Semesters, and an Old Bed

This past week my girlfriend graduated from college with Bachelor's degree in Communication with a minor in Psychology. I'm way proud of her! Here's a picture of her and her sister at her graduation. Congratulations Amy!



Today I was faced with daunting task of getting my room assembled. Each semester I am forced to remove all my possessions from the room at my school, and find some manner of temporary abode for them in my room. Fortunately, my mother had some spare boxes and I was able to store much of it in an unused corner of the garage.

But I get ahead of myself. Before I could even think about what I was going to do with all the junk that was filling up most of my car, I first had to make space for it in my room by getting it cleaned up. As I began the first round of cleanings, I had an awesome idea. Earlier, my mom had mentioned that since the frame for my bed was broken, I should just use the frame that my Grandfather Bennett had made for me when I was 8 months old (By 6 months, I had made it quiet clear to my mother that I would not stand being in a crib).

It should have been easy, right? I take the pieces out of the garage, dust them off, put them together and I'm done. 30 minutes top. I have come to adopt a new moto in life when it comes to projects: "The easier a project should be, the more time it's going to take". Things started out bad when my shoulder informed me that I had slept on it wrong and was going to make life unbearably painful the more I tried to use it. But I was determined to get this done, so I muscle through the pain and attempt to do this two person project by myself.

Fortunately, my mom came to the rescue with an extra pair of hands and a pair of Aleeve tablets. We managed to get the frame together when I realized that the box frame (the thing that the matress sits on) was too large to fit in the frame my granddad made. Oh well, that's no big problem, for as long as I can remember, we've always just used a piece of plywood with this bed and it's worked fantastically.

After a short debate with my mom about how wide I should get the plywood cut, I run off to Lowe's to procure my item. As I'm walking in, I decide that my mom was probably right about erring on the side of caution with the width of the board and decide to get it cut to the exact width of the frame. A short time later I leave with my cut plywood (which cost me an extra 5 dollars since someone had mislabled a section of plywood), arrived home, and carried the wood upstairs. With mom's help we set the plywood in place only to find it was an inch to wide. Oops.

Thankfully, mom is used to dealing with frustrated Bennett men, and we quickly cut off an inch of the wood and fit in back into place with no problems. I hope that this bed will continue to last me for another 24 years and my kids will get to enjoy the bed that their great-grandpa made for their dad. All in all, it goes quite nicely with my wood shelves, the Benny's Place sign, and the bookcase, the desk, the floor... my room is very woodsy. Here's picture of the bed.


The washcloths are there to keep the metal bolts from damaging the mattress, and the suitcase is only there because I'm going to use it tomorrow to go see my best friend (who isn't Amy ;) ) in our annual Christmas time get together.

Oh, and after we finally got everything worked out with the bed (7:30) I was able to get my stuff in from my car and got done around 10:30. It was a very profitable day which started at 11:30 with me heading out to do the last of my Christmas shopping!

Graduations, End of Semesters, and an Old Bed

How I wish I were joking

Barak Obama has had a lot of dark secrets that has cropped up in the course of this election time. From being a secret Muslim, to belonging to a church run by a crazy lunatic (is it redundant to use crazy to modify the word lunatic?), to some of the more recent, he's not eligible to be president because he is not a natural born citizen (the Supreme Court is refusing to take the case for reasons they won't tellm, which you gotta admit regardless of the validity of the situtation, that seems underhanded of them, I think they've expanded their power a little beyond what they were supposed to).

However, the most recent, and by far the most pathetic controversy in the Obama camp? Whether or not he uses Microsoft's Zune MP3 player instead of the Apple iPod.

I wish I were joking. His campaign team has lunched a slew of releases stating emphatically that he is an iPod users and it must have been one of his SS men, or perhaps a daughter (who got it from where?) who was using it.

But why all the fuss? Because of the response, people are litterally saying they have no faith in Obama to run America because he owns a Zune! Come on guys! Wasn't the fact that this guy's policies are the same things Clinton did that set up the Bank crash a bigger worry? Or what about the fact that the guy has a remarably undisguished career? Or, I dunno, what about the fact that any white guy who had the credenticals and plans Obama had never would have even been elected to represent the democratic ticket let alone won the presidency race? I kinda count those things as a little more solid ground for lossing faith in someone.

It's a brave new world President-hopefuls, make sure to be a good little consumer lemming and bring your iPod.

How I wish I were joking

The conclusion of my PS2 adventure

So, when I bought the PS2 I was informed that the reason it was so cheap was the the 1st player port did not work. I thought to myself, "I don't see why I should worry about that, I'm the only one who ever plays Video games anyways at my house" and promptly saved myself 30 bucks. Well as I did some research on the PS2, I decided that I most definitely wanted to install a hard drive on it so I could play games from the Hard drive instead of having to deal with the painfully long load times of the CD/DVD (as mentioned yesterday).

Much to my joy, I found that my local Gamestop carried the Network adapter (remember Network adapter = hard drive?) and instead of it being 30 dollars it was a scant 10! Once I arrived there, I inquired the Gamestop employee where said item was and was informed that the adapter was attached to another PS2 already and they could not give it to me since they didn't have the back plate to cover up the hole left by it. Fortunately I had my PS2 with me in the car with said back plate and convinced them to let me trade my back plate for their adapter (I still had to pay for it of course).

Armed with everything I needed for my set up, I traveled home and inserted a certain disc to allow me to install my hard drive and play games from it. And then I hit "a snag". Turns out this disc only responds to a controller plugged into the 1st player port... you know, the broken one. And just like that, my new PS2 was in pieces on the floor as I searched for the problem. Long story short, the cable that attached the controller ports to the motherboard was loose. It would have been a simple thing to fix... if I hadn't taken apart the entire thing.

As I attempted to reinsert the cable, I realized that the PS2 had designed the cable holder in a fascinating way. The cable in question was just a flat, paper thin cable. To make sure this cable didn't become dislodged, the holder would clamp down on the cable. I found this out just in time for the clamp to break on one end. A quick superglue and electrical tape job later, and I was back in action! At some point I'll buy a replacement piece for it, but right now I'm okay with this solution (plus the replacement pieces cost 25 bucks in most places, if I wanted to spend that much I would have just bought the thing new!). With the first player port now working, it was a simple matter to install the hard drive and copy the discs over to it.

Now one thing I should mention about this software I installed to let me copy the games... the original software it was based on was shut down by Sony (the maker of PS2). Their contention was that by making it such that the game CD is not needed to play the game, the software created piracy solutions where the user could buy the game, copy it, then turn around and return it while keeping the game on their hard drive. And I understand this concern. If Sony had been smart however, they would have simply made it so the game would run from the hard drive only when the game CD was present in the drive (most modern games work like this on the computer). Then they would have made a fortune of selling PS2 compatible Hard drives larger than the official 40GB hard drive.

Regardless, I believe in showing corporations that not every gamer is out to rob them blind (in fact, most aren't and their anti-piracy measures are only hurting the people following the rules). Which is why I have no problem in using a software based on another software shut down by a corporation provided I use it to the fullest legal extent of only making backup copies of my games that will be deleted in the event that I ever sell said game.

Remember kids, always read the EULA so you can know your rights and do things like this to the full extent of the law!

The conclusion of my PS2 adventure