I can’t say enough good things about American Express. Seriously. They rock. I have ~$3800 in credit card debt that I’ve amassed over the past 5 years, including school classes, emergency vehicle fixes, bailbondsman costs, partying, rockstaring, everything under the sun. I have APRs that range from now 9.9% all the way up to 21%. Yes, 21%. I decided tonight that I am going to fixify this, because I’m paying out like $130 a month in interest, and maybe $20 is actually going to principle. So I call up Discover and Citibank and tell them hey, I’ve got balances, I need them to be smaller. I need a lower APR, or I’m going to transfer them away so that somebody else can take (less of) my money. They all give me this song and dance, and give me crappy APRs. I reaffirm that American Express is going to take all my worries away if they don’t help me. Discover drops down to a 14.9% (acceptable), and Citibank/student credit card drops down to 15.74% … it’s still a student credit card, though, so I’m not concerned. Little do Discover & Citibank know what they’re in for. So then I call up AmEx, and I’m like whatup, I need to shuffle some bling onto my shiney new AmEx Clear card, which has a 4% life-time APR on balance transfers. Transfer over that shiz. Ba-BAM! It takes all of about 2 minutes to get it done. Now, if I continue to pay the same $130/mo, my $20 to principle has become ($130-($3900*.04/12))=$117. A sixfold increase, simply because of interest. Not to mention the ease of consolidation. Also, when I spoke to Discover and Citibank, they suck. Their reps are terrible. AmEx reps speak english clearly and actually sound -Happy- on the phone. The Citibank guy, particularly, sounded like he wanted to inflict severe injury to me, even though I went out of my way to sound chipper and be nice (so I could get on the good side = lower APR?). American Express just treats me great – with their plans, friendly representatives and good rewards, I can’t hype them up enough. American Express Clear for the win.

OK so it’s been a long time since I posted, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone. I don’t even know what’s happened in the past … three weeks. All I do know is that some have sucked and others have been OK. I am told by Corey that I am experiencing what is known as “burn out,” or when live-to-work becomes standard operating procedure. I am told this is bad. As such, I have decided to stop slaving like a pack mule on duty in the himalayas, but to instead focus on being productive while I am at work, and then … not working when I am not at work. I know that sounds like crazy talk, but sometimes revolution is necessary to incite change. OK, so Amamda (no, not Amanda, Amamda) flew into town on Saturday morning, so I’ve been ‘illin on Cloud 9 all weekend. My AIM away message even says so 😉 I’ve also not been working, since she is here, so I’m on some much needed vacation. I really can’t express with words what a good time we’ve had; it’s great that she came to visit, but it sucks that she has to leave soon :-/. Boo Leaving! Yay Amanda! Yay vacation! Yay Amanda and Vacation! Yay! So we were over at Brooklyn Bagel, or whatever it’s called this week, and there was a girl there with this huge bird dog. Then this guy comes up and sits with the girl with the dog, looks at me and says “HPI.” I kinda looked at him with this paranoid WTF look, and he says his name is Tom Harrington, used to work for one of my previous’ employers customers. Said Hi and chatted for minute. So then we’re sitting there, and lo and OFMG behold Rata Clark walks by and waves. !!! was all I could think. She has retired from PHS, encouraged me to vote, we chatted, she said I have the same face as … wow, almost 9 years ago. Holy Shit that was 9 years ago what the hell!? I’m like 01285 years old now, holy crap. Anyways, she is retired, and doing a lot of travelling with her Hubby and Anne (Bernhardt) and Anne’s SO. I had no idea that Rata was from New Zealand. I guess I didn’t pick up on these things when I was a loudmouthed little shit that she hated. She seems to like me now, though, because I’ve grown up a little. She says I’m still the same person though, and that she is pleased with that. To fill her copious amounts of spare time, she fills in as a part-time personal assistant at Shoemaker’s downtown and is there on Monday & Friday afternoons. So if you want to see Rata, there’s an easy window. 🙂 Keen had a pizzarty at his place on Saturday night and it was a great time. Met a couple new folks, re-met a couple great folks, and had a generally good night out. It was also really spooky how many people in this town went to PHS – relived a lot of memories with some folks, talked about new ones, was just a good time. I didn’t get hammered or anything, but we sure did have an enjoyable time. The bonfire thing was a definite plus. Good job Keen 😀 rand0m.org is under a redesign, which should come to fruition sometime this week. I am sure that all 6 of my readers are breathless with anticipation – no sneek previews, though. 😉 [b]edit[/b] – I forgot to mention that I stream audio throughout the workweek via shoutcast. You’ll need to point winamp at http://radio.rand0m.org:8000/listen.pls to make it happen. [b]edit2[/b] – Well, her plane left at 5pm, and the last time I saw her was about an hour ago (baaarely made the flight), and I am a sad monkey. I feel … empty. 🙁

I had the craziest dream last night. Somehow, I thought up that Janelle, the old flame from yesteryear, was seeing [L=http://www.shmoo.com/~gdead/]Bruce[/L] from the [L=http://www.shmoo.com]Shmoo Group[/L]. Except that it couldn’t be him, because this guy was at least 6’1″, and Bruce is maybe 5’10”. I don’t know what else happened, because I woke up and forgot, but that peice stuck with me. I watched West Wing last night, and something really hit me – do our Congressmen give a shit about what their constituents think? Do they vote on things based on their own politcal gains, the voice of their public at large (gleaned via polls etc), or based on the relatively few vocal folks who actually write letters / call? If it’s the first, then Wow, we’re all fucked, as every pork barrel project out there will pass and everybody is just jockying for their job. If it’s the second, then great. If it’s the third, then the extremists will inevitably run this country until the teaming masses wake up. I thought about this at length last night, and found it terribly disconcerting. Our ad goes into the [L=http://www.csbj.com]CSBJ[/L] this Friday; I am stoked. I’m also going to go see the Aristocrats sometime with Laura.

[b]Public Service Announcement[/b]: I curse too much, and you probably do too. We should all clean up our language a little bit so that when we -do- curse, it means something. I just realized this when I searched for ‘f*ck’ and it came up with 146 results, which is a full 29.55% of my posts. I think that is a little excessive. And I swear on here much less than I do in normal conversation. That’s all, carry on.

I added an RSS feed to this here website, so if you use a news aggregator, point it to http://rand0m.org/rss.xml. I’ll be redoing a couple things here and there over the next week or so, some cosmetic, a couple under the hood. Thanks to [L=http://michaelhusson.com/mark]/Mark[/L] for prodding me into action. Tore came into town this past Friday. We went to lunch at the Ritz, then met Sammi over at the Perk. That was good. Then we all split up, and reconvened at Phantom Canyon later that evening and had a splendid time. It’s fun to catch up with friends that I haven’t seen in forever — those who live 400+ miles away [i]and[/i] those who live just up the street. I went to Denver a while back to do some maintenance and to hit up a party at Craigalito’s place. Unfortunately I came out of the datacenter to find my truck with a flat tire. That sucked. I called up Steve-o, who promptly left to come to my aid with some fix-a-flat. He arrived no sooner than 2 1/2 hours later, ready to rock. Heh. I chatted with Amanda and a ton of other folks while I waited, so it was A-OK. Anyways, got back to his place, spent the weekend there, then headed down. Oh, and the new set of tires were $360.41 installed. Oof. My brother Matt, yes, the one who posted his infamous comments [L=http://rand0m.org/viewcomments.php?NewsID=419#4098]here[/L], [L=http://rand0m.org/viewcomments.php?NewsID=419#4104]here[/L], and [L=http://rand0m.org/viewcomments.php?NewsID=419#4120]here[/L] has moved here to Colorado Springs. Apparently his home was wiped out when hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, so he moved here where there is familial support. From what I’ve gathered, he is here with his wife and kid (?? unsure on that). I am sure I will know more tomorrow. Speaking of, I will be going out tomorrow morning with the family for breakfast, then for a cruise to look at the turning leaves, stopping off in Cripple Creek for dinner (damn that’s a lot of driving), then coming home. I hope there will be a lot of family to distract me from the crazy amounts of just driving. I watched “2Fast2Furious” the other night. It was fucking terrible. I watched “Closer” tonight, and aside from Natalie Portman’s fucking hot little body (HOT GRITS ANYONE!?), it was fucking terrible. Thumbs down to both. I miss having a woman. Chin up! *sigh*

[b]bigot[/b] – [i]One who is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.[/i] Ok, so if you call someone a bigot in a derogatory manner – aka not approving of their closed-mindedness – does that make you a bigot as well? Food for thought. And don’t worry, I don’t hate you, I just think you’re fucking crazy. [not laura]