Dude. Long story short, I’ve been sick for like 3+ weeks now. I get better just to get a different cold a few days later… This sucks. DayQuil and Theraflu have become like best buddies of mine.

I just realized the best camera I own (or may have ever owned) is the one that’s on my phone. Too often, the pictures on my current phone kick ass compared to the ones I get from my Fuji or Sony. Why is that? For a 2.0 Megapixel camera from Sanyo to beat my other cameras is just plain wrong…

Lately, I’ve been using my phone to take pictures for my blog because they’re easier to transfer via bluetooth and because they’re just less grainy! Maybe the next iPhone (in like 4 years) will have a better camera and I will be able to use it on Sprint’s network…

FIRST,
I FINALLY made a sale on iStockPhoto. Now all I have to do is make 999,999 more and I’ll be a millionaire.

SECOND,
my scale told me I was only 15.4% fat. That’s an all time low for me but I have a feeling the scale was wrong. I’ve had McDonald’s twice this week as well as Pizza Hut and Jack in the Box. Yes, this was a fast food week. I’ve been craving salt all week. I should get a salt lick… for myself…

THIRD,
I finally swallowed my financial pains and bought new Pantone books. UGH. Soooooo much freaking money for just little spirals of color. Why did I do this? Well, they’ll be of use to me in the future I’m sure (since my existing book was bought used and dated 1986) and the project I’m currently working on I really need to know what color I’m dealing with. It’s this weird Teal tint and as I’m trying to match complimentary colors to it ON COATED METALLIC paper, I just don’t trust my two-decade old book’s integrity anymore. If it was just Pantone Reflex blue, I probably wouldn’t care but then again. I mean, for the most part, that book is kept in relatively cool temperatures and in the dark so fading shouldn’t be that bad, but the newer books are printed on brighter paper stock AND have an additional 115+ colors I’m currently missing, so yeah, it’ll be nice having those new books. (Tonight I tried looking up color 7526 and noticed my book ended at color 5875… yeah… no good… no good at all. :(

FINALLY FOURTH,
I was offered a new position within CBRE today. :)
The official offer should be coming to me in the mail sometime next week for me to sign and stuff… hmmm… that reminds me, i better have them send the package to the office and not my mailing address otherwise I’ll have to go up to PV to get the package… anyway, few of my co-workers would check this site (or check it before an offical memo goes out) but I’m pretty darn excited. Rebecca, I know you read this… what’s there to do in Dallas? Apparently, I’ll be visiting Dallas regularly. :)

Wow, aren’t all of you out there on the ‘inta-web’ lucky duckies today? TWO posts?! Well, what follows are TWO completely boring tales about my day…

The Bloated Battery
So shortly after swiggin my DayQuil, I left work to head over to the Apple store in Manhattan Beach Village. Why? Well, because it seemed my MacBookPro’s battery has what I can only refer to as some sort of cancer. Apparently, this problem has plagued many MacBookPro owners. It started a few weeks ago when my computer would just suddenly shut of for no reason around 40% charged. That happened like 2 or 3 times and was quite frustrating as I was trying to drain the battery so I could do a fresh battery cycle. Anyway, after learning that 40% was the new ‘zero,’ I stopped trying to drain my battery and Googled the problem. Other people had mentioned similar problems on posts and it was a mixxed bag. Some got their batteries replaced for free, others had to pay. I was kind of like, “Well, at least it still works. I’ll deal with this problem later.” Well, I guess my laptop had different ideas.

On Monday night, I was in bed reading the latest issue of HOW when my Mac suddenly snapped out of sleep mode by itself. Not only that, but it somehow had launched Safari as well. I thought to myself, “HOLY CRAP! My laptop is possessed!?” Well, that’s not likely so then I thought, “Oh man, I actually got a virus?! That’s not supposed to happen.” Continuing to psycho-babble, my following idea was, “Awe man, maybe I have a mouse or rat in the room and it crawled across my mouse really quickly or something…” Well, I quickly ruled out all three as unlikely scenarios and just figured maybe I had launched Safari before my Mac went into sleep and had forgotten about it.

Later, when I tried using my laptop, I discovered I couldn’t do anything. It was somehow locked. After much frustration, i realized the computer was registering the mouse button as being held down, the thing was I wasn’t pressing the mouse button or the touchpad button. I also noticed that my laptop was no longer flat on my table. Flipping the computer over, to my horror, my battery had somehow developed a 2mm dent protruding OUTWARDS. Well, how the hell does that happen. I then pull the battery out and plug in my power cord and reboot my laptop. Bamn, it works fine again. Because the battery pack rests beneath the touch pad, the bloated battery pack had gathered enough pressure to press the mouse button upwards. Well, I guess that solved the possessed computer mystery, but why the heck was my battery pack expanding?

Well, I still don’t know but apparently it’s a known defect among MacBookPro’s released between April 2006 and May 2007. Checking Google again, I found a number of users who had their batteries replaced for free while others cursed and threatened their local Apple employees when shown the hefty $179 price tag. Lucky for me, the dude at the Apple store gave it to me for free saying it was covered under warranty. So bottom line, only because I had a good experience this time around, I give Apple 2 thumbs up on customer support. If they had charged me the $179 though, I’d be giving them two different fingers.

Friggin Finger Burning Goodness…
So I don’t know Korean, but I swear Kyo Chon must mean burning. It’s been a while since Freshia Market opened and brought with it the goodness known as Kyo Chon chicken, but tonight was my first time sampling the stuff. S, of course, being the complete glutton that I am and disregarding my post earlier about eating healthy, I decided to order for myself a whole chicken and get half hot, half original. Well, about 20 minutes later, a very hungry Jacob rushed his lasted fried chicken adventure home.

First of all, its good chicken. it’s not great beyond belief (I swear I’ve had similar stuff in Chinese restaurants) but it’s still pretty damn good. The original is at least. The ‘hot’ flavor, well, maybe it’s because I’ve gotten weak over the years but that stuff just plain burns. Next time I go back, if I go back, I’ll just get the original flavor. Why am I a ‘maybe’ on going back? Well, that tiny box of chicken you see in my hand in the picture above cost me $15.99 before tax. It’s not cheap chicken. Next time, i think I’ll just head over to Peter’s Place or Sue’s Kitchen.

Yay. I’m back in the office after 2 weeks off and you know what, it feels liek the past 2 weeks have been nothing more than a dream.

Am I more rested? Not really. Why?  Because I left work on the 20th with a mild flu and didn’t feel better until around Christmas eve. Then I got sick again Saturday night and am sitting here at my desk congested and looking forward to taking another swig of DayQuil at 4 PM.

Am I less stressed? Not really. Why?  Because this morning I got 2 cavities filld and everythign aches. I also got a new mold taken for a night guard that my dentist told me shoul would like me to wear BOTH at night and AT WORK when I’m just in front of the computer or sitting for extended periods. GREAT. Nothing like starting out a new year with a $400 dental co-payment. Whoop-dee-do! I still expect more dental work later in the year but I’m guesing it will be on th eupper jaw since she took a lower mold for the night guard… Else it will suck if I have to get anothe rnight guard made after they do any additonal lower jaw work… that will piss me off.

Am I more optomistic? Not sure. Why?  I don’t know why. I mean, this is at least a positive note that I’m not LESS optomistic than past years. Usually around this time of year, I’m looking back and thinking to myself what the hell did I do all last year and feeling even more bleak about life. This year, I guess even though I can’t think of anything to be happy about, I’m also not coming up with any major complaints. Those close to me know all about the crap I’ve dealt with this year but most of it came to a resolution in December… so that’s a good thing right? Well, I guess it is but since the ‘crap’ portion took so long to resolve, it all balances out to a rather neutral pathos…

Any resolutions? Why even bother?  I swear I make these same resolutions every year but yeah, I need to eat better and learn to to enjoy each day/moment for what they are worth. You can’t control the future so just enjoy the good times when they come. Blah. Gawd I need help.