Welcome to Dan's Journal!

So, I've taken a little over a month off from work, it's kinda cool to be mock-unemployed, but I'm starting to not look forward to going back, but bills have to be paid, right? Sofi (our cat) is really enjoying all the extra attention and she gets pissed when we even leave for a few hours. Even right now she's curled up on my belly taking a nap, it's really cute.
I'm not really sure what's happening in the near future. I'm thinking of going back to school to be an Elementary School Teacher, I don't really know why and I'm not sure I'll be good at it, but it's a good masters degree to shoot for and I think I'll be good at teaching little kids, and having summers off will be awesome.
This week I chopped a crap load of wood with a pneumatic wood splitter. Even though the machine does the splitting for you it's still a lot of work hauling the wood onto the thing and then back off it.
The cat rolled over so it's a little harder to type, it's probably her way of saying 'stop doing that and love me!', so I think I shall.
-Live Long and Prosper

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Silversun Pickups - Panic Switch

Surgery Success!
Crystle is out of the OR and into the recovery room, and it all took less time then they thought by about an hour!
-Live Long and Prosper

MGH
Hi all, 5 months later I'm back at MGH waiting for Crystle, this time for longer. The brain surgery in April didn't fully work, so she's back again for a little more radical of a procedure. I planned to take off 3 weeks of work which blossomed into a full month after I got fed up with work, and I'm glad I did since I needed the time with Crystle to fully logistically and emotionally prepare for today's surgery.
Lets look at the other stuff that's happened since April. I got married to Crystle, a nice private ceremony on Gooseberry Island which is about a mile down from Horseneck beach in Westport on August 1. Then had a half week long honeymoon on the Vineyard when we ran out of money and came home. This is one reason why I'm very happy to use every single sick day and vacation day and even unpaid FMLA time to get away from work.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to go back to UMass this spring and quit work and get a real degree. I've been very enthused for the past couple months about being and Elementary school teacher, I might also just go back for what I originally went for, Engineering. So, I think in the Spring I'll take the two pre-rec classes for teaching, as well as a couple 'remedial' math courses and see where it goes, I might hate both and beg for my job back in the middle of the semester, we'll see.
Ok, there was a ton of other things I was thinking of, but since I only got about an hours sleep last night, I can't remember them.
-Live Long and Prosper

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: MIT Chorallaries - running away

Vroooooom!
I took this guy for a test drive!

http://southcoast.craigslist.org/mcy/1163494824.html

Now I just have to find the money to get it, or a good excuse not to get it.

-Live Long and Prosper

MGH
Well, the last time I updated this was in February, and this is a good of a time as any to put more in.
Crystle came back from China after 2 and a half weeks, instead of coming back 2 and a half months later on May 1st. There were a few reasons for this, the biggest being they moved her 45 minutes out of Beijing to a satellite campus on a landfill next to one of the most polluted places in China. The campus itself was quite nice, but you could go out of the compound without and escort, it just wasn't nice. They still want her back for this fall, we'll see how it goes.
Fast forward to today, she is in the recovery room of MGH after having a 9am Transsphenoidal Hypophysectomy, otherwise known as brain surgery to take out a tumor on her pituitary gland. She seems ok so far, there was chance she might loose her sight, but it looks good so far.
Compared to that my life is kinda boring, Frank is on vacation till tomorrow, so I just pray that nothing goes terribly wrong till he or I can get back there. I'm having a 3.8 meter satelitte dish put in in Groton, and I'm helping put in a new automation system in New Bedford and New London.
Now, to keep waiting!

-Live Long and Prosper

Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: Carbon Leaf - One Prairie Outpost (Radio Paradise - DJ-mixed modern & classic rock, world, electroni

Sooooooo Busy
First chance I've had to update in awhile. Here are the highlights I can remember in chronological order:
Found a 4 year old chihuahua at the Springfield MSPCA 2 Sundays ago that Crystle and I adopted and brought home Wednesday and took back Saturday because she turns unexpectedly and wants to kill you.
Slept over in the New London office last week which was surprisingly comfortable.
Now the biggest news, last week Crystle got a job offer to teach English in Beijing starting this coming Monday. After wrestling with her classes and whatnot we took the 2am Lucky Star bus from South Station to New York on Presidents Day to get to the Chinese Consulate when they opened to get an emergency Visa. Then I took today off to help her with the finishing touches and then drove her to Burlington where her Mom drove us to Logan to catch a 8:10pm British Airways flight to London, then a 9 hour layover, and then another 12 hour or so flight to Beijing. So I got the apartment to myself for the next 2 and a half months till May 1st.
Oh yea, I also made use of the Circuit City sales and bought her a nice Nikon P50 today for the trip.

Anyway, enough of an update. 'Night.
-Live Long and Prosper

Current Music: WBRU

Happy Valentines Day!

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Going better
Well, updating at work, but it's good news. Got the passenger window replaced on Friday, then the windshield started to crack, so I got that replaced today, but it's all covered under insurance so it's all good. Also, work is buying me a new GPS to replace the one that got stolen! Yey!
Oh yea, Christmas wasn't bad, got a new bluetooth headset, a Jawbone, it's cool and I'm still getting used to it. Crystle had a horrible time in Boston at Dim Sum, so we went on Sunday to make up for it, which turned out awesome even though the friends we were going to go with never showed up, so we ordered whatever we wanted and didn't spend all that much.
So life is good!

-Live Long and Prosper

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Fun 107

Fuck you Worcester!
Well, my Merry Christmas today from Worcester was getting my passenger's side window busted in and my GPS stolen. Hopefully the window's getting taken care of Friday, but it sucked driving home without it in the cold and drizzle. That, and I've taken the Escort up there a number of times, and never a problem, even after leaving my GPS on the dashboard, and this was the first time taking the '93 Corolla up there.
Other then this the Corolla has been working ok, even in the snow. The Escort magically works now, some weirdness going on there, it might be a clutch slave cylinder, or something like that.
Anyway, hopefully tomorrow will be better, Merry Christmas!

-Live Long and Prosper

Current Mood: disappointed

Dead Car....
The inevitable has happened, the clutch on the new Escort died and it's going to cost $1000 to replace, plus another $900 of other things that really should be done to it before it goes back on the road. So, seeing as I only paid $3000 for it a year and a half ago, and it' sonly worth $1000ish now, to the junkyard it goes!
So, that happened at the Mashpee Commons on Sunday afternoon, got it towed to Luccetti's in Marshfield to get the bad news, and took the train to Rockport to get Crystle's '93 Corolla Wagon which I've been driving around since. It's works and it was cheap, her Mom sold it to me for $800, and it seems like it has a lot of life left in it. So seeing as the old Escort wagon is still sitting in my parent's yard, both the new and old one will be going bye bye after this weekend when I clean them both out.
And Sofi is doing great, Crystle and I just took down her crate where she has been using on and off for the past too weeks. We took her back to the vet on Monday, and she has Glaucoma along with the respiratory infection we already knew about. So twice a day we have to put jell in her eyes that she really doesn't like. It's almost over, so it's all good.

That's it for now!

Got Cat?
I got a cat!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v155/AVMan86/DSCN3251.jpg

Crystle and I adopted this 5 month old female beauty from the MSPCA in Centerville (on the Cape). We named her Sofi because we like the name, and she had only had the shelter name for a week, and I couldn't remember it for the life of me. So this weekend was spent playing with her and getting her toys and stuff. After being a little scared at first and darting under my desk she warmed up very quickly after we left her alone int he house for a few hours to get used to the place. She is extremely affectionate and loves to play, or just be petted, or sleep, whatever.
In other fun goings on I went to the Providence Citadel Wednesday and got to learn about guns, gun laws, and all sorts of fun things. I almost went to a gun class Saturday morning at the Smith and Wesson factory in Springfield, but we went to adopt the kitten instead.

Anyway, I have to call my boss again and see where the heck I'm going today!

-Live Long and Prosper

PS: Thanksgiving was cool, but the 4 day weekend was better!

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Paul Simon - Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes (Radio Paradise - DJ-mixed modern & classic rock, wo

So much driving.....
On Monday I drove out to Springfield MA
On Tuesday I drove back to Westport
On Wednesday I went to Montauk NY
On Thursday I went into Boston
On Friday I went back out to Springfield
Today I stay home....I think

On the plus side, I'm hired out of New London where they are laying off people left and right and I just got a $5k raise, yey! Also, they hired an engineer for Worcester who is a cool MIS guy I worked with on Monday from Buffalo NY. This should be fun :-) WMAS is officially on the air from the basketball hall of fame, so if your heading out to Springfield stop in and wave, or just listen to 94.7. On Tuesday Frank and I raided the old studio which is right in front of the transmitter, got some cool stuff like a box of CAT5, a nice bag, and I even stole a big 5 gallon bottle of watter, hehe.
Anyway, off to find something lazy yet productive to do!

-Live Long and Prosper

Current Mood: accomplished

It's raining, it's pouring....
Howdy! I officially turned down the chief engineering position of Worcester because it wasn't enough money to put up with so much crap. But for the moment it's fun driving up there and playing with / fixing their toys. Thursday I got to check out the Bank across the street from the studio where the STL antennas are. A security guard almost let me on the roof of the 20 story building, one of the tallest in Worcester, but I knew I would just piss myself and come back down, so I'll save that for another day. As is, there's an equipment cubicle up there I have to break into to get to the processors and stuff, if I can't find a key I'll have to take a crowbar to it, should be fun , hehe.
In other news, Crystle and I came to some life plans, to go to Grad school. For me, it's BU's LEAP program, designed as an engineering masters program for people with non-engineering bachelors. Looks like a lot of fun but it'll be quite a bit of work preparing for it. This is especially good because Citadel is showing all the signs of going chapter 11, they're now on from just laying off useless people to laying off good people, like the production director in Worcester and a morning show guy in New Bedford that had been there for years.
We bought a canoe last week, 10 feet with life jackets and paddles for $100. Unfortunately, we took it out today and found out there is no way we can use it, as soon as we pushed off we were going to tip over, fortunately, a woman from the kayak place next door pulled us back in. She said it's a good canoe for one person, and so I took it out real fast and she was right. So my dad wants it and I'm going to be taking it home to him tomorrow.
Crystle and I have been looking at adopting a dog, but with the whole grad school thing it may not actually happen. But so far we put in to adopt a 12 year old mutt named Padre from the Falmouth Friends of Dogs. He's a great guy, but we went to visit him for a second time today, the first time was last week, and he wasn't quite the same dog as last week, especailly since he had more energy today and we took him for a walk. He's still cool though, so we'll see.
That's about it for now!

-Live Long and Prosper

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Kings of Leon - Sex On Fire

Well, Obama is President, hopefully this will turn out for the best. The only reason I'm scared is I work for two conservative talk radio stations who keep preaching that, in a nutshell, Obama's a terrorist and we are all screwed when he gets in.
Anyway in more relevant news it's been really busy around here, that and it's 4:30 in the morning. Why am I up? The Worcester silence sense alarm called me at 2:30 and I haven't been to bed since, I gotta start putting my phone on silent at night. To continue from my last post I didn't get the WATD van since the brakes were totally shot and I came to the painful realization that I have no time to play with it.
The big thing that has been on my mind is I have been offered the chief engineer's position for the Worcester market. At first I thought it was a great idea but the more I think about it the more I think it isn't. I would have to move up there, I'd probably end up working at least 10 hours a day and be on call for whenever something breaks. They want to pay me crap compared to what a real broadcast engineer makes, and there are various social problems up there, like any thing I buy I have to fill out a purchase order and get it signed by the General and Business Managers, and the General manager is only there every other day, and people are already bugging me to fix computers and I haven't even been hired there yet. So, it's a cool opportunity but I'm happy where I am.
Also, my car is dieing. The check engine light has been on for awhile for some air intake sensor, now it with have random cylinder for a few seconds either when I start it up or sometimes when I lug the engine, and then the light will blink at me. It's like before the car was saying "please check under the hood when you get a chance" and now when it's blinking it's saying "for the love of God fix me!"
I think that's about it for now, I should try getting some more sleep. Good night / Morning!

-Live Long and Prosper

Current Mood: confused

:-)
It's been a busy couple of weeks. Last Friday went with my Dad up to Near-Fest in Deerfield NH and got some new Ham toys and whatnot. This week Frank and I are looking into taking over the Worcester market as well as the two we already have, maybe Springfield as well. So Wednesday we went on a road trip to see the studios in downtown Worcester and as many of the 3 Tx sites we could get to, 104.5 WXLO, 100.1 WWFX (the Pike), and 98.9 WORC. We only got to the first two since the studio was a bitch to get to and then WXLO is in the middle of the Fitchburg state forest, reminded me of an old XKCD about Google Maps since the directions we got were go through the gate, go a mile down the dirt road, then take a left and go a mile down the other dirt road, and you can't see the 300 of so foot tower until your right on top of it, and it's a creepy building, like an old bomb shelter. NECRAT has some good pictures. "The Pike" was a lot more tame since it's in a really nice building that looks like it used to be some sort of cable sub station, and has two huge satellite dishes in front, that now are pointed at overgrown trees and aren't hooked up. We didn't get to WORC or WMAS in Springfield.
Yesterday I drove Crystle to MGH for her doctor's appointment, ended up having to take most of the day off from work since I picked her up too late to drop her on the train.
Maybe this weekend I should pick up the WATD van since I now have a place to put it in Westport. That and I have to get it out of the parking lot by the end of the month.
Oh, and I went to the Rainforest Cafe for the first time yesterday. I got kinda sick from the food, the the atmosphere was really cool.
That's about it for now!

-Live Long and Prosper

Fun Day!
Yesterday I went to King Richards Faire with Crystle and her Dad. We watched a joust, made wax hands, Crystle got lost, and we got in for free since I got the tickets though Fun 107. After that we went to my house and shot some stuff with my BB gun which I haven't done in a while. Then we went to dinner and headed to the cape to meet Crystle's Sensi Tony for some fishing on the canal.
Also, this week was a good week. Got to go down with Fun 107 to Q105's territory at Mohegan Sun for the New Kids on the Block concert and got them all set up for an interview with a couple of the New Kids, then I got to spend the rest of the time surfing the net and looking up new jobs, since looking at a the fun AV toys they have a big concerts at big venues like that makes me want to get into it again. Friday Crystle went with me to New London because she wasn't feeling good, and it was fun to have to company.
Anyway, I should get started cleaning and other fun Sunday chores!

-Live Long and Prosper

Current Mood: content

Weight off my chest....
For the past few months I've been meaning to call Frank from WUMD, and I saw him and his wife Dottie at Stop and Shop yesterday! I guess him and the GM of WUMD got in a fight but it had nothing to do with me, which is cool. He was happy that I only live like 2 miles away from him, and Crystle and I have to call him at somepoint to do dinner. But, yey! One more thing off my growing list of crap to do, and I was really worried that he would be pissed if I got him fired, and come to find out it's just Jen the GM is a bitch, yey!
Anywho, back to work.....

-Live Long and Prosper

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: WBSM News

It's weird that now that I have the Internet I don't write in this thing as much. Anyway, I asked for a raise at work and they said no, but, they did what radio stations have been doing since there have been radio stations, offer me trade. He said a TV or something..... Frank and I are thinking a car because of all the driving I do, that and I think I have like a $10k raise coming to me. Se we'll see and I have to keep on it, but we'll see.
We now have goats, 12 of them and almost half are pregnant. They are kinda cool, some like to be scratched, most don't. They're dairy goats and the guy who's taking care of them is going to make cheese and whatnot, should be interesting, and tasty!
Got to see the true 'back 40' yesterday and took a walk with the landlords in the preservation land behind the house, it's beautiful back there! It's about 100 acres that was grazing land for cows up until last year. It also backs up to the Westport river with a cool fire pit and stuff. Also, they said we can use their kayaks which will be really cool, but we're also looking into getting our own.
Anyway, bedtime!

-Live Long and Prosper

Almost forgot, I got one of the digital TV converters yesterday, it's sooo cool! Channel 7 and 10 have weather channels as 7-2 and 10-2, there is things saying what's on and on next and the picture is beautiful! Now I just have to raise the antenna a bit more to get more channels in better.

Current Mood: cheerful

Antenna and Internet!
Yey! Got the Internet reinstalled today, turns out I just needed a new modem and the tech last week was too lazy to fix it. The XKCD from yesterday fit my situation perfectly http://xkcd.com/466/
Also, went on Craigslist yesterday and found a TV antenna in Franklin, used for $25. Got a call from her today saying pick it up for free, so I did! Even comes with a rotator, I just have to figure out how to remount everything since all the hardware is rotted, and how to power the rotor since I don't have a controller. Now, everyone sing System of a Down with me! "Aerials, in the sky, When you lose small mind You free your life" I think that is the official radio engineer's song.
Anyway, Crystle's Mom took Jake back yesterday which was kinda a bummer, also a couple of the guinea hen chicks we're babysitting died, but I have the Internet now so it's all good!
Oh, interesting point of note, to get into the system page of a Motorola Surfboard cable modem goto 192.168.100.1, never knew that.

-Live Long and Prosper

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: System of a Down - Aerials

Hi all!
Crystle and I went to her house last weekend and got her dog Jake while her Mom is away on a business trip, he's a little 7 pound Chiwawa. I still don't have the Internet at home, so I'll have to bug Charter again about that, I now have a rooftop patio though, my landlord built it, so I can chill out there and stuff, fun times. At some point I'll have to post the nasty email I got from WUMD in response to an email I sent them since they were off the air last week and I asked if I could help. I just have to remember the bastards aren't worth my time, and I can get paid for doing the same stuff I would do over there.
Also saw Jess yesterday that was fun. Picked her up in the WBSM van and she helped me unload a 400 pound air conditioner from the back of it at Mid-City scrap. Know how much 400 lbs of light iron is? About $33.
Anyway, I should get back to work!

-Live Long and Prosper

Current Mood: apathetic

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