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This week has been pretty much hell all the way up until today, thanks to having to prepare for my business law quiz, which was an adventure in its own right. I spent each night reading over 70 pages of notes and skimming over 100 pages in the book and watching hours of ridiculous lecture (our professor likes to dress up for his lectures to illustrate points... though I find it more of a distraction than anything else!).
But alas, I took the quiz and am done with that class... at least for today! I took the opportunity to relax by training Kung Fu for about an hour with Joe, then headed back home and ate supper, and finally it was on. Wii time. I hadn't really played Wii since my cousins from Taiwan came over our place a few weeks ago. I don't think I've yet posted on that visit - my mother's sister brought her kids to America for the first time to visit my mother and they decided to stop at our place before heading out fpr the rest of their vacation. To commemorate the occasion, we went out to Indialantic Beach, then had dinner at Island Pasta Company, where we had nothing but appetizers (sort of like dim sum! in a way...), and then went home and had cake to belatedly celebrate Cherry and Melinda's birthdays.
Anyhow, back to the main point of the story. After over a year of playing (albeit not continuously), I have finally acquired all 120 stars in Super Mario Galaxy! Huzzah!
Only problem is, now, I have to get all 120 again with Luigi!!!
So, if you're at least as much of an Internet denizen as I am (and that's not saying much), you've probably heard of the fake News website/network The Onion. Yesterday, Ed posted several hilarious videos from The Onion on his blog at TWFC. I highly recommend checking them out!
The recent joke, however, is that The Onion was purchased by a Chinese fish by-product company called Yu Wan Mei. As such, all of their articles now have a hugely Chinese-politically charged flavor to them. Stories such as "Internet Adds 12th Website" and "Toddler Chokes to Death on Taiwanese-Made Plastic Toy" are must reads. Perhaps the most amazing thing to me, however, is the length they went to making this spoof. As you can see, I've hyperlinked the website to supposed parent company Yu Wan Mei. If you visit it, you will see a fully fleshed out company website, complete with promotional videos, product catalogues, and a full Chinese language version of the same site!
It must be nice having a job that requires you to bullshit all day, every day!
It's been a while since I've last had any meaningful posts! To be quite frank, it feels like my life has slowed to a droll over the last few weeks. Work itself has actually lightened up quite a bit, but school work has dominated after-work hours. I have, however, managed to generally keep up with my workout schedule, though ever since Mike had his baby boy, he has not gone to the gym with me. Admittedly, it's a bit tough to continue to go regularly without your gym partner!
Anyhow, the topic of today's post is in regards to several of the government's stimulus plans intended to help people put some money back into the system. In particular, I am referring to the housing stimulus and the so-called "clunker" bill. Basically, the housing stimulus provides first time homebuyers an $8000 tax credit when they buy a home this year or if they bought a home in 2008, while the "clunker" bill offers $3500 or $4500 vouchers towards the purchase of a new car if you are trading in an old vehicle that has crappy gas mileage.
Thus the reason for my sad face. Those of you that have been following Grant's Pad since 2007 or earlier will know that Cherry and I purchased our home in that year, rendering us ineligible for the first time homebuyer's credit. Some of you may also know that I own a 1994 Toyota Corolla, which is certainly old enough to qualify for the "clunker" bill. Unfortunately, said Corolla gets close to 33 miles per gallon, once again rendering us ineligible for that particular perk.
I sort of understand the purpose behind the "clunker" bill. Two birds with one stone - get gass guzzling carbon emitters off of the road while pouring some money into the system. But why punish folks like me who have always had the foresight to have an environmentally friendly car?
I have even more beef with the homebuyer credit. While I have nothing against several of my friends who managed to take this great opportunity, I find it, to put it lightly, !@$!#ed up that people like me are also omitted from government assistance. Let's take a closer look. First of all, many economists will point to excessive home buying in the early part of the 21st century as a major influence of today's economic meltdown. And yet, we are encouraging people to buy, buy, buy! Whereas people who bought during the bubble like me, but have been responsible in making all of our payments and not foreclosing and so on are stuck with our unfairly large mortgage payments. If the government wants people to spend money, they should give some relief to those of us who won't be a burden later on!
Anyhow, I thought I would just rant a bit. Surely, Obama and company have thought these actions through and I am just complaining like any good citizen would, right?
With that, I leave you with yet another awesome highlight video from GatorHighlights2. I found its soundtrack to fit my mood quite well tonight.
I'm in Gainesville over the weekend, as usual. However, this week, I got here extra early! It turns out that, since we did not get Good Friday off earlier this year, my company extended our paid days off for Independence Day. As a result, not only did we get Friday, July 3rd off on observance of Independence Day, we also got Thursday, July 2nd, off! You know you're jealous, admit it!
What that means is I've been in Gainesville since Wednesday night. However, it hasn't been the awesome vacation you might have expected it to be. You see, due to Cherry and my academic pursuits, both of us had boatloads of schoolwork to do. That brought me to my next complication. Most of my readers know that I'm currently pursuing my MBA by way of UF's fairly prestigious Internet MBA program (which I have raved about before). This, naturally, access to the Internet is quite valuable to me (among many, many other reasons, such as YouTube, Facebook, forum surfing, to name a few Internet activities that I regularly partake in).
Herein lies the problem. For whatever reason, the wickedly awesome Dell XPS laptop supplied to me by the aforementioned UF Internet MBA program doesn't get along well with the wi-fi router at Cherry's apartment. And not in the same way my DS and Wii don't get along with it either. My DS and Wii merely don't recognize the router and won't go online. My laptop, however, will go online for a few minutes before deciding that it has had enough abuse and completely kills the router, rendering it impossible for any device to connect to the Internet until the router is power-cycled! Ordinarily, this would be possible when Anna is around, since we could ask her to reset the router, which is in her room, but alas, she is away all semester on summer vacation!
A second alternative that we have employed in the past to satisfy our Internet needs is to go to Library West at school, where Internet is free and plentiful. In fact, some of you may recall that I have actually blogger from Library West on several occasions. However, as might be expected, this option was unavailable to us this weekend, for the same reason that I was in town so early. Yes, the library was closed for most of the weekend!
Fortunately, as you can see, I found one last avenue for recourse. My trusty iPod Touch, also supplied by my UF Internet MBA program, possibly to serve as a remedy for exactly this type of ailment, has found no issue with the wi-fi router, and so, this entire post was painstakingly crafted with just my index finger!
