The Cairo Complex

For a flood of Blog posts, Emails, instant messages, phone calls, texts and MySpace comments… But, whatever. C’est la vie.

While doing my regular pass through OpenTable, I came across a little French place in Baltimore called “Brasserie Tatin” and now I’m really craving a crepe and a petite salade. Of course, I can’t just go alone which brings me to this post; I’m looking for a date. Oh man, I know this is just going to wreak havoc on the poor servers over at TotalChoice Hosting, but what can I say? It’s not easy being a highly sought after playboy, like myself.

Applicants should be:

• Blonde (I can not stress this enough).
• Ahem… Brunettes and Redheads may also apply.
• Between 5′3 and 5′8. Seeing as this is a French restaurant, I feel justified in maintaining my Napoleon complex on this point.
• Knock-out physique. Meaning, I should be able to take you in a fist fight. Again, the Napoleon complex.
• Single, or at least negotiably so. Like Bond, my type seems to be “taken” but I’m trying my best to quit that.
• Female, or at least negotiably so.

Dress is evening informal (cocktails anyone?). I’m thinking Friday or Saturday around 8:00-ish. Things are more fun at prime time.

Hmm. Maybe I’m being too picky… Especially with that “female” part. Okay, okay. How about, if you’re a friend (or even just someone that I manage to tolerate) we try and get a nice group together and have ourselves a little soiree. We can joie de vivre it up and what not.

Awesome. Now I can just sit back and watch the network come crashing down.

Most blogs tend to be about something. There are being-Arab blogs, weird book blogs, nerdy blogs (oh snap!), techno-political blogs, etc. My blog is kind of about whatever I’m into right at that moment. Then there are LJs. LJs are specifically about one thing as well; the people who author them (cough-andtheirwhining-cough). I mean, it’s not too hard to believe the most commonly used words on LJ are “I” and “my” and “sigh.” It’s also not hard to believe that I just made that up on my own… Sigh…

Well anyway, I’m setting up to make a self-centric post. An ode to LJ of sorts. There’s a couple of reasons for wanting to do this, but the most obvious (to me) are that I’ve fallen out of touch with a great number of people who may secretly read this blog, that I hate mass Emailings when they aren’t about people jumping into frozen bodies of water, and some suitably motivating LJ-y emotion… Let’s go with “nostalgia.”

Here we go:

I’ve been working long weeks between three jobs recently. The first job, most are well aware, is keeping me in the collegiate spirit with free room and bored. The second has me browsing the Internet and chatting on AIM late into most nights of the week between helping people with their homework and fixing their computers. The third is an internship in the business continuity department of a rather prestigious financial institution. It’s pretty swanky at job 3:3, except for the fact that the dress code is “business casual” which everyone has interpreted (correctly, it seems) as “like Bill Gates.” This particular company has already offered me a full-time position, and I have accepted. My start date is in June, but I should point out that I have found myself dragging my feet in clearing my interview schedule.

Should I choose to stick with the job I’ve gotten, I will probably move into an old fixer-upper of a house with my Enviro-savvy friend. Secretly, though, I’m hoping for a position to be offered where I can off and move to a new place. Maybe Washington State. Honestly, though, even DC would do. (Note my use of “secretly” in this clearly public forum. Ohh! This is so El-Jay-y!).

Going to the gym remains one of my favoritest hobbies, but scheduling time to go has grown increasingly difficult given my schedule. I still make it in, just not at the hours I would prefer. However, one thing that’s definitely worthy of mention is the gym that belongs to my new company at job 3:3. I’m the only person that ever uses it, so it’s pretty much like having my own personal gym. Complete with towel service and everything! Current fitness goals include running a sub-20-minute 5K. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to hit that at my next race in about two months.

Uhh… Oh yeah! I’ve taken up an old-found interest in math and drawing. I made some graphs the other day. Through extensive data collection and analysis, I’ve discovered my collection of phone numbers belonging to girls who end up having boyfriends grows in a direct relation to my collection of pornography.

Hmm… What else? What else? I mean, this falls pretty short of being a lame LJ-esque post if the best I can come up with is just… A regular lame post!

Oh well.

Current Music: Something emo

Current Mood: Sigh…

I was complaining to a friend of mine earlier today that it’s a shame that I don’t attend a university with more prestige when he suggested that perhaps the lack of prestige was a self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuated by whiners like myself. It took me only a moment before I realized he was absolutely right. I shouldn’t be bashing my own university… I should be making fun of other people’s.

With that being said, I present:

I’m taking pre-orders. I’m thinking something like 18 bucks a pop. If you’re interested, send me an Email.

I’ve mentioned Mr. Hawk in the past, and anyone who took the time to browse the link provided knows that he is a very talented artist. The guy is awesome, and a quick search on YouTube will bear a whole bunch of great videos of him doing his art-thing. He’s got a nifty Cintiq which is probably one of the coolest tech toys around!

Anyway, all of this is to say that I’ve taken up a bit of the Photoshoping again, and will try my best to post new and old stuff here. Before anyone has a chance to say it disdainfully, let me declare it for myself that yes, I am a total Hawk-wannabe. This is no surprise for anyone who remembers back to when I was a Halsey-wannabe, and to way before that when I was a Madureira-wannabe… And a Lee-wannabe.

Anyway, all of that being said, I doubt I’ll ever reach Hawk’s skillz-level, but I don’t think I do too badly considering I’m using a tablet display with one level of touch-sensitivity and a mouse, versus a 25-hundred dollar piece of art in itself. That thing has 1,024 level of sensitivity! And it’s 21.3″ big! And, I think you need a Mac to use one… Damn it!

When it comes to computers and technology in general, I have about a 6-month run time before I have a fantastic urge to just wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. Usually, I can control this urge and just settle for reformatting and loading a fresh install of whatever stuff I happen to be using at the time (though, the thought of reinstalling XP right now and suffering through the 300 or so updates that will need to follow is frightening). At other times, though, I find myself simmering with the need to buy all new hardware and “pimp” my computer desk which, by the way, MTV-43 is foolish for having turned down my pitch for.

Generally speaking, when I get the great hardware itch, I follow a distinct pattern of thought that cycles about every four days usually for about a month straight before I decide I’m too cool to be using computers anyway (BAH! How lame… Calculations…). The pattern is rather simple, but a testament to my neurosis, all the same. Here’s how it goes:

Day #1 (The Apple of My Eye)- I wake up and think to myself “how great would it be if I had a nice little cute shiny new Mac with all the fixin’s.” This thought will usually result in me surfing over to the Apple page where I click my way into potential monetary oblivion on a desktop, a monitor that’s just way to large if I plan on keeping my eyesight past 30, about $800 in must have Adobe software, an awesome photo printer, and an Wacom tablet that’d let me set up creative shop just like the awesome Mohammed Haque. Sitting there starring at my cart nearly overflowing with white polymer casings, I often save myself from financial ruin when I realize I could do all the same “stuff” with a much cheaper Dell…

D ay #2 (Over Hill, Over Dell) – Well, what really hurts here is the fact that I can customize the Dell out of all the machines on the site. I mean, who am I to be settling for the video card with only 156 MB of cache. I’ll just have to upgrade it later if I don’t get it now, right? While I’m at it I better punch in for that extra large hard drive. You know, just in case I get to the point where I own more music than a person could possibly listen to in a lifetime. And the monitor! Oh, I almost forgot the monitor. What? I can’t get the 30-inch display without the super-suped up video card. Well then, I guess I’d better fix that. Does that component really cost that much though???

Day #3 (I am Nerd. Hear Me Snort!)- Bah! Screw Dell! I’ve got some screwdrivers and a general knowledge of electronics that don’t blink 12:00 at me. I’m just going to build my own box (huh huh… box). TigerDirect has everything I need, I can do all the stuff I want, and what with all the savings, I can upgrade to my heart’s content. And look at all the parts I have to choose from… No seriously, look at them. They’re looming above me in giant silicon masses threatening to smother me in potential calculations per second and compatibility issues with this year’s flavor of RAM. And hey! Some of this stuff doesn’t look all that much cheaper at all!

Day #4 (Rinse and Repeat) – A Zen like quite settles over me, and I realize there is no new computer. I’ve got a laptop and an only moderately doddering desktop. That’s all I need. Psh! I could even set myself up with a hip little network if I wanted to. Yeah! Sure! I’ll run Windows on my laptop and that can be my cool little take-around rig, and to spice things up, maybe I’ll even install a nice little distro of Linux on my desktop (you know, something to surf SlashDot with). Hmm, you know what would be super hip though? If I could cover all my operating systems bases. Yeah, I need something with OS-X on it…