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I didn’t have enough milk this morning to make coffee, and I wanted one, so I decided to stop at Atomic Coffee before work. I believe that will be the last time I stop there. First off, they charged me about $5.17 for a damn 16oz white chocolate mocha. I think he charged me for a shot of white chocolate syrup, and they don’t usually do that. It is a WHITE CHOCOLATE mocha after all. Secondly, it didn’t even come close to tasting as good as the ones I make do. I make a sauce of white chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk, and vanilla extract. I mix in a little of the white chocolate syrup that I bought at Moxie Java (doing so makes both the sauce and the syrup last longer). I also started using regular flavored coffee beans (vanilla hazelnut) rather than espresso beans. I think it tastes better. And it sure the hell is cheaper.

Needless to say, I stopped at the grocery store on my way home from work to get some milk.

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Holy shit. Gas went up about 19¢ since this morning. I swear it was still $3.25/gal (maybe $3.29/gal) when I left for work this morning. When I came home, it was $3.44/gal. I’m assuming this jump is because of the shit going on in Libya. I just wonder how high it will get (regardless of the Libya stuff). I’ve heard rumors of it getting up to $4 or $5 per gallon this summer. God I hope not. I’d start taking the bus to work, but I don’t think any of the metro buses cross the river. If you know of any routes that do, please let me know.

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Prices keep going up while products keep getting smaller. Since Easter is the next holiday, Reese’s peanut butter eggs have hit the stores. And I am such a sucker for those things. I can’t get enough (or the pb trees at Christmas or the pb hearts at Valentine’s or the pb pumpkins at Halloween …). I gave in and bought a bag of the mini ones at the grocery store. They were $3.28, which I think is around the price they were last year. But the damn eggs got frickin’ smaller. They’re tiny now … practically bite size. They are mini eggs, but they weren’t this mini last year. Same price, fewer product. Gotta love our economy. </sarcasm>

I’ve been waiting for the Droid 2 to be released for 2 months. There were rumors all over the internet about when the release date was. Verizon finally announced on Aug. 10 that there would be a pre-sale on Aug. 11, and the phone would be available for purchase in stores on Aug. 12. I was one of those crazy people who got up just after midnight on Aug. 11 to get the phone during the pre-sale. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t sold out by the time I got a chance to buy it. Verizon ended up shipping my phone out (via FedEx) that same day, and they had free overnight shipping for internet orders, so it was to be delivered yesterday (Aug. 12).

I was pretty sure that they’d try to deliver it while I was at work. I was hopefully they might try when I was home on lunch, but I figured that with my luck, that wouldn’t be the case.

The following is a sequence of tweets that had me hopeful that I’d be home when they stopped (even if I had to take a late lunch).

At this point, I sent her an email with the information she requested. I hadn’t heard back from her by noon, so I headed home for lunch (with my fingers crossed ) Just as I turned on to the street in front of my apartment, I saw the FedEx truck at the stoplight up the street waiting to turn onto 13th Ave. Crap. That means I just missed him. The following is a sequence of tweets after I got into my apartment.

Just after I sent that last tweet, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number but a little part of me hoped it might be FedEx. And to my surprise, it was. FedEx Robin called me to see if someone was going to be home for a while. She said she’d call dispatch and see if she could get the FedEx guy to come back to my place. She called back just a couple minutes later to let me know that the FedEx guy was coming back. Rock on.

Within 5 minutes of her calling me to let me know, the FedEx guy showed up. He said that I was lucky … if I had been 15 minutes later, he would have been out of the area. I was so happy that I didn’t have to go to the FedEx office that night to pick up my phone.

And to think … this all started with a random tweet where I said I was hoping they’d try to deliver my phone when I was home. To think that FedEx has employees with jobs where they search Twitter for tweets about the company is pretty awesome. I know that there are others who do it, but those seem to be bots or just tweets to get you to do something for the company. This was a case where they were trying to help me out. They were proactive with a customer and that is something that I wish more companies did.

I can honestly say that if I had to ship something, FedEx would be at the top of my list for shippers because of the experience that I had. I wish more companies would take notice.

So … thank you FedEx. Thank you FedEx Robin. Now I’m off to play with my shiny new Droid 2.

Twunch: Lunch – twitter style; loosely organized open invitation lunch meeting among twitter friends

Source: Twictionary

On December 29, 2007, I joined Twitter. At the time, I was following 2 people. As of tonite, I’m following 106 people. Up until December of last year, I didn’t know a single person that I followed on Twitter in real life. Now I know quite a few (I work with most of those). Today I added more to that list.

A co-worker of mine (Melanie, a.k.a. @AmazonGrace) organized a lunch Tweet-Up for today. I believe there were about 20 of us there. I ended up sitting near my co-workers, for the most part. But I did meet some of the other Fargo tweeps. I hope we do it again soon. I think we should do it once a month. I’ll just have to wait and see what everyone else wants to do. If we do do it again, I need to mingle more.

I think it would be fun to get together for a nite on the town too. I tried to organize that a couple weeks ago, but I’m a poor organizer of social events I guess (could that be because I’m naturally shy?). I only ended up meeting @epizoic and @kalyke that nite. But then again, all I did was post a few tweets about going up and possibly meeting somewhere.

And to think, there was a time where I said that I wanted to live in a more high tech town. I guess Fargo is more techie than I thought. I’m now following a lot more local people than I even knew were on Twitter. And I know that there are more that I’m not following … yet.

Earlier this week, a co-worker of mine (Laura, a.k.a @lala_k) decided to organize a Twestival right here in Fargo. “What the heck is a twestival” you ask? Well, quite simply, Twitter + festival = Twestival.

On February 12, 2009, more than 100 cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals, bringing together Twitter communities for an evening of fun while raising money and awareness for charity: water. Well, what is charity: water? charity: water is a non-profit initiative bringing clean water and basic sanitation into impoverished communities. They raise money to build freshwater wells and sanitation projects in developing nations, giving away 100% of the funds raised.

Right now 1.1 billion people on the planet don’t have access to safe, clean drinking water. That’s one in six of us. Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Many communities in developing nations often have a plentiful supply of clean drinking water just below the ground, but no way to get to it. This is where charity: water and their partner organizations come in. Drilling a well can cost from $4,000 – $12,000 USD and many living on less than $1 a day cannot afford one in their community, even if the money is combined. With the help of exemplary organizations on the ground, charity: water can drill wells and provide people with this basic, essential need.

I’m doing my part to help. In addition to being at the Twestival, I’m helping out with the Fargo Twestival website (since I’ve got experience with WordPress). How can you help? I’m glad you asked.

The Fargo Twestival will be held at Ristreto Coffee & Tea on Thursday, February 12, 2009 from 6:30pm to 8:30pm. Ristreto has coffee and tea as well as a selection of beer, wine, pastries, and edibles from the Green Market. Entertainment will be provided by Fargo’s own The 404. Check out the Fargo Twestival website for more information as well as for tickets. I hope to see you there.

You don’t have to be on Twitter to come to the Twestival, but … why aren’t you on Twitter? Sign up for an account already.

The Company
It seems like a really good company to work for. They seem to care about their employees and what they think rather than just pushing them to get stuff done. They’re more than just a web dev company, but I’ve only interacted with the web dev side of things. The rest of the work they do is pretty cool (marketing related). It’s just not where my area of “expertise” is, so I don’t have any interaction with it.

The People
The people that I’ve met so far are pretty cool … dare I saw awesome. Some are crazy … but in a good way. They’re all friendly and seem to have accepted me. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t feel like a complete outcast … well maybe sometimes. But that’s because of my own feelings of self doubt and stuff.

And thanks to this job, I actually know people IRL that I follow on Twitter. Some I’ve interacted with (@AmazonGrace, @fargoirish, @lemur, @krondek, @copaland), and others I’ve just seen around the office (@istafish, @lala_k). I’d love to hang out with them outside of work some time … as long as I was welcome. Who knows if that will ever happen. One of my goals for this year is to be more social. And hanging out with people that are techie like me would be good for me. Maybe after I’ve been around longer, I’ll get some invites.

My project managers are great too. With my lack of self confidence (I’m working on that … it’s another of my goals for this year), I tend to feel silly when I ask questions or feel like I don’t do the work fast enough or apologize for asking questions. But they’ve been telling me that I’ve been doing a good job. That’s a really good feeling. I had that a little bit at my last job, but not as much as I’m getting here (and I’ve only been there a month). It’s good for me (and my very fragile ego). I just need to learn to accept the praise and not feel like I’m a screw up waiting to happen.

There are some pretty good looking guys working around the place too. I’m not gonna go into details as to who and where since there are possibly people from the office who will read this (since I push updates to Twitter). It was bad enough in high school that the ENTIRE school knew who I had a crush on. I don’t need that happening at work. And just ‘cuz I think they’re “easy on the eyes” doesn’t mean there’s any more to it than that.

The Work
I haven’t gotten a whole lot of work yet, but I have gotten a few tasks. I’ve worked on some landing pages, changes to an email campaign, and setting up pages for brochure request forms. I’ve also been told that I will probably be working on some Expression Engine sites as well. So far, everything has been basic html and css. They have a custom CMS for the website that I’ve been working on. I haven’t gotten to work with php, and I don’t know that I will. I miss it. Yeah … that makes me a geek, I know. But that’s me. I don’t know what the rest of my time there will entail, but I’m looking forward to it.

What IS taking some getting used to is the processes for how things are done. Where I was last, we would publish changes for a task after we were finished with them. Even when there were more than 2 of us, the development process was pretty “causal”. Where I am now, they have more of a procedure for doing things. They have code releases and do branching off of SVN and do unit testing and have QA people. I’ve never worked in a situation like that before. It’s definitely a good thing … just something that I need to get use to. After working as part of a 2 person team for a little over a year, I’m used to doing a lot of stuff myself. And we didn’t have the resources to do a lot of that QA stuff.

The Future
I don’t know what the future holds. I’m working a contract position that is to last 3 months. That brings me to March (or so). Yeah, there is the chance that it could turn into a permanent position, but I don’t know how much of a chance that is. It just depends on how much work they have and if they’ve been happy with my work.

I did have a dream a week or so ago about things. I was talking to someone at work and made the comment that I’d only be there for a couple more months. Then Mark said that he was writing a proposal to keep me on permanently. It would be nice if that dream came true … that they wanted to keep me on. I just have to keep my chin up, work as hard as I can, and make as good an impression as possible. The rest will take care of itself if it’s meant to be.

So, I’m on the job hunt … again. This so sucks. Especially since it had nothing to do with me. I just wish I had had more notice. I mean … if you know there’s no room in the budget for my position, let me know so that I can start planning instead of freaking out at what I’m going to do.

At least I don’t have to worry about cleaning out an office since I work at home. I already have my work laptop and external hard drive packed up. Justin is picking it up around 12:30pm or so. Now I have plenty of room on my desk. LOL

I’m trying really hard not to completely lose it. But it’s hard to keep the tears away. Things were finally going good for me. I liked my job, even though I got pissy at times. But who doesn’t. And things were going good financially. I’ve been planning to start house hunting at the end of next summer. I guess that won’t happen now. I’m just glad I wasn’t looking this year and just moved into a house. Then I REALLY would have been screwed.

So now I need to sit down and figure out what to do next. The logical things are updating my resume and filing for unemployment. But then what? Where do I start looking for a job? Is there anything around here? Or am I going to have to move? I really don’t want to move. Amazingly, a couple local people on Twitter DM’d me. At least that’s somewhere to start.

I guess I’ll be paying more attention to the job postings in the paper. And I should probably call the local agencies. And I should also probably get some clothes for interviews that actually fit well and are comfortable. But I don’t want to have to spend money for clothes. But I can’t get a job if I go to an interview looking like a slob.

If anyone reading this knows of anyone in the Fargo/Moorhead area, or anywhere in region, who is looking to hire a web developer, please let me know. You don’t know how much I would appreciate it.

But I’m starting to change that … starting right here. As you may have noticed, there is now a daily digest of my Twitter posts. I installed Twitter Tools after upgrading to version 2.5. So there will be daily posts here … even if they are just my Twitter posts for the day.

And then last nite, I decided to create a Flickr account. For a while now, I’ve wanted a way to be able to send pics from my cell phone to my blog. I looked around for a plugin briefly, but didn’t put too much effort into it. But I looked into Flickr last nite and realized I could do that really easily with it. I tested it out last nite and it worked like a charm. So be on the lookout for some pics from my cell phone. Well, that is if I get out of my apartment … LOL.

I’ve also added a couple sections in the sidebar. There is a Flickr section and a Where You Can Find Me section. The ‘Flickr’ section has a little widget that shows my Flickr pics. Unfortunately there are only 2 in there right now. But hopefully I’ll get some more in there soon. The ‘Where You Can Find Me’ has links to different places you can find me: Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, and Infield Parking (a site like MySpace but is for race fans).

I do have some other plans for my development, but for now, I’ll keep that to myself. But hopefully they will mean that I’ve got more techie stuff to post around here. After all, that was my intention when I registered this domain and set up this blog.

Well, I’m off to do more playing development (and finish my beer ) and then watch GH. It should be a good one tonite … they’re trying to kill Sonny. As long as Johnny doesn’t get caught in the crossfire, I’ll be happy.

That’s enough playing for me tonite. It’s bedtime. Nite all …

I’ve been meaning to send out an email to some friends to try to brainwash talk them into using Twitter. I just haven’t sat down to do it yet. But I really need to. I need to find some Twitter-ites outside of Houston to follow … LOL.

I have a feeling I’ll be “tweeting” from my phone tonite at the rodeo. I’m going with Robin, Mona, and Allen. And then to Pete’s for the rodeo dance. Rodeo … that means COWBOYS!!!! And if you know me, you know I like cowboys. It’s times like this where I wish I had a fancy cell phone (a PDA-type phone) so I could follow along with Twitter. I can get notifications on my phone, but that would be a lot of text messages. But most of the time, I have no need for that fancy of a phone. So I’ll just have to live with it.

I’ll try to start blogging more again. But I can’t promise anything. After working on the computer all day for work, I just don’t have the energy at nite. And working from home and not leaving my apartment that often means I have a boring life. Not much to blog about. But I plan on doing some more work on my websites soon. So maybe I’ll get some techy posts up that I meant to when I registered this domain and set up this blog. But only time will tell.

I’d better get going. I have 2 hours before Robin gets here to pick me up for the rodeo … I need to figure out what I’m gonna do for supper and eat early so I can get ready. I already know what I’m gonna wear. I just need to fix my hair and makeup and change clothes. Then I’ll be all ready for all those cowboys … So many cowboys … so little time.

I’ve been starting to follow more and more people. It makes it easier to follow conversations when they’re not one sided … LOL. And it jut so happens that most of the people I follow live in Houston. It’s all Christine’s fault. I started following her and Mace and started adding people she follows. Since she lives in Houston, she’s bound to follow people from there. Following their conversations makes me wish it was more techie up here. I know that there are geeks up here, but I just don’t know where to find them. I’ve done some searching from time to time for blogs from the area. But the only one I know of at this point is Mace. Maybe he knows of more. Or maybe I just need to get out of my apartment and start hanging out at coffee shops. LOL

But even if there a lot of geeks up here, I don’t think they’re as social as they are down in Houston. I was really jealous reading about the Twitter meetup they were having this past weekend. I would love to go to something like that. To meet people who blog and have Twitter accounts and are geeky like me. But until I find people like that up here, I’m living vicariously through them.

What really makes me jealous about following all these Houston Twitterers (is that a word? LOL) is their talk of coworking. OMG … I would love to be able to do that. While I don’t work for myself, I do work from home. I could really work anywhere that had wifi (I’d need a power source too because I have an external hard drive with my work laptop that would need to be plugged in). Being able to do that would solve my space issue and it would give me some much needed social contact. I did find out that there are people doing the coworking thing in Minneapolis, but that’s too far away for me. Maybe I should try to get something like that going up here. But I don’t know if there are others who would be interested in it. And I’m not the kind of person who would be good at getting it going. I’m too much of a follower.

I know … I sound like I hate living up here. Well … only during the winter. Other than that, it’s not a bad place. That’s why I still live here (that and ‘cuz my family and friends are here). But I do wish I knew more techy/geeky people. I wish I new the people whose blogs and Twitter feeds I read. So … if you live up around here (the Fargo, ND area) and you happen to be reading this and have a blog or Twitter feed, leave a comment with a link to it.

Now I have to go. It’s almost time for General Hospital (I love having SoapNet on digital cable …