Brent Pirolli's

Day of weird sites…

So my day included three rather unusual sites.  I’ll start from the top.

Site 1:  Garbage Tornado

I was leaving my dorm and walking across the parking lot to go to my car for work.  About half way through lot 7 I see quite a bit of debris flying through the air.  I didn’t think much of it at first because we’re in BG…. Bowling Green is a city with an average wind speed of 10-20mph.  Then it hit me… I don’t feel any wind!  Yet 50 feet from me I see bags, papers, and bottles being tossed in the wind.  Upon closer examination, they weren’t being blown sideways, they were going in circles!  A mini-garbage tornado…  HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!?!

I watched for about 5 minutes as it picked up leaves, papers, litter, cups, whatever it found in the lot and tossed them in circles.  The base was a solid ring of leaves and the rest of it was invisible except what trash it was flinging around.  There wasn’t any dust or dirt to make up the funnel shape since it was on pavement…  The base would move at about 2mph and I followed it as it wound through the lot.  I ventured in to about 20 feet from the vortex and felt an enormous blast of wind at about 40-50mph.  I figured that a bottle to the head at 50mph would suck so I backed off a bit.  Then I called Sarah on my cell phone and told her about it as I watched it.  I started flinging a few plastic bottles upwards of 100 feet in the air… pretty impressive… Then the base moved over right on top of a car that a family was trying to get into…  You could see their clothes flapping and blowing in the wind and they were all covering their heads with their arms… They were laughing but the roughly 10 year old boy was freakin out and yelling… “AHHH… AHHH… AHHH…”  It was pretty funny.  Then just like that, it stopped.

Site 2:  Stray Dog

As I was driving home that night after work, I had a dog in front of me on the road.  It was just trotting along with its tongue hanging out and it was all happy wagging it’s tail… I’m driving like 4mph behind it and it stops and looks over it’s shoulder at me, steps off the side of the road, lets me pass, then looks both ways and starts trotting right back on the road… It looked REALLY funny… almost like a trained child or something.

Site 3:  Jeep Spin-Out

On the way back to the dorm tonight I was on the expressway and saw a few cars braking for no apparent reason.  As I got closer I saw some WICKED HUGE tire tracks on the far left side of the road that curved off of the road, crossed the 3 lanes of highway traffic, then came to a stop on the opposite side.  At the front of them was a jeep facing backwards on the interstate.  Wow… That must’ve just happened cuz they were all in the car still and the lights were all on… LUCKY people!  That jeep shoulda flipped at that speed and such a sharp angle… AND they didn’t hit anyone else on a crazy busy interstate!  Kinda surprising!

So anyway, I had a pretty exciting and strange day.  Other than all that jazz, I’m fighting a cold and it’s not only beating me, but it’s kicking me in the groin when I’m on the ground.  ::sigh:: Oh well.  I’ll overcome it eventually.  Well, time for bed.  Gotta get up for work at 7:30am.

Mood:  Good, but my nose hates me…

Fun With The Law

So I finally got this textbook online that I ordered a week ago.  One of my law classes requires a book that is 1,298 pages long.  It retails for 100.00 bucks at the publisher’s site and 120.00 bucks at the campus bookstore.  I found a used copy online at Classbook.com for 70 bucks plus 5 bucks s/h.  WHAT A DEAL?!?!?  … … … right?

Yeah it arrives today and is 96 pages long.  I paid 75 dollars for a 96 page book.  Did I order the wrong book?  Nope.  I used the exact ISBN number.  In fact, the book they sent has not only the same ISBN, but the same Name, Author, Cover Art… By all means, it’s identical… just missing 49 of the 52 chapters in the full book!

I took the book to my teacher, who is also the author of the book, and just happens to be a lawyer…   She explained that this book is obviously a specially made copy for some other class that shouldn’t have been resold by any company and since it uses the same ISBN number, and they sold it for such a high price, it constitutes as fraud.  She then advised me to email classbook.com and explain to them that I consulted a lawyer and that they’ve committed fraud.  If they don’t refund 100% of my cost along with shipping costs, as opposed to the 90% they normally offer, then I will be reporting them to the State Attourney General….

… …. Having a lawyer for a teacher… is REALLY cool…  And on top of that, she’s emailing them since she’s the author and she’s gonna ream them for re-selling bogus copies of her book.  Heh heh…

ANYWAY, here’s the pic that Scoot drew me in about 4 minutes on his last day of work:

Ok… time to go nap before more classes…

Mood:  Headached and Sickly… sleepy time…

Another long night

Sitting at a table in the lobby for four hours isn’t the most exciting thing in the world. Especially when the hours are from 12am-4am. But I do have a lot of time to read, browse the online news community, play putt-putt on candystand.com, and of course, read XANGA!

Not much has happened around here lately… Classes, work, desk shifts, sleep, eat, and… uhh… poop. If anything interesting happens, I’m sure I’ll update and share all my crazy opinions and harsh, straight-shooting views. If there’s anything you have seen that begs for my commentary, feel free to let me know. But if you REALLY want my comments… and give a rip what I say… something is wrong already!

Every third “E” I type breaks my “E” key…. I have to snap it back on all the time… …. GRRRRR… then I have to delete all the extra “eeeeeeeeee”s that appear while I’m pressing it into place. Hmm…. Where can I get a mac laptop keyboard fixed…. ? Or at least buy an “E” key for a 17″ titanium G4 PowerBook? Any leads? Let me know….

OK… I’m still going to post that pic Scoot drew me eventually. I have to scan it in my room. Until then, whitey say bye bye.

Mood: Surprisingly awake for being up 19 hours+. 

The Cycle Continues

More vomit in the bathroom today… what a surprise… I’m ready for the school year to end already.  I can’t stand living with such irresponsible fools!  HOWEVER, I DO have my own room, and I no longer have to be the RA in charge of those idiots… Now I can watch other poor RAs deal with them.  Although, part of me wishes I were still an RA for the sake of free room and board!   Heck, that’s what drew me to it in the first place!

8 months.  8 months and I’m taking finals, moving into an apartment, graduating, and getting married to my best friend and beautiful fiance.  8 months and I leave this daycare dormlife behind forever.  Come quickly May… Winter has no hold on you.

So tonight I had to bid adieu to a great co-worker.  “Scoot” is no longer planning on working as a desk clerk at Offenhauer.  ::sigh::  He now works for WENDY’S and is happy making his 7 bucks an hour flipping burgers instead of his 5.15 an hour dealing with drunken morons.  Ah well, we all must move on someday, and for Scoot, his day was today.  Congrats buddy, you’re free.

The thing that we’re going to miss most about Scoot is that he is an AMAZING artist.  He hand sketches some REALLY SWEET cartoons.  I had him draw me a final one tonight before he left.  He drew a pic of me and him sitting at the desk checking in this dude that came in tonight who had just gotten into a fight.  It was pretty funny…  I’ll scan it in and post it when I have a chance later.  For now, I must sleep.  Night all.

Mood:  TIRED!  But overall, good. 

Back to Dorm Life

I realize how much I DIDN’T miss certain aspects of campus life tonight… While working till 4am at the desk, some chick came in and checked in with her friend, then walked over to the trash can all calmly, held open the little door on the lid, stuck her head in there… and just puked her guts out…  It ran down the front of the can and onto the floor.  The four desk clerks sat there and watched with smirks of “what a moron” caliber.  I then walked over to the desk and grabbed the cedar chip stuff that kills the smell and poured it on the mess… Figured I’d leave it there for the janitors to find the next morning.

Then I get back to my room at 4am… walk to the bathroom, and sure enough, there is vomit all over one of the sinks.  That is so freaking disgusting.  I hate that crap.  People are pathetic.  They don’t flush toilets, they puke on the furniture, they complain about security procedures (“We have to do this every night?  That’s Bull****!”  Yes… you have to spend 4 seconds telling us your room and ID number so we can verify you live here, and you have to have your friends all sign in with ID so we know which moron is responsible for putting holes in the walls or stealing university property.), they reak of alcohol, pot, and cigarettes, and a good 30% of them are complete morons with no respect for others.

Bah.  I’m a little bitter.  Time for bed.  Long day of work tomorrow.

Mood:  Can’t ya tell? GRRR!

Who needs sleep?

Well I’m back. I haven’t updated in a LONG time… I had some crazy-go-nuts going ons lately. If you read my last post you saw that I was workin some stupid-long hours. Then I worked 54 more the next week and left for vacation.

Sarah and I went back to Mason, OH (near Cinci) where her family lives and stayed with her parents for 5 days. We did all kinds of crazy stuff that week. It was cool cuz none of it was a “planned” event really, it just was a “Let’s wing it” type of life. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Friday we drove down there in the afternoon, had dinner with her family, then crashed for a while. Saturday we went to a friend’s birthday party, went swimming, then had a “Let’s meet Brent” party with a lot of Sarah’s friends from back home. Sunday was church at “The River” and then the heavens opened and I saw what God’s plan for my eternity looks like… We went to “CompUSA.” The computer Superstore…

Now I’ve never been to heaven, but I’m pretty sure it’s a lot like “CompUSA” only cheaper prices and slightly more inventory. We don’t have a store like that back home in Toledo… so I was drooling… Unfortunately we had to split pretty quick and I didn’t get time to shoplift… …. …. much…

ACTUALLY, we went back to Sarah’s house and then David (Sarah’s Dad) and I went to the driving range. Now you have to understand that I’ve never in my life hit a golf ball with a real club other than putt-putt… It was pretty freakin hilarious. One of my “drives” was a massive swing and I totally went under the ball, popped it up about 15 feet in the air and yelled, “I got it!” Then I ran out about 5 feet and caught the ball. Another shot I hit involved me swinging the club and smoking the ball… It soared a good couple hundred yards straight out and I remember thinking, “That sounded odd…” and I looked at this black thing flying through the air… The head to the golf club had broken off and was twirling a good 75 yards out. Luckilly it was a club David had bought for 10 bucks online and he was laughing pretty hard.

That night Sarah had made dinner for us. We all enjoyed that and called it a night. Monday, Sarah and I played 11 holes of disc golf down in Cinci with a guy from “The River.” We called it quits after 90 minutes of getting our butts kicked by a course that shouldn’t have ever been made… It was in the middle of a forest with no designated “Throw This Way” areas… It was pretty much “Pick your path through the trees” and it sucked. But we had fun playing none-the-less.

Then we went to a hobby store that one of Sarah’s bridesmaids works in. They sold discs for DIRT cheap and we got 40% off on top of that! I bought 48 bucks worth of discs for 22 bucks! SCORE!

Then on Tuesday Sarah and I went to King’s Island in Mason. We got in for free thanks to a friend who works there and had some tickets to spare. NOBODY was there! We walked on to every roller-coaster in the park and did a TON of rides and coasters, saw a magic show, ate lunch, took a helicopter tour of the park, and decided that after 5 hours we had nothing left to do. We called it a day and left. Then we met Sarah’s parents for dinner at the Cracker Barrel and went home.

Wednesday we came back to BG and Sarah moved into the dorm. Thursday I moved into the dorm. Friday we finally unpacked our rooms completely and settled in. Saturday and Sunday I worked my butt off at the Creek for the weekend services. Saturday night Luke, Ritz, and I played a round of disc golf in BG. I did alright and finished at 4 under par. Sunday night was a New Community service that filled up my night and then we went back to BG for some floor meetings and then worked a 12am-4am shift (Which is where I am now.)

I’m SOOOOOO tired. Only 32 more minutes until I’m done for the day!!! ::sigh:: OK…. Well, thanks to the wonders of a Mac Laptop with wireless internet ability… I can speak to you now and cruise the net while waiting for the clock to move. Classes start tomorrow…. ACK! K… Gotta go….

Mood: ::head dropping in sleepful splendor:: huh?

Super Crazy Mondo Plus Fun Work Week

So I’ve decided that working a 72 hour work week…. sucks.  Even if you love your job… and especially when you only get paid for 20 hours…

I’ve been installing the new computer network at CedarCreek.  40 machines…  It consists of 28 new dell desktops, 2 new dell high end desktops, 3 new dell laptops, 2 re-configured gateways, 3 re-configured e-machines, 1 re-configured Compaq Presario, 1 new Dell server, 3 networked copier/printers, and a LOT of nerd knowhow…

I have a little nerd knowhow, but luckilly there is a guy helping me who works for IBM as a lead IT dude and knows anything I don’t.  The whole project is supposed to get all the staff a GOOD working computer (as opposed to the pentium pro 120mhz, 40 meg ram beasts we had…), as well as have them all be standardized.  Most machines are the same physically which is a HUGE help to those fixing them (me) and quite different than the way it was before when a whole 3 were alike.

The really sad part is that despite my 72 hour work week, I’m still not even half way done!  I’m close to half way… But I’m trying to finish them all so I can go on a vacation to Sarah’s hometown with her and hang with her parents, meet her family friends, and relax after some crazy hours here.  So with T minus 4 days left, I’m on my way back to work!  WISH ME LUCK!

On the plus side, bad eating habits are leading me to a loss of weight (hopefully! ).

Mood:  Almost clinically insane…. give me a few more days.

Double Eagle?  NAH!

So we went disc golfing on Saturday night… and I threw some MONSTER drives…. and had this one hole that is a par 5…. My drive ended up a good 350-400 feet out… and then my second shot was a 204 foot hammer that hit the chains and went THROUGH them!  My disc then rolled so far away that it took two shots to put it in from there!  But yes, I hit the chains in two shots on a par 5…. I was pretty ticked that it took me a total of 4 to make it still…. BAH!  But either way we had a good time.  And I still finished with a 3 under par.

Drew, Cory, Luke, Adam, Ritz, and I all went after church.  Then we went to Slob Evans for dinner.  It was fun.  There were major storms all around the city on the radar and clouds covered the skies of BG, but somehow God kept the rain from smashing us and we played on…

In other news, I got a payment from Amazon.com in my bank account for 39.52 last week…. why?  I have NO CLUE!  I thought it was from this “Amazon Associates” program I’m in.  Whenever someone clicks on a link to a CD that I have on my site and actually purchases it, I get 5% of the sales price sent to me for the referral.  HOWEVER, when I checked the history on my account, NO ONE HAS EVER purchased anything via my site (not that I expected them to either, I just did it for the sake of coolness ).  Then I thought, “Hey, wasn’t I trying to sell a textbook on there in May?  Yeah… I checked that out and apparently some chick bought it July 11th…. and Amazon NEVER TOLD ME!  So maybe she paid me Amazon for it and they paid me…. I emailed her to ask if she still wanted it (not saying, “Hey did you pay already??!?!?” Cuz that’d be stupid…) and am waiting for a reply.  I told her that Amazon never contacted me about the sale and apologized for the delay…. and said that I totally understand if she already bought a copy elsewhere.  But hey, 40 bucks is always nice, so I hope she wants mine!

OK, off to the land of church/work.  Gotta be there in 25 minutes…  Spose I should put some pants on…. …. …. …. probably…

Mood:  Silly…. but like a viking…

Creative Juices Flowing:

So I was listening to the song “Hello” by Evanescence today and I thought about the lyrics a bit… it is very cool to hear a song about this subject.  I took a verse and combined it with a picture I found online… Then I worked some photoshop goodness into the text and came out with a pretty neat new background for my desktop!

The lyrics talk about walking through a situation and refusing to believe the truth.  We can put up our fake reality and pretend it is all fine when in reality we’re walking through a nightmare.  We pretend nothing is wrong with us… we’re not broken.  Instead we live out a lie and hide from the truth…. MAN that song is so cool.

So I found this graphic and thought of how cool it is to walk in the forest at night… It’s so peaceful and beautiful, yet we don’t realize how dangerous it can be.  Darkness hides evil…. threats… dangers…  And this image just matched the song.  Bingo.

If you want a copy of it you can get the full 1024×768 image here.  Let me know what you think!

Tonight Sarah and I found out that our small group leader was on vacation…. So we pretty much figured group was cancelled!  Instead we went to Maumee Bay State Park to watch the sunset, but the sun was behind trees and clouds and that pretty much killed the “coolness” effect.  Then we went with Luke and Sara to Mel-O-Creme and got some ice cream… After that we called it a night because Sarah had to get up for work in the morning.  So now I’m cruising the daily happenings of Xanga….

Oh yeah… If you’re hit numero 5,000 on my site… let me know!

Mood:  Slight stress, but overall good.

All hail CJ’s Party Store!

Man… I get no respect…. Tara so smoothly tells me that I SUCK for not posting in 4 days…. SO SORRY THAT I’M NOT HERE TO ENTERTAIN YOU!!!  BUT I’M BACK NOW!!!  I’LL DANCE LIKE THE MONKEY TO THE MUSIC FOR YOU… LOOK AT ME CLAP MY HANDS WITH CYMBALS… CLAP CLAP CLAP…. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW!??!?!?!

::sigh::  My life is SO hard… I tell ya…

ANYway, today was a day of…. a roadtrip.  Drew, Ray, Dugan, Luke, Sarah, and I (heh heh… I get a link too… ) all went up to Ann Arbor to play some disc golf courses in Hudson Metro Park.  The drive wasn’t terrible, but it was over an hour and change… We stopped at CJ’s Party Store which so calmly advertises “Over 2000 discs in stock.”  To a disc golfer, that’s known as a gold mine.  The stores around the Toledo area that sell discs (and I can think of 3) all pretty much suck for selection.  1 (MC Sporting Goods) only sells “starter packs” which consist of 3 discs that are all beginner discs… The other two are in Bowling Green and are “The Shed” and “The Falcon House” which both carry about 20-30 discs apiece.  So it’s pretty slim pickins round these parts…

So I bought Luke a disc in return for him buying me one a month back or so… and I bought Sarah a new one too (the “Dragon”) cuz she liked one of mine so I got her one of her own.  I also bought myself a new putter… and it freaking ROCKS!  It’s black with a highly rounded edge and a big green outlined “X” on the center of it as well as two sparkle silver logos on the top and bottom of the X.  When you throw it the silver glistens something fierce in the sunlight and when you putt with it upside-down it drops like a brick and flies straight as an arrow… My short game was amazing due to this marvel of DiscCraft engineering.  WOOT!

So after drooling all over the place, we left CJ’s and headed to the park.  We then started at a practice hole at which Dugan threw the maiden voyage of his newly purchased “Panther” disc… yeah… it was never found… After scouring the land for a good 20 minutes, Dugan called in the “LD” (Lost Disc) and we all moved on to start the day.

The first course was 24 holes of Ann Arbor goodness.  After the first 12 I was sitting nice at six under par… Then came the woods.  I finished the back 12 for a total score of zero.  Arg… Ah well…. easy come, easy go.  I just got frustrated when I threw bogey on 6 holes in a row!  Luke finished with an amazing -13 that round, but was not meant to dominate the master throwing of Drew Wood who put up a beastly -14!  Nice shooting!

We drove 10 miles back into town to eat lunch at Ponderosa Steakhouse and then went back to throw the other 24 hole course known only as “The Monster Course.”  This course is played by the pros of the PDGA.  In the end I finished it out with a -4.  Can’t complain bout that!  Luke said his first time on that course was a -1…. So hey…. I beat Luke for once!  WOOT AGAIN!

Sarah has improved her game a ton too… I’m proud of her.  She stuck with it and is now posting scores that rivaled some of us on a few holes!  She beat me on one or two even!

In the end we found one disc and lost three to the tree gnomes of Ann Arbor.  Great day… sunburns… disc golf… good scores… I can deal with that.   OK.  I’m dead tired now.  Must sleep.  I’ll be back soon, I’m sure.

Mood:  I feel happy!  I think I’ll go for a walk!