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My Dear Readers, I have some good news. For those who are unsatisfied with my choice of colors, as much as I want to say “screw off,” it’s in my nature to make people happy. In the next post down you’ll see a color scheme chooser. Browse through the choices, and make sure your favorite is the last one you visit. Your choice will be saved as a cookie (if you have that feature enabled) so that you’ll see the website in your choice of colors every time you visit.

If you’re still not satisfied… screw off and design your own. :>

Also, I posted something new to the “Books and Music” area on the sidebar over there. As I post there more, you can check out my previous postings in that section by activating the “Previously” link.

Download the music and enjoy.

Okay, I’ve been playing around with some color schemes. Tell me which ones you like, but don’t tell me which ones you don’t like. I might add some more, so check back later tonight or tomorrow.

Scheme 0
Scheme 1
Scheme 2
Scheme 3
Scheme 4
Scheme 5
Scheme 6

I’m not promising to do anything with them… but if you want to link to or keep coming back to a certain scheme page, you can do that.

Though April showers may come your way
They bring the flowers that bloom in May
So if it’s raining, have no regrets
Because it isn’t raining rain, you know
It’s raining violets

And when you see clouds upon the hills
You soon will see crowds of daffodils
So keep on looking for a bluebird and listening for his songs
Whenever April showers come along.

Well, looky at what we got here: Al Roker, aka. “America’s Favorite Weatherman (and Best Selling Author)”, fresh from his stint on television and obviously jealous of all the attention Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) gets, has his own online journal, complete with swag.

Here’s Christopher Reeve talking about cloning research. Great article. He’s right about everything, but the thing that hit me as the most powerful point is that as funding for scientific progress becomes smaller here and larger overseas, the best scientists will leave our country to set their shops up where they can get the most money for their research. Thereby, the President will continue his crusade to bring the mean intelligence of the United States down to his level (if it isn’t close enough already).

I miss the time late last year when Bush was talking to the American people on television every day, because you would know since he was busy being media-happy, he wasn’t busy trying to make policies.

UPDATE: It seems that the technology advancements our government would rather support comes in the form of shaving razors. (Hm. I could use one of those.)

For the most part I slept well last night. However, I briefly woke up at four o’clock in the morning, just in time to experience one of the worst headaches I ever had. I tried to ignore it for a while but it was just too painful. I forced myself out of bed, got some disgusting water from the Brita filter (can’t they filter out the bad taste?), swallowed two extra-strength Tylenol in one gulp without any fuss (and without chewing), got back in bed and contained my suffering for another forty-five minutes as I tried to fall back asleep.

Here’s what I need to get done some time today.

1. Update my resume. I need to redo my resume to include the work I’ve been doing over the past two months or so.

2. Send out invoices. Since I’m pretty much done on two clients’ websites, I need to make sure they pay me.

3. Research restaurants. I’m probably having dinner with my father tonight (he might have to cancel), and I have to find a decent place to eat in this town.

4. Do work type stuff. …which for today includes printing reports, putting them in binders, filing, and editing: fun, meaningful work. </sarcasm> Also, socialize with coworkers.

5. Make people happy. Okay, I’ll concede and offer differing background colors on this website so people who feel this is too yellow can choose their own. (I might not get to this today.) However, I still like it.

Once again, I’m back to bad sleeping patterns. After not being able to get to sleep Friday night, waking up much too late on Saturday, not sleeping Saturday night at all, and taking a five-hour name Sunday around noon-time, I found myself not being able to fall asleep last night. So I did what was best: stayed up the whole night.

Now I’m here at work at a quarter to nine in the morning. Hopefully tonight I will be tired enough (I know I am right now) to fall asleep at a decent hour.

If you see me online tonight, say to me, “Get thee to bed!”

You might think that I was up all night and all weekend redesigning this site. Not true—this layout was ready to go at least a week ago. Check out the cool stuff on the sidebar.

One thing I did discover while awake in the wee hours of the morning is the new Alexa search. It combines the features of amazon.com with the search capabilities of Google, resulting in software that searches for the terms you provide, and gives you the results with screenshot thumbnails, contact information and reviews. It’s still in the testing and information-gathering stage, but it promises to be the next-generation cool web tool.

I found out some details about the position they plan on offering me here. My title would be Senior Administrative Assistant and my salary offered (mentioned to me by an HR person “off the record”) will be… less than I expected. I’ve started doing a little salary research, and I’ve found that the average salary for an Administrative Assistant (without the Senior bit) in my area is $5,000 more than what they are offering me.

So I plan to do some research and give a good argument as to why I deserve more money.

But the thing is that I don’t really want to be a Senior Administrative Assistant. In order to move to another job at this company, I’d have to stay in this first one for a year. So… I guess I’ll go through all the steps, negotiate a higher salary if I can, continue freelance web design on the side, and learn everything I can about .NET. I’m not going to wait a year in an Admin Assistant job with just the chance something better will come up at this company.

My boss owns a couple of businesses on the side… makes lots of money. I have to start hanging around him more.

Music in public schools is still a cause that’s attracting famous… creatures… to Washington to speak up. Hopefully it’ll be effective, but either way, it’s an interesting publicity stunt.