Hey, I move into an office next Monday! I'm excited about having a DOOR. I haven't yet moved up to the level where I get a mahogany credenza, so I'll still have boring furniture. I will share a room with a massive PILLAR. Right in my damn window. Though, it does make it easy to create a darker environment within. Which I will do.

I am far too enthusiastic about personalization. My desktop at work runs windows, but people don't believe me when I say so. It's windows! I just personalized the hell out of it. (Less hell = better) Good luck finding the "start menu". Sure, I'd like a mac - I hear you can personalize those things beyond recognition, too. Mac users historically have spent hours tweaking things. There's a word for this: "Macdinking". I used to make fun of Ed when he would tweak a graphic for hours ("...sup, macdinker?"), but I'm conspicuously guilty of this behavior. Reserve a space and call it mine. In about 12 days it will be black and shiny, with Anthro accessories and EL lighting. And a bizarre cartoon dog head cookie jar, just to keep 'em guessing.

Being a permanent employee gives me decent health insurance. I'm not really happy with the idea of someone else helping me pay for things, so it feels weird. I only pay for part of the bill? Huh? I get free what? Why? But... It will help me save money for a house or a company or whatever other things I want to spend money on. And if I get hit by a blimp and run up an $800,000 hospital bill, it will limit my liability. Health insurance: you already knew what it was, but I am still going to act like it is something that H.R. just made up.

In other news, me and my autosloth went to Boeing surplus, where you can buy stuff that Boeing doesn't want anymore! Boeing likes to make things that fly through the air at hundreds of miles an hour, so you can find some unusual items at their garage sale: Lots of tungsten carbide end mills, sturdy cases with "delicate instrument" stenciled on the lid and dense lookup charts pasted inside, 900 pound blocks of 6/4 titanium...you could even buy a functioning "dimpler". I don't know what a "dimpler" is for, but it is as big as a VW bug and looks like it could poke some pretty mean holes in something (like 5" titanium plate). I wound up with one of those cases (for my Machinedrum) and a D-sub to BNC monitor cable. Grand total: $20.

As my entries get longer, I get the feeling I should be putting them in the online journal I have maintained for 8 years. Perhaps this will turn into a feed of that. The thing about having your own website versus a livejournal: it's more personalizable.