So what's going on over here? :D

Amazingly enough, it's been almost exactly two whole years... AGAIN... since I last posted. What is it with July? Hey, I know, let's do another big generic dump of updated info! I wasn't tired anyway. :D

State of the Rick 2012:

I quit my previously horribly underpaid job after 4.5 years over a year ago. Since then, I have been working for liquidweb.com as a Perl Programmer... hooray! Actual full benefits and insurance.... hooray! Paid time off.... hooray! Making more than double my previous job... hooray! Hooray all around is really what I'm getting at. :P

My 2008 VW Rabbit is now paid off as of a month or so ago. Just rounded 50K miles the other day on it. After starting my new job last year, first major purchase was my new road bike... a Trek 1.5... and boy do I love it. I've barely touched my mountain bike since getting it, and have over 300 miles ridden on it this summer so far. In the winter, also got a CycleOps Fluid 2 trainer so I can ride it indoors during the off-season... so lovely. :D

Dumped my ancient cell phone last year when I started my new job... got an HTC Thunderbolt... 4G LTE... and dumped Sprint for Verizon the day before Verizon discontinued their Unlimited data plan so I could get grandfathered in. It became much easier to justify a $70 phone bill when I started making double my previous wages. And now it's annoying being without my portable internet device... I mean, phone. Still don't really use it as a phone much.

Old iPod Touch was pretty much kicked to the curb immediately upon getting my TBolt... it sits on my desk with a dead battery most of the time these days. Doesn't help that when it became 2 years old, Apple pretty much dropped their support/updates for it... so nothing new as an incentive to keep using it for anything.

In other gadget news, got one of the 32G HP Touchpad's for $150 during their fire sale when they discontinued them. It is happily running Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich (CM9 Nightlies) instead of WebOS. Can't remember the last time I booted it into WebOS. Makes a nice portable computer in lieu of a laptop... and portable programming workstation even. I installed a nice text editor and perl, and bought a bluetooth keyboard and mouse off a friend... good to go.

Gaming... haven't been gaming much in general. Minecraft! Oh, Minecraft... you alluring sandbox game you. Still paying for WoW though I haven't played in 4 months at this point. Played Tera Online during beta, and am paying for that too monthly though I haven't played it in months either. Need to cancel these things. WoW Mists of Pandaria beta is progressing, though I got bored with it early on, and discouraged by the bugs keeping me from playing my main character or new Panda character both. When it comes out later this year, I'll probably play it though. So many other games I've bought but haven't played as well.

Biking! As mentioned, got my road bike last year. Already more than double my mileage from two years ago at this time of year. :P Our annual Kal-Haven Ride/South Haven Beach Weekend is going to be mid-August on the 17th-19th this year. Not sure who all is going this year though. My cousin and friend Ben got married and had a baby, so Ben may be out. Wes has had some medical issues and monetary issues and says he's probably out. Elyse who went many years has kind of dropped hanging out with the group entirely for the last year+. But sounds like Tony, Amanda, and myself still in. Still haven't done Biketemberfest yet, nor the PALM ride that I've watched go through multiple years now.

Kayak! Actually took it somewhere finally! For my birthday this year, my brother spent way too much and got me my kayak rack for my car so now I can throw both my kayak and bike on there. Last weekend, drove it up north to the Huron National Forest outside Oscoda, and spent 5.5 hours kayaking down the Au Sable River with friends. Great times! Definitely want to do it again! Camped in the National Forest at a primitive site as well. Watched a black bear ransack part of the camp Sunday morning around 5AM. Good stuff. :P

Oh geez, still at home. Car paid off though and actively looking at houses. Submitted loan app, and viewed a house last night that's really cool. Still a lot of people moving back home these days. Numerous people at work, cousins, friends. It's crazy, but definitely a buyer's market right now, so getting on it. And can easily get a nice size house with a mortgage/insurance/taxes payment lower than rent. But yeah, that's the major in progress right now.

Wow, it's been two years since the Conan Tour... damn you Father Time! Went to see Conan with Travis and Chris from work. As mentioned above, I got my new job a year and a month ago. What I forgot to mention was that Travis from my old workplace also went to liquidweb before I did back in April of last year. My brother was first though, and started at liquidweb in November 2010. And Chris followed Travis and I from the old place to LW in January 2012.

Working at LW is amazing by the way, so many awesome perks, and the environment is just great. I so love it there.

Never went to any Cons still. Did go see Dark Knight Rises with Travis and Jessica last night at midnight. I've been hanging out with a bunch of people from meetup.com groups lately, gaming, the camping/kayaking mentioned above, etc.

Not sure why I didn't mention relationship status in my last update two years ago. Still amazingly single going on a decade now. Did meet one woman from online, but it didn't go anywhere. On track for celibate monkhood I guess. Not that I want that to be the case, just seems to be. :D

And now it is 5:30 AM and going to be getting light out before long, so I will end this and get some sleep. I really would like to get back into updating something regularly, but since the LJ community feel really fell apart over the years, I'm leaning more towards running something on my own site. Anyone out there on my friends list still active and reading this? :D No need to comment on anything in the post, just curious who's alive. :)

People I Want to Smack #237

Anyone who, when filling out a profile on a social or personals site, puts down that they "like to have fun". Seriously? No shit Sherlock, that's why it's called fun... because you like to do it. It provides enjoyment, that's the definition. You might as well put "Fun things are fun!" On top of how redundant it is, it also has the added bonus of telling you almost nothing about the person. You have no idea what they find fun, or if it coincides with what you find fun. Maybe they like having fun like Hannibal Lecter. Who knows. I suppose on a base level it tells you that they're not a horribly depressed nihilist who finds enjoyment in nothing. So that's... something.

This concludes my rant on people I want to smack.

So it's been over two years since I last posted on here. Oops. I kind of feel bad about it, because it seems like I'm wasting my perm account. On the other hand, I'm kind of annoyed by some of the changes that have occurred.

First and foremost, while trying to catch up on my Friends page, I found it just cut off on April 29th of this year... and wouldn't let me browse back and further. After scouring the Support section, I found an article saying it's now limited to two weeks. TWO WEEKS?! So now, if I want to catch up on things in general, I can only catch up on the last two weeks, or else I have to manually view by date, or browse individual journals. Feh.

Second, when I logged in, it asked me if I wanted to be tracked everywhere I go. No thanks.

State of the Rick:

In other news, I've been at my current job for just past three years now. Still amazingly underpaid, no benefits, no insurance, no paid sick days, no paid vacation. I make less right now than I did as a Student Assistant for the State of Michigan a decade ago. So sad.

I have a 2008 VW Rabbit currently, I love it, it's fun to drive. In a couple weeks it'll be half paid off. Still using the same cell phone I got three years ago... the first one I've had and still have. I'd like something new with more features and data capability, but I can't justify spending $70 or more a month on a phone plan. It's annoys me that even the very basic 200 minutes which I don't even use fully costs like $35.

I do have my iPod Touch though, which I use all the time for so many things, least of which is usually music. The previous owner of wouldyouhitthis.com bought each of the high-level mods one when he sold the site to say thanks for our help. Sadly, the new owner has ruined the site and it's fallen to pieces since.

Heck, WoW only costs $13 a month, and I use it a lot more. :P Though kind of in a slump with that as well. Waiting for Cataclysm, and just kind of grinding rep, mounts, pets, etc in the meantime. Got my last two weapon skills to 400 just for kicks the other night. Got my Violet Proto-Drake finally.

But it's also on hold because it's biking season! I've ridden 120 miles so far this spring, or a little more as I believe I forgot my bike computer on at least one occasion. I definitely want to get in a lot more miles this year than last year. Planning our group ride of the Kal-Haven Trail for the weekend of July 9th. And maybe another go at it later in August. Would like to hit Biketemberfest up at Boyne Highlands this year too.

I bought a kayak a while back as well. I've only used it on the lake at home so far, but it's cool. I'd like to take it out some more as well... once the water gets warmer. It's a good upper body workout to balance the biking.

Sadly, I still live at home as well, though I've been looking at houses a bit since there's so many cheap ones around. It's sad, though I know so many people who are stuck in the same position with low-paying jobs and no way to afford anything else. Although that doesn't really make me feel much better when I'll be 30 next month. Sad.

Happier though, I'm going to see Conan at the Breslin Center in a week and half. Whoo! Was looking at hitting up Motor City Comic Con but I think I've going to pass on that one now. Been spending way too much money lately. Went out with a ton of people on Friday... co-worker Travis and his wife Jessica, co-worker Chris, my brother Nate, and former co-worker Zach. We went to Omi in East Lansing and had lots of awesome sushi. Expensive though. :P

I think I'm going to wrap this up for now though, and get back to work. :D