God Doesn't Want Brian to Have iTunes

i believe i'm cursed when it comes to iTunes.

since 2003, my iTunes library - my sole source of jams (excluding my records) since most of my CDs were stolen in a heist back in november of that same year - has consistently been plagued with organizational and logistical problems. first, there was the Great File Corruption Scare of 2004, that led to a solid 1/3 of my songs starting half-way through the song that preceded it. following this, and a massive overhaul and re-importation of all my old music, came the epic Song Duplication Disaster of 2006, which massacred countless hours that could've been spent doing something far less nerdical and many times more productive. it didn't help that i was operating my library with a desktop that had the computing power of a cardboard box... but let's not get off topic, here.

it wasn't until 2008, when yours truly put on his daddy pants, destroyed the troublesome library all together, and rebuilt it from the ground up - jam by jam - that i was finally able to restore order to my iTunes.

...or at least i thought.

as you all know (and i'm sure deeply, deeply care about), i bought a flashy, new macbook pro the first week of august. at the time, i realized that i'd need to buy a new chord in order to utilize my external harddrive (where my trusty iTunes - polished upand ready to rock and roll - was waiting patiently.) a couple days after buying my new computer, i ordered an adapter to convert my 400 firewire cable to an 800 firewire port, which is standard with the macbook pro.

well, the adapter showed up, sure enough, about a week later... and something didn't work. my computer wasn't registering the external HD at all (of course).

that sucks, says brian, hopefully its not the laptop. a quick venture to the apple store (which i've already told you about) proved that it was, in fact, the adapter... which was about the best, possible outcome i could've hoped for in the situation. so, after obtaining a refund from amazon, i ordered a cable instead... and my iTunes library patiently waited for jam optimization in my unused, neglected HD.

three weeks later. USPS and my apartment complex have, collectively, lost the package. no one knows where it is. God, recognizing my devotion to the sacrilegious idol that is iTunes, intervened and smote the package while it was in transit to my house. that's the only thing that could've possibly happened to it. He realized, in his infinite wisdom, that i was straying from my duties as a christian, and that i was placing mp3 playlists before Him... or something. i don't know. its been three weeks and i still can't access my music.

i hate so many things right now i don't even know where to begin...

... and i just now realized that this is probably the nerdiest, f***ing entry i've ever posted. holy crap.

- iHough

Here We Go Again...

well... summer's over.

'time for yours truly to tear off his muslim man dress and strap on his grown-up pants (which, surprisingly, still fit despite two or three months of loafing around the house like a trailer park occupant).

not that i know many trailer park dwellers working on their master's. still...

anyway, my reason for typin' is this, friends: i officially started back and my school today. no, not with kids (that's next monday). just with staff and faculty. we had a half-hour 'welcome back'/staff meeting, and then were excused to our rooms to begin (or, in my fortunate case, continue) setting up our rooms. as you already know, i was smart this year (yes, me) and returned to the school a week earlier than the crowded educational masses in order to call dibs on all the sweet (i.e. ungraffitied) desks, tables, and book cases. it was a good thing, too: this place was a friggin' mad house today. i'm so glad i wasn't one of our new teachers (we have about a dozen or so) coming into all of this - nothing was up and running for them, and folks were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

chickens, by the way, do run about with their heads cut off... but its not as comical as you might think. they fall a lot.

anyway... i have a parent open house on wednesday that should be interesting. my biggest turnout for parents is about 2/5 of the total parent population for my student roster - adults don't seem to care about their kids' education down here. who knows. it sucks, but its how crap works down here. i'll keep you posted with more hilarious banter from this first week back (what i can disclose publicly, at any rate) - stay tuned.

warmest regards,

mr. hough

HotWheels

well readers, after a long, long scavenger hunt through the bowels of central florida car dealerships, the houghs finally picked themselves up a (sort of) new car.

me, i already have a car. it may look like a clown car, but it gets me from point A to point B with only a smidget of gasoline. nay, this new additional to our automotive fleet is for kristina, who has driven the same 1998 chevy malibu since the cretaceous period.

so yesterday - after following after several possible vehicles and getting her hopes up more than she would've liked, the mrs. finally found a horseless carriage to her liking: a 2007 chevy uplander (yes, much like the one we told you about before), with 39,000 miles and enough space to pack in a whole litter of hobbit-footed hough sprouts.

i was a little bummed the damn thing didn't have a DVD player in the ceiling like the last uplander did, nor missiles that flipped out from the sides

when Cobra draws near... but the interior is a lot nicer than some of the other vehicles we had smurfed out (with the exception of a couple tears in the upholstery in one of the middle seats). but, as we're reaching that time of year when we can no longer rely on one vehicle to get ourselves to work each morning, we had to forego that elusive dream car and pick up something that was 'very good' instead of 'excellent.'

so there you have it. we bought a new used car. all we need now are some bitchin' flame decals down the side and a couple yosemite sam mud flaps for the tires and we're ready to rock and roll.

vrrrooooommm,

- brian

Vans, Firewire, Scrapes and Tooths

fans, let me tell you this much right off the bat: the last 48 hours have been crappy as all hell.

allow me to explain...

about a week ago, the brakes went out in kris' chevy malibu... and no, not in a wacky, '80s movie style, either. no rockin' tunes in the background, no hilarious close-calls or teenagers screaming at the top of their lungs. nay, dear readers, instead it was the really, really expensive style of brake failure: after nine plus years of diligent service, the malibu's brake line had completed rusted out. too many michigan winters and tropical what-have-you - it was finally time to tie ol' yellar to the tree outback (so to speak). seeing as the houghs are somewhat of a procrastinating lot, we let the malibu sit in the drive for about a week before we realized, "oh crap, brian has to go back to work soon, and kris will need her own car to take the kid to daycare, go to work, tackle chick stuff, etc." so now we get to deal with it.

cowabunga.

and so, over the course of the last 48 hours, we have scoured central florida looking for a new car ('new' in the sense that we had not previously owned the vehicle ourselves, mind you). it has been a trying, trying ordeal, and i am officially 'funned out' with the whole affair in general. i have seen more sleazy car salesmen in the last two days to last a life time (four salesmen = one lifetime in my book). as this is kris' car, i'm pretty much offering my two cents on what vehicles to consider, but, as the 'pretty nice guy' that i am, letting her make the final call. she tends to look at things like 'safety ratings' and 'existing warranties,' while i tend to look for 'mp3 CD option' and 'leather interior.'

to each their own. she's checking out a van tomorrow morning, so hopefully the accursed 2009 new car fiasco will have run its course by sundown tomorrow. we'll see.

in other news, the cannonball sprouted her first tooth this afternoon. huzzah. her bottom right-center one. 'big whoop,' you might say, but this kid's fourteen months old. sure, she can gum her way through a tin can easily enough, but we've nevertheless been kinda holding out for that whole 'teeth' thing. now that its here, i'm a little more at ease. toothless chicks worry me.

in yet other news, i've been having difficulty with my new MacBook Pro: the firewire drive on it is 800 (as are all new Mac models), but all the old external hard drives i own are 400. i bought a converter so i can, oh, listen to music and upload my photo libraries onto the stupid thing, but the piece of crap doesn't even work. this means, dear readers, that i have to a.) return some piece of garbage to amazon and suck up the shipping cost, and b.) venture forth into the local shopping mall and head into the neighborhood nerd mecca (i.e. apple store) and have a few geeks take a gander at my compatibility problem... which should be loads of fun.

my biggest issue with this, of course, is that every damn time i walk into an apple store and talk to one of their 'techs,' i feel like a caveman... which is absolutely ridiculous, because i somewhat know what i'm talking about when it comes to computers. more than likely, i think its not my supposed 'normie' status that's in question, but instead the people that work at these apple stores. they are completely insane. they spend way too much time sitting in front of a screen and not nearly enough time enjoying the world of good ol' fashioned analog (books, records, trees, and people).

lastly, i began moving all my crap back into my classroom today (fun), and, at high noon in the hottest month of the year down here in florida, i had my ass handed to me. moving furniture across campus, slinging around cardboard boxes full of worn-out textbooks, and stacking chairs in 100 degree heat is hell on earth, folks. i've got more exposed wounds on me right now than i did when i was taking that controversial malaria medication my first year in africa. every muscle in my body (both of them) ache, and i seriously feel like i've been in a car accident.

in conclusion, i am totally looking forward to tomorrow (not). three grad school papers due, a new car (er, van) fiasco to figure out, hours and hours of more classroom muscle work in this horrible, humid august heat, and a computer problem that can only be remedied with the help of a crack team of elitest iNerds.

man, you are straight up jealous of my life, aren't you...

sad,

- brian

F*** Sharks.

as shark week comes to yet another close, i'd like to look back for a moment and reiterate something that i've sworn for many, many years:

i hate sharks.

any animal that could possibly kill me, i'm obviously going to have a problem with. sharks? not too fond of 'em. granted, i can stomach that underwater conveyer belt in a tube that they have at sea world, where sharks are swimming all around you. those are four foot long, bottom feeding sharks... the kind that if you looked at it the wrong way it'd turn on its tail and flee.

last time i was at sea world, i didn't catch any great whites, tigers, bulls, or hammerheads... and for good, sound reason: those things will straight up murder your ass.

i don't understand why people swim so far out into the ocean. if i knew that somewhere - somewhere - in the ocean, there were giant fish that could strike from out of nowhere and swim off with one of my appendages in its mouth, i would not go that far into the water. if i knew a man-eating shark was spotted off the coast of england, for Christ's sake, and i was splashin' about in the water at cocoa beach, FL. like a jackass, i would still not go beyond the point where i could touch the bottom with my toes.

do you know how long it takes a great white shark to get from england to cocoa beach? you don't? well i bet its not that long - sharks swim super fast, and they have lots of teeth, and they will kill you.

me? i'm staying out of ocean water that rises above my friggin' waist. screw sharks. i'll watch them annually on the discovery channel - because, as we all know, shark week is visual heroin and no one can say 'no' to shark week - but i will not give them the time of day in person. no way.

i'll stay in the kiddie pool, thank you very much.

- brian

A Beautiful Day

have a great and beautiful day, everybody!

...i know i will.

oi,

- brian

Gadgetry and Finance: Brian Saves the Day

howdy.

as i've stated before, readers, on occasion, bein' a teacher does have its perks. summers off, weekends and holidays off, and quasi-adorable license plates to name a few.

another perk for educators, as it would seem, is $100 off a computer for the upcoming school year... along with a free iPod of your choice.

my old laptop is an iBook G3, folks (for those of you who have absolutely no idea what that means, its comparable to yours truly puttin' around in a 1993 plymouth voyager made up of three or four different body frame parts). kris' computer, while still operable, is getting up there in age as well, and is beginning to run slow with age. taking all of this into consideration, i decided that with my part of our 2010 tax refund, we were going to buy ourselves a new, fancy MacBook Pro laptop... thereby bringing us back into the 21st century.

you see, kris and i came up with a system a couple years ago in regards to tax season. generally, i keep about one-third of the tax money and blow it on new toys for around the house, where as kris keeps the remaining two-thirds of our refund money and puts it to more responsible ends - paying off debt, adding to savings, blah blah blah. last year, for example, we got ourselves new cell phones, a big ol' HDTV, and an iPod classic (for yours truly)... and kris put the rest into various accounts and other such boring nonsense. so the plan was to be for the 2010 tax season.

that was before i devised a most ingenious plan towards the purchasing of a new computer.

as you already know, i'm not only a teacher, but i'm also a student (and not a bad one at that either, surprisingly enough). as a student, i had to take out ass-loads of student loans in order to fund my master's degree, and all that money had been sitting dormant in one of our random savings accounts all these long months. and so, i decided that since that money wasn't going anywhere, and the time for obtaining my educational discount on a new computer (and free iPod) was running out, that i'd just go ahead and buy the damn thing now and use my third of the tax money to refund the savings account.

and so, dear readers, i got myself a new MacBook Pro, and i gave the Mrs. an iPod Touch for her birthday. not a shabby bit of financin', if i do say so myself.

Jesus, i should write a book on this crap...

- brian