Rather impressive.

Last Christmas, I got a kindle. It's been awesome - I can carry around a whole library of books (including textbooks) in something that's smaller than a notebook, and weighs less than a pound. It's way nicer to have a choice of textbooks in my backpack all the time, instead of having to plan for which ones I'll need to bring with me to class.

There's only been one downside. It occasionally freezes. Usually rebooting it, and making sure it's fully charged does the trick. Not Saturday. It would freeze, reboot on it's own, then freeze again. Eventually it got so frozen, I couldn't even reboot it.

It was finally bad enough that I steeled myself to call amazon's customer service. If you're anything like me, customer service is the last resort. It's where you call if you want to spend hours listening to shitty easy listening jazz, followed by questions about whether or not your device is plugged in, making you power cycle it, or any of the freaking obvious things you tried to avoid calling them. Then you get to the point where none of those things work (because they didn't work before you called!) and the CSR is baffled, because that's not in the script. You're put back into jazz he'll while they transfer you to the next person who may have a different script to go off of, before finally throwing you back on hold to somebody who may be able to help you, if you're lucky.

So I prepared myself for this before calling amazon. I looked their number up on their website, and it had an option to sign in, and have them call me, so I wouldn't have to repeat my account information. The phone rang almost immediately, with a real human on the other side. They asked what was wrong, and transferred me to a different department. There was a brief 30 second interlude of baroque music, then another human. She immediately recognized the problem - apparently an older version of the leather cases (which I also got for Xmas) short out the kindles. She immediately sent out a new device, and credited my account for $35 for a new case - even though the one I had was purchased at target. Both packages were supposed to arrive at my house Wednesday, but I got the case cover today, and the tracking for my kindle says it should show up tomorrow - even faster than promised.

I am so shocked. I never have pleasant customer service experiences. This just makes me love my kindle (well, the new one) even more.

If there are any students reading this - I highly suggest you look into amazon prime. If you have a .edu address, you get a year of free 2 day shipping. Totally helpful for textbooks and stuff. (and I don't get paid for promoting that.)

Hopefully the formatting on this post is ok. This is the first time I've sent a blog post from my phone.

Nuke

As I'm sure everybody knows, I have a kitty problem.  Strays just seem to find me.  A couple months ago, a stray cat showed up on my porch.  I'm a sucker, so I gave him food.  He decided that since I fed him, and gave him skritches, that now we're bestest buds.  Our friend who was staying with us at the time randomly decided to call him "canoe kitty," and it's stuck.  I thought it was lame, so I've been calling him "nuke" for short. 

Nuke chases other cats out of my yard, reducing my crazy cat lady tendencies, and brings me presents.  He's not a normal cat, so he doesn't bring me normal cat things, like dead mice and hairballs.  No, he's awesome, so he spends the days combing the neighborhood, and leaves me these:

Do you recognize those?  Ok, does this help?

That's right.  I've got a crazy cat that spends all day hunting for popsicle wrappers, and leaving them piled on my porch.  If I throw them away, more appear in their place.  If I kick them off the porch onto the lawn, a couple hours later, they're all stacked nicely in front of my door again. 

The only problem I have with Nuke is that I'm at capacity, and cannot take in another cat.  I have my 3 cats, plus the mama from the litter that I could never find a home for.  I cannot take in a 5th cat.  And I HATE the idea of outdoor cats, but I don't want to take him to the shelter, since I'm afraid they'll just put him down.  So I have this stray cat, who I'm pretending isn't my cat, but I'm feeding him, he's vaccinated, and on flea control, and who I absolutely adore.  So, uh, anybody who's short some popsicle wrappers want a cat?



I guess this officially makes me a Californian.

I've been thinking for the past few days about what I want to write about next.  I've got a couple things planned, but nothing really worth writing about, or zany adventures have popped up until tonight. 
Because tonight, I was in a drive by. 

Earlier tonight, one of Tyler's coworkers from Guitar Center invited us to a party in Rialto she and her boyfriend were going to.  We went, and ended up hanging out until about 4:30 in the morning, playing pool and chatting.  A bunch of us went to leave, and me, Tyler, his coworker and her boyfriend all stood in the street by our cars chatting for about 20 minutes.  We were in what seemed like a quiet neighborhood, on a dead silent side street, about 5 houses down from a slightly bigger main street.  As we were talking, a car sped down the cross-street, squealing it's tires.  We all stopped and looked in that direction, stopped talking for a couple seconds, and took that as our cue to head out for the night.  Right as I was opening the door to my car, a second car drove by, and I heard a loud BLAM!  I ducked between my door and my car, and immediately felt silly and started to stand back up when BLAM! BLAM! and we heard the second car speed off.  I heard Tyler's co-worker's boyfried ask if we were ok, and after hearing that nobody was hurt, we all got the fuck out of there as quickly as possible. 

Tyler was standing in the middle of the street when it happened, so he had the best view.  He said he saw two muzzle flashes from the driver's-side window.  As we were driving home, his coworker texted him, and said she and her boyfriend had talked about it, and there was nothing on the street to shoot at, so she's convinced that we were the targets.  Some asshole decided to shoot at a group of random strangers for shits and giggles.  At least they had shitty aim. 

Blog stats

I was peeking at my page views, and it shows you what websites people use to access the blog.  Apparently, somebody was searching for "crossdressing car guys" to get here.  Sorry for the dissapointment guy!  
In completely unrelated news, I'm waiting for my stupid dog to go back to sleep, so I can paint his nails while he's passed out, and unable to protest.  I got one paw done before he woke up about an hour ago.  I just need to even it out with the other side, or it's going to drive me bonkers.  Why does my big bad male doberman need nail polish?  Two reasons. 

1.) I was busy doing a water marble on my nails, and was curious how a glitter red polish would look over black.  Instead of trying it out on my nails, or a black piece of paper, there was a set of already black nails sleeping next to me on the couch.  Unfortunately, those black nails belong to a light sleeper. 

2.) Tyler's been on tour for the past 2 weeks with his band, Alabaster Morgue.  This means that I've been bored out of my mind, coupled with the fact that the person who usually cautions me not to proceed with bad ideas is nowhere to be found.  Muahahaha. 

So waiting for the damn dog to fall asleep it is, 'cause whether he wants to or not, he will have red sparkly nails.  He can't stay awake forever. 

Bwahahaha!

I need this mug. That is all.

Something to mull over

So I've been reading on VIN (a veterinary-only website with message boards and tons of helpful informations) this summer, as I never really get a chance to during the school year.

I just finished reading a 900 post discussion on veterinary student debt, and man, was it depressing. Basically, it comes down to veterinarians who graduated with little to no debt thinking that those of us going through school are batshit to be going into the type of debt we are to pay for school. That, combined with the fact that Western opened a few years ago, one of Mexico's vet schools just got AVMA accredited, Utah and Arizona are trying to open up schools, and the economy crash, people are predicting that there's going to be a big glut of veterinarians without enough jobs for all of them. Basically, they're comparing the veterinary profession to the whole law school situation. Hopefully it all works out. The way I see it, even though vets don't make a whole lot, hopefully after taxes and student loan payments, I should be making about the same amount I would if I were working as a funeral director when I graduate. After a few years, my potential income should increase above what I could have if I had stayed in the funeral industry. Even if it evens out to about the same income, there's one big advantage to what I'm doing - I'm giving myself a career that I love, one where going to work is enjoyable. I wouldn't have had that otherwise.

Another thing I was reading about was some slimey behavior out of the AVMA. Apparently, an economist looked at the veterinary situation, and the number of students being cranked out, combined with student debt increases, and didn't paint a glowing picture of the potential outcome for the profession. So instead of taking it to heart, and trying to improve the situation, the AVMA tried to bury the study and prove him wrong. I'm already not a fan of the AVMA, since I feel like the only interests they really care about are their own - not the profession, not the animals - but this just makes me dislike them more. Apparently, in the human medical side of things, only about 20% of physicians are members of the AMA, while a much higher chunk (I'm thinking somewhere in the range of 80%) of vets are AVMA members. I wonder if in the not so distance future, if we'll see AVMA membership start to drop drastically, or if the benefits of cheap insurance through the AVMA PLIT/GHLIT branch are enough to keep dues-paying members to stick around.

I do know that when I graduate, that while I probably won't want to shell out for an AVMA membership, I will gladly pay the membership fees for VIN. They may not have the insurance services and lobbying branch the AVMA does, but through their website, they do far more to bring veterinarians together and promote discourse than the AVMA ever will.