edward fox’s reality

I left voice mails for two different people yesterday. I’m 100% sure they’ll (a) never read this blog entry and (b) never know I was talking about them. I left brief messages, because we all know that most of the time, voice mails are ignored– they’re now treated like a missed call from an unknown number. Who cares? It’s just a voice mail, most of us say.

I’m one of the few that actually will check their voice mail as soon as possible. I can usually answer my phone anywhere, whether at work, home, or school, depending on how important the lecture is… but sometimes, I just can’t answer fast enough. Thankfully, there’s such an invention as a voice mail, but most people don’t even bother to leave me voice mails. I guess they assume that I received their missed call notification, even though I may not have had service at that time, which may have explained why I didn’t answer the call…

…but perhaps we didn’t think about that.

On top of that, I love people’s surprised reactions when they don’t even realize that they have a voice mail, while others blatantly will tell you, “Oh, I never check my voice mail.” OK, so disable it. You can do that? Seriously? Why yes, you can! It’s pretty easy. Dial “611″ from your phone (without the quotes, heh) and ask for it to be removed. Simple as pie!

But why would anyone want to do that? Perhaps that message was important, or maybe it could be saved to blackmail one of your exes! Who knows? The possibilities are genuinely endless, but without a truly plausible scenario for a voice mail (or so it seems), the reason for voice mails on cell phones is depleting. Now, it seems, text messages are taking extreme precedence over the need for voice mail. With text messages, they usually will receive it within a few seconds (unless they are in a poor coverage area). I know with Sprint, sometimes it would take up to an hour to receive a text. GSM networks (T-Mo, Cingular, etc.) are just better with this kind of thing.

But I don’t think that text messages should replace voice mails completely as far as importance. I think you should check your voice mail… it’s just a respect thing. Wouldn’t you want someone to do that for you?

It seems like we’re all losing respect…

…but that’s for another blog.

CHECK Yo’ MESSAGES.

There had been hacks before so that people could download artist’s tracks from MySpace even though the ubiquitous “Download” link was nowhere to be found. Now, MySpaceValley.com offers a solution for those of us who wish to violate copyright laws in the United States and other countries. Without further ado, here’s the link:

http://myspacevalley.com/mp3dl.php

It’s really simple. All you need is the URL of the artist’s page, and then you will be able to select the MP3’s that artist has available for download. I have heard this site’s script works with Windows computers running Internet Explorer and Mozilla, but failed on Mac OS X systems running Safari. Hopefully it works for you!

Happy pirating. Kidding!

Note: I do not condone the illegal transmission of copyrighted material. Provided for educational purposes only and should only be used on files that you are able to download through the regular “Download” link method.

Here’s some randomly exciting news. My last post was the 400th one I’ve posted. This is number 401. Wow. That’s a hell of a lot of hours of sitting, typing things that no one reads. Ah, I kid. I know people read this, more often than I expect them to. Thanks for being a reader of my blog. I look forward to writing many more entries.

It turned three years old on March 4th of this year. How exciting! Congratulations to my blog for surviving so many years of confusion, server switches, redesigns, and, of course, me! There are plenty of other things going on in my life that I’m not sure you’d care to hear about, but I thought I would stop and give my server the belated respect it deserves… Happy B-Day, Mr. Blog programming code… stuff. We love you!

-Frederick

P.S. This is a pathetic blog entry. =)

I was told I had a great personality but they decided to seek someone else for the position to be filled. That’s why I’m never too confident when it comes to employment… I’m sure something else will come up soon. Now to scrounge around for food a little more.

All this “new” talk probably makes me sound a tad ungrateful. In reality, however, it’s just the opposite. You’ll see shortly, but first a word from our sponsors.

YOU CAN BE APPROVED TODAY! Do you have $199?! Do you want $3,000 Minimum for your Trade?! Well, then….oh wait. I don’t have advertisements. I pay for my web site with my own money. Back to the blog entry.

I’m not going to be too forward, but I have been offered a job interview at a company. Statistically speaking, I have a 50% chance of getting into the job. It’s a small 10-person company that consults with individuals and small businesses for computer / technology repair. I would be doing clerical work, primarily with Microsoft Excel.

Realistically speaking, however, I will have about a 95% chance of scoring the job due to my scores on the exams. Pretty sweet.

So… I’m going to do something special for all of my friends and you’re all invited… but I’m not going to tell you what it is until I actually get the job, because that’d be a huuuuge disappointment for all of us. I am sure I will, but sometimes, surprises are nice, right?! I’ll post a blog within 30 minutes of finding out I got the job. I should know by 12PM on Friday morning. WISH ME LUCK!

In case you haven’t noticed, I actually put together a new MySpace layout. It wasn’t made entirely from scratch, but it’s a design I really like and plan to stick with for a while. It’s very clean, simple, and neat, and I imagine I will be putting and changing the background to have a picture to suit my needs, moods, and feelings. Check it out for yourself: http://myspace.com/drnx …

I’m also trying to lose the weight I put on since mid-2005 and trying to go even lower than that. It’s another 40 lbs. till I’m where I want to be, but at 10 lbs. a month, I’ll be more than set for the trip to California I’m planning with my friends this summer. Want to come along?! I’ll take as many people as two or three cars can hold. I’m getting a new car (hopefully a Gallant Ralliart… or a Jetta) so people won’t feel so squished the way they do in my present vehicle, a 2005 Nissan Sentra 1.8S.

Granted, it is just a MySpace, and it may say simple things, but these simple things mean more to me than you can imagine. A lot of things and people mean more to me than you can imagine. But that’s all for another blog entry. Take care everyone, and enjoy my new MySpace.

P.S. I’ll be keeping everyone updated at least once a month on how my weight loss is going. I’m not going to say how much I weigh now, nor my target weight, until I’m within 10 lbs. of it!

P.P.S. My trip to Cali and Vegas will have a much more thorough blog entry regarding unofficial dates, things to do, places to see, etc. And yes, we are definitely drinking, and yes, we are definitely gambling. K THNX.

This is a “Trash Entry“. It’s entirely useless and serves no value, but is moderately informative, so I’ll let it live so you can suffer through a pointless ensemble of complaints with information twisted into the end.

Rated “T” for Trash.

As you have most inevitably been informed by your co-worker, friend, teacher(s), bosses, family members, news, news, and … oh, the news, too, there is a WINTER BLAST headed STRAIGHT FOR US! Head for the hills, head for your cars, head for your homes! Old Man Winter is a-comin’ and he’s a-comin’ for you.

But seriously… How far is too far? How whiny is too whiny? How freaked out is too… freaked out? When will these rhetorical questions stop and the madness begin?!!?!??!?!…….. Uhm… Let’s see…

Now.

This is one of those blog entries where I act like a friendly moron, so if you were looking for something intelligent/insightful/other fancy “I” words here… look forward to my next blog entry, arriving tomorrow.

I was amazed that in most of my classes, at least 5-25% of the class time was taken up by talking about how cold and dangerous it’s going to be, as if we’re all newborns just emerging from the womb, just being exposed to the harshness of the elements of nature. Do we really need to be reminded so thoroughly, by everyone? People act like it’s the Apocalypse.

I am being a bit sarcastic, though. In Texas, it’s rare that we have to face such harsh, cold temperatures. To some, a high of 35F is just another day of winter, particularly those up North.

The cold weather does pose a number of unidentified-by-most threats that you should consider. Be careful with the roadways. Tomorrow isn’t much of an issue, but Friday will be. Also, make sure your pipes are all patched up and faucets near windows should be left to drip slowly… but you already know this, I’m sure…

That’s all for now…

So I attempted to do an abstract-yet-related subject for this blog entry. Was it successful?… Find out, by the end of the entry.
New York was rather interesting. However, I’m going to simply fill everyone on in what happened during the weekend, and in the past, that I didn’t know about until after the fact.

First, let’s start with the fact that my car was broken into on the North Lake College campus of the DCCCD schools in Irving, TX. Was that too descriptive? My precious Escort X50 was stolen I got it at a great price since I had an employee discount when I worked at Best Buy, and I did not take a picture of the serial number. I’m doing my own investigating which will pursue a number of different routes a thief could take with his newly acquired merchandise. I figure I have about a 40% chance of getting back my radar detector. I already replaced my window. I was going to take pictures of it, but forgot.

So that was the tragedy that happened this weekend, but apparently, there was another tragedy that happened a few months ago.

A shooting occurred south of Rock Island (what I call “Zone 1″ of 5 “wealth zones” in Irving, with “1″ being the least gross income per capita, and “5″ being the most) at an apartment complex. My friend apparently knew the guy who shot someone, but it was unintentional. He was shooting his gun into the air and somehow managed to shoot and kill someone else in the apartment complex. The complex is now shut down… Amazing. Makes me wonder, the whole, 6 degrees thing. You are connected to everyone by only six steps… really makes you wonder. Really.

This entry has nothing to do with New York, or my life, really, or to San Marcos. It was just one of those fillers. An entry with lots of shiny pictures [and such] will follow within a few days. I have a week’s worth of schoolwork to catch up on now…

Rated TV-14 for Mature Language.

[Random Thought: When are they coming out with a “Chicken Soup for the Profane Soul”? That would be killer in sales, I think. Moving on…]

If you want to know what actually happened to 183 and don’t care to read my humorous introduction, find the “Start Editorial” mark.

Check out these numbers (in no particular order):

• 86
• 183
• 114
• 482
• 1382
• 12
• 30
• 75
• 356
• 35
• 348
• 354
• 635
• 33
• 289

What am I talking about? The latest combos at McDonald’s? The number of tracks I have from each of my favorite artists? None of the above. I was on every one of these highways today, and it was hell–even more than usual, but there’s an explanation for that. Half of them have alternate names.

Highways are hell, regardless of when over-sized and wide loads run into them. Some of them change names multiple times… Some of them are confusing as hell. For example, E. Northwest Hwy. Well, good luck trying to figure out which direction that fucking thing runs. Belt Line Rd. Oh goodness, the ever-prevalent Belt Line Rd. This bitch runs in every possible direction, and with aliases at its most southern point! This thing is east, west, north (with a different name), south, north, south (yes, twice), and then a four-digit road, then west. What the hell? Then I saw, “482: Storey Ln.” I thought, well, I only know of Story Rd., here in Irving, but 482 sounds familiar… Why didn’t they just say “Spur 482″ like they do on the other side, coming from 183 or Loop 12? No, the name is changed, and for about 30 feet, there’s a road called Storey Ln., made just to disorient you. Some highways are just in rush hour mode from sunrise to sunset. I-35. Need I say more?

I could go on and on about how much longer it took me to drive to meet up with my friend Kathryn for lunch (she works at Firewheel Shopping Center) and get back home than it did for me to actually find a good suit, a few good shirts, and some gorgeous ties. I could also go on by saying I had to pay a toll, three times, and the third time, I had thrown my change and it said I still owed 10 cents, and I reached down and found all I had–besides pennies– a quarter! Oh, what luck, I am saved! Right as I threw the quarter in, it said I already had enough money inserted and the light turned green and turned red before I entirely made it through. The car behind me just tailed my ass and didn’t pay at all. Irony, Irony, Irony. Everywhere.

I feel deep sympathy for this highway. All the shit that’s been exploded onto it, placed on it, run into it, time after time… Not to mention cars falling off of this highway in front of me, too. All of these things lead me to believe two things: 1) God hates Highway 183 (aka Airport Freeway, then Highway 10 if you’re heading West on it towards Euless), and 2) it’s time for an editorial since a majority of us didn’t seem to know why traffic was so painfully slow today, and heavy wherever it wasn’t necessarily moving at the rate of a tortoise.

—Start Editorial—

360 DEGREES OF CHAOS ON 183
By: Frederick Szczepanski

“One lane is now open…heading eastbound on the 183,” was the last I heard of the catastrophic blow to a bridge of 183, the most recent report on the radio station KRLD 1080, on a story which I was following since noon today. It was 7PM and I was just making it home. I was on my way to South Irving, near I-30 territory, coming from Fire Wheel Shopping Center.

WFAA’s reported stated “Highway 183 was closed in both directions near Texas Stadium Thursday afternoon after a truck carrying oil well drilling equipment struck an overpass over Loop 12.” Loop 12 North was closed off at this point.

Making the way around the metroplex, particularly through Irving, Dallas, and surrounding locales was quite challenging for many commuters. The Texas Dept. of Transportation, or TxDOT, urged commuters to avoid the area if at all possible.

A definite date and time for repair of the bridge, entirely, was unknown, but sources indicate that 183 should be open for business, but only at 66% capacity eastbound at last check. All roadways should be cleared and accessible by midnight.

Star-Telegram indicated, “Texas 183, or the Airport Freeway, was closed at two spots — eastbound at Carl Road and westbound at the 183/114 split — to allow TxDOT crews to work on the bridge. The eastbound frontage road of Texas 183 was still passable.”

The main cause for delay, aside from visible structural damage to multiple rungs beneath the bridge, was also the incredible amount of debris the collision caused.

Highway 183 has been involved in the press multiple times this past year in relation to accidents.

In May 2006, a gas tanker collided with the highway’s bridge while heading Northbound on MacArthur and exploded, killing the driver. A $636,000 emergency contract with Gibson & Associates emergency repair contract was drawn up shortly after. The bridge was fixed within days of the May 28th contract and accident. Parts of the bridge which were not damaged physically can still be seen covered with black smoke that originally came from the tanker’s gas contents.

In early August this year, a car made a sharp turn and lane change and ended up upside down on the southbound side of Story Rd., having fallen off from Highway 183. Paramedics and fire trucks were called to the scene for injuries, but all parties involved survived. The vehicle did not.
—End Editorial—

This is pretty unrelated, but I just had to throw this in. Seems like an old grandmother (is there any other kind?) decided to divert attention away, briefly, from the 183 mess to herself as she drove into a Post Office in Duncanville a few hours after the spotlight roadway event of the day.

Lesson of the day? Sometimes, Sprint’s location service doesn’t always work, and sometimes, roads are just plain vicious. And so are the drivers.