BIONIC

Believe
It
Or
Not
I
Care

It's a MTC (Management Training Corporation) slogan I sometimes see on signs or pins on staff members. I just think that it sounds like the kind of thing to say to someone you've already fucked-up with and have given them no reason to actually believe you (and still haven't given them any reason to actually believe you.)

Meanwhile, I got to tour the Shriver Job Corps Center in Devens, MA on Wednesday. Amazing how much quieter the place felt with only 300+ instead of 500+ students and how the lunch food is something I can actually call food instead of a food-like substance.

This is the place I had wanted to go to because I wanted to get my basic and advanced training done at the same center, but there was a waiting list and I wanted to be in Job Corps before I turned 25 so I wouldn't have to get an exemption to the upper-age limit on the basis of disability.

Back at Westover, there's now a Zumba class on Tuesdays, but I wasn't able to go to the first class because I had signed-up for the movie trip. I got to enjoy "Where the Wild Things Are" instead. Wednesdays are now Jeet Kune Do days, fortunately at a later time than the semi-existent Gay-Straight Alliance.

There's a reward system in place to try to get us to have incentive to do good and wear our uniforms during the training day according to policy. The idea is to earn merit points and then use them at the school store, The Eagle's Nest, to get items. Easiest way to earn merit points is the, Good Appearance Award. You get a paper from the CSIO office and get one signature each training day from a staff member to say you were in uniform. When you collect 20 signatures, you turn the paper into CSIO and get 2000 merit points.

When I first came here, it was mentioned that sometimes you can special order items not already in the Eagles Nest. It wasn't until I was asking questions Wednesday afternoon that I found-out there's normally a limit that the item can't exceed $200 in value. We'll see if I can still get my netbook request or not. If not, I'm going to have see if I can American Express gift cards instead and then just get the netbook or not.

I think it was Tuesday that I had a meeting with H.R. and I'm going to wait to make a separate entry to detail that.

Thursday through Friday. . .

my room mate got me worried. I know her work-based learning job at Yankee Candle (we still see no connection between making candles and the office administration training she sometimes does) doesn't get-off till 10 PM and she's returned by 10:45. So when I woke-up around 3:11 AM and couldn't tell the R.A. that was doing room checks at the same time where my room mate was, I was worried. After the training day I called her.

BRO! Remember to call me and tell me you're taking a few days off instead of worrying me! Since you were showing me that you were spitting-up black the previous time I saw you, I was wondering if you had to go to the hospital or something.

Thank-you.

After getting to Newton, going to Chinatown for turnip cake with scrambled egg (don't love it, but something feels like comfort food), and Cosi in Kendall to use the restroom/get coffee, I got to go the MIT Anime Club for my first time with l33tminion.

First anime was the beginning of Nyan Koi!. The premise is a high school student with an allergy to cats who lives with his cat fanatic mother, sister, and cat has a crush on a cat-loving girl from a dog-centric family finds himself with a curse to understand what cats are saying due to accidentally beheading a statue of a cat named Jinpei who saved the village from danger and if he doesn't do 100 good deeds for cats, he will turn into one. Funny as fuck.

Second anime was the beginning of another comedy called Moyashimon (Tales of Agriculture) that had a premise of a first-year university student at an agricultural school in Tokyo who can see microbes without the aid of a microscope.

Third anime was Darker Than Black and since the series was already in progress, I had to try to pick-up what was happening. I at least get the idea that there are these things called gates appearing around the world and that a new religious order has formed around them. Meanwhile other people see the religious order as a threat and there's an organization called the Syndicate attempting to take them down. BTW, the religious order has a separate kind of being/human called contractors that do have deadly powers.

Afterwards I slept-over at The Haunted Grotto.

Buy, Buy Money, Off to MicroCenter You'll Go

(previously posted in alt.gothic)

Recently I've received a check from my former employer for the pension I
had earned with them since I didn't have the proper kind of account for
them to just roll it into. I've also earned over 10,000 merit points at
my training program.

(Earn merit points, "buy" items at the school
store with them, you can special order some items. Easiest way to earn
them is the good appearance award. Get one signature-a-day to say you
were dressed according to the dress code till you have 20 signatures and
turn in the sheet for 2,000 points.)

Originally I was going to get a PS3, but thought better of it since it's
not like I have the time to even play my XBox 360 that I bought-off of
my room mate. So now I'm considering what to use my merit points and
the cash from my recent check.

Only change to the home machine's hardware since I bought it in 2004 has
been a bigger hard drive (1 TB.) I've looked at the machine's manual
and know I can have up to 4 GB of RAM instead of the current 2 sticks of
512 MB each. Maybe I will switch to a LCD monitor instead of the CRT
I'm staring at, but then I have to deal with recycling the CRT and don't
feel like taking the effort to go to the part-of-town to ditch it at
when I don't drive.

I know I want an external hard drive to back-up the home machine,
Icarus (the HP mini 1035nr), Daedalus (not bought yet), and my personal
hard drive in my class machine. Also, I'd like to get an external case
for the personal hard drive in my class machine since I don't have
anything to store it in when I take it back.

Daedalus I want to be another netbook, but a model with a riduculously
long battery-life of 12 hours or whatever they're up to by the time I
buy him.

to tracks I'll actually bother listening to for a second time or so.

Using the camera feature on my Nintendo DSi has me wishing for a real
digital camera, but I'm not sure how much I'll use it.

As pretty as another student's camera with a phone (not a phone with a
camera) is, I probably should not get that or a similiar model to avoid
having a cell phone beyond my pre-paid Tracfone. My mind melted enough
as it is when I was comparing Tracfone with AT&T GoPhone and the thought
of getting an actual plan scares me.

So anyone have any comments, suggestions, additional products to
consider, etc.?