FuzzyTummyRumblings

Alright kids- I took the Portland Police Bureau entrance exam on March 18th.  I got my results yesterday.  Of 216, I was ranked number 21.  They say that there may be more than one person per rank- which makes sense because I thought there were about 250 people there.  Regardless, I did well and I'm very excited about the possibility of this getting rolling.  I'm not holding my breath as the recruiters and background checkers said it would take quite a while to get everything going, but I'm hoping that by mid summer, I can be enrolled in the academy and working towards becoming a Portland Police officer.

Random Side Note- I've been listening to a band called FlyLeaf for the past couple of days and I've decided that I like them.  Hard rock with a positive message and a singer with one of the most pleasantly distinctive voices I've heard in quite a while.  You won't all like her voice and you won't all like the music but you should all give them a shot.  They're better than you think.

In other news- Carley's computer fried its northbridge.  For those of you who aren't too computer saavy- that means that the way the brain talks to the rest of the system burnt out.  It's like your cerebellum (I think) disappearing.  The processor is fine. the memory is fine. the hard drive was fine. etc etc etc...  But she had an eMachines.  This means that replacing the motherboard would be about as costly and difficult as replacing the entire tower.  So we did the latter.  She got a shiny new Compaq and we dumped her old data onto the new hard disk and she's up and running.  I got her old 80 GB hard drive out of the deal so I'm not as bitter as I could be.  Bitter?  Why?  Because Carley doesn't even LIKE computers and she got a new one.  I've been pining over a new system for... ever.  and I'm still running my old system.  Here comes the geek speak so you can tune out if you want.

Right now I'm running a first-generation Athlon 800.  Yes- eight hundred megahertz- not giga-anything. 800 mhz, 384 MB of PC100 RAM, a GeForce2 GTS with 32 MB, a 30GB and (now) an 80GB hard drive, an 8x CD burner, and a SoundBlaster Live card.  yes, Dad- your palm Treo is probably more powerful than my desktop.

This is what I want to be running.  Now, I've thrown in some stuff I don't need- water cooling, plenty of software, etc... but that's my goal system.  About 3 grand for the setup I want.  Now 3 grand is a lot for a computer but if you were to get a system of that caliber built by alienware or Voodoo, you'd pay almost five grand.  So I don't feel bad about it.  I'm hoping that my system can keep it together long enough for me to set aside the money for a new one.  I've decided to stop setting a timeline for that particular goal.  Every time I do something like that, it blows up.  I have two personal debts that I owe to very good friends and have owed for a long time.  I will pay those off before replacing the computer.  But every time I get a chunk set aside, something happens.  Last year, my car kept needing repairs.  I set aside 800 bucks for Carley's ring and my car needed 680 bucks of work.  Then I got another 700 set aside and it needed 550 in repairs.  Then I replaced it and the new car has been a dream but it takes a little longer to save money when paying the car payment.  no big deal.  I was back up to 800 bucks and BOOM.  Geoff got fired.  SO that money went to paying bills while job hunting.

ANYWAY. I'm back on my feet and making better money and things should be fine but I wanted to vent/whine about the whole "woe is me" crap.  I haven't done that in a while so you can indulge me in this.