Every time i look at my $75 a month cable bill, I wonder why I pay it.  I was so happy without cable, and if I lived alone, there would be no cable.  I don’t understand why I have to pay so much money for something that gives me commercials.  This opens another topic about why the television was created and marketed the way it was, which really has some interesting literature and documentaries apropos, but this rant is not about that.  It’s just about my recent encounter with comcast.

So I’ve been a comcast customer for over 6 years now in one form or another.  full blown digital subscriber, just basic tv, then to the standard package where I sit now.  All the time, I’ve been enrolled in automatic bill payments with no paper bills mailed to me.  Bliss.  It’s a never changing bill, so i don’t need to look at it, i just expect that much to taken out each month.  So for years this goes on fine.  Back in december, I logged in to change my credit card information.  Still, all works fine, until May, apparently.  In June, I get a "past due" notice in the mail.  WTF?  So i call the number and try to see what’s up.  The representative was utterly useless.  She kept stating the obvious, "No payment was made in May."  And I say, "umm…I know, otherwise I wouldn’t have received a past due notice.  What I need you to do is fix it so it doesn’t happen again."  It’s absolutely ridiculous how inept this person is, and coming from a helpdesk background, I know how things should go here, and this is terrible.  So I ask her to take off the late fee, and she says she doesn’t have the ability to do that.  She doesn’t seem to have the ability to do anything I need her to do, so I ask to speak to her manager, or at least someone with the access to remove late fees.  She says only supervisors can, and they can call me back within a 24 hour period.  So it’s going to be one of those deals, aye?  Whatever.  I leave instructions to call my cell phone and not my home number.

So I log into comcast’s website, and I see that my credit card information shows a credit card that expired in 2006.  WTF?  That’s not my fault.  To me, sounds like someone had a system crash and reverted to a backup with old information.  The last time I changed my info was in december, and it’s been working since then.  I update the information and wait for my call back to get that late fee removed.

Of course, it never comes.  I’m livid.  I do automatic bill payment so i don’t have to deal with crap, now they’re making me take time out of my day to deal with crap that is their fault.  I call them back today, and get some lady who again has this crazy knack for saying things that are utterly useless.  I say that my information was reverted to old information, and I didn’t do anything, so something changed on their end.  She said she doesn’t even have the access to do that, as if I meant SHE did it.  She’s totally defensive at anything I’m saying, and I can see that I will never get retribution for my time wasted with these people.  She was able to remove the late fee pretty easily.  She says that they did try to call me, but they used my home number even though I had left instructions not to use that number.  She said that she could have someone call me back within 24 hours so that I can ask a supervisor why my payments didn’t go through, but honestly, I don’t feel like investing my time, nay, my VACATION, in finding and fixing the flaws in their system.  This is what helpdesk tickets are for.  I open a problem ticket, you fix it.  Don’t call me back until it’s fixed.

So all to appropriately, I don’t expect any calls from Comcast any time soon.

I think i had my first, "When I was your age…" moment a couple weeks ago.  Colin and I went out to see Rachel in Cleveland and we went to see Underoath and Poison the Well in concert.  If you’re not familiar with them, you’re not alone.  I’ve heard a few of their songs, nothing really my taste, but close enough, and I will never turn down a chance for some live music.  Now, to reminisce, I was definitely a concert goer when I was younger, and I’d always be in the  mosh pit; it was my second home.  So, for old times sake, I get in the pit at this show too.  I’ve having a great time, I’m a little bigger now, so i’m certainly holding my ground.  Now, one problem I’ve always had in the pit was when people are crowd surfing and I’m facing forward, they’ll come flying into the back of my head since I’m so much taller than the rest of the crowd.  A minor nuisance, I just lift the person forward and carry on with my moshing.  Now this particular night, someone is literally tossed into the air and as they land on my head, I’m struck pretty hard and stunned by what I can only assume to be a camera, or more likely an effing cell phone in their pocket.  Needless to say, that guy got tossed to the front of the crowd a little faster than he was planning.  I was ticked, and I had a bump on my head.  A few minutes later, i was retreating to where Rachel and Colin were, with the thoughts of, "When I was your age, we didn’t have cell phones!  We went to concerts with some cash, a ticket, and that’s all we needed!  You kids these days…"

this is the most lucid dream i’ve had in a long time.  So i’m taking the bus somewhere.  The bus actually varies a few times from a 15 passenger van, to a charter bus, but this is a minor detail.  The seat layout was consistently like a 15 passenger van, bench seats, isle way on the side.  The drive was a big old guy, maybe 60, and those old style glasses with the double bar across the nose.  There’s a large fellow in the row behind me, and a black guy talking on his cell phone on the bench infront of me, and then the driver.  We’re cruising a long for a while, making stops, people getting off and such, and we get on this divided highway.  he pulls off the highway into this parking lot for a building, when i know the route calls for us to go a little further and then loop back.  He looks  the mirror and asks the three of us left on the bus if any of us want to get off at that last stop, because he’s running a little late and just wants to turn around in the parking lot, cut across the median, and head back on the highway so he can get back on track time-wise.  The cell phone guy ignores him, and the guy in the back just sits there too, so the bus driver turns around and looks at me and asks me if it’s ok.  I tell him that I don’t mind.

      So, do the loop in the parking lot, cross the 2 lanes of left coming traffic fine, off-road it a little bit on the grass median strip, which seems to be really wide.  We’re going at a good speed, he starts turning to the left, so that he can keep accelerating as we merge, and just before we can reach the road, we go over a large hill, and on the otherside of that hill…nothing.  This was a bridge section of the highway, and he had just driven us right off the cliff.  I had been looking out the front window this whole time and can still see the image of coming over that hill, and realizing that there was no ground on the other end, and seeing the bridges on either side.  The bus driver was shocked.  He calmly turned around and said, "Crash.  We’re going to crash, I’m sorry.  Best to hold on to something so you don’t flip around."   So i laid down on my back across the bench, left arm holding the lip of the bench, and right arm tucked between the back and seat holding on for dear life.  I started to pray.  I started to think "wow, so this is how it ends."  I started to think about how my mom would react.  I swear we fell for a good 30 seconds.  My eyes were closed the whole time; body stiff as a board, trying to prepare myself for the hardest impact i’d ever feel in my life. 

   And that sense is the last thing i felt or heard.  Until i started coming to.  A female EMT, short brown hair, in her 40s is reaching towards me to put an oxygen mask on me.  I start to struggle a little, wanting to get up and show her that I’m fine, I’m disoriented, I try to give her a thumbs up but my nerves can’t do it convincingly.  She tells me to calm down for a while, just sit tight.  she pushes against my upper lip and i scream in painful agony, it feels like my whole face is swollen.  She pushes on the bottom of the chest, where the rib cage stops, and again i scream in pain.  she comes back up to my face and pushes, and it’s fine now for some reason, i’m a little relaxed at that, then she pushes again on my chest and i scream for her to stop, i think about my snowboarding accident, and it’s the same pain.  I fear that i separated my sternum from my ribcage again.  I start to cry from the pain and tell her i have a history of chest pain and to stop pushing on it.  She tells me that my blood pressure is high and that she needs to find out why.  I tell her it’s because i’m scared she’s going to kill me by pushing on my chest, which is totally true.  She does an "oh" look, and stops.  they get me on a stretcher and get me in the back of an ambulance to take me to the hospital.  I don’t think the bus driver made it, but i saw the big guy behind me on a stretcher too.  on the ride there, I’m telling the EMT lady exactly what happened.  I remember that I always felt that my back was falling towards the ground, so it seemed that the bus didnt twist around at all, just straight down on it’s wheels.  I was thinking about how much time i’d get off work, but i couldnt remember what day it was.  I was thinking about how this would be on the news.  I was thinking about if rachel’s family would come and see me in the hospital.  I was laughing at how i survived.  I had no idea how far we fell, but i know it was far.

and i woke up on my back, with hands on my chest, in the same position as i was in the ambulance.  Actually, i really did transition out of the dream, like slowly things from inside the ambulance started to be replaced with things from my dark bedroom.  It just faded away.

Moral of the story:  Don’t eat a reese’s klondike right before bed OR never tell a bus driver to drive across a median.

Things to do over my 12 day birthday weekend…

Personal Development

• Make at least 1 life altering decision
  • Became a organ donor
• Work out at least 3 times…1/3…FAIL!
• Become 24 years of age in mind, body, and soul…It was achieved a few times, feeling pretty good
• DO NOT SLEEP IN!…SUCCESS!
• Do something you’ve never had the guts to do, but always wanted to…Couldn’t think of anything, but I didn’t not do something by chickening out……RAIN CHECK!
• Do something generous… CHECK!
• Show someone you care and go out of your way to do something for them… CHECK!
• Expand your horizons, do something you’ve never done before… CHECK! (nothing spectacular though)
• Do something spontaneous… CHECK!
  • Registered to vote
• Read at least 1 entire book… FAIL!
• Record at least 1 song… ACCEPTABLE. When you’re sick, you can’t record. But I did record instruments for 3 songs…
• Go to a religious event… CHECK!
  • Kutless concert

Financial

• Invest in something… FOLLOW UP NEEDED! We’ll see how the Playstation 3 thing works out
• Take a risk… CHECK!
• Give to charity/Church… CHECK!

Social

• Go on at least 1 date… CHECK!
• Meet at least 1 new person… CHECK!
• Reconnect with a lost friend/person… CHECK!
• Get at least one single female phone number…CHECK!
• Go out with a group of friends… CHECK!
• Go out with 1 friend… CHECK!
• Have at least 1conversation for over an hour on the phone… FAIL!
• Get drunk…cultural?… FAIL!

Cultural

• See a movie, art exhibit, or other event
  • Death Cab for Cutie Concert
  • Penguins Game
  • Toured the whitehouse (lame)
• Eat at a restaurant you’ve never eaten at…CHECK!

Misc errands/chores

• Put in time working at the estate …CHECK!
• Deep clean house…FAIL!
• Change the truck’s oil…CHECK!
• Work on website(s)…FAIL!
• Get a new cell phone…CHECK! (Black Motorola KRZR)
• Get new driver’s license…CHECK!

Note: List is subject to change. Details have been withheld for privacy, security, lameness, and embarrassment reasons. Some items were achieved multiple times, but only required 1 instance for success classification. All rights reserved. Carpe Diem. Who’s your daddy.

So, I’ve had lots of dreams where my dad is in them, sometimes he’s fine and nothing ever happened, and sometimes he actually survived the surgery, but last night was one of the first dreams that I remember having where he wasn’t actually there…sort of. I say sort of, because J’aime was talking to him on her cell phone, and i saw emails between her and him. My dad was giving J’aime a hard time over the cell phone, in his typical fashioin. We were all over at the estate in the dining room talking about what we are going to with the house and robbie and her girls were there too. after we were done, everyone left, and i was walking around turning off lights in the estate and my cell phone rang, and it was my dad’s voice asking violently “WHERE’S J’AIME?”…so i guess you can kinda consider this a haunting/nightmare thing. It was all dark in the house and i’m walking around upstairs turning off lights and such, and in every room, i’m scared i’m going to open a door and he’s going to be there. most of the house was empty, except my old room, it was just how i left it when i was a kid, instead of the piles of boxes it is currently. After Ieft the house, i headed over to my mom’s with 2 cats from my dad’s house. It was as if it was the first time we were closing up the estate. When i got to my moms, the 3 cats from my dad’s were already there, but i remember thinking there were 5 now that i added the other 2, again.
next, i ‘woke up’ in my old room in the basement at my moms. It was something like 6:45 am in the dream, and for some reason it was the time we normally go to school…highschool. I went up stairs to where deirdre’s, keren’s, and serah’s rooms were, and keren and deirdre were still sleeping and serah was in the bathroom. I was asking keren why everyone was still sleeping, we had to go to school. She just said they slept in. Serah came out of the bathroom, and went for the phone, which was off the hook, with J’aime apparently waiting on the other end. They starting talking, and Deirdre came out, and I started having this deja vu and telling her about remember serah picking up the phone and j’aime being on the other end, and waking up late for school. Then, I started realizing that I was repeating things that already happened, like bringing the cats over. And i’m telling deirdre this, and then i ask her when it was that i hit my head snowboarding, and she said 2 weeks ago. I was really freaked out.

The fact that i was repeating things in dreams didnt set well with me, and i woke up really freaked out and it was hard to shake that feeling. I want to say that it’s progress i’m not seeing my dad alive in my dreams, but now he’s haunting me, and the fact that the stuff at my mom’s house took place with the assumption that we were all going to highschool, even serah, scares me. That was 6 years ago. So it’s like my dreams are retro-progressive. I don’t like that.

the past 24 have sucked. so i woke up at 8 Tuesday to go to a cornerstone meeting we had, all went well there, but we had problems wrapping it all up, and getting to my class @ 11 late. When i got to the class, which was a 10 minute walk, it said that class was in another building, about 10 minutes walking again. and about 2 minutes from the church where i was. And keep in mind it is cold, wet, raining, and 4 inches of snow on the ground, and slush everywhere.

after i get home, Chris emails me and says they’re having problems with their email server, so i go in there about 4, and end up working with problems related to the email server until 1 am. Poor Chris. He stayed the whole time, good thing he is a patient man…or atleast talks about you behind your back like a real friend. So rather than having Chris brave the elements and take me back to my apartment, i just went back home with him. we got home at 2. My mom heard us come in, and she asked us what we had for dinner. We didn’t eat, but i did have a foot long subway for lunch around 12:30. So i looked for something to snack on anyway, but didn’t find anything. So i figure i will check my email and such before i go to bed, so i get on the laptop, start doing my thing, and it freezes. grrr. so i restart it, and go to the bathroom in the mean time. Just my luck, the toilet is clogged…with “remains.” So i plunge the crap (literally) out of it for about 20-30 minutes. It was bad. And instead of taking my chances on the laptop,i go downstairs, start to dial in and it BSoD on me. WTF. so i restart it, dial in, start doing my thing, then THAT one freezes on me!!! WTF! So back up to the laptop i go. I dont remember if it froze on me twice or not, but i just know i did what i needed to, and it froze on me, so i just shut it off. in bed at 3:30 AM.

So Chris wakes me up at 6:30 to go to work with him. Grab some crackers. roads are trecherous. we get to the T alright though. So i get on the T, and ofcourse everyone makes a mad dash for the single seats so they dont have to share. and with it being rush hour, i grab a window seat and a lady sits next to me as soon as i sit down. so i am deciding whether or not to sleep, and my cell phone rings. it’s the answering service. It is 7:56. I am supposed to be on call to “roughly between 6:30 PM and 7:30AM” i missed the call though, called the office like i normally do to get the service, and Marc answers. I asked him if he could handle it, and before we get to finish working it out, my cell phone battery dies. grrrr.

so i get to my stop on the T. the lady is still sitting next to me. i had manage to doze a bit in the 30 minute ride, and i figured i wont bother the lady next to me to let me out,so i would let her get off when at her stop, and i would just get off in 5 minutes when the T loops back. So she gets off at the last stop, we loop around, and at the stop right before mine, the door on the T breaks. The operator can’t close it. creates a 10 minute ordeal. so finally get off the T, back in the cold, sidewalks haven’t seen a grain of salt, or a tip of a shovel. so sludging around in 6 inches of snow, i look down the road, and see my bus going up Centre Avenue. Looks like Josh is Hiking Mt. Centre Avenue.

Well, i am back now, still havent eaten anything, still havent showered, still in the same clothes, and getting out of here. gotta go to cornerstone again tonight too. hopefully that will cheer me up, as it always does.

I just got done watching the movie Love, Actually. What a beautiful movie! It is about the agony of love, and the many faces it has. Wonderful.

and something i am really exited about. So now i have another title. Don’t ask me where that title came from though, i have no clue.:) Guess that is what they call people that carry around a cell phone. I am so glad to be a part of that. Great people at Touchtown.

I am wondering if i don’t provide enough “nitty gritty” of the “ins and outs” of Josh Hall in my updates. Do you guys find them at all interesting? I usually just say “this is what i did today, this is how i feel about it” but maybe i should let you get into my head more, and just write down anything and everything i am thinking. making this more of a blog.

So i am done with this semester. I really suck with college, i am going to change my major to something to do with business and see how that goes. I hate computer science with a passion.

I went to the last cornerstone of this semester, and had a great time, it was really relaxed. Afterwards, i went out and played pool with my new friend Chris:) he is really outgoing, and he is a leader, like i will be doing starting this coming semester. I am really looking forward to it. There are retreats and stuff we get to go on. The first one being Jan 2-4, where just the leaders go. And the best part of it is that it is FREE! I am really hoping to make some lasting friendships there.

Billy Talent is playing tomorrow at Nick’s Fat City, and i convinced Becky to go down with me. I am so pumped. And get this, Matchbook Romance is playing next tuesday! I am so there! What a time to be alive! and i feel like it too! My mood has been so great, i never want it to stop! but alas, i have to stop typing, this is becoming quite the novel! Talk to me people! and talk to everyone else here too! I want this to be a place where i can spend with all of you. register if you haven’t! And thank you all for making me feel so happy.

Well, I got a cell phone, or “handy” as I am going to force myself to call it. let me know if you want the number. still working on this website, and migrating stuff over from the old one. some links are up and some songs in the download section. Be sure to sign the Guestbook!