I’ll post about the weekend shortly, but I thought I’d get the entries from my class last Wednesday and Thursday posted up here since people might be interested.

This is, of course, the typical way-too-long play-by-play entry, so if you want the whole skinny… Wednesday, May 28

8:53a

Okay… so I’m in course “MS-2071B: Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2000 With Transact-SQL.” So far, so good. Instructor’s nice. This being a smaller, two-day course, I’m expecting a fairly easy time. Here we go…

9:02a

I’m realizing I didn’t brush my teeth this morning. Icky. On top of that, I’m wearing my last pair of clean underwear. I’ll have to go digging in the clean laundry bin to see if I’ve got some that are floating in there.

10:10a

Just got back from my first break. Standing up, I realized these chairs suck donkey balls. They’re TOTALLY not adjustable - not height, not tilt… nothing. My back’s starting to kill me because they were obviously made for a midget office. I think the chairs in Barbie’s Dream House are bigger than this.

10:41a

The first lab was… how to read the online help file. A lab on RTFM. That’s too funny.

11:01a

Not being at work and drinking altogether too much Vanilla Coke so far today has put me in a good mood. One of my rarer moments to be sure, but not entirely disagreeable. Maybe I should try out this good mood thing more often. If only there weren’t so many people out there to piss me off…

11:38a

Time for lunch. So far this hasn’t been too much of a stretch for me, but I have learned a couple of new tricks for editing and re-using SQL scripts. So - easy, but still worthwhile. I like that.

12:47p

Back from lunch… but the class is empty. Huh. Good thing I’ve got my book.

Went to Fred Meyer for some deli food for lunch. Cheap and tasty. Love it. While I was there I found the legs that go to these little modular cabinet things I bought the other day (on sale, of course).

Talked for a little while to the admin and one of the instructors, just hanging out. That’s cool. I like them both, and it doesn’t hurt that the admin’s a little hottie.

1:09p

Starting class again. Woohoo!

1:33p

My morning buzz is wearing off. I’ve hit that post-lunch-naptime phase of my day. Eyes… closing… losing… consciousness…

1:42p

Found this salary survey from Visual Studio Magazine (sitting in the lunch room) that confirms that I’m getting underpaid. Not that I didn’t already know that, but it’s nice to see the statistics confirm it.

2:01p

Lab time!

2:31p

Lab’s done. Still pretty well cruising through this class, but it is definitely serving to reinforce existing knowledge and fill in the gaps to round the whole thing out. Very cool.

2:57p

…and back to work…

My afternoon drag is still here. Not sure what to do about it. Maybe not getting up so damn early.

4:07p

Finished another lab. This one was really good and talked about a LOAD of stuff I didn’t know. Stuff like aggregate functions (getting totals and averages of information) and how to interpret the results and get exactly the results you’re looking for. SQL Server can do a lot of the computational work for you so you don’t have to write a program to do it later. Lots of things that are really helpful.

I guess the instructor’s gung-ho, since we’re at the end of a chapter and he’s wanting to start the next one already. We’ll end up in the middle of a chapter, which isn’t the greatest, but I suppose to keep on schedule one does what one must do.

I’ve moved from Vanilla Coke to Sprite because the Coke was making me just crave more Coke… but the Sprite is giving me heartburn, so I guess I can’t win for losing on this drink thing.

4:36p

Joining a table to ITSELF?! My head hurts…

4:38p

And that’s that. Time to go home!

Thursday, May 29

9:10a

Well, I finished the lab that we didn’t do yesterday and I’m ready for action. While waiting for the other guy in the class to finish, I’ll fill you in on last night.

Got home about my usual time because we stayed pretty late in the class (we were supposed to be out by 4:30p and usually you get out by around 4:00p, but not this time). Jenn wanted to go to the mall to get her nails done (little pleasures - besides, they were looking pretty bad), so I went to the mall, too, just to get out of the house.

While she was in the salon, I went to almost every cool shop in the mall. That’s not to say she took a long time; it was more a case of nothing really interesting me. I almost felt guilty going to the mall and not seeing anything I wanted, but I don’t know if that was a subconscious budgetary restriction or if nothing really did catch my attention.

I did notice that American Eagle Outfitters, Old Navy, Abercrombie & Fitch, and, well, pretty much every other “trendy” clothing store all sell approximately the same thing. “Screen print tees” and unkempt looking pants and drawstring-oriented shit… It makes me wonder where fashion ever went. Even The Gap, which is more of a Nazi uniform sales store than a clothing shop, is starting to sell this “shabby chic” shit. And here I thought I could count on good old Gap to remain the cookie cutter style it is known for. So much for that.

Watched the new Fame show on TV and thought the competition was way stiffer than for American Idol. The singers were generally better and these folks could dance. It got kind of irritating when they repeated the phrase “triple-threat” over and over and over. I think that’s their big slogan or trademark or something. Don’t be surprised if you see triple-threat^TM somewhere in the media soon.

This probably crosses the TMI boundary but tough noogies:

Yesterday I mentioned I was wearing my last pair of clean underwear. Well, normally I wear lo-rise briefs because they just seem to fit better (and I can’t stand that “going Commando” feeling that boxers provide - there’s no control there and I just can’t abide by it). The last pair of underwear in my drawer was a full-rise brief that I had bought because the package was mismarked. Anyway, I always wear them last since they don’t fit as well as my other underwear.

So I’m standing in my underwear, brushing my teeth before going to bed, and I’m looking at myself in the mirror realizing that I look like a two-year-old on a Huggies commercial for “big boy pants.” It was really pathetic. Not to mention that my other briefs are reasonably form fitting - you can see that I do have an ass, and the, uh, unit up front is doing okay, too. These briefs… no ass, baggy everything, and the front looked like I had taken a marble and dropped it into a hanky. Really fucking lame. Well, just one more reason not to wear those sons-of-bitches. I should probably pitch them out so I don’t catch myself in them again.

Luckily there was clean underwear in the clean laundry bin so I pulled some out and wore those today. Everything down under is back to normal. Crisis averted.

9:35a

Well, we HAD started class again, but then the video projector went all wonky so we’re working on that now.

Oh, here we go. We’re going to skip the projector and use paper. Whatever.

10:00a

Break and lab time!

10:54a

Well, I’m officially slightly behind. The lab just now on subqueries is a tough one. I even had to cheat a bit and look at the answers because I got slightly stumped - I got the right answer for the question, but I got the answer a different way than they did.

It’s a good thing there’s more than one way to do things. I’m screwed otherwise.

11:51a

Lunch! Plus, I have to poop, so good times.

12:45p

Back from lunch, and I think we have about 15 minutes until we resume. I’m hoping to get out of here by 3:00p or so because I have a haircut scheduled at 6:00p that I can go and get done early, then I can be ready for The Italian Job at 7:00p (I’ll need to be to the theater an hour early or thereabouts because I really want into this one.)

1:03p

Still haven’t started class. I’m reeeeeeeeeeaaaaadddyyyyyyyyy…..

1:15p

Class is underway. Apparently we’re going to do the next (last) two modules back to back, then the last is labs. Cool. It’s looking like I’ll get out of here early, which matches my evil plans perfectly. It’s all coming together.

1:41p

Last module…

2:37p

I’m outta here! Time for my haircut!