Pat told me that he might maybe have put my blog up on the screen in front of all the geeks at the Black Hat Conference.
I just died and went to that place where we get to play Guitar Hero and eat Cheetos and tell our bosses to fuck off, we’re busy.
Ahhhhhhh… life has gone from zero to hero with one email.
I am reading the novel die for you by Lisa Unger. It is set in Eastern Europe and New York City and is all about the idea of thinking you know exactly what’s going on in your life, trusting that your reality is The True Reality, but then finding out that everything about your current circumstance was pretty much a set-up and a lie, all done for money. As in, your husband who tells you he loves you and wants to take care of you and shares his bank account with you and fucks the everloving sweetness right out of you on hard surfaces is really thinking about his real life back home where he’s from and his name isn’t really what his name is so that Mrs. Hislastname shit you’re sporting isn’t real either. Oh, and by the way, his real wife beat the shit out of you and took her wedding ring back off your finger after she gashed your head open.
This type of story line does two things for me:
1. Makes me ponder the thought of everything in my life right now being unreal.
2. Makes me contemplate my trust of other human beings.
I have trust issues already. I could choose to let this book feed into those issues, but perhaps I should choose the mature adult path and learn what I don’t want to be, learn who I am right now and who I want to become and make a plan for getting there.
But if it turns out that Dawg really isn’t Dawg I’m gonna freak the fuck out. 
There’s nothing new about me now that I’m 35.
I bought a vertical laptop bag today. I need a messenger bag because carrying the weight on my back is painful, but having a horizontal bag is really awkward on the train. Plus, if I get another laptop bag for my birthday I’ll have two! (Yah, don’t have all my presents yet, not sure what they all are, excited to find out, do not mind duplicates.
Geek speak is about to occur. Read through it, it might save you or your IT Guy (gender neutral) hours of annoyment. 
(I made that word up.)
Between yesterday and today I spent 6 hours trying to figure out why someone’s BlackBerry stopped checking in with the Black[B]erry Enterprise Server (BES) at 6:33am on Saturday, July 25. 633725 — nope, nothing significant about that, so what the hell? Today I finally got the bright idea to try to add her email account to my phone — it worked, so I knew it wasn’t her account on server that was causing the problem! So I tried adding my email account to her phone! And it got STUCK at the same spot! So I had a hunch and called the provider… They had no record of her being on a BES plan, which means her phone was NEVER, EVER going to be able to both send and receive mail through Enterprise Activation. Why had it ever worked before? I don’t know, but I have an ignorant theory (ignorant because I don’t know the details of how phones work) and it goes something like this: There is some way to allow phones to activate on a BES server without a BES plan that costs more money, but BlackBerry’s service providers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, Nextel) would prefer that you pay for the service so if your phone randomly happens to connect even without that plan a little cleanup script is run at certain intervals that checks in with your phone and deactivates your phone’s mechanism for connecting. I think it has to do with the Desktop [CMIME] service book, personally, but again that’s just a hunch since I don’t know what I’m talking about at the granular level. My bottom line recommendation: Call your cell phone provider first and innocently say, “I’m having a little trouble connecting this phone to my BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Is my phone on a BES plan?” and if they say no tell them to add you. Don’t ask why it’s worked for forever and suddenly stopped, just accept it and move on, and once they add BES to the phone it will magically work again.
Geek speaking is over.
I went to the zoo on my birthday and took some really great photos, but my favorite one is this one:
I love that we are such little kids together. It makes my heart happy.
Technically, Dawg took that photo, as you can tell by his left arm placement, but it was at my request when I could not figure out how to angle the camera to get the totem pole from the background into the shot. He showed me how. He’s a pro. He rocks.
A few notes about my birthday weekend: I did not knock over any of my beverages at the fondue place Friday night, but Saturday I did knock an almost full scalding hot cappuccino into Dawg’s crotch area while he was telling me a story about his younger vollies days, then Sunday at Jekyll & Hyde Club my Coach purse knocked over Dawg’s mostly full soda glass after he’d already gotten up. Oh, and I totally heckled one of the J&H guys who was picking on a girl from Houston at the table next to us. He would not leave her alone, which he is supposed to do while she eats her main meal, so I finally asked, “what’cha got in that glass? Looks like a Hurricane glass! Ya got a Hurricane in there?” and he muttered something about it being water and skulked away. Apparently he did not like the implication that he appeared drunk, even though he totally did appear drunk, but then again I had consumed a Chimay White (9%) and a Chimay Red (7%) (none of my favorite, Chimay Blue (12%), in the house) so I was tipsy.
I love being me.
Ok, resume your day. Good to see you.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ROBIN!!!!!!
That photo is from the first time I ever met Robin in the actual flesh (despite having been somewhere near her at TequilaCon ’08 but not knowing about it) and knew she was awesome from the first moment I saw her. I mean, only awesome people actually take the time to go into Godiva and wait on line for their delicious chocolate-covered strawberries.
In the words of Finn: It only gets better from here. Good things come to good people, so great things are on their way to you!!!
(And I don’t just mean this post — EVERY POST!)
Tonight commences Birthday Weekend. Dawg will be taking me out for fondue!!!!!!!
I’m going to be posting videos or photos of the birthday fun. Here’s a video:
And here’s where I’m keeping the photos. woot!
Just not here — it’s over at Tres Hearts. You should read it! And reflect upon it. And leave a comment. And if you’re not already a regular reader over there you should read Chrissi’s posts too.
I think I’ve run out of things to write down for right now. I’m being introspective about life now that I’m a week away from The Big 35. I prefer to overanalyze my worries until I induce an anxiety attack, which I wait until I am in Dawg‘s arms to do (sorry, babe) and then I get refocused and wait for the next overload of feelings. C’est ma vie.
Anyway, I have no big plans that I know about coming up, although I am secretly exhuberantly (I knew I misspelled that) anticipating what Dawg has planned for my bday.
At the start of August we’re making the fastest trip ever to VT to celebrate my dad’s bday belatedly (“in retrospect,” as I prefer to call it) and rather than using any friend or family’s home as simply a hotel we will be staying at a hotel.
I will stop back in VT near the end of August to see EZA and the Gang for his bday. I will bring my vat of bug spray sunscreen.
Maybe someone in VT will have a family or friends party this summer so I can see lots of people at once? No? Ok, family and friends party in Central Park 2nd weekend of August! Lemme know if you’re attending!
Anyway, see you sporadically. I’m going to spend more time reading and introspecting and cuddling with my Queens family, but I’ll be around.
She wouldn’t be expecting this two days later, so it’s extra awesome to celebrate now… For the lovely, talented, gloriously gammed Libragirl:
Rock it, Rachel! You can make it through this! wooohooo!!!!
A food story
Monday at lunchtime I did not feel like leaving the office, as I never feel like doing, so I hopped onto grubhub.com and put in my lunch order.
What I ordered:
What I meant by my special instructions:
What I technically said and therefore received, because this is New York City, so anything you say you want you can actually get, oops: A bunch of pieces of swiss cheese thrown together between white bread (dry) with bananas on it. As in, the fruit. I hate bananas. They are revolting to my taste buds. And they charged me $1.00 extra for the bananas but the delivery guy couldn’t read the slip and kept telling me it was $10 for the bananas. Yah, no. 100 is a dollar. That’s the last time I pre-tip for that particular establishment… I had a proper swiss cheese sandwich with sandwich topper peppers, mayo, and toasted bread for dinner. NUM!
A movie story
And for your viewing pleasure I present to you my review of the movie KNOW1NG (aka Knowing) starring Nicolas Cage, in less than a minute!
At the end I say something about spoiling the whole movie. I know, I know, my audio sucks. But my boobs are fantastic, so who cares?
A love story
Also, a piece of love advice from me and your favorite Dawg with an orange blog: It’s hard work to find true love, and even harder work to keep it. Be prepared! (<3-8 baby!)
A story-tall amount of happy
Happy bastille day, happy my-dad’s-birthday, happy (18th?!) anniversary to you-know-who-you-are!
This weekend Dawg and I went to New Jersey to see The New Jersey Crew. Guess what they did when I got there?
GAVE ME A BIRTHDAY PRESENT!!!!!!!!
My very first Coach bag! And an adorable card!
Was NOT expecting that.
If you are not my FB friend (what? you hate me? what the hell?) let it be known: My birthday is Christmas in July. That is a real thing — Google says so.