No more abandoned cars!

Woot! The abandoned cars are now gone! It only took eight months to figure out how to get it done, but finally, they're gone!

Sadly, I had to pay $345 for the priviledge of having three abandoned cars hauled off my property. :(

There are still three snow mobiles, a fishing boat and a camp trailer, not to mention random junk my sister threw out of the shed. I suspect I'll have to go up there again, sometime in March, and after the snow has started to melt, to throw out the remaining junk (since my brother-in-law seems to have decided it's unimportant to collect his things).

Blog deleted, and site updates

I decided to delete my Cocoa blog for the time being. I'd started working on a Life program in Objective-C, but took a detour into Ajax and a review of HTML, XHTML and CSS. I'll return to the Life program later, after another detour into Java.

As much as I'd like to work at Apple (i.e. my dream job), I'm beginning to doubt it'll happen. I want to do something different from what I've been doing the last several years at Oracle, but I'm not finding much interest in hiring someone who doesn't have any recent experience with C, and has never used C++. I'm reviewing Java, HTML, XHTML and CSS, and learning Ajax (aka Javascript), in hopes of possibly landing a job at Google or Yahoo!, but again, I haven't any practical experience with these technologies, other than as a hobbyist. So the return to Java is because that's likely my best opportunity for finding a new job.

I'd like to try QA, but again, there's the lack of practical experience. Heck, I'd even like to give technical writing a try, but again... lack of practical experience.

The frustration of abandoned cars

We're going to return to Ellensburg, WA, briefly, for a rant.

In May, my sister was arrested for dealing drugs. I own the property on which she and her kids have been living. I had to deal with the huge mess of making sure her daughters had homes, her son had a home, and cleaning up the property when she got sentenced to prison.

I had to make several trips to Washington, rent dumpsters, and spend several days throwing stuff out or putting it in storage.

The last remaining probems are her ex, a number of abandoned vehicles, and the mobile home.

Her ex has left a bunch of crap on the property, which he basically refuses to move. I called him a few months ago and told him anything left after two more weeks will be thrown out. No response. According to my niece, it's all still there.

His crap includes a camp trailer, a fishing boat, a shed full of tools, hunting supplies and fishing supplies, and the shed itself. According to my nephew, the camp trailer and fishing boat also have a bunch of stuff in them.

Then there are the abandoned cars. One of these apparently belongs to one of my sister's ex-boyfriends. According to my nephew, he was terminally ill with cancer, and was sent to prison for dealing drugs, and may not even be alive any longer.

Another was apparently given to my sister by her latest boyfriend's ex-wife. The third was apparently give to my sister by one of my nephew's friends.

Supposedly, all three of these people signed the paperwork, but the cars were never transferred claimed by my sister. So they're all abandoned, and sitting on my property, and there's nothing I can do to remove them.

It seems in Washington, if someone abandons cars on your property, you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to have them hauled away.

The sheriff's department won't take them, as they're on private property -- not on public roads.

Salvage yards won't take them, without first having them declared as abandoned by the sheriff's department. Yet when I had the sheriff's department look at them in July, they never told me about this. They told me to call an impounder, who, after repeated calls, never even bothered to drive out to the property.

I just got off the phone with a salvage yard who told me the sheriff's department should have provided paperwork to file with Olympia, to notify the owners of the cars they have to remove them. This involves a license plate search, and contacting the prior owners at their last known address. If there's no response, they're abandoned. But it's a 30 day period in which they have to reply, plus how ever long it takes to have the paperwork filled out. So I'm looking at another several weeks before I can have these cars hauled off.

It's frustrating as all hell that I have to jump through all these hoops.

Woof

For my final post of the day, let's talk about Toby. I know Beverley, his breeder, reads my blog, and commented a few months ago about my lack of Toby entries, so this one's for Bev. :)

Toby's still an absolute love. He's 4 1/2 now, loves to play tug, loves to go for walks, sleeps at every opportunity, and continues to chase squirrels, birds and cats out of the back yard.

He's actually grown quite annoying about the back yard over the past few months. It seems to coincide with my nephew moving in. Toby'll sit at the window, staring outside, and will start whining if he sees something in the yard. I keep trying to get him to stop whining, as it drives me nuts! I've been working on getting him to go to the back door if he wants to run out into the yard, to scare away the pest, but it's been slow going. He's almost there.

Walks frustrate me, to tell the truth. I seem to have to keep up a never-ending litany of, "Toby, come on. Toby, come on. Toby, come on. Come on. Come on. Leave it! Come on!" He has to stop and shove his nose in something about once every eight seconds. Argh! This is probably my fault, for not making him heel for the duration of our walks. I don't like the idea of forcing him to walk next to me, lock step. Letting him run back and forth across the sidewalk, sniffing at stuff, just seems, to me, to be more fun for the dog -- though frustrating for me. :)

Then there's the pooping (sigh). It used to be, he'd wait 'til we got home. Now, even if I put him outside for half an hour before we go on a walk, he waits 'til we're two blocks from the house to crap in someone's yard (argh!). So, I end up having to carry a bag of dog doo for the remainder of our walk (double sigh).

I miss the days where he'd hold it 'til we got home. :)

Finally, there's my friends Darren & Corrii. They have cats. Toby chases cats out of my yard. At their house, he tries to engage the cats in play, or chase them, depending on whether the cat tries to run. Regardless, they don't like him. Hiss, spit, flee, climb a post and sit and glare, taunt, taunt, taunt. Toby seems to want to play with them, but, of course, they want nothing to do with him. Last night he found the kitten hiding under the coffee table. The kitten ran, of course, and Toby ran after, of course. This time, however, he didn't bark (as he's done in the past). That was a nice change.

When I was in Hawaii a three years ago, for my cousin's wedding, Corrii watched Toby for ten days. She tells a story of Bug, one of the cats, hauling off and smacking him. For the remainder of his stay, Toby stayed away from the cats. Of course, he was still a puppy then. Sometimes I wish Bug'd just haul off and smack him again, to make him understand cats aren't to be touched, but considering he's so much bigger now, I'd be worried he might hurt her -- not that he's violent, it's just that any animal can be unpredictable. I wouldn't want him to respond to an attack with an attack of his own. So usually, when there's a cat nearby, he's yelled at: "Toby, no! Bad dog! Leave it!" The idea is to try and make him understand the cats are off limits.

Forgetting Dreams

I'm thinking I should start keeping a dream journal. I've had several dreams over the past few months, in which I've either invented a game, or outlined an entire screenplay, only to forget them upon waking.

This morning, during REM sleep, I invented and played several levels of a strategy game that would have been a lot of fun to implement, only as soon as I woke, the rules of the game started to fade -- just as the screenplay did, just as many other things have done.

I've heard that many of Clive Barker's stories came from his dreams. I've also heard that keeping a dream journal can help to remember one's dreams upon waking. Couldn't hurt...

"Are stores open today?"

That was what my nephew asked. "Are stores open today?"

"Why wouldn't they be?"

"It's Super Bowl Sunday."

"Dude, it's not a holiday. Yes, stores will be open."

He's designated weekends as his job hunting days, which usually consist of going to a single store, picking up an application, bringing it home, and filling it out and returning it later. I keep trying to make him understand he's not going to find a job by applying at one place a week.

The sad thing is, since he's been here, he's applied at Albertson's, Safeway, Rock Bottom, OSH, Taco Bell, Jamba Juice, Century Theaters, Blockbuster, Michael's, Hollywood Video, Longs, The Garret, Hallmark, Jack in the Box, Petco, and a few others, and hasn't gotten a single call. I suspect it's because he's 20, hasn't finished high school, and is looking for his first job. I'm thinking the first job, at that age, and without having finished high school, is working against him. In seven months, I'd think that even a job at a fast food joint would have happened.

He was called in for an interview at Century Theaters a few months ago, but freaked out and left when the interviewer led him to the elevator. He was also offered a job, on the spot, at Wheel Works back in July, but didn't want to work in an auto shop. I keep telling him to go back there, but he hasn't done it yet.

Goal not accomplished

One of my goals for the new year was to loose some weight. I've put on 20 lbs since I stopped marathoning and mountain biking regularly -- 10 or so from the reduction in exercise, another 10 or so due to my sister (sigh). So I decided December 31st to lose all 20. December 31st, I weighed 178.8. I'd planned on dropping to 168.8 by January 31st and 158.8 by February 28th.

By January 29th, I'd made it to 173.4. Now, on February 4th, I'm back up to 176.6 (double sigh).

Time to redouble my efforts.

Ozymandias

One of my favorite poems, for reasons I can't explain...

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley