Jonathan's LiveJournal

Well guys, you may have noticed I don't post much. I'm just not very interested in keeping an online journal anymore. Who knows, I might make an occasional post, but it's unlikely.

So to all my LJ friends -- farewell, and happy holidays!

December is the official government "let's screw with Jon" month.

First I get a fix-it ticket for having a light out. No biggie, I knew I had to fix it anyway. The ticket is only like $10.

Then I also got a ticket for not having a new license registered. Well, I actually did have it registered the day before, and I even showed the cop my confirmation, but he still had to give me the ticket because their computer didn't show it updated yet. Dumb stuff. So I sent them in my proof to show that I don't need to pay the ticket (like the cop told me to since I had proof) and now they said that the cop quoted me the wrong law, and they want me to pay anyway. So now we have to call them soon and sort it out.

And finally, I pull into the supermarket the other day to drop off Victoria at the ATM, and these two meter maids block me in and give me a ticket for being in a No Parking zone. Umm, I was NOT parked, you goonies! We have a word for what they did: Entrapment.

Damn it, government! Leave me alone!

In other news, things are going great for me overall. Happy holidays!

Mission objective:
Close old Paypal account so I can add information to my current account.

Reason:
Old account information is blocking the ability to add it to my current account.

Time Spent on Phone:
48 minutes. 35 seconds. (over 30 minutes on hold)

Enemies Contacted:
Two. One barely spoke English.

Mission status:
Failed. After being put on hold again at the 45th minute, I was eventually hung up on.

Fuck you, Paypal.

Time for my monthly update, heh. This will be fairly long so if you're interested, click the below link...

Wow, I haven't updated my livejournal in a while. I will soon. But for now, check out how awesome this is:

Carson Daly is not funny. His late show sucks so hard.

I was rear-ended today at a stop light. It was just a slight bump, enough to feel but not enough to do any damage to my truck. I'm not sure if it did any damage to their front end, but I sure laughed about it. This little car running into my big Dodge 4x4. I didn't even bother getting out.

I found this cool local gaming center. They're gonna have a Halo 2 tournament in October. Maybe I can join in.

When Vic and I parked at the bank today, I was approached by some homeless black guy asking for money. I gave him a dollar and said, "this is all I can spare for now man." He specifically told me that he wants to buy food, which basically means that he's going to buy a beer. :)

It's really annoying to have these people come right up to you right when you step out of your car. He's an alcoholic bigger black guy, I'm a smaller white sober guy. I'd rather just give him a buck than risk any aggression, know what I mean? I wouldn't wanna beat down some black dude, it would seem racist of me. ;)

I don't mind helping people, but it's not fun to be approached like that. I can't really say it's wrong though. However, if he were to approach a woman, I would consider that to be wrong. It's just a threatening situation. It's one thing to ask a guy for money, but for a guy to approach a woman and ask her for money is rude and can be very scary.

Work-related news: we've been getting some stupid customers lately. Like, they are literally just stupid. They'll sign up, not like the service, and ask for a refund. Fine, no problem, so we close their account and refund them. Now here's the stupid part: after we do that for them, they complain that we closed their account! Uh, hello Mr. Stupid, you just asked us to! I swear, what's wrong with humans?!

Oh well, most of our customers are pretty smart, so it's all good. There's just a dummy here and there.

And... that's it for now. :)

I found myself speed-reading through Philosophy for Dummies. One day and I'm done with the 340+ page book. I didn't read every single word but I get the jist of things and more thoroughly read what I was interested in. There were a few things that made me think and I felt like writing them down so here we go.

If God exists and knows everything, then does that mean our future is already determined? It must be, if He knows what will happen, then it has already happened in some effect. If God knows I'm going to sneeze in five minutes, then no matter what, I am going to sneeze in five minutes. So even though it appears I have free will and a free choice to do what I please in my life, that is only true for me because I do not know the future, unlike God.

There are other possibilities. God may know the future plans, but not the specifics. For example, if you play a Grand Master in chess, he knows he's going to win the game. He'll kick your ass. He doesn't know what your exact moves will be, but it doesn't matter because his plan will prevail. You can move your pawn, or you can move your bishop - either way, he's going to beat you.

Another possibility is that God knows us better than we know ourself, and therefore can accurately predict the future, even if it hasn't happened yet. For example, I know my sister. I know she's not going to come in and shoot me in the head in five seconds. I'll wait and see.

Five seconds are up! I'm still alive. And I did that with my human knowledge. I didn't impose on her free will at all, she could have come in here and shot me if she wanted to. Imagine what God could do with his Godly knowledge.

--------

I think Success/Happiness/Peace are three different things. Some people confuse them to be the same, but they are not.

You can be happy and not have inner peace. For example, you may be playing basketball with your friends and be happy, but it will be temporary. The game will end, and you won't be happy doing it anymore.

You can have internal peace and not be happy. You may have no worries in the world, but if you're just sitting on a chair doing nothing, you're more likely to be bored than feeling the same kind of happiness or joy that you would be feeling if you were out doing something.

And success - what is success? Some people would define success as having internal peace and happiness. But others define it as having money, fame, and power. But these things are not required for internal peace or happiness, although they can make it easier to attain for some.

I just finished reading The Ten Percent Solution by Marc Allen. It was pretty good and since it's a short book it only took me a few hours to read.

Now I'll start reading Philosophy for Dummies, as if I haven't studied enough philosophy already!

Why halo thar, I do believest it is timest for another updatest, eh?

• Played two different games of soccer on two different days. It's fun. I've never played soccer before so considering that fact I think I did pretty well. I had a freshly kicked ball come up and smack me in the face. Left a nice little mark for a day or two. Also made my skin itch like crazy.
  
  I'm not sure how much more I'll be playing. Some of the people out there are too competitive. It's like, hey, shut up dude, it's a game. But ah, whatever.
  
  
• Saw Crank the other day with Vic, Tiff, and Chris. I had not even heard of the movie until Chris mentioned it to me. I liked it a lot, it was a crazy fast movie. I don't think I've ever seen a movie quite like that.
  
  
• I'm going to put off a new car a little longer so I can build up a bigger financial reserve. For now I'll just keep using the old Dodge. It's slow and has no A/C, but it works for now.
  
  
• Vic and me just got done watching Ghostbusters 1 and 2 today. I wish I was a ghostbuster. I think I'd like to be Egon in specific, since he's almost as smart as me.

That's all for now. Later days...

Yo Livejournal land, time for me to update. So what's new with me...

• I opened an account with my new bank. I will soon close the old one after some final pending charges clear. The old bank was good, but I have a few personal reasons I want to go with the new one.

• I got myself approved for a secured credit card, so I can finally get around to building my credit score up. I put down $99 and they give me a $500 limit so that's good. Within a year I should be able to get a normal credit card.

• Victoria came to my house for a few days and hung out with my family. We went out to eat at a few places, went bowling, and just hung out. A few days later I also met her family, where we basically just had dinner and hung out at their house for a while. It's a great house, very nice. Fun family, good stuff.
  
  
• I started researching another online business I thought of trying but I ultimately decided against it.
  
  
  ( Read more in detail if you want... )

• I've been driving around in my old '89 Dodge truck the past few days. This thing has over 167,000 miles and it's still ticking along. It doesn't have any A/C though, which really sucks because of how hot and humid Florida is. It's not unbearable though.

• I'm planning to get a new car fairly soon. Probably a Protege, Escort, or Corolla. Maybe something else if there's a good deal. I have four main requirements: good gas, good A/C, reliable, automatic transmission.

• Vic thinks she is better than me at Ultimate Frisbee. I'm not sure what she's been smoking but it must be good to make her that delusional.

• I saw Office Space today. Funny movie but I'm not in love with it like many people are.

• I was in Barnes & Noble today and I saw a book about Microsoft Frontpage 2003 that was around 1,000 pages. I had no idea that so much could be written about that one piece of software, geeez!

• And to finish this up... I had awesome steak and potatoes tonight, and you probably didn't. Ha... ha... ha!