Joe's New Blog

Nothing special, this is just my third effort at writing a blog about my life and what goes on in it: Hobbies, cooking, work, maybe the occasional book or DVD review, and so forth. Nothing really noteworthy, but this is sort of a little subset of my world...

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Daily Journal: Day 9 of 365

Today wasn’t too bad a day. Work in the morning was pretty routine. When the girlfriend and I got home for lunch, we found that there was a carpet cleaner’s van out front. And, sure enough, there were a bunch of hoses and stuff leading into our living room. So, did the carpet look “as good as new”? No, not really, but it did look an order of magnitude better than it ever has since I’ve lived here.

While we were talking with the carpet guys, the new landlord came by. He had already looked at the leaky garbage disposal and figured out that we needed a new one. He’d also already fixed the countertop which was separating from the cupboards beneath it. And he had purchased a deadbolt for the back door, although he had to do some drilling to get the thing installed. He said that the chimney was actually clean, but the flue was really hard to get open, so maybe we can start using the fireplace tomorrow. We also showed him the lighting problems with the outside lights, and he said he’d get an electrician out to look at it and see if we can get a switch or something.

As we were leaving, he also showed us where he’s going to put a section of fence to give us some privacy on our back patio. And he said that he’d repair the screens and get them re-hung. That means we’ll finally be able to open the windows without flies getting in and the cat getting out. That’ll be nice.

The afternoon at work was pretty good, too. I had enough driving that I stayed busy most of the shift, but not a lot of really difficult-to-find addresses. Between that and pulling up a few cars for customers, it kept me pretty active all shift. And that’s a good day…

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Friday, December 11, 2009

Daily journal: Day 5 of 365

It was another very quiet day at work. I had one ride, picking up a lady from about three miles away. And today I didn’t even have as many cars to bring up as I had yesterday. So, I wound up spending most of the evening working on creating my list of New Year’s resolutions and getting them organized. Now I just need to get them all typed in, figure out some way of displaying my progress in some kind of organized way, and post the result to the website.

After work, my sweetie and I carpooled home. I did the dishes before she made something for dinner. It was supposed to be sort of a shrimp scampi kind of dish, but it wound up being a sort of thick fish stew with shrimp in it. She didn’t like it very much, but I had my whole bowl. I thought it was pretty decent tasting, although the texture certainly left something to be desired. After having dinner, I vacuumed the bedroom, so hopefully her allergies won’t have so much effect on her.

Now I’m just sitting watching hockey. The Stars just tied their game against the Sharks. We’ll be going to see the Stars play live next weekend, which is nice. If they win, we’ll get tickets to another game. It was kind of a special deal that the Stars had going on. We are at least going to five more games this season, and if they win all five, we could theoretically be going to a total of ten more games. That’d be cool…

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Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Daily Journal: Day 3 of 365

Today was another bitterly cold day, barely reaching 40 degrees. At least it was sunny, though. Driving at work was fairly uneventful today. I had one short run into Denton and one longer one out to Justin, and that was about it. The lady on the first (Denton) run works at an accounting firm, and I was talking to her about going into the accounting field. I’m still just not really sure what I want to be when I grow up, but I’m seriously looking at accounting. Other options include getting a degree in library science, getting my certification as a DBA and getting back into the computer geek biz, or heading toward a culinary career. I’m just still really uncertain, though. I guess trying to go back to college would be a good starting point, and it would keep the girlfriend from griping at me about not taking any classes this term. That would be a serious bonus…

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Monday, December 7, 2009

Daily writing: Day 1 of 365

The girlfriend and I slept in later than we should have this morning, and we barely made it to work on time. It was cold and foggy and a generally dreary sort of winter day. It reminded me a lot of winter in Oregon. I don’t think it got over 40 degrees today.

The morning shift was uneventful. I didn’t have much filing to do, and I had everything done about two hours into my 4-1/2 hour shift. Fortunately I had a little list of orders to try to find during the middle, so I wasn’t totally bored all morning.

We drove home for lunch, which was pretty uneventful. Back to work, and it was pretty much right onto the road. I had a total of three runs today, one take-home and two pick-ups. The first was just to the north end of Denton, but the second was a bit of a pain. It was a pick-up in Flower Mound, so I took the little back route that Art, the morning driver, had shown me on my second day. That all was fine until I got about halfway there, and the road was closed to through traffic. So I wound up detouring about 20 minutes out of the way from where I would have been. And there was more construction on the way, so after picking the lady up, I had to head south and head through downtown Lewisville to make it to the freeway. By the time I’d hit the freeway, it was just about rush hour, and it took about 45 minutes to get back to the dealership. The lady wasn’t upset or anything, but it was kind of a pain nevertheless. Fortunately, the last run was just down the road about five minutes from the dealership. That lady seemed like she would have been kind of fun to go to a party with. She was older, but seemed like the sort who always has fun wherever she goes.

After the last run, I just had to hang out about half an hour before it was time to head home. Some lady called to say that she’d be there to pick up her rental a little after 7:00, but fortunately I don’t have to deal with that. It became even more fortunate when the lady called back again at about 6:50 and said that she was still half an hour away. Hopefully she finally made it. I know that Vickie, the gal who was running rentals tonight, was pretty pissed about the whole issue.

We stopped and got gas on the way home. I didn’t realize I had the 10-cent per gallon bonus at Kroger, but I was pleasantly surprised that the gas was going to be cheaper than I’d expected. We decided not to stop at the grocery store for coffee, since I already have enough for tomorrow. Instead, we just drove home and the girlfriend started making spaghetti for dinner. I started watching Monday Night Football. Dinner was good, the game was decent, and now it’s about time to call it a night…

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Friday, December 4, 2009

Shut out!

I had no runs at all today at work. It was about the most boring couple of hours that I can really recall. Yesterday, I wound up having two runs after the bank run. The first was just up to the State School, maybe a five-minute run from the dealership. Of course, it was right about at five, which is just about the time that most of the workers leave there. So it wound up taking about half an hour to get back the mile or so to the dealership because of all the traffic backed up in the school's driveway. The lady who I picked up was a bit wacky, but she seemed nice enough. When we got back to the dealership, I found out that she had an old Corvette which she was getting looked at. The driver's side window wouldn't work, though, so one of the porters had to duct tape it closed for her while she held it up from the inside. It was a pretty funny scene, and it would have looked pretty messed up if someone had been driving in to the service area right then. "So, do you do all of your repairs with duct tape?"

After that run, it was pretty much waiting most of the evening. A car got towed in at about 6:30, and I guessed that I'd probably wind up kind of getting screwed on that deal. And sure enough, that's what happened. The lady who owned the car was stranded with no one to come and get her, so despite the fact that I'm not usually supposed to head out after 6:30, I headed out to take her home at about 6:45. She was upset that the dealership didn't have any loaner cars or anything that she could use to get to a test she had to take at 8:00 this morning, and I just tried to explain to her that we did have rental cars, but there's a waiting list and we had all of them rented at the time. She still just kept complaining most of the time. She also wasn't exactly the best at giving directions, waiting until I was pretty much at each intersection before she told me which way I was supposed to turn. I finally got her dropped off and got back to work after pretty much everyone had left. Only the shop foreman was still there waiting for me. Hopefully that won't happen very much again.

This morning on the way to work, the girlfriend and I stopped at the Unicorn Lake Diner and Bakery, or Bakery and Diner. I don't remember which it's called, and I'm too lazy to look it up. One of the ladies I work with said that she'd had a very good lunch there, so we figured we'd go ahead and give them a try. I had an apple turnover. It wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't the best I've ever had. The girlfriend said hers was also not the best she's ever tasted, but we're going to go ahead and give them another chance for lunch sometime. Maybe their "diner" side is a bit better than their "bakery" side.

On the way home from work, we ate at the Cafe China, right around the corner from the bakery/diner. It was your basic Chinese restaurant. The service was fairly quick, and the food was decent. It's certainly not something that I'd really shout about one way or the other, but it's convenient to the movie theater, so we may stop in once in a while if we go to the movies. There are a few other Chinese restaurants here in town that I'd prefer if the location is no issue...

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Thursday, December 3, 2009

Another slow day at work...

Looks like it's going to be another slow day here at work, doing the driving. I had a bank run when I first got here, and that's been it so far. Don't have any runs scheduled for later or anything, so I guess it's pretty much just sit and try to kill time until I can call it a night.

The girlfriend and I headed home around the same time for lunch, even though we didn't carpool today. When I got home, Rick, the new landlord, was waiting outside. He came in and talked to us for a bit about what he plans to do around the place to try to keep us happy. It seems like he's in a little over his head, and even he commented that he should have talked to us before he purchased the property. He said he has a really good carpet guy who claims that he can make the crappy old carpet as good as new. I tried to make it as clear as possible that we really don't want to have a bunch of mildew and stuff growing under the carpet, and he said that he understood. He also told us he's going to try to get a bunch of the other things done, although he obviously can't just wave a magic wand and get everything done. The girlfriend and I are going to give him a couple of months, as we're still on a month-to-month lease. If it looks like things are getting better at a reasonable rate, we'll sign a new lease and stay on. Otherwise, we're probably going to start saving and try to find a better place to live...

Oops, I have a run to make, so off to it...

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So, yesterday was pretty dull for the most part. The new landlord didn't show up by 3, and the girlfriend called and mentioned that we'd taken extra time off work to meet him and wondered where he was. He called back a bit later and said that his carpet guy had a busted radiator and couldn't show up until an hour or so later, but there was no way we could wait that long. So it's not a real auspicious start for the new management.

Once I got back to work, I had someone to drop off down in Lewisville, so it was pretty much right onto the road. I ended up picking up four other people total, so the night was pretty much continuous driving with very little time to get bored. I like it when it's like that. Two of the people I picked up were ladies who I'd driven home during the past week. One of them gave me my first tip. Not sure if I'm even supposed to take tips when offered, but I figured that she could probably afford the two bucks, considering that she's driving a new Cadillac Escalade, living in a McMansion out in Lake Dallas, and evidently hubby drives a newer-model Corvette. Nevertheless, she's a pretty nice lady, and I appreciate the gesture.

That same lady and I were talking about New Orleans both when I drove her home and when I picked her up. She's originally from New Orleans. Sounds like October will probably be the best time to visit down there, so I guess we'll have to schedule that for our fall road trip next year. I'm thinking that our spring road trip might have to be the journey up to the northern midwest. Or if we don't have all that much money or vacation time saved up, maybe we can see more of Arkansas and Tennessee, as well as visiting Kentucky and West Virginia. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I made enchiladas for dinner after work yesterday. Some were cheese and some were beef and cheese. I thought we had regular enchilada sauce in the cupboard, but we evidently used it already, so I wound up making a pretty basic cheese sauce to go on top. I didn't think they came out all that well, but the girlfriend said they tasted good, and that's most of the battle right there. We ate them while we watched the new episode of Mythbusters.

Well, it's about time to head back to work, so off I go...

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Wednesday, December 2, 2009

White stuff on the ground...

We had snow on the ground this morning when we got up. I'm glad that it seems to have pretty much all melted off now. I really don't feel like driving around this area in the snow, trying to find people at addresses I've never been near before. Tomorrow is supposed to just be cloudy, but they're expecting more snow showers after midnight tomorrow night, and then more into Friday. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will either not stick or will melt before my driving shift. Not dreaming of a white Christmas, damn it...

It was freezing cold in the file room today, and my hands are like little ice cubes. I took my lunch early to come home and wait for the new landlord, who is supposed to be here between 1 and 3 to inspect the place and look over all the repairs and such which we e-mailed him about on Monday. There was a van parked outside between the two apartment buildings when I got here, but I don't know if one of those is him or not. In any case, the girlfriend should be home for her lunch in half an hour or so, and then she can take over the waiting duties. It won't be a good sign if he just doesn't bother to show up at all. Might be getting near time to start getting ready to move out...

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Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Another day, another dollar...

I had three pickups and a drop-off on a cold, wet day of driving at work. I was a bit annoyed this morning. We carpooled in today. Yesterday, I walked over to the reception area to pick up the girlfriend for lunch just a little earlier than I had planned, at about 2:20 instead of 2:30-2:45. She was kind of annoyed at that. So today I had a couple of things to do in the file room, so I was busy until about 2:30. And she calls me to find out where I'm at, because Kathy, the other receptionist, wants to leave early. If that kind of thing is going to happen regularly, I guess the whole carpooling thing might not be such a good idea. I guess we'll find out as time goes along, though.

Before leaving for work this morning, I got a reply back from the new landlord. He's going to come by tomorrow and take a look at all the things that we've told him we'd like fixed in the apartment. I doubt that everything will be taken care of, but maybe we'll at least get some of the major stuff done.

Got home from work and watched a hockey game while eating leftover curry for dinner. The game was the Blackhawks hosting the Blue Jackets, and it was a pretty good game. Went through overtime at 3-3, and it took them 11 rounds of a shootout to determine the winner. Wish I had the luck to see a game like that live. Now I'm watching How the Earth Was Made on the History Channel. I suppose I should probably head off to bed now. It's getting late, I'm getting tired, and I still have to do the dishes tomorrow morning so we have the house a little cleaner for the landlord...

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Monday, November 30, 2009

Working and grievances...

Boring first half of the day at work. The girlfriend called the new landlords at lunch, and he gave us his e-mail address to send any of our grievances to. Apparently, the old landlords told him all this stuff was going to be fixed before they signed the actual sale papers. We've drafted and sent off a large e-mail to him this evening, detailing all the shit they said they would do and some of the other stuff we gave to them over a year and a half ago.

Second half of the day wasn't anywhere near as boring. Had a take-home, who was a nice college girl who works at the UNT observatory. Quick run. There was one guy who didn't want to be picked up until around five, so I figured I had time to go get a guy in Double Oak. Got lost, wound up taking about an hour to do a run which should have taken about half that. Got the other guy almost half an hour late, but he didn't seem to mind. Had another nice lady as the end of the day, nice short run to Lake Dallas. She was from New Orleans originally and we talked about weather and the best times to visit the Big Easy. Looks like maybe next October would be good.

Went shopping after work and got home later than expected. The girlfriend made curry. I helped with that and then watched Monday Night Football before drafting the letter to the new landlords. Now I need to go wash the dishes, since I told her I'd do it yesterday...

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Saturday, November 28, 2009

Quasi-birthday party

The last half of work yesterday was pretty uneventful. I basically sat around and read Napalm and Silly Putty for most of the time. I had a whopping total of one person to pick up, and that was about a 10-mile round trip. I left a little early, because I figured losing half an hour's pay was better than just falling asleep there in the little spare office cubicle.

I stopped at the liquor store on the way home and picked up a fifth of rum and a bottle of Pepsi. I got home and got changed and the girlfriend and I headed off to go to a party. Wasn't a birthday party or anything, but it was still kind of fun. We actually stopped and grabbed a bite to eat at Chik-Fil-A before we got there, because I was pretty starved and she was a bit hungry, too. I'm glad we did stop. She had told me that there would probably be finger foods and such at the party, but it turns out that Will, one of the hosts, has gone fully vegan, and his cooking is not exactly to either of our likings any longer.

We were introduced to a variety of people at the party. Seems that Will meets a lot of folks, and he introduced quite a little cross section of society. Quite a few of them were native Spanish speakers, and we didn't really talk with the a lot, but everyone was nice and friendly. The girlfriend and I hadn't really been getting a lot of sleep lately, though, and we wound up bailing out at around 10:30. We got home around 11:30 and went to bed shortly afterward.

It kind of sucks getting old...

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Friday, November 27, 2009

Another year older...

So, this has pretty much been about the most crappy birthday I've had in the last two decades. I don't seem to do well with those ages that are even multiples of 21, I guess. Went to work this morning, have had a dull day doing the filing so far, and it looks like there's not going to be much business for me driving the courtesy shuttle around town, because there just aren't that many people coming in to get their cars fixed today. And, of course, most of them have other options for rides today, since they have spouses or kids who have the day off. Anyway, I should get ready to head back and see how things are going. No sense getting myself fired on my "special day." Heh...

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Friday, February 20, 2009

Manic Depression's a Frustratin' Mess...

So I find myself here, feeling depressed and like a considerable failure. I always just seem to find myself distracted, not finishing the things that I really should. It seems I constantly have things added to my to-do list, and nothing ever gets to-done. And now most of the girlfriend's friends have pretty much quick contacting us. Before I moved down here, they all seemed very happy for her. Now we could all go out as a group and have fun together, and she wouldn't be the single person there like a third wheel. Now, though, the former roommate who has since moved out really doesn't talk to us at all, and of course most of his friends and such don't really talk to us much either, since their real connection with us was through him. And the girlfriend's best friend doesn't really answer her phone or return messages any more, so we haven't really seen her for a month and a half.

Of course, a large part of the reason I moved down here to north Texas was so that I could find a band, which I thought would be considerably easier here than in southern Oregon. Of course, it probably would wind up being easier if I actually followed up with any of the leads that I had obtained when I first moved down here. But, being the lazy ass that I am, I didn't follow through with most of them for one lame reason or another, and the few that I did, I either let slide after the initial contact or else I just didn't like the music that the group was playing. I was playing with one guy for a while who was doing music that I enjoyed, but it was all covers, and it just seemed like I didn't have a whole lot of input into what we were playing. Then my car broke down, and between how I was feeling about things and the problems with getting to his place to jam, I just let it drop. I shouldn't have, but I can't do much about it now. I really need to get back off my ass and put up another ad or two on Craigslist and see if I can't generate a little more interest. See if I can find someone who wants to jam on some original material but isn't necessarily out to change the world with their music. We'll see if I can do something about getting back in that flow this weekend.

And my work has just been a royal pain in the ass. Everything was initially moving along just fine, but since I've been here, I've run into a few little sticking points in the programming, and I got lazy about doing as much stuff as I should have during the day. I'm kind of left alone over here in my little corner all day, and it's easy for me to just screw off a fair portion of the day. And, unfortunately, I've spent too much time doing that and too little trying to figure out the problems I've been having with the programming. And now it's come to the point where I really need to get the stuff done immediately, and I'm just having a hard time even concentrating on what I'm doing.

So I guess my plan for the weekend is as follows: When I get home this evening, I'm going to clean the cat's litter box and water dish, and finish doing the dishes if the girlfriend hasn't already done so. Actually, before I get started with the litter box and such, I'm going to get a load of laundry running, since I'm way behind on that, too. Somewhere along in there, I also need to make sure that I take out the garbage, since we have a bunch sitting in the laundry room waiting to go out. I should also make a special run down to the recycling center and get rid of a bunch of the crap that's in the closet under the stairs. After I finish doing the dishes and cleaning the litter box, I'm going to gather up all of my Dremel equipment that is currently sitting in the living room and put it in one of the totes that I have sitting up in my room upstairs. Following all of that, which really shouldn't take all that long, I will spend the remainder of the evening finishing the data-entry form for the contracts database, as well as taking screen shots to document it once it is done. I might try doing a little of the technical documentation, but that can wait a little longer as long as the database itself is up and running. One thing that I will not do this evening is have a drink, because I tend to get lazy and stupid when I do that, and I don't need it right now.

Tomorrow morning, the girlfriend wants to go see a house that she's been interested in. It's probably going to be auctioned off long before we could save up enough money for a decent down payment, but I can at least humor her and go to the open house. If she has the time and the interest, I'm going to see if she wants to run down to Home Depot or Lowe's so I can pick up a 3/8" drill bit so I can finally get her shelves hung up in her room upstairs. If she doesn't have the time or doesn't want to make that long a run out of the way, I'll go get it after she goes to work, and then I will get her shelves hung up, finally. Assuming it's not raining, my next goal after that is to get all the stuff unloaded from my old car, so I can think about getting it listed for sale. After I get the car unloaded, I'm going to write up a listing for Craigslist to see if I can find some fellow musicians to play with. I'm also going to draft at least three messages to people on various forums, although I might not send them all immediately because some of those forums are only available on my old laptop, which is currently having issues. And I'm going to write a message to Mom, because I haven't really talked to her for a while, and I should keep in more touch.

After all of that is done, I'm going to spend most of the afternoon and evening working on finishing the edit/view form for the contracts database, as well as finishing the documentation for that portion of it. I want it to be pretty much cosmetically perfect, and I want to start entering some data in to make sure it's showing up the way I want it to. If I feel like the form itself is pretty well complete, I'm going to see about making a couple loaves of bread, or perhaps some other similar kind of baked good. No cookies, though, because they just take too much time and would keep me from getting anything else done. Maybe I'll make those cinnamon rolls I was thinking about making a couple of weeks ago, though. Those would be good for breakfast on Sunday morning, too.

Speaking of Sunday morning, I would like to spend at least an hour or so picking stuff up in my room upstairs. I don't really have any good way to get everything organized as well as I would like, but at least I can get stuff off the floor and into some of those empty totes that I have sitting around up there. I think there is a hockey game Sunday afternoon, so I'm going to take a little time off and watch that, maybe have myself a nice cup of coffee with some Irish cream, but then I need to get back to it. For programming, I'm going to try to complete both the payment report and the payment reconciliation module, as well as hopefully being able to complete a couple of other reports that I think Deana might find handy. Documentation for those in at least a basic mode. And I need to write a couple of search functions for her, because she asked for them before.

Since I will hopefully have picked up a fair amount of stuff in the upstairs room, I'm going to get the old laptop set up and send off the messages I hope to draft on Saturday, if I haven't already sent them off prior to that. I'd also like to go through the old 43Things list and see what needs to be weeded out of there and what other things I need to add to the list. We'll see whether I have time for that, though. In the evening, I'm going to take a shower, read some of my ASP.Net AJAX book, and try to get myself rested up for the coming day. I'll hopefully check in to see how everything's going, too. We'll see, though...

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Friday, October 3, 2008

Yes, I'm still alive...

So, I've definitely not been keeping up on my hypothetical daily postings to the blog. But to review in general, I did find a job, doing database programming at Denton County MHMR, the mental health and mental retardation authority for the county. It pays just a little better than my old job back in Oregon, which is nice, and considering the fact that Texas doesn't have an income tax, I'm actually doing quite a bit better than I was back in Oregon from a financial point of view.

Musically, I've played with a couple of people around the area, but I've kind of dropped out of touch with them, unfortunately. I really should call back Alan, the one guy who I played with several times. He likes 60s and 70s sort of folky-rock, which is all right with me. Not really sure why I dropped out of touch with him, but it's been a couple of months since we talked. The other group I played with mostly did the sort of Def Leppard/ZZ Top kind of thing, which doesn't really appeal to me all that much. I'd really like to find a band that wants to do originals. Maybe I'll start perusing Craigslist again to see if anything comes up, or maybe I'll put up an ad myself.

The programming job I'm doing right now mostly entails me gutting a bunch of Access databases which my predecessor designed and moving them to SQL Server and ASP.net webpages. It seems that the guy who did the development before really didn't know a whole hell of a lot about database design or anything at all about writing actual code in Access. There are tons of temporary tables where there should just be queries, lots of episodes of pulling data out of the SQL server back-end database wholesale, then running sets of delete queries against the data to remove the parts he didn't want. And there are a ton of arcane steps to do things, because if it couldn't be automated in a simple macro with queries, he couldn't do it without user intervention. So most of the applications are getting completely rewritten from the ground up, because it's less work to start over than it would be to try to refactor them to make them work well and have normalized data. Definitely a chore, but they seem happy with the work I'm doing there.

I'm watching the baseball playoffs now, in addition to trying to get a few things caught up on my e-mail, but I do plan to actually keep up a little better with the blog in the future, though. For now, though, I'm outta here...

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