Archive for August, 2008
Dragon Blogger wrote a post about energy drinks, which made me think about my beloved Josta (R.I.P), so I thought I’d take this opportunity to talk about my favorite discontinued beverage.
I’m not big on energy drinks. They don’t really seem to do anything for me, and most of them taste awful. I only like Red Bull with Jagermeifter. 
By itself it tastes kinda like Robitussin to me. I do like the flavor of the Sobe drinks but they do a number on my stomach. Bleh.
The greatest energy drink of ALL TIME, and perhaps the first, was Josta. It was actually a soda/energy drink, with a unique flavor. I don’t know if it provided much of an energy boost, but damn it was good. Most people I’ve mentioned it to have never heard of it. It’s been off the market for nearly 10 years now anyway. They sold it in the vending machines at my high school, which I believe is the only place I ever saw it for sale, so perhaps poor distribution is one of the reasons it failed. Pepsi, bring back Josta! Please!
At least I can finally prove I didn’t make it up, because there’s a whole site about it. With pictures! Has anyone else out there ever heard of Josta? Aside from the folks that run the Save Josta site?
So, Thursday marked my first time driving to L.A….err, Northridge all by myself and driving back. I have mentioned before that I do not drive on the freeway because of some inexplicable phobia about it. So, I took the highway there (I have been told numerous times that the highway is worse than the freeway because it’s 2 lanes and blah blah blah..but people are not going as fast and whipping around each other to get there 2 minutes earlier and I don’t have to go through the whole getting on the freeway and getting off and that freaks me the hell out.)
Anyway, I had my class Thursday night (I didn’t make it to the Tuesday one largely because I was terrified of driving myself there…but I am definitely going this week.) When I was driving home on the highway there was some sort of accident or something because it was one truck in front of me and in front of him there were just emergency vehicles as far as the eye could see driving extremely slowly. It was taking like 15 minutes to go half a mile. I tried that for quite some time, but there was no sign of it ever getting better and more and more cop cars & etc. kept joining the caravan (I have no idea what happened, I never heard anything about it on the news or anything.) So at this point I am so frustrated and pissed because it took over an hour to get there and then 3 hours of class and then not being able to leave until 10 pm, and OMFG the traffic never ends. I am in fact so irritated that I nearly get on the freeway to escape this mess, which is a big deal in and of itself because of my aforementioned freeway phobia.
I ultimately decided not to do that, but I got off the highway and took a different route home, which consisted of driving mostly downhill, through the mountains, with 180 degree turns one way, and then back the other way, and then back the other way again which was only like 30 or 40 miles or so but felt like for fucking ever. And I got home safe and sound, about a quarter to midnight, even though I was almost as scared of the mountain road as the freeway (and realistically, should have been far more so because I was basically hanging off the side of the mountain, with a very far drop, which I knew was there but at least couldn’t see because it was nighttime.
Oh, and also, there is one freaky ass narrow road that is nearly impossible to make a left turn to get onto, which takes one from highway into town on the way there which I thankfully have found a way to avoid in the future. So basically, I have now driven on 2 of the scariest, most messed up roads around here, to avoid driving on the freeway. So, I think I’m going to start trying to drive the freeway sometime pretty damn soon, because I am so much braver than I though I was, being such a wussy driver and all.
Okay, our society is pretty screwed up. The majority of Americans are overweight, but I keep seeing these commercials on TV for various weight loss products and diet pills. I remember, when I was a kid, the testimonials on these types of ads would be from women saying “I went from a size 16 to a 10!” Now it’s “I went from a size 8 to a size 2!” What is wrong with people? I don’t understand the necessity to lose that much weight, it’s not necessary and likely not even healthy!
I’ve been trying to lose some weight myself, but that’s mostly because my family has a tendency to carry their weight around the middle, so even though I don’t wear a large size, my waist measurement is borderline on being a health risk. I’m trying to get healthier and no longer be teetering on the edge of having higher health risks (diabetes and heart disease already run in my family.) So it’s kind of nice to see that there are still sites that have honest reviews of diet pill scams like extreme acai berry, which leech off of people that are trying desperately to lose weight, be it for health reasons or body image issues.
Now my site is down completely. Thanks to the magic of MacJournal, I can write this now and post it whenever the hell my site works again! If you are trying to access it right now, you are probably seeing something like this:
Site Temporarily Unavailable
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this.
error id: “bad_httpd_conf”
Lucky for me, I’ve already signed up with Lunarpages. Unluckily, I hadn’t backed everything up yet when this happened. That actually is what I was about to do when this happened! I e-mailed their support (because totally awesome hosting companies like Dreamhost will only talk to you on the phone when you pay them extra.) I’m just waiting to see what they come up with this time. My support history page shows 3 pages of back-and-forth emails with them over the one year that I’ve been with them. I’ve had websites for 10 years, and rarely needed to talk to support before Dreamhost.
I’ll be moving everything over when I can access my files.
Added: It’s back up now! (A few hours later.) I received a response from support.
I’m sorry to hear that you are having problems. I just checked and the website is accessible both via http and ftp. Can you please check again for yourself and let me know if you are still unable to connect?
See, this is part of my issue with them. I only get a response after things are okay, which makes me think that they did something to make it okay, but it’s always sorta implied that it was something on my end, and I’m either an idiot or crazy. Or maybe I’m just reading to much into it. But it’s never like “oh, there was an issue with your server, it’s all better now.”
I really wanted to like Dreamhost. I had heard good things about them. But, my experience was not so good. See ya, Dreamhost, I’m moving!
I usually do pretty well on tests, but I just took the Bills IQ quiz, and I got a 77%. It’s broken down into sections, and each one just got progressively worse.
- Credit: 88 - Okay, I’m doing alright!
- Debt: 87 - Cool, still doing well…
- Budget: 70 - Well, I knew I needed a little help in that department, and it’s really not all my fault…
- Wealth: 72 - Well, no kidding, I know I have nothing right now…
- Life Plan: 68 - Now, that’s a little unfair. I’m still in school for another year! I don’t have to have my whole future planned out, right?
When you’re done with the quiz, there is some advice about how to improve your score. Credit counseling is one option suggested, but there’s other stuff about budgeting, saving, investing, and generally planning for the future. Then there’s a little graph to compare your score with others that fit your demographic profile. In most areas, my score was below average. 
Honestly, I don’t think it’s all that bad though. I’m really concerned about paying off my student loans. But I don’t have to start making payments on those until after I graduate, at which point I will hopefully be making enough money that it won’t be a big deal. I don’t have any credit cards, I don’t have a car payment, the only debt I have is my student loans. And one thing that I have read over and over is that the expense of a college education is well worth it because you’re making an investment.
This haiku pretty much sums up my situation:
so broke I must be
until my college degree
then I’ll have money
I got some work done on my car. All that’s left to do is replace the fuel filter and timing belt, and get the tires rotated.
We went to Winco and bought groceries. I should have taken pictures of their produce. Seriously, the strawberries had more fur than my cat. Gross.
Now, I’ve spent way too much time trying to get MacJournal to download my old Livejournal entries. It will only download the 20 most recent..which are already stored in MacJournal, and I want the 2005-2006 ones. I exported from Livejournal’s site, and couldn’t get the file to import properly into MacJournal. I wasn’t planning on posting them here or anything, but I just wanted to have a local copy in the unlikely event that something happens with their site. This idea appears to be far more trouble than it’s worth. If anyone has dealt with this program and can tell me what the hell I’m doing wrong, that would be great.
Seriously. I want a different one. But I’ve just finally managed to get to like..2 visitors per day. And if I moved, I would have to start aaallll over again.
Also? Captcha is damn annoying. I tried like 12 times to leave a comment on someone’s blog, and it kept telling me to enter the letters correctly..which I DID. Repeatedly. I am positively baffled because there was another comment on the same entry.
Also? My site has been loading insanely slowly, which you may have noticed if you are reading this. Thanks again, Dreamhost. Your incompetence knows no bounds.
I went and had my thyroid scan this morning. I’m aware that, as a rule, the ultrasound techs don’t/can’t/won’t tell you anything. But I asked her anyway, and she told me that to her, it doesn’t appear to look any different from last time. I take that as very comforting news since my follow-up appointment is two weeks away.
Also, I heard back from my advisor who said that as far as she’s concerned, I can do whatever the hell I want since the department head already told me it was okay. So tomorrow I go to the other campus and make sure it’s okay with them for me to take these classes. Then it’s just a matter of filling out a form, having CSUN fill out part of it, then CSUB fill out part of it, and registering for those classes. That way my financial aid covers it, and everything is peachy-keen, and I then I just have to take the transcripts to CSUN and have the department chair sign off on another form declaring that it was, in fact, okay for me to substitute those courses. But I swear, doing all of this actually makes life much easier for me. So…yay! But I am definitely saving the e-mail where he said it was alright for me to do this. Just in case.
I went to the endocrinologist this morning for my thyroid checkup. I had to wait an hour for the lab to send my results over, which they should have done already but didn’t, and they had some sort of technical difficulties so it took forever. Anyway, my thyroid meds are working fine, labs came back looking good. I’m scheduled to go in tomorrow morning for an ultrasound to see if my thyroid is any more enlarged than it was when I had the last one done.
I e-mailed my advisor, only to find out that he’s no longer my advisor because he’s been promoted to department chair. He gave me the e-mail of my new advisor, and I’m waiting on her to get back to me. He did tell me, however, that the two classes I want to take at the other campus sound okay to him, and I’m guessing if the head of the department says it’s okay, there won’t be a problem with it. If it works out, it’ll save me time and gas and stress, and I’ll only have to commute two nights a week.
Sis-in-law’s lizard has cancer. This sucks. I got pretty attached to my “nieces” when I was lizard-sitting last year, and her mama loves her so.
