| Homepage of Erik Chmelar | |||||||||||
 Home |
 Photos |
 Bio |
 Family |
 Invent |
 Biz |
 Time |
 CV:pdf|ps|txt |
 School |
 Quote |
 Guests |
 Blog |
| Homepage of Erik Chmelar | |||||||||||
Home |
Photos |
Bio |
Family |
Invent |
Biz |
Time |
CV:pdf|ps|txt |
School |
Quote |
Guests |
Blog |
| Blog |
| Date and Time | Blog | ||||||||||||
| Sat Jul 15, 2006 22:59:00 PDT |
Damn Spam
My web site has been getting increasingly more spam daily. For some reason people see a message box and view it as a chance to post a URL to some spam site or to post miscellaneous things. Sadly, this has made it harder for me to continue to take the time to post periodic blogs about fun and interesting things that happen in my life. Please stop spamming, it is lame. With less spam to delete, I can spend more time writing about my less than stellar performance in the triathlon I entered, about the redneck pick-up truck guy who peeled out in front of everyone at a red light only to lose all his lumber out the back of his truck, and about my pimp ride to the emergency room in an ambulance with an IV in my foot and 20ccs of morphine in my veins. 12 Comments |
||||||||||||
| Fri May 26, 2006 13:48:00 PDT |
Pity the Petty
Over a month ago my ex-girlfriend emailed me out of the blue to tell me she would like to send me some stuff of mine that she thought I should have. That was about one sentence, and the rest of the email was about how she is getting married and graduating, and whatever else she felt like bragging about. Not caring whatsoever, I didn't think much of it, and said, you don't have to send my stuff, but if you want to send my stuff then please do. There was a beautiful glass sculpture of mine that I left at her place, so I asked if she could send that, or if not, at least I could come pick the stuff up to save her money and so nothing would get broken. She sent a response and said, "sure, no problem, and by the way, I am so busy plannig my wedding, blah blah." I waited a week or so, and decided to collect about 100 pictures of her that I had, pictures like her at graduation, her family, etc.--pictures without me in them, of course--and send them to her so she could have them. She received them, and sent me an email thanking me, but stating that she still hasn't sent my stuff because she is so busy with her wedding and graduation. Fine, maybe she is busy, I waited another week and sent her a friendly reminder to send my stuff. Another week went by and still no response nor package from her. I decided to call her and ask if I could come by and pick up my stuff, but of course, she did not answer. In a few more days I got an email saying how she was away in Massachussetts visiting her fiancee when I called. No mention of my stuff being sent. By this point I was getting quite annoyed. She contacted me, offerred to send me my stuff, and was not sending it. I wait one more week, more than three weeks from when she said she would send me my stuff, and sent her yet another email asking her to please send me my stuff. No response, of course. Another week passed as I got more annoyed with this girl. I decided to call her on last Friday and ask if I could come by to pick up my stuff. I called her cell phone first, which she of course did not answer due to called ID. I then called her home phone and got a hold of her. She was absolutely not thrilled that I had gotten a hold of her. I asked her if I could come by tonight and pick up my stuff. "Um, no, tonight is not a good night..." "Well, I don't want to hang out or anything, I just want to get my stuff that you said you would send more than a month ago," I replied. "Um, no, I'm busy, I have family over." Let me remind you that she lives at home with her parents, so she has "family" over every night. "That's fine, you can just leave it on the doorstep and I will come by, pick it up, and leave without you ever knowing I was there." "Um, I don't think so. I'm busy. I'm getting married and graduating." Let me remind you that her wedding is nearly one and a half years away (and she already knows the date, location, time, etc., but that's another story). "Ok, well then how about this weekend?" I asked. "I'm really busy with graduation and the wedding, so no." "So then are you going to send my stuff to me since you won't let ME come by and pick up MY stuff that YOU offerred to send to ME?" "Um I'm getting married. You need to leave me alone," she said, and then hung up on me. If she has not alreay broken or thrown out my stuff out of spite, I am sure she will very soon. It is fairly obvious that this girl simply offerred to send me my stuff so she would have an excuse to email me and brag about her wedding, as if I would care. Sure, I care, I care that some poor schmuck is going to get stuck with this vindictive and petty girl. As Marissa, my current girlfriend, said, "my condolences to the groom." That's one bullet I'm happy to have dodged. So from now on if anyone ever asks me to do something, I'm going give an equally lame excuse like, "sorry, no, I'm busy planning my retirement." 3 Comments |
||||||||||||
| Fri May 12, 2006 12:09:00 PDT |
Dog Gone It
Lately I have been having some real luck with my aging car. A few weeks ago I was driving on the highway when suddenly my car turned off--I lost all power and the RPMs went to zero. I always thought this is how my car would die, although I imagined it being accompanied by a loud banging noise and then a hissing as I coasted to the side of the highway. I pulled over and tried to restart my car several times to no avail. I popped the hood and got out to see if anything was amiss. Nothing looked broken, but then again what the hell do I know about car engines. I wiggled the spark plug cables and the battery connector, got back in, and tried to start it again. After several attempts it finally turned over and began to run. As I drove home my car lost power several times, but luckily never completely died. It turns out that the battery connector wasn't in as tip-top shape as it should have been, which caused intermittant power to the computer, and my car's computer needs the battery to run. Anyhow, yesterday I was driving to the gym. Just as I changed lanes to merge onto the highway I noticed a heaping carcass, apparently a dog, 30 or so feet in front of me. Since there was no time to change back to my lane, and I didn't want to swerve to cause an accident, I simply manned-up and ran over the damn thing. I felt my car jolt and heard a huge thud as the carcass struck the underside of my car. Since I was already on the onramp to the highway, I continued onward to my exit, watching my gauges and listening carefully. As I exited and slowed down from highway speeds, I heard a nice clanging noise like some metal being dragged on the concrete. Excellent. I pulled into a lit parking lot and had a look underneath my car. Aside from leaving a pleasant fragrance, the carcass managed to rip off half of a bracket in the middle of the underside of my car that supports the the muffler. I removed the bracket and everything seemed to still be functional. I'm curious about what'll happen to my car next week. Maybe my tire will fall off or something. Whatever it is, I'm sure I'll do another half-ass job of fixing it and pretend everything is ok. 2 Comments |
||||||||||||
| Tue Apr 18, 2006 11:13:00 PDT |
Hello, I'm Zrik
I went to the post office yesterday morning (really early, about 7:00 AM) to pick up a package. I received the "Sorry we missed you" slip on my door the previous day, so I brought it with me along with my ID and a piece of mail that has my name and address. I went prepared because last time I picked up a package they gave me a hard time about proving my current address, since stuff I pick up is usually addressed to ALPHA, attn: Erik. I get to the pick-up window and give the lady the slip and my ID. She looks at the slip and says she can't give me my package because it's addressed to "Zrik," not "Erik." "You are not Zrik," she says. "You've got to be kidding me right," I replied. "So the sender has trouble writing his captial "E's". Here's a current piece of mail proving I am at that address." "That mail is addressed to Erik, not Zrik. This one we have is addressed to ALPHA Zrik, which is not you." "You're stupid," I thought to myself. "Look, ALPHA is the name of my small business, what do you want from me?" "I need proof that ALPHA Zrik lives at this address, a piece of mail or a business card." I was very upset at this point. It's 7:00 AM (keep in mind I usually go to bed between 2:00 and 3:00 AM) and I had to bike to the post office because my car broke down the previous day. "Fine, I'll be back." I biked home and grabbed a piece of mail addressed to "ALPHA, Eric" (apparently nobody can spell my oh-so-complicated first name). I went to the pick up window and gave the annoying woman my slip and the piece of mail. "What's this, I thought you were going to bring a business card?" "You're joking, right. I come in here every couple of weeks to pick something up addressed to ALPHA. What's the problem?" "I'm going to have to get the supervisor." She says. By this time I was very upset, and wishing I brought a baseball bat instead of the piece of mail. The supervisor comes out with my package and proceeds to give me the same song and dance that the previous woman did. "I'll give this package to you this time," she finally says. I sign for the stupid package while voicing my disappointment of the previous woman, the post office, and California. Later that day Marissa noticed that the package was addressed an ALPHA Zrik who lives on Zlan Village Ln. Apparently they can figure out that Zlan is Elan but the leap from Zrik to Erik is far too complicated. 3 Comments |
||||||||||||
| Fri Mar 03, 2006 23:21:00 PDT |
Where There's a Will, There's a Way [to waste 20 minutes]
I recently cleaned my apartment, and did a super job unpacking every box in my closet and throwing out all unnecessary junk. I found a mini soccer ball that I got from a trade show/career fair that I went to a while ago, and today around 10:00 PM I got it in my mind that I needed to blow it up NOW to play with it. The only catch was that I didn't have a needle for my bike pump. No big deal, WalMart is open until 11:00 PM, so I headed out in search of a needle. Of course, when I got to the sporting goods department there were four hangers on the rack labeled "needle, $0.77," but no needles. This always happens--the one thing you go to the store for and they don't have it. All other stores were now closed, so what to do? I got home and looked at my sadly deflated mini soccer ball. "Maybe I can blow it up with my mouth," I thought, and picked it up and started to inflate it. I only managed to get a little bit of air inside before it felt like my cheeks were going to burst and my head was going to spin off. Ok, that didn't work. But I still wanted to kick around this cute mini soccer ball. "Hmm, maybe I can make my own needle." I thought for a minute and then realized that this was going to be a piece of cake, all I needed was a very small metal tube and an air-tight cone-shaped thingy with a small opening on one side that will fit the small tube and a large opening on the other side that will fit my bike pump. Those years of wacthing MacGyver and the A-Team on TV were finally going to pay off. I grabbed a handfull of mechanical pencils and found one with a tip whose large end fit into my bike pump (after a couple seconds of filing it down a bit). I then searched for a pencil with a metal a lead-guide tube (it's the tube that guides the lead to the chuck). Because the lead guide tube has to have an inside diameter larger than the diameter of the lead plus some additional room for the lead to move around, it fit nicely over the tiny metal tube that stabilizes lead out of the tip. "Hmm, this connection between the tube and the tip isn't air-tight, what to do now?" I thought for a minute--of course, modeling wax. I grabbed a small chunk of wax and shaped it around the connection between the tube and the tip, making it air-tight. I pushed the small end of my home-made needle into the mini soccer ball. I ried to pump up the ball but it wasn't working. "Duh, did you check the tip, there's probably a broken off piece of lead stuck in there." I took out my home-made needle and cleared the piece of lead, stuck it back into the ball, and violla, it worked. Even though I wasted 20 minutes making a needle that I could buy for $0.77, I was happy I could finally kick around the mini soccer ball. Sadly, however, immediately after inflating the ball I sat down in front of the computer for another 20 minutes to write this blog instead of playing with the ball. Oh well. 
Home-made air needle to inflate this mini soccer ball. 2 Comments |
||||||||||||
| Thu Dec 22, 2005 00:49:00 PDT |
Midland Visit
I visited my family over the Christmas/New Years holidays in Midland, MI. I took my girlfriend Marissa with me and we both had a lot of fun. We took advantage of the snow and built a snow Homer (Simpson) and an igloo. Unfortunately, after it snowed the temperature went above freezing and the snow continued to melt for the next few days, destoying our creations. Click on the picture below to see a few more pictures from the trip. 
Ma and Pops standing next to our igloo, Midland, MI, Dec 2005. 1 Comment |