What do I do in my spare time, you may ask? Some people knit or build model airplanes. I tinker. And fix things. I build custom phone systems out of scratch and make them do things that in the wrong hands could be used for nefarious purposes. I build strobe power supplies from scratch and connect them to iPods in order to change traffic lights from red to green. I talk to folks in Australia on a handheld two-way radio from my back porch. I turn broken laptop computers into functioning laptop computers, occasionally disassembling them completely in the process. I figure out how I would get my outside house lights to turn on at sunset and turn off at sunrise without the use of a photoelectric sensor. I crack the WEP passwords of my neighbor’s wireless networks. I build a DVR from scratch and record my favorite TV shows automatically, and send these recordings to my iPhone to watch on-the-go. I plan a reactor to turn used cooking oil into free diesel fuel for my car.

It appears I have occasionally more than one reader. And in the interest of making the internet and the real world a more livable place (at least for me) I offer the following:

If you recall my earlier post about the Charlie Brown auditions, I mentioned the girl who plays Lucy is cute. I neglected to mention that the girl who plays Sally is cute too. In fact she’s more than cute. She’s smokin’ hot. She’s an irresistable, alluring, voluptuous seductress who would make Helen of Troy look like the product of seven generations of sibling inbreeding by comparison.

And let me tell you why. I go to someone’s house, I fix their computer. Anything that could possibly go wrong in the next 24 hours does and then I’m automatically to blame. Windows XP sucks. Windows Vista REALLY sucks. Why do people continue to buy crappy Microsoft products?

As soon as possible I’m getting out of the PC tech business. I’ll still fix computers for friends and previous customers, but even if the work didn’t suck so much, it would be too boring to want to continue. Plus that and I’m getting shafted out of all the money I make for another company that hires me as an independent contractor, anyway. They charge the customers $95 an hour and pay me $25 which works out to less than $19 after I withhold all my own taxes. Not to mention I have to pay for my own healthcare. On top of that, on a good day I only do about 3 or so hours of actual work; the rest of the time I’m running around town from one site to another like a bloody pizza delivery guy. No thanks, been there, done that. Now if they offered to split it 50/50 it might be more agreeable to me. As soon as I find another job I’m making them that offer.

Today I spent about 8 1/2 hours at the Denver Combined Communications Center, or Denver 911 for short. This is the building where all 911 and non-emergency calls (720-913-2000) for the City and County of Denver are answered. In the radio room they have the phone operators and dispatchers for Denver Police, Denver Fire, and Denver Health. I’d post pictures if this cool location but I’m afraid that would probably be a breach of security. I can tell you that they use scramble pads to enter the door access codes, so don’t bother looking over anyone’s shoulder. Scramble pads sound more fun than they actually are.

I got my car back today. Hooray indeed. Now that I’ve realigned the steering wheel (myself) I also have to figure out how to stop the noise that is coming from the pedal area. I think when they took my car apart they didn’t completely put it back together again and now I can hear (and smell) the engine through the firewall. If I were emperor all incompetents would be punished. Does anybody even care anymore or are they just too lazy or stupid to get a simple thing done right?

Hooray! I finally get my car back tomorrow! New steering rack and all. I think this is the end of the ordeal.

28 down. 222 to go.

Today I emailed the person who interviewed me for that new job because it had been a while. I didn’t get the job. They didn’t even have the courtesy to mass email the applicants who didn’t make it.

No Job.

No house.

No girl.

No car.