Cats.

In terms of my experience with cats, the first several years of my life where rather negative. My father has always been opposed to the feline friends so many of us have grown fond of. Every time that I interacted with a cat when I was younger, I was oblivious to the fact that animals absolutely feed off of our emotions and react to us accordingly. Therefore, since I was always nervous that cats wouldn't like me or would attack me, they almost always lived up to those expectations.

You know what I find interesting? It's so rare that you encounter a wonderful person with a shitty pet. Just as interesting, you rarely see a fantastic animal who belongs to a shitty person. You know why? Animals do feed off of our habits and emotions. That's why my cat adores laying on the couch all day and her number one complaint is only getting about 110% of her daily recommended nutrition.

Many of you people are quite familiar with the twist and turns my life has taken. One thing I don't regularly mention is the weird span of time between living in Richland and living in Seattle, when I lived in Bellevue.

It was a Tuesday at my parent's house and I was looking for places to live in Seattle. My Aunt Traci texted me and informed me that Taco Tuesday was a thing at Ty's in West Richland. Knowing that I had a small amount of remaining time in the Tri Cities and that I really enjoy hanging with the Chapman crew, I quickly left and found myself eating some tacos and having a few glasses of beer. While it was a very nice taco Tuesday, what truly made the experience memorable was the fact that I had received a response from my Housing Wanted post on Craigslist in Seattle. At first I received a three page text about the place that was being offered including prices, personality style, and allowing of cats.

He also mentioned specifically that rent was a fixed price, and included all utilities.

Quite a bit took place between Tacos and moving to Bellevue. We'll skip that now.

Finally I was moved into this house in Bellevue. The owner of the house was named Lynn, a 50 year old guy. My cat was welcome so long as she was house trained and could get along with the house owner's dog.

The first hint I should have taken was when the owner of the house was helping me put a bed in my room. He warned me to watch out for used needles. I assumed he was joking, naturally. But he met my laughter with a serious tone which indicated that an individual who abused heroin had lived in this room prior to me. As we were moving a mattress up from the garage, I questioned why we couldn't use the more logically sized one next to the one we were carrying. He answered that his friend had died on that mattress and that he wasn't ready for others to sleep on it.

Unfortunately about three days before any of those events, he had cashed the check I gave him for $1400.

Things went alright for a short period following this. I figured maybe I had lucked out and he had one horrible tenant before.

Suddenly I come home from a long day of driving, and my landlord, the other tenant, and two friends are sitting around the living room table snorting cocaine.

To be honest, I didn't really give a shit. It was a red flag, for sure, but I had only paid for two rents on a month to month verbal agreement. So I figured if this was the worst of it things would be alright.

At this point I was rather lonely. I didn't know anyone in Bellevue and wasn't thrilled with the prospect of hanging out with the people I lived with.

Fast forward another week or so, and I come home to the Bellevue house with a trio of unfamiliar cars parked outside the house.

I walk in to find a group of guys I've never seen before. A box of sweet tarts lay spread across the table in front of them.

I had introduced myself and shaken hands with most of them before my realization that a lot of the tablets on the table were not sweet tarts, they were pills of some sort being placed into sweet tart boxes so as to cover suspicion.

It was that moment that I realized I was in a bit over my head with where I had chosen to live. Lucky for me, it didn't paralyze me socially. Instead I offered the people some of the 18 pack of beer I'd recently purchased. Of course, I had the option of saying "HEY guise drugs r bad stop it." I don't see an alternative universe where I had said that and things proceeded better than they had.

This ends part 1 of this story.

A few weeks in to living at the Bellevue house Lynn rented the downstairs portion out to a guy who he thought was a cocaine dealer. He didn't see this as an issue as long as the guy paid rent.

As I said before, I was pretty lonely by this point. So when I went downstairs to check my laundry to find a young lady hanging out by herself in the basement, I was somewhat excited at the prospect of a person to hang out with.

We chatted for a bit and eventually I went to check my laundry, and discovered what I couldn't quite describe, but knew to me some form of hard drugs. By this time I had had a few of the beers I originally shared with the opiate salesman (I never thought I would string anything like that sentence together) and I ask her what it is. Turns out she'd been switching back and forth between smoking meth and heroin. At this point the idea of judgemental had long been gone from me, and I chose to ask her a few questions about it rather than immediately dismiss her. She was still at an interesting point where she was clearly addicted to certain substances, yet still convinced herself that she was living in an ideal situation.

A few hours later I exchanged words the the guy who rented the downstairs area (the supposed cocaine dealer) and discover the majority of his income actually comes from taking a percentage of prostitution sales of women he knows. You read that correctly. The guy living downstairs wasn't actually a coke dealer, he was a pimp.

By now we're a little a month into my two months of payment. I inform Lynn that I will be moving out when my rent is up.

Lynn immediately throws a childish fit. The agreement we had was that I would inform him 30 days prior to moving out. Despite the fact I told him 33 days before moving out, he was pissed. I asked if he meant 30 days before not paying rent, to which he said yes. I then reminded him that I had already paid for my rent for the second month, and that he was actually asking for 60 days notice.

The 50 year old man reacted like a 5 year child. He began yelling and told me to leave immediately.

So I retreated to the local safeway to give him time to calm down. He tells me that he will refund me the 700 dollars for the second month of rent so long as I'm out in 3 days. He said he will give me 3 days, like I gave him 3 days, and that a new guy is coming to check out my room soon so I best be ready.

I call his bluff. I tell him to show me the money and I'll be out by day's end.

A few hours pass, and he sends me a long message about the asshole that canceled on him to view my room, and how he'd rather me just stay there for now anyway.

Luckily by about this time, I had my next living space lined up, and I had the option of moving in at almost any time.

Remember when I said that he included utilities? Well,  when I think utilities nowadays, I think of power, water/sewage, garbage, and internet. Lynn's idea of utilities meant water/sewage, and power outlets which consisted solely of two prong outlets. The kicker was he had real trouble keeping up with the power bill, so the power went out for days at a time here and there.

So at this point I've written off the experience entirely as a stupid bump between Richland and Seattle.

Finally the day comes where I move the majority of my shit from the shitty Bellevue house to my new pad in north Seattle.

The thing is, by this time, due to the lack of a trash service, I've built up a small wall of trash in my room. Naturally, I move my possessions, not including my trash. This occurred on the 15th of July, whereas my agreement to move out of the Bellevue house landed on August 3rd.

So essentially what happens is this: I move out on Thursday, tell Lynn I'll be back on Monday to take care of the trash, and on Saturday, Lynn texts me.

I've chosen not to post the screen shot of the text. The threats from his end made certain people I showed them to originally very uncomfortable, despite my lack of concern. I don't wish to spread that further, so just know he essentially said that if I came back to deal with the trash as I discussed, I would have been with a pistol in my face.

That was several months ago and my living situation is now lovely.

France and stuff

Three things that I'm proud of lately:

1. My fluffy hair

2. My driving skills

3. My ability to always come up with a third thing when making lists 

So France bombed the shit out of an ISIS stronghold today. I'm not really into promoting violence, but that knowledge still makes me fill a bit warmer inside. You've got to hand it to ISIS, they've been handy in uniting people. It's been a while since there was such a black and white case of good vs bad. While I don't wish to rank atrocities, I think we can agree that the overall shittiness of ISIS rivals the Nazi regime. It doesn't matter if you a bleeding heart liberal or a die hard conservative, it appears as though everyone who matters/has a brain stem opposes them. 

Which does make me fear a bit for the moderate Muslims throughout the world. So many individuals seem to be attributing the actions of few to well over a billion people. It is worth noting that even if just 1% of Muslims are of extremist nature, we're still talking about a million crazy, murderous people. The figure that strikes me as frightening is the number of Islamic people who are somewhat supportive of ISIS, and what is likely pushing them in that direction. 

Scroll through damn near any facebook feed and the hate is appalling. Eradicating Islam is a fucking sickening idea. Has anyone posting that sort of garbage considered how that kind of thought process ends up contributing to growing support of ISIS? Consider a moderate, peaceful Muslim family who moves to a country in search of an improved standard of living. Then they are verbally assaulted regularly, despite having done nothing wrong, blamed for atrocities which they did not support, and then we wonder why they don't all love America. Lack of education and blind hatred will be an issue the coming years in the sense that moderate Muslims may be driven away from supporting the US because they've never felt a shred of support themselves.  

With the recent attacks in Paris came the option on facebook to change your display photo to include an overlay of the French flag. The way people react to this sort of thing is always so amusing to me. I haven't personally done so, but I think it's a nice and simple way to show support. And I believe that that is the point of doing so, to show support. No one updated their facebook profile to include the French flag in hopes of bringing back those murdered in Paris back to life. So when I see posts about "wow guise you changd you're picture that doesn't help at all i hope u no that" I get a bit frustrated. Apparently we should all arm ourselves, jetpack over to the Middle East, and open fire. Anything less is useless, according to some.

Then there's the opposite end of the spectrum. I've seen people complain that not everyone has changed their photo in support of France :"this is why the terrorists are winning!" Really? I can't even address that, and I hope no one finds it necessary for me to do so.  

If you don't believe the photo feature helps, how can you possibly be under the impression that complaining about it is any different? These people who decry small things like this have no intention of helping anything, they only hope to put others down. 

I truly desire a raise in the level of casual political discourse in this country. If about three turns into a conversation your argument turns to "fucking liberals," you are part of the problem. My opinions change regularly when I'm confronted with new information.  If you believe that I'm astray in my political views, the proper way to address it is a discussion, not an attack on my character. 

Why can't we ever have a rational discussion about guns? I fucking love guns. But I can't grasp why a large percentage of the country is so radically opposed to any sort of legislature designed to reduce gun violence. I am not in favor of taking away firearms, or making it more difficult for citizens to defend themselves. I am in favor of research into how we can reduce the number of deaths associated with firearms in this country. 

Right there, a few people stopped reading and wrote me off. Again, you're part of the problem. 

When I find myself in a political discussion, the point I wish to drive home more than any other is that unless you are a political scholar, you probably don't have all the information relevant to your beliefs. There is almost always some factor that lays unconsidered, and unfortunately the natural human instinct to information which conflicts with what we already know is to deny it and defend your prior knowledge. I do not wish at all to convey that I, on the other hand, do know everything. I don't. But I am interested in expanding what I do know. 

I realize this deviates a bit from my usual blogging style. I don't think I'll get political very often. Writing with the intention of not offending people on either side of the spectrum is rather exhausting. 

Got the bug again

That's all on that subject. 

Seattle was rainy as hell today. Though scholars struggle to determine why, rain tends to increase demand for Uber rides. So tonight was relatively busy, up to and including around 11:15. I received a request to pick up a rider on 6th ave, and proceeded to the location. Aside from an initial concern that there would be too many riders, things continued to operate smoothly until the rider entered my car. A member of her group was yelling something indistinct, but with enough concern that it warranted stopping and rolling the window down to exchange some info. 

"Sir! you have a flat tire!" 

...Fuck. Most of you are aware of the fact that I'm not in the best place financially at the moment, and issues with my car scare the hell out of me because my car directly relates to my ability to have an income. 

In a panic I informed the rider that I was not comfortable driving her while a rather important aspect of my vehicle in such a dire state. This was all fine and dandy except for the minor issue that I had began the trip (in the Uber partner app) when she entered the vehicle, and had to end the ride immediately. With my mind almost entirely on my tire and therefore my ability to earn money, I was a bit flustered in my explanation that she will be charged $4.35 for the "ride," but that a refund will take place in a day or two. It was clear she didn't put a lot of stock into my words, and I'm fairly certain the ordeal resulted in a 1 star rating from the rider. 

At this point after roughly 1000 rides, I maintain a 4.84* driver rating. A "top driver" for Uber has a 4.83, while average is considered a 4.7. So this far into the game a 1 star rating here and there doesn't hurt me much. Still it'd be nice if people listened to those who may be slightly more educated on the subject than them. 

*When I initially told my mother about the rating system and my rating, she asked, in complete seriousness, if that rating was out of 10. Yes, she believed that there was a chance I averaged a 4.8 out of 10. So... that was a confidence booster. 

After travelling about 2 miles to a 76, I added some air to the tire and now am sitting at home with fingers crossed that it either magically holds air, or will be an easy/inexpensive fix. The tires are about two months old now so it's far too soon for this type of shit to be happening. 

Switching gears entirely, I'm single now. It's a very strange feeling coming out of a relationship which spanned over five years. I'd rather not dwell on it too much, and I'm more focused on what comes next.

I'm fairly certain that if you were to mix (the real life equivalent of) these two 

with these two, that you'd essentially have produced the most perfect relationship possible.

 (yes shut up I'm up to date on HOC but I've decided my point stands).

You'd get the absolutely ruthless pursuit of power combined with adorable/hilarious puppy love.

Plus I'd love to experience the product of mixing Aubrey Plaza and Robin Wright. 

I am absolutely aware of the fact that I'm basing a made up future relationship off of two fictional couples from entirely different worlds. Maybe that sort of behavior is a contributing factor to my current relationship status.

I'll leave you with a picture of my cat cuddling with my hand. 

Ranting 2015 style

So it's been several years since my last post. I'm gonna go ahead and pick up like I've been doing this the whole time and there are no holes to fill.

We hear constantly about how our generation is horrible with social interactions, and it's largely due to cell phones tearing us away from what's right in front of us. I don't deny that this is an issue with a minority of individuals I've crossed paths with. Perhaps it's because I chose the company of excellent people, but I find that most of my friends are more than capable to carry on a conversation.

Sometimes I see pictures like this shared on social media captioned with something along the lines of "look how bad this generation is at communicating!!1! In my day we talked to people!!!!!" That's great and all, but who the hell really wants some random person in line for a restaurant or bus stop or something to start talking to them out of nowhere? I don't mind the occasional friendly hello or brief small chat, but chances are that there's a fair amount on my mind and since I'm clearly alone in the venture that this hypothetical unknown person is speaking to me in, it's fair to assume I'm set in the social interaction department for the moment.

You know what I find rude? When I'm at a restaurant (or something of that nature) with someone, the conversation dies down momentarily, and I look at my phone, resulting in them mocking my social skills. Demanding 100% of my attention solely based on the fact that we are consuming food together is a bit ridiculous. Perhaps if you had something more interesting to say than "derrr you just look at your phone" the issue wouldn't arise.

The strange thing is I'm not basing this off of much life experience. It's almost an ideal definition for a straw-man argument. Still, I'm sticking with it.

You know what else I'm tired of? People complaining about facebook. If you don't like it, please stop using it, and more importantly please refrain from clogging up my newsfeed with articles about why I should stop using it. I understand some obvious issues some people have with it. Privacy is a big one, comparing your dark moments to others' highlights unfairly, the list goes on. But you know what facebook has done for me? Twice now I've connected with friends who became room mates. Both times the individuals were people I had long respected, and thus had not removed from my news feed. Both posted about looking for a room mate they were familiar with, to which I responded. Both times it has worked quite well and I feel extremely fortunate to have made these connections years ago.

In addition to finding places to live, I have the opportunity to retain a vague idea of how many of my friends who reside in lands afar are doing in life. From time to time I have the opportunity to reconnect with people who I haven't spoken to in years.

It is extremely easy to both remove annoying people from your friends list, or to simply hide their posts. Even with the knowledge and ability to do this at any time, I still maintain a handful of facebook friends who regularly post things that make me want to scream. Part of this is because I enjoy having my opinions challenged regularly, and another part is to boost my self-confidence, because despite my many flaws, at least I don't harbor opinions that childish.


Anyway, here are 3 things you need to stop doing when you use Uber.

1.) Ordering an Uber when you aren't ready to use an Uber.

-Uber is an on demand service. When you use the app, you are given a relatively (within roughly two minutes) accurate estimate to when your driver will arrive. If you are in a large city during a busy time of day (e.g. downtown Seattle) and you order a car, be on your way to the damn curb when you do so. Parking is not an easy feat in metro areas, and if you aren't ready to hop in, there's a good chance you'll be waiting an extra five minutes while I circle the block through a barrage of red lights, one way streets, and entitled pedestrians.

2.) Using the location service to determine your location versus typing in an address.

-The number one reason I cancel rides is due to riders not entering their location correctly. If you are using a data connection (3G 4G LTE etc) your location will not be very exact and may even show a cross street if you're in a funny location. At worst it will put you several streets away, which wastes both your time and ours. If you want your driver to arrive accurately and without you having to walk far, type in the address of your location manually.

3.) Not entering a drop off location prior to entering the vehicle.

If I'm essentially extracting your from a war zone, (i.e. picking you up in a very busy area while being honked at because I'm stopping to pick people up) then please be certain to take the two seconds to type in your address before I get there. Having to stop and wait for you to type in the address before taking a wrong turn and adding 10 minutes to the trip is extremely frustrating. Also, if you haven't entered the address by the time you get in the car, please just tell me the address. It will be faster for me to enter and confirm in than it is for you to do the same and send it to my phone. I promise that at this point I am a faster typer than you are, and my phone is already unlocked and in my hands.

4.) Giving verbal directions versus giving an address

I don't know you. There is a good chance you give excellent directions. There is a better chance that your ability to do so is utter shit. 95% of the rides I give, I operate using the GPS. If you know where you're going and insist on telling me turn by turn rather than giving me an end point, you're simply a dick. It's wonderful that you know the city so well, but it's extremely immature of you to demand that I change my work routine because you want to be macho.

5.) Giving an intersection instead of an address

You get in the car, you haven't put in an address yet, I'm already a bit ticked but I am covering it up because there's a chance you're friendly and as usual I'll let it slide. I ask for an address, and you say something like "Pike and 11th." I politely ask for an address, as opposed to an intersection. You repeat "Pike and 11th," already frustrated by my incompetence. I am not a taxi driver. I do not claim to know the entire city of Seattle by heart. It's difficult to input an intersection into a GPS. It's also stated in the Uber application that as a rider, you have two options: providing an address, or giving turn by turn directions. An address and an intersection are not the same thing.

6.) Asking your driver to take you through a drive through. 

UberX drivers make (80% of) $1.35 a mile, and 24 cents per minute. Clearly, we would rather be moving as sitting in one place is very profitable at all. If you absolutely have to exercise this option, at least offer to buy your driver something. Especially if it's during peak hours (late night Friday or Saturday) you're really cutting into prime earnings. Most drivers will not want to refuse requests like this because it will likely result in a poor review.

I realize that I originally said I would give three reasons. But once I got going I couldn't help myself.

The vast majority of my riders are extremely polite and friendly people. As usual it's the frustrating minority of people who tarnish the overall experience.

I suppose that's all for now.