Doug Goldstein

So here at the University of Florida there is an organization called Parking and Transportation Services and the regulate all parking on campus. The parking structure at UF is to give faculty the closest spots near all the buildings, including most dorms (since they’re near classes) and make student parking rare and far from classes. Commuter students have to park even farther away, based on how many classes they’ve completed, they can park within a 5-10 minute bike of classes or nearly off campus if you’re anything shy of a second semester senior. For this privilege you must pay $114 a year. No thanks is what I said. I decided that $30 for 2 years is all I’d pay and that I’d park next to my classes.

Basically I paid attention to when I saw the meter maids around and when someone I knew got a ticket I asked them where they got it and when. Now plus or minus 30 minutes and that lot is “not safe” for an hour. This scheme worked for 2 years for me with the exception of 2 tickets that I got. Both while parked in faculty parking next to my class, the most recent one I even remember. I violated my 1 hour rule and stayed parked there too long but I had to wait for a long time for a professor that I needed to talk to.

Now each ticket costs $20, how’d I reduce it by $5 each? Well you can appeal you tickets on a form or more recently they added the ability to appeal the ticket online and it doesn’t cost you anything. It actually delays the due date on your ticket for 20 business days after you hear back from the appeals panel. Each time I wrote them saying that my professor had asked me to come help bring project materials up to his office and I was only complying. Each time they said I was still in the wrong but reduced my fine by $5.

Now the City of Gainesville is even better. They check even less frequently. They check every area only once a week based on my guess. I’ve only managed to get 1 $25 ticket in the two years I parked in city parking. But there was no appeals process, do not pass go. Go directly to paying a fine within 72 hours otherwise it goes up by like $50.

So in the end, while everyone paid a couple hundred bucks for crappy parking. I got good parking for only $50.

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So Jenn got a “new” mattress from her first roommate Teri who’s moving to Michigan. We went today over there to pick it up. Jenn freaked out the whole time that we were going to die driving back but she did really good. She kept it to 30mph and we were set. I had a blast lugging the new mattress and boxspring down from Teri’s and into our apartment (read: not).

Since Jenn’s a slave driver and cracked the whip. We lugged out the old stuff to her car and we were going to take it to Goodwill but they were totally closed and locked up, which was a bummer. Rather then drive all the way back home and toss them in the dumpster, we went to Gainesville Place and tossed them there then rushed over to Best Buy.

By the time we got there they were closed but like I told Brittany and Jenn… “I’m kind of a big deal around here. People know me.” and I just walked in and we shopped for like 30 minutes. We looked at camcorders for Brittany and the TV I’m buying with my first paycheck.

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Let me just start this by saying I have the best roommate in the world. I don’t know how I can top what she did this year for my birthday. It’s been ages since I had “a party” or a gathering for my birthday since it lands right in the middle of break week every year so no one is here. So this year I went to Texas Roadhouse for food and Jenn, Brittany, Nicole, Heather, Dan, Adam and Brian came along. Of course there was a wait and so Jenn bought me a beer. The hostess told me that there were only two tables that could fit us all and one was just sitting there and they were done eating so I volunteered to walk by and give them dirty looks. I won… because by my second lap, they left. There was a waitress there putting out some silverware and I asked if she was going to be our waitress. She said no, some guy would be. I told her that it was my birthday and I picked her. So… she was our waitress. She was awesome. She brought me more beer. On my way to the bathroom another waitress stopped me to tell me she liked my shirt. We talked for a while. On the way out of the bathroom I told her she needed to feel it because the material felt great. She said she was going to ask, so she stood there rubbing my arm. We talked for a while. Then when we were leaving I told her that she should come drink with us and leave work. She said she couldn’t. I asked when she got off and she told me. I told her that was plenty of time left to drink and she said ok and asked for my number. I gave her my number but wasn’t smart enough (read: had beer) to ask for hers. She didn’t call me. Oh well.

When we got home I got a cake that Jenn baked. She made blue icing for it and orange lettering. It tastes great. She did an amazing job. It had these sparkler candles like you find in Baked Alaska.

Jenn scrubbed the whole apartment. It was sparkling clean. It was amazing to see it like that. We haven’t had it that clean in ages. She also paid for everything for me at Roadhouse. Which she didn’t have to do. I tried to talk the waitress into not taking her card and taking mine, but it didn’t work out.

It was good to hang out with Adam and Brian some more. I really miss those guys. I wish I had been in a better time when I lived with them because I really would have had a blast. We got to share old stories that reminded us of good times. Brian Thomas Octavius Xavier Pugh… Adam Gregarious George Piercy Pierce… Douglas Stanford Soloman Ezekel Klima Goldstein…

Brittany is amazing. She got me a Rubix cube, which I can’t solve at all. She solved the bottom and the bottom row at dinner… maybe the 2nd row as well… I don’t remember. I was really impressed. I love Brittany, she always makes me laugh and she’s the Good Baptist.

Nicole is my anchor. She’s always there for me when I need to rant/vent/whatever. I was glad she came along. Apparently I annoyed her at dinner though. I’m sorry Nicole.

Dan’s a computer guy like me so we sat there making all sorts of jokes no one else knew. Oh well forget you all! Dan and I also have a similar sense of humor so we can rebound jokes. Heather, Dan’s girlfriend, and Jenn’s old roommate is part of the “old clik”, TCP. But lately we haven’t seen much of her.

All and all it was an outstanding birthday.

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So I started my new job over at Main Street Softworks this week. Some of you might know them for Monetra or MCVE. I will be handling all their support inquires and doing some development work.

Today was also my last day over at Bureau of Economic and Business Research or BEBR as everyone calls it. I had a great time working over there with everyone and hopefully everyone will continue to find all the stuff I implemented to be useful for a long time to come. I suspect they will since there are actually more committers and users of my systems then I could do on my own. I want to thank Clint for the job opporunity. Maybe toss him a link to GatorLUG, which he’s the current president of, in hopes that Google will index it some more.

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