Adventures with Stan

2009-10-26T18:07:00.000-07:00

S2: "I have this habit of trying to come up with creative ways to solve a problem even if I have to put forth a lot of effort into it because I assume that it will make me understand the problem better. Plus, I feel more rewarded this way."

His response when I pointed out that his way has always been different and always caused him and others more problems until he works through it. Even if his way is infinitely more complicated.

Example: We're supposed to (easy way and TA's solution way) use Solver with a sum of the difference squared error to find parameters in a HW assignment. S2 went out of his way to use Gram-Schmidt and MathCad. No one else is using either. S2 crashed his computer a few times and worked for a few hours to "get it right" and "get it more accurate than any one else's"

2009-10-22T21:00:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering how on earth S2 can get a girlfriend. I thought maybe she's uh...special. Or guys never hit on her. Or she has quirks that turn all guys away.

1. Found out she thinks S2 is calm. Strike 1

2. She can't think for herself. Ever. She called him to tell her whether or not she should go to sleep. Strike 2.

3. She needed help setting up and plugging into a router. A frakking router. And she's out.

2009-10-19T07:17:00.001-07:00

S2, please stop talking in a high voice for no reason at all, it isn't amusing, charming, or funny in any way. It is really just ridiculously annoying.

2009-10-14T11:33:00.001-07:00

1. S2 didn't believe he should tip people. He claims his jobs in retail and as a custodian were far worse. He didn't tip until some of us lectured him about it. I guess he didn't know that waitstaff get paid under minimum wage because they're expected to make up the difference in tips.

One time we went to a bar and he wanted to close his tab. S2 raised his credit card and held it out like he was royalty, expecting the bartender to come immediately to close the tab. Bartender was busy, couldn't come right away, S2 got mad and wondered what was wrong with the service.

Another time, a group of 8 of us walked into the restaurant portion of the place and sat down for dinner. Waitress was busy and tried to keep up with our orders and requests. Once, she came over and asked us if we wanted water. Loudly...so that we could all hear. A few people said yes. But not S2. She came back with waters and S2 looked angry and said "where's mine?" The waitress left to take care of 3 other tables and walked by us with plates in all of her arms. S2 had raised his hand and was waving. When she rushed by and didn't see, he basically yelled "WELL SOMEONE'S NOT GETTING A TIP".

Last time in the bar (for now). We're eating dinner. I buy a pitcher for me and a friend since I owe him. S2 pours himself a glass of beer. He orders a $6 meal. He threw in $10 for all of his stuff. He got upset when we didn't give him change back. We told him that whatever was left of his $10 was absorbed into the tip. He said he "expected $10 to last longer".

2. S2 has a tendency to come to my cube and do work. While he's working, he talks to himself. One time:

"So then I carry this...take the derivative...I have a really bad habit of talking aloud....mostly to myself...maybe I should stop...but I continue with this...and the boundary condition is this..."

3. I had to tell S2 to "use his inside voice" because he was so loud. He's older than me. I had to tell a grown man to use his inside voice.

He didn't hear. Precisely because he wasn't using his goddamn inside voice.

4. S2 has a tendency to open himself up to bad things happening to him...and then he gets upset and claims it isn't his fault. He went to see the professor for help on a problem, the professor said "your solution looks a lot like coworkerofstan's, did you work together?"

The correct answer was no. And that's true, as we did not work together except for one part where we both got stuck and we simply bounced ideas off of each other. S2's answer: "Is that a problem?"

The professor gave us a lecture on copying hw solutions and working in groups during class that day. S2 said the professor was being ridiculous. I sternly told him that he royally fucked up by answering that question improperly. What happened next?

S2: "Well, if I said 'no, I didn't work with coworkerofstan' it would have been untrue since I got to that point when I was sitting next to you in your cube"

Me: "....that doesn't mean I worked with you on it. in fact, we worked separately until that difficult point, and we didn't write down the same thing for what happened after"

He then said something about how I just wouldn't get it.

5. S2 told a story about how awful working in industry is. He said his 1st week at his 1st internship, he got sprayed/covered with resin while changing a pump filter. The reason? He screwed up and didn't tighten one screw correctly. For some reason, that became industry's fault...and he was "lucky to not get fired"

2009-10-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

1. S2 gave me a lecture on how the moon affects tides. Apparently, he had to look this up online and was fascinated by the fact that the moon causes high/low tide. When he asked me if I knew this amazing fact, I said simply "Yes, the moon being closer to the earth on one side causes water to be drawn there, thus creating high tide near the moon and low tide away from it on the other side of the earth." He claimed that I didn't understand how the moon could do this and that there was no point explaining it to me because I "wouldn't get it".

I guess he missed this day in elementary school when tides were explained?

2. S2 claims that a "good thermo problem" is to explain why it takes longer for 2 turkeys to cook in an oven than 1 turkey. When my friend responded "...it's because there's greater mass to heat up", S2 replied, "no that's wrong."

3. He had said conversation while I was on the phone with my dad. I could not hear my dad on the phone because S2 was yelling. This resulted in the following:

Friend: "Dude, lower your voice, he's on the phone and it sounds really important."

S2: "What? Are you telling me to shut up?"

Friend: "NO, he's on the freaking phone!"

4. We were stuck on a hw problem. S2 came over to my cube and wanted to check his work. He did some stuff wrong and completely overreacted to needing to correct it. Whatevs. After we were on the same page, I said I felt tired and wanted to call it a night to try to go sleep. He didn't leave. I said this another 3 times. He didn't get it. He stayed put and kept trying, uselessly, to solve the problem. I then said, "dude, i'm going to ask the professor tomorrow, i'm just going to call it a night". He nodded, said ok, then kept working. When he expressed his frustration at not being able to solve the problem (yet again), I said "This is why i've already said 4 times that I'm calling it a night and want to go home". He said fine and did not leave my cube. After trying for another 10 minutes and not getting anywhere, he said he was frustrated again, to which I said "YES, this is why I said 5 times already that I am calling it a night and want to go home."

He got upset at me for saying that. Let's recap: he invites himself over, I help him, he's still stuck, I say do it tomorrow a few times, he's still stuck and won't leave my cube, and then when I say "that's enough" he gets upset at me.

5. S2 decided not to even look at one of our homework assignments until 7 pm the night before. He became a whiny bitch about it for the whole night. We all had to help him get caught up to where we were, which took 3 days, in order to get him to shut up. We also had to learn his unique way to code the problems due to his insistence on not using the sample code provided. His excuses for not looking at the pset earlier?

1. "I did other homeworks" (so did everyone else)

2. "I forgot my power cable, so I can't code on a dead laptop." (he forgot it TWICE in 2 days)

3. "I helped other people do other homework" (so did I)

4. "I thought the hw would take 30 mins"

He spent the days beforehand Skype-ing with his GF, watching YouTube, reading Gizmodo, and drawing cartoons for our professor.

Oh man, I have to write the tip stories here later. But I have class stuff to do now.

Like a Phoenix...

2009-09-29T20:33:00.000-07:00

Hey,

So, the real Stan has moved on past my jurisdiction. The latest thing I know is that he opened his big mouth for a magazine and talked about how amazing his major is for getting him a job he "didn't fit into" (or deserve, but the article didn't mention that...neither did he)...granted, that industry loves ChemE's...so...technically, not a big surprise...oh wait...you say you're in the paper and pulp industry? Stan, you're oh so wrong again! You're in consumer products.

Nevertheless, his reign of terror has momentarily ended. But...can Stan ever truly...move on? There will always be a Stan. None will ever surpass the original (I pray), but I think I have found a decent enough substitute for now. He has chosen, through his actions, attitude, and asshole-ishness (at times) to take up the sacred mantle, and his stories shall be told here.

Stan I: 2006-2009.

Stan II: 2009-

1. Stan II shares a few attributes with his forebear...interrupting conversations, stuck-up "I'm better than you" attitude, lack of social skills...not to the same extremes, but he adds one more dimension: whining. S2 whines about every possible disturbance in his life. And based off his reactions, if something slightly bad happens to him, it becomes the worst thing to happen to anyone ever.

2. S2 asked me to help me move his stuff into his room. I said sure, but I wouldn't be back for an hour. He said he'd wait. So, I get back to the dorm and call him up. In an hour, he had managed to find a cart to move all of his stuff. Great, I think, all the stuff will move faster. Then he opens his car.

All of his stuff is in small boxes and none of them are heavy. He waited an hour for me to help him move stuff he could have easily moved by himself within that same time period...it took us like 20-25 minutes to move it all.

Then, he talked on the phone while I unloaded his stuff from the car. He also insisted on showing me everything and anything he found interesting in his pile of stuff.

S2, how could a machete be useful in a dorm. Fer srs. Why did you bring a space heater with you if you're specifically prohibited from bringing them? Why on earth do you have so much stuff to fit in a 10x15 DOUBLE?

3. S2 insists on not taking notes in some of our classes...then he gets surprised when he doesn't know a technique we learned in class. He also got upset when he missed a TA office hour...because he arranged for a meeting with a professor at the same time.

4. S2 is extraordinarily condescending in tone when you ask him for help...even though he is one of only a few ChemE's who can't extract data from a steam table or who have never seen a Mollier diagram.

5. S2 learned thermodynamics from the professor who wrote the book we're getting example problems from. As expected, he has a big head about it. Surprisingly, he never understands the problems we do from the book...even though he has a copy of the book...and has surely done all of them before.

6. S2 has a girlfriend...that he yells at when she asks him for help on questions and she doesn't get it after a poor explanation.

7. I've had several discussions with S2 on how to do some of our homework problems. Several times, we disagree on something...and he always insists he is right...even when I prove him wrong. He then claims that we were talking about something different to begin with. Granted, if you rewind the conversations...that's obviously not true.

8. You've taken...what'd you tell me...3 classes of linear algebra? How do you NOT know that the complex conjugate of a real, symmetric matrix (Hermitian) is its transpose? It's on frakking wiki. The professor TOLD US in class.

9. We get it. You're mixed Chinese and German. That does not make you specially diverse. Stop talking and bragging about it.

10. I have a new Macbook Pro. We are all in agreement that it is shiny. However, I do not feel comfortable when you say:

"I like my black Macbook, but every time I look at your computer, I fly into a jealous rage."

Staying Somewhere

2008-08-12T18:23:00.000-07:00

1. Stan moved into a manager's apartment on a Friday. Friday before his first day. Which makes sense. However, when his work term ended...

Landlord (manager at work): "Hey, when do you think you're moving out?"
Stan: "Oh...I dunno...Friday...maybe Saturday, maybe Sunday, maybe Monday."

Friday rolled around. He hadn't finished packing. And he lounged around all day after work. Saturday came. He didn't finish packing and kept lounging around. Sunday came...

Landlord: "So, when did you think you were leaving?"
Stan: "Haven't decided yet."
Landlord: "Ok. Get out. Today."

2. Our company has a bare minimum number of weeks that they like summer interns to work. The summer is fairly short, so most people don't stay much longer past the minumum of 10, but Stan wanted to repeat what he did last fall and stay as long as he could. His first week at work, apparently, something like this happened:

HR: "Stan, how long did you want to work?"
Stan: "Well, I started May 19th...and school starts Aug 28th. I can work *I imagine he whipped out his phone calendar* til Aug 22nd."
HR: "COMPANY NAME HERE has a minimum of 10 weeks for summer interns."
Stan: "Oh, that's way beyond 10 weeks. I should be fine."
HR: "We want you to leave after 10 weeks."

3. Stan did end up getting a full time offer for the company. Surprising many people. Supposedly the people here had extremely low expectations for him. And he mighta exceeded them.

4. The managers here are ridiculously upset that he got a full time offer. Like...more upset than I was puzzled. Actually, they're more upset and puzzled..more than...uh...more than Dark Knight had made money.

His Final Presentation

2008-07-28T18:09:00.000-07:00

1. He still has shitty powerpoints of all text that he reads off of. This time he didn't even bother like trying to learn what he was gonna say as he stumbled pretty much every slide...even the background slide about himself.

2. He still clicks the clicker (mouse) as if breaking the mouse and making a loud noise every minute will make his presentation better.

3. I was wondering why Stan wanted to only work 10 weeks. Last time, he worked near 20, and 10 is the minimum number of weeks interns are supposed to work. With his start date, it gave him a month of nothing to do. I don't know how true this is, but one of the other interns told me that they called Stan into HR's office and told him that NOMNOMNOMOMGFORGOTANDACTUALLYPUTCOMPANYNAMEHEREFORTHELONGESTTIME wanted him to work the bare minimum 10 weeks and leave.

Updatesville

2008-07-20T19:47:00.000-07:00

New (Long) Post!

1. Intern 1: "Where's Intern 3? We're all supposed to be having a meeting!"
Intern 2: "Oh she told me she's not coming, project meeting or something."
Stan: "I'll call her anyway."

True to his word, he was on his phone 5 seconds later.

Stan: "Oh ok. So you're not coming? Ok. Bye. She's not coming guys."

Thanks, Stan, where would we be if you didn't needlessly confirm something we all knew every 5 seconds?

2. Manager: "So we need someone else to drive people to the airport for the trip."
Stan: "I'll drive, I have a Honda CR-V."
*momentary silence*
Stan: "It's got a lot of room."

3. Stan pretty much insisted on driving for the next two days. Then he told everyone how he wouldn't be able to drive anyone back from the airport. At the time, this was a huge problem. 13 people...and up to a carload can't leave? Thanks, Stan, for offering something halfway, really. Thank God we managed to have differing plans for the weekend and we only needed 2 cars to get everyone.

4. Intern X: "Could you give me some advice on picking cameras?"
Me: "Yeah, sure! No problem!"
X: "Uh, not like yours. Like a normal camera." (I give up, we all know who writes this fucking thing.)
Me: "Oh yeah, like a point and shoot then?"
X: "Yes, thinner maybe?"
Me: "Thinner ones usually take crappy photos...I'll look for a decent point and shoot that's not too bulky."
X: "Oh great! Thanks!"
Stan: "You should get one with a massive zoom."
Me: "...Ok...X, do you need a massive zoom? What kind of pictures do you think you're going to take?"
X: "Nothing to special, like normal hanging out ones."
Me: "Ok, so a massive zoom would be totally unnecessary...plus massive zooms make the camera very large."
Stan: "I like my 12x zoom."
Me: "Great."
Stan: "Yeah, I like to take a lot of landscape photos, so I need a huge zoom."
Me: "...uh...for landscape photos....you don't need a huge zoom. In fact, you should generally be looking at a very wide angle lens."
Stan: "Really?"
Me: (let's keep in mind...what I do for a hobby.) ".....Yes."

To be fair, there are times when telephoto (sorry, I couldn't dumb myself down anymore) lenses are good for landscapes. I really don't think Stan knows when it's good.

5. Trip time! I got stuck riding in Stan's car. Again. It was not fun. I probably should've guessed as much when he was telling me how to load stuff into his car. Which was empty.

6. Intern Alpha: "Where are you from anyway, coworker?"
Me: "From near Boston, if you're from the area, I'd say near Braintree."
Alpha: "OH ok, cool, my bf is from there!"
Me: "Oh nice!"
Stan: "I know Braintree!"
Me: "....*knowing he like...never leaves his home state unless he's visiting family...who don't live in my states*...really."
Stan: "Yeah, John Quincy Adams and John Adams were born there!"
Me: "*sigh*....well, technically, Braintree and its neighboring town have traded territories several times, so that's debatable."
Stan: "Oh."

7. Intern X started a discussion about wearing seat belts in the backseat and how she hates it since it's uncomfortable. We all talked in the car about why we wear belts in the backseat. Stan then described why we should wear seatbelts in the front passenger and driver seats for like 5 minutes. Until I was like "dude, get on topic, we're not talking about front seats." Then he got it.

8. Intern X: "I like my Subaru, cuz the Boxer engine gives it a nice low center of gravity."
Stan: "Yeah, I don't have that low center of gravity, my spare tire on the back screws it up."
*awkward silence*
Me: "....dude, I don't think that's really a factor...you drive an SUV, which is raised higher in general, with an I-4 mounted high in the front of the car. Your tire weighs like 40 pounds at most and your engine weighs at least 400-500 pounds."
Stan: "...Oh...I guess. I still think my tire screws with it."
Me: "Whatever helps you sleep at night."

9. Stan tried to have a competition with me about cars and offroad capability. Specifically about skid plates on cars. With me. I drive a fucking Jeep, motherfucker. Yes, I have skid-fucking-plates. No, of course your shitty compact crossover SUV wouldn't have skid plates, it doesn't even have a good engine. Now shut your goddamn mouth until you say something else short-bussy and quotable.

10. HE DRIVES SO BADLY 2 PEOPLE IN THE CAR GOT MOTION SICK. He would like....JERK the wheel 30 degrees to go against a smooth curve in the road. He also doesn't see why you should slowly decelerate to stop signs...

11. Reread number 10.

Did you do that? Good.

Stan: "There are SO many BAD drivers on the road!!!"
Me: (I've gotten so motion sick, I've pretty much lost my internal monologue at this point)"....Wow. I was about to say something very mean."
X: "Yeah, I totally agree."

12. Stan: "We're here! We're at the finish line!"

Stan then tried to give a high five to Intern X. By placing his hand literally in front of her boobs. It was dead quiet in the car for like 10 seconds. Then she moved his hand away...and he punched her flirtingly in the arm.

13. Stan: "Whenever you see me talking to a random person, I probably know them."

You wish Stan. More likely, you're bothering them, especially when you find out you have less than 3 degrees of separation from them.

14. Manager, as we're following the car Stan's in: "I can tell he's in there by the shape of his head."

15. In an elevator with Stan:
Intern South1: "Oh yeah, he's the person I was telling you about."
Intern South2: "Eh?"
IS1: "He's like a plant version of Alex."
IS2: "Oh. I mean, uh, good!"

16. We were walking through the airport when I saw some pretty awesome architecture. I started my previsualization so that I could imagine the shot before I took it. I made this kinda obvious as I slowed my walking down and started looking around.

Stan, after watching me for like 30 seconds, turned to Intern X and said "This architecture looks pretty significant." And whipped his phone out in like 2 seconds before I could even open my bag. Possibly to make it seem like I was copying his shots to the rest of the (very tardy) group.

I try not to see too much of Stan this summer, I feel very uncomfortable around him.

Renew!

2008-06-19T07:58:00.000-07:00

More posts!

1. Stan talked constantly about how his 21st birthday was coming up. Mostly to the twins. He then looked up the caloric value of beer and debated drinking since he didn't want a beer belly.

2. Stan told this to some of us:

"Hey, I just had a brilliant idea! You know how they keep complaining that it costs more to make a penny than it's worth? Well why not get some chemical engineers in there and have them make it cheaper? I'm going to be so successful when I'm in the business world."

3. He also said this to people who were not me. Nor were they in earshot of me because I would've ripped him a new one. Especially with a post that comes later!

"I almost saved the company I co-oped for half a million dollars. Too bad they said it was against the rules. Darn patents and stuff."

4. A lot of people were in a small apartment having a party. Like 20 people? With alcohol? On a 93+ degree day.

Girl that Stan has been hitting on pretty much every single time I see them together: "It's really hot in here."
Stan: "It's because I'm here."

5. Same girl as in Number 4 drives a 10 year old beat up Subaru. Stan said it'd be cool to pimp.

6. Stan was wearing the shirt with distillation columns at work and decided to tell everyone else about how much better our major is TO people. And explaining why the shirt was so good.

7. Stan eavesdropped on a conversation about computers and started talking about his work computer and all the programs it has. Which, by extension, are all the programs that EVERYONE has. And if they don't have them? Clicking like 4 links gets them downloaded.

8. Lastly! Remember number 3?

Young Manager 1: "Did Stan cause a Quality Incident last fall?"
Young Manager 2: "I don't think so, since if he did, he would not get invited back this summer."

Stan's former officemate: "Now remember, if you do run anything, say, you run an experiment to test a new kind of glue. Make sure that you put the product on hold or else it becomes a QI and there's all kinds of trouble."
Girl now working in Stan's former department: "Has that ever happened before?"
SFO: "Stan did it last fall."

Remember, as co-ops, companies are legally bound to let us serve 2 terms.

Enjoy!

Long Time, But Was It Worth It?

2008-05-17T08:31:00.000-07:00

1. I went to office hours for help on some homework. Naturally, since our homework seems fucking impossible in this specific class, there was a line. I think I was 3rd. Stan was 5th. He wanted to have a conversation with slot number 4.

Stan: "Yeah, so I forget what my file's called, but it's on my flash drive."
Number 4: "That's great."
Stan: *takes out flash drive with as much flair as he can...while it's attached to a neck lanyard and like 6 keys* "On my flash drive that's right here."

For some reason, he still believes that conversations are only him talking. He continued by...narrating...his phone call list...like who he called, who called him, etc. Then he described the virtues of his standard flash drive and the wonders of the flash drive market.

2. I went to the computer lab to try to print some stuff. All the computers were taken and I knew I'd only be around for like 20 seconds. I saw one computer that was unoccupied, but someone had logged in on it. There was also no screensaver or lock or anything, so the person probably just went up to the bathroom. The person sitting right next to the computer was, unfortunately, Stan. I was in a rush and asked him about the computer.

Me: "Who was using this computer?"
Stan: "That was.........................someone who was just using that recently, he was just here."
Me: *under breath* ".....fucking useless." *Proceeds to use computer and print*

3. From someone older and more experienced with Stan:
"In the middle of your exam, Stan started cracking up for no reason. First, I thought he mighta been losing it or something. When I graded his exam, I realized that he was indeed laughing. The part of the exam where your professor wrote that another professor was a master on the subject? Yeah, he wrote out 'LOL.' There was also a diagram that was designed to help us solve a question. Some of us didn't use it. Stan was also one of those people. He wrote: 'I didn't know how to use this diagram.' And then drew a foot in mouth smiley face all over the page."

4. There are two twins that are classmates of ours. That one sentence, btw, has probably done more to give away the secrecy of this blog than anything else. Anyway, apparently Stan told one of them "You know, you're sister's a lot smarter than you are." That's a rumor. Supposedly, he kept talking to them and eventually one of them just said "SHUT UP YOU ARE SO OBNOXIOUS." Also, a rumor?

What isn't a rumor?

Me: "So...how do you two feel about him anyway?"
Twin 1: ".....We think he's really obnoxious....and offensive...so we just do the same thing back to him whenever we talk to him."
Me: "I see. Listen, take these cards. Go there when you're bored."

Fuck. I had more notes, but they're not showing up in my notepad. This update was kinda disappointing for me, actually.

OMG UPDATE WTF BBQ

2008-05-06T18:39:00.000-07:00

GOTCHA!!!!

No seriously, maybe this weekend. Just pretend this is a late April Fools' Day joke.

Back Again

2008-03-24T13:27:00.001-07:00

Hey, I have a meeting soonish, so this will be a brief post. Any content is good content right?

1. Stan and I are in the same major at school. Our major is pretty much measured by our two capstone courses; these courses really test students and are pretty much the whole point of studying this major (imo). Stan was telling other people that he wanted to find a hard working group so that he wouldn't have to do any work in these courses. He also wanted to take them pass/fail.

2. Stan spent a long time bragging about "getting a Master's" in a semester. He changed this to getting an MEng in a semester after he got back to school, or graduating a semester early.
He told some people that his advisor told him he wasn't smart enough.

3. Stan tried to graph a temperature or pressure profile with a donut graph. Here is info on donut graphs: http://ib005.k12.sd.us/Excel%20WebQuest/donut_chart.htm

When he told me what he did, he complained:

"Donut graphs were so useless! It just made concentric circles!"

4. Stan and I are in the same extracurricular academic club. However, he has never done any work for his position...and thinks he's doing his job right. Our constitution allows people to nominate themselves for elections. Stan had taken advantage of this fact (and the willingness of seniors to play pranks on us) to get his position. He had this conversation with some other people:

Stan: "So, what're you gonna nominate yourself for?"
Girl: ".....I'm not nominating myself for anything...that seems pretty pointless."
Guy: "Yeah, if you have to nominate yourself for something, you're probably not going to get it anyway."
Girl: "Yeah...it'd also be kinda sad."

.....Stan....went....and nominated himself for pretty much every position he was eligible for. He, unsurprisingly, lost every election. He proceeded to tell our outgoing president the following:

"You guys should change the constitution so that if someone runs for almost every position, they should at least get something."

And walked out.

5. We had an exam where we were supposed to analyze a graph, use equations, and come up with constants in the equations. There was a given condition that made us able to do the problems. After the exam, Stan was yelling his methodology to a female classmate.

Stan: "Yeah, so you have that given condition?"
Girl: *Looks disinterested* "Sure."
Stan: "Yeah, then, you just take the numbers off the graph. So-"
Girl turns away from Stan. Like....full back to him.
Stan: *steps in FRONT of girl* "Boom, no math.

6. We were in the computer lab and the solutions to the exam were posted. Stan looked up the solutions and insisted that "everything looks familiar, so I'm sure I aced it." Despite the fact that there was, actually, some decent math.

7. Still in the same computer lab, he was supposed to finish a pset for his partner. He started talking about his waterproof phone to two people, and I started to burst out laughing and had to leave the lab for a good three minutes to calm down. When I reentered the lab, two of my friends looked at me and giggled, forcing me to leave for another three minutes.

8. We're all still in the computer lab, Stan walked up to a person who worked at our Co-Op location before we did and bragged about policy changes that we benefited from. Specifically vacation days. Stan talked about them for a long time.

9. Also in the computer lab, Stan bragged about the professors he has or has had during the summer to other kids. He most definitely has not progressed past two words on the pset.

Also, he's being annoying.

10. Aaaaand from a friend of ours:

Stan consulting with TA over something...TA looks tired
Other student: "Hey TA, I have a question."
TA: "On what?"
OS: "Just come over here. I need you to explain something to me."
TA leaves Stan and heads towards OS.
OS: "I actually didn't have a question, you just looked distressed talking to Stan, so I called you over."

Oh wait, I finished my posts. Yay! Fast typing! Hope this meets the usual quality.

First in a Long Time

2008-02-27T22:16:00.001-08:00

Hey, sorry, haven't really had time to post anything.

Stan's actually sitting 2 rows away from me right now.

1. We had a pretty bad storm during the winter that froze everything that fell. I went outside to clean the ice off my windshield and so did Stan.

Me: *Scraping politely*
Stan: "Hey, do you have to fight your car to get the ice off?"
Me: "....uh...no....actually."

2. His idea to clean his car's windshield was to slam on the hood of the car three times. He then executed this idea. To little result.

3. The other day I walked into the hallway to see Stan brushing his teeth and such in the hallway sink. Him using mouthwash is like the most disgusting thing you could imagine. The directions recommend like...what...2/3 of an ounce? Not even a shotglass of mouthwash. Stan definitely just filled his mouth with the stuff since when he went to spit it out, he was pouring mouthwash out of his mouth for a full 4 seconds. Try spitting. See how long it takes. Now you know.

Also, he decided not to bend down to the sink to avoid splashback. He just tilted his head a little bit and opened the valve that is his mouth.

4. Stan was moving out and he made a huge deal about how he was moving the toaster oven out. I know, Stan, it's yours. Keep it. Honestly, my notes just say "moving toaster oven out." It's been so long that I've forgotten what that means.

5. Stan wanted to take his food with him when he went home.

Stan: "Could you label the stuff in the fridge that's yours?"
Me: "....It's already split like...level by level or straight down the middle. Also...just...don't take what isn't yours."
Stan: "Yeah, but it'd be easier for me if everything was labeled."
Me: "...."

6. I stopped talking or making sound for a few minutes. So did he. Suddenly:

Stan: "You there?"
Me: "....Yeah...?"
Stan: "Oh, ok, so I found this random thing on the internet..."

Shame on me for thinking he was asking about my concern, like I suddenly fell over and died or something.

7. Stan walked by my room and loudly said "Why is my bank account so big, oh right, I remember."

8. My notes just say "water dries." I think he was wondering why he had something damp that simply became dry, but I can't remember.

9. Stan: "I took a space heater from upstairs (landlady's house). I'll just leave it here next to your room."
Me: "...Shouldn't you....put the space heater back where you found it?"
Stan: "No, it's fine here. You can move it."
Me: "....I have no idea where you got that from. Also, it'd be inconvenient for our landlady since she'll probably look for the space heater..."
Stan: "Nah, it's fine."
Me: "...Just put it back."
Stan: "Fine."

10. Stan: "Are you bringing stuff home for Christmas?"
Me: "I have like a 6 hour drive, and it would just make things difficult. Especially since I'd just have to bring it back to school."
Stan: "Yeah, that's why I like only living 2 hours away from here. I'll just bring it all back, and if I wanted to, I could come back and just get more stuff. Plus it's easy for me to drop it back off at school."

Stan? Bragging? Nooooo... Never happens.

11. Stan: "Huh, I didn't remember eating this soup, but the can's empty and I have a dirty bowl and spoon, so I must've."

12. We came back to school, and I thought I wouldn't have to write this blog as much. Nope. Stan spent pretty much the first week repeating other people's answers in class. Just saying them about 10 times louder.

13. Stan was eating a cookie loudly. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU DO THAT

14. We have a computer lab at school. 1/3 are nice, new computers. The other 2/3 are slower, beat up, older computers, but still usable. Stan was like yelling at someone or about something about how the older computers aren't that much slower. Even though they ARE significantly slower. After the speech, Stan went and took a newer computer.

15. Someone had printed their schedule three times, and to shame the mystery person, the extra copies were hung on the wall. Several seniors were taking a break or something and reading the schedule. Stan jumped out of his chair and tried to make small talk with the seniors and seem popular. By reading the schedule louder than everyone else. Word for word.

16. Stan: *Bragging* "I have a friend who has 763 Facebook friends at this school."

Stan, first off, that says nothing about your OWN popularity. Second, the amount of people who actually like that "763 friends" person are countable on one hand.

17. Stan: "If you don't have your number in your Facebook profile, why have a Facebook account?"

There's plenty of reasons, Stan. Social/professional networking, photo sharing, event planning. Basically, just because you use it solely to stalk the hell out of people (myself included), doesn't mean everyone else does.

18. I was walking to my mailbox when I saw Stan walking tough and muscular. I lol'd

19. Our professor asked us which TV scientist claimed that explosions were when "things get very large very fast." TV. Scientist. Explosions. Stan claimed that Mr. Rogers was the one who said this. Yes, endearing, sweater-wearing, Mr. Rogers.

20. I was looking for a professor and couldn't find him in his office. I then walked to his graduate students' offices, which were right outside our mailboxes. Stan arrived and was checking his mailbox while staring at me. I was peering into the windows to see if the professor was in the grad student offices. When I didn't see him, I began to open the door so I could ask one of the grad students. My hand was 2 inches from the handle when:

Stan: "Who are you looking for?"
Me: "...Professor [soandso]."
Stan: "Never heard of him."
Me: "....*opens door*"

I knew that, Stan. I also know that you don't know any of the grad students in the room.

More will come later, I'm tired.

From the Ashes.

2008-02-09T19:05:00.000-08:00

Welcome back. I realized that this blog's popularity had far exceeded my initial expectations. I decided to restart the blog. After all, Stan will always be Stan. I have a feeling that updates will be even more sporadic since I won't interact with Stan as much as I did before, but there will be content posted.

Also, my time back here at school has shown me the wonders of young students taking freshman classes. Look to the right to see the link to what will be nicknamed the "Econ Blog."

Lastly, I found 3 entries in my notes that need to be posted. Yes, it's true, I forgot to post some content! Look for it soon.

Over

2008-01-20T10:27:00.000-08:00

My time living with Stan came to an end a few weeks ago. I wanted to put up one last post fixing an apparent goof I made.

Stan's phone does have voice dialing. He just:

1. Didn't use it for some reason or another for a year. Probably because he didn't know how.
2. He used voice dialing while holding the phone as if he was only pressing buttons. So, screen about 16 inches away from face. He only used it while sitting around doing nothing. Not while driving or doing something else that required both hands.

Enjoy!

Mouse Problem

2007-12-16T19:46:00.000-08:00

1. Stan laughed today like a hyper monkey.

2. Stan started doing the voice dialing thing again...like...slowly and clearly pronouncing each word like a command. Cept, remember, his phone does not have voice dialing.

3. There was snow on the road and I decided to be nice and offer a ride to the grocery store or WalMart so he could get stuff. He drives a sedan and I thought he might have trouble getting out.

Me: "Do you need or want to go to WalMart or the grocery store or anything? Anything at all? Like batteries?" Notice how I'm hinting that he should get batteries for his mouse.
Stan: "Nope. Don't need anything after I took that wired mouse from upstairs. Gotta think outside the box."

Now...I think...it's quite rude to steal from your landlady. Especially since he's gone and made her computer useless. When he can use his trackpad. But, that's just me.

4. I opened my cabinet and found mouse poop on the shelf.

Me: "Yo, we have a mouse problem."
Stan: "How can you tell?"
Me: "Mouse poop. Look."

I removed my box of crackers from the shelf and the open pack had several crackers that were gnawed away.

Stan: "Yup, that would be the culprit."

I moved other stuff around so we could see if anything else was eaten. Also, I wanted to clean the mouse poop away from the shelf and my stuff.

Me: *moving a metal can and glass jar away and looking at the bottom of each*
Stan: "I don't think mice will eat through that *with attitude*."
Me: "...I'm looking for poop, dude."
Stan: "Oh."
Me: "Oh well."
Stan: "Did you find any open packages?"
Me: "....You mean....besides....the crackers...?"
Stan: "....Yeah, the crackers."
Me: "......ok....Well, also, I have no idea what this piece of plastic is for. Looks like it was part of the heater."
Stan: "Yeah. I don't know. Maybe part of the refridgerator or the heater. *looks away at heater* Yeah it was part of the heater."
Me: "..."
Stan: *walks away like he's going to solve the mouse problem, only to talk to his family about something entirely different*

Sick Delay

2007-12-15T20:41:00.000-08:00

Sorry all, I got really sick and couldn't update for a while. Strep throat is nasty business...made better through Motrin, raw garlic pieces, and Robitussin.

Anyway, long post again, so here we go.

1. Stan had gotten into a car accident. To quote him, he was "t-boned." In any case, he had called me and told me that his car was damaged and to watch out for the damaged CR-V and a rental car sitting in the parking lot. He told me two days after the fact. As in, he called me Sunday to tell me he got into a car accident on Friday. Anyway, when I got back, I looked over his car briefly and talked to him about it.

Stan: "Yeah, the side, two wheels, part of the front. It's really pretty bad. The other car just went right into my side."
Me: "How fast were you going?"
Stan: "45."
Me: "How fast was the other car going?"
Stan: "15 mph."
Me: "..."
Stan: "He was accelerating, though!"

By looking at the damage, it didn't really look like a "t-bone," it looked more like the other car scraped like <5 inches in for half the length of the car.

Me: "You know it really doesn't look THAT bad. Doesn't look like there'll be any frame damage, just cosmetic stuff."
Stan: "Yeah, but the frame is probably gone."
Me: "..."

2. Oh sorry, I probably shoulda backed up to when I actually got home. Or before that. See during the call on Sunday he had told me that he had gotten whiplash. When I arrived home, I had both arms full and couldn't open the door. In the rain. With snow all around me, melting and sloshing. Our door has a window that faces into the living room, where Stan was very comfortably laid out on the couch. We established eye contact and he didn't even acknowledge my presence. Then, I struggled to readjust all my stuff to unlock and open the door. Only then did he say hi.

3. I walked to the sink and was horrified. All of our glasses, 3 pots and pans, and several plates and sets of silverware were sitting in the sink, soaking in water. Not soapy water, just water.

Me: "Holy."
Stan: "Yeah, sorry, I couldn't do the dishes because I couldn't really move around without pain. I shouldn't be doing a lot of exertion."

That. Was probably a bold faced lie so he could be extra lazy. After I got home, he literally followed me everywhere in the house for 20 mins, walking and talking. Clearly, he was not hurting as bad as he claimed. Not bad enough to avoid doing dishes at least.

Me: "Just clean one glass for now. I don't think it's fair that I should have to do your dishes."
Stan: "If I can, maybe."

He did his exercises from his doctor. 15 mins after that, he washed one glass. With attitude.

4. I had broken a glass trying to fill my water pitcher in the sink. There was simply no room to move around in there and I ended up hitting one of the glasses with my pitcher as I was rinsing it out. I put the pieces on the table top at eye level so that I could see it and put all the pieces inside a paper bag, once I found one. Like. The pieces were right above the sink, directly under the lights. But I couldn't find a paper bag.

Me: "Stan, do you have any paper bags?"
Stan: *at sink* "No. What do you need it for?"
Me: "...That broken glass. *point right in front of him*"
Stan: "What broken glass?"
Me: "..............That one. *repoint*"
Stan: "Where?"
Me: "Right in front of you."
Stan: "Oh. So *smugly*, you broke a glass too huh?"
Me: "Yeah. There was too much stuff in the sink."

5. Stan always leaves his bananas out on a plate in the kitchen. There was only one there and it was very very overripe.

Stan: "I don't understand, I ate that banana's twin two days ago and it wasn't that ripe."

6. Stan likes to take his metal cans from food and soak them in water. I guess to clean them or something, I dunno. I always just swish out the food remainder, peel the label, and put it in the metal recycling, but whatever. Stan had left two cans soaking for 3 days. He then wondered why the cans rusted.

BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT WET METAL DOES WHEN EXPOSED TO AIR, TARDBUCKET

7. Stan took the dry dishes in the dish rack and wiped them with a wet towel before placing them in the cupboards. Maybe he thought he was helping. By defeating the action we left evaporation to do.

8. I had started getting quite sick and didn't know why yet. Stan had offered me cough drops one night, but I told him I'd try to find my own since I have 2 bags lying around somewhere. The next morning, I couldn't find them.

Me: "Stan, can I have some of the cough drops you were talking about? I couldn't find mine."
Stan: "......Yeah. Let me see if I have any."

We then walked towards his room together, with me following a step behind. When he got inside his room, he shut the door in my face. Like, trailing foot in, door shut. He didn't slam, just shut very quickly. He did almost hit me in the nose.

9. Stan walked into the house and towards his room. He stuck his hand up in the same direction as his walking and pressed the remote lock button on his car remote. His car locked, but why he was facing totally perpendicular to his car, I will never figure out. It's not like he didn't know where the thing was; he's parked there every day and he can actually see his car through the huge kitchen window.

10. Stan wanted to get a different rental car. He didn't like how his car didn't have Anti-lock brakes. How did he know? He tested the brakes. By slamming hard when going 15 mph. While it was snowing. On an icy road. He was right about the car not having ABS, but I don't think it's fair for him to claim that the only reason why his car kept veering to the sides while he was braking was due to lack of ABS.

11. Stan: "I'm glad I have a Honda. The tow truck only had to take it to [dealership] (a 30-40 minute drive). I'm so much more fortunate than you as that's far more reasonable for me."
Me: "................You....are aware that....there's a Jeep dealership downtown. So...like...5 minutes away."
Stan: "....Ok."

12. Me: "Yeah, our landlord was here earlier saying that the main road through town wasn't even plowed."
Stan: "Wow. How'd she get here then? Did she take her Mercedes or her Jeep?"
Me: "I didn't see, but I'm guessing she took her Jeep."
Stan: "Yeah, well, you mean Ted's Jeep."
Me: ".....*thinking, wtf is wrong with this kid, he's pretty much correcting himself* Sure."
Stan: "That's better."
Me: "....Anyway, yeah, I didn't see her car. She left not long afterwards."

13. Stan: "Do you have any AA batteries?"
Me: "Somewhere. I don't know where though, I've been looking for them."
Stan: "I need some to finish my final presentation."
Me: "...Don't you have a laptop? Can't you use the trackpad?"
Stan: "BAH, that'll mean it'll take FOREVER!"
Me: "......Right, well, I don't know where my batteries are."
Stan: "I guess I'll manage then."

Good news! He's moving out this Friday! I don't know why or how he did it but he's coming back to work in January for like 4 days. This makes no sense to me. Why would you be done with your final presentation, basically stop working, and come back for 4 days? Just stay home. You're done. If they're paying him for a longer vacation than most of the people at work take, then I should be able to get a week off no problem. Anyway, he's not moving back in, so I'm happy.

HR Person at work: "I don't really know what he was thinking, coming from home. But, if he really wants to drive 40 mins one way...in the terrible snow...in a hilly area....with narrow, dark roads, that's his choice."

**Edit**

Some stuff I forgot and just got this afternoon

1. So Stan needed a hot pad and a cold pad for his sore areas after his car accident. Remember, I saw him...two days...after the accident happened.

Stan: "OHHHHH, I probably shouldn't keep the hot pad in the freezer."

2. When I woke up this afternoon, Stan IMMEDIATELY opened the door and said hi. It was creepy.

3. Stan in the kitchen to his phone: "Phonebook. Call. [Name]. Ok."

His phone...does not have voice recognition.

4. Remember Stan's mouse dilemma?

Stan: "I fixed my mouse problem! I went upstairs and took our landlady's mouse off her computer. Can you believe that it's a USB mouse with a ball?"

Yes, Stan. What I can't believe is that you stole our landlady's mouse. Oh wait. No. I can believe that. I just didn't think you'd actually do it.

**End Edit**

Couple Days

2007-12-04T18:38:00.000-08:00

1. Stan left a butter tub in the sink with water sitting in it for days. I would've confronted him earlier but he didn't come back home. When he did, I spoke to him.

Me: "Stan, why is this plastic tub sitting in the sink?"
Stan: "It's a butter tub. I was soaking it to get rid of the butter."

Ok. First off, 3 seconds with a soapy sponge, which we have, would've gotten rid of it immediately. Second off, I know he failed orgo, but, butter is for all intents and purposes, a fat. A lipid. An organic substance. As in, not water soluble. Hence, why butterbells (which are amazing) work. A butterbell has two pieces, a cup and a bell shape. The bell shape is filled with butter and the cup with water. The bell part goes into the cup and keeps the butter at water temperature to keep it spreadable and reduces the speed of going bad. But, the butter doesn't dissolve in the water. So, Stan left oily water in a plastic tub for two days.

2. Stan shaved one day and didn't rinse the sink. Which made brushing my teeth an endeavor. When I saw him at lunch, I told him that he needs to wash the sink after he shaves. He claimed he did. I pointed out that he didn't. He sounded defensive again, but said he'd try to remember next time.

3. Stan left at 4 in the morning one day. I know because he had the common courtesy to slam his bedroom door, which is right outside of mine. In addition, he was completely unable to leave the shower door open, as I reqested and he acknowledged.

4. Later that day, I told Stan that he needed to leave the shower door open. He said he did. I said he didn't. He then asked which door I was talking about. I said again, shower door. Glass door. Stan thought I was talking about the wood bathroom door. Silly Stan.

5. Someone goofed at work. New hires are given a gift pack a few weeks after they start, but for some reason, only a few people got them this year. And those few, of whom Stan was one, got like 10 of them, but in a staggered way. He had gotten 4 and given them to his family (I think, the boxes disappeared). Then all of a sudden he got 6 more. All the boxes are the same. I joked that if he didn't want one, I could take one. He said he'd think about it. The next day at work he told me that he was going to graciously give me one of his boxes. The opened one. I didn't understand why he opened the box, seeing as how he might have to return it anyway, so I asked.

Stan: "I was wondering if they were all the same."
Me: "Probably."

So, I started going through the box since he insisted that I keep it.

Me: "Oh hey, this is nice, I think I use this anyway."
Stan: "What? Wait, I didn't see this before."

Stan then proceeded to dump out the entire contents of the box into the hallway and rummaged through. And he refused to put things back in the way they came, so the box didn't shut anymore and I had to repack it.

Me: "THANKS. Stan."
Stan: "Yeah sorry. Apparently, some things in the package are different."
Me: "...But...you already went through the box before."
Stan: "Yeah."

6. Our table has an ion filtering fan on it to get rid of smells. Which, come to think of it, since Stan turned it off, our kitchen has smelled like garlic. Lemme go fix that. Never mind, it's on low, but now the buttons are stuck.

Anyway, he moved it off so he could sit and eat. I told him that he could take the normal chair as I was going to eat in my room and do some work/chores. Stan told me to "eat wherever I want," as if he was giving me orders and owned the house.

7. When my friends came over to visit, they had prepared a salad. To make said salad, they used a clear plastic bowl that I had never seen before they arrived. Stan was making dinner one day:

Stan: "Have you seen that clear plastic bowl?"
Me: "No."
Stan: "I found out it's a good salad bowl."
Me: "I thought that belonged to my friends. Thought they bought it, since I had never seen it before they came over."
Stan: "Yeah, that's when I discovered it."

I think by "discover," he means saw it being used. So that he could take credit for it.

8. Stan was talking about something he was doing. Something about a long day later this week. I thought he was trying to make conversation, and I wanted to seem nice while I was putting on my jacket to leave.

Me: "Yeah, just to let you know, I'm going into work at 6 in two days."
Stan: "Ouch..........Not as bad as 4."

I shoulda realized he just wanted a competition.

9. Stan on the phone with his friend: "Is ritalin an antidepressant? .......That's a pretty old prescription."

No WONDER why his friends think he's so smart!

10. Me: "Stan, you gotta keep the shower door open."
Stan: "I did."
Me: "I just used the bathroom, and the shower door was shut and you were the last person to use it."
Stan: "Well, I definitely left it open."
Me: "Right. Just like how you're doing the recycling?"
*Motion to egg carton on floor. That's been there for 3 days.*
Stan: "I don't see YOU doing your recycling!"
Me: "...You mean that pizza box that's too dirty to be recycled?"
Stan: "...*places egg carton in bag for plastic recycling*"
Me: "..."
Stan: *places cardboard tube into plastic recycling*
Me: "Yeah, no, try that again."
Stan: *opens cabinet and rearranges plastics*
Me: "No, I meant the cardboard in the plastics."
Stan: "*attitude* That's why I opened the cabinet? To get another plastic bag?"
Me: "Yup, that's also why you put the cardboard tube into the plastics?"
Stan: "......*gets new plastic bag*"

Shower Door

2007-11-28T17:16:00.000-08:00

So, our shower is in a very small and poorly ventilated bathroom. It is also sort of like a glass booth. As such, every time I shower, I make sure to leave the shower door open so that all the moisture can dry faster, therby discouraging mildew, mold, and what have you from forming. Stan has never left the door open. Ever.

Stan: "I'm going to shower now."
Me: "Ok, as long as you mean it this time."
Stan: "What?"
Me: "Last time you showered at night, you said you were going to shower between 9 and 930, and you showered at 1030, when I wanted and normally shower."
Stan: "Sorry."
Me: "Make sure to leave the shower door open from now on, though."
Stan: "What?"
Me: "....You know why, right?"
Stan: *With attitude* "So that nothing grows..."
Me: "Right."
Stan: "Well, I always leave the door open."
Me: "....No. No, you don't. You always leave the door closed."
Stan: *long pause* "That must be the door slamming whenever I leave for work in the morning!"
Me: "..."
Stan: "There's always the sound of a door slamming whenever I shut the outside door. That must be it. I always leave the shower door open."
Me: "....Well, whatever, but it's always closed whenever I come home....and you're the only other person living here."
Stan: "No, I always leave the door open. *leaves*"

Well...no...even when he showers at night, he leaves the door closed. I know because I shower later and the room is moist...and the door is shut.

Also, it's been 15 mins, and he still hasn't gone to shower.

*Edit*

So, Stan walked by 20 mins after he said he was going to shower and he was "on the phone." Dunno if he just did that "look I'm important" thing again, but in any case, I needed to use the bathroom and I didn't want to wait in case he stayed on the phone for a long time. So I grabbed my shower stuff and went. As I'm using the bathroom:

Stan: "Um. In case you didn't notice my stuff is in the shower."
Me: "....Ok..."
Stan: "Yeah."
Me: "It's been over 20 mins."
Stan: "Well, 20 mins ago, I said I was going to be in the shower within 15 minutes."
*Silence except for me USING THE BATHROOM*
Stan: "....So, that's still within margin of error."
Me: *Thinking* "Stan, this is not Orgo where the professor took pity on you and bumped your grade up: 33% is not a good number and is definitely not a B-."
Me: "Ok."
Silence as I'm now washing my hands and not coming out.
Stan: "What're you going to do with my stuff?"
Me: "...Put it on the sink."
Stan: "Ok, thanks."
*Sound of angry footsteps*
Me: *loudly* "Try to be more reliable, Stan!"

If I actually could trust him, I wouldn't have cared that he was 5 mins late. But, he's proven time and time again that I just can't trust him.

*End Edit*

Quiet Times

2007-11-26T19:32:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

I believe that this blog will start slowing down soon with new content. Stan is spending less time around me (or is it vice versa), so I'm getting less things to write about. I believe I'll try posting on old stuff that made us all come to know the Stan we love so much.

Honestly, all that happened today was that he scared the crap out of me when he got home. I was in the bathroom and I heard him walk in and to his room. After I finished up and washed my hands, I walked back to my room. I swear, the millisecond he saw part of my hand he just screamed "I'M BACK."

Also, I don't know about what he did for the rest of the day, but it seems as if no one wants to talk to him lately. I haven't heard him on the phone at all. He also stopped sleeping upstairs where he and Naseem slept. Something tells me he told her that he started sleeping there for reasons other than what he told me (better reception, pretty much a lie since he told me he gets decent reception everywhere in the house until you go outside) and she told him he was creeping her the fuck out.

If you guys get bored, you can go check out my real blog, if you want. Less bashing, more openness, and sometimes I post items that you all know me for.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Stan and the Sink Again

2007-11-21T17:00:00.000-08:00

1. Remember how Stan said he couldn't tell when the green dish detergent was running low? Here's a picture of the green (I use) and the blue (he uses). Apparently, I'm quite frugal with the detergent as I told him we were running low a few weeks ago.

Notice how visible my detergent is. Yet the blue one you can't see, as I claimed before.

2. Stan failed again at washing something and leaving it in the sink. Observe.

Although this time he has pretty much no excuse; he didn't even go to work today. Our quality checker took him out on a shelf audit, where we inspect quality of our products as they sit on the shelves.

I'm a little disturbed for his department, since I'm under the impression that he's done pretty much no work for the last 3 weeks. Even less work than usual. I think it's because he has no one to copy/steal ideas or work from since his last 2 projects are actually projects and not busy work.

3. Stan: "Ok, I'm leaving, have a good break."
Me: "Yeah, you too."
Stan: "I-What?"
Me: "......I said 'you too.'"
Stan: "Oh. Ok. Well, I'll see ya sometime *something I didn't hear because I said 'Ok, bye'*. You never know when I'll show up."

Privacy

2007-11-14T20:11:00.000-08:00

1. I was going to the bathroom to take a shower when I decided to go check on my laundry in the dryer first. You know, to see if it was dry or how much time was left in the cycle. Imagine my surprise when I hear the dryer stop rotating and the door wide open. With Stan elbows deep into the dryer.

Me: "WHOA, WHAT are you doing?!?!"

Now it's not like he was even doing laundry. The washer was totally empty and he had no clothes with him. He was litterally just going through my clothes in the dryer.

Stan: "I saw a bottle of bleach sitting on the washer and I was worried that you used it."
Me: "........."
Stan: "Sorry."
Me: "Stan, for the last time, I'm not retarded, and that's not my bleach."
Stan: "Ok, I just wanted to check."
Me: "Can you not touch my stuff? Ever? It isn't yours."
Stan: *very defensive* "I was checking to see if you used bleach!"
Me: "They're not your clothes! I don't appreciate you just rifling through my clothes!"
Stan: *defensive* "Fine, I better just get some sleep."

2. Stan: "Can you deal with these apples?"
Me: "Can you take the trash out?"
Stan: "I'll do it tomorrow as it's dark and rainy out."

No. No, it wasn't. Dark, yes. But it had finished raining hours ago. The ground was just wet. How do I know this? Because I went and got stuff out of my car right when he got home.

3. Stan: "My heater or something is acting up, so I'm going to go try to get it looked at or fixed."
Me: "Great."
Stan: "Yeah, but I guess I have to go to a Honda dealership to keep it under warranty right?"

No, Stan, of course other car companies will work on your Honda for no charge since they'll file it under a competitor's warranty. Even though they don't have the parts. And the car is engineered differently. And the service people aren't trained for it.

4. I had to leave town to handle a few issues. The next morning Stan messaged me at work:

Stan: "Did you come home at all last night?"

No, I didn't. You would know if I did as you would've seen lights (as always) going into the driveway. And you also would've heard the car horn go off when I locked the car. But moving on.

Stan: "Yeah, I'll do the dishes that are in the sink tonight."

.....So...he can't do the dishes when I'm gone. Even when he has a guest. When I went home, it was the same story; dishes were barely rinsed and the glasses had milk in them still.

5. Last night, I lost control of my car and wound up stuck in a ditch for an hour. This morning, Stan knocked on my door.

Stan: "Are you aware that it's 7 am?"
Me: "Yeah. Not going into work today, need to get my car looked at since I lost control last night and ended up in a ditch for an hour."
Stan: "Yeah, the snow was bad last night. That's why I called you to say that I was surprised by the sudden snow storm. I slept upstairs last night where me and Naseem usually sleep since I'm waiting for the line to call me so I can observe a dust blowdown and there's better reception in that room so that when they call me at like 2am, I know when I can go in and see everything. Anyway, bye."

I like how much compassion he showed to me. Not even an "are you ok," just "here's what i'm doing and why."

Stan and Girls Redux

2007-11-12T16:06:00.000-08:00

1. So there I was, sitting down eating my dinner. Big big bowl of pasta with lots of tomato sauce. Mushroom and garlic, the jar said. I was lazy and didn't really "make" anything tonight. Stan had seen me pour the sauce and pasta into a white bowl and mix it all up. Three minutes after I started eating:

Stan: "Mmm. Pasta."
Me: "....Yup."

....Stan, I really don't need you telling me what I'm eating if I know full well what it is.

2. I like to play music from my room when I'm eating. And I don't mind when people hum along to the song. However, I do mind if someone butchers the song.

I don't believe Stan had ever heard "Sweet Child o'Mine" before, because when he was trying to hum the melody/solo, he was...I don't even know. For all I know, he mighta been sending musical signals to the Moon. Cept the aliens there would STILL be confused and probably be like "yo, that fucker needs to shut the fuck up, we're trying to rock out to some Guns N Roses here."

3. Stan: "Yeah, my next few days are extremely busy. CPR classes tomorrow and Wednesday, Naseem coming over on Thursday. Just busy."
Me: "Whoa, wait, she's coming back on Thursday?"
Stan: "Yyyyyeah."
Me: "....Do you wanna give me more advance notice?"
Stan: "I'm telling you the second I'm sure."
Me: "...."
Stan: "We decided on my drive home today."
Me: *thinking, Stan, you've been home for 30 mins now* "...Ok, well, the way you said it made it sound like I was already supposed to know...."
Stan: "...Oh. Sorry. I just grouped it into my CPR classes, which I told you last week about."

Yes, I gave her real name. Yes, I'm aware that it makes this blog very much not anonymous anymore, but I don't care. I just feel like a dick like Stan doesn't deserve any sort of attention from girls if he's just going to group his girlfriend in with CPR classes. One SHOULD be more important than the others.

Also, he's the least considerate roommate ever. He's bringing a girl over...and tells me like...not even 3 days in advance. And we won't even really see each other the next 2 days. If he hadn't had let it slip tonight, I would never have known until Thursday night.

Lastly, I feel like I don't know everyone who's commenting on this blog. Send an email to coworkerofstan@gmail.com if you wanna clue me in.

Stan and Girls

2007-11-08T19:52:00.000-08:00

1. Stan walked into the house, past me, to his room, and was silent for 25 seconds. As in, he saw me, kept going for 30 feet, and stood still. He then yelled down the hall "You got mail today! I left it on your luggage in the hallway!"

I don't understand why he didn't just hand it to me or leave it right in front of me, but whatever.

2. Stan: "I told our landlady that my friend is coming over tomorrow and staying the night. 'Friend.'"
Me: "....That's nice."
Stan: "Yup."
Me: "Did you ever plan on telling your roommate?" (I told him a week in advance that I was having guests over)
Stan: *Dead silence for a full minute* "Roommate?"
Me: "...."
Stan: "Oh, you. Yes, well I didn't know until about 20 mins ago."
Me: "....You've been home for like 15."

3. Me: "So are you two dating?"
Stan: "I dunno. We hung out three times, and I think we have something."

4. It has been extremely awkward these past two days as every time he opens his mouth, he mentions something about "needing privacy." It was interesting seeing our landlady's face as he told her what was going on as she looked quite uncomfortable.

5. Stan: "Your interview is tomorrow!"
Me: "...Yeah."
Stan: "Ok, I'm sure MY Outlook will tell me. I love that feature."

We've basically had the same Outlook the entire time. Why he assumes that I don't know about the calendar alert feature, I have no idea. Especially since I've told him like five times that I use Outlook on my computer.

6. Stan: "First thing I did was change the colors of MY Outlook. Dark blue. So much better now."
Me: "....*sigh, continues prep work for dinner/cookies*"

7. Stan: "My boss says I'm the best intern in my department!"
Me: "...."
Stan: "But then I told him I was the only one."

8. Stan: "Thanksgiving is in two weeks!"
Me: "...."
Stan: "I didn't realize it was so soon, but I just remembered that Nov 1st was a Thursday, so Thanksgiving is coming as quickly as possible."
Me: *thinking* "...It...is always...the 4th Thursday of November...I don't see how this is a big deal."

9. Stan: "If my friend and I are too loud at night, just knock on the door and let us know."
Me: *shiver*

10. Stan paced nervously for about 15 minutes while talking about the most random and dumbest crap. He then brushed his teeth and spent 20 mins shaving.

11. I got a big package from UPS today.

Stan: "What's in the package?"
Me: "Lens."
Stan: ".........................OH for your camera!"
Me: "..........."
Stan: "I thought you meant a lens for a telescope. The box is so big!"

We...do not...have a telescope. Or anything remotely close to a telescope.

12. Stan: "Hey, can you keep the toilet seat down?"
Me: *thinking* "I haven't used this bathroom yet today besides in the morning. In fact, he used it about 3 minutes ago." "I always leave the seat down."
Stan: "Oh. So I guess it's been me leaving the seat up this whole time."

13. His guest arrived, and he opened the door. He promptly left her outside and walked back into the house. I ended up seeing his guest in.

14. This turned out to be a real date. It was supremely awkward when they shut the door to the basement as they like...tackled the door. I thought there was a rape going on, truthfully. She seems...like she wants attention. She's quite plain and kinda chubby, so I don't think she's ever gotten attention like this before. I don't know if this is the same girl he's been trying to see.

15. As they were leaving for dinner, I was playing with my new lens.

Stan: "What's the optical zoom on that?"
Me: "....This is an SLR. Those numbers don't mean anything."
Stan: "...."
Me: "....It is a 70-200mm lens."
Stan: "So, like not even 3x optical zoom?"
Me: ".....Ok, I just told you that those numbers don't mean anything. It's more than a standard 50 mm lens."
Stan: "Even my camera has 12x optical zoom."
Me: "....*deep sigh*"
Stan: "You take better pictures than me though."
Me: "...*thinking* I certainly hope so."

16. Stan did some recycling today. Remember how I've made a big deal about separating everything?

Apparently, Stan lives in a world where plastic bottles and aluminum cans make babies with each other.

17. To give you a scope as to what it's like to go on a date with Stan.

You go to dinner.
You come back from dinner.
He ditches you in the house for 3 hours, even though you drove 30 mins to get here and will have to drive 30+ mins back for school tomorrow morning.
He sleeps with you. This part, I don't know. All I know is that they're in the same bed, and what sounds like stampeding is happening.

Periodicity

2007-11-05T20:10:00.000-08:00

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I've had a total of 3 roommates in my life. One was a kleptomaniac. The second turned out to be a pothead. Who didn't share. And ate my food. And the third is Stan. I can honestly say I'd rather have either the klepto or the pothead as a roommate right now.

1. Stan and his family owned an HP or Gateway desktop tower. Something went funny with the power supply, and they didn't know what to do. Apparently, Stan called customer support and asked what could be done.

Stan: "Our computer was having problems with the power supply and because it has special clip things, we can't replace it with a different one from the store. So I called Customer Support and asked what they could do and they told me that the computer was still under warranty and that they could ship us a new power supply. So I ordered one and bingo, the computer was fixed and because I was smart we didn't have to worry about voiding our warranty."

Yes. Hence, why they have proprietary hardware in stock, in case such a situation arises.

2. I had bought a 9 pack of toilet paper about 4 weeks ago. Today,

Stan: "We're running low on toilet paper. Should I go buy some?"
Me: "Really? How much is left?"
Stan: "4 rolls."
Me: "......*thinking* It took us 4 weeks...with two guests for a few days...to go through 5 rolls...I'm pretty sure that we're not low on toilet paper."
*out loud*
"Yeah, sure go buy some."
Stan: "What kind?"
Me: "....The kind we make that feels like what we have..."
Stan: "We make like 10 different products."
Me: "....Ok...buy *name of product*."

Here's the thing. Yes, we make a variety of products. However, we clearly do not use all of them. There are three categories of product we make on site: toilet paper, paper towel, and diapers. Ignoring diapers (we make at least 10 SKU's of diapers, so Stan's already wrong), there's toilet paper and paper towel left. Well, of the paper towel, we have 5 general types that are on site...except 3 of them are experimental and aren't for sale. So, 2 products. Now, there are different combinations and factors of those 2 products that can lead to 20 permutations. Except we're talking about paper towels. And he wanted to buy toilet paper. Of that, we have 3 types. Each type has 3-4 levels. How are the levels different? Size. How are the types different? DRASTICALLY.

3. I sent him an invite to attend my mid term presentation. I actually sent it twice; I had a list of 30 people who got the invite, but I realized that I forgot a few and resent the invite out, hoping that Outlook would be smart enough to not send it to people who already got the invite. I was wrong. Anyway, Stan got two copies of the invite, which clearly listed date, time, and location. He even confirmed with me all three of those things. I was going to have my presentation on Friday. Imagine my surprise when Stan came up to me today and said this:

Stan: "I thought your presentation was on Monday."

4. Friday morning, I forgot to throw some old salad out of the fridge. Today,

Stan: "I noticed that the fridge is starting to smell and some old salad is in there."
Me: "Oh, yeah, I forgot to take care of that on Friday."
Stan: "Mmm, well, can you follow up on the salad soon?"

....Is he...trying to be a manager...or use managerial vocabulary at home?

5. I know what Stan ate for dinner today. I know he ate a frozen pizza, drank 2 Pepsi MAX's, used a glass, a plate, and had yogurt. How do I know these things? He left a plate with grease on it, a glass, knife, fork, and yogurt cup in the sink when he went out tonight. He also left a frozen pizza box and two soda bottles on the floor next to the garbage can.

Obviously, he hasn't learned anything at all. So I asked him when he got home:

Me: "Stan, can you-"
Stan: "The dishes? Yeah, I'll take care of that now."
Me: "And?"
Stan: "And what?"
Me: "What about the recycling?"
Stan: "*angrily* What about the recycling?"
Me: "*annoyed sigh* .....We talked about this before."
Stan: "...Yeah, I'll do that too. Sorry, I was doing too much before."

What was he doing before? He was sitting in his room for 1.5-2 hours. He told me at work he'd "drop by between 5 and 6, eat a bit, and head out." He showed up at 5, left at 630-645.

Then, after he said he'd take care of it, I noticed that everything was still sitting around. I went downstairs to get him off the phone and take care of it.

Me: "Stan, are you slow or are you trying to get me angry? In any case, do the dishes and stuff."
Stan: "I'm on the phone helping my sister with a math problem."
Me: "You weren't busy before."
Stan: "Well, I just read an email saying to help her before 11 and its 1045 right now."
Me: "Wow...You're very reliable aren't you?"

6. Stan walked into his door or doorframe (I couldn't see), said ow, and immediately started making hurt dog sounds to himself.

7. Stan has been reading Fortune magazine lately. One every week. Except, I used to read Fortune and I know it's monthly, not weekly. So imagine my surprise when I saw him reading a new one every week. The first one had the address label still attached. All the other ones had them missing. I guess he was trying to look smart by reading the magazines, and didn't want people to know that he just took them from his family.

But, I don't think you'll be very knowledgable or intelligent-looking by reading 4 month old magazines.

Unbelievably Huge Update

2007-10-25T20:32:00.000-07:00

Here's the deal.

Most of the time, I post whenever I hit eight or so bullet points and it can take me anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to write everything down here. Usually, eight bullet points takes a few days. Yesterday, Stan hit a whopping 54 bullet points in one day. On top of that, I never posted the notes from before!

So...without further ado:

1. Stan asked me if I had taken his nasal spray. I'm going to spell it out for you: why would I take HIS nasal spray? We all know where nasal sprays go, so why would I want to borrow someone else's let alone his?

2. Stan asked me one day if he could drink some of my milk. I didn't see a problem with it as I never finish my milk usually (I just don't drink enough of it).

Me: "Yeah go ahead."
Stan: "Thanks. I thought I had a whole gallon in there, but I just realized that I brought it home with me over the weekend since it was expired."

3. Stan and I had a dinner with a representative not from work. This representative was unfamiliar with our area and wanted us to pick a place to eat. Actually, he wanted us to work together to pick a place to eat. I was extremely busy, and have been extremely busy both in and out of work lately, so I didn't go ask Stan about dinner. Imagine my surprise when Stan sent out an email ordering us to eat at Applebee's. Now...he had claimed to be familiar with the area before, and I can say without any hesitation that Applebee's...was not the best place to eat, even with a budget of $15 each. He clearly just picked a place at random and told us to go.

Now, I sent an email out to him and the representative saying that Applebee's was not a good choice for the money we were going to spend and suggested a place like Chili's, at least. Stan did not get back to me, even though he "prides himself on responding to email instantly." So, I asked him about it at lunch the next day. He was sitting with his coworkers, while I had just finished a 15 minute lunch as they were sitting.

Me: "Stan, did you get my email about dinner?"
Stan: *air of arrogance* "I got like 6 emails last night."
*silence*
Me: *Nevermind that I've been getting 20 emails a night for various reasons (not all Facebook)* "...Ok, well did you read it?"
Stan: "Oh... Yeah. Chili's sounds fine by me."
Me: "....*wonders why that was so hard to say* Ok, well, I have to go prepare for a meeting, so I'll see you later."

4. Stan had given us the address of the Applebee's he wanted to go to so badly. He then said, and this is a DIRECT copy paste from the email:

"My cell is ---.---.---- if anyone needs to last-minute cancel/gets lost getting to the restaurant. I would recommend not using the direction finder on Applebee's website; it completely overcomplicated my directions.
Google maps works a lot better."

Soooo...now he's taking credit...for Google Maps giving him directions?

On top of that, he didn't actually give directions.

5. I had bought a 6 pack of light bulbs to replace 2 that had burned out. It was not a huge concern for either of us to put bulbs in, so I let the bulbs sit on the counter. I even asked him if he cared about having lighting, and he didn't. So the bulbs sat for 2 days. Then, one day Stan made a lot of noise in the hallway and everything got brighter when he hit a switch. Wow. He put my bulbs in.

Stan: "We now have light."

Now....why he wanted to paraphrase God, I can understand; he has a complex, I wager. However, the "light" had been there for a while. Obviously, and again, taking credit for someone else's work.

6. My room is quite small and there isn't enough room to put my copier inside. As such, I put the copier on the hallway sink counter as it had the biggest counter space with a working power outlet. It was clear and away from water, and would always be, especially if no one used the sink. After three days of leaving the copier there and hearing no complaints, Stan walked into the hallway and stood in complete silence for 45 seconds.

Stan: "Is this copier always going to be here?"
Me: "Is it a problem?"
Stan: "I want to use this sink."
Me: "....The actual bathroom is about 10 feet from that sink."
Stan: "I know. I like using this sink to brush my teeth."
Me: "....You are very lazy."

Course I moved the copier about 10 mins later because I didn't want to risk him getting water onto it.

7. Trooper had a birthday recently. Stan asked how old trooper was. Now, this is always a relative question, so I answered "our age"

Stan: "So they're 21?"
Me: "...No, we're not even 21, they're 20 now."
Stan: "So they're younger then." *walks into room with arrogance*

8. I walked out the other day and saw him eating a salad and reading a Fortune magazine. I have a feeling someone told him to read the Fortune as he never did before. I'm also guessing that he was trying to look smarter. Kinda failed.

9. I recently attended a dinner in a major city far away from where Stan and I live. Stan did not go, so it was a fairly pleasant drive over. When I got there, I met new people. We didn't even know we had mutual friends until another guest walked in to the restaurant.

Her: "OH MAN, so I've been reading the blog!"
New person 1: "THE STAN BLOG?!?"

10. New person 1: "Oh yeah, I had class with Stan. I loved everything about that class except for him.

11. New person 3: "Has he played any music for you yet?"
New person 2: "Yeah, he kept saying he was a 'Violin Master'."
Me: "....My friends were in orchestra with him. He sat in the last chair of the 2nd Violins. Which means he was the worst violinist in the orchestra. He didn't even make that seat the next year."

12. Stan was explaining why he was gone one day. Apparently, he just stayed over at a coworker's place because it was so late in the night.

"Good thing I always have a change of clothes in my car for just such an occasion."

13. Stan came out of the bathroom the other day and felt need to tell me the following:

"The bathroom is all yours."

Now, I didn't even need to use it. I was literally just sitting in my room at my desk.

14. Stan's explanation as to why he came back home at like 9 pm was because "someone screwed up at work." I really wonder who.

Ok, this is the day with 54 notes. I don't even remember everything because I wrote it all in short fragments. In his car. While he was driving. And while I was in shotgun. Or during dinner.

15. Stan and I had a separate dinner with a representative from our mutual organization. Despite the fact that Stan dictated that dinner was at 7:00 pm a few days prior to this dinner and the fact that all he really does is read emails all day (meaning he would've been able to see about 6 confirmation emails), he had forgotten what time dinner was. By 5:00 pm.

16. We have two bottles of dish detergent at our sink. One is a very dark blue one, so dark that you cannot really see how much detergent is left in the bottle unless you look hard. The other is a clear bottle with bright green colored detergent. I remembered how low the green one had gone (maybe 2 cm from the bottom) and asked Stan if he could pick up another bottle of detergent. Stan asked if we had run out. He then claimed he hadn't noticed because he only used the dark blue one. The one that always sits next to the bright green one.

17. We decided to carpool to this dinner. Last time we carpooled, we took my car, even though I didn't really have to go, and I had to fill up on gas the next time I went out. Which of course didn't faze Stan. He also didn't think about thanking me for driving either. So, when we were going to leave for dinner, Stan obviously asked who was going to drive.

18. While Stan was driving, he asked if I had seen any schoolbuses around on the roads.

Me: "Yeah."
Stan: "Aren't they terrible to follow?"
Me: "....They're schoolbuses...what did you expect?"
Stan: "No, maybe you don't understand. These schoolbuses were awful. They kept stopping every like 100 feet in the midafternoon and on my way to work!"
Me: "...As in...when school starts....and when school ends?"
Stan: "Yeah."

Conversation ended there for a moment.

19. Somehow we ended up talking about Binghampton.

Stan: "Binghampton is so in the boonies." Followed by his own laughter. And that was it. I'm really not sure how someone who's living in an area with only a WalMart can judge, but hey.

20. Stan totally ate like a full plate of food 2 hours before our dinner. Was it for etiquette? I hope not, since we knew the dinner was casual...and at Chili's.

21. We'd been working here for 9 weeks by the time this event happened. Stan had taken a tour of my department. Very quick and simple tour. He went on and on about how bad the dust was in one area of the machine. I didn't tell him but I'd been there several times. I did tell him that he went on a light day and that it wasn't too bad. He insisted that it was terrible and began trying to tell me how machines in my department worked. Unlike him, however, I did not spend 6 weeks checking email and getting lost, so I did already know how my machines worked.

22. Our power flickered. All the lights dimmed and some fans slowed down. Stan asked me if my lights dimmed.

23. I was playing video games to wait for him to leave. I ended up playing for 3 minutes too long and he commanded me to get up and get in the car.

24. As I got into the front seat of his car, Stan had this nugget of information for me:

Stan: "If you want to adjust the seatback, the lever is on the right."

THANKS STAN WHAT WOULD I EVER DO WITHOUT YOU.

25. I had gotten a new phone a whole week before this dinner. Stan knew I had gotten it because he was going to help me by waiting for the package. Then I got home and told him he could go as I waited for my phone.

Flash forward a week:

Stan: "Hey, nice new phone."

26. Our first week at work, we were told that we would be given Outlook 300. It's a fancy name for Webmail based Outlook. We were also told to not use Outlook 500, or the actual program, because they didn't have enough licenses and such.

Four weeks in, Stan complained about how his Outlook wasn't working. Of course, I asked what was wrong. He then said that he had been using the program the entire time and was going to have it fixed.

Now, the ninth week at work, Stan told me in the car that his Outlook was still having issues. And that he was told not to use the program. He wondered why the IT people waited so long to tell him not to use the program and just stick to Webmail. I told him that we were explicitly told to use Webmail. He said he must not have been there. I told him we were told during training. He sat and looked dumb.

27. Stan's sister was having a senior recital. She invited him and really wanted him to come home to see it.

Stan: *in a very non-caring tone* "Yeah...so...sister's recital...whatever, I guess I'll go."

28. I vented a little about how one of my projects went bad. We lost items that we were supposed to track. Stan offered to help me find them. Even though he didn't know what they looked like. And I told many more important people to keep an eye out. Including in his own department. He still insisted that he could help.

29. Stan's department had ordered too much glue to use in the machines. They had a big meeting to come up with ways to get rid of the glue. As in hundreds, maybe tons of the stuff. Of glue. Sticky, will screw lots of stuff up, glue. Stan suggested that they dump it in the river. He then told me that he woke everyone up out of boredom during the meeting. I personally doubt they were bored, just shocked at his idiocy.

30. Stan bragged about how his car only needs planned maintenance every couple thousand miles. Just like any other car, really.

31. Me: "Yeah, I have to get my maintenance. And my oil changed. I'll just have them done at the same time."
Stan: "You haven't gotten your oil changed? What's wrong with you?"
Me: "...I just said...I'm going to...with my maintenance...and also...I'm entirely too busy to do it."

32. So the first night we were in the apartment, Stan told me that he basically took his mom's car to drive here. This day, he changed his story and claimed that his mom gave him the car.

33. Stan said he's too busy at home as his cell phone constantly rings. He implied a tone of great importance, but we all know that it's his family or people returning calls. Specifically after he tells them to call him back later.

34. We were following a car that was slowing down. Now, when cars slow down, it's either quick or slow. Quick means braking. Slow means naturally drifting to a stop. This car we were following was VERY slow as it was slowing down.

Stan: "That car has its center brake light out."
Me: "....Uh...it could just be not using the brake. It is slowing down very slowly."
Stan: "....True."

35. Stan talked about how there were 50,000 miles on his car and bragged about how much of those miles he had driven. He claimed half. He argued that this made him an experienced driver who knew what he was doing, unlike most people. I didn't feel like bringing it up, but my car has 76,000 miles on it, and I've driven it across the country twice. One of those trips had mountains, snow, rain, sleet, massive traffic, trucks, sun, clouds, fog, and nighttime driving on the highway and in the city in a span of 12 hours. On top of that, I've driven the car in so many different states that I can sorta identify driver origins based off their driving behavior. And I can honestly say I've never driven on the wrong side of a narrow downhill road before. Which he did. And almost made me crash into him.

36. My notes say "car brag" but I don't remember what happened. I think it had to do with windshield wipers.

37. Stan said that he would like long drives so he wouldn't unleash his stress on his wife and kids. Even ignoring the fact that he "wasn't worried about that yet," I'm a little afraid for anyone unlucky enough to be in that situation. Personally, I doubt I would destress on other people.

38. He asked what the car situation was like in my family. I told him hard because we had 5 cars and 4 drivers and we can't juggle insurance and parking around to make it work, usually.

Stan: "I totally understand, the car situation is hard in my family too."
Me: "How so?"
Stan: "We have 4 cars and 4 drivers."

....HOW ABOUT ONE CAR PER DRIVER FUCKTARD?! DONE AND DONE

Granted, what should I expect from a person who struggled for a long time at coming up with ways to move Mr. Toad. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read older posts.

39. Stan: "Yeah, my car is fully loaded. Power windows, locks, AC, ABS."
Me: "....Yeah....most of those...like especially ABS... were made standard on cars larger than compact 10 years ago. [we're in 2007]."
Stan: "My minivan didn't have it!"
Me: "What year was your minivan (I knew that minivans usually HAD ABS because soccer moms love safety)?"
Stan: "A '94."

40. Notes say "Car Brag 2." I think it had to do with the other standard features in his car and how it came "fully loaded."

41. Stan tried to argue with me about cars. Like...model features, renovations, etc. He wouldn't take the fact that he was wrong lightly. Actually, he didn't accept that fact at all. For example, he claimed that the Toyota Camry was all new for 2007. He was off by a year.

42. It had been raining for most of the drive down to dinner. Notice that this all happened BEFORE we got to the dinner. So within 30 minutes. Anyway, when we got to the city where we were going to eat, the rain had stopped. However, the shoulder was very clearly wet. It was significantly darker than the road we were driving on. Still, Stan boldly pronounced that it had obviously not rained in this city.

43. When we got to Chili's, our dinner host had not arrived.

Stan: "Do you know him?"
Me: "...Yes...I ate dinner with him last night."
Stan: "Oh that's right. Do you have his cell phone number?"
Me: "No, I don't."
Stan: "Ok, well I do."

Creepy. Especially since Stan had never met him before.

44. Stan couldn't find the way into Chili's. I told him turn by turn directions as I had driven by it before. Unsurprisingly, after he made the final turn and saw the sign, he claimed that it was "very easy to find."

45. The entire Chili's was decked out in Halloween decorations. This took me -15 seconds to notice, because I could see everything when I was walking into the restaurant. It took Stan 5 minutes. He then had to tell me that the Chili's was covered in Halloween decorations.

46. Stan: "Did your high school have mol day?"
Me: "...So...Oct 23, at 602 AM?"
Stan: "Yeah."
Me: "No. We were entirely too busy."
Stan: "Oh, my mol day was great blahblahblah..."
Three minutes later
Stan: "So that's what I did. I liked mol day a lot."
Me: "...To be honest, it sounds kinda stupid."
Stan: "Yeah, I didn't really enjoy it that much."

47. Our host was clearly lost. I told Stan to call him at 7:00 when he didn't show up. The host said "I'll be right there." Stan came back to tell me this via thumbs up since I was on the phone. After 10 minutes, I knew he was lost, but I was still on the phone. Stan sat around looking confused and like he was looking for friends in all the decorations when he caught my eye and I glanced at my watch and motioned my phone. He finally realized that maybe he should call the host and help him with directions. The directions were clearly terrible as it took our host another 20 minutes to get to Chili's.

48. Maitre d: *looking at our host, who is much older than us* "How many?"
Host: "Thr-"
Stan: "Three."
Maitre d: *taken aback* "...Smoking or non?"
Host: "No-"
Stan: "Non-smoking."

49. Our host told us how bad his day was, including a wolfed-down breakfast. Stan said that his 1o minute lunch that day was just as bad. Including just as bad as the three 10 minute lunches I had for 3 days straight.

50. I bought a gallon jug of Sweet Tea from the grocery store. Stan knew I had gone to the grocery store, but was scared when he opened the fridge and saw the tea.

Stan: "That's your's right?"
Me: "Yes."
Stan: "Oh ok, cuz all of a sudden a gallon of tea just appeared!"

51. We were all having trouble deciding what to order since there were so many choices on the menu. Stan then claimed that it was just as hard as having to choose where to work. A reminder (and another story related to this will appear down the list): When offers came around, he got zero. Zero job offers. And he was like that for a week. He begged our recruiter since he saw that someone declined a spot and managed to get the job.

52. Our company culture says "do not talk about pay." Really, that seems to be all that Stan can talk about at times. A reminder: we're still at dinner.

53. Stan: "I like my job because it allows me to do what I'm good at. Working with the machines."

I doubt it.

54. Our host went on to describe his day.

Host: "Yeah, I'd say it was a weird day toda-"
Stan: "I have a weird day everyday."

55. Stan: "I want to go to Italy because our machines have an Italian name, so I'd know what I'm doing there."

56. During the first week at work, Stan asked me why they had hired people from our major for these jobs as they didn't really have anything to do with what we were working on. I told him that I asked the same question during my interview and the interviewers liked my frankness and answered that we were being looked at because of our analytical thinking. I had told this to Stan.

At this dinner, our host had locked eye contact with me:

Host: "Are you bothered by the fact that you're not necessarily applying what you've learned? Why did they have you fill this role?"
Me: "Well, it's bec-"
Stan: "They wanted us for our analytical thinking, I found out."

57. Stan claimed that there was plenty of mechanical engineering in chemical engineering. And that there were a lot of similarities.

58. We had all ordered house special drinks. Our host had a tea with mango syrup in it. However, the syrup and the liquid were both yellow, so I don't blame him when he didn't notice that he was supposed to stir his drink. Stan had a clear drink with a dark syrup. The waitress had told him to mix the drink. He didn't notice. So he said that the drink was too strong. Then I told him to stir it. It was good afterwards.

59. I had complained several times in the beginning that the young managers kept inviting me to do stuff. And by do stuff, I mean go to bars. Big no no. When our host asked us what we did, Stan turned my story into his.

60. We were leaving from dinner, and Stan ended up in a left turn only lane. He JUMPED out of the lane into the normal lane.

Stan: "Did you see that? Those are my reflexes. I inherited them from my mom. She has really quick reflexes too."

That makes me wonder if it was his reflexes that let him run the stop sign that came 15 feet later.

61. Stan and I entered the car at the same time. I had noticed that there was condensation on the inside of the windshield. Stan immediately turned the defrost/defog setting in his car to max.

Stan: "The car fogged up as soon as I got in!"

I know. I was there. Believe me, I noticed. As hard as it was to notice a large, clear object be unclear 2 feet from my face, I somehow noticed.

62. Stan asked if I was considering Lasik. I said no because there were still a few dangers. You can search on the Internet and find the dangers. Stan insisted that there were none. I had somehow ended up looking at Lasik stories that day during my break, so I think I knew what I was talking about.

63. My notes say fishing. I think he asked me if I'd ever gone fishing before. Which I would say yes to. I'm guessing he then tried to teach me what fishing was.

64. Stan was complaining that he doesn't get a lot of work done because so many people try to talk to him. And that he never gets lost at work.

65. My notes say "Car Brag 3" OH I REMEMBER THIS ONE.

We were at a red light. I told him that he needed to take a left at the next light, and that he should've gotten in the left lane before. Since now he had to pass a car that was even with us.

Stan: "No problem, me and my VTEC will get us out of this."

When the light turned green, he floored the pedal. Lots of revving ensued for 5 seconds. We hit 27, then he had to slow down for the red light. He did managed to take that left turn, but after we were on the on ramp, he floored the pedal again. Lots of revving for 6 seconds. We were going 30. Sounds like quite the "4 cylinder monster" he makes it out to be.

66. Stan: "I will definitely come back here when they offer me a full time position. Unless some other place offers something better."

Great loyalty eh? Also, he's placing a lot of bets on his performance...story to come...

67. Stan named his machine and himself with his own names. He then proceeded to tell everyone what his ideas for names were. He then wondered why everyone was using his language.

68. The street signs near our apartment are white obelisks with black letters. Probably because green signs would blend in with the bunches of trees lining the roads here. Stan said he liked the signs but couldn't figure out why they were like that. When I suggested my idea, he shot it down. And he'll probably explain to other people why the signs here are like that and pass it off as his own thinking.

69. Back to the job offers. He had told everyone in the spring that he hadn't gotten any offers and was stuck like that for a week. He then told me later that he had gotten an offer from my company because he found out that someone gave up a spot and then begged the recruiter through email for the position that was turned down.

When I asked him in the car on the ride home about job offers, his story changed. He now claimed that after he realized he had no offers, he talked to our job finders and emailed a few places that had empty spots. Stan said that he got an email back the next morning from my recruiter, offering him a job.

I have long suspected that Stan only got this job because 1. they probably needed more help and 2. they didn't want me to be alone. I reasoned the latter because we're in the middle of nowhere and they must've thought I'd be lonely and that one person from the same organization as me is better than none.

Monday, I spoke with our recruiter about the recruiting process.

Recruiter: "We decided 2 years ago that we would never, ever hire only one person. We had hired one girl all by herself 3 years ago, and she ended up being extremely lonely because she lived all by herself and couldn't really hang out with the drinking crowd. So now, it is always at least two people."

Doesn't it all make sense now?

70. A warning, 70 to 74 all happened in 5 minutes in one morning. I was trying to make sense of the mess Stan left near the garbage. Stan had just left recycling all over the floor. Even though, ever since we'd been in the apartment, I had been very obviously and clearly hanging plastic bags from the cabinets and placing recyclables in different bags. The bags are at eye level and very easy to identify. Stan followed along with this for a while, then he just forgot. I told him to go pick up all his recycling.

71. Stan tried to shove his recycling in very full bags. I wanted to test his logic, and he obviously failed. We have more than enough empty plastic bags he could've used. And he knew exactly where they were.

Me: *watching him struggle* "...Is it that hard to use another bag?"
Stan: "..........I could."

72. We took Organic Chemistry class together. So we learned at the same time that plastic and styrofoam are derived from the same type of material: polymers from petroleum. To be honest, I learned this in high school, so this was not news to me. PS: Fleece is recycled styrofoam. Anyway, plastic and styrofoam are pretty much the exact same material, just adjusted for different uses.

Stan: *holding an egg carton, looking perplexed* "What do I do with this?"
Me: "Why don't you put it with the other plastics?"
Stan: "They're not the same!"
Me: *dead eye*
Stan: "Well, where I'm from they're not the same. We treat them differently."
Me: "...No...we both know that they're the same. Put them together."

73. Lastly, he left dead lightbulbs on the floor. Hiding near a trash bin. On tile. To me, that spells danger. One misstep or dropping some heavy garbage and broken glass would be everywhere.

Stan: "What do I do with the lightbulbs? Can't recycle them."
Me: *HEAVY SARCASM* "Yeah, just put them back on the floor there. In a hard to see and dangerous spot."
Stan: *places lightbulbs down*
Me: "..........................I was so sarcastic it's not even funny. Can you move the lightbulbs someplace else? I don't like the idea of sharp lightbulbs on the ground."
Stan: "Uhh, they're not sharp. See? They're lightbulbs?"
Me: "And what are lightbulbs made of?"
Stan: "Yeah but it's not broken, and there's no danger of breaking them here."
Me: "...Hard to see, on tile, yes, no, no danger at all. Besides a misstep or dropping anything."
Stan: "What do you want me to do with them then?"
Me: "....Why don't we just put them in a bag in the empty cabinet? That doesn't sound so hard."

74. After all that, Stan left the kitchen. There's a table that we eat (separately) on. It had been a terrible mess for a long time because whenever he went to the grocery store or WalMart, he would just leave the plastic bags on the table and not take care of them. Even after I showed him my system of leaving them in a cabinet. As Stan left:

Stan: *looking upset* "THIS TABLE IS A MESS!!!!"
Me: "Yeah....those...are your plastic bags. Look, the only things on that table that are mine are these. You've been leaving your crap there the entire time."
Stan: ".....Well, some of these bags are tied up! I didn't do that!"
Me: "No, but you made our guests from before think that they could do that. Clean it up."
Stan: *silently moves bags away....by throwing them decently hard into cabinet*

NEW STUFF

75. We have to give midterm and final presentations. Stan gave his a few days ago. Well, let's back up. The 2nd day of training, we had to attend a "how to give presentations" training session. I thought it was a waste of time since I had given a few and am a barely passable public speaker. Stan looked like he had the same attitude. Yet, during his midterm presentation, he threw every suggestion out the window. He read off his slides, fidgeted the entire time, and didn't involve his audience.

76. We were encouraged to bring snacks to presentations. I was going to do this, but I was going to make it a surprise. Stan did not bring snacks at all.

Recruiter: "You know, your predecessor brought cookies to their midterm presentation."
Stan: *very snappy* "Do I look like my predecessor to you?"

77. During his presentation, I thought the remote for the slides was broken. It clicked very loudly everytime he pressed the button. I had assumed it was broken because I have a few items that still sorta work, but do click loudly when used. But I was weirded out when all of a sudden the slide advanced and Stan said "Sorry, trigger happy with the clicker." I then watched how he was using the remote. He was hitting it with is finger. Like, slamming his index finger into the clicking area as best as he could with limited swing.

78. Stan put into his presentation a quote from his boss's boss.

"I get a better return of investment from my pet rock than I do with Stan."

79. One of Stan's projects was to have part of a floor painted white. It took him weeks to call a contractor to get it done. He talked about this during his presentation. He claimed that the white floor would allow everyone to see oil drips better. This is true. However, it is a bit of a stretch to say that seeing oil allows the machine to stay running longer. Stan did this. He tried to tie in the business needs of the company into his presentation and his projects wherever he could.

80. Stan once again went to his lady-friend's place 30 mins from here.

Stan: "I don't plan on staying but it could happen."
Me: "Ok."
Stan: "If I end up being there at midnight, I'll stay over there."
Me: "Ok."
Stan: *while leaving* "Ok, I'm off. See you sometime. Don't know when sometime is though."

Wouldn't that be why you say "sometime" instead of, oh I don't know, a CERTAIN time?

81. So Stan came back at 12:45 am. Which leads me to believe that he tried to stay at her place, since he said if was there at midnight, he would stay over there, but failed.

WHEW that was a long post. That's pretty much everything that you've missed. Enjoy. I'm keenly aware that this post is not up to the normal level of fluid speech and all the other elements of good storytelling that I usually strive for. However, this post took me over 3 hours to type, and I'm guessing that it would've taken me 5 had I actually tried to make it nicer. My apologies.

The Train Keeps Rolling

2007-10-17T17:52:00.000-07:00

Addressing the comments of the last post: if I have to work with him, I will address the professor and TA's and flat out offer a "new group or no group" policy. Granted, I have a lot more experience living and working with Stan. I'm also going to speak with our HR person and ask that we not live together later. As amusing as this is, I don't think I can handle another living situation with him.

1. Our company gives each employee an annual gift basket containing some products made by the company. First, we get a notification letter in the mail saying that the package will be arriving at the address this letter was mailed to unless it is changed. I took my and his letters from the mailbox and placed his on his doorknob. Common sense...would say that if the letters are mailed at the same time to the SAME PLACE, they would arrive on the same day. I've pretty much already given away the blockbuster plot twist, but here it is.

Stan: "Hey my gift package letter!"
Me: "Yup, I put it there today."
Stan: "Did you get yours too?"

2. It's also no surprise that my mom works for the same company but in a different location. The company she was originally working for was bought by this one almost three years ago. Stan asked me what was in the gifts and if my mother had received a gift before. Yes, Stan, she has received two. This is after I specifically told him that one of the cool perks of working here was the annual gift.

3. Stan bragged to his friend on the phone last night that he has spent 24 hours in the office and would have spent 35 if he had worked his normal 10 hours today. First off....look at the math. Second, my boss and her boss have a term for spending that much time in the office: "poor time management." They specifically told me that if I was spending that much time in the office I was either overworked or not working hard enough at all.

I'm honestly perplexed how he can spend that much time at work. In my entire division (not my department, but the department containing my department and others like it), 80% of the leadership leaves at 4:30 (or try to). Generally, they're busy past 3:00.

4. Stan again realized why his balance is so high.

5.  We have a pretty crappy dryer here in the apartment.  A regular load in the washer for me takes two hours to dry.  The dryer is older than I am.  Stan knows this as we had a conversation that went like this:

Stan: "My clothes take forever to dry."
Me: "Yeah, the dryer sucks."
Stan: "Yeah."

So...can anyone tell me why, when I added another 30 minutes to a load after 70 minutes, I got this from Stan:

Stan: "The dryer is taking FOREVER."
Me: "I know, we know it su-"
Stan: "Are you sure you didn't leave it on 'air fluff'?"

Air fluff has a maximum time limit of 30 minutes.  So it occupies half as much arc as regular dry, which I was using.  He also based my drying time off his normal wash load...which uses about half the capacity of the washer.  He claims that he's not sure how much he can load into a front load washer and still have it wash.

Anyway, after he asked me that question, I took a deep sigh, put my hands on my hips, and told him that I was not retarded and could read the clear labels.

6.  Earlier in the day, I had eaten lunch with him.  His coworker was there and asked us why we went on these job assignments.  We gave him all the reasons:

Coworker: "Plus, it looks good on your resume!"
Stan: "Yeah, everyone's heard of [product], so I can say that I worked in [product]."
Me: "....I'm pretty sure that you can just say 'I worked for [company].'  Everyone knows us."
Stan: "Exactly, 'I worked in [product]."

7. I woke up late this morning. Just in time to see Stan come back from the shower in a towel. Apparently, though, all he did was go turn the shower on and leave for 10 minutes.

8. He left his room after 10 minutes and was still only wearing a towel.

9. Stan had left a yogurt cup full of water sitting in the sink for two days. I didn't know what he wanted to do with it so I asked him this morning what was going on with it. He poured it out right away. What...exactly...takes two days...to pour out a damn yogurt cup.

10. I was out for most of the night because I went to a mall to shop/walk around. While I was gone, we had gotten an email from a mutual organization. When I got back home, Stan knew I was out. Yet...after we had established where I had been for the past 4 hours, Stan asked if I had read the email from the organization.

11. Stan doesn't realize that when the drying rack is full, he can go ahead and move dry stuff into the cabinets. So, he rinsed a glass, but let it sit right side up on a table...for two days...defeating the purpose of washing it because it would catch dust and would become a miniature breeding ground for anything in the water. When I told him that he needed to wash it again and that I put it in a colander that he had to wash, he looked confused. Then it dawned on him what I was talking about. I thought I was being pretty crystal clear, but he thought I was talking about a glass colander.

**Edit**
12. Stan sits crosslegged...even when laying down on his back. I had a pleasant sight when I went to ask him a question.

13. Stan tried to convince me about how bad rush hour traffic was and when it started in the area around the mall I went to today. I've been there three times all around when he said the rush hour started, and I've never seen a problem. This is at the mall, which probably has the worst traffic due to the high attraction to the area (lots of shopping and restaurants). When I told him this, he mentioned construction...which I didn't see...and then he said that because he grew up "around here," with his hometown being 2 hours away from the mall, he knew about everything related to the rush hour.

**2nd Edit**

14. I just plain forgot this one. At the same lunch as the "I work in [product]" post, the following also happened:

Stan: "I might stay a year at school and get my Master's in a semester."
Coworker: *impressed* "Master's in a semester?"
Me: "You mean a Master's of Engineering?"
Stan: "Yes."
Me: "Those are different things....Master's are much harder and take a few years...not just one."
Stan: "Right, so I'm going to be staying to get my Master's in a semester. I've got 100 credits already anyway."

I don't think he knows that liberal studies don't really count as credit towards a M.Eng.

Apologies Again

2007-10-15T19:21:00.001-07:00

The downtime wasn't due to him not saying anything. I just ran out of time during the day to post.

1. I went to eat lunch one day at work. I saw some of the people in my department, but they had finished lunch and had to leave. I looked up from talking with them and saw some of Stan's coworkers. I thought "well, I've met them, why don't I eat with them?"

They had the same deal: most of them were past done with lunch, but they hung around for a little bit. Til they saw Stan. Apparently, one of them had even tried to get rid of Stan as he had messaged him before with misleading directions/instructions about lunch. When everyone started leaving, only one person other than me wasn't finished with lunch. This person quietly spoke:

"Guys. Don't leave me with Stan. Please don't...come on guys....Hey Stan, how's it going?"

2. At said lunch, I had ordered a chili dog. Now, the way things work at the cafeteria here (like most cafeterias) is that there's a menu with a list of what's available. Then, you go up to the food stations and order what you want. If you want a special, say "Stuffed Shells with Cheese, vegetable, and a roll," you must tell them that specifically. In addition, the menu clearly lists ingredients. So, for Stuffed Shells with Cheese, the ingredients are pasta shells and cheese. Stan had gotten Stuffed Shells with Cheese, vegetable, and a dinner roll, and came outside to eat with us. He finished all of the stuffed shells (in his defense, they were actually macaroni and cheese), started chowing down on the vegetable (peas), when he offered a great observation. Five minutes after he had bought his food.

Stan: "Hey, there's no meat in my stuffed shells with cheese!"
Me and his coworker: "............"
Stan: "I thought there would be some sort of meat."
Me: "...well....it did...just say cheese on the menu."

3. At the same lunch (the only time I saw him at all that particular day), Stan told me he was scared witless earlier as he couldn't find his towels. He believed that his towels had gone missing, so he spent a lot of time that morning looking for them. He looked in his car, under his bed, in the bathroom, and gave up. He simply declared the towels gone. Then he opened his closet. And there they were.

4. Part of the reason why I didn't update the blog earlier was that I was hosting some friends here. When we arrived, we moved all of our groceries we had bought into the house before I gave them a tour of the apartment. We went to the basement and talked there about what we could and couldn't or shouldn't do for a few minutes before we went back upstairs and to the bedrooms. Stan came out of his bedroom and greeted the both of them loudly.

The next morning at breakfast, Stan told me that he had heard us walk in and saw the bags on the kitchen table. Then went back to his room and waited for us to walk near his room, instead of looking for us and introducing himself then.

5. I had gone to a concert about 45 minutes away from here with one of the guests. I never told Stan this as I didn't feel like he really had to know. However, one person (whom I'm dating), didn't go to the concert and stayed behind like a good trooper.

This person had to use the bathroom and had walked all the way into the bathroom when Stan called out their name.

Stan: "Where's my coworker? And the other guest?"
Trooper: "At a concert."
Stan: "Which concert?"
Trooper: "[Name of band]."
Stan: "Where?"
Trooper: "I have no idea."
Stan: "I'm going to go look this up then."

Stan kept talking for a few minutes, uninterrupted, before the trooper told him that they had to use the bathroom and shut the door.

What does this have to do with me? Well, the next morning, Stan confronted me while I was at breakfast.

Stan: "So, where'd you go last night?"
Me: "Concert."
Stan: "Yeah, the [name of band] concert down in [place where concert was held]. I remember. I was sitting in my room and wondering where you were, and all of a sudden it hit me, 'He's at the concert!'"

Then he walked away.

6. Stan had told me the week before that he was thinking of staying over at his friend's place since she was on fall break. Or having her come over and stay at our apartment to let her relax. This is the same friend whom he visited before and canceled on him like twice. I think he was trying to brag about having friends since he didn't suggest having his friend stay over til after I told him that two of my friends were coming. Anyway, one night, he didn't come home. Could it be, I wondered, had he pulled it off?

No. He came home the next day and told me that his friend canceled again. He had apparently gone to try to fix a coworker's computer at their house and ended up staying until midnight. The coworker refused to let him drive home since we live an hour from him. After telling me this, he started talking about his boss's truck for no reason at all. I didn't keep very good notes about this day, but I have a feeling that he made a comparison to his Honda CR-V. Which...when I think of intimidating cars, I think Japanese 4-cylinder econo-suvs.

He then told me how smart he was for leaving a random change of clothes in his car. For just such an occasion.

7. He told me the following things while yelling. From 4 feet away.

Tonight, Stan told me that he had essentially gotten into work today at 2:00 PM, so he had to leave at 8:00 PM. When I asked if he had actually gotten in at 2, he said that he had gotten in at 8 am, but went to get SAP training and went to a team member's special lunch celebration for a few hours.

Now, I guess I really shouldn't be surprised considering that he thinks Googling stuff (we do not need Google for anything at work. Period. We have all information on intranet or with contacts) and walking around confused is actual work, but I would never waste time with administrative training we don't really need anyway. Nor would I so easily and openly go attend a celebration that I don't really have a part of. Don't get me wrong, I was also invited to lunch celebrations, but I first cleared it with my boss if it was ok for me to go. Mainly because these lunches celebrate events that we've been present for around 1% of.

8. After he told me what he did today, he walked back into his room. Then came back 3 minutes later to tell me that he felt homeless because he's slept in 4 different beds in 5 days. Then he went back to his room.

9. When he was in my room (both times) he could clearly see me using the internet and playing games over the internet. Yet, when he went back to his room:

Stan: "My internet isn't working. Is it broken?"

10. I wanted to go visit the tourist attraction that he had seen a few weeks ago. So I asked him what it was called. He invited himself into my room and next to my chair and told me what he thought the name was. So I Googled it. He was sorta right; the site has three different names. He couldn't tell me directions. The directions he gave me turned out to be horribly wrong. When I told him I could look it up myself, he stayed around and watched me search for it in in Google and Google Maps. This is the same place where he walked miles to reach it even though there's a parking lot at the site. And it's known for being the largest object of its kind in the whole state. Yet Stan had one more nugget of info for me:

Stan: "Yeah, it's pretty hard to miss."

*Edit*
Stan still can't turn on the fan when he cooks.
*end edit*

Holding a Conversation

2007-10-04T19:45:00.000-07:00

Stan: "So how are your projects going?"
Me: "Oh, they're going ok."
Stan: "How many do you have?"
Me: "4."
Stan: "Yeah, I have 6."
Me: "Yeah, I've been trying to get more, but my leadership has all been busy."
Stan then proceeded to talk non stop for five minutes, and then left.

I do believe...that when you start a conversation with someone...you shouldn't be the only party in the conversation.

Also, he compared the ranks of our bosses. Which, to me, matters for shit. And I think it honestly should matter for shit since whatever level our bosses are doesn't really determine the work we get or how well we do it, but hey, Stan likes to compete.

Lastly, his brilliant idea to fix a problem on a machine was to burn the excess dust that was formed. Right at the machine. Sounded like he wanted to burn the crap IN the machine. We work in a paper factory. That is the most I will say about our jobs.

Awkward Staring

2007-10-03T16:35:00.000-07:00

I sat in my room and enjoyed a quiet dinner; I forgot to turn on music, wasn't watching any videos, and Stan was not in the house. I decided to have a little dessert: Brie on crackers. As I proceeded to spread the somewhat decent brie on some rather bland crackers (the best ones I could find in the local grocery store, I'm afraid), Stan returned home. He walked by my door to say hello and then stopped in the door frame for 30 seconds, staring at me.

Me: "...Wh-"
Stan: "OH, I was confused about what you were doing." *Walks away*

I really don't see why he couldn't be more normal and just ask or something, but, hey, it's Stan.

Kind of Ridiculous.

2007-10-02T17:15:00.000-07:00

Heads up, a huge update heading your way.

** Over the weekend, I heard a story about Stan and a girl. He had told her that she was "a good girl to bring home to the parents." If that wasn't awkward enough, he then invited her to dinner with his parents. If this quote needs to be removed, it shall be done.

1. When we moved in, I had gotten cartons of large size eggs. Stan had gotten medium sized ones when he went to the grocery store. Of course, Stan asked me several times in the first two weeks whether the large ones were mine or his. But that's not the point. This week, I was making breakfast and thought I'd have eggs. When I opened the refrigerator I saw a box of large eggs, but I had sworn that I had finally finished my carton last week. I remembered Stan telling me that I could use his food if I had to, so I just took some eggs and went about my business. The next morning, I realized my milk was bad, so I just had eggs again. After breakfast, I go brush my teeth. The second day I had eggs, I went and brushed my teeth like normal. Stan stood in the shadows for 45 seconds and stared at me before I felt something extremely odd and threatening and turned to look.
Stan: "Were you eating my eggs?"
Me: *nods head, keeps brushing teeth*
Stan: "Ok, good, I thought I was going crazy."

2. We worked out a system for recycling the very first week we were here. We would put up plastic bags to hold things; separate bags for plastics, metals, and glass. Stan has left a plastic jub and cardboard cereal box on the floor for a week. Even though said bags were already mounted on the wall by me. At waist level. As in, he'd have to see the bags in order to put the crap on the floor. White bags. On a brown wall.

3. Our office has a special lunch program that happens once in a while. Basically, we eat hot dogs for really cheap. I knew about this early last week and didn't really pay it any mind. I love hot dogs, but I had other things to take care of. Yesterday, Stan did his creepy stick his head into my room and not say anything for a while or knock and when I finally acknowledged his presence, he had words of wisdom to say:

Stan: "So hot dog truck tomorrow."
Me: "Yup, I knew last we-"
Stan: "It's a good deal, 2 for a $1, wouldn't you say?"
Me: "Yeah, but I alre-"
Stan: "I'm going to eat so many *walks away*"

4. Stan does not seem to acknowledge personal space at all. He had no hesitation walking right into my room to put give me a receipt I left on a table in the living room. Right onto my bed. And then he told me why he walked into my room as he was leaving. It was quite frightening as I was sitting down and reading stuff online and all of a sudden he jumped out of nowhere.

5. Stan: "Why is my checking account balance so high? *looks at statements online* Oh right, I've been paid twice."

6. When I got home tonight, I realized that we were short a few drinking glasses. When I left for work this morning, we had the normal amount, so common sense says that Stan had something to do with the glasses.

Me: "Stan, what happened to our glasses?"
Stan: "I didn't do anything, they're in the drying rack."
Me: "Yeah...not so much."
Stan: "Oh. I'll probably find them when I'm cooking."
*pause*
Stan: "I have a tendency to lose stuff as I'm using it. Like, I've lost bagels and things like that as I'm eating them."
Me: "...."
Stan: "Also, I've broken two glasses already."
Me: "....What...how, these glasses are pretty strong."
Stan: "Not at all, they're totally flimsy."
Me: *thinking: I've accidentally dropped glasses onto pans in the drying rack*
Stan: "I just tapped two glasses together and they broke."
Me: "....Nice."

Keep in mind that these glasses belong to the landlord, not us...and he didn't tell either of us til now.

30 minutes later.

Stan: "I found the glasses. I put them in the pantry next to my cereal."

7. So, pretty much everything house related has been provided for us already. Including bedsheets. Stan asked today where his extra ones were. As if we'd be provided with extra stores of things that aren't even usually given anyway.

8. Stan and I have had several conversations about phones and providers. Basically, every conversation ends with him declaring how much better his stuff is than mine. I let it pass because his provider does offer better coverage than mine and also because I don't see the point in talking with him anymore. He struck up another conversation about phones today and recommended locations where he had the best signal in or around the house. Even though we have totally different phones. And service providers.

9. We have an in-house instant message client. Stan jumped on the emoticons right away. He doesn't hesitate to use a picture of a baby sheep instead of the word "you" in normal conversation. And he's very proud of doing so. Keep in mind the emoticons are roughly the size of a capital E. So it isn't at all confusing or hard to figure out what the fuck he's talking about.

10. Stan discusses our production schedules on the phone with family. Initially, I confronted him because I thought I heard him mentioning a product that's not on the shelves. Instead he was mentioning what his team was making and when. Either of which is a big no no.

11. I own and use a very expensive camera. Obviously, I would not have such a camera if I didn't know a little bit on how to use it. Stan saw some of my pictures online today.

Stan: "Your pictures are really good. I don't know how you did it. I have trouble taking pictures of [stationary machine]."

12. He literally just did this as I was about to close this post. We had bought 2 colanders, one metal and one plastic. We agreed that one would be used when anything was hot. Guess which one. We got the colanders 4 weeks ago.

Stan: "So, I'm confused about the two colanders. Can we just use them for whatever?"
Me: "....Well....one...is for hot things...or for heat resistance...like straining just-boiled pasta..."
Stan: "Oh. Ok. I've been using the metal one for that. And the plastic one for like salads."
Me: "Great. Keep at it."
Stan: "Just wanted to make sure we didn't designate the colanders for any specific tasks or anything."
Me: "...No, we did designate them."
Stan: "....OH YEAH."

**Edit 1**

13. Last week, I bought light bulbs for the lights in the hallway. I was nice and got normal lights. I was very tempted to get a green, a blue, and a normal. Just to screw with Stan. Just now:
Stan: "One of use should get 60 Watt lightbulbs for the lights in the bathroom."
Me: "Ok."
*15 second silence*
Me: "I bought the ones in the hallway."
Stan: "Oh, I guess I'll get them then."

**Edit 2...2 minutes after Edit 1**

14. Stan: "So you're going back in a few days?"
Me: "Yeah."
Stan: "I'm going to hitch a ride with you. I need to sign a lease."
Me: "You're going to have to drive yourself."
Stan: "Why?"
Me: *thinking: Because I do not want to ride with you for a total of 4 hours in a tiny space* "There's a bunch of stuff in my car that I can't move out, and it has to stay in there."
Stan: "...Ok. Just thought I'd let you know a few days in advance."

I don't know if he actually listened to what I said.

The Dishes Are Always A Problem

2007-10-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

Stan messaged me at work today saying that he forgot to do the dishes and that he'd do them right when he got home.

I got home and looked in the sink. Lo and behold, there were dirty dishes there. And they weren't even rinsed. The silverware was sitting in a bowl that once held cereal. I knew because little crumbs floated in the white water.

When he got home, he still didn't keep his word and waited a good 20 minutes before doing the dishes "right away," as he said he would at work and when he opened the door.

Awkward Moment

2007-09-27T19:56:00.000-07:00

Stan called me and told me that he had been sitting in his car for a long time. Why didn't he come back into house, you say? Apparently, he was too afraid to come out of his car because of the rain, thunder, and lightning. He was...too scared....to move....10 feet.

When he did come back inside, I was on the phone and very into my conversation on the phone. So... I didn't pay him any attention. But he really wanted my attention or something, so he knocked on my door frame and waved at me for a good minute. Until I waved him away.

Laundry and Music

2007-09-27T14:41:00.001-07:00

Stan messaged me at work saying that he wanted to do laundry at 9 or 10 pm tonight. This isn't a huge concern to me, since I get home at the latest around 5. Regardless of whether or not he told me, if I had gotten home and done my laundry first, it gets done. For some reason, Stan thought that he "owned" the time slot from 9-10 pm and that if I was using the machines, I'd be encroaching on his time. Even if he hadn't told me beforehand.

I was listening to Rocketman in iTunes. My door was open.
Stan: "Good song."
Me: "Yup..." (common sense: "That's why I'm listening to it.")
Stan: "Rocketman."
Me: *thinking* "...did...he...just...tell me the name of the song...like I didn't know it?"

And remember, this is comment time, so whatever y'all want. I know two people are fine with what's being posted.

On Dishes and Comments

2007-09-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

Stan approached me today about the dishes.

Stan: "Did you see?!?! The dishes are clean. I've been doing them after every meal."
Me: "Ok."

Forty five seconds of awkward silence followed, during which I realized that he was expecting a "thank you" for something he said he'd do like last week. And the week before that, technically.

Also, I've decided that I should do one post that's kinda dedicated to all the comments. I mean, I can't stop Stan from being himself, but I feel like sometimes the comments might get neglected. So, if there's anything you wanna know or if you'd like to hear a different story (one from before living with him, for example), let me know in the comments, and I'll try to answer them all for the next post.

More Apologies

2007-09-25T17:04:00.000-07:00

Sorry guys, I know I missed my regular Monday update, but here's what's going on.

1. I had to eat lunch with him the other day. Probably one of the worst dining experiences ever...and I've been spit on, seen someone vomit at the table, and been surrounded by angry soccer moms with hyperactive children at McDonalds's. Thankfully, not all at the same meal. Stan eats...well....it's not so much chewing...the best analogy I can think of...is...imagine a front-loading washing machine with a clear door washing a load of colors. Just as colorful, visible, and loud.

2. At said lunch, I brought up the fact that I wasn't going to be home for a while after work. I was going to go to a farewell dinner for someone at work. I know I didn't know the guy who was leaving all that well, but I liked his company and his advice, so I thought I would pay my respects. I had emailed an RSVP several days in advance so that the dinner organizer could make reservations. This is what happened when I told him what I was doing that night.
Stan: "Really? There's a dinner for him?"
Me: "Yeah."
Stan: "Ok, I think I'll go to that."
Me: "....*thinking* The concept of reservations seems to escape him totally* Well, it's for an affinity group, so you'd be quite out of place."
Stan: "....Oh...ok."

3. At work, we are encouraged to go meet with people all over the site in order to raise awareness of who we are. My boss and several others told me to never speak to the higher ups, even though it is encouraged, unless I was solid about what I was doing and made everything look good. As such, I didn't hesitate to meet with people from other teams, departments, higher and lower rank people, no big deal. Stan has only singled out higher ups...I'm fairly certain he's wasting time, as there's only so much interest one can generate from getting a floor painted.

4. On the same topic, Stan wanted to babysit contractors as they painted the floor white. Because there's so much that can go wrong.

5. I arrived home today and found Stan outside the apartment on his phone. All of the lights were off in the apartment, so I assumed he was locked out. I assumed wrongly, thank God. However, there was a new problem:
Stan: "There's a toad at our door. Called Mr. Toad."
Me: "Ok..."
Stan: "Yeah, and he won't move."
Me: "Ok...*starts nudging toad with shoe*"
Stan: "No, that really doesn't work unless you step on him."
Me: *grabs short wood chip from garden, pushes toad away*
Stan: "Oh...yeah...I was going to do that."

I wonder why he didn't. It sure looked like he was outside for a LONG time...considering the lights inside the house were off...and he had been inside already to drop off mail.

6. Stan asked his boss about any trails nearby our house. He told Stan there was one, so he went to go look for it after work. He found it. He said he took a right off the road and wondered why everything became so bumpy. After a few minutes, he realized he was driving on the riverbank.

7. Stan said his boss came to work before him and left at the same time he did, leaving Stan to claim that he worked more hours than his boss. Normally, I'd just assume brain fart. Except he made that claim like three times in two minutes.

8. He's making his retirement account already. Seems smart? Isn't retirement account money locked away until a certain age? So...what happens before he turns gray and senile? Oop...well, gray at least.

9. Stan asked me if I ate dinner already. I'd like to assume that he doesn't think I'm like him.

10. Stan came into my room to announce that he gave his Windows PC the start up and shut down sounds that are installed on Macs. And he didn't want to confuse me. I'm confused as to why...he doesn't just buy a Mac if he apparently likes them so much.

Gas Stoves

2007-09-21T03:17:00.000-07:00

Stan: "Yeah, I had a lot of trouble with the gas stove. The first time I used it, and the way I learned how, was I played around with it for 15 minutes. I kept turning the knobs and eventually I was like 'Oh, you have to turn it all the way and it'll auto-ignite!'"
Me: "....No...I showed you how to use a gas stove." (and it took 45 seconds)
Stan: "...Oh, that's right."

Cooking

2007-09-20T19:48:00.001-07:00

Stan doesn't use fans at all when he cooks. Although that doesn't explain why he turned OFF the exhaust fan and the ionized filter fan that were left on. But it does explain why the whole apartment smells like eggs. His sense of smell sucks because he can't sense it at all.

Big Macs

2007-09-19T19:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a young manager at work sat with Stan and I for lunch. We somehow ended up on the topic of McDonalds. The YM told us that one of the greatest combinations he had ever seen was the limited tim Double Big Mac Combo. It's 2 Big Mac's for really cheap. He always needed a drink, so he also got the Sweet Tea. The same YM said that he could never finish 2 Big Mac's, so he saved one for dinner for the next day. Of course, after lunch, we all went back to work. I ended up home earlier than Stan (as usual, since he likes to wait and sit around/do nothing), but when he did get home, we had our confrontation about him doing dishes. He had claimed that he hadn't eaten his dinner yet, and that was why he couldn't do the dishes. Yet...there he was...holding a bag from McDonalds. You can guess what was inside. Yes, he had gotten the Double Big Mac combo with a Sweet Tea.

That was yesterday. Now, what's particularly boggling is what happened today:
Stan: "Oh wow, that was amazing!"
Me: "..."
Stan: "I discovered the greatest thing ever!"
Me: "...Ok, first of all, you're 6 feet away, you can stop yelling."
Stan: "You can get a Double Big Mac combo and a Sweet Tea for really cheap and it keeps for a day! So good."
Me: "....Yeah...you definitely did not discover that since the young manager told us that yesterday at lunch. And he recommended that we try it."
Stan: "No. No. I discovered it. He talked about it, but I went out and found the truth. This is what I do at work too; people may tell me things or how to do something, but I'm the one who does everything."
Me: "..."

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. When our internet wasn't working, I tried for 3 days on the router and software side to get them fixed. When Stan showed up, he had no idea how to do anything, so he called his grandfather, who told him how to wire up and test everything on the house side of the connection. After he got a working connection, he ended his conversation with his grandfather, and I went and configured everything to work with the routers and software since he had no idea what he was doing. For example, the router/modem that we used had a very weak wifi signal, so I connected a stronger router to it and configured passwords and everything. The router called for a 128 bit password, and only a 128 bit password. Stan's computer could not recognize 128 bit passwords and kept popping up with an error message saying that the password was too long for a 64 bit key. He came over and asked me 5 times why it was screwed up and if I was doing anything wrong. Eventually, I had to show him the process of what I did and prove to him that he had to use a 128 bit password.

Anyway, we did get the internet working. When we found out the next day that every person who lived there and worked at our office could never get the internet working, he didn't hesitate to say that he fixed it.

I think...on the last post of this blog...I will reveal identities. Either that or when I know I won't see him again.

Stalker?

2007-09-17T20:24:00.000-07:00

When we returned this weekend, we found that we were locked out of half the house. I had arrived first and realized that I wouldn't be able to do my laundry. Because of the tininess of my room, I decided to leave the luggage with dirty clothes out in the hallway between our rooms. Allow me a diagram.
Stan's Door|-----------------------@luggage@@@@--------|My door

Stan got here maybe 40 minutes after me. When he realized the door was locked (he wanted to do laundry too) he came storming to my room.
Stan (while on phone): "Did you know that the door is locked?"
Me: "Yes, I did."
Stan: "Did you call the landlord?"
Me: "Nope, I was busy unpacking (and still was doing so at this point). I can-"
Stan: "I'll call her."
Me: *thinking* "I'll give him his moment..." "Ok, call her."
Stan: "Right after I call my grandparents."

He proceeded to have a very curt conversation with them, so curt he pretty much hung up on them at the end, and then he called our landlord. Now Stan doesn't have the knack for having normal volume conversation, so I can hear him on his phone from down the hall. And it's obvious from his speaking/yelling that he has been forwarded to voicemail. Obviously, I heard every word, but he came and told me that he only got her voicemail. Followed by him coming back to my open door, so I can see and hear everything that he does, and saying:
Stan: "Yeah, she hasn't called me back, but I'll forward the information to you when I find out more."
Me: *clearly on my way to the shower* "Great."

You may be asking why I gave you a diagram above. Refer back to it now. While I was heading to the shower, Stan confronted me.

Stan: "Can you move the luggage? I'm afraid I might trip over it."
The distance...from his door to the luggage...is 1.5 of his steps. Basically, he would have to be trying to kick the luggage in order to kick the luggage. It is also directly in front of my door.
Me: "...You want me to move it...even though...it's pretty much on my side?"
Stan: "I'm afraid that I'll go to the bathroom during the night and trip over it."
Me: "..."
Stan: "I mean, I don't have a problem with putting it in the living room."
Me (thinking): "No, of course not, it's my stuff, and I do have a problem with putting the luggage there."

Anyway, I get out of the shower and get dressed. My door is open again. Stan...felt the need to update me at 1130 with the fact that our landlord had not called back.

I believe he's trying to have a competition with me over who can stay/work the longest at work. I really don't see the point of this competition. He's told me every detail of all of his projects and his current status on all of them is:
Project 1: Waiting for funding
Project 2: Waiting for info
Project 3: Waiting for info
Project 4: Waiting for people to get back to him

Basically, he pretty much sits in his office all day doing nothing. Sorry, I take that back. I can empirically prove my previous statement wrong. I was on the floor at 515 pm, almost 11 hours after I arrived at work, and I was talking with vendors. I saw Stan walk by, looking very lost and confused...in his own department. He saw me and started walking over, but I was clearly very busy, so he didn't try to talk to me. Thus, Stan doesn't just sit in his office. He walks around looking stupid too.

Later today, our landlord did come back and open the door for us. It had been an accident that the door was locked. In order to go to our rooms, we have to pass this very conspicuous door after we walk into the apartment. I sat in my room and just relaxed at my computer when he came home and knocked annoyingly on my door to tell me he got back.

Me: "Yeah, the landlord came and unlocked the door. Said it was an accident."
Stan: "Really? I'll have to go back and check."

I just...don't understand...how he could have missed the door on his way in. Well...to be fair, it has a large window...so maybe he's like a bird and just didn't realize the clear part was a "wall."

Stan then told me that he had to stop to let wild turkeys pass in front of him. He asked, in a bragging voice, if I had seen the turkeys at all. Well...I had told him on the first day that I had seen them...so now...
Me: "Yeah...I saw them on the first day here, I told you already."
Stan: "Yeah...I also saw a deer. It ran away. From my huge 4 cylinder SUV."

When Stan did his laundry today, he came to my room with a HUGE revelation.
Stan: "DID YOU KNOW THAT ALL WASHERS HAVE THE HINGE ON THE LEFT?"
Me: "....No...they don't....they're user-adjustable..."
Stan: "But they're ALWAYS on the left side. Dryers are ALWAYS on the right side. I've NEVER seen it any other way."
Me: "Well...I have it the other way at home...You seriously just need to get a screwdriver to change it."
Stan: "Well, no one I know has the hinge on the right."

I confronted Stan about his not washing the dishes. I let him get away with it in the beginning. Then I realized that he wasn't gonna do them...I realized this when he filled a sink with dirty dishes and just kept adding more. After I confronted him the first time, he said he'd wash the dishes once a day. Fine, I thought, better than once a week. He was good about it for a week. Then, he let everything sit. He didn't even rinse stuff out. He had drank milk in a glass and instead of rinsing the glass, he just poured water in it and let it sit for 4 days. With milk-water. That was going bad. So tonight:

Me: "Dude, do the dishes."
Stan: "But I haven't eaten dinner yet (1030)."
Me: "Do them after dinner, then do them after every meal."
Stan: "Why?"
Me: "Because you aren't cleaning them at all."
Stan: "I'm rinsing things out!"
Me: "No...your breakfast is literally in the sink...and before that you had a glass of milk that you just poured water into and let sit for 4 days as a milkwater filled glass. So it really is just easier to do them after every meal, so just do it that way."
Stan: "Even after breakfast?"
Me: (thinking: wtf...yes breakfast is a meal...are you that retarded?) "Yeah, it's not that hard, it takes like 5 minutes."

So why is he a stalker? Stan looked up my SN somewhere just to tell me that his clothes needed drying. He couldn't just tell me.

Guiltless

2007-09-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

Yeah...so...I totally...do not feel guilty about this blog anymore. Reason follows

Stan and I realized that the toilet was not flushing. I had gone to the bathroom right before I went to work and it didn't flush fully. He confirmed that it hadn't flushed fully when he had gone before I did. He said he'd buy a plunger on the way back home from work.

Stan: "So I'll drop by WalMart and get one."
Me: "Great."
Stan: "How was your shower last night?"
Me: "Fine...normal."
After a minute of awkward silence I realized that this was not related to the flushing/plumbing problem as I thought...he was actually trying to have a conversation based on my shower.
Me: "Was the shower normal this morning?"
Stan: "I don't know, I didn't shower yet."
He had to be at work in like 30 minutes....work is a 15-20 minute drive, and he hadn't started breakfast yet.
Me: "Ok, I gotta go."

I come back home and there's a smoldering fire in the backyard.
Stan: "Yeah, our landlady just burns all of her boxes since they take so much room...and I'm watching to make sure the fire burns ok. I like fire."
Me: "That's great, listen, don't you think it's extremely wasteful that she burns the boxes? They're recyclable..."
Stan: *Shrug* "It's her house."
Me: *thinking* "Wow...worst logic ever...because it's still our environment...and house."
Me: *spoken* "...Ok, I'm going inside."

So here is why I don't feel guilty anymore. Stan did get a plunger as he said he would, and he managed to get the toilet working again.

Me: "Yeah, dude it's really not a HUGE deal. I'm sure our landlady would understand if we used one of her bathrooms in the actual house...especially since she's not here most of the time...and one upstairs does actually work. I mean, we want OUR toilet fixed, but if the situation calls for it..."
Stan: "Right. I just want our own fixed."
Me: *thinking* "I just said that."

*20 Minutes Later*
Stan walked by on the phone...and I paused my music to watch a video online. During that silence
Stan: "Yeah, so [My Name] was against fixing the toilet, he just wanted to use one of the landlord's. But I was like 'NO, that's not right, we need to fix it.' So I did."
Me: *thinking* "Wtf...I cannot believe...you just told a bold-faced lie. Man...fuck you...so much crap about you, it's ridiculous."

I actually will tell him about this blog when it's not needed anymore. I really don't care.

*edit*
Almost forgot. Stan shaves about every morning. With an electric razor. And he does this ridiculously hideous thing where he shaves over the sink, but lets the hair sit there. All day. And it's a lot of hair, so I kinda doubt he's shaving just his face. Dude is hairy...I have seen him without a shirt on. Anyway, he did this once...then he shaved over the garbage bag...which I thought he would keep doing. Nope...he went back to over the sink and leaving the hair there. So I confronted him about it.

Me: "Stan, you really need to wash the hair down the sink. It's gross."
Stan: "*defensive* But it's an electric razor! It's supposed to catch all of it! *points to the "catching strip*"
Me: ".....*mumble* what the fuck is wrong with this kid *in normal voice* Yeah...well..it's clearly NOT working...and it's gross."
Stan: "...Ok...I'll do that."

Stan also drove to the "biggest [something in the state we're in]," but he decided to park far away from it and walk over. When he got there, he found the scenic overlook/parking lot. On the highway. The one he had to take to get there.

*end edit*

Another Big Update

2007-09-09T19:36:00.001-07:00

Sorry guys, I was out of town last weekend and I totally forgot to post what happened. So here is another big update

1. Computers are important in corporate life, but we don't have a real corporate environment. Thus, OS upgrades aren't really necessary here at work. Most people only require that the computer 1. works and 2. has a GUI to enable people TO work. One of the IT guys here was complaining that everything would soon have to be updated to Vista. A good complaint, and one I agreed with. I had seen the machines, and they didn't need the fancy graphics. Stan agreed. But he went so far as to say "the machines here don't need anything, they should just run DOS."

2. Not too long after that statement, we had to work on payroll. We both had checkbooks and we only needed our account numbers and the bank routing numbers. Both of which are on the checks. It took me about 4 minutes to enter my bank information into our database. It took Stan 30...with calls to his parents...the bank...and looking stuff up on Google. But I guess I'm being unfair. My checkbook had a sample blank check that said explicitly "here is where the bank routing number is" and gave an X digit number. It then said "here is where your account number is on each check" and gave a Y digit number. So...2 sequences of numbers. Stan had 3 sequences. The 3rd one? That number told him which check he was using. As in "1st of this book...2nd of this book..."

3. Stan told me one night that something came up with the office's doctor. He told me he'd have to wake up and leave early the next day. He said he had to be at work at 5:30 am and that I shouldn't be scared if I heard a bunch of noise very early in the morning. Imagine my surprise the next morning when I woke up and ate breakfast...and saw him leaving his room at 5:40.

Me: "I thought you had to be at work at 5:30?"
Stan: "....nooooooo....why would you think that?"
Me: "You told me..."
Stan: "Well, I had to be at work at 6."
Me: "...."
Stan: " *with a high and mighty tone* But 6 is very different from 5:30."
Me: "Yeah...I know..."
Stan: "....Hmm...I don't remember what I said last night."

4. Also, I forgot to mention this...but we had a security training session...and we got to the technology part.

Stan: "Question."
Trainer: "Yes?"
Stan: *throws keys onto table*
*Awkard silence for 25 seconds*
*Me and the trainer realize that Stan has a flash drive on his keychain...along with 25 keys.*
Trainer: "Flash drives?"
Stan: "Yes."

5. This one is a MULTIPARTER

Stan has a friend that goes to college like an hour from here. She's one of the people he talks to everyday for so long. Stan kept saying "I'll come visit" and they plan a day, but she always has a reason why he can't visit that day. The first time, she got sick. The second time, she pulled an all-nighter the night before and wanted to sleep. But THIS time...Stan called her and woke her up....the talk for a bit, and he eventually finds out he's able to go...probably because she felt guilty. I mean, I won't lie....I feel guilty writing this stuff sometimes...but then...he speaks...anyway, he hangs up and proceeds to brush his hair, neaten his clothes, and brush his teeth. Basically, prepping himself to look nice....as if he's going to get lucky. He then comes to my room:

Stan: "Hey, so I'm going out now."
Me: "Ok..."
Stan: "The plan is that I'll be coming back home tonight, but I really don't know...I might stay over there."
Me: "...ok..."
Stan: "Yeah, so if I end up staying over, I'll give you a call so you're not worried."
Me: "Ok."
Stan: "Yeah, but I have my work stuff with me so don't worry."
Me: "Ok."
Stan: "Yeah, were you a Boy Scout?"
Me: "No...but I get it...'always b-'"
Stan: "Well, they have a motto called 'Always be prepared.' So I'm keeping to that."
Me: "Great."

Then he left. After about 45 seconds of peace and quiet, he called my cell phone.

Stan: "I think I forgot to shut the door. Can you get it? *hang up*"

And, no, he didn't forget, the door was shut. But still.

I was all alone for a few hours...later that night I went to shower...I came out and he was sitting on the couch, holding his cell phone, totally silent. I guess he tried something and made his visit awkward, since he didn't talk to anybody that night.

6. Stan came to me and bragged about his work projects...he then bragged about something else:

Stan: "I heard people talking about me behind my back today."
Me: "....ok...what'd they say?"
Stan: "I don't know, I didn't hear everything...just '...kid from Cornell...'. So I don't know if they were saying bad or good things, but hey, they're talking about me."
Me: "Right."
Stan: "Yeah, you're nothing without your name. I like that. I just made that up, it should be a quote."

7. We saw the newer version of his car in the parking lot. Stan went and started talking about the blind spots in his car.

Stan: "Yeah, so I really hate the blindspots on the newer version."
Me: "I see...aren't there blindspots on your car?"
Stan: "Yes, but they're not that bad."
Me: "Ahh..so...you've driven the new one and didn't like the new blindspots?"
Stan: "No, I've never driven the car."
Me: "....ok...how do you know about the blindspots...?"
Stan: "I read about them in magazines."
Me: "...so how do you know that you personally hate the blindspots if you've never even seen the car in person til now?"
Stan: "..."

8. See how I said below that he's proud of his executive board position? Last time we talked about an email deluge, he actually complained about getting emails related to his position. He said he didn't care and that he shouldn't have to worry about that stuff while he was away. He said he was content with having other people do his job for him. If he says it again, I will notify the board, because he was given the position under the clause that he would work while away.

9. Stan was yelling at his friend about housing for next year. His friend didn't like how much the rent was.

Stan: "Ok, so how much are you paying now?"
Phone: "$490."
Stan: "$490? Ok, so with inflation, that's $500."

Back to the Apartment

2007-09-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

Stan started a conversation with me about something unimportant as I was going to the bathroom. He followed me there and stood in the doorway as I stood right in front of the toilet, flipped the fan switch on, and had a look of discomfort on my face (I really had to go). As soon as he finished his sentence, I shut the door.

Also, Stan doesn't seem to realize that the only reason he's on the executive board for our organization is because the seniors were pulling a prank on us/felt bad for him. He's very proud to be what he is now.

Kitchen 1

2007-08-29T16:45:00.000-07:00

From now on, I'll do my best to reduce the number of quotes to one per post. But...in the end...that's really up to Stan.

Stan: "What was this colander used for?"
Me: "Rinsing potatoes."
Stan: "Raw or cooked?"
Me: ".....Excuse me?"
Stan: "Raw or cooked?"
Me: "...Rinsing potatoes."
Stan: "So, they were raw then."

Massive Update 1

2007-08-28T16:41:00.001-07:00

So I haven't been able to update the blog in a while. Sorry. I bring you lots of updates. So many, they required being written down in a notebook, lest I forget.

1. The night he moved in, he said "I talk a lot...so you can tell me to shut up." Boy, he almost opened Pandora's Box on his ass.

2. The first morning he was here, I woke up and started making breakfast. When I went to make sure he wasn't still sleeping (we carpool, more on that soon), I found him in his room only wearing boxers...and he wanted to have a normal morning conversation. I'm pretty sure that a prerequisite of conversation is clothes...unless it's pillow talk.

3. When he drives, he seems unaware that seatbacks are designed to support weight. He leans into the wheel, such that his back is not "perpendicular" to the seat. Also, he puts an unnecessary amount of force into shifting, shutting doors, and using the parking brake.

4. The way to work is one downhill road into the office. The only way out of work that concerns us is one uphill road out of the office. This road leads to the closest standards of civilization. Yet Stan thought it was necessary to tell me as we left work that the road we were taking "was the road to lunch."

5. As we drove into the apartment, a twig with leaves was sitting in the driveway. Anyone could tell it was a twig with leaves because it was funny colored, had random color patches of asphalt, and wasn't moving at all. Stan found it necessary to dodge around the twig. He then commented that he "thought it was a cat, but it was just leaves."

5a. After the twig/leaf incident, we were moving into the parking lot at 2 mph. 100 feet away (on the other side of the parking lot) was a huge deer. HUGE. DEER. Stan told himself, very loudly, not to hit the deer. The deer that was 100 feet away. Said deer proceeded to run off, and he turned to me and asked "did you see the deer?"

I almost smacked him and asked "I DON'T KNOW MOTHERFUCKER, DID YOU SEE MY HAND?"

6. Stan talks and hums to himself. Non. Stop.

7. I've noticed that whenever I talk on the phone to anyone (friends, parents, etc), Stan will immediately whip out his phone and call someone. Then talk louder than me. He makes each phone call sound extremely important, but he's not really talking about anything at all. At least, nothing business oriented that his family and friends (the only people he talks to) would care about.

7a. He insults every single person he talks to on the phone. Or demeans them.

7b. He brags about his phone nonstop since it gets reception at work (very few people do). And also because it's waterproof. I have never known an instance where waterproofness in a phone is a huge factor, because (imo) if you're dropping phones into water with regularity, you've got other problems.

8. Stan's suggestions for a work project show that he definitely does not understand what is going on. I can't get specific at all due to the confidentiality needed by my company and by myself, but he pretty much would have destroyed a multimillion dollar machine and cost the company millions in revenue if his supervisor approved Stan's ideas on "how to fix the problem." Notice, I said "ideas" not "idea."

9. He stood in my doorway for a full minute without saying a word. Luckily, my closet door blocked his vision (I was typing this post).

Whew. Hoped you liked reading it, it was sorta amusing to live it.

Here Are the Adventures with Stan

2007-08-19T17:26:00.000-07:00

Hey, everyone who's here knows exactly who Stan is and why this blog was created. Especially those of you who endured him during the summer.

First and foremost, one of the more ridiculous Stan moments:

We're given a ridiculously good rate on housing through our company. After watching fellow workers struggle through housing and getting furnished, it becomes almost readily apparent that me and Stan have almost zero expenses due to housing. Everything comes with our housing and we didn't even have to look for it. Leave it to Stan to ask if meals are included with the small fee we do pay.

Just now, Stan asked what kind of car I had. Basically, the rest of the conversation went with him implying that I would be doing the driving all the time, since I drive an SUV capable of going through snow, he would just drive a small car that didn't have to move. If he brought a car. He left a subtler implication that I would have to take care of him on weekends.

Life will be fantastic.