Patience is a virtue right? I certainly learned a lesson in patience this week. Lynz posted a link on facebook saying that Verizon was going to start sending the new Android OS to the phones starting on Friday the 27th. Friday came and my phone didn't upgrade, come to find out they were only pushing it to a select number of phones as a "soak test", feeling left out and impatient I found the leaked OS on a website and loaded it to my phone.. Yay to the internet? I thought so..
Anyway, they officially released the new OS and it turns out it was a newer version than the one I had.. I had 588 and they released 596.. D'oh.. No problem right, just do a quick upgrade, or not.. Because I was not on the soak list my phone wouldn't upgrade via the Verizon phone upgrade. In the meantime I decided I wanted my phone to get emails from work, I put in a request to get Active Sync turned on and on Tuesday set up my phone to receive work emails, in doing so I inadvertently locked my phone via corporate settings. Corporate settings = no pattern lock, must use pin lock of 5+ characters, can't browse certain websites and worst of all, can't get gmail?! Can't get gmail on my google phone, wtf!! Removed work email account but could not get the remote administrator and corporate policy off my phone. To the internets..
Only way to remove corporate policy is to wipe my phone?! Had to revert phone back to factory settings and re-install all my applications. After doing all this I found out the next day that I couldn't upgrade my phone because of the pre-release OS.. Back to the internets.. so frustrating, spent most of last night researching before finally finding a download of 596.. Bitch was I couldn't install it unless I was back at Froyo or rooted.
For all of those who are afraid of rooting the phones, it's super easy.. You download an application called GingerRoot and run it, GingerRoot is a one click rooting tool. Click, reboot, done. Now had a to grab another application to do boot strap recovery and loaded 596. Rebooted, unrooted and back to normal. Should have just waited the extra 2-3 days.. Oh well, lesson learned.
In terms of corporate email, I got a tool called Touchdown. It sections off a portion of the phone to be a "corporate run" area, it takes the corporate policy and applies it to email only.
I hate playing catch up but I apparently suck at this blogging thing lately. I would really like to get back into my daily blog mode but alas it keeps not happening.. It's not even like I don't have anything to say I just can't seem to find the time to say it. When it gets a few weeks out then it feels like I either need to write a smeggin' novel or not blog at all.
As you know (if you read the last blog) I had recently gotten my Droid X. After having it for over a month now I have to say I still love it. I do however wish the stupid 2.2 upgrade would be pushed to it already. I "check for updates" on the phone every day and still nothing.. The version of Android OS I have is buggy and it's annoying when little things hang or when you can't access all your contacts. The biggest bug I've had is the Social Networking app which does not work with any contact that is linked with a phone book contact.. This problem only happens if you try to hide anyone from the app so it's not a big deal, but still slightly annoying.
Oh, and speaking of issues with my phone... My stupid SD card died!? I lost all my pictures from the day I went to see Adams Family and the Mets game with my dad which included maybe the best picture I've had of him in a long time. I also lost all the pics and videos of my mom's "4th of july" bbq. Lesson here - copy pictures to your PC on a regular basis.
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Speaking of my mom's 4th of july bbq.. Because of everyone's crazy weekend schedules my mom moved her 4th bbq to Aug 21st, that's kind of like the 4th of july right? It was fun but it was also sad that Jessie and Lenny were missing. Lenny was out in Chicago and Jessie was taking care of Hoyle who had just had hernia surgery. Did have a blast hanging out with the kids and shooting off fireworks! And as always the food was very good as was the company.. :)
The week before the bbq I was in NYC again for work. I drove down on Sunday and went to the 8pm Mets game, after the game I went back to the hotel to find out they don't have a bar right now (construction) so I went to a local bar down on the corner. They had Abita on tap and the bartender was very cool, I ended up hanging out there till they closed.. I don't really remember what I did what day anymore but I ended up hanging out with Michelle and Jim one night, we met at a vegan place and then brought food back to his apartment. We just hung out on his balcony for a lots of hours chatting, listening to music and playing with phones.
While in NYC I went to see Expendables with a bunch of guys from Laire. It was very good, lots of unnecessary action and lots of good one liners. As Schwarzenegger was walking away in a huff Bruno asks Stallone what's wrong with that guy to which he responds oh, him, he just wants to be president! The bad guy telling a female captive that he does not believe in hitting women but that guy over there (Jesse Ventura) has no problems with it! Gotta love big stars making fun of each other on film.
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The day after my mom's bbq me and Jessie went to the beer and chili festival at Mohegan Sun. The stand out chili for me was Willi Brew Pub's chili, I had never had it because I am not one to normally get chili in a restaurant but I will make sure I get there more often. The best thing at the chili/beer fest was probably the ice cream! A company in Old Lyme called ironically enough Old Lyme Ice Cream Shoppe makes ice cream with beer, they had a few flavors to try and I was very impressed. Perhaps someone who lives or works near there should pick some up one day when they are in the area.. (hint hint)
Lush stopped making Tramp again!? When we first found Lush in Montreal I fell in love with Vagabond/Tramp, this is now the second time it's been discontinued.. Hopefully it won't be for very long this time.
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My dad had gotten tickets for us to sit in the Delta Club for a Mets game on the 28th. We decided to make a long day of it and got tickets to see Adams Family: The Musical on the same day.. The musical was good, the casting was great (except Pugsley), the story was all original and very well thought out and written, the dialog was classic Adams Family and they did a few awesome in-jokes throughout for the loyal Adams Family fans. The only thing that fell a bit flat was the music unfortunately. Some of the songs were very good but overall they were just eh. I think it would be more successful as a play and not as a musical. I do however recommend seeing it if you are an Adams Family fan. It is crazy expensive so maybe wait till it does a touring cast. It was very cool sitting in those seats for the Mets game, we had waiter service so you never had to leave the seat! Just wave your arm and a guy would come and take your order..
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This last weekend was a mix of great and REAL bad! Started out great, went to Laire on Friday and was pleasantly surprised at how painless check in was this weekend. We had a bunch of pre-regs so I thought it was going to be a painful night but in the end it was not bad. Went to bed after my work assignment because my back was killing me and I was tired. Played all day / night on Saturday and lots of fun playing Daimone. I have been playing Brother Hawk more lately so it was a nice change of pace, plus Rich, Harry, Bryan and Corina all showed up so we had almost the entire Order for the first time in a very long time. Sunday I played during the morning and then left to go to Vin's wedding. Vin's wedding was very fun, I had a blast dancing (thanks Dianne for pulling me up to Come on Eileen) and catching up with Mike, Steve, Vin, Randy and Matt.
After the wedding was the problem... I went back to Laire and was not in fighting form on Sunday night, very tired from the dancing.. But, after fighting for a while I got back into form and was fine by the end of the night. Monday the town got over run, I was in good form but we were getting pressed hard! The mages got so low on power that I was told there was not enough power to give out spell defenses, I should have taken this as a sign to stop fighting so hard. But, one of the Order was down and dying and after arguing and trying to convince the other Order members to assist me in saving him I did the only thing I could do. I grabbed too little support and ran out after him. A second or two into the rescue attempt my support had fled and I was forced to run back towards the line, on the way I got hit by a dark paladin's lucky shot and fell. Was brought back to lay next to my dying brethren and was turned into a Drowned One (think zombie but more powerful). Spent the rest of the event as Daimone the Drowned One attacking the town! I have a 1 in 20 chance of coming back.. If that fails it will be a sad sad end to an epic character. At least I died trying to save my men..
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This weekend is Future Imperfect, hopefully it will go better than Laire did last weekend.
Yesterday started the night before.. When I was getting ready for bed we realized we had no blankets or pillows for the living room beds.. I called the lobby around 11pm and finally got blankets and pillows at 1:30 after calling them 3 more times.. Between that frustration and my dad watching TV in his room it took me a long time to get to sleep so I was extra upset when at 5am uncle Larry turned on all the lights to make coffee! He came in and was trying to turn on just the light above the sink but there didn't seem to be a switch to do that. After he started coffee he went back into his bedroom and I was now wide awake and grumpy.. Took a shower in the living room bathroom which was lame because that shower has a single shower head and it sprays in a straight line so it's like pouring a pitcher of water..
Dad was hanging out when I got out of the shower and I tried to convince him to come to the Magic Kingdom, but he decided to wait for them to get up and moving. The Magic Kingdom had "extra" morning hours yesterday so I went over for the early opening. I went on a few rides and was very impressed with the Monsters Inc show. The Monsters Inc show is a new addition to Tomorrowland, while you're in the waiting room for the show they tell you text jokes to them so they can use them in the show which I thought was a joke but turned out to be real. I don't know what magic they use to do this but it's an animated movie where they interact with the audience! Imagine being at a comedy club but the comedians are cartoons, at first I figured it was pre-programmed but then the person sitting next to me got harassed so I knew it was real. I would be bold enough to say that one show is worth going to the Magic Kingdom. They also changed up the line for Space Mountain and added video games you can play while waiting in line. Met up with everyone as they were coming off Pirates and I went on Splash Mountain with uncle Larry and Cameron and got soaked! I've been on that ride many many times and never got as wet as I did this time..
Back to the hotel for a nap and change of clothes.. After nap I went over to Epcot and quickly remembered why that is the best part of Disney. I didn't get real far actually, I went in and found me and Jessie's "Leave a Legacy" marker right away, man we looked young in that (put up in 2001). Next onto Starship Earth which they changed a bit, they updated some of the special effects and added a computer to the cars which asks you questions about how you want your future to look and then shows you some of the new or upcoming technological advancements that can make your future a reality! The ride now drops you off into an area which has some activities, one of them tested your reaction time, memory, and hand eye coordination and showed how in the future they can use a machine like this to perform physicals, uploading the data to the doctors office. They also had a 3D operation game which was really neat looking.
Went from there to Innoventions where I spent the rest of the day. I played a waste management game, they would ask you questions about your usage and then you get a "truck" of garbage, you have to bring the truck over to the recycle station and separate trash from recyclables, then to a trash burner to burn whatever you can and finally to a land fill where you can make a nature preserve with your remaining trash. Also played a Piggy Bank game where they teach you how to save money by bringing a piggy bank from station to station and collecting coins, diversifying your loot to hide it from the wolf and fighting the inflation balloon.. From there I went to "Sum of all Thrills" which shows you how you need math to do things like build roller coasters, once you build it you ride it on a mechanical arm which whips you about to simulate the motion of your coaster. From the wild to the mild, the next stop was the Segway which I got to ride up and down a pre-set course for free! It was a bit tricky at first but once you get the hang of it you can move around pretty good, it steers like a motorcycle and the only thing that was tricky was mounting and dis-mounting. What else? Oh, right, then I played a fire prevention game which was there before but still lots of fun and watched the effects of wind and weather on a house.
Finally left Innoventions right around 6 and went up to Canada to watch Off Kilter which had their last show of the night at 6:15. I got two more of their CDs and there are apparently two more which they were out of yesterday. If you don't know Off Kilter, they are a band very much in the vain of Kilt and Great Big Sea. Check your iPods because you may already have their first CD.. ;)
Decided to eat while I was in Epcot so I went over to the UK and had me some fish and chips while sitting on a quiet bench at the lake. The fish and chips was very good and apparently got me in the UK mindset (more on that later).. After dinner I accepted a Kim Possible mission which led me from the UK to Norway to Mexico. The way it works is they give you a cell phone which gives you hints to lead you from place to place, the cell phone interacts with items around the park to make them change, etc. These could possibly be the best thing that could happen to make Epcot even better, there are (from what I've been told) 7 different cell phones, in each cell phone there is a mission in each of the Worlds so that's a lot of different missions! I see a long day of me doing nothing but playing these ahead.. What a great way to make sure you see everything in the World Showcase.
After I solved my mission I went over to America to watch some of the Candlelight Performance which was very pretty, the left and right side of the choir was dressed in white to look like snow, the middle of the choir was dressed in green and those at the top of the tree in gold so that when you stood back it looked like a giant Christmas tree! I thought it was going to be a parade but it was just a stage show of choir music. I watched a song before heading back to the UK to get a seat for the fireworks show. I went up and ordered a beer and the guy said $8, I handed him a $10 and then pulled my coin purse out expecting a $2 coin! Silly America and our reluctance to use coins..
I filmed most of the fireworks show with my camera phone but can't post them because the hotel blocks youtube as R rated content.. I will have to post it later.. After the park closed I went over the Boardwalk so I could see where Cora's restaurant was. Got back to the room and all was quiet because dad and uncle Larry went to the store to get breakfast stuff. I turned on the little light over the coffee maker and went to sleep so that there would be no "lights on" event again this morning.
Got up and took a shower in dad's bathroom which has a great shower, it has a real shower head and a rain shower head so it was a nice happy making shower. Uncle Larry made egg sammiches and I'm now sitting in the lobby on the WiFi because dad is using the room internet to do work.
Today.. Heading to Hollywood Studios (used to be called MGM)..
Long time no blog.. I have been having some issues with my work laptop over the last few weeks, it started when I got home from Duluth. Apparently I got some sort of virus while using the in flight wi-fi. The laptop was running real slow all of a sudden and I went into the services running and saw two CTFMON.exe, I ended them both and ran a scan which found nothing.. I ended up having to run a FULL virus scan (including looking inside all zip files) before it finally found a SpyWare. Ok, lesson learned, is it really that important to have internet on the flight? I don't think so, and if I do that again in the future I will be jacking my security settings before hand.
Spyware - gone.. PC back to normal for a day or two before it just locks up, wtf!! I go to move mouse, bring up task manager, anything and realize that the laptop is REAL hot.. I turn it off and feel bottom which could probably cook an egg.. Turn it back on and it runs.. I was in the airport on the way to Brazil when this happened the first time so not much I can do.. Get to Brazil and find out the IT guy there will not take my laptop apart but suggests I wait till I get back to corporate, in the meantime I grab a little metal frame which will hold the laptop up and make it not overheat as much. Get back to corporate and after a day of fighting with India and our IT group I finally get a local IT guy who cleans out the fans which had collected MASSIVE dust bunnies.
Overheating - gone.. So, you know how when things run hot it can have adverse effects on the long term life of your parts? Well, although the laptop has no more dust bunnies it still is overheating? Bad mother board? Probably, I have an appointment with IT to bring it on Monday because of the holiday weekend. What to do in the meantime? My friend happens to have an extra Dell D630 which he brings over and we swap the hard drive..
Overheating II - gone.. Now to relax and resume normal PC operation.. Not so fast, overheating PC = crashed operating system.. Hard booting crashed operating system = corrupt files! My laptop is going to need to be re-imaged because anytime I load things like Chrome, Java, Flash the PC hangs. Not that overheating kind of hang, but the operating system dying kind of hang. Well, I uninstall Chrome and re-install to try and fix the issue.. Now it only does it when I close Chrome.. Switch to IE.. Same problem.. Ugh.. Back to re-image idea.. Well, as you may or may not know I've been wanting to replace my work laptop with a lighter smaller netbook. As it turns out Radio Shack has the Acer Netbook I want on sale for $250 on Black Friday.. 5am journey to the store yields favorable results amid the crazy shoppers..
So, I wake up on Black Friday at 5am, throw some clothes on and head over to the Shack.. They open at 5:30 and can't really be that busy right? I know it's Black Friday, but they are Radio Shack not Walmart. Speaking of Walmart, I drove by them and found their parking lot and all the nearby parking lots filled! On to Radio Shack, I got there around 5:15 and there was a pretty decent sized mob hovering around the door. By the time the store opened I would say there were just under 50 people waiting, they were shaking the doors and yelling for the Shack employees to let them in early.. When the doors were finally opened at 5:30 much pushing and shoving ensued, luckily for me I was standing near some big dudes and followed them as they pushed their way through. This little maneuver made me the 2nd person to the counter and the 2nd person to get a Netbook. They only had three which I knew going into it so I feel pretty lucky..
One of the deciding factors to me buying this Netbook was that, although it came with Vista, it got a free upgrade to Windows 7. So, first thing I do is go to Acer's website and register for my free upgrade only to find out that this netbook is NOT eligible for the upgrade! I call Acer customer service who informs me that:
1 - the website does indeed say the AO751h is eligible for the upgrade but only if
2 - the netbook came pre-loaded with Vista Home Premium and that
3 - this netbook came with Vista Home Basic and therefore
4 - it is not eligible
Odd, ok.. Do any of the AO751h configurations come with Vista Home Premium? No! That is not a valid operating system choice for this netbook! What are your valid choices you ask? XP Home and Vista Home Basic. You really have to love false advertising! Oh, and even if it was eligible for the upgrade I found out that I would have gotten Windows 7 Starter which is not even a full version of Windows 7!
Well, there are some amazing deals on Windows 7 right now, you can get Home Premium for $29.99 if you're a student or an educator at a university. The only thing you need is a .edu email address.. If you have a .edu look it up because I can't imagine you will get a better deal.. Oh, well, maybe.. Worcester State College is selling Windows 7 Professional for $39.99! Speaking of .edu, I really think EMC should have .edu email addresses for people who work in education. The Microsoft deal will work for both students and teachers but I can't prove I'm a teacher.. Either a .edu or some form of EMCU ID, I'll be bringing this up next time I'm at work.
Next time I'll be at work will be Dec 23rd.. I have an ass-ton of vacation left for the year so I am (as of last Wednesday) on vacation. I'll be heading down to Florida in a few days (probably leaving on Thursday) and will return around the 19th. I do actually return to work on Dec 21st but I will be teaching a TTT via Centra at 5am on the 21st and 22nd so I won't be going into the office.
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So, short story long is I'm typing this blog on my brand new Acer Netbook which is at the moment running Vista but will be upgraded to Windows 7 later today.
Anything else happen? Well.. Last I blogged I was heading out to the Galeria and to meet Luana. The Galeria was indeed open when I got there and pretty crowded since everyone was getting off early on Thursday for the long weekend (Friday was a holiday in Brazil). I wondered around the mall for a few hours and was a bit disappointed honestly, the last time I was in Sao Paulo the mall seemed to have more diversity.. What I mean by that is, more stuff from more bands.. This time it seemed that most stores had the same stuff, if not the same stuff it was different stuff for the same bands. Not only did they all seem to have the same bands, but those bands were almost all American bands, they didn't even have any Tuatha De Dannan shirts or dvds this time. I was really hoping for a bootleg concert DVD of theirs and I was trying to find Jessie one of their shirts. Another disappointing thing was the prices.. You may remember that KISS recently released a WalMart exclusive CD (Sonic Boom), they had that CD for over $100! Yes, I mean the "$" sign not the "R$".
After a few hours there I walked over to Augusta St to meet Luana. We meet and went to get some food, I was wanting something healthy since I had not eaten much greens since I was in Brazil so we went to a mall that was up the street. The mall was just like an American mall and we went up into the food court which had things like Subway and Starbucks. She suggested one place which had really good salads and I got a salad/steak combo meal, the steak was ok but the salad was indeed really good. After dinner we walked down to the club she had to do sound check at and after I walked her to the subway before catching a taxi back to the hotel. She is a very nice girl and it's a shame we didn't have more of an opportunity to hang out..
Brazil taxes imports up to 70% depending on the item. They do this to encourage people to buy Brazilian which I guess I understand, but why tax imports when there is no Brazilian counterpart? To make the rich richer right? Only reason I can think of..
Friday I checked out and went to work to hang out with Paulo a bit, we went to a mall for lunch because it was the only thing nearby that was open. We ended up eating at a sushi restaurant which is always a good thing.. It was very good sushi and I was amazed that everyone there, even the little kids, were using chopsticks! I guess it's really just North Americans that can't figure out how to use chopsticks.. After lunch we went to a few stores and looked at TVs, laptops and DVD/Blue Ray discs. I am amazed at how much electronics in general cost in Brazil and I really think they need to relax that stupid import tax on things like TVs and computers. US and Japanese car companies build cars in Brazil and are still taxed with the import tax because they are not Brazilian companies.. I was sorta surprised that some of the mall stores were cheaper than the galeria on heavy metal CDs & DVDs, and I'm not talking a little cheaper either. Paulo convinced me to buy City of Gods on DVD, I have not watched it yet but he says it's quite possibly the best movie ever made in Brazil.
After lunch Paulo took a few calls and then had to leave for a few sites. I hung out a bit more at work and then left for the airport. They say you want to get to the airport early right, well not too early in Brazil.. I arrived around 7pm for my 11pm flight and found out the Continental ticket counter was still closed, there was a big line waiting, I asked the lady where the "elite" line was and was pointed to a MUCH smaller line. In line I met a really cool guy from PA, we ended up chatting for a long time and after we finally got through security we went and got some food together. Turns out he was on the same flight, and not only the same flight but the same row of seats! Certainly made the trip back more enjoyable.
Speaking of enjoyable, I watched "GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra" and "Julie and Julia" on the plane. GI Joe was much better than I expected, I don't know if it was really a good movie or if it was good because my expectations where so low. Either way, I really enjoyed it and would probably watch it again because it's always tough to watch super special effects movies on the little screen on the plane, not to mention that they probably cut some stuff too to make it more family friendly. Julie and Julia was a cute movie and was very well done, they mixed in just the right amount of Julia's life to let you know what her life was like before she became the TV superstar.
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While we are on the subject of TV superstars and cooking for that matter.. I landed Saturday and we decided to go to Bar Americain (Bobby Flay's restaurant in Mohegan Sun). We're not stupid enough to think the place won't be crazy crowded so we call, and call, and call.. Not once did they answer so we figure we will just go down, how long can the wait be? So, funny story.. They were closed for a Private Party on Saturday night! It was apparently the official opening night with the ribbon cutting ceremony and all.. So, Summer Shack it is.. We had a very nice meal at the Summer Shack and then headed home. During the day on Saturday we were trying to convince Christian and Mara to come down, luckily they didn't since the place was closed! Sunday we made attempt number two, once again we called all day and once again there was no answer. We went down somewhat early and were asked if we had a reservation.. How could we have a reservation when you don't answer the phone? Oh, we have the wrong number? Apparently both Bobby Flay's site and Mohegan Sun's site have the wrong phone number.
They sat us anyway after a very short wait and all the hassle was worth it.. I may have mocked Bobby, well, ok, I mocked him a lot.. I will not mock Bobby anymore, he is truly an Iron Chef. When Fuji TV was looking for the first American Iron Chef they turned to Bobby Flay and he showed how American he was by dis-respecting the kitchen and standing on his cutting board after the battle. I guess I never looked past that one moment. What I should have realized is that they picked him to the be the first and, at the time, only American Iron Chef and they obviously had reason to do so. I have now eaten at most of the Iron Chef restaurants, I have Cora, Batali and Garces left, and Bobby is certainly in the top 3 in my mind. The whole meal costs around $130 which is a pretty good deal when it comes to Iron Chef meals and I highly recommend his restaurant if you ever want to eat Iron Chef quality American food!
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This blog is getting out of hand so I am going to start ending it. Here's the quick week in review.. :)
Monday - Dinner with Holly, we went to dinner by her house and then back to her house where I finally met Brutus! I was about to write a big thing about how Brutus is a really cool dog and how I'm really glad we got along but I really don't want this blog to be 100 pages.. Oh, bah.. Nobody ever said you had to read my blog right? I assume if you're hear it's because you want to hear my ramblings so 10 pages or 100 pages it doesn't matter right?
So, after dinner we went back to her house.. First she let Ruca out, I met Ruca before and we seemed to get along so let's start easy.. Ruca came out and seemed to remember me which was good. We bonded a bit and then I held her leash and gave her a dried bull penis to keep her busy while Holly let Brutus out. Brutus came out and seemed surprised to see someone in the house, he was not upset, just surprised. He turned the corner into the living room and just stopped. Brutus is a much bigger dog then Ruca and I think he is the kind of dog who does not realize how big and strong he is. After some time, tricks and treats Holly brought him over to smell me, after a few minutes he was eating out of my hand. He is very gentle when taking food out of your hand, it could be the most gentle I've ever seen a dog take food from a person actually. After a little while I tried to give him his bull penis but unfortunately Ruca finished hers too quick so now she wanted his too. Brutus was let outside, then put away while Ruca was let out. Then Ruca was put away and Brutus came back out to hang out a bit more, I gave him his bull penis (I really just like saying bull penis) and we got along well. After a bit more he was put away and Ruca let back out with no leash while we played some Wii.
Tuesday - Dinner.. We had our own little Thanksgiving celebration with Turkey Burgers, stuffing, sweet potatoes and egg nog. I made Brazilian pizza with Catipuri, ham, onions and egg. I know, it's not very Thanksgiving, but it was in honor of Sao Paulo.
Wednesday - Played and lost the OOTP World Series.. Caught up on lots of TV..
Thursday - Thanksgiving at my mom's house.. Lots of food, lots of fixing computers and lots of good times..
Friday - Radio Shack (see above) and Joe's birthday party. Joe's party was zombie themed and most of the food was in the shape of brains.. He boarded up his front window and put caution tape up which made the house look really cool from the outside.
Saturday - Anja's birthday party, hung out with Dagmar again.. She is really cool and we need to get her to Tuesday dinners.. Me and Jessie caught up on more TV and played Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. That game is really not very good, the song choices are pretty bad and the sound mixing makes it hard to play. We have to keep reminding ourselves it came out between Guitar Hero III and IV, they obviously rushed it out.. Saturday night Kevin and Sarah came over and we played MULE, troubleshoot his PC (bad video card) and watched most of Red Dwarf Season 1.
Last night after going to the Galeria de Rock me and Paulo went to Casa de Mortadela which is a restaurant downtown that serves, what else, mortadela sandwiches. They also have a really good sausage sandwich too. Oh, speaking of the Galeria de Rock.. I looked online and found that the Galeria closes at 8pm, what they failed to mention is that most stores close between 6 and 6:30.. We got there with not much time to look around, most of the stores were either already closed or just about to. I did get a live Blackmore's Night DVD/CD which is PAL and from some crazy region and I got Jessie a Helloween shirt. I saw some amazing Blind Guardian long sleeve shirts but none in my size. Well, Friday is a holiday which means I don't have to teach so I can come back right? No.. The entire Galeria is closed on Friday! I'm going to attempt to go back Thursday after work, hopefully I can get there earlier this time so I can spend more time looking around.
Back to Casa de Mortadela... Are you ready for this?? This is a beer that they serve there, it's actually the reason we went there... It is... Caracu hit with oats, egg, peanuts and powdered guarana. I know it sounds nasty but it was REAL good, it was like a chocolate/coffee milk shake. The only bad part was the end which had all the ground up peanuts floating in it.
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I really need to get my laptop taken apart and cleaned, the heat off it is crazy and it's froze a few times on this trip already from overheating.
Last night I went to Fry's and Micro Center to look at netbooks. I really want to replace my work laptop with an Acer netbook. The new one is $298 at Fry's which is an amazing price, I just don't know if I can justify spending the money on it when I have a working work supplied laptop.
After wandering around a bit I went to Red Lobster for dinner.. You know, when in Georgia eat local food right? I don't know what I was thinking.. After eating lobster in New England a Georgia lobster is not going to cut the mustard as they say. I did really enjoy the crab cake I had as an appetizer but the lobster was tough and not all that tasty.
After dinner I went to the Pool House/Sports bar again and watched the World Series with some of my new friends.. I met two new really cool people last night, I was sitting at the bar when a guy and girl came and sat next to me. They were together and talking about their phones and they dragged me into it. She had just gotten rid of her Storm and replaced it with a new Blackberry. Anyway, we ended up chatting and hanging out for the entire game. She had gotten a beer from a "secret admirer" and a little while later I got up to hit the bathroom and a guy stopped me to ask if she was with me. I said no, but she's married (her husband is in Afganastan). A little while later she got a second one! I don't know if it was from the same person or not but jeez, how come guys never get free drinks from "secret admirers"?
I finally mailed my Son of Sandlar boots back to them today so hopefully I will get them back sooner rather than later.
It is so nice out here today, 71 degrees and very sunny! I don't know what I'm doing for dinner tonight, I was thinking of wandering around the mall but I may see what else is near by. I am thinking of going into downtown Atlanta on Thursday after class since it will be an early day.
So, I just got to Duluth GA last night. I flew into Atlanta and was geared up for fist-a-cuffs with some f'n Braves fans, not really - but it sounds good.. The airport here is oddly laid out and very big. I had to take a tram to the baggage claim it was so far away from my terminal. The layout is sorta like this:
........| |....| |....| |....| |....| |
........| |....| |....| |....| |....| |
[]-----| |---| |---| |----| |---| |
........| |....| |....| |....| |....| |
........| |....| |....| |....| |....| |
Each of the | | is a terminal with the dotted line being the connecting point between them. So, if you came in on the 4th terminal back (which I did) you have to walk to the center of the terminal and then up the connection walk or take the tram which runs on the dotted line.
When you get to the square (ticket area, baggage claim and rent-a-car) you pass the rent-a-car area before getting to the bags. I grabbed my bag and came back to the Enterprise counter. I filled out paperwork and then went outside to grab a bus which brought me right to my car. I ended up getting a Kia Spectra, man it's hot! It does not really have any balls but it is comfortable to sit in and the radio has an Aux input so I can listen to my book while driving.
Drove to the hotel and then went out wandering Duluth. Duluth is a shopping mecca, there is a Best Buy, MicroCenter and Fry's all in a matter of a few blocks. There are also tons of places to eat including Red Lobster. Last night I went to a Sushi BBQ place which was a Japanese/Korean restaurant, all the servers spoke Japanese and they had real wasabi and didn't offer me a spoon for my soup! Holly asked me to show her a picture of what real wasabi looked like and I got busy with class so never did.. Here you go Holly, a picture of real wasabi..
After dinner I went to a pool hall/sports bar and watched a bit of the World Series while drinking a Fat Tire. I was shocked at how many people in the place where Yankees fans! Not a Braves fan in site, wtf! I ended up hanging out with a few guys and having a great time but left after the 6th because my tattoo was itching like crazy and I just wanted to get back to the hotel and take my shirt off.
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Saturday me and Jessie went and hung out my dad during the day and my mom at night. During the day we went to Lou Rocs, which is a diner up in Worcester, and then went to Best Buy and Staples to look at netbooks. I want to get one to use instead of my work laptop. I think I've decided on the Acer Aspire One which I can get at Radio Shack for $349.99, it has an 11" screen with 2GB memory and a 260GB hard drive.
I am going to see how cheap they are down here at Fry's and maybe MicroCenter.
At night we hung out at mom's house and watched WC Fields' You Can't Cheat an Honest Man. It's been years since I've seen it and it is still pretty funny after all these years.
Last night I went to play Mini-Golf in Milpitas at Golf Land USA. They have 3 courses which are rated easy, medium and hard. I left to head up there (about 10 miles) right around 5pm so I was a so glad to have the Prius and all-access to the carpool lane! The traffic was stopped on the highway and I was doing 65 next to them! Anyway, as I got closer I saw a wonderful mountain range.. The way the sun was playing off it was so pretty, I took a crap ton of pics of it to capture the beauty. I posted 2 pics from the drive to Flickr. The Mini-Golf place was right at the base of the mountain range so I took another good pic from the parking lot.
Anyway, so.. Mini-Golf.. I decided I would play both the medium and hard courses. I played the medium one first as a warm-up and shot a 52 on 18 holes, I think I had one hole at 5 but everything else was in the 2-4 range. One thing I thought was really cool, well ok, maybe more than one.. First, the putting area changed colors at points which made a really neat trick of the eye when trying to read the hills. Second, the entire course was covered in "mini-golf carpet". When I say the entire course I mean the whole place, the hills, the walkways, everything. It was like immersing yourself into a mini-golf world.
Onto my second course.. Oh, wait.. I forgot to mention the most supertabular thing about this place! When I grabbed my pencil out of the pencil bin it had LETS GO METS carved into it in orange writing! OK, now on to the second course. Remember this is the "hard" course. I was actually talking to Lynz for most of this course so she can vouch (in a way) for my awesomeness. What, what, can't hear you over the sound of my awesomeness.. :D Right, so.. I actually hit two consecutive Hole-In-Ones! The first one was one of those holes that you just have to hit it up the ramp in the middle and you automatically get a hole in one but the second one was a brutal looking hole. It had a MASSIVE hill in the middle of the green and then at the end had a V right after the hole so if it came down the hill too quick or at the wrong angle it would pass the hole, hit the V and head out into the outskirts of the green! So, continuing on with my amazingness (couldn't use awesomeness, it would have been repetitive), there was one hole that had two choices, picture of it on Flickr, one choice was to go up a real steep hill into the mouth of a tree which presumably would bring the ball near the hole, the other choice was to hit it straight through a really thin passage. I shot the hole twice, once up the tree and once down the passage. Both times I got a 2 on the hole, both times I was right near the hole after the first shot! I can't believe I made it through that thin passage.. Oh, wait, yes I can, because I am that awesome.. ;)
After Mini-Golf I went to the Great Mall to check on yet another Verizon store. I told the stupid guy I had a Z6c World Edition and needed a charger that would work with my international adapters (they slide onto the old charger and won't fit the new one) or I needed new international adapters. He said that they don't make international adapters for my phone and the only one they have them for is the blackberry and that the blackberry charger won't work for my phone because the blackberry is micro-usb and my phone is mini-usb! I really wanted to punch him, why in the hell can't a Verizon rep know that my phone, first of all, does exist and second of all does NOT use the same accessories as the Z6TV! So, after explaining that my phone was indeed micro-usb (which by the way he argued with me about) he pulled out the blackberry charger and it worked! No "unsupported charger" or anything, just straight up charging! So, I want to buy.. Nope.. They don't stock that charger, but he can order me one which will take approx a week to get in. No thanks.. Ordered one on-line and it will be at the house maybe as early as Friday, but no later than Monday.
That guy get's a "random people - douches" tag! Anyway, speaking of the "random people - cool" tag.. I went back to the hotel and spent some time chatting with Ashley, the girl who works the night shift behind the counter, and two of her friends. They are all in college and the one guy is doing a project where he has to come up with original game ideas, Ashley was doing Spanish homework, put those two together and you get... "Language Brawl" Language Brawl is a game idea the three of us came up with.. So, here's the idea.. You're driving down the street and you hit a car, you get out and so does the other driver. The other driver does not speak your language, instead he speaks the language you're trying to learn. As he speaks it shows up on the screen and you have to translate it and answer him, if you don't answer in time he kicks your ass. Figure the beginning levels will have the sentence in your language except maybe one word you have to translate but in the end you could have to translate the whole sentence. We even figure you can do a multi-lingual one (for our European friends who speak many languages) where you hit a car which hits a car and both drivers speak different languages and you have to translate them both in the alloted time.
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Food TV is doing another "Next Iron Chef", the last time they did one it was to replace Mario Batali who had a contract difficulty with Food TV. So, I was trying to figure out who was leaving this time.. Well, I too can add 1+1 and get 2.. For years now Cat Cora said she would not open a restaurant because she could not juggle her personal life, the show and a restaurant. Apparently she opened a restaurant in Disney World called Kouzzina. So the only question now is, do I go there this year or do I wait till next year and go with Jessie. I have to figure that out soon because if I'm going this year I need to make reservations.
---Diversion of the Day (watch with sound to truly enjoy)
I was going to call this blog First of May but I already have one titled that when I posted the lyrics and video of the song, I went to post it and Blogger yelled at me because it was a repeat name..
---- Here we are on the much anticipated First of May... Unfortunately the weather is not the greatest but it's also not horrible out either, I wish we had the weather from the beginning of the week but at least it's not snowing..
This week has been a series of long nights and little sleep and looking forward it looks like I should be able to sleep in on Sunday.. I'm not complaining about the long nights, I just wish I didn't have to get up so early but I guess that's the working mans curse.
Tuesday night we had a pretty big group for dinner and everyone made lots of food. I really have to find out from Sara how to log into the Tuesday night blog, I know she gave me a username/password but I went to the blog today and I don't see a login button.. Anyway, I made a shrimp & rice dish...
1 lb Shrimp sauteed in the wok with a combination of soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and the hot sauce John got Jessie which is "Pain is good batch 37". (I should really measure amounts when I make stuff, but since I didn't I can't say how much of each I used. I can say I didn't use enough of the hot sauce.) 2 packages of steamed Broccolini 2 cups of rice cooked with sushi seasoning in rice cooker. Mix everything together (including sauce from pan) and serve.
Gwen came this week and brought her son Tim who seems to have gotten along really well with the other kids. Kevin was a no show this week, but Amber made it because she was driving home from Long Island.. We got there really late because I had forgotten to start the rice in the morning and I had to wait around for it to finish. It was really nice out and Lynz brought her dulcimer and Sara broke out her guitar.
---- Wednesday night I went over to Willimantic and me, Lynz and Anja went to dinner at Opus. Opus is a really good restaurant that opened recently, they don't have a website which is a major problem because we were the only people there and Lynz says that's normal for them. I took their card and am going to try and get it over to Mike so he can contact them about getting them setup. I got one of their set dinners which was a cauliflower soup, garlic bread in a fondue cheese sauce, a steamed trout and lemon sorbet. Everything was really good, if you're ever in Willimantic I would recommend checking it out, I know I'll be back.. After dinner me and Lynz finally got a chance to sit and talk which we had not been able to do in a long time. I'm so glad the weather is getting warmer, it's been a long winter of no picnics.
---- Last night I went to see Spring Awakening with Melissa and Gwen in Boston. It was a good play, the music was excellent and it had some very funny stuff as well as some very serious points and moments. I'm trying to figure out what to say without saying too much (don't want to tell the entire plot). I guess I will just say it's a story about a group of kids coming into and finding their sexuality, the play does a good job of showing what mistakes can be avoided if the parents would educate their kids. One example is: Wendla asks her mom where babies come from and her response is that in order to conceive a child a woman must love her husband with all of her heart. Because of this explanation the girl is surprised when she becomes pregnant from having sex.. I was checking it out on Wiki today and I found out that the play was originally done in Germany in 1891 and was banned there due to the sexually explicit scenes.. It re-appeared a few times over the years (sometimes censored) before being turned into a musical in 2006.
Before the play we ate at Remington's of Boston which is right next to the Colonial Theater. Remington's is upstairs and attached to Dick Doherty's Comedy Club. This was the second time I ate there, the first was with Kaitlyn before Ryan Adams. Me and Gwen both had fish and chips and Melissa got the meat ravioli. They have a Sam Adams beer on tap that was made just for sale in the Boston area called Brick Red which is a very smooth Irish Red Ale.
After the play we ended up going back to Gwen's new apartment which is very nice and very secluded but also not really setup yet. For some stupid reason the GPS thinks that the best way to get to 295 from Franklin is to drive to Woonsocket RI and then take side roads almost all the way back to Franklin before getting on 122. My GPS tried to do the same thing today when I was driving here, it appears that the GPSs (mine and Melissas) think that one of the roads over here is a dead end when in truth it's a thru street. My guess is that the road was extended recently and the GPSs don't know about it yet. When I was driving this morning my GPS said I entered a dead end road and that I should turn around.
---Thought of the Day Things really don't change do they? Spring Awakening was written in 1891 and deals with issues around parents not talking to their children honestly. It shows that by parents trying to seclude and shelter kids when it comes to sexuality they do nothing but harm them and damn them to make the same mistakes generation after generation! If generation A makes a mistake because their parents didn't talk to them then why does generation A NOT talk to their kids when the roles are reversed? Do they want them to make the same shitty mistakes? Here we are 118 years later and we are still having the same problem... Come on people, it's about time people learned the right thing to do is to inform your kids! It's really not a joke that information is power! Arm your kids with the power to succeed..
This morning Jessie wanted to show me the Shamwow infomercial. We looked it up on the TV and from there went to the slap chop. From that one we found a parody called slap nuts which was eh. From there we found a bunch of parody ones and I now give you what in our opinion was the best one.. Might Putty Dub by Jabo0odyDubs.
Laying on the couch taking pain killers and watching lots of mindless TV.. When I say mindless I really mean that.. I am now all caught up on Legend of the Seeker and it's still really crappy! As a matter of fact it might be getting worse as the show continues. There are three episodes left in season one so I am going to make myself finish the season but I will not be watching it next year if there is one. Some of the horrible things they did was gave Zedd a brother, made Geller an evil wizard trying to recreate the power of a confessor and speaking of confessors, they have an army of confessors who were all running from one quad and in that army of confessors was the real mother confessor! Oh, it's ok though because now Kahlan is the mother confessor because Kahlan and Richard killed the mother confessor after she confessed Zedd!?! As I said, I'm going to make myself finish watching the season but I'm done after that...
Right now I'm catching up on Monk, what's really cool about that is that I'm watching it in black and white. Why, you ask? It's on my old TiVo which is an old series one, the series one TiVos have a problem when you put it into standby mode it sometimes comes back in black and white. Now I can't get it back into color, I think it has more to do with the fact that I broke the connector on the back of the TiVo when I took the coax cable off. I'm planing on getting an old Series one TiVo from dad so I can swap out my hard drives and copy the rest of our old shows off in color. I'm sorta growing bored with Monk right now, I've watched a bunch of episodes over the last few days and it's amazing how similar they are to each other. Plus, it's been years since they did any advancement on the Trudy murder plot line.
.... Japan beat Korea in last night's WBC game which means that Saturday night Korea plays Venezuela and Sunday night Japan plays the USA. The winner of each of those games plays in the final on Monday night. This is the first round of the WBC that should have a double elimination, instead the first few rounds did. They way the first few rounds worked was: Day 1 Team A v. Team B Team C v. Team D Lets say A and C win. Now Day 2 Team B plays Team D Team A plays Team C Lets say B and A wins (that sends Team D home because they lost twice) Now Day 3 Team B plays Team C Lets say team B wins (that sends Team C home because they lost twice) Now Day 4 Team A plays Team B and they both continue to next round regardless of who wins!
As of right now there is no way Japan and USA can play in the final game. Because they play each other in the first game and one of them will go home. I would think in the finals you would want the double elimination.
.... So, as you may or may not know we got a new HDTivo over last weekend and had the cable guy install cable cards in it on Monday. When I booked the appointment they told me the cable company did not use Multicards and that they would have to give me two Single Cards. Well, the Tivo worked well for a day or two before it started skipping and losing picture. The cable guy came out today to troubleshoot and brought a Multicard. He pulled the S cards out and put the M in and now everything seems to be working again plus we save $3.00 a month because now we are only paying for one card. I really hope this is not an ongoing problem, the cable guys seems to think that it will be an ongoing problem because of the cable cards.
.... I updated the relationship chart finally... Here is the new version...
Welcome to my not-so-daily blog.. Lynz just left and I think I'm going to have a nice relaxing day at the house, Jessie is over at Ryan's house and I'm hearing Sam & Max calling to me from my Wii. Before I get to that though let me catch you all up..
Wednesday night me and Jessie had a nice night, it went later than we wanted but it's to be expected I guess. Jessie had yoga and afterwards we went down to Bed Bath and Beyond to get some coffee and Target to check and see if they had Streets and Trips 2009 cheaper then online (they didn't). The plan was to eat at the Thai Place on the way back from BBB and Target but by the time we got back to Putnam they were closed so we ended up getting some food to go from the Courthouse before coming back and watching the weeks American Idols. While at BBB I was speaking with the cashier about our mutual love of iced coffee, here's what we figured out.. Take a travel coffee mug that has space between the outer plastic and the inner metal and fill that space with water so that you can store the mug in the freezer like one of those freezer beer mugs, then make coffee and put it in that and you have instant non-watered down iced coffee. Now I just need to find the perfect coffee mug to make that happen.
Thursday night Kaitlyn came over and hung out with me and Jessie. I made a spicy Chinese style chicken/mushroom/spinach dish over Quinoa and Jessie made a raw cacao/avocado pudding with chili powder in it and fresh raspberries which was amazing especially when combined with the red wine Kaitlyn brought over. After we ate we all snuggled on the couch and watched the Daily Shows from the week and Big Bang Theory before heading to bed. It was very nice to have spent a night together with the two of them. I really hope we can do that more.. Cool side note about Thursday night - I slept without my boot and it didn't cause any pain/problems the next day.
Yesterday after work I went to visit Sara at her grandmother's house. Her grandmother lives in a beautiful condo complex in Bristol RI, on one side of the complex is the Audobon Society and in the back is Narragansett Bay. It was an unusually warm day so we walked down to the water and hung out on the rocks for a bit, while we were walking back her aunt arrived at the house so I went and got lunch while she was there. When she left I came back and we ended up hanging out some more before I headed home. Got home right as Jessie did so we got to hang out for a few minutes while she got everything ready to go out to Ryan's house. Lynz came over around 7:30 and we went out to Engine 6 in Norwich for gluten free pizza, I forgot who told me about that place but I'm glad we heard about it because it was awesome. I will certainly be going back there, they also have gluten free calzones, lasagna and cakes.
---- I updated my relationships on my OKCupid profile to include Sara and Kaitlyn yesterday while at work, apparently Elizabeth saw this and freaked out.. She has now blocked me on OKCupid and asked me to not come to her concert tonight. I don't understand how someone does not get happiness from seeing their friends happy.. /sigh
---- Speaking of relationships.. Robyn, a really cool girl I met at Laire who lives in Virgina, is coming up on Valentine's day weekend to go to a fair with Kevin on Saturday and to hang out with me on Sunday.. I'm very glad of the excuse to get her into this part of the country for the weekend. I land from Australia on Friday night and need to figure out plans for that weekend soon, the biggest trick will be getting quality time with everyone. This is when I could really use Hermione Grainger's Time-Turner.. I would rather have a problem scheduling time with all the people I want to see than not having any people I wanted to see..
---- Speaking of relationships II.. Carrie posted a facebook status the other day saying that Paul (not sure which one, but I assume her husband) was nasty because he had brought his laptop into the bathroom with him, I don't know why that's nasty. The way I look at is most guys read books or magazines while in there to pass the time, what's wrong with bringing your laptop in with you? I do it, what better way to pass time than on the Internet..
---- Speaking of relationships III.. Jessie posted this blog the other day titled "When will I be bored!" which I thought was awesome.
"Cool article - In defense of boredom talks about how technology is somehow attempting to make boredom obsolete and why that isn’t a good idea for us humans.. turns out, just as Kirk said in Star Trek V how we need our pain, we also need those routine periods of time in our lives that give us pause to reflect or use our imagination.. some call this state ‘being bored.’
So what exactly is happening to kill off the boredom? Well, it’s not so much killing it off as finding more micro-boredom escapes. Things like youtube videos or facebook and all its apps fill in snippets of time to get us to the next moment… Our tolerance level becomes less and less for time in which we have nothing to do.
It’s comforting and scary at the same time time that it is in those moments when we aren’t being social or plugged in that makes us who we are, just as much as when we are engaged in those activities. If we aren’t constantly communicating (tweeting, even) our thoughts and feelings out to the world we either feel cutoff or elated and basque in the freedom… Far fewer are the latter I suspect. How many of us smile when we discover we have forgotten our cell phones that day or that our destination for a few hours does not have a wifi connection?
How many steps away from Borg do we become when we reinforce those behaviors and attitudes that boredom and space to become reflective or creative are bad and only productivity and being social are good?"
One of the biggest things for me that has been invented for this purpose is the iPod, think about it. No matter where I am I have music or books or even videos. Taking a long train ride, no problem, just plug in and you can be engrossed in music, a book or TV show in seconds. Some people even put full movies on their iPods. I guess one way I will continue to avoid the "connection" is not get a blackberry.
---- Speaking of relationship IV.. Kaitlyn got tickets for us to go see Ryan Adams and the Cardinals towards the end of February, a few days after she got the tickets Ryan Adams announced that this is his last tour ever because he has balance issues and hearing loss. I had heard a few of his songs in the past without knowing who it was and I got a few CDs from Kaitlyn and have been listening to their newest CD "Cardinology" which is really good. I'm really looking forward to seeing them live but it's a shame that he is not going to continue to do music.
---- I'm going to go, I've let Sam and Max wait to long as it is, you know that Max guy, he can get a bit crazy if you keep him waiting.. Now that I'm not going to Elizabeth's concert tonight I imagine it will be a night of 4400.
---- Great quotes I heard on the Daily Show from this week..
"Why is cheese delicious on Italian food but when you melt it on Chinese food it's disgusting?" - Jason Jones
"I can't imagine someone like Osama Bin Ladin appreciates the joys of Hanukkah." - George W Bush
The New York Mets announced that the Brooklyn Cyclones (A ball team) will be changing their name to the Baracklyn Cyclones for a game on June 23rd. They will be wearing red, white and blue uniforms and will be giving out a Barack Obama bobblehead..
While the name change and bobblehead giveaway will be the undisputed highlights of the evening, the club has already announced a wide range of other innovations.
The first 1,000 fans will receive "Universal Health Care" in the form of a complimentary Band-Aid, and -- as part of the team's "Clear-Cut Exit Strategy" -- American flags will be handed out to fans as they leave the ballpark.
Additionally, a "Bi-Partisan Consolation Prize" insures that anyone named "McCain" or "Palin" gets in free, and plumbers with the first name of Joe will receive two free tickets thanks to a "spread-the-wealth special."
I think this is a great idea and think it would be cool if they did the name change for the entire season to celebrate our new president.
---- I've been running Get Data Back on Kaitlyn's hard drive, it dropped ready the other night and I had put it in the freezer for Laire weekend. I started it again on Monday morning and it failed again Tuesday night. I put it in the freezer and decided I would run it in parts so that it does not heat up too much. I ran it in 10 gig chunks last night and managed to get 20 gig before it started to flake out. It's currently back in the freezer and I will run a few more chunks tonight. If you are not familiar with Get Data Back it's a program that scans broken hard drives for any data it can find, it can even find data that had been formatted. As long as the drive can spin it will find something.. Think about that next time you want to delete files off your PC, they say that if you want to really get rid of data you need to format the area 7 times...
---- I recently got the demo of Streets and Trips 2009, it will run for 30 days without activation so I installed it to make sure it worked on my work PC. Streets 2008 never worked because there was a conflict between it and the way EMC has our CISCO security program setup. I have been running 2009 now for a few days and it has been working so I will go buy a real copy soon.
Speaking of CISCO.. The A's are having problems with the city of Fremont, apparently the city feels that if they build a stadium there it will bring in a bad crowd so they don't want to let CISCO build the stadium. They are currently trying to convince the city that they will not bring in a bad crowd by having a stadium. The people in the city are going to vote on it in the next few months. If they deny the stadium CISCO will be looking for alternative locations to put the stadium. I thought they had broken ground on it already, but I guess I was wrong.. So much for it being open for the 2011 season..
---- Yesterday I mentioned I wanted to talk more about dinner on Tuesday.. Well... I made a southwestern tofu/rice dish and it came out a bit too spicy for me plus the idea to make a salsa/sauce out of the veggies didn't work well. The texture was all off and the spice was too much making me not want to eat it. The good news was that Sara made her black bean and sweet potato filling for burritos. We also had ground venison, ground faux beef, faux chicken which I did a great job of spicing, cheese, veggie cheese, guacamole and salsa for the burritos. John brought some of his home made pastrami which was "holy cow" great and Lynz brought some of her amazing cookies.. Kevin made a cheesy shrimp asparagus pasta dish with thai style rice noodles, I think it was his best dish to date, I'm glad I took a Lactaid so I could eat it without causing stomach problems.. So, yeah.. The Lactaid thing has been helping a lot, I am ready to admit (un-happily) that it's dairy that was kicking my ass all this time.. But, as Lynz said, at least there is something I can take to make it so I can still eat dairy. Her food problem (wheat) has no such pill or medicine so I really can't bitch..
After dinner Lynz and Joe started playing SET on the floor. Me, John and Drew were talking over them and started calling out sets so we ended up joining the game. The first hand (when I was standing and talking) I came in 2nd place, the next hand I did much worse. I guess the trick to playing was not focusing too much. Speaking of SET, did you know that there is a Set Daily Puzzle on their website?! After SET John and Lynz left and I played Cro-Magnon with Sara, Kevin, Joe and Drew. Sara won and I came in second, stupid word section is so annoying..
I leave for Australia in two weeks from today so I'm hoping to get as much time with everyone as possible till then.. To that note Lynz is coming over tonight, Kaitlyn is coming over on Friday and I'm going to have lunch with Sara on Saturday.. I guess it's true when they say pimpin' ain't easy, but it sure is worth it though..
Apparently Sam Raimi wanted to make another Hercules or Zena and somehow suckered Terry Goodkind into giving him the Sword of Truth Series for his characters and for the general plot/storyline. I just finished watching the 6th episode and I'm dumbfounded at how much they are not following the storyline in the book. Terry's books were so amazing and had such great stories, I was so excited to hear that they were making a full show of the series with each season being one book. I was more happy when Terry mentioned in an interview that they were going to be filming stuff that was not shown in the books, for example stuff that they mentioned in the past was going to be filmed so that instead of just saying this or that happened they could show it. Sounds good right? The first two episodes (2 hour premier) followed the general storyline, they changed some things (most minor but one major) but I was willing to let that go because it is a new medium and obviously they need to change it up for the TV audience.
Episode three didn't have anything to do with any story that Goodkind wrote or even alluded to, it did at least have a good point about people in the mid-lands needing to trust the seeker and showing that Richard was going to need to help out people for that to happen. Major problem in episode three was that all the women in the mid-lands have long hair and people didn't instantly recognize Kahlan for being the Mother Confessor.
Episode four once again had nothing to with anything Goodkind ever wrote or alluded to. Once again all women had long hair and for some reason people recognized Richard by site but not Kahlan! One thing from the stories was mentioned but it was something that was not talked about until book three and really kinda craps on some of the big surprises later on.
Episode five was something I would have expected to see on Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel but certainly NOT on a Sword of the Truth show. They are inventing magics that have no place in the Goodkind world, instead of inventing new stuff can they please focus on something that actually DID happen in the series!
So that brings us to episode six. For the fourth consecutive episode we are not going to follow anything written, remember (if you read the books) that there was only one wizard other than Zedd and he worked for the queen and princess who had the box of ordan. Apparently they decided it would be cool if there was another random wizard floating around, and this one would have a Radahan and a Quilliam! If you don't know what those are I'm not going to go into detail but the Radahan is used by the Sisters of the Light in book 2 and the Quilliam is used by the Sisters of the Dark!
Other issues with the series? Well, it's episode six and there is no mention of the Mud People who were a main part of not just the first book but a main part of four different books. They were also the people who started Richard in learning about the sword's magic. No mention of the boxes of ordan and the only mention of the Book of Counted Shadows was in episode one and two and they burned the only known copy. In every episode so far people in the mid-lands did not immediately recognize Kahlan, on more than one occasion Zedd or Richard had to say something about her being the Mother Confessor before people would pay her heed!
How many episodes am I going to watch before I give up? I don't know, I'm pretty stubborn but I know a bunch of people who gave up already and Jessie is on the verge.
---- Today was my first day back at work, it was tough to go back to teaching. I had my foot not-elevated for far too long and it was really bothering me by the end of the day, it was actually bothering me around lunch-time and got worse from there. I did manage to draw on the board and everything so I don't feel I shorted the students which is good. I did leave early, because Elizabeth is my ride for most of the week and she got there at 2:30, which is good because I don't know how much longer I could have lasted with my foot.
--- Got home and called Ikea to have them mail me the "missing" parts for the day bed. We had two broken 60GbiPods, one of them had a broken drive and battery, the other one had a broken click wheel. I took them both apart today and made a working one from the parts.
--- Jessie ordered the Raw Box last week from Rawvolution. We had been eating it a little at a time over the last week and finished it up tonight. One of the things we ate tonight was the French Onion Soup, it was frikkin amazing. Jessie found the recipe online and we are going to have to make it. I also would love the recipe for their raw bread (hint, hint).. :D
--- We can't do anything about getting the Mets tickets till Dec 10th at 10am so that gives us time to get everyone from Section 17 together so we can try and get seats together for next year. I am going to setup a con-call on Monday morning so we can all dial into the Mets together and request our seats.
"One thing about your food, when you really hit it you can't stop eating it and I've stopped." - Jeffrey Steingarten (ICA) speaking to Bobby Flay in battle corn.
I called the Mets ticket office today, the lady I talked to was stuffing the envelopes for the Sunday packages when I called her. The letters should arrive in the next few days so I will finally know what the Mets are offering for packages.
Speaking of new baseball stadiums.. I was looking at the Yankee Stadium information the other day and I absolutely love their stadium seat selector. The seat selector has 360 degree 3D renderings of what the stadium would look like in each row of each section! As if that was not cool enough they also have estimated sun/shade pictures for 1pm, 4pm and 7pm on May 15th and August 15th so you get a really good idea of what seats you want if you want to be in the shade.
The Mets don't even have a seating chart on their website. In order to find a Citi-Field seating chart you need to go to StubHub... Speaking of StubHub, they are selling tickets to the exhibition game at Citi-Field against the Red Sox on 4/3 for $300 - $23,000!
---- Last night I had to have my cast changed because the one I had was too lose, Lynz drove me up to the doctor's office and the changed it out. If you've never had a cast removed it is a very odd feeling, they take what appears to be a circular saw and cut the cast on either side. It's not really a saw, it does not spin, it cuts with the vibration of the blade, the vibration feels nice in one way but it's just very weird feeling. So they take the old cast off and you have this free feeling, the first instinct is to move your leg around but I know better... So, I'm concentrating with all my might to make sure I don't move my leg so that my Achilles does not move. The air on the leg felt so good.. Dr Scheffel then moves and holds the foot on an upward slant and puts the new cast on. The new cast is not lose at all which is good, it is heavier (I think) and it's blue which is better than white.
After the doctors appointment me and Lynz went to the Japanese restaurant in Kelly Square and got a sushi/sashimi boat for two. It was the first time in my life of eating sushi that I was actually served on a boat. I always see the boats but I've never actually been served with one so that was cool. A few months ago Lynz would not eat sushi because she was scared of the idea of eating raw fish. She has been eating it now on a somewhat regular basis because (as you know) sushi is one of the best foods on the planet. So each time she eats sushi we push it a little bit further and I was very proud of her last night because she ate octopus, she didn't like the texture but she ate it.. :) When we sat down the lady at the restaurant turned on a small heater fan and put it next to us and told us to let her know when it got to hot so she could turn it off, she asked us twice during the meal if we wanted it off yet.. Little did she know that she put the fan next to two people who love the heat and that little fan could not possibly make either of us too hot..
---- All of the books me and Jessie want have been pulled from our bookshelves, now I need someone with two legs and a car to bring them to the library... Amber is coming over tomorrow and staying for Thanksgiving, I already warned her that I would be putting her to work.. I would really like to get that room turned into a real guest room soon and the Ikea in New Haven does have the day bed that my mom has that me and Jessie liked. I see lots of running around tomorrow when Amber gets here.
---Diversion of the Day (I tried to embed it and it was acting weird so, here's a link) http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_barber_s_surprising_foie_gras_parable.html
I've been laid up on the sleeper the last few days. My dad came over last night and we played with iTunes and music files most of the day, he brought over a Berry Berry Pie from Mrs. Mack's Bakery in Worcester. If you live near there and love berry pies I would highly recommend it. A few years ago he brought one over to my brother's house for one of the holidays and Sandy (my sister in-law) horded the whole pie. The 2nd time he tried to bring one over it was different and just all right, this year they brought back the original Berry Berry Pie and I'm very glad that he brought it over yesterday, we ended up eating six of eight slices yesterday! After playing with music Jessie and my dad went to Casa Mariachi and brought back dinner. I had a vegetarian burrito which came with a really good Tomatillo sauce, excellent burrito.
After dad left Jessie went and got Guitar Hero World Tour for the Wii and we stayed up way too late playing.. This version allows up to 8 players! You can have 4 players on this end (guitar, bass, drums, vocals) playing online against another 4 players in a battle of the bands.. We didn't get the drum kit yet because we already have two guitars and a microphone and the drums are only sold right now in a "full band kit" which comes with 2 guitars and a microphone. The drum kit will be sold separately in early 2009 so until then we can only play with 3 people on this end (guitar, bass and vocals). I know the big argument is between Guitar Hero and Rock Band, I think Guitar Hero is more fun to play in general (granted I have not played Rock Band 2) and the song selection in World Tour is really good so far. When Rock Band came out on the Wii I purchased the "game only" version and found out that they programmed their game to not work with the Guitar Hero guitars which pissed me off. There is no reason for me to have to buy two sets of guitars and two drum kits because I want to play two different games. Not to mention that the Guitar Hero guitars are made better and have a much lower failure rate. This version of Guitar Hero added in downloadable content as well but we have not played with that yet.
Today has been a very busy day for me so far, I had an electrician come over and fix our kitchen light problem, apparently you can't have two dimmer switches on a 3-way light. He will be switching our fuses to circuit breakers sometime in the spring too so that's a good thing. Does $1600 sound too high to do that? After that Sandy came over and brought me a lemon cake for Thanksgiving and a home made pickle.. Don't know how the cake is but I'm sure it will be either too dry or too sweet.. :P The pickle however was really good and want her to bring more.. Went with her to VSC and got lunch (was supposed to go to Bella's but they are closed on Mondays).. The tree guy came over afterwards and we have a date set to remove the tree (next Sunday unless it rains), he is going to remove it and trim up the crab apple for $750!
Lynz just came over and we are going to hang out for a bit before my doctor's appointment tonight, they are going to check the cast to see if it is really too big or not. If it's too big they will have to remove it and re-cast it.
Over the next few days I will be going through my books and donating bunches of them to the library. Also, does anyone want Laser Discs? If not I will be dropping them either at the Salvation Army or into the circular file..
Somehow I keep getting more and more connected this friggin web.. Figure it's about time I took my section of the tubes..
I just created a youtube page and a flikr page. I posted 8 videos from Japan on my youtube page today. I will continue to add new videos I take with Camera Phone as I take cool things worth sharing. I may, depending on how bored I get, add older videos there too.. Don't worry, if I do I will probably make some sort of mention to it here.
I wanted to upload two pics from Great Big Sea and decided they shouldn't go in my japan pics link because they are not from Japan. So, now I have a Flikr site so I can upload pics that I want to share. As with my youtube page, I may go back and update that site with some older pics. Yes, I'm sure I will mention that here too..
The links are in my "Random Links" section...
Happy viewing.. :)
---- Communal Dinner tonight.. I am making rice balls for everyone's enjoyment, there will be three kinds tonight (tuna, shrimp and mushroom). I'll take a picture of them and post it tomorrow.. :)
Did I mention how much I like my MicroSD to USB adapter? I have this little adapter that's made by SanDisk, it was like $10 at the Verizon Store and it makes transferring pictures from my phone easy which means I can do it on a regular basis instead of once in a blue moon.
---Diversion of the Day
---Thought of the Day It's 10:15 and I'm shocked that CNN has no results up yet.. Maybe this year they will be responsible about posting results? Wanna bet they call East Coast states by 1pm.. I really wish we had a media blackout today. It's gotta suck to be getting out of work in CA and finding out that your vote does not count because one candidate already won so many states. This thought of course brings me back to the rant about our Primary election system.. Why in the name of fuck do they not hold all primaries on the same day! Let everyone have an equal chance to vote for the candidates they want!
