BCGC = OK

Well, I did partake of a Bacon Cheddar Gordita Crunch. It was OK. It would have been better had I eaten it the second I pulled away from the drive thru. However, there was a 10 minute gap in there... and by that time the cheese sauce on the outside soaked into the crunchy taco shell... so it wasn't very crunchy. The bacon was smoky.

I think that the Bacon Cheeseburger Burrito was much better.

=-=-=-=

Amazingly enough this Christmas I did NOT get a Dilbert calendar. So I went to the mall at lunch. I never did find the usual calendar shop that sits in the middle of the mall walkway. I went to Waldenbooks, but they didn't have Dilbert. I covered the entire bottom of the mall and then moved upstairs. I was pretty much to the end of the mall and was thinking 'awww man... no Dilbert.' But then there was a Carlton Cards store and I decided to go in on a guess. I got lucky and Carlton Cards had the Dilbert page-a-day calendars, so I picked one up for 50% off. It's even in color this year, which is awesome! Historically they have always been black and white.

I also got some kick ass Christmas cards for 90% off. So I picked 20 nice foil ones for 2 bucks and 28 nice glittery ones for a buck sixty. That was awesome. If the wrapping paper was 90%, I would have got some of that as well... but it was only 75% off and we still have oodles of wrapping paper that we picked out last year.

=-=-=-=-=-=

Oh... speaking of wrapping paper, we finally ran out of the Batman Begins wrapping paper that picked up a few years back. I usually pick up one roll of just the most gawd awful wrapping paper and then use that to wrap Maryann's gifts cause, well, I find it to be funny. :) Last year I picked up a ginormous roll of Transformers Optimus Prime wrapping paper... so I started using that this year. It looks like this:


If the Mrs and I get out for the post-xmas sales this year, I'll have to check out the ugly paper again.

And very quickly, the whole ugly paper thank started probably the year I met M. I went to Target after the holidays and they had wrapping paper like 75 ot 90 percent off. There was this one roll of like 250 ft or something insane like that which had a partridge in a pear tree. It was horrible looking... and I love it. A big honkin bird sitting on a twig. It was great. It took forever to use it up. Then we went to Garden Ridge the following year and we decided to always pick up one roll of ugly paper. You know, the one with demented blury santa that is printed on really daark blue paper. :-P It's been tradition ever since. :) I guess technically we get two rolls of ugly paper. One which is traditional and ugly and then another which is capitalistic advertising ugly.

=-=-=-=

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!! May 2009 be a little less stressful and bring you loads of happiness. :)

BCGC

Man... that new Bacon Cheddar Gordita Crunch from Taco Bell looks TAAAASTY!!!



I think I'll get one for lunch today.

heh ... martians

I found the MST3K version of one of the best Christmas movies ever!

I give you... the full episode of 'Santa Claus Conquers The Martians' from MST3K. Enjoy!

better

Well, everyone in the house is... for the most part... better now. Thank goodness. No one wants to go into the holidays sick.

Not much else going on. We got a new stereo for the living room. My parents gave me some money on my birthday to buy a new stereo. The old one was starting to become more and more tempermental. Most CD-Rs wouldn't play. In fact most regular Cds wouldn't play. It would just kinda skip over them as if there wasn't a disc in there one day and then the next it would work. It was a big pain in the butt. So, I got a new one from Wal-Mart. It's a Sony. And it doesn't have a cassette player. I think this is the first stereo I've bought that doesn't have a cassette. I don't use it that often, I know. But, since my car doesn't have a CD player, I actually used the old stereo the other day to dub off an album or two to cassette. No loss though, I have 2 boom boxes downstairs that I think can perform that function as well. I haven't tried yet, but I'm guessing that they should be able to do that.

Other than that, nothing else is new.

I wish everyone out there safe travels and a happy holiday!

barf

That's what I was doing yesterday. The whole family has been sick a week. And it sucks. Luckily, for at least me and the Mrs it was a 24 hour bug. She was sick on Sunday, so I was going to take a 1/2 day to help out.... however then I woke up on Monday and hurled. That sucked. And by that time she felt better, so I guess that part didn't suck.

So, we're all slowly getting back to health. Just thought you might like to know.

I laughed.

I laughed when I looked at the latest Billboard Top 200 results for this week.

In case you were living under a rock, Guns R Roses finally released the long awaited (by some) Chinese Democracy album.

And the results are in:
#1 this week: Kanye West's new album '808s and Heartbreak'. Wait... what? That can't be right. Axl Rose spent some 15 years and 13 million (or more) on the masterpiece called Chinese Democracy. Oh well, I'm sure it came in second...

#2 this week: Taylor Swift - Fearless. What? This album has been on the charts for 3 weeks now. Something must be amiss here. There's no way that a few thousand country fans can out buy all the metalheads and hard rock boyz in the world.

#3 this week: Guns n Roses - Chinese Democracy. Ha!

So... yeah... I find it to be funny. All this hype and pfffffffffft it lets out a puff of stanky air. Granted, #3 isn't that bad. I'm sure I would have loved it if Devilcake's 'I Can't Believe It's Not Satan' album debuted at #3. Or in the course of 5 years sold as many albums as the new GnR sold in its first week, hell, even in its first day. Or if the album even showed up in the Billboard at all. :P

So, good for you Axl for finally getting out this long awaited (by some) album. Maybe next week will prove to be better and you'll outsell a loud-mouthed auto-tuned hip hop singer and an 18 year old hotttttttie country singer and everyone else who plans on putting out a new album next week. Maybe next week you will be number one. For the sake of your record label who is probably seething at the measly 260k albums that were sold, I hope you do better. But you can count on one fewer this week and probably for the rest of your life because I have no intention of buying this album. And I know you don't care, so you don't have to let me know that. Though, if you want to go on a tear of song writing like you did for Use Your Illusion I & II and create a triple album called 'Darrin Can Bite Me - Vols. 1, 2 and 3', then be my guest. I quite enjoyed the Use Your Illusion albums. Of course, if you take another 15 years to put it out, I and everyone else will probably lose interest.

So, sorry about your luck Axl on not getting the number 1 spot on Billboard. I myself was quite surprised. I'm hoping that your tour goes much better. Maybe a good 3 year long tour will do you some good. Just make sure that you show up for at least 98% of them and of those 98% make sure at least 95% of you play the entire concert and not walk off the stage 4 songs in because the sound is bad or it's too hot in the venue or your pinky finger on your left hand hurts. Do that, and you should see a pile of cash. Of course, the record label's going to want to recoup the 13 million they invested in Chinese Democracy, so don't plan on seeing a cent for at least the first year. Though, you might be been shrewd enough to fix your contract so that they can't touch your tour profits. If you were that smart, then kudos to you Axl. No, seriously, if you were that smart, good for you... because while I might think your a bit on the nutty side, I also know that over the past 80 years that record labels have been hosing artists by fronting them money, then charging them for studio time and god knows what else, then charging 15 bucks for an album that costs 5 cents to make... maybe a dollar per if you take into consideration advertising ... anyways... they walk away with liek 10 bucks per album and give artists something like 10 cents or something stupid like that.

Ok, I'm going off on a tangent here. Badly even since i have no fact to back up any of that shit above. Let's get back on track here.

At least, in the end of this whole Chinese Democracy hype, I'll get a free Dr. Pepper. It will be tasty.

The end.

Mystery Flavor

I just had a 'Mystery Flavor' Dum Dum lollipop which was a combination of Bubble Gum and Butterscotch. Most time you get combinations that are fairly similar (like grape and cherry, or watermelon and strawberry) but I knew this one was special because it was pink on top and kinda tan-ish on the bottom. Overall, it didn't taste that bad, really.

In case you were wondering, here's information on the wonderment of the Mystery Flavor

howdy

Well, the new kiddo is around a week old now. Wish everyone would get on the same schedule though. Oooof. I think my wife got like 2 hours of sleep yesterday. I got about 5... which normally would be fine... if it were 5 continuous hours. But I wouldn't trade all of this tiredness for anything in the world since da baby boy is so cute.

I think 'm heading to the record show this weekend for giggles. I haven't been to one since 2006. I took Maryann with me, however she was pregnant with lil N and, well, the smell of the old musty records (and a few of the record collectors as well) got to her, so she ended up waiting for me in the car. It was a bit crowded since they weren't in the Vet Memorial and instead in some shrine rec area or something like that. I remember almost buying a DVD of a bunch of garage band / psychedelic videos. There was also some TV series that I half contemplated buying as well. It was some TV show that doesn't have a formal release and I'm not even sure it was a series I had ever watched. I guess I liked the way the case art was done or something. 'Medical Center - The full series'? Sure! Why not! The pictures look good.

Speaking of Medical Center, I was dorking around on a few of the ol' LP blogs last night and ran into into a rip of a record by Chad Everett called 'Chad'.

Why is this important? Well, a long long time ago, at the local homecoming fair there were games and rides and whatnot. One of the games was the cork gun game where you have to knock over targets. I remember playing this game and actually knocked over enough to get a prize. And my prize was ... this record. I had no idea what it was at the time. If I remember correctly, he guy running the stand had all sorts of 'cool' records on display and this what that I got. It was probably around... oh... 1980 something when I won this record which was recorded in 1976. I remember being really ticked off because this was NOT a cool record in my opinion. So, I guess now I'll finally get to listen to this piece of work and judge for myself with a more 'seasoned' ear and see how good it is.

Meme off

I don't know how to pronounce 'meme'. I just say mee mee. I don't know why or if this is even correct. Toddeus filled this one out and it was bizarre enough after the first 5 questions that I figured I'd have a go at this one.

1. Do you like blue cheese?
You know it. But sometimes I prefer bleu cheese. Of note, if you are eating semi-edible hamburgers (say, at the OSU commons) adding a ton of blue cheese makes it taste awesome.

2. Have you ever smoked heroin?
Um... no.

3. Do you own a gun?
No sirree bob. Thought about it for a while, but decided against it in the end. I have fired several guns though and that kinda made my mind up. It was interesting but not my cup o tea.

4. What flavor do you add to your drink at Sonic?
I usually just get a Dr. Pepper, straight. I haven't had one of their icy drinks... yet. Maybe some day when I'm playing hooky during the 2 - 4pm half price special they always have.

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments?
Nope. I usually register a fairly low heartrate which always amuses me.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?
I agree with Todd: hot dogs awesome, even those weird little mini corn dogs appetizers.

7. Favorite Christmas movie?
C'mon... Is there anything other than 'A Christmas Story'. I am so happy that TBS continues to have the 24 hour marathon.

Um.. 8 through 12 anyone? I looked and found one where the first 7 were the same and then had 8 through 12 but was missing 13 and question 13 was 15. So I don't know WTF is up with that. Did find one where 13 matched up so I'll go with that version.

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Water. I don't like boiled leaves or twigs.

9. Can you do push ups!?
Sure. Just don't ask me to do more than 10. :P

10. What's your favorite piece of jewelry?
My wedding ring. It's also the only piece of jewelry I really wear.

11. Favorite hobby?
Listening to music. Unless of course eating food can be considered a hobby. Food is good.

12. Do you have A.D.D.?
I have no been professionally diagnosed. I don't think I do, but what do I know.

13. What is one trait you hate about yourself?
My temper. It's a bit... explosive at times.

14. Middle name?
Michael.

15. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment.
- I hope the batter doesn't die on the laptop before the wife gets to check her mail
- I should have been watching Iron Chef more closely. It was battle cheddar chesse
- Work tomorrow is not gonig to be fun.

16. Name 3 things you bought yesterday.
Yesterday? I bought a laundry basket, some frankenberry cereal and some infant drink

I'm filling in the missing question 17 from a different meme since the one I pulled 8 through twelve from has 17 as 'current worry'. Actually... most other memes have question 18 as 'three things your regularily drink... so I'm filling in with that. I hate it when people mess up the questions to a meme in order to get dirt on one of their friends. I'm not accusing any of MY friends, I'm talking about whoever yanked out the questions from this one and added who knows what.

17. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink?
1. water, 2. diet dr. pepper 3. milk

18. Current worry...
That I won't be able to make ends meet when the lil one shows up and this economy officially goes into the shitter.

19. Current hate right now?
The fact that I obsess about money and that it ruins my ability to enjoy anything at all.

20. Favorite place to be?
At home.

21. Where would you like to go?
Vietnam. My friend justgot back from his honeymoon there and the pictures are beautiful.

22. Name three people who will complete this?
Todd (where I yanked it from), me... and Ian (who I think was the person who started all of this. Funny that Todd said I would finish it and I didn't even read that question before starting this. :-P

23. Name three people you would like to complete this?
I don't wanna. And it's not likely that three other people will complete this.

24. Shirt you are wearing?
Black Ben Folds t-shirt from the 2005 tour, with Ben Lee and Rufus Wainwright (sp?)

25. What year would you go back in time to?
2002. Things for the most part were really good then. Band was doing well. Met my wife. Etc.

26. Can you whistle?
You know it. I can even sound like a referee's whistle.

27. Favorite color?
Blue

28. Would you be a pirate?
Um... no. Wouldn't be clean. Too many people scheming to kill me and take my ship

29. Favorite girl's name?
Sarah Sylvia Cynthia Stout. :P

30. Favorite boy's name?
Shel Silverstien :P :P

31. Last thing you dreamed about?
I was at a garage sale (for some gamer dude) in the middle of a city. It started raining, so me and someone else grabbed the money and whatever other video game collectables we could. We ran into this college dorm looking for the dude. We finally found him and he was like 'oh, thanks'. We went back outside and the rain had stopped and the gamer dude was with us. The guy running the sale said 'don't worry Billy, we got all of it out of the rain for you. So I ran up to the sale dude, got up in his face and said that he was a liar as I help up several game cartriges which water started pouring out of them.

32. What's in your pocket right now?
Nothing.

33. Last person that made you laugh?
My wife.

34. Best Halloween costume?
King Diamond circa 2003 >:)

35. Worst injury you've ever had?
Shreaded tendons on my right ankle

36. Do you like where you live?
Yeah. I like C-bus. My house on the other hand it a bit small for a family of four.

37. How many TVs do you have in your house?
3. Two of which are hooked up.

38. Who is your loudest friend?
I think Todd wins this one. :)

39. How many dogs do you have?
zero.

40. Does someone have a crush on you?
I steal Todd's answer: Is it a crush if they're married to you?

41. What is your favorite book?
Umm... Probably 'Bootleg: the other recording industry. It's the only book I've ever read twice.

42. What is your favorite candy?
Hmm... that's a hard one. Um... Today, I'll say... the Zero bar. Mmm... white chocolate with chocolate nougat.

43. Favorite Sports Team ?
Go Buckeyes!!!

44. Favorite Sport?
To play? Beach volleyball To watch? Go Buckeyes!!!

45. What were you doing 12 AM last night?
That's none of your business. >:-)

46. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up?
That was a messed up dream (see question 31)

A little bit of this... a little bit of that.

Hmm... where to start... I had a whole bunch of stuff lined up in my head... and now... *poof*... they are gone.

Well, last weekend the family got to go to Leed's Farm. It was a lot of fun. The little one got to go down some slides, play in the hay, play in a 'corn' box (think sand box, but filled with corn instead). I even took the little one a lap or two around a race track in a pedalled go kart. We even met up with the White's there by coincidence and had lunch together which was nice since we haven't see them in forever. The bonus was getting to see their new little one.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Last Friday, I took the Vibe back to the dealership. It was a sad day. I really liked that little car. It got great gas mileage. I hauled all sorts of stuff in that thing. 20 bags of mulch? No problem. Haul the drums to a gig? Did that several times. 300 lbs of rocks? Sure, why not, though not recommended for long hauls.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

This Friday, on the other hand, I had to take the 01 Grand Prix to the same dealership. I nearly didn't get out of the parking lot at work because the battery was dead. Boo. So we took the GP in. I could have just dropped another battery in, but I wanted to make sure that the alternator wasn't toast. As we were leaving, we saw the Vibe in the used car lot. My wife wife felt bad seeing it sitting there, lonely. But it's okay. Good memories in that car. I gave it back to them with only 31k miles on it when it was a 48k lease. It'll make a great car for some high school or college student. I hope they enjoy it as much as I did. :)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Took the little one to urgent care yesterday, which is no fun. She's been battling boogers for quite a while and when some of the boogers started being bloody, enough was enough so we took her in. But, no worries, everything is okay. It's just what it sounds like. A cold. I have to say, though, I take no joy in having to hold my daughter's head and arms at the same time while the doctor is trying to look in her mouth, ears and nose. But she's a trooper and settles down very quickly.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

What else? I'm sure there is something else. I passed the 20k mark on the Music Counter. But that happened a while ago.

I can't think of them at the moment, so this information will have to suffice for now.

Hope your weekends have been good to you. Mine have been too short as of late. But that's the way it goes I guess.

WE GOT THE POWER!!!

No, I'm not singing that Lizzy Borden tune by the same name... actually, yes I am... because we have got the power. Or, well, we have power now. Yay!

Mr. Zurin says 'More power!'

... from the infamous blimp scene in "A View To A Kill", one of my favorite James Bond movies... mainly cause it is so bad and because Christopher Walken is in it (and mutters that line).

Actually, right now _any_ power would be nice. I'm sure Ian has it good cause he's over at his lady's house. Todd and Tom are probably a-ok 'cause I heard Westerville was spared. Kevin is one of the peachy keen few in Dublin who still have power. I, on the other hand, do not have power. Booo! MORE POWER!!! DO IT!!!

AS for the rest of the family, for how, we're doing okay. There are still places that have power, and those places have food. So that's fine. Our food in the fridge and freezer are probably already toast. And that's fine too. If I had half a cow in there like some families do, then maybe I'd make an effort to get it out of there and save it. But it amounts, for the most part to: 4 frozen (or unfrozen) pizzas, 5 lbs of ground beef, 1 bag of chicken breasts, 1 box of egg rolls (I'll miss those :( ) and various other left overs. That's pretty much it in the freezer. And the fridge had been mostly cleared out recently, so all that was really in there was some ketchup and whatnot. Half a gallon of milk. Nothing for me really to worry about. It's just gone (or soon to be gone) and that's how it goes. Places still have power. Places still have food. And tap water is just fine.

Thus far, the temperature in the house hasn't been an issue yet. It was quite nice last night, really. Once the hurricane like winds were over, there was a nice breeze that would go through the house and keep things cooled down to a respectable level.

So, for all of you viewers out there... we're doing okay. I know each and everyone of you would help with whatever if we asked, that just goes without saying cause all my friends are wonderful people. Who knows, we might call you tonight to see if you want to do dinner. Ya never know. ;-) But for now, we're just playing it by ear and doing what we can.

In other news, I was pretty much sick all last week to boot. From Tuesday evening through Saturday evening, I was dealing with my total body aching at every joint and having my fever spike and sending me into chills (even when standing in a warm shower) about... oh ... everything 2 or 3 hours. Not alot of congestion to speak of thank goodness, just an annoying 'dry' cough with not much behind it. It was alot of fun. But I'm mostly better now. Still coughing a little bit, but that's about it.

So, see? All's good. Now, let's have a few extra seconds of silence to pray that AEP gets this whole mess figured out quickly so 300, 500 or however many hundreds of thousands of people can get back to doing there thang.

Nectarines are swell... and other crap

Story #1: Nectarines are swell
Sunday afternoon my wife peeled and cut up a nectarine, but for some reason she didn't like the taste. Seemed fine to me, so I finished it off. Of course, about an hour later my throat was swelling. Not swelling shut, but it's like the soft palette gets inflamed or something. This is the problem I have with apples as well. I can eat apple sauce and apple pie, but give me a raw apple (usually with the skin still on) and my throat gets all kerfluged. It makes it uncomfortable to swallow food and it sucks. And depending on how much I eat, it can either take a hour for the swelling to go down or a day. Well, I ate an entire nectarine, so it took about 24 hours for it not to feel like I was swallowing fine sandpaper.

I think it's something that they spray on the fruit to fight off bugs and disease. I told my boss about it yesterday in passing and he said 'yeah, about 10 years ago the same thing started to happen to me. Unless the fruit is peeled, my throat gets all swollen. The interesting part about this conversation, is this is about the same time I started having problems. I remember eating an apple at work around 1998 or 1999. I didn't wash it (cause I was a stupid bachelor) and the next thing I knew my throat was nearly swollen shut. I could still breathe fine but swallowing food took effort. That lasted about 2 days that first time.

The interesting thing about this is that my wife had peeled the nectarine. However, the skin of an apple and nectarine are much different. Nectarine skin is much more porous, so I'm guessing whatever insecticide they use gets absorbed by the fruit itself. Just the though of having my daughter eat that crap scares me a bit. Guess we'll be getting organic apples and nectarines from now one since organic fruits don't usually get sprayed with stuff like that.

Story #2: Other crap...
So, Sunday morning we hopped into the van and were heading off to Waffle House because it sounded REALLY tasty. So we backed out of the van. That's when I noticed the toilet paper hanging off my car. I figured it was some teenage boneheads. I wanted to make sure that they hadn't done anything else to the car so I got out. Once I got around to the driver side that's when I saw it... smeared on the windows. Yes. It was poop. I don't know what kinda poop. Might have been doggie poop, but I've cleaned up after dogs before and, um... it didn't smell like this. So went to the faucet and put some water on the toilet paper and proceeded to clean off said crap. Some of it had dried pretty good, so it took some scrubbin' to get it all off.

I looked around and all the other cars that were out on the street (and in my neighborhood, that is about every freakin' house) and they all seemed to be fine. Just mine. And that makes this just weird. We pretty much keep to ourselves, so it bugs me that this happened. I have the feeling that my years is a 'through way' between my neighborhood and the 2 different neighborhoods which lie in my backyard. We don't have a fence like most of our neighbors, so it's probably just an easy place to cross.

But, anyway, it also bugs me because there have been several acts of weirdness that happen at my house. In the past 5 years, the following have weird things have occurred:
1) One day when taking out the trash I noticed a billfold in my big city trashcan that sits outside. It looked fairly new. I figured Maryann had it and didn't want it so she threw it away. Mine was getting crappy, so I figured waste not want not. So I opened it up and noticed it wasn't new. It had a persons license, college ID, and various other things. I asked a couple of neighbors if they knew who the person was. Turns out it was one of the kids down the street. Dumb ass had left it in his car, which was likely unlocked. He had just gotten his first paycheck and the silly fool had cashed it. Of course, the money was gone. But at least he got his library card back. But why did they pick MY trashcan. It's not like there aren't other trashcans sitting outside in my neighborhood.

2) Another time I noticed that there was a purse laying in the street. Turns out it was a small Coach purse. It was empty with the exception of a scrap of paper which had someone's work schedule on it. I asked several neighbors but it didn't belong to any of them. Again, why dump it outside of my house. My wife tried taking it to Plato's Closet thinking we'd get a few buck out of it cause it was a Coach purse. They wouldn't take it cause they said 'There are alot of counterfeits out there'. Whatever. This was the real deal with a serial number and everything. We ended up giving to her niece. Who knows if she still has it.

3) One day when I was leaving for work I noticed a red duffel back sitting by my garage. It had a bunch of baseball equipment in it: a baseball bat and catcher's gear. I thought maybe some kid dropped it when goofing off with his friends. So I left it in the front year, assuming that they'd pick it up that morning or when they came home from school. I got back from work and it was still there. Again, why did someone drop this random thing in MY yard. Anyways, I did find out that it belonged so some Catholic School. I found info on the school website and tried contacting the principal, athletic director and the baseball coach. The principal and AD never did contact me. But, about 2 hours after I sent the email I did hear from the baseball coach. He said he said, given the color of the shin guards he had a good idea of who's it was, but had some errands to run so he'd call me later and arrange a time to meet up and he could have the school's equipment back. Two months and several emails later, he finally got back in touch with me. He said he lost the original email or something. He had some errands to run that weekend and said he could probably meet up so I could give him the equipment. And of course, I didn't hear from him. After about 8 months of trying to get the equipment to him, I gave up. The wife was tired of tripping over it in the garage, so we gave it to her nephew. He's a big guy, and the stuff was seemingly for a small catcher, so I have no idea what he did with the stuff. At least the bat was nice. Maybe he used that. *shrug*

So, yeah... that's some weird stuff. That's all I can think of at the moment.

Random Crap

Here's a post for Ian since he wanted someone to do some blogging....

In the great MP3 listen-a-thon, I just finished up the Rolling Stones MP3 DVD. After 50 hours of the Stones (okay, 49 hours, 59 minutes and 39 seconds), I think I get the whole thing. They really have consistently put out decent stuff. The early shows are pretty darn good and their later ones are fairly decent as well. So, yeah, I get it. I still won't go out of my way to listen to them or see one of their concerts, but I guess the whole hoopla of it all.

As I mentioned to Ian already in email, I've discovered that the the beginning of 'Sacrificial Leg of Lamb' (one of my Devilcake contributions) is very close to the beginning of Dokken's 'Heaven Sent'. That's kinda funny and totally not done on purpose.

My boss gave me a spare MSDN folder so I can now store my sleeves in a nice cloth folder. It's pretty sweet.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

I know that they aren't real onion rings, but I really really really like those onio whatevers that they serve at Burger King. It's probably more because of the Zesty dipping sauce that comes with them.

I almost wrote another Devilcake songs called 'Those aren't onion rings, they're onion things' in ode them. But I didn't.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Work's been busy as all get out. If it's not one thing, it's another. I can't seem to catch up or keep up or whatever. *shrug* I guess sitting here writing a blog entry doesn't help my case any, does it?

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

By the way, Woodstock had it's 39th anniversary last Friday. I didn't even bother updating my web page. *shrug* It's not like I was going to update all the links anyways.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

I've been watching lots of Olympics. I like watching this stuff, seeing people at the top of their game. I did track n field and swimming. I even watched the entire marathon... though I was thinking that they were gonna cut in on the action to show some other sports... but nope... it was 2 1/2 hours of the marathon and that was it. And I watched all of it. I'm glad that the Romainian woman won. It was a gutsy move that has previously caused her to crash and burn, but this time it actually worked. So... good for her.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The Mrs. and I watched Enchanted last night. I had a love / hate going on with that movie. Some parts it was nice, other parts just annoyed the hell out of me. Overall, it was a decent movie, but I'm glad I didn't have to pay for it (got it free from the library).

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

I finished up the book "I Am Jackie Chan" the other night. I ripped through that book fairly fast. I got it for a dollar at Half Price Books. I dug the book a bunch and it made me want to see if the library has any copies of any of the Police Story movies. There was one Jackie Chan movie which involved a fight in a warehouse where these guys were throwing these little ball things that would explode on impact. That part was sweet... but I have no idea if it was from one of the Police Story movies or not. I'm hoping I can find that movie again. (I just went out and reserved 4 Jackie Chan movies.... yay!)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

And that's all for now, y'all. Rock on! Especially to Todd who's (no lie) heading off to Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp for the next five days and getting to play shows in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles (and one other California place that I can think of at the moment).

Fair going

Last night I came home and the wife said 'Get changed! We're going to the fair!' And who am I to argue with the potential of being able to eat tons of fried things.

When we got there and parked, we couldn't help but notice we were literally in the same spot where we were last year. At worst, we were maybe one row forward or back from last years spot. On the plus side, the police office helping us park didn't tell my wife to 'park more normally'. :) As we were loading the car, we noticed that it appears that the copy had us drive over a beer bottle. Didn't think much of it. Of course, I just got a call from the wife and the 'tire' light came on... so we probably have to get the tire patched. And there were only 300 miles on that tire. *sigh*... but no matter.. on with the story.

We walked the 5 miles to the front gate (okay, that's an exageration). Got to the gate and saw the sign that said that it was $10 per person. However, when I paid, it was only $10 for both of us to get in since there was a special. Yee haw!

So we got into the fair and started scoping out the food. I started looking for my favorite carnival food fo all time... the Giant Texas Pork Tenderloin sandwich. I quickly found that and had them load it up with pickles. We walked a bit farther and the wife got a hot dog from Schmidt's stand with kraut and some waffle fries. It was all very very very tasty. I loves me some giant tenderloin with tons o pickles.

Then we talked around some more. We got to see the butter cow and the giant butter Ohio Mr. Rushmore with the heads of all the U.S. presidents that came from Ohio.

After that we went to the little birthing booth thing they have there. They usually have an incubator with some eggs and then a couple pregnant cows. I got to pet a cow, but the little one wasn't so sure about this big honkin' animal with a running nose, so she was interest and said 'moooo!' but wouldn't touch it. So... um... yeah.

Then we went to the barn with chickens and turkeys and ducks and rabbits and geese. The little one enjoyed that a bunch! She was saying quack and gobble gobble and cockadoodledoo. It was all very cute.

By then it was about 7:30pm and the lil one was showing signs of fading, so we trekked back to the front of the fair. Of course, before we left we had to get a funnel cake... another wonderful staple and tradition of going to the fair. It was very tasty with all it's powdered sugary goodness.

And then we went home.

It was fun. I would have been sad had we missed going.

Nice weekend

Just wanted to say I had a nice weekend with my wife. My folks came into town and watched lil N while we went out on the town for a couple of days. Let's see, Saturday we first went to Easton and ate at Brio. I had some chicken risotto with broccoli thing. It was rich and tasty. But I have to say, I really really liked the little crispy bread things that they brought to the table with the regular bread. It was sprinkled with parmesean cheese and some herbs. Tasty Tasty! Then we walked around and shopped buying clothes n stuff for the new one. Then we went and saw Kung Fu Panda. It was pretty good. I wasn't disappointed like I was when I saw Madagascar (which of course, they are making a sequel of). Then we left there and did some more shopping around. We ate dinner at... um... Red Robin. It was tasty. I had the... um.. Bonzai burger. It had grilled pineapple and a teriakki sauce over it... it was TAAAASTY!!! Very good. Then we went to Linens n Things which is going out of business in Columbus. We'd been talking about redoing the decor in the master bedroom. We ended up finding a bed in a bag which contained like 17 pc (quilt, 2 bed sheet sets, the skirt, 2 sham covers and 2 euro (aka square) sham covers. It was the last one of that style and lucky us it was a Queen. Then we found some curtains to match at $15 each so we bought 3 panels. If you haven't had to buy curtains in a while, $15 a panel is cheeeeeep!

Then we headed off to the hotel. We stayed at the Sheraton behind the theater at Crosswoods. It was nice. Had both a bedroom and a little living room. Both areas had 35in flat panel TVs. Very nice.

The next morning, we got up and ate breakfast at Waffle House and it was uber good. I got the All AMerican which has 2 eggs, 2 sausage patties, hashbrowns, 2 slices of toast and a waffle. I got my eggs over easy... but they accidentally broke one of the yolks when they put it on my plate... so they made me two more eggs. So I got 4 eggs!!! It was awesome! Then shopped around some more.

Then for lunch we went to Pei Wei (as I pronouce it, Peeeee Weeeee... even though it's actually pronouced 'pay way'). Pei Wei is the fast food version of PF Chang's. Now, in the past, I ripped on Pei Wei because the price imo was too high (entre's are around 7 bucks. I figured I could get the same thing at PF's and a little bit warmer and bigger for like $12. Well, then PFs recently got rid of my favorite diskh and jacked up their prices as well. Lucky for me, the Dan Dan Noodles were a good replacement dish. And they have that as Pei Wei as well. And I have to say, that the serving size at Pei Wei was the same (if not bigger) than when I last went to PFs and it cost about 7 bucks less. So, Pei Wei is now on the 'good' list.

We finally reutrned home around 4pm on Sunday. It was nice to spend some time with my wife and not have to worry about the little one getting tired or screaming or crying or whining or getting into things and all the other things that normal kids do.

But, I missed lil N so I was glad to be back home too.

Whew!

Yesterday was a busy one for me.

Got up bright and early, but mainly because my daughter still thinks that 6am is a good time to get up. The first order of business was steam cleaning the carpets. I had t fiddle with it a bit this time because the brushes weren't turning around. They are air driven, so it something isn't quite right... no brushes. I checked what the told me in the manual but that didn't seem to do anything. Went online where I found out that they were air driven. Tried a couple more things. A few swift kicks (not based on a recommendation from online help) and then they started up again. I forget how long that took. I think a couple of hours. One shampoo and then 2 or 3 rinse cycles.

M and N took a nap around 11am I think. Me? I sat on the carpet with a pair of scissors for an hour. Why? Well, underneath the window it appeared as if someone had tried to clean the baseboards with a bleach based product, so the carpet was... um... bleached out. When I looked at it more closely the other day, I noticed that it was just the very top that was bleached. So, for about an hour I sat down with a pair of scissors and slowly chopped off the very top of the carpet in the affected area. Seems simple enough, but since it was right against the baseboard, you couldn't take out any big sections. It was all about using the very tip of the scissors, practically going at 2 or 3 strands of carpet at a time. When Maryann woke up I told her of my deed and she said she didn't even notice the bleached spot I was talking about. Oh well. I did and now I'm much happier about it.

Around 3pm the carpet finally was dry enough for me to start putting together the long 6 drawer chest. The last one I did was a tall 5 drawer dresser. I knew this one would be a little more complex simply because you got the center divider. At least this time most of the pieces were marked and those that weren't I quickly identified since I had put together the other one only a week ago so I was familiar with all the pieces. So, after four hours, at 7pm I was finally done. (There was a small break in there for me to eat pizza, but probably only 1/2 hour at the most.)

After it was done Maryann wanted to see what it would look like against a certain wall. Well, in order to see what the dresser was going to look like, you kinda need to crib. Sooooo... I went downstairs and grabbed all of the pieces and proceeded to put that together with the help of my wonder wife who had to decipher her dad's instructions. Wasn't too bad really. There actually wasn't that much to do, a few screws here and there and voila... crib!

So once that was done, then I decided well, if I have the dresser _and_ crib done, I might as well tackle the closet. The previous weekend (I think), I had pulled out the ancient 1970's carpet and the tack board. The wife helped me out by sweeping the space during the week sometime. We had bought some carpet square on the cheap at Big Lots last weekend, so I set about measuring and figuring out my game plan. So I measured and cut and did all that as well. That took probably another hour. So, I think by now it was either 9 or 10pm. It's all a big blur. While we got them on clearance, I have to say, the carpet tiles did really well. The glue was very sticky and that it is a good thing. It'll last a little while I think... as long as I don't tear it up trying to get the tall dresser back into the closet.

After all that, I finally got to sit down, eat some wonderful chocolate peanut butter chip cookies, drink some milk and watch the neighbor's shooting off some fireworks.

Whew! Thank goodness all of that is done. All that is really left is decorating the room with pictures and getting all the furniture into it's (hopefully) final placement.

Painting done... yay!

I managed to get one coat o purple done on Thursday and then another coat done Friday night. On Saturday morning the Mrs and lil N went to a play date, so I took up all the painters tape. Overall, I'm happy with how it came out. There were only a few spots that I wish I could have done better, but oh well, unless you're looking to nit pick, it looks great. :)

We removed the closet door since it is a pinching hazard. So, once the Mrs got back home, we determined where the curtain for the closet needed to be. After that, I went out and picked up a couple of outlet covers, a white vent cover and a white tension rod. Two, actually, but one wasn't going to work because 1) it looked almost like a light blue and two it wasn't a tension rod, but an adjustable rod but it was expecting the installer to screw it into the wall, which I wasn't doing to do. Actually, the wife had picked up a closet rod hanger, so in fact, the tension rod won't have any tension on it at all. I made a slight boo boo on the paint when I actually applied and then took away the tension rod since the paint hadn't completely set. The paint tried to stick to the little rubber ends. Oh well. The paint actually stayed in place because I noticed before I yanked it away from the wall.

Oh, I also replaced all the outlets and switches with white ones since the original ones were the cream color, but the trim and the furniture is white... hence why I needed to go get outlet covers. I also put back up the blinds and the curtain rods on Saturday.

Yesterday (Sunday), we went out ad found some self adhesive carpet squares to replace the carpet that was in the closet. I yanked out all the tack board. I'm pretty sure that the carpet in there was the original from 1979 when the house was built since there were no other holes in the sub floor from the tack board or from the 'padding' that they had stapled onto the floor.

I also put together the tall chest of drawers. That took me about and hour and a half. Not bad considering that over half of the pieces weren't marked. Luckily, Sauder is very good with their parts inventory, even showing all of the individual holes in each piece of wood, which is a saving grace when you don't have the little stickers on them.

So, now I need to steam clean the carpet and then I can put together the long chest of drawers and, well, that'll be it with the exception of putting up pictures and figuring out if we're gonna put lil N in a crib, a toddler bed or a twin mattress on the floor.

I almost made the July date that I set for myself. Shoulda been done alot sooner, but I had a big gap between getting all the furniture moved out and just plain getting started.

Whole lotta music goin' on!

I recently finished up both the 2nd Elvis MP3 DVD as well as a Journey MP3 DVD.
This puts me just shy of 1100 hrs of music. Up on deck is a Rolling Stones MP3 DVD with just shy of 50 hrs of music (it's 49h 59m and 39s to be exact) and the last Elvis MP3 DVD clocking in at just under 25 hours. There's actually more on that DVD, however, it's a repeat of the RCA Elvis Collection which I listened to already earlier in the year, so I can spare myself another 30 hours of music that I've already heard before.

O'Charley's

I forgot to mention that when my friends came up from lil' ol Anna Ohio, that we went to O'Charley's. I got the Firecracker Burger Wrap. It was basically a hamburger cut in half with some lettuce and a spicy sauce wrapped in a ... um ... wrap. It wasn't very good. And it marked the second evening in a row where I got short changed on french fries. On Saturday my parents were in town and they stopped in and we went to Red Lobster. I got the Admiral's Feast. Their prices have changed btw. I swear it is about 4 dollars more for everything there. I remember the Admiral's Feast costing about 12.95 and I think it was 16.95. Anyhoo... they short changed me on fries there as well. I bet I had, no lie, like 30 fries. A very small handful. Probably the equiv of a small fry at McDs. Did I need more than that considering EVERYTHING on my plate was deep fried, probably not... but when I get a platter and my side of fries is miniscule, I tend to get peeved since I can take the rest home in a to-go box. Jerks. Red Lobster is getting one strike after the other. First, they stop doing the all-you-can-eat crab legs and now charging me $4 more for everything. Granted I might be able to give them a pass on the crab legs since they lost a TON of money on that. Some doofus didn't think they would have many takers when charging $22 for all you can eat crab legs. Big dummy. The reason most people don't get crab legs is that 1) they are expensive and 2) because you don't get much from it when you do get them. But if you make it UNLIMITED, people will gladly cram 3 lbs of crab legs down their gullet for $22. High class eatin' there! THey even give yo a bib so you can lick off all the little pieces that fly off! I need to visit Maine or something where I'm sure that all-you-can-eat crab legs places are a dime a dozen. I love crab legs... but i refuse to pay for them. At least I have that one time I got the all you can eat crab legs at Red Lobster. It was tasty.

Painter for hire

Spent much of this weekend painting my daughter's soon-to-be new room. I just want the thing done now. Originally I was going to wait for my sister and her husband to come up and paint... but then I thought 'I painted her first room, the nursery, so I should also paint her new room'. So M went to Cinci Friday and Saturday, so I got a late start on Friday due to procrastination... went to bed at like 1am... then worked a few hours on Saturday. Sucks when you have to wait like 3 or 4 hours between coats. Grr. So all I got done was putting on the primer and then painting the base boards. Once I get the the walls done, then things will move really fast since at that point it's just about putting together the crib and her dressers. I don't mind the sauder furniture stuff. They used to really really be a pain to put together, but they've made great advances, so it's pretty easy to do.

Had some friends from back home come up on Sunday. I don't think I had seen them since N was like 3 months old... so it's been a while. Their daughter is about a month older than N so they managed to amuse each other, though N was a little bit shy. She's been doing that alot as of late. That whole stranger anxiety thing is kicking in. By then end of the day though, she of course cried when they had to go. They just don't understand things like 'we'll see them again soon'.

I forgot to mention that my Canon SureShot A75 finally croaked on the CCD harness. There was a problem that affected a bazillion or so cameras back in 2005 (which was 1 year after I had originally bought mine). There was a piece which connected the CCD to something which wasn't manufactured correctly, so after a while, it would just stop working... aka, no more taking pictures. Well, I was taking a blizzard of photos of N the other day and then the screen went blank. I knew exactly what it was. I was concerned that Canon wouldn't fix it for free as they did back in 2005. I was also concerned that they would replace it with a new camera, which I really didn't want since I like the one I have now since it's fairly light and takes decent pictures and I know most of its tricks. But, it turned out they would fix my current one. When I finally sent it in, I was concerned that it was going to take them more than a month to fix it which wouldn't be in time for N b-day... but about a week later, they had it fixed and shipped it back. Works like I a champ. Thank you Canon for fixing a problem correctly.

I started a blog the other day to track what I'm eating since I've gained about 10 lbs and my pants are starting to not fit as well. Did you know that an Admiral's Feast at Red Lobster is 1060 calories. Neither did I. Egads. And those stupid tasty cheddar buiscuts are something like 230 cal eat. Realizing what one is eating sucks. But, if I have any hope of losing any weight... it is a necessary evil to understand what I am eating.


Um... not much else.

what in the world...

.. have i been up to lately. i honestly can't say really... but i'll make a half attempt:

* been sorta kinda not really getting lil N's big girl room ready. i really need to get it primed and painted cause then it's just a hop skip and jump before it's ready. oh ... i need to steam clean the carpets as well. oh.. the electrician came in and did his thing... so now the light switch actually controls the ceiling light. yay!

* i hung out with todd and ian last friday. it was all good. there were hot pork rinds digested. we watched 'the legend of billie jean' and some funny ass green wing. ok, assy mcgee wasn't good, but that was the only blemish. man, i hated that show. i'm glad it was only a 15 minute episode.

* went back home for b-days and early father's day last weekend. lil N got to run around and play in the sprinkler with a couple of my cousin's kids. the burgers were good and we also had homemade ice cream which was tasty tasty. i haven't had homemade ice cream in, like, 15 years or so. it's been a long time. and it's every bit as good as i remember.

* went to the zoo two weekends ago. ate lunch there. it was cool to hang out with the Mrs and lil N. weather was nice. not the overly hot crap or rainy crap we've been dealing with as of late.

* i still need to decide where i want to have my father's day meal. it's still really weird to know that _i_ get to celebrate father's day. weird indeed.

* i'm not motivated to work today... this sucks. i'll find something work related to bide my time and keep busy so i don't drive myself nuts.

Music Counter update

Well, this week I finished up MP3 DVDs for both Elvis _and_ Yes. So the increase in the counter is significant. 15,000 songs and 975 hours of music. Dang!

Currently in rotation are: another Elvis MP3 DVD (full of lots of Christmas and Movie recording sessions), a Journey MP3 DVD (which is basically their entire catalogue... twice), and one of the many Napster era MP3 CDs which is labeled Vol 6... and I know I have up to 26 before I scrapped the volume numbering system. I tend to rotate three discs, listening to each for about 2 hours at a time. I found that when I started getting to huge single group discography sessions (like the 20 Kiss MP3 CDs) that I was starting to get burnt out very very quickly and was getting pretty agitated at work because of it. I like my job, so I found a way to remedy the situation.

Um... not much else new.

If you have time... go catch Devilcake playing the Hell City Tattoo Festival at 3pm at the Hyatt Regency Hotel (the MySpace says 8pm... ignore that). Food metal... acoustically!

S. . . l . . . . . . o . . . . . . . w R . . . . .a . . . . . m . . . . b. . .l . .e

I feel slow today. I'm sure that it has to do with being at work on Friday after being off Monday through Wednesday on our first family vacation (we went to Cinci, went to the zoo and fun was had by all). I dragged through yesterday as well. And I slept on the couch last night (due to some tasty but less than friendly food from PF Chang's and my wife's sensitive nose).. which actually... it's that big of a problem really since I actually slept until 6am or so... but I do have slight remnants of a crick in my neck. And of course it's dreary and rainy out. Blech. And I have to do not one but two status reports. And I feel like a big dope at work lately, wondering if I'm cutout for this crap. Everyone seems to think I'm doing an okay job though, so, I guess I'm not doing that bad. I feel like I'm sitting in some slightly cooled jello. It's not a solid yet, but it's getting there. I'm still able to move, but not with the greatest of ease. Maybe I'm slightly dreading looking at the Discover bill and reconsiling everything in Quicken this weekend. Maybe I feel bad 'cause I didn't get through getting all the home movies onto DVD before Mother's Day. I need to look at the can lights in the family room as well. 3 out of 6 are currently out and putting new bulbs in doesn't do anything. I hope there isn't a leak in my roof. That would suck. I really don't feel like doing these status reports, but I need to since, well, it's part of my job. There used to be plenty of time before the first build came for the new project, but it's quickly coming up now and half my team are noobs. They know some stuff, but they are still unsure of themselves. Plus, we have a gazillion high level docs to write. I need to get my brain back up to speed so I'm not looking at a whole lotta nothing where there should be tons o test cases. Later.

Buy and Sell... Buy and Sell

Sorry... been out of the loop for a while.

Lately there's been some buying and selling going on.

Oh... about a month ago we bought a new microwave, stove and dishwasher. Didn't sell the old ones (though I could easily have gotten 50 bucks each for them since all of them worked.) In the case of the microwave, while the new one heats better, it is a little bit noisier. Luckily, most stuff nukes in 3 minutes or less.

Last weekend, we bought a new 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan. Yeah, I can officially be considered old now.

I put a couple things up on Craigslist this past weekend and can happily say that I sold 300 LPs for $75 to a nice old man who plans on giving them to his son-in-law as a birthday present. Hopefully the son-in-law likes them. Also, if everything goes as planned, the futon frame (the mattress was destroyed a couple of years ago) will be gone and I'll be $50 richer. Kinda, well not sad, but... something... to see that futon go. Probably because I know when I moved into my house in '99 that I paid $400 for that darn thing. It's a good frame, but alas, it's just in the way of everything so it had to go. I think in the coming weeks I'll start posting crap on eBay. I have waaaayyyy too many CDs and boxset n stuff (aka electronics from my circuit bending days). There's just not enough room in the house and I have too much stuff. I don't listen to but a third of the CDs I have and I haven't circuit-bent anything for at least a year and a half... maybe longer... so, it's gotta go.

Um... what else...

Oh ... I bought a laptop computer. Since all the computer moved downstairs, I figured the missus and I needed a way to quickly check email without having to leave the lil one unsupervised.

I've had massive allergies this year. They seem to get worse every year. And it sucks. But, it seems to finally be letting up. It helps that the tree that drops TONS of pollen appears to be done. No lie. Tons of pollen. It drops hundreds these little things that are about the size of a golf ball and they are loaded with pollen. M swept a bunch of them off the driveway they other day when it was still a little damp out and now I have a driveway made for Stryper, ala being nothing but black and lots of yellow streaks!

As far as the 'Music Counter' goes, I'm sitting at 14245 songs and a total listening time of 899h 59m 28s... juuuusssstt shy of 900 hours.

Oh... and I got a little raise at work. 4%. I'll take it. Could have been better, but considering my boss told me I got one of the higher raises, it certainly could have been worse. I just bought a minivan for crying out loud. I need gas money. I'll take it!

And holy poop! I just checked my checking account and I already have my stimulus plan money. Woooooooooot! And not a moment too soon. My credit card bill this past month is huuuuuge.

Quick update...

Notta much going on...

Todd came over on Saturday to give me hand loading and unloading the Sauder chest and drawers we bought for the little one's new room. Actually, the loading was taken care of for us. The guy from 'Just About Furniture' whipped them into the car by himself. Todd and I then of course back to the house and the things weighed a ton. I have no idea how this guy just swung these things around. Crazy! After that was done, Toddeus wanted the exercise equipment that I had in the basement, so we dismantled the bike and got that into the Transformermobile and then I dumped the cardioglide into the Vibe and we set off for his house and got them unloaded.

Sunday was spent driving 2 1/2 hours down to Portsmouth where my sister lives for Easter dinner. We visited for about 5 hours and then jumped into the car and drove the 2 1/2 hours back. And the little one was very very very good this time, barely making a peep. This was contrary to the last time we went down about 6 months ago where she cried and screamed for about 2 hours in each direction. It was, to say the least, a less than pleasant experience.

Umm... I have work to do, so I gotta run. Just figured I'd give a brief update.

It's Monday and I'm already looking for some Friday movie ackshun with my peeps!

Finally!

After listening to 3 straight CDs of Kiss stuff, I am finally through the 100 CD spindle of MP3 discs. That puts me just over 800 hours of listening. Whew!

Plenty of MP3s left to go (including a billion years worth of Elvis stuff), but I can finally put that spindle to rest.

I got a little change in my pocket...

to the tune of $90 for all the video games that I sold to Play It Trade It. I was hoping for $100, but eh... it's all good. They are now out of the house and someone can actually get some game playing on. I will miss them but I'm slowly getting over this 'want to have things'.

Todd and I were talking over the weekend about our records. We've got tons of records, but we hardly play them at all anymore. I think I have mine pared down fairly good. I have about 300 records I need to list on craigslist along with a couple exercise machine which see no use. And a futon frame.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Last night the Mrs and I watched Disney's 'Meet the Robinsons'. My goodness was that a bad movie. The funny thing is that the bonus features showed lots of very very cool stuff and idea that they ultimately scrapped in order to make this horrible piece of celluloid. Ugh. It was very slow in the beginning and later parts of it were so frenetic that one couldn't really follow (and I couldn't be bothered to try by that point). I'm glad we got this one from the library and didn't have to pay for this horrible movie.

Let there be light... and other stuff

Well, the weekend is gone. But at least something got done. My sis and her husband came up on Saturday. I had a couple of fluorescent light fixtures go bad in the basement so I was looking to replace them. I'm not talking about the bulbs going bad, but the whole thing went bad (aka the ballast). So, we got those installed with only a few casualties. Dan cut his hand on one of the fixtures, then one of the coveres cracked a little bit (cause we didn't read the directions... doh!) and then Dan got a little shock. But overall, it was a great success and now the basement doesn't feel like such a dungeon.

On Sunday my parents called and said they wanted to come to town for a visit (read: we want to see our grand daughter). I already had plans so, they came and I went. First stop was to the local "Play It Trade It" store. I've had some old video game consoles sitting around from my bachelor days and they were just sitting in the basement, getting in the way and collecting dust, so I figured I might as well sell them off and get a few bucks. So I dropped off the stuff. Since I had so much stuff, they needed to look it over and test it out and all that happy crap. They are supposed to call me with a purchase quote by Tuesday. Punks better not lose my stuff. It was sad to drop off the Intellivision, ColecoVision, Odyssey 2 and original Nintendo, but... I wasn't playing them. If I had even played them more than 5 times in the past 5 years, then I almost might be able to make a case for keeping them. But I haven't even played them that much, so it was time to bid adieu to them.

After dropping off the games at Play It Trade It, I headed over to Todd's house. We ended up watching Deathproof which is Quentin Tarantino's half of the Grindhouse double feature. It was pretty cool. The second half was much better than the first half. First half was more horror / thriller oriented, whereas the second half was just a big long car chase with dents and busting glass and cars running off the road. I like that kinda stuff. :)

um... what else...
On the Music Counter front I surpassed the 12K mark. I only have 3 CDs left from the original spindle. Of course, they are all Kiss MP3s. I think I'm just going to power through those even though I might drive myself slightly insane by only listening to Kiss for the next 3 or 4 days. But I just want to be done with that spindle so I can take it back home and say 'I've listened to all of this!'. It would be a little bit easier if it was a mishmash of different shows (a couple from 77, one from 82, another from 96, etc)... but the majority of them are from the 2004 tour so pretty much every single show sounds the same with the exception of occationally Gene's voice being screwed up and him having to sing an octave lower than usual. And of course, they are pretty much all fairly consecutive. So you'll have 07-03 in Indianapolis, then 07-07 in Wisconsin then 07-11 in Cincinnati, then 07-14 in New York. You get the idea. So if Gene's voice is blown out, then likely it'll be blown out for a week or so.

I'm listening to Somerset, WI 06-26-04 right now. For the past 3 discs, I've heard what I swear is a girl singing during love gun. But now, I'm convinced it might be Eric Singer since it has shown up exactly the same way and practically the same balance in the mix, which were from the Rock the Nation tour which were mixed from the soundboard. Or maybe it's Tommy Thayer. No idea. But it's really high in the mix for Love Gun and it's kind of annoying. Oh well. Wish me luck. 3 days of nothing but Kiss.

Almost there...

I'm almost done listening to the original spindle of MP3 CDs. The counter has been updated. Nearly 12,000 songs and 750 hours of listening time. Wow.

However, at the moment, I'm hitting a bit of a brick wall as far as patience goes. From the original spindle, I'm left with: 1 CD of Elvis, 4 CDs of Kiss and 1 CD of Smashing Pumpkins. Not alot of variety there. You tend to get tired of listening to the same three voices.

Luckily, today I brought in the majority of the MP3 CDs that I had left at home. Some of those are just random goodness from the days of random websites and Napster when it was rare to find complete albums. There would be days where I would find someone with a huge collection and a super fast connection and would just download everything they had. Those were the ones that really paid off 'cause you would end up with just randomness from ABBA to Frank Sinatra to Frank Zappa. I found out about alot of groups that day and purchased many CDs because of that. So I've got those to look forward to.

I also have... (sound of dread) ... 2 DVDs and 3 more CDs full of Elvis to get through. At the time, I was in a big Evlis phase, or at the very least a big Elvis downloading phase. I think it was RCA that had all of Elvis' records out on CD in a 50 CD collection, which were numbered. That is the worst thing you can do to a complete-ist. I did manage to get them all, thank you very much. I also found LOADS of outtake CDs from his movie soundtracks and many many soundboard and audience boots out there as well. Did I really need every day of his 7 day stand at some casino in Las Vegas. I dunno. But I have it.

On the upside, I brought in my Have A Nice Day collection which consisted of 28 CDs (2 MP3 CDs) chock full o' 1970's goodness. That will be a nice relief. Then there are the others that I already had here at work: Another DVD full o Kiss, DVD full o Chicago, a DVD full o BeeGees, 2 DVDs full o Pop Culture goodness (anything from Superman 'audio comics' to children's records to Sammy David Jr. Christmas albums), ... looking at pile ... 1 DVD full o Smashing Pumpkins (I also had a SP phase, can you tell?), CD full o King Diamond and Mercyful Fate, DVD of Beach Boys (lots of outtakes), CD full of 80's music, DVD o Rush, CD o Genesis, DVD o random Rock goodness (lots o ben folds), DVD o Pink Floyd, DVD o Beatles (I don't recall exactly what's on that), CD o random Rock goodies, DVD called Metal Mayhem, 2 DVD of Psych and Garage Band goodies, hey... there's my copies of Dream Theater's Score album... and a few more... other than the 50 random CDs which I talked about earlier.

But I'm glad that I'm almost to that milestone of getting through that spindle. I figured it would take me a while. I guess if I think about it, it's taken nearly a year since I believe I started this project about the time I started my new job. Ha!

I remember in H.S. listening to all of the cassettes I had. That took me nearly a year as well. I had alot of cassettes. Had? Still have. They're down in the basement keeping the cats company. Same goes for all my CDs. That took something like a year and a half. But I got through it, and I'll get through all of these MP3s as well.

Here's to another year of music!

Kill Bill Vol. 2 and other things this weekend

This weekend was, well, a weekend. But I got some things accomplished and that is good.

What did I do on Saturday? In the morning, I got my hair cut. It had been about 2 months and I was starting to look like a scruffy Beatle wannabe. After that I went to Lowe's to pick up some shit for fixing some things in the house (see discussion on that below). When I got home, the wife, the kiddo and I _tried_ to go to Sonic for lunch, but it was a bust with all the 'stalls' filled up and the drive-in lane literally all the way around the building. So we ended up going to Chik-Fil-A instead and then straight back home. That was a bit of a disappointment, but, on the upside, at least we have a Sonic in Columbus now. And man, they make some tasty hamburgers (and chili dogs... and I really really want to try their country fried steak sandwich). Oh yeah, and I got a migraine after we got back so I took some meds and laid down for a few hours.

I really worked about as fast and hard as I could at work on Friday. That left my brain spinning and my neck all in a twisted mess. I wasn't even recovered when I woke up Saturday as I still felt woozy. It's not often when I wake up with a headache, but Saturday was one of those days. Luckily, this coming week is the last week for testing this Build of the software. It's been pretty rough on me. My hours may not compare to some factory workers, I know 'cause I've done that too, but it still doesn't mean that I don't become physically fatigued and more so mentally fatigued. Just knowing that after next week, I'm done for a couple of weeks (plus, having the help of others help me catch up on the test cases) is starting to put my mind at ease.

Oh yeah, so the wife and I came up with a list on Friday of what needs to be done upstairs and downstairs in the next few months. The good ol' Honey-Do list. I dread the Honey-Do list, but, for someone like me who is... well just weird about getting shit done, it's a good thing. I dread putting it together, but then it gives me something to drive for. It also puts things into perspective. If it's not all laid out, I tend to bunch it all into one big ball of sh*t and it just starts getting to me and I freak out in the way I tend to freak out. But once there is a list, usually I see that it's not _that_ bad of a list and I'll start cranking sh*t out.

So, when I got up today, I had it in my head that I would get some sh*t done.

1) Fix the light switch in the office. This has, no lie, been in my head as being something that needed to be done for no fewer than 9 months. So today, I got out the screw driver and fixed it within 15 minutes. Why it took this long, I have no idea.

2) Fix the toilet in the master bedroom. It's been 'making dripping noises' for the past few weeks and it was driving my wife nuts, which pretty much means it drives me nuts. I had the same problem with the guest bath about 2 years ago. So I bought the parts yesterday and, hell, they had the exact same kit that I used before. So it went fairly easily. Only one 'where the hell is this water coming from moment' and after I figured out what I did wrong, I remembered that I did the exact same thing 2 years ago. It is the next to last step where you're attaching the guts to the main water line. There's a little fastener that connects the two and I was so focused on that part that I forgot to do the OTHER fastener which makes the guts snug to the tank. Duh! Getting ahead of myself. So once I got that figure out, the rest was peachy.

That's it for the official Honey-Do list.

So after I did those two things, I went to the library, picked up my reserved copy of Kill Bill Vol 2, went to the store, picked up my meds, did some grocery shopping, came home, handed the wife the groceries (which she quickly put away as I lugged two 40lb. boxes of kitty litter into the basement.

Then I sat down in the basement on the computer with the headphones plugged in so I wouldn't wake the little one sleeping directly above me and watched Kill Bill Vol 2. I enjoyed it much more than Vol 1. I'm sure that's partly because I could hear the actors and the music and the sound effects whereas with Vol 1 I had to pretty much watch it on mute with subtitles. But I also think I liked the direction of this one more. As Quentin says in the 'Making of...', Vol 1 was done more in the Shaolin samurai movie kinda vein whereas Vol 2 was more Spaghetti Western-ish. Yeah, I can see that.

I watched the extras (what few there were) later on in the evening. I learned from the Kill Bill Diary that David Carradine wrote, that there was this fight scene with this huge black guy that got cut. David said he hoped it would make the DVD extras. It did. But it was, honestly, a bit disappointing. It was much shorter that I was expecting. Seemed like it only lasted 4 minutes, though I'm sure it was longer than that, but probably not by much.

Anyways... I'm babbling. And I need to get up bright and early tomorrow so I'm just gonna end it here. Sorry that most of my thoughts tonight were only half-written. I don't consider myself much of a critic, so I tend to just stop myself before I go there. I guess that's how it goes sometimes. I can tell you, though, that the mexican meatloaf my wife made this even was tasty! Yummy stuff.

G'night!

Breaking the 10K mark

Well, finally broke the 10K mark on ye olde Music Counter. Actually, I passed it a while ago. I'm about it pass the 11K mark now. But no matter. The Kiss MP3 CDs have been going rather quickly. Actually, they all have been since I've had to keep my head down and my fingers testing. And when you're pulling 10 / 11 / 12 hour days they tend to move along a little faster as well.

The hours are starting to wear on me, but I think the 9 hours I got last night helped out quite a bit. I went to bed at 9pm. It's been a while since I've done that. Woke up at the ass-crack of 5:45 this morning, my wonderful wife was already up with our sick daughter and made me some bacon and eggs. It was quite a nice way to start the day. Then at lunch, I got 10 Banquet meals for $5.38 _with_ tax! They had some BOGO coupones in the freeze section for pot pies, so I got 5 of those. Then the reg meals were 10 for 10. And on top of that, K Rogers was having some weird promo where, if you bought 10 banquet meals you got 2 dollars off your bill automatically. Wootage! So yeah, 10 meals + 5.38 = awesome. Better than the $2 I would spend in ONE MEAL at McDs.

Um.. what else.. I already exclaimed about my 50 musicals DVD thing. Still haven't had a chance to watch any yet. I wonder when my Kill Bill Pt 2 will be coming in. Started reading a book on bad casting in movies. Like John Wayne as Gengis Khan (sp?). Yeah, how that got through the studio heads is beyond me. That's a good book for when you're not really in a reading mood. You read one little blip and then you can be done and not retain ANY of it to memory like you would with a reg piece of fiction or even a biography. I made a feeble attempt at starting Turn Turn Turn, a book about the folk-rock revolution of the 60's, but I don't think I have the mental capacity for that right now. It's like 300 pages, which wouldn't be a big deal, except that it's in microscopic font... so 1 page is like 3 pages of regular text, which makes it a 900 page book. And nil pictures. It's put out by Hal Leonard, so I think it might be used as a text book as well.

The Dilbert calendar hasn't been that good this year, but I'm sure it'll pick up. It's Dilbert which means it ALWAYS applies to me. I see the project creep mentality first hand. Except, 'round here it seems to be feature swipe, where it's in your project until they look at the time line and don't like it, so they swipe it from your project and put it on a later project.. which makes it this huge thing... and then when they look at that project's schedule... you can guess what happens. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Um... been having some odd dreams lately. One involved me looking around a warehouse full of pillows to find two matching ones that would look ogod with the couch, but they had to be on sale with a little orange clearance sticker.

And this morning, I had another one of my 'I'm late for school' dreams. So, I was heading to school and following some dude who 'knew the way' and had to cut through a shipping warehouse (at which point he disappear)... I ended up on top of one of the trucks but then safely swung down and ran out the back door... but then I noticed at some point I lost my pants and was wearing only boxer shorts... and I didn't have any in my gym bag. At first I thought that maybe I could just go to school that way, but then decided that maybe falling out in the middle of class might be frowned upon, so instead of going back through the warehouse, I attempted to go back home another way which involved cutting through an old apartment building. At that point I started to get mugged, until a TV crew showed up. So the main mugger dude (there were about 8 of them) put his arm around me like we were pals, to which I responded to by repeatedly punching him in the face, which didn't seem to phase him. And then I woke up. Yeah, take that one to your shrink and see if they can decipher THAT. At least there wasn't an overflowing toilet. That's a common reoccurance in my dreams as well.

Well, I gotta get back to the grind. Later!

New Stuff

I've been working like a dog lately. At least the end is a mere 3 weeks away. Ugh. I'm on multiple projects at the moment, but of course, the scheduling assumes that I'm 100% for each one of those... so at the moment, I'm hopelessly behind and really have no chance of catching up without pulling in a few more people. Hence, why I'm working on a Sunday. This sucks.

In better news, I ran across a coupon where I was able to get a free 2GB Flash Drive. The coupon / promo ended today. I'd been eyeballing a new flash drive es since the free on Todd gave me was only a 64 MB one. Honestly, I've never needed much more than that, but there were a few times where I was needing to tote some ISO images and couldn't, so... now I can... as long as they are CD ISOs.

Since I wasn't sure of the validity of the coupon in hand, I wandered around the store looking for something cheep so I wouldn't end up at the counter with just the flash drive and nothing else. I'm weird like that. Anyhoo... I wandered over to the DVD section which always has some interesting DVDs on sale. I almost picked up Kill Bill Vol 2, new, for $6.50. But I put that back. And scanned the DVDs some more. One thing I have a weakness for is the 50 Movie Packs that are usually around $20.00 and contain 50 movies on 12 DVDs. They are usually horrible movies that either can be bought uber cheep or are 'public domain'. Anyhoo... I picked up a couple of them, but they were all full price. One that I had been eyeing for a while was '50 Musical Classics'. I had done a little bit of research on it and decided that I wasn't going to pay anywhere near the $20 retail for it since it wasn't really the kind of musicals I was thinking about (Easter Parade, Meet Me In St. Louis, etc). It's more like Rock, Rock, Rock will Bill Haley, old soundies with Duke Ellington, and the like.

Anyhoo. As I was just about the leave the section, I noticed another set of 'sale' items... in front of the 50 Musicals Movie Pack. No way was it on sale. They never are. Until today. Yay! It was $8.18. That's what I'm talking about yo! So now I have a 2GB flash drive (free) and the 50 Musical DVD set for less than what I have in my toy budget. Gotta love that.

I've also been reading David Carradine's book "The Kill Bill Diary"... which he wrote while making the movie. It was pretty cool. Much better than "Endless Highway" which I didn't give much of a chance since it didn't go into much detail about any of the Corman movies he was in, which is all I really cared about. I finished it up last night and, like I said, I liked it pretty much. Now I want to see the movie so I can put into visuals some of the things that David described.

Well, gotta cut this one short... the process I was waiting for finished. Later!

Movies... n other stuff

I'm sitting here eating Michellina's Lean Gourmet Mac n Cheese doused with some El Yucateco XXXHot Habeñero Hot Sauce and figured I'd give an update.

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Last night the wife and I watched the movie Junebug. It was definitely an indie film, not in that the acting sucked (it was good) or that the cinematography sucked (there were quite a few very nice shots and interesting camera angles which I enjoyed), but more in that at least on a first watching, the theme or story or whatever isn't exactly concrete in the way that watching, say, Men In Black would be.

So, I enjoyed and didn't enjoy the movie. I admit, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I'm not a moron either. I understood in most cases where the movie was going.. but when it was done I was left wondering 'Why did I just watch an hour-40 of this?' Yes, I got the whole big-city vs. small-town thing. I came from a small town, I get that some of the things we do there can seem a bit backwards and all that crap. Have you every witnessed 'hog trough dancing' at a wedding? I rest my case. So I understood that aspect of it. But I felt like there should have been something more there. I dunno what that should have been, but there should have been something more. Or maybe, my feeling of uncomfortable emptiness at the end of the movie was the intended reaction. That happens sometimes I guess.

It got quite a bit of good press and most reviews are 'glowing' and the like. Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for it. Maybe it was because it was a 'talkie' movies and we had to mostly watch it with the sound turned off (because for whatever reason, the geniuses to pressed the DVD thought that only French subtitles were needed). Maybe it's 'cause some of the material hit close to home for me and I was busy thinking about things in my brain when I should have continued to pay attention to the movie. Again, I didn't hate the movie, but on the other hand, I likely wouldn't want to see it twice.

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We watched another movie the other day called The Namesake. This indie film is one I enjoyed. It's the story of a boy/man who was born in America to Indian parents and given an 'interesting' name by his parents when he is born. At first he likes the name, then rejects it later in life and tries to distance himself from his parents and his parent's heritage. The lead character in The Namesake is none other than Kal Penn, Kumar from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.

Interestingly enough, Kal Penn's character is, at first, a doped out high school student, which pretty much mirrors his performance in H&KGTWC. But after those first few scenes and he moves into a period later in his life, Kal really put in a good performance, in my opinion. Hopefully he will continue to take challenging roles but still continue to do goofy movies like Van Wilder and Harold and Kumar.

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I messed up at work today. I'll make this the short version. We were waiting on a group in UK to finish their stuff. My boss was supposed to have a meeting with some peeps in the UK to determine if we could start. Got an email from one of the lead testers in the UK saying that their testing had PASSED. I assumed this meant we could move on. Half hour later, boss shows up and says 'they are doing another build'. I say 'uh, oh'. He says 'You haven't told the group to start have you?'. I say 'Yes'. He says, 'Tell them to stop. You were supposed to wait for me'. I say, 'Ooops. I figured someone saying that the testing had PASSED meant that we were all clear. Obv not'. So run around and tell everyone to stop. We'll likely get the new build tomorrow. Sigh. This puts my schedule 'techincally' behind. However, since we can't move the dates, I have to somehow absorb a two day loss. Shouldn't be a big deal really. Just had to comment about it since it was on my mind.

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Found out in my testing group of about 15 people that there are like four drummers. What are the odds. Drummers are scarce... or usually don't come out of the woodwork unless provoked. Wow! That's like a quarter of our group. Weird. I mentioned to one of the other peeps that we should start our own taiko group. That would be bad-ass.

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The 'super machine' downstairs is acting a little weird. I switched out a power supply and that seemed to make it less weird, but it has rebooted on my a few times already, so it seems that maybe it wasn't just the power supply. Maybe the mobo is a bit goofy. Noticed it was running a little warmer than my machines upstairs. Generally runs around 120F which shouldn't be a problem, but the odd thing is that it is like 60 in the basement, so you think it would run COOLER than the ones upstairs where the room temp can usually get up to 80-85F when the halogen and the two computers are running. I dunno. Maybe I will have to switch out the mobos.

Or, since I am considering going wireless and buying a laptop (a cheepo, but a laptop nonetheless) for the main computer for both me and the wife, maybe I'll just not bother and use my old computer (which is nice and solid) as the new 'toy' machine.

Good Weekend

On Saturday, I got to hang out with my bro Todd. We went to Cici's Pizza and buffet-ed our selves silly. Then we went back to his place and played a few hours worth of Rock Band. That was fun. I first tried being the 'drummer' and let me tell you when you're a drummer, you don't want some screen telling you where to hit. Plus, it probably did not help that my first song was The Who 'Won't Get Fooled Again' which is typical Keith Moon - i.e. pretty much it's one big drum fill with nothing every really repeating. I found I did much better in Singing Mode, though by the end of the evening my throat was getting sore.

On Sunday, my wife's sister came up for her birthday and we went to the Money exhibit at the Columbus Museum of Art. That was pretty cool. After that we went to The Cheesecake factory and rang up a sizable bill. But at least I have left overs for the next two days. Man, those portions are out of control.