Moving and cleaning

Moving sucks and as Steve can attest, I have too much stuff. At least I did 5 or so years ago when we lived together and 3 years ago when I packed a storage locker full when I moved to Montana. Well, I still have too much stuff.

Moving my stuff always takes longer than I think it will and it is tiring. I'm beat today. Plus we cleaned most of the house last night as well for our walkthrough this morning.

Now my new house is nearly packed to the gills with my crap. It's going to take a little while to unpack and get it all in the right place. Of course, I'm really curious how I'm going to make it all fit.

I'm too tired to make a big post, so that's all for now.

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DNF

The Voyager 1 spacecraft has travelled approximately 2.5 billion miles since the announcement of Duke Nukem Forever.

I am not the most hardcore gamer out there. I like games, but I don't obsess. I am also not a huge first person shooter fan. I like them, I play them a bit, usually on the easy setting, but I'm just not that good at them. I certainly don't play them online against other people.

Duke Nukem 3D was a fun game back in the day. I remember playing the original 2D scrolling Duke Nukem games, I really enjoyed them. The true sequel to DN3D is called Duke Nukem Forever. A long standing joke is that it's named after how long it's been in development.

The opening quote in this post is from a forum thread I found from a link I saw at Voodoo Extreme. It's a fun read if you've followed the saga at all, and maybe even if you haven't.

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Painting and moving

This weekend was pretty busy. I am beat.
I spent Friday night not doing enough that was productive, though Steph and I did go out to dinner at Bennigan's which is always tasty and then we went shopping for painting supplies in preperations for Saturday.

Saturday arrives and there is painting to be done. Since I am lazy I didn't get up until much later than I wanted to and we didn't get started until like 10:30 or 11am. Stephanie (my interior decorator) had the idea of a two colored room, a darker color on windowed walls, of which there were two, and then a lighter cream color on the opposite walls and the trim. I thought, hey, that might look nice and it was certainly different from anything I had had before. So we went for it.

The darker color chosen was a light blue gray and the cream was just a light cream. Steph did all the trim and the windows while I did all of the big open wall spaces with a roller. It took us all day long. We finished at like 8:30 after which we ordered pizza and rented Chicago, which I really liked. I did two coats on all of the walls and Steph did basically one coat on all of the trim. She was getting tired and motivation was running very low by the end. I also did a little touch up on some of the edging Steph had done. But the worst part (though it didn't turn out to be the worst part until yesterday) was getting the roller almost up to the ceiling. I would have to stand on my tip toes to get up there. So to keep with the rolling action and get from side to side, I was bouncing on my toes.

It didn't make any difference that night. But the next day my hammies were feeling super sore and I had no idea why. Steph and I had talked about going on a run, but never got around to it. From what I know about medical science I think you have to actually do the running to get sore. I don't think talking about running affects your muscles. I was walking around all day (and this morning so far as well) with pain and I didn't know why until Steph pointed out how I had been painting the day before. I can't believe how much it affected me.

Anyway, the room turned out nice. The cream is a little more yellow than what I would have wanted, but it's alright. It definitely gives the room more character than what it had before and more than pretty much any other room I've had in a while.

So yesterday was spent moving stuff. I have almost everything over in my new house. The main focus was to get my bedroom set up so I have a comfortable place to sleep. I just have my computers left, a lot of clothes, and a couple of la-z-boy chairs. Other than that it's just nik-naks and small crap. Every time I move I tell myself that I'm going to start packing all of this stuff earlier so I can go through it all and throw away stuff I don't need. But instead I wait until the last day and throw everything into boxes and keep it until my next move.

Well, that's all folks.

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Pointers are fun

It turns out that Steve was right, programming ability isn't like a fine wine. It does not get better with age just fermenting without use.

This is pretty clear to anyone who thinks for a couple of seconds but it becomes even clearer when one tries to remember the ins and outs of C++ pointers. They have been my bane since high school. I finally really got them in college, which was a great feeling. But somehow, like most of my collegiate knowledge, it has escaped me in the last few years.

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The Filling Station

I went out to a bar with some friends last night to see a band. The band was the Clumsy Lovers and the bar was the Filling Station.

I had never been to the Filler before, which is kind of a surprise since it is on the road back to town from Bridger Bowl and they supposedly give you a free beer if you are in your ski stuff and have a lift pass from the day or a season pass. I'm not the biggest beer drinker in the world, but I skied a lot with my brother Brian and his buddy Keith. They both liked putting a few back from time to time. Why we (or I) never stopped in is a bit of a mystery.

I had seen the Clumsy Lovers a couple of times before. The first time was at a bar called Little John's but is now called Mixers (they just remodeled and renamed themselves, I don't think they're open yet) after the company Christmas party two Decembers ago. A big group of people went out to the bar after the party, all dressed up and with a few drinks already partaken. (as a side note, because I never have one of those, I ate three main coarses that night. I had the beef, which was good, then I had the chicken, which looked but did not taste good. I figured I couldn't end on a low note like that and proceeded to eat another portion of beef. Most of the people at my table were amazed.) Us younger kids had a blast watching all of the older engineers busting a move on the dance floor. Beside that, we had a great time, the music is very upbeat and energetic. Pretty much a normal band setup expect they have a girl playing the fiddle and one of the guitarists sometimes busts out a banjo. Don't worry, they aren't country. They can lean that way a little bit, but not very often. One interesting fact was that my current girlfriend, Stephanie, was at this show, but we didn't know each other at all. Who knows, I might have been checking her out at one point. The place was packed and hopping until the end of the show

The next time was at the same bar, Little John's, with some different people. Steph and I were dating and we went out with maybe 5 or 6 friends. The show wasn't quite as packed as the previous one but just as fun. Plus, I had a good looking girl to dance with.

So, Steph and Sean and Heidi and I headed to the Filler at about 9:30pm last night. The filler is a small, old, mostly made out of wood bar. It just screams "Montana" at you. There are license plates all over the walls, a bar with two frantic bartenders running to try and serve everyone (they did a pretty good job considering the crowd), and a very small "dance floor" area.

I wouldn't call the Clumsy Lovers the biggest band out there but I think they have a pretty big following in Bozeman. They seem to be coming back a couple times a year and they always play to a full house. The leads to the problem at hand--the Filler is not the largest of bars/clubs in Bozeman. In fact it was downright tight last night. It just wasn't the best place for them to place. I imagine that they would have been playing Little John's/Mixers had it been open, but such is life, we were seeing them at the Filling Station. We all enjoyed a few drinks, danced to the great music with the energetic crowd, and finally started to get tired.

Around 1am or 1:15 we all decided that it was about the right time to head for home. I dropped everyone off and I think I made it into bed close to 2am. Sure, that's later than normal but hey, it's not too bad right? Wait a minute, every Friday morning a bunch of guys from work get together in one of the gyms on campus to play basketball. We try to play from about 6am to 7am or 7:15 before heading to work. I'm always the worst player there (I'm a hockey player) but it's lots of fun and a pretty good workout. The problem is the whole getting up before 5:45am to get there on time. Now you see my dilema, starting the sleep cycle at 2am doesn't afford much rest before 5:30 or so. I did wake with my alarm to see how I felt, but there was never really any doubt. I slept in, even a little past my normal time, and went into work sans b-ball.

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There are clever people out there

There's been lots and lots and lots of discussion on the net and off about the one scene in the Star Wars Special Edition that makes fans want to burn down Skywalker Ranch: Greedo fires first. I won't go into it, there's plenty of words written about it else where. Though I must admit, I didn't notice the first time I watched through the Special Edition (in the theaters) but when I did finally notice it I think it scarred my retinas. It is an inexplicable marring of the film.

Anyway, this comic is completely hilarious and I would invite anyone who is a Star Wars fan to read it and laugh.

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w00t!

I was on a bike ride with a buddy the other day and on our way back from the trail we passed by a Jeep Wrangler with huge tires and lots of mud on it. A burly vehicle to be sure. And what should I see when I gazed at the license plate?

A Montana plate reading "TEH1337".

I had to laugh out loud. Bozeman isn't really known as a hotbed of technology (they do have computers at MSU though) but it's good to know that there are geeks around. Not to mention geeks that are TEH 1337, which of course are the best kind.

If you don't get the joke or have no clue what I'm talking about in this post please see here and here. (though they are semi entertaining for someone who gets the joke as well)

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So what did I do?

Didn't I mention something about things happening this past weekend?

So lets see; first, I didn't float the Madison River. I think I had mentioned that Steph's friend Linzy was in town. She had come out to Bozeman last summer as well, but before Steph and I started dating. While here a big group went floating and she really enjoyed it. So when she came this year she was really looking forward to floating again. Unfortunately, it did not happen.

The only nice day of the weekend was going to be Saturday, and it wasn't guaranteed to be beautiful, the weather has been all over the place lately. We had decided the night before that we were going to leave for the river between noon and 1pm "no matter what". Well, that didn't last. We had friends coming into town but we didn't know what time they were going to arrive. Another friend who had talked to them said that they were interested in going and if we could wait a little that would be great. Fine, we'll wait. We rationalized that the water would be a little warmer if we waited a little longer.

We finally got a call from our friends and they said that they were at the bike shop building the bike they had come into town for. This was about 1:30pm and I was assured that it would be only about 30 minutes until they were done. Fine, 2pm would work--we'd be out there pretty late, but it wouldn't be too bad. So we all sat around and watched the Olympics while waiting for the call. We lost a little track of the time and by about 3:30 we were all pretty unhappy. We decided to go over to the Bozeman Beach which is just a little pond so people could swim a little bit. As we left we contacted our friends to let them know that floating was no longer in the works, it was 4pm and we probably wouldn't have gotten in the water until 5:30 or so, we would have been freezing by the end of our float.

So we all met over at the beach and the ladies went for a swim and the two guys just chilled out and drank some "cheerleader beer". Another friend had somehow got his hands on 4 cases of Bacardi Silver Limon so he wanted people to drink as much of it as possible. We struggled through those while the ladies swam in the rain. It was cold and windy and sometimes rainy--I was thinking that it probably would have been a pretty miserable float. Oh well.

After that we went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant and then headed over to my current roommate's soon-to-be new place for a party/bonfire. They were having a going away/welcome to the place party. So we went out, had a beer or two out of the keg and waited for the bonfire to start. For most of the time while it was light out I played with the pack of dogs that was there. I think there were about 10 dogs at this party, and most of them were Blue Heelers. I don't know if I've ever met one of these dogs before but they are high strung and can be nasty. They would all gang up on the other, non-blue dogs at the party. A buddy had to take his dog, a big Chesapeake Retriever, home before we even got there because all of the other dogs were trying to take a piece out of him.

They were fun to throw sticks for though. Imagine a pack of yipping dingos, jumping and barking all around you, waiting for a big stick to be launched. When I threw it they would all take off at once and either pick up the stick or try to get it from the dog that had actually picked it up.

The bonfire ended up being quite a disappointment. It was hardly bigger than a normal campfire and my group of friends was the only one sitting around it for the most part. Steph was the only one who actually put more wood on the fire! They had tons and tons of wood to use, but no one wanted to use it. By the time we left, most of the people the party was for had already left or were just chilling out inside. It was really weird.

So that was Saturday. On Sunday a few friends headed to The Lewis and Clark Caverns. They were exceptionally cool. It was a nearly 2 hour walking tour underground up and down stairs and through tight tunnels. Most of the time you couldn't believe that what you were looking at was real. It looked like everything was straight off of a movie set or something. The tour itself came with too much cheese. The rehearsed jokes and quips contained way too many groaners for my comfort. When we did receive actual information it was usually very interesting. It cost $10 which I was a little leary of (I had fairly recently been kind of burned for $15) but it ended up being well worth it. It's a tour I would recommend to everyone making a trip to Montana.

Later that day I decided to sit down and watch a couple of movies that Steph and Linzy had rented earlier in the week. One I had been interested to see and the other I was a little leary of. The first, which I had wanted to see was Monster starring the Oscar winning Charlize Theron. The film is certainly disturbing and Theron gives quite the performace, completely transforming into a crazed serial killer. The one thing about the film that is a little hard to swallow is how the director/writer seems to be trying to justify the killings. Many of the guys killed were scum of the earth and were guilty of punishible offences, but I didn't like how the movie was trying to make us feel sorry for the crazy, murderous lady. I wouldn't necessarily call my time watching the movie "enjoyable" but it was cool to see an actress do something completely different.

The second movie, which never really piqued my interest was Something's Gotta Give starring Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton. I was really pleasantly surprised by this movie. There were lots of easy laughs and pretty good dialog. It certainly wasn't perfect and lots of stuff seemed forced and unlikely, but hey, it was a romantic comedy. Jack and Diane worked really well together, in a few scenes it really didn't seem like a movie and it was like watching two real people just chatting with each other. I have to say that watching this movie was more enjoyable than the previous one, a few good laughs and a nice, tight, happy ending tying up pretty much all of the strings. Like Steph had mentioned before, I can defintely see how people like our parents would have really enjoyed the movie.

So that was the weekend.

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Why?

I don't understand this. I just don't, there's nothing I can really add to the discussion here. I don't get it. What kind of person comes up with the idea that there is an actual market for this? And even more importantly, why is there indeed a market for this?

Sometimes the world makes me want to cry.

There doesn't seem to be a picture in that story anymore, here's a link with pictures.

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Powerless...to...resist

Have I mentioned that I'm a fan boy of certain geeky franchises? If I haven't, I just want you to know that I am.

Anyway, this recent post at Slashdot indicates that the "original" idea might be back in motion--a 9 movie epic, with 3 sequels to the original trilogy. Of course the article that mentions this rumor (it's only a rumor) is difficult to get to (as per the slashdot effect), so I don't know the source or anything. One comment mentions a post on a forum at TheForce.net.

Here is a forum thread talking about it. I don't think it's the original, but hey, I didn't look too hard.

My question is "How much money does George Lucas think he needs?"

I have mixed feelings about this. If George decides to go it alone and write and direct everything it's not going to be a pretty sight. If he actually hires some writers and directors, I think a lot of people would be even more exited than they would be anyway.

We will just have to see what the future holds.

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A disturbing trend

I'm sure (all of) you have noticed that many of my recent posts haven't been about me and the whimsical adventures I am having while in Montana and they haven't contained the little nuggets of wisdom you've come to depend on to get through your daily life.

No, they've been about my blog. I have, in fact, been metablogging. And it was ego-stroking metablogging to boot. (ooo! what search terms can find me? how many people visted me?) This was not the point of this endeavor. So I will try and stop, I might put an interesting tidbit about the blog every once in a while, but I'll try not to make it a point of multiple consecutive posts.

So anyway, what did I do this weekend? I'm glad you asked. I didn't float the Madison River, I went to see the Lewis and Clark Caverns and I watched two movies. But I'll post about all that in a while.

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Disturbing

I know that this is probably really old, but I just saw it and had to post it.

It's a comic, but in that comic is a picture of Ah-nold from People magazine around the release of T3. I really enjoyed the movie and was thinking that the Govinator looked really good. But that was, now I see, due to a lot of make-up and a full compliment of clothing.

I've never enjoyed the whole European swimming in speedos at the pool or beach thing. (which I was able to experience first hand while living in Germany for a year during high school) There are certain body types that work in that kind of suit and certain types that don't. Unfortunately the people who make the decisions about whether or not to wear a speedo don't seem to be able to differentiate as well as the rest of us. It's too bad that Arnold now seems to fall in to that company.

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Fun Searches

I've mentioned it before, but why can't search engines that own blogspot find me when other ones can? I had a referral tonight from NineMSN in Australia for The Matrix Reloaded Breakdancers. That's the second search that's found my Oakenfold concert entry.

Anyway, I thought that it was funny that I'm #7 for that particular search.

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BlogShares

I just found myself on BlogShares.com from a referral link on my Site Meter. How suprised was I to find that my blog is being traded on the open market? It turns out that all of my shares are owned by one dude who's has a small blog up here. A few generic web tips, nothing really.

So I decided to sign up for the heck of it. I doubt I'll play that much. I just don't have the time or desire to really get into a fake stock market game. I'll have a little BlogShares link over to the side and I'll trade every once in a while. This is the kind of thing that made me want to try out the blogging thing in the first place. I can't believe how popular and prevalent this whole trend is. And here I am, riding the wave!

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Yikes

There are lots of idiots out there. A lot of them happen to be celebrities. From time to time some high profile individual will say something so outrageous that it just makes you wonder what this world is coming to where these people are worshipped for really nothing.

Take this quote from rapper Shyne, which I spotted today on The Sports Guy's World on ESPN.com's Page 2:

"It's like Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder, they had their handicaps. It didn't stop them from making their mark."
-- Shyne, discussing how a 10-year jail sentence could affect his career

That will get you in good with people who know music.

Here's a classic that always gets me:

"We might make a lot of money, but we also spend a lot of money." - basketball player Patrick Ewing

Love those celebrites, they are so in touch with the lives and world of the "little people".

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Visitors?

Its a well known fact that my blog here (along with probably 99% of blogs out there) has a very limited audience. I've managed to keep one steady reader, my good friend Steve. Also, though I wouldn't go so far as to call him "steady", Site Meter tells me that my Scottish friend Newplanet has actually stopped back to my site a couple of times and read some of what I've written. He even left the first non-family comment. (unfortunately it is difficult to reciprocate as fully as I am just not a big fan of reality TV, which has been a major part of his posting thus far) Even my girlfriend didn't stay interested more than a week or so. I told my whole family that they could read regular updates of my "adventures" and thoughts but it turned out to be a little difficult to transfer the information from either the phone or email to an actual web browser and subsequent bookmark (my parents) or the person is always just a little too busy (my brother Brian). Alas, but no real matter. I knew that I would have an audience of approximately one when I started this thing.

Every once in a while Site Meter will tell me that someone stopped in for nearly 1 second from the Recently Updated Blogs page. But tonight I had a couple of visitors come in from random blogs which I thought was odd. Until I remembered what I had seen just a few minutes earlier, the new Blogger bar at the top of my blog. It has a google search box and a "Next Blog" button on it. I looked at the two other blogs and of course there was no hard link to my site, I just got picked by the "next blog" script. I tried the button out a few times from my own blog and the first one I hit was a bit of a shocker. Some pictures of scantily clad, soaking wet men greeted me. Not really my kind of site. Just to make sure it was random and this wasn't the site "right after mine" in blogger.com's lists, I went back to my site and clicked next again. Phew! Something different.

One thing that still strikes me as odd though is that blogger.com blogs aren't crawled by Google. The new search bar above someone's blog (mine for example) cannot be used to search for that blog! Blogger is owned by Google yet Google doesn't know I exist. I can search for myself on Yahoo (#1) Search(#6) but not Google? I just find it odd. No matter. Even though it was fun when I saw that someone found my site by searching for "nunchaku glow chucks"on uk.search.yahoo.com (#24) (#22 on search.yahoo.com incidentaly) I don't think I'm going to get a lot of readers though search engines.

I guess there wasn't really a point to this, just some thoughts.

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Forsooth, my countenence is of a nerdly predilection

In otherwords, I'm kind of a nerd.

Take for example my obsession with wanting a home theater setup (or my imminent Final Fantasy experiment) even with the crappy audio/video equipment I own--and lack of money for new, better equipment. I dream about (or actually, I read on the internet a lot about) a big theater with super comfy seats viewing a huge drop down screen with a digial projector image on it with 8 or more speakers in the room all placed with and blaring sound with THX-like precision.

Okay, that's a few years down the road.

In my current house we have a huge living room area where all of the a/v stuff is. We have the TV in a corner and then a semi-circle around it so we can fit about 7-10 people watching something, depending on how friendly people feel. The house I am moving into soon is much smaller and doesn't have a large open area like that. It has a small living room and two bedrooms and then a basement that is split in half. My roommate and I decided we would split the basement and I immediately decided that my half was the only place in the house that would fit my TV and speakers and everything else. But how to set it up?

It was long and narrow so obviously the TV would go at one end. The problem is that "rows" in home viewing situations don't work so well as the giant heads of people in the front row tend to get in the way of people in the back row. This is where my idea popped into my head. There were a bunch of cinder blocks around the house; I proposed that these blocks be used to prop up a second row of seating. I'd have stadium seating in my own house--there are a couple of theaters in town that don't have that!

This weekend I had moved the three section reclining couch over to the new place and last night I moved a loveseat with an ottoman over there. My soon-to-be roommate, Eric, and I arranged the furniture in a few different ways to try and get it all to work. We ended up with the loveseat/ottoman in the front row with the reclining couch, using only two sections instead of three because of width considerations, raised on blocks in the back row. We then proceeded to watch some of the Olympics with me sitting in front and him in the second row. It worked sweet. I can't wait to get the whole system hooked up and fully operational.

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Wonderful rain

Summers growing up in Minnesota were always pretty nice. It was hot and sunny most of the time. It would rain every once in a while, and we'd pout and go inside and watch TV or play Nintendo. But if it didn't rain for a few weeks or a month at a time no one was worried, it was cause for joy. The lawns didn't get too bad, we'd just water them. There are 10,000 lakes to get water from. There's tons of water in Minnesota.

Fast forward to the present. I live in Montana, a mountainous state in the west. There are two big lakes in the state and a few smaller ones, mostly up in the mountains. There are lots of rivers in and around the mountains but they rely on what kind of snowfall there was in the previous winter.

About two months ago it got nice out. Sunny and warm and big blue skies--and it has stayed that way since. Coming from my background, I love it. Perfect days every day, what more could a guy ask for. That is, until you start driving out into the country and see the fields and trees starting to turn a little less green.

In Montana we've got these two little problems: drought and forest fires. When it doesn't rain for months I'm thinking "Wow, it sure is nice, I hope it stays like this." most Montanans are thinking "Which comes first, rain or a sky choked with black smoke from the fire raging in the nearby National Forest?"

So when I woke up this morning to the pitter-patter of rainfall outside I was actually like a Montanan and thought "What a beautiful day for rain."

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Okay now...Kill Bill

Alright, so Steph and I did finish Kill Bill Vol 2 this weekend. I have been feeling much better than (warning: do not click) Thursday night. I won't go into a long review of the 2 part movie; as you know, I am a man of few words. I liked the movies over all and watching the "Making of Kill Bill Vol 2" on the DVD illucidated a few things that I think I "knew" but didn't really see.

The first picture was more of a kung-fu movie. It had lots of action, lots of blood, and lots of death. The sword fighting was the most fun for me. The gushing fountains of blood didn't really bother me, but they didn't "do it" for me either. The characters were set up, we were kind of introduced to them one by one, and we were left to wonder "Who is Bill?" and "Why did this happen to the Bride?"

The second picture is more of a speghetti western movie. The music (composed by Robert Rodriguez was pretty much right on and put me in the mood that was right for this movie. There was less overall action, but the action was top notch. Including a scene with a classic white haired kung-fu master. We finally meet Bill and finally figure out what's going on.

I definitely give it thumbs up. But one thing (that jumps out at me) that I didn't like is Quentin's tendency to put things out of order. He used this technique masterfully in Pulp Fiction where it helped to make sure we didn't always know what was going on. We would see things out of order, but we wouldn't know that they were out of order until we saw the connecting, earlier part and say "Ah! This happened before that part I saw earlier. I see how they fit." Well, in Kill Bill he just threw a couple things out of order and basically let us know how two or three very important things turned out. It is one thing to think "Okay, so-and-so isn't going to die here because it's the beginning of the movie" while watching a tension filled fight, but it is completely different for the director or writer to come out and pretty much say "This person will survive everything that gets thrown at her until you see her driving this car along a dusty road". That isn't "artistic", that's stupid.

Anyway, like I said, I liked it.

Steph and I last night went to see The Bourne Supremacy. We both enjoyed it, just like the first one. The action was good and the plot was good with no blarring holes that I immediately noticed. But here we go again: an artistic direction that I didn't really like, but unlike Quentin's time shifting, I can actually understand why this was done. For all of the action or fighting the movie shifted to "shaky camera mode". I can see the point; that when in these extreme situations that everything happens quickly and you can't see everything in Matrix like precision. A fight or a fast car chase is just a bunch of flashing images that you have to react to. After the last car chase Steph let out an audible sigh of relief from the tension and excitement that had built up. I nearly let one out from the relief to my head and eyes trying to focus on a purposely blurred film. It bugged me, but I can see why it was done, but it bugged me.

Anyway, like I said, I liked it.

Finally, rounding out the weekend movie trifecta. I popped in an old VHS of the movie Invincible Armor which I first watched a few years ago while living with Steve. It's classic old school kung-fu. Bad dubbing, no plot, crazy white-haired kung-fu masters, a not-quite-good-enough hero who learns the ultimate secret technique from an unlikely source, and plenty of sweet action. There's not much to say about it other than it is an enjoyable hour and a half or so marvelling at the moves and laughing at the ridiculousness at the same time.

Other than move a few things to my new place, that's about all I did this weekend.
Caio!

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Kill Bill...oh wait

So I was going to review my recent viewings of both Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 since Steph and I watched Vol. 1 two nights ago and were set up to watch Vol. 2 last night.

My company picnic was last night--almost everyone comes out and brings sidedishes while the company provides the meat and the drinks (including a keg and a half of beer). Steph and I brought the watermelon, which people liked (though I do not). I had a few bbq'd beef sandwiches and some fruit and one beer. Nothing on that list seems like it could be a recipe for disaster, right? Little did I know...

After eating I threw a football around with some of the guys and their kids and talked with a number of people. It was a fun time. After a while we left and on our way home we decided to go rent Kill Bill Vol. 2 and complete the movie. The whole time I was feeling a little "full" from the food I had eaten. We got to my house and popped the movie in. We were enjoying it until around the 1 hour mark and I started feeling worse than "full". Something was amiss.

Disclaimer:

For those of you who know me, you know that I like to go into detail about anything and everything. So for those who are squeemish and more sensitive, you may not want to click on the link below.



Okay, I won't go into ultra detail. But I started making repeated trips to the bathroom--which, luckily, is right across from my bedroom. The first few times, not much happened, it just felt like something was going to happen, and it felt like something could happen on either end...and something did.

The first time I threw up it was fairly violent. I let go with 4-5 mighty heaves, emptying what (I thought) was everything in my stomach into the toilet. It didn't feel that great, though I did feel slightly better afterwards. One of the anti-perks of throwing up with force is the chunks that get stuck in your teeth. That's always fun to pick those out after you thought you were done with your business. Another thing, since there was "splash damage" I had to step into the shower, where I blew my nose a couple of times. You know you threw up too much when your snot contains vomitus (what a great word).

Well, I kept making trips to the bathroom for quite some time, though we did get to proceed to the 1 hour and 30 minute point of the movie in between all the interrupts. At some point (about 11:45pm) my lovely girlfriend took a trip to Safeway to pick me up a couple of things, some Pepto Bismol (which I had never used before and didn't taste that bad), some Sprite (which I'm drinking right now--it's like Scrubbing Bubbles for my stomach--yikes, I could go on with a story about that--the Scrubbing Bubbles I mean, but I'll leave it for either later or never), and some tic-tacs. She was the last person served last night, whew!

The second time I threw up (No, the Pepto didn't seem to work and I'll leave it to the readers imagination to come up with what all the other trips were for) wasn't as violent but, with less material to work with, I had to end with the dry heaves, which completely (if you don't mind me using an inappropriate idiom) blow chunks. After wards I kept making trips across the hall when needed and I took some more Pepto, to see if it would help.

Even though Pepto says it works for "nausea" I don't think that means "any feeling that could make you throw up". We decided, after throwing up for the third time which was really nothing more than Pepto coming up, that food poisoning and the like are not really affected by the pink coating stuff. If something is really wrong and needs to exit, it's going to get itself out of there.

Well, that's my story. Aren't you sorry you read it? I'm feeling way better but still way bad this morning, so I'm at home. Hopefully I'll feel better after today so I can enjoy my weekend.


Take care!

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Olympics

So the Olympics have started (women's soccer has had a few matches already) and the opening ceremonies are coming up on Friday. As with most of the recent Summer games, the Americans are expected to do very well and come home with the most medals (which, of course, is not supposed to be the point of the games but has turned into the point). Two events with the US team being noticeably missing are men's soccer and baseball.

I had read it a few days ago and didn't really think about it but was looking up some articles today and found that both teams were elimated by Mexico. How about that?

We invented baseball. It's our "national pasttime". We're the defending gold medalists. How come we lost to a Mexican team that had gone 1-3 in the qualifying tournament? Ouch, and to our rivals to the south, that has to hurt.

And soccer. Okay, we didn't invent the game by any means, but the sport has made great strides in our country. We placed 4th in the 2002 World Cub, we got the silver medal in the Sydney olympics. I was a little confused though, the teams trying to qualify and play in the olympics are not the World Cup teams, the olympic teams are under-23 teams. But it is disappointing nonetheless.

I don't know how much I'll actually watch the Games, probably some of the sprint finals and maybe any finals where Michael Phelps is trying for his 8 medals. But I'm sure that I'll be following everything along online. I do wish they showed more Table Tennis on TV, I love watching that sport played at high levels. And who knew that trampoline was an olympic event? I may have to check that out. I'm sure some fairly impressive aerial twisting and turning will take place.

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A Pox upon Zip Disks!

Way back in the day (the first part of this story takes place in my junior year of college, which preceded about 3 senior years) I had a 100MB Zip Drive. Man, that thing was cool. CD burners were very expensive and could be flaky but 100MB Zip disks were relatively cheap and reliable, and what could you have to transport that took up more than 100MB? That was so much space!

Anyway, I had a 100MB parallel port drive and Steve had a blazingly fast internal ATAPI one. His was less portable, but man, it was speedy. He would come down from UMD to visit me at the U with a few Zip disks of stuff we'd load them up in my Zip drive to copy all of the stuff off. And wait...

And wait...

And wait...

Steve would be dreaming of his own Zip drive that filled his disks in minutes while we'd be waiting for half hour or more for each of those things to empty themselves on to my computer. Needless to say, Steve, who never gets bitter about anything, would get a little bitter about the whole situation--and certainly never brings it up these days.

You may be asking, why are you bringing this up? What made you even think of it?

Yesterday I was handed a 250MB Zip disk and told to copy a presentation off of it for so-and-so-1 and let him know where I saved it on the network. And that so-and-so-2 has a 250 MB Zip drive, so I can use that.

I go up to #2 to borrow the drive and while he's disconnecting it from his computer I notice that it is parallel port, not a good sign. So I think, okay, it's just a presentation, maybe it's small and they used a 250MB disk because it was all they had.

I get the drive hooked up and the software installed (not automatic detection via USB for this drive!), reboot, and browse to the disk. Yikes, the presentation is about 120MB, this is going to take a while. There are a bunch of other files on the disk which I copy off quickly and then start on the big one. It starts going and after a little bit stops with a cyclic redundancy error. Another not good sign. So I try again and it starts copying normally. While it's going my computer slows to a crawl, the crawl of a three-toed sloth encased in a glacier. So I sit there staring at the non-work-related presentation being copied using ancient Zip technology. It keeps going for a while and suddenly, when it gets to the "8 minutes remaining" point the drive clicks, the time jumps back to "10 minutes remaining", and then proceeds to click every 10 seconds or so. Ouch. I stop it, make sure I have the latest drivers, reboot and try again. The same thing happens.

The urge to pitch the disk and drive through the small window in my office was quickly subdued.

Luckily, I don't really care if the presentation gets copied or not, because if I did care I'd be stressed out, because it's not going to get copied. (I don't think that sentence is grammatically correct, there seems to be too many instances of the word 'because', but I don't know how to otherwise get across what I mean to say)

That's my story. The moral? Start using a CD burner or USB key and then have your friends throw you a party to welcome you to the year 2004.

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A Journey of Fantastical Proportions

I've just published the first post on my new blog A Final Fantasy Adventure. I am going to play through all of the Final Fantasy games that have been released for the Playstation in the US in order and blog my progress and thoughts as I play through.

Head on over if it sounds at all interesting. I haven't started playing yet, but I will soon. Check back for when I start it.

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SECURITY ALERT!

I hate popup ads. Pretty much everyone does.

One kind that really bother me, because they can more easily fool novice computer users (and thus infect their computer and if they are my friends I am the one who is looked upon to clean up the mess), are the ones that are made to look like system or error warnings.

I found this page that demonstrates one such ad and then goes on to show other more dire warnings that ad companies haven't tried pawning off on users. I found some of them quite amusing.

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Coach K

No, not that one, this Coach K.

What about him? Well, last night Steph, her dad, and I went to eat at a steak house in Manhattan called Sir Scott's Oasis. I've been there a few times before and it is probably my favorite restaurant out here. They have great steaks and awesome steak fingers (steak strips battered and deep fried).

Well, we all sit down and start parusing the menu when Mr. Jordan notices that sitting at the next table is none other than Bobby Knight, illustrious ex-coach of the U of Indiana men's basketball team. (and current coach at Texas Tech)

The place was packed, even at 9pm, but we could hear Bobby over the din for most of the night. He was at a table with 7 other people, it looked like 4 couples. The ladies were mostly at one end of the table having their own quiet conversations, but I'm not sure if any man other than Knight got a word in all night. He told sports celebrity stories the whole time. Ranging from Tony LaRussa and George Brett (who he knows very well) to Mickey Mantle and the DiMaggio family to various basketball stories.

He was kind of how I would expect him to be at the table, loud and in control. Now, we don't know who else was at the table, but he was by far the most famous one and he's got lots and lots of money, but they all asked for separate checks. Like I said, we don't know who those other people were, but it struck our table as odd.

Anyway, that made a good night even a little more interesting.

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5K

As I mentioned, last Saturday morning I ran in a 5K race with Stephanie. It was the first timed run I had done since Jr High gym and High School track.

On our way to the race we stopped in at Safeway to pickup some nourishment for energy. I had a Clif bar and Steph had a Luna bar (basically a Clif bar for women) and we shared a Gatorade. Now two of those things were on sale so it was going to be a good deal, BUT since I didn't bring my wallet along to the race I didn't have my stupid Safeway card with me (oh, how I miss Cub and its consistantly low prices without a stupid club card). They make a provision for this and allow you to input your phone number in a keypad instead of swiping your card. Well, this didn't work because my Safeway card still had my old phone number associated with it, along with Steph's, and along with everyone else in my house because that number didn't work. So instead of swiping some random card (like I've seen happen on multiple occasions) the stupid checkout lady told me to hold on to the receipt and bring it in later with my card for a refund. Well, I was not too happy with that response but there was nothing I could do. (On a positive note, since we didn't have any pockets we put the change in the change slot of a pay phone and when we came back later our $.50 was still there!)

So we started towards the starting line chowing our energy bars and sipping the Gatorade. When we got there I started looking around for a garbage can and couldn't find one anywhere. I finally spotted one that was half a block away from the line and ran over to pitch our trash. Of course, as I'm coming around the corner back onto the street I hear the starting gun go off. Nice, my first race and I miss the gun!

No worries, there were hundreds of people in front of us anyway so we couldn't have gone anywhere anyway. As we crossed the starting line I started my own stop watch to see what our "real" time would be. We started off running with the pack and then trying to pick our way through to get ahead of most of the slower people. (of course, we were some of the slower people) I started off feeling very good and set the pace a little high, Steph was struggling a little to keep up but was doing fine. At about the mile or mile-and-a-half mark I was really starting to feel the lack of training creeping through my body. Keep in mind that I had been out on short bike rides and a couple of walks in recent weeks--and I also play basketball on most Friday mornings before work, but I hadn't been running in a while, maybe a month or two.

Near this halfway point, as I was told later, Steph started feeling a lot better and I was letting her set the pace. It was a struggle to keep up but I managed. For the last 2K or so it was mostly downhill, which felt a lot better than the gradual uphill climb we had been on for most of the morning, but I was getting so burned out it didn't matter much.

There were lots of people out on the course to watch friends and just runners in general. It was nice to have people cheering you on the whole way. At one spot this lady had brought her garbage can and a big bucket out and was playing the drums on them. The cadence didn't help with the rhythm of running, but it was fun to listen to (though I didn't think about her neighbors who might have wanted to be sleeping at 7:45am on a Saturday morning).

On the home strech we picked up the pace maybe a step and passed a few stragglers making their way to the finish--there were also many 10Kers finishing at that time, they had started 15 minutes before the 5K run.

Our official time was 29:36 which is a 9:33 mile pace. Stephanie placed in the upper half of all women in the race and I placed much closer to the bottom of all men. Our real time (by my watch) was 29:14 which is a 9:24 mile pace, not much difference, but hey, in racing every second counts. We were happy with our times, considering the shape we are in and the training regimen we had leading to the race.

So will I do one again? I'm pretty sure I will. But I definitely would like to get out there and run a little bit before doing another race. I know it would help me for the upcoming hockey season.

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Long Weekend

Don't you love those weekends where it seems like you've been away from work for a whole week? When I walked into work this morning it felt like it had been forever since I'd done it.

Friday night...I can't really remember, but I don't think I did very much. Oh, I remember, Steph and I just watched some TV and played Sequence. Tina gave me that game a few years ago for my birthday--it's simple and fun.

Then on Saturday morning I got up at about 6:45am and headed to the starting line of the Bozeman Classic 5K race. Steph and I signed up earlier in the week and ran the race together. It was my first race ever and Steph's second. We ran it in 29:14, which works out to 9:24 miles, which we were both happy with. This was with zero training on my part and Steph has only been out running a couple of times. It was fun but my legs were ultra sore for the rest of the weekend, thankfully I'm feeling much better today.

After the race on Saturday we mostly did Sweet Pea Festival activites. We watched the Children's 1K run followed by the parade. Then we went to the festival grounds and watched a number of different performers and walked through the artisans' shops. All in all a really fun day. After the fest we went out with a few friends for some drinks, but I was too beat to stay out and called it a night midway through hanging out at the first bar.

On Sunday morning we headed up to "Church in the Park". The festival had brought in an acapella singing group from North Carolina called "The Gospel Julilators". They sang a bunch of spiritual songs and were very good and entertaining at the same time.

I didn't do much important for the rest of the day before going and meeting Steph and her dad later that night to see the Jubilators again and then going out for a few drinks.

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Nice cans...

You gotta love working at a company where, along with the pop cans, there are PBR cans in the recycling bin in the break room.

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Those crazy Finns

This is crazy. Some men in the Finnish military are being let out of service because they can't be without the internet for the six months they are required to serve.

Back a few years when I worked for SimonDelivers.com I had a buddy who was a Finn. While working at SD.com it came time for him to serve in the military. He left for 6 months and came back pretty much the same. About the same time my brother was either in or had just come back from US Marine boot camp. The differences between the two were striking. First, we hardly ever heard from Matt because he barely had time to even write to his fiance. But Nick, he had access to the internet and email, I even heard from him a few times and I was just a friend from work! Second, the food. Matt was forced to eat MREs while in the field and in the mess hall while in camp. If I remember correctly mess food wasn't too bad but it wasn't good and it got repetative. Whereas Nick had fast food restaurants on base!

Maybe they treated their snipers differently but those idiots who got out of service should have been able to get access to the 'net at least a little. Just imagine if they had been addicted to heroin as well, they would have had to have been let out twice as fast.

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Big boys on little bikes

A former WWE (formerly the WWF) star, Brock Lesnar, is trying to make the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL. I was looking through some pictures on FOXSports.com today and found this:



Don't those bikes look rediculously small under those 300 lb giants? Like clowns on mini-bikes. I just thought it was funny.

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Brewery Follies

So we drove out to the Brewery Follies last night. It is a vaudeville type show that is (as they describe themselves) nasty and wrong. On their website they rate themselves as PG-13, but I'd have to say more like PG15 or 16 or even R. Some of the stuff is out there and pretty risque. We were all warned before hand, but in the middle of the 1st act a family of 5 left.

It was good, but not great. I'm not sure it was worth $15. It was definitely a neat experience. I laughed lots, but a number of the jokes seemed forced like they were really searching for something sick to put into a skit.

The venue was cool, an old brewery that was built in 1863. Most of the brewery was just as it was back in the days that it was actually brewing beer.

A couple of my favorite skits were the dueling nostrils and the dyslexic doubletalk. In dueling nostrils two of the actors stood onstage with small colored flashlights in each nostril and they played the song "Dueling Banjos" on a tape player. Along with each pick of the banjo they alternated turning on the flashlight in their nose. One actor followed the first banjo, and the other, the second. It may not sound all that great, but it was hilarious. In dyslexic doubletalk a guy went off on a huge spiel about a bunch of stuff, but switched the first letters of multiple words in every sentence. It was both amazing and funny. This of course allows you to talk about many things you couldn't normally talk about since you're not actually saying the words you're talking about.

All in all I had a good time, I just wish it had been a little cheaper. Though I really feel bad for those people who spent $75 for 30 minutes of stuff that offended them. (why not stay around for 2 hours of offensive material?)

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So lazy...

This weekend was nice and easy.

First on Friday night my friends Emily and Ricarda invited Steph and I over to their house for dinner. It was a speghetti dinner which was very tasty. They also had another friend over with her two kids: a 4 year old girl named Kailyn (probably spelled wrong) and an 8 year old boy named Connor. They were quite entertaining and also entertained by me. Being of average strength I was able to throw them around and wrestle and other various activities. Kailyn really like being flipped around upside down and Connor liked to wrestle. Ricarda and Emily have a trampoline in their back yard so we had to bounce around on that for a while as well. The two kids loved that and Kailyn really liked bouncing while holding my hands, saying that I was "more fun" than Stephanie. She also grilled me on why I would want a girlfriend, I hope my answer was satisfactory. After that we all went and watched Ricarda play softball. Her team lost 19-17 (at least that's the score I heard). Most of the scoring must have gone on in the first couple of innings, which we missed.

Steph's sister Kris flew into town on Friday night and this event helped dictate the events of the rest of the weekend. The first fun activity was floating on the Madison river. You may remember that I had done this just a few weeks prior. This time it was with my friends, so everybody knew everybody else (except Kris, of course). Also this time, we had found the valves for the tractor tire inner tubes that I have so we were able to bring those to float on. They fit 3 people very comfortably and could fit 4 in a pinch. I didn't even get sunburned this time, which was nice.

After that there was a dinner party at my house. My roommate Matt grilled up some burgers and we all chowed down. After dinner Steph, Kris, my soon-to-be roommate Eric and I went for a walk up on Pete's hill. Then we went for ice cream, which to everyone's astonishment (including my own), I didn't partake in. I was just too stuffed from burgers. I only had two of them, but they were huge.

Yesterday I didn't do all that much. In the evening I went to dinner with Steph and Kris at the Ale Works before they went to see Harry Connick Jr. For the rest of the day I sat around mostly, watching Futurama and Family Guy episodes on my computer, those are two funny shows.

Today has been a pretty good day at work so far, it's gone quickly. Tonight Steph, Kris and I are going to see The Brewery Follies in Virginia City, MT. Ricarda went last week sometime and said it was hilarious, so I'm looking forward to it.

This post is a little odd. I started off with a good head of steam and then it tapered off. I guess it kind of goes along with the post's title. Every paragraph is shorter than the one before it.

Including this one. Talk at you later.

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