Just Plain Chips - Brenden Johnson's Blog

I've Moved

2005-05-31T21:59:00.000-07:00

I've moved.

Check me out in my new location.

Bummer

2005-05-12T08:13:00.000-07:00

As you may (or may not) have noticed, my new site is down. All of blogsome is down. It doesn't make me very happy. With the combination of no internet at home and generally more busy at work than when I was in Montana this means that I don't have tons of time to write anyway, so when my site and its manager go down, it leaves me up a creek. At least they have a warning up now, yesterday the site just didn't load.

I'm in the middle of a post from my perspective of Steve's party, and I have a few other things to say as well. Like how great my friends are and how I watched Star Wars Episode 2 last night. You know, important stuff that you need to know about!

Anyway, hopefully it will be up soon.

EDIT: It's back up. Phew.

Food and more food

2005-05-07T13:15:00.000-07:00

Work is killing me today. It’s too nice out and there’s only 3 people here today, and I’m the only one in the office. Zzzzz.

Must keep working at plans on computer screen...

I know you've all been waiting for me to say something about food. Isn't that what I always talk about? So let's recap some of the highlights from the past month or two.

Read whole post...

Last Day in Montana

2005-05-05T20:11:00.000-07:00

As I downloaded the pictures I took for my last post I noticed I had some pictures from March in my camera. What could those be?

Well, they turned out to be from my last day in Montana. Emily and I went on a hike up the Storm Castle, or Castle Rock. It was a beautiful day and we talked about all sorts of stuff. A perfect send off for me. I had the camera along and took a few pictures, and here are a couple of them.

If you want to see the pictures you should go look at them.

New Family Member

2005-05-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

Someone already called me a "horrible uncle" for not having pictures ready after 1 day of knowing Elaina. But I have a few from tonight. My nephew is very excited to have the baby around and has been very good with her so far. He's even been a little over protective at times when other people want to hold the darling little girl.

There are pictures over here.

Good Blog Stuff

2005-05-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

I put a couple of blogs up in my "Blogs I Read" section (of the new place), but I thought I would call them out specifically.

If you are a fan of Star Wars, you should read "The Darth Side": Memoirs of a Monster. It is a blog written from the perspective of Darth Vader during The Empire Strikes Back. It is pretty darn hilarious. The comments can be funny but a few people get a little crazy about it.

If you are a fan of the Minnesota Twins (and maybe even if you are not) you should read Bat-Girl. Most of it is really funny and excellently written. I thought that the post about yesterday's game was especially good. It explained, in metaphysical terms, why the Twins can't get a hit with the bases loaded. Good stuff.

Happy 5-5-5 Day

2005-05-05T08:15:00.000-07:00

Today is a day that only happens 12 times a century: the month, day, and year numbers in today's date are all the same. I suppose it becomes a little passe, since it has happened the last 4 years in a row, and will happen for the next 7 years. But I think it's pretty cool. When I was born in 1976 this hadn't happened in 64 years!

A consequence of this that I just thought of is that the date reads the same here as it would in Europe. I suppose people who have to deal with that on a daily basis don't worry too much any more, but it confuses me for a second when I read dates written over there, especially if it is before the 13th of the month, when it becomes obvious which number means what.

Moving

2005-05-04T15:58:00.000-07:00

I'll be out of my brother's house this weekend. As I mentioned, this means that I won't be around Elaina as much as I've been around Luke for a couple months, but I'm guessing mom and dad are looking forward to having their whole house to themselves again. I will be moving into a luxorious place over in Eden Prairie, which will be way closer to work. I'm looking forward to giving that new commute a test drive on Monday.

So, if I'm moving in real life, why not make a move in cyberspace as well?

I've been on Blogger/Blogspot since last May 13th--almost exactly one year. I've enjoyed it, but had a few frustrations and wrangled the system into submission. But I've seen other websites out there. Websites running on much cooler software with way better features. Features that I probably wouldn't understand or use, but features nonetheless.

Out of the blue a few weeks ago I found a link to Blogsome.com where they have free space for WordPress powered blogs. So I signed up since I had read a few things about how powerful it is. I hadn't really looked into the site I signed up for until this weekend. Just logging in to the dashboard I was blown away. The default themes and features are pretty sweet. A few things that I've noticed that I'm excited about are: a clickable archive calander, static pages (like an "about" page) that aren't in the normal time flow of posts, hosting of images on the same server, and categories for posts.

So after I've finally gotten my Blogger.com blog and profile to the top of Google (you can even see the link to the post where I asked for and got my gmail account--hooray!), and finally getting back into writing, and even gaining a few new readers I know of (Hello Madison, WI and Anchorage, AK!) I'm going to try and start migrating my readership to the new setup. For a little while I'll be double posting so that you won't miss anything (the horror!!) if you go to one site or the other. Also, I'm going to try and point some of the links on this page to the new site, like the header link, and maybe the "Read the whole post" links, if I can figure that out. This also means that two(?) of you will have to change your links some time soon as well, not that I get all that many referrals, but you never know.

Please leave me any feedback on your thoughts on this or on the feel of the new site.

Later!

New Life (for real this time)

2005-05-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

Well, that didn't take long!

I'm an uncle times two. And this time it's a baby girl.

Elaina Mary Johnson was born at 11:07pm on May 3rd, 2005, weighing 7lbs. 8oz. and measuring 20.5" long. Mom and baby are healthy and happy (and sleeping as far as I know), and dad is floating on cloud nine, I could hear it through the phone.

I'll be going over there tomorrow morning to visit. I don't think I've ever seen a zero day old baby before, I'm pretty excited.

Okay, good night for real this time.

New Life (almost)

2005-05-03T20:45:00.000-07:00

It's a pretty exciting night in the Johnson family. Jenny, my sister-in-law, is in labor as I type this. She and Matt, my parents, and her parents have all been up at the hospital since 6:30 or so. By the morning Brian and I will have a new neice or nephew.

It's been so fun to watch Luke grow up in his third year. He's almost like a new person every single day. Kids can pickup and learn so much just observing everything around them. Luke literally seems more grown up and smarter every day that I talk to him. It was fun to see the leaps and bounds he grew by when I'd visit every few months from Montana, but it's even more amazing when you notice a difference from day to day. I can't wait to be around the new one for its first and second years too. I won't be living at the house any more but I'll still be way closer than Montana.

Keep mom and baby in your thoughts and prayers.
Good night.

Mmmm, finger steaks (part 2)

2005-05-01T20:45:00.000-07:00

Remember back in February when I went to Sir Scott's to have succulent finger steaks?

Well, someone asked to see some pictures of the occasion. Since I haven't posted many pictures lately, except in relation to amatuer movies, I figured I'd finally get around to this request. (thanks for the pics, bro)

A welcome sight when you're hungry for beef.

Here they are. Battered, deep fried stips of steak. I never knew such a wonderful thing existed until I lived in Montana. And those are lightly floured and fried slices of potato, Jo-Jo's, in the background. On the plate behind the beer is ketchup for the Jo-Jo's and ranch for the finger steaks.

(Incidentally, I think this short post has the new record for most typos. I had to read through it about 5 times to make sure everything was correct. And it was so bad I'm not even sure I got it right in the end.)

Ripoff

2005-05-01T19:54:00.000-07:00

This weekend could have been really fun if it weren't for dastardly microbes coursing through my throat causing me discomfort and pain. I can't remember a time when I've been sick or under the weather so many times within a few months. It is rediculous.

Alas. Friday was an okay day at work. We had a nice meeting with a contractor and designer in the afternoon. It went really long but we got through all sorts of good stuff that needed to get ironed out. Unfortunately I had woken up with a sore spot in the back of my throat--not a good sign. It didn't escalate into anything worse, it was just really annoying.

I went to bed on Friday night just achy and sore, not happy at all. I woke up feeling better but not good. The rotten thing about this was that I was going to a wedding later that day (that I had been invited to only on Thursday night--he didn't know I was back in town). The groom was my bro's best friend through junior high and high school--so my parents and I were invited along seeing as we were pretty much his second family for half of his youth. The ceremony was very nice and in a very nice church. I'm not Catholic, but I've been to a number of Catholic services at different churches in my day and this sanctuary was very different than any I had seen. The neatest thing, I thought, was their 3-D cross hanging above the altar. It was built out with more vertices than would be in a normal 3-D cross shape, almost like trying to represent a 4-D figure like a tesseract. It was pretty unique.

The reception was a full two hours after the ceremony so my parents and I drove around a bit. We drove by the house I lived in for the first couple years of my life. The neighborhood is starting to look a little run down these days. Then we drove to what my mom believes was one of the first Target stores ever, where I quickly bought a card and present to bring to the reception.

The reception was very similar to any other wedding you've been to. One cool thing they did was bride/groom trivia. Whenever people clinked their glasses enough instead of just having the bride and groom kiss the DJ asked a trivia question of the crowd and then had the couple kiss.

One fun moment of the evening happened when I decided to open my big mouth during the trivia. The question was "Does the groom have any siblings and what are their names?" I raised my hand and gave my answer "Yes and Kari." For any of the other questions that would have been it and he would have walked away, but no, he had a follow up question: "Is she single?" To which I answered "No" (she's been married 3 years.) You would have thought that would be it, right? But no, he had one more two part question for me "Does that make you sad?"(or something like that) and "Are you single?" I just left him with an ambiguous "Yes".

Well, the groom's sister, Kari, who was a bridesmaid, and her mother start laughing up in front and no one else knows why. What they, and my family, but probably no one else in the room knows is that Kari and I dated in high school. Kari told me later that she was glad that the lights were turned down a bit as she was turning a bright red color in the cheeks.

I didn't make it much longer beyond dinner unfortunately. I was just feeling too crappy. Luckily my brother Matt took my mom out for at least one dance, as I couldn't fulfill that duty this time.

Today was very uneventful, except for the fact that there was snow falling all over the Twin Cities today! How crazy is that? It's May! I guess it's all a part of the plot to keep people out of the state. We like it just the way it is and don't want it any more crowded.

Thumbs Up

2005-04-28T19:15:00.000-07:00

Well, well, well. That just goes to show that you shouldn't judge something before you see or experience it for yourself. I actually enjoyed Mobile Home Disaster. For all the same reasons that I enjoy Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. A deserving family gets a new house and everybody in the whole show wins in the end. I thought they were going to make a ton of fun of "trailer trash" and that whole set of stereotypes, but Bill Engvall, the host, did it all very nicely. The family was very nice and completely appreciative. They could laugh at themselves and their situation.

Brian's graphics, especially for the opening montage, were really cool. One effect was where a wrecking ball came swinging in and took the screen off like a piece of paper. I guess it's hard to explain, but it was neat. Especially because I can picture Brian sitting up until 4am at his desk trying to get the shot perfect.

Anyway, if you missed it. That's too bad. Hopefully enough people watched it and you'll get to see more episodes in the future.

G'night

Cheesy TV

2005-04-28T12:35:00.000-07:00

Who likes campy humor that laughs at the dregs of American society?

That's right we all do.

Well, maybe not all of the time. But when it's a TV show pilot that my brother worked on, I have to check it out. Tonight, on the WB, at 8pm (CST), will be airing "Mobile Home Disaster". Think "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in a trailer park and you're just about there.

Brian has done mostly (all?) graphics on the shows he's worked on before. Well, that changed a bit for this one. True, he pretty much did all of the effects on this show; but he was also out on location, behind the camera, doing odd jobs, and whatever else. So if you have the time and aren't addicted to "The Apprentice" check it out. Even if you end up being sorry you did, just imagine my brother being happy that so many people watched his show.

Aren't I just so encouraging?

A Short Lived Romance...

2005-04-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

Sorry, that should be "romance", in quotes.

Alas...it was never meant to be.

Though I wouldn't have had it any other way. The cute girl from class and I sat together in class again yesterday. At the lunch break we went together to the hotel restaurant. We pretty much talked the whole time, while I ate my juicy burger and she her turkey(?) sandwich, about all sorts of stuff--just like the night before. Except the focus of the day was relationships, with much of it about her boyfriend back in Florida. (ahhh! rats! just kidding) In the afternoon I made her smile during class a few times while trying to keep her from falling asleep. Afterwards we said good bye and good luck and I headed for the door and she for the elevator. And no, we didn't exchange any info or anything--she doesn't even know my last name.

It helped that I was by far the nearest person to her age in the class, but it's always nice to have a gorgeous woman pay you any attention at all. (guys are so stupid like that) Not to mention that she was interesting and funny. Oh, and it was fun to listen to her talk about her business as it was very different than the cabinet shop my dad is running. There are so many different ways to make cabinets out there, it's crazy.

You know what? She reminds me of comedian Elvira Kurt, with the short hair and big, funny smile. Except she's prettier, has red hair, and freckles.

Dang, now I sound like I'm obsessing. That's not it though, I'm just giving all the details. After this I can't imagine when I'd mention her again.

Anyway. I had another good run with the pup this morning. That's three mornings in a row, which breaks last week's "streak" of two.

My last day of class was pretty interesting today. I learned a lot of interesting stuff which I won't be able to use for a while but can see how the program could really help our business become more efficient. Hopefully I'll be able to figure and configure it all and get it working right.

I suppose that can be it. I've had enough small, disconnected paragraphs about random stuff for one post.

Rock on!

2005-04-25T19:40:00.000-07:00

Today was sweet. My class was actually pretty good. I learned a bunch of stuff that will help at my job. Then I had dinner with a beautiful girl that I met in class. And then I went downtown and got tickets to two shows at the Fine Line Music Cafe downtown for Brian and I late in May.

The two shows we're going to go see are Porcupine Tree and Kasabian. They are both from the UK and you have probably heard of neither of them. Porcupine Tree is pretty much completely awesome. They have some sweet stuff. I hadn't heard of Kasabian until Brian mentioned them this last weekend. I was able to listen to a little of their debut album and they sound much like a typical British punkish rock band. But I trust Brian's judgement, so I'm really looking forward to the show. For Kasabian we were able to get upper level reserved tickets, so that should be pretty sweet. The upper level for Porcupine Tree was sold out.

It is pretty awesome that I'm getting the chance to see a lot of live music that I really didn't know if I'd ever be able to see. I never got into going to shows, but while living out in Bozeman there were a few acts that I decided that I'd like to see if I ever got the chance. The first was Paul Oakenfold, who I got to see in July of last year. Another was Porcupine Tree, which I get to see in about a month. I'm pretty stoked about it.

Like I said, the class was pretty good as well. I didn't learn anything huge, as it was the "basic" day, but I learned some pretty good techniques and tricks that will help me work more efficiently and a few things that I didn't know I could do. I'm looking forward to the next couple of days as well.

Oh! Wait! Did I say something about dinner with a beautiful girl?
Oh yeah, I did.

So I got to class a little later than most of the people (but still before 8am) and there were only two spots left in the room. The room was laid out with 3 tables of two seats each on each side of the room with an aisle between. The two spots that were available were on either of the front two tables. At one table was a girl who was against the wall, so the open spot was the aisle seat. At the other table a guy was sitting on the aisle with the wall seat open. I of course sat down next to the girl since I didn't want to have to walk behind the guy and make a big scene.

No big whoop, so I'm sitting next to a girl in a 2-3 day class. Well, there were a couple of times where she fell a little behind in what the instructor was talking about or she didn't quite get something and who was there to help her out? Why, me, of course.

We talked a little bit during the breaks and got along alright. It turns out that she's from southern Florida where her parents own a cabinet shop and she's trying to learn all she can so she can take over the place. While she was up in our great state she figured that she had to see the Mall of America, so we headed over to walk around a little and have some dinner. We attempted a couple of places before arriving at our final destination. The first was Jillian's Fire Stone Grill. That sounds nice enough, right? Well, it was a "Dining & Entertainment Megaplex" that included a bowling alley. Not exactly what we were looking for. So then we tried Wolfgang Puck's Express (we didn't know what the Express would mean, but we wanted to see) but even though it was listed on the map it wasn't open yet. Strike 2. So I then suggested Tucci Bennuch, which is italian and which I knew was there. We had a lovely dinner, a glass of wine and just talked for the hour or so that we were there. It was really nice.

Including this dinner I can only remember two "dates" that weren't with a serious girlfriend in my entire life. The other one was dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Stadium Village at the U witha really cute swimmer girl that I met through a roommate. (and I guess, to be fair (to her) that really wasn't a date either--we just went to dinner during a break of the swim meat we were watching) I've just never been a "dating" guy, I've always been a "relationship" guy. But it was really fun to just go out and have a nice time with a cool girl tonight knowing that I'd see her at class tomorrow and then that was it.

So I had a pretty good day.

Hi ya!

2005-04-25T05:19:00.000-07:00

Dinner on Saturday was at Grizzly's, which was pretty good. And it was definitely more reasonably priced than say...TGI Fridays.

The movie was good, it was very entertaining. Most of it was over the top, which was the stuff that was entertaining, but then the rest was over the top of that, which was mostly groan worthy.

This is going to be a quick post because I have to get out of here soon. I have a class I'm going to near the Mall of America for Cabnetware, the software I use at work. The class is three days starting today, and hopefully I'll learn tons from it.

Talk to you all later.

Zzzz

2005-04-22T16:06:00.000-07:00

Did I mention this morning that I was tired? Yikes, I've been slow all day--but I was able to get a lot done. I'm actually still at work because I'm going to dinner over at my godparent's daughter's new town house tonight. That should be pretty fun. My godparents will be there, as will their eldest son, who I haven't seen in quite some time, and my parents.

Tomorrow though, a huge day is planned. I have three things on the agenda.

1. Use the work moving truck to move my stuff, with my dad's help, from storage to my brother's house.
2. Eat a delectible meal at a fine restuarant with Steve.
3. Following dinner, go watch Kung Fu Hustle.

That will all be sweet.

I'm still okay with me

2005-04-22T08:05:00.000-07:00

Well, the combination of sore body muscles (I swear I could feel my ears before stepping into the shower this morning) and the "late night" party last night means that I just couldn't get up early enough even for a walk. But fear not loyal readers! I will take a jaunt this evening and enjoy the crisp spring air in the light.

I can't wait until I'm at least in good enough shape to not feel so pathetic as to want to take a walk. But I'm not too proud to take this (pardon the appropriate idiom) one step at a time and build myself back up slowly and surely.

Music Notes

2005-04-21T22:05:00.000-07:00

This is probably more for me than anyone else, but when I started paying attention to the music I was listening to while on my run this morning I noticed a couple things. Some music is perfect for my running and other music is not as good or even disrupting. The main cause is the beat. The rhythm of music always gets right to me and I want to align everything I do along with the beat of whatever I happen to be listening to at one particular moment. This is very handy while running as it can spur my to keep up the pace as my footsteps hit the ground to the beat of the music.

I have an ecclectic mix of music on my mp3 player right now, so the songs can be quite different from one another. The first song that I noticed this morning was "Superbeast" by Rob Zombie, it was perfect. Hard and heavy, fast, and the perfect beat. Then came "I Am Hell" by White Zombie (Rob's old band) and it had the same first two qualifications of the previous song but was lacking in the third. It was slightly faster and either it was too hard to keep the pace or it just rubbed me the wrong way to have my foot steps falling off of the beat. The third song was "It's Only Rock and Roll" by the Rolling Stones. I love that song, but the beat was just too slow, I had to skip ahead. The next was "Blackest Eyes" by Porcupine Tree. Another winner, it just made me want to keep running.

After that I didn't pay too much attention until I got to Juno Reactor's "Mona Lisa Overdrive". This was another one that was well suited to my run. But hearing it made me think of something else I had realized about this song at an earlier date. It isn't quite safe to listen to this car while driving along with any speed on the freeway. It makes you want to weave through traffic avoiding bullets and cops. You may recognize the song even if you don't find the name familiar. It is the song played during the huge freeway chase scene in The Matrix Reloaded.

Goodnight, it's too late for me. Especially if I'm going to get up in the morning for a walk! I went over to Paul and Laura's tonight and ended up watching Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. I had wanted to watch this movie for a while. It was entertaining but not a modern classic in the vein of Napolean Dynamite, Office Space, or Van Wilder. I'll try to give a fuller review another time

Wow!

2005-04-21T05:45:00.000-07:00

Another morning, another excursion with the pup.

That's right, I've gotten up early and got in a work out two days in a row. (check back tomorrow to see if I can make it three)

I kept the dog much more in rein today. The shorter leash and tugs on the leash helped keep him at my side. Though that presents a new set of problems whereby his giant rump often bumps into my legs. At one point we saw a couple of geese sitting on a lake and was slowly drawn towards them. But before he reached the end of the leash he realized that he was supposed to be by my side and pulled himself back. Unfortunately he overcompensated and nearly ran under my legs. That's okay though; he's such a great guy I can forgive nearly everything he does.

I'm much sorer today, which I expected. We'll see how I feel tomorrow morning, though it may turn in to much more of a walk to let my muscles recover a little but. Matt already called me "wussy bananas" (a very old Johnson Boys insult) for even thinking about just walking, but we'll see.

Blingity Bling

2005-04-20T20:40:00.000-07:00

I can kind of understand the whole blinging out your car craze. Not entirely, but a little. But there are cases where I cannot understand it even one bit.

One thing that I've never got, but maybe had a breakthrough thought the other day, was the whole labeling your car with giant stickers proclaiming the make of your car. Whenever I see a crappy Honda Accord with a giant "HONDA" across the top of the windshield, or a huge Honda "H" on the hood (I saw a car with both the other day) I cringe. I never got it at all--it didn't make sense. But I had a thought, maybe they want it to look like a NASCAR race car. Maybe they want to feel like Honda is sponsoring their 1992 Honda Accord LX. I don't know if that's right, but it's the only thing I've come up with.

Now, the reason I started this post...this morning, on 77/Cedar Ave Northbound I saw a minivan. No big whoop, there are literally hundreds of minivans in the neighborhood I live in alone. Wait...I can't tell this until I tell about something else that happened over the weekend.

(Here's the crux of whether you hate listening to/reading my stories or love it: I feel an irresistible urge to give every detail and fill in every item of backstory I can for even the smallest anecdote I wish to tell anyone about. The main reason is that I'm kind of a details guy and it's the way I wish people would tell me stories; I love the little details. They're what make stories personal and unique. So love it or leave it, but it's the way I tell tales.)

So, Matt, Jenny, Luke, and I headed over to Wal-Mart the other day for some such thing. I can't remember what. On the way in I happened to notice a tire/hub cap display in the row of products lined up to entice people on their entrance to the store. The tire sitting there had this plasticky, chromed hub cap installed. But that's not it, it also had a spinner part. But this isn't your $1000 a wheel gold and silver spinner built into a 22" rim for some lowered, tricked out Escalade. This was a chromed piece of plastic that could spin attached to a rod extending out from the hub cap. It looked cheap, rediculous, stupid, and I struggled to think of what kind of person would buy these for their vehicle.

You may sense where this is going...

So I see this old Dodge or Chrysler minivan driving up Cedar Ave. But what made this minivan special was that on its tires were the spinner hub caps I just described. I wish I had been able to see who was driving. The thing that struck me was how worried I became while driving near that vehicle. The spinners looked like the spinning razor blades that would come out of the wheels of a spy car in an old James Bond movie. I was picturing the cheap posts snapping and the spinner parts rolling over the hood and roof of my car like a buzz saw.

That's the story.

Starting.......NOW!

2005-04-20T08:10:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, breaktime...

This morning I began Operation "Look Semi-Good to the Ladies, Again".

Though it is also known by a few other names:

Operation "Get My Lazy Butt Out of Bed at a Reasonable Hour"
Operation "Stop Looking Like a Tub-O-Lard"
Operation "Enjoy a Bit of the Outdoors"
Operation "Do Something Besides Eat, Sleep and Sit Around"

It felt good to get up early and actually do something. Matt and Tom have been getting up to go workout at the club for a few weeks. To help me jump start my own workout I asked Matt to yell at me to get up when he was making breakfast. Hopefully he can do that for me a little while and then I'll be able to get up on my own without too much trouble.

I wish I could say I went on a run, or even a jog, this morning. But my fitness level has fallen to the point where I need to jog with a little walking interspersed. I also took Ole with me. (that's "O-lee", the Norwegian name, not "O-lay" the Spanish exclamation) He was pretty energetic at first and having an 85 pound oaf dragging me and making my legs move a little faster than they would have on my own helped the workout factor. It also gave my arms and hands a good work out holding on to the leash as he zig-zagged back and forth pretty much the entire time. By the home strech he was trotting right along beside me, tongue hanging out, paying attention to nothing but the goal: his house down the street. I let him in the back yard and went to get his bowl of water, but he was too thirsy to wait. He started drinking rain water out of one of Luke's toys that was lying on the deck.

I'm quite proud of myself, but I'll be even prouder if I keep this up and actually start to feel better.

A Scary Villian

2005-04-19T21:30:00.000-07:00

Ask, and you shall receive.

Here are some pictures of the scary villian from Star Wars: Revelations. Unfortunately she's scary for all of the wrong reasons. I feel very shallow going into all of this, but it is what it is. Maybe it's jealousy that I'm not the star of a half hour Star Wars movie.

Anyway, I give you...Zhanna, the Emperor's Hand!

Here she is going on about how she has to do stuff herself to get it done right.

Here is a 3/4 profile view.

Here is a scary side profile.

This is not what I would call an imposing presence.

Here is that super tricky light saber move you've all dreamed about seeing--the double overhead swing blocked by the double overhead parry.

Well, I hope I haven't turned you too far away from the movie if you had your heart set upon watching it. It is an impressive achievment, I'll give it that. It simply lacks in the same areas most amatuer films lack in.

"Movie" - Star Wars: Revelations

2005-04-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

Because I am a geeky Star Wars fan boy, I decided to download the 300+MB behemoth amateur Star Wars movie, "Revelations" . I'd give you the official link, but their servers are still down.

It completed downloading today and I just watched the first 34 minutes and 20 seconds. I had to stop for a while because I was afraid I'd laugh too loud and wake someone up. "Oh!" you're thinking, "They managed to put some humor into it!". Not so much. I was laughing too hard at the huge climactic light saber battle going on.

I won't go into too detailed of a review but you can fairly easily guess at some of the things that I am going to say. Let us think for a bit first: what kind of people would be getting together and making a half hour plus long movie set in the Star Wars universe? I bet a bunch of Star Wars geeks with props and costumes would want in. I'm guessing there are a myriad computer geeks that would love to join. Oh, and the audio/visual club has to be a part. Wow--that's some trifecta. But what could be missing?

Oh yeah, writing and acting.

(Hey, that sounds like Episodes 1 and 2!)

As one may expect, the effects are quite amazing considering that this was an amateur project. There were some nice ship designs and flying scenes and green/blue screen effects. That's the high point.

The writers had some trouble with most of the dialogue, it was trite and meaningless. Things like "There's two Star Destroyers!" Oh, thanks for pointing that out, I would have missed those gigantic death machines in the sky bearing down on us. I would say the plot has the same problem, but I'm not done yet. Maybe there's a huge twist at the end that pulls it all together and makes it all worth while. But mostly the "plot" is a vehicle for the camera to go from location to location where Star Wars geeks are done up and running around in costumes and masks.

The director (and probably cinematographer and editors) take themselves a bit too seriously at a few points as well. Long shots of the city scape drag on to show us how big and busy things are. All right! Things are crazy! We understood that after the first 15 seconds (that's a lot of screen time, just ask my brother) of the ship flying into town. Or following a character down a stairway for 10 seconds (still a lot of time). Oooo! It's the Emperor's Hand, we get it, she's important.

Don't get me started on the Emperor's Hand. Let's see here...the main bad guy of the movie. Well, I can't say that. Let's call her the main antagonist, the Emperor and Darth Vader are still badder. So we have the main antagonist, an ex-Jedi who is now the Hand of the Emperor. Sadly, the Emperor's HR department was bored the day they were hiring for that position. They must have run an ad in the Galactic Gazette that said:

WANTED
One Ex-Jedi looking to help find and exterminate the remaining light side Jedi throughout the galaxy. Pay dependent on performance. No long term benefits. Must deal with heavy breathing cyborg.
Ideal candidate's presence should strike fear into enemies, demand respect from allies, and send fan boys into convulsions. Less-than-ideal candidate will be slightly overweight, have large facial features, and an annoying, hard to place accent.
Complete badassness a plus, but not required.
Please contact D. Sidious on Coruscant.

A chubby lady with a chin bigger than Chyna (of wrestling fame) is not the first vision that pops into my mind when I think of badass villian. Oh, and she has no screen presence and her voice is rediculous. (though the lines she has to read don't help her at all) You may be thinking that I'm sexist and "weight-ist". Well, you know what? I'd love to dress up in tight clothes and run around with a light saber slaughtering Jedi, but it ain't gonna happen, you know why? I don't think I have what you'd call a "Jedi physique". I have more of a "Porkins from the Death Star run in Episode 4" physique, and that's the role I'd play. Sit me in a space ship and only show my head and shoulders.

Hmmm, this is rambling a bit, but I only have a few more points to make.

You know what else Star Wars fans like to do? They dream about all of the cool stuff that could happen with Jedi that hasn't happened in the movies. When Episode One came out people couldn't believe how cool Darth Maul was with his double bladed saber. Then in Episode Two Anakin fought Count Dooku with two light sabers! Unfortunately that fight happened to be horrible, so what would fans do? Film themselves fighting with two light sabers. And what could be cooler than that? How about two Jedi, both with dual light sabers, fighting against one another.

And so we reach the point in the film where I had to stop. The Jedi and the Hand follow the trail of a Jedi artifact to a cave that holds a secret. They all stand around watching a video recording together until it's done and then the Hand decides to kill everyone. So a huge lightsaber battle ensues, with the Hand and the main Jedi character (a woman much better fitted to her role than the Hand) running off into the caves to find each other. The good Jedi prevail over the bad Jedi and the two main characters find each other and start fighting.

They fight normally, one saber on one saber for a while. Until, inexplicably, the Hand pulls another light saber out of no where and starts fighting with it. After a couple of swings in that config, the main Jedi all of a sudden has another saber as well! What? If you're so much more deadly with two, why wouldn't you always fight with two?

It reminds me of that scene in The Princess Bride where the Dread Pirate Roberts and Inigo Montoya are fencing at the top of the cliff. They both start out left handed just to toy with the other. When Inigo realizes that Roberts is really good, he switches to his good hand. After a few swings of that, Roberts releaves that he himself is right handed as well and proceeds to easily win the fight. Unfortunately, for Revelations, The Princess Bride is a really good movie and the acting is excellent and the characterization allows that exchange to make sense.

Oh, and did I mention that neither the protagonist nor antagonist have any martial arts skills whatsoever?

So I started laughing and had to turn it off. Maybe I'll finish it tomorrow and let you know how it turns out.

And then there was the time...

2005-04-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

Why am I finally writing today? Over the last three weeks I've had plenty of great days where I did something fun or interesting. Not so today or yesterday. This morning I got up, took a shower, and ate breakfast. Nothing super there. Yesterday it rained pretty much all day and I had horrible allergies. Now, granted, they were the worst allergies I can ever *remember* having, so that's notable, but nothing really post worthy. (Of course if you look at the quality of my past work I guess it is very post worthy)

Hmmm, what has been interesting in my life lately? Not much.

I went out to a bar downtown with Steve last weekend. (Un?)Fortunately I didn't get drunk enough to hit on any girls and convince them that kissing me was a good idea. There were plenty of them, including the waitresses (yes, we had two, it was a miracle our tab came out right), though I had to rely on Steve to work his charm to get me the beer I wanted.

Well, at least I posted. Maybe this will be a catalyst to keep me writing. I can hope. (I was going to say "we" can hope, but that seemed a bit optimistic)

So little (blog) work

2005-03-24T20:13:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been lazier than normal. It sounds like a cop out but I've just been really tired lately. I'm used to working a straight 8 hour day with a 5 minute commute. Now, my commute is 30 minutes if I leave at 6:45am and up to an hour if I leave after 7am. It's rediculous.

I've got so much to talk about, but some of it is fleeing my memory. My going away party, which seems ages ago, was awesome. There were tons of people there to see me off, it was really nice. Plus, (you knew this was coming) there was tons of food there as well. I ate so much food that I didn't get sick or get a hangover from drinking an entire bottle of Southern Comfort. How about that??

Then there was my last hike in Montana (at least for a while), my friend Emily and I had a wonderful hike up Storm Castle. It was a perfect day to spend walking around and talking with a friend.

Then my long drive, broken up near the beginning by my stopover in Red Lodge. While there I saw a movie I had wanted to see, but in hind sight, shouldn't have wanted to see. It was "Sky Capitan and the World of Tomorrow". Technologically, it was pretty cool, the dialog was brutal.

While I've been back I haven't seen my friends very much. There are even a few I haven't had a chance to talk to yet.

I'm heading down to Chicago on Saturday morning. My parents close on their house down there next week and I'm going to be helping my mom pack up and get everything ready and done. It will be nice to have one last trip down there.

Well, that's the short, short version of what's going on. Hopefully I'll get on the ball soon. If you want a critique of my work so far, check out my dad's comment on my last post.

I Made It

2005-03-10T20:35:00.000-08:00

I'm back in Minnesota and loving it, though I do miss Bozeman. It's a little colder here than in Montana, but it is definitely home. I've been really busy this week and have hardly had time to email anyone, so if you haven't heard from me, I'm sorry.

Work has been hectic but really cool. I'm really enjoying working with my mom and dad.

I'll be writing more when I finally get into a routine and some time starts popping up. Take care for now.

Just about out of time

2005-02-28T18:27:00.000-08:00

I know that I've been really bad at blogging lately. I hope you can forgive me, given the circumstances. But I had to get at least one last post up before I lose my internet access tonight or tomorrow morning.

Things are moving right along. Tomorrow is my last day at work. I'm looking forward to the going away pizza party at lunch time. Then I'll spend the next couple of days doing the final packing/throwing away of my stuff and then I'll see how much can fit in my car and how much can fit in my uncle's truck and then I'll hit the road.

As I've said, I'm both excited and nervous. I talked to my parents this weekend and my dad said he already had a bunch of tasks lined up for me. Luckily they sounded really easy, so I should be able to start my new job on the right foot with my boss.

Thanks for sticking with me through this big transition. I'll post when I can.

A Glorious Day

2005-02-24T17:02:00.000-08:00

Right now I'm sitting in a work truck on the Big Sky Spur Road with the sun beating down on me. I am writing this on my handy-dandy Palm IIIe that I found last night while going through boxes looking for stuff to throw away. I haven't used this thing for years. I had it for a while in college, but I accidentally dropped it in some water and it really didn't want to work after that. I guess that five or so years of drying of in a box cured it. I am surprised how well I remember Graffiti.

Anyway, what am I doing in a work truck in Big Sky, you ask? I'm taking advantage of what may very well be my last ever opportunity to survey, at least in Montana. The last couple of days at work have been spent training my replacement as much as I can before I take off. But my old friend Margaret, who I learned almost all of my surveying from, was heading out for a simple job by herself and asked if I wanted to go out and help her. Well, there was really no question of what I had to do.

Phew! I just had to take my sweatshirt off. This sun is killing me. I may even end up with a sunburn. How many of you got a sunburn today? (No fair answering if you live near the equator or in the southern hemisphere or something. No one here is allowed to make me jealous, only the other way around.)

So I'm sitting in the truck--tunes going, sun beating, remote blogging (though I won't be able to post this until I go home and sync--my Palm is too old for the internet) while Margaret is out there with a property owner, trying to figure out where he can move his garage to. All in all, not a bad afternoon.

Well, I better get back out there before Margaret calls me on the radio.

"Sad to leave, but happy to go"

2005-02-21T14:45:00.000-08:00

It's nice to feel wanted. Friends are great are great for that.

For three years my friends (and family) in Minnesota have lamented the fact that I have never come through on my promises that I'm coming back from Bozeman "after one more winter". Now that I've finally decided to go back, people are excited to have me coming back.

But the flip side to the coin is that I've been in Bozeman long enough to make some pretty good friends here. As the news of my impending departure has filtered around the office most of the people here have stopped me and asked when I'm leaving and what I'll be doing and also to tell me that I'll be missed. That makes me feel good about the job I've done and the impact I've had here.

The same goes for my hockey team. I informed the team that I was leaving after our game on Sunday morning. The reaction was mainly one of shock and disbelief. I think this has mainly to do with the fact that I'm not as close to my hockey buddies as I am to the rest of my friends. My friends outside of hockey have known that I've at least been thinking about leaving for a while. But again, the fact that this crazy group of guys that I whack at a hockey puck with is going to miss me gives me a nice warm fuzzy. To see see various stages of dealing with hardships upfold right before my eyes was interesting. There was definitely some denial. "What? You're not going?" "Okay, are you going going? Or just leaving for a while?" Then there was bargaining. "I'm going to call up your dad and let him know why he doesn't need you that soon." "You can leave only if you promise to come back for the tournament next year." Luckily there wasn't too much anger or depressions. But at the end everyone came to acceptance.

In the end the fact that everyone is excited for me and understands why I'm going back helps a lot as well. Everyone knows how nice having family around can be. People are generally intrigued by small business ventures and the opportunities and challenges that they can provide. And everyone who knows me well enough knows that sitting at a computer support desk is not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.

I'm sad to leave the wonderful town of Bozeman and all the friends I've made here. But I'm happy to go back home and be with my even older friends and my family.

Phew

2005-02-20T22:35:00.000-08:00

So I've been out for a week. When last we were together I had scored a goal in a 7-1 win last Saturday. Well, I've had 7 more hockey games since that Sunday morning post. It's been a tiring week. And my life has been a little overwhelming in general right now.

First, the hockey. Including that Saturday game my team had 8 games in 9 days. We didn't have a game on Monday (Happy belated Valentine's day to you all) and Thursday, but then we had two on this Saturday. We had a Saturday-Sunday combo, then a Tuesday-Wednesday pair, and then this weekend we had the Winter Classic Tournament. The tournament was 4 games in 3 days, starting Friday night and ending Sunday morning.

Unfortunately our team isn't very good this year and we didn't have a very good record for the week. We won that first game last Saturday and we won the first game of the tournament on Friday night, but we lost the rest of them. A disappointing week to be sure, but not out of line with the rest of the season.

I am feeling the wear and tear on my body. I have sore ribs on both sides. I can't remember if I've ever had that before. My legs are pretty exhausted. I fell hard on my elbow this morning (I need new elbow pads) and it hurts to rest on anything. But I'm not doing nearly as bad as some other guys on my team. Our goalie got hit in the head with some really hard shots over the weekend. During our Friday game he wasn't sure he was going to make it to the end after a bell ringer made him nauseous. Another guy, who had just turned 41, had hurt his knee skiing, he had a big gash on one of his thighs, got another gash in his forearm, I hit him with a ripping slapshot in the calf, and he got hit in the throat with a puck. He ended up not showing for the game this morning.

As far as tournament results go, we didn't do very well. All of the teams played three games and then were seeded for the "Championship" round on Sunday. Our team was 1-2 along with a couple other teams, but because of tie breakers we were forced back into the 7th/8th place game (out of 8 teams in the tourney). Our game on Sunday morning was a rematch against the team we had beaten on Friday night, who had lost all three prelim games. Well, they came out seeking revenge and got it with a 2-1 victory. So there you have it, the Phatties took 8th place in our own tournament. Oh well, we did have fun and play pretty well except for the Saturday night game.

As for the rest of my life, yikes. For those of you who don't know, I've decided to finally leave Bozeman...for real this time. I'm moving back home to Minneapolis in a couple of weeks to be nearer my family and work for my dad. He bought a small cabinet-making business and I'm going to be Mr. Jack-of-all-Trades at first while I learn the trade and the business. It is exciting and scary at the same time. None of my jobs to this point in my life have given me much responsibility. But as one of the few cogs of a small business my responsibility and accountability will most likely skyrocket. That is a scary proposition for me.

So I guess I'm just saying that some big changes are coming up in my life in the next couple of weeks and it's been weighing on my mind. Like I said, this is all a little scary for me, but it is also exciting. It is going to be a challenge and something totally new. And that combination is something that motivates me.

I generally enjoy a little change, I've always enjoyed doing something new (working as a surveyor) or going somewhere new (living in Germany for 10th grade). But, even so, I tend to resist the change if I can. I'm inertial like that. When I'm settled and comfy, I'll tend to want to rest on my laurels and keep doing what I'm doing. But if I'm already up and doing something new and just going I'll get more into it as I get into it all will be fine.

If I just stayed in Bozeman and worked my computer support job and surveyed part time while living in a small house and eating steak with friends every week or so, and skiing when I can in the winter I'd stay relatively happy (happiness in my life outside of work is more important to me than happiness at my job). But I finally decided it was time to pick my life up, put it in a blender, and see what the Frappe setting does to it.

He Shoots...

2005-02-13T08:55:00.000-08:00

...He Scores!

That's right, I finally notched my second goal of the season last night. We played our best game of the season and won 7-1. It was pretty incredible. It helped that the other team wasn't very good, but we still played way better than we have been. I was +5 on the night, which also made me feel pretty good. Our main thing, just like our game last weekend, was that we played consistantly through the whole game. It was mucho fun.

Then after the game I headed over to Emily's house for game night. Everyone had been there for a couple hours and I got there just as they finished up with the game they were playing. We proceeded into the next "game" by not actually playing and just asking the questions. The game was "Would You Rather..." and it was really fun to just ask the questions and discuss them as opposed to play the game they tried to construct around the asking of the questions.

All in all a fun Saturday night.

Mmmm, finger steaks

2005-02-09T12:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Brian left me a message before I got home from work that the whole gang (Brian, Ricky, Amber, Sean, and Heidi) was going to dinner at the Oasis that night and that they (Brian, Ricky, and Amber) were leaving now and would be out there shooting pool and drinking beer. It was the first I had heard of the plan, but it was a good plan. Then I got a message from Sean saying that he and Heidi were indeed going but Heidi wasn't home yet. Then was another message from Brian saying that the 3 were there and would be awaiting the arrival of the rest of us. I gave Sean a call and he said he and Heidi would come and pick me up as soon as she got home.

They arrived and off we went, 30 minutes west on I90 to the town of Manhattan. A left turn at the only stop sign in town and were walking into Sir Scott's Oasis. Brian, Ricky, and Amber were indeed there, shooting pool and drinking beer. Brian and I ordered some finger steaks and Jo-Jos (breaded potato medallions deep fried) and then shot a game of pool while we waited. Brian of course beat me, but that's okay.

Sean and Heidi, in their years of living in Bozeman, had never been to Sir Scott's, which surprised me a little. Sean is a big fan of barbeque and meat and also of deep fried foods. Well, what are finger steaks but breaded, deep fried, strips of steak? He thouroughly enjoyed his meal as did Heidi with her steak.

Afterwards the plan was to head south to the Norris hot springs, which I had never been to. On the way there Heidi missed the exit off of the freeway and since there is really nothing in Montana the next exit wasn't for another 5 miles or so. So after a 10 minute delay or so we were back on the right track. Unfortunately when we finally arrived at the hot springs, the sign said open Wed-Sun. Darn! Unfortunately Brian's vehicle was nowhere in sight. We had lost them with our little detour. So we headed back home.

My three houseguests came back later after they had gone to the Bozeman hot springs. Quite the backup plan indeed. All in all it was a fun night.

A win!

2005-02-07T12:09:00.000-08:00

My first hockey win since before Christmas! It felt pretty good, and made having to leave early from the Super Bowl party I was at a little easier. The game ended up being 1-0. We didn't play all the great, but we played consistant throughout the whole game. And that's what I've noticed from hockey and volleyball over the last couple of years. At the level of competition I compete at it isn't that important to be great very often. If you are consistantly okay, you'll do well.

Our goalie didn't show up because he was getting drunk at a Super Bowl party. Luckily, before he started drinking he called up a substitute, who pulled out the first Phatties (my team) shutout since last year's playoffs.

Crazy Dream

2005-02-03T12:33:00.000-08:00

I never usually remember my dreams, I really wish I could, but I just don't. So it is a nice occasion when I wake up from one and I can remember it. Especially when it was as crazy as the one the other night.

First of all it was connected to a dream I had had a few days prior. I don't remember the earlier one, but the common thread between the two dreams was that my brother Brian's new dream was to become a master carpenter. That's right. He was taking classes and attending seminars, all unbeknownst to the people he was working for in TV, since he didn't want to quit or be fired from that just yet. Evidently wanting to become a carpenter involved a lot of other more down to earth activities, like contests at State Fairs. The dream began with my whole family at a State Fair like environment hanging out at the animal competition barn. Everyone was inside watching but I went to the basement (I know, barns, like the Alamo, don't have basements) where there was a snake's pit of wires and cords going everywhere. I was stepping over and under lots of them until I came to one particular tangle of cords all plugged into one extension cord that was hanging in the air because the cords coming from the ceiling weren't long enough to let it rest on the floor. Well, I got it in my mind that this wouldn't do at all so went about trying to rectify the situation. I unplugged everything, telling myself that I'm sure the cords weren't for anything important, and pulled and corralled them all so that the extension cord could rest on the floor. Except for one cord that couldn't reach. I just left it unplugged and again told myself that it wasn't important. That is until my brother Matt came down and asked me what was going on. I showed him and he told me that the cord I left hanging was to his refrigeration unit. (I don't know what he was cooling) So we jeri-rigged the whole mess again with that one extension cord hanging in the air. Matt then told me I better get upstairs because Brian was competing. So I did a few more things and headed up. I didn't make it in time for the competition and I met up with Matt outside the barn and asked how Brian did. He pointed out Brian stomping away in disgust and annoyance and said "How do you think?". It turned out that Brian had only gotten second place in the goat competition and he was pretty mad.

Right about then I woke up and a second later Brian came in the front door after hanging out with his friends. I looked over at my alarm clock and it was about 4am. Great, I thought, I'm never going to fall asleep now. Luckily that is about the last thought I remember until my alarm woke me up three hours later.

I was talking to my mom last night and we discussed the possible meaning for a little bit. One of her ideas seemed to fit really well. Brian actually represented me, and his longing to become a carpenter instead of working in TV was symbolic of my really wanting to go back to Minnesota and work for my dad's cabinet making business instead of heading to LA and work in TV. The goat...I don't know. Second place? Maybe that I'll be a second fiddle to my dad...ooo, and maybe that will make me mad or something. The tangle of cords? Maybe represents the computer/IT work I've been doing for so long that I need to walk away from and just let it be. Matt's refrigerator? I don't know either.

So that was my crazy dream. What is your analysis?

Hockey changeup

2005-02-03T12:30:00.000-08:00

I had a hockey game a couple nights ago and it was actually pretty fun. As usually there was a time during the game where our defense just kind of fell apart and we let in a few goals which was our downfall. We ended up losing 7-5, with their 7th goal being an empty netter after we had pulled the goaling being down only 6-5. Our main difficulties this year have been untimely defensive breakdowns and a lack of offensive production. We tried to combat both of these last night by switching up our lines. We moved a few of the guys who normally play defense up to forward and then brought a few forwards back to D. The guys we moved forward have not been playing defence with the mindset I like to see back there. First, they make lots of mental mistakes, and they make the same ones over and over again. Second, most of them seem to have an offensive and aggresive temperment which leads them to be out of position more times than is necessary. The difficulty was finding people to move back. The choice of defensemen was made by basically putting most of the best skaters and most experience hockey players back there. This worked very well last year but this year it hasn't helped because we haven't had any offensive power.

The first period went really well with the new lines but the second period was the same old story. A few timely defensive breakdowns (by the defensive pair that *wasn't* me, I might add) led to 4 goals. So late in the 3rd period we were down 6-2. But then, the line switches paid off as we scored 3 quick goals to make it 6-5. Then of course we grew a little timid when we pulled the goalie and they were able to
bag the empty netter. But all in all the game went a lot better than normal.

Another Productive Weekend

2005-01-31T21:37:00.000-08:00

So this weekend was probably more productive than last weekend. It's crazy. Brian got into town last night and I wanted the house to be semi-presentable when he got here. He can be a little picky about stuff like that. I did laundry, a bunch of dishes, vacuumed two rooms, cleaned up a bunch of the bathroom, cut my hair, and turned my matress over (that was just for me, not because Brian was coming). That's a pretty good list of stuff for me.

On Friday night I went over to a Emily's house and played a game with a bunch of girls. There was one other guy there, but he was smart and just stayed out of the whole thing. It really wasn't bad! Well, there were actually two guys there for a while, but one of them got sick and started walking home. I don't know how far away he lived, but we all thought he just went outside for some air or a smoke. But he never came back.

Then on Saturday I went out to meet (what I thought) was going to be a few friends for a surprise Birthday party for Emily. I got there a little early and met Sean and we were going to wait until one of the organizers found us and told us what to do. Ricarda finally found us and let us in on the news and wouldn't you know it, the birthday girl was brought too early and the surprise was ruined!! I didn't even get to say surprise. It was a little maddening, but we still all had a great time and Emily was surprised nonetheless. There were maybe 25-30 people there, pretty crazy. The restaurant we went to, Santa Fe Red's, had a "sun room" that was separated from the rest of the restaurant. The whole gang was in there and completely filled the room up.

My most exciting part of the evening was trying to order before dinner. Okay, there were lots of people and I'm sure it is easy for the servers to get a little disoriented and maybe forget about a few people. Well, we had two servers and they decided to split the party in half to make it a little more managable. So the guy serving my half of the table (I was right at the border) came up to me and the girl sitting next to me, Katherine, who is Emily's new roommate, and asked us if we were a couple (they were putting all of the couples on separate checks). We both laughed (along with our friends) and said no. He said okay and asked for Katherine's order, she said she wasn't ready so he took off to come back later. Well, he did come back later and take Katherine's order, and then skipped me. I was not to happy. The dude ran off but I was able to track down the girl who served the other half of the table and get my order in. The night was saved.

Okay, that's all for now, I have to go to bed.

Hockey...fun?

2005-01-27T21:05:00.000-08:00

I actually had a great time at my game last night. We lost 2-1, but we played really well, so it didn't feel as bad as most of the games have this year. Plus, I hardly even felt my back during the game. Isn't it weird how that happens? Numerous times this year I've had sore muscles and aches just disappear while I'm playing and then come right back when I sit down in the car on the way home.

So you know how I've been thinking about going to LA? Well, I'm not so sure any more. My second choice was (and indeed it was my original plan before Brian suggested I go out to Cali) to head back home, Minneapolis. Well, Minneapolis has taken a huge step up towards being the place I live next. It just happened this weekend. All of a sudden the thought of moving to LA was pretty scary and nerve wracking and I started thinking that maybe I'd be happier closer to my family and all of my old friends in MN. So who knows at this point. I've got a lot of thinking to do.

It's been a few days

2005-01-26T18:20:00.000-08:00

Well, thanks for still stopping by, even if I haven't been.

I had a pretty good weekend a few days ago. It was pretty productive, for me. I brought all of the recycling to the recycling center, which had needed to be done for a long while. I did two loads of laundry. I did a bunch of dishes. I guess that's about it, but believe me, it would have been easy for me to do none of it.

This week though, yikes. I mentioned in my last post that a bunch of upgrades had been done to our systems at work. All the upgrades have done is make my job a bunch harder. The first upgrade, on Thursday, just didn't go smoothly, and then they rolled out the next upgrade right away on Friday morning before anything had been fixed from the day before. Not to mention the problems that we didn't even know about that hadn't been fixed.

I think I may have even got a little stressed out about the whole thing. That may not sound like a big thing, but ask anyone who knows me really well, I don't get stressed about anything. My back is just tight and killing me, which I think is from the last two days. I can't wait to play hockey tonight.

Speaking of hockey, we had a game this weekend. We lost. We got up 1-0 early but let it all slip by and we lost 4-1. You may have noticed that I haven't been keeping up on my stats. Well, it's been hard to care about my stats when they aren't very good and we lose every game. Oh well. Anyway, after the game, the team was sitting in the locker room, bummed that another one got away from us. But then one of our teammates, who owns a BBQ restaurant in town, brought out a tin of beef brisket strips and little cups of BBQ sauce. Let me tell you, that tasty snack took the edge off the loss.

That's about all that is going on in my life. Hopefully I'll get on the ball and keep writing here. Work is cooled off a little, so maybe I'll have more time, and be less stressed.

Blah

2005-01-21T16:00:00.000-08:00

So I didn't write anything yesterday because not one interesting thing happened. It was a pretty boring day. And I didn't write today because it was crazy at work and I didn't have any time. They just rolled out a bunch of new "features" on all of our workstations and many of them didn't work the way they thought they would. So I ran around putting out fires all day. Besides, the new "features" are slightly draconian in nature and I don't know if I'll be doing a whole lot of blogging from work any more. At least not for a while.

I hope everyone else out there is doing well.

Dinner and a Movie

2005-01-19T15:15:00.000-08:00

Last night I headed over to Matt's house for some grilled meat and to hang out. The weather was so pleasant he wanted to fire up the grill and be outside a little bit. Jesse and Scott also came over to partake in the tasty fare. We ended up throwing in a movie while we ate, and it happened to be Buying the Cow. I had never seen nor heard of it before, but it was alright. It happened to be perfect for the mood I was in. It was pretty funny most of the time, many times thanks to Ryan Renolds (who I really enjoyed in Van Wilder), even if he was naked way too much. The premise was that a dude wasn't ready to be married because he wasn't sure if the girl he was with was "the one". It went on to talk about how there just isn't a "the one" out there for everyone but many "just rights" and you just have to have your eyes open for those opportunities.

It was a pretty chill night, which was nice.

Today has been pretty slow at work. I don't know what I'm up to tonight, but probably not too much. Maybe I'll do some laundry since it is so warm out and the basement likely isn't freezing anymore.

Turning the corner

2005-01-19T07:21:00.000-08:00

I think I'm actually starting to feel better. I have only had to blow my nose once this morning and I don't think I've coughed involuntarily. It is quite a nice feeling. I think I even slept pretty well last night because of the lack of coughing.

That, added to the fact that Bozeman is in the middle of a heat wave, it was in the 50s yesterday and will get that hot today, makes it pretty nice around here. (of course, the heat isn't any good for skiing.)

Misappropriated Funds

2005-01-18T14:53:00.000-08:00

Deep in the IRS, circa Spring 2001, the year 2000 tax season.
Two agents are browsing through some returns

IRS Dude 1: Hmmm, this name, it seems familiar.
IRS Dude 2: Really, what is it?
D1: Richard Hatch.
D2: You're right, where do I know it from? ... Oh, I know, isn't that the name of the guy that won (the first)Survivor? The most popular show ever and start of the reality TV craze?
D1: Totally! How could I forget that crazy naked dude freaking out all of the other contestants.
D2: So, what does his return look like?
D1: Poor guy, it doesn't look like he had that good of a year. I guess CBS decided to not pay him the $1 million for winning that they said they would.
D2: That's too bad, but why do you say that?
D1: Well, it's not reported here on his return, so I can only assume that he never received it. I feel bad for him.
D2: Poor, poor guy. Hopefully he will benefit in other ways from his win. Maybe a radio talk show or something. We'll have to check his return next year to see if he made any more money.

Yes, poor Richard Hatch. The $1 million prize and over $300K earnings the next year must have slipped his mind while doing taxes. Or maybe living primitavely for so long made him forget how to do taxes correctly.

Come on, tea...Work!

2005-01-18T09:20:00.000-08:00

You know, maybe I don't get sick that often and I don't remember, or maybe it's the fact that I tend not to remember most of the bad things in my life, but this dang cold I have is about as annoying as any cold I can remember having. It just won't go away.

I have been drinking tea, which my lovely friends have been supplying me with. Emily even gave me some Vitamin C pills, which I have been taking. But nothing is happening. Over the weekend I just felt down and tired and had a sore throat and a runny nose. Now I have a bad cough, that keeps me up well past my bed time, and my nose is just stuffed up constantly.

Thank goodness my life is so wonderful or I might become ill-tempered!

Tea Time

2005-01-17T09:33:00.000-08:00

Now, I don't know if it is really tea time. I'm not from the UK and I just don't know these things. But I am having a cup of tea right now. I went over to my wonderful friend Emily's house last night to play the Would You Rather game and she me a few bags of tea because she knows I'm sick.

The funny thing about my drinking this tea right now isn't that I'm drinking the tea, or even the tea itself. No, it's the mug I'm drinking out of. There are a bunch of community mugs here at work and the one I chose is very interesting to me. It is a Burnsville High School Class of '91 mug! Black with gold lettering and a gold Brave's head. For those of you who don't know, that's where I went to high school in Minnesota. I was class of '95, but still! The mug must have come to the office before I got here, because no one else is from Minnesota. Anyway, it's quite a coincidence and I got a kick out of it.

Too Much Food

2005-01-16T08:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I broke my diet. But I'm giving myself a pass since I'm sick. When you're sick, you just don't care. You just do whatever it takes to feel a little better. And that whole pizza did make me feel a little better. Mmmmm.

Of course, overeating while sick is about the worst thing you can do if you're even thinking about calories. I mean, when you get tired moving between two rooms, and sitting in a chair for long periods of time is sapping all of your strength, you're probably not getting too good of a workout that day. My most difficult physical activity yesterday involved going up and down the stairs a few times while I did my laundry and while looking for a CD. Let me tell you, it was rough.

Up on the Ridge

2005-01-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

Today Sean and I went up to Bridger in the afternoon. We figured it would be time better spent than time spent at work.
If you would like to know where we skied and what we did you can refer to the Bridger Bowl trail map here.

We got up and got on the #6 lift, Powder Park at about 12:30. We skied to the right and over to the lift #2, Alpine. We headed to the left and went down the little bowl right under the chair at #44. Then we headed through the forest crossing #41 and #40. Of course right before we get to the open I hit a stump that is hidden under barely any snow and I crash pretty quickly. No harm done. Back on the skis and over to life #1, the Bridger Lift.

I know what you're thinking. There's nothing but black diamonds and double black diamonds! Where would you go down! So we didn't go down. We went up. One of the special and unique features of Bridger Bowl is the Ridge. You can ski off of nearly the entire ridge line of the mountains above Bridger Bowl ski resort. The only problem is that it is not lift accessible, you have to hike it. You are only allowed up to the ridge if you have a Avalanche Transceiver and you have at least one other person that you're skiing with.

From the top of the Bridger Chair Lift you basically hike straight up the mountain. This is picture I took a few winters ago looking up the hike, from about halfway up the hike. The lift line you see is a pommel life and is for ski patrol only. They need to be able to get up to the Ridge quickly incase anyone is in need of help. Having the hike itself is a deterrent to skiers who are not advanced enough to handle the terrain and the danger.

Once you reach the top you are at the top of the Bridger Mountian range. I always felt that they should have a welcoming committee with huge banners that say "Welcome to the Ridge" and serving hot cocoa. But that's probably just me, since I'm not super hardcore like some of the people who do it and I feel like it's a huge accomplishment when I make it.

Here is a picture (from a few winters ago, again) looking out across the Ridge. The little dots along the crest are people, and the first one happens to be my brother Brian. Sean and I hiked halfway up the slope to that hightest point and then traversed along the face past (if you refer to the Bridger Ski map) Bridger Gully and the Apron. We didn't actually go too far past the Apron, but pretty much right to the Northern Boundry. This area is called the Northwest Passage.

There is a fairly large chute that you ski out of first and then you get to a wide open and huge field of powder. After that you ski through some nicely spaced out trees and after that you are above the Alpine ski lift again and you just ski into the normal ski area.

Here are a few pictures that Sean took of me coming down. The powder was probably shin to knee deep and pretty light and fluffy. One bad thing was that my goggles were pretty fogged up for most of this, so I couldn't see all that well. Luckily the ski down is pretty easy, the traverse was the hard part, and I had my goggles up for that.

The first two are shots coming out of the large chute, and then the third is a shot of me coming down the big powder field. I really have to thank Sean for bringing the camera and whipping it out to take a few shots. The snow was really coming down hard, which is why everything is so white.

Sick Day

2005-01-14T10:09:00.000-08:00

Blah. I think spending a couple of hours in the frigid air twice yesterday did me in. I've been in bed most of the morning so far.

I will post about my wonderful (yet cold) day of skiing later today.

Snow Day

2005-01-13T09:55:00.000-08:00

It is puking outside. It has been snowing since I woke up and it has snowed harder and harder. They already have over 5" of fresh pow up at Bridger this morning and I'm sure it's only going to keep accumulating. So, I'm taking the afternoon off and heading up with my buddy Sean. It will be a fun time. Much more fun than staying warm in my boring office.

Have a great day!

$2.5 Billion?

2005-01-12T16:00:00.000-08:00

Wow, I knew Don King was crazy but not crazy times 2.5 Billion. Maybe he just aimed high in order to be able to settle for a slightly less garish amount, like $1 Billion. How can telling facts about a person, even if they are bad, be defamation? Our legal system, sometimes you just have to laugh.

And I never knew that he has actually killed two men. That's crazy.

After Christmas

2005-01-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

The night of Christmas Day we hung out at Brian's apartment and opened presents. I was very embarrassed because none of my presents were wrapped for anyone, and I didn't even have my dad's present in the state (of California). Luckily, my family loves me and none of that really mattered. We ate a snacky dinner of nuts, cheese, and crackers and hung out for a while before Brian took our parents back to the hotel.

The day after Christmas was much like the rest of the days. Didn't do a whole lot. I had mentioned that we watched and I eventually bought Napolean Dynamite. We all watched that and then my parents went home. When he got back, Brian and I watched I, Robot. After first seeing the previews and having read Isaac Asimov's book I was appalled at the way they had butchered the story (though now I am appalled to see that they are selling the book with Will Smith's picture on it). Then I read somewhere that the writer had written this screenplay with no connection to Asimov and only later they put in references to a few of Asimov's characters and the Three Laws. So that made me feel a little better and my interest grew back to normal levels.

Thankfully it did not grow too much as I didn't need to be appalled at the gall to have Asimov's name associated with it, it just wasn't a very good movie. Brian and I had many laughs at plot holes, coincidences, and the like. It's fun to watch bad movies with Brian. With his film school training and my cynicism, we can keep ripping the movie apart for nearly the whole time, it makes bad movies way more entertaining. (Like Jackie Chan flicks, right Steve?) Anyway, it had a little bit of good action, some of the effects were neat, and they had a couple of clever ideas about the future, but it was all in all what I expected, not very good.

The next day Brian and I took our parents to the airport and they left for Chicago. That day wasn't spent doing too much. The next day was just as lazy. Later in the evening we went to see House of Flying Daggers. The cineplex we saw it at was huge, I think it had over 20 screens and the "director's" theaters included leather seats and ginormous screens. We saw it in a normal theater, but still had to pay $11 a ticket. I ended up really enjoying the movie, Brian, not so much. I think he might have had his hopes too high, though I was pretty excited about it myself. I can't say it is as good as Crouching Tiger or Hero, but I still liked it a lot. There were so many of the same elements in the story from the other two, that made some things a little repetitive. One thing that I really enjoyed was the sound design. One of the characters was blind and thus was able to do all of her crazy moves just by detecting sounds around her. The feel and mood of those scenes was brought across excellently, I thought.

Ouch

2005-01-11T14:20:00.000-08:00

Back in this post I mentioned that a friend's husband died in an avalanche. It was on January 1st. I went to his funeral this last weekend in Billings. I didn't know him very well, but I was there to support his wife. It was a very nice ceremony, with hundreds of people there.

Another person that was caught in the avalanche was a coworker of mine who broke his leg. Since the rescue took so long he lost a lot of blood and his leg wasn't able to get the treatment it needed. Because of this there was lots of tissue damage and they had to remove a lot of muscle from his lower leg. They have been monitoring him in the hospital seeing how his leg and foot would do after a couple of surgeries. Unfortunately they are going to have to amputate.

The funny part is that he's actually bummed that they're not taking off enough of his leg to make him eligible for the Handicap Olympics. He was hoping to win a gold medal in skiing. He is in high spirits even with a long road of recovery and therapy in front of him. Mainly he can't wait to get out of bed and move around.

Dang pictures

2005-01-11T14:10:00.000-08:00

It seems that the online image hosting service I have been using is down right now. Hopefully it will come back up soon, or my blog will be decidedly less nice looking.

Just to let you know, that's what's up with the header and the rest of the pictures (except, as you can see, the About Me pictures)

Edit: (9:30pm) It looks as though the image hosting servers are back up. Phew!

Golden Gopher

2005-01-11T13:40:00.000-08:00

You may think that this post is about some University of Minnesota athetic team. But it's not. Brian pointed me to a new bar that opened up in downtown LA. The Golden Gopher. I thought that was pretty funny. I may have to check it out just because when I go down there.

I'm guessing they don't have any connection to the U, but they do have golden, gopher-shaped lamps, and that's got to count for something.

Collect Them All!

2005-01-10T19:37:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Steve's genius (or at least his javascript coding abilities) and my uncanny ability to waste lots of time on projects that aren't important; I bring you a new addition to the Just Plain Chips blog: random profile pictures.

Before, there was only one picture of me that showed up. Then I changed it so there was one picture for the main page and a different one if you ever clicked on "Read the whole post" or on the comments link of a post. But now, for any page that you visit or reload on the blog a new picture will be randomly selected from ONE HUNDRED head shots.

Did I mention that I enjoy wasting time on worthless things?

Anyway, there are lots of little pictures of me, including a head shot of the elusive Halloween broom costume. You'll just have to keep coming back multiple times a day and reload lots to see them all. Or, if you're not that patient and have some strange desire to see too much of me, you can click on the picture in the "About Me" box and it will bring you to a collage that I created from all of the head shots. It has all 100 pictures in order--though they are not necessarily in chronological order.

Anyway, enjoy. And just in case you forgot...this is all about me. ME ME ME.

Christmas Day

2005-01-10T13:40:00.000-08:00

When last we left the story of my trip to LA, my family had just driven back from Ventura after candlelight services.

I went to bed with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head. The next morning I woke up to a quiet apartment. Brian likes to sleep in most of the time and this day was no exception. I sat down in front of the TV and tried to find something interesting to watch while eating a bowl of Life cereal.

After a while my brother woke up and we got in touch with our parents. We headed to their hotel, picked them up, and headed down to Santa Monica. We parked near the beach and headed for the boardwalk. We mainly just wandered around that day, enjoying the 70 degree weather and the crash of ocean waves. We walked to the Santa Monica pier, which has an amusement park and all sorts of shops and little kiosks on it. You can see the silouette of the ferris wheel in the sunset picture in this post.

While walking along the pier there were a number of street performers, and artists, and people hawking all manner of wares. Here are pictures from a couple of performers.

After the beach we headed to the Third Street Promenade, where I found the shoes I was going to buy. We just walked around people watching and came across another street performer. He was an escape artist. My family had seen him before I got into town, and I was only able to see the end of his act, but I guess he was pretty good. I don't have any pictures ready to post of him, but I might put some up later. We stopped for lunch after a while, which was where we saw the funny dog in this post.

After dinner we headed back down to the beach and walked along the boardwalk toward our car. Ooo, on the way there we saw a Lotus Elise. It was a pretty hot looking car. I don't have any pictures up yet, but I will. Near the end of our walk, on Muscle Beach, there was this aparatus that looked like a giant piece of equipment from a elementary school playground. Basically it was a long row of rings. The goal being to swing from ring to ring all the way to the end and back. There was a group of friends hanging out doing the rings and cheering each other on. It was pretty cool. A few of them were really good, and a few others were just learning the tricks of the trade. A few pictures of this are here.

Before too long we had almost made it too the car and the sun started to go down.

Sunset at Santa Monica

2005-01-10T13:38:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of sunset pictures from Christmas day at Santa Monica beach. Nothing too special, I just thought it was a beautiful night. They seem to be a little darker on my screen here than they were earlier, but oh well. Hopefully they look alright.

On the rings

2005-01-10T13:31:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures of the crazy (strong) people who were playing on the rings while we walked by.

This is a view looking down the coarse.

This is the group that was hanging out at the rings getting their photo taken. They were having a wonderful Christmas day.

Balancing Act

2005-01-10T13:25:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures of the balancing acts on the Santa Monica Pier.

This guy was funny in that he was pretty good, but he thought he was really good. He even made us all donate before doing his final act, which is pictured here. Sorry dude, that isn't the way street performers are supposed to act. Here he is, balancing a glass of water on a sheet of glass on 4 glasses of water on a sheet of glass on a stick on his chin. Whew!

So we left the first guy thinking he was alright when we happened across another balancing act. This one was much better. A better showman, he had better tricks, and he didn't demand money before his tricks. (that didn't stop him from asking for it, but that's to be expected). This guy's finally involved balancing an old, heavy road bike on his head while juggling. Good stuff.

A New Boss in Town

2005-01-10T10:20:00.000-08:00

For those of you who don't know, my dad has been in the process of buying a cabinet making business called "Anderson Millwork" in Eden Prairie (a suburb of Minneapolis). He has been in the due dilligence period for a little while and finally closed on the business on Friday. In the culmination of a lifelong dream, he is the owner of his own business.

While they don't have a web presense yet, so I can't give you a site, that is something he's working on getting done fairly soon. The cabinets that they specialize in are called framed-inset (I'm pretty sure that's correct), which are very custom and require a high degree of craftsmanship and are not the kind that you'd see rows and rows of at a Lowe's or Home Depot, which are called frameless or European.

I couldn't be prouder of him (though maybe I will be when he is the kingpin of the cabinet market throughout the United States) and am very happy for him. I can't wait to get back to Minneapolis some time in the near future to check the place out.

Moving back into the modern world

2005-01-07T09:45:00.000-08:00

I don't have a cell phone, or a mobile, if that's what you call them. I had one when I lived in Minneapolis, but I felt that I didn't need one when I moved to the mountains. It has been nice to be without that leash, even though there have been times when I could have used one. The rest of my family owns cell phones and they had started to become more perturbed by the fact that I didn't have one.

When Brian and my dad came to pick me up at Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) when I went home for Thanksgiving, Brian thought the world was going to end since I didn't have a cell phone. They had told me they were going to pick me up out at the curb--just driving through instead of parking. But, because the line was so long to get into the drive around, and because of the call of nature, they decided to park. Well, there was no way for them to communicate with me. So after a while they finally walked to the curb outside the Delta area and couldn't find me. The problem was that I had decided to walk down the curb a bit to find a more open spot. I figured, since they are driving by, it doesn't matter where I'm standing. After a while they figured that might be the case and Brian found me a little ways down the curb. As Brian put it, "There are 250 million people in this country and 249,999,999 of them have cell phones. Why don't you?"

So, with me missing a cool gadget to carry around, the ability to call people in other states without a calling card, the family pressure, and the possibility of moving into the city again, I decided I should start looking at phones.

One hinderance was that I didn't know what carrier to look for, as I wanted maybe be on a family plan with my parents and/or brothers and certainly be on the same provider as them so we could all talk to each other for free. That decision was finally made yesterday when my dad and brother Matt went out and signed up for a family plan with Sprint.

Now the search for the right phone begins in earnest. I'm thinking I'll have them buy a phone for me in Minneapolis and put it on their plan some time in the near future so we can all start talking. Though I have to find out what kind of service Sprint has in Montana. I know it doesn't provide "home base" service here, but I would think that you can at least use a phone along the I90 corridor. We'll have to see.

Anyway, I'm a little excited about having a new phone soon. It should be pretty cool.

Mmmm, dinner(s)

2005-01-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned that I have a pretty good life right?
Two nights ago Emily and Ricarda had a big dinner party at their house. It was the typical Emily party. Lots of people and lots of food. She had spaghetti, garlic bread, pizza bread, burnt brownies (no one ate those), boxed wine, and Sean and Heidi brought cupcakes. A good time was had by all, mainly because there was lots of good food and lots of people to talk to.

Then yesterday at about 12:10pm an old coworker who left and formed his own surveying company walked into my office and said "Let's go to lunch." He owed me lunch for helping him set up his computer at his home office. So we headed to Bar 3 Barbeque. It is a local restaurant owned by a guy on my hockey team. The double meat pulled pork sandwich slathered in the Bar 3 BBQ Sauce might possibly be my favorite sandwich in the world. That was a tasty surprise in the middle of the day.

And finally, last night Sean and Heidi broke out the grill and had a few people over. A lot of people were invited, but inexplicably, almost no one showed up. Oh well, more room at the table for me. I brought over my steak and Sean had this marinade, Stubbs Beef Marinade. Mmmm, man that was good. It was a little tangy and it really brought the beef flavor out in the steak instead of covering it up, it was the best steak I've had in a long time. I had also brought over a nearly perfect loaf of French bread which we doused with butter and a garlic and parmesan cheese seasoning. Yowza, that was tasty as well. Plus, a grilled green pepper, some tasty salad, and then ice cream for desert.

The only problem with all of these great food happenings is my new diet.

Yes, you read that correctly, my new diet.

I'm not doing Atkins, or any crazy strict diet. I am dubbing my diet the "Eat Slightly Less than Brenden-sized Portions Diet".

I have a fairly large group of friends that gets together to eat all of the time. And I'm the guy that is known to eat a lot. I'm just not sure that is a good distinction. Luckily I am not known as the obese guy who eats a lot, but still, I could stand to eat a little less.

So instead of two helpings of spaghetti and tons of bread two nights ago and then two or three cupcakes, I only had one non-overflowing plate of spaghetti, a couple pieces of bread, and one cupcake. Then for lunch yesterday I still splurged with the double meat sandwich, but I didn't have any pop (I almost never drink it anymore) or any side dishes. Then for dinner I had a modest 12oz steak (including the bone) instead of a monster 20oz steak (or two 12oz steaks) or also having a piece of chicken like I normally would have done, and I also held off on bread again and had a very small amount of ice cream.

If you know me and have hung out with me you know how much I love food and love to eat. This is a little tough for me. The bread and ice cream last night were especially hard to hold off on. But, I figure that a week or two of dealing with the small hunger pangs and my body will start to get used to the new amounts of food and I'll be doing better.

The Note

2005-01-06T15:25:00.000-08:00

Remember when I told you about a note I found on my desk that I thought seemed a little odd? I promised a scan, so here it is:

The yellow of the paper got bled out in the scan, but you get the point. I really just don't know who it could be from.

Christmas Eve

2005-01-06T13:45:00.000-08:00

I suppose I should get through my vacation before it becomes February.
As you may remember, my first day in Los Angeles was pretty nice. It was in the 60s and 70s and we spent much of our time in Malibu and on a beach.

The next day, Christmas Eve day, was just as nice. Brian and I went to pick our parents up at their hotel and we went out for breakfast at a restaurant Brian frequents. The Overland Cafe. We all had a little breakfast, that was quite tasty, and that was the morning. I actually can't really remember what we did for the greater part of the day. I know we ran around to a couple of grocery stores to try and find stuff to bring to some friends' house for dinner that night. Maybe if a family member reads this and remembers they can comment below.

So after getting dressed and finding a couple bottles of wine we headed up to Ventura. We could have taken the PCH, but that would have taken forever. So we took the 405 to the 101 up to Ventura.

Did you notice what I said right there?
I said "the" 405 and "the" 101. They are pronounced "the four oh five" and "the one oh one". That is how freeways are referred to in California. Every one is the number preceeded by "the". It is easy and it works. It's better than Chicago where every interstate has an actual name "Take the such and such to the Eisenhower". But even if it works out there it just doesn't sound right applied anywhere else. I mean if I told anyone here in Bozeman that I was going to take Main Street to the 90 to the 94 to Minneapolis. They'd laugh in my face. And if I was in my old home town and told someone that they needed to take the 13 to the 77 to the 494 to get to the airport, they'd look at me funny. Or (just to get really convoluted) if I said "take the 13 to the 77 to the 494 to the 35W (I think that and 35E are the ones that really screw it up) to the 62 to the 101 to get near my old place of work", well, I wouldn't blame them if they decided that they never wanted to talk to me again. Anyway, it was a fun observation my parents and I made while we were down there.

So, there we were, travelling up the 101. We made it to the Hall's house an hour or so before dinner. Debbie, the mom, was a very good friend of my mom's in high school. So they've been friends forever. I don't remember if Dave, the dad, had grown up with them or if he entered the picture later. They had three kids, Matt, Siri, and Ben. Matt was a little younger than I was and the other two were younger than Brian. At first, just Debbie and Siri were there, oh, and Ben's dog.

Hmmm, I can't remember the dog's name right now. Anyway, he was the most muscular dog I had ever seen. He was a pitbull mix and whatever he was mixed with was a beefcake. Just a solid brickhouse of rippling muscle. And he loved to play. In the back yard he just ran back and forth trying to get people to chase him. If you were sitting down on a couch or chair or the floor, he would be right over and trying to climb up on you and lick your face. A really friendly and fun dog.

After a while Matt and Ben and Dave came home. And we did a lot of visiting. My mom and Dad remembered the family a lot better than Brian and I did. We had seen Debbie and Dave a little bit at my brother Matt's wedding, but we hadn't seen the kids since we were very young and our two families took a trip together to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

After a very tasty dinner of ham and potatoes and a number of other yummy things (we were all so thankful that we didn't have to go out to eat for Christmas Eve dinner) we played some cards and talked some more. After that we went to church, where Dave is the pastor. I was racking my brain to try and remember if I had ever known a pastor in a social setting, let alone having dinner with one right before he led Christmas Eve candlelight services, and I don't think I have. It was a nice service and neat to see Dave up there talking to everyone.

After that we headed back down to LA to go to sleep before Christmas.

What, Me Worry?

2005-01-06T09:30:00.000-08:00

I know I can complain about things.
Like a little rain on an awesome vacation. Or that my girlfriend is leaving. Or that my stupid web site is broken. Or that I'm sore from playing hockey. Or that it's too cold outside. Or that my football teams aren't doing well. Or even my fantasy football team isn't doing well. Or that I suffered through a bad movie. Or that I couldn't see everything in Glacier.

But that's all crap. My life is grand. I have cool new shoes and everything is smelling like roses. Stuff has been going on lately. Bad stuff. And it's all happening to everyone else.

I have a friend that just got divorced after a little over a year of marriage. Oh, and I have another young (around my age) friend that got divorced. And a friend who broke off an engangement. And I have a friend whose parents just separated. And I have a coworker whose grandfather just died (albeit peacefully at 92 years old after a wonderful life). And I have a friend whose long time family friend keeled over and died in the middle of running a race. And I have a friend, who is 8 months pregnant, whose husband just died in an avalanche while backcountry skiing. And a coworker who broke his leg in that same avalanche.

And that doesn't even touch upon any global trajedies occuring right now. These are just people I know. My thoughts and prayers go out to all of the people involved, and I'm just so thankful that I lead such a charmed life.

I live in Bozeman, Montana and have a job that pays the bills and isn't stressful. I have way too much stuff that can entertain me in a myriad of ways. I just visited my brother, who works in the exciting world of TV, in sunny Los Angeles. My parents just bought a new business in Minneapolis and are excited for what the future holds in that regard and are excited about moving back to Minnesota. I have another brother who is a Marine and a Vet and is married to one of the most wonderful girls I know. They have the cutest, funniest kid I've ever met, and another will be arriving this Summer.

I play hockey and volleyball for fun, and I'm pretty good at both. My Gophers won their bowl game and the Vikes have a chance to knock off the Pack in the playoffs. I have a huge group of friends that get together pretty often and always have a great time. Some days the only thing I have to worry about is whether to save my burger or my corn dog to eat last in order to maximize my enjoyment of dinner. (that actually took place in the Arctic Circle restaurant in Havre, MT) I got a bunch of sweet stuff for Christmas, and everyone else enjoyed the presents I gave them. I might be moving to sunny LA sometime in the next few months to open another new chapter in my life.

And that's not even a full list.
So you see? I really have nothing to complain about.

'Bama

2005-01-05T15:45:00.000-08:00

Many of you may know that I attended and barely graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in Computer Engineering. In my junior year I was lucky enough to be paired with a roommate who was on the swim team and was also a huge college football fan. From then on I have followed the Golden Gopher football team as closely as I can.

This season has been one of ups and downs. Well, actually, one of up and down. The team was riding high at the beginning of the season, cruising through an easy pre-conference schedule, and then completely tanked at the end of the year, with the low points including a 51-17 pasting by Michigan State and a 30-21 debacle against lowly Indiana.

The limped into bowl contention with a 6-5 record and were selected to play Alabama in the Music City Bowl in Nashville, TN. The Gophers and the Crimson Tide had never played each other in their long histories, so many people were quite excited about it. Plus each team's strength would be pitted against the other's. The vaunted Minnesota running game versus the great Alabama defense. Minnesota came in with the 13th best offense in the country, with the 6th best ground game. Alabama had the 2nd ranked defense and hadn't allowed a 100 yard rusher all year.

The game was on New Year's Eve day at 9am PST. I didn't get to watch the game as Brian doesn't have ESPN and I didn't feel like trying to find a sports bar at 9am. So I went into work with Brian and watched updates of the game on ESPN Gamecast. Let me tell you, it was pretty exciting.

When it was all said and done, the Gophers emerged victorious, 20-16. Even though they tried to give the game away by committing 3 turnovers on their first 3 possessions and missing a chip shot field goal late in the game that could have sealed the deal. And how did the key matchup end up? Marion Barber III was voted MVP of the game with 187 yards rushing and partner Laurence Maroney added 105 yards. They were the only two players to rush for 100 yards and they did it together in the same game.

Needless to say, I was very happy with the outcome. It put a happy ending on a disappointing season. It also marked the first time in Gopher history that they won 3 consecutive bowl games and it moved their overall bowl record to 5-5.

Most of the newspaper articles I read pretty much read the same way. The Minnesota offensive line pushed the Alabama defense around and opened up huge whole for the running backs. All the while controlling the ball and with it the clock. (MN held the advantage in time of possession 38-22 minutes). And the poor Minnesota defense played just well enough to hold the poor Alabama offense in check when needed. Of course, some of the Alabama players were likedly to be bitter and upset about the loss. This was my favorite quote by Alabama safety Roman Harper:

We understood that what they like to do is get out there and get on you. They have great technique. A lot of people call it holding, but if you don’t get called for it, it’s called technique.

Good fun. Now all that's left to cheer for is the even more pathetic Vikings in their improbable playoff game (they did everything they possibly could to not get in to the playoffs). They play this Sunday against the hated Packers in the confines of the Frozen Tundra of Lambeau Field.

Shoes

2005-01-05T15:15:00.000-08:00

I need your help. You see, I recently realized something about me that doesn't seem all that manly.

I know it is sexist to say that women love shoes, but I've seen it in practice too many times for it to be denied. I know that not all women love shoes, but a great deal of them do.

Anyway, the slightly feminine thing I realized the other day was that there is a certain pair of shoes in my past that I specifically remember as being my favorites. (and no, it isn't the Air Jordans that I somehow got my parents to buy me in Junior High). No, my favorite pair of shoes happens to be my Adidas Samba Classics. At first I think I may have been influenced by the fact that I played a lot of intramural soccer at school. Then I think I was influenced by the fact that my girlfriend at the time was a big fan of Adidas, and that kind of rubbed off on me.

I wore them for a number of years in the middle of my college career. I wore them everywhere and I wore them way too long. I wore them until I had holes in the soles and then I wore them after I plugged the holes with duct tape. I even kept them after I stopped wearing them thinking I could use them as a type of slipper or something, but I finally threw them away last year.

How does this all enter into the story of the present? After eating lunch and watching the first half of the Rose Bowl in a restaurant on the Promenade in Santa Monica with Brian and Erin, we walked up and down going into a few shops. We hit the Gap, a toy store, the Levi's store, and then on our way out I guided us into the Adidas store just on a whim. I still like the stuff, but I didn't expect to get anything, even if they were having a big sale. Brian and Erin wouldn't have even thought of the place but they said "sure" and even ended up buying a pair of shoes each. I also went back to the shoes department and had a look around. There were some cool shoes but nothing that really fit me.

Until...there they were...my next pair of shoes. The Samba Milleniums. I had been into a few Adidas stores and a few Adidas outlets in the past number of years and I never saw a pair of Sambas. I just thought that they had been discontinued or something, so I never really gave it another thought. But there they were in front of me. I tried them on and they looked and felt great. But, being the popular model they are, they were not on sale. I decided to forego buying the shoes then with thoughts that I could find them online for cheaper than $65.

As a side note, on my way out of the store, I spotted a micro fleece jacket that looked kind of cool. It was on a 50% off rack, but I wasn't really sure, since it didn't say anything on the tag, like a number of other clearance items did. I had a guy check the price and sure enough, it was on sale. I snatched up the last medium and I left a happy man. It is very soft and comfortable with two pockets and a chest pocket that perfectly holds the mp3 player I got for Christmas. It has slightly long arms with holes for your thumbs to go through and then a piece of fleece to flip over your hands if you are outside in the cold with no gloves.

Anyway, when we got back to Brian's apartment I started the search for the shoes. I found a place that had them for $10 less than the store, with free shipping. So I ordered them then and there.

They should be waiting at my house when I get home from work. I can't wait. I'm still a man, right?

Hockey update

2005-01-05T13:15:00.000-08:00

Well, well. We won last night! It felt pretty good. Except that it was bitter cold out. Just about 0 degrees with a wind whipping through the bench. Our team played just okay over all, but well enough to beat an inferior team. I am overall happy with my performance, though, as always, I could have done better.

I had a number of scoring chances that I couldn't convert on. On one I was leading the break and got over the blue line and I dropped it to a teammate. He got a shot off that wasn't really strong but the rebound bounced straight to me right in front of the net. I shot it twice into the goalie's chest before he covered it up. Darn.

One other time I was on a two on one break with one of our weaker players. I laid a nice pass across to him where he was alone with an open shot. But instead of taking a shot he whipped a pass back at me a little too hard and a bit off the mark and the puck went into the corner.

Another time I pinched at the blue line, picked the puck up, and carried it around the net. When I came out from behind on the other side I had a man wide open just back off of the scrum going on in front of the net. I got it to him right on the stick and he took a shot, but the goalie stopped it and covered up.

Here are the overall stats for the year so far:

Date	Res	Opp	Score	+/-	G	A	P	Shots	PIM
TOTALS	5-10-2		39-56	-5	1	1	2	24	3

A couple of notes. The total goals don't include 4 games that I didn't play in, I don't know the scores to those. The penalty minutes may look strange at 3, instead of 2. But in our league minor penalties are 3 mintues because the clock is always running.

Some more pictures

2005-01-05T10:45:00.000-08:00

Here are a few more pictures from LA

On Christmas day we walked around Santa Monica. Including the beach, the Pier, and the Promenade.

Here's a picture of the beach, taken from the Pier

Here was a dude sleeping on the beach, albeit in a strange position.

Here is the sun setting over the ocean looking out past the Pier.

Hockey...hockey...hockey

2005-01-04T11:02:00.000-08:00

I got into Bozeman on Sunday afternoon and got home about 5pm. I then unpacked, ate, unpacked the rest, and then took a nap for a couple hours before getting up to go play hockey. I was tired, but them's the breaks. So off to the rink I went to play against the hated Black Angus. We ended up losing 3-1. I had a few nice shots, but nothing went in. I was only a -1 for the night and even that wasn't my fault. A dude on the other team launched a weak bouncing shot from the blue line and the goalie just didn't put his body in front of it and it bounced past him and in. That was a little frustrating.

After hockey I went home and tried to fall asleep, without much success. Tossing and turning, turning and tossing until probably around 2am. At work yesterday my vision started to shake and blur from exhaustion near the end of the day. Oh, and I had a hockey game last night as well. And that game was not looking to be much fun as we were playing a power league team. Ouch.

We didn't actually play that poorly. But the score registered our lack of skill and experience in relation to the other team: 9-2. I felt I played a pretty good game and one stat backs this up, I was +2 for the night. I was on the ice for both of our goals and none of the opposing goals. I was pretty proud of that fact after the game. We only had two sets of defense, so I was out there a lot, but they never poked one in. But of course, we still lost badly.

I'm not too tired at work yet today, but the afternoon lull hasn't hit yet. Oh, and I have another hockey game tonight. That's right, three nights, three games, all at 9:30pm. Yawn. You know what's nice though? I did nearly nothing but eat and sit around while down in LA (I did bike 10 miles one day though) so this is good to get right back into some activity to burn off some of the excess I'm sure I accumulated.

A Secret Admirer?

2005-01-04T10:28:00.000-08:00

I don't know if it is a joke, but yesterday I found a note on my desk. It was afixed to the back of a note I had made earlier (they are both post-it notes).
On it, the note says, in slightly shaky red pen, "gess who?" with a red heart following. And then inside a green heart it says, in slightly less shaky red pen, "Marry Christmas".

Now that I think on it a little bit more I think that the note was near where some Christmas candy had been deposited on my desk. Everyone in the office got some candy, so I wasn't special in that regard. But why was the note stuck to the back of another note and then turned face down? And why would one draw hearts on a candy delivery note?

It should be a simple process of elimination to discover who the note writer is. The office is overwhelmingly male, I am certain I can safely eliminate every one of them. There are 6 women at the office. Three are younger (30s) and married. One is older (50s or 60s) and married. And two are younger and not married. I don't know if they are in relationships, but neither one of them seems to me to be the cryptic note writing type. But, what do I know? My track record of the last decade clearly indicates that I have no understanding of women.

So maybe it was a joke. Or maybe I have a secret admirer. I don't know which and I doubt I ever will. Maybe I'll scan the note sometime and post it, just so you can see what I'm dealing with.

Back in Boz Angeles

2005-01-03T15:52:00.000-08:00

Howdy all! (that's Montanan for "Hello everyone!")
I made it back from the big city. I had a great time and I still have lots to post about, but I was actually busy at work today and I've been very tired.

New Years Eve was a late one and travelling never refreshes anyone. Plus, after I got back yesterday I had a hockey game at 9:30. Oh, and I have another hockey game tonight, and another tomorrow night.

To tide you over, here are a couple of pictures.

The first is a dog that was outside a restaurant we ate at and lots of people stopped to pet it. It looks like a pug mix to me, and as Steph could tell you, I think pugs are hilarious.

I'm just guessing, but I think you can check out of this next place any time you like. But you can never leave.

Right next to the Hotel California was a Segway store. I actually saw a dude going along the boardwalk on one at Venice Beach.

Still alive in 2005

2005-01-01T03:05:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone. I hope this next year is as kind to you as the last one was to me.

I just got back from Giant Village downtown LA. It was awesome. Unfortunately we didn't stay as long as I would have liked, but them's the breaks. From what I was able to see, here are my rankings of the acts:

1. The Crystal Method (only got to see them for 13-14 minutes)
2. John Digweed (sweet and lighter crowds than Oakey)
3. Paul Oakenfold (very fun, packed, and went crazy with piercing treble notes again)
4. The Killers (a live rock band, their current single is "Somebody Told Me")
5. Mark Farina (just okay, actually played the same song twice in the 30 minues we watched him)

Well, I suppose I should go to bed. It's 3am PST.

Happy New Year.

Pictures from Malibu

2004-12-29T23:33:00.000-08:00

So here are some pictures from the State Park beach up in Malibu we visited on the first day I got into town.

This is a view of the beach from the cliffs above.

This was a house that sat at one end of the beach. Not a bad place to live or visit, huh?

This seagull was very interested in our bag.

Here is my mom just watching the waves roll in.

Most of our time was spent running around in the water...

...or just standing around in the water.

Fun at Ralphs

2004-12-29T21:30:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah, I forgot. I was walking past the meat section in the supermarket today when this guy yelled at a worker and stormed off. Did I say he merely stormed off? No, that's not what happened. He yelled at the worker, tipped over a lady's shopping cart, stormed off towards the next aisle, turned around, yelled at the worker again, kept storming, and tipped over another person's cart. It was pretty funny.

I heard the worker explaining what happened to a friend after it was done. Apparently the psycho was a little upset that they were out of something that was in the weekly ad. I know that always sends me into an insane tirade.

Lazy Day

2004-12-29T17:12:00.000-08:00

I spent today mostly sitting on the couch in Brians apartment. A nice lazy day in LA.

It was a rainy morning here and at just about the time I wanted to head out, the rain stopped and the sun came out. Brian had already left for work and I had a couple of errands I wanted to do. So outside I went to hit the sidewalk. A nice 10 to 15 minute walk and there I was at Best Buy. A few nights ago my family and I had watched Napolean Dynamite. I had heard it was pretty funny and I wasn't disappointed. I will definitely say that not everyone would enjoy this movie, but I thought it was brilliant. It was just so strange and funny. So anyway, I had to buy my own copy, which I did at Best Buy today. Much fun. Then I walked across the parking lot to Ralphs, a supermarket. I picked up a few things for dinner and some chips (mmm, just plain chips). And then a short walk back to the apartment.

For the rest of the day I've done laundry. Watched the first half of The Great Escape. I'm watching That Thing You Do!, which is actually pretty good, at this very moment. A very movie-ful day.

I guess that's about it.

Well, isn't this nice

2004-12-28T23:27:00.000-08:00

For all of you who might be jealous of super nice Southern California weather, it is pouring outside. Brian said he can't remember it raining as hard as it is tonight. Plus, it was raining most of the day and overcast all day today (and yesterday). It probably didn't get much above 60 degrees either. What's that about?

Loving Life

2004-12-28T14:54:00.000-08:00

Well, SoCal is nice.
For the first couple of days the temps got up to the low 70s. Much nicer than the zero degrees and lower that I left in Bozeman (and that my parents had left in Chicago and that my brother and Steve stayed in in Minneapolis.)

After I flew into LAX Brian and I headed to pick up my parents at their hotel in Westwood, a really nice neighborhood next to Beverly Hills. From there we headed out for lunch at this nice little place towards the ocean. As we were in the shade we did need to wear long sleeves, but the sun was shining and the sky was blue. After that we headed for the PCH, the Pacific Coast Highway, US 1. We drove up the coast and past beaches and past hills and nice neighborhoods into Malibu.

Malibu, as you may imagine, is quite nice. We didn't even see all of it (it is a 27 mile long city on the coast) but from what we saw we wouldn't have minded living there. We ended up stopping at a State Park beach and getting out for a while. For the next two or three hours we just walked up and down this very secluded and private beach and enjoyed the ocean. We stood in the surf, skipped rocks, and just enjoyed the beautiful days. We took a number of pictures, which I hopefully will be posting some time soon. They are all on Brian's main computer and he's working on it nearly constantly.

After our time on the beach Brian drove us over a canyon to the San Fernando Valley. Have you ever seen movies or Saturday Night Live skits with "Valley Girls" in them? Yeah, it's this valley. We then headed back to Brian's place, in Palms, and ordered pizza for dinner and watched Dodgeball. It was hilarious. Steph and I had watched it earlier in the week, but it was funny the second time as well.

That was my first day in Los Angeles, so the trip started out well.

Bye bye

2004-12-22T23:25:00.000-08:00

I didn't have any time to write today (yesterday). Why you ask? Well, I'll tell you.

First, I didn't go to work this morning. I went skiing. It was epic. Nothing less than knee deep powder, and in some places it was waist to stomach deep. I got sprayed in the face so many times I had snow frozen in my beard. I was only there for a couple hours, but it might have been my best day ever. And my first run was definitely my best "first run of the season" ever.

Then I went to work for a little and was kept busy enough.

Then I came home and have been really busy here getting ready to leave. Leave? That's right. I'm heading down to Los Angeles tomorrow morning for Christmas and New Years. My parents flew out there a couple days ago and have been hanging out with my brother. After they leave he and I will be chilling. On New Years Eve we'll be attending a giant techno party downtown LA. It's going to be awesome.

Anyway, I don't know how much I'll be writing in the next week and a half. So Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to you all.

Don't you hate it?

2004-12-21T09:30:00.000-08:00

Don't you hate it when people try to tell you something funny, or something about something funny, but they can't remember the whole thing or the punchline, so it was just a big waste of your time? Don't you? Well, I hope you don't hate it too much, because I'm going to do that exact thing right now.

When I went home for lunch yesterday I was watching "Comic Remix" on Comedy Central. Whoa, was it hilarious. I let out hardy guffaws multiple times. Unfortunately I can't really remember all (or any) of the jokes, but let me assure you, they were really funny. It was just what I needed.

On an almost completely unrelated point, does anyone else think that the show Strangers With Candy was one of the worst shows ever put on TV? If you agree with me, don't you find it sad that you can buy all 3 seasons on DVD? Who buys this crap? My roommate can only get the first two seasons of his favorite show, Northern Exposure, on DVD. Plus, they're really expensive because the studio has had to spend a lot of extra money to try and renegotiate the rights to all of the music that goes into each episode. It really bums him out.

Postponed until further notice

2004-12-20T14:06:00.000-08:00

This is hilarious.

It is the 2004-2005 NHL schedule on ESPN.com. Every game is there, though for some reason they aren't listing what kind of TV coverage each game is getting. My favorite part is how the time (in Eastern Time) on each game is given as "Postponed". I didn't even know that the Dallas Stars were playing my Minnesota Wild tonight in St. Paul. I can't believe I almost missed it. Go Wild.

We won, now what?

2004-12-20T14:01:00.000-08:00

More fun with professional athletes:
Two Raiders arrested for public intoxication

My favorite part of the article:

"Apparently what happened, an officer in our transportation section was flagged down by a woman who said the men were in the back of her car and wouldn't get out," said Ashford, who was uncertain whether the players knew the woman. "They were very uncooperative. They had problems maintaining their balance and had a strong odor of alcohol. They were acting in a belligerent manner."

I guess these two were so excited after beating the Titans that they went out, got plastered, and jumped into a lady's car. Maybe they thought it was a taxi or something. Or maybe they were just so drunk that they had no clue what was going on. That's the kind of guy I would want on my professional sports team.

sigh

2004-12-20T08:04:00.000-08:00

Thanks for the kind word gents.

I know you're all sick of my bellyaching, so I'll try to keep it to a minimum. Today I'll regale you with a tale of overcoming hardship and defeating hardwork.

It is well known that I hate washing dishes. I just don't like to do it, so if I have to do it I want to do it in as easy a way as possible. (That sentense had 14 two letter words, including 5 in a row. That's got to be some kind of a record.) As you can imagine, I wasn't to keen on hard work--including dishwashing--this weekend, seeing as how I had just been made single with my girlfriend leaving me to go home. A pile of dishes had started to accumulate earlier in the week and had no thoughts of slowing down. Something had to be done, and there was no one to do it but me.

So, what did I do? Did I clear out the sink and fill it with soapy water? Did I roll up my sleeves and plunge my hands into the greasy melee? Did I brush and scrub as I had never brushed and scrubbed before? No. I went straight to work at getting our portable dishwasher to work.

It came with the house and Eric and I had tried to get it to work once before, with no luck. For some reason we couldn't seem to get the nozzle hooked to the faucet with a tight enough seal. No water would actually get to the machine.

But this time it would be different. This time I really wanted it to work. Because this time, I would have to do all of the dishes.

After much finagling and cajoling I finally figured out what we had done wrong and I had the nozzle attached to the faucet. Now the moment of truth. I turned the machine on and...nothing. No water was going in, it was just running. Bummer. But wait! What is this I hear? The water, it is flowing, the machine is working! Eureka! It just wanted to run a little before starting the water up.

So I loaded the dishes up and put some soap in and set it to run. No water...no water...no water. Hmm, this seemed to be taking longer...whew! There it goes.

You have no idea how nice it felt to have all the dishes being washed while I played a computer game downstairs.

So there you have it. When you're not feeling tip top you have to take the small victories. Hooray

blah

2004-12-17T12:12:00.000-08:00

I'm very bummed today. I'll talk about it more after this weekend, but I'm bummed.

I've had a great week though. I left off my tale of the weekend after Friday.

On Saturday was my company's Christmas party. It was lots of fun. The dinner, prime rib, was very tasty. The gift giving was very fun as well. At the beginning of the night we were given $25 of fake money to be used in an auction for the gifts at the end of dinner. We exchanged money in a couple of ways before the auction. First, some people sold their drink tickets for more money. Second, if you heard anyone say the word "Christmas" they had to give you $5.

The auction consisted of around 50 presents or so. They were all wrapped so you didn't know what you were bidding on. Steph took the first gift with only $10 and it was a big jar of chocolates. Perfect! After that the bidding took off and some gifts went for $70 or $80 or even $90. Some of the gifts were pretty disappointing to some people though. Like a liquid soap dispenser or a picture frame. Towards the end of the auction, when the big spenders had finally spent all of their money I finally won an auction. When I opened it up it was a daily Dilbert calender. Perfect! I have gotten one for Christmas for like 3 or 4 years running, so I loved it.

After the party Steph and I decided to rent a movie. We wanted to get Dodgeball, but it was out. So we got The Terminal. Steph really likes Tom Hanks and we had both been curious about the movie. There were certain things I didn't like. For instance the "bad guy's" motivation just didn't seem real. I really didn't believe he was doing all his stuff for any reason. But the movie was cute and Tom was of course excellent.

I can't for the life remember what happened Sunday, but I think I mainly just relaxed and had dinner with Steph. Very nice indeed.

On Monday night my roommate took a bunch of people out to celebrate passing his Licensed Surveyor exam. That was nice. There were nine of us and we had a good time. Tuesday was the win in hockey.

On Wednesday I made my Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza, which, if I may say so, is very good. I made it for Steph and Eric. We had a good time eating and it filled us up. After that Steph and I were finally able to rent Dodgeball, which we enjoyed quite a bit. It could be pretty, but it kept us laughing pretty much the whole time.

Anyway, that's pretty much my life up to date. Tonight is a birthday/congrats/going away party. It is Ricarda's birthday and Steph just graduated and is going away. Hopefully I will be able to enjoy myself. Steph's family is getting into town very soon and will be coming to the party as well, it will be nice to see them again.

A double double

2004-12-16T08:09:00.000-08:00

Wow. Twins for twins. That's crazy. I would think that the chances that the odds given at the end of the article are based on any facts to be approximately 1,230,875 to 1.

Still amazing though.

You have to wonder

2004-12-16T08:05:00.000-08:00

You may remember a long time ago when I told you about a pillow that is in the shape of a man's arm and shoulder that single women in Japan could buy to "sleep with someone".

Well, they've done it again, this time for the boys. I give you the lap pillow. That just freaks me out.

We Won!

2004-12-15T14:05:00.000-08:00

Our second win of the hockey season finally came. I know I haven't been keeping up with the season for the last couple of weeks, but we hadn't won since that first game. But last night we broke our winless streak. We are now 2-6-2. Hooray! The common factor in our two wins was that they were the two games that Steph came to watch. With her leaving very shortly, I'm not looking forward to the rest of the season.

We ended up winning 7-5, so we didn't do too bad, but we could have done better. We were up 4-0 at one point. Like so often, we started strong and then tapered off towards the end.

I had an up and down game personally. As a defenseman the main thing I care about is that there are no goals scored while I'm on the ice. Assists and goals are just gravy. I feel I played pretty well but the other team scored their first 4 goals while I was out there trying to defend against that very occurrence. (On a side note, I can't think if I've ever written the word 'occurrence'. I had no clue it was spelled like that. I tried 'occurance' but thought it didn't look quite right. I figured it could have been an 'e' instead of an 'a', but I didn't know there was a double 'r' in there. Crazy)

I have to be honest and say that the goals were mostly not my fault. On two of the goals I would not have played any differently. I was in the position I wanted to be in and had my guy where I wanted him to be. The goalie just let in weak goals from bad angles. On the other two I feel I was interferred with and wasn't able to make any play. It was very frustrating.

So I was -3 for the game on a night that I felt pretty good about the way I played. It was really weird.

I also got my first penalty of the year. This other guy and I were getting into it a little bit for most of the game and finally with just over 2 minutes left in the game he slashed me one last time and I kind of checked him into the boards a little bit. We both got whistled. My problem with the guy is that I just don't think he has any class and I don't respect him at all. This is rec hockey and there's no place for cheap play and chipiness. I won't go into everything, suffice it to say I don't like him. He even owns a shop here in town and I don't shop there anymore.

La Casa Sanchez y la Betty Boop

2004-12-13T11:02:00.000-08:00

Alright, you've all been very patient with a slow week. Thanks. I hope you all had great weekends, because I did.

On Friday night I took Steph out to dinner at Casa Sanchez. I'm not a huge fan of Mexican food, but Steph likes it, so I took her there. I had been curious about the place since I had moved to this part of town. It is a house, I'm sure someone used to live there, maybe they still do. I had always thought it must be a fairly tight fit for everyone inside and my suspicions were confirmed when we entered. Steph and I were seated at the smalled dinner table I had ever eaten at. It almost had less room than my lap.

Most tables for two we've been seated at in restaurants are arranged so that the people are seated opposite each other, with ample space behind each person. Some times we get seated at a table for 4 and instead of sitting opposite of each other we sit kitty-corner (or catty-corner) from each other, on the two sides of one corner. Well, merge those ideas and imagine a little less room and you've got it.

The room itself was very cramped. There were three tables for four in three of the room's corners. In the final corner, right next to the entry to the room was our table. It was a very small two person table, maybe a one-and-a-half person table. It was pushed into the corner so that the only two sides to sit at were adjacent. Steph's chair almost couldn't be pulled out since the guy sitting behind her was basically right up against her chair--luckily she's really small and fit in fine while seated, she just couldn't get up very well. My chair pulled straight out with no obstructions, though I was seated pretty much in the entry to the room.

The salsa and basket of chips nearly filled the table, which didn't bode well for dinner. The chips were excellent, lightly salted and just the right amount of density and crispiness. I did feel obligated to try the salsa once, but as you can imagine (look at the title of this website) I enjoyed nearly all of my chips sans decoration, and I loved it.

With some help from the server we figured out what we wanted and ordered. I ordered pork fajitas and Steph had an enchilada and a chili relleno. Everyone knows what enchiladas are, but a chili relleno is something I haven't seen anywhere else. It is a green chili (pepper) stuffed with monterey jack cheese, lightly battered and pan fried.

Our food came and it was an excersize in quantum spacial mechanics (a new field I just made up) to figure out how to fit all of the plates on our table. With everything in place we comenced the dining. Unfortunately I can only say that the food was okay. Definitely not the best Mexican in Bozeman. Steph and I both agreed on this point, but you should take her opinion more seriously, since she actually really likes Mexican food. But hey, we would have never known that had we not gone, and you wouldn't have known it either.

So we headed home and popped in a DVD to watch. A while ago Steph and I were in Walmart and I happened to see a huge display of DVDs with large signs proclaiming DVDs for $1. Things of this nature tend to catch my eye so it wasn't surprise that I noticed it. The DVDs in question were collections of old cartoons. There were old Superman, Spiderman, and many other characters I don't know well enough to remember. The one that was most interesting for the purposes of our story was the one Steph ended up buying, which was a Betty Boop.

Steph loves Betty Boop. She has a thermometer, a clock, a framed picture thing, a little figurine that hangs on her cell phone, and numerous other paraphenilia of her favorite cartoon character. So, even though she doesn't have a DVD player it didn't take much for Steph to shell out the one dollar for the item. We knew we could watch it at my house or she could watch it at her parent's house some time.

So we finally sat down to watch it on Friday. I can't say for certain, but I don't think I had ever seen a full Betty Boop cartoon before. They certainly had some risque parts, considering they were made in the 30s. Especially the one where Betty was wearing nothing but a grass skirt and a lei and doing a Hawaiian dance on the beach. The flower in the ground next to her was so embarrassed he replanted himself roots up. They were all pretty funny.

I am a big fan of the cartoons of my youth and Japanese animation and it is interesting to see what kind of stuff was made in the infancy of the art form. For one thing, there aren't too many tunes in todays cartoons. Every episode of Betty Boop had her or someone else singing a song.

So that was Friday, we had a good time. I'll get to the rest later.

Stupid Internet Explorer

2004-12-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, through the magic of not testing enough, my new site doesn't look right in Internet Explorer. It doesn't surprise me (either that I didn't test it, or that it doesn't look right). This would be a great time for you to discover the wonder that is Firefox, which I use exclusively.

Edit: Okay, I got it mostly working (thanks Steve). If you didn't get to see it really crappy, well, that's too bad. Now, there's the little problem of the sidebar sticking out, which I will have to work on.

(I still think you should download and use Firefox)

Where Am I?

2004-12-08T22:25:00.001-08:00

You may be asking yourself that very question when looking at the site you're at.

Well, if you couldn't guess, I did a little bit of a redesign. I like it better than the old one, at least most of it. I think the main content region (where you're reading right now) may be a little cramped, and I might dress up the post headers or date headers a little bit. But overall I like how it turned out.

If you have any thoughts, good or bad (seriously--I can take criticism. I'm not a designer nor do I know HTML/CSS very well), please give me feedback. Either leave a comment here or email me directly.

We've come a long way baby

2004-12-08T08:51:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, it's nice when visions of the future don't come to pass.

Just imagine how easy Need For Speed would be on that baby!

Nothing to see here

2004-12-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

Sorry, I just haven't been in a writing mood lately. While many people in the history of literature have been inspired by less-than-happy times in their lives I am more inclined to write when everything is sailing along smoothly and I'm feeling on top of the world.

I'm sure I'll be writing something soon. But you're not missing much, I promise.

Oh, and this isn't meant to imply that I'm feeling down in the dumps. I'm just not feeling as ecstatic about everything as I normally do.

It's not our fault!

2004-12-03T08:13:00.000-08:00

So I guess retailers in Europe are having a difficult time getting Playstation 2s. It turns out that everyday reasons like "explosions at factories" or "we are trying to build our new product, so forget you" are not the real reasons.

According to this story the real reason is simple shipping problems and apparently the Suez Canal is to blame. You know, I remember learning about the Suez Canal in geography, but I couldn't tell you where it is...without looking it up on google...it's the waterway linking the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Suez and then to the Red Sea.

The story just struck me because I don't think I've read or heard the words "Suez Canal" since eighth grade geography.

Ouch

2004-12-02T08:03:00.000-08:00

I'm a mess this morning. I really strained my groin last night in hockey. I could hardly walk or move last night. I'm better today but still get around with some trouble. Then my jaw really hurts as well. I'm thinking I must have clenched my jaw a lot last night from the pain of tossing and turning.

Like I said, a mess.

Sneaky New Site Post

2004-11-30T21:59:00.000-08:00

The November, 2004 archive page is the page on my blog that is most commonly found through search engines. It's all because of the hot wings picture on my Halloween post.

I haven't posted here since May, 2005, my new blog has been up since about then.

Traditions

2004-11-24T12:42:00.000-08:00

Many people and many families around this great country will partake in multitudinous traditions this weekend. I know one that I will engage in will be eating copious amounts of food. I would be watching lots of football tomorrow if I weren't flying for most of the day. I'm guessing my family will also play some cards or some board games and some pool.

One tradition that I will be experiencing tonight is something my roommate has been doing for 12 straight years and was described by a friend of his as "The stupidest Thanksgiving tradition ever". With that kind of praise how could I not want to join in?

It is simple, we are going to watch his VHS copy of Son in Law. That is right, I will be enjoying Thanksgiving Eve with Pauly Shore (whose character in the movie is named "Crawl"). Luckily, to soften the blow Eric baked two pumpkin pies last night. He even made the pie crust from scratch. They have been cooling in the frig all night and day and will be ready to eat tonight. Of course, we'll only dip into one, as he is probably going to a friend's house tomorrow and will be bringing the other. Combine the pie with some whipped cream and I'll be ready to watch anything.

Well, time to sell some records.

2004-11-24T10:24:00.000-08:00

You might have heard about the big brawl in the Pistons/Pacers NBA game last Friday. The suspensions came down afterwards and left Ron Artest with a 73 game (rest of the season) suspension. What is kind of funny is that Artest had been talking earlier, and was even benched for it, about taking some time off to promote a new rap CD he produced, which came out yesterday.

Well, now he has his chance to promote it without all of that basketball to get in the way. He didn't waste any time as I saw a clip of him on SportsCenter last night. It was supposed to be his apology statement and response to his suspension. Well, he mentioned those two unimportant things, but he made numerous references to his CD "which is available now" and that people should go out and buy it. It was unbelievable, though knowing a little about the guy, it was not.

I guess he was like this not only on ESPN. Artest speaks.

Color Coded Computer Cords

2004-11-24T09:30:00.000-08:00

In the misty, nearly-forgotten days of yore there was a young man. This young man was renowned (in his own mind) for his intellect and his practicality. There was nothing he could not do if he was shown but once.

Since his childhood the young man had been enamored with the fascinating world of the electronic computer. What power! What freedom!

With a computer one could do nearly anything. One could write a book or a journal. One could travel to distant worlds and defeat hideous monsters. And with the right tools and enough knowledge, one could even create those worlds and its inhabitants.

This young man did all of this and more. He tended lemonade stands. He learned about the old west while travelling along the Oregon Trail. But what he really started to enjoy learning was how to make the computer do what you wanted it to do.

After enjoying computers for many years the young man decided that he needed a computer of his own and not be shackled by the whims and schedules of other people. But how to afford it? Home computers were relatively new and still fairly expensive. Fortunately a friend of his had ventured into the world of building one's own computer and possessed eldritch knowledge of their construction. Instead of bending to the will of some manufacturer you could have a computer with any set of specs and any parts you wanted, all for cheaper than if you bought it at a store (even if you worked at a store and got a discount).

With the guidance and pantience of his friend the young man was able to select and purchase the elemenatal parts that would combine to create a computing machine of surpassing power. A small part of the lore was to know where everything was to go. For example what cords plugged in where: the keyboard always plugged into the PS/2 slot closest to the motherboard and the mouse into the one further away. The young man could do this without resorting to using the small etched diagram in the back plate--he would not be denied the use of his know-how.

The young man relished the idea of being in the company of a select few who held the understanding of how to accomplish what he had just done. Soon family members and other friends were requesting the young man's assistance in all matters related to computers. Whether to diagnose and fix problems or to construct a personal computer for them, the young man was able to help all comers.

As time passed and seasons changed computers started to become more ubiquitous. Computers were starting to be made more "user friendly. Even the hidden realm of building one's own computer started to become more widespread. Parts and part shops started to become more common. Guides and techniques were popping up on this new invention called the "Internet".

One small part of the easier-to-use push was to start color coding parts of the computer in an effort to ensure than anyone would be able to put their computer together correctly. The young man scoffed at these ideas and put his nose up at anyone who needed these hacks to use a computer. The young man believed he could take apart and re-assemble a computer while blindfolded and couldn't see why everyone else couldn't do the same. All you had to do was follow the cord from the peripheral to the connector and then remember which plug it goes in to. How hard is that?

...
...
...

Fast forward to the present. The young man is now a slightly older young man. His wisdom has not been augmented very much by the years and neither has his common sense, but a few things have changed. His job now mainly consists of fixing and setting up computers for people who have not the understanding that he possesses. Day in and day out he is installing programs and undating security, crawling under a desk and changing out a mouse, or explainging (again) how one prints double sided on a certain printer. In his sojourn in this position he has unplugged and replugged countless keyboards and countless mice. He has done it with a flashlight in hand and with a flashlight in mouth. He has done it under desks and around corners with his neck crooked and his arms stained to their outmost.

In these situations every little advantage is coveted. After five minutes of crawling around fending off dust bunnies the size of his head, the slightly older young man doesn't want to have to go back and redo what he thought he had done. One advantage of the modern computer that enables him to complete his duties quickly and with a minimum of errors is the fact that most computer cords are color coded. And he is thankful that they are.

Poor Press

2004-11-23T10:05:00.000-08:00

I know you can't believe every review of every movie, but I knew that I didn't think Alexander looked good for a reason.

It's strange, because I think that this would be the type of movie I'd normally like, but ever since the first preview I've had my doubts about it. To be sure, my dislike didn't stem from any preview or actual watching of the movie. It boiled down to a few things: I don't like Colin Ferrell very much, I don't like Angelina Jolie all that much (and for some reason she looks extra-unappealing to me in this movie), and there's some line in the trailer that sounds like it was taken straight out of Braveheart (which I loved)--come up with something original.

Also, the reviews for Polar Express all seem to have the same gripe I have with it (just from viewing the trailers). Which is that the characters all look creepy and weird.

Oh, and as a side note, I was shocked. SHOCKED, I say, to see National Treasure getting mostly negative reviews.