May 2004 Archives

Okay so I better blog before the blogstopo get me. Truthfully I had a nice full entry written last night and MT ate it somehow. Of course, since I was chatting, checking email , and web browsing at the same time. It MIGHT, MIGHT I SAY have been pilot error.

Yesterday was boring. I spent most of it in the air flying back home and the rest of the day cleaning the yard and the pool in preparation for this weekend's festivities. I'm having a cookout/pool party this Saturday afternoon. If any of you are in the Dallas area and want to join in the fun, hit the email link there on the right and I'll give you the specifics.

Today is more of the same, cleaning the pool, cleaning the house, with some poker later on tonight.

Oh and for all you Alternative Rock fans out there, the Pixies will be here October 19th!

Last night I decided I was going to make the best of my time here in Baltimore, and went down to Camden Yards to see Baltimore play the Yankees. I got through the traffic, parked, got my ticket, got my hotdog and beer and sat down in my seat. I got to watch 2 whole innings before a huge thunderstorm poured rain down on all of creation. This is how my week is going. Of course, this is Major League Baseball, they don't cancel a game unless they REALLY have to. After an hour of walking around the stadium wathcing it rain, the game resumed. While I was waiting, I purchased an Orioles cap so no one would mistake me for a Yankees fan. Baltimore didn't do so well, losing to the Yanks , 11-3. Even worse was that every cute girl I saw was wearing a Yankee's jersey or more specifically a Derek Jeter Jersey. Yeah Mr .189 batting average 3 HR is great. How much do they pay him again.....

Oh and it was decided that the accident was not my fault, whew.

hmm I better write something or I'm just going to keep putting it off and fall really behind on blogging. I think the weekend was fully covered elsewhere. Except we also went and saw the newly re-released "Life of Brian". Which was just as good on the big screen if not better.

I'm in Baltimore,MD all this week. I'm still not sure why I have to be here to do this project, nothing, I've done yet couldn't have been done from Home. To make matters even worse. Someone hit me last night. No one was hurt and the cars weren't even all the badly damaged, but now it's a big pain. I was driving a company rental car, so now I have to make sworn statemements, to my insurence, my company's insurence, the other person's insurence, AND the rental car company. Let me tell you that's not fun.

To top it all off, my dog is massivley upset I'm gone. Poor baby.....

KEGL one of the last Hard Rock stations in the Dallas Area is no more. It's now
Sunny 97.1 I have no idea what kind of music they play but it sounds horriffic. I wasn't a huge Eagle listener, but it was glad it was around, if nothing else to justify that SOMEONE else out there still liked 80's hair-metal bands. Is there a new Hard Rock station coming a long to fill the void? I know 93.3 the Bone claims to be Hard Rock but they're almost classic rock, which is okay but only good when I'm in a certain mood.

Oh and here is possibly the worst Pirate Joke ever.

A pirate walks into a bar and sits down.

The bartender walks over to him and says "Hey, I couldn't help but notice when you walked in. Is that a steering wheel hung between your legs?"

"Aye!" replied the pirate, "And it's drivin' me nuts!"

1. What time do you get up? Depends if I want to work out or not, sometime between 7 and 7:45

2. If you could eat lunch with one person, who would it be?
Angelina Jolie or Gwen Stefani

3. Gold or silver? Platinum

4. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Hellboy

5. What is/are your favorite TV show(s) ?
I hardly ever watch TV but I watch Stargate SG-1 and Family Guy sometimes

6. What did you have for breakfast? Dry Frosted Flakes (The Milk was Bad)

7.What would you hate to be stuck in a room with? Boring people

8. What inspires you? writers

9. What is your middle name? Howard

10. Beach, City or Country? City, I need lot of choice in Bars

11. Favorite ice cream? Chocolate Chip

12. Butter, plain or salted popcorn? Salted though I'm not a huge fan in general

13. Favorite color? Purple!

14. What kind of car do you drive? XTerra

15. Favorite sandwich? Grilled Cheese or Proscuitto and Cheese

16. What characteristic do you despise? Indecisiveness

17. Favorite flower? This is so a girl question.....

18. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you
go? Full European Tour

19. What color is your bathroom? One is blue and white (with a Blue Toilet even) the other is a really awful yellow.

20. Favorite brand of clothing: Whatever is on sale at Nordstrom Rack this month

21. Where would you retire to? Wherever all my friends are

22. Favorite day of the week: Friday

23. What did you do for your last birthday? German Restraunt, German Food, German Beer

24. Where were you born? Ponca City,OK

25. Favorite sport to watch? Baseball

26. Who do you least expect to send this back to you? I don't know anyone but Red.

27. Person you expect to send it back first? See Above

28. What fabric detergent do you use? Arm and Hammer

29. Coke or Pepsi? Soda? I only drink Water, Beer and sometimes coffee or tea.

30. Are you a morning person or a night owl? Night owl.

31. What size shoe do you wear? 14

32. Do you have any pets? 2 sorta

I have a husky miz Named Mira and a Roommate Pet named Luna.

33. What is your favorite season? Spring, it is way to damn hot in Texas in the summer.

34. Do you pray? Not as much as I should.

35. Do you read all the e-mails sent to you? Well all the ones from people I know. I get a TON of spam.

Hmm Must blog... So alright I'm in Chicago. It's not so bad. The temperatre is about 50 so it's not frigid like the lasst time I was here. Mostly boring stuff to talk about like me attending meetings all day and that I have to write some kind of document before I go to bed. (that won't happen) Here is one interesting anecdote from today.

I get to the hotel around 6 and go work out, afterwards I take a shower, open my suitcase to put on some fresh clothes and lo and behold I have forgotten to pack underwear! Well let's just say I "went commando" to the Mall across the street. I didn't realize there was such a vast variety of choices in men's undergarmets. Briefs, boxer briefs, boxers, and a few kinds that had might as well said "for gay men" (paco briefs?) After much searching I did manage to find some regular ole boxer shorts, my undergarmet of choice. Slacks are kinda breezy without undies so at least I'll be comfortable tomorrow.

As always I had an very enventful weekend. Friday night was poker night, with a slight change. Shady Manor hosted its very own World Series of Poker, playing no-limit Texas Holdem all night. Well or so I thought. We started out with a group of 8 but the temptation of no limit betting managed to knock out at least one person every half hour. I managed to stay in till there was only three of us left, but Phlome managed to knock down my pocket Kings with Flush. Then if was down to just him and the Flash. I don't remember the exact hand that he took it down with but Phlome ended up with all the chips. There was much rejoicing.

Saturday I played golf with Phlome and Cutter. I think I played my worst game ever. I did manage one bogey, somehow, but the rest of my game was complete shit. I wasn't a big fan of the course either. The rough was so rough that it ate many many balls and the back nine had water on every hole.

Speaking of water, I was chipping onto one of the greens on the back nine and heard a large splash off to my right. At first, I thought that Phlome had hit his ball into the water, but then realized that would have been impossible from where he was standing. Phlome had not been happy with his last shot with his 9 iron and had decided to punish it by fliniging it across the fairway. Unfortunatley, it landed in one the plentiful water traps. THAT was funny.

I'm prepping for travel again today. Fly out early tomorrow to Chicago, then onto to Maryland on Wenesday. At least I get to come home for the weekend.

Readhead sent me a link to some really cool pics. Enjoy.

Apparently it's very very hard to get fired from Jack in the Box.

Someone googled the following phrase and got my page. This has to be the funniest thing I've ever heard.

leather pants party pics gay bears bear

BEARS? WTF?

So the Cable guy finally shows yesterday at 11:30! This is after the promise that they would be there right at 8am. Cable finally gets installed at around 3pm. I really don't understand how they ever get anyone installed with this kind of service. Oh well, I yelled at them enough, that I'm paying almost nothing for it AND the cable modem for the next 3 months. Anyway so I now have 100 channels that look like absolute crap (cause they are analog cable), Another 100 that look OK, and 6 HD channels that look simply amazing.

In other news, I particiapted in a Commando raid last night to help Phlome out with a practical joke. Pictures were taken, but I'll let Phlome post them since it was his deal.

UPDATE:
The pics are posted now, so go check out what you can do with some free time and 496 plastic Grandpa heads.

Not much to say today. I spent all day at home waiting on the cable guy, who didn't show up. They swore they would be here at 8 am tomorrow. We'll see about that. Right now I have no TV, the satellite receiver died last week, and since I've been meaning to switch to cable for a while, I figured this was the time.

I also found out I am still on this silly ass Maryland project, at least until they can find someone to take over. So that means I'm off to Chicago for a day or two next week and then back to Maryland the week after that for 3 days. I really don't mind the travel, but the Marlyand project involves a lot of sitting around in boring meetings, rather than actual hands-on work.

I used to say Wal-Mart was hell, now I think it's just an an insane asylum that happens to turn a profit. I went there yesterday to look at patio furniture, I would have gone somewhere else, but I 'm not really sure where you can go to get patio furniture other than Wally-World.

So first off, being at Wal-Mart, I was constantly assualted by the loud, incomprehensible annoncements that blared over the speakers at 30 second intervals. No really I counted.

I manage to locate some patio furniture, and then corral one of the employees and tell them I want to buy it.

His response "The register is over there."

I point out that it comes packaged in a large crate, and that it would be rather difficult to get it over to the register. He walks over to it and begins to examine the crate and rips a little barcode sticker off of it and hands it to me.

"Here, tell them you want this. They'll ring it up, then bring me the reciept and I'll load it." Wow they have process, I'm impressed.

So I go to pay for it and it rings up at HALF the price the is on the price tag outside. I'm thinking "Great the guy gave me the wrong Barcode," but then I notice right there ont he screen it says "Price Reduction 50% Discount" That was just too weird. I mean did eveyone else who bought this patio set just get screwed? 50% is like a clearence price.
I take it back out to the guy, who immediately questions the price. I show him right on the reciept where it says that there is a 50% discount. I really thought he was going to say "Fuck It" but remembered he was at work and mumbled something to the effect of "That can't be right."

He appears to give up on life at this point but then proceeds to help Phlome and I load the patio set. Well okay Sorta.

Right as we begin to load it, another Wal-Mart guy comes up The two guys begin to argue. I'm not sure about what. Apparently one guy didn't want the other guy to tell him what to do, but it seems like all he told him was "They want to see you up front." In any case, the original guy storms of in a huff and the new guy helps us load the furniture. Which was better anyway, this guy actually HAD a box blade to help take apart the crate.

To top off the craziness a second smaller patio table was in with the set that I bought. So now thanks to Wal-Mart quality control and lazy employees I have 2 patio tables.

Haven't blogged in a few days, but really not much to write about. I've been on a massive house, pool, and yard cleaning binge. The pool has gone from black, to brown, to green, to cloudy blue after the past 3 days.

Thursday was spent catching up on stuff after being gone for two weeks. Phlome and I played some par 3 golf, which I did terrible. Of course, thats what happens when you don't play or go to the range for two weeks.

Friday , I ended up seeing Polyphonic Spree at the Wildflower festival. See the title for my comment. I'm sure their very good, but just not my taste.

Saturday was more cleaning of the pool and house. I also had massive amounts of errands to run, but I kept being distracted by FarCry, possibly the best 3-D shooter since Half-Life. The graphics are unbelivable. That you can't save anywhere is a little annoying but there is a hack that fixes it. I'm guessing it will be ported to the X-Box soon.

So today, my goal is to FINISH cleaning the pool, and run all those errands.

So it was a very weird day today. I was put on a project at work for a week, that turned out to be an 8 week project that required me to relocate to Maryland. Needless to say, I am not moving to Maryland. The weird part was that when I told them I couldn't relocate to Maryland for the next 8 weeks, they offered to hire me directly. Kinda took me by surprise. I don't know why everyone assumes you always want to change jobs. I should probably get used to it though, I think knowledgeable people may be in short supply right now. Maybe they shouldn't have laid off so many over the last few years......

So here's the thing, who am I? In terms of the blog and real life I mean. Obviously, the blog "me" is is my own creation, shaped and formed by me, into the form I wish to present. That's not really true though. That would require that I thought about and planned out each entry in advance to "present" just the right kind of image. Like I'm doing PR for myself or something. In truth, most days I just write some shit without really thinking about it. (or proofing it for that matter Neko)

So maybe the blog me really is a somewhat authentic me. So some of you know me in RL, and some of you only know me by the blog, but a few of you knew me on the blog first and THEN in RL. Discuss...

Things from my goth past keep bubbling to the surface. First, Cruxshadows are releasing a new album this summer. No news songs to download yet. No American tour dates as yet either, excpet for thier standard yearly appearance at Dragoncon. Thier site is much new and improved so go check it out.

Anyone from Tulsa Remember the IKON? Apparently it's reopened at a new location. Downtown Tulsa, 2nd and North Elgin. The grand opening was this past saturday night. I was not 2 blocks away at an Irish pub and had no clue. I'm sure I would have seen more than a few people I knew from "back in the day." According to the rumor mill, it been designed to look exactly like the old club, bar cage and all. I'll definitely have to check it out the next time I'm in town. Here's a short blurb about it I found. Google rocks.

I am now T-minus 2 hours from flying out to Baltimore. I am SOOOO not gonna go ANYWHERE this weekend.

Speaking of Dragoncon, Jason Carter is going to be there. He played the Ranger, Marcus Cole, on Babylon 5. I saw him a few years back at the Dallas Comicon. Even if you aren't a B5 fan his stories about being a "not quite famous" actor are absolutely hilarious.

Whew! What a weekend, 7+ hours in the car yesterday. Got lost in Wichita trying to find my Dad's doctor, because there are no less than 3 highways with the number 35 in them and apparently the kansans don't know the difference between them. Dad is doing well though so it was worth the drive.

More relaxing day today hd lunch with a old friend and hung out at my Dad's. Heading downtown tonight to meet some people and have a few drinks.

REALLY not looking forward to the drive home tomorrow. 4 more hours in the car BLEAH!