I'm swamped today, 4 meetings, 2 conference calls and I forgot my cell phone at home, which makes it hard to do some of the conference call. Heh. How much longer till I can have a beer?
So apparently when I said "I think I invited absolutley everyone I knew but if you'd like to come email me." everyone took that to mean "post a comment if I didn't invite you" or if your Chicken, post an aserbic comment and swear. Too funny.
So I did a little Site rearrangment today. You can see the results there on the right. I'd do more but Stylesheets, HTML, and Javascript come under the heading of "work" not "fun" for me. Ninsi gave a good run-down of this week today, but I'll repeat it again here in case you don't read her site. (Though you SHOULD).
Wednesday is Spider-Man, Thursday is my Birthday and Dinner at the Bavarian, and Friday is My Birthday Party. I think I invited absolutley everyone I knew but if you'd like to come email me.
The Camportal page is in progress, some of you have been kind enough to send me a picture, if you don't want me to use some random picture of you email me one or a link to one.
I didn't really do much this weekend, which was nice for a change. I think I needed to do nothing though, since this I have plans for every night this week starting Wedsnesday.
Friday, I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 with Monketo and Bunny. Didn't really tell me anything new and the whole "grieving soldiers mom" part was way way too long. I think it's pretty funny that it was number one for the weekend. What was WAY funnier than anything in the movie was Bunny almost throwing down on some old guy for referring to it as "The commie pinko faggot" movie. I belive her comment was "Hey I'm going to see that Commie pinko faggot movie!" which caused said old guy to shuffle past us and give us the "crazy person" look.
I also purchased City of Heroes Friday. My first foray into MMOGs since Everquest. So far I like it quite a bit. Very little time commitment and quick advancement. I'm Lazzarr on the Freedom server if you happen to play.
Saturday I spent most of the Day playing City of Heroes, and then played Poker most of the night. Started out badly, losing alomst $20 in the first hour, then lost another $20 over the coure of the next 3 hours. I sat out for a bit then bought back in for $10 and managed to turn that into $46, so I came out only $4 down.
Sunday I really did nothing. I played some more City of Heroes, and hooked back up with a lot of the folks from my old Everquest Guild. Speaking of which, If Jordy is reading this, post a comment and I'll send you some links of pictures of the dogs.
I'm back home now and it looks like I don't have to go back for a while. Whew! Here's a good corporate story for ya. I was in a meeting this past week with some corporate execs from my company and networking sub-contractor that we want to team up with us on a proposal. The contractor was going back and forth on how much of the job they wanted with the execs. Basically, they only want to team up with us if they get a Lion's share of the work. Understandable I guess. All of a sudden the VP chimes in and says " Sounds like you guys need to decide whether you want to shit or go blind." I would've bust out laughing but I was so stunned that he said it. The contractor thought it was funny. What the heck does that phrase mean anyway? In other news Cheney Drops the F-Bomb.
Okay so now I'll tell you the story about Monday Night, since it's Wednesday an all. First off, I find out Friday that I have to be in Baltimore by Monday morning. As I'm in OK for the weekend, that isn't going to happen, so I make my travel arrangements to arrive here late Monday night. I log into the travel system on Monday to check my flight time and lo and behold it has no record of my reservations. So I go in in and make them again except there is only one hotel that had any room available. It has a very odd name but anywhere is better than nowhere right? So I get directions once I arrive and drive to it, except the directions seem to take me to the middle of a residential area, so I call them. It went something like this:
Me: "I can't seem to find your Hotel."
Them: "Oh! We aren't a hotel we'r a manor house."
ME: "Uhm...a What?"
Them:" It a big white house with a wall around it."
Me: "Oh! Okay I see it."
So I pull into this place, which is exactly what she said, a Manor House, like in Old England or some shit. I have to ring the bell a few time sbut someone comes and lets me in. The place is very odd, it's basically someone's house that they have turned into some kind of odd little hotel. She checks me in and shows me to my "room." My room, I kid you not, is bigger than all the apartments I've ever been in. It has a kitchen, a living room, and TWO bedrooms. Right outside my room is the "game room" which has a pool table and a Big Screen TV. I'll guess I'll suffer through it. Let's hear it for last minute reservations.
I think lollapalooza is now officially dead.
So uhm yeah the blog...Well I was home in TX for almost 20 hours before I flew off to Baltimore again. Ah well, At least this way I might be able to avoid coming here next week ON MY BIRTHDAY.
I was home in Oklahoma this past weekend, see the fam and friends.
Friday, I hung out with my Dad. We were going to go fishing but between going to get fishing equipment, prepping the boat, and naps :) We never got around to it and decided to go on Sunday.
Saturday, the Bro and I celebrated my Mom's Birthday and my own. I got new clothes, aren't mom's great. We watched Along came Polly, which was pretty good little comedy. Very Ben Stillerish. That evening we did what I think eveyone else seemed to have done this weekend, go see Dodgeball, which is very very Ben Stiller and way funnier than I thought it would be.
Sunday, we finally got around to going fishing with my Dad at Oolagah Lake. I hadn't been fishing on this lake since I was very young. It was very odd going back to a place I hadn't been in over 20 years and seeing that it had not changed that much. Got rained on, caught a few fish, then the Sun came out and gave me a nice sunburn, not too bad. Now I have GREAT tan on my lower arms and about 1/4 of my legs but nowhere else.
Ended up staying pretty late in Tulsa and didn't get home to DFW till almost Midnight. Bleah hate that drive.....though I did get to talk with friends on the cell phone during the drive, which made it go by quicker.
I had to come to Baltimore on such short notice, that I had a hard time finding a Hotel. The one I finally got into is very interesting. That's for tomorrow though as this is already a long entry.
Some of you have asked how the Camportal works so here goes. The normal way to do a camportal is for you to host a picture of yourself on your own site, I would then link to this picute in my camportal making the picture a hotlink to your blog. This way anytime you updated your picture it would be updated in the camportal and anyone who clicked on your picture would be taken to your blog. For example, if someone wanted to put me in a camportal they could link to http://www.channel-zero.net/images/webcam.jpg
You don’t have to use a webcam, that just makes it more convenient.
Okay now I know some of you can’t host pictures, so if you like I will host them for you. Just email whatever picture you would like to use and I ‘ll put it up or even just point me to one you’d like me to use if you've got in posted somewhere.
Here's a collection of pictures I've been meaing to post but haven't.
When I first opened the pool this year I meant to post a before and after picture cleaning so you could see what it looked looked, but I just never got around to it. BUT lucky for me, the pump broke and we got two weeks of rain here so I was able to get some pcitures afterall. Here is the pool before massive amounts of chemicals and 4 hours of cleaning, and here it is now.
Phlome and I have gone golfing at Stevens park twice now, and we were both struck by some of the odd yet funny signs that are there. First the 5th hole (I think) bears this historical marker. Yep, we're so proud of that French Colony, we built on Golf course on it. The second sign warns you not to vandalize the pro-shop windows.
Well only one person spoke up about the Camportal so I guess I'll make one anyway and just use any old picture I might have of my various blogfriends. The tough ones will be QT KT, who I've never had the pleasure of meeting, and Hagrok, who I have one very bad picture of from years ago.
Well I'm off to Oklahoma today, to see the family and friends. May not be any more updates till Monday.
I was just cruising the blogs there in the sidebar, seeing if anyone had written anything new and realized that I myself had yet to blog today.
I watched Starship Troopers 2 last night. I'd lke to say it wasn't bad but Lord it sure wasn't good. I guess the best thing I could say is that I've seen worse "Sci-Fi Original Movies."
I think I might make a Camportal. It's basically like the sidebar links except it uses pictures. A lot of bloggers maintain a picture of themselves on thier sites that they update regularly and you simply link to that. Here's some examples: twsited monkey and honeybee manor.
I've been meaning to link Honey-Bee Manor for a while, she writes about trying to break into the stand-up comedy scene.
So anyway, anyone interested in doing a camportal? If you can't host a picture on your own site I can host it here.
I thought Texas was supposed to be an arid near-desert kinda place. I'm about to be washed away here. The pool is now FIXED! Cost less than $200 too so that makes it the cheapest pool repair yet. Of course, all this rain keeps making it turn green and grow algae so I'm having to dump loads of shock into it.
For all you google hackers and whackers out there, check out this book. I wonder if it shows any new ways to get your site higher in the search engine listings?
Friday Phlome, Ninisi, Bunny, Demi, Monketo, Donut, and myself went to bask in the Glory that was Riddick. Not much basking commenced. Maybe I should have covered myself in water, I hear it protects your from scalding hot temperatures, like those that exist on Mercury and prison planets in Bad sci-fi movies. Much to my annoyance, it was not this Years Reign of Fire, it was this decades attempt to re-invent Conan the Barbarian. I wonder if that was on purpose? They did a pretty bad job of it, but it does contain all the basic Conan plot elements. I think they must have, since this was the conversation that followed the movie?
Me: "Was that Conan in Space?"
Donut: "Yep Conan."
A little later......
Phlome: " Hey was that movie Conan or what?"
Saturday played golf and went out to both Lower Greenville and Deep Ellum. Sunday I saw the Rangers get pumulled by St Louis.
There may or may not be a picture page from Saturday night, I have to review them first.
Yes I know you all are on the edge of your seats wondering if I passed my exam. I passed!!! Whew, I was going to shoot myself if I had to review anything else about ip networking. Again I scored the lowest on the "Technology" section, which I don't really understand. Here's the topics it covers all of which I studied.
Describe network communications using layered models
Describe the Spanning Tree process
Compare and contrast key characteristics of LAN environments
Evaluate the characteristics of routing protocols
Evaluate TCP/IP communication process and its associated protocols
Describe the components of network devices
Evaluate rules for packet control
Evaluate key characteristics of WANs
Hell I studied Spanning Tree a ton, and I didn't even get one question on it. BTW for you non-network people Spanning Tree is used to prevent traffic from looping around infintiely in a network. These tests are so weird anyway, I had at leat 3 questions that didn't have anything to do with what the exam was about and got no questions about ISDN, which is one of the major objectives.
Well Anyway, fuck em, I passed, so now it's on to the next exam, 4 more for Networking Profesional, 6 more for Design Professional.
Furious Jessy is back and with a new look. Go check her out.
The rain seems to have abated for now. I'm afraid to even look at the forecast for this weekend, as I have outdoor activites planned for both Saturday and Sunday. The part for the pool pump did come in today, but the plumbing required to get the pump connected back to the system is beyond my ability to stick PVC together, so the full repair will have to wait till Tuesday. It's so full of rainwater right now it looks like there's a lake in the backyard.
Okay back to reviewing for my exam......
Rain, yes rain, that's what we have here in North Texas. It's been pouring down all this week and most of last week. It looks like it may continue for quite a while too. I don't have much interesting to say today. I'm studying for my CCNA exam again. The netwroking certification exam that I took back in April and missed a passing score by 1%. I'm planning on taking it again on Friday so here's hoping I've studied enough.
People have decided to use my Forums again. Check out the movie discussion, if you are so inclinded.
I made a page of the pictures I took at A-Kon. Thse are the only decent ones. They're mostly of Ninsi and Phlome. I somehow ended up with a lot of sideways pictures of people's legs. I'm guessing I was walking around with the camera button held down.
Phlome has decided to go on sabbatical. I think that's just a fancy way of saying "I don't want to blog right now." I'm not sure why he took his page down and put this crap up though.
Well Ninsi covered the weekend pretty well, but I�ll add my own thoughts. Friday we celebrated Bunny�s birthday with Bunny, Phlome, Ninsi, Demi, Monketo, and Donut. I have to agree Mi Cocina�s just ain�t all that good food-wise. The margaritas were great but their lack of draft beer was a disappointment. Harry Potter was good but could have been much better. I think if someone who had never read he book went to see it they would be totally lost. They spent WAY too much time on the Lupin/Harry relationship and left most of the other characters out of the movie. Heck Ron wasn�t even in it all that much.
Saturday, I did get up early enough to go to Dog Day Afternoon or �Dog Morning� as Ninsi would call it. It�s really just a little �dog fair� to help Operation Kindness raise money. Mira and I bought some raffle tickets but we didn�t win anything. The only funny thing that happened here was the one cute girl who tried to sell me �pet cremation� services. Uhmm no thanks�.
That afternoon/evening Phlome, Ninisi, and I went to A-Kon. Phlome managed to talk his way first into some free �temporary� badges for us and then got us some actual �Industry� badges. We were told that these were better than normal badges and that we could �abuse� them to get in the front of lines and things like that. I did use it to skip to the head of a very short line for a concert by some Japanese speed metal band dressed as the power rangers, but I was un-impressed so didn�t stay long. It was an unorganized Con in my opinion. For some reason, no one was allowed to post flyers for room parties, which made it very hard for us to find one Saturday night. We did make one friend who had a friend who knew where a party was. Apparently it was for the aforementioned Japanese speed metal band, but I didn�t recognize them without their power suits. The party got broken up by the cops, which was really funny. �Alright all you people dressed as weird cats and superheroes, you�ve got to go party�s over.� (BTW Neko there were MANY MANY people dressed as Neko�s.)
There were some great quotes from that evening but I can only remember a few.
Ninisi: " These boots weren't made for walkin."
Zero: "Hey check out that girl."
Phlome: "Which one?"
Zero: "The one in the Cat Ears."
Sunday was golfing, I improved my score a little but still need more practice. The problem there is that playing Golf=FUN, practicing Golf=not so much fun. Check out my post-golfing ugly mug here.
So are actual mistresses, or so I imagine. I FINALLY updated the webcam pic The last one had been up since Ninsi's Bday. I should update it more. In any case that's what I look like after playing golf. Cute eh? Lot's to tell from this weekend, including the trip to A-Kon, but I'll save that for tomorrow.
Okay So I've been trying to come up with an entry for today and then I realized I hadn't done the stats for last month, so here goes...
For the month of May I had 2193 Unique Visitors. Still doesn't top the 2419 in February, but of course that's when the Mardi Gras Pics went up.
Most searched on phrase used to find my site: channel zero
Yeah finally it's not boobs. (Boobs was number 3.)
Here's how this month's battle of the referrers shook out.
Bunny
Ninsi
Phlome
Hagrok
Jessy
Chicken
Neko
Katie
I also had 18 hits from this site. Which in entirely in Japanese. (I think?) 11 hits from a Porn site and 4 from Scotland.com Isn't the internet great?
Interesting Phrases that resulted in my page:
captain caveman Baltimore md
muck stink and poison
how many supernovas have occurred in 2004
conjunction junction porn
I don't even want to know about that last one.
This is how it goes when you own a pool. Last weekend, it was great, people came over, swam, hung out. It was great! Last night there was a huge storm which turned the pool a nice shade of emerald green. This will require the three day cleaning cycle of shock-vacuum-brush-vacuum, to get it looking nice again. I walked out this morning and skimmed all the branches and leaves out of it. When I turned the pump on in preparation to shock it, two fine streams of water mist shot out and hit me in the leg. Two small micro-fractures had developed in the pump housing. So now the pool has to sit and fester while I get the pump fixed.
In happier news, someone named an airline after me. It's even an Irish airline.
Had a fun-filled action packed memorial day weekend. Friday was our regular poker night at Shady Manor. Phlome ended up with all the money AGAIN! This depsite the fact that Cutter seemed to be able to pull Full Houses OUT OF HIS ASS. I, myself, did pretty well in the beginning and then lost it all to one of Cutter's plentiful Boats. Sat out for a bit then bought back in just for some fun and lost it all again.
Saturday was the Official kick off the summer cookout to celebrate the pool opening. ( I meant to link a picture of the pool here but I forgot to upload it.) There was much swimming, grilling, beer drinking, and FUBAR, which again I learned that you should START OUT playing a drinking game, not finish up playing one. I'm feeling much better now thank you very much.
Sunday was spent mostly recovering and resting, because that night Demigoblin,Phlome, Ninsi, Lizard and I got all decked out in our "party" outfits and headed out to the Church. The pre-emminent goth club of Dallas.
The actual Memorial Day holiday was spent relaxing in the pool, which is just what I needed after this weekend.
