Best day of my life!

Ok im going to take a break from the gloom and doom of my usual posts (j/k) and spend a little time (warning long post imminent!) commemorating a pretty freaking awesome day. 6 years ago today Lisa Noel Branson become my wife, I became complete, and my life got dramatically better than I ever imagined it could be. The path that lead to that day was a long and rocky one that started when I was 13. I met lisa just a few weeks after I lost a couple of friends who were very very close to me and incidentally I should have died with them but the Lord in his wisdom saw fit for me to remain. SO when I met Lisa it was more of a "I noticed that she was there" but was not really in a mood to make new friends so that was our first encounter. A few months later she was my girlfriend and the funny thing about this is that later in life, like when we were married, we were going through some of her old notebooks and she actually admits to manipulating me (her words not mine) into becoming her boyfriend which was toooo funny! SO a few months later she broke up with me (a trend was starting) But what can I say I was hooked. Over the next couple of years we dated off and on (the off always initiated by my sweet sweet wife!) until my senior year her junior year when we dated exclusively for about a year. That was a tough year for me b/c thats when I found out I was color blind and not going to be a pilot like I had always dreamed. Lisa was really great and really helped me get through that. However things kinda went south on us and Lisa broke up with me yet again. I went off to college and she ended up taking my #2 Arch nemesis (#1 is gravity in case you were wondering) to her prom. At that point I was like WHATEVER home girl -- if thats the junk you want then I dont want to have anything to do wit ya. SO for a time there was another girl I was interested in but WOW did she really turn on me. Yes if you are noticing a theme its not just co-incidental. So for pretty much my entire freshman year at college lisa and I didnt talk hardly at all. We were barely even friends in my opinion and didnt really have anything to do with each other. SO yeah things were not so good between us. Well after my freshman year (summer 97) I was really torn about what to do with my life. I had no direction and I didnt like where I was and didnt know where I wanted to go. Well over the summer Lisa and I started hanging out again and she actually made the suggestion that we start dating again. I actually had the hootzpa to say no. I was like ok I have been burned like a billion times by you and now a month before you go off to covenant and I am who knows where you want to get together. It just seemed doomed to me so we stayed friends. Well I ended up flipping a coin and going to covenant in the fall. Really thats what happened. You would think after I described the summer were we had gotten close and the intrest lisa had in me that something might have started up again with us since we were at the same school but SUPRISE she was not interested anymore (woo hoo I dodged a bullet) My time at covenant was really really brief (2.5 months brief) and I was gone. In that time I decided I needed to find my own path and go someplace that had something to offer me school wise so I applied and was accepted at Embry Riddle Aero Univ In florida and I would start jan of 98. SO heres where things start to get more interesting. Lisa's family had decided to move to Ohio to take care of Lisa's Grandfather and they were moving in the beggining of january. My family was staying in Lynchburg. Lisa was going to college in GA. I was going to school in Florida. We basically decided that we wanted to go out one last time before we said good by to each other for what could have very well been forever. since we had no reason to be in the same geographic region as the other ever again. We went out for my birthday to a nice restaurant and saw the movie Titanic (in a first run theater mind you) And afterward we talked a bit and then we said good by. I left the next day for Florida to begin what I thought would be a new life. Well it was new but their was this little thing hanging on in the back of my mind and that was my lisa. I just couldnt get her out of my head so I decided to start pursuing her again. I knew that I loved her and that I wanted to be with only her for the rest of my life and I was determined to give it my best shot. Well She was not so receptive and was downright opposed to it for the most part but over the summer we got back together and then right before she went back to school we got engaged!!!!!!! Then on december 28th 1999 we were married. And like I said that day changed my life for the better in more ways than I ever could have imagined. SO here we are 6 years later and we are still uber happy. Like I said before the path leading up to that day was a very long and difficult one but it was totally worth it. And even though the last 6 years have had their ups and downs I really only remember the ups and I really truly feel that each year has been better than the last. Its been wonderfull to see both of us grow in maturity and love for one another and I am super duper jazzed about the next 10,25,50, 75+ years we have together. Yes I am optimistic about how long I am going to be alive. I have good reason to want to be alive!

SO happy Anniversary Baby. I love you so much and I cant wait to see what the rest of our lives have in store for us!

cheers!

WOOOOOO HOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Real quick post today. Why could I be so excited??? Perhaps its becuase at 8:45am this morning I got my xbox 360!!!!!!!!!! The irony of it is that I did not get it from my pre-order I got it from k-mart. They got 4 in the store last night and I got #4!!!!!!!

Cheers!

Todays entry brought to you in part by the number...

Yup thats right 25. I just called Gamestop and thats where I stand on the xbox 360 pre-order list. 25 its a long ways down and the sales guy said "sorry but I really doubt we will get to you before christmas." Which kinda sucks but hey those are the breaks right. SO ebay seems totally off and me getting one probably still wont happen for quite some time. As of now my store has gotten 12 total units since the 22. 10 for launch and a second shipment of a whopping 2. With the big 300,000 shipment this weekend I think my store might see 10 again but even if they got 20 which is a huge stretch it still wouldnt matter. After this shipment I think its back to 2-4 every other week or so. SO yeah it bites. I think I will still keep looking around at other places to get one since it could be mid to end of january before I would ever see my pre-order filled. Seeing as it has taken almost a month to knock the list down a whopping 12 spaces.

weekend wrap up

Well its monday morning so I thought I would give a wee update on whats been going on as of late.
1st up im still doing the bachelor thing as my wife is not yet back from chattanooga and it could be tuesday or wednesday of this week before she makes it back. SO just a side note if you could pray that she is able to come back sooner rather than later I would appreciate it. I miss my baby : (

2nd my weekend has been crazy busy. I swear I had a honey do list like you wouldnt believe and I am still not done with it. It included last minute x-mas shopping, grocery shopping, cleaning, watering plants, and a score of other things that were very time consuming. All in all I have been working pretty hard this weekend and still feel like I have TONS to do.

3 - I am even more inthe x-mas spirit now in that I spent 3 hours wrapping presents on saturday night (another item on the long list) and yes again I did it all without the aid of one single track of x-mas music. BWUAHAHAHAHA!!! Yes it was another technotrancified night of slammin tracks to get my wrap on.

4 - Now on to me in general. Im in a surprisingly good mood. Its kinda funny how when you are the type of person who does not normally feel pulled to one side or the other on the mood scale to feel particularly drawn to one side. But I am. In a good mood that is. I have been so for a number of days so if you wanna see what im like in a good mood heres your chance! On a related note its very interesting to me to see how much weather affects your body and especially your mental state and its delicate (im)balance. It is truly amazing how God has engineered us to adapt and overcome our environment without us even noticing. However if for whatever reason you have say an imperfection that needs to be supplemented its more easy to see these things. Ok I know im not making sense so here goes. I take a hormone supplement for my thyroid as it is "Hypo" which means underactive. Well in general it works pretty well but unlike the human body it doesnt change and react the way it should since it is a fixed amount. Case in point my mind was a huge washboard of infinity on friday. I swear I could not focus at all on like a single thought. Its kinda frustrating but like I said it just shows me more and more how amazing a design we as humans are and how Amazing God is for what he has done. What really got me thinking about this was a trip to wal mart. OMG I swear I had like 3 things I needed to find at walmart and I walked into the store and I was like. ummm. Why I am here again??? SO I just started wandering around the store in hopes that I would see something that would jog the mind back into sync. Well I noticed a department and was like right I need to go there for x y and z. SO I walked the 20 feet to get there and then was like. CRAP! why did I need to come here again. This happened for each of the three items of which I was searching for and was at times very very frustrating. But like I said im in a good mood! SO go figure

5 - wee game update - Ok I have totally given up on getting a 360 anytime before xmas and it wouldnt really matter at this point if I got one say next week b/c its not like I have any games for it and I hear that block buster isnt renting them yet. SO no biggy in my mind.

xbox - lisa and I started to play fatal frame 2 again and we are digging on it Also DOA rules. I love that game which is weird b/c I have never ever liked fighters. But I really look forward to my 10-15 min fix each day

ps2 - need to get back to god of war and finish that one up.

psone - playing FFIX and loving it. I had gotten a good start on it but then put it down for a number of months during the mistake that was ".hack" but now I am back playing it and really digging on it. More on that later.

Well thats about it for my weekend. Sunday was sad in that it was the last sunday for our pastor to be our full time pastor. He is going to be a missionary in the Ukraine and though I am so jazzed and excited for him he will be greatly missed. It also kinda sucks b/c im on the pulpit committee and we are charged with finding someone as good as Dan. I think the congregation is going to have some pretty lofty expectations.

Well thats it for now.

cheers!

Im getting into the Christmas Spirit!

Well the other day lisa dropped the bomb on me that she wanted to put up our tree this year which we had before agreed to bypass. I know I know were awefull people. WHATEVER! SO in any event she decided she would really like it up and felt that it would be nice. SO I was like oke doke. WELLLLL I decided I would surprise her yesterday and while she was gone I put the tree up myself so it would be done when she got home. IT was a lot of work but it was worth it and it also did manage to help get me in the christmas mood. However my tree trimming was and is probably different from a lot of other peoples in that their was NO christmas music playing at all. None nadda zilch zero. Thats right instead I kicked it up a notch and got my tree rocking to some choice tunes like:

first up was a cd of stuff Jason did a loooong time ago (like 2-3 years) and I have not listened to it in a long time. Or on a system that could thump some decent bass I might add. It was sweet and I still have to say that Jason your version of radio babylon is my absolute favorite. This means a lot since radio babylon is one of my favorite MBM songs and your mix is like I said my fav. Their was also a track on their that was not done by jason but a friend of his and its based around transformers. Now I grew up hooked on those things and I had forgotten a little line from the begining of the show that goes something like this "In the year 2005 the treacherous decepticons have conquered the autobot home world of cybertron." Dang I feel old b/c all the stuff happening in the show was supposed to be happening this year!!! SO watch out people b/c this is the month the Autobots are going to land!

Next up was a cd of JPOP that I have again not listened to in forever. Lots of great songs and was really what got me tuned into Jpop and the likes of Ayumi Hamasaki (ayu) and Boa. Since then I have acquired many Ayu cds and am a big fan.

After that was a really good cd I made of trance tracks that I really like. And thats how I finished out the evening.

SO a tree was assembled and trimmed and not a lick of christmas music was played. I consider that to be a good evening.

On another note the japan trip is now cancelled which means that the prospects for a wild and rowdy dead or alive tournament are now more up in the air as lisa will now be home when I was thinking of doing it. However I will still see what I can do to at least have some people over to kick it.

thats it for now. Oh I ate twice yesterday!!!!! I think im over this thing!!!!!!

Cheers!

Dang that hurt!

Ok so wow as some of you already no I got hit with the insanely cruel stomach virus that has been going around these parts last week. What was really weird was I felt great on monday and had a really good run but nothing could prepare me for how I would feel tuesday when I woke up. I wont go into all the wonderfull details but I felt as if I was being constantly punched in the stomach for about 3 days. Tuesday I didnt eat anything at all and I drank about half a glass of 7-up. Wed I was feeling a little bit better and ate a hot dog and some other stuff. Thursday again felt like crap. Ate next to nothing if anything and tried to drink a lot of fluids b/c I was getting dehydrated. Friday was feeling better didnt eat anything till the evening which was a mistake. I was feeling good and steak and shake really appealed to me. Well it tasted good but It was too soon. Saturday I literally ate 3 wendys chicken nuggets. I couldnt finish a $.99 5 piece on my own! Sunday I ate my other 2 nuggets and another hot dog. sO now we are at monday and im feeling better but I am still really really weak from lack of food so I really need to try and eat something today. SO thanks to everyone who prayed for me to feel better.

Well I still have no xbox 360 so that is something that I dont have to worry about and other than that on the gaming front my recent sickness provided me with gobs and gobs of time to start and almost finish Jade Empire which so far has been pretty cool. will write more later but I have some stuff I need to do for now.

Cheers!

quick updatage (if that is even a word and if it aint then tough)

Ok so like heres the big news of the weekend --



TA DA!!! we got a new car / truck / whatever! Its pretty cool and so far has been a lot of fun to drive. You might be asking yourself what is it??? well let me tell you what it is. A 2005 Hyundai Tucson LX in blue with a light grey / beigy leather interior. It has a moonroof and a v6 engine and most importantly BUTT WARMERS!!!! yeah its pretty posh. It also has an in dash 6 disc cd changer that is supposed to be able to do mp3's but I have not gotten that to work yet. Oh and it it also supposed to have a subwoofer to kick out the freaky bass which I have also not tried yet due mostly to the fact that I have not gotten a chance to drive it alone yet and will not be able to really kick the funky tunage until then. SO thats pretty cool ya. I was able to trade the VW in on it and got a whopping $1000 dollar trade on that. I feal so violated by that car it isnt even funny. However I feel that I have at least "pulled one over" or "gottten even" with the car dealer as there are a TON of things wrong with that car and for them to be able to sell it for what I know they are going to they are going to have to fix a lot of stuff to make the car sellable. SO They may have thought they screwed me but I got them just as good!!!! (insert evil laughter) SO anyway I am happy to be rid of the piece o crap Vdub that I had and its nice to have a brand spanking new car in the garage that is at the moment problemless. SO thats that

Other than that had a pretty good T-giving hanging out with my folks and just chilling out. Lisa and I did do something that we have here to for not done. That being we went shopping friday morning. Ya see we looked through all the pamphlets and flyers and stuff from thursday and discovered that their were quite a lot of things that we were looking for at staples that were either free or dramatically reduced in price. SO we decided to get up early and get their when they opened their doors at -- sigh-- 6am. OITS that was early and freaking cold but it was worth it and we got all the stuff we were shooting for. The funny thing is that we got like I dont know 7 diff items and only two of them were meant as gifts for other people. The others were things we had needed but just put off getting like a paper shredder which we got and will be free after its rebate so it was a worthy trip. I think were getting something like 100 bucks back in rebates so we did save quite a bit or we will I should say. After that we met up with Sue and went to the mall b/c lisa saw a flyer for parisian with some boots she wanted and I gotta say they are pretty hot boots. I like lisa in heels and shes wearing them more and more now and I have to say I think Jeans look really good with heels. I guess im getting older I dont know. SO whatever we then went and grabbed some lunch. went home and then went to go get the car which took 3 hours longer than it should have. I swear it was like hello we are trying to give you money perhaps you could do something slightly faster than you are. Oh well we have it and its done now. Then on Sat. we had Sue and Scott Damerow over to watch Napolean Dynamite which my parents had not seen and I hate to admit it but that movie gets funnier the more times you watch it. That was my second time and I found myself in giddy anticipation over such scenes like napolean $%@^$ slaps kip, or kip runs over the tupperware. Many many classicly good scenes and then other I had totally forgotten about like when the old guy shoots the cow which is PRICELESS. SO it was a good time. Then on Sunday I got to hear my Dad preach which is a very very rare treat for me so that was nice as well. Alas though its monday and Im back to the grind and life is back to normal. At least for the next three weeks until the 16th of december when lisa - sue - and sara (aka max) go to the land of the rising FUN! to get their tourist thing on for a week. At which time their will be a lot of pizza and even more gaming. SO stop by! Maybe I will finaly get to have a real 4 person death match in metal arms!!!!! Or a DOA tournament. Could be cool. Thats all for now

Cheers!

A new dillema

Ok I know I said that I didnt think I would update again till after thanksgiving but hey X-mas comes early this year what can I say! Ok so if you have been following my site you know a couple of things.

1.) I am getting an X360
2.) Their is a high probability I will have it before x-mas

This has now presented me with a new dillema. Do I keep it or do I sell it on e-bay and then buy one perhaps in march when the market is more normalized??? Heres my quandry if you will. Right now I have the big bundle on reserve and that costs 400+ tax = 426 which will be my cost. Right now your going uh huh get to the point ok spunk monkey keep ya knick knacks on. If you go to ebay and check the current prices of x360's the average price they are going for today is $1050.00+ 40 for shipping. Thats close to a $600 dollar profit for not doing anything at all and would more than cover the cost of a new 360 + an extra controller and a few games from my new pal darren (thanks buddy!) Now my mind is moving on to even more enterprising ideas. right now the hype on e-bay is initial launch hype which I would expect to go down. But my friends we live in a land of stupid adults. Adults who are at the mercy of their children and who feel they have one shot each year to appease the little devils just a little bit and that day is x-mas. SO my point is if a x360 will sell for 1050-1200 today what will it sell for the week before x-mas when they are no where to be found???? Most major game stores are already saying if you dont have a pre-order dont even ask until feb. In fact gamestop is now taking pre-orders again for x360 with a ship date of feb 28th!!! The quantities are that limited. I cant even imagine how much they will be going for the week before x-mas but I have to think it will be in the range of $1500-2000 and that people will be fighting for them like moms were fighting for cabbage patch dolls back in the 80's. SO like I said my dillema. Should I get it and hold out on e-bay to see what the prices are like and then sell it if I can clear $600-1000+ or do I embrace the next gen technology and bask in the fact that I have something cool before so many other peopl do. Its a tough call for sure but I gotta tell you I think I might reserve a ps3 right now just thinking about whats happening now.

Cheers!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well I doubt that I will get a chance to post up again before wed. SO I thought I would throw a little plug in for thanksgiving and wish everyone well. Its tuesday and I have been very very busy at work which I have to say my perception of time is very skewed b/c I felt like it had only been like this for few months and I just spent some time looking back over old blog entries and this really has been a crapy year for me work wise in terms of volume and stress so hooray for blogs as they help to keep me well seated in the realms of time and space! SO anyway I am very excited about this week as my parents are coming in for a visit which will be nice to have them here. And their is a possiblity that they might be coming to stay with us for a few months which would also be pretty kewl as well. Who knows maybe I can even get my dad into video games! Trying to think about anything else that is happening. Oh I have officially had it with my car. Yes last friday getting up for work I started driving and didnt get out of my sub before I realized I had a flat. GARRRRRR so I changed that and was late for work. double GARRRRR. Now I realize that flat tires happen. Perhaps thats my new t-shirt idea "flats happen" ne way thats now copyrighted so dont even think about taking the idea ^_^ neway I realize these things happen however it was not a simple nail or something like that. No my car had worn off the ENTIRE INSIDE EDGE of the tire down to the steel threads which kept sticking me in my fingers and hurting quite badly. SO I have never seen this before and if you look back to May you can see that I posted about buying new tires and they have less than 15000 miles on them! GARRRRR. SO yes I have officially had it with this car. IT is Wic by definition. Well I have tons to do but again happy t-day and everyone try to get some much needed rest and relaxation over the next few days.

Cheers!

Xbox 360????Where are you?????

Ok so I have some news regarding the whole xbox 360 thing for anyone who cares. Sorry hannah but hey if your reading this you never e-mailed me so there. neway SO back a few weeks when Jason and Momo were here Jason dropped the bomb on me that he was going to cancel his 360 pre-order for what will remain undisclosed reasons. SO of course my first reaction was AH CRAP! there goes my chance to kick around on one for a week. But then my sweet lovely wife said well maybe you can get it. This came as what has to be stated as a total shock and so I said ok we can think about it. Well after a few weeks we talked about it last night and Lisa said it could be my X-mas / B-day present from her! SO WOOT im getting a 360! SO I was all excited and jazzed about that and then I got a phone call last night from Game Stop (which is where my pre-order is) which basically said. YO we aint getting nearly the # of 360's we thought we was gittin so dont expect to see one this x-mas and you might be waiting till the beggining of next year 'click' (ya see I added the click b/c it was a recording). SO I was like DOH! so I called my game stop today and asked for a more realistic status and heres what I got. I am #32 on the list of pre-orders. They originally thought they were going to be getting roughly 25 units a week up until x-mas. SO before they thought I was a 2nd week candidate. However they have been informed its going to be more like 10 units for my store at launch (DUDE!) and they have not been given any promises in terms of shipments after that. SO he said yeah I think we should be able to get yours in by x-mas but Its still hard to say. I basically got the feeling that this guy knew his store was getting 10 units and that anything outside of that, that shows up each week will be a super duper suprise. SO as it stands right now I will be getting one however who knows when that will be. Also some other circumstances are possibly popping up that might make the wifesky say uh no to the whole thing. SO I guess in the end I really didnt have anythign new to say but yet I said a lot. But I take that back. SO neway thats my "big" news. SO this brings up another question what to do with the ol xbox??? I still have a lot of games that I like to play on it and assuming that half will work on the 360 is that enough to keep the old one around? Also say all my games work thats cool but all my level saves and what not are still on my xbox and I dont think the memory cards are cross platform compatible. SO that brings up another problem in that like for example Kung Fu Chaos I worked my butt off to unlock everything in that game. Do I keep it and do that all over again or just say whatever and trade in all my xbox games and xbox. SO let me know what you guys think.

Cheers!

New Phone!!!!

Yes I have finaly entered into a more modern Era of Cell Phone. No it does not have a camera or an MP3 player or a video camera but it does have a color screen and it can do MP3 ringtones and that aint bad. This phone also knows about a little thing called java so I can load some cool apps on it as well. SO how did this come about??? Well my old phone an i60c (which sucked) starting having an issue about 6 months ago that I finally got tired of living with and it got tired of living with me so it just stopped working. SO this morning I went and picked up my new phone!!!! I am still running the stock settings but over the next day or so I think I should have it pretty customized to my liking which will be nice. SO the two new feature that I love about this phone are these.

1.) it has a display on the front that tells the time but more importantly does caller ID. My old phone did not have that and it sucked to have to answer the phone and find out you didnt want the call.

2.) I can add a custom ringtone which might seem trite but hey if you have ever had a generic nextel phone (like an i60c) then you know that LOTS of people have nextel phones and a lot of people have the same ring and that gets really annoying to be in a crowded area think your phone keeps going off. SO that will be a nice change.

quick game update
PS2 Lisa and I finished xenosaga which I dont even think I mentioned we had started but I have to say it was pretty awesome. Really deep story and really good gameplay. Total time start to finish for us was a fantastic 65 hours!!! which for the investment of 14.99 comes out to a rough .23 cents an hour cost for entertainment. Imagine if you could see a second run movie for 50 cents. Other than that I am playing god of war for PS2 as well which should make Jason happy. SO far im almost all the way through athens and the game is pretty amazing. the graphics and speed are really good and really fast. SO far im having fun with it and since its borrowed the cost per hour of enjoyment is $0.00 / hour which is even a better deal then Xenosaga!

Oh did I mention a little thing called Xbox 360 launches next week! I wonder how many my store will get and what wave of pre order I will be. Right now I think I am solidly in 2nd round which would be the following week but I think their is always a chance I could get first round as well. my number is I think 31. SO we shall see.

Ok well their ya go ankle biters I updated. Excuse me for being busy at work and Sick all in the same week!!! J/K

cheers!

Atmosphere is everything

Ok if you have read my blog at all then you know Lisa and I are BIG fans of the silent hill series. In fact after lisa's recent birthday we now have every game in the series which is pretty cool since it spans 3 different consoles. SO far we have played through 1 (on psone) 2 (xbox) 4 (xbox) and just recently got 3 for PS2. SO what does this have to do with anything??? Well they are making a movie out of the game and that has me pretty excited. Now for the most part I think Movies based on video games are pretty weak. Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Doom are all pretty much just action flicks that get a lot of negative press and to that I say "what did you expect?" The games are not very story centric and are mostly action and that is why the silent hill movie has me excited. The silent hill games are very deep in story and try to scare you by messing with your senses. For example in most of the games they really promote a feeling that you are alone in what could be considered your own worst nightmare so their is very little interaction with other people. However at times everything will be very quiet and out of no where you will hear screams of horror and pain that arent coming from you or are they? Its very psychological and I think thats what has made these games so good in the first place. SO that being said I feel their is a lot to build off of to make a good movie out of one of them and the edition of the game they chose is ranking up there as my favorite so im even more jazzed. Silent Hill 1 is what started the series and so far imo had the best and most conclusive storyline. And just had a well planned out plot to begin with. SO look for it next april as Im sure it should be pretty good. Providing they stick with the story and the atmosphere that the games try to create and from the looks of the pic above they have it dead on.

cheers

PEOPLE WHO LIE SUCK!

ok thats the gist of my post. Yup that about sums it up they suck big time. I dont know why its so hard to give a truthfull factual answer in some cases but hey if it nets you a sale then its ok right? SO in short I made a very specific request to a vendor. They said yeah we can do that. They sold me something. And when it came it does not do what I need it to do. Not to go on and on so I will be brief but I still need part X and it appears it does not come in the flavor of which I was requesting (so they say, however they already lied to me onces about it) What really sucks is this puts me in a terribly bad place between my customer and my vendor who has now basically shot me in the foot. SO in general work life is all about the suckage for me!

Happy B-day to you!

Well shes probably going to kill me for using this pic but its the best and cutest close up shot I had of her and although I could have done a crop job on the pic and just included her face I think this is a really cute pic of My darling dear wife. SO as you may be guessing Its my honeys b-day and well I think that should be grounds enough to declaring a national holiday. Thats right instead of halloween it can now be International Lisa Knodel day. What you thought I would just limit her observance to the US??? BAH I think shes amazing enough to be observed the world over. Even in Canada and Madagascar. And yes for those of you who think Madagascar is a place invented for a disney movie YOUR WRONG ITS A REAL PLACE!!!! Sorry anyway so I thought I would help celebrate this great accomplishment with a dedicated blog entry so here we go.

Lisa is the most amazing and wonderfull woman I think I have ever known. She ceases to suprise me on a daily basis and I think she is absolutly wonderfull. She can make me happy just by seeing her smile and she always seems to know if something is bothering me or if I need a hug. In short shes amazing and I feel overly blessed to have her in my life.

SO happy birthday Sweetie. You mean the world to me and I couldnt wake up in the morning without you. You complete me and make me so happy. I love you so much and have a great day. Just to be cute I looked up ways to say happy b-day in other cultures. SO here we go with my favs!

Gaelic (scottish) Co` latha breith sona dhuibh!
german Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!
hawaiian Hau`oli la hanau!
japanese Otanjou-bi Omedetou Gozaimasu!
klingon Quchjaj qoSlIj!
latin Fortuna dies natalis!
maltese Nifrahlek ghal gheluq sninek!
swahili Hongera! or Heri ya Siku kuu!
zulu Ilanga elimndandi kuwe!

Again Happy Birthday Sweeheart!

cheers!

The Results are In!

Ok just in case you were wondering the official results are in for the race and I did a little cut and past so you can see my time

Place Div/Tot  No.   Name           Age Sex City     St Time  Pace
===== ======== ===== ============== === === ======== == ===== =====
569   37/69    1158  CHRIS KNODEL   27  M   FRANKLIN OH 26:35  8:35

Ok so like I said before this is pretty acurate of what I was thinking however my guess that there were like 500 runners was grossely underestimated. Lets try a total of 1925 runners and walkers. WOW that was a huge start. If you want to see the results for yourself check em out here.

Im slow but im not that slow

Well I did it I ran the 5k last night and im happy I did it. Its funny how competing can help you learn more about yourself and thats probably why I enjoy doing stuff like that. SO on to my post race wrap up!

I got to the site about 6pm feeling pretty good and that I had a lot of time and well I was a little wrong. I really wished I had gotten there maybe 15 min earlier as that would have given me some time to do some real stretching but oh well I know for next time. I got my race packet and my shirt which was really nice and a suprise. You dont expect to get a long sleeve fleece sweatshirt for a 15 dollar registration fee but thats what we got. Plus the logo is cool and I think I will actually wear this as opposed to the mountain of event t-shirts that I have never worn after the event. SO I did a little bit of a warm up and then went to the starting line. Well I guess I should say the starting pack b/c I couldnt even see the line. Im guessing there were somewhere around 500 runners and walkers and I think I was probably in the middle of the pack somewhere. This was totally crazy and probably one of the biggest events I have ever been in so that was kinda neat at first. Well they started at 6:30 on the dot but my start was a little delayed. See if you think of it like a traffic jam just because the cops say you can go doesnt mean everyone moves at the same time. SO I would have to say that it was a good 30-45 seconds before I even started to run. yeah thats right some im not sure what my exact time is yet and they have not posted the results so I will have to wait for that bit of intel. SO I will break this into segments from here on out

Mile 1
Feeling really good a little cold but mostly comfortable. The first mile was really spent dodging people and trying to find ways around other slow people which was quite the challenge.

first mile split 8:30ish

Mile 2
At this point the pack had really thinned out and I was feeling good about my pace I had lots of room to move and didnt feel boxed in anymore. I was still passing more people than were passing me which is a good feeling and helps to keep the spirits up. I felt really happy with my first mile split knowing that I probably went under 8 for my first mile and my goal of sub 25 would be reachable if I kept this pace.

second mile split 17:30ish

Mile 3
At this point I was starting to feel very hot and the clothes that I was wearing to run in are meant to keep the heat in and not really breath all that much. The temps were supposed to be upper 30's low 40's so it seemed like a good call and for the first 2 miles I was happy with that but now that I was in mile 3 I was over heating. The cold air was also having its usual effect on me which means I start having difficulty breathing so things started going down hill for me. I also noticed that I was losing ground to the people I had been keeping pace with as well as more people were starting to pass me and I was not really overtaking anyone anymore. I have to say this mile is where I really gave up on myself and started to have difficulties. SO I tried to give myself my usual pep line which is "what if this was the ironman. would you slow down then? would you want to quit?" I suprised myself by instantly thinking "yeah right like Im ever going to do one" SO I was really feeling beaten mentally and then HA HA it started to rain. I told lisa earlier in the day I might not do the run at all as I do not like running in the dark the rain or the cold which is looked like I might get all of these in one run so all that together really started to put me in a downer if ya know what I mean. Also I thought the course was going to go one way and it didnt it made another small loop which added more distance and that hit me hard mentally thinking that I would be done very soon and realizing I still had quite a bit more to do.

3 mile split - unknown no clock at 3 mile mark

race finish

Ok this was the point where everything gets better I mean c'mon who cant run 1 tenth of a mile. SO I had been keeping pace with this one girl and she was in a racoon costume (people were encouraged to dress up) and halfway through mile 3 I decided I was not going to get beat by a girl in a racoon costume so I stayed with her all the way till the end and I had more of a kick then she did so I did manage to beat her. WOOO HOO I beat a girl in a racoon costume! The end of the race was really bad in the the chute was very small and you went from a full on sprint to a dead stop which my body told me it did not like. I did manage to keep it all together but at that moment I realized I probably pushed my body as hard as it was going to go that night. SO I guess that was good. and what you have all been waiting for!!!!

Final time 26:30ish

I was not happy at the time but now the more I think of it im pretty happy. If I adjust that for the start that puts me in the 25 min range which is very close to where I wanted to be. Also this is the first time I have run for a time since my last operation on my leg and my time was better than before I had my operation so thats cool. all in all it figures out to be an avg mile time of somewhere between 8:20-30 which I can live with. Im most dissapointed however in how I gave up mentally with only a mile to go. I think life in general has contributed to my attitude being more negative I just didnt realize how negative it was. SO thats something I need to work on as well.

Well I hope everyone enjoyed getting in my head a little bit with this run. And like I said im really glad I did it and I think im going to start trying to do more of this type of thing again.

well thats all for now
Cheers!

Oh fyi the reason I was bumming about my time is my Personal best for a 5k is 17:41 and my time is light years away from that one. SO it sucks but it takes time to get good again and I just need to be patient.

Not much new

Well its about 8:am and I am at work already but to my despair it is still dark outside. I really dislike the winter time waking up in the dark and having it be an hour or 2 before the sun comes out -- If it comes out -- SO whos ready for an Indian Summer??? I know I am. Well this entry is going no where fas so I will do a quick wrap up of how things are going for me.

Work -- I have officially reached the point where I just dont care and dont feel like making an effort will change anything anyways so my motivation level is nill. ^__^ but im happy with that!

Life in general -- Didnt get to take a day off this week to go climbing which sucked b/c tuesday was about as perfect a day as we could have asked for. I have however gotten to ride my motor bike twice this week down to cinci which means extended ride time and that has been nice. The weather is turning more cold here, I think they said it dropped like 20 degrees from tuesday to wed so that sucks. The weather here never seems to know what it wants to do but it sure enjoys drastic changes! Other than that not much else. Oh I played football again this week but my left quad was really knotted up and still is. I actually resorted to a heating pad last night which feels like it has helped a lot. I have also tried my limited knowledge of deep tissue massage on myself which by itself is difficult but on yourself is really hard to succeed in. Other than that im gearing up for lisa's b-day which is the 31st. I have already purchased many good things for her which I could list off here since she never reads my blog but just in case she does check it I will keep it anonymous. One thing that was frustrating was I ordered her something that we will call x. I ordered x in color y. what I got was a. in color b. a. looks nothing in the world like x. SO I had to call and they said oops yeah we have a wrong number in the catalog so our bad. But I still have to mail back the old one so thats kinda stinky. But once thats done I should be done with my shopping for her. SO thats cool. We really need to start our x-mas shopping which we have not even begun yet. I hate waiting till after thanksgiving as most shopping establishments are filled with instant nut jobs as soon as thanksgiving ends. ITs like on thursday the nation collectively says "Dear Lord thank you for all you have done for us" then on friday the nation turns into a bunch of blood thirsty scavengers saying "no its mine I saw it first" SO anyway the only other thing I got going on is a signed up for a 5k this tuesday. Lisa said she might be able to make it which would mean she could try out her new digi cam and take some action shots of me getting my run on. My goal that I am posting here is to come in under 25 minutes. That would put me right around 8 minute mile pace and I would be happy with that. Ideally I would like to break the 20 minute mark but I dont think I can pull 6's just yet.

Gaming update -- Well I have a ton of games to take back to the game store for trade and I have made my pick on what I am going to get with the credit. Xenosaga. IT looks really cool and should be pretty deep. I am really on the fence about DOA ultimate. I dont know why but Im just totally drawn to this game. I have never liked fighters before but soul caliber really turned me on to it and I think the DOA series is a lot cooler than soul caliber. SO I have been thinking about what I would do while all the girls are in Japan and Im kinda thinking DOA tournament at my house. Could be fun. Even more so if none of us really knows how to play! SO just kicking that idea out now. Other than that I have not gotten a chance to play hardly anything this week. I think I am giving up on .hack I just dont care enough anymore about it and would rather play xenosaga or FFX-2.

Well thats all for now -- Oh missions conference this weekend please come as it makes me look bad if nobody shows up and then I will be sad and well thats not good.

Cheers!

Human Nature

Its funny how human nature instinctively longs to do the things which it knows it should not do. Case in point my last blog entry. I knew that saying "do not post" would elicit many posts. I have deleted 3 so far and let me say that no I am not mad or being anal. I just think its funny and it got me thinking about signs like the one I put up here. Its like if you tell me not to feed the bears it just makes me want to feed them that much more. SO thats what got me on the whole idea of the fastest way to get someone to do something is to tell them not to do it. Ok nobody better even think about giving me a million dollars. If you dare give me a million dollars i''l bite your face off ya got it! (somehow I doubt that will work but hey nothing ventured nothing gained) anyway so that train of thought led me to that wonderfull Episode of Ren and Stimpy where Ren charges Stimpy to guard the history eraser button and to make sure that nobody touches it ever. Why??? Because maybe it will be good, Maybe it will be bad we just dont know. SO in the end the weak minded stimpy gives in and pushes the big shiny candy like button and annihilates the universe. So my question today is this??????? Would you have the will power to not annihilate the universe???? or would you give in to temptation and PUSH THE BUTTON!

Cheers!

Oh side note. Saw war of the worlds. thought the effects were groovy thought the story was crap. HEEELLLOOOO we can exist in the vacum of space which implies we understand the concepts of atmospheres and foreign environments but we never thought to protect ourselves on a foreign planet. Nope I would have been happy if even one of the aliens had on one of those little surgical masks b/c at least it would have said "hey maybe theirs something bad here" but no. SO I guees the question of who sent the dumb aliens from signs to the earth has been answered. IT was the dumb aliens from war of the worlds and if you dont get that its b/c they were both totally stupid about trying to conquer a planet that was extremely toxic to them with no protection. I mean c'mon the aliens from signs were bipedal humanoid. How hard would it have been to break into a sporting goods store and steal a wet suit????? Oh wait those have zippers and they couldnt figure out how to open doors.

yeah so Cheers!

This ends here and now

Ok I feel I am a fairly patient person and that I am not easily angered. Usually it takes that rare type of "special" person to push me over the edge and today that has happened. Below I am going to list a comment put on MY blog. I will then list a response to said comment on MY blog and then that will be it. Any comments that are put in response to this will be deleted as soon as I see them. I dont care from whom they are. I will delete them so please dont even bother writting a comment.

After not being around for a few weeks Gary has popped up on my blog again today and this is what he wrote.

An apology is what I want, then maybe I'll back off. Afterall, all these blogs were started by r. via J. and gave links to all of yours'. I was invited initially on r.'s; then made a few stupid comments, then backed off and wrote him by email. Then came these downright scorns at me and my intelligence. Then, when I apologized none of them were ever accepted. Case over, no-win solution. Get over it Gary / g-unit aka the Riddler.

My response.

Gary I have no reason to apologize to you nor will I. I have wronged you in no way and I feel its arrogant and a threat on your part to demand an apology in order for you to "back off" This is my little crapshack in cyper space and I will post what I want to when I want to. I didnt make this site for you gary and I will not be a victim to cyber threats or cyber terrorism on your part.

Im not sure what you mean when you say "all these blogs were started by r. via J." but again this is wrong. I am a computer network engineer. If you read the top of my blog you would know this. I am capable of at least the same computer skillz as your average 12 year old girl therefore I am competant enough to create my own blog apart from Radar and Jason.

Let me say this very clearly. I dont care about your relationship with radar. I dont care about your relationship with Jason. I dont know you. Therefore my blog is not a valid venue for your bickering and yes a mature adult would realize this. Im sorry that you have ticked off jason and radar enough that they have blocked you from their blogs. Again this is not my problem. Again I dont care. Seriously. I flat out just dont care. SO as I said before stop using my blog as your soap box.

On a Similar note -- If radar and jason do not accept your appoligies how is this my issue. I speak to jason over AIM perhaps once a week as he lives in Japan now and radar and I trade comments on blogs once in a great while. Therefore if you are hoping to woo me and then have me subsequently influence either of them you are sadly barking up the wrong tree.

Now as I write this I see you have just posted another comment. SO I will include that in this post. Thank you for your contributions at the start of your post about games and football. Yes those are on topic. Now as I have said before its a free internet im not going to tell anyone they cant come to my blog b/c well I choose not to. However half way through you have again gone off on your own thing claiming to have brought us all together by your refusing to follow simple netiquette. Im sorry dude but you are really really wrong. I still have absolutely no clue who della is but man im glad you know somebody whos name you can drop. Jason and I have known each other for like close to 15 years so I dont think you can take credit for that one and as far as radar goes I think you have only made him feel bad and apologetic to me b/c of your actions. Not exactly lifelong friend building feelings. Oh and yeah did I mention I still have absolutely no clue who della is??????

and those are the final words that I will post on this. Again. It is my desire for this to be over. therefore any comments would only spark more conversation which is why I will delete any comments that are posted to this entry.

cheers

I feel old

Yeah I feel old. I played football with the youngins of my church on thursday and I hate to admit it but im still sore from it. It is amazing how the older you get even if you stay active the less flexible you are and the longer it takes to recover from stuff. I feel im in pretty good shape and despite the fact that I think I would have made a better water boy than running back I still managed to hold my own and keep up with and even out run a few people during the game. SO I dont feel old in that respect I just feel old that Im still sore b/c Im not used to the type of running you get from playing sports like football or soccer. Oh well I just need to keep doing stuff like this so that I dont get sore again! But Im actually pretty excited b/c its fall like weather which is great for doing stuff outside and im actually doing stuff outside!!! Climbing this week and football and it looks like climbing next week and maybe football as well. SO my heart leaps with joy! And im really looking forward to climbing next week as it should be a little warmer and a little dryer and I think im goign to turn up the intensity a little bit and get a little more gutsy and try some BIG moves. Maybe some dynos (jumps) and what not. SO im stoked. Its a great time of year!

Cheers

Oh to comment on steves comment about finishing a game yeah I know some games I just cant bring myself to finish and others I dont think I ever will but somehow I pick it up a year or so later and finish it. Dr. Muto for xbox is one such game I dont think I will ever play again and I should really trade in. I thought that was the case for Ty the tasmanian tiger but I did manage to finish it like 2 years after I started. I really do need to go through my games and get rid of some stuff that I doubt I will ever play again although the last time I did that I really regretted it so now i just hold on to everything.

SO since I have not done this in awhile I will give a brief game update

First off let me say I am playing a lot of different games right now which is pretty cool!

PS2
-- .hack -- which I have already talked about in some detail. SO far the game is to me very repetitive and the story is really lacking.
-- Wallace and Gromit Project zoo -- so far so good. It can be a bear to control and like I said earlier the camera is totally wonky!

PSOne
-- FFIX -- This game is really growing on me and Im really enjoying it. It starts out really cutesy but I have to say despite the way the characters look they are all in some sort of deep struggle with who they are and where they are. It just leads to a very interesting party dynamic and makes the story and game more fun to me. If only .hack had character development like this I might care about at least one of the characters
-- Silent Hill 1 -- Ok we finished this one a while ago but you know what that means??? Alternate ending time!!! SO far we have gotten the good, bad, and bad+ endings and we still need to get the good+ ending and we might shoot for the ufo ending but that requires and entire run through of the game from start to finish and I dont know if I care that much.

Xbox
-- Fatal Frame 2 -- Ok last week I finally broke this out of the shrink wrap and put it in the ol xbox and I have to say so far its really good. Very creepy and scary and the story is top notch. also If you have never played fatal frame 1 dont even bother with 2. The combat is soooo much harder in 2 then the first and if you are not used to how to play the game you will get SPANKED! Just as an example in FF1 it was about 3/4's of the way through the game when you started getting encounters with multiple ghosts which allowed you some time to get used to fighting just one before you had to deal with a bunch. Well SO far I dont think I have had any enocounters with just 1 ghost. They have all been multiples and they are all really ticked off. SO if you think it looks cool buy #1 play it, beat it, practice and then get 2. Just my suggestion.

Cheers

3-day weekend wrap up!

Ok I actually did some cool stuff this weekend so I thought I would post up about it.

Friday -- Was supposed to go climbing with luke but well lets just say I think somone keeps straightening her hair despite the fact that I told her I would take her climbing so we scrubbed climbing for that day and rescheduled for monday. Sigh I really didnt want to go to work but it was only slightly miserable. ^_^ J/K anyway so on my way home I stopped at borders and got my sweetie a book on PR strategies and what not to help her with her new job. why you ask? Just because and thats the only reason I need! Ok so I was almost home and then I remembered that I was supposed to run another errand. SO I got home finally at like quarter past 5 and ran and changed clothes and got ready to leave again. Where were we going???? why to the little miami football game thats where! Yup part of lisa's job is schmoozing it up with the pipples so we went early so she could talk with some people and hand out some Pro School literature. Ok I was all up for this and thought it would be fun. That is until it was like dark, 50 degrees, and raining. IT was sooooooooooooooooo cold but we managed and GO me I actually had 2 jackets in my car which was really good b/c we did not think it was going to be that cold out. SO we watched a little of the game and we bought SPIRIT WAREZ!!!!! I got a sweatshirt and lisa got this nice jacket so we are ready for any and all Little Miamit events now. SO that was cool and afterward we went with an old co-worker of Lisa's to this little eatery called wild bills in Lebanon. I had one of the best burgers I have ever had and was very very happy with it. SO that was friday

Saturday -- Slept in which was divine! And just kinda bummed around a bit in the morning and played some more .hack . I have to say I still dont care much for it but im at least goign to try and finish it. Then I went to my follow up eye doctor appointment at wal-mart. I know who in their right mind goes to wal-mart for contacts. I do thats who. I used to go to this pretentious snobby place in Oakwood and my Eye Doctor used to be Park Studebaker. Yeah I used your name and you work in the Oakwood Eye Clinic and despite the fact that your staff are nice your selection of glasses suck and your sir are quite the jerk to your patients. Hence the reason I will never go back to you or your establishment despite the fact that it was terribly convienant for me. SO to you I say good day! SO anyway why is walmart cool?? B/c the eye doc actually listened to me and then tried something new each time. SO in short I went through about 5 different sizes / styles of contacts till I got the ones that fit me really really well. Versus Park who said "these work for everyone else I guess maybe your different but I cant see how" what a tool. Anyway SO my past contacts experiance have been psuedo comfortable 1-2 hours. then hours 3-4 are bearable and hours 5-6 are flat out painfull. But with the final pair that walmart got me I left them in for about 25 hours and yes slept in them and was fine. I was feeling a little discomfort around hour 23 but to me thats pretty darn good compared to what I have been. After that I came home and we met Sue to go and see the new wallace and grommit movie. It was awesome. If you like wallace and gromit or chicken run then you will love this movie. Their are soooo many bunnies and I swear they are all cuter then the last bunny. Gromit delivers yet another Oscar winning performance which is truly remarkable as he has zero lines in the movie. He doesnt even bark! Hes just that good. SO its worth a watch if you like claymation and dry brittish humor which I do. After that went home and just did the chill thing.

Sunday -- was pretty normal except Sue is really sick so we didnt go over for lunch - I hope you feel better soon - and we played lots of the wallace and gromit video game that I just picked up. I think its called project zoo and apart from a totally WONKY camera and some at times difficult controls its a lot of fun.

Monday -- Despite the bad omen of rain and overcast Skies Luke and I still went climbing. It wasa a lot of fun and we got to hit three different sites successfully and the 4 one we tried was just really poorly rated and very difficult. neigther of us made it up. But oh well 3 outta 4 aint bad. Luke took some "Sam Fisher" pics so if he sends me those I will post em up. After that we came back and went to a movie with my sweetie. We went and saw "the cave" per lukes suggestion and it was ok. I hear steve hates it and I think thats a bit harsh although I think the movie should be renamed "When stupid people do dumb things" but that could be the title to most any scary/suspence movie. SO it was not bad. Then we ate dinner at max and ermas and that was really really good as well. SO that pretty much sums up my weekend which was pretty nice.

But alas now I am back to reality and working my butt off at the office so whenever you pass a computer think of me!

Cheers!

Overconfidence

Ok first off let me say that this is not the first time I have written a post about this same very topic. SO if there is some overlap oh please will ya forgive me. On the off chance that you wont I have included a pic that will help make things seem fresh and new. ooooohhhhh aaaaahhhhhh
Ok scrub that b/c it wont load my pic. grrr. Anyway It was a very smashingly well done Demotivator poster entitled Overconfidence. And the basic gist is dont take on the world if losing means the worlds gonna crush ya. SO what am I speaking of hmm Oh I dont know could it be Porn. Yes the ugly p word rears its even uglier head yeat again. This morning I got a call that a school was suspicious of an employee and would not give me anything to search on besides and address of a local machine. I assumed porn was a concern as 9 times out of 10 when I get requests like this its porn Oh and if you are wondering the 1 out of 10 was a guy who wanted to know if his people were going to E-Bay. Talk about micro-mgt. Anyway so I did the requested grep on the logs and I could have just sent them on their merry way but they are rather cryptic so I thought I would do some key word searching and see if I could find something. SO whats the first word I try "sex" WOW i gotta hit! then another and another and before too long I think I may have helped sink someones battle ship. Whats amazing isnt that I found the word sex its how incriminating web logs can be. for instance when I did a search for sex I didnt think I would find keyword searches on the internet movie database for lesbian + anal sex. SO I still dont know if this is a dude or a dudette but I did find a lot of searches like the above one through the imdb adult section. SO long story short while this model employee is supposed to be working they were truly in fact trying to find their next skin flick to go rent. SO this comes back to overconfidence and a statement I made a few months ago, that being: If you doing something your not supposed to be doing and your using a computer to do it you will be caught.

Below are my new insights on the matter

1. the Internet is not the free utopia everyone thinks it is, everything and I mean everything leaves a trace no matter what.

2. someone is watching or can watch if asked to.

3. If you want to search for porno flicks or look at porno for the love of pete man go home and do it. If you dont feel like you can look at porn at home then well maybe you shouldnt be looking at porn but if you can then dude for the love do it there. I mean if you cant go 8 hours without looking at porn then the porn is the least of your problems and you got some serious addict action going on.

SO lets sum up and since a recent mathmatically related post of a friend of mine got so much attention of late I will make this into an equation

porn + work = bad stuffs

porn + family = bad stuffs

work + family = good stuffs

so there in this case I fear that from my investigation the individuals results may be something like this

porn + work = -job

and if the family finds out its something like this

port + work + family = -( work + family)

SO again to all the stupid peoples out there who think their computer is the black hole of space and time its not!

Cheers!

POO SUPPLIES!!!!!!!!!

Ok first off this is a totally 100% un-doctored photo. I seem to always find the weirdest things and rarely have a camera with me to prove it. Like the whole "I got lance in my pants" post from before and also the "bone me" pic that I took. SO was stopped at a light and looked over and saw this. Grabbed the camera took aim and blamo!

Ok now onto my thursday. Some of you might remember that I have had some fairly big projects to work on at work and that as of late my success rate has been quite low. Well yesterday was going to be what I thought to be a trifecta of failure! I even debated on making up t-shirts feeling that all great disasters get t-shirts and that helps make those disasters well less disaterous and more fun! SO to my surprise I will say quickly that things went alright. Not great but alright. SO heres my day

got up at 5:50am and was out of the house by 6am on my way to a school to perform a cutover of service for them.

6:30 started to cutover (wich went badly on attempt 1 and this was attempt 2)

7:30 Success! and a quick departure from the school as I was needing to get to my next destination

7:45 arrived at the Montgomery County ESC to help set up for a big meeting my office was hosting there.

8:00 left the esc and returned to the office again succesfull!!

the rest of my normal work day was pretty standard however I had some pretty annoying support calls from people who openly admit to not understanding certain facets of technology but in contrast have no problem with making wild illogical theories as to why the previously admitted mystery is broken. What is even more impressive is how they continue to stick to their out there theory even after I explain why said theory is well totally WIC!

16:00 at this point I should be leaving to go home but no I have another thing to do at 6pm so i decide to stay at the office and try to get caught up on some stuff.

17:45 began final prep for my project. I will only mention what I was going to do once and here it is. I was making a 2nd attempt at upgrading our core routers operating system. Your thinking that doesnt sound so bad. In order to do this it requires me to take our ENTIRE facility down. Including all of the schools that we provide internet service for. The crux of this is also that once I take things down I no longer have the internet either. SO no way to look for help if I get stuck.

18:00 GO TIME- killed the power to the router and started swapping cards

19:00 First major snafu has cropped up as I can get the defualted router to see machines on my network but it cant communicate with them and I cant really even start the conversion until this problem is rectumfied (he he)

19:45 First major snafu resolved and conversion begins

20:30 Second major snafu crops up. The router will not accept my flash drive as a valid drive. This is a major issue as this is where my new software is located. I try and try and nothing seems to work. I decided to place a support call.

- side note - Dave Jacobson is my hero.

21:45 Still trying to work through snafu #2. Both dave and I are on the brink of pulling the plug and reverting to the back up plan but then Dave had an idea and bounced it off me. I agreed it was worth a shot.

22:15 After some work and some testing We both feel confident that this idea will be successfull. I will call this idea "The Flash Card Shuffle"

22:45 Operation "Flash Card Shuffle" is a success and we are able to boot the router normally with the new software. I breathed a quick sigh of relief and then went back into extreme panic mode as I was still not out of the woods yet as the configuration still needed to be restored and a lot of supplemental configuration was going to be needed.

23:45 Most everything is back to normal. Just a few nodes not working however they are very important so we start to focus on them

00:30 I tell Dave I think things are good and that I can get off the phone with him. However their are still a few local issues I need to resolve

01:00 Leave the office and got hit with major snafu #3. their was an accident on the interstate approximately 3 miles from my exit. I sat motionless on 75 for an hour.

02:00 finally pulled into the Garage at home. I was tired and beat. but I was mostly successfull.

SO that was my day. As far as today (friday) has gone I left a message at work saying that I would not be in till 9:30 ish (as opposed to my usual 7:30) as I felt I needed some sleep. But at 7:30 I got a call. E-mail was down as well as many web-sites. SO I threw on my jeans (I love casual friday) and jumped in the car got to work at 8am and worked at putting out minor issues that were a result of last nights upgrade. that lasted till about 10am. SO now im slacking and going to go home early and take a nap. Im dead tired and just want to sleep.

Cheers!

My view on Blogs

Ok recently I have come into a bit of a love/hate triangle between a guy who I have never met and probably never will named Gary, Jason my brother in law, and Radar Jasons dad. Much of the controversy seems to stem from Gary posting lots and lots of essentially worthless comments on peoples blogs just to get attention. However Gary posted something in rebuttle to this that I wish to comment on.

g-unit said...

I'm banned from your blog vicariously by radar. I enjoyed it. One question, and ask radar, too, If one has a public blog, then why are most of them for family members only?
Gary Van Leeuwen

Gary does pose an interesting question I think what you are not realizing is that although a blog maybe public its intented audience may not be the general public and it may be written as a means to keep up with family and friends. I want people to be able to put comments on my blog and i wish for this to be an easy process which is why I have turned anonymous comments on and have left the validation means turned off. I feel that if someone wants to say something that they should be able do so and it should not be a hard process requiring the need to register or what not. However the issue that Gary is having is not an uncommon one on the web and stems from a bit of ignorance on certain aspects of netiquette. I think the general rule goes as follows

"If you dont have anything interesting to contribute shut your pie hole"

This Gary is where I think you are having issues. Peoples blogs are not intended to be your soap box to get attention which is what is seems you are trying to make them. There are plenty of forums online that would love to have you comments as a target for a flame war but a blog is not a forum to just post up whatever random thoughts you might have that day. A blog to me is like a online journal that you share with the world and allow them into your life in a way that they are probably not able to be whether by geography or other means. SO if Jason posts about how he wants the new asteroids watch from fossil (seriously dude check it out) you should not put up a comment about how you have a strange amount of lint in your belly button today. Its just that simple. For whatever reason though you just dont seem to get it. I dont care if you post to my blog as long as it stays on topic. However if its just random crap that you feel like saying, after seeing jason and radar's blogs and how they feel Im sorry but I will just delete your comments. SO those are my terms to you or anyone else in the net who would want to post. The sad thing is that with the exception of spammers most people dont need this spelled out for them.

final Posting on Vacation....I think

Well since it was like two weeks ago and I feel that I am totally dwelling on the past now I thought since I had pics I would just throw them all up with some captions which is probably about all anyone was interested in anyway ^_^ I have tried to dwell on the highlights and not include any pics that would bring back some of the not so nice memories of the trip and unfortunately b/c I fear the wrath of my wife often proceeded by a loud shout of "Fist In FACE!" I have not posted many pics of her. Mostly b/c they are of her looking very very fine (contrary to her opinion) in her many bikinis. SO Im respecting her wishes and only posting 1 of the 20 pics I took of her.

Here we are on our last day in Ft Lauderdale (FLL) At this point you can tell that we are pretty well rested and have spent a lot of time in the sun!!!!















This is by the pool at our first hotel in FLL. I just thought the view was amazing and I love Palm Trees.




















The FLL beach / coastal area. It was a lot Different from Daytona ans their were shells everywhere and lots of pieces of coral reef on the beach as well. Also not a whole lot of traffic so it was pretty quiet. Not to bad.















Ok this is our cabin on the ship. As these things are typically small this was the best angle of a pic I could get and im actually standing in the bathroom doorway to take it.















Ok I guess this is a cruise ship thing to make animals out of the towels since Sue and Sara mentioned the same thing happening. Well this is the first night on the boat and we got a bonus the person who did turn down service in our room took Lisa's sun glasses and placed them on the towel puppy so this is what we saw when we got back from dinner. A very welcom surprise.















This is the back of the boat on the main outside deck. If you have been on a cruise ship before you will notice that this is pretty small compared to your bigger carnival cruise ships and what not. But here you can see the one pool and too hot tubs.















Heres the front of the boat. Not a whole lot to say.















Ok on our second night on the boat Lisa was still feeling very not so good but she wanted me to have some fun so she insisted I do something and I said I wanted a pic of the sunset. SO I went out and watched the sunset and took this pic.















Heres our boat in port in Nassau and im actually taking this pic from a little boat on our way back from snorkeling.















Lisa chillin in the shade Paradise Island















Ok whenever we go on vacation I usually try to find a place that I can at least do a little bouldering. Well I saw this little face by the ocean and was like WOW SOOOO I told Lisa she had to get a shot of me and she had to let me crank for a minute. Well I was getting set up and started to make my first move (right after she took this pic) and discovered something. This whole structure was not rock it was sand. Very hard compact sand that was not very load bearing at all. SO that was a bit of a dissapointment but its still a good pic.















Totally gorgeous shot of the Paradise Island beach. This place was amazing and we are definitly going back some day.















Another shot of PI















Another Shot of Paradise island















More Paradise Island.















Well that pretty much wraps it up and should give you guys an idea of where we were and what we did.

Cheers!

Sup?

Yeah that sums it up, I was going to write up on the next and possibly the best day of our vacation today but I still dont have pictures so I am going to wait till monday for that. Providing I bring pics. Other than that not much has been going on. However I did get a couple of pretty cool things this week. The first being the lcd add on screen for my PSOne. Its pretty amazing and k-mart had it on sale for a mere 26 bucks as opposed to the list price of $130.00 so for that reason I felt like I needed to get it, just too good to pass up. And the other are a pair of mac mini's for my training lab. They are super duper sweet and I think they even impressed Luke a little bit. Kevin thought they were awesome and so far everyone I show them to are in awe of them. But of course I just had to do something before I installed them at work. I took one home and hooked it up to my tv. 43" display and it was abso-freakin-lutely fantastic. SO that was like I said pretty cool. It looks like my weekend it going to be rather blah as lisa and I have things we need to get done around the house so it will be another weekend of laundry and touch up painting whoopeee!! can you tell im thrilled. SO anyway thats what Im upto I think we are getting chinese tonight so that could be yummy and its been awhile since we got chinese so at least it will be different.

Oh ok Luke the dream about my bike and crashing it and dying? Are you having guilt dreams about taking my bike out and discovering the unbelievable speed of it????? huh huh??? But speaking of dreams I didnt sleep well at all last night and that usually means that I had a dream and that I remember it which is usually never a good thing for me. Its totally weird but I dreampt that Sara was at Centerville HS doing some Dance team thing and I said good bye to her and left. we were supposed to be meeting her later with Sue and Grampa but she never showed so we started calling around and what not and it turned out she had been kidnapped. SO I woke up in a wonderfull mood and that sadness from that dream has kinda followed me all through the day. SO Sara if you by any chance read this give me a call it would be nice to hear that you are ok.

Well thats all for now
Cheers!

Sept 7th

Ok the next part of our ongoing series of Chris and Lisa's big adventure! Not to be confused with Pee Wee's big adventure which was just odd. SO away we go

Got up wed. morning to the suprise of good weather! We were both sooo excited that the weather was nice and that we were going to finaly get some time out in the sun. We got our stuff ready and went out by the pool and just chilled for quite awhile. Oh I called for a late check out since we didnt have to be at the boat till about 3:30ish and check out was at 11:00 well they were nice enough to grant me 11:30. they are soo generous at Ramada's arent they ^_^ SO we decided to just get our stuff together and check out and then go lay out and just have clothes to change into before we left. SO thats what we did. Ahh it was sooo nice and sunny and a really nice change from the day before. SO we grabbed a bite to eat at the wonderfully crap tastic in hotel restaurant and were on our way to fun on the high sea!!!! Ok we were both super jazzed about the whole cruise thing and really really looking forward to it so we were pretty excited. I will spare the details of getting to the boat but lets just say nobody has any clue how to give directions in ft lauderdale. But we got there and got processed throug and got on the boat. I do have pics of the boat but dont have them with me today DOH I will try to get them up tommorow. Anyway we did our whole mandatory life boat drill and then we went and had our fun in the sun meeting and discovered that our original plan of just getting off the boat and wondering around till we found a nice patch of beach was not going to work. Appearantly the beaches on the main island of Nassau are almost all private and they are gated entry with guards. SOOOO we were pretty much told that if we wanted to go to the beach we would have to pay for a shore excursion $40/person to go to their private island. I was not real thrilled with this and did not know if I wanted to do it but lisa said lets go for it! and I was like ALRIGHT! LETS DO IT! SO that was act of spontenaity #1 then we were looking at the excursion list and it listed the island with some options and one of them was snorkeling. for an added $20/person. I forget how we even started talking about it but lisa was like what do you think??? and I was like LETS GO FOR IT!!! so that was random act of spontenaity #2. SO we filled out our form and gave it to the activity chick and went back to our room. At this point the Boat had started to dissembark (arf arf) and we went back to our room to unpack. Dinner was going to start being served in about an hour so we got ready and decided to go top side to see the ship and what was going on. This is where things started to go a wee bit downhill. Lisa started to feel a wee bit motion sick despite the fact that she had taken something for motion sickness already. SO we just sat and tried to get her feeling better. SO then we went to dinner and the walk down to the dinning hall was both humurous and sad for me. Mostly sad b/c I could tell lisa was not doing well. slightly funny b/c she was walking as if she was drunk out o her mind. She could barely stand up straight and she kept almost falling down. SO we got to dinner a little late and sat down. Lisa then informed me that she felt as though she was going to lose it now that she was seeing food and what not. SO I told her we could go and she said no you still need to eat. SO when the waiter came over he asked what we wanted and Lisa explained how she was doing and the waiter said he would get her crackers and thats really what she should focus on eating. I felt my time at dinner was very limited so I skipped the appetizer, and salad, and went striaght for the main course. I got me some chickin! Well it came within about 3 min of me asking for it so I think the waiter was also picking up on the fact that we might not be there very long. SO I got my chicken and went to town on that mofo and honestly dont really remember if it was very good or not. I also ate a couple rolls and took one with me. Total time at dinner was probably about 10-15 min. SO then we bailed and I suggested going back top side to see if some fresh air would help. Seemed logical but boy was I wrong. Only made things worse. SO then we walked /stumbled back to our room where my sweet little lady proceeded to toss her cookies overboard metaphorically that is, and looked like she felt absolutely awefull. SO she proceeded to lay down and I told her that I was going to get some of the stronger motion sickness medicine from the ship. I got back and gave it to her and Lisa pretty much passed out. Ok now before I go much further I have to say that I did have a back up plan for our vacation in case lisa got sick and that was a little wonder I like to call a PSone. Yes I brought my PSone as well as a couple of games. We had a TV in our room and within about 5 min I had it all hooked up and running. SO for the rest of the night I played FF 9 while lisa dozed in and out of conciousness. Then around 11:30ish I went to sleep. And that was that day!

Ok I got to give some a mad shout out and super props or eprops for wizzles or whatever you like to give to my funky fly and super fresh home girl Lisa. It is now official that she has gotten her new job. I went to the board meeting with her last night and got to hear them approve her contract and got to meet her boss and what not. I have to say she is getting a pretty sweet hook up right from the git go and im kinda jealous. but its good jealous and im uber happy and proud of her. Heres what they are trying to have ready for her on day 1

Office space
IP phone
cell phone
laptop
digi cam - her suggestion and they will buy
palm pilot

then they said if their is anything else you think you need let us know. Give us your wish list!

SO thats just really awesome that they are taking care of her and she is going to have all kinds of neat new tech gizmo's to play with. SO it seems now that if we get high speed at home it will probably be a wireless net so that her laptop will work wherever she wants it too. SO if you see or talk to lisa tell her mad congrats b/c she has really been working her butt off for the last 5 years and I feel like she is really seeing the fruit of that work now. SO I love you sweetie and am very very proud of you! You ROCK!

Sept 6th

Well I have been spending most of my time at work umm "Gasp" working which is why I have been less diligent about posting up more. Also Ive been playing catch-up from the last couple of weeks and ive spent more time reading and posting comments on other blogs then writting my own so hey you all should feel loved! On to the show!

Sept 6th. Was kind of a blah day. We got up and immediately packed up our gear and went to the front desk to inquire if our wonderfull mates next door would be in the room the next night. They were. We complained big time and asked to be switched to a different room. They agreed and we checked into room #3 of our trip. After that we got our stuff together and went to Time Share pitch #2. The weather sucked and the presentation blew. Long story short 2.5 hours later we found out we didnt have to go to it and had been lied to by the Ramada agent. SO that was uber sucky. The weather was still crappy so we decided to go to "the largest outlet mall in the world!!!!" which sounded like a lot of fun. Well it was a really large mall but the whole outlet thing was a bit decieving. It was a regular mall with lots of outlet stores thrown in but whatever. Oh before that we had lunch and what could be for lisa and me the epitome of restaurant perfection. Pizza hut taco bell. Could their be anything sweeter in this world then a place where lisa can order mexican and I can order pizza from the same counter. Sheer bliss. also as we were sitting there a lotus esprit went through the drive through. In a word -- Nice -- SO then we went to the mall and got some stuff. Lisa got some clothes and I got a much needed case for my Ipod and a Paul Van Dyke CD so that we no longer had to rely on the radio for quality tunage. SO after that we went back to the hotel and Kicked around a bit. Got some dinner and just chilled out. SO not a terribly awefull day but not a tremendously great one either.

Game update (yeah I still play games really I do)
My poor xbox has not gotten any love in a long time. I really need to play it. Anyway PS2 has been taking all my time.

Im like 15-16 hours into .hack and I still dont know what I think of it. I dont know if the story will be enough to pull me into getting all 4 games. At this point I would say no. Its just not doing it for me and in general the game is just to repetitive for my tastes. The whole game is basically just going into dungeons and fighting stuff. But thats all really. Their is like nothing else. SO im getting bored but will try to finish it. Then its back to FF X-2

Oh while I was in columbus last week I picked up silent hill 1. Yeah the original for psone. Anyway a good indicator of how good a game is, is how much is costs used years after it came out. Well in General I have not been able to find it for cheaper than 25 bucks used! which is crazy for a game that is almost 7 years old and for a system that is last gen. SO that is a good indicator that the game is pretty solid. Well as I was saying I found it at an ebgames for 7 bucks! I grabbed the copy and did not let go till I had purchased it as well as the years insurance on the disc for the bargain price of 1 extra dollar. I would usually not do this but I have gotten burned on a # of used psone games so now the extra dollar is well worth it. Well anyway long story longer I guess Last night lisa and I finished it! In general its a short game. Took us 10.5 hours first time through but man it was a creepy spooky 10.5 hours. Their were a number of times when something happened in that game that made both lisa and I jump and even more times when I would just freeze to see if anything was going to just jump out and get me. SO the game was pretty awesome. Im still trying to figure out what order I would place them in since we have now played 1,2,4 and I need to get 3 now just to finish up the whole thing. Maybe I will go pick that up today I just dont know if I can handle all the creepy ya know. Anyway I need to get back to work.

Cheers!

sept 5th part deux

Ok yeah so I know that this didnt come up on wed like I said and that their was nothing yesterday. Well too bad. In the words of jack dangers "and away we go!"

SO we went over to the disney bus depot area and decided we were going to go to MGM next. Well we waited and waited and waited and no bus was coming so a bus we getting ready to leave for epcot so we were like "lets go for it" so we sprinted the 10 feet to get to the next bus and barely made it on. Ok that last little bit was added for dramatic effect it was more of a leisurely walk but anyway so yeah we then went to epcot and first up was this ride called Soarin. Its new to disney and OMG it rocks. It is a simulator but its like hang gliding sim and your sitting on seats where your legs can dangle and then it lifts you up and puts you into this huge movie screen that totally surrounds you. Then you start soarin and its just tooo cool. A definite for anyone who goes to epcot. Next we went on Mission space which was ok. The first part of it was cool where they are launching you into space and then I thought everything else was forced and weak. Nuff said. Then we decided to venture to MGM. Once their we went on the great american movie ride which is very disneyish and pretty cool. Next up was Aerosmiths rocking roller coaster which was also really cool. Think outer limits but with neon road signs instead of pitch blackness and aerosmith music pumping from your head rest. It was pretty cool. After that we went on the tower of terror which was not what I thought it was going to be. It was more like a yo yo than drop zone so we were both quite surprised. After that we did this Drew Carey sound stage thing which just flat out sucked. litterally 12 min in the dark listening to Drew Carey talk. Absolutely weak.

So at this point it was about 4ish and we decided to start making the trek back to Ft lauderdale to get checked in and squared away. Ok the 3 hour drive sucked b/c it rained almost the entire time and when I speak of rain I speak of florida flash flood like rain. SO the drive blew. then we got into FLL and got bombshell #2 dropped on us which was that we had to do another time share, the next morning at 9:30am GRRRRRR I was really pist. SO anyway we were told like 15-20 min to the hotel so we got in our car took our directions and were off. About a half hour later we realized the directions were wic (Language lesson time!!! if you dont know "wic" is what the youth in N. Ireland say and it means rubbish. Rubbish=garbage and in the US we substitue crap for garbage so saying something is wic is like saying its crap but much more fun! Now you try to use it in a sentence!) and despite the fact that we were not lost we were most certainly not where we wished to be. SO we figured out what to do and finnaly made it to the hotel. Again we were promised meals at this hotel and we got checked in and then went to get some dinner. It was just shy of say 9:00 pm and guess what the restaurant closes at 9pm! I was like your joking right and the chick was like uh no. SO we were very mad and very very hungry so off to find someplace to eat dinner. Ok in case you were ever thinking of going to FLL dont. Its just that simple. all that is their are bitter old people. We drove for like 20 min and finnaly stopped at this place that we effectionaltly called "The Steak Monarchy" i.e. burger king. And grapped a bite. Then on our way back lisa is like hey we passed a cvs you want to stop and get something for dessert? Im like sure sounds good. SO we pop over to cvs and its about 9:59 now and guess what???? CVS closes their at 10 pm!!! 10 friggin PM. SO we are really cheesed at this point and go back to the hotel. I discover thye have a candy vending machine and well yeah. I go and get change and we blew about 5 bucks in the vending machine and just laughing our heads off over what we are doing and how we are like little kids buying tons of candy. SO we scoot back to the room and eat snickers and skittles and m&m's and all that kind of good stuff. After that we went to sleep. Now I didnt know if I would put the next part in this post or not but im going to. At about 3:30am we hear the door next to ours slam shut and a woman scream in terror. Then for the next 2.5 hours we got to hear a drunk couple argue and slam doors. Let me tell you it was lots of fun. LOTS. then around 6am she locked the dude out and he proceeded to bang on the door for a half hour cussing her out before he went and slept it off under a palm tree or on the beach who knows. SO our first night in FLL totally blew! But things are going to get better so dont feel too bad for us. Thats all for now.

Cheers!