That'll do pig....That'll do.

Ok so first off I have to say that today I got an instant message that I was totally not expecting. A really good friend of mine whom I had lost contact with many many years ago. Like were talking pre-lisa days popped up and said hi! And my blog is to thank for it. I have to say my primary motivation for starting this thing was the hopes of connecting with friends I had lost touch with and so far it has worked twice for that purpose and I have not even had this site up for 6 months so thats just more motivation for me to keep posting my random musings on work and life! SO who is the mystery Friend??? A guy by the name of Payton Gauldin. We chatted for a bit and I come to find out he is a comic book letterer and graphic artist you can check out his work here. SO that was really cool and neat. I have Payton to thank for getting me into Video games. He was the only kid I knew growing up who had a home console and he always had the latest and greatest consoles with the hottest games! He got me hooked on Gameboy and was the reason I got my first one. He also gave me and my brothers all of his old atari consoles and games which he probably wishes he hadnt done now and which I wish we had the forsight not to get rid of. SO go check out his sight and see the stuff he has done. It sounds like hes working on some pretty hot comics right now and some cool upcoming projects!

Ok now I have the pleasure of doing something that well, Probably isnt that significant to most people but I think its pretty cool. I would like to introduce cyber space to Jenny Wright.


She is the daughter of some really good Friends of ours Chris and Kerry Wright. Jenny is their first and a really sweet baby. We got to hang out with them for a week while they were hurricane refugees a few weeks back. There was lots of Xbox playing (D&D Heroes) and very little crying on anyones part and we had a really good time with them. Heres a shot of Jenny with her proud parents.


Kerry is a cool tempered level 18 Dwarf Cleric, while Chris is a level 19 Human Warrior who mostly resembles the incredible hulk in terms of sounds made and level of inteligence. Im guessing that in a few years Jenny will join the scene as a elven rogue but perhaps she will make a fine wizard yet. In any event she will have to watch out for her mom's #1 treasure stealing trick, otherwise known as burst of speed! So a long overdoo congrats to the two of you and we really did have a lot of fun getting to know Jenny.

Misc. updates

I feel old b/c my back is sore from playing close to 9 holes of golf yesterday. Yes Luke and I finaly made it out on the links (ok thats a huge stretch) yesterday and wow I play as bad as I remember. Our scores were really awesome had we been playing a regulation size course and not a par 3 course but hey those are small details. What matters is we left with the same # of balls we came with and that is important on so many levels. ^_^

Well its friday and almost 1pm. I have 3 hours of work till the weekend and then its rest time. Or finish house project time. probably the later. SO I will talk to you all later

Oh I talked to the director about my computer. He said to spec one out for his approval and i turned it into him. heres what I picked

intel pentium D @2.8ghz DUAL CORE BABY!!!!
80 gig SATA drive @7200 RPM
Gig ethernet
Dual 17" flat tube crts
1 freaking big Gig of RAM

I have yet to get the ok but im getting my hopes up! I will let you guys know if I get to order it or not.

Cheers!

Im as confused as the rest of you???

Yeah so I have not posted in a bit but mostly b/c I have not had much to say. But at the risk of the blog becoming stale and old and not worth checking I am posting for the sake of posting!!! SO whats up with me since last I posted. Well like I said earlier not much. I guess I will do my patented bulleted list that everyone hates so much so that I can address things that I have been doing.

Motor Bike -- Chopped the fender off! I need to do some sanding but it already looks a lot better. I think I took like 8" off of it. Now I just need to get a small clear light for the rear - mount the leds - and put it all back together. I should be done with it before hmmm X-mas?

My Car -- Yeah I know its like wow no posts about the VW in like a month. Well Its running really well but somebody in the wonderfull downtown area of dayton thought it would be funny to kick in one of my turn signals. SO that sucks and I have to now buy a new one. Its like 35 bucks plus a bulb which is not bad but still very annoying.

House Stuff -- I am trying to be a better hubby and complete stuff around the house. I am great at getting stuff say 90% complete but that last 10% just never seems to happen. SO im going around and trying to finish stuff. On monday I reset our mailbox. WOW monday was really hot and yeah first I had to pull the mailbox out of the ground which was not that hard since it was not placed well at all. Then I had to dig a new hole about 2-3' deep with a post hole digger. That was not fun at all. But hey I got it done and set and now it is not hanging towards the street at a funky angle. Its actually straight! Then tuesday I filled in the old hole and cleaned up the mailbox from all the dirt I got on it. Tonight I am going to finish the wiring for my invisible puppy fence! And to answer your question NO the fun never stops at the Knodel place!

Games -- Have not had much time to play but have managed to get to basically the end of the FF-X. I am at the critical junction for most players of Final Fantasy. Last night I kicked the snot out of Yunalesca and now im going to get the airship. Once I get the airship I will be at that point in the game where I can either go and beat the shizzle out of Sin. ORRRR I can go back and fight stuff and level up more and complete quests that I did not do and what not. Right now im at 45 hours of game time and I am halfway through my guide book. the other half is stuff I could do now that I have the airship. SO im torn. Do I try to take on Sin now. finish the game and move on to X-2 or do I try to hang out in Spira a little more? Let me know what you think.

Music -- Ok I if anyone is still reading I keep hearing about podcasts and I was like ok fine I will give it a shot. I downloaded my first podcast yesterday and have been listening to it today. I was kind of dissapointed in the selection of podcasts. It keeps being touted as radio on the go and what not. But it seems more like talk radio or people just being weird. For example I typed in trance for my search term and I got 4 podcasts that came up. Only one of them was music. Thats the one I downloaded and its not even trance! It really a mix of trance, electronica, and IDM. Which is cool but its not quite what I was thinking it would be. However the DJ did play aphex twin and Bjork back to back and well I have not listened to either of them in a long time and since I am one of the 5 people in the world who like Bjork and Aphex Twin enough to have bought CD's (yes multiple of each) I think its time break those out again and give a listen. Right now I want to hear "come to daddy" by Aphex Twin and "Human Behavior" by Bjork If you have never heard Either of them well Bjork is one crazy Icelandic chick who is like the god-mother of modern techno and Aphex Twin. Well That cat is crazy if you are willing to open your mind to what you think you define music as and give something a chance then you can listen to Aphex Twin. If you cant then dont even bother asking me to hear it because you will not like it.

Well I think I've droned on long enough and will call it quits for today.

Cheers!

Quick Rantage

Ok so everyone who knows me knows that I am not one to complain. In genereal I just do what I am told or find what needs to be done and I just do it. Heck I should be in a nike commercial. It could fade in and show a busy office building. All around are people talking and yelling asking questions looking for direction. Then in a lone cube in the bowels of the building would be one lone worker the sound of voices would fade away and a deep bass thump would slowly kick in and lead into a killer high energy trance track then the camera would pan above the cube and all you see is me working away. No talking, no whining, no what am I supposed to do now. Just me working and then the swoosh and the just do it tag would come up underneath and then everything else but the logo would fade to black. Of course I would be adorned in Nike's new yuppie wear but thats all beside the point. SO back to my rantage the other day a co-worker called me up to their office b/c of a computer problem. This is common and not a big deal. It turns out her CMOS battery was dead so everytime she shut her computer down the next time she turned it on it would have to reset a lot of settings and she would have to reset her clock. Nothing major just majorly annoying. SO I told her that and she says "doesnt surprise me that computer is two years old." Something at this moment hit me but I didnt say anything I just kept that thought in my mind. You see we here at my office are supposed to be on a 3 year pc retirment scheme and why this statement that she made was so interesting to me is that we both got our pcs at the same time. Yes they arrived the same day. I can just hear everybody now. WOW your computer is 2 years old big whoop. ha ha ha. no no no. I am still using the same computer since I first started working here. SO im on the one before this employees one that is 2 years old. SO let me run down some differences for the techies here

My pc is the only Gateway left in use.
Everyone else is using Dell's

My pc is running a PIII 733 mhz cpu
Everyone else is running PIII 2.0 Ghz or higher

My pc has a 15 gig hard drive
Everyoen else has at least 40 gigs

my pc is 2 months away from being 5 years old
everyone else's is less than 3 years old.

I am the only one in the building not using an LCD flat panel monitor. Even our computer lab has LCD's

SO why have I slipped through the cracks? Why has everyone else been upgraded and not me? I think the reason is that I dont complain. I just do my work. if my computer is running like crap I fix it and make it run better. I dont walk around the halls aimlessly waiting for people to ask me what im doing so I can say. Oh my computer shut down again and it takes like 15 min to reboot so I thought I would go for a walk. No I just do it. But im starting to think that the whole squeeky wheel getting the grease thing is not such a bad idea. I think i might talk with my director about my pc. B/c it is running dreadfully slow nowadays. And my memory has more leaks than the titanic. OMG. I have 512 MB of Ram but I think I lose almost half of that to memory leaks. Its crazy how this thing cant free a resource!!!!! Anyway so thats my rant. I think over the next week I am going to think about how to approach my Director and politely ask for a budget for a new machine and go from there. I will let you all know what and if I get anything.

cheers!

Say Hello...

Does it ever happen to you that you get a song stuck in your head and it just kinda shapes your mood for the whole time your thinking about it. That kinda thing happens to me a lot especially with Techno /Trance music. Every so often I hear a track that really gets into me, if that makes sense, and it just starts to shape me a little bit. Well the current track has a story for me. I first heard it maybe a month ago on a Judge Jules set from BBC Radio. And well the tracklisting wasnt working and unless you are following along with the set its hard to know where Jules is when the track you want comes up. SO I had no clue what the track was but I knew I liked it. SO I have also lately been on a kick for anything either Paul Van Dyke or Ibiza related and I found a closing set from Van Dyke at least years Ibiza so I downloaded it. Well its like 3.5 hours long of techno/trace goodness and I was thrilled beyond belief that this set had the track thats been haunting me. SO now I had it and could listen to it whenever I wanted but it was embedded in this really long set, so I still wanted it but had no clue what the track title was or who it was by. Well about a week ago I was listening to Digitally Imported radios vocal trance channel and the track came up. WOOT! I was able to finally to get the track information. SO if your interests are piqued at all now the name of the track is 'Say Hello' and its by a Deep Dish.

Check this link to watch the video and hear the song. Let me know what you think!

and the next time you see me dont forget to Say Hello

Cheers

The Downfall Of Tom, The End Of Oprah!

Ok I used to be a BIG Tom Cruise fan but lately well not so much. He has really gotten away from the style of movie that really IMO "fit" him well and is now producing quite a lot of crap. Also using other actresses as a publicity stunt to boost his career loses major points with me. Now on to Oprah. While on her own she is quite a dynamic woman their is still something about her that keeps me suspect. Although I will pay her this compliment. I think if she tried to run for President of the USA she would have a better chance of winning than any black man or white woman before her. I really think she could win and be not only the first Woman president but the first Black president as well. I think she has that much commercial power and I don't know a single woman who does not like Oprah. SO like I said I'm always watching her wondering what exactly she is trying to do.

SO that's why the clip above is so joyous to me. I get to see a waning actor lose control of all things sane and kill someone that I think could be apart of a larger conspiracy. So enjoy!

Cheers!

5 days of work makes one weak!

Ok so yeah i think I mentioned before that things were going to start getting busier for me and well yeah I am about to reach critical mass. At least thats how I feel. July is going to be CA-RAZY and it all starts next tuesday. The whats even better is that I keep getting more stuff dumped on me. WOOO HOOO and despite the fact that higher ups keep talking about hiring someone to take over my lesser duties and help out the net team nothing happens. Sigh. SO whats cool about this week??? Had monday off for the 4th which was nice. To quote Apu

"Celebrate your countries independance by blowing up a small part of it!"

And thats pretty much what we did. I really wish we had a camera because the highlight of the evening went something like this.

m-100 + pudding cup = gleefull schoolgirl fun!

Oh yeah we launched a pudding cup about 15' in the air and it was spectacular! I also learned that all fireworks are more exciting when combined with either food or put into a metal trash can. JOY! SO that was monday tuesday was work and stuff same with Wed as well. Oh On Saturday I put in our invisible fence and we started training the pups. Pika's getting it Toshi isnt. Hes such a smart dog and is already avoiding the barrier flags. Toshi on the other hand I think is going to require feeling the full power of the force I mean fence before she realizes what she needs to do.

SO that brings us to today. Friday. I love fridays. Anyway I finnaly graded all my finals, well all but two and you know who you are! SO those and the grades will go out in the post tommorow. My star student Nicole Hust won the wrinkly Brain award for the year so im sure she will be excited about that. Hopefully everyone else will feel inferior to her 1337 computing skillz and wish beyond wishes to be as 1337 as she. SO other than that not much just lots of work and then working with the pups on the fence. Oh I did accomplish a major thing today. I was able to get my motorcyle helmet on my head while my headphones remained in my ears!!!! Tunes while I rode to work. Its amazing how music makes things so much better. Well I guess I should try to do something since im still at work but the problem is I need to do stuff away from my desk and since I am one of the only people left I have to sit here and answer the phones and wait for people to show up for apointments. SO that greatly limits my productivity.

Well I hope everyone has a great weekend. Cheers!

Big Weekend!

Well this weekend was only alright for me but it was Huge for Lisa and Sara. About a year ago (I think it was october 04) Lisa and Sara started talking about doing Locks Of Love together. Well the time was set to do it before Sara went off to College but she was getting a little nervous about if she didnt like it and wanting some time for it to grow out. And I also think she really wanted a hair cut. SO she talked lisa into doing it this past weekend instead of in a month or so. Heres the before Shot!



Now Lisa and Sara have Always had long hair. the shortest Lisa's has ever been is layerd that started at shoulders and went a little below and Sara has had hers mid back so this was a totally HUGE change for both of them. If you dont know in order to do locks of love you have to give a min of 10" and heres what that looked like for my two girls.



Lisa said her ponytail was about 2xs as thick as Sara but they were almost the exact same color so I guess sara can look forward to thick hair or she is blest with what shes got. Heres another pic thats closer so you can see the style better that they got.



I think they both turned out really great and am very proud of both of them for making a sacrifice so that someone who has lost their hair could have some. I know lisa is not real happy with hers and I think sara still doesnt know what to think of her cut but like I said I think they are both really cute and came out really well. SO if you see either of them or feel like dropping them a line let them know they did a good job. I think they are planning on doing it again in another year or so. That is if Sara doesnt fall in love with her new style and not want to give it up ^_^

Cheers