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!

Sept 5th part 1

Ok i am now in columbus for another day or so and I do have my laptop with me and net access in my room but I have like 15 min till my next session here so to kill time I thought I would try to get something about the next day up and then maybe finish it off tonight. SO here we go!

Got up on monday morning and both lisa and I were feeling pretty good. We went to disney on monday and decided to try and maximize our time their by getting to the parks when they first opened. Lisa has never been to animal kingdom so thats where we started. WE got their a little before 9am parked and started making out way in. Two things that are worth noting. The first is that Paul has a friend at a disney store who hooked us up with 1 day park hopper passes!!!! thats like a around I forget like $150-180 in ticket costs that we got for free. SO our trip to disney cost us a whopping 8 dollars. Quite the bargain. The second uber cool thing was that well ok let me digress for a second. I think segweys are pretty cool and if you dont know what one is well crawl out from under the rock your sitting under and google it. They are sweet, however I have never seen one in person. Well guess what disney is using for parking lot management now???? If you guessed segway your right. If you guessed something else then you know me really well and know that I can go off on tangents that have absolutely nothing to do with what I am talking about. ASIMO ROCKS!!! Anyway so I got to see a bunch of people zoooming around on segways and that was sweet. SO we got checked in at animal kingdom and first up we rode the new Dinosaur ride which was pretty cool. Pretty much every disney ride has to have a story and the story for it was pretty funny. Next up was, in my mind the best ride of that park, Its tough to be a bug. Ok I guess its more of a show but its a 3d show featuring Flick from a bugs life and other bugs. It was by far the cutest thing we saw and had the best story of anything. 3d stink bug effects with smell is awesome and gross all at the same time! After that we went on the safari ride which was really really cool. We got to see lions and tigers and bears oh my! Well ok no tigers or bears but their were giraffs and hippos and rhino's and lots of other cool stuff. Side not we were sitting next to a japanese couple that were on their honeymoon. Probably lisa and my age and guess what. I was darker then both of them! WOOT for easily tanning! SO at that point we had done all we wanted to do their and we were just at about 10:45am so we were right on schedule. The weather was awesome and the parks were really empty. Longest wait we had was 45 the whole day and on average our waits were 15 min or less so that helped us to be able to hop parks and get a lot in. Well I got 5 min so im going to jet but look for part 2 later today.

Cheers!

Sunday Sept 4th

Ok so we went to sleep and all that jazz and then in the morning we had selected a PCA church to attend. I would provide the name and url for the church but I dont have much good to say about it and I do not feel that publicly bad press is appropriate so I will say this. It was a very mainstream contemporary church and one of the reasons that I dislike the PCA as a denomination. I really dislike the fact that you have no clue what you are going to get when you step into a church. SO the service went something like this. IT started (however their was no call to worship mind you) and we sang what seemed like a million praise choruses (yuck). Then people got up and said who they knew that was affected by Katrina and we prayed and sang another million or so choruses. Then the pastor gave his "sermonette" and it was pretty weak. then we sang a bit more and at the end we bolted. We had about as much as we could take. On the drive over to our next appointment I told lisa that during the service I had come to a conclusion and I will share it here. I realize I might offend some people but im sorry its how I feel. What I said was this. "The only thing that praise choruses/hymns have taught me is that we as a people are becoming less reformed in our thinking and that our understanding of God and who he is, is increasingly becoming cloudy and watered down." This point became ever so much more clear to me this past sunday when we sang the hymn "And can it be" and I was singing and thinking that this one hymn had more accurate doctrine and theology then the entire service we sat through and it saddened me. SO anyway moving on. Next up Time Share with Eddie! We were told / threatened that we had to do this thing on sunday b/c their were no other times available and that if we didnt we would be penalized monetarily. SO we went. OITS. can you say almost 4 hours later we were finally getting out of it. IT was absolutely awefull I just kept thinking about how the weather was wonderfull outside and we were stuck in Eddie's car driving around Orlando being told how fantastic a deal we would be getting. On a side note he showed us a little town in the middle of orlando called "celebration." Celebration is supposed to be the realization of a dream that good ol Walt Disney had many many years ago. What it is in reality is more of a perverted nightmare I think. SO first up the dream. A place for people who work in the disney parks to be able to live and have all their needs taken care of for them. The Nightmare is that its a super hyper upperclass snot ville with their own hospital, fire/police department, k-12 school and college. Almost everything is mickey themed from the lake which is shapped like mickeys head to the movie theater which also shares similar mickey features. The homes almost all start around 1 million and go up from there and get this. All landscaping and grounds work for all property is provided from the town. why? they want it to all look uniform. SO the whole town has a bit to perfect look to it. Oh but dont turn around b/c then you will see the 8-10' high concrete wall that surrounds the city. SO in general I thought the whole thing was uber creepy. One kewl thing about the town is that they are electric car friendly so many of the vehicles that residents drive around town are electric. And every parking spot has an outlet so you can charge your car. I thought that was pretty cool. Oh and segways are street legal vehicles. That Rocks. However the place still creeps me out. However we did get to see two cool houses. The first was Tiger woods house which was pretty cool and then we saw this house that was an exact replica of the barbie mansion and that was again super creepy. SO we really ran out of the Time share thing and I could go on with more details about it but in all honesty im trying to forget them myself. Ok so then we finally got back to the hotel and we got to spend some time by the pool. We laid out for a bit and then we sat in the shade and continued to read our books and that was absolutly wonderfull. I was reading "I am the cheese" which lisa wanted me to read and she was reading "microcerfs" which I wanted her to read so that was cool. We then got some dinner and decided to go over to this resort hotel that is really awesome down there called Gaylord Palms. Its huge and the whole center area has lots of cool stuff like an indoor aligator preserve and a full size yacht that has been converted into seating for a restaurant. SO we went their and it was the last day of this thing called summerfest so we got to just walk in and watch some really cool shows featuring some very talented gymnasts and then we walked around a bit. Then we left and went back to the hotel and got some sleep.

Well thats it for Day #2

Gaming update -- It has been suggested that I take a break from FF games so I am going to start playing part 1 of .hack while at OEDSA, which I leave for today. SO Luke and Steve there ya go im stepping away from FF for awhile. I hope your happy!

Until tommorow cheers! Oh and yeah I will start posting pics as relevant. Probably tommorow b/c I just got them off the camera last night.

Were Back!

Well in short Lisa and I are back. We got back without incident on saturday and in general had a good time. I think I am going to over the next few days give a wrap up of each day of our vacation so that all you funky folk can get a taste of what we did. SO here goes

September 3rd.

Ok yes we got up at the Butt Crack of dawn. Actually I think it was before the butt crack of dawn b/c it was 3:50am and wow that sucked. Oh and what time did we go to bed the night before??? about 12:30 am. SO as you can see we did not get much sleep that night. SO our flight was supposed to leave about 5:45am and we got to the airport aruond 4:45am, Thanks Paul for driving us! We were flying Air Tran which I have not flown on in awhile and well let me tell you I really like them now. In almost all of their planes they have XM radio available in every seat which kicks major music booty. SO for the flight to Atlanta I kicked it on XM channel 81 BPM and was very very happy. SO we touch down in Atlanta and have typically had to sprint from one concourse to another to make out connection b/c our flights have almost always been late. Not with Air Tran. We were right on time and had our full 50 min to leisurly walk from one concourse to the next. We checked in at our gate. Waited about 10 min and walked on the plane. Sheer flying bliss! The plane from ATL to FLL did not have XM so that was a downer but hey I had my ipod so no foul right! SO we touch down in FLL and we are on schedule its about 9:30 am now and we are both feeling pretty good. Next came picking up the rental car. WOW it was in a entirely different building then the airport and we had to take a bus to get there. Then once their it took about an hour to get our car and get on our way! Thats waaaayyy to frickin long. Why did it take so long???? B/c the counter agent kept trying to scare me into buying Alamo's car insurance. "the roads here are very dangerous, lots of old people and teenagers" I really thought he was going to tell me that I would be involved in an accident this week and that if I didnt buy their insurance I would die a horrible fiery death. In any event I kept saying no and we proceeded to "pick out" our car. Yes in the weirdest rental I have ever done they have all their cars in the garage with the keys in them. You go to the class that you paid for and then pick out your car. WE had 3 choices. Silver chevy cavalier, red cavalier, gold sunfire. Lisa said she wanted the red cavalier so thats what we took. And away we went! SO next we started our three hour drive to orlando! WOW it was a lot of traveling that day. SO we got about half way their and we both started to crash big time. SO we stopped and had some lunch and got a shot of caffeine which helped me finish the drive. SO we arrive in Orlando and go to the (not so) welcome center and get all our vouchers and crap and their we get bad news #1. Our Timeshare speel is going to be sunday at 12:30pm. DOH! SO we were not happy about that but were like ok fine. SO then we went and checked in and went up to our room which was still being prepped by housekeeping. SO we waited for like 10 minutes and then the chick was gone and working in another room so I went and asked if she was done in our room. And in very broken english she said "uh yeah" SO we went in and I said he its nice out lets go to the pool and lisa said hey im freaking exhausted lets take a nap and then go to the pool and I said ok that works. 1.5 hours later we wake up and guess what? Hellacious thunderstorm is going on outside so no sitting by the pool soaking up the sun : ( Oh well we got adventurous and put on our anoraks and walked around the area a bit in the rain. Saw a lot of really cheap souveniers and a bunch of really awefull t-shirts like "keep laughing this is your girlfriends shirt" or FBI Female Breast Inspector. Ahhh Florida is so classy! SO after that we got some dinner and pretty much chilled in the room and recovered from the day of traveling. And so ends Day #1. Oh as a side note the hotel was ok but in many ways it was a dump. For example their was this really large picture in our bathroom (who puts pictures in bathrooms?) and it was too big for the wall it was on. Like it hung off the edge of the wall by like 2" SO im like hmmm thats odd so I lift the pic up and WOW huge hole in the wall behind it. SO again classy!

Well thats it for day 1

Cheers!

Blogging faster than I ever have before

Yeah thats right you heard me. And you know what it came my new machine came. Im still waiting on the monitors but its here and although its not in production yet so to speak I do have it set up next to my other computer so that I can start migrating stuff from one machine to the other. This thing kicks major booty so WOOT!

In other news....Lisa and I leave for vacation tommorow at the butt crack of dawn! No really our flight leaves dayton at 5:45am and we should hit the groun in Ft. Lauderdale around 9:30ish providing we make out connecting flight in orlando which I think we should. Weather looks really good for tommorow and I think we are just about the first flight up in the morning so we should not have to wait for a plane or anything. SO BOO YEAH! Anyway like I was saying im "un-plugging" for the week or at least im going to try to. I think checking e-mail is still going to be neccesary to some degree but that means I may have some time to blog. However I am not bringing any of my own hardware so I will be limited to what I can find in the hotels and what not. Which should be ok. Well anyway See everyone in a week and have a great time!!!

Cheers!