CATCHING UP ON OLD POSTS
I had to laugh this morning as I was going through the last couple of posts I had and one of them was where I very briefly wondered who I would vote for. Well, that was way back in January and I was hoping to back Mitt Romney. In two months, McCain sealed the deal and wrapped up the nomination. On the Democratic side of the things, Hilary is still fighting tooth and nail with Obama to get the nomination. Most people have said there's no way for her to get the nomination because Obama already has way more delegates than her and her only out is to get the SUPER delegates (don't ask me what they are - but here's a link anyways) to cast their ballots for her instead of Obama. Regardless, McCain will have about a 10 month jump on them with his campaign while Obama and Clinton burn their money trying to get the other to submit.
I will never voted for Hilary and I still haven't heard enough substance from Obama to vote for him. McCain right now is the best bet for me. Unless Obama can give me something more to go on with what he will do with illegal immigartion, the war and the economy, I'm going to stick with McCain.
Alright kids, I know I've been talking about for a while and I've seen all the other kids do it, so here's goes nothing. . .
My first YouTube video!!
This one is Jake Brown. Most people only know him from his slam at the X-Games last summer when he basically fell about 5 stories and walked away. Yeah he did some serious damage to his body including a broken wrist and arm, broken vertebrae and a bruised liver. Not to mention a pretty serious concusion.
Before the X-Games and all the coverage he got from his slam, he had this part in the Blind video which was shot at the DC Ramp. As you can see in the clip, the kid completely rips it up. After seeing this part, my jaw wa laying on the ground for about five minutes.
Anyways, onward to more importat things.
My son showed up for Spring Break and I decided was just going to let him be. Do what he wants, hang out, play his PS2, play on my computer and just let him chill. I decided I wasn't going to set limits and try to keep him in line and see what happens. As I look back now, it was a lot less stressful for both of us. He did play the PS2 and he did spend some time on my computer, but he really managed his time better than I thought he would. I took Monday off so we could spend some more time together. It was fun to go to Game Stop and let him pick out a few games. He brought home his report card and I was really impressed with his progress in the few short months he's been at Hargraves. Personally, I think it has a lot to do with being away from his Mom and learning to be out on his own. He's way more mature than his 13 years would indicate. I'm happy he's found a great environment to thrive in, and it shows in his demeanor and the way we interact with each other now. This summer is going to be the big test. The way things are shaping up, I'm thinking he won't be here for 4 straight weeks, but maybe a week at a time or something where he comes up for a short time, then goes home, then comes back again. I still have to work out the details with his Mom, so we'll see.
As far as work goes, everything is top notch. I hit my number for this month and I pretty much have today off, but hopefully can get a few easy sites to start the month off properly.
The other big news is I'm jumping into the fray and getting my very own
As an ardent non-conformist, I spent a lot of time trying to find something which was even in the same league as the i-phone and couldn't come up with much. I came up with Helio and one of their phones the Ocean. I saw it online and the reviews were okay. They unfortunately use Sprint's network. When I checked out their kiosk in the mall, I was really unimpressed with the phone. It was really small and not very user friendly. The sales person I spoke with told me they were in the midst of transitioning to Verizon's networks, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that ever happening.
The other phone I found was AT&T's Tilt. The phone had pretty much everything anybody would want - except it runs on Windows Mobile. This isn't the dealbreaker, but it gave me pause.
The clincher for the iphone was my co-worker has one and also works in the Apple store at the MOA. He said he could get a good deal on it and since I've seen his in action many times and he knows all the cool programs I should have for it and actually how to use it, I figured he could help me with the learning curve. With the internet and the monthly plan, my bills will be going up, but not tremendously. It should still be relatively manageable.
I'll have to check back in and let you know how its going after I get one - hopefully some time this week. . . .
Here's the pic of the day:
Soccer is coming back around and I'm only playing for one team this summer. I want to log some more mountain biking time this summer and playing with three teams is not going to allow me to do this. Also, the picture reminded of summer and as of right now, its fucking snowing outside which just means soccer, mountain biking or any other spring pursuit is on the back burner for another a few weeks. DAMN YOU OLD MAN WINTER!!
Out.
HOW FAST IT ALL GOES BY YOU
Well, its been several months since my last post and as always there's a ton of stuff going on. Maybe too much even to keep my blog up to date. My new job as a developer has left me little precious time during the day to hop on and write freely for an hour or so. I guess I had it pretty easy as an Account Manager huh? I even had a left over Word Press account I was going to document the process of learning my new job. Yeah, that was cool for about the first week, then I got so swamped I just forgot about trying to keep it up to date. Having more work than hours in the day is a new experience for me. The only reason I have time to write now is I all caught up and waiting for the que to clear a bit so I can go in and vulture an easy site to get over 100% and get another site up to get closer to my monthly goal.
I can see I've learned more in the past few months than the past three years here. Developers definitely have some cool tools they use and seem to know jsut about every corner of the internet. This is really what I was looking for. When I was an AM, it was pretty much up to a handful of people to go out and find cool stuff. I found some unusual stuff, but nothing like the stuff they have down here. One of the other developers showed me a cool music player called Pandora. I use it almost every day now. Between that and my Sirius subscription, I have too much stuff to listen to.
I've kinda cooled my jets on Howard Stern lately, and am completely into the Jason Ellis show on Sirius. The guy is so freaking hilarious, its awesome to listen to him. Whenever I'm having a bad day, I know by 2pm, when Ellis comes on, everything will turn out ok. He has some crazy bits like, "The World's Most Awesome Wednesday's" where they give out a topic and then have people call in and give them nominees and then the listeners can vote. Some of the past topics have been - most awesome job, most awesome sport, most awesome animal. He also has a bit called, "Dude is it gay?" which is pretty funny. People call in with there question and he either hits a bell indicating yes its gay, or they get a buzzer effect which means no they're not gay - its radio gold since Ellis alone makes the call, usually with a brief description either way.
In a nutshell, my job is going awesome and I completely love it. I didn't know how the team would accept me since I don't have near the amount of experience most people on the team have. I found out my manager (who got me the gig) said I fit right in and have been accepted by the rest of the team. She never had any worries I could make it, although I had some doubts myself, but I guess my determination to learn and work hard at all aspects of the job thus far has paid off. I still have a TON to learn and the real skills come when I get cross trained in Desgin Support which is actually programming in CSS. Only time will tell how soon I'll be ready for that.
Everything is still well on the home front. We recently found out we actually signed an ARM (adjustable rate mortgage) back when we purchased our house and my GIF was freaked out since we probably would've gotten crushed in two year when the rate went up. We very wisely re-financed to avoid the impending headache. Our monthly payments only went about $100 per month which was a relief. Of course we close on this mortgage later today.
Soccer is still soccer. I dropped my B level indoor team. There were too many guys and we weren't winning many games. It just got boring after a while. I stuck with my A level indoor team and we finally bounced back this session. Last session we had a lot of close games we should have won. We played both the top teams who were undefeated and lost in the last seconds of one game and we tied the other one. Both games were awesome to experience since they were both really clean games and it was just two really good teams going at it. It was a nice change from all the hack fests I've been used to. Of course before my trip to Whitecap (which I'll detail later in this post) I got drilled along the boards. Its several weeks later and my calf still hurts. Oh well, its all part of the game right?
Right now, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to play for Dunesday again. I'm still bitter I played really well for them and they never gave me any indication they would pick me up and give me a full time spot for their indoor teams or the next outdoor season. I've committed to play with some guys who broke off the old Northland Wolves team from last season. I know we're going to have an awesome team. We have lots of young guys and plenty of guys from the Wolves who I've played with before. This will be my only team I'll be playing for. I want to get out and ride my mountain bike more this summer. Playing for two teams was almost too much last summer and when I did get out and ride, it felt great. I really missed riding last summer.
My winter turned out ok. I wanted to snowboard more, but mother nature really cursed me bad this winter. We had snow, and I did get out once and went to Afton Alps for the day. Of course I did get a new board, and this is when the curse finally took hold. I didn't get out until a few weeks ago when we went to Whitecap. Here's my recap of that trip:
Thursday Night:
We leave Minneapolis about 8pm. Get to the one star hotel The Hurley Inn about midnight. Walk in and immediately greeted by the staff who are apparently half in the bag. Several bar patrons come out and tell us we have five minutes to drop our bags and get to the bar as our first round was on them. I was also asked if I was a pro snowboarder. Weird, but then again, this is Hurley WI.
Get to bar about 1pm, upon our arrival, we're met with a fresh beer. We play a game of darts, are given several free shots and several more drinks, I think we paid for one round total. The bar closes as my buzz is just getting started.
I already know this will be a good trip. Pray for LOTS of snow tomorrow.
Friday:
Get to Whitecap nice and early. Its completly deserted. I figure its just a weekday. My first run sucks. Not even a new board and a fresh wax job can help with the fact Whitecap doesn't groom their trails and the snow is shit. Hard and crusty with icy spots in several places. I'm thinking this was a bad idea to go so late in the season. The weather is overcast, cold and slightly windy. We'll see.
Around lunch time, they finally send out the groomer. We have lunch, and I remember the food at the resort totally sucks. Two undercooked brats, an order of nacho and cheese and a 16oz pop (which I had to pay another $1.50 to get a refill) almost filled me up. My Powerbar helped a little.
After lunch Michelle (Dave's whatever you want to call her) decides she wants to take the "Eagle's Nest" chairlift. Yeah, count me OUT. I meet them on the other side after bombing a run and then walking on the tram trail over to the chairlift. After getting to the top and meeting back up with them, find out she had a panic attack on the way over. I just laughed it off.
They close at 4pm and I'm pretty exhausted. Back to the hotel for some hot tub action and a nice nap.
Friday night:
We eat at a local joint and have pizza. I was actually surprised, the pizza was awesome. We polished off two large pizzas and an order of cheesebread. We go back to the hotel to get ready - it was about 9pm.
We went to several bars and I've realized we've gone too late in the season. Most of the bars have a handful of locals in them and not much else. After several hours of going up and down the mainstreet, and taking in several sub-par strippers, we call it a night. I put back a ton of beers, but am not all that drunk.
We go back to the hotel wondering if we can still catch last call - no chance. We wonder back to the room about 2am. Dave and Michelle stop and have sex for two hours in one of the tanning bed rooms they have at the hotel. I'm awoken at 4am with Dave shouting, "Wake up and look at me!" to which I opened my eyes to the horror of him gyrating his hips and shaking his dick at me from across the room. Without anything close to throw at him, I just passed back out and wondered if tomorrow would be better at Indianhead.
Saturday:
I high hopes for this day and Indianhead didn't disappoint. Freshly groomed trails, not a ton of people around made for a great start to the day. Even the long chairlift rides and several stops didn't matter that much to me. We carved that place to shreds. Indianhead has a great terrain park and I was eager to see if the pipe had been maintained this year. I went a few years back and it was simply awesome. I had such a great time, I was hoping for a repeat performance. I didn't have much time before we took lunch.
Let me just say the food at Indianhead was head and shoulder sabove Whitecap. I had a half pund angus cheeseburger and a heaping pile of fries. I barely finished my burger and hardly touched my fries and I was stuffed. I even got a free refill from the lady at the bar. Then my day got much better. Someone told us the "Bikini Race" was just starting and we better get out to check it out. We headed over and were not disappointed. Dave even got the last girl (a snowboarder no less) captured on his phone as a video - awesome!!
As if the day couldn't get any better, the SUN came out. We rode in the 20+ degree day for the last few hours and it was simply paradise. I split up and rode in the terrain park for about two hours and then headed in around 3pm, totally exhuasted. I knew I better save up some energy for tonight since it was St. Patricks weekend and there would be a lot more people out tonight.
Friday night:
We got back to the hotel and chilled out in the hot tub again and then figured we'd crash for a few hours (like we did the previous night) and then get ready around 9pm again. Ummmmmmmmmm yeah, we crashed HARD and didn't get up till 10:30pm!! We got up and hurried to get ready. We ordered pizza at the bar and then headed out about 11:30pm. We went back to the same bar (The Horse's Corral or something) and there were more people around, but the music was still horseshit. Then played BuckCherry's "Crazy Bith" four times within the first 30 minutes. Michelle wanted to go check out the rest of the bars. We went to virtually every bar and NOBODY, I mean NOBODY was out. The whole town was empty except for this one bar. We went back, had several more drinks and bascially hung out. We lamented on the trip and all agreed, next year, we're going to come up a few weeks earlier.
Sunday:
A lazy ride home was nice. Sunny and in the lower 30's. It was a great day to talk about the trip, the strange things Hurley offered up and lament about next year. Next year. . . . .
No pictures for the day, sorry - I gotta get to lunch!!!
Seacrest OUT.
