Month: December 2004

New Years Eve

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I go back and forth on what I do on New Years Eve. This year I sat at home and just hung out. I haven’t felt that great this week. And to be honest I didn’t really want to do very much. In years past I have done parties, hung with friends, gone to Time Square (twice), done Bourbon Street in New Orleans, and traveled far and wide to ring in the new year with friends. It is nice to just relax at home sometimes. Why does everyone feel compelled to do “something” on new years. My family has been asking “what am I doing”? They don’t understand when I say I want to do nothing.

Here is to a low key (aka restful) new years eve!

What In The World Is Kwanzaa?

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I am told it is Kwanzaa. When thinking about this “holiday” I can’t stop thinking about an episode of Futurama. Bender is talking to “Kwanzaabot” about what gift he is giving out to all the children that year. Kwanzabot’s reply is the traditional Kwanzaa gift. he holds up a book with two kids looking at each other with a bewildered look on their faces. The title of the book is What in the world is Kwanzaa. It was very funny. That whole show is very funny, but I remember that scene. Tried a little while ago to find that scene on the internet and I was unable to. Futurama’s entire X-Mas theme’d episodes are really funny. You should check them out.

So after thinking about the book reference above, Jayson showed me the Official Kwanzaa website. After checking it out for a minute I have come to a conclusion about holiday’s I will observe. First I will say that I respect other people’s believes, and their right to celebrate any holiday they want. I for one am a fan of Festivus. What I have come to believe is that I don’t think I will observe any holiday founded by someone who is still alive. Furthermore if that person was alive at any time in my lifetime I have to question a holiday’s integrity, unless that person was killed and the holiday was formed in his or her honor. For example Martin Luther King day to me is a legit holiday. Mothers & Fathers day’s, not so much. So I guess another rule is if some company somewhere made up the holiday it is just as bad as some guy somewhere doing it. A holiday that the founder has a message on his website (aka Kwanzaa) does not convey to me the long standing legitimacy. But that is just me. I am 30 and I still believe in Santa Clause.

Now anyone that may stumble upon this posting when searching the internet should hopefully realize that any writing like this one that refers to commentary from a cartoon when talking about a holiday should not be taken very seriously. But if you are a whack job, you can feel free to be offended.

Allergy Med’s and Good Food!

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Today I felt horrible. I ran out of my allergy medication Zirtec. I ended up going out and buying over the counter Clariton D, but it will take a while to get in my system. I feel like I have a cold, but it is all due to allergy’s and the dry heat in my apartment. Yesterday was no better. I had a head ache right when I woke up. That is never a good thing. I ended up taking 2 doses of Butabitol to get me through the day and night. At least I was feeling better enough to go out and meet some friends.

Joe was in from Baton Rouge for the a few days visiting his girl friend. Jay, Joe, John, myself and Joe & John’s girlfriends all got together last night for dinner. We hit City Crab. It is right by my office so I didn’t complain. I wasn’t feeling so great so I didn’t splurge on the King Crab legs. They looked good, but I stuck with the cheaper (still very expensive) Crab Cakes. They were great. Most everyone else got the surf n turf. Jay had a salad! We had a good time catching up. Joe went to the Christmas show at radio city tonight. he was then going over to John’s for some Halo. Jay and like 6 other people also went over there. I still wasn’t feeling so great, and I was tired from the craziness all week so I bowed out. I had no good excuse, but I was just tired. Everyone will have to get by fragging others.

Rebuilt My Laptop

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I rebuilt my work issued IBM Thinkpad T40 on Christmas eve. Gus finally returned his old laptop. Since he wiped his hard drive I took the opportunity to upgrade mine. I needed more drive space, and I really needed to wipe my laptop. I had tons of issues with it freezing up on me. It was driving me crazy.

Now that it is rebuilt (well almost) I am still having some issues. I am frustrated with windows, even though I use it almost every day. I haven’t even put on the more obscure software that I have on the Thinkpad so I could see if the system worked fine without them. The answer I got was it works better than before, but not by much.

At least I have double the drive space now. That will keep me in business with VMWare images. With all my Virtual Machines I have stored on my laptop now I still don’t have room for any MP3’s, but this is a work machine anyway:)

Home Entertainment System

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I have been pondering updating my Home Entertainment System for some time now. What that means is getting a new TV. I have a regular Sharp 27″ CRT TV. I have been thinking about taking some money and getting a Plasma or some type of HD TV. Part of me (and Jayson coaxing me) is saying go get a big TV. The realistic side of me is saying that I don’t want to spend the amount needed to get the system I want at todays prices. I also don’t really utilize Digital TV yet so a HD TV may be a waste for me. So for now I am in wait and see mode.

What I have done is got my Tivo Series 2 up and working. I also tinkered with my new desktop computer and am now very happy with my Hauppauge WinTV USB2 Capture Device, and Snapstream’s Beyond TV. I have my ATI remote wonder working so I can sit on my couch and use my TV just like I would use Tivo. At this point I could seriously think about replacing the Tivo with this new solution, but I wont just yet. I also like the ability to capture shows on two different TV’s. The only down side is that I have to change the video resolution on my computer whenever I want to watch TV with Beyond TV. I run my monitor at 1280×1024. The TV can only properly display 1024×768. Not that big a deal, but it is a pain.

What is also good is that my TV Capture system on my computer can save a ton more stuff than my Tivo and I can burn stuff to DVD if I want to archive it. I cannot offload MPEG-2 files of my Tivoed shows now that I have an un-hacked Series 2.

It’s Snowing Outside

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As I sit here writing my Blog I notice it is still snowing. It started snowing a little before we left the movie theater. Now about an hour later there is a sizable dusting of snow on the ground. The sidewalks are covered in snow. The roads are being used enough that no snow has accumulated on them yet. They say there will be up to 2 inches tonight.

I love snow. Being in it, not so much. But watching it snow is cool. Coming in from the snow was always a nice experience. Hot Chocolate, Mmmm. Commuting in snow or other bad weather, not so good. We shall see how living in Manhattan and relying on mass transit that is entirely underground for me goes tomorrow. Should not be a problem, but since I am a realist I am prepared for problems! For now I am finishing up this entry and going to look out the window some more…

Holiday Week Recap

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I could say that I took the week off, and that is why I haven’t posted in a few days. That would not be true, but I could say that. I worked all of last week. I even ran to the office on both friday and Saturday. I had off both days but I had some quick stuff to do so I ran down there for about an hour each day.

Christmas eve I did some rewiring of my TV and computer. I bought RCA cables to hook up my computer video card to my TV and stereo. I can now use Beyond TV on my TV like a Tivo. It actually works really well. More news on that as it develops. I ended up down at Outback with Jayson and Gretchen for dinner. It was empty because it was Christmas eve, but the place was open till 10:30PM. I made it down in record time. The cab powers that be have been kind to me for finding cabs in the freezing cold. Gretchen knows I cannot pass up Outback. Dam her! That was the third time in recent memory that I have dropped what I was doing and went down to Outback because of a phone call. She is not helping my diet. Since I don’t have I diet, I shouldn’t care:) I did have a bloomin onion for the first time in months. It was a good day!

I went to my parents friends house for a Christmas party. it was ok. My family is friends with a bunch of crazy people. I should learn not to trust my mom when it comes to time or how far someplace is. The trip to the party was LONG. traffic was bad. Coming home it was not as bad, but my sister got into a small fender bender. As she was pulling over to the curb to let me out to the subway we hit another car. Some dumb-ass was stopped at the curb, so my sister went to pull in front of them to park and let me out. The dumb-ass begins to move and hits us in the side of the truck. I could see no damage to my sisters cherokee, but the other car had a nice dent and paint off of the bumper by the front headlight. After some “nice” words between the group of us, we exchanged insurance and off we went. Not sure who will be blamed by the insurance company. I think we will, even thought this ass-whole was not moving when we were moving into his lane. At least morgan slept through the whole thing.

As for commuting on the subway on a cold holiday, I was surprised by how quick most of the trains came on Christmas. Maybe I got lucky, but 3 out of the 4 trains I had to catch came quick.

Today I hung out at home. I had work to do on my laptop (see another post on that) and I had to update my checkbook in quicken. What fun. I just got back from seeing meet the fockers with Jayson and Gretchen. I went down to their neck of the woods and we saw it. That movie was stupid but funny.

Lets hope this week will be a calm and q—t. I won’t say the “Q” word. But I am probably wrong about it being “Q”. Why you ask? Because I am thinking it will be.

The Office Holiday Party

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Last Thursday we had our company holiday party. OK I am late on writing about it. So sue me. It was on a boat. Dan had the crazy idea of having a holiday party on a boat sailing around the east river in the middle of December. It was probably not the best idea he has had, but we did have a good time. It goes to show you that you can party anywhere. It was rocky, cold, and did I mention rocky? I am cranky thinking about the party because I got a head ache. It was actually a good time had by most. I had to take a butabital for my head ache so I was in no mood to drink. I also tried to eat, but had nothing. The rocking of the waves, the lights on the dance floor and the loud music did not agree with my head.

The view from the river was fantastic. We mainly sailed in circles by the South Street seaport area of downtown, and then by the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges. It was nice. It was more choppy in the Hudson river by Chelsea Peers than it was where we cruised most of the night.

Kai came down. He had a good time but I didn’t see him most of the night. Jayson got really drunk. Danny got drunk but I could not tell that he did. He said he had a decent amount. Linus got so drunk he didn’t come in the next day. Like I said fun was had by all. I missed last years party because I felt sick and went home early, so this party was catchup for me. Figures I missed the year that I won an award at the party! I did make the company top ten list. I think that was a good thing?

Next company party will be the we are profitable party. Hopefully sometime in February!

Only Good Thing Today

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I forgot to mention the only good thing that happened today. Last night I went over to Jayson’s and we hit the Bed Bath & Beyond by his house. Sounds exciting right? Well actually it was. I got 2 sets of chocolate filled alcohol. If you haven’t had any I suggest you get some. It is bite sized chocolate in the shape of bottles with different alcohol’s in them. Very tasty. You can only find them during the holiday’s. Jay, Cari, AJ, & Danny ate a box today after work. I have another one at home to savor. Danny is getting another box so we can have more later in the week.

Hanukah But Late

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Went to my sisters today for a Hanukah brunch.  If you are Jewish, or if you keep track of holiday’s you may be saying "wasn’t that last week"?  Yes, yes it was.  My sister was in Jamaica (the island, not queens) for vacation so we had a get together when they got back.  Morgan had tons of presents, and wanted to play with all of them.  That kid is too cute for her own good.

I got a bottle of Gentleman Jack (Daniel’s) out of their trip.  It is my favorite, but I am not a shot drinker like I used to be.  Whenever anyone in my family goes somewhere I always end up with a bottle of alcohol.  I may have done too much spin on my drinking habits with them, because I have a full liquor cabinet of stuff from vacations.  I am not complaining.  I actually just finished off my last bottle of Gentleman Jack, so this new one is now in my freezer.

After my sisters I went over to Gretchen and Jay’s to hang out for a bit.  It was a nice weekend day…