Entertainment

Black Friday

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Yesterday was black friday. The busiest shopping day of the year. As a rule for most of my adult life I attempt to avoid malls and most stores between Thanksgiving and New Years. I can buy stuff (gifts, etc) online. I cannot stand the crazy crowds at the store.

Today I got up early to head to the office (yes I had the day off, but jay and I needed to kill some time). Jay had to package some stuff up of his to ship, and we needed to kill some time till we went to my dad’s to fix his computer. On the way we hit the Best Buy near work to check out the “one day only” sales they had. We got there like 11AM and the store was mobbed. We saw how long both main checkout lines were and we were out of that store in 2 minutes.

Jay and I rebuilt my dad’s computer. Didn’t fix his problem. I got the Treo 300 he has to sync 9 out of 10 times. The 10th time (or so) it crashes still. Instead of a blue screen it just reboots itself. I totally removed his epocrates sync software. That crashed the computer all the time. I am trying to convince him to maybe look at a newer palm. The Treo 300 is running version 3.5x of the palm os. My Treo 600 that is not even the newest out there anymore is running palm os 5.2x something. So far he is not ready to change.

We hung out at my parents for a while, saw my niece. She was stingy with the hugs today. Dam kids. She did give me a hug and kiss goodbye. She salvaged her Hanukkah, lucky girl:) We headed back to Long Island City to return Jay’s dad’s car. We hit the white castle. Mmmm white castle. I never go there, but it is good.

Ended up the night hanging out at his place, and then Gretchen, Jay, and I went to see Christmas with the Kranks. it was funny, if not predictable. Nice entertainment. I just got home a little while ago.

Jay and Gretchen are off to hunt for a Super Walmart tomorrow. They are going to do food shopping / Christmas shopping. They wanted me to go, but I was not up for a long car ride. I was out Thursday and Friday, so I want to lay around today (it is early Saturday morning). I know I have no reason to feel this way, but sometimes I feel like a third wheel when hanging around with them. I need a girlfriend, that is probably why I feel that way. I know gretchen doesn’t mind me hanging out (she would tell me if it did bother her), but sometimes I get self conscious and think differently. And since they read this, I wont get sappy!

It is late, and I am not tired. Man my sleep habits are going to be messed up by the end of this weekend…

Halo 2 Day

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I was sitting around on a Saturday afternoon like I normally do, and the funniest thing happened. I got calls from 2 people to have plans. Now I like having friday to unwind. I usually go out friday night, so Saturday is the day of rest for me. I have been going on Sunday’s, so I relax Saturday. Well jayson wanted to go shopping. I was all set to do that when John called and wanted me to play Halo. I decided to let Jay and Gretchen go shopping and I would frag (really get fragged) by John, Dave, and one of John’s friends.

We played Halo 2 for like 5 or 6 hours. it was fun. I get tunnel vision head aches when I play, but I still have fun. John has a 42″ plasma that we play on. I suck at first person shooters. I used to be good at Half Live but that was back in 2000. Even then Jay and John could still wipe the floor with me.

All around a geeky day, but I had fun. We ordered in and hung out. We were all going to head back to the city and goto a bar, but when we got to the door everyone realized that it was raining out. Fearing melting everyone bailed out of the trip, so I just went home. Everyone else went back in to play some more. I headed back to Manhattan since the subway run’s less frequently later at night, especially on the weekends.

SAW

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Today I spent time moving files to my new desktop. That is still going on. it will be a while before that machine is fully configured. Tonight I meet up with Cari and went to Outback for dinner. I tried their fried shrimp entr?(c)e. It was good.

We then hit the heartland brewery to wait for Gretchen and Jayson so we could all goto a movie. We were originally going to see the Incredibles. Unfortunately we are all retarded and didn’t buy tickets ahead of time. All the shows were sold out. In my defense I did say we should order them online before hand but got mocked by Cari for it. We ended up a different theater to see Saw. That movie was just disturbing. it was a great plot. Some of the acting was terrible though. Some crazy stuff in that movie. I won’t ruin it for anyone but it was just disturbing, but a cool kind of disturbing. Kind of like From Hell. it was crazy, graphic, and yet you sat there and took it all in!

Plan for later this week is to try and see the Incredibles.

Going To The Movies

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A bunch of us from work are getting together later to see the new movie from the guys who made South Park. I honestly don’t remember the name. I just remember everyone says it is very vulgar and not politically correct. That makes me want to see it. I am lazying around my apartment until we are meeting up.

I woke up with a head ache today so I took a furiset. I am feeling better now but I will need to take another one near the start of the movie if the drugs wear off and I still have a head ache. These are the type of days where I DO get migraines. It is cool outside, but not cold. It is stifling in the apartment, and I am inside right now. This is the exact change of weather situation that gets me sick. I hate it. It is my demon I need to keep in check. I don’t want to have to cancel so I am medicating early. When I am home on a weekend I tend not to take any drugs. It usually leads to bad consequences, but I take the medications enough during the week that keeps me working and a normal functioning person in society. That is why on weekends (my time) I try not to medicate if needed. Unfortunately I end up canceling on plans allot since I refuse to medicate sometimes. My dad says I am crazy, but I get scared sometimes about getting a “habit” to some of these medications. Some of the stuff I take is pure pain medication. I could see how easy it is to get used to taking them.

Welcome to world! Just spoke to Cari, and Jayson. They are both in for the movies. Danny is even coming in from Staten Island. I am off to Jays in a little bit to hang out before the movie…

After Work Scrabble

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After work Cari convinced me to goto Dan’s and hang out. They were playing Scrabble. I was invited earlier by Dan and Jenn but I passed. Cari talked me into it since I had a terrible busy day. I ended up playing a round of Scrabble. Now first I have to mention if you don’t know me that I cannot spell. I mean I really CANNOT spell. I am not stupid (or I don’t think I am), but ever since I was little I had issues with spelling. it is partly due to a learning disability, but that is off topic. The point is for someone who considers themselves a terrible speller, how did I end up in a room with 8 people playing scrabble? And how did I actually have a decent score for half the game? Granted I ended up in last place out of the 2 others I played, but for a while I was actually giving them a run for their money. Come on people, I suck at spelling how can I do ok at Scrabble?

DVR’s

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I am sitting at home (fighting a cold) today. What to do? Watch TV of course. I am cleaning out my Tivo of things I want to watch. After that I decided to play around with my Eye TV USB. it is a DVR for my Mac. It is a great little device, that I don’t use as often as I would like. It act’s just like a Tivo. It records the files right to my Powerbook’s hard drive, which is cool. It can export to MPEG-1 so I can burn a VCD. that is also cool. I would like to burn as a DVD using MPEG-2 files, but I don’t want to upgrade to the newer version (EyeTV-200) that will do that. EyeTV also does not require me to pay a monthly subscription fee. Why then don’t I use it all the time? It has one fatal flaw.

I have a digital cable box (2 actually). In order for me to get digital cable channels I need to plug the EyeTV into the Digital Cable box. When the EyeTV wants to record something it cannot change the Cable box’s channel. That means if I want to record something on the EyeTV I need to change the channel on the cable box for it. What good is that unless I am at the TV? Now if they made some sort of IR channel changer that Tivo has to resolve this problem then I would not need my Tivo. With the majority of the US population with cable or satellite, why not have this option? This is a great product, that I can’t use that much because of this limitation. I have no way around it for now. I am warming up to the DVR on a computer idea. I would rather do this on my Mac, then finding a PC solution. I don’t even know if the PC TV cards can change cable box channels? My old ATI All in Wonder Pro had the same issue.

For now I will stick with my Tivo. I love it, and have not found anything that works better. That said I keep going back to replayTV’s website to check out their warez every few months.

Star Wars DVD

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I just finished watching the Empire Strikes Back on DVD. It was as good as I remember it. The one issue I had was that I only got my two front speakers to work with the DVD. I am about to try a different DVD to make sure nothing is wrong with my sound system, but I think all is well. The question is why am I not getting the awesome digital surround sound that I should be?

Weird. After pressing a few random buttons on my stereo system I am now getting all speakers working with Return of the Jedi. Oh well. I may just have to re-watch Empire to get the better sounds!

New Cheap DVD’s

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On Tuesday I received all 3 of my new DVD’s I ordered from Amazon. I used their zshops (think that is what they call it) and got 3 DVD’s for under $6 each. they were new, not even used. So far they are all in perfect condition. I will use that service again when I want something, but don’t want to pay $20 for it. I bought City Hall, Gia, and the Lawnmower Man. I never saw city hall but like john kuzac, can’t spell. I also never saw the entire movie Gia, but what I saw was weird and interesting so I figured I would pick it up. I need to go back online and get a few more cheap movies once I finish these.

Today + Poker + Scott = $

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Today we had a poker game. Dan had 10 people over and we had a nice round of Texas Hold em. I can’t spell the game (or anything else for that matter), but I can sort of play it. We had a good game. It started early so it finished up early. I started out strong with a few hands, then I got beaten down a bit, especially by Miguel. Then I ended up staying in and coming in 2nd. Not bad out of 10 players. I got a nice chuck of the pot. Miguel played loud, and intense. he took a bunch of my money. Jack took some of his money and dan took both of their money. John never had a decent hand and got blown away. Alyssa and Joseph also got out early on. Heather and Igor fell in the middle. Gus and jack ended up both going out on the same hand and tied for 3rd and it came down to Jack having a better high card in order to take 3rd and make his money back.

It was down to Dan and I for 1st & 2nd place. Everyone thought I had a chance, but dan had more than triple the amount of chips that I had. I got out in like 3-4 hands. I was happy to make a bit of cash and not loosing anything.

I learned allot from tonight’s game. I learned that Joseph, and Heather are new, but decent players. John may or may not be a good player, but luck was not on his side tonight. Jack is good, and conservative. He had some chances to go head to head with some people and he backed down. Other times he got into the mix and came out on top. To me he was the one to watch tonight. Dan was good as always. Gus also is hit or miss. Looks like luck was not on his side tonight, but he still made 4th place.

It was a fun game. It turns out there was some contention regarding this game tonight. Dan could not host more than 10 people. he couldn’t have 2 tables, so 10 was the max he could do. Their was about 20 or so people who wanted to play. he couldn’t even invite friends from out of work like he normally does. Their was so many people who wanted to play at least 2 people got upset about not being invited. One of who I didn’t even know liked to play poker. Honestly I didn’t want her to play either. She probably wouldn’t be quiet during the game. Their were others who ended up getting left out, but didn’t seem to take it badly, or didn’t know that a game was on. That just shows you that you can’t please everyone all the time, and adults can act like children if given the chance. Of course this is from someone who was at the game and never even “officially” asked to play. It was just assumed I would play until Dan asked me on tuesday. I don’t play allot but I am always down for a good fun poker game.

Now I hope my luck lasts until I get back from Vegas. And no I do not plan on playing poker while in Vegas. Sean and I are going to try our luck with Craps…

Softball And Movies

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My first night out on the town in the city was a nice and low key. I met people from work to watch the company softball game. It was a slaughter. We got killed. I didn’t see the end of the game though. AJ hurt his foot in outfield so I helped him off the field with many other peoples help. I can’t lift people like some of the other big guys at work can. I stayed with him until we determined the injury was bad enough to warrant an ER visit. By then Gus showed up and he road with him to the ER. I wasn’t big enough to go alone with AJ to the ER. I couldn’t help him in and out of the cab as well as Gus could.

After the game we meet up at a bar and drank for a while. Then we went to see Anchorman. It was a funny movie.

Took the subway home and it took me less than 15 minutes to get home. it was awesome…