Trip Report and Other Junk

Well, really there's not much to report. The drive to Vegas went quickly and easily. We literally did nothing in Vegas -- In fact, we we most excited by the fact that the Luxor has two Starbucks. Party animals we are not.

The second leg of the drive into Los Feliz also went without a hitch. From then on it was just the usual sort of "hang out with Chris, Kate, and Chowda" sort of scene. Highlights as I remember them:

  • Best of all, we got lots of quality time with Scot & Matt. We love those kids. You might recognize Scot. Thanks to both him and Kate, I have a Bacon Number of 3!
  • Casa Bianca has the best sausage pizza I have ever consumed. I am curious as to whether it's the sausage or the pizza. I cheese pie trial needs to happen someday.
  • The Museum of Jurassic Technology is supremely weird. A must see if you're in LA (and like weirdness).
  • Friday poker: In spite of playing like an idiot (and in doing so, pissing Scot off a bit when I rivered and ace to beat his pocket kings), I managed to finish in second place. I had a chance to do better than that, but Matt's crazy enough that I shouldn't have tried to scare him out of a pot by going all-in with ace-high.
  • Saturday was Chris' birthday cookout/party in which Chris ended up doing all the cooking... *shrug* Staggering amounts of Guinness were consumed, and I got to see some of my favorite people.
  • The Wife and I hiked up to Griffith Observatory a couple times. It's a steep little hill, let me tell you!
  • Lots of dining out, but not as disastrous as usual. Though, we totally had to hit Tito's Tacos.

The drive back was fairly ordinary except for a crazy huge moon we saw rising over the Utah desert.

Today, when I came back into work, I found a strange Japanese swan phallus thingy on my desk. Thanks to Miracle Ed, I now get the reference, but nobody here has owned up to actually putting it on my desk...

Random, unrelated crap follows ...

In sporting news, the Red Sox managed to hold off the Yankees and will face the Angels in the ALDS, the Rockies are actually trying to get in the playoffs, the Broncos finally got the trouncing they've deserved after stealing their first two wins, and hockey season is about to get fired up.

...

On the booze-review tip: If you enjoy a good shiraz (I like to say "shih-RAZZ" because it's Australian, after all.) you should give the 2006 Mollydooker "The Boxer" a go. It's one of those uber-hip Stelvin cap jobbies, so no cork-screw needed. Also, it seems mollydooker is Aussie for left-handed, though as of yet, I've been unable to confirm it...

...

Weeds and Californication might be my favorite hour of television right now. Though, I already miss John from Cincinnati. (I might be alone on that one, though.)

Time for Travelling

Just when you thought posting couldn't get any lighter here at the ol' Blah and Stuff, LLC, I'm here to tell you that it will do just that. Time has come for The Wife and I to bundle into our Honda Civic and hit the open road to that glittering city known as Los Angeles for our annual road trip to see The Brother-in-Law and Auntie Kate. This time around it looks like we'll have extremely limited access to teh intarwebs, so the best you'll probably get out of me is a few tweets and some goofy pictures (both of which I can do with my cell phone, you see?).

For the record, my fame spotting abilities are next to useless. In all my trips to LA I've only seen the back of Zach de la Rocha outside Fred 62 and Melissa Joan Hart at the Suss yarn store. And those were only because somebody else pointed them out. I have hope, though -- the last episode of LA Ink showed Corey Miller discussing his impending vasectomy with his wife at Home, which is right up the road from Chris & Kate's house. Maybe I'll get to take a blurry phonecam pic of Kat Von D or my current tattoo TV crush, Hannah Aitchison, while I'm there.

We leave at the crack of Sunday, stop over at the Luxor in Vegas for a craaaazy night of not-doing-anything-in-Vegas, and arrive in Los Feliz on Monday sometime after grabbing that first In-n-Out burger and strawberry shake in Barstow. Plans are to leave LA on Wednesday, the 26th, in order to have plenty of time to decompress and do stuff around the house before heading back to work on October 1st.

We're very excited. Updates as they are possible.

Climbing Pics

Rocky Mtn Wife I've been scanning and posting a few rock climbing pictures from my days in Massachusetts (and a few from here in Colorado). There are some great shots of me and my friends from those days (most notably Miracle Ed and Hanh). Makes me wistful.

And a bit depressed... As Ed put it to me "You should get skinny again. You were pretty."

As of right now, the notions of getting skinny and getting back into climbing are almost a chicken and egg proposition... Nothing to it but to do it, right?

(Did I mention rock climbing is how I seduced my wife? It's somewhat true.)

I want to play with my ding-a-ling

Good times this weekend. The primary highlight was a video game tourney and home-cooked Korean barbecue at my friend Peter's house. Peter (a former co-worker) and his fiance, Ann, laid out quite a spread of delicious kalbi, rice cakes, kalbi, fried fish, kalbie, kimchi, and some totally yummy kalbi. We also played a bunch of video games, but most of that part of the night is kind of fuzzy. I know I played the wrong screen on 4-man Halo and therefore got pwned.

One part that is clear is that The Wife pronounced "I want one!" almost as soon as she touched the Nintendo Wii. The Wife gets what The Wife wants (especially when it's something I've been forcing myself *not* to buy up to now), so we now have a shiny new Wii and the sore shoulders to prove it. (Here's the tip for those of you searching for a Wii: WalMart. I never go in the place, generally, but our local Wally World had about 10 of the things.)

Now we just have to find something other than Wii Sports to play on the thing...

Oh, and yesterday I came into work for a half day. Boo. Big launch tomorrow, so it's crunch time...

Walk for Danes

My mother is turning into a crazy cat lady... Except it's with Great Danes. The truth is she's gotten involved with the local Great Dane rescue and has ended up adopting a couple and fostering a couple. That's a whole lotta dog for one house. My dog, Mingus, doesn't much care to visit Grandmama's house anymore. ;)

The point of the post, though, is that she's gotten more involved in a professional capacity. Just one of those involvements is fund raising:

So, I've been busy, busy, busy with the whole Dane Rescue thing, and we are planning a dog walk in Cherry Creek State Park sometime in September. We're looking for corporate sponsors, t-shirt donors, pledge collectors, contributors to a silent auction, and of course walkers. If you have any contacts that might be able to help on any front, let me know.

So, let me know if any of you fine people can help in any way.

A Burning Ring of Fire

This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of taking in the Ring of Fire 29: Aftershock mixed martial arts fighting event at the Broomfield Events Center. As I mentioned before, this followed after taking my company founder (I'm not supposed to treat him like "the boss"...) out to roller derby last month. As it turns out, his wife is friends with the wife of the local fighter who was the main event of the night. This fact would turn out add both interest and stress to the night for her. I don't have the wherewithal to run down all of my observations from the night, but the fights leading up to the two big fights were enjoyable. The results are available for those who care. A few highlights:

  • There was one premature stoppage. Dude got clocked but was defending himself "intelligently" by the time he landed on his back.
  • One of the referees looked like The Wife's brother in a couple decades. No worries, he was a handsome devil.
  • The crowd was... Wow. Now that I think about it, it should have been what I expected.

Which brings me to the two big fights of the night, both in the 205lb weight class.

First we had Big Mike Nickels the Denver-based tattoo shop owner who had a short stint on the Spike "reality" show, The Ultimate Fighter. He was fighting a guy named Carpaccio (yeah, that's what we thought) who is Army Airborne. Seven second knockout by Big Mike. Wow. Afterwards, they gave the mic to Carpaccio, who is a great guy, obviously. He apologized for not putting on a better show and then proceeded to tell us that he's shipping out to Iraq, like immediately and asked that "even if you don't support the war, please support your troops". This generated a lot of "Awww, bummer." and even more patriotic applause.

Then Nickels got on the mic... He started off well, letting us know that his next fight may be against Stefan Bonner in the UFC. Then he went completely off track. He was trying to say something nice about his opponent, but it came out as something like "I don't believe in murdering women and babies" at which point the ring announcer snatched the microphone and said "LET'S HEAR IT FOR OUR TROOPS!"

Odd.

Then of course, he got accosted by the two supposed Marines sitting in front of us. (I say "supposed" because they looked like overweight frat boys, not the type of Marine I know.) It was good drama, if you're into that sort of thing. I just hope Dana White doesn't pull the plug on his big fight because he decides he doesn't want any anti-war hippies in his league...

Then we had the main even, featuring the afore-mentioned friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, Eliot "Fire" Marshall. His opposition had such a classic "heel" entrance I had to laugh. Hailing from Las Vegas, Marcus Sursa came out strutting and posing and tossing autographed play money and photos into the crowd. Fantastic. Everyone hated him instantly. The fight itself was good. Marcus made a strong go at it at first, applying good pressure with his striking game, but he just couldn't hang with Eliot on the ground. Eliot finished him off with one of many chokes in the second round of what I would consider a fun fight. Eliot's wife and the boss's wife didn't seem to have a whole lot of fun, however.

Fighting sports might not be the best thing for family participation...

Prairie Doggin'

There's plenty going on these days, but that's all I can think of to share at the moment.

In which I miss something...

Is it just me, or is Bloc Party absolutely worthless? Both albums they've come out with (that I've known about) have gotten all kinds of indie nerd buzz, but I just flat-out hate 'em. It confuses me, because they tend to get lumped in with stuff I like a lot (The Shins) or a least a little (Arcade Fire). And yet, I just want to punch them every time I listen to them. The entire emo scene has nothing on the whining done by these douches.

There. That feels better.

Oh, and Happy Birthday to Miracle Ed! Someday soon he might get out of the Army.

Hi. How are you?

So the big news of the past few days is the hot water heater saga: Last Thursday evening The Wife and I went out in Boulder to the Rio with a gaggle of my new coworkers. After a lovely evening discussing the possibilities of attending a roller derby, a mixed martial arts bout, or a minor league hockey game (or all three) with the company founder's wife, we came home to discover that we had no hot water. A quick trip downstairs revealed that our twelve-year-old tank was done and dead and pissing itself on the basement floor. Off go the water valves, and I know what I get to do Friday (hardly a worthwhile day off work, if you ask me).

Long story shorter than it might be: We actually had the funds on-hand to do the upgrade to a tankless water heater like I've wanted to do. Now I'm a proud owner of a Rinnai unit hidden away in my crawl space. The old space for the water heater is now only filled by a wall-mounted control panel. Best of all, I can take a shower all friggin' day long if I want to.

There are couple downsides: the hot water is mighty slow to come at first; the hot water pressure is noticeably lower than that of the cold water. But neither of those bother me much -- the continuous nature of the hot water (I can now happily take my shower after everyone else in the house!) more than balances them out, IMO. (Oh, and I guess I get $300 next tax season...) Also worth noting: David at Oasis Plumbing rules me - highly recommended.

Other News:

Socialization of the Human Animal

The last weekend featured a lot of interaction with real, live human beings, which is a bit odd, to be honest. On Friday, I had poker with the boys. The games have been extremely rare lately, and I missed the last one, so this was exciting. Of course, I lost my pants, but that's not the point. ;)

Saturday was my darling mother's birthday celebration. (Her actual birthday was Sunday.) The Wife and I drove down to enjoy Hockey Night in Canada with Mom and her pack of "adopted" kids (plus three Great Danes, two other dogs, and two cats). Beer, hockey, and good-natured smack talk made it a super fun evening. If nothing else, I demonstrated the obviousness of the fact that I am my mother's son. The only bummer is that we missed the opening bout of the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls' new season, which happened to be on the same night.

Sunday wasn't as public, but we managed to not sit on the couch all day.

And I didn't even touch WoW for the whole weekend.

Shotgun

OK, so... Sorry about the week an a half of nothing. I wish I could say I've been busy or some such, but no. Mostly I've been sitting around alternately playing World of Warcraft and watching TV while trying out new and exciting pillow-influenced hair styles.

I suppose I can blast out a short list of tidbits for you though:

  • The big news is that not only did Rod and I jump ship from my old place of employment; now Brandon has followed suit. He's working for an interesting new company, too.
  • Oh, yeah, I start my new gig today. I'm psyched.
  • Related to that, I had the best intentions to try and learn Ruby on Rails this past week that I've had off. That didn't really happen. I've got time, though. ;)
  • I did try to get right on switching my 401(k) plans to an IRA, but only got as far as opening the IRA because the 401(k) people didn't know I'd quit yet. Super...
  • Last Thursday, The Wife and I took in a matinĂ©e of Pan's Labyrinth -- totally frickin' awesome. Funny how Fascism and faerie tale allegory goes hand in hand so often.
  • Rod got my hooked up with a private torrent tracker site... Now I'm obsessed with keeping my upload/download ratio above 1.
  • Last night we mixed up a pitcher of martinis and took in the Screen Actors Guild Awards. It was generally an inoffensive evening of festivities, though I can say that some of my favorite shows (24, Weeds, ... that may be it) got robbed, but whatever. They did show Dennis Weaver in their "fallen soldiers" tribute, reminding me of the time he popped into a gas stop cafe in the middle of nowhere (aka Western Kansas) while Miracle Ed and I were having breakfast and trying to get our collective shit together at the tail end of a 31 hour single shot drive from Boston to Denver. Let me tell you, having a bunch of flatland hicks (remember, I'm somewhat of an expert in the field of recognizing and categorizing hicks) freaking out about how "that was the feller that played on that show!" really turns the surreal dial to 11.
  • Ever heard of "Toddy" coffee? Neither had I until the other day. I don't think I buy it.

I guess that will have to do for now.

Birds Flying High, You Know How I Feel

Near the end of August in 2001, after a four month period of being unemployed, I finally found a job with a Boulder company called e-InfoData.com (Holy internet cliche overload!). We'll round the ensuing passage of time up to five and a half years for the purpose of this discussion. In that period the company changed it's name to InsightAmerica, moved its office to Broomfield, and eventually was acquired by a corporate giant (name uselessly withheld). The basic "job" of the company never really changed, and the work was mostly interesting on a nuts-and-bolts level (I still think we regularly pushed ColdFusion well beyond its normal bounds and managed to make it work.), even if the bigger picture at times gave me the heebee-jeebees.

At a more micro level, I've had the opportunity to work with some amazing people (particularly within the technology teams - but outside that, as well). In fact, most of the people I currently consider my best friends were first coworkers.

On a work level, there have certainly been ups and downs, but on a personal level this job has been nothing but positive.

You've probably already guessed that I've decided it's time for me to move on.

  • I'm going back to Boulder. (meh. I'll miss my 10 minute commute, but I only think I'm doubling it.)
  • It's a very small company. (sweet! I enjoy the dynamic of a small company much more than a megalocorp.)
  • I'll be working with an old friend. (yay! This is actually the only reason I applied for the job when I saw it come across the wire.)
  • I'm going to be working daily on a Mac. (w00t! This excites me unreasonably. Not to mention the HUGE monitors they use.)
  • I'll eventually get to work with Ruby on Rails professionally. (double w00t!! I've been a fanboy since the early days, though I've never actually done anything with it.)

I'm also leaving a lot of friends behind. Hopefully I'll be able to keep in touch - the Denver Metro area isn't a very big place, really. Some of us already have outside-of-work connections, but I want to cultivate more of those.

So, yeah... That's what's going on with me.

Let's have Nina Simone carry us out, shall we?

Its a new dawn Its a new day Its a new life For me And I'm feeling good

High Ho, High Ho

I have no idea how long it's been since I've actually been to work. I had the week between Christmas and New Year's scheduled for vacation, but then we had the Hanukkah Blizzard of 2006 so things got started off really early for me. I guess two weeks ago today was the last time I was in the office. Take a guess at my motivation level... ;)

Thanks to the Hanukkah and Kwanzaa blizzard combination, we ended up spending the holidays doing a lot of sitting around and staring at each other. We did get out to the tattoo shop to get the Mother-in-Law a new piece (of which I should really get a better picture) and for The Wife and I to get some touch up done.

Other than that, not a lot to report. We did watch some DVDs:

  • Nacho Libre (B) -- Jack Black, yo. Plus I love me some Lucha Libre.
  • Talladega Nights (A-) -- Best Will Ferrell joint ever. Period. John C. Riley is a king.
  • Aeon Flux (B+) -- I was a big fan of the animated shorts on MTV's Liquid Television, but I kind of like this better. There was actually a storyline available without creative interpretation. Plus Charlize is badass.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest (B-) -- Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow was weird in this one. Not nearly as good as the first one.

One quick link, while I'm at it: I like this guy's style.

Merry Ho Ho Ho!

Here's hoping everyone had a happy and fruitful holiday. I certainly did. Highlights:

  • My darling mother got me a solar powered atomic watch, so not only does it never need its battery changed, it never needs to be set either. This is timekeeping heaven for me. Now I just need to read the manual to figure out how to use its other functions. And of course, I need to get it sized waaay down for my girlish wrists.
  • The moms made out well: Mine got a cobalt blue Kitchen Aid mixer (she'd been eyeballing ours lately) and The Wife's got an iPod Nano (which is ridiculously small).
  • I got The Wife a Bella Umbrella. Without her realizing it, I noticed that she'd been talking about getting a parasol for the past year or so, so this was a home run for me. ;)
  • I also got my better half a Mac Mini, as her old iBook was having a hard time keeping up. That means I get to play with the iBook: So far I've reinstalled OS X 3 times and I plan to install Ubuntu as well (the third round with OS X was to get a partition for the linux).
  • As for me, I got some woodworking and home improvement accessories, some DVDs (namely two big time personal faves: Pete & Pete and The Greatest American Hero, and a CBC history of hockey that looks awesome) and lots of other stuff.

So yeah, materialistically, we all did pretty well. Better yet, though, we had some nice time off at home thanks to the blizzard, and yet we were mobile in time to make it down to my mom's house on Christmas Eve.

God bless us, every one, eh?

Let's Get This Pahty Stahted. Right?

Last Saturday, the Wife, Mother-in-Law, and I hosted a holiday dinner soiree at the Sutton abode. Good times were had by all. A few notes/highlights:

  • The slate tile was a big hit. It even survived a couple drunken games of darts.
  • The menu was primarily Italian-style fare. We did have crab rolls in split-top hot dog rolls that we'd had shipped from Boston -- they were a big hit.
  • We made waaaaaaaaay too much food. Should have forced people to take doggie bags.
  • I doubt anyone else even noticed, but I felt the music mix was spot on.
  • We had, at one point, three Asians in our house. In Colorado, this is actually worth pointing out. Sadly, though, that was the (almost) full extent of our ethnic diversity.
  • I'm actually impressed with how long it took the crowd to get into "Hey! What's this?!" mode at our bar/liquor collection. Absinthe and Japanese Whiskey were the most exotic samples that were poured.

If you didn't get invited and think you should have been, I apologize deeply.

Don't take it personally, though, OK? Good. ;)