Adubya Says

VoiceScreener into public beta

2008-11-24T13:52:00.003-06:00

Today our PR firm provided press releases for our new product, VoiceScreener, which went into public beta today.

If you google Voicescreener you'll find tons of news articles and a nice write-up on Mashable here.

This is what I've been working so hard on for the last 4 1/2 months.

By the way, our new company name is harQen (harqen.com).

It's that time again

2008-11-19T11:12:00.003-06:00

Wow, 2 1/2 months and I haven't said boo.

Such is the life of a lone developer for a startup company. I have no free time for this, but felt like enough had happened that I should give an update.

The new project we're working on is about to go into public beta. We're hoping we get some really good momentum out of it. I'll update more when I'm allowed to... right now we have a ban on all public talk on it.

On the downside, Cdubya got hit in her Acura TL a couple weeks ago. She was minding her own business waiting in a left turn lane, about 4th in line when 2 morons decided to tangle. Woman in about an '83 Olds Cutlass coming straight across trying to beat a yellow light was clipped by a jackass in a Grand Am trying to turn left and also beat the light. The Cutlass went out of control and in her brilliant effort to save it she ended up flooring it into Cdubya's drivers side, completely smashing it to hell.

Fortunately the Acura is a pretty safe car. The side airbags deployed and protected her head from the window and all she got out of it was a sore chest from the seatbelts retracting to smash her against the seat.

But the car was not so fortunate. Over $16,000 in damage (bent frame in 2 places, bent tie rod, damage from bumper to bumper). The insurance company declared it a total loss. And of course, no insurance for the Olds driver and the Grand Am driver fled the scene. Nice... real nice.

So, instead, we get to go buy a new car and there goes our vacation funds on a down payment. We spent all day Saturday looking at cars until we drove a Lexus IS 250 AWD. It as instant car love for Cdubya and we worked out the financing quickly and picked it up yesterday. It's a beautiful car and if you've never had the pleasure of the Lexus car buying experience, it is definitely far better than anywhere else I've ever gone. And the new Lexus of Madison dealership is a thing of beauty.

Lexus seems to go overboard with all the amenities. We got it fully loaded and it is amazing. Just a sampling of the things it has:

All wheel drive (something she really, really wanted after last winter's snow).

Nav system with bluetooth and support for up to 6 phones and 1,000 phonebook entries. All voice activated.

Power tilt and telescoping steering wheel. It also pushes back into the dash when you turn the car off, making it easier to get out.

3 driver memory settings AND 3 passenger memory settings. Never seen that before.

Lighted door sill when you open the door so it's easier to see getting in in the dark.

Awesome leather seating, including heated AND air conditioned front seats.

Manual shift 6 speed automatic with paddle shifters (like you'd see on a formula one car).

and the list goes on and on....

Here are a couple pictures. It's Mica Red.

The Palazzo

2008-09-04T08:08:00.006-05:00

Yeah, I know, I haven't posted in forever... I'm busy trying to become a freakin' millionaire here, give me a break!

I just got back from Vegas where we stayed at the new casino called The Palazzo. It's connected to the Venetian and is all suites and very luxurious. I'm always on the lookout when new casino's open because that's about the only time I can afford to stay at them. I've stayed at the Venetian, the Wynn and now the Palazzo, all for about $150/night. Next time we go I'm sure it'll be about $500/night.

The downside to staying there is that it's usually more expensive to gamble there so we end up going elsewhere. I like the Planet Hollywood, which used to be the Aladdin. It's always fun there. In fact, we played a new blackjack game that was very weird! It's called "Double Exposure". Here's how it works:

The dealer has both cards face up, which is cool. However, to offset that all pushes (ties) go to the dealer. Also, blackjack only pays 1-1 instead of 2-1. Also, you can only double down on 10 and 11, nothing else. The part that really throws you in this game is getting a 20 only to see the dealer get a 20 and you have to hit! I did see a woman on our table actually hit a 20 and get an ace to win! I usually hit a 20 with another face card for a 30, which is a rarity to see on a blackjack table, haha.

Cdubya and I played for about 3 hours. At one point we were both up about $50 each but eventually she went back down to even and quit and I continued to throw money at it hoping for another good run that never came and was down about $75.

I did not have any luck the whole trip. I lost about $150 on craps and blackjack the first day.
Day 2 I decided to put $50 on the Brewers to beat the Mets with Ben Sheets going. Well, he fucked me of course, taking himself out after 5 innings in a 1-0 game with a very minor little groin thing (that's what she said). Gagne eventually gave up 3 in the 8th and they lost. I was not a happy camper. I went on to lost another couple hundred over the rest of the day. Just had no luck at all. I did skip betting on the Brewers again so that helped me as they lost the next 2 games as well. If I'd gotten into Vegas a couple hours earlier on Sunday I would have bet the Brewers with CC Sabathia going for sure but missed it. Of course, the line was -260 which is nuts. -260 means that a $260 bet would have gotten me back $100 ($360 total).

On Tuesday we decided to just spend the day at the pool. Well, 6 hours later, despite our best efforts to stay out of the sun, we were both sunburned. Never really saw or felt it coming as we were mostly in the shade, except for brief forays into the pool. My chest, stomach and shoulders are now a bright shade of red and it hurts like a mofo. And to make things better, I have a hockey playoff game tonight! I may skip wearing shoulder pads. I don't think that would feel too great.

After a painful shower Tuesday we went to see "The Jersey Boys" which is the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Great show, highly recommend it. Amazing they could find someone that could hit those high notes like Frankie.

Oh, almost forgot. I tried the "slip a $20 to the person checking you in for a complimentary upgrade" thing and was upgraded to a strip view for no extra charge. I'm 2-2 on upgrades that way now, definitely try it. Only thing is that they will probably try to get you to pay for a much larger upgrade. Just say you're not interested in paying more.

Anywho, here are some pictures of the Palazzo.

Goodbye consulting, hello funny business

2008-07-29T19:23:00.002-05:00

As of this Friday, August 1st, I'll no longer be a consultant. I've accepted a deal with ComicWonder (actually, with the parent company that has no name yet) to be a permanent employee and partial owner (very, very, very small part, kind of like owning one brick in a skyscraper).

Why would I do this, you ask? Well, it was actually a very easy decision to make. Great people, great work, control over how I develop, I could go on and on. It's the best job I've ever had by far. And it's not just about ComicWonder. We are branching out into many different areas that all take advantage of the technology we use for ComicWonder.

Right now we have several big name customers testing out a new application I've been working on that could blow the lid off the Human Resources game. It's one of those apps that you go, wow, how come I didn't think of that? Aren't those always the ones where you're like, duh, that makes total sense and damn, I could have done that. I think it's going to be huge and we're not stopping there. There are several other apps in the hopper just waiting for me to get to them.

Before too long I'm going to actually need to bring on help. As the sole Java developer it's been great. No worrying about someone else's code or what they're working on or merging code. It's just me and I do it the way I want to. Unfortunately I'm only one person and with the amount of work we have coming in I'll need some help sooner or later.

Needless to say I'm very excited about this opportunity and am looking forward to being part of the "family" for many years to come.

By the way, one other side benefit... our bowling team will be sponsored by ComicWonder! I can't wait to see the shirts!

Miller Beer Man

2008-07-28T08:25:00.004-05:00

For Cdubya's b-day Saturday we went to the Brewers game against the Astros. Just so happened it was Miller cooler bag day so we were lucky enough to scarf a couple of those, but the coolest thing was that the Miller beer man from the High Life commercials was there to throw out the first pitch. But that's not all. He was all over the park, always with a big smile on his face as he signed more autographs than any of the players. I think he truly enjoyed every minute at the park. And he wasn't one of those guys that throws out the first pitch then hops in his limo and is out of there. When Ryan Braun hit a 2 run homer to tie it up in the 7th inning he was down in the crowd high fiving all the fans.

Here's a picture of him up in the broadcast booth with Bill Schroeder (left) and Brian Anderson during the game. I swear he got more attention than the game...

And to make it a perfect night the Crew scored twice in the 8th to win it 6-4 and tie the Cubs for first place!

iPhone 3G

2008-07-21T08:44:00.002-05:00

So, as most of you know, I have the original iPhone (2G) and I totally love it. Best phone I've ever had hands down. So when Cdubya says she's sick of her Razr and wants something that can do more I explained to her that she couldn't go wrong with the iPhone. I spend time showing her mine, letting her play with it, explaining all the cool functions (especially the new apps that came out with the new software update).

She's not convinced that's the phone for her. She wants to go to the AT&T store and look around. So we go Friday evening. We talk to Jimmy Chipmunk and he says that you can't beat the iPhone. She says she wants to look around. She looks at all the other phones (almost every one of them costs more than the $199 price of the iPhone and they all have the same $30/month unlimited data plan). After all that she says "Well, that guy said the iPhone is the best, I guess I should get one."

WTF, had I not been saying that for a week?!?!?!? Why would you believe your husband, someone that actually has had the phone for a year and loves it. Someone that works in IT. Someone you should trust...

No, but she'll trust junior at the AT&T store because he must be an expert... sheesh.

So anyway, we're told at the store that they have a wait of about 20 days for one. Wow... uh, ok. We decide to check what that Apple Store has (West Towne). The web site says they have them in stock, so we decide we'll try to get there an hour before they open Saturday morning on the outside chance we might be able to get one. I told her not to get her hopes up, from what I'd been reading it was still very difficult to get one.

We show up at West Towne at 9:15 (10:00 opening) and turn the corner and there's no line out front, cool! We walk up to the Apple Store and it's open already. Weird... ok. We walk in, 2 people are getting iPhones! We are next in line and we get the phone, activate it and are out the door in 20 minutes!

So, moral of the story is the Apple Store gets a LOT more iPhones than the AT&T store and AT&T is not telling people that they have an option (in cities where there is also an Apple Store that is).

Also, the Apple Store has been doing this "soft opening" for a while now so don't be surprised if you can get in before they open.

And yes, the iPhone 3G is all that. I downloaded the iphone sdk yesterday (only a 1.2 gb download!) and made my first iphone "Hello, World" app. Their documentation is very good and they also have video instruction on how to use it. Anyone with an ADC id can download the sdk. If you want to sell your app in the App Store you must pay a $99 fee to join.

I already have 3 or 4 apps in mind to build, now I just need some free time.

Battle of Door Creek Followup

2008-07-03T09:39:00.003-05:00

Last night was golf league time again.

When I got done I was ordering my dinner at the bar and look over and there's the guy. Luckily I don't think he recognized who I was so nothing happened.

However, later on a guy in my league tells me he knows the guy very well and tells me all sorts of stories about when the guy was in high school at La Follette and how he basically had a gang that went around terrorizing people and beating the crap out of them. Of course, I also find out that this was in the late 60's, making him about 57 or so now! Ok, I feel bad I hit someone's grandpa...

Then I find out that he has a brother that plays there too (much younger). Of course, the idiot in my league goes over to him (after the other guy left) and points me out! Sheesh, thanks buddy, needed that. I also find out he told his brother all about it and basically said that if it wasn't for Cdubya coming out there I would be dead. Not beat up, dead. Nice...

I go home and tell Cdubya all about this and then I find out that the last name of her new boss is the same as his... oh great. I do a little research this morning and find out that yep, she's married to the younger brother. Oh boy. So, I got in a fight with her new boss's brother in law. Extra nice.

And to make the world even smaller, that same woman is the sister of my friend Jim. Jim tells me that in the past, yes, I would be lucky to be alive. Nice again. I'm hoping Jim can help ease the tension a little.

Door Creek has just become an uncomfortable place for me.

BTW, I shot a 41 with a birdie on 9.

Double Eagle and the Double Punch

2008-06-26T07:23:00.003-05:00

This is a funny world we live in. You can be on top of the world one minute and be going toe to toe with some drunken buffoon the next. And that's where I found myself last night.

More on that in a sec, but let's go back to the beginning. As most of you know, Wednesday is golf league night. Last night was fun night where we were all divided into 4-somes for a 4-man scramble. After not doing much the first 2 holes I came alive on the 3rd, hitting a 300 yard drive and a sand wedge to 8 feet where a teammate made the birdie putt. Another bomb drive on the 4th led to a par. After parring the 5th we went to the par 5 6th (15th hole, we were playing the back nine). Another 300 yard drive led to a tap in birdie. And again on the next hole, yet another big drive and we par.

That takes us to the 8th hole (#17) at -2. Once again I murder a drive down the middle and we're sitting at about 185 yards out (486 yard hole) after my tee shot. I go first and just play my ball where it lies (side note: in a scramble, everyone hits the ball they determine to be in the best position and can drop anywhere within a club length of it, no nearer the hole). It was important that I played the ball where it was without lifting it or anything, and that's because I took a 5 iron and hit a beautiful shot, just right of the hole, drawing slightly in... I'm hoping it'll be within 10 feet so we have a good look at eagle.... the ball lands, bounces once and rolls slowly turning towards the cup and DISAPPEARS! My first double eagle (2 on a par 5)! I still cannot believe it happened. My friends playing in different groups said later they were wondering who was screaming like a girl... yeah, that was me.

So, my name is in the paper (it's more rare than a hole in one), last name spelled wrong of course...

We win the scramble at -5 by 1 shot. Plenty of congrats in the clubhouse, just a great night.

Then I decide to hustle home about 8:30.

That's where the story turns horribly wrong... As I leave the parking lot I am quickly behind some moron in a red pickup truck that keeps crossing the center line, then jerking it back over and then crossing again, etc. He makes it to the Cottage Grove road stop sign without killing anyone and I'm thinking "man, this dude is hammered".

He turns left on CG road, same direction I'm going. Speed limit is 55, but he seems to mis-read 35 for 55 and I'm behind him giving him the international "what the fuck" symbol. He's not going any faster and of course, keeps drifting over the center line. I get to a passing zone and decide to get away from this asshole as quick as I can, so I blow by him and as I pass I look over and yell "Get the fuck off the road!" and continue on. I only live a mile away but by the time I get to my turn I'm a half mile ahead of him. I turn into my garage and park and get out only to see him pulling up in front of the house.

He comes storming up my driveway and I walk out to meet him. He gets right in my face yelling something about me yelling at him. I said "Maybe you should go back and have another drink before you drive" which is pretty hypocritical of me considering I'd had several Island Wheats myself. He says, to my amusement, "I was on the phone" to which I sarcastically respond with "Maybe you shouldn't be on the phone while you're driving since you obviously can't do both". Now, it's also obvious he's been drinking as well.

He's right in my face and I'm noticing he's got about 6" and 40 lbs on me when he gives me the 2 handed shove to the chest. I step back and come right forward again and all of a sudden he slaps me! Slaps! Like a girl! I dodged around him laughing "Did you just slap me???".

And now he is pissed. He comes storming towards me again and I'm thinking "this dude is not going to just walk away" so as he's coming in I launch a right cross and catch him right on the jaw. He staggers back as I dance around him getting over to the grass where I have more traction (I still had my golf shoes on). Now he's in his Marvin Hagler stance and wants to box. This is where I'm grateful for Showtime Boxing on the Nintendo Wii where I've honed my boxing skills (lol). He comes forward again and I flick a jab and catch him right on the point of his chin. He steps back and takes a wild swing which I duck under.

At about this time, Cdubya has heard the commotion and come out where she begins screaming for us to stop. I'm poised and ready to beat the shit out of this drunken jackass but he stops and just stares at her. She says "You want to hit me, go ahead." He mumbles something about if he sees me again he'll hit me again to which I laugh and say "you haven't hit me yet" and throw in a "douchebag" just for good measure. It's then that I notice the golf glove in his back pocket. Great, he plays league on Wednesdays at Door Creek, I'll probably get matched up with him in the final round of the club championship this year. He gets in his truck and drives away as I stand in the driveway.

Of course, I know what's coming next so I'm a little afraid to go inside... I finally relent and I get the lecture I knew was coming. "How many times have I told you to not do things like that?" "You have to just mind your own business", "You should have just called the police".

And all I'm thinking is "I'd really like to tell you about my double eagle".

Recovery

2008-06-24T08:16:00.004-05:00

Well, after a turbulent month things are starting to get back to some semblance of normality. Drexel Interiors came out Thursday and Friday and put down my new basement flooring. We decided to go with an inexpensive vinyl flooring instead of doing the laminate hardwood again. We got something that can withstand a little water on it without ruining it, just in case. It has a wood pattern and looks fairly similar to the old flooring.

I took some pictures and posted them on my basement finishing blog. You can also compare to the old flooring over there.

Beware of Mitsubishi DLP's

2008-06-16T08:34:00.002-05:00

Late Saturday afternoon I sat down to watch some US Open and the Brewer game on my 57" Mitsubishi DLP tv, only to have it turn off right after it turned on. No matter what I did (unplug, reset, etc), it wouldn't turn on. Then I got a red light for the Lamp indicator. Looks like my lamp is dead. Funny, I've only had it for about 18 months, didn't think it would need to be replaced already.

I purchased the Advantage protection plan from Circuit City so I figured it would be simple to get a new lamp. I called CC, found that I have to call the 888 number for the plan, so I called that. Ugh, only open during normal business hours. Ok, no tv till at least Monday. I brought down my HD monitor from my office and set that up instead. Not quite the same watching the Open on a 28" instead of a 57" but for a day or two I can live with it.

I called the protection plan people this morning and with the help of a Mitsubishi tech they determined the lamp needed to be replaced. Wow, they sure are smart. (that's called sarcasm, kids).

The friendly guy with the plan says it'll be shipping UPS ground this afternoon and should be here in about a week. A WEEK!?!?!?!??! Are you fucking kidding me???? "Sir, I'm sorry but Mitsubishi does not allow us to ship their parts overnight." What the fuck, this has to be a joke. Sorry, sir, hopefully it will arrive in 3-5 days. Sonofadirtygoatfucker....

Then I started doing a little research. Turns out I'm definitely not the only one having problems with the Mits DLP's. There are A LOT of people having problems. And not just with the lamps, but that is a very common one. I'm not looking forward to having the same additional problems that these people are having (multiple bulb burnouts, ballast replacements, light engines, circuit boards, etc).

Consider this a warning if you're thinking about getting a new Mitsubishi DLP. I bought it mainly because I have a Mitsubishi 55" rear projection that I've had for about 6 years with only one minor issue. Now, I'm pretty sure I won't go this route again.

It probably wouldn't be that big of a deal if my basement hadn't flooded. That's where the other Mits is living and since the flooring is going to be installed later this week I've had to tear everything out and it's not hooked up so I don't really have another option.

Roll with the punches

2008-06-13T14:50:00.001-05:00

So called Professionals

2008-06-12T16:09:00.002-05:00

You know what really irks me about some "professional" baseball players?

No, not the millions of dollars they make for playing a game.

No, not the "world owes me something" attitudes.

It's the inability of these people to do the most basic things that we learn how to do in little league. I'm talking about fundamentals like bunting or throwing a ball to a base.

Twice on Tuesday night Brewer pitchers could successfully throw a baseball to first base. These are guys that throw 90+ mph pitches to exact spots 60' away but you give them a bunt where they need to make a 40' throw to first base and they will bounce it half way there. How is this possible? I pitched for over 20 years in a variety of leagues and I cannot recall ever having an issue with throwing a ball to a base.

Do they forget how to throw off flat ground? Do they need to run back to the mound first? I mean I've seen them spin on the mound and throw hard to a base to pick off a runner and they're right on the money. But give them 15 minutes to get a nice easy throw to first on a sacrifice bunt and they one hop it into right field.

On Tuesday Julian Taveras did this in a 2-1 game and ended up giving up 4 runs to lose any chance at winning the game. I came unhinged, screaming at the television.

We need to send these so-called professionals back to little league so the 9 year olds can show them how to do it.

Well, I'm sure you've all heard about the heavy rains we've had which have caused massive flooding (and one lake being emptied). I thought for sure golf league would be water logged out last night but surprisingly Door Creek dried up enough for us to play and I was amazed at how well the course was considering the 8" of rain we had just a few days earlier.

Of course, today we've had another batch of big storms rolling through. It's supposed to end tonight. I have a tournament to play in on Saturday, I sure hope the water drains.

That's it for now, stay dry!

Glub Glub Glub

2008-06-09T09:10:00.002-05:00

That's the sound of the southern half of Wisconsin going underwater as we deluged by rain over the weekend. Well, not just rain; very high winds, tornadoes, hail, etc. What a wonderful spring weekend.

In Madison we had over 4" of rain yesterday added to almost 2" on Saturday. And we got off easy. Just an hour north of us they had over 8" on Saturday and another 7" yesterday. Just crazy. Everything is underwater.

I went by Door Creek at about 1:00 yesterday afternoon and the little creek running through the back nine was about 50' onto the fairway. And that was BEFORE our torrential downpour last night. I'm sure most of the course is under water by now.

This just in: Bridges golf course closed through at least Wednesday.

I'm assuming Door Creek is closed too and that we won't have league Wednesday. I'm more concerned about the 27 hole Challenge tournament scheduled for Saturday. We're supposed to get more storms Thursday and Friday which would pretty much end any hope of playing Saturday.

The Yin and Yang of golf

2008-06-02T10:09:00.002-05:00

Have you ever noticed that when you finally figure out the one thing that's been going wrong in your game that something else will fall apart? The golf gods appear to need you to maintain some sort of balance between good and not so good (evil?).

When I first got the new driver I struggled with it for a few rounds but was still chipping well enough to save myself some strokes. Well, I finally got the driver figured out and am hitting it pretty well (for the most part, never perfect obviously) and now I can't putt. Now, don't get me wrong, I've never been a stellar putter but I was getting better at it (got fitted for a new putter last fall).

Yesterday was a perfect example of how, even if you think you're putting the ball pretty well, it doesn't count unless it actually goes in the hole. I constantly burned the lip, just missed by millimeters, had good speed but misread the line or had the line and misread the speed. It's amazing how many little things have to go right to get that little white ball into the cup.

I actually played the entire round without a single 1-putt. I don't recall ever doing that before, at least over 18 holes. And to make matters worse, I 3-putted 5 times, including 3 in a row on 9-11. 2 of those were understandable. I was 70 feet away (wrong part of the green) on 9 and 11 is just a bitch of a green if you have to putt side hill. Ended up with 41 putts. Almost half my strokes were putts. That, is only good if I'm planning on shooting a 60. I'd been averaging about 34 putts. Just being average would have given me an 83 instead of a 90.

Just goes to show you, drive for show, putt for dough. Looks like I'll be spending some additional time on the putting green this week practicing.

My goal of breaking 80 this year can only be done by reducing my putts. If I don't get any better best I can expect is 83/84.

Of course, if I was to someone magically become better at putting, you know damn well something else would completely fall apart. Such is the yin and yang of this frustrating game.

Lawsonia Woodlands

2008-05-27T08:09:00.002-05:00

Sunday was our group golf outing for the Memorial Day Weekend for this year. We chose to play Lawsonia this year and based on recommendations we chose to play the Woodlands course (they also have a Links course).

The course was very nice, though some of the greens were still showing signs of aeration, mostly around the edges. They were definitely fast and I really struggled getting the speed right. Nothing like blasting a putt 20 feet past the hole to make you leave everything else short. Once again my driver was psycho, not really doing what I wanted it to. Wish I had a little more time before we played to get it in synch.

As for the golf, pretty ugly. I got off to a horrible start and took forever to recover. I went double, triple, triple, triple to start. Pretty damn hard to have a good round when you're 11 over after 4! I recovered a little to finish the front at +16 for a 52. I played a little better on the back and shot 45 for 97, which was good for 3rd place out of our 2 4-somes. My putting and short game in general really let me down I thought. I had 38 putts, 22 on the front nine alone when I 3 putted 4 times. I did manage 3 1-putts on the back which helped a lot.

Comparing Lawsonia to Wild Rock which I recently played as well, I would have to give the edge to Wild Rock. It has more elevation changes, more ravines and canyons to hit over and crazy 3-tiered greens that make putting an adventure (but also exciting).

Both courses definitely attempt to make you hit something other than driver off the tee. They both had strategically placed fairway bunkers just where you might want to land a tee shot. I thought there were more opportunities to drive the ball at Wild Rock while I could have played the entire 18 without my driver at Lawsonia.

Of course, Wild Rock, at $95, is $30 more than Lawsonia. Oh, and you can have a beer at Wild Rock while Lawsonia is dry, in case that factors into your golf outings. We drove about 30 miles to Kelly's Bar in the middle of no where off Hwy 73 to tip back a few.

Anyway, it's over, I survived...

Burner

2008-05-22T08:15:00.002-05:00

Well, I finally did it. I broke down and replaced my trusty Taylormade R580 driver with a brand spankin' new Taylormade Burner. Went to a demo day after my round on Sunday and just crushed that thing like no other. With my discount card at Door Creek I was able to get it for $254 instead of $299. I went to the range with it Tuesday night and just killed it. Couldn't wait for league on Wednesday.

And of course, league comes and I basically hit it like crap, never felt like I hit one on the nuts. First drive goes right and luckily doesn't go OB. 2nd drive I try to cut the corner on a dogleg right and drill it into a huge pine tree 30 yards in front of me (a little low, eh?). 3rd hole I got it in the fairway but it was a low screamer. 4th hole I finally hit it with the right trajectory but pushed it right into the rough at about 260. 6th hole I hooked the living shit out of it clear over to the 4th fairway. 7th hole I hit it pretty good, cut the corner and went about 280. But it still didn't have the trajectory I wanted. 9th hole I swung a little harder but pulled it and ended up under a tree by the green.

I ended up shooting 43 and it wasn't really the driver so much as I 3 putted 3 times. I hit some nice iron shots so I had that going for me...

Anywho, backing up to last week... Last Thursday was our 20th anniversary and Cdubya wanted to go to a Brewer game and then go golfing! God bless her... so we did that. Then Saturday she asks if we can go golfing on Sunday too. She's really getting into it and I think we're getting close to being able to take golf vacations in the winter/spring. That would be awesome. Give us something else to do besides Disney and Vegas. I ended up shooting 85 Sunday and hit 7/14 fairways. Guess that wasn't good enough as I bought the Burner the next day. Hope I don't regret the decision. Guy in our league bought one too and has gone through some adjustments with it but he shot 38 last night and was hitting it well, so hopefully that will be how it works for me.

We're heading to Lawsonia to play the Woodlands course on Sunday, I sure hope I can keep it in play most of the day.

Well, that's it for now, got a pile of work to do. Have a great weekend.

Comic Wonder at Accelerate Madison

2008-05-14T07:31:00.005-05:00

Accelerate Madison is a company that focuses on providing business support for IT organizations. They frequently have guest speakers and last night, Kelly Fitzsimmons, the CEO of ComicWonder, was one of the speakers. She got me in for free so I went and watched. It was pretty awesome.

The entire thing was also broadcast as a webcast and can be watched here. Kelly starts at about 35 minutes in.

The first presentation was by one of the founders of Sharendipity, Mark Gehring, and was quite interesting. Basically they are building a platform onto which anyone can do programming. Currently it's build onto Facebook's API and is mostly about games but it's got lots of potential. They'll be launching in July. They are a local Madison company.

After that Kelly took over. For those of you that want to know what Comic Wonder is really all about and who's working behind the scenes it really is quite interesting. One of the things she does mention is who her husband, Jeff's uncle is. I had no idea but it makes sense now. You'll have to watch to find out, but I'll give you a hint. He's a famous movie director.

The other thing that happened is that she pointed me out a few times towards the end, which was nice. If you really don't want to watch but want to hear my name mentioned, you can jump ahead to about 75 minutes during the Q/A (question about staffing).

Oh, and another thing I did not know that I found out before hand when Kelly was talking about a possible deal with Playboy for us to provide the audio component of their party jokes section, was that Kelly's mom was a Playboy Bunny! How funny is that? I had no clue...

Anyway, watch the webcast. I found it very interesting.

Oops, sorry

2008-05-12T07:50:00.002-05:00

Just realized it's been 2 weeks since I've posted something... and probably 2 years since I've posted something interesting. ba dum dum.

I can rectify the former, not promising anything on the latter.

Where to start... Our insurance covered the sump pump malfunction and I think we've determined what we're going to do for the basement floor. We found some vinyl flooring that "looks" like wood flooring only I won't have to rip it up next time we get water on it. This will allow us some piece of mind. We'll be getting it installed from Drexel Interiors, but haven't ordered it yet. Some time this week.

My new lawn mower works great. What a difference key start and being rear-propelled makes. Nice to just walk behind instead of pushing, especially on the hills.

In golf land, we started league last week. I shot a 43 but I gave away a stroke on each of the first 5 holes due to incredibly bad putting. I feel like I'm getting closer. I'm driving the ball in the fairway consistently (slowed down, lost a little distance but more under control). My irons are just not doing the job right now. I need to go to the range and work on them.

Saturday we played in a charity scramble at Wild Rock in the Dells. Wild Rock replaced the Wilderness golf course at Wilderness Resort. We finished at a whopping +5, good for 2nd to last. None of us could putt, not really good for a scramble. I did win a hole prize and a 50/50 prize for closest to the pin on the par 3 4th hole. I got really lucky. It was about 180 yards, water along the right the whole way and the pin tucked back in the corner over the water. I just happened to hit a 5 iron just left of the pin and it rolled right down to about 10 feet or so. Of course we all missed the birdie putt. I picked up a Wild Rock windshirt and $44 for my $3 entry into the 50/50.

As for the course, it still needs a little work but it's a really cool set up. Massive elevation changes and the greens... well, there's not a flat spot on them and every one has at least 3 tiers. You definitely need to hit to the right tier or you're looking at a near impossible 2 putt.

Thursday marks Cdubya and my 20th wedding anniversary. Hard to believe it was 20 years ago when two young kids travelled to Kauai and got married in a beautiful setting. It still makes me laugh to look at our wedding pictures. Thank god I cut the mullet off...

Well, I better get to working. Catch you all later.

Water is not always your friend

2008-04-28T08:47:00.005-05:00

The majority of today's post can be found on my Basement blog

That's pretty much my entire weekend except for 2 other things.

1) We won our hockey championship Friday night, 5-0. I had the first and last goals and finished the season with 26 goals and 43 total points in 22 games, leading the team in both. Here's a team picture.

2) I bought a new lawn mower (mine died last fall). It's a kick ass rear propelled model with variable speed and a big engine. It also has a high vacuum bagging system. About as good as you can get in a walk behind without going to a pro model. Sears had a big sale Saturday that I couldn't pass up.

Kohler Cup 2008

2008-04-21T09:40:00.003-05:00

Well, we didn't win again but that didn't stop Pat and I from having a good time golfing. While the weather in Madison was awesome all weekend it wasn't quite that great on Lake Michigan up north. Saturday was about 46, cloudy and windy at Whistling Straits. That seems to always be the temperature up there, I don't know what's going on with that.

We played Saturday at even par, which was pretty disappointing because we didn't play that poorly. It always seemed that Pat and I would get birdies on the same holes and bogeys on the same hole. If we'd just switched that up a little we could have been 4-6 under par. We went into Sunday in 53rd place out of 93 teams.

Sunday we didn't get off to the great start we needed and faded poorly at the end shooting a 3 over par. Once again there were 6 holes where neither of us did worth a crap and cost us.

All in all, a great weekend despite not winning. Can't wait till next year.

Quick catch-up

2008-04-18T08:28:00.002-05:00

I haven't been in the mood to blog lately. I think a lot of it stems from being busy but also I'm finding that I have nothing to say. Nothing really happens around here. Work, bowling, hockey and now golf are about it for me.

However, I guess there are a couple things. On Sunday we had our first Comic Wonder full team meeting in Milwaukee (of course, scheduled during the final round of the Masters so I didn't see any of it). It was really good and lots of great energy and ideas to make the site great and other ways we can make use of the technology. After that we went to see the new office space that we'll be getting May 1st. I still won't have to go in very often but it's cool we have a space to get together in. It's right by the Milwaukee river with a good view of downtown. It also has a basketball/tennis court next to it and one side has a big garage door so you can really open up the space. Kind of an industrial thing.

This weekend is the Kohler Cup. I think the 3rd one I've been in. Mike can't make it this year so Pat is taking his place. I went to play 18 on Wednesday afternoon to get in some more practice. I did ok, considering the wind was gusting to 35mph! Shot a 92 (46-46). The wind was amazing. On one par 5 dead into the wind I hit 2 straight 3-woods, each about 115 yards! They were rising shots that just went up and up and up and then back and back and back! I swear it was like a boomerang, thought I'd have to catch the ball as it came flying back past me. I ended up parring 3 of the last 4 holes so I feel ok about this weekend. I found the key was to relax and not try to swing hard. We'll see how it goes.

Weekend forecast calls for some showers tomorrow with possible t-storms in the afternoon. Of course they also said it was going to rain all day yesterday and it didn't rain at all until almost 10pm. Sunday is supposed to be great, mid-60's and sunny.

What else is new... oh, hockey playoffs. We won our first 2 games and are in the championship game next week already. Somehow I have no goals and 2 assists in 2 games though I did play better last week than I did the previous.

That's about it, lots of work to do today. Have a great weekend.

Is this the beginning of the end?

2008-04-09T08:11:00.002-05:00

I meant to post this Monday but I was too depressed. I'm starting to wonder if, at the ripe old age of 43, my natural athletic ability has left me.

It all started Friday night with our first playoff hockey game. I arrived early and got plenty of warm up time (too much, maybe). No signs of what was to come a short time later.

The game starts and for some reason I keep tripping, stumbling, basically acting like I hadn't ever done this before. Then I started having good scoring chances and either losing the puck or shooting a weak ass shot into the goalie. No signs of the guy that lead the team with 23 goals during the regular season. I don't think I could have played any worse and while, personally, I was quite down on myself, at least the team picked me up and we won 7-1.

Then Saturday comes around and it's time for our first golf round of the year. We head out to the Oaks and I hit pretty well on the range so I'm feeling pretty optimistic. I keep forgetting the old "good on the range, shit on the course" adage. And that's pretty much what happened. I hit a few decent drives but my iron shots were, for the most part, horrendous. I kept chunking so many shots.

I probably can blame some of that on 1st time out. Stuff like flying a lob wedge 15 yards over the green is mostly just a lack of playing time and re-learning my distances again. But I was taking 20 yard chip shots and hitting them 10 yards into a bunker, taking divots big enough to start my own lawn sod business, etc. I also managed to hook a hybrid on the par 5 15th over a fence and land it in the middle of the road, luckily between 2 sets of cars or I might have caused a major pile-up.

And to make matters worse, Retro beat me for the first time, 104-106 (yes, I had a freakin' 106).

There were a couple bright spots, mostly long drives, but I did birdie the par 3 7th hole with a nice 6 iron from 175 to 12 feet. Of course, that was sandwiched by triple bogey 7's on 6 and 8. Oh well, tough day, but at least it was sunny and warm in the mid 60's (tapered by a good 15-20 mph wind however).

None of that is why I felt depressed come Monday. It was the fact that I was winded walking a golf course (pushing a cart no less) after 8 holes. I'm so out of shape I think it's finally starting to catch up with me. Outside of hockey once a week I really wasn't doing much (I did play basketball 3 times in 3 months too). So, this week began my quest to get back into shape and not be that beer belly toting inactive putz that can barely waddle his way to the kitchen for another bucket of ice cream.

I'm not a fat guy mind you, but at 5'8" tall I should be in the 155ish range and I'm over 20 lbs beyond that. 20 lbs, amazing what that little difference can do to you. Of course, it's all in the gut region and no, I'm not going to quit drinking beer so it's going to take some actual body movement to do this. My goal is 156 (20 lb loss) by my 20th anniversary (May 15th). That gives me 6 weeks to lose it, a little over 3 lbs per week. I did it once before about 4 years ago but put it right back on. However, until recently I never went much over 170. I think working at home and having access to a continuous flow of snacks is not helping as I'm heavier than I've ever been in my life after only 2 1/2 months of doing it.

So now my weekdays begin with a vigorous 30 minute workout on the elliptical machine and some upper body weight work. Now, staying disciplined and doing it every day is where I've always failed so I'm going to have to be stronger and fight through on those days when I just don't feel like it.

Wish me luck...

Let the games begin!

2008-03-31T08:46:00.002-05:00

Brewers are scheduled to open the season at Wrigley against the scuzzball Cubs today at 1:30. However, there are some pretty strong storms headed this way and I have a feeling it's going to get washed out.

On the hockey front, we won again Friday night 9-5 to win the regular season. I had 2 more goals, ending up with 23 goals and 14 assists in 18 games. We start the playoffs this Friday.

On Saturday we went out looking for a 2nd club chair for the pub room and somehow ended up buying a new sofa sectional for the living room. I'm never sure how these things happen but I always wanted more seating for the living room and we found a really good deal on one that we both liked. It will be delivered Wednesday.

And of course, as I was looking at the current configuration of the living room I realized it really would give us more space if I flipped where the tv was. Sounds simple, right? Yeah... sure.

I ended up having to run 2 new coax lines (50'), splice a new phone line, rewire my surround speakers and put in a new outlet box on the wall. And of course, since I finished the basement, I had to pull ceiling tiles out and work around the insulation in the ceiling. Hardest part was getting the cable lines run through the ceiling about 25'. Ended up being able to push them about half way and then had to pull another ceiling tile so I could reach up and feed them the rest of the way.

Then I drilled holes in the ceiling up into the wall cavity where the other cable outlet was and feeding the new lines up there. I used a remodel box to put a new outlet in the wall near the original one. Once I got it all set I had to move the giant table with the tv on it over to the other side of the room. I ended up putting pieces of cardboard under the legs and sliding it across the floor so I wouldn't scratch the flooring. I was shocked when I fired everything back up and it all worked on the first try! That only took about 6 hours to do...

It looks pretty good but I still have several things to finish. The wall behind the tv had a big picture on it which now has to go somewhere else. Also, that wall is really dirty and needs repainting. I also need to lower a painting that was above the tv, it's too high now.

I'll take some pictures once the new sectional is here. We're giving our current sofa and big chair to my brother (he gets most of my old stuff).

Yeah, my bracket sucks too

2008-03-28T08:13:00.003-05:00

Well, I'm tied for 55th place out of 128 in the ncaa pool I'm in. Needless to say I'm toast. I guess that simplifies my life as I can just focus all my rooting energy on the Badgers instead (6:10pm CDT tonight). I'll also be rooting for Michigan State over Memphis. Would be great to get 2 Big 10 schools in the final 4 to prove all those nay-sayers wrong.

Badger hockey team also managed to snag themselves one of the 16 ncaa tourney spots and will be playing Saturday at 5:30 (locally on channel 14, MyMadison). If they win they'll play Sunday at 6.

That's all I got for now, but I'll leave you with this joke that almost made diet coke shoot out of my nose yesterday.

100 inches? That's what she said...

2008-03-24T09:19:00.003-05:00

Yep, we finally passed the 100" mark in snow fall this year yesterday. We needed 0.3" and got about an inch I guess. That coupled with the 7" from Friday put us over the top. Remember, the all time record was about 76.5" so this is likely to stand for ever or at least until next winter.

40's this week so hopefully it will all melt soon.

And on to the Sweet 16 for the Badgers as they completely dominated Fullerton on Thursday and Kansas State on Saturday. I hope they just keep on kicking ass to prove the freakin' idiot national media and all those bloggers who last saw the Badgers play in 2000 under Dick Bennett wrong.

This is not Bennett's team and while yes, they do play incredible defense leading to holding teams to the lowest average point total in the nation, they also have a well balanced offense and have scored in the 70's both games.

How come when UCLA scores in the 50's it's because they played a tough game but the Badgers score 72 and it's still boring? Honestly, it's a total joke. And for as much bashing as the big 10 has taken this year, how does a 5-2 record for the tourney look now? Only team that lost in the first round was an Indiana team that gave up when their coach got shit canned. I really hope Michigan State keeps winning and the Badgers meet them again in the final 4.

Oh, and for those of you who think Stephen Curry and Davidson will be able to hang with Bucky, I have 2 words for you... Michael Flowers. Have Curry ask Drew Neitzel and Eric Gordon how they liked trying to get shots off with Flowers up in their grill or how Kansas State did shooting 3 pointers (uh, can you say 0fer?).

Wow, that went on a little longer than I meant. I'm not really that angry, just frustrated at the lack of respect for one of the premier college hoops programs in the country.

On the hockey front, we won 10-3 in possibly the most boring game of the season. We had to shut it down half way through the 2nd period as it became apparent we were on our way to 20 goals. I don't think I even broke a sweat. I had one goal and just stopped shooting in the 2nd period.

We have 1 regular season game left and have a 2 point lead over the 2nd place team, plus we hold the tie breaker with them as we're 2-0-2 against them this year so we have first place sewn up. All that means is we get first choice of goalies for the playoffs.

Yay, Spring! Wait, WTF?

2008-03-21T09:41:00.003-05:00

First off, sorry for the lack of posts! It's actually been 9 days. I don't think I've ever gone that long without at least 1 post before. As I explained in my last post, I'm quite happy in my work which means I'm actually working more and blogging less. I know, I sound like a broken record and you probably all hate me by now. All I can say to that is "don't be a hater."

Anyway, what's new? Great question. First off, yesterday was the first official day of Spring and it was glorious. Upper 40's, brilliant sunshine, a perfect spring day. I let the dogs out in the backyard for over an hour and I sat in my office with the window open!

Ok, that was fun while it lasted. Guess what... yeah, for those that aren't around Wisconsin, that's right, huge fucking snow storm, that's what. They're predicting 6-8" in most areas with some approaching 10-12" (that's what she said).

What a nightmare. Just when you thought it was safe to go outside, wham, a land shark chomps down on your head and it's all over. *knock knock knock* "Unicef, ma'am."

Did I just date myself there? For those of you who don't know what the hell I just said, go rent the first couple seasons of Saturday Night Live.

Ok, so we've established that it's snowing (couple inches by now and it's not quite 10am yet) and that I'm not exactly excited about it. Let's move on...

Bowling. Ok, we're on fire now. 2 straight weeks of 7-0 and we might be back in the hunt, though I haven't seen the standings for a couple weeks so who knows. I'm not sure what happened but I'm starting to bowl better again. Guess I got through the February blah's and got my second wind. After a 680 and 644 the last week I had a 694 Wednesday (236, 232, 226). Should have had a 700. Needed 2 strikes in the 10th and after getting the first buried a 10 pin on the 2nd which cost me the 700 and also a house hanger which also means I got hung. Bummer....

Hockey. We're still in first place and continuing to roll towards the playoffs. We have 2 more regular season games. I'm not sure what's come over me but I keep scoring goals and I don't know why. Some of it is right place at the right time. Some of it is getting great passes from teammates and finding the spot. Whatever it is I now have 20 goals in 16 games and 18 in the last 10 after scoring only 2 in our first 6.

Golf. Yeah, I went to the driving range one time so far. Pat and I are playing in the Kohler cup on April 19th and 20th this year. Mike can't make it this year. I sure hope the snow has melted by then. Things were looking pretty good right up until this morning... :(

I hope you've all been reading Grinder's blog on the movie Public Enemies which is filming in nearby Columbus, WI. He was on site all week long for filming.

That's it for now, lots of work to do.

Oh crap, NCAA tourney, totally spaced that one. Badgers won, I went 13-3 the first day. Missed Kansas State (Wisconsin's next opponent), Texas A&M, and UNLV>

Later, gotta run!

A busy programmer is a happy programmer

2008-03-12T07:57:00.003-05:00

For programmers, there's nothing worse than not having much to do. We tend to start surfing the web, reading other blogs, going over your fantasy baseball draft strategy, etc. We can't stay focused on the minor trivial tasks we do have so we tend to drift away not doing much of anything.

On the other hand, when we have a ton to do we are at our best. Cranking out code in long stretches, forgetting to eat, drink, pee, etc. We don't talk to our loved ones, we don't talk to our friends and of course, we forget about our blog.

I've definitely fallen into the latter category. As the only Java developer at Comic Wonder I certainly have my hands full, but instead of complaining, I relish the challenge. I have more work than I can possibly do but I never have to be worried about being bored. I have freedom to code in my own style, I don't have to worry about reviewing someone else's work, I can deploy on my schedule, I can make database changes as I see fit, when I see fit.

So, this blog has suffered obviously. My work days are now running from about 7:30am to 6:00pm with a very short break to get some lunch to take back to my desk. And I love every minute of it.

And what's new at Comic Wonder you ask?

For starters, we're gearing up to be able to provide radio stations around the country with their own joke of the day player to put on their site, which will link in to custom station sites within Comic Wonder where they can hold their own contests, etc. Sort of a community within a community. Much of my work over the last 3 weeks has been focused on getting that part up and running.

In addition to that, we're also talking to a fairly famous company (run by a man in pajamas) about providing joke content on their website, customized to fit their theme. This gives me an excuse to peruse a web site I would normally not visit (at least during work hours). :)

Another thing I put into test yesterday was a preference setting for users that wish to filter out our spicier jokes. You will be able to set your account to only show mild, mild and medium or mild, medium and spicy jokes. That will go into production Sunday night.

And today I'll be working on what we call Joke Limbo. It's a place to look for text jokes to save from limbo, since we believe a joke isn't a joke until it's told. This should help in those times when you really want to tell a joke but can't come up with a good one. This should also go in Sunday night (assuming I finish it today or tomorrow).

Our traffic has picked up nicely. One of our jokes got put out on stumble upon (another digg like site) and we got a lot of traffic from that and it's been progressing from there. All our performance problems seem to be a thing of the past now. We've added more hardware and memory and this weekend we'll also be putting in a second web server with a load balancer, coupled with the use of a separate file server.

Speaking of performance issues, I'd like to think Retro and Dale for their suggestions (almost simultaneously) to implement memcached on the site to handle caching of frequently run queries. I believe that's helped out our performance issues greatly. When I took over you could say things were less than efficient. Kind of like an 8 cylinder car running on 3 cylinders. We're humming along smoothly now.

And now, you're joke of the day...

Joke of the Day

2008-03-06T17:04:00.001-06:00

This one's great...

Badgers nearly flawless

2008-02-29T08:24:00.002-06:00

The Badger hoopsters put on an exhibition of ball control last night in stomping the Michigan State Spartans 57-42. Unbelievably, they turned the ball over only 1 time for the entire game, setting a team record in the process. Amazingly enough MSU only turned it over 6 times making for a very clean game. The difference was Michael Flowers suffocating defense on Drew Neitzel and Joe Krabenhoft on Raymar Morgan. Those guys could do little and Neitzel basically stopped shooting after he was 1-10. They moved to 14-2 in the big 10 and 24-4 overall. Only 2 games left and a half game lead over Indiana and Purdue who each have 3 games left. Who'd of thought they would have a chance to win the conference when the season started after losing Alando Tucker and Chris Rock. ;)

Hey, another bowling team member has joined the joke tellers at ComicWonder. Soup has told a bunch of jokes, specializing in his ridiculously funny puns that he loves so much. Here's a good example...

Also, he turned me on to a new site which is pretty cool. It's called BeFunky. It's how I made my new avatar. Check it out, good fun.

Monday's suck

2008-02-25T18:30:00.003-06:00

I have that grumpy Monday mood today. Can't explain it, just feel blah. Maybe it's the freakin' ice and crap outside. I'm like 2 minutes from moving to Florida or something. Even asked a realtor friend how much our house is worth.

Yesterday was so nice out, actually above freezing which felt like 60. Unfortunately all the snow/ice melt ended up forming a lake in the road in front of my house. Being the good neighbor I went out and carved a channel to the storm drain and watched as it lowered by a good 2/3rds. Unfortunately overnight it froze over and once again a big lake formed today. So, tonight I go out and redig the channel and use my shovel to force the water to it.

I'm doing this for my neighbors, right? You'd think that they would appreciate it and go slowly by as I'm standing on the side of the road with a shovel, right? Well, most of them did but 4 or 5 cars blew by at 30mph spraying me with a tidal wave of water! What the fuck people!?!?!?! I wanted to pitch my shovel through their back window as they drove by oblivious to me standing there soaked.

Ah people, they're so awesome. I'm definitely better off working at home where I don't have to put up with the general idiotic population on a daily basis.

Ok, enough venting for one day. On a brighter note, the Grinder has become my first friend to actually go to ComicWonder.com and tell a joke. He told 2 actually! Now, take that as a challenge readers. Go get funny!

Here's his first joke:

Busy busy busy

2008-02-20T13:45:00.002-06:00

Sorry, haven't had much time for anything these days. Thought I would at least write something during my 3 minute lunch break.

So, ice... ice is bad, unless you're playing hockey that is.
Ice on the road... that's really bad. I've never seen the roads so completely covered with ice like this in my life. Main highways are good but anything else you might be better off just putting on the skates and leaving the car behind.

Since Cdubya is not from around here (California) she really didn't want to drive on ice (neither did I) so I've been driving her to work all week.

Yesterday morning I decided I should stick to the main roads and avoid the normal county highways I usually take. I head down Cottage Grove road to get on 51 North. Well, it's pretty freakin' icy as you would expect. We near the 51 entrance and I'm in the right lane, slowly easing up to a light that had turned red a few seconds ago. There's one car in front of me and he kind of skidded to a stop. So, being smart, I ease slowly up and stop behind him... reach for my coffee and BAM!

Stupid bitch behind me slammed right into me with her Trail Blazer. What the fuck you stupid whore, can you not see what is going on in front of you? Man, I was pissed. I jumped out of the car and damn near fell on my ass. After regaining my composure I went to check on the damage. Luckily her front bumper went under mine and just left me with a few scratches on the Murano. Her bumper was cracked and broken. I quickly got her insurance info since it was 3 below zero.

Fast forward 15 minutes and I'm driving down Main street in Sun Prairie. Asswipe in front of me is in a Mustang pretending that the roads are just fine and dandy. He attempts to take off from the stop light and just spins for a bit before swerving and starting out like his ass was on fire. He speeds up on one car in the right lane and quickly swerves to the left lane and continues his mission of destruction. I watch muttering how stupid people can be and as I catch up at the next light I notice that his bumper is under the rear bumper of the Expedition in front of me. What a total knob. I laughed at him as I slowly went by. Still in a hurry buddy? Jackass...

Rest of my day went great amazingly. I need to take it in for an estimate before I get hit again.

And if the snow and ice wasn't enough, we're going for 2 more records today. The record coldest high temp on this day is +4. We should be close. The record low for tonight is -14. We should also be close to that. Gotta love Wisconsin!

Working from home makes one sick?

2008-02-13T11:21:00.002-06:00

Ok, somehow I got sick over the weekend and I have no idea how. I'm working at home, the only people I've seen are my wife and my family (last Tuesday they were over). None of them are or have been sick, so what gives?

I hope it goes away soon, I have to go to Milwaukee for a meeting on Friday.

On the ComicWonder effort, there's a Mashable article about the funding we've raised. Check it here.

We successfully survived our time on Bob and Tom last Tuesday. Chris Cashman and Mark Metcalf were on for about 2 hours and plugged the site many times. We held up just fine, no performance issues as we had a pretty big spike in traffic.

Our new goal is to be ready for 100 radio stations to have custom group operations in place by April 1st. It's a pretty aggressive time frame but I think we can pull it off.

I Loathe Snow

2008-02-07T10:20:00.000-06:00

I've had enough. Just stop already.

We got 13.3" more snow yesterday. What a joke. We're now within 2.5" of our all time record for one winter and 42 more days till spring. We have over 76" so far and now they're saying it's possible we could hit 100". Nice... I need to move to Arizona or something.

Yesterday was a big day for ComicWonder.com. The Comic Wonder of the Year, Chris Cashman, and Mark Metcalf (Neidermeyer) were on the Bob and Tom show yesterday morning. It was great, they were on for 2 hours and did a lot to pump up the site. We had quite a bit of traffic and lots of new members and jokes.

I ended up putting in some database caching and performance improvements Tuesday night and we ran flawlessly.

We're working now towards getting some additional hardware and some load balancing then we'll be adding some group stuff for radio stations to have their own joke sections. Should be fun building that.

Back to the snow.. did I mention I hate it? 500 cars stranded on the interstate yesterday and they were still telling everyone to stay off I-90 between Madison and Janesville as there were still 100 cars left to remove. Glad I wasn't on the highway yesterday, it was bad enough just getting around town.

Bowling, of course was canceled. They even shut down the UW, which is unheard of. Somehow the Badger basketball team managed to make it to Iowa where they struggled but ended up beating Iowa to run their record to 19-3 (9-1 in the Big 10). That was the first game I was able to watch on the Big 10 network in HD. Pretty cool.

Speaking of HD. I got a new dish installed on Saturday and bought the new Directv HD DVR so I could get their full compliment of some 75 HD channels.

Unfortunately I couldn't get a signal on one of the satellites. I called and complained and nothing. Finally during the snow storm another installer came yesterday. Turns out that the multiswitch (takes 4 incoming satellite lines and runs them to 8 output lines) couldn't handle the frequency that the new satellite comes in on. He replaced the multiswitch and everything is great. They should let people know that, I could have replaced it myself.

That's all for now, gotta catch up on work after spending a couple hours clearing the snow.

Plugging away

2008-01-31T09:28:00.001-06:00

We went 5-2 again last night in bowling for the 2nd week in a row. We're right about in the middle of the standings. If we can just keep plugging away, going 5-2 each week I think there's enough time for us to move up, assuming no one starts running away with it.

I did ok, finally got back over 600 again with a 621 (212, 207, 202). Last game should have been much better but somehow I missed a spare in the 9th that I make 99% of the time and then had a big split in the 10th frame.

I also got away with 2 near "Bonehead blunders". First one, I was about to bowl on the wrong lane when the other team yelled out "WAIT!" Phew... then in the 9th frame I left the 2-8 (sleeper). Well, the 8 pin had slid a bit to the right so it wasn't right behind the 2 pin. But, I pick this up all the time. It's not a hard spare. I threw it right where I wanted and saw it hooking right in and turned my back and walked back to the table. I discarded a card and was just about to pick up a new card when Bubba yelled out "Blunder!" I stopped and looked up at the score and saw that I had not gotten the spare (not sure how I could have missed it). But, he jumped the gun and I didn't draw a card, so once again, saved by the yell.

Well, I guess my plea for super bowl jokes fell on deaf ears. Maybe it's because you don't understand how Comic Wonder works. Here's a short explanation.

Comic Wonder uses technology like your voice mail does. After you sign up you just go to the Tell a Joke page. At that page, you enter your phone number (using a land line works best for audio quality) and we call you. It's really fast, as soon as you hit the Call me button your phone will ring. You record your joke into the phone just like you were leaving a voice mail for someone. You have the ability to listen to it, record it again, etc. When you're finished you hang up and the page will show you a Next button to upload your joke.

Once you do that we get a wave file sent back to us from the server and we convert it to an mp3 and store it on our servers. Simple as that.

To get you started, here's a super bowl joke I told yesterday.

Have a good Thursday.

We need your Super Bowl jokes!

2008-01-30T11:23:00.000-06:00

Hey, do you know some Super Bowl jokes and are just itching for a place to tell them where you won't be told to shut up? Have we got the place for you!

Just head over to Comic Wonder and tell them there. Then tell everyone you know to listen to them and tell their own!

And who knows, if your joke is judged to be the best of the week you could even win amazing prizes!

So, what are you waiting for?

Smelly Dog

2008-01-30T11:06:00.000-06:00

I took the girls to a new dog groomer yesterday. The new Mounds in Sun Prairie includes a groomer (Shaggy Dogs). Thought I would give them a try, so I made an appointment for 3:00 yesterday.

First thing, 2:45 rolls around and we're in the middle of a sleet storm with 20+mph winds. Drive there isn't too horrible but much worse on the way home 30 minutes later as there's glare ice everywhere. I make it home in about a half hour.

At 6:00 we have to go pick them up. It's a total mess out, with the new snow we received now blowing across the roads. In places unprotected, like country roads next to corn fields, it's a virtual white out. Can't see anything in places and have to crawl forward slowly. Luckily there's hardly anyone on the road so we make it there and back without dying.

And the end result was great. Dogs smell good for once, they're nicely groomed and even got little pink bandanna's, though Delaney is too much of a tom-boy to enjoy it so her's is quickly taken off.

I took a couple pictures of them with my iPhone.

Delaney

Guinness

Testing embedded joke player

2008-01-29T13:07:00.001-06:00

Enough already

2008-01-29T08:15:00.000-06:00

Will someone please tell Roger Clemens to just shut the fuck up already?

First, it was his youtube video proclaiming his innocence, then the 60 minutes interview, now his lawyers have drafted a long document explaining just how he achieved his level of greatness in his mid-40's without the use of performance enhancing drugs.

Yeah, ok, NOW I believe you. Why would a lawyer fudge the truth? That would never happen.

Give it up already Roger. Brian McNamee had no reason to add you to his list if it wasn't true. He risked completely losing his entire plea deal if he was caught lying. What incentive is there for him to lie? And your best buddy, Andy Pettite, has already admitted to using them. Are we to believe you? Not hardly. Dude, you can deny till the cows come home but that's not going to change what anyone believes and it just makes you look like a total fucking asshole. Give it up already.

Electro-static discharge

2008-01-28T12:48:00.000-06:00

All last week I would walk around the house and just get the living shit zapped out of me every time I touched something. The kicker came Friday night as I was walking into the kitchen. I went to flip on the lights and as my finger came in contact with the light switch a blue arc of fire flew from it into my finger sending me into an expletive laced rant about freakin' winters in Wisconsin.

That did it. Saturday morning we went out to Home Depot and bought an 11 gallon humidifier. Cranked that thing on high for an hour then set it back so it would maintain a constant 40% humidity level in the house. I haven't been shocked since.

Friday night hockey was great again. We won once more, running our record to 8-3-2, and we haven't lost in 5 straight (4-0-1). I scored twice but had at least 9 really good looks including one where I took a feed in front and shot for the far corner only for the goalie to kick it back to me so I tried for the near corner and he flashed an amazing toe save to deny me again. I now have a team leading 13 goals in 12 games with 8 assists (2nd in assists). During our 5 game unbeaten string I have 10 goals, only getting kept off the scoreboard in our 2-2 tie.

Unfortunately this week's game is on Saturday because of a kid's tourney bumping us and I can't make the game because of couples bowling league. After that we have 2 weeks off because of more tournaments. That means my next game is on Feb 22nd.

I'll try to get in some basketball those weekends instead.

Work is going well. We managed to improve the speed of ComicWonder.com dramatically in the last few days. Not sure how it's going to hold up under a heavy load yet. I guess we'll find out soon. The winner of the Comic Wonder of the Year contest, Chris Cashman and Mark Metcalf (Neidermeyer from Animal House and Maestro from Seinfeld) are making the radio talk show circuit now and will be on Bob & Tom a week from Wednesday (Feb 6th).

I guess we'll know if we can handle an increased load that day. That's what she said. There's no time for that!

And here's another joke from Christopher Walken.

Later

Yay, Friday!

2008-01-25T12:26:00.000-06:00

Have you seen the awesome goal that Rick Nash of Columbus scored against Phoenix a little while ago? It's all over youtube. Check this out. Just freakin' amazing.

And here's your Christopher Walken joke of the day.

Everyone should have dogs at work

2008-01-24T08:17:00.000-06:00

There's nothing quite like having a dog next to you to pet when you're stuck on a problem. They just look at you like they wish they could help. Everyone should be so lucky to have a buddy like that.

Guinness spends most of the day sprawled out on the couch sleeping but Delaney spends all day upstairs with me, mostly lying under the desk return sleeping but she can tell when I'm stuck and will sit up next to me, just looking at me, hoping for a little head scratch. She's so cool...

Anyway, last night was bowling night again and I continued to struggle. Actually the first and second games I bowled pretty well but couldn't carry anything. The 2nd game everything was right there but I left a 4 pin, 3 10 pins, a 9 pin and then the coupe de grace, a crushed 8 pin in the 10th when I needed to strike out for us to have a chance. All that for a whopping 206 after a 215 first game. 3rd game I really struggled as the oil started breaking down quickly and after a huge split in the 10th I ended up with a 158. Fortunately we still won thanks to Jim's 242. We went 5-2 on the night, just losing that 2nd game. That's 3 straight sub 570 series for me. Not good.

And now, a vampire joke (credit goes to Chad for telling this one at bowling). Yes, the comedian is me...

And if that's not enough, how eerie is this clip from Coming to America? (credit Paul's Poop for finding this nugget).

Bowling drop off

2008-01-22T09:31:00.000-06:00

After nearly shooting a 300 2 weeks ago (298) and a 727 series I have completely lost it. Last Wednesday I shot 553 never breaking 200 and then Saturday night I couldn't do anything right, starting with a 149 game and shooting 524. I did manage a 213 the last game. I know something I did wrong though. I started messing around switching balls and used 3 different ones Wednesday and 2 on Saturday. I think I need to figure out which ball to use in warm ups and not switch.

To make myself more comfortable working from home I bought a new chair from Staples which was delivered yesterday. Amazingly, I ordered it Friday and it was delivered Monday with free shipping. Go figure. Here's a picture of it... oh so comfy.

And here is today's joke.

On the job

2008-01-21T14:58:00.000-06:00

Day 2 with Comic Wonder. I'm learning a lot about how all this works but still feel like I'll never grasp it all.

Here's a funny joke I listened to today.

Last Day!

2008-01-17T10:04:00.000-06:00

Today is my last day at my current client!

I start with ComicWonder tomorrow (though I have been working nights getting ready).

I'm so jacked to be able to do something cool and exciting without a big bureaucracy getting in my way.

We'll be heading out to bar at Bowl-a-vard lanes after work for a little going away party. Hopefully we won't get too much snow...

My next post will be from the comfort of my home office. :)

Later all!

Comic Wonder in the news

2008-01-12T17:26:00.000-06:00

The Seattle PI did an article on Comic Wonder of the Year winner, Chris Cashman.

Pretty cool. We got a big increase in traffic this morning because of it.

In hockey news we tied 2-2 last night. My 2 game hat trick streak is over. I didn't score. We had so many opportunities it was ridiculous but their goalie came up with huge save after huge save.

Choker!

2008-01-10T19:09:00.000-06:00

First 11 strikes tonight in game one only to throw an 8 count on the last ball for 298.

Funny thing is I actually thought I threw the ball better in the last 2 games and couldn't carry to save my ass. Shot 223 and 206 for 727. Pretty much sucked. Tons of 10 pins and 8 pins in the last 2 games, not sure what happened there.

Fire on the Ice

2008-01-07T11:18:00.000-06:00

After only scoring 3 goals combined in our first 8 games, I've had hat tricks in the last 2, including scoring 3 times in the first period Saturday night en route to a 7-2 drubbing. I'm not sure what's happened other than we haven't had to go up against the best goalie in these last 2. I could have had more goals Saturday but the league has a rule where a single person can't score more than 3 in a game so I ended up moving to defense after getting my 3rd about 12 minutes into the first. We're now tied for first place.

But before hockey I had to bowl in couples league. I managed to just have 2 Guinness but then we went to Red Robin afterwards where I had one of those giant burgers. Half hour after I finished eating I was getting dressed and I was so full I could barely bend over to tie my skates. After a few healthy burps I hit the ice and scored on my first shot. It all steamrolled from there. Oh, and I bowled a 616 series which should have been much better. I left 13 single pins, it was ridiculous. In the first game I crushed all 11 shots and managed 5 strikes, 5 10 pins and a 7 pin for a 207 game. Easily could have been a 300... The whole night went that way. I was actually shocked every time I actually got a strike.

Tonight I have to drive to Milwaukee to meet the team at 7pm. I sure hope the fog has lifted enough so there's not a repeat of the 100 car pile up on the freeway that happened yesterday.

Oh, I got new tires on the Acura Saturday too. Goodyear Eagle F1 All Season's. They have great grip! I took some corners really fast and they held tight. Unfortunately all the snow is melting off the roads so I couldn't test the traction fully yet. I'm sure I'll get my chance fairly soon.

Well, back to merging code. Enjoy your Monday.

Catch up

2008-01-05T09:02:00.001-06:00

I feel like I haven't said much lately so while I'm sitting at Goodyear getting new tires I would try to catch up some.

Cdubya's Acura TL has summer high perf tires and I've been struggling to keep it on the road in the snow. I'm now replacing them with F1 All Season tires. They're rated very high for snow and wet traction and a great high perf tire.

On the work front I'll be going to Milwaukee Monday night to meet the whole team (all 6 of us) I'm looking forward to getting away from the corporate bullshit and making a difference while actually having fun doing it.

I took wednesday off from bowling, I needed a break. I think it helped as I shot 674 Thursday. Back bowling couples league tonight followed by a late hockey game.

Well, I'm tired off typing with my thumbs on my iPhone.
see ya

Got it!

2008-01-03T16:13:00.001-06:00

Got the call at 3:55 today. Putting in my notice tomorrow.

Still no word

2008-01-02T09:50:00.001-06:00

Apparently the owners are still closing on the funding they received and it's keeping them too busy to finalize an offer to me. Latest word is that it will be Friday at the latest... unfortunately that extends my nightmare here a little longer.

Still sweating it out

2007-12-31T11:22:00.001-06:00

Still haven't heard back about the job yet. Getting a little more nervous...

Friday night's hockey game turned out to be great. Despite only having 1 sub we destroyed the first place team 7-0. I ended up having a hat trick (that's 3 goals for you non-hockey types) despite barely being able to move after the first period. I swear I played no defense and spent most of the game standing around. I scored the first goal of the game on a deflection of a shot from the point early on when I still had energy. I scored the other 2 just on sheer luck. Just standing around and the puck ended up coming right to me. The 2nd goal I was floating out near the blue line when the puck popped out front. Decided I couldn't pass it up and stepped into a slap shot from about 15 feet away and blasted it over the goalie's glove and off the inside of the near post. 3rd goal was similar, just floating over to the goalie's right and the puck squirted free to me and I one timed it into the near corner. I could barely skate by that point. We sure earned our beer that night!

Merry belated Christmas

2007-12-28T07:50:00.000-06:00

Late Merry Christmas and all that other stuff. Hope you all had a great holiday.

I'm glad Christmas is over, only so much of my family I can take. However, I do have one more really big Christmas get-together left on Sunday at my uncle's house. This is the one with my mom's entire family with her 5 siblings, all my cousins and their kids. About 40 people in all. Luckily the Packer game will be on so I won't have to talk to them too much. :)

On the Christmas loot side, I got 3 really cool things. First, a talking Michael Scott bobble head (from the Office). He says "that's what she said" which cracks me up every time. Second, a new golf bag that's a hybrid carry/cart bag from Sun Mountain. Unfortunately I'll have to wait 4 more months to use it unless I can finagle a trip down south to play before that. Third, Guitar Hero III for my ps2. What a blast that is! Very addicting.

My final Christmas present may be arriving shortly. I met with one of the owners of comicwonder.com last night. I think things went pretty well. He wants me to be in charge of all the development. A daunting task but I'm ready for it. I could barely sleep last night and ended up getting up around 4:30 and sending off another email. I sure hope it happens. I should hear by Monday at the latest, hopefully today.

One bad thing about this time of the year. We have a hockey game tonight and we're going to be missing 5 players plus 1 injured guy which means instead of 12 or 13 guys we'll have 7, going against the first place team. That means 4 forwards and 3 defensemen and a whole bunch of ice time for everyone. Considering the cold I've been fighting I'll probably need an oxygen tank to get through the first period. On the bright side, it's my turn to bring beer and with only 7 guys I can probably get away with only bringing a case.

In bowling news, I suck. 3 straight 560's before I recovered to shoot a 642 last night (right on my average of 214 in that league). I could have done much better but really had very little luck. If I get the new job I only have 2 weeks left in that league as I can't bowl in it if I'm not working at this company. That actually makes me happy as I'm getting totally burned out with bowling right now. 2-3 times a week is just too much. I'd rather do the once a week men's league and every other week couples. Plus the new job would require much more of my time and I'd probably have to quit anyway.

Ok, that's all for now. Have a great weekend.

Time to take the leap

2007-12-21T16:11:00.000-06:00

I interviewed today for a position joining a new start-up web company in Milwaukee. I'd be subcontracting, doing Java stuff. They're a new social networking, fun, type of site with tons of angel funding. I don't know a whole lot about it just yet.

The web site is called Comic Wonder. I should hear something soon. They were about 98% sure they wanted me, just needed to talk to one of the partners.

I think it's time for me to move out of the big corporate stuffy environment to something hot, fresh and fun.

The Joys of being 40-something

2007-12-20T10:15:00.000-06:00

Had my yearly physical yesterday. Last year I had successfully convinced my doc that I did not need a prostate exam and I'm pretty sure he said we can wait till your 45...

However, yesterday he was singing a different tune. He insisted that I should have one but did say that if it was normal I might be able to convince him next year that I don't need one.

What a joyous experience . I tried to make it a humorous situation, invoking Fletch-isms, but when he said "just relax" all I could think of was "no fucking way" and clenched up tight...

In the end (pun intended) it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be but I certainly could never be a homosexual and I hope I never have to go to prison...

After that bit of fun I got a call to meet a couple bowling teammates for dinner at the Cloud-9 grill prior to bowling, which of course translates into "let's have some beers before bowling". And that was not a good idea as we got pasted our first two games, losing by 190 and 140. I was awesome, 165 and 159 to start. Not bad at all, just needed a 300 game in game 3 to get my average for the night (I did manage a 238 in game three to save some dignity). We did win the 3rd game and it could have been worse I guess. No one did worth a shit...

Oh well, I'll try again tonight in my other league.

Weekend Wrap

2007-12-17T09:10:00.001-06:00

Hockey Friday night. 10:45pm game. What a pain those are on an old guy that is normally in bed by 10:30. We were supposed to face the worst goalie in the league but he was sick and was replaced by the best goalie in the league. We've now faced him in 5 of our 8 games. We're 3-0 against the other goalies but 1-3-1 against him as we lost 3-1. I got the lone goal on a deflection in front. Our GM (who was sick) took pictures and caught my goal. You can see the puck as a blur just in front of me right before the deflection. I'll try to remember to post some more pics when I get a chance.

Saturday was our company holiday party. We had dinner at the Concourse hotel and of course, it was crap. The chicken that several of us had was not cooked. Cdubya and I were smart and had a very late good lunch so it didn't matter too much. Afterwards we went to the Comedy Club on State Street and saw a pretty funny show.

Sunday morning after I finished clearing snow for the umpteenth time this year, I went to Target to finish my Xmas shopping. What a zoo... at least I'm done now.

Then we watched the Packers destroy the Rams and saw Brett break Marino's record for passing yards. Very cool. Then we watched Romo stink up the joint in Philly as the Cowboys lost their 2nd game. Makes that last second win against Detroit last week all the larger. Funniest part was Westbrook giving up an easy td and laying down at the 1 yard line in order to run out the clock. Cdubya has him on her fantasy football team and was screaming at him. I was laughing. It's her first year playing and after finishing tied for first and getting a first round bye in the playoffs, really needed that score. I think she probably lost, haven't looked yet.

Then we watched the Survivor finale. It kind of went the way I thought it would, with someone taking Todd to the final 3 despite knowing he could swing the jury with his sneaky ways. He did just that. It was good to see Courtney put some more weight on her. Apparently she was down to 86 lbs by the end. Personally, I think she looked more like 75... I actually thought she had a chance to win at the end. I knew she'd get at least 2 votes but that's all she got. Amanda, who seemed to have the best chance, really didn't respond well at the final Tribal Council and failed to convince anyone that she deserved to win, ending up getting only 1 vote.

The next season looks pretty good with a tribe of "super-fans" vs a tribe of "favorites", competitors from previous seasons that hadn't won. Should be interesting. They're in Micronesia, wherever the heck that is.

Installing Windows on my MacBook

2007-12-15T11:30:00.000-06:00

I am working towards ridding my house of pc's, just as I have rid my house of Charter cable. Unfortunately I still have 2 things that require me to have a pc.
1) Quicken Home and Business, the software I use to do my invoicing and manage my business accounts, is only available on Windows.
2) Remote connections to work.

So, how do I get around this predicament? My first try is to install Parallels for Mac. It's virtual O/S software that has been getting some good buzz.

Parallels has a 15 day free trial so I downloaded it yesterday to try out. Install was quite easy BUT the install of Windows XP was not. My first several attempts always hung at about 37 minutes remaining while installing devices. Kept restarting it but nothing.

Finally I started looking at which devices it was trying to set up. It was trying to do 2 devices that didn't exist; a floppy drive and a parallel port. I disabled those and also turned off my Airport card (wifi). This time it blew through all that but stopped on saving settings with about 9 minutes remaining. I started to wonder if it needed a network connection for that or something so I turned the Airport card back on and restarted it and bingo, it went right through the install and started Windows in a window on my desktop.

This will allow me to do all my windows stuff on my Mac. Say goodnight PC. "Goodnight PC"

Here's a screen shot.

White out

2007-12-11T13:03:00.000-06:00

Just looked outside and can barely see. The snow is really coming down, sure going to be a fun drive home tonight. We're going to be over 20 inches of snow for the month already and it's only the 11th! I guess my golfing is done for the year... :(

Ever see those Monster.com commercials where there's one dude working with a whole bunch of monkeys? Yeah, that's where I work. I'm that guy.

Have you heard of the Nutty Buddy? It's a brand new cup for protecting your nads. Here's a video demonstrating it's effectiveness. This guy is nuts, pun intended.

Spotted Dick

2007-12-10T14:17:00.000-06:00

No, I don't have a new disease...

Ever walk through a grocery store and see something on the shelf that makes you stop and say "what the fuck?" I had one of those moments Saturday. Here was the cause of it.

Can't say I know anyone that would ever buy something like that. Especially at $4.29 a can!

The weekend was interesting. Friday night Cdubya was having some kind of cooking party so I got the hell outta there and went to a bar and grill near the hockey rink for some dinner before my game. Well, I ate too much of course and had a pint of Guinness of course and went to my game way too full to be effective. We ended up winning 8-5 but I didn't do much of anything.

Saturday morning I went to play basketball with a co-worker. I hadn't touched a ball in 9 years and it showed. I think I made 3 baskets in 90 minutes. I ended up not shooting too much because air balls are humiliating. My D and rebounding weren't bad so I focused on that.

Unfortunately, I forgot about my bad ankle and I'm paying for it now. All that pounding took it's toll and I've been hobbling around since. Add some back and shoulder pain and I spent all day yesterday lying on the couch watching football.

Speaking of football, how about those Packers? 11-2 and looking like a legit contender. Of course, no one is going to beat Brady and the Pats but I'm looking forward to a rematch with the Cowboys at least.

On a different subject, I may have an interview with a new Web startup company in Milwaukee some time this week. They're looking for a consultant to come in and do some Java work. It's supposed to be some sort of Facebook or MySpace type of company but with a humorous twist. Not sure what it's all about. I'll update when I find out more. Could be fun and it couldn't be worse than where I'm at now. Oh, and I would only have to go to Milwaukee twice a week, working from home the rest of the time.

Sucky week

2007-12-06T09:56:00.001-06:00

Work is still driving me nuts. We'll be deploying more bug fixes again tonight. I sure hope this cycle ends soon. I think I'll try to take tomorrow off if I can.

Bowling isn't much better as we got swept for the 2nd straight week. I'm bowling like crap and basically cost us the 1st 2 games...

After a week off from hockey, I'll be back at it tomorrow night. Our GM spent our last game taking pictures of us playing. Here's one of me.

I gotta get outta here

2007-12-03T10:17:00.000-06:00

This client has no idea how to manage, build and deploy web applications. I worked 42 hours from Friday - Sunday this weekend to get an app deployed that in other places would have taken an hour.

As a result, I'm sore, tired, angry and I don't have much to say...

Hopefully I'll post again later in the week when I'm unburied.

Yes, I'm still alive

2007-12-01T07:32:00.000-06:00

Super busy week, moving an application into production today. I'm just waiting for the web team to contact me about a problem so I have a minute to post. This whole week has been a blur, from work to bowling to Packers game back to work. I worked until 11pm last night and back at it at 6:15 this morning. Most likely it will be an all day thing today as nothing ever goes right at this company.

Nothing much new going on. Bowled Wed and Thurs, nothing special. No hockey last night due to a youth tournament. I had to work anyway, so not a big deal.

We're supposed to get about 6" of snow today, which is cool since I just bought a new Ariens 2-stage snow thrower. Looking forward to trying it out.

Well, better get back to it. Enjoy your weekend.

Oh, and Favre is ok, he'll play next week.

Working Late Saves Catastrophy!

2007-11-20T09:30:00.000-06:00

My supervisor came by late yesterday to discuss a candidate we had interviewed earlier in the day and I ended up leaving work a half hour late. And today I am extremely grateful.

You see, 5 minutes before I got home 2 huge shelves full of all sorts of stuff (car ramps, golf bags, wood, carpet scraps, lawn chairs, etc) ripped loose from the wall and crash down right where my car would have been. The 2 shelves were 4x12 sheets of fiberboard, weighing about 40 lbs each. The damage to my new Murano would have been extensive.

I was shocked when I opened the garage door and it looked like a tornado had ripped through there. Cdubya said it had just happened and totally sounded like that, enough to freak the dogs out big time.

So, the lesson of the day is: always work late, you never know what you'll be saving from certain disaster.

Frozen Tundra

2007-11-19T08:27:00.000-06:00

Bubba and I went up to the Packers/Panthers game yesterday and saw a great game. Packers dominated from the start en route to a 21-3 half time lead and despite giving up a couple of late td's (prevent defense) they won easily 31-17. They're now at 9-1, they're best start since starting 10-0 under Lombardi in '62. Speaking of 62, Brett threw 3 td's in a game for the 62nd time, tying another Dan Marino record. He'll be breaking that Thanksgiving day against the declining Lions (lost 3 straight after starting 6-1). The big game is the following Thursday night against the Cowboys, which is on the NFL Network (go out and get DirecTv this week if you want to see it around here, and no, don't ask me if you can come over to watch it. :)

Friday afternoon I managed to install the carpeting on the stairs. It wasn't that bad. I used my staple gun to attach it and a stair tool to wedge it along the sides. Took a couple hours or so.

Saturday night we played poker at my place. I ended up winning $63 after we doubled the limits and I got hot. We just played Hold 'em for about 5 hours (had to cut it off at midnight so I could get up early to go to Green Bay).

Short week this week, gotta go get some work done.

Have a happy Turkey day.

New ball works

2007-11-15T18:41:00.000-06:00

Well, after 6 games with the new ball I'm happy with it.

On Wednesday I started with 9 strikes in the first game for a 234 (2 big splits cost me). It definitely hooks a lot, especially if there's not a ton of oil. I was playing a line I haven't ever come close to playing before and adjustments were a little difficult. I ended up shooting 630.

Now tonight at a place where they slather the oil gratuitously I did a little better, shooting a 711 (212, 266, 233). I had 9 strikes in a row in the 2nd game. Should have done better in the 3rd game but the oil dried up a little and it took me 3 bad shots to realize I needed to move a little.

So, 223 average this week with it. And I'm still learning how it works. Skies the limit here...

New ball

2007-11-13T08:23:00.000-06:00

I decided to bite the bullet and get a new bowling ball last night. I needed something that I could still turn despite heavy oil conditions, which I've been seeing a lot lately. What I ended up getting is a super hooking ball, the Brunswick Fury.

Rob drilled it for me last night. I threw a bunch of shots on his lanes but they hadn't been oiled since Friday so it was quite difficult to get the ball to the right side. It definitely hooks. I may need to have it polished a little to get it down the lane more, but I'll wait to see how it reacts first.

One new thing I did have done was to get a switch grip put in for the thumb. Basically it's a 2 part thumb hole. There's an outer sleeve and an inner component that slides in and locks at the bottom. It allows you to have one custom thumb fitting that is perfect and move it to a different ball. Or you could have several sized ones and allows you to swap out when you need to adjust (say if your thumb is swollen due to the heat or something).

I was planning on having him put one in my Columbia Ti Messenger ball as well since it needed to have the thumb hole fixed anyhow. Unfortunately when Rob drilled in he hit the ceramic core of that ball and just about ruined his $200 drill bit. You can't drill into ceramic so I'm stuck. He's plugging it and will re-drill it for a normal thumb plug. Oh well... I probably won't have that ball for tomorrow.

At least it was a good football weekend

2007-11-12T09:39:00.000-06:00

Well, the iPod adapter thing didn't work for my Murano. After the tech finished taking everything apart there was nothing to plug it into. Apparently I'm missing a wiring harness that's required. They're going to do more research today to see what they can do. I'm still hopeful that I can get it installed. I figured there would be problems so I wasn't all that upset.

Luckily they had the Badger/Michigan game on tv at the dealership so I was able to watch Bucky dismantle the Wolverines and win 37-21. I guess there's still a chance they could end up playing a New Years game. When they beat Minnesota next week they'll finish at 9-3 (5-3 in the conference).

Saturday night was couples bowling. My game has fallen apart. Partly because my newest ball has just stopped working. I had to use my back up which is not drilled the same and hurts my thumb. I struggled big time and shot my lowest score in god knows how long, a 499. My average is down to 192 in that league (compared to 207 and 216 in my other 2). I don't really care about couples league, it's just for fun.

Sunday I got to watch the Packers destroy the Vikings. They're making a believer out of me now. They now have a 2 game lead in the NFC North since Detroit lost to Arizona (they still haven't played anyone decent yet). Packers play Carolina Sunday then Detroit on Thanksgiving day.

In between football I managed to tear all the old carpeting off the stairs. What a pain the ass that was. It was all stapled down, with about 100 staples on each step. Took me about 5 hours to get it out and to pull all the staples with a pliers. My hands, back, shoulders, all killing me today. I have a blister on my right ring finger that could impact bowling Wednesday. I'm hopeful it will heal, it's not a big one.

I'm going back to see Rob Bailey tonight. I may end up just trading in my newer ball for something better. I'm getting sick of trying to get it to work and taking it back in to get cleaned every couple months. We'll see...

My balls need some refurbishment

2007-11-09T14:20:00.000-06:00

Bowling balls... sheesh, get your minds out of the gutter.

The resurface job done on my newer Track Solution Plus ball last week lasted all of 3 games and it was back to not hooking again by game 4. Now I have to take it in to put it in the super oil sucker machine to try to unclog the pores that are filled with oil. Sounds like a teenager problem. Maybe I should try some clearasil instead.

I ended up using my old Columbia Ti Messenger ball the rest of the night. It's not a reactive resin ball so it doesn't have these same features. In fact, I've had it for about 5 years and never had anything done to it. I've only had the Track ball for 8 months and this is the 3rd time I've had to take it back in to the shop...

Unfortunately the thumb plug is wearing out causing it to cut into the base of my thumb where I already suffer from tendinitis so it feels terrible. I have to just put my thumb in part way (that's what she said). I'll get that fixed Monday when I go in. Until then I guess I'll just deal with it. Bowl again tomorrow night.

And now for the really bad news. No "24" this year. The producers said that since they can't guarantee that they'll be able to film all 24 hours they decided to just cancel the season instead of risking not finishing. Bummer, my favorite show, gone. Looks like I'll get more use out of my Netflix subscription in the coming months.

And I think I'm coming down with a cold... I've had a stomach "issue" all week and went home early on Monday (hence the reason I'm still at work at 2:30pm on a Friday) but now it's my throat and sinuses. Great... just great. Lots of sicko's around the office, I'll blame them since I don't have any kids (aka germ factories) to blame it on.

Ok, that's enough for now, see you after the weekend. Party on....

iPod adapter

2007-11-06T16:17:00.000-06:00

Got a call from Nissan today. The iPod adapter I asked for is in and can be installed on Saturday! This took a bit of work on my part as there technically isn't a Nissan iPod adapter for the Murano, but according to several forums, the one for the Titan works fine. I had to find the part numbers and pass them to Zimbrick Nissan so they could order the right part.

Once installed I should be able to hook my iPhone into it and play audio through it in crystal clarity along with displaying artist, album, song info on the navigation screen and be able to use the steering wheel controls to move through songs. Can't wait to try it out.

There's one more thing I'd really like to add and that's to add another video input to the nav screen so that I can actually play videos from my iPhone on the nav screen. Of course, doing this while driving is illegal so I would never try that. ;)

In other news, I had to run our hockey team Friday night and suffered our first defeat of the season and the first time I've lost while substituting as GM. Not sure what I did wrong but we couldn't beat a hot goalie despite controlling most of the play. We lost 4-2. I had 1 assist, no goals. For the season I have 2 goals and 4 assists in 3 games. I need to step it up.

Unfortunately I won't be playing this week. Our game was moved to Saturday night which happens to conflict with couples league bowling. Pretty sure Cdubya would have my ass if I bailed on her to go play hockey so I'm not even going to try. They'll have to make due without me (and 4 other guys that can't make it).

That's it for now.

Ooops, I did it again

2007-11-05T09:16:00.000-06:00

As most of you know, I have a bit of a car "issue". I can't seem to just buy a car and keep it... which leads me to this past Saturday.

On Thursday I got a letter from Zimbrick Used cars saying they were desperate for some late model cars with local histories and would pay over for them.

So, just for shits and giggles I found out what it would cost to pay off my '05 Murano to get out of the lease and went in Saturday. Their initial offer was about $2,000 over blue book but $2,500 under what I owed. I thanked them for their time and was about to leave when they asked what I would be looking for when it came time to trade it in. I told them I really loved the Murano but wanted Nav and ipod integration.

Well, as it just so happened, they had an '06 Murano with the same package as mine (SL AWD Touring) and the Nav system. Only 5,000 miles on it, was one of the Nissan salesman's and they traded it after a year for an Altima. We started working the numbers and I got them to increase their offer on mine to cover the lease payoff without increasing the price on the other one and also throw in the ipod adapter so that I can control it through the nav/stereo and I drove it home 90 minutes later.

I'm still not sure how that helped them out with their shortage of used cars as I took a better car and left them mine. Maybe it'll be easier to sell it since it's cheaper. Anyway, not my problem.

Here's a pic I took this morning...

Hockey team goes to 2-0

2007-10-27T17:02:00.000-05:00

We won our 2nd game of the season Friday to go to 2-0. It's early yet but I think we have a pretty decent team. I had a goal and an assist. After 2 games I have 2 goals and 3 assists. I even got to play center for the 2nd and 3rd periods. I love doing it, taking faceoffs is a blast and it gives me a chance to make more plays. I usually don't do it when we're short handed (we run 2 centers and 3 pairs of wings) since I'm getting old and don't have the stamina I used to. I did pretty well though and we won 5-2 (same score for both games). I did get stoned on a breakaway though, I'll have to work on my moves some more...

I had some bowling trouble on Saturday. My ball suddenly stopped hooking again. It's the 2nd time it's happened and I still didn't recognize the problem until really late. The new resin balls have a lot of pores that absorb the oil to help it hook. Once the pores get clogged with oil it won't absorb any more and it just won't hook. I'm taking it in to get cleaned and sanded tonight. I need to recognize this problem earlier. I didn't switch balls until the 7th frame of the 3rd game and struck out. Wish I'd done that before. Lowest series of the year at 524... and we lost all 3 games.

Once again a boring world series results in a sweep. Seems like we just can't get a decent world series or super bowl any more. Always one-sided. I see that AssRod opted out of his contract with the Yankees. I guess their offer of $27-$30 million over an additional 5 years just isn't enough for that greedy bastard. Maybe he can sign with the Red Sox now...

Oh, I took pictures of the finished upstairs flooring now that everything is back together. I'll post them when I get a chance.

Remember, Packers/Bronco's at 7:30 tonight!

Sin City 1, Adubya 0

2007-10-22T09:49:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm back from Vegas after making a huge donation to help build additional casino's where I can make future huge donations...

I haven't had a trip like that in about 8 years. Nothing worked, got my ass kicked everywhere I turned. I tried different tables, different casino's, different limits... screwed at every turn. I'm not sure how much we ended up losing but it wasn't just a little.

2 good things did happen though. 1 was that we saw Phantom at the Venetian and it was outstanding. Awesome theater and great show. Best of the 4 I've seen.

The 2nd was that I tried the front desk tip deal and it worked like a charm!

We arrived at the Paris in Las Vegas around 2pm Sunday. The check in line was about 20 people deep so I wasn't too excited about my chances of scoring an upgrade. When it was my turn I told Said my name and slid my credit card and id to him with a $20 bill folded between them. I asked him if he had any "complementary upgrades". He smiled knowingly and said he'd see what he could do. He found a newly renovated room for us pretty quickly. Then he says he isn't supposed to do this until later but he got me into a suite for $85 more. I jumped on the $1,200 a night room which ended up costing me about $225/night.

The room was also newly renovated with a separate living area with a 42" plasma tv, wet bar and 2 separate bathrooms (one with a huge jacuzzi tub). It was great. I'll try the tip thing every time now.

One other thing about Vegas you should know. When catching a cab to or from the airport, make sure you tell them to NOT take the freeway. They'll tell you it's faster but it's about 10 miles longer, not faster and will cost you double. On the way from the airport I was ready to say "no freeway" but he was on the right going away from the freeway so I didn't think I had to. At the last second, he swerves left and says "I'll take the freeway, it's faster" and before I could even say a word it was too late. $22 for that trip. On the way back it was $12 without taking the freeway. It's 4 freakin' miles from the airport to the strip. There's no reason to drive 14 miles around the city. Assholes....

I did learn from one cab driver that while the law officially states no open intoxicants on the street or in cabs, no one will say anything to you. He told us that as long as the person isn't so drunk that they'll spill their drink that it's ok to just bring your beer into the cab. I tried this, no problem.

I didn't see anyone famous this trip but I did see 3 new Rolls Royce Phantom's in front of casino's. Very cool car, and apparently the new choice of the rich and spoiled, I mean famous.

Too bad I'm not going to be there next week, Paris Hilton is hosting a Halloween party at the LAX club at the Luxor. Bummer...

I'll post more later as I start remembering what actually happened...

It's a total undular bore

2007-10-19T08:08:00.001-05:00

For those of you who are weather geeks (you know who I'm talking about) or maybe you like to go outside during a storm and look at the sky, here's video of giant atmospheric bore waves rolling over Iowa (courtesy of NASA).

And now on to the always not popular bowling update. 628 on Wednesday with a horrible 168 start, followed by the most god-awful 243 you'd ever see and a 217.
Thursday went a little better as I fired 235, 255, 242 for 732. Had at least 6 strikes in a row in each game. My average in that league is now 226 after 3 weeks.

As it's Friday, I'll probably work a half day. I really need to get my office put back together again so it's not hanging over me while I'm in Vegas. My hockey league is starting the winter season tonight as well, first game at 8:30.

As for Vegas, we leave Sunday morning, flying Midwest Airlines out of Milwaukee. We return Wednesday afternoon. We'll be staying at the Paris, I'm hoping I can get an upgraded room with a view of the Bellagio Fountains. I'm going to try the $20 tip suggestion offered here.

I'm planning on betting on some football games, just not sure which ones yet, and playing craps mostly. I'll probably do a little blackjack and I was thinking I'd try pai-gao poker, haven't played that before.

That's all for now, I might post from Vegas from my iPhone if I feel like it. It'll probably just be pictures of drunk people...

Office Flooring done

2007-10-15T19:18:00.000-05:00

Finished the trim tonight, here's a couple of pictures before I put my office back together again. I'll take a couple more after that is done too.

Almost good enough

2007-10-15T07:36:00.000-05:00

Well, the Ice Cube open ended in frustrating fashion. For some reason my driving, which is usually the best part of my game, left me. I hit only 2 fairways and didn't really hit a great drive until 18. My iron game picked up for it the most part but I ended up getting in trouble too often off the tee; 2 toppped drives, 3 that ended up under a tree and twice I had to try to hit over trees only to catch part of the tree and carom off into more trouble. Still, a couple shots here or there and I would have finished in the money at least. I ended up shooting an 86 (40/46), my 4th straight 86, and with a 15 handicap I ended up at even par 71, net.

The front 9 was pretty strange. I 3 putted for double bogey on 1, 3 putted for bogey on 2 and 3 putted for double on 6. I parred the other 6 holes, 5 of them by sinking a 1-putt.

Back 9, the 2 par 5's cost me. And again, it was the driver. Both drives left me in trouble and I ended up double bogeying both of them. Those 2 holes are usually my bread and butter but not Saturday. Oh well, there's always next year.

Yesterday I worked on my office. I got all the flooring down but it was a pain in the ass. Since I had already done the hall way, I needed to work backwards from the door into the room, which is opposite how the flooring should go down. Instead of locking the tongue into the groove, I had to do it in reverse. Made for a difficult time at best. I'll try to finish the trim tonight and maybe Tuesday I can get the room put back together again. I'll be very happy when this is over. Of course, there are still 20 things on the "honey-do" list...

Packers held on to win a tough defensive battle against the Redskins yesterday. The D really came through this time as the O struggled to do much of anything. Favre was picked off twice and really should have been picked off 5 times but the Redskins dropped the passes he threw to them several times. Charles Woodson came up with a big fumble recovery that he raced to the end zone with and Nick Barnett came up with a huge stop on 4th and 3 to seal the game.

The Badgers... um, well, uh... their D has been exposed and it's become obvious they were no where as good as the writers had initially predicted. Hello Alamo Bowl... maybe. Luckily they get Northern Illinois this week.

We leave for Vegas this Sunday. Won't be able to bet on the Packers since this is their bye week. I'll probably bet a few other games and the world series. Looks like the Rockies will not lose.

Final Room

2007-10-11T10:57:00.001-05:00

As you know I've been working on putting in new flooring in the house. I'm in the middle of working on my office currently. Last weekend I got everything out of the room and tore up the carpet. I bought some paint and primer from Home Depot and after priming Sunday I painted Monday and Tuesday nights.

I decided to use a different paint than I've used throughout the rest of the house and I'm not happy with it at all. In the past I've always used Sherwin Williams paint. It's pretty expensive but I've always been happy with it and it's worked great. This time, however, we bought Behr paint from Home Depot and while the color is great, the paint itself sucks. Taking the tape off the walls takes the paint right with it. I've had to be very careful to not just rip the tape off or I'd pull entire sheets of paint right with it. I won't use that paint again. I should know better, you get what you pay for, I say it all the time.

That said, I do think it looks nice. I'll get the flooring done this weekend and post a couple pictures so you can judge for yourself.

Bowled last night and shot a 710 (265, 235, 210) and won $20 in Keggler's Kash again. Weird thing, now that it's colder out the a/c was off at the lanes. Unfortunately you put a ton of guys in one area and it got hot in a hurry. They finally turned the a/c on at the start of the 3rd game (full blast!) and the oil evaporated almost instantly. Shots that were normally right there were all of a sudden diving right into the head pin. I never got adjusted right, which explains the last game's score. I did manage to be open-free. Just one split on the night too. We won the first game easily but lost the next 2 and ended up tying for total pins! That sucked...

Saturday marks the last golf tournament of the season, the Ice Cube Open at Door Creek. Typically it is 45, sleeting and 25 mph winds for this tourney but it looks like it will be sunny and about 60 for this one. Can't wait. We'll probably have a frost delay though as the overnight temp is supposed to be about 34.

A week from Sunday we leave for Vegas with Dr. Mike and his wife. We're staying at the Paris this time. We haven't stayed there before but have been in it many times. I better start refreshing my craps strategies again. Oh, and loading up my iPhone with movies for the flights! ;)

Laying a big turd

2007-10-08T08:21:00.001-05:00

That's exactly what the Packers did last night in losing to the Bears. National tv, huge game against their biggest rivals and they dropped a deuce on the 50.

Instead of the run and gun offense we've seen the first 4 games, they decided to run the ball. And it worked in the first half when they had a chance to bury the Bears. They put up 341 yards of offense and 17 points in the first 2 quarters but it could have been 31-3 at the half very easily if not for James Jones fumbling twice deep in Chicago territory to ruin drives.

2nd half was a joke. No offense at all, ultra conservative play calling (to McCarthy's defense, they never had good field position), tons of penalties and 3 more turnovers all lead to allowing the Bears back in the game and eventually the win.

Even on the last drive, it was just what the doctor ordered. 2 minutes left with 1 timeout and Brett Favre on the field. Unfortunately they took their sweet ass time and blew 90 seconds just getting to mid-field. They ended up taking 2 shots down the field from the 35, one of them being dropped inside the 15 by James Jones (what a horrendous game for the rookie) and the last a hail mary to the end zone that Donald Driver couldn't come up with and was intercepted.

Made me sick...

Went golfing on Saturday and it was a beautiful 87 degree day. Don't see that on October 6th too often. Felt like July all over again. Me, Dr. Mike, Retro and Balderdash played Foxboro in Oregon. It was the first time I'd played it. The owners of Door Creek bought it with the old head pro and they've done some really nice work there. The greens were in great shape. They were pretty fast and very sloped which surprised me. The fairways and rough were all nice and green. There are no sand traps on the course, which is a little weird but there are plenty of trees and lots of water to make things interesting.

The course is laid out a little oddly though. Par 36 on the front, mostly through the trees. Par 34 on the back, which meanders through a development and you end up having to drive your cart under a highway then back through the neighborhood. Still, the holes were set up nicely and I enjoyed the course. I shot an 87 (41/46). I should have done much better. The 41 on the front included 2 4-putts (did I mention that the greens were super sloped?) and 2 birdies. I had a good look at eagle on the first par 5 after driver/6 iron to about 15 feet. I made the tap in birdie then birdied the next hole after a good drive and a sand wedge to about 4 feet. Back 9 I 3 putted for bogey on the first 2 holes and eventually started struggling a little bit. I hit 8 of 13 fairways and 8 greens in regulation but ended up with 40 putts. I don't think any of us putted well. Balderdash had about a 12 foot downhill putt from the fringe that went all the way off the front of the green, about 60 feet away.

Yesterday was spent tearing apart my office to get ready for the flooring. Took quite a while to go through everything and throw out a bunch of junk, then take my giant 7 piece desk apart and move it out of the room. After that was done and the carpet was ripped out, I primed the walls. I'll be painting tonight and tomorrow night. Picked up a dark blue (it's called sapphire something or other) which will require 2 coats and a primer. Plan is to do the flooring Sunday (Ice Cube Open on Saturday) and be finished so that I can go to Vegas the following weekend without that hanging over me.

Old age and treachery

2007-10-04T11:18:00.001-05:00

MC made a comment yesterday when I sent out the bowling lineup for last night that we were going with the old guy lineup (because me, CB and Grinder were all bowling). And after the "young boy" lineup we had last week getting crushed, it was probably a good idea.

And it turned out that the "old guy" lineup was the right way to go as we dismantled a very good team, winning 7-0. Just goes to show you that old age and treachery will win out every time.

I shot 657 with a fairly consistent night. I also won $20 in the "Keggler's Cash" bet. You can bet up to $5 a game on yourself and based on your average you have to get strikes in certain frames to win. For me, I had to strike in the 1st, 3rd, 6th, 9th and 10th frames, which I did in the first game and won 10x my bet. Of course, I do this every week so I'm still behind... But, add in 2 more card game wins (the first was a HUGE pot) and I've probably paid for my bowling each week already.

So, suck it youngsters!

Quick Update

2007-10-02T10:17:00.001-05:00

Once again, I have to apologize for being so lax in posting. I have been unbelievably busy, both at work and at home. Seems like I never have a minute to just sit back and relax.

After a one week delay in our hockey playoffs, due to some nutcase with a death wish, we played our 2 playoff games Thursay and Friday.
Unfortunately, we lost Thursday's game and had to play Friday for 3rd place. We ended up having to play the 2nd place team from the regular season (who lost to the 3rd place team on Thursday). We hadn't beaten them once the entire year but we came out firing and my line scored 2 in our first shift. I scored the first with a no look backhander from in close that the goalie probably never saw and set up the 2nd with a feed across the slot to a breaking defenseman for a tap in empty netter.
We went on to win 6-4 to take 3rd place. Better than 4th! :)

On the weekend I ended up doing the flooring in the upstairs hallway and closet. Went pretty well and still had time to watch some football and go to my niece's 2nd b-day party. Also another opportunity to show off the iPhone. It's still kick ass. I used the camera to take a few pictures of the niece and nephew with ice cream and cake all over their faces. Family was impressed by the "pinch" zoom feature on the pictures.

Brewers... I'm disappointed that they didn't make the playoffs but they're very young and I didn't expect that much from them. If they can re-sign Cordero and keep this nucleus together they will be very tough next year. Ah, battle cry of the losers - "WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR!"

And how about them Packers? I believe Favre has finally learned to be patient in his old age. In years past he would throw short pass, short pass, short pass.. oh fuck it, and chuck one way down the field where it was picked off. Now he's taking what the D will allow and moving the team with the patience of someone his age. Big test against the Bears Sunday night, I can't wait. Brian Griese... bwaahaahhahahaha

It's been... one week

2007-09-24T14:17:00.000-05:00

First, I'd like to apologize for not posting for a week. That's pretty lame.
Here's my excuse: I'm busy!

I know, that's a pathetic excuse but it's true.

One of our key Java architects is leaving Wednesday for good... and who has to replace him? That's right, yours truly. As if I didn't have enough to do already. It's making my life a tad stressful.

So, what's happened in a week? Well, quite a bit actually!

Wednesday - bowling. Shot a 60-something, don't remember which. Just hitting my average or there-abouts.

Thursday - supposed to be a playoff game but some jackass who doesn't care about anyone else AND lives right behind the rink decided Thursday sounded like a good day to tell his family he felt like killing himself and others. Police standoff. Hockey canceled at 6:24. At 6:28 he gives up. Good god man, you couldn't have given up 5 minutes earlier or better yet, just blow your freakin' brains out around 1:00 so we can get on with our lives. So, no hockey, rescheduled for this week, now we have to play Thursday and Friday! Can you say smelly equipment? I think I'll just leave everything outside overnight.

Friday - got out at noon, supposed to go golfing. Nothing works out right so I end up at a crappy local course (Yahara) in 30 mph winds. I shot 88 with a 9 on one hole. Otherwise not too bad.

Saturday - started work on Cdubya's room to replace the carpet with laminate hardwood flooring. Got most of it done then we had to go to couples bowling. Shot another 615 or something (can't seem to get off that). Then we went to Cannery Grill in Sun Prairie. Pretty neat place, used to be a Dole processing plant so it has that industrial feel to it. I guess it was going to be a Great Dane brew pub at one point but the stupid law about one place having more than 2 brewing facilities in one area forbids it so that went out the window. Would have been a great place for a brew pub.
Caught some of the Badger/Iowa game there and the rest at home. They won but it wasn't pretty.

Sunday - Finished the flooring and trim in her room while watching the Brewers get royally jacked by the umps. It's not looking good for the true blue brew crew. Down 3 1/2 with a week to go. Afterwards (about 5:00) we finally sat down and watched the dvr'd Packer game. That was fun! Brett free-wheeling it with basically no running game at all. Awesome. 3-0, who would have thought? Not me, that's for sure.

And here we are on Monday, gonna do it all again. Every Monday feels the same. This will be the week I get a lot of stuff done and by Thursday I realize I ran out of time again... maybe next week!

Oh yeah, iPhone update!
I LOVE IT! It's so much fun. Everyone should have one.

Only one thing I found weird. On Saturday I was at bowl-a-vard lanes and there's basically no AT&T signal there for some reason but they do have wi-fi which I connected the iPhone to. Only problem was that without a cell signal I still couldn't browse the web even with wi-fi. I'll have to investigate that some more.

That's it for now, enjoy your week and pray for the Cubs to fall apart as only the Cubs can. :)

Wait, it's Sunday night already?

2007-09-16T20:26:00.001-05:00

Whirlwind...

That would describe the pace of this weekend pretty well.

Friday.

Rushing out of work after checking in a ton of code and breaking almost EVERY SINGLE TEST CASE, I had enough time to grab some beer and ice and get the cooler and grill out for our trip to the Brewers/Reds game. We tailgated for a couple hours in 50 degree weather with 20-30mph winds. A tad chilly.

Ben Sheets pretty much ruined the game for us right off the bat as he was hammered for 4 in the first and another in the 2nd. We did get to see Prince Fielder's club record tying 45th homer (he broke the record Saturday night), but it wasn't enough as they lost. I'm 0-3 this year, no more games for me.

Saturday was the 2-man best ball tourney at Door Creek. Dr. Mike and I played pretty well and tied for 3rd place with a 59 net. 52 won it and 58 took 2nd. Mike had an 87 and I had an 86 but I was ready to slit my wrists afterwards. You see, after posting an 8 under par 27 on the front 9 we were not really doing much on the back. On 13 Mike had a penalty so it was pretty much me. I was looking at a 40 foot birdie putt and made a decent run at it but ran it past about 6 feet. Then I missed the par putt coming back, leaving myself another 3 footer for bogey and then I missed that one too! 4-putt double bogey!

I recovered to par 14 somehow. Then Mike birdied the par 5 15th and we were back in it again. We both bogied 16 and then came 17....

Mike started it off by hitting a wild ass slice clear over onto the executive course (out of bounds). I hit a decent drive but it stayed just right of the fairway. Of course, it ended up under a tree but I could hit a wedge and get it over another tree back to the fairway and did just that. I left myself about 85 yards from the middle of the fairway (Mike's hit another tree and at this point I'm not worried about what he does). I hit a pretty nice sand wedge about 12 feet below the hole.

I'm starting to think that a birdie would be nice here and we could get to 56 with a birdie/birdie finish. I hit a pretty good putt but maybe a tad hard and it didn't break as much as it should have and went by about 3 feet. Ok, not a problem. Oops, rammed the par putt by the lip and 3 feet past the hole again. This time I just walked up to it and oh christ I missed it again. 4 putt double bogey after looking at a super makable birdie. I let out the loudest FUCK! ever heard on a golf course (I'm nothing if not classy). On the 18th tee I swung as hard as I possible could and damn near fell as my right foot slipped out (gotta change those spikes). Luckily it went near the fairway by the 150 post. From there I hit a fat 8 iron that landed in front of the green and somehow rolled up to about 8 feet. I guess the golf gods felt sorry for me because I managed to make that putt for birdie.

So, 56 turns into 59 and I'm incredibly depressed as I see that 58 is leading. Jim lets Phil the pro know to keep sharp objects away from me for awhile as I drown my sorrows in some Capital Island Wheat.

Unfortunately I can't just get shit-faced as I Cdubya and I are taking my mom to American Players Theater (outdoor theater for those who don't know) that evening. I go home, shower and we leave for dinner with mom. The play was good ("Missalliance" by George Bernard Shaw) but good grief, it was freezing. By the time the show ended at 11:15, it was 40 degrees! My legs were completely numb.

But today made it all worth it. Not only did the Packers win (whoo hoo!) and the Brewers win (yeah baby!) but I bought an iPhone today! It's pretty cool, the screen is amazing and the set up was super easy. It found my wi-fi network right away and I set up my bluetooth headset in about 10 seconds. I'll post more on it next week after I've had enough "play time".

Phew, and in just a few more hours I get to go to work and start all over again.

Regular Season Finale

2007-09-14T08:18:00.000-05:00

Well, we lost our final regular season hockey game last night, 4-3. We finished 4-8-1 to end up in last place. We play the first place team in the playoffs next week.

Before hand I bowled in the company league and had 3 Guinness while I was bowling. I think that may have impacted my hockey skills a little. I did have 3 close in opportunities and should have buried at least one of them but I missed the net twice and hit the goalie in the shoulder with the 3rd.

I bowled pretty well, score should have been higher if it weren't for some unlucky shots. I ended up shooting 691 (208, 248, 235). The 2nd game could have easily been a 300. Every ball was buried but I left an 8 pin in the 2nd and 9 pins in the 8th and 9th. And of course, that first night sets our average for the league so now I have to deal with a 230 average. I'm not bowling in that league the next 2 weeks due to hockey playoffs though, so it'll have to wait.

Leaving at 3pm today to go tailgate before the Brewer game. Strange weather we're having too. Only supposed to be in the mid 50's with about a 15 mph nw wind. Tonight it's supposed to get down near freezing and they're saying 34 at 7:30am tomorrow morning. I don't know when my tee time is yet but I hope it's not TOO early!

Ok, back to work. Have a great weekend.

Bowling underway

2007-09-13T08:23:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the lack of posts, it's been very hectic lately.

Started bowling again last week and so far I've been consistent but nothing spectacular. Shot 619 last Wednesday, 602 Saturday and 617 last night. No big games, no low games. Kind of boring actually.

Tonight I bowl again right after work and then hockey is at 8:30. 2 more weeks of hockey left for this season after tonight (playoffs).

Quite a busy time of the year. Tomorrow we are going to the Brewer game. It's Robin Yount Bobblehead night! Saturday morning I have a 2 man best ball golf tournament at Door Creek and then Saturday night we're taking my mom to American Players Theater in Spring Green. I still have more flooring to get done upstairs too. Maybe Sunday? I'd rather watch football... sigh.

Ok, off to a meeting, later!

The Great (almost) Comeback

2007-09-07T11:37:00.001-05:00

We had an interesting problem at hockey last night. The center on my line (one of our better offensive players) is also a goalie. Last night he played goalie in the game before us (and gave up 10 goals!) and when it came time for our game we found out that due to vacations, injuries, going to college, etc. that we didn't have another goalie for our team so he was going to play. Well, that hurts us both in losing his scoring but also because he just had a horrible game.

We moved another guy to center our line and went at it. Unfortunately, he picked up where he left off the previous game, giving up 4 weak goals in the first period and we couldn't get any offense going. So we're down 4-0 going into the 3rd period and finally our offense starts getting on track. We score 3 in the first 8 minutes to get us close and we tie it up with about 9 minutes left. We kept the attack going and got some really good chances to go ahead but couldn't quite do it (one of my shots hit the underside of the crossbar and dropped straight down, somehow staying out of the goal).

Then with about 4 minutes left the ref called a pretty bad penalty on one of our defenseman. Ok, we can deal with that, we score short handed goals all the time. Unfortunately, they called another penalty on us a minute later, again a cheap call where two players got their legs tangled and fell down. Not sure how they could decide that was a penalty on us, especially in a tie game and already down a man. By the time we got back to full strength there wasn't much time left. We had a few chances but the game ended in a tie. I guess we get the "moral victory" but it still felt disappointing.

Fantasy Football Draft

2007-09-05T07:49:00.001-05:00

Last night was the annual OFFL football draft. It's a scoring only league with the points laid out like so:
Rushing TD: 6
Receiving TD: 6
Passing TD: 4
Defense/Special Teams TD: 6
Defense shutout: 6
FG < 50 yards: 3
FG >= 50 yards: 4
Coach victory: 3

I've won this league a few times and won the playoffs after finishing 3rd in the regular season last year.

We start with 4 keepers. Mine were:
Joseph Addai, RB
Steven Jackson, RB
Willie Parker, RB
Terrell Owens, WR

Here's who I picked up (in the order drafted):
Javon Walker, WR
Donald Driver, WR
Philip Rivers, QB
Darrell Jackson, WR
Baltimore Defense
Eli Manning, QB
Shayne Graham, K
Josh Brown, K
Mushin Muhammad, WR
Kellen Winslow, TE
Vernand Morency, RB
Najeh Davenport, RB
Wade Phillips (Dallas), Coach

I should be able to contend once again with that.

After missing the first week of bowling due to golf league, tonight will mark my first night of the season. Unfortunately I can still barely move. My right leg is a little better but my left hamstring is one big knot. I'd be better off if it was the other way around as my left leg is my sliding leg and the one I put most of my weight on at release.

Oh well, wish me luck.

1 down, 3 to go

2007-09-04T11:06:00.001-05:00

Picked up 26 boxes of laminate hardwood flooring for the house on Friday and started on room 1 (our master bedroom) on Sunday (Saturday was Badger game, they won 42-21 over WAZZU, and I enjoyed it).
Finished ripping up the carpet and putting down the new floor Sunday night (about 11 hours worth of work). Finished all the trim work yesterday and got to sit down around 5:00 to watch the final round of the PGA. After which I was unable to get up. My body pretty much was very angry with me for abusing it for 2 solid days.

Unfortunately I'm just getting started. I have 2 more rooms plus the hallway upstairs still to do and Cdubya would like that done pretty soon. Unfortunately I'm not sure how long it will be before I can actually walk normally again. My inner thighs and ass are in knots, I can barely walk today. The thought of having to do the upstairs makes me hurt even more. Maybe I should just hire my brother to do it... I'm getting too old for this shit.

Not sure how bowling is going to go tomorrow night. If I had to bowl tonight I couldn't. Of course, there's no rest for the weary as our fantasy football draft is tonight. That shouldn't take too much physical effort at least...

2nd Place

2007-08-30T12:54:00.001-05:00

Balderdash and I succeeded in capturing 2nd place in golf league last night. It was a nail biter but we won 16.5 to 13.5.

Now that it's over, it's bowling time. I'll be starting 2 leagues next week.

Tonight starts the home stretch for hockey. 3 more games until the playoffs. I think we're probably in last right now. Time to turn it on! Last time we played tonight's opponent they beat us 7-2. We have some payback to give.

Last night of golf league

2007-08-29T10:07:00.000-05:00

It appears that the rain may be done for awhile now and we should be able to get in our last night of golf league. Balderdash and I are playing for 2nd place. One team won both halves so there's no first place playoff.

Tonight also marks the beginning of bowling league. We switched leagues and moved from Bowl-a-vard Lanes to Dream Lanes. I'll have to miss the first night because of golf.

I hate this time of the year, feels like my golf season is slipping away and snow can't be far down the road. Bowling season may be the longest season ever, running well into April. In addition to Wednesday league I'll also be bowling half time on Thursdays in the company league and every other week on Saturdays for couples league. After getting my 300 last year finally, my goal this year is to get an 800 series. Closest I've been is 787, I think.

Saturday marks the kickoff of Badger football. We're going to the game, which is against Washington State. I have experience in booing Wazzu from my years in Seattle going to Husky games. Should be a blow-out in favor of the 7th ranked Badgers.

I'll spend Sunday and Monday of the holiday weekend putting in new laminate flooring that we ordered Monday from Drexel Interiors. I'll be doing our master bedroom this weekend and at some point doing both rooms and the hallway upstairs. Hardest part of the whole thing is getting the furniture out of the room and putting it somewhere else. Not sure where we'll sleep Sunday night if the bedroom isn't done...

That's it for now, enjoy the coming sunshine!

Oh Come on already!

2007-08-27T19:13:00.000-05:00

This is just getting stupid now. Forecast for today was sunny and 84. So, what happens? A huge storm rolls through this morning and once again we have pouring rain to soak an already saturated landscape.

To make matters worse, almost all the golf courses are closed again. League tonight was canceled again and with more rain coming tomorrow and Wednesday it doesn't look good for Wednesday night either.

I did get out and play 18 Sunday morning at Door Creek but it was soaked. Squish, squish, squish on every step. And with all the rain, the fairways and rough hadn't been mowed in over a week so they were really long and thick (that's what she said). I shot an 89 which could have been better and could have been worse. Nothing really affected by all the water much except the 3rd hole when I pushed my drive into a very wet tree area and had to try to chip out twice from the puddles and mud. That was fun...

On a downer note, we put down our cat, Morticia, Saturday. She was 17 and her health was failing quickly. She was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism a month ago. We got medication but it didn't do anything. She ate and ate and defecated everywhere, loosing weight till she was down to 4 lbs. I decided that enough was enough, she wasn't enjoying life any more and constantly having to clean up messes was wearing on my patience. That's 2 animals this year, hopefully no more for another 7 or 8 years!

Work is really busy so I'm not sure how often I'll be posting. As you can tell by the time on this post, I didn't get around to my normal morning posting...

Winning Streak ends at 1

2007-08-24T07:21:00.000-05:00

That's really not much of a streak. We followed up our good play from last week with another really good game. Unfortunately their goalie made the big saves while ours didn't. That's pretty much how our league goes. If you have the better goalie you'll win. We out shot the other team by at least a 2-1 margin but every time they had a shot close in they scored.

My line continued to get better as we scored all 4 of our goals in the 7-4 loss. I had another goal on a backdoor tip in off a pass from the left defenseman. I had a backhand rebound chance that rang off the pipe, at least the 4th pipe I've hit this season. That's pretty much how we go, no luck.

I was lucky to escape injury too. I was crashing the net for a rebound when the defenseman caught me under the chin with his stick and snapped my head back. To add insult to injury, they ended up with a breakaway and scored while I lay face down behind the net. No penalty called because they couldn't tell what happened from the angle the closest ref had, even though the defenseman was telling them he hit me in the face with his stick and was telling them to blow the whistle. I'm feeling a little sore today but otherwise fine. I know the defenseman that did it and he would never intentionally do something like that and was very apologetic. I'm just glad it wasn't any worse.

Apparently after today the rain will stop for 3 days or so... we'll see.

Ok, this is just ridiculous

2007-08-23T07:33:00.000-05:00

It won't stop raining! Golf league canceled again last night. Looks like the rain that started last Saturday won't stop till some time Friday.

The funny thing is that we're getting brief respites that make you think it might be over then it just hammers you over the head again. I was able to get out and mow the yard quick Tuesday before another storm rolled through. And yesterday was pretty nice for most of the day but all hell broke loose around 3:30, dumping almost 2 inches of rain in a half hour. It let up by 5 or so but the damage had been done, everything was under water. Every stream, river, pond and lake is flooding over. The low lying golf courses are under water. It's not good.

And to top things off we had a scene right out of Final Destination last night. A bus stopped to let off a mother and her young daughter and just as they were stepping off into a puddle lightning hit a power line and knocked it down into the puddle where the 2 were electrocuted. A man on the bus tried to save them and he was electrocuted as well. Unreal...

Another storm is rolling through now, adding to the mess. They're saying the weekend should be nice but who knows how long it will be until the water has soaked in enough to get back out on the course. This totally feels like April, not August. The dogs are going nuts not getting their normal play time outside.

Waterlogged Club Championship

2007-08-20T07:59:00.001-05:00

6 inches of rain do not help golf tournaments... or anything else for that matter.

Around 9am Saturday morning the rain started and it still hasn't stopped (other than a few brief moments). We played round 1 of the club championship in a constant rain and it didn't go well for anyone in our 4-some (or most of the players). It was a very long, slow, wet day that featured rooster-tails on the greens, soggy shoes, wet grips and general malaise.

I started out ok and probably would have had a nice front 9 if I hadn't made a couple mistakes and blew up on 2 holes (7 over for those 2 while the remaining 7 consisted of 5 pars and 2 bogeys). In the increasing rain of the back 9 I pretty much fell apart. I ended up shooting 93 (44/49) which put me tied for 3rd to last in the 1st flight.

Afterwards they still held the long drive contest (though fewer people participated than usual due to the rain). In the preliminary round I placed 2nd (274 behind a 281). It just happened to stop raining for about 15 minutes while we were hitting. That qualified me for the final of my flight. Of course, that was 2 hours and 5 beers later. By the time we got out there at 7:30 it was almost dark and completely pouring. You couldn't even see the drives after about 20 yards. The first person missed the fairway all 3 times. The 2nd guy (the 281 guy) went and missed on 2 but hit the fairway once with a nice drive, but it only went 221. I thought I would win easily. I can hit my hybrid that far... I hit my first 2 left but my last one I hit really well down the middle. I thought I would win easily... until they radioed in the distance. 2 - 1 - 9. 219! That's it!?!?!? I guess pouring rain will do that to a ball. I lost by 2 yards and missed out on the $75 prize.

The 2nd round was canceled as I knew it would be since at least 3 greens were under water when we left Saturday night. Oh well. I think most of the courses in the area are closed and it's not supposed to stop raining until Friday or so. Doesn't feel like mid-August, it's more like October. That's the first time it's rained in the CC for at least 10 years.

The Streak is Over!

2007-08-17T07:56:00.000-05:00

We finally busted our 5 game losing streak in hockey last night with a 6-3 victory. It helped to have a real goalie but we came out on a mission and pretty much dominated.

I finally got off the schnide too scoring a pair of goals. First one was a big slapshot from the top of the right circle that beat the goalie inside the far post. Honestly, I never really aimed at anything. The puck was dumped up ahead of me and I was just skating as fast as I could to get to it with a defenseman angling towards me. I just wound up and hit it as hard as I could. Luckily it was towards the net. :)

The 2nd goal was with less than a minute left as we were hanging on to our 2 goal lead. My center intercepted a pass just inside our blue line and caught me on the fly from the right wing and I went in alone. The goalie decided to come out and poke check me. It actually caught me by surprise, just as I looked up to see where he was I saw him coming at me so I just flipped it through his legs and cut left to not get creamed.

Afterwards a bunch of us went to Beef O'Brady's (a fairly new sports bar near the Sun Prairie rink) for some brewski's. We started with the Hopalicious from Ale Asylum followed by pitchers of Smithwicks, Island Wheat, Spotted Cow and more Hopalicious. Got home around 11 and needless to say I have a whopper of a headache this morning.

They have some pitchers that I'd never seen before. They're bigger and have a cylinder in the middle that they fill with ice to keep the beer cold. I, of course, questioned them to make sure we weren't getting screwed out of some beer.

I'll have to leave work early today to try to get the lawn mowed. That recent rain has brought the grass back from it's slumber with a vengeance. It's grown about 4 inches since Saturday morning when I mowed. We're golfing at 5:30.

Not a good tune up

2007-08-16T07:16:00.000-05:00

Well, I totally don't feel ready for the club championship now. I didn't play worth a crap last night. Only hit 1 fairway and 2 greens. About the only thing I did well was chip and putt. I seem to have lost the draw on my drives so I kept missing right. I also hit a few really bad iron shots. Maybe I just got all that out of my system. We shall see...

Retro played very well after the 2nd hole (the first 2 were ugly). He ended up hitting 6 fairways and hit his irons as crisply as I've seen and putted pretty well too. He still shot a 48 to my 43, not sure how that happened.

I've got to figure out a time when I can mow my yard again. I just mowed on Saturday for the first time in nearly 2 months but with all this rain we've had I could have mowed again on Tuesday. And I should have, since I had golf last night, hockey tonight, golf tomorrow night, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Looks like maybe Tuesday now but it'll be 3 feet high by then. I'll try to get off at noon on Friday and get it done before we go golfing. It's the only chance I'll have.

And then there's the Brewers... I guess this was to be expected with such a young team. They're feeling the heat of a pennant race and not responding well. The pitching staff is getting beaten like a rented mule and the offense only seems capable of hitting a few solo homers each game. Mean time the Cardinals have come alive, like a defending WS champ should and have closed to 3 1/2 games. Some people said I was nuts when I said "don't count the Cards out yet" when they were 8 1/2 back a few weeks ago. Who's nuts now? Brewers are in a must win situation today, with Dave Bush trying to get the first win by a starting pitcher since August 3rd today at 1pm. If there's a silver lining to any of this it's that they're still in 1st and the Cubs truly suck.

Gabe Gross was called up yesterday and Chris Spurling sent down. Look for Gross, who hit .355 in 20 games at Nashville, to be in the starting lineup today. Also, Prince Fielder was suspended for 3 games for his ejection/tirade in Houston Saturday. He has appealed.

Think happy thoughts and have a great Thursday.

Rain Rain...

2007-08-15T09:41:00.000-05:00

Go away! Just fuck off already! Why can't it just be nice? Let's just go from 90 and super humid to t-storms. What ever happened to just being 75 and sunny? Oh yeah, global warming, that's right. We're all gonna die... I think Al Gore's jet just went over my house. I hope he turned the lights off at home before he left.

Today looks horrible for golf. Hold on, album over, need to pick a new one to listen to on my ipod. I still need to sell this thing so I can justify an iPhone. Anyone want an 80 gb ipod video? Only a year old, perfect condition. New $350, yours for only $275. What a deal... email me.

Ok, Audioslave over, Black Crowes now.

Where was I? Oh yeah, rain bad... golf league tonight. Last night of regular season. Not sure what would happen if we got rained out. We typically don't make anything up.

Did I mention I want the rain to stop? After golf today, I'm also golfing Friday night (9 holes with Cdubya and my sister and her husband), then Saturday and Sunday we have the Door Creek Club Championship. Forecast for Saturday is 69 and rain. Sunday, 76 and rain. Not ideal conditions. Maybe I have an advantage in the rain though, considering my 15 years of golfing in Seattle where if you don't golf in the rain, you don't golf.

Then Monday I'm subbing in the company league again. Cdubya is showing considerable patience with the amount of golfing I'm doing. She hasn't complained once. Could be that she just enjoys me not being around. I find that hard to believe as I am quite charming and a joy to be around. :) Shut up, you know it's true!

While I was bbq'ing last night I saw Retro out in his backyard practicing his chipping towards a bucket. He must have been out there an hour, still in his work clothes I might add. I asked him this morning if he's got it all figured out now. His reply: "no, i'm no good at this game." I see he's finally reached the knowledge the rest of us already knew. It's probably good that he realizes that 3 days before the club championship. Still time to give up and focus on buying a new minivan for his ever increasing family. :) (Just kidding Retro, you can do it! You'll win, I know it! hahahaha, sorry, couldn't say that without laughing, I'm soooo funny)

Jeez, I'm rambling so much this is starting to feel like a Grinder post (without the "special" spelling).

Ok, I'm done. I need to update another dozen sequence diagrams for these lazy motherfuckers... it's killing me.

Later.

New Favorite Show

2007-08-13T10:15:00.000-05:00

A couple people mentioned they really liked "Gene Simmons: Family Jewels" in the past couple weeks and I found 4 episodes back to back on A&E last night so I thought we'd give them a try. And wouldn't you know it, the show was hilarious! It's my new favorite and I'll be setting up the tivo to record as many as I can. If you haven't seen it, give it one episode, it's only a half hour, and you'll be hooked.

Rock of Love is very close to being cut from my rotation. There's one woman on there that I like (Jes) and in no way would I want her to be in a relationship with Brett Michaels. For one thing, she's not a party-girl type and for another she's young enough to be his daughter and it makes me ill to think about it. The rest of the women are just bitches who cuss like sailors (or strippers of course). I think Brett should end up with one of the strippers since that fits his personality better and he'll just cheat on her anyway.

I watched Ghost Rider Saturday night (instead of suffering through a Packer pre-season game). It was ok, kind of interesting and pretty good special effects but one thing bugged me that I couldn't get out of my head. In the movie, Nicholas Cage is a stunt bike rider and he attempts to jump a football field from goal post to goal post (ramps on the outside of the posts). After he does it everyone keeps saying "300 feet, a new record!" Well, according to my memory the goal posts haven't been on the goal line in some 25 or so years. They're at the back which adds 20 yards to the jump. It was 360 feet you idiots. For some reason that kept bugging me.

I finished the last Harry Potter book yesterday. Best book of the series, by far. Great story and the finish kept you on the edge of your seat. Loved it.

In the world of golf (no, not the PGA with Tiger winning again) we played a free round at the Oaks. After complaining about how crappy our round was last time (5.5 hours with no beer cart service) the head pro gave us a chance to do it again. This time the course was dead (sunny Sunday morning at 9am and it's dead?) and we played in 3:45. Much better. I played up and down, hitting some good shots and some terrible ones. Shot a 90 (45/45). Not sure if I'm ready for this weekend's club championship at Door Creek or not. My goal is 160 for the 36 holes. I would pretty much have to shoot my best round 2 days in a row. Not likely to happen.

From bad to worse

2007-08-10T07:55:00.001-05:00

Our hockey losing streak has now reached 5 straight after a 7-2 drubbing last night. Once again (2nd week in a row) we were stuck with Roger in goal. I don't want to say he's bad but... yeah, he's downright awful. I swear he has no peripheral vision. Shit that had no business going in continues to go right by him. It wouldn't be so bad if there was another crappy goalie to match up with him but he's far and away the worst there is. We lose by 5 but dominated the game. How in the fuck does that work? We hold the puck in their zone for minutes at a time peppering their goalie but we can't get one by him. They finally get the puck out, skate down, take a weak ass shot and score. And once again, he gives up 2 goals in the first minute of the game so we're automatically playing from behind. That's disheartening. We were down 3-0 and staged a mini-comeback getting it to 3-2 and then they got a breakaway and it was the turning point in the game. If Roger makes the save we gain momentum and possibly catch them. However, Roger couldn't come up with it and that was all she wrote.

Strange drive home after the game too (10:45pm). The temp was 71 and the dewpoint must have been the same because the air was so thick you could hardly breathe. There was a ton of fog and I could not keep my windshield clear despite all the windows open and the a/c cranked and on defrost. I'm sick of the humidity!

Not that bad

2007-08-09T09:07:00.000-05:00

I'd have to say that the weather was not that bad last night. In the midst of having an awfully humid week it turned out to be slightly less humid and with a nice cloud cover and light breeze it was quite tolerable in golf league.

I played just ok. 3 pars, 5 bogies and a double (on a par 5 I should not be doubling but I hit a horrendous drive and couldn't recover) for a 43. That's about average for me I guess. Not sure how we did as a team but probably not very well and Balderdash hacked his way through the first 4 holes at 11 over and finished with a 50. Man, he is getting heavy... I don't think a 170 lb man should have to carry a 290 lb man. Just not fair. And to make matters worse, next week is the end of the 2nd half and I'm pretty sure we don't have a chance unless we maybe win 20-0, which is pretty much impossible.

I think I have found my proper number of beers per 9 holes as well. The number is 4. At 4 I was hitting my drives and my irons nicely as I was properly lubricated. And after beer 5 I was still doing that but unfortunately the fine motor skills were impacted and I couldn't chip or putt properly. Gotta remember that.

Even got Retro to have a few beers but of course, being the lightweight he is, he was hammered after 3 and started getting pretty loud and loopy. I think his beer number is 1. :)

First Eagle

2007-08-07T07:12:00.000-05:00

I had my first eagle ever last night, subbing at the Oaks. It was on the first hole we played which was the 4th. It is an uphill par 5, usually playing 526 from the black tees but the tees were up yesterday, probably only playing about 480.

I hit a fairly good drive that must have caught a downslope and rolled quite aways. I ended up just on the right edge of the fairway, about 186 yards out. I took out a 5 iron and hit it nice and smooth. I knew it had a great line on it but since the green is so much higher and has bunkers in front of it I couldn't tell where it ended up.

As I walked around the bunkers I saw a ball on the green and as I got closer I realized it was actually pretty damn close to the pin. Ended up only being 3 feet away. Buried the putt for a 3. Not too long ago I gagged one from similar range so I was happy to get that one down.

Of course, from that point on I was mostly crap. I ended up 3 putting for double from short range on the next hole, then falling apart on the next for a snowman. I ended up shooting a 50 taking double, triple and quad on the par 4's while going bogey, double and triple on the par 3's. I was -1 on the par 5's (eagle, par, bogey).

Oh well, those greens are really tough and I 3 putted 3 times. I also 1 putted 4 times so it wasn't really a putting problem as much as putting myself into some bad situations and losing a couple balls.

And while I realize that 85 is not a hot temperature, the humidity and lack of any breeze at all made it miserable. We were all completely soaked after 2 holes. No matter what you did you couldn't dry off. Made it difficult to hang on to the club because you couldn't keep your hands dry. Might have been better to wear two gloves but it was so hot I could barely stand having one glove on. Oh well.

The Brewers and Cubs both lost last night, while the Cards won again to cut the Brewers lead over them to 7 games. I don't think the Cards have enough pitching to seriously make a run but I thought the same thing last year, even when they had Chris Carpenter still. I guess I can't count them out as they are the defending WS champs.

Rollercoaster ride

2007-08-06T08:26:00.000-05:00

The Brewers are fucking with my emotions big time. Saturday night was one of the greatest comebacks of the year. Down 5-1 against Cole Hammels and the Phillies the chipped away to get it to 5-4. Then with 2 outs in the bottom of the 8th Prince Fielder crushes a Tom Gordon fastball 400 feet to give them the lead. Then in the top of the 9th Corey Hart leaps high above the right field fence to rob Taguchi of a game tying home run. Amazing...

Fast forward to Sunday. They jump all over the Phillies from the start, scoring 4 in the first and 2 more in the 4th. Staked to a 6-1 lead the Brewers coasted in, until the 9th... Matt Wise in to close it out gave up a runner and a 2 run homer to make it 6-3. He hasn't been the same since hitting Cinci's Pedro Lopez in the face a couple weeks ago. Yost summons Francisco Cordero from the pen to close it out. He gets 2 outs but then a couple hits. Ex-Brewer Wes Helms dumps one down the right field line for a double that makes it 6-4. A grounder that gets past rookie 3b sensation Ryan Braun (E5) ties the score. Cordero gets out of it but in the 11th the Phillies score twice off rookie Manny Parra with 2 outs. The Brewers get guys on 2nd and 3rd with 2 outs in the 11th. Yost goes to Estrada and he's intentionally walked to get to Craig Counsell, a career .411 hitter with the bases loaded. He smokes the first pitch he sees from Jose Mesa but it's lined directly into the Taguchi's glove at 2nd to end the game. A foot to the left and we're all tied up again. What a horrible way to lose.

Luckily Tom Glavine got his 300th win in Chicago as the Cubs stayed a game back. Now comes a tough stretch where the Brewers are back on the road (in Colorado to start tonight). The Cubs are going to have to deal with their own adversity as well as stud LF Alfonso Soriano injured his quad and is out 2-4 weeks. That won't help them any. It's going to be an interesting last 2 months of the season for sure.

Golf/Brewer Day #9

2007-08-03T07:22:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the 9th annual Bubba/Adubya golf/brewer extravaganza. We left Cottage Grove at 5:45am heading for DeerTrak Golf Course just north of Oconomowoc. After a 10 minute detour due to some poor navigational skills by Bubba we made it to the course a little before 7. Lucky for us the course was pretty empty.

The course is pretty nice looking, enough trees, ponds, blind shots, etc to make it interesting but not super tight or long to make it too difficult. Only thing that bugged me constantly was the lack of yardage markers. I never saw a 200 marker and I think the longest mark I saw was 176. They did have 150 and 100 yard markers but that was about it. Many times we were left guessing the yardage.

I played ok in spurts and terribly at other times. Ended up shooting 43/47 for 90 while Bubba went 50/50 for 100. He probably would have beaten me on the back had he not had a nuclear meltdown on the last par 5 and took an 11. Or if he hadn't missed a half dozen short putts just to the right.

I had a couple nice shots. On a par 4 where you have to lay up short of a creek I hit a 6 iron from 178 yards to a back pin that stuck about 5' from the hole and I made the birdie. Almost had the chip of my life on another hole. After thinning a lob wedge from about 30 yards clear over the green and under a tree, I punched out into the rough above the green. It was a 2 tiered green with the pin down on the lower tier. I chipped just to the edge of the green and it barely made the down slope and turned and went right at the hole and missed by a fraction of an inch. I made the putt to salvage a bogey.

I putted pretty well with the new putter, 1-putting 4 times on the front 9. I did have a couple of 3 putts, one where I was about 100 feet away and the other where I rammed it past the hole too far. All in all, I'm pretty excited about it.

We finished golf about 10:30 and our plan was to head to the game and eat at Friday's grill at Miller Park. Unfortunately we hit some traffic on the way to Milwaukee (opening day of the state fair) and didn't get there till 11:45 and by then Friday's had a 45 minute wait so we just ate from the concession stands (polish and a hot dog). We grabbed a beer and drank it but it was so hot that even beer didn't taste good (oh my god, did I just say that?), so we pretty much stuck to water.

Craig's choice of seats, while a good thought, was not comfortable. We were 8 rows from the field just past 3rd base, which is directly under the sun the entire game. I don't think I've ever sweated so much just sitting still before. And to make matters worse we were situated amongst dozens of Mets fans, including one woman I referred to as "the stalker" who was alone, in all her Mets gear with a sign that said "The Future Mrs. David Wright." As the game wore on she kept getting closer to the field. I was certain she would be running on the field at some point to attack Wright. She didn't, but I'm sure she was waiting for him at the team hotel.

As for Wright and the rest of the Mets, they put an ass kicking on our Brewers, 12-4. They are really looking like the pressure is too much for them. Lots of pop ups in clutch situations, bad pitching, Hardy made an error on a ball that didn't look that tough, and then Yost and Estrada get into some fight in the tunnel after the 7th inning. I still don't know what that was about. They need to get their shit together and soon.

We left in the bottom of the 9th and lucky we did. Traffic was awful when we left but half way home we heard a traffic report that said Miller Park to Moorland Road (8 miles) was taking 73 minutes. Phew, I didn't have enough left in me to handle that. We got back to Cottage Grove by 5:30.

I laid around for a couple hours then it was time for hockey. By the time I got to the game at 8:30 I was ready for some serious nap time. I ended up volunteering to go back on D since I knew I wouldn't have the energy to play up front. We ended up losing 8-3. Our goalie didn't help matters at all, allowing 3 goals from behind the goal! He's really bad and I pretty much gave up trying to hard by the beginning of the 3rd period.

Got home around 11, quick shower and straight to bed. Usually I can't sleep after a game and have to stay up for at least an hour but not last night.

We'll see if I can make it through a full day of work today.