Windows or Linux??

I just installed Linux on my home PC. I didn't use my regular Windows hard drive that I have because I didn't want to mess that up. I have a few spare hard drives from various computers hanging around so I took one of my 30 gig hard drives that I have and I installed Ubuntu Lnux which is based on the Debian release of Linux.

I'm probably very biased towards Windows because I know it so well and I can do plenty of functions in it already. Most of the programs that I have are made for Windows and they all run fine. I just decided to use Ubuntu Linux for a little bit to see how it is. I've tried other distributions before but this one doesn't seem too bad. The updates are pretty quick and they're free of course. The only problem I have is with some of the applications but I don't know how long I'll have to play with the thing. Right now I put my Windows hard drive back into my computer since it was just easier to use this right now and I'm playing a DVD. I was having trouble using my DVD player in Linux so I switched it back for now. We'll see how things go. I've also installed the KDE package in Ubuntu which I prefer to Gnome.

I'll report back later when I've had more time to mess around with Ubuntu and figure out how to install all the programs that I need to make it work like Windows XP.

Run run run as fast as you can!

It's Saturday and I finished running the Gasparilla Distance Classic held here in Tampa. This is the first time that I've ever run a real race in my life and the fact that it was 5K is pretty significant. I ran the race with my wife and our friend Jasmin and we made some pretty good time. My wife and I were able to finish it in about 45 minutes. Thats not bad considering that I haven't ran around that much since I was in high school playing soccer for my city league. Only time will tell if I ever try and do something like this again. At least I got a cool medal out of it :)

I'm gonna run a race, I'm not getting first place!

I'm probably nuts but this Saturday I'm going to be running the 5K race for the Gasparilla Distance Classic held here in Tampa. I was roped into doing it by my wife and her maid of honor. I'm probably going to be able to run the first 100 feet then probably will need assistance from an oxygen tank since I've never in my life run a race. I think its been close to a decade since I've had to run for any type of reason at all. I'll blog about it later if I'm not in the emergency room dying from a heart attack.

DOOM!

I recently rented the movie Doom which had The Rock in it. I have to say that the ending was quite surprising. I'm not going to say what happened since I don't want to spoil it for anyone but the movie was pretty cool. It was a bit too dark (the scenery) and it was hard to see a lot of stuff but the gun battles were cool. The gun battle near the end when it switches to a first person shooter perspective was excellent. I think they should have done more of the movie in that style, that would have been the ultimate!

Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee for PSP

I recently got this game for my wife's PSP and even though I'm not a big fan of golf, I have to say that this game is pretty fun. I personally haven't played a lot of it, but from what my wife tells me the game is quite challenging and there are tons of things that you can unlock. Some of the standard things you can unlock are abilities and courses. Some of the fun things that you can get are new pieces of clothing and hair styles. I'll play around with the game some more when my wife isn't looking but it seems really fun over all :)

Man am I dumb sometimes.......

Today was cleaning day at the old homestead. Of course that included lots of vacuuming since I have lots of carpet in my apartment. I figured that since I hadn't looked at some of the moving parts in my Dyson vacuum, now would be a good time to see if any of its parts needed cleaning. The front roller needed cleaning since there was all this hair and other stuff wrapped around the roller. Stupid me, I took off the plate that holds the roller and started trying to PULL the hair off instead of cutting it. This resulted in me pull up one half of the roller from the rest of the vacuum. Since I couldn't fix it right away, I decided to clean it first then attempt to put it back together. After a good 15 minutes of struggle and examining the totally useless instructions, I was able to put the roller back on the vacuum and it worked perfectly again. I will not be taking apart my $500+ vacuum again in the near future unless I have detailed schematics I can tell you that!

Another 360 games DONE!

I've finally finished up Project Gotham Racing 3 for Xbox 360. I haven't unlocked everything but I managed to get a medal in all the races and other events that are in the game. I've bought a lot of awesome cars so far and my personal favorites are Ferrari's and Porches. I'm going to start playing Perfect Dark Zero since that and Kameo are the only games that I haven't beaten yet.

Waiting

I saw this movie tonight that my wife and I rented from Blockbuster. I thought it was going to be funny but disappointingly it wasn't all that funny. I was hoping it was going to be along the lines of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (now that was a funny ass movie). I'll give it this thought, it had its moments and I will probably never ever send food back to the kitchen because its wrong ever again!

I need to start to NOT eat at the cafeteria

Here at work I have a cafeteria and I used to never really go. When my wife started, I went a couple times. The food was OK, nothing to really scream about but this morning my breakfast sandwich was just not up to snuff. So I have resolved, that if I can totally avoid it, I will no longer eat at the cafeteria to save my health and my taste buds! I'll drive all the way home first before eating there because too much of that food will probably shed decades from my life span.

BRRRRR!!

Talk about cold, I don't think Tampa has seen the 30's consistantly in a good long time. And here I thought the days of being in the cold were over. Still nothing can top my sister in laws wedding where it was a whopping 15 degrees!! WOOOOO! OK thats it, gotta find a way to keep warm. At least I have J Alexanders steak for lunch with their signature smashed potato's :)

Now thats what I call some SNOW!

This weekend I was in semi sunny South Floriduh visiting the in-laws again and I ran upon some news clips that showed how much snow everyone in the North East just received. All I can say is DAMN! They totally got pounded with about 2 FEET of snow. In any book thats a ton. I can't say I wish I was up there but I kind of do wish I was there. Why you ask?? SKIING! Just think, there are now mountains of freshly packed powder up in Vermont just waiting for skiiers to use and abuse it. I tell ya, if I wasn't here and still living up north, we'd be prepping my wife's Xterra for a little trip to the mountains to get in some skiing :)

Oh the humanity!!

I'm really bored (as you can tell by the amount of blog posts in one day) and I'm watching womens ice hockey for the '06 winter olympics and right now Canada is totally thrashing Italy 10-0. Thats just a crazy score for hockey. I mean scoring goals in hockey is like scoring goals in soccer. It comes maybe once every full moon or something. I guess thats what happens when you take a european team and put them against one of the gods of ice hockey. muahaha!!

MySpace is starting to suck

I'm not complaining really about the concept or anything of MySpace. I think its pretty cool that I can find people that I lost touch with and all that jazz. What really really sucks is that they don't have the capacity for all the stuff thats on the site. It's slow as peanut butter running down hill and the site is always under maintenance. Get it together MySpace tech support or else you're going to end up like Friendster!!! :P

Sunflower Seeds

I've been driving for a long time and I also drive for very long distances from time to time (Tampa to Ft. Lauderdale is about 280 miles one way) and the only way that I can actually stay awake for drives that are over 2 hours is to eat............... sun flower seeds! I've tried to use gum or other types of snacks but for some reason sun flower seeds always do the trick.

I think I have become a connoisseur when it comes to sun flower seeds because these days I just can't eat just any kind. My seeds of choice are David's Sun Flower seeds. I've tried all types from Planters to run of the mill ones that are at CVS and in terms of taste, David's knows no equal. So far the only place that carries them near me is Walgreens. It's a good thing I live close to one so when I take those long drives, I have a ready supply of my favorite wake me up food :)

Mario Strikers!

I have to say that I'm thoroughly addicted to playing Mario Strikers for GameCube. I'm taking a break from the 360 for now and playing a bad ass soccer game instead. I love killing and beating things up but there's only so much you can do on a given evening. So I've once again gone to the 'Cube to change things up. Right now I'm playing Super Cup battles which are pretty challenging and I'm cleaning up nicely. Once I beat it, I'll crank the difficulty up a few notches and see how badly I get my ass stomped. LOL!

Internet job hunting just got harder

I just read this on CNN about new rules that the Feds just put in place for making it tougher for people online to apply to jobs. I personally think thats total crap. It's hard enough already trying to get a job and a lot of people already do it online, with the new rules in place it'll make getting a job even tougher which is absolute CRAP! I hope this law gets kicked to the curb because I have enough stress in my life as it is.

Red Eye

My wife and I rented the movie Red Eye this weekend to kill some time before the Super Bowl and I have to say that it wasn't one of Wes Craven's best movies. We were looking for the absolute terror that normally occurs during his movies but this one was lacking. Oh well, I'll just take it back to Blockbuster tomorrow and hopefully something good will come in the mail for me to watch.

Now thats what I call a good burger

I went out to Gameworks in Tampa, well Ybor, for lunch with one of my co-workers to check the place out for a meeting that we might hold there. Since we'll be there for lunch and for the afternoon, we tried out some of the food. The food there is pretty good I must say. The place at Gameworks where I ate was called Jax Grill. I had the BBQ and Bacon Burger. This was an excellent burger over all. I had to pick the veggies off of it but thats alright since they were all at the bottom. The best part about it?? I didn't have to add ketchup or anything like that. I did ask them to add a slice of swiss cheese but thats all. Good thing there's a Gameworks in South Florida, now I can go there and get this burger when I visit the in-laws :)

And God opened up the heavens and out poured rain that lastetd for 40 Days.............

The title for this blog seemed appropriate today considering its raining like CRAZY! I went out to lunch with a co-worker and the rain is just thick as hell. I can barely see where I'm going. Now consider that I live in Floriduh, this state is at sea level which means lots and lots of FLOODING! I think I'm going to have to seriously look at investing in a jetski to get around this town when it rains like this, my poor car can't take all the water. Good thing its the weekend after it hits 5pm or else it would have made this day really crappy.

Trying to get smartified!

In my very lazy pursuit of knowledge, I have bought a book about SQL aka Sequel. I'm learning this mainly for my job just because it will be tons easier if I can run my own queries and stuff without having to ask someone to do it for me. Not to mention, if I want to get a new job, knowing how to do SQL will be a definate plus since most large IT organizations like it if you know how to do SQL. ;)

I'm sure some of you are asking, wtf is all this geek speak anyway??? Well I am a techie somewhat and we use this huge relational database (too complicated to explain, if you want to know what it is buy the book!!) at work and the easiest way to get info out of it is to run a query (thats a search for you non technical people) against the database using archaic statements that seem cryptic (stuff like SELECT, WHERE, ORDER BY, etc.... in really long strings) than using the application that connects to the database. This way I can see everything and narrow down the data to the actual stuff that I need. Pretty nifty eh?

The book I bought is called Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes. That doesn't mean to say that I'm going to be an SQL guru in 10 minutes, it has lessons in it and each one is 10 minutes. I haven't counted all the lessons yet but I do know that I'm only on lesson 4 and I'm learning how to get info out of a table. I downloaded a simple Access database to do the lessons but when I get more experience and confidence, I'm going to try it on the test version of our CMDB and see if I can get some useful info out of the thing. :)