Zucca's!

For lunch today my wife decided to take me out since I'm working with her in Ft. Lauderdale for the month. I'm on a rotation to the Ft. Lauderdale office for my firm since I spent the last two months in Miami.

The place that my wife chose is supposedly a pretty new place called Zucca's which is an Italian place in the Bank of America building right down the street from me. They have this really cool bread that they make in house that looks like a half a ball and its mostly filled with hot air. I also have no idea what the spread was that they gave us but it was sooooooo good that I ordered a second one for us even though I was almost done with lunch. They have a pasta bar in the restaurant which is pretty cool. You can have made to order pasta dishes and watch them cook it for you while you wait. I've experienced something like this before but this was some high class pasta and also quite tasty. My wife ordered something off the menu that she had tried once before and that was also really good too. I might go there again for like a dinner or something because eating that pasta for lunch really made me sleepy. All in all, an excellent place for food in downtown Ft. Lauderdale!

Happy Halloween

Ahh Halloween! The night of evil is upon us and in Los Angeles, Satan is having his super sweet 16 party complete with Ferrari cake!! (If you don't get the reference, you're totally sad for missing South Park last week, it was AWESOME!) Tonight all the little kiddies will be out in their costumes trick or treating and getting lots of cavity creating candy. Hmm I remember those days about almost 20 years ago now, holy crap thats a long time! I'm just going to sit back, relax, and let my brother in law deal with all the kids that will come to the door asking for candy and maybe play a little Xbox 360 while I'm at it.

Penguin bashing at its best

A few years ago one of my co-workers introduced me to a fabulous site called Yetisports.org. On this site is nothing but games and they're all pretty simple. However, even though its simple its hella fun. You basically play a huge abominable snow man and you get to either toss or hit penguins to acquire points! What could be more fun than that? It's highly addictive and fun as hell to play to while away the hours when you're waiting for stuff to download or just to break up the day. I highly recommend the baseball and the penguin toss. :)

British Camera's

I read this pretty amusing post on the NY Times about the camera's that the UK puts on its streets to catch speeders. It sounds like a pretty good idea but the people in the UK don't like it all that much. They described some pretty funny things that people were doing to the cameras such as setting them on fire, smashing them to bits, SHOOTING them, or using home made explosives to blow them up. Supposedly, a lot of people don't like the cameras because it forces them to slow down or else you get a ticket in the mail. I personally like speeding on the highways so I could be one of those disgruntled people knocking it over with a bat or something if they tried that here in the US. But at least it brightened up my Friday reading about that... LOL!

Somethings not right in the mornings......

It's been an odd week and its only Tuesday! Something has happened to the traffic patterns in South Floriduh this week because the roads that I travel which are normally clear except of course I-95 are getting all clogged up. My route consists of I-75 South which is never bad (and this is still a constant) but 119th St which is where I go to make my cross over to I-95 has been just terrible the past 2 days for no apparent reason. It was jammed past the toll plaza and it hasn't done that in the 6 or so weeks that I've been living down here. I hope it clears up quick or I'm going to have to find another route to work because coming in at 8:30 is unacceptable!

Weird Tourists

This past Friday was a little weird in terms of going home. I left at my normal time so of course I'm stuck in traffic. Friday traffic is normally a bit heavier than normal because of the weekend and all but now I'm digressing. On to my point!!

I was going about my business when this Chrystler Seabring convertable passes me on the right. I know, does seem strange right? Well here's the strange part...... There were 2 guys in the car and one had his hands in the air in that praise God kinda pose. Well I took a closer look and he was holding a camera...... The doofus was taking a picture of Miami traffic!! Who in their right mind takes pictures of traffic unless you're not from the area?? I just found it funny that some tourist was taking multiple pics of Miami's horrible traffic. At least when I take pics as a tourist, I take pics of cool looking inanimate objects like mountains or buildings and not TRAFFIC!

Free food!

A week or so ago I decided to drop my business card and my wife's business card into one of those little fish bowls at Bahama Breeze. Lo and behold, my wife won some free food. Booyah!! I'm grabbing more business cards before I leave so I can drop more in some fish bowls around town. No one really wants my card anyway at work so why not? :)

More Miami traffic woes

This mornings commute wasn't bad, I still left maybe 5 minutes late but over all things were pretty smooth till I hit one of the parking lots on my way to work (I-95). It seemed much busier than usual but that stuff doesn't really faze me since I have my iPod to listen to. Oh no the real problem now is Miami itself!

I'm in downtown Miami trying to get to my beat up parking garage that I pay way too much money for and lo and behold, I get stuck........ AGAIN on 2nd Ave and Flagler Street. They just made Flagler Street into a two way road for some odd reason (the powers that be in the Miami City gov't are probably to blame) and this requires additional traffic lights. For most towns, no big deal right? Hook it up to the system and let it ride. Sounds simple enough to me. HA!! Whatever!! The dingleberries that set up this traffic light forgot one little detail, the fucking thing needs to change every now and again to let people coming from other directions through!!

So what did I do to remedy my plight? Why run the red light of course. I looked left, no cars, I looked right, no cars, I slammed on the gas and heard my tires chirp as I sped through the intersection, made a quick left turn not caring if it was green or not and high tailed it to my garage.

It's a really sad thing when I am already thinking that Tampa is way better than Miami. I think it might do the city good to be totally washed away in a hurricane or something and start over fresh. I don't want people to die mind you, I just want the city itself washed off the face of the map so no one has to suffer (especially me) anymore.

The parking lot

Thats my new name for I-95 and downtown Miami. I was running a little bit late this morning and I-95 was just a parking lot! Normally after the airport exit, things start to pick up again and I can maybe hit like 70 mph but not today, today I think I caught a glimpse of what traffic would be like if I left at around 8 am instead of 7 am.

I thought that was bad enough, but in Miami downtown thery're doing a whole bunch of construction and some genius has decided in his infinate wisdom to change the way some of the roads work. Some east bound roads now go west, some one way streets are now two way streets. I can already tell that this is having an adverse effect on traffic because I was able to turn off my car and just listen to my iPod for 10 minutes while I just watched the pretty traffic lights change color but me not moving one inch forward. Needless to say I got to work about an hour later than I wanted to so that means my butt is stuck here till 6pm. Oh well, at least its almost lunch time :)

Highway Signs

I don't know if I've blogged about this before but there are highway signs down in the Miami area that are similar to the highway signs that were in Stamford and both served the exact same purpose, show flash messages about how bad traffic is. Very useful if you don't listen to the radio a lot for traffic information, not like the information they give you on the radio is all that accurate anyway.

When I lived in Stamford, the sign would always update with new info about whats happening on I-95, like traffic is backed up until exit 22 which I knew was Fairfield so I would take alternate routes so I could get to my destination faster. They have traffic signs in the Miami area as well on both I-95 and I-75 but with a slight difference...... it doesn't give you traffic information!! I've been commuting to work in Miami for a good 6 weeks now and the only thing that it has ever told me is to buckle my seat belt because its the law in Florida. I'm assuming a few hundred grand of tax payer money went into putting in these electronic billboards to show traffic info and the best they can do is to tell me to buckle up. What a waste of resources! If it showed traffic data, I think things might flow more smoothly in the mornings, like that 5 lane closure this morning, I bet that wasn't on the traffic board for people heading north bound on I-95 until they were stuck in the huge mess that developed this morning.

Only 30 minutes to lunch time, can't wait!

Google Maps for Palm OS

Google just came out with a small program for Palm OS so that Treo users like me can use Google Maps on a Smartphone. I just downloaded it for my Treo (I'm running out of memory with all these applications on my phone but oh well) and I tested it out and it seems to work great! It's even easier to do a search for stuff than using TomTom (which I paid a shit load of money for). It might replace my TomTom when it comes to just looking up places on a map since it seems so much easier in terms of the interface but TomTom will remain of course for giving me blow by blow directions to where I want to go since it is a GPS app.

I would include screen shots but I don't have a program that does that (yet) for my Treo. But now I have a new toy to play with so YAY I'm pretty syched!

I live with a Gremlin!!

Last night was highly amusing because my wife and I have renamed my sister in laws cat Lady Gremlin. Her real name is Lady Gray (my brother in law gave her the name) but she hasn't gotten along with Thumper or Nala and is always growling, snorting, or hissing. Last night Thumper was in a playful mood and decided to chase Lady Gray like he does to Nala. Well he chased her into the kitchen and all of a sudden my wife and I hear this huge growl followed by a snort! My wife then declared "there's a gremlin in here!!" So now we're going to call Lady Gray Lady Gremlin............ and whats even funnier is that she'll respond to the name Gremlin too. I called out to her using her new name and she meowed at me twice. I think I'll get her a new name tag, my brother in law should love that!

The Miami Auto Show

This past weekend I went with my wife to the Miami Auto Show that was held at the Miami Beach Convention Center. All the major car manufacturers were present of course and showing off 2007 model cars and some 2008's as well. There was a lack of concept cars but I think thats because all of those cars got shipped off to the Paris Auto Show. But all in all, it was a great show and there are some pictures below of some of the awesome cars that I sat in or saw. Needless to say, I definately want a Nissan 350Z, anyone care to make a donation to Jason's 350Z fund?? ;) Enjoy the photos!

Ahh the newly redesigned Nissan Altima. I was able to actually sit in this car and I must say that its super sweet. I like how they redid the lights and the lines of the car. I think they made it look even better than it already did. Almost makes me want to turn mine in for this model.

Wooo, check this sucker out. This is the all new Porche 911. It only had a price tag of over $175K. It's a small price to pay for being able to go over 200MPH and 0-60 in less than 4 seconds. This is the kind of car you drive out in Nevada where everything is flat and straight so you can see just how fast this puppy can go!!

This really sweet photo was taken by my wife while we were in "Millionaire's Row" where they showcased most of the cars that were over $200K a piece. The lights look like little eyes and the effect is super cool too when she took it while we were walking by. Obviously they wouldn't let us sit in one of these cars, they're just way too expensive to have mere mortals touching them.

Three words come to mind whenever I see this picture........ PIMP MY RIDE!

And here we have the new Camero, one of the only concept cars that I saw while at the auto show. This sucker looked really sweet and I would have loved to sit in it but they were keeping the public away with a barrier. PAH! Let me see so I can decide if I want to drop 40K on it or not!

And finally, one of the highlights of the show was being able to ride in a Jeep and going through an obstacle course. They did not let you actually drive the jeep but they basically put it on two wheels, climb some logs, do this awesome hill climb, then a sharp drop and then another hill climb and another sharp drop. It didn't last all that long but it was pretty cool. I got to ride in one of the new Cherokee's but I really wanted to go in one of the new 4 door Wranglers they had. Maybe I'll go back to the show in 2 years, they should have some really exciting things by then.

The evil VW Rabbit!!

This is one of the pictures I took at the Miami Auto Show. It's VW's rendition of an evil Rabbit in honor of them bringing the Rabbit back to America. I personally like it although it does kind of look like a character out of Super Mario Bros. 

The Yankees Lost :(

I wasn't around to see it because I was at the Miami Auto Show but the Yankees lost in the ALDS which truely stinks. I guess there is always next year but at least the Red Sox didn't make it at all :) Ahh there is a silver lining to this dark cloud........ ha!

South Park and World of Warcraft

Last night South Park aired one of their best episodes to come out in a long time. Last night it had the cast of South Park totally immersed in the game World of Warcraft or WoW. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law both play the game and my wife and I thought it was hysterically funny when we compared them to the characters. I'm definitely saving that episode on my computer and ripping it to a DVD until I can buy it. It's not yet on YouTube but its only a matter of time...........................

Blogger Beta

I just finished upgrading to the new Blogger Beta that has been floating around for a little while. I'm still trying to figure out all the in's and out's of this thing but it doesn't seem that much different. The big one that I noticed is that I don't have to figure out code anymore to add elements to my pages. That's definately a good thing although a bit behind places like Yahoo 360 and MSN Spaces that already have these functions built in and so far still look way slicker than Blogger.

I did notice one thing when I was updating my page though, I can't use a mailto link anymore so that people can email me (not like anyone emailed me anyway but still). I think there's a way to get around it but I'll have to tinker a bit with the new blogger. I think posting stuff is supposed to be faster too but I'll test that after I'm done writing this blog up. Time to get back to work!

NJ Tax for iTunes

The lovely state of New Jersey has levied a new tax that began this month that institutes a sales tax on iTunes music downloads. For the most part $0.99 is pretty cheap for a song but by adding the 7% sales tax (up from 6%), you're paying over a buck per song now. I don't have a problem with taxes really as long as they're used for the right thing. Adding taxes to kill budget deficits doesn't seem right though. If you get your state in the hole by 4.5 billion dollars, you're obviously doing something wrong. Real estate taxes are through the roof almost everywhere, I don't see a reason to add this type of tax. If successful other places are going to be doing it and then we're all just going to go back to stealing music like the good old days in the 1990's.

Fearless!

This past weekend I saw the movie Fearless and I have to say that it was pretty awesome. I didn't expect it to be in Chinese though which kinda threw me but it was alright reading all the sub titles. Unlike a lot of other recent Chinese action/drama's that have come out over the years, there weren't a lot of action sequences with wires or people generally flying through the air doing impossible feats of martial arts mastery. I mean there are a few instances sure but for the most part it looked all quite believeable. This will definately be added to my DVD collection once it comes out next year.

Voltron is MINE!

I have just completed my purchase of the Voltron Masterpiece Collectors edition toy. It comes with all 5 lions from Voltron, the main weapon and of course the awesome box that it comes in. There's only 150,000 of these things in existence and I'm going to be one of the people to own one of these bad boys. It'll look great next to my Robotech VF-1S Roy Fokker Masterpiece Collection toy that I got a couple years ago. I'll post again once I get it, I'll take my own pics as actual proof that I have it in hand :)

VOLTRON!!!

Today I purchased Voltron Season 1 on DVD. I didn't get the cheesey car one but the all important lion one. It came in a nice blue tin with a picture of the Blue Lion. I'm sure the other tins will be similar and just as awesome.

I also saw in the mall a collectors edition of Voltron for about $150 but I didn't get it although I was very tempted. Its the same company that made my Robotech collectors edition Veritech and that one was awesome. If I find some spare money maybe I'll get it because it totally looked awesome. Can't wait for the rest of the DDVD's to come out to complete my collection.