The Weekend

I'm finally 27 and for my birthday, Claire and I went to Disney for the weekend. The weekend itself was quite hot (heat index of 110 according to the local's) and standing in line was no picknick either. However we did visit 3 different parks while we were there.

Friday we started off by going to Epcot and rode the new ride called Soarin which was pretty cool since you're suspended in the air and watch a pretty neat video that gives you the sensation that you're flying. We then walked over to China for some food at the 9 Dragons. The first two dishes were so so, nothing to write home about, but the last one and the red bean ice cream were positivly awesome. We didn't stay at Epcot after that but headed over to our hotel, Disney's Wilderness Lodge, so we could change for dinner at Palio at Disney's Swan resort. Dinner was SOOO good, we had some great Italian food and afterwards we went and picked up one of those all you can drink mugs so we can get free soda's at Wilderness Lodge.

Saturday we hit up two parks, Animal Kingdom and MGM. Animal Kingdom was pretty fun, we did two rides there in the Dinoland area. The first of course being the ride Dinosaur which is always fun. The second was this mini coaster that also twirled around. It was pretty fun although I was dizzy after getting off and a little sick to my stomach. Since it was scorching hot, we went back to Wilderness Lodge for lunch (I had a nice greasy double cheeseburger with fries) and chilled out till later in the afternoon and headed for MGM to watch Lights, Motor's, Action which is the new show they have there. The place was packed! I have to admit thought the show was really really cool and I wouldn't mind having one of those stunt cars so I can tear through the streets of Tampa like a wild man. That night we went to some place where they serve buffet style food and stuff but they DELIVER! AWESOME!! After getting stuffed at dinner we had a sweet banana type dessert and then went BACK to MGM to see Fantasmic which neither of us have seen before since we normally head home long before this show comes on. The show was very impressive and I liked how they used water as projector screens for some of the sequences in the show.

Sunday! Time to head on home but not before going to Pollo Tropical in Orlando for some plantains and chicken! We also decided to walk around the Mall at Millenia which is also fun and relaxing. We decided to go home in the early afternoon to relax at home (I also wanted to play with my new Bose stereo system that I got for my birthday) and to make sure our cats were ok.

Next up, Claire's birthday dinner tomorrow night......... mmmmmm its gonna be good!!

Have you seen this man??

Hmmm, I think I've seen this guy in the Bible before.........

BOSE!!

I just got some SLAMMIN speakers for my computer for my birthday from my lovely wife :) Check out the picture!

My brittle bones!!

Since turning 27, I feel so old!! This is how Claire had to push me around Disney all weekend long.

M&M's and Star Wars??

This is something a really hard core fan might buy for their collection, I think it looks funny as hell!

No Jury Duty for ME!!

I called up the phone number last night to see if I was exempt and I was over joyed to learn that I didn't have to get my ass up early, go to court, and sit in a boring room with people I don't know for the whole day. And this now means............ FREE DAY!! I have Thursday and Friday off too so that means 5 day weekend aww yeah, gotta love it :)

First Place Baby!!

With their 11-10 win over the Texas Rangers last night, the NY Yankees are now half a game ahead of Baltimore and Boston to regain their first place standing in the AL East. BOOYAH!!

More Wedding Pictures

Jen just came down from CT to visit Orlando and she dropped by Tampa to give me and the Mrs. some wedding photo's that she took. There were a ton but I tried to pick the best ones. Click here to get to the slide show.

Enjoy!

Harry Potter x2

On Saturday, the Harry Potter book came out. I saw all the news stories and what not but I was personally waiting for the copy I ordered from Amazon. After wasting the entire morning at home (well to me it wasn't a waste, I was rebuilding a computer from scratch), I went out with the wife, for what I really can't remember at this point. When we came back I decided to check the management office to see if it was delivered. To my surprise it was closed at 4pm because of some pool party they were throwing. I was thinking, CRAP now I have to wait. I head on over to the mail boxes and the mail man is still there (we saw him 2 hours before putting mail away) and when he saw I had a slip of paper for a package, he told me that he had it!! SAWEETNESS! He gives me my Harry Potter book and I hand it over to my wife since I bought it for her. She knew we might start fighting over the book to read it so we headed over to Borders and got a regular version since hers is the limited edition one. Sadly, I haven't even hit chapter 2 yet since I was busy this weekend. Although check out the cool cover for both books.

The one on the right is the limited edition book, the one on the left is my "regular one". I'll see if I can make some progress this week and this weekend.

My cats are too funny

This past Saturday, there were people working on the roof of the apartment. Being that I live on the top floor, I can hear all the banging and what not going on and I didn't really thing much of it. My cats certainly didn't appreciate it one bit. They were stalking around the apartment looking for who was making the sound and getting ready to pounce. If they weren't doing that, they were hiding in their cat carriers or under the stairs. I only regret I didn't get a picture of it because it was damn funny!

OK I know you probably can't visualize it, but you just have to take my word for it :)

The Fantastic Four

This weekend I went out and saw the Fantastic Four. I have to say that the movie was pretty good overall. I can tell that they're setting it up for a sequel just by how the movie ended. Hopefully it'll be like Spider Man 2 and be better than the original. Marvel is coming out with some bad ass movies is all I can say and now they're going to be teaming up with MS to come out with games, its going to be SWEET!

Potter Mania

Tonight at midnight, millions and millions of parents, teens, hell almost everyone is going to hit a local bookstore and try and get the new Harry Potter book. I will not be among them since I pre-ordered mine from Amazon. And I didn't get any old edition, I got the DELUXE edition. My wife has all the other books in hard cover so I thought why not get her the really nice version of the book to add to her collection. Since I'm getting it for her, I'll probably be able to read it in about a week or so from tomorrow which is when its expected to arrive. To all you Potter fans waiting in lines at bookstores tonight, all I have to say is ............... SUCKERS!! :)

Simple Plan = Pansies

I'm listening to my internet radio this morning and I hear yet another wussy song from Simple Plan, how do these guys still manage to get on the radio and even call themselves straight? Come on!!

Thanks Jackass

This will be nice and short. Some asshole hit my car while it was parked in the garage at work. How you manage to hit a parked car that has NO ONE parked next to it astounds me. Thanks for the large scratch on the bumper and the slight dent. I hope you get in a car crash and go straight to hell in a huge ass inferno....... FUCKTARD!

Yet another web browser that I like

Being the 'techie' that I am, I've been experimenting with new web browsers. My wife still likes to use IE (I only do if thats the only thing the page will load on), I've tried out Firefox (not bad but its not wow-ing me yet), Netscape 8 (interface is a little on the cluttered side), Maxthon (my current favorite), and now I have Avant (this one is pretty impressive too). Right now I'm using Avant because blogger seems to work better with it than Maxthon. I can use the spell check featue and the picture feature in Avant and I can't in Maxthon so if anything I'm just going to use this bad boy to blog or to replace Firefox. K I'm bored and its lunch time!

I'm returning my Treo Holster

I have the Seido Treo holster for my Treo 650. At first I thought it was a good investment and I liked the holster for my old phone. The bad thing about it is that it didn't offer it any protection and it was slowly stripping the paint off. So I'm going to see if "someone" will get me a new case for my birthday. I would personally like this one. :)

Come on Emily, Bring it!!

Check it out, another storm is heading towards the Caribbean! This is storm number 5, looks like I better go out and buy my Wave Runner!

Damn Dell

I was trying to see if I could get the Dell Desktop I received to work with the hard drives I had installed on my custom built PC but it just didn't want to work. I think I'm going to have to spend some quality time with the thing just to get it up and running. Just looking at the specs this Dell should beat the living shit out of my current PC but we'll see what happens after I rebuild the thing from scratch. The sad thing is that it only has a 30 Gig hard drive. I have a spare 20 Gig that I can add to it but that still seems a bit smallish and it has no CD burner either. If I can get it to run like a champ I might have to take the plunge and redo EVERYTHING and just start using the Dell (after I clean out the 10 pounds of cat hair thats stuck in it)

Now thats what I call a storm!

I'm down here in Ft. Lauderdale after driving through some of the nastiest weather I've ever encountered. During the entire way down it was raining but there was a particular area that was scary. There was an actual line in the sky! One side of the sky was light gray, the other side was pitch black. It looked like I was going over to the otherside of the train tracks or something. I took a pic with my Treo but it didn't come out so well.

We checked the weather reports while we were on the road and it said that for our entire route down, we'd be in a Tornado watch zone. Now that is just freakin crazy. I believe it too because the rain kept on coming down like someone turned the shower on FULL BLAST and added about 40 mph winds just to keep things interesting. Dennis is now a category 2 hurricane so its not anything to worry about and its not even coming close to Tampa or west floriduh for that matter. I guess we'll see how things go tomorrow on my way home.

How I Love Thee Friday!

It's finally Friday! Bout time it got to this point in the week. I shouldn't really bitch too much since I had a short week and worked 3 days but still, thank God its Friday. I'm taking my trip to Ft Lauderdale after work and I'm going to brave a huge ass category 4 hurricane thats off the coast of Floriduh as well as numerous flood and tornado warned areas. I think I'll be alright though its not expected to come really close until Saturday sometime and by that time I'll be on the east coast of the state. The only concern I have is for the way home because I don't want to get stuck in like 3 feet of water on I-75. I get to use my new SunPass! Whoohoo, lets see if this bad boy works or not as advertised.

The cool color of BLUE

I decided to change the color of my blog to blue since I was kinda getting sick of the green and I'm starting to develop my flash site again so I figured why not make everything match. Anyway, thats it!! On to do more FLASH!

Bring it on Dennis!

It looks like there's a storm brewing in the Caribbean called Dennis. There is a possibility it'll come to Florida but all the tracks say it'll go into the Gulf. Now no matter what people think, even if the thing misses us in Floriduh we're bound to get tons of freakin rain which means I should start looking into buying a jetski since thats the only way I'll probably be able to get around town if it comes close enough.

4th of July is cool

I just got back from Safety Harbor (it's just over the border from Tampa) and I saw some of the best fireworks yet. We were really close to where they were launching them and they had a badass finale as well. I didn't take any pictures because who really wants to take pictures of fireworks anyway? I used to do it but decided not to do it this year. I think I'll go again next year but this time instead of eating at the spa thats in town we'll just get some hot dogs and soda's. Bleh! Work tomorrow!

Typing Test

I just took a typing test at the suggestion of my wife at www.typingtest.com just to see how fast I could actually type something that they presented on the screen. I have to say that I'm not very good when it comes to reproducing something, I'm much faster when it comes to just straight up typing stuff thats coming from my head.

But anyway, here are my results so far: I can type about 72 words a minute with a 97% percent accuracy of what is on the screen. I'm told thats pretty decent considering that I still don't use the home keys and I sorta have my own style when it comes to typing stuff out (I'm not one of those two finger typers though) Try it out and see how well you do!

Router upgrade complete

I just got a new wireless router today, the Linksys Wireless G so that my wireless PC's aren't running so slow on my network. I've had no trouble hooking up my work PC and my dad's PC but my old Sony with the wireless B card seems to be having trouble connecting. Not that I use that PC a lot it just kinda annoys me that its not working right. I'll get it to work though, I haven't met a PC I can't defeat yet! :)

Happy 4th of July!

I need a jetski

Yesterday was CRAZY! There was so much freakin rain it started flooding the roads. I really could have used a jetski yesterday to get home. I went down this street in my apartment complex and it had a slight dip and when I went through it I think I hit about a foot of water. Now this morning the horn for my car sounds a little funny. I think I damaged it going through that much water. It sounds super weak now, it lost its manliness hahaha. Oh well, I'll give it a few days and we'll see if it gets better.

You go girl!

I must say I'm very impressed with my cat Nala's jumping ability. I figure if I ever let her go outside, she would bring back dead animals or something to my door step because she's such a good pouncer. Yesterday I brought her and Thumper home from getting their bath and a stupid bug got into the apartment. It was a BIG one too. I couldn't see it for a few minutes but then Nala spotted it on one of the paintings that we have hanging in our apartment. It was right above the spot she likes to sleep which is slightly elevated. She got up and jumped I would say a good 4-5 feet straight up and took a swipe at the bug. She hit the thing because it started to coast to the floor and she just kept right on trying to swipe at it. I saw it was one of those bugs with a stinger so I had to push her out of the way while I got something to squish it good and dead. Thumper is just sitting there looking at us all regal and aloof and not even caring that there was something to attack. HA! Oh well, at least I know who to go to when I want something hunted down and killed :)

So fresh and so clean!

I finally got my cats back from the vet and they smell nice and clean. The only thing that the vet didn't do was clip thei claws but I can deal with that for now. At least they don't smell lke kitty litter anymore :)

A new link to a blog

I forgot to mention in my previous post that my friend Shirley has a blog now. The thing is that its not on Blogger but on MSN Spaces. Either way, I made sure the link and everything works so feel free to go to her blog and comment, view pics, you know all that other good stuff that bored people do on the internet.

The Longest Yard and other stuff

This weekend I went to see the movie The Longest Yard starring Adam Sandler. Now I must say that after watching it, I thought it was pretty damn good. I won't spoil it for anyone reading this since its just a movie that must be seen. There are also quite a large number of pro wrestlers in the movie as well (the ones I could identify are Goldberg and Stone Cold Steve Austin but there were at least one or two more who's names I forget but their performances were just AWESOME!).

Also, I just sent the cats to get cleaned. It's been ages since they've had a decent bath, I sure as hell am not going to give them one, I don't want to get scratched to death or anything because they don't like water. So they should come home smelling fresh and clean and also a touch mad at me for shoving them in cat carriers, going through a car ride and handing them over to complete strangers so they can toss them in a deep sink, hold them down, douse them with water and shampoo, and then letting them dry in a small cage. But hey at least they'll smell good!

This is the best wedding cake picture of all, thanks Wyatt and Kate! 

Dells really suck balls

Most of you who are in the IT support probably already know that my subject heading is pretty much true. I've worked in IT support for a number of years now and there isn't a Dell model I haven't hated or experienced trouble with. The newer Dell business desktops are somewhat cumbersome and the notebooks just outright stink!

Now, on to a short story. Last night out of the kindness of my heart, I went to the wife's office because her co-worker couldn't get their monitor to work. Being the good former technician that I am, I bring along my laptop and my bag of goodies just in case I need it. I go over there and hook up the monitor to the old laptop since I use dual displays and I'm set up for it. Presto it works on my laptop so its not the monitor. Just to be sure I hook up the old CRT. The settings are set up in the most basic configuration (800x600 with 256 colors, who the hell uses that anymore?) because thats what their tech guy told them to do in order to get the monitor working. Well whatever......... So I play around with the display controls, hook up the new LCD and wham, it works! I reboot the PC a couple of times just to be sure it's working alright. All of a sudden it says that some DLL file in Windows is corrupt or missing. Well doesn't that suck ass right there.

I know that he needs the file, I know how I would normally load the file using a floppy and booting with a Win 95 boot disk that I have in my car so I figure, no biggie I can copy it from someone else's PC and load it. I go down to my car and when I return he's gone home already. WTF! Next when I'm looking at the PC I notice that something is missing, why it has no freakin floppy drive! WTF?!?!?! Any tech worth his salt always needs a floppy drive because its the fastest way to do things and sometimes you just need a good ole boot disk to get things going again but for some reason Dell didn't include one on this model. Since I had my bag of goodies and there's no restore disc in sight, I use my old Win XP Pro disc and start to repair the sucker. Now the one problem with this is that it takes about 40 minutes to get this POS running if I do a repair job. I get up to the part to attach the PC to the domain and it just hangs there, now this pisses me off since I have to reboot the PC and try again. I do this about 3 times till I get fed up and just say install as a stand alone since I can make it join a domain later anyway. After I do that, it goes by pretty fast and then it reboots itself and wham! It's ALIVE! Afterwards just to be on the safe side I reboot it a few more times and check to make sure all the drive mappings work out ok (which they do I might add) so I leave with the wife to go relax. At this point we've been there for about 2 hours trying to get this POS Dell to work.

This morning my lovely wife sends me a message that her co-worker thinks I broke his PC because MS Office no longer works. Now how the hell is that my fault? I didn't even touch office and my techie friend up in NY agrees that my repair should not have affected his programs in any way. Besides, it's not like I'm their tech support and I'm not just going to launch programs just for the hell of it or anything. I didn't even get so much as a thank you, he actually had the balls to question if I knew what I was doing last night. If I know how to crack open the case and check the connections of the video card and he doesn't, I think I know what I'm doing since I worked as a tech for 2 years and I still tinker with my own PC. Some of it isn't his fault since the design of the PC is TERRIBLE but since I'm getting shit for "supposedly" corrupting MS Office he is now on my shit list forever (not to mention he's a terrible bowler).

Lets go Yankees! (Again)

Now this is what I call a freakin blowout of a game!! Tampa Bay went down hard in the 8th ;)

http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/gameday_recap.jsp?ymd=20050621&content_id=1098716&vkey=recap&fext=.jsp&c_id=nyy

Why can't I finish video games?

Something weird has happened as I've gotten a bit older, I just can't bring myself to finish a video game anymore. I have all these awesome games for my Xbox (Ninja Gaiden, Halo 2, Jade Empire, just to name a few) and I'm RIGHT there at the end basically. I'm normally within 2-3 levels of completing a game and then I just sorta stop and lose interest after going around and blasting or slicing to death thousands of computer generated enemies with glee.

The only games that still seem to catch my interset are games that don't have a definate end. I still keep on coming back to games like SSX 3 (thats for my GameCube), Burnout3, Dead or Alive 3 (talk about old school, thats first generation Xbox right there), and Soul Calibur 2.

For example, last night I threw in Halo 2 to see if I could get back into the game. After about 5 minutes of blasting Flood and Covenant bad guys I got bored and turned off the game and switched it to Dead or Alive 3. I proceeded to play this for about half an hour in Survival mode just to see if my skills were still decent at ass whoopin. I must admit, my skills are still there for certain characters like Ayane and Kasumi but I would have to practice a lot in order to beat my all time high of 47 knock outs (I average about 15 these days depending on the character I'm using).

I'm even wondering whether or not its worth my getting an Xbox 360 (for those of you under a rock, thats the new Xbox game console slated to come out this fall) when it comes out or if I should just wait and try and beat some of my other games first. Oh well, I had such a good time with DOA3 last night, I think I'll play it a little more tonight just to whoop some computer ass. :)

Totally AWESOME

You can make fun of me all you want but my new trash can is freakin awesome!

Ahh clementines!

I'll just come out and say it, clementines are my favorite fruit! Granted it makes me hungry after I eat one but I still eat them by the case. I bought two at Costco this weekend and I'm almost done with the the first one. I'll eat the next one for lunch later this week :)

A day of shopping

Today the wife and I did a little shopping. We picked up a SunPass (for those of you back in CT and NY, its just like an EZPass) and the most awesome trash can on the planet from Bed Bath and Beyond. I registered for this but since no one got it for me, we decided to get it ourselves. Check it out!!

Trash Can Link

New Treo 650 for ME!!!

I finally got my new PalmOne 650 Treo! Whoohoo! Now I can send email, surf the web, and place phone calls from my cell phone without having to crack open a laptop. The keyboard is kinda smallish but I don't really give a shit. This is AWESOME!

Chinese Fortune Cookies

Last night my wife and I got chinese food from a take out place and of course they gave us fortune cookies. This time they gave us four and we decided to crack all four open, two for her and two for me. Now here's the funny part, my two fortune cookies have the exact same foturnes in them. I mean come on, what are the odds that in a whole box full of fortune cookies I'll get two of the same one?? LOL!

Vacation Time

I dont' normally write about work but this is really interesting to me. I got married and took quite a bit of time off I thought. I had about 3 weeks to burn in terms of time and I thought I at least burned up a week and a half. I got my pay stub today and I calculated it out and I have over 3 weeks of vacation time again. Now its not a bad thing but its sick how fast I accrue vacation time. I have 4 weeks a year and that doesn't include holidays and days they give us here and there. Since my wife only gets 1 week a year I have to start finding creative ways to burn it up. WOO!!

Aww crap!

I just got a notice from the County Clerk that I have to report for jury duty on July 20th. I'll be so freakin pissed if I get picked and even more freakin pissed if the case lasts into the weekend since I have a trip plan not to mention my birthday is on July 22. GAH!!! Thats what I get for registering to vote in Tampa!!

An observation about NY

Here's something intersting that I observed when I was recently up in the Northeast, and I think its rather funny.

In Floriduh, almost all the toll booth operators are either exact change only, SunPass, or senior citizens.

In New York, all the toll booths (even exact change and EZPass) are manned or monitored by NYPD.

Says something about each state I think ;)

Now that was a good lunch (burp!)

I just finished up some BBQ meat and rice that my wife brought back from CT and I gotta say it was DAMN good. Ahh, now I need to find an unused storage closet and a cot so I can take a nap this afternoon............zzzzz

I'm back from CT

My trip to CT was pretty good and the party was excellent! I didn't spend a lot of time up there because I have work today (boo!!!) but I did get to see my mom and Mama Chippy. Here are some of the highlights....

Almost misssed the flight from Tampa
I know what you're thinking but this was totally not our fault! We got to the airport and gate ontime and then JetBlue tells us that the flight is going to be delayed because of weather up in NY and to come back at 9:30. So..... Claire and I decided to go to the main airport terminal to shop around for stuff. We go there and decide at around 9pm to go back to the gate. To our surprise there was NO ONE THERE! We were like oh shit and ran towards the gate to see if the plane was still there. On a good note, we weren't the last ones to board, there were 4 other people that were late too ;)

Cool new camera!
Being the cool wife that she is, Claire bought a new digital camera for us. I'm contemplating selling my old one here at work for like $150 or something. I'll have to mull this over in my mind a little longer. We have a new Canon D400 which takes pictures super fast and the pics are even larger now than with my old one. The best part? It's freakin tiny!

Saweeet new radio station!
Of course when I return to CT, I have to listen to all my favorite stations like Z100, KTU, and Power 105.1. But I found a new station that was bad ass. It's 105.9 and they play nothing but Reggaeton which is something we don't get down here in Tampa. Although they do have it in Ft. Lauderdale so I get to listen to that stuff maybe 2-3 times a year on the radio. But at least now I have something new to listen to while I'm in CT.

Driving the Convertable
Claire's mom has a nice 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder and she let me drive it this weekend which was really nice of her. The thing is a V6 and fully loaded to the gills with options. The only bad part was that it was way too hot to keep the top open. Driving on I-95 is like sitting in a parking lot so with no wind, it was just HOT! Buy just being able to drive the car was cool all by itself.

Dim Sum!!!
Being Chinese and from the Northeast, I'm a man that loves his Dim Sum. If there is enough time in the day to go, I'm all about going to Dim Sum on a weekend and this weekend was no exception. Even after eating a healthy breakfast with Claire and her dad, we decided to go to Hartsdale NY and eat some Dim Sum mmmmm........ now why can't Tampa have a good Dim Sum place eh???

OK, well that was the weekend end in a nut shell. I'm glad to be back home with my wife and my cats though. Now if only next weekend would come faster so I can relax at home :)

You know its summer in Tampa..........

when you start seeing hurricane or tropical storm warnings on TV all the time!

A funny movie

Here is a link to one of the funnier Foamy cartoon's I've seen recently. I have a whole archive of his stuff :)

http://mysite.verizon.net/jvwong96/pairs.swf

Too funny!! HA!

I was driving to work this morning when I saw one of the funniest things I've ever witnessed in Tampa. I saw a small Chevy pickup that looked fairly beat up and I thought, man what a piece of junk. Little did I know that this crap box was semi pimped. At the traffic light, the tailgate part of the truck started to lower itself to the ground. Holy crap it has hydraulics! LOL! I was dying in my car when I saw this because as soon as the light turned green, the back of the truck popped back up so the bumper wouldn't be dragging on the ground.

Just to gross you out.....

While I was on my honeymoon I kissed a sting ray in Grand Cayman ;) haha! I don't have a pic of it but you can go ahead and ask my wife, she'll confirm it!!

Why doesn't Tampa have clams?

I was talking to my friend Alison on IM during lunch and she sparked a memory ............ I really miss raw clams with cocktail sauce. When I used to live in CT, I used to have them every once in a while. I'd get them from Stew Leonard's (the best freakin grocery store on the face of the earth btw), out those little buggers in hot water and crackedem open with a knife. Now in Tampa, they have oysters (I don't like them) but why don't they have clam's? Clam's are so much better! Yet another reason why I should move back home ;)

Damn you Walmart!

Today I have one slight pet peeve.......... scanning in pictures............... because Walmart ran out of blank CD's.............. is this even possible??

I had the pictures from my water proof camera developed (the pics came out pretty good except for two that were messed up because I probably forgot to wind the camera enough between shots) and of course I went to Walmart to do it, they're so cheap its almost criminal not to use them. However when I got there and asked them to scan in the negatives they said they couldn't because they had no more CD's to burn. Thats freakin crazy! I'd just snatch some from the shelf or something in the electronics department. So I spent about 45 minutes scanning in pictures (I'll put up a picture or two if I deem them worthy) scanning in the pics. Now I need to transfer them to some back up device so I have a copy of it just in case my PC decides to die.

Anyway, thats my gripe about Walmart......... until tomorrow!

Whew I didn't poison myself

For the first time ever I cooked linguini with clam sauce with a hint of crushed red pepper. Granted everything was kinda from a can (just the clams and clam juice) but at least for the moment I'm alive and I'm not even sick. There was a lot of clams and juice in the can so I cooked a whole box of linguini. Thats tomorrow's lunch and dinner lol.

On another note, I got my proofs from the photographer but I'm waiting until the wife gets home to look at them. I also don't have the negatives yet so it'll be another few weeks till I get the professional pics in digital format. Hope everyone is having a good weekend.

Cool new skin for Winamp

After not visiting the Winamp site for a long time (those bastards at Time Warner have stopped development on it :( ), I found a pretty cool skin that I'm going to start using on my work PC when I listen to internet radio. Here's the link

http://www.winamp.com/skins/details.php?id=144223

Ahh nothing like a cool mixed drink :) 

Please don't die!

I got a rude ass shock when I turned on my home PC. It said that it couldn't boot and it had to check the hard disks to make sure everything was ok. I was like OH SHIT!! Totally not good since I have so much stuff on here thats important. Good thing I have two hard drives and multiple external hard drives from broken laptops. I ran a chkdsk /r and everything seems alright on the good ole C:\ drive. Granted it took about 3 hours to do.

Now I have to hope my printer doesn't go bust because my heavy ass cat is at this very moment sitting on top of it and staring at I have no idea what.

Anyway, I'll post another picture or two tomorrow if I have time from the honeymoon.

The Mariner of the Seas .......oooooooo

The Mariner of the Seas

I don't know how many of you are interested but if you are here is a link to Royal Caribbean that showcases whats on the Mariner of the Seas. It's pretty cool!

Back from the Honeymoon!

Well I'm finally back from my honeymoon and I gotta say it was great to get away for a week! I'll have day to day stuff up later, most likely I'll write it up this weekend as well as post some pictures.

For now though, here are some cool web links

My Cruise Ship (Mariner of the Seas): www.royalcaribbean.com
Del Sol T-Shirts: www.delsol.com
Xel-Ha Water Park: http://www.xelha.com.mx/default.asp?com_id=0&idioma=1
Two Funny Guys (they were a show on the ship): http://www.twofunnyguys.com/

Just to give you a basic run down of what I did each day, check the trip schedule

Day 1: Leave Florida
Day 2: At Sea
Day 3: Labadee, Hispaniola
Day 4: Ocho Rios, Jamaica
Day 5: Grand Cayman
Day 6: Cozumel, Mexico
Day 7: At Sea
Day 8: Back in Florida

Links to new slide shows will be up soon :) Cya all in cyberspace!

Oh for those of you who want to see the ship I was on, here's a pic of it in Labadee

Claire on our wedding day 

Another link courtesy of Duvee!

For those of you who have a Kodak Easy Share account (once known as Ofoto), follow this link which will take you to pics that Duvee took during the wedding and a few of the other events that occured in Tampa. PORC!! ;)

More Wedding photo's

Click here to find more photo's from my wedding. I'll be putting up more as I get them in my email.

Git R Done!

Whoohoo, wedding is now OVER! For those that are interested, click here for the pics. I'll post more later :)

Wow its getting really close!

It's Wednesday and my wedding is Saturday......oooooooooooo!! I'm getting info from people that they are starting to filter into Tampa and are awaiting the big day that I get married. I doubt I'll be able to write in my blog till after the wedding so this is my last post as a single person!!!

I'll put up some pictures if I have time next week :)

Counting the days

Almost time to get married, according to who you listen to, I have 5 days left. Still lots of preparation stuff to get done but it'll be done by Satuday. Then its PARTY TIME! WOOO!!

No longer in last place

I have checked Yankees.com and the Yankees are out of last place but are still 5 games behind the Red Sox. Tampa Bay just lost 3 in a row...... boo hoo LOL!

Wow what a lobster!

This past weekend I went to The Capitol Grille with Claire for a company dinner that was being held. This place is brand new and it looked pretty impressive. The menu was traditional american food really with steak and such but there was one item on there that was worth blogging about.............a 6lb lobster!

I dunno about the rest of you I've never seen one that large before and of course when Claire's co-workers heard this, someone was bound to get it. Once that bad boy came in, we were all staring at it and the staff at the place even took a picture for us. I guess it's very uncommon for a person to actually order this monster lobster and attempt to eat it on their own.

I wish I brought my camera so I could post a picture, that sucker was HUGE! Me personally I want the smaller ones because they are tastier over all and I must say I was quite happy with my FREE steak dinner :)

How crappy

Well its happened, the Yankees are now tied for LAST place in the ALCS East. They seriously need to move their asses if they want a chance to even be a wild card this year!

WTF Happened???

Well last night I went to the Yankee's game here at Tropicana Field, wearing my good ole 24 jersey too thinking, this is the Yankees, they're gonna steam roll these guys! Man how wrong I was. Instead of Randy Johnson taking the mound, they sent in a rookie from AA Trenton. He lasted maybe until the 3rd inning before he was booted when the score was 6-2.

Now the Yankess are looking to tie LAST place. I mean come on! 200 million dollar salary just this year Steinbrenner is shelling out and his team is looking at LAST PLACE! Someones head is gonna roll soon if they don't at least get it up to second. Other than the Yankee's losing, it was a pretty good night at the ball park :)

Lets go Yankees!

Oh happy day! Tonight after a hard days work, I'm going to be heading over to Tropicana Field in Tampa/St. Pete to watch the Yankee's play the Devil Ray's. Last night the Yankees lost because Kevin Brown let in 6 runs in the first inning and I'm sure good ole George isn't too happy about that!

Tonight Randy Johnson was supposed to pitch but he's out with a stiff groin muscle (is he just sporting some drift wood or something? What does it mean??) so they tapped some guy from the Yankee Double AA ball club to open things up tonight. These tickets are part of my 6 year anniversary gift from my fiance and she got us some bad ass seats on the home side of the field. Even though I'm on the home side, I'm going to be wearing my Tino Martinez Yankee jersey that I got before he even went to the Devil Ray's. Hopefully they'll kick some Devil Ray ass tonight :)

Wow that was pretty cool

Last night I was up watching TV and my fiance's sister got me hooked on watching Law and Order. Last night was kick ass, they had Law and Order Special Victim's Unit tag team with Law and Order Criminal Intent for two hours of joyus fun watching Doctor Octopus (I don't know the actor's name) get grilled over the coals by the NYPD and DA's office. I think they should do more of it in my opinion.

Whats up with pink these days?

This has been bothering me a sometime now, my fiance knows about it since I comment about it every time we go to the mall, but what the heck is up with pink these days? It's freakin everywhere in clothing stores. Every store I go there are pink mens shirts all over the place and there seems to be this trend about going to more 1980 like clothing colors. Because of this new trend I'm finding it harder and harder to find clothes that I'll actually wear (more for work, I still have plenty of t-shirts in my drawers). Most polo's I find at Aeropastale are pink, some sickly green, or nasty blue with stripe combo. I just might have to start dressing my age if this keeps up :P

Whoa..

Talk about a stellar weekend for FOX! Two, not one, TWO new Simpson's, the return of Family Guy (thats just kick ass), and a new episode for American Dad (I think thats what its called)... but anyway, yeah that was just totally bad ass. I hope they keep doing it, I don't really care to see people on TV, animation is so much better!

Sin City

This weekend my fiance decided to take me out to the movies so I decided to see Sin City and seee what all the hype was about. I'll admit it was a pretty good movie but if there's one thing I hate it's trying to follow multiple plot lines with multiple lead characters. I think I was able to follow about 4 of the plots but there were probably others that just went right over my head.

The way the film was shot was UBER cool. Most of the movie was shot in black and white with the only visible colors being blue or red. There was also a lot of death and stuff blowing up but thats just what helped make the film cool. I'd give it 3 stars if they merged all the plot lines or something. I'll blog more about random shit later..........

Jade Empire!

I have finally gotten yet another new game. This time I opted for an RPG called Jade Empire and I even got the Limited Edition since it didn't even cost more. Pretty sweet eh?

I've already played the game for about 5 hours and the limited edition comes with a new character. Little did I know that this character is loaded from the SECOND disc that comes in the package so I'm debating whether or not to start over from scratch. I haven't done a lot yet in the game but still, all that time wasted! According to most game sites, this should take roughly 20 hours to beat, but knowing me it'll be more like 40 hours since I like to wander around in RPG's looking for all the hidden cash and junk. Thats it, I'm out!

Burnout3 is DONE!

Last night I was able to get gold medals in all the race portions of Burnout3. BOOYAH! I'm just missing two trophies but that matters little to me at this point since I completed all the races and my fiance cleared all the crash events. Now I think I'm going to go and pick up Jade Empire for some RPG action. Everywhere except Gamespot gave it an editors choice so I'm going to get it today after lunch. WHOOHOO NEW GAME!

I hate birds

I've hated birds for a while, especially pigeons which I consider flying rats. Now this is a funny story. Yesterday I was on my way to the mall and I was in the passenger seat while my fiance drove. I stuck my arm out of the window since it was a nice day. We were going through Westchase (really nice area of Tampa that I can't afford) and I felt this *splash* on my arm. I thought it was water but there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the sprinkler system wasn't on either. I looked and there was this white stuff on my arm. A damn bird took a dump on me!! My fiance was cracking up while driving and was nice enough to take me to a 7-11 to get cleaned up but yes, I now have a bigger hate on birds than I did before!

Why isn't it Friday?

I don't know what happend this morning but for some reason I thought it was Friday. I got up and felt great that it was Friday since it means I can wear jeans to work and the weekend was only a few hours away. I picked up my cell phone and looked at the day and saw it was THURSDAY! DAMN IT! Guess I have to suffer one more day till the weekend.

New South Park

I don't know about the rest of you but I think South Park just keeps on getting better and better! Last nights about baseball was freakin awesome! I only played baseball for one year and I can say that I was kinda bored with it waiting around for the ball to come my way or to get up to bat so I could feel their pain. But putting the spin on every team wanting to lose to end the season was super sweet! If anyone noticed it, it was the return of Kyle's cousin Kyle from CT. You would know him from the time that Mr Garrison made his own IT for traveling around the country without worrying about planes. Maybe he'll be in another episode sometime soon. I can't wait till next week!! BEEF CAKE!!

Looking for a sweep

So far the start of baseball season has been pretty good. Right now the Yankees are playing the Sox in a 3 game series and today is game 3. The Yankees have taken two games so far, I hope they can sweep the Sox and send them packing with their heads hung low!!! MUAHAHAHA!

Something to gripe about

Well today I have something to gripe about, and no its not my usual crap like traffic or something like that. Today I dedicate today's gripe to MLBTV.com. I supposedly have a free subscription with my DSL service but now its not even working and this is pissing me off. The reason for my gripe is that I live in Tampa and the only way I can watch Yankee games now is through the internet. The Yankee's only broadcast their games on the YES network which is only in NY for the most part so I relied on MLBTV to watch games that I wanted to see that wasn't on ESPN or regular TV. BOOO!! SUCKS! I need to get satellite or something!

The Curse is not dead!

Now I'm sure you're scratching your head wondering what does the title mean or refer to...... well I'll tell ya! The Curse of the Bambino is not dead quite yet! What better time for the Sox to lose after winning the World Series than to none other than the Empire in a 9-2 blowout on opening day of the 2005 baseball season.

I missed a good amount of the game because I didn't know that it was being televised on ESPN but I was able to see the end which was awesome, espeically when they put Tino in the game for Giambi. If this is any indication of how the season is going to go, fear the EMPIRE!!!

What are the odds???

Yesterday I went to Disney World to pick up my annual pass for 2005. I figured, maybe this time I'll have a good character like Mickey, Donald, or Goofy. Did I get one of them?? NO!!!! I get Minnie Mouse like I did last year. What are the odds of me getting another Minnie Mouse pass for 2005? I'm considering losing it or something so I don't get another Minnie Mouse pass so I can have a better one like all the cool kids that go to Disney. :P

Three day weekend!

This week I get to have a three day weekend, why do you ask? I have to take some vacation time before I lose it and I have some wedding things to take care of as well. Ahhh relaxation!! :) ENVY ME!!!

Blogger being a bit slow?

I'm sure that those of you that read my blog have noticed that I haven't posted anything in a while. I think there have been a few system changes to the site thats affecting my ability to post, not to mention I don't have anything to post anyway since I lead a boring life over all LOL! If the site improves I'll share some nuggets of info that I have. Anyway, work time!

The Blue Mystery String

Well, this weekend I was greeted with one of my cats throwing up. Which one I can't say since I didn't witness it but there was some blue string in it and it was kinda gross. I don't recall anything in my apartment that has blue string except for one of the play mice but it has its string attached so now its a mystery................

Tivo To Go............POS???

It's been a few days since I posted but I've been busy so anyone who wants to complain can kiss my asian butt :P

I just got Tivo To Go a few days ago which lets me take my Tivo recordings from the Tivo and transfer it to my PC. Since my PC is upstairs and the Tivo is downstairs I used a wireless adapter. Now I'm a technology freak, so using my vast knowledge I figured it wouldn't take all that long to download the stuff. Using conventional tech reason, it should transfer over at 11MB per second since thats what my network supports. Holy crap is all I can say, it takes almost 3 hours to download a 1 hour show!! I decided to download a few shows and left my PC on at night to get them.

Now I figured, this should be freakin cake, how long can it possibly take to take some MPEG's and throw them on a DVD? 4 hours! What I discovered during this extremely painful process (I made a few coasters too with my wrecked DVD's during this) is that the files are all encrypted by Tivo and when you burn it to DVD it decrypts the thing while it burns. Totally unacceptable! On top of all this, some of the Tivo files wouldn't decrypt properly because I wasn't using the correct software. I joined the tivocommunity.com boards and found a way to use Nero (my burning app of choice) and found a few ways to help me along.

I now have a way of decrypting a tivo file in 5 minutes but the re-coding after stripping out commercials takes 3-4 hours still which totally sucks. I'm looking for software to do this faster if possible. Oh I also found out the Tivo's use Linux as the OS and its coded to broadcast Tivo To Go at 1MB per second even if you're using Ethernet cable. WTF!! This isn't going to stop me from burning DVD's mind you, I just have to find a faster way to do it or get another PC so mine isn't locked up encoding Tivo files. Tivo needs to make this thing better FAST! POS!

Bachelor Party........ AWW YEAH!

It's March which means my bachelor party is going to be coming up pretty soon. Since my best man hates using email I'm helping him communicate the details of it. Right now I know the date (March 19), I know the general location (Stamford CT and surrounding area), but the details are a little bit on the fuzzy side right now since he's trying to keep it a surprise. I have to go ring shopping on the 19th so it'll be at night or in the afternoon. Who knows! I just know that once I have more details I'm going to be sending out Evites. Oh one detail I do know is to bring lots of cash LOL!!

For more wedding news and stuff, you should head over to Weddingchannel.com. Thats where almost everything is including the gift registry. Now I say ALMOST everything because one of our registries isn't there. We have one going at Bed Bath & Beyond too. All you really need to do is look up me, or better yet my fiance's name and the date and presto! Instant wedding registry! OK thats all, gotta go!

South Park Season 5 on DVD

Two words: Freakin AWESOME!

Nuff said!

Almost done with Burnout!!

Aww yeah I'm almost done with Burnout 3. My fiance got gold medals in all the crash events about a week ago and I'm still working on finishing all the race events. The freaking Indy car is fast as hell but can't turn for shit! I have Bronze medals for all the Special events with the Indy car, gold for all the regular races EXCEPT the last race which features...........THE INDY CAR!! SOB!!! I got a Silver in that race and I think there is one more since the game says I'm only 97% complete. hmmmmmmmmm........................

Anyway, wedding invites might be sent this weekend, I dunno though since we still have to finalize a few more things for them. Oh for my groomsmen, I'll let you guys know about the bachelor party stuff a little later, just bring tons of singles LOL!! Alright thats it for now!

Just relaxin with my girl :) 

Hide and seek!!! 

Lets Race!

My fiance has finally finished all the crash sections of the game Burnout 3. Now its time for me to get my groove on and do some hard hitting RACING! Anyone with a freakin pulse and an Xbox need to try out this game! So much for working out tonight, tonight is race night!

Challenging

My kitten Nala has a problem recently with scratching herself. This started to happen after she received her routine shots. I let it go on for a few weeks to see if she would stop on her own. So far she hasn't so I took her to the vet again to see what can be done. Well they gave me these pills that might help make her stop scratching since it's supposed to ease the itchy area of her internally.

Well any pet owner knows that trying to give any animal a pill is hard stuff. This is made even harder since Nala doesn't like to stay still or be confined in any way. Thumper I have no problems with, he'll take a shot in the ass and not even meow. Now the area that Nala is scratching is around her neck area. The vet recommended I use wet food or something but I know that Thumper will eat it if he sees or even hears a can pop open. My only recourse is to try and hold her down. Hence my CHALLENGE twice a day. This involves grabbing her by the back of her neck (where it itches) and prying her mouth open and forcing her to swallow a pill. I've tried the nice way but this seems to work best. The only bad part is then she hates me for a few hours and runs away. I hope she stops itching so I don't have to keep on giving her pills forcefully.

My new addiction

OK so this weekend I went out with my fiance and got a new Xbox game called Burnout 3: Takedown. I've read some reviews on the game and since they were pretty good I got it used at EB Games. Talk about addictive game play! I don't normally like racing games because they're kinda boring since you go round and round a track or something. There are many reasons to love this game but I'll just name a few.....

Reason 1: TAKEDOWNS!
One of the coolest freakin things you can do in this game is take out your opponents. Most of the other driving games I've played punish you for hitting someone or something but this game actually rewards you for hitting a rival into a wall. Now thats just impressive all on its own and a reason why I am addicted to playing this game.

Reason 2: Crash Mode!
This is the mode my fiance plays the most since I'm really good at the driving part and beat her often. This one is totally bad ass. You get a car, some boost to go uber fast, and then you find a spot in an intersection with tons of cars and you just plow your way into it. The point? To cause the most damage of course!! My fiance is really good at this part of the game, we're talking millions of dollars worth of damage wheras I can only maybe manage a few hundred thousand or so.

Reason 3: Unlockables!
So far I've had the game for about a day and already with the help of my fiance, we've gone through around half the game. We've unlocked a ton of cars and new race tracks that just keeps us coming back for more and more. When will it end???

Well thats it in a nutshell, if you own an Xbox, you MUST get this game. When I get home from work, I'm turning on my Xbox for some Burnout bliss :)

A gross gift from my cats

This morning was starting out OK. I got up, said goodbye to my fiance who had to go to the dentist, thought how awesome it was that it was Friday and that tonight is bowling night but what greets my eyes is a strange gift from one of my cats. I don't know which one of them did it but one of them decided to throw up their dinner near the scratching posts. Now this isn't a real big deal mind you since only the cats roam around the scratching post area but still it was pretty gross and kinda smelled. Using my trusty Petzyme, I sprayed that sucker till there was almost a little pool of liquid and let it sit there for the prescribed 10 minutes then I cleaned up what was left of the mess. This only happens when I change cat food and I have a feeling it might be Thumper since he's not big on changing cat food. On the other hand Nala hasn't thrown up yet since she's been with me so it just might be here time to pass a hair ball or something. We'll see what happens when I get home to see if there are any more "gifts" from Nala and Thumper.

It's only Wednesday!!

Good lord its only Wednesday! I don't know about the rest of you out there in cyberspace but this week is dragging really bad. Good thing its almost 5 :)

Blue Collar Comedy Tour RULZ!

This weekend I watched the Blue Collar Comedy Tour movies, they debuted the second one on Sunday. I gotta say thats some funny shit! Now that I live in red neck country, a lot of things make a little more sense now. I recommend people see this, and the TV show thats on Friday evenings (only if you have nothing better to do on a Friday night)

Time for a new website design??

Well this is something I've been mulling over for a week or so now. I'm starting to get a bit bored with my current website design but I don't know what to put in its place. Don't get me wrong, I like how it is now but it seems bland and lacks a little something.

I've considered going back to the tried and true HTML type site but that doesn't seem cool enough so I'm probably going to stick with Flash for now and maybe try and use some of my new found Action Script knowledge to make it look semi cool.

Anyway I don't know I'm just rambling on because I'm bored and not in the mood to do work cuz its Friday. Bah only 5 more hours of this torture till I'm FREE!!

Happy Chinese New Year!

It's Chinese New Year! I think its the year of the Rooster (or Cock, whatever you sick minded people prefer) or something. I don't know I don't follow Chinese New Year all that closely. But anyway, to all the asian people that I know, Happy New Year! :P

Pats Win :P

OK OK I'm not really a New England Patriots fan since they're really a Mass team (hate the Red Sox) but for this game against the Eagles I just had to go with the Pats. Philly is too close to Jersey for me to like and the town itself scared me when I went there fora visit last year. So congrats NE Pats! Booyah!!

Choices choices........

As many people know I have two cats at home. Now living with two cats is pretty fun except when I have to scoop the crap out of the litter box. Now you would expect that I would probably go through a fair amount of litter and yes indeed I do. I've been experimenting with different brands and now it comes down to two choices..........

Brand 1: Fresh Step!!
This is the one I started with when I first got Thumper. It smells alright and gets the job done. The price is around the middle area and I normally get around 30 pounds of the stuff and dump all of it in. So far I like this brand.

Brand 2: Scoop Away!!
I bought this last night and dumped it into the box. This one was a little cheaper than Fresh Step and I always see sale signs around this brand. They also only had one jug of Fresh Step so I decided to try it. It smells the same and it looks the same as Fresh Step and I know the cats don't mind since I found a few turds in the box this morning. I'll have to see how bad it stinks after a few weeks but so far so good.

Litter to stay away from: Arm and Hammer Multi Cat
This stuff was freakin NASTY! Awful smell to it and it didn't keep kitties box all that fresh either. I think it lasted about two weeks before I bought more Fresh Step and dumped it in.

So there it is, in about a month I will choose the winner which will be my kitties new brand of litter. Good lord I'm bored!!

The weekend..........

The weekend was pretty busy, busier than normal but only because there were wedding plans to finish up. There are still a few details to iron out but overall we're in good shape :) WHOOHOO! Personally I can't wait since my wedding is going to be da bomb! My guests will just have to wait and see what happens but pretty much its going to be uber cool.

I saw the Winter X games on ESPN and the things those people were doing are SICK!! I saw them all this weekend and even into this week. My favorites are definately skiing and snowboarding although the snowmobile stuff was also pretty freakin sweet. I wish I could do sick stuff like that but most likely I would have cracked my skull open trying it.

Sunday was my LAZY day. I didn't go out at all except to get gas for my car. Although it was a very productive day in terms of computer upkeep. I have 2 computers at home that I upkeep, one is a test machine and the other is my "file server" that has all my music and pictures. I was able to update everything and try out some new software to keep myself occupied so I wouldn't get too bored and start playing video games. Hmmmmm............... Well I'm at work so its time to eat some LUNCH!!