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Okay, so it's been a while since the last entry. What else is new? If you read the last entry, then you will know that I've been busy with the beta of the Burning Crusade and then, of course, with the release version. But that will all be covered later in the games post.

Okay since the last post, much has happened. Let's see how much I remember.

Heather and I went to her parents' house for Thanksgiving again. This time I got to meet her brother Chris. I think it went pretty well. There are some picture from our trip to Sioux City on the Vacation Photos page.

Next up, Heather and I got to go to a wine tasting/class at the Cannon River Winery in Cannon Falls, MN. Some of Heather's co-workers won the tasting in a charitable auction and were nice enough to invite us along (Thank-you Edie and Jeff!). We had a great time. Who would have thought that a winery in MN would be good.

Heather ended up going home for Christmas. It was just as well anyway, as our Christmas was put on hold with the arrival of Angela's baby girl, Makaela Irene Reinke, on the 23rd of December. She is quite the cutie. But she also has quite the set of lungs on her. I don't think I could scream that loud and for that long without passing out. She's doing very well and has enough clothes to last her about 7 or 8 years. My family has gone a bit nuts buying clothing. I'm kind of scared to see what my mother does when I have kids. Click here to see a picture of Makaela.

Speaking of kids, a few days before Makaela was born, Tony and Alycia had a baby girl of their own. Abigail Grace Coleman was born on December 18th. Last I heard both mom and baby were doing great.

Just after Christmas, I took Heather to a Wolves-Supersonics game. We had good seats but the game was a little boring. KG had a bit of an off night, but everyone else managed to pick up the slack. The Wolves managed to win the game but it was a fairly lackluster performance most of the time. I will say that Mark Blount is the best center the Wolves have had in years.

Right about this time Blizzard released the Burning Crusade upon us. So naturally, I had to step up and take the fight to the Burning Legion. Yes, I know I'm a dork. If you want to know about the BC, read the game post below.

So after a slight respite of just work and gaming, the end of February brought a new adventure. Heather and I travelled to San Diego. Heather's brother was nice enough to let us stay with him while we visited him and Heather's grandparents. Her grandparents actually live near Tucson, AZ and drove over to San Diego to see her and meet me. I've now completely another milestone with Heather, the meeting of the grandparents. I guess her father was contemplating visiting as well, but at the last minute he had to go to France for work.

San Diego was a LOT of fun. We got in about noon on Saturday (we left MN just before the first big snow storm of the week) and Chris took us to lunch at this nice little rooftop restaurant overlooking the Pacific. It was beautiful out, we had highs of 70 all week while we were there. Then Chris has gotten us tickets to the San Diego State University vs Brigham Young University basketball game. The game was incredible. I've never been to a large conference college game before but this one was impressive. Much better than the Wolves game we went to in December. The one down side was there were TV timeouts every other minute and 3 kids behind us that are probably going to be featured in an upcoming episode of the Nanny 911 or Supernanny. After that it was off to meet the grandparents and have dinner. I think the meeting of the grandparents went quite well. It helps that Heather's grandparents are very nice.

Sunday Heather and I started our day with a harbor tour of San Diego. Heather complained that I took too many pictures but I don't care, it was interesting. Between the military base on Coronado and the ship yards on the south end of the harbor, I have many picture of Naval and Coast Guard ships. Unfortunately the 2 active aircraft carriers that call San Diego home were both out on maneuvers. Although the USS Midway is a permanent resident of the harbor. Unfortunately after the harbor tour, Heather wasn't too eager to tour the Midway. So we walked down the waterfront a ways and wandered through the Seaport Village. I think the tour guide said it was designed to resemble and Spanish seaside village. Basically it was a bunch of specialty shops. I was intrigued by the store that sold nothing but hot sauces, but in the end I though all of the shops were a bit over priced. After wandering for a bit, we decided to head back to Chris's until we were supposed to meet the grandparents for dinner. It was then that we had out first trolley experience. Basically the San Diego trolley system is like the lightrail system in the cities. Except this one doesn't go anywhere it should. It doesn't go to the airport, Seaworld, the Zoo, the wild animal park, or even the beach. From what I can tell it goes to the shopping mall, downtown. the convention center and Qualcomm Stadium (where the Chargers play). In addition the whole system appears to run on the honor system, as there is no real check in place for whether or not you have a ticket. But after a short ride, a train switch and a short walk, we were back at Chris's apartment. Heather's grandparents took us to dinner that night at the Black Angus Steakhouse. The food was great but what I liked most was the atmosphere. All of the seating consisted of high back, like nearly floor to ceiling, booths. It was like being in your own little world. You couldn't hear or see the people in the next booth and you didn't need to yell over them to be heard by the people in you booth. But the food was really great.

We spent Monday at SeaWorld with Heather's grandparents. We spent the whole day there. And we still didn't see everything. The place is huge. Although, the shows take up a good portion of the day. The shark exhibit was great although it was a bit on the dark side, which made it tough to get any good photos. But it was a good day overall and it was nice to spend some time with Heather's grandparents, as I said they are very nice.

Tuesday was our one blah day in San Diego. It rained until about 11 but it was nice after that. Since Heather and I still had some gifts to buy, we decided to take the trolley down to "Old Town". Plus Heather wanted to have lunch at a restaurant that our guide book recommended, the Old Town Mexican Cafe. While you wait to be seated you can watch them hand making all of the tortillas. Once again, the food was excellent. Personally I didn't care as much for the atmosphere, but that would just be because I kept getting dive-bombed by birds. We were seated in the open air portion of the restaurant. I've never quite understood that concept. Why do people enjoy eating outdoors. If I wanted to eat outside with the birds and bugs, I'd go camping. Anyway, as I said, the food was excellent. After that we walked around Old Town for a bit and picked up some gifts for the folks back home. This was a much better and more reasonably priced area than the Seaport Village. It had more of a farmer's market feel to it. Eventually we had to head back to Chris's and hit the outdoor hot-tub for a while. Did I mention it was beautiful weather there? Our flight was early Wednesday morning, so after the hot-tub we headed over to say goodbye to Heather's grandparents.

I'd say it was a great trip. There are pictures (mostly of boats) on the Vacation Photos page. Plus we missed the first big snow storm of that week. Unfortunately we got home just in time for the second one.

The second storm nearly complicated another event that was happening that weekend. Amy had planned a surprise 30th birthday party for Mike at Gluek's in Minneapolis. It was quite the surprise for him considering it was a month before his birthday. The problem came in that Estela, a friend of our from college, was flying in from Ohio for the party and Ed and Des were driving up from Iowa. Fortunately, the state was better prepared for this storm and most of the roads were in good condition by Saturday. It was nice to see Estela again. I hadn't seen her since her wedding like 6 or 7 years ago.

Well that's it for the general life update. Next weekend I'll be in Iowa helping Ed and Des move back to civilization. Okay well, St. Peter, MN. But hey it's closer to civilization.

As most of you know, I work for K-6 school in Woodbury. As of this past Wednesday, all of the children have returned for another glorious school year. Can you tell I'm excited? Actually it hasn't been too bad so far. I've got all the teacher and student computers setup and I've made it through the first week of school without anything blowing up. Well. sort of. I added rules to the mail server filter the other day to help block some of the junk mail. Unfortunately they were a tad too aggressive and some actual email was blocked. I've adjusted some of the settings and it seems to be doing better. I'll have to keep an eye on it this week to see how it does.

Things are going well at home. I finally had to mow the lawn. The thing I hate about that is now I just have to mow it again. I swear one day, I'm going to pave the yard and paint it green. The only thing stopping me is that I hate painting more than mowing. other than that it's been a fairly uneventful month or so.

Heather and I returned safely from our camping trip to Gooseberry Falls. No major problems. But a few minor ones. Pictures are, as usual, on the Vacation Photos page.

The first day we were up there was cloudy and drizzly. We were glad our tent had a screen porch that we could sit in instead of having to sit in the tent all day. The tent had some minor leaks but nothing major. We just need to seam seal some of the seams.

The rain also gave us a chance to go into town and do the little sight-seeing that Two Harbors, MN has to offer. Basically we went down to the harbor break wall and browsed the lighthouse gift shop. We didn't remember to bring the camera but we stopped quick on our way home and took some photos here.

Fortunately, the second day of our vacation was much nicer, sunny and upper 70s. We took advantage of this by hiking on the paths along the falls. I took many pictures. Heather eventually gave me crap about all the pictures I was taking of the falls, uttering things like "Another waterfall picture." Well yeah. You go to Gooseberry Falls, you are going to take pictures of the falls. It's not like I'm wasting film or there is any chance of me running out of space on my memory card.

Anyway, after our hike we needed to run into Two Harbors again. Heather needed coffee. So if anyone can recommend a good camping coffee pot, I'd appreciate it. You know how to reach me. Actually I've been looking to find one that would plug into the cigarette lighter in the truck. I'm trying to avoid having to build a fire in the morning and we don't own a camping stove.

Our afternoon consisted of reading down by the lake. I have to say that Lake Superior is one of the most beautiful place on earth. I've always loved the endlessness of large bodies of water. They just aren't very common in Wisconsin. But back to our reading, I must say that the first 50 pages of The Tale of Despereaux are quite intriguing. I really should finish the book one of these days. Heather was reading The Birth of Venus. She says it was very good. Although she was also giving me crap about reading a book from the library at my K-6 school.

That brings us to our next minor problem, our neighbors that night. They were probably about 5 minutes out of high school and I could have swore the one girl had Tourette's Syndrome. She'd just scream randomly. After a while I realized she was just one of those people who talk really loud all the time. The worst part was that they must have said/screamed "a dingo ate my baby" about 8 THOUSAND times. They finally shut up (kind of) around 10:30 p.m. Of course it was a short night as they woke us up at 5 a.m.

That was our last night though. Good thing too. The lady in the camping office said they were staying another night. She told me that after I suggested that if they were staying another night, that a ranger go talk to them about their volume and when quiet hours begin. Yes, I'm getting old. But I don't think being young entitles you to behave like a complete tard.

We're back from the "Camping with the Katie's" trip. It was an interesting weekend. I now know to ask if shower access is included with my site. Apparently at the Cascade River State Park, if you rent a group site, showers are not included. My hair was pretty nasty by Sunday evening when I finally got to shower. You can tell in a couple of the photos. It's not a pretty sight though.

The tent worked wonderfully. It is well vented so it was cool for afternoon naps and yet quite warm when you zip up all the windows at night. We didn't really get a chance to use the screen porch. I'm guessing that we'll use it more when we go to Gooseberry Falls in August. Heather got bit by quite a few mosquitos. I don't think I have a single mosquito bite on me. I have a fly bite on my ankle, but that's it. She doesn't think that is very fair.

Anyway, as I said there are photos up in the Vacation Photos section.

So Heather and I had our trip on the Minnesota Zephyr a couple of weekends ago. It was a good time. I was dreading the thought of getting stuck sitting with another couple but it turned out ok. We ended up sitting with a nice 30-something couple who were celebrating their 4th wedding anniversary.

The train ride itself was nice. Although, I must say it wasn't the most scenic ride most of the time. Unless of course you consider golf courses and people's yards scenic. Actually some of it was very nice, tree and such. And now that i think of it, i do find golf course scenic. There was one that was really nice. Now if I could just golf decently.

Anyway the real treat was the meal. You certainly don't starve and it's very good. My favorite part of the meal was of course the slab of cheesecake for dessert. Heather's favorite park was getting to see the engine. Well more specifically, she got to blow the whistle. Pretty much made her trip right there.

So I would definitely recommend going. But go with another couple. Otherwise you roll the dice on who sits with you.

Hey look, only 8 months later and I'm finally posting an update.

Wow so mych has happened since then I hardly know where to begin. Well how about a comment on he change to the site. Shortly after the last post Rapid Weaver, the software I use to create the site, had a major upgrade. This upgrade marked a significant change in how the site's files are organized. This of course meant that I had to pick a new color scheme and layout as the old one was incompatible with the new version. So I decided to undertake the process of reorganizing and updating the photos section.

Obviously, that shouldn't have taken this long and to be honest it still isn't completely done. I've just been slacking. Well that's not true. I've been doing a lot of stuff, just none of it involved updating this site. But I'm going to try to change that habit and get back into the habit of making at least weekly updates.

So... one of the new features of the new version of Rapid Weaver is categories. You should notice that you can now choose to read entries based on catagory. This doesn't completely work for the way I write, as I tend to like transitions and segways, but I'll do my best. For now you have 3 catagories, Animals which will include all things related to my animals and other animals with which I have contact, General which will be more miscellaneous than anything else and Video Games which will include but is not limited to WoW updates and my reviews of games I play.

Oh and one more note. I've also switched the format up so that the newest post is on the bottom. so you don't have to go to the bottom of the page to read the newest post, although i had to trick the software to do it. so ignore the dates and times.

Life in general is good.

Oh you want more? Ok. well let's see...

Heather and I are doing well. We're actually coming up on our one year anniversary at the end of June. We're thinking that we are going to celebrate by using the gift certificates that my parents gave us for Christmas. They were certificates for the Minnesota Zephyr in Stillwater, MN. Here's the website http://www.minnesotazephyr.com/ I've been on the Zephyr before when i was little. I guess it's a 3.5 hour train ride. It should be fun.

Let's see just after the last post in October, we had a Halloween party with Heather's friends from college (hereafter referred to as "the Katie's"). Heather and I went as cowboys. Next year I'm going to plan ahead and get my CTS costume ready in time for the party.

We (Heather, Pika and I) spent Thanksgiving with her mom and step-dad. They live in Sioux City, Iowa. Don't feel bad if you don't know where it is, I didn't know either. We had a great time though, despite the long and very boring drive along I90. They have 2 dogs who feel in love with me, as all dogs do. We also ended up seeing "Walk the Line" that weekend. Terrific movie. If you haven't seen it yet, stop reading now and go rent or buy it, watch it and then come back and continue reading. No seriously. I'll wait.

Back? Okay then.

In the world of construction and house progress it's been an interesting spring. Harold messed up his left elbow a few months ago and hasn't been able to do much in the way of lifting and such. As a result I got to help out a bit on the farm. I think that my willingness to help on the farm shocked my mom. Now it's not that I would choose to shovel cow crap around all the time but there are times when it has to be done. Actually I don't think the farm would be a bad place to live. Heather would die there though. She thinks New Richmond is rural (which it is to a degree).

Right now Heather and I are trying to plan a camping trip this summer. She found a state park in WI that looks cool. You have to take a ferry to get to it. I think we'll have to leave Pika with my parents though as the park isn't very dog friendly. We've looking at buying a new tent as well. Well I would like popup camper but I don't think that's an affordable option at the moment. Last year we used Heather's tent which pretty much has just enough room for my queen size mattress and nothing else. I'm looking at a couple of the Coleman tents right now. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to email me via the contact link at the bottom of the page.

This would have been posted last night but it seems every time I try decide to do a post, it rains. Oh well, if it did anything tonight it would be snow not rain.

It's been a big week so far. Sunday was a great day in the world of football as the Vikings were crushed by the Falcons. I know that we Packer fans don't really have the right to say anything about it this year, but that game was so atrocious that it was beautiful.

In other sports news, tonight is opening night for the NHL, very exciting. I'm trying to listen to the Wild game that's on in the other room and type at the same time. I must say it doesn't work well so I'm going to hurry this up a bit.

Heather had a couple of "firsts" this past weekend. On Saturday she petted her first cow. Now for those of you in disbelief, there are pictures up to prove it. From the sound of it, things went pretty well. I was hanging sheetrock at the time, so my mother was in charge of the digital camera. She did fairly well with the camera considering her lack of technical aptitude. Then later that evening she saw her first gun, sort of. We met up with my cousin Angie and her boyfriend Travis. They wanted to go to Dick's Sporting Goods to look for guns. Heather and I didn't actually go over by the gun cases as we were busy browsing the camping section. Then we went down to the golf section where they have drivers that cost more than my set of clubs did. So that was Heather's experience filled weekend. Don't forget to check out the photos.

Speaking of the photo section, there are a couple of miscellaneous pictures in there that might need some explanation. The pictures of the laminate flooring for instance. There's a bit of a story behind those pictures. I picked up a box of the laminate flooring that Sam's Club sells. I was debating on whether I should replace my upstairs carpet with that stuff or with actual hardwood floors and figured I would buy one box and torture test it. So far it's doing pretty well considering it's in a high moisture and traffic area. But i think the hardwood floors may end up winning in the long run. The Sam's Club laminate would run about $1100 or so depending on waste and the fact that I just did a rough estimate of how much area I have to cover. Actual hardwood probably at least $5000 but would last forever and add a lot more value to the house. I should note that this debate began because Setesh had decided to start peeing on a certain spot on the carpet. As I don't think she's doing it anymore, this project will probably get shifted to a back burner for a year or two.

The other photo that probably seems out of place is of my Cardboard Tube Samurai print. I know I've linked their site a few times now, but the CTS is a product of Penny Arcade. The CTS is one of Gabe's alter-egos and one of my favorite recurring characters. They only made 750 of these prints and of those only 500 were available to buy via ThinkGeek. They went on sale one night at 11pm (central) and were sold out within 30 minutes. I have 705 of 750. I finally found a frame for it about a week ago at Michael's. Try to ignore the reflection of my desk and stuff in the photo. Really the photo doesn't do it justice.

The last photo in there is a screenshot I took just outside Stormwind Castle (WoW). Apparently a guild must have recently kill Onyxia the dragon. When this amazing feat happens, her head is put on display here for a few hours. It was the first time I'd seen it, so I took a picture. It would be cool to see during the day, but I'm guessing that considering most WoW players are in school or at work ten, that it probably doesn't happen very often during the day.

The last set of pictures should need no introduction at this point. They are of Rocky. He's getting to be quite the little kitty. I dare say he's growing into a fine young cat. That's of course when he isn't trying to bite you. Yes, he's a little biter. But only after a bit. Usually you can pet him for a good 5-10 minutes before he goes satanic on you. He seems to have a hit and miss pattern of wanting to be cuddly when the alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m. and sometimes before then. Anyway, I figured that the millions and millions of the Rocky's fans would like some new photos of him (raise your hands if you caught the WWE reference there, minus 10 points if you missed it).

A while back I'd made some comments on how kids today are pansies. I had no idea at the time how true this was. Keeping that in mind I have seen the future and the end of mankind. As I'm sure you are curious, I'll tell you what I saw. Within the next 3 generations the human race will become extinct. Yes folks and it won't be caused by nuclear weapons or biological weapons or even Desperate Housewives reruns. This shall be the fall of the human race. Okay, so maybe Mr. Peanuts won't be the direct cause, but apparently his nutty brethren will be. In all seriousness, how can you be so allergic to peanuts that to be in the same room with them makes you ill? I know a couple people that I get nauseous when they are around, but I have yet to meet the peanut that can kick my butt from 30 feet away. To some this may sound ridiculous, feel free to ask me about it. The rest of you should already be in the know as to what I'm talking about.

Speaking of ridiculous, have you been paying any attention to the debate on whether or not Intelligent Design (aka the Copout Theory) should be taught alongside evolution is public schools? The Star Tribune did a few articles on this last Sunday. I'm afraid I have to agree with Bobby Henderson, prophet of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It's a well thought out and entertaining take on the situation. Plus who doesn't love pirates?

Well until next time, just ask yourself... WWFSMD?

This will be a quick update due to impending storms. Well that and I'm tired.

There are a whole slew of new pictures. There are a couple of new Rocky and company pictures, a bunch of pictures from Kristen and Allen's wedding last night and a couple of WoW screenshots. So go ahead and check them out. I'll try to write more about my exploits tomorrow.

That would be what the last entry is. I wrote it a week ago and never got around to posting it, so go ahead and skip down to it before you read this one. I know, I know. I am a slacker.

Did you go read the other entry? Good. Now on to events that have occurred since then.

First, Ed and Des visited last weekend. It was a very nice, but short visit. As one might expect the three f us ended up playing a bit of WoW since we were all in the same room. Including starting some new characters together. Although I think I may have gotten a bit ahead of Ed and Des during the past week. We all started Horde characters, Tauren to be specific. My new character, Munaki, is a Tauren Shaman. I've been looking forward to trying out the shaman class and so far I am impressed. Now I just need to get Mortir's tailoring up so he can start providing bags for his Horde siblings.

Also this past week my car died. Supposedly I need a new starter cylinoid. Whatever. I figure it needed to go in for 2 recalls, an oil change, a replacement on an exhaust hanger and a recharge of the cooling system. So it was due for service anyway. I am a bit worried that I haven't heard from them since last Wednesday though.

But the week ended well with some work for my parents and a visit from Heather. Saturday we didn't do too much for construction work, just a couple of window well railings. Most of Saturday was spent doing yard work. I helped my mom mow a couple of yards, including my cousin's. Then moved on to my own yard. Earlier that day I'd had a bad experience with a can of Great Stuff. I was trying to fill in the bee hole but the Great Stuff can was defective and I ended up with Great Stuff all over my hands. I ended up getting it off with some nail polish remover. Don't ask, I have no idea why that was under the bathroom sink. Then Sunday was another short day. Harold and I went to the summer pasture and replaced two fence posts. They weren't too bad, but could have been easier. I was bleeding within 5 minutes of arriving. I caught the knuckle of my left thumb with the back side of the prybar. I also managed to find some barbwire fence but fortunately that didn't draw blood. I was actually kind of surprised that Harold ended up with more cuts than I did. Usually I seem to manage to injure myself more than he does.

But as I said it wasn't all pain and free flowing blood. Heather was kind enough to come and visit after a party with some of her friends in the cities. She was even nice enough to make lasagna on Sunday. I, being the pain in the butt that I am, couldn't resist taking some photos of her cooking.

That pretty much brings us up to the present. Be sure to check out the Pictures page as there are a couple new Rocky photos as well as some of the other kitties and of course, Heather cooking. Check back next week to hear all about Fantasy Football Draft Day. I bet you can't wait...

Yes kiddies it's that time of year again. Time to strap on those backpacks and trudge 20 miles uphill (both ways) to school. Oh who am I kidding, half the kids these days get dropped off in the Hummer and their backpacks have wheels. I know I'm not the first to say it, but I think it bears repeating. We are raising a generation of pansies. And I'll admit that it began with my generation and that it's my generation that is raising today's pansies. I realize that every parent wants more for their children then they had, but there has to be a limit to that. I think my generation had it pretty good. Perhaps maybe we should try to make the next generation better by try to instill some of our parents' values into the next generation.

Oh don't mind me, I always get this way at the beginning, middle and end of the school year. But I'll get off the soap box for a little bit, at least regarding that topic anyway.

Well Rocky has fully recovered from his trip to the vet and is up to his old tricks. He's been set free from his bathroom prison and is enjoying the ability to attack at any hour. Although I think he has mellowed slightly. I deduce that from his 4am purring sessions. You cannot imagine how annoying it is to be awoke at 4am because there is a cat on you purring and trying to force you to pet him. As I'm writing this I have no new photos of the Rockster, but I'll try to take a couple before I upload this to the server. And I'll try to see if he'll hold still long enough to do a size comparison photo. I know he's only 4 months old but he's almost the size of Piccolo and will easily be Daimao sized before he's done growing.

In other news, I've redone the living room furniture. Well that's not exactly accurate. I tossed the 12 ton hide-a-bed couch and replaced it with a couch and a futon from my cousin Angie's house. It's nice to have furniture that is light and easy to move for vacuuming. If I tried to move the hide-a-bed, the casters fell off. But it was a good couch in it's time and survived for quite a long time considering I was its fourth owner. All you previous owners may want to pour out a 40 in honor of its demise.

So that may have sounded like a simple proposition right? Just move some furniture. For most people, maybe. But for me everything seems to turn into a production. As such, allow me to set the scene for you. We'd loaded the treadmill and futon into my truck and made it successfully to my house. First we unloaded the futon and were about to unload the treadmill. Well I walk down the stairs to move the dehumidifier and the box the keeps the dog out of the workout room. Well as I was moving the box I noticed an unusual number of bugs on the floor. Bugs are not uncommon in the basement and I usually have my share of box elder bugs and those mock lady bug things. However these were something different, these were yellow-jackets. And the exercise room was just the tip of the iceberg as the guest bedroom had a large number of these stinging insects in various stages of life and death. After vacuuming up the majority of them I noticed the source of the infestation, a hole in the wall by the self ledge that sits in the foundation block. "Neat.", I thought. Well actually I thought a different four letter word. Well to conclude this tale of woe, the yellow-jackets have been climbing up under the bottom piece of siding on the outside of the house and in an effort to expand, chewed through the sheetrock wall and into the guest room. Currently the hole has been covered with duct tape. Although if sheetrock didn't stop them, the tape doesn't instill much confidence in me. I checked earlier and it's still holding though. Since that time a can of wasp killer and a can of great stuff have been purchased by early to mid week this problem will be sealed off permanently. Well at least until new siding happens which should prevent situations like this all together. Stupid wood siding.

On a happier note, I noticed this week that "Dead Like Me" and "Star Trek Enterprise" have released their second seasons on DVD. So I'll be breaking in the new couch soon. That's it for DVDs for a while. Other than my Netflix that is. I think I'm almost to the point in my queue that contains season 1 of "Newsradio" and the complete series of "Are You Being Served? Again". And I can't wait to get to season 1 of "Thundercats" in my queue. And now I notice that season 1 of "The Muppet Show" is out on DVD. Oh my, hours and hours of fond childhood memories.

In more serious news, I received a new demo disc the other day with the latest issue of "Computer Games Magazine". Low and behold it contained a demo of the Lego Star Wars game. I tried an early demo of this game a couple of months ago and thought it sucked. But I figured perhaps they had managed to fix the issues I had with the game since then. Boy was I disappointed. Let's clear something up right now, in my opinion, play control is the most important part of a game. Hands down, no question. You could have the greatest game in the world (and Lego Star Wars has potential) but if the play control sucks (and it does in Lego Star Wars) then the game sucks. There is nothing more frustrating than poor play control. I don't care if the game looks like crap. If I can move my character in an easy and intuitive fashion, I'm happy. If I can't easily move around the odds of me enjoying the experience is pretty slim.

On a brighter note, the disc also included a demo of Worms 4 Mayhem. This game is a decent 3D take on the classic 2D version of Worms. If I had one complaint it would be about the view system. The camera angles are always the best and it's more difficult to judge range than it was in the old 2D version. But overall a decent game if you've been itching for some arcade style action.

Well I'll try to get some photos up of Rocky and the new furniture. Maybe even some of Rocky on the new furniture. And if time permits, perhaps a few pictures of the killer bees...

Man is it cold at work. Now don't get me wrong, I like cold. But this is milk cooler cold. Last week they installed an AC unit in the server room and it was about time. The building is 10 years old, but the room was originally designated to be the server room. It should have had some sort of separate cooling control from the word go. It was actually an elaborate process because they hooked it up to the water lines and had to run the condensation purge out through the roof. So in addition to the guy installing the thing, they had an electrician and a roofing guy there during the week for the installation. Then there was another guy that had to come out this week and turn it on, which he did yesterday. Today the temperature gauge said it was 63 degrees in there, while my Garfield thermometer said it was 52 degrees. In either case, it was nice and cool in there. I think I'm going to have to stop wearing shorts and sandals to work (although school starts soon so I would have anyway).

It's been quite the dramatic change from camping this past weekend. Yes that's right, camping. I actually went camping outside of the safety of my air conditioned house. First, I'd like to state that I had a great time. It was fun to see some of Heather's friends that I haven't seen Mike and Amy's wedding and to meet a few new ones. That said, let discuss the concept of camping in July. I am of the theory that it either requires an air conditioned RV or needs to only occur in Alaska. I can't begin to describe how hot it was this weekend and how little air flows through a tent in a river valley. I have no idea how I managed to fall asleep Saturday night, but oddly enough I slept fairly well after I did. There are some photos of us sweating our butts off in the pictures section.

As we were camping in New Ulm, MN it only seemed natural to tour the Schell's brewery. Some of you may remember that the Schell brewery took over production of Grain Belt when the brewery in the cities closed. I will say this was my first exposure to Schell's beer. Now I don't want to ruin the tour for you, so I'll just say that it isn't as good as either the Leinenkugel's or the Sierra Nevada tours. However, I would have to say that the FireBrick and the Hefeweizen are very good beers. Just a word of caution, they aren't twist offs. Bring your own bottle opener. Or just get one of these http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/accessories/756e/

Speaking of geeky things. Last night was the release of the new limited edition CTS (Cardboard Tube Samurai) cel from Penny Arcade. They only made 750 of them and only 500 were available at ThinkGeek. According to the ThinkGeek page, they sold out in less than 2 hours. In an update on the Penny Arcade site, Gabe said that the ThinkGeek people told him they were actually sold out in less than 30 minutes and that at one point they were receiving 30 orders per minute for the cel. I wonder what number mine is. I should have it on Friday and will let you know if it looks as good in person as it does on the site. To be honest, I'd buy just about anything from these guys. Gabe is an amazing artist. Here's the link for the cel and just because everyone should check it out here is the Penny Arcade site

Well while we're on the topic of all things geek, I may as well mention that it has finally happened. Hedana has finally reached level 60. Yes I'm going to briefly talk about WoW. Actually that's about all the news I have for WoW. I now need to work on gathering gold for epic items and elite mounts and all that fun stuff. And I suppose Hedana's younger siblings could use some attention now. I posted a couple of screenshots in the pictures section, including one of Hedana hitting 60.

Let's see what could I be forgetting? Oh yeah, Rocky. Well as they say, out of sight, out of mind. Rocky got dropped off at the vet this morning to be neutered and declawed. They said he should be out of surgery by about noon so when 2pm hit and I still hadn't heard from the vet's office, I was compelled to call and make sure I hadn't given them a wrong number or something. I was told they had a lot of surgeries today and that Rocky had just gone under the knife and everything was going well so far. But I'm happy to report that everything went well and Rocky is going to be fine. Well at least as well as he was before. I'm hoping that this little snip, will take some of the fight out of him. I guess if nothing else he's been disarmed. But it means that tonight I've had the fun task of cleaning the bathroom since he can't use regular litter for a week. Let me just say that you would be amazed at the places in the bathroom he managed to get litter to. I think I need another can of Clorox Wipes.

Well that's it for now. I'll take some shots of my ThinkGeek purchases and post later this week. And yes there will be some post-op Rocky photos. Oh and speaking of pictures, watch for a revamp of the pictures section coming in the future. I finally got around to exporting and doing a general sort of my iPhoto Library. Hopefully I can figure out a better way to arrange all the albums this will create and still make them a manageable size for those of you on dial-up connections.

Until then go amuse yourself at Penny Arcade...

Yes it has been quite some time since the last update. I've been a bit distracted since then. Hey, I heard that. I am not always distracted, just most of the time. And you are probably wondering what could have been keeping me from updating Rocky's fan club on his latest exploits. I know you are probably all thinking that I've been playing World of WarCraft or that I've moved on to a new game (no chance of that, I still haven't played a game demo I installed 2 months ago). But you'd all be wrong. I've actually been distracted by a social life. But you can read more about that after I satisfy the multitude of Rocky fans.

Well the time has finally come for Rocky to go to the vet for his neuter and declaw. And not a moment too soon I might add. For those unfamiliar with Rocky's demonic ways, he typically greets my attempts at petting him with a flash of fangs and claws. I've lost a great deal of blood and skin since Rocky joined the family. Yes, I've attempted to trim his claws in the past. However, as his name suggests, he's a bit of a fighter. I'd basically have to duct tape him to the floor to get him to hold still. And yes, the thought of it has been tempting. Hey, I said I THOUGHT about it, not that I did it. But after this week that will all be behind us. I have to see when exactly this can take place though. Rocky will be about 11-12 weeks at the end of this week. So I'm hoping that maybe he could go in Friday and stay until Monday, as I wouldn't be able to pick him up on Saturday. But maybe he'll have to wait and go in Monday. I'll have to see how long they are planning/willing to keep him.

I know I make it sound like he's possessed by the devil. Well and really that probably the case. But he does have his moments. For example, we were both on the couch last night. I was watching TV and Rocky was lying there dozing. Well I knew if he slept then he wouldn't when it was bedtime, so I reached over and started petting him. Much to my surprise there were no claws or teeth to be seen. Instead the soft sound of purring came lofting from his direction. I continue to pet him and he continued to purr. It was almost tranquil. Then he realized what he was doing and bit me. Not hard enough to draw blood mind you. He's never bit me hard enough to draw blood. But of course where the teeth go, the claws are quick to follow. Sure enough, within another second, Rocky had attached himself to my hand and forearm with his claws. Such are Rocky's "moments" of calm. A brief period of calm and serenity while being petted, followed by an all out fight which he eventually gives up on but I walk away from bloodied. I suppose I could walk away before the tearing of my flesh, but I cannot allow Rocky to win a fight. I'm confident that one day he'll either accept my dominance or I'll die of blood loss. Either way, there will finally be peace. Actually, I'm just hoping that the neuter mellows him out a little. A sentiment the rest of the cats share.

That's about it for the Rocky portion of the update. He's still bathroom bound until after the declaw, but yesterday he used the regular litter box instead of his in the bathroom. I hadn't seen him to that yet, so I'm quite relieved that he hasn't been finding a corner to go in when he didn't have access to his litter box in the bathroom.

There are a couple of new pictures of him, but he hasn't changed much since the last posting. I've decided that part of my lack of posts has been due to a feeling that I need to have new Rocky pictures with each post. I've since gotten over this and you should do the same. Future posts may or may not coincide to new Rocky pictures. Future posts will also start containing pictures beyond the world of Rocky. I know the fan club may protest, but Rocky isn't the only thing happening in my life and this blog was intended to be about my life, not just his.

Speaking of my life, it's been going pretty darn good. I know I mentioned the addition of a social life earlier and I will get to that in a minute, but first an update on my WoW activities. What? I said I added a social life, I didn't say I'd stopped gaming. Although, I have been gaming much less the past month. Hedana is still struggling her way to level 60. She's almost to level 59. If things go well she should hit 59 tonight. All her
younger siblings have been resting while she makes this push for level 60. Recently, Ed and I have been debating the role of a level 60 player. Ed's main character has been level 60 for quite some time and he has been happily engaging in 40 person raids in Molten Core. This appeals to him. I'm less enthused about it. To me, the planning and time that goes into a 40 person raid seems more like work than playing. Especially if you don't end up getting any of the item drops from the raid. Let's face it, if you are in a 40 person raid and there are only 4 epic drops, even if only half the people can use the item and roll you still are likely to be leaving empty handed. The idea is that you need to do the raid many times to get the item you want. This is a lot of work for the casual gamer. I know none of you would call me a casual gamer, but I am on the casual end of the hardcore gamer spectrum. WoW does offer a few 5 person raids for the more casual gamers and perhaps that's where Hedana will eventually end up. Right now I'm just going to concentrate on getting her to level 60 and maxing out her blacksmithing, cooking and fishing skills. Oh and the game demo I mentioned earlier, the one I installed 2 months ago and haven't tried. It's a demo of House of the Dead 3, I think. I'll have to try it out tonight and let you know what I think. It'll be weird to play without the gun in my hand, I'm so used to the arcade version. And I think I have 2 more demo discs that haven't found their way to the CD drive yet, so I'll have to see what is on those.

So is that enough suspense? Are you all dying to hear about my social life? Or did you all tune out when I started talking about video games? Some of you already know this but since the last post I've met a wonderful, young woman named Heather. Well that's not exactly true since I met her a little over a year ago. She's a friend of a friend's wife. But I guess since I consider the friend's wife a friend, Heather is really the friend of a friend. I'm not going to go into too much detail though as she is a little bit shy. So I'll just say that we've been seeing each other for almost a month and things seem to be going well. And I'm sure it will be a relief to her to read that the pictures of us didn't turn out well, so she has avoided fame for the week. I think it had something to do with the lighting. Oh well perhaps next week there will be photos from this weekend's camping trip. New Ulm here I come...

Some of you will notice that suddenly a bunch of blog entries have appeared dated last Sunday. How can this be you ask? The answer, I've discovered time travel. Okay actually I can set the date and time to anything on these things.

The entries below were written last week, I just never posted them to the site as I was waiting to take a couple more photos. But here they finally are. I divided them up into topics so that you can easily skip the WoW update if you want. There will be a little bit of a WoW update later here too (hey it's been a week).

First I'd like to say hello to the ever growing Rocky fan club. I had no idea the little bugger was so popular. I'm not going to be telling him that he has a fan club though. His ego is big enough already. But welcome all the same and feel free to browse the rest of the site or drop me (yes, or Rocky) a line via the recently fixed contact page if you feel so moved.

Well it's been an exciting week again. Despite what last week's entries say, there are no new Rocky videos. Sorry about that, there was a problem with cutting them down a size that could be easily downloaded. But the pictures are there as promised. He's been as nuts as ever this week. He goes to the vet on Wednesday for a booster shot so we'll see how brave he feels then.

Today was the first official day of summer for me, as it was the first day without teachers or students at school. Ah, a month and a half of somewhat quiet. I started doing book inventory in the library Friday and have a good portion of it done. Plus Dana was in today and finished most of the Non-fiction section. She said she's coming in tomorrow too. I'm not sure if she's planning on coming in the whole week or what, but it does go much faster with two people.

This past Friday was also Pika's 5th birthday. Happy Birthday Pikachu!

Saturday was spent have on a roof shingling, half in the yard mowing and raking, and half out with Mike, Amy and friends (don't know if they mind having their names mentioned). Yes I know that I just named 3 halves. What can I say, it was a long, but fun, day. Of course that means that Sunday was a blur. I slept until 3pm and then went to bed again at 11pm. Ah the price we aged people pay for a night out.

Earlier this week, Jason and Tascha came over for dinner. That's a bit of a story too (and it leads nicely into my next topic). As some of you maybe know, Tascha is VERY allergic to eggs. Now I don't know if any of you have noticed this but there are eggs in damn near everything. We decided to order pizza. The short of the story is that we ended up ordering from the very last place in town that was available (Kozy Korner). But we decided also to watch a movie. As I have like 8 billion movies, we first narrowed it down to 80's horror movie and then decided on "Sleepaway Camp". It was by far the WORST movie ever made. I've seen movies via Mystery Science Theater 3000 that could win oscars compared to this movie. Sadly, I was at Best Buy Thursday night and discovered they have a box set of Sleepaway Camp 1, 2 & 3.

This brings us to the next topic, movie reviews. I finally got around to watching "The Grudge" this last week. I was not impressed. If the idea was to scare me, they really needed to go back to the drawing board. That's really all I'm going to say about it as it isn't worth my time to review it further. Actually, the special features of the cast and crew interviews were much more entertaining.

I also watched "National Treasure" the other day. I saw the movie in theaters and must say it didn't suck. It's actually a pretty well thought out and entertaining plot. Plus it has a decent cast, provided you can accept Nicholas Cage as an action star. It's nice to see Jon Voight being cast as a good guy. It's not a roll he gets to play often and in my opinion, plays the good guy better than the bad guy.

Finally a quick note on WoW. I finally made it into Alterac Valley last Monday night. Alterac kicks butt. I was in there for a few hours and managed to rack up over 500 Honorable Kills, which brought me back up to Sergeant in the rankings. The only down side was that I spent about 2 hours in line waiting to get in. So if you only have a few hours to play at night you may as well forget it. But in any case there are a bunch of new screen shots up from WoW including a couple from Alterac.

Before I go I just wanted to mention the picture of my house. There are a few pictures of my new shingles. I don't know how well they will look on your screen. They normally aren't that dark but it had just rained when I took the photos so they are wet. And yes the house is some sort of mustard orange color with brown trim. It will eventually be white with green windows, shutters and door. Thanks again to my parents and aunt and uncle for helping with the shingling project (okay so my step-father did most of the work). THANKS!

I must apologize to all those who have tried to send me email via the contact page. It turns out that there were some issues with the form, first I forgot to setup postfix on the server so all messages were going to /dev/null (it's just what it sounds like, oblivion) and then the address the messages were getting forwarded to was rejecting connections from my server. So if I didn't reply to an email, it might not be that I don't like you, I might not have received the message.

The contact page has been fixed and will work correctly now. I even tested it and everything. Of course most of the people reading this probably have my email address or know someone who does.

Yes after many weeks, I've finally managed to write up an update. Sorry about that but there was a shingling project, baseball game and some other events that kept me distracted (I've posted some pictures of the shingling).

So I forgot that I'd been playing with the idea of a weekly archive and accidentally posted the website like that last week. Whoops.

Rocky began his first adventures with hard food today. So far so good, but I am a bit concerned that he may choke. I guess I mainly think that because none of the others chew their food. But the little trooper seems to be doing okay with it. He's had a busy weekend of chasing the dog around and fighting with Daimao and playing king of the recliner with Setesh. There are pictures up of some of the highlights from tonight. This week will be a trip to the vet for his first sets of shots and hopefully they'll volunteer to trim his claws again.

Then there's poor Pikachu. If it weren't bad enough being chased around the house by a little kitten, she has to go outside and risk getting lost in the grass. I haven't mowed yet this year and it's getting a little bit long. Well it's been raining for the past week so it's not like I've had a lot of opportunity. It didn't rain today and isn't supposed to rain tomorrow so I'm going to try to get the mower through it tomorrow night. I need to get it fairly short by this weekend as it would make it easier to find any dropped nails. That's right kids, we're starting work on my house this weekend, weather dependent. So maybe I'll see call Bernard's about bring the truck in later this week. It has a recall needs to be fix and I need the transmission looked at. I'm guessing they'll have to keep it a few days. That way it's out of the driveway for a while.

Also this weekend is the opening of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. I'm taking a vacation day Friday to go see it. I'll post in the next update.

Meanwhile, in Azeroth... Well after spending a month or more at level 49, Hedana is now part way through level 52. I've decided that if I'm going to be at all effective in PvP I need to hit level 60. That became painfully clear last night as a level 60 priest cleaned the clocks of not only myself but 6 others a couple levels below me, all at once. It wasn't even close. Between draining my mana and casting fear spells on me, I couldn't lift a finger. So Hedana spent a couple of days in the Western Plague Lands killing undead and collecting scourge stones for the Argent Dawn. Now she's doing some questing in Un' Goro Crater. Really she only wanted some tar and soil for other quests but the quests in that area have been surprisingly easy and makes for some good XP. I'll eventually head back to the Plague Lands and finish some quests but that area takes a long time to go through because Hedana burns so much mana on spells against the undead that she has to drink all the time. In Un' Goro she maybe has to heal once per enemy and that regenerates by the time she needs to heal again.

Well anyway, off to Un' Goro to kill dinosaurs and tar monsters...

I've got a couple new Rocky pictures up for those of you who have been begging, or rather demanding them.

There are only 2 this week though, but they are good. It's Rocky and Daimao "playing". I wish I would have got a picture of Rocky and Daimao playing the other day. Daimao has taken it upon herself to keep the little bugger in line. So the other day she'd apparently had enough and had him pinned on his back. But she was holding him down by draping a leg over his head. He just kept kicking and scratching at her. When he finally stopped fighting she let him up and he scampered off. It was cute to watch.

Other than that not much else is new. I've been doing my best to avoid mowing my yard. In the pictures section there are pictures of the fence the doughhead behind me put up. I swear they should require you get a license to do "do-it-yourself" projects. You should need to demonstrate some hint of common sense. Instead of taking the time to call the phone company to see where he could put the corner post, he cut the corner. Look at the pictures and you'll see what I mean. All I can say is what a doughhead.

Also in the pictures section are a couple new WoW screenshots. One is of a giant that Walyn helped me kill. I've been meaning to finish that series quest for about a month now. The other shot would best be captioned (and will be captioned) "She turned me into a newt." Stupid polymorph spells. Yup Hedana as a frog. It's from a group Ed and I did last night in Zul'Farrak. Wasn't a bad trip. Made enough money off it to pay Ed back the 5 gold I borrowed to respec and still had about 7 gold left over . Plus Hedana finally managed to make it over the level 50 hump. Yup and after last night's trip to ZF I'm almost to 51. One of these nights I'll have to log into each character that I have and add up all the time played totals. That should be a scary number.

That's all for tonight. I'll try to get some more pictures of Rocky for this weekend. Maybe a video of him going nuts with a jingle ball in the morning. Oh and Rocky has moved on to soft food. Hopefully hard food comes soon cause I hate the smell of canned cat food...

Sorry I just had to say it. Ah the first day of May. A time for new beginnings. Time to put those cold winter months behind and focus on the spring and coming summer. Just look out the window and you can see the beautiful snow falling. Wait a minute. Snow? How can it snow on May Day? That seems thoroughly un-American. I'd like to know just what exactly President Bush is doing to combat this horrible, white, flaky menace. Earlier this week I was wondering when I should do the first mowing of the lawn, now I'm wondering if I put the shovel away prematurely.

I now I promised new Rocky pictures earlier this week, but they didn't happen. Deal with it. More on Rocky later.

First a quick update on WoW. I've started another new character. Chloie is a human warrior. I had no idea warriors kicked so much butt. At least they do in the first 10 levels. I could take on 2-3 enemies at my level and could easily kill ones 2-3 levels above. Can't wait until dual wield at level 20. I've mostly been playing as Gnick lately though, well Gnick and Hedana. Walyn escorted Gnick through the Dead Mines the other day and Hedana escorted Alexzander through part of the Dead Mines. Hedana is about half way through level 49 still. I haven't had her doing many quests for XP lately. Mostly she's been doing dungeon raids to gather items for her lower level siblings.

Last night was a bit different though. Blizzard, creators of WoW, recently introduced the honor system patch. Basically it is a way of keeping track of Player VS Player kills. I'm not going to go into detail here but the short of it is that you are awarded kills when you participate in PVP. The more kills you get the higher your rank becomes depending on the ranks of others. Last night we spent about 4 hours raiding Crossroads in the Barrens. We had about 30+ people just on our side. I racked up 208 kills last night alone. Those are all me alone mind you. As long as you are in the raid party and participating (ie, within a certain distance of the killing) you gain kills. And since I'm a lower level (yes, 49 was low compared to who we were killing and others in my group) more kills count for me. But it would be nice to get up to level 60 so I don't have to worry as much about getting my butt kicked by some ?? level character. We did have some delusions of greatness though. Twice we got the stupid idea that we could storm Ogrimmar, the Orc capitol. Twice, we were severely mistaken. I have some screenshots up from our raid in the WoW pictures pages. Overall it was very fun and a nice break from questing and looting.

Saturday was also the last night of bowling. Bowling, yet another sport I suck at. I don't know why I haven't been doing well the last few weeks. But it was fun anyway. Bailey, the other guy on our team, and Kara are engaged. Congratulations to them..... Suckers, been there, done that, not impressed. No I'm kidding, I wish them all the best. Other than that bit of news it was a pretty straight forward evening, a few games of bowling and then a little buffet dinner and then we're done.

Okay ready to hear about Rocky? Well it's been a big week for Rocky. Earlier this week he learned how to drink his formula out of a bowl. So no more bottle feeding for the little psychopath. His eyes are doing much better and we are nearing the end of his medication period. On top of that he's had a big week of interaction with the other cats. They have all stopped hissing at him and will even let him come up to them, sort of. Daimao is taking the most interest in him. They've been playing often these past few days. I'm hoping this will help with his social skills. I've posted some new photos of him playing in the living room. He's become fond of some of Pika's toys. And since I didn't get photos up earlier this week, I have a bonus for those of you with either high speed internet or some patience. On the left you will now see there is a "Movies" page. You will find some short, soundless movies that I took of Rocky with my digital camera. They are designed to use the QuickTime media plugin but if not, should be viewable in Windows Media Player. I included the file size in parentheses, the bigger the file the longer to download. Enjoy.

Well to round things out for the week, I'd like to give you some movie reviews. I watched a couple this week. First up is "A Series of Unfortunate Events". Either read the books or see the movie. Don't do both. You'll be disappointed by the movie. They are trying to cram 3 books worth of stuff into 1 movie and it doesn't work. The movie was entertaining enough and Jim Carrey does a surprisingly good job as Count Olaf but a lot of "artistic license" is taken with the plot to merge the 3 books into one movie. Maybe it's just me, but I'm under the impression that if the author had wanted the plot to go that way then it would have been written that way. But if you consider the movie on its own, it's not bad. The cast is very well put together. I especially liked the casting of Billy Connolly as Uncle Monty and Jude Law as the narrator (Lemony Snicket).

Next up is Blade Trinity. Wow, talk about throwing things together. Again the movie was entertaining but it lacked the darker feel from the first movie. As I said the movie overall felt a bit thrown together. Like they had all these great ideas and could decide which to use, so they used all of them and it became a mess. The character Ryan Reynolds plays is very funny. Unfortunately I didn't watch Blade Trinity expecting a comedy, but it's what I got. As far as casting goes I'm sure you'd expect me to applaud whoever signed Jennifer Biel to do the movie. She has grown up quite nicely since "7th Heaven" and is, in my opinion, the best eye-candy in the Blade series. But I was pleasantly surprised at the casting of Natasha Lyonne as a blind, bit-part character. For those who don't recognize the name, her filmography includes movies such as "Slums of Beverly Hills", "American Pie", "American Pie 2", "But I'm a Cheerleader" and "The Devil's Rejects" (an upcoming film from Rob Zombie).

Well that's it for now sports fans. Now it's time to go find my snow shoes....

Just kidding. The ankle hasn't bled since Tuesday night. But it really wants to bleed today.

So Rocky went to the vet for his feline leukemia test and a check up. You'll all be happy to here that he is mostly disease free. I say mostly because they did say some antibiotics home to apply to his eyes. It seems to be helping though. His eyes have been less goobery. He's twice as big as he was when they weighed him 3 weeks ago. He's up to 1 pound now. Since he is mostly disease free he has now been given the run of the bathroom which he seems quite happy about. I don't have any new pictures of him today. Maybe tomorrow night.

I do have 2 new screenshots from World of WarCraft and I added the Pikachu and My Cats pages back to the pictures section, although they still aren't complete.

Bowling sucked this week. Well let me say that I sucked at bowling. Well no maybe it just sucked in general. But that's kind of an involved story and a bit more personal. Let's just say I'm seriously debating my bowling future.

Well that's not really my whole week, but it's all of it that I have the energy to type up. Maybe if I get some sleep tonight I'll try to type some more tomorrow and take some Rocky pictures.

Okay let's start off with a disclaimer, I am tired. Remember that as you read.

So I learned Saturday that it's perhaps not a good idea to try to pick up an exercise routine right where you left off six months ago. Yup I decided to start running again. Well after the first 1/2 mile nearly killed me, we slowed the pace on the treadmill, finished that mile, walked a mile jogged 2 more miles and finally walked one last mile. Wow it was sad. 5 miles in 60 minutes. Guess it will be a while before I make it back to 10 miles in 80 minutes. Oh well that's what I get for taking the holidays off. I still need to move the treadmill to New Richmond, but I'm thinking I'll wait until I can move my legs. I don't know which is worse, the sore muscles or the quarter sized blister on the back of my left heel. My shoe must not have been on right or something.

It made step construction interesting today though. The front steps on the corner house were rotten, so we were going to replace them. Well it turns out that a good portion of the supports for the front porch were rotten too. So today was spent jacking up the front porch and putting new supports under it. But that all went fairly smoothly and we even got the support structure up for the top of the steps. I haven't done pictures of the garage apartment for a while. It's pretty much done now, so I should probably take some photos of it before my parents find someone to wreck... er, I mean.. rent it.

Well as I said I'm tire so I'm going to try to keep this short. So on that note, I've posted some new pictures of Rocky. Just a few but you should be able to compare them to the first few photos to get an idea of how much he's grown. I have to call tomorrow and get him an appointment at the vet as he's getting to the point where he'd like a bit more room to move. Litter training has been going well. He actually took to it like a duck to water. Well sort of. We still have some issues. Like he keeps getting litter stuck to the back of his leg. I don't know if he sits in it after he pees or what, but hopefully as he gets taller and more mobile it will resolve itself. My attempts to introduce some soft kitten food have been less encouraging. He's getting teeth but still isn't really interested in the soft food yet.

Man who knew this little bugger would be so much pressure. Not so much taking care of him, but just keeping his adoring fans up to date. This is one popular kitten. I'm thinking about getting him his own phone line. if I had a long enough USB cable I could bring the webcam in so his fans could check in on him. Actually.... I have an X10 camera around here somewhere... I wonder what I have for a video capture card and software. I'll keep you all posted on that possibility. While it would be nice to be able to check on him from work, I'm a little concerned about hooking up a video camera in my bathroom.

Well off to the pre-bedtime feeding and then ... bedtime.

Alright so I've been a bit of a slacker this week and haven't added any of the picture pages back or done any updates on Rocky. I'll admit that I've been using Rock's new found eating ability to do a little catch up in the World of WarCraft.

However, today I noticed I have a lot of catch up to do. I've been playing as Gnick a lot lately and haven't seen Ed online recently. I knew he was at level 59 but I figured since I hadn't seen him he hadn't hit the "wall" yet. But tonight when I logged in as Hedana and looked at the guild page I saw that he has hit the magical level 60 ceiling. So I guess I have some work to do to finish those last 11 levels.

On the plus side of my Hedana session tonight... I had a chance to talk to Elohym tonight. He's our guild leader. It sounds like our guild, , will be merging with another guild, . From what Elohym was telling me they have about 47 members, a large portion of which are level 60. That'll come in handy for finding people to do dungeon raids and really nice for when the Battlegrounds patch is released.

Okay now on to some real life matters. Rocky is doing well. I think I'm just going to do weekend photos as a sort of growth progression thingy. Tonight I'm going to introduce the concept of litter box to him. He seems to be headed that direction anyway as he's already chosen a corner of the cardboard box to do his business. It should be interesting.

On another Rocky note, he scared the crap out of my aunt today. She had the day off today, so she stopped by to check up on him and such. Well when she got here, his eye goobers had sealed his eyelids shut. So she was all in a panic and was going to take him to the vet. Well by the time she got all set and ready to go, he had managed to get his eyes open. This story today didn't worry me in the slightest as it happened to me yesterday. I'm going to make Rocky a vet appointment for next week to get him check for Feline Leukemia so I'll have to ask about the eye goobers.

I went in this morning to get my permanent crown installed. I must say it looks nicer and feels much better. My gums are still a little sore around it but not nearly as bad as with my temporary. The top of it is much more rounded than my actual teeth. My actual teeth feel much sharper in comparison. But as long as it works...

Speaking of new things... I finally decided on what to get with the Amazon.com gift certificate that I had. I decided to pick up Season 3 of Smallville on DVD and the Ozzy box set "Prince of Darkness". Oh and more new things, well not exactly new, but new information to me... I was watching some TV with dinner and was going to check the Trio station to see if "Laugh In" was on (yes I know it's a TV show from like a billion years ago and the only reason I get half the jokes is because I have a history degree, but it's still funny). Anyway, it's gone. No Trio for me. So I checked DTV's channel listing and it isn't there anymore. The got rid of Trio and didn't inform me. I of course wrote an email of complaint. I liked Trio. Couldn't they get rid of one of the home shopping channels or one of the 100 billion news channels?

Anyway, my parent's are putting me back to work this weekend. Just a quick build steps project, but my mom also wants me to sit down and figure out what I need to order to redo my roof. I suppose it would be good to do it before it gets too warm out. I've come to like my weekends off, but I'll get used to working on them again eventually.

That reminds me, one of these days I have to get around to moving Angie's treadmill from her house to mine.

That's all for today's entry. I think I may switch the blog archiving to weekly instead of monthly. Oh and for all those of you who have been waiting patiently, you only have a short time left to wait. It looks good, but I don't know if it looks $129 good.

Well I'm off to get my small game license and shoot me some wild kittens...

This was a HUGE update. I'm of course referring to RapidWeaver. I was just playing around while updating some pages and have discovered some cool new features, like the button that insert "Today in History" and the button that inserts a stock quote.

But the best feature of the day has to be the addition of comments. You can comment on current blog entries, such as the one you are reading right now. So you may now tell me to get a life and stop playing video games right here and now. I've also added a new contact page that you can use to send me email. Hopefully I'll be able to pick it out of the sea of SPAM.

I think I'm going to have to try to redo my Bio and Links pages though. I just don't want to edit them as html code anymore. Another change I thought of today and implemented was the main Pictures page. That page will now be home to the most recently added pictures to the albums.

Today's picture addtions are of the new 29 gallon aquarium. And why is it 29 gallons? Why couldn't they just make it an even 30 gallons? I don't get it. But I think I did a good job decorating it, although it seems a little spatan. Well you be the judge, check it out here.

In WoW news, Blizzard got everything sorted out, sort-of. I was still having issues with freezing, but I think I managed to get that fixed by deletely a cache file. I'm sad to say the boat from Menethil Harbor to Auberdine has returned. Blizzard has had problems with this boat in the past, to the point where they replaced the boat with a NPC that teleported you to the other continent. Here's what happens now. You are riding the boat and just in the instant that you should go to the load screen for Kalimdor, the boat disappears leaving you in the middle of the ocean to die.

So I wasted a lot of time swimming and going the long way to Darnassus on Wednesday night. I did manage to do a couple of quests in the Hinderlands but didn't have time to do an instance raid for loot. So I think tonight I'll raid Shadowfang Keep tonight since I'm in that neck of the woods already. Plus most of the targets in there are undead so I'll be able to sweep through pretty fast with my Paladin abilities. And it's a level 20ish instance, so Gnick will probably be able to use most of the stuff I find.

Well I have to test my contact page and move my new Pleco to the ice cream bucket for the ride home. His name is Charlie. I genereally have a rule against naming fish, I think it's like giving them a death sentence. But first of all he's a pleco and they are the exception to my rule and second he came with the name so there's not a lot I could do. My other pleco, in the 20 gallon tank, is named Montana.

Night all...

Don't you just love it when you get a bunch of new stuff all at once? In some cases it can be bad though. For example, I've hardly touched Goldeneye: Rogue Agent for PS2 that I got for Christmas.

But in this case it is a good thing. The Mac Mini rocks. I can't believe how quiet it is. The hard drive I took out of my old G3 and stuck into an external enclosure is the loudest thing in the room. But the thing rocks. I really missed running a Mac at home.

Then I got a new toy at work. Well, it's actually just a replacement part but still very cool. We had an 8 port fiber media to 10baseT converter go bad about a month or more ago. So Monday the new 6 port fiber media to 100baseT converter came in. Okay so it isn't that exciting, but still fun to get new toys.

Then today, after the 6 hours without internet at work and 2 hours without power, I finally fired up RapidWeaver to write this and discovered they released version 3.1 with oodles of new features including the one I was waiting for... sub pages! So after some conversion here I am happily typing away and updating you good folks on my day. You'll also notice that the blog page is now archived by month, another new feature. The theme for my site isn't compatible with the new version though. So that's why all the colors and buttons changed.

In non-techie news, I'm in the market for a new aquarium. I think the female guppy is pregnant again. Plus one of the teachers here wants me to take her pleco home with me. But it's as big, maybe bigger than the one I have. I don't think I need two of them that size for my tank. So now I'm debating on whether I want to just steal my parents' 75 gallon tank or buy another 20 gallon tank. I'm leaning towards theft at the moment, but I don't know where I'd put it. It would have to go in the basement, but that would eventually be so inconvienient. Maybe I'll call my mom tonight and talk to her about it.

Now back to techie news. Last night I was all pumped up to play WoW. I was going to raid Gnomeregan for green items and gold to send to Gnick the Gnome. When I got home I did all my normal animal care routines and had dinner. Then I booted up WoW and was greeted with a patch, ugg. These can take forever to download, even on DSL. But it was a small patch and went quite fast. I got back to the login screen, plugged in my name and password....... authenticating........ and then nothing. Well not nothing, it failed. Tried again and it just sat there at authenticating... forever. So I quit WoW and fired up Internet Explorer to check the Realm Status page. Server error. Not a good sign. Apparently yesterday's patch cause some major issues with character naming. My realm, Malygos, was down until after 11pm last night. Blizzard is compensating us all with 2 free days to make up for the all the problems that have occurred since last week's patch. I'm not mad at Blizzard though, I know that these things happen and they so they're best. But I was so looking forward to playing last night. Oh well, I decided to read a book and have a couple cups of tea instead.

One final note for the day. Now that I have the Mac Mini at home and with the new version of RapidWeaver, I'll be upgrading the pictures section of the website soon. Right now I just have a select few of the pictures that I have in digital form. So check back in the next couple of weeks to see if I actually get around to doing it.

So my trip to the dentist yesterday was interesting. I will say that it didn't feel like 90 minutes in the chair. They put my temporary crown on yesterday and aside from my gums being sore and a little bleeding when I brushed last night, everything seems okay. But it has been a little rough chewing because of the sore gums. That should make Easter interesting.

Speaking of Easter, apparently I will be hosting Easter this year despite my lack of table. That should prove interesting. I think no one else wanted to have to clean up. We're doing Easter on Friday though as that was when everyone was available. I suppose I should maybe vacuum and clean the bathroom. I've just been ignoring a growing amount of beard clippings for some time now.

In the hectic schedule of the week, I did manage to install and try 3 game demos. The Punisher was okay but not really something I'd buy as I'm not a big fan of 3rd person shooters. There was a bowling game I trying which I believe was called Rocket Bowling. That was actually really fun and I'm debating on shelling out the $20 for the full version.

Finally, Star Wars Republic Commando. Let me put it this way, if you like Rainbow Six, you will like Republic Commando. The idea is that you are leader of this 4 person squad. Well that's fine and good, but as with most co-op AI, your 3 team mates are completely braindead unless you direct them. I'm not a fan of this approach in a FPS. the game is nice because it lets you "resurrect" your teammates when the idiots die, but if you die the odds of the 3 morons actually surviving on their own long enough to resurrect you is very low. But they should have just made a regular FPS and then in the multiplayer added a co-op feature. And I had one Star Wars continuity complaint too. Since when have their been shotguns in the Star Wars universe? Haven't we moved on to blasters and such? Why am I shooting little lead projectiles at things?

So that has been my week at home. I've been doing updates at work, which is nice because it affords me some time to read while I wait for an update to complete. I've decided to try to continue reading "A Series of Unfortunate Events" by Lemony Snicket. In my opinion the books would receive a PG-13 based on movie ratings. They seem a little to violent to be children's books. But we'll see, I'm on book 4 now but we'll see how far I get.

Tonight promises to be good. I'll have to do some cleaning for Easter tomorrow. But aside from that I'm upgrading the RAM in my Gateway to 1GB and my Mac Mini came today. Don't you just love new toys?

So I'm really ready for winter to be done. Sunday is the first day of spring, so of course we get 6-10 inches of snow today. I think we need some sort of adjustment to the calendar to fit our region. A seasonal version of Daylight Savings Time.

Just a quick update on my dentist trip... I need to start flossing (as usual) and the tooth I chipped gets to become a crown. So now I have to go back to the dentist next Wednesday to get the temporary put on and then again 2 weeks after that for them to install the permanent crown. Should be interesting.

The cats and dog survived the trip to the vet too. Although they are all supposedly dramatically overweight. In all fairness, Setesh really probably is overweight. But you can't tell me that Pika and Daimao are overweight. I mean at 11.5 pounds, Pika is large for a Pomeranian but both her parents were like 14 pounds. And Daimao isn't skinny but I wouldn't say she is fat. The vet suggested that I start schedule feeding them. It was all I could do to not fall over laughing. First of all, Daimao starts bugging me when the bowl hits about half full. I'd never hear the end of it if the bowl was gone or empty. Second, Piccolo is close to anorexic. There's no way she'd survive schedule feeding. With the exception of Setesh who is a bit overweight, they are all happy and healthy. So I say they are fine.

Bowling went well this past weekend despite my bad mood. Between my family that day and the fact that the hard drive in my G3 that contained all my documents died, I was in a piss poor mood Saturday night. But I've moved on. Most of what I had on the drive I either have a hard copy of or it might exist on an old back up somewhere. And I think some of the files I had I have duplicates of on my Quadra. In related news, my new Mac Mini is scheduled to ship next Wednesday.

It's been a week of meetings. Monday and Tuesday consisted of training at the district on the new version of Campus we are being moved to in June. Then I've had union meetings the past 2 nights. But it looks like I'm done with meetings now until sometime in April. I cannot stress enough my dislike for meetings. Although I do feel the ones I had this week were the some of the most productive ones I've ever attended.

So I'm thinking that I want something other than carpet in the dining room. I'm thinking that it would be nice to have hardwood floors. Unfortunately I can't currently afford real hardwood floors. So I'm thinking about spending a couple hundred dollars on laminate hardwood flooring. This weekend would be the perfect time to do it too. Plus it's on sale at Menard's. I have some issue to resolve though. I have to figure out how to tack down the edge of the carpet I keep in the living room and how to transition from the carpet to the laminate and from the laminate to the flooring in the kitchen. Plus the dining room side of my kitchen peninsula is carpeted (morons). So I'm thinking that would need some sort of paint. Maybe I'll pick up the flooring tonight and then if I need to paint the back of the stupid cabinet, I'll pick up some paint at Farm and Home. I'm thinking about just using a piece of molding for the transitions. Maybe I need a staple gun too.

Well the week of meetings has cut into my game play time. I've finally posted pictures of Gnick the Gnome in the pictures section. I've also put up a picture of Frayer the Dwarf. Frayer is a hunter. As a first pet, I've chosen a wolf. Hunters can rename their pets and so I've decided to name Frayer's wolf after one of my parents' dogs, Woofie.

I picked up a demo of Star Wars Republic Commando the other day (it came with a magazine). So I'll have to try to get around to installing and playing that game for a bit. If my memory serves correctly I do believe that Gabe (of Penny-Arcade fame) thought very highly of this game. Or maybe it was Tycho. Either way, it was free and I'll try most things once if it's free. I'll let you know what I think when I get to it.

Well 3 hours and 4 inches of snow later and I've finished this entry. Should be a fun drive home.

So wouldn't you know it, the one time I actually try to get technical support for something I've purchased I can't.

It's been brought to my attention that the "Christmas 2004" link on the Pictures page wasn't linking to the correct file. Well in the program I'm using to generate pages for the site, it's easy to accidentally assign the page to the wrong iPhoto library. I've done it before, not a big deal to change. Or so I thought.

It appears that for some reason I can't permanently change that page back to the correct album. I managed to get it to switch once and exported the files, so it's currently correct. But after I quit and opened the file again, the incorrect album is associated with that page.

So no problem, I'll just check the forum section of www.realmacsoftware.com and see if anyone else has noticed this problem. Much to my dismay the site is currently down while it's being moved to a new hosting company. Only I could have such bad timing. I must say though that they have produced a wonderful product and their site, when up, is very helpful and informative. I'm looking forward for purchasing the next version of Rapid Weaver and would recommend it to anyone from beginner to expert.

Tomorrow should be a fun change of pace for me. I get to go to the dentist. First time in like 3-5 years. What suddenly spurred me into a visit to the dentist you ask? Well last Thursday I somehow managed to chip off a piece of the top of my back, lower-left molar. It's nothing that is bothering me, although it is annoying now that I have discovered it. But I figure with how bad my teeth are to begin with I probably shouldn't leave it exposed for too long without sealant of some sort.

I've add some new pictures to the World of WarCraft page. I'm probably boring some of you to death with all this but I can't stress enough how good a game it is. So I'll keep this update short. Last night I started a new character, a Gnomish Mage. I named him Gnick (no pictures of him yet). But if you are completely bored by all this yet, feel free to check out the new pictures. My paladin, Hedana, would like to thank Ed's mage, Walyn, for the lovely wedding dress he made her.

That's all for today. I'll try to check in later this week after my trip to the dentist and give the full update on that torturous experience.

I think I'm going to have to "borrow" my parents' 75 gallon aquarium and setup at my house. When I went to feed the fish Saturday night I noticed the female looked a little different. Then I looked at the bottom of the tank. Guppy babies everywhere. I lost count at around 19 when I noticed another group behind the castle. Last night I lost count around 30 or so. I'm thinking my poor little 20 gallon tank will not be able to support these new guppies in addition to the 5 adults and dozen that were born last month. Not to mention by poor Neon Tetra. The only of his kind to survive to this point. But I'm sure my plecostomus is happy as a kid in a candy store.

The funny part of the guppy situation is that none of the guppies I purchased at Petsmart are still alive. And I specifically asked the guy at Petsmart about the whole breeding thing and he said they only carry females. Apparently one of them didn't get separated soon enough at the fish farm. I must say the males are much more colorful than the females. But you can judge for yourself by clicking here.

My paladin hit level 47 last night. I've got this goofy quest in Tanaris right now though. I'm supposed to find these "Gahz'ridian Ornaments" which is all find and dandy. Unfortuantely they appear as a little lump in the sand and are hard to see unless you get really close to them. Fortunately, the quest comes with a device you can put on your head to make them show up on the mini-map (like radar). Unfortunately the thing looks rediculous when you have it on. There really are no words for it. I'll have to post a picture.

I had a bit of a revelation last night as my paladin leveled in a golden whoosh of light. I've realized that she has more levels behind her than before her. My paladin is 13 short levels away from the level 60 cap. Yes just like baseball's salary cap, level 60 is as high as you can go. Then it's all about raids and gold collecting. Saving up for that epic mount. Helping the less fortunate lower levels to finish those pesky "instance" quests. And then finally retirement. Spending the day maxing out fishing and cooking skills. Learning how to make runecloth bandages. If I ever find the stupid recipes for something higher than Mageweave bandages...

As for real world exploits not involving fish, I had bowling this past weekend and did pretty well (149, 179 and 169). Not bad considering my average is about 145.

But I leave you now with but one last thing... Happy Birthday Kara!

Okay a really quick update because I have to get out of here and meet my parents for fish fry.

WoW is going well but slow. You wouldn't believe how many things you have to kill in order to rack up 120,000 XP points. I've finally hit level 45. Ed, of course, is already at level 50. But I have a bit of a surprise for him next time we play. I finally was able to get Seal of Command, which potentially adds 2-3 times damage to my attacks. One word... Sweet!

I'm blaming my slow level building on real world obstacles to my game play. Repeat after me, meetings suck.

Although I have taken some time out for some other new, older games. Picked up 3 recently, all FPS games. Halo, Armed and Dangerous, and Painkiller. Of the 3, Painkiller is definately the best. It's a cross between DOOM and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Nothing like a gun that shots wooden stakes.

Also of note, I have some pet news. Unfortunately one of my female guppies has gone to that great toilet bowl in the sky, or at least the one in the bathroom. But between her and the other one, I currently have 12 guppy babies. Well I counted 10 this morning but I usually count between 8 and 12. They like hiding in the castle and pineapple under the sea.

That's all for now. Oh but I will suggest if you are bored and not easily offended, check out Penny Arcade. Nothing like gaming geeks with a comic strip. But like I said, the content is definately meant for mature readers (no porn, but they don't bother to pardon their french).

So the washer exchange went smoothly this weekend. Except now I have to learn what all the new buttons and settings mean.

I picked up the new Ani DiFranco CD, Knuckle Down, this weekend. Overall it's a really good disc. I'd have to say that track 6, "Seeing Eye Dog", is my favorite track off it and track 8, "Parameters", is my least favorite track. But track 8 isn't really a song per-say, so that could be what is putting me off about it.

I also picked up "The Grudge" but I haven't had a chance to watch it. Been busy watching Season 1 of "Carnivale" on DVD via my Netflix subscription. For those who don't know, "Carnivale" is an HBO original series based in the dust bowl of the 1930s. But it has quite a bit of religious/supernatural overtones. I think it's a really well done show but then again, I'll watch practically anything with Clea DuVall in it.

Not a lot of WoW time lately. I hit level 41 and I'm in a bit of a rut. Currently most of my quests are level 41 "Elite" or higher quests. Basically I'd have no chance of finishing them on my own and I'm not fond of finding groups. But I may have to find a group to finish a couple of them tonight. We'll see. I need to find some quests that want me to kill humanoids instead of beasts. I'm tired of not getting money for the things I kill. I don't care if I can sell a basilisk tail to a merchant. I still have to carry it around and then find a vendor to sell it to. Maybe I'll do some fishing tonight too. We'll see.

It's been an event filled couple of weeks. Well at least the last few days. I spent a large part of the last week in a training session of some sort. Now keep in mind I hate meetings. It's been fun.

On top of that, Sunday night the washing machine died half way through a load of whites. Thankfully after I managed to get the thing to drain, so it should be easier to drag it out of the house this weekend.

On the bright side, my laptop at work finally came back from Apple last Thursday and I almost have everything reinstalled. It was $400 less than what they quoted. Only $600 to replace the display. Plus I got my new laptop stand in the mail yesterday. I bought an iBreeze. It's a stand with 2 built-in, USB powered fans. Not bad for the price.

Also, this weekend I've done some serious WoW questing. I'd fallen behind Ed in level by quite a bit (I think at one point I was 5 levels behind). But after some serious beast killing I've started catching up. I've almost finished with level 39, which would put me 2 levels below Ed. More importantly, when I hit level 40 I get my Paladin Warhorse. And almost more importantly than that I can train to use Plate armor, not that I can afford any yet. I splurged a bit last night and bought a new axe. Unfortunately I hadn't ever used a 2 handed axe before, so I spent about 30 minutes swinging and missing. I think I still have about 5 skill points left before I max my 2 handed axe mastery for level 39, but my cap will bump another 5 when I hit level 40. Confused yet?

I added some new pictures to the World of WarCraft picture page including pictures of my new Night Elf Druid, Sharis.

Oh yes it's been fun already today. I'm currently wearing my cologne of the day. It's called "Unleaded 87." That's right kids. I forgot this morning that an eighth of a tank equals empty in winter. But thankfully I managed to be off the freeway and just a brisk jog from a gas station. This comes after Friday's wonderful "no start" incident. But the car is quite the trooper. Sunday it filled in for the truck and hauled 16 stair treads and backs from Baldwin to New Richmond. Quite an impressive showing by the shocks.

Oh and then last night my newer DTV receiver shorted. So I get picture but no sound. And of course it's not under warrantee anymore, so I may just scrap it and buy a new receiver with TIVO. We'll see, I may still call DTV tonight and see what they say.

Okay now for my quick tale of lack of life. So last night I got home and there was a message from Dan on my phone with a good news/bad news deal. Good news is he found a job, which really is good news since his previous employer didn't really give him any notice that he was going to retire and close the business. So I am happy for him. Bad news is that it's second shift. So he won't be able to play darts anymore. So I'm without a partner for my Wednesday night dart league. He said that Twin States was going to try to find a partner for me but I'm not sure about it. I've been playing like crap lately anyway so I might just drop out. We'll see.

Okay well I've now spent an hour and a half trying to remove a DVD rip of Star Wars Episode IV from our stupid PC server. I don't know which I hate more, Microsoft's hole filled operating systems or the morons who feel the need to do this crap in the first place. Now that I finally have it removed, I get to spend the rest of the day trying to track down the service that's running and allowing access. Grrrrr...

Welcome one and all, old and young, intelligent and Republican. As this is my first entry I think it only fair to warn you that I'm just experimenting with new blog software, so this site may be a work in progress. But welcome anyway and enjoy.