| Birthday fun. |
[May. 5th, 2005|10:44 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Silence is golden | ] |
So, another b-day has come and gone. Lauren and I went to San Francisco for our birthday. (for those who don't know Lauren and I share the same birthday. (May 2nd)) We spent the weekend with Laurens sister Heather.
We had a great time and Heather went out of her way to try and make our stay fun. Constantly looking up places to go and things to do. We visited Napa and went wine tasting, went to several bars and restaurants, including a champagne bar called The Bubble Lounge.
If you are ever in San Francisco, I definitely recommend checking this place out.
Lauren and I found a new champagne we really enjoy called Iron Horse. We drink champagne pretty often amazingly, it's nice to jump in the hot tub with a bottle every now and then. We normally get "J" which is a great brand of champagne and I highly recommend it. We are now in search of a local supplier of Iron Horse, unfortunately our liquor store down the street (who know us by name now... it's a sad state of affairs.) don't carry it. A trip to BevMo! (The costco of alcohol) might be necessary to locate it.
On saturday we went to a shwanky dinner at a restaurant called the Boulevard. We felt like doing something a little crazy and eating a nice dinner. The food was definitely amazing. However, you do pay heftily for it.
After being seated at our table, Lauren noticed that Jesse Martin (of Law and Order fame) was sitting at the table right next to ours. After a little while I also noticed that Taye Diggs (Brown Sugar, Ally McBeal) was sitting with his back to Heather. She could have literally elbowed him. Also present at their table was Taye's wife Idina Menzel and two other important looking people who we couldn't ID.
At the end of our meal, the waiter brought Lauren and I our deserts with candles in them and then promptly went back to work. At this point the side of the restaurant we were sitting in had pretty well cleared out other than Jesse Martin and our table. The slightly intoxicated stars proceeded to sing us happy birthday all on their own without prompting. Heather was smart enough to bust out her camera and begin to record video of our reaction and the audio captured the stars singing for us. At one point you hear Taye ask his wife "Uhh, it is their birthday right?" reconsidering what we were celebrating since we BOTH got deserts with candles.
A crazy weekend for sure. It's definitely a birthday I won't forget. Thanks again to Heather for making the weekend so enjoyable.
Anyhow, I'm bantering on and on so I think I will sign off now. However, isn't that what a blog is really for anyhow?
My birthday resolution is to update my blog at least every other day. People actually commenting on my posts letting me know that someone is reading this would definitely go a long way in increasing my motivation.
Cheers.
Awesome website of the day: http://www.rentamidget.com |
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| Strep throat and other unpleasantness. |
[Mar. 17th, 2005|01:39 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  tired | ] |
So it turns out that I had strep throat. Nothing like a 4am trip to the ER to discover it. My throat was hurting so bad that Lauren and I thought it would be a good idea to get it checked out right away.
I am now on 2 a day antibiotics. For whatever reason they seem to leach all the energy from me. I feel groggy almost all day even after sleeping 10 hours the night before. It makes things really interesting when work is super busy right now and I am basically running from one meeting to another.
I have so many meetings right now it is not uncommon for there to be 2 meetings scheduled at the same time that I should be attending. I guess I will just have to start cloning myself.
More updates to come later.. |
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| Thera-flu and then work, or is that work and then Thera-flu? |
[Mar. 10th, 2005|09:25 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  content | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Def Leopard - "Pour Some Sugar on Me" | ] |
This cold that is going around is amazingly resilient. Lauren and I cought it about a month ago. It basically floored us both for a good few days. Eventually we got better and things seemed fine. However, other people kept warning us 'It seems to go away for awhile and then comes back with a vengeance'. Well, it appears now that they were right. Lauren and I are both floored once again.
I have to say though, if I ever meet the inventor of Thera-Flu I am going to shake his hand. The stuff perfectly gets rid of my symptoms. It does however have the unfortunate side effect of making me feel like I am constantly floating about 3 feet off the floor.
In other non-cold medicine related news, I had my first full weekend off in awhile this last weekend. Work has been pretty crazy lately. It seems that ship schedules keep getting more and more aggresive the longer that I work for this company. However, it does appear that we have pulled through the rough bits and it should now be relatively smooth sailing to the finish line.
It was nice to actually spend a weekend just hanging out with Lauren. She's been traveling a bit, and our schedules are exactly opposite. So I felt like I hadn't seen her in days. However, we have been invited to go on a cruise for 7 days on March 25th to Mexico. Since we aren't having to actually pay for the cruise this makes it an even sweeter deal. Since work has been so hectic I am still making sure that things will be ok while I'm out of the office, so the possibility of me going is still a little up in the air. But things are looking good so far, and I could definetly use the rest.
In other news, I picked up a Treo 650 about a month ago. This phone is pretty amazing, giving you all the power of a Palm with all the abilities of a cell phone. The coolest software I have found so far is LJP. This software is a emulator for Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Neo-Geo Pocket, and others. The speed is right on and amazes me everytime I play it. Super Mario World 3, that brings back memories. I also found 'Space Harrier' for Sega Genesis. I used to remember my friends playing this when 'Def Leopard' was 'new' and my friends played their album over and over. (agh)
It's strange how things get linked in your mind. Everytime I even see that game I get Def Leopard album flashbacks now. It's actually pretty annoying. I wonder where all my old friends are now?
Anyhow.. you'll have to forgive me wandering all over topics. I guess at the moment I am just using my blog as a dumping ground for random thoughts. But I will try and get the hang of it in the future and actually stay on topic.
I wonder if anyone is even reading this? Send me a comment, I could use the encouragement. |
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| Maybe I can keep this up to date now.
|
[Mar. 9th, 2005|02:36 pm] |
So... Now that i have my treo 650, i am hoping i can actually keep a blog up to date.
This message is just a test to see if this is working from my phone.
More to come later! |
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| Now that was a stupid mistake. |
[Oct. 20th, 2004|01:30 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sick | ] |
| [ | music |
| | 'Never had a friend like me' 2-Pac | ] |
As many of you may know. I have been writing a HMO (Home Media Option) server for Series 2 TiVo's.
I have been spending a pretty excessively large chunk of my spare time working on this project, and
hopefully it will pay off in the end.
I had been fighting a strange error problem when playing MP3 files streaming from the server to the TiVo
for about 2-3 days. It would quickly skip through all the songs then error out on the last song, and then
start streaming the last song with an "Server error" display message while playing the song.
I must have rewrote the networking code for my server about 7-8 times in an attempt to figure out what was going
on. Well, after taking a closer look at the packets being sent. (via a packet sniffer) I found that the TiVo
was requesting additional information regarding the MP3 right before playing.. I was not sending back a response,
I simply started streaming the MP3.
It was a VERY simple problem that took me tons of time to find. (How frustrating.)
What I have learned:
Rather than go with an assumption on what you think the problem may be. Simply retrace your previous steps
all the way through, being very diligent about the details.
Oh well, most of you won't understand a word about what I'm talking about.. But it feels good to get it off my chest.
P.S. My HMO Server is now playing MP3's just fine, and I move on to the next step in completing this project. (and I'm sure
the next set of problems.)
On a sadder note.. I think I got the flu.. Maybe being sick slowed my mind down enough to retrace my steps.
Cheers. |
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| I think computers are starting to hate me. |
[Oct. 1st, 2004|12:44 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  geeky | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Violet Arcana - "World Inside (Reality Mix)" | ] |
In the last 30 days I have had 3 hard drives crash. Two data drives in the home server, and my laptop hard drive died last friday.
I think computers actually have it in for me.
On top of all that, I finally get my "loaner laptop" up and running with all my work stuff and it starts blue screening. Luckily, I figured
out that it was just a problem with the VPN client that we are using and just needed to upgrade it. Of course, during this process I updated the firmware for my Linksys firewall.. Thus thrashing VPN access all together. I had to scour the web to get the old firmware and roll-back.
Seriously, Computers have it in for me this week.
I have 500+ work related e-mails to catch up on since my hard drive crash. It will be a fun filled day of reading e-mails for me.
Maybe I will run out and get Star Wars Battlefront this evening. I saw Paul playing this game at his house, and all I can say is "AMAZING". You can drive almost every vehicle. Including the giant AT-AT's on Hoth from "The Empire strikes back". It's a lot like Battlefield 1942, however it's just about the coolest game I've seen for a long time.
Anyhow.. I guess I'm really geeking out today.. Back to work for me.
Proof that Mac users are stupid right from Apples website:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86816 |
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| Tivo hacking is the coolest thing ever. |
[Sep. 26th, 2004|09:29 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Groove Salad (Shoutcast Radio) | ] |
Hey, I'm back again for more fun updates.
So, Tivo hacking.. We currently have 3 Tivo's in our house. 2 Series 2 Tivo's and 1 Series 1 Tivo. The Series 2 Tivo's have the Home Media Option enabled. This allows us to stream pictures (that we have taken on our camera) and music from a PC server in our house. After browsing the web this weekend, I found an freeware server that allows you to do all sorts of crazy things with this feature.
We can now, look at doppler radar and get the weather forcast via the tivo, check local theater times for movies, stream shoutcast audio streams, and a TON of other cool stuff all via the Tivo.
Check it out at: http://www.javahmo.com
In other news.. Lauren and I are going down to San Diego on Monday night and won't be back until Wed. I have a QA Conference to attend and we will be staying in the luxurious "W" hotel. Check it out here: http://www.starwood.com/whotels/search/hotel_detail.html?propertyID=1433
We spent most of the weekend hanging around the house and cleaning up and doing Laundry. Paul was nice enough to sell us a $250+ dollar Home Theatre rack that he wasn't using for $50. This makes our living room look much better.
I will be trying to find time to convert pictures and get them online. Since this is such a tedious task at the moment I have been putting it off. :( I really need to find a Photoshop script that will convert my images in to 640x480 and 480x640 by somehow figuring out if the picture was taken sideways or not.. (There has to be a solution out there somewhere.) Maybe my next mission will be to find this.
Anyhow, I hope you all enjoyed your weekend.. I can't believe it's almost over already.
Cheers! |
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| Is it Monday again already? |
[Sep. 20th, 2004|03:21 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | full | ] |
| [ | music |
| | "Fly With Me" - Grooverider | ] |
Wow, it's monday again already. The weekends fly by too fast now a days.
Anyhow, Lauren and I went to her 10 year High School reunion on Saturday. It was alright. Reunions seem to be
more fun for the person reminissing than the 'significant other' tag along. Luckily I got to play craps with fake money
and ended up winning two of the prizes.
Lauren and I also went to see the Dan Band on friday. This show was great, and super funny. We sat in the front
row so it was fun to watch him pick on people.
Well, back to work.. |
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| Old Games, and Spiders. |
[Sep. 15th, 2004|07:00 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  busy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | "Runaway - Nuyorican Soul" Armand Van Helden | ] |
So, last night I found "Subspace" again. It was a game I used to play online about 5-6+ years ago created by Virgin Interactive. It has been made free and has been renamed to "Continuum". Amazingly, it's still as addicting as it was back then.
Imagine Asteroids, with slightly updated graphics, and 50-100 people playing at once. It's crazy, and fun. Of course it's full of people with childish names that love to yell things like "I 0wned U!" and "EZ" and what not when they kill you. But still pretty fun all the same. (esp. now that it's free.)
Check it out at: http://beginners.subspace.net/
Lauren and I went outside the other night and found about 4 Black Widows hanging around right outside our bedroom door. I think it's time to call the exterminator. We killed the ones we found, but I have a feeling more will be back.
Hopefully none have made it inside our house, as that's a pretty scary thought. |
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