Saturday, April 30, 2005

There's a new radio station in the area called The Current. It's public radio that's run by common folk and plays pretty much anything that the DJ's want. It reminds me a lot of my MP3 player that has 30GB of music set to random. On the way home tonight, they played a Stan Getz duo with Joao Gilberto, followed by Beastie Boys' Intergalactic Planetary. Rad.

Friday, April 29, 2005

I feel sorry for those of you who've stumbled across this site. It must be pretty boring reading about my study adventures. Well, I've got a solution. I invite you to hang out with me while I study. If you're anywhere near normal, you'll be screaming to only have to read about and not live through study season. Just bear with me ... Tuesday is the big exam. After that, it'll be nothing but blow and hookers.

But until then, stay tuned for tomorrow's antics: marathon study day.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

When I study, I try to think of worse things that could happen so studying doesn't seem so bad. One I thought of was being in a dust storm in Iraq, with your eyes and mouth held open.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

I'm thinking of getting Mountain Dew to be my sponsor. It'll be like NASCAR or professional golf. I'll wear their logo and use their product while I study. When I pass the test, I'll claim it was due in part to the use of Mountain Dew. I would even appear in a commercial if they'd like. All I ask is that they pay me in Mountain Dew. Nothing more, just all the Mountain Dew I need.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

It's really amazing on how much the mind wanders when you're studying insurance law. I have thought of ways to make, save, and steal money, additions to the home network, updating the file server, components of my car PC, not to mention a few theories on world peace and cold fusion.

Monday, April 25, 2005

I use Sage as my RSS reader. It's interesting to see the changes in the sites to which I subscribe. I have anywhere between 15 and 25 feeds. It got pretty crowded on my screen with 40, but then I stumbled across a feed that aggregates feeds. Thankfully, the original feeds are only updated weekly, otherwise I'd be clicking on it constantly.

But what else do you do at work?

Sunday, April 24, 2005

I tried to teach Pea how to play Tiger Woods, perhaps one of the easier games to learn. After about 10 shots into the water, she gave up and swore off video games. How can I continue to live with someone that hates video games?

Saturday, April 23, 2005

As you can probably guess, when the two week mark hits, I get really cranky to have to study. The spring exams are the roughest, since it's nice outside, I have other projects I want to work on, and friends call me more to do stuff. After tomorrow, only one more weekend.

I tried not drinking brew for a while in an attempt to try to keep my brain focused. I broke down tonight and picked up old standby. After only four, I was falling down the stairs, slurring my speech, and driving off cliffs.

Friday, April 22, 2005

I took the evening off from studying and left work around 5:00 pm. I got a little gaming in and watched Spanglish (which I'm still weighing in on). I am supposed to meet Karl online to slay some Covenant, but can't keep my peepers open and have to cash in a bit early tonight.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

If the Kamel Jockey doesn't remind you of Animatrix, I don't know what will. They've built a machine that can control a camel, but I can't figure out a way to bypass my work's internet filter.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

... 12 days, 14 hours, 40 minutes ...

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Studying sucks. Friends are taunting me to come out and play, but I can't for another two weeks. Crap, two weeks ... I better get studying.

I did get the HD DirecTiVo up and running. It's working as expected, except that they gave me a used receiver. Of course, the box will become a doorstop in a few years anyway.

Monday, April 18, 2005

As I was driving home late from a wonderful day of studying, someone was driving a radio controlled car down the road. It had headlights, blinkers, and was obeying all traffic laws, including the stoplights. The cool thing was that other drivers didn't freak out, but acted as though it was a real vehicle, yielding to it and everything. It may have been the vast amounts of useless facts in my brain causing weakened blood flow, but I couldn't stop laughing. Out loud. Hard.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

I pretty much studied all day. I did take a break and found my first cache with Knapper.

For Movie Night Sunday, I watched Ocean's Twelve. A true to form thief movie, it was written and directed similar to the first. There are quite a few twists and turns, but you're expecting them. If you don't take this movie seriously and have fun with it, you'll have an entertaining two hour's.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

I had a great birthday today. I got to see Sin City, an excellent film. I haven't seen a movie at a movie theater in a long time. Having a decent home theater, and usually bothered by candy wrapper, popcorn eating people, I tend to stay home for my movie experiences. But this time wasn't bad, other than the commercials before the previews.

The replacement DirecTiVo came today as well. Hopefully I'll get this installed tomorrow.

Friday, April 15, 2005

I took an opportunity to play a little more Tiger Woods 2005. After maxing out my stats and figuring out the techniques, I can see this game being put away for a while. It is a fun game, but with so many others to try, it's almost time to move on.

Still no HD ...

Thursday, April 14, 2005

I'll give you one guess on what I did today. Answer is study.

I did check out carpet prices to redo the entire upstairs, about 1450 sq ft. It's quite spendy. I figure if I just wear slippers, I can go without carpet and just use the wood subfloor.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Not much new. Got home late from a great day of studying.

It never ends...

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

After nearly 45 hours for reformatting the hard drive in the Tivo (I forgot to check on it yesterday), I figured it was trashed. I called DirecTV back and they're sending a replacement box. So far it's been painless, other than the fact I lost all my HD recordings and am without HD for another 2 - 5 days. Perhaps I should build a little redundancy into the network.

Monday, April 11, 2005

My cell phone belt clip came today. I don't know if I'll like it, but figured for $0.01 plus shipping, it might be worth a try.

Also, didn't get a chance to geocache. I'm itching to find my first. Maybe this week.

Sunday, April 10, 2005

I slept in late today because I was at a bachelor party last night. The night consisted of Broadway Pizza, a Twins game, Gameworks, O'Donovan's, and Seville's. It was a blast and good to see those I haven't in a while.

Since the Tivo wasn't working right, I watched three movies this weekend: I ♥ Huckabee's, Vanity Fair, and Closer, all of which were probably way over my head.

Man, that's a lot of links.

Saturday, April 9, 2005

I started with DirecTV about my issue. After the usual troubleshooting, she recommended a complete format of the hard drive. Before I do that, I'll have to see if there is a temporary solution to extract some of my recordings, as they will be completely erased.

Let's see, how long will a format take on a 250GB HD?

Friday, April 8, 2005

Ahh, the first grill of the season. I almost forgot how good a grilled steak can be.

I'm having troubles with the HD DirecTiVo unit. As I'm watching either Live TV or a recording, the audio/video jerks and hesitates, like it's a corrupt file. Then after a while, it stops responding altogether and reboots itself. I've tried a manual clean reboot, but that didn't seem to help. Luckily it's still under the year warranty, but we'll see how much of a hassle it is to exchange.

Thursday, April 7, 2005

It was quite hard getting up this morning. I rolled into work around 10:30. I played around a bit with the new GPS device. The good news is that I can navigate my driveway, and only got lost once. Hopefully I'll be able to go find a cache this weekend. There are several in the park I live by, so we'll see.

Wednesday, April 6, 2005

Well, I'm home, after sitting in between two fat people on the plane. Luckily I slept the whole way. I noticed that my Garmin Vista came today. I've been wanting to get one of these for the past couple years, mainly for geocaching, and I finally did it. Now to just figure it out.

Tuesday, April 5, 2005

Stupid, stupid. I felt like crap all day. There were four of us last night, and at any given time during the seminar today, not all four were there. I got there a bit late and had to leave to take a nap from 10:00 to noon. We were planning on going to New York city, but we knew that would end up in disaster. So we ended up going to "Ladies Night" at the hotel bar, barely choking down a few brews. The only ladies I saw were the waitresses.

Monday, April 4, 2005

I'm not sure how this post will read, as we closed down two bars tonight. The hotel bar tried to kick us out at midnight, but we talked them into serving us one more, and they gave it to us for free. Then at about 12:30 they brought in the heavy artillery, a big black dude which we called Chisel. For some reason, he was carrying a hammer around that apparently, at least to us, looked like a chisel. We then headed over to TGIF's until about 2:30am. There weren't many people there on a Monday night in the middle of New Jersey. Go figure.

Sunday, April 3, 2005

I'll spare you the details of my day, since it consisted of sitting or eating. I had to go buy an adapter from Best Buy as the TV in my room wouldn't accept composite cables. I asked about their return policy since I'll probably just return the adaptor when I'm done. When I was unscrewing the coax from the TV, part of the back of the TV snapped and shattered, rendering it useless. I called maintenance and played stupid. They brought me another one, but smaller.

I did learn that some of my coworkers didn't get into the hotel until 3:00am and had a similar landing I did.

Saturday, April 2, 2005

I finally arrived at about 9:30 at the hotel in New Jersey for a work seminar. There was some situations that prevented us from taking off from Minneapolis. First we were sitting on the tarmac waiting for our turn. Then the captain came on the PA and said the ground crew put some stuff on the wings, but didn't give the paperwork to the pilot. So we had to turn around and get some paper. Naturally, everyone blamed someone else for the mix up, but in the end it just meant we were delayed. So we get back out to waiting for our turn, and the captain said there was really bad weather in Newark. He said other planes tried to land but couldn't and had to go find another airport to land at. After waiting in Minneapolis on the plane for almost 2 hours, the captain came back on and said "The weather still hasn't lifted and in fact the air pressure is reading identical to hurricane-like weather. But we've got a good plane. I think we'll make it." So, after almost a 3 hour flight, we prepare for landing. I still find it amazing we landed in anything but a fireball. The plane was flying sideways, I swear the wing scraped the runway due to the rocking, the front tire wouldn't connect so we were bouncing like a superball, and we were fishtailing when he slammed on the brakes. People were crying and praying.

At least I get to now sit in a 4 day seminar about insurance regulation.

Friday, April 1, 2005

I asked Karl to use his Xbox travel case for my upcoming trip to exciting New Jersey. And what does he go and do? He gives me one of my very own. Now I'll be taking it where ever I go ... hotels, work, every where.