Spent Friday evening eating dinner at AB’s with the Burns. Unfortunately, Mr. Leatherman was in the vicinity which was the only thing to interrupt a pleasant dining experience. While the food was suprisingly good, our waiter was slow. It’s just hard to get a good combination of positive factors going in any of the local restaurants around here. Simp’s is pretty good in that respect but that’s even skewed because I know people there. I still think they would do a better job of serving customers there though.

The grand plan for Saturday was to head to Nashville. That fizzled out mainly because the Burn’s had to be back for the trunk or treat thing at church. Having to be back by a certain time kinda puts a damper on enjoying being out of town. Looks like that trip might be happening next week at any rate so that’s cool. Ended up going to Huntsville instead. Had a GREAT lunch at Macaroni Grill. Hands down that is some of the best Italian food to be had around here. MUCH better than Olive Garden IMO. Service was excellent as well as the food quality. Very consistent over there. I don’t recall having anything remotely resembling a bad experience there.

Checked out the hhGregg store. It’s a good place to go if you’re in the market for large appliances but it’s not the electronics variety store like Best Buy. Headed to BB next where I picked up a CD player for my living room. My old Denon player was so old that it didn’t have an optical output on it so I though it might be time to get something newer. I had been using the old one back in my drum room as a practice tool when I hook my in-ears up to it.

Spent the evening hooking things up in the entertainment cabinet and watching part of the Master and Commander DVD I borrowed. Conked out after that.

Church went well. I got no feedback on the sound so I can only assume it was “as usual”. Eric’s kid Heidi was playing the bongos and congas. I’m pretty sure her hands are sore from doing that. That’s rough for even me. She could have benefitted from a mic and IEM’s though so she could hear herself. Scott, did you bring home your IEM receiver again? I felt kinda bad for her because I know how loud the drums are.

Lunch was at Firehouse Subs. Tasty stuff. We’re going to have to add them on the dining rotation for sure. Good food reasonably priced.

Next stop was Home Depot to stock up on batteries (aziz). Picked up 2 packs of 9v for my IEM receiver and a 24 pack of AA’s for remote controls and such. Also got some yard chemicals to winterize my… dirt. I should have better luck on the yard next year with more sunshine being able to reach it now that I have 5 less trees covering the place.

Took a short nap and woke up confused as it was dark outside… I thought it was Monday morning, Sunday night, or somewhere in between. Nice. Sat up and found a pounding headache strapped to my head. Where did THAT come from? Made some dinner and watched some tube. I felt much better after eating. Finished up Master and Commander. That was a good flick. I’d give it a 7.

Time for bed. Busy week ahead.

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The above comment came as a result of one of my co-workers getting bit on the @ss by a red wasp hiding in her robe. That’s a rude awakening right there let me tell ya. She’s apparently pretty allergic to them and had some swelling. Unfortunately for her, I got wind of her situation before she told me so as usual, I took advantage of the situation. “Um, is your right cheek bigger than your left one for some reason?” Yes, it was as funny as you could imagine it.

I too had a rough morning. Woke up dizzy, almost nauseus. It wasn’t a sick to my stomach thing but more of an inner-ear type deal. That sucked. I was just going to lay in bed and go into work later but I thought I’d at least eat some breakfast and try getting ready for work to see if that improved things. Well, now I was all ready to go and it would be too much of a hassle to get back into bed so I went on to work. I felt crappy up until about lunchtime and then things went back to normal. Sup wif dat?

Spent the day working on I.T. stuff but still found time to do some client work as well. They’re not used to any kind of network security at the office so there’s a lot of bitching going on when people have to log in to use certain resources and they also get all twisted up when they can’t get to other people’s files like they used to. A little network security is a good thing as we go forward. They’ll be some kicking and screaming for sure but we’ll all make it through once I explain everything. I’ve still got lots to learn about OSX (the OS running on the server) so it’s a learning curve for all of us.

Band practice went well. Everyone had a good time for the most part. Sound board was jacked up again (as is the norm) and Kev had to make corrections for the vocals. The drums actually looked less jacked up than normal as they weren’t sitting on zero as is the custom of our people. Kev’s buddy Andrew joined up with us for some eats at Ruby’s. Apparently, they’re friends from school. Seemed like a good guy. Dude could hide some groceries though. Man, if I ate like him, I’d look like a grown-up by now.

Looks like there’s gonna be another poker night next Friday. I wonder if I’ll be making a donation to Wes again like last time? I’m going to have to review the various poker hands so I can tell if I’ve got something other than the easy stuff… 2, 3, 4 of a kind, 2 or 3 pairs, flushes and stuff like that. Helps to know the rules for sure.

Think I’m gonna go crash now.

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Another busy day at the office. My server looks to be running as it should. I also had a chance to poke around the GUI a little more and found the server monitoring tools I was looking for. Still, I hope I can find something I can use on the Windows platform to view it instead of needing something running the Mac OSX. Had a few meetings this morning in Huntsville. At lunch, ate at a new place called Sazio’s over in 5 points. It’s kind of like a smaller Macaroni Grill. It’s a cool environment. The bar area looks VERY nice from what I saw of it. Might have to get the brewski crew to head over there for a few one night soon and take it all in.

Had to run a few errands after work. Talked to Rochelle for awhile as she wasn’t feeling too good due to some sort of sinus malfunction. Poor thing. I know what that crap feels like.

Not too much else to report. Gonna hop on the drums for awhile then do some more reading.

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Had to use that line at lunch today on Rochelle. She joined up with Kay and I at Logan’s. After she sat down beside me, she was chompin on peanuts and was turned so that she could drop the shells on the floor next to the booth. The way she was sitting, her hindquarters were positioned in way that would someone who was saying “look at my butt tattoo” would sit. Anyway, I said the above and the told her “Look sista, once you’ve sold it, you don’t have to keep sellin it”. We were all rollin with laughter. After several more inappropriate comments, we fould ourselves eating free desserts provided to us by a buddy in management over there. A fun way to spend lunch I’ll tell ya. Oh, ran in to Jack S. there as well. Looks like a trip to the shooting range may be out of the question for him this weekend. On the other hand, he IS excited about the opportunity to play at the VBCC gig.

I was suprisingly busy today trying to handle meetings and addressing a few IT issues that cropped up. I did have some server weirdness as the XServer somehow “lost” it’s connection (via firewire) to the tape backup system. I rebooted the server and tape drive and all seemed to go back to normal. I’ll have to look through the server logs in detail tomorrow to see if I can find anything that would indicate what caused this.

Static IP’s are of the devil. Just thought I’d get that out of my system.

Oh, Lesa told me all about her new bike she picked up Saturday. Talk about nice… it’s a full-suspension Cannondale. She, Lynn and Luke are trying to convince me to get a bike so I can join them. Dang… that’s all I need. Another expensive hobby. You know me, I won’t be on some Huffy Wal-Mart special… I’ll have a Cannondale, Specialized or a Trek bike. Winter’s coming up though so I probably won’t get one this season. I would however be open to picking up a good used bike. Those will probably be more reasonable than a new one I’m sure.

My next door neighbor suprised me with a visit. This is the neighbor whose cat Kelsey did a Cuisinart on last year. (In case you missed that, short version: neighbors cat goes into my fenced back yard and leaves in a box courtesy of my dog) Apparently, his car and the car of a neighbor on the other side of him got broken into last night. It looks like they left their doors unlocked and someone simply opened them and went through the stuff on the inside. Some small items were taken but nothing valuable. Hmmm… I usually bring in all my stuff… iPod mainly, when I’m in for the night AND I lock my doors. Kelsey will probably wake me up if anyone comes near my car espcially since she sleeps on the porch a few feet away. I think I might leave the doors unlocked but arm my alarm tonight and see what fun ensues.

It does concern me that this sort of thing has happend right here where I live. You’d think people would just leave other people’s stuff alone. Sigh.

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Had to use that line at lunch today on Rochelle. She joined up with Kay and I at Logan’s. After she sat down beside me, she was chompin on peanuts and was turned so that she could drop the shells on the floor next to the booth. The way she was sitting, her hindquarters were positioned in way that would someone who was saying “look at my butt tattoo” would sit. Anyway, I said the above and the told her “Look sista, once you’ve sold it, you don’t have to keep sellin it”. We were all rollin with laughter. After several more inappropriate comments, we found ourselves eating free desserts provided to us by a buddy in management over there. A fun way to spend lunch I’ll tell ya. Oh, ran in to Jack S. there as well. Looks like a trip to the shooting range may be out of the question for him this weekend. On the other hand, he IS excited about the opportunity to play at the VBCC gig.

I was suprisingly busy today trying to handle meetings and addressing a few IT issues that cropped up. I did have some server weirdness as the XServer somehow “lost” it’s connection (via firewire) to the tape backup system. I rebooted the server and tape drive and all seemed to go back to normal. I’ll have to look through the server logs in detail tomorrow to see if I can find anything that would indicate what caused this.

Static IP’s are of the devil. Just thought I’d get that out of my system.

Oh, Lesa told me all about her new bike she picked up Saturday. Talk about nice… it’s a full-suspension Cannondale. She, Lynn and Luke are trying to convince me to get a bike so I can join them. Dang… that’s all I need. Another expensive hobby. You know me, I won’t be on some Huffy Wal-Mart special… I’ll have a Cannondale, Specialized or a Trek bike. Winter’s coming up though so I probably won’t get one this season. I would however be open to picking up a good used bike. Those will probably be more reasonable than a new one I’m sure.

My next door neighbor suprised me with a visit. This is the neighbor whose cat Kelsey did a Cuisinart on last year. (In case you missed that, short version: neighbors cat goes into my fenced back yard and leaves in a box courtesy of my dog) Apparently, his car and the car of a neighbor on the other side of him got broken into last night. It looks like they left their doors unlocked and someone simply opened them and went through the stuff on the inside. Some small items were taken but nothing valuable. Hmmm… I usually bring in all my stuff… iPod mainly, when I’m in for the night AND I lock my doors. Kelsey will probably wake me up if anyone comes near my car espcially since she sleeps on the porch a few feet away. I think I might leave the doors unlocked but arm my alarm tonight and see what fun ensues.

It does concern me that this sort of thing has happend right here where I live. You’d think people would just leave other people’s stuff alone. Sigh.

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Met up with my buddy Cameron for lunch today. He brought along his new Motorola RAZR V3 cell with him so I could check it out. MAN! That’s one sweet piece of technology. Back in the day when Motorola’s StarTAC’s were the cat’s meow, I think I had 3 different iterations of it as new features were added in each generation. Since then, Motorola’s designs have taken a dive and other companies like Nokia, Samsung and Sony came out with more appealing products. I think they’re back on track with the V3. It’s a little too “spendy” for me but dang it’s pretty.

Cam checked out my BlackBerry which, unusually, he hadn’t seen yet. I had been wanting to try out the Bluetooth functionality of it but didn’t have anything to try it with. He brought along the BT headset he had been using up until he got his V3 to let me try it. Figured out how to “pair” my BB and the headset together and got things working. THAT my friends, is the poo. If I only had voice dialing on my BB, I’d be able to both MAKE and receive calls without needing to get my phone out. The overall functionality of the BB really shines when it comes to email though. It works like a champ for both my office and personal email.

Okay, I’ll take my geek hat off now.

Tonight was a slim night on the Guad front. Back to the core group again of me, The Burns and Eli. Walked the mall a little and checked things out. Nothing special going on. Talked to Erica over at T-Mobile and filled her in on all the festivities last week. She’s gonna try and hook me up with a deal on a BT headset. I was about to head into American Eagle to pick up a gift card for Jordan when lo and behold, her and Dave were walking towards me. I got her to pick out something she wanted so my gift shopping was greatly simplified. Found out she had gotten bit by a dog last night. Hope that turns out okay. That stinks.

Yup, gonna put an end to the margaritas on Monday nights. I have much more productive evenings without them. Corona’s have been good to me. They cut the lime wedges a little too big tonight so it was a bit of a struggle to get them down into the bottle. Life’s tough I’m tellin ya.

Oooo… Kev told me that one of the kids pushed a speaker over onto the side of the plasma… I’d have to be medicated if that was my plasma. So would someone else when I told them “Yeah, I hate to tell you this but you’re gonna have to cough up a few thousand $$$ to replace that.” That’s not being mean, that’s just how it works. You too can hear me say something like that if something gets dropped or otherwise damages the kick drum on my bling set… “That’ll be $1900 to replace that…” In Kevin’s case, luckily nothing was damaged that he mentioned. I’ll bet the speaker cabinet has a ding in it now though.

Speaking of kids. Eh… never mind.

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No, that’s not a comment I’ve had to use with a girl… but I did use it at last night’s poker game at Scott’s place. Saturday was good to me. Met up with the Burns at Arby’s for lunch. The Dabster showed up late because she was untangling Raven’s thong or something like that. Anyway… Next was a dreaded trip to WalMart to pick up some supplies. First on my list was some Brasso to try and get rid of some of the scratches on my iPod. I also got some other stuff but nothing else was particularly significant. Band practice was in a few hours so Dabs just hung out at my place looking at catalogs while making some high-pitched noises that interfered with my enjoyment of the Formula 1 program on the satellite. It was qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix which was also the last race of the season. Naturally, I would not have honored requests to change the channel in this situation. Finally, the noise subsided but not after she asked me about some of the catalogs I had. Sheesh. (heh)

I went into the kitchen to try the Brasso out on the iPod. It worked like a charm! I had read on some iPod forums that Brasso was the ticket to getting scratches out. I was careful not to get any of the cleaner into the seams or on the click wheel so as not to screw things up. I was doing all this so that I could stick it in the case I received for it on Friday as a gift from the folks I got my server at work from. I actually scored me and Lesa some stuff so now we both have some iPod bling.

Band practice went well. We were done in an hour. Took a look at the sound board and it was all eff’d up as usual. Such is life. Not my problem. Scott was steering the boat this week to give Kevin a break.

At around 8, a bunch of us got together at Scott’s for our first organized poker night. Me, John, Stacey, Dabney, Eric, Wes and Scott started off the group. Jo, Patrick and some other girl stopped in for a bit later on. It was just the guys at the table though doing the card thing while the girls watched movies. At one point, Scott was trying to convince the girls to… never mind. I felt kind of bad for John as it seemed he was clueless on how to play. Hopefully, he’s got a better handle on it now so he won’t just be making a donation next time. There was some good playing going on though. In the end, it came down to me and Wes. Ultimately, Wes won. Congrats!

Morning came early Sunday. Got to church, warmed up then was ready to go. Music went well despite some things that could have seriously have train wrecked some songs happening. Suprisingly though, we ALL took it in stride and kept things going. I doubt the audience even knew anything was wrong. I’m sure Wes had fun keeping the lyrics on the screen though.

Rushed home when all was done so I would watch my F1 race. It was exciting. Man, I love that stuff. I can’t wait till I head to Indy again next year. Oh, on a sad note, I saw the news report where Hendrick racing suffered the loss of 10 people in a plane crash on their way to the Martinsville race today. That’s sad. Hendrick owns several racing teams in Nascar.

Time to get to bed. Gotta go to work tomorrow.

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Finally got my BlackBerry cluster worked out. When I last blogged about it, the situation was that I supposedly couldn’t get the deal in the store that I saw online. That was Monday. On Tuesday, I went to order the phone and my service online but realized there’s nowhere to indicate that this is an UPGRADE and not a whole new contract. Sheesh. What a pain in the ass. So I call them. My plan gets changed over properly and I order the phone. I also opt for the “Express Overnight Shipping” for an additional $16. Guess what? Come Thursday morning (TWO nights later) I still have no phone. I call and find out it’s on backorder? WTF?!? They had them at the store on Monday. I finally get hold of a guy named “Kevin” who normally works at the T-Mo store next to Winn-Dixie but he was covering the mall store temporarily. Evidently Kevin is someone that knows how to do his job. I explained my whole ordeal to him. “Hmmmm, that doesn’t sound right. You shouldn’t have had to go through all that.” When I was done, he asked for a few minutes to figure out the next move to make. He calls a bit later and tells me to come pick up the phone in the store and instructs me to refuse shipment of the other phone that is supposedly “on backorder”. He also takes the time to apologize for all the hassle and that I really SHOULD have been able to walk out of the store on my Monday visit with everything I wanted. Additionally, he prints out extra receipts and a rebate form for me instead of telling me to make my own copies and going to the website to print my own rebate form. Nice. So… if any of ya’ll are T-Mo customers and need assistance from someone that knows what’s going on, look up Kevin.

FedEx ruled the roost again when I placed another international order. France to the US in less than 2 days. That’s amazing. Had to get a present for someone.

Friday, me and most of the office headed to Edo’s for sushi. We all had fun except for one person who I knew wouldn’t like it but she insisted on coming. When she started bitching, I reminded her that I specifically didn’t invite her because I knew how she was. I also let her know I was there to enjoy my lunch and wasn’t asking her opinion of it. In other words, STFU.

Kudos to Lesa! On the new menu at Simp’s, there’s an entree named after her. Dean, the chef there, made a roasted pork loin dish as an experiment several weeks ago and brought some out for Lesa to try. Lesa got me to try it too. Yummy. Anyway, there’s a “Lesa’s Roasted Pork Loin” on the menu now. How cool is that? I was supposed to go try it out after work but I had been to Simp’s Thursday night and really didn’t want to spend a load of cash on a meal especially after my sushi lunch. Scott and Eric called me up to go to HSV with them and find some brewery. We never found the brewery and they weren’t answering their phone so methinks this brewery isn’t a “regular” business. Ended up at Bennigans for dinner where we enjoyed draft beer, me with my Fosters and the other guys with their Guiness and Newcastle. Got carded too which is always nice. Apparently, the beer snob thing to do is look down on ppl who drink beer you can see through… like the Fosters and Corona that I drink. “Kiss my @zz… at least it’s not Zima.” Heh.

Oh, Scott took one for the team and got a thousand poker chips for our new gambling ministry. While he got a good deal on them, they weren’t cheap by any means. I need to find a good place to get quality cards. I’d like to contribute at least something to the game. Hmm… maybe a table or some felt. Dunno.

Looks like Kevin got hit with a funk bomb according to his blog. I know how that feels sometimes. If I ever want to depress myself, this is what I think of:

1. Is that as big as it gets?
2. Just kidding about #1.
3. Will I find the right girl to marry?
4. Will she sign a pre-nup? LOL
5. Will I have kids?
6. How old will I be when the kid(s) show up?
7. How will I pay for their college? Braces? Cars? Hobbies? Sports? Bail?
8. Will I be a good dad?
9. When I retire, will I have enough income? (actually, got a good plan going here going on 10+ years)
10. Will I have to work all the way to retirement age or can I retire early?
11. Buying a new car.

Wow. That’s about it.

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I’m not sure but I better be able to go back to sleep in a few minutes or the day’s gonna be a bit rough. Grrrr….

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Wow. Busy couple of days for me! Tuesday went well… capped it off with dinner at Macaroni Grill with a co-worker of mine. The salmon was amzing as usual. I’ve had that dish twice lately so it’s time to change it up again on the next trip. Wisely, I opted to not have dessert as I would have been “uncomfortable” seeing as how I was already stuffed to the gills. Did a Best Buy walk thru where I picked up Van Helsing on DVD.

Work was different today as the server I ordered a few weeks ago arrived for delivery. It’s a sweet machine for sure. I’ve got to finish setting users up on it tomorrow as well as familiarizing myself with the new backup software. I’m really pleased with it the little I’ve been exposed to it so far. Stayed late at the office getting as much done on it as possible.

Oh, had a nearly city-wide power outage today. THAT was special. What’s funny is that our owner thought we had something to do with it as we were in the middle of getting the server in place. Oh, the big honkin UPS I got for the server takes a special kind of power outlet. Luckily for us, our building owner is an electrician. How convenient is that? An hour later we had the right outlet in place. Turns out the cause of the blackout was a squirrel at a main electrical station shorted something out. I was telling Lesa that I’m sure the squirrel went out with a bang. She commented that she thought feathers went everywhere. I told her “I don’t know where you went to school, but when I was in biology class, squirrels had fur…” Good times.

Went over to Ashley’s next to watch how a rifle comes together from parts. That was interesting. I’m getting a better idea of how I want mine built so I’m a little closer to getting my order together.

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