Friday, March 14 2008, 7:46 PM

I sure love me some vacation. I've been taking it nice and easy throughout the week, with only a meager amount of annoying things present. It's very nice.

I spent the past weekend down in Indianapolis with Andre, Chris, Darin, Guy, Guy's son Leo, and Andre's Indianapolis crew. It was a great time. We made pretty good time getting down there, and wasted little time before heading out for some drinking fun. One of the bars not too far from Andre's place has a pretty nice selection of beer on tap (50 different beers), and we made it our goal that night to try each one. We had ten guys total, and we split one pint worth of each beer up so that each guy got his fair share. It ended up being roughly 1-2 shots worth of each kind of beer. We tore through all the different beers in roughly 2.5 hours, which really isn't that bad. That was plenty enough for us old folk, so we headed back to Andre's after a side trip to McDonald's. We all took great pleasure in teaching Leo the 'real' name for McDonalds - "Dirty Ron's". Hopefully he uses that term frequently.

Saturday was another drinking day. Andre had a bunch of his buddies over for beer, grilling, and drinking games. The main attraction was a beirut tourney. We had enough guys for 6 teams, which is just right really. Andre and I lost our first game, but tore through the losers bracket, winning our way to the finals. We ended up losing to Darin's team, but it was a strong showing. The day took a nasty turn when Guy stepped on a water pipe in Andre's closet while fishing for the controls on a receiver buried therein, and broke it. Water was spraying everywhere, which necessitated a trip under the house for Andre to shut down the water inlet. It made quite a mess, and Andre was not too pleased. We tried to keep the spirit alive, but having to go to the bathroom outside seemed to dampen everyone's sprits.

Sunday was rather abbreviated. Since none of us could take showers, we decided to get on the road pretty early. While we were packing up, Andre's uncle-in-law (a plumber) came by to help Andre get his water system squared away. We got news later in the day that Andre got everything fixed, which made Guy feel better.

I've been pretty worthless since I got back into town... perfect for vacation. I've been doing a whole lot of nothing, with a few bits and pieces of responsibility mixed in. I cleaned my kitchen pretty thoroughly yesterday, which amounted to one of the ten or so things I have on my cleaning list for the week. Hopefully I'll get to the rest of them before I have to head back to work. The kitchen was the worst part though, by far. It really needed the cleaning.

beirut indianapolis vacation

Thursday, August 05 2004, 10:28 PM

It's been a while since my latest "real" post, which is mostly because I've been in the process of moving to the new place and getting settled into it. Well, I'm moved and mostly settled in, and so far it's pretty sweet. My room is significantly smaller than the room at the other place, but that's no big deal. I'm good at compacting all of my belongings into a small area, so no worries there. The main portion of the house is pretty much set as well, but Greg and Carl are still moving their stuff into place.

Last weekend I was down in Indianapolis for another one of Andre's shindigs, and it was a blast. We went out on the town friday night for some debauchery, and then closed the night off with some Jimmy Johns. Jon and I were masters of beirut on saturday, playing 12 games and only losing 2. We were both in rare form, and it was great. We both paid for it the next day though. I felt like ass for most of the day, although not as bad as I felt as a result of the first indy trip, where I could barely sit upright without being nauseous.

I bought Doom 3 yesterday... I don't want to sound too much like a fanboy here, but the game is fucking sweet. The lighting is simply amazing, the graphics are crisp and lifelike, and overall the game is straight-up scary. I've caught myself hopping out of the chair a few times when some piece of evil sneaks up on me and starts attacking. Crazy shit. If you've got a decent computer, check this one out.

beirut doom3 indianapolis ramblings residences roadtrips

Thursday, June 03 2004, 11:47 AM

Well, I've restored my project at work to most of its pre-disaster state, and as it stands I've only lost a rather small amount of work. Most of the lost stuff resides in one piece of functionality - the graphing code. I had planned on redoing the way the graphing code accepts data, but the display was working pretty nice before the crash. Now I had to revert it to something from about 3-4 months ago, and it's ugly as a dog's ass again. On a related note, backups are installed and working fine on the new server.

This past weekend I was at my parents house. Andre was in town from Indy, and we hung out at his parents place around the campfire and got smashed like the days of yore. It was excellent. I was totally in the mood to be rawkus after the deboccle of the day before... Sunday I lounged about, then headed over to Jon's for some more debauchery (read: Beirut). I spent a decent portion of Monday restoring the limited amount of backups I had for my monitoring stuff and getting things working with the older version so there would at least be somthing in place letting us know what was going on. Gettting that back going wasn't too hard, thankfully.

beirut family projects ramblings work

Sunday, March 07 2004, 2:45 PM

Yah, that seems to be a common theme for the past few weekends... I've actually been going out on the weekends lately, and it seems like I get hung over every time now, even if I don't have a lot of beer. I always seem to drink labatts, so I'm wondering if my body just doesn't like labatts anymore. That would really suck, because I like labatts, and everyone seems to have it. It might also be the cigarette smoke that is always present in the bar environment, because the post-bar headaches I get always seem to be limited to my sinuses. Whatever causes it, it's no fun.

The work week was pretty uneventful I suppose... Phil was back on days this week, which helped out the light-staffing problem, and also helped lighten the mood a bit. He's pretty good at making people laugh, which is cool. I guess the mood around Liquid Web is never really that heavy, so lightening it is pretty much like adding good things to good things...

Friday night was pretty fun... My buddy Matt came up and, along with Joe, we met up with Phil at Moriarty's in Lansing and had a few drinks and shot the shit. Both times I've been there, there's been a band playing, which is cool. Not some crappy band, but real players who can jam with the best of 'em. Cool shit.

I had the aforementioned hangover yesterday, so after Matt left, I slept a lot. It was good. I went down to Jon's place for the evening... his birthday was on Friday, so he had a little shindig in celebration. It was mostly people he knew from work, but Darin and Lisa were there as well. There was much food to be eaten, and games to be played. We played a few games of beirut and pool, and in the process Michelle got totally trashed. It was pretty funny. I don't think I've ever seen her that wasted. She is definitely a hoot when she gets intoxicated!

I don't really have any plans for today... I might go pick up some groceries if I'm so inclined, but then again I may not. Laying around and being a bum has a real nice ring to it.

beirut frustrations ramblings work

Monday, February 02 2004, 12:52 AM

Yup, plenty of beer this weekend. Friday night I went out with Joe and his buddy Andy... We started off wanting to go to Ricks, but we ended up diverting to Beggars once we saw the huge line outside of Ricks. We each had a few beers there, and then we made our way to Ricks. I now remember why I really don't like that place... it's just a meathouse, where you go to pick up the 'meal' for this evening. Not my kind of place. Shauna came to pick us up to go to some other place, but once Joe found out who was going to be at said other place, we ditched that idea and went over to The Dollar instead. That place sucks too. I had never been there before, and I probably won't go back. Just give me a beer and a place to sit, and I'm cool. Those places had none of the latter.

Last night was part two of Chris's sendoff before he ships out to Japan for a year. His brother hosted a gathering at his place, and most of the crew plus some cousins made it out. It was a lot of fun, with great eats and plenty of Beirut action. Tom had taken a lot of camera footage in South Africa when/where Chris was married, so we spent a lot of time watching that as well. The scenery in those videos Tom took was incredible. Scenes reminiscent of the large panoramic views in the Lord of the Rings movies... beautiful landscape. I couldn't imagine waking up every morning and having views like I was seeing. Anyways... after a while, a couple of Chris's cousins and a friend they brought wanted to head out to a bar, so the remaining folk journeyed out and about until we found a place. We walked in at like 1:30 and we pretty much instantly had a round of Jager shots in our hands. All in all, we had like 4 rounds of shots and a beer in roughly 45 minutes at that place... bad news all in all. Chris was absolutely obliterated... probably the most drunk I've ever seen him. He ended up paying for it, and evidently he spent the night praying to the porcelain. Not good. Combine that with Jon's multiple Buick sales earlier in the evening, and you get a not happy night for Tom's main-level bathroom.

Today I just slept a lot. I've been pretty much hammered for the past three nights in a row, so today was my day to catch up. I slept in until around 1pm today, and then slept on the couch for another hour or so during the afternoon. Mom and Dad made a great Prime Rib for dinner, and it was most excellent. Home cooked meals rock, and so do home cooked meal leftovers! :)

beirut ramblings

Sunday, July 27 2003, 9:32 PM

This past weekend was the annual LaRouche land canoe trip. There was a pretty good turnout this year. Our part of the crew consisted of Jon and Michelle, Andre, Chris and Lana and two of her friends, Bob, and myself. We staggered up to the property, with Jon and Michelle arriving first, followed by me at about 8:30, then Chris and crew around 11ish, Andre around 1am, and Bob around 5:30am (ouch!). Jon and I took an opportunity to break in the new beirut table. We got one game in before darkness took over, and then we went on to drinking in a more standard manne - from the can. Jon and I had a pretty good jag on by the time Chris showed up, and plenty of good times were had. I honestly don't remember if I was awake when Andre showed up, but it doesn't really matter. Apparently after I passed out, Chris and Andre kept the night alive for quite a while apparently.. Michelle said something about them being up until 5am or so. I was passed the hell out, so I don't wouldn't be able to say either way.

The morning of the canoe trip started off kinda crappy, with dark skies and rain, and a bit of thunder. Being the (foolish) troopers that we are, we went anyway. The first half of the trip was kinda rainy, but the thunder wasn't present thankfully. The second half was much nicer, with the sun breaking through the clouds for a while. Good times were had in the evening as well... we set up the beirut table again and played a few games before it got dark, and before the drinking beer ran out. Bob brough bottles of some nicer stuff, and Jon and Bob played a 1 on 1 game with some of it, but it was determined that it wasn't suitable for beirut. After the sun set, we sat around in a circle being merry and talking... pretty cool. We all passed out pretty quickly that night. Well, I did anyways.

Today was rather uneventful. We got all packed up and headed home. Only took me two hours to get home, which is pretty good. Overall, a good time.

beirut canoeing roadtrips

Monday, July 21 2003, 12:09 AM

This weekend turned out to be pretty productive, and annoying in one aspect... Friday night, while trying to get my new hard drives installed and formatted, one of my monitors decided that it didn't like the 22uF capacitor on it's main circuit board, so it blew it up. Made a nice pop and a puff of smoke, so I unhooked the monitor with a quickness. My dad took a look at it, and thinks that replacing the cap will probably fix the monitor, so that's good. Now I have to suffer without my dual monitor setup on this computer for a few days, but I think I can manage.

Yesterday was pretty sweet. I slept in nice and late - almost until noon, which is a feat unheard of for me these days. I didn't do much for the afternoon, but I hung out at Chris's with said friend, Jon, and Tom, along with their respective others, Lana, Michelle, and Lindsay. We cooked out and had some good eats. Then, Chris, Jon, and I went to work at making beirut table 2.0... We went up to home depot and bought a nice sheet of Medium Density Fiberboard, and had them cut it to our specs. Once we got home, we disassembled the old table, and built up the new one in 70 minutes... We dubbed the new table "THE NOMAD." We played one inaugural game to test things out, and it performed quite well.

Today had some accomplishment and frustration at the same time... I took a couple hours to wash and clean out the inside of my car, only to have it rain and mess up the wash. I was mad. Oh well, I'll get over it. I went out and bought a couple new Queensryche CDs, Empire and The Warning, in response to the great vibe I got from the concert the other night. So far I like them a lot. This evening I did something I've been considering for a few weeks now - a change long overdue... I got out the clippers and lopped off all of my hair, down to about a 1/4 inch. Looks a lot different. I was ready for the change though. Had that old style for like, 10 years. It needed to go, at least temporarily.

beirut music projects queensryche ramblings

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