Saturday, November 11 2006, 2:02 AM

It seems that I don't ever take the time to post anymore. I'm sitting here on the floor in this hallway of a hotel in Indianapolis typing this because I'm bored out of my mind, and Bob is asleep already in the hotel room. Since I'm not tired, I'm out here.

I'm down here for my buddy Andre's wedding. It rained like crazy coming down here, and there were some wind gusts that probably could have blown me off the road if I wasn't paying attention. Good thing I got the new wipers on my car the other day...

Now onto news... First off, I came up with names for my cats. I liked my dad's suggestion of Marshall for the black cat, since he's always sleeping up on my Marshall 4x12 speaker cabinet. Running with the cool guitar equipment names, I called the gray cat Mesa, in honor of Mesa amplification. Now I have to get used to calling the cats by those names.

I also had a follow-up appointment with Dr. Doshi on Wednesday. He said everything was looking good, and my vision tests showed I was seeing a "fuzzy 20/20" with my righteye, which is pretty damned good. I guess that equates to being able to see the 20/20 line with significant effort, as opposed to seeing it at a quick glance. I don't ever remember seeing 20/20 with my right eye even before the problems started occuring, so that's something to be happy about. In a related note, I was able to get a pretty good sampling of night-time driving this evening with the associated headlight glare. It still gives me problems, but it doesn't seem to be as bad as it was.

cats friends indianapolis righteye roadtrips

Monday, October 16 2006, 2:59 AM

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I'm hearing it from my mom again, which means that I've been slacking. That isn't to say that things haven't been happening - I just haven't taken the time to write. I've actually got a decent backlog of topics, some which I will mention here. Others will get their own posts. Lets get started!

Last week started off with a trip up north for the annual closing of the cottage. This year's closing also brought with it some non-trivial repair work on the cottage itself. Earlier in the summer, during a pretty intense thunderstorm, a tree blew over and landed on the roof, breaking two rafters and punching a few other holes in the roof. The holes were patched up shortly after it happened, but the structural damage still needed mending.

I headed up sunday night, and was preceeded by my dad, my Uncle Rick, and Ryder, a good friend of my cousin Carl. Cousins Carl and Bill arrived mid-Monday, and second cousins Brian and Jeff arrived a little later. Ryder had started tearing the shingles off the roof by the time I woke up on monday, and I went up and helped when I had gained a sufficient amount of consciousness. We had a decent portion of the roof cleaned off by the time the other guys arrived and started helping. Things went faster with the additional hands, and once the roof was clean, Bill and Carl got down to the task of fixing the broken rafters. That whole process didn't take nearly as long as I would have expected, but that might be because I have absolutely crap for knowledge about this sort of thing. The whole removal process took Bill about 10 minutes, and once measurements were taken, installing the new rafters and replacing the boards making up the 'outer hull' of the roof took about 30 minutes if memory serves. Once the structural damage was repaired, we laid the tar paper for the new set of shingles, and called it a day.

Bill, Carl, and Ryder were up on the roof somewhat early the next day attacking the shingling task. Those guys are machines, let me tell you. When I woke up, I asked my dad how long they had been at it, and how much they had done. His answer was about 45 minutes, and about 1/3 done. They certainly had a system, and had the bulk of the roof done in under four hours. The rest of us stayed out of their way, and took to a few other tasks around the property. My dad, Brian, Jeff, and I cleaned up a few fallen trees out of the wooded lot across from our cottage. We dragged the smaller stuff down to the beach so it can be burned at a later date. It will make one hell of a blaze, that's for sure.

Wednesday and thursday saw a lot of lethargy on our parts. Bill, Ryder, and Carl brought up a few guns for the trip, and shot them off into a big sand hill a few miles down the road. Brian and Jeff rode their four-wheelers for a while. The rest of just sat around the cottage watching movies, napping, or reading. The same pattern played out on thursday as well.

One thing that always makes the closing trips memorable is that we eat like kings. This time was no exception. Rick bought a 18 pound cut of ribeye steak before he came up, and that was prepared monday or tuesday night. Man, I've never seen steaks so huge in my life. I beleve the meat was cut into eleven steaks, which puts each at about 1.5 pounds pre-cooked weight on average. My steak covered about three quarters of my plate, leaving almost no room for the baked potato or asparagus spears. And boy, was it tasty. Wednesday night, we cooked up the 30-odd pounds of whole chicken that someone had brought up, and that was magnificent as well. Bill headed up that effort, and aside from pulling the birds off the heat a little early, they were perfect. Each of the five birds needed a short trip through the microwave to make sure they were cooked all the way through, but that did nothing to disrupt the flavor or moistness of the meat. Both were superb.

I made my journey home thursday night though the area's first bout with old man winter. My trip, which should only take about 3.5-4 hours, took more than 5 due to low visibility and snow covering the roads. There were quite a few points where I had to slow down to around 25-30MPH due to visibilities less than 50 feet. I have a harder time driving at night due to my eye issues, but this was many times worse. I made it though, after much annoyance, beef jerky, and caffiene.

I wasn't home for long though. This weekend was set aside for a trip to Toronto for Andre's bachelor party. The trip out had no major delays, and we arrived at the hotel around midnight. Following bachelor party protocol, no details will be provided about the debauchery that ensued except the following, which certainly merits recognition. A very special event took place saturday afternoon, and we were quite happy to be able to experience it as a band of brothers. The event? The Detroit Tigers defeated the Oakland Athletics to take the American League crown! Nobody would have expected this six months ago, but it happened, and we were all together to witness it! It certainly made for a special night. Our trip home was unnecessarily long. We ran into the Toronto Marathon on the way out of town, which blocked our planned escape route and forced us to take a long trip through the city. About 45 minutes and many side streets later, we met up with the highway and made our way back to the USA. Our trip came to a halt at the border, where things were very backed up. It took around an hour to make it through the last mile of Canada. Those two delays made the whole trip take around seven hours total.

baseball family friends frustrations tigers toronto upnorth vacation

Wednesday, September 06 2006, 11:13 AM

I had a good holiday weekend. I took it easy friday night, and just hung about in the apartment. Saturday afternoon I headed down to Andre's in Indianapolis. He was having a get-together for the holiday weekend, and probably his last before he bows out of bachelor-dom officially. We took it easy Saturday night and played some pool and watched football while enjoying some tasty cold keg-dispensed beverages.

Sunday was party day, and we didn't waste any time, from my perspective anyway. I woke up at my customary 11-something AM, and beers were being dispensed in the 1pm hour. People started showing up around 3pm, and much merryment ensued. Lawn games were played, food was grilled, and good times were had. Also, thanks to some drinking game horseplay and hijinks, I can now truthfully say that I've had a beer poured on my head by an attractive girl, if that's ever a good thing.

In other news, the Gentoo install on my workstation is complete for the most part. I've still got some configuration to dink with, but that's best done for times of boredom. The X configuration I had working flawlessly before the reinstall full-out hardware lockups with the new install, so I had to start fresh. Not a horrible thing, but annoying. I've yet to get all the fun hardware acceleration working, so I'm stuck with slow-rendering graphics for the time being.

I'm also thinking that I need to make some time to try to take apart The Bolt and do some maintenance on it. After a few years of playing, the finish I put on the neck has started to get tacky and it has been rubbing away when I play it. There's a pretty good hole in the finish down near the end of the neck. I guess that's what I get for using plain furniture-grade varnish. Thing is, I doubt I'll be able to strip the finish that's there properly, so I may end up having to buy a new neck altogether and starting the process anew. I also want to redo the electronics in the guitar as well. It's only been running with one pickup for a while now, and I'd like to remedy that. I like the feeling of the Bolt a lot more than I do my Strat, but its tone is very one-dimensional with only one pickup.

friends gentoo guitar indianapolis linux roadtrips

Thursday, July 27 2006, 12:46 AM

Everyone needs vacation. Even me. One might think that I don't because I don't seem to vacation enough, but I do. That's one reason why this week rules. I'm free from work, free from its stresses, free from dealing with stuff I would rather not deal with.

My vacation actually started later than planned due to said things I would not deal with, but not by much. I was planning on leaving for Cincinnati to visit Jon and Michelle friday night, but I got caught up with some important last minute stuff, and had to postpone the journey until saturday. It was all right though, as it gave me some time to get some things taken care of that would otherwise be postponed.

The trip was a lot of fun. After I got down there saturday evening, Jon and I got totally ripped with a few of his neighbors while sitting on their driveway in lawn chairs. We talked a lot about music of various timeframes, which was really neat since they were a bit older and had some different insights and perspectives. After his neighbors hung it up for the night, Jon and I must have spent a good hour and a half listening to music out in my car. Mostly we were marvelling at Dragonforce, and wondering how people could keep up such an insane pace without falling over dead.

Sunday involved a lot of lounging about, and not a whole lot past that. We rented "The Devils Rejects" and watched that. We had all heard surprisingly good reviews of the movie, and figured it would be a decent movie to rent. It was a pretty good movie as far as scary flicks go, but nothing I would really have any need to see again.

Monday was the coolest day down there by far. After another slow start to the day (requisite for vacations in my book), Jon and I did something we both have wanted to do since he moved down there almost two years ago - check out the Air Force museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. I visited it with my family many many moons ago, but have no memory of it other than getting a SR-71 poster and a space shuttle book from the gift shop. Well, I'll remember this visit a lot better. I took my camera, and took as many pictures as my batteries would allow. Pictures are in the gallery. We saw all the planes we would have expected there, including the beforementioned SR-71, and a few that we wouldn't expect to see. They had a YF-22 there, which I believe is a prototype for the F-22 Raptor that will come into service sometime within the next few years. They also had a B-2 there, but it may have just been a mock-up or a prototype. I can't imagine the Air Force (or the taxpayers) would be too keen on stuffing a billion-plus dollar plane in a hangar, only to rot away under the constant glare of camera flashes.

After we got back from the museum and had dinner, Jon and I decided to play some pool, and that quickly involved into many games of pool. At least 10. We used up the beer in his fridge during those many games and did a lot of reminiscing about times long past, which was pretty cool. Afterwards, we decided to hop on the internet and look for people we used to know on MySpace (one of two good uses for that piece of crap site). We had a pretty good time doing that, and stayed up until at least 6am hunting people down.

I came back home yesterday, and I've been taking it easy at home while enjoying my lack of work. I head up north tomorrow for our annual cousin's weekend, which should be a lot of fun. It'll be hectic due to the sheer number of people involved, which is one of the reasons I'm only shooting for a three day weekend. Being subjected to lots of people wears on me rather quickly, especially when there is chatter waking me up long before I want to every morning. Oh well, it'll still be a lot of fun.

cincinnati dragonforce friends upnorth vacation

Tuesday, April 11 2006, 11:45 AM

This past weekend the boys and I met up down in Columbus for a Red Wings game and some general debauchery. I met up with Chris, Darin, and Guy at Darin's house, then we made the journey down. It's not a bad trip really - only about 3.5 - 4 hours if you take out the stop for food. Andre and Jon each drove from their respective areas in about two hours. It's probabably about the most central place for us all to meet, which is cool.

After we all arrived and got situated in our suites, we sat around and shot the shit for a while, enjoyed some frosty beverages, and watched some bad TV. After a while we got bored and decided to head out and see some of the night life. We walked around for a while and stopped at a brew-pub, mostly due to the diuretic nature of the beer we had already partaken in. We each had a drink, but quickly decided to take off because the place was dead and the beer wasn't that good. After a while, we found the place we were looking for, a local dive called the Char Bar. Before we left, Andre called down to the receptionist asking for a good local dive bar, and that was her recommendation. A good recommendation it was. The place was very relaxed, and the staff behind the personable. We had a few rounds there before closing time, then took off. The walk back was interesting as well. Andre and I decided to have a sumo match in a patch of lawn in front of some sort of office building. I relied on my agility (which isn't saying much) to best Dre in the first round, but he pancaked me pretty good in the second. I think we gave up after that. The match must have made Andre feel spry, because he decided to jog all the way back to the hotel. The rest of us didn't follow his lead.

The next morning we had scheduled some golfing at a local course, and that came far sooner than I would have liked. It wasn't the picture perfect day for golf. It was sunny, but the wind was roaring on top of about 45 degree temperatures. It was pretty chilly. In addition, there were no trees on the course (!!), so there was nothing to knock down the wind. Rumor has it that the course was built on an old landfill, which might explain some things. After a while, the wind and chill caught up with us, and we took off after nine holes, even though we paid for 18.

A few of us napped for some of the afternoon, which was very much needed. After our slumber, we got ready and headed over to the WIngs game. We were the stereotypical visiting fans, totally decked out in Wings garb. Our section was up in nosebleed, and there were a lot of other Wings fans up there as well. The Wings pulled out a close victory, 4-2. (The fourth goal was on an empty net with about three seconds left, which makes it seem a bit less close.) We had some good fun with the locals shouting insults after the game, but it was expected and taken in stride.

After the game, we headed back over to the Char Bar. It was much more lively after the game than it was the previous night. We spent a good amount of time there and had at least 7 or 8 rounds of beer. We took a decent amount of ribbing from the locals, but nobody was out of hand. I actually recieved a free shot from a guy I was talking to at the bar while waiting for a round. Apparently his feeling is that it's good for the sport to treat the travelling fans as well as possible while they're on the road supporting their teams. I can completely agree with that one. He sat down and talked with the rest of us for a while a bit later in the night, and he seemed like a very cool fellow - very passionate about hockey. There was even an instance of conversation with random attractive females, which was made easier because they were picking on my Wings jersey. I had to defend my honor! A good night all in all.

The next day we parted company, after at least 20 minutes of being "those guys" while trying to figure out the bill at the reception desk. For a group of six engineering/science types, we sure do suck at basic stuff like figuring out a bill. The drive back was quiet for the most part. Chris and Darin were pretty worse for the wear, and they slept for most of the trip back while Guy and I talked music.

Pictures are up in the gallery.

columbus friends golf redwings roadtrips

Sunday, March 05 2006, 11:41 PM

I suppose I'm well overdue for a post, considering that it's been almost a month. I would say that I haven't been up to much, which was my standard M.O. for a while, but I don't think that's been the case lately.

First off, my eye still sucks. I had an appointment with the cataract specialist a week or so ago. He didn't tell me much I hadn't yet heard, but the ball is rolling now. I have a mild cataract in my right eye, which doesn't sound that bad, but it will continue to get worse as time progresses. As a result, I'm going to have it removed. This will likely be some time in May, but the time isn't set yet.

I learned some more details about the aftermath of the procedure as well. Once my natural lens has been removed and replaced with an artificial lens, I will lose the ability to focus up close with my right eye, so I'll need to wear reading glasses in order for my right eye to be useful for any kind of detailed vision. I'm just hoping that removing the cataract will help restore some of the clarity I had before, even if there are floaters. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

I've also been on the road a bit over the past month. A couple weekends back, I went down to Indianapolis with the crew to visit Andre and celebrate his engagement. Congrats big man! As always, his party was a blast, with much drunken merryment being had by all.

This weekend we all met up down in Cincinnati for Jon's birthday. It was also a great time. We hit up Skyline chili and had some cheese-laden dirty eats. After that, the 5 guys (Jon, Andre, Chris, Darin, and myself) reverted back to the 5th grade and played some street football. It was a ton of fun, even if it highlighted how out of shape we all are. After we caught our breath, we headed down to the Hofbrauhaus in Newport, Kentucky. The beer was flowing, and we had a great time. We will definitely have to go back there again. After our beer, we headed over to the Rock Bottom brewery and had some delicious food and drink. I think it was all too much for me really, and I ended up passing out on Jon's couch by midnight or so, while everyone else was playing pictionary and other board games. The rest of the crew rousted early... far too early for my liking, but there wasn't much I could do. Oh well I guess.

cincinnati friends indianapolis righteye roadtrips

Sunday, August 07 2005, 11:37 PM

I guess it's been a while since I've posted something meaningful. I've recieved some questions on the nature of the last post, but if I haven't told you, you're not destined to know. Let it rest. I was pretty much drunk when I posted it, but that doesn't take away from the meaning.

I guess I've been keeping myself busy for the most part. I've been slowly infiltrating my new residence. My room is mostly squared away, and it's quite different for me not to have a computer in my room. There's been a computer of some form in my bedroom for like, 8 years now. It's actually quiet and cool in my bedroom now. It's rather hard to believe. Who knows... now that I've forced the computers out of my room, a female might enter! Well, with my luck, probably not. But I guess I can hope. I've got a few more boxes worth of stuff to make homes for, but it's mostly stuff like spare bedding, so it's nothing critical at this point.

Last weekend was the annual LaRouche-land canoe trip up on the Rifle River. As usual, it was a great time. There was a much smaller contingent of people there this year, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. There were a lot less of the peripheral folk that come up with the family, which is good in my eyes. Some of the people that came up in the past were no good. Most of the crew was there - Jon + Michelle, Chris + Lana, Andre, Thomann, Guy + Ana... The Phils were strong in attendance. We all got pretty ripped the first night, Andre and Jonny T. especially. They didn't sleep at all, and kept most of the camp up all night. I slept in the van, so I didn't hear a thing, but there was quite a lot of negative feelings towards those two when I woke up. It passed, and everybody had a good time canoeing. The weather couldn't have been better, but the river could have been a little warmer. We didn't really do much of anything except pass out from exhaustion after the trip down the river. All in all, it was a good time.

I put together a decent-sized list of things to get done this weekend, and I made a pretty good dent in them. I've still gotta get out to the Pontiac dealership sometime this week. There are a couple dealerships in my parents area that are offering pull-aheads on any GMAC lease, so I can get out of my current lease without any penalty if I get a new lease. This is quite good, since I've got around 500 miles left on my current lease, and it expires in February. The math isn't too good on that one. I'll definitely be taking advantage of that offer and get myself into a new ride. I'm looking pretty hard at a G6, perhaps a G6 GT(P) if I can afford it. We'll see within the next week or two, after I take a test drive or two.

canoeing friends grandam ramblings roadtrips

Sunday, July 03 2005, 12:31 AM

At last, after many weeks of working many hours of unpaid overtime and tons of hair-pulling, my project launched. It launched on monday, and hasn't receieved a huge amount of attention yet, but it's an unadvertised product, so we don't expect it to generate a huge buzz right off the bat. So far the feedback has been positive though, which is good.

I'm also quite happy that I'm able to take a nice 4 day weekend. I worked all of last weekend, so I was able to take friday off, which was good because it turned out that I had a lot of errands to take care of. I waited a good hour at the secretary of state's office to get my registration renewed. That's always a fun time. I also got my hair cut, did some laundry, and took care of a few other things. I was excited though, I got to see Chris and Lana for the first time since they've been back in the US from their extended stay in Japan. We didn't get to catch up as much as I would have liked, but it was good to see them nonetheless.

Today we had a party to celebrate my Grandma Neir's 90th birthday. There was a whole ton of people there, and it was a great time. I guess my sister and I were antisocial for a while because we were off by ourselves talking about the drama in our lives. I don't get to talk to her much these days, which kinda sucks. Between my dad and I many pictures were taken, and once I take the time to upload the 100MB or so of picture data, they'll be in the gallery. [Edit: Both my pictures and my dad's pictures are up now.]

Oh, yeah, I guess I turn 26 today (the 3rd). Another year gone.... nothing's really changed. :-\

family friends projects ramblings vacation work

Monday, May 23 2005, 8:44 PM

This past saturday I helped Phil move into his new house. I have to thank Phil for making this move an easy one. He had everything packed and ready to go, with nothing left to be done but carry it out to the moving van. His desk was giving us some trouble, so we tossed it out the window. Literally. This desk had been around for many many years, long since forgotten by the sands of time. We convinced him that he was buying a new house, so he should buy new stuff. He reluctantly agreed. I'm happy for Phil though... I could see weeks of stress lifting off his shoulders as we started moving stuff into his house. He was quite happy. Congrats Phil!

Yesterday I went out with my family in honor of my sister's 23rd birthday. We gorged ourselves at Outback and then lounged around the homestead here. After about an hour of continuous exposure to the four-legged energy bomb that goes by the name of 'Ace,' my family finally understands why my patience is so thin at times. We actually had to put him up in Greg's room because he just wouldn't calm down. America could power 3/4 of it's homes for about 2 years from the energy that dog has.

I also had the pleasure of sharing some beers and ice cream with Megan. She does exist! I had a very good time. We'll have to do it again sometime!

family friends ramblings

Sunday, March 13 2005, 8:40 PM

There's really only one word to describe my current state - tired. I'm on another midnight rotation, and I've worked over 70 hours in the past week. We're doing things a bit differently this time - instead of the two weeks of 12am-8am, we're doing one of 8pm-4am then one of 12am-8am. Well, Greg (roommate/coworker) was on his second week of midnights when I started my 8pm-4am's, and he was sick as a dog for the first two days of that, so I just sent him home both days. He had a fever of around 103°F, so he had no business being at work. I found other reasons over the next few days to be at work far longer than I wanted to be, and it's just sucked the life out of me..... and I've got another week to go. :-(

Last weekend was cool though - I caught a ride with Darin and Lisa to visit with Jon and Michelle at their new house near Cincinnati. Andre braved his cat allergies and made the trip as well. Jon and Michelle have quite the house down there - it just goes to show that the dollar goes a lot farther once you get out of southeast Michigan. We went to downtown Cinci and walked around for a while, just kinda wandering around before we went out for Jon's birthday dinner. The women insisted that we go into places like Tiffany's, but then got all offended when we wanted to go into the Hustler store we stumbled across... oh well. That place looked shady anyways. We also got to enjoy some Skyline Chili - a gift that keeps on giving... Giving lower intestinal problems that is. It was tasty, but wow. More cheese than any human should eat! All in all I had a great time, dispite the gastrointestinal discomfort.

cincinnati friends roadtrips work

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