Christmas Concert

We attended the Christmas concert tonight at the LDS Convention Center. While I wouldn't call it my favorite event ever, the music was pretty good actually. The music was choral and while that isn't my favorite type of music, it fit the season.

I do have a question for you readers, though. What is the purpose of getting dressed up in one's "Sunday Best" in order to go sit in the dark and view a concert? I understand wearing decent, clean clothes, but come on! It just seems to be a bit of overkill to me. Of course, that's my perception and I'd appreciate you guys telling me why people do this. :)

The only other issue I had with the evening was security. I told them I had steel-toed shoes on (the ones I wear to work) and I had to go through metal detectors 5 or 6 times, each time wearing a little less. I was nearly to the point of saying, "Nevermind! I'll just go home. I don't want to be here that badly." They finally believed me when after using the wand, they verified that my shoes were indeed setting off the detector. This is worse that Airport Security where they'll just have me remove the shoes and x-ray them.

Such is life I guess. I lived through it so I guess I'm OK.

This post was brought to you by the letters G, O, S, R, and the number 6.

We Gots Sofas!

We now have a deep red sofa and love seat. Thi is our early Christmas present to our little family. I appreciate my colleague for helping get them here. I'm not happy about my rec room's current layout, but the furniture's here.

Anyway, I just want to say WooHoo for the furniture! :) It's here and all done!

This post was brought to you by the letters R, E, D, and the number 2.

Furniture a No-No!

Talk about HORRIBLE customer service! We ordered a sofa and love seat from this local furniture warehouse and asked them if we could pick it up on Wednesday at 5:30. They said yes!

I arrange to get a truck through my brother-in-law and it turns out that a cargo van was available instead. Great! No need for bungies or tarps! So we yank all the passenger seats out of the van and schlep out to the warehouse to pick up our items.

We arrive and find that there is not a SINGLE LIGHT on in the place.

WTF!!!

It turns out that there is no one there on Wednesdays and whoever said yes is an idiot.

If it wasn't for the fact that we really liked this sofa and loveseat (and got it at a really good price), I'd have said "Screw it!" and demanded a return of funds. Instead, I'm wrangling my brother-in-law into helping me pick it up tomorrow. Sorry, Bro.

Happy. <-- Please make note of copious sarcasm!

This post was brought to you by the letters, S, E, R, V, I, C, E, and the number 0.

Geeking!

I got to go Geeking tonight! :) Those of you who know me will know that I really enjoy D&D. I got the chance to play tonight instead of Friday. I can't play on Friday since my wife has a Creative Memories event to attend and most of the rest of my group can't play on Friday either.

So we got to play tonight and we killed another dragon! What fun! :)

Anyway, I'm in a pretty good mood as a result. Too bad I'm going to bed as soon as I possibly can. I'm really tired.

This post was brought to you by the letters D, I, C, E, and the number 20.

A Play

Tonight, we went to see "The Foreigner". It was a play at one of our local theaters. It was pretty good. We kinda 'lucked' our way into it.

It was quite amusing actually. :) I enjoyed the interplay between the characters and was pleasantly surprised I liked it. I won't give too much away, but the play is basically about how a socially withdrawn man is left in the company of a bunch of deep southern people. It is explained that he is a foreigner and understands no English. As a result, he is privy to all the private conversations of those people. The entertainment ensues.

This post was brought to you by the letters P, L, A, Y, and the number 3.

Simple Electronics

Simple electronics really know how to get me going. We have icicle lights that I've been trying to hang for about the last 2 weeks. I tested each set so that I could be sure to put up only the ones that were WORKING.

So, I wander out there in the freezing temps, hang up some lights, borrow a longer ladder, hang up some more lights, turn them on and...

Oh. The. AGONY!

One section of the lights I just tested, and carefully hung on the house, is out.

So-- What now?

I get a replacement bulb and go out there to find the offending bad bulb. I give them all a viual inspectionn and they all seem fine. I check the wiring and it all seems sound. Only one thing left, start swapping out bulbs until I find the bad one. An hour later, I find it (one of the last few I change out). Grrr... Stupid simple electronics...

So now my fingertips, ears, and toes are all numb, but the lights are hung. Happy Day!

So, tomorrow, I get to put out the moving deer, light up the topiary bushes, and line the walkway with nice seasonal lights. Sounds like I'll have some more numb toes. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters T, A, I, V, and the number 8.

Correction...

I went back and re-read my last post and realized that it reads as if I lost my position at that point. In actuality, I was just insulted by being introduced at a lesser title than the one I hold and not actually demoted on the spot. Please accept my apologies for any confusion this may have caused. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters O, O, O, P, S, and the number 6.

Stupid People

So how many times have you been demoted by your boss in front of potential company partners. How many times has your boss given you a 20minute task at the last 2 minutes? Mine just did and I want to smack him for it. Grrr...

How stupid can a person be?

This post was brought to you by the letters D, U, H, and the number 2.

Exhausted...

Hello all. I'm exhausted.

Whether or not you want to know about it, I'm going to tell you why. :) In an effort to spend less money (and as a result put more money in his own pocket), the owner of the company where I work rented out half of our space. Chowderhead!

As a result, we've had to uproot all our equipment and put it into half the space. Also, we have a really important meeting with some potential partners tomorrow. So the entire week, we've been killing ourselves to get the place clean and presentable.

So, I'm tired and I'm tempted to play hooky tomorrow and stay home. I WISH!

This post was brought to you by the letters R, E, E, K, and the number 5.

Battlestar Galactica

So, which of you out there are Battlestar Galactica fans? I'm talking mainly about the new series, but the old one would be fine. So, is anyone other than me truly saddened by the fact that it takes so increadibly long between seasons these days? I really like this series, but to make me wait so long between episodes is brutal. Too bad I didn't have nice huge capacity DVR when it the series first started. Oh well, such is life.

I like the fact that this new series makes better use of ethnicity than the old series. If my memory serves me correctly, there was only one minority in the entire show. That would be Boomer. :) There were pitifully few (if any) women in any sort of leadership roles. This new series has women and minorities all over the place. I'd like to see another brother or sister as one of the top-tier characters, but I'm not going to complain. :)

That being said, go watch the mini-series and as many seasons as are on DVD. It's a really good show. I really like what was done to the Cylons. I think you will too :)

This post was brought to you by the letters B, S, G, and the number 2003.

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The Digging is Complete!

I finally finished the expansion to my garden! At least the rough turnover of the soil by hand. :) I still need to till it up to properly incorporate the remaining plant material and grass clippings into the dark clay-like soil in order to loosen it up and enrich it. Next year's garden will be better than this year's garden was. :) It will be bigger overall and the things I plant won't be so crowded. I'll actually be able to weed it, not that weeding is fun, but I'll be able to perform said weeding next year since things will not be so crowded. :)

There are a few sprinkler heads that I'll have to change out and a few other specific things, but the hardest part is done! Yay me!

I'm sure most of you aren't interested in my gardening exploits, but there they are anyway. :)

The next large-ish project is to put in some duct work in the basement so it will be heated this winter. We'll see when that'll get done. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters G, A, R, D, E, N, and the number 7.

Turkey!

Tomorrow is Turkey Day! I get to cook the turkey! This bird is HUGE. Nearly 24 pounds of turkey meat waiting for me to season and shove into the oven.

JOY!

Anyway, I need to do some prep.

Later!

This post was brought to you by the letters T, H, C, and the number 23.

Haiku for Our Four-Legged Friend

Energy bundle,
active dynamo of fun -
Harry the fur ball.

To appease my royal family, Here's an alternate final line.

George the curious. :)

This post and the doggerel it contains was brought to you by the letters G, H, S, and the number 8.

Blame this on Gun Fighter

I will torture you all now with bad haiku and blame the Gun Fighter for it. :) You have my apologies.

Consumed by apathy,
subsumed in indifference,
the laughter has died.

This post was brought to you by the letters H, A, I, K, U, and the numbers 5, 7, 5, and 17.

Complainer...

Long time, no see. It's been nearly a month since I've last posted. I've been tempted to post quite a few times since then, but I realized it was a complaint and consciously decided not to post because it was specifically a complaint. I don't want to be known out there in the blog-o-sphere as a complainer, because I'm not. I'm sure the Queen will have something to say about that, but she's in a unique position and can comment as she wishes.

So, I'm going to try to cut down on my percentage of complaints in the coming posts. Let' hope I can make it happen. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters W, H, A, H, and the number 26.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to the Queen! :) She is 29 today. :)

This post is brought to you by the letters Y, S, F, B, and the number 29.

Vista?

So... M$ releases a new OS at the end of last year and so far, in nearly a year since the release, they haven't solved some simple compatibility issues with software that's LESS than a year old. In fact, software that's been released since the new OS was released doesn't work with it because of OS issues. M$ says there are issues with it's memory management which is at the root of a bunch of problems. Yes, I'm talking mostly about games (and the demos).

The argument can be made that it's the game manufacturers' responsibility to make their software compatible with the OS, but it also means that the OS manufacturer needs to make the OS able to deal with NEW software and give the game manufacturers USEFUL tools and specs (that aren't out of date immediately and/or changed every 2 months) to use to develop their games. I don't think M$ has lived up to their responsibility, especially since their OS costs so much more than it should.

If you compare the features that Vista offers, to the other OSes out there that offer comparable features (notably nearly any version of UNIX, any distro of Linux, or release of MacOS), you'll find that Vista is over-priced by a factor of 10! MacOS X for instance costs about $40 and Apple is still making money on each copy they sell. If Vista cost only $40 a copy, I think we could more easily swallow its flaws. As it is, $400 a pop should buy me an OS that was ready for the main stream and has all the tools that was promised. This thing is reminding me of what happened with Windows ME (and even M$ admits that ME was a failure).

This may or may not happen with this OS, but I'm only partially impressed with the OS. It has NOT lived up to the hype so far. Sure, you can perform word processing, web browsing, and other mundane things in this new OS, but you can't play the graphically intensive games people want to play. There are 3 versions of Battlefield, for instance, that you can't play on a Vista box. There are a number of other games that perform significantly WORSE on Vista than on any other OS. This was after making adjustments for Vista's memory issues.

Oh, by the way, WoW seems to work fine, but then again, this machine is so much faster than the other machine I was using that I wouldn't be able to notice any performance issues Vista did or did not introduce because the rest of the equipment is so much better.

I think I'll have to dual boot my machine in order to run the apps I'd like. Currently, it looks like I should get a second hard drive and install XP Pro on it. That way, I can have my gaming setup on one drive and everything else on another.

This post was brought to you by the letters X, P, and the number 2.

At home

So Last Night, my walking pneumonia decided it wanted to kick my ass again and the net result is I wake up with a 101 degree fever, pretty hefty lower back pain, sweating through my shirt, and no sleep for my trouble. What gives? I felt OK yesterday and have been on the Doctor's meds for a few days now.

The fever broke less than an hour ago so I decided to get dressed and imitate a human for a bit. :) I guess it's time to remote into work and get some things done.

This post was brought to you by the letters T, E, M, P, and the number 101.

Finally

Hello all. It's finally happened. Last week, I was allowed to order my laptop. I got the rep to expedite it and it arrived yesterday. I'm using it right now! :) Of course, the Queen isn't happy with me at the moment because I've installed WoW on it and I'm waiting for the updates to download. :)

I'm so far really happy with my new laptop. It's a Dell Inspiron 1720 and it's pretty much maxed out. I'm stoked! I just have to finish installing the rest of my software. That'll take the better part of the rest of the week.

I've been diagnosed with mycoplasma (walking pneumonia) and I'm on meds to clear it up. I'll be better in a few days.

This post was brought to you by the letters U, D, I, S, and the number 8.