To Do List

1) Update the blog template.

2) Start learning PHP.

3) Apply for the ND ticket lottery (Penn State and a TBD home game)

4) Donate money so I can be in next year's lottery.

5) Buy my sister a graduation present (once I think of something good).

6) Buy a train ticket so I can actually attend the graduation.

Weekend tease.

So we had the first beautiful weekend of the year. Last week I was hoping to go for a bike ride on Sunday. Unfortunately, as the weekend drew closer and closer, and after tow nights at the office to 10pm, it became clear that I was going to need to work on the weekend. I suppose I got up before 11 am I would only have needed to work on Saturday, but it's still the weekend, and I still sleep like a college student, consequently I sat in front of a computer Saturday and Sunday afternoon. ::sigh:: Somehow telling myself that I got more experience in AJAX technologies isn't particularly satisfying.

In other news...damn how about that sweep of the Yankees! The back to back to back to back home runs were almost orgasmic to watch. I'm still a little concerned that we only one the whole series by 4 or 5 runs against a team that doesn't have ANYONE to pitch, but I'll take the result.

I went grocery shopping last night and noticed a woman checking out the expiration dates on the bottled water. This bothered me for two reasons. 1)Water has an expiration date?!?! Do the polar water molecules eventually eat away the plastic or something and make the water less safe? I find this unlikely. Is there a chemist lurking on this blog that can explain this to me? 2)The expiration date wasn't for like 2 years (after the woman looked at them i felt the need to do it myself), how long are you going to hoard water in your apartment? Are you planning for the apocolypse? Why would spend money on bottled water and then not drink it?

Two weekends ago I went through a downloading binge (what else are you doing to do on a rainy Sunday), and today I got around to thinking, I wonder if I shoudl download songs that I have tapes for. It's not like you can easily rip them to a computer, or like I ever listen to them, but a lot of them have music I like. I just get hung up on the fact that I paid for the music once (even if it was like 15 years ago), and I don't want to do it again.

Everything I can remember

So yeah, it's been a while. I haven't been posting or reading. It's kinda bad. This entry will be random, and possibly a little rambling.

Fashion:
I've noticed recently the wallet chain is making a come back. Though its really more among the ghetto kids the the punk kids. I remarked on this phenomenon to a friend of mine and she said that not only is they ghetto crowd sporting the wallet chains, but that they've also started wearing suspenders and the checkered vans. I didn't believe and then saw that exact combination on the way home. When the hell did the ghetto kids start looking to the nerdy emo/punk kids for fashion ideas. Next dogs and cats will start marrying each other and there will be mass hysteria.

1 Year
March 10th was my one year anniversary in the city. This also marked the end of my opposition to dating anyone in the city. This will have more relevance later, but I'm trying to go chronologically here.

St. Patrick's day.
1 Hockey game and 3 bars later, I got two phone numbers. How a guy wearing jeans and hoodie who isn't shaved and is already 6 hours into drinking pulls this off is beyond me. I celebrated by having a vague recollection of catching the uptown D train at 14th street. The next thing I remember is peeing on the platform at 205th street in the Bronx. I really need to stop passing out on trains. Of course by the same token, anyone that trys to mug me will be really disapointed because I usually don't have much money left in my wallet by the end of nights like that anway.

Birthday
Thanks to those who left my the myspace birthday love, it was appreciated.

Speaking of birthdays, that meant I as in Atlantic City. It was good tiems. I love taking people's money at the poker table. I love it even more when they're smart enough to know what i have, but dumb enough to keep putting down more money just so they can see my cards. Thanks for bringing me back into the game kids! This excursion involved the small but good crew of Rory and Jim; amazingly we all survived. I think we drunk dialed everyone that we mutually knew and had numbers for until our phones died. Apologies if you feel left out. Get me your number and I promise it won't happen again.

Anyway, after gambling, Hooters, a stop back to the room to watch the Final Four, we headed out to a bar with a cover band. We were hanging out, singing along to our favorite dorm room party songs when some drunk idiot bumped into me causing me to spill my beer a little. (FYI, the bar was crowded, but there was still sufficient walking room.) Being the asshole that I am, I felt the need to shove back. This caused him to shove me back causing me to spill more of my beer onto the courgar I was flirting with. Thankfully, Jim being the least drunk and most level headed of all us stepped between us so I didn't do something insanely stupid. Well the night continues on without incident for another hour or 2 and the cover band wraps it up for the night.

After releiving himself, Jim returns to tell me that the guy I was trying to pick a fight with was apparently hanging on to the urinal for dear life. That would have been funny enough, but then the guy decides he wants to try to pick the fight this time. He wedges himself between me and the wall as I was next to and I think says something about not liking the sideburns (hey they're not for everyone). Jim this time decides that the smart choice is to just take my beer from me to prevent any alcohol abuse. In what can only be described as an amazing degree of restraint (particularly considering that I'm drunk and teh bar is closing so getting thrown out wouldn't be that big of a deal), I convince the guy to get the hell away from me. The guy then wanders forward a few steps, and I guess he tried to get on stage, where he ended up tripping and completely taking himself out. He was then carried out of the bar by security. High comedy.

The Academy is...
A friend of mine had an extra ticket to a "live taping" of The Academy is... for MTV. This conveniently fell the week I had off from rehearsal so I could actually go. I only knew 2 songs by them, but I liked those 2 songs so decided hey, free ticket lets go check them out. I was disturbed by 2 things. First, I had to walk through a metal detector to get in. I can deal with this, but the fact that I set it off and I was told to keep walking was really weird. Second, all ages shows really kinda suck because hanging out with high school kids makes me feel a little dirty. It's also a little sad that I probably have more in common with the 40 and 50 year old parents than I do with the high school kids. Anyway, they put on a decent show, though I don't think I'll be buying any CD's.

Notre Dame Hockey
A dispointing second round exit, but what I really want to talk about is our first round opponent. Alabama-Huntsville. That's right, a school in Alabama can support a D-I hockey team. WTF? Can anyone explain to me how this is possible? Is there another D-I hockey school with 500 miles of them? Who the hell plays hockey in Alabama? Needless to say I'm perpelexed.

Sit down for this one.
I'm actually dating someone. We had agreed to "casually date" with the implication of being able to date other people, though it seems to be sliding towards "exlusively date." While its nice for now, I'm pretty sure it isn't going to be going much of anywhere for 1 main reason: she's spending the summer studying abroad. There are several other contributing factors that cause me to have doubts as well, but if I am going to do this dating thing, I suppose you have to throw yourself out there a little right?

getting caught up.

So the weekend after being woken up by runners I was woken up by workers sawing through bricks on the building across the street. I thought the blue collar people in this city had unions that told them not to work on weekends, then someone pointed out to me that the unions actually tell them to work on weekends so they make time and a half. I can't win. It's like some divine sing telling me I should grow up and start getting out of bed earlier on the weekends so I do something productive with me day. Personally, I'd rather make a lot more money and move into a high rise apartment building where I'm above all the noise. They seem to be equally difficult, but the making money idea seems a lot more enjoyable.

In other news, the second busiest time of the sports year after football season, is march madness. I may disappear for a little while.

Speaking of sports, I missed ND's loss in the tournament. I'm disappointed obviously, but I didn't see the game so I can't really comment on it. I will comment on the lack of underdogs in the sweet sixteen though. This is the most boring tournament in years. At least the women's tournament has an underdog in the sweet sixteen. I'm officially on the Marist bandwagon, but I'm pretty sure Tennessee will kill them in the next round.

Friday night I was supposed to hang out some old coworkers from Bristol, but then that whole nor'easter thing happened, and they decided it wasn't worth risking their lives to go watch the Knicks, which I can't really blame them for. Anyway, the Knicks donned green unis for the game which I thought were pretty tight. If I cared about the NBA at all, and was a Knicks fan, I definitely would have spent too much on a jersey.

St. Patty's day I found myself back at MSG for the Rangers vs. Bruins. This game was a blowout, but it was also the first time I've seen the goalie get pulled, only to see the replacement get pulled later and have the starter go back in. After this I did bit of bar hopping and ended up meeting a couple of cute girls. Good times all around except for the hour of time missing when I tried to take the subway home. That was a little scary.

Getting ornery

Apparently the theme for this week is to find those little things that annoy the piss out of me. There is currently some dumb old bitch doing 7 loads of laundry at once. There are 4 washers in my building, so occupied them all for one 40 minute set. Annoying, but I can deal. But after the first 4 you have 3 more! Are you fucking serious! Are you washing your entire wardrobe? What the fuck is your problem? Did your closet explode followed by a literal pissing match that would cause this? On top of this I'm getting sick and was planning on taking care of myself and was going to go to bed early. Now I have to stay up late to finish my own damn laundry (a for more reasonable 2 loads I might add). I hate people.

I hate runners

"Run for fun" is a concept that is completely beyond my comprehension. The list of things that I would do before running include such items, but are by no means limited to stabbing myself, jumping out a 3rd story window and participating in ultimate fighting. What really pisses me about runners is that they seem to have this compulsion to do their running at the ass crack of dawn, and if there's something I hate more than running, its morning people.

Now the reason for this bitter post is the 5k that was run this morning up here in Washington Heights. From at at least 9-11 there were a bunch of people outside screaming and making noise ruining my beauty sleep. C'mon people its a distance race, its even more boring than auto racing. At least there is a chance for a crash and explosions and shit to go flying there. That's something worth getting excited over.

Also, its fucking March. Why do you want to run first thing in the morning? Would waiting until like noon when it might be a bit more comfortable be a more ideal time for running? Hmmmm? The only running that is mildly interesting is a sprinting because close and its quick. Now I know I have no power to stop people from running, but I do have an idea to make things more interesting in a distance race. This will even add a true element of strategy that I'm sure the few runners still reading this will claim exists already. My thought would be that at random points during would get attacked in different ways. At one point they could be like pelted with footballs. At another you could have people come out and try to just body check the runners (running the gauntlet was always one of my favorite hockey drills). You could also have a point they have to battle people with melee weapons, so instead of handing the runners water as they go by you hand them like a club or a bow. You could also incorporate a team concept into this as you want to run in a pack to defend yourself, or have certain members of a team try and take the hits to defend the better runner. Don't tell me you love watching this on TV.

As I stepped...

As I stepped out of the grocery store on to the snowy sidewalk, all I coudl think was, "I'm carrying a bag with eggs, I better not slip."

Music: "A Day in the Life" - The Beatles, "Don't You Want Me" - The Human League

Less Social Life=more blogging

So, many of you are probably myspace users, with different degrees of frequency, but regardless of the frequency you're probably aware of the fact that there about a million technical issues with it. I had assumed that these were mostly database and server problems since the load time on pages is waaaay longer than what it should be for pages that are relatively simple looking. Well, the web developer in me decided to play with my page a little. At first I was using one of those engines that creates the code for the page, then I realized that I get paid to do this sort of thing 5 days a week for another site, and that I have the ability to figure this out on my own. Wow, do they have bad front-end code too. It made me cringe. You'd think with the popularity and the fact that it is now part of a huge company they'd be able to hire a few decent developers to bring the code up to standard. Just awful.

A myspace question for females. What is the most common ad you see upon login? Guys seem to get a "True ad which usually contains a half naked model which makes True seem like it is a hair's breath short of a porn site. I find it amusing.

Random poll: Which do you find more amusing. A UPS ad that uses The Postal Service as background music, or a Mercury ad that uses a band called Morningwood. I'm partial to Morning wood, but that's just me.

Also of note: While watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight, I noticed that two of the top three "Newsmakers" where mentioned on Deadspin today (the Bears fan changing is name to Peyton Manning, and the Chinese inability to hire a good translator).

Short thoughts

More Superbowl stuff.

Billy Joel: I love you man, but your voice isn't what it used to be. Thanks for keeping the national anthem an appropriate length though(1:30). I hate divas.

Prince: I don't understand why he's getting such great reviews. He wasn't all that great. He was just better than the past several halftimes. That doesn't make him good, just mediocre. If you have a 15 minute show, you do you own shit, you don't do covers. That's retarded. I'll admit to being biased because I wanted to party like it was 1999, but that still doesn't save him from mediocrity. I will give him credit for the phallic reference that I honestly didn't catch until it was pointed out to me later. Credit must be given where credit is due.

Note to self, when making major purchases, check the discounts you get through your company so you don't have to spend half an hour on the phone giving customer service reps new and and interesting problems to solve as you try to save yourself some cash.

Yesterday my elevator was out of service. 6th floor elevator building is really nice. 6th floor walkup is really shitty.

Worst. Commercials. Ever.

I think Bud Light definitely won the award for "best overall", with Career Builder coming in second, but otherwise, I think this was the most dismal year for commercials ever. Granted they've sucked for the past sevearl years, but there were usually more things that at least made me smile. There weren't even many of those this year. As far as the game went, I'd have to say it went more or less as I woudl have predicted it, thought Colts pulled away a little before I thought they would. Whatever, that Pats weren't in it so I didn't really care that much.

In other news, I ponied up for a new PC today. Since my current PC is 6 years old, had 500MG left on the hard drive, and my virus software expired yesterday, I decided to kiss that Christmas bonus goodbye and buy a new PC. For those of you that think I shodul have bought a Mac, die, now.

Also, if you are a night owl, and coem accross that conflux of a cold night where you want to go out, but don't want to go far, and can't find anyone that want's to go out near you, and consequently you just stay up late watchign random late night TV, you come accross some real intersting commecials. For instance, last night I learned they have plastic surgery for vaginas if you feel your vagina is too loose after childbirth. I'll let the feminists decide whether or not this is actually good idea. I also discovered that on public acess channels, not only do they advetise phone sex, but they do it with naked women. Good tiems all around. Sadly, if it wans't Superbowl weekend, these two discoveries would have been the highlight of my weekend.

Get Random

So I'm wasting my day on Saturday (like I do most Saturdays) when I get this call from this girl who claims to "Amy." Now, I have 2 Amy's in my phone, and she wasn't either of them, and while I certainly have had plenty of drunken nights where details are a little fuzzy over the past few weeks, none of them were in situations where I was meeting new people. She goes on to mention something about my Aunt, and there was some more "blah blah blah" before I stop her and say "how did you get my number again?" Apparently, my aunt in Florida is friends with this girls mother, and my number got passed around.

Apparently there was supposed to some sort of warning that this call was coming, which I sure as hell didn't get. Anyway, she said she'd call back some other time since I had plans that evening, but given my "who the fuck are you" response I doubt it. I'm fine with this. The last thing I need is the aunt who perpetually thinks I'm 4 years old trying to set me up with someone. You'd think she'd take the hint that I don't really want anything to do with her with the minimal amount I have any contact with her (2 thank-you e-mails for Christmas and birthday, and obligatory calls on holidays with the fam).

Sorry, that turned into rant. In other news I went to bed at 5am Sunday and woke up at 3 in the afternoon. I'm hoping I can get some semblence of a sleep pattern back tonight.

Your government at work

So I got my social security statement the other day, which was mailed to my East Hartford address, but lets ignore the fact that I've lived in NYC for 9 months now. Anyway it said I have 19 of the 40 credits i need to start receiving social security. Now, I'm 24, and have had some sort of job 8 years. Assuming I maintain some sort of employment for the next nine years, and assuming I continue to collect credits at the current rate, I'll be able to start receiving social security when I'm 33. Rock on. Maybe I'll be a millionaire by then too....

In other news I finally got off my lazy ass and networked the computers in my apartment. Now I have to wait 2 hours while all my mp3's transfer to my laptop.

The motivating factor for this was that I finally joined the ranks of the ipod users. I still don't think I'll ever be a real New Yorker, but I have a feeling this might be a step in that direction.


Anyway, I have new year's story I will share when I get back from New Orleans. I might have New Orleans stories too, but I might drink those memories away as well. We'll see. Anyway, here's a picture on the way I did a Times Square new years, 20 floors up.

Just for fun, some 2006 news oddities.

The year (and this week) in review

Through Thursday (barring any unforseen disasters) I will go out every night of the week (from Friday last week). Soon my liver will be quite angry with me.

Anyway, I've liked this idea. Go to your calendar, find the first entry for each month of 2006, and post the first sentence of it in your journal/blog/what-have-you.

January: So I've been blogging for a while, but it has been tucked off in a hidden corner of the net, and there are some topics that are not as well suited for that blog, so I decided to create this public one.

February: FINALLY! I'm getting the hell out of CT and moving to a real city.

March: So I was browsing through some blogs and I stumbled upon one that made a mention of today as Ash Wednesday.

April: I'm going to miss having TV at my desk.

May: Yup, today pretty much blew my weekend out of the water.

June: Yesterday was one of my coworker's last day.

July: So, I have returned from a fun filled week of camp.

August: I had to stay a little late at work today.

September: Question: if you were hanging out someone at a bar who had/was recovering from cold sores, would you willingly offer that individual your drink, and then finish it after they tried it?

October: 'Twas a good weekend.

November: Tomorrow I get to spend the day on the company's tab.

December: You want to know what this is?

Hmm...I think I need to come up with better opening sentences... Though this did work out kinda well since I just stared blogging in January.

For your entertainment

While exercising will power, I will avoid any racially insensitive comments, and just post this link. :-)