Random Crap

Yo.

Just chilling in front of the Hawks game with the laptop... A bit of a boring game as it really means nothing. The Seahawks position is frozen in the playoffs.

Clyde is busy entertaining himself chasing his tail. He is also doing some weird contortion thing. While laying down, he puts his right hind leg over his shoulder and mouths it on his left side. A welcome break from him annoying me earlier... He unpluggeg the entertainment center. Pain in the neck dog.

I enjoyed watching Josh Brown make a good open field tackle of Atlanta's kick returner. Good fun, but I don't need any of that in the playoffs.

T'was a good Christmas. Spent the morning at home having our family Christmas, the late morning having brunch at my parents, and the evening having dinner with Carrie's. Clyde wasn't much for it as he had to spend most of it in his crate. We did come home between to let him out and play.

He really likes his presents. He got a giant Kong, and a big rubber squirrel. He doesn't rip into presents like Mom's dog does, he was content to just play with the whole package. I think it has to do with his developing Lab soft mouth. I had to help him get it open. Later Carrie and I were exchanging our gifts for each other when he came upstairs, stuck his head in the tree and made off with his other present. He took it downstairs and played with that package too.

The squirrel is a hit. You can stuff treats inside it and it has little spikes on the opening so he can't get them out easily. I actually had to trim them down a bit so I could get the treats out. We put a few carrots in there when we put him to bed and he played with it all night. ALL NIGHT! It sounded like rocks in the dryer. Annoying.

Talking about annoying, now he is banging my knee with the damn ten pound Kong.

One of my presents I got this Christmas was a cold. Bitchin'. It seems that more often than not I am sick this time of the year.

Well it looks like the Hawks are gonna lose. No biggie, they are coasting against a team that probably wants to finish a miserable season on a good note. Ooops, the Hawks just scored a TD and are trying a onside kick.... Got it, but there is a flag.

Dammit, offsides on Burleson, rekick 5 yards back.

Nope the falcons get it. That'll be the game. Holmgrens pissed at someone. The Falcons are now just taking a knee.

Lol, they just doused their interim head coach with the gatorade. Like I said, it looks like the Falcons really needed that win to go into the offseason on a bit of a positive note. As they are not a member of my hated teams (49ers, Rams, Cardinals, Steelers and Broncos*) I am fine with that.

Woo, look at me, live blogging!

Well, now that the game is done it looks like I best be getting something productive done. I have three light bulbs that need to be replaced. One that requires a ladder, one that needs screws removed to do it and one in front of the house that seems to burn out bi-weekly.

*note - Oakland used to be on my list but since their Superbowl appearance they have been so pathetic that they don't matter anymore.

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Red Red Wine

...Didn't make me feel so fine.

Well friends, I sure screwed up and to tell you the truth I saw it coming from a million miles away.

Last night Carrie and I decided to sit down and watch my favorite Christmas movie, "Christmas Vacation". After my 'Wine and Cheese' birthday party we had quite a bit of wine (and cheese) left over, including some bottles that were brought as gifts. I'm not complaining, quite the opposite, just setting up the story. Well I figured I would sit down and watch the movie with a glass of one of the reds that was given to me.

Mistake.

Clark had jus discovered that his tree was a bit 'pitchy' when the land shark struck.

Clyde launched at my glass of wine when I wasn't looking, spraying wine every where. My shirt, hair, face, wall, carpet, and the couch. The carpet isn't a big deal at all as it is the same color as the wine. The couch, however, isn't. There was red wine on half of the cushions and pillows. Being a sectional, that is a lot.

Basically it was time for a freakout (by me). No, we didn't beat the dog, but he got to go to his kennel. It was his wild time and we didn't need to be keeping and eye on him while trying to save the couch. Carrie jumped on the internet and came up with a solution of a cup of hydrogen peroxide and a tablespoon of laundry detergent. We blotted the countless spots with that and then used a diluted solution in our small carpet and upholstery cleaning machine, the Bissell Little Green. This thing is a must have if you have an indoor dog or anyone spill-prone. After all the commotion and a crappy day at work*, I was done for the night. I went to bed and slept for ten hours, a rarity for me.

The good news is after inspecting everything this morning, the only loss is an undershirt that we ignored. I couldn't find a trace of the wine on the couch, thank God.

Lesson learned, no red wine while siting at the couch with the dog during crazy time. If I would have waited a half an hour he would have been curled up on the floor 'not' snoring. (heh- mom, sister, though their dogs would have to work quite a bit harder to cause the damage that Clyde did with a single lunge.) Have I said before that I can't wait for the puppy phase to pass?

Here is the troublemaker watching me write this....


That is jowl slobber on my shirt... He like to share.



* Note- I had a file that I had spent all week working on crash. It would not open. After two hours of trying different things I got it to work, but a few more gray hairs popped out of my head in the process.

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Happy Birthday to Me

Yesterday was my birthday and I am now 29 years old (heh).

Being an adult now, Carrie had the great idea to host a wine and cheese party instead of my typical cooler full of beer and see what happens party. She did a great job. Both of our families showed up and some good friends. It was a good time.

This was Clydes second try in a social situation. Age factored (he is 9 months old), I give him a solid B. My biggest concern was if he would be jumping up on people. Being a 75+ pound dog he can take people down. He did great in that respect, I don't recall him jumping up on anyone. There was the typical leaving of 'Clyde trails' of slobber on pants. Because there was good smelling stuff like cheese and prosciutto around, he was doing quite a bit counter cruising occasionally popping up to try and make a snag. Luckily there was always someone there to knock him down.

...Until late in the evening. We had retired to the living room when he sneaked away and downed a bowl of shrimp that was in the middle of the table. I blame it on myself as I had been keeping him by my side and lost track of him. He was yanked off and scolded but I think it was a net win in his mind. He got some tasty shrimp. In fact he asked me this morning if he could have some for breakfast.

Today as I am writing this, there is some brie on the counter that we didn't put away last night. He has been eyeing it all morning popping up every once in awhile. He is getting much better at getting down now without me having to yank him. A sharp 'OFF!' is all it takes. Eventually (duh) we would like to curb this behavior altogether. As frustrating as it is, we are making progress.

Best present, no offense to others, but you had no chance, Mom brought me a pie. I quickly hid it away because I wasn't going to share that! Carrie didn't even know I had it until I showed it to her this morning.

It was a good night

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New Toy II

So me and my new laptop have spent a weekend together and I am in love...

As I said the other day, this is my first laptop. I've used them for work, but this one was purchased to be my toy.

Originally I thought I wanted the biggest, baddest, laptop that I could find, but I soon changed my mind. Around October I decided to go the opposite direction. I wanted a lightweight computer. So I ordered up a Dell XPS M1330. After five excruciating days, I found out that I was denied credit. What!! Come to find out, I had clicked on the 'submit' button too many times so they had received like 5 apps from me in one evening. My bad. I was a bit miffed that they couldn't have contacted me and said.

"Excuse me Mr. Mike, but we got five apps from you in five minutes and were concerned that someone was trying to pull something".

I was a bit miffed and cooled my heels for a week. Come to find out, it was a good thing. The next week, it was leaked that Dell was going to make a 15" version of the M1330. It would have the same good looks, be a bit heavier, but still on the lighter side of the 15" units. Woo Hoo!, this was what I needed (wanted). The wait for them to release the thing was annoyingly long but I persevered, and on November 27, I ordered up a Dell XPS M1530.

So far I am really enjoying the thing. There isn't really anything that I don't like about it. I got both the 6 and 9 cell battery so I can have the best of both worlds, lightweight and longer battery life. To early to give a full review, but so far, so good. I am a horrible reviewer anyways, faults are just character to me. Spice of life.

An added bonus is with this thing being portable, I can use it any where. Which helps a great deal with Clyde the beast. Instead of being upstairs in our office, I can be downstairs at the dining room table. I can keep track of the guy in a large portion of the house. At the moment he is curled up in a ball in the family room. Nose to bottom. To bad I can't do that.....

Later!
Mike

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NFC West Champs

Four in a row!



Ho hum, another year, another NFC West title. With yesterdays thorough drubbing of the hated Arizona Cardinals the Hawks have once again made it to the playoffs for the fifth year in a row. How many other teams can say that? Not many. In fact, the number is two, the Colts with 6 appearances in a row, and the Patriots with 5. Not too shabby!

The game yesterday was a blast, one of the more fun games that I have been too. Hasselbeck was on fire, hitting everyone. Literally. (He hit a TV cameraman throwing the ball away at one point. Kearney has come alive, throwing old man Kurt Warner on the ground three times. I'm really liking Trufant this year, and his three interceptions didn't hurt that. The highlight of the game was his second interception tha the ran back 84 yards. He ran directly down the sideline almost the whole way, running directly at us. Beautiful.




Three more games to go before the playoffs begin and I would like to see them go full throttle the whole time. I overheard someone say that teh think think the Hawks should rest everyone and lose the next three to avoid the hot Vikings. What a load of crap that would be! The goal isn't to win A playoff game, the goal is to win ALL playoff games. You got to play them sometime, Might as well do it in the brutally loud Qwest Field.

Go Hawks!!

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New Toy

Woo hoo, Mike has finally stepped into the 2000's and purchased a laptop!

To be honest I waited all this time because I couldn't find one that did what I wanted for a price that I wanted to pay. Well that day has come folks! No longer am I sitting in front of the same desk that I have always sat at when I am blogging... I am actually at the dinning room table right now!

Yeah, yeah, you've been there, done that, a million times. Don't rain on my parade, this is a first for me, if you don't count my Blackberry. I have written emails while on the toilet at work with that.....

That's all I have to say right now. I have literally been on this thing less than an hour. At the moment I am busily installing all the programs that I love. Google Earth, Google SketchUp, MS VB 2008...

It is an all out geek-fest in my living room at the moment.

Goodnight,
Mike

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Van Halen

Freakin sweet!!!



Last night Van Halen stormed into town with Diamond David Lee Roth (Finally!) and blew me away. The only thing that disappointed was that the night eventually had to end.

It was one of the greatest concerts I have experienced. Yeah, technically, there have been better concerts, but this was Van freaking Halen, the band that weaned me off of my dads music. Before VH it was John Denver, after, rock and roll! The started rocking with 'You Really Got Me' and didn't stop until they walked off the stage before their encore. I stood and sang out loud with the familiar lyrics along with everybody else, occasionally whipping out the old air guitar. Probably one of the most electric crowds I have been apart of. The energy there could have lit the city for a month.

It wasn't the whole Van Halen. Michael Anthony was replaced with Wolfgang Van Halen, Eddie's son. It was 3/4 Van Halen, but unlike the past two decades, it was the proper 3/4. Yes, I like Michael Anthony on bass, but if made to choose between him or Dave, I'll go with Dave every time. ...and he didn't let me down last night. He is a fantastic front man for a rocking party band. I love the campy Vegas off-the-strip lounge act.

Eddie was Eddie (read: amazing). As a guitar hack, I was mesmerized by the close ups of his fingers. The guy makes it look as easy as breathing. At almost 53 years old he was bounding around the stage like a 30 year old. :) Is there any greater?

Wolfgang was great on the bass. My friend complained that he didn't have much of a stage presence, but what do you expect from a 16 year old? He was like an active John Entwistle. When I was 17 I spent the summer working with my dad (I now work for the same company again..) but it was nothing like that! It was pretty cool seeing him and Eddie singing background vocals into the same mic.

Again, as a huge DLR era Van Halen fan that was in elementary school when their last album together came out, the show was sweet. Sadly I know it will never happen again. If they stick together with Dave (wagers anyone) they'll tour with some new music. This show didn't. It was every song that you could possibly want to hear. there was no playing of Van Hagar songs* and no David Lee Roth solo stuff. Face it, that is what you want when you go see a band that is 30 years (!?!?!?) old.

The highlight of the night for me was 'Ice Cream Man'. Dave came out with an acoustic guitar, and told a story about growing up in the suburbs, "where they cut down all the trees and name streets after them", before getting into the son. If you know the song, they stayed true to it and rocked out at the end. Fantastic!

Set list:

1. You Really Got Me
2. I'm the One
3. Runnin' With the Devil
4. Romeo Delight
5. Beautiful Girls
6. Dance the Night Away
7. Atomic Punk
8. Everybody Wants Some!
9. So This is Love?
10. Mean Street
11. Pretty Woman
Drum Solo
12. Unchained
13. I'll Wait
14. And the Cradle Will Rock...
15. Hot for Teacher
16. Little Dreamer
17. Jamie's Cryin'
18. Ice Cream Man
19. Panama
Guitar Solo
20. Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love
Encore

21. 1984/Jump

*- during his solo he played some 316 but we'll give him a pass on that as it was written for Wolfgang when he was born 3/16/91.

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Clyde's First Snow

Nothing better to get me into a holiday mood then some snow on December 1st...

Here is a quickly thrown together video of Clyde playing in it for the first time with a little holiday music thrown in to set the mood. Money shot at the 1:26 mark. He was having a blast out there. If I didn't drag him in, the dog would have tried to eat the whole yard.

Enjoy!

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Google Reader

Have you subscribed to Google Reader yet?

I have been using it for a while now and love it. It has allowed me to keep up on things that interest me way easier and less obtrusively than ever before. Things like CAD tips, Formula 1 racing, automobile news, NFL news, tech new, airplane news, sailing news... You get the point.

Here is a typical shot of my reader...



It is showing the contents of my 'technology' folder which should probably be called gadgets. On the left under technology you can see all the feeds that I subscribe too that I have tagged with that. The ones in bold such as 'Crave: the gadget blog' have unread items and it shows how many in parenthesis.

Here come the beauty of the reader. If you look on the right side of the screen you can see all the headers of all the articles that are unread by me. Do I read all of these? Hell no! I can quickly scan the list and read just the ones that look interesting. 5 seconds to do what would take 5 minutes the 'old fashioned' way of navigating to a site, scanning through all the stories, then reading the interesting ones. I have 55 subscriptions right now and get around 400 new articles every week day. It typically takes me 30 minutes a day to clear that out. It's not work, it is comparable to newspaper time.

Lets say there is a blog that you enjoy reading, but the writer can be a lazy bum sometimes and won't post for long periods occasionally. Sound familiar? You old-skool peeps would would probably tire of clicking on said blog if it had a long drought. Eventually you would forget about it. Not so with the reader. It tirelessly checks often, I believe even multiple times an hour looking for updates. I have a blog of a fella that is currently sailing around the world. Often hell go weeks without posting because he is in the middle of an ocean. With out the reader I would have lost interest in his site long ago.

The final cool thing about the reader that I will tell you about today is the new 'Discover' button that you see on the left in the green area. It recommends other feeds that you may not have seen that may interest you by taking in account your reading habits, location and such. With the little that I have played with it so far, it does a good job.

Damn, one more thing that is slick. I you have a web enabled mobile phone, you can get to you reader over that and Reader will format it to read on you small screen. I was in Austin, Texas a few weeks ago with out a laptop (I have one on order...) and it was a great way to pass time.

I hope this encouraged you to swing by www.google.com/reader and check it out. As you can tell, I highly recommend it!

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