The Captain Is Back

Every Great Sandwich Needs a Name (but this is still a great sandwich)

2011-02-24T23:09:00.000-05:00

I haven't come up with one yet, but this is my create-a-sandwich I eat pretty often. I like the different contrasts it provides and like to mentally pat myself on the back for it's creation often.

Sweet - Honey Mustard
Meat - (Peppercorn) Turkey
Cheese - Pepperjack
Hot - Jalapenos
Cool - Avacado
Lettuce

Coffee is AWESOME

2010-11-03T21:49:00.000-05:00

If you're on Long Island you should check out Roast in Patchogue for its GRAND OPENING weekend on Nov 13 and 14th. Take a sip and you'll instantly be transported to Seattle circa 1993 (minus the grunge music).

I bet you've never tasted coffee just roasted.

So do it.

Two Years, Two Months, One Day

2010-11-03T21:44:00.001-05:00

Good to know I still know how to type considering I do it every day for work. Just wanted to check in with the whole interwebs since I've been telling people about my Russian Star drink recently. Perhaps I'll even do this again sometime soon!

GOAL!!!!!!!!

2008-09-02T21:59:00.002-05:00

Well another one that I've decided on based on my performance today. Today (slightly to my surprise) I went down to the treadmill and ran one mile straight besting my previous high of 3/4 mile set on Saturday. Must have been the shoes!

Anyway so my new goal is to add an additional mile of consecutive running for every month that I keep running. So by the end of September I should hopefully be able to run 2 miles consecutively and so forth. I can't wait to find out!

Me+

2008-08-31T18:03:00.004-05:00

I guess it's easy to define something as a "hobby" once you start spending money on it. So today I will officially announce running/walking ("traversing") as a hobby of mine as I went out and bought some running sneakers specifically just to run in.

I purchased the Nike Air Pegasus+ 2007 which allows me to use the Nike+ running sensor I have to upload my stats to the Nike running web site. Luckily I found them for a great price as the Nike+ sneakers generally are sold at a premium over their other running shoes. I also found out that you don't actually need a Nano to use the sensor; Nike sells a wristband for Nano-less people such as myself which is what I'll be using.

I'm not usually one for paying for the privilege of someone else to keep track of statistics for me since I can generally easily do it myself, but seeing how easy it makes things and the motivation it brings I'd recommend the Nike+ system (or at the least using a GPS) to anyone who wants to start running.

Finally, my monthly tally for this month is... 36.9 miles including 14 of that running.
This actually is only since 8/7 so I should be able to hit 40 miles next month pretty easily as long as I can keep up the same pace!

I'm a Proclaimer

2008-08-09T23:35:00.006-05:00

I will walk 100 miles...and then I will walk 100 more.

I've decided on a new goal to walk/run 100 miles before the end of the year. I'm not including any traversing before I decided on this so currently I stand at 4.5 miles. I only need to average about a mile/day for the next few non winter months to make my goal which I'm confident I can do. Everything (walking, running, jogging, treadmills, ellipticals) is included in this, but I want to walk at least .5 miles to include it in my total.

I think I'll post monthly totals on here too.

On a similar topic Olaf has the Nike+ running kit thingie for his nano and it's pretty cool. Mostly because the kit keeps track of your running and updates the Nike+ website including keeping you up to date on whichever "program" you've chosen to do.

This is only for the Nano though and I already have a mini so I'm not getting another small iPod. I think it's pretty silly of Apple/Nike not expanding the user base of the kit even if the mini is a discontinued product. Supposedly one of the reasons for not supporting anything except the nano is that the other players are hard drive based, but I should be able to take the risk of my hard drive jumping up and down if I want to. Dumb.

My Fatness

2008-07-17T00:23:00.004-05:00

I generally try to go the gym, but as with most people I think I'll get in to ruts of not going or not going often enough. Several weeks back though I decided to attempt to exercise 4-5 times a week. This was like nothing I ever tried before... and I was able to successfully do it for a good 6 weeks before I inevitably got sick and was forced to take some time off.

That period was actually the incentive for this post as I woke up one morning and thought I noticed a slight flattening of my jolly belly. As anyone who's experienced a similar situation can imagine I was ecstatic. Was it just me though or was it really true?

Cut to present day. After my 6 weeks on, 4 weeks off, I've been back to the gym for the past week plus at the same pace as before I got sick. The cherry on top of all this is that I got a mention to me how my stomach looked slightly flatter recently (not a typo, there is an 'l' in there) which I've taken as confirmation of truth.

In general though it's hard for me to evaluate changes. My weight has fluctuated (on average) a tick upward; squarely now in the 160-165 range where previously it was 158-163. Is this good? I don't think my eating habits have changed, although it's difficult to always keep track of such things. I like to think this is a net positive though.

Bottom line, I feel better about myself, like to think I look better and have the confidence if some crazed HGH'd chick attacked me I'd have a chance to take her down now.

If You Can't Beat Them...Bribe People!

2008-05-21T23:11:00.004-05:00

Perhaps coming off the heels of their failed attempt to purchase Yahoo!, Microsoft has decided to pay users to use their search engine. This payment comes in the forms of rebates when you link-through from their live-search site. Apparently there are hundreds of retailers signed up for this service, including most of the "major" ones.

Not only does this smack of desperation to me, I don't really see how it could work. Sure there may be an initial increase in users using their search, but will that really pay off in the long run? What about once the rebates go away or become insignificant. Not to mention the fact that if some how the idea becomes successful, can't Google just copy it?

I'm going to take full advantage of the generosity of Microsoft since it's available though. I'll continue to use google as my main search engine and just link through to a product on live search (or maybe even paste in the url?) if I plan on buying something to get my rebate.

You need a windows live account to sign up and have to accumulate at least $5 in your account before you can get the cold hard cash. As well due to return scams, you'll have to wait a good 60 days before the transaction is posted to your account.
http://search.live.com/cashback

Like Looking In The Mirror

2008-03-29T21:45:00.001-05:00

Netflix in it's attempt to move more to a hybrid social site introduced the concept of "faves" a little while back. This is essentially a watered down "friend". Where as a "friend" is probably someone you know in real life, and therefore netflix allows you to see basically all the information they can see about themselves, a "fave" is someone you probably don't know. Therefore you can only see limited information about them such as 5-star rated movies, and genres or actors they watch a lot of.

Each potential "fave" has a similarity percentage ("friends" have a percentage as well) based on some netflix algorithm which is a quick way to see (hey!) how similar your movie watching tastes are. So as I sometimes do I was on one of the netflix pages where you can see potential "faves" and saw a person with an 86% similarity percentage; which is very high. In fact this would be the highest of any "fave" similarity percentage I've seen yet. With all this "friends"and "faves" stuff netflix also introduced user names which if you don't choose one will be auto-generated for you from as far as I can tell your first and last initial, and then a string of digits. This specific "fave" (who by the way also had Kevin Spacey as the most watched actor...my favorite actor) had an auto-generated user name of "MZ 123456". (Yeah I changed the digits).
SPOOKY!!!

Type O Positive

2008-03-25T21:30:00.002-05:00

I'm always impressed by so-called "creative types" (because I am not one of them). With the limitless power of the internet any artist can get their message out through various means such as shirts, music, comics and both of these.

Not only are the videos fantastic in itself, but they used scenes from several of my favorite movies. There are even more on YouTube as well if you decide to look!

Faux St. Patty's Day

2008-03-17T20:53:00.002-05:00

On this technically non St. Patty's Day I present my list of music you should have listened to today while drinking your Guinness (non U2 division).

Dropkick Murphys - my favorite irish punk band
The Pogues - it seems every year they play St. Patty's Day in NYC and every year I forget
Flogging Molly - similar to Dropkick Murphy's
Black 47 - Only because I've seen them at Shea Stadium more than once without even knowing who they were! Not too bad.

Instant Gratification

2008-02-12T00:05:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty sure I've emailed everyone possible about this but I find it really cool in that some of the big TV networks are offering their shows on demand through their websites. Just tonight I was able to go to the fox website and catch the latest Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles (nice little show while I can't get my 24 fix) and then afterwards surf to the ABC website to get back in to Lost. Terminator was available in several resolutions (including HD) and Lost is (seemingly) only available in HD (which is totally fine with me).

I can't see why this won't continue going forward, I'm more likely to watch a show even with commercials (which ABC has, fox didn't) when I get to choose when I want to watch the show. The reason I find this great and I think it will be successful going forward is because I'm being given a choice. My only other options are recording the show somehow and then I'm certainly not sitting through commercials.

While I was writing this I thought "Well I should check the web sites of the other networks and see if anything is available on there". I go to NBC and whoa; I can now see season 2 of 30 Rock. Awesome! It gets better though as they have "vintage" shows available for instant viewing also... including the mother f'n A-Team!!!! Actually it's only the pilot episode for now, but it looks like they will be adding one a week.

CBS had some shows available too but since most shows on CBS suck, I couldn't find much of interest on there.

Now I have even more useless ways to suck away my time!

The Happy Recap

2007-12-31T14:39:00.000-05:00

Well the year is just about over and as is often the case it seemed like such a long year.

My year started with two of the owners of my company leaving and (eventually) taking all but one client, most of the management team and taking or getting to leave all the highest level programmers. As I was made aware at our holiday party though, the one owner who was left had a bit of a harder time than I did. Literally about half the year I was unsure if I'd have a job to come to, but it turned out to be OK.

I went to 23 concerts this year including finally getting to see Rage Against the Machine. How awesome is that! Anyway probably at least half of those I went to by myself....and everything was fine. Now I'm not saying I wouldn't have enjoyed it more with friends, but the alternative probably would have been me sitting home on my computer. It seems so silly now that I would have in the past put something off just because I couldn't get someone else to do it with me even though I really wanted to do it. Yay, I've evolved.

Several people my family or I know passed away this year. More people in fact than I think I can recall in the last 10 years or so. I'm not sure if that really makes a difference though. Someone dies and it generally sucks; individually of what else is going on. One of these passings has unfortunately led to a large strife in my family that I can't see ever being mended. I'm not one to say something along the lines of "some good comes from everything", but it certainly have been driven home to me with this situation that money can overpower any and all ties including family which is pretty lame.

I went to my first wedding (and more importantly bachelor party) this year which was pretty freakin cool. With that I got to see a few people I hadn't seen in quite some years and that was neat.

All in all I think things have turned out pretty good. (Aside from the whole Mets spectacular failure that is.) Tomorrow will be just another day (and since I don't write notes anymore I don't have to worry about writing the date wrong on my paper).

Happy New Year!

Mets 4 Life

2007-09-23T14:49:00.000-05:00

So my sister is a mets fan. Pretty big mets fan for a girl I'd say. I like to think I've done a fair part in molding her since we were little kids. As has been going on for the past week, every game the mets play are of dire importance to get in to the playoffs.

My sister who works as a waitress generally works Saturday and Sunday during the day. They have a bunch of TVs there though so she gets to catch most of the game on the weekends. Today though some dumb ass customer decides that he wants to watch car-racing (not even football!) and has them change off the Mets game. So she tells her job that she has to leave just so she can watch the rest of the game! Well I don't know if that's what she told them, but she left just to do that. I love it!!

Behold the Future!

2007-09-14T09:25:00.000-05:00

Well maybe....Anyway I just bought one of these digital pens to mess around with. I'll use it to take notes at work for the time being and see how it performs. If it does pretty well I might give it to my mom since she basically writes notes all day and then transcribes them to Word when the day is over. Pretty cool stuff this is.

sermotion:excited

I try not to forget

2007-09-11T21:19:00.000-05:00

I generally don't discuss my feelings towards September 11th with other people, not that they are all that different from others I'd think. Thankfully I wasn't personally affected by that day other than being a shocked new yorker and American. However, today probably in being that it was a Tuesday just like in 2001 has made me think about it more than in years past.

Feel free to continue reading if you want, but what follows is an account of my day and days afterwards. For lack of a better place I post this online so I will hopefully never forget.

I had an 11:20 class, but went in early because I didn't get homework done. I never found it easy to do at home. Therefore just by coincidence this day I hopped on the 8:35 bus. I remember hearing murmurs about something, but nothing that spoke to the magnitude of what happened. Maybe something about a plane, hitting a building? I was half asleep and no one seemed excited enough to warrant my attention.

I got to school about 9:15 near the union and walked inside to study in the lounge. I happened upon another kid in my class in the lounge and we looked over each others homework. Shortly thereafter Nick (I think) came in and told me what he had heard happened. It was still somewhat early so I think details were still sketchy. It's hard to believe but I don't think the phrase "terrorist attack" was even in my vocabulary at the time. We walked out of the union and ran in to a girl, Kirsten, that Nick and I worked at the sports authority with. Chatting outside the union about what happened a security guard came over to us. Someone had left a bag unattended near the steps to the union bridge. Honestly I don't know what came of this situation as we decided it was best to leave the area, but it seems strange such a thing would happen on that day. As I was walking over to class I called (or was called by) my house and started to hear the full details of what exactly happened. At that point I decided I had to go home.

I got home and like most people watched the news until I couldn't physically watch it anymore. It's unfathomable to me to think how many people's lives changed that day.

I'm sure the days that followed were a blur of emotions. Days passed and I went back to school. I think there was a vigil there for the USB alumni who had lost their lives that day, but I did not attend.

Only three things over that time period do I recall. None of particular importance either, but I'll probably forever associate with that day and the ones following. I had met a girl (Sherry) who was in the lecture hall in Javits that I had my class, but for the 9:50 period. I spoke to her a couple times and the Thursday before invited her to grab a bite to eat with me. Being the shy person I am I thought about actually asking her to hang out, but didn't. That day was the last time I saw her. I don't think anything drastic happened to her, but who knows about her family or her emotional state after the attack. It was the start of the semester and maybe even early enough to drop all your classes if one so wished. It's pretty lame, but I've thought about this situation whenever I question whether I should ask someone (a girl usually) something. I always at least try to now.

The second feeling I remember is that of not wanting to listen to a specific album I had bought recently. Physically being unable to listen to it even. The album was "Underground Network" by "Anti-Flag" and as you can imagine by the name, a bit of a politically minded one. I was so affected I couldn't even listen to music that I loved. What a sad time that was.

Finally the third item I recall was actually an event. I went to the first mets home game played after September 11th which was of course against the Braves. Myself, my mom, Andrew P. and his dad went. The place was sold out, security was tight. Although Andrew and I as we later noticed cut about 20k people in line and walked in to the stadium after only waiting about 10 minutes. Our parents waited around 45 minutes if I recall. In what was quite possibly the greatest HR I've ever witnessed in my lifetime; Mike Piazza hit a game-winning shot in the bottom of the 8th to put the Mets ahead 3-2 after the Braves themselves had just gone up 2-1 in the top of the 8th. It was quite the contrast to 10 days earlier and I like to think a few people in attendance that night were comforted in a way they didn't think could be done.

Random Acts of Kindness

2007-09-03T02:01:00.000-05:00

So tonight I went out to Applebees with my sister. This is a relatively often occurrence (a few times a month) which we partake in generally after 10pm when they have their "late-night" specials. Hostess came over and sat us down by the window, but it was really cold so we asked the waitress if we could move when she came over. She didn't have a problem with it, except that she claimed we'd no longer be at one of her tables. We moved anyway, although I think we both felt a bit bad. It didn't matter though as a few minutes later she appeared at our new table perhaps after telling her boss of the situation. As we were to find out, we were the third group who had moved from that area because of it being so cold.

So putting in our order my sister and I being from the same family have to add all these quantifiers to our meal. No ice in the drinks, lemons on the side, extra this, none of that, etc. Noticing the waitress not taking notes (and my sister currently working as one) she suggested to our waitress ("Michele") she not just try and remember it. Michele laughed although seemingly nervously and told us now that we commented on her not using a pad that she would indeed forget unless she wrote it all down. We repeated the order and she went on her way. Now tonight was not much different than any other except maybe that we decided to get three appetizers instead of two (because we can both eat a lot when we want to despite observations to the contrary).

As often is the case when we get together, the topic of money comes up. How work was going for my sister (she likes it!) to how much money she is in debt (a lot). Specifically something that I would recall later on though was that she had worked a double shift on Saturday (~12 hours) and not done too well money-wise. Days eb and flow I'm sure, but she sounded disappointed at working such a key day and not making very much cash.

Skip to the end of the meal. The check comes and it's a robust $18.31. My sister puts in $10 and I leave $12. A decent tip for such a small meal I felt. As we're still sitting there sipping our sodas, my sister starts playing around with her extra cash. She grabs my singles on the table and throws another $10 in. I was a little surprised but didn't really say anything. We eventually left and I had to ask her why she gave the extra money. All she said to me was "It looked like she was having a bad day".

Just last week in fact I met a few people that were telling me how great my sister was and just general good things to say. It's not that I didn't believe these things were true, but my perspective is totally different. I tend too often I think to concentrate on negative aspects of things; especially with people. Anyway earlier tonight I was so glad to be my sisters brother.

sermotion:proud

Five Steps to Dressing Trendy

2007-07-01T16:50:00.000-05:00

Step 1) Shoes, Black: Probably want to wear some Aldo's or something along that line.
Step 2) Dark blue "designer" jeans. Make sure they cost at least $100.
Step 3) Hair should not be any longer than optimal spiking length. Make sure it is gelled too.
Step 4) Clean-shaven is a must; no facial hair allowed.
Step 5) White button-down shirt, generally lightly pin-striped in blue. Most importantly make sure it is not tucked in.
Step 6 (optional) Wear a navy blue sport coat/blazer to go with your dark blue jeans. This will really cap off your outfit.

There you have it! Follow these steps and you will be on your way to trendiness no matter if you're fat or skinny, likable or not. I'll see you there!

sermotion:laughable

GigFodder

2007-06-24T10:29:00.000-05:00

The phenomenon has launched!

Are you tired of missing out on concerts for your favorite bands? Do you hate signing up for a dozen mailing lists just hoping they'll tell you when and where your favorite band is playing next?? Well then check out www.gigfodder.com! Just get yourself an RSS feed reader and you'll always be up to date!

sermotion:awesome

Some of My Favorite Things

2007-06-05T18:40:00.000-05:00

So I've been trying to think of more things to post recently, but nothing shock or awe inducing has really transpired. With that being said though, a few weeks back I was talking to my friend about her top 5 bands and I thought I'd throw together a similar post (in no particular order....except Rage).

Top 5 Bands (yes, I only have 3)
Rage Against the Machine
System of a Down
Tool

Top 5 Movies (or series)
Fight Club
Gladiator
Lord Of The Rings Trilogy
The Matrix
Terminator 1 & 2

Top 5 TV
24
Arrested Development
Family Guy
The Prisoner
Scrubs

sermotion:cool

The Captain' s Guide to Better Living

2007-05-31T21:23:00.000-05:00

A couple months back, my uncle passed away. He often would hand out this little slip of paper with his tips for a happy and healthy life. It certainly meant something to me coming from a successful entrepreneur, inventor, engineer and long-living person.

With that in mind, I've decided to come up with my own list of things to help make you almost as kick-ass as me. Now it's nothing compared to this song, but maybe you'll take something from it. In fact I won't go so far as to guarantee anything with these; in fact I won't even say they "work". They're just several things I thought of that when analyzing my behavior I try to do that make me feel good. And if you're feeling as good as the Captain, you're in pretty great shape.

-Do something silly every day: That's right, every freakin day, do something that you can think of the next day and chuckle to yourself about. I tend to try to do this at work where any amount of silliness gets me more bang for my buck.

-Do something fun every week: I can hear it now. "Doing something fun costs money and I'm not a corporation seizing entrepreneur of the high seas such as yourself Captain!" To that I say "you're a whiny little bitch". Fun is hanging out with friends, playing a video game for 5 hours, splitting a bag of candy with a co-worker. Everyone has their own definition of fun, make time for it.

-Take someone out or make dinner for someone else every month: If you can't afford to take someone out, invite them over when you make dinner. You do eat right? Conversation over food is an age old tradition. Ask anyone who knows me, I spend more time talking than eating when I have food in front of me.

-Do something fabulous every year: Pretty self-explanatory I think. Once a year you should be able to do something that you really want to do and maybe haven't done before. I'm generally thinking of a trip, but maybe you go to a crazy party or take a week off of work and spend it at the beach. I can't do this all for you, you'll come up with something.

-Personalize when talking to people: I generally try to refer to people by name. You should do the same, especially when addressing me.

-Meet lots of people: (even if you don't like people) The more people you meet or know, the more knowledge you can absorb. And knowledge is power!

-Keep in touch with old friends: This is of course assuming you still like them. Nevertheless we live in a world now where you pretty much can stay in contact with anyone you want anywhere during any time. There is generally a reason you were friends with these people in the first place, why waste that effort?

-Try new things: "new" being anything you've never done before. I used to not, but I do now. I used to be poor, now I'm less poor, coincidence? I think not.

-Laugh at, and make fun of yourself a lot: It will suck less when others do it for you.

-Root for the New York Mets: This really goes without saying.

-Have a dream: There is no order to this list, but this may be the most important. Seriously how many people can honestly say they have some sort of dream still? I hope it's a lot, but I kinda doubt it. Around high school (or perhaps even before) I think most dreams are beaten out of us. This is lame and stupid. Anyway, I think it should be something somewhat based in reality, but just out there enough. I mean if it was something totally obtainable, who would dream about it?

sermotion:happy

The Happy Recap (Part 1)

2007-05-28T22:50:00.000-05:00

Been meaning to write this up for a while. (Hey look TWO posts this month!)
It's a good thing I have a schedule of all the shows I went to as I would never have remembered all of these. On to the list!

My Chemical Romance & Rise Against @ Nassau Coliseum on 2/23
Got there a bit late and missed some of the Rise Against set which was disappointing since they only wound up playing 30 minutes or so. Otherwise it was good to see them as I was more excited to see them than MCR initially. Nevertheless I thought MCR was pretty good, they essentially broke the show up into their last two albums; first 45m off their latest album and then last 45m off their second album. I can't recall if they played anything from the first, I'm thinking not. One awesome aspect of the show was that since there were so many teenagers there, there was practically no line for beer! I also got to see some drunk chick in the guys bathroom and Evan ran in to some friends he hadn't seen in a few years. All around a very good start to my concert going season!

From Autumn to Ashes @ The Crazy Donkey on 2/24
My first back-to-back concerts. This one I hadn't planned on attending ahead of time, but it turned out to be OK. I wasn't expecting much actually but still had fun.

Killswitch Engage @ Roseland on 3/1
The night started out like any other, but man would it get crazy. First off, this was and is the roughest show I've ever been to. Constantly being pushed around until finally just being overtaken by the wave of people falling backwards in front of me and buckling to the floor. No one helped me up; not fun at all. I left where I was in the middle front and waded to the side and watched the rest of the show. Bad viewing angle and all, I was a bit disappointed. Did get to meet the guitarist from killswitch after the show though as he came over to near where Lee and I where standing, pretty cool. That would only be half the night though!
I should really have devoted a whole post to it, but to sum it up quickly....Nick's car got towed, we ran through the rain looking for it, took a cab to the impound yard (then more running through the rain), waited for like 3 hours and then got blackmailed in to paying an exorbitant fee to get his car back. Awesome.

Anti-Flag @ Irving Plaza on 3/8
As much as I didn't really enjoy the killswitch show, this was just the opposite. The opening act (Alexisonfire) I thought was great and wound up purchasing their CD there for a mere $5. Anti-Flag was outstanding as well and to top it off they brought out their special guest Tom freakin Morello!! to play a tune. He was in his Nightwatchman mode so he did "This Land is Your Land" with like 15 people on stage, very cool. All in all a fantastic show. Unfortunately my after show bad luck continued as the subway was late due to track work, I missed the earlier LIRR train and then got caught in the farmingdale station because of a track fire! Nothing better than being on a train with no heat when it's 20 degrees outside and there is a fire burning a few hundred feet away. It was very tempting...Ugh... didn't get back until 4:30am on a weekday. You guessed it, awesome.

Clutch @ Irving Plaza on 3/20
Back at irving for another show. I find it neat the total difference in the crowds to all these shows I go to. Near polar opposite from the anti-flag show. Where as then I was certainly one of the older people there, at this one I was probably one of the few in their 20s. Good show and I took a taxi up to Penn rather than relying on the train. Lesson learned.

Lamb of God & Machine Head @ Roseland on 3/22
How cool is it when one of your favorite bands plays in a venue you can get to on your birthday? About as much as it sucks that when you get there the band has already played. Then some sucky band comes on and plays in what should be the Machine Head time slot. Ugh!! Oh yeah I felt pretty shitty about this one... Even worse once I heard the new Machine Head album and read they put on a kick-ass show later on. Scott Ian was at the show though which was kinda cool. Anyway, we wound up leaving early because the power went out when Lamb of God was playing and went down near union square to have dinner. I thought it turned out to be a pretty good night after the show, especially since no cars were towed!

Down @ Roseland on 3/31
Odd in that Down was the only band playing that night. No opening acts whatsoever. I got there at 8 expecting to see some band, any band and I watched a Down DVD for an hour. The one interesting aspect of this was that every single person was there to see Down and Down only. So the whole place was rocking during the entire show. Several Dimebag tributes, myriad Anselmo ramblings, but no Pantera songs. Good show though.

sermotion:amazed

No Intro Needed

2007-05-04T23:55:00.000-05:00

I can't say much about this video other than it's pretty scary what we as a country are in to right now.

"Gun Markets of Pakistan"

sermotion:scared

Russian Star

2007-03-15T22:20:00.000-05:00

So I put forth "my" new drink. I'm sure someone else has tried this before, but I'm the first I know to make it and give it a kick ass name (because it's really all about the marketing). My (ironically) Russian friend scoffed at it "it's only a white russian" (just like him, hah!) but I say it's an improvement on that. I tried to find a nice quote that tied this together...but I couldn't. Most quotes I read about "improvement" were lame.

Anyway, below are the ingredients. I personally taste-tested this mix several times over to get what I felt was the right amount; it was a tough job. :)

1 1/2 parts Kahlua
1 1/2 parts vodka
3 parts Starbucks cream liquor

Pour this over ice because there is a bit of liquor in there and you're not adding milk. Then shake and enjoy!

sermotion:content

What's with the space

2007-02-28T22:05:00.001-05:00

Why is there a gigantic space in between the text and my table?? If you know how to get rid of that, please let me know. I'm too tired to look in to it right now.

sermotion:annoyed

The Sprint Begins

2007-02-28T22:04:00.000-05:00

My "sprint" actually started last Friday, but I've been too tired to write about it until now. Actually I'm still really tired, but now I'm tired and bored. The "sprint" I'm referring to is the rather large (for me at least) number of concerts I will be going to over the next month or so (and then a few more sporadically after that). Some I'll go to by myself, (which I've never done before), but I figured I'd rather see said band by myself than well, not at all. Most I'll see with friends though so it should be awesome. Let me know if you want to go to any !

Including the two from last weekend, I will attend no less than seven shows through the start of April. Why stop there though? Just because I know you want it; below is a list of all the shows I plan to attend including the ones from last weekend. I sure am going to spend a lot on train tickets...

Band	Venue	Date
My Chemical Romance	Nassau Coliseum	2/23/07
From Autumn to Ashes	Crazy Donkey	2/24/07
Killswitch Engage	Irving Plaza	3/01/07
Anti-Flag	Irving Plaza	3/08/07
Clutch	Irving Plaza	3/20/07
LOG/Machine Head	Roseland	3/22/07
Down	Roseland	3/31/07
Chevelle	Gramercy Theatre	4/03/07
Stone Sour	Stone Sour	4/06/07
Peeping Tom	Irving Plaza	4/09/07
From Autumn to Ashes	Irving Plaza	4/20/07
The Kooks	Irving Plaza	5/11/07

Wow, I'm also going on the big ski trip to Vermont this weekend. I've kept myself pretty busy as of late actually. Anyway, should be pretty freakin fun. Hopefully I don't break anything.

sermotion:tired

That little red envelope

2007-02-18T19:44:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure when they rolled it out, but I just realized today that netflix has their "watch now" tab up and running. There is no additional charge and you can view as many hours per month as your plan costs (my plan is $10/month so I can watch 10 hours). This is a tremendous boost especially to the lower pricing models. While I sometimes let my one movie sit around for a few days or a week before watching it, other times I watch it right away and am then movie-less. Now of course they don't have most of their movies available so far (only 6% of my queue was available), but they are constantly adding new ones.

I was so excited I decided to "test drive" the functionality and had no problem with the stream. The quality was good enough (I watched a movie from 1976 so it's hard to know where the limitations were) and I had no interruptions of sound or video whatsoever. My only knock against it is that I had to use IE to view the movie. Annoying, but nevertheless, two thumbs up !

sermotion:cool

The Rage is Back

2007-02-17T11:31:00.000-05:00

"The Audioslave split was not unexpected. His colleagues, guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk, have reunited with singer Zack de la Rocha to resurrect their former band Rage Against the Machine, which will play its first show in seven years at California's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on April 29. Rage's plans beyond this show are unknown."

So RATM is pretty much my favorite band of all time.

sermotion:thrilled

Conspiracy Theory

2007-02-14T23:08:00.000-05:00

Everyone who is reading this should know the storyline behind the "Terminator" series. Man builds machine/computer, machine/computer becomes "aware", machine/computer attacks man. It's an age old science fiction story that goes at least as far back as Frankenstein if not farther. We are ever so quickly inching closer to that day.

Monday in the Wall Street Journal there were two articles that would seem unrelated except to a trained (and paranoid) eye. Below are the article titles along with a few excerpts.

Intel plans to unveil superchip
-"... they have developed the world's first programmable processor that can deliver so-called 'teraflop' performance. It uses less electricity than most home appliances."
-"The first teraflop computer was developed ... in 1996. ... supercomputer filling 104 cabinets, covering 2,500 square feet, using 10,000 processor chips and consuming 500,000 watts of power."
-" Intel expects it to be available in everyday computers by 2012."

Now the term "teraflop" doesn't mean much without any context, but suffice to say this is pretty freakin fast for a chip. It also makes a point how fast the speed of chips are still jumping ahead every ten years.

Nasa technology to help increase stem cell output
-"... the launch of technology to grow large numbers of stem cells ..."
-"It grows cartilage and muscle tissue very well."

Before the "machines" were able to make that x-files guy turn into liquid metal they had gotten pretty good at making "metal surrounded by living tissue", you know like say cartilage and muscles.

Now to top it all off "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" was on AMC that night. Coincidence? I'll let you decide; I'm personally looking into adopting a German Shepard.

sermotion:nervous

My First Time

2007-02-13T22:15:00.000-05:00

So Sunday I participated in my first ever winter sport (other than the occasional snowball fight and extreme snowman making). That is I went snowboarding, it was a lot of fun but I've been paying for it over the last couple days as my body refuses to stop hurting. My first three trips down the bunny hill I literally fell about 50 times combined. Leaving the mountain my knees looked like tomatoes and my hands were brown and yellow from bruises. None of that mattered though when I finally made it down the hill (at first falling only twice and later not at all), not to mention actually feeling like I was riding the board as opposed to being taken for a ride. It was the greatest feeling in the world. That feeling was only topped when we hit the beginner slope and I actually took a fairly tight curve at a fairly decent speed with Bo behind me cheering me on.
We snowboarded on and off from 8:30a-4:30p (I stopped at 2:30) and overall I'd rate my first time about an 8/10. I could go in to much more detail about the day as just about every moment is burned in to my head, but I won't. Although, I should mention that coming in from 3+ hours of snowboarding and smelling sweet perfume on a cute waitress was something you need to experience. Anyway, all the pain was worth it if next time I go I pick up where I left off.
On a final note I have to thank Bo and Lee who stayed with me on the bunny hill for most of the day and constantly gave me tips on what to do and how to figure out what I was doing wrong. I didn't know what to expect going in to the day (other than falling and getting hurt, as I was told this constantly), but even with the lack of expectations I didn't think I'd get home and honestly be able to say at least to a basic degree I learned how to snowboard.

sermotion:stoked

My Day With the MS

2007-02-10T14:24:00.000-05:00

So I attended the Microsoft QPB (Quarterly Partner Briefing) at the MS office in the city on Wednesday for SMS&P (Small, Mid market Solutions and Partners). MS like the government has acronyms for everything. Before I went we sat through a brief overview of their most commonly used ones by one of the guys in my office, I kid you not. It was very interesting from my perspective because it wasn't a technical conference. It was almost solely devoted to sales and meeting other MS partners and networking with a few technical aspects thrown in here and there.
There were blocks of sessions that we each attended during the day, three in total. Since I had never been to one of these before I decided to attend two sales and marketing sessions. The first session was on the use of metaphors in advertising which was OK, but nothing too great. I consider myself a well rounded person when it comes to education so nothing that was said was too surprising.
The second session though I found to be outstanding. It was given by one of the keynotes at the conference; Larry Bailin who is the CEO of Single Throw Internet Marketing. He started off by telling everyone how he wasn't a "tech" guy which was driven home during his presentation when practically all the techniques he pointed out could have been applied to advertising for any type of company. There were no secrets or "magic bullets" here, most of the items he touched on were just common sense. Target your customer, "a specific message for a specific customer" was how one of the other people in the class put it. Make things easy for your customer; it sounds so simple! It's amazing how many examples there are out there where this is not the case though. The best one that stuck in my head which I see everywhere is that when filling out a form with my contact information on it, why do we have to put our city, state and zip code? The zip code determines the former so nothing more than that should be necessary. Simple, one less thing to fill out on a form. There were other examples as well, but that was the one that stuck out the most.

As an added note I saw the movie "Babel" later in the day (nominated for a best picture btw) and I thought it was really bad. I was generous and gave it 2/5 stars on netflix because it made some good points about language and different cultures and how they can be tied together by seemingly unconnected events. Due to the fact that there was practically no plot, non-existent character development, Brad Pitt being on screen for only like 20 minutes of a 140 minute movie and it's slow pacing and length, I whole heartily do NOT recommend this movie.

sermotion:annoyed

musings of a first time blogger

2007-02-02T21:40:00.000-05:00

So I was just surfing the web and somehow the easy to remember link to my friends blog (which I only found out about recently) popped in to my head. Hence my blog is born! I find it a bit strange that I never got in to the whole "blog revolution" in that I work in the IT industry as well as previously sending out a monthly newsletter type email to a select group of friends. I stopped doing it though because I felt like I needed to have content to send out which I think is the same reason I never started a blog. Better late than never though.

So it didn't bother me that I had nothing particularly interesting to write in my first blog until about 10 minutes later while still surfing the web I came across this. Anyone who knows me personally and takes a few minutes to look at the comments will see what I found so interesting. Lots of strange initial thoughts racing through my head on that one. And all along I thought I was so unique...