Wario... shake it!

I don't know if you know Wario but he's the anti-Mario in Nintendo land. He is still my favorite character in Super Mario Kart because when you select him he says "I'm Wario, I'm gonna win!" For some reason, I really think that rocks.

Anyway, they came out with this cool ad for the new Wario game on the Wii... which I am going out to get right now. Trust me, it's worth the watch.

Check it out here.

This is my daughter

Serentiy has recently appeared upstairs despite there being a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs. We finally found out how she does it.

She pushes the foot stool over to the gate and then scales it. You have got to see this to believe it.




Yep, she's only one and a half. Just imagine how much trouble she's going to be at three!

I need more paintball... er cowbell!

Here's the pictures I promised of our paintball outing. I really love playing. Paintball is one of those games that make you really feel alive while at the same time painfully reminding you how fat and old you are. Luckily, I held my own and IMO whooped up on some of the guys in the office. Enough so that I can be a little smug about it at work. Not that I would, of course... I'm just too nice of a guy to point out bruises that I happened to have doled out.

The name of the game in paintball is cover... the other name is angles... oh, and there's extra paint and also not using a rental gun... well, you get the idea.


Towards the end we were running out of paint, so I'd grab a gun off of someone if they were out and leaving the field. It was pretty cool because I went through 3 guns that game. It was kind of like Call of Duty, but with slightly less Germans.


This is LtCol Barker. He's been with us for about 4 weeks now. In the first game I shot him on one side of his head and on the last game I shot him on the other... I'm pretty proud of that.


The guys in this picture are John and Ian. John is my fellow fat kid and Ian's the dumb one. He actually got caught cheating by wiping off paint after he was shot in an office paintball game. He also shot our boss in the back about 5 times... and they were on the same team. I guess he forgot that he has to work with these guys... which is why he is the dumb one.


Well, that's it for pictures. I'm going to try and make it out there this Sunday if I can. We'll see if I can get a chance.

In other news, it's rumored that Activision dumped ghost busters and as game, which sucks. The Force Unleashed is still really good. All I have to say is Jar-Jar frozen in carbonite. Yeah, that just happened.

The Force Unleashed

I got the Force Unleashed yesterday and played it for a couple of hours. It got really bad reviews but... I really like it. It might be that I just haven't gotten far enough to embrace the suck yet, or it might also have to do with me dreaming about Star Wars pretty much every night, but it's a really fun game.


If you're in the market I'd suggest it as a buy. It doesn't live up to the hype and there are some problems with the game play but nothing that ruins the game IMO. I guess I'm in the minority with that opinion, but I stick by my decision.

Walking the streets.

I finally got a day to walk around NYC. It was pretty fun, but it would have been better with Joy. Here are some of the places that I got to see. You can click on them to get bigger pictures.

Here's Radio City Music Hall


St Patrick's Cathedral


The Apple Store


Time Square



A Lego Statue of Liberty in Toys R Us


The New York Public Library


Rockefeller Center


And Serenity in her I love NY shirt.



I started out in Penn Station and walked to Time Square. From there I went to 5th ave and walked up it to Central Park. After that I was pretty hungry so I stopped in some restaurant and has a great grilled salmon with some good egg rolls and a martini. I had a 90 dollar per diem since the salesmen I was with took me out to dinner the night before. I tried to spend it all but didn't quite make it.

After that I was way too full to walk all the way back. That's when I saw one of those bike taxis flying down the street and I knew I had to try it.



My guy was being really conservative, and I was a little disappointed. Then, of course, I put the camera away and he ran a red light and almost got us hit by a bus. My perfect photographers timing shines through once again.

It was a really good time. I got back to the hotel and just passed out cold. Joy and I are going to try and go again in November or maybe after our cruise... so next summer. I really don't want to go when it's hot. It was 70 most of the time I was there this time and it was awesome. The subway still smelled like feet, but other than that it was all good.

Next time I'm going to try to get my company to send me to DC. I do have a 2 week training class coming up in February or March but I think it's in Arkansas or some other place I don't want to go.

It was so good to get back and see the kids. I can definitely recommend leaving your kids for a week every once in a while. It helps you forget how much of a pain they can be. It's very refreshing.

While I was gone, Hayden caught some kind of rash and needed to go on antibiotics for it. He had it on the back of his neck so the MIL cut the little hanging strap off of his backpack because she believed that it was rubbing his neck and causing the rash. I swear, I turn around for one second and that lady is breaking my stuff! I was pretty pissed off about it, just because it's so senseless but, she was only trying to help, so I guess it's not a big deal.

Well, we're going to go to Fredericksburg today and buy some Holloween stuff. I'll get some pictures of the kids eating German food.

New York

My company sent me to NYC this week for some training. Well, actually I'm in Jersey, but I flew into LaGuardia and I'm going to make it my mission to see as much of the city as I can. So far I only have this picture. I was stuck in traffic for over an hour right after I crossed the George Washington bridge. I spent most of that time looking at the underside of other bridges so... here you go. (my car has a sun roof!)


The plane ride was pretty fun. I had a good copy of Iron Man on the PC that I shared with my 'planemates'. It went well enough until my laptop crashed. I got the click of death from the HDD and was really ticked off. I have a ton of homework to do, not to mention all my movies and e-books on this thing! Well, the click un-screwed itself on the ride to the hotel so it was all good.

My class is going really well, they answered most of my questions so far and even took us out to dinner! I'm sitting next to a Marine who is taking the same programing course at Park that I took last semester. So, I traded him all my java programs for this cool mug. Say it with me... swag!!


Other than that things are ok, we're going to try to see some of NYC tomorrow. A couple of our classmates live in the city so they can get us around. It should be fun. On the other hand I really miss Hayden and Seri. Haydish was cool with me being gone even though he told me that he'd miss me alot. Seri, on the other hand, had to spend her last moment with me crying over Hayden's toothbrush, that I had to confiscate from her. Yeah, so not that great of a send off. Well, I'm going to try to get everyone a cool prize from New York before I head back home.

Oh, I gotta tell you about this. I was setting up the wireless in the hotel room and I found this ad-hoc called free wireless. I didn't connect but the hotel wireless was a standard network... this ad-hoc had to be a guy fishing for idiots. He named it 'free wireless network', so people would think it's the hotels wireless connection. Pretty sneaky!

BTW, ad-hoc is actually a Latin term that loosely translates to 'for this purpose'. I've been using that term for years and I always thought it was some sort of acronym for a longer term. Isn't learning fun!

More paint please

Ok, here's more of a breakdown of the whole paintball day. We broke into two teams in our office. Since our office space is divided into Area 1 and Area 2 we split on those lines and called ourselves team 1 and team 2. Yep, us computer guys have huge imaginations. Somehow, the Area 2 guys became team 1 and the Area 1 guys were team 2. I was on team 1 and we destroyed the other team. It was like slapping babies! I was feeling pretty good.

Then my body realized what I'd been doing for the last 4 hours. See, I'm not what you would call athletic... or coordinated... or not fat. So, when my body finally realized that I was low-crawling and sprinting around the woods for 4 hours it decided to tell me how it felt about my choice of activity... through the language of pain. I'm sore all over!! Now, I'm no medicalologist and I don't want to get to technical with my medicalogical speak but... I think I pulled my butt. Is that even possible? I pulled my butt and I can't walk right. The funny thing is that I only got shot three times, once in the side, once in the mask and once on the top of my head. (I forgot turn of my safety and decided to look down at my gun instead of getting to cover.) The head shot and the rib shot don't even hurt, but the butt pull is killing me! Serenity had an extra long bath tonight because I thought that when I bent down to get her out of the tub that I'd be stuck there!

One funny thing is that I shot our new LtCol in the forehead... from 10 feet away. It was a great shot, very Matrix like. The good news was that he was on the other team and was good natured about the whole thing. My co-worker Ian on the other hand, unloaded half of his paint balls on our boss, Maj Bohenek. Ian was on my team... so was Maj Bohenek. That was funny. Maj Bohenek didn't think so. I told Ian that I'd not worry about it... because I didn't do it.

Well, all in all it was a great day. We also got some great books for Hayden at his schools book store... but that's a different story. I'm going to take my paintballed butt upstairs and read him a book and then go to bed. College homework can wait till tomorrow.

Pop pop pop...

Here I am wearing my barrel cleaner as a mustache. Don't knock it till you try it.


I went out with the guys from work for some paintball action today. I'm not saying this just because I'm awesome, but I was pretty much the best guy out there. See, work with a bunch of retired military guys and you can be the best too!




I got the gun running really well, and it made a ton of difference. I actually had my hammer (paintball gun part) in backwards so for the first round I used a rental while the ref fixed my gun. Now in my defense, I didn't put that gun together myself. I had a friend do it. Anyway, they forgot to chrono my gun in... that's where they check to see how fast your gun is shooting. You need to be under 275 to play. When I checked my gun at the end of the day I was at 315 to 320. The rentals were shooting at 185ish. So, it was a definite advantage having the gun. I measured out 30 yards in the backyard and shot at my little garbage can I use for ash from the grill. I was able to get it pretty dead on so I'm happy.

When I was getting Hayden ready in the morning he gave me this prediction for the paintball match. I had to get it on camera.



He told me that I was going to catch a paintball in the chest when I wasn't looking and then get all messy. What ever happened to the kid who thought his dad could do anything. I guess that he's been talking to is mom too much!

Paint

We have a friendly game of paintball coming up at the office and I decided that I am sick of running with rental equipment. This ushers in the era of the E-MR1.


It's a good starter gun for under $200.00. I happen to get a package deal with all the things I need to play for $204.00 from Predator Paint. I didn't get a great deal but I didn't get ripped off either.

It's an ok gun. It doesn't shoot as far as I like or as accurately either. I need to get an NO2 tank, which should fix both of those problems... but for now it's good enough.

Oh and check out the garden!


Man, I got this green thumb thing down pat! The night shot is courtesy of my discrete math course and the boat load of homework that I had to do this weekend. At least I'm passing!

Video Ringtones

I made a cool little video ring tone for my phone. Here, check it out. (the quality may be crappy because I had to mush it for the phone.)




You can get the version that works on your phone here.

Then go to here to upload it if you have sprint.

Enjoy.

The rib recipe

I forgot to post this earlier so here it is...

How to make da ribs.

Get pork loin ribs... they're called baby back ribs. Also, get some rib rub. It's rib seasoning and should have some tenderizer in it. I use Bolners Rib Rub. It's made right here in San Antonio and it's good stuff. They also have a steak rub that's great in chili and also as a... steak rub. Anyway, don't freeze the ribs. If you do, get them thawed out and put the rib rub all over them... top to bottom. Then wrap them in aluminum foil. Put them in the fridge over night, not the freezer!

The next day get a good wood fire going in your smoker. I start with charcoal and then add wood. This way the charcoal keeps going and you use less wood. smoke the ribs for two hours while still wrapped in the foil. Then open them up and add some BBQ sauce. I'd go with some Taste the Heat BBQ sauce but if you don't want to have awesome ribs you can try something that isn't as good. You know... you're choice.

Get the ribs nice and covered in sauce. You can do just the top... that'll do just fine. Wrap them back up and it's another hour smoking. On the last hour open the foil to get a good amount of smokey flavor and to dry the ribs up just a tad. There's a huge difference between fall off the bone ribs and a soggy mess. After the 4th hours up, grab your ribs and let them rest for about 15 minutes while you make some baked beans.

Oh yeah, here's how you make baked beans. Get a can of baked beans, put them in a pot and add some more of that BBQ sauce to them. Heat it up and eat them.

That should be it. Take your ribs and get yourself a good root beer. Then, hide from your family and eat the ribs all by yourself! You just spent all night and then 5 hours the next day smoking ribs! What did they do? That's right, they invited over the in-laws! They invited the in-laws over to steal your ribs! That is not cool man. You eat those ribs and then go take a nap on the couch... the beans may give you gas but you're a man... let 'er rip!

What comes before Pee-Wee hockey?

I'll tell you what comes before Pee-Wee hockey. It's snow flurries ice skating. Hayden has started ice skating lessons in our continuing effort to make him hurt himself. The truth be told, Hayden really likes ice skating! He has to wear a helmet so I tried to get him the coolest one I could find... which is a pretty tall order when you're talking about little kids safety helmets. His has a red dragon on the side. It's pretty sweet. Here's some pictures of him showing off his moves... which is standing still or falling at this point.



Actually, Hayden has a small problem where he takes out kids around him. In fact the teacher asked me to talk to him about not trying to knock the whole class down when he falls... it's really fun to watch though.

Being near the ice, in a place that isn't 100 degrees made me pretty home sick. I get that way every once in a while but this was pretty fierce. The cool thing is that Joy wants to learn how to skate now too. We're going to sign up for the next class that is parallel with Hayden... that way we can skate together. I haven't skated is almost 13 years but... I think I'll be ok. Joy's really excited. I volunteered to take her in the kitchen and knock her on her butt over and over again for a warm up but she declined.

In college news, I might actually pass Discrete Math! I know, I'm shocked as well. I actually like math overall. I'm not good at it but it is hard enough to keep my interest. I just can't wait till this is all over and I am a computer scientist. Do they really call themselves that? If they do it sounds stupid. Oh well, I'll still be a SysAd. SysAds get their own appreciation day. It's July 25th incase you don't know. I celebrate each year by deleting all my trouble tickets and playing NES roms all day. I also do that on Fridays... so it's not that special after all.

I did get a great ticket in today. It was something like "Must have ability to print documents on both sides of paper. Is printer in the hall capable of duplexing?" I replied "Yes". Done and done. It took until that afternoon for the user to ask how to do it. I told him it was disabled on that printer... but technically it did have the ability to duplex. I offered to turn it on for him and he was off to the races. See, I took one job and turned it into 2 jobs, which I closed both in under a minute each, which in turn brought my stats up. I win!

Ok, I got to get some sleep... I have guitar lessons after work and that thing isn't going to play horribly by itself!

Smokey the bear says... give a hoot, don't burn down your house!

You ever have a day where you start out just doing something innocent... like making ribs for dinner and then you kind of... start a large fire? Yep, me too. I started smoking some ribs around 11 am. They have to go for at least 5 hours. I had put rub on them the night before and was ready to rock. I had just downloaded a remake of the original Bionic Commando from Xbox Live. It's awesome and I was 11 years old again... but that's a different story. I was checking the fire every half hour or so to see if I had to add some more wood when I noticed that my grill was giving out a lot of smoke... a whole lot of smoke. Sure enough, half the backyard was ablaze! A coal had fallen out of the smoker and started a brush fire in my own backyard. I ran out with my trusty garden hose (which kinked up as soon as I got to the fire) and saved the day. Here's the aftermath.


Now, if your a true American I already know the question you are going to ask and yes, the ribs turned out awesome. So awesome in fact, that I think I'm going to get my cousins Peter and Janet over for ribs this next weekend.


They were fall off the bone good! Oh yeah, Peter is a cop and he's one of the few good ones in San Antonio. Also, he has helped me with some... um... minor infractions in the past. See, the best way to sum up my driving in one word is... retarded. I like to go fast, and the fact that I drive a Silverado with a V-6 doesn't really phase me. This is why I don't drive my wife's Grand Prix GT... because that thing really is fast. Also, years of driving in the winters of Buffalo have taught me how to kick out the back end of my truck at will... which I do ever time it rains. That means, having Peter over for ribs is kind of like an investment.

Have you heard that there is a group that is trying to stop people from saying retarded. That's just... retarded! They say it's offensive to actual retarded people but I don't use the word to describe them... I use it to describe the average citizen of San Antonio. This place is the retard mecca of the world. Seriously, people here are so dumb it's like they're trying to win a prize at dumb-assery. I guess we are suppose to use the r-word instead. For example "I can't believe that guy cut me off! He's a fucking r-word!" I don't think it's going to catch on.

Anyway, it's late and I have to go get some sleep or my r-word boss will be all over me for drooling on my keyboard tomorrow.