In the Fade

Congrats, you're a seeder!

2010-04-29T09:10:00.000-05:00

There are certain things that are distinctly say "Summer." Ice cold beer while sitting on the porch, girls in flower dresses, grilling out, the smell of fresh cut grass and spitting sunflower seeds. I've been a seeder since sophomore year of high school. One of the first things you learn when you joined the baseball team was how to slide. And the second thing was how to properly split, crack, and eat a sunflower from it's shell. Learning was a laborious task, with many smashed and crushed seeds before you finally get one to split right on the seams. And from that moment on it becomes an addiction. I think most people in life get some sort of fixation that focuses on their mouth, whether it's cigarettes, chewing tobacco, gum, or sunflower seeds. (I'm guilty of the last two). I always carry an empty water bottle under my seat and a half eaten bag of seeds in my arm rest for when I'm driving. It's pretty much the only thing that'll keep me awake on long drives. Playing softball, watching baseball, mowing the lawn, discing: you name the outdoor summer activity and I'll probably be spitting seeds on the ground.

I've tried lots of different seeds in my time, but for my money David remains the best. They've got the perfect assortment of flavors (I'm privy to Nacho, Jalapeno hot salsa, and Ranch), and the seems are rarely ever burnt.

I doubt any of my readers haven't tried seeds before, but if you somehow haven't you should give it a try. Tis' the season, after all.

Random Content to Appease the Masses

2010-04-27T09:05:00.000-05:00

Been in a big writer's funk lately (obviously), so until I get my mojo back here's some a random link dump.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! That is TERRIFYING.
This is utter and complete bullshit. Do they realize how many people and websites tell you "well, look for the Energy Star to make sure it's an efficient model?" Ugh.
He may no longer be with the Brewers but I still love Frank Catalanotto. And I'm STILL 4th of Google for him, which seems absurd.
I think that doing the Lebowski Fest in Chicago is like Christmas and my birthday rolled into one.
These graphs from Flip Flop Fly Ball are fantastic. My faves are the Home Runs vs PEDS, Homosexuality in Baseball, and Starters vs Relievers in 2009. Stats are so nerdy.

Work

2010-04-22T17:07:00.001-05:00

I was going to blog about the 5k run from this past weekend. And then I was going to blog about how my perception of distance has really changed over time. (I think that'll be the topic for tomorrow)

But then something happened yesterday when I was leaving work. I realized just how good of a day of work I had. I left the building feeling great about everything that had gotten accomplished, the problems that had been solved, and the situation we were now in.

I think we try to forget the fact that we spend the majority of our adult lives working, and when that job isn't perfect it can kind of stink.

But days like yesterday keep me coming back.

Where Art Thou Hal Scardino?

2010-04-16T08:42:00.002-05:00

For some reason we got the idea in our heads to watch Indian in the Cupboard from Netflix this week. It's your usual "90s adaptation of a children's book," but the effects are pretty good, and I remember loving the book as a wee lad. The actors for both Little Bear and Boone are great and play off each other very well. But kid that plays Omri, the main character...well, he stuck out as much now as he did back then. Looking on IMDB I found out his name is Hal Scardino, which sounds like some sort of crime boss, not a child actor of the 90s. Further research reveals that Hal Scardino was only in 3 movies? And nothing since 1996? How is that possible?

Oh yeah, that's why.

Apparently Hal is a year older than me and graduated from Colombia (way to go Hal!). However, that pic from Facebook is the most recent picture I can find from him. Aside from obviously writing your own bio on Flixster.com (come on now Hal, "He beat them all - and got the part" and "it didn't take him long to learn his lines - and he never forgot them" were TOTALLY written by you) his online presence is practically nil.

Except for this. I urge to you open this link in another tab on your browser so that it actually takes you to YouTube, that way you can see the ridiculous comments, number of views, etc, for THIS. BEHOLD.

How ridiculously creepy is that?? My goodness, I felt dirty just watching it. Whereever you are Hal Scardino KEEP RUNNING SO LORDVARKON DOESN'T GET YOU!!!

(as a sidenote: the actor who played Little Bear also played Nightwolf in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Sweet.)

Things I Learned at the Wisconsin Deer and Turkey Expo

2010-04-14T08:39:00.001-05:00

Hunters LOVE dip. There were 5 different companies there with tents setup giving away free samples (after you had confirmed you were a tobacco user, gave them your ID, phone number, and email address. It took more to get into one of those tents than it did to get into college).
Affliction and Ed Hardy designs are spreading to the world of hunting. Both Bone Collector and Rut Junkie had some some swirly designed shirts on display. I guess hunters go clubbing too?
Speaking of shirts: I saw more Brewers t-shirts than Packers, which was very, very cool. Fielding a competitive team the last couple years has really led to a resurgence of interest in the team.
This Can Cooker invention had me very interested. The convenience of just dumping a bunch of food into the cooker, putting it on a fire, and eating it after an hour or so had me rather interested. I don't go camping enough to justify it, but mayhaps in the future it would be work looking into. Seriously, look how easy it is to make delicious things like Crab Legs.
Sadly the thing that interested me most was a tie between the sweeeet AirSoft rifles that were for sale (the look so real it's crazy) and the bear cubs that you could take pictures with (Considering how scary full size bears are they might just have the cutest little ones next to these guys)

daaaawwww

For 3 Easy Payments of $29.99

2010-04-08T13:31:00.000-05:00

A shift in my work schedule has awakened me to the wacky world of early morning fitness informercials. In the last week I've seen Brazil Butt Lift, Hip Hop Abs, and Insanity (the workout so EXTREME it'll make you go INSANE). Now, these are all brought to you by BeachBody.com, same people that do P90 (which I've tried) and P90X (which I have not).

In theory workout videos are a good thing. Anything that gets people in shape is a good thing, right? Well here's the thing with those videos:

Expensive. Brazil Butt Lift and Hip Hop Abs are $75 a piece while Insanity is $145. That is not cheap, considering...
You probably won't stick with it. We went balls deep into P90, even taking pictures with our shirts off, measuring body parts, testing how many reps we could do with every exercise. And even with 3-4 people doing it we only stuck with it for maybe a month. Mainly because...
It gets repetitive. The first stage of P90 had two 40 minute workouts that you were supposed to alternate every day. Do you know how boring that gets? Hearing the same commands and statements day in and day out is enough to drive anyone bonkers. It appears that Insanity has 10 workouts which gives you quite a bit of variety, but most of workouts aren't so diverse.
And they can be very, very hard. There's not much of a learning curve with most of these. The people in the videos can all perform the maneuvers perfectly (which is to be expected from athletes and models), but for someone that's not in very good shape to think "Hey, I can just order these workout videos and get started!" Even someone who's in relatively decent shape like myself struggles with these types of videos.

There's a reason that not many people are in truly "good" shape these days: it takes hard work! Just buying a dvd and expecting the rest to come easy isn't going to cut it.

The Burning Sun

2010-04-06T16:57:00.000-05:00

Seems like every year around this time I get some sort of sunburn. However this is definitely the first time that I've been sunburnt while in Wisconsin. Yesterday we took off for Opening Day 2010 to watch the Brewers at Miller Park, and you couldn't have asked for a better day. 70 degrees, sunny, slight breeze. Downright perfect. However, I was not expecting the familiar burning sensation about halfway through the game. I looked around and everyone else was a darker shade of red as well, so I didn't feel too bad about it.

Until this morning, of course. Aaaaggh.

They Don't Know How It Feels

2010-04-02T07:40:00.000-05:00

From Flickr

And by "they" I mean people that live in nice weather year round. Do you think they appreciate nice weather like we Wisconsinites do? Doubtful. These first really nice days of spring are on par with a butterfly emerging from it's pupation stage. Yesterday it was so nice and sunny out I was squinting the entire time, my eyes weren't used to such beauty. Back in college I joked that all the hot girls were like bears because they seemingly hibernated all winter and would finally emerge again on the first nice day of the year.

But if the weather is always sunny and beautiful how quick before you take that weather for granted? Say I uprooted from Wisconsin and moved to California. How long would it take for me to take the weather for granted? 1 year? 2 years? No thanks. I'd rather appreciate every spring around this time.

An Appreciation for Baseball

2010-03-31T07:54:00.000-05:00

From Jsonline.com

Opening Day 2010 is 5 days away as I type this, and to put it mildly I am excited. Things were not always this way, however. Despite having played baseball in high school I was never really a big fan of the sport. I hardly watched nor listened to any games. Too many movies and video games to really care, ya know?

This continued on into college. Two of my roommates, Marcus and Eric, were both huge Cubs fans that would spend most of their free time playing MLB '06 on PS2 and talking about the season. I stated absorbing some general baseball knowledge from them, and my proximity to Milwaukee made it easy to attend games, but I didn't really get too into it until the summer of 2007 when I was interning in Milwaukee. Long days of doing nothing allowed me to read up on the team a bit, and that carried over to the first few months of my full time job. By spring of 2008 I had read every article about the Brewers I could find that wasn't blocked at work. We went to a rainy game in April, and since then it's been Brewers Brewers Brewers all the time.

I think I like baseball because it appeals to the two sides of me. The one side is the kid, the one that loves browsing all the Brewers blogs and websites, reading articles and evaluating stats. Playing pretty much every day gives me something to look forward to every morning when I see how things went from the night before. It's good to have that constant stream of info buzzing through me.

The old man part of me loves the fact that every pitch matters. That one simple mistake can turn the tide of a game. That the psychologic battle between pitcher and hitter is almost as important as skill. A nice sunny day can be made even better by sitting outside and watching the boys of summer.

Man, now I'm REALLY excited for Opening Day!

And then I found $5

2010-03-25T12:56:00.000-05:00

I got up from my cube Tuesday to go to the lab when something near the trashcan in the hallway caught my eye; a neatly folded $5 bill. I looked around to see if anyone had recently dropped it but didn't spot anyone. So I reached down to pick it up when a Project Manager I know says "Score! That's much better than the quarters I usually find." I chuckled and shoved the money into my pocket as I continued on my way. My mind raced with what I could do with the money....donate it to a charity, pay for a random person's lunch, put it in my retirement account.

But I just bought a Schlitz instead.

Now, that $5 obviously was lost by someone but would they expect the finder to turn it in to the front desk? And if I didn't grab it someone else would have and probably bought crack with it, right?

Swearing and Violence

2010-03-23T17:48:00.001-05:00

Sunday afternoon I was flipping through the channels when I landed on SyFy channel and started watching Total Recall, a Schwarzenegger classic. Something odd struck me about halfway through it, however. While all of the swearing was blanked out pretty much NONE of the violence was. Keep in mind this movie has

Numerous bullets going directly through people's heads.
A guy getting stabbed through a steel plate with some sort of rock drilling machine (and thus dying the most horrible death ever while someone yells at him "SCREW YOU BENNY!!!")
Multiple broken necks
A guy getting used as a bullet shield
Head shaped explosive decimating a group of soldiers
A guy getting stabbed in the stomach by a little person prostitute
Lab technician getting stabbed in the neck with a wrist restraint
Getting a pole SHOVED THROUGH AN EYE SOCKET and OUT THE OTHER SIDE OF HIS HEAD
Fire ax to the stomach
Arms getting torn off Richter's body, then falling down a elevator shaft (while Quaid yells down the shaft "See you at the party Richter!" Love that part)
Cohaagen suffocating on the surface of Mars while the eyes bug out of his sockets

Have a gander, will you?

And yet every single swear word is bleeped out. The same thing happens in comic books. Sentry rips a dude in HALF in the same comic where they use "&@%!$%" for "asshole" and "son of a bitch."

America is a weird place. The lesson is pretty simple, though....show as much of this as you want:

But don't you dare say the word "dammit" on Syfy!

Money Come, Money Go

2010-03-20T14:58:00.003-05:00

From Photobucket

Part of my 2010 goals was to continue getting my finances in order by recording the balance of all of my accounts every Monday morning. I've done a great job of it so far, only missing one Monday because we were in Mexico. However, I did a quick review of the spreadsheet yesterday and it dawned on me: My account balance now is the same as it was in January.

WHAT.

How is that possible? I haven't made any big purchases. I used my tax return money to pay off part of my TV purchase, so that should be a net "neutral" for the money situation. So I went off to Mint.com to peer through my transactions and something started sticking out to me. It wasn't so much the size of the purchases so much as number of purchases. 18 so far in March. 32 in February, and a ridiculous 58 transactions in January. My goodness.

Until further notice I will not be spending any money unless it's on rent, gas, or food.

The Garbage Man

2010-03-17T08:20:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned twice before that one of my college jobs was picking up garbage on campus. But here's a little known secret of that job.

I loved it.

Basically my job was to travel around the residence halls driving a Gator emptying out 55 gallon trash barrels and taking those bags of trash to the dumpsters. In between trash barrels I'd use a 5 gallon pail and a reacher-grabber to grab trash off the ground and from inside bushes. This was a one man job, (and before I had a MP3 player) so I would usually hum or whistle to myself as I went about my business, trying to prevent the garbage bags from ripping and spilling all over my shoes, attempting to swerve around day-dreaming students as they walked to class, and successfully not getting stung once by the copious amounts of bees that surrounded all of the trash barrels in the warmer months. (I think I figured out the secret of avoiding getting stung: acting completely calm, not swapping at them or freaking out. I would carefully remove the lid, reach in to grab the trash bag, making sure I didn't squish any of them in my paws, remove the bag, throw it on the Gator, and put a new one in the barrel, and replace the cover. Never needed to use the insecticide spray.)

Looking back, it was one of those mindless manual labor jobs that people look down upon, but I enjoyed it. Maybe the juxtaposition of sitting in an office doing garbage all day comparing with driving around outside picking up garbage is what appeals to me.

Video

2010-03-12T19:41:00.000-06:00

At work they've got a wall of big screen flat panels setup with a constant loop of 10-15 music videos in order to do a stress test on them. There are speakers attached to the flat panels, but the sound is usually never on. And I am downright ENTHRALLED by this wall of video. Every time I go into the lab I find myself stealing glances at these screens. Or purposely turning my chair toward the wall while I work so I can just zone out, mouth agape, watching artists I've never heard of mime their way through various set pieces and situations. One of the videos shown is Crystal Method "Double Down Under". Give it a view, but imagine it 8 feet by 6 feet, with no sound. It's something that I just can't get enough of.

It looks something like this, but with bigger screens and less of them.

I think it helps that I was really, really into music videos during the heydey of MTV. I'd watch TRL nearly every weekend, Making the Video to see how music videos were shot, and the program that would premiere new videos every week. Since they started doing this stress test I've begun to wonder: Have music videos pretty much died since the early 2000s? Or is it that I just don't pay attention to them anymore?

Broken Window

2010-03-09T07:59:00.048-06:00

Lately I've been thinking about the Broken Window Theory. The basics of it go like this:

Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.
Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.

The thought is that if police, community workers, business owners, and residents spend time keeping a community cleaned and repaired then larger crimes has a smaller chance of being committed. This article from Boston.com makes the case that people were less likely to throw flyers on the ground on a "clean" side of a building than on the "dirty" side.

I started thinking about this a bit more in the spring mainly because a winter of trash and garbage has accumulated in snow banks and gutters. You drive through the less desirable parts of town and it looks like a garbage trunk just opened up and dumped a weeks worth of trash on the side of the street. And so you start to wonder: Would it really make any difference if some organization would take time to clean up the garbage in Milwaukee? I'd be very curious to find out. Aesthetically speaking I think it would really help some of the areas along Capitol Dr and Silver Spring Dr if someone took the time to clean up the litter along the road. I've been looking into different Organizations to volunteer for, maybe one that helps clean up some neighborhoods would be a good one to look into.

I Have This Problem...

2010-03-04T21:39:00.001-06:00

I've watched tons of movies in my day and thus have lots of movie quotes stuck in my head, but most of the time I have no idea what movie it might be from. I've been saying "what the hell bro?" a bunch the past few weeks but had to Google it to remember where it came from. I should start keeping track of all the random sayings and quotes that come out of my trap to see if I can figure out what they're from.

On that note, let's get random!

*shuffle*

Speaking of movies; movie critic Roger Ebert lost his lower jaw and voice almost 4 years ago. This feature in Esquire is a great read, and that fact that he'll be able to talk (using a computer) with his original voice that was lifted from his tv and radio shows from years ago amazes me.

*shuffle*

Here's a nice Spring Training article about everyone's favorite Brewer super-sub Craig Counsell. I thoroughly look forward to shouting "Coooooouuunseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeellll" at Opening Day this year.

*shuffle*

Last weekend we hungout with a bunch of people from Illinois and my "accent" was again brought to my attention. Yes, I realize I hold the "O" on "boooat" a bit longer than most. Yes, I do talk like a Yooper. No, I do not plan on changing anytime soon.

*shuffle*

I think Lennon would approve.

My Mouth is Confused

2010-03-02T18:28:00.000-06:00

What does this look like to you?

If you said "apple" than you are correct....kind of. It's actually a "grapple," an apple that's been infused with natural and artificial grape flavor. Ric picked some up at the grocery store the other day, and I had one for a snack this afternoon. Let me tell you, the mouth doesn't really know what to think of these. The texture is exactly the same as an apple, and there's still a hint of apple flavor, but primarily there's the grape taste that starts kicking in while you're chewing. It's like someone dunked a apple into grape juice and let it soak for a while. I'm not sure the world needs grapples but it's kind of a fun idea.

The best part, however, is that I've started saying "how bout them grapples??" to Ric all the time, which cracks me right up.

Sometimes I hear...

2010-02-25T15:53:00.001-06:00

...Hulk Hogan's entrance music as I'm walking down the hallway at work. And I really wanna slap people's hands and point at people and jabber jaw and flex and tear my shirt off.

I imagine most people would want to do the same thing, though.

Saved by the Bell

2010-02-23T15:23:00.000-06:00

I get up every weekday around 6:10, stumble downstairs to pour a bowl of cereal, and then turn on the tv to watch reruns of Saved by the Bell on TBS. Last week sometime there was an episode called The Time Capsule, where the graduating class of 2003(!) found a video in the time capsule from the graduating class of 1993, which was Zach, Slater, Kelly, and the whole gang. Watching this I was amazed because I graduated in 2003, but never really considered that group of people to be that much older than me. Saved by the Bell was in syndication so much when I was a kid, I've probably seen that show more times than I've seen anything else, including The Office and Lost. While a lot of the episodes are kind of goofy, it's that warm bit of nostalgia that I get from watching the show that keeps me coming back, morning after morning.

I found two interesting "Where are they now?" sites on my adventures of the internet. This first one has the primary cast minus Screech, who really doesn't talk with any of the others anymore. And it's kind of weird that Lisa doesn't do any acting anymore. I was always a fan of her.

This second one has the primary cast plus some supporting members like Max and Miss Bliss. And I for one would be fully in for a Saved by the Bell reunion. Because Tiffani Theissen (she played Kelly) is not on screen nearly enough anymore. My Goodness.

Width and Heigtht

2010-02-19T13:09:00.000-06:00

So I'm sure by now you've heard all the hubbub about director Kevin Smith being asked to leave an airplane for being "too fat." It's in interesting case, but William Saletan of Slate.com asks a great question to come out of this: Should fat people on airplanes be treated like tall people? Both groups have issues on planes, mainly because the "one size fits all" policy doesn't work when you're cramming as many people as possible on a single aircraft in order to make the most money. I'm the right side of the bell curve when it comes to height, at about 6' 4," and plane and bus rides are a pain in the knees. I almost always sit in the aisle seat, or otherwise spend most of the flight adjusting my legs into different positions so they're not digging into people's backs. And I can't imagine being bigger and having to cram onto those 18 inch wide seats.

One of the commentors from the Slate article had an excellent point: There should really be two rows of seats, one which offers larger seats, and one which offers more legroom. People over a certain height/weight could request them, and if they are not requested than anyone could get them. Having just traveled from Milwaukee to Mexico and back on 6 different aircraft I can safely say that this would be much appreciated, because every flight was filled with people, including those that were "big and tall." I understand the desire to make the most money per flight, but Airlines have got to realize that we're paying good money to fly the friendly skies, and deserve a decent level of comfort in return.

Guess Who's Back

2010-02-17T12:17:00.002-06:00

Well I completed dropped the ball on setting the blog up to auto-post while I was on vacation. I was going to do it Thursday before we left, but I didn't have anything packed so that kind of took precedence. Regardless, the vacation was amazing, and I'm sure you all survived without me. We stayed at the Akumal Beach Resort in Akumal, Mexico, which is about 1.5 hours south of Cancun on the Pacific Ocean. It was a pretty nice place with one of the best beaches in the area.

Anyways, here's some of what we did on vacation, with some lovely pics.

Snorkeled with wild sea turtles.
Played beach volleyball with 4 Argentinians, 3 Canadians, 2 Hungarians, and 2 Italians.
Ziplined 200 ft over the ocean.
Explored the Mayan Ruins at Chichen Itza
Swam with dolphins, sharks, and sting rays.
Played Thumper with a group of people that included a Canadian rapper and a 69 year old grandma.
Got my ear chatted off by a Canadian Chuck Norris look-alike, eh.
Swam in a fresh water cenote.

All in all, a good vacation. Starting next week we'll be back on schedule with new posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Whoa Mexico

2010-02-04T13:56:00.001-06:00

Well, I'll be out next week on vacation in Mexico, but I've got the blog setup to post some of my older articles that you might have missed out on the first time or that I really enjoyed writing. A couple of things to note before I hit the trails.

The final season of Lost started up on Tuesday, and (as I've talked about before) I'm a big fan of the show. We even went through and watched all 5 previous seasons before this season premiere, mainly because E and myself had missed most of season 3 and 4. The best part about Lost is easily the internet discussion as amateurs and professionals attempt to figure out what the frak is going on, with the Idiot Board's Lost discussion easily being the best of the bunch.
Here's an interview with Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes. It's believed to be his first interview since 1989(!!). And if you don't like Calvin and Hobbes then you should probably just turn off your computer and go be a curmudgeon somewhere else, ya heard?
On a suggestion from Blaze I'm about to start reading "Blood of the Fold," by Terry Goodkind. Now that we're all caught up with Lost I've got more time to read, so if anyone else has recommendations of any sort feel free to give me some suggestions.

Keep Turning Up the Heat

2010-02-02T09:09:00.001-06:00

As we're currently on the verge of buying 9-packs of tickets for the Brewers 2010 season I think it's a good time to talk about them, no?

Brewers made some interesting transactions this off-season - trading for CF Carlos Gomez, catcher Gregg Zaun, signing new starting pitchers Randy Wolf and Doug Davis, plus a bunch of other moves to hopefully improve the team. It'll be interesting to see how these moves effect a team that was ravaged by an overused bullpen last season.
GREAT news is that they re-signed Craig Counsell. Counsell is easily my favorite Brewer player (obviously), so it's great to see him back. My #30 jersey will get much use this summer.
Go to google.com, type in the name "Frank Catalanotto," and look at the fourth link. That's right, this blog right here is 4th on Google when you search his name! How cool is that? Sadly, Frank signed a minor league contract with the Mets, and will not be returning to Miller Park this year. This makes me rather sad, as we'll not be getting a helping dose of The Outfield's "Your Love" whenever you come up to bat. You'll be missed, Frank!
Brewer Fever has overtaken me so much that I even watched a Brewer Replay on FSN this past week, Gallardo vs Carpenter in a pitchers duel that ended with a Bill Hall (!) walk-off hit.

Man oh man, I'm excited for this season. Beers, baseball, brats, grilling, bags, sunshine....it doesn't get much better than that.

Etiquette and Protocol

2010-01-28T15:59:00.001-06:00

I found myself in another awkward situation today. Suppose you're walking through a thin space, like the gap between some cubes at work. There's a man sitting in the alleyway of the cubes, and you need to squeeze past him to continue on. It's a tight fit, so either you've got to turn sideways, and either give him a bit of your backyard, or have your package be about 2 inches from the back of his head and neck. What do you choose? I actually was actually squeezing through using one of these techniques, took a step back, and then went past him using the other technique, because it seemed the lesser of two evils.

(In this case the guy in the hall and the guy he's talking to are circles, and you are a Mike and Ike.)

So I ask you, fair citizens, what would you choose?

Tuesday Randomings

2010-01-26T14:05:00.000-06:00

You maggots wanna live forever?

*shuffle*

I've talked about Stick It before, but that movie owes a large debt of gratitude to Bring It On, that's for sure. And I'm not sure what's more weird: The fact that there's so many direct to dvd sequels, or that I've never seen any.

*shuffle*

Boston.com's photographs from Haiti are eye-opening. Just to warn you, some are very graphic, and all are quite depressing.

*shuffle*

After living in our current apartment for nearly a month we finally have things arranged and put away to a satisfactory degree. It's amazing, there's so much room in the place and it still doesn't seem big enough for our purposes. At this point I think we'd trade the extra bedroom for a few closets interspersed throughout the apartment.

*shuffle*

I need a haircut soon, but I don't think that I'm ballsy enough to give this a try. I'm more of a Space Invaders fan anyhow.

*shuffle*

Speaking of video games, guess how many I've played this winter. Two. Just Modern Warfare 2, and Left 4 Dead 2. How pathetic is that? College aged Gregor would be sorely dissappointed in Working aged Gregor. However, there's a bunch of good games coming out soon (Mass Effect 2 comes out today!) that I'd like to play, plus a handful of games from 2009 that I'd still like to play through. After we get all caught up on our re-watch of season 5 of Lost I should be good to go.

PlayStation

2010-01-21T15:31:00.000-06:00

As part of my "moving in with the gf and getting a place of my own" I've been trying to clear a bunch of stuff out of my parents house. Some of it was left there for lack of room during college, but the majority of it was plain laziness. However, this past weekend I gathered up my original Playstation and games from the basement and put it in a box to be donated. I believe I got the Playstation as a gift somewhere around 1997, right after the DualShock controllers had come out. I remember that the decision between a N64 and a PlayStation was one that I weighed for weeks, with a scribbling of paper listing the pros and cons, but ultimately decided on PlayStation for some reason. The first games I got for it were mostly of the racing persuasion, for some reason. Cart World Series, Sled Storm, Test Drive Offroad, and Test Drive 5 were all included in the first Christmas, and all of them were pretty fun. However, I had this thing where I HATED paying more than $30 for a game, so I ended up buying of the $5.99 demo discs(you see, before there was the internet you had to buy discs with demos on them, rather then just download them) and also a lot of trash. Blade the video game (TERRIBLE) is Chieften of the terrible games, and Spec Ops: Stealth Patrol is close behind it. Seriously, look at that cover. Just not good.

There were a bunch of great games that I owned, however. Tenchu: Stealth Assassins was released around the same time as Metal Gear Solid, and so it's stealth gameplay was overshadowed, but Tenchu had ninjas who could breath fire, which MGS was sorely lacking on. And Syphon Filter was a great 3rd person shooter that also was overshadowed by MGS, but lives on via the PSP. Star Wars: Demolition was like Twisted Metal set in the Star Wars universe, and was a blast for how absurd it was. Case in point: Everyone else uses vehicles like land speeders and AT-ST walkers, but Boba Fett flies around with just a jetpack. Example here.

Oh Boba you soooooo crazy.

And one of the the games I discovered via the demo discs was Colony Wars: Red Sun, which remains one of my favorite games ever. The story was sweet, and the missions were very cool...protecting convoys from maruading space pirates, defending interstellar bases. Plus you could buy new ships, and upgrade the weapons on them. This stuff was groundbreakingly cool for 1997.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and the days of PS2 and Xbox doomed the Playstation. But for a few years I loved that system, and it was a good dose of nostalgia to look through all those old games.

Family Values

2010-01-19T08:39:00.000-06:00

My mom has 7 siblings, and my dad has 6 siblings, so family get-togethers are always an experience. Including cousins, and now the children of the cousins, that's 45 people on my mom's side and 56 on my dad's. Typically we have to hold our annual Christmas parties in January, in order to accomodate everyone's busy holiday schedule. And no one on my mom's side has a house big enough to hold anyone, so we have it at the local church hall.

My aunt Nancy on my dad's side told me an interesting story this past weekend when we had my dad's family Christmas. Back when she was around 13 (this was around 1960, I believe) my Grandma's side of the family would get together for Christmas at each one of her sibling's houses every day after Christmas for a week, until they had visited everyone's house. They all lived within 20 miles of each other and since all of the kids were on vacation for the week between Christmas and New Years they figured it was the best time to see everyone. After the dad of the family got home from work they'd pile into their cars and drive over to Sibling A's house on the 26th, Sibling B's house on the 27th, etc. Kind of crazy, but also a pretty neat way to celebrate the holidays.

Thursday Randomings

2010-01-14T09:30:00.000-06:00

Onward to glory.

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REEEDD LIIIGHT CHALLENGE! For those of us who have watched Cash Cab this gives you a nice behind the scenes look at how it goes down, from the perspective of the contestants.

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So with a vacation coming up at the beginning of February (MEXICO!) I figured it was a good time to go to a tanning salon. I have a tendency to get burnt while on winter vacation to warmer climates (even last year, when I went to a tanning salon like 8 times before the vacation), and I told myself I wouldn't let that happen this time. So I found a local place that was running a deal of 4 tans for $3 dollars, and the lady recommended I use tanning lotion as well. There were signs all over the place stating "30 seconds - how long it takes for the UV rays to begin working when you use lotion. 6-7 minutes - how long it takes without lotion." So I bought lotion, and it seems to be working so far, but I definitely end up smelling like a stripper when I get done.

Not that I know what they smell like.

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I've talked about this before, but this post from Gizmodo does a great job of demonstrating the Social Acceptance of various Geek Subgenres. I find myself right in the middle. *whew*

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For Ric's bday we went to COA, a Mexican restaurant in the Bayshore mall. Food was good, though (as the review mentions) the restaurant has an identity crisis between what it thinks it is and what it actually is. They serve "street food," as they like to call it, but it's presented very well and the prices match the quality. Advertising it as "street food" gives it the connotation that it's cheap and quick. So if you're looking for that I'd recommend the Taco Bell up the street.

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Recently The New York Times published an interactive map of Netflix Queues in some of the bigger cities in the US. The data presented is historical, and with enough digging people have been pulling out some very interesting queues from specific Zip Codes. The readers on Slate picked out some choice ones, the best one being 90073 which is home to the Veteren's Administration whose number 1 in the queue is Swimming with Sharks.

Confession Time

2010-01-12T13:05:00.000-06:00

A conversation with Blaze this morning was kind of eye opening. We were discussing this article on Cracked about insane fan theories that actually made movies better, and he started talking about The Neverending Story, a movie of which I have never seen.

Though maybe I should, look at that freaking thing.

And I started thinking about other things like this, in which pretty much everyone else (it seems) has seen or experienced or had knowledge of something but for whatever reason I have not. Here's what I could come up with:

I didn't know that a "churchkey" was a bottle opener. There's even a bar in Madison called The Church Key, but I never put 2 and 2 together. I only found this out about 3 weeks ago.
I've never been a big fan of The Simpsons, and have probably only watched 10 episodes in my entire life.
I only like two, maybe three U2 songs. The only one I can think of right now is "Desire."
I've never been a big fan of college basketball. I'll fill out the brackets when March Madness rolls around, but other than that I don't have much attachment for the game.

I'm sure there's gotta be more. So it's time to fess up, all the rest of you. Have you never seen The Goonies until you were 20 years old? Are you from Wisconsin but not a Packer fan?

Tzatziki

2010-01-07T09:14:00.000-06:00

I will make a bold proclamation right now. 2010 will be the year of Tzatziki! You may be thinking, "what the frak is tzatziki??" The answer, my dear friends, is cucumber sauce, the same stuff you slather on gyros!

From flickr

The delicious mix of strained yoghurt (usually sheep's-milk or goat's-milk in Greece and Turkey) mixed with cucumbers, garlic, salt, and olive oil isn't just for gyros anymore. We had Oakland Gyros delivered to us on Monday, and we used the cucumber sauce for dipping chips and carrots into as well. It was great, and something other than ranch to dip food in.

But that is only the start, dear friends. I will be beginning a rigorous taste test to find out the best things to put Tzatziki on. Hot dogs? Nachos? Cereal?!?! Everything shall be tried, and devoured. Wish me luck.

2010 Goals

2010-01-05T08:51:00.003-06:00

Rather than label these as resolutions I believe I shall call them "Goals."

Sky Dive. Failed in doing this last year, so it's a pretty high priority for this year.
Learn First Aid. See #1.
Volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. See #1.
Finances. Last year I did a decent job getting my finances in order, but this year I'm going to take it one step farther. Every Monday morning I'm going to enter the balances of all of my accounts into an Excel spreadsheet. Currently I use Mint.com for keeping track of all of my info, but there doesn't seem to be a way to find out exactly how much money is in each account at a specific point in the past, so this will alleviate that issue. Plus typing in each dollar amount will make the money seem more "real," and I won't plunge back into spending willy-nilly.
Blog 2x a week. The frequency of my blog posts has been rather sporadic the past 6 months or so (as you can see over to the right), but blogging helps clear my head, and is good for the soul. I'll be posting every Tuesday and Thursday (as it seems that many other blogs post Monday-Wednesday-Friday so this will fill in the gaps). I plan on working ahead a bit to get a few different posts "in the hopper" ready to deploy in case work gets in the way.
Get rid of some of my stuff. Moving reinforces the fact that I plain old have too much worthless crap. Boxes full of stuff that I kept just in case. It's foolish, and considering we just moved into a new place and there STILL isn't enough room, I think it's time to make a change. We've already gathered 3 or 4 boxes of stuff we realized right away that we didn't need, but as time goes on I'm going to take a good hard look at all of our stuff, and figure out what stays and what goes. Most of it will be donated, but some could be sold on Craigslist for some extra money, and there ain't nothing wrong with that.
Spend more time with Family. I have two nieces, ages 5 and 2. I see them 8 times a year, if I'm lucky. I have two brothers, one sister-in-law, and one girlfriend of a brother. I see them about 5 times a year. I have two parents. And I see them 15 times a year. This isn't enough for me. We've moved a bit closer to all of them recently, and now that the girls are older and everyone is settling down it'll be easier for them to come down to visit also. Hopefully we'll be able to plan camping trips and other vacations around seeing them, 2 birds 1 stone.

Best of luck to all of you in 2010. If you need help keeping track of your goals for the year I recommend this little webapp. You "check-in" every time you do one of your goals that has a frequency. I'll be doing it for my blogging.

One Year Later

2009-12-30T08:29:00.002-06:00

So 355 Days ago I made 7 New Year's Resolutions. How well did I do?

From Flickr

Get Trained in CPR. Failure. Will be adding this to my 2010 list.
Setup an IRA and get finances in order. Success. Started up an IRA this fall, and though I wasn't able to contribute the maximum it was a good start. Also with this last paycheck I've saved up enough for a 6 month Emergency Fund without depleting the rest of my moneys. But getting ones finances in order is a marathon, not a sprint, so this will continue with aplomb into 2010.
Start Doing Habitat for Humanity again. Failure. I didn't even do any volunteering this fall/winter, sadly. I shall carry over this one into 2010 as well.
Skydiving. Failure. Had plenty of opportunities to go, but this summer was so busy with different things going on that by the time I had some free weekends it was October, and jumping out of a plane in October seems mad to me. 2010, here we come.
Get up to 200 lbs, and stay there. Eh, kind of failure. As I mentioned when I did the halfway year check up that with minimal working out and eating alright I tend to stay around 195, so unless I want to starting drinking muscle milk and weightlifting 3 times a week I'm happy with where I'm at.
Visit another country. Success. Bahamas vacation was very enjoyable, and hopefully more out of the country trips follow in the next couple of years.
Get back into computers/take my job more seriously. Success, with room for improvement. I built my own computer this fall, and that was a heck of a learning experience. But now I've got a spare desktop (plus Ric's old tower) to fool around with, so this will allow me to continue fooling around and learning some new things. In regards to my job, well, things have been rather busy. I've finally received more responsibility, but I still don't have the leeway or clout to do what I want on certain things, so that will continue to be worked on next year. Much like the finances, this is a life-long goal.

All in all, not too bad. The big life changing resolutions were completed while the smaller "personal development" ones were cast aside, but there's always time for that next year.

Here's to 2010.

Empty Nest

2009-12-23T13:11:00.003-06:00

From Flickr

I think I know how my parents felt when my two brothers and myself were finally all moved out of their house. After directly living with a houseful of people for the past 4 years, now it's just down to me and Ric living in the big house in Shorewood. And it's weird. We're pretty much living out of one room, one bathroom, the kitchen, and the living room, but the house has 4 bedrooms, 3 full baths, 3 floors, 2 living rooms, and a den. After you get used to having all of these other people to talk to, to watch movies with, and suddenly it's quiet.

The funny thing is that I could count the number of times I had been alone in either the place in New Berlin or the one in Shorewood on both hands, and relished in the chance to have the place to myself for once. Now it's empty every time I get home from work.

So who's up for moving into a nice populated hippy commune? I can't handle this being alone stuff, not in the dead of winter!

Monday Randomings Vol. V

2009-12-07T10:51:00.005-06:00

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I can't stop watching this .gif file. She gets absolutely DESTROYED. Plus the guy gets bonus points for splash damage by hitting the guy between them. It's from MTV's new show "Jersey Shore," which is like the Real World except filled with Guidos and Guidettes. Watching it will make you feel better about yourself, but not necessarily the human race as a whole.

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Here's a very good way to determine where to eat. Flow charts make everything easier.

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We went to the Comedy Club on State Street in Madison on Saturday and had a great time. Tickets were only $8 with a two drink minimum. The opening acts were nothing too special, but the headliner Bryan McCree was very hilarious. Somehow we got sat at the front table so we were only a few feet away from him, and thus were pulled into a couple of his routines. The table next to us was a few couples in their 40s and 50s, and Bryan mockingly had to explain some of his jokes to them, but they were eating it up too. All in all, it was a great time. Next time you want to do something different instead of just the old "go out to the bars" I'd suggest going to a comedy club to get your night started.

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Afterwords I had a hamburger piled with bacon, a bratwurst patty, carmelized onions, lettuce, tomatoes, sharp cheddar and Peck's Pilsner mustard on a pretzel bun. It was awesome. I fear the day that my metabolism starts slowing down. (Pic from here)

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Some Holiday classics are better left untouched. Not this one.

Hey Kid, I'm A Computah

2009-12-03T09:05:00.005-06:00

So after almost a year of talking about it I finally took the plunge in early November and built my own PC.

Tada!

I wanted to say thanks to Blaze, MrB, and Assailant.9 for their help in picking out what to go with. It was interesting to see differing opinions on what to go with, but in the end I had to make some compromises because of parts being out of stock, or my own wishes. I also used Ars Technicas Hot Rod guide as a base line of what I was interested in. I wanted to remain pretty close to what they recommended, just to see how it would turn out.
Here's the part list.

Case - NZXT Zero Black/Silver Aluminum ATX Full
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-P55-UP4P LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX
Processor - Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66ghz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 Quad-Core Processor
Graphics Card - EVGA GeForce GTX 275 1792MB
Power Supply - Corsair CMPSU-620HX 620W ATX12V
RAM - Corsair XMS3 6GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 1333
Hard Drive - Western Digital Caviar Black 640 GB 7200 RPM
Optical Drive - LG Black 22x DVD+R
Grand total of $1,250.

It only took about three hours to assemble, which surprised me. The basement of strewn with parts and pieces, and I was admittedly nervous when I hit the power button for the first time and nothing happened. However, MrB reminded me that there's a toggle button on the power supply that needed to be flipped as well. I installed Windows XP to start off with, but will probably switch to Windows 7 in 2010 sometime. The case is very quiet, I hardly notice when it's running, and it's big enough to expand and upgrade in the future, since I see myself owning this particular case for at least 5 years.

But the best part? I can play pretty much any new game at 1920 x 1280 with settings nearly maxed out. It's AWESOME. I've never tried benchmarking before, but I ran 3DMark 05, and it came up with scores of 23731 3DMarks and 15116 CPUMarks, which seems pretty good since I haven't overclocked anything yet. But both Modern Warfare 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 look and run perfect. And that's what matters to me.

So yeah, there's my baby. Check another thing off my resolutions!

Only Shaving Your Face?

2009-11-24T08:54:00.004-06:00

Found this gem of an ad on Facebook today.

So Gillette, you're recommending that we shave our entire bodies to "maximize your potential"? What are we, professional swimmers? Look, unless you spend most of your day with your shirt off as part of your job, or your arms look like Robin Williams, than there's no reason to be shaving anything other than your face. If you really are self-conscious about your hair I know people that have gotten laser hair removal and it worked great for them.

On the other hand, I know some people that really enjoy hair on a man. To each their own.

And screw you Gillette.

Monday Randomings, Thanksgiving Week Edition

2009-11-23T09:58:00.002-06:00

I'm liking these Monday Randomings, it's a good way to jump into the week with lots of the random things I've been thinking about during the weekend.

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Two charities that I'm rather fond of, Toys for Tots and Child's Play, are in full Holiday swing, and I'd recommend you donate some money or items for either of them. I'll be doing both.

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A guest post on Frugal Dad really struck a cord with me. Young couple making plenty of money, quite a bit of debt, but obviously spending too much, and thus could could be debt free in 3 years. But they don't really want to do anything about it! I'll be talking about it a little more when I talk about my 2009 resolutions, but I'm pretty happy with how my finances turned out for the year. Wanting to do something about them, and actually doing something about them are two different things.

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Over the last two weekends I've driven 720 miles without my CDs in my car, so I've been listening to a lot of radio. Specifically a lot of Top 40 radio, like 103.7 KISS FM. I haven't listened to pop radio in years, so it was interesting to hear what's "popular." I have to admit, my guilty pleasure is definitely Rihanna: I can't think of a single song of hers that I don't enjoy hearing. However the biggest issue with pop stations is that they have a playlist of about 30 songs, so they're CONSTANTLY playing the same things over and over again. It made for good driving music for 4 days, but now I'll be dipping my feet rather gingerly into the pool of pop music.

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Here's an interesting chart about the evolution of Superhero movies. The 4 movies on that list that I have not seen are Catwoman, Elektra, Howard the Duck, and the original Punisher. All of these movies, not consequently, are supposedly terrible.

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The Milwaukee Bucks are off to a pretty darn good start this season, and even have a game being broadcast on Friday night on ESPN. I think it's about time to go to a game and check them out in person.

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I'll have a blog up tomorrow about hunting, but nothing makes you appreciate internet access and warm food like sitting in a tree stand for 10 straight hours.

Monday Randomings Vol. III

2009-11-13T10:11:00.007-06:00

Let's jump into it, shall we?

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Lot's of free time means lots of thinking about things, and one of those things I think about is retirement, financial matters, and frugality. JD at Get Rich Slowly had a great blog the other day about Roth IRAs which breaks down in very simple terms what it is, and where you can open one. Look into it folks.

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Click it!

Lesson? Stop overreacting, H1N1 isn't a big deal.

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I finally bought a Xbox 360 a few weeks back when Wal-Mart had them for $200 with a $100 gift card. I figured it was about time, considering we'll soon be moving into a place and won't be able to use MrB's or FortNight's 360s. Now I've just got to look into the easiest way to transfer my saved games to the new machine (which by the way runs amazingly quiet compared to the older 360s. Hopefully mine won't RRoD anytime in the future.)

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My Grandma's house had this same light switch....hurm.

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One of my earliest blog posts was entitled "Friends Forever?", in which I talked about how friendships change over time, and that's ok. But over time I've realized that just because things change doesn't mean that friendships dissolve, they just get put on hold. I met up with my friend Nater this weekend to pick up a book I lent him over a year ago, and we caught up a bit over a beer, and it was a blast. We talked about video games and movies and life, and I was sad I couldn't stay longer to talk to him. We agreed to meet up again over Christmas, and I'm looking forward to it.

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Oakland Gyros are awesome.

The Addiction

2009-11-13T09:34:00.003-06:00

I've been clean for about 1.5 years now. Sure, I've dabbled in some lesser evils here and there, but nothing grabbed me as strongly as "MW" did. It started off as something to do with friends, but then I would just start doing it by myself. I was getting high all hours of the day, and when I wasn't getting high I was thinking about getting high. I'd decline going out and being social just so I could stay in my room. But over time I got bored with it, realized that I was missing out on life, and so cut myself off cold turkey. It burned at first but I managed, until the part of me that was so addicted seemed like a completely different person.

But now, it's all come undone. A more powerful, fresher version of "MW" has come out. MrB said to me "you don't seem all that anxious" and I wasn't. But then I got my first taste of it, and it reminded of years past. Instantly I was hooked. I told myself "only one hour, then I need to go do stuff." And I stuck to that. But then 9:30 rolled around, and I really didn't have anything to do. "One more hit, just to help me sleep," and so I went back for more. And now I can't stop thinking about it.

(It's funny how much I've been thinking about Modern Warfare 2 since last night, it almost started feeling like an addiction. Thus this post. I bet if I went through my gaming history, and found the times when I was really into multiplayer games - Call of Duty, C & C Generals, Counterstrike, etc - there would be a noticeable dip in my GPA for that time period, but also a dip in how much money I spent on going out and drinking. There's two sides to every coin.)

Mohawk for a Day

2009-11-03T10:21:00.003-06:00

As a corporate drone in good standing it is expected of me that I will dress in business casual every day and remain properly groomed. I usually do a pretty good job of this, though some days my 5 o'clock shadow turns into a 10 o'clock shadow, but for the most part I do a decent job of it.

However, as part of my Halloween costume I decided to go with a mohawk and a goatee. It was fun to do something different for the weekend, but laziness rolled around by Sunday night, and I figured, "Eh, what could one day with a mohawk really do? It's not terribly noticeable." So off I went to work in the morning, rocking the mohawk. And to tell you the truth? No one really noticed. A guy on my team mentioned that he liked it, but for the most part it was radio silence out there.

And then that night I had E cut it off. Tempting fate one day was enough. There will come a day in the future when it will return, but when that is no one can say.

Haunted House - A Review

2009-10-30T08:49:00.003-05:00

Last night we went to Hauntfest at the State Fair Grounds. I came away extremely disappointed. First of all, the inside was extremely loud, it was hard to have a conversation with anyone. Also the lighting inside was quite lackluster, and we frequently didn't know which way to go. The customer service associates attire was atrocious to say the least. Torn dirty clothing, no common uniform...Frankly, I was appalled. And their hygiene! Some of them look like they hadn't showered in months, others were covered in blood (terrible unsanitary), and some even looked like they had risen from the gross. Disgusting. And what was with them constantly yelling at us? Quite rude.

I give it 1 out of 5 stars, and would not recommend it to family or friends.

Dread

2009-10-23T11:04:00.003-05:00

Movies typically make me do one of 5 things:

Laugh.
Smile with joy.
Think.
Cry.
Bored.

However, there are only two movies that I can think of that have made me feel something new. Dread. The first time I watched it was when I saw No Country for Old Men. I had heard good things about it from other people but didn’t know much about the plot going in, and man, I was just blown away. Hopefully you’ve seen the movie already, but there’s a part where the main character Llewelyn is hiding out in a motel, and hitman Anton is slowly stalking his way through the place. Watching this seemingly unstoppable man-beast methodically hunting his prey really got my heart going, and this sense of dread came over me. Truly an awesome feeling considering I was watching something on screen and it’s not like I was the one in danger.

The second time I’ve had this feeling was just this past week. Netflix is letting us catch up on a ton of movies, and one that I never got a chance to see when it was in the theater was United 93. I remember there was controversy surrounding the movie when it first came out (for good reason), but I don’t know of anyone that actually saw it. We watched it Wednesday night, and here’s the thing: Just because you know how a story ends doesn’t mean it still can’t be an amazing experience. Once again this feeling of dread crept over me, as the movie started with a slow burn all the way until.....it ended.

Anyway, both movies are highly recommended, if you haven’t seen them. I hope you get to experience the same things I did.

Shazam!

2009-10-20T08:33:00.003-05:00

By far the coolest/most useful application I've seen on the iPhone is Shazam, a deceptively simple program that listens to a song, and then lets you know the artist name, song title, and allows you to purchase it, if you wish. How it works is a pretty interesting read, if you've got 10 minutes you should do so. I'm still over a year away from getting a "smart phone," (though the Motorola Droid looks pretty enticing) but when I do Shazam will be one of my first purchases

Downhill From Here

2009-09-10T08:45:00.004-05:00

About a year ago I wrote an post about the Brewers, and how they seemed to be sleeping walking into October. And now....we'll, the Brewers have been sleep walking since early July, and it's kind of hard to watch. They're 17 games out of first place in the division, and there's no chance of making the playoffs. And so you start looking to next year. Should the manager keep playing the veterans, in a hope to win games and try to salvage their record? Or do they play the younger guys more excessively, like shortstop Alcides Escobar, outfielder Jason Bourgeois, and 3rd Baseman Mat Gamel to get them some big league experience in possible preparation for next year? If I was Ken Macha, I'd start looking towards next year. The Brewers will need to spend a decent amount of money in order to bring in some better pitching, so they will almost certainly have to start less expensive younger guys in order to make up for it. It makes sense to see what they can do in the remaining month, and help them build some confidence coming in to next year.

A lot of fans are disappointed with the Brewers this season, and for good reasons. After a slow start to the season the Brewers were white hot in May and June, having one of the best stretches in all of baseball. Everyone had thoughts of post-season baseball, but injuries (Rickie Weeks, Dave Bush) and ineffectiveness (Bill Hall, JJ Hardy, Corey Hart, etc) took their toll, and so we sit at 66 wins and 73 losses.

Just because they're out of playoff contention doesn't mean you should stop watching, however. The last weeks worth of games have been very close and exciting, and the players you're seeing might just be the future of the team. So keep on cheering our boys on, I know I will be.

No Time to Blog

2009-08-25T09:02:00.003-05:00

(Too busy.

Must provide content for blog.

Stole from email forward.

Will now attempt to pass off as original content.)

Random thoughts from people our age...

-I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.

-More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.

-Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

-I don't understand the purpose of the line, "I don't need to drink to have fun." Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they've invented the lighter?

-Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

-That's enough, Nickelback.

-I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

-Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the "people you may know" feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?

-Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.

-There is a great need for sarcasm font.

-Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the f was going on when I first saw it.

-I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I'll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone's laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I'm still the only one who really, really gets it.

-How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

-I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

- I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

-The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.

- A recent study has shown that playing beer pong contributes to the spread of mono and the flu. Yeah, if you suck at it.

- Was learning cursive really necessary?

- Lol has gone from meaning, "laugh out loud" to "I have nothing else to say".

- I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

- Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.

- My brother's Municipal League baseball team is named the Stepdads. Seeing as none of the guys on the team are actual stepdads, I inquired about the name. He explained, "Cuz we beat you, and you hate us." Classy, bro.

- Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".

- How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?

- I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!

- Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using 'as in' examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss's last name to an attorney and said "Yes that's G as in...(10 second lapse)..ummm...Goonies"

-What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

- While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it...thanks Mario Kart.

- MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

- Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

- I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

-Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

-I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.

- Bad decisions make good stories

-Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do!

- Is it just me or do high school girls get sluttier & sluttier every year?

-If Carmen San Diego and Waldo ever got together, their offspring would probably just be completely invisible.

-Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I'm from, this shouldn't be a problem....

-You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

-Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection.

-There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

-I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

- "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this ever.

-I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There's so much pressure. 'I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren't watching this. It's only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?'

-I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Dammit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What'd you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?

- I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

-When I meet a new girl, I'm terrified of mentioning something she hasn't already told me but that I have learned from some light internet stalking.

-I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

-Why is a school zone 20 mph? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for pedophiles...

- As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.

-Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

-It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood.

-I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

-Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn't know what do to with it.

-Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, hitting the G-spot, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I’d bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time...

-My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day "Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?" How the hell do I respond to that?

-It really pisses me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text.

-I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.

-I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

-I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lites than Kay.

-The other night I ordered takeout, and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic silverware. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimated that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There's nothing like being made to feel like a fat bastard before dinner.

And one that I came up with:

-At this point in my life I can safely say that I have burned the roof of my mouth on hot pizza more often than not. One would think that I would learn the lesson that something that was being backed at 400 degrees would be "hot" by now.

Too Many Calories

2009-08-17T15:41:00.005-05:00

The Wisconsin State Fair is something I didn't even know existed until a few years ago. I thought each County had a fair, but had no idea that the entire state had one also. "Why does the state need one if every county already has one?" Oh Gregor, you ignorant bastard! The reason is quite simple: The most delicious, unhealthy food ever thought up is made at the fair. Here's the list of everything I ate this year.

Hot Cheese on a Stick - It's like a corndog, but instead of meat in the middle there's nacho cheese.
Corn Dog - I love me some corn dogs.
Cheese Cake on a stick, dipped in chocolate and peanuts. Delicious, though it filled me up quite a bit more than expected.
1/2 Pound cheeseburger.
Cheese fries.
Samplings from different soups and dips in the Pavilion.
Deep fried Mac & Cheese on a stick.
Foot long Corn Dog - Told you I loved corn dogs.
Chocolate covered bacon - It's surprisingly very good.
Deep fried peanut butter jelly sandwiches - I will be attempting to manufacture these sometime in the future, they were that good.
Jalepeno Cheddar cheese curds.
Strawberry Sundae - probably some of the best ice cream I've ever had....made in Wisconsin, dontcha know.
Bison and Elk snack sticks.
Cream Puff.

And yes, I will begin eating healthy again starting today....I don't think my heart could take going to the State Fair more than twice a year.

Yo Joe!

2009-08-05T11:23:00.003-05:00

So the G.I. Joe movie comes out this weekend.

I'm excited. Along with Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe was a big part of my childhood. I'm not sure when I discovered it, but my brothers had a brown cardboard box with "GIJOE" written in black marker on the top of it. Inside was about 10 figures, and two big vehicles, a Cobra Stun and a G.I. Joe Snow Cat Being from the Northwoods I used to LOVE that Snow Cat. I never actually took it outside to play in the snow, but as a 6 year old with an over active imagination that hardly mattered. The two arctic themed Joes we had, Frostbite and Iceberg would cruise around the couches and floor of our living room and shoot the ski missile at the escaping Cobra forces. Seriously, ski missiles.

The first Joe I ever got was from collecting UPC labels from boxes of Rice Krispies. Because Kellogg's didn't want the action figure to have any guns my Lifeline only came with a backpack and a medkit, but I was still stoked when I got him. As the years rolled on I was able to assemble a pretty decent army of Joes, but like all good things my interest in them came to an end.

Just like when I was a kid, though, Joes are back in the action figure aisle in full force, and it's kinda cool to see. Hopefully the movie does a good job of introducing G.I. Joe to a new generation of kids. I know I'll be seeing it this weekend, and fighting the flashbacks of Flint, Beachhead, and Stalker rappelling down the side of our couch into enemy territory.

And knowing is half the battle.

Chop 'Em Down

2009-07-29T08:18:00.006-05:00

The landscaping around our house isn't particularly good. There's some bushes in the front, and some patches of wood chippings around the back where the rose bushes are, but the north side of the house is completely neglected. The dead brush and bushes were cleared out earlier this year by one of the roommates so that he could get his motorcycle into the back yard, but since then it has been overrun by burdock. This is what it looked like (Click pics to biggerize them):

At this point is was nearly 6 feet tall, and thick as thieves. I will stand no such aggression on my territory, however. I took that patch of burdock behind the woodshed and beat it down.

My instrument of chopping?

Hahah, just kidding. I just used a hand scythe that I borrowed from back home.

Back in my younger years one of the many tasks I took upon my self was going into the field across from our house and chopping down all of the burdock that would flair up. It was good exercise, and I would pretty much go into a berserker rage with the hand scythe, chopping and slashing until the field was laid to waste. Probably one of my favorite chores.

Anyways, it'll probably take a few more times before the burdock stays dead, but that's ok with me. I was born to chop.

I Hate Running

2009-07-28T15:04:00.002-05:00

But sometimes even I can be coaxed into going for a run for Charity. This past Saturday me and the roommates ran in the Sausage Run/Walk 5K, held at Miller Park. Like a fool, I didn't really prep for it as much as I should have. Work the past two weeks has been insane (thus the lack of blogging), but I did get a 1.4 mile run/walk in a few days before the race (I'm still working on being able to run the whole way). I ended up finishing in about 32 minutes, which I didn't think was too bad, but yes, I got beat by some 13 year old girls, 60 year old women, and a person in a giant Hot Dog costume, but I beat the Chorizo, so I've got that going for me. And part of the race goes through Miller Park, which is very cool. They take you in through a service entrance, and then onto the field, where you run on the gravel warning track area from right field to home plate and then to left. Very cool, and kind of eerie seeing the place so empty.

All in all I had a fun time, even though my calves were killing me the past 2 days. But I told Ric that I'd be up for running another 5k sometime in the future, so that's a small victory, no?

Encounters in the Animal Kingdom

2009-07-08T08:43:00.002-05:00

My encounters with animal life have been documented before, but this one is rather odd. I had a volleyball game last night that I arrived far too early for, so I decided to grab my disc golf discs and practice throwing them around the park (don't judge me). As I walked past the tennis courts to pick up my previously thrown disc I noticed a chipmunk standing on it's back legs, looking at me from the middle of the grass near my disk. I cautiously walked closer to it, and when I got about 2 feet away it scampered into it's hole. I laughed it off, bent down to pick up my disc, and looked up to noticed that there were 8 more chipmunks, all staring right at me from their individual holes. Like so.

I've never seen that many chipmunks in one place. They were like prairie dogs, with all their interconnecting holes within a 40 ft. radius. What the what? Do chipmunks always do this? David Seville would not be pleased.

Wednesday Comics

2009-07-07T09:36:00.002-05:00

I like comics of all sorts, including webcomics (Chad introduced me to Daisy Owl, which is quite good) and comic books. Typically new comic books go on sale on Wednesday at your local comic book shop. New comics typically look like this.

They usually tell the tale of one character, or group of characters that are on a team. However, DC Comics, creators of Batman and Superman, have decided to experiment with a new format starting Wednesday. Measuring 14" by 20," this format is known as "Wednesday Comics," and is meant to invoke memories of reading the Sunday Comics from when you were a kid. Each print has stories about 15 different characters or groups, and over the next 12 weeks will unfold easily accessible stories about major characters (like the two mentioned before) and some obscure ones like Sgt. Rock and Deadman.

It's only $3.99, and I'll be picking up a copy for sure (though probably not until the weekend.

(Tim Callahan from CBR had a great write-up about it, if you're interested in finding out more information).

Friday Randomings, Vol. 5

2009-06-26T07:27:00.003-05:00

Man, it's been a while since I've done one of these, eh? Let's get to it!

*shuffle*

This is probably one of the funniest things I've read all week. Prince Fielder isn't exactly known for his speaking ability, but the line "I don't know. I just work here" cracks me up to no end. Good stuff, Prince.

*shuffle*

You know life is crapping on you when you're standing at a restroom sink, trying to get the automatic sensor to recognize that your hands are in front of it, when the sink next to yours turns on, even though there's no one in front of it.

*shuffle*

First day of Summerfest is downright insane. The number of people coupled with the heat made for an interesting time, but all in all it was very enjoyable. At the US Cellular Connection stage they have a massive screen that you can send texts and pics to, and some of the messages are ridiculous. My favorite was "The basest is my new best friend."

*shuffle*

This is the first I've seen or heard of the movie Daybreakers, and holy cow that is a high concept. I do love me some vampire movies, but this spins it on it's head in a very neat way.

*shuffle*

While at The Toys show last night they mentioned (before playing Sex on Fire) that the Kings of Leon show at the Bradley Center in September was already sold out. Seriously? Now, I had heard that they had played a soldout show at Madison Square Garden, but I didn't think it would sellout so quick here in Wisconsin. Kings of Leon: Biggest band that no one is really talking about?

The Best Show You're Not Watching

2009-06-23T15:09:00.003-05:00

Yes, I know it's summer and you're probably too busy doing fun outside things, but do yourself a solid and set your DVR to record the television show "How I Met Your Mother." Traditional sit-coms might not be as popular as they once were, but one show refuses to go quietly into thy good night. The premise is simple: 5 friends that live in New York. It's like Friends, but doesn't suck.* The main character is Ted, who is describing to his kid's in a very roundabout way, how he met their mother. There's some recognizable characters, as Barney is played by Neil Patrick Harris, and is downright awesome as a corporate lothario.

Marshall, played by Jason Segel of Forgetting Sarah Marshall fame, is hilarious too.

Here's a clip.

See what I mean? It's the perfect mix of goofy, surreal, and hilarious that makes me happy. Give it a try, it's got the Gregor Seal of Approval™

Damn You Frank Catalanotto

2009-06-17T07:48:00.005-05:00

So Sunday we went to the Brewer game, and Frank Catalanotto for the Brewers is announced to come up to bat.

Pic from Wikipedia

And ever since then I've had his damn entrance song stuck in my head. Give it a listen.

Dammit Catalanotto, do you realize what you've done? That song is down right infectious! Since then I've been singing "Your Love" by The Outfield (appropriate, no?) in my head, whistling it while walking out of the building yesterday, and even was caught singing it at home last night. Thanks Frank, you jerk!

Halfway There

2009-06-15T10:52:00.004-05:00

So this year I made New Year's Resolutions and to help myself keep on track I posted them here for all the world to see. Let's see how we're doing, shall we?

Get Trained in CPR. Well, I had pretty much forgotten about this one until I reviewed my resolutions. This might be a late summer addition to my schedule; with softball and volleyball taking up two of my weeknights at the moment time free time is a precious luxury.
Setup an IRA and get finances in order. The IRA will be something to setup closer to the end of the year, but I've been steadily using Mint.com for all of my purchases the past 5 months, and that's really helped me to see how much money I piddle away on unnecessary things.
Start doing Habitat for Humanity again. I labeled this one as a "big one," and thus I failed pretty big in doing nothing about it. I excuse to myself was "well, in college it was easy to just sign up and go work for a Saturday." Signing up to help out the County affiliate takes a bit more work. More research is needed to find out exactly what I need to do.
Go Skydiving. Looks like this is going to happen July 2nd. Woohoo!
Get up to 200 lbs, and stay there. I still hover around the 195-198 lb area, which seems to be where my body is comfortable at with minimal exercise and healthy eating. Saturday the roommates and myself started doing Power 90, a 90 day workout routine, so we'll see if that helps with the weight gaining. Honestly though, getting up to 200 lbs really isn't that big of deal to me anymore. As long as I'm fit and healthy, no matter the weight.
Visit another country. As mentioned in the previous post, this one was achieved in February, and was a great time. However, rumors of going to Austria to visit Ric's brother have been bouncing around, so if goal #2 continues I should be able to swing that later this fall.
Get back into computers/take my job more seriously. This was a two part one, and career-wise I'm doing great. I'm about halfway through a month-long project where I'm in charge of a group of people, and even though I'm coming to work early and putting in long hours I really do love it. Hopefully after this project I can continue to be given plenty of work to keep me busy. On the personal side I still need to build a computer, but I pushed this off until fall because I'm rarely use my PC during the summer. It pays to wait a few months for prices to come down and for newer parts to become available.

So that's the wrap-up. All in all I'd say that I'm doing alright, but I've definitely been slacking in certain areas. No time like the present to kick it into high gear.

Low Man on the Totem Pole

2009-06-10T09:00:00.001-05:00

Sometimes at work I feel like Rodney Dangerfield: I just can't get no respect. It probably doesn't help that occasionally I'm put in charge of other people and these other people are almost always my seniors by 10 years. This can make for an awkward working arrangement, because telling someone that's been married for 15 years and has a family at home that they're doing things incorrectly when I look like I just stepped off the bus from college seems kind of odd. If we swapped positions would I respect a 24 year old kid telling me how to do my menial task? Meh, probably not.

The idea of respect, in every aspect of life, interests the amateur sociologist in myself. Why do certain groups of people get respect, just because of arbitrary factors? Does the "mature" generation deserve respect just because they're old? That doesn't seem fair. There's probably a whole bunch of crappy people in that generation, so I'd argue the fact that they shouldn't be given a blank check when it comes to respect. (I'm sure Chad could enlighten us with tales of "The Greatest Generation" from his weekend job).

So I toil on, extolling the virtues the "respect should be earned, not given." Meanwhile I continue to attempt to earn the respect of co-workers, by doing my job as flawlessly as possible. Getting respect through hard work seems to be a good path to take.

Happy Birfday!

2009-06-09T11:07:00.004-05:00

So today is the 75th birthday of the esteemed Donald Duck. In honor of that I present a favorite clip from when I was a lad, in which Mickey, Goofy, and Donald go camping. I wish I had a camper just like theirs.

Happy Birthday Donald!

(Oh, it's also the 1 year anniversary of In The Fade. That's right, one year ago today I first dipped into blogging, and 208 posts later here we are. Thanks for reading, commenting, arguing and debating. And many happy returns.)

A Query for All

2009-06-04T10:23:00.003-05:00

How much popcorn do you think you could eat on an empty stomach? I'm thinking I could eat the second to largest one in the back row of the pic. It just seems like you're eating nothing at all Do you think you could eat popcorn continuously until you grew tired of chewing? It seems my hunger for it goes away, or my jaw gets sore, before I really fill up.

Just something to think about on a boring Thursday.

You're Too Young

2009-06-02T13:04:00.003-05:00

It's a beautiful time of year for dorks like myself. Not only is there a plethora of movies in theatres that I want to see, but E3, the world's largest video game expo, is currently going on. And that is a great thing. So as I try to find a decent website to watch the trailer for the newly announced Left 4 Dead 2, I find this. Hooray, I think to myself.

So I click the play button and I am presented with this.

I chuckle to myself as I set my birthday to January 1, 1932. Seriously, what the hell is the point of this? Does this simple check get video companies off the hook when parents are upset that little Timmy saw a zombie's head get exploded? And what kid is going to honestly put in his real birthday after the first time? It just seems foolish to me.

Pay to Play

2009-05-28T09:16:00.006-05:00

In general, I'm a tightwad. In most cases I'll take some sort of inconvenience to pay less for something (6 people in a taxi cab, nosebleed seats for a Brewer game, etc). But as of late I've been doing the opposite, paying more for utter comfort.

Folks, let me introduce you to IPic.

Tickets for movies are $14, which is sort of steep, but the benefits quickly outweigh the cost.

First, the video and sound are both digital, so the picture quality is beautiful, and the sound is amazing. It shakes your seats on some of the louder scenes!
The seats are reserved, which kinda stinks if you want to sit a huge group together, but we've been pretty fortunate so far.
Speaking of the seats, they're love seat-style, with two people sitting together in the back section. And they're comfortable as can be, with a fold down arm rest in between.
It's 21 and over after 7 pm, so there's no little kids ruining the movie with their crying and talking. I didn't even realize it until after the movie, but that is awesome.
You can drink all sorts of alcohol during your movie. Beer wine, mixed drinks, it's all there.
And free popcorn to boot. And you get free tickets for bowling in the attached bowling alley.

Now I wouldn't recommend it for every movie. But it made the experience of Star Trek that much better, in my humble opinion. If you're in the Whitefish Bay area give it a try, I doubt you'll be disappointing.

Bane of My Existence

2009-05-19T08:43:00.003-05:00

I've been very happy with nearly every aspect of our new house, minus one thing: the parking situation. Out place came with a two car garage, plus a concrete slab next to it that can fit one car. This would be more than enough if a family lived here, but we're 5 working people with 5 cars. Add in the fact that you can't park in the street overnight, and things get difficult. Shorewood offers parking lots for $45 a month, but the stipulations of said parking lots are borderline ridiculous. The first lot we could get into had rules for when you could have your car in there. It had to be out by 7:00 AM in the morning, and couldn't return to the lot until 6:00 pm. Considering I work an 8:00 am to 5:00 pm job, this provides some issues. For the first two months I made sure that I was leaving the lot by around 7:00, and when I returned home I would park my car on the street until after 6:00 pm. This was a pain in the ass.

However we also signed up to be on the waiting list for another lot, and after a few months we got put into this lot. The only stipulation for this lot was that you could only leave the car in the lot for 4 hours during the day, so it would need to be moved out of the lot during the day. Not really a problem, for the most part. However, this parking lot is between a funeral home, library, and the village hall, so it is used CONSTANTLY. Monday nights, especially, are the worst. For the past month I've come home on Monday nights only to find the entire lot full. No problem, I tell myself, I'll just park on the street and move into the lot in an hour. But then an hour goes by, and I go to move my car AND IT'S STILL FULL. I'm paying damn good money for that spot, is it so hard to make these other people park on the road?

The fact that parking is the biggest headache in my life should make me happy, though. Things could be a lot worse.

Gregor's Dirty Laundry

2009-05-15T09:51:00.002-05:00

I didn't really get into baseball until 2 years ago, even though I played in high school.
The first alcoholic drink I had was Hooch. It took about 2 years after that for me to enjoy the taste of beer. And now it's pretty much all I drink.
I told Chad that I couldn't pick out the bassline for most songs my Freshman year of college. It's amazing how dumb I was back then.
I hardly ever ate hamburgers or cheeseburgers as a kid. It was hot dogs or (if we went out to eat) chicken nuggets, all the way.
Going off that, I didn't like steak all the much until high school. I think it was because we could only afford the lowest quality of steaks when I was a kid, so it was usually stringy, and bland as heck.
I convinced myself that telling people the truth all the time, no matter what the situation, was a good idea in the beginning of college. It's amazing I maintained any friends at all.
You know on the passenger side mirror of cars it says "Objects in mirror are closer than then appear"? Well I used to think that meant if something was too far away from the mirror it would disappear from site. And when it got closer it would pop out of nowhere and reappear.
I thought the lead singer of Rush was a female until I was 18.

My Morning Vice

2009-05-13T12:51:00.005-05:00

Many of us, whether we're in the working world or not, tend to rely on certain stimulants to get us going in the morning. For some people it's coffee. I love seeing certain people in the hallway here at work, because they are NEVER without their mug of coffee. I've seen people come out of the bathroom stall with it. Others it's Mountain Dew, or an energy drink. They drink it so much they start bringing in cases of soda to stock in the fridge.

But me? Well, I shower.

Even if I took a shower the night before (like I did after working out last night), I still shower every weekday morning. It's probably more of a mental thing than anything, but it gets me going in the morning unlike anything else. Just 5 or 10 minutes soaking in some hot water recharges my batteries, washes away the worries of the previous day and prepares me for the next day.

Now I'm not saying I don't indulge in some caffeine (or Gummy Bears, as was the case today) from time to time, but for me the best part of waking up is a nice hot shower in the morning.

To Boldly Go...

2009-05-11T13:16:00.006-05:00

(I'll keep this spoiler-free, in case anyone hasn't seen the movie yet)

My nerdery is very wide, for the most part, but there are some pockets of the spectrum that I really haven't delved too deeply into. Star Trek is one of them. I had seen a few issues here and there, knew characters, and had seen 2 or 3 of the movies, but the only lasting aspect of the Star Trek universe was this .gif file.

No, I will not give you any context.

Anyways, I was interested in the idea of rebooting the Star Trek franchise, because franchises tend to get stale after a while: it's the nature of the beast. So we went to the IPic at Bayshore Mall, grudgingly paid $14 a seat, and watched the movie.

And I gotta say, it was well, well worth the money. It follows the same line of thinking for every "first" movie, in that there's a lot of setup and character background, but the way they explain this new continuity is downright genius. A great movie with fun action, big explosions, and lots of humor, I can pretty much recommend it to anybody that likes watching movies. Everyone I saw the movie with loved it, even to the point of wanting to go back and watch the original series.

So while you're waiting for the nice weather to finally stay here for good, do yourself a favor and see Star Trek in the theater. THIS is the reason the movies are shown on a 40 foot screen.

I Really Should be Saving Money, But.....

2009-05-08T15:32:00.004-05:00

...this is too good to pass up.

Currently on sale on Amazon for $9.95. That, ladies and gentlemen is a DEAL. Don't believe me? Check out the first review

This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that's when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to 'howl at the moon' from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn't have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn't settle for the first thing that comes to him.

I arrived at Wal-mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her mountain dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.

Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women
Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the 'guns'), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.

Oh hello, what other recommendations do you have, Amazon?

Nothing sets off a nice black Wolf t-shirt like purple Zubaz pants. I've said before that I want these to come back into style, but I think the time is now. Who's up for a Wolf Pack bar crawl?

Entrance Music

2009-05-07T08:40:00.004-05:00

Carlos Corporan, a minor league back-up catcher in the Brewers system, was recently called up to the big leagues to back-up Jason Kendell until Mike Rivera gets off the Disabled List. (He also got his first major league hit last night. Congrats Carlos!)

And it got me thinking, once again: What would I pick for my entrance music? The choice is rather obvious. AC/DC "Whole Lotta Rosie." Give the beginning a quick listen.

Awesome, eh? I picture a crowded Miller Park, bottom of the 9th, two outs. Down by one, with a man on second. My name is announced, the crowd roars, and then the guitar lick roars out of the loud speakers. Duh-duh-nah-nah-nah-nah-naah! And then the whole crowd shouts my last name. Or "Gregor!" Either one works. Duh-duh-nah-nah-nah-nah-naah! Again shouting! The place is electric. And then I pull out my bat, and it's got "Rosie" engraved on the side, and the crowd goes bananas!!! What happens after that? Well, we'll hopefully find out someday, no?

Aaaah, day dreaming....

So what would be YOUR entrance music, fair reader?

Hell Yeah Monday!

2009-05-04T11:10:00.005-05:00

Today is quickly turning into a "Hell Yeah Monday!" Reasons? We've got plenty!

Turtles in Time is getting remade. As I talked about during Top 5 week, Turtles in Time is one of my favorite video games EVAH, so I'm really looking forward to this.
From OnMilwaukee.com, "Credit Mike Vassallo with an assist; the Brewers' PR director suggested an entrance song for reliever Jorge Julio, who now comes into games to the tune of Paul Simon's "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard."" I cubeloled quite heartily about that one.
Spring has finally sprung, with highs in the 60s nearly all week long. I had my shirt off both Saturday and Sunday while outside. And loved every minute of it. Minus when I went +18 in disc golf in Whitewater. But it's still early in the season!
I had a dream last night that Rocky Balboa had opened an auto shop in Edgar, and was barely scraping by with Adrian. It even looked like the movie, with the colors slightly washed out, like a lot of movies from the 70s look.

It was Free Comic Book Day on Saturday, so we stopped at Planet Chaos in Fort Atkinson to pick up some comics to send to my nieces, and some stuff for us too.

So cheer up, chaps. It's only Monday!

I've Figured out Twitter

2009-05-01T10:12:00.002-05:00

When new technology comes out of nowhere I tend to be pretty skeptical. It's just the manner of the beast for me to think, "Bwah, why would anybody use THAT?"

I'm working on that.

It's been about 20 days since BlaZE joined the Twitter nation. And we've been talking about it off and on since then, and I think I've got my head wrapped around it the progression. AIM Away Messeges led to Facebook Status updates, which now has given way to Twitter's Tweets. In high school and college, away messages were how you told everyone what you were up to, posted a funny link, or just blathered on about something. Eventually people started doing the same thing with their Facebook Status, which allowed people to know what was going on even if that original person wasn't on AIM at the time. And now you can find out what people are up to or thinking even if you're not by a computer!

So will I start Twittering now? Nah. Luckily at the moment I'm pretty much surrounded by people, 24/7, that I can tell what I'm thinking, and get instant feedback. Maybe when I'm old, sad, and alone in my mansion with my action figures I'll start Tweeting.

"Had Fiber One and prunes for breakfast this morning. Now it's time to alphabetize my Ninja Turtle figures again."

Lean On Me

2009-04-28T14:53:00.006-05:00

Bill Withers isn't one of those musical artists that you probably know by name. But dammit, he should be. First of all, he has some downright fantastic songs. Let's start with one of his best known ones.
Lean on Me.

Listen to that voice, man. Just beautiful, even live. Plus he dresses like a downright pimp.

It's hard pulling off the all brown ensemble.

And he can sing the sad songs with the best of them.
Ain't No Sunshine.

And I used to love when we'd see the Blue Olives at Bad Brad's bar in Janesville, because they'd almost always do a swell cover of Use Me. Just close your eyes and you're back in the land of Starsky and Hutch.

So there you have it, next time you find yourself humming "Lean on Me" think of Bill Withers, the man that brought you such great songs.

How to Blow Someone's Mind

2009-04-27T11:31:00.003-05:00

Step 1: Begin talking about XKCD.
Step 2: Bring up the fact that there will be a book produced soon with the comics from XKCD in it.
Step 3: Have someone ask what they're going to do with the mouse-overs (they happen every time you place your mouse over the comic)
Step 4: Have MrB hear this conversation.
Step 5: Watch out for the brain splatter as his mind is blown by this fact.

(His mission for today is to go through all of the old comics and read the mouseovers. It's like he had this favorite toy truck for many years, and today he discovered it could transform into a robot.)

Garden Update #1

2009-04-21T13:16:00.006-05:00

So after talking about starting my garden, I went out and purchased 10 packets of seeds, a large bag of potting soil, and small starter kit for flowers (it was on sale for the cheap). Add in some pots and containers from Ric's mom, and voila!

I originally planned on labeling all of the pots, so I knew which was which, but that quickly got thrown out the window. I think the big guys are beans, but I honestly have no idea anymore.

These guys were from the starter kit for flowers. I planted some of the seeds in the pot, and the rest into this little container, and wouldn't you know it, the only ones that actually came up were the ones in the extra container.

Originally I was thinking about transplanting the seedlings into different pots outside this weekend, but I might hold off for a bit. Wisconsin's insane weather has me a bit leary.

Laugh It Up

2009-04-20T09:06:00.006-05:00

Saturday night we were lucky enough to go to the beautiful Pabst Theater in downtown Milwaukee to see comedian Louis C.K perform. Like dozens of things in my life, I jumped on the bandwagon far later than I honestly should have. I had heard about Louis a few years back, but was too lazy to actually YouTube his name and look up some of his comedy. However we watched his special on Showtime a few months back, and absolutely loved it, and as luck would have it we were offered tickets to go see his show a few days after that. Fate smiles upon you sometimes.

So Louis C.K. is very funny. Here's a clip to peak your interest, but I recommend you sit down and watch one of his specials and have a beer, you'll love it. I can honestly say the show was the hardest I've laughed in a long time. We had pretty good seats, second row in the second floor, so we could see him really well. And we found out a week before going that they were taping the show to make a movie of it, which is really cool. I doubt we'll pop up anywhere in the movie, but it'll be neat to tell my grandkids that "I was there!" while I blow their minds with swearing and violence and sexual jokes.

But there's one thing that nearly ruined the night for me. One thing that nearly made me turn around in my seat and get in a fight. And that's because this lady was sitting directly behind me.

And this is what it sounded like the whole time. Mix in a few "OH MY GAWD!"'s and "OH GAWWWD" and you'll get the full effect. Either this lady was hammered-ass drunk, or had never heard jokes before in her entire life. She was constantly laughing after everyone else would stop, and just wouldn't shut up. Thankfully I managed to focus my chi and ignore her for most of the show, but holy crap did I want to strangle her for the first 10 minutes.

Anyways, it was a great show (here's a recap from The Decider), and I highly recommend everyone to check out a show at the Pabst Theater if you get a chance. That place is beautiful.

Never Seen That

2009-04-16T13:26:00.004-05:00

I like talking about movies, because everyone has seen movies they like, movies they hate, and movies that moved them. But what I really like finding out is movies that people haven't seen. One tends to take for granted that someone our age, growing up in America has seen certain movies, but there will always be those that have fallen through the cracks. Take me, for instance. I've never see Scarface, any of the Godfathers, and up until a few months ago had never seen True Lies. Isn't that kind of odd? You'd figure that a guy of my age would have seen all of these, but no dice. And it's not just me, either. FortNight hasn't seen Hook, the 1991 CLASSIC Peter Pan movie starring Robin Williams. And my friend Carolyn hadn't seen The Goonies until a few years ago, which is practically blaspheme in my house. So I ask you, fair readers, are there any movies you haven't seen that you probably should have by now? Some classic Disney cartoon that escaped your grasp during childhood and you've still never seen it. I'm curious to find out.
(Yes, this whole post was just a reason to throw up a picture of Arnold on my blog, which was severely lacking in him up to this point. I'm sure you don't have a problem with this.)

My Bday IS Coming Up, You Know...

2009-04-13T08:41:00.002-05:00

(Click to make it bigger) From Joystiq, the new Batman game comes with an actual batarang. Way too cool, nerd cells overloading.

Nobody F's With Da Jesus

2009-04-09T09:19:00.003-05:00

So today is Holy Thursday, and in Christian history tomorrow would be the day that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. But Brother, let me tell you how it really happened.

It happened just like this.

Jesus don't take no shit from nobody, and you better believe it. Reason #451 why comic books are awesome.

How Would You Spend Your Time?

2009-04-08T10:12:00.002-05:00

So let's do a little daydreaming together, shall we? I pose you this question: If you didn't have to wake up tomorrow morning and work for money, how would you spend your time? It's basically like your company is paying you NOT to come int to work, for the rest of your life. You would continue getting paid your current amount of money, with yearly cost of living adjustments, and the occasional "raise," but you wouldn't have to come in to the office or really do anything. So how would you spend your time?

I think the key is this: just because you're not at work doesn't mean you can spend money like it ain't no thang. You've still got to live within your budget, but you've got all these hours in the day to just do whatever you want. So how do you fill them? I think it would start easy enough for me.

I would begin cleaning the house, top to bottom, inside AND outside. It could really use it. Than I'd clean out the garage.
I would read up on fishing techniques and lakes in the area, and go fishing. I've never been the biggest fan in the fishing, but it seems like something that would be peaceful and relaxing, plus eat up a lot of hours.
Many of the volunteer organizations that interest me are looking for full-time volunteers, so this would be a chance to have a 40 hour a week "job" without getting paid. Habitat for Humanity or the River Revitalization Foundation could use a young fella to help with menial labor.
I'd expand my pending garden to include a bevy of other veggies, like potatoes, pumpkin, corn, and squash.
I would spend more time on the "home farm," chopping wood, removing old farm machinery, and prepping the deer stands. My dad spends an awful lot of time plowing and tilling and cultivating right now, so I'd probably do my best to take over some of that.

And I would love it. The chance for me to do basically whatever I wanted when I wanted would be amazing. But I would make sure I set goals for myself, and setup agendas for everyday, otherwise I fear I would slink into a life of boredom and sloth.

So yeah, that's how I would spend my time.

And So It Begins...

2009-04-07T09:45:00.003-05:00

After an odd and interesting off season and Spring training, the Brewers FINALLY play their first game of the season today (Crap, is it going to be postponed??) And this is a good thing. Towards the last 2 months of the season last year I was becoming a super fan of the team, checking the score everyday, watching games when I could, reading blogs and articles whenever I could. And that's just stewed and grown over the winter to the point that I'm bursting at the seams to see some baseball.

I watched a few preseason games, but that's not the same. I want to watch REAL games, with the stands packed and people cheering. TheGF secured half-price tickets for next Monday's game, so that'll be the first of many games I'll be seeing this year. Hooray for the REAL start of Spring!

He Lives!

2009-04-06T10:47:00.003-05:00

Remember back in January when I talked about my early morning run-in with the fox? Well he's all grown up down in Bay View! Take a look.

Though what's that in his jaw...? Oh no!

Sorry kids, you're not getting crap on Sunday.

That's not very scary. More like a six-foot Turkey.

2009-04-03T10:26:00.003-05:00

Well I managed to not blog at all this week. And I did manage to accomplish this:

And this:

And also this:
Yep, I watched all three Jurassic Parks this week, all on different channels of varying quality. So I got that going for me.

Big Ideas

2009-03-27T08:29:00.004-05:00

I like supporting big ideas. Ones that will revolutionize quality of life for everyone. And this is one of those big ideas.
Manufactured and patented by Milwaukee's own Brew City (Casual Gear from the Midwestern Lifesyle), this hoodie is such a good idea it's ridiculous. A hoodie with a built in can coozie! The little pocket is lined with a different type of fabric that helps insulate the beer, and it still allows for full use of the normal hoodie pocket. I purchased one the other day, and I gotta say that I love it.

And they come in tons of different styles and colors. Very highly recommended, and I can't wait to bust mine out at a Brewer game coming up soon.

(As a sidenote, when I first took the hoodie out of the package I thought it was defective, in that all the extra material around the seams was on the outside of the shirt rather than the inside. I called up to let them know and I was informed that it was intentional, as they were going for a "relaxing beach look." It was also described as "fashion forward," which made me chuckle a bit. So now I'm on the forefront of style. Excellent.)

What I'm Watching

2009-03-26T09:40:00.002-05:00

So it's dawned on me that I watch a lot more TV than I used to, thanks mainly to having a DVR and abundant free time after work. Here's the list of shows I watch regularly.

The Office - A staple for our house, every time there's a new episode we gather 'round to watch it together. This season seemed to be spinning it's wheels for a while (now that Pam and Jim are together), but Michael seems to finally be cracking.
Lost - As I talked about here I've been watching this season of Lost very regularly, and I'm loving it so far. Time travel is often botched by most forms of media, but Lost seems to be doing a good job of keeping it straight. Hopefully I'll be going back and watching the older seasons to get caught up.
How I Met Your Mother - I started this show on a whim a few weeks back, and so far I've been pretty impressed with it. It's a standard sitcom for the most part, but the cast is fantastic (Neil Patrick Harris! Jason Segel!), and the jokes are better than most other shows on.
South Park - Season 13 just started, and other than a couple good things (Mickey Mouse still cracks me up) it hasn't been too spectacular.
Ax Men - Season 2 just started, and it's about as insane as ever. Having two goofballs trying to fish logs out of a river is endless amounts of entertainment.

And that's about it. I stopped watching Heroes because I'm not a masochist, and that show was going absolutely nowhere. I pray it gets canceled after this season.

Anyways, what are YOU folks watching? Any recommendations?

Baby You Can Drive My Car

2009-03-24T12:42:00.003-05:00

Trent over at TheSimpleDollar.com has been talking about buying a new car for a while, and he finally posted his thought process and procedure behind getting his new Prius. Not too long ago I was thinking about getting a new car myself. Now don't get me wrong, I do like my 1999 Oldsmobile Alero aka Silver Bullet aka Betsy. But over the years she's becoming more and more....how do I put this....difficult. It started off a few years back when the blinker stopped working randomly. Some fiddling with the hazard button on the console revealed that holding it to the left would somehow activate the blinker. Then it started overheating randomly if the coolant level wasn't absolutely to the top. And the traction control started cutting out at odd times. And the automatic locks and lights stopped working. And just the other day I discovered another fantastic "feature" of my luxury sedan. While sitting at the stoplight I pushed the switches on the two back windows to make sure they were all the way up, and noticed the engine rev down a bit, and the RPMs dropped below 1,000. I tried it again, and sure enough it happened again. Oh Betsy, you odd, quirky automobile.

So back to getting a new car. My dad called me out of nowhere about a month back and said that I should probably look into getting a new car if the whole "Stimulus-package-gives-you-money-to-buy-cars-and-help-bail-out-the-automakers" thing actually got passed. And he's got a good point: If the government is going to give you moneys to buy a new car, and it's time to replace your current vehicle than now is the time. But my car, even with all it's quirks, still runs fine. It only has 130,000 miles on it, gets good gas mileage for a V6, only has a few specks of rust, and most of all - it's completely paid off. So by driving my current car longer, and I save up more money for a new car when the time comes, and thus put more money down on it, thus making it much cheaper. It just makes cents. Now here's hoping for another 20,000 miles from Ol' Betsy.

Too Much Fiber

2009-03-20T11:09:00.002-05:00

I meant to add a footnote to my post yesterday about this, but that Fiber One bar I had before the run? Terrible idea. Ric had warned me previously about them, in that they might be very delicious (and they are), but they also give you atrocious amounts of gas. And she was right. It didn't hit me until we went out later that night to celebrate St. Patrick's day, and within 10 minutes of being out I needed to take a righteous poop. But 12 hours of drinkers had downright demolished any reasonable bathroom into TP-less wastelands of vomit and urine, so I decided that waiting until I got home was the best idea.

The lesson to be learned? Next time you're constipated just mow down on a Fiber One bar. You won't have that problem for long.

Run Like Hell

2009-03-19T12:53:00.005-05:00

Unlike those other people I loathe running. Unless I'm running for a purpose, like being chased by secret agents or wild animals, I find myself getting terribly bored. However, the weather on Tuesday was so nice down here I figured that going for a run would be a good idea. Even though I work out a bit in the winter months my aerobic exercise is pretty limited. So I got home from work, had myself a Fiber One Granola bar for energy, and then headed outside. I had plotted out a course that would take me around the neighborhood, about a 3 mile trek. After stretching a bit, I started off and within 40 feet realized I'd have to amend my trip to something much shorter. I decided to just run to Lake Michigan and back, not wanting to give myself shin splints or anything of that nature. 2 blocks into it and I was sweating already. The combo of a short sleeve and a long sleeve t-shirt was too much, but it would have to do. After cross the last rode before Atwater Park, I decided to take a little break and check out the view. Even in March it's quite a view from the bluff, and there were groups of people walking on the sand below and playing in the jungle gym.
After sitting for about 5 minutes I decided to head back, and made it about 3 blocks before my body pulled a mutiny and decided that walking sounds much better. And so I walked the rest of the way home. A grand total of .89 miles was covered, .4 of that was running.
But I shall not give up. I plan on running again today. Maybe the cooler temperatures will keep me moving at a steady pace. I'm going to try to take the same route as last time, and run it the whole way (with a nice break in the park, of course). Right now I'm in "video game shape," and I'd like to take the next step into "softball shape" before that season begins.

Move Over

2009-03-18T14:45:00.005-05:00

So after 1 year, 2 months, and 2 days I've been required to relocate myself to a different cube. For the past year my team has been talking about waiting for the lady that was camped out like Vatican City in the middle of Italy. She was finally convinced to move, and so out with the old, in with the Gregor.

Now this is a rather bittersweet event for me. I like my old cube. It's off by itself, and I can laugh as loud as I please without disturbing others around me. And now I'm SURROUNDED by other people. Constantly typing, and talking on the phone, and being loud. Hurm....

But then again, I need change in my surrounds. When I was a kid I would re-situate my room every few months, just for a change. And in between those month's sleep on top of the covers, and fold it over like a soft taco on top of me. That way my head would be in the opposite direction, effectively fooling myself into thinking I was somewhere new.

But I fear this move is just the first of many. I've seen it happen before...

The Lament of a Grapefruit

2009-03-17T09:09:00.004-05:00

Woe is me, for I am but a Grapefruit. While my cousins Orange and Tangerine are peeled and eaten on a daily basis, and Lemon and Lime are used for drinks of all sorts, I sit neglected on the shelves. Who will eat me? Who would go through all the work of cutting me in half, and then cutting all of my little sections apart, and finally spooning me out?

And why would they want to? For sometimes I am tart, and sometimes I am sweet, and it really is a gamble to see what I will end up being. And if I don't meet your standards you douse me with sugar to cover the tartness. It's ok, I understand.....I'm not as sweet as you would like. I'll try harder, I really will. Oh woe, woe is me.

(As an aside, who knew that people actually peeled and ate grapefruit like this. Do any of you do it like that? Seems easier to just eat it with a spoon)

Junkyard

2009-03-16T13:30:00.004-05:00

With every trip back home I must always be prepared to load up the car with any and everything my mom can think of to get rid of. Her never-ending battle against the clutter that seems to permeate all of our long-abandoned bedrooms is really quite honorable, but it seems like she hasn't made much headway in the past years. However, she got serious on both me and my brother this past weekend. I left the house with a never opened pizza oven (like so), 2 house plants, 1 large painting, 3 other paintings of various sizes, and a cooler full of frozen food. Oh, and a loaf of bread, and a bag of buns. I'm thinking the food parts were just bribery for me to come back later on in the spring to grab more of my crap.

Not actually my closet. It's bad, but not that bad.

Being back home made me realize just how badly I need to clean out my old room. Drawers full of clothes, closet full of games and toys. All of this junk that doesn't need to be kept anymore. My mom is determined to have a garage sale in May (there's a village-wide garage sale during a Friday/Saturday), so she's determined to use our new garage to get rid of the mounds of crap that's accumulated. And I'm determined to help her out, by just going hogwild on my room back home (heck, my room in Shorewood too. Far too many t-shirts and ill-fitting jeans for a 23 year old to have.) Plus a little extra scratch in my pocket is never a bad thing. And anything that doesn't sell will be going right to Goodwill, so that someone else can (hopefully) use it. Let the purging begin.

Jellowned

2009-03-13T08:37:00.004-05:00

I was at my desk on Wednesday when the hairs on the back of my neck started to stand up. I got this inkling to open the bottom drawer of my desk, and what do I find?

Yep, some jokers had encased my stapler in Jell-O. They even got the same color as Jim did in The Office.

And the reaction.

Sorry for the crummy quality of the pics, FortNight's iPhone has a wussy camera.

Happy Friday everyone!

The Green Thumb

2009-03-12T14:26:00.006-05:00

Having a house, a bit of ambition, and some resolve to not be bored has made me decide to try growing a garden this summer. Originally I thought about digging out some dirt in our backyard to plant some things, but I think for my first growing experience I'm going to try something different and grow things in the pots that were left behind by our landlord. Rather than buying (pleasing to the eye, but otherwise of no value) flowers to fill them I think I'll use the 4 or 5 pots for vegetables. And when the tomatoes and peppers begin to ripen it'll give some nice color to the front of the house.

So what's step one? Figure out what I should grow. I'm looking at cucumbers, green beans, tomatoes, and green peppers to start off with. All of them should be easy enough, and I could see eating them in the fall when they're ready to be harvested. There's an "Urban Garden Store" right around the corner called Garden Room that I'll probably be buying the seeds from, and I'll hopefully be blogging about the status of the garden as the growing season gets closer.

Welcome to 2005

2009-03-11T11:04:00.000-05:00

Ric talked about her experiences with Facebook here, and as luck would have it I've recently had an interesting experience with it myself. One of my roommates (let's go ahead and call him FortNight) it's probably the only person I know within my age range that doesn't have Facebook. He's never really explained why this is so, just that "it's not for him." Well, something changed, and he decided he wanted to get Facebook now. And that something was this:

Yes, FortNight loves his iPhone more than life itself, and thus decided to jump into Facebook so that he can use his iPhone even more than he already does. So last night we went about setting up his account, and then I went through some old pictures that I knew he was in and tagged him. But here's the thing: he doesn't want to be contacted by old high school and college friends, doesn't want people to know when he's online, and doesn't want to update anything. So what's he want to use it for?

Reece Witherspoon. Even wearing shades to cover her eyes. A true pro.

Snipin'(definition #7) and creepin', baby, snipin' and creepin'.

Yeah, I'm a Biker

2009-03-10T10:31:00.005-05:00

You might be thinking to yourself at this exact moment "Man, this Gregor character sure is cool. But he couldn't have possibly always been this cool, right?" And to that I say wrong. Exhibit A, my main mode of operation from the ages of 16-18:

A 1984 Suzuki FA50 moped. Cherry red. This 50cc 2 stroke hog would cruise the streets of Edgar at a breakneck pace of 26 miles per hour. Downhill.

Anything past 30 on the speedometer was purely for aesthetics.

I fearlessly cruised the streets in my chopper, a trail of dust in my wake. The ferocious *WEEEEEEEEEEEEE* of the engine would cause people to hide in their homes, for they knew that trouble would be coming.

I always wanted to bring her down to Whitewater with me, but it's pretty much an antique at this point, and I figured it would be damaged or stolen. Plus it's technically my dad's moped, though I don't think he drives it too much anymore, which is a shame. That thing gets like 60 mpg. Too bad the gas tank only holds about a gallon.

Oh, and my grandpa had a matching blue one.

How cool is that? I might keep my eyes open for one just like it, it would be perfect for bombing around the neighborhood to pick up groceries and the like.

Monday Randomings Vol. II

2009-03-09T09:59:00.000-05:00

Friday's post was rather sad, but it was something that was on my mind. As I've been blogging I've discovered that if something is tickling my fancy than I really need to just write about it right then and there, otherwise all ambition will be gone.

And then sometimes I just want to link you to funny things on zee internet. Here we go!

*shuffle*

I've been watching Kenan Thompson since he was on All That on Nickelodeon in the 90s, so I thought he was a natural to be on Saturday Night Light a few years back. Honestly, this is probably the first skit of his that I really enjoyed, though. And the fact that Charles Barkley just got a DUI just makes it funnier. Agreed!

*shuffle*

So we saw Watchmen yesterday, and as your resident nerd I would like to give the typical nerd answer: "The book was better." And it's true. The reason that Watchmen has been called unfilmable is because the novel is far too deep, without too many nuances and too many things that you can only do in comics to be accurately depicted in any other medium. Now, the movie did a pretty good job adapted the book (and I have to tip my hat to Zack Snyder for not allowing the studio to tear it apart like so, but I'm curious to hear the thoughts from someone who hasn't read the book. Did it makes sense? Was there too much exposition?
Lev Grossman from Time sums up my thoughts very, very well in this article.

*shuffle*

This sounds like a pretty sweet deal. I'm all for supported local Minor League sports teams (Hello Admirals), and the fact that the Timber Rattlers are part of the Brewers farm system gives one such as myself a good chance to scout out some of the Brewers of the future.

*shuffle*

My nieces turn 4 years old and 2 years old this month, and rather than buy them even more toys (they're the only grandchildren on both sides of the family, so they're terrifically spoiled) I'm thinking about something that gets them out of the house. I think a day at a local indoor waterpark would be pretty swell, right? Maybe their Uncle Gregor will even go himself.

*shuffle*

Personal Finance is something I've taken more interest in this last year, and one of my big resources is The Simple Dollar. Trent writes multiple posts a day about different things to help yourself get your finances back in order and save everyday money. His Monday mailbag is particularly good.

*shuffle*

And you think your life is bad? F*** My Life will help cheer you up.

Happy Monday folkz.

With Great Difficulty

2009-03-06T09:56:00.000-06:00

On the ride back from work yesterday we drove by a funeral home that had a line of people so long that it wrapped around the block. (Later on Weeks found out it was the wake for this girl.) I've talked before about things I love, but this brings me to one of the things I hate.

Funerals.

I have a really hard time dealing with them. The most vivid of the funerals was my grandparents on my dad's side. They both died in a car accident when I was a sophomore in college, and even though my other grandparents had died when I was younger, this one hit me a lot harder. Maybe because I was closer with my Dad's parents, or maybe because I was older and had a better grasp of life and death. I remember getting the phone call from my mom while I was in class. It went to voicemail, and I checked it on the walk back to the dorms. She said I needed to call her right away, but something was off about her voice. I called her up, trying to sound cheerful, but all the while my mind was racing about what it could be. She broke the news to me, and I just stopped in the sidewalk. Before the tears could start rolling I made my way to a nearby park. There I sat by myself while she explained what had happened, when the wake would be, when the funeral would be. After I got back to the dorms I packed up some clothes and headed home.

As a boy, you like to think of your father as an infallible character, someone who is above normal emotion. But when I saw my dad crying at the wake you start to realize that he's just a son who's hurting, and there's nothing wrong with that. And my uncle Gary (who I had hardly seen smile much less cry in all my life) was in the same state. My dad's whole family, 7 brothers and sisters, countless cousins, all together talking and crying and consoling. It's kind of sad that we only get together anymore for weddings and funerals.

Even when I'm not very close with someone a funeral can still rock me to the bone. Seeing other people sad and in pain has a profound effect on me, that's for sure. A few years back the father of a guy I went to high school with had a heart attack and died while deer hunting. He was 52. I came home a day early for Thanksgiving break to come to the funeral, and I made sure to bring plenty of tissues with me, but that wasn't enough. I was a wreck by the end, hearing the eulogy of an associate of John put me over the edge.

So the question I ask myself is "why?" Why do I get so torn up at funerals? Probably the same reason I get teary-eyed while watching emotional performances in movies and TV shows: I'm an empathetic kind of person, and the emotions of those around me really effect my state of being. When other people are happy, I'm on top of the world. When other people are sad, I feel it right along side them. I guess it's better than keeping it all bottled up inside, though.

About the only good thing I can think of that comes out of funerals is just seeing how many people the life of one person could effect. Every funeral I've attended has been packed with people wishing to pay their last respects, and to celebrate the life of the recently departed. It's just that sometimes the sad emotions get in the way.

Hot Hot Heat

2009-03-05T08:54:00.003-06:00

As talked about here, we just got back from a vacation to the Bahamas. Ric did a good job summing it all up (it truly was a fantastic time), and I'd definitely do it again in a heartbeat. But now that I'm back, I still carry the look of a vacationer, namely a light sunburn on my face. Despite going tanning for a few weeks prior to the trip, I still missed some spots with the sunscreen, and my forehead is now peeling like a snake. And it's GROSS. I momentarily thought about adding some pics to this post, but a quick trip to Google Images almost started making me dry heave. Do NOT Google "skin peeling" unless you want to skip lunch. So here's some big eared puppies instead.

So anyways, after a shower in the morning I feel like I've been in the desert for 3 days, so I put some lotion on my forehead to cover up the dried skin, but of course I miss a few spots. Hiding in my cube is not an option.

My parents had just gotten back from their vacation to Mexico when we left for the Bahamas, and she said that half their crew of people looked like they had leprosy....aaack. The only time I can remember being that burnt was San Diego when I was a middle schooler. I didn't realize I would get sunburnt because it didn't seem that hot, but my ears were so sunburnt that they blistered. Delicious.

And the best part about this sunburn? It'll probably be completed faded by the end of March. Darn you Wisconsin spring.

That First Impression

2009-03-04T10:47:00.004-06:00

Depending if you're a male or a female you will have different thoughts when you see this face:

If you're a male, you probably see Lucius Vorenus, a centurion in Ceaser's army from the HBO series Rome. If you're a female you probably think of Dr. Owen Hunt from ABC TV show Grey's Anatomy. Kevin McKidd has popped up in many movie and TV shows, but chances are that you know him from one of those. So this weekend while killing time on the boat I was watching Made of Honor (don't judge me), and who should pop up but Mr. McKidd himself! And it's downright jarring to see him playing anyone but Lucius, the angriest man in all of Rome. For me it'll always go like this: "Oh hey, Lucious is playing a reporter who's traveling through time. That'd be funny if we went back to 49 BC and meet himself."

While I wouldn't say actors have a difficult job, I would say they have an interesting one, in that they have to fall into a role and a character, but not too much so that no one remembers who you really are. And on the flip side, you don't want to be known as that guy, or defined as your most famous character. Isn't that right, Pie-Fucker? Or how about you, Harry? I wish you, and those other actors like you, the best of luck in shrugging off your title. If Neil Patrick Harris can do it, I think pretty much anyone can.

Habitat, and Where it's Taken Me pt. 2

2009-02-25T09:33:00.000-06:00

So after working all day on the house, we'd come back to camp to shower and relax in the evening. This was usually made up of playing ping pong and card games while sitting around the fire. But college kids will get feisty, and eventually we made a trek down the road to a gas station to buy beer. Hey I was 22, no reason I can't enjoy a beer after a long day of working in the sun, yes? We talked more with the AmeriCorps volunteers, most of whom were college graduates that wanted to do something with their lives before getting into the career force, so they would sign up for a year and use the Grant they received at the end to pay off student loans. They had different "modules," where they would work on a project for 3 months, then move somewhere else to work on a different project. Very cool stuff to hear about.

The tents that the AmeriCorps volunteers stayed in.

Back on the jobsite the houses went up surprisingly fast. I think by the end of the second day we had all of the exterior walls and trusses up.

Why who is that handsome devil in the green shirt?

And before long the roof was sheeted.

The third day saw us up on the roof laying down the sheeting, while people were putting up the interior walls and framing out for the windows.

The guy that was talking to Danny and myself was "The Major," a retired Marine Corps. officer who joined us on the third day with all the roof-related construction. I think a cool part of the whole experience is that we got to meet such an eclectic group of individuals, all coming together to give time and effort for people they'll never meet and never know.

We had a halfday where we went to the Gulf Shores to relax by the beach, which was very nice, but the best time I had was definitely being on the jobsite. I loved it, mainly because this was the first time I was doing construction frequently in a few years, and within a few days some of the less-experienced people were asking me for advice or asking for help. It's always good to have someone look up to you.

The memories from the trip have faded over time (partially the reason I'm writing about it, so that I don't completely lose them), but it still stands out as a great experience for me. By the end of the week we had both houses completely shingled, with windows and doors installed, and had were about halfway done siding them. Not too shabby for a bunch of lazy college students.

Habitat, and Where it's Taken Me

2009-02-24T10:59:00.002-06:00

My sophomore year of college was about the time I decided to stop being so lazy and actually do something with my free time, other than playing Call of Duty and Command and Conquer: Generals. One of the girls on my floor, Kim, was involved with Habitat for Humanity and the idea of putting my construction skills to good use for charity was a good one. I attended a few meetings to see what it was all about, and then signed up for a fundraiser to meet some people. At the time the the closest house we were able to work on was Jefferson and Pell Lake, so a few Saturdays a month we'd meet up and carpool out to the jobsite to help out where we could. Professional contractors would be running the job site, with experienced volunteers leading different parts of the project from putting up walls to installing windows. Eventually our county was able to raise enough funding to build 3 houses just south of Whitewater, and by this time I was roped into being the Webmaster on the Executive Board for the campus organization.

Part of being on the Exec. Board involved doing pretty much every event that was planned, including the annual Spring Break trip. Every year when other kids would be off drinking and partying a group of about 50 students would board a bus and head down south for week of working. In 2007 when we were headed to Mobile, Alabama, which was still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Katrina. A neighborhood of 15 Habitat houses was being assembled, and we were tasked with starting two houses ourselves. But first, we arrived at our camp.

We had been warned ahead of time that we'd be staying at a camp that was primarily used to house vagabonds such as ourselves, and they weren't kidding. Set a bit off the highway, our camp was occupied by a handful of AmeriCorp volunteers that were doing longtime work on the same Habitat site as ourselves. The sleeping quarters were small, with twin sized mattresses pack anywhere from 3-8 in a room. Showers were a separate building, and needed a thorough cleaning before anyone even thought about using them. But there was plenty of open space, and a huge kitchen and mess hall perfect for our group. And there was a pool! Though the previous occupants...

...were still around. Even that didn't stop us, though. We found some cleaning equipment and scrubbed it up to the best of our ability, and then played makeshift volleyball using a hose for the net.

Our first day of work Brad, the site supervisor went over the basics of the site. And by basics, I mean he taught half the crew how to use hammers. And also that you will get fried to a crisp unless you use ample amounts of sunscreen, you Wisconsin fools. He split us into two crews, one working on each house. One would be under him, and one would be under his co-worker Cory. So work began, and even though it seemed at times that there was too many chiefs and not enough Indians, walls were put up quickly and work got done. Besides Cory and Brad there were two other older gentlemen that were in charge of specific projects going on. One was Ansen, a British expatriate who had been traveling around the country when the idea of working for Habitat caught his eye. I have to admit, I had no idea what he was saying for the first 2 days because his accent was so thick, but after a while I went to him with most of my questions. Hearing the word "bollocks" out of a real Englishman never gets old.

Continued tomorrow...

It IS Orange...Kind of...

2009-02-20T09:05:00.000-06:00

So one of my many quirks is that I call the middle light on a traffic sign "orange." I don't know why I do this, just something I started doing as a kid and never was able to shake off. Anyways, people tend to laugh when I say "it's going to turn orange," because it's commonly known as a yellow light. So I did some poking around on the wiki for Traffic Light, and what happens to catch my eye?

Its purpose is to indicate, using a series of colors (Red - Amber - Green)

Amber, you say? So I read a bit further and come upon this:

Although the word "yellow" is common parlance in the United States, the color of the actual lamp is usually only slightly more yellowish than the amber used in Europe.

AhHA! And for my final step in the journey, the Wiki for Amber says...

Amber is an orange-yellow color that got its name from the material known as amber.

That means more orange than yellow! For all these years I thought I was slightly color blind, but it appears that everyone is just a sheep to the man! Just because someone says that it's yellow DOESN'T make it yellow, ya heard? From now on I shall hold my head high while proclaiming "that middle stoplight is ORANGE!" Score one for the home team.

The Extinction of Cash

2009-02-18T10:47:00.002-06:00

So when did this start happening? It seems like anytime something requires cash the answer is "I don't have any on me, let me run to the ATM." I understand that it's usually easier to just pay with a credit or debit card, but I don't like doing that for 2 big reasons. Stores get charged a percentage of the transaction by the credit card company, and I'd rather that money go to the store itself. And when you actually pay with cash you realize just how much money your spending, and maybe that this purchase is kind of foolhardy? (The same applies to any system that has you buying "points" that you use to purchase something. You don't feel nearly as guilty when you spend 1200 Microsoft points on a downloadable game if you don't remember what the conversation rate is.)

I like to always keep some cash on me, especially when I know I'll be going out and about. But the lack of cash of everyone else gets on my nerves in certain situations. Say you take a taxi, and everyone else is lacking in dinero. Guess who's paying the fare? Or how about when you go to a restaurant, and they won't allow you to split the bill 8 ways (don't get me started on how stupid this "rule" is). So this is my bleg for the day: carry some cash around with you, even if you plan on using your credit card for most everything. It'll help me out, mainly because I'm planning on pickpocketing all of you.

mwahahahahha

Shocking

2009-02-17T13:34:00.003-06:00

There was a comic book movie released in 1999 ago called Mystery Men (starring Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo) who's cast of characters have rather lame powers. The Spleen has super-powered flatulence, Invisible Boy can only be invisible when no one is looking at him, and the Blue Raja can throw silverware accurately, except for knifes. And if I was part of this team I would be the Shocker. No, not him. And definitely not that. I have the ability to discharge over 3000 volts of electricity from my body with terrible force! But only over 1 inch. And I have no control over it. Every winter like clockwork I become charged up with electrons, and touching anything metal is an exercise in SCIENCE. And just because you're human doesn't mean you get away free. I've been known to shock people via my hands AND nose. I'm a double threat.