June 01, 2006
BNO among other things...
I attended my first BNO tonight. For those of you wondering, BNO = Boys Night Out. It's a weekly gathering every Wednesday night with the gang I knew back from the old st3 days. There are a few others from the Chattanooga geek crowd that also attend that I had the pleasure of meeting tonight. It was a damn fun time and I think I might have to get out of the house every Wednesday for it. I will be posting pictures to PhragMunkee.com as soon as I get Overkill back up.
I also had lunch with George and the McGillenator today. I got to meet one of the rising Consumating stars and had a really fun lunch. I even got her home and on one of my new leather couches...for pictures...of evidence...that I met a hot girl. It's pathetic, but I don't mind. She's a great girl inside and out, so there's nothing wrong with that!
My back deck is also lined with 8 new tiki torches filled to the brim with cintronella oil. That oughta keep the mosquitos away for the next cookout/LAN party. It adds a good touch to the deck. I think it will look pretty awesome when they are all lit. I won't be able to light them until the oil has soaked up into the wicks, so I'll get a picture of them lit tomorrow, hopefully. The dogs already stole and shredded one of the wicks, so I'll have to get a replacement tomorrow.
That's about it for today (other than having dinner and going to Lowes with Amy). It's been action-packed and I'm worn out. G'night folks!
Munkee | By PhragMunkee | 02:09 AM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2006
Back from WA
Justin and I are back from Washington. We had a really great time with Adam and Megan and Keller (the cat). The flight from Cincinattie to Seatac seemed to take forever, but the flight back wasn't too bad. Here's a breakdown of the weekend:
Arrival - Thursday:
We finally got to Adam's around 1:30 AM Pacific time. Our flight had been delayed and it took longer than anticipated to get our rental car. Then, we were stuck in construction traffic on I-5 (the crappiest interstate in the US). So it took about an hour and a half to get from Seatac to Olympia. When we finally got to the apartment, we were tired and didn't stay awake too long before crashing.
Day 1 - Friday:
Woke up and went to Shari's for lunch. Then, we went to rent a game and buy an extra controller. We got NHL 2K6 for the XBox 360 and proceeded to play that pretty much all afternoon. After we got tired of video games, we played poker for a little while. That night, we went to a casino in Muckleshoot (an Indian reservation casino). It was about a 45-minute drive and sucked. As it turns out, none of us are real casino-goers. Justin and Adam got Jack and Cokes and then we left back for the apartment. On the way back, we stopped by Wal-Mart and picked up Trivial Pursuit 90's edition. We failed miserably after about 2 hours. We finally called it quits when I finally got my 3rd piece and went to bed.
Day 2 - Saturday:
Megan made biscuits and sausage gravy--a most excellent breakfast. We played hockey all afternoon (we were starting to get pretty good at that point). Then, we left for Seattle for dinner at the Crab Pot. We ordered the Westport for Adam, Justin, and myself. They gave us bibs, a mallet, and a crab fork. When the food came, they just dumped it all on the table and we proceeded to feast. The crab was excellent, but the shrimp was sub-par. The experience as a whole was great, though. It was fun to just go at it with our mallets and fingers and wiping our hands on our bibs. It was almost like a bunch of toddlers cramming their face with cake...but it was seafood. After dinner, we got some ice cream and strolled around for a bit before returning to Olympia for more hockey and then calling it a night.
Day 3 - Sunday:
Megan made breakfast again. This time we had eggs with cheese, toast, and bacon. We played more hockey and then went to Fort Lewis. We drove around and went to the PDSA (Pre-deployment Staging Area) and saw all the strikers parked and waiting to be loaded up on trains and shipped to Iraq. We then went to the PX, the military clothing store, and then to the commissary for some groceries. We got back to the apartment around 7:00 and played hockey, packed, and rested a little before our flight home. The flight back wasn't too bad. Justin and I watched Glory Road and managed to rest our eyes a little (but not really sleep). We got back to Chattanooga at 9:45 AM and were beat. So, we pretty much slept from the time we got home until I woke up a couple of hours ago. The pictures are uploaded and I'm catching up on some Internet time.
We should see Adam and Megan again sometime in July or August (when the baby is due). I'm going to go play some NHL 2K6 on the XBox!
Munkee | By PhragMunkee | 08:46 PM | Comments (0)
May 17, 2006
New phone, new service
...but without service.
On Monday, I made the switch from Cingular to Verizon. The reason is two-fold. One was to get a new cell phone to replace the Nokia 3300 that was slowing down and just getting old. The other reason is that a lot of my family and friends are already on Verizon. With a cheaper plan and unlimited IN calling, I'd never have to worry about running out of minutes. Unlimited IN text messaging helps, too. And another 500 incoming/outgoing text messages for non-Verizon customers.
I got the new phone in this morning. It's an LG VX9800 (with a QWERTY keypad, of course). Pretty spiffy, but also naked as far as pre-installed programs go. I've downloaded and installed Zuma so far. It cost $7, which is pretty steep in my opinion. But I guess that's what you have to pay if you want anything since that's the only way to get it.
However, I'm still waiting (after about 14 hours) on a confirmation of my number to port over to Verizon. It was supposed to take up to 4 hours. I called after 8 hours with no confirmation and was told to just wait longer. Hopefully, I will have something by the time I wake up tomorrow.
I don't want to have to take 3 cell phones to Seattle!
Munkee | By PhragMunkee | 12:32 AM | Comments (0)
May 12, 2006
Trying out Opera 9
I've been struggling with FireFox since about 1.5.0.2 or so. Suddenly, memory leaks have been consistently more consistent and crashes are all too frequent now. And this is across all of my computers, not just singling out a single one or a single site. I've decided to try an alternative...Opera 9 Beta.
So far, first impressions are at about 50/50. All my CSS, AJAX, and Javascript from my various web projects still works fine. Standard pages render pretty much the same with some minor differences in default fonts and size, etc. Nothing that you can't get used to in a hurry. So far, my one complaint is that Alt+D does not jump to the address bar. I don't know what it does, but in every browser I have used for the past 10 years, Alt+D has been the shortcut for the address bar. And I really miss my Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn shortcuts for switching tabs. Ctrl+W still works as it should as does Ctrl+T.
That's all I have to report for now. Back to work. Will probably update with more frustrations and discoveries later.
Blah | By PhragMunkee | 04:09 PM | Comments (1)
Possibly More Stuff Appearing on PhragMunkee.com
With the Consumating secret out of the bag, I think I may try to program a way to scrape parts of my profile and post them to the site. They offer a feed, but it's half-broken and doesn't include timestamps. So, I may set up an automated process or a manually-triggered one that will scrape my profile for the latest updates and XML-ify them. So, I may SPAM the front page with a lot of stuff suddenly if I get it working. That's a fair warning!
Web Site | By PhragMunkee | 02:30 AM | Comments (1)
On IRC Again
So, I've been poking around on Consumating for about a month now and it's kind of...consuming. Today, I stumbled upon a post by unixmercenary about an IRC channel and decided to hop on to see how IRC separates the true geeks from the "hipsters". It separates those who know how to use the Internet from those who know how the Internet works.
I spent the better part of about two hours talking to a woman in Cyprus, a girl in Michigan, and a guy from somewhere else about PHP, Drupal, work, web sites, and CRM. It was 6:30 AM in Cyprus and 1:30 AM in Tennessee and Michigan. I almost forgot exactly how big a world it really is and how small the Internet can make it sometimes. It was a great 2 hours spent chatting, exchanging thoughts, ideas, life events, etc. I think I may be hooked on IRC again!
Munkee | By PhragMunkee | 02:22 AM | Comments (1)