Fleetmack.com - January 2008 News

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"I guess I'll save the best for last. My future seems like on big past. You'll live with me 'cause you left me no choice. I push my fingers into my eyes, It's the only thing that slowly stops the ache." --Corey Taylor

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January 2008 News Archives

January 07 January 11 January 14 January 22 January 25 January 28 January 31

What I am listening to as I type this: Rammstein - Buck Dich

January 31, 2008

HELP!! I'm an idiot!! I refuse to use anything where you pay to file taxes online, you will NEVER see me use turbotax or some shit like that. But, I'm an idiot. I need tax help! I normally just fill out the 1040EZ form as I have one source of income, don't own anything, and have no debt. It's pretty easy. BUT ... I want to use either the HOPE credit or Lifetime-Learning Tax Deduction (even though I don't itemize) to get me some money back. Anyone know how to do this?? HELP!!

You couldn't beat my good mood out of me with a rubber hose. I will be awake, sitting at my desk in my office, until probably 11-12 tonight working on a research paper and some labs, yet still, you will not get me out of this mood. You know some days when everything goes wrong and you let it get to you? Today is one of those days. A few computers are broken. I popped my brand new Swiss Ball this morning already (don't ask). Laetitia is filthy. I'm almost out of gas. I got paid and already sent my entire check to bills. Eli Manning is in the Super Bowl. Still, you will not get me out of this mood today. Just try it, try it. Have the Seahawks cut Seneca Wallace. Have Slipknot break up. Have snowboarding made illegal. Wreck my car. I dare you to try and take this mood from me today, it cannot be done. It simply.cannot.be.done.

I love people.

What I am listening to as I type this: Toto - Hold The Line

January 28, 2008

Santa Fe, Santa Fe. What can I say about Santa Fe? First off, the actual town fits its stereotype I had developed to a "T". Everything in that town is made of adobe; the Wal-Marts, the bars, every single house, the gas stations, McDonalds ... everything. Everything is adobe. No wood, no aluminum siding on homes, nothing. All adobe. There was snow, and it was cold, but you could tell you were in the desert. I could never live there. We stayed with Bridget's friends John & Brandy and their three kiddos, gorgeous house they're living in for 4 months while filming the movie Brothers. We hung out at the house all weekend; played Wii, played guitars, ate great food, drank great beer, and played with the coolest little kids I've ever met. Those kids just frickin' ruled, honestly, playing with them was the highlight of my weekend. Dweezey, Bridget, and I got back around 10 last night and now I do not want to work!

Busy week ahead, I have an 8 page paper due on Sunday and have a bunch of lab work to get done (20 mini-database-programs to write). Also have (4) 1-page-research projects to complete along with two lectures and participation in the online forums (after reading 2 chapters). Grad school keeps me busy, folks. Very busy. Still haven't started working on my annotated bibliography or my course project (which is sure to destroy me and my sleep habits). This next five week stretch could be miserable. Although I'm thrilled to be in the program and thoroughly enjoy everything I'm doing with it, words cannot express how much I miss having free time. I will again have to work my ass off almost every night this week in order to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday; I think my life as a snowboarder is getting close to non-existent thanks to school. I've only been up 4 f**king times so far this year. Grrrrrrrrrr

So yes, this week, uhm .... school. Might try to eat too, perhaps this would be a good time to do a cleansing fast since I have no time to cook/eat. Stupid school is going to make me fat, can't even find time for the gym :(

Sorry, I'm whining, I'm no normally like this, I promise ... just needed to vent a little of this someplace and I figured what better place than a PHP editor as opposed to a person's face?

What I am listening to as I type this: Too $hort w/ B-Legit - What Happened to the Groupies?

January 25, 2008

So last Sunday I was on my way to Kevin's place to watch the NFL games; I stopped at King Soopers (grocery store) to pick up some beer, chips, and Red Bull (for Duane) when I came across this phenomenal sale on tortilla chips! Just check out the difference between the above-listed regular price and the below coupon price. Amazing! Thank God for camera phones!

What a well-deserved weekend. It feels as though the only places I've been have been are my office and my bed. I've stayed in my office after work every day this week doing homework. Tuesday I stayed here until about 10:00. Wednesday I came to work at 6:30 to do homework before work, then I never left the office until about 12:30am. Back to the office yesterday morning, homework after work, and left the office at 7:40 last night. The thing is, I am in "detasseling mode" right now. When detasseling in the summers, you literally dream about corn as it is your life for a 2-3 week interval. When my alarm went off at 5:30 yesterday morning, my mind wasn't all there. All I could think was, "How is the alarm clock going off? I set the MAXEXTENTS variable to "unlimited" and it's on AUTOEXTEND! Sleep time cannot be over unless I'm out of physical disk space for the SLEEP table's tablespace datafiles." So I hit snooze. 9 minutes later I literally sat up in bed, slammed my hand on "snooze" again and said, aloud "THE FUCKING CREATE TABLESPACE SCRIPT IS RIGHT, what the fuck is wrong with this damn thing?!" (only now realizing what I was saying/thinking at the time). I need to get more sleep, I quickly realized I should sleep until 7 instead of getting up at 5:30 again.

ANYWAYS, with that, I am heading out for the weekend after work. I'm going to go to Santa Fe with Duane and Bridget for the weekend. It'll be nice to get out of town and just relax. It's a quick little drive, so we'll arrive around 10 tonight, then we'll probably leave later Sunday afternoon. Just a good time to chill. With the exception of our little 4-Corners trip this summer, I haven't been to New Mexico since I was six, and even that was just driving through it. Hopefully it'll be a great time!

So yes, with that, I bid you farewell and wish you a lovely weekend. Have fun, be safe, and join me in my quest of talking to 5 strangers every day.

What I am listening to as I type this: CCR - Bad Moon Rising

January 22, 2008

Yes, my website is hosed, don't know what my web host did but I got an email saying I was "upgraded" then I went to my site and none of my dynamic php scripts work anymore. I don't have time for this stuff, if they can't fix it, pretty much this site's existence is over as I'm sick of hosts screwing me over.

A very good friend of mine's father passed away yesterday. Please keep the family in your prayers. Another very good friend of mine lost an Aunt over the weekend, same prayer requests.

First thing's first, if you want to laugh, watch the "Slipknot" video on the main page. It's a dub-over someone did on YouTube, so even if you don't like Slipknot I'll go on a limb and say at the bare-minimum this'll make you smile and say, "What the hell?!" while laughing ...

\Today is bizarr-o day. I promise you I truly mean topics 1 and 2 today, which are things I never thought I'd hear myself say.

1) Thank you Eli Manning! Although I have a strong distaste for you, you beat the team of my #1 most disliked player in the NFL -- Al Harris. Eli threw to Burress all day, thus embarrassing Harris and his ridiculously-gay hair. I'll admit, it would have been cool to see Favre in the Super Bowl, but not if it means that worthless puke Al Harris would've had to have played in it as well. Hopefully he can spend this off season being less of a dirty-playing pussy and cutting his hair off.

2) Winamp, Winamp, why have you forsaken me?! My media player of choice since I first got a computer in 1997 is causing me problems for the first time ever. You have no idea how devastating this is to me. The program that really whips the llama's ass is causing all kinds of problems. I have the installation file for every version since v3.0 saved, but no matter which version I install, it hoses my computer. Can't open any program, (not even the task manager!)etc. It's basically causing my computer to crash; as soon as I close Winamp, everything is fine again. The software that rips all my CD's (has ripped over 1700 of them for me!), controls my iPod in a back-end way (thus making the need for iTunes unnecessary), and has my gorgeous custom-Slipknot skin on it (as well as my Laetitia Casta custom skin I made quite a few years back). Why, Winamp? Why? So here I sit today, listening to CCR on mutherfucking Windows Media Player of all things. Well, I guess it's better than garbage iTunes .... but WHY?! WHY did my glorious Winamp have to finally crash?! Why? How can I live without Winamp? It is the single most reliable, user-friendly, and wonderfully-interfaced product I've ever used, and they had to go fuck it all up by trying to improve it. Why improve it?! It was perfect!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

3) This isn't a bizarr-o topic, this is your weekend recap. Friday night I went down to Bridget's place to play poker with the guys, 11 of us. I took 3rd place, which basically means I won my money back. Saturday I went shopping (ok, maybe this is a bizarr-o post), picked up some new polarized shades (Arnettes) and new jeans. Saturday I stayed home and watched movies; I decided I was going to watch a movie I'd always wanted to see and, for whatever reason, hadn't watched it before: Vanilla Sky. Ok, I'm picky with movies. There is a very short list of movies that have left an impression on me that made me think, "Wow, what a spectacular fucking movie in every facet." I have an entire writing I'm going to have to do on Tom Cruise and why he is insane which makes him an even better actor, but that's beside the fact. I was absolutely blown away by Vanilla Sky. Perhaps I'm biased as I'm 400% in love with Penelope Cruz ... but holy shit ... if I were to make my top 6 list of favorite movies not called Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, I'd place Vanilla Sky solidly in 2nd place:

1) Pulp Fiction
2) Vanilla Sky
3) Fargo
4) Eyes Wide Shut
5) The Firm
6) American Beauty

... one of my tests for a movie is "How Much Did You Enjoy It The First Time You Saw It?". The thing about this list is, you can never change it. You can never look back and say, "Ok, the first time I saw that movie I now think I didn't like it." Bullshit, the minute a movie is over you know if it was worth your money or not and you know how much you enjoyed the past 1.5-2 hours. I'm embarrassed to say that Speed ranked extremely high on this list, but I was in 8th grade and I'll still admit -- it was a great movie to watch (albeit, watch ONCE!). Regardless ... I'd place Vanilla Sky right next to Dumb & Dumber and Eyes Wide Shut on this list. We will see if it withstands the test of time, but I cannot imagine it'll falter at all.

After watching this masterpiece of a movie, I decided to make a triple feature out of it for the night. I stayed up until 3am as I followed it up with Fargo and then American Beauty. Now ... until I do a double-feature of Snakes on a Plane and Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, well, I just can't imagine a better sequence of things to appear on a television set without it involving the Seahawks and the Vince Lombardi trophy.

Speaking of the Vince Lombardi trophy --- GO PATRIOTS!!!!

What I am listening to as I type this: Master P - Come And Get Some

January 14, 2008

First thing's first ... that game didn't happen on Saturday, so let's not even fucking talk about it.

Steamboat. Ok. Let's put it this way. I've ridden at around 20 different ski resorts in 3 different countries. While the towns of Zermatt and Breckenridge have no comparisons with respect to the towns (and you can't even compare those two to each other as they are so tremendously different), the actual snowboarding slopes can be improved vastly in those places. Beaver Creek is damn close to heaven, but the town sucks. Keystone is stellar and is a close drive, but the town is frustrating, as are the crowds. Steamboat .... uhm ... well ... yeah .... there is zero possible way you could improve a mountain. The town is very cool, it's no Zermatt by any means, but it's ok. But that mountain, wow, it just destroys Beaver Creek. In the past week, they have gotten well over 5' of snow. 5 feet of snow. Yes, FIVE FEET OF SNOW!!! There was, in areas, between waist-deep and chest-deep powder. I got stuck about 20 times. Once, while buried up to between my navel and chest, I had to unstrap the board. It took about 10 minutes to get fully freed. It was, by far, the best snowboarding conditions I've ever seen in my life.

Hey everybody, I love Steamboat. Just love it.

Oh, I saw Kelly & Katie too. :) There were about 50ish RAGBRAI riders with us on this trip. I believe the teams represented were Team Blonde, Team Haze, Team Irish, Team Party Patrol, and Team Joker. Just an incredible time. Wow. I have my pictures up, but will get Kelly & Katie's when they give them to me. Wow. I don't want to work again (ever), I want to be in Steamboat (forever).

What I am listening to as I type this: Marilyn Manson - Vodevil

January 11, 2008

After work today, Bryan finally is heading to Steamboat. I haven't been there since the summer of 2002 with she who we don't speak of. I simply cannot wait to get up there, I've always wanted to snowboard up there and cannot believe that, in my 7th snowboarding season in Colorado, I haven't been there yet. Meeting Kelly & Katie up there, will go out tonight, ride tomorrow, stay up there Saturday night, drive to Keystone or Breck or A-Basin on Sunday, then head home Sunday night. Giddy up!

On top of this, we have the game of the year at 2:30 on Saturday afternoon. Seahawks @ Packers. The rematch of the dreaded "We want the ball and we're gonna score" playoff game of a few years ago. I still detest Al Harris because of that game and take every opportunity I can to talk trash about him and jeer against him. This year will be redemption in the sweetest of ways. We can end this Brett Favre season everyone is clamoring about. We can go to the NFC Championship game next week (hopefully at home!). As usual, I sit here on the eve of a playoff game wearing a jersey at work. Today's jersey of choice, Marcus Trufant. As I said numerous times after Marcus' tremendous pick-6 last week, "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUF!!!!!" "The TRUF, the TRUF, the TRUF IS ON FIRE!!!" I love me some Seahawks playoff games!! I watched last Saturday's games up at Nick's place, and I don't think I will ever forget what his son Brenden told me after the game .... I am amazed that these words actually came out of a living human being's mouth (given that he's a Dolphins fan). He said to me, "You're so lucky to be a Seahawks fan." Wow. When did the Seahawks quietly become one of the NFL's powerhouse teams? They used to be just downright terrible year-in and year-out. This is certainly enjoyable getting used to having a chance to go to the Super Bowl ever year. Giddy up!!!!!

I have a Chia Homer in my office, he is struggling to grow. I heard through the grapevine that plants (proven on Mythbusters) like heavy metal music. I'm going to move C.H. over by my computer speakers and have him listen to Slipknot all weekend. I bet I come back to a full head of hair!

And with that, have a most lovely of weekends, and please root your ass off for the Seahawks!!!

What I am listening to as I type this: Candlebox - Arrow

January 7, 2008

Ok, I suppose I'll put up a legitimate update today for the first time in recent memory. Things have been good lately and I've been enjoying my final days away from school. New Year's was spent up in Westminster at the Electric Cowboy as I couldn't snowboard on New Year's Day due to high winds, closed roads, -35 wind chills, etc. This disappointed me greatly as snowboarding on New Year's Day is one of my favorite things in the world to do. I easily enjoy this day of snowboarding more than I enjoy Kinetics or BeerFest. Fortunately I was able to make up for that yesterday with a stellar day in Breckenridge. Trotted up there solo and got out of Denver around 6:15, one of the first ones up the mountain. I rode hard all day, stayed until about 3:30 when they started shutting things down. It snowed all damn day (por ejemplo, Beaver Creek is reporting they got 16" since yesterday morning, not sure what Breck reported).

Seahawks ... yeah. Hell yeah. That was a fun game to watch. They didn't keep me nervous for too long. I'm very proud to be the owner/wearer of a Marcus Trufant jersey these days. They better sign that guy long term after this year, we need him. It'd be a devastating blow to our team to lose the Truf. Nobody can handle the Truf. Next week Brett Favre is going to find out just how crushing the Seattle defense is. I'll be watching next week's playoff game from Steamboat as I'm heading up there Friday after work for the weekend. (I thought I was going this past weekend, but I had my dates mixed up, oops!)

I think Peter King is an awful football analyst, pretty much always have. Today he states this in his MMQB column, "We all -- everyone of us -- underrated the Seattle Seahawks.". In the same article, Mr. King rates "The Fine Fifteen" in which he rates the teams right now, pretty much a power rankings. He has Seattle 9th ... there are only 8 teams left playing. Explain how you claim you underrated us, then you place non-active teams above us? Idiot.

Two of my favorite things growing up: Transformers and American Gladiators. Words cannot express how much I loved Transformers the movie last year, that movie just rocked. Words couldn't describe the excitement I had for American Gladiators to start up again last night. I am sad to say that AG did not live up to anything close to its expectations last night. I thought it sucked, truly sucked. The "Wolf" gladiator howls all the time? What gives with that? The gladiators now congratulate the contestants and vice versa ... what happened to the days of talking trash?! The events were not that impressive (but I will say the new Eliminator is pretty damn sweet). I found it to be boring and I didn't even watch the second hour of it. Probably will not be tuning in again. I'm very disappointed as I held ultra-high expectations.

School starts today but I'm not going to touch it, probably watch the game tonight even though I really don't care about it at all. Getting the week off to a good start by hitting the gym at 6:30 this morning for an hour+ before work; I really need to get back into the mode of going to the gym before work, it's so much easier to get it out of the way as I can always find a reason to put it off come 5pm. Similarly, I tend to eat nearly perfect on days when I attend the gym first as I have that healthy mindset implanted in my mind. Hoping to get a quick 5-6K run in over lunch today, that'd be nice ... a solid Monday!

A lady I work with informed me today that "The Alps" is playing at the Denver IMAX theatre starting this Friday until June 12. I saw this movie when I was in Luzern (Switzerland) in November and simply cannot emphasize enough how incredible this movie is. If you want to experience the Swiss Alps and see a simply amazing movie (it's only 45 minutes long), just go. I guarantee you I'll go 2 or 3 times.

And lastly, I got a very special treat this morning. I thought it was very cool when I ran across this heard of elk last Thursday on my way to work (just a few blocks from my office), however, that was trumped this morning. It was about 6:15 about 2 blocks from my house; one block north of Coal Mine on Kipling. Realizing that means nothing to you, it's basically hardcore suburbia and the mountains are probably 5 miles west of here. I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a mountain lion running at full speed across the road. Absolutely amazing!!! This was the third lion I've seen since living in Colorado and beyond the most shocked I've been to see one. I had no idea I'd see them living right in my neighborhood! As dangerous as they are, I think they're the coolest looking creatures, just badass. That, my friends, is the best birthday gift I could have gotten!