Fleetmack.com - June 2008 News

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"Women: You can't live with them, and you can't get them to dress up in a skimpy little Nazi costume and beat you with a warm squash or something." --Emo Philips

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June 2008 News Archives

June 05 June 15 June 20 June 22

What I am listening to as I type this: nothing

June 22, 2008

"Looked at your watch it said 6:22; cut to the house and say 'Baby, I love you.'" Quick, without google, what song is that from? It was just in my head as I typed the date.

By the way, I'd like to publically welcome B.J. back home after serving our country overseas for the last couple of months. Welcome home, bud!!!!

Warning: this will be an old-school, very-detailed updated! This'll likely be the last time I update the site for quite some time so I figure I'll go all out! Here's how to describe my weekend: Awesome. I overuse that word, but it was truly an awesome weekend. Friday I hit up Gov's Park with Duane, Keith, and Bridget. Bridget's friends met up with us later and we just chilled all night, excellent stuff.

Saturday was picture perfect. Truly a perfect day in every sense of the word. I was to go camping with Rikelle and her friends up on Guanella Pass (between the towns of Georgetown and Grant at around 11000 feet of elevation). This is awesome to begin with. Riki sent me a text message the previous night that said Ian (her husband) flew in from Cleveland to surprise her and was camping with us. I just thought that was so awesome. On my way to the campsite (they all left on Friday for camping, so I was joining the party a bit late) I just rolled down the windows, put on some CCR, and enjoyed the scenery. Riki's friends are awesome, they are all musicians. They had about 6 guitars and 3 sets of drums. Those guys can play any song. We jammed out all night, until around 3am I believe. I was playing guitar at times, drums at times, singing at times, and drinking a Newcastle under a sky full of stars. Had my tent pitched right on the river. No cell phones. No cameras. No stereos. The kids were playing in the dirt and climbing trees (so were the adults!). Just stars, moon, friends, beer, bonfire, 4-wheelers, wood chopping, river, flashlights, and music. As I sat there at one point, I was playing a drum and I just looked up at the sky and saw a billion stars. I look around the campsite and I see all these people (around 25-30 of us) that I'd never met before and every one of them was smiling. This is the life I made for myself. Nights like Saturday night are the kind of nights I will always look back on and say, "That night was special."

Today has been a happy day as well. I woke up around 9:00am and helped pack up and headed out around 10:00. On the way back home, near Platte Canyon High School (where the shooting took place 2 years ago) there was a hitchhiker on the side of the road. He was wearing a Safeway uniform (grocery store) and looked as non-threatening as possible. I had my gun between my seat and the console (easy for me to draw if needed and he wouldn't see I had it) and it was loaded up, so I felt safe picking this guy up. He needed a ride to Conifer so I picked him up. He ended up being a relative of the girl who was murdered in that high school so we talked about that. VERY nice guy and I was happy to help him out.

When I got home, I ate chips & salsa. Yeah, big surprise I know. Then I met up with Andy and Colby at BW3's for lunch. I came home, watched some Dr. Steve Brule videos (for your health!) on adultswim.com, and then watched Vanilla Sky. It was as amazing as it was when I first watched it. I consider that one of very few movies I would describe as being done perfectly. It would be impossible to improve that movie. Penelope Cruz puts me in a trance. I am simply mesmerized by her. I've put some major thought into this over the past couple of months, and I'm not ready to officially declare this yet ... but I may possibly be infatuated with Penelope Cruz even more than Laetitia Casta. Sie ist einfach schön.

I am currently procrastinating. This week will be hell for me. I have to complete my entire course project for my PL/SQL class and complete my final exam by the time I go to bed on Wednesday night. Each of these duties will likely take 15-20 hours of work. I am not certain how I will possibly do this. This is also a week simply loaded with work at the office. I have several deadlines which are June 30 (end of the fiscal year). I have a new employee starting next week that I have to prepare a setup for. We have a ton of new equipment we've ordered arriving early this week which I will be in charge of configuring and installing. I have major ETL (enter, transform, load) work to do into our database with regards to new entities. My two long-term projects are going to enter testing phase tomorrow (Monday). This is all excelled as well being how I have Friday off; I am leaving for Minnesota on Thursday straight from work and won't arrive home until 8pm on Sunday. I also have to run up to Westminster tomorrow night to meet Colby so I can borrow his golf club case such that I can bring my clubs with me to Minnesota. I will not be playing softball this week. I will not be running this week. I will not be biking to work this week (maybe). I will not be lifting weights this week. My friends, I will be thrilled one week from now when this week is over. Summer officially begins on Thursday night for me, and it is deserved.

Work hard to play harder. Don't live to work, work to live. If something is in your nose, say "fuck it" and cram your finger in there as deep as you can, pull it out, flick it out our window, and laugh at the person in the car next to you who is laughing at you. Words to live by.

What I am listening to as I type this: Monster Magnet - Look to Your Orb For the Warning

June 20, 2008

I'm on one hour of sleep today. Tired.As.Shit. This has been an extremely busy week in which I've spent almost all of my time away from work doing homework. It's been nice as I've still gotten good workouts by biking to and from work once in awhile, I'm averaging doing that over once a week. On Wednesday night I made it home from work (16.5 miles) in just over an hour, which was nice considering the hills. Yesterday morning on the way to work I even felt like I was in Iowa when I stopped to moo at the cows. Last night we had a softball game at 10. We ended up playing 7 innings. It got to the bottom of the 7th and we were losing 18-9, but we came back and won 19-18; we were pretty excited. I met up with Riki and Aja at the PCL afterwards (wow, that sounds like 2001 all over again!) for some karaoke. I didn't drink, but stayed there so I could be a driver, I didn't end up getting home until around 3:00am, then I couldn't sleep. Rise and shine at 5:40am today, and here I am, exhausted. I mean come on, I woke up at 4:30 on Thursday to ride my bike to work, then I have slept an hour since then? Crazy.

I'm not sure how I'm going to get through today, I am beyond tired.

I may have touched upon this before on this site, but I'm not sure. Back in high school, they did the announcements over the intercom in the morning. They were usually read by our principal, Dr. Guy (R.I.P. - he was an awesome guy!). We just called him Doc. Each morning, Doc would start the announcements by saying, "This is Dr. Guy with your thought for the day ..."; then he would read a passage from some thought-provoking book. As much as I loved Dr. Guy, I can't say I listened to the thought for the day very often. Anyways, a quick tale and then I am going to give you a thought for the day ....

I was in a shitty mood this morning. I'm just run down mentally, I need a break from school so badly and I need some sleep, I'm exhausted. I came into work dragging this morning and nothing was working. Got some messed up stuff at work (database crashed last night), got some messed up stuff on the Team Blonde website ... just everything is messed up. But two things happened, tiny things, and I am suddenly in a fantastic mood. You wouldn't believe how "nothing" these things were (hell, I'll just tell you one of them -- this comic today, the fact that Showbiz was switching the fruit around cracked me up). Anyways, it's amazing how fast a very little thing can make your hell day just light up .... and with that ....

I'm Bryan Mack and here's your thought for the day. Many people get upset over little things and let them ruin their day. Other people find the smallest thing and allow that to make their day bright. Be the guy who finds good in everything and your day will be better than someone who finds the little bad things in everything. Lastly, do several little things for others every day, because that one little thing may be all someone needs to cheer up.

What I am listening to as I type this: nothing

June 15, 2008

I had surgery on my esophagus last Wednesday, it seemed to go quite well. It proved to be extremely difficult for them to get me to sleep, they had to put an IV in my hand, right arm, and left arm before they were able to knock me out (and even then it took 3 or 4 doses). Anyways, once that finally happened, they were able to dilate my esophagus and take a biopsy. I don't yet know the results and I was pretty out of it when the doctor spoke with me after surgery, so I'm not really sure what's going on; I'll elaborate more on why the tests were taken and what the results were after I get them back. Basically I am pretty sure I will not need further surgery for 10 years or so, but there is a slight chance I will need to have another surgery in the next month, time will tell. BUT, I'm back to 100% right now, only went 1.5 days without eating this time, which is a huge improvement from the last time I had this surgery done! I believe they got my esophagus stretched out to 15mm of diameter, which I think is double what it was. Again, not really sure as I don't really remember talking to my doctor after the surgery.

Weekend was good. I played softball (poorly) on Thursday night. Although I don't truly believe it, I will attribute my poor play to being the day after I had surgery. I was still a bit sore on Friday so I played low-key and played poker with the guys. I split the pot and took home $90, so that was a good thing!

I road biked up Mt. Evans on Saturday, which is the highest paved road in North America. I did this ride last summer, but this time I did much more. Last year I started at Echo Lake, which made for 14 miles up and 14 miles down with 4000 feet of vertical gain on the way up. This year I stepped it up a level. We started at 7:30am from Idaho Springs!! This added an extra 14 miles and 3000+ feet of vertical gain, almost doubling the difficulty. Basically, we went 28.5 miles uphill and gained over 7000 feet in the process. Then it was 28.5 miles all downhill. It took 5.5 hours to get up and 1.5 hours to get down. It was an incredible bike ride. We averaged over 30MPH for the final 14 miles and didn't stop the entire time. I look forward to several other rides like this over the course of the summer! I must say, I am impressed I was able to complete such a difficult ride just 3 days after surgery!

This summer is on fire, nothing could be going better and I love it :) L.I.V.I.N.G.

What I am listening to as I type this: Stone Sour - 1st Person

June 05, 2008

Things are good. My head is pretty messed up still but I've been utilizing the "keep yourself busy" method of getting my mind off things. I've faced it, it's over and done, but it's lingering. Things are just too damn good for me to stay down. Really, things are just awesome right now. School keeps me busy and I'm learning awesome stuff. I'm getting back in phenomenal shape, I'm talking the kind of shape I was in back in 2003. Lifting heavy again and running fast. The stuff I'm doing at work, well, I'm about a month away from implementing it and am excited to see the payoff of a an almost 100% reliable and available system. I have many new projects in the works. All my trips are all planned and paid for. I am loving having every-other Freitag off of work with my new work schedule, and there is a strong possibility that something awesome is going to happen very soon at this job, but I can't talk about that yet, but it'll make my job just rock your socks. I'm ready, summer is here, let the fun begin! (3 more weeks of school!).

Upcoming plans:
--My parents are coming here tomorrow for a 3-day weekend, should be a great time. We will be staying downtown all weekend at Hotel Monaco, which should absolutely rock. Tomorrow we may go to Estes Park for the day. We have great seats to a Rockies game on Saturday, will attend The Alps at the museum, and a bunch of time to just play it by ear. Great weekend.

--Next weekend I am invited to play in a kickball league on Saturday, but not sure I'll make it. I'm going to ride my bike up Mt. Evans on Saturday morning (we're starting at 7am), so we'll see about kickball when we get back. Last year when I did this, I started at Echo Lake, making it about 30 miles round-trip. This year I'm starting from Idaho Springs, so hopefully that'll make it a 60 mile ride, with the first 30 being 100% uphill. Sunday, depending on how I feel and/or if I end up playing kickball Saturday afternoon, I'd like to climb Missouri Mountain; if not I may just go on a long hike closer to home. Ich nur will wandern in den Bergen am Sontag!!

--Weekend of the 28th I'm going to Minneapolis to go golfing at an all-inclusive resort

--4th of July, no plans. Might chill in Denver. Might go camping with some friends. Might bike from Copper Mountain up to Leadville (wow, I just thought of that right now, that sounds AWESOME!) Might go on a hiking trip down by Gunnison. I'm not sure, not too worried about it, I'll do whichever sounds most fun

--July 10th - Going to NYC and staying with Yort Diggidy for a few days

--July 17th-27th - RAGBRAI beeyatch!!!!

Oh yeah, softball game tonight if it stops raining!! I love my life. Back at it, I'm figuring out Data Pump today, so far it's a KICKASS tool!! Hey, I may be a geek, but trust me, this shit is cool and in demand as a career!