ABAGAB - A Boy, A Girl, A Bird

You will have to excuse my lack of news as of late. Due to the Tropical Storm of a week ago, the one tree my neighbor did NOT cut down, managed to fall on my cable lines thus robbing me of a myriad abilities to amuse myself.

That being said…a brief list of things dealt with over the last week or two…barbecue with Shannon and Jay, barbecue with the Wilsons, first attempt at painting a car hood (fail), business picking up again, and College Football Season.

At this point in time, I’d like to mention once again how much I hate baseball. Thank God for the Olympics this year breaking up the monotony of that sport.

So now it is the most wonderful time of year, College Football Season. Tailgates, highs and lows, and time spent with friends. This is most likely my favorite time of year now.

That being said, nothing makes me laugh like the whiners, complainers, and conspiracy theorists on College Football boards hiding behind the anonyminity of the intarwebs. Reading the posts on ESPN makes me laugh…hard to believe the majority of these people are “adults”.

UF vs UM this weekend….UF wins by 17 (sorry Rush).

So I’ve been watching the Olympics…it is something I’ve enjoyed since I was a kid. Although you have the occasional report of a doper or a scandal, there is always something special or magnificent about the Olympics to me. Perhaps it is the thought that maybe for a few, brief weeks, the world competes in sports and with sportsmanship and forgets all the bullshit.

During events, NBC generally has at least one expert in the sport that is being shown along with an announcer and this tends to work out well. However, when you watch channels like MSNBC, there are always the 3rd stringers on who aren’t there to comment on sports, but about “every day life” at the Olympics or all kinds of bullshit.

So the other day I’m watching Tiki Barber and some chick in Beijing banter back and forth with some personality back in the US. Tiki looks plane uncomfortable and the two women attempt to outdo each other with their douchebaggery aka “witty” banter.

It was one of those trainwrecks that was so bad, it was good. If I hadn’t been working at a computer on the other side of the room, I would have changed the channel…I’m glad I didn’t.

The woman in the US starts interviewing the US 400m hurdler who won gold and asked to try on his medal. She then says to the woman in Beijing, “Don’t you wish you could do this?”

Trying to be a smart ass back, the woman in Beijing replies, “That’s ok…I’ve been wearing Tiki’s Super Bowl ring all day and I’d rather have that.”

Granted, that would generally be rude enough…however that isn’t the problem. Tiki retired from the Giants in acrimonious fashion the year before the Giants won the Super Bowl. So now not only is the dumb bitch being shown as an attempted, on-upper, and liar. Tiki is looking at her with death in his eyes and says, “I should bench press you over this wall.”

Fucking classic…I wish I had it Tivo’d.

I only have 2 neighbors. The one who lives to the right of me, I’ve never spoken to. The one in front of me is a young family who I’ve spoken to. The husband is a good, hard working guy. So this past Monday, I awaken to the sounds of chainsaws at 8:30AM…no big problem…go back to bed.

I wake up at 10AM and I notice all of the power is out. WTF? I check all the breakers, look outside, and finally notice that my neighbor has been cutting down trees in his yard. Then I notice that he has managed to chop a big ass tree down that apparently he misjudged the blast radius of and it took out a power line. Ooops.

Although it was a bit inconvenient not to have power for about 4 or 5 hours, it was kind of funny. Just another day in the life.

So….for those of you who know about the toy company…the big second site launched yesterday and today. Quite simply, it is amazing! There are some bugs and we have a long way to go, but hopefully this is the beginning of some great times for the company.

I still have some concerns and worries about how everything will pan out, but I can only wait and see what type of actions others take.

The only other news is I’m headed to Orlando this coming week to interview for a pretty damn decent job at a company where a buddy of mine works. I believe if I was actually to take a job, this place would be a good fit for me. This is the second interview, so we shall see how it goes.

Determining decisions are coming soon and it will interesting to see what direction my life takes.

So I’m flipping through channels while stretching and come across a teaser on VH1 for “Work for Diddy” or some shit like this. WTF?!?!?!

So first the guy makes a name for himself by sampling almost every good 80’s song ever made. Subsequent albums bomb. In between, in my opinion, he’s knocked off a couple of other things as well. Now he is ripping off Donald Trump and The Apprentice?

Jesus…does this guy have an original thought in his head or what?

So this time around I’ve managed to stumble across a very eclectic mix of mostly unknown groups spread across multiple genres. Most have videos on youtube. Good stuff!

1. Gary Schyman - Praan
2. Mates of State - My Only Offer
3. Ambulance LTD - Heavy Lifting
4. Jack Penate - Second Minute or Hour
5. Les Savy Fav - We’ll Make a Lover of You
6. Lukid - Piano Nono
7. Street Dogs - Not Without a Purpose
8. The Roots - Seed 2.0
9. David Ball - When the Thought of You Catches Up with Me
10. Man Man - Harpoon Fever

I love browsing sites like myspace and imeem for new music but I stumbled across this group on one of my favorite, absolutely, out of control sites on the internet…Genmay.

You gotta love a group of guys who rock the fuck out in some crazy, rock, electronic mess dressed up in ridiculous costumes. It is almost like a white, hard rock version of some Afrikaa Bambaataa.

http://www.myspace.com/taradactyl

If you don’t like this you aren’t my friend (and are a Grade A Pussy!) =P

So nothing REALLY bad has happened this week…just annoying shit. It started a week ago when I fried my main work PC doing a chipset update. I did a good job of it…best in a while. I was in command console trying to pull up deleted restore points…finally got it working. 48 hours later, destroyed it again to the point that my buddy Josh had to use his 25k data recovery device at the bank to get all my info back. Had everything reinstalled for 48 hours and the PSU went bad. Needless to say…that computer has been permanently retired. Oh…big thanks to my buddy Rush for helping me get a SQL DB transferred to another computer as well.

So after a week I finally have all my backups and such reinstalled on my backup machine which is actually nicer than my primary machine (but I just like my little toasters).

In the meantime, during the past week, I had a client back out of a NICE project at the last moment, the girl I’ve been training in kickboxing for the last 2 months…who I finally had thought regained her confidence…is apparently speaking to the guy who has made her an emotional wreck over the last 18 month again. After staying away from him for 4 months. It sucks as this person has been my friend for ten years but I can’t train or be around someone who has such little respect for themselves or lack of confidence.

Somehow I can do shrugs or deadlifts at the gym with hundreds of pounds at the gym no problem but sitting down in my chair I manage to pull my back.

Um…I think that is all for right now…I think there was something else however.

Hopefully things are turning around as today I ran into my old kickboxing coach at the gym which was cool…maybe I’ll start that up again. I also managed to get the aluminum hood on my car (although I still need to paint it) so that is like 20 pounds lighter than my old hood! I might actually get my replacement fender on this week as well!

Well the weekend of 4th of July ended up being quite eventful!

July 4th started off with a bang…literally! Megan, her family, friends and I drove down to Orlando for the US Open Karate Tournament. Now I have to admit, I hate traditional martial arts since 99% of them don’t teach you anything useful. As long as you go every month and pay your dues, you get your black belt in a couple of years.

Megan was doing a “continuous fighting” match which isn’t too tough but it isn’t as pussy as point sparring is. I genuinely wasn’t worried about her winning as for the last two months I had been training her as a kickboxer…not the chump ass karate styles she would be facing. Furthermore, due to her height, Megan had a natural advantage over most competitors.

When it was time for the fight, I was about ready to throw up. I think I was more nervous than Megan was. I was truly worried she was going to get DQ’d for being a “fighter” if she beat up her opponent too badly. Well…Megan did everything I taught her to and dominated her fight. I think she got hit twice! It was awesome! I did feel sorry for her opponent though who got knocked out.

That night I went over to Jenny’s house (Kyle…as in Megan’s brother…girlfriend) and we had a big bonfire/cookout with Jenny’s family, the Pratts, and other friends…it was a great time!

Saturday morning I woke up and Cris invited me canoing spur of the moment. It was a fun three hours heading up river, visiting with naked Ed, seeing tons of turtles, and just relaxing. The Springs felt GREAT after paddling in the hot sun. I love spending time with Cris…one of my favorite people on the planet!

After the canoe excursion, I went back to the Pratt’s and began bodywork on my convertible. I tool off the damaged passenger fender and front bumper for replacement or repair. That night I watched UFC with Megan and Brian.

Sunday I woke up, headed over to Cris’s for a little bit, and then came home to do so cleaning. I did manage to fuck up my work computer something awful and I still haven’t recovered everything yet. Oh well!

So after a week or two of planning, I finally managed to setup a lunch date with my friend Lourdes. Now normally I’m 15 minutes early to everything so imagine my surprise when I slept through my alarm and woke up 20 minutes before I was supposed to be ALL THE WAY ACROSS TOWN! Being a good sport, Lourdes forgave me being 30 minutes late.

Lunch was at Omi’s which is a Hispanic restaurant out in the same shopping plaza as the Tower Road Publix. Lourdes eats there at least once a week + she is Cuban so when we walked in, she was of course greeted very cordially! Omi is a very friendly lady with a fantastic menu! My decision came down to the Churrasco or the Chicken Mexican Bowl…of course chicken.

Man…what a great meal! Chicken, rice, beans, guacamole, and more! There were a number of other regulars eating so Omi came out and sat with everyone. This prompted a hysterical conversation between all of the Hispanic women and the one other man there who was teasing his wife. I started waving my plastic knife around threatning to fight my way out.

It was about this time that Omi noticed I had finished the entire meal…she couldn’t beleive it. Apparently in two years, no one has finished this particular meal in one sitting…hell I wanted more. Omi was so impressed she took down my name…at first I told her it was Gringo Grande…which elicited a chuckle…and she wants to give me some reward for finishing the meal. Apparently most people buy it for two meals…go figure.

We ended lunch with a fantastic and fresh flan. My God it was yummy! I am so heading back to this place and soon!