PARTY TIME!!

Happy New Years All! Im about to head out the door with Val to Craig and Becki's NYE party. Should be a lot of fun. Im taking my camera with me to get a few pics. Hopefully i can post them on the site. Last night we had a really great Dinner Club outting. We went to a place called Thai Tango. WOW. Simply some of the best Asian food Ive ever had! Great atmosphere, great food and great friends. Overall, a great time! One of our friends flaked out and bailed on us just before dinner. Oh well, her loss. There were 6 of us, including CURLY, (ha!) and we all had a really good evening together. Well im out of here. I will update the site with party info and pics from tonight!

Another One Bites the Dust

Well another Christmas has come and gone. It was a good one this year. Everybody together with lots of great gifts, given and gotten. It started out Christmas eve. I went with Valerie to her parents house. They do their big feast and present exchange on the 24th. They had so much good food I could barely walk when I left there for the drive to my parents house, two hours later. I got one of the coolest gifts from my girlfriend Valerie. Long ago I had talked about getting a hermit-crab. She rememberd and got me a very large hermit-crab with a 10 gallon tank, sand, food/water bowls and play things for him. The next day I went down to the pet store and bought another hermie and another fake driftwood thing with plants growning on it so they have something to climb. I named the large hermie, Krusty... and the newest one I bought, Sideshow Bob. Soon I hope to get my web cam up so I (or anyone else) can watch them during the day. Most the time they are pretty still. But sometimes they get very adventurous and roam and climb around in their tank. As for giving presents, I got Val a few things she had been wanting and needing. One of those things being the movie Finding Nemo. We watched it. Pretty funny for kids or grown ups. I also got my brother a starter paintball gun. We plan on playing again on Jan. 4th and now he has a gun to shoot back with. I plan on taking quiet a few action shots and even some video I can share on the main site.
On another note, the Ghost Recon club I play often with, Red-Sector Inc., accepted me in as a full member! Read all about it at www.red-sector.com .

Chillin on Saturday

Im just hanging out at the pad right now, waiting for Val to give me a call up. We're supposed to go out and do some final Christmas shopping. I still have to get my Mom, Dad and sisters presents. Its all under control. I might go see The Last Samuri tonight with Craig. Looks like an excellent movie. The weather is really nice outside right now. Its close to 68F out and sunny. Sometimes I do miss the snow of Chicago, but i cant complain when i can just wear a long sleeved shirt and jeans and be comfortable. Well Im off to get things done.

The Un-Dead

Today I read one of the most interesting news articles that ive seen in a long time. It was a story from London, England. It seems that the CCTV (security) camera's at Hampton Court Palace, home of King Henry VIII, captured a ghostly figure. Some security guards noticed on their monitor that the double doors of a fire escape were open. They walked out to inspect for intruders and to shut the doors. When they got there, the doors were shut. So they go back to their office to review the video tape. To their disblief, they see a figure in a long thick robe, step out of the darkness of the doorway and close the doors! The freeze frame picture of the figure is incredibly creepy. The palace museum swears it was not a hoax or a prank. They have no explanation for it. From the picture, Id have to say if it was a joke, they did a VERY good job. Its one of the best ghost pictures Ive seen in quite a while. You really just have to see it for yourself. Have a look!!! Go to www.thorpeland.com/ghost.htm

Man Down!

This past Sunday we played another game of paintball. Man, what fun! This time we only had 5 guys, so we played games of 3 vs 2.... hunter/seeker. The 2 man team would go out into the woods and hide. The 3 man team would proceed to slowly hunt them through the woods. Once the teams found eachother, a fierce firefight would break out. Paintballs were flying everywhere, splattering through the trees and branches. With everyone using semi-auto paintball markers, you can shoot as fast as you can pull the trigger. In a single firefight, I would easily burn through 200 rounds of paint. I actually had a pretty good day. Only hit twice all day long. While on the other hand, I was able to land game ending shots on Paul, Courts, Adam and Ken. I even fired a few extra rounds into Courts after he was "dead". He said he yelled "Hit!" but I told him I thought he yelled "Not yet!". Hahaha It was a fun day for everyone. We all went home with humorous war stories to think about until the next time we play. Which should be in a couple weeks. Probably after christmas. I took some pictures with my camera phone, and I may post them if I get the chance.

Wal-Blog

I'm sitting in the checkout line in walmart blogging on my Sidekick. Kinda funny. Man this line is slow. Oh, good news. I found out today that I've been taken in as a "candidate" with a Ghost Recon gaming club (clan), called RSi. Check them out, www.red-sector.com. They are a great group of guys from all over the world. Not to mention they are pretty decent gamers. Geeze, why can't parents control their kids?! The kid in front of me in line is on the floor smashing all the candy in the in line display. The mom just keeps looking down at her and smiling. Will mommy do somthing about this kid or do I need to drop kick it out of the line? Harsh? Maybe.

Surprise, Surprise... Surprise!

My friend Jarod is graduating from college this semester and his girlfriend contacted me and our group of friends to say she's organizing a suprise birthday dinner for him tonight. Should be fun. It's at a Thia food restaraunt. Ive never had Thia food, but I like most other asian cuisines so I'll give this a good try. We are meeting tonght at 7pm and Jarod thinks its only he and his girlfriend, Andrea, having the dinner.
On another note I heard a funny story today. My friend Brandon, Valerie's brother works for a local video rental store. He tells me yesterday he gets a call from a guy who says, "my movie is due tonight but Im not going to be able to bring it in. How can we take care of this over the phone." HA! Brandon politely tells the guy he cant. He has to bring the movie back... thats just the way it works. The nerve of some people... thinking they can talk their way out of being charged when clearly they are at fault.
Tomorrow is another Paintball War day. We are meeting at our wooded location at 9:30am and will battle it out for a few hours. This should be a ton of fun. We are expecting about 10 guys. I'll try to take some pictures.

Woo-Whoo!! ... DOH!

Well this weekend in the NFL it was a weekend of good followed by not so good. First off, the dallas cowgirls lost BIG TIME to the Philidelphia Eagles. That was awesome! With McNabb back and healthy, the Eagles easily picked apart dallas' weak secondary and handled all of the dallas blitz packeges like champs. On one of them, McNabb scrambled out of the pocket away from the dallas players for a 30 yard gain down to the 4 yard line. They scored a couple plays later. On the not so good side of things, my Chicago Bears were leading the Greenbay Packers 14-0 but later blew it to lose 32-21. Oh well, still a good weekend.
As far as activities this past weekend it was pretty low key. Me, Val, Craig and Becki went over to Dave & Busters Friday night for dinner and games. That was a whole lotta fun. We did learn one thing. Of the four of us, Valerie is the best shot with a basket ball. On the time B-ball shooting game where you have 24 seconds to make as many baskets as possible, I shot 21, Craig shot 8, Becki shot 4 and Valerie shoots out the lights with 32!! Great fun.
Also, I started playing FIFA 2004 online after playing enough one player games to be proficient with the controls. My first match up was against a guy from the U.K., using Real Madrid. I knew this would be a tough game so I went with my favorite team A.C. Milan. It turned out to be a very well balanced game. Both sides getting plenty of scoring chances. Late in the second half I had my shot bounce of the goal post, almost a game winner for sure! Moments later, he gets a break away with David Beckham into my penalty box. In a last second desparation tackle, I bring him down and are called for a penalty shot. Well my instincts were correct. I guessed to dive right and made the penalty save! Then, with less than 30 seconds left, he fires one from the top of my penalty box which deflects off my defenders leg and into the upper right corner of my net. He runs out the clock and takes the 1-0 win. Oh well, it was a fun game. Im sure I will win more in games to come!

Blown Chances

Well its the morning after my game which i mentioned in my last posting. What should have been a sure victory, ended in an embarassing 8-8 tie. Lots of mistakes and sloppy defense gave our lesser opponent plenty of chances to get shots on our goal. And they did. By mid second half, we were leading 7-2. Normally this would be enough to secure a win if we just play smart and run down the clock. But no, we didnt. They pulled it to 6-8 with :44 seconds left on the clock. They score and then one of our guys takes his time returning the ball to the center after the goal, so the ref calls a delay of game penalty on him giving him a 2 minute penalty in the box. So now we're down a man. They throw everything they have at us the last :40 seconds, scoring the tieing goal with 6 seconds left. I grab the ball run back to the center circle and look up to see their goalie still high-fiving his team. The ref blows the whistle to start play and with 3 seconds left I chip the ball deep towards their goal hoping to catch him unaware. Their keeper dives back towards the goal line to make the save and tips it just over the open net. Saving the spoiler for them. We had our chances, we should have won. We have to get better.

Untested Opponent

Im preparing for my 9pm soccer game tonight. We're playing a team that is new to our division. So we really arent sure what to expect. But, we have a good squad this season so I think the odd's are strong we'll get a win tonight. But you never know. I'll update soon after the game. After last weeks huge 18-4 slaughter we dished out, team morale is at full throttle. I doubt will score that many again. I hope we do though.

Precious Cargo is in the Nest

Got the pleasure of driving down to DFW International Airport tonight to pick up my mom flying back in from Florida where she was attending my grandfathers funeral. Not too bad of a drive, only about 20 minutes for me. I was afraid traffic was going to spoil my 7pm pickup. Not to fear, I zipped thru traffic in the Saturn 5 Turbo and had her, 2 dogs and 5 suitcases loaded up and headed north before we new it. On the way home my mom confessed a rather chilling story. She said around 1:30am on the morning my grandfather passed away, she woke up suddenly after having an extremely vivid dream of my grandfather standing in the doorway of the room she was sleeping in. He was gesturing and trying to tell her something, then he turned and walked away into the room next door. This woke her up and she couldnt go back to sleep. At 8am, the doctor called the house to tell her my grandfather had passed away earlier that morning. Yeah, strange to say the least. Was it a coincidence, just a dream created from the stress of the situation... or was it really a message being given to her as he passed away? We'll never know for sure but it is awful interesting. Well grandpa... if your somewhere else now and your reading blogs on the internet and you come across mine, we got your message. Goodbye. :(

Bad Santa

Valerie, me, Becca and Dan went and saw the movie Bad Santa on Sunday. As far as comedy's go it would be considered a "dark comedy". But it was still a funny movie. If you are offended by lots of drinking, sex and the "F" word, dont go. Billy Bob Thornton plays his normal slob, perv character very well in this one. But for Christmas movies for this season my favorite still stands with Will Farrels, "Elf". I'll give Bad Santa a 6 out of 10. Entertaining but nothing to go home and wait for the DVD release over.
Oh I almost forgot to mention how great this weekend was simply for the fact that the dallas cowgirls lost BAD to the Miami Dolphins and my good old Chicago Bears whipped up on the Cardinals late Sunday. I love it when a plan comes together. haha

Big D visits Big D

This past Tuesday night my old buddy and former roomate, Dan flew in to DFW for the holidays. Its always a blast when he's in town. Because everyone wants to see him while he's here, we have lots of gatherings with all our old friends. Ive been out with him pretty much each night since Tuesday. Its been a very fun 4 day weekend over the holidays. Last night we all met up at Dave & Busters in Frisco. Dan and I were there to meet up with 3 of his old buddies from high school. One of them insisted on drinking non-stop. Beers, shots, liqour... anything. Sure enough, an hour later he was in the Dave & Busters bathroom, sitting on the floor of a stall with his face laying on a toilet seat, puking his guts out. Gross, yes.... funny? Definatly! ha! It was just after that happened that a surprise guest showed up. Big man, Dustin. He also had a laugh at Dan's sickly friend on the restroom floor. We stayed till the place closed then headed back from distant Frisco. Getting back at almost 3am, I was beat. Contacts out, face first into my bed. Flatline.
On a different note, well a nerdy note, I set up whats called a Team Speak server yesterday. What this does is allows players in tactical type shooter games to put on a headset and communicate using voice during the game. Its very cool and Im excited to get a chance for me and my buds to put it to use in Ghost Recon on our next gaming night! Oh also while Dan was here I talked him into finally retiring his ancient and outdated PC at home. So we went online PC shopping for him, because I know where to get some great deals. When it was all said and done, we got him a rockin system. (Nerds pay attention, everyone else just move along.) When it comes in, his new box will have a ASUS 500mhz FSB MoBo with a 8X AGP slot, equiped with a 2.8 GHZ Athlon XP CPU. It has 512 MB of high speed DDR memory to help it fly thru most anything and a 128MB GeForce vid card to make gaming an unbelievable experience. All this with an 80GB hard drive strapped to it for storage space to spare running Windows XP Pro and for a total of $640. I think mikey likes. hehe

Saturday Gunbattle

Well not quite a "gunbattle" but more of a paintball gunbattle. A few friends and I headed out to the wooded Corp of Engineers land near the lake to play some paintball. As usual, tons O fun. Although we had a small turn out, the paint was still flying. My team was unable to achieve a victory for the day but came close on a couple rounds. Unlike the last paintball match which was played on whats called a speedball field, this was thick woods. Which means long periods of quiet stalking and hunting your enemy, with sudden fire-fights and ambushes. Im looking forward to playing again very soon.

Sad News

I learned sad news this afteroon. My grandpa's heart finally gave out this morning around 8am and he passed away. He was 82 years old and my mom said he held up his good humor until the end. I'll miss grandpa. He came from Siclli, Italy when he was a young boy. He ran an Italian resaurant many years outside Orlando Florida. He drove everywhere because he was scared to fly and never left home without his little dog Nikki. He will be missed.

And Another Must See

Ok Friday night me, Val, Craig and Becki went to see Master and Commander, The new Russel Crowe movie. I had heard good reviews about it but I never put too much into those. Turns out it was a pretty good movie. I was very impressed by the quality of the war ships in the movie. Im afraid to know how much they spent on recreating these exact replica's of 18th century navy vessels. It was incredible to watch the battle scenes. As the ships pull near eachother and fire off all their cannon's you can only think how badly damaged the ship and crew must have been after it was over.
On another note, I picked up a new video card for my pc today. Its a nice Radeon 9200, with 128MB of memory on board. Its not the top of the line but its a nice fast card. Top of the line runs close to $500, but I caught this dandy on sale for $80. Can't beat that for upgrading your gaming pleasure!

Must See!

Whatever you do this holiday season, youi have to go see the new movie Elf! What a funny movie. Sure its one of those happy ending christmas movies, but Will Farrell makes it a truly hilarious flick.

Sooooooo Lucky

Well the dallas cowgirls managed to win today in the NFL. And to top it off, the Chicago Bears lost. Ugg, to the detroit lions for that matter. This league must be rigged I tell ya!

Update!

Be sure to check out my site, if you didn't get here through there anyhow. Ive updated the Party page with pics from Samia's Halloween party last saturday. It was a blast!
Tonight should be interesting. My friend Cheryl is participating in a belly dancing show. So of course in support, me and all my friends will be there in force to cheer her on! Yes, I'll have my camera ready. :)

Ho-Hum

Im at work right now. Bored. Im tied to my desk and the day is just crawwwwwwllling. Could this day go any slower? Anywho, its Friday finally! I have no idea what the weekend holds in store. I'll definatly update the site this week. So check back!

Shame On Me

Here it is Friday morning and I have not made a blog entry since Monday! Shame, shame, shame. It's been a pretty good week. I have'nt had time to post the latest pictures from last weekends party. But I still plan to. Wednesday, for those of you who didn't know or didn't care, the new movie "Matrix Revolutions" came out in theaters. If you haven't seen it, DO SO! It was awesome! The movie takes some very interesting twists and turns. The action is incredible and Agent Smith is just as humorous as ever. My favorite line of his... when he standing in the street facing off with Neo, he gestures to the thousands of copies of himself standing around them in the city streets and says to Neo, "Like what I've done with the place?" Ha, classic! Overall, great movie. Very entertaining. And if you don't try to get too caught up in all the philosophy and hidden religious and ethical messages, its even a better movie. Things are getting busy here at work. Gotta run, but I'll blog some more later today.

November Halloween

Saturday night may have been November 1st, but that didn't prevent my friend Samia from throwing a belated Halloween party at her house. In attendance were, Valerie and myself along with THE AMANDA'S, Mandy with her sister and Sylvia with Ted. What a great group and a great time! I took lots of pics and should have them up VERY soon. Including one pic of me in full mullet/nascar mode. For those of you who are big time nascar fans and are possibly offended that I have made a joke about mullets and nascar... too bad. It's true.

Crash and Burn

The stage was set. My Thursday night soccer team had finished the regular season in 4th place and squeezed into the playoffs for a chance at the championship. The one team that stood in our way, the first place team. They had already beaten us once this season, but this time with our full team we felt victory was in our grasp! The game started out well enough, they scored two goals on us and we answered with one just before half-time. Down 2-1 wasn't bad at all. Second half starts. Im playing rights-side striker, the ball is played perfectly through their midfield and I get the ball to my feet with one defender left to beat for a shot on goal. He rushes towards me and my soccer instincts take over my feet. I start to do a normal wrong-footing move on him by stopping it fast and switching it from my left foot to my right, to leave him standing still. I plant my left foot on the turf and cut back to my right. At that second I feel a tremendous pain in my left heel. My foot rolls over and I almost collapse to the turf. I regain myself and still have control of the ball. All I can feel is an intense burning in my heel. I pass the ball off to a teamate and get off the field for a sub to come in. I managed to go back into the game and even score a goal on a free kick. They still ended up being too much for us, winning the game 5-2. Ouch. I came home and iced the foot/heel and went to bed. I woke up to try and go to work. I stepped out of the bed.... AAAAHHHHH!!!! No way. I cant even put an ounce of weight on it. The heel is now black and blue and swollen. Looks like a deep tissue bruise. To answer your next question, no... I didn't go to the doctor. I know enough about this type of injury to know what I would be told by a doctor. "Stay off it, put ice on it, take some asprin to help the pain and oh yeah... stay off it", is what they would tell me. I can do that without paying them say it. So, Im going out tonight with some friends. It's going to hurt, im going to be slow... but oh well. I'm tough, it'll heal. I hope.

New Record!

With the help of the pumpkin carving contest, my site has hit a new one day high in visitations!! The former recored was holding steady at 26 visitors for the day of September 4th, 2001. Now, two years later the site hit the mark of 33 visitors and the day is not over yet! This one will be tough to beat.

Woop!

Halloween pics from the party are up! Go to thorpeland.com and check them out!

Whew!

Everynow and then I get to have a wall to wall busy weekend. Well this was one of them. It started out Friday evening. Craig, Becki, Amanda K., Amanda Curly, Mandy, Brian and Valerie and I headed over to Ft. Worth to check out a haunted house we had heard about on the radio. It was called "Cutting Edge" Haunted house. I checked out their website and it seemed to be a pretty cool place. They claimed to have a lot of original things and that it was worth the money and trip. Well, we arrived at the location around 10pm and found our way to the ticket boothe. A regular ticket was $20. But you could get a VIP ticket for $25, which included one hour of free game play at Game Works and allowed you to skip the LONG line and go right in. We chose the latter. A few minutes later we were walking by the 100 or so people in a long snaking line and right into the haunted house. We were a little disapointed they charged tax on top of the ticket price, we figured it would have just been included in their final price. So our tickets cost $27.06. I thought, "this better be one good haunted house". The best way to describe the place is, the haunted house that never ends. Which in this case was a good thing. We entered the maze at just after 10pm and finally found our way out at 11:20pm. Over an hour of scares and thrill, which included a timed maze where we were given glow sticks and 5 minutes to find our way out of, numorous floors to navigate through and a foam filled ending. (hehe) So after it was all said and done, it turned out to be worth the amount to go through.
Saturday was Roger and Melissa's Halloween Party! I will soon have pictures up from this event. I had some techincal difficulties during my first upload tonight. They will be up soon. I wore a Landshark costume and was awarded the ribon for Most Creative Costume. Woo Whoo! There were a lot of great costumes though. And we all had a blast. Be sure to check back in the next couple days to see all the pictures I took.
Sunday, which is normally a slow relaxing day, turned out to be exciting also. It was time for another LAN Party. Me and several other fellow PC gamers met at an office building in Dallas to set up our battle network. After about an hour of getting everyone's PC's set up and syncronized it was time for war. The game of choice for the day was Unreal Tournament 2003. The competition was tough, but I managed to rack of a few wins in some of the rounds. A winner was decided when a competitor reached 25 Frags (kills). The LAN Party was a blast, litterally. Ha! I can't wait till our next one. Although hauling all my equipement to my car and back is a lot of work.
All in all it turned out to be a great weekend. I had been looking forward to this weekend for quite a while. Now that it's over, im not sure what to look forward to next. Thanksgiving? hhmm... Ok.

Unexpected

Recently my department at work held a big meeting to talk about what we had accomplished, what we had planned and anything else our managers could think of. Turns out they had an awards section where they had decided to recognize the people who had done a good job during our recent PC Rollout this last summer. Based on the feedback from our users, I was given an award for my work during the rollout. I totally didnt expect it. But it was pretty cool to get something for all our hard work. Perhaps i'll put a picture of the award on my site somewhere. That was pretty much the highlight of my week. Other than that its been pretty dull. I cant think of anything else for now. More to come im sure.

Friday

Friday started out with lunch at Subway, yum. From there I took Valerie sightseeing to show her all my college day haunts and hangouts. We started out with a tour of the MSU campus. There she got to see the dorms I lived in, the place I ate lunch and dinner at, the places I studied at.... and the places I tried to study at but fell asleep. After the campus tour her, James and myself, drove out to "The Falls", that are Wichita Falls. Soon I'll have the pictures up on my site on the Adventures page. Basically, its a man-made waterfall that greats people as they drive into town on the highway. Friday evening, we grabbed dinner at On The Border. We all left the place over stuffed. From there we headed over to my friend Tie's (spelling?) to watch a movie on his new 64 inch wide sceen tv, complete with surround sound. Very cool. Now I'm about to crash and decided to do a bit of blogging on my Sidekick before I sleep. James doesn't own a computer, so this has been my only internet and email access for the weekend. What a lifesaver. Haha ok, I'm sleepy. Goodnight and more blogging to come.

Live from Wichita Falls Texas!

Well its Friday morning, so I'll give a review of Thursday night. We arrived in Wichita Falls around 6:30pm and picked up brother James for some dinner at Hunan's chinese restaraunt. Good stuff, buffet! From there it was back to his place to get cleaned up and relax for a bit. Then it was off to the MSU campus for the torch march and bonfire. The fire this year was quite wimpy compared to when I was there for school. From there it was off to play pool. A couple of hours later it was off to crash for the night, by 1:30am. More to come.

Road Trip!!

It's 3:20pm and at 4pm im hitting the road for Wichita Falls Texas. My girlfriend Valerie and I are headed up to my alma-mater, MSU (Midwestern State University), to partake in some of this weekends homecoming events. Should be a lot of fun. I plan on taking a ton of pictures, which im sure will warrent its own page on Thorpeland.com. Things kick off tonight with the torch march and bonfire, followed by open house at the president of the universities home. Friday night is the cookout/fish fry at the Sikes Lake. I get to stay with Brotha James and whip him at our normal putt-putt and pool competitions. haha Then Saturday is the MSU football game. Should be a great 3 day weekend! Im excited to get it started. Work is just dragging by today.

Ouch

Yup, Rams are sticking it to the Falcons. It's in the 3rd quarter and it's 19-0. Rams just scored a safety before going to commercial. Ouch. You hear that Craig.... OUCH!! I swear, its like your still holding your controller.

MNF!!

Its Monday night and that means one thing..... Are you ready for some football!!? Yup, Monday Night Football on ABC. So here I am sitting on my couch with a bag of chips watching the Atlanta Falcons versus the St. Louis Rams. I guess if I haev to pick a team to cheer for, I'd choose the Falcons. Too bad Michael Vick is out injured. I think the Rams are going to win. Earlier tonight my buddy Craig stops in and we re-created tonights matchup in Madden 2004 (football video game). If our "predictions" are correct, the Rams will win 24-10 tonight. Well, we'll see about that.

A Night at the Movies

Saturday night me and my friend Doug headed to the theater to see the movie The Run Down. It got good reviews, but that means nothing. Normally I'm not a big fan of "the Rock", but he seemed pretty funny in this one. It turned out to be a very entertaining movie. Lots of action and lots of laugh's. I'll give it a 7 out of a 10, which is pretty good considering most these types of movies are too cheezy to enjoy.

:(

A bad day in Thorpeland. :(

Say Cheesy!

My camera attatchement came in today for my T-Mobile Sidekick. Its pretty cool. Pictures are small and nowhere as clear as my Sony digital camera. But handy for things like pic's of friends and interesring things while out and about. I'll post any really good ones i take. On a side note, yesterday was my friend Jenna's birthday! Happy Birthday! She lives in Oklahoma and is a lawyer.

Showdown

What a Monday Night Football game! The Colts come back from 21 points down to win in overtime 38-35. The Colts remain undefeated. Its late, im sleepy.. games over. Im out.

Victory!

Just got in from my soccer game. At half time we were down 2-1. In the second half, we come came back to win 4-2! I had 2 goals, the 2nd goal was a header that slipped between the keeper and a defender a split second before they crashed into me. I guess I took one for the team. Our record is now 3 wins, 1 loss.

Un-Boo

Wow. And not wow in a good way. The haunted house in Krum Texas is beyond a joke. It advertised a 2000 ft tunnel of terror. Umm...yeeeaah. What we found was a long tunnel, with a 13 yr old kids standing along the wall every 100 feet trying to be scary. Not. I've worked at and helped run a haunted house a few years ago. With a little creativity and hard work, we created a truly scary and fun haunted house. The Krum haunted house had potential, but just fell flat. I hope they figure that out and improve it as halloween nears. It just wasn't worth the $15 they charged to walk through it. Afterwards, me, Valerie and the group went to Beth Maries ice cream shop. Mmmmmmmm... Good stuff.

Boo!

Im sitting around waiting on my friends to get here. We are headed out to the local haunted houses tonight! Fun! This one is a 2000 foot long "tunnel" you walk thru. Should be interesting. More details to come!

Mobile Man!

I got a sidekick!! In fact I'm blogging from it right now. There's just something cool about writing from my couch with this tiny device. COOL! If you don't know what a Sidekick is, go to www.t-mobile.com, and checkout the sidekick demo.

Bummer

What a bummer of a night. Tonights Monday Night Football matchup was my Chicago Bears vs. the Green Bay Packers (cheese heads). The Packers won 38-23. It was the Bears first home game in the newly renovated Soldiers Stadium. I had hoped that would motivate them to beat the Packers. It wasnt to be. The Bears weak offensive line had their quarterback running from Packer defenders on every snap of the ball. Well I guess they can only get better. I hope.

Bday Part Two

With my mother back in town from visiting my grandfather in Florida, she wanted me to come by for a belated birthday cake and family gathering. This meant my favorite Boston Creme Pie! Two layers of white cake with vanilla pudding in the middle and creamy chocolate icing on top. OOOHH! My sister also showed up since her bday was on Sept. 11th and we were celebrating them together. My brother Courts also stopped in for the gathering. Valerie was with me and was able to "experience" Pioneer Days in Collinsville Texas. Oh boy. Now, my parents don't live in Collinsville but that is where my dad's store is. The town has maybe 1500 people and they all flock to the town square for music, food and to watch a recreation of old western gunfighters shoot it out. We only stayed there briefly, then became annoyed by all the kids running around screaming and shooting marshmellows at eachother out of homade guns crafted from 1 inch PVC piping that apparently some guy was selling at a boothe that day. So Valerie and I left there and headed to over to my brother Steves'. He showed me the work he's done on his classic Corvette lately. Installing a huge sound system, putting glowing lights inside the door pannels and redoing the interior. One sharp looking car. This car not only can fly but looks good doing it. He mentions to me his next project is installing nitrousoxide for that killer boost. I wonder if they make that for my Saturn? hehe
I now rewind a bit to Friday night. Valerie and I met up with my buddy Craig and his girlfriend Becky to go watch the new movie Underworld. This is the movie about vampires vs. werwolfes in some dark goth-like city... somewhere. I'll have to say it was pretty good. Entertaining at least. Lots of shooting, blood and general action with some plot twists. The werwolves were a pretty scary bunch. The ending of the movie definatly screamed SEQUAL!! As it left the door open to what was going to happen next.
So now here I am on Sunday. Not much going on. Just doing laundry and watching some football. Man I hope the Jets pound the dallas cowgirls.

Misleading Movies

So Friday night Valerie and I got to see the movie, "Cold Creek Manor". In the preview they show a family moving into a really old house and then creepy stuff starts happening. Oh yeah, and there's an previous owner who wants them out. I knew this going into the movie, but the movie trailers and preview clearly try to make this movie out to be a Halloween season scary movie. Don't buy it! They are being misleading. Over all it was a decent movie. It moved really slow thru parts and is a full 2 hours long. It could have easily been cut by 30 minutes and many parts were predictable. After about 4,000 run-in's with the ex-owner, they finally get into the big fight at the end of the movie. Good guy wins, bad guy dies... blah, blah, blah. Oh im sorry, did I ruin it? Well If you couldn't figure out that ending within the first 20 minutes of the movie, then you deserve to hear it from me first. I give the movie an overall rating of a "C-". Dragging scenes and predictable story line dropped this movies grade faster than a right hook from Tyson.

Birthday Weekend Recap

Well its been a busy week so I have to apologize for the delay in posting the pictures from my birthday bash last weekend. I should be actually posting those tonight after work. As I said in my last post, we headed out Friday night to downtown Dallas, to the West End area. The evening started out a bit frusterating as our trip down I-35 was slowed by a wreck causing a 5 mile backup. We finally made it to Joe's Crab Shack and the fun began! Attending my party were, my sister Macey, Valerie, Samia and her husband Kamron and of course Mr. Craig. We ate our dinners then enjoyed a chocolate cake that Valerie had brought. YUM! From there is was a short walk down to Gators Piano Bar. We took a table just to the right of the piano stage, which made us a prime target for the entertainment to pick on us. It wasnt long before he found out it was a birthday table, and his full attention was focused on us. Not only was it my birthday (Sept. 12), but my sisters (Sept 11) and Samia's (Sept. 14)! Before I knew it, he had me, Samia and Macey standing up on stage, ON top of the piano doing the "chicken dance" as he played faster and faster. Im sure we gave the crowd a good laugh. Yes, pictures were taken and I will post them along with the rest. It was a lot of fun and its something I will remember for a long long time. HA! Funny thing was, my sister Macey being a kindergarten teacher, could do the chicken dance as fast as the guy could play the song on the piano. While me on the other hand, could barely keep up! Well, it was a hilarious evening and there will be pictures soon to show it. Stay tuned!!

Time to Paaaarrrr- Tay!

Its party time! Today is my birthday! Yup, the big three- two. Eeeek! It seem like just yesterday I was turning 23. I must have been having a lot of fun over the past 9 years because time sure did fly. Today a bunch of my friends/co-workers are taking me out to a good italian restaraunt in town for lunch. Then tonight, a bunch of friends are going with me and Valerie to the West End in downtown Dallas. We'll be dinning at Joe's Crab Shack, (YUM!) then heading over to a piano bar for a good time. I'll try to post some pictures for all to see.

Serving it up!

As a side learning project and partly as a computing convenience, ive set up a public FTP server. I will explain to all those unfamiliar with that term. It stands for File Transfer Protocal. Basically, I set up this FTP server and load it with files of any type. Ive chosen files that were difficult to come across on the internet, things sent to me that were funny and files I know certain friends would be interested in getting their digital hands on. The only hang up before was the files are too big to email. Some are as large as 250MB. But now, all they have to do is download an FTP client for free. One such as WS_FTP_LE is an excellent one. Once the client is started up, just enter "thorpeland.selfhost.com" as the address, put in a username and password (supplied by me) and any file is there for the choosing! Also on the same note, if you have a hilarious video or such that you've recieved thru an email, contact me and I will give you a different username and password to upload your file to my server for all to view. If you didn't know, my email is thorpe@thorpeland.com. Try it out!!

Trouble in Paradise

Late Saturday morning Valerie, myself and Jimmy headed out to the lake for a day of jetskiiing. I park and get on my jetski while its still on the trailer and begin the normal engine warm up procedure. I am greeted with only, "click, click... click click." Noooooooo!! The battery is dead. Luckily Jimmy has a batter charger. But it needs a wall outlet, and cannot use a car lighter socket. So we end up having to remove the battery and walking back up to the little building where you pay to get into the park. Luckily it wasnt very hot outside and there was shade to sit in while we waited the 45 minutes for the battery to reach a strong enough charge level. We walk back to the jetski's and begin to install the batter again. Only to find out, on of the nuts that secures the battery posts had fallen off somewhere! Without this nut, we would be unable to re-attache the positive battery cable. Leave it to Jimmy. He digs thru his tool box and brings out 2 plastic zip ties. We loop them through the batter post holes and zipped them as tight as we could get them. The cable held solid and the jetski fired right up! We were then able to have a great day of riding out on the lake.
Now let me rewind a bit and talk about Friday night's activities. It was time again for another gathering of the "Dinner Club". This is where a group of friends and myself gather every month or so and meet for dinner at an unusual restaraunt. This month it was Ethiopian food. I had never had this type of food and was interested in finding out what it was like. The six of us met up at the restaraunt about 7pm in Dallas. We were seated at our table and began to look at the menu. Everything seemed normal. Dishes of chicken, lamb and vegtables made dinner sound better and better. We were already starving! It comes time to order and I decided to go with the seasoned chicken with some type of vegetable/meat sauce. After what seemed like an hour wait, the food arrived. Whoa... not what i expected. First off, I had forgotten that with Ethiopian food you do not use silverware. You eat with your hands using a type of bread that resembles a giant pancake. Secondly, what I had ordered was nothing I could recognize. But oh well, I was starving and I wanted to try it. I tear off a piece of pancake like bread and dip it in the sauce thats on the chicken. Take a bite.... OUCH!! SPICY HOT!! It seems in Ethiopia, curry is a popular seasoning. Three glasses of water and 45 minutes later I had just about finished off my chicken dish. I can honestly say, im glad I got to try Ethiopian food, but if I never have it again....I'll live.
Now, jumping ahead to Sunday. ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL!!? Its the first weekend of the NFL and my Chicago Bears are up against one of my other favorites, the San Francisco 49'ers. Oh dear, by games end the score was 49-14... San Fran. I sure hope the Bears get a lot better by next week. On a good note though, the Dallas Cowboys lost also to the Atlanta Falcons. Which means at least I dont get a phone call from my friend James, talking trash about how "his" Cowboys are going to the Super Bowl. Lucky me.

Weekend in Review

So im back at work, thinking about my past 3 days of weekend and vacation. I really did'nt do that much, just relaxed. So i'll just hit the highlights. I had originally planned to hit the lake on the jetski, but rain storms blew in from the Gulf so that kinda killed that idea. Saturday, Valerie and I went to a cook out at her parents house. Bugers..... mmmmmmmm. That night we decided to rent the movie "Jeepers Creepers" in preperation to go see the second one which was just released in theaters. Well finding the movie to rent turned out to be a task. An hour and 5 video stores later, we were back at my place with what must have been the last copy of the movie available in the city! After watching it, id have to say thats one of the scarier movies ive seen in a while! Im looking forward to part 2 in theaters now! Sunday night, i had a soccer game. We won! But... you always win when the other team is a no show. So we actually had a practice since everyone from my team was there. After the game, it was home to clean up and out to meet up with my buddy Craig. We had planned to meet at the Star Bucks on lower Greenville. But by the time we got there it was closed, so we instead met up at Cafe Brazil. It had been a while since i had been to Cafe Brazil and I had forgotten what an interesting group of people you can see in there. For example: It was Sunday, by which I was quickly reminded that meant it was "The Church - Goth night" at the Lizard Lounge, a local club. So there is one thing I often wonder about "goth people". That is, they may feel cool and stylish when in the dark clubs with the haze of smoke in the air and the pounding beat from the speakers in the ears. But once out of the club and sitting in a very bright, crowded restaraunt.... do they feel rediculous? I only ask this because of the guy at the table next to us. I will describe him the best i can. He's wearing tight black pants, a fish net shirt, with dog collar around his neck. The only real problem was, one should not wear a fish net shirt if your gut hangs out from it and over your belt line on all sides! Sorry lonely goth child and vampire boy of the night.... you just look hilarious, not mysterious. Anywho, on with the weekend. Monday finally comes along and its a holiday off work. So its up to my parents house with Valerie for another cookout. Burgers.... mmmmmmmm. haha My brother Courts brings the movie "House of a 1000 Corpses" by Rob Zombie to watch. We only got about half way thru it before I had to leave. But it looked pretty good, so I may have to rent it to watch the rest. After I returned from "the boro", I decided to fire up Madden 2004 and give their online Match Up service a try. When you buy the game they include a card for a free trial period of online gaming. So I go thru the setup process and 15 minutes later im linked up with a guy from who knows where. He's using the Philidelphia Eagles and of course Im using my Chicago Bears, but instead I choose to run the 46 Defense play book. (Those who do not remember, the 46 Defense was the 8 man front, pressure defense used by the World Champion 1986 Chicago Bears.) So, halfway thru the games its working like a charm. The game play is smooth, the interface easy to use, there is no lag and Im up 7-0 after 3 intereceptions and a touchdown pass. Then on my own 35 yard line, I throw and interception and he returns it for a touch down. Dang it! We battle it out and in the last minutes its still tied 7-7. I have the ball and im driving down the field. Then, I go to call a time out and after i call it the game stops, disconnects from the EA server and tells me there was a syncronization error. WHAT??!! Oh well, note to self... use caution when calling time outs. But overall it was a lot of fun and Im sure i'll be playing more online with this game!

3 Day Weekend... Woo WhooooO!!

You Gotta Comment?

Over the past few weeks, Ive occationally gotten people that leave mean comments on my poll question comment board. Things like "Thorpe is a loser", ect. Then when i edit the comment or delete it they actually have the nerve to write back on there upset about it. Well to them I only write back, screw you. If you dont like me or my site, DO NOT VISIT IT. Nobody makes you. Yet, they seem to keep coming back. And I do know its the same people each time. My domain stats tell me what ISP they come from. So either they have an obession with me... or just the need for attention. This is about the extent of attention they will get. So, if you really have a problem with me, or my website... leave me a private message on my Guest Book. Or do yourself a favor and just stop visiting, its making you look like the loser.

... On the Plus side

Had a men's league soccer game last night at Inwood. We were playing the first place team in the first round of the playoffs. Now, my team has had a dismal season and we're pretty much ready to get this one over with so we can start a new one. So we didn't have big expectations. Well, at half time they are only winning 1-0. Not bad. Im starting to think we have a chance. I thought too soon. Before i know it we're down 4-0, and things are looking about what we expected them to. Then, comes this "plus" side i spoke of. I steal the ball from their defender at midfield and evade another defender which leaves me on the far right side of the field, about 15 yards from the goal. I wind up and hit a perfect shot to the far upper corner of the goal. I even surprised myself on that one! Ok, we're still down 4-1. Minutes later, our goalie Josh for some reason take off up the field with the ball. I move with him expecting the pass but he's set on getting a shot off. He takes his shot from the yellow line and it hits just wide left of the goal. Their keeper comes out but misses the rebound. I didn't. A quick one touch shot off my right foot and it's 4-2. We're all getting tired because we have only one sub on the bench. The other team had 4 or 5 at least and it was showing! A couple minutes after that second goal, I get the ball again very close to their net. My shot goes wide but my teammate Bay is there to try and rebound it in. His shot hits a defender and arc's up over the goalie's head back to the center. I outjumped my defender and headed it home for my 3rd goal of the night! They ended up scoring one more on us to make it 5-3 final. But we started to make a comeback, and it had been a while since i'd tallied 3 goals in a game. I guess that's my plus side.

The Scoop

Ok, now that I have more time to write and divulge the details of my trip... here it goes:

Friday:

My plane leaves DFW at 8:30am and arrives at Long Beach airport at 9:20 local time. Although the flight was 2.5 hours, the time difference only sets me back one hour in flight. Nice. My buddy Dan meets me at the gate and we head off to get some breakfast. We stop at a pier in Redondo Beach at eat at the "Redondo Beach Coffee Shop". While I stuff my face with a plate of 4 huge pancakes, Dan goes on to tell me about a scene from the new Fox TV show "OC" which was recently shot in the very coffee shop where we were eating at. Very interesting. From there it was off to his apartment to change clothes, unpack and relax for a bit. About an hour later, I was playing soccer with a group of guys from his office. Every monday and friday they get together on their lunch break and play soccer. That was a lot of fun! After soccer, it was back to his place to get cleaned up and chill for a bit longer. From there it was off to Hollywood! We saw a movie at the famous Mannes Chinese Theater, saw the sidewalk of stars and walked all over Hollywood Blvd and Vine. There were some VERY interesting people to be seen. Around 9pm, Dan and I headed down to Hermosa Beach, to a place called Paradise Sushi. The place was run by an amusing little Japanese guy, that insisted that Dan drink shots of Saki with him. Apparently, Dan and the guys are regulars there and normally drink saki with him. Anyhow, the sushi was excellent and it was a fun time.

Saturday:

Saturday started out very relaxing. Dan, his roomate Dustin and myself packed up our gear and headed down to the beach. Since he lives within walking distance of the beach, it was no big trip. The water was a little chilly but was very refreshing. Body surfing was a blast and I had forgotten how fun it was to crash thru the large surf waves. We chilled on the beach, sunbathing and taking pictures for a couple hours. Then Dan and I headed back to his place, got cleaned up and headed for Venice Beach. Now, those of you who have never been to Venice Beach have to at least know its a freak show! Ive never seen so many bums running so many money making scams for cash. If they worked half as hard at a real job as they do with these scams, they'd be very well off. So we walked around there for a couple hours taking pictures, then it was off to Santa Monica. Once there we grabbed an early dinner at Hooters. Mmmmm... wings. Then took a walk down to the amusment park pier. We were walking out onto the pier looking out over the beach when i noticed people were still swimming even when it was almost totally pitch black out. Right as I thought that, a beach patrol truck rolled up and yelled at them over the loud speaker, "You had 14 hours of daylight to swim. Get out!!". I thought that was pretty funny. After returning from Santa Monica, Dan and I headed over to one of his co-workers places to hang out at a poker night party. By the time we got back to his place, i was beat!

Sunday:

Sunday was our trip down to San Diego to visit our Navy friend and former college buddy, Zach. We arrived at his place and chatted awhile about his time spent on a destroyer during the recent Gulf War. Then it was off to the Naval ship yards and Port. It was cool to see the large war ships pulled into dock. And we also got to see the recently retired USS Constalation in port. This huge aircraft carrier made all other boats look tiny! Zach gave us a tour of San Diego, which I must say is one of the cleanest cities I saw in California. It also wasnt as crowded as the others. Around 7:30, it was time to head north back up to L.A. What we did not count on is a 3 hour, solid traffic jam the entire way! Not till we hit the toll road did we move more than 20 mph. It was a long, tiring trip to say the least. But at least I returned with a camera full of pictures.

Monday:

Monday was really just a day to relax. We slept in and then got up to play more soccer with his coworkers. Of course while in town, Dan needed my services to fix his PC. (Note to Dan, get a new computer. Yours has had it.) Then the evening was spent with Dan, Dustin and Jason back at Paradise Sushi. More fun times and good sushi! We got home about 11 and all headed off to bed since it was a work day for them and I had an early flight.

Tuesday:

Alas my final day was here. I was up and off the couch by 7am and by 7:30 we were headed to the airport. I had forgotten how thorough the security had become. They had take off my shoes and my belt for a search. Then they swabbed my laptop for explosives and checked out my digital camera. The 2.5 hour flight home was uneventful but tiring. I got home, took a nap then headed off to my Tuesday night soccer game. We lost by a goal. What an anti climatic ending to my great trip. Oh well.

Im Back!!!!

You may (or may not) have noticed that I had not updated Thorpeland or my blog in a few days. That was because I was out visiting sunny California and my friend Dan. The trip was GREAT!! I am preparing the pictures I will soon be uploading to the site for all to see. So stay tuned and check back over the next couple days!

Techie Time

Okay, for those of you who have no interest in internet tech talk... leave now. (waiting...) Alright, they are gone. So the rest of you who have stayed to read on must be somewhat curious about what I have to say this week! Ok here's the situation: you have an program such as a web server, ftp server, chat app, web cam, VOIP app and you need a static IP address but your stupid ISP wants to nail you another $10 to $20 a month per IP. Pay it? Yeah right. There are services out there on the far reaches of this here internet that offer you the ability to bind your DHCP address to a domain name for all humans and non-humans to use. What this means is you just give out your domain name and let the program do the rest. No need to worry about a constantly changing IP address. And best of all... its FREE. Yup, the four letter word we all love. Two sites to check out off hand are www.selfhost.com and www.no-ip.com. Both offer free sign up and use. The selfhost site even offers a list of "freeware" to make use of your new found static life. So, if you know what your doing this can open up an all new world for home pc usefulness. Be sure to check it out!
On a similar note, craig and I tested these services recently while doing some online gaming. At the same time we got to test another great program called Haxial Netfone. If you need a cross platform voice, in-game program be sure to give www.haxial.com a look. The program is called Netfone, so you have to dig around in their downloads for it. The program works great for Mac and PC's. You can use it as a regular netphone or as background program to talk to your teamates during multiplayer matches. When used in combination with the selfhost or No-IP sites, all who call you only need to know your domain name, not an ever changing IP address. So let DNS do the walking!

A Special Drink

So last Friday, my friend Craig and I are having lunch at a local Chili's restaraunt. When asked what we would like to drink, we both requested water. The waitor brings back our waters and we continue are discussion as we beging to drink. Suddenly I look up at Craig while he's talking and there is a piece of tortilla chip sticking out of his lips. He quickly notices this too and looks at his glass in confusion. What he finds is a glass of water filled with floating, broken tortilla chips. I asked him how he ordered such a special drink?? I just wish I had my camera with me when he was talking to me with chips stuck to his mouth. A pretty hilarious site. We told the waitor and he quickly brought craig another water. I could just hear his tip dropping.

Check out

Be sure to check out www.dustinhall.com. He's an awesome buddy of mine. His site is under construction, so this may motivate him to fix it up. Stay cool dustin!!!

Close to Riches

Ok, maybe not. I bought 4 tickets to saturday's lottery drawing. I did not win. Surprised? Not really. Although it was a paltry $4 Million, I think I could have still had some fun. Someone finally won the $47 Million drawing, last Wednesday. That's the one I really wanted to win. It really is depressing when you buy your ticket and find out you didn't even match one of the 6 numbers.
This past weekend turned out to be pretty fun. Friday night, Valerie and I went and saw American Pie 3. One word, Hilarious! If you want to laugh your butt off until tears are coming out of your eyes, go see this movie. If you are easily offended, a prude, a lame-O, a bible beater or anyone else who does not like crude humor... don't see the movie, you wont like it. Sunday Me, Valerie and Jimmy headed out to the lake to get in at least one day of jetskiing. As we arrived at the lake, the sky's were dark with storm clouds and the wind was wiping up the water. I thought, well we're out here might as well ride! So we set off. We rode out to Party Cove. It was fairly empty. About 6 or 7 boats only. It was a beating riding out there. We had to ride into the wind, hitting every wave head on. But on the way back was something special. We were riding in the direction of the wind and waves. I have NEVER seen waves and swells this large on a lake before!! My jetski would dip down in one swell and jimmy's jetski would disapear out of my view. Then the slightest bit of throttle would send me air born as i came out of the swell. Then I noticed the large waves rolling towards shore. These waves had white caps that crested about 4 to 6 feet high and would crash over as they rolled towards the shore. I quickly found if i rode head on into one, then cut the jetski sharp and gunned the throttle, I could bank off the top of the wave and ride it like a surfer would. It was an incredible feeling to have the jetski being lifted up and carried by these large waves!! During all of this, we were being hit in the face by so much water spray we could barely see the next wave coming. In fact, Jimmy almost went over his handle bars! He jumped one wave and the spray blinded him. When he hit the water there was already another large wave coming. He slammed into it and it threw him forward. Luckily he regained control and stayed up.

Oh Glorious Friday!

Well the week just sped by and it's now Friday. Nothing too eventfull this week. Online action has been going strong with Craig hosting regular Ghost Recon missions and multiplayer firefights. If you have this game and want to get in on the action, email me for details (server IP, ect.). Weekend plans are still wide open. It's looking like Valerie and I are going to see the new American Pie 3 movie tonight. Should be funny.

Good Times!

It's Sunday and yesterday was a total blast! Valerie, Me, Jimmy, the Amanda's, Brandon and Cassie (his girlfriend) all went to the lake with the jetski's. We cooked out on the beach area while Jimmy and I gave non-stop rides on the jetski's. I was going to bring my camera, but left it at the house (DOH!). Next time i'll be sure to bring it. The water was great, about 85 degrees, but the lake was the lowest ive seen it in a while. Probably down about 8 feet. The temperature was perfect, probably mid-90's with low humidity. There were A LOT of boats putting in at the park we were at, so that made for some choppy waters and big swells just past the I-35 bridge crossing as the boat headed out to open waters. This of course results in some awesome wave jumping on the jetski's! I was afraid my passengers were going to be terrified by the feeling of launching out of the water and into the air, but they all seemed to love it. Next time, i'll be sure to have some pics! Oh be sure to check out the new site of the week on the Thorpeland.com homepage. VERY AMAZING to watch!

Statitically Speaking

Well on Monday, July 21'st, Thorpeland.com got its 2000'th visitor! I conisder that a great mile-stone. According to the site statistics the busiest day ever was on September 4th, 2001, when I got 24 visits to the site. The visits come from all over but the USA leads the pack with 86.8%, followed by visits from the U.K. with a distant 1.5%. Then there's Australia, Germany and Canada with 1.0%, 0.9% and 0.8% respectivly. July of 2001, 202 people hit the site and the most popular day to visit seems to be on Monday's with 18.8% of visits occuring. The slowest day is Saturday's with only 6.3% of the hits. And, odly enough, the 4 O'clock PM hour seems to be the most popular time to visit, edging out all the other hours in the day with 7.2%. These are just some of the interesting stats from Thorpeland.com. You can view these and more by scrolling to the bottom of the sites main page and clicking on the small graph icon.

Prime Time!

Here I sit at my desk again on a Friday. The weekend before me awaits. I'm not sure what the next 3 days holds for me, except for another jetski outing tomorrow late-morning with Valerie and Jimmy. Should be a lot of fun.
This past work week was a busy one! We set up and installed 71 new computers for a new city library that opened. Thats a huge task for a department of 4 network administrators. Not to mention the 3 networked NDPS printers we had to get online. For months the city had been hyping their new library to the public. Well the day was finally here to open the doors. The announcement claimed they would open the doors to the public at 10am on Thursday. Well by 9am there were roughly 50 to 60 people outside the doors trying to peek in. I thought to myself, these people really need a life. Its just a library! Well the doors open and they all rush in as fast as they can. What was so funny is the people would stop in the foyer just inside the doorway and just look around, not knowing where to go or what to do. I'm thinking, why did you just wait an hour outside and then rush inside for?! Cattle. The only word to describe them. It was about that moment when i heard the head librarian, Mary, ask me, "Thorpe, do you have a library card?". "DOH! I don't", I replied. She promptly whipped out a form for me to fill out and get one. I really dont have much need for one, with this internet thing we got going. But she guilted me into it. It's free, what the heck.
In the traveling news department, this coming August I will be flying out to sunny California to visit my buddy Dan. He lives near Long Beach, and actually just a block from the beach. Once there he's going to give me the L.A. tours, head over to Venice Beach then take a day and drive down to San Diego to see our friend Zach that is stationed there with the Navy. It should be an awesome trip and provide me with some great pics to post up on Thorpeland.com! So be sure to check back in mid August!

Weekend in Review

I got so busy by the end of last week and into the weekend, I didnt get to update the blog. Sorry all. Saturday was another jetski outing. Jimmy and I cruised all over the lake, reaching as far as the 121 Marina and back over to Party Cove. We had a great time, lots of wake jumping. Something occurred to me while out riding on Saturday. I was watching as the large cruisers and yachts moved across the lake. Shortly behind them, is always several jetski's, jumping the large boats waves. It made me think, they must see us as the equivilent to dolphins. Always riding along behind the boats, jumping. It was an amusing thought. Sunday I spent at Hurricane Harbor in Arlington. It was my first time there and it was a blast. One of my favorite things they had to do was a boogy board "simulator" i guess you'd call it. Water is shooting out of a long slot at about 40 mph. Its only about 2 inches deep but is rushing so fast against a banked wall it creates a kind of wave. You jump onto this thing with the boogy board and ride it in place as long as you can. The good riders lasted as long as they wanted, making it look easy. If you slipped up, the current shot you around the enbankment and out an exit shoot. I lasted all of about 3 seconds then got shot out. It was very similar to being flushed down the toilet i guess. Ha! I think if I would have had several more tries I could have lasted much longer. But i didnt want to wait another 30 minutes in line.

Hump

Its Wednesday, hump day here at work. It must be 1000 degrees outside right now. If I have to go outside, I prefer to be wearing a swimsuit and be in the water. The week seems to be going pretty fast. From here on out its all downhill to Friday. Woo Whooo! No sure plans for this weekend yet. But im sure something exciting will gell by then.

Mobile Me

I was greeted with a small surprise during my monday morning meeting at work. We were all given new Palm Tungsten C's. If you had not see one of these, they are Palm Pilot pc's, with color screens and fast processors. Now, in the past i was a diehard Pocket PC fan. But these Tungstens are actually quite impressive. They even have built in 802.11b wireless conectivity. Just to have some fun, one of the guys brought in his personal Linksys wireless router from home. In seconds we had used the Tungstens to detect and connect to the internet. It was an odd feeling surfing the web on a 3.5 inch screen. Configuring it to check POP3 email accounts was easy too. A few information screens on the setup wizard and I was able to check all my personal email accounts. Its too bad my entire work doesn't have wireless network setup. These really would'nt be a bad toy to have around home. Unfortunatly they list at $500. For less than $250 I can get a Dell Axim and add wireless networking to it for $40. Oh well. Its fun to play with new toys at work.

I Wake for No One!

So Jimmy and I are out on the jet ski's today at the lake. We ride up to the 380 bridge on the far north section of the lake. As we enter the No Wake zone, we both let off the throttle and coast in. We move thru this area at about 5 mph. Right as we reach the exit area of the no wake zone, we hear someone yelling to us over a loud speaker. I turn around to see a sheriffs patrol boat right behind us. He orders us to pull up aside his boat. After doing so we ask what did he stop us for. His reason, he could see with white water of a small wake coming off the front of our jetski's. Give me a break! Luckly for us, he just let us off with a verbal warning to slow down on in the no wake zones. This guy is seriously bored out there. The lake is full of people driving large boats after they've been drinking all day... and he goes after us for creating too much wake? Anywho, we still had a blast. We hung out at party cove for a bit (www.wetrat.com), cruised to all our favorite coves and did a TON of wave jumping. Ah yeah!

We Have a Winner!!

Well for those of you that knew, I had my old Sega Dreamcast up on Ebay to see what I'd get. Turns out, I ended up getting $60 for it! Which is about what I wanted for it. Not bad for something that had been sitting in my closet for almost 2 years. Now, Ebay has me digging thru my closet again to see what else I can sell. I'll post my auctions on Thorpeland for all to have a look at. Stay tuned.

Swelling and Bloated

I stumbled across an interesting factoid today. I was checking my disk space usage on the web server hosting Thorpeland.com, when I noticed they had changed the hosting plan from 50MB to 100MB for the same price I am paying for the 50. But I was STILL only limited to 50MB!! I quickly wrote them an email and recieved a quick response, giving me the instructions I needed to change my account information and recieve the extra 50 megs of space. So, I'll give credit Myhosting.com (formerly softcom) for giving me 100MB of diskspace with a 5 GB data transfer limit for only $9.95 a month. Not too bad! So now with all this extra space, I can again begin to make Thorpeland.com a bloated site full of stuff about me. :)

Back in the chain gang

After being out on vacation from work for 6 days, I am back at it today. I feel fairly rested and recharged i guess. My urge to kill co-workers and others has greatly diminished. I had a fairly productive vacation. If you had not read any of my recent past postings, I went to 6 Flags Over Texas, had a cook out at the lake with my friends and went jet skiing, visited my parents, went ice skating, went up to Wichita Falls and stayed with some old friends and finally returned to play in a soccer championship game. Which we did end up losing, unfortunatly.
I have to give a shout out to some of my "peeps" for a great time. Thanks a lot to Brotha James, Thai and Mike in WF for a great time. Always good to see you guys again! And James, yes your couch is still very uncomfortable.

Happy 4th!

Just like the title, happy 4th all. I went to the lake yesterday with a group of friends. We cooked out and took my jetski out on the lake for some riding. About 4 hours into it, we start to see helicopters and police everywhere. Turns out over at the beach section, 2 kids had disapeared in the water somewhere. I found myself a bit torn. One side of me was concerned they got the kids back safe. The other side of me was ticked because they were closing the entire park and lake area where we were to search for the bodies. Why can't stupid people watch after their kids on a major holiday at the lake?! Well at least we got a few hours in of fun. Later that evening we went to watch a big fireworks show. It was alright. Now im just chillin at the parents house while i fine tune my mom's new pc. I have monday and tuesday off work, so it's all about relaxing now.

Boom Bang Pow!

Its hard to believe its already the 4th of July. Now, to the rest of the world, this means virtually nothing. But here, we find ourselves sitting atop of another "american pride" holiday. To me, its just a day off work to go out on the jet ski. Which I will be doing! Today is Wednesday, but Im taking vactation from work starting tomorrow thru next tuesday. It will be nice to do nothing for a week. Even though I know thats not true! Im sure I'll be quite busy for most of it, working on a project, hanging out with friends and doing whatever.
On another note, Im planning a trip out to see my buddy Dan who lives in sunny California at the end of July. We'll be taking a drive down to San Diego to visit with my friend Zach who is in the Navy. Should be a great trip with lots of great pictures for the website. So stay tuned.
And lastly, I was send a humorous email from a co-worker. Now, for those of you who know me... I NEVER forward emails. I despise forwarded email jokes and refuse to pass them on. But this one really was clever. And because so, I will post it here. Please, read on below!
----------------------------------------------

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington
chemistry mid-term exam. The answer by one student was so "profound"
that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which
is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

***Bonus Question***

Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic
(absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using
Boyle's Law, gas cools off when it expands and heats up when
it is compressed) or some variant, but fell short in
producing a demonstration argument.

One student, however, wrote the following:

"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing
in time. So we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and
the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely
assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave.
Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, lets look at the
different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these
religions state that if you are not a member of their
religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of
these religions and since people do not belong to more than
one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With
birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number
of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell
because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure
in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand
proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at
which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure
in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase
of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until
Hell freeze over. Considering then the postulate presented to me by
Teresa
K. during my Freshman year that ; "it will be a cold day in Hell before
I sleep with you," and taking into account the fact that over two years
later, I still have not succeeded in having relations with her, then, #2
cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not
freeze."

This student received the only "A".

Evening Caller

Let me replay a scenario for you. Its Wednesday night. Im laying in bed, sound asleep. The phone rings. My eyes open and i roll over to look at the clock. It says 3:30AM!! Of course Im not getting up to answer it, so I lay there and wait for the machine to pick up. It does and suddenly I hear the strained, drunken voice of my friend Dan in California. Being that its 1:30AM there, he's probably out drinking with some buddies and thought he'd call me to say hello. Actually what he said when calling was unintelligable, even after listening to the message 3 times. All I could make out was, "Thorpe! I do think its.......... son of a........ where's my...." click. So Dan, if you read this, try to speak in complete sentences next time you call me, drunk, in the middle of the night. Thank you. :)
On another note, while building my mom's new PC so she can work at home, I got her a nice large 19 inch flat screen CRT monitor. Since her PC is not ready yet, I went ahead and set up the monitor on my own computer... you know, for quality assurance purposes only of course. Well, Im hooked. It looks so much better than my tiny 17 inch monitors. So ive decided to keep that one and just pick her up another one. Its well worth the crystal clear image and the larger details. Not to mention, games look incredible!
Before Im done I want to give kudos to my friend Craig. He went an entire co-op game of Ghost Recon WITHOUT firing one round of hot lead in to me... his own teamate. Well done Private!! Although, his virtual war campaign wasn't completly error free. While clearing a small 3 room building of rebels in a remote area of Ethiopia, Craig (Bravo Zulu), did manage to fire his M203 grenade launcher in to the wall at point blank range, killing us both. DOH!

That's Gump... Forrest Gump

Tonight on of the guys from one of my soccer teams threw a cook out and ping pong tournament. I dug thru my boxes and found my "battle paddle". It was time to show my pong skills. I handnt played in a couple years so i knew i would be rusty. Boy was that an understatement. I did ok, but not what im capable of. My curves were off, my spins were sloppy. I must avenge my losses. Gregg.... I will avenge!!! But it was a lot of fun, even though i couldn't win.

YIPPEEEE!!!!

Well I will have to say the water park was a blast. They have 4 water slides, a kids play area pool, 2 indoor pools and a "lazy river", which lets you take an inner tube in and just float down. I had forgotten how fun it is to shoot down a tube and out into a pool at 30 MPH! Now, its no Hurricane Harbor. But if you just want somewhere local to go and have a lot of fun in the water, the Denton Water Park is worth it.

Auction Sweat

Every year my place of employment holds an auction to get rid of old (busted up) computers and equipment. Of course on the one day when we have to load it up and take it to the place the auction is held, its 100 degrees out. So there I am in my work slacks and shirt, loading and unloading PC's, printers and other tech junk onto pallets. Needless to say, I'm gushing sweat. My shirt was soaked. My pants were sticking to me. Not fun I tell ya. As a bit of consolation, I am going up to the new Water Park here in town. It has water slides, a wave pool and a river you can take a tube down. That should help me forget all about the pain i have suffered today.

Heads Up!

New pics are up in the friends section. The newest pictures up were taken at a dinner outing I had with a few good friends and that dinner i mentioned earlier here at La Hacienda. Also, coming soon: a MUCH better streaming web cam that will run directly on Thorpeland! After Earthlink switched its free streaming web cam software to a very scaled down version in an attempt to force everyone to their pay model, I went on the hunt for a better option. Well, I found it and will be working on getting it up and running over the next couple days.

Danny Boy

Today is Monday and my friend Dan's last day of vacation. Which means his last day visiting Texas. These past 9 days have flown by. Im sure it seems even shorter to him, being its his vacation from work. How nice of him to take his entire vacation in Texas, rather than go to a true vacation spot. While here, we went out to eat a lot, saw a movie and generally just hung out. He got to play as a guest player for the Honda coed soccer team. For the first time in his soccer playing life, he scored 3 goals. He now truly believes he is David Beckham (professional player). haha As soon as I stop being lazy, I will post pic's of he and the rest of my friends. So, today is Dan's last day. See you next trip out, Danny boy. And the answer is still NO, I will not provide you with gay love when no one is looking. Dude, thats sick.

Stuffed

For anyone who has ever eaten at the restaraunt La Hacienda, they know the true meaning of "stuffed". It's a big tex-mex place, with several locations around the dallas area. I highly recommend the fajitas. I was'nt even a tex-mex fan until I tried this dish. It has since converted me. Anyhow, last night me, dan, craig, ziggy and our friend phil and his wife jenny all met up there and ate more food than any human should safely do. It was a lot of fun. Especially since I rarely get to see most of them because everyone lives so spread apart. I took some pictures and will try to get them up soon!

Chillin...

Its Friday! I took the day off work to get caught up on a few things and get ready for a crazy weekend ahead! The weather is perfect, its getting hot. Today we're getting temps close to 98 F, with not a cloud in the sky. Which should make for some awesome jetskiing weather this weekend. I really need to take some pics of this weekends events for the site. Stay tuned!

Long time no... nothing

Well its been a long time since ive updated Thorpeland or my Blog. But here I am at least doing one of them. I hope to have some more pic's soon. My buddy Dan is flying in from LA tomorrow (today). He's in town for about 9 days and its time for some fun! Whenever he comes into town, all my old college buddies crawl out of the woodwork. This should provide some interesting moments. As for an update on the soccer season, my Mens A Division team won 11-2 this past tuesday. We now have a record of 4 wins and 1 loss. Our loss coming the week before to the team we beat in last seasons championship game. They beat us 4-3. But we kept it close, almost getting the tie in the final seconds. Im looking forward to the rematch. Well check back on Thorpeland soon. More pics WILL be posted!!

Light at the end of the tunnel

Finally, after 6 weeks we are ending our new PC rollout at my work. This has been a daunting task. Replacing almost 600 computers with new one's and getting the users set back up and working again has been quite a job. If we stay on schedule, at the end of this week it should be over! My work day will return to normal. Although I must say I've made some good friends in the contract guys that have been helping us from Dell. I will now give a big shout out to my peeps Will, Paul, Phil, and Jeff (Sekin, Cyborknot). Ah before I know it, I will be griping about how my days are boring and all the same.

SUPREME VICTORY!!!!!

Tonight my Men's A Division team finally got a huge monkey off our backs. We played in the Championship Final against a team that was coming in with a record of 90-0. After a long, hard fought game that ended in a 4-4 tie, we beat them in a Penalty Kick shootout!! Final score 8-7. When our final shooter, Jamie, scored the winning goal, we mobbed him. The other team fell to the turf in disgust. Ha! So, ive got another Champion T-shirt. This is a great follow up to my Co-ed Teams victory the previous Friday. We won our final there also, me scoring 3 goals in a 12-10 win. Jenna played incredible defense! Stealing the ball from their best players on more than one occation. The rest of the team played great too. Our top female scorer, Graham, put in 3 goals for 6 points. So, two championship wins in one week... not bad. Not bad at all.

Bye Bye Saddam

Seems like just yesterday I was watching bombs drop on Baghdad. Today we're driving our tanks down main street and pulling down statues of the evil Saddam. It was pretty cool to see the people in that city cheer when the statue fell. They've suddenly changed from the Anti American crowd they were just weeks earlier. Interesting.

Fireworks (Power)

Today at work we crowded around my computer monitor to watch a live web stream of the bombing of Bagdad. It was pretty incredible to watch, if you missed it or the 1000 or so replays on the nightly news. It sounds like a thunderstorm except for the massive explosions rising out of the city. They keep using the most annoying term to describe the big attack, "Shock and Aw." If I hear that term one more time im going to scream. That is the stupidest name for a large scale military attack ive ever heard of. I had just explained this opinion to my co-workers huddled around my computer watching, when suddenly another co-worker enters our room and says calmly to us, "hey guys, shock and aw has started." Yes, i wanted to scream.

Favorite Simpsons Quote

Marge Simpson: "Homer, Mr. Burns called and said if you don't come in on Friday don't bother coming in on Monday."

Homer Simpson: "Four day weekend! Wooo Whooo!"

Cough, cough... hack

Its Monday and Im home sick today. It hit me late this past weekend and only got worse as i headed into Monday. I had almost forgotten how fun it is to be congested and have my head so pressurized it feels like its going to explode. Ah, heaven.

What a view

Well we went to the Dallas Stars game and it was awesome! Our tickets were actually 8 rows up from the ice, right behind the Stars defensive net. I took my digital camera and took a bunch of pictures. I will be posting them soon on my site for all to see. I wore my Blackhawks jersey to show my support. To my surprise there were quite a few other people wearing Chicago jersey's too. Which I thought was pretty cool.

Countdown to Victory!

Well almost. Last night my girlfriend Jenna and I decided to buy tickets for a Dallas Star's ice hockey game. Now, there are two ways to do this. The first way is the chump way. You can contact the Star's box office and severly lighten you wallet as you pay a hefty price for a not so hot seat (a.k.a. - nosebleed). Or, there is the second method... hit Ebay and click your way to bargain goodness! And thats what I did. In the first auction, I was bidding on a pair of tickets on the 6th row, right at mid-ice. Now, this is prime "stray puck to the teeth" area, so i knew quite a few people would be bidding for them. I was correct. I lost the bidding in the last seconds. No problem. I had already located my second set of tickets to bid on. They were located in about the 15th row, behind the Star's defensive goal. Still pretty darned good seats! We then noticed there were no bid's yet on these tickets, and it had the option to "Buy Now" at a set price. Still $20 lower per ticket than the box office price. I grabbed them fast! I will be meeting the guy tonight to get the tickets and Wednesday night I'll be wearing my Blackhawks jersey, watching the game from some sweet seats. Oh yeah.

Bad Investments

Let me tell you all about a very bad investment Ive learned more about recently. There is a VERY large house not far from where I live. By large its listed as in the 50,000 square foot large. Yes, that's four zero's. Basically a rich guys wife went to France and when she came back begged her husband for a house modeled after a French Chatau (spelling?). He abided by her wishes and built this MASSIVE house. They lived alone in it for just over a year. Now, she feels its too big for just the two of them. (duh!) So the husband has put the house up for sale. And they will now move into the "smaller" house the own across the street, which is valued at just $2 million. The big house has been priced at...are you sitting down.... $45 million. The monthly payment on this house is $650,000. Now, despite what you have just read, I do not live in a rich area of the Dallas Metroplex. This house is an oddity to say the least. So im betting he will not get $45 million for this place. Hence the really bad investment. Moral of this story: If the wife, girlfriend, sister, mom, grandma, stepmom... anyone, ever asks you to build them a 50K sq ft home modeled after a French Chatau out of your love for them, just say "But dear how about the "cosey" $2 million home just across the street?" You'll save yourself a heck of a lot of money in the long run.
I am going to try to get a photo of this "shack" and post it on my site. Not easily done though. The owners dont like people stopping in front of their mansion. Pesky common folk!

Texas Weather

Two days ago it was sunny and in the upper 60's here. I was out in my shorts and t-shirt enjoying the nice weather. Today, its 25F and sleeting ice pellets. Im sure tomorrow it will be 90 degrees and sunny.

Are you there? ... Over.

Recently, my place of work issued us new work phones. Normally that would mean getting the cheapest cingular or nokia phone the vendor had just so we could communicate. This time though, they gave us those cool Motorala Nextel phones. These are the ones that have the walkie talkie button on the side. No more dialing a full number just to ask a simple question. Now i just highlight the guys name, and hit an alert button. In seconds i get a loud, "whats up?!" from my phone. Its pretty cool. Our phones have that rubber, shock absorbing coating on them and a rugged outdoors yellow face. I asked the boss if we would be getting the matching Hummer H2's to go with the phones. All i got was a blank stare. I'll take that as a No.
Earlier this week I decided to use a few comp hours I had accrued thru work and take Monday and Tuesday off work. It was nice to just relax and get caught up on a few projects ive been working on at home. On Tuesday I went out to lunch with my buddy Chris. He's recently fallen on hard times in the work department and tells me he has decided to return to his home town in South Texas to save some money and finish his degree. Although I was a little bummed to hear he is moving, he promised to move back up here in about a year. Which will be cool. Until then i figure that will give me the excuse to drive to South Texas and get the beach/Gulf of Mexico tour from a local's view. Chris is not only a good friend of mine but a fierce competitor in Medal of Honor. Now how many friends do you have that will let you fire round after round of red hot lead into their back and then laugh and have lunch with you the next day? Hey, what are friends for! haha

GGGGOOOOOAAAAALLLLL!!!!!!

Friday night, I had another one of those moments which always reminds me of why I love playing soccer so much. It was our first Co-Ed game of the new season. We were leading 3-1 at half time but had not played as well the second half. It was now tied 4-4. Less than a minute left in the game. Our team was awarded an out of bounds free kick an just past mid-field. Dustin takes the in bounds kick and passes it to Heather, one of our forwards. As their defenders close down on her, she quickly passes the ball over to me. I have the ball just outside the top of the other teams goalie box, I hear the guys on the bench yelling, "10 seconds!!". One defender in front of me and one closing in quickly from my left. I throw a quick fake to my left and push the ball a couple feet out to my right. Wind-up, strike the ball as hard as i can... lower left corner, nothing but net. Game winner! Four seconds left, time runs out.. we win!! I have to say, there's nothing more satisfying in soccer than to see your opponents defenders collapse to the ground in exhaustion and frustration, knowing they are beat and there is nothing they can do. ha! Of course, ive been on that side of things before too, so i know how awful it feels. But, this was my time to smile. :)

Disaster Strikes

Sometimes in soccer you get to do the whipping, other times you get whipped. Well tuesday my men's team got WHIPPED. 11-0 to be exact. Yes you read correctly. No, we were not short players. No, we did'nt play the Brazilian national team. We just played awful. At half time, we were down 5-0. We've been there before as a team and have come back. So no one was too worried. By mid-second half, we began to realize and accept that we just could'nt buy a goal that night. For any of my teammates that may find their way to this page, let me break down what exactly went wrong. First off let me state that the score was of NO fault of our goal keeper Steve. He played great actually, making some incredible saves. It was our lack of defending and player marking that got us in trouble. The week before we had played a weaker team. We were able to run the field at our own pace and score on odd man rushes. Not this time. Often caught with only two defenders, we waited for the quick turn over to spring a forward for a fast break. This didnt work because the other team had plenty of speed and was able to get a third defender back every time to help kill our attacks. There was no build up in midfield and no combination passing in our attacking third. Our midfielders wanted to attack, became tired and were unable to defend effectivly. Their speedy forwards and midfielders were able to bring the ball up the field, almost unpressured for the most part and find an open forward making a run downfield. Frustration began to set in and aggressive ball tackling turned into just plain player tackling as our defenders tripped and drug down their forwards. This resulted in two penatly shots and 2 goals for them. As we fell behind in the score, all patience was lost. Normally we are a team that controls the ball. Cycling it around our defenders, through midfield and to the forwards to finish. On this night, it was the oppisote. We resorted to send repeated long balls up the field in hopes of getting a lucky shot. We probably connected no more than 4 consecutive passes and forced or hurried 80% of our shots on goal. This resulted in lots of easy saves for their keeper. A long story short, we just fell apart. It looks like it will take at least one more season for our team to be ready to take the tittle. We will now play in the third place match in the play-offs. Bummer.

Almost There

My co-ed soccer team scored a big win last friday night with an 8-1 win. Also during our big win, my girlfriend Jenna got her first ever assist for a goal! She recieved the ball at the top left of the keepers penalty box. She spun to her right and fired a left footed shot which hit the wall just outside the net. The rebound came rolling right out to the penalty spot where another one of our girl players finished it off with a goal! I was very proud of her when she got the assist. This is her first soccer season ever so she's still learning.
On a totally different note, if you are into video editing on your PC and are looking for a cheap and easy video editing software suite... check out Microsoft Movie Maker 2.0. Its free to download from Microsofts site and is a MAJOR upgrade from the previous version. In a short amount of time you will be editing video clips, adding music and special effects. Then tell it what you want to use the video for, (the web, CD, LAN) and it will help you choose the correct format and compression. I had it pretty much mastered in 30 minutes.

HATE!!!

If you're like me, you absolutly hate pop-up ad's on the web. It's really insulting to think the ad's are put there with the expectation that we will be distracted from the site we came to see, enough to click on the ad and buy their product. Anyhow, don't waste your money on pop-up "killer" software. I saw one of these programs at walmart for $30! Consider this my download tip of the week. Go to www.avantbrowser.com. Download their browser. It has a built-in pop up killer that works great. It also has a ton of cool web surfing enhancements. Its not actually a completely new browser. It uses Internet Explorer as its basis. But, its free and very very good at what it does.

Big Win!

Last night my men's A league soccer team scored a big win over a rival team, 7-4. This gives us the 3 points needed to move us closer to second place and into the finals! We played this team about a month ago and had to come from behind to end the game with a 6-6 tie. It felt good to get the win this time around. I gotta give props to our keeper Steve. He was on his game, making diving and quick reaction saves on practically every shot he faced. The Goal of the Game goes to Cody for his almost half field volley that caught their keeper standing off his goaline, scoring a crucial goal. And lastly, I cant forget Dustin (tenatious D). His relentless defensive hustle and constant runs into the offense, helped us out on both ends of the field. One more game and one more win needed to make it into the final match!

Time Flys

Well it seemed like just last year I was writing about playing paintball. Oh wait, it was. Christmas and New Years Eve have come and gone and im finally getting back to updating my blog! Xmas was all good here. Got some cool things I wanted. Spent New Years Eve at a pub called The Londoner with my girlfriend, Jenna. Its a sports bar with a small dance floor and a very English theme to the place. Go figure. So today I sit, in a Novell training class, overlooking Addison Texas from the 12th floor of a high rise office building. Im here with a co-working trying to do the "advance my knowledge-advance my career" thing. So far its all good. Stay tuned!