My view from Row 11, Section 4, Seat 10. This is a wide angle shot. The zoom lens was able to capture some decent action. No, I didnt catch any homeruns. :(

Batter Up!

After neglecting my blog for about a week, im back. This past weekend, Craig, Becci, myself and Emily went to a Texas Rangers baseball game. It was an exciting day because the Rangers were closing in on 1st place. As the game started, we soon realized this wouldnt be the day they took first place. The game ended 9-0... Seatle Marlins. Ouch. Our seats were'nt too bad. In the 11th row of section 4, we were in the left side of the outfield. The bad thing was the heat. Although the temps were only in the low 80's, there was no wind inside the stadium and we quickly began to cook. Then luck struck our little group. We went back into the tunnel to take a break from the sun. Suddenly, I notce my buddy Houston standing next to me. He asks where we are sitting and I tell him. Then he asks if we want their seats! They are leaving and have 4 seats that were closer to the action and in the shade. We quickly made our way there. The last 3 innings were much more pleasant. I was able to get some cool photo's which I put up on my photography hobby site. ( http://www.blurryimage.com/show_gallery.php?gid=505 ) It was good to get in one more baseball game before the end of the season.

A day at Texas Stadium to watch the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders...... oh, and the Dallas Cowboys too. Read the blog entry below for complete scoop!

Behind the Velvet Curtain

Alright, so I tempted everyone to "stay tuned" for some interesting events. The weekend is over and the events took place. Last week my buddy Eric (EVP) comes to me and asks if I would be interested in going to a Dallas Cowboys game with him. I paused because, first off, I hate the cowboys. Secondly, they were playing the Cleveland Browns and I don't really have any emotion for them either way. But then he said the magic words. The seats are in a luxury box suite. That translates to a great view, comfy seats and tons of free food. Sold. Im in.

Sunday arrives and we leave about 2 hours early for the 3:15pm kick off. This turned out to be a good idea. Despite being only 30 minutes from Texas Stadium, traffic would be bad near the field. As we aproach the exit for the stadium, we see traffic already backing up onto the highway. It actually wasn't as bad as we thought. From the exit ramp to our seats, totalled 30 minutes roughly. When we entered the stadium is where things went from, just another sporting event, to an eye opening experience. Normally, im one of what I like to call the "peasants". The people who sit in the rock hard, tiny, cramped seats in the normal seating area of the stadium. Getting the a concession stand or to the bathroom is a battle and a big event. You never get to see the people deep in the bowels of the building and behind all the glass windows surrounding the field. But on that day, I was one of them. Eric and I ask a stadium attendant how to go about getting to our seats. She points to some back stairs to our left. We approach the stairs and get in line with a bunch of older, well dressed people. A lady carefully inspects each ticket to make sure no one is trying to get up there for a free ride I guess. We get upstairs and walk into what looks like a hotel hall way. Again, there are more well dress people walking thru the hallways, occationally stopping to greet eachother and saying things like "lets have a good game today!" or "Go cowboys!". Ugg It was kind of a surreal world, plush carpet, everyone dressed nice... you'd think you were at a formal banquet or something. As we walk down the hallway, some of the suite doors are open. The view over the field is incredible. You can see every bit of the field clearly. Since EVP and I came in on the oppisote side of the stadium than our seats, we had to take this hallway all the way around the stadium. We come to an end in the hallway and it seems to be some very large banquet room. It has full wall sized windows overlooking the fields and blue carpet and walls. There are tables with people everywhere eating from buffet's with chef's standing at each table. This was definatly, for the most part, a room of "beautiful people". There were told we could cut thru the room but not to stop and eat anything. Bummer. Shortly after, we arrive at our box suite. To our surprise, we are the first to arrive! We quickly pick the best seats, down in the front row and begin to take in the scenery. The host of the event shortly arrives and he introduces himself as "Paul". He then gives us a surprise. He says that although he was told dinner would not be served to us, there was a change of plans and we all get passes to go eat in the "blue room" we had earlier passed through. We quickly left our stuff in our seats and headed back to dish up! We got to the blue room, got our dishes and then got our food. Everything was delicious. Shrimp, roast, vegetables, bread and desserts were ours for the taking. I could clearly tell, from all the people smoozing and talking, this was a normal weekend activity for many of the people in this room. Ive been told it wasn't uncommon for Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, to walk thru greeting people.
So, we finish eating and head back to the box suite. The others are starting to arrive but our good seats remain entact. By now its 20 minutes till kick off and the seats are filling in the stadium and the players are begining to take the field for warm up. As soon as a few Browns players enter the field, the stadium fills with boo's. Then Cowboys come on to the field and the stadium roars. As 3:15 came, the game kicked off and the place had a sellout crowd of 65,000 people. The view was great, but what I found amusing was how many people kept turning around in their seats to look up into our box. I couldn't help but think, "is that what I look like when i'm sitting down there looking up?". With the players on the field and the action starting, I began to snap away with my Canon Digital Rebel. I was able to get a number of good shots of the players... and cheerleaders, from our suite. I'll be posting those on my site soon, since I recently upgraded and now have more disk space! :)

The game was one of the sloppiest NFL games ive seen played in a while. Still, the Cowgirls won, 24-9 (i think). It was time to leave and EVP and I knew we had a LONG walk back out to our car. Coming in, a trolley brought us in from the distant parking lot. But leaving, those trolleys don't run. There were a number of Browns fans at the game dressed in their orange and brown colors. They were walking mixed in with everyone else and were now at the mercy of the thousands of now, drunk, loud Cowboys fans still lined up in the parking lot at their talegate parties. I actually felt bad for the Browns fans. They were just cheering for their team and now they had to be practically assulted by cowgirl fans who would get right up in their face and taunt them while they were still walking. I thought a fight would surely break out, but none did. What's more sad is the cowboys really aren't a good team, nor have they had a good record in recent seasons... and now they get one scrappy win and they feel like they're kings of the NFL. How pathetic.

All in all it was a great time. The food was delicious, the game was entertaining and it was an eye opening experience to see that much "money" socializing behind the "velvet curtain". So many rich, smoozers and their trophy wives talking about who has the biggest Cadillac Escalade or the nicest summer condo. Ah, the superficial life.

Fathead!!

Ok, not fathead, but in actuality... fatfingers. Huh? Yeah. If you're an ebay shopper/dealfinder, im sure you've spent at least an hour hunting the site for the best deal on the do-dad of the moment you need. You may find it. The funny thing is, there are listings for your item you won't find. Do you know why? Because the brain that listed it, mistyped the title of his/her item. So, few if anyone finds the thing! This means, zero to slim bids. So, you're asking, how do I find these items if they are incorrectly listed? Easy, check out http://www.fatfingers.co.uk/Default.aspx
Once there, you can enter your item (correctly spelled) and tell it which ebay to search. In searching for an item i will be buying soon, I was surprised to find about 35 listings mispelled and barely or not at all bid on. Oh I placed my bid sure thing! I hope I win. Enjoy the new secret weapon you have on ebay. And yes.... you're welcome. :)

Fall Eh?

So they say on the news that summer is ending and fall is coming this weekend. Suuuuuure. Thats why its going to be 95F today and this weekend, right? Normally, I put the jetski away in storage on the second week of September. Which I did. But the weather is still warm enough to where I could have kept it out one more week at least. Oh well. The jetski may be gone for the winter, but new things are on the horizon for fall. Im looking forward to geting in a full season of paintball this winter. I also hope to expand the section on my web site with pictures and even video downloads of some great paintball action! Anyone who is interested in trying it out or playing with us, contact me (thorpe322@hotmail.com) . I'll be more than happy to shoot you. :)

On a side note, last weekend - September 12th, was my birthday. Yay me. I had dinner with some friends, another dinner with my family. It was a good time. Im now officially 33. Hhhm.... I dont feel any older. Mentally, still 12. Ha!

Stay tuned for some good updates after this weekend. Cool things are afoot. :)

My buddy Roger is in Kabul Afganistan working as a goverment contractor. He was lured by the big time $$ and the urge for adventure, I guess. He recently sent me this picture of him and a base guard. (How many US military guards would allow this pose??!) haha Stay safe Roger. Dont make any CNN headlines!

The Long Wait.

Couldn't sleep so I decided to blog for a minute. Not much time to really get into it, but there is exciting news to talk about... coming soon. Very cool stuff. Stay tuned.

Live From Terminal A, Gate 18

I'm sitting in DFW airport right now, waiting for Emily to get back from Las Vegas. I never can guess how long it will take me to get to the airport. Tonight, it took me 20 minutes. I'm here like 40 minutes early because I guessed wrong. That's ok, I can people watch. Haha For instance, to my left there is a hispanic family. The father keeps speaking in spanish to someone on the phone but then swiches to english to speak to his wife and kids. Odd. To my right there is an older airport security "guard". The reason I say it like that is because his head keeps bobbing as he fights off sleep. Also because he looks like he couldn't fight off an old woman if he had to. Another observation; some girl, probably early 20's, just walked past me while talking on her cell phone. She was crying and saying to the person on the line, "I can't find my gate!". I live here and know this airport by heart. Should I volunteer to help her? Maybe I could at least...... Ah screw it.... She's too far away now and I'm not chasing. Good luck lady! There I yelled it.....kinda. Well 20 minutes till arrival. Tick tock tick tock. I'm really excited to see Emily. I've missed her while she partied hard in sin city. Haha its always fun when you first see the person you're waiting on, come through the arrival gate from the plane. I can barely contain my excitement. Although my buddy Dan made me promise I would never again greet him at the airport with the 2 minute long hug followed by uncontrollable crying. He said he looked "gay". All I can say to him is, where's the love man?!

A Pack Mule Named Thorpe

Recently my sister bought a house. Its a nice little place about 20 minutes from her currently apartment, in a recently developed part of the area. I knew it was just a matter of time before moving day would be upon us. Behold, today was the day. I show up at her apartment at 10am ready to start. I walk in expecting to see stacks of packed up boxes, bagged up trash and things ready to roll. Wrong. NOTHING has been done. The place is full of trash, most of her furniture is still there and she has done little to prepare for this big day. I couldn't believe it. It was like we surprised her by showing up and saying "Lets move you today!" Totally unprepaired. So the loading begins. Luckily, her boyfriend, Steve was there to help with a truck and trailer also. We got all the furniture loaded up and taken over to the house along with most the clothes and other junk. Then came the refridgerator she had bought and wanted to take with her. Now, her kitchen is tiny at the apartment and I wondered how the delivery guys got that thing in there. We soon found out, it must have been done by voodoo or something. The fridge was too big to get out of the kitchens doorway! We had to remove both doors of the fridge and still barely squeeze it out. Meanwhile, the house is like an oven and we are all sweat soaked while trying to lug this thing out of the apartment and onto a trailer. We finally get it loaded and over to her houes. Now, time to get it inside. Turns out we have to remove her front door from its hinges AND remove the fridge doors again, just to get it inside! This was exhausting. But, now she's moved in and seems to be happy. She has no drapes or blinds yet on any windows, so it feels like you are a science experiment for all the neighbors to look in and watch. I'll have to post some pics when she gets the place all set up.

Do You Understand the Words Coming Out of My Mouth?!

During a normal day in my job, I wear many hats. One moment, I'll be diagnosing a computers failing hardware, another moment I'll be troubleshooting a network problem, or sometimes helping a user with a simple set up type issue. Today in this case, my phone rings and its a user (employee) who can't log in to his email. No problem, right? Wrong. I can't remember his real name, nor can I use it... so he will be given (deserves) the name Bubba Joe. So, Bubba calls and says in a rather rural accent, "I cant log onto my email". I say, "ok, what is your user name?" (this is a abbreviated format of their first and last name used for logging onto the network and email) He says, "Bubba Joe". I chuckle and say, "no, no sir... your username". He says, "ok, Bubba Joe". I say again, "no... your username, the name you use to log onto your pc in the morning". He says, "Oh ok... that would be Bubba Joe". Now I'm getting annoyed. The guy has worked here for over a year and SHOULD know his computer username. So... one last time I ask, "Sir, I need your network USERNAME so I can help you out here". He then says, "Oh.......(long pause)....... Bubba". At this point I want to scream. Im then forced to just look up his username in our directory, the long way. I connect to his pc screen remotely to see, of all things, he's already logged in. Which tells me he had to know his username in order to even be on his computer!! There is one thing I have learned in this line of work, some people do not posess the intelligence to perform even the simplest tasks on a computer and probably should'nt be allowed to use them. But, those are the same people that give me job security I suppose, so I'll continue to grin and bear it. (sigh)