And So It Ends...

That is, another jetski season has come to a close. (Sad sigh) We took the jetski out this weekend for one more run on the lake. Emily and I met Jimmy at the park around 2pm. We had planned to meet at 1pm, but Jimmy was stuck in construction traffic for almost an hour. That had to really suck. We got to the boat ramp about the same time and began putting the boats into the water. I stepped out of my car and into the water to pull my jetski off the trailer, and ... WHOA!! The water had dropped about 10 degrees in just these past 2 weeks!! It was actually chilly! It was at this very second I heard Emily let out a scream. She had just waded into the water and discovered the same thing. I had to convince her it would be fine once we got going on the lake. Which I knew wasnt completely true because when the water would hit us, followed by the wind, it would be chilly! Because of the lack of rain this summer, the lake was at an all time low. There was enough new shore line to make a very spacious beach if we were to lay down sand. There were rocks and stumps sticking out of the water that never see the light of day during normal rain periods. Id guess the lake was 10 to 12 feet lower than normal. This didn't really worry me. I just have to keep an extra eye out for stumps while moving across the open waters.

We rode for about 45 minutes or so, then headed back to the shore. Jimmy had brought his cook-out gear and we were going to cook up some burgers on the grill in the park. We hadn't been on the lake too long but that was fine with me. I was starving and the lake was pretty empty. We cooked and ate our burgers then relaxed for a bit. I wanted to get in a little more riding before we packed it in for the fall but Emily wanted to hang out at our picknic camp and read her book. So Jimmy and I were back out on the lake to do some final riding. We took the time to explore some new coves on the lake that I either had not been into or had not visited in a long long time. One was very interesting and went way back around a bend, but we had to turn back because of all the tree stumps now blocking our path. After about 30 minutes we finally headed back to shore for good. I loaded the jetski up and headed home. It was a nice jetski season. We got out on the lake a week earlier this season and only missed a couple weekends here and there. Well, I'll soon put it back in storage until next May and the fun starts all over again! Now, time for paintball!

Late News!

I forgot to mention this... big news! Last saturday evening the U.S. Soccer National Team played a big qualifying match against our arch rivals, Mexico. We beat them 2-0 automatically qualifying the USA for World Cup 2006 in Germany! This is big news for a few reasons. First is, we are in the World Cup! Secondly, we now have bragging rights as the first team from our group to qualify. Third, we beat Mexico with a shutout. Which is what they deserve after all the trash talk their coach did. And finally, now we can play the rest of our matches up till the World Cup with 2nd and 3rd string players, letting them get experience. The starters now get to rest, relax and heal up for the big event next summer. Its going to be a great WC06 I feel. The USA made it to the Quarter finals back in 2002 and we've improved greatly since then.

Tough One To Swallow

It was week 6 of first season with my new soccer team, Menace FC. And this week, we had to play my old team U Wish. I knew it would be a tough game normally, but I knew they would do everything they could to keep me from scoring a goal. Right from the start their defenders collided with me hard on my first 3 touches to the ball. Only one was called for a foul. My team began to struggle. We were missing our goalie who had to work late. (Of all nights!) We had a substitute goalie playing but he wasnt anywhere as good as our starter. By half time, we were down 3-1. Not too bad but it should be a closer game. Im back on the field for the second half and I recieve the ball at midfield. I move it up and beat one defender. The defense hesitates to close in on me. I wind up and fire a hard shot towards goal. In the last split second a defender gets his foot out to tip it. The ball is deflected barely at the top of the goal, missing its target. Darn!! We managed to score 2 more goals to make it 6-3 at the final whistle. Hopefully we'll play them in the playoffs and have a rematch with our full team. I know we can beat them.

Interesting Find

I went jetskiing this afternoon, like I usually do on most summer weekends. Ive been to this lake probably close to a 1000 times. No exageration. But this trip, I happen to be lucky enough to be in the right place, at the right time and catch a glimpse of something I did not think exsisted or even could exist in this lake. A freshwater stingray! Jimmy and I were pulling our jetski's up onto the shore and preparing to go get our vehicles, to pull out and leave for the day. I was walking thru water about 8 inches deep when something caught my eye just in front of my feet. I took another look and saw what clearly appeared to be a small brown stingray swimming quickly from rock to rock along the bottom. I bent down to have a closer look. He was about 4 inches long, nose to the tip of his thin tail. He was dark brown with small light brown splotches on his back which really helped him blend into the bottom of the lake bed. When he swam, he glided along the bottem effortlessly and didnt really seem scared. Just botherd that I was moving in his direction. He came to a stop just in front of me so when I bent down to look at him closer, I reached into the water and used my index finger to gently stroke his back. He was smooth, almost like a salomanders skin. At first I was very surprised he sat so still for me. Then right as I thought that, zoom.... gone into the deep. My buddy Jimmy got to my location right as this happened. I told him what I saw and he was just as amazed as I was. I came home and searched the internet for anything on freshwater stingrays in local lakes. But found nothing. I know a few people that are familiar with the wildlife in the area. Im going to ask them if they've ever seen or heard of them. Very facinating... indeed!

Recent Adventures

I forgot to post about my trip last weekend. Emily and I jumped on a plane and flew down to Galveston Texas to visit our friends Mike and Cheryl. We had a great time going to the beach, seeing the sites and eating out. We took the ferry across the harbor to an island. We stayed on the ferry because we didnt really go to see the island, just to ride the ferry and see the dolphins jump along side the boat. They didnt come as close as I had hoped they would. My camera was ready! We also got to check out the Moody Gardens Aquarium. This was a pretty neat place and I was totally surprised such a large park was located on the small Galveston Island. On Saturday morning, Mike and I had some time to kill while the girls went out looking at wedding dresses for Cheryl. (Her and Mike are getting married next May) So Mikey and I headed down to the historic district of town and found the Gavleston Hurricane Museum. Now, the term "Museum" turned out to be a bit misleading. It should have been called a gift shop. There were no historical artifacts, exhibits or relics from the massive hurricane that destroyed the island in 1900. Although they did have a short movie in a little theater you could watch that told all about what happened in that storm. So Mike and I decided to stay and watch that. It was very interesting because the story was told by the nararrators reading old diaries and personal accounts of the storm. It was much better to hear it in the words of the people who lived thru it. That hurricane killed 6000 people and leveled almost every building on the island! Later that night we met up with some of Mike and Cheryls local friends. We all headed down to the beach. The moon was so bright it lit the ocean up! You could pretty much see everything because of the full moon. We could see the faint flickering lights of oil drilling platforms and oil tankers on the oceans horizon.
It was a great trip and on Sunday August 21st I realized Emily and I have been together for a year and 3 months! Wow, time just fly's! She's the greatest girlfriend I could ask for. No insane mood swings or any other defects which i've had to put up with in past relationships. Things with her are just fun and simple. Im lucky to have her. :)

Hilarious!!

A buddy passed this one to me the other day. I laughed so hard I was in tears.
http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/2536

Here's a quick picture I took the other day of my new ride. I took it with my camera phone so it doesn't show much detail.

Breaking the Silence

After a couple weeks of not updating my blog, im back. And im back with actual news! About a week and a half ago, I got rid of the old Saturn I'd been driving since 2000. Im now driving a 2005 Kia Sportage EX! Its black, with power everything and has leather interior. Very sharp! Ive put a link below to the vehicle specs. So far, im very impressed with this little SUV. Lots of features for a very nice price. I'll post a pic of me and the new ride soon.
http://autos.yahoo.com/newcars/kia_sportage_exv62wd_2005/16638/style_overview.html

In the Words of Homer Simpson...

"Urge to kill... growing." That just about how I feel after my latest bout with my former phone/internet provider, Grande Communications. Im normally calm and civilized when it comes to dealing with their customer service. But thats about to change. Allow me to back-track a bit.

Back in April, I was fed up with their horrible service, lack of technical knowledge and inability to provide my new home with the products I had ordered. So I canceled my account with them. You'd think that would be the end of it. Wrong. Two months go by and I find out, they are STILL auto-billing my account!! They've now withdrawn $109 from my bank account!! So I call their customer service to put a stop to this and get my cash back. I get their residential support on the line and begin explaining the problem. He looks up my records and tells me Im listed as a business account and he cannot help me. I'll have to call the business accounts department. What?! I ask him what business could I possibly be listed as?! He reads it back. The company name, is my employer! Somehow they have mistaken my employer as my residence. Idiots. So, I call the business accounts department and explain... all over again. To my disbelief, the guy tells me, "Im sorry sir but to get this fixed you'll have to call up residential services and have them change your account". I tell him, oh no... they just sent me to this number! So he puts me on hold for a bit, then comes back and tells me, "Ok, sorry for the inconvenience. Its fixed now". He then tells me that they can get me a refund check and I should have it in 6 to 8 weeks. Uuggg... longer than I wanted to wait, but at least thats fixed. My blood pressure begins to return to normal.

So I wait. Seven weeks goes by and 2 days ago I get my check in the mail. Im relieved I get to put that money back in the bank. I mean, who can't use $109!? I open the envelope, pull out the check to look it over. I look at the check. I cant believe my eyes. They made the check payable to my employer!!! Its useless to me. Back to square one with these dorks. I used to be a nice guy when calling customer serice. Thats out the window, with my patience. It will take full restraint not vent my anger on the first phone chump who takes my call. Will this hell-hole of a company ever be out of my life?

Prepare for Liftoff

Its been awhile since I talked about my jetskiing fun I have each summer weekend. Well, I had a particularly fun ride this past Sunday out on the lake. My buddy Jimmy and I hit the lake about 2:30pm. There was a light breeze but nothing that would make riding too rough. We got our jetskis in the water and cruised out to our normal haunts to check things out. Not much going on so we headed out to the large open area of the lake, the "high-seas" as we sometimes call it. We call it that because this is the large, deep area of the lake where the huge yachts and boats pass thru on their way from the marina's to various areas of the lake. So we are cruising along, when all of a sudden we start to hit HUGE swells. My first thought is, where did these come from!? I look around and see a large 35 foot yacht rolling by about 200 yards to our right. We were getting caught in its large wake waves that were being created. I looked at Jimmy and he had the same idea I did. We quickly whipped the jetskis around and headed back into the oncoming waves. At first I was a little hesitant. I mean, these waves were big. When I rode down the first one, so I could launch myself off the second wave... I couldnt see the horizon. Which means the wave was around 6 feet high! Me and my jetski shot off the top of that wave like a bullet. It felt like I was in the air for 30 seconds. Although it was only a couple. I look over to see Jimmy launching himself off the same wave. His jetski got about 4 feet off the water! We followed this yacht for about a mile, jumping waves back and forth like a couple of dolphins. It was a blast!

The large yacht and us ended up at the area called "Party Cove". This is where all the boats link up and well... party. On this day there were probably 40 to 50 boats already tied together. Music was blasting from stereo's on the boats, people were floating everywhere in the water throwing footballs, drinking beer and swimming. Jimmy and I found a corner out of the high traffic area and shut down the engines and jumped into the water to relax. As soon as we did, the sheriffs water patrol came through. We always try to avoid them because they stop jetskiers quite often for random safety checks. We keep our registrations and equipment up to requirements, but its just a major hassle getting stopped and digging it all out to show them. Lucky for us, they just kept rolling on by. I think they were concerned with all the boats and people.

By 5pm we were worn out, hungery and ready to head home. The wind had picked up and the ride back to the ramp was choppy and rough. But I was home by 5:30, relaxing and eating. Now, thats a fun Sunday! :)

"True" Reality TV!

For the most part, I dread reality TV shows. Not the ones on the Discovery Health channel where you get to watch a real face lift or lipo-suction procedure. Thats real and all. What I dread is the half scripted "reality" shows where people have to live together in any form or fasion.

Well, yesterday my buddy EVP and I were talking about a documentary show he saw about the battle in Fallujah last fall. This event facinated me because, as a fan of military stuff, this was one of the U.S. military's largest combat sitations they'd faced in a long time. That, and I'm facinated about what really happens that crappy CNN and MSNBC wont show. Heavens forbid, they may show what real war looks like or how tough it is for the soldiers fighting in it. So... I decided to do some net searching of my own. I figured someone, somewhere out there took along their video camera into this hell hole. I was right. I came across a site where some guy had posted many video's submitted to him from soldiers. Video showing actual combat and the soldiers daily lives. This video is the most gripping, facinating reality TV ive ever seen. What amazed me the most, was despite explosions going off, bullets buzzing through the air and all the kaos, some of the soldiers not only remain calm and cool but show a slight sense of humor in some situations! In one scene, soldiers are trying to blow open a steel gate with C-4 explosives to get into a compound where insurgents may be hiding. The charge goes off, but the gate isnt damaged enough to open. They kick and push on it, but it doesnt budge. You can hear voices off camera laugh and say "re-do!" and "C-4 is so overrated!". So they slap another charge to the gate and blow off the hinges this time. A loud cheer goes up and they storm into the compound. The guy with the camera zooms in on the blow up steel gate and says "yeah, take that!". You can't help but chuckle.

Some of the video seems to be shot by "embedded" news cameramen. But clearly this isnt the stuff that passed the censors and made it to the evening news. This footage shows the more gruesome stuff. Dead bodies in the streets, insurgents scrambling for cover as US soldiers pepper them with bullets. In one interesting scene, they had an insurgent cornered in a garage. The camera turns and does a quick interview with a soldier, asking him what was happening. He says, with a slight smile on his face, "We were patrolling when they opened fire on us. Then they threw a frag (grenade) at us. I turned to run for cover, tripped over a dead body..one of theirs, then made it back to here. Now we're trying to get them." This clearly showed me how they have adapted to this situation. I would have dropped a brick in my shorts and probably just called in a bomb to blast the entire area, once im gone! But this guy was just calm, cool and... smiling. Wow.

Another interesting video on the site was a camera not following US troops, but following insurgents. Of course it was made with a home video camera, using its limited night vision abilities. They were setting up a nightime ambush on a US convoy. They walked along a trail and all lined up behind a dirt embankment waiting for the convoy to cross their field of fire on the distant road in the dark. The entire time every one of them is chanting "Allah Akbar!!", over and over. It was really strange, like they were a bunch of programmed zombies. So, the convoy rolls by and they open fire with machine guns and RPG's. I swear these guys must have the most un-accurate weapons or be the worst shots... or a combo. It seemed like they hit nothing as the convoy just rolls by.

Very interesting site! I plan on downloading the videos so i can watch them more thoroughly. There's about 2 hours worth!

The Genius of George Carlin

Here are some quotes from one of the best and most intelligent comics in my opinion. Tell'em George!!!

"Religion convinced the world that there's an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there's 10 things he doesn't want you to do or else you'll go to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! ...And he needs money! He's all powerful, but he can't handle money!"

"The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done."

"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac? "

"Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong."

"Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday."

Downward Spiral

Yikes!! Say Nope to Dope kiddies! --> 15 Years of Drug Abuse!

33Mhz of Blazing Speed!

I recently upgraded my home pc to keep it up with modern times. Also so I can play the latest games and other goodies. Not to mention, i HATE waiting for a pc to load up a program or start up. It should be fast and efficient! As I was upgrading the hardware, I thought back to my families first PC we used. It was 1985 and my dad brought home an IBM X386 model office pc. I dont remember the official name of it or anything. I just remember it laid down flat and was beige. It had a 20MB hard drive, a 5-1/4 inch floppy drive and a 13 inch green text monitor. The poor thing must have had MAYBE 20kb of onboard RAM. But we were so excited when he brought it home, we actually had a PC!! When you powered it up, the fan was so loud you almost had to raise your voice to talk over it. Average boot up time was about 8 minutes. I remember this because I used to hit the power switch (and it actually was a red flip switch) and then go get my drink and sandwhich to snack on while at the pc.

The operating system was only an early version of DOS. Which meant the system booted up to a blank screen with a blinking C:\_ . Oh, the fun. Ha! The first program I got for it was Wheel of Fortune. The graphics were, in all terms... pathetic. But since I had never really seen computer graphics before, they were cool. A choppy, green animated Vanna White would walk across the screen to reveal the letters during play. Hours of excitement I tell you. I later found and loaded up some type of spread sheet software, I believe it was a Lotus office product. I thought this was really cool because I could track my current soccer teams wins, losses and stats. I would create a roster spread sheet and track everyone's goals and assists. I was now, a "computer guy"! hahaha

I often think back, comparing what I use now to what we had then. That little pc ran at a blazing fast 33mhz. My current home pc runs at 3Ghz, or, roughly 3000mhz. The old IBM, as I mentioned, had 20kb (kilobytes) of on board RAM. My current machine packs a mere 1.75 GB (gigabites) of RAM. The IBM's hard drive was a whopping 20mb, large for current 1985 standards. Currently at home, I have 200GB of hard drive storage space. There is no way I could have fathomed those specs on a home computer back then. It really amazes me. But, im sure one day i'll re-read this post and laugh at the puny specs I had in my home computer back in 2005. Man i love computer stuff.

Whats This?!

I just heard a rumble outside my office building. I walk outside to see the sky looking very dark and this strange liquid falling from above. What.... rain? Its been so long since we've had any, I forgot what it looked like! We need it bad here.

Yeah, im bored so im blogging more today. :)

Playing Catch-Up

Ive been so busy latley I almost forgot to post this past week! What is this world coming to? I'll rewind a bit and start with the 4th of July weekend. Emily and I took another drive out to the remote city known as Odessa to spend the holiday with her family. It was a fun trip, the only daunting part of it is the drive. Once there, all is good. The night before the 4th we all drove out to her fathers shop just outside the city limits and shot off a bunch of fireworks. That was pretty fun. Everyone brought some, so it seemed like we had a ton waiting to launch. Shooting everything off took a good 2 hours. While we were out there we checked out the new "War of the Worlds" movie. I'll have to say it was pretty good. Great special effects and very tense and suspenseful through many parts. There were a couple plot holes, but I let those slide because it was good overall as a movie.

The past couple weeks, both my soccer teams have been at low points. My tuesday night team has the worst record we've ever had. 2 wins, 3 losses and a tie have put us in 4th place. We have to win our last game to even have a chance of making the playoffs and playing for 3rd place. We play tonight at 11:15pm. I hate these late games.

Gotta get some work done. More to come later....

On The Road

This was the view as we drove towards the sunset on our way to Odessa Texas. Last weekend, Emily and I had to take an unplanned trip to West Texas to attend our friend Cheryl's mothers funeral. She passed away unexpectedly. I felt bad for our friend Cheryl. She was on a trip to Romania working on her medical degree when she got the bad news and had to return home.

New Stuff and .... Stuff

Its been a few days since my last post. It was just one of those times when not much is going on. No news worthy events in the life of me, I supose. Well this past week has brought some cool stuff to speak of. So, I fired up the blog to write about it.

First off, I bought 2 more Hermit Crabs for my new crabitat. They're nice sized purple-claws who aren't shy about exploring and mingling with my other 4 hermies already in the tank. I brought them home from the pet store, gave them a bath in their water and solution mix to make sure they were clean and mite free, then released them into the crabitat. They immediatly began exploring and climbing around. Each found an empty shell and began rotating it, trying to feel it out for correct sizing. Im sure their lives at the pet store were miserable. Packed in a small tank with many other crabs, never bathed, fed the same food all the time, nothing to climb on. Not in my crabitat! The 29 gallon fish tank with fresh, smooth sandbox sand and various climbing structures, fresh water and a variety of food is the envy of any hermit crab's home! What amused me was one of my original hermit crabs immediatly came out from hiding and approached one of the new crabs from behind. He latched onto the new hermie and began to shake him. This is called a "shell fight". If one crab see's another shell he likes, he tries to take it. They dont care if someone is already living in it! Funny thing was, the crab wanting the shell is much smaller than the new crab already living in that shell. The new hermie just pulled into his defensive position and held his ground. The smaller crab gave up and went on his way. The pecking order was established and he left the new crab alone. At first, I had the urge to break up the fight. But then I thought I should just let nature take its course and let them work it out. They did, all is well. I checked on them this morning before I left for work. Everyone was in one piece and getting along nicely.

Another recent event was the evolution of my slightly out-dated pc evolving into a powerful beast! For the techies, I upgraded from a Pentium 4, 2Ghz cpu with 768MB of DDR memory... to a Pentium 4, 3 Ghz cpu with 1.75GB of DDR memory! Gave it a fresh install of Windows XP Pro and threw on an 80GB slave drive to my current 120 GB main drive and ive got one decent gaming rig with the power to do whatever else I need to. I havent run any benchmarks yet, but I hope to soon. Im sure it will show some very nice speed improvements over my last configurations. I had a few days of hardware headaches as I configured everything. But I got those problems worked out. My only bottle neck on the system is my video card. Im running an ATI Radeon 9550 with 256mb on-board memory. While this is a decent mid-range gaming card, it wont do what the high end cards can. But I cant afford to drop $500 on a video card!

The most recent notable event took place yesterday. As payment for working on my buddy Steve's PC he gave me a tool shed for my backyard! That was really nice of him since the toolshed runs about $400 in local home improvement stores. He had recently built a new one at his place and needed to get rid of his current one. So, he broke it down, loaded it up in his truck and brought it on over. We assembled it Sunday evening and within an hour I had filled it with the clutter from my garage. Mr. Mower, Mr. BBQ and Mr. Gas-Can now have a new home... out of my garage. hehe I may mount some shelves to further utilize the new storage space. Thanks again Steve!!

New Digs

My good buddy EVP was kind enough to donate to me a nice 29 gallon fish tank he no longer had any use for. Of course, I have no plans of putting fish into it. But I know a few hermitt crabs who will just love this new large home to roam around in and dig thru! I plan on getting everything set up tonight for them. I've bought new sand, some new climbing logs and I plan on even picking up a few more hermies. I currently have 4 who will inhabbit the new tank, but I hope to grow the population to as many as 10! The tank is of course, very deep, being a 29 gallon tank. So I'm going to be creative an build up some type of double decker crawling area for them. No where to dig and scavenge on the ground level? Then start climbing little buddies! It should look really cool when i'm done. I know the crabs will enjoy it. Thanks again EVP!!

The Winner!

Here is the picture that won me 1st place in a recent local photography contest, in the Nature catagory. Funny thing was, there were 6 catatogories. I submitted one picture for each catagory. But when I got to the nature section I didn't really have picture I wanted to submit, so I entered this one as kind of a filler. Although I thought it was a decent pic, it wasn't my favorite. But the 3 judges thought so and awarded me first place! I won a $50 gift card at a local photography store and my picture will be used in a 2006 calander along with the other winners. The picture has also been published in a magazine and the local newspaper. Kinda cool I think!