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