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!