Freedom!!

Yesterday, Friday, at 5:01pm my 9 day vacation from work officially started. It was such a relief to walk out the door and know I have so much time off to get caught up on things. Unfortunatly, this weekend so far has been kinda gloomy. Which has delayed jetskiing for the time being. The first adventure of my vacation is planned. Monday morning around 10am I will arrive in Wichita Falls Texas to shoot some photo's of interesting places, and visit Brotha James. From there, we get up early on Tuesday morning and drive an hour north to the Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma. I should be able to get some really great pictures there with my new camera. I can't wait to try it out! I'll return home that evening and prepare for a late 10:30pm soccer game. Should be an exhausting day.

As for most recent activities, Emily and I saw "Open Water" last night. This is the movie about the couple that goes on a diving trip and the boat mis-counts heads on the boat and leaves while they are still underwater on the dive. They come up and realize the boat has left them in the middle of the ocean! Needless to say, the sharks soon find them and its only a matter of time. But suddenly, the boat captain finds their belongings still on the boat and a huge search for them is launched! Will they reach the couple in time?! Will the sharks have scuba divers for dinner!? Stay tuned for the exciting ending! Ok... just see the movie. I wont tell what happends. :)

It's Official

Just got word late last week that my buddy Roger has found a place to work as a contract worker..... Uzbekistan! It had come down to one of two places, there or Afganistan. I think he got the safer of the two. He'll be doing technical support for the military while living on an Army base for a year. Rumor has it, he could stand to make as much as $120K for his stint in this dangerous part of the world. I guess as long as he doesn't go on long, desolate hikes thru the remote tribal regions of the country, he'll be ok. I guess this is the best time for him to work as much as he can, read books, watch movies, play video games and sit tight while the months role by. Well Roger, if you read this; Good luck over there. You'd better take a bunch of cool pictures and write home often. Perhaps you can set up a blog like this one, and update it for all us safe, boring folk back here at home. :)

Let the Countdown Begin

In four days I start a week long vacation from work. Woo Whoo! Of course, this week will go extra slow because im looking forward to my time off. But I do know that at 5:01pm on Friday I will be a free man. Well, at least for the following week. I have some adventures already planned. People to see, places to go!

This past weekend was fairly uneventful. Went jetskiing on saturday like usual. Sunday, made a run up to my parents house to visit. Like I said, nothing action packed. Ok, enough boring posts. I'll stop now.

All Aboard!!

The time was here and it was time to help Mike and Cheryl load up their U-Haul rental truck for their move to Galveston, Texas. Emily and I arrived about 7 and I began helping Mike carry out peices of sectional couch and the bed. Loading all their stuff into a fairly small rental truck was like playing a giant game of Tetrus. But, we got it all in there. We were later joined by Mandy and her new friend, who I can't remember the name of off hand. But he was cool and he help carry stuff out, so glad he showed up! I have to express my disapointment in one of our friends. Therese, you let us down. Cheryl and Mike kept asking me if I had heard from you or if you were coming out to help or even to say bye. I told them you were coming late. You never showed. =( Im sure you had your reasons. Now they are gone, moved south... and your chance to say good luck and good bye has passed.

Anyhow, they are on their way to a new life on the island in south Texas. Should be a lot of fun for them. I'll be visiting them soon and take lots of pictures to share. It was a nice moving/going away party last night. One of the best parts of the night came when it was time to clean out the refridgerator. They couldnt take all the food with them, so they gave me chips, icecream and other dishes they couldn't take with them! Free snacks! haha

A Time to Party

This past Saturday, my friend Mike graduated from college. So, of course, we had to party that night! His dad and some other family had also flown into town to attend the event. It was a good time. The evening finished off with everyone heading down to Fry Street (bar district) and Mikey boy getting his fill of celebratory drinks. I heard he gave some of it back to his lawn later that night. But thats another story I suppose. haha

Not too much else happening this week. Im counting down the days till my next scheduled vacation. Im taking a week off soon, so another 9 days of freedom and fun for me! Where will I go? What will I do? Plans are in the works, thats all I can say. :)

About Time

For the past year and a half Ive resisted the urge to buy a new printer for my home computer. Well I finally broke down and picked up one last night. I got the HP 1350v. It's a scanner/copier/printer combo with front ports for all types of memory cards. Its pretty sweet. Prints out nice color 8 X 11's too! Not bad for $125. Yeah, not a very exciting post. But I just wanted to mention it. :) Im happy I finally got a printer.

Second Time's a Charm!

It's time again for Tuesday night soccer. For the second time this season we were matched up against the Dragons. Now, this is the team we beat 15-0 a few weeks ago. They haven't won a game and we didn't want this to be their first win. Besides, we needed this win to stay in 2nd place. When I arrived at the game, I found out we would be missing one of our better players, Cody. He was out of town. As game time neared, it seemed hardly any of our team was showing up! When the whistle blew to start the game, we had only one subsitute on the bench. Not looking good. Thats when Ken spotted a couple players who are on our reserve roster. I got them suited up and now we had 3 subs. Much better. It was a lower scoring game, but we still managed to come out on top 6-0. Second game against this team where they couldn't score a goal on us. We played some tight defense! Good job team!

Is it the Red Planet?! Nope, just our good old local moon. I took this on the first night of August, while the moon was low in the sky. Nice shot I say! Besure to read the post below this one about my fun trip to Odessa Texas!

Across the Flatlands

This past weekend, Emily and I packed up our bags and drove 5 hours across the flatlands of west Texas to the distant city of Odessa. First off, just let me say that it is totally mind boggling that we can drive for 5 and a half hours, in a straight line practically, and still be in the same state.

We hit the road right after work on Friday evening. By 11pm, we were rolling up in the driveway of her parents house in Odessa. We were so exhausted! But, excited to be there. Emily was excited to be there because it's her home town and she gets to see her family and friends. I was excited (and quite nervous) because I was getting to meet her parents for the first time! After arriving, getting settled in and some drinks and snacks we all sat down at the kitchen table to talk and introduce. I quickly felt very comfortable at her house. Her parents turned out to be some of the nicest people I have met in a long time. It was a big relief. All the scary things she had told me, turned out to be false. Ha! About midnight everybody went to bed and I was out like a light.

Saturday was a busy day. First we all drove over to Emily's grandparents house so I could meet them. Her grandma and grandpa were also very friendly to me. He joked with me about not going too fast on my jetski with Emily riding on the back. I assured him I was very careful while riding on the lake with his grandaughter. ;) Hey... I am! We left their house and went to eat at a local restaraunt called "Taco Villa". It kind of reminded me of a Taco Bell but with better food. Emily had raved about this place the entire drive to Odessa. I ordered a couple soft chicken taco's and a challupa. I'll have to admit, it was pretty good fast food Tex-Mex. Id probably choose it over the local Taco Bell most any time. Although I wouldn't quite rave about it like Emily did. :) From there, the day got really interesting. We followed a poorly drawn map given to her by her friend, to a skydiving place out in the middle of nowhere. Two of her friends were going to be skydiving for the first time. Arriving, we expected to see a sharp, clean establishment with new planes and equipment. Buzzz.... wrong. Although they were professional about the subject, it looked like a crop-dusting business run out of a barn! Besides the owner, the rest of the employee's were barely 21. Even the pilot! I had brought my DRebel with me and I was snapping away the entire time. I probably took 80 pictures during the event. It was really cool to see the both of them jump out of the plane and float down to the ground. Ive gone blank at this moment and cant remember their names! Im sorry!! Wait... .I think it was Shannon and Alisha. haha Alisha went first. She landed picture perfect. Shanon was looking good, then... she just kind of crumpled to the ground. Not hard. Just tumbled forward. She wasnt hurt and it really was kinda funny. They helped her up and she dusted off and was just fine. From there we headed home to relax and have some pizza with her family.

Sunday, we were all up early and preparing to go somewhere I had not been in almost 18 years.... church. I was wrong... the building didn't burst into flames and satan himself didn't break thru the floor to tell me hello when I walked into the church. Ha! The service was longer than I remember. Back in the day when I was a child going to the catholic church, we were in and out of the place in 45 minutes, despite all the sitting, kneeling and standing. This church service lasted about an 1.5 hours. Didn't seem that long though. It was a fairly entertaining service. From there me and her family gathered at another restaraunt she had been really talking up, called "Roses Cafe", I think. This was a Tex-Mex restaraunt that was somewhere in between fast food and sit down food. I got a taco salad and I liked this food a bit better than the Taco Villa place. It was good stuff! Two thumbs up. :) Her family knows how to pick the tasty places to dine in town. After that we headed home to pack, get cleaned up and prepare for the long drive home. This was my first time to Odessa Texas. Although VERY different from anywhere Ive ever lived, it really was a nice town with a vibe of its own. The scenery around the city was pretty incredible. It was flat, as far as you could see... to the horizon. A few tree's speckled the scene, but overall it was flat and barren. Well, with the exception of the literally hundereds of "pump-jacks", pumping oil from the ground everywhere. Most people would say this is boring scenery. To me, it was kind of exciting. This was a landscape I had never seen before. Given more time, I would have gone out exploring across this vast expanse.

The drive back wasn't too bad. We were home by 8pm and tired. I got unpacked, cleaned up and crashed in bed to get ready for work the next day. Ugg

I found this picture on the web. He's not one of mine. But this just shows how resourceful these little guys can be!

A Week's Recap

Yeah, so my last post was over a week ago talking about Dan's marathon mud run.  I hadn't felt I had anything really worthy of posting on here.  Nothing's worse than posting a bunch of garbage about nothing that has happened.  Well, ok there are worse things.  But I dont want it to get dull here, ya know?! 

So last weekend Brotha James from the big metropolis of Wichita Falls comes for a visit.  It had been fairly cool and rainy outside, so the good old jetski had to stay in its parking place this time.  Bummer.  James brought his Xbox with him.  Id never played an Xbox, so I thought... sure, why not.  He also brought a football game called ESPN NFL 2K5.  I'll have to admit, it was a pretty fun game.  High in detail and lots of plays to pick from.  We loaded it up and within a couple minutes, my Chicago Bears were ready to rumble.  He beat me the first game, 27-14.  Four turn-overs cost me.  But, I now had learned the controls and was ready for a rematch.  Second game... I killed him.   haha  I think the score was like 39-7.  He wasnt happy, so we played again.  Once again, Thorpe wins.  By this time, James is getting upset.  So we switch to Tiger Woods golf.  This was a closer matchup.  I only beat him once out of like 3 skins games.  James was all smiles again.  This went on for most of Saturday night.  He was scheduled to stay until Monday morning.  But then Sunday night came along.  We decided to go out and rent Major League Baseball 2004 for the Xbox.  First game, my Chicago Cubs vs. Boston Red Sox.  James loses, but its close... 13-9.  He demands a rematch but "tells me" I cant use the Cubbies.  I see where this is going already.  So I choose the Chicago White Sox.  He, goes with the Texas Rangers.  This is where things got ugly.  In the seventh inning, down 4-3, with the bases loaded, James decided to sub out his pitcher.  The new pitcher comes onto the field.  James looks at me and says, "I hope you're ready for this guys fast ball!".  Here's the pitch.... BOOM!  I hit a Grand Slam so far out of the park, its probably still going.  haha  James finishes the game and decides he wants to go home that night.  So, at 10:30pm, he packs his bags and drives the 2 hours back to Wichita Falls.  James, if you're reading this.... don't be a sore loser and bring your Xbox over unless you're prepared to take a beating.  You got that!!?   :) 

Tuesday night arrives and its another big game in my soccer league.  We played another new, young team of players called "Team Ram-Rod".  They were in 3rd place but we knew they'd put up a good fight.  And they did.  The entire first game was a defensive battle, ending in a 0-0 score.  Both teams had good scoring chances, but just couldn't put it away.  Second half starts and I'm on the first rotation in.  During a scramble infront of our goal one of our defenders clears the ball deep past half field.  Me and one of their defenders race for the ball, which is now traveling down the wall.  Since he was a bit closer, he beats me there by a step.  But, my shoulder charge knocks him off balance.  He spins his body around to shield me off the ball and I begin trying to steal it away fast before he has full control.  I quickly see he is going to use his right foot and pull the ball back and around me.  I reach around with my right leg and sweep the ball away from him as he turns.  He falls the to turf with a heavy thud and screams to the ref for the foul.  I push the ball past him expecting to hear the whistle at any second.  But... no whistle!  Its now a break away with just me and the goalie.  I pour on the speed knowing that defender is going to be on his feet, angery and wanting to stop me at all costs.  I get within about 10 yards of the goalie and he starts to come off his line towards me.  I push the ball to my left foot and quickly flick it to the near corner as the goalie was starting to approach.  He falls to his left, expecting me to shoot to the far corner, while the ball rolls into the back of the net!  Goal!  After that, the scoring opened up.  It was a back and forth game, they matched each of our goals with their own.  Finally, we pulled away and won it 5-3.  A very exciting game and a big win keeping my team in 2nd place and on course for the championship game at seasons end. 

FUNNY MOMENT IN HISTORY #2453 - Dan runs a military style endurance race through grueling mud, water and hills. But for some reason, out of 5000 runners in the event, Dan is the only one who chose to wear full military fatigues! This unfortunatly resulted in Dan having to carry an extra 45 pounds of mud and water in his pants for the entire 6 mile event and finishing mid-pack. Ah, he had so much potential... if only he too had worn his bikini.

Big Game, Big Win!

Tonight my soccer team was scheduled to play a new team to our division.  Although we had not played them before, they already had a reputation as a tough team to beat.  They had already defeated our divisions league champions from last season.  This... was no easy feat.  The team was the varsity players from a local high school.  It was said they had all played together for 3 years and were in top physical shape. 

Well the game starts and in the first 2 minutes of play, I score 2 goals!  Both well placed shots found the back of the net and gave us an early surprise lead.  Our advantage didnt last long.  Late in the first half, they tied it up, 2-2.  But my team continued to fight, scoring 2 more goals just before half time giving us a small cusion.  The second half was much tighter.  They went into an all out attack to even the score, but with each attack, we defended well.  Actually this is the best defense Ive ever seen my team play.  Passing lanes clogged, two defenders infront of them anytime they had the ball and Steve our goalie all over the place making saves!  The night was ours with the game ending 5-3!  At the end of the game, the other team seemed a bit shocked.  Walking around with looks on their faces saying, "what just happened?".  I'll tell you what happend... you got out played.  To give them credit though, it was an extremely tough game.   

Gotta Go!

Recenly, Emily loans me several issues of a magazine called "National Geographic Adventure".  It's a magazine for the outdoors hiker, camper, canoe'r, rock climber and general explorer type of person.  The issues are filled with "how to's", "how to get there's" and "when to go's".  They are also filled with beautiful pictures of what you will see once at these destinations.  After reading almost all of the magazines in one weekend, I have come up with a list of places in the U.S. that are on my Must See list in the coming years. 
 
First  Stop: The Appalachain Trail.  This 2,174 mile "walking" trail winds from Northern Maine down into Georgia.  Now, I have no intensions to walk freakin two-thousand miles.  For those who accomplish this, it can take up to a year!  Id be happy to conquor 200 miles of this challanging trail.  For me, this is the most do'able quest.  Im an experienced camper and hiker, familiar with woodland survival skills and have most the equipment already.  After a quick call to my buddy Dan in Cali, he was on board with the idea too.  Plans for a March 2005 trip are slowly begining.  Stay tuned over the coming months as I update how planning progress'.  Odd's are, we'll pick up a third hiker to our party.  You know... someone to use as a human shield for the bears.  hahahaha
 
Second Stop: Alaska.  This place is a photographers dream!  Where else can you see glaciers, forrests and wild rivers?  Definatly not Texas.  No plans in the mix for this one, but it definatly wont be forgotten. 
 
Third Stop:  Hawaii.  How can I hit Alaska without going South to see the other remote US state?  For those that don't know, Hawaii was where most of Jurassic Park were filmed.  The mountains and giant waterfalls, lava fields and miles of beaches should make for another great photog location.  When I go there, it probably wont be in for form of wearing a backpack, boots and carrying a canteen.  Most likely I'll be in a colorful shirt, shorts with no shoe's laying on a beach with my shades.  Ha!  So much to see there.  Dan went there this past summer.  His pic's were really great.  Im sure I could talk him into going again. 
 
Forth Stop:  The Grand Canyon.  Not only do I want to drive up to the edge of this little "creek" and take pictures... I want to go down into it and ride one of those boats down the river.  Every picture I've seen of this place is incredible!  A mile across, thousands of feet deep... what an adventure!! 
 
Who know's how long it will take me to make it to all these places.  But they are on my check list and on my radar now.  It would be awesome to make it to all of them in the next 10 years.  We can only wait and see.   

Stupid rice cake!!!

While at work I try to stay somewhat healthy and fight off the late afternoon hunger monster by snacking on those flavored rice cakes.  You know the ones that come in chocolate, carmel... etc.  They really are bland but keep me from starving.  Anyhow, so I bite into one today and the thing explodes.  Well, shatters is more like it.  As I brush all the crumbs off my shirt and pants Im thinking to myself, "I know one big piece broke off and fell on me".  I look on the floor... nothing.  I look on my clothes... nothing.  I get up and look in my chair.... nothing.  Hhhmm.  Then a couple coworkers come in and we chat about some work issues.  Nothing odd.  I decided to walk down the hall and see what good buddy Craig is up to.  He's not at his desk but my other buddy Sylvia is.  I say, "whats up?"  She looks at me and then gets a strange look on her face.  "Whats that on your shoulder?!", she says.  I look over on my right shoulder, just out of my periphial vision to see a one inch chunk of the rice cake just sitting on my shoulder... like some kind of dried parrot.  I say, "oh! There you are!".  Then I pick if off and pop it in my mouth.  Sylvia about fell over laughing.  She asks how long thats been there!?  I say, about 15 minutes.  After the explosion I couldn't find it!  LOL  I am amazed my coworkers didn't say anything about it...... WHILE I WAS TALKING TO THEM!!  That was about the funniest highlight of my day. 

Major Upgrade

I did it... finally. Allow me to rewind the story. Four years ago I walked into a Best Buy store with the urge to expand my interest in photography. Thorpeland.com had just started and I needed a way to put pictures up on my site. I wanted a high end camera but couldnt afford the professional cameras, starting at $2000! What I found that day was a good little digital camera called a Sony Cybershot DSC-50. It was a 2.1 megapixel camera witha 6X zoom and a number of manual features that allowed me to takes some pretty sharp and creative pictures. At that time, 2.1MP camera's were near the top of the consumer choice tree. I paid $600 for that camera and believe me, I got my milage out of it.

Well as my photography skills grew, so did my desire for a better camera. After exahaustive research I found what I wanted... a Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel. This is the first sub-$1000 high end Digital SLR camera to hit the market. So, after a few months of saving up, I cashed in and bought one! For one "resonable" price I got the Digital Rebel, a 18mm-55mm lens, a 75mm-300mm lens, a cleaning kit, a camera bag and a 512MB CF memory card. Im all set! Photography taken to the next level. After just a few test snapshots outdoors, I can honestly say... WOW. The creative options with this camera are endless. Expect some really great photo's on thorpeland to come in the future!

Zulu the hermit crab strikes a pose for the camera. Isn't he just the stud-crab?

Cheryl and Mike hanging out with me and Em at Sonic Drive In. They recently returned from Galveston TX, where they found an apartment to live in when they move there in August. Hhhmm... looks like I now have a beach house. :)

Weekend Wrap

After a busy busy weekend, I sit here early Monday morning at work with finally the chance to update things with a weekend wrap-up. Friday night Emily and I met up with our good friends Mike and Cheryl and went to see the new movie "Anchorman". This movie, along with "Dodgeball", has to be 2 of the funniest movies Ive seen in months. I laughed so hard in Anchorman, that I was in tears at one point. Maybe it was the campy jokes, maybe it was just Will Farrel... dont know. But anyone who doesnt find that movie funny needs to be checked for a pulse.

I slept in pretty late on Saturday. I was awoken by the phone ringing and my buddy Jimmy saying "are you ready to ride?!" One hour later, we're on the lake doing some wave jumping. This time, we brought Mike and Cheryl with us. I took turns giving everyone a ride on my SeaDoo. Everyone seemed to have fun.

Sunday started out very similar. I was out on the lake again by 2pm, this time with just Emily. By the time I got there, Jimmy was already out on the water. It was a perfect day. Not too hot, only about 90 degrees with a mild breeze. Apparently Im not the only one who thought it would be a good day for jetskiing. I must have seen 30 others out on the lake with personal watercraft (waverunners, seadoos, polaris, ect.). Including the type of rider I HATE. The idiots that make the game wardens, sheriffs and boaters in general dislike jetski'ers. If there is a "Slow- NO WAKE" zone, they fly right thru it full throttle. If there is a boat anchored, with people just relaxing and sunbathing, they ride right up to it to "check out" who's on the boat. I even saw one jetski with one kid driving and the other sitting on the front end of the bike, stradling the handlebars, facing the driver!! They drove around in circles, in the NO JETSKIING area for a while before falling over and off the watercraft. Where was the lake patrol when you needed them!? Geeze, and people wonder why jetskii'es get a bad image?

Overall it was a great weekend though. Im actually a bit worn out. I need a weekend from my weekend! :)

Poor Fossil. I learned last week one of the friendlies puppies my family had ever owned was hit by a car while following another dog across the road. He will always be remembered as a playful, loveable and very obedient puppy. He was only about a year old.

A Loaner Thorpe

Last night I was called up by my buddy Gregg to play on his Thursday night team. Im not an official player on his team but he put me on the roster as a reserve. His team plays in the B division. Well, despite not having a bad group of guys, we were beat 5-1 by a team of scrubs. It was 1-0 at half time, we were winning. Im not sure what happend. Funny thing though. There is a guy on the team named Colin who has his head shaved, similar to mine is now. He's a good player, but likes to hold on to the ball a bit long sometimes. If in trouble, he'll try to dribble his way out of it. Its just the way he plays. I on the other hand prefer to pass than to wear myself out. I think I held on to the ball maybe twice the entire game. So, after the game the hispanic goalie comes up to me and in extremely broken english, starts yelling at me for not passing the ball. He says "have you ever played soccer before!?", "why didnt you ever pass the ball?!". At first, I looked at him... then looked behind me thinking he must be talking to someone else. Then he says "no... you, im talking to you!!". Well, my instant reaction, knowing that in no way did I dribble too much said, "have you ever played goalie before because I didnt see you making a lot of saves?!". I had really made me angery that he said that. Because I couldnt understand why he thought thats how I had played. Then on the way home it hit me. He had to be confusing me and Colin for eachother. Both white boys... both shaved heads. I hope he gets halfway home also and thinks, wait, maybe it was the other one? Oh well, Im not letting it bother me anymore. I do blame DMAC for bringing over pizza and making me eat it before my game. I felt like I was running with a bag of lead in my gutt. No more pizza on game nights!!

Uh-Oh

Wednesday, my coworker Paul invited me to go with him to 6 Flags Over Texas since he had an extra ticket. I thought, sure. I hadnt been in over a year and Emily had a season pass anyhow, so why not. I did my normal ritual of not eating anything heavy in the hours leading up to the trip. We left after work and arrived at the park around 6:30pm. The first ride everyone wanted to hit was The Titan. For those who have never rode on The Titan, its one bad boy of a roller coaster. It has one of the steepest, highest opening drop-offs of any modern roller coaster. The ride ends in a downward spiraling cork-screw, where the G-forces almost reach a black out level for me. The lines were short, so we were getting our seats on the coaster in no time. The ride went as expected, lasting all of about 2.5 minutes. But when we got off the roller coaster and started to walk.... Uh-Oh. I could feel it. Nausea in the head and stomach had me on the verge of a full blown projectile vomit. But I focused and avoided a technicolor yawn. The only down side to that was that I was unable to go on any other rides the rest of the night. I did manage to get aboard the Mine Train, a rollercoaster for those who cant handle or dont like real roller coasters. But that even almost made me sick again. We left the park and I hit the sack immediatly. I was asleep in 30 seconds flat. No joke. This morning, I felt better but not 100%. I can still feel the remnants of the extreme motion. Even as I type this and think about the roller coaster I get a little nauseated. Blah! I guess this tells me something. I am not cut out to be a astronaut or a jet fighter pilot. I can live with that.

EEEEKK!!

I just read this article on CNET. http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3513-5142439.html?tag=cnetfd.plug

Its talking about how badly and easily Microsofts Internet Explorer is being cracked and used to steal banking and other log in info! Normally im not one to give much concern. But the way its being done, can bye-pass any safe measures currently being used! The article suggests trying a new browser. One they reccomended is called Firefox by Mozilla. Im using it now, and I have to say, im impressed. Check it out.
This is what CNET had to say in their article.

"Bail on Internet Explorer--now
The crisis with Internet Explorer is so bad that the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) now recommends that you move away from Microsoft Internet Explorer. You have Netscape 7.1, Mozilla 1.7, and Opera 7.5 to choose from. However, there is much excitement surrounding Mozilla's new Firefox browser, currently in beta, if only because Firefox reunites several original Netscape developers."

The Kings New Clothes

If you are a frequent visiter to the Thorpeblog you should be noticing right about now that things look different. Ive redesigned the blog's look. Pretty sharp if you ask me! And to top it off, ive added the ability for you, the reader, to add a comment to a posting. So, if you look in the bottom right of each post, you will see the word "Comment". Click it and say what you want back to me. Of course, if I dont like it or I dont like you... i'll just delete it anyhow. :) I wasnt going to enable the ability to post comments but my good friend Therese, who is an avid Thorpeblog reader, really wanted to leave me comments. So, here it is. New look, comments enabled!

My Music, My Way

I was recently reading an article on the various "Legal" music download sources and how they are all battling now over which should be the standard music format. Companies such as Apple, Music Match, Roxio and Napster have each opened online music stores and each have tied each of them closely to a music playing device. For example, Apples "iTunes" has a slick download interface and a great choice of music to purchase. But, all the music is in their proprietary format with the extension ".aa". I guess it stands for Apple Audio, or something similar. In this article I was reading, Apple was so proud to announce that the only way to take the music you buy from them on the road was to purchase an Apple iPod. Because that is all their music would play on. Besides the PC itself of course. Ha! If I buy the music, I'll play it on whatever I want. So despite the millions ($$$) Apple spent on perfecting their iTunes times iPod equals big sales equation, it took me 5 minutes to circumvent it and play the music how I wanted. Basically here's all I did. Within iTunes, I created my play list of songs I had purchased and clicked on "Burn to CD". iTunes automatically converts the songs to the ".cda" format. This format, along with ".wav", is used by all home and car CD players. Once my CD was burned, I simply fired up a program called "FreeRIP". As the name declares, its free and it also rip's the ".cda and .wav" files from the CD and converts them into the music industries dreaded ".mp3". Once the file is on my hard drive as an MP3, I can burn it to CD's, make copies to other PC's... whatever I want. And since I have an MP3/CD player in my car, I just load up my music to go on a CD. Take that Apple. As slick as they are, I now have no need for your $400 iPod.

Meanwhile, On the Recieving End...

If you read back a few posts, you will read about my soccer teams opening match where we beat the other team 15-0. Well, after playing our second game, we've been brought back down to earth. We went up against the leagues top team and lost 14-5. Ouch. Granted, we played like crap as a team, our starting goalie was out and we had a couple new players join this game. We get one more shot at them this season, it will be time for some payback. :(

Hanging on the porch with Emily. :)

Relaxation

Man, I didnt know how badly I needed these past few days off of work. I was really getting worn out. I feel totally rejuvinated after the past 3 days off. And I still have the rest of today and tomorrow off! Its been a great 4th of July weekend so far. Friday night, Emily and I played putt-putt and rode go-carts. It was a lot of fun and she insists that the highest score in putt-putt declares the winner. In that case, she won... by a very large margin. Ha! In the go-cart catagory I expected a rough and tumble race from the little speed racer. Turns out, she got the slowest cart on the track and everybody was passing her. LOL Oh well, maybe next time.

Saturday started out with Emily and I meeting Jimmy at the lake for an afternoon of jetskiing. It was a ton of fun and we covered miles of lake! Party cove was super packed. Must have been 100 boats there! We had fun jumping the large boat wakes and flying across a fairly calm lake. Only later in the day did things get rough out on the open water. That night we met up with Cheryl and Mike and headed over to Fouts Field stadium to watch a huge fireworks show. It was pretty good, although a bit short. Lasted about 25 minutes. At least it was free.

Sunday I took Emily up to my parents house for a cookout and to shoot off some fireworks. It was a lot of fun and the food was great. Fireworks went off smooth. I didnt blow off any hands or my face! Always makes for a successful 4th, dont you agree?

Tick Tock, Tick Tock...

Its Thursday, 4:28pm. Im on vacation tomorrow and because of that the clock hates me. I think it even went backwards 2 minutes! Its dead quiet here at work and getting difficult to find stuff to do to help time pass. So I figured I'd blog for a few minutes. I was just given the new Novell SUSE Linux 9.1 install. Should be intesting since I know just a microscopic ounce about Linux. Although Im trying to learn. Microsofts days as king of the hill are numbered. Might as well start learning the next big thing.

So, what am I going to do on my extended vacation/4th of July weekend? Hopefully get caught up on some sleep, do a lot of jetskiing at the lake, finish repairing my buddies laptop, visit my parents, clean my apartment, bathe the hermit crabs and work on any other projects I can think of that ive been putting off. Seems like a lot now that I look back at what ive typed. Oh yeah, I'll also have to watch some fireworks go off Saturday night.

Nothing beats a free lunch and thats what I got today. I found in my wallet a gift card to Johnny Carino's Italian restaurant that I left from my birthday in September. I found out I also still had $15 left on the card! Cha-ching! Free lunch. It was sooo good, but after lunch I was painfully stuffed. Im just now getting to where I can breath without leaning way back in my chair.

Well hopefully I'll take some cool pics this weekend and have something worth posting on thorpeland.com.

Let's Get it on!!

I just got in from the first game from my teams summer soccer season. We played a team called "Dragons", who had won the championship in the "B" division and were promoted to the "A" division this season. Let me just say, it's going to be a long, long season for those poor guys. We beat them 15-0! Let me repeat that.... fifteen to zero. I finished the night with 2 goals and 4 assists. Not too bad of a night considering it had been almost 4 weeks since the end of the spring season. We picked up several new players, which will greatly increase our chances at winning the league this season. Still, it will be very tough. I dont expect us to win any more games by the margin we did tonight. But if we play like we did tonight, we are going to be very tough to beat on any night. Could be an exciting season. Stay tuned!

AWESOME!

So, here's how my "hypothetical" discussion went with my friend yesterday;

Thorpe: So Stan, how is it you make exact "backup" copies of the DVD movies you own?
Stan: It's easy Thorpe. Just download the free programs DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink.
Thorpe: Wow Stan, is it really that easy to make "backup" copies of the DVD's you already own?
Stan: Yes it is Thorpe. Give it a try.

So I did. After about 2 minutes of searching the web for those 2 programs I had them downloaded and installed. I popped in a movie ran DVD Decrypter. In 20 minutes an exact copy of the movie was on my computers hard drive. Ok, easy enough. Then I fired up DVD Shrink. I selected my movie file and clicked "Go". Ten minutes later, the movie was re-compressed and ready to be burned. I checked the box in DVD Shrink that said "Use DVD Decrypter to burn DVD Image". Two clicks later, my movie was being written back to a blank DVD-R disk. After 35 minutes, I went in to check on the process. It was done! I quickly removed the DVD from my PC and ran to my living room DVD player under my TV. I popped in the disk and sat back on the couch. BINGO!! The movie quickly started to play. Despite using a higher compression ratio than the original, I could not tell a difference in quality. It was a perfect 1 for 1 copy! I can now make backups of all the movies I own. ;)

Finally!!

After 5 months and various attempts, I finally was able to set up Therese's PC she purchased back in January! She "found" time and I was quick to get there early and get that thing set up and out of my place. We still had a problem with the internet connection working, but that will be resolved soon. Now, Therese is probably mad that Ive noted this day in my Blog. But how could I not?! This is a day to celebrate! I have reclaimed the large spot in my living room that was previously taken up by a large computer tower box. Sorry Therese, you have a new computer now. You are just going to have to grin and bare it. I know it sucks, I know its rough. But it will be ok. Life is good with a new computer. Thats why you bought it after all, isnt it?

On a totally different note, as I am typing this I just noticed the latest spam downloading into my inbox. The title is "READ THIS NOW!! IT WILL IMPROVE YOUR LOVE LIFE!!" Please! As if spam is going to help me in any way in that field. Ironically, my love life couldn't be going any better at this point in time anyhow. ;) It's good to be in Thorpeland right now. LOL And that's all I have to say about that. hehe

If you're up to seeing a funny movie, make sure and catch the new Ben Stiller movie "Dodge Ball". Freakin hilarious! I haven't laughed that hard in a movie in a long long time. Yes, the movie has cheezy moments. But it knows its cheezy and doesnt try to hide it. And that's part of what makes it so funny and enjoyable. It actually made me want to go out and play dodge ball. Ha!

For the first time in a while, I didnt get to get out on the lake on the jetski this weekend. Cloudy sky's and sporadic rain kept the aqua rocket on its trailer in the parking lot. No worries though. Its early in the summer and many hot dry Texas summer days are ahead! Jimmy and I are planning a July 4th cookout at the lake with some friends and the jetski's. Should be fun! I'll be taking pictures at that one for sure.

This weekend my old buddy Dan was back in town from L.A. He was my college roomie who now lives in California. He comes back every few months and visits or work sends him to their office here in Dallas. Friday night, Dan, me, Emily, Kirk and his girlfriend Jennifer met up near downtown Dallas at a place called "Hook, Line and Sinker". Its a nice little sea food place where you can sit outside and people watch. We had a good time hanging out and telling old stories of back in the day. Fun times.

Well its about 11pm on Sunday night and Im getting ready for a Monday and another work week. I guess Im rested up and ready to take it on. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Im off work next friday, making this only a 4 day work week for me. Woo whoo!! Then its a 5 day weekend for me as the 4th of July rolls around and Im taking an extra day off the next week too. Yay for me!

Migrating

Today is day 3 of our domain migration project. Not a lot of fun. In fact, none at all. As our old domain controller nears its death, the new shiny PDC is up and ready for its new users. But, because of the type of network we have, we have to physically go from department to department migrating users to the new domain. And if there are problems, we have to do it manually. A real pain. Of course, while this is going on, work still piles up back at my desk. Im glad its already Wednesday. The weekend is near.

Weekend Wrap

Ok so it's Tuesday, I suppose I should update everyone with last weekends events. (Deep breath...) Here we go.

Friday night: Started out with the group meeting up at the LoopHole sports bar for some food and drinks. We even pried DMC out of his hole to come join us! Mandy showed up and brought her album of pictures from her recent trip to Hawaii. Very cool. Makes me want to go visit! Later, Therese showed up to join our already growing group. From the Loophole, we headed over to the bowling alley in town. At 11pm they have something called "Cosmic Bowl". This is where they turn off the lights, turn on black lights and blast rock music while you bowl. Its really fun. Unlike the last Cosmic Bowl, I was on fire this time. I won all but one game for my team, beating the evil EVP each time. Ha! Although, EVP bowls much better once he's had a couple pitchers of beer. I dont know why or how, but its true. Mike bowled pretty good, racking up a few strikes. I give him extra points for his exagerated form when releasing the ball. LOL Cheryl did MUCH better this time, actually geting the ball all the way down the lane! Its amazing how much better you bowl without 6 glasses of beer and 4 tequilla shots in you. Isnt it Cheryl? ;) One of the best improved bowlers was my Emily. :) She even scored a 133 in one game. Very impressive!

Saturday night: This was the big event I had to keep secret, because of EVP. It was his birthday, a whopping 41 years old! haha Secretly, me and therese planned to surprise him and take him to Medevil Times. This is the place that's in a castle. You eat dinner and watch nights in armor fight and joust. Tons O fun! Well, EVP knew we were going, but what he didnt know was we had paid extra for them to call his name and have his picture taken with the castles King. He was very surprised and seemd really happy. His 6 year old son also came along and had a blast. Although, the evening almost had a setback. Emily's cable guy caused her to be late, which threw off our time schedule for the evening. Kudos to Therese for some speedy driving down 35E! She was peddal to the medal the entire way down.

Sunday: With the weather looking a perfect 95F out and clearing sky's, the lake was calling! Emily and I headed out to the lake to meet up with Top Jimmy and a new female friend of his. We covered a huge amount of the lake this weekend, riding way north, past Party Cove. It was a fun day on the lake. And my newly shaved head didnt even get sunburnt. :) Party Cove was PACKED this weekend. Probably 60 or so boats had grouped together by late afternoon. I took some pictures with the disposable water-proof camera i had bought. As soon as I finish the roll, I'll post some pictures!

I went in for a normal hair cut and decided.... heck cut it all!! It's amazing what the 1/8 inch guard will do to a head of hair. I guess I don't look totally like a dead baby bird? At worst, it will grow back in two weeks. Not like I have a lot of foliage to regrow! haha I'll definatly save on shampoo for a while! ;)

Its that time again! Time to hit Lake Lewisville with the SeaDoo and have a blast. If you have a jetski and ride on Lake Lewisville or Lake Texoma, shoot me an email at thorpe@thorpeland.com.

Ready, Set... GO!

Its Friday, 4:21PM CST. Im sitting at my desk counting down the minutes till an action packed weekend begins. Well, I supose the term "action packed" is subject to opinion. lol But I do have a lot of fun things planned. Im not going to write completely about what they are until probably Sunday. Some of it is still top secret. Certain people are not to know until the timing is right. haha

On a different and much less interesting note, I have purchased new clean sand for the crabitat and will rebuild it tonight. Im sure the hermies will be estatic to get back into their home again. They can once again begin digging, exploring and having fun in general.

Well I will be sure to take pictures this weekend, and try to get a few of them up! Oh, 4:27! Time is just flying by now. Wooo Whooo!

Me, to the Rescue!

Last night I rode with my buddy Doug, to his parents house down in Arlington. They were having a computer disaster. Unable to connect to the internet and no fix in sight. They called the Dell "technical support", where they were told the system was unfixable and to wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall everything! BUZZZZZZZ!! Wrong answer! Then they called their local ISP's support line. They were completely stumped and told his parents it was probably the network interface card and that they need to go buy another one. So they did. DOH! Wrong answer.

So I went to work, examining their system. After a quick run of Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy, it was found their system was infected with almost 200 spyware, adware and other baddies. Using Adaware and Spybot, I cleaned off all the garbage and hey, the internet began to work again! There were 2 real nasties on there called TCP Blocker and UDP blocker. These were most likely the cluprit responsible for killing the internet connection. I patched up Windows XP to the lastest and greatest and had them on their way. I was horrified to find they use their computer with NO antivirus software and NO firewall. Great googly moogly!! I advised they purchase both, soon.

A big thanks to DMAC for the huge seafood dinner as payment for services rendered!

So Close

Tonight was my soccer leagues Championship Match. We had worked our way back to it, to face the dreaded IMEG soccer club. In the end we came up short, losing 7-4. Not too bad considering what a stacked team they are. Game high notes include me getting our opening goal and minutes later a nice assist. After a making a save, our keeper Steve throws a long ball over half the distance of the field to me. I trap the ball quickly and notice we have a two on one attack going. Teamate Sahal is on the oppisote side of the field signaling for the pass. I dribble the ball forward towards their defender. I quickly fake an instep pass to Sahal and push the ball out to my right. Then, a quick right footed shot, driven straight across goal into the far lower corner, puts up 1-0! They answered with 2 goals in the next few minutes. I feared it would turn into a landslide unless we scored some more. A minute later Jamie dribbles into our attacking third. I post up infront of their goalie inside the goalbox with my back to the goal. Jamie gives me a quick pass to my feet. I know their keeper is closing in on my fast and hard. I flick the ball to my right perfectly to an onrushing Cody, who burries it home, tying the game 2-2. They kept the pressure on us, slowly wearing down our defense. Late in the second half, we were down 6-4 with less than 2 minutes left. We knew we needed goals and fast. We pushed our defense up to put more pressure on the attack. The gamble cost us, as they scored on a break away. It didnt matter though. All in all, our team played a solid match. We have a week off, then time to prepare for the next season starting. Hopefully we'll pick up a couple new players and be back in the championship to win it this time!

It's A Miracle!!!

Last week, disaster struck. Well, hermit crab disaster. With the sand in the crabitat getting a bit too wet and nasty, I decided to remove the crabs, all of their climbing things and fill the tank with fresh dry sand. I put the hermies in a temporary crabitat, a Nike shoebox with a lid. They had water, food and some climbing toys and seemed happy in their vacation home. There was a small hole on one side of the box for air. It seemed way too small for anyone to squeeze thru. Or so I thought. I come home afterwork and open the box to check on them. One, two....... hhmm... one... two.... ok, WHERE IS NUMBER THREE!!!?? Moe had escaped!! He aparently forced his way thru the small hole, dropped off the kitchen counter and was loose in the apartment! There were only about a thousand places he could hide. Under furiture, clothes, computer equipement... anywhere. I looked for hours, nothing. I sat down, and just accepted the fact I'd lost my little buddy. A day goes by and I come home from work. I finished dinner and walk into the bathroom. As I open the door to come out, something catches my eye. I look down and... THERE HE IS!! Sitting in the middle of the hallway, looking at me is Moe, alive and well! I pick up the little explorer, his little beedy eyes staring back at me. After further inspection, he seems healthy and active. I put him back into the box and seal the hole to make it way too small this time. Im still trying to get the right kind of sand, but until then the hermies are safe and happy again... together.

Just another day on the job of "Driving Mr. Craig" around town. haha No, just our group on our way back to work from lunch.

Just Plain Funny

If you enjoy drinking the Starbucks Doubleshot drinks, you're familiar with this hilarious Ad. Wait for it to load and enjoy.
http://content.collegehumor.com/media/movies/starbucks.mov

Relative Funniness

Working in the computer field as a network administrator, gives me the pleasure of constantly fighting the evils of spam. Comedy Central recently did an interview with one of the largest spammers around. Or as he calls himself a "high volume email deployer". Check it out, copy and paste this link into your browser!

http://www.comedycentral.com/mp/play.php?reposid=/multimedia/tds/cord/cord_8121e.html

UPDATE: Comedy Central has removed this lone video segment for some reason. Perhaps legal pressure from the spammer, since they posted his personal email addy on the screen in the story? LOL

One More Time

A 7-2 victory last night in Indoor soccer is sending us back to the league Championship Game next Tuesday. Of course, its against the undefeated "IMEG" jugarnauts. This time, we have a few new tricks up our sleeve. A few strategy changes may change the outcome of this final. But we'll have to wait and see.

These are 2 of the dogs at my parents house. Bo (left) and Fossil (right). They really aren't very bright dogs. Friendly, but not so smart. They remind me of hyenas, the way they jump around and yelp when they see a person. Really annoying.

I found this big guy sitting on the porch at my parents house. I thought it was interesting how brave he was. He's sitting about 6 inches to the right of their front door. People, dogs and cats pass by him, yet, he doesn't even flinch. My dad has named him "Herbert". Why I dont know.

Much Smoother

I hit the lake again Sunday with Jimmy. Without the 100 mph winds the lake was much smoother and didnt beat us down. It made for a much more enjoyable day. Jimmy ran into mechanical problems. Its seems he started his jetski in too shallow of water (less than 3 feet). The water intake sucked sand and rocks from the bottom of the lake, up into his coolant track. His jetski began to overheat, forcing him to kill the engine and put it back on the trailor for the day. Bummer. We made the best of things by inflating his innertube and I pulled him around the lake for the afternoon, doing my best to fling him off in the turns. haha It was still a lot of fun! Soon i will be picking up one of those disposable water-proof cameras. I'll post some of the pics on my site. Its just too risky to take my digital camera out on the open lake. Jetski's and technology dont mix.

Land HO!!!

Its that time again! My jetski and I hit the water at 1:30pm CST today. As usual, Top Jimmy was there to meet me for an afternoon of wave jumping and other high speed aqua antics. This time though I was accompanied by a newbie to the SeaDoo scene, my girlfriend Emily. As we all arrived at Lake Lewisville to drop the watercraft in, we immediatly noticed the 30 plus mph winds which were causing white caps out on the lake. We knew this would make for some rough riding. Sure enough, the waves pounded me as I jumped from one the next. Not to mention to blow back from the splashes from the jetski hitting the waves. The wind carried the displaced water right back into my face! It made it a little tough to see. Thats when Top Jimmy showed me a new pair of jetskiing googles he bought. These things are sweet. They seal water out of the eyes and they are also polarized to help you see clearer. I'll be picking some up soon. The SeaDoo ran great after coming out of its hibernation de-winterizing process. It smoked a little heavy at first, but was revving very responsively minutes later.

A little later in the day our good friends Cheryl and Mike showed up for some lake fun. Neither of them had ever been on a jetski, so I knew they were in for a fun time. They took turns riding on back as I gave them a quick lake tour. They seemed to really be having a blast. I invited everyone back for a day of cooking out and jetskiing in the weeks to come. And hopefully, it wont be so windy.

The B-52's take the stage at The Taste of Addison festival two weeks ago. It was a great time and the band still sounded sharp. They gave a very good live performance. Sorry its so fuzzy. Phone cams just dont have the resolution of a Sony Cybershot.

FINALLY!!!

I have been an active member of Blogger.com for about 2 years now. Anyone who stops by here on occation has noticed my posts go way back, describing many events and situations ive been involved in. The only thing missing was the ability to post small photo's in the blog posts. The day has finally come where that service is available! Blogger.com has teamed up with a company called Picasa, to create a small program called "Hello". It allows you to quickly blog and publish small pictures along with your posts. This is great news! Now i can publish pic's from my phone-cam rather quickly to give a visual to my stories. Stay tuned for the addition of photo's to my stories!

I HAVE THE POWER!!

The power of Direct TV that is! :) After almost 5 years of having nothing but local TV stations, I broke down and got something better... much better. I also went ahead and got it bundled with Tivo. For those that are not familier with Tivo, it allows you to pause, rewind and record live TV. Its really amazing! And I got a really great deal on it too, giving me 130 channels for around $30 a month. I cant complain. The main force in me finally breaking down and getting this was the June start of Euro 2004, soccer championships. This is going to be a great summer!

Saturday Re-Cap

After sleeping off my high octane coffee and waking up refreshed, Saturday was upon me. I was scheduled to make a PC repair run up to my parents house. Complaints of my mom's and brothers PC's running very slowly kept them calling and emailing me all week. I feared it would be the newest Sasser virus. So i came prepared. But what I found was much less serious. Malicious spy-ware was the cluprit. A quick run through with Spybot and Adaware and their systems were clean and running tip top again.

A forty minute drive home later, I was preparing for the real event of the day. A group consisting of Mike, Cheryl, EVP (Eric), Therese and myself were to head down to the Taste of Addison festival going on all weekend. Basically, each year the city of Addison Texas throws a huge outdoor festival where all of the restaraunts in the city can set up boothes for people to hop from one the other tasting the foods for only a couple bucks per stop. They also bring in a big name music act to finish off the evening. Our first stop was the booth of the Macceroni Grill, a tasty Italian eatery. I got a bowl of some type of bow-tie pasta. It was good! But barely put a dent in my starving belly. Next stop, The Magic Time Machine. This fairy tale themed restaraunt has the staff dressing up as various characters from child hood stories and poems. I think some roman gladiator served me my steak and veggie shish kabob. Like most everything, it was awesome. Cooked perfectly. (Sorry Eric) haha Getting a little full, we decided it was time to find dessert. What better than the boothe of the Marble Slab, ice cream shop. I ordered their chocolate ice cream sunday. Covered in chocolate topings and whip cream, it was the perfect dessert. After that, I was about to pop I was so full!

The group had gotten split up after a bit of cell phone tag, we met up again with Craig, Bex and Ken. We worked our way around the park to the main stage area where the music performance of the night was. On stage at the time was the group Blue October. I recognized one song they played but the rest I had no idea of. As it got dark and all the stage lights began to come on, they announced the main act of the night... the B-52's! I have always like the B-52's and have a couple of their CD's. By the time they came on stage, there were probably a few thousand people standing in the lawn seating area. It was a great time! They sounded exactly like they do on CD. Which was good because some groups suck when live. The event ended a little after 11pm and we walked to a near by coffee shop and had some drinks. Everyone headed home finally around 1am, exhausted. It was a really fun evening. I took some pic's with my phone cam, since I didnt have my real digi-cam with me. I'll try to post some of them soon!

Friday Re-Cap

With the end of the week here and an impromptu DC (Dinner Club) planned, the weekend was off to a good start. This time it was a smaller group consisting of only Therese, Craig, Becci, Ken and myself. The restaraunt was choosen by Mr. Craig and this time he reccomended "The Canary", in Addison. This was an interesting place. The sign out front says, "The Canary - Japanese by day, Medeteranian by Night". Odd combo I must say. The place was fairly small and dark, with candle lit tables spread thru the room. There was a 4 piece jazz band playing in the corner, which added a nice atmosphere. Looking at the menu, I noticed a wide variety of sea food and pasta type dishes. Everything sounded great. Prices ranged from $8 to $25, not bad all considering. We placed our orders and snacked on an appetizer while waiting. Thats when things got intersting, and almost disasterous! We had 2 candles burning at our table. But they weren't actually candles, they were small glass jars of, i guess, kerosene with a wick that soaks up the fuel and you light the end. Well Ken first says the one on his end of the table is making him nervous and he fears he will hit the flame with his arm. So he blows it out. No problem. Minutes later, he says his end of the table is too dark now. But rather than asking the guy who runs the place to relight it, he takes the small lantern and tries to tip it over on its side to use the other OPEN FLAME to relight it!!! I stare in disbelief as the fluid from one lantern spills out over the OPEN FLAME of the other one. Lucky for us, rather than a huge fireball like explosion, it just dowsed out the other flame leaving us with no candles. Whew! The owner rushed over and with a nervous smile on his face, told us to ask him to relight them next time. Ha! We agreed.... right Ken? :) A short time later, our food arrived. I can honestly say, this was some of the best restaraunt food I'd had in a long long time. I ordered salmon with some type of glaze and pasta, surrounded by grilled vegetables. Everything was delicious and perfect! I think the rest of the group enjoyed their food equally. After dinner, we ordered Turkish coffee. They brought it to us in a tall, thin, mug like glass. I added my normal amount of creme and sugar (a bunch) and took my first sip. Strong coffee! It reminded me almost of the Cuban coffee my grandpa used to make for my mom, which I used to steal sips from as a kid. I knew after a glass of this, I would be wired the rest of the night. I was. Overall it was a great Dinner Club, that will be remembered!

A Room With a View

I just got home and cleaned up from an awesome road trip to the beaches of Galveston Texas! Good friend Cheryl has been accepted to medical school and needed to find an apartment in the Texas coastal city, four of us (cheryl, mike, emily and myself) loaded up our bags and took the 5 hour drive to help her find a place to live come August. The drive down wasn't too bad at all. I was picked up at my apartment by Mike and Emily, then the three of us proceeded to into Dallas to pick up Cheryl at her work. From there it was onto highway 45 South, bound for Houston. After a couple stops for food and to refuel, we hit Houston around 11pm. The excitement begin to build, knowing Galveston was just under an hour away. Sure enough, just before midnight we rolled up to our hotel, the Victorian, located right across the street from the beach. It was a very cool feeling to step out of the car and smell the ocean and hear the waves crashing on the beach! We took our bags up to the room and got settled. The Victorian was the type of hotel room that has a full kitchen, so we decided we'd better get some food for the next couple days. Lucky for us, Walmart was right next door. So, even though we were tired, we headed out on a short walk to Walmart. Thirty minutes later, we're on our way back with good stuff in hand. Everyone crashed pretty quick once we were back in the room. Exahaustion was catching up! Saturday was going to be a big day. Falling asleep though, wasnt so easy for me. My assigned bedding would be the fold out couch in the hotel living room. Sometimes you get lucky and they are comfy. Not this one. My head and legs were facing downhill, and my back elevated up about 6 inches. I joked with the others saying I didnt actually fall asleep Friday night, I passed out because of the lack of blood flowing to my head. LOL I eventually got comfortable and fell asleep.

Saturday morning came and the sun woke me up as it shined in our sliding porch windows. As I got up I noticed Mike and Cheryl had not left yet to go apartment hunting. They were just too tired to get out of there by 8am. It was now 10am and we were all just getting going. I walk out on to the porch to see our room overlooks not only the pool and courtyard of the hotel, but a nice view of the ocean. We were on the 3rd floor, so I can see probably about 10 miles out to sea. I find myself mezmerized by the distant oil drilling platforms barely visible on the horizon. Are they starring back at land, wondering the same? Ha! Anyhow, we all eat breakfast (cereal from Walmart), then Cheryl and Mike head out to look at apartments. Emily and I now have a few hours to kill while they are out, so we decide to get cleaned up and head down to the beach. Now, for those who have never been to Galveston, the wind is a constant 30mph gust at all times it seems. Also being that it is still only May, the water was quite chilly. So we decided to go down in just shirt and shorts rather than swimsuits. When we got down to the beach, there actually were a lot of people swimming. Although, mostly kids... which will swim in the waters of the arctic circle if you let them. There were a lot of fishermen on the piers and others walking the beach just taking in the scenery. First thing I noticed was, unlike other beaches ive been to, the Galveston beaches have a lot of washed up seaweed. There were also a lot of Man-O-War jelly fish lying around. This is something Emily took an interest in. Each one we found, she would poke with a stick and step on until their big clear air sack, popped. Not so mean i suppose. They are already washed up and doomed, why not finish the little poison buggers off? LOL We walked the beach for about a mile. Then got a call from Mike and Cheryl saying they were on their way back. Turns out they had'nt had much luck apartment hunting. Or at least finding what they were looking for. From there we ventured down into the tourist distric of Galveston called "The Strand". Its full of open doored shops, horse carriage rides and things to do. It was a lot of fun!

With the evening coming up on us and everyone getting hungry, we decided on a Mexican food place called Tortuga, located across the street from the beach. Good food! We left there stuffed and decided to find a bar, or somewhere to hang out. We stopped at a place, which i cant remember the name of. It was alright, but we were practically the only ones there. Slow night? We had some drinks and left. We decided to walk the beach sidewalk and look thru some of the stores still open. One we came across was very cool. They sold all kinds of coastal city type souveniers, like giant shells, hermit crabs, full shark jaws, etc. It was very intersting. We got back to the hotel close to 1am. We were beat from all the walking, and decided to crash and prepare for our last day.

Everyone got up really early on Sunday, I think it was at least 9am. We cleaned the room and gathered our stuff. Checkout was at 11am, so we couldnt be too lazy. We ate our cereal breakfast and headed down for checkout. Of course, on our last day there, it was perfectly sunny and warm. The wind was still whipping, but it was more bearable. As we headed out of town, we decided to make one more beach stop. We took more pictures and took in the sights, then it was time to start our long drive home.

Nothing too eventful during the drive. It was a slow 5.5 hours. I wish I had more time to spend in Galveston. There is more I would have liked to done. I will definatly go back when Mike and Cheryl move there in August. Hey, there's nothing better than having someone to stay with at a great vacation spot! Perhaps I'll just fly down next time though. Haha! Check my site soon for pictures!

Thru the Five Hole!!

Just got home from playing 2 hours of pick up in-line hockey. Wow, I had forgotten what a workout that is! It has been almost 4 years since I played roller hockey. What a blast! I was a little slow on my skates at first and my stick skills weren't as sharp as they once were. But with each shift I played, I got a little sharper. That is until an hour had past and my legs felt like wet noodles and I was flat out exhausted! What a great workout. I keep this up, combined with soccer... I should be in great shape in no time. The only down part about it is pick up hockey is from 10pm to midnight, on Thursdays. Could make for a tough Friday morning at work. Oh well, its worth it! Despite my slowness of getting back into the game, I did have one really nice shift where I scored 2 goals and got an assist! He shoots.... he scores!!!

Tunes

If you're into downloading MP3's and actually want to do it legally, I hav to recommend the Music Match Player and service. Like all the others, their songs are all .99 cents and they come in Windows Media Audio (WMA). This is fine for listening to them on your pc, but if you want to take them on the go-go you'll need to convert them to MP3 format. Easily done. Burn all your recently purchased songs to a cd. Then, in Music Match, click on "Rip From CD". Make sure you choose your default Rip format as MP3 and badda-boom, your songs are now MP3's.

Batter Up!

After not going for almost 2 years, I finally took in a Texas Rangers baseball game with a few good friends. The day started at around 3:30pm when Mike cheryl and Emily picked me up in the hooptie (mikes boat like car) and we all headed south to Arlington. We found out that the Rangers game from Friday night had been rained out and it would be a double header on Saturday night so our game would start later. We headed to Brian's parents house in Arlington, which was practically across the street from the Stadium. His parents were awesome and provided us with a full dinner of bar-B-Q, and side dishes with dessert. That was great stuff! We watched the first game on TV and just kicked back waiting till it was time to get our tickets. At the bottom of the 7th, we walked over to the stadium, got our tickets and found our seats, now accompanied by Brian and Mandy. I should have known we were in for a climb. Our tickets were only $2.50 each! Turns out, we were 4 rows from the top of the stadium!! Can we say nose bleed? haha But, we still could see everything very good. So we watched the 8th and 9th innings of the first game then our game started. There was only one home run by the rangers, but it was cool to get to see the fireworks go off when they hit it. The Rangers ended up winning the game 8-6! I took some pics, so i'll try to get them posted soon.

Complete Surprise!

For the past month Craigs girlfriend, Becci had been planning a surprise party of his 30th Bday. Well it all came to a finale last night at Breadwinners in Dallas. Craig walked into the restaraunt, to what he thought was a dinner with his parents, Becci and her dad but instead found 20+ of his close friends waiting at a large table. To say the least, he was shocked. We all had a great time and the food was awesome! After the dinner, everyone met at his friend Ken's house for drinks and to hang out. It was one of the better surprise birthday parties ive ever been to. Very well organized. Good job Becci! Great job introducing Mr. Craig to the big three-zero. Ha! Although, we already know he's actually 45. :)

2 or 14?

This past Thursday I was invited to a birthday party. But not just any birthday party. It was a party for a dog turning 2 years old. Doesn't that mean she's really 14? Either way, my friend Cheryl felt the need to have a party and decided to use her small brown dogs birthday as a reason. It was only a small gathering of maybe 12 people. I brought small doggie bones as a gift for the guest of honor. We gave her one and she seemed to really like them. As she spent most the evening under the coffee table chewing on it. Anyhow it turned out to be a nice little party for a weeknight.

More the Merrier

Im sure all you avid Thorpeland Blog readers remember the Death of Krusty. It was a tragic and sadening event inwhich thousands attended the funeral. Well this past weekend, the Great Krusty's shoes were filled just a little bit with the arrival of 2 new Hermies! They've been named Moe and Barney and they seem to be bonding quickly with Sideshow Bob. The three of them are always in the same area of the crabitat, huddled together. I may even be getting them some more buddies soon. I really need to get some pics up of these guys. They are very interesting to watch.
On a completely different note, this past weekend was a blast. Friday night a group of us headed out to see the movie, "The Girl Next Door". I was really surprised as to how funny it ended up being. We all had a lot of fun.

But Saturday night is where things got interesting. It started out with about 6 of us hanging out at the Loop Hole, a local bar. The drinking began. (oh boy) Then we decided to go partake in what was called "Cosmic Bowl" at the local bowling alley. This is where they turn out the lights, turn on black lights and blast rock music while you bowl. This was seriously fun. I had not bowled in about 3 years at least! I have to EVP credit, even half drunk the guy can bowl the lights out (no pun intended). He beat me by just a few pins each game. DOH! Dont worry EVP.... I'll be back for revenge!!! Words to the rest of our gang; Cheryl remember, throw the bowling ball forwards not backwards! Therese... just give up bowling. Bryan, not bad dude you were right up there with me and EVP! Becca, I never thought you had the guns to throw a 15 pound ball all that way! hahahaha Emily, you had some mad bowling skills going on. I think you beat your team in each game. Good job! All in all it was a fun night to remember.

Into the Fast Lane!!

Today is a good day for all the nerds in the Thorpeland household. Ok, there's only one nerd... me. But its still a great day. I come home from work to find out my DSL internet connection speed has been DOUBLED! And to top it off at no additional charge to me. Cant beat that! I recent speed test done on dslreports.com shows my speed at 1.46mbps download and 333kbps upload speed. To non-techies, thats pretty good! And much faster than I had before. This is great news for my FTP server and online games. Yup, in the fast lane!

Victory!

My outdoor soccer team finally won a tough game last night, 3-1. To top it off, it was against the 1st place team in our division. It was the best I've seen our team play this season. Everyonee passing, attacking and defending as a team. I didn't score a goal, but came very close in the second half. With the goalie off his line, I lobbed a shot from about 30 yards that arced over the goalie and hit the crossbar of the goal! Doh! Overall I had a good game and had a role in each of our 3 goals.

An Educational Day

So today our big PC rollout moved into the Criminal Investigations Lab of the PD. Facinating stuff I tell ya. I noticed the lab tech working with finger prints on his computer screen. Just out of curiosity, I asked him how he gets them scanned into a digital format to examine on the PC. He leaves the room for a second and comes back with a baseball bat thats wrapped in duct tape. He says to follow him. We go back into a small room where he hands me a set of orange goggles. He turns out the lights in the room and turns on some type of super high intensity blue light. Then he holds the bat under this light. Suddenly, fingerprints appear on the bat! I asked him if its the light causing this? He says, first he lets super glue fumes coat the bat, the fumes stick to the finger prints and allow the light to see them. Thats just so cool!

Some Good News

Well after posting the sad news of Krusty's demise, I am pleased to say Sideshow Bob has come out of the sand from his molting period and is looking good. He's still a little grogy, but is eating and drinking. A good sign! My fingers are crossed he'll be just fine.
On a nerdy note of good news, today Ubisoft announced the release of Ghost Recon 2 for later this year! This is great news considering this is the game my friends and I play frequently. The original GR came out almost 3 years ago! It has been time for an update for quite a while. So im really looking forward to that!

A Very Sad Day

Its a sad day in Thorpeland. This morning as I got up to make breakfast, I did my normaly routine of checking on my two hermit crabs Krusty and Sideshow Bob. To my dismay, I see Krusty's large shell upside down..... and EMPTY! My eyes quickly darted around the crabitat, soon to find him at the other side. He was laying on his back, dead. :( His little blue abdomen, curled up. I dont understand quite why he died. He had just finished his molting period successfully. He was up about about this past week, feeding, drinking and being quite active. I was very proud of him for bouncing back from his traumatic exo-skeleton shedding. I had been meticulous with this care and feeding. I will have to do some research to see what may have gone wrong. His little buddy, Sideshow Bob is still under the sand molting. I hope he pulls through ok when he wakes up and realizes his big buddy is gone. Sad days in the crabitat. :(

Opa!!

Another episode of Dinner Club as come and gone. This was a fun one as we all headed into Dallas for a evening of delicious Greek food! In attendance were good bud's Therese (yes she made one!), Becca (no longer a DC virgin), Craig, Becki and myself. The evening started off quite interesting and could have been disasterous! While driving over to my place Therese and Becca almost hit a guy standing in the middle of the highway off ramp! He was just standing there, in the middle of the lane, starring straight forward. They hit the breaks, avoiding flattening him. Becca, being Becca... jumped out of the car to see what his problem was and why he refused to move. Meanwhile, in the safety of the car, Therese frantically dialed 911. The guy tells Becca he recently had a car accident and while in the hospital, no one came to see him and now he just wanted to die. So, this was his chosen way to go. Stand in the middle of the road and let a car do the job. A short time later, the cops showed up and cuffed & stuffed him. Therese and Becca arrived at my place safe but a bit rattled. At first I was afraid that was going to ruin the evening. But after they had a couple drinks at the bar, all was good again. haha Once in the restaraunt, called Opa!, things settled back to normal. The food was great. It seemed like it had been mellowed out a bit from its original Greek recipes, but still very tasty. We all left the place totally stuffed and met up at another Cafe Brazil in North Dallas to talk and have drinks. This is where I found a new favorite coffee; Tiramisu (spelling?) flavored. Awesome stuff! Tastes just like the Italian dessert. Somehow our conversation of the night turned to the Waco Texas Standoff which happened back in 1995 or somewhere around then. The debate seemed to center around who was at fault for the event ending fire and gunbattle, the government or the cult in their compound. On my left!! (in my best announcer voice) We have Becca, who blames the US Government for just about everything from the death of the cult members to the sky being blue. And on my right! Craig, who claims the ATF/FBI did things right and by the book and the deaths were not their fault. Despite overwhelming evidence against her, Becca stood by her guns. I'll give her credit for that, even when her defense looked weak. My interest in the arguement faded in and out. I needed more coffee. Overall, a great evening. You missed out E.V.P.!!

Another N00b Down

Last night was the first game of my Mens A division season. Our first match was against a team who had just won the B division championship and has been promoted to A. Losing to them would be a bit humiliating so we had everything to play for. So far in the history of our team we were 2-0-1 against new teams coming into our league, playing in their first game. We didnt want to add our first loss to that record! At the starting whistle we were missing 3 of our better players, so we only had one sub and knew it would be a tough game. In the first half, the new team matched us goal for goal. Each time we put one in the net, they managed to find a way to score back. At half time it was 6-6, and although we were tired we could tell we were starting to wear them down. Sure enough, we began to score more freqently in the second half. As my team went on a 3 goal scoring streak, they failed to answer with a goal each time. One of those goals being my second of the night, off a right foot shot that was deflected by a defender into the corner and out of reach of their keeper. At the final whistle, the score was 11-6. We were happy with that score.

Rollin.... Again

Well just like we did almost a year ago, my place of work is rolling out more new PC's to another group of our users. So far its not going to bad. We burne thru the first building in one day. Not bad. We only have about 200 more PC's to go. Should be an interesting month.
Last week my friends and I gathered for another meeting of the Dinner Club. This time we chose a place a bit less extravegant. We met up at the Studio Movie Grill in Addison, Texas. Those that have never been, its a very cool place. It is a movie theater, where you sit at tables and order regular food while you watch the first run movies. We decided to see Starsky & Hutch. Man, what a funny movie! Dont worry, you dont have to remember the original show to enjoy the movie. We were all laughing our butts off. After the movie, half the group had to leave to make another event. Me, Therese, Eric, Craig and Becki headed out to Cafe Brazil for some good desserts and coffee. It was a great time had by all. We're now planning the next dinner club in April. Hopefully I'll be able to take pics at this one!

Gentlemen.... Let's Peel Some Skin!!

For those that know me, they know I have 2 pets. Well... not like the ones you'd think of. They dont bark, meow, swim or cuddle on my lap for petting. They are hermit crabs. And while you think they are just crabs, you would be wrong. Krusty and Sideshow Bob each have their own distinct personalities. Although currently, they are going thru a rather traumatic crab process called "molting". Basically, once every few months the crabs grow and need to shed their exo-skeleton and grow a new one. Well right now they are both in mid-skin-shed. They are either burried or half burried in the sand in their aquarium. Krusty has half his bodies exo-skeleton worked off of his torso. I cant see Sideshow. He's dug himself into a deep hole. This is the first time ive had them when they have molted. According to crab experts, after the molting it complete the crabs will eat their exo-skeleton. Kinda gross... yes. But it has important nutrients for them. This will be an interesting process to watch. I'll be posting some pics soon!

Worth It?

So my friend MD tells me a funny story the the other day. He tells me about "back in the day" when he and the band he was playing in, needed a cheap place to live and practice. They found an apartment in a rough area of dallas for only $400 a month that they could all live in. He says to me, "ah, yes that is where I heard my very first drive by shooting". Geeze... hit the dirt! He goes on to tell me about a time where they were all sitting in the living room, when their drummer leans forward and peeks thru the front drapes. Then he says, "you guys gotta see this!". They all look out the window to see a guy standing in the grass of their apartments, firing a gun at someone across the street! I think that is where I would say, time to pack the bags and get out! Is it really worth the rent? haha I like the idea of safety in the places i live. Call me crazy! Anyhow, I found that story to be pretty interesting. Thanks Big MD!

Not a Whole Lot

Well I have'nt blogged in about a week because nothing has happened! My indoor soccer team did lose our championship match. Oh well, there's always next season as the Cubs say. My hermitt crabs are both in full molting right now. Its kinda strange, Krusty looks like his body is falling off of him and out of the shell. What is actually happening is he's shedding his exo-skeleton and growing! Time to get him a bigger home I guess (bigger shell). Sideshow Bob is still burried under the sand, with his small airhole being the only view I have of him. I hope he's doing ok down there. Everynow and then I use the water bottle to spray some water down in on him.
This coming saturday, a bunch of us are playing paintball on a "speedball" course. Should be some fast and furious action! I'll try to take some good pictures, and even some video. Sunday, Brotha James comes down for a visit, trash talk and all. We'll see what he's got.
As for work, we've been in turbo mode getting ready for a second PC rollout. We also got approval to get our department renovated. So construction starts soon. Wooo Whoo.. new walls! haha Its going to be a crazy month or so ahead. To top it off, we've been told we are getting a 3% cost of living raise starting at the end of April. Not much, but hey i'll take it. So, not much this week going on but lots to write about in the coming weeks.

Life on Jupiter

Im currently sitting in a new internet coffee house here in town called Jupiter Cafe. Pretty cool. This is my first time taking my laptop out to an internet cafe and logging on. Other than that I just use it to check my mail from the couch when im too lazy to walk over to my real pc. So, its sunday night and im off work monday. My buddy James was supposed to drive down from wichita falls today but he called me last minute to tell me his dad had to go into the hospital. I hope he's ok. Well, I had already requested the day off work to spend with james so I thought why not go out tonight to Jupiter Cafe and chill with some live jazz music, a chai tea and my laptop. Fun times if you ask me!! Now, I knew it would be interesting to see how they have people connect to their WiFi network. They chick at the counter gives me my chai tea and then a user name and password. After about 15 minutes of wrestling with my laptop settings i finally figured out what i needed to do. I cant get my firewall to let me past their router so, i had to disable it. Yikes I know. Once I find their router IP and i can designate it as a trusted network and hopefully it will let me thru. The internet access here is really cheap. Its $2 for an hour or $5 for a day. Cant beat that eh? And the drinks are good too! Funny thing... when i first couldnt get online, I asked the waitress as she was walking by if she had seen people having this log on problem before. She looked at my screen and as I looked back at her, she either rolls her own cigerettes or had a huge doobe hanging from her lips. Hhmmm.... a new meaning to the phrase "smoke'em if you gott'em". haha So Im up and running now and the first thing I thought id do is blog. Yeah, im cool. About 10 feet in front of me is a guy playing solo on guitar. Is playing some slow jazz number where he mumbles a few words ever 30 seconds or so. Its ok, he's decent.
Outdoor soccer was rained out again today. Blah. So to make up for the lack of physical activity, I hit the gym with a vengance to punish me for my lazyness. haha Ok just kidding, i just wanted to do something active during this rainy day. I ran almost 2 miles on the tread mill, did my 6 sets of 15 crunches on the inclined bench while holding a 15lb dumbell to my chest and then got on the stationary bike for a 10 minute hilly ride. I was beat. So its kinda nice to relax in here for a while. Ah, the good life. haha

Deserved Beating?

Ya know some people just deserve a good a** kicking. Top of my list. Ryan Seacrest. Yes, gasp in disbelief. I was watching, I think its called Access Hollywood the other night. And they started to talk about the top "metro-sexuals" in Hollywood. First off, i hate that term and I'll rant about it a bit later. Anywho, they list Miss Seacrest as one of the top in the field. They went on to talk about his weekly grooming. He tans twice a week, gets his finger and toe-nails done, has his hair highlighted, has some type of mud body scrub done and something else i cant remember at this moment but sounded ridiculous. Ok, ANY man who does all this to look pretty just needs a good pummeling. There is no way I can have any respect for a guy who grooms himself like that. Its one thing to try to look sharp and look your best. But, c'mon!!! So, ive now concluded that the term "metro-sexual" simply means girly man to the highest degree. Let the butt kicking begin.

Losing Sunday

Well my outdoor soccer team falls 5-2 after a disasterous second half. Leading 2-0 at half time we had to go into the wind second half. They score 5 unanswered goals to kill us. Oh well. Later that evening my Ghost Recon team loses 2 close matches to teams we could have beat. They went down to the wire. Very exciting but still... a loss. On the up-note. Tonight (monday) we did bounce back by beating another team 5-1 in a best of 9 match. Perhaps my luck is turning up now?

Saturday In Deep Ellum

So far, Saturday has been pretty eventful. A morning call from my buddy Craig and he, I and his girl Becki were off to Deep Ellum and a restaraunt called Crescent City Cafe. There we met up with two of their friends, who's names escape me at the moment. The place is a French/Cajun type cafe, nice atmosphere. If you ever go you MUST try the sandwhich called a Muffalata. Its on some type of toasted bread they bake there, with from what I could tell... ham, egg and some other stuff. It was very DELISH. Be sure to chose the half or quarter order. A full sandwhich is larger than most normal humans could consume. So I got the quarter order with a side bowl of crawfish etouffee. Good stuff! I was so full after just that. Then, came dessert. We got something called Beignets. They look like little hot pockets except no meat in them. Just a sweet bread dough that you sprinkle powdered sugar and pour a bit of syrup over. OOOOH... good! From there we went over to Fair Park and to the Dallas Science Museum. They were having an exhibit on terrorism and the whole 9/11 thing. They had some parts and pieces from the twin tower ruins and lots of pictures. Then they had a huge storyboard along the wall that explained how the drug bussiness fuels terrorism. I was just impressed that they had a real AK-47 there to show what the baddies like to use. I took some pictures. Perhaps I'll post them. Weeeelll.. more to come, im sure.

Lots of Time

Because of recent changes in my social surroundings, I now have lots of free time. Gee, what do I do with it all. Well ive learned that with all this time i can actually keep a clean apartment, catch up on reading, finish up countless projects, catch up on TV shows, rearrange my furniture and even clean ALL the lent out of my belly button. Wait, ignore that last one. (eeww) Several fun things are on the horizon for the near future. Soon comes the LAN party, a possible camp out, a visit from Brotha James and a paintball tourny. Should be fun stuff to share with all.

The Big Four-Zero

Well Happy Birthday to my buddy Roger. He turns 40 this coming weekend but we had a surprise party for him this last weekend. The party was organized by his sister Melissa. It was a total surprise to him when he came in the back door and we all yelled Happy Birthday!! I thought for sure he was going to have a heart attack and fall over. The party was a blast, with about 20 people attending. The pictures are up on my site so all can view the celebration. I have to give a "shout out" to my bud's at the party that I had a blast with. Jimmy, Cliff, Brad, Jill, Katy and Melissa it was great to see you all again. I look forward to next time!

Blogging to Blog

Not really too much going on this week. The weather sucks. Its cold, cloudy, windy and rainy out today. Where I am, Seattle? Im hoping it dries up enough by Sunday so we have an outdoor soccer game. I hate playing in the cold and wind and the league wont let us play if the fields are slop. It tears them up too badly for the rest of the season.
Well, its looking like another huge LAN party is on the horizon. One of the guys from my gaming group has secured a large room and large tables. Perfect for setting up 15 or so computers and and packing nerds and pizza into a building for 6 hours. Oh the fun!!

Another Late Update

Wow, im really getting lazy about these updates! I was just sitting here at work, and I thought... uh-oh, I havent updated the Thorpeblog in a log time!! So here I am, trying to write in a few quick things before lunch. Lets see, whats been going on? Oh yeah, my buddy Dan flew into town from LA for a family get together. I didnt get to see him much, but while he was here me, Drew and him met up at one of our favorite restaurants, La Hacienda. For those that do not know what La Hacienda is... your missing out! Its a "Tex-Mex" place that makes fajitas that are unbelievable. Im getting hungery just typing about it. Im not sure how many there are around the USA, but there are at least 3 I know of in the Dallas area alone. Needless to say, we stuffed ourselves. Funny thing, Drew has a thing for their salsa dip. So we get our bowl of tortilla chips and he burns thru 4 bowls of the stuff! The waitress gives him a bowl sealed in a to-go bag. But after he finishes his meal and the 4 bowls of the salsa he already had... he opens the bag and digs into the to-go salsa. Crazy I tell ya. haha
Also, a Texas rarity, we got hit by a "snow storm" last saturday. It was kinda neat. Reminded me of my days in Chicagoland. Although we only got about 6 inches of the white stuff, the news and weather stations here were acting like it was practically the end of the world. Talking about how to drive safe, stay warm, care for you pets and plants, how to walk in it.... it was hilarious. Drew and I were joking about how up north the weather man would have said, "... and this morning we got a little snow, looks nice out... Now on to sports." But here our weather man devotes the entire day to "Snow Storm Coverage". Too funny. Well gotta run and do some work. More to come.