Playing in the Fire

Well that's at least what it feels like. Outdoor soccer in Texas is always a warming experience. Which is why for the past 3 years I have avoided getting myself into an outdoor season. I don't know if it was all the World Cup soccer I had been watching or if I just missed the pain and suffering of playing outdoor soccer, but I've committed myself to a new team. My buddy Ken approached me last week and said they needed a striker (forward) for a Men's Over 30 4th division team. I had never played in the Over 30 division before. Normally I played in the "Open" division because of better competition. But I decided to come out and see how they looked. Also, another factor in this was this team was gearing up for the Fall season. Which meant about half our games would be in cooler, more barable weather. So Sunday rolls around and I show up for their training session to get signed up. The coach gets me and Ken's information and we join the group in warming up. I notice there are a lot of guys there and some look pretty old. Then one of the guys tells me this is a combined practice between the Over 30 team and the Over 40 squad. That would explain the older, heavier guys. They split the group up into two teams, light shirts vs dark shirts. I was wearing white so i got put on the team with the majority being the Over 40 group. It didn't bother me much because this would give me a chance to play against my future teamates and see what skill level they are.

The scrimage kicked off and we were playing. Many of these guys knew eachother from previous practices. So I was just going to play it low key and not go 100% until I got the feel for the pace and how to play with this group. I started out in midfield, just recieving some short passes... knocking the ball around.. not playing too hard. I noticed our outside midfielder was getting the ball a lot, so I moved to the left inside midfield position near him. He received a pass along the side line and looked up for help since a defender was already covering him. I made a run to him and he layed the ball off to me. I quickly one-touched the ball behind the defender and into the large open space behind him down the field. My player who just gave me the ball sprinted down the line and got to my pass. He crossed it to the center and our forward shot it wide. But we had sucessfully put together an attack. Now, I was getting the ball much more frequently. I guess I had earned some trust or something. I noticed our forwards were becoming exhausted, so I moved from midfield into a forward position. I pushed up the field to their last defender, staying on-sides even though there were no linesmen to call offsides. Suddenly, one of our midfielders steals the ball from theirs. I look at him and put my arm up, calling for the ball. He see's me and sends a perfect pass over the head of the defender next to me. I pour on the speed to meet the ball about 10 yards out from the goal and its 1 on 1 with their keeper. The ball bounces once and the keeper starts to come out. I jumped into the air and with the outside of my right foot, calmly flick the ball by the charging keeper and into the right side of the net. Goal! Immediatly, guys on the Under30 team began coming up to me and asking me my name and which team I was on. It was funny. I soon learned they were so happy to see that because the one thing they were missing last season was a forward with a scoring touch. Defense has always been their strength. Which I did learn there are a couple very good defenders on this team. Lots of good hustle and mental toughness. These are good signs to see in my new teamates.

So today during my lunch hour, I took a trip down to a local sporting good store to look at some new outdoor soccer cleats. I didn't expect to find anything I liked really, since local stores are known for carrying only 1 or 2 types of shoes and not very good quality ones at that. I was pleasantly surprised to find several decent pair to choose from. But one pair of Adidas cleats caught my eye. They had a good cleat design for hard ground, good colors to go with most any uniform, seemed well built and most impressivly they were feather light. I mean so light, it didn't even feel like i was holding a soccer cleat. This was an important factor since by the second half my legs feel like 2 cement bags tied to me. Light is good! So I found my size and bought them. Im looking forward to getting them broke in. This is the first time in 12 years I have worn another brand of shoe besides Kelme. I feel bad about being a traitor and not buying them. Kelme's are such high quality boots I hope these $50 Adidas can compare to them. Don't be fooled by the price though. The Kelme's I usually wear run $100, double what I paid for the Adidas. But the Kelme shoe's are imported and all imported soccer shoes carry a bit higher price tag. Maybe these USA made cleats can win me over. We'll see as the outdoor soccer action pics up!

Zidane Fest

And the comedy begins...

Rebirth!

Besure to check in on my main website, thorpeland.com in the coming days. A total transformation is about to take place. Changes have already begun. A new look, a new webhost and some new features! Oh, the excitement. I know... I know.

Vacation Time!!

 
After being gone for the past week, Emily and I have returned from Puerta Vallarta Mexico! What a blast we had. We arrived Wednesday, July 5th at 8:30 in the morning. We got checked into the hotel and began to explore the area, eat and hit the beach. That evening I was able to take a bunch of pretty good pictures as the sun set.

Thursday morning, we were up early and on our way outside of town to the jungle for the Canopy Zip-line tour. A network of 13 tree-top platforms with cables running to each. They suit us up in our harness gear and we fly through the canopy along these cables at high speeds. Fun! We returned to town that afternoon to relax and hit the beach. Since our trip was an all-inclusive package, our meals were included and we could eat as many times as we wanted. Surprisingly, we didn't gorge ourselves as much as the average toursist might have. Which is probably good, since we had so many things planned.

Friday was another early morning out of bed. This time we had to be at the Marina to catch a boat. We were headed down the coast for some snorkeling and exploring. After about an hours ride on the catamaran, we stopped at a small cove and everyone suited up with our masks, snorkels and life vests. As we hopped into the water, we were handed a dinner roll by the tour guides. This was to feed the fish underwater. What I did not expect was the ferocity of the little buggers when they saw the food! I looked down and saw one colorful sunfish coming out of the coral and seaweed at the bottom. Suddenly, I was caught in what best could be described as a pirranha like frenzy. I could feel fish all over me and they churned the waters around me. I struggled to quickly take out my waterproof camera, and I think I got some decent pictures. I still have to get them developed. A bit later while swimming, Emily tells me she lost one of her swimming fins! I look down and its sitting on the coral floor about 15 feet down. So, I wiggled out of my vest and gave it to Emily to hold on to. I took a deep breath and began my decent. About half way down I began to think, "what if i get down here and there is a barracuda in these rocks?". Ha! Well there wasn't and I returned to the surface safely. We all got back onto the boat shortly after that and got served a good lunch. Emily wasn't able to enjoy it as much because she was getting a bit motion sick from the rocking boat. But she kept her eye on the level horizon and never threw up. A few minutes later we arrived at our second stop, the remote village of Yelapa. This is a town only accessible by boat and which only recieve electricity five years ago. Our tour guide gave us a walk thru tour of the small village then lead us down to a picturesque beach. We stayed there for about an hour, relaxing and swimming. Then we all boarded the boat for the return trip back to Puerta Vallarta. Our tour guide Jovani was a real comedian and kept everyone entertained the whole way.

Saturday was another day of getting up early. We had to catch a ride to the airport at 7am, even though our flight wasnt until 9:40. Emily took a little fall at the airport on some stairs. But she was alright. Just slipped on a couple stairs, bruising her backside a bit. We got on our plane and landed in Dallas by 12:30 in the afternoon. Home in time to unpack, relax and still enjoy the weekend before returning to work Monday.

On Sunday, I was able to meet up with Dan (who was in town for work from L.A.) and Kirk at Hooters to watch the World Cup Final. It was a great time and a very entertaining game. The French scored first on a penalty kick, but a short time later, Italy got the equalizer off a corner kick header. Very nice! The game went into extra time, then into a penalty shootout. Italy won it 5-3 to claim the World Cup trophy! It was a great time since both teams played some decent attacking soccer. And being able to watch the game with my old college buddies made it even more fun.

I took a TON of pictures while in Mexico. Check them out at HERE! 

Free Fun??

 
Few things in this world that are truly fun are, well... truly free. There's always a cost... somehow. Right? Well I've come across something that is very fun and very free. My buddy Barmy pointed to towards a game called TrackMania Nations. Its a PC game that is free to download, but has the quality of a game you'd pay $50 for at the store. Its a car racing game. Its simple to play and tremendous fun. I spent about 3 or 4 hours this weekend racing against my buddies online. And a nice thing about it is you do not have to have a high end gaming pc to play it. It will run on most older computers. And its some crazy fun. The tracks have jumps, loops and insane turns you'd almost have to see to believe. Not to mention all the mods and skins there are for the cars, created by players all over the world. This game is truly a great find in a sea full of crappy $50 retail games. Check it out at http://www.trackmanianations.com See you on the track! 

The Open Water and Good Friends

Yesterday, my friends Gregg and Stacey came out with me, Top Jimmy and his friend Steve. Jimmy had his boat and I brought out my jetski. We hit the lake at noon but it was cool and cloudy. There was even a light rain coming down. Within the hour, the clouds broke and it was 100% sun! We had fun pulling the tube behind the boat and blasting the waves on the jetski. About half way thru the day, my jetski's main tank ran out of gas and I had to switch to the reserve line. I drove it over to local marina and bought some gas there. They charged a whopping $3.59 a gallon! I guess they figure if you need gas, you don't have many choices so they can charge as much as they want. It was a great day on the lake and we hope to get more people out with us in the coming weekends. I'll have to take some pictures to post.

Eating Their Words

In preparing for this past Friday's Coed game, I learned two things. One, this was a new team made up of all great players, girls and guys, they would be very tough. And two, someone on their team told our team they wanted to beat us so badly this Friday that we'd not want to play in the Friday night league anymore. Well, those is fightin' words!! Our team was definatly fired up by that statement and came ready to play. Apparently, they weren't quite as ready. We won the match 11-4. They put up a fight early in the game, but we wore them down with constant attacking pressure and solid defense. I'm sure this is a team we will face in the final championship game. I'll look forward to beating them again.

Soccer Update

Things are going well on my soccer front. My coed team has been blowing away everyone in our division so far this season. Our last win was something like 23-1. And the team looked very good in warmup. I thought we were in for a battle. Not so. I scored our second goal and then resorted to just passing the ball to our girls, trying to set them up for a score. Suposedly this coming friday, we play a team that could really give us a run for our money. I'll update with what happens.

On the men's team front, we're doing ok. Currently at 2-2, we won last Tuesday 6-2. I scored 2 goals, the last one being on a penalty shot. We have some tough games ahead so im not sure how we'll end up this season.

Longest Week... Ever.

Is it just me or this week just crawling by? It's only Tuesday but it feels like it should be Thursday at least. I guess that because I dont really have anthing happening this week. Well anything very interesting. Took the jetski out last Saturday with Emily and met Top Jimmy at the lake. It was a blast getting back out there again. The water was nice, although a bit lower because of our drought. But we still had fun. The jetski ran great after coming out of its winter hibernation. Im looking forward to getting back out there this saturday. Ah yes... fun times ahead.

They Do!

Last weekend Emily and I drove down to Galveston (TX) for our good friends Mike and Cheryl's wedding. But not only were we attending their wedding, we were in it! Emily was the maid of honor and I was a groomsman. We hit the road early Friday morning and had made great time on the normally 6 hour drive, making it in about 5 hours. Just in time for lunch with our hosts. They took everyone out to a BBQ place. Which is probably the last place I would have chosen to eat at, but oh well. I had a burger and fries, its all good.

That night came and it was time for the Bachalor and Bachalorette parties. Emily had spent the past month planning Cheryl's and the best man Aaron had evertything arranged for Mike's. The girls were getting to gether to play odd games like "pin the penis on the man" and later have a stripper show up acting as a doctor, since Cheryl is down there for med school. Our plan was to take Mikey boy out to a strip club and make him think twice about this whole marriage thing. Ha! Well without divulging too many details, they both had fun at their respective events and still wanted to get married the next day. The wedding went off without a hitch. No one tripped or forgot their lines or went the wrong direction. The reception was a lot of fun. They had rented out a building in The Strand (tourist area of Galveston). Food was catered and they had a good DJ for the tunes.

Our drive back seemed longer than going down, but was uneventful. No traffic jams or problems. We took my new car and it was smooth riding the entire trip. I cringed at the fact I was putting almost 1000 miles on my new ride! haha I guess thats what I got it for. Oh yeah, the day after the wedding Mike and Cheryl headed off for the Bahamas for a 7 day vacation. I bet they had a blast! Congrats guys!! We're all happy for you!

The Beast

So the time has come for me to begin building a new powerful home pc for multi-media and gaming use. Unlike my last rig, where I merely built it to run the current app of the day, I wanted to build this one to handle whatever the next 3 or 4 years may throw at it. By that I mean it doesn't necessarily have to have the power currently to run everything that will come out over the next four years, but be capable of upgrading with the latest technology as needed. Of course, I want to build it powerful enough to not need any upgrades for as long as possible. In the ever changing world of computers, this is a tough chore.

I started planning out what I now refer to as "The Beast" by hitting the web to do my research. After all, it has been at least a year since I upgraded my current PC and so much has changed since then! I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing out on any cool new tech that would give me an edge. One of the best places to start out with research, price comparing and buying is the website NewEgg.com. What makes this site so great is first off, their low prices. Few sites can beat their discounts. They also offer cheap or free shipping on items and often sizable mail in rebates. After weeks of planning, Ive mapped out my new rig. Below is the parts list, which Ive begun buying peice by piece over the past few and next few months.

RAM - 2GB of Corsair DDR400, Dual channel
Hard Drive - 120GB 720RPM W/8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
MoBo - MSI K8N Diamond Plus Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 ATX AMD
PSU - Rosewill 600W Power Supply, W/SLi support
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Toledo 2000MHz HT 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket 939 Dual Core
Video - DUAL Geforce 7900GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16, Running in 16X SLi Mode
Case - COOLER MASTER Centurion 532

So far i have recieved my RAM, MoBo, PSU and the Case. I havent started assembling anything yet. Waiting till i get it all ordered and in. Im salvaging a CD/DVD burner drive from my current pc. So I did not have to purchase another. The last thing on the list I will be buying is the CPU. Currently the 4800+ is one of AMD's top processors. And of course the top dual core CPU's currently out fetch a high price. Right now the price sits at $683. Ouch, I know. That's why im holding off for a couple more months to see what the price does as Intel gets closer to releasing its new "Conroe" line of CPU's which are claiming to be the fastest around. That normally starts a domino effect of prices falling. I plan to make updated posts, with pictures as I assemble "The Beast". I'll then post performace results and some benchmarks. Oh, the excitement!!

A Clean Sheet!

My Coed Indoor soccer team finished the season a perfect 10-0, winning the championship last Friday night. We pulled off a rather close 9-3 victory. I say close because we beat most teams by double digit margins. Im looking forward to next season, so we can "Threepeat" as they say in pro sports. If we keep the same team together, there is a good chance we can do it again!

It's a Done Deal!

 
After nearly a 2 year wait, Verizon FiOS has been installed! For those who aren't in "the know", FiOS is a fiber optic connection directly to the home. This gives internet connection speeds which make DSl or Cable internet look like the days of dial-up. After it was set up I did some tweaking and was able to get my speeds to 15.33MB Down/2.38MB UP. That's darned fast! These speed are important to me because I don't just check email and surf the web from my home pc. I host video game servers, upload video's and download a lot of large software installs. This is definatly a good day in Thorpeland. :) Above is a picture of the Verizon installers patching the fiber line into the side of my house. 

The Perfect Lunch

 
Many of my friends despise sushi. To me, this is an extremly tasty and fulfilling lunch! I highly recommend trying various types of "cali-rolls" if you get the chance. So many are so delicious! Don't be a wuss and be scared because it has some type of raw fish on it. Consider it a healthy break from the deep fried everything topped off with a loaded hamburger that you usually get for lunch. 

Testing the YouTube

Watch me drive a lap in the Cart class in Toca Race Driver 3. Mainly im just posting this to test the embeded video feature from youtube.com. Enjoy.

Into the Playoffs!

Both my Tuesday men's and Friday Coed soccer teams had their first round playoff games this past week. And both ended in wins for both my squads! Tuesday we played the badly outmatched "Average Joe's", beating them easily 11-3. This puts my men's team, Menace FC, in the B division championship match next Tuesday. We could have been playing for the A championship, but lost the our last game of the season, putting the top championship game out of reach according to our points standing. On Friday night, my coed team finished off our first round oppenent 9-5. This puts us into the final championship match and a chance to finish the season with a perfect 10-0 record! I see no reason why we should lose that game!

The Perfect Regular Season!

Last night was the 8th and final regular season game of my co-ed soccer teams indoor season. We finished a perfect 8-0 and head into the playoffs next week. We overwelmed practically every team we faced this season, scoring a total of 73 goals and only giving up 21 goals. We did something funny las night. With 3 minutes left in the game, we pulled all our guys off the field(3)and replaced them with the girls on our team who were still subs on the bench. So we had an all girl team playing against the other coed team. We were up 8-3 so it didnt matter. They held the ball at our opponents side for practically the entire 3 minutes and almost scored once! In the last seconds, we passed it back to our keeper and he made a bad pass out of the goal to one of their girls who scored making the final 8-5. Oh well. Fun game and we're on to the playoffs. I fully expect we will win it all fairly easily. This is the best coed team ive ever played on.

Dueling Banjos

This has to be one of the most hilarious versions of Dueling Banjos. Either that or a subliminal Ad campaign for the South.

April Wrap-Up

I haven't really had the chance to blog much this past month. Each week fly's by and the weekends become packed with stuff going on! About 3 weeks ago, Emily and I took a trip down to the Dallas Arboritum. Pretty cool place for photography and to walk around and explore. I suppose that place would be a gardners dream. It was a fun afternoon, I still need to process the pics I took that day so I can post them.

Last weekend I met up with my jetski buddy, Jimmy, at Lake Lewisville. He was out there with his new boat. Nice boat, about 27feet long with an inboard motor. Seats about 12 people and has a canopy for shade. Which is nice so you can just park out in Party Cove and relax without baking. The water was still way too chilly for me to jump in. I heard it was 67F. That didn't stop a lot of people though. It was sad to see how low the lake had become with the lack of rain we've had. Even after gaining almost 2 feet after our last major rain storm, it was still about 6 feet lower than normal. Hopefully it will fill up more before June and the official start of our jetskiing season.

On the home upgrade front, we broke down and had ceramic tile installed to replace ALL of the original linolium tile in the house. Sure it was a good chunk of money spent. But it looks great, is much more durable and raises the value of the house nicely. We are very happy with how it all looks now. It took the work crew 2 full days of work to finish. If I had tried this by myself, it would have been 2 months of trial and error. A disaster! But its done and it looks great!

On the friend front, my buddies are biting the dust left and right. By that I mean getting married!! Steve and Monica.. getting married. Cheryl and Mike, yup... getting married. Doug and Jennifer, getting married. And now even Craig and Bex have announce the M word. Wow, is there something in the water? Not that them getting married is a bad thing. But everyone at once!? Well, I guess its bound to happen to everyonee eventually. haha

What's next? Ah yes, the computer front. In gaming news, Ghost Recon 3 or "GRAW" (Ghost Recon Advanced Warrior) is set to come out in May. This one is long awaited and really looks like a great game. We'll see when the reviewers get ahold of it. On the Battlefield 2 front, Tour 3 over at www.bf2combat.net has started up today. I played the first half of our battleday and we weren't doing so well against the dreaded 2MC. But the day isn't over! Im also in the early stages of planning my next PC. Its almost time for a major upgrade and later this year it will be time to do it. So far, I should be able to build it for around $1800. Unfortunalty, technology has changed so much since I built the one I have now, that I am not even able to take any parts from this one to use in the next one and save me money. The new one is from scratch. But it will be SWEET. Dual PCI-Express cards, DDR2 3200 mem, SATA drives, Dual core AMD CPU... the focus with this PC being on speed, power and upgradability for the future.

Yard Boy

The weather is getting warm, we are finally getting rain again and that means its time to get the yard ready for spring. Ive been in the house just over a year now and the lawn finally lost its newly sodded look. Last week a fertilized and began regular watering and I think its already paying off. I got green stuff sticking up thru all the brown winter grass. Woo Whoo! A small setback has been the front of the yard where Verizon dug some holes and trenches to lay the fiber lines for the upcomming FIOS. But since Im anxiously awaiting that service, I will forgive them for tearing up the small area of my lawn. This weekend Im going to get some grass seed and replant the area. Also on a good note, the front hedge bushes which I thought were killed by the ice we got this winter, are spinging back to life with lots of new leaves and branches. Good stuff. To brighten things up, Emily and I bought a new glass storm door for the front entrance. Now we can leave the solid front door open and let light in. It really brightens the living room nicely. Now that we have had some time to really get settled in the house (a year). Im going to take some pictures to post soon.