SUPREME VICTORY!!!!!

Tonight my Men's A Division team finally got a huge monkey off our backs. We played in the Championship Final against a team that was coming in with a record of 90-0. After a long, hard fought game that ended in a 4-4 tie, we beat them in a Penalty Kick shootout!! Final score 8-7. When our final shooter, Jamie, scored the winning goal, we mobbed him. The other team fell to the turf in disgust. Ha! So, ive got another Champion T-shirt. This is a great follow up to my Co-ed Teams victory the previous Friday. We won our final there also, me scoring 3 goals in a 12-10 win. Jenna played incredible defense! Stealing the ball from their best players on more than one occation. The rest of the team played great too. Our top female scorer, Graham, put in 3 goals for 6 points. So, two championship wins in one week... not bad. Not bad at all.

Bye Bye Saddam

Seems like just yesterday I was watching bombs drop on Baghdad. Today we're driving our tanks down main street and pulling down statues of the evil Saddam. It was pretty cool to see the people in that city cheer when the statue fell. They've suddenly changed from the Anti American crowd they were just weeks earlier. Interesting.

Fireworks (Power)

Today at work we crowded around my computer monitor to watch a live web stream of the bombing of Bagdad. It was pretty incredible to watch, if you missed it or the 1000 or so replays on the nightly news. It sounds like a thunderstorm except for the massive explosions rising out of the city. They keep using the most annoying term to describe the big attack, "Shock and Aw." If I hear that term one more time im going to scream. That is the stupidest name for a large scale military attack ive ever heard of. I had just explained this opinion to my co-workers huddled around my computer watching, when suddenly another co-worker enters our room and says calmly to us, "hey guys, shock and aw has started." Yes, i wanted to scream.

Favorite Simpsons Quote

Marge Simpson: "Homer, Mr. Burns called and said if you don't come in on Friday don't bother coming in on Monday."

Homer Simpson: "Four day weekend! Wooo Whooo!"

Cough, cough... hack

Its Monday and Im home sick today. It hit me late this past weekend and only got worse as i headed into Monday. I had almost forgotten how fun it is to be congested and have my head so pressurized it feels like its going to explode. Ah, heaven.

What a view

Well we went to the Dallas Stars game and it was awesome! Our tickets were actually 8 rows up from the ice, right behind the Stars defensive net. I took my digital camera and took a bunch of pictures. I will be posting them soon on my site for all to see. I wore my Blackhawks jersey to show my support. To my surprise there were quite a few other people wearing Chicago jersey's too. Which I thought was pretty cool.

Countdown to Victory!

Well almost. Last night my girlfriend Jenna and I decided to buy tickets for a Dallas Star's ice hockey game. Now, there are two ways to do this. The first way is the chump way. You can contact the Star's box office and severly lighten you wallet as you pay a hefty price for a not so hot seat (a.k.a. - nosebleed). Or, there is the second method... hit Ebay and click your way to bargain goodness! And thats what I did. In the first auction, I was bidding on a pair of tickets on the 6th row, right at mid-ice. Now, this is prime "stray puck to the teeth" area, so i knew quite a few people would be bidding for them. I was correct. I lost the bidding in the last seconds. No problem. I had already located my second set of tickets to bid on. They were located in about the 15th row, behind the Star's defensive goal. Still pretty darned good seats! We then noticed there were no bid's yet on these tickets, and it had the option to "Buy Now" at a set price. Still $20 lower per ticket than the box office price. I grabbed them fast! I will be meeting the guy tonight to get the tickets and Wednesday night I'll be wearing my Blackhawks jersey, watching the game from some sweet seats. Oh yeah.

Bad Investments

Let me tell you all about a very bad investment Ive learned more about recently. There is a VERY large house not far from where I live. By large its listed as in the 50,000 square foot large. Yes, that's four zero's. Basically a rich guys wife went to France and when she came back begged her husband for a house modeled after a French Chatau (spelling?). He abided by her wishes and built this MASSIVE house. They lived alone in it for just over a year. Now, she feels its too big for just the two of them. (duh!) So the husband has put the house up for sale. And they will now move into the "smaller" house the own across the street, which is valued at just $2 million. The big house has been priced at...are you sitting down.... $45 million. The monthly payment on this house is $650,000. Now, despite what you have just read, I do not live in a rich area of the Dallas Metroplex. This house is an oddity to say the least. So im betting he will not get $45 million for this place. Hence the really bad investment. Moral of this story: If the wife, girlfriend, sister, mom, grandma, stepmom... anyone, ever asks you to build them a 50K sq ft home modeled after a French Chatau out of your love for them, just say "But dear how about the "cosey" $2 million home just across the street?" You'll save yourself a heck of a lot of money in the long run.
I am going to try to get a photo of this "shack" and post it on my site. Not easily done though. The owners dont like people stopping in front of their mansion. Pesky common folk!

Texas Weather

Two days ago it was sunny and in the upper 60's here. I was out in my shorts and t-shirt enjoying the nice weather. Today, its 25F and sleeting ice pellets. Im sure tomorrow it will be 90 degrees and sunny.

Are you there? ... Over.

Recently, my place of work issued us new work phones. Normally that would mean getting the cheapest cingular or nokia phone the vendor had just so we could communicate. This time though, they gave us those cool Motorala Nextel phones. These are the ones that have the walkie talkie button on the side. No more dialing a full number just to ask a simple question. Now i just highlight the guys name, and hit an alert button. In seconds i get a loud, "whats up?!" from my phone. Its pretty cool. Our phones have that rubber, shock absorbing coating on them and a rugged outdoors yellow face. I asked the boss if we would be getting the matching Hummer H2's to go with the phones. All i got was a blank stare. I'll take that as a No.
Earlier this week I decided to use a few comp hours I had accrued thru work and take Monday and Tuesday off work. It was nice to just relax and get caught up on a few projects ive been working on at home. On Tuesday I went out to lunch with my buddy Chris. He's recently fallen on hard times in the work department and tells me he has decided to return to his home town in South Texas to save some money and finish his degree. Although I was a little bummed to hear he is moving, he promised to move back up here in about a year. Which will be cool. Until then i figure that will give me the excuse to drive to South Texas and get the beach/Gulf of Mexico tour from a local's view. Chris is not only a good friend of mine but a fierce competitor in Medal of Honor. Now how many friends do you have that will let you fire round after round of red hot lead into their back and then laugh and have lunch with you the next day? Hey, what are friends for! haha

GGGGOOOOOAAAAALLLLL!!!!!!

Friday night, I had another one of those moments which always reminds me of why I love playing soccer so much. It was our first Co-Ed game of the new season. We were leading 3-1 at half time but had not played as well the second half. It was now tied 4-4. Less than a minute left in the game. Our team was awarded an out of bounds free kick an just past mid-field. Dustin takes the in bounds kick and passes it to Heather, one of our forwards. As their defenders close down on her, she quickly passes the ball over to me. I have the ball just outside the top of the other teams goalie box, I hear the guys on the bench yelling, "10 seconds!!". One defender in front of me and one closing in quickly from my left. I throw a quick fake to my left and push the ball a couple feet out to my right. Wind-up, strike the ball as hard as i can... lower left corner, nothing but net. Game winner! Four seconds left, time runs out.. we win!! I have to say, there's nothing more satisfying in soccer than to see your opponents defenders collapse to the ground in exhaustion and frustration, knowing they are beat and there is nothing they can do. ha! Of course, ive been on that side of things before too, so i know how awful it feels. But, this was my time to smile. :)

Disaster Strikes

Sometimes in soccer you get to do the whipping, other times you get whipped. Well tuesday my men's team got WHIPPED. 11-0 to be exact. Yes you read correctly. No, we were not short players. No, we did'nt play the Brazilian national team. We just played awful. At half time, we were down 5-0. We've been there before as a team and have come back. So no one was too worried. By mid-second half, we began to realize and accept that we just could'nt buy a goal that night. For any of my teammates that may find their way to this page, let me break down what exactly went wrong. First off let me state that the score was of NO fault of our goal keeper Steve. He played great actually, making some incredible saves. It was our lack of defending and player marking that got us in trouble. The week before we had played a weaker team. We were able to run the field at our own pace and score on odd man rushes. Not this time. Often caught with only two defenders, we waited for the quick turn over to spring a forward for a fast break. This didnt work because the other team had plenty of speed and was able to get a third defender back every time to help kill our attacks. There was no build up in midfield and no combination passing in our attacking third. Our midfielders wanted to attack, became tired and were unable to defend effectivly. Their speedy forwards and midfielders were able to bring the ball up the field, almost unpressured for the most part and find an open forward making a run downfield. Frustration began to set in and aggressive ball tackling turned into just plain player tackling as our defenders tripped and drug down their forwards. This resulted in two penatly shots and 2 goals for them. As we fell behind in the score, all patience was lost. Normally we are a team that controls the ball. Cycling it around our defenders, through midfield and to the forwards to finish. On this night, it was the oppisote. We resorted to send repeated long balls up the field in hopes of getting a lucky shot. We probably connected no more than 4 consecutive passes and forced or hurried 80% of our shots on goal. This resulted in lots of easy saves for their keeper. A long story short, we just fell apart. It looks like it will take at least one more season for our team to be ready to take the tittle. We will now play in the third place match in the play-offs. Bummer.

Almost There

My co-ed soccer team scored a big win last friday night with an 8-1 win. Also during our big win, my girlfriend Jenna got her first ever assist for a goal! She recieved the ball at the top left of the keepers penalty box. She spun to her right and fired a left footed shot which hit the wall just outside the net. The rebound came rolling right out to the penalty spot where another one of our girl players finished it off with a goal! I was very proud of her when she got the assist. This is her first soccer season ever so she's still learning.
On a totally different note, if you are into video editing on your PC and are looking for a cheap and easy video editing software suite... check out Microsoft Movie Maker 2.0. Its free to download from Microsofts site and is a MAJOR upgrade from the previous version. In a short amount of time you will be editing video clips, adding music and special effects. Then tell it what you want to use the video for, (the web, CD, LAN) and it will help you choose the correct format and compression. I had it pretty much mastered in 30 minutes.

HATE!!!

If you're like me, you absolutly hate pop-up ad's on the web. It's really insulting to think the ad's are put there with the expectation that we will be distracted from the site we came to see, enough to click on the ad and buy their product. Anyhow, don't waste your money on pop-up "killer" software. I saw one of these programs at walmart for $30! Consider this my download tip of the week. Go to www.avantbrowser.com. Download their browser. It has a built-in pop up killer that works great. It also has a ton of cool web surfing enhancements. Its not actually a completely new browser. It uses Internet Explorer as its basis. But, its free and very very good at what it does.

Big Win!

Last night my men's A league soccer team scored a big win over a rival team, 7-4. This gives us the 3 points needed to move us closer to second place and into the finals! We played this team about a month ago and had to come from behind to end the game with a 6-6 tie. It felt good to get the win this time around. I gotta give props to our keeper Steve. He was on his game, making diving and quick reaction saves on practically every shot he faced. The Goal of the Game goes to Cody for his almost half field volley that caught their keeper standing off his goaline, scoring a crucial goal. And lastly, I cant forget Dustin (tenatious D). His relentless defensive hustle and constant runs into the offense, helped us out on both ends of the field. One more game and one more win needed to make it into the final match!

Time Flys

Well it seemed like just last year I was writing about playing paintball. Oh wait, it was. Christmas and New Years Eve have come and gone and im finally getting back to updating my blog! Xmas was all good here. Got some cool things I wanted. Spent New Years Eve at a pub called The Londoner with my girlfriend, Jenna. Its a sports bar with a small dance floor and a very English theme to the place. Go figure. So today I sit, in a Novell training class, overlooking Addison Texas from the 12th floor of a high rise office building. Im here with a co-working trying to do the "advance my knowledge-advance my career" thing. So far its all good. Stay tuned!

Splat!

This past saturday, I played paintball with a bunch of guys from work. I had forgotten how much fun that sport is! Earlier this year I had bought a paintball gun (marker) from a buddy of mine and I finally got to use it. The last time I played I had to rent a gun. Which turned out to be a single shot, pump action type. This time, I was fully armed with a semi-auto, paintball spraying machine. haha In the course of 4 hours of play, I shot over a 1000 rounds (1 case)! But having the semi-auto gun definatly increased my number of tags. Be sure to check the pictures on my site of the paintball battle! www.thorpeland.com/paintball.htm

Today

It's finally friday! Although Im here at work and its just past 7am, at least its the end of the week. Not a whole lot of excitement as of late. Thanksgiving at the Thorpe house went smooth. I ate all I could. Then, like the Grinch who stole Thanksgiving, I snuck away with most of the families leftovers from the big meal. Ah yes, I was eating good for the next few days.
Its actually starting to get cold here in Texas. Lately our nights have been getting down to the uppper 20's (F), and the days have barely been topping off at 50. I laugh because when i was living in the Chicagoland area, those temperatures would have been reason to put on the swim shorts and hit the beach! Instead, my friends up north are just hoping each daytime high will get UP TO 20 degrees. My friend Dan in California emailed me the other day to taunt me with the 70 degree temps they are getting. (note to self, be sure to laugh at dan after next large cali earthquake.) See, life all balances out. hehe

Guess Who's Back?

Well, Monday night I renewed the Thorpeland.com Domain name for another 4 years!! That means I will be around for quite a while longer. Who know's what adventures and pictures I will get to post over the years to come. I have some big ideas for my site, just havent had the time to sit down and really do them. Perhaps now that I know I have four more years of site updating, it will motivate me to really change things up? If anyone has any cool website ideas they think could improve my site, please go back to my hompage (www.thorpeland.com) and click on the "Contact Me" link. Shoot me an email with ANY ideas.

Stupid People Tricks

Some people are just too stupid for their own good. And to think, this kid will probably sue because he was given the idea by something he saw. Idiot! Go. Read.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Movies/11/12/life.jackass.reut/index.html