Rally Racing!!

There are few motor sports as exciting to watch as Rally Racing. Big in Europe, this awesome race type has yet to really catch on in the USA. I wish it would. Watch this clip as this team races through a dirt road course at 70mph!

Brother Steve, You'll Be Missed

 
Its been almost a month since my last blog post. On Saturday, January 21st my older brother Steve passed away after a 2 year battle with cancer. That would be his picture above. Steve was only 48 years old. Techincally, he was my half-brother. But he was always around my entire life, so to me, he was just my brother. Steve was a great guy. A comedian, a dedicated bass fisherman, a Harley rider and a guy who could fix, upgrade, or modify anything. He was very creative. When I was a kid he would play a game with me. He called it, "make Thorpe laugh till he can't breathe". Steve was never short on jokes and wisecracks. One of the funniest guys I ever knew. I found out just over a year ago about his cancer. He had wanted to keep it a secret and just take care of his treatments in private. I guess he just didn't want us to worry or be burdened finacially with him. I'll never really know. I do know I'll miss the guy. I still find myself out somewhere and I'll see or hear something and I think, "oh, I gotta show Steve this!". Then I remember.
We had a small funeral for Steve on January 25th, a Wednesday night. It was attended by me and Emily, my family, his girlfriend Flo and her family and about 25 others from his work and circle of friends. He was cremated and the small urn sat on the table at the head of the ceremony. It was all so very strange to see his hat which he always wore and his leather riding jacket laying out on the table, knowing I just saw him in them a couple months back. At the funeral, my dad told me when he was with Steve in his final hour, Steve told my dad he had no regrets about his life. Knowing that,I supose, is at least some consolation to bring out of such a sad event.

Now that I've found the words to post about my brother Steve and his passing, I can begin updating my blog on a regular basis again. I just didn't feel it was right to continue posting about my daily trivial events until I talked about Steve in the way I wanted to . 

One Crazy Weekend!

It was finally here! Last Friday, I was off to Las Vegas, Nevada to meet up with a few of my buddies for our friend Kirk's bachaelor party. We had this planned for about 3 months and everyone was looking forward to it.

I arrived at DFW airport around 7:30AM for my 8:40AM flight. I was to meet Kirk there so we could try to get seats together on the plane. A quick cell call later, I had found him just inside the baggage check area and we were off to our gate. That's when he turns to me and says, "there has been a change in plans". I look at him puzzled and ask what in the world he's talking about. He then say's, "Jennifer and I got into a big fight last night and the wedding is off". My response is, "dude, im still going to Vegas". I tell him to hold off telling Dan this news until we unite with him at the Vegas airport. I just had to see his face when he told him.

So we board the flight and lift off. I manage to talk the kid sitting next to me, to allow kirk to sit there instead. Kirk takes the seat next to me and within 10 minutes he's doing the head bob as he falls alseep. Why bother switching seats? On top of that, Kirk is a rather furry guy and his Wookie left arm is brushing up against mine on the arm rest the entire flight. Akward.

We land, finally get off the plane and trek thru the airport to find Dan. We meet up at the baggage claim and now we are three. Dan then tells me that one of our planned group, Mark, was M.I.A. and was an assumed no-show for this trip. Oh... bummer. I don't have to listen to 3 days of trash talk, bragging and exagerations. This trip just got better. LOL So now, we were just missing one more guy... Ziggy.

I found out Ziggy had flown into Vegas on Thursday, the night before. He was already at the hotel casino awaiting us. So to the cab and off we went, headed for the Monte Carlo. We get there and no sign of Ziggy. The hotel check in counter couldnt find record of him in their system. Not good. He's not answering his phone either. So we decide to walk the casino floor to find him. Within 15 minutes we find him, sitting at a "Texas Hold'em" table. Turns out there was some confusion with names and reservations and he had already checked in. We pull him away from our table and go to get our rooms.

The rooms were basic hotel rooms, 2 beds, a TV and bathroom. But it was clean and comfy. We were on the 17th floor over looking the New York, New York hotel and a few others. It was a nice view! We spent most the day down in the hotel's casino. I played a few slot machines while the other guys went into a poker tourny room. This lasted until evening and dinner time.

Dan had dinner plans and reservations already set. Although Kirk had already announced the wedding was off, we still wanted to have a nice dinner as a group. Everyone got cleaned and dressed up and met in the sports bar downstairs. That's when Ziggy tells us he's lost almost $5000 in the casino. But then he add's that he's been given the card of the casino manager and to call them if we need anything. So he whips out his cell phone and gives the guy a call. Fifteen minutes later, we have a limo to use for the evening. We all jump in and head to a restaraunt called "El Frisco's". Its a very unusual feeling to pull up to a restaraunt and have open your door. Then when you step out everyone else waiting to eat turn and stares to see who's in the limo. That was a new one for me! We go in and it turns out this is a VERY nice place. I felt a bit underdressed, but oh well. We get seated, order and then the food arrives. Wow! I'm not a huge steak fan, but this had to be some of the best steak I've ever tasted. The meal was delicious and I was stuffed. But I should be for $60.

Saturday was a normal tourist day in Vegas. Well, except for breakfast. Dan recommended we head over to the Wynn Hotel. The Wynn Hotel's rooms average around $400 to $500 a night. Not a cheap place. But their breakfast buffett is nothing short of amazing! For about $28, you get to choose from literally hundreds of different types of food. Everything from waffles, pancakes, eggs and bacon... to king crab legs, fillet minion and chef prepared omletts while you wait. Every corner I turned, I found a new type of food. This was truly a dangerous buffett. I could eat myself into a comma if not careful. Six plates later, I had almost done that. I had our waiter bring me some coffee, hoping to bring me out of the deep sleep I felt coming over me. We finally left the buffett and decided to walk off our food.

First stop, the Ferrari dealership inside the hotel. This place was pretty amazing. First off, it costs $10 just to walk around inside it... unless you are a prospective buyer. This was a showroom like nothing ive seen before. Each car, sits on a rotating pedestal with its doors and engine hood open. Prices ranges from $100K to $1.2 million. Yes... that's for a car. Of course they had ropes around everything so there was no sitting and taking pictures in the cars. And I had forgot to bring my digital cam on the trip to the Wynn Hotel, so I had to use my cell phone camera. Not the greatest but i can at least show some pictures of the day. The dealership has an upstairs main show room then a downstairs repair shop and museum. The repair shop reminded me of an operating room. It was spotless, clean and very sterile looking. You could probably eat off the floor. It was all very amazing. But hey, when you spend hundreds of thousands on a car I guess you want to give it the best money can buy. We learned a Ferrari oil change and basic service runs $3000. Holly crap!

From there we headed out to walk the strip. Its always fun to people watch out there. We'd walk for a bit then stop off at a hotel to check it out, the guys would gamble some then we'd hit the sidewalks again. We probably walked 5 miles that day. My feet were killing me. One of the things that really gave me a chuckle last time I was in Vegas was the guys who stand on every street corner handing out what looks like baseball trading cards. But if you look at them, you'll see they are escort calling cards. The card usually has a risque picture on it with the girls "name" and number. I started joking with dan that I was going to collect the whole deck of cards this trip out. So as we walked down the stip, I accepted every card each of these people were handing out. By day two, I had probably 60 "trading" cards. I guess its nothing more than a humorous souvenier from Vegas for me to look back on.

Sunday was quite a bit slower. Dan's flight left at 8am. Kirk and I were flying out that night and Ziggy's flight left Monday morning. I spent the day watching the NFL playoff games down in the casino. Unfortunatly, my Bears decided not to play much defense in the biggest game of their season. They allowed the weak Panthers to score early and they never quite caught up, losing 28-21. Close but not enough. Oh well, next year. It was a memorable game to watch in Vegas. I was surrounded by Bears fans, which was pretty cool. Everytime they made a big play or scored a touchdown, we all cheered loudly.

Our flight home was a beating, in true Las Vegas tradition. My 8:40pm flight got delayed by 30 minutes. So after a 3 hour flight, then the 2 hour jump ahead in time zones, I got home at 2:45AM local time. I hit the bed and was out... quick. Fun trip, guys. Lots of good memories from this one. Yes Dan, you'll get you're hot wings next trip to Dallas.

An Easy Win

My Tuesday "A" division team played a new team last night. I dont think this new team did their homework before signing up, because they should have easily been placed in the C or even D division. We had no problem beating them 7-0. And their season will only get worse, because we're probably the 3rd or 4th best team in the division right now. I finished with 1 goal and 1 assist. The assist was especially nice because I beat two defenders on the dribble, and made a no-look pass to the back post of the goal, where my teammate Thomas was standing un-marked. He had an easy tap in for the goal. The score should have been higher than 7-0. We missed several easy chances. Im not sure if I like these kind of games because it doesn't make our team any better or sharpen us up for the tough teams that lay ahead in the schedule.

On to the Playoffs!

 

Well the Bears have won the NFC North and a first round bye into the playoffs! I won my lunch bet with Brotha James, although he has yet to pay up. He's completely disgusted that the cowgirls didn't make the playoffs and the Bears did. HA!! So, I'm hoping the Bears will play the Buc's in their first game at home. They should, and better, beat them! Then it's off to a real game. The NFC Championship against the Seattle Seahawks. Tough game! But its just amazing that just 2 winnable games stand between the Bears and the Superbowl! Im not predicting a SB appearance yet, but hey, they've got a better chance than some of the other NFC teams also playing for it. This has been such a great season, considering they looked like a college team the past couple years. With the return of Rex Grossman to the offense (pictured above), they are now a real threat to anyone they play. GO BEARS!! 

Just Say No, Dan

In the world of "I told you so's", I had a huge one this past Wednesday night while out with some buddies. Since my old college roomate, Dan, is in town from L.A. for the week we thought we'd meet up with some other old college bud's at a bar in downtown Dallas. As we are going into the bar, Dan and I notice what looks like a homeless guy walking around out front of the bar, holding a tray with a bunch of sandwhiches wrapped in tin-foil on them. I didnt pay much attention to him, but Dan say's, "dude im starving I should buy one!". I tell him forget it we'll get something to eat after the bar. So we go on in, meed up with our buddies and have a good time. A couple of hours later we come out. The homeless guy is still there with his sandwhiches. Dan see's him and whips out his wallet and asks the guy how much for a sandwhich? I look at him and say, "are you kidding me?" He quickly answers "man im starving, its just a sandwhich". Its at this point I go on to tell him about the FDA, restaraunt food inspectors, food vendors licenses, ect. But he pays no mind to me and buys the tin-foil surprise. He opens it up and starts chowing down. All I hear is muffled talk about how good the BBQ sandwhich is and how he could NEVER get anything this tasty out in California. I take him home and drop him off.
The next morning I get a text message, "dude you dropped me off and i threw up". He calls me a few minutes later to also say he was throwing up and had diarhea most the night also. I gotta say it, I told you so man!! DONT BUY FOOD FROM A HOMELESS GUY!!! Who knows how old that BBQ was, or if it was even BBQ! Maybe it was dog food with BBQ sauce. HAHA! He's lucky he didn't end up in the hospital getting his stomach pumped. Lesson learned Danny boy.

They're In!!

It's been awhile since my last post. I finally have something news worthy to announce. Although it really isn't about me directly. Yesterday my Chicago Bears beat the dreaded Greenbay Packer, sweeping them in both games this season and winning the NFC North division. On top of that, they are in the playoffs with a first round bye! To make things even sweeter, the return of injured starting QB Rex Grossman has sparked a completely new offense. They are now putting points on the board and will be a much tougher team to beat in the playoffs. They'll need it. I fear they will face The Seahawks, who are awfully good. With this latest win, it also puts me closer to winning my best season record bet with Brotha James. Subway lunch will be mine! Be sure to watch the Bears in the playoffs, there will be some very exciting football on TV!

Consulation Victory

My men's "A" division team won the championship last night! Well, sort of. After last weeks loss in the semi's, we were out of contention for the first place match. So the league decided to make the 3rd place match, the Division II championship match. Odd, but hey, I'll take it. We beat our opponents fairly easily. I scored one nice goal and played a large roll in 2 more goals in the 7-4 victory. At least we get the free champ T-shirt. I can always use another T-shirt.

The Statistics of War

 

For anyone who is a Battlefield 2 fan, check out the website www.bf2s.com for a full break down of every statistic of every player in the game. It's very interesting to see how you actually stack up against players from all over the world. 

They're Actually Doing It!!

 

My once laughed at Chicago Bears have now won 7 games in a row. They hold first place in the NFC North and have silenced the doubters by beating NFC East leaders, The Carolina Panthers and then the NFC South leaders, The Tampa Bay Bucs. My lunch bet with Brotha James is looking better and better each week. His dallas cowgirls lost last week dropping them to a 7-4 record while this latest Bears win moved me to 8-3. The Dallas schedule only gets tougher from here out. They face the Giants, Redskins, the Panthers and the Rams. All tough teams for the cowgirls. The Bears face the Packers... twice, the Steelers, Falcons and the Vikings. I see a nice winning record by seasons end. No Super Bowl, but I'll take a couple good playoff games! 

BEAT TO THE PUNCH!!

 

My sister emails me today to break the news she bought this (see picture above). A 46 inch DLP widescreen TV. What are the odd's I was just blogging and thinking about getting a similar version for my place and so was she, at the same time?! Although I'm looking at the 50inch version, her's still does look quite nice once in the living room. She is having Direct TV set up the high definition reciever and dish tomorrow. I'll be there very soon to check things out. Dang it... beat to the punch!! 

Must...Have...Need...Bigger!!

The last thing on my mind recently had to have been my TV. Well that all changed yesterday when I got a Newegg.com flyer in the mail advertising their deals. They are selling a 50 inch DLP television for $2047. Not bad I thought, for a DLP big screen. So I went down to Best Buy to see what they had. They are selling the exact same TV for $3400! Wow! Then my mind starts to reason and bargin. Yeah... I could afford two grand. I'll just work hard to pay it off soon! Then reality kicks in. DOH!! Save your money boy! Either way, when my current Sanyo 32 inch TV dies, I know what I WILL be upgrading to. Oh how nice the picture looked while in Best Buy. That would make watching my Bears unbelievably awesome. They offer a 60 inch screen evenm, but it's like $3000 and thats just crazy for a TV.

My Drug

 

This would be a screenshot of a game called Battlefield 2 for the PC. This one of the most action packed, fun games I've ever played. To top it off, you can track the stats of you and your buddies in-game progress over at www.bf2s.com! Rarely do I think a game is worth $50. But this one is an exception. I'm definatly getting my money's worth out of this one. Never have I had so much fun, dying over and over again in a game. :) 

This is a humorous picture of the two little monsters that went camping with me this weekend. Actually they are two great kids. They gave us a ton of laughs and some great times to remember. Taylor (left) and James had a great time hiking, building the fires, helping cook and most of all helping eat during our trip to Fobb Bottom Wildlife Preserve at Lake Texoma.

 

This is one of my favorite shots from last sundays MLS game. My 300mm lens really helped it seem like I wasn't actually sitting in the 21st row. With some slight cropping, I was able to really bring the action up-close to the lens! 

GOAL!

Well the Major League Soccer championship game was a blast. We had great seats and I was able to take some really good action shots. The Los Angeles Galaxy beat the New England Revolution 1-0 in overtime. Have a look at some of the picturs I took!

MLS CHAMP GAME PHOTO'S!

Excitement Ahead!

I have two events coming up which I am really looking forward to. This weekend Ive been invited to go with some soccer buddies to the Major League Soccer Championship Game. (MLS) I'll be sitting at midfield in row 22. Should give me a great chance to put my Digital Rebel to good use. I hope to get some really great action shots! This is the first time MLS has held the championship game in Texas. I think its because of the newly finished "Pizza Hut Park" which was built for FC Dallas of the MLS.

The second event is the following weekend. Another campout is planned! This time we'll be heading up to Lake Texoma to do some trail hiking, fishing and of course... camping. Accompanying will be EVP, little EVP and a work buddy, Clay with his son. Should be a blast of a time. Pictures of the events coming soon!

Going, Going... Gone

This past Saturday was the big day for our first garage sale. We had combined stuff from mine, Emily's, her friend Sheila and my mom's homes and piled it all into my garage. We stuck price tags on it all and waited for the people to arrive. Ive learned some intersting things about garage sale shoppers. First, they re-define the term "cheap". If you're selling something for a dollar, they want it for 50 cents. If the price is 50 cents, they want it for 25 cents. And if you won't bend on your already cheap price, they act offended. Secondly, some people will try to steal items they cannot get the deal they want on. A young girl came up to me and asked if she could have 3 music CD's for $2, even though they were marked $1 each. I said, no... they're $3 for the 3. She said ok and walked off into the crowd. A few minutes later, we noticed those 3 CD's were gone. She took them anyhow. How nice of her. Another thing that annoyed me. A large hispanic family arrived. They had 4 adults and about 4 or 5 children. They immediatly spread out to look at everything. But the adults completely stopped watching any of the kids. One of the girls digs thru a box of random stuff for sale, finds a tube of eye liner and begins to draw on on of Emily's stuff animals for sale. We take it from her and luckly were able to clean it off somewhat. Then the family begins to leave. They decided not to buy anything, yet I notice EVERY kid is carrying something back to the car!! I walked down the driveway to stop them. It wasnt till then that the parents looked what the kids were carrying and reluctantly paid for what they were taking.

By the end of the afternoon we had actually done pretty good. A lot of stuff had been sold. I made about $80 and Emily made about $120. Not bad for a bunch of our junk we didnt want anymore. We may have another in a few months. But this time, security will be a little tighter.

An Evening With Suse

Or more accurately, SUSE 10.0, the latest release of the Linux distro from Novell. Up until recently, I had thought Novell was charging $60 for this Linux version. But come to find out, that's only if you want their full tech support. If you don't, its 100% free. So I figured I'd give it a look. To play it safe, I decided to install the OS as a virtual machine in a handy program called VMWare. This will allow me to run Linux, on my high-end pc, without the danger of losing all my Window XP Pro settings and work.

I spent about an hour downloading and burning the 5 CD SUSE 10 setup disks. Then, about another 45 minutes installing the disks. It was a pleasant surprise to find this Linux install was about as easy as any Windows XP install ive done recently. I chose the default options and let the install do what it found best for my system. I was glad to see it only wanted to use 4GB of disk space and only 256MB of RAM to run the OS in. This hardly puts a dent in my 1.75GB of total installed system RAM. Once the install finished, I was prompted to set up my root password and create a normal user log in. After one final system reboot, I was up and running in SUSE Linux!

I had decided I was going try to use only Linux for the evening. Which immediatly excluded any gaming, since few real games are written to work on Linux. Web surfing seemed about normal. Using Firefox browser, I was able to install their browser extensions and surf pretty much like I normally would. My first problem came when I encountered a site using Macromedia Flash. I tried to install the Flash plug-in but found out that Firefox tries to download and install the normal Flash.exe file. The problem being, Linux does not use .EXE install files. It uses something called "Tarballs". Yeah, I laughed for awhile too. And unlike Windows where you simply click on the install file and a wizard walks you thru setting up the new program, tarball files, or ".tar" files must be de-compressed first, then installed thru a variety of command line based phases. I haven't quite figured it all out yet. There's a bit of a learning curve here. I even tried to follow some guys tutorial, but that didn't go so well. This "so-called" beginners guide, took for granted I knew certian things. One of his first instructions was, run some type of compiler to un-tar the files to a specific directory. Yeah, back up and tell me how to do that first!!! So, long story short, I was unable to install a Linux version of Flash. Or, any other software for that matter.

Thats ok, onward with whatever I could do then! I was impressed with the amount of software that came bundled with SUSE 10. There's a fully functional Office Suite, GIMP, the image editing package, a fully fuctional multi-client chat program and tons of others that come included. Even plug & play has greatly improved since my last Linux experience with Mandrake 8. I turned on my HP 1350 color printer and it was quickly detected, installed and ready to use. Nice. SUSE now even has its own version of Automatic Update. It popped up prompting me to check for updates. I clicked yes and in seconds I was shown a list of 15 or so updates. One more click and they all downloaded and installed on the system. Again, nice! I just wish installing a normal program was that easy. I decided to give the Office suite a compatibility test. I created a text document and wanted to see if I could open it on my Windows XP system in Office 2000. After typing up a few quick sentences, I clicked on "Save As". The drop down list gave me a choice of various Office suites and versions to choose from. I selected Microsoft Office 2000 and clicked save. I emailed it to myself and checked my email on my Windows PC. Office 2000 opened it easily with no format problems. Nice!

Overall, this latest SUSE 10 release is a very useable, pleasant experience. With the exception of not being able to install any software packages, there are some people who could use it right out of the box and be perfectly productive. Installing is a peice of cake, and using it only takes some time to get the hang of where everything is. Security is nice, but its Linux so thats a given. Making any changes to the system prompts you for the root (admin) password. I wish windows did that. I feel that SUSE (or Linux in general) is so close to becoming wide spread on peoples PC's. If they can just make installing software easy, it will explode in popularity. Then hopefully game makers will ship games for it. Look out Microsoft, and ambush looms.

Greatest Sunday EVER

Ever since the begining of this NFL season, I've had an ongoing bet with Brotha James. The bet being, my Chicago Bears would finish the season with a better record than his sorry Dallas Cowgirls. At first, it was looking like I was in trouble. My bears fell to 1-3 while the cowgirls jumped out to 2-2. Then they went up to 4-2. Luckily da Bears were able to get another win, giving them a 2-3 record. Then, this past Sunday happend. Dallas suffered one of the most embarassing losses an NFL team could have had happen. With the game tied at 10-10 against Seatle, 10 seconds on the clock, Dallas throws an interception which is run back to the 35 yard line. Seatle comes on the field and kicks a 50 yard feild goal to win it. At the same time up in Chicago, my Bears solid defense held the Ravens to only 2 field goals and beat them 10-6! Now, with a 3-3 record they are gaining ground on the 4-3 cowgirls. Dallas has a tough schedule ahead, with the Bronco's and Eagles to play. Chicago, has much better odd's with Detroit and happless Green Bay in its sights. Things are looking better!