Thursday, January 29, 2004
Have you ever woken up in a rotten mood? Some people would call it waking up on the wrong side of the bed. Using this analogy my mood is some what akin to this; Wake up, Jump out of bed and slam into the wall, Trip on bed clothes and fall on my face into a pile left by my cat who doesn't appreciate his litter box. Yeah... that about sums it up.

I have a feeling my boss is going to be looking for a fight later today. I wonder what kind of mood I'll be in when that's over with.

8:47 AM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

Friday, January 23, 2004
Hmm... well I'm just ready for this week to be over. It's almost there, but I still have a few things to do before I manage.

This week has been frustrating and exhausting. Today has been no exception.

Last weekend was busy. My mom, brother, and Sam came in town to finish getting moved. Friday night was very low key since I had been exhausted from the week. Saturday Dezi and I went out to help with the apartment and try and get Jeff's car running. We replaced the alternator with the help of Keri's hubby Shawn. On my way up there, I got pulled over by a cop. He didn't even ask me what was going on... just gave me the ticket and said that I might not get differed adjudication since I have my bus driver's license. I was more than a little annoyed with the boy.

We got the car running and the ladies had most of the apartment packed and ready to be loaded. We went back to my place and then dined at a great place in Frisco called Leonardo's.

I recently purchased an Xbox and my brother and I played a little Soul Caliber 2. He actually woke up around 5:00 in the morning and played so he could get good enough to beat me. Hmm.... that's awfully familiar for some reason.

Sunday was another busy day. We got the trailer packed up and then I had time to go home and plan my lesson for youth that night. The lesson went over well. We talked about how other people can be pulling us in different directions and how they might not have our best intentions in mind.

Last Monday Dezi and I had our first dance lesson. Our instructor was Satan with a smile. He's very touchy feely (1 strike) and he's so peppy he's annoying (2nd strike). Imagine a human equivalent of a young puppy that you can't get to quit from jumping up and down on your leg. I may be exagerating, but my opinion is my own. The lesson was fine, but I was coming from Jiu-Jitsu till 8:15 and trying to make it to Plano at 9. Sometimes I wish Dezi and I didn't stay so busy. Oh well... It makes things interesting.

This weekend I'm going to an honest to God toga party. I'm trying to decide if that's scary or not. We'll just have to see.

I'm still at work switching our production environment back over to our good servers. I'm already in trouble with Dezi, but there's not a whole lot I could do about it. Even though 2 of us argued to do it tomorrow, it was decided to do it this evening. Sigh... Now I have to go reconcile with a frustrated girlfriend.

6:57 PM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

Wednesday, January 21, 2004
I'm running on very little sleep, a little adrenaline, and a whole lot of coffee. We have had a whole lot of issues with our servers this week. I've been up till 4 for the last 2 nights in a row. Not necessarily all at work, but at work till the wee hours of the morning.

Hopefully today can be a return to normalcy.

10:05 AM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

Monday, January 12, 2004
I wonder if anyone else is amused by the spam mail asking if you want to block spam. Well... rule number one. I will never buy anything from a spammer. Rule number two, I'm not going to provide my email address to a known spammer. Silly boys.

I had a really good weekend. I was very geeky. I had purchased a new TV last week and it was finally delivered Saturday afternoon. I am very pleased with it. I replaced my little 19" TV with a 32" flat screen. I spent most of that afternoon figuring out how I wanted to hook up the rest of my components. I'm quite pleased with the results. It's been moved and seconded that I have a Super Bowl party at my new digs. Since I decided to do that, I'm working on finally putting stuff on the walls and making the office look like I actually do things in there. It will be nice when it's done, but it costs money to do some of that. The bathroom is mostly done and I have bought some art/pictures with Dezi's help.

Saturday I also proved that a geek can be a grease monkey. Dezi has had the front headlight out on her car for months now. She bought the bulbs and I promised I would help her put them on. Little did I realize what took me all of 10 minutes on my old Nissan took us the better part of 2.5 hours to figure out how to get the head lamp assembly out. The picture that came with the users manual was really lousy. We went to a nearby AutoZone to purchase the maintenance manual from Pontiac. When it told me I had been pulling on the right things, I took out a giant set of channel locks and pulled very hard. The pins finally came out. When all else fails, get a bigger wrench.

That night we went out to eat with Jeff and Lisa. It had been a while since we'd seen them last and it was good to go play and visit. We ended up back at there place to watch a movie and I got to wrestle with Tito. Tito is there 80 pound black lab that always goes a little crazy when I come over.

We used my new grill a couple of times this weekend. I am happy about having the ability to use it. I cooked a nice big steak one night and grilled a eggplant steak with some grilled vegetables. When someone one doesn't eat meat, you have to get creative on what you can grill for them. It all turned out well and I'm pretty happy with it.

My Jiu-Jitsu lessons are going well. We have a new instructor who's actually much more formal in his training. I'm excited about the chance to learn, but worked us over pretty good tonight. I'm tired and can tell I'm going to be sore tomorrow. But I'm pretty content. I'm glad I'm taking the class and I think it will be good for me. In the meantime, I'm going to be exhausted every time I come out of that class.

11:29 PM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

Tuesday, January 06, 2004
So I have to tell my super small aggie world story. I walk into class tonight and start taking off my shoes and socks and get ready and the teacher is talking to a guy named "Mackey." I thought it couldn't be the same guy I knew from A&M, but sure enough. David Mackey lived across the hall from me in the dorm for my first two years at A&M. He's a great guy and I enjoyed knowing him, but we weren't real close and didn't keep in touch after moving out of the dorm. Well it turns out he's in my class and has been taking lessons there for about a year. I'm real excited that I know someone. It's such a small world.

Now I don't feel as sore as I did on Saturday, but I'm going to be taking tylenol and drinking water to get a head start on the whole mess.

Today I was cultured. Yaser, Kapil, and I went to visit MCI and then afterwards went to a World Market grocery store that had ethnic foods from all over the world. It was interesting. I had a Flafel sandwhich and bought some dried figs.

10:24 PM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

Saturday, January 03, 2004
I'm sore and sweaty, but grinning. I just finished my first jiu-jitsu class and now I need to hop in the shower so I can meet some friends at a gun show. Hmmm... this is a very testosterone driven weekend.

1:25 PM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

Ok... you may laugh now.

10:21 AM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

This is shaping up to be a very busy weekend. Last night I began scheming early to figure out a cheap way to go out and have fun. My buddy Daniel had just moved to town and I was under the impression that Keri and Shawn needed to be dragged out as well. I initially met resistance on both sides, but I sent my muscle and she twisted their arms hard enough that they were convinced they should come. We went to Pete's Piano Bar and had a great time. We ended up with eight of us there and the place just kept getting more and more packed. If you've never been to a piano bar they get very raunchy. They pull people up on stage and tease/cajole them into doing what they want. These guys had two sets of pianos and would switch out every hour or so. They were having a great time and so was the crowd. It was good to see everyone and I'm glad Christi could convince them to come.

In about 1.5 hours I'm going to have my first Karate class. I emailed one of the dojos yesterday for more information and he invited me to come today and check it out. I'm all excited. We'll see if I can move once its over. But I'm still excited.

Some of the guys talked about going to a gun show today. It's been a very long time since I've been to a gun show, but I think it would be fun to go check it out.

10:15 AM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

Friday, January 02, 2004
I know I have been uncharacteristically quite as of late. Not really sure why. I don't even have a good excuse. I had a great set of Holidays. I got some fun toys to play with and bought myself the ones I didn't get.

Christmas was good to me. I ended up with a small, but adequate indoor/outdoor grill. It's fine for myself, but I was thinking about having everyone over for a barbecue and decided that it wouldn't be adequate. It's a Big George grill. The fire codes at my apartment say that I can't have a gas or charcoal grill on my patio, but they don't have a problem with an electronic grill. That's exactly what this is. I also got some walkie talkies. They are tiny little things, but they have a 2 mile range. My brother and I used them to talk back and forth on the way back from Abilene to Dallas. Definitely some handy little gadgets. I wanted them for camping and road trips. One of the other cool things I got from my Christmas list is a book called Masters of Doom. It's about John Carmack and John Romero the founders of id software and the brains behind Doom. It's a great book. I have been reading for the last couple of days and I can barely put it down. I saw it on Thinkgeek.com, but I never expected it to be well written and interesting as it is. I highly recommend it. I got several things for my apartment, but no wall art. I'm going to have to make an effort to put stuff on my bare walls. It's past time that my apartment looked like I lived there rather than just stayed there. Well... we won't count the mess that I leave after a couple of days of dropping stuff off and picking things up before running out the door.

Dezi got me a coupon book with fun date ideas. I have yet to put one in play, but I'm looking. I thought long and hard and finally decided on what I thought would be the perfect gift. We had talked about learning how to ballroom dance, but never seriously. I know it's something she would really like to do and it's something we could do together. I purchased a gift certificate for a private lesson at Arthur Murray Dance Studio so we could figure out what we wanted to learn and go from there. I think she was pleased.

I spent and awful lot of time reading/listening to audio books (usually while driving) over the Holidays. I managed to get almost everyone in my immediate family hooked on my audio book of the Davinci Code by Dan Brown. Very good book, even to listen too. I finished Wizard's First Rule by Terry Brooks. Not for the squeamish. I thought I could figure everything out, but there were some twists that I wasn't expecting. I also listened to Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card. In my opinion, not as good as Ender's Game, but it set it up for a great sequel. I'll have to find that one too.

I spent Christmas Eve with Dezi and her family and then drove to Abilene on Christmas Day. I had been looking for my cell phone that morning and couldn't find it. I even called and woke Dezi up asking her to keep an eye out for it. As I was leaving Frisco, I heard my phone going off from behind me. Apparently it had fallen out of my pocket and was in the back seat. I pulled off at a gas station in Lewisville and began filling up as the phone went off again. It was my mother asking me if I was on my way to go pick up Jeff. Apparently their car wouldn't start and they wanted me to come pick them up. I headed up to Denton were we pack up and the three of us headed out of town. After we got to Abilene we went straight to my Aunt Sheila's house. Rachel, my 1.5 year old cousin, was put down for a nap that was obviously past due. We had lunch and started to watch Pirates of the Caribbean (I still haven't seen the whole thing since I bought the movie). We interrupted the movie to open presents as soon as the start arrived. Rachel was having a great time. I managed to be the one to remove the toys from their cardboard prison after they were opened. Rachel definitely had no patience for the intricacies of removing the wire and trying to get it out of the back of those toys. She would stand over me and hop up and down until I ripped open the package and gave her the toy. I only did that a couple of times, but that's usually after trying to finesse it and failing miserably. We had a good time and Rachel was fun to watch. The big present she received the night before was a self powered car that she enjoyed getting in and out of more than she did moving it around.

Friday Jeff, Sam, mom, and I drove to Quanah for Christmas with my mom's side of the family. When we got there we discovered that my grandmother had been taken to the ER for evaluation. I'm sure there are several reasons, one is that there were a whole bunch of people in their house. (I think we counted 26.) The other is they are in their 80s and have failing health. When they were taking her blood pressure something happened and they were getting a reading saying that the diastolic number was above the systolic. (I don't know if I have those reversed, but it's the one where that's not supposed to happen.) She ended up being fine and was brought home about noon. By that time the we had pretty much finished getting everything prepared for lunch. The daughters had brought items for a Mexican feast. I put myself in charge of cooking the already prepared enchiladas. Everything turned out fabulous. The four of us headed back that night.

When we got back I called my friend Braden. He and I discussed getting together and he told me that his uncle was in a band that was playing in a bar that night. His whole family was going to go and wanted to know if I would like to join them. After agreeing to meet at 8:00, I ran off to eat dinner with my parentals. I showed up at the bar at 8:05. I looked around and decided they weren't there, so I pulled up a bar stool and ordered a drink. The band was already going. They were very good. It's hard to describe their sound. They were more of a Texas Rock band. Elements of blues and country in their music. I enjoyed it, but I sat there for an hour waiting and decided I had spotted them and hour and it was time to leave. Of course as fate would have it, Braden said they showed up right after I left. That's the way it always happens.

After I got back to Dallas I had a few days of bachelorhood before Dezi and her family got back from Colorado. I bought a GMAT book and went to visit with Matt and Christi. Matt had a really cool painting that I liked. He had it commissioned from "Elwood" outside of the Spaghetti Warehouse in downtown Dallas. It used paint on top of plaster and canvas to give it a textured look. Elwood also said that Matt looked like Gomer Pile which I think is particularly funny b/c Matt looks nothing like Gomer Pile.

10:30 AM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts