Shutdown, count to ten, then restart.

That is what this weekend was. A good hard reset, we all need one every once and awhile. You could probably tell I wasn’t in the greatest of moods last week, but this weekend hopefully fixed that. I managed somehow to do absolutely nothing productive. Friday we had a little party, somehow they never get as big or rowdy as I expect but it was a lot of fun anyway. Our goal for the party was to finish the keg we have, it was about 2/3 full and we managed to fail... how does that happen? Back when we were in school we would have drained the whole thing in a matter of minutes. Now I guess we are all getting old and more responsible. What crap!! Now I have to still abide by the house rule and have 2 glasses every day until it is gone!! I had the party so I would not have to do that! The party was still a lot of fun though.

Saturday, I barely rolled out of bed around noon-thirty. I rolled right onto the couch and watched Cold Mountain. I think it is a great movie, if you haven’t seen it I highly recommend it.

After the movie, I rolled off the couch and rolled into my desk chair and successfully got lost in World of Warcraft for the next few hours. What a great game! Every time I get into it I play for at least 2 hours. The only reason I stopped was to put some pants on (I was in my pajamas all day) so that I could go watch my friend Jenny in her hockey game. The evening continued with Mike coming over and we finished Halo 2. A good game but the ending totally sucked. We just played for three weeks and all I get is this crappy cut scene that says "Halo 3 coming soon (at least a year) so buy it when it comes out." that’s not really what it said but it was implied.

Sunday was another wonderful day, I got up around 10 the sun was out and it was warm so I spent some quality time with the truck, giving her a good washing. It is a process, I spend a lot of time washing my cars.

Later I went on a run with Mark and Sarah it was great, I had not run in over three weeks but we ran 6-7 miles with no problems it felt great. Definitely got me in the mood to start my training again. I am going to try to run the Durango Marathon in October, Long way away I know, but I’ve got a lot of training to do.

After the run, I played some more World of Warcraft, watched 2 Episodes of Star Trek and went to bed. All in all an good non-productive weekend

It is getting stranger...

I just read my horriscope for today...

"You've just about had it with that certain individual who's had it in for you for what seems like months and you're perfectly prepared to handle this, face to face, with the authority figures. The problem that this individual may have -- and may not have thought of before they started this campaign -- is that you've been following all the rules, and they haven't."

The only thing that is not exact about that is the timespan... it has been years not months. The strange thing is I had just finnished writing a nasty email telling this person off for things that I dont thing anyone should have to deal with when I wrote the last post, that is why I felt stange. I really dont like being mean, it is hard work and it cant be good for you. It is very long story that I dont want to get into, or else I would.

Today has felt just slightly off kilter since the moment I got up... I set my alarm early (for some reason) and ended up staying in bed longer than normal. (I kept hitting snooze from 6:30 - 7:35.) hmm.

What a stange day do far...

First of all I guess I want to explain my prevoius post... I dont really know why but I just dont feel very good about it, I write alot of those but never actually hit "Publish." Im pretty sure I mean what I say in that ranting state, but I just dont really feel to good about letting "Unfilterd" thoughts out, but I did so you can take it as you wish.

My buddy Andy is a little upset with me right now, I can understand why, but I dont entirely think it is fair. That is not really what I am writing for, Im writing this because in his last post he seems to be feeling a little down, SO I invite you to go read his blog (especially some of his previous posts) laugh a little then send him a comment to make him feel better. Pants Party

Last but not least, If you happen to be in Durango and wish to participate in a little gatering tonight please drop me a note. This is probably not a good idea Inviting people on the internet, but I know most (i think) of you that read this.

This doesnt really fit with the title of the post but thats how I feel and it makes it even stranger that I wrote nothing about why the day is strange.. get it.. nope me neather.


UPDATE: 2-27-05: I see in that I have very much messed up the title of this post, I was just about to fix it but I decided that it shows exactly what kind of mood I was in when I wrote it.

'Aviator' tops Oscar nominees in swear words

'Aviator' tops Oscar nominees in swear words

What that says to me is obvoulsy people really dont care (give a shit) about how many swear words there are. There are alot af excelent movies that contain swear words, and there are also alot of excelent movies that dont. So who cares? I think the problem is that there are 5 really (fucking) pissed off moms out there that do a good job of making their point to make sure that creativity is limited only to words deemed acceptable. Acceptable by who? They are just words! Every mormon that I grew up with had alternate words they said that meant EXACTLY the same thing only spelled differently. It doesnt make any Figgin sence (see what I mean.) I really get pissed off when a very small group of people (as far as I know) changes what the everyone gets to see or hear. If you dont want to see it, quit bitching and make your own shows! Oh yea that never works because very few people actually care and still watch the offencive material.

Sorry about the rant... I guess I just dont see the point. I grew up in Utah, so I know about some very restrictive religous beliefs, but I also know about the hipocracy, and I see it everywhere.

How do you stop a mormon from drinking all your beer?
.
.
.
.
Invite another mormon.

EDIT: Upon furter reflection, I dont mean to say that anyone with these beleifs is bad or wrong in any way. Infact I have a lot of respect for those who make a life decition like that and stick by it. Just dont fake it (wich I believe 90% do), and please dont expect me to have the same beliefs. You respect my beliefs and I will respect yours.

What did I do to deserve this?

My friend Brendan and I just spent all weekend trying to come up with an answer to this question. It seems that no matter how hard we tried we could not screw anything up, only to end up with an all around excellent three day weekend in Moab.

Brendan arrived from LA (Los Alamos for those who think that LA is a city in California) on Friday night. We spent a few beers (yes I am using beers as a unit of time) trying to solve the ultimate dilemma, what do we do this weekend? Finally on Saturday morning, after looking at the weather and determining that it looked crappy everywhere, we decided to head to Moab and brave the rain. It does not rain much in the desert so a good storm could be very entertaining, and we had nothing better to do. We packed up the truck and took off.

On the way out of town the weather was terrible—cold, snowy, no visibility, the roads were making progress slow. It was turning into a pretty dreary trip and things were not looking too good. At one point I said “Last time I left town in weather like this bound for Moab the weather was perfect” I was just trying to be optimistic. As we roll into Moab the rain cleared and the clouds began to dissipate. Things were starting to look up.

We started off by trying to wreck my truck by doing some four-wheeling. Once again the thing amazes me. We did the same trail that I did last time because I knew I could do it.





After getting off scratch-free (well, sort-of) we attempted another frequent failure for my trips to Moab: we went to the outdoor gear store. In the last tree trips I have never walked out of that place without a receipt for less than $100. You always can find something else you “need.” Not only did we leave with only essentials (a can opener and a few bundles of firewood $7.95 total), but we did so with everything in the store 15-40% off. It was close though—I really “needed” a new $60 hatchet.

The next possible failing point was the fact that it was Presidents weekend, most three-day weekends are packed in Moab. We were fully expecting to have to search pretty hard to find a mediocre camping spot. Our good karma paid off again. We went up the road to Gemini Bridges because for the last ten years going to Moab with my dad he has always told me of some great campsites up there but I have never been able to stay because I am meeting people somewhere, I have a car that wont make it up, or it is full (there are only 4 spots). Not only did we find a spot right away, we did not see another person near it or any of the other spots the whole time. We had the entire canyon to ourselves!




I knew of a climbing spot just up the road from our camp called “Crack House”, and because the weather was so good we decided to give it a shot. Luckily we had decided to bring at least the essentials of our climbing gear. (Again we were expecting a lot of rain.) The “Crack House” is neat little cave with a perfect hand-sized crack all the way from one entrance to the other—very fun to climb but VERY difficult. Crack climbing is something that I have never learned to do because it is hard and it really hurts (I don’t like pain.) Brendan, on the other hand, is one of those guys that gets a rush when things hurt, so he gave it a legitimate attempt and I stood by and took lots off pictures.

Doesnt this look like it hurts?

Just hanging around.

I got to do some bouldering around the cave.


Later we headed to Gemini Bridges, a very cool set of arches a little farther down the road. We got the spot to park and began heading down the trail (or at least what we thought was a trail.) On the canyon edge we ran into a family that looked rather lost. “Do you know where the arches are? We can’t seem to find them.” “Nope” we replied because we had never been there as well. They can’t be that hard to find—they are two giant arches right next to each other. We just kept running around on the slickrock admiring the view, by running I mean really running—we were having a good time being kids and running and jumping from rock to rock. Suddenly we came across this giant hole… It was the arches, they were below us. No wonder you can’t see them! Cool stuff, that natural architecture.





Heading back to camp, we decided to attempt another failure. Let’s try to get lost! I know I saw a road down below the arches, let’s try to find that. Off we went on 4x4 trails that we had now idea where they went or how difficult they would be. Right on par with the way thing had gone so far (after a couple of tight sections where I was really worried about denting the truck) we turned a corner and there they were: Gemini Bridges right above us, exactly on the road we had spotted from above. We snapped a few pics and headed back.



For dinner that night we had decided to attempt “Fajita Surprise”. What this consisted of was some fajita steak that I had been marinating for a day and a half now, peppers and onions. We combined them all in some aluminum foil, drowned it in the marinade, wrapped it up in about 6 more layers of foils and tossed it into the fire. That is where the surprise comes in, what will you get when you open it all up? You only get one chance for once you have opened it, it becomes very difficult to re-wrap. “Do you think they are ready?” gets said over and over again until finally we build up the courage to open them up. I pulled mine off the fire, oh man it smelled good, but as I began unwrapping it became apparent that we had kept them on for too long and it seemed that there was only a solid mass of charred marinade in the middle. The thought of that sucked, we were so looking forward to them, they had smelled so good and the anticipation was so high while they were cooking that we would not except failure. I took my knife, jabbed it right in the middle and began prying it apart, suddenly a glint of a pepper then some steam, and finally a whole pile of slightly well done steak and perfect looking vegetables. The meat was a bit over cooked bit it was SOOO good. We put it on some tortillas, added some cheese and chowed down. That was the low point of the weekend.

During the night it began to rain. We were already in the tent so it did not matter, but I began to worry about tomorrow, the weather still called for rain all day. We woke up, unzipped the tent to reveal a bluebird morning, not a cloud in the sky. Wouldn’t it be cool to stay another day? We decided to try. The only thing I was worried about was my friend Andy wanted me to give his friend from out of town a ride to Albuquerque. I had told him that I would, depending on what Brendan and I decided to do. I had to call him so we went into town for breakfast and to make phone calls to arrange staying another day. I got ahold of Andy, and he didn’t seem too thrilled so I felt bad, but I really didn’t want to leave (sorry Andy). Anyway we began planning the new day and all the ways we could try to wreck it. To the Outdoor Gear shop! I really “need” that hatchet now because of all the trouble we had with the fire last night (not really, I just was generating excuses to buy stuff), ended up getting out of that one for less than 10 bucks again. Let’s go wreck the truck some more! Once again the truck goes beyond the call of duty and makes it through unscathed (I did get some scratches from trees, but I should be able to buff those out.) We need some beer for tonight now because we drank all we had last night. Now that is going to be a tough one. We are in Utah and it is Sunday meaning we may have just been stopped dead in our tracks on an otherwise perfect weekend. Maybe we can get growlers (1/2 gallon jugs of beer) at the Moab Brewery? Score!! We now had beer for the night—yet another disaster averted!

The weather stayed perfect all night again and the next morning was beautiful as well. Not a person around, you can’t ask for much better. We finally packed up the camp and headed home. The only thing left that could ruin a perfect weekend was a speeding ticket or something stupid like that on the way home. Nope, made it home safe and sound. What else can you ask for?

Here are some other good Pics of the Gemini Bridges area:

This one is from Camp on the second night, we are the only ones in that whole canyon.


A cool view on our way back to camp from Gemini Bridges.


The only question that remains is, What did I do to deserve this?

500 Visitors!

Congratulations!! You are the 500th visitor to Inner Workings! You win lifetime access to read my blog!

Getting caught up...

Whew!! What a week, I just got back for an excelent trip to Moab, and as soon as I catch my breath and get back into real life and will have a long story to tell with lots of pictures. I hope everyone had a good 3 day weekend (if you actually got one) otherwise... too bad for you!!

I decided this weekend that I would set up my server again so that I can host this on my own, Mainly because I want to keep and archive for myself. Wouldnt this be fun to read in 20 years? Another reason is there will be no limit to what I can post, Big Pictures, Videos, I can change the format of the page so that it looks better, and the address will be www.LarakinSystems.com instead of larakin.blogspot.com. So this is just a pre warning, I may change the address of this soon. I probably will only do the pictures and Videos for now, but I think eventually I would like to move the whole blog.

Montréal: Parting Thoughts

Well, after three days almost constant meetings I am finally on my way home. I wish that I had gotten more of opportunity to see the city of Montréal, but unfortunately there was not any time to really explore. Every day @ 8:30 we got to the office and started the meeting, other than a few breaks and lunch that meeting continued until 6:00-6:30 every day, by the time we finished dinner it was 9:00 and everyone was tired from the day so we all just went back to the hotel. But last night the whole team made it a point to get us out to show us what the city really was like. We ended out meeting in time for “cenq au sept“ (five to seven, or happy hour) and the whole team went out for a few drinks, We had a great time and we got a chance to meet them all in a social setting, which I think makes the whole working together think a whole lot easier. I got the opportunity to practice a little French with one of them, and I was fairy impressed that he could understand the few phrases that I can remember from French class in high school. The only problem was I apparently asked him if he could go the bathroom instead of asking if I could go. He got a pretty good laugh out of that.

After we had finished off the free pitchers Eric, the team lead in Montréal, decided he was going to show whoever wanted to go what the nightlife really was about. I wasn’t going to pass up that chance, so a few of us piled into the cars and we went downtown to “The Radio Lounge” for Celebrity night. It was not anyone that we would know but because Quebec is the only French speaking province the regularly produce their own television shows they have a lot of local celebrities. We got there pretty early, 9:30 or so, so nobody was there yet and we claimed out spot in the corner of the dance floor. The crowd began to roll in, the drinks began to flow, and the party really began. It was amazing, everyone was having a great time, and everyone was dancing (well at leas bouncing up and down) after awhile you cannot help but to dance. Now I don’t spend a lot of time in dance clubs (by not a lot I mean none) so I never dance, but for some reason it all came out last night and I was in the middle of it all with no reservations. It is not very often that you see a bunch of geeks with control of a large portion of the dance floor, an amazing sight! The “scenery” was very good as well and a few times the waitresses began dancing on the bars Coyote Ugly style. Mmmm, girls dancing on the bars… Ok, back on track, How come that does not happen in Durango? Oh yea, there are no dance clubs. I definitely don't think that I will become a regular but it was definitely fun. I don’t know how many drinks I had but if we were back at elevation I think I would have been dead, Pretty amazing that oxygen stuff. We headed back to the hotel around 2, only to get up 3 ½ hours later to catch a plane. It was a wonderful finale to the trip and I am glad that I went. Hopefully soon I get the opportunity to go back and maybe see the city and the area by day, or at least with the sun out, it was cloudy, cold and dreary the whole time we wert here (Except the day we got there and this morning, nice timing huh?).

Well, I cant seem to get into this post (you can probably tell) so I am going to stop here.

Valentine

I have never been a huge fan of Valentines day, I still don’t think that I am, but this year as I am a few thousand miles away from home in an unknown city I kept getting messages on my phone. I got 4 valentine wishes this year... well three, 2 were from the same person. I never used to get any, I’m not complaining by any means, it just made me feel really good today, and today is not the easiest day of the year to feel good. Thank you to everyone that sent me one, I really appreciate it. I hope that all of you felt as good as I did today.

I am strangely amazed by this, I don’t know when this "harem" developed but I like it. I live in a small city where there are very few single, good looking, nice girls around, and somehow I have become friends with all of them. Again I’m not complaining, but I still would rather find a girlfriend instead if girl-friends. I think I am just too picky. It seems that whenever I feel emotionally attracted to a girl, that feeling is never reciprocated. I can’t say that it is not my fault because there is at least one girl that seems to like me but I guess I just don’t feel that way about her. I am trying though, and there may be a few factors that I will not discuss here that may be blocking any feelings toward her, we will see. I am not quite experienced with these emotion things to really know what is going on anyway. All I can do is be honest, that’s the way it is I guess.

I hope everyone had a great Valentines day.

Montreal

I am sitting here in my hotel room at 11:30 trying to go to bed, but I can’t because according to my clock it is only 9:30. I know not much of a difference there but when sleeping as a problem, like it is for me, two hours makes a big difference. I think that another part of the problem is that I spent all day sitting on an airplane. I do spend a lot of my day sitting nowadays but I make it a point to get up and walk around for a little bit every once and awhile. Today the only moving I did was running between planes in the airport. That leads me to a more concerning problem…

Because of the fact that I did nothing today and I knew that I would have to try to get to sleep earlier than normal I decided to head down to the hotel gym and do some running on the treadmill (because it is freezing outside) and lift some weights. Now that was not the decision that caused the problem. The problem arose when I realized that I did not bring my running shoes. This was slightly on purpose because I knew I would probably not be running outside up here, I had not considered the possibility of the gym. So what I did was attempt to run on the treadmill with my old warn out SnowClogs, that didn’t work so well. Then I decided that it would be easier to run in my bare feet, so that’s what I did. It worked well, it didn’t hurt, it actually was sort-of fun. I could really feel how my feet were moving while I ran, what parts hit first and how I weighted each foot. I ran about 2 miles like this. I felt great, I finished with a few sets on the weight machines and a few laps in the highly chlorinated hotel pool. It was not until half way back to my room that I realized that my feet were really beginning to hurt. Once I got into my room I could barely put my feet flat on the ground. Turns out I now have one quarter sized and one nickel sized blister on the bottom of both of my feet. AWESOME!!! So now I am sitting here not sleeping, limping around the hotel room on my heels.

Later, flipping through the channels on the TV I realize something (again)... TV sucks!! I was watching a TLC program on the new Airbus A380 “The Worlds Largest Airliner”, what crap!!! They probably paid John Travolta $10K to do 5 min of work doing the 10 second sound bite before every commercial so that they could say that John Travolta was the host. He probably never even saw the show! That is not the worst of it, yet again did a once great channel disappoint me I got 25 min (for an hour spot) of the same footage over and over again talking about how hard It was to build the plane on schedule. I learned NOTHING about the plane itself, except that Airbus invested $10.2 Billion and it is a huge risk. I was talking in the earlier post about how excited I was to fly in a 777, that was because I saw a great documentary on it probably 8 years ago and I still remember all sorts of facts and tidbits about the plane. Oh, but I know that the new A380 is the “Worlds Largest Airliner”, they costs $250 Million each, and John Travolta hosted the show. I could not change the channel because that was one of the very few channels in English, and I did not want to watch Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie prove just how stupid and spoiled they are.

Now is when I wish I had paid more attention in my 3 years of French in high school. I can understand about 25% of what people say but I can only respond with “Hi, my name is Justin”, “Will you go to bed with me tonight”, and “May I use the restroom”. It is pretty humbling to know that I am a lowly American and I only speak one language. Even in Canada, the butt of many jokes, I still feel like a lowly American, and I can’t use the “I’m from Canada” excuse.

Your in-flight entertainment

It is Sunday afternoon at about 2:39 central time and according to the nifty in-flight map above me, I am currently somewhere over Iowa. This is my third and final flight of the day, hopefully sometime this evening I will arrive at my hotel in Montreal. As much of a hassle they day has been I have enjoyed it quite a bit. I had to wake up @ 4:30 this morning in order to catch my flight from Durango to Denver, a very uneventful flight as always. I have spent many hours just hangin’ out in DIA and I still think that it is a cool airport. Of course I have always been in the same terminal and have never had to deal with checked baggage, but it has still always been an easy airport for me to get around.

The Denver to Chicago leg of the trip is the one I have been anticipating the most. I get to fly on a Boeing 777, the newest aircraft in the Boeing fleet. The reason I am excited is because of my very geeky obsession with airplanes as a kid. I watched and read just about everything involving the development of that aircraft, its fly-by-wire control systems, it powerful GE engines (each one has more thrust that the Apollo 11 liftoff rocket), and in-seat entertainment systems. I have flown and been in many airports since then but I could never definitively say that I had seen one, and now I get to fly in one! It was everything I thought it could be! It absolutely amazes me the ingenuity if the human race. We can created this massive aluminum tube, stuff hundreds of people and fly them across the country at 600 mph without even breaking a sweat. It seemed like this massive airplane was far easier to fly that the little 25 person turboprop that we have to fly out of Durango. Cool stuff.

As we are leaving Denver the pilot announces that we can expect some mild overcast in Chicago. I like that because I have never seen the city and flying over it should provide some great views. NOPE!! Apparently overcast in Chicago means you cant see 50 feet. I could not even see the end of the wing! And we had to wait in a holding pattern for 30 min, good thing we have another flight to catch! It wasn’t all bad the seats had audio plug to listen to he movies or TV shows on in-seat entertainment screens. I watched the map and listened to the radio communications between all the aircraft and the tower in Chicago. I know its geeky but I enjoyed it we were circling at 9000 Ft because there were a bunch of aircraft flying between 10-16000 reporting slight-moderate icing. OK, well that’s entertaining to me anyway.

My entire experience in Chicago consists of exactly 10 minutes of running between terminals trying to catch the next flight. I have always heard stories of running through the terminals trying to catch your next flight but I never really thought that I happened much. O'Hare is HUGE we had to run forever, I thought we had plenty of time but I had no idea how far we had to go to get to the other side of the airport. Luckly for you I had time to snap a picture and email it to myself without even breaking stride! We barely made it, only to close the door, back out and sit there for 20 min, then get in line for takeoff and wait another 30 min with visibility of about ¼ Mile there was no view to be had. Hopefully Chicago gets another chance to redeem itself in the near future.

This is Steve and Dianne on our scramble to make our connection in O'Hare:


That’s it for now, I can see the ground so I am going to stare out the window for a bit.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the in-flight entertainment as much as I have.

P.S. The pilot just came on and said we are currently @ 31000 Ft flying over the center of the universe, maybe thats only funny to me but I thought it was worth opening the laptop again to write it down.

I got nothin'

I’m at a loss, I have things I want to write about but I can’t figure out how. So I am just going to ramble for a min to see what happens.

On Monday night I watched House of Sand and Fog, mainly because I think that Jennifer Connelly is simply the most beautiful person on the planet, but also because I had hear a lot of good things about it. Within the first five minutes I was sold, Jennifer Connelly IS the most beautiful person on the planet! Not only that but she is a wonderful actress, there is a scene at the very beginning where she is talking on the phone to her mother, everything seems great until a single tear runs down her face. At that moment you can tell that she is deeply troubled inside and does not what her mother to know. The whole movie is an emotional struggle, you really feel for both main characters, Ben Kingsley does and excellent job as well. Very good movie and I highly recommend watching, just be sure that if you are prone to crying, have a box of tissues nearby, this one almost got me.

Last night trivia night @ Lady Falconburghs, it was about normal, except that I was winning. Well more than normal anyway, I tied one but lost the bonus question, then I tied another and won the Chug-off. The real surprise came during the Sinberg Challenge. Aaron, the host and owner, always challenges a member of the audience to a one on one after game five. He announced that he wanted to take on a member of the winning team from Lunacy, so he picked me. Aaron NEVER loses (well, he does but it is very rare and he always seems to forget after the next game which he always finishes with "and still Undefeated!!!"), he picked me because I was on the winning team and he wanted to make fun, which is normal. Not looking forward to my public embarrassment I head up to the counter and get ready for a whooping, and all sorts of comments about my center parted hair. The questions are read and I can only answer 3 of ten. It turns out that he only answered 2 of them and I won!! Not only did he pick me because he KNEW I was going to lose but he was announcing the fact that I was on the winning lunacy team just so he could rub it in later, what a backfire!! Anyway he gave me my free beer token and promptly forgot about the loss. Nobody will ever know he lost, (but I will, and so will all of you) especially to me.

At the end of the evening he offered me a business proposal, if I helped him get his computer working correctly again (which means erasing all the porn :-)) he gave me a sweet Pilsner Urquell (sp) neon sign! It is very cool, I will post a picture of it later. I think that it was a fair trade!

Turn off the TV

OK, I know this has been said many times before but I never realized just how bad it really is until recently. When I moved into my now place I never got around to hooking up the cable, I was going to see what it was like. I didn't really have a problem with not having it, nowhere near as difficult as I thought it would be. I hooked it up the other day. Man you don't realize just how much time you waste until you have it in front of you. I guess I don't really mind that aspect of it, the part that bother me is that everything on TV is geared toward the LOWEST common denominator, lets make our TV shows and commercials (because that is really what we watch TV for, did you know that for a 30 Min spot there are shows produced to be 12 Min long?) as Stupid as possible so that the most people will understand it, Also lets get rid of anything that might spark any emotional response because 3 of the 50 Million people that are going to watch this will be offended. Well now I'm offended, you treat me as a little child, I guess I can no longer make my own decitions. I hate it, there is no point, every second is a marketing ploy. Every word is there to make you stupid, even the good channels are no good any more, Discovery channel, Used to be great I learned a lot as a kid watching it, but now it is Monster this and American that, even when they do have good documentaries on anymore it is more toward lets make this so that more people watch it, not so that more people get informed. OK, I think I am done ranting for a bit.

Montreal be warned, Here I come!!

I just found out that my company will be sending me to Montreal Feb 13th-17th to work on our new application. I am pretty excited, I don't get many opportunities to spend any time in big cities, and I have never been that far east. I hope I get a chance to really explore the place and see the town, maybe go out a bit.

The other cool thing about that is we get back to Durango on the 17th and I get Fri the 18th off so I will have a 4 day weekend! I am thinking of gathering a few friends piling them in the truck and taking a road trip to Park City to ski or maybe even a weekend in Vegas, or anywhere for that matter.

Sarti Parti!

Last night was my good friend Mike's birthday, 1/4 Century old, what an accomplishment! We had a gathering of friends at my house as a trade for having my party at his house. His girlfriend Sadie made some excellent chili for everyone, I thought it was good except that I have a very hard time with tomatoes so I could not eat much of it. Anyway Tuesday is normally trivia night at Lady Falconburgs, but because most of the regulars were at my house for Mike’s birthday, they didn’t have enough people to do it! Aaron, The owner of the bar and announcer for the trivia ended up showing up at the party due to it being dead at the bar! Yay for fun parties!

I have some pictures from the evening so here they are.
Here we have the imfamous Michael J "Emloyee of the Mountain" Sarti and his wonderful fiance, Sadie Iyana.


This is Mark, Sarah, and Sadie discussing the latest post on some Geeks blog.


Here we have Morgan, Jared, Mike, Mark, and Sarah enjoying the pool table.


Morgan lines it up.