deathmetalthunder dot com

Made up some dinner last night for Chilly and me. Turned out OK, though I agreed to a bike ride right afterwards to Sears and Old Navy which wasn't so good. We managed to avoid getting killed and acquire a staple gun and exercise shorts.

I left my phone at home and returned to a couple of voice mails: one from JMVC regarding cards and another cryptic message from S. Money. I declined the offer from the former and pondered the later. And it turned out just as I had feared, some pseudo good news from S. Money. He's got engaged to Miss Mary. And the apostate NGF will be in the wedding next August. Weddings are not the best place for me, but I do look good in a tux. Though I believe there are issues with a marriage where the activities at the bachelor party, rather lack-there-of, are dictated right after the proposal is accepted. I was to be given the task of organizing said event, but, as a result of the restrictions, I was forced to decline. An artist must be able to use the full spectrum of colors. Anything less would be a disservice. Junior's the Best Man and certainly can handle a job with such limitations.

I had plans on working on the Links page. The best of intentions. Tomorrow, I guess.

Labels: jmvc, s. money

News Flash! I've received two emails to the deathmetalthunder.com email address. That slightly offsets the chocolate stain I got on my pant cuff. At least I hope its chocolate.

Pretty good day so far for NGF, though I did have a bit of a reality check. All I'll say is I recommend balancing the checkbook before you consider dropping some serious dinero on a new T.V.

I'm getting feedback that my lack of action on the site's causing consternation amongst the loyal readers. As a result, I've rambled off a couple Rants, updated Reviews with one for Seabiscuit ( Read my for it ). Now get off my back!

I really need to get off this work thing and do more posts. I mean, 24 hours between posts? That's unacceptable.

The rest of Tuesday at work went pretty smoothly. Dare I say I'm ahead of schedule? Tuesday was a B-Side's night. Chilly D decided to take a break from his project and come along for a beer. Chilly's doing his Bob Villa impersonation and rebuilding the porch door. We had to stop along the way for some paint, so I assumed we'd be arrive way past JMVC. Well, he called me up near 8:00 pm telling me he got on a diatribe and his meeting ran late. Apparently it'll be on TV tonight on channel 6.

We showed up and had a few beers before Chilly went back to Door Creation 101. Tuesday's at B-Sides is growing pretty fast; our third week and we had to move upstairs for more room. That side salad at home wasn't nearly enough, so I joined in on devouring some calamari (with a tasty chipotle dipping sauce). In between bites, Lo and I had an interesting discussion over my phone call rants. I think it was around 11:00 pm when people started heading out. ME, JMVC, and I decided to get another drink at another place. We headed to the Whiskey Bar and had a couple. Then we tried to find something a bit more lively. JMVC and I usually create lively, but it's a bit tough on a Tuesday. An interesting change occurred between the first bar and the last as I passed the baton of talking all the time to JMVC without a drop or stutter. We ended up closing down Oilcan Harry's (JMVC's apparently pretty popular in such places). Anyway, I got home around 2:30 am. Needless to say, my pledge to Chilly to run Wednesday morning will be reneged.

Now I'm up and off to moil at the plant.

Labels: jmvc

Monday was a pretty busy workday. Not much time to screw around.

The evening produced a lazy night and few updates on the site. Mostly did the last post from Monday (below), but I did do some cleaning up of images. All the main picture index pages should look pretty consistent. Also added a preview for pictures from Hungary and Ireland on the Destinations. In between I did manage to chat with SC and JMVC and had to explain where the camping pictures were to SL.

Today, on the way to work, I heard this story on NPR about the Japanese fascination with kitsch. Apparently there's a giant swap meet in the Rose Bowl a couple times a year. Japanese merchants come over and pay thousands for this stuff and sell it for upwards of five times what they paid. Dude, if they want crap, I got a storage locker up in Parts Unknown filled with it. I'll deliver it myself with a smile on my face.

If you ever wanted to know why the Japanese don't run the world, feel free to listen to that story. You can't live on the cast-offs of another society.

Work time, American style.

Labels: jmvc

So I had this whole recap of MT's exploits on Saturday then my damn work PC crashed. I was so frustrated that I have put it off and off. Let's see if can do my memory justice...

For those who missed it from Sunday's post, Chilly D, MT and MT went to a former boss's party. The attendees were, on average, in their mid-to-late thirties and the professional type. Around 11:00 pm Chilly and I decide to head out and left MT at the party on Saturday night. The plans for MT recovery were a bit up in the air. He was chatting some chick up. Let's call said chick Emily. Emily mentioned she and her friend(s) would head downtown and meet up with me (and drop off MT). Or I'd come back to the party after downtown. Whatever. Next communication is missed call from MT telling me to call him back at an invalid number. Next sighting of MT by me is past 5 am and he's dead to the world on the lazy-boy at Chilly's place. Mike uttered some words that might have been comprehended if said by an awake person and heard by a sober one. Well, MT and I talked this morning and what follows is his recounting of the evening (allowing for my own creative license, of course).

MT and Emily chatted for a while and things were going pretty well. I had conveniently left the remaining alcohol in my car, so MT was left scrounging for drinks. And an admirable job was done as evidenced by the state I found him. But I digress.

MT tells of an encounter with some dude (let's call him Dude0) who's talking about nailing one of the girls at the party. MT tries to be pleasant in that "I'm working mine, so get out of my way" sort of way. MT felt privileged for Dude0 to share such a personal detail considering he hadn't even been introduced to Dude0. Well, MT overhears Dude0 converses the same sort of way with several other people. These "other people" including the girl Dude0 intends to have relations. Something to the effect of "I'm going to get with you before the night's done." And I thought spilling a beer was a party foul.

Well, the host of the party (let's call him "The Host") doesn't really know Dude0 either, so The Host decides its time for him to leave. Its well past 1:00 am by this time and Dude0 is pretty intoxicated. The Host gets hold of MT as a backup in case anything goes violent. The guy goes a bit gruff but leaves without incident.

Fast forward another couple of hours and replace Dude0 with Dude1 and you get a repeat of the first incident. Again, nobody The Host knew. Again MT is called to serve as impromptu member of the Praetorian Guard. Again no incident.

All this time MT's lost track of Emily. He sees her chatting up some other dude (Let's call him Dude2). MT's not too concerned about it and goes hot tubbing and ogles some other woman. Around 4:30 am Emily comes over and asks if MT's ready for a ride home. MT notices that Emily is pretty drunk but who's he to turn down a ride. They head towards the door and Emily tells MT that Dude2 will be driving them home. Again, MT's not too concerned about it.

About 3/4 of the way to my place, Emily informs Dude2 that its nice that he's driving them but she's just moved to Austin and is staying with her parents. She's not sure what Dude2 was expecting, but he can't stay over. And they are in Emily's car. And it turns out Dude2 got a ride to the party and is now sans his ride about 15 miles North of where he was. And to make matters worse...

Outside Chilly's place, Emily gets out of the car and tosses her tongue down MT's throat. Leaning right against the car, they play a friendly little game of grab ass for a bit. As MT put it, "That guy got a good view of what he might get from her, but he's still stuck up here and all the kissing in the world doesn't pay cab fare. And he doesn't want to be where I've been."

And then MT walked into Chilly's place and passed out. Only to be woken up by NGF. And that concludes our Saturday nights.

Monday. Another weekend gone. No running today. I could do it, but I deserve a break today. Work's a bit chaotic this morning.

As for the rest of Sunday, I woke up around 10:30 am starving. I threw some food together, watched some TV then passed back out. The plan had me going to the office around noon for a few hours but I postponed that until 4:00 pm. And then at work (ON A SUNDAY?!) until 7:15.

Chilly, BS, and I headed to VD's place for some cards around 9:00 pm. After making a contribution to some other people's drinking funds, we headed back way too late. We got back to the place around midnight and I was ready to pass out for good. Unfortunately I got an incidenary email from JMVC casting doubts about my abilities to keep the picture pages updated (Well, I read it that way). That kind of thing required action, so NGF stayed up until 1:30 updating some parts of the site. My camping/tubing trip from 7/12-7/13 has been added to the Events page. All the pictures from Friday night at Mexic-Arte Museum and some of the pictures from Saturday have been added to atx - july 2003. Also sprucing this page up and have added pictures to some of the posts.

I then slept like the dead. No running today. A brief break to recover (and get some real shoes). Oh, talked briefly to MT about his adventures on Saturday night. More on that later.

Labels: jmvc

Saturday was a long, long night. First we hit the Easy Rhino for a pre-party drink. We should have stayed there for a bit longer because we ended up showing up for the party a bit too early for my taste. BM's got a sweet place, btw. MT thought it more social to talk to other interact with other party-goers while Chilly D and I thought it better for me to rant on in a corner about nothing in particular. We blew through a couple bottles of wine when I thought it time to head to Antone's and meet up with JMVC and company. Though I managed to forget my camera case before I departed. And we left a soldier behing; MT's party-going nature convinced him to stay behind. Well, he met some woman. It seemed like we had a pretty good plan to collect him later on. More on MT later.

God bless J-saw. He sure is a trooper. He ran the 5k, played softball, and basketball (all this was part of a memorial scholarship for a friend of his) and still was out with everyone. That's the kind of dedication America's all about.

JMVC has raved about Grupo Fantasma for as long as I've known him. I had never seen them but now see why he rhapsodizes so. It was easy to forget that this was not necessarily my type of music when there were so many beautiful women around. Aye carumba! Communication was extremely difficult as my voice was nearly gone and the club extremely loud. I tried my best Marcel Marceau material to no avail. Instead I just pointed out what other people were drinking to the bartender. Hopefully they just thought I was eccentric.

On a day of a 5k, something even rarer seen: NGF dancing. And not his typical "b-bopping, put your hands in the air like you just don't care" dancing. Real attempted dancing. Slight prompting from Lo and an amalgamation of alcoholic beverages in my gullet made it seem like not such a bad idea. BS later informed me that it was the first time he had ever seen a person dance without moving their hips. I like my hips the way they are and they aren't going anywhere.

After Antone's, I tried to track down my car. For some reason, I thought bunches of people were coming back to our place. Regardless, I couldn't find my car to save my life. I've misplaced cars in the most obvious places before so I had put a note in my phone to remind me where the car was. And it wasn't there. There were two bottles of wine in there so maybe somebody did steal it. And then, I had one of the Seinfeld type moments when the attendant said "The parking across the street looks exactly like this one, you should check that out." And he was right. Some loud Outkast made the half-hour wasted seem less wasted. Back to the house.

Walking through the concrete shells kept me from receiving phone calls for a bit, but I had a couple calls: one from Lo called up to say they had arrived; and one from seemingly intoxicated MT asking where I was and to call him back at some miracle nine-digit phone number. One of those people got a call back.

More wine back at the place; Raspy man doing Tim Burtonesque re-imaginings of Godfather dialogue; weird pictures of people's feet; drunken phone calls to London (sorry FG!); and a reappearance of MT on the lazy-boy capped off the long night. Well, it was early Sunday morning by this time. But, really, what's the difference.

Labels: drinking, jmvc, music, stupidity

Not dead! Finished the 5k and saw Seabiscuit.

Amazing as it may sound, NGF, the long-time doer of nothing, finished a 5k run on Saturday, July 26, 2003. Around 6:30 am Chilly D and I headed to Smithville, the home of Hope Floats (or as an old friend of mine called it, Poop Floats. I was pretty wiped out from the after-party; not from drinking, but from this damn cold. My voice went raspy Friday evening and didn't get any better until after the race (Which I thought was odd that I'd run for over 3 miles and be less congested than went I started. Maybe this exercise thing has merits after all). J-saw and some of his track friends were there prepping up while Chilly and I are shooting the shit. They're a bit more serious about this stuff. Anyway, I just ignored the pain in my calf at the halfway point and the lack of feeling in my feet for 3/4 of the race and trudged through to the end. And some people talk about the exhilaration of a race or the rush of finishing it up. Well, I made it through and was just happy it was over. A friend of J-saw's did tell me it was pretty good to go from not running to finishing a 5k in only 6 weeks. I should write a book!

After the race, Chilly and I headed back to the atx. A couple breakfast tacos back at the Tamale House and we were ready to check out Seabiscuit (A great, great movie, by the way). Some other errands (birthday gifts, scoping out TVs) ran, we got back to the place around 3:00 pm. And only towards the end did I get tired. Raspy guy came back with a fury, though.

MT's up from H-town and we're going to hit a party in a bit. A nice nap and I'm ready to roll.

Getting ready to leave for the Smithville 5k. If this post is still up past 2:00 pm Saturday I'm dead. It's been nice knowing you.

Last night didn't go as planned. I had the intentions of staying in and passing out around 10:30 to get a full night's sleep. Well, I was beat around 6:30 and Lo called up. There was an exhibit at the Mexic-Arte Museum and she was checking it out with JMVC. If I stayed at home, I'd fall asleep around 8:00 and get no sleep so I owed it to myself to check out the exhibit. Met some of Lo's friends, took some pictures, had some wine, and made cracks about modern art. My voice has been steadily worse throughout the day and JMVC and Lo's friend ME suggested some scotch to clear up my voice. Many people don't know this about me, but medicinal applications of alcohol are a hobby of mine. As a result, a few of us hit Apple Bar to scotch it up. It didn't make my voice any better but it didn't make it any worse. That's a winner in my book!

There was an after-party which I thought would be a bad idea. When I discovered the house was mere minutes from my house, I couldn't not say yes. Real cool house in Hyde Park. Fun at the house, but I knew it was time to leave when I stopped being funny. I tried to blame it on people not being able to hear me, but I think I was actually starting to be not funny. Tired, I sometimes force the humour. Also, the older I get the more I'm beginning to think I'm not always funny. Get those jaws off the floor!

Labels: jmvc

Finalized the Brazil trip. PJC took talked with Bean's travel agent aunt who hooked us up. Going to Rio October 25 - November 1. Our group totals seven so, hopefully, that'll keep the kidnapping to a minimum. Let's hope I can find an internet cafe to update the site during the trip.

Thanks to a tip from JMVC, me and Bubba went to the Bitter End for lunch. Mmm, mmm, good chicken-fried chicken. Unfortunately it made me pretty drowsy. Must. Not. Sleep. At. Desk.

Labels: bubba, jmvc, travel

I have the 5k tomorrow and woke up dead today. I've got a sore throat, cough, and am congested. And that's just the good stuff. Anyway, I figured I could jog for a bit to ease into tomorrow; could barely go around the block. That's no good, not good at all. Tomorrow will be fun. At least I got to work before 8:30 for a change. So that's something. Need to get some things done so I can come in on Sunday. Good ol' weekend work. I volunteered so I've only myself to blame.

So the third time's a charm. Meeting got done but not before the guy who I thought was presenting for the guy who left told me I was presenting (still with me?). Well, well, well. I had to pull some shit out of my ass but it went ok. In an environment where nearly everyone is incompetent, bullshit is almost indecipherable from capability.

So a couple of weeks ago I finished this project up for this manager. He didn't know who I was until a couple days before everything was supposed to be done. Why? Because he had been talking to somebody else whom he thought was NGF. For over a month he did this all the while I emailed him updates. Anyway, I basically saved this guy and, because of some snafus, I ended up doing a week's worth of work in a day and a half. Flash forward to today and bonehead manager walks buy me and doesn't even acknowledge me. I say "hello" and he can't even fake some pleasantries? Don't worry, I'm not bitter about it.

Came home and had some pizza. After which Chilly D suggests a bike ride. Even the ever-elusive BS comes along. The three of us drive down to the local park and toss the frisbee around. Boy, that BS can pull down the disc. You would peg BS for a pretty boy but he's got game. And then the kicker, Chilly suggests a little sprint. I'm dumb enough to do it but smart enough to realize I can't compete with the young bucks. BS kicks way past Chilly and defeats him handily. Chilly and I have been getting up around 7 am to run for nearly six weeks, three times a week. I've never actually seen BS do any sort of exercise, so it's got to hurt to a bit come out of nowhere to glory. Well, it doesn't hurt me because I was a big tub of goo to begin with. But the good news is I've got something to always hang over Chilly D. For all time.

Worked on the Archives pages tonight. Each of the main Blogger run sections should have an Archive with the main exception being Reviews. Those I'll do manually every year. I need to work on some formatting issues, but the main functionality is there. With Chilly's help, I worked on a common footer that also has directNIC stat tracking JavaScript in it. No work on any of the pictures pages, as I'm tired and a bit sick. Maybe over the weekend.

Labels: dmt

FYI, doing laundry at 7:00 am does not necessarily guarantee you'll get to the office before 9 am. And the laundry isn't even folded. Damn me.

My postponed meeting from yesterday was held at 11 am. Around noon it was determined we didn't have enough information so we adjourned until 2:30. The reason for the delay? Well, my main developer didn't have sufficient documentation to prove his results. He was scheduled to leave at noon but is staying around until 2:00 to get what he needs. And by "get what he needs" I mean having me track down the stuff I gave him originally that he's misplaced. Fortunately I was able to do that will little fuss. Hell, to make sure the 2:30 meeting is the last of these for a while, I'd whittle an oak tree into a toothpick.

Had a nice near miss on the way home. I'm heading out of the office and make a stop by Academy Sports off Research. The entrance to the freeway is right by the entrance/exit of the store. Shopping complete, I jump back in my car and pull to the exit. Look both ways and there's an opening but I had just come to a stop and figure I'll give it another second. The car that I would have pulled behind was a black SUV. I pull in the next opening (a couple cars back) and see that same SUV's tire blow out and the driver way overcompensated and rolled it on it's top. A piece of one of the taillights flew right over my car. Anyway, I called 911 to find "all 911 emergency operators are currently engaged in other emergencies." Refreshing. So I'm not dead again. Also refreshing.

As for the rest of work, I don't know what exactly I did all day. This happens from time to time so I look at my Sent Items folder to jar my memory. Today it didn't jar anything so I looked at my Calendar. There it was; a meeting that got postponed but I still ended up being there for 45 minutes hearing elaboration for a dim wit. Another meeting tomorrow to finish up!

When I did get home, I got The Epicenter up and running. I put the case back on the PC, made room on my desk for the keyboard, monitor, and laptop. That involved me throwing a pile of magazines on the floor. Now I can truly multi-task. First course of action, dumb-down the image sizes on my picture index pages (for those of you on high-speed connections, this won't affect you too much. And since this is actually a majority I pretty much pissed away that time. If you are on a dial-up, feel free to extend your thanks my way). Next step was to beef up some of the atx pages. Except March, all the pictures I want out should be out. And besides March and April, I think all should be in time order (first picture is close to the first of the month and the last towards the end). March has a bit more pics to fix and April needs some tweaking. And, finally, I put up a placeholder for all my camping/tubing pictures. You'll find it on the Events page.

Running has a lot of positive effects but all that's moot right now. I'm beat. Not sure if I went the necessary 5k this morning but I just knew that I was done. The first portion of my run heads up an incline so I'm hoping the Smithville flat course will be a bit more forgiving. I only have one short run on Friday then the ol' kit and caboodle on Saturday. Let's see if the site's updated after Friday...

Last night I was given some shit over my State Government rant. They can't all be winners (and according to some other folks, none of them are), but I took the criticism to heart and I came up with a couple new ones. Well, two variations of a common theme. If you don't like the rants, send me some new topics. I can make up an opinion on pretty much anything. And as surprising as it may sound, I can formulate an opinion on a subject I know nothing about. Please don't make me read the newspaper and be original. We wouldn't want that.

"Fun with my PC" time is about done. Chilly D did some quick research and fixes prior to this post so now I've got decent video and sound. Now I've just got to remount the hard drives and toss the cover on and I'm pretty much ready for prime time.

I have this hellish meeting every Tuesday. It used to be at 10 am so it used to be a way to ruin a morning. Now it's at 1:00 pm so now its responsible for the ruination of the rest of my day. Every week we seem to get through the agenda at such a quickened pace that I think we'll go less than our standard hour. Every single time this tempo is kicked back a notch or two. It doesn't stop me from getting my hopes up every week because the meeting is virtually worthless. We ended up taking an extra fifteen minutes and can assert for a fact that nothing was accomplished.

I take that back, one of the developers did have an imaginary conversation with two of the developers we dial into the meeting. And this was prior to us calling them. "Hi Mary, Hi Lisa" to an empty phone sets the expectations for a meeting.

Good thing the rest of the day disappeared pretty well. But for some reason, people come looking for me just when I'm heading out the door. Today was no exception as I had two people pop their heads in my cube, as I was about to bolt. It was nearly 5:30, shouldn't all these people have been gone? Did what was necessary and hit the door.

The Tuesday tradition begins again. B-Side's with JMVC. I got him there around 7:30 pm followed a short time later by Lo. She and JMVC talked about the construction business for quite a while. I sat their waiting for the next nugget about suppliers, pouring concrete, and HAZMAT. I'm beginning to think every single occupation is more stimulating to talk about than mine is.

Some of JMVC's other crewmembers stopped by, but I wasn't in a big-drinking mood. Word of dmtdotcom is getting out, however. Full release soon before the anticipation becomes too frantic? Much too much to think about, as I needed to get home and blather a couple rants off and then pass out.

Labels: jmvc

Two things happened this morning that made me realize I need another job.

Incident 1: I come into the office and head towards my cube. I encounter four of the women from adjacent cubes talking. I typically sit down and grab my CD player as soon as possible to avoid overhearing any of the soccer mom talk. Well, I wasn't quick enough on this day. They were talking about "kids these days". Now nothing gets me wanting to bitch more than to bitch about the good-for-nothing kids this country produces (in general, I know there are specific exceptions). Fortunately I got the earphones in my ears just in time to prevent me from joining their yakfest. A near miss.

Incident 2: Pepsi's got this "Play for a Billion Dollars" contest. I'm a Mountain Dew fan from way back so I've been playing the game. As a side note, I've significantly cut down on the amount of caffeine that goes in my system but one every day or two's not going to kill me. Anyway, each Pepsi product cap has this string of character that the participant enters on the Pepsi contest web site. You have an account and it keeps track of the numbers you enter. Well, today I was organizing the caps on my desk to determine if I had entered all of them. After a period of time I determine two hadn't been entered. A direct hit.

I may be nearing rock bottom.

Did I only do one post yesterday? Seems totally improbable but true.

Lots accomplished yesterday: I set up my fantasy football league; finished up assisting the developer I'd been helping last week; went back to Fry's for lesser memory; put in said memory; burned some CD's; set up an alternative to terminal services on the PC; and made a crap load of sauce. Throw in me going to bed before midnight and getting a full night's sleep for the first time in recent memory and you get Monday, July 21, 2003: a red-letter day for NGF.

The FFL league's going into its third year and I had teams signing up within minutes. In these crazy, turbulent times it does warm one's bitter heart to see three people have less going on than me. Nobody really has a chance though, as the commish will defeat all.

The computer's actually pretty decent now. My main concern was the lack of a monitor. I just wanted to use it to back up content and burn CD's. So I figured I could do terminal services into that box without a monitor. Only problem is our good friends at Microsoft are out to screw me and terminal services costs money. Damn them. Good thing Chilly D was on the case and tracked down RealVNC which has freeware software which accomplished all I need. Praise them. Now I've got a PC with all my pictures, MP3's and documents that can burn CD's. I'm good to go with nary a word to say.

My sauce turned out decent. BS got back from his Minnesota just in time for din din. No meat in the sauce or in the tortellini so this could be the first vegetarian meal I've made in years.

OK, now I'm just wasting space. I'm out.

Labels: fantasysports

A nice long run to start the day. Chilly D says he feels good towards the end. I'm hoping he's lying because I just want it to end before I do. Week 6 of running's going decently. Probably did around 2 3/4 miles so I'm pretty close to the 5k (approximately 3.1 miles) for Saturday in Smithville. Considering my feet are burned and bruised I'm pretty happy.

Well, time to trudge off to work.

Dinner turned out good. I had a decent bottle of wine, Lindemans Merlot. A SE Australian vintage.

On the bad side, 256 MB of RAM didn't work. A cd-burner on a 64 MB computer is virtually worthless. So I'll have to go back to Fry's to talk to the geeks. Oh, the geeks.

Labels: technology

Oh, sleeping in is not bad. After that, needed to run some serious errands. Sam's to drop off pictures and get fuel; to Fry's to get hardware for the dead PC; some place to get some picture frames; and to the grocery to the remaining items needed for dinner tonight. I'm making a Hungarian chicken recipe that hasn't made its way to the recipe's page. I pretty much pull it out of my ass each time so I'll have to sit down and write it down. One of these days...

Labels: cooking, sleep

Well, that was a full couple of days. Getting lost on land and in the water; getting bloody and bruised; and spending a night under the stars. What more could a boy ask for?

But first I got to finish up work. I had worked with this developer all day Thursday and Friday trying to get him set up to do some weekend work. If somebody's working the weekend, I feel obliged to get them everything I can to get them on track (or in this case, back on track). Well, unfortunately, he was in no position to do anything and I got to spin my wheels for another majority of a day. He had absolutely no idea what he was doing. Dealing with incorrigible developers has me thinking of going back to coding. I may not be that good, but I knew enough to get with people when I was screwing up.

One final task to do before I left on a personal level. An email cutting a cord. Tough to do but it had to be done.

After that insanity, I rushed home to get ready for the trip. I really wanted to get out of town. Chilly D had just got back into town so we had some food and headed south (or I think it was south). We headed out a bit later than we should as J-saw was already there holding down the fort. A couple of wrong turns later got us to the campsite around 9:30 pm. SL's crew arrived about an hour later and the fun began.

I've never voluntarily exposed myself to nature before. My notion of "roughing it" is sleeping for an hour on my enclosed porch. And that only for a couple of hours for fear of being carried away by wandering animals. I know I live in a city and that chance is remote but that doesn't lessen the fear. Anyway, campsite was set up, food was eaten, drinks imbibed and social formalities conducted. And, of course, pictures taken. SL's group contains a lot of good eggs so it was a good time. He and I hadn't spoken at length in a few weeks, so we ended up chatting about stuff until past four. NGF, last man standing.

Pan to Saturday morning. I awake to the smell of pancakes. J-saw had woken up and was cooking up food for everybody. Mental note: Never don't camp with J-saw. A couple pancakes and a breakfast taco and I'm good to go to the river. Slight problem, it's 9:30 am and the rest of our group isn't supposed to arrive until 11:00 am (Some friends of J-saw are coming tubing for a birthday). Our group is around 8 already. That's well past an acceptable number for a cohesive group. Past four is usually trouble.

We ended up in the river a bit past noon. We almost immediately lost the rest of the group. No big deal though J-saw was also lost. Woe is me. Lots of good pictures taken, though we'll see if that waterproof camera comes through.

Lots of funny stories from the trip but nothing tops the loss of NGF. I went back off the tube to chat with some people. OK, they were funneling beers and I wanted to funnel one, too. Anyway, after that I couldn't catch up with the group. This was towards the end so I assumed there would be plenty of indicators (signs and such) letting me know where the pick up place was. I see nothing, but I'm not too concerned; I talk to people floating by and nobody knows where they are going and are not concerned. So it wasn't until the water starting feeling cold and the sun was going down that I changed my outlook.

I realize I have to be pretty much down when I see a place called "Jerry's Last Stop". I fumble out of the water cutting up my knee and feet to get out of the water. I had apparently entertained some of the attendants of a tube-return station. I dedicate my blood loss to them. They did inform me I was almost as far away from where I needed to be as possible. Next time I won't stop until I see oil rigs in the Gulf.

Oh, did I mention I didn't have anything on my feet? Not a good call on my part.

Well, I meandered for a bit before I found some Rastafarian dude who drove me back to the campsite. Though I insisted the campsite wasn't the campsite and I had him continue on for a bit. I told him do go to my website and email me if he ever came to Austin. He didn't think I was the death metal type. I figured I'd give him a crumb and gave him a recap of the deathmetalthunder.com origin's issue. He didn't get it.

SL's crew was still around. Chilly and J-saw had headed back. I told my tale and got the hell out of Dodge. A couple of phone calls to clear things up along the way but my primary mission was getting back to my bed and some desperately needed sleep.

Labels: chilly, drinking, food, stupidity, the saw

In the office before 9:30! I did get up at 6:45 am, but it was some of the most restful sleep I've had in a couple months. Woke up and ran a couple miles then came up to update the atx - may 2003 pictures with some Amber Alert shots. Also some interesting shots of some guy dealing with the ramifications of leaving his car running at the airport parking lot.

Stopped on the way home at Sam's to pick up some supplies for the camping/tubing trip. And by "supplies" I mean beer. Heading out some time early evening tomorrow towards New Braunfels, Texas. A pretty big group will be camping out Friday and Saturday with tubing in between, though I'll just be camping out Friday. NGF and the outdoors are a rarely mixed combination so it is probably best not to push things.

After the shopping, I got home and took a most-needed nap. Then the PC rebuild went south. The cd-rom died during the re-install of the OS. Of course after the hard drive was wiped. Unexpected problems. Maybe I'll just buy a burner as a replacement and save the other bay for something else. I did update the Reviews section of my site. New reviews (including DVD's). They just need to be reorganized and actual reviews put in.

I ended up spinning my wheels until 4:15 pm. Between PC problems and chasing people down, I would have been better off not going in to work. Good times to be had in corporate bureaucracies; don't let anyone tell you different.

Boring night ahead of me. Both roommates are gone tonight so my fun will be rebuilding my PC. Getting that to work is the next step in getting videos up on the site. I've got a couple dozen Hi-8 tapes with tons of great material. Dug those out of my storage locker a month ago so I need to get off my ass to make the magic happen.

And the damndest thing happened. The only person I know more stubborn that me called to apologize. The...Damndest...Thing. JRF must have been working on him pretty hard these last last two months.

Uhm, one glass of port turned into the rest of the bottle and a couple snorts of Sambuca. Hoity-toity of me, I know. Ended going to bed around 12:30 and totally slept through my alarms. Forth day into the office past 9:30 am. Nothing queued up for me, but still lots to do. Got into the office just in time to hit a 10 am weekly meeting. Our supervisor wondered if we'd have issues with only being able to test for half the day. Just a few. Prognosis for this next release: abject failure.

Need to track down some people who've wandered off...

Ever go to a restaurant and have the bill comped? Well, ever for the reason of an electrical fire?

So I go to the Carrabba's for dinner with a friend of mine. Vino, viand and good company, what more could you ask for? It was a pretty rainy evening and we arrived a little past 8:30 pm. We had appetizers and everything was going pretty well. The staff was very friendly so we weren't surprised when the general manager stopped by our table. We were surprised when he said that there was smoke coming into the restaurant and that it wasn't coming from the kitchen; the fire department had been alerted and were on their way. Great timing as the bread, calamari and salad had me filled up. So we headed out to the porch and hung out and talked. Lots of fire trucks, police, and EMT units arrived. The wait staff came by with some more wine to help kill the time.

We waited outside until past eleven, but they were done for the night. We had the intention of getting some dessert but that'll have to be another time. Our waitress bagged our remaining food. I had no cash to give her, but MA did. Good thing for people with money. As for fires, this was a pretty good one.

Well, I'm going to have myself a glass of port and pass the hell out.

Labels: food, minutia, near-death

Did anyone get the tag off that truck that just ran me over? And me with no insurance.

I walked into a meeting with no current tasks and walked out with the most difficult things to test. You can't write down facial expressions, but if you could it'd be with words like "acute pain", "anguish" and/or "scorn". That and realizing I'll be knowing this place pretty well over the next month. In laymen's terms, I'm screwed.

Man, this sleeping thing's a pain. I finally got to sleep around 5:30 am. That made the 7 am run an 8 am run for a bit less distance. I felt way sluggish. A group of us signed up for a 5k on the 26th and at this rate I'll be lucky to drive that distance. By the time I did get to the office, there was still half an hour to prep for a meeting. Now I'm heading south to sign some paperwork. In a few short days I'll be able to get run over by a car and be covered by insurance. In addition to the car covering me, of course.

There was a bit of distress at the house last night, so I left a note with BS to wake me up to discuss when he arrived. Well, that turned out to be 3 am. Found out the details but ended up staying up a couple more hours shooting the shit. Careful what you ask for as you just may get it. And lose a few hours sleep in the bargain.

Went to see Terminator 3 tonight ( Read my for it ). Dear God that was bad.

Labels: movies

I just learned why not to overextend myself. This woman I work with volunteered for some stuff last week. She ended up not getting some of it done and got called out in a meeting. And what does she get for all her benevolence? Notta. I do what I've got well and tell people I've got problems way before they actually materialize.

No, I'm not Kreskin; I'm just good.

A late day into the office. I didn't get into my car until 9:25 am. Rush in to see nobody even knows I'm missing. Oh well.

Anyway, it was long, strange night. Some commotion in the house woke me up around 3:30 am and I couldn't fall back to sleep. So I worked on the picture pages until 5:30 am. I put a bunch more pictures on the atx - june 2003 page. In order and including the aftermath of the June 25, 2003 White Stripes show. In case you were wondering, that second row of pictures does contain pictures of Matthew McConaughey and Sandra Bullock.

Trying to get a decent amount of pictures is quite the pain. I've got all the pictures one could need, but I'm doing each of the HTML pages by hand. That 'tis no fun. Cutting and pasting stuff really is more appropriate for a work environment, not sitting on one's ass on the couch at home.

Anyway, updated March, April, May, June and July atx picture pages. Removed the link to the wedding page (I'll put that back once I feel like doing almost as much work as I did for the atx pictures). All these pages seem like there's content.

Well, this is day one of the deathmetalthunder.com blog. What goes into the daily operation of such an enterprise? It's a miracle every day. And you're in for a thrill!

Today's the first day of the blog, but the second using blogger to update content on several sections of my site. And whom do I have to thank for it? Chilly D as usual steps to the plate and hits one out of the park. Besides making the content update process easier, I can also periodically add content from work (I can't ftp from work, but can use blogger.com). Thanks, D!

And where would this site be without atl's own PJC? The dmt.com logo is from him. The domain name was made possible by lots of chats back when I was in MD last summer/fall (2002). Most of the look and feel comes from him pushing me to forget about work and surf the Internet. And HUGE thanks will come once the video section goes online. A lot of work will be necessary but it'll be worth it to see me running into walls, setting carpets on fire, doing water gun drive-by's and seeing a man fall into a manhole. And that's only a start.

deathmetalthunder.com: the future is now.