Not long after finishing my first country mix, which was in turn based on Jen's country mix - both playlists were posted earlier on this blog - I started (and just recently finished) my second country mix. As before, this includes some of the newest hits in country music as well as some of the classics.
1. Chattahoochee (Alan Jackson)
I loved this song back when I swore up and down that I didn't like country, back in the 90s. This was the exception, and to this day it remains a favorite. The beat is hot, and the lyrics - it's country's answer to Jack & Diane (John Mellencamp's coming-of-age hit).
2. Brand New Girlfriend (Steve Holy)
A good and fun fast-paced country song, fairly new.
3. Nothin' to Lose (Josh Gracin)
One of the better driving songs, possibly the fastest-paced song on the album, although tracks 1, 2, 4, and 9 give it a good run. After my brother got me into Garth Brooks, this was one of my first favorites from just listening to country radio.
4. Life is a Highway (Rascal Flatts)
If you've seen Disney and Pixar's Cars - or better yet, if your kid has it - you've heard this song and it's probably grown on you some. Unlike the previous mix, this album doesn't have a rock song to show how similar some country is to rock, but this is the closest, being something of a crossover song.
5. Good Directions (Billy Currington)
A current hit. The song itself is nothing spectacular, but it is good, and I always chuckle at the end.
6. Lucky Man (Montgomery Gentry)
The duo's latest, and a current hit. Good to sing along to.
7. I'm Gonna Miss Her (Brad Paisley)
It's not Ticks (his current single) but it is pretty witty. I'm not even into fishing and I dig this track.
8. Honky Tonk Badonkadonk (Trace Adkins)
This is country's answer to Sir Mix-a-Lot's Baby Got Back. I never thought I'd hear a country song about a girl with a nice bottom, but here it is. The Nintendo reference got me listening to it (She's got it going on, like Donkey Kong) but the humor kept me playing it over again.
9. Tennessee River Run (Darryl Worley)
A blatant ripoff of Chattahoochee (track 1) but I don't see that as a bad thing. I love the hell outta this song, and the way I see it, it's two great songs along the same lines.
10. Lifestyles of the Not So Rich and Famous (Tracy Byrd)
Jen suggested this one. It's OK, kind of funny. Not a favorite, but I don't skip it either.
11. Get Drunk and Be Somebody (Toby Keith)
A great drinking anthem, pretty fun.
12. Strawberry Wine (Deanna Carter)
My sister-in-law and her boyfriend claim this as their song together, but I dig it because I don't find many female-sung country songs to my liking. This is an exception, and it's very good.
13. No News (Lonestar)
Didn't like this at first, but it's pretty funny.
14. Austin (Blake Shelton)
This song tries to be more epic than it has any right being, and I don't get why he calls his girlfriend (ex?) Austin just because she talked about going there. It would have worked better had he used an actual name. Also the one I have seems to cut off after the last line, but it might be like that intentionally. Good song.
15. Love, Me (Collin Raye)
This one is even more emotional than the Collin Raye pick on the last mix (One Boy, One Girl). Very nice song.
16. Tough (Craig Morgan)
A touching song about a man admiring his wife's strength while dealing with cancer, with a little fun thrown in.
17. Startin' With Me (Jake Owen)
This is almost hard to listen to, makes you wanna hate the guy. Another current single. I have mixed feelings about it, but I think I dig it, in an odd way.
18. Wrapped (George Strait)
The last one added, Strait's latest and current single is the one I've heard the least, but I like what I've heard.
19. Find Out Who Your Friends Are (Tracy Lawrence)
Yet another current single. I love this song because it reminds me of myself. About five years ago I had a friend for whom I'd drive four hours round trip twice a weekend to help him spend time with his kid. Back to the song, the only thing I have a problem with - and it's more of a laughing point - is how he pronounces one word in the chorus. It's like, "run out and crank up Their car" as if Their is the start of a new line. You'd have to hear it.
20. Live Like You Were Dying (Tim McGraw)
About a guy who finds out he only has so long to live and makes the most of it. Real inspiring and fun song. A movie was made on the idea (not that it was McGraw's to start with, necessarily) called "Last Holiday" starring Queen Latifah. Seems like it's the same thing anyway.
21. Drive (Alan Jackson)
My new favorite Alan Jackson song, barely edging past Chattahoochee, which is still the most fun one, but as far as sentimental value... Well, my father taught me how to drive (when I had my permit though, not when I was a kid) and he passed away 5 years ago... and it's been a dream of mine to teach my own (future and hypothetical) kids how to drive. I just love this song. I don't like to put two songs by the same artist on a mix. It's not the first time, though, and here it's very appropriate.
Note: Due to a (hopefully, temporary) error in the Blogger software, I am unable to title this entry - so the title is at the top of the post in bold. It's the best I could do with what I was given.
Second note: They fixed it, so I changed it.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Friday, July 6, 2007
Shaved it all off
Click to view full image.
Yep, shaved it all off, and it's fairly smooth. Could use a little touching up.
I'd type more, but I haven't got much time, have to leave for work.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
I'm not at all excited about the iPhone
And why should I be?
First of all, the biggest offense about the iPhone is not the price but the exclusive deal with AT&T. This is not only an issue for non-AT&T subscribers who will have to change providers if they want one bad enough (or start an additional plan with AT&T). The problem is that while AT&T is pretty big, they aren't the biggest. We commonly assume that Verizon is the biggest - after all, that is their marketing campaign. I don't know that Verizon isn't the biggest, but they don't service the rural area where I live. However, regional provider Alltel does, and they're not known around here as "No-tel" for nothing. Alltel uses Verizon's towers, and my wife had Alltel for some time. Sometimes she would have to stick her head out a window, and sometimes she'd have to walk down the driveway. (Obviously using the phone in bad weather posed a problem.) We don't have experience with AT&T, but they weren't out here before they acquired Cingular, who we do have experience with. Again, indirectly - T-Mobile uses both Cingular and Suncom towers (and provides free roaming). In Greenville (the nearest city) we would be on Suncom towers, but out here in the country, it would be Cingular, and the service was terrible. One bar at most, calls dropped frequently - it was a nightmare.
OK, we live in the country. Fair enough, but in my hometown of Santa Rosa, CA, my brother once had AT&T service, through AT&T themselves. If he was in a call and drove through the intersection of Farmers Lane and Highway 12 East, the call would drop. No service at the intersection, which is home to an IHOP, used to be home to a Lyon's (like an upscale Dennys), a high-class hotel (The Flamingo), and a liquor store. Maybe these businesses on the corners would get signal, but the intersection wouldn't. This was in a town of about 175,000. (Yeah, it was a town... It's hard to think of Rose Town as a "City".) So anyway, you're in Los Angeles, New York City, Las Vegas, Chicago, whatever, your iPhone works great. Once you leave the city, however, your iPhone is nothing more than an iPod with a touch screen and more features.
And the price! Who do they think they're fooling? Well, the early adopters, of course. I confess, my first DVD burner was $500 and my first CD burner was $325. So I've played the fool myself a time or two. But I just look at these and Sony's PlayStation 3 - $499 for the base model that nobody wants but does some of the same things and makes you part of the club, and $599 for the real deal - and sit back in amazement, that someone would pay so much for such a limited device.
Let me tell you - there is one feature only that I envy on the iPhone - Web surfing. That would be kind of nice to do on my own cell phone, as my own phone - the Kyocera KX-5 Slider Remix - has this inspired-by-AOL limited "EasyEdge" web where you can only surf within the predetermined Channels. Still, I can get the news from Yahoo and read Dear Abby, which is kind of like Jerry Springer in a text-based format, at times. But my phone has what apparently the iPhone does not - a microSD (aka Transflash) port. The phone's manual says I can go up to 512MB (which I have) but people online post results with the 1GB and the 2GB, although they also report problems. My phone plays video clips (converted to the 3GP format) and mp3 files (both songs in the music player, and as ringtones). I can make my own wallpapers converted from images on my computer, and I can assign images from my computer as caller IDs. (I wouldn't use its camera, which is pathetic.) So as it is I feel as though I have the best overall phone. Our provider is regional, so you might not have heard of US Cellular. But their service has been great over the 8 months we've been with them. Sure, we've had a couple dropped calls, but so far their service has no dead zones. Even outside their territory here in Eastern NC - we went to Connecticut and back last December - their service is still good. We'll test them in Myrtle Beach, SC this coming weekend and all over Northern CA this November.
Apple is a pretty good company that I like and have a decent amount of respect for. Steve Jobs is a mad genius, but more often than not he knows what he's doing. The problem with Apple, however, is they've never wanted to appeal to the common man. They've always wanted to be part of an exclusive club. Their stuff usually doesn't work with competitor's products. They've done a little collaboration with Microsoft on some things - well, sure, they'd want professionals to be able to exchange documents and such - hence, the Mac version of Office. And Quicktime and Safari, which both started out as Mac-only perks, are now available to regular PCs as well. (Yes, you can now use Safari on a PC, but it's too late - Firefox already dominates the power user market and for good reason.) But Apple's stuff has always looked good. Before the iPod, Mp3 players were ugly, for the most part. Their computers have always been easy on the eyes, and I still think the most beautiful monitor is the Apple Cinema Display 30" model, but at $100/1" (so to speak) it had better be, right? (To compare, my monitor cost us $28.12½/1" and it's a 32".) Undeniably, the iPhone is a beautiful phone. But is it really the fairest? Call me biased, but I still think my Kyocera KX-5 Slider Remix is in the running. Verizon's (Motorola's?) En-V and Chocolate are pretty nice phones, too, and so is the Helio Ocean dual-slider. Because in the end, all an iPhone is, is a bulky solid-state phone with a touch screen.
PC World put out this great article which I must admit is the inspiration for this blog (along with some of my own beef, of course), called "iPhone vs. Your Phone: Avoiding iPhone Envy". Sure, it assumes you have a phone as good as mine (such as a RAZR/KRZR) but it's a great article. So I give credit as well as thanks to the author and publishers of this article here. And while I'm giving out thanks, generous thanks go to Wikipedia for the links here; except for the article in this paragraph, the rest point to informative pages on Wikipedia, where you truly can find (just about) anything you're looking for. Look up your hometown, your workplace, your car, or anything you're interested in. (No, I'm not trying to advertise for them, but they are one of my favorite websites.)
First of all, the biggest offense about the iPhone is not the price but the exclusive deal with AT&T. This is not only an issue for non-AT&T subscribers who will have to change providers if they want one bad enough (or start an additional plan with AT&T). The problem is that while AT&T is pretty big, they aren't the biggest. We commonly assume that Verizon is the biggest - after all, that is their marketing campaign. I don't know that Verizon isn't the biggest, but they don't service the rural area where I live. However, regional provider Alltel does, and they're not known around here as "No-tel" for nothing. Alltel uses Verizon's towers, and my wife had Alltel for some time. Sometimes she would have to stick her head out a window, and sometimes she'd have to walk down the driveway. (Obviously using the phone in bad weather posed a problem.) We don't have experience with AT&T, but they weren't out here before they acquired Cingular, who we do have experience with. Again, indirectly - T-Mobile uses both Cingular and Suncom towers (and provides free roaming). In Greenville (the nearest city) we would be on Suncom towers, but out here in the country, it would be Cingular, and the service was terrible. One bar at most, calls dropped frequently - it was a nightmare.
OK, we live in the country. Fair enough, but in my hometown of Santa Rosa, CA, my brother once had AT&T service, through AT&T themselves. If he was in a call and drove through the intersection of Farmers Lane and Highway 12 East, the call would drop. No service at the intersection, which is home to an IHOP, used to be home to a Lyon's (like an upscale Dennys), a high-class hotel (The Flamingo), and a liquor store. Maybe these businesses on the corners would get signal, but the intersection wouldn't. This was in a town of about 175,000. (Yeah, it was a town... It's hard to think of Rose Town as a "City".) So anyway, you're in Los Angeles, New York City, Las Vegas, Chicago, whatever, your iPhone works great. Once you leave the city, however, your iPhone is nothing more than an iPod with a touch screen and more features.
And the price! Who do they think they're fooling? Well, the early adopters, of course. I confess, my first DVD burner was $500 and my first CD burner was $325. So I've played the fool myself a time or two. But I just look at these and Sony's PlayStation 3 - $499 for the base model that nobody wants but does some of the same things and makes you part of the club, and $599 for the real deal - and sit back in amazement, that someone would pay so much for such a limited device.
Let me tell you - there is one feature only that I envy on the iPhone - Web surfing. That would be kind of nice to do on my own cell phone, as my own phone - the Kyocera KX-5 Slider Remix - has this inspired-by-AOL limited "EasyEdge" web where you can only surf within the predetermined Channels. Still, I can get the news from Yahoo and read Dear Abby, which is kind of like Jerry Springer in a text-based format, at times. But my phone has what apparently the iPhone does not - a microSD (aka Transflash) port. The phone's manual says I can go up to 512MB (which I have) but people online post results with the 1GB and the 2GB, although they also report problems. My phone plays video clips (converted to the 3GP format) and mp3 files (both songs in the music player, and as ringtones). I can make my own wallpapers converted from images on my computer, and I can assign images from my computer as caller IDs. (I wouldn't use its camera, which is pathetic.) So as it is I feel as though I have the best overall phone. Our provider is regional, so you might not have heard of US Cellular. But their service has been great over the 8 months we've been with them. Sure, we've had a couple dropped calls, but so far their service has no dead zones. Even outside their territory here in Eastern NC - we went to Connecticut and back last December - their service is still good. We'll test them in Myrtle Beach, SC this coming weekend and all over Northern CA this November.
Apple is a pretty good company that I like and have a decent amount of respect for. Steve Jobs is a mad genius, but more often than not he knows what he's doing. The problem with Apple, however, is they've never wanted to appeal to the common man. They've always wanted to be part of an exclusive club. Their stuff usually doesn't work with competitor's products. They've done a little collaboration with Microsoft on some things - well, sure, they'd want professionals to be able to exchange documents and such - hence, the Mac version of Office. And Quicktime and Safari, which both started out as Mac-only perks, are now available to regular PCs as well. (Yes, you can now use Safari on a PC, but it's too late - Firefox already dominates the power user market and for good reason.) But Apple's stuff has always looked good. Before the iPod, Mp3 players were ugly, for the most part. Their computers have always been easy on the eyes, and I still think the most beautiful monitor is the Apple Cinema Display 30" model, but at $100/1" (so to speak) it had better be, right? (To compare, my monitor cost us $28.12½/1" and it's a 32".) Undeniably, the iPhone is a beautiful phone. But is it really the fairest? Call me biased, but I still think my Kyocera KX-5 Slider Remix is in the running. Verizon's (Motorola's?) En-V and Chocolate are pretty nice phones, too, and so is the Helio Ocean dual-slider. Because in the end, all an iPhone is, is a bulky solid-state phone with a touch screen.
PC World put out this great article which I must admit is the inspiration for this blog (along with some of my own beef, of course), called "iPhone vs. Your Phone: Avoiding iPhone Envy". Sure, it assumes you have a phone as good as mine (such as a RAZR/KRZR) but it's a great article. So I give credit as well as thanks to the author and publishers of this article here. And while I'm giving out thanks, generous thanks go to Wikipedia for the links here; except for the article in this paragraph, the rest point to informative pages on Wikipedia, where you truly can find (just about) anything you're looking for. Look up your hometown, your workplace, your car, or anything you're interested in. (No, I'm not trying to advertise for them, but they are one of my favorite websites.)
Our wedding in review, Chapter Two
Here's Chapter Two, or The Big One - or, The Important One. A summary on the bachelor party, the wedding and reception, and the honeymoon. Again this was originally posted on Myspace, and it was posted a day or two after we got back
The pictures link actually still works! If you went there manually, the picture link might not be in the same place. I did not wait for the pictures to load, but a few did, so I assume they're all up there.
We never did get the CD-ROM as promised, but we did get two whole photo albums loaded with pictures. And what we got from the web site was fine for taking to Walmart and ordering reprints - they looked just as good as those printed in the album. So naturally if you want pictures (prints, I mean) you can save any pictures (not the thumbnails, the actual pictures they link to) and upload them to Walmart.com or wherever, or burn them to a CD or put them on a memory card, carry them to the store and get them printed very easily and fairly cheaply. Walmart does it for like 35¢ a picture.
Another thing I remember about the bachelor party: I drunk-dialed my mom, and was quite loud on the phone. I was walking back and forth outside like the drunken fool I was. I just didn't care. I was having a good time, and besides, I was a little disturbed by how Jen handled that day. She told me she was going to do a dump run, didn't even say goodbye or anything, and wound up at her sister's and began, well, you know, you're not supposed to see the bride until the wedding day. So Wayne and John were here, and Jen stayed with her sister. Except John got too drunk (not the first nor the last time) and had to be picked up. It worked out great because Wayne had picked up a Roman candle in South Carolina on his way up from Georgia, so Jen's sister pulls up and picks John up, then Wayne fires off the candle, we all watch, and they take him and Wayne and I finish drinking. So I was a little resentful about that, but I was focusing on the positive.
The honeymoon was great, in Tennessee. Never would I have believed, when I was younger, that I would be married by 27, honeymooning in Tennessee. Well, it just goes to show that we never truly know where our lives will take us. But less philosophically and more realistically, since the first anniversary will be in South Carolina, we are tentatively looking at Virginia for our second anniversary, and to complete the compass - well, what's east of North Carolina? No other state, that's for sure - so maybe the Outer Banks. Of course, to consider a true out-of-state destination east of North Carolina, one must indeed leave the country. London is a place we both want to visit, but whether we can afford a London vacation by our fifth anniversary remains to be seen...
I didn't have much of a bachelor party. I got drunk with my brother and brother-in-law. Watched WrestleMania 22 on DVD. But that's all fine with me, I wasn't relishing the thought of having strippers at my party. I'm quite committed to monogamy. So I had the bachelor party I wanted, and got just drunk enough to enjoy myself, but not enough to get sick. Even better.
At the last few minutes, the wedding was real hectic, but it fell into place. Because of the arrangement, Jen had to walk a good distance to get to me. So I had to look away. It worked, though. The flower girl (who was only 3 at the time) tripped and fell, and started to walk off - created a bit of a diversion. Then I look up and Jen's at the end of the aisle. That's the moment, guys, where you know a relationship that's developed into a marriage is worth it.
The reception wasn't well organized, half the food wasn't ready, and we got crappy instrumental music for an hour and a half, and the CD we put together to play at the reception for half an hour. Here's the tracklist for those interested.
Nickelback - Far Away
Goo Goo Dolls - Iris
LeAnn Rimes - I Need You
Yuki Kajiura - Key of the Twilight
3 Doors Down - Here Without You
Savage Garden - I Knew I Loved You
Rhett Atkins - She Said Yes
Celine Dion - A New Day Has Come
Tal Bachman - She's So High
Avril Lavigne - I'm With You
Vanessa Carlton - A Thousand Miles
Celine Dion - Because You Loved Me
Garth Brooks - The Red Strokes
Extreme - More Than Words
Nightwish - Forever Yours
Savage Garden - Truly Madly Deeply
Lee Ann Womack - I Hope You Dance
Gloria Estefan - Live For Loving You
UB40 - Can't Help Falling in Love
Nope, no Disturbed up there. We also meant to have Bryan Adams' "Everything I Do" but forgot to include it.
One neat thing I did during the ceremony... No one from California could make it (except my brother, who's now in Georgia) so I made two calls right before the ceremony began. One to my mother and one to my sister. They put it on speakerphone and most of my family out in CA got to listen in on the ceremony. (They said they heard the minister and I very well, but said they could barely hear Jen.)
Anyway, after the reception, we headed back home to get out of our costumes. The plan was to meet a couple friends at their hotel, who had flown in for the event, and party with them. That still happened, but we got delayed - badly - and the party didn't happen. I did however get two hotel rooms - one for my wife and I, the other for my brother. Waste of time and money overall. That wasn't the honeymoon, mind you, that was just the wedding night. Aren't they one and the same? Not in our case. One of the bridesmaids had to be at the airport, and it was on the way to where we were honeymooning at - you know I'll get to that - so we took her Sunday morning to the airport, and left from there.
The first idea was to take her over the Tennessee border, get a room for the night, and drive back so she could see, during the day, that mountain pass between Tennessee and North Carolina on I-40. It's a very nice drive, especially for someone who hasn't seen it - Jen hasn't been that far west.
Sure enough, we went out to TN along I-40, but ended up all the way in Knoxville. We stayed for two nights at a Marriott hotel, and drove back yesterday. That one day was a heck of an adventure. We had some shopping to do, and finding a Wal-Mart was relatively easy. However we had gift checks to cash to fund the honeymoon, and finding a Bank of America was not. We had to get lost in downtown. Once we got the checks cashed, the search for a bathroom was insane. Money in pocket, we headed back east 15 miles or so, and headed for Gatlinburg.
First stop was Floyd Garrett's Muscle Car Museum. Over 90 cars worth $5 million. And I got pictures. Including one of me with the car better known as Eleanor - a 1969 Ford Mustang/Shelby GT-500, easily one of the best muscle cars ever (and my personal favourite).
After that we got sucked into a "As Seen on TV Store". The place was huge. They got us for about $15, and we got a pancake maker/flipper thing, and I got a pair of those Ambervision shades for only $5. They're worth it and more - they add considerable sharpness and contrast more so than blocking bright light. Every driver should have a pair - they could reduce accidents.
Speaking of every driver, there's a road between the Tennessee towns (or tourist traps, take your pick) of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg that every motorist should drive at least once. I was honoured to drive it twice - there and back. Curvy enough to keep you alert, but not enough to really challenge. Trees completely covering the road overhead, through the mountains. Absolutely inspiring.
Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge are both shameless tourist traps, but Gatlinburg does it so much better. It's a picture perfect mountain town. Unfortunately, the shops are wall to wall. There's no parking for most businesses. Only place you can park is in parking lots about a mile and a half apart.
My mother told me she'd put a good amount of money in my bank account for an expensive dinner. My first choice was the Italian places. Actually it was my only choice, until I saw an ad for the Hard Rock Cafe in Gatlinburg. After that there was no other choice. Jen had never been to a Hard Rock, and I'd only been to the one in San Francisco once, when I was a kid. I don't really remember it, but I did know going to Hard Rock was a real treat. And boy, was it ever.
The Hard Rock was conveniently located right smack in the middle of two parking garages, so we had to hoof it. We went in, and naturally there was a wait. They told us an hour, it was actually half that. We went in, and it was incredibly noisy. LOUD rock music playing, videos on plasma screens, and of course wall to wall rock memorobilia. Good, top stuff.
The tab came to $96.80 for just us two. No joke. But the deposit covered it. And it was well worth it. Let's see - we started with an appetizer, chips and a spinach-artichoke-fried chicken dip; and two drinks - margaritas using Sammy Hagar's own brand of tequila, Cabo Wabo. (Best tequila you can get for any price, IMHO.) Without discussing it, we both ordered the same entrée, fried chicken and sausage over penne pasta tossed with alfredo sauce and spinach leaves - and two more drinks called Hurricanes - like a Tequila Sunrise but with Rum. And we did get to keep all four glasses, so we have proof we went to Hard Rock.
All in all, we had a great honeymoon. We did spend a little money, but it didn't break us. It was mostly driving, but Monday, we had a GREAT day.
Now, those of you who wanted to see pictures... Follow this link, or go to russeaton.com, click on "Lots of Pics" to the right, and look for "Jennifer_Nathan" in the lower-left corner of the page. At some point you will be asked for credentials; the info's just "view" in both fields.
I'm on Dialup, so I couldn't wait for the page to load. We've already saved all the images from the site - but we'll be getting higher quality files on CD-ROM and of course the prints. The photographer's in the process of assembling the final package, I think. But looking at the pics in the folder on the computer in thumbnail view, I think I can guide you through the pics as you see them:
The children in the first row are the ring-bearer and flower girl. Nephew and neice of the bride. The first couple you see is the sister of the bride and her boyfriend (of 5 years, they're unofficially married or something). The young lady is a bridesmaid, longtime friend of the bride. The three men together are, from left to right (in the ones where we're all facing front) my sister-in-law's boyfriend (who I call a brother-in-law), me, and my brother who now stays in Georgia. The only people at my bachelor party there. The two women you see before you first see the bride: the woman carrying the laptop is the bride's aunt from Connecticut, and the one in green with the bouquet is the bride's mother. Then of course you see the bride - the man behind her is the limo driver. And meanwhile when the ladies are getting Jen out of the car, you see the guys up at the altar. The next pictures show the ceremony. The first group shot is Jen with friends from work. Others have more of a mix. Then you'll see something confusing: the photographer really seemed to be interested in the tat on Jen's shoulder - he took about half a dozen pics of it! Then Jen and I get in the limo. What I'm looking up at was a CD player, which was broken. It was a short ride anyway. We then see the reception. Not going to explain all that, but I will say that the two teenage girls you see (a redhead and a blonde) are both very underage, so don't even think of getting excited. Oh, and halfway through the pics appear to start again. The photographer used two cameras. Camera one, camera two.
The pictures link actually still works! If you went there manually, the picture link might not be in the same place. I did not wait for the pictures to load, but a few did, so I assume they're all up there.
We never did get the CD-ROM as promised, but we did get two whole photo albums loaded with pictures. And what we got from the web site was fine for taking to Walmart and ordering reprints - they looked just as good as those printed in the album. So naturally if you want pictures (prints, I mean) you can save any pictures (not the thumbnails, the actual pictures they link to) and upload them to Walmart.com or wherever, or burn them to a CD or put them on a memory card, carry them to the store and get them printed very easily and fairly cheaply. Walmart does it for like 35¢ a picture.
Another thing I remember about the bachelor party: I drunk-dialed my mom, and was quite loud on the phone. I was walking back and forth outside like the drunken fool I was. I just didn't care. I was having a good time, and besides, I was a little disturbed by how Jen handled that day. She told me she was going to do a dump run, didn't even say goodbye or anything, and wound up at her sister's and began, well, you know, you're not supposed to see the bride until the wedding day. So Wayne and John were here, and Jen stayed with her sister. Except John got too drunk (not the first nor the last time) and had to be picked up. It worked out great because Wayne had picked up a Roman candle in South Carolina on his way up from Georgia, so Jen's sister pulls up and picks John up, then Wayne fires off the candle, we all watch, and they take him and Wayne and I finish drinking. So I was a little resentful about that, but I was focusing on the positive.
The honeymoon was great, in Tennessee. Never would I have believed, when I was younger, that I would be married by 27, honeymooning in Tennessee. Well, it just goes to show that we never truly know where our lives will take us. But less philosophically and more realistically, since the first anniversary will be in South Carolina, we are tentatively looking at Virginia for our second anniversary, and to complete the compass - well, what's east of North Carolina? No other state, that's for sure - so maybe the Outer Banks. Of course, to consider a true out-of-state destination east of North Carolina, one must indeed leave the country. London is a place we both want to visit, but whether we can afford a London vacation by our fifth anniversary remains to be seen...
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Got drunk last night
Since I have to work the night of July 4th, I figured I'd do my drinking early - as in the first few hours of the day. Jen started out with a couple shots of tequila, and I put the last shot and a half of the last bottle of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum in a glass of Tahitian Treat (a fruit punch soda). Then we each had a Jagërbomb - drop a shot of Jagërmeister in a glass of Red Bull. It was OK, nothing real special. (I always heard an Irish Carbomb - 1 Guinness Stout, a shot of Bailey's Irish cream, and a shot of Irish whiskey was good but never tried it.)
Then we sat down to watch the new movie Shooter, but we didn't finish it.
We had just gotten another bottle of Captain Morgans, so Jen cracked it open and took a sip and chased it with whatever fruit drink she had over there. So I went and mixed half cranberry juice, half Sprite, and took a swallow of the rum chased with my carbonated cranberry concoction. We went back and forth for about three rounds but had only killed the neck of the bottle when she gave up. I took one more, and she said I was done - but she went to the bathroom, where she spent the next half hour or so. Meanwhile, I was making macaroni & cheese (love the stuff) and kept hitting the rum. I had finished about half the bottle when Jen stopped me.
The rest is a blur. She said I passed out on the couch and that she brought me a bucket, but I never threw up. I always heard if you take an Asprin and drink water after you drink, you won't get a hangover, so I did, and I didn't. Well, I was a little out of it today, but I didn't have the pounding headache associated with hangover.
Then we sat down to watch the new movie Shooter, but we didn't finish it.
We had just gotten another bottle of Captain Morgans, so Jen cracked it open and took a sip and chased it with whatever fruit drink she had over there. So I went and mixed half cranberry juice, half Sprite, and took a swallow of the rum chased with my carbonated cranberry concoction. We went back and forth for about three rounds but had only killed the neck of the bottle when she gave up. I took one more, and she said I was done - but she went to the bathroom, where she spent the next half hour or so. Meanwhile, I was making macaroni & cheese (love the stuff) and kept hitting the rum. I had finished about half the bottle when Jen stopped me.
The rest is a blur. She said I passed out on the couch and that she brought me a bucket, but I never threw up. I always heard if you take an Asprin and drink water after you drink, you won't get a hangover, so I did, and I didn't. Well, I was a little out of it today, but I didn't have the pounding headache associated with hangover.
Monday, July 2, 2007
So I have an Xbox for awhile
A week ago my sister-in-law and her boyfriend got in a bit of a fight, and I wound up with his Xbox - he was afraid something would happen to it, even though as far as "taking sides" goes, I'm on my wife's side, who's on her sister's side - although that doesn't necessarily mean I'm on her sister's side. I'm like Switzerland, I don't take sides. But anyway, be that as it may, I wound up with custody of the Xbox and about a dozen and a half games - none I give two craps about except for one: "WWE RAW 2". It's a wrestling game, and though I've mastered it to the point where I can beat just about anybody with just about anybody (I mean, I can probably beat Hulk Hogan or Triple H with Stephanie McMahon or Rey Mysterio - if you don't know these people, what I'm sayin is I can beat Goliath with David.)
But did I hook it up right away? Nope, procrastinator to the end. I just hooked it up - like, as in quarter after 5am. It's 5:30am right now, but I'm tying this in a text editor waiting for a download to finish. (No Ma, nothing dirty - it's a system files update kit called AutoPatcher.) We were right about to go to bed, and what do I do? No, I didn't hook it up to my ubërsexy wide 32" HDTV... no, I hooked it up to the POS 19" Dollar General or Walmart brand rounded-tube TV in the bedroom. It just doesn't look that much better on an HD set. (We've tried - this is the second time the Xbox has been here.) Sure, the image is bigger and some edges are sharper, but like every other console (barring the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360) it looks just as good on a crappy TV as it does on a good one. Plus, I haven't got much room on my power stip here, let alone room on the desk. The bedroom is a better location, and if John wants it back, it'll be much easier to disconnect (albeit farther to carry) in there.
An Xbox is a pretty cool system. It's not as powerful as a Playstation 2 despite being about ten times the size - but it's not far behind. (I mean, the PS2 can play "WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2007", the be-all-end-all of wrestling games, but for Xbox, you have to have a 360 - the old Xbox just doesn't have the clocks to run it. Heck, even Sony's portable PSP can play SDvR07.) But that aside, the Xbox is a viable system in its own right, despite being put out by console gaming newcomer Microsoft. But being that it's Microsoft, it has one advantage, and it's the system's biggest secret (not so much now as when it was new): It's really a PC that hooks up to a TV, but with one difference. It can only use "authorized" software, distributed by Microsoft and their partners. Well, as shipped. The Xbox can be modified to run Linux, the free and open-source (meaning you can edit the source code, change it up some depending on your programming skill) competitor to Windows. It actually can't run Windows, but running Linux you can run Windows in a virtual machine, or emulate Windows, but what's the point? You lose performance and Linux can basically do everything Windows can - if you know what you're doing.
But then you can't play Xbox games, and then what you have is a badly made computer. No, a better solution is to bypass the Xbox's region code checker (which also verifies the game is authentic) and replace the Xbox's dashboard (the stuff you can work with if you start it without a game) with a custom one, which lets you do a lot more. This way you get the expanded functionality without sacrificing what it was made for. I got a chance to tinker with a modded Xbox (no, it was not mine, it belonged to someone I knew in California) and it was amazing. Looked different, was different. Started with a menu... entries like Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Arcade, Xbox Games, Media Center, and others. You click on the first three - every game ever made for those systems. Arcade - thousands of arcade machines rendered for a computer (or Xbox). Xbox games - about a dozen of them ran off the hard drive, upgraded from 10GB to 120GB. Halo, for instance, loaded much faster and otherwise played just the same. Media Center had hundreds of music files (songs, albums), some video clips, photos... Then I go to put in an Xbox game. Rather than load it, it came up and asked me if I wanted to play it, or copy it. It took about half an hour to copy it, but once it did I no longer needed the disc, it was on the hard drive. DVD movies, it did the same thing for.
But no, I'm not going to modify this dude's Xbox. A new hard drive (figure at least $100), a modchip (around $60), soldering stuff - I don't think I'm technically adept enough to modify an Xbox. I wanted a modded Xbox for a while, but the Xbox's time has passed, and I can do all that stuff I said (yes including the Nintendo games) and more on my comptuer. My computer can play Playstation games now, so I have to retract what I said previously about it not being possible. That was my fault, I was making a stupid mistake. (But it was true that I had never seen anyone else do it...) I got my computer to load a Playstation 2 game, but not actually play it - only Start and Select worked on my controller, so I saw the menus, etc.
No, what I am going to mod - with no technical expertise needed, no less, is my Nintendo DS. Smaller than a paperback book - the size of a checkbook 1/2" thick actually - this bad boy has approximately the horsepower of the old Nintendo 64 (although its games are mostly 2D), two screens (one being a touch screen), a microphone - and oh yes, Wi-Fi. A guy I met at work came in with one - before I bought mine, actually - and was playing Mp3s on it, a la Winamp - so I had to interrupt him and ask him how he did it, being that I knew a stock NDS didn't have that capability. He told me about the M3 device, which I'll be getting in the next couple months. This bad boy, you plug it in like any NDS game, but it's not a software/game pack, it's an adapter. You plug a MicroSD card (aka Transflash, what cell phones use) into the back, up to 2GB, and like a modded Xbox, the NDS will run unauthorized software. As I understand it, the M3 software will play music, read text files, play videos, and play all or at least some console games. As long as it supports Nintendo and Super Nintendo I'll be happy. I know it'll play NDS games (downloaded, heh heh), so it should play Game Boy games as well. If it will play Sega Genesis games, that's great too. Altered Beast, Sonic, Toejam and Earl... I can go with some Sega stuff too. And all that in one cartridge the same size and weight as any NDS game. No need to open the NDS, no need to solder anything - and I've seen the M3 device for around $100 shipped with a memory card. I'm either going to get one with a memory card, or without and buy a 2GB card separately. I have an Mp3 player and my phone plays Mp3s as well, but I'll have some favorites up there. My phone does videos, but the quality is low - so I'll probably designate the DS for video. The screen is comparable to that of an iPod. And of course all my favorite classic games. Oh yeah, and some books. Maybe rig some Sudoku game to it - yes, I'm still solving those things. (Still on easy, too, and not finding them "easy" at all.)
Well, it's 6AM now. Jen's off today, so we get to watch RAW together later. I hope they continue the "Vince murdered" angle, but since Vince appeared on both RAW and ECW "posthumously" I'm betting that story just got cancelled. Sad, because it was probably going to end with a big bang. But more importantly, when we wake up, I'm going to cook her breakfast, and then we're gonna go shoot pool for at least a few hours. And maybe see if a friend from work can join us if he's up. So, adios.
Update Thursday 5 July 2007 9:15AM - Sure enough, the next day he asked for it back. Oh well. And for the record, in my first game I played regular pick Tommy Dreamer against Jen's choice, Y2J Chris Jericho. Second game, it was Chris Benoit vs. Cena at Wrestlemania. I played Benoit, and oh yes, I made Cena tap. (Had Dreamer pin Jericho, don't remember where that was at.)
But did I hook it up right away? Nope, procrastinator to the end. I just hooked it up - like, as in quarter after 5am. It's 5:30am right now, but I'm tying this in a text editor waiting for a download to finish. (No Ma, nothing dirty - it's a system files update kit called AutoPatcher.) We were right about to go to bed, and what do I do? No, I didn't hook it up to my ubërsexy wide 32" HDTV... no, I hooked it up to the POS 19" Dollar General or Walmart brand rounded-tube TV in the bedroom. It just doesn't look that much better on an HD set. (We've tried - this is the second time the Xbox has been here.) Sure, the image is bigger and some edges are sharper, but like every other console (barring the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360) it looks just as good on a crappy TV as it does on a good one. Plus, I haven't got much room on my power stip here, let alone room on the desk. The bedroom is a better location, and if John wants it back, it'll be much easier to disconnect (albeit farther to carry) in there.
An Xbox is a pretty cool system. It's not as powerful as a Playstation 2 despite being about ten times the size - but it's not far behind. (I mean, the PS2 can play "WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2007", the be-all-end-all of wrestling games, but for Xbox, you have to have a 360 - the old Xbox just doesn't have the clocks to run it. Heck, even Sony's portable PSP can play SDvR07.) But that aside, the Xbox is a viable system in its own right, despite being put out by console gaming newcomer Microsoft. But being that it's Microsoft, it has one advantage, and it's the system's biggest secret (not so much now as when it was new): It's really a PC that hooks up to a TV, but with one difference. It can only use "authorized" software, distributed by Microsoft and their partners. Well, as shipped. The Xbox can be modified to run Linux, the free and open-source (meaning you can edit the source code, change it up some depending on your programming skill) competitor to Windows. It actually can't run Windows, but running Linux you can run Windows in a virtual machine, or emulate Windows, but what's the point? You lose performance and Linux can basically do everything Windows can - if you know what you're doing.
But then you can't play Xbox games, and then what you have is a badly made computer. No, a better solution is to bypass the Xbox's region code checker (which also verifies the game is authentic) and replace the Xbox's dashboard (the stuff you can work with if you start it without a game) with a custom one, which lets you do a lot more. This way you get the expanded functionality without sacrificing what it was made for. I got a chance to tinker with a modded Xbox (no, it was not mine, it belonged to someone I knew in California) and it was amazing. Looked different, was different. Started with a menu... entries like Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Arcade, Xbox Games, Media Center, and others. You click on the first three - every game ever made for those systems. Arcade - thousands of arcade machines rendered for a computer (or Xbox). Xbox games - about a dozen of them ran off the hard drive, upgraded from 10GB to 120GB. Halo, for instance, loaded much faster and otherwise played just the same. Media Center had hundreds of music files (songs, albums), some video clips, photos... Then I go to put in an Xbox game. Rather than load it, it came up and asked me if I wanted to play it, or copy it. It took about half an hour to copy it, but once it did I no longer needed the disc, it was on the hard drive. DVD movies, it did the same thing for.
But no, I'm not going to modify this dude's Xbox. A new hard drive (figure at least $100), a modchip (around $60), soldering stuff - I don't think I'm technically adept enough to modify an Xbox. I wanted a modded Xbox for a while, but the Xbox's time has passed, and I can do all that stuff I said (yes including the Nintendo games) and more on my comptuer. My computer can play Playstation games now, so I have to retract what I said previously about it not being possible. That was my fault, I was making a stupid mistake. (But it was true that I had never seen anyone else do it...) I got my computer to load a Playstation 2 game, but not actually play it - only Start and Select worked on my controller, so I saw the menus, etc.
No, what I am going to mod - with no technical expertise needed, no less, is my Nintendo DS. Smaller than a paperback book - the size of a checkbook 1/2" thick actually - this bad boy has approximately the horsepower of the old Nintendo 64 (although its games are mostly 2D), two screens (one being a touch screen), a microphone - and oh yes, Wi-Fi. A guy I met at work came in with one - before I bought mine, actually - and was playing Mp3s on it, a la Winamp - so I had to interrupt him and ask him how he did it, being that I knew a stock NDS didn't have that capability. He told me about the M3 device, which I'll be getting in the next couple months. This bad boy, you plug it in like any NDS game, but it's not a software/game pack, it's an adapter. You plug a MicroSD card (aka Transflash, what cell phones use) into the back, up to 2GB, and like a modded Xbox, the NDS will run unauthorized software. As I understand it, the M3 software will play music, read text files, play videos, and play all or at least some console games. As long as it supports Nintendo and Super Nintendo I'll be happy. I know it'll play NDS games (downloaded, heh heh), so it should play Game Boy games as well. If it will play Sega Genesis games, that's great too. Altered Beast, Sonic, Toejam and Earl... I can go with some Sega stuff too. And all that in one cartridge the same size and weight as any NDS game. No need to open the NDS, no need to solder anything - and I've seen the M3 device for around $100 shipped with a memory card. I'm either going to get one with a memory card, or without and buy a 2GB card separately. I have an Mp3 player and my phone plays Mp3s as well, but I'll have some favorites up there. My phone does videos, but the quality is low - so I'll probably designate the DS for video. The screen is comparable to that of an iPod. And of course all my favorite classic games. Oh yeah, and some books. Maybe rig some Sudoku game to it - yes, I'm still solving those things. (Still on easy, too, and not finding them "easy" at all.)
Well, it's 6AM now. Jen's off today, so we get to watch RAW together later. I hope they continue the "Vince murdered" angle, but since Vince appeared on both RAW and ECW "posthumously" I'm betting that story just got cancelled. Sad, because it was probably going to end with a big bang. But more importantly, when we wake up, I'm going to cook her breakfast, and then we're gonna go shoot pool for at least a few hours. And maybe see if a friend from work can join us if he's up. So, adios.
Update Thursday 5 July 2007 9:15AM - Sure enough, the next day he asked for it back. Oh well. And for the record, in my first game I played regular pick Tommy Dreamer against Jen's choice, Y2J Chris Jericho. Second game, it was Chris Benoit vs. Cena at Wrestlemania. I played Benoit, and oh yes, I made Cena tap. (Had Dreamer pin Jericho, don't remember where that was at.)
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Our wedding in review, Chapter One
Being that this is the last week of the first year of my marriage, I thought I would harness the power of the Internet and repost a few blogs I had posted on my nearly-defunct Myspace (ugh!) page, with a few comments following. This was posted in early January 2006 after we had returned from our winter vacation.
Stay tuned for the next chapter... (which may or may not be the next post, but it will come.)
PS: Thirty-seven? If you're a fan of film director/writer Kevin Smith, you'll know what I'm referring to. But really, this is my 37th blog post. 37 started as something rude in his first movie, but became sort of a staple in the others. 37 is to Kevin Smith what 47 is to Star Trek, so to speak.
Yep... I proposed to my girlfriend Jen, now fiance. She'd kill me if I didn't tell the WHOLE story, so here goes.Well, that was our winter vacation in 2005. We returned to Stamford in 2006, but then as husband and wife. Winter vacation '07 will come a month early (late November this time) and to California to see my own family.
Last Sunday (Christmas) we left for Stamford, CT, to visit Jen's family. We were to be staying with her grandmother, and visiting her aunt, uncle, and cousins; and friends from school and work, as she'd grown up there (until she was 11, she moved to NC) and stayed there for a year or two in 2000-2001 when her grandmother was sick. I had gotten an oil change and had everything checked out right before the trip (Friday the 23rd as a matter of fact), but we were about 25 miles from Delaware (taking I-95 all the way) when my battery light came on, electrical went out, and the car eventually died.
We were in the middle of nowhere without a cell phone, but we didn't have to wait long. Maryland State Patrol was there within 10 minutes. (Luckily it was enough time for me and Jen's brother-in-law to steal a bathroom break in the woods nearby!) The cop was totally cool, very helpful; we told him what happened, and he called a tow truck. He actually had to call a second cop in addition to his own car and the tow truck to carry all the people who were travelling with us... and riding in the cop car was really casual. No divisor shield, and the back doors opened from the inside. (The first cop was a K-9 unit, so he only had one seat available.) They took us through a toll and to a rest stop/service area called the Chesapeake House in the town (area, actually) called "North East, Maryland". It may have been a town, but all we saw was the service area* and an Exxon gas(petrol) station. (*In the northeast US, they have service areas... kinda like airports... a few restaurants, a gift shop, all overpriced... and open 24/7.) We were talking to the tow truck driver and the cop, and he was saying how even if you check for everything, even if you plan for everything, stuff still happens, and you just have to ride the flow. Remember that...
So we're staying at this service area in the dining area of a Popeyes Chicken... me, Jen, her sister, her sister's boyfriend, and their two boys. The boys were on one bench under blankets and sleeping, and the adults took turns taking walks. They smoke, we don't. We got there around 3am... around 6am we're going for a walk, and Jen keeps asking me what's wrong. When I'm really thinking, she thinks I look upset, but I wasn't, I was just thinking. So I told her that I couldn't get that out of my head, that bit about stuff still happening and you just have to roll with it... I then told her how I was first planning to propose to her on her birthday, then in my impatience, it was gonna be at her grandmother's place in the room she stayed in when she was a kid. But since we were stranded, I admitted that I really didn't know for sure where we'd be the next day or the day after that... but it didn't change the fact that she's the most important thing that ever happened to me, and I wanted to make it official. I didn't have a ring, but that didn't stop me... I asked her to marry me, right there in the rain, with $4 and change in my pocket, our car broke down, and not knowing what was gonna happen. And she said yes... and for the past week I've been floating in the clouds.
To make a LONG story short, we waited until the Exxon service station opened, got our battery charged (but the alternator was dead) and were able to drive to Sears in Newark, Delaware, where Jen used her grandmother's Sears card (with permission, of course) to get a new alternator, belts, and the labor to put it on. We left Sears around 4:30-5:00, so we were "down" for a good 14 hours or so! But once we got going, we were right on into Jersey, on the turnpike, stopped in NYC for a good hour waiting to get on the George Washington Bridge... and from there it was smooth sailing up into Stamford, CT (home of the WWE HQ for all you wrestling fans out there!).
To make an even longer story short, we had a great time in CT. I took Jen to see Narnia (well, she paid), we met a bunch of her friends, her family was really cool and welcomed me to the family, and I taught her cousins (girls, 11 and 16) how to use Firefox, Wikipedia, IMDb, Google Earth, and a few other wonders of the Internet. The trip back was largely uneventful. We took an exit in NYC we weren't supposed to... in the Bronx no less, around midnight, but got back on I-95. At the beginning of the Jersey turnpike, I accidentally took the FastTrak lane and had to park, go into the office, and get a ticket (and get laughed at by the guy inside)... come back out and there's a cop there... but he was cool when I told him what happened, sent us on our way. Both ways, I drove the whole way, except for letting Jen's sister drive for an hour on the turnpike on the way there when I got a cramp from Hell, and letting Jen drive into her hometown to her grandma's house. The WHOLE way back, I drove, with two stops for gas. 10.5 hours behind the wheel, practically straight, from Stamford, CT, to Chocowinity, NC. Freakin long drive.
Anyway, we've set the wedding date as 7 July 2006. It was going to be 7 July no matter what year; I first asked her out in a private message on the Disturbed board on 7 July 2003, so that's an anniversary for us. I was kinda hoping to land 7/7/07 (how cool would that be?) but I can't wait. Well, I guess we could, but we don't want to. She was raised Catholic, but doesn't practice anymore. I'm somewhere between atheism and agnosticism... let's just not go there, OK? So a religious wedding is out - neither of us care to be blessed by any God or priest, just those who love us. What I'm thinking is just going to the courthouse and getting the marriage certificate/contract/license taken care of, and having a "small" reception with family at the waterfront. We want a small party, but I don't care much about a whole drawn-out ceremony. Neither of our families have any kind of money - we're all poor, but we're not materialistic, either. So I'm thinking we'll either have a small nondenominational ceremony at the waterfront, or just do the court thing and have a reception with family.
We also want a second reception with friends. This one will have louder music, younger people, and will be more of a "party". Because we met online, we're inviting just about everyone we know from our board, and from the Disturbed board, even people from other countries. We know they may not be able to make it, but sometimes it's cool just to get the actual invite in the mail, something you can keep... and we've had a lot of people from a lot of places cheering us on, from when we first met, to when I moved across the country to be with her, people who will probably send us death threats if we don't at least invite them. This is a first for both of us, and if anyone wants to offer any advice on getting married, ceremonies, receptions, parties, traditions, whatever... feel free to post here or by PM... we need all the advice we can get... but ultimately we're gonna do it our way. We're treading pretty much uncharted territory, having met online and all. There really is no set standard, or established tradition... short of blog posts and other unofficial stuff. But I mean... even if you know you can't make it, if you want an invite, we'll send you one, and you can say someone you met online got married to someone he met online, and you were invited. If it were any of you, I'd sure as hell want an invite!
Stay tuned for the next chapter... (which may or may not be the next post, but it will come.)
PS: Thirty-seven? If you're a fan of film director/writer Kevin Smith, you'll know what I'm referring to. But really, this is my 37th blog post. 37 started as something rude in his first movie, but became sort of a staple in the others. 37 is to Kevin Smith what 47 is to Star Trek, so to speak.
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