Tag: erick

Happy Birthday to Me!

Sorry it’s been so long. I’ve been very very busy!

So going back, two weekends ago, Kris and I went to San Diego{/wiki] to visit his friend Suze and for my Birthday. We had a mostly good trip down there, but it became clear as the weekend went on that he only went down to see his friends and I was a total third wheel. He HATES and bitches when people are the third wheel, so I got very annoyed. Sunday he asked what I wanted to do, I told him the one thing that I would have liked to see and do again that I know in town. Now, I don’t know San Diego, and if _I_ took a friend to a town that I knew very well and they didn’t know very well, I would come up with suggestions of things for them/us to do. I was offered no such items. So instead we basically wasted the day wondering around and watching a movie. On the ride home he asked what was wrong. I told him, he BLEW up at me saying that I was only pissed because the weekend wasn’t ALL about me. We haven’t spoken since. He told me that I was being childish. Ugh. Whatever.

We went to the San Diego wild animal park while there. That was tons of fun at least! 🙂 I took like 400 pictures with the new camera. Only kept 200 of them. Still trying to widdle down to my favorites. I’m going to have to get used to deleting images now that EACH picture is 10megs!

So anyways, Birthday week wasn’t all that exciting. Jason and I had a heart-to-heart one night, I got a birthday package from Aaron and Erick which was VERY nice of them! Although, I just went to get some chocolate out of the box and there’s a WHOLE bar missing!! WHO the FUCK steals a bar of chocolate out of someone’s box on their desk!? Ugh. These are the idiots I work with.

Speaking of idiots. So my big project that I was all exciting about before the holidays. Well the boss man has TAKEN IT OVER and is ruining it with lightening efficiency. Basically he’s writing the requirements without EVER talking to the end users about what they want to see changed and what they do, etc. He says, “I have a basic idea of how things work.” You MIGHT. BUT that doesn’t mean you have ANY IDEA about how things are ACTUALLY working! Plus part of this project is to REDUCE the number of Excel spreadsheets that are wondering around the company. Well you would think that you would NEED TO KNOW what those are and how they are getting used to be sure that they are going to be worked into the new software. He has NOT begun at ALL exploration of what those spreadsheets are. VERY ANNOYING.

Also he designed a [wiki]Gnatt chart in fucking EXCEL! Who does Gnatt charts in EXCEL!? Idiots do Gnatt charts in EXCEL, that’s WHO!

So then, remember how I went to Caborca and NO ONE knew the fucking passwords. Well apparently LAST week German, the guy in Caborca, figured them out or remembered them or something. So anyways, the boss calls me the other day and we proceed to have a 20 minute convo in which I have to EXPLAIN TO HIM in detail a reason why my solution to a problem is the ONLY solution. I mention SEVERAL times in my reasoning that this is BECAUSE WE DO NOT KNOW THE passwords. AT THE END of the convo, the boss says, “By the way German has access to the server now”. I ask, “How is that?”. He says, “because he remembered the password”. DON’T YOU THINK that’s something you should have mentioned to me RIGHT AWAY when you found out?! Don’t you think that’s something that would be HELPFUL to me to do my FUCKING JOB!

Anyways, so for my Birthday Jason and I had Champagne and Cake, just a low-class day. Nothing to exciting. I really wasn’t into my birthday again this year.

So this past weekend, I was gonna go on a quick backpacking trip with JoEric and Claudia, but it rained and was nasty and it’s a good thing I didn’t go because I ended up pretty damn sick all weekend! So Saturday I dropped of Asparagus off to George and then went to Griffith Observatory with Jason and his new wife. Had a good time overall, came home, took a vicodin and went to bed.

Sunday I spent the whole day laying on the couch. Tried to do laundry, but everyone else in the building apparently had the same Idea. So I got nothing done.

Sedona and the Grand Canyon

Soooo, what a weekend!

I flew out of work at 3pm on Friday and headed for the airport, the flight into Phoenix was right on time, excellent flight, no problems or anything! Got my rental car and headed out for Sedona. After driving through lots of random construction and lots of winding back roads I found the camp ground around 9:30ish. Laid out my sleeping bag and went to bed. Got up early the next morning and headed out to Slide Rock where they were having this crazy Apple Festival. It was alright. Not exactly what I was expecting and the trails there were only about half a mile long. So I made my own off roading trails and did some bouldering up to the top of the rocks which was lots of fun! Getting down was not so much fun! lol. Hung out at the festival for a little bit and then headed off to Red Rock Canyon.

Red Rock canyon was really very neat, though again there were only about 5 miles of trails. I did the longest trail which was about 3 miles and had enough of that so I headed back into town to explore the touristness of Sedona, AZ. I have to say that I was not impressed by the town of Sedona, there’s way to much touristy shit. And the Pink Jeep and competitors are EVERYWHERE! I stopped into the tourist information booth and asked the guy where a good place to watch the sunset was at. He told me to just drive up to the Airport and watch it from there. I told him that I didn’t want to just drive somewhere and that I wanted to hike somewhere. He said “I wouldn’t suggest that, It’s too dangerous.” You know that once you say that I just have to do that, so I pressed him for some good hiking because the shit I had been told about sucked. He finally coughed up this great hike to Cathedral Rock but he said, “It’s way to dangerous to do today.” BAH! I headed out after that and did another short hike where I got rained on. I love mountain weather!

From there I headed off to the Cathedral Rock hike. It’s only a half mile, but it’s a VERY steep half mile hike and WELL worth every effort. I basically ran up the whole thing bouldering and stuff up the side of this mountain. Got up to the top and it was just AMAZING! So beautiful, I wish that they hadn’t ruined such a wonderful place with so many stupid fat American tourists. Watched the sunset and ate a PB&J and then headed down. Going down was just as much fun as going up, and this time I folloed the trail, so not as much rock hopping was needed.

Headed back into town and found this place that was EXACTLY like Panera Bread, but it was called “WildFlower Bread Company”. Got a salad and sat and used the internet for a while then headed back to the camp site and crashed for the night. I had a different camp site this time with a CLEAR view of the sky. Absolutely amazing! You could see all the stars and the milky way and everything. Breathtaking! I laid there for a bit watching the stars and then fell asleep. Around 11ish or so the moon came out from behind the mountians and woke me up because it was so bright! I got a little chilly that night, but after zipping up the wonderful new 0 degree sleeping bag I was nice and toasty! 🙂

Woke up Sunday morning early and headed out for the grand canyon. I got up to Flagstaff and all the tourist information things were closed. So I called some LA people to try and figure out what was going on. I found this great place called “Sunset Crater and Wupatki”. It was a really great drive through the country side and you got to see this really neat lava flow and old volcano, etc. After that you drive about 20 miles and you get to see these really neat old Adobe houses from the Wupatki Indians. Very very neato! After those I headed into the Grand Canyon, checked out my camp site and then did some Rim hiking and took a trail down into the canyon for about a mile.

I headed back up to watch the sunset which the paper said was at 6:30. I find a great location to watch it about 5:30 and decided to just sit and wait instead of running off to find somewhere else. Last time I was the canyon for a Rim sunset there were 8 million tourists who ruined the great spot I had found before.

So I sit there and 6:30 comes around and the sun was still WAY up in the sky, I was getting very confused by this point. Lots of other people started gathering and finally at 7:30 the sunsets! Apparently I had no idea all weekend what time it really was, oh well. Also there was this REALLY cute Australian boy doing a filming about the sunset and one of the great wonders of the world. Some stupid asian walked right infront of his Camera as he was taking video of the sunset and he yelled at him, it was so funny! There was also this asian sitting next to me, wearing a beanie, hoodie, and a big furry coat! It wasnt that cold! I was there in a t-shirt and shorts! Crazies.

I hiked back to the camp site making a stop off at the General store and bought a Grand Canyon patch. Crawled into my sleeing bag and had another amazing open sky view! I just can’t describe it!

Woke up the next morning and had 2 voicemails and an email from work… I called them back and found out that the email server had crashed. I also had this voicemail/email from one of the really annoying guys at work. “My email doesn’t work.”… I assumed that fixing the first problem would fix his problem. But I called him bak just to be sure. He didn’t answer and I left a VM. I started heading back to Phoenix after that because I could just tell this was going to be a disaster. He called me back while I was pooping so I didn’t answer. then called him RIGHT back and he didn’t answer AGAIN so I left a VM. A couple minutes later I get an email from the boss man saying that this needs to be fixed ASAP, blah blah blah. Ugh. So I call the guy back again and he answers.. His problem.. The signature at the bottom of his emails are not showing up! WTF!?!?!? Are you fucking kidding me!? So I have him transfer me to the boss man and I yell at him about that. UGH. Fucking annoying.

Got back to Phoenix and came to the hotel. Have been hanging out with Mark and all the other gay nerds. So many iPhones! And who knew there were so many gay nerds! And some of them are actually CUTE! lol.

Other Drama regarding Jason/Steve/Const and Mike. Not really going to get into it here, but I feel it’s the last straw between Jason and I. And he wonderes why our friendship has been going downhill. It’s because of shit like this. First Erick/Kris shit now Const/Mike stuff. I can’t deal with it. Whatever happened to loyal friends.

The conference is really cool so far. I’ve learned so much already and had tons of fun last night with the guys. I’ve even met some great guys from Argentina and Peru who can help me out down there with stuff.

Dad’s Visit!

It’s been a pretty drama filled weekend around here, but lots of fun.

Last week at work was crazy as usual. Friday I had a demo with this company that FINALLY has their shit together.. Sad thing is, it’s a product from MICROSOFT! I can’t believe I am saying this, but I really really like this software called Dynamics! For once it appears that Microsoft has got something done right! I am setting up a full 8 hour demo for later this month after I am back from Phoenix. I was supposed to leave at noon but this guy’s Outlook kept crashing on him. Gee, I wonder why, could it be because you have 5 Gigabytes worth of email stored on your computer!?!!? WHO needs that much fucking email saved!?! I got out at 1:30 and had some stupid conference to go to.

Got home that night and cleaned up the apartment and did a bunch of other stuff. Nothing to exciting. Got in a HUGE fight with Jason over the whole Kris/Erick meeting thing. I really do not approve of it. Long story short, I was pretty pissed the whole night at him. Then to top it all off as I was leaving to pick up dad, I saw Erick pulling away from Kris’ house. Just rubbing salt in! 🙂

So I go to pick up dad and stop to get gas at the Shell station by the Airport and some fucking homeless woman comes up to me and won’t fucking leave me alone. She started to get a little violent! I was scared. Went and picked him up, he was actually early and his luggage was the first one off the plane so we were able to get home pretty quick and get in bed.

Got up Saturday morning to some horrible overcast weather. Decided to drive out to Perris anyways just to see what the weather was like out there and as we got closer, it kept getting foggier. So we get there and they say they probably won’t start flying till 1, there’s already 2 hours of reservations backed up in front of us, so we wouldn’t get in the air till nearly 3 or 4 if at ALL! So we decided to forgo that and headed to the Marsh Air Museum. It was alright, they had lots of neat old planes and stuff out there. From there we decided to hear out to Joshua Tree. Had lunch at this CRAZY little Cafe in which the woman got our order COMPLETELY wrong! But we ran into these two REALLY hot rock climber guys who ate lunch with us and gave some tips on places to check out in the park. Spent a few hours in the park just bouldering around, hiking, etc. Headed back to LA and made it in really good time, stopped at China Town and Olvera Street, both of which were having some sort of crazy festival! Ate dinner at Olvera, headed over and showed him Union Station and then headed over to Disney to show him that crazy building. We walked around on the top of it and then headed home.

Sunday we got up EARLY again, there was a HUGE train wreck right by our normal climbing place, 26 people died, so that was all closed off. Decided to go to Malibu, George got there first and found out IT was also closed due to some stupid Triatholon. Ended up having to drive all the way to Mojave which ended up being a good thing. We got out there and headed to the bottom. I got to do my first lead climbing which was TONS of fun! I was a little scared and shaking like crazy, but I made it to the top without slipping once! These other random three guys joined us in the same spot and one of them brought his REALLY hot son along! I enjoyed watching him climb… Got done with that and I ran out of the Punchbowl again which was fun! My Ankle didn’t hurt this time, so that’s showing signs of improvement. Of course we ate at Charlie Browns! 🙂

Headed back to RB from there, stopped off at the airport overlook for a few minutes and then drove him through all the beach cities, stopped at the RB Pier and did the “Speed Boat” which really wasn’t that fast or that much fun. 🙁 The best part was that we saw probably 30-40 dolphins swimming along side the boat for a while.

Got back home and I showered then we went out to dinner with Sirin and Kris which was a lot of laughs. We had yet another stupid waitress at the freaking RB Brewing Company.

After that I left dad and went to Kris’ for our end of week drinks. I was only going to have one beer and then leave so he could study more and I felt bad about leaving dad home alone. Well that turned into one beer, a bottle of wine and then a Rogers Roy! I didn’t leave till 1:30am but we finished all of the first season of Heroes! Now we just have to get through Season 2 this week sometime! It was a little awk at times last night with him though, not in a bad way, but whatever. It’s hard to explain! I like him, but I don’t really think we should start anything for the sake of the threesome relationship (not in a dirty way!!) and the fact that he’s just gonna leave anyways! Like I’ve said before he’s a really great guy!

Sunday I got a REALLY long email from Erick again regarding the whole he and Const thing that happened back in April (well I found out about it in April, the act happened in January). I’ve basically decided over the past couple months from taking a step back and really looking at who he is that I don’t really feel comfortable having him in my life. He’s a manipulator to get what he wants, kind of a stalker in ways and there are tons of other little things about his personality that just really sit wrong with me. He was a great friend before, but I just don’t feel comfortable having him in my life at all any longer. I have yet to reply to his email as I’m not sure how to exactly put how I feel into words and I feel like he does deserve a full explanation.

Can I Use a Figure 8?

Another adventure filled week in the life of Cj B! Wow. Sometimes it amazes me how much my life has changed in the last year. How much I’ve accomplished in the last two years. Just wow.

I’m sitting here trying to remember everything that I did this week. I hung out with Jason Monday night. I think that’s the night that we ended up with a little party on our hands and drank 6 bottles of wine between 5 of us. Tons of fun. It was Vince, Me, The fiancee, Jason and Kris. It started out with just Jason and I making dinner together and being ungodly cute! lol Then Vince and Fiancee showed up and then Kris. We all sat around the kitchen table from 7ish to 11ish just talking. I love that I have a group of friends who can do that.

Tuesday was alright. I had this date with a latin guy, he gets here and asks for $10 for gas! WTF! Either way we hung out and watched this movie called The Orphanage it was in Spanish and it’s about this girl who was adopted from an orphanage, then goes back years later, buys the place and tries to open it as a place for handicap kids. It was VERY VERY good. I highly suggest the movie… NOT the date though!

Wed I went to this stupid backpacking clinic at REI. I mean it was nice if you had never been camping before, but I was expecting it to be a little bit more about actual BACKPACKING. Which I haven’t done in forever, so I was hoping to get a little refresher. I did not enjoy it. I think I went to bed pretty early that night.

Thursday I had my final checkup with the doctor for my ankle, so that was good. He said everything looks fine and to expect pain for the next 3-4 months when doing strenuous things. After that I went out with this guy Justin and we worked out. He’s uber buff, so I figured he’d be a great person to work out with. Which he was. A a little awk and very very flamy, but very buff and I was very sore the next day. I’ll probably keep trying to work out with him.

Friday I got home and went Kayaking with Kris up in Marina Del Ray, we had another great time up there and were out on the water for nearly 2.5 hours. Tons and tons of fun! We sat out in the ocean and watched the sunset again, words cannot describe. I wish I had a water proof camera. Got done with that, drove home, showered and then we went out to dinner at this mexican place. We drank a pitcher of margaritas, ate food and talked. Got done with that and went back to his place where we drank another pitcher of margaritas! 🙂 What a night!

Saturday I got up and Kris came over, we sat out on the porch, drank our breakfast and then decided what to do. Ended up driving to Malibu and going hiking at this place called Winding Way Such a pretty hike! After we were done with that we spent a few hours at the beach, drove home and got dinner. I came home after that and watched this movie called Valintine. It was a little slow, but I liked it overa all.

Sunday was the typical rock climbing. We did Devil’s Punch bowl again. We didn’t start the day out very good though. First my trailing rope got ALL fucked up and I had to undo that shit, then the lead climber got up to a belay station and all of a sudden we hear “clink…. clink….. clinkk…. clinkk…. thud” and then the guy yells out, “Can we use a figure 8!”. He had dropped the belay device! Which is essential! Thank god he found an extra one on his gear! It only took us 1.5 hours this time to climb up, then we rapped down and climbed back up a different route called “Slot machine”. I decided to be crazy and carry my gear up it! Tons and tons of fun! After that JoErick and I decided to race out of the bottom of the punchbowl. Oh my god, bad idea! about 20 pounds of gear, 110 degrees, and very steep trail up. My ankle is KILLING me right now.

We ate at Charlie Browns again. If you live anywhere in the SoCal Area. YOU MUST STOP HERE for food sometime. I HIGHLY suggest the Rodeo Sandwhich! It’s DELICIOUS! And for $6.95, you can’t fucking BEAT it!

I just got home and am going to just crash on the couch now. I may or may not have a date tonight. I haven’t decided if I will go or not. I’m very tired.

Pictures from the weekend are here.

Apple, You Are Losing Me!

Another crazy busy week/weekend! Let’s see. Thursday I had a date, which went pretty good. The guy is Latino and a little different, but we had fun. Went to dinner, talked about random things, had a bottle of wine and watched a movie. He was a nice guy, but probably a bit to immature for me still. We’re going to hang out again on Tuesday, but he’ll probably end up just being friends if anything.

Friday I was at work and did a full day of work. Left at 4:30 and stopped by the Apple Store. STILL no fucking iPhone! Very annoying. I wrote a nasty letter to Steve Jobs. Jerk! Left the Apple store a little after 5 and receive an email from the Boss…

Can you make sure that the subject laptop is configured with Produce Pro and MS Office 2003? Please leave the administrative codes and laptop and charger on Mac’s desk by end of the day tomorrow (Saturday). Mac will pick up the laptop on his way to the airport on Sunday AM. I understand it may not have been clear to you that Mac’s laptop was needed by Sunday AM. Your support is appreciated.

What a mess!Umm, excuse me! You have been talking about this whole laptop switch around for WEEKS. NEVER ONCE! NEVER! Did you ever say that the laptop which was replaced by a new one was going to Peru! And NEVER ONCE did you say that it needed to be COMPLETED by Sunday.

Let’s step back for a second. Weeks ago, we ordered 4 new laptops. ONE of them was for Peru, the other three for internal people. I got them all and ONE of the people getting a new Laptop had an OLD one. He was supposed to bring the old one in for me LAST MONDAY so that I could transfer all his shit onto the new one. He didn’t bring it to me till 11am on FRIDAY! When he handed it to me, he never ONCE mentioned anything about it needed to go to Peru on Sunday! UGH! So I called the boss and reamed him a new one! I was VERY annoyed. He kept saying that he had left it in this other guys hands to let me know, blah blah blah. NO YOU were the one managing this laptop change, YOU should have told me that this was going to happen. Then I go on to bitch about how this is NOT an emergency etc. UGH!

So anyways, after that Kris and I went Kayaking for about 2 hours. We got out there and just sat in the water for about 30 minutes watching the sunset. It was sooooo gorgeous! Once the sun was past the horizon, we paddled back and got back to his place about 8. Showered and then headed up to my office to pick up the laptop shit, found a REALLY great Persian place around the corner and ate dinner there then came back and we drank while I reformatted the laptop’s hard drive.

ALSO, with the laptop. I found 14 GIGS of straight porn on there. I have no idea what I should do with this information! LOL

Kris and I parted ways about 2am, but I couldn’t sleep at all, probably from all the caffeine in the pop we were drinking! So I laid in bed and chatted on the phone with this guy. He was nice, and really hot (in his pics), but sounds REALLY girly! I think I got to sleep about 4 am… And then my alarm went off at 6am, then the neighbors started talking really loudly and playing guitar about 6:45am, then someone knocked on my door about 7ish and then my phone rang at 7:30. I decided that the world was against my sleeping, so I got up, ran around and did some shit and then called Kris about 9. We went furniture shopping, I spent $300 at REI on climbing gear and we dropped off the laptop at the office. Did some other random shit and got home about 2:30, took a quick nap, showered and the picked Kris up again. We headed out to the LA Arboretum to meet up with Sirin and her mom. We ate dinner at the Arboretum, had some wine and then Kris and I went and walked around. It was right at sunset so the place was absolutely beautiful, and technically everything was “Off Limits” and closed, so we were the only ones walking around the gardens!

The concert was pretty good. The last two songs were not my favorites, but the rest of the songs were just amazing! And they had this really good pianist/violin player named Ayke Agus! She was amazing! Got home from that about 11:30 and crashed!

Sunday I got up at 5am and headed out to Rock Climbing. We did more lead climbing this week and did some pretty easy/difficult stuff. Most of the route was 5.5/5.4 so not to bad. The first 20 feet was even a class 4 (which means “a fire escape without hand rails”). Anyways, Jerry and I were climbing and then Jason, JoErick and George on the other one. Jerry and I would climb up to a belay station and then wait for the rest of the guys. At the first station we had about 2 inches of ledge to stand on and for some reason it took them nearly an hour to get up to it, so I was standing there on just my tip-toes the whole time. We had a really great time climbing, the last bit of the climb was nearly a 5.10 and Jerry took a pretty good lead climb fall and went probably 10-15 feet down. I was belaying him and got ripped off my feet and slammed into the rock wall. Thankfully I got my feet out in front of me fast enough and broke off a chunk of rock where my feet hit! It was funny after it happened because I remember seeing out of the side of my eyes everyone else on the belay station grabbing for my harness!

Once we got off there we headed out to Charlie Browns again for lunch. I had this HUGE BBQ sandwich that had Pork, Chicken and Tri-Tip on it! Delicious! I love that place! We also discussed more the next few weeks and since Tahquitz is in Idyllwild, I decided to just make it a long weekend up there. So I booked a camping site up there and sent out a group request. We’ll see how many people reply! I hope we can get enough people to go. It’s Labor day weekend, so I realize a lot of people will be busy/out of town. But I just took the chance.

Got home about 4:30, showered, did a load of laundry, vacuumed, did the dishes and then Kris and I went grocery shopping, came back to my place and watched a few episodes of Rome. Very good stuff.

And that was my crazy busy weekend! 🙂

PS. That laptop that I worked so much on fixing… Still sitting on the guy’s fucking desk!