road trip – Chris' Site

Const is in Houston!

Road trip to Houston!!!

This past week I have been on a road trip to Houston! Constantine has moved there for the next 6 months! 🙁

So Tuesday was not a very good day for me. I had a 4 hour meeting I had to prepare for, and I had to prepare to be out of the office for the next week and a half (I am in training this week). So I email all my clients and tell them that I will be gone, most of them were like. “Ok whatever”. Well one of them emailed me back and was all bitchy and was like. “I was expecting things to be done this week! blah blah blah. So I had to come pu with a way that I could work while traveling. I installed Windows 2003 on my external drive so that I could use Parallels, then installed MsSQL so that I had the DB. Then I had y 4 hour meeting which ended up only lasting 2 hours. Got done with that and it was noon and I wanted to go home. But As soon as I got back to my desk I had three clients IMing me wanting help with shit! UGH! Very annoying. I ended up getting out of the office at 2:30. Rushed home because Const said he’d be there in about 2 hours (when I talked to him at 2).

Get home and shower and pack real quick and what not… And then ended up sitting around till 6 when he finally got there. We went out to dinner with Sirin to Hennessey’s for burgers.

Got home that night and just hung out at the house and watched TV. Got up at 8 on Wed and had breakfast at this new Crepe place in Redondo Beach. We had a HOT french/russian/vietnamese waiter. He was really ncie too, we talked to him for a while and what not. The food was excellent! I would highly suggest going there and checking it out. It’s on the corner of Ave I and Catalina.

Got in the car and headed out after that. I plugged in my external drive (one of those portable ones that’s powered off USB) and worked away for a few hours. About the time I was finishing up, the hard drive suddenly says it’s been disconnected…. IT was still connected to me!!! So I unplug it and plug it back in… “Please initialize this drive”!

WTF! So I freak out because this drive has ALL my windows installations that I use for work, and training and playing and testing and everything else! PLUS It has ALL THE INFORMATION I need to be able to do work on this trip! VERY ANNNOYING!

The rest of the drive wasn’t too bad. 530 miles that day. Some VERY pretty wild flowers and stuff along the way. Got to the hotel and it was amazing. It was basically a HUGE apartment. Hung out there for a couple minutes and then went to dinner at an Asian place.

Thursday we got up at 8:30 again and we were on the road by 10. 550 miles that day. Lots of VERY VERY boring flat lands. Const spent hours calling all the apartments. I am SOOO jealous of these Texas apartments. 2 bedrooms with granite and hard wood floors and all this sweeeeet shit for WAY LESS then what I pay for a crappy 1 bedroom! Some of the places even have FREE starbucks coffee and fluff and fold service! UGH! That night we watched a comedian called Daniel Tosh. He’s very very funny. You should all go check it out.

Friday, 1610 miles later we MADE IT! 🙂 We got here and ate dinner at this very yummy Steak house called Smith & Wollensky got to the hotel and figured out plans for Saturday and then watched Americal Idol!

Satrday we got up at 8 and headed out to this place called Le Peep for breakfast. I got the blueberry pancakes which were not that good. But Const got bannana nut waffles which were delicious! After that we started looking at apartments. I think we went to like 10 different places. The second place we saw SMELLED soooooo fucking bad! GROSS! I wanted to puke when we walked into the stairwell to the apartment! The 4th place was just amazing! Very industrial with concrete floors and exposed duct work and what not. HUGE tub. It was SO CUTE! All the other places were really nice as well. At the end of the day we headed back to place number 4 to put down the money and what not. We get there and some guy is putting the deposit down on the apartment Const wanted. :'( So we went back to the third place which was also very nice and he got that one. I sure hope he will like it.

Saturday night we went out to a bar called “South Beach” which was tons of fun! Dancing and drinking and what not.

Sunday we slept in and then went shopping for stuff for his apartment. Got some really cute plates and what not from Pier 1. I think once I am back to LA I will go buy 2 more sets so that when he gets back we’ll have a 4some! haha. We went and saw the movie “Jumper” which was pretty good. After that we went back to the hotel and laid in the bed for a couple hours before my flight. I wanted to just bawl, but I held it back… I just realized that I forgot to get one last picture of us together there in Houston! Awwww. Anyways, we left the hotel and tried finding food on the way to the airport. That was one crazy adventure. We ended up in some GHETTO Popeye’s and got chicken. Seriously. I mean GHETTO! Got to the airport and it was very sad, but I held it together. I can’t wait to see him again.

I forget?

Water tower to house!

The 50 best cookie recipes on the internet!

Some hot boys!

Mount Ritter Banner Peak

Luang Sathorn Mansion/Russian Embassy

This has been one busy ass week for me and I’m really behind on the shit that I need to get done. I have one client that I have a huge list of stuff to do for him, but I just haven’t had the time to do it.

Not much else has really been happening. I’ve been hanging out with Constantine and having a great time with him. One night this week I went walking on the beach which was really nice. Wed I worked 12 hours, came home, made pudding… The pudding didn’t even make it to the fridge before the whole thing was gone! I dunno where it went! haha

I honestly can’t tell you what else I’ve done all week!

This weekend I have a BBQ tonight, then Constantine and I are going on a last minute road trip for the weekend. It was a bit of a pain in the ass trying to find places to stay this late in the game, but we found some. He’s gonna book them today.

Yesterday we did the first demo for the project I’ve been working on hard core the last two weeks. It was hilarious because GT was showing off the calendar function, which I HATE, and the client said. “That’s a clever way of doing it.”…. IE: “That’s a stupid way to do it!” At least that’s the impression I got. The new calendar is soooo hideous! You can only select ONE day at a time, etc. _MY_ Calendar you could do tons of stuff with! It was soo neat! I’ll see if I can post screen shots of the two so you can see the diff. I’ll be glad when this project is over. I _HATE_ Java!

UPDATE:// Here’s the screen shots:

This is my calendar. As you can see you can select more then one day (this is an early mock-up. You’ll have to use your imagination that the 17th and 18th are highlighed in a light blue to indicate that the range from the 16-19th is selected).

GT’s Calendar. As you can see you can only select ONE day at a time or you can select one RECORD from the day. Very annoying and ugly!

Adios!

A LONG Weekend!

Oh my god… This weekend, I DROVE… All over hell. Over 450 miles this weekend alone. What craziness.

So Friday, I got home from work and headed up to Santa Monica to hang out with this guy Dan. Who had an amazing DVD/CD collection. I went through all his DVD’s and that took about an hour. We ended up watching Vacation. I had a good time. I went home after that and went to bed.

Got up Saturday morning and went and washed my car. I’ve got this Astroturf in my bathroom under the cat litter. It’s been a while since I last cleaned it good, so I took it to the car wash with me and spent like 2 whole minutes trying to wash it out completely. I thought I got it pretty clean and then just threw it in my trunk and drove home. Took it out as soon as I got there and found out that there was a LOT more water left in it then I thought, so there was a ton of NASTY smelling water all over my trunk! I tried to clean it all up but my car smells SOOO bad now! 🙁 I took out all the carpeting and shit from the trunk Sunday night so that helped some.

After that disaster, I headed out on my road trip to check out some nice wonderful trucks…

The first one was a 1956 F250. It’s a good body and good looking truck, but needs a lot of interior work done to it. New handles, new carpet, work to the dash, needs a new bed, etc. Lots of over spray from a previous paint job that hadn’t been corrected. It also had a LOT of oil on the transmission, etc. Not sure how normal that is, but it was a little concerning. The guy selling it was HOT and I thought I was getting a little gay vibe from him. But probably not. I got a lot of great information out of him and I think no matter what truck I buy, he could be a good resource for the future.

Second was a 1954 Ford F100. Great looking truck. The guy said he hadn’t driven it in a year though. It had leaked basically all it’s transmission fluid, we got in and it started right up. Took it out on a test drive… We’re driving down the street and this truck pulls out in front of us. Slam on the breaks and they go straight to the floor.. THERE’S NO BRAKES! OMG! Grab the emergency break to stop it… SCARY! The truck has no rust, and it’s nice and complete truck. All new interior, etc. One issue is that the guy said the previous owners rebuilt the engine and then it sat for 6 years. So he’s not sure how many miles, are on the engine and since it sat so long the seals, etc could be a bit dry/etc. He said he’d take $1k off the price to get the brakes fixed (Probably just need to be bleed out)

The third was the same guy, it was a Studebaker. Nice looking yellow truck, but needs more work then I’d be willing to put into it.

The fourth was a 1956 F100. This one was a real POS. Needs TONS of work. I took one look at it and said no thanks! What a mess.

The last one is the best and of course the most expensive! A 1955 F100. Everything is all new, GREAT paint job (although not an original color which is a little annoying), great new interior (and also the only one with seat belts) and drove great. The only concern I had was that the steering was a little lose. He said it probably just needed to be adjusted. He’d already come down from $18k, so I’m not sure there’s much wiggle room for price.

Saturday night I stayed home and watched Can’t Hardly Wait. Very interesting movie with lots of hot boys!

Sunday I got up early and headed up to Hollywood to meet up with Ran and Enver. We went out on a short little 15 mile ride. It was really good to see them again since the Lifecycle ride. They’re very great people. The ride was very pretty. We went up into the valley and around Griffith park and WB studios.

Came home and showered real quick and then the neighbor and I headed up to Port Hueneme, CA. It was a great little town. The neighbor is looking at buying a house/condo up there so we looked at a few of those. I went up with her to check out one more truck this weekend. A 1956 F100 Panel Truck. This was by far one of the most interesting trucks I saw this weekend. The guy who owns it sounded like a real ass on the phone, but ended up being pretty nice. The engine is pretty much unknown to him, but it was his daily driver for many years so it’s probably about ready for a rebuild/etc. It would also need a lot of interior work. New side wall coverings, etc. It’s a VERY interesting truck though which is nice. And the guy is apparently desperate for cash. He was willing to take $3k off the price right there.

We headed up to Ventura after that and ate at this random place called “I Love Sushi”. And boy, do I love the sushi there. I highly suggest getting the “In & Out Roll” very good! So if you’re ever in Ventura, Ca. I highly suggest you go there.

Got home about 8, had just enough time to read my emails from the day and then went to bed. It was another morning of getting up at 3:30am and dealing with stupid people at the HD!

On the way into the office, I heard this song on the radio called “Dear Mr. President” by Pink. Apparently it was released forever ago. But I’ve never heard it before and if you haven’t. I suggest going and checking it out.

I also found this very interesting Wold Clock on digg the other day. This clock has stats collected from all over the world, showing population, prison growth, births, US illegal immigrations, divorces, species extinct, forests lost, barrels of oil, and LOADS more, including in depth death stats. Highly interesting.

Adios!

Long Long Week

Ok, so it’s been a long long week, and it’s been a while since I last updated. Sorry normal readers!

Lets see, highlights…

Last Tuesday was good, sushi and all that.

Wed was lots of proof-of-concept work for both the consulting and for my real job. Speaking of, OG and the guys at the office are starting up a consulting business. Very exciting stuff. I’ve already got two potential projects for me. After work I went over to Andrew’s and got the charger for the iPod and hung out for a short bit. Went home, biked for a while and then went out and played tennis with Jon. We both sucked. Me more so. It was good to get one-on-one time hanging out with him. He’s a nice guy. 🙂

Also ran into Ty there, apparently he lives in the apartments RIGHT next to the tennis courts. It was random. After we were done with that we went back to our own places, showered and then met back up at Joel’s place. We all went out to dinner and then hung out the rest of the night.

Thursday, was a long day at work. Meetings in Santa Monica, and driving there and back. Though I did get to drive the boss’ 530i BMW. That was hot! We also went to this place to eat where a freaking salad was $15! Thank god the boss paid! Then meetings later in the day for the consulting stuff, and the boy there was uber hot!. Then packing and all that. Ugh, crazyness. Is this what it felt like to be popular in HS, constantly busy? lol. I left my fucking apartment at 5:30 that morning and didn’t get home till 8pm. Ugh.

There was also LOTS of talk of me moving up to Santa Monica during that meeting and just in general from the VP himself. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Friday was just work and then the flight, LONG fucking day. My Scope for that day said: “For now, writing in your journal or blog could be the best answer.”… 😀

The plane ride on friday was fine. I got moved from seat 33, all the way up to 11 and had the whole row to myself, so that was really nice. we left about 30 minutes late, but got in on time. ORD was a mess though, they were doing all this construction in the baggage claim. I honestly don’t know why I bothered with that. Ugh. Got out of there and went to the Car rental place.

Got there and they were like, “well we’re out of Kia Rio’s so we’ll have to give you a PT Cruiser”. So I was just like, “whatever, i just want a fucking car to go home”. So she pulls it up and it’s a freaking PT Convertable! How fun. I left there and traffic was fine. I drove for like an hour with the top down, but then it got too cold. It was kinda cool, you would really tell when you were going through the cold front, cause it went from 80 in Chicago, down to 50 about an hour outside of ORD, and then a few hours later it went back tup to 66.

Sometime I really need to take a road trip out to Chicago when I’m not in a hurry. There’s so much random stuff along I-80 that I want to take pictures of.. Such as “What Cheer, IA” and The worlds largest truck stop and some other really random stuff.

I was able to talk to people for like the first three hours of the trip. Talked to Andrew for like an hour, and then talked to Robert for like 2 hours. It was pretty entertaining. Finially got into my house at 4am and everyone in the house was up. It was so random. Went to bed and got up at about 8 that morning.

Hung around the house talking to the Parents and playing in the pond and stuff like that. We all went out to lunch and got Sushi then came back to the house. Where I realized I had forgotten a belt and my mom hated the way my shirt fit. So her and I went back out to the Mall and bought two new shirts and a new belt. The boys in the mid-west are so yummy!

Got back home and it was time to head out to see Angel so I drove over to Ankeny and picked her up. We went to chili’s and I SWORE the guy hosting was Adam, it was really creepy. But then once he turned and looked at us, it was clearly not him. But it was still really creepy.

From dinner we went back to my house and waited for everyone else to show up. It ended up being, Vero, Zach, Mandy, Angel, Ginny, Oksana, Nic and this random guy that Ginny brought who was pretty cute, but sadly straight. We all hung out there for a while and then headed downtown. Hung out at the Royal Mile and then hit up The Lift ! Yay for $5 martinis! 😀 Had a really great night. Sadly Jenks couldn’t make it. :'(

At the lift there was this REALLY hot boy in a purple shirt. They kept trying to get me to go talk to him. JJ said that I should go put a dollor down his pants and say, “This is for later when you are stripping for me” haha. As we were leaving Ginny went up to him and gave him my number. He never called. 🙁

Ginny was also wearing the most adorable jacket! I stole it for the night. Pictures will be posted as soon as I get them from her! 😀

OH, I also watched the two episodes of Penn & Teller: Bullshit. That show is GREAT. Everyone should go watch it. Specially the Boy Scout one (Here’s the torrent).. Steven Cozza, I love you!

Got home about midnight and just crashed hard core.

Sunday was easter. It was really good to see everyone there, the best part was my grandma’s face when she saw me get out of the car. 🙂

Left there about 1 and headed out to Chicago. The drive was fine till I got 40 miles from Chicago… When traffic STOPPED. It took 2.5 hours to go 40 miles! I was so stressed out and just started crying in the car. Ugh. I finially got to the hotel, which was very easy to find. It’s so adorable too. There’s wall paper with GIANT blueberries, and a purple wall and I’m on the 12th floor with a pretty good view of the city. There’s also all these cute Haiju’s on all the lit stuff in the room. It’s ADORABLE!

I weighed myself on my mom’s scale, I’m at the lowest I’ve been in like a year, but yet for some reason I feel the fattest I’ve been in a long time. I dunno why!

On the drive here I saw a sign that said “6-6-06 The signs are all around you” and the -‘s were all upside down crosses… it was REALLY wierd!

My scope for Sunday was this: “You are at the very front edge of an intellectual storm that may have your nerves standing up at attention. This is a highly interactive phase and you are mentally up for whatever challenge come your way. You can be clever, even brilliant over the next month, but it will be wasted if you don’t finish what you start.” Kinda creepy.

I had the most random dreams about my job interview on Sunday night. But I slept SO well in this amazing bed! Got up at 8:30 and walked up to the school to see where it was, and then came back to the hotel and got ready for my interview….. I was SOOOOO NERVOUS!

BUT! The interview itself went GREAT! I asked a ton of questions about the place, and what’s going ond all that. You could tell that he was VERY surprised about how old I was. But I think I impressed them anywyas. The interview itself lasted a full 2 hours and we did lunch as well… And oh, the boys at the school… Yum yum! 😀 I guess I’m one of 7 people interviewing for the job, and I’m the ONLY person they offered to fly out! So that must be good news at least.

While we were eating lunch though, I was sitting there and BOTH of my legs cramped up so badly. I wanted to jump up and scream, but I sat there and just smiled… I’m so good like that. haha.

One possible issue though is that the boss man had a picture of the Pope in his office? Random! Also.. There was a nun sitting next to me on the plane. Random again?!

There were TONS of hot boys on the plane too… Made me so horny. :'(

But now that the stress of the interview is gone, I’ve got even more stress of just living and working currently. With the talk of moving to Santa Monica, comes the fact that I’ll have to dress more business casual, instead of street bum, like I currently do. Also comes the stress of moving, friends, etc etc etc. So no matter what happens with the Chicago job, there’s still lots of stress in my life.

Being back in So Cal Is kinda nice though, because at least here it takes more then 2 idiots to cause atraffic problem, and drviing 80 is the norm, instead of this shit about driving the speed limit. But alas, we shall see what all happens.

Beat Disney FastPass

NAS — Decided.

I decided to go with the Buffalo TerraStation It’s $929 at one place, and you get 750Gig’s of usuable RAID5 space (1 Terrabyte with striping). And it’s hardware RAID. THe only thing I don’t like about it is that you have to take the damn thing all the way apart to change a drive. I wish it had a module loader like most. But that’s what you get when you don’t have a budget for an Enterprise solution.

The thing I really like is that you can add up to 4 more drives via USB2. And from my understanding they can be used as part of the RAID!

Now I’m going to update my desktop with LInux and reformat the drives. I still need to buy a new tuner card with more onboard encoding capacity, and a better graphics card to output to my HDTV. Then I can finially have my PVR that I want. I was thinking about maybe installing the Windows Media CEnter version (we have a copy here at work that I could use) just to see how it works. I think it’d be fun. 🙂 But MythTV is the way to go.

I really can’t wait to do all this, but I feel SO BAD about dropping all this money on technology. Gah, why must I be such a tightwad.

Hung out with Andrew again tonight. It was lots of fun. Just like old times. We went to Target, and watched Golden Girls and had a jolly old time. Though I guess lots of people are talking bad about my hanging out with him again… Oh well… They are right to think bad about me.

Next weekend is also a three day weekend for me. I want to go on a trip somewhere, but I just don’t know where. Nor do I know who I’d go with. 🙁 Anyone up for a road trip?

Later.