Sick

I've been sick since Monday morning and I'm not happy about it. I spent most of Monday sleeping...and have missed 3 days of workouts. I hate being sick.

One for Dave

Random from the web

Her friend casually points to the poor girls chest as if to say 'yes, my friends boobs are very small'.

Thinking of you on the holidays

Why is divorce so expensive?
Because it's worth it.

Random from the web

She's a hit with the boys.

Wine event -- Saturday December 10, 2005 Broomfield 7PM

Come to the last wine party of the year! Bring your favorite wine of 2005, red, white, pink, blue, or any other color you fancy. Also, bring a white elephant gift and we'll do a gift exchange.

7PM, Broomfield, Saturday December 10th, 2005.

You bring: wine, white elephant gift, some food to share.
I have: toe licking dog, space.

FYI a white elephant gift is just something you want to get rid of. Think 're-gifting'. Think 'I can't believe someone gave me this thing and how do I get rid of it now?'

MEETinDENVER Wine social -- Prosecco

Event Link

Prosecco was Katie's idea. I'd never even heard of it. I found out a few days after posting that it was a *sparkling* wine...so...basically it was champagne part 2, except everyone kept their clothes on this time.

Alas, poor Katie spent the night before doing shots with strange boys, and called in 'too hung over' to come to her wine event. I made the best of it by trying to picture everyone in pj's.

View sean's pictures online

Busy

Last night was probably the first time in too many days that I've gone to bed before midnight. Of course I was up for good at 4am... go figure.

Working half a day today then doing some cooking for Thanksgiving tomorrow. I have a lot to make.

Ok...off to the gym.

MEETinDENVER Appetizer social

Event Link

We ate appetizers.

view Sean's pictures online

MEETinDENVER dinner@home -- polish

Event Link

Google says:
The Milford Senior Center
A Polish-theme dinner dance was held Fri. Sept. 29 where a kielbasi and sauerkraut dinner was served to 107guests. From the left are, DJ Joseph Kelley, ...

Not us, of course. Since it was more than 24 hours ago I can't remember anything about it. It did look fun from the pictures, though. Alan made a rare appearance, probably because the thing was his idea in the first place, and more likely: Amy would never let him get away with it.

A lesson to all you over-achievers out there: don't sign up for dinners while taking 26 credits, dating, working full time, and cross stitching a quilt for your mom at the same time.

view Sean's pictures online

Dinner and dancing...and a list of girl qualities

Ok, off dinner and dancing tonight....but a quick one before I go:
Sean's list (of desirable girl qualities):

Emotionally healthy: Not interested if your fucked up over some childhood problems, passive aggressive, under-responsible, or think loving me will be some surrogate for love you never got as a kid.

Non smoker

No kids

Exercise regularly: Expect to be dragged into the mountains with heavy gear, up 14'ers, through snow drifts. If your idea of exercise is taking out the trash then you're off the list.

Cultural: You're going with me to the plays and the symphonies, and I'll need you to dress up. That doesn't mean jeans and flip flops.

You have a brain: You understand simple cultural references without explanation like 'catch-22'.

You read: and read something other than soup labels.

You have your own life: I have a life. I'll expect you to have one too.

You have your own friends.

I'm attracted to you.

You're not allergic to Dogs.

You drink: I drink wine. I collect wine...I taste wine...if you're non-alcoholic then we have a problem.

You make a decent living: If you work at target for 18K/yr then we've got a problem, Houston.

You either own a home or a condo.

You want kids.

You have a passport and have used it before to leave the country.



Easy! A girl on every block, I'd imagine.

eshmarmy

If you haven't tried eharmony, I'll give you the cliff note version: answer a bunch of questions, pay money, post a photo (hopefully of you), write some gibberish about yourself hopefully leaving out those obvious red flags such as parole, prison, mom's basement, restraining orders, FBI, and AIDS.

Then, they match you up with some other people who've done the same. The first step is to look. Scary? Not scary?

Then, you send some pre-canned questions. This is the fun part. You don't actually get to write anything at this point...you just check off some questions from a list.

Then you wait. Will they answer? Will they close the match? Closing is permanent. It's the eharmony way of saying 'you're too ugly to date'. They don't actually say that, though. Once again, you get some canned options to send to the luckless soul...things like 'I think the distance between us is too great.' or 'I'm pursuing other matches at eharmony'.

I get a kick of of this part. Especially when you get one back that says 'I don't think there is chemistry between us.'

LADY, I SENT YOU 5 CANNED QUESTIONS. WHERE IS THE CHEMISTRY IN THAT?

I think they need more options:

'You're too ugly to date'
'You remind me of my grandfather'
'I'd rather date someone with teeth'
'You remind me of my 3rd ex husband'
'I saw your picture at the post office'
'Maybe after 6 or 7 beers'

Smell my finger

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I don't think so.

Shaun of the dead

Over at Jane's place last night with Nancy, Holly, and Theresa watching shaun of the dead.

Love that movie.

Run screaming from the room, why don't you?

(it's a small world after all plays in the background).
I've been doing eharmony lately. LATELY I'VE MATCHED WITH TWO PEOPLE I ALREADY KNOW. One of them I took on a few dates last year before running away screaming.... some of you have heard a few of the dating nightmare stories, and she was near the top... anyway, so POP there she is again, STANDING NEXT TO SOMEONE I KNOW FROM THE MEET IN DENVER GROUP.

I need to move.

BMG dolts

It looks like BMG record company is having a bit of trouble with it's CD copy protection system. From CNN:

"When recipients click on an attachment, they install malware, which may tear down a computer's firewall and give hackers access to a PC. The malware hides by using Sony BMG software that is also hidden -- the software would have been installed on a computer when consumers played Sony's copy-protected music CDs."

Read the article here.

Record companies must think I'm stupid

So, at Target today picking up...stuff...whatever... and I'm browsing through some CD's. I see a cd I've been thinking about getting, from David Gray. Something doesn't look right, though. There is a sticker on the front that says '*****AUDIO CD', and down in the bottom where you can barely read it...'This ***AUIDIO CD does not conform to the CD standard. This ****AUIDIO CD may not play on all CD players or computer equipment.'

Basically it's copy protected. It doesn't say that anywhere...but that's what it is. That ***bullshit disclaimer is so they don't get sued by Phillips, who invented the CD format.

So, no mp3's, no AAC, no IPOD, no mix, no 'put it on my dance dvd' nothing.

I put it back on the shelf. No fucking way I'm paying money for that. GUESS WHAT GUYS, I'M ONLINE DOWNLOADING THE FUCKING UN-PROTECTED CD LATER TONIGHT.

I guess you won't be making your $15 dollars from me.

Wine event -- Saturday November 12, 2005 Broomfield 7PM

Prosecco $35 or less
Saturday November 12, 2005 Broomfield 7PM

Prosecco
[praw-SEHK-koh, proh-SEHK-koh]
A white-wine grape that's grown primarily in the eastern part of Italy's VENETO region. Prosecco's made into lightly sparkling (FRIZZANTE), fully sparkling (SPUMANTE), and STILL WINES. Its fine reputation, however, comes from the sparkling versions. The wines are CRISP and appley and, though they can be sweet, are more often found DRY. The best-known wines made principally from Prosecco come from the DOC of Prosecco di Conegliano-Valdobbiadene and are generally sold with either the name of Conegliano or Valdobbiadene attached. The very best Prosecco wines are labeled "Superiore di Cartizze" and come from a subzone within Valdobbiadene. Prosecco is also known as Balbi, Glera, Serprina, and Tondo.

Special instructions: Bring some food to share with the group, and one bottle of wine per person or couple.

Saturday

After a starbucks induced caffeine buzz, I went to the gym. There I did cardio while outside it rained, then snowed, then became completely sunny without a cloud in the sky.

Silly state.

Tons to do today, including work, laundry, cleaning, walk the dog, dry cleaning, bank, clean the car, and tonight's appetizer party.

The grand total damage on the server raid array is two completely fried hard drives. I'm patching together what's left onto a new 250GB mirror from backups and whatever I could pull off the blow array last week.

It's a real pain in the ass.

Ok...Shower, and off to the dog park before Thomas chews my leg off.

Um...I don't think so

One of the projects I'm working on is a 4-way li-ion charger. There are a number of parts on there. Yesterday I finally looked at the proposed pcb area for the design from the mechanical guy. He's got a board 0.7 inches wide and 8 inches long. Most of the board is marked "keep out".

I don't think so.

Recovery

Hardware showed up today. A new drive for the raid array and a external backup. My old backup drive seems to have died.

36,000 files getting copied from the blown array to the backup. I'll wipe the array and see what is left of the drives.

Long day today. 10 hours in boulder, a couple hours on another project. Both interesting.

Going to bed.

Work, server, raid

Basically worked today from 8am to 9pm...3 different clients. Tired.

I did some work on the server last night...and after spending money on some software recovery tools it looks like it's not as bad as I thought. The array is blown...and there are read errors on one disk, but I think I can get most of the data off.

Lovely.

When data goes bad

The array that went down was my 500GB personal data array on the server. I have most of it backed up, but there still is a gap. There are about 500-600 digital pictures I'll need to recover.

Luckily I've uploaded most of those online. That means I can order a CD of my own pictures and get them back. I can live with that.

30,000 files, 130GB of data, lot's of mess.

I hate computers.