Gonna be gone for a week and a half. Going to Las Vegas, NV for a few days. We got front row center tickets to the Blue Man Group tonight. You are required to wear ponchos in the area we are sitting in. I'll prolly get more paint on me there than I did at paintball.

After Vegas we will stay in Brianhead, UT for about a week. There we will snowboard, ride snowmobiles, snowtube, play videogames, watch movies, visit Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park. We also see what else there is to do around there.

Congrats to BJay & Jessica who had their 1st baby yesterday. His name is Asher James. Happy birthday Asher!

Ron knows what I'm taling about. Cos his lizards ate him.

For the past three or so weeks I have been working with Steve on planning a huge group paintball activity. It all seemed to be coming together nicely. We had reservations made and were getting a group discount. And we had close to 50 people committed to going.

Then today (the day of the event) arrives...

At 7:15 AM I am on the road in a car packed to the ceiling with friends and their paintball gear, I'm decked out in full camo (pic maybe coming soon if I can get a copy), and we realize "So, who printed out the map of where we're going?" No one did. We'll I personally did print one out, but I just forgot to bring it. So this isn't a big deal, we all have cell phone and we make some calls and in no time we have directions.

So we're on track again...

Then we arrive at the place of play and I suddenly realize that this is a popular sport. There were tons of people there, most of them also decked out in full camo gear. This is gonna be cool. We all start loading up guns and getting ready when I realize that we left out a major part of planning an event. "Um, how are we going to find the rest of our group? We never setup a place to meet."

So this is a problem...

After going through the little pep talk the park gives at the beginning of the day, I figure I will start seeing other from our group. But no luck. The people I carpooled with are getting restless and want to play (same here), so I walk up and down every aisle of the parking lot. And as I finish the last row and start heading back to the entrance of the park, I hear someone calling out my name. And it's Steve with his 13 friends. BTW, reservation is under Steve's name. So we joined with his group and now have 18 guys all together.

So where's the rest of our group? That is the question. We all wanted to play so we decided to just get registered with the park and start playing. And that somehow we would meet up with anyone else that came. We figured that we would have a lot of no-shows and so we didn't want to wait for people that had no intention of showing up.

So we checked in and got registered...

While checking in we found another portion of our group. They are actually another group of 17 people that were already planning on going, and already regularly play together, that said they would join our group a few days ago. But they were not ready to play and we had people in our group that were getting really restless. So we decided to start playing and hoped that they'd be able to join us in a few games.

We never saw them again.

Here's the rest of the story in just a few words: We joined the advance team because the beginners team was full and consisted of 10 year olds and girls wearing sweaters and other clothes purchased from Old Navy. We got creamed every game except for two. Paintballing is a lot of fun. I want to go again. I will never go to SC Village again. They are unorganized there and make you do more walking than paintballing. I think if I had these robotic enhancements I could of done better.

End of paintball story.

I was home at 5:30 and the wife and I wanted to go out. So we made plans on dinner and a movie. I also had checked my e-mail and there was a reminder from my friend Jared that his band Pier Pressure was tonight. So we figured we could make time between the movie and dinner to see them.

Pier Pressure is a cover band that only plays shows on the Huntington Beach pier (and private parties). So we bundled our little boy up and started walking down the pier. If you have never been to the HB pier it is quite long. So long, that you can be half way down the pier and you have no chance of hearing if a band is playing at the end, or seeing them in my case since my vision is kinda blurry. You may not be able to see even with good sight.

Regardless of that, I knew they were playing already because everyone walking back towards the mainland had smiles on their faces. From know that my friends Jared, Keith, Josh, Mark and Ryan were all in this band together, I had no doubt that they were the one putting the smiles on these peoples faces. Jared, Keith, and Josh were all in The Decapitones (RIP), and Jared, Keith, and Ryan are all currently in another band Routine Riot. I recommend all three bands.

So we get to the end of the pier and watch Pier Pressure play. They stopped before the next song and all were amazed by the cute factor of our boy which they had yet to see. They snapped a photo with him and then played Baby Baby, a cover of Britney Spears. After about a half hour and them getting about 30 dancing to some Beatles covers, we departed.

We had fun watching them and it was a nice way to round off our day.

If I may touch a bit on the Beatles. I never got them. They have some great songs. But growing up, their fanbase seemed to be such a machine with such high numbers that I never really bought into them and I just ignored them. I haven't even bothered to d/l any MP3's of theirs. The interest just isn't there on my part. Maybe some day I'll bother with them, bur for now Tool will do.

So it's been over 15 days since we actually received our new Sonicare toothbrushes from are good friend's James and Amy. And tonight we finally got around to using them for the first time.

If you don't know much about these things. They are high powered electric toothbrushes. I forget the exact number but they operate at such high speeds it equals like 36,000 regular brush strokes a minute.

So we've been delaying the rollover to the Sonicares from our regular brushes because our friends recommended that we read the manual and what-not. So tonight we were finally ready...

The manual says to have the Sonicare in your month when you turn it on, and to keep your month closed at all times during the brushing, because if you don't do both of those, toothpaste will splatter all over the place. So I have the brush in my mouth, and I turn the thing on and the sensation of the vibrating device caused me to jerk the thing out of my mouth. "It tickles!" I immediately exclaimed to my wife who was already laughing at me. So I tried again and ended with the same results. As did my 3rd and 4th and I believe 5th try. By the 6th try and using the Sonicare I was finally able to keep the thing in my mouth for a full brushing.

All said and done, they are cool. Wife doesn't think her mouth feels as clean when brushing with the Sonicare, I on the other hand think it does the job right. She prolly just had better technique to start with. I think on the road to whiter teeth!

This [link] should work for most people (if not, open a telnet prompt, and go to: towel.blinkenlights.nl). Once you get it to appear, you will see the ultimate testament to geekiness. Enjoy! [almost verbatim from kungfoo.com]

This goes along heavily with the person that made a program to watch the teli through a Linux text console. How crazy is that idea?! [also via kungfoo.com]

Thought I'd mention it now rather than when it arrives since I will be too busy playing with it. But yesterday I ordered a new Sony Vaio notebook. Here's the specs:

Sony Vaio GR300
1.2GHz Intel Pentium III-Mobile Processor
15.0" SXGA+ (1400x1050) Display
16 MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON-D Graphics Chip
256MB SDRAM(I will be upgrading to 512 rapidly)
40GB Removable Hard Drive
DVD-ROM Drive
Windows 2000 Professional
Ports: Ethernet, Firewire, TV out, USB, V.90 Modem, VGA Output, PS/2, Headphone, Mic, PCI Slots, Parallel, and Sony Memory Stick Slot
1.5" thin and weighs in under 7lbs when optical drive is in place

I'm really excited about this for several reasons. 1) My home & work networks are both setup with wireless networking, and this will be the first item I'll have to actually use it. 2) My Sony TRV-900 Digital Camcorder will hook up perfectly to the Vaio to edit digital video. 3) Gaming at friends will be easier with not having to take my whole PC and monitor with me.

That's the job that been given to Bob. As the story goes, Bob has to clean the 7.6 million pennies that spilled out over the road during transport.

Bob is an optomist. He is sure that he can finish the job within 60 days. He just hopes to not have to roll all the pennies into 50 cent packs. [via funjunkie in the uk]

We all want to have dinner with a robot. Someone (possibly Chris?) has put together this animated .gif so we can imagine what it would be like. [via tmn.org]

This looks like something outta a 'What If?' machine.

I found this nice blog by this guy John, his site is highlighted by his polls and features like 'Erik Estrada Kissed Me' and The Garfield Project. Aparently his distaste for how low the comic stip's standards have dropped caused him to convert a fluffy stuffed Garfield doll into a smoldering cowpie. He has plenty of photos and nicely documented comentary. Here's an excerpt:

Theres so much good stuff on the internet, and it's amzing how people find it all. When I first started my blog I did so because I wanted to keep a journal of some sort so I could have something to look back upon later in life (hopefully all my links will still point to live sites/stories yeah right, get real). But lately I have really gotten on this "blog trip" where I am really into reading other peoples blog. This is something I had really not done much of before. There are all these windows into people lives, people I have really no idea about. It's weird, because sometimes you can't tell if the blog you are reading is from a male or female, and you start forming opinions and decide one way, and then you find out you were wrong, and you are just thrown for a loop.

I am also hooked on blogs because you find out about things you could possibly live your whole life without finding out about, like DVORAK [via JK]. And you would miss out on personal experiences, such as encountering the dumbest girls in the world [via kottke.org]. And you would never know that such nightmares could haunt a person.

Weird Blog Experience of My Own That I Have Forgotten To Share For Several Weeks Now That Just Hit Me: Wife and Kid and I having dinner at Mom's place and I think that she might like to hear what her wonderful son did just two days prior while at work (refering to the Cinnamon Challenge of course). Again I will repeat, this is just two days after the challenge took place. So I begin the story of how I was at lunch and Mike wanted to bet me... And my mom stopped me and said, Is this about the cinnamon? I already read about that on your web site. I'm floored because 1) I didn't know my mother reads my blog changes things 2) My blog worked faster at spreading the story than I could myself. I had this same experience when getting together with friends at holiday parties, they already knew the story. Luckily, they let me amuse myself and re-tell them the story even though the web site dedicated to the event did a fancy job of documenting the whole thing.

Lately I have had so many little things to write, that I leave them out, because I feel they might clutter up my page because every little item has a title and sometimes the titles are hard to think up and sometimes I want to just post one line and why should a one line entry have it's own title. So I think I am about to start seriously considering switching to a kottke style blog where each day has it's own entry no matter how many times he adds to it. Pros: Takes up less room. Don't have to think up titles for each entry. Cons: Comments for a whole day's worth of my ramblings will all be combined rather than broken up to exactly what item they refer to. Same goes for others linking to me yeah right, get real. Harder for me to find something I know I wrote before because I can no longer skim the titles (others will also have this same problem of not being able to skim titles).

I think I might of just convinced myself outta changing my stylee. Oh yeah! Big Pro: I would longer need to worry about the time stamp showing one of the following: 1) My wife how late I was up while she sleep alone, and 2) my work that I occasionally rarely hardly sometimes will post an entry during what normally could be determined by some as working hours. This still is convincing enough to change my format. But makes the choice much more tempting.

Speaking of being up late, my wife just kissed me goodnight, so I am gonna follow her lead and go to bed.

Looks like others want to join in on the Cinnamon Challenge. One guy is even holding his own CC2K2. Pictures should be coming soon. And I'm looking forward to hearing the results and seeing his pictures.

There has been talks in my own circle of what challenges we will do next. Everyday now someone will just blurt out with random ideas. Mike's been trying to get Joel to go to The Block and eat lunch with his arms covered in chunky peanut butter that's been in Mike's desk for who knows how long now. Silly stuff like that which none of us have any intention of really doing. Except Mike maybe.

Last night I read on the Epitpah web site that Bad Religion would be playing a few shows later this month at some small clubs in Hollywood. At first I thought how rad it would be if I only had a connection to get in. To me Ticket Master is not an option. They suck. Then I realized, um, I *do* know a person that can prolly get me into the show. Guttermouth is an Epi band along with BR, so my thoughts were that the chances are high that Mr. Guttermark can get me in. So today I talked with Mark about it... and he's down with doing his best to get me in.

Happy Day.

So I just went to confirm the info on the show, and found out that it's two days after I leave to go out of town. So I can't go to the show. Major bummer.

I'm really bummed about this too cos the last time I tried to see BR they cancled the show I had tickets to. And supposedly they were going to annouce a show that would honor all tickets from the previous show, but here I am with unused tickets still. I even tried contacting Ticket Master and contacting BR's management and I have yet to recieve replies from either party. But BR's new album, The Process of Belief, comes out at the end of this month and it rocks! I've had the MP3's for a few months now and I still listen to them regularly. I highly reccommend it.

This entry goes along with one of my 2002 New Year Resolutions. I resolve to make all reasonable attempts to see the following bands play live: Dashboard Confessional, Tenacious D, and Weezer. This list may grow, but I have initially choosen these bands because all three are bands that last year I missed seeing when I had the chance. So this year I am going to make up for it. Weezer I have seen before, the others I have never seen live before. The D reign supreme!

Can anyone else tell me if they understand what 'Doomsday' is after reading Joel's entry of why Thursday is Doomsday?

Idea is simple: Send Mazie a Birthday card. Why? Well, Mazie's really, really cool.

I could play this for hours. Well, the fun actually lasted for about 5 minutes. But still linkworthy.

We spent the evening welcoming in the new year with friends. Pyrotechnics were present and it was fun.

I just got the new version of the Guttermouth web site on-line. What do you think?