A few pics from our trip over to Disney World for the weekend – I’ll eventually post the entire trip to Gallery, but I’ve got some maintenance/upgrade-type stuff on the plate first so it might be a while. But in the meantime, here are some of the more holiday-inspired shots – enjoy…
Mind you, I’ve never been in a Trader Joe’s before because I don’t think we even have them around here, but this little video / fan-commercial is kinda fun!
So…Super Bowl ads! A week and a half later, I finally got around to watching some of them and a few weren’t too bad. Like these…
Hulu: Alec in Huluwood
http://www.hulu.com/superbowl/55719/super-bowl-xliii-ads-hulu-alec-in-huluwood#s-p1-sn-i0
Pepsi: Pepsuber
http://www.hulu.com/superbowl/55730/super-bowl-xliii-ads-pepsi-pepsuber#s-p1-sn-i0
Denny’s: Thugs
http://www.hulu.com/superbowl/55608/super-bowl-xliii-ads-dennys-thugs#s-p1-sn-i0
Coke: Heist
http://www.hulu.com/superbowl/55737/super-bowl-xliii-ads-coke-heist#s-p2-sn-i0
Fedex: Carrier Pigeons (technically from last year, but it got mixed in with this year’s and I thought it was the best anyways!)
http://www.hulu.com/watch/8099/super-bowl-xlii-ads-fedex-carrier-pigeons
Also, this is kinda the first time that I’ve really used Hulu and I’ve got to say, the video quality sure beats the pants off of YouTube! Then again, I suppose that’s what you get when you move away from shaky camcorder videos to actual TV-quality video. Long overdue…
DVRs should have a rule where if you’re already watching something when a new scheduled recording comes on and it doesn’t have enough tuners to go around, it asks you which program you want to go with instead of just chucking whatever you were currently on in favor of the scheduled recording.
This message brought to you because my stupid DVR just dropped the last half of the program I was watching because a rerun of Good Eats came on, and of course, I can’t just switch back because I was watching it in buffer and the buffer disappeared the second the channel changed.
…I registered the domain name for my next project this evening…
So I spent over an hour trying to fix my desktop PC this evening, but left even angrier and more out of options than before. It’s still having the same symptoms (no visual output to the screen), except now I’ve also tried:
Seriously, I’m running out of things to try – what’s left?! Aside from swapping out components one by one and trying them in a working box to verify their state, I really don’t know what else to do. The office has been reduced to a messy pile of strewn about computer parts, and I really don’t even want to think about it anymore tonight.
Lack of Resolutions
Actually, I do have them, but at the moment I can’t exactly find them, mostly due to computer problems which I’ll get into in a moment.
Writing Accomplishments
I’m happy to say that the new year is going well, at least as far as my humor column is concerned. Five of my six weekly columns so far have gone up each Friday morning as scheduled – one technically got posted a day late on Saturday, but all of the others were posted in advance at least a day or two early. I’ve also got a few upcoming columns already in the can, so I’m kinda excited about being able to keep a schedule on this correctly thus far … it means there are really no reasons why I shouldn’t be able to try a few other projects as my remaining free time allows while still keeping the bread and butter on-time, which is important to me.
Diet & Exercise Accomplishments
I have mixed opinions about this because while I haven’t exactly lost the amount of weight that I would’ve liked to after a month of diet and exercise, so far I’ve been the most successful that I’ve ever been at keeping an exercise regiment and that’s a pretty big deal for me. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve managed to exercise every single week for at least three days a week (except last week), thus blowing my previous records of two and three weeks in a row out of the water! The down side of it is that I’ve only lost about five pounds so far, which bounces between discouraging and frustrating, but I have also done a little better at eating correctly and ultimately I know that this is something that’s going to take time to fix. Hell, if I can lose 5 pounds a month between now and summertime, I’ll be good to go!
Computer Not-So-Much Accomplishments
If anything, this has really been a lousy weekend for computers in my life … really, if it weren’t for the new laptop we bought Sara a few months ago, I’d pretty much just be sitting around twiddling my thumbs right now. Over the last three days, I’ve had two computers die on me:
Either way, I’m kinda hosed right now in the computer department. Fortunately all of my documents are stored on a file server in another room and I keep my writing on a flash drive that I carry with me, so all of that is still safe and accessible, but I can’t really do much more than just write on Sara’s laptop and I really have a ton of web work still left to do at this point. It looks like I know how I’m spending my Monday night, and possibly Tuesday and Wednesday… 🙁
Valentine’s Day Getaway!
I’m very excited to get some time with the wife this year, especially because time has been so scarce with school and writing and all lately. Even though actually I think we’ve been doing a little better at getting some us time in the evenings when she gets home, it’ll still be nice to go someplace without distractions where we can just relax and enjoy each other’s company. I think a couple of days away from all of this could do us some good…
I’ve unofficially decided that Sara and I need to take a trip down to the Florida Keys this summer.
The thought came about earlier this weekend when I was trying to come up with some vacation ideas that we could enjoy without completely crumpling our budget. It’s been extra difficult over the last year because she only gets a week off between semesters, and usually that time is just spent trying to unwind here at home, but at the same time it’s always nice to be able to get away and relax in another locale, too. We’ve already got the plan to go on a cruise this fall when she finally graduates, and obviously we go over to Disney all the time anyways, and then I came up with the idea of possibly hopping down to the Keys for a three or four night getaway.
For us it would actually work out pretty good because given the timing of her summer break from school, we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of the blackout season for Florida Resident Passholders over at Disney, and between the heat and the crowd levels we wouldn’t really want to go there anyways, but the Keys could be an entirely different scene. With no actual events or activities to fill our schedule, it would leave lots of time for just lying around on the beach relaxing. Throw in maybe a bit of snorkeling, a few umbrella-laden drinks, and it sounds good to me!
I’m trying to think back and it’s all still a bit fuzzy to me, but I think the last time I’ve actually been in the Keys was back in high school when I took a “senior trip,” if you will, down here with a couple of friends. And mind you, that was in 1999, so I do believe that after 9 years have passed, 5 of which I have lived in Florida, thus making the Keys a mere 6-hour drive away as opposed to nearly 30 … as Jimmy would put it, I’ve just got to get back to the islands…
Can anyone recommend a nice, but affordable resort down south?
If it’s not one thing…
Recycling still didn’t get picked up today – this is the second consecutive pickup that they missed, and I even called to complain about the last time. Our garbage & recycling pick-up is managed by the HOA, so I e-mailed the contact guy to find out who’s job it is to light a fire under somebody’s ass.
It’s another…
Checked my bank account this morning and found that the videographer from our wedding made an unauthorized charge for the balance of our payment to my credit card, which resulted in it bouncing because it was very close to the limit as it is. Our agreement was that we would make our final payment when we received the finished video, which we haven’t yet because neither of us have had time to do so. Called the bank to dispute the charge, who didn’t provide much help and told me to try to handle it directly with the guy before they did the whole legal thing. Sent off a very pissed off e-mail to the videographer basically asking, “WTF?!” … we’ll see what he says.
So, how’s your weekend going?!
I was supposed to:
But instead I: