A Weekend Recap…

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My absence over the past days can probably best be blamed on the fact that I worked the last ten days in a row without any time off. That streak ended last night, and there was much rejoicing.

Walked down to Channelside Friday evening after work for dinner and a movie with Kurt and Nikki – a pricey night, that’s for sure, but it was nice to go somewhere other than straight home after work! Another of my many desired “tourist stops,” I’d never actually been down there before, so it was kinda neat to see what all of the fuss is about, between the shops and the street performers and the live music – pretty cool. Of course, the main draw for the evening was an opportunity to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban…

And what better place to see such a beautiful movie than at an IMAX theater, right?! Wow – the scenery in this latest episode truly was amazing and I think the five-story screen really played a huge role in helping to portray the setting…no pun intended. I even found myself agreeing with the critics on this one – not only was this the best Harry Potter movie to date, but I think it was the first one that I’ll say was accurately transferred from paper to film – they really did a good job with this one. Did I mention that it was an IMAX film???

Today was just one of those days best spent sitting around the house playing video games and writing because tomorrow is going to be one of those days where I have to drag my ass out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn on a Sunday to go in for a meeting at work where we’ll all be treated like grade schoolers for a period of three hours. Topics of discussion are said to include how to dress for a business environment, how to clean up after yourself, and how to get your lazy, border-line unemployed ass to work on-time – should be a good time for all!

Not that I’m at all bitter about it – we are being provided with free bagels, mind you…

Real Cool

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The Internet has finally reached a first that I’ve been waiting for now for a long time – streaming video…

…but not just 2×2 inch squares of the local news, mind you. No, we’re finally to the point where you can download full-length, feature movies over the ‘net – legally – and actually be enjoying the movie in less than an hour! No more un-raring archives and begging for posters to resend missing pieces; no more finding an FTP server with everything you could ever want and later learning that it’s being hosted by some fourteen year-old with dial-up; no more videos that cut out halfway through, or have obnoxious watermarks, or Arabic subtitles…well, you get the idea.

Just last week Starz! and Real Networks rolled out Starz! Ticket which allows broadband users to download from a weekly-changing archive of 100+ movies for unlimited viewing at only $12.95 a month (with a 14-day trial, no less). Each movie comes with a specific license that allows it to remain on your computer for a set period of time, after which it gets automatically deleted, so the pirates are stopped dead in their tracks, at least for a while. I watched The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl tonight and was pretty impressed – the video itself weighed in at around 700 MB and was complete in about 40 minutes, which translates to something like 300 KB/s…a speed that I’ve never seen pulling downloads from anywhere else! The video was arguably DVD quality – I’ll find out more when I run the next one through my home theater system, but seriously, this really is the lazy man’s dream…

Sure, I know it’s pretty much the same idea as the movies on demand that I get with digital cable, but just the idea of doing this online is something that I’ve been waiting for for a long time! I’m sure it’s too early to know how popular this is going to be, but hopefully it’ll be enough so that Blockbuster or one of the other large chains will come online and begin offering rentals for a similar plan as an alternative to NetFlix – as opposed to $22 a month to get DVDs by mail, I think I’d be willing to pay ten or fifteen to be able to stream from a library online that would be ready for our enjoyment by the time I get back with the pizza. Until then, though – Starz! is swapping out about 20 movies a week…it’s almost like getting digital cable for the first time all over again!

*sigh*

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…I wish I had a tuner so I could re-string and start playing guitar again.

I hear that chicks still dig guys who can play the guitar…

“What else can you think but you’ve won the lobster sweepstakes?!”

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Wow, what a busy day / week / weekend…

  • Worked something like 66 hours and realized that I spent more time downtown than I did at home last week! Sure, the check will be nice, but damn…
  • To make up for all of the time at work, I pretty much slept all of Sunday away, which I don’t feel the least bit guilty about at all. Then I went out and bought the last half of the Family Guyseries on DVD, and there was much rejoicing.
  • Microsoft Money died on me last weekend, so I got to spend a good portion of one evening rebuilding all of my financial records. I figure I lost about five years worth of data, which isn’t all that bad because I was in debt most of the time and at least the details of it are finally gone!
  • I started working on the formatting for my book again – I have about 2/3rds of the first quarter printed out and ready to ship up to Lori so that she can add her artistic touch. I still don’t know what I want to do for the cover, but maybe that would be easier if I could settle on a title…
  • Things are up and down, as usual, at work, but for the most part I feel like I made a difference last week. I like the fact that I’m at a point in my life where I can enjoy going to work and what I do for a living…and not just because I have an attractive, new co-worker who needs a lot of “training!” 😉
  • I realized today that it rains a lothere in Florida…so much that Wal-Mart hands out “umbrella bags” at the door so you don’t get their floors and all of the merchandise soaking wet.
  • On top of all that, the power went out for a while when I was shopping there earlier today. The lights randomly came on and off for a while, yet the registers themselves remained fully operational the entire time – go figure!
  • As soon as I get paid next week, I’ll be writing a pay-off check for one of my four remaining debts…and if the OT keeps up at work, another twoby the end of the summer!
  • I’m to the point in Vice City that I don’t really care about the missions – I just enjoy driving around and hitting things. I’m still confused as to why the cops get mad when I beat up hookers or mow down gangs by the dozen, but then again, I suppose prostitutes and thugs are technically people too.
  • I ran Ad Aware tonight and came up with 29 new registry keys that shouldn’t have been in this thing…and yet my browser is still driving funny. I have a pop-up that still keeps, well, popping-up – I may end up having to run a virus check, but I just don’t have time to do it right now.
  • I cleaned up my office at home while I was burning CDs for people earlier tonight and now it’s the cleanest it’s been since Christmas. I reallyneed to buy a vacuum…
  • Time for bed.

Tampa’s Got a Winning Team!!!

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I was a little doubtful myself, but last night the Lightning whooped Calgary and brought home the Stanley Cup – I can only imagine what the atmosphere is going to be like at work today! I don’t remember what the actual number was for the amount of people downtown, but it was certainly more than a few!


Nonetheless, the coolest thing was probably actually watching out the windows of our building throughout the day as actual lightning circled the downtown area – it was almost like they were destined to win! Very cool, indeed…

A Long Day, Indeed…

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Michael’s funeral was today, as most already know. It was nice to meet so many of the other people he called friends, both online and off, as well as refreshing to hear all of the stories that everyone had to tell. Looking back, I think I would’ve preferred coming over for the wake Thursday evening to chat with everyone, but that’s ok. I do have one final bit that I want to write up here about this whole experience, but it’s just going to have to wait until tomorrow because 2:00 AM is simply too late to crank out prose that I have no intentions of proofreading later…

On a completely different note, I’ve decided that I’m going to Disney World on Sunday…I think. We were gonna go tomorrow, but then stupid, old me got scheduled for overtime at work and ruined that little plan! It just means that I get to hold onto my $54 dollars for one more day, right?