The Winter Hawks never cease to piss me off. I pay like $500/seat for the regular season and they suck ass. All season long they lose. Then they try to gouge me for another $300/seat for the playoff tickets, after just barely making it to playoffs by the skin of their teeth. Thinking to outsmart them (and because I wasn't keen to invest the $600 for more losing game tickets), I declined the offer. I'll be going to the entire next regular season, though.

Now, of course, the bastards are winning - who'd have thought? - and I don't have my God damn seat on the glass. Doesn't that just fucking figure?

As luck would have it, Mom called me up earlier today and she got some free tix to the game tonight - game 6 of 7 - so I'll be able to maybe see them move from the first to the second round. On the other hand, if I go, I'll probably end up jinxing the whole thing and they'll just lose. Which would make some sick sort of sense.

Went running errands this weekend and while at Fred Meyer I noticed that their video games are all 20% off. That's a pretty good deal, so I picked up Metroid Fusion (for my GBA) from them. The sale's on until the end of tomorrow, so if I can find a place that has The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (also for GBA) available, I'll pick that up, too. I looked around for Amplitude (for PS2) but didn't find it.

I'm pretty much over my chest cold now, and aside from some minor congestion, I'm doing well. Thanks to all the folks who left concerned comments on my blog (Tanya). Those who didn't can take a long walk off a short pier.

My dad and I have been working out together on Monday and Thursday evenings in the fitness center at my apartment complex. Not that it makes weightlifting fun or anything, but it helps a lot to have someone to go work out with. Besides which, it's cool to hang out with Dad. Dad rocks.

Anyway, that working out is helping to get me a little more active than I normally am. Which is good, because I'm back to wearing my older (larger) pants size again - up to a 36 inch waist from a 34. I suppose I should expect a little of that. My diet, while I've not been eating too much, hasn't really changed, while I'm now working out and beginning to build muscle mass under my flab.

Of course, I'm not wearing larger pants because I'm buff.

Saw the latest John Travolta/Samuel Jackson film, Basic, on Saturday. I liked it, as did Jenn and my dad. Mom wasn't too keen on it, but Mom's not much for movies that twist and turn to hard. If you like movies that twist and twist and twist again, this is definitely for you. If you have trouble keeping track of who is really double-crossing who, I'd say you might want to pass on it. Or rent it so you'll be able to pause it and write stuff down. It's pretty confusing if you're not paying attention, but for those who want to invest the time, you'll be amply rewarded.

My chest cold continues. I thought I was getting better this morning when I woke up because the phlegm in my chest and throat started breaking up. By the time I got to work, it had solidified again in a war against me and my poor lungs.

I'm also feeling sort of tired and achey, almost like I have a fever but not quite. I'm generally feeling sluggish, and that's not so good when you're at work and people actually want you to do something. So I'm going to go home at 3:00p, which is in about an hour. That'll give me enough time to get the rest of the stuff done that I have pending (for today, at least) and still allow me time to beat the rush hour traffic.

When I get home, I'm going to lay down and take a huge nap. Somehow a nap always seems to fix everything.

Maybe I need to get this book so I can convince my boss of that, too.

I added some new crap to the paraesthesia junk store including some t-shirts, a camisole, panties (extra points awarded for sending pictures of you wearing the panties), and a rather cool wall clock that I myself may have to pick up.

Give it a look, then buy lots of stuff, eh?

There's something about porn spam in my Inbox that just gives me the warm fuzzies. Especially the myriad ads for "Enhance Your Penis" or "Extra Length!" That's just great. Please, send me more of those because you know as well as I do that I click on every single one of them and find them all worthwhile.

NOT.

Some are legitimately clever, though. I think my favorite recent one had the subject, "Satisfy your woman you pindick." That definitely makes me want to click it. Morons. People who spam people should be fucking shot.

Okay, so I found some GBA accessories I need to get...

• MP3 Player - This actually comes in two varieties: the SongPro ($100) and the Innovation ($60). The SongPro is better with more features and higher quality sound, so obviously that's the way I'd like to go.
• TV Converter - So you can play the game on the TV instead of on the little screen.
• Personal Organizer - Turn your GBA into a PDA...
• Macro Kit - A kit with a small carrying case, a headphone adapter, headphones, and a car charger. At $15, I think I'll probably just order this and call it a day.
• Ergo Grips - Hand grips that attach to the GBA to relieve cramps.
• Flash Advance Card - A card that allows you to put downloadable game ROMs on it and then play them on your GBA.

By the way, I'm still loving my GBA SP. However, I'm realizing that, as simple as the unit is, that doesn't make the games any easier. I'm still as bad at Mario Brothers games as I ever was. That doesn't make it any less fun, though.

The weekend itself wasn't terribly eventful, but I do have a lot of little, unrelated information to catch folks up on, so I'll do that here.

First, the weekend news.

Went to a local club Saturday night to see "an intimate show" by Josh Kelley and the band "Pay The Girl." By my definition, "an intimate show" implies about 100 - 150 people. There were probably a good 500 people in this place. I'm sure the fire marshal would have been pissed - I mean, it was packed in. They started wheeling out chairs for people to sit in, but there was nowhere to put them so folks were sitting in the aisles and walkways... not good. We saw a few songs by Josh Kelley, but then the smoke in the place started severely hindering Jenn's breathing (it wasn't great for me, either) so we left before Pay The Girl came on stage.

Went to Fry's Electronics during the day on Saturday and picked up a Platt heavy-duty polyethelene case with custom foam cutout to store my GBA SP in. I got the foam all punched out and all the parts are in the case with plenty of growing room in the event I get other accessories that need storage. I've always wanted one of those cases (sort of like the sniper rifle cases you see in action movies), but I never knew what I'd store in it. Now I know.

Sunday I didn't do much of anything. Played a little PS2 with Jenn, hung out... that's about it.

Random stuff:

There's a class action lawsuit against movie theaters for showing paid advertisements that run past the time when the movie's supposed to start. The idea is that if the movie is supposed to start at 7:00, then it starts at 7:00 and not 7:30 because you, the captive audience, just had to watch 30 minutes of advertising. This is the greatest thing ever. I hate the stupid ads at the beginning of movies. One or two doesn't bother me too much, but I've sat through seriously like 10 ads at a time. Fucking ridiculous.

I took a Star Trek Personality Test and it says I'm an "ENTP" and identify most with the character Harry Kim. I'm not sure I entirely agree with that, but whatever.

The Alias Season One DVD set is available for preorder from Amazon. Looks like it won't be out until September, which is not soon enough as far as I'm concerned. Buffy Season Four is coming out in June. I should preorder both of those.

My instructor from the training class I went to a couple weeks ago is fairly new to the area of Portland. I thought about it, and there's really not a simple guide to What's Cool in the Portland, OR Area. There are tourist books and stuff, but nothing I really agree with. I am thinking I may have to come up with that and post it here. Then again, that's a lot of work, so maybe not.

The new Kelly Clarkson album looks like it should be coming out April 15 and Justin Guarini's should be out later this Spring. I'm stoked - curious to hear their music.

I think it's interesting - if you look at this site (AmericanIdolMusic.com), they basically treat Justin and Kelly the same as opposed to one being the Idol and the other being runner-up. I think that's pretty cool, actually, because it sort of implies a tie, which I think it was. They both rock.

Got the call last night about 4:45p that my GBA SP was waiting for me at the local GameSpot. Picked that bitch up by 5:30p. Plugged it in, it was charged and set to go by 9:30p (the first time you charge the battery it takes a little longer).

*sigh*

It is everything I hoped it to be.

I'm now afraid I may be cheating on my Playstation 2 a little bit. This little baby is just super. It's light, it has an ultra-clear screen on it... the beauty of portable gaming is without bounds.

I bought, at the same time, a copy of Yoshi's Island, a Super Mario game with a sort of hand-drawn feel to it. It's really cool looking. I haven't gotten a chance to play it, but I think as soon as I finish up here, I'm going to take a little of my lunch break and bust it out.

I also went to Toys R Us and bought the Nintendo e-Reader. I highlighted it, attached to my GBA, in the picture, so you can see how it works. It plugs into the cartridge slot for the GBA and has an optical reader on it. You get cards, sort of like baseball trading cards, with this ultra-fine "dot code" on the edges that this thing reads and then lets you play games. It came with Donkey Kong Jr. on a series of five cards. The reader is the only real expense; the game cards only cost like $5 a set. SWEET!

Anyway, loving it. Now I may have to get a GameCube in order to connect the two. I guess you can unlock stuff between the two when they're connected. Brilliance.

I realized while on vacation - er, training - last week that I am having an affair behind Jenn's back.

It's true, and I'm coming clean about it right now.

I have a love affair with my Playstation 2. It's an odd relationship where I am both its sugar daddy and its bitch. I cannot help but to play it, to buy more games for it, to give it its every need. When it calls for me, I must go to it. I must find that last hidden package, perform the entire set of unique tricks, get the ultimate weapon and/or destroy the enemy. It is a moral imperative, and I am unable to resist its siren call.

So much so that I anxiously await the arrival of its distant cousin, the GBA SP. I am counting down the days until March 23, when the official Nintendo release date has been set. I can hardly wait.

Okay, first up, check out the fat gut there. How come nobody ever told me I was such a fat fuck? Maybe I should start binging on Subway so I can be a skinny fuck like Jared. This just goes to show you that I definitely need to work out. This is just disgusting.

Okay, so I went to SQL Server administration training last week. I learned lots of stuff, but here's the primary set of stuff I gained from going to training:

First, going to training is like being on fucking vacation. Not having to go in to work, not having to deal with bitchy users all day, not having to troubleshoot crappy products or fix things I didn't break and/or have nothing to do with... it's brilliance. It's like a nonstop party. Maybe I should be paid to go to training all day.

Second, while I absolutely hated school - both high school and college - I dig the whole technical training gig. Maybe it's the fact that I'm learning something I see value in, or maybe it's that I'm learning things that I find interesting. Maybe both. The fact of the matter is, training classes are so vastly better than school I can't begin to explain it. They should offer training classes instead of school. That'd rock.

Third, there's a hell of a lot of stuff I have no idea about regarding database administration. There's a lot of cool stuff out there that would make my day loads simpler, and I don't know a damn thing about it. Going to the class was like this epiphany - all sorts of cool stuff I can implement that will make things run generally smoother and possibly shut some of the whiny users up. It just doesn't get much better than that.

So, besides training, what'd I do all week?

Well, Jenn and I rented The Ring and Rocky on Friday night. The Ring was pretty good - more a psychological/image-oriented horror film than a slasher flick - and it was sorta freaky. Jenn's sister called us at exactly the wrong moment in the movie and both of us screamed. I had only seen small clips of Rocky, and after talking about it with a friend of mine at the hockey game, I had to rent it to see for myself. How was it? Hmmm... Well, it won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1976 and I reflected on that for a while after seeing the movie... where were the standards in 1976? Best Picture, for crying out loud! Heads up our asses, man, heads up our asses.

Went to the last two Winter Hawks games of the regular season on Saturday and Sunday. I'm really glad the season's over; I'm not going to go to the playoff games because I've been waiting so long for this season to end - I'm glad to finally have some free time to do stuff again. I'll miss my hockey friends, but hopefully we'll hang out during the off-season. I gave my friend Jerry my email address and phone number, maybe we'll get together and watch the other four Rocky movies. Who knows?

Bought a couple of CDs in my off-time: Garbage - beautifulgarbage and Quarashi - Jinx. Both are good in their own right, though I'm sort of listening to them and hoping on a level that they grow on me a bit more. The Quarashi disc reminds me of Rage Against the Machine, which is fine, but I like them better because they're not so politically-oriented as Rage is. The Garbage disc... there are a couple of really good ones on there, but for the most part it feels like they're trying too hard to "be original" or some crap and rather than putting out good music they're focusing on liberating their artistic creativity. Eh. If you do get that one, check out the remix program for your computer that comes on the disc. It's really cool.

Got a call on the Friday before last from my mom telling me that my grandfather (mom's dad) was in the hospital after having another heart attack. I rushed in to see him laying in the ICU, telling jokes and flirting with the nurses. He was out a couple of days later. In the scheme of things, as heart attacks go, it wasn't that big of a deal. I'm glad he's okay; I think he's pretty well indestructible, and I like it that way.

I'll be out for SQL Server DBA training the week of March 10 - 14, so there will most likely be no posts. I probably won't even be getting email, so, uh, don't expect any replies or anything. We call it busy in my country.

Watched Survivor last night at my parents' house. I was glad they voted Joanna's whiny, annoying, overly-pious, off-key-singing, stupid ass off the show because she was irritating the living shit out of me.

I finished the majority of the sewing on this hat project I'm working on before Survivor started. It turned out pretty good, but I'm no professional tailor or anything. Now I've gotta wash it to get the disappearing ink to, well, disappear, and then I'm going to iron it and start beading it. I think once the beads get put on it'll be a lot better. Right now it looks sort of rumpled and, while I am pretty pleased with it, I think it could be better.

We went to lunch today with the CTO of the company. He took the department out because he claims we're doing a good job. I appreciate that he thinks so, but I'm honestly waiting for the other shoe to drop. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

The end of the hockey season is approaching, and I'm glad to see it coming. The Winter Hawks suck this season and as much as I enjoy hockey and seeing my hockey friends, it's difficult to pay money for season tickets to a losing team. I have hope that next season the coach will kick their asses if they suck this bad again. I think we have like three games left; next Sunday is our last game. Hey, maybe I'll actually have some free time after that. Wouldn't that be novel?

I have learned a lot about SQL Server databases in the past couple of days. The primary lesson is: if you have a 10GB database on a 25GB drive and you decide to delete a large portion of the database, the database transaction log will not hesitate to fill up the remaining 15GB of disk space and crash the system.

Rockstar Games is distributing the original Grand Theft Auto game for PC - free! All you have to do is sign up and download it. It's 300+ MB, so a fast connection is key, but that's cool that they're giving it away. I downloaded it and burned it to disc. I'll have to try it out one of these days.

I cannot wait for March 23 - I am impatient for my GBA SP.

I got notified via Classmates.com that my 10-Year High School Reunion is coming up in July.

There are three events over the course of three days. The first night there's an informal dinner at a local pizza joint. The second night there's formal dinner and dancing at a local college. The third night (afternoon, actually) there's a potluck picnic in a park with softball and volleyball.

I've been thinking about this for the last couple of days and I'm not sure what to make of it. I went to Jenn's high school reunion and it was lame, even according to her. I don't know if mine will be that lame, but I'm beginning to wonder if all reunions aren't just a little lame. I never really got along with most of the folks in high school, either, so it's not like I'm dying to see most of them again. The ones I really got along with I still talk to.

So why go?

Actually, I'm still puzzling that one out. As one of the valedictorians of the class (we had two), I spoke at graduation. I guess that sort of makes it my civic duty to show to the reunion, doesn't it? But then, people didn't like me so much (at least, that's how I felt), so maybe not.

A short while ago I was flipping through my senior yearbook. Honestly, if you covered up the names in there, there's no way I could tell you who 95% of those people are. I don't remember; it's been blocked from my mind.

I hope there will be nametags if I go.

If anything, I am thinking I'll go to the formal dinner/dance thing. I think the most people will turn out for that one, and I'm not much for socializing at informal gatherings of people I don't really know (at least, not anymore). Also, the formal event is a "no kids allowed" deal, whereas they can go to the informal ones. I'm not so hot on kids, so that's a big plus for me.

I asked a friend of mine, Lisa, if she is going to the reunion. She hadn't heard about it, which makes me wonder if the only folks who know about it are the ones on Classmates.com. That would suck, wouldn't it?

I'm feeling a tad under the weather lately with the slightest twinge of a head cold. I like to blame Jenn for that, since she's been sick for the last week and a half, and I think that her snoring right in my face at night has finally taken its toll. I drowned my sorrows in NyQuil prior to retiring for the evening, and I am told that I did my share of snoring last night, but I am entirely unable to remember since I was well into my NyQuil Coma. (I have the cherry version, not the green-fucking-death flavor.)

I received the Red Dwarf series pack of DVDs (containing the episodes from series 1 and 2) last night from Amazon. It had been a while since I'd seen the show (and Jenn had never seen it), so I popped in the first disc and watched the first episode - The End. I prefaced the playing of the show for Jenn with "This is British humor, so you may or may not like it." On playing the show, the first words out of her mouth were "Hey, wait! This is British!" Hmmm. Someone wasn't listening, were they?

The first episode, like other TV show first episodes, is good to introduce the characters and the story but not so good for the rest - it doesn't demonstrate really how funny the show can be. I don't think Jenn liked it as much as I did, but I'll try to get her to watch a couple of the funnier episodes and see where that takes us.

After that and a little tortellini for dinner, we went over to my parents' house to use my mom's sewing machine. Jenn's making herself a dress, and I'm making a Queen Amidala style beaded hat out of a childrens' winter hat pattern. It's the first thing I've actually sewn from a pattern (usually it's just guesswork and making things hook up right; I don't make clothing so much as just decorative items that don't require exactitude), and I think it is so far pretty good. The only thing that stopped me from finishing the sewing part last night was that I ran out of bobbin thread - I can use the sewing machine, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to set it up. Oh well, I guess it takes practice.