Mike's Weblog

This past weekend I took Winnie to the boardwalk.
o She had never been there before. We went on what was probably the busiest day of the month.
o The traffic in Santa Cruz was so bad that it took nearly an hour to drive from the highway 17 exit to the boardwalk parking lot.
o We went to the 'fried terrible stuff for you stand' and ordered the works. We split a fried Twinkie, three fried Oreos, and a fried apple rolled in sugar. I felt sick for an hour and a half.
o We took advantage of the opportunity to drink outside. We shared two 24oz Heineken keg cans.
o We received our weekend dose of vitamin D by sun.
o It was fun.

I hosted poker night yesterday (Wednesday).
o Since I hosted, I expanded the audience a bit. The table was much fuller than it had been in months.
o We managed to eat tons of food and polish off several bottles. There was much food and drink.
o I lost $5.
o It was fun. We should continue another week.
o And yes, Wednesday is the true poker night, and Wednesday it will stay!
o If you'd like to poker, let me know. It's an open table.

I ran over a squirrel today.
o On the way to work a very fast squirrel went from totally camouflaged on the central expressway median, to an obstacle in front of me in a fraction of a second.
o He ran out so close to my car that there was no time to swerve or brake. Only to see that I was about to run him over.
o He missed the tires, but made a nasty 'clang' sound on the undercarriage of my car.
o I saw him scurry off the road in my rear view mirror. He was alive but probably mortally wounded.
o This is the third animal I've hit with a vehicle.
o I've never hit more than two animals with the same vehicle yet. I hit a prairie dog with my Miata, a squirrel with a U-Haul truck, and this most recent casualty.
o I tell myself that it's just Darwin in action, but running over an animal is always sad.

That's all for now

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This weekend the heat was intense. It’s been one of the worst heat waves in years. This seemed like the perfect time to squeeze into a crowded comedy club and watch a vulgar, intoxicated, sweaty, cable television star execute his stand up act. So we did.

Winnie, Adam, Geoff and I drove up to SF on the sixth ‘Spare the Air Day’ of 2006 on an adventure to see Dave Atel. We burnt a few hours finding parking, wolfing down some sushi, climbing hills, and watching tourists drive down the windy part of Lombard. We then arrived at the comedy club a bit early.

Since we arrived early we were seated a great table in the second row at the comedian’s 2 o’clock. The first two acts were as satisfactory as the compulsory alcohol. Then Dave took the stage. He complained about the heat. He made fun of Hayward. Then he decided to tell a joke about the Tsunami. He preceded joke this with a warning about his intentions. This was when Winnie decided to head to the restroom.

The joke was totally diffused. I never got to hear it. Instead Dave started asking me about Winnie. I explained that she’s not a child or midget. She’s 26 years old and does not have an eating disorder. When she returned another handful of jokes followed with us as the focus including a statement about me being a ‘tall Swedish guy’ and some comments designed to elicit thoughts of our anatomical compatibility or lack thereof.

All in all, it was a good outing. Joining the action in a comedy show reminds me of karaoke. Being part of the action is a bit embarrassing at first, but more fun in the end. We also won a DVD of Dave’s other work. Or as Dave called it while Winnie claimed it: “A huge, giant CD-thing. Just look at her hold it, it looks so big”

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The Canada portion of our wedding tour is over. We’re done with one wedding and going to the rehearsal for the second one shortly.

Besides wedding stuff, which is boring, we’ve done the following things:

• Briskly toured the St. Louis Art Museum
• Watched the shuttle launch at the St. Louis Science Center
• Saw an Imax movie about cowboys
• Visited the Gateway Arch
• Toured the Anheuser-Busch brewery
• Went bar hopping with Mike Flavin and Mike O’Connor until 3:00 am

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On the third day of my fourth trip to Toronto, I wandered around down town with Winnie, her friend Christina, and Winnie's brother Peter. The bullet summary of our activities reads like a list of B movies:

• The Great 2006 Toronto Bubble-Fight. (thanks upcoming.org via Christina)
• The Search for the Secret Swing
• Bellinis at Milestones
• The Adventures of Rachel Racoon (including a daring rescue scene)
• Canadian Graffiti: Roller Style

That's all for now... I'm sure tomorrow will hold even greater adventures.

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The wedding tour begins. 2 weddings in 2 cities in 1 week... I'm even a groom's man in one of them.

I just recovered (kind-of) from a bad red-eye flight. The following things made it bad:
• The flight was delayed 75 min
• The movie on the plane was set in a winter wonderland. That means the TVs were blinking bright white backgrounds the whole time illuminating the plane
• The person behind me physically prevented me from reclining my seat at all, even though he reclined. He'd push his knees up high and push my seat back up.
• When we arrived, the rental car computer system was down and it took us over an hour to pick up our rental car.

At least when we arrived the weather was better than predicted. Sunshine and no thunderheads in sight.

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Now no one can say that I've never been to an outdoor camping rave with a bunch of pseudo-hippies.

Eccentric people, interesting music, and tons of alcohol… It was fun, but I think I've had my fill for awhile.

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I had surprise party #2 of my life tonight.

It was fun. Thanks for planning it, anonymous planner.

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I'm 25 today.

The 25th birthday is a significant one. It's the last birthday where you gain any right or privilege.

• At age 15, I was not subject to curfew in St. Louis.
• At age 16, I got behind the wheel.
• At age 18, I earned the privilege to buy a cigarette lighter and the right to vote.
• At age 21 I was able to legally purchase alcohol.
• And, at age 25 I can now rent a car without paying a premium and pay less for my auto insurance.

Yes, this is a small perk, but I better savor it since it's all down hill from here. Future birthdays will only bring more pounds of fat, less health, and more responsibility as my career advances.

In other news, it's my birthday so time to get drunk!

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Yesterday was a primary and a vote on a couple referenda in CA. I did not vote, as usual.

Why did I not vote? I did not vote, because I am a lazy sloth. I did not realize how lazy until I got home, though. When I arrived at home, I noticed that there was a poll set up 50' from my front door. Yes, there was a poll inside my apartment complex. It was open 2 for hours after I arrived home, yet I still did not vote.

It's sad that the political system is so annoying and uninteresting to me now that I won't even walk 50' to vote.

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Very little has happened to me in the past few days… Well nothing exciting anyway…

Here is a quick 10 second update:

• I-many tried to unsuccessfully poach me
• I saw X-men 3: it was pretty good
• I saw my first firebrat
• I’m almost done watching Star Trek: Enterprise

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I'm back in LA. It was an OK drive with little traffic thanks to an early end to my work day (and Winnie's).

The odd part is that I was just here two days ago for a technical evaluation of a product for Yahoo!

Anyway, this trip should be interesting. No plans set at all. We're hanigng out with Winnie's cousin... let's see how it goes. Looks like another adventure for us.

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I might switch to this from perl for all my quick hacks. It's called Whitespace and it's, by far, the best programming language ever!

And yes I am trying to increase their anchor text on these critical words. Help me google bomb them :)

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Yes, are indeed no fun at all. I’m on the second day of my first infection in 2 years. I seem to get some kind of mild virus every 2 years in the spring almost like clock work. Luckily it’s just some wussy wimpy virus this time unlike the influenza virus I had last time.

Since I’m sick very rarely, I seem to forget how boring it is. When I was first getting sick a couple days ago I was thinking, “This won’t be so bad. At least I’ll get to relax.” This was, of course, a stupid thing to think. Yes I have been resting, but the rest is not very restful. I was hoping to catch up on my web hobbies, such as importing ancient blog entries, or having some fun reading. This would have worked, other than the fact that my mind was so muddled and confused that I haven’t even been able to type properly until a few hours ago.

On the bright side, I have lost 5 lbs. :)

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My move-in to my new place in Sunnyvale is finishing up now and Cinco de Mayo was fun.

This means I'll be spending less time commuting and I'll have more time for nerding out on stuff like this blog. I should have my old entries imported and the stylesheets figured out soon.

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