Michael

Is a MAC next?????

2009-09-04T01:08:35Z

First it was a free iPod Shuffle. Ok, I won it. I didn't actually buy it.

Then, I went out and bought an iPod Nano. I know. Once you start down the path to the dark side, it's hard to turn around.......

Tonight I made another huge leap......

I just upgraded my phone to an iPhone 3GS 16GB.

What's next, an Macbook Pro?

Steve Jobs is the devil.

Side note, the livejournal spell check thinks all Apple products are misspelled. :)

I'm in Ottawa this week......

2009-07-08T02:06:41Z

Only it's Illinois and not Ontario. I'm here on business, doing an audit of one of our plants in Utica. I'm having so much fun.....

travelogue part 1, finally?

2009-05-29T02:33:07Z

I guess it's past time for this entry.....

We left on Thursday evening with a plane change in Chicago. Boarded a Boeing 777 headed for Heathrow. We landed in London a little before noon and walked to the hotel at the airport. I decided it was easier to stay at the airport and take the train rather than fight to catch the early morning flight to Amsterdam.

We had reservations for the champagne flight on the London Eye at 3:00. Unfortunately, by the time we got checked in and caught the Tube to central London, we didn't get there until 3:20. Luckily, they give you a little leeway and allowed us on the 4:00 flight.

Since the champagne flight is a premium ticket, you are escorted by your own personal guide to a special line that bypasses the crowds. There was only one other couple going on this flight, so a capsule that normally holds 25, had just the 5 of us.

It takes 30 minutes to complete the ride and on a clear day you can see 15 miles. Of course, this day was very overcast, so everything was grey and washed out.

After the ride we stopped and had a lunch at a little restaurant called the Arch Duke, which is built into the arch of one of the bridges.

Wondered over to Piccadilly Circus and then into SOHO. We stopped into a couple of bars and had a drink.

Then it was back to the hotel to sleep before the early morning flight to Amsterdam.

Star Trek

2009-05-09T03:59:32Z

We went and saw the new movie last night at midnight. Which made going into work today was sooo much fun. I'm just getting too old to stay out until 2:30 and then get up at 5:30 to go to work.

The movie was fun. But it kills 45 years of Star Trek history. I'm not sure how I like that. Chris Pine in skimpy grey briefs was nice, although not on the screen long enough. And even though I think Zachary Quinto is very attractive, he still gives me the creeps from playing Sylar.

Lynn flies out in the morning to spend a couple of days with his sister and mother in Colorado Springs. His mother wanted me to come too, but I'm working tomorrow and Sunday. I also decided I should go see my mom on mother's day.

So it's time to go find something to eat, since we both have to be up early. I have a store meeting at 7:00 and he has to be at the airport at 9:00.

We're Back

2009-04-08T03:12:18Z

We're back from the short trip across the Atlantic. Yes, as everyone keeps telling us, it was too short, but well worth it.

We spent one day in London and than it was off the Amsterdam for two more. We are already talking about possibly taking two weeks and getting a Eurorail pass for next year.

The London Eye....

and Schiphol's balls....

Woo Hoo, Spring is here!!

2009-03-20T15:12:54Z

I'm really happy spring has officially started. Although it was warmer on St. Pat's day, than it is today. But that's ok. Warm weather is just around the corner.

Speaking of Tuesday, it was very warm out, so all the boys were out in shorts and t-shirts. And people wonder why I like warm weather. :)

13 days and counting......

I've said this before, but I really think we have become way too sensitive. There are times when I get really tired of political correctness. Yes, the comment last night probably wasn't a good one, but does it warrant the "TOP STORY" on every news feed and the topic of everyone's debate? Does it really need to have the president of Special Olympics making a demand for an apology from the White House? Come on, aren't there more important things to worry about?

There are times when I think we give words too much power. Maybe I just had the old adage about sticks and stones beat into my head so much as a child, I still fall back on it.

On a totally different subject, one of the managers at the store was fired yesterday. This individual was brought in about 8 months ago. One of these that thought their sh!t was all that. Ruled by coercion, manipulation and bullying everyone around them. Told people that he was a manager and they weren't so do their f***ing job and shut up. Well several people got fed up and sent a petition to the corporate office back in November. Half the store signed it. And there was the normal response of "we're investigating and as soon as we find something, we'll let you know."

After not hearing anything since December, HR started calling everyone who signed the petition, the first of the week, to say the matter was being handled locally and that they were closing the case. Everyone assumed that was that and nothing would happen.

Fast forward to yesterday morning when he was fired. But not for anything relating to his poor managing skills or the above mentioned petition. No, he was fired because he stole from the store.

I guess that sends a pretty clear message, you can treat people however you want, but don't steal from us.

Oh well, I guess I should get back to work.

Only 13 days......

spudpuppy @ 2009-03-07T23:01:00

2009-03-08T05:05:08Z

I have to ask myself, is it a good thing when you are in Starbuck's so much and always order the same drink, that they call out your order by your name?

"I need a Mike"

Reservations are made

2009-03-03T05:04:17Z

I just made my reservations.......

MCI - ORD - LHR on Apr 2

Spend the day and night in London....

LHR - AMS on Apr 4

Two wonderful days in Amsterdam....

AMS - LHR - DFW - MCI on Apr 6

This was supposed to be a birthday present to myself, but the tickets I saw last week were gone today. So it will be a couple of weeks later.

I'm already excited. :)

The Pony Express had nothing on today's Postal Service

2009-02-02T20:25:22Z

So I received a somewhat larger stack of mail on Saturday. Didn't really think too much about it, until I started opening some of it.

I found it strange that I was getting things, like the utility bill that just came earlier in the week, again. A shipment for tax software, that arrived a week and half ago. (That I had to reorder, because it never arrived the first time.) And couple of other items, that appeared to be duplicates.

Then I opened them and found they were all from November. A 10 week delivery time just seems a little bit excessive.

spudpuppy @ 2009-01-05T15:25:00

2009-01-05T21:39:38Z

So another year is over and a new begins. L and I went out for A drink at Missie B's on NYE. Wasn't as busy this year, but still crowded. We only ran into a couple of people we knew.

XMAS day wasn't any more exciting. Which was fine with me. L ended up making hoodies for his family and several friends. We also made several batches of cookies to take into the store.

My vacation wasn't really a vacation, since I had to come into to work on 6 different days to fix problems. And then got told that some of the VPs didn't like that I took off at the end of the year. Can we say "screw you"? But I'm smiling, really I am.

Movies

2008-12-10T06:52:22Z

Several days ago, kishenehn had an entry listing his favorite top picks for gay genre movies. There were several good ones listed in both his list and in suggestions in others' comments.

I think there should also be a list of REALLY BAD gay genre movies. A few nights ago, I saw one that should definitely be on that list. If you are looking for something really bad and campy, maybe of the a bad movie night, then "The Gay Bed and Breakfast of Terror" is a must see.

I did see another movie this week that was pretty good. Not of the gay genre, but still hot eye candy worthy. I picked up "Wanted", when it went on sale last week. If you liked "The Matrix", you would probably like this one as well. Plus it has James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie. Both of whom are very nice to look at.

I also recorded the third installment of the "Librarian" series on the DVR, but haven't watched it yet. That was the movie that was filming this spring when I was in New Orleans. So I actually got to see a portion of a scene being filmed. Plus I got to see Noah Wiley from about 10 feet away while he was on a break, smoking a cigarette, and trying to stay warm between shoots. Hey, if he'd asked, I would have kept him warm. :)

spudpuppy @ 2008-11-04T20:41:00

2008-11-05T02:54:27Z

I got up early this morning and made it to the polling location a few minutes before 6. The line was already around the building, waiting for the polls to open. And the parking lot was completely full. I followed everyone else around the block to find parking on the street. Made it back a couple of minutes after 6 and the line was already moving.

It took me about 45 minutes to get in and out, then it was off to Starbucks for coffee. The line was almost as bad. Apparently, everyone else had the same idea. Go Vote - Get Coffee. So it was 20 minutes in Starbucks and then into work. Ended up leaving work at 11:30 to head home and pack.

I was on the road by 2:30 and made it to St. Louis by 6:30. Even with forgetting that I-64 is closed between I-270 and I-170. Got checked in to the Hampton by Union Station and ran down the hill to get my fix. And what do I find to my horror? Starbucks at Union station closed a couple of weeks ago. The closest one is in Central West End. Which means I probably won't be able to get coffee in the morning before heading to my meeting.

Oh well. And to top if off, I just checked some of the election results and early numbers look pretty crappy. There are times when I getting really frustrated with some of the F'ed up people we have in Missouri.

spudpuppy @ 2008-10-31T08:45:00

2008-10-31T13:59:09Z

Ok, another trip next week. This time it's a meeting in St. Louis. So I get to drive down Tuesday afternoon. That will make Tuesday very busy, voting and driving.

The meeting will be all day Wednesday and until noon on Thursday. Then drive back to KC Thursday evening. Lynn said he might drive down and join me, it depends on what days he has off next week. But even if he does, this trip is just business and no play.

Ok, I know there are reasons that some people really want push one candidate over another. And it is somewhat common for employers to nudge their employees a certain way. But getting a phone call last night telling me to have all of my people, including myself, at a 6:30am meeting this morning is a little over the top. And then to find out it is a political candidate running for US Rep, coming to make his sales pitch to everyone, has put me in foul mood. I don't even fucking live in Kansas, I only work there. Sitting through a campaign speech for a party I don't agree with and a candidate I can't vote for, even if I wanted to is taking the nudging to the extreme.

Actually, I'm just tired of this whole political bullshit campaign. I'm ready for it to be over.

Ok, I'm better now. I'll stop ranting.

The Travel Update

2008-10-20T17:00:22Z

Ok, I guess I should finally post the update on the last couple of trips. Let's see if I can remember.

Rhode Island and beyond......

Ok, it's time for coffee, so NYC will have to wait for the next update.

I'm Back

2008-10-13T05:56:48Z

We're back from NYC. It was a very fun and busy few days. I'll update with the trip details, later.

spudpuppy @ 2008-10-02T15:34:00

2008-10-02T20:50:52Z

I'm getting excited. We leave for NYC, one week from yesterday.

But things aren't all great...... Apparently, I got into poison ivy last week, so now my arm and face are all broke out and swollen. It's looks really hot, in that weird elephant man kind of way.

L and I have been cleaning for the last two weeks, trying to make the place look half way presentable. The week after we get back for NY, his little brother and his wife are coming to visit. And will be staying with us for a couple of days. We're still not sure where they're going to sleep. But somebody is going to have to share a bed.

spudpuppy @ 2008-08-13T15:56:00

2008-08-13T21:15:16Z

I started getting ready for all of the upcoming trips. I knew there were a few things I needed to do, like getting all of the mobile electronics charged up, getting travel size toiletries for the carry-ons, etc.

Monday, I went to pull out the little IPod Shuffle I won last year and start charging it and discovered that sometime in the last three months, it must have fallen out of the pouch on my backpack. Where it happened is anybody's guess. So I was IPod-less. Well, even though I said I would never intentionally go to the dark side, I did. Went out and bought an 8GB IPod Nano. It's all charged and has 1.5GB of music transferred to it.

I was happy to discover something fun about ITunes. I have purchased a few CD's over the last several years that I couldn't play in the computer because of their crappy DRM. Apparently, it's not a problem for ITunes to extract the songs for transfer to the IPod.

In other news, I went over to Mom's last night to mow her yard. When I got there, I found out that it had already been partially mowed by my brother over the weekend, the neighbor next door Monday morning and attempted by my sister yesterday morning. The partial and attempted are because the mower died while my brother was using it. I guess he fiddled with it but had no success. I tried cleaning the spark plug but it still won't start. I'll go buy another and see if that fixes it, otherwise I'll be buying a new lawn mower as well.

I was able to get a lot of the weed eating and trimming done, that I haven't really kept on this summer. But I'll still have to finish the last of the mowing as soon as I get time.

She also told me that she thinks she may have cracked a rib while she was cleaning out her chest freezer. She said she was helping my sister-in-law clean out the freezer and was leaning over the edge trying to reach the bottom and had all of her weight resting on the edge. She said she heard and felt a loud pop and than has been in pain ever since. I told her she needed to go get it checked but she is stubborn and said even if it is broken that won't do anything. Don't know what will happen there. I guess if she finally gets into enough pain, she'll go and have it checked.

spudpuppy @ 2008-08-07T22:18:00

2008-08-08T03:21:55Z

I got an email a couple of days ago about another training session in Dallas put on by HP and AMD...... So Lynn and I are flying to Dallas the afternoon of August 17th for a short course that evening and returning O'Dark thirty on the 18th.

spudpuppy @ 2008-07-21T15:34:00

2008-07-21T20:52:01Z

L and I went to another special preview showing Thursday night. This time it was "The Dark Knight". I was impressed. I think they did a good job, and I can see how Heath Ledger went nutso doing it. I did hear a couple of people comment that they were surprised that one of the characters was killed off so quickly. But, they are "assuming" that character is dead, they don't "know" he's dead.

In the process of making all of the arrangements for the trips to Rhode Island and New York. Since the RI trip is for business, all the information has been sent to the travel agent for her to handle. It kind of irritates me because I do all the checking work up front and she just puts it in the system. But I still have to pay a $25 per reservation agent fee.

As for the NY trip, I have the reservations for the show, and the hotel, but not the flights. So might ask why, and maybe I'm being petty..... L's mom and step-dad have offered to "pay" for the flights to as a gift. I say pay in that it would be using their frequent flyer miles. The issue, the only return flights that meet their criteria leave on Sunday morning between 6 and 8 am. I'm sorry, I would rather pay for the tickets myself and leave late afternoon, than be gracious and accept having to leave at crack-ass dawn, just to be cheap. Is that wrong of me?

Other than that, things are about normal. Work is work. The store is trying to hold it's own, even though we just opened a new location 4 miles away.

I assembled two new desktops in the last week. One is an Intel Q6700 with 4GB RAM, 1TB SATA drive, and ATI HD2600 graphics. The other is an AMD X2 4400, with 2GB RAM, 1TB SATA drive and on-board ATI graphics. Both have been sitting there for months. I finally had to build one since the system I use to transfer old albums to digital bit the dust a month ago.

Oh well, I guess that's about it.

The next trip is in the works.

2008-07-03T18:41:22Z

So I booked the tickets for Equus last night. We'll be staying in NYC October 8 through October 12 and seeing the show Thursday night. I don't know what else we'll be doing while we're there. Anyone have suggestions?

spudpuppy @ 2008-06-25T16:33:00

2008-06-25T21:47:31Z

Well, it looks like I will be knocking off a couple more states in my quest to visit all 50. I'm scheduling a trip to Rhode Island in late August. So I'll hit RI and Connecticut for sure, and if I have a little extra free time, I may even try and drive up to Vermont or New Hampshire. I'm only going to be there 4 days, and 1 1/2 of those days will be for work. But it's a relatively small geographic area, so who knows.

I'm currently at 40, so 80% complete on the goal. Of course my other goals are trips to Europe and Australia.

L and I are still considering trying to go to Manhattan to see David Radcliffe in Equus. But we may have already missed any chance of getting tickets. (Well, other than a year's salary to a scalper of course.)

Iron Man

2008-05-02T17:19:46Z

Lynn and I went and saw Iron Man at a midnight showing, last night. It wasn't a bad movie. There were some funny lines and Robert Downey Jr was actually better than I expected. However, since I have never read any of the Iron Man comics, I don't know if his portrayal of Tony Stark was accurate or if he was just playing Robert Downey Jr with a different name. And did he gain weight? Or was that just costuming for the hole in his chest? And of course, it was full of CGI special effects. Although, I really did like his interactive house.

Didn't get home until 2:30, so today has been a real motivational struggle.

The storms last night were quite exciting. They are still questioning whether the damage around the city was caused by tornadoes or straight-line winds. I talked with mom this morning. She said that one of her trees was pretty badly damaged, with limbs scattered across the yard, and that one of the neighbor's trees had fallen in her yard. Of course, this is the neighbor who's house has been vacant for almost two years.

I'm scheduled to work all weekend, so I don't when I'll have time to go over and see what cleanup needs to be done.

spudpuppy @ 2008-03-22T12:21:00

2008-03-22T17:18:28Z

L* and I are heading to St. Louis, this afternoon. We'll be meeting up for dinner with a friend and her daughter for dinner. She is the night manager for the hotel we normally stay in when we're in St. Louis, and we've known her for years.

After dinner, we'll probably head over to The Club for a soak in the hot tub, and maybe dabble in some debauchery, depending on how busy it is. :)

Then back to KC tomorrow. Just a quickie road trip.

spudpuppy @ 2008-03-04T23:53:00

2008-03-05T06:02:57Z

We've been in NOLA for a few days and having a fun time. Lynn ended getting a guest badge so he could walk around the conference with me. The supervisor at the registration desk said he'd have to wear a spouse badge, but that would save him the $100 registration fee.

We ended up taking her a box of Ferro Roche chocolates this morning to thank her. She said they are all volunteers and they do just because they love it so much, so it wasn't necessary. She finally accepted it and started crying, because no one had ever given her something, in all the years she'd been doing it.

Tonight we headed over the quarter and saw some stuff going on on one of the side streets. There were lots of photo light panels and huge crowd. When we asked what was going on, we found out they were filming a movie. It was The Librarian 3, staring Noah Wyle. We even got to see him up close. I snapped a couple of pics on the cell phone, but only one came out.

But it's late now and both have an early morning. I'll update more later.

4 Women and a Dripping Faucet

2008-03-01T17:43:39Z

Ok, Lynn and I are finishing getting packed. We leave for NOLA in 5 hours. Wilynm, I'll call you tomorrow, once we're in town. Looking forward to getting together.

I had to go into to work this morning for about an hour. I always love having to do that on a weekend. It's even better when I'm short on time.

I got a call from my sister on Monday. She was over at mom's for the weekly trip, taking mom and my aunt shopping. Apparently, the faucet in the laundry room had developed a drip, and when mom "played" with it, it had gotten worse. Now it was a steady stream of water and couldn't be stopped. That sink and faucet are probably 20 years older than me. And I doubt the washers had ever been changed. So I told her to take out the valve stems and replace the washers. I even gave her step-by-step instructions over the phone. She was relaying these to my aunt and the neighbor next door. Of course, they all ignored what I said and took the whole faucet apart, without removing the valve stems. They found two washers where the faucet connects to the nipples, and so they decided to change those.

After they did that, the faucet was still leaking. I told her I would be over either Monday or Tuesday night. I was waiting on a part to fix mom's dehumidifier, and was wanting to fix both at the same time. The part finally came in on Tuesday. I went over that night and sure enough, the stem washers were completely dead. Total time to repair, including the trip to the hardware store to buy the washers, 30 minutes.

I love my sister, mother and aunt, but they just aren't that mechanically inclined.

And then mom called me Thursday, because she found a leak in the garage. Went over Thursday night and found her hot water heater has developed a leak. Unfortunately, since I'm leaving today, I couldn't do anything about it. I called my brother-in-law, and he said he'd take care of it. At least that's one thing I don't have to worry about.