All posts by wilco

today's new thing

new toys

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the new toys i ordered came in the mail today! after much debate, i finally got two things that i’ve been struggling about for a while now. the linksys wireless 802.11g router is a thing of beauty. i’ve had a little difficulty getting it set up, but most of it was due to my own braindead-ness. but once i got it up and running it was smooth sailing. i’ve heard about how you can hack this router because it’s running linux, so i’m anxious to start getting under the hood and seeing what i can do with it.

i’m currently typing this entry via the wonders of my new wireless router. though not as cute as [url=http://www.track15.com]dardy’s[/url] airport, i still like it just the same.

the other thing that came in the mail today was the canon s400. i’ve been debating whether or not to get this for so long, i never thought that i would actually get it. but after i opened the box, i fell in love with it. it’s so tiny, so portable, so sexy. i’m still trying to learn how to use it and i’ll look at the pictures in a little bit.

quite an exciting gadget day.

rants

house of prime rib

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oh yeah, i forgot, after cirque, we went to the house of prime rib for dinner. we had reservations for the place, and though parking was a pain to find, we finally found a spot a few blocks from the restaurant and we were seated pretty promptly.

man, the service at the restaurant absolutely blows. it took forever to get our order in. my glass of water was empty most of the night, and we unfortunately got a waiter whose shift ended before our meal did, so we got a new waitress in the middle of our meal which added to the lack of service. very poorly done, if you ask me.

the salad was pretty good, though, i have to admit, i haven’t had a salad that good in a long, long time. the prime rib itself was pretty decent too, but what separates the house of prime rib from other places (aside from the fact that they only serve prime rib…oh and a fish plate) is that you used to get unlimited seconds on the prime rib. i say USED TO because that is no longer the case.

no, no more free unlimited seconds. in fact, the seconds that you get is this piddly little sliver of a slice of prime rib. our friend, brad, finished the second helping in seconds and was wanting more only to find out that their policy has changed!

no more unlimited seconds…

really tiny portions for your seconds…

i felt seriously gypped. grrrrr. the only reason why the place was good was because of this gimmick…now, they are just fall into the medicore steakhouses that sell prime rib. there’s nothing that spectacular about them to set them aside from other places.

oh, the pleasant surprise was their horseradish. it was extra super hot. i wasn’t expecting it to be so strong and i took a big bite of it and got a bigger-than-i-wanted surprise. this will probably be my last visit to the place for a long, long time.

general ramblings

cirque!

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i went to cirque over the weekend in the city. it was a rainy sunday evening, so i didn’t see any of the protesters out there about the recent controversy that cirque was involved in. apparently, cirque let go of a performer who was HIV positive and there’s a lot of protesting involved as a result of that…but i guess the rain stops people from protesting. it’s too bad, i would have lent them my support, but i had gotten these tickets a long time ago and i still wanted to see cirque…though i find their justification for their practices to be completely invalid.

anyway, cirque was cool. i think that i enjoyed varekai more than allegria…it was definitely more mystical and magical.

it’s a shame that they don’t allow photography there, i’m sure that it would have been quite an event to shoot. oh well.

rants

garcia/rattay

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i blame coach dennis erickson completely for the absolute disaster that happened today to the niners. i understand the idea of loyalty to your “star” player, but come on, we’re in this to win games, not be loyal losers!

i don’t think that i ever want to see garcia in a niners uniform again. why did it take 4 interceptions before erickson pulled out garcia? why? why take out your hot quarterback who has filled in remarkably? why pull out garcia after there’s no chance that rattay could do anything about it? why not leave garcia in and let go down with the sinking ship?

i hope that the coaching staff takes a very good look at the niners and decide to start rattay permanently.

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today's new thing

tea and crumpets?

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yesterday i went to gina’s baby shower. this was my first baby shower and i don’t think that i will be going to too many of these. i was asked to go to the baby shower and help take pictures of the event. the baby shower was at the laurel court at the fairmont hotel. talk about fancy!

the restaurant was dimly lit and unfortunately i didn’t have very many options when it came to taking pictures in the low light. i decided to shoot in an all prime set up. i brought several lenses and i borrowed a few lenses from paul as well. this wa the first all-prime lens shoot i’ve ever done. it was sort of a pain switching from lens to lens, but it definitely gave me the speed that i needed to take pictures.

it was a lot of fun and it was nice to indulge in the finer things in life…and i can now say that i’ve had a crumpet before!

general ramblings

this year’s thanksgiving

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this year i went home for thanksgiving dinner. it was pretty good dinner with the usual dinner items: turkey, cranberries, salad, stuffing, and a zuccini casserole. every year we have at least those dishes. every year i think to myself that maybe, just maybe this will be the year that i will actually *like* the zuccini casserole, but, alas, no…i didn’t like it this year either.

i usually end up trying a little bit of it because my parents rave about how good it is and how much they like it and how i should try it. it’s the same pattern every year…and i still don’t like it. i don’t know why i keep trying it, thinking that i might actually like it this time. i guess some traditions die hard.

after dinner, my dad and i sifted through all of the advertisements looking for the good sales. i think that my dad woke up at 5AM this morning to try and get in on some deals at best buy’s 6 hour sale which started at 6AM this morning. it’s craziness, i tell you…sheer madness.

after we finished looking at ads, my dad challenged me to some games of pool. the first two games were overwhelmingly large victories for me. i crushed him. ph33r m3. but then, he came back and his aim was true and he proceeded to romp me in three straight games. after that i decided to give up and rest.

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rants

technical rant

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one of the things i’ve done in the past is reverse engineer existing apps, just to see how they work. some of the things i’ve come to realize is that even though something works well, it doesn’t mean that how it’s doing it is done well.

and go figure that the one day that i have off of work, i’m spending it in front of my computer programming. who would have thunk it?

so what am i doing? i’m trying to get pMachine up and running better. it has the best feature set for a blogging tool that i want, but the one thing that bothers me about it is that it is missing a few key features.

the thing that i’ve been working on today is the calendaring feature. it seems to have a rather robust calendaring feature, but they’ve been stripped away in the free version. now, i can understand this tactic to encourage users to pay for the full-featured version. i mean, a guy’s gotta earn a living, right? i have no problem with that.

what i do have a problem with is poorly written code. and it seems that there is some bad coding techniques employed in relatively good code. it reminds me of phpAdsNew and it’s ridiculous database design.

anyway, i’m done ranting because i’ve figured out how this works…i just don’t like how it’s done, though i understand why it was done the way that it was.

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general ramblings

thanksgiving tradition

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a long, long time ago, it used to be tradition that we would go over to my aunt’s place for thanksgiving dinner. we would go in the early afternoon and then we would catch up with my aunt and uncle for a while.

we would gorge ourselves with more food than we could eat and then after all was done, we would sit around moaning in pain. once the pain was gone, i would go and hang out with my cousin. my cousin was a big computer super know it all and i wanted to be just like him. he would show me all these cool things about computers and we’d talk about it forever. then we would play some computer games that he had or check out other such things.

in the more recent future, after dinner we would talk about our going ons in life and just have a grand time.

my aunt passed away a couple of years ago and thanksgiving dinner has become a more private affair since. my family stays at home and cooks a grand feast for ourselves and we still gorge ourselves silly. but i am reminded of my aunt whenever the holidays come around.

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general ramblings

happy turkey day!

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happy thanksgiving! i guess it’s nice to have a holiday set aside where you can reflect about what you are thankful for in this holiday season. it’s also a time of year to think about all of the gorging you will do at the dinner table.

this past year has definitely given me many things to be thankful for. i’m thankful for my family and friends who are so much a part of my daily life. i am thankful for my health, specifically my arm so that i can continue to play volleyball, a sport that i have recently come to enjoy quite a bit. i can go on and on about all of the things that i could be thankful for, but i’m too busy playing games to be able to name it all…oh, i am thankful for games and the distraction that they provide from real life. we all need our escapes, you know?

anyhow, happy thanksgiving, everyone!

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