Superman Killed Kumar

Saturday, we headed down to Cedar Rapids to meet up with the Mattas to celebrate Nathan's birthday. We ended up leaving a little later then we planned, so they (Nate, Jenny, Taylor and Cali) headed towards the Fireworks that we were going to see, and we headed to their house to drop off our things and head out to the Kirkwood campus.

So we stopped to get a freedom fest button (since they had a spare one), and then headed in to the event. There was a 7$ charge to see the a military band, and the CR orchestra and then follow it up with fireworks. A little silly, but what the hell, the company was nice. I figured that between the freedom fest sponsorship, and corporate sponsors and the cut from the food vendors, that maybe, it'd be free, but apprently not.

It turned out to be a good show, and we had really good seats to see both the band and the orchestra (seperate stages), but instead of doing things in time with the 1812 overture, they just had fireworks afterwards...Oh well. It was still a good show, and I got some great pictures, both of the enviroment, the Mattas and us, but also of the fireworks. I tried the firework setting on my camera and it turned out pretty good.

Sunday, we went out for a picnic at Ellis Park and had a wonderful chicken salad with bleu cheese. Afterwards, we chatted for a bit and then we stopped by my parent's house to drop off a couple of slides that I had barrowed and then headed home.

Monday, I was lazy, I took the extra day off. Shannon had to work. Monday afternoon we went to Fuddruckers for lunch. It was...well good, but not the best, the I liked that they don't freeze the meat, and they have options like buffalo and ostrich (which I want to go back and try), but it wasn't the best burger I've had, but not bad at all. Then we went to Superman. It was good. I had heard some bad things from movie reviewers, but it wasn't near as bad as they said. I enjoyed it, so did Shannon.

Today we had a picnic. The chicken salad that we had on was so good, that I made it (it was a recipe in Bon Appitiet). And we met out at a part of Waterworks Park that apprently not many people know about. In attendence was Dave, Jan, Jerry & Renee & Baby, Jen, Dutty, Courtie, and Adam and Tiffer. Good times, good times. Several people were late, my shorts (which were already worn out) made the leap from worn out to garbage but splitting from the pocket to the lower end of the back pocket. Luckily my boxers were a simliar color. We tossed a frisbee around and played some bocce. Eventually it broke up and we head home (others went to play disc golf and others went swimming).

Good extended weekend. And a short week ahead.

Happy Fourth!

Happy Belated Birthday Courtie!

No, there is to much, let me sum up

I am now in the process of looking for speakers for the reception, I am thinking that It might actually be easier to get a dj, considering I'll need a microphone for speeches and what not. I dunno...originally the iPod plan seemed so good, but getting the music loud enough that people can hear it, but not so loud so that people think it's overwhelming. I dunno.

Today is Nathan's Birthday, Yesterday was Chris's Birthday, Happy Birthday...

Anyways, back in time.

Thursday was the DMMC member meeting. It was pretty boring, since it was for the purpose of maintaining the tax status of the organization. Voted on some things, listened to some people. Drank some stout. Ate dinner with Dave, listened to Like Knives play. The bass was too loud, so they turned other things up to compensate for it, when all they really needed to do was turn down the bass. I also saw my old roommate Peewee's ex girlfriend Amy there. I couldn't remember her name, so I text message Brandon to find out her name (Amy). I didn't even recognize her, not that she doesn't look the same, it's just that I wasn't that close to her to begin with.

Tuesday, we had our 2nd meeting with the pastor who will be running the wedding. We went through the things we wrote, how we wanted the wedding to be, the music we wanted and he also gave us the instructions to the questions that he gave us the first time...It was really handy to have. We'll probably do the full assignment, but it's nice to know that we're pretty much ready to go...Fine tune some details, get the marriage license.

Sometime during this week I invited the Vossinator to my birthday party next week, and he'll be coming (that rules).

Also, I talked to my dad and he told me a few things. First he told me that my nephew (oldest sister's son) was sucked out into the ocean by a riptide, but since he had swimming lessons was able to be rescued. Initially my youngest sister Lovina tried, but was too tired by the time she got out there, that she couldn't get back, so then a marine, who happened to be there, swam out, got Camden (nephew), and swam out again to get Lovina and by that time he was so tired that he needed their combined efforts to get back. My mom lost her glasses and her brand new cell phone...I think My oldest sister Cara also lost her cell phone, but when it comes down to it, every one was ok, and that's all that mattered.

My dad also told me that it doesn't look like Grandma will be moving back home, so they are making plans to sell her house (to help pay for the nursing home) and dad asked me if there was anything from the house that I wanted, with little thought I came up with the cookie jar that she always had filled with cookies (and I mean always), and the big wooden knife fork and spoon. It just reminds me of all the good meals and family times that we had there. It's hard though, to think that Grandma may not be getting out of the nursing home. I know this will be tough on my dad, I think he's already struggling with the realization of it.

Today we're jetting off to wish Nathan a happy birthday and go see some fireworks in Cedar Rapids. Just an overnight trip, but it's part of the whole goal of avoiding the feast or famine type of visits we have been having (2 weekends a month or so ago, and 3 weekends in a row around Christmas). Speaking of which, I should probably get ready.

a few other things

So I forgot to mention. I made a couple of cakes this past week, for Chris & Holly & Pat's birthdays. I made a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and a flourless carrot torte (Courtney Safe). They both turned out well, although the confectioners sugar on the torte apprently kinda bundled up, so...it didn't look very nice. Both got good reviews at the party and at work.

Also, I took a picture, just cause it's interesting. Here's what 19 pounds of M&Ms looks like. Three 5 pound bags (white, silver and pink) and the rest of it in 8 oz bags of custom printed M&Ms.

Happy Birthday to Chris, Holly and Pat!

So even though this week was short, it was full of meetings and short on real productivity. My frustration with our primary vendor for a content management system has been very high for the last month, but after making some remarks to a sales rep there, I was quickly taken care of (making the total ticket time for the request just under a month). It's still not fully done, but at least it's too the point that I can install the system on our new server (which was my goal).

Friday, we (Deb, Michelle and I (Keith had to go to new hire class, and Brandon had the day off) went to a new chain resturant called Red Robin. It was ok...the fries were good, but the burger (they claim as being the best), was good, but certainly not the best that I've had. And it was free...they want to start the word of mouth, or test their staff in a real rush and maybe get those kinks out, which seems like a good idea to me. We just left a tip.

Friday afternoon, I finished up all my tasks for the day (of the list there were many), and left work a little early. On my mind was hair cut and washing my car, but since my car can wait, I went and got a hair cut, and then I remembered I needed to pick up pictures (we got some photos resized, and some slides made into pictures). They are pictures of us, while we are young...(I said there when I was looking at them, "Was I ever this young?").

When I got home, the M&Ms that we ordered were on the kitchen door's porch. Two big boxes, 19 pounds of chocolate covered candies.

After Shannon got home from work (6:30 or so), we headed out to Culvers for dinner and then came back, picked up the cakes, wine, dopplebock, and Crainium and headed over to Chris and Pat's.

Lots of snacks (pickles, olives, chips, salsa, etc), lots of wine. and in looking around I did notice some Scotch on the counter, still in it's box and so I investigated and found that Dusty had brought it. So With his permission we opened up a bottle of Macallan 12 Year Old.

It has quite a bit of heat to it, so we both added an ice cube to it to mellow it out. Much better. Dusty was also talking about a scoth that he had that smelled like a leather store, but tasted really good...it's slipping my mind as to what it is.

Holly broke into the Carrot Cake, and several people had some, it got good reviews.

Eventually a game of Cranium Happened, with Shannon and I on a team, Courtney and Holly's Mom on a team, Chris's parents, and Holly and...uh...that one girl. Holly's team was far in the lead, but through efforts on our part and me just randomly guessing action words (running), Shannon and I ended up winning.

I moved over to the poker game that was playing in tandem and proceded to loose all my chips (no monetary value) to Chris's Mom (otherwise known as the Card Shark).

But this point I was drunk and looking for more things to drink, so chris and I moved to the cheaper wines, and drank some more.

After the game of Scene it was done, Shannon drove me home, and I went to bed....Shannon had to wake me up to brush my teeth and put my mask on.

Good Party, Lots of fun.

Happy Birthday Chris (a week from yesterday), Holly (yesterday) and Pat (26th)!

Radiohead

Best.
Show.
Ever.

at least that I've been to.

So I figured why go to Chicago just for the show, why not go and hang out for a bit. So I left got some water, stopped at La Mie for a bit of Mocha and headed out on the road. I remembered at the gas station that I had forgotten my camera, but I thought about it and I didn't think I'd really need it.

I made a few stops, Just past Iowa City (potty and more water), at the Dekalb Oasis (potty, lunch, gas (not that I really needed it, just didn't want to find Gas in Chicago). I ate Subway...the Dekalb Oasis has gotten much better the McDonalds and gas station that I remember. They even had a Starbucks there. I was thinking maybe I could stop there on my way back.

So then I headed into the Chi-town. I don't remember if I've ever mentioned that I was an adopted Chicagoian. I was adopted by a group of guys that lived on my floor in college that I played poker with. Traffic wasn't to bad, certainly worse then Des Moines, except for at the very worst times.

It was pretty much a straight shot in and after I figured out where I was parking (apprently for almost $20) I got out, figured out where the venue was and started wandering around Michigan Ave. After wandering up and down the street for a while, I decided some indoors would be fun, so I walked up to The Art Institute of Chicago and went through the vast majority of the collection. I think I missed part of it though... It was fun they had a lot of stuff that I have seen before (in pictures) and it was interesting. I would've like to go when I have more time to actually spend more time. They had a whole lot of religious paintings, and etc. It was interesting.

At around 5 I was getting Hungry, so I headed to find some place to eat. I ended up at The Artist's Cafe. I had a beer (anchor steam) and a ruben. The sandwhich was ok, nothing special. I was kind of annoyed with the pay as soon as I got my meal, and having to pay in cash (they only accepted AmEx).

Afterwards I Chatted with Shannon (I did when I got there too) and then ended up getting this Fruit Smoothie at this smoothie/sushi place right on the block of the venue. It was actully the best thing I had that day. I saw a lot of people lining up. So I decided to get in line too. But which line? There were 3 lines. One for regular tickets, one for tickets for those who bought through the fan club and one for "premium" will call tickets. The last one was my line. But there was a bit of confusion, since, several people that were in the line I was in, were turned away and told to get in another line.

The check in process was a bit silly. I needed my ID, the order number from ticketmaster and the credit card that I bought the ticket with. So it was a long line, but it went pretty quickly.

The Auditorium Theater was very cool. The lightbulbs were even cool. Lots of reliefs, lots of decorations, 4 levels of seats (I think), box seats. I was in row F and had a great view of the stage. I really wished I had brought the camera (not that it was actually allowed in the theater), not for just the theater but the other things I had seen that day.

So the theater wasn't half full yet and the lights dimmed. The Black Keys. A drummer and a guitar playeer. The music was interesting and good in a way. But by the end of their set I was starting to get bored, cause a lot of it was sounding the same.

So they left the stage and the crowd's anticipation grew. After a while the crowd would cheer for Radiohead at every pause in the music playing. It was kind of silly.

When they finally took the stage, a huge roar came up and they started right into it.

It was a mixture of older stuff (most of their albums being represented) and the stuff that will be coming out soon enough. It was interesting and I was just amazed...and I mean AMAZED as to how well they sounded and played together.

The stage was setup in a way to allow for many changing of instruments on the stage (including mini drum sets, pianos, guitars and etc). And they also had many lights and on the backdrop of the stage, they had about 10 trapazoidal screens that were being projected on. It's quite interesting what they did. They had cameras all over the stage, and so they might show a video of Thom Yorke broken up across the screens, singing. And they would have effects added to it. So things like inverted colors, or orange tints or dots or etc. At points you could see the drummer on two screens and Yorke on some others or the like. It worked.

The lights were amazing, being both, well timed and matching the speed and the intensity of the music.

After 2 encores, the show ended and I raced out of the theater. There were a few songs that I would've liked to hear, but all and all they covered the bases pretty well. I called Shannon when I got in the car, but the reception was pretty bad (since I was under Michigan Ave). So I told her the plan (I'd call if I was going to sleep somewhere before I got home). So I headed out of Chicago. The traffic leaving was pretty bad, until I got into the western suburbs. Then it calmed down quite a bit.

I stopped at the Dekalb Oasis, but Starbucks wasn't open, so I got a big pepsi and a water and continued on. I called my parent's house and left a message (around 11) and said I might be stopping by if I needed to sleep.

I drove on, traffic was very light and I rarely had to wait to pass anyone.

When I was on the East Side of Iowa City...or at least close to the East Side, I got a call back from Joseph to say it was ok, but I was doing fine (and by the end of the call I was passing the I-380 Exit anyways).

40 miles or so out of Des Moines, I was starting to wonder if I was gonna run out of gas (even if the light wasn't off) and I was kind of hungry and wanted something. So I saw this Kum & Go and noticed something. In Illinois premium is 92 octane, while Iowa's is 91. And it must of helped, cause on the Tank of gas from the Dekalb Oasis to Chicago and back to wherever I was off of I-80, I got Just over 33 MPG (again my car is supposed to get 29 MPG on the highway) and this was going 80 most of the way.

I pulled into my driveway at around 3:45 and I was pretty exausted, eyes dry and just kind of mentally losing it.

So I went upstairs, brushed my teeth, took my pills (since I didn't think I'd be up early enough to actually take it in the morning, and crawled into bed.

Anyways, I've been wanting to see Radiohead for around 12 years and now I have had the chance and I couldn't be more happy about it.

book book

So I finished The Complete Calvin and Hobbes this morning and now I'm under a sort of delimma.

I have the new Wheel of Time book, but my tradition (beacuse I forget things), to reread the series every time a new book comes out...but this is a significant time investment. 1 Book before the series and 11 books in the series and the before the series book is probably the shortest (at just over 300 pages).

I suppose I will, since my list of things to read are coming in as cookbooks, some cooking magazines (I'm several months behind on both magazines I get), and some not as much of a pleasure to or easy to read (Machiavelli). I suppose I could always barrow some more Harry Potter books (2 more before I'm caught up).

I guess I'll have to make a decision pretty quick here.

Wedding Plans ramp up again

It's good to have my girl back again. After the long time working for her test, it's done and Shannon's stress level is back to a more normal level.

To celebrate, since Shannon wanted a malt, we headed down to Drake Diner for dinner. I love that place. Good food. Good price. Her malt was good and my shake was good too.

Afterwards we went to Nacho Libre. The reviews that I had read were rather mixed. Either people loved it, or hated it, which sounds like Napolean Dynamite. I laughed and I thought parts were stupid...pretty much just like the previous movie. So I'm mixed but I'd probably watch it again.

Saturday, we lounged around for a good part of the morning, and then when we were ready, we headed over to University Photo and dropped off a few slides and photographs to get resized. Not to bad a price. I'm sure if I wanted to deal with my old scanner, I could probably have done it myself, but when it comes down to it, I'm not even sure that scanner works, or that I even have it anymore...

Anyways, we went grocery shopping, got home and started working on invitations.

We've gotten them designed and test printed and it's all good. And maybe, just maybe, if we do it right, we'll be able to get the maps, response card and invite in there and still remain under an ounce (thus not having to add extra postage). Shannon scanned through the stamps and foud a couple of designs that we wanted to use. So we ordered oh around 200 Stamps for around 70$. Initially when I've thought about ordered just single books of stamps, they were a little obnoxious on the price, but when you buy a lot, it's not so bad to pay $1 for shipping and handling.

Shannon talked to her mom a bit and while she was doign that I investigaged M&M prices. So we ended up getting 5 pounds of pink M&Ms, 5 Pounds of White, and 5 Pounds of Silver. Then we added a couple of custom printed M&Ms, and got 2 pounds (4 8oz bags) of a mix of Pink and White with our names on them and then another 2 pounds of a mix of dark pink and silver. So I cannot believe that we ordered 19 pounds of M&Ms or how much we paid for them, but they'll make a nice give away. We will have to have a M&M packing party (no eating of the wedding M&Ms).

Today we plan on checking and finalizing directions and maps and get the final weight of the invitation...then maybe start printing.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Chicago to see Radiohead. My seat is pretty good, but I'll miss not having company. I think a big part of the fun of going to a concert is going with someone else. But I'm not missing the show. 6 hours there and and another 6 on the way back, probably puts me home (depending on the show's end time) at 5 in the morning on Tuesday. Good thing I took Tuesday off too.

yay for generic PCL drivers!

So here's my printing situation. I have an HP Laserjet 2100 (not a TN just a plain old 2100). I go this sucker in college (to avoid the personal laserjet that HP was producing at the time, since those didn't really have paper trays.

I also have a DLink DP-301P+. When I moved into this house and got a laptop from work, having things networked and wireless became more and more of the thing to do. So the Dlink put my Laserjet 2100 on the network.

And now I have the Mac OS X (10.4.6). So here's the problem. Even though Bonjour see's it, what it comes up with, for the driver, doesn't so much work. It would get an error printing, or the one time I actually got it to print, it printed off a huge amount of garbage.

Even using a driver I downloaded from HP, I still had no luck. But the garbage gave me an idea. when you would try to print in PostScript on a PCL printer, it'd have that problem....so I thought it was something...so I searched and searched and finally came across these:

http://www.linuxprinting.org/macosx/hpijs/

This provide Generic PCL drivers for OS X. And using the 5e driver, I was able to IP Print through the 301-P+ and success! A nice crisp Print out.

woo!

me=happy

I was talking to Brandon earlier today, and I told him that I'd be a bit pissed if I couldn't even get through one cartrigde on my 2100 before I called it quits on it. And yes, I haven't put a dime into that printer since I bought it.

Success!

Study, er fun, er study...Oh and Cleaning too

So we spent large portions of this past weekend cleaning the house. We had been deliquent in doing it for a while and the place really needed it. So we did the main level and the lower level on Saturday.

Saturday afternoon we headed over to Target and did a bit of shopping (stuff Shannon needed for the most part), and then met Chris and Holly (and Pat, Chris's Parents, Holly's mom and sister and Holly's sister's friend) at Crave over at West Glen (conviently next to the target we were at).

We ended up at the Bar and Grill side instead of the fondue side. It was...well...not bad at all. The price was fair and the food was good. It wasn't outstanding or anything. But it does make me curious as to the price of the fondue is quite a bit more then the regular meals there (60-80$ for 2 people for a 4 course meal). Holly said that the fondue place they had been to in Kansas City was similarly priced though.

The waitress took quite a long time to split up our checks and when she did, she forgot my beer (I'm not gonna complain about that) but when she brought it back, she gave my check to Chris's dad and his check to me (yeah...uh...and we didnt' figure it out until it was all signed and stuff. Neat 'eh?).

So we got out of there and headed up to Jordan Creek Mall to the theater to go see Cars. We met up with Dusty, Dave, and Ryan there.

Since it was 7:30, which is the movie we planed to go too we ended up going to the 8:15 (hoping for less children). This also allowed me to run to the apple store to get Toast (of which the part I really wanted is still not working for intel based macs). Shortly after I got back, we headed into the movie.

One funny bit here. Shannon got a water, with the obnoxiously priced 3.25$ for half a liter...I also got a way over priced water...but I got the whole liter...for a 3.75$ not much of a diffrence for half a liter of water...

So Cars was a good flick. There was only one spot where I really felt bludgeoned by the moral of the story, but I did laugh lots and enjoyed myself.

Afterwards we headed over to Chris and Pat's and ganked some Pork that chris got for helping a friend with the World Pork Expo.

Sunday we cleaned the upstairs. I made beds. Yes, Mom...me...made beds. and vacuumed and straightend and started some laundry. Shannon cleaned the bathroom.

Afterwards, Shannon studiied and I made a lame ass attempt at updating our wedding site. I did add some additional data. and made it match more with our color scheme.

After Shannon got tired of studiing we watched The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. And then some new HBO shows. Good end to a Sunday.

Shannon's off at a review session right now, so I've had the house to myself for a few hours...so what do I do? I dink around at watch Shaun of the Dead.

It's time to stop kidding myself.

Although I didn't spend a whole lot of time on updating the design of our wedding site, this weekend, I've come to the conclusion that I really am not a graphic designer.

I do know what I like, and have enough experience in the area to certainly put forward critiques of websites, but when it comes down to it. It takes me 5x to 10x as long to do what people with that talent can do. When I started working on it, I was basically just gonna steal Chris's design and go from there, but when I thought about it, I really didn't wanna do that.

I am good at process and making processes work slick for the users (so they have to do as little work as possible) and since that's what I do, for the most part, it makes sense. Other then my own website, I really haven't done any design work (except for one site, where they redid it themselves in about 6 months (it did look alot worse)) in about 6 years.

Oh well. I did do some work, and it at least folows the wedding color scheme, and I did get rid of the problematic items (as far as cross-browser support goes).

1 week to Radiohead (in Chicago).
~3.5 weeks to 30 Years old.