iTRIP

Forgot to mention this is my last post...

For those of you with iPOD's I highly recommend the iTRIP by Griffin Technologies. The iTRIp fits conveniently into the earpiece connector, and allows you to play your iPOD music over FM frequencies. I've used it this past week on my commute to work and it works great. The iPOD played crystal clear through my car stereo. The best part is that iTRIP doesn't require batteries. It draws a small amount of power from the iPOD itself. It's small and compact and can easily be removed when you want to listen to the iPOD with your earpiece.

Two completely different subjects...

Subject #1, yesterday was a crazy day around here. The day began at 8:00 when I took Rachel over to the oral surgeon. We got to his office before he did, so we sat and waited in the car out front. About 10 minutes later a black Acura parks behind us. A 40 something woman gets out and unlocks the door, 2-3 minutes later this old man walks into the office. His hair disheveled, his feet a little shakey. Rachel looks at me and says "Do you think that's the oral surgeon"? Well I guess there are two ways to look at the situation...1) A guy that old has lots of experience and should be very good or 2) I hope this guy doesn't doze off in the middle of the proceedure. We both opted to panic a bit. Rachel looked at me and said "geesh, I hope he can see ok. I don't want him pulling the wrong tooth".

So we walk inside the office and get handed a bunch of paperwork to fill out. Around 9:10 or so, they call Rachel's name and she walks in. It gave me this creepy feeling seeing her disapear down the hall. I felt like they were sending her to the electric chair. So I thumbed through magazines in the waiting area, cursing my dental insurance the whole time. Apparantly with Met Life dental they don't allow you to be put to sleep during a tooth extraction if it's for a single tooth. So it was just local anastethic for Rachel's tooth extraction.

After about 40 minutes, Rachel emerged from behind the same door they lead her through earlier. She looked a little pale, and she resembled a chipmunk, but she seemed ok. We left and went to get her prescription filled. oooh Vicadin!!! She was chatty in the car, so I thought that was a good sign. She changed the gauze, I sat her down on the couch and gave her the essentials; the remote, the phone and of course the vicadin. It was time for me to head into work.

The first hour or so was kind of quiet. Since our operations center is under re-construction, a lot of people are relocated. So I ran into my boss about an hour later on my way back from lunch. "Oh good, you're here. I have some stuff I need you to take care of after lunch". Oh great!

Since the move in date to our new workspace is scheduled for Monday, we had a lot of work to get finsihed. The construction is all finished, so now it was just a matter of getting all the equipment moved into place, and setting it all up. To make a long story short and sparing everyone the geeky details, we got finished at around 9:00PM. But some good came of this, my boss said to take Wednesday-Saturday off, but I may have to go in on Sunday. Not a bad trade off.

On my way home, I picked up $10 worth of Mega Millions tickets and some Burger King. Rachel was out doing some returns at the mall with her mom. Guess that's a good sign that she's up and doing her regular activities. I got a Chad Pennington McFarlane figure and a cool fleece from Old Navy out of the mall visit. WOOHOO!!!

At 11:00 PM it was time for the Mega Millions drawing. We didn't win the $155 million like we hoped, but I think we won $7, so we almost broke out even. Not sure if anyone won. I hope nobody did, so the next drawing will approach $200 million. 11:30 it was time for bed... Ahhhh the closing of a long day.

Am I the next Rush?

So this morning I take Rachel to the oral surgery to have her tooth extracted. Metlife insurance won't let you get sodium penathol to go to sleep if they are extracting a single tooth. So Rachel had to sit there awake while they yanked her tooth from her mouth. Youch.

Well when all was said and done the tooth came out, she had a mouth packed with gauze and a prescription for Vicadin. She had a pretty high threshold for pain, so she said she probably won't need the Vicadin. Oh boy 16 Vicadin laying around the house. Isn't this how Jack Osbourne and Rush Limbaugh got started? If my postings on here are stranger than usual in the next few days, please throw together an intervention...

A new member...

There's been a new addition to my sisters family. His name is Jake and he's an 8 week old yellow Labrador. Something tells me Im going to have to take a drive up to NY to see Jake for myself...

The first...

The first SQUILKY.COM song of the week is Asthenia by Blink 182. Download it, buy it, check it out!!! Let me know if you agree!!!!

Battle of the network dorks

So last night I'm browsing through the Tivo suggestions and one of the shocased programs was Battle of the Network Stars. I quickly tuned into it since it was one of my favorite shows growing up.

The first thing that really struck me was how horrible a toupe Howard Kosel had on. I guess you don't notice those things when you're a kid. Secondly, his broadcasting partner was Billy Crystal. He was much younger and A LOT thinner, freakishly thin actually. I swear he probably weighed like 110 pounds.

The first event was a swimming race. The first thing that freaked me a bit was that all the men were wearing Speedos. And I mean EVERY man was wearing a Speedo. Including Dick Van Patten and Ed Asner. Ed Asner is one of the harriest men on the planet, so him without a shirt is bad enough, but him in a Speedo was just horrible. The women all had on these weird one piece bathing suites that didn't really accentuate the female form. Most of the women looked like they had giant butter churning hips and were flatchested. Ahh the days before rampant plastic surgery and silcione.

Willie Ames, yes Buddy from Charles in Charge is one hell of a swimmer. He swam the first leg of the race and had a half a pool length lead. He was amazing. Christy McNichol (who played his siter on Eight is Enough I think) was also a good swimmer.

One of the odder moments was when they introduced Howard Kosell's 2nd assistant. It turned out to be that cheesy ass robot from Buck Rogers. I think his name was Tweeky or something. They may have had a tin garbage can out there. Special effects sure have come a long way.

I guess back in the 70's, equal rights wasn't what it was now. Steve Garvey read the rules for the dunk tank and improvised by saying something like "Some of the girls may not be able to throw hard enough to sink the dunk tank". It turned out to be true, but if a man were to say that nowadays he would be verbally castrated by the media.

I finally had enough after I saw Ed Asner get sunk in the dunk tank. After I turned it off, I tried to imagine how great it would be if they brought the Battle of the Network Stars back on the air. Wouldn't it be great to see the cast of Friends in an obstacle course competition with the cast of Everybody Loves Raymond? Who wouldn't want to see Jennifer Aniston on the monkey bars? Who wouldn't love to see Patricia Heaton get dunked in the dunk tank? Who wouldn't kill to see Brad Garret try to paddle across a pool in an inflatable kayak? I just couldn't image these multi millionaires putting themselves through the humiliation, but I would love to see it. If any network executives stumble across this, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make this happen. And TV Execs don't forget the cast of Malcolm in the Middle and Will & Grace.

SHARK!!!!!

I saw this picture online the other day and thought it was really cool. It looks like a shark, but it was actually just a dolphin. Still, seeing the shadow of something that large, so close to me would be enough to make me stain my wetsuit.

Weekend...

As an update to an earlier post about losing my edge in video games, there may be a glimmer of hope. This past weekend, my sister, brother-in-law and 2 nieces came over from Maryland. Typically when I visit my sister, my brother-in-law and I play John Madden Football on his Playstation 2. So when they got to our house, we sat around and talked for a while, then asked my brother-in-law if he wanted to play some Madden on the Xbox. He enthusiastically said yes. He was thrown off a bit when he saw the controls for the XBOX. I only have one of the smaller X controllers, so of course I used that and I gave him the gigantic controller that came with my XBOX.

He looked over the manual to familiarize himself with the controls and we started game #1. I was the Giants, he was the Saints. I absolutely slaughtered him 35-0. Almost as bad as the real Saints beat up on the real Giants last night. But halftime it was 21-0, so I knew I had won the game. All I wanted from that point forward was the shutout. At one point it was 28-0, he had the ball on the Giants 20 and it was 4th down. He sends it the field goal unit, and thanfully shanked one wide right!!! The shutout was preserved and I had the ball with 35 seconds left.

Sure at that point I could have just taken the snaps and took a knee, but in retaliation I sent Ike Hilliard deep. I scored a final touchdown as time expired making the final 35-0. At this point, I was feeling pretty confident. "lets play one more" he pleaded.

So we start game #2. He stuck with the Saints, I changed over and picked the Broncos this time around. Figured I would give him a break using a softer, AFC team. I beat him this time as well, not as badly, but it wasnt pretty either. The final score was 37-14. How did I get 37 you ask? A safety? Nope. About halfway through the game, I started going for 2 after every TD.

I was pretty much done at this point, but he asked that we play one more. I even let him pick which team he wanted me to be. He said "lets make it a good ol' NFC south rivalry, why dont you pick Tampa.". This game is a little fuzzy. I was pretty bored at this point. I believe he jumped out to a 10-0 lead. Then I scored 21 unanswered points and wound up winning the game 31-20. The closest of the three games, but I still dominated. Even though I was pretty much playing with 1/2 my brain tied behind my back at that point.

We concluded the evening by exchanging gifts. They gave Rachel and I a really cool, hand made cabinet. I felt really bad knowing he spent like 20 hours building that for us, painting it, crackling it etc. Then he comes to my house and I slaughter him in Madden. I would have gone easier on him had I known this beforehand :-). The cabinet is really awesome and one of the nicest gifts I've ever received. There's something really nice about getting someone from someone that is hand made and you know they put a lot of hard work into. My sister jokingly said that our cabinet came out nicer than the one he had made for her. She was considering taking our cabinet and giving us her old one. The cabinet fits perfectly in the corner of our dining room.

Rachel and I got quite motivated by seeing how good the cabinet came out, and decided that once the weather gets warmer we should try making something ourselves. She's actually more handy with tools than I am, but I have the artsy, designer brain, so I think between the two of us, we can probably come up with something cool. And even more reason for me to add the Black and Decker Bullseye laser level to my holiday wish list :-). And if we're gonna be cutting all that wood, I could probably use a circular saw too. A visit to the Craftsman section of Sears may be in order this spring. WOOHOO.

Sunday I woke up to learn of the news that we had found and captured Saddam. After watching the news a while, I looked outside and realized I should probably shovel. We got about 4-5 inches of snow. For those keeping track, this should be snow event #2 for the season. If the old farmers theory is correct, we should have another 3-4 snow events this winter season.

OK this post is way longer than I expected... I'll end it here.

Merry Christmas from President Bush and the US Armed Forces

My sincere thanks goes out to the US armed forces who are over in Iraq. I don't know how they stay so motivated, and how they continue to stay so strong. But Im certainly glad they are, and thankful for all their hard work. Finding Saddam was like finding a needle in a haystack, but they did it. How appropriate that Saddam was found in a hole in the ground. Hiding like a rat, a man once so brave when he had henchmen and his sons by his side. Merry Christmas Saddam, you sick fuck!!!!

Have I peaked?

While up in NY for Thanksgiving, I came to a sad realization. I've been playing video games for a good part of my life. From Atari, to Sega Genesis, to Nintendo, to Playstation I & 2 and finally XBOX. I've always considered myself fairly good at games, with the exception of 1st person shooter games. Im a love, not a fighter when it comes to Quake and Unreal Tournament type games. I've always done well in sports games. Particularly in football and basketball.

In the beginning of the year, my 7 year old Godson was down visiting for my wedding. We played NBA Live 2003 and I really struggled and had to try real hard to beat him. But for the most part, I was able to beat him. Well that all changed this Thanksgiving. I sat down to play my Godson in NBA Street and he just crushed me. At one point the game was 18-6 in his favor. You need 21 points to win. I started mounting a comeback. 18-10, 18-12, 18-16, then just as I started getting confident and had a glimmer of hope that I could win, he steals the ball from me, runs up court and dunks. Ok that was just a fluke, I can still win, I have the ball back. Oh and he steals it from me again and shoots from downtown for 2 points. GAME OVER!

Ok 21-16 wasn't so terrible. It was about to get much worse. "Hey Uncle Mikey, you want to play Shawn Palmers Snowboarding?" Boy what a mistake it was saying yes to that question. He's flying down the hill, grinding down the ski lift, doing 1200 degree spins, multiple trick combinations. There was no competiting there. And it only got worse when he played Tony Hawk.

So I guess it's only a matter of time, before my Godson and niece start beating me at real sports. I can still dominate in basketball, but of course I'm like a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier. The day when they start beating me 1 on 1 or during a game of H.O.R.S.E. is going to kill me. Even though I know it's inevitable, it's still going to hurt. My niece scored 12 of her teams 24 points the other night, it's only a matter of time before she's running circles around me. At which point I will have no choice but to throw a Bill Lambier like elbow straight across the bridge of her nose. :-)

Snowy Weekend

The picture speaks for itself...I guess winter is here a little early this year.

First Snow

Well we got our first snow of the season last night. Nothing major, about 2-3 inches. Since we got our first snow on the 4th of December, if the old farmers rule of thumb holds true, we should only have about 4 snow events this fall/winter.

The snow looked much prettier last nice when it was freshly fallen. I guess it warmed up towards morning so the snow turned to sleet and eventually just rain, so now everything is just a sloppy, soggy, slushy gray mess. I think they are predicting some more snow for this weekend.

Of course I get up my usual time and sit in 90 minutes of traffic to come to work only to find that several members of upper managment decided to stay home. Oh well... maybe today will be one of those days where I'll get to catch up on my work since noone is arround to distract or bother me.

A Holiday Message

Rachel was working late, I had some Christmas ornaments, a table lamp and a digital camera. Here's what I came up with...

The opinions expressed by elves of Squilky.com do not necessarily represent the sentiments of other Squilky.com personell.

Bah Humbug

Tonight on NBC, they aired in prime time, the lighting of the Rockerfeller Christmas tree. I normally look forward to watching the lighting of the tree, and this year was no exception. So Rachel and I tuned in to NBC at 8:00 as we baked cookies. The show started with Jessica Simpson and her husband Nick. Not great, but at least they sang a Christmas song. Then comes out Brian Setzer (who was cool like 15 years ago) and did some "big band" version of Santa Claus is coming to town. He had a full brass section, and a doofus with a bompadoor playing an upright bass. Simply terrible. The Big Band era died over 50 years ago Brian, let it be!!!

Then out came Gloria Estefan, who sang some kind of song which I think was supposed to be a Christmas carol, but one I never heard before. This was followed by Enrique Iglesias who was wearing some weird looking Elmer Fudd hat. He sang some song which was typical pop music crap. Just awful. Not remotely related to Christmas in any way I could see. Then Nick and Jessica did a song each, in front of St. Patricks Cathedral, they sang seperately this time. Neither song was Christmas oriented. Opie and Anthony get fired because two of their listeners have sex in St. Patricks, yet Nick and Jessica are more popular than ever singing crappy songs in front the same NY landmark.

Ahhh then the big finale came. "Ladies and gentleman, Harry Conick Jr". How this shmuch ever got a super model to marry him, I'll never know. He does some super hip, jazzified version of Frosty the Snowman. At one point he was scatting, and I thing I heard him say "beeza nee bop, that Frosty is one cold kat, bah dat dee wahh". It was awful. The whole time I was cursing Harry Conick Sr for fathering this moron. What a waste of sperm.

Ahhh then it's time to light the tree. Great! Maybe they'll have some cool NY personality like Joe Torre, or David Letterman light the tree. Nope, not on this show. It was Mayor Bloomberg, and the cast of the West Wing. WTF!? Why not have Kathy Lee and Richard Simons up there also?

This had to be the most awful Christmas special ever. So disapointing. Good thing we had all that eggnog to get me through the night...

The next Jordan...???

This is just me being a proud Godfather, here's a picture of Dylan taking the ball up court. #23, just like his uncle :-). His team won 18-4, Dylan scored twice and surprisingly he wasn't the shortest kid to play despite being one of only two 2nd graders to play with the 3rd grade team. Check out the size of #34 on the other team (in blue). I think the kid was on steroids.