A few CD's

As much as I enjoy listening to internet radio, I felt it was time to support the music industry and actually BUY some music. I bought three discs, here they are.

Pinnacle PCI HD Tuner - I <3 Woot.com

So recently, I upgraded the graphics card in my computer. I moved from an ATI All-In-Wonder 2006 to a Nvidia BFG Tech 7900. The BFG is working great, but now my computer is lacking a TV Tuner. Woot.com had a launch product the other day from Pinnacle. A PCI high definition tuner card. It has analog, digital, and FM; all for 50 bucks. Not a bad deal at all.

Rod's Birthday Party - P-Diddy Style

Good times were had by all. Rod threw a bit of a birthday party for himself, it turned out quite nicely. I wore my dishdasha, the only all white piece of clothing I own. It was a fun night, and I've only one comment. Keep the microphone away from a drunk Rod. :) Enjoy the pics.

Blackberry Curve - Right after I bought a PDA

So, only a few days after I bought my PDA, my work decides I need to carry around a blackberry as well. On top of that, I'm on call this week (which includes the 'duty' phone). That makes three phones I'm carrying with me right now. With three gadgets on my person, I'd feel the fool carrying around a PDA. Especially when all functions on the PDA are subsumed by the Blackberry. Grr. Maybe I'll send it to my brother or something.

Shirt.Woot.Com - Suicidal Maple Leaf

One of my favorite sites, Woot.com has come up with a sister site, Shirt.Woot.com. The shirts all have graphics that had been submitted and voted on by the users. If you're a handy designer, you could end up with your own up there for sale. :) The shirts are only 10 bucks, free shipping. Unless you want the shirt faster, then it's an extra five bucks. Anyway, here's the one I bought. I don't even have it yet and it love it!

Holy Crap! Hotties!

Ok, Today was the Mesa Big Surf party. It's a company sponsored event at a waterpark. I go every year for the free lunch and t-shirt, as well as the chance to win prizes. It was pretty much the same as every year, I get to see everyone I haven't talked to in a while. They even had a band this year. Larry D and Dr. Huff where the two I knew in it. Excellent music, for sure. I did run into some of my favorite friends that are girls. :) They're all hotties too. I love it.

Burning Man - First Time!

Ok, I'll not regale ya on how much fun this was, or try to convince you to go even. If you want to know about it, let me know. It was a good time. Here's a sample of the pics I took. Highly recommended. :)

Palm Z22 - Don't Hate!

Ok, so I went to Burning Man a few weeks ago, and re-discovered the value of carrying a notepad around with me. With the chaos that inhibits my memory, it helps if I'm able to write things down as I think of them. Once back in the real world, it hit me that a geek like myself wouldn't carry a notepad, how antiquated. Instead I bought a PIM (Personal Information Manager), more specifically, the Palm Z22. It's small, only cost about $100, and doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles. There isn't any Wi-Fi, MP3 Player, Camera, or slots for additional memory. What it does do is hold notes, phone numbers, pictures, and the like. It does everything you'd expect it to, and is way cooler than a notepad. :)

Once Again..

.. My three month ADD kicks in, and my attention comes back to my poor neglected blog. I'll attempt to catch up on here. As this seems to be my only blog that I consistently updated, for a time. :)

-- LC

Usher loves AIM

Ok, I finally figured it out. AIM kept playing an ad that would randomly play a clip from an Usher song. Took me about 2 months to figure out which program it was. How annoying, no? Just imagine, trying to sleep, and you hear Lil' John bust out with a half second "Yeah!". Gah!

So anyway, I disabled the ads on AIM, shouldn't be any more trouble. :)

** Update **
Apparently in AIM, you can assign your own sound, that plays on others computers when you log in. THAT was the problem. I blame Peaches. :)

Problem solved permanently though. I'm using Miranda.

Buy the Force.

Craptop - Acer Aspire 3680

Ok, so I decided that I really enjoy having a laptop when going to school. My recently deceased Sony VIAO did this cool magic trick of 'not working', so I decided to pick up another laptop. Needless to say, ALL I'll be doing with it is surfing the net, and writing papers; MAYBE listening to music. Through Dealnews.com I found the absolute most inexpensive laptop available. Turns out it's the Acer Aspire 3680, from Best Buy. Grand total after tax was roughly $486. Not bad for a new operating system, 80gig HD, 512 RAM, WiFi, and a Celeron M 520. I haven't road tested it yet, but we'll assume the battery sucks. And I'll obviously need to adjust to using Vista. Overall, though, a good deal.

Cheree's 21st Birthday

Not a lot to say here. Plenty of drinking. Good times. Happy Birthday Cheree!

Tickets!

Oh yeah, who's got suite tickets tonight. This guy, that's who. Suns vs Lakers. Should be good. :)

Los Angeles is too Expensive

So, I spent this past weekend in LA with my Alaska boys. We stayed at the Westin Bonaventure, thanks to Eric, on the cheap. A few days at the Universal Studios theme park, and watching 300 on IMAX. Good times were had by all. Of course, any trip to Cali isn't complete w/out a visiting Andy. I have yet to visit his new digs without passing out drunk. Of course, drink of choice this time around was Fat Tire and Patron. Go figure.

Random Website - jamesbondlifestyle.com

I found this site this morning while searching for free sunglasses on the net. It's a pretty cool deal if you ask me. Check it out.

Experimental Pot Roast

Ok, here's the story. I can never find a recipe that doesn't seem too excessive when I'm using my crockpot. I want them to be REALLY simple. A quick look at the ingredients kinda shows you how I think when I'm doing this stuff. So I tried my own. It is, as follows:

1 2.5 lb pot roast
1 lb bag of pre-pealed baby carrots
8 medium red potatoes
1 package Lipton Onion soup mix
1 package brown gravy mix
1 6 oz. can of tomato paste
20 shakes of small Johnny's Seasoning Salt
1 shake of cayenne pepper

Put the pot roast in the bottom of the crockpot, add water to crockpot until there roughly 1 inch or so in the bottom. Dump both the package of Onion soup mix, and the package of brown gravy mix onto the roast. Add the tomato paste to the water. I didn't worry about mixing it. Wash and cut the potatoes into bite size pieces, add both the potatoes and carrots to the crockpot, placing them on and around the roast. I put the potatoes on top of the carrots, I'm don't think it makes that much of a difference how you do it though. Shake the Johnny's Seasoning salt over the whole thing, make sure to evenly cover the potatoes. Shake the cayenne pepper on while you're at it.

Cook on low for 8+ hours. Should serve about 6.

I'm not certain on the details on making sure your roast is cooked, but I do know it needs to get to a pretty high temperature all the way through for a certain amount of time. Make sure to check it through the center before you eat it. If it's still red, cook it some more. :)

You probably don't need the pepper, but I like the stuff. Keep in mind, if you like black pepper, don't add it until you're almost done cooking. It tends to get bitter if cooked too long.

Heathfest '07

We had a good time last night at Stacy's. I think I embarrassed myself at one point. I should try not to do that again. Anyway, here's the pic. I've a self timer on there. Go figure.

Easy Crockpot Chili

I always forget to write this recipe down. I never stick to it exactly, but it works. It's the first recipe I was able to get from my mother after my venture into bachelorhood. :)

Here's what you'll need.

1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 pound hamburger
1 chopped onion

3 cans of beans
1 can tomato sauce
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can water
1 cup salsa
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon red pepper

Fry up the garlic, meat, and onion. Drain off the excess water and fat, and add to crockpot.

Add everything else to the crockpot.

Keep in mind that this isn't an exact recipe. When I say 'can', I mean your average 14-16 oz. can found in the grocery store. Also, it doesn't really matter what kinds of beans you use. I generally use pinto, black, and kidney beans; one can of each. But you can easily use three cans of pinto beans if you like.

I've found it works better if you leave it for about four hours or so if cooking it on high. If you set it to low, you can let it cook all night. You'll know it's ready when the onions aren't crunchy anymore.

Arizona Strong Beer and Ale Festival

Not much to say, the pictures should speak for themselves. Man am I worn out. :)

Almost Forgot - Casio Exilim EX-Z70

Look at that, I mention that I get a new toy, and don't even show what it is. Shame on this guy.

In my search for a good digital camera I did as usual, a routine of internet research and price comparisons. There's a lot of good cameras out there, but I had some pretty specific ideas. I wanted something easy to use, that used Secure Digital memory, had a long battery life, and looked cool. What I ended up finding was the Casio Exilim EX-Z70. It sports a slick black aluminum casing, has a sweet feature called "best shot" which takes the guesswork out of your camera settings, and uses SD memory. A perfect match. I used it these past to days with no hassle at all. You can see the quality of picture from my previous two posts.

Here's some pictures I snagged from Digitalcamerareview.com. Go figure, they have pretty good reviews as well.

I look good in costume - Arizona Renaissance Festival

Yesterday was one for the books. I think I actually wore myself out. Breakfast from 08:00 to 09:00, Renfest from 10:30 to 18:00, house party from 20:00 to 01:00 or so. Yup.

Breakfast was good, except for a mention from Marc about certain strange things found on the internet. Normally this wouldn't be a problem except that a friend of mine from work had stopped by, with his wife. Marc, if you're reading this, yeah.. We need different breakfast conversation. :)

Renfest was the fun part. Went there with Curtis and my other friend Marc. Good times, I'll post pictures from that. I really enjoy Renfest, but I must admit, I had ulterior motives for going. A pretty girl I know was working there. I like her, and I'm mostly sure she like me. Puts me in a good mood she does.

House party was pretty good, not huge, which is good. It was more of a house 'de-virginizing' party. Breaking her in for when we decide to have a big time get together. I'm thinking my next party will be a 'super hero' themed shenanigan. We'll see. Oh, and the pretty girl showed for the party too. Yay me. :)

Abajian Invasion

Good times. We celebrated my roommate Gabe's 30th birthday today at Prankster's. I'm completely dog tired, and have a full day ahead of me tomorrow. Here's the best pic of the night I think. Love ya man, Happy birthday!

Is Golf that exciting? - FBR Open

A dumber man than I would complain about yesterdays events. But not I. My boss managed to procure several tickets to the FBR Open up in Scottsdale this weekend, a golfing event that runs Tuesday through Sunday. Now here's the deal, the weekend is when they big boys are playing, the famous names in golf and such. Tuesday, well not much happening on Tuesday. Guess when I get to go, yup Tuesday. So, I didn't see a lick of golf. It probably didn't help that it was raining. However, our tickets were for the skybox, so instead of watching golf, we got free drinks and food. The end result from yesterdays events from my view? Leave work early, get free food and free drinks. Not too shabby. The golf thing? Well, maybe next year.

Not a normal MMO - GuildWars: Nightfall

So, I recently got the gaming bug again. This time I picked up a copy of Guildwars: Nightfall. So far I've been really impressed. There are a variety of character classes available. The Nightfall edition lets you play two extra classes, the dervish and the paragon. I wasn't really excited with these extras since it's all new to me.

I may post more as I get into the game a bit, but this is all you get for now. I perused the GuildWars sight for a good pic to post, and here's what I found. A hottie, computer rendered, ranger chick wearing green and brown. She is this geeks dream come true. Hats off to the artist.