Life on the Left Coast

New Blog

2008-01-11T05:51:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

So please check out the new blog

I will NEVER post here again.

New White Stripes

2007-06-26T23:50:00.000-07:00

Holy Shit! Two posts in one day. Jesus christ how fucking drunk is this guy? No No No... i'm just bored as shit.

So i've been listening to the new White Stripes album, Icky Thump. I gotta say, it's pretty damn good. So first off you really should be a fan before you pick up this album.

If you don't own any of their other albums buy them first.

But here are top 3 favorite songs so far.

1.)Little Cream Soda
2.) Rag and Bone
3.) Icky Thump

Let me know what you think if you've heard the album. If you haven't heard it go out and buy their older shit... listen to it for 2 months and then go buy their new album!

We're Moving

2007-06-26T23:34:00.000-07:00

Holy fuck it's been a long time since I last put something up here. And you know what... i seem to be tipsy everytime i do put something up here. So fuck you if you are going to bitch about my grammar.

So yeah as you might have guessed from the title we are moving. Shari and I decided that we wanted to move back to NC. It's been great living in Seattle, but damn I hate to admit it but NC is home.

I'm really excitted to get back there. I miss so much about it, and I'm sure I'll miss so much about Seattle. I think Seattle is a great vacation city, but i'm not sure it's a place where you would want to raise some kids. I guess I should make a top ten list of shit I'll miss about Seattle.

1.) BEER. My god it's fucking good out here.
2.) Music. Sure I didn't get to see all the shows I wanted, but man there is always something good playing.
3.) Being close to Portland. You know if i really had it my way thats where i would have ended up! Portland is the shit.
4.)Being close to Canada. Say what you will about Canadians, but when the shit goes down here in America thanks to dick head bush I wouldn't mind being closer to the border.
5.)Seattle Friends. I really have made some great friends here in Seattle. I tend to think of Seattleites as being M&M's but instead of a soft candy coating they have a titanium coating!
6.)Public Transportation. It's better than Raleighs at least.
7.) Food. Oh man there are some great restaurants here!
8.)The Mountains. This should actually be closer to 3 or 4. The mountains out here are beautiful, when you can see them.
9.)... hum drawing a blank here, obviously i enter 10 before 9.
10.)Plants... Yeah they are nice and greeeeen out here.

Twin Cities Hilarity

2007-02-14T18:54:00.000-08:00

So i'm in Minneapolis training one of my clients, UMN. So I decided to head over to the restaurant adjacent to my hotel. It's called Grandma's. So anyway I' have a great meal, a decent beer and I'm getting ready to leave when these two teenagers are sat in the booth behind mine. So yeah it's valentines day and I'm stuck in fucking cold ass Minneapolis but seriously the conversation i'm going to relay to you really almost made not being in Seattle with Shari worthwhile. So here it is. I hope you enjoy it.

Boy : You're gonna love Brian

Girl : Oh, Brian so and so.

Boy: No, Brian such and such.

Boy: Yeah he's gay, But he knows that being gay is wrong and he's trying to change. Yeah I roomed with him last year. My mom was really pissed that I wanted to room with a gay guy. But if you were a homophobe and you met Brian you wouldn't be a homophobe anymore.... Are you a homophobe?

Boy: Yeah Janet Jackson is too muscular. Girls aren't supposed to have that much muscles, then they aren't girly anymore.

Boy: You know Britney Spears is really gross now. I heard she was a lesbian.

Girl: No she is Bi.

Boy: OH, Bi.

Now the girl is ordering after they just got finished talking about going to the gym.

Girl: Yeah i'll take a small chicken salad.

Girl: So we all went out the other night and I ate a ton of candy bars. Yeah all the fat went to the same place.

Boy: To your stomach.

Girl: Yeah.... to my stomach.

Boy: So who do you think is the cutest guy in such and such building.

Girl: Phelps.

Boy: Yeah there are alot of odd looking guys in this other building. If i were a girl I would say so and so was really cute.

So maybe these conversations aren't that funny to you. But jesus I stayed 30 minutes later after I had payed my bill just so I could listen to these two kids talk. Remember this is valentines day... so I'm kinda assuming that this guy was taking this girl out to dinner. I just couldn't help but laugh to myself at what these two kids were talking about.

Happy Holidays

2007-01-07T18:58:00.000-08:00

This was our first holiday season away from our families. We decided to stay in the Pacific Northwest rather than paying the gouging airlines for tickets home. We had an enjoyable, happy holidays here, celebrating with great friends and their families.

The season kicked off with a lovely trip down to Portland for Thanksgiving. We spent several days with Andy, Jen and their cute pets Koby (hyper pup) and Vega (meow). Koby was smitten by Noah. See the cute pic of the two.

About 18 of us "transplants" who didn't go home for Thanksgiving got together at our friend Lorra's house to cook dinner. Noah made up a delish turkey, the showpiece and main event. It was tasty as usual (some thanks needs to go to our friend Alton Brown), whereas my pecan pies were a little sorry. Boo to runny, goopy pie filling.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we had a Mid-Holiday Feast at our house. The plan was to make up another feast on our own since we didn't bring any leftover turkey home with us the first time around. Noah did it up big again; however, a flood of biblical proportions dampened our dinner plans.

If you'll recall, Seattle experienced heavy, torrential rains at the end of November that flooded many areas of the city. Our street saw some pretty bad flooding. Noah was trying to help clean the storm drains on the street, and the water came up to his thighs. I'd never seen so much rain in my life! Noah carried me to our house because the water was somewhat high around the townhouses (and I didn't want to mess up my shoes). Luckily, the water never made it into our house, just a little bit in our garage. The rest of the houses toward the end of our street weren't so lucky. Their basements were flooded, and the tenants that lived in the lower levels had to move out. The street was pretty disgusting.

Back to the dinner: Some friends actually braved the floods to have some of Noah's turkey. Loren, Russ, Mike Verk and Tad came over and feasted with us. Great fun!

One of the highlights of the holiday season is my company's holiday party. Open bar, dancing, fun with people who actually like each other. Definitely not your typical office party. This was the third PN holiday party for us, and it was probably the best one to date. Noah busted some moves on the dance floor with me, I won an iPod Shuffle and Noah walked away with some peppermint bark. Here's a pic of us all dolled up.

We didn't get a Christmas tree this year, but instead decorated a lamp with lights. You get the same effect...okay, not really. But it's still cool.

Here's a pic of sneaky little Boris trying to peek into his presents from Noah's sister, Anna. I like the crazy lights.

This was a big Christmas for all of us. Noah got a Nintendo DS and a bowling ball. I got an assortment of scarves and cool socks, as well as season 2 of "The Office" and a bad ass rain jacket. The kitties got a sweet Pet Sport club house from Anna. They looove it.

We spent Christmas day with our friend Loren and his family in Bremerton. We took the ferry over and had a fun day with the Halls. We enjoyed delicious ham and watched a drawn out, but fun, gift exchange. We appreciated the Halls opening up their home to us as they did :)

Noah and I also had a mini holiday with Loren and Sarah. We took off to Leavenworth, a small Bavarian village in the Cascades. The village was absolutely beautiful; everything was covered in snow. We stayed at a lovely inn with a cute loft.

We went snowboarding one day. I didn't bust my ass too much getting off the lift, but I did have a rough day. I took one hard tumble, but what did me in was a snowboarder plowed right into me. I have a gnarly bruise on my right leg, and you could see where the edge of his board slid across my leg. Otherwise, it was a fine day. Noah got some good runs in and broke in his spiffy new jacket.

We spent a good day piddling around the village. Here are some photos of the village and our friends (Noah's the silly one with his hat pulled over his eyes). It was a cold, foggy day, so it's hard to see the huge mountains in the back.

We left to return to Seattle on New Year's Eve. As we packed the car, Noah spotted the coolest thing. There was a little barn owl sitting in the snow outside of our cabin. Check out the owl and see if you see something "different" about the photo.

Do you see the legs sticking out from beneath the owl? That little owl had just killed a bird for breakfast. It was amazing how an owl killed something that was its own size. You kind of felt bad for the owl though, because he couldn't go anywhere with its kill. The poor thing was probably starving and went for something big (it's eyes were definitely bigger than it's stomach). We watched the owl for a while as it tried to fly away with its breakfast. After a while, it only got so far as 10 feet from where we originally saw it. We didn't stay around to see what the owl did, but I hope it got out okay and filled its belly.

Well, that was Holiday 2006 with the Beckers. We hope you all had a memorable one and got everything you wished for. We wish you the best in the New Year and hope to see you soon!

Bad Luck

2006-08-25T16:07:00.000-07:00

So I planned on visiting my friends down in Portland this weekend. We were planning on heading out to Rockaway beach. This would have been an awesome weekend. Well besides the fact that Shari wasn't going to be able to make it down. So I decided that I should take the train down to Portland. It's about a 3.5 hr - 4 hr trip. Not too expensive and no stress. Well I checked for tickets this morning and everything was all sold out. At this time I was a little bummed but decided to drive down to the train station and ask if they had anything free up. When I got down there I was able to get a ticket with out any problems. I was to leave for Portland at 11:20 and get into Portland at around 3. This was perfect cause Andy in Portland would be able to pick me up and we could head out to the beach around 4. Ah to think that as I'm writing this post now I could be leaving Portland heading for the beach. So anyway... the train leaves right on time. We start making our way down to Portland. Everything was pretty uneventful just until we got into Tacoma. Tacoma is about an hour or an hour and half drive from Seattle. So we stop just about a mile shy of the train station in Tacoma. The conductor or some other train offical comes over the intercom and states that a train in front of ours had a car derail. So we waited there for about an hour and a half until Amtrak decided that we would turn around and head back to Seattle and then have busses waiting for us to take us onto whatever the destinations were. The hell if I was going to take the bus down to Portland. I wouldn't get in until late in the evening and I'm not sure if I would have had a ride out to the beach until Saturday. So I decided to just get a refund and come back home. I'm still not sure if I'll be able to head down there this weekend or not. We'll just have to see how my bad luck plays out.

Patio Project Part II

2006-07-20T18:13:00.000-07:00

So I finally got the pavers that I ordered from Mutual Materials. I ordered like 700 pavers! So here is a picture of the patio portion completed.

Here is a picture of the left side of the patio.

And finally here is a picture of the walkway which is to be finished next.

I miscalculated the amount of sand I needed to finish the project so now I have to go get some more sand before I can complete the walkway. So far it's looking great. Once I have all the walkway pavers down I'll just need to sweep sand into all the joints and fill in the space around the pavers.

Photoshop Edit

2006-06-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

As per Eddies request I have photoshopped the devil revealed picture. Please check the comment on the Devil Revealed post to ensure I'm not lying.

The Real Devil

I prefer this picture. I think it shows Eddies true side.

Devil Revealed

2006-06-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

Poor Eddie! As soon as I saw this picture I was very surprised that eddie had been turned into a devil. So check it out for yourself.

Jason and Kaori's Wedding

2006-06-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

Ok so if you've read the previous post you would know that Shari and I flew down to Napa, CA this past weekend to visit Jason and Kaori and to celebrate their wedding. Here are some pictures from the wedding.

Waiting

Beautiful Kaori

Kaori, Dave and Jason

Happy Jason

Good Cake

Wait For Me!

Jason and Kaori Dancing

Ok so those are all the cute picutes of the couple. We took a few more pictures so here they are.

Devil Eddie

Katie Monster

Shari and I at the ceremony.

Noah and Deaver

Dave, Noah and Mike

Trueman and Noah

Napa, CA Vacation

2006-06-26T12:59:00.000-07:00

Shari and I spent a weekend down in Napa, CA this past weekend (6/23/06 - 6/25/06). Jason and Kaori were getting married and so of course we flew down for that. I'm going to post pictures of everything outside of the wedding here and then create a seperate post for the wedding.

So the first day we got into Napa we did two wine tours. Here is a picture from the first winery we visited.

On the last day of our visit most people went to San Fran to hang out. Shari, Eddie, Elaina and I decided to visit one more winery. We choose the Coppola winery which turns out has been renamed to the Rubicon Estate Winery. If you ever go to Napa you really should check out this winery. It has some amazing history and it's absolutely gorgeous.

Rubicon Estate Winery

Shari and I in front of the winery.

Eddie and Elaina in front of the winery.

Stair Case inside winery. (Make sure you click on the picture)

Our better sides.

Patio Project

2006-06-26T12:54:00.000-07:00

Shari and I decided that we wanted to install a patio in our yard. I've taken two pictures to show how much fucking work this is. These two pictures are of the big ass hole in our yard.

Left Side of Yard

Right Side of Yard

As I get more work done on the yard I'll post those pictures up here.

The Miserables

2006-06-02T14:19:00.000-07:00

Shari and I went to see Les Miserables last night at the 5th Avenue Theater. First off let me say that overall it was a decent show. Now having said that I'll also say that the theater was amazing. We had really great seats thanks to Shari's co-worker Tad. Tad has apparently seen Les Miserables like 7 times. Talk about fanaticism. So I found a picture of the theater on the net, check it out.

Our seats where right under the top left point of the star on the ceiling. Ok so back to the show. So here are some pros and cons about the show.

Pros

Theater was really awesome
The set was really cool
Some of the singers were hot

Cons

Les Miserables is a musical
The family sitting behind us were crazy and annoying
The seats were uncomfortable
The show was about an hour too long

So you might be thinking that I really didn't like the show... and you are mostly right. First off I was expecting the show to be fucking amazing... why else would Tad have seen it 7 times. I mean it just wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. This just goes to show you that if you go into something with low expectations you are going to more then likely enjoy it. So to everyone out there... stop hyping everything up so much. Just let the virgins experience it like you did the first time.

Let me also say that I'm not a musical fan. When I was a kid we owned the Sound of Music and I've seen that like 50 times so that pretty much burnt me out. I will say this though, the singers were amazing. They all had great voices and no one made any mistakes. But hell I don't even listen to the lyrics in most of my music. It's just another instrument in the song. So when you go to a show and you are supposed to actually listen to the lyrics to get the story it just doesn't work for me.

Call me an uncultured basted... I really don't give a shit.

Sasquatch Festival

2006-05-31T13:05:00.000-07:00

Shari and I attended the Sasquatch Music Festival this past weekend (5/26-29). This year the sasquatch festival was three days. Check out the lineup. The first days lineup was pretty decent. We didn't get to see everybody as we didn't get to the concert until around 7 but NIN was headlining and that was the main reason we went on Friday.

Shari and I weren't too keen on the lineup for Saturday. I'm not a huge Ben Harper fan. So we decided to sell our tickets. We drove to the gorge to see if we could sell them. On our way there we saw two people standing next to the road trying to buy tickets. So we pulled over and sold both our tickets to them. Boy were we glad to get rid of them. Turns out that Saturday was the shittiest day. It rained most of the day and it actually hailed. Check out this link. It's highlights of the Saturday show. If you skip to around 1 minute 20 seconds you will see the hail starting to come down.

The Sunday lineup was fucking sweet. We got to see Pretty Girls Make Graves, Nada Surf, Arctic Monkeys, Decemberists, We are Scientists, Matisyahu, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Death Cab for Cutie, and Beck. That's a shit ton of good music. Pretty Girls Make Graves was really good, I haven't really heard much of their stuff but they played a lot of stuff off their new album. Arctic Monkeys put on an awesome show, even though you couldn't understand most of what they said to the crowd. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah was by far my favorite show on Sunday. The guitarist/keyboardist/tambourine man was the shit. He had so much energy and didn't stop smiling the entire time they played. If you've never heard CYHSY before please check them out. They are truly an amazing band.

We only took a few pictures while we were at the gorge. So here they are.

Bridge across the Gorge

Me, Brent and Tyler

View at The Gorge

Second view at The Gorge

Me and Shari

FUCK YOU BLOGGER.COM

2006-05-05T18:42:00.000-07:00

I just wrote a fucking book and mother fucking blogger.com lost it. I tried to spell check it and guess what happened. It took me to a mother fucking blank page. God damn you blogger.com. What the fuck. Well this is it for me.

Tool + Drugs = 10,000 Days

2006-05-04T19:31:00.000-07:00

Don't walk, don't run, don't fucking drive... fly high and go buy this album. This is yet another amazing Tool album. I really don't have much else to say other then it lives up to my every expectation. There are of course some crazy lyrics. I'm going to post some. Let me know what you think.

So I checked out the link that anonymous posted in the comments. I have to agree that those lyrics sound more like what the song says. So I'm gonna repost them above the lyrics I first found. You be the judge to whats the correct lyrics.

Lyrics from Let's Sing It.com

Alright then,

Picture this if you will

10 to 2AM and actually heating up

The old box of Krispy Kremes at my

Need-to-know post just outside of

Area 51 contemplating the whole

"Chosen people" thing but just then

A flaming stealth banana split the

Sky,like, wide open never really

Expect to see it in a place like this

I think, I think, I'm gonna gonna

Die but something right inside my

Birkenstocks began fuming

Holy fucking shit...

(holy fucking shit..)(x4)

Then the x-files beings who were like

Some kind of blue-grey Jackie Chan

With Isabella Rossellini lips and breath that reeked

And they're wicked-shot terrorists all by making the sound

Abananadabanana

So when I opened up my bug eyes, my gaping jaw and my..

Sweaty L. Ron Hubbard upper lip and all I could think was...

I hope Uncle Martin here doesn't notice that I pissed my fuckin pants

So alive in this way

Like an apparition

And you had me crying out

Fuck me

It's gotta be

Deadhead chemistry

The bottom covering the top of me.

It's got me seeing E motherfucking T.

And after calming me down with some

Orange slices and some fetal spooning

ET revealed to me his singular purpose

He said,"You are the chosen one.

The one who'll deliver the message.

A message of hope for those who choose to hear it,

And a warning for those who do not.

Me, the chosen one.

They chose me

And I didn't even graduate from fucking high school.

You'd better...

You'd better...

You'd better...

You'd better listen.

Then he looked right through me

With somniferous almond eyes

Don't even know what that means

Must remember to write it down

This is surreal

Like the time they floated away

See, my heart is burning

Cause this shit never happens to me

Can't breathe right now

It was so real,

Like I woke up in Wonderland

Also a bit terrifying

I don't want to be all alone

When I tell this story

And can anyone tell me why

It was a repeat experience

Will I ever be coming down?

This is so real

Finally, it's my lucky day

See my heart is racing

'Cause this shit never happens to me

I can't breathe right now

You believe me don't you?

Please believe what I just said

See them telling children

And this wasn't all in my head

See they took a hold of my hand

And invited me right in

Then they showed me something

I don't even know where to begin

Strapped down to my bed

Feet cold and eyes red

I'm out my head.

Am I alive? Or'm I dead?

Can't remember what they said

Goddamn

Shit the bed

Overwhelmed as one would be

Placed in my position

Such a heavy burden now to be the one

Born to bear and read you all

The details of our ending

To write it down for all the world to see

But I forgot my pen

Shit the bed again

Typical

Strapped down to my bed

Feet cold and eyes red

I'm out of my head

Am I alive or'm I dead?

Sunkist and sudafed

Gyroscopes and infrared

Won't help the braindead

Can't remember what they said

Goddamn

Shit the bed

I can't remember what they said to me

Can’t remember what they said to

Make me out to be a hero

Can't remember what he said

Mom, help me

Can’t remember what he said

Don't know

Won't know...

Goddamn, shit the bed

Lyrics were taken from Let's Sing It.Com

Lyrics from Lyrics Mania

Alrighty then... picture this if you will...

Time to de-wrap that chili dog

Eat a box of krispy kremes

We've ID'd an air pollutant [indiscernable] area 51

Contemplating the whole truth

Of people thinking we just took a flaming

Stale banana split the sky light, well

One opened up we'd expect to see a place like this

Code red i'll put us in a diamond setting

Right on my birkenstocks in the open

Holy fucking shit... holy fucking shit...

Let the x-file be entered

As some kind of blue creature

[indiscernable]

If you look at your appearance for a moment you can see

Another banana bourbon enema

Someone hovered above my buckeyes

My daily chore

Maybe i'll run over the upper lip but all i could think was

[indiscernable] fucking cats

The sewer line is waiting

Like an apparition he had me crying out

Fuck me! sodomy!

A dead head chemistry! bladder problems won't stifle me!

If i can't make it, people who are watching see.

And after calming me down with some orange slices and some needle spooning

He revealed to me a singular purpose, he said, you are the chosen one

The one who will deliver the message

A message of hope for those who choose to hear it

And a warning for those who do not

Me, the chosen one... they chose me

And i didn't graduate from fucking high school

Shit the bed

Shit better

You better

You better listen

He looked right through me

With somniferous almond eyes

Don't even know what that means, must remember to write it down

This is so real,

Like the time that he floated away

See my heart is pounding

Cause this shit never happens to me

Can't breathe right now, it was so real

Like i woke up in wonderland

Also a bit terrifying

I don't want to be all alone when i tell this story

And can anyone tell me why? [indiscernable]

Will i ever be coming down?

This is so real, finally it's my lucky day

See my heart is racing

Cause this shit never happens to me

Can't breathe right now

You believe me don't you, please believe what i just said

See they're telling true and... and this wasn't all in my head

So they took me by the hand and invited me right in

Then they showed me something

I don't even know where to begin

Strapped down to my bed,

Feet cold and eyes red,

I'm out of my head,

Am i alive am i dead,

Can't remember what they said

God damn shit the bed

Overwhelmed as one would be, placed in my position

Such a heavy burden now to be the one

Born to bear and read to all

The details of our ending

To write it down for all the world to see

But i forgot my pen, shit the bed again

Typical

Strapped down to my bed,

Feet cold and eyes red

I'm out of my head

Am i alive am i dead,

Sunkist and Sudafed, gyroscopes, and infrared won't help

Brain dead, can't remember what they said

God damn shit the bed

I can't remember what they said to me

Can't remember what they said to me

Made out to be a hero

Can't remember what they said

[indiscernable] oh no

God damn shit the bed

Lyrics were taken from Lyrics Mania

Wedding Planning for Dummies

2006-04-01T17:47:00.000-08:00

Noah and I are now happily wed. It's been a long time coming, I suppose. We'd been dating for about 5 and a half years, engaged for about the last year and a half. Time definitely flew by! Apparently not fast enough for some folks since we kept getting nagged by a lot of our friends and family...

Anyway, we're now married :) The past 3 months have been heinous, and I thought I'd share some "key lessons learned" that will help you stay sane during the wedding planning process.

Lesson 1: Don't consult fortune tellers, soothsayers or monks. They just fuck with your lives and give you impossible timelines to work with. Case in point: We learned in December that March 25 was our "lucky" day, thus, the quick wedding and frantic planning (not shotgun like most people presumed).

Lesson 2: Don't try online RSVPing unless your guests have degrees in CSC, CE or date geeks with the aforementioned degrees. So many of our friends and family (yes, our age) had issues with our RSVP page. Who knew it'd be so difficult to fill out "Name" then click on either "Will attend" or "Will not attend"? Don't give your guests the benefit of the doubt -- most people are computer illiterate!

Lesson 3: Save money by employing your large family to help with tasks such as cooking and creating pomanders and bouquets. Think sweatshop. Just kidding! Our family and friends were great and truly our saving grace. Everybody pitched in somehow, making the crazy week leading up to the wedding manageable and memorable. Seeing my parents' and cousin's houses filled with so many friends and family really was moving and one of the best memories I'll have for a long while.

Lesson 4: Rein in the parental units early on. A lot of people say that planning a wedding will really test the marrying couple's relationship. I disagree. Noah and I were fine through the planning, but what was really tested was the relationship with my mom. She threw curveballs, telling me about additional guests (to the tune of 50 extra attendees) and informing me of Chinese/Cambodian traditions/superstitions at the 25th hour. Make sure everyone's expectations are set and understood from the get-go.

Lesson 5: Don't hire your mom's co-worker's nephew DJ unless you've heard him before. He could potentially not recall the first dance song you discussed three times prior to the wedding date and outlined in e-mail. You could not have a first dance.

Not trying to scare anyone from having a wedding, just wanted to bring up some things that couples in planning may not consider, especially those combining cultural/ethnic traditions. If only we'd known these things before...

Noah and I both agree that having a wedding was an excellent decision and something we'll cherish for the rest of our lives. Stay tuned for another posting where I'll recap the highlights of the wedding for you (specifically for those slack bros who had the lame excuse of being out of the country). Hopefully, we'll have some pictures together by then so I can throw them up here as well. Later!

You Know What Really Grinds My Gears

2006-02-03T13:11:00.000-08:00

You know what really fucking pisses me off. Irresponsible people. So check out this first article.

FUCKING IDIOTS

All I gotta say is read the fucking manual you jack ass. Here is a picture of page 56 in my ipod users manual

I predict that we will see some more crazy lawsuits. Here are my predictions

suing Blizzard Games for creating the most addictive game ever: World of Warcraft

suing God for natural disasters.

suing city's for shitty air quality

suing Ford Motor Company for not making cars that run on air

Next we have this fine article. Take a look.

FUCKING PARENTS

Now this probably pisses me off as much as the jack ass suing Apple for hearing loss. The problem here is that parents are irresponsible. They don't monitor what their kids are doing, and as soon as their daughter/son gets into trouble they look to other places for blame. I bet if these parents knew exactly what their 12 year old kids were doing they would shoot themselves for being bad parents.

All I have to say to this is for fucking christs sake take responsibility for your own god damn actions.

Quote of the day

2005-11-30T13:15:00.000-08:00

Monkies can't shine shoes but if they could they would shine like their asses.

- me

Pumpkin Carvings

2005-11-14T14:32:00.000-08:00

Ok so I know it's a little past Halloween... but my friend Rohan sent me an image of his latest pumpkin carving and so I decided I would share it and his others with everyone. So here they are.

Halloween 2005

Halloween 2003

Halloween 2002

I Super Hero

2005-11-09T15:39:00.000-08:00

You scored as Batman, the Dark Knight. As the Dark Knight of Gotham, Batman is a vigilante who deals out his own brand of justice to the criminals and corrupt of the city. He follows his own code and is often misunderstood. He has few friends or allies, but finds comfort in his cause.

Lara Croft

75%

Captain Jack Sparrow

75%

Batman, the Dark Knight

75%

Neo, the "One"

54%

James Bond, Agent 007

54%

Maximus

54%

William Wallace

54%

The Amazing Spider-Man

46%

El Zorro

42%

Indiana Jones

38%

The Terminator

33%

Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
created with QuizFarm.com

I ♥ Google

2005-10-25T23:20:00.000-07:00

Google continues to amaze me to this day. I can remember when google first came out with their search. It was the best thing since fried rice. I use Google search almost everyday. Google also came out with google maps. Google maps is very easy to use and you can actually see satellite images of your location. Now Google has come out with a customized homepage. This is basically the same thing as MyYahoo, but much cleaner.

Here is a picture of what my Google homepage looks like. Click on the image to get a better image.

Let me highlight some of the neat features of the Google homepage.

First we have a section where you can add your own bookmarks. This is ideal for any page that you visit on a daily or weekly basis.

If you have gmail you can also add a section to display your inbox.

I have also added a bunch of techy sites. Of course it would be techy sites. You can also add many other sites from different content categorizes like news, business, technology and sports.

Now then this is the coolest thing about google homepage. You can add any RSS feed as a customized section. For those of you who don't know what RSS is check out this link. Here you can see that I've added two of my favorite blogs to this section.

Lastly I've also added a section just for my netflix queue. No, I didn't add "The Aviator" to the list, that was Shari's doing.

I can't wait to find more RSS feeds I really enjoy so I can add them to my Google homepage.

If you are interested in your own Google homepage then goto Google.com, and look for the link "Personalized Home".

You Know What Grinds My Gears

2005-10-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

You know what really grinds my gears.... that lasagna is spelled with an s. I mean come on look at the pronunciation of it Dictionary.com

So for now on I'm going to always spell lazagna with a z.

Games These Days.

2005-10-11T21:57:00.000-07:00

So, I've been playing this game called World of Warcraft, or wow. For those of you who love RPG games this is the game for you. Basicly you can create a character and then run around a massive online mulitplayer world killing shit. Yeah thats basically the run down. So I created a character named "Beardedclam". Well I was playing with this character for quite some time until I received the following e-mail.

Account Name: NBBECKER
Realm: Llane
Character Name: Beardedclam
Account Action: Warning

Offense: Naming Violation - Obscene/Vulgar
This category includes both clear and masked names which:
. Are inappropriate references to human anatomy or bodily functions
. Are pornographic in nature

The name selected for this character has been deemed as inappropriate for the World of Warcraft by the In-Game Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment. Upon your next log-in, you will be prompted to select a new character name.

Well I was pretty pissed that I had to change my name... but I agree that it could be an inappropriate reference to (female) anatomy. I wanted to change my name to P.Nis but I figured Blizzard wouldn't like that too much. So I changed my name to just Clam. Everyone in my guild was calling me Clam anyway so I figured it was the easiest transition.

Apparently my character had been flagged due to Blizzard requiring me to change my name because I received the following e-mail a few days after I changed my name.

Account Name: NBBECKER
Realm: Llane
Character Name: Clam

Account Action: Warning

Offense: Obscene/Vulgar
This category includes both clear and masked language which:
. Is an inappropriate reference to human anatomy or bodily functions
. Is pornographic in nature
10/10/2005 21:36 Clam &Immortal what a fucking idiot.... oh well i'm not complaining

Details (Note - Times are listed in Greenwich Mean Time, GMT):

The actions detailed above have been deemed inappropriate for the World of Warcraft by the In-Game Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment. For further information, please view the World of Warcraft Policies and Terms of Use Agreement: (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01712p).

Be aware that additional inappropriate actions may result in further disciplinary action, leading up to or including account closure. We thank you in advance for respecting our position.

So if you look about halfway through the above quote you will see this (10/10/2005 21:36 Clam &Immortal what a fucking idiot.... oh well i'm not complaining). So this is something that I had typed in guild chat. This means that Blizzard has been monitoring my chat. I'm pretty pissed about this. I mean I can completely understand monitoring the general chat where everone on the server can read it... but I was chatting in my own guild in which everyone opted to be in. The really screwed up thing is that there is a profanity filter in the game in which any swear words come out as *$&@ YOU BLIZZARD instead of FUCK YOU BLIZZARD!

Nine Inch Nails: Bow down, muthaf*ckers

2005-09-26T20:53:00.000-07:00

Noah and I saw Nine Inch Nails this past Friday at Key Arena. The show was fucking amazing! I was totally blown away and am still reeling from the experience. I won't blog my heart out like most groupies do, but thought I'd share my thoughts on the show (and say "in yo' face" to people who wanna see them, haha).

Autolux and Queens of the Stone Age opened for NIN. We missed Autolux and wish we had missed Queens. Completely let down. All of the songs sounded exactly the same: obnoxious. I don't think I've ever been more annoyed by an opening band. Lame.

But, it was all good. I was there for NIN. Noah, who's seen them several times, wasn't expecting much, especially after their latest album. But they played so many of their best singles (Wish, Hurt, Terrible Lies, etc., etc.), and the handful of new songs they did play sounded so much better than anything you'd hear on the CD.

The lights were on point and probably the best visual show I've ever seen. The video they showed in the middle of the set was poignant and made you really pay attention to the words of the songs (this album is pretty politically charged, specifically hitting on the war and GWB).

Trent Reznor is a genius and has remarkable talent. You could totally feel his energy throughout the night, he was all over the place. He brought the whole show and experience together with amazing music and aesthetics and so much energy and passion.

In sum, check out NIN if you can. The best money you'll spend on a show this year.