Fuzzy Couch

Chocolate Nibs

2008-09-06T09:33:00.002-06:00

Last Saturday Jantina and I drove to the Whole Foods (its a bit of a drive, we don't go there often) and discovered they had a couple aged new york strips. I've not noticed aged beef in a grocery before, and was pretty excited. So we picked those up, and I also grabbed some dark chocolate that I saw on Diggnation, Kopali Cacao Nibs. It wasn't as good as they went on about, but not bad. I preferred the Dagoba bar that was displayed next to them.

On Wednesday, I opened my MacBook Pro and the screen didn't come on. The front light that usually indicates 'sleep mode' was glowing steadily. I tried several methods to wake it up, reboot, but it just wouldn't come alive. I made an appointment with the Apple store for that night, they confirmed that it was a bad logic board, that the part was in stock, and the repair queue is short. So I left it there and received it back Friday night. All covered under warranty, only cost me a couple days without my computer.

We tried a couple new places to eat too. Down in Orlando, Jenn introduced Jantina to Pei Wei, a spin-off of P.F. Changs. We discovered we had one here, pretty much just around the corner from our place. It was really good, and about 4 dollars cheaper than P.F. Changs per dish. We also re-tried Redstone one afternoon. It is still overpriced, but the patio out back was nice with the mild weather we were having. We usually hit up Jake's for the same reason, to sit outside, and it is more reasonably priced.

New places to Eat:
Pei Wei
RedStone
Jake's

A bucket of balls

2008-09-03T10:35:00.007-06:00

My eyes swelled shut again from rubbing poison ivy in them Thursday. Must remember to stop doing that. I picked up medication Saturday, and the swelling went down a lot by Monday.

I attended a disc golf event Saturday -- the annual Discraft Ace Race -- where everyone just shoots for an ace (hole in one) on each hole. The one with the most aces wins. There were 22 holes and we played the course twice. No aces for me, unfortunately. I did have a few close ones.

Monday evening, Julie and I went out to dinner with Stephanie, who's about to ship out to Ireland for the semester, Josh and Gavin. We also stopped by Beth's and played a few songs on "Rock Band."

Yesterday I got to hang out with Erin for most of the day. We got lunch at Cafe Brio, saw "Traitor," played minature golf and hit a bucket of balls at the driving range at Knights Action Park, shopped a little for a new watch for her. Then I got some dinner at Panera Bread and took that home to sick-feeling Julie.

Today, I'm noticing some changes in Yahoo! Mail ... a little redesign or something. The viewing of attachments seems a little different. And I just noticed that Picasa Web Albums got a redesign.

Disc golf and Caribe

2008-08-25T10:15:00.001-06:00

Julie and I went to Caribe Restaurant in Beardstown on Saturday. It has a bunch of Caribbean dishes on the menu in addition to Mexican dishes. We need to go back and try some more stuff.

We went up for the grand opening of the Beardstown Park District's new disc golf course. I had told Tom Bazan from my Ultimate group about it and he was already there and had played a round on the course already when we got there.

Weekend update

2008-08-22T18:40:00.003-06:00

Jantina is in Florida for a baby shower and to see friends, so I'm holding down the fort with Sassy this weekend! My first order of business was sustenance (a.k.a. acquiring "Healthy Choice" frozen dinners), and while I was at the grocery store I found an alternative to Starbucks Doubleshot from Cinnabon. They offer larger serving sizes and run a dollar cheaper per 4-pack. I tried the Espresso & Cream variety... it was similar, but a lot sweeter than the Starbucks product, so I'll be sticking to the original doubleshot.

I rented a couple of movies (Kill Bill Vol. 1, and In Bruges) and Soul Calibur IV. I'm also playing the new Galaga Legions that just came out this week. That should get me through the weekend pretty well. Galaga is made by the same team as Pac-Man Championship Edition, which I'm already addicted to, so its pretty dangerous.

Earlier this week I called on some clients in Des Moines. While I was there I tried 3 new restaurants and all were good!
New Places to Eat:
Tursi's Latin King
Granite City
Johnny's Italian Steakhouse

Movie attempt - fail

2008-08-18T10:38:00.002-06:00

I attempted to watch "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" in Delafield, Wis., late Saturday night. I was pretty wiped out after driving to Wisconsin, and playing Ultimate all day, so my body wasn't up for paying attention while sitting in a dark room. I'm going to have to see the movie again.

My sixth year at Cooler Classic was fun. The weather was pretty perfect. I played with the Purdue team -- Undue Perversity, headed up by Eric Leonard -- in the Open B category. We won two games and lost but were really close in two games. The remaining two were pretty solid losses.

I got to hang out with Mel -- we went to the Water Street Brewry for dinner -- and a bunch of Corn n Disc folks and a bit with my team. And Pete from the Madtown Boozehounds let me sleep in his tent. I figure that I had been up for 40 hours before I finally went to bed Saturday night. Then I was up around 8 a.m. as the tent needed to get packed up.

Unknown toy

2008-08-10T22:06:00.003-06:00

I'd like to know the name of the toy I'm holding in this photo from about 1980. What would be a good way to figure that out?

I found it. ... It's the Dragonfly Megabug from the 1979 Megabug Gladiators: Combat Machine of the Future line. The future being 2003.

http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/megabug
http://www.toyarchive.com/MegaBug.html

Larry Calhoun site

2008-08-07T08:29:00.007-06:00

I re-uploaded Larry Calhoun's Web site to a new host. It's now at http://larrycalhoun.110mb.com. Larry might be interested in buying a URL to use instead of that one.

A while back we notice his last host just lost his whole site and has yet to find it.

I also have a bunch of newer work of his that I am hoping to post on there soon. I'm hoping to use some album software instead of hand coding all the image pages.

Julie and I went with Josh, Stephanie, and Wes to see "The Dark Knight" on Tuesday. It's the 50th movie I've seen this year. [link]

Also this week, I think I finished the Voices of Jacksonville Audio Tour site I did for the Jacksonville Looking for Lincoln Committee.

Springfield just got Street View enabled on Google Maps. Here's the field near the corner of Monroe and Chatham Road where we usually play Ultimate:

View Larger Map

Home repairs

2008-07-31T13:59:00.006-06:00

We replaced the carpet in our front room. There was a strange smell that never quite went away after cleaning (well others didn't notice it, but I guess I'm sensitive to stuff like that). After the old carpet was up, we discovered a large spill-like area under the carpet near the windows. We were able to clean it up, and spread baking soda over the floor before the new carpet went down, and it is much much better now.

We've had a ton of rain this year. Our basement flooded twice. The first time the sump-pump died, the second time power was out long enough that the backup battery drained too. Now I have the primary pump, backup pump with battery, and a tertiary pump that is water-powered. If I get water in my basement after all that, I'll have to give up.

We had a broken basement window. We discovered that there was a leak in one of the gutter runs, directly over the basement window well. When the window well filled up with water, we found the crack by following the resulting stream of water. We patched the gutter, and replaced the window glass.

In our family room off the kitchen, we noticed dried trails of discoloration on one of the walls. We were concerned there was a leak so we had roofing companies come look at the roof. They told us the attic was dry, however, behind that wall there was no insulation (it is above a stairway). The theory is that during the winter, we had condensation forming on the walls. So we had insulation blown in above the stairs, hopefully that is fixed now.

The roofing companies noticed we had some storm damage on the roof. State Farm came out to take a look and are taking care of it. We have a contract signed with a contractor and they should be out to re-roof the place by end of August.

End of July

2008-07-22T15:22:00.002-06:00

Still really busy lately. Jax Hat '08 is this weekend -- Saturday, July 26. We're hoping for no lightning. Shirts are ordered. There are a bunch of things to do this week.

A Web site I've been working on is taking shape.

This is Heather's last week at work, after which we'll likely be even busier than we already are. She's going back to school down in St. Louis.

I did get the chance to go to a little poker night with Wes, Rob, Julie, Josh and Stephanie last night. I didn't seem to get many good hands, but it was fun.

Jax Hat IV shirt designs

2008-07-16T17:49:00.008-06:00

I worked on ~~two~~ three Jax Hat IV shirt designs last night. One is a design I started two years ago, meant for the back of that year's shirt, but was abandoned. The second design I dreamed up at dinner last night.

Update: I added another design on July 20 (shown here on pink). And the new green one has added figure.

Jage came up with this one:

Mel came up with this one:

Update 7/22: I turned in the shirt order Monday and we went with the design on the pink shirt above.

Back in MN

2008-07-14T17:53:00.005-06:00

I'm back in Minneapolis, I drove home last night, got home about 10 p.m. We had a great visit in Lincoln, this is some of the fun stuff we were able to do:

Went water skiing / boating in Clinton with Dad, Emilie, Kallie, and Janel. I was able to "get up" on my first attempt, but subsequent trials were not as successful.

Spent the Fourth of July with family, barbecued, played capture the flag and bocce during the day, board games that night. Travis, Grace and cupcake came to town; it was great to see them!

Played "Supreme Commander" with Travis, David and Darin on the unofficial, yet traditional, Video Game Day (July 5). Also played some oldies -- "Phantasy Star Online" and "Kung Fu Chaos" -- with Emilie.

Jantina and I played games (Dicecapades, Ticket to Ride, and Zigity) with Julie, Guido and Guido's parents in Lincoln one night, and had a great time.

Thinking over the time, I'm realizing we played a lot of games! Mostly Puerto Rico, San Juan, and Catan with various crowds over different weekends (Dad, Ethan, Travis, Grace, David, Emilie, Mom).

On July 7, Bungie Day, I celebrated by playing the new "Halo 3" map called Cold Storage.

Attempted to assist Ethan in acquiring his new iPhone (though they were sold out and Travis and Ethan ended up getting it in St. Louis late on the 11th). I didn't pick up a new iPhone for myself because the monthly fee would have been $15 more than my current deal, though I did upgrade the firmware to get the new applications. I like the potential for the Yelp! application, though I've not used it for real yet.

Hung at Noir with Guido, Julie, Jantina, Emilie and Janel, and ate a horseshoe at Muggsy's after "The Hop."

Priced out various home improvement / repairs; carpeting for the front room, flooring and drainage for the back porch, water-powered backup sump-pump, basement window replacement, roof repair, etc., etc.

All-the-while working remotely during the day, we were still able to pack in a lot of time with friends and family after-hours and over the weekends. Caught quite a few lunch breaks with David too. It was good.

Small site update: I added My and Guido's tweets on the left under each of our "links" drop down lists.

In Lincoln

2008-06-26T08:31:00.014-06:00

Jantina and I drove to Lincoln last Thursday for my test on Friday (I passed!) and summer camp on Saturday. Weather was awesome and I had a great time! I was originally planning on heading back this weekend, but I have some work meetings in Bloomington and Chicago, and with things slowing down for July 4th (lots of people taking vacations) it made sense to stay here for a few weeks rather than going back and forth. We are excited!

We've been making the most of our time back.

I've been able to workout with the rest of the karate class on Tuesday and Thursday
David came over for dinner earlier this week, we played some San Juan afterward.
I saw Brett last night, we ate an original "The Mill" schnitzel for dinner from Hallie's downtown and then played some Guitar Hero.
Heading on a triple-date with Emilie-Les, Travis-Grace, Jantina and I tomorrow to go see "WALL-E."
I'm hoping to hang at Noir sometime too.

I made a small change to fuzzycouch.com. I added an icon for iPhone users adding fuzzycouch to their home screen and also redirect iPhone users to the RSS feed for easier readability and it keeps things fast. Let me know what you think!

Update: Do you like 1) this better than 2) this on the iPhone?

New places to eat:
Nami, Minneapolis
Hallie's, Lincoln
I'm also recently addicted to Starbucks Double Shot on Ice (decaf)

Out of the house

2008-06-14T01:17:00.005-06:00

This afternoon -- since I had the day off -- we went to see "Kung Fu Panda" with friends Wes and Kacey. I really enjoyed the movie and how much Jack Black came though in his character. The animation was great, most of the character design was interesting. Some of the celebrity voices seemed underused, but that was just something I noticed ... not necessarily something bad. We all went to the Magic Kitchen for Thai food and I seriously stuffed myself.

Yesterday was Julie's birthday. We went out for sushi after Ultimate (where we had a great turnout with lots of new players). Julie and I picked some really good sushi rolls. Then we picked up a birthday cake this evening. I ate a piece even though I was still very stuffed.

I added a little snipped of code from MyBlogLog over on the bottom of the right column here on fuzzycouch.com a little bit ago. I'm not sure if it'll end up being useful enough to keep, but I thought I'd try it out.

After seeing lincolninjacksonville.com, I had another group ask me, yesterday, to design a site for them. I'll be sketching something out post-haste.

Guest Emilie

2008-06-02T13:43:00.004-06:00

Emilie came to visit us this week, we had a blast! She helped me train in the mornings; we worked out early and she went back to bed as I went to work. We went over Kata, Tai Ho Jitsu, and self-defense. I have a test coming up on June 20, so I've been preparing for that.

We also played Catan. She beat me her very first time playing, I don't think she could have had a better hand!

Throughout the week she also hit a fair number of malls, I'm thinking of at least four, but she only bought one top that was on sale, so that is pretty good (the rest went on her birthday list).

We ate at home, but also dinned out quite a bit. We went out for sushi, aged-steak, and hit several local dives throughout the week. We made our way to St. Paul on Saturday had brunch and visited with Matt, Mandy and Lucas. After we ate, we spent some time at the zoo as a group, that was fun (the weather was gorgeous).

She's on her way back to Illinois on the train now. I didn't think they would make it, they left here pretty late, but Jantina reports that she is safely on her way home. We had a great time.

New places to eat:
Trotter's
Origami
Manny's

Theater in series

2008-05-26T20:30:00.004-06:00

This is a post from Blogger in Beta.

Julie and I saw three movies in the theater this week. Unusual for us. Today, after lunch with friends, it was the new Indiana Jones movie; yesterday "Iron Man."

Here's a photo I took recently in the yard.

Iris, originally uploaded by utini.

Black Box

2008-05-21T11:00:00.003-06:00

I'm working the Black Box a.k.a. Sun Modular Datacenter event in Minneapolis today and tomorrow. Today I gave tours and tomorrow I'm speaking on a variety of topics: Identity, VDI, and other software offerings.

Going downtown

2008-05-19T00:34:00.004-06:00

Julie and I were about to head out the door, heading for Springfield to have some brunch when Cordova called asking for a ride. We stopped by and picked up Cordova and Ash, dropped them off in Springfield and headed downtown to Cafe Brio.

We had some trouble finding a parking place thanks to the Capitol Arts Fair going on. We would have like to go to that, too, if we'd have had more time. Cafe Brio was good, though the coffee was week. I had the Eggs Oscar and Julie had the french toast with pecans and blueberry syrup. I got stuffed ... not great for just before my regular Sunday Ultimate pickup game.

The weather was pretty perfect and we had a decent turnout at Ultimate. We played a round of Ultimate Showdown before heading home. We gave Cordova and Ash a ride back to Jacksonville.

Julie and I watched "Live Free or Die Hard." Josh loaned me his mower for tomorrow since I couldn't get mine running this week. Mowing is on my to do list for tomorrow.

Secure360°

2008-05-12T06:32:00.004-06:00

Working another trade show this week, this time it is local though. I'll be at the St. Paul River Centre all-day Tuesday. It can make for a long day, but it is fun.

We watched a few movies this weekend, Iron Man was better than I expected, we both liked it. Cloverfield was fun too. I also rented Rainbow Six Vegas 2, I think all developers should do this for sequels; when I started a new game, it recognized that I played the first one, so it gave me rank recognition and unlocked some equipment right away. That whole "welcome back" package was appreciated.

I've also been working out every morning, 5:30 AM most days. Its been great, but I've noticed that I've been gaining weight since starting that, even though I'm not over eating ... I have been drinking a lot more water though.

New places to eat:
French Meadow Cafe
Kabobi
Good Earth

Blessings on State

2008-05-10T23:49:00.001-06:00

There's a new bed and breakfast right around the corner from our house. Check it out at blessingsonstate.com. It looks pretty nice.

I'm slowly getting over the virus that gave me a fever of 103.4 on Tuesday.

Coming and going

2008-04-29T22:57:00.003-06:00

Today is a long-time coworker Steve Warmowski's last day. Julie helped me make some chili for a newsroom potluck we're having for lunch. That reminds me -- I need to check on it. ... It's doing OK, but taking longer for the beans to soften than expected. Steve is staying in town, so maybe I'll still see him a fair amount. We also have a new reporter starting soon. I hear she found an apartment, so she should be here soon.

I started working on a new Web site the other night and it was fairly frustrating. I lost track of time and stayed up way too late. Still lots to do on it.

We have an opening reception for our May artist at the gallery this Friday. That means we had a show come down this week and a show going up.

I'm also planning to go to an Ultimate tournament Saturday in Carbondale. That's a long drive after working all day Friday. It's going to be rough, I think.

I went to see the doctor about my shoulder on Monday. He wants to try even more rehab and is less gung-ho about surgery. My shoulder is still really weak, though.

Some sort of $700 computer went out on the car, but it's under warranty. I did have to nearly spend that much on tires, though ... ug.

Vanderslice

2008-04-19T11:34:00.003-06:00

Julie and I drove down to St. Louis Wednesday to see John Vanderslice play at the Billiken Club at St. Louis University. The concert was great. I bought a copy of his latest CD, though somehow I knew almost all the songs on it, I hadn't bought a copy yet ... and he signed it for me.

Heroes Happen

2008-04-19T08:07:00.004-06:00

Busy week coming up; I'll be in Des Moines for a marketing event (and seeing Toni, Christopher & their twins), then swinging through Illinois for a meeting in Itasca the following week. While in Illinois, I'll be able to catch karate class a few times and Jantina gets to help Kallie with her prom primping!

My XBOX "red-ringed" but I just got it back from repair (took about a month). I've been playing the new Halo 3 maps; the Heroic map pack is now free, and the Legendary map pack (has a remake of "sidewinder"!) is 800 points.

We've been watching the new season of Battlestar Galactica through Sci-Fi rewind! That was the biggest temptation for upgrading cable, but now we just hook the laptop up to the TV and watch it a day late ;)

Earthquake in Ill.

2008-04-18T12:39:00.002-06:00

Lighter sleepers -- I'm not usually included in that lot -- were shaken awake by the tremors from a 5.2 earthquake 150 miles away at 4:37 a.m. this morning.

The earthquake’s epicenter was estimated to be six miles northwest of Mount Carmel, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earthquake Web site.

Aftershocks were felt as far away as Grand Rapids, Mich. The latest aftershock about 10:15 a.m. had a magnitude of 4.2, according to the USGS.

My mom said it woke her. Troy, how about you guys ... too far away?

The Revolution's You

2008-04-07T22:35:00.001-06:00

There's a new story in the SJ-R about Josh Foster (formerly Smith) and the project he's been working on.

Powering down

2008-03-27T09:16:00.005-06:00

I had a new problem with my mobile phone last weekend. I had it in the special phone pouch in my Ultimate duffel bag for several hours before I looked at it to check the time, only to find it was powered down. It does that to keep from entirely depleting the battery. It had been almost fully charged when I looked at it that morning. It did this again once or twice on Sunday after I had a chance to charge the phone again.

My two guesses (as to what the problem is) include: (1) battery is dying, (2) buttons are sticking and causing the phone not to enter its power-save mode. I'm not sure how to test these out. Ideas?

While we were out and about in Lincoln on Monday we stopped in our cell provider's shop where they immediately blamed the battery, which they don't have in stock and can't check to see if they can get one without sending someone a form. Bah!

So I ordered a new battery on eBay and tried giving the phone a good cleaning with rubbing alcohol. So far, no massive power loss. But I have a backup battery on the way, anyway.