Caesary Chavez

Cesar Chavez is one of my favorite people this week. Who is he and why, you ask? His name is Cesar E. Chavez, and when pronounced really quickly (as in on the radio the other day) he sounds like a nice, flavorful dish. And, according to a sign posted at the ECEC (my work) last week, and I quote "ECEC will be closed March 28 due to Cesar Chavez." Why wouldn't he be one of my favorite people? So Chris and I got to take the day off after 2 very crazy stressful weeks. We had big plans for Friday. We did. But when you wake up and it is overcast and only about 55 degrees, it makes it really hard to want to go to the beach and go body boarding. Wah wah wah, all of you who live in the cold say, but 55 IS cold here, (no matter what you try to tell me!) Anyway...we spent the day playing video games, cleaning and sewing. Which I think is just what we needed...a day off.

Hmm one more reason I'm glad I don't drink

So this came courtesy of my friend Natalie (the link was on her blog). I don't know that there's much I can say other than- wow, another reason not to drink.

Don't Drink and Think

Chris

Back to Vegas- a look at a game I shouldn't want but do

Just a quick heads-up to those of you who game. R6 Vegas 2 is out. This is so bad... what do I do- do I long for the joy of playing R6 Vegas 2 which is sure to be even better than R6V, and by doing so know that I am forsaking my extremely capable guy on CoD4, OR do I say, "Well there's always a few months from now for R6V2, and honestly will I want to play MP?" Cause see all along I never thought I'd ever play MP much, not with friends. Turns out when friends aren't near by, or readily available I still hop in to a few rounds of CoD4- now Alicia knows that this is usually a bad choice cause I just get mad at the people playing, but yet like a glutton looking for another whipping, I just keep playing. THIS btw is how CoD4 became a time-suck beyond all others. So my concern is do I want to try a new game (which I know I'll love b/c I'm a R6 addict, even more than CoD- thanks to Ed, who got me stuck on R6 to begin with).
See here's where I have to wax sentimental for a minute. R6 is where I cut my teeth in LAN partying. What exactly does this mean? Well let me show what 2:00 AM on a weekend in the TownHouse may look like:













So on top of just the normal great gameplay and all, there's this whole... "I Heart R6" and it brings back great memories on top of it all.
So there's the conundrum. To buy or wait? Chances are I'll wait- I've got lots else to do, but still it is nagging at me.

BTW- To make matters worse I do have a gift card to buy at least part of it... man oh man, what do I do?

AWOL

If a blog is left alone in the forest with no one to post does it cry? Yes.
Sadly our blog has been weeping for a week now. I wrote a post, but haven't had time to append the pics, so it sat. I attended the AVA concert and was planning on writing it up, but I haven't. And then my parents came into town for a few days, including a glorious escape to Disneyland for a couple days. Again, I was gonna post- but I haven't. Oh yeah and in the middle of all this I have worked way TOO MUCH (like 60+ hours a week- even nights at home working :( ) And through all this, neither Alicia nor I have been able to get close to the blog. And yet it sat, sulking like a lost suitcase on the side of the information superhighway. But now we're back. Hopefully over the next few days I'll get some of these posts up, and with Alicia's help we'll catch everyone up to speed.

Chris

Gettin' Rich with Sunshine Dollars

So recently we were playing BANG! (feel free to ask me for a good banging) with our friends Jason and Elise. During the out of control gaming we were talking about how poor wages were in SD versus costs of things like rent. It was at this point that Jason told us during his recruitment to his previous job he was told that even though the pay was not commensurate in respects to other locations/work, that they also paid in Sunshine Dollars (a la living in Sunny SD). That of course got me laughing and thinking simultaneously (a dangerous habit, I know). So when I was recruited to the BMS program here at UCSD they too talked of a lack of equal pay to cost but that it WAS San Diego. So was that the scientific way of saying, "Hey we'll pay you in sunshine dollars."
So as part of my goal to always save more I have officially opened up my SDSD account (San Diego Sunshine Dollars). Only question now is: Do I have to make a payment every time the weather is gorgeous? If so, how much? Can I buy my way out a gray weekend?
The irony of it all is how true it is. Alicia and I have often talked of the fact that if we'd have chosen to go to UW it'd be different. We'd own a house, I'd probably ski more, wouldn't surf, and oh yeah, people wouldn't just happen to want to come visit us for a few days. Interesting. That being said, we often talk of how nice it is having a beach a few minutes away, bicycling year-round, and the fact that I have palm trees out side my window. Oh yeah and the pay really is good here- if you count the SD ;)

Now to make everyone jealous, I had to go down to SIO to last week (Scripps Inst. of Oceanography (its part of UCSD just down on the coast more)), so I decided to take a few pix while I was there:

So this is about 50' from the building I work in. A great place to eat, as long as you don't want to go back to work any time soon.


This guy was making me jealous- wish I could join him, he looks lonely.

Christmas comes but twice a year

Right now is one of those moments I wish I had a camera. See, a couple days ago I had to call EA to get a replacement guitar sent out for Rockband (mine had started to act funny). It was a painless process (a true first in customer service). I was told there are two options 1) Have them send me a box, send my guitar, wait for them to get said guitar, wait for a replacement to be sent to me, or 2) Have them send me a guitar in a box, and then send mine back to them (free- but I had to have them place a hold on my card). Wow, choices... OR NOT! Umm I'll have you ship the guitar so I can at least always have a guitar with me. So here I am today 48 hours later and voila! I have a guitar in my hands. WOW 48 hours to ship and get to me from Michigan. Not bad...not bad at all. I'm well over impressed with the service I received. I wish ALL customer service was this efficient. Too bad I'm now spoiled. Thanks EA, you set the bar extra high on this one. Now to everyone else out there- you better shape up, cause I know it's possible to get great service, even from a huge company.
So why the camera in the beginning- simple- I have a guitar at my desk in lab. Who doesn't think that truly is a great photo op?

Foreign Frat Parties with Guns!

***Warning: The Following is NOT a political statement. I am fine with the war, I don’t frown on the marines, or the armed forces. Instead I frown at how stupid we as a nation are.***

He he he, nothing better than getting the boys together and being crazy, foreign style! Now the goal here is not to be political in any way shape or form- no, no. I merely want to point out some really funny realizations that Alicia and I came to recently while watching the news. Once again there were marines in the news for doing stupid things- foremost among them was the “potential abuse of a puppy.” Now in no way am I qualified to speak on it because all I saw was a simple video of the marines holding the pup by the scruff of his neck- very much the way a mother dog would. Now for those of you who cry at Old Yeller and mourn every road kill cat- I’m sorry, but I am apparently a calloused person as I didn’t even think twice of that. Well for whatever it doesn’t matter in getting to the point- these are 20 year old guys doing stupid things and the nation is shocked. Did I miss something? Did the “nation” never go to college? Did we forget movies such as Revenge of the Nerds, Animal House, and Old School. I just don’t get it. At what point did we think that sending 18-25 year olds was a good idea to represent America? These are teens to early college kids. Everybody remembers those guys in college, right? Now I understand that some of the demographic went to the sheltered bubble that is BYU but that being said there are still those guys hanging around at UVSC and in the grocery stores, gas stations, and concerts (not to mention Taco Bell at 2:00 AM) in and around Provo. Lets face it here’s what we’ve done: trained these guys and given them firearms, sent them to a foreign country with minimal supervision with a bunch of their friends, and now become appalled when they go and do the same thing that they would have done had they been back in America, in the Sigma Chi or Pi Kappa Alpha houses. Did I miss something? Honestly people, all we’ve done is create a foreign frat party, with guns! I for one don’t even bat an eye when I see what stupid people have done while serving over seas (and why should I? People do amazingly stupid things at home too). Am I just crazy? Am I so desensitized? Or is it maybe that I have such low expectations out of frat boys that this type of action merely serves to reinforce my stereotyping? No matter what it doesn’t matter in the end. Because as long as the marines recruit, and as long as we allow 18-25 year old kids not be under constant supervision we will get this type of action. I for one don’t care, in fact I find it funny sometimes, stupid frat boys! Now with GUNS!!!

A Quick Congrats

To Kevin and Pam:
Congrats on the birth of your son. Sounds like it was a wild ride to Ogden. Hope you guys are doing well.

Chris and Lish

Gettin' NASty in our house

Now I know what everyone is thinking? What on earth is this title? Well let me provide you with a quick link here. Yeah so still confused? Good, er, wait, bad. So what does this all mean- it means that the hundreds of pictures and thousands of albums of music that we own finally have a neat place to all party together. Plus it means they're safe (I have opted to RAID 1 the drives). We opted to get a sweet little D-Link NAS box and then a couple of 750GB drives. So while I have 1 1/2 TB of space since it's mirrored I only have ~740GB for storage- yeah I know I should think of upgrading. In the mean time it's nice to be able to have all of our music in one place, or so the theory goes. The reality is this means a WHOLE LOT of work over the next month as I try to inventory and rip ALL of our music. Good news, however, is I'll finally have a complete catalog of my music. Also I am looking forward to the fact that I can DDNS on it- meaning no matter where I go in the world I can access ALL the files (aka music and other) from the internet. Also of noteworthy to the few of you who have corrupted files that need a copy- FTP can be run off a DDNS-enabled server. So you should be able to get the file copies you need to repair broken discs and such. Just thought I'd share that excitement with the few of you who know what I'm talking about. Oh and on a side note- it's a sweet UPnP and AV server so I can stream the music/pix/vid to the 360, the PS3, and any other comp I have hooked up to the system. It'll be nice to not have to worry. AND it features a print server to boot so I can now print without having to turn on the Gateway. Who knew a little box could be so useful!?!
The cool factor is pretty low- until you see the unit- it's about 5" tall x 7" long x 4" wide- smaller than a toaster with 1 1/2 TB of data- WOW!

btw- the Geek factor is uber high on this! (couldn't resist)

Changes and Housekeeping

Sorry to inform everyone, but, "I (and now you) can't get no." Yup instant satisfaction has been taken away. Yeah because of the problems with spam "commenters" we've had to put an approval button on the comments. Don't worry, we'll post everything from everyone, we just are sick of unsolicited "Click here for free Rx" crap. Hopefully if it goes away we can take that off, until then Lish and I will try to check the blog a few times a day to allow for "current" posts. Weekends- I make no promises.
Until then Cheers!

**UPDATE** I've found a sweet JavaScript that I can run that enables me to automatically approve a whole bunch of peeps AND also filter keywords- so for the time being partial SATISFACTION has been restored.

After the flood all the colours came out...

It was a beautiful day. Don't let it get away.

You know the irony of drought is that every time you hear about it, it rains. So is calling a drought the modern version of a rain dance? Does this make meteorologists no better than some crack-pot shaman? or ode sit make them superior because they can actually get it to rain? Either way I'm sick of the rain.
Yup in the last month we've had 3+ inches of rain. YIKES! The beauty of the rain is how clear it is after. Starting Monday it cleared up, now we have 75 and sunny. The ocean looks so gorgeous. I think in some ways it's worse because now I have to fight the urge to not work and instead play outside or ride or go surfing. Oh well, I guess you win some and you lose some.

On an unrelated note-

Thanks Shane for my new favorite BuzzBite Ya picture. This trumps anything you could ever take during the ride.

The Star of India (& other fun things)

Okay, so this summer Chris and I are going on the infamous pioneer trek. Yeah, yeah, pretty much everybody did that when they were 15 or whatever. But what's cool is that we get to go as a Ma and Pa. And since it is such an ordeal to go to Wyoming from San Diego, our Stake is making the most of it. So we get to experience 'just what the handcart pioneers did'. Starting from the time they left England.

Last Saturday we got to go visit the Star of India, a sailing ship kind of similar to that which the pioneers sailed on. This is us with the Star of India in the background.

To see the Star of India, you buy a ticket to the San Diego Maritime Museum which includes several boats including the HMS Surprise, which was used in the filming of the movie "Master and Commander."

This is Chris steering the ship into battle.
This is me actually steering the ship from below deck.

Below is Chris's favorite part of the museum, the Russian sub.

So this is one of the coolest symbols I think I've ever seen. Don't get too close or lightning will come out of your head and hand (who knew?).

The Happiest (?) place on Earth

Ahh yes Disneyland. I know it was a week ago we went but I finally decided- cause I guess Lish won't- to talk about all the joys and entertainment that can be had. For those of you who may not know Alicia and I are Disneyland Addicts. The Rides? Yup. The Freaks? Yup. The Costumed Characters? Yup. Parades? Yup. Mickey pretzels (esp the jalapeno cheese filled ones- the cream cheese aren't bad either)? Yup. Hot Chocolate in a mug to end it all? Yup. We could live there if they'd let us. So anyway back to the case at hand. It was 11:00 AM the park and only been open for a couple hours when we stumble across this:


WOW!?!? Really- it's only 11:00 AM. And this guy was OUT! I walked up nice and close to snap this. There were people all around, food being served 10 yards from this guy, heck this is outside a store and across from 3 rides, and a huge children's attraction. So my only 2 questions are this?

1) HOW? How do you stay asleep like that?

2) WHY? What on Earth has led you to this point?

Exclusive! INSIDER PICTURES: Blue Steel- Exposed!

Here are some pictures of the interior...

A/C, MP3 jack, CD/MP3 Player

Love me some stick shifts, safety belts, and bucket seats

Plenty of room in the backseat...

Notice on the steering wheel are Chris's favorite options (cruise control and audio controls for his 6-speaker sound system) We also enjoy pushing the big red button (hazard lights)

and the craziest feature of all (so crazy it took us 3 days to notice it...) the sweet sunglass holder!

The FINALLY posted pictures of the "New-new car"

Here it is!!! Blue Steel!We definitely like the color...

and the 15" alloy rims...

fog lamps to boot...

and, no, no plates does not indicate stolen...

and we like the look of the rear spoiler too!

POST FLOOD!

The management of this web log wishes to inform you of the following:
This is just a heads up- there have been a few recent posts on our blog - some of them out of order (yeah that's me) so you may want to take a look-see at the older sections- cause you may have just missed the best post yet, or not.

Back for more

So this was once on the blog- I think I lost it when I was trying out new backgrounds. I'm just gonna link to the other blog that has posted:

Do's and Don'ts with the newborn

I highly recommend the whole book.
Man what more can I say.
BTW- I prefer "introducing the child to pets" myself.

New-New Car

It's really hard for me to get the title right. It needs to be read with a pause after the first new. Not two fast news, that just sounds ridiculous. So anyway...We bought a new car...see a couple posts ago. When we bought it, the assistant manager and sales manager that sold it to us apparently knew nothing about the product they were selling. So, as a result, they promised us a lot of things (air conditioning, cruise control, stereo w/audio jack, and new rims and tires). These features were not on the car when we bought it but we were assured that they could be added without difficulty. WRONG!!!!! Apparently the model we bought accepts none of said features, at least not without great difficulty. But they promised!!! (Besides the fact that we had already paid for said features...) So at this point we had 3 options...1)They would just reverse the whole transaction and give us our old car back...hmmmm nope, that isn't going to work, one of the main reasons we bought the car was because you took our old one... 2) They could find a way to get most of the said features put on the car (with great cost to them)--which isn't perfect but hey, most is better than none right? or- 3) They could find another car at another dealership and try and trade it so we could switch. That definitely sounded like a winning option.
So they tried. And tried. And tried. Or so we thought. Apparently through this whole process it was very important for us to be standing in front of them. We saw absolutely no progress-none- unless we were at the dealership in their faces. GRRRRRR! So they finally found some acceptable cars (with all said features, from the factory) We told them the priority order and the next day (IT'S A MIRACLE...) we heard that our #1 choice was good to go and that someone was going to go get it. (it'll be ready tonight or tomorrow for sure...)This is Friday morning. We don't hear anything else the rest of the day. We try to call--he's busy, he's not here, he's cutting a deal, he's too busy. WHAT!?!?!?! Just because you already sold me a car does not mean I'm not important! TALK TO ME!!! But no. So we again have to make an appearance at the dealership. And the guy is REALLY annoyed that we did. The car just got here, he tells us, and will be ready tomorrow afternoon for sure. No problem. We tell him we'll call around 2:30 the next afternoon he says great it will definitely be ready. So we called the next day at 4. He's busy. He's cutting a deal. REALLY? So, when he doesn't call us back...we show up again. Oh, uh, ummm...the guy didn't come in today that takes care of it. Sorry. SERIOUSLY?!?!?!? At this point, it's me (nice, calm, Alicia) that's mad. REALLY mad. So when he tells me that it will be ready tomorrow I find it really difficult to believe him. So I look him in the eye and ask...And what if it's not? What do I do if it's not? He's starting to feel a little guilty now, and replies, I'm not going to answer that question because it will be. So I look at him again as my eyes fill with tears and say, What if it's not? and walk out. Apparently, I should have yelled and cried 3 weeks earlier. Maybe it would have been resolved that much sooner. Because, as I have noticed on several occasions, crying works. The next day my car was finally ready. Finally. And yes it includes all said features, including being a manual transmission, plus a spoiler and fog lamps. (Wahoo!) But it is the same kind of car, in a steeley blue color and it's official name is Blue Steel... But I love it...and I'll probably never ever ever ever ever in my whole life buy a brand new car ever ever ever again.

Pretty sure I had more posts than this....

I could have sworn that in the last two weeks I'd posted. Well in my mind I did. So I'm not gonna talk about the whole car situation, I figure Alicia would/could cover that. I'll talk about the non-exciting, like friendly get-togethers. So the long story-short is when we lived in Logan we never knew a quiet weekend because we always invited everyone over. It was great- nothing better than me (Chris) ruining the solemn evening of Sunday by scoring crazy points in Quiddler spelling Sex Toys. Hey it's not my fault that every time I get the same three letters in my hand. So fast-forwarding to present- it's been a long time since we've had so many things going on with people that we don't get "down time." In fact, I can't remember the last time we got together with people so frequently. Now this sounds weird like a pity party, or some sort of heartfelt post of times past, or neat intervention now- it's not. It is a post of me observing that hey I remember how it was, and now it's kinda happening again. That's all. We've been to Brian and Erin's a couple times, Jeff and Kate's, became jealous of the Foster's place, finally got to see the Cook's house, had a slightly over-done RockBand party- who knew that 14 was too many for our apartment? It's been great. Now, however is the downside- I'm tired, and my house is a mess again. Oh well, it's worth it. Now if you're reading this in UT or ID: think back on any Sunday night you randomly showed up at the Townhouse and just start laughing, cause you know something funny will come to mind. If you're reading this is San Diego: think of the fact that Brady absolutely wanted to play, "Don't Fear the Reaper." Wow I never would have pegged Brady as a BOC fan- just goes to show you they're everywhere. On second thought maybe Brady just had a fever and every knows the only cure is, "More Cowbell."

Just can't get enough, just can't get enough

This was supposed to be the spot that I was gonna post pix and such from one of the RockBand/chaos parties we've had recently. Too bad that isn't gonna happen anytime soon. In the mean time I'll just tell you what addicted means- addicted is when Alicia is jonesing to play a game. Period. Anything that can make Alicia turn on the Xbox is pretty addictive, plus on top of that she gets the mic and instruments out. I love my wife, I hope she doesn't think this is meant to tease her, I'm just observing how addictive RockBand is some days. Oh, and on a good note we have opened up all of the songs so that means I can get my "Learn to Fly," fix anytime I want. So on a different note, I should inform everyone that the car woes continue. Hopefully we'll get it all fixed sooner or later. Oh yeah, and I am trying to figure out how to balance life, because now that Alicia has been recalled into RS, and suddenly I am doing more bishopric stuff than ever, I think I'm gonna lose it- oh yeah and we're still training for the Ride the Rockies bike ride this summer. Anywho- later. Yeah and maybe I'll get some pictures up someday.