I'm Going Down to South Park...

Just in case any of you ever wondered what the WiredMonkey might look like as a South Park character....wonder no more:



Just thought you might want to know.

Over the Holiday...

The posts have been lacking again - sorry about that. One thing lead to another...it was an evil domino effect. Horrible stuff those dominos. Evil dominos of blog prevention.

The holidays were nice. Had a great visit with A&E, ate lots of turkey and marveled at how quickly time can fly when you're having fun. Took a great road trip - Dublin Dr. Pepper plant in Dublin, TX. It's the oldest Dr. Pepper bottling plant in the world. Pretty interesting really. AND, we got to see the world's largest cedar rocker on our way there. Nifty!

Got lions and tigers...only in Kenya.

Then, once you've digested that... 5 more minutes.

Wheeee....

Crazy Day in North Texas

Mrs. Monkey and I got new phones yesterday, which finally got us away from Cingular. I don't have any particular complaint against Cingular, other than the fact that they gouge their customers every month for service. What we were paying for the service we got is really pretty shabby. We went back to Sprint, which is what her family has. That alone should save us some money with the all the calls about the mini-monkey.

Today was a day on the go for sure - lots of errand running and feeding of the little monk in the parking lots of North Dallas. We left for some lunch with friends around noon, expecting to be back around 2:30 or 3, and we got in around 7:30pm. Crazy day.

That's all I have for right now. Hope everyone is doing well while gearing up for the fun holiday here in the States coming next week. We're very excited about it, and have lots to be thankful for - this year more than most.

Dumb Rambling

The weekend is here - plenty of relaxing to be had, and hopefully a few exciting times as well. I really want a pizza. Advertising to those who are hungry and craving cheese should be unlawful. Unfortunately, I guess it's hard to know who wants the fromage and who doesn't. Bah. I want pizza.

I Love This Time of Year

It's a beautifully crisp night out tonight - weather that reminds me strongly of the Northeast. The air is very cold and smells like decaying leaves and far-off chimneys. Your breath hangs in the air after you exhale or talk...it just feels right. I really love this season the best, but can't point to just one thing - it's a combination of them all.

Mrs. Monkey and I are getting things in order to put Thanksgiving Dinner on the table this year. It's going to be a lot of fun this time around - we'll have Mrs. Monkey's mom and grandmother here, as well as our good friends A&E. We're very excited about the full table. I'm going to cook some of my famous pork stuffing and Mrs. Monkey is making her famous pumpkin pecan pie. Yum!! Any favorites out there? The stuffing is something my mom made every year and I just LOVED. I could eat it all by itself by the pound. What was your family's favorite dish?

Oh, and I have a TV in my office that stopped working a few months ago. It just all of a sudden up and died one day. Was the strangest thing... Well, I've tried to turn it on and see if it's running a few times but the status hasn't changed. So, I was sitting in there the other night, and I just had this feeling I should turn it on and check...I ignored the urge for a while, but finally I turned it on, just to appease the notion. Well, sure enough, it was working again. It was the weirdest thing. But, at least it's working again.

A Return to the Cool...

Seriously, Southwest Airlines? Why is the freedom to sit where you want such a big perk when it comes to airlines seating. Is this really what surveys revealed to be passengers' biggest gripe? Honestly? Keep the scary food, keep the limited leg room - let's make sure passengers can sit where they want? Whatever, Southwest.

We had a cold front come in today, and are finally feeling some more autumn-esque temperatures. I was really getting tired of the low to mid-80s temperatures in November. Not my idea of a good time, if you're writing this down. I like the cool, crisp autumnal weather. 'Course, a good number of you are saying, "well, don't live in Texas, dumbass." Fair enough.

I've decided to focus a fun link on hockey today, inspired by the cool breeze blowing in through the opened windows and the hockey game that is currently showing on my television (Stars and Sharks are tied 3-3, currently). I went on to YouTube, and doing a search of "Stanley Cup", was reminded about one of the best moments in Stanley Cup history - Ray Bourque finally getting a chance to lift the Cup (even though it was for that Colorado Avalanche team I hate so much). Yay Ray!

A Bit of This...A Bit of That...

Oops - missed a few. Well, you didn't think I'd make it all the way through the month posting everyday anyway, did you? I actually thought I might be able to, but oh well. Hey - I'm still going to do my best to finish out the rest of the month strong.

So, the Stars made a few moves today. They fired Doug Armstrong as the GM and replaced him with Les Jackson (who I think was the director of scouting operations - could be wrong) and Brett Hull, who will be "co-general managers". It's an interesting twist, and I didn't see it coming, for sure. I saw the writing on the wall for someone, and had a feeling it would be either Armstrong or head coach Dave Tippett who would get the axe, but I didn't think that Hullie would be one of the replacements as GM. He's definitely loved by the fans...maybe owner Tom Hicks and team president Jim Lites wanted someone in the front office that the fans wouldn't get angry at. Hard to get mad at the man who gave us our one-and-only (so far!) Stanley Cup.

In non-sports news....well, there's just not much non-sports news right now. My buddy Trog (I'll call him that for reasons known to him and the world of WoW) and I are going to see a theater screening of The Menagerie, which is a 2-part episode of the original Star Trek series. It should be pretty cool - we're both Trek fans (and not Trekkies...just don't have that kind of time to devote to a TV series....any TV series). That's on Thursday. Will let you know how it goes. They reportedly have cleaned up the film and turned it into a high-definition projection with stereo surround sound. It's hard to do something like that when your original is mono (I think it was recorded mono) and in "Panavision". But, fingers crossed....

Random fun video of the day: Wanna Buy a Ghost?

A Brief Entry...

Had a great time tonight - went out for a bachelor's party for a friend of BurntoutZen's and mine tonight. Saw a fun show by Poison Cherry (Glam is BACK baby!) - will have more info about that tomorrow. As I haven't gotten to bed tonight, this is still the 10th. ;)

Where's My Staple Remover?

I posted this site about two years ago on here, but I had COMPLETELY forgotten about it. GO. Become an NHL superstar, and then we can rule the league together!!

Whip Out Da Tongue and Squirt That Mofo!

A lot of my posts have been kind of Apple-centric lately (sorry to those MS fanboys & fangirls that might be out there), but what can I say - I work at an Apple-centric job and it's been moreso lately.

Anyway, today I got to take apart the LCD Screen on a 12" iBook G4. Wow. Man, it's really impressive how they orchestrate everything inside of those panels. The planning and coordination that goes on to make those things work as slickly as they do is really impressive. And I learned something - Apple was using Philips/LG flat panels when they made the G4 iBooks. Didn't know that - putting in the new one was lots of fun but, MAN....time consuming. Two hours flew by like it was 30 minutes. I get part two of the re-assemble, therefore, on Monday morning. I just couldn't wrap it up in one day.

The Stars dropped another game last night - was tough to watch, but I couldn't tear myself away. I just can't make myself believe that Phoenix is good enough to put up 10 goals against us in two games, but it's hard to argue with reality. But, so far on the four-game road trip, Dallas has gone 2-1, so the worst they can finish is .500, and that's not too bad for a Pacific Division road trip.

Time to get back to my iTunes library. Still trying to get it back in shape after the horrible accident. *sigh* All the music is there now, at least...it's just not in the Smart Playlists I had it in or rated. That's where more time at the computer comes in... Give it up for the big Pale Indoor Kid.

Oh - here's a funny for you: Word.

Apple Dinner

Today at work we had an impromptu visit from some Apple representatives. It was interesting, because I'm not completely Apple Certified yet, and don't have anyone that I work with who is...I am therefore at a loss, sometimes, as to how to use their help pages and support site. During the visit, they cleared up a bunch of things which was nice.

They also let me know about a "Bench Table Live" event that was going on this evening, and told me they would be doing some live demos, giving some explanations about the support site and providing food. Well, that was all I needed! It turned out to be a really nice event. The event was at the Palomino Hotel in Dallas - a relatively new hotel in a pretty nice area (right near SMU and Mockingbird Station). The food was VERY tasty, and the information was helpful. All in all, a good time.

Other than that - a quiet day. Thanksgiving is getting close, and A&E will be visiting. Mrs. Monkey and I are really looking forward to their visit. They're great friends and we have a great time whenever they're around.

Back to my hockey game and my beer... Oh, FU-D - you can get beer towers at several places around here, including Humperdink's (all their locations) and Blackfinn in Addison. Enjoy - and bring a designated driver...

The Guys' Evening

After work today, I went to go pick up my son. This is something I don't usually do - getting the Monkeyling from the in-laws, who watch him while Mrs. Monkey is in school and I'm at work. It's not because I don't want to do it, or like doing it - I simply don't have the tools to do it. I drive a little beat-up pickup truck, and though it's endurance is a trait that I LOVE (nearly 110k and no major garage visits *knocks on wood*), the lack of safe child-seating is a bummer. So, my wife, who drives the new car with the good 5-star safety rating, gets the job of fetching Little Monkey.

Well, she had a late day at school today, and so I took the car and got to go get him. It was a lot of fun, because he's kind of worn out from the day with the grandparents, but is just getting to the age where he recognizes me and will sometimes give me a smile when I see him. The kid's got one of the best smiles ever, I swear. The melt-your-heart variety. He'll be a lady-killer one day....he'll flash the little crooked smile and give them the big brown eyes.....it'll be all over for them!

Anyway, my son and I got a couple hours this evening of fun bonding time - laying on the bed while he showed me his Bruce Lee routine (lots of good punches and kicks), walking the halls of the MonkeyHouse, rocking in various chairs, bouncing on knees...anything to keep the cries back pretty much. And, by the time Mrs. Monkey got home, I had successfully squired him off to dreamland. It was a nice little victory, even though it was short lived - the little bugger was up 5 minutes after she was in.
But still - she got to come home to a sleeping baby. That's not so shabby...

Weather Musings

The kiddo is sleeping, and the dog is too...so I get a chance to chime in. I missed posting yesterday - yeah, I admit it - but I'm still staying with the spirit of NaBloPoMo as much as possible. Yesterday was just a bit difficult to get out here and make my mark.

There was a bit of a return to some cooler weather in North Texas, today. This was welcomed with opened arms by me. I much prefer the cooler weather to the warmer. I stand in contrast to my mom and sister there, I think. They were both happy to get away from Maine's climate, whereas I still occasionally daydream about living what that weather again. Don't get me wrong. Winter all-out sucks. But, no worse than Texas Summers kinda all-out suck. So, you trade out one for another. I used to joke that "you don't have to shovel heat". And this is true, obviously...but you know. You can always put on clothes....you can only take off so much...and then if you're still miserable, you're just f*cked.

Post-game Debriefing

First off - great game today. The Patriots bested the Colts in a nail-biter. The Pats won by 4 points, and I'm sure it's not the last time we'll see them.

There was a great turn out for the game - lots of fun New England folks at the bar. I bought a tower of beer for the group, but not enough people helped me to consume it. I need to go, because otherwise I can't work on the sobering that needs to happen in the next 10 hours. Good night to all!!

End of the Day Ketchup

Just squeezing in under the deadline...who knew this posting every day thing would be a difficult thing?

It's a great Texas fall day today (meaning temperatures in the low 70s as a high, which feels downright cool after nearly 6 months of 90-100 degree heat). The Little Monkey and I had our weekly Saturday outing - kind of created to give Mrs. Monkey a bit of a break and let her catch up on some studying or chores she needs to catch up on (or, as the case was today, relaxing in a bath for a while after mowing the lawn...).

Tomorrow is the big Patriots/Colts showdown. Superbowl XLI.5. Go Pats!

Hockey, Music & Monkeys

It's been rough watching the Stars play tonight. Currently, the score is 3-0 Phoenix with 5:27 left to play in the 2nd period. What's sad is that the Stars have had many more scoring chances than Phoenix. The Coyotes are just getting all the lucky bounces. Things just haven't gone the Stars' way this season so far, and I think one of the big reasons it hasn't happened is management's decision not to put all the money they had at their disposal to go out and get a big scoring winger this off-season. It's showing now.

Other than that, though, it was a good day. The weekend is here, finally. I don't think I posted about my misfortune with my music collection the other night. Tragedy struck when I came home from work to find that my CAREFULLY saved music collection that I had reloaded onto my new operating system just the night before, was missing. There was just nothing to be found. I'm not sure if I did it, or if someone else accidently deleted something (I left my account logged in, and a couple people had access to it...I don't blame them - it's my fault - but they might have accidently done it). Luckily, I got together with some friends a few months ago for a big music swap, and so all of that music is also on one of their hard drives. I'm getting together with one of those friends tomorrow to restore the collection. I miss it!!

I'm getting back to the game. Enjoy a preview of what could possibly be the worst movie ever (but, it does have a monkey skateboarding and playing hockey - still not enough though...yikes).

Monkey out.

Many Monkeys!

Okay, this is a bit of a test, because I haven't posted pictures since my cat passed away nearly two years ago. But, I'm sure we've had some technological developments since then, right? I think it said something about that on the back of the AOL Free Trial CD I got in the mail the other day....

What?? Oh. Here's a pic of my mom and my son and I. MONKEYS!!

NaBloPoMo and 80 Blatherings!

So, what is this gibberish you're reading above, and why should I start my blog posting talking about it? I'm glad you asked, Hector. You always were the inquisitive one of the twins. Quick, to the explanation stool!

Okay, so NaBloPoMo is a site that I stumbled upon after a late night of binge-drinking and yahtzee. Actually, I came across it while web-meandering from page to page (while binge-drinking). It started with a visit to an iLike page of a fan of Michael Penn...or maybe it was They Might Be Giants...who turned out to be the adorable Uber-Mom from Colorado, Greeblemonkey (sorry 'bout your state's Rockies, Greeblemonkey - they were a fantastic team this year and deserved better than to run into the Machine that my Red Sox had become at that point). Anyway, she had a link to her page about the Blog Posting Fiesta that was to happen, and I loved the concept. And HEY!! What better idea to kick start a person who has been posting a blog a month (at best) for the past year or two, than to challenge said person to post a blog a DAY? Yes folks...for those who haven't already followed the link and learned, NaBloPoMo stands for National Blog Posting Month. I view it as a tribute to bloggers and writers everywhere, and a call for them to do what they do best - or in my case, what they do monthly. (No, FU-D, I'm not going to make that comparison. Shut up).

So, that's the goal - we're really going to plunge deep into the WiredMonkey's psyche if you can stomach the ride long enough. Not that it's a grotesque or demanding journey...just hoping it's not so boring you want to get off the ride on Nov. 2nd. Heh. I hear you get a free shirt if you make it through Thanksgiving....

Anyhoo...so this is my 80th posting. Nice round number...it made me stop and a take a moment on what I've reflected upon in the past couple years. Not bad, but there should be more. Again, this is where this drive kicks in, I think. I've got lots going on to reflect upon now, and a few good stories to tell. The people will remain nameless (or dubbed with silly little psuedonyms, which is something that amuses me endlessly), so you'll get all the fun details. Now that you have the details, check back tomorrow, and you'll see something new. Yay.

P.S. Wouldn't it suck if my next posting were November 28th? Hah!
P.P.S. I love the idea of a label called "random". Eventually, my "random" posts will all be categorized neatly to read at once. That's awe-tastic.

Where's My Time Machine??

As I have been detailing (modestly and scantily) on this very blog, I have been growing my music collection on my Mac Mini (also known as Fred). Fred got a buddy last spring in the form of a 300 GB firewire drive, and some friends and I got together, shared our music collections, and promptly stuffed the firewire buddy to his gills. I do not exaggerate - I believe there was just over a gig of free space left when trading was finished.

Anyway, I have been transferring and consolidating music files...getting rid of duplicates, etc., etc. When I'm finished, I should still have nearly 200 GB in music, but there will be some space on the firewire drive to build a partition for back-up purposes. Then I can make sure I keep all of my music, photos, and other such important things. Just in time for Time Machine to come around on Leopard and make all of this tie together oh so nicely. Stay with me here...

So, this evening, I was wrapping up some of my "drive cleaning", and getting ready to outfit Fred with Leopard. I move over my pictures and document folders to back those up, and decide to give the disk a bit of a check with the Disk Utility feature on the install disk - make sure it's working okay and ready to handle the new OS. Here, we begin the fun...

First, as I'm verifying the disk, the utility starts spewing error after error at me - problems with several HP Laserjet printer descriptions or something to that effect. Kind of odd, since I don't use an HP Laserjet, and I'm not sure Fred has ever printed to an HP Laserjet. I'm sure it's some of the default descriptions they have on file so that Fred can be a Plug & Play wiz, but it's a pain that they've gone corrupt or whatever.

So, it goes through several thousand of those errors, and then locks up. Big Fat Beachball o' Death. Ugh. Not much to do at this point but to give him a restart and go in to run it again. This time, I get in there, and Disk Utility won't verify the disk. It starts and stops about 30 seconds in. Hrmmm....

Well, let's go back to OS 10.4.10, I say to myself. Let's REALLY make sure everything is backed up, and bring out the heavy diagnostic tools.... Ha, ha, ha. Of course not! Fred won't have it. Right during startup, Fred just shuts off. Going back in to the Leopard startup disk, the new installer won't even see the hard drive. It requires that I completely erase and re-format the disk before it will do any sort of verifying or installing.

Well. I could spend the lengthy (and probably costly) process of reclaiming the data through various outlets - there are options to get stuff off of dead/damaged disks. But, I really don't want to deal with all of that. And, aside from an iTunes Library file and some bookmarks in my Safari folder, I have complete backups of everything.

Things definitely could be worse. I could have NOT backed up my pictures and document folders before going in to Disk Utility. I have gone in there without doing so before. And, I could have no backup system in place, and be in a real pickle about what to do to recover my precious stuff. Really, what I'm left with is the realization of what a great advertisement this is for the new backup feature I'm trying to install on Leopard....almost makes you wonder if there is some conspiracy in place....to truly show you just how badly you need the product you are installing. Building consumer confidence through annoyance and data destruction! W00t!

Red Sox, Patriots and Leopards...Oh My!

It's been great to be a New England sports fan lately. The Boston Red Sox clinched their 7th World Series title last night after sweeping the Colorado Rockies. And, the New England Patriots have run their record to 8-0 after shellacking the Washington Redskins 52-7 this weekend. The sports pages are ablaze with disgruntled fans and offended, PC-geared, commentators who say the Patriots are "running up the score" on their opponents. Yeah, they are. Scoring records were made to be broken. Why SHOULDN'T the Patriots try to beat the other teams as much as possible. And to the Patriot opponents who have complained about the scoring, here's a tip: If you don't like it - stop them. It's that easy (or maybe it isn't, and that's why you're so upset).

Okay, so that's what's going on in the sports world, right now. At least, in my sports world. I'm working my butt off at my new job, trying to figure out PC mysteries and do my best to keep up with the Mac work we have had. Apple released OS 10.5, nicknamed Leopard, on Friday, and I've been doing my best to learn all the features. I haven't installed it on my Mac Mini, but I do have it up and running on my (work's) MacBook Pro, and it's been doing great on there. I like a lot of the features it offers, and it makes finding information on your computer pretty easy. I think once I have more things on this laptop, it will be a real time saver. Until then, it just kinda looks pretty.