So I have a guilty pleasure. (ok, who doesn’t). Emily had been talking about this show that she thought I should check out. Normally I wouldn’t watch something like this, it’s not my style. I am more of the 24, Bones, Heroes type with a little How I Met your Mother thrown in for the laughs. Reality shows are not my bag. I can barely sit through an episode of American Idol now (though I did watch the first season fairly intently). I never even got into survivor. So when Em said I should check out “Beauty and the Geek” I kind of rolled my eyes.

Then I watched one. I got sucked in by the megalomaniacal machine that is reality TV. It was actually pretty good! It breaks the mold of the reality’s prettiest home videos. For those that don’t know, they took a bunch of Beauty queen types, Models and such, and paired them up with a bunch of Geeks. Geeks that would make me look like Tom Cruise. They team up and do different challenges and such to help round out each other as a person. The girls would have to do things that would be outside of their norm, like build a dog house. The geeks would have to follow suit by getting a girls phone number in the park. Granted I came into the show late in the game, but I was able to identify a little too well with some of the characters and it was cool to see the development non both the guys and the girls.

Well, last night was the end of the competition. There were two teams left and at that point, you see the growth and such of each person, you are usually pretty happy for whoever wins. Except one person. Cecille. She was one of the girls and from the start she approached the show for the stand point of “a reality show where the goal is to win” (they did a lot of flash backs and such so I could see from most of the start of the show). It seems like all the other people were there for the experience and were enjoying the time they had. Well, that came back to bite her in the end. The downside is that she was teamed up with Nate. Nate is the epitome of the nice guy. Heart of gold, helpful to anyone, and a huge star wars fan (always a plus). The other team, Scooter and Megan, were just all around awesome. They look and act like they had grown as people through the whole experience.

Well, as you can tell, I really started getting into the show. Andrew even came out to watch (hopefully he learned a few things and wasn’t just watching to see cute girls). I won’t ruin the ending for those who have DVR’d it and haven’t seen it yet. Not that I think it would be a surprise at all. Next week is the Reunion show and re-cap so catch it if you want to see what I am talking about!

Remember way back when I bought that ½ cord of wood that Don and I split? No? Oh yeah, I didn’t blog about it, but I did send a pic to the photoblog. Well anyways, as you can see, ½ a cord of wood is a lot. And ½ of that (1/4 cord) ended up on my patio. I remember looking at it and saying… “I will finish with this before the winter is done”

Guess what.

It’s gone! I threw the last few logs on the fire and it’s all gone. I may run out and get another 1/8th this weekend (or next week). Well lots of snow brought everything to a grinding halt around here (as usual). And it’s all supposed to re-freeze tonight for all the more fun tomorrow. Meanwhile back at Stately Wizzer Manor, It’s Valentines Day and I am here all by my lonesome. If anyone knows any hot red heads that want to venture up, from what ever warm tropical un-disclosed location they may happen to be in, for maybe some cuddling and smooches, please let me know!

Snow!
Originally uploaded by wizzer2801.

Yup, this is what I walked out to find this morning! My truck has a nice candy coated shell around it! It snowed a great deal, and then the sleeted, and then it froze! But then….. I LOVE IT! The roads were still being cleared so I was able to have some fun with the 4×4 on the way in to work.

Yet another weekend goes by at the speed of light. In some ways I feel I got a lot done, in others, not so much.

I am not even sure I remember what I did on Friday night. (woah, now I remember, I did the Happy Hour with some of the people from work! And learning how gross some of my work mates can be!) It was mostly just recovering from one heck of a week. High stress at the work place with some inter-personnel issues, and some rather sad news on Lee’s end. One thing I did try and do was throw in the new Vista disk and start an upgrade. Yeah, that didn’t go so well, but that leads into Saturday.

Happy Vista Day! I say that because Saturday was pretty much all Vista All day! Yeah I am doing the whole vista thing and going all the way, I have the Ultimate version. (No really, it’s called ultimate) Well, as I stated earlier, I started the install on Friday night. Well it wouldn’t upgrade, but it did give me the option to install to one of my clear drives. You see, I have 3 hard drives in my machine. SATA1 = 500gb, SATA2 = 300gb, and IDE1 = 100gb. My main drive is SATA1, so it said it would install to IDE1 and do a multi-boot. Silly me, I believed it! After the initial copy and configure, it needed to reboot, so I let it.

NTFS Not found
Press CTL + ALT + DEL to restart

Oh crap

So I try and repair using my XP disk. No Dice as the XP disk doesn’t see the SATA drives without special drivers (which can only be loaded via floppy disk, ……what’s a floppy disk? I haven’t had a floppy drive in years!) So I finish the install to the IDE drive and am able to see all my sad lonely files on SATA1. I start the move of the 100gb of personal data to SATA2 for safe keeping. This is going to take a while so I take a break from the PC and watch The Producers! Great movie/play/musical. Really makes me miss doing theater. Checking back on my copy…. Nope, not done yet.

When the copy finally finished I was able to install Vista to SATA1 and do all the updates and such. I cleaned off IDE1 and started the migration of my data back to SATA1 from SATA2. (copy, not move. Just in case). I also went about installing any excess drivers I needed for the network card and such. I also got to play with the Media Center stuff (the 360 acts as an extender). I also had to reinstall my Zune and such, which meant a wipe and reload on the Zune as a new association with the new OS. So now I am copying 100gb back to SATA1 and copying 30gb to my Zune. Time to run to the mall!!

I managed to find a gem at the mall too. At the FYE Movies they sell some used DVD’s and I uncovered a $6.99 gold mine! The 2 disk Animated full series of Clerks! Yeah, I had to pick that up. Andrew and I also took some time to have dinner (yup, it was around 6pm by now) at UNO’s and visit some the usual stores.

When I got back home, I checked on the copy. It was only ½ done!

“Windows requires administrator access to move this file, do you want to allow access?”

Ugh! Yes, allow access. Well, now I get to watch some Clerks! 3 episodes later, the copy is done and I can start re-configuring my machine to like it was. Installing Office, installing Money 2006. Moving all the My Documents files to their right locations (Vista has a new layout for all the files). Ok, take Vista disk out of drive so I can install, install program, reboot……

BOOTMGR Not found
Press CTL + ALT + DEL to restart

What?

Ok, drop the Vista disk in and reboot to the disk, run the Starup repair utility and reboot, all is good! More installs, take Vista disk out, install disk in, another reboot….

BOOTMGR Not found
Press CTL + ALT + DEL to restart

Ugh! Vista disk in, reboot and distracted with Clerks…..Machine boots up. But I didn’t boot to the DVD? Ok, so a few searches on the internet (on my Powerbook, how’s that for Irony) and I found that Vista uses a new boot tech called the BCD (Boot Configuration Data) and that mine was all borked up. You see, I could boot up fine when the disk was in, but not without it. I was able to find a utility that showed me what the problem was. My BCD was written as such: (edited down for important parts)

Windows Boot Manager
——————–
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=D:
description Windows Boot Manager

Windows Boot Loader
——————-
identifier {default}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe

So, my BOOTMGR was looking at the D: drive (IDE1) and my windows was installed on the C: drive (SATA1). After looking at 2 different utilities and many different forums, I found the proper way to use the BCDedit program that comes with Vista and changed the Boot Manager device to C:.

For the record the command I used was:
bcdedit.exe /set {bootmgr} osdevice partition=c:
bcdedit.exe /set {bootmgr} device partition=c:

Then I moved the hidden directory of [Boot] and the hidden bootmgr file from IDE1 to SATA1. After that, I booted to the DVD and ran the start-up repair utility again. This time it found an fixed a problem. The big test…..reboot! I took the disk out and crossed my fingers.

YATTA!! It worked! 2 hours of diagnosing and I finally fixed it! That was the big hurdle. Everything else is just tweaking to personal specs and such. I imagine I will write up more thoughts on my Vista experience after I have used it for a few days. I was exhausted.

Sunday I took it easy. I picked up the VGA cable for the 360 because I heard that’s the only way to get it to upscale DVD’s. It also makes some of the games a little crisper as well! While I was out getting that I picked up BeerFest on HD-DVD! I had to sit and watch that. It is probably the most ultimate guy movie I have ever seen! And absolutely hilarious. It was the much needed laugh that I needed after the last two days.

I probably flatter myself that I have 3 whole readers. Anyways, I made it to my appointment and was nervous as all heck. First thing in the nurse asked if she could get a Urine sample. This was a good thing as I had waited on going all morning and I had a good sized glass of water the night before. How many jars did she need filled? I got a little worried though, there was this metal hatchway between the bathroom and lab that she said to set the sample in. This is all fine and everything, I did my stuff and capped it, when I opened the door to put it in I was a tad apprehensive. You see there was another jar there. And I didn’t remember her telling me to wrote my name on the jar, Thoughts racing through my head of some weird lab mix up, I finally broke down and asked. Then I had to learn to write sideways on a jar of my own juice. FUN!

Once in, the Doc seemed fixated on Ticks. I hate ticks. More than frogs! This of course led to a rather embarrassing story of geo-caching and stripping down on Doc’s front patio. Ask me if you really want to know. The doctor told me I should spread that story around too much though.

The suspense part comes in that, while outwardly I am very healthy (albeit with a strange sense of humor) but the blood work will take a while to come back. The verdict is, a Card in the mail means I am all clear. A call from the nurse means something mild, a call from the Doctor for a new appointment means I start freaking out. Either way it’s going to be about a week. Cross your fingers everyone!!

So tomorrow I have an appointment for a psychical. I haven’t really been to a Doctor in probably about 4 years, if not more. I am not talking about the whole “I feel ill” sort of visit, but a full blown “drop yer drawers” visit. I have to say it is scaring the crap out of me. I kind of wish they had an appointment available when I called just so I could get it done that much faster. This way was a full week of anticipation and nervousness. See, the thing is that I am 32 years old and over the past few months/years I have been noticing things that I should probably have gotten checked out a long time ago. But at the time they were all little things. One thing here, another thing there. Except that when you look back at all the little things, and see them all grouped in one big bunch, it’s kind of terrifying. I am thinking of these things because I know that when I go in, I should tell the doctor about them. In the past I have always just gone in with the attitude of “Nothing is wrong with me, I’m Spiderman!!”

Daily Bugle News flash: Spiderman is not invincible. He has gotten his butt kicked a number of times, broken bones, illnesses, and even a bad case of death. Unlike Spiderman, I don’t have a team of writers behind me thinking up new and interesting ways that I can be brought back from the afterlife. (Kind of wish I did). So this time when I go in, I will be telling the doctor everything and just hoping for the best. The appointment is tomorrow morning at 8:30am (EST)

See, that’s why we don’t have the super bowl on a Monday. It just doesn’t sound right! Well this weekend was the big game. I know that mot of you are probably saying “You don’t watch football!” You would be half right. I don’t mind watching sports games. Actually they are pretty entertaining. I just can’t do the whole team worship follow every stat of every player, know who scored the 8th touchdown of the 36th super bowl and what he wore to the after party sort of thing. (No offense Don). Besides, with the new TV I was really looking forward to watching the game in all it’s HD glory! (I swear I wrote this before you e-mailed me Em) But that was Sunday, let’s not get ahead.

Friday night was pretty busy. I stayed late at work and went to the Happy Hour over at the hotel with some of the Co-Workers. You know, Pool on the hotel tables sucks. I am so used to the tables over at Bungalow that it was difficult to switch up my game. Regardless it was fun to get out and blow off some work steam. Work has been getting pretty stressful as of late and I needed to vent. I couldn’t stay all that late though as I had to meet up with Doc for our latest round of BattleStar Galactica! We were behind by 2 episodes and he hadn’t been over since way before Christmas, so we had some catching up to do. We got to talk about his latest endeavor, pirating the open seas (sort of) on the Kalmar Nyckel.

Saturday morning was kind of blah. I have been having an issue lately where I am overly tired. I tried to get going on Saturday but just couldn’t get the steam and ended up crashing out again till about 10:30. When I finally forced myself out of bed I got dressed and headed down to the mall. Anything to get me up and moving. This ended up being a good thing as I got my Oil changed in the truck and made an appointment with H&R Block. So I was a little productive. In the afternoon I went and played some pool where I heard a vicious nasty rumor that Laura may have been fired! (Laura being my favorite waitress for the last 2 years!) This will be investigated on Tuesday of course. Saturday night was quiet. Heather came over and we watched Underworld: Evolution. Overall, not bad.

Sunday was the game day! I set about cleaning up the house and getting some last min food. Don and Jen were coming down, Andrew had one of his friends over and Paul was supposed to show (but flaked, no big surprise). Somewhere in the mix I managed to get away and get the latest run of comics as well. So, the menu (of which I had way too much of) consisted of all guy food. We had Tostitos, Doritos, Spicy Thai chips, Queseo dip, Guacamole, Buffalo Wings (50!!!) Bagel Bites, and Brats. Too…….Much…….Foood…. The game was good, close the whole way. The commercials were great as well. If you want game highlights, I am sure Don’s site has everything you could want. As for the commercials, here are my top 3:

Did I say 3? I meant 4:

Ahhhh Yeah!
Originally uploaded by wizzer2801.

This would be my 2600 hooked up to the 37inch tv

.Ok, I officially LOVE my HD TV. I know that sounds goofy but it’s true. You never really know how much standard def sucks till you watch it on an HD TV and see HD right next to it. My new HD cable box/DVR came in on Monday and, while it’s certainly no Tivo, it does have some nifty features. The main one being that I can record 2 things at a time, both HD if I want. This comes in handy as Heroes and 24 are in the same timeslot and both are broadcast in HD. I am also taking advantage of the “new cable box syndrome.” You know how when a new box gets hooked up for the first time, all of the pay channels are active for a short period? Well, HBOHD and ShowtimeHD had some good movies playing so I had the DVR record them. Problem is that they tend to take up quite a bit of space.

One of the things I will miss is the ability to pull things off the Tivo to archive them on my PC. See my PC has a metric crapload of space and the Tivo allowed for transfers. While I still have the Tivo in the bedroom, it’s not the same. Ah well, maybe I can save up and get one of the new Series 3 HD Tivo’s. Right now they are just too much. In the meantime, I am going to need to hit the store sometime this week to stock up for Sunday. This will be the first time I have seen the Superbowl in HD!! Super Sweet!

Finally back to the daily grind! I know this sounds kind of funny, but after all of the holidays and travel and everything else that was going on, it’s kind of nice to get back to the norm. Don’t get me wrong, I love extra days off, but when you are trying to get some work done that you know will be taking a few days, a short week kind of un-motivates you. So no more worries about that! Things are folding back to the standard daily routine.

Andrew has started guitar practice at one of the local music stores. He really seems to like it and says that he is getting chords down pretty well. He tries to explain the transitions from A to E to C and some other things, but most of that goes over my head. I do drool over some of the drums they have in the store though. He also should be starting up with Little League again here soon. In the meantime I have been on him pretty hard about school and getting decent grades

Our recent trip to FL went really well. Both Andrew and I got to visit with Emily and see some of the local sites. We even made it down to St. Augustine to visit the main downtown area and see the Fountain of Youth. Yes, I took a drink, and no, I don’t think it’s working. I am still pretty crotchety. One of the things that I know Emily and I were both looking forward to was to just relax and spend some time together. We squeezed in a few movies on the couch and even picked up the first season of “How I met Your Mother” for her to see.

Speaking of Seasons of shows. I have recently become addicted to “Scrubs.” I am not sure why it’s taken me 5 years to find this show, but it is chocked full of funny! Katie (friend from work) has the first 4 seasons on DVD and has been loaning them to me. Sadly, I polish off all three disks of a season in usually 3 days. So if you happen to have me on your Xbox 360 list and see me “Watching a movie”, it’s probably me watching more scrubs.

On the subject of the 360, I have stepped into the 21st century! Now you know I picked up an Xbox 360 a while back. And the 360 looks great on my 32inch Sony Trinitron. But it doesn’t look Awesome. I had been wanting a new TV for a while and finally saved up the money (and found an awesome deal). Microcenter had a sale on HDTV’s and I found a 37inch LCD that fit my price range. The quality is amazing and I did quite a bit of research on it before picking it up! Even better, I paid cash! No putting it on credit! So now I am truly in the Digital Age. I got to watch “Heroes” in HD on Monday night and it was amazing. To all those people who say they can’t tell the difference, Come over, I will show you the difference!

One movie that I can’t wait till it comes out in HD is Pan’s Labyrinth. I went to see this in the theater and I was stunned. It was truly one of the most amazing films I had seen. The effects were simple yet amazing. And the story was the same. On the front it was just the story of a war and a girl, but it had so many underlying tones that I was riveted. This is a MUST SEE, but keep in mind a few things. 1: It is a Spanish film so there are subtitles. 2: It has a number of scenes that get pretty graphic. I was cringing and hiding my eyes a few times. This one is not for the kids. It goes beyond your average slasher/horror (because it’s neither one of these) but the violence is very realistic and very graphic.

So now that things are back to normal, I need to take a look at my own daily routine and see what is in my line-up. The next big event will probably be Farpoint. This would mark my 3rd Farpoint! It’s weird to think about being here for 3 years so far. With the whole military things I was always moving close to every 2 years. 2 in Okinawa, 1 in Korea, 2 in Denver, and The Pentagon had me for just about 3 years. I was also reminded of my daily (or I should say weekly) routine of pool playing yesterday. Every week I go play pool at Bungalow Billiards during lunch. This is usually on Tuesday. I almost always have the same Waitress as well, Laura. Well, I have been doing this for about 2 of the 3 years here and I was told that I was Laura’s oldest longest lasting regular that had been around the longest (there is no real easy way to phrase that)

Not sure where I was going with that run. Anyways, with the routine coming back, I will try and get back into the swing of posting more often. Oh, on that posting thing. We just passed 300 posts!!! The first post was made on January 23rd 2004! Happy 3rd year!