Union Pacific's Great Excursion Adventure

“I am the eye in the sky, looking at you…”

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Friday – 31 July 2009
First and foremost: Happy Birthday, !

Sorry I only wished you a happy birthday in person and not on your Facebook Wall

It’s not my 9/80 Friday, but at least it’s quiet around here today. Maybe I’ll be able to clear a few things off my “To Do” list…

…of course, I might just have to add “Play Typing of the Dead” to that list, though. I wonder if I can justify it as “Training,” since it (theoretically) is a typing game/tutor..?

Stray Toasters

WHEEEEEE!

Namaste.

“Long live the Legion (of 3 Worlds)!”

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Friday – 24 July 2009
It’s my 9/80 Friday.
It’s not even 8:30.
So, why am I wide awake? (written when it was still “morning” in Utah.)

Oh, well.

Last night, SaraRules and I had dinner with OnlyAly, , Stephanie and Jason at MacCool’s, an Irish(-style) pub, in Foothill Village. I had been there once before, but not for dinner. I ordered the Finn’s Fries (think “nachos,” then take a left – it’s made with potatoes, rather than tortillas) for an appetizer. Holy cow… They were incredible. I had the Pub Steak for my entree. I was a bit more disappointed here: I asked for it “medium-well,” it came out “medium-rare,” or as might say: “They threatened it with the flame.” They took it back and recooked it; while it did cook through, it made the outer layers a tad tougher. All-in-all, it was a good experience and I’d definitely go back again.

The evening was spent lazily lounging around. Nothing wrong with that.

Today is also Pioneer Day in Utah. (And Missouri and California, according to one joke I’ve heard.)

Stray Toasters
Stray Toasters are preceding Four-Color Coverage today. Why? Because I think that FCC may get to be “a bit” lengthy and I’m going to try using the never-seen-in-this-blog “MORE” tag. Or, for a shorter answer: “Because I can.” So, without further ado:

Namaste.

Four-Color Coverage
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these; hopefully, I remember how it goes. Since it’s been so long, I’m also going to cover some of the highlights from the past weeks, as well. With that in mind, I’m going to use the “MORE” tag to cut the bulk of the text. Hopefully, it will work as expected…

Read More �

“Rang dang diggety dang a dang”

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Wednesday – 15 July 2009
I went out to dinner at Redrock Brewing Company with SaraRules, her parents and her grandparents. I had the French Onion Steak Sandwich (which, although very messy, was delicious) and washed it down with a tasty Cream Stout.

After dinner, I went to play ‘Clix with Chris. We decided to play a non-themed game, which allowed us to play with some figures that we hadn’t used before. I threw a decent team together…

  • Black Widow (Ultimates)
  • Captain Marvel, Jr.
  • Dark Beast
  • Iceman and
  • Spider-Girl

…but didn’t adhere to the strategy that I’d started with and put the wrong pieces in the wrong places at the wrong time. Thus, Black Widow – a lynch-pin in my game plan – wound up getting beaten down. Game plan go *poof*. Dark Beast fell next. Spider-Girl went next and was followed, very shortly, by Iceman. Despite all of this, CMJ did well… relatively speaking. He took a fair bit of punishment, but was still dancing toe-to-toe with Chris’ Hulkbuster Iron Man. In the end, he got taken out, but he went down swinging; I was impressed with the figure – I’ll definitely be putting him in the field again.  (Hopefully, with better dice rolls…)

This morning has been… not too bad, but there were a couple of items that were on the fast-track when I got into the office. One was fairly easy to deal with, the other was… out of my area of expertise. (I’m willing to bet that John Hodgman could have handled it, though.) Fortunately, a workaround was found and life continued apace.

Stray Toasters

Namaste.

“Carve away the stone…”

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Thursday – 09 July 2009
It’s supposed to be an NBN Thursday and my technical Friday… but this morning, it was pushing the envelope.  That’s not entirely true: GoogleTalk was a righteous pain in the keister this morning. For some reason, it decided to tell iChat and Adium to “Sod off!” It’s working now. So, all things considered, it’s still a good day.

Last night, while SaraRules went off to a Zumba class, I fired up City of Heroes and patrolled Paragon City with a pick-up team. The mission level was “a little high” on the first mission we ran, but the others went well. By the time it was all said and done, I had tacked a couple more levels onto Khnurn.

This morning, someone came over and commented about how large my monitor (the 42″ TV) is. I retorted that it is, in fact, large. He asked if it was for a project; I told him that it “kind of” was. He asked if it was for work or personal. At this point, I had a very quick internal monologue… that somehow managed to stay internal:

“Is this for a personal project?”

Come on.  Rub two – JUST TWO – brain cells together and get a synapse or two to fire.  If this was for a personal project, don’t you think that someone (ANYONE!) – from my manager all the way up to one of the execs – would have said something and/or repossessed it long before now? Idiotstick.

It didn’t help that this was one of my “not-as-favored-as-others” coworkers. *sigh* Monkeys.

Then I had a presentation to give in today’s staff meeting. That went well. At least, I think it went well. And really, that’s all I am concerned with right now.

Stray Toasters

I should eat something now, for I hunger.

Namaste.

“Code Monkey get up, get coffee… Code Monkey go to job…”

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Wednesday – 08 July 2009
The work week is half over. Selah.

Tonight is Corps Encore in Ogden; I don’t think that I’ll be attending this year.

Stray Toasters

Namaste.

“Little Red Corvette, baby you’re much too fast…”

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Tuesday – 30 June 2009
It’s the last day of June. I’m sure that this is important – or at least “notable” – for many reasons, but prime among them is the fact that the new IKEA bible catalog will be out soon.

Last night, we had a tasty dinner with SaraRules’ family. After dinner, and some errand-running, we headed home for some downtime. I started putting together walls for my new ‘Clix building. Of the eight main walls, I have five complete; the last three should go much faster. Then I can start in on the “lobby” section, which should go quite quickly. I’m looking forward to getting it completed.

This morning, I was at work at 0700. One of our teams has a couple of days’ worth of meetings and we had to get some networking ready for it. So, loonybin88 and I were in here – neither bright-eyed nor bushy-tailed – to get it taken care of.  Naturally, while we were wrapping up the setup, there was a pushy monkey who wanted to have something done his way; little did he know that he was mere moments away from having the closest live power cord plugged into a place neither God, Mother Nature nor Darwin ever intended for it to go. *sigh* Monkeys, go figure.

Stray Tourists Toasters

Right on to the friction of the day…

Namaste.

“In nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritu Sancti…”

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Sunday – 31 May 2009
Yesterday, SaraRules and I decided to visit the International Peace Gardens. We were concerned about the weather, it looked as though it might pour down rain before – or while – we were there. Fortunately, it didn’t. We were there for about an hour (give or take); I came away with over 200 pictures, but narrowed it down to roughly 160. Pictures of our excursion can be seen here.

Last night, we went to Arbavanel Hall to hear Bernstein’s MASS (1, 2, 3), which also served as Keith Lockhart’s final performance as Music Director and conductor of Utah Symphony. It was an amazing performance. There were roughly 200 performers on-stage – musicians, singers, dancers. It was an epic production; Mr. Lockhart chose well for his final work. The piece followed a Catholic Mass, over the course of which both the congregation and the celebrant come to question their faith. There are some themes that might prove disturbing to some, but as a whole, it is a great work of art.

Stray Toasters

Namaste.

Monday? Yeah, what of it…?

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Monday – 18 May 2009
Today is apparently International Museum Day.

It’s also a day that I’ve taken off from work. I’m not sure what we’ll be doing today… possibly a museum visit will be added to the non-existant agenda.

We didn’t wind up watching a movie last night, but we did manage to catch up on episodes of NCIS, CSI:, and Batman: The Brave and the Bold that we’d missed. While watching B:TBTB, I picked out Michael Dorn‘s voice as the main antagonist. (SaraRules looked at me a little askance, I told her that I watched a lot of Star Trek: TNG and DS9 and that Michael Dorn had done a lot of voiceover work.) I checked when the credits came on; I was right. Something that I wasn’t as sure of was the voices for Booster Gold and Skeets – they sounded like the actors who filled the roles on Justice League Unlimited. A couple of IMDb searches later and I had the answer. The roles were done by the same actors, Tom Everett Scott and Billy West, respectively.

Stray Toasters

Time to find some trouble to get into…

Namaste.

“Wanna live underground… Wanna live underground…”

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A few late-afternoon distractions have been discovered:

  • By way of and Not Always Right: May Contain Scenes of Gratuitous Bowie
  • Erfworld
  • From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” file: Woman rubs chili pepper seeds in her eyes after setting new world record
    I can’t just make her “Human of the Day.” It would be… too much of an understatement.  So, we’ll make her “Hardcore Human of the Day.”  Yeah, that’ll work.
  • Obama eases curbs on Cuba travel
  • Ariana Page Russell: The Human Etch-A-Sketch
  • We are in the midst of a server room upgrade. Along with this, we’re getting some new cabinets for servers. Julie fielded a call this morning from the shipping company to schedule delivery of the cabinets. She set us up for Thursday delivery.  Ten minutes ago, a driver from the company showed up… with the racks in his truck. We couldn’t take delivery for a couple of reasons
    1. The truck had no liftgate.
    2. We have no forklift.
    3. Our building has no loading dock.  (FAIL!)
    4. We weren’t expecting them until… um… Thursday maybe?!

    So, Julie sent the driver packing. The cabinets will be delivered… on Thursday, as agreed upon… in a truck with a liftgate.

Namaste.

Easter Recap

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Today has been a great day.

SaraRules and I got up this morning and went to Mass at St. Vincent De Paul’s Church.

easter2009
In our Easter Sunday finery.

It was a nice service with a nice homily – Change and the cross as a transformative figure. There was a little boy, about 18 months or so, in the pew in front of us who was quite entertaining (to us) and a bit of a handful (to his parents). The kid was well-behaved, but when his parents weren’t looking, he would take the opportunity to scoot up and down the pew. Comedy. Straight-up comedy.

We came back home for breakfast and coffee. I changed clothes and got ready to head to Chris’ for a few hours of playing HeroClix; he was teaching the game and we started up a three-way game on the Arena map. I had a team in mind to play – Young Superman, Gamora, Wasp (from The Ultimates) and Marvel Girl – but swapped Storm, Winter Soldier and Hawkeye in for Young Superman, Gamora and Wasp. I had a great opening couple of rounds (including a great opening shot on three targets with Hawkeye), but wound up getting caught between Chris and ‘zephyr and getting worn down. Quickly. It was still fun.  Chris and I are getting together Tuesday night for an X-Men vs. The Brotherhood/Hellfire Club game.  That should be good.

I met SaraRules’ at her parents’ house for dinner and a late celebration of Logan’s birthday. Both dinner and the homemade birthday cake were delicious.

Stray Toasters

And now, we’re going to watch Casablanca.

Namaste.

“1.21 Gigawatts!”

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Friday – 10 April 2009
Another 9/80 “on” Friday. There are rumors that it’s supposed to be in the 60s today.  We’ll see how that pans out.

Last night was a lazy Date Night: We had pizza and watched this week’s NCIS (Thanks, On Demand!), CSI: and then Aladdin, which is still one of my favorite modern (pre-Pixar) Disney movies.

Stray Toasters

Time to see what kind of trouble I can get into today…

Namaste.

“Superman and Green Lantern ain’t got nothing on me…”

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Tuesday – 07 April 2009
It’s another good morning in Granada Hills.  I don’t get why Superman moved to Metropolis; this place was made for Kryptonians and Daxamites: It’s 1030, sunny and already 61°F.

It seems as though SaraRules has found “The Dress.”  In fact, she and her parents just left to pick it up. I’m not sure what all is going on today. Various and sundry forms of “shopping” are going to be involved, as far as I know. *shrug* I can live with that.

Stray Toasters

…SaraRules and company just got back with the dress. (Which I will see in six months.)

Namaste.

“On the road again…”

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Monday – 06 April 2009
Day One of the Sunny Southern California Adventure. Well, I guess this is technically “Day Two,” since we got in last night. *shrug* We’re here to:

  1. …visit SaraRules’ aunt, uncle and cousin
  2. …see her sister and
  3. …to let her get in a bit of dress shopping with her mother, sister, aunt and cousin.

I’m hanging out with her father and uncle (or, as SaraRules calls it: “Listening to them sit around and tell lies…”). We’ve been having a good time while they’re out gallivanting.

Yesterday, SaraRules and I got up, watched an episode of The Brave and the Bold, packed up, ran a couple of errands and then headed to her folks’ place to get on the road. We stopped at the In-N-Out Burger in Vegas. (Tasty burgers and fries, with chocolatey shaked milk!) The trip, while long, was rather uneventful… although, we did encounter many road monkeys. (Uneventful pictures here) When we got L.A., I met the family: Marie, Stan and their daughter Angela.  And then… SLEEP! (It’s amazing how tired just riding in a car can make a person.)

Today has been fairly low-key. We started off with breakfast and a fair bit of catching up, then the ladies were off to hunt for dresses. So far, we (the guys) have gone to Target, Best Buy – where Steve and I introduced Stan to the joys of Mac – and an Italian deli. Amusing side story: Steve and I were talking about the different flavors of Mac (Mini, iMac, Pro and MacBook) and discussing some of the features when a sales associate walked up… whom we effectively ignored. He just stood looking while we talked up the machines and their software to Stan. He silently wandered away at some point, because I turned around again and he was gone.

I’m not sure what’s on tap for the rest of the evening.  I’m good with that, though; that’s what “vacation” is all about.

Stray Toasters

The weather’s here
Wish you were beautiful.

Back to that “relaxing” thing.

Namaste.

“I don’t want you to misunderstand me, I just want to say what’s on my mind…”

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Friday – 03 April 2009
It’s my 9/80 “off” Friday, but I’m working today – I’m shifting my day off to Monday.

Last night, SaraRules and I headed over to visit . I knew that and would be there, but we were surprised to find there; he had dropped in before heading to the airport. showed up a little later, too. Nyx was doing henna on and when we got there:

SaraRules and I had dinner with and after leaving ‘s.

Back at home, SaraRules and I hung out in front of the TV – she quilted while I played on the Interwebs. David Letterman had Michael J. Fox as his guest on The Late Show. I was impressed to find that Mr. Fox hasn’t let his bout with Parkinson’s Disease get/keep him down. In fact, one of the things that he discussed was a trip he took to Bhutan, including hiking up mountains there. It was a good interview.

Stray Toasters

  • This morning, I woke up with Chicago’s Stay the Night running through my head.

  • We got the proofs back on our “Save the Date” announcements.  They look good. Really good.
  • Angry Villagers Run Google Out of Town
  • Mow the Lawn – I don’t have the words to do this justice, you’ll just have to watch it.
  • I was pleasantly surprised to find that LilFormers has grown into a full-blown webcomic:

  • …speaking of LilFormers, while at dinner last night, made a comment that reminded me of this toon. I decided to do a little digging, because my Transformers knowledge wanes from the period just before the movie. One thing led to another and I wound up looking up information on Transformers: Beast Wars, that’s when I came across this gem:

    The later plot was developed following the discovery of a message made by the original Megatron for any Decepticons who would uncover it within the Golden Disks.

    I shared it with Nyx, along with the following question:

    By this rationale, it’s not too much of a stretch to wonder: Were the Decepticons Mormon?

  • Batman Icon’s Mutation – a look at the bat-symbol through the years
  • By way of Nyx and Not Always Right: There Can Be Only One Insane Customer
  • Gorillaz go Bananaz
  • Flurries. Again.
  • After Sweden’s New Law, Drop in Internet Traffic

That’s a good start for the day.

Namaste.

“Well, if they wanted his soul, they should have made a deal with a priest.”

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Tuesday – 31 March 2009
It’s hard to believe that March is nearly over already.

Last night, SaraRules and I had “Sunday dinner” with her family. We also watched Quantum of Solace. I still enjoy the movie and, to a lesser degree, the theme song… but the theme still sounds a bit too disjointed and/or like it’s trying too hard to be a Bond theme. *shrug* While there, her father offered me a taste of something new at Whole Foods: Double Cream White Chocolate Milk. Wow. It was good. VERY good, in fact.

Back at home, SaraRules did some quilting and I read last week’s comics. The standouts of the haul were:

  • Captain America #48 – In this issue, Bucky/Winter Soldier/Cap, Namor and Black Widow wrap up a few loose ends from Cap’s time as the Winter Soldier. And, while he’s never been a favorite character of mine, it was nice to see Namor’s wrath directed at a target who deserved it for an actual affront, rather than a perceived one.
  • Fantastic 4: #565 – This was the second part of a holiday story that saw the FF and family on vacation in Scotland. To be honest, the first half of the story didn’t exactly wow me; the finale, however, was good. I was also surprised at how the issue ended: A “thank you” letter from someone the FF saved during the issue’s adventure.
  • R.E.B.E.L.S. #2 – More adventures of Vril Dox (Brainiac 2) and his attempt to wrest control of his L.E.G.I.O.N. operation from his usurpers. Supergirl and the LSH’s Brainiac 5 are on-hand to lend assistance, as well.
  • Wonder Woman #30 – Readers finally meet The Olympian, whose arrival has been hinted at for a while. We also learn just how far Dr. Barbara Minerva, the Cheetah, is willing to go to try and break Diana. (Hint: It’s pretty far.) But, readers also see just how far Diana is willing to let herself be pushed… and how far she’s willing to push back.

Stray Toasters

That’s good for now.

Namaste.