The Halls

So I'm pretty much done working since I'm nearly ready to go on vacation, and doing nothing at work but surfing through funny videos. I see this thumbnail, and it catches my eye for 2 reasons:
1) what is that guy doing to her, exactly? (when I saw it, there was no title, only the thumbnail)
2) that just happens to be a wrestling mat that is the same color as our judo room's, and even the same color walls...

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

Perhaps I'll watch...
I was pleasantly surprised on both counts
That is our judo practice room, if you didn't catch the subtle hint...

Posted by Aaron at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yeah, I have officially shut down now.
My don't care meter is pretty much pegged for much of anything, as all I can think about is leaving for Hawaii on saturday!
No more work is gonna get done this week.

The only way this trip could be any better is if we could have convinced the wives to stay a day in vegas on the way out.
Maybe our LAS->HNL leg will get delayed....

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With that in mind, I have been doing lot's 'o surfing today, and am now very excited about this




oh boy!

Posted by Aaron at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So this Easter weekend was pretty busy. Busy drinking way too much.
Mostly I've been zoned out on working or anything else, and I'm just thinking about leaving for Hawaii on Saturday. Which is too bad, because I really have quite a bit to get done before I leave.
It's looking more and more like it's just not going to happen.

Posted by Aaron at 1:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So I have posted many disparging things here about my place of employment.
Generally about the guy who runs the place, Sami.
My latest review has been postponed for almost six months by him, for no reason that I agreed with.
So I didn't want to gripe too much, but I was really getting worried because my anniversary date is in October, and I got my review by my boss, and it was stellar. Guy recommended a huge raise and I left Chicago happy.
Then Sami said I couldn't have the raise until March.
He gave some lame reasons, and I couldn't much other than to say "if you have an employee you like, wouldn't you go out of your way to reward that guy, rather than do things to make him disatisfied?"
Sami apparently doesn't care, and we have lost many good people to attrition.
So now it's March. No raise, no mention of it all all.
I've sent several emails, but they all go off into a black hole, so I have idea if they're even read.

Now I'm really upset because in October, no one is talking recession or the like. Now that everyone is, I could really see that as a weak excuse to say "Yeah, we can't do that right now...."
Which would really make me mad about it not being done when it was originally supposed to be.

So Monday I sent a much more stern email to my boss (he reports to Sami) saying I wanted something done about my review, or I was going to be very unhappy, careful to use any words like 'quit'.
I finally got a call late Tuesday from my boss saying "Ok, I got your email, and I took it to Joe, (the new COO). He's going to be handling these types of issues going forward, and he went ahead and approved it"
Well, fantastic. I'm glad it finally got done, but I'm a little irritated that it was able to be handled that fast, and yet was postponed for so long.

I left work and went to coach the girls' soccer practice, and that went really good. Earlier in the day, I went to a used bookstore I like to look for a very specific and long out of print book, and they had it!

All in all, a very good day!

Posted by Aaron at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted some new pics of the girls.

Posted by Aaron at 9:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My webserver is getting hammered by google and msn live search engines, bringing my home network connection to a crawl. So that's fun.

Here's the song I was just raving about.

Posted by Aaron at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Got some cool new judo pics uploaded.


These are definitely going to be treasured by me, as they surely are in the category of 'last hurrah'. Every day I walk around with some kind of ache or pain from this. There's no way I can do it at this intensity forever.

Posted by Aaron at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

After 27 years, my favorite college bar, PO Pears, is closing.
This makes me unbelievably sad. This place has been a rock for me ever since I was of age to go to the bars. We even went there when we were underage for the FAC food.

About 5-8 years before I was in college, it was the hottest bar downtown, but by the time I was in college, it was just another bar. I spent more time there than anywhere else just because it wasn't that popular, and therefore was far less smoky. I have many fond memories of hanging out with college friends there.
I had my college graduation party, my bachelor party, my brother's graduation party, several friend's bachelor parties, my parent's 60th birthday party and my uncle's retirement party all there.
Making the leap of faith that I will be getting my master's soon, I was already planning on having that graduation party there too.

One of my favorite things about Fort Collins was that they had a sister bar to Pears called Washington's. It was basically the same thing, as they were both originally part of a chain of bars. But it instantly made Ft. Collins feel like a home away from home.

Now I, and nearly everyone I've talked to recently who's within 10 years my age is planning on going down there "one last time" for nostalgia's sake.
It's not like I go there a lot, but it still makes me sad.

Posted by Aaron at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm still into mashup, but they are very hit and miss. Maiden goes to bollywood is really, really good. It's a mix of iron maiden and some famous indian dance tune. Never would have guessed I would have liked it, but there you go.

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A scientist gets on a train to go to New York. His cabin also has a poor farmer in it. To pass the time the scientist decides to play a game with the guy.

"I will ask you a question and if you get it wrong, you have to pay me one dollar. Then you ask me a question, and if I get it wrong, you get ten dollars. You ask me a question first." The farmer thinks for a while.

"I know. What has three legs, takes ten hours to climb up a palm tree, and ten seconds to get back down?" The scientist is confused and thinks long and hard about the question. Finally, the train ride is coming to an end. As it pulls into the station, the scientist takes out ten dollars and gives it to the farmer.

"I don''t know. What has three legs, takes ten hours to get up a palm tree and ten seconds to get back down?"

The farmer takes the ten dollars and puts it into his pocket. He then takes out one dollar and hands it to the scientist.

"I don''t know."

Posted by Aaron at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I spent the majority of last week doing our taxes and working on my thesis. I got the taxes done, and am now maybe 50% done with the thesis.
That stupid thing is proving to be a exercise in futility because my adviser is out of the country. He said, "it will work out, because you can just email me your thesis document as you work on it, and I will read it and provide feedback from Scotland".
Yeah, that sounds like a great plan, if you answer your email. If you don't it's just me writing and babbling on, not sure if what I'm doing is even close to what is expected, so I'm flying pretty blind right now, and loving it.


During the week, we had a typical Aubrey breakdown due to math. It is a subject that he consistently does poorly in, not because he doesn't have the ability, but merely because he doesn't like it, and therefore doesn't put in the effort. During the outbreak of frustration, he mentions something about how Nostrdomus predicted the end of the world soon, and I laughed out loud.
It just so happened that I had been downloading episodes of Penn & Teller's showtime show - BS!, which I love. I love The Amazing Randi and anyone who can easily call out the idiots who claim to have extrasensory powers that any sane person knows they cannot. (I will have to say that I was a little disappointed that Penn went on that Dancing show, but whatever).
So I just so happened to have the episode titled "The End of the World", which addresses all the nutjobs who "predicted" the end of the world, including Nostrodomus. It also has much about how people "prepare" for living in the nuclear fallout / aftermath, which is great.
So anyway, since it's a cable show, it's got lot's of gratuitous swearing, so I spent the better part of the weekend learning some video ripping and encoding tools to rip the audio track, and hand edit it with bleeps in the appropriate spots, and then build the video with that audio track instead. It turned out pretty good, so I thought I'd try to setup my site with it's own embedded video player to show it off.

I've got some code that is supposed to do that, so hopefully the next post will contain a pretty, youtube-style embedded player with my masterpiece.

Posted by Aaron at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm having a tough time finding time to do my thesis. Mostly because I'm only really doing anything for it when I go into the office, and I'm going into the office less and less, with the gas prices going up and up.
I can't believe I have nothing more interesting than that to say, so I'll let Auggie Smith do my next bit.

Posted by Aaron at 1:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Aaron at 11:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm currently watching the new game show 'amnesia'. Once again, I'm saddened at the complete lack of originality in tv shows.
"Hey, this Howie Mandel game show is a hit, we need to make 4 more game show hosted by has been comedians"
Thus, you get "1 vs 100" , "show me the money", and whatever Penn Jellete did.
I only watched Amenesia because I actually like Dennis Miller.
The show is better than most, (most notably 'to tell the truth") but I think it will have the same short life as most of the others.

This weekend was pretty busy.
I gave a bunch of kids in the judo club promotion tests 2 weeks ago, and they all passed, mostly due to my huge generosity. So I told them I would take them out for a round of drinks to celebrate.
So I went to the closing on a 12plex Jon and I bought in Beatrice (big thanks to Dave for a last minute save with some legal advice on that deal), then drove back to town to meet them at the bar.
I originally planned to only stay til ~7pm, but, the best laid plans....
I got home around 10:30, and watching my freshly downloaded movie "No country for Old Men"
which I have mixed feelings about.
Loved the first 3/4 of the movie, didn't care for the last 1/4, hated the ending.

Saturday, I cleaned out the garage, and got ready for a monthly poker tourney.
We took the girls to their soccer practice, then got back in time to get the tourney started.
I managed to finish in the worst possible spot, on the bubble. When I was in 2nd place in chips. And that's all I want to say about that. I want to never speak of that again.

After playing cards until 4am, I had to get up and go play in a church volleyball tournament. We turned into the cindirella team last year, but this year it was two and out. Good times.
So I've been spending the last few hours just trying to catch up with life, answer all the emails I got friday afternoon....

Posted by Aaron at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)