The Duke game was a blast the other night! We had some of the most awesome seats imaginable. We were third row behind the Cameron Crazies, and my seat was even with the free throw line. Easily the best seats I’ve ever had for a basketball game. Duke crushed Georgia Southern as expected, and it was just so much fun. I hope to get to see another game there this year but its so hard to get tickets usually. I put some pictures up at Flickr if you’re bored and want to take a look.

Darts was awesome last night. I didn’t get there until right at 8pm, which meant I didn’t get to warmup really. It cost me in my first game and I lost a close one. Then I turned it on and caught fire. I shot the best darts of my life and set new personal records for most All Star Points in a game (4) and most ASP’s in a night (9!). I had never scored more than 6 or 6.5 ASP’s in a single night before. Our team won the match 17-7 and solidified 3rd place going into the tournament next week. Hopefully we can keep up our momentum from last night and make some noise in the tourney. It would be nice to win another one.

I decided recently to upgrade my laptop’s hard drive. Some of you know that I’m such a whore for hard drive space (and big monitors/tvs), and I recently ran out of space on my 120gb hard drive. So I did some research and found an awesome deal on a 500gb laptop drive which I have ordered. I found a great web-tutorial that walks you through how to transfer all your files from your old drive to the new one without having to reinstall every single program. It requires an external drive, so I bought an empty hard drive enclosure so I could do this. Well, it shipped out earlier this week. One problem - it was shipped with DHL. Yes, DHL. The company that slashed 9,500 jobs and quit domestic shipping this week. I have a tracking number and it keeps saying all sorts of weird things on there:

11/11/2008 7:00 AM CT MEMPHIS, TN, US PICK UP
11/11/2008 7:00 PM ET HEBRON, KY, US ARRIVAL ORIGIN DHL GLOBAL MAIL FACILITY
11/12/2008 1:22 AM ET HEBRON, KY, US PROCESSED
11/12/2008 7:42 AM ET HEBRON, KY, US DEPARTURE ORIGIN DHL GLOBAL MAIL FACILITY
11/13/2008 6:31 AM ET FOREST PARK, GA, US ARRIVAL DESTINATION DHL GLOBAL MAIL FACILITY
11/13/2008 8:43 AM ET FOREST PARK, GA, US TENDERED TO USPS

So it went North to Kentucky, South to Georgia, and then they finally gave up and handed it over to the Postal Service. I have confidence they won’t go out of service in the next 48 hours, so maybe I’ll get it delivered this weekend. Then I can finally upgrade the laptop!

Also of note, I got my Christmas present from my mom early this year. I found a really awesome deal online a couple weeks ago for something I have been wanting, and I emailed her about it because she bought one that is similar recently and I wanted her input. She then surprised me and said that she would split the cost of it and call it my Christmas present. Sometimes it pays to be hard to shop for, huh? Anyways, I quickly agreed to that and ordered it later that evening. I’m sure you’re dying to know what new toy it is that I got (OK probably not, and its not like more than a handful of people read this anyway.. haha). I put some pictures up over at Flickr. You can check them out here and here. I tried to adjust the surrounding color in Photoshop on the first one, and it ended up making that weird blue halo. I can assure you that is not there in real life. And yes, that is Erin Andrews. Mmmm.

I have this crazy feeling that I am forgetting some other things, but that’s all I can think of at the moment. At least I finally have some fun and exciting things going on. Woohoo!

A friend of mine at work talked me into getting two tickets for tonight’s Duke basketball game against Georgia Southern (he really had to twist my arm.. haha). It starts at 9pm and is on ESPNU. I’m not sure where our seats are yet, except for they are somewhere on the side and not behind the basket.

I can’t wait to get home and watch the game on DVR! Woohoo! On a completely unrelated note, I found out that our future President is a Mac fan. He recently purchased 2 Macbooks for him and his daughters to video chat with while he’s on the road. Then I saw this picture of him which I thought was really cool.

Let’s see.. there are actually a couple things out of the ordinary to talk about for a change. Nothing really all that exciting but so be it.

I found an insane deal on a Samsung LCD last week and I ordered it a week ago. It will arrive Wednesday and I’m pretty excited. It’s 40″, 1080p, and was $720. Its the same TV that will be on sale at Sears for $799 on Black Friday. I’m pretty sure its last year’s model (which explains why its so cheap), but its not like they magically infused 3D holographic technology into this year’s models. I am fine having a TV that isn’t the latest and greatest. Its still a huge step up from the big clunker I watch on a daily basis right now.

I found out today that Netflix finally has streaming movies available for the Mac. I quit Netflix 2 years ago because I just didn’t have the time or money for it anymore, but now that I find myself with time to kill these days I figured it would be a good investment. I spent about 2 hours this afternoon putting movies in my queue to watch now. I believe there are 86 of them waiting to be streamed to my laptop at some point. I’m currently watching The Original Comedians of Comedy and while the quality isn’t all that great, its better than nothing. Oh, did I mention I got a free 1 month trial? Yeah that’s right. Double bonus points!

The other day a crazy thought occurred to me. I think I was driving to or from work (a lot of my crazy ideas happen in the car). Everyone’s seen normal contacts, they sit on the front of your eyeball and they are the size of your fingertip. I got to wondering if it was possible to make larger contacts, ones that almost wrap around the front of your eyeball. You’re probably asking why anyone would ever want to do this. I’m not entirely sure, but this is what I had in mind:

The first one really uses the larger surface area while the other one is just extra creepy. It’s like a milky white eyeball. I’m not sure which one is creepier really. It would have been a great addition for a Halloween costume, or just something fun to do to people at work. Too bad they’re expensive as crap. I’ll hold off for now (but I’m still going to think about it).

I voted last Thursday. It took less than 10 minutes. It would’ve been closer to 5 minutes but my pen that was tied down to my little cubbyhole was not working properly. It was tethered rather poorly and caused me all sorts of grief. Once I fixed that everything went smoothly. One thing I thought was ridiculous was that 10 elections had one candidate. That’s not really an election. I refused to vote in all 10 of those. That’s pointless. That’s like some crap that happens in communist countries. Oh look Kim Il Sung won the popular vote again with 100%. Why is that? Oh right, because if you vote against him you die. Yeah. Awesome. Granted its nowhere near as extreme here but its just as pointless.

I got a haircut today. Its my usual buzz with a 1 guard. I came this close to asking for a mohawk. When they shave your head, they generally start on the sides for some reason, so it leaves sort of a mohawk until they finish the job. Well for some reason it looked really good and I think I might do it next time. Yeah. Mohawk and milky white eyeballs. Great combo.

Nobody came to my house for Halloween again this year. I think this is 3 years in a row? I know there are some kids in the neighborhood somewhere, I hear em every now and then and of course I dodge them while driving down the road from time to time. I guess I’m the scary neighbor that parents tell their kids to avoid. I’m OK with that.

Our dart team fizzled last week. We busted our ass to get in position to finish 2nd place and move up to A league next season — then we went and lost 14-10 to a team that normally we should beat. It was kinda disappointing. I didn’t throw great but I went 3-1 on the night. I’m really not sure how to explain it. I think our team just kinda coasted through the night thinking that since we had beat the #1 and #2 teams that we could win this one easily. Oops. That’s what we get for taking someone lightly. Oh well. We still have an outside chance to finish 2nd place but we’ll need a lot of help, and of course we’ll need to win the rest of our matches. Not very likely but I’m still hoping it happens.

Oh get this. Several months ago I bought a home theater system online from Onkyo. I didn’t really mess with it that much because I didn’t have any other components that make up a good system (HD TV, etc). I started putzing around with it not too long ago though because I knew I would be TV shopping soon. Well, it turns out that it was defective. I emailed Onkyo and they said to take it to Circuit City because they’re an authorized service center. I called Circuit City yesterday and they verified that I can bring it in. So I stopped by this afternoon.

I was there for about an hour. At first they were so confused that I brought in something that wasn’t purchased there and they were trying to tell me they couldn’t help. I showed them the email I printed out and the receipt/packing slip that came with it. Eventually the assistant manager came by and said he’d help me out. He said they would be able to send it back to Onkyo for repairs. Awesome. Then he proceeded to push buttons on the computer for about 20 minutes without saying a word. It was really f’ing awkward. Finally I broke the silence and said “Having problems?” and he said “Yeah.” Turns out he didn’t have a clue what he was doing and finally told me to contact Onkyo to find out what he needs to do to get an authorization code to send it back. Right, because that’s my job. So I called their 1800# that was printed on the email and the guy said that the lady who emailed me originally was out today but would be back tomorrow, and he’d have her call me to figure something out. Basically Circuit City was a waste of my time. Then I get home and read this, which didn’t surprise me one bit. When you hire incapable people and don’t train them properly and you have very poor customer service in general (I base that off of previous trips to CC where I stood around for an eternity without anyone asking if I need anything, and then one time even being told the wrong information) — well it should come as no surprise that you go out of business.

So yeah, that’s that. Hope everyone had a great Halloween weekend!

Everyone has heard jokes for the last 10+ years about how MTV never plays videos anymore. About how they created a new channel MTV2 that is dedicated to music videos and even that one doesn’t show videos all the time anymore. If you’re old enough to remember MTV when it didn’t suck, then you probably hate MTV for the most part these days. I can’t stomach another show with Tila Tequila in it. So why on earth did I choose to write about MTV? Well, they went and did something today that completely blew me away.

They went and put EVERY MUSIC VIDEO THEY HAVE ONLINE. Granted, you can find most videos already on the internet somewhere, but there are some you can’t find and some are crappy quality. Most of the ones I’ve seen on this new site are solid quality. Not HD or anything but better than some crappy video transfer from some guy’s VHS tape he recorded 20 years ago.

I can’t wait to watch some of the videos I haven’t seen in years and have forgotten about. Punk Rock Girl by the Dead Milkmen? Check. Hot For Teacher by Van Halen (the real VH)? Check. Birdhouse in Your Soul by They Might Be Giants? Check. Not to mention the greatest Tom Petty video of all time….

Go have some fun with it. If you find some really awesome videos that are must-see, let me know so I can enjoy the fun too!

Well tonight sucked. We got spanked. I lost all of my matches.

Just kidding! haha. We played the 2nd ranked team in our division tonight, and we were picked to lose 13-11 (which is how our first game ended up earlier this season). We really needed a win to keep our chances alive for moving up to A division next season.

I played one of their best guys in 301. Funny thing is, we both threw like crap. Unfortunately, his crappy game was better than my crappy game (just barely, I was close to winning but I kinda stunk up the place and honestly didn’t deserve to win that game anyway). Fortunately, the rest of my team kicked butt and we jumped out to a surprising 4-2 lead after 301.

Next up in singles cricket I got matched up with a really cool guy named Donald. Before our game, one of my teammates told me to stay focused and keep with it, because he was undefeated. I checked the stats. Yep, he was 9-0 in cricket. Gulp. He got to shoot first and immediately opened up a big lead by hitting 5 20s. I managed to hit a couple 19s and then he did the same. Then he bombed another 5mark on me and I was starting to get a little bit worried. Fortunately I answered his 5mark with one of my own. Then I pounded away and kept hitting some big shots until he slipped up and gave me an opening. I took advantage and hit another 5mark. Then it was merely a matter of hitting my 3 bulls to win, which I did. His record now stands at 9-1 in singles cricket. Our team continued to kick butt, and we were up 9-3 after singles cricket. This meant that we only needed to win 2 of the last 6 games to win the entire match.

And that’s just what we did in doubles cricket. My partner was on fire and hit some huge shots while I started off pretty slowly. I was kinda getting frustrated but then I hit a 5mark that got me back on track. Then it was just a matter of hitting our bullseyes again. My partner hit a double bull and then I hit one more for the win. We won the match before even getting to 501, which is very rare for us (although we did do it last week.. but that was the first time its happened for us all season).

I then sat out the last round, which was probably a good thing. I was tired and the guy that had been previously undefeated bought me two shots. So did two guys on my own team. So yeah I really didn’t think it would be a good idea to throw anymore darts after that. haha. Our team one one of the last 3 games of 501, so we finished 15-9.

Before the season started, I really thought that we would finish in the middle of the pack but possibly in the lower half with a chance of moving back down to C if we really stunk up the place. Now, however, we have a realistic shot of going up to A. If we can win the rest of our matches and if the first place team wins all of their games, then we will almost undoubtedly finish in 2nd place. That is just crazy. But I am really excited about it. One of the best ways to improve is to play people who are better than you, and if we manage to make it up to A then that’s going to happen every time we throw darts. So maybe it will help us learn and improve our games. I hope it happens!

With all that said, I was having a miserable day at work today and was about to snap. Things have not been going well for me there lately as I keep getting more and more frustrated. Then towards the end of the day two really awesome things happened. One of my old clients called me up to talk and see how things are going, and to get some advice on some things. It was really refreshing to hear from him and just that alone would have made my day. But then once we were done, I got an email from a different ex client and it was just awesome. I’m going to share it below because it just made me remember what work is like when you don’t hate the world for a change:

Hi David! Just wanted to write you a quick note to tell you that it was a pleasure working with you. I truly appreciate all you did to support PCA and help us with everything. I hope everyone there knows what an outstanding employee (and person) you are. Sorry I haven’t had a chance to email you until now. I am just getting back to work from maternity leave. Again, thanks for everything.

PS I attached our latest family picture taken in September so you can actually see who you talked to for all those months!

Thanks,
Amy

I’ll keep the picture to myself, because I’m sure she would freak out if she happened to see a picture of her family on a website called “Holy Crap Bagels” and I’d probably get in trouble somehow. Hell I might get in trouble just for posting the email. But I don’t care. That was just one of the best emails I’ve received in a long time and it absolutely changed my day. I wish everyone could be as pleasant to work with as Amy and her firm. It feels dumb to say that I miss an ex client but I miss both of them.

So yeah, that was my day in a nutshell. It went from pure crap to pure awesomness. I hope it carries over to tomorrow and the rest of the week.

When I was in college, someone turned me on to Rudy Ray Moore and his Dolemite character from the 70s. I bought the first movie and just loved it. Nobody else in the history of the world has sounded more authoritative when saying the word “motherfucker!” than Dolemite. He put so much energy into that word it seemed. It cracked me up.

The movie itself has got to be one of the best blaxploitation movies of all time. Of course his character is a pimp, he has an army of kungfu whores at his disposal, and he runs around sticking it to The Man and anyone else who wants a piece of him. There are some great videos on YouTube, but this was one of my favorites, for several reasons:

1) It takes him about 7 seconds to heal from a beatdown.
2) Watch the karate kick at the 16 second mark. His foot is no closer than 8 inches from the other guy’s face. I think I watched this scene about 10 times when I first saw the movie in college.
3) The last 5 seconds. Just listen to it.

Another classic example of Dolemite in action:

And finally, these 6 seconds explain the legend of Dolemite better than anything else:

Not only did Dolemite star in some awesome movies, but he also put out about 30 comedy albums that are probably the raunchiest albums ever. I bought one a couple years ago off eBay and I must say that even my face turned red. The man was a genius. Sadly, he passed away this past weekend due to complications of diabetes. Do yourself a favor and check out some of his work sometime.

I know, another post about darts. Kinda boring. But is that better than nothing? Eh, maybe.

All day today I was kinda psyched about it. I went to Pipes by George on Hillsborough street and got some new accessories (flights and shafts.. haha I said shafts). I have bought a couple different kinds of shafts lately and was not happy with any of them. So I found the last one that I truly loved and took it down to see George and he had plenty of them waiting for me. So I bought them and then bought some new flights, because mine were getting rather rugged from all the wear and tear.

After work I was in a rush to get some errands done before darts. I finished them off and drove over to Blinco’s and made it there at 7:45. The match starts at 8. Plenty of time to warm up and get ready. Only there was a problem. Nobody from my team was there.

I called up our team captain and asked him where the match was. Oops its at Snookers. Yep, I’m an idiot. Luckily that’s only about 10 minutes away, so I was able to make it there right at 8. Unfortunately it was too late for me to throw in the first round (singles 301 matches), but that turned out just fine as our team won 301 by a score of 5-1. Yay team!

My first match of the night was very weird. When they called out the lineups, the guy I was playing said really loudly “Dave? I get to throw against Daaaaave? Uh ohhhhh” and I couldn’t figure out if he was trying to be funny or be a schmuck. Or maybe he was drunk. I’m still not entirely sure, but I think he is a schmuck. Apparently he walked up to our team’s scorekeeper before the match and said “Are you ready for this?” So yeah, that’s a schmuck for ya.

The match started off well. I threw 3 20s to close them out. He then threw 5 19s to close them out and score 38 points. Its also a 5mark which means he got an AllStar Point. When he walked back I said “nice shot” and he just blew me off. Yep, seems like a schmuck to me. I always try to congratulate my opponent when they throw good darts. Its fun to watch someone throw good darts. Anyways.

I went up and hit 5 20s. Game on, bitches. We went back and forth on these two numbers just scoring points like mad. I hit a rough spot and he kept firing away, and eventually he got a 100 point lead on me. Then he closed the 20s so I moved on to the next number, 18. I hit 5 of them. Then he went back to 19s for more points. Then I hit 4 18s. Then I hit 4 more. Then 3. Then 4. I was just destroying the 18s. I then went up there and hit a triple 17, triple 18, and almost hit a triple 16 with the third dart. To make a long story short, he had a very weird strategy in that game which I think backfired on him and I was able to eventually beat him by about 75 points. The final score was 810 to 728 I think. (As a sidenote, I’ve had several games where the final score is like 110-70 or something like that. Its kinda rare for me to be in a game that has more than 150 points. So 810?? That is insane.) In that one game I had 4.5 ASP’s, which is easily the most I’ve ever had in a single game. Yay me!

I played again in doubles cricket and I hit two more 5 marks, and it could’ve been 4 more if not for technicalities. I was just on fire. The new flights and shafts were a huge improvement apparently. We won that match rather easily. My opponent finished it off by hitting 3 bullseyes. Awyeah.

That was it for me. Our team won the match before the final round even started, and I didn’t throw in that round. I just sat by and played the role of cheerleader. It rocked. I totalled up 6.5 ASP’s in 2 games, and that’s the most I’ve had for any night all season. Woohoo! Hopefully I can continue to throw that well — we’re playing the #2 team in the league next week and if we win then we will have a good shot at finishing in the top 2 or 3 of the league, which would just be awesome.

Yay darts, and yay for 3 posts this week. Its a miracle, I tell ya.

Apparently I’ve entered a new realm of old-person-spam. I now get sent messages from “young girls” who want me to date their mom. Wow.

PS. This might be formatted weird because I’m sending it from my phone. I still have 20 minutes to kill before my appointment. Yay.

Yes its been a while and yes I start off every entry like that. Call it a case of writer’s block or whatever you want, but there hasn’t been much new in my life lately. Definitely nothing really all that exciting. I did manage to come up with some interesting stuff, but I’ll save that for after this mandatory story about darts.

So darts is going sorta OK I guess. I took a beating for a couple weeks. I think I was 1-6 during that stretch. I was playing some really tough opponents and things didn’t go my way at all. Kinda demoralizing but it definitely has made me focus on practicing some more, which is a good thing. My stats aren’t terrible actually, but they aren’t at the level I was used to. If we move up to A next season then they really won’t be up to that level. I didn’t think we would have a chance to do that, but if our team wins the rest of our matches then we should finish in 2nd place and move up. That is scary to think about.

I’ve been contemplating getting a new dartboard that might help me throw better, as well. Its a practice or trainer board. The double and triple rings are basically half the normal size, which means they are harder to hit obviously. Supposedly if you can get really good at this then it will be much easier to hit regular doubles and triples. I am still researching that because I don’t want to waste money on something if its not really helpful. Here’s a picture to help you get the idea:

Moving away from darts.. I’ve rediscovered a fascinating website lately that I used to frequent a long time ago but then stopped. Its full of some really strange and different stories from people that are quite amazing. The site is called BMEzine. Some of the pictures over there are NSFW, but some are normal and just downright crazy (but in a really interesting way). Its really fun to read about some of the things these people have done.

Here’s an example. Two genetic twins decided to modify their bodies. They didn’t want to do regular stuff so they got hardcore. Check this out:

One of the brothers decided to have his arm amputated and surgically attached to his brother’s chest. The other one agreed. Not something you see the emo kids doing, is it? Then there’s this:

They decided to remove a joint from one of the brother’s fingers and attach it to the other one’s finger. Next they plan on completely removing the bone from the stump finger and sliding the pinky finger over to take its place.

Yeah, I don’t know why they do that. Who could understand something like that? But its pretty damn fascinating to read about. Its people like this that made me love my Deviance classes in college. I wish I could actually find some type of employment where I could interact with people like this. Sure beats stock and bonds if you ask me.

I know you are dying to read the story, so go check it out. There are no NSFW pictures on that page, but any links from it you should click at your own discretion.

*update* So I did some research on these two and Snopes.com says that its a fake. They cite the date at the bottom of the page (April 1st, 1999) as being the main reason why. Sadly I bet they are correct, since there have been no updates on these two in the last 9 years. Its a real shame too because the last paragraph of the story had me trying to think of what they were going to do. Oh well, April Fools.

The crazy part is that this site is so full of interesting things that people have done, that a whole lot of people have been fooled by this. That’s a testament to just how awesome the website is.

This did sort of rekindle my interest in all-things-deviant though. Why can’t there be real life jobs that pay real money where you get to learn about and get to know people like this? Its so fascinating. And it has nothing to do with the rate of return of your 401k plan either (hint, its in the crapper anyway).

If you have any suggestions for how to find a job working with in the field of “deviance” let me know. My brain has turned into a pile of crap over the last couple weeks due to the pounding it takes at work every day, so thinking for myself really isn’t an option at the moment. Thanks.

Its been a while since I posted anything. Work has basically consumed me for the last 6 weeks or so. And for the next 2 weeks it will be even worse, since it is quarter-end and that’s our busiest time. Many days I work through lunch and stay late just so I’m not buried when my shift starts the next day. There is just so much to do and so little time. I’m considering remoting in after I finish this so I can get some more work done.

I’ve been a recluse during this time, for the most part anyway. Probably will be for the next 2 weeks also. Maybe after that things will pick up. I sure hope so. I’ve been alot grumpier lately and I think people have noticed, which is never a good sign. I laughed at something stupid yesterday and the guy that sits in the cube beside me said “Wow Dave, that’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh in about a month.. what happened?” So yeah, hopefully things change soon.

Now for something that will bore everyone to death again. Darts! Our team beat the only remaining undefeated (and vastly superior) team in our division last night, 13-11. The first time we played them, we lost 13-11 and I went 3-1. Last night I didn’t do quite as well — I lost all 3 of my games actually. I threw pretty decent darts actually, but I kept getting paired up against their best thrower. This guy was 50-2 a couple seasons ago. He led the entire dart league in All Star Points last season. He’s just an awesome player so I can’t complain about losing to him at all really. Since our team managed to eek out the win, I’m definitely OK with it. That team won 20-2 last week and we are the only team all season to compete with them (twice!).

Also in dart news, I think I will enter a couple events in the dart tournament this weekend. Its the North Carolina state tournament and its being held in Cary. Normally its either in Charlotte or Greensboro, I think. So this is pretty special. Its being held at the VFW, which is where my Dad first taught me to throw darts when I was a young teenager. I am really looking forward to it and I hope to see some old-timers there that might remember when I used to go there with my Dad.

I’m not silly enough to think I will win anything this weekend, because the level of competition is going to be insane. But I do think it will be a good learning experience, and who knows what could happen? If I throw my best game then I could upset a couple guys and make a little noise. That would be a lot of fun.

That’s about it for now I guess. I wish I had more fascinating stories for everyone, but really my life is still a boring game of groundhog day.