captbrando's log

Whee, all of use salaried employees get ripped off for one day every four years. It is fitting this year that Leap Year Day falls on a Sunday. Happy birthday to all you leap year kids!

This is what we woke up to here in McKinney. Lovely!

Today was a really fun day. We went to the Zoo in spite of the cloudy and windy weather and it was really awesome. Not only was it not very crowded overall, but we did not have ANY no-shows. Every exhibit had an animal in it (save for some of the closed reptile exhibits). Our niece got to see
some really cool stuff.

On that note, I left my camera at their house. OOPS. Hopefully we can get it back before I head out of town to Providence. That would be sweet.

Well the beergas experiment is a mild success at this time. I still get some pretty foamy beer initially, but I have a feeling it is this particular keg. Killians always acts funny when it is brand new, and I bet there are only 8 beers drawn off of this one. So hopefully, things will calm down a bit shortly. The beer definitely tastes better as there is less of a CO₂ taste. It was getting to the point where it was SO prominent in the beer flavor.

Chris and I went to the relatively new Virgin Megastore down on Mockingbird today. That whole place is pretty damn neat (meaning the mockingbird station). They did not have what I was looking for–the new Sorta CD, Little Bay, so we ran across the street to the famous CD World. Well its famous for stocking local acts. So we picked that one, the new Lyle Lovett, and the Evanescence CD. Good stuff.

Maybe James will come by tomorrow? Maybe not! Who knows.

This weekend was absolutely gorgeous here in the Dallas area. Had the windows open most of the weekend. Yesterday Chris and I went and looked at some of the new homes in the area. We found a couple that we REALLY like, so we are hoping that we’ll be able to figure out all of the features we want by the time it is new home time.

More to come…

James,

Brando & Chris

So I’m working on some schoolwork this evening (yes, last minute again but you gotta love the mid-week travel), and a trailer for a movie pops on the screen. I’m not normally paying much attention to it, but I happen to look over and see the extra uber hot Elisha Cuthbert on the TV! So I’m pretty much captivated by this point. Oh man, she is in this movie called The Girl Next Door. Go there for the synopsis, and definitely watch the trailer. I will be checking this movie out FOR SURE.

Ok, I got my speakers in Friday finally (they had to special order them) and I just want to say, thank you Jim Luckett at Frisco’s Ultimate Electronics. What a great experience I had with them! I would most definitely recommend anyone go talk to him about any Hi-Fi home theater stuff. I really can’t wait until we move into the next house (still over a year away) where I can get this all set up the right way!

VERY wow man. Anyway… James came over this weekend and we got him some head shots taken in the studio. Man I need a new camera.

Here are some Wintery Pictures from today!

Leave it to Texas weather to decide to dump a few inches of snow on us 6 weeks late. Chris wanted snow on Christmas so bad. Oh well, better late than never right?

Last night it was coming down a little bit, but this morning it must have started just pouring from the sky. We’ve got about 3 inches down on the ground here in McKinney and I’m not sure we were the hardest hit. Bummer that it happened on a Saturday tho, no school closings!

Anyway, I’ll take a few pictures of “Winter Storm Blast 2004!” before the day is out. Maybe I’ll even get a nice weather graphic thrown together.

Welp, it has definitely been an interesting couple of days. Lots of good stuff has happened. My speakers should be arriving shortly. Hopefully within a week or so. I also got my new nitrogen tank for my kegerator. Switching from straight CO2 to a Beergas mix (N2/CO2). Better for the beer.

Yesterday was interesting. If you can imagine 10 things that might go wrong at a client site when you are trying to help them out, they all went wrong. Thankfully, we did get everything up and running. We are still working out an issue or two, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to finish this without going back to the client site.

This week is filled with some goodness. I’ve got project work to keep me very busy all week, and it is time for that famous Hallmark holiday to yank at all of our pocket books. Chris and I have decided to do beer and pizza this year (I have the BEST WIFE EVER!) and skip the crowds. We’ll go out some other time this month, but after last year’s ripoff, I’m done with restaurants on Valentine’s. They are smart in doing what they are doing (limited menu, fixed price for 3 course meal, inflated alkyhawl prices), but I’m excercising my right as a consumer to call Pizza Hut and drink out of my kegerator instead.

Don’t forget to send your loved one’s flowers guys!

Now it is sleepy time.

Finally got someone to hook me up with a BeerGas solution so I can run that through my kegerator as opposed to straight CO2. BeerGas is a N2/C02 mix that allows you to get more beer out of the keg, and keeps you from overcarbonating your beer. I’m pumped! Can’t wait until my new tank comes in.

Oh well, off to the Stars game…

So I finally ported over my backend scripts to the DBD perl package over the less used libpgperl package. Debian unstable forced my hand .

Super Bowl is now over, and it marks the end of the 2003-4 NFL season. How unfortunate for all of us. At least we still have some hockey to watch for a while. Then once that is done, we have the doldrums of summer sports…. until FOOTBALL season again!! YAAY!

Oh yeah, and I sure am glad that CBS allowed America to enjoy Janet Jackson’s right breasticle!