Well, some of you already know, some of you don't... I have accepted a position at Yellowpages.com in Henderson. I'm going to be the Senior Desktop Administrator, or Helpdesk Administrator. I like the first title better, but the job will be the same regardless. Basically, from what I can gather it's going to be a lot like working at KB Home Mortgage. I'll be the only tech there, I'll handle all of the user calls, network, servers & backups onsite, and the phone systems. The pay is significantly better... in fact I'm almost going to make as much with 1 job as I did with 2 the past couple of years. I start May 16th. Yay me.

In other news, just got my 401k statement for the quarter. I haven't put anything into it since leaving KB/Perot, and have left it in their system since I had enough in to not incur fees or anything. Anyhow, this quarter I noticed a net investment gain of $875. Not too shabby eh? That was pretty much an 11% gain. Cool...

So now I'm done with all 5 seasons of Six Feet Under (highly recommend that show!), I've found some pretty cool shows to watch.

I shouldn't be alive - Yeah, good stuff here. Real life survival stories from people that probably shouldn't have survived. Some of these survivors did all the wrong things, some did many things right but didn't know, others just tempted fate, and got lucky. While the story is unfolding, there are choices the person could have made. A real survival expert will actually show you what the person did, should have done, could have done, etc etc...

Survivorman - Another cool survival show. This time, a crazy Canadian is thrown into some situation for 7 days, usually without anything beside what would have landed him there in the first place. A plane wreck, a broken down snowmobile, a backpack, or maybe nothing at all. The part I'm not all too sure I like is that he has to film the whole thing himself. He has to carry around the cameras, set them up to take the shot of him walking to a new area, and rewalk it, or to get a shot of him walking away, again having to go back for the camera. You'll see him complaining about the cameras sometimes, or him having to go back and get them. This isn't so bad, and there are some good skills to be taken from the show most of the time... the biggest flaw, it's all packed into a 30 minute episode. I shouldn't be alive on the other hand is an hour long. After a show last night though, I now know what Rabbit Starvation is, and how to avoid it. Eat everything in the rabbit. Organs, brain, bones, everything. Eck... but alright... now I know.

Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations - This guy is the Anti Celebrity chef. He's on the road, traveling the world, living and eating as the locals do. He pulls no punches, speaks his mind while boozing it up, chewing cocoa leaves, smoking like a chimney... most recently I saw an episode in he did in Peru, visiting a tribe in the amazon, drinking their version of booze (some drink fermented with the spit of the women that chew the stuff out of sugar cane looking things... ), eating Guinea Pigs, suffering altitude sickness in some town 11,000 feet above sea level and chewing cocoa leaves to stay normal. He bashes Sting saying that while he's protesting to protect the rainforests, he's staying in 5 star hotels. Bourdain tells the tribesmen he likes how they live and where they are... they told him he could have it. heheh

Stranded with Cash Peters - Cash Peters is dropped off somewhere in the world. He doesn't know where he is and is given no money. I'm sure having a film crew following you around gets you whatever you want for the most part, but it's still interesting seeing some of the people that take him in, and where he goes with them. I really enjoy the show, but if you visit the shows message board, many people hate Cash Peters... I don't have a problem with him, but whatever... I'm enjoying the show.

It takes a thief - I love this show. I don't always get home from work in time to watch it though. 5pm weekdays on Discovery. If you own your own home, this show might give you a little wake up call to how secure you feel there. Also, you'll get some good ideas on how to improve your security, and what to look out for around your home.
The show takes former convicted burglars, to rob and ransack a home all while it's being viewed by the owner of the home from a nearby van via the cameras installed throughout the house. The owner consents to all of this in return for a security makeover for their house. They also have a security guard onsite till everything’s fixed (some owners appear pretty rattled after it's all done with), and they have a service come in and clean the place up from the mess that was made. Some of the security makeovers are pretty extravagant, but then again, so are some of the break-ins. One I recall watching, the owner was a cocky bastard that thought his place was pretty secure. Not only did Jon (the burglar) completely disable the security system within seconds, but he also made out with most parts of the security system itself, a $125,000 Mercedes, a safe with $30,000 cash in it, Jeep Wrangler, ATV's, Plasma TV's... you name it, he got it. All within 10 to 15 minutes or so. Good stuff.

Believe it or not, this has nothing to do with drugs, in fact, I'm not sure you can melt pot, but who knows, I'm not a science guy.

For my birthday dinner, Shawna took me out to The Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant. Neither one of us had done Fondue before, and we'd both wanted to check it out... so that was that.

For one, this place is not cheap. When you think about it, they have a good thing going. I hadn't even thought about it, but Shawna brought it up while we were waiting for our food. All of the tables have an electric range where your fondue pot goes. They bring out your choice of cheese for your appetizer to dip bread, apples and veggies in. Then they bring out your salad. After that is your main course. They prep the cooking mixture at the table, let it get all nice and hot, then bring out a selection of raw meats, seafood and veggies. The waiter then tells you how long each kind of meat should be cooked for before eating it. So, what is it that the cooks there have to do? Make salads and cut meat and put it on a plate? It really isn't cheap by any means, and you cook all your own food. Food poisoning? Tough shit, should've cooked your meat longer eh? Shawna didn't cook one of her shrimp long enough and was totally grossed out by the mushiness (sp?) of it. So all of this was followed up by a chocolate sauce fondue mixture, with a selection of cheesecake cubes, fruits and marshmallows. I was stuffed by the time we were done. Really good meal. Kinda cool that a place can charge so much for you to cook your own food.

Thanks to my wonderful fiancee, I am now listening to Sirius Satellite radio for my birthday! She bought me the unit, a boombox that it docks into for home listening, and a years subscription!!! 8-) I have to say, it's pretty damn cool!! Of course, I'm back to listening to Howard Stern. He has 2 stations on Sirius.... one of them he uses to rebroadcast his show all day which is cool since I don't get to listen for long in the morning, and there are no windows at work to get a signal. Other favorites so far are the Maxim station, and BBC Radio 1. For music, Shade45 is preset, along with a number of other hip hop/rap stations.

Anyway, so far I'm really digging it! Thank you so much baby! All I have to do now is figure a good way to mount it in the car... I'm not digging the suction cup with wires dangling everywhere. I think mounting it on the ashtray and running the cables through it and out of the way is my best idea so far. I want to make sure I can get a replacement ashtray though incase I really screw it up.

So yeah, 30 years old! Wow... can't believe it... where the hell do the years go? In the grand scheme of things, those 30 years went pretty damn quick! I still feel that I've hardly even started my life.

Damn, been a while since I've posted anything. Been busy and forgetful, and stuff...

So I've been engaged for a little over a month now. Shawna and I have been trying to figure out what we are going to do. We've gone around to a few places to see where we can have a ceremony and reception, but we've also been debating on what exactly we want. We might be starting to lean toward a family only event... weddings can be so damn expensive. Since we're looking to start out our life not in debt, a smaller wedding sounds better and better. We've also discussed if we do something small, take the money we saved and take a nice honeymoon rather than waiting years for a honeymoon. Just take off for 10 days or so. I was a little surprised to hear this idea come from Shawna... something that someone at her work is going to do. (I think that's what it was). She's not been one to take off somewhere like that, favoring stateside travel... I'm just guessing, but I think she might of popped that out there because she knows how much I like to take off to different places, and she knows I want to take her to England... dunno... but we're still figuring all that out. We're both excited about getting married, regardless of how it all goes down, so long as we're both happy. :-)

I've been working a lot of nights at The Orleans. I guess i've been doing a lot of that since I've started. Recently though, we're redoing the server room here, have all new Enterprise racks, and slowly moving shit over. Since we have it all going into a new room, it's proving to be interesting with all the different connections going all over the place... but it's cool non the less. Coming in at nights has it's benefits too. Let's us work without interruptions.

My car hit 90,000 miles a little while ago. After having my first ever blow out getting onto the freeway the other weekend, I decided it was time to get all my fluids flushed and changed, and alignment and stuff. So, $750 later tire, fluids and alignment all done. Good lord. Can't complain though, short of routine stuff, my car has treated me well. They did tell me something about my CV Boots or joints going out... said that replacing my axle would be the same as repairing the CV... so I'll be dropping another $220 in coming months. Other than that, they gave me the all clear.

Last weekend I went up to Mt Charleston with some of the guys from work for some Snowboarding. I'm by no means a fan of Lee Canyon, but with all the snow they've had in recent weeks, it made for a great day in the snow. They don't have the best runs, but it was probably the best time I've had up there. The snow started coming down hard half way through the day, bringing in a few more inches. They have a new lift now since the old one was damaged in last years avalanche. I spent most of the day on that one and the black diamond run... Unfortunately I wrecked my board, but I have a backup... so I have to get to waxing that tonight.

haha... I loved this one. There are a bunch of them somewhere on ebaumsworld... dubs of the old PSA's (Public Service Announcements) from GI Joe... some of them suck, but I liked this one.

I'm excited to announce that last night I proposed to Shawna, and she said YES! It was such a perfect night, a nice quiet evening at her place, cooked her dinner (Sherry & the Devil, Kruxs' recipe, thx) then sat outside on the balcony, candles, champagne in some nice new Mikasa flutes, music streaming from the iPod, chocolate dipped strawberries, and a 1 1/2 Karat diamond solitaire sealed the occasion with tears, lots of kissing, and smiles all around. Something has never felt so right... she makes me so happy in so many ways... and apparently I do too. :) So YAY us!

I Love You Shawna!

Last weekend I went back to Hemet to visit my parents. They have sold their house, will be closing on the 1st, and leaving shortly thereafter for Wylie, TX. I took a trip home to see them before they left, to take some pictures of the place I grew up in here in the US, and to say goodbye to both.

I've never really been a great lover of Hemet. To me, since leaving about 11-12 years ago, it's always been rather a depressing place. But no matter what, it was home. There are so many memories in that house, it was unreal knowing I would never return to it.

Since I was in town, I looked up my friend Chris. He was one of my best friends growing up, lived right across the street. We did so many stupid things together, but all in all, lots of great memories. I found him out in Anza, a TINY hick town about 30-40 minutes from Hemet. Thank god for my GPS, not only would I of not found his place, I wouldn't of found Anza. He took me out for some Brazillian BBQ in Temecula, then we headed back to Hemet to kick it with my folks for a while. We sat around for hours talking about when we were kids. I'm going to miss that house... and it's going to be something else to get used to knowing it's going to take a flight to visit my parents from now on.

I've been wanting to build my own Tivo/PVR for quite some time now. While I haven't exactly accomplished this yet, I have built up something I'm pretty happy with so far. I'm not recording TV at all, but I do have a nice small system that fits under the TV to play DVD's, ripped DVD's, Music, pictures, runs emulators, displays movie showtimes and trailors and more.

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Been writing this on and off for a while now, I'll never finish, so this isn't a full featured review

From the Oohhh cool, I want one department, I picked up my very first PDA from Dell. I'd been looking at these a while back, and looked over a wide variety of devices, and decided if I ever picked one up, it'd be the Dell Axim.

Why the Dell Axim x51v? I liked the smooth 640x480 3.7" TFT VGA screen, and the absence of the graffiti 1/3 of the screen. I liked that you had the option of using either CF and/or SD memory cards and/or devices. The processor is pretty phat, running a 624mhz... 64MB SDRAM & 256MB Flash ROM, 16MB Video memory. 802.11b & Bluetooth built in. The one thing it didn't have that I liked about the Palm Lifedrive was a hard drive. But with the memory card options, and the cost of said memory cards, it seemed more of a null issue. Last on the list, it runs Windows Mobile rather than the Palm OS. When researching these a while back, I was getting a feel that Palm was leaving it's users in the cold with it's OS, not fixing issues, not implementing many new features that was leaving the OS a bit behind WM.

I've had the system for a few days now, what are the pros and cons:

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