Poor Christina... still sick, but at work today. :(
Maybe we'll go out to lunch today if she feels up for it. Might make her feel better.
I submitted a photo for the Eternity/Infinity challenge on the photography forums, but I'm not terribly happy with it. It's not great lighting and it's kind of noisy. The idea was Christina's... I have this thing called a Tangle.. not sure what to call it... kind of a toy. Anyway, it twists and bends and stuff, but doesn't really have a beginning or an end. Plus, when you twist it a certain way and look at it right it looks kind of like the symbol for infinity.
[image removed]
I have a couple other ideas that might work better and I have until March 1st to change my submission. We'll see how other things turn out.
Pretty busy weekend here. Christina and I went to watch Carolina play Radford in baseball Saturday afternoon. Up until the 8th inning or so it was a beautiful day... sunny, warm. Then the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up and it got much colder. But the 16-4 win was certainly nice. Came the day after Carolina beat Radford 20-0 too. They're rolling so far this season.
We also went out last night to go bowling with Matt and Misty. I bowled a 188, a 177, and a.... umm........ 103.
I came down the bell curve of beer pretty quickly! That last game was pretty hopeless.
Don't know that we're going to go back there much though. $3.50 for shoes per person, $3.75 per game per person and $7.00 pitchers of Bud Light. Yes, $7.00. We'll find a cheaper place to bowl in town next time.
Today was pretty slow. Christina's throat started bothering her last night a bit and today she's all drainage, sneezing, and scratchy throat girl. Fun stuff. So, I found things to do around the house and I also finished doing our taxes. Sadly, I actually like doing taxes... well, not the owing money this year part... but the actual forms and numbers and such. Another form of statistics I suppose and I'm a stat junkie at times. In fact, if it didn't require more upper level mathematics than I'd ever care to take, it would have been fun finding a unique stat job for a career. For a sports team or something.
And here's another random photo... Christina in 1998 with a heart in her hair:
Shot with my first digital camera, an old Kodak, so you'll have to excuse the quality.
Was at work until about 6 last night (we normally leave at 4:30). People love clicking on strange attachments in suspicious emails. Lots of the MyDoom virus showing up lately. Last night our Dean even opened one so I was getting her machine taken care of and also working on a server update and kicking people off to restart it.
Ended up missing my workout too so we only made it to the gym once this week on Tuesday instead of twice. We normally go M/W/F, but with Monday being Valentine's Day, we decided to do T/Th instead. Oh well, we'll get back into it next week again I suppose.
Can you believe that a county is allowed to charge $535/year for owning something that depreciates faster than most everything else someone owns? I can't stand car taxes, especially growing up in Michigan where they don't have them.
For those of you who don't follow college basketball, we beat #3 Kentucky here in Columbia last night on ESPN. And we didn't just eek out a 1 point win either, we beat them by 12. Awesome game to watch, even if I was up late watching it and Sportscenter afterwards.
Hope everyone had a good V-day... ours was okay. Dreary day here unfortunately, but it was a good day anyway. Had a nice dinner out at Carabba's... some lobster ravioli for me and sirloin marsala for Christina (and me when she got full). The waiter even brought us out a free tiramisu... simply because we were talking to him about it and how they made it there. Some Italian places don't make very good tiramisu, so we were asking him if theirs was sweet at all or not. So, he brings out one and a box and it wasn't on the bill afterwards. So, I tipped him the difference. I'd rather he get a $20 tip than the restaurant make the extra $7-$8 on the tab for the dessert.
The new challenge on the photography forums is up now. "Eternity" is the theme. Haven't figured out the best thing to shoot for that one yet... I have a few initial ideas, but any suggestions are more than welcome, feel free to post them on my zonkboard on the left there. Of course I'll post a copy of whatever I end up submitting for the contest.
I thought I'd start posting odds and ends photos once in a while. So, here's a picture chosen at random from my 12,098 photos on my computer:
The picture is of two friends of ours who I used to work with, Laura and Kevin, leaving the church after being married back in March of 2001.
Not something you grow up accustomed to hearing in Michigan.
I guess it's all the days in the 70's lately. Now we have a front moving through today bringing thunderstorms with it. It makes for a very bland, dreary, sleepy day at work.
Last weekend was nice though. We went to a Superbowl party Sunday. I brought over the high def satellite box and a friend of ours, Brian, brought his projector and screen from work. Pretty big group too... lots of good food and beer. Lots of recovery Monday too.
We got there early because Brian's wife Debra was having a baby shower before the game. But since Brian brought cards and chips, the guys played poker instead. $5 to get in, all chips even, no limit texas hold 'em. I ended up 3rd out of 5 guys playing and lost by going all in on the first and only decent anything I got all night... two pair, aces and eights. Matt had three sevens. Oh well.
We also bought 20 squares at $1/each. Ended up winning the fourth quarter, so it was worth $25. So, we broke even counting the poker loss. Matt and Misty did pretty well. Matt won the poker game making him $20 there and he won the first quarter on squares and Misty won the second quarter. That's another $50.
Anyway, I forgot my camera or I'd post pics of the setup and such. The party was at Karin and Matt's (different Matt) house. Karin took some pictures... so if I get copies of those I'll post a couple.
Me: What is the amount that was fraudulently charged to Christina's debit/credit bank card last night and today by someone in Italy?
Alex: Correct!
Yep... checked the bank today and nearly $700 was gone that we couldn't account for. Turns out someone out there with a random credit card number generating program, randomly generated a few numbers that are used by Carolina Collegiate FCU where we bank. One was Christina's card of course.
The main purchase was for $658.64 at a place called Vern's Electronics... or as they say in the wonderful city of San Cipriano, "VERRONE ELETTRONICA".
Punks.
Anyway, the money gets deposited back into our account tomorrow morning. Thus ends the story of the day.
We have a new remote now for the A/V stuff. The thing is quite amazing. The old one, while cool that it had a motion sensor and no visible buttons while not glowing, got old fast. Mostly because battery life was being measured in days instead of weeks or months. And the lack of tactile buttons got old too.
So, I found a great deal on a Harmony remote... the Harmony 659. Harmony's main mode of operation is an 'activity based' system instead of individual device controls. For instance, you press "Watch TV" and it turns on the TV, the Satellite box, and the home theater system. In fact, it also sets all of the devices to their proper inputs and such... TV to input #7, home theater to mode 'Digital In', etc. And to top that off, it knows if the devices are already on or already off.
To sum all that up... it means that when you press "Watch TV" on the remote, no matter the state of any or all of the devices, everything is going to switch to what it needs to be on so that you're watching the satellite box on the TV and the audio is coming through the home theater speakers. Amazing little device in my opinion.
Christina and I may have known all the programmed macros and device controls and nuances of the old remote, but now we have a remote that any guests can operate easily also.
