/dev/null

not a whole lot new here. life has been busy as usual…hung out with Mare on friday/saturday and went to Anoka for a halloween party (kicking and screaming!). I went out to eat with my sis and her friends on Sunday, went to play kickball on Monday (the other team forfeited so we didn’t actually play…it was freezing so I wasn’t too upset), then I headed over to Adam’s place for MNF/his birthday party. Today was kinda stressful as usual. I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately but work has just been really hard…I think i’m just getting burnt out and the cold weather/seasonal depression is starting to set in. Whatever, i guess i just need to toughen up.

tonight mare and i went to church to help out with a Halloween party. We helped with the hay ride (horses pulling a trailer for those of you city folk who’ve never heard of such a thing) and it was actually a lot of fun. The group helping with the hay ride was pretty crazy…there was a girl I went to college with my freshmen year, two people who were “a little off” as i would say, and a guy missing most of his teeth who was hitting on Mare like crazy. I don’t think he realized that we were together and at one point he told Mare to go get her a cup of hot cider. She said “sure” (hoping to avoid riding the hay ride with him). He then looked over at me and said “I’ve got her wrapped around my little finger! just were I want her!” hahahaahaha, I turned away and busted out laughing. Later, he told her the exact same thing! It was hilarious to say the least.

Tomorrow will be another busy day. I’m headed over to our hardware supplier to go over the installation procedure and make sure everything is kosher. Then I’m headed over to do some stupid IT-type work for one of mare’s friends…not too excited about that one but it’s good to help out friends i guess…

Thursday morning i’m flying out to San Fran for a strategy session. Unfortunately my flight leaves at 7am…not cool. I’m coming home saturday night and will hopefully catch up on some sleep. Ugh i need some time away…completely disconnected…

on a more positive note, our office got setup with a CentOS/trixbox/asterisk system courtesy of a local Asterisk consultant (who really knows his stuff). I’m glad to be on an open system and the customization is limitless. The wiring was a pain and I’m sure the asterisk guy hates us at this point, but, whatever…

time for sleep…i don’t want to wake up tomorrow!

last night was the first round of playoffs for the kickball league i’m playing in. Our team has one a total of 1 game which was good enough to get us in! hehehe

We played another 1-6 team and played better that we played all season! We only had 2 women playing which was great defensively but was hard offensively since a women must kick ever other batter and had to take an out if both girls ended up on base at the same time!

funny story…before the game I saw a guy wearing NDSU gear. I thought to myself “i wonder if i know that guy” then completely dismissed the idea. During the second inning i went to coach third base. Someone kicked a ball to third and all of a sudden I realized that the guy from NDSU was Bryce, a guy I spent HOURS doing homework with my first two years of college! I said something like “Bryce!? It’s Pete! Good to see you man!” I haven’t seen nor heard from Bryce since 2001 when he graduated and it was awesome to run into him again. As it turns out, he’s been on again/off again working for Cray and moving between fargo and minneapolis. After the game we chatted for a bit and got caught up (as much as you can after not seeing someone for 5 years!). Bryce is a big NDSU football fan as has a _super_ sweet bus that he takes up to the games to go tailgating. Here are some pics: http://www.bisoninsider.com/fantalk.html

Mare is in washington, D.C. for a few days so she didn’t make it to the game. We sure could have used another atheletic woman on our team! Somehow we ended up winning so we play again next week. We’re gonna get a team together to play broomball this winter so I’m really excited about that…but not excited about winter.

Mare is coming home tomorrow…yeah…that’ll be nice

i can’t believe people are still talking to me. i’ve been so incredibly condescending and short tempered the last few days. I think I need some time away from life. Too bad it’s getting cold and the Boundary Waters is so far away. Escaping to the mountains (or northern MN) for a week or so seems like a really good idea right now…..

This last week just seems like a total blur. I got back from San Fran Friday morning at about 6:30. Slept a few hours then worked the rest of the day. My family was in town Friday night so we went over to my aunt and uncles house and ate some pizza. My sis just got back from a two week vacation in Australia so she had some great pictures and a video of her scuba diving with sharks, rays, and a GIGANTIC turtle. Then I headed over to Mare’s and we went to St. Paul for Gus’ going away party. He’s moving up to Grand Forks bummer…

Saturday morning I headed over to Matty’s and helped him put up a fence. My brother was visiting a couple of colleges and I picked him up and recruited him to work on the fence for a few hours. Then we took it easy for the night and fixed up a couple of xbox’s (mod chips jarred loose, software reload). I finally grabbed the new XBMC 2.0 and installed that. The UI is really nice and I like the youtube python script, animated transitions, and better FF/RW functionality.

Sunday morning we got together for breakfast with my parents then Mare and I went to church and took a nice long nap. Sunday night we headed downtown to meet up with Mr. M and P who were in town for Joey’s son’s baptism. We met up at Brit’s and had a great time! It was cool to see Mr. M and Paula again. I’m glad they finally got to meet Marianne and I wish they would have been in town longer!

Last night we had our last regular season kickball game and lost big (as usual). Once again I managed to hit the dirt a couple of times so I’m sore again Man i love kickball…too bad our team is so terrible. Then I headed up to Blaine for MNF and poker. I again learned not to go all in on a game of Omaha when I only held the top two pair…there’s a pretty good chance someone’s gonna hit a straight or flush! hehehe, at least we only play for $5 and it was a lot of fun.

Tonight I went to Mare’s and ate some food. Then we finally made it to the gym (it’s been a while!). I got 7 miles in on the bike and ran 2.25. It was nice.

Now it’s time to watch a couple of presentations from ToorCon and get some sleep.

• Main Page - Remote-exploit.org
  (tags: security hacking hackaday toread)

I’m at the San Fran airport waiting to head home. Soooo tired right now. I might even be tired enough to get some sleep on the plane. I’m looking forward to a nice nap when I finally get home tomorrow (around 6:30am…yuk).

• Build HTML Forms, Online Surveys and Invitations with Wufoo
  very cool form builder…demo’d at office2.0
  (tags: web2.0 javascript html forms)

• funambol :: open source
  (tags: mobile syncml todo dev wireless)

I forgot to post about this earlier this week. Check out this awesome anonymous presentation at ToorCon using Tor.

http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/AnonymousPublicSpeech

what a great use for a great piece of software!

Another great weekend has nearly passed. Mitch came to town on Thursday night. We hit up Morts for some food and beer. On friday I worked a half day then stopped by Matty’s house and borrowed his mountain bike. Mitch and I cruised over to Theo Wirth Park to ride the mountain bike trails. I hadn’t been there _once_ this summer so it was a blast to ride the trails. I just love being in the city yet completely isolated by trees. We both made it out without injury (though there were some close calls)

Friday night we headed over to Marianne’s apartment for her birthday party. We ate some tacos and did our best to survive the estrogen fueled craziness that ensued! Mitch, Adam, and I were the only males there and we were severely outnumbered. One of mare’s friends was starting to get pretty friendly with Mitch. Thankfully Marianne basically told her that mitch was too good for her…which was the truth! Obviously he could have handled himself but, still, a second shield didn’t hurt! hahahaha, it was fun to see. We headed downtown at 9 or so and made it to Harvey’s. We stayed there until about 1am then Mitch and I headed for home.

Saturday morning I woke up way too early and drove up to Maple Grove to run a 5k with Adam. Thankfully I drank a lot of water the night before and felt decent. I met up with Adam and Jason (mare’s old coworker) and started the race. About 3 minutes into the race we were going downhill on a narrow trail and I decided to run off the trail and pass some people…stupid move…I turned my ankle pretty hard but thankfully I think my ankles are still in good shape after years of skating. It hurt but felt better as I continued to run. The course was in a nature preserve and the fall scenery was beautiful. I watched Adam and Jason take off in front of me and just enjoyed the view (hoping my legs would continue moving foward). The hills proved difficult and I finished with a pretty pathetic time of 23:00. I wasn’t happy with my time, but whatever, I don’t care…considering the preparation (or lack thereof), I was just happy to finish the race without walking. Jason finished 20th out of 550 racers so it was a great race for him. He said he was hurting afterwards though…he’s 42 years old so I would hope he hurt a little!

After the race I went home and cooked up some bacon and eggs from the Wedge…good stuff. After taking it easy for a while Mitch and I went out for a bike ride. We rode the Greenway from Nicollet to West River Pkwy then went north into downtown. The scenery was beautiful and it was nice to be outside on such a great day. We rode Hennipen south through downtown, then through Loring Park and eventually made it home. It was a great 11 mile cruise.

Then we stopped by the Wedge and bought two giant sirloins, two marianted chicken breasts, a China Cola (wtf?), and a nasty root beer (mine) and went over to Mare’s apartment to grill. We grilled for an _eternity_ (slowest grill ever)! It was worth the wait though…mmm…the steak was DARN good. Then mare, mitch and I headed across the street to catch a movie. We watched “Employee of the Month”. There were a few funny parts but I still want my money back (or actually, mare paid for the movie, so I want her money back).

Sunday was 100% lazy. Mare and Jen picked up Mitch and went to the Vikings game. Jen bought Mare tickets for her bday and Mitch met up with his friends at the game. I watched from home, drank too much coffee, and sat in front of the computer. Then I met up with all of them at the Town Hall on the West Bank afterwards. Mitch took off for Fargo and Mare and I fell asleep and took it easy for the rest of the night.

This week will be pretty cool. I have kickball tomororw night then I’m headed to San Fran on Tuesday for the Office 2.0 conference with AaronF. I’ve never been to California so I’m pretty excited and hoping the weather will be nice. My mom, dad, and bro are coming to town sometime on the weekend for a funeral so it’ll be good to see them again.

that’s it…time to find a smartcard reader. I have memory card that I’d like to hack but I’m dumb and can’t get the old DSS unloopers I have to read the card. i’m in over my head i guess…probably one of those projects that I’ll fail to complete…oh well

Mare and I are going and I’m really excited for the show! It’s bound to be a fun night

UPDATE:
The show was a lot of fun. The opening bands were pretty cool. I really liked Takka Takka and grabbed their CD. Architecture in Helsinki was ok and I think their music will grow on me. I thought their first song was HORRIBLE but I really liked the chaotic/experimental nature of their other songs. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah played a great set, and honestly they were way better live than I thought they would be!

I had to laugh at how “un-alternative” I am though. First Ave was FILLED with rock-and-roll hipsters and Mare and I were the weirdos in the crowd with our simple jeans-and-tshirts attire I had _never_ been to First Ave and I really liked the place (especially the 24oz Red Stripes!).

The only downside of the night was that I once again realized that I’m just too old for staying out late on a Wed night. I was tired/sore for standing for 3.5 hours and it was really warm in there! sheesh i’m such a panzi!

so the results of the 5k run I did on Saturday are online now. I finished in 22:48 which was 133 of 1432 so it was ok. I know I could have done better but I only ran one time for 3 weeks prior to the event and my lungs were in terrible shape (due to a sinus infection about a week before the event).

I’m doing another 5k on Saturday with my friend Adam. It should be interesting considering we’re going out on Friday night to celebrate mare’s birthday! I’m just hoping to finish the stupid thing hehehee.

Mitch is coming to town on Thursday night so it will be cool to have him stay for the weekend. Hopefully we can find some fun stuff to do (maybe go ride the mountain bike trails at Theo Wirth or something) but Mitch is super laid back so I know we’ll have fun no matter what! which reminds me…I need to ask for friday off of work

What a great day. I was up way too early again today to run the powerpoint at church. Afterwards mare and I headed back to the state capitol to watch two of our friends finish the Twin Cities Marathon. We waited by the finish line for about 2 hours and finally saw Erin and Jon finish around 5 hours and 45 minutes. It was kinda funny because we were standing there complaining about how hot the sun was while all these crazy people were struggling to finish the last block of a 26.2 mile race! hahahaha, I kinda felt like a jerk. At least I wasn’t like my friend Gus who joked about making a giant sign that said “better you than me” as he sat along the course drinking cocktails! It was cool too see Erin and Jon finish and I’m still amazed at their accomplishment!

After the race Mare dropped me off at a gas station where I met my buddy Matt to go shoot some guns! Matt just got a couple of handguns from his dad and in the process of getting his concealed carry permit. He was born after 1980 so he had to take a gun safety course online and get certified by someone. The guy who certified him (Alan) was a retired DNR employee and gun enthusiast who lived in St. Paul. Matt had sent Alan a thank you note and he invited Matt to go to the shooting range sometime. Matt invited me last week and said that he thought Alan was a nice guy and he was “85% sure he was harmless” but wanted a buffer (me) just in case. hahahhaa. Alan is a single guy who lives with his 40 year old brother (Roger) who has down’s syndrome. Since I hadn’t ever shot a high-powered pistol before Alan gave me a good introduction to handguns and laid down the rules of the gun range. Then we loaded all the guns (Alan had 5 or 6 and Matt had 3), ammo, ear-muffs, and targets into Alan’s truck and headed down to Burnsville to the shooting range.

We arrived at the range and got all checked in. Matt loaded up his six-shooter with 5 38 special rounds and a single 357 round. I popped off 5 rounds and had surprisingly good accuracy! Before I shot the 6th, Matt said “get ready for this one! it’s gonna kick a little”. Holy @#$#@$ crap! I thought a grenade went off when I fired the 357 round and I _swear_ a flame shot out of the barrel! I’m not kidding. My heart was RACING! Alan said something like “what was _that_! You shouldn’t have let him (meaning me) shoot that round!” hahahahaahhaa, what a rush! Alan said I did a really good job and said I should shoot some of his guns. At this point, everything went downhill.

To set the scene for you, let me just say that I’m a bit of a head case some times. I get really nervous easily and have a terrible time doing anything that requires a high amount of precision. I have a _very_ shaky hand normally and when I’m nervous I shake like CRAZY. I was really nervous shooting Alan’s guns and he was standing over my shoulder (and was really anal about things) so I was sweating bullets (no pun intended)! Alan loaded up a clip of 40 S&W into his GLOCK military/police issue…sweeeeeeet gun. I shot off a few rounds and Alan stopped me saying “RELAX! You’re too tense! take a few deep breaths!” I shot a few rounds more rounds from random guns, a .45 caliber GLOCK and a 9mm (I think). Then Alan decided that I was too tense and he took it upon himself to “straighten me out” by focusing on the 40 S&W. He kept telling me to relax and was breathing on my neck and I was freaking out! “GET AWAY FROM ME!” i kept thinking! I finally calmed my nerves a bit and finished off a box of 100 shells. At one point Alan was trying to calm me down and said “just remember, that’s a bad guy (speaking of the target which was a human body (complete with human organs and pointing a gun at me) who’s going to kill your girlfriend so you need to kill him first”. hahahahahaha, THAT will calm me down! “How about you leave me ALONE and let me just shoot this gun and I’ll be FINE!” i kept thinking…

We shot for about another hour and half. I finished the day shooting about 20 rounds from matt’s .22 rifle. Then we packed up and headed home…which was nice considering I was really getting tired of “super coach”. hehehehe. Roger (Alan’s brother with Downs) patiently waited outside during this whole time and reminded me to wash my hands with colder water and soap to get the lead off my hands!

We finally headed home and got back to Alan’s place. I carried the guns and ammo into Alan’s basement with Roger. Roger reached out to shake my hand before he went upstairs to “get his clothes ready” for his day at work at Taco Bell. I said something like “have a good week Roger!” and he started talking about “making lots of money” so he could take a train “a long ways away”. As we were saying good-bye he opened his arms to give me a hug. I think Roger liked me because he gave me a giant hug and kissed me on the cheek! hahaha, he’s very affectionate. It was a _really_ long and slightly awkward hug but since my brother (and the coolest kid in the world) has Downs Syndrome, I have a soft spot in my heart for Downs’ people and I know Roger was just happy to meet someone new and have a good day with them.

After a long conversation/goodbye with Alan Matt and I _finally_ headed home. Matt said something like “I know I invited you to be a ‘buffer’ but didn’t expect you to be a complete SHIELD!” hahahaha, we laughed and joked about how crazy alan was on the way home. All in all it was a blast. Matt and I grabbed some pizza and hot wings then I headed over to Mare’s to hang out for a bit and fill her in on the crazy details of the day!

Now I have the Gun Fever (Sunny in Philadelphia reference…the Gun Fever episode!) and want to buy a gun. If I ever get one, I think I’ll buy a GLOCK 21 (.45 caliber). I’m a bit torn though because I really don’t feel like I need and handgun and shooting someone would be really hard for me. Plus, owning a handgun seems silly to me and the chance of me hurting myself or someone else significantly increases if there’s a gun around! Also, I’m the type of person that looks over a cliff and thinks “I should jump!” knowing full well that jumping would kill me! That may sound suicidal but it’s not at all…my mind is just a little twisted sometimes! A nice gun would be pretty sweet though!

Oh what a crazy day! I can’t wait to go to the range with Matt again sometime and shoot some more 357 rounds. Wow, what an INSANE gun…and sooooo much fun! I want to shoot it NOW