There hasn’t been a dull moment around here the past couple days. I was tired as hell at work yesterday, probably due to being up after midnight the night before, but that didn’t stop me from staying up late again last night. If you remember, I used to play hockey on Wednesday nights in a pick-up league. Well they are starting another session and wanted me to come back to play. I told them that one day a week is enough, especially with the weather getting better. They asked if I would fill in for just a night, since they are still short on guys.

So I ended up at the rink playing hockey at 9PM. Of course, I didn’t get home until around 11 and then I didn’t make it to bed until after midnight again. I had some stuff to take care of that couldn’t wait until today. I am once again exhausted here at work but glad that the day is over half complete. I’ve been searching for an online audio stream of the basketball games but haven’t had any luck so far. I was thinking that this would help the rest of the day move along faster.

Only three more hours of work for the rest of this week! I am off tomorrow and will be flying back to Cincinnati for the weekend. We’ve got lots of things planned already so I’m sure it will be a busy one. I love long weekends!

I dropped Kim off at the airport before work yesterday. She spent the day in Iowa for work and is flying into Cincinnati today. That means I’m all alone for the rest of the week, on a bachelor week if you will. So, what have I done so far?

Last night I made the drive over to Lawrence, Kansas to see the band Zox * who were previously included on Now That’s What Ed Calls Music 2004. That was the year that I first heard of these guys, and although I only saw a song or two of their set at the Feeling Better Than Everfine Festival, I knew they were capable of putting on a very good show. I’m happy to report that they did not disappoint, even though the “venue” they played left a lot to be desired.

The Gaslight Tavern is one of the few places I had yet to see a show at in Lawrence. I had often heard from friends that it was small, but this didn’t prepare me for how tiny the place truly is. I didn’t see a sign on the wall indicating the maximum capacity, but if I were in charge of these signs I would give this place a maximum of 20 people. That’s the approximate number of people who were in attendance last night and I don’t think anyone else could have fit comfortably. The bar is very nice and clean. And although I was not drinking last night, they appear to have a great selection of drinks. The room is just not conducive to bands playing. I think a solo singer/songwriter is the perfect fit for the Gaslight. Despite these problems, Zox played a great show and I look forward to seeing them again in April when they are back in Lawrence at the Bottleneck.

* The link to Zox’s website is now correct. Sorry about that.

Many of you (myself included) are likely still a little sour that Cincinnati was left out of the NCAA Tournament, but if you want to participate in a Pick’Em here’s your chance. Doni has setup a yahoo private group that you can join for free. I know that Kim, Doni, Phil, Mike, Todd, and I are already in. Who’s next?

To join follow these steps:

1. go to http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/men
2. Click Sign Up
3. sign in using your football sign in or sign up for a new one if you
don’t remember or have one
4. Click on create or join team
5. Click on select under Join Existing Group
6. Click on select under Join a Private Group
7. Enter the Group ID# (69234) and the Password (morelock).

I’m hoping that Doni and Phil agree on some sort of prize to give out to the winner. I’m thinking a date with Gabe would be nice! Or a couple of free rounds at the Brooksider!

Our weekend was full of some crazy weather changes. Friday was a decent enough night to sit outside and have a couple of beers. Before doing that, I went to SidePockets with some folks at work. This was put together as a going away party for Chad, who is leaving the company this week. Hopefully we’ll still see him around on Wednesday nights. From there I headed home to find Kim and Christie out on the porch having a couple of drinks. I joined them for a couple of hours, and then we called it a night.

Saturday was a beautiful day in Kansas City! Kim and I started off the day with nine holes of golf. I think both of us played much better than we did last year, even if it was only the first time we’ve been out this season. Kim’s new clubs seem to be doing the trick or at least giving her enough confidence to really hit the ball. I actually enjoyed golfing for a couple of the holes. From there we returned home to prepare for a little gathering at our place. Mike, Christie, and Maria all made their way over for some cornhole, cards, grilling, and drinks. We all had a great time and it was good to see everyone again.

We went from a beautiful day to a truly ugly one. We left the apartment with plans of running errands and hanging out with Bianca, but didn’t make it further than the nearest gas station. We stopped there to pick up a few drinks and as we were pulling in the national weather service was announcing severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings for most of the area. We decided to head back home to wait it out. In the end, there were three separate waves of storms that swept through the area, but luckily for us, our area was mostly untouched. It’s been said that “We had a full season of tornadoes today and tonight alone,” with something like 15 tornadoes spotted. Once the storms were all past us, we continued on with the errands. Kim and Bianca hung out at our place while I worked on the computer until my hockey game later in the evening. We won our game and I finally scored another goal! Even on my way home from the game, they were announcing more warnings for some of the counties just outside our area.

Today it’s cold outside, and the clouds are again forming out my window. Don’t you just love spring?

Kim is taking one of her insurance tests today and has been studying for it all week. This should help to explain the lack of entertaining updates, but that should end today. I hope to have a great weekend to tell you all about on Monday.

Here is a logo idea for my site that I put together last night. I really like the design of it, but I cannot decide if the colors are too bright. I’ve been reading that the colors of web 2.0 are greens, blues and oranges, and that they are mostly bright and cheery. I’m pretty sure that I want to use a blue and green theme, just trying to decide on some final hues.

One of the things I want to include in my re-designed site is an online calendar. Ideally I could use it instead of the paper calendar I carry with me daily, and furthermore you all could view it to see what I’m up to from time to time.

As of right now I’m going to be using wordpress to run the blog section of the site, if not more. I’ve been looking for a good calendar plug-in for wordpress, but so far none of them do everything that I want them to do. The one thing that I love is the simple integration with wordpress, which will be the building blocks of the entire site.

Today, after reading about google’s planned calendar application, CL2, I began looking for existing applications that are similar to it. I found many existing web 2.0 calendar websites: 30 Boxes, Planzo, AirSet, etc. They all seem to offer similar functionality, and even offer someway to display events on your own site using a “badge.” The question now is if I should wait for google’s product or just go ahead and evaluate these others.

In the words of fighty, yawn.

We are getting closer and closer to selection sunday and with that brings the abundance of conference tournaments taking place right now. My parents are currently on a trip with their friends the Hemmelgarn’s in good ol’ New York City for the Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden. Cincinnati had a noon game today against Syracuse that I know they attended. Unfortunately Syracuse made a last second three point shot to give them the win by one point, 74-73.

I’m not sure if they are still planning to watch any of the other games, but I hope that they enjoy their vacation. I think this is my dad’s first time ever in the city! They are staying in the same hotel we stayed at a few months ago when we visited NYC. Hopefully I didn’t give them too much bad advice.

With Cincy out of the conference tournament, we can only hope for a good spot the Big Dance. Hopefully then they can have a little better success than in the Big East tourney.

I have a new enemy and its name is Cymphonix. I guess that we’ve had one of their Network Composer devices installed here at work for a week or two now. At first it didn’t cause too many problems for me, but I was told by other employees that their streaming music was no longer working. Luckily the streams that I use via my Sirius subscription are still working to this day (knock on wood).

I soon realized that I was no longer able to download mp3 files, which isn’t that big of a deal since I obviously have other ways of listening to music. Something strange started happening yesterday though. I was not able to get to oarsa.org:

Blocked Content Analysis: Gambling

I then browsed over here to edpaffjr.com:

Blocked Content Analysis: Alcohol and Tobacco

What the hell? It’s obvious to me that they either have a monkey doing their website categorization or they are using some sort of real-time filtering. Perhaps the device can read what’s on a page and then decide to block it or not. Obviously O.A.R.’s song “That Was A Crazy Game Of Poker” could lead to the gambling categorization, and that’s what first led me to this theory.

Regardless, I’m sure this product aims at increasing productivity. I’m not sure if the result is going to be reached though, especially after I just spent the last half hour of my lunch trying to research how the filtering is done. I haven’t quite figured it out yet, but hopefully I’ll be able to view these obviously “safe for work” sites in the future.

After work on Friday Kim and I headed out to Amanda and Joel’s place on the outskirts of town. We met up with the two of them, along with Maria, and headed over to the new entertainment area of town called Legends. They are still in the process of building most of it, but there are a few restaurants and shops that are already open. We quickly decided on Granite City Food & Brewery, a chain of microbreweries from Minnesota, for dinner and drinks. The food was really good and the beers weren’t bad either. Once they can figure out how to work a thermostat they should be good to go. After freezing through our final round of drinks, we headed outside to thaw out and return to Amanda and Joel’s. We topped off the night with a couple games of euchre, which Joel and I won!

We hung around the apartment most of Saturday until later in the evening when we went over to Doni and Phil’s. Phil cooked up Kung Pao chicken, Doni served drinks, and we provided fortune cookies for dessert! The food was excellent, especially with a little hot mustard thrown in. Our after dinner entertainment first consisted of a DVD that Phil made from their recent trip to Hawaii. It wasn’t quite as good as my mom’s work, but at least he figured out how to make a DVD, I haven’t even got that far. From there we played some more cards, this time the name of the game was hearts. I think Phil spends a little too much time playing online because he kicked the crap out of all of us.

Since Sunday’s weather was so nice we decided to get outside early, after lunch from Chipotle. We first hit some balls at the local driving range. Kim wanted to try out her new set of clubs, which actually did seem to help a little so far. I’m sure this will be a common activity for us for the next few weeks leading up to her trip to Pinehurst. We then picked up Bianca and one of her friends and took them to the zoo. Since many parts of the zoo are currently closed for the winter and for construction it only costs $2 to get in. There is still enough open to keep you busy for an hour or two, so it’s well worth it. After spending some time with them we ran a few errands and returned home just in time for me to leave for my hockey game. Our star player was out for this week, but we still managed to get the win and remain in first place!

Well the lenten season is upon us, and even though I’m not a church going Catholic it still doesn’t hurt to give something up. This year’s sacrifice is cigarettes. Yeah I know that I gave those up awhile back. Truth be told though, I have been known to sneak one from time to time while out at a bar drinking. So for the next forty days (and hopefully after) this should not happen. Not only is this sometimes hard to do, it obviously has a positive benefit on me.

On to the no meat eating on Fridays thing, I will continue to ignore this, unless that means no red meat, because I’m all for that. Friday is the one day of the week that I go out to eat for lunch, and if I want a chicken sandwich I’m gonna have a chicken sandwich. I say that if you are allowed to eat fish, I’m allowed to eat chicken, and I’m heading out now to do exactly that!