I saw Riverdance last night at the Starlight Theatre and actually enjoyed it. I was slightly worried that it wouldn’t be what I expected from hearing about the show years ago, but it was all that and more. The singers, musicians, and of course the dancers are all world class. I would definitely recommend seeing this show if you get the chance.

My favorite act of the night was called Trading Taps and featured “a trio of Irish dancers facing off against two urban American tappers.” The contrasting styles were interesting to watch and the duel was very entertaining. In the end they join together to close out the act to the loud cheers of the crowd.

How did I end up there for the show? Well Phil and Doni have had season tickets to Starlight for years, and even Phil seems to enjoy some of the shows. Kim convinced me that we should also get season tickets this year, so we did. This was our first show of the season and if the rest are of this quality I will deem the purchase a huge success. Next up is Dr. Doolittle.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, but I now have remote desktop setup on my computers at home so I can connect to them from work or any other place that has a connection to the Internet. Brilliant! I got the idea from my buddy Nate who I was hanging out with this past weekend. We were at the airport and he was connecting into his PC when this idea hit me. I thought, “why don’t I have that setup?” So that’s what I did yesterday.

The tricky part was trying to figure out which computer to connect to, since I do have two of them. I decided to connect into my PC where I do most of my work, the newer machine. This was done easily since I already have a domain name that points to that machine. At the same time though I wanted to be able to connect to my web server, so I could restart Apache if needed or edit my configuration. It was at that point that I realized all I needed to do was setup remote desktop on that machine as well. Once I connect in to my newer machine I can then remote desktop to the web server and have full control there.

It’s kind of slow, but I’m not sure how I ever lived without this!

My apologies for the lack of updates today but we have entered “crisis mode” with one of our clients. They have a list of bugs that they want fixed and they want it done now!

Um… I’m gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomorrow. So if you could be here around 9:00, that would be great. Mm-kay? Oh, oh, and I almost forgot. Uh, I’m also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, ‘kay? We, um, lost some people this week and uh, we need to sort of play catch-up. Thanks.

Update: It’s past 7 and I’m still here. Where’s my overtime pay??

Has anyone else been watching Treasure Hunters? I was hoping it would be just as good as my latest experience with Amazing Race, but so far it’s been kind of a let down. On the night of the premiere Kim fell asleep watching the show. I’ll give her credit though since it was two hours long.

Last night’s episode flew by, but maybe that’s just a sign of the show getting better. I think the hard part is that there are so many teams right now that it’s hard to get to know any of them, let alone pick out a favorite. Right now I just hope the Fogal family gets knocked out ASAP. After that I’m pulling for the Wild Hanlons just so I can continue to be entertained by them. One Hanlon rocks a mullet, the other two are his son and brother. Last night they left the last mission to grab some food on a eighty mile round trip and somehow still made it back in time to avoid elimination by solving the puzzle.

The show is on Monday nights at 9PM eastern and 8PM central. I’m hoping that it’s only going to get better from here, so maybe you should check it out next week if you have not already done so.

I was in beautiful Cleveland, Ohio all weekend long for one of my favorite weekends of the summer. As with any other year I met up with friends from all over the country and listened to some great music from many different bands. In addition to that I also attended a Reds and Indians game. The Reds won but we probably saw less than one full inning of the game. Instead we gathered our group together in the outfield bar to catch up and wait for more of our friends to show up. At least I only paid $5 to get into the game.

We also partied at the coolest dive bar two nights in a row. It’s pretty hard to beat $2 beers and karaoke every night of the week. I don’t think the staff of this place had ever seen their bar so crowded. When we left on Saturday night one of the ladies was giving us hugs and thanking us for coming back.

We talked about going to a “beach” on Lake Erie but instead we were treated to a party at the townhouse of Jay and Suellen. The food was delicious and so were the drinks. A huge thanks goes out to them for all of their hospitality over the weekend.

Luckily we had tons of fun all weekend because the airport was not fun yesterday, and I only experienced half of what some of my friends went through. Storms all over the east coast cancelled many flights and delayed flights throughout the country. I should have landed in Kansas City before 10PM but didn’t get there until around midnight. At least I made it home though, some were forced to stay in Cleveland for another night last night. I wonder if they went back to that bar for a third round.

I’ve got four words for you, well actually three words and one made up word: Feeling Better Than Everfine! Have a good weekend everyone.

Hello? Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone home?

I thought for sure “Slothlisberger” would have drawn at least one comment. Maybe everyone is a closet Steelers fan. Either way you all are going to be very disappointed by this entry. I thought the beginning of this week was busy, but it definitely does not hold a candle to today. I cannot believe I only have another hour or so of work. Hopefully the weather gets better so I can get out and play a little tennis. Check back tomorrow for a better entry (I hope) but in the meantime check out my buddy Jay‘s latest creation, the Canyard.

I finally sorted through my pictures from Wakarusa and put them up on the site. There are some good ones of Virginia Coalition and some other various shots from the weekend. Honestly I should have taken better advantage of the press pass I had to get some killer pictures but often I was too busy drinking the free beer. A better camera probably would have helped as well. I think that’s the second time I’ve used that excuse though. Anyway, check them out here if you have the time. I also added the full list of bands that I saw to my show database.

Speaking of pictures…

While running this morning the news reported that more people watched the US and Italy World Cup game than Game 6 of the Stanley Cup, which could have been the last game if Carolina had won. The World Cup game did a 4.3 national rating on ABC while Game 6 did a 2.2 on NBC. I guess soccer is more popular than I had originally thought.

What’s funny is that I watched the soccer game but did not watch the hockey game later that night. As I mentioned yesterday we had a block party to attend on Saturday night. Luckily Edmonton went on to win that game and force a Game 7, which hopefully had better ratings than Game 6 (I couldn’t find the ratings yet). I know that I watched all of the game last night.

The Carolina Hurricanes went on to win a pretty exciting Game 7. It was a very physical game with lots of good shots and even better saves. Carolina’s rookie goalie, Cam Ward, went on to win the Conn Smythe Trophy and captain Rod Brind’Amour finally got to hold Lord Stanley’s Cup. Congrats Carolina!

We finally had another weekend where we were actually in our new house. If you remember we first started moving on the weekend of May 12-14. The following weekend we were in Greensboro for a wedding. The weekend after that we were up in Minnesota for a mini vacation. After that we finally had our first weekend at home but I caught a slight cold that ruined parts of it. Last weekend was spent camping at Wakarusa. Finally this past weekend was spent at home, our second weekend doing so in over a month of being home owners.

In addition to finishing up the deck staining project, we attended a block party on Saturday evening. A guy who lives a couple houses up from us put it together and invited everyone that lives on Genessee between 45th and 46th to attend. The turnout was great and we got the chance to meet around 75% of the block.

We also went up to Eddie Delahunt’s “Cafe &” that I mentioned at the beginning of last month. It just opened a week ago and seems to be doing really well so far. We walked up there on Saturday morning and got a couple cups of coffee and some muffins from Eddie. We watched one of the World Cup games up there and socialized with Eddie and some of the other patrons. I’m sure we’ll be back sometime soon.