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!

Last night we made the adventurous weekday drive to Lawrence, Kansas to see Stephen Kellogg & The Sixers at the Bottleneck. There was however one small problem, Stephen Kellogg is sick and has left the tour to return home for now. We didn’t know this before leaving Kansas City otherwise we probably would have skipped the show. I guess we don’t have much room to complain because we got in free after all, thanks to our friends Brett and Emily.

I helped Brett with his first live taping experience and hopefully I didn’t tell or show him anything too incorrect. He bought microphones very similar to the ones that I use, so we decided to set them up next to each other and run the rest of our gear identically. This should give us very similar recordings that we can compare to see what the difference is, if any at all.

The Sixers (along with Kyle Riabko) attempted to put on the show, even without the front man. Some of the songs were pretty good, while others were just hilarious to watch. Often times they were reading the lyrics off a sheet of paper while trying to play their instruments. I give them credit though, because many bands would not have done this. It was definitely one of those shows that will likely never happen again, although it doesn’t really compare to the Virginia Coalition show @ Earlham College. Pat McGee played afterward, and like usual I stuck around only long enough to hear two songs.

We headed up to The Levee last night for a little Fat Tuesday celebrating. The regular Wednesday night group from work was meeting up there instead of the standard, Hooper’s. They were having a pub crawl that prevented us from going downstairs (unless we wanted to pay $15) so we enjoyed the comforts of the upstairs bar while still somewhat hearing what the band was playing downstairs. Sure it doesn’t compare to the action down in New Orleans but it doesn’t hurt to get out for awhile.

Today the DMB summer tour dates were announced, and once again O.A.R. is opening a few of the shows. They aren’t doing Alpine this year but are instead heading to The Gorge! This could finally be the year that I take a trip all the way to George, Washington. Who’s in???

Over the weekend we bought a food processor to replace the as seen on TV “quick chop”. As much as we use fresh vegetables in our cooking, we figured that a $20 or $30 processor would be worth trying.

Last night was the first time we used it to make a vegetable soup. I found a recipe online that looked pretty good and we just left the corn out (because of my supposed allergy). The processor easily chopped the onion, maybe even too easily. The potato was also no match for the blades. The slicing of the carrots and celery worked alright, not the most consistent cuts, but it worked. The end result is delicious! I’m eating some right now.

The only other thing I did last night was that I gave up on the Olympics. The closing ceremonies have already happened and I was still four or five days behind. I went ahead and deleted the rest of my recorded episodes. Better luck in four years I guess…

Finally a relaxing weekend. After work on Friday we had a few beers at home before heading down to George Brett’s. We met up with Maria and her friend Elizabeth, who was in town for the weekend. Typically we just have drinks at George’s, but this time we sampled a variety of their food as well. I would highly recommend the Turkey BLT Sandwich or the BBQ Chicken Pizza. After a couple of hours there, we headed home for the night.

Saturday was spent mostly in the apartment. Kim took care of some studying while I worked on the next version of edpaffjr.com. After hours and hours of that, we decided to put together homemade lasagna. The rest of the night was spent eating, drinking some wine, and watching a couple of movies. First up was Kim’s choice, Must Love Dogs. I’ll make my review of this movie short, it was terrible. I don’t think Kim liked it either. We then watched March Of The Penguins, a film that I’ve been wanting to see. I was obviously expecting big things because of the hype that surrounded it last year. Honestly, I was a little let down. It was a good movie but it was far from amazing, after all it is still a documentary. It was made to be shown on omnimax screens across the country.

We started off Sunday exactly like Saturday. Luckily we made it out of the apartment later in the day for more than an hour. We started off with a long game of tennis at the gym. We had planned on doing an inside workout, but the nice weather changed our minds. When we ran out of time, the score was tied one set to one. I was trying to conserve my energy for my hockey game later in the day. I guess I didn’t save enough though, we ended up losing our game and are no longer undefeated. We still hold a one game lead over the team that just beat us.

Earlier this month I mentioned that Dominique was moving down to Atlanta. He has been down there since then and seems to be doing well. Big Brothers Big Sisters wanted me to get matched up with another kid, but I think even one kid is demanding enough for us. Besides, this move may not last forever, and Dominique could be back in KC at some point in the future.

Anyway, we hung out with Bianca last night. I got home after work and found her and Kim doing some science experiments in the kitchen. I finished making the dinner that they started while they cleaned up from an incident involving vinegar and baking soda. We ate dinner very fast and then head off to Bianca’s school for the Blue Jay Fair, basically an open house. The school was much nicer than I was expecting, and Bianca’s teachers were mostly young and energetic. Previously I assumed that the teachers likely didn’t care much about the students or their education, but I was definitely proven wrong. The kids’ poor grades must be due to their lack of interest and effort. I wish I could find a way to convince them that it’s for their own good.

With Kim in Iowa overnight last night, I took advantage of the situation by eating Chipotle for dinner and then working at my computers for the rest of the night. I finally finished my project of moving my web server from Phil’s old machine, to Ringo (my old machine). I immediately noticed a slight improvement in overall performance. Upon further investigation, I noticed significant improvement involving my upcoming redesigned site. Now that this design is not horribly slow, I can continue on and hopefully release it in the future.

What does this mean for you? Absolutely nothing…well hopefully. I don’t think I missed anything when moving everything from one computer to the other, but there is a slight chance that I did. If you notice anything strange, please let me know about it. In the meantime, enjoy the slightly faster website!

We had our final game of volleyball last night, and once again I’m waiting for the results to be posted. The team that was in first (one game ahead of us) was in the middle of their match when we arrived. We saw them lose one game, and I think they won the other two. Obviously we realized that if we won all three games, then we would be tied with them for 1st place. Although a couple of the games were close, we actually wound up winning all three or our games last night.

I’m now wondering if the delay in the results is because they are trying to figure out how to break the 1st place tie. There are two other teams that could join this tie, if they won all three of their own games last night.

We better get a t-shirt!

With this session now complete, I am announcing my retirement from volleyball, at least for now. Time to conquer something else…