Time of Year... For Beer!

I love this time of year. Most smaller brewreys are coming out with their fall brew or Octoberfest brew, and as far as varieties go, it's by far my favorite. Sam Adams Octoberfest has been my beer of choice in the fall for the last few years, but it may be facing some stiff competition this year. My favorite brand the rest of the time, Goose Island, now has a fall brew that I'm itching to sample. The only reason I didn't buy it tonight was because the Sam Adams was in the cooler, while the Goose Island was not. Last year I bought 2 cases of the Sam Adams, just so I could have it after they stopped shipping it. I was drinking it until January! I may have to do the same this year. It's a shame they don't have this variety year round.

Impatient Kitty

And now, in honor if the Unhappy Kitties, I give you the Impatient Kitty:

Unhappy Kitties

This afternoon I took yet another trip to the vet with one of our four cats. Today it was Bear's turn, but in the last few weeks we've had Chloe there three times, and Punkin there once. Cotton is the only lucky one that hasn't had to go, and that's probably for the better. Cotton, the sweetest cat you'll ever see, turns into an absolute psychopath when he goes to the vet. They all get a little crazy when you shove them into a little plastic box. It turns out Bear has a flea problem, which means they all have a flea problem. Punkin is the only cat that goes outside, so it's highly likely he brought them in. Let me tell you, it's fun to have pets, but the can be really expensive. Our vet gives us a discount sometimes. I feel like I'm buying in bulk or something.

Back For More

It's that time of year again. The baseball season is winding down, and as usual, the White Sox failed to go to the playoffs. I'm really starting to look forward to the football season starting, and I don't have long to wait. Tonight was the opening game, but the Bears first game is Sunday afternoon. After the disappointment of last year, I'm ready to start clean and feel good about my team again. This year I hope they finish the job!

Now, the bad stuff. Every day that goes by, it looks more and more likely that I'll soon be bumped back to 2nd shift. With all the movement that's been going on, all the people transferring to the Paint Shop are requesting preferred shifts, which is forcing the so called ETE employees to the bad shift. Three people were bumped last week, three more this week, so now that leaves about 4 people ahead of me. I'm likely looking at another 2 or 3 weeks on 3rd before I'm bumped. Fortunately, after I'm moved to assembly, it looks like I'll be able to return to 3rd. I just have no idea at the moment when that will be.

Prime Rates

Th Nintendo Wii launched in November '06, and since that time there hasn't been one game that I've been compelled to run out and buy. All that changed last week when they finally released the third game in the Metroid series, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. The first two games were released on the Game Cube, and were widely considered to be two of the best games of their time. Unfortunately for the underpowered Wii, the third in the installment simply can't hold up graphically to the competition. That being said, this is the only drawback I can see. The game is brilliant. Traditional Metroid game play is in abundance, and the new controls featuring the motion sensing Wii Remote are superb. It does take some adjustment at first, but now I can't imagine playing a Metroid game without them. If this is any indication of the quality we can expect from first party Nintendo titles, I'm really looking forward to future releases.

Favorite Shots #15: The River Walk

Back in 2005, Dad and I took a trip to San Antonio, Texas to be there for my brother Justin's graduation from basic training. He's in the Airforce, along with his twin brother Jon, and it was nice to be able to be there on that important day. I was really impressed with the city of San Antonio. It's very clean, and has a nice mix of the modern and traditional that is unique to that city. One of the city's major attractions is called the River Walk. It's really a series of shops and restaurants situated on the banks of the river, that flows through down town San Antonio. There realy wasn't much beyond restaurants down there, but it was a beautiful area nonetheless, and I really enjoyed the time we spent there. This particular area was a little outdoor theater we discovered on the far end of the River Walk area. There wasn't that many people this far down, but this was probably my favorite area. It was very peaceful and scenic.

Deflated

I've been having issues with this tire for a couple of weeks now. It has an incredibly slow air leak, so every few days I have to refill it. I took it in to have it patched after I noticed the problem, but the rocket scientist working at Wal-Mart (nothing else is open at 7am!) couldn't find the leak. I've decided that this week I'll have to wait an hour or so after work and take it into Farm & Fleet to have it patched. That way, I can drop off the busted mower to have that fixed as well. It's just so damn hard to do things like this when you sleep all day....

Labor Day, Wii Play

Tonight Steph and I had dinner at her Sister Melanie's house. The dinner, cooked by Melanie's husband Joe on the grill, consisted of the traditional fare: Brats, chicken, burgers, and all the trimmings. Before the party, Melanie asked Steph if we would bring the Wii. I thought it would be fun, but didn't think anyone would really get into it too much. Man, was I wrong. We played Wii Sports: Bowling for probably about 3 hours. Everyone from my brother in law, to Steph's mom and dad, to my 4 year old niece were playing it and having a blast. By the end of the night we pretty much convinced everyone there that they had to have one. I'm really starting to understand what Nintendo has done with this thing. They've created something totally accessible that people in any age group can really enjoy. It's no wonder they've sold 10 million of the things.

You can see the rest of the pictures I took here.

Co-Op

Okay, I admit it. I took this last night. This is the first time I've done this, but I had a lot of fun last night, and since it was the last day of the month, I was unable to blog about it. It's my blog, I make the rules, right? Right.

One of the best features of the new generation of gaming systems is the online component. For many of the newest Xbox games, you're able to play them over the internet with people all over the world. My dad bough a 360 a while ago, and lately has finally connected it. For the first time last night, he played Gears of War with me online. What fun! I have done this many times, but seeing through his eyes, it was like the first time all over again. I think he spent about an hour and a half laughing. It really makes me appreciate the lifestyle technology affords us in this country, and the pastimes we're able to enjoy.

August: In Review

Today was a big day: The end of August, the first of three days off, and some other things that I'll be talking about later.... Since this is my month in review post, I'll save some of the things that happened today for later. Guess you'll just have to keep reading! Anyway, we're looking at about two more weeks until I find out my fate at Chrysler. Every part of me feels like after September 15th I'll be a full time employee, but a lot can happen in two weeks.

The (second) best part of this month by far was being able to spend a little time with my sister Kathie and her son Noah. They were only here a couple weeks, and I didn't really see them for long, but with them being so far away, I really cherish the small amount of time we do spend together. Some other events this month:

• I got the dreaded Red Ring of Death
• The mower met an untimely demise
• My truck broke down and was then repaired
• I got some nice photos on a short walk

All in all, it was a pretty busy month. I think we'll look back at this month as a big one.... Here's my favorites for the month:

Minor Surgury

Today I received three packages from my UPS guy. One contained an DVI to HDMI cable that I will use to connect my Mac to my TV, one was my replaced DS Lite, and the last one held the 2 GB of memory I bought for Steph's new laptop. I must admit, I was a little leery of trying to upgrade a laptop. I've done it many time with my desktops, but laptop architecture is totally new to me, and I really didn't want to screw it up. My fears were completely pointless. It literally took me 5 minutes. Open the panel, remove the old memory, install the new, close the panel. Easy as that! I love how computers are designed now to be easily upgraded by even the lowliest Luddites out there.

Different Views

It's fun to play around. On those ordinary, average days that I complain about so much in relation to this blog, it's a lot of fun to try and take everyday objects and shoot them in odd ways. We bought this plant a few weeks back, and I was looking at it tonight, trying to see how I can make it interesting in a photograph. What I eventually decided was to set the camera inside the pot looking up. It really makes these relatively small trees look enormously tall. It's a nice technique that can be used in a lot of different ways to make boring shots (or boring days) interesting.

Pooped

I only think it's fair that since Bear is the only of our cats that has not been featured on the blog, he should at least get on there once. It's fitting, since how he looks is how I feel today. Some days when I wake, it feels as if I hadn't slept at all. Today (and yesterday for that matter) was one of those days.

When we bought this couch a few months back, it was as if it was made for these guys. The back cushions are really puffy, and they can sink in and make little nests for themselves. Bear, since he's a little on the big side, tends to hang off a bit.

Bioshock

If you're not a gamer, look away now. Move along, nothing to see here. There's your warning, don't say I didn't give you one.

I think I may have finished one of the greatest games ever. No exaggeration. I've played a lot of games in the last 20 years, so I think that's saying a lot. the game in question is called Bioshock, and it may just be one the most influential games of this generation. Set in the underwater city of Rapture, the game begins with one of the greatest intros since Half-Life, thrusts you right into the action, and never lets up. Everything about this game is nearly perfect. The voice acting, the story, graphics, pacing; all flawlessly executed and totally immersive. This is as close to art as a video game will ever get. I'm not much of a reviewer, so I'll keep it brief by saying if you own a 360 (or a decent PC) there's no reason that you shouldn't be buying this game. If you don't own a 360, this is a damn good reason to go get one. Here's a far better review than I could ever write if you're interested.

Flooded

Last night,on the way home, I drove through a small town called Kirkland. Kirkland is about 10 miles to the west of us, and has a population of roughly 1,500 people. The reason I mention it, is because these photos are from that town. Like most of the Midwest, they've been hit hard by storms and the resulting flooding has been pretty bad. Keep in mind these photos are from today and is hasn't rained in two days. The water has receded somewhat, and the level is still high. From what I can see, there hasn't been any significant property damage, but there are some streets that are impassable. I found this out passing through at around midnight last night. If I hadn't seen someone up ahead in my lane, I likely would not have seen the water until it was too late, plowing into it at 60 mph. The signs were not out far enough to warn you in time. Today they have that street entirely closed. Here's a couple more shots: The light was pretty low when I took these, so they're not the greatest quality, but I think they get the point across.

Beautiful Day

What a gorgeous day. The long, gray days have gone and today the sky was bright and blue. The past week I've driven past these wildflowers every day, and every day I've told myself that I needed to come and shoot them. Since the days have been so gray and colorless, I was happy to see this amazing blue sky today. The sun and the blue sky really make this shot.

Favorite Shots #14: Whoah!!

This is a shot I took while visiting California in July. I haven't shown this to anyone yet, because at the time, this was a pretty traumatic experience for my sister Kathie and little Noah. The next wave coming in behind him nearly went over his head, and the surf actually began to pull him deeper down the coast. At the time it was pretty scary, but I really love this shot. The look of surprise on his face is just priceless. I felt a little ashamed because by the time I realized he was in trouble, I had snapped a couple pictures already. I really should have been in the water helping my pregnant sister, but it happened so quickly, I was taken completely off guard. He was obviously alright, and now I feel enough time has passed for me to show this to Kathie without her freaking out again. Love ya sis!

De-Bogging

From the minute I turned on Steph's new computer, it reminded me fully why I chose to make the switch to Mac. Don't get me wrong, considering what we paid for it, it's a perfectly usable computer. It needs a memory upgrade to run Vista effectively, but we've already ordered 2 GB for it, and that should make a huge difference. It just really irritates me how PC manufacturers find it necessary to bloat your system with a bunch of terrible software that you will never even consider using. I spent nearly an hour uninstalling HP software, trial versions of things I've never even heard of, toolbars for Internet Explorer that are totally unnecessary, and desktop shortcuts to web pages I'm afraid to visit. I guess it's the money from these companies that make computers so cheap, but it still irritates me to no end. It's unfortunate that most tech people suggest the first thing you do when you buy a new computer is format the hard drive and do a clean install of Windows. Since I've removed all this bloat-ware, the system runs about twice as fast as it did out of the box. Thanks HP.

Overgrown

Sometimes I let things go too long. Between the breakdown of our mower last week and the almost daily rain we've received since then, the yard ha become an overgrown mess. Thankfully, we have a backup mower, but it doesn't help much if it rains every day. This is probably the wettest August I can remember in a long time. There's flooding everywhere. Most years, the late summer usually means no more mowing. The grass burns up, and I get a reprieve from a ton of yardwork. Not this year.

Switching Back? Not quite....

No, I didn't already lose faith in my Mac and chuck it out the window. I did, however, buy this PC laptop this afternoon. Not for me, but for Stephanie! I've been talking to her for a while about getting her own system, and thanks to a pretty good deal this week at CompUSA, we pulled the trigger. I initially wanted to get another Mac in the form of a MacBook, but the cheapest MacBook is nearly $1,000. Considering how infrequently she'll be using it and for what it will be used, a more affordable PC was the way to go. Since it's running Vista, we'll have to upgrade the RAM, but other than that it was a pretty good deal! After rebates, it was $399. $400 for a laptop is pretty affordable.