Sorry for the lack of posts over the summer. I just haven’t been doing anything too exciting. There is only so much I can write about work and video games I guess. But summer finally seems to be coming to a close and the days are getting cooler, thank god. Me and heat don’t mix well.
Labor Day was as fun as always this year. I made the trek to Nahma last Friday with Laura in tow. Friday night was your typical late night with a bonfire on the beach and lots of alcohol. Saturday was spent finishing the float, swimming, and getting burnt. Then the partying started in earnest on Saturday night. I think I started after church with a couple screwdrivers and some beer, then we all went to Fish Fest. After that we moved to Wayne and Sonja’s camp site.
Sunday was a little rough with the lack of sleep but I got up reasonably early and jumped in the lake. We took 1st place in the parade with the giant boot, then we went to the celebration to work the kids games. I think the prizes were a little better than usual this year. I got a sweet blue monkey tattoo. After a long day in which we walked back and forth from the house to the hall six times we ended with what was probably my last bonfire of the year. It was a very good weekend over all. I took some pictures and some short videos which aren’t all up yet. I’ll let you know when all of the videos are up.
UPDATE - September 3rd, 5:59 PM: All videos are up.
Posted by Justin on September 3rd, 2008
No Comments »
We had a good time in Nahma this year for the 4th. But honestly we’d have to try pretty hard to have a bad time when you mix the bottle rocket launcher with a lot of beer. Seriously, the weekend consisted mostly of drinking copious amounts of beer and launching bottle rockets. We did somehow find time to play some croquet, horseshoes, ladderball, go golfing, and enjoy the Great Nahma Fire of 2008. But since I’m not much for explaining myself in complete sentences, go check out Leah and Greg’s website and Leah’s photoblog for all the hairy details.
But here’s a little something I had to include (I stole it from Leah’s photoblog) because it’s so cool. Check out me and my glowing beer can. I’m the one right in the middle looking like I don’t know what’s going on.
Posted by Justin on July 9th, 2008
8 Comments »
I’ll be heading to Nahma this weekend for the 4th. I plan to leave here around noon tomorrow so I should be there around 7:00. Hopefully we have some good weather and plenty of bottle rockets for the gun!
UPDATE
Since I’m at a good point with things at work I decided to take a full vacation day tomorrow. This means I’ll probably leave before noon and be in Nahma sometime in the 5:00 - 7:00 range, or even earlier if I just get up and go. Viva Las Nahma!
Posted by Justin on July 2nd, 2008
4 Comments »
I finally got around to putting up the pictures I have from Colorado Springs. I separated them into four different albums so that it’s not too overwhelming.
The Young House
Blodgett Peak
Cheyenne Mountain Zoo
Garden of the Gods
If you want to see more check out Matt’s pictures. He has some pictures of us getting ready to go rafting and some from the arcade.
Posted by Justin on June 19th, 2008
5 Comments »
I just got back from one hell of a good vacation in Colorado. I flew out last Thursday night with my friend Matt to visit our friends Justin and Annie in Colorado Springs. We did some hiking, white water rafting, went to the zoo, ate at some great restaurants, and spent a couple hours at an actual penny arcade.
(more…)
Posted by Justin on June 16th, 2008
6 Comments »
I spent most of Memorial Day weekend drinking and staying up too late. One thing you can always count on when going to Nahma is that you won’t get enough sleep. It might have to do with the fact that there are at least 20 people present at any one time and sleeping is simply not possible, but I think it’s mostly because the beach is too damn hard to leave, especially on nights like the ones we had over the weekend. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky on either Friday or Saturday night, and since the moon didn’t rise until late the stars were amazing. That changed though on Sunday when it rained so hard I thought we might need to start gathering up the animals. But two perfect nights were enough.
A ton of people showed up on Sunday. I don’t think we’ve had a crowd like that in a long time. And babies started popping up left and right. I don’t even know where most of them came from. Leah has some pictures of these mysterious babies. So overall it was a very good time; too much food and just the right amount of alcohol.
Now it’s back to work. I’m jumping back into our prototype project after missing a couple days. Busy busy busy. But I’m going to see the new Indiana Jones movie tonight so I’m looking forward to that. Also a few good movies come out on DVD today. It’s a good day to be a Dario Argento fan since there are some new editions of a few of his movies coming out. Phenomena is one of my favorites so I’ll be getting that for sure, even though I already have the old discontinued version.
Posted by Justin on May 27th, 2008
10 Comments »
I’ve decided to take a couple days off work and make the trip home for Memorial Day. I’ll be heading home after work on Wednesday the 21st. I’m looking forward to a bonfire on the beach. And I expect Dayna to go swimming. I’ve heard she hasn’t been in yet and that just doesn’t feel right.
I played Mario Kart Wii at a friend’s house last week. It’s pretty cool because it’s got a bunch of the old tracks from the SNES and N64 versions of the game. I didn’t try the wheel though. I’ve heard mixed things about it. The Gamecube controllers seem to work best. I’ve also heard that Earthbound is probably coming out on the Virtual Console soon so now I think I’m definitely going to have to get a Wii. Besides I really want to play Super Mario Galaxy. I guess it’s a good thing they’re never in stock anywhere because I’m probably going to have to buy it the next time I see one.
Posted by Justin on May 12th, 2008
6 Comments »
So you’ve probably noticed I changed the site’s layout for about the fifth time in the past six months. I guess this really came about because I finally installed IE 7 on my work laptop and noticed how dang ugly my site was. So now I’m using a simpler stylesheet that has no little quirks between browsers, so it looks pretty much the same in Firefox and IE. I promise I won’t change anything again for at least a month.
I’m feeling considerably less stress at the moment since the big project I was working on got cancelled last week. It just means moving on to something else really. It also means more time for Grand Theft Auto IV, which is going to take quite a bit if I ever want to finish it. The game is absolutely huge.
Posted by Justin on May 5th, 2008
14 Comments »
Thank god it’s Friday. This is the end of a very busy week where I spent four days in class and most of my time outside class writing code for a project that needs to be done at the end of this month. Seeing as how due dates are fast approaching it might not have been the best time to take a class, but it was an interesting one on Service Oriented Architecture. It looks like I’m going to be getting more work on another project on Monday, so any hope of a little downtime has just been quashed. These next few weeks are really going to test my time management skills. But I always try to fit in a movie at the end of the day just so I don’t go cross-eyed from staring at my computer screen all day.
Last weekend Laura came to visit. She rode with a friend of hers to Winona and then I picked her up from there. We spent pretty much the whole weekend watching movies and TV shows. Juno, Fight Club, Alien, Little Miss Sunshine, Man On Fire… I know I’m missing some. It was a good time. We also made it to Sky Dragon Buffet, which I’d been wanting to go to for a long time. It was everything I thought it would be.
I just ordered two more posters for my already poster cramped apartment. I just love posters I guess, and I hate bare walls. And these are two really good ones. One of them if this sweet Dark Knight poster and the other is this cool Fruity Oaty Bar poster. For those who don’t know, Fruity Oaty Bar is the advertisement in the movie Serenity that makes River go into kill mode. I am such a nerd.
After work I plan to go pick up Cloverfield. I’ve been looking forward to seeing that for a long time, even though I’m sure the experience won’t be the same on a small screen. Last Friday I bought Juno and I love it. I’ve watched it three time in the past week, and I’ll probably watch it again this weekend.
In other news, today I reached a milestone that I’d rather not have. It was the first time I ever paid $40 for gas. I was quite surprised. I think it was $3.42 a gallon.
Posted by Justin on April 25th, 2008
15 Comments »
Things have been pretty quiet around here lately. I’m still spending most of my time either working or watching movies and playing my Xbox. I just watched Fight Club again the other day, so that’s where the strange title of the post comes from. That is such a great movie. It’s the kind of movie that you have to watch twice. And I don’t mean that in a “Man I don’t get that movie, I think I need to see it again,” sort of way. It’s more like, “Oh my god. I have to watch that again.”
I made a little site update today by switching the meebo chat to google chat. I like the google chat better for a couple reasons, but mostly because now it will open the chat in a new window so you can browse to different pages and still keep chatting.
In other news, the one and only Laura Kennedy is supposed to make a visit this Friday. She’s hitching a ride with a friend to Winona and I’m going to pick her up there. We have a movie list to get through so it should be a good time.
Posted by Justin on April 17th, 2008
9 Comments »
