Quick hit from Saturday night.

So it’s Valentine’s Day and we’re eating up at the Second Floor restaurant at the Westin Galleria hotel, when we get the wild idea to get a room there at the swank hotel.  So, after dinner I wander over to the check-in desk and ask the snooty dude if they have any rooms available.  The guy gives me a look and says, “We do have a few rooms left, but they are $315 for the night.”  He’s got that dismissive look in his face, the little cock-knocker.  So I say, “No thanks” and step about 10 feet away and whip out the ol’ iPhone and go to the hotel’s website and book the room for $179.  Booyeah.  I walk back up to the counter to check in and make sure I get serviced by the aforementioned puddknocker so I can see the disdain in his eyes.

Doesn’t he know I’m the sausage king of Chicago?

This is pretty nerdy, but those of you who know me aren’t surprised by this.

I have purchased my first adult LEGO product, the Darth Vader TIE Advanced pictured below:

I’ll probably detail the build up here and on my Flickr.  And I’ll probably wear my R2-D2 beanie whilst doing it.

I’ve added a new Poll on my Veggie blog.  Go check it out!

In other news, today marks the 8th day of my recent semi-conversion to vegetarianism.  I decided last Saturday to try this out for a month and then decide if I’d like to continue.  You can track my progress via my new blog “The Meatless Wonder.”  Most of you that know me will find this borderline-ludicrous since you know how much I love beef, poultry, pork, seafood, etc.  In fact, I find it a little insane myself, but I promised myself I would give it a shot and who knows, I just might enjoy it!  Or I might find myself in a cow pasture late at night with a knife and fork.  We’ll see.

As some of you may know by now, I have finally found a new source of employment recently.  After an excruciating 2 months of unemployment, I have found a new SharePoint Admin. position at Tetra Pak.  Tetra Pak is a Swedish manufacturing company that produces food packaging; folded paper containers such as the Swanson Chicken Broth to the right.  Every job has it’s pro’s and con’s, but I’m really very happy with this one and am actually excited to work there.  And really, this is how I see it break down:

Pro’s-

• Stable Company
• Good Pay
• Great people (Really interesting mix of personalities and nationalities.  I have sitting with me in my small area people from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Sweden, Poland, Mexico, and of course, the U.S.)

Con’s-

• It’s in Denton

Seriously, that’s it.  It is kind of a bitch to drive 40+ miles each way to work, but I’ve moved my hours to 7am-4pm so that helps a lot with traffic.  And I’ve gotten quite a few audiobooks to help pass the time easily.  

Another neat perk is that I should be heading out to Sweden sometime  in the near future to meet with my team of SharePoint Admin’s out there.  Can’t wait!

Saturday Night: check
Happenin’ bar: check
Fresh duds: check
Person/people with me: . . .

Winter makes me want to put a gun in my mouth.

J/k please don’t call the suicide hotline on me.

Here are the photos from this year’s festivities:

Today marks the second full day of my unemployment.  This is very foreign territory for me.  I haven’t been without a job since the summer of 1996 when I got my first job at SMU.  I have quite a few prospects, but nothing is concrete yet so I’m still worried about finding work.  So much so that I’ve entertained the idea of relocating to San Antonio or Boston for two different opportunities.  God, please don’t make me have to move to San Antonio!  Ugh.  

Yesterday, on my first day of unemployment, I kind of felt lazy.  Slept in till 11AM.  I had to clean up a lot of shit in the house from Crunksgiving the night before, but I really didn’t feel like doing it.  So, I ended up doing a pretty half-assed job.  I did have an interview at Statera, but I knew going into it that they didn’t have any immediate openings.  This was just more of a pressing the flesh, getting to know me type of interview in case anything comes up.

Today, I feel like I’m back on my game.  Woke up at a reasonable 10AM, and now I’m halfway through with juicing my pecs and then I’m going to go on a bike ride.  Then maybe I’ll finish that half-assed cleaning job I did.  Who knows?  The gutter is the limit for me!

As we enter the holiday season, and by “holiday” I mean Crunksgiving, I find myself looking back at what has become a grand and glorious tradition amongst myself and my friends.  

First, a history lesson:

Crunksgiving was first observed in November of 2003.  Only then, it had not yet acquired the Crunksgiving moniker.  No, then it was called Trippsgiving, named after the band, Tripp Fontaine, the members of which I counted amongst my closest friends.  We got together and realized that we needed a “friends only” counter to the traditionally family-oriented Thanksgiving holiday.  The original Trippsgiving was a gala event held at Mark Petty’s house where we all came together with our baked goods and high-octane alcohol.  Food was eaten, libations consumed, poker and video games played, songs sung, and a new tradition was born.  

Unfortunately, soon after the first annual Trippsgiving, the band Tripp Fontaine was, alas, no more.  We soldiered on though, hosting Trippsgiving II in November 2004 at my place.  As was tradition at this point, the host provided the turkey, while everyone else supplied the supporting cast.  This was to be the last of the Trippsgivings however, as from here on out we would celebrate Crunksgiving (I think Kim came up with it, but I can’t remember).  It was a more apropos name as we would all inevitably get crunk’d on that day. 

Fast forward 4 years later, and we’ve almost arrived at our 6th annual Crunksgiving, to be held at my house November 16th, 2008.  This year marks quite a departure from the previous five.  The core group of my friends that were involved from the beginning; Aaron, Joey, Kim, and Eric are no longer in the Metroplex.  They’ve up and left me for the big city.  I thought about canceling this year’s festivities, but then thought better of it.  These are the types of challenges in life that test one’s meddle.  When the going gets tough, etc..

So, we’ve expanded the invite list a bit to bring the Crunksgiving spirit to more people in the D/FW area.  We may even attempt to do a satellite link-up with the boys and girl in NYC so that they can join in the frivolity.  Who knows?  It may even be the best one yet.  If not, God knows we’ll be too CRUNK to tell.

Party on.

I took the plunge last week and ordered a new MacBook Pro.  Here are the particulars:

15.4″ 1440 x 900 LED-backlit glossy display

2.4GHz Core 2 Duo CPU w/ 3MB on-chip L2 cache

1066MHz front side bus

4GB DDR3 RAM

250GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive

NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics processor w/ 256MB GDDR3 RAM

Put shortly, it f’ing COOKS!  It’s quite a step up from my lowly Mac Mini.  And to top it all off, I’ve got it all h4×0r3d up to use my iPhone as a tethered wireless internet bridge.  It’s pretty darn slow, since it’s going over the 2G EDGE network (I haven’t upgraded to the new iPhones yet).

If anyone’s wondering how to do this, it’s pretty easy using the NetShare iPhone app which basically turns the iPhone into a SOCKS proxy.  Unfortunately, NetShare was removed from the App Store about 1 day after it was released.  bummer.