What I did last Wednesday...

Hillary and I saw Coldplay at Verizon Ampitheater (I'll always want to call it Sandstone) outside of KC this week. It was a great show. Really high energy, good music, good weather. All around enjoyable experience. We even got a great parking spot. The fates were smiling on us.

It was funny, I was at the very back of the crowd, and I looked down the hill and saw hundreds of people trying to take pictures with their cell phones. I'll admit, even I tried. The results were less than satisfactory. It would have been great if I could have sat up close, and taken my Nikon, but unfortunately the close seats sold out quick, and they don't allow digital cameras at Verizon Ampitheater, especially ones like mine. No zoom, really low resolution, and a crappy, tiny lens with no low-light capabilities make for crappy pictures, otherwise I would have uploaded some myself.

The best thing about the show was that it was priced reasonably. Our tickets were $25 a piece, parking included. When I saw Dave Matthews last year I think I paid $40-45. The show was sold out, too. Even the lawn. Crazy. But a worthwhile show, for sure.

My buddy Paul has a blog now...

...and here it is. Like me, and my buddy Jason, and my buddy Tom, he also has a Nikon dSLR. I'm pretty influential, it would seem. Always starting trends. Unfortunately REALLY furry eyebrows haven't yet made it into the limelight, but you can't win them all. Expect him to post a lot of pictures such as the one above, all of which are better than mine. Hopefully he'll give me some reciprocal back scratching and give me a link on his site as well.

Glad they fixed that problem

I'm of course being optimistic, but hopefully Blogger's new word verification program will fix some of the auto-spamming that's been going on. You can look through some of my comments and see what I'm talking about. It's now enabled, so if you are a legitimate person wanting to post a comment, I apologize about the hassle, but I'm sick of seeing people posting spam referrals for their real-estate or investing "blogs" which are really MLM or some other type of scam. Here's hoping for the best!

Found a cool program

This guy lets you take a bunch of pictures and paste them together into a panorama type picture. It does it all automatically, so you don't have to worry about lining things up...it does the work for you. You don't even need a tripod, although one never hurts. Check it out, you won't be dissapointed.

Got the job

Well, as you can probably tell from the title of this post, I got the job. It should work out pretty well. I have Thursdays and Fridays completely open, and a good part of the work they need me to do is on those days. I'm curious to see what other KU students I'll be working with. I start Thursday at 8:00 AM. Wish me luck.

Looking good so far

I'm pretty excited about this football season. It's looking good after today. I know it's a long season, and a lot can happen, but it's nice knowing that we've still got a serious offensive punch, and have dramatically improved our defense. In case you didn't notice, I'm a KC Chiefs fan. Our running game looked great, both from Priest Holmes AND from our backup, Larry Johnson. The passing game looked good too. It's amazing how much better a good running game can make your passing game, and vice versa. The Lions had one of the best running backs ever, in my opinion, and could never do anything for all the years they had him. It's a lot tougher knowing you're only a threat on the ground.

The defense is the big story of the day though. Last year we had the worst defense in the league, and this year it's looking pretty solid. We don't need the best defense in the league to win games, but last year showed we at least need a solid one. Looks like that's the case. Makes me excited for Sundays again.

Interview Today

I have an interview today, and I guess we'll see how it goes. I'm pretty excited about it. It's the same type of work I did this summer, so I think I have a pretty good handle on what they'll expect. I hope can still squeeze into my suits I had this summer. It's Thursday, but I think I'll wear my cornflower blue tie anyway. 5 points if you get that one. :)

This phone is amazing...

The Treo 650 is charging right now. I got it to sync with Outlook, and didn't have to add any of my contacts manually. That was a relief. I got my email set up on it, and can now send and receive emails anywhere I get a signal. I can also surf the web. That's nice. I loaded Google Maps onto it with a program a guy wrote for it. That's nice too. I can take pictures, take video, and all kinds of other goodies. Nice, nice, nice. All I need now is an SD card, and I don't have to worry about an iPod, because this guy plays music too. Not a bad investment for $58. If I could get more than one rebate, I'd buy as many as I could and ebay them. I'd make at least $100 a pop. If you have Sprint, and you need a new phone, you should SERIOUSLY think about this. Of course, you'll have to pay $299 unless you can do the warranty swap with CompUSSR, but I'd still think about it, if you're in the market.

Just in case any of my loyal fans are doing their Christmas shopping early...

This is a list of the crap that I wish I had the money for.

This lens is for my camera. Does a pretty good job at long range stuff, from what I've seen. It's also useable for some basic macro work as well, which is a bonus in this price range.

I know this is kinda cheesy, but here's another lens for my camera. This one is supposed to be pretty good for the money. It would let me get a really wide angle look at things. If I were a realtor, I would have one already. Lets you get the whole picture in when shooting indoors.

This would do a great job at replacing my phone. I may end up cheating and getting this one tonight. I have a scheme worked out to where I can get this $600 phone/PDA combo for about $58. I'll keep you posted.

Edit: I got the phone. They wouldn't let me do it unless I bought the warranty. They can make me buy it, but they can't stop me from returning it. $58 bucks, plus tax. I'm weak, but it was soooo worth it.

This printer. I have a really nice, really practical, really economical photo printer. But this one is supposedly amazing. Plus it would let me print up to 13" wide and as long as I want. If you're generous enough to get this for me, don't cheap out on me. Get me some extra ink tanks. They're expensive as hell from what I understand.

This guy. Just announced this morning, I had to put him on here. This is style at its finest. My favorite iPod so far. Too bad the headphone jack is on the bottom. I don't get it either.

This camera. I know, I know. I've got a crazy camera the way it is. But it would be nice to also have a tiny one that was a bit easier to haul around. And as much as I like my Nikon, I don't think Canon makes a bad product, as long as you take it for what it is.

This dual core CPU. It would really be nice to have one of these guys cranking out operations under my desk. Of course, I'd need a new motherboard, which would require a new video card. Hmmmm...

A TV Tuner for my computer, or for that matter, any LCD monitor. It would be nice to be able to record TV on to my hard drive. Not to mention being able to watch TV on an LCD hooked up in another room.

One of these guys. I don't have time to play the video games I have, but this would still be pretty nice to have sitting under my TV.

I suppose that would be enough to satisfy me. For a while anyway.

My Family

My family had a gathering on Labor Day and as we were all together, a thought occurred to me.

I'm very lucky. I'm 25 years old, and still have all of my grandparents. I don't know many people my age who haven't lost a single grandparent, and I'm thankful for it. It's really neat knowing that my grandparents were able to be around for the entire time I grew up, and they all made it to my wedding.

My grandparents are extraordinary people, and I'm very thankful for the time we've had together. I hope that they know how much they mean to me, and what a great example they've been to me.

Mad Max IV: New Orleans

Wow. This is big time. I don't even know where to begin, or what to write about on this. It doesn't look like anywhere in America I've ever seen. I'm watching TV, and they have civilian vehicles driving around full of AK-47 wielding thugs. People are being beaten, raped, shot. I saw a report that some guy shot his own sister in the head, over a bag of ice. My friend Jason told me something yesterday that really hit home. He said that people tend to take for granted just how deep the social fabric runs.

Crazy. People are just stuck there, with nowhere to go, and no way to get any communications. People are arming themselves with anything they can. Guns, knives, clubs. Crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Bodies lying in the open, people just sitting in filth, with no food or water for days. Walking around in feet of water, that's full of gasoline, sewage, dead bodies, and alligators.

Everyone has been talking about the looting, but man, I can't blame them. I'd be getting food, WATER, and medicine. That's what I'd be doing, and I wouldn't feel bad about it either. You gotta survive, and you gotta make sure your family survives. But you can't hoard the stuff, and you can't take it from people. The stuff is going to be ruined anyway. On the other hand, what kind of moron would steal TV's and electronics in these conditions? Any TV is almost certainly ruined anyway, and even if it's perfectly fine, where is he going to put it? Carry it around above his head for 6 months until the water goes away? I bet a pallette of water is worth more than any plasma TV in New Orleans anyway, at this point.

The medical problem is what blows my mind. You've got thousands of people that are healthy as long as they have their medication, but that might quickly become terminal without it. Diabetics, heart patients, epileptics. I don't know if I'd survive in this type of situation. I'm pretty normal with my medication, but if I miss a couple doses, my Tourette's kicks in pretty hard, and I don't think I'd make it in that type of situation with a loss of motor control. I can't even concentrate without it. I can't imagine if I needed insulin or something.

The Superdome was so bad that workers there were walking around in gas masks because of the smell days ago. It hasn't gotten any better, I'm sure. There's a Civic Center somewhere I guess where chaos had taken over. People inside were being raped, tourists were getting beaten, people shot. 80 some ARMED cops came to try and restore order there, and couldn't even force their way inside. They were repelled by the people holed up in there, who apparently thought they were better off without the cops.

I guess the military is starting to show up in force, but man, it just seems like the response was way too slow. I know the Federal Government is an unwieldy thing to move into action by design, but it's been days, and they're just now getting enough soldiers in there to start to establish order. I mean, maybe they really couldn't do much more, but it's hard to believe that in America, today, this kind of thing is still possible. I can't imagine what it would have been like if there was a nuclear disaster in the 60's or something. Every urban center in the US would be like New Orleans is now. Scary thought for sure.