Birthday Party

I don’t usually write about work related stuff, kind of a personal rule, but this is more social than work related. I went to Pappadeaux for my boss’s 50th birthday party. Much fun was had, the crawfish etouffee was excellent, the beer was cold, and there were plenty of over the hill cracks made at his expense. All in all a good night.

RockNob

My RockNob came in today and is now sitting on the gearshift. It looks good and feels quite comfortable in my hand. The universal mounting kit they’ve got is excellent. Installation was a breeze, in fact, it took longer to get the old gearshift knob off than it did to put this one on.

Margaret’s Back Home

I got up early this morning to drive Alex out to Covenant Transport‘s depot in Hutchins to pick Margaret up. She’s finished her basic training and is now an official long haul trucker. It’s good to see her so happy about what she’s doing and it’s nice to have her back in town, even if it is just a week’s layover until she heads back out.

Bubba Ho Tep

I finally got around to watching Bubba Ho Tep tonight and wasn’t impressed. It was pretty slow, the plot dragged at times, and the funny bits just couldn’t make up for it. I guess comparing it against Bruce Campbell’s other films, especially Army of Darkness, it just comes up short.

Winter in Texas

I love Texas winters. I’m sitting outside, enjoying an Ashton VSG Illusion and a Heineken. It’s been over 80 degrees for the past couple days here and while it’s going to cool off again, I’m enjoying it while it lasts.

A good friend of mine turned me on to the Ashton VSG‘s a couple years ago and I try to treat myself to one every so often. This one’s been sitting in the humidor for a couple months just waiting for an excuse. So I used it as a little motivation to get this week’s programming assignment completed early. That plus the good weather made a great excuse.

The End of Too Many Remote Controls

I picked up a new universal remote control today because I was sick and tired of having four separate remotes to control the TV, HDTV receiver, Tivo, DVD player, and surround sound receiver. It’s a Logitech Harmony 688 programmable remote control. What’s really cool was that I went to the Logitech website, entered in the model numbers of the different components, and it programmed the remote via USB. The only problem I had was getting it to turn off the Tivo, but that was quickly fixed. I’m now watching the battery life but if it’s too bad I’ll just switch to rechargables because I now do everything I could before with only one remote and have added a couple more functions.

Constantine

I went to see the new Keanu Reeves movie Constantine this afternoon. It was a pretty good film. Unfortunately I haven’t read the comic books it’s based on, so I don’t know how it compares but they did seem to do a pretty good job of filling in the back story. And the special effects were great! Definitely worth the price of a ticket, though adding on popcorn and a drink might be pushing it…

Save Municipal Wireless

It looks like the telephone and cable companies doing business in Texas have flexed their muscles and introduced a bill to ban municipalities from providing wireless data networks. Take a look at the Save Muni Wireless for some more info. This is stupid and a waste of the Texas Legislature’s time. When we still don’t have a school financing plan worked out we don’t have time to waste on making SBC, Verizon, and Comcast richer.