What A Day

Hello Everyone,

I mentioned yesterday that I probably wouldn't be posting over the weekend but I feel like I have too much on my mind and if I don't put some of these thoughts on the page, my head will most likely explode.

First, let's talk about the fun stuff. Last night Apple released OS X 10.4 or as it's more popularly referred to, Tiger. My roommate Tito and I went to CompUSA and the suits at Apple will be thrilled to know that Comp held to the official 6:00pm release time.

As I do every time Apple releases a new software, I spent the day thinking Apple was rediculous to insist on releasing there software at the end of the day. For the first time, I realized yesterday evening that Apple is doing the employers of the world a favor by waiting til the end of the work day to release new software as us nutty Mac users lose about 3 hours of our day installing and playing with new software as soon as we get it.

I'd say there were about 15 or 20 of us in the back corner/Apple section of CompUSA waiting for them to give us our friggin OS boxes. Now, I don't consider myself a computer geek by any means but as a group, we were a sight to behold. I'm not saying we were a sad bunch or anything, but I will say that we were seriously lacking in the hot chick department.

From a business standpoint, the other plus to having us wait around for the software is that customers are given some time to see what else is available for purchase. Generally, this isn't a huge things as we mac people are obsessive and we have most everything we want. Still, Belkin makes a Radio Shark thing that allows you to listen and record radio on your mac in a tivo like fashion. While I had heard of this technology, I had never come across it in a store before. Needless to say, I know own it.

Tiger was released at 6 and I went down to Stamford to meet up with my beautiful fiancé, Kristine. We ended up not leaving for LI last night and instead went out for a nice dinner...oh wait. Man, I've got a lot to say. This is going to become two posts. I can feel it.

Kristine and I have eaten at Paradise Restaurant in Stamford a few times. We enjoy their food very much. It's right next to the Crabshell which is also very good and because both these places are on the water with decks, they are total meat markets in the summertime. The food we had last night was great. We had the Jalapeno Popper special as an app and our only complaint was that we wished they came with 10 times as many poppers as they were so friggin good.

Kristine had a salad with shrimp that she enjoyed and I had The Orange Compo special which consisted of broiled salmon and yellow fin tuna. It was most delicous. It's too bad our waitor sucked. I'll tell ya...great food is one thing but if your service sucks, that's what I remember and that's what I'll hold against you. I could go into details but just know that our waiter suck royally. You know how bad he sucked? I'm an overtipper. For one, It usually doesn't cost that much more and I like the help to think well of me for future visits. Second, it's much easier to do the math for 20% vs 15%, especially after a couple of glasses of wine.

I was so pissed at our waiter last night...I think the bill was for $61 and I left $66 and quite frankly that was too much. If I ever go to Paradise again and he is my waiter, I will leave. I wish I had a picture so that you could avoid the lameness that is this piece of shit waitor. That fact that he is preventing me even now from getting to the real stresses of my day, pisses me off so much more. Bla to him I say....Blaaaaaaaaaa.....

But just to be clear, the food at Paradise in Stamford is very good and the restaurant is worth a try. Hold on...Where was I before I got off topic? Ahh yes. Nice dinner. Afterwards, we went back to Kristine's and she talked me into watching Miss Congeniality on DVD. To my surprise I laughed my ass off. If we find the time, we may go to the theatre to catch the sequel. Otherwise, we'll just catch it on DVD.

Alright, this is going way long and I have two beers in me. In a little bit, we're going to see John Stewart so I think I may take a nap. I just want to say that so far, I'm loving Tiger and I especially love Dashboard, the widget part of the OS. Because of Dashboard, I can tell you that the current temperature in Huntington, Long Island is 55 degrees and cloudy. Tomorrow it will be 63 and sunny. Very cool.

I have so much to say but not now. Until next time...

Thank God It's Friday

Hello All,

I'm sitting here listening to the new Family Guy cd. Very funny. Not for the kiddies though. Lot's of foul language. Can't wait for Sunday when Fox starts airing new episodes.

Last night, Kristine and I did our first sort of couple kind of thing. We went to Rio in Norwalk for dinner with her former roommate Meghan and her husband Brent. Actually, I guess we've done that sort of thing with my friend Tim and his wife Karen, but for some reason I don't really count that. I've known Tim forever so going out with him and his wife doesn't so much feel as an event as it does just...well, hanging out with people I've known forever.

Anyway, going out with Meghan and Brent was a blast. Great conversation. Great food. Excellent Margaritas. I think I'm going to dig this whole couplehood thing.

This weekend is a huge weekend for Kristine and I. Why? Tiger comes out tonight of course. Well, alright no. But Apple is releasing Tiger tonight and that's very exciting.

We're going to Long Island tonight and we're spending the weekend visiting her family and showing off her new ring. On the one hand, I'm excited because I get to walk around with the one I love and say look at the great thing that I've done. On the other hand, I'm curious to see how my conversation skills hold up as I'll be doing a lot of talking.

We'll be taking a break from the visiting tomorrow night when we go to the Westbury Music Fair to see John Stewart. That should be awesome. He's the smartest funniest guy out there. I expect plenty of laughs.

Alright, I need to work. I don't know if I'll be updating over the weekend so I'll see you when I see you. As always, thanx for reading. Check ya l8r.

Strange Sleeping Habbits

Good Morning All,

Had hoped to get up early this morning and do some blogging but that didn't pan out. I realize that there are a couple of you who read this every day so I thought I should try to give you at least a little new something every day.

Well, for whatever reason, I woke up at 4:30am and couldn't fall asleep right away. Part of this was because I had to talk myself back down to my sleep zone. The other part was that Kristine (who was also awake and probably responsible for waking me up somehow) had seen a recent episode of Oprah and felt the need to recount the entire episode to me in bed. I don't know why. I don't watch Oprah. I mean, I caught a little bit of John Stewart on her show last week and it's not like I'm living in suspense on wondering what I missed from that show.

The thing is, she was tired when she got home last night and we didn't have a lot of conversation before bed. Therefore, I'm counting our little Oprah talk towards our total quality conversation time. I figure if I add up enough of those points, one day I may be rewarded with...well, something.

One last note, I found the mashup website of the dj who hosts the Sirius radio show on Monday nights. www.mashupradio.com. Now DJ Muggs has a lot of cool mashups up on his site, but what sucks is that their all in real audio format. Now, thankfully, I picked up that Audio Hijack software and was able to convert the audioslave vs eminem and dr. dre song, but I have to do it in real time. If any of you know a program for the mac that converts real audio into mp3s, please let me know.

Thas it 4 2day. Chat wicha l8r.

I had a sec...

Good Morning Friends And Family,

Just wanted to say a quick hello as I didn't bring work keys and I have a minute or two b4 someone can let me in.

First, the engagement is still going great. I love my wife to be and look forward to the day when we are married.

Next, I'm sort of in a get my life together phase now that I undoubtably have a beautiful future. Part of that process involved going down to the new parking garage in SoNo to pay some old parking tickets. (Yes, I'm aware some of you are laughing hard at this. Ha Ha Ha.) For those of you youngin's out there, let me just tell you that you should try your hardest to never get a parking ticket and if you do, you should pay it immediately. And while I try my hardest to be above negativity and focus on the positive, let me take a quick moment to give a big FUCK YOU to the town of Norwalk and all those who delight in profiting from the shortcomings of others. But I digress...

I haven't mentioned this yet, but I did have my first of many dentist appointments to come last week and spent an hour filling my first cavity. To all you youngins out there who aren't fond of brushing your teeth, flossing, or going to dentist once ever six months, let me just tell you....JUST DO IT.

On an humorous note, Kristine visited the dentist yesterday and told the dentist that I had a pleasant experience when I last visited him. I love her so much but holy cow, sometimes she doesn't know how to read me at all.

Right now, I'm very into this Mash Up thing when it comes to music. A mash up is when you take two songs and make them into one. This can be a very cool thing. Every Monday, the Slim Shady station on Sirius Radio has a two hour show from 10pm - 12am of just mashups. I heard it for the first time the other night and loved it.

Actually, I've been listening to it a lot. I purchased a program called Audio Hijack for the mac and recorded the internet stream. Since then it's been living on my iPod. New to the software, I was only able to get a little more than half the show, but they said on the show that there's a website you can go to where you can download all the songs they play. Unfortunately, I keep forgetting the website and I never write it down as I'm usually busy when it comes on.

You will most likely be hearing more about mash ups from me in the future. In case I never get to it though, a great cd to have is Collission Course, which is a really cool mash up cd. It has like 6 or 8 tunes with the best songs from Linkin Park and Jay-Z. The difference between the cd and most mashup tunes is that the artists contributed to Collission, recording extra vocals and music to make the whole thing flow well. Most mashups typically are done by djs without artist involvement which is why mashups are generally considered bootlegs.

Oh wait. Can't forget. The coolest mashup cd is one you can't get in stores. It's called The Grey Album. Some dj in England I think took 2 weeks out of his schedule and spent the entire time putting Jay-Z's vocals from The Black Album over music and sounds from The Beatles White album. The end product is fantastic. While Jay-Z's record lable has no problem with you downloading these tunes, EMI, the rights holder to The Beatles recordings shuts down any site who posts the mp3s. I have the album though so if you can't find it anywhere, drop me a line and I'll send them off to you. Unless of course, you're EMI, in which case, Ha Ha. Just kidding. I would never do anything that involved me being sued by The Beatles.

Alright. I need to figure out how I'm getting into my workplace. Talk 2 ya l8r.

The Joys of a Little Vacation

Hello Everyone,

First things first. Anyone who read my blog in the last day or so saw a blog entry that dealt with a story I was telling about some people I wasn't fond of. I've pulled it for two reasons. First, the story was showing a bit of the negative side of me and as I'm not feeling very negative, I don't feel like giving that story much of my time. Second, I realize that I just have to do a blog entry and be done with it. As my thoughts are ever changing, it's next to impossible for me to start an entry now and finish at a later date. For those of you who did catch a piece of the story, allow me to sum up. A while back I worked for some people and it was a drag. Adding insult to injury, they thought I was the problem. I was later able to vindicate myself when a bit of competition arose and I KICKED ASS. Now, that company has gone out of business and well, it doesn't sadden me. So that's that.

So my beloved fiancé and I are up in New London, CT hanging out at a bed and breakfast for a long weekend. My job was unable to let me take off for a week so instead we compromised on two long weekends. My next is Memorial Day weekend. To be honest, The Queen Anne isn't exactly the sort of middle of nowhere bed & breakfast experience we were hoping for. We're right next to I95 and we're still in CT and well, it's alright here but I don't expect we'll be back. It is a nice house though. The woman Casey is nice as well. She made up Santa Fe style eggs this morning. But we're near a Dunkin Donut's/Baskin Robins as well as a Brooks Pharmacy and again, did I mention we're right next to I95? Really, it's sort of like being at home.

One nice thing though is that we're 15 minutes away from Mohegan Sun, one of the two Indian Reservation Casinos we have here in CT. I'm happy to say that both Kristine and I picked up a little dough at the blackjack table and hope our luck continues into tomorrow and Monday. We ate dinner at Michael Jordon's inside Mohegan and now we're back to take a little nap before we get up to go back to Mohegan for some drinking and to see a comedian whose name I can't remember.

Check ya l8r.

Ladies & Gentlemen: A NEWS FLASH!!!

Hello All,

I just wanted to let all of you know that The Lovely Miss Kristine Czarnomski has accepted my proposal for marriage. I am now amongst the wonderful world of the engaged. Talk 2 ya l8r.

Dave From The Past

These last few days have been really nice. The weather has been fantastic. It's nice to see the sun and clear skies on a regular basis. I took my bike out of the attic yesterday and replaced one of the tires that had gone flat. I have a route that I normally ride that takes me through Norwalk into Wilton. It's very scenic and beautiful, but I opted to try and figure out how to ride to Kristine's for my first ride of the year. It turns out it wasn't a difficult task at all. I went out of my way and I still got there in less than an hour.

Kristine and I got haircuts at Salon Sole in Norwalk today. I've been there many times and this was Kristine's first visit. I wonder how long I've been going there. My hair stylist Colleen used to work at another place that was more convenient to where I worked. She cut my hair at that place 3 or 4 times and then she left for Sole. I remember going to the other place when it opened up downstairs from where I was working and I thought, this is Awesome. I'll never have to go very far for a haircut and I can even do it during lunch. Then she left. What I've learned over the years is that it's very hard to find someone you really like to cut your hair and when you find that someone, you need to latch onto them and never let them go. So, Colleen's my girl and I'm glad to find someone who does such a wonderful job with my hair. Salon Sole in Norwalk, CT. It's a very nice place to get your hair cut.

In other news, I was thinking about killing my old website but I had a change of heart. I have a .mac account with something like 100 meg of webspace. I haven't updated it in 3 years and was thinking about getting rid of everything that was there and just use it for online storage or something like that. I went to look at it an hour ago and got all reminiscent and decided not to act so hastily.

I built that site around the time when I was President of my ski club, thus there's a lot of images from that time. There's also some other things, most prominently is an online journal that I kept back then. Now I scanned it a little bit and I realized that I was a bit more open with my thoughts back then. Truth be told, I'm a little nervous to read it. Still, I'm going to trust the me from 3 years ago and believe that I put that stuff up there without fear of embarrassment. So I'm leaving the site intact for the time being. If you want to check it out, go to http://homepage.mac.com/tvguydave.

I know I keep talking about this Nelly concert thing, but it seems a little bigger than I'm feeling right now, so I'm putting it off again. Not that you should expect great things from it when it comes. I don't want to build it up or anything. I just think I'll have a lot to say when I finally get around to writing it and I just don't have the time for that right now. Maybe next time. C U l8r.

So I have some tooth issues

Yo Yo,

Good evening from Stamford, CT. For those of you curious as to why I seem to be reporting from Stamford of late instead of Norwalk, it's because this is where my significant other lives. Come July, I will live here as well.

Today was very exciting as it was my first full fledged visit to a dentist in ages. I graduated high school in 1991 so I'm guessing it was around then. I'm not anti dentist or anything. It's just that once my Mom stopped making me go...well, 24 years passed by. Here's something of interest. The female dental hygenist who took care of me today, graduated from dental school the year that I stopped going to dentists.

Anyway, Kristine informed me a few weeks ago that she made an appointment with her dentist for me and I was like, "OK". I will admit it wasn't my best showing at the dentist. I was diagnosed with 13, yes 13, cavities and I'm in need of some bridge work. Oh yeah...and I think I remember something being said about a root canal. Joy. Again, not my finest hour, but I guess growing up means you start doing the things that your supposed to do. So now I go to the dentist. I have an appointment to start work on the fillings for next week as well as an appointment for a cleaning 6 months from now. That's pretty amazing.

I'll try and get to the Nelly show on the next post. Until next time...

Just a Placeholder

Good evening,

It's about 10pm here in Stamford. I'm about to crash for the evening but I wanted to put up a quick post as my friend Tim reminded me via email that I haven't posted an entry in over a week. Ironically, Tim is the same friend who commented three posts ago that I was wasting my Gmail invites by creating an email address so that people could complain about my blog. Just to be clear, davesblogster@gmail.com was created for people to comment on my blog and not necessarily for complaints.

And holy cow did I call that whole email spam thing. To date the only email I've gotten on that email is...well hold on. Guess this post isn't just a short one. Allow me to promote the first lame ass people to take advantage of my blog email which can only be found on this website.

Sandra Dilali

CISCO WORLD NETWORK NV.
INTERNATIONAL LOTTERY PROMOTION
PRIZE AWARD.
HAARLERBERGWEG 15-18
10101 CH AMSTERDAM
REF:OGS/415432791/33 BATCH: 81/9334/ILPPA/CWNL
Dear Sir/Madam,
We are pleased to inform you of the result of the Lottery Winners International programs held on the 1st April 2005.
Your e-mail address attached to ticket number 532111497-31121 with serial number 197154-336 drew lucky numbers 9-91-22-41-61-33 which consequently won in the 1st category, you have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of US$ 500,000.00(Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars)
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Due to mix up of some numbers and names, we ask that you keep your winning information confidential until your claims has been processed and your money Remitted to you. This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program by some participants.
All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from over 20,000 company and 30,000,000 individual email addresses and names from all over the world. This promotional program takes place every year.
This lottery was promoted and sponsored by eminent personalities like Mr. Bill Gates and the sultan of Brunei, we hope with part of your winning you will take part in our next year USD50 million International Promotion lottery. To file for your claim, please contact our fiducially Agent:
Dr. Williams Don Bentley, (WilliamsDBentley@netscape.net)
Foreign Operations Director,
TEL: 0031-6208-8533-4
FAX: 0031-8473-0081-5
email: CiscoWorldNetLot@netscape.net
Remember all winning must be claimed not later than 20th April 2005.
after this date all unclaimed funds will be included in the next stake. Please note in order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications endeavor to quote your reference and batch numbers in
all first correspondence. Furthermore, should there be any change of address do
inform our agent as soon as possible. We hope with part of your winning you will take part
in our next year 30 million dollars international lottery.
Congratulations!!!
Once more from our members of staff, we thank you for being part of our promotional program.
Note: anybody under the age of 18 is automatically disqualified.
Sincerely yours,
Mrs. Sandra Dilali,
Secretary
NB: We are very sorry for the delay!!!

So to Sandra and all you other bastards at CISCO WORLD NETWORK NV., allow me to respond to you by saying a big FUCK YOU to you and all you other lame ass spammers for clogging up the internet and eating up my time with your bullshit advertising. I hope you all fucking die.

I should note that I'm not typically an angry man except when it comes to advertising and sales people. Also, spammers should know that I will not be reprinting their future bullshit, nor will I be commenting in such a specific manner...because I hope you will all just die.

Went to see Nelly last night in Bridgeport. It was awesome. Odds are I'll be talking about that in the next post. Until then, nighty night.

What a Beautiful Day

It is so fantastic outside. The weather is beautiful here. Once again, I'm writing my post a day or two before I'm posting this. I like this whole getting ahead of the curve thing.

I don't have much to say but I thought I'd address that internet radio station thing. I have a station of Live365.com. I started it I think over a year ago because Tito and I had a little show we did. That was when Tito was just a coworker and not yet a roommate. I think we did 4, maybe 5 shows and then it got a little much to coordinate our schedules. I then turned "The Dave & Tito Show" station into "Dave Tunes" by just loading my radio webspace up with a ton of tunes and programming them. It got to be a bit much work than I wanted to do so I just let it go. It's been playing music all this time. Unless you listen to the station 8 days straight, you'll never here the same playlist. Still, I felt a little off about not keeping it current.

Here's what amusing. I get an email once a month from Live365 with my stats for the month. Without me doing anything for the last 4 or 5 months, surprisingly...my numbers have gone up. Suddenly, I have a renewed interest in the station. In the next couple of weeks, I'll probably start to add new programming. I'll keep you posted.

In case my last entry has been wiped off or something, you can check out my radio station in it's current form at http://www.live365.com/stations/medavecool.

L8r

Outdated Bloggage and Some Dave Tunes

Good Morning...a day later.

I actually wrote this post yesterday (well, the day before you could first ready this), but I really liked what I wrote about Mitch Hedberg and I didn't want to replace that post so quickly as my most recent post. Plus, I like the idea of being ahead of the game. It's cool to know that tomorrow, I can post something new without having to do more work and still be current.

Speaking of being current, remember my freaky stalker chick from VT aka my Aunt Sara from three posts ago? Due to a screwup in how she had bookmarked my blog, yesterday she still thought my most recent post was from March 30th. That's not so bad except that when she IM'd me last night, she described my blog as being "out of date".

OUT OF DATE!!?? That means she had thought 7 days had passed without a blog update and that was just way to long. Let me just say to you my blogging fans...if you're checking in on me more than once a week, that's awfully nice of you, but I'm not Walter Cronkite over here. Nor is my life THAT interesting that it needs reporting on every day.

I only say this because this blogging thing is something I love doing but it's a bit of a phase and sooner or later it will pass and I'll only be updating this thing once or twice a month. I don't know when that will happen but I know me and it's more than likely an inevitable fact. So, you know...don't be thinkin I'm behind the times because a weeks gone without a post...ESPECIALLY, when I've still been posting thank you very much. But I digress.

So I live about a 40 minute walk from work and last night, I took that walk. I enjoy walking, especially while listening to my tunes on my 60 gig iPod Photo, a lovely gift my girlfriend Kristine gave me for my birthday. My tastes are very eclectic but I think many of those who know me think I listen to mainly the harder brand of rock. Therefore, I've decided to periodically post my recently played music every so often. Here are the tunes I enjoyed last night as I walked home.

Shut-Up (Remix) - Black Eyed Peas
Runnin' Down A Dream - Tom Petty
Unskinny Bop - Poison
Goodnight Saigon - Billy Joel
Until The End Of The World - U2
Adia - Sarah McLachlan
The Power Of Equality - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Shut Up and Dance - Aerosmith

There ya go. A brief glimpse into the tunage of Dave. In an upcoming post, I need to talk about my internet radio station as I'm going to start actively programming it again. If you want to check it out, go to http://www.live365.com/stations/medavecool.

I need to go get ready for work now. See you guys soon.

YOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Boy does it feel good to be blogging. First off, let me say that regardless of where I get to in writing this entry, I'M POSTING IT!!! This is my 3rd attempt in the last 5 days at putting up a post and God dammit all, I'm going to do it.

First, let me say to all you believers in the Lord that I'm sorry the Pope has passed. I've never really followed his career, but I hear he's done some wonderful things.

Lotta death goin on lately. You have the Pope. Johnny Cochran died last week. That woman with no feeding tube finally passed. I feel like there's someone else but it's not coming to me. There is one person I do want to mention though. I'm sorry to see that the comedian Mitch Hedberg passed away last week.

I think one of the reasons I haven't been able to post recently is that I wanted to try and give Mitch a decent writeup as I was a big fan. I've come to grips with the fact that it's probably not going to happen so I'll just say what I can and advise you to google his name. Actually, go to google news.

Mitch was one of the few comedians out there that didn't sound like everyone else. He got some comparisons to Steven Wright but his response to said comparison shows you how interesting his mind worked.

"If I made potato chips and put them in a can, people would say I was ripping off Pringles," he said. "But what if I put them in a bag?"

Another one of my favorite may be relevant to his passing at the age of 37.

"I used to do drugs. I still do drugs. But I used to, too."

I highly recomend picking up Mitch's first cd, Strategic Grill Locations. It's awesome. My favorite joke on that one is the donut receit bit. I also love the roommate material. What I've learned about Mitch in the last few days is that you have to work into him a little bit. I heard that donut thing for the first time on my iPod the day after he died. I replayed it 3 times and cracked up every time. When I played it for some of my coworkers, even 1 who was a fan, I got now response at all. Luckily, I found a fan's website that agreed with me and thus I felt vindicated. I don't know that Mitch Hedberg is for everyone, but I sure know he's for me.

His second album, Mitch All Together, is very funny too. It was the first material I heard from him. It's weird though because upon hearing it back to back after listening to Grill,...well, it has a different tone. Compared to the material Mitch presents while a guy plays bass thru the entire set, All Together almost sounds angry. Very good material though. His take on the letter X is very enjoyable.

In conclusion, it's just too freakin bad. While he was never able to turn his work into sitcom material, he was successful at being a good comedian. Actually, that's another one of his great observations. He talked on one of his albums about how comedy wasn't fair. You can be the best comedian you can be but then the industry wants you to do things like write and act. He compared it to working long and hard to be the best chef and then someone coming along and saying, "Okay, you're a great cook. Can you farm?" [I couldn't find that one quoted anywhere but you get the gist.]

So goodbye Mitch. You will be missed...all together.

I'm sure there's more things I have to tell you but I told myself I'd stop at 7 and get back to work. Thank you for reading and feel free to respond in the comments section. OH!!! It occurred to me that I could set up an email just for blogging. Hell, they keep giving me 50 invites. No reason I can't use 1 for my blog. Should you feel the need to converse with me outside of the blogging realm, you can email me at davesblogster@gmail.com.

There ya go. Thanx for reading. I'll talk 2 ya l8r.

A Very Short Update

Hello All,

I started to write some very cool stuff today...but then I got distracted. Just wanted to let all of you know that I haven't forgotten about you. You're all the best. Thank U 4 your viewership. Talk 2 u soon. Go Yankees!

Dave