Vacation, all I ever wanted...

I am on vacation!!! I will be in Chicago from September 1st through the 7th. This is what the itinerary looks like:


The following flights are confirmed:
Date: September 1 Flight: NW 6508/*CO 730
Departs: El Paso-Int'l, TX (ELP) at 6:45AM
Arrives: Houston-George Bush Intercontinental, TX (IAH) at 9:40AM

Date: September 1 Flight: NW 1830
Departs: Houston-George Bush Intercontinental, TX (IAH) at 12:00N
Arrives: Detroit-Wayne County Int'l, MI (DTW) at 3:44PM

Date: September 1 Flight: NW 1830
Departs: Detroit-Wayne County Int'l, MI (DTW) at 5:07PM
Arrives: Chicago-Midway Int'l, IL (MDW) at 5:12PM

Return Flights
Date: September 7 Flight: NW 1763
Departs: Chicago-Midway Int'l, IL (MDW) at 7:00AM
Arrives: Minneapolis/St. Paul-Int'l, MN (MSP) at 8:28AM

Date: September 7 Flight: NW 1153
Departs: Minneapolis/St. Paul-Int'l, MN (MSP) at 9:22AM
Arrives: Houston-George Bush Intercontinental, TX (IAH) at 12:18PM

Date: September 7 Flight: NW 6806/*CO 2826
Departs: Houston-George Bush Intercontinental, TX (IAH) at 1:30PM
Arrives: El Paso-Int'l, TX (ELP) at 2:24PM

-See you all in one week!

What's on your iPod?

I'll tell you what's on mine.

• Alison Krauss & Union Station
• Audioslave
• Brian Setzer Orchestra
• Cubanate
• Eminem
• Filter
• Fleetwood Mac catalog (1975 - 2003)
• Fluke
• Franz Ferdinand
• Frank Sinatra
• Grand Theft Audio
• Green Day
• Hoobastank
• Lindsey Buckingham
• Linkin Park

More to come!

STRANGE FINDINGS FROM THE INTERNET LXVIII

*a return of an internet classic*

It's hard for everyone to wake up early. It's even harder to deal with crap that pops up so early in the morning at work. What would you do if you got to work and found a flaming heap of garbage on your property? Let alone the smell, I cant stand the thought of having to step in garbage water!

So, you're a major leaguer with a multi-million dollar salary and time to spare. You bet the batboy to drink a gallon of milk for $500. He doesn't and he gets a 10 game suspension. The Marlin's organization justifies the cause as the "Pete Rose" law recently in effect...

Ever wish you could applique a sticker to your car that would match or one-up those damn Jesus fish on cars? Visit RingOfFire.com and find yourself the "Zuni Spirit Bear", the "Sushi" fish, "Isis" car emblem or the "Procreation" sticker....

Earl Scheib is looking to take some painting tips from this woman...

This is why I stick to body piercings.

These are just fucking awesome. Great projects for Halloween!

Definitely NSFW under any circumstances, this is just strangely entertaining.

A devastating blow

It's no mistake Corpus Christi is like a second home to me. This is just too much of a devastating blow to the entire city of Corpus & surrounding towns. It sent a chill down my spine when I heard it was Ingleside.

One cities loss is another cities gain. El Paso is gaining 16,000 new troops.

Yay.

The Hollywood Bowl goes Beyond Good and Evil

How awesome is this? The Hollywood Bowl is featuring a performance of many videogame soundtracks to include:

• Tomb Raider (series)
  
• Beyond Good and Evil
  
• Mario Bros. (series)
  
• Halo (series)

What's awesome, tickets are still available.

Movies like this shouldn't exist

So yesterday I went home and had some lunch. While eating, my dad was in control of the satellite and landed upon the most sorriest excuse for an action movie, waste of studio dollars and (in my opinion) single handedly set the genre of cheesy action movies back about 15 years.

The Ultimate Weapon was by far, the worst movie I had ever seen, and I suffered through the original Stargate movie. An obvious audio-dub* from Germany, this movie epitomizes the fact that Terry "Hulk" Hogan cannot get a decent job to save his career. The scenes I saw were sorry examples of acting ever filmed, actors who literally waited for their cues to perform their line/ action shot, then looked at the camera & then (apparently) the director and back to the action! I was just sitting there thinking to myself WTF?

Then, the coup-de-grace was the scene where the supporting actor punches the pilot of the helicopter (one of the most convincing punches seen yet far in this clap-trap) and commandeered it with the 'Hulkster' and they blow up a small weapons bunker in what looks like Northern Canada. When I next paid attention, the 'Hulkster' was returning home (which ironically looked like the same area the exploded cache of weapons was built) and told his girlfriend of countless years he finally wanted to marry her. Man, talk about pulling out the book of "How to make a cookie-cutter action flick with cheesy C-list actors" and following the formula!

I had enough. I walked out, but not before looking at the release date. It was 1997! I thought movies like this were long considered obsolete when Rambo burst on the scene and made meat-pulp out of crap like this.

Avoid at all costs.

*audio-dub - to replace audio on a track with another track, usually done to foreign films.

Live from the KTSM Studios...

So we had to keep it under wraps that someone as big as Sean Hannity was going to be in the studios for good reason. People were just flooding into our station waiting area in the lobby just to get a glimpse of him. I didn't want to aggravate the crowd too much, they were a surly bunch of misfits and thought that by me mocking them behind the security glass was a bad idea.



Around 10am, Sean's producer shows up. Focused and short on time, he immediately asks where everything is, asks if everything for him is set and wants nothing more than the space to run around the on-air studio areas like a spaz. We let him do his own thing. He commandeered the fax machine & two computers with printers. At the time this picture was taken, he had already placed notes on each pile of show prep about its topic & value to the show. Even after this was taken, there were more piles of prep on the console.



This is Sean's engineer. He got here about 5 minutes after the producer. A skilled man with little time and tons of worry on his mind. He went to work after the obligatory hand shaking and found that most of the equipment was to satisfaction. Others -- well, others weren't up to code. Anonymous humming & problems linking & getting a decent sounding phone call were problems at first, but were quickly overcome.



This is a shot outside of the engineering room. These people are trying to get the ISDN line to work properly. I was shocked, both engineers at the station were on hand and working hard! Not that they don't work hard mind you, the phrase "They were working hard" usually never applies to my station! Indeed, a moment to capture on film!



Then we have Mr. Hannity. Sean Hannity of the Sean Hannity show. He came in and took command of everyone's attention. He quickly shook everyone's hand & had a smile on his face as he explained a little of what he expects out of the next few hours, then gets to work reviewing the producers well placed prep work.

After the show, we had a small "Greet & Meet" in our conference room. Nothing too extravagant, he talked about why he was here in El Paso, promoted his show for the evening, then took time to take some last photos.

Yesterday in pictures

So, on my way home from getting paid, I saw the rain starting to creep up at us.



I had gone home because I needed to drop off the laptop and do some things without thinking about it in the car. So I reached in and grabbed the camera and decided to take some pictures of the coming rain.



I got home and lightning and thunder were all around me. Lighting up the mid-day skies scared the crap out of me, so I bolted inside and left the laptop and other things in the house. The above picture is of me leaving the driveway at the house, the river I am in front of is my street, choked with water from the torrential rain.



I got to the end of the block and saw this car pass me. Its my car exactly, only it was an automatic transmission. I thought it was kinda strange to see a clone in the same neighborhood, and ironically, its from the same dealership.



So on my way to look for a wireless router, I drove all over town. I took to the side roads because of the rainfall. The street drainage system was overtaxed and wasn't dealing with the water at a fast enough pace, so many streets were hella flooded. I averaged 15mph in 2nd gear most of the time on the road.

That's all the pictures I took. I would have taken more, but I was driving a 5 speed. You try to navigate the wet roads and take pictures at the same time. More to come later!

Calling one's bluff...

I have been challenged...

Coming Up...

I will be bringing the camera with me to document my afternoon. Haven't done that in a while.

Vindicated

It feels good to be vindicated. Six years ago, I used to co-host a weekend show, and was ousted because I was "too young for the job" by the shows agent & salesman. It was sort-of a win-win situation, I had a chance to go ahead and have my Saturday mornings off & sleep in. Still, I was removed from the show and miffed about it.

This past Tuesday, I was asked by management to go ahead and fill in for the guy who took my spot. I didn't think twice about it, but also I didn't want to go in on a Saturday morning. Working at Sonitrol on weekends means that weekend mornings are the only chance I get to sleep in. Still, I agreed and went in.

During the show, the co-host and myself would banter coming out of commercial sets, and one in particular was interesting. He stated that he "would choose (me) over that other guy any day". He said this on air, and eluded to it a good number of times.

It was the vindication I was always looking for. The sort of knowledge that I was doing a great job and the listeners were happy about it. I feel better about myself today.

Weather

I love it when it rains. It infrequently happens, so when it does, I love to go outside or sit next to a window and watch it. Well, at work, I did one better.



I grabbed my sunglasses. My Oakley's are fucking amazing. Polarized lenses that you can remove and replace with other lenses if needed. Mine are the darkest black lens with Polarization possible. So, I thought to myself it would be great if I could use one of the lenses as a polarization filter for the digital camera.



So I went outside and held the lens in place with one hand and snapped this first picture. I got the Neon in this shot. Then I went up front. This is a shot of Mesa street towards downtown. The dark center spot of the rain clouds is directly over the International Airport.



I love the rain. Wish it rained more.

Vacation being scheduled & sought out

I've already started to save the cash for the airline tickets (I aint gonna fly if I go either to Corpus Christi or Chicago) and pay the outlandish gas prices all over the country. I've already got half of the cost of the airline tickets so I can't wait to make that critical purchase.

Today's another day at the salt mines. The weather might play a huge factor in my sanity tonight. There's been some thunderstorms in the area and with Sonitrol being a company that monitors sounds, I am not gonna like the thunderstorms that will be rampant. I nearly had a breakdown the other day with fewer notifications. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it -- but its paying the bills...

I need a vacation

Seriously. It's been months, since January when Ralph wanted to go to Corpus Christi that I was last on vacation. Since January people! This means I have gone 8 months since taking a break. Now, things are going swimmingly, and have some money to spend. I have some plans to go to Chicago before winter hits, and now have half of the money to buy airline tickets. Spend a week out there (including one weekend!) and just do nothing in a new city. I didn't have a chance to see everything that Chicago has to offer the last time I was out there, but with friends living there and nothing else to do, there will be more of a chance to have some fun.

So many options, what to do?

I have two resume's floating around El Paso & Chicago. One is exactly what I am doing, the other is something completely different. Both can potentially lead to my other dream to open a buisness, but that remains to be seen. I will keep you posted incase something pops up in the next few days to weeks.

Things I do to pass the time

I am taking a small break at work right now, but I thought I would update the website with some things I do to pass the time between jobs and between the time I have before one job and after another.

IM learning to be patient, that's for damn sure. Usually, I have that overwhelming voice in my head that tells me to be somewhere at a certain time of day. I've slowly been killing that voice with a steady stream of monotonous, tedious tasks. I am also going out and hunting down the strangest, yet somewhat practical baubles for office ease. Such as these retractable reel clips for your ID cards. I started to really hate pulling out the wallet to get the security pass to the building every time I got to work, so now its conveniently placed on my body, not in the wallet.

Trying new food is also something I have been doing the past few weeks. Several restaurants I wouldn't go in to use the restroom I am now trying out for lunch. More notably -- well, I at least pass by these places. You can't expect me to change that drastically. I am, however, eating more foods indoors at the restaurants. Today, I ate at Mc Donnalds. I tried not to look like a total asshat when I nearly slipped on the just Mc Scrubbed floors, but I ate with relative ease knowing I didn't waste gas in line, and the somewhat brush with social interactions outside a speakerbox didn't ruin my otherwise sunny disposition on my fellow denizens of the burger joint.

I've also been on a strange reading kick. Not the worthy publications, either. Well, Mens Health mags and Import Tuner mags are now in my reading pile -- and by pile, I mean the accumulation of magazines in my now increasingly heavy laptop tote has increased the weight of a 12lb laptop to somewhere near 35lbs. At this time, I have in the laptop tote bag:

• Dell Inspiron 1000, AC Adapter
• Microsoft InteliWheel Optical Mouse
• Kodak 2.0 Megapixel Camera, USB cable
• Dell 801.11b,g wireless card
• Antec Cool Pad
• The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
• Skipping Towards Gommorah: The 7 deadly sins and the pursuit of happiness in America by Dan Savage
• Men's Health - Sept. 2005 issue
• Import Tuner - Aug. 2005 issue
• Sport Compact Car - Aug. 2005 issue
• Hero - DVD
• Office Space - DVD

Hefty load, isn't it?

So that's me in a nutshell. Tonight is my last night here at the security company before having to come back on Friday to do it all over again. I am going to enjoy my evenings off for the next three days, and will look forward to updating a few more times this week. I have just had one of the largest cases of writers block!

Yay, whoopee, another day another dollar...

Ugh, I go to the second job today. Yeah, its a job, and yes I realize there are people out there looking for jobs. I just want to get the hell out of debt and not worry about money for one year. That would be so sweet.

In the three days I've had off, I realized that I am driving a hell of a lot of miles! In the 20 days I have owned the car, I have already put 3 thousand miles on it! I already changed the oil! Damn! The car is holding up nicely though, which is good.

One of the funny things I am doing at the radio station is buying a fresh half gallon of milk and drinking it. I don't know why I am on this kick, but its something sort-of satisfying since I stopped drinking sodas at work. I have also made the decision to start going back to the gym. Man, this sounds like a recipe for disaster, doesn't it? Me, sleepy from two jobs, at a gym with heavy machinery. Yeah, IM glad I got a camera to film the hilarity!

New Haircut

So I got a wild hair up my butt and decided to get my haircut short. Shorter than I ever had it in the past. Its a #1 all around. I like it. Whats even more interesting, people love to touch. They ask, the touch, and I like it! I should have done this years ago...

Memories

So with everything that has been going on with me the past few weeks with my second job, I started to look at the pictures taken at Magic Landing back in May. I also took a look at a satellite photograph that was emailed to me around the time that the park was being built.

I started to remember some sounds and sights from the park. I sit here with m eyes closed (a true typing skill) remembering the sounds from when I was 4 or 5 years old. I can see its late at night, around 9pm or so, and I can hear the whirl & humming sound of the hydraulic pump that powered the ride "The Rainbow" as it sent its riders on a circular path up and down. I remember sitting on a park bench with my mom and dad as I would see the ride, lit up in magnificent yellows and oranges, with neon tubes making up the colors of the rainbow as it would move and gyrate. In my mind, the sound of the hydraulic pumps almost sounded like a team of monks chanting, holding a steady 'E' note. I remember this because I loved the way it sounded.

If you'd like to see what ride I am talking about, the ride is still a staple of may other amusement parks around the country and is in use. Click here for the picture!

My playlist

Yesterday's outburst stems from a lot of things flying around in my head. Hopefully, things will change real soon. For now, this is what I have been shuffling:

Pink Floyd - Learning to fly
Queen - Somebody to Love
Michael Buble' - Home
Green Day - Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Jackson Browne - Runnin' on Empty
Eagles - Lyin' Eyes
John Lennon - Watching The Wheels
Ray Charles - The night time (is the right time)
Stained - It's Been a While
3 Doors Down - Here Without You
Fleetwood Mac - I Know I'm Not Wrong

... does anyone see a pattern?