Weekend with Amanda Bye

Apple Pickin:
We went apple pickin. It was cool. I ate an apple like seconds after I got it from the tree. That was tight.
See pictures here: Apples


Capoeira:
Capoeira is this Brazilian fighting style. If anyone remembers the game Street Fighter by Capcom, the guy who had the REALLY long arms and could punch from far away. That is a cartoon version of this fighting style. Or should I say, he uses Capoeira (pronounced "Cap p ate ah").

From here (http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/capoeirafighter - a cool game you can DL and play which features this type of fighting): Capoeira is a unique fighting style that mixes martial arts with song and dance.

Anyway, I got into this kinda fighting. Sorta. Well I went to one class and I liked it alot. It was really cool. It was like dancing. Only your dance partner, was trying to kick your ass (sorta). It was so great. My feet hurt now. We did it barefoot so I feel like my pads are raw.

Anyway. So it is VERY similar to break dancing. The first move you do is a "top rock" in BD and in C it is called "Jenga". Its REALLY similar. That is why I could do it. Not to say that I have TONS of experience in Break Dancing, but I do have an instructional video or 2.

Anyway, then you break off into kicks and cartwheels which you need to block if you are getting them at you. This goes on for quite a bit until a new person comes in from the mouth of the dance circle. I don't have all the terms down so any Brazilians will have to forgive me.

So I would like to do this again. They are starting a Capoeira "Center" or whatever south of DC(far). I would consider obtaining a membership.

side note about the music. The Zoom Zoom song of Mazda is a very common song to play with from what I have found out.

LOST:
Kathy and I are up to episode 6 of lost. Its good.

Desperate Housewives:
Eva Langoria...

Jesse's Computer:
Jesse hinted at me buying his computer. I hinted at buying his bike AND his computer.

I hinted on JUST the bike. He didn't hint anything back.

This week:
I see a personal trainer to build my size. WAHOO..

Kathy's day

Damnit Kathy. But congrats.

Election.
So we are within like 6 days of the election. I still don't know who to vote for.

HA HA HA HA HA. yeah right. Its so obvious. It seems that there is a large portion of the country that is pretty thrilled though to vote for the "other guy". I don't understand that. Its odd. Both candidates suck. But one sucks WAY less than the other. With what I feel is proven experience doing [better] stuff.

Anyway. A ton has happened since last post. Including...

Pumps.
...a pumpkin carving contest betwix Kathy and I. You can see the process at the following link.

http://rodericj.com/gallery/pumpkins04

Or just the end results here.

http://rodericj.com/gallery/pumpkins04/IMG_4117

I think the Headless horseman rules at the right angle. There is detail in that mane and cape.

But so far Kathy is winning. Vote for your favorite with the voting tabs under the pictures.

What else.

Sports.
Saw Monday night football with Adrian Urias at Strike Bethesda. That was cool. Except I forgot to pay. And I overate. But it was good. Also, Broncos lost.

Gym.
I joined a Gym. They are all expensive. This was not AS expensive as some and it is cool cuz it isn't crowded as all get out. The people that are there though are pretty cool. I am going to join the Raquetball leage as well as the scuba diving class. I am into that. I could change my icon for that.

Investigator.
My investigator FINALLY got in touch with me. He will be contacting(and already has) some of my friends. Thats cool. At least the ball is rolling.

Damnit Kathy.

Project.
I gotta work more on this. I have been working on the math library for MONTHS. I hate it. I just wanna get done. Problem after problem keeps coming up. Including I don't work on it enough. Damnit.

Time wasting.

Here is what I have been doing *edit*.

My Updated Homepage
Monster Builder, Brain Baseball(not really), Cat Fight
Went to a CHAP (College Hire Acceleration Program) meeting in Hanover MD.

Ryan came in yesterday and told me about some stuff I can do. That is fun.

Does anyone know how to import an RSS into a webpage? Id like to import this to my website. And you may have noticed that I used the CSS from my LJ also. Sweet.

I'm 24 now

Parents:
Hung out with my parents all weekend. They stayed at one of the dozen hotels near my place. It was cool. It was hella cheap and it was a Comfort Suite or something so they had some gigantic room. If anyone wants to visit this is where you will stay(or at my place). We had breakfast there Saturday and Sunday cuz it was a free buffet. I liked it.

We ended up going to DC and we saw the WWII memorial as well as the International Spy Museum. That was fun.

Then we took the ole Metro to Rock Bottom in Bethesda. It ruled. I suggest the Titan Toothpicks.

I had my birthday yesterday:
It ruled. It started out with a bang. I was showered with gifts and stuff starting at midnight and ending at 11:30PM. It was great.

I got the new Jon Stewart/Daily Show book about America.

Updated Desktop Image from way back:
Here

Last but not least. I won my second game of Fantasy Football!!! WAHOOO..Go Stagnant Unit

Queens and ChinaTown

New Kitties:
Went to NYC this weekend. That ruled. Got to see Jesse and Bob and the new Kitties.



They were cool. I just wish that their friend took care of the cats better. She let one of them out at like 4 in the morning and we got a knock on the door at 6. He wanted to give the cat back. She sucks.

Kathy and I went to Central Park. We were late for the dinner.

ChinaTown and Crazy Ass Food:
The food was tight. I had some jelly fish, I had some sea cucumbers, Shark Fin soup, I had some Abalone. It was crazy. I liked it.

We then went to her uncle's place in Long Island. The house was tight. I dug it.

We went to China town the next day. That ruled. Her Grampa's place was pretty much in the best place ever. You could see the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, and the Empire Statebuilding. On the other side you could see where the Twin Towers were too. That was cool.

We went to a restaurant in China Town were we had some more normal stuff but it was cool still.
Then we got beef jerky and it was the best I have ever had. GREAT.

Tons of Asians everywere in ChinaTown. Didn't see that.

Fun at Work:
At work we had so much fun today. I had some carrots that got dried. They got dry at the end of the day. And they looked like fingers. Becky and I tried to fool Kathy into thinking my finger fell off. We were laughing at eachother. It was so funny.

Cool Ass Plugins:
The plugins of Mozilla are so fricken awesome. I got the
gestures one. There are some rediculous combos you can do. Like I totally love how you can open up ANY number of links. I opened like 50 at a time off of cnn. It ruled. Plus it keeps a dragging trail. It ruled. And the preview pane one rules too. Its so cool cuz it finds a preview from alexia. It looks tight. I suggest seeing the screenshot on that one. Oh man. I love them all.

editcss also

Too long a post.

I want to play

Just had a meeting with Monica McManus and Peter Cuviello. She is the Deputy VP of Geospatial Systems. He is the VP and Managing Director for Focused Logistics Enterprises at LMCO. That was pretty cool. It was a bunch of new hires who were there for "career planning" and stuff. It was pretty cool.

Monica: I liked what she had to say. She discussed her route to the top and how she got there and how she felt on the way up. I thought it was pretty informative. I dug it.

Peter: He was from the Army. He was more laid back than I though the would have been. I thought he contradicted her in many ways. But he was an impressive individual.

They gave me some pointers as to what to do in order to move up. I think I can do it. Seems like common sense to me.

I am supposed to hang out with Henry, Courtney and Derek all at the same time. They do not know eachother. I think it will be a bit odd getting this to work. If Henry doesn't call, I can play Derek off as a friend I brought to Courtney's Happy hour. We will see how it goes. I think I am going to Capital Hill for that.

Home and work

This weekend:
Got to go home. It was my first time back since I moved. I guess it will always be my first time back so that adjective was pointless. So was that sentence. So was the first sentence if it read "It was my time back since I moved".

Anyway. Saw my 2 sisters which was cool. Saw my parents which ruled. Saw both sets of Grandparents and it ruled. My gramma got a Sport 2002(I think) Camry LE with a spoiler. It is red. Like her passion for speed.

Dave put in a patio for us. That rules. There is a fountain and rocks and its really really nice.





The fam was great. It was so nice to see all of them. I wish everyone wasn't so busy though.

I saw Alyssa and Cory. That ruled. We went to play laser tag then we went to a bar called the Thirsty Turtle. It was cool. Then we went to Wegmans and drove the electric cars around in the store. I was laughing so hard till the loser stock boy yelled at me and made sure I had 3 id's to buy the beer. How lame. Get a life. I wasn't hurting anyone.

Anyway, we all had fun. The trip ruled.

Haircut:
Monday Kathy gave me a haircut. I was a bit nervous about it but I was told that I wasn't going to be able to find a haircut place for less than $20. That sucks!
I think it came out good. I wouldn't normally rush into a risky thing such as a girl cutting my hair like that but I had to get my license. See below.

Got my license:
I got my Maryland license today.

Doing real work RIGHT NOW:
As I am writing this I am doing real work. Ryan and I are fixing some stuff up from the Formal Inspection we had today. I thought that was fun. And by fun I mean boring. Formal inspections are normally boring but I didn't hate it. I like learning about our processes and our system. Its fun.

So Ryan had me working on some threading stuff. There is this thing that is like a deconstructor in java but its different. No details needed here. That would be lame.

Now I am doing Javadocs.

Then it is off to IKEA to get new shelves.
Then maybe I will grab a beer with Luis Calderon from roommates.com. Good guy.

I hate long posts also!!

Varekai

Kathy and I saw Cirque du Soleil's Varekai last night. It was good. I really enjoyed it. We got the tickets earlier this week and we found out Rick and Kurt(roommates) were also going that night. That was cool. They got their tickets MONTHS in advance.

The aerobics they were doing blew me away. They had this swings like a swingset kinda and they made them go ALL the way around. I didn't think that was possible. So that was cool. They would just jump off those things and go flying into some homemade cloth net. It ruled. I dig shows like that. It makes me want to g o back to Vegas. I REALLY wanted to see O when we were there. Oh well. I guess I will have to go back. Side Note: There were a lot of flexible asians there. For those links above, I would suggest looking at the videos

It made me think of some indoor shows I would love to write. Speaking of which. I got call from a friend in Newport News, VA. He wants me to teach one of his lines down there. That would be cool. I am sure I could help out quite a bit. That would rule. He says the kids are MAD good. They just need to be cleaner. So that is cool.

So I put up some shelves and whiteboards at the house. They rule. The white board isn't really white. It is glass. It looks cool as hell. I also got these(this) shel(ves)(f). The idea is like this glass motif in my room. It will be cool.

Networking news. I used the shelf I got at Ikea(College Park, MD) to clean up the clutter in the room. I also put the WAP54G that I got last week up there. I can connect my computers to that with a switch or something. So the AP acts as a wireless repeater as well as a wired/wireless access point. So the house network is SWEET!

The computer I got from Amanda(Kathy's friend) is now a fully functional Gentoo system. That makes 3. I named it CJ. After my car. Who is also named CJ. I named it that for 2 reasons: 1) It is a short name. 2) It is going in the car.

Next step is to get hibernate to work as well as KDE. (e.g. My old desktops)

I am going home today for the weekend. I will visit my Sisters and Parents. It will be a good time. Its how I will start up the frequent flyer miles on AirTran. Its gonna rule.

Work news: Ryan gave me a task. I tried doing it but I couldn't really do much cuz I didn't have an account on the ITL systems. So Kathy and I worked on it for a bit. Then she finished it.

The day she finished I got my ITL accounts up and running.
Imma gonna play with the system some today.

I hate long posts.