thedarkcyde.net

Zoinks yo. Last week or so has been bonkers. My sister’s wedding was fabulous. The reception was good fun and it was so nice to see people I hadn’t seen in years. Really was glad to see that the day went so well. At least it went better than Sunday. Damn Redskins.

Tailgating was fun. We switched it up and did cold sammiches instead of BBQ. Good stuff. The game was craptastic. The Rams had not won a game all season, and they beat us in the last seconds by kicking a field goal. Fuckers only scored 12 points on FG kicks. To think how bad the score could have been if those were 4 touchdowns, not so shitty. But come on. 0-4 team makes our last two wins against division rivals seem like nothing. Dammit.

Went and saw The Autumn Offering and Mushroomhead on Wednesday. That was pretty tight. I needed a night to leave the house and just let it all out. Mission accomplished. I had not seen TAO before, and have seen MH many times. Every time they perform a killer show. This time was not to disappoint. The crowd was mad into it and they were feeding off of it. They had to end 2 songs early cuz some drum equipment broke, but they hung out and got fucked up with us afterwards. Good times.

Work has been going well, aside from being entirely too busy. I also have had a lot on my mind that has distracted me but I need to forget about it and just try to focus on the task at hand. Easier said then done, however. Every time I think about it, I feel more and more like a dumbass. But it’s okay. You live and you learn. Besides, I am really starting to get used to things not going my way. So what more should I expect?!

I am so looking forward to the weekend. I am going to see GWAR which is always a good time. Plus I don’t have to work… I hope…. Just get drunk, play video games, and get fake blood squirted at me by freaks dressed up in giant alien costumes and shit.

Now listening to: “You can’t always get what you want” by the Rolling Stones

You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need, ah yes…

Current Mood(s):  Sad

… Get out of bed this morning. Fridays are the only work day that I get to sleep in, and it is the most magical time ever. Even if it is just 1.5 hours more sleep than I get any other night of the week. As if I needed some sort of excuse to like Fridays… pfft.

I got absolutely nothing done at work yesterday and it sucked balls. My production install went smooth (for the third week in a row - BONUS!) but then the rest of my day was shot by so many damn meetings. We had a super long lunch meeting and I was damn near falling asleep. If I wasn’t goofing off with a colleague I would have just zonked out and slouched over. She is so goddamn awesome. Her sense of humor is the best. We were making fun of these people in the videos that were playing. Her boss was joking about how he wanted to switch seats with her so he could see what was making me laugh so hard. I knew it was her making me laugh that hard, but told him that I was looking at icanhascheezburger.com to cover for it. Smooth operator in action. Look out!!

After that, I did not even attempt to get any work done. I took care of some administrative bs, managed to thrash my outlook calendar (fuck you microsoft! your products suck - ‘cept 360) and cleaned my desk some.I should have went and shot a game of pool in the game room or something. Ugh.

As we were walking out of the office we saw a friend and he mentioned that he was going to Clydes to attend some happy-hours for peeps leaving the company. It was hella nice outside so I decided to change my plans and hang out. Got there, saw my buddy bar-tender and talked with him for a few then went outside. Hooray, some of the regular happy-hour crew were chillin! There was no room at the table so I pulled a chair over and sat next to the table. Saw my buddy Ryan, who just had his first baby boy and talked with him for a few. Came back to the table and some dude that was already at the table had taken my seat. And I swear… motherfuckers like that need to take a picture if they want to remember me. This dude would NOT. STOP. STARING. at me and it was disturbing! Go away creepy guy!

Whatever. But seriously … “Where is that fucking waiter?… Ah fuckit, I’ll just holler at my bar-tender friend.” Thanks for taking such good care of me all night, Dave! All-in-all, I managed to have a pretty decent time - at least when I wasn’t being picked on about the Red Robin experience, or being ‘ignored’ by our punk-mofo-bitch-ass waiter, or being left out of conversations at the dinner table. I took my plate inside, downed my beer and just took off. I bet no one even noticed that I was gone. Weeeee.

I be ghost’n. Peace the FUUUUUCK out!!

Current Mood(s):  Confused & Sad

What a week it has been! It started Saturday… Fucking POURED all day. The shit from Hurricane Hanna made its way up here and it unleashed some serious rain & wind. We needed it and all, but it was crazy. It started Friday night and did not end ’til about 7pm Sat night. I do not mind being a couch potato at all and enjoyed sitting on my ass and watching NCAA football all day. Played some video games, had a nice dinner with my Mom, Sister and her Fiance (MMM Outback) and then had a buddy over for more gaming fun. Good times.

Sunday was an awesome day of football! WEEK ONE!! I got to watch the ‘Skins on Thursday so they were not playing. Instead, I got to watch Brett Favre play his first game on his new team. That was kewl and all but the highlight had to be when Tom Brady went down for the season 20 minutes in with a serious knee injury. I have wished for 3 seasons that he would get his head taken off and it finally happened, well kinda. But YAY. It sucks and all, you never want to see anyone get hurt, but I totally dislike the guy and his coach. Maybe he will just give up and quit. That would be great! Other than that, there were some really good games on. Lots of upsets. Damn I love football! Yay football season.

Monday meant back to work, which has been going pretty well lately. Me and the boys have been doing some really hot shit and were starting to get more into some larger projects that are really going to make the site even kewler. Go Autos! Worky work, busy B! HEHE Tuesday meant happy hour, which I look forward to every week. This week we went to Red Robin. We had not done that one before, and may not after the experience I had…

So I shave my head, and I have a giant beard. That’s kewl and all until a dude in a giant Red Robin mascot costume starts to fuck with you about it. Not sure if he wanted to nest in my beard, but he kept touching it and we ended up getting a picture of him holding it. Yeah, so I’m trying to play nice and have fun. Then he started shining my head with a napkin, and proceeded to put a sticker on the back of my head. Still playing along, getting bitter tho. Why he chose the ‘fruity’ cowboy Red Robin is beyond me, he could have used the football one! Sheesh.

There was this cute little girl next to us that saw the stickers and wanted them pretty bad so I gave the rest to her. Bonus! It was her birthday so Im now that guy that hooked her up on her bday! You’re welcome little girl. At least I can use that get past the embarrassment.  Which got worse when the kid decided to ‘come out’ after his shift and comment on how funny it was that I let him fuck with me. Har har. We all got some good laughs and then I went home to cry. (Not really but I like making people feel bad for laughing at me :P)

Thursday was September 11 (9/11) and usually is a sad day. For the first time in 7 years - on this day, it seemed - there was no sun, it was all cloudy and very gloomy. 9/11 in the past were almost exactly like the day it happened. Sunny, no clouds, very cool, slight breeze. But this one was different. I happened to catch some of the ceremonies and had a moment of silence before driving into work. And what a day it was going to shape up being.

Our production install went smooth (YAY 3 in a row) and after my manager said he needed me for 15 minutes. I made myself available and we went down to find some space to chat. Immediately upon finding a spot he congratulated me on being promoted to Senior Software Engineer. YAY! I have been working damn hard to get to the next level and finally achieved it. Money is nice, but the recognition is nice too!! I was expecting that maybe early next year it would happen, so this totally shocked me. Definitely makes 9/11 a lil sweeter than it was before. There are still a few people that deserve the next-level so hopefully the company will come correct at take care of them too.

Friday and Saturday were chill days. Lots of Rock Band. Damn, I love that game. The Ohio State Buckeyes got destroyed on Saturday. Pretty good day of College football other than that. Damn Buckeyes. Sunday was week two in the NFL and that meant that Mom and I got to go to the New Orleans Saints game! We left early to tailgate. Cooked up some burgers & dogs, crushed some beers… and made it into the stadium early to catch the opening day festivities.

It was absolutely fucking dead hot outside. Maybe the hottest day we have felt since being in Florida a month ago. Damn, we had to stay hydrated and cool. Resorted to keeping a shit ton of ice in my baseball cap. They should have been giving out water, but they sold them shits for $5 a pop. They must have made a killing!

The game was kinda crap-tastic in the first half. It seemed like every drive we had stalled out and we had to attempt kicking field-goals. They scored a TD and got a FG right as time ran out in the first half and had the lead 10-9 at halftime. They scored on the opening drive of the third and the score was 17-9. Portis scored a 9-yard TD on the next drive and the ‘Skins were down 15-17. After they had to punt we got the ball and were also forced to punt. Reggie Bush ran the damn thing back for a TD and they went up 24-15.

After each of us punted one more time we got the ball again and drove for a TD. Portis with an 8-yarder this time. Nice! 24-22 Saints. We held them to a 3-and-out on their next drive and got the ball back at our 33 yard-line. On first and 10, Jason Campbell heaved a bomb and Santana Moss beat his man to run under it and catch it. 67-yard TD! FUCK YEAH@@!@#@! On their next drive, rookie (and my player of the game) Chris Horton picked off the ball (for his second of the game, along with a fumble recovery) and it was game over! 29-24 ‘Skins! Whoa. That was a good one.

Notes: Jason Taylor had his first sack as a ‘Skin. A hot and steamy day — 90 degrees at kickoff, hottest in FedEx Field history — prompted Zorn to have sideline personnel hold up canvas sheets to help cool the players. He didn’t want to use a more structured version he invented for practices (known as the “Z-Shade”) because NFL rules would have required the Redskins to supply one for the Saints as well. Some players used IVs to stay hydrated. Jason Campbell got his 2nd career 300-yard game, and hist first career 4th quarter comeback victory!

GO ‘SKINS!

Mom, Josh & I are going to the Cardinals game this Sunday. Hopefully we get another W! Whew, what a crazy ride. Weeeee.

Current Mood(s):  Playful & Surprised

Thats for sure! Holy hell. What a busy past few days. Last Tuesday I was planning to meet some coworkers at Dominion Brewery, which is a local brewery here, but it also had a pretty decent restaurant. Anyways, the damn thing was shut down. That sucked. I really enjoyed that place. Had lots of good times there. At least I have those… Instead I just went home and jammed on some Rock Band and went to bed early. Boo early meetings!

Wednesday was much of the same. Just kickin’ it trying not to work too late. I managed to get some relaxation time in before taking a really nice walk. I don’t do that enough. I been meaning to buy a nice bicycle, but haven’t done that. Guess as the weather gets shittier it would kinda be the time. Maybe I can get a good deal on a sweet ride. I should ask my buddies at work… They seem to know more about it than I do. Some crazy shit out there, that’s for sure!

Thursday I went to a local bar and hung out with my buddy Josh. He is taking off to St. Louis with his family and I am happy for him. It was good to hang for one last time. Ever since he became a daddy he kinda dropped off the radar but he has always been a good dude. Can’t let a good opportunity pass you by. Pretty awesome gig he was telling me he scored. Schwing! Speaking of schwing. There were some milfs up in the house. Holy shitballs! I had not seen his wife in a few years, but damn - she was smokin’. My other buddy that showed up also had a beauty. Good show gents!

Crazy shit ALWAYS happens at Clyde’s. I was standing there talking to my buddy Steve and this crazy old lady approached us. “How do I get a drink in this place” she says. Immediately, we both looked at each other with that “douche chill” (haha, im a phrase stealer) look as she began to ramble on about how she could not see cuz she was wearing her computer glasses. After about 15 minutes of her going on about how she hated the Chinese and their treatment of Tibet to how when she was young she had the statue to become a professional gymnast. To be honest, I don’t even remember what the fuck she was talking about anymore. After 15 minutes I left the conversation to go talk to Josh. The look of desperation on Steve’s face was classic. But I was going to tell Josh to come over and interrupt the convo so that we could be saved. He did and she ran off all weird. Steve even paid for her glass of wine. I do remember how every three minutes she would tell me how much she liked my earrings, and how I was “bold” for wearing them. But wow… fucking weird. The 75% blind guy was funny. He stood waaay to close for comfort when you were talking to him. Eeek.

Friday was the last chance to sneak out of work early for “Summer Friday” and we fucking did it! We left around 1:30 and went to get cheezburgrs. MMM nom nom. I love me some Five Guys. That was good times. After leaving I hooked up with some peeps and did some gaming, and some chillin’. Saturday was chill. Played some Madden and went to spend time with some peeps in my family at my Gmas house. Good times. Sunday was cook out day and we did it up. Crushed some RB and downed much barely juice. Muahaha.

I have been trying to get motivated to move so I decided to start going through shit and packing shit I don’t use/need up to make it easier to move later. I came across a lot of kewl shit that brought back a lot of memories. Sorted a bunch of stuff. Fun times. Spent the afternoon chillin’ at the new Body Gallery shop. Yay Jenni. Shop #2. It is so awesome. I can’t wait to get my first piece in the new joint. Fuck yeah!

Work has been work. Busy, aggravating, delightful, annoying, pleasant, frustrating, fun. Sigh. Rushed to get a bunch of stuff done cuz of the short week and now I am all burnt out. Chik-fil-a day on Wednesday was great. Gotta love a breakout to enjoy the awesome weather and have a chicken sangwich. Going back to work wasn’t so fun, meetings the rest of the kinda killed it but it comes with the territory. Hopefully tomorrow wont suck.

Hopefully… cuz tonight sucked. Goddamn Redskins. If the last three games (granted two were preseason) are any indication of how this new ball coach is going to lead the team, we are boned. Campbell could not throw a ball past ten yards. Randle El had two dumb penalties, and Moss had two dumb drops. We could have picked Eli at least three different times, but the defenders just dropped the balls. Our fucking PRO BOWL tight-end had one catch. For fucks sake. It better get better. We have too good of a team to not be able to convert third downs, have NO hurry-up offense, or to have so many missed opportunities. GRR.

Come on Dedskins! I am going to the next two games (Saints, Cardinals) and both of those games could be W’s. I hope… I gotta find someone to take to the Cardinals game. Hmmm…

Anyways, off to dreamland I go. Smaa.

We have this thing at work called “Summer Friday” where if you have your work for the week completed and are in a position by the middle of the day Friday, you could leave work early to enjoy a half day. As developers some of us never got to actually have one. But this past Friday, we were super slackers and left at 1:30. Fuck yeah.

I was really looking forward to this Summer Friday. Josh and I had been planning this Friday for a long time. We were going to see some of the Subnoize Recording Artists up in Baltimore. We missed some of the opening acts but were able to sneak through the admission line and catch the majority of Hed PE’s set. They fuckin’ rocked! Jahred blabs too much and they could have gotten 2 more songs in, but whatever. He always has funny shit to say. It was also nice to see him doing his civic duty by signing boobs after their set. Fun times!

Tech N9ne came out and rapped for a long ass time. He is pretty tight. The crowd was really into his performance and the place was packed so it was kewl to see everyone going nuts. This group of young idiots next to me were acting stupid so me and a couple of new friends that I made were making fun of them. One of the dudes threw his beer all over the place and Josh was about to grab my beer and dump it on the fucker. He is notorious for that. I will never forget the time he dumped a full beer on the chest of this dude we know cuz he was acting like a fuckhead. Needless to say, we had a fun time and made it home safely, memories intact!

Saturday I woke up with the worst allergies ever. I was supposed to get some tattoo work done but there was no way cuz of how I felt. Sneezing, sniffling, runny nose. BOO. Sudafed almost helped but not really. Damnit! I spent my day lounging and playing video games. It was great. Until the Redskins played and got absolutely obliterated. Fuck, it was horrible. They looked like mongoloids out there getting beat down. Sad. Thankfully its only preseason. If we lose like that in the regular season I would be super bitter!

Sunday was pretty fun. My good work pal Kristen was getting married. I have the privilege of being there when she met her hubby. It really makes me happy to see that love story from beginning to now. Definitely not the end of their story, but pretty kewl to be a part of it. Yay love at first sight, or whatever you wanna call it. The hopeless romantic in me gained confidence when I saw them say “I do” though, for sure. Their ceremony was beautiful! Lots of friends and family showed up to witness the event. She is happy. He is happy. Everyone had a great time. Fucking awesome. WOOOOO! We even got to blow bubbles as they walked out to get their pictures taken.

Oh shit. I got pretty saucy at the reception, as did a lot of others. Got home, crashed out pretty hard. I had been tired from being outside and drinking and shit, PLUS I was wearing pants for the first time all summer! That’s tough!! I slept in today and was a total lazy bum getting to work. But I can do that every once and a while. Not making a habit of it, but it sure is nice to sleep in on a Monday instead of going to an early ass meeting to talk about work. No work in dreamland! Well, ‘real’ work. Hehe.

Went to a new place for happy hour after work tonight and on my way, down a road I am familiar with some crazy shit happened. This car with a couple of punk-ass dudes did not obey the merge sign and ran this Lincoln Navigator off the road into the gravel. I was just tooling along and saw the dude in the SUV swerve back into the road behind me. Immediately I was like WTF. As we got to the stop sign a little bit up the road, the dude in the SUV straight got out and went to say some choice words with the dudes in the car. I just went through the stop sign and took off, but holy shit. That was crazy.

I was the first one to the venue and other than it being chilly inside, it was fun. It was good to get out with some work heads again since I missed them a lot during vacation. My burger was tasty, my black and tans were tasty, and I got 3 of them for free. Buy 3 get 3 free. Fuck yeah! I’ll take that deal any day. I really enjoy going out with the group because we always end up having the greatest conversations. Tonight’s highlight was no slouch… I never knew that there were such interesting things when it came to personal pleasure devices. But I draw the line at a blow-up sheep. That is just fucked up!

HAHAHAHAHAHA. Hooray beer.

Current Mood(s):  Cool

I love fun weekends. For real. I needed a super fun weekend before going back to work. That’s exactly what I got. On Caturday, I got to see Jenni and have her work on me. I got a neat tattoo. Kinda secret right now but I’ll post more later. Hurts like a bitch. Now its time to heal. Ugh. I hate healing. Chilled with her and some other peeps after and had some dinner, played some Rock Band (I got a 565 note streak on one song playing lead guitar - OH SHIT) watched the Skins game (3-0 preseason FUCK YEAH) and read more of my book. Shit is awesome.

Sunday was the ROCKSTAR Mayhem Festival down the road a bit. It was pretty awesome. Lately, I have become more of a fan to see shows at bars and clubs. The big venues are cool, but I really don’t like people that much so it kinda sucks most of the time. We saw Mastodon, Disturbed and Slipknot, and I went over to the second stage to catch Machine Head. They destroyed - as usual - and it was really kewl to see the side-stage crowd getting hardcore into their performance. See my previous post but it sucked cuz Phil collapsed during their second to last song. Hope he’s okay!

Mastodon was tight. I had never seen them before. I really like their style. They were the first band on the main stage so the crowd was not all that large, but it was still sweet. After seeing Machine Head I came back to catch Disturbed. They put on a really good show. This is the second time I have seen them at Nissan Pavilion. The crowd was really into their set. The sun went down and it cooled off a bit. They sounded really good too. Rock!

Slipknot is just brutal. They had a really good set too. Covering all of their albums, including the one coming out next week. I was hoping they would play another new song other than Psychosocial but they didn’t. Ah well. The crowd was going wild. They were fucking loud! And the lighting that they had going on was really kewl. One of the better times I have seen them perform by far.

After all that fun stuff it was time to head back home and get some rest for my first day at work in over two weeks. It was weird, but I really was glad to be back. I really missed my friends there and was excited to get back into the groove all refreshed and ready to crush it. I had over 400 emails. SUCK. Still going thru them… weeee. Of course, no first Monday back from vacation would be complete without a production issue on your channels main page. I really wish our installs went better than they do. Sigh*

Time to float away to dreamland, where most of the time things go my way and I can be happy. I used to not remember my dreams, but I remember them a lot more lately. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing, but it sure does leave a lot to be desired…

//Currently listening to ‘Closer’ by Nine Inch Nails

Current Mood(s):  Flirtatious & Mischievous

Which is why I got to play on Saturday with my friends. We went to the Bob Marley Reggae Roots fest up in Baltimore Maryland. It was real neat. The pavillion sat right on Pier6. We could see lots of water, boats, neat scenery and got lots of breeze. We had lawn seats so the Sun was pretty bad but the big awesome clouds came to bully the Sun away and save us.

I have not seen live Reggae much so this was a new experience for me. It was hella kewl. I had a blast. There were lots of chill people and we met a few of the musicians from the different bands. We ended up hanging out for the entire afternoon. We missed the first few bands but caught Soja, Barrington Levy, Ziggy Marley (acoustic set, YAY) & Stephen Marley. Damien came out to do some songs as well. It was really awesome. I gotta admit, they really had the crowd into it and they were very talented musicians.

Being the white-guy-that-cant-dance that I am, I learned a few moves from the back-up singers. They had some moves! So I dedided to dance around like an idiot for a bit and enjoyed myself. This kid passed out on the lawn so we totally fucked with him. I got a picture standing over him where it looks like im squashing his head. HAHA. Fun times.

We scooted down into the Pavillion to catch the rest of Stephen and Damien. It was pretty sweet. Got lots of good pictures. Met a few kewl dudes and dudettes. It was a lot more lively down there. Everybody was moving, singing, having a good time. After the show, we made our way back to the car and had a nice ride home. Such a fun day. I needed it bad. Especially cuz I saw this huge black cloud coming my way.

I ended up working from 9:30 am to 1 am yesterday to complete the project I have been chugging on at work. I knew I was going to have to bust my ass to get it done. The page is looking really sharp. It is one of the most fun builds I have done in a while. I took extra time to really make sure that it is as solid as it can be. Think I got most of it nailed. We will have to wait to see what QA has to say about it. I cannot wait to get it done though… meet my new VP, please my business/product team like whoa, and then get the fuck out of dodge for my uber 2 week vacation!

4 days left!!!!!!!!#@$#$@$@