May 2003

I'm such a drama queen

May 31, 2003: If you read what I wrote yesterday, just ignore it and attribute it to me being a dumbass drama queen.
What's New? Never has that question been more appropriate than to what I just wrote.

Blah blah blah

May 30, 2003: blah blah blah! blah blah BLAh blah blah blah blah blahblahblah! :-) blah blah blah BLAH BLAH blah! Blah blah blah.
What's New? BLAH!

Boulder Station, baby!

May 29, 2003: There's plenty to talk about, so sit down and take notice. First, the tentative plan for my promotion party to end all promotion parties (I won't be having another for at least 6 years or so, so this one has to be good and has to make up for the complete lack of one when I was promoted to 1st Lieutenant) is the following: On 18 July, I will have the actual ceremony at work. I'm hoping that some family and friends will be able to make it to that, which will take place on that Friday afternoon. Whoever is up for it is more than welcome to then go to dinner that night. On 19 July is the actual party-time get together/family reunion/excuse to drink/excuse to gamble/extravaganza. I initially was hoping to have it somewhere on the strip, but I just couldn't afford what was available. I could possibly afford the Imperial Palace, but I actually visited the place on Wednesday and oh boy, that was the pits. Literally. It smelled like armpits or something. And too claustrophobic, as it had low ceilings in the casino. So I refocused and after talking to the good people at Boulder Station, this will be the best value for my money. I am going to get some hors d'oeuvres catered and have the music playing up on the top floor hospitality suite there. Plus, if anyone who is interested wants to stay there, the rooms can be had for $69/night. Not too shabby. Also, the casino is very very big, there are lots of bars & restaurants inside, and for the gamblers, there are $3 minimums on the tables! Yay! I'm going to try to finalize all the details as soon as possible and send out formal invites to those I have addresses for. I would love it if you could come up for Saturday and Friday, and if possible, I would appreciate knowing who is pretty much a definite, so if you could email me, that would be cool.

Let's see, what else has been going on? I was at a Network Encryption seminar being held at the Mirage the last two days, so I have been away from work and it's been kinda nice. I like my job now, but I actually got some useful info from the seminar and it was fun to walk around the Mirage. I haven't been there in a long time.

I bought a new laptop also! It's a beauty, and I got a really great deal on it. Here's the lowdown, and you could take advantage of it too if you buy it before 31 May 03. Best Buy is having good sales on all their Compaq laptops, which mine is. Originally priced at $1199, it is discounted to $1099 (although it only says -$50 on the website). If you buy it from Bestbuy.com, you get a $100 gift card back. There are also another $250 in rebates. But the way I really made out is that I picked my laptop up today from the store having ordered it online, and when I got home, there was a pixel burned out green in the center of my laptop. I returned it to the store, and they would have to return and resell me a laptop. Concerned I wouldn't get my $100 Bestbuy.com rebate, they just took $100 off right there. So instead of a gift card, just a discount! Sweet! So all in all, my laptop will actually cost me right around $750. Not a bad deal at all, for what I got. It's rare that I actually get a good deal, so that's why I'm talking it up so much. Yay for me! :-)

What's New? Well, I should have had Harv's pictures done by now, but I just haven't put them up yet. And with me hanging out with Byron & Connie tomorrow and this weekend, it doesn't look good that it'll get done this weekend. But shortly thereafter, promise! I'll be updating on the Byron & Connie visit as well, as it seems like it should lots of fun - we're going to the Blue Man Group tomorrow night, and Byron got 5th row center tickets! I guess we'll even get ponchos issued to us. I don't know why, yet. Scary.

I've been DoS'd. I feel so violated.

May 24, 2003: For those of you who may have been trying to get to my website in the latter half of last week, you may have noticed that you weren't getting to my website or it was unbearably slow. Well, the problem is that my ISP was the target of some serious Denial of Service attacks. I think they're still getting hit, but whatever. I am getting better throughput than I was before. I downloaded my pictures from my camera finally from Harv's birthday party, which was a blast. The pictures came out good too, but there's so many that it'll be a lit bit longer till I convert them to web-ready size. But they're coming soon! And can I get a Hallelujah for a three-day weekend? I did pretty much nothing today, but it felt great. I slept in, found my Social security card and birth certificate which I thought I had lost, worked out, did some homework, and now I can watch some movies and spend absolutely no money. YAY! Byron and Connie and Aidan are coming to town next week, so that will be fun. I will hope to have some pictures of that too.
What's New? I got my computer DVD player to work and so I can now do screen captures. So I've updated my DVD page.

Back to Life, Back to Reality

May 22, 2003: I don't know if you remember this classic song from the 80s, but if you do, the song is now stuck in your head. Ha hahahahahahahaahaha!
So what's been going on in the wild world of Hobie Barnes? Well, sit down a spell and let me tell ya. Geez, it's been a while since I last wrote. My work life took a dramatic turn last week, as I now get to actually do some comm stuff and feel like a worthwhile human being. It's amazing what feeling needed can do for an ego and for sanity. Seriously.
This past weekend, I went back down to Los Angeles for my stepdad Harv's 70th birthday party. It was a lot of fun, and there was a lot of people there I hadn't seen in a while. Lots of the Beaman clan (I hadn't seen Francie, Paul & Matt in forever) were there as were lots of my Mom's family. I was able to negotiate a place on the couch to crash, so I proceeded to get pretty sloshed and that led to lots of fun being had, including dancing and merrymaking. Ah yes, fun fun fun. There was some typical family drama, but I think everyone is doing better now. No need to go into it for the record. But I will be putting up pictures as soon as I download them to my camera. I think Harv had a great time though!
This week has been my first full week in my new job, and it's been great. The days actually seem to fly by now. Yeay!
I've also started the search for a house to buy. The house next to Marian and Drew's came up for sale and I took a look at it this week. I don't think I'll be getting it though, even though it would be a blast to live next door to them. The house will need plenty of work, and while I"m not averse to working on my house, I'd rather have something that doesn't need lots of work just to make it liveable. I would like to devote work to making a nice house even better. So I've gotten a realtor's name from Ski at work and we'll see what comes up then.
I'm also planning my promotion party for July. Damn it will be hot, but you know what, I think it's lining up to be quite fun. I'm trying to coordinate a penthouse suite at a hotel on the Strip. Right now I've found a deal at the Imperial Palace, but I'm still looking. Stay tuned, as you may be invited to come party down on the strip one hot summer day in Las Vegas. Make sure to stay hydrated! With alcohol or water, well, that's up to you. ;-)
And if you didn't see it, the last episode EVER of Buffy was on this week. It was bittersweet, but I think it ended well, with Buffy finally getting released from the burden of being the sole (or at least, one of two) Vampire Slayers. The girl was cracking up under the pressure, and now she finally gets some me-time. It'll be interesting to see how they discuss it on Angel next season (it was renewed - whew).
What's New? I finally finished up my Survivor pages, albeit sorta anticlimactically. I'm not bothering updating the Team Jelly stats, as only two of us voted on them. But rest assured, I won. I also updated my movies page, as I've seen a few movies lately and I hadn't updated that yet. I've also found out that I'm only using 28 MB of my recently increased web space of 150 MB (from an original 100 MB). So I think I need to put up lots more pictures. I also think an overhaul of the front page is in order. There's things I'd like to put up but they don't really fit in any of those banal categories.

Color Me Shocked

May 11, 2003 (later): Wow! I LOVED this season of Survivor. It never failed to surprise me or entertain me, and this latest twist was incredible. I so thought Matt had this in the bag, but in a complete 180 degree spin, Jenna beat him out SIX to ONE! Woah! And to boot, even Christy voted for Jenna, her self-declared evil stepsister! Well, all I gotta say is I loved this season and for some reason it kicked me out of my gray mood even. And I'm all for that! I'll eventually finish up my last Survivor page, let my Survivor section linger for a week or so, and then remove it in anticipation for Survivor in the Panama Pearl Isles! Woo hoo! It just sucks to have to wait until this fall. Oh well.

Survivor Finale is tonight

May 11, 2003: I'm happy that the finale is finally here, but also sad, as now I'll have to figure out something else to do on Thursday evenings, just like my Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. With Buffy going off the air forever and Angel ending last week, what is a person to do? That's pretty much my TV nights too! I guess I'll need to start taking violin lessons again or something....
So in the good news category, I got an A in Accounting! A Mother-bleepin' A! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not even an A-! A real deal A. I got a 96 on the 100-96 A scale that my insane accounting professor issued. Yes, you get an A- if you get a 95. Unreal. But whatever, I am keeping my 4.0 GPA and have finished 7 graduate credits. I'm stoked. In other happy news, I got to see Jason & Wendy yesterday. I wasn't in a happy place though, so I'm sure they wished they hadn't seen me. I tried to be in a good mood though, although I wasn't quite successful. I'm also pretty sure I'm over the real gambling thing. I have figured out I have no luck whatsoever and I need to stop losing money, money that could be better used on DVDs and such. :-)
What's New? My second-to-last Survivor page is up!

Alright - April is finally over. May HAS to be better.

May 6, 2003: Happy Seis de Mayo to you. I really can't tell you how happy I am to be done with April. It was a pretty shitty month for the most part. My accounting class is finally over, and while I don't know how I did gradewise, at this point I really don't care. Really.
So what's been going on with me, you ask? Well, I took off Thurs and Fri last week just so I could do accounting homework. And that's all I did. The assignments were awful. But at least they're over. Mom and Harv came up on Wednesday and were here till Sunday morning. I saw them on Thursday and Friday evenings. On Thursday I met up with them at Sam's Town mexican restaurant, which is pretty good. I then rushed home to watch Survivor.....Hey, it's one of my shows! Then on Friday, having spent all day at home doing blasted homework, I met them at Paris and we had dinner at this fantastic steakhouse inside Paris. I had a Prime Rib that was literally to die for. It was perfectly cooked and the cut of meat was so thick. It's hard not to drool just thinking about it. After that, we hopped in a cab to Mandalay Bay to go catch Mamma Mia! It's such a good show and I was glad to be able to get tickets for us, both for Harv's birthday and Mother's Day. They both liked the show, and I loved to see it again. After that was done, I said goodbye to them and went home to get some sleep for the next day, which would be a long day.
I did my accounting presentation that morning, then drove to LA afterwards to go to a Young Alumni UCLA thing at Pauley Pavilion with Roni. I picked her up and we went to Westwood and Jerry's Famous Deli, which I hadn't eaten at in quite a while (before the Azores for sure). After a great dinner, we went up to Pauley and went to see what there was to see. I was very impressed with what was done, as it was all decked out with dark carpet and lights and there was a huge mock casino there, with everyone getting $500 fake bucks to play with. That was fun, and we even got some dancing in before leaving to go to Virgin Megastore! The long day was finally taking its toll on me and I crashed at home before leaving on Sunday morning back to Las Vegas.
I saw X2 that afternoon, which was great!, and then played a little craps, lost (although it was casino money, as I made $60 on a Monopoly nickel machine, which was very cool - yet the girl next to me had 6000 credits in her machine, which is about $300!), and then I'm here now, with not too interesting of a Monday day, but Monday evening was a blast, as Marian and Drew and I went to the Cannery and we all had pretty good success at the games. I didn't do so well in slots, but not so bad either, but the real fun was to be had at the craps table, as we played for 2 hours and I ended up $6 up! Go figure. The success story of the evening was Drew going to the 3-5-7 table with his last $15 and playing a few hands, winning and losing some, even digging out one more $10 bill, and then getting dealt a straight flush! It pays 40-1 on the 3-card hand, and that meant he got $200 for a $5 bet. It was sweet! Needless to say, Drew was whooping it up at that time!
And now I"m here getting ready to watch the 3rd-to-last Buffy episode in less than an hour. How oh how will it end in just three more episodes?
What's New? Survivor has been updated!

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