Using a key to gouge explitives on another’s vehicle is a sign of trust and friendship.

Time certainly does fly by these days… Let’s try to play catch up.

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Where did my weekend go? It went by way too fast. Seriously.

Not much going on lately. I’ve been trying to cut back our budget (or lack thereof), because we spend money without any regard. I had a real shock when I setup an account on mint.com (which is a fantastic site!), and saw what our spending on food was over the past month. I’m not going to put it here, because I don’t like to talk about personal finances, but needless to say, it was a lot more than it should be. So we went grocery shopping, and have instituted a once a week dining out rule for the time being. My goal isn’t to cut out eating out, or eating things we love, so much as it is to budget doing so.

Started playing rock band a bit more lately (haven’t really been playing much the past few months), since I can never seem to play my real drums when I want to. It’s obviously not the same, but it can get close when playing on expert, and I get the same workout. I grabbed the demo of Guitar Hero: Metallica
the other day, and it’s pretty cool. I’m not that into the interface Guitar Hero uses, but there’s no denying the killer song set they have in that game, so I’ll probably pick it up when a good deal comes around.

While on the subject of Music, some awesome new releases lately:

Lamb Of God – Wrath: Love it! It’s no secret that LoG is one of my favorite bands. Metal at it’s finest. Unlike a lot of their hardcore fans though, I thought that the last album (Sacrament) was a killer album. I loved the obvious Pantera influence, and I’m not that big of a fan of the cookie monster vocals. That said, the new album is a return to the more aggressive style, and with it brings more growling. It’s not a bad thing, but IMO it doesn’t do the music justice.

Mastodon – Crack The Skye: Another killer album. I love these guys! Very prog oriented, technical band. Their lyrics are total cheese-dick fantasy stuff, but there’s no denying that their music is fantastic.

Static-X – Cult Of Static: What can I say, it sounds like every other Static-X album to an extent, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

From the not new (although they do have a new album coming in May), but new found love category: Isis. I’ve heard these guys a ton in the past, even seen them a few times opening for various bands, but I never really gave them a chance despite rave reviews from both friends, and music rags. Finally getting into them, and I have to say that I feel like a total tool for not giving them more of a chance before. Awesome layered, ambient, metal oriented music.

I’ve been using Dropbox (this is a referral link, as I get extra space, and so do you!) for a few months, and it is just pure awesome! The basic idea of it is, it’s 2GB of free disk space on a web server. Why would I need free web space since I run a web hosting company? I don’t, but Dropbox is much more than just free web space.

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So I called comcast to cancel my cable internet service today, and the conversation went something like this:

comcast: Hi, how can I assist you today?
me: Hi, I’d like to cancel my internet service.
comcast: May I ask the reason?
me: I’m switching to FIOS.
comcast: Why do you want to do that?
me: Faster speeds.
comcast: You know, we have pretty fast speeds available too.
me: I’m pretty sure I have the fastest already.
comcast: What city are you in?
me: Ashburn
comcast: One moment…. Yes, I see you have 16/2. You do know that you are getting a discounted rate on this service? You pay $56/mo, normally it’s $62/mo.
me: All the more reason to switch.
comcast: So there’s nothing we can do to keep you?
me: No. I’ve already switched.
comcast: Okay. You just need to return your router within 5 days.
me: Thanks. Have a nice day.

So Verizon was scheduled for the final install from 1-6 on Friday 3/6. I got a call from the installer just before 1:00 on Friday saying he was on his way. He showed up about 10 minutes later, and I showed him where things were, and how I wanted the install done.

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I have decided to do a series of posts about my pending Verizon Fios install for both my own tracking, and for others to use for reference. If you are interested, read more after the break. I’m cutting this to spare space for those who don’t care.

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Sorry for the blast of lifehacker posts that got cross posted to LJ. My stupid plugin shat itself and cross posted my the feed I just setup. I deleted them all from LJ, but I know some of you get this crap in a feed. So sorry.

It would seem a few months have passed since my last substantive post, so here we are again….

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Well, it’s been quite some time since I made a real blog entry. Thanks to twitter, at least my life in 140 characters or less has been somewhat documented.

As some of my close friends and family already know, I finally quit my job at OpSource, and started working at The College Board last week. I had to get out of there, because it just wasn’t a healthy environment for me both mentally and physically. While I will somewhat miss the freedom I had there telecommuting and such, I definitely wont miss the crazy hours I worked, and the constantly being called for dumb stuff. My new gig is much more laid back. While there are days that I have to be in at 5:00am to do deployments, there’s no expectation for me to work any more than the 8 hours I get paid for. So when I come in at 5:00am, I go home at 1:00pm, and that’s fine by me.

Outside of work, I took a short trip home to California before I started the new job. Unfortunately, since it was on such short notice, and we really didn’t have the money to spend on it, Steph didn’t get to go. I flew on frequent flier miles, and hardly spent any money while I was there, thanks to awesome friends and family. Hopefully, we’ll both be making another trip out for xmas, but we’re still not sure about it yet. Have to wait a bit and see how things look.

On a side note, my work wouldn’t just let me use my personal blackberry, and pay for it, so they gave me a new one with a new number. Steph’s phone was giving her problems, and she’s always wanted it to be more internet friendly, so I finally talked her into getting a BB last night. I killed off my old plan, and transferred the number to Steph’s old phone, so I’m only paying $10/mo for it instead of the ridiculous amount I was paying before. The old number is being forwarded to my new BB. Those of you who call and txt me, please hit me up via IM or email, and I’ll give you my new number. If you txt my old number, I’m not gonna get it until I happen to look at the other phone (I’m not even keeping it on or with me).

[smartads]

Been a while since I posted anything of substance, so I figure I should write something. Things have been crazy the past couple of months. Without whining too much, work sucks. I’m ready to move on. After going on a last minute London trip, I was back for a little over a week, then it was vacation time.

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