Category: beer flavored

Dogs of NASCAR…

You know I must be getting old when I’ve been meaning to write about this Springs sojourn out to NASCAR for 4 days and keep putting it off because….

I haven’t recovered yet!

Well not exactly anymore, I’m recovered (finally) it just took 6 days more then I expected it to I don’t think it has anything to do with the 2 thirty packs of Coors light…. though I’ve been wrong about this kind of thing before.

Anyway it was the ususal debauchery…. Cars turning left, mullets in full bloom, rednecks were out in full force.   Oh and top it all off I lost my cell phone…

I know I know…

Let me start at the beginning… so there we were watching the grocery cart races which had devolved into putting people into 55 gallon drums and rolling them down the hill (You won if you made it 10 seconds inside and didn’t puke).  The sheriff’s office finally rolled in and put a end to the barrel rolling the grocery carts mysteriously disappeared…. Anyway Greg, Dan, Allan and I say “Hey it’s only 11 lets grab a couple of beers and see whats going on out there”  So we all grab a couple of beers and go on “Safari”.

So we wander the wilderness of campers that is Nascar in the spring and alot of people have turned in for the night but in every row you find a group that is still going at it.  One of these groups has two travel trailers parked together with a white sheet up on the side of the trailer displaying Karaoke! So of course we pull in there and are welcomed with open arms and cold beer (good thing since we were all about out).  We sing… actually Dan and Allan sing… I hang back drink beer and enjoy the crowd.

So now at this point I’ve had more then “my fair share” of beer and we all know what happens when I have to much to drink… nothing good.  And up walks so redneck chic in her Dale Jr. shirt talking about how great her driver was.  Now I’m standing there listening to this in my Tony Stewart hat (who incidentally came in 2nd that day and not 31st like Mr. Jr.) and I’m listening to all of this and I star to analyze it and say “bullshit” not in my head but out loud.   I now have the drunk redneck chic’s attention and not in a way that I wanted… I don’t remember how I got out of it but I’m told that it was a very intense 3 minute conversation with this woman and I was also told “If she had started to kick your ass you would have been on your own brother”.  I can’t fault anyone there.

So we hang for another bit and start to wander back to camp it’s at this point that I realize that I’ve lost my phone… so we wander back to camp karaoke and no one’s seen it but we look around no luck.  So I call into Verizon and flag the phone as lost. We get back to camp a little after 3.   Later that morning at 7 I wake up and head back to camp karaoke to look in the day light, yep still no phone.  We break Nascar camp and head home.

Next day I walk into my friendly Verizon store and purchase a new Blackberry Storm.   it’s not the one I was after but I will give it a try.   And as I’m setting up the email on the thing I have a new message… it’s a email asking if I’m missing a phone…. Is it a blackberry pearl with a big scratch on the side of the screen?…. sure is.

Damn…

It’s Saturday before the guy who found it and I hook up, but I get the phone back a little bit more cosmetic damage on it then before.  But seems to be functional, well except for the SD card that is missing but that is a small price to pay (and there were no pictures on that card that I didn’t have backed up to Flickr or Facebook if I wanted them that bad).

So the moral of this story?

Don’t go on Safari with a phone in a holster have it your pocket!

Also the Storm with the 4.7.132 OS rocks.

Watch out for those souped up grills…

So as most all you know that I have this thing with watching cars turn left and I really like it when cars turn left here in Phoenix.  Well I like it to the point that I go and camp at the track for a couple of days every time they come to town.

Yes I know it’s a sickness… your also talking to someone who’s been followed the Cardinals since 1993 and fan since 1998 (you know the first bandwagon)… well not so much talking as reading the ramblings of said person.

Anyway at the spring race last year as we are packing up Greg gives me his old gril and tells me “It’s a good grill, but Beth wants to get me a new one for fathers day” well I being the cheap bastard that I am said “sure”.   Greg later informed me that he made a few “upgrades” to the grill while he owned it.   What kind of upgrades you ask?  Just some new burners nothing to terribly special.

That was April of 08 and the grill has sat in my garage since then, mainly because I already had a grill and didn’t want to give up a lot of patio space.  So tonight after my old grills flame went out for the third time in 5 minutes I decided to drag Greg’s old grill out and fire it up.

And fire it up I did… this is the first grill I’ve ever used that lit on the first press of the igniter and burned my eyebrows almost clean off… and if my patio cover was any lower I’m pretty sure I would have burn marks on it too.

Ok so the burners were upgraded a bit but how much?

Well after 10 minutes on medium the grate on the bottom that holds the briquettes was glowing red.

That’s also a first for me….

Did I mention Greg’s nickname is “The Foreman”?

No?

I think that may have something to do with it all.

This is necessary…. life feeds on life feeds on lie

Ok it’s 24 hours after the game and it almost doesn’t hurt to talk…. it used to be 48 hours before I got to this point… so either I didn’t yell as much (no likely) or my vocal chords are now the most developed muscle in my upper body…

“I’ll take people who need to get off their ass and start working out for a $200 please Alex”.

More on that later… it’s also not the first time I’ve talked about it nor will it be the last.

I was also contemplating on posting the spirited exchange that Eve and I had via txt message during the course of the game.  I was wanting to do this for two reasons.  First to document that Eve is a closet Cardinals fan (as most are), and two semi-admittance that Steelers fans may be just a tad dim.  Alas I decided to not upset the order of things… Rather, I’m saving that energy for other people like say a certain Giants fan whose team may come up against my #1 team or my #2 team.

So your probally wondering what these txt messages contain don’t you?  Well here’s a little peak… The mutual loathing/hatred that Eve, I, and probally a good portion of the Football watching public have towards Chris Colinsworth.  And something about a Elk Gun, motive, and oppurtuntity.

So now the question is this, the Cardinals play in Carolina next week… And assuming they win and assuming the Giants lose to the Eagles… There could be a NFC championship game in Phoenix.

Oh god… that could be very expensive… but so worth it.

Of course the Cardinals have to win first… and well remember what I said about talking shit about the other team.

Have Faith Baby, Have Faith

Take what is mine…. bury what is mine…

So one nice thing about the WordPress blog is I found a add on that updates the whole back end for me auto-magically.  And after having used it a couple of times I can say that honestly it works way better then the old method.  You know me FTPing everything down to the MAC… uploading the new files… enabling the new files… making sure I didn’t bork anything in the process.  I like this auto upgrade feature way more then the old manual method.

Yes folks this is what you get for a update when I’m on vacation… A update about how easy the plug in to update the blog is to operate.

Oh btw I’m on vacation and I have Internet access!  Which while is exciting it keeping me from paying attention to the election… No wait this Internet on vacation is just what the doctor ordered!

So what does a vacation for Tom look like… well it looks like one of the following

– Camping in the high grasslands of Arizona looking for Elk.

– Hanging out in Williams while looking for Elk/Deer

-Hanging out in Kingman while kind of looking for Deer and drinking alot of beer (this is the one I’m currently on)

– Camping on the dark side of Catalina with six kids and 5 adults… guess who doesn’t have any kids and was having no part of the kids.

-Camp at NASCAR while drinking beer (this is next week)

So all and all when I go on extended runs of vacation I tend to camp and drink beer.

Maybe I should expand my horizons, you know maybe take a trip to another country and drink their beer.

Man that sounds expensive… I think I will keep camping and drinking my own beer.

Who knows maybe while I’m out looking for Deer someone I know personally will post *cough*curtis*cough* *cough*eve*cough*

You know stranger things have happened like me coming back with something…

Mother mary won’t you listen…

Name the song and band I lifted tonights title from…  (Cody you can’t play, you know the answer) Winner gets a box of Nilla Waffers.

Bonus question… how many boxes of Nilla Wafters have I given out for prizes?  (Curtis you can’t play you know the answer)

Interesting fact… time it takes from the time I click “approve” on a comment to the time I get the email on my blackberry?  Just under 6 seconds… Which is all the more immpressive because I’m using Google for the email on this site and Blackberry Internet Service for my “familiar”

Yes witches have cats, wizards have owls, I have a blackberry.

While that does seem wrong… it also seems so SO SOO right.

So you want to know what is really frustrating…. importing music into your itunes library and not having it show up but you can see the files on the disk… now that is sheer frustration!

And at some point I will write something meaningful… tonight is not that night.

There are few things sweeter….

Then a big win in the regular season against a opponent that every one thinks your going to lose to.

It’s even sweeter when a bet made two months ago is paid in a voice mail, even though I was being way lippy during a pre-season game.

Matt, you are a good man which is why I have recorded the voice mail but I’m not posting it on the internet.
If however anyone would like to hear the voice mail…. well that can be arranged.

Houses in motion…

I’m still undecide what I’m going to do with this little space of the intertubes.

The good news is it’s paid through the end of the year…. the bad news is I have to pay for it.

While I do enjoy the fact that I can have total and complete control of my blog, I don’t want to spend the weekends working on it because I borked some upgrade (which lets face it if I bork a upgrade it’s my own damn fault for not backing up the database before I bork the bolg)(hmmm that much “bork” that close together is kind of dirty… I guess “bork” and “3 thrusts” have something in common)

So there is that, the other side to the coin is that there isn’t much traffic here which I do like. Basically read that as unless your really looking for it your not likely to find this piece of drivel. To me that is a plus in my own weird way.

So I clicked off “Secure Empty Trash” 10 minutes ago on the Macbook Pro and it just now finshed deleting 5.7k items. I guess we know it’s thorough.

I guess my biggest damage with the whole blogger thing is I can’t post photo’s here via phone because of the way that godaddy has their hosting. And I don’t want to move my blog to another host because I have alot files other then the blog I keep out on this webspace (nothing cool just pictures if you know where to look).

So in other news I applied for a PACS job in Denver. Mainly just for the hell of it, and to see how I truly feel about my current employer. I guess when I put down “fishing for a lunker” as a reason for wanting to work someplace I know I’m pretty happy where I’m at.

Still Alive

Yes I’m Still Alive

That said… what the hell have I been doing?

Well the things that stand out in my mind are several marathon sessions of Rock Band in Colorado and even more marathon sessions of Grand Theft Auto in Arizona.

Speaking of Colorado I went to “Beer Mecca” aka “The Fat Tire Brewery” so there is that.

But yeah alot of Rock Band and Grand Theft Auto.

Rock Band has a strange effect on how I listen to music, no longer do I listen to a song I start to think about how the various pieces parts will interact in Rock Band… Like the drum opening to “Jambi” by TOOL… or the Guitar Solo’s in just about any Led Zepplin or Pink Floyd song. I have questions about Pearl Jam too specifcally “Lukin” At one point there was supposed to be the capablity to import your iTunes library into Rock Band and be able to play those songs. I’m sure that got nixed because some record label exec was mad that they weren’t making a sufficent amount of money from anything.

I do have say, any time I hear a Disturbed song on the radio I cringe when I think about the guitars/drums/vocals that would be required in Rock Band.

Stiff upper lip…. and I shoot from the hip

So this is the firs somewhat serious attempt to fork rollingskull.blogspot.com and rollingskull.com from one another.   I’m still undecided as to what I will do with both blogs.  There are a few features of the word-press setup that I haven’t been able to get working and I’m chalking most of that up to a lack of SSL support for godaddy and my choice of google as the email service for this domain.  Though truth be told it’s not that big of a move to get the email routed back to a godaddy server and try the whole post by email thing.  There are a few other things too, but they are mainly related to how google does things and I don’t know if I would know the difference if I hadn’t been using blogger for the last 4 odd years.

Of course some of it may have something to do with the fact that I’m anal-retentive and refuse to give up any functionality for another piece of functionality.   Look at the bright side at least I’m not on live journal where no one would ever find this drivel.

So there is someplace to start.  Why I’ve always called this blog of mine “drivel” I think a certain portion of it is self loathing we all have it some more then others.  I think I also do it as a check against myself to make sure I don’t start to let things go to my head.  Yes I know I’m just a I.T. guy, but it’s very easy for me to let things go straight to the old noggin.  This attitude has also followed me into other parts of my life and has given me a decidedly darker approach to alot of things (life and the belief that the absolute worst thing will always happen) and a much lighter approach to other things (i.e. some one dying is not a big deal)  it may also have something to do with the fact that I’ve tended to hang around weirder folks at my various places of work.

I chalk up alot of the things in my life in my choices.  And most all of my choices tend to be of the variety where it’s me doing whatever it is I’m doing and not caring what anyone else does.  I think this was best demonstrated when I was working in the hospital in Kingman and Mike asked me “So do you have any friends that you consider your best buddies and did everything with?”  and my response was something along the lines of “Nope, always have been more of a loner.” That was 2002 and I think it colored my time at Kingman Regional more then anything else.

You know I had elk for dinner and several Fat Tires and I’m feeling really good.  Like drunk Tom posting good, but you know what  I’m going to end this now before I say something that I regret.