A public service of sorts….

For those of you who have basically been with me since the beginning you may remember a period where I all wrote about was Linux and my musings involving that oh so lovely operating system…

Know that in the last 24 hours I’ve had to fight the urge to start doing the same about my Android phone…

Who knew that “clockwork mod” would be so much fun.

How to kill a fat kid’s dream….

So most of you my dear readers know my brother in one form or another, so use your context of my brother to fill in the gaps of what follows…. Or you can take it as it is and just run with it.  Run all the way to the hills with it.

My brother used to come down on a regular basis once upon a time, but due to changes in his personal life and scheduling conflicts he hasn’t been able to come down in almost a year.  Sometime last month he signs up for a conference in Phoenix so he can have an excuse to come down and try and hang out with his brother… at least that is what he told me.  At the very least he saved his work a few dollars by crashing at “Chateu de me” instead of a staying smart at a Holiday in Express.

So I roll in from work at my usual time and there is my brother watching TV on my couch… strange how he always has a key to my house, but yet “the key to his house can’t be copied and he has only one” very very very strange.  So we chat for a bit and I ask “what do you want for dinner?” because as you all know I keep exactly enough food for one person for about 2.5 days in my house.   After the usual hemming and hawing he doesn’t really have a answer.

At one point he was wanting to do the “Man VS Food” challenge at Chompies in Tempe, but he backed out of that because “he wanted to make sure he like the sliders first”…. Ok kind of weak, but I will give him the pass our family is known for having notoriously sensitive stomachs.  So I suggest the “Tilted Kilt” the following conversation ensues…

LilBrother (LB); What’s “Tilted Kilt”

Me; Bar food but more of a Irish flavor, even though Kilts are Scottish.

LB; Uh ok, I guess.

Later on in the truck as we are pulling into the Tilted Kilt on Baseline and Gilbert in Mesa….

LB; So really all this way for something we could have gotten around the corner from your house?

Me; Food yes, but the service is really good here.

And as we walk up to the door and I open I all I hear from my brother is…

LB; whoa (just loud enough that I could hear it)

So yeah, he enjoyed the “Tilted Kilt”  after we finish he says “I saw this place called ‘Aunt Lena’s’ by Chandler Mall we should go there…. OK the boy doesn’t get out of the sticks much I will indulge him…

Turns out that using his smart phone to look up directions is not something that ever occurred to him… I finally have to pull over to look up the place… and it’s nowhere near Chandler Mall it’s over on Arizona and Ocitllo… The following conversation ensues…

Me; how did figure this place was near the Chandler Mall?

LB; I saw it on “Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives” and I when I saw the background shots it looked like the strip malls around the Chandler Mall.

I guess nobody told him that all the strip malls in that part of town look the same.  So we trek out there… and sure enough there are two identical strip malls across the street from one another the only difference is one has a Lowe’s and one has a Home Depot.   So we drive through both, I do the Google maps thing, and we can’t find this place.   Finally little brother calls the place listed on Google maps page… and the number is disconnected….

LB; Man way to kill a fat kids dream there

So we begin the trek home… somewhere along the way we get detoured to a cold stone and a movie about a guy who kills people with carrots… The movie was almost as good as the Kilt…

As a interesting side note on why you should research before going anywhere, after I put in a cursory Google search I found this article and it’s #1 on the Google results!

http://thedish.freedomblogging.com/2009/01/05/restaurant-closings-aunt-lenas-lucs-carrabbas/2660/

I think someone missed the boat just a touch.

Brothers going to work it out

So I was watching a movie last night (Magnum Force) and I had all the lights turned off in the house and it’s about 10:30 and I go… “Damn I want a beer” so I get up to get a beer… now I’ve lived in this place or a few years so I almost never turn the lights on when I go to the fridge or get a beer.

Currently I keep my beer in my keg freezer in the back room which has no light… (this part is important)

I’m going after a Coors in a bottle, since it’s late and I don’t want anything heavy… I feel around and find the right kind of bottle, put in a coozy, twist off the top and go back to my movie…

I start drinking and after the third drink I think to my self… did I get a bad Coors?   (Yes yes I know there is no such thing as a “good” Coors)

Once again I pause the movie turn on the light to look at the expiration date and to my horror discover I have not a brown bottle of Coors but a clear bottle of Highlife??

Damn… it’s the last of the beer from 4th of July… foiled by Curtis yet again.

And he wasn’t even trying this time (probably)

10,000 ft and surprisngly I feel pretty good…

The day after the event.

So I’ve probally mentioned a hike in August to go up Longs Peak in Colorado w/ a few friends… well on the way to that final hike Curtis and I did what could best be described as a “midterm” hike to gauge our progress.

The results are encouraging.

From a gear perspective; I picked up new shoes, a larger day pack with true hip support, and large hydration system.   The shoes I’ve been using for a couple of weeks now on hikes around Phoenix and they have done well.  The back and hydration system were taken out for the first time this week.   Overall I’m pleased with how the pack worked I was a little surprised when I pulled out the hydration pack and it was dry all that was left was the water in the tube.  So 100oz in the high country of Arizona on 11 miles of trail is probably juuuussstttt enough.  Provided you don’t hit it hard and early and tap out on the way up.  Longs will probably require a couple of nalgene type water bottles to supplement the hydration pack.

From a food perspective; we ate mainly trail mix fruit and jerky on the way up along with water.  I had a couple of energy packs.  For a buck a pop they actually work surprisingly well, I will definitely be bringing a few extra with me on the longs hike.  As for lunch at the top Curtis and I both had sandwiches from Safeway… I’m thinking some a bit more substantial may be in order.

From a physical perspective; the time in the gym paid off in large dividends.  Unfortunately there is no way to train for altitude at 1,500 ft above sea level.  I started to having issues around 10,000 ft on the climb up, going 40 or 50 feet stop for a couple seconds catch my breath go another 50 or so feet which is pretty much what I expected.   Curtis started having issues around 9,000ft when we started gaining a fair bit of elevation.  9,000 ft and flat he had no problem with.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with the results.  Longs Peak is still going to be 14,000 ft of damned interesting though.

Magdalena…

A while back Curtis said I needed to watch this movie on Net Flix called “It Might Get Loud” and well since he watched “Breer Wars” on my recommendation (and was able to regurgitate timely and topical tidbits from it) I put “It Might Get Loud” into the old insta queue.

It was fucking awesome! (Best watched with the volume turned to 11)

I already had a pretty health dose of respect for these artists before, but after that little documentary The Edge and Jimmy Page have validated their god like status in my musical world while Jack Black has been elevated from minor deity to second only to Johnny Cash in my world.

I’m not going to write more… your just going to have to go check it out.

4 months…

It’s 4 months till football… and already the trash talk is starting. I don’t know about trash talk, but motivation is being provided….

This is taken from the official… Darnell Docket talking about twitter and a player on the 49ers…

– On Vernon Davis and having Adrian Wilson’s back: “Vernon, you see the trash he is talking, he and Adrian, they have their own vendetta against each other. But me? I’m cool with Vernon. I see him all the time. We’re from the same area (in Maryland), I just saw him this weekend. But I’m going to ride-or-die for my teammates too. I am as loyal as they come. I’m going to have my boy’s back, because he’s not on Twitter and I know if Adrian had been on Twitter he would have spoken up. Adrian was in the weight room the other day and I told him what Vernon said and all of a sudden, he’s got 525 pounds on the squat with no hesitation.” Arizona Cardinals Blog..

The rivalry according to Dockett

Need to start working on the trash talking skills… maybe twitter has a place in my world after all.