Home Alone

The Wife left Friday afternoon for a women's retreat and won't be home till late on Saturday, so you know what that means... PAR-TAY!!! Oh man did it get wild on Fried Chicken Dr, there were ladies, guys, cigars, copious amounts of alcohol I mean the cops even showed up... to PAR-TAY! Woooo what a blast!

OK, that was a lie, you all know me and probably figured out my night alone and if you said order a pizza and watch seasons 3 and 5 of the Simpsons then you won the prize (as usual the prize is a hug from me). It's pretty sad state of affairs for me, but at the same time it was totally awesome. So I am now resigned to the fact I am a married guy and have become "that guy." I was never a partier, but I use to go out. Oh well, Lucy and I had fun any ways.

Hey Let's Kill Everyone

With the first episode for about a month, Lost wasted no time to "rev" it up. We had explosions, deceit, Risk, killing of small characters, killing of medium characters, and a smoke monster. This was a Ben episode with a flash forward so it was weird yet awesome. I'm still wondering how Ben awoke in the middle of the Tanzania. I wonder if his secret room has something to do with it. The mercs kill Alex and Ben exclaims "He changes the rules." Then you find out that Ben and Whitemore have some kind of arraignment. It felt like a bizarre Trading Places moment, instead of a dollar wager it's dead daughters.

I felt like I learned a lot about the island, yet I am still utterly confused about everything and have no idea what I learned. I'm guessing that the Whitemore's were first on the island or had something to do with Darhma and we know what happened from there. Who is evil? I don't know who I should be rooting for. The Losties are just screwed no matter who wins. Look at Sayid, Ben manipulates Sayid with the death of his wife (I'm still thinking Ben has something to do with it). From the looks of it Jack ruptures his appendix Hurley is now all alone with Locke and Ben, I'd say that's a lose/lose.

Oh yeah, then you have the return of Smokey the friendly killer cloud of doom! I guess Ben does control it, how, we do not know. Maybe it's something in Ben's Harry Potteresque room that allows him to control it. I also don't remember Smokey looking that long, nor do I remember it having any train like attributes. Maybe it's just me, but I expected to see a conductor on the back of Smokey. Onto the random thoughts!

I really hate Daniel, I am tired of his bad lying and his constant wishy washiness. Every time he opens his mouth I want to punch him so we can get the truth.

Early on I didn't like Miles and now I kind of do. He is getting shoved around, is lost... he's slowly become one of the Losties.

Hurly is right, Australia is the key to risk.

OK we saw Bernard, but where is Rose?

House Shopping

We met with our realtor today and look at 7 houses. It's feels a little weird going into someones house while they are away. I felt like I needed to steal something or look in their drawers, I did neither by the way.

We saw a few empty houses as well and it's interesting to see how it actually "looks better" when there is furniture in the house. I always thought it would be the other way around, but you get to see how the couch could go or where to put the bed. I can use my imagination to see where everything will go, but sometimes it's easier if someone already had it laid out. I also noticed we have a lot more crap everywhere. It's not that we are cluttered, it's just they have less items presented. When we move we may have to store more stuff instead of having it all out in the open.

We saw a few houses we liked, the best was in a small subdivision, the big thing for me and subdivisions is cookie cutter houses and fees that you have to pay. Luckily this subdivision has different looking houses with lots of different sizes. To be honest this house is right on the edge of our price range. If it was a year from now when we have paid off two more bills, it might not matter. Right now it does and I'm a little worried. We have been pre-approved for a loan larger than this house, but still, you have to be able to afford to live there. this is the only problems with past financial transgressions. They will come back and haunt you... stupid aught 5!

Poor Lucy

Yesterday we were responsible dog parents and took Lucy to get fixed. She has been tired since then and not allowed to go on long walks and I can't rough house with her. The worst part of the experience has been the cone. She started to lick the incisions and we had to put it on her. She was not a fan and fought us every step of the way.

After we got it on, she walked around the house moping, whining and bumping into things. It was sad and yet somehow funny. Lucy finally laid down and dealt with it; she is not a happy camper.

Rick Rolled?

I was visiting one of my favorite photographer message board and someone had a Youtube link to story he had shot. He loved it and wanted to know what we thought. The link led to the above video, supposedly we got "Rick Rolled." I guess it's the new fun web prank, you tell someone about something cool on Youtube and when you get there, you get Rick Astley. I can't figure out why this is funny. The video on Youtube has over 7 million hits, so there has to be a lot of people doing this. Maybe I'm out of touch, maybe it's actually because I remember when the song was a hit. To me this is on the level of chain letters, bad photoshoped pictures and guys saying "pull my finger." Please explain to me why this is funny? It's a fair song with a crappy 80s video. Wouldn't Flock of Seagulls I Ran be better how about Men Without Hats Safety Dance and my personal choice Snap! I Got The Power. You can be Snapped or Got Powered. This is getting kind of hectic and if I get Rick Rolled again or I will attack you don't want that.

Update; the above video is not working, I guess the Rick Roll people want you to ask for permission to embed the video. How about no, if you want go watch it, I just don't want to encourage them any more than I have to.

Why Are You Calling Me!

OK, I was going to wait to do this, but people are forcing me to reveal this a little earlier. We are looking to buy a house... again. So I was looking for property values and since the house is technically in a small rural county, they don't have any of that information on the web. To be honest, they barely have anything on their webpage.

So I go to Realtor.com to look for property value, because I know the house is not worth that much. Well, you have to go through some hoops to get the value; including a page for buying a car and selling a house. Stupid me did not use a fake phone number. As I am driving to pay for my car licence I get a call from a chevy dealer. He thinks I'm interested in a Aveo. I inform him that it was the first car I could put down so I could move on to find the property value. Two hours later another Chevy guy calls me another hour later I get a call from a lady asking if we need help selling our house. Obviosuly we don't have a house and who would want an Aveo?

This is what I get for using the internet to find information.

One for Me Nineteen to Uncle Sam

Today being tax day I guess I will have to do the obligatory people who are doing there taxes at the last minute. To be honest we sent our government tax in yesterday. We actually finished it back in March, but we owed this year. In the grand scheme of things, its not too much, but still we owed Uncle Sam over $750! So you can see why we waited to pay.

Yet, with all that money going out, North Carolina owed us over $400. Obviously we are using that to help out, and luckily I picked up 46 hours of over time on my last two pay checks. With The Wife's job, it's always going to be like this. We are finding new charities and other tax deductible ways to help out next year, so maybe we can get it down to the point we just send the government what North Carolina sends us. We also may have a big way to get a tax break... more on that later (Crosses fingers).

Finally The March Madness Wrap Up

I've been back for a week and you may be wondering why it took me so long to get a wrap up of my trip. The simple answer is, I was exhausted. I have never had a trip were I worked that hard, had so many problems and still get everything done. I'd say it was more exhausting than my post Katrina trip, and on that trip I slept on the ground two nights.

After my last post trying to convince UNC that they needed to win because they were loosing to a guy named Sasha, things didn't get any better. UNC lost and I had to go into the locker room for post game talk about how they were not prepared to play. We got a lot of great sound and things were looking pretty good. It was a late night but the next day should go pretty easy. Yet again, Murphy had other plans.

Sunday we had laptop issues ranging from my external hard drive dying to Gibby's laptop not reading P2 cards. Then here's where it really went down hill, the internet in some of the rooms in the hotel didn't work. Let me revise that only two rooms could not get internet connections; mine and Gibby's, the two people feeding out copious amounts of video. After having the business center guy not care about our plight Penn got his room to work and I continued to deal with the motel's engineer and his compatriots on the phone in some undisclosed location. All I got was I'm sorry for the problem and a bill for internet usage. We barely got everything in for the 6pm show... how barely... lets just say less than 5 minutes barely.

After we were done, no one at home knew we had a problem, in TV that's the biggest thing. You can have a day from hell where nothing works, yet when it's time for the story to air and it goes as planned all problems are for not.

After all the problems we decided to hit the town, we caught up with a couple of radio guys and had a good time. While sitting there I hear one of the radio guys mention he sees Dan Dakich. Poor radio guy, he did not know I'm an angry Bowling Green fan that is willing to make a fool out of himself. I taunted Dakich with everything but the kitchen sink; you suck, how many players left you, you destroyed our program, good job at Indiana, I think I even started screaming Ay Ziggy Zoomba. My sports guy was laughing while the radio guys hit under the table. They had interviewed him earlier in the day and here I am launching attack on him next to them.

Here's the thing Dakich has zero connection to North Carolina, so why where they talking to a guy who was not going to be out of a job and had no way of coming to our area. That's the problem with radio guys, they only worry about connections, they are almost as bad as PR guys. Of course I would never have yelled at him if I had my gear with me, I'm a fan and when I see a guy like Dakich or Urban Meyer I'm going to let them have it.

A Guy Named Sasha is Beating You

Dear UNC,

You are letting a guy named Sasha beat you. How can you allow that to happen, his name is Sasha! There is no way a guy named Sasha should be allowed to play anything other than figure skating or fencing. You are down eight, start playing like the other team has a guy named Sasha on it.

Either Win or Just Lose!

So I run out to the live shot to make sure it's good, when I get there the lead was down to 4. I set up the lights and get everything ready. I run back in and the lead is up to 8! Come on Tarheels take the lead or lose big, I want to know when my flight will be. If it gets ugly, we can call and change our flights, if they start to win everything is fine. I hate the waiting.

Talk in the hole

The big conversation in the second half by the Carolina media is defense and the fact the Heels don't play it. Even though the lead is down to 14, they have to start playing defense. it's even been brought up that they have not played defense all year.

Half Time

Murphy has not only smacked me upside the head, he has decided to hit UNC as well. My Laptop has crapped out, I can not use my external hard drive and I also can not record the game feeds. So I can only blog and edit off of my P2 cards. It's caused a lot of stress for me and yet again I feel less than whole. This trip has been a mental disaster.

I guess UNC forgot that Kansas was a 1 seed and seemed out of sorts. At one time the Tarheels were down 26 points and at half time were down 17. They were forcing shots and were chasing Kansas around the court. The one thing though Kansas seems to be in a bit of foul trouble and that could help Carolina in the second half.

If UNC loses, I'm probably going to be flying back early Sunday or sometime Monday.

Everyone is Blue

It didn't dawn on us till today, all four schools at the Final Four have the color blue. All be it that UCLA and North Carolina are a light blue and Kansas and Memphis are darker it's still odd to see that much blue in the city.

Yet with this blur of blue the largest fan base belongs to Kansas. I can't throw a rock with out hitting a Jayhawk... trust me I tried and they don't like being hit by flying projectiles. This has me a little worried, the last time I saw some many fans out numbering the others was the BCS title game where LSU represented strong. We know how that game ended so I'm a little worried. I don't want to go home early.

No Basement at the Alamo

I felt a little extra spring in my step so I took a quick jaunt down to the Alamo. To be honest I was a little disappointed. I almost walked right past it, luckily I saw an arrow point me across the street. I took a lot of great picture and I might post them after I get my camera developed.

The one thing that kept popping into my mind was, the Alamo was a huge defeat. You always hear the cry "remember the Alamo," as a kid I always thought we won that battle. Instead it's about remember how they killed everyone inside. Enjoyed the walk around and seeing the history.

IT'S ALIVE!!!!

It's alive! My camera works!!! Behold me in all my glory! Suck on that Murphy your my bitch now! Crap I probably cursed myself now. Ummm, hi Mr. Murphy... my your hair looks nice today. Please don't make things suck. I'm off with Gilbert to the Alamo for some touristy crap.

Murphy Strikes Again

I was hoping today would be better, alas not so. I got the battery plate around 10 in the morning only to find out it's the wrong plate. For some reason Panasonic and Anton Baur decided to make different plates for each model of camera. So, for another day I was cameraless.

We developed a system for having only one camera and that worked out fine, the only other problem was feeding video. I guess the Alamodome or the NCAA tournament did not realize TV stations would feed through the internet and there is not enough bandwidth to deal with this issue. So what took 20 minutes last week was now taking and hour or longer. I caused a lot a panic and then at different points through out the day the laptops kept "freaking out." Mine would not respond and then we would have to start the sending process all over. Gibby's was just going real slow.

Luckily for the most part the viewers never saw a problem, except when the IFB (the way the reporter can hear what is airing and hear the producer) when down. Also we had a problem coming back from commercial one time. We did not know they were going to not play the normal music, instead they went straight into the Mariachi band that we sent back. All I heard on the phone was; cue... CUE, J DOG CUE PENN! I frantically started waving my hand at Penn and he response was classic. What? Oh, hi?!?! Welcome back.

So after two days we have had our fair share of problems and I am looking forward to a relaxed morning and a slow start before the chaos known as game day. I may see the Alamo tomorrow and I might do some other touristy crap before we have to head to the arena. I hope tomorrow I will have more time so I can do more than one post a day.

I'm Murphy's Bitch

You all know Murphy and his law, what ever can go wrong will? Well that was yesterday, it all started with the 6:30AM flight. The flight itself was OK, it was my camera that did not enjoy it. I had to check my camera and bad things happened. I get the camera to the hotel room and find out that the batter that WAS connected has now been ripped off and the battery plate is severely damaged and the battery is useless. So yesterday I had a $16,000 paper weight. Of course, the station was not happy and luckily they are sending me a new plate. I am down to two batteries, but that should get me through the week.

Then we almost missed our slot in the show. For some strange reason, every time I sent back the look live through the internet I would get an error message with 5 minutes remaining. We thought it was my computer till we tried to send it to my external hard drive. The file was bad and I had to reconvert it. It made it back with five minutes to spare.

It was just a long day, we pretty much started our day at 4:30 in the morning and did not stop till after 7 in the evening. After we got back to the hotel I kept sending more stuff back so could get ahead on Friday. Hopefully Friday will go a little better, it's 10:00AM and my battery plate has yet to arrive, FedEX normally gets to the hotel at 8:00AM... not a good sign.

One more thing, I also for got the digital camera. So there will only be pictures posted via my cell phone or image grabs from the video camera... if it ever works.