Frobie

Saturday having past reminded me of the adventure from last Saturday; I decided to go hiking with a group of people. The guy who invited me along on this trip occasionally writes for this blog, namely lilb612. He is a big buff on these outdoor activities with aspirations to climb the Half Dome in Yosemite, which I think is a crazy goal.

We started the day early around 8am. Yes. 8am. On a weekend. That’s crazy talk!

I rode with another buddy up to the starting point. His AC was on the fritz which was not so bad early in the morning, but something I would suffer through on the way back. Our destination was the southern part of Lake Tahoe off the I50. The difficulty of the hiking trip was supposedly easy to moderate. I had no idea what that meant. I expected to be walking trails that bicycles would have an easy time to travel over.
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Sushi is awesome.

Day-old sushi is still awesome.

Multiple day-old sushi is not so awesome.

Having returned from a weekend trip, I noticed a plate of sushi sitting in the food dispenser. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I gobbled the sushi down lickety-split.

I should have seen the warning signs. The browning avocado on top, the hardened rice, the chewy texture of the shrimp–all signs of spoiled food. Five hours later, I learned to regret my hasty actions.
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Just managed to upgrade from WordPress 2.5.1 to WordPress 2.6 via the 3-step Upgrade Process. The new features are awesome. I especially like the Image Captions which will save me time for having to do it myself through HTML and CSS.

I forgot the login info to my own blog after seven days of non-use.

Luckily Wordpress has a workaround via the database to remedy this problem. If they had not, I would have been rather red in the face to ask for help on their support forums.

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay is a hilarious hour and a half adventure of two marijuana smoking buddies getting into trouble.  The story starts a week after the end of the first movie, Harold and Kumar Go To Whitecastle.  The two are flying to Amsterdam so Harold can hook up with Maria.  Except that they never land in Amsterdam because Kumar is suspected of being a terrorist on the plane.

The comedy style is inline with the first movie.  If you liked the first movie, you’ll like Escape from Guantanamo Bay.  If you hated the first movie, you’ll probably hate this one too.  The main plot is driven by love, but sex and weed are still key elements in the storyline.

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A week or two ago, I lost internet access. I checked the router and the settings were not changed. The other computer had internet access. I checked my ethernet cable, my ethernet card, and fiddled around with the Windows network settings with equally negative results.

Turned out my problem was following the Windows Automatic Updates’ recommendation to update to XP SP3. A whole bunch of people had the same problem as me after installing SP3. They would receive the “limited or no connectivity” message on their network icon and pull their hair out trying to find the cause.

A simple uninstall of SP3 through the Add or Remove Programs tool under the Control Panel fixed the connectivity issue.

Forward three weeks later, the automatic update from Windows struck again, installing a security fix which seemed to fix my internet connection to not allow me to connect. Again, the only workaround was to uninstall the fix. And turn off the automatic update so this does not occur again.

This may have been a ploy by Windows to push everyone towards Vista!

Never Back Down is a good fighting / action movie.  The story involves a former football player from Iowa moving to the sunny beaches of Orlando where he discovers organized fighting.  The fighting is in the form of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), with its combination of boxing, kick-boxing, wrestling, and street fighting.  He ends up being lured into competing at Beatdown, an underground fight tournament.

If you are a fan of fighting movies, you will like this movie.  If you are a fan of MMA, go watch Forrest Griffin fight Quinton ‘Rampage‘ Jackson in the UFC instead.  As with most Hollywood movies, the fighting is choreographed for as much action as possible for the standard audience member.  This basically means very little blocking, a lack of proper technique, and all offense.

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Lately, fantasy stories showcase dragons as wise beings befriending a human or as the mounts for dragonriders. The various races would all travel and greet one another in a matrimony of happiness and invariably, the dwarf in each tale would take up his role as the protagonist’s loyal sidekick and comedy shtick.

That is not the case in Dennis L. McKiernan’s Dragondoom.
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Wow.. first time I’ve tried cajun food. I went to Creola with a friend. Upon arriving, there was only one customer there. Maybe we were early. The atmosphere seemed like a more quiet and personal type of environment. The place was nicely decorated and a few tables along the wall even had couches with pillows. I was very anxious to try out the what Cajun food taste like. The last time I went to try was at Crawdad King in Milpitas. They didn’t have any Gumbo or Jumbalaya, so we were stuck with only eating Cajun Crawdads. But this time was a little different!

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Ayola, on 114 New Montgomery Street, has the best fries within a three block radius of 2nd and Howard in downtown San Francisco. They are meaty and large to chew and seasoned well. You come away surprised when you realize they are originally frozen; most likely purchased from a bulk wholesaler.

But, their frozen starting state does not deter me from ordering the fries every time I go to Ayola for lunch. The frozen fries are dumped into a metal tray and slid into the Fry Master 4000 (?). Three to five minutes later, they spit out toasty hot. The overseer seasons the hot batch of fries considerably and then scoops a load full into the brown paper bag to go along with the rest of the order.

Sometimes I forgo the rest of the order and just get the fries to go along with food I purchased from another establishment. I am not a big fan of the texture of the meat in the gyros. They seem packed to me. If I had to choose though, I usually get the Chicken Shawarma.