Upgrades ‘N Shit

Last week was a fairly chilled out California trip; I had so many meetings at work that there wasn’t a whole lot of time for much else.  I did get to hang out with fuddruckus and manders a couple of nights, but I wasn’t able to go on a date with GMX.  I also wanted to go see which off-ramp Cal is living under these days but couldn’t swing a trip up to the city.

I made a pretty dumb mistake with my flight booking and so I left San Heezy at 9am and didn’t get into Madison until 11pm.  Along the way I stopped in beautiful LAX and MSP (ed note: LAX not beautiful).  I found out that my new credit card allows me $25 access to the Delta Sky Club and it’s all-you-can-drink booze and comfortable chairs.  I wouldn’t normally do that but I had a 2.5 hour layover at LAX and a 3 hour layover in MSP so I jumped in with both feet.  The result: pretty drunk on the last MSP ✈ MSN leg.  I almost forgot my Kindle in the seat pocket when I staggered off the plane to baggage claim.

For those that weren’t following along, I was holding court on various Star Trek: The Next Generation topics while pounding Canadian Club & Cokes:

Occupying My Time in an Airport

While I was out in California I was alerted to the fact that I might need to go to Bangalore, India on a trip at some point this fall.  Fuddruckus told me scary stories of goats eating burning piles of garbage on the side of the road, and neverending sickness from drinking the water.  That scares me.  However, the ability to get 20,000+ airline miles would bump me from being treated like a Dickhead every time ti fly to being treated like a Chump.  It doesn’t sound like much, but it is.  Also, at least then I could say I’ve been to India? Right? RIGHT?!

How To Replace a Fucking Toilet

This is a little late but it’s been quite hectic around the ol’ homestead what with CAH-RAZYLEGS last weekend (I beat Spacebee and her sister!) The weekend before that, however, I delighted in replacing my fucking toilet when it broke such that the water in the tank ran all over my floor.  Knowing how terrible I am at home repair I decided to record myself attempting to fix the dumb thing, and only slight hilarity ensued.

T-Plush Slide Analysis

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Ramp It Up!

Been a while since I rapped atcha, but I’m back with AMAZING news.  Because I’m lazy and Spacebee works hard I demanded that we go out for dinner last night instead of me having to cook something.  We hadn’t been to Brasserie V in awhile so we drove up, and were pleasantly surprised that yesterday was the first day of their spring menu. Do you know what that means? RAMPS!

I had two delicious ramp-based items: for an appetizer they had homemade pickles: ramps, cucumbers, and spring onions.  Very light and tasty.  For dinner I had the homemade beef, ramp, and bacon sausage on northern beans and grilled bok choy.  Holy shit the sausage was great; very meaty with great flavor from the bacon and ramps.

So there you go, it’s really spring now if the ramps are out and about.  I’m looking forward to the first Farmer’s Market next weekend so I can grab a couple bunches myself and start my spring tradition of Scrambled Eggs with Ramps.

Timely News, Everyone!

Wwhazz and I stayed up late last night, ordered a pizza, started a hangout (which no one attended!) and discovered that merely by searching on YouTube for the terms “royal rumble” that you can watch almost every one since 1998.

You should be aware that this ability exists.

Also: tonight is Wrestlemania WhateverTheyAreUpToNow, wwhazz and I wanted to ordered it, but I think his wife hit him with a ham leg when he got home last night.  He’s likely still out.

VEGAS! 2012

Yes, I’m the star of the hit show: Vegas! This one’s a reboot after four years in development hell. Seal Team Seven dropped into McCarran Airport at 9:30am on Friday and we were checked-in at TheHOTEL by 10:30am.

A little lunch (tequila) and we were off and running at the tables. I won $75 playing craps, and then wandered over where the rest of our group was playing roulette. Played my usual style (heavy on 20, lighter on 12, spread the table to hedge) and in four spins I went [12, 12, blank, 20]. After the back-to-back twelves I was heavyheavyheavy on the 20 when it hit- I think I won $500 or $600 on just the 20. I kept hitting numbers so on an off chance I just threw a hundo on 20 to see if vegas had decided it was my time to fucking SHINE. Nope, not that lucky.

We went and threw down a G-ball on steaks and scotch. I had some roasted marrow bones that grossed out most of the table (though Spacebee did eat some!) and then we headed back to the tables. Went up another $350 at craps and then met everyone for live band karaoke at the House of Blues. Sat and drank beer, vodka, and more during that little run and then they closed the show down around 2:30am (right before I was up on the list to sing Jump Around!)

I’d been drinking since lunchtime (the full list: beer, scotch, vodka, tequila, red wine, and two hundred 7&7′s) so I swayed over to the roulette table again and played some more numbers. I hit the 12 and 20 again and was up about $400 when I decided to take my winnings and quit while I was ahead. I colored up my chips, tipped the dealer, and what I had was a bunch of blacks and one $25 greenie. I threw the greenie on 20 and it hit on the next spin. Boom: $900 holmes. I was so drunk that I didn’t even get excited. I just swayed there and grinned for about 5 minutes, then went to pee.

Two of the folks we were with went to bed 45 seconds before the big score, and then the other four of us were trying to decide what to do. The other couple asked if we wanted to go to bed since we’d been up since 3am, Vegas-time, and I yelled “I’m rich biatch! We’re partyin’!” We went to the Minus 5 Ice Bar in the Mandalay and I bought fur coats for the ladies so they could sit on an ice bench and drink Snowflakes. Spacebee was very wobbly in the ice bar, and everyone thought I was the Incredible Hulk the way I was still functioning like a hue-man given the amount I’d drank. We retired at about 4:30am.

So on Friday I bought into chips for $200 after lunch and when I went to bed I had $2400 in chips in my pocket.

Cue ominous, distant thunder.

I spent some fo the winnings to rent a cabana by the pool on Saturday. They were pretty booked up but they reserved us one and said we had to get downstairs before 10:30a or they’d charge my held card number and give away the reservation. I awoke to a bad (but not too bad, considering) hangover, pulled clothes on, and stumbled down towards the pool at 10am while everyone else slept in or ate breakfast. In the elevator I cursed at the thumping disco music to the amusement of the other occupants. Halfway across the vast Mandalay casino floor I had to stop and give myself a pep talk that I’d make it to the pool. I approached the cabana host counter and asked the nice lady working there if she’d kill me. She looked concerned and said, “…no.” They took me over to the cabana and the host asked if he could get me anything. I asked politely for coffee, and then I curled up in a ball and slept in the corner of the cabana until everyone else showed up (some not until 2pm).

Later in the evening we had dinner and then headed down to Fremont Street. Holy fucking hell that place has gone to shit. By which I mean: it used to be a respite from the dumb bullshit on the strip, but every casino I walked into had $10 or $15 minimum tables and were packed to the gills. The booming music, the collective wal*mart patrons of america clientele, the dancing grannies. I could put up with all that for $3 craps, but no fucking way am I gonna endure that for the same table minimums I would find on the strip.

I lost every bet I made on Saturday.

I lost nearly every bet I made on Sunday.

We went and saw the Love show at The Mirage on Sunday night. Afterwards we wandered into O’Sheas and whooped it up with some $5 craps. Then we walked all the way back to the Monte Carlo and jumped a cab from there back to the hotel due to whining and yelling by the ladyfolk.

This morning I checked my funds and saw that the three dinners, cabana rental, minus 5 ice spectacular, and most of all 48 hours of consecutive losses had brought me back from my winner’s high on Friday. Ah well, we did have a fantastic time and the big score on Friday more than makes up for the dreary gambling on Saturday and Sunday.

Pancakes!

[UPDATE] whazzmaster.com is now officially blocked on the Intuit intranet.  Probably because of the name of the post, but maybe not.

whazzmaster.com: banned in one company

SuperCrapche To The Resuce

I’m helping Kcar get Coach and his wonderful stories onto a new server and so I spent the evening test-configuring whazzmaster to use two new plugins for managing static assets on Amazon S3.  I’m not entirely clear if I got everything configured correctly so shit may get weird for awhile here.  Specifically, I’m having lots of problems displaying embedded videos in the JWPlayer (see The Wedding page to see what I mean).

So I’m using WP Supercache and CDN-Sync-Tool to try to get the majority of the static content cached and, when needed, served from Amazon S3.  If this goes as planned then we can mimic the setup on centralwisconsinsports.net over the next few days. Yeehaw.  If you’re interested to see the awesomeness you can also check out twitter.centralwisconsinsports.net and facebook.centralwisconsinsports.net.  Ain’t that purty?

ROBOCALYPSE

Big congratulations to the Lawfolk on their baby being born- I’m just assuming the baby will be a lawyer too someday, or possibly a sheriff.  Law-related, I suppose.  Anyways, again with the congrats; the baby train continues at full speed.

I made a pretty great experimental meal last night: I took some of the Southwestern Fiesta brats from D & G Meats, stripped the meat out of the casing and fried it up.  I made burritos out of it with my special black bean recipe and cilantro rice.  Oh man I think we’re onto something- the brats are seasoned just right for the job, and you end up with some tasty ground pork filling.

This is a good TED talk about robots.  Fast forward to 14:10 to see something really swanky, but the whole thing is pretty interesting.

Woo!

So Much To Say

Get a load of Quindohawk

Wow, while I’ve been busy working, coding, and walking dumbly around Madison the other folk on this website have been up to delightful shenanigans.  Some dude shaved a mohawk on his dog.  A bunch of supposed ‘fisherfolk’ couldn’t beat a nine-year-old child at catching fish through a hole.  RyPy is getting along, and the Lawman/Peapods date draws near.

Apologies for not joining into the Great Debates raging in the comments.  Alandovos recently joined Intuit as a new engineer and between on-campus recruiting last week and getting him on-boarded this week things have been fairly hectic.

Early next week we’re heading down to go skiing at Chestnut Mountain in honor of Spacebee’s birthday– it will likely be 90 degrees and raining because this winter is one of the weirdest ones I can remember, BUT using advanced Illinois Technology they will likely have made a small patch of fake snow we can whizz down… directly into the Mississippi River.

Skiing next week, then in March I’ll be out in the Yay Area again sometime, and then at the end of March we’re heading back out to VEGAS(~!) for the first time in a looong time.

SEBEN!!!!11!!!

Chiggity Check Yo Thumbs Before You Wreck Yo Thumbs

Look, I’m out in the yay area slangin’ see sharp code and eating prime rib with GMX. It’s hard to find time to write new junk to prevent thumb injuries for all my peeps back at the ice fishing derby.

At any rate, here’s a new tagline”whazzmaster.com: eventually some asshole froze me and i died” Enjoy.

*waves* Seeya in a few days with some more news!!!!!