Storm Chasers

Anna and I are finding ourselves watching HDTV programming almost exclusively now that we have a pretty large TV. One of the shows we have started watching is Storm Chasers on the Discovery Channel. Fantastic and beautiful show documenting a team of people that hunt down and study tornadoes in the midwest United States. These people are pretty crazy and also ridiculously smart.

One thing I noticed though: there is some definite male sexual tension in the TornadoVideos.net vehicle between Joel and Reed. I'm pretty sure these guys get sexually excited when they are approaching a large tornado on the ground. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against this lifestyle, but at times these guys are pretty silly.

The show overall is very good though, very entertaining and thrilling. A must-watch if you have an HDTV.

Christmas is here!

Anna and I put up the tree and ornaments tonight. Its always a good time doing that, going through all the ornaments and the memories they bring back. She was able to get Christmas weekend off to head back home to spend Christmas with her family. I'm not allowed to take time off during November and December so I don't get to come with. I'm not too bummed out since I'm used to not being able to take off on holidays.

I'm such a geek

And not just because I work for Geek Squad. Last night, I had a very long dream about owning the Apple iPhone. Yes thats right, I could have dreamt about winning the lottery, living on a private island in the Caribbean, or having magical powers. No, I dreamt I had an iPhone.

And I'm almost ashamed to admit that I enjoyed the dream.

I blame my wife

Anna showed me several kitty videos on Youtube today. Now I want a kitty! We already have 2, but I'd like a little kitten now too.

At work, they are changing our cell phone carrier from Sprint to AT&T. This change makes me nervous since Sprint has phenomenal coverage in my area and AT&T is questionable. I got the new phone and it should be active in a few days so we'll see how well it performs around the area. The phone is a slightly different model and it does feel a bit more refined and solid.

We got a little bit of snow today and both of us would definitely like more. I think we will also set up our Christmas tree and decorations on Monday. So far, I'm not too grumpy about the holidays. Some years I can't wait for it to be over with and other years it is no big deal.

Ho ho ho

Geocaching, Dad's turn

Dad finally got his handheld GPS unit so he could go Geocaching. For those that don't remember, geocaching, as defined by Wikipedia is:

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and "treasure," usually toys or trinkets of little value. Today, well over 800,000 geocaches are registered on various websites devoted to the pastime. Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.

I went over to their place so Dad and I could figure out the new GPS unit and how to download the Geocaching stuff into it. After about an hour we had it set and we were off towards a cache that was about 2 miles from their house. It was down a minimum maintenance road and thankfully we were in Dad's Ford Expedition with 4WD. Without that we most likely couldn't have made it in there. Dad was able to zero in on it pretty easily and we signed the log book and took photos.

Getting his bearings

It led us to this suspicious pile of rocks

I think he's onto something

What's this barrel here?

Hey what's that?!

Dad and I taking a look at what we found

Dad signing the logbook

Panorama I made of the site. Its pretty big, you might have to scroll from left to right to see it all

My new car

My 2004 Volkswagen Geekmobile has been retired and replaced with a brand-new 2009 with 6 miles on it. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to get my first new car! Granted, its not exactly my car, but I'm the only one that drives it and my personal car gets maybe 2 miles a week put on it, if even.

Sorry about the poor quality, I didn't have my digital camera with me when I picked it up so I had to use my cell phone camera.



Its been a very enjoyable experience so far with the new car. Some of the highlights I really like about it: Heated seats, very nice especially since it is getting cold now. It has a jack that I can plug my iPod into and listen to my music and stuff. In the last car, I had to hook it up to this FM transmitter thing and tune in to a certain station to listen to it which had a ton of static. Now it is crystal clear.

Somehow, it has slightly less legroom up front now but it isn't too big of a deal. I've already driven it 40-50 miles one way to an appointment and it is very comfortable.

Whoops

Looking back at my last post, it probably wasn't a good idea to have such a long delay in posting to here again. No, I did not suffer any brain damage or physical harm from my bout of insomnia.

Not much to report here lately. It is coming up on the busy season at work so the stress levels are rising a bit. They wouldn't be so high, but one of the supervisors at the store quit so they have me doing some of the responsibilities. Its been pretty good at work lately though, I've had lots of appointments so I've been out on the road quite a bit.

For some reason I had an appointment in Eden Prairie which is about an hour and a half drive for me but I made it up there no problem. It was a difficult computer issue for a business but I was able to recover the guy's files and get him up and running again. He was incredibly excited since he had quite a few documents and presentations he'd been working on for months. At some point it looked like he wanted to give me a high five but I wasn't sure so I stuck my hand out for a handshake so I didn't look like a complete idiot.

Saturday is my good friend Andy's birthday. He and his girlfriend Holly will be in town so we're going out for dinner and drinks with them. Its always a good time hanging out with them, a shame they live in Burnsville so its tough to meet up as often as we'd like. Its been over a month since we've all met up so we have lots of catching up to do. At least we can keep in contact via the internet so we're not completely isolated.