Today I imaged over a hundred thumbdrives, labeled them (until the labeler ran out of tape), moved hundreds of gigabytes of images from server to server, and other random stuff for my coworkers.

Went to the gym after work, too. I’m enjoying working out after hours, I still have a lot of energy in me and this is a good way to use it. Been trying to eat healthier, too. Let’s hope my health regime bears fruit.

Heading out to VA for a weekend to play Empress. I’m pretty excited. Get to meet a lot of people I only know through the internets, and see some old faces from my DDR tournament days. Greg’s awesome for letting me crash at his spot and helping me with transportation to/from the airport. Liz is all sad I’m going to be gone for *gasp* two days. I think she’ll survive.

Time to catch up on some primetime TV.

She hasn’t gone psychotic on me yet. Either I must be doing something right or she just hasn’t wised up yet.

SuperNOVA 2 is finally in town, about 10 minutes from me. I’m a fan of the songlist so far, and the charts I played were pretty fun. Of course the machine has been in operation for less than 48 hours and the 2P up arrow is already busted, so I couldn’t enter in the unlock codes.

Had a knack for running into coworkers outside of work today, too. Saw Adrian in a clothing store Liz and I stopped into, and then Essad was with a date when Liz and I went to go see Madagascar 2. Amazing movie by the way, go see it if you want a lot of laughs.

Aside from all that I’m working overtime nearly every day, on top of coming on on Saturday mornings. I’m pushing for a new job position and soon enough the extra hours will pay off. As a sacrifice I don’t spend as much time here at the apartment as I’d want to. Things will work themselves out, I’m sure.

School’s been alright. Not a fan of Statistics but I’m surviving.

Adobe Flash has been broken on my distro for about 2 weeks now. It’s pretty sweet, I can’t waste time with YouTube. I had to hack my way around to get the 32-bit app working in my 64-bit distro, but then it magically… just… stopped working. I completely removed it and then re-added it, but no dice. I just get a white space where the content should be. about:plugins shows it’s loaded, and flash-based sites aren’t tossing me an error, nothing just loads.

Looks like my wireless mouse just died too… computers seem to hate me lately. At least I got an Atheros chip from work, to replace my crappy Broadcom.

Sunday Liz and I went to her cousin’s graduation party back out in Cooperstown, and on the way home I took a different route. Unfortunately the route I took wasn’t going in the direction I thought it would and we ended up getting home a lot later than we should’ve, but I’m a guy and I don’t want to listen to women when it comes to directions. If it’s of any consolation, though, I did end up listening to Liz

I really need to keep myself more occupied during the week when I’m not at work. I’ve wasted too many afternoons and nights doing absolutely nothing of value, nothing productive. I putz around on the internet, maybe watch a movie, and that’s about it. I can get almost all my homework done in a single night within a couple hours, so that doesn’t really take up much of my time. Alex is back home and free, I really should spend more time hanging out with him. It was just like old times seeing him this weekend.

I’ve all but given up caffeine. I’ll sometimes drink a cup of coffee at work, and go for Starbucks on the weekends, but aside from that it’s pretty much out of my system completely.. Soda is also completely out of my diet. Now if only my headaches would go away.

Man this car is one sexy beast.

So this weekend Liz and I went to Rochester for an ITG tournament, which I entered for the sake of making the 11 player bracket a 12 player bracket. I lost my round, and the loser’s bracket round. Oh well. They had a lot of weird custom songs added in, especially ones that were rated so horribly off that they didn’t make sense at all. It kinda irked me. Seeing Renard’s stuff on there was a delight, though

Saw my Rochester buddies which was a great sight for sore eyes. Played some IIDX which I’m totally rusty at, also I don’t play left side, but it was still enjoyable. DD’s song list isn’t as good as HS’s though, that’s for sure. Tried to get Troopers working on Liz’s laptop, but no go. They wanted to charge me $15 for just using it in the building too, wtf? Stupid LAN center, I wasn’t even touching their internet. So instead we played some Monopoly with Kait and Paul since Liz had it in her car. Good times. I destroyed everyone.

Liz and I went out for ice cream after with Kait and Brandon, and then went back to Brandon’s apartment for another round of Monopoly. I lost hardcore that time. Greens are hard to win with when there’s 4 people.

Headed back home late, and slept in late on Sunday. We needed it. Liz made me this awesome soup for lunch, which I must’ve complimented her 10 times for over the course of the day. It was that good. We spent the day at the mall playing DDR with Adamn and Dre, good times as always. Matzi showed up too, damn he looks so different now. Jiri was there for a bit, he’s still got the skill. I also think I learned how to time SN, which is quite the feat for me. I got less than 20 greats on various 7 footers. And I’ve always been bad at this silly dancing game. Liz and I had dinner at Uno’s, went for a nice walk in the park by the lake, and spent the rest of the night watching Pulp Fiction. That movie never gets old for me.

Work dragged by for me today, I just wanted it to be 4 so I could get my car. I no longer have my original work station because they keep bringing temp people in to fill the spot since I’ve been on special assignment, but it looks like I got a new spot now on the other side (read: the side where people get paid more) so I guess that means I get a pay raise soon? My boss tells me I’m the “utility guy” and I can solve problems all over the place. I like that idea, I think I’ll stick with it.

Liz and I spent Saturday traveling around town. Had lunch at a local sit-down restaurant which was pretty delicious. Went to both Carousel and Great Northern malls along with some other places. I always have a good time when I’m out with her, since we’re so laid-back about everything and we just go with whatever flow happens to come our way. We hit both malls because we were both struck by the DDR bug and headed to Carousel to play. But then the coin register broke. So no SuperNOVA for us. The trip wasn’t all bad though, we looked at cell phones since I’m getting one next month under Liz’s plan. I figured it’s about time I join in on this whole 20th century revolution. We also saw Dre, which makes any trip to Carousel worth it.

GNM was nice, not many people there and it was nice seeing Adamn again. I also prefer Extreme since my scores are much better, I can’t stand SN’s timing. But this is all old news.

Sunday we went to her parents’ for Easter. I love her family, they’re awesome. Good food, good times. Liz’s brother Rob is friggin awesome too. Wish they were closer, he’s definitely the kind of kid I’d hang around with more. Aside from the whole playing WoW thing, of course.

Speaking of, a ton of people at my job play WoW. I’m not going to get hooked in though, I like my spare time. I’m probably going to pick up RO again though, but not hardcore. I still have school to worry about. I’m slowly moving away from a lot of my website administration duties only because I just don’t have it in me anymore to keep current on everything and do menial tasks. Especially the tracker. I’m behind on a lot of things there and I’m just going to pass off the responsibility to someone else, and call it quits soon after. Sorry everyone, but I’ve done a pretty damn good job of expanding the place (from an IRC channel that rarely got over 100 users to a tracker with over 2000) and after almost 3 years I’m ready to pass the torch. Here’s to hoping the place doesn’t go down in flames.

Installed the latest beta of Ubuntu 8.04. Don’t really notice much different about it, if anything X eats more processor usage and RAM. But the latest Firefox beta is lean, so that makes up for it. Packages are getting updated daily to the date of release so I’m assuming things will only get better. I’m getting rid of my desktops soon anyway, replacing them with laptops I get at a deep discount from work.

After the tournament we headed back home, stopping at Wegmans to get some cake mix. Liz was debating on the way home whether or not she wanted to make one, and she finally gave in And yes, it was indeed a piece of cake to bake a pretty cake.

Sunday Liz had to head to the gym so I kinda bummed around until she got back. We grabbed a somewhat early dinner at the local Indian restaurant (which was effin’ delicious, by the way). Afterwards her friend from college Sarah came over and we hung out for a while, her and Liz caught up since they haven’t seen each other in a while. Then we went to see The Bank Job, which was a pretty sweet movie. I recommend it.

Work is the usual, though Friday and Monday I was busy with a side project which was a nice step away from the norm. Also shows that the higher-ups trust me and I’ve proven to be a hard worker. Past couple days have just been a blur, really. Today dragged a bit though, probably because I didn’t have any cash to raid the vending machine for caffeine or sugar-inducing snacks. Stopped at the bank on the way home, so that won’t be happening again!

I also have to work Saturday, mandatory overtime. I don’t mind it, I get paid extra $$$ which always comes in handy. And Liz is busy for some time in the afternoon too so I suppose it works out. Supposedly my job is going to start doing 4-10 hour days, with some people working Mon-Thurs and others working Tues-Fri. I’ll definitely take that, and if I need to work overtime it can be on another weekday, instead of Saturday. I kinda like my weekends free. But for the time being, mandatory Saturday this week and maybe for another couple weeks until things get caught up. I guess there’s a lot of deficiencies that need to be worked out still. All I know is that I’m doing my part, that’s for sure.

Friday we went out to dinner at a local Thai restaurant, Bangkok. It was deeeelicious. I have a soft spot for pad thai. Liz is making me it for my birthday! I’m psyched. After that we went to Coldstone for dessert. They have the best ice cream there. Went to Build-A-Bear and made stuffed animals. Liz made a groundhog, named him Milton, and dressed him up in hospital scrubs. She’s going to keep him at her desk at work, it’s pretty awesome. And I got to make a penguin! Cody Maverick from Surf’s Up.

Add one more to the collection for me. He even talks too. It’s great.

We saw Meet the Spartans later that night. The movie was alright, it had its funny parts but with the rising costs of seeing a movie in theaters (WTF @ $9.50 a ticket) I personally don’t think it was worth it. Soon enough the cost of buying a DVD in the store is going to be less than seeing it in the theaters. And people wonder why movie piracy is on the rise…

Saturday I spent the day doing homework and taking a final exam for one of my classes, and ended the class with a 92 average. Not going to complain there. Liz was out prettying herself up, since later that night we went out downtown with her friends. We hit a few bars, played some darts, got pizza, and ended up at her friends’ house after it all to watch Snakes on a Plane. It has Sam L, it’s good by default. Liz and I ended the night back at her apartment.

Today we went out for lunch at a local Indian buffet, then back to the mall for some shopping. Liz bought herself a Coach bag, and we spent some time in the arcade playing DDR. And boy, are we old.

Got all my W2 forms in the mail, so I’m going to take care of my taxes tomorrow. Hellloooo refund. I’m hoping my SD card comes in the mail so I can start taking more pictures. I really want to get a D40 too, but it’s way out of my finances right now. Soon enough. I just need to find some scenic places in Central NY.

I parked in the lot that used to be the usual lot to park at – outside of FJ – and damn, just walking through those doors brought back so many memories. I could almost smell the cloves that Vince always smoked. Memories of the huge-ass Phat Al circles. Getting yelled at by rentacops for swinging glowsticks. Nipple tassles (don’t ask). DDR pun after DDR pun. So many friendships were made and broken, just in that one small spot outside the mall doors.

I walked upstairs to the food court, and the first thing that crossed my mind were the Genji Grill vs. Flaming Wok debates we always would have. And that one time we had SO many people that we made a line of tables to sit at, and it literally spanned the entire food court. I remember meeting up with Pete on multiple occasions for movies.

Walked into Fun Junction. The DDR machine was back in the spot where the 5th mix used to be. Of course, it’s SuperNOVA now. Remembered all the old crew of guys there, and the girls…damn we used to have a crowd of them it seemed. Lindsey, Yvonne, Kay, Rachel, Jordan, Jess, Michelle, the list goes on. And of course there’s Fiscoe, and Jenna. Oh man, does that bring me back.

Of course then I wander around a bit and see Fred working at one of the calendar kiosks. I’ve seen him around before, both at school (since he’s there at ITT now) and he was working at the Namco arcade at Carousel for a while. But just him there at the mall was just one more thing to the list.

Oh Team Zeal, as drama filled as it may have been, and as bad as the fallout of it all was… you really gotta admit there were some pretty awesome times.

Weekend consisted of partying with Kait and lots of people, having a realllly fun time:

Also playing MAX1 at an undisclosed location:

And to top it all off, finishing up end-of-the-quarter projects. One more and I’m done, damn. Florida’s a little over a week away too, I’m so friggin excited for that.

Flight: Syracuse to Tampa
Syracuse to Tampa 5/17/07 6:55 am – 11:29 am
Tampa to Syracuse 5/20/07 2:30 pm – 8:12 pm