Entries from December 2007 ↓

• just ate at a fantastic vegan restaurant-sublime-if you’re in s. fla you should look it up. do the cauliflower and chili sauce. woot. $5 +1 #
• it is a beautiful sunny s fla day (yes, really) and we’re off to the Floridian for breaaakfast. Mmmmm. #
• @Marketing_Queen are you a day early or is my clock off?? #

• ok shut down from work until 1.7.8. That’s a nice feeling. maybe i should start collecting vintage eye glass frames. #
• yeah so i’m in fla and i gots to say: love me sum sunshine. what? that sound in the background? that’s the ocean. oh yeah. #
• i have $400+ in singles with me and have decided everything gets paid for in $1’s until they’re gone. My wife is slightly horrified. #

• yeah so up and at em. more informatica work that I should have gotten done yesterday but managed to somehow miss what with all the eating. #
• @popejephei I’m up. in fact, you’re tweet woke me up. metaphorically. to the possibilities of an early morn, fresh with dew like a meadow. #
• @popejephei you forgot to mention to dog poop. don’t forget the dog poop. #
• @popejephei first, +1 for using ‘coprophagic’ in an early morning tweet. actually that’s all i have to say. #
• @antibrianshaler OMG you’re so right sorry. bronze? anywho: the money gram for the gold is on its way. self flagellation will start shortly. #
• cursing DB2 and SQLSTATE=57026 (reason code "3"). First: awesome error message! TNX IBM 2nd: INFA aborts but leaves table inaccessible? WTF #

We decided to hit the Pay/View last night. They had “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry”, so the Lovely J and I watched that.  As a bonus: I managed to remember that we have HD and that we get the HD package from Comcast so we went for the whole shebang and watched the nicer version.

First, if you can spring for the extra $2.00 Comcast charges for the HD version, you should definitely go for it.  The picture was freakin’ awesome.  Why do they charge the extra $2?  No idea.  But it was totally worth it.

Second, the movie: definitely better that we didn’t pay $20 for the two of us to see it when it came out, but $5.99 felt fine. It has a surprisingly good cast (besides our heroes: David Spade, Dan Akroyd, the guy who plays the roller skate wearing prostitute on Reno 911, etc), limited toilet humor (given that it’s an Adam Sandler movie about two guys pretending to be gay) and a reasonable message at the end (I won’t spoil it but my heart is still predictably warm).

Given that there’s nothing else on and that you can’t stand the bastardized versions of Star Wars currently flying around HBO, you could do worse than watching this.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry: not bad.

I’ve been using Skype to chat for a while, but recently added a decent set of headphones to the mix.  And I LOVE that iTunes will simply pause whatever its doing when you start a call.  And the iTunes unpause? Gradual.  Awesome.

• @popejephei i signed up for sms notifications on your tweets. they seem to come in bunches. #
• @popejephei no worries just think its funny. i set it up before you moved and then you went silent so i forgot about it until this am. #
• ah: boxes. a scurge. a pox. a blight on our humanity. each and everyone one of them a mark, if you will, of our declining civilization. #
• BNF (Backus Naur Form) for SOQL? Be still my heart! http://tinyurl.com/yt4nco #
• @antibrianshaler heeellloooooooo! #
• @pji nice! #
• @popejephei i’ll do the sermons. as i mentioned before I’m pretty much up on my cursing and blasphemies so i think i should be a shoe in. #
• Spotted another stray dog in the neighborhood. Black & white husky mix. Took off like a shot when it caught me staring, ran around the crner #
• @antibrianshaler i’ve been working on some curses and libations (sacrificial colt 45, of course). next up: a small, jumping bronze monument. #
• @fsponge sounds rhetorical, but if not: yes, there is something worse: people who never travel anywhere. #

Looking for something great to do on News Years Eve? Tired of expectations that no night can reasonably meet? According to a recent informal survey, here are three rock solid options.

Option 1:

• Get shit faced.

Option 2:

• Get shit faced.
• With a friend.

Option 3:

• Get shit faced.
• With friends.
• While playing Cranium.

OK, “great” might have been a bit strong. And it’s been a long time since I’ve gotten shit faced.  The friends and Cranium however — that I can vouch for.

Fortunately, I’m at my train stop. Cheers. If you have any other plans, please add them to the list.

I’m killing time. First, it was on the train, now it’s just waiting until I can leave for the train. Either way: here’s a recap of what I consider to the biggest things for this year. With bonus links to some earlier blog posts.

7. The god damned Jetta passed the 10 year mark. But I swear this one will not go to eleven, at least not with me. So, if you’d like to buy a low mileage 1998 Jetta VR6, drop me a note. It’s a great car, I’m just done with it.

6. Spent a fair amount of time with Chicago Greeter. Love the greeter program. I get to hang out with people for a few hours, show them around some part of Chicago, and then they move on to whatever is next for them. It’s pretty much the right amount of time for my short attention span and I have an excuse to learn a lot more about the city. Awesome. And I’ve had some good feedback.

5. Sold the website maintenance business. That was actually pretty fun. I ended up selling it myself using — you guessed it — another website. Anyway, at the end, there were three parties bidding against each other for it. It worked out considerably better than selling the eBay business on eBay.

4. Closed Five Sticks. After 11 years of running my own gig I decided it was time. Why? That’s the subject of a future post which I promise I will actually write at some point.

3. Started a new job helping people integrate with Salesforce.com. The company is Model Metrics. They’re / We’re (depending on your preference) a fast growth services company in a really interesting industry. I like the pace, I like the people and I like the work. Very cool.

2. Made some decisions about the house that have been in process for a long, Long, LONG time. For the past year and a half or three years or so, J and I have talked about doing this massive remodel to the house. And then we decided we should look around at houses we could just buy. Complete architectural plans and 40+ potential houses later, we ended up doing just a little renovation and our place feels great.

1. Expecting a kid. The lovely J and I are super excited to be expecting the first new Carlberg in 17 years. Well, the first Carlberg of the Gunther Carlberg bloodline to actually be named Carlberg. Turns out there are at least three Carlberg mom’s in Illinois alone currently registered at Baby’s R Us. In any case, turns out my family tree is getting pretty good at producing marrying, name-changing women but not so good a men. And my brother and I to date haven’t exactly been changing the trends. Until now. Or, rather, until sometime next year. Whatever.

There you have it. There’s a lot more detail to how good this year has been in my book but these are the top items that come to mind as I’m killing time. Now I’m off to catch a train. Happy New Year, everyone.

• good morning. on deck: cursing, blasphemies and a couple of quotes to prospects. #
• @ScooterGirl a little scooter info for when you’re back. http://www.xuecast.com/?p=411 #
• apparently I’m sitting here putting off doing any real work. why do you suppose that is? not enough coffee. too much phlegm. cats? #
• can’t connect to the client’s vpn. makes me both unhappy and unproductive. #
• @ScooterGirl not only does it mean you could be a cop, it suggests that in fact maybe you *should* be a cop. Think of it: you’d get a taser! #
• picking up some glasses. turns out the lenscrafters nearest me doesn’t have a lab. why would you go to lensc if you have to wait 2 wks? #
• @sass you might paste it into here. http://tinyurl.com/fbkgs #
• @sass loosely, i’m not deeply familiar with it, so this may not pertain, but it sounds like it might be a precision problem. #
• @sass (2) if I had to guess, I would say that SASS should have been SPSS, the statistical plotting program. #
• @sass no problem. hey you’re s fla, right? what’s a good, nice restaurant in the FLL area that I could hit for new years. any input is great #

• A whole bunch of tweeting from the pope. Nice to see you back! #
• You were thinking they would be cooler without repeats and that your sermon chops could handle the challlenge. #
• Glad to hear it – that’s nice work. My sermons were on the whole less well received what with the cursing and blashphemy #
• On the train heading back to the salt mines. Like my job, my co-workers & my project but would still rather hang for a few mooore daaeys. #