Charlie’s Haus

Well I havent posted lately because honestly I just havent been feeling good.  I found out a couple of weeks ago I have a kidney stone (the blood in my pee and the intense pain were a good tipoff….make this number 3…kinda..more on that in a sec).  I went to the Dr to confirm my suspicions and they gave me some pain meds to go with it.  I went back this week for a followup and since I hadnt passed it yet, he sent me for a CT scan yesterday.  I got a call this morning with the results.  Yay me!  Remember I cant do anything half-assed….so they say I actually have 2, one in each kidney.  Thats terrific!  So I have an appt with the urologist in 2 weeks to see what we should do.  Fun times.

Anyways, on Monday Mandi and I went to a meeting for a new group forming called Badger Honor Flight.  Honor Flight is a service to WWII vets and terminally ill vets from any era to go see the WWII memorial in Washington for free.  There are regional branches all over the US and we are trying to get one started here in Madison (we are lucky to have 2 other branches already in WI with another starting up in the Fox Valley…so 4 in WI…pretty awesome considering some states have none).  Basically the local branches take care of all the flight details and then the national tells you who is priority to go.  Long story short is we both think that it is a great organization to get involved with and its something we can do together.  Its a pretty small group right now because word isnt out yet…but actually that might be OK for now until everything gets going.  I told them I would help work on the website for them.  I have a basic outline drafted for them right now, but that is all because I want to make sure they like it before I actually do anything with it.

As soon as the site is live I will make sure to post the URL to it. 

MBT (Milton Beer Tent) is this weekend.  Good times there for sure.  Although it may be a little less cool this year since some of the neighbors from the hood no longer live there.  Only time will tell.  Either way, its will be a good drinking towny time =D

Ive also started getting a little political lately.  I know…its something people hate hearing (I know I do).  But I have gotten involved in the recall Doyle campaign.  I signed up to collect signatures.  We still need a bunch of people to help, so if you can help out, please sign up.  We need to get this bozo out of office before he destroys our great state even more.  http://www.recalldoyle.com/

Last but not least, I thought I would post a great video that makes you think.  The voice you hear is Dr. Ron Paul and a speech he gave to the House of Representatives.  I really think this guy would be a great President.  Too bad he is so old, dunno if he will run next time.  Its time for real change…and not the kind of change of democrat or republican.  Ive always said that a two party system is heavily flawed.  Anyways, here it is in all its glory!  Peace out and have a great 4th!

Skydiving was pretty fricken awesome.  I thought I would be more nervous about it once the time drew closer, but for some reason, I didnt get nervous at all.  Even during the 15 minute climb up to 14,000 feet.  My instructor joked around with me a bit and that helped lighten the mood too.  Even when the door opened and it was our turn, it ended up being easy to jump out of the plane.  The first 2 or 3 thousand feet were laced with hail (we were jumping with impending rain storms around us).  That felt a little hurty on the face, but it wasnt too bad really.  After that until 5500 feet it was smooth sailing.  During the freefall, he spun me around etc…it was pretty cool.  Every few seconds he would show me how high we were, and at 5500ft it was my job to pull the shoot.  I did it and BAM! it pulls hard on you!  You go from deafness with the wind to almost absolute silence.  It was almost a tranquil feeling.  He then let me steer for a bit and we did some acrobatics that were pretty fun.  He took back over when we came in for a landing though and set us down in the small area in front of the observation deck instead of the field where the others came down (yeah we were showing off…or I guess he was..lol).  As soon as your back on the ground, you immediately want to go again.  I can see why people love it so much.  If it wasnt so expensive to get a license I would totally do it.  After you get your license its only like $35-40 to jump which isnt bad at all, but getting that far is around $2500 they said.  It was a good time and as soon as I get the pics Ill post them.

The bachelor party was pretty fun, we went to some kind of scanky strip clubs though…not my cup of tea to begin with though.  Ended up being an expensive night with all the taxi’s, but the bachelor had fun, thats all that matters.

I feel a little bad though because I was so tired on Sunday at Haidens birthday party since I didnt get much sleep.  I wasnt in much of a socializing mood.  He got lots of presents though and I got to see my little sister and my grandma too.  It was a good time despite being so tired. 

Got another busy week ahead of us.  It is graduation season after all.  Nothing quite as exciting as jumping out of a perfectly fine airplane though =D

I know…a little late, but my Dad and I did awesome fishing especially considering the weather. I woke up Saturday morning to 30mph winds. That pretty much ruled out anyplace we wanted to fish. I mean even the river in Oshkosh had white caps on it. Dad at the last minute thought of some little channels on winnebago that we could hit. It was windy, but very manageable. Neither one of us expected to catch anything really, but were we wrong! In the 4 or so hours we were out, we ended up with 19 fish! For the longest time we went back and forth as to who caught the most fish (which is pretty cool considering my Dad ALWAYS outfishes me…though some of that is because he is in the front of the boat), but at the end of the day, my dad went up 3 or 4 fish. He didnt get those until the last 20 minutes too, so it was pretty close all day. It was fun. None of the fish had any size, they were all mostly in the 14″ range, but considering we didnt expect any fish with the wind and the temp drop, there were no complaints.

Moving grandma went well. It really didnt take all that long since we had so many people helping. After 3 or so hours, it was all done. Not bad.

Today I took down the last big pine tree in our back yard. With a lot of luck and very little skill, it fell perfectly (actually to the side of where I wanted it to, but it ended up being a better spot). I got it all taken care of except like 8 feet of trunk…I ran out of gas. I was tired and hungry so I decided that I will finish it later and called it a night.

This weekend with any luck I will be skydiving. Hopefully the weather is nice on Saturday and we can go…Im nervous and excited at the same time, but its something I have always wanted to do.

Well thats all for now….Peace!

I should have mentioned that the video yesterday is from the documentary “Playing for Change.” The Playing For Change Foundation provides resources (facilities, supplies, educational programs, etc) to musicians and communities around the world. They put together a bunch of songs and are selling them to help fund projects they are doing. Unfortunately their website is down currently, but you can buy the CD from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Playing-Change-DVD-Various-Artists/dp/B001QOOCTE/

I also found a cool article on Grandpa Elliot from 1996 on the NYTimes website: http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/25/us/new-orleans-journal-music-draws-the-crowd-the-act-pays-the-bills.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

And now for something completely different….

This weekend Im helping my grandma move but called my Dad and he was free so we are going to go fishing in the morning. It will be my first time out this year…Im pretty excited. First because Im going fishing, but also its a chance to spend some time with my Dad….I dont get to do that very often.

Have a great weekend everyone!

I forgot to post that right before I went to Vegas, Mandi and I went to a new restaurant here in Madison called The Bayou.  I had the Bourbon St Special Po’ Boy which is Shrimp and Crawfish.  Let me tell you it was out of this world!  The only thing it was missing is the garlic sauce from New Orleans Take Out.  The bread is from a place in New Orleans and was extra tasty.  I would totally go back there.  When we were there it was before the grand opening so they were still getting up to speed.  They didnt have their voodoo juice yet and they were kind of slow.  Im sure it will get better as they get used to it.

The reason I remembered that is because I saw a video today that reminded me of New Orleans.  Its a video with a montage of different singers singing Stand by Me.  One of the guys is Grandpa Elliott.  I want to go and see him perform really badly…maybe someday soon, who knows.  Here is the video, he’s near the begining.

Been real busy lately with odds and ends of stuff.  I just ordered all our lighting controls for the theater side of the basement.  Im going to be using Insteon stuff there to do some scene controls.  Someday Ill buy the plugin so I can control them with my remote, but not today.  Ill be not lazy and use the switch I guess =D  Cant wait though.

The basement is actually getting somewhat near completion.  I have started to set the travertine hearth on the fireplace (will hopefully be finishing the majority of that tonight).  After that, I can finally finish up with the pine planks on the walls.  Then finish the lighting and some other odds and ends and I will be done.  Im hoping a few months at the most.  Its really hard to work on it when its so nice out.  Maybe we can have a grand opening sometime this fall, that would be sweet.

I went and saw Star Trek last Friday, it was awesome!  The characters had the same voices and quirks as the originals, so it was pretty cool to see that.  The movie was really well done.  Speaking of movies, whats up with all the good movies this summer?  Not that I am complaining, but there is a bunch of them.  Next is Terminator Salvation, then Transformers 2, Public Enemies, the new Harry Potter, GI Joe, and finally Inglourious Basterds.  Those are just theater quality films.  There are a bunch of others that look good too like UP!, Funny People, Land of the Lost, Year One, etc.  I guess the Theatres wont be hurting for business this summer.  Well at least ours anyways since I really dont see too many movies there, but there are 6 more this summer alone that I will be seeing on the Ultrascreen.  If you want to check out the full lineup go here:  http://www.imdb.com/features/summermovieguide/2009/month/may and then near the top you can look month by month.

Well that is all for now, time to go home and do real work =D

Well MMS 2009 (Microsoft Management Summit) is officially over here in Las Vegas.  It was a good and tiring week here.  Learned a ton of stuff, met some good people, and had a couple of long nights/mornings!  In fact, note to self, anytime you meet some guys and they suggest playing some beer pong, find something else to do =D  That was a bad morning.  I missed two sessions because of that!  Good thing the two sessions werent ones that I really was that interested in seeing anyways.

The sessions this year were very informative, and its interesting to see how I can work some of the stuff into my job.  One thing that I am going to do for sure is OSD (operating system deployment).  Its one of those things that may be a little time consuming in the begining setting it up, but after that will be so much better.  Instead of putting in the windows cd and going through the prompts, you just boot up and tell it which image to grab.  Then an hour or two later, you have a machine that is fully configured, and fully setup with all the software ready to go.  It really speeds things up and all the computers you deploy are now the same, doesnt matter who did the install.

Learned a lot more about app-v (application virtualization) and some cool new group policy stuff.  Also learned a couple of cool new windows 7 things I didnt know about (a trivial one…with a bunch of windows up, grab one and shake it…everything else will minimize….now shake it again and everything comes back…how cool is that!). 

All in all, the conference is a bargain for the price.  I learned so much more than a single class could ever offer, and I learned it from the people who actually help make the products.  I hope Im able to attend next year.

…life is like a leaky bathtub.  You plug one hole and another pops up.  OK, she never said that, but it would be the truth!  I have been battling our bathtub for what seems like an eternity.  I would fix a leaky pipe, and it would leak somewhere else.  I would fix the drain that leaked, and I had to do it multiple times because it would leak after time.  The handle would break off, and I would have to replace that.  Stupid showers.  The best was the leak where the water would go into the wall where the spigot came out, but since it was sealed on the back side, it could only go INTO the fiberglass layers then leak out at many little pinholes all around the tub.  Took me awhile to figure that one out.  Last night I think I finally tracked down the last leak.  As of this mornings showers for Mandi and I, there was no water in the basement….YEAH!!!!  Thank god.  I can finally close the hole in the wall now.

Easter was good but long.  We got to see my grandpa, it was good to talk with him.  I need to make an effort to go see him more.  We drove all over though.  Saturday was Mandi’s family, then Sunday was my Mom, then my grandma then my grandpa.  It was a really long day and long weekend.  At least this weekend will be more relaxed.

I broke out the motorcycle this week.  What great weather we have been having!  Its going to cool off for a little while, but hey, it looks like spring is finally here.  Im not going to complain.  Only problem is that it makes working in the house really hard since its so nice out.  I would rather be outside.

I know there was a bunch more I was going to post, and of course I forgot =(  If I remember later, Ill add it.  I hope everyone has a great weekend!