tinkr.net

It’s been a crazy weekend. We had the wife’s family here for Thanksgiving, so we had a houseful all weekend. Then Monday morning, shortly after everybody left, we got a call from the hospital in my hometown and my Mom was sick. We didn’t know what was really going on, but we took off right away. The wife was on the phone almost the whole way down there. During our drive my Mom had surgery on a perforated bowel. By the time we got down there she was just getting out of surgery. We stayed with her Monday night and most of Tuesday. My Aunt is staying with her now. We came back home to work a couple days and are heading back down there Friday. She is doing really well. She is just sore from the surgery now. She should be getting out on Friday. It’s been a crazy couple weeks with my Brothers wedding, Thanksgiving, and now this. I am sure getting sick of family though.

I just got an email from my ISP stating that they are no longer gong to have newsgroups starting next year. That’s kinda crazy, but I guess people aren’t using newsgroups much anymore. I pretty much just use them for downloading stuff. I wonder if my ISP is shutting them down from lack of use, or if they are scared of the piracy thing? You can pretty much find anything legal and illegal posted in newsgroups.

Back when I first got on the Internet, it was just basically newsgroups and email. Actually, next week will be my 13th anniversary of logging onto the internet. It’s easy for me to remember. The very first thing I saw when I logged onto Prodigy was the news that Jeffery Dahmer was killed in prison. After my free trial to Prodigy was over, I switched to AOL. There were very few ISPs back in those days. AOL was good because they had a bunch of their own content, but they didn’t have the web yet. The web was really small back then. I remember when AOL first got the web. I thought it was super cool, but too damn slow. Downloading images on a 14400 baud modem took just too long when you only had 20 hours a month online. I racked up some pretty big bills going over my 20 hours a month that AOL gave us. Now most people thing that the web is the Internet.

Times sure have changed, but I don’t think I want to give up newsgroup access just yet. I guess I will have to start looking around for a good newsgroup provider next year.

My list of books that I want to read grows and grows. I have a hard time setting aside time to read. It probably takes me a month to get through a book. So, last week I subscribed to Audible. I am not sure how much I would like listening to fiction books, but I know I will enjoy listening to non-fiction. I am always listening to podcasts on my iPod, so I know I will have no problem knocking out some of the book that I want to read. Right now I am listening to The God Delusion. I am really enjoying it. I look forward to listening to it every night before I go to bed.

A bunch of my friends have always been telling me how good Chipotle is. I have never eaten at one before. That is until this past weekend. My Brother took me to one. I don’t know what is great about the place. Sure the food was good, but I didn’t think it was the best. I actually prefer Qdoba. To each his own I guess.

So I was out of town all weekend. My Brother got married down in Minneapolis on Friday. The wedding and reception were great. They were a little different than I am use to, but they turned out great. His church down there is huge. It seats 2500 people. I bet the ceremony took 15 minutes tops. It was super short. My Brothers wife doesn’t like attention paid to her. She didn’t like being up front have having everybody watching, so they made it as fast as possible.

The reception was at this super nice golf course. My Brothers wife also doesn’t like dancing. The reception had a jazz band and they had deserts there. It was really nice. I hate dancing too, so I didn’t miss that part of it.

The days leading up to the wedding I hung out with my Brother and two of his other groomsmen. All three of them are chiropractors. I sure got an earful of chiropractic talk. Chiropractors think they can cure everything. I don’t really believe in all of it. One of the groomsmen spent $6000 to go to some seminar where is says he learned to adjust people from across the room. Yeah, seriously he believes he can do that. I think he was just suckered out of $6000. The chiropractors that I hung out with were smart people, but they sure believed in a lot of wacko stuff that makes no sense.

My wife had similar days hanging out with the bridesmaids. They were all super religious. She had to put up with a lot of God talk all weekend.

I love my family, but I don’t think I share any of the beliefs that they have. It drives me crazy, but I just keep my mouth shut respect their beliefs.

Not really. I bought the Tumbledown online album. Tumbledown is the country side project of Mike Herrera from MXPX. He released his first 6 song album online through discrevolt. For six bucks I got a little card with the code on back to download the album DRM free. I love this kind of stuff. I love to support the bands I like. Especially when they give me what I want, Non-DRMed music.

So last night we watched Click. Yeah, my Netflix queue is quite backed up. I was expecting your typical funny Adam Sandler movie. You know, funny, but not particularly good. I was surprised. I thought it was a really good movie. I was actually getting teary eyed toward the end of the movie. It makes you not want to take anything for granted. It makes you want to enjoy every day. Even the days spent at work. When it comes down to it, we don’t know how many days we have left, so we should enjoy want we can everyday, because when it’s over, it’s over.

I don’t get many weekends off with nothing to do. This weekend was one of them, but I was busier than hell. Yesterday I put up Christmas light, new curtains in kitchen and bedroom, installed a new programable thermostat, put up a shelf in the kitchen, and cleaned out the garage getting it ready for winter.

Today wont be so busy though. I am just going to sit my fat ass on the couch and watch football all day. Then it’s Red Lobster for super tonight. Yum! I love seafood, but the wife hates it. We are going out with her Aunt that loves seafood and has a husband that hates it. It should be good. I haven’t eaten at the Fargo Red Lobster yet.