To sum it up – there is alot happening.

Mickey and Kathy came up, very nice to see them. We toured castle vanberge, mickeyvb’s seal of approval is a greater honor than being knighted. They played guitar hero. I should have taken pictures.

Mickey also brought me a new computer. You see, when mickeyvb gets upgraded parts, he passes his former items on to whichever McManus brother has the slowest computer. And, since vanbergs (vanbergs) got one for christmas, it was my time to shine. So, i went from an athlon 1500xp to an athlon 2800XP – and from 512 pc 2100 to 1 gig of pc2700 ram. AND – CS source does not blue screen on this hardware. People can say “ef windows” all they want, but installing completely new hardware into my existing configuration yielded a fantastically easy migration. “Vanberge, you should format your drive if you get new hardware!!!” – ef that. I just formatted like 2 months ago, and i could give a crap less about 50 megs of extra drivers. XP literally started right up, and detected everything perfectly. I had to re-install my vid card drivers and Direct X, but that really was it. Thanks Mickeyvb!! This computer should keep me happy for some time now, and it is my first upgrade since seriously my junior year of college. CS source is the effing man. wow. Counter strike is the best game of all time. I have probably spent more hours of my life playing counter strike than doing any other activity at all… showering, eating, studying?, i guarantee CS has them all destroyed.

I also have spent far too much time hacking up my ipod. I’ve restored the thing like 6 times… which, over USB 1 – is pretty slow. 20 gigs over usb 1 takes an incalculatable amount of time. But, that should be remedied with the aforementioned “new terminal” and USB 2. blah blah blah – my ipod has menu icons and a cool “GUI”.

Really though, this weekend is ultimately slamming reality into my mind. The surreal aspect of this entire castle process is void. We’re moving in like 1 week. P4P is going to experience sheer downtime as my cable is disconnected on 3/1/2006 to be transferred to my new residence. I spent 250 dollars on paint and painting supplies. I’m taking a week off work. Im re-caulking the bathtub. I’m playing basketball. I’m painting possibly the entire house. This is really happening and there is literally no turning back. No more neighbors. No more fighting for parking spots. No more apartment. And I cannot wait.

I love vanbergs. I love vanlandw. I love Flo. I love my kitty cat. I love “Cranberry Whip” (its a paint color). I love uccello’s pizza. I love holland. I love russellteee. I love ninja vanberge.

For christmas, i had gotten an iPod video (30 gig)… I hadnt done too much with this until recently, and that was mainly because i didnt have any means of playing it in my car. I bought the “itrip” FM transmitter, but that blew harder than the eyewall of hurricane katrina. Literally. It was nearly impossible to hear clear music. So, as a result of that, the ipod has really just kind of sat on my computer desk.

Well, i somehow got re-aquainted with my ipod recently and really started using it to its full potential. First, i tried to put linux on it. I downloaded the ipodlinux installer, and clicked ‘next next next finish’. Had I read the documentation on thier site, i would have clearly noticed that the 5g video ipods are not yet supported… What happened? Well, my ipod rebooted, and then simply displayed a screen that said “www.apple.com/support/ipod”.
After a brief lol, i commenced trying to fix it.

I figured “i’ll just restore it”. So i start up the apple restore utility which says “cannot mount ipod”…. at which point i started to worry a bit. “Maybe i need to reformat the hd first, i thought”… “Please insert a disk into drive ‘G’ ” my computer asked me… now i seriously started to panic.

I resorted to forums, where i came across an HP utility that is used to format external usb storage devices. I used that to format the ipod Fat32. Then the apple restore utility worked like a charm and my ipod works again like new 🙂

Then i bought dLo Transpod. Which works 100 times better than the itrip did. It plugs into the cig lighter, so it uses the cars juice and not the ipods. Plus it charges the ipod, has preset stations, a nice backlit display. pwns.

Then i spent probably 4 hours getting album art from www.images.google.com. And then vanlandw pointed me onto a neat trick to put menu icons onto an ipod. so, i did that today as well 🙂

The point of this post is essentially to say that i used to not really think about or use my ipod. Now, i take it to work with me, take it out to eat with me, in general i am obsessed with it.

It’s hard to think back over the past few weeks and come to the realization that i (we) are about 98% done buying a home. I’ve never done this before, so it’s great to work with people who answer my questions and who are actually out to help me vs. make a ton of money off me. I really had no idea how fast things would move once you pick out the home.

That entire process is an absolute pain. Looking on line for hours… mapping out areas… finally checking a few out in person… just thinking about that is exhausting. All that just to finally walk into a home and have it hit you… “this is home”. Then you have inspections… appraisals… insurance… etc. ung.

We’ll hopefully be moving in the first week of march – and anybody who wants to help will get a buffet of free pizza and free beer.

Besides buying a home… I’m definitely enjoying 24. I’m definitely enjoying The Shield. I’m using google ads and I think I already hate them. Noob update.

lately, i have been growing exceedingly frustrated with leasing an ‘apartment’. not only are neighbors annoying, noisy, slobs, – but rent is expensive where i live. its not worth it to me to pay so much money and have absolutely no return on that investment. All that money could be going towards a house.

So, the process of home owning is now rolling. I qualify for up to 135 grand (although those mortgage payments would be less than affordable)… In reality im looking to spend 110 – 115 k. So i’m 99 % sure that i’m going to own a home before, perhaps way before; my lease ends in may. We have looked at one, and are scheduled to look at two more… If i find something i like for an affordable price, consider me homeownerberge. I dont even mind if it’s a bit of a fixer upper. Pretty much as long as it is not an apartment, and my stuff can fit into it, i would possibly be interested.

in addition to house shopping… i love every one of my friends. This was one of the better weekends of my entire life. Thanks to everyone who participated. It was especially nice to let loose after a fairly stressful week at work. My position is really evolving to a point where i am the go to guy for alot of different things. Blackberries, the SAN, pretty much anythin server related, etc. etc… Its very exciting. But, in cases where you have to be the one to administer a “Disaster recovery SAN failover test” – it can be a slight bit stressful.

At any rate – the D.R test was a success, im vanberge, payner can arrest me legally, vanlandw lost 10 knockout matches straight, vanbergs is my brother, flo throws up if he bowls, i suck at bowling, uccello’s has the best pizza ever, some day i’m eating “the legend”, and Gran Turismo 4 has gotten me back into it.

A bit prior to thanksgiving, i weighed myself on my parents scale… Typically, i could care less about my body or my weight… But, this day, i saw something i have never seen before “245”. I typically thought i weighed 235, which was fine with me on every accord. However, when i realized that the elusive “250” was so close, i felt like something had to be done.

I started drinking less pop… drinking black coffee at work… minor changes. I got to about 235 this way.

Then comes the new year at work. Somehow, somebody organized a ‘biggest losers’ type club; with a catch. Each person puts in 10 dollars… and at the end of a year, the biggest loser takes all. That, in combination with ENFUEGO MIGUEL weighing less than me (although i am taller…), have inspired me to drastically change my lifestlye. So, for the past week, i have: Eaten a banana and grape nuts cereal every day for breakfast, drank only water and black coffee, eaten very light lunches (1 sandwitch without mayo, an apple, etc), and eaten sensible dinners. I have even gone out to eat twice and ordered only salads. Blah blah blah, i changed my eating habits.

Keeping in mind that i did not do any additional exercise of any kind, read on: Initial weigh in at work for the ‘biggest losers’ club i weighed 238… Over the weekend I purchased a scale, and was astounded that i currently weigh 228 pounds. I havent been that light in probably 24 years. I was absolutely shocked to see that changing my eating habits for 7 days yielded a 10 pound reduction in my body weight…

Now the trick is ‘staying motivated’… as it grows harder and harder to avoid calling papa john.

I’m back into scionlife.com
I want to buy this
I love third strike.

i took my last week of vacation. i got a new cell phone. christmas happened. i got an ipod video. i really like my car. everyone i know is undecisive. the lead singer of the “Guano Apes” is not a male. I have a new found love for “3rd Strike – No light”. videora kicks ass. “The Boondock Saints” resides on my ipod and on my cell phone. www.myspace.com/vanbergs. i’m never leaving my job. i dont know your “hoo ha” name. i wish mickeyvb would make a website. ef digital catch phrase. ef tom. i really love 16 pound 95 dollar cuts of prime rib that mickeyvb prepares to perfection. jesus. literally jesus. i have the same cell phone number. fieldy is a slap bassist. ef flo. four brothers is an awesome move. looking forward to beer dogs.

can you hear me now