Just came across these and thought they were funny

[Listening to: Monkey Man - Dave Matthews]

All Jen and I have been doing over the past few weeks was wedding planning, wedding planning, and oh yeah, wedding planning. It’s really beginning to take it’s toll on the both of us. Jen’s been feeling like crap, and my brain is so mushy right now, I had my cell phone on my desk at work and just tried using it as a mouse to my computer. Yeah, it’s time to go home.

I think maybe we’ll go watch some racing this weekend. We havent had any time away from the wedding details in quite a while now. I guess sitting in the stands at a race inhaling 103 octane gas fumes and burning rubber should be able to clear our heads.

Oh yeah, have a safe Memorial Day weekend!

[Listening to: Granny - Dave Matthews Band & Tim Reynolds]

I’ve been on this new project at work for the past two weeks or so, and I’m actually really into it. I basically get to redo part of my company’s backup system, as well as migrate us off of old hardware. It should be nice working w/ new equipment, new operating systems, and FASTER equipment instead of some servers that are less powerful than my desktop computer! Putting out fires on those legacy systems was becoming unbearable. It rules that my company is looking at I.T. as a profit center instead of a cost. For instance, we’ve got a tape autoloader that’s been in production for about 5 years, that was on it’s last leg probably about 2 years ago. It had two drives at one point, and the second has been repaired so many times that I’ve stopped calling in for service on it, it’s just considered *dead* at this point and we’ve been limping along on one tape drive. I ran a full backup this weekend on the new system, and it finished in half the time, and used about a 1/4 of the media that it would have under the old system. Back to work I go

[Listening to: Mother Father - Dave Matthews Band]

My cousin Jim and his wife Joan live in Germany while Jim’s in the military
So from time to time they send me photos of their European travels.
They sent this one yesterday of a trip they took. It’s their son Caeden
Apparantly he’s off milk now…

[Listening to: Get My Party On ft Chaka Khan - Shaggy]

I’ve been on Marlboro’s marketing mailing lists for about 7-8 years now, and since I always give them all the feedback they want, and show up at any events they send me to, they continue to send me all kinds of free stuff. Myself and my family enjoy watching racing alot, so it worked out well Marlboro sent me and a guest to the track. Last year I was pretty suprised when they sent me two free tickets to the IRL race in Milwaukee.
This year they had a promotion called Hot Laps, where they take instructors from their racing school, and bring them to a local track and have them give you ride-along experiences that most people have never had the chance to do. So I graciously accepted, and took my dad along. We had a great time! We got to ride in the actual IROC cars that drivers such as the Earnhardts, Allisons, Fitipaldi’s, and Unsers drove back in the mid 90′s. After the IROC (International Race of Champions) cars took us around Chicagoland Speedway, we went over to the Mustang Drift course, where they took stock Mustang’s and basically tried to create a little road-course style driving in the confines of a track parking lot. It was pretty wild, with the drivers pushing the cars to their absolute limit, tires squealing and smoking the whole way! Afterwards, Marlboro provided us w/ some lunch and some swag on our way out.
More pictures are here, and some videos are at the bottom

[Listening to: The Shortest Straw - Metallica]

Yesterday I told of how our family & friends had this bridal shower for Jen and I, and of course cameras were snapping off pictures everywhere. I told my dad I’d be a smartass and take some nice Kodak moments for him, since I knew he was gonna Photoshop them Well, here it is

So yesterday afternoon our family and friends held a bridal shower for our upcoming wedding, and it wasn’t as bad as an event that I had imagined it would be.
I imagined myself surrounded by 50 women going on and on about how nice our towel sets we just received were and stuff, but it really wasn’t bad. We had some good food, then snacked on some fruit and pretzels dipped in a chocolate fountain. I refrained from just cupping my hands and drinking chocolate out of them, so kudo’s to me. Jen and I got a lot of nice stuff. Tons of gifts, enough to fill two Chevy Blazers really, and some Target gift cards, some green $tuff, and some gift certificates from our travel agent for our honeymoon. That’ll help alot, thats NOT cheap.

Since my dad loves to Photoshop pictures, I can only imagine what he’s
going to do to the photos of me surrounded by 50 women *shudder*

[Listening to: Devil Without a Cause - Kid Rock]