Unwanted Commentary

I guess by most conventional means of discernment I am now a home owner, a homeowner for almost most of four days now. So far I see what all the hype is about. I am glad that I believed in myself to know myself enough to buy a house that was "ready-to-move-into", I can already see I am not a fixer upper kind of person, no not at all. The physical process of moving is debilating enough without having to worry about doing repairs or upgrades or whatevers.

The old apartment must be vacated by Wednesday, and we still have a few things lingering there, but I feel pretty good about getting them out and away and safely stored in our new residence. I've actually met some of my neighbors and they all seem like tip-top folk, I do not fear them.

The kitties seem to have adjusted well, they seem to be loving the comparably wide open spaces and the multitude of windows from which they can now peer. Their world must seem so much larger now.

Posted by Jeff at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We watched the women's gymnastics last night and it was a difficult situation to rationalize in my head. I'm unsure as to whether I should be disappointed or upset with the US team for a poor performance, mesmerized by the awesome performance of the Chinese girls, or righteously indignant and suspicious that the Chinese team does not meet minimum age requirements. Maybe a bit from each plate?

The US team, going into the floor exercises, needed to execute flawlessly, and turn it up to 11. Without both of those factors I don't think they could have beat the Chinese, baring a Commie implosion. And I think out of all possibilities that one was the least likely to happen, the Chinese were far too consistent. Still, the poor execution by the US girls was hard to watch, I know they had higher expectations for themselves and even if the chances of them beating the Reds was slim it sucks that fell farther short of what they wanted to accomplish.

It's hard to deny that the Chinese girls performed at such a high level, and it was a treat to get to watch them. I admit I'm a little suspicious, some of those girls in no way looked 16 years old, but at this point I would feel like a whiny little bitch to pinpoint that as the reason they won. Bottom line is that they brought a great product to the table and they elevated their game when they had to. The US gave them a run for their money, no doubt, and there was a chance at the end for the Americans to win the gold, but both teams were so good it was just a question of who was going to bend or break first. Unfortunately it was our girls who did, but they done real good and they have nothing to be ashamed of.

Plus, did you see how far back the bronze medal was in points? Crazy, that's how good both teams were!

Posted by Jeff at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm on twitter, for the zero people that visit here and who may be interested in that fact.

I believe, but am not certain, that you can follow me @ JeffreyL

The internets hurt my brain sometimes. And I feel that because I am in IT I am expected to understand it more than the usual person. But I do not, and I'm okay with that.

Anyway, I can follow *you* if you like, though the notion of how you would communicate this to me is not entirely clear on my part. I already follow Warren Ellis, Snoop Dogg, the Diesel Sweeties guy and the Sneeze guy, plus some others who are no less awesome because I didn't mention them, so you will be amongst an esteemed crowd of Internet Gladiators.

I wonder if gladiators will ever become the next ninja, pirate, chuck norris fad?

Posted by Jeff at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hmmm...nothing about this restaurant made me think of Cuba. I don't have well formed images of Cuba, not in my mind or anywhere else, so that may be my fault. The food was good, the mojito was descent, the service was not stellar. When I pay $12 US dollars for two tacos I would prefer my service to be good. I had the Jamaican Butcher Block taco plate, it had two tacos filled with various meats and it came with rice and beans. Mitzy had tortilla soup, it was quite tasty, but it seemed to be a lot of chicken in a spicy broth. Evidently they don't give you chips and salsa there, and that's cool, it is not a Tex-Mex place. They have, I believe, fried plantain chips, but those are not complimentary or at least were not for us on our visit.

I don't know a lot about traditional Cuban cuisine, but nothing on the menu seemed to scream traditional. And, again, that's okay. I don't think that's what they're going for. Still I was disappointed, and then I was suddenly filled with an urge to really rant and rave about this establishment. About how it's one of those trendy, schmaltzy plastic restaurants that caters to an equally trendy, schmaltzy, plastic crowd. And it is, but that it is not the fault of the restaurant, indeed I read some reviews of the place on line and it gets good a lot good comments, and I went there because I had overheard some people I hold in high regard speaking so highly of it.

I realize the problem is me, I don't like these types of dinning establishments and I am not willing to spend the amount of money it takes to really enjoy what they have to offer. To get the whole experience as it were. To me these places are over done, glitzed up with cheap facades, trendy art and motif's that sort-of-kind-of have something to do with the theme their going for, but not really. They have menus with over priced items, that while good, are never that good, but merely evoke the sense that your eating something exotic, something special. It seems so soulless to me.

It may have helped if they hadn't been playing top 40 over the speaker system, loudly. As it is I don't think I'll ever go back to Cuba Libre, I feel like I was bamboozled. The key lime pie was great, but should a "Cuban" place have great key lime pie? I'll have to check into that.

Posted by Jeff at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today is the final day of my online Oracle SQL class, at least I think it is. Everything is due today by 5:00. All of my labs, quizzes, and stuff are already turned in. I took the Final Exam last night and made a 92, which is less than what I was hoping. It was 50 questions, so I missed four and I can't help but feel disappointed by that. We were supposed to turn in a final project based on a pretend city jail database, there are exercises at the end of each chapter. More or less these are just extended labs that challenge you a little bit more, and their good practice. I'm supposed to have chapters 9-14 turned in by 5:00 this afternoon, but I only completed 9-11.

It's not all my fault, the iSQL server went down last night and didn't come back up again until around 12:00 today, so there was no chance of banging out the rest last night. Our instructor was ill last night and I couldn't contact her, I only found out she was ill from a fellow student. Being a summer course we've been under a lot of pressure to keep up with the work load, and while not terribly difficult it has been very time consuming. I've probably averaged well over an hour and a half a night working on this class. I know I've put in a few 4-5 hour shifts. The instructor had mentioned she may drop the final project, since I know my fellow student hasn't completed any of it and the only other student that I'm aware of hadn't finished the mid-term requirements as of last week. I emailed her again this morning and still no response.

Still, I'm in a bit of a twist, one because I could have finished the city jail stuff, but I didn't work on it Sunday or Monday because I thought I needed new scripts to setup the city jail exercises. I had emailed the instructor early Sunday, but she never responded, and that's frustrating because I would have accepted a, "you don't need any additional scripts dumbass" as an answer. Especially over no answer. I'm glad the course is over, and as far as I know I've gotten everything turned in and I feel pretty sure she isn't going to count off for not having the City Jail stuff in. However, it's stressing me a bit that I don't feel I really completed everything, and I should have. On top of all of this I really want to take the certification test now, but I'm worried that this course didn't really prepare me for it. I'm going to have to take some practice exams and find out. Everything I did for this course was open book, so I could look up forgotten command, clauses, functions, etc., but I don't think they'll let me do that in the testing center. Booooo.

I'll get over it and move on. I'm overloaded on this SQL stuff anyway, I'm tired of looking at it and it was all I could do to get through the final exam. Still pissed about missing four questions though.

Posted by Jeff at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)