I’m a music freak, if you’ve not noticed and I’m always listening to new music. Below is a list of some of my favorite new albums of late. I highly recommend checking them out!
Against Me! – White Crosses
Alejandro Escovedo – Street Songs of Love
Blitzen Trapper – Destroyer of the Void
The Gaslight Anthem – American Slang
Holy Fuck – Latin
LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening
Pulled Apart By Horses – Pulled Apart By Horses
Ok, ok ok…it has literally been months since I’ve posted (and the same is true with Ari). In fact, I have this whole “end of year update” post written up on the laptop, but I haven’t posted it, although I will soon – Promise! In the meantime let me just say that the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 have been absolutely amazing!
My 30th birthday celebrations began on the last day of 2009 with Ari surprising me with a trip to Disney World. There aren’t enough words to describe how absolutely amazing it was. It definitely brought out the kid in me and I couldn’t have asked for anything more awesome from such an awesome fiance! Click here to view all the pics from Disney World, Epcot and Hollywood Studios!
The birthday festivities continued once we arrived back in Boston. Ari, the crafty woman she is, had worked with one of my best friends who is one of my best men for the wedding, to arrange for his flight up to Boston to surprise me for my birthday! After what seemed like a never ending series of clues that had me looking all around the house for my gift, I ended up opening the back door to someone scaring the bejeezus out of me. There was a party the next day, which brought friends out for a great night of food and drinks!
Otherwise, we have been hard at work, and hard at work on wedding preparations as well! We recently bought a Wii after being tempted by the fun-factor of the Wii Bowling game. It’s been a source of plenty of fun thus far, although Ari continues to beat me in just about every competition, which is actually pretty cool!
Oh, I know…it’s been ages since I’ve written anything here. In my defense however, it’s been a busy three months. So, it’s a new year, and I decided to do one big, synoptic entry to cover what’s been going on for the past few months.
In late October and early November I did the first bit of web development for someone, other than myself or Ari, that I’ve done in years. I’ve talked about Lynn & Mick before, as you may recall and Mick has his own business in the form of a lunch truck. He asked me to put together a website for him. That was about the only thing he said to me, the rest was up to me. A week or two later and MicksMunchies.com was up and running. I decided to base it off of WordPress because of my familiarity with it and the ease of management that its dashboard offers. The second portion was especially important because Lynn would be updating and running the site, so the ease of management aspect was key.
The latter portion of November brought Thanksgiving and this year marked the first Thanksgiving that Ari and I have hosted. Ari’s mom, Katia, and her younger brother, Yuryj, came from Florida for the week. Between Katia, Ari and Ari’s sister, Tia, there was an obscene amount of food the whole week. The turkey that Ari prepared was delicious, and everyone enjoyed a great Thanksgiving meal. I prepared a leg of lamb on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and an herb-crusted pork loin on Sunday. You can click here for pictures from Thanksgiving.
December….ahhh December…. December brought the first “real” snow fall in Boston. The first real snow in Boston brought the anticipation of Florida for Christmas, and a respite in a warmer climate.
Ari and I decided that we would do our Christmas gift exchange prior to leaving to Florida. I gave her two small teapots from Teavana along with gift cards for Anne Taylor and Victoria’s Secret as she’s been saying she wanted/needed new clothes. She gave me the awesome recording headphones I had been eyeing along with a seven port USB hub and a bottle of Lucid Absinthe (which I plan to enjoy for my upcoming 30th birthday).
When we departed for Florida on the morning of December 22nd it was approximately 19°F in Boston and when we arrived it was a beautiful 68°F in Orlando. The next few days were spent milling about Ari’s grandparent’s home in preparation for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinner. I had an opportunity to spend time with some of Ari’s cousins, whom I had only spent limited time with previously and had a blast on Christmas Eve. There was a plethora of food for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (a fact that doesn’t bode well for my waistline necessarily). We received some very nice gifts from Ari’s family including two crock (or maybe earthenware?) baking containers (they know we both love to cook).
Click here for pictures of Christmas preparation, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
So, with Christmas over, Ari, her mother, brother and I visited Downtown Disney and Celebration. Downtown Disney is filled with shops, clubs and restaurants outside of Disney World. This was the closest I’d ever been to Disney World and I thought it was pretty cool. I have to say that the kid in me absolutely loved the Legoland Shop, which featured many really cool and interesting Lego sets, including one to build Frank Lloyd Wright’s classic architectural masterpiece, “Falling Water”.
After Downtown Disney, we visited Celebration. Celebration, Florida is . The reason for our visit to Celebration was to view its daily “snowfall”. “Snow?!?” you say? Yep, every night at about 6pm, what looks to be the most beautiful snow falls in the square at the intersection of Market and Front streets. The “snow” is, however, soap. It’s cute, and while you don’t get cold, from the look of some of the children, it does get somewhat messy.
Our day didn’t stop there! After Celebration, we took in a movie with Ari’s little brother and cousins. We went to see Sherlock Holmes and I have to say that I was rather impressed with the movie. Robert Downy, Jr. pulls off a convincing Holmes and Jude Law was great as Watson. It was one of the few movies I’ve seen as of late that didn’t end up boring me at some point.
Click here for pictures of Downtown Disney and the Celebration snowfall.
Although hanging out with Ari’s family was enjoyable, we decided to take a quick trip to the Sarasota area. Ok, so I’m gonna go ahead and say it: Sarasota has the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever been on. Specifically, Siesta Key is my favorite beach. I lived in Wilmington, NC and while I’ll always love Wrightsville Beach, it really pales in comparison to Siesta Key. In addition to hitting up Siesta Key, we toured around St. Armonds and browsed through all kinds of shops before heading to the Old Salty Dog Cafe. Ari had mentioned it because we had seen it during a segment on “Man Versus Food” on the Travel Channel. The segment featured their deep fried hotdog and we thought we should check it out. I have to say that, while I initially didn’t like the idea of a deep fried hotdog, it was far better than I had anticipated.
Click here for pictures from Siesta Key and Sarasota
On Saturday the 30th, Ari, Yuryj and I went to FunSpot. FunSpot has a carnival atmosphere and featured a number of carnival type rides (the Tilt-a-Whirl, swings, slides, etc) along with four go-cart tracks. I’m a sucker for amusement parks and rides, so I had a blast. We spent the whole day there and were eventually joined by Katia. We walked next door to Old Town to check out the classic cars that apparently drive in every evening.
Click here for pictures from FunSpot and click here for the pictures from the Old Town Cruise In.
Alright. Pretty packed end of the year right? Well, guess what! It gets even better. Once we returned to Ari’s grandparent’s house from our day at FunSpot and Old Town, Ari’s grandmother, Josie, gave me an envelope she had “received in the mail”. You can see my reaction to what was in the envelope.
So I finally decided to “jailbreak” my iPhone. Since I’ve got a 2G iPhone, the jailbreaking of it wasn’t particually cutting edge or anyting. I figured it had reached the end of it’s “super fun” time frame and I figured, why not extend it a little by hacking it.
Why I didn’t do this before hand, I don’t know. There are a lot of enhancements that are a by-product of jailbreaking. I can, for example, change the look of the phone interface with themes (it looks like Snow Leopard now), organize apps into folders (I really prefer to have a very clean desktop, without a ton of icons) and add new features (the lock screen now shows me the number of emails, txts, missed calls, etc. without having to unlock the phone).
I haven’t noticed any downside to the jailbreak as of yet, although I have to say that if I had a 3G I’d be more skittish to hack it. I’ll be sure to update from time to time on my further feelings regarding the jailbreak.
While Friday marked the beginning of the one year countdown to our wedding day, Ari, Tia and I traveled to Wells Beach, Maine to join Chuch & Bill, as well as some of their friends, for our second annual Fall vacation. We had a great time, even with the weather. Much like last year, Friday and Saturday were rainy while Sunday was absolutely beautiful.
Evidently, Wells Beach closes up early on Friday nights. When we arrived, around 9pm, we checked in and met up with Chuch & Bill. After driving around the area surrounding the hotel, we realized there wasn’t a single place to grab dinner, save McDonalds. So, I enjoyed one of the new Angus burgers (believe it or not, they’re surprisingly delicious).
Saturday morning found us at Congdon’s Doughnuts, which was absolutely delicious (and has some of the best scratch made doughnuts I’ve had!). The ladies spent some time Saturday touring the shops of downtown Ogunquit and we hit Mike’s Clam Shack for dinner (the lobster roll hit the spot!). Sunday marked a return to Congdon’s for breakfast, after which Chuch & Bill headed back to Vermont and Ari, Tia and I took a quick trip to the beach for a walk during which I snapped a few pictures, which you can see below.
After the beach, we began the return leg of our trip vis-à-vis Kittery and a trip to the Kittery Outlets.
So, we recently underwent a change at work where we now have to log in to a website to “clock-in” and “clock-out”. I really hate having to be under the pressure of rushing back to my desk from lunch for fear of arriving a minute late. I can say this with no remorse as I arrive, on average, 25-35 minutes early for my shift, and don’t count that time on my time sheet. I figure it is my responsibility to arrive in time for my shift. I feel that, however, makes up for any minute or so I may run late in returning from work.
What does any of this have to do with nerdiness you ask? Well, I started thinking, “if we have to log into a webpage, I’ll just set a scheduled task in Windows XP to launch a browser around the time I’ll need it, to serve as a reminder…” From there, it was a short trek in my mind to, “hmmm… I wonder if I can write up something to automatically login?” A little while later I had explored VBScript and had written the following, with the help of Google:
Set IE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
IE.Visible = true
WshShell.AppActivate "Microsoft Internet Explorer" 'This brings the IE window to the front
IE.Navigate http://link.to.webpage 'This represents the page to load
WScript.Sleep 3000 'This pauses the script to give time to load the webpage
WshShell.SendKeys ("username") 'this sends the username - the cursor automatically focuses to the username field
WshShell.SendKeys "{Tab}" 'advances to the password field
WshShell.SendKeys ("password") 'this sends the password
WshShell.SendKeys "{Tab}" 'advances to the submit button
WshShell.SendKeys "{ENTER}" 'this clicks the submit button
Wscript.Sleep 6000 'waits while the next page loads
WshShell.SendKeys "{Tab 8}" 'this tabs to the timestamp button
WshShell.SendKeys "{ENTER}" 'this clicks the timestamp button
So, here you have it…nerdiness at work…
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