The weekend itself wasn’t terribly eventful, but I do have a lot of little, unrelated information to catch folks up on, so I’ll do that here.

First, the weekend news.

Went to a local club Saturday night to see “an intimate show” by Josh Kelley and the band “Pay The Girl.” By my definition, “an intimate show” implies about 100 - 150 people. There were probably a good 500 people in this place. I’m sure the fire marshal would have been pissed - I mean, it was packed in. They started wheeling out chairs for people to sit in, but there was nowhere to put them so folks were sitting in the aisles and walkways… not good. We saw a few songs by Josh Kelley, but then the smoke in the place started severely hindering Jenn’s breathing (it wasn’t great for me, either) so we left before Pay The Girl came on stage.

Went to Fry’s Electronics during the day on Saturday and picked up a Platt heavy-duty polyethelene case with custom foam cutout to store my GBA SP in. I got the foam all punched out and all the parts are in the case with plenty of growing room in the event I get other accessories that need storage. I’ve always wanted one of those cases (sort of like the sniper rifle cases you see in action movies), but I never knew what I’d store in it. Now I know.

Sunday I didn’t do much of anything. Played a little PS2 with Jenn, hung out… that’s about it.

Random stuff:

There’s a class action lawsuit against movie theaters for showing paid advertisements that run past the time when the movie’s supposed to start. The idea is that if the movie is supposed to start at 7:00, then it starts at 7:00 and not 7:30 because you, the captive audience, just had to watch 30 minutes of advertising. This is the greatest thing ever. I hate the stupid ads at the beginning of movies. One or two doesn’t bother me too much, but I’ve sat through seriously like 10 ads at a time. Fucking ridiculous.

I took a Star Trek Personality Test and it says I’m an “ENTP” and identify most with the character Harry Kim. I’m not sure I entirely agree with that, but whatever.

The Alias Season One DVD set is available for preorder from Amazon. Looks like it won’t be out until September, which is not soon enough as far as I’m concerned. Buffy Season Four is coming out in June. I should preorder both of those.

My instructor from the training class I went to a couple weeks ago is fairly new to the area of Portland. I thought about it, and there’s really not a simple guide to What’s Cool in the Portland, OR Area. There are tourist books and stuff, but nothing I really agree with. I am thinking I may have to come up with that and post it here. Then again, that’s a lot of work, so maybe not.

The new Kelly Clarkson album looks like it should be coming out April 15 and Justin Guarini’s should be out later this Spring. I’m stoked - curious to hear their music.

I think it’s interesting - if you look at this site (AmericanIdolMusic.com), they basically treat Justin and Kelly the same as opposed to one being the Idol and the other being runner-up. I think that’s pretty cool, actually, because it sort of implies a tie, which I think it was. They both rock.

Got the call last night about 4:45p that my GBA SP was waiting for me at the local GameSpot. Picked that bitch up by 5:30p. Plugged it in, it was charged and set to go by 9:30p (the first time you charge the battery it takes a little longer).

*sigh*

It is everything I hoped it to be.

I’m now afraid I may be cheating on my Playstation 2 a little bit. This little baby is just super. It’s light, it has an ultra-clear screen on it… the beauty of portable gaming is without bounds.

I bought, at the same time, a copy of Yoshi’s Island, a Super Mario game with a sort of hand-drawn feel to it. It’s really cool looking. I haven’t gotten a chance to play it, but I think as soon as I finish up here, I’m going to take a little of my lunch break and bust it out.

I also went to Toys R Us and bought the Nintendo e-Reader. I highlighted it, attached to my GBA, in the picture, so you can see how it works. It plugs into the cartridge slot for the GBA and has an optical reader on it. You get cards, sort of like baseball trading cards, with this ultra-fine “dot code” on the edges that this thing reads and then lets you play games. It came with Donkey Kong Jr. on a series of five cards. The reader is the only real expense; the game cards only cost like $5 a set. SWEET!

Anyway, loving it. Now I may have to get a GameCube in order to connect the two. I guess you can unlock stuff between the two when they’re connected. Brilliance.

I realized while on vacation - er, training - last week that I am having an affair behind Jenn’s back.

It’s true, and I’m coming clean about it right now.

I have a love affair with my Playstation 2. It’s an odd relationship where I am both its sugar daddy and its bitch. I cannot help but to play it, to buy more games for it, to give it its every need. When it calls for me, I must go to it. I must find that last hidden package, perform the entire set of unique tricks, get the ultimate weapon and/or destroy the enemy. It is a moral imperative, and I am unable to resist its siren call.

So much so that I anxiously await the arrival of its distant cousin, the GBA SP. I am counting down the days until March 23, when the official Nintendo release date has been set. I can hardly wait.

Okay, first up, check out the fat gut there. How come nobody ever told me I was such a fat fuck? Maybe I should start binging on Subway so I can be a skinny fuck like Jared. This just goes to show you that I definitely need to work out. This is just disgusting.

Okay, so I went to SQL Server administration training last week. I learned lots of stuff, but here’s the primary set of stuff I gained from going to training:

First, going to training is like being on fucking vacation. Not having to go in to work, not having to deal with bitchy users all day, not having to troubleshoot crappy products or fix things I didn’t break and/or have nothing to do with… it’s brilliance. It’s like a nonstop party. Maybe I should be paid to go to training all day.

Second, while I absolutely hated school - both high school and college

• I dig the whole technical training gig. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m learning something I see value in, or maybe it’s that I’m learning things that I find interesting. Maybe both. The fact of the matter is, training classes are so vastly better than school I can’t begin to explain it. They should offer training classes instead of school. That’d rock.

Third, there’s a hell of a lot of stuff I have no idea about regarding database administration. There’s a lot of cool stuff out there that would make my day loads simpler, and I don’t know a damn thing about it. Going to the class was like this epiphany - all sorts of cool stuff I can implement that will make things run generally smoother and possibly shut some of the whiny users up. It just doesn’t get much better than that.

So, besides training, what’d I do all week?

Well, Jenn and I rented The Ring and Rocky on Friday night. The Ring was pretty good - more a psychological/image-oriented horror film than a slasher flick - and it was sorta freaky. Jenn’s sister called us at exactly the wrong moment in the movie and both of us screamed. I had only seen small clips of Rocky, and after talking about it with a friend of mine at the hockey game, I had to rent it to see for myself. How was it? Hmmm… Well, it won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1976 and I reflected on that for a while after seeing the movie… where were the standards in 1976? Best Picture, for crying out loud! Heads up our asses, man, heads up our asses.

Went to the last two Winter Hawks games of the regular season on Saturday and Sunday. I’m really glad the season’s over; I’m not going to go to the playoff games because I’ve been waiting so long for this season to end - I’m glad to finally have some free time to do stuff again. I’ll miss my hockey friends, but hopefully we’ll hang out during the off-season. I gave my friend Jerry my email address and phone number, maybe we’ll get together and watch the other four Rocky movies. Who knows?

Bought a couple of CDs in my off-time: Garbage - beautifulgarbage and Quarashi - Jinx. Both are good in their own right, though I’m sort of listening to them and hoping on a level that they grow on me a bit more. The Quarashi disc reminds me of Rage Against the Machine, which is fine, but I like them better because they’re not so politically-oriented as Rage is. The Garbage disc… there are a couple of really good ones on there, but for the most part it feels like they’re trying too hard to “be original” or some crap and rather than putting out good music they’re focusing on liberating their artistic creativity. Eh. If you do get that one, check out the remix program for your computer that comes on the disc. It’s really cool.

Got a call on the Friday before last from my mom telling me that my grandfather (mom’s dad) was in the hospital after having another heart attack. I rushed in to see him laying in the ICU, telling jokes and flirting with the nurses. He was out a couple of days later. In the scheme of things, as heart attacks go, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I’m glad he’s okay; I think he’s pretty well indestructible, and I like it that way.

Watched Survivor last night at my parents’ house. I was glad they voted Joanna’s whiny, annoying, overly-pious, off-key-singing, stupid ass off the show because she was irritating the living shit out of me.

I finished the majority of the sewing on this hat project I’m working on before Survivor started. It turned out pretty good, but I’m no professional tailor or anything. Now I’ve gotta wash it to get the disappearing ink to, well, disappear, and then I’m going to iron it and start beading it. I think once the beads get put on it’ll be a lot better. Right now it looks sort of rumpled and, while I am pretty pleased with it, I think it could be better.

We went to lunch today with the CTO of the company. He took the department out because he claims we’re doing a good job. I appreciate that he thinks so, but I’m honestly waiting for the other shoe to drop. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

The end of the hockey season is approaching, and I’m glad to see it coming. The Winter Hawks suck this season and as much as I enjoy hockey and seeing my hockey friends, it’s difficult to pay money for season tickets to a losing team. I have hope that next season the coach will kick their asses if they suck this bad again. I think we have like three games left; next Sunday is our last game. Hey, maybe I’ll actually have some free time after that. Wouldn’t that be novel?

I have learned a lot about SQL Server databases in the past couple of days. The primary lesson is: if you have a 10GB database on a 25GB drive and you decide to delete a large portion of the database, the database transaction log will not hesitate to fill up the remaining 15GB of disk space and crash the system.

Rockstar Games is distributing the original Grand Theft Auto game for PC - free! All you have to do is sign up and download it. It’s 300+ MB, so a fast connection is key, but that’s cool that they’re giving it away. I downloaded it and burned it to disc. I’ll have to try it out one of these days.

I cannot wait for March 23 - I am impatient for my GBA SP.