On Sunday we hosted my friend Dave Doyle's surprise retirement party at our house. His ex-wife and daughters planned it all and thought that by having it at our house he would have no idea. We told him we were having a barbeque. Needless to say he was totally freakin' surprised when all his friends and family jumped out and yelled surprise! from behind our garage.

I invited my co-workers (e:jim) and (e:enknot) and their signfy-os - sorry everyone else but this was a family affair and not an estrip party - sorry (e:leetee)

This video says it all. In Dave's his daughter Erin gives a speech about his commitment to their family and what an awesome dad, dave is. It might make you cry if you are the emotional type.



Dave Doyle and his daughters Erin and Crescent


Dave Doyle's daughters and wife Lynn - who organized the party


Dave Doyle and his retirement cake


The cake gave everyone smurf tongues


Dave got a GPS navigation system - so now we won't get lost on trips anymore. I guess (e:terry) is out of a job.


Everyone looking for basra


(e:enknot) and megan and the almost ready baby ?


(e:enknot) and (e:matthew)


(e:jim) and (e:james)


We got our chiminea going and burned the rest of october surprise debris


Making Faces

Unfortunately, at the very same time I got sick. I think it has to do with going to the Dr. McClurr, my dentist over on West Utica last wednesday. The last time I visited that dentist I got sick afterwards too. The same thing happend to Nameless Bitch who also went there. Maybe its just coincidence. I think I will try another dentist next time. In fact the lazy dentist did not even show up for the appointment which was scheduled for 8:30 so instead I only saw the hygenist and I had to reschedule for the dentist. The hygenist kept telling me I needed braces. I am so over that after the visit to the orthodontist they recommended last time (e:paul,37587) .

I hate being sick in the summer. It really sucks. My throat and sinuses are all swollen and I have a massive headache, blah.

In order to feel better I made myself some clam and crab soup. I am really seafood obsessed. At the coop they have frozen baby clams for $2.99 a pack. They are quite tasty and make a great addition to soup and are quite pretty.





I think it is much better to eat the abby clams because compared to say cherry stone clams, the meat is about the same size, but the shell is tiny. And who needs all that extra shell to discard.


There is this really pretty beetle that is killing all our hollyhocks. They eat all the leaves, to the point where the hollyhocks didn't bother flowering this year.




My mother send my fur-E wallet back to me. I am using it as my normal waller now.


(e:terry) and I met (e:enknot) and megan for lunch on friday at Brodo. I had one of their yummy italian sausage focaccia pizzas.



It was good but I was so jealous of meagan who got the shrimp salad.


Afterwards I got a cinco from Spot. It is quite possibly the tastiest drink I ever had.


This weekend someone also stole of the people who works at the church's bike. Another girl who works there saw saw black dude leaning on the girls bike with his hand behind him. She didn't realize however, that he was cutting the chain. I found the chain aroudn the corner. Goes to show you that chain type locks are useless.


At 2:30am (e:oda) showed up on friday night to give her friend a tour of the house and hang out. I thought the days of 2:30 am visits were over now. I took this picture of our fireplace then.

Flowers from a wonderful boyfriend.

I love my brand new 4GB 256MB vid Santa Rosa 2.4ghz powerbook but it is also cooking my legs. I have decided I simply need to stop touching it to my lap as I am getting lapburn. So much for laptop. At least 90% of the time I am using it at one desk or another.



I looked more closely into the mobile mail processing and realized that apple was weirdly encoding some mail and that I had a typo where I typed $email->delete when I meant to type $email->deleted, oops.

It was a great day for computing for me, wrote some major enhancements for the surebert toolkit and framework and they came out with a skype client for my nokia n800 along with flash player 9. Not to mention that it now takes up to 16GB of external memory.

Unfortunately, the built-in video camera on the n800 takes about as quality a picture as my gameboy color camera attachment did. It is much better in the light.



On a really good note, my Nikon s7c camera arrived back in the mail after repairs today but I wasn't there to pick it up. I am going to work from home tomorrow morning until it shows up because it says I have to sign for delivery and i seriously don't think I could handle living without it much more.

That question is "not going to face this government," Bush said, chuckling slightly at a news conference with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "because we made up our mind. We've made that part clear. It'll face future governments. There will be future opportunities for people to say, 'Well, it's not worth it. Let's just retreat.' "

Since then, nearly 700 more American soldiers have died in a war that has now lasted more than four years, lost the lives of more than 3,600 U.S. troops, cost $10 billion a month -- and cost Republicans control of the House and Senate.

I love how it costs 10 billion dollars a month. I wish it was better phrased top money was transfered from the people to a select group of mega corporations. I am sure some of it is for the troops but a whole heck of a lot of it is for war machinery and infrastructure, which results in big companies getting richer and the American People losing money that could otherwise pay for a fucking hell of a lot of services. Imagine if our government had an additional 10 billion to spend on domestic programs.

I can't wait to read about how terrible Bush was in history books. Unfortunately, I will be one of those people that children ask why I didn't do anything about it.

Sorry we weren't able to find "paul visco" " on MySpace.com

Holy crap, I went on a little tour de myspace for the first time today - it kind of gives me that scummy feeling I get after hanging out at the pink.

Robert at work told me that Nick Battaglia, someone he knows, knew me. The name sounded familiar but I couldn't exactly remember who it was. So I searched their name online and ended up at ,which led me to myspace, which led me to see a hole bunch of people I know tangentially but did not know were interrelated. I realized through the connections that he was in fact the younger brother of someone I went to school with.

It all took me back to (e:chris)

I wonder if this will ever stop or if we will have 30 of them like we did with the pet mice in Germany.





An with special effects.




Scary

I was thinking about how I was getting bored with only computer languages and wanted to branch out back into human ones when I realized historical languages might be more fun.

Old English (WIKIPEDIA - old english) piqued my interest because of its tied to the germanic languages and because it is so interesting. I am over that desire now, but while I was researching the languages of yore, I found a site dedicated to linguistic that talk about cases.

I thought German having dative, accusative, nominative and genative was over the top but there are so many other cases out there

I think I am going to just go back to german and maybe just research a dialect.

I will never eat at Solid Grounds on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, NY again. I used to love it. In fact it was one of my favorite restaurants but now in July of 2007 it has gone really downhill. The decor, service, and food have all gone seriously downhill while the prices remained the same.

Our long haired, medium height, red-headed waitress at
Solid Grounds on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, NY sucked so much. She never even refilled our free refill lemonade. When the people behind us, which arrived after us, got their food I was pissed. (e:terry) joked that maybe our waitress had left. haha, right?

About five minutes later at Solid Grounds on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, NY our waitress shows up from the kitchen with her purse on and left the restaurant. What the hell!?

Eventually, some other waitress brought us our food minus the usual salad and potato side (on the menu) that makes $7.50 for an omelette seem reasonable.

Compare this very plain meal from today


with the very same order (e:paul,32837) placed in December of 2006

The salad was under the bread. Both of these same order of the same meal cost $7.50

Solid Grounds on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, NY also no longer have the slab style thick bacon, but have replaced it with ordinary thin bacon for the same price.

I heard some other guy complaining that he was charged for wheat toast that he asked for twice but never received. The girl at the counter actually asked him if he would like the side of wheat to go!

Totally unrelated, while sitting for 45 minutes waiting for my simple Apple Omelette at Solid Grounds on Elmwood in Buffalo, NY I read Artvoice and saw this ad. I can't believe there is a sale on VHS anything as we are in the era leaving normal DVD. Even weirder, is that it is for such a niche market.

I did a lot, managed to really hurt my neck again and still didn't dance.

Got a letter from Germany that the university I attended is having a 450 year anniversary and is inviting back all the Alumni. I would really like to go. I wonder if I can convince (e:matthew) . I should apply for italian citizenship first so that I can be all EU.

Taste of Buffalo was yummy. It is my favorite festival of all.

There were lots of people at The Taste Of Buffalo 07. I had fun with (e:terry) and (e:matthew) but no Taste of Buffalo is the same without (e:hodown) or (e:mike) , the biggest food enjoyers I know, neither of which I was with.


I ate craw dads, the main reason I like to go.





Everytime I see these cookies I think of (e:jim)


The polish sausage from the Polish Villa was tasty.


(e:terry) being attacked by a monster


Saw Matt Puchler - I was sad we didn't get to work together but it is really awesome working with (e:jim)

I finally painted the garage and the french doors on the back of the house. I am so happy as they really looked like crap before and it was stressing me out.





Then I attended Kenmore Days for the fireworks. Damn those people know how to put on a fireworks display. My cell phone can't manage fireworks pics like my real camera which is now totally missing in action.

I had my first taste of funnel cake, it was quite yummy.




I have been wanting to go dancing for so long but didn't notice Soma's chat post about the HEMF (music fest) on Grand Island until today ;(

Which led me to - I went to school with him in Kenmore. It is strange how our raver days never coincided. I think once when I was home and he was home we saw each other at a party. Now we are neighbors, he lives in the building behind us, but we haven't hung out - even though I saw him and said I would call. I am just not good at making friends or doing things other than computing / house repair.