A good friend makes you more than you thought you could be.

A good friend can even make you into a lucador.



I have a good friend, indeed.

Spent my new years with some friends. We went to Marinaccio's on Main Street in Williamsville.

It's supposed to be fine dining, and Lance Diamond was playing their ballroom, so it looked like a perfect fit. I'd given my wife one of them "good anywhere" gift certificates, and Marinaccio's is on the list. She wanted to try the place... so off we go.

Well, seeing Lance Diamond was fun, as Lance always is. The man's a Buffalo, NY staple. The restaurant, well that's another story. We quickly found that the place is WAY overpriced (Surf and Turf for $76... you gotta be kidding me!!), the wait staff was kinda rude, and they actually tried to refuse to take a gift certificate. Not a coupon... a gift certificate. I had to explain to the manager that this wasn't a discount. I'd already paid them when I bought the certificate. After some arguing, they realized that they were wrong and took the certificate.

On to the meal...

I had shrimp with scallops over angel hair pasta. It was OK. I didn't take a picture b/c it wasn't worthy. Totally average. I was so expecting above average. (The prices mandated above average!) Others among my friends had salmon steaks (neither finished them due to blandness), and one of us had the chicken. At $21, a chicken entree better be yummy. The review was: This tastes like boiled chicken. Not good at all. A $160 check later, dinner was over and no one was too satisfied... So, it's on to LANCE DIAMOND!


We decided to make the evening more fun than it was...

Here's Andy and Shannon...


Andy drank about half a bottle of Cutty Sark (yeah, Cutty Sark... *barf*) This is Andy looking kinda evil.


Here's Lance attempting to get the party moving. Unfortunately, most of the crowd would require 3 to 6 Viagra and/or a Rascal Scooter to actually get moving.


Lance rocks a mean party. We got to watch about 30 nearly-geriatric couples shake things that shouldn't shake. I did notice one Buffalo school board member on Lance's bongos. It got me thinking... Bongos in Lance's band and Buffalo's school board members. What do these 2 have in common? If you guessed "They're both totally useless and just suck up resources." You'd be correct.


Chris ((e:ruleofblue)) insisted I take a picture of the under-developed balloon embryos that appeared to be digesting in a transparent plastic whale above the tiny dance floor. Note the old geezers shaking it to Lance Diamond. Man, his show's too good for that place. WTF was lance doing out there??

Here's a pic of me with a cutout of Lance. I was drunk, it was late. No excuse...



Anyways... much fun was had, and I learned that Merinaccio's is a waste of money. I also get to pass that along to you in the hopes that others will not fall into the pitfall we fell into.

Tomorrow I start a new life working from home. Got my home office all set up, my work vonage account set up. I'm ready to go. The feeling of freedom is mildly terrifying. No office to go to. No clock to punch.

I'm looking forward to the work, that's for sure. I'll be working with new technologies in a budding new field on a top-notch product. I just pray I don't come to resent my new office confines as much as I hated cubicle life.

So I got me this cool new gig working for www.e2campus.com

It's a work from home job (awesome) and requires me to be up on the latest mobile technology.

Thus I've got this new "blackberry curve". I was skeptical at first, but man, this thing is sweet.

It even takes decent pictures. Here's a shot of my lil dog, Miss Millie.

Looking for a dog park in Buffalo? Well, most people have heard about the one in LaSalle Park. That's a nice facility and all, but after the 100th visit or so, you might be looking for somewhere else to take your 4-legged friend..

Not many people know about the "secret" dog park... Amherst State Park (WIKIPEDIA - Amherst State Park) on Mill Street in Williamsville. (MAP TO: 400 MILL STREET)

It's a beautiful old abandoned apple orchard, with a stream running through it and PLENTY of room to run. This little known gem in Amherst has been a closely guarded secret of the residents of Amherst for years.

Here's the catch... it's a STATE PARK... it's for everyone, not just rich white folks in Amherst. So I'm blogging here to let everyone know about it. If you're looking for a good "off leash" dog park, check out the AMHERST STATE PARK. Your taxes are paying or it, so go enjoy it!

Technically, the rules say you're supposed to keep your dog on the leash at all times, but from what I saw, no ones seems to follow that rule. Most people show up at 5 or 6pm on weekdays and let the dogs play 'til sunset... it's a blast!

As you may have noticed, my e-strip productivity has kinda died off. I haven't stopped writing, I've just moved it to my own little corner of the web. This will likely be my last post here, unless I use the API and tie it into Mambo somehow...

Why? This move is a good thing. Mainly b/c my wife and I have lots of stuff to post, much more than blog entries. Our main project on the site (ivyhurst.com) is our family genealogical project.

If you've never done any genealogy for your family, you totally should. It's been the most addictive and rewarding hobby for my wife and I. Digging through old records, tracking family members through history, finding out that I might be somehow related to Jesse James... all cool stuff...

Anyways... that's all on our site. (and my stupidity in blog format is represented, as well.)

About the site:

I went with Mambo ([link=www.mamboserver.com]http://www.mamboserver.com[/link]) for our main CMS, as it was easy to set up and customize. I just customized the default template, installed a few components and it was a go. I'm currently working on a new template, and that's coming along nicely.

For the genealogical portal site, we used TNG). That was one of the better $40 I've spent, as the software creator was super helpful in installation and dealing with moving our stuff from "ancestry.com", who is a pack of morons (for reasons to be explained in later blogs). TNG took a standard GEDCOM file and built a dynamic portal via php and MySQL. Very easy to customize, and very slick.

Since 1 site is enough, looks like I'm taking my lil' blogginess over to my new website (http://www.ivyhurst.com).

I did enjoy e-strip, and may post here again at some point. The community aspect is great,and I'm quite sure I won't have as many folks stumble onto my rampant stupidity there as would here, but that's OK. (Who really reads this stuff, anyways?)

-S