burnaby t wallace

After one decent band, and a not-so-much band, and standing for 4 hours already, we finally got to see Chris Daughtry at the Belly Up Tavern. If I could sum up the whole concert in two words…

Hurtyfeet Daughtryisawesome

I will be posting pictures soon.

Certainly has been a while since I have done one of these weekend reviews.

 I finished the graphics for the wedding website. If you are invited, you will be recieving a save the date pretty soon–which I also finished designing. My fiancee is working on the AJAX and the code integration for the site and I will share the URL once it is ready.

 Finished watching some Blockbuster movies and went to Petco Park for Friarfest. Toot’s and I got on the jumbotron and they caught us kissing–which was cool. Then we went to Costco and picked up some food for couple’s night.

Couple’s night was pretty cool. Joining us was my groomsman, Jeremy, and his fiancee, Shaula. We also had Rick and Arlene here and we all started chatting about tons of stuff–from wedding preparations to ghosts and orbs on pictures. The night continued with some board games and crazy ukelele playing.

The next day, the future missus and I went to the convention center for the San Diego Bridal Bazaar. There, we found the seat covers, florist, tuxes and gowns, and ideas for the giveaways. Good times, good times. Expensive, but good times.

And that brings me here, to the time I write this post. Taking a break from the web developing, watching Brando in a surprisingly masculine role not too far off from his Godfather roles (it’s a musical). Yes, I am writing my blog sharing TV screen space with Guys and Dolls.

And though tomorrow is Monday, my weekend is not over (at least in my mind) because we are seeing Duaghtry at the Belly Up Tavern. Yep, that’s right…you know…the guy who should have won last season’s American Idol. Pretty much, isn’t his album outselling the winner (Taylor Hicks) anyway?

Anyway, time to bring this italics-fused entry to a close. It’s time for bed.

Thinking that I was deleting my cache locally stored on my computer, I used Microsoft Live Writer to delete some posts–again, thinking that I was deleting from a local cache–just to tidy up.

Not so much.

After I found out that I was deleting my posts and was very deep into last year, I freaked out. I mean, it’s the digital equivalent of ripping pages out of one’s diary, or looking into that one chrome highlighter thing from Men In Black and removing any recent memory.

Coincidently, I updated my Wordpress on Monday–making backups and all that stuff. So, after not finding anything on the internet on how to recover from backups, I began playing with the little SQLdatabase. I recovered and *presto* I got everything back.

Up to that point.

So I’m missing anything recent–comments and maybe a post or two. But it’s better than nothing.

Sweet! I got tickets for the sure-to-be-sold-out Padres/Red Sox game. Let me
just say that if I lived in the east coast, I would be a Red Sox fan. So to
have both of them come out here and play at Petco Park–huzzah!

Of course, to get them (before single day seats go on sale in March), I had
to buy a set of tickets for other games. Kind of like season tickets, but
not.

I am a tenth of a season ticket holder!

Great! You can believe I will be taking pictures. Of course, I could only
afford tickets in the nose bleed section, but that’s what telephoto lenses
are for, right?

So things have been pretty busy here, on my end.

I am cleaning and wiring my house, painting and mounting home theater stuff to my walls, meeting my social responsibilities and…oh yeah, preparing to get married in six months.

February is a short month, so it doesn’t really count. Sheesh! So it’s even less…I just lost a month. And in June, I am a groomsman and it’s my birthday. There you go, just lost another month.

Ohmygoodness.

Wow! It’s just around the corner.

So we were working on the website, which will be uploaded and posted very soon…on the same server that this here blog sits.

As of right now, we need to send out the save-the-dates, decide on a florist and get a tux. Then it’s all about the reception and writing vows.

We can do it. If I can come up with an entire national NEPLO conference training curricullum and procure the needed computers and services and speak in front of hundreds of Navy officers–all within three weeks…I can prepare for this wedding (*gulp*). I was watching this show on TV and after the crazy preparations of a wedding, the couple seem to lean towards eloping as the stress-free way of tying the knot. While funny, I think we can handle the stress.

See you at the Bridal Bazaar this weekend, peeps!

I found out that the last co-founder left flock to land some dream job at Bessemer. Now the CEO of Flock is Shawn Hardin, formerly of Yahoo!

Some say this may be the beginning of the end for Flock. I hope not. There has been no other browser with such sweet web 2.0ness. I hope that Flock jumps over to the updated Firefox code very soon.

Read the article here.

After reading David Pogue’s FAQ on the iPhone, I found one line that made me completely change my techno iPhone desires. One line…

Will it sync with Outlook? –No.

Read it and weep.

Warning, extensive use of the word fat. If you are fat, and don’t like being called fat (ie, you haven’t accepted yourself), then skip this entry. I’ve accepted it, my girlfriend likes the meat on my bones, and I can do most anything a skinny person can do. Except, apparently, shop at Banana Republic.

Check.

So I got this email from Banana Republic telling me that they now have a big & tall-friendly section of the website. Cool, I thought–as skinny people look good in clothes–it’s easy for them. However, buying clothes for the rest of us (the fatter crowd), it’s a gamble to see how the stripes look, how the clothes hang over certain curves that skinny people don’t have, and…of course…

the man boobs.

Trying clothes on doesn’t help, either, as the lighting in many clothing stores are flattering, plus people usually see themselves standing in front of the mirror. It’s sitting at a desk in front of a computer, or at a table in a restaurant, that people need to see themselves. That’s when good ol’belly can’t hang down and has no choice but to find places outward to protrude toward. That’s when the shirt wonders–hey, what’s going on here?

You see…skinny people don’t have to worry about this. Unfortunately, most American’s are not skinny.

So imagine how cool it was to hear about the new Banana Republic store carrying clothes made for the bigger person. And since you can’t try on virtual clothes, you would at least see it on someone that represents the rotund populace. Right? It is big & tall, after all.

Well, one quick look at the site and you can see, uhm…rather, not see, how fat-unfriendly the store is. There are over three hundred pictures specifically in the big & tall section. Probably closer to four hundred.

Not a single fat man picture.

Why don’t they just call it Banana Republic’s tall & pretty store.

And they aren’t the only ones (ahem, Gap/Old Navy–we know you’re the same company). Even stores that cater specifically to the “big & tall crowd are guilty. Go ahead…google “big and tall” and click on any of the first ten links–not a single fat person.

I am just bouncing on Banana Republic because they sent out a friggin’ email advertising the fact that they “cater” to the big people.

It’s a huge (pun) part of the population, people! It’s not hard. Make some clothes that look decent on large people–have them put it on, take some pictures, put it on the store’s website. Extra bonus points if you make a fat retail store display or even (gasp) a mannequin that’s fat.

A large friend of mine once said that if he were wealthy, he would create clothes for large people. You would think that someone out there who has the funds has had a vision like that and moved in that direction to make clothes for fat people.

I got tickets. But I am not going. So, it’s simply sitting in front of my screen with macrumorslive.com. I hope they come out with some cool laptop news.

Update–OMG…the Apple phone.

So it’s almost a third into this month and this is my first blog entry of the new year. So far, so good.

I took a few days off work so I could be productive around the house. Now, normally that means sitting down and playing video games all times of the night. While I did (we had a LAN/karaoke/Guitar Hero party), it was also one of the most.productive.times.off.ever.

I had no less than five tree stumps (that’s all of them–yay!) grinded off and removed from my front and backyard. With the help of the lovely fiancee, we have given the living a fresh new look, complete with some fresh new home theater equipment (HD-sick!). I discovered that running through the air is a ton of HD programming (PBS-HD is awesome, and so is the TUBE, a non-stop music channel that is better than MTV as they actually play music). I also ran some CAT6 (gigabit, baby) and wired up some gallery lighting. I also attended the San Diego International Auto Show and had good, albeit slightly-more-than-I-was-expecting, Thai food in downtown. Did I mention that we had a LAN party (three days)?

So yes, this year is starting off pretty cool.