If the last few days are any indication as to how hot it's going to be here this summer, I'm moving to Alaska tomorrow. And not only was it super hot, but they tell me that it gets about 20 degrees hotter in the summer. What? Really? I thought I moved to Lincoln, not hell.
In other news, if you need me for the next few weeks, I'll be playing Grand Theft Auto IV. Or GTA, if you're in "the know". The funniest part about me buying GTA is that Nicki will be begging me to give her the controller so she can carjack someone and drive around town running people over and smashing into things. And you thought I was demented?
And finally, I've lost 12 pounds since March 8th people. 12 pounds. Lots of water, and a ton of cardiovascular exercises. Like running, jogging (I believe it's pronounced yogging) and biking.
I'm kinda proud to say I choreographed this fight.
And here is a VERY brief bio I put together of myself. I just really honestly don't have time to write and post the entire thing however.
Recently Ricky's genealogy and ancestry was traced all the way back to the Mayflower Voyage. Both Edward Borba, later a Governor and Governor Bradford of the Mayflower are ancestors to Mr. Borba. This may explain his passion to fight for what he believes is right and never give up.
Ricky solo'd five different types of aircraft on his sixteenth birthday, solo'd a glider at sixteen, became a private pilot at age seventeen and started the world's first computerized aircraft multi-listing service before the fax machine was popular or widespread computer use. During this time, Ricky was also the Western Regional Advertising Representative for The Pacific Flyer, a major general aviation newspaper.
Ricky was a Junior Olympic AAU track and field champion starting at age ten which culminated into a track scholarship to college, which he chose not to take advantage of. During his youth, Ricky posted four consecutive years of no defeats. He continues running to this day. In addition to track and field Ricky was involved in other team sports, including soccer, which he played for 7 years. Four years in AYSO- American Youth Soccer Organization, 2 years of Club Soccer and one year in HS.
Ricky had early interests in architecture and the sketching of WWII aircraft. He built many plastic and balsa wood aircraft models. He also built and airbrushed 100's of army tanks and other military models. Later he got involved in HO scale railroad models.
Ricky is also an accomplished motorcycle street racer and got into much trouble in his youth when he was not on the race track, most of which was blamed on his warrior genes, as his dad was a US Navy fighter pilot. In high school Ricky was class president, four year varsity letterman and voted Most Likely To Succeed. He was President of his high school's Future Business Leaders of America club and Chess club. Ricky was in the Civil Air Patrol and the Boy Scouts Aviation Explorers while learning to fly as kid.
Ricky personally has assisted non-profit groups in raising over $500,000 in funds for their organizations. In 1995 he rode his bicycle from Oregon to Mexico 1360 miles in six days in a pledge drive for the Special Olympics. He was Deputy Grand Marshall and Honorary Sheriff for the county’s largest parade and largest non-profit fair west of the Mississippi. Ricky has been active in the Optimist Club, International and Kiwanis Clubs. He understands local politics having run in two consecutive elections for a city council seat. Ricky was appointed to the county's Council on Economic Vitality. He also served on the California Association of Governments. He founded the Neighborhood Mobile Watch Patrol which involves small businesses, chambers of commerce, police departments and cities. The entire program is privately funded. He also introduced a program where local businesses could sell their wares on the Internet, providing jobs, additional revenue for civic groups and increased sales volumes for many local merchants just as the Internet was getting started.
During the aftermath of the Northridge, California earthquake Ricky reconstructed a water purification plant for Unilab, a medical clinical laboratory testing corporation. His innovation in marketing has propelled The Car Wash Guys to celebrity status in many cities. Known for this enthusiasm, exuberance and motivation, Ricky Borba is a speaker for MBA programs at top colleges and universities.
Following exhaustive research and comprehensive comparisons of franchise case law, legislative updates and hundred's of other franchisor documents, Ricky wrote his own Uniform Franchise Offering Circular (UFOC), Franchisee Agreement with all exhibits. The ninety plus page legal document was approved by the California Department of Corporations in an unusually short timeframe. Ricky became a franchisor at age twenty-seven.
Ricky is currently in training for a long-distance bicycle ride from Canada to Mexico. If this works out he will ride from San Diego to Virginia Beach on a blistering 3-week time table. He also has his sights on setting the World Record for riding to all Continental states in the shortest time, using a high-tech carbon ten speed which weighs 16.7 lbs.
I've begun enjoying a couple of other sports. One of the sports I enjoy watching and playing the video game version of, and the other sport I only enjoy playing the video game version of. And if you've been a reader of my website/blog for a while you probably know one of them already.
Hockey. Hockey is cool. No pun intended. Seriously. It's fun to watch, and it's fun to playon the PS3 or XBOX 360. It's fast-paced, dudes check each other (which means they basically slam into each other while skating as fast as they humanly can), fights break out all the time, and it's fun to listen to all of the announcers because most of them are from Canada, eh. I don't understand all of the nuances of Hockey. I don't understand the penalties, and I sure as hell don't understand why the players don't wear face guards. Half of the guys I've seen are missing some, if not all of their teeth AND all of their noses look more crooked than a politician in an election year. Still, I get the basics, and I've really enjoyed watching the Sharks play in the playoffs this year. Right now they're winning game 7 by the score of 3-2, and it's been exciting to watch the whole time. Hockey is cool, and you should at least watch one game.
Now, this second admission of mine is a little hard to swallow, because I've given Nicki such a hard time for being SO into it. Soccer. Yeah that's right, soccer. To quote Mike Ward, lead singer of the band "The Business End" and current best friend of mine, "It's a beautiful game, Rick". (By the way, Mike is one of 4 people I allow to call me Rick. So don't try it.) And it is. Soccer is beautiful. It's not very fast paced, the players are all huge sissy's (I mean come on, someone could spit on their shin and they'd go down wincing in pain), a lot of time is spent passing to teammates behind you, the whole time keeping system blows goats, and the overtime system isn't that great. Still, it is beautiful. And I enjoy playing it on my 360. It's fun. Trust me. However, I still can't bring myself to watch it on TV. It's slow, boring, and I have no patience in waiting 45 minutes for 1 score. So until Kayla or Brielle start playing soccer, I refuse to watch it in real life.
Having said all that, Basketball sucks. I've tried. Really I have. But something about that sport really rubs me the wrong way. It flat out sucks. And Golf shouldn't even be classified as a sport, so I'm not even going to dignify an explanation for why I loathe that acquired skill.
In the 8 minutes I've taken to write this, the Sharks have scored twice. 5-2 Sharks. Exciting, see?!
I don't follow politics, and I'm not a democrat, so the dream I had was especially weird. I dreamed that I was at a dinner table with Barack Obama. We both sat down and I was allowed to ask him anything I wanted. So I asked him what his definition of God was, and what it meant to "follow God". I don't remember specifically how he replied, except that he said things like "God is this ambiguous being, that can mean very different things to different people." He said some more vague things about what it meant to follow God, and then he got up and left. I remember thinking in my dream that I felt like he was full of crap, and was being intentionally non-offensive about his answer.
After Barack was done, Hillary Clinton sat down and I asked her the same exact questions. She answered the same exact way as Barack did, and I was equally disappointed in her. She got up to leave, and I said good bye to her. Then all of a sudden, she turned around and sincerely apologized for her answers and asked if I would let her re-answer the questions. She started crying really intensely, and told me that following God also meant following Jesus, and then she went on to describe Christianity. She gave me a huge hug at the end of her speech while still crying, and left. After she left, I turned to whoever it was that was in the room wiith me and said "Well, I'm voting for her now."
But in real life, I'm not. So there.
And then there's this. Worst. Fight. Ever. I remember watching this rerun as a kid and being terrified of that green monster. Fast forward 20 some years later, and it looks like they're both fighting underwater. Seriously, pay attention at about 20 seconds in. And I'm also a fan of about 1:20 in when the actor in the suit realizes a giant rock just hit him. Too bad he realizes this about 7 seconds after it actually happened.
To those of you out there without children, this might seem like a fine time to get up and start the day. But to someone like me, who has created a daughter that shuns sleep like Dwight shuns Andy, this feels like hour 72 of a "see how long you can stay up without any sleep" contest. Brielle turned 6 months old yesterday. (By the way, she's in her walker right now, smiling at me as if she knows I'm writing about her and how exhausted I am because of her. It's kind of a "I love you daddy" smile.) At 6 months old, Kayla was sleeping through the entire night. In fact if I remember correctly, there were some mornings that Nicki and I would get up, and little 6-month old Kayla had breakfast on the table for us and had started in on things like cleaning the kitchen and vacuuming.
Brielle however is your typical 6-month old. She's practically up all night, and then she gets up for GOOD around 6:30. Sometimes she just plays in her crib and we're able to fall back asleep (her crib is in our room still) but most of the time she wakes up, realizes she's all alone in this crazy world, and starts screaming accordingly. And although I feel like I've been subject to a sleep deprivation POW technique, I'm pretty sure Nicki has it worse, because she's actually breast feeding Brielle 2 to 3 times a night still. Although I don't stay up with Nicki the entire time, I do get up every time. And I think not being able to sleep for more than 2 and a half hours at a time is NOT GOOD for you. That's what I think. I realize I only have myself and Nicki as test subjects and that I'm not a scientist, but just take my word on this ok?
Case and point is last night. I'm 30. I'll go ahead and say that this is probably the prime of my life. I'm taking my vitamins, have lost 1o pounds since March 8th, and I'm generally feeling pretty good these days. (Except for the lack of sleep and being tired). So last night I went to a concert. A band called Project 86. I've seen them in concert once before, 4 years ago, and I remember really liking them. Despite liking that concert though (which was the first time I'd heard them) I've still never downloaded bought any of their music, so last night was only the second time I'd heard them. Ok. Back to my point. I know I was AT the concert last night because my right ear is STILL ringing. Seriously. I feel like I was on the deck of a USS Warship when it fired off a few rounds. But if it weren't for the constant ring in my right ear right now, I doubt I'd remember going. That's not true really, but what is true is that I was at the very front of the stage for a ROCK concert, and I must have yawned about 19 times. Seriously, no joke. I'm pretty sure the lead singer of Project 86 felt like he was the worst performer ever, because he saw me yawn, 2 feet from his face, mid-song, about 4 separate times. Poor guy. It's not my fault though.
And last but not least, there's THIS: http://tubemall.net/undeletube.php?v=ePdRjB-JkOE That link will take you to the new trailer for the new Star Wars movie coming out this summer. That's right, you read correctly. A new Star Wars movie is being released this summer. You probably haven't heard of it because it's computer animation and not live-action. So don't be too down on yourself. Anyway, my problem with this animated movie can be summed up in 8 words; "should have been in the live-action movie". Everything I saw in this new trailer made me want to drive 2 hours to San Rafael, and wake up George Lucas by kicking him in the nuts. Why is all the cool stuff in THIS movie? And we did we have to sit through dialog like "I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth." Reading that out of context you'd think I was quoting your mom's romance novel. Cheesy and lame. Bad dialog aside, the prequels have honestly disappointed me, and a lot of fans. Sparing all of you another 4 paragraphs of geek complaints, I'll just say this, that all of the cool action sequences, story revolving around the army of the republic, and Anakin's increasing frustration with the Jedi order should have ALL been in the live-action prequels. Still though, disappointment aside, I still love the new prequels, and this new animated movie looks pretty cool. (Even if it does look like one giant cutscene from a Star Wars video game).
But it's bothering me. I used to get well over 3000 hits a month on my website/blog, and I am steadily hovering around right about 1000 now. I have a few theories, but nothing concrete. I know for a long time that I had messed up some code on my page that wasn't allowing half of the internet explorer users onto my page, but I fixed that a couple months ago. Hmmm.
Anyway, my clothes should be done drying now. Good night.
I think I figured it out. I went back and looked at my web stats for last year and the year before. I noticed that the huge drop-off started in September of last year, which was when I decided to remove the forums from my website because they totally sucked and the only things getting posted on them was spam. I had over 1500 hits a month just to the forums. And I'd say 99.9999% of those hits were spam. So there you have it. I cracked the case. My human hits are still a little lower than before, but I think that's because I had the problem with Internet Explorer, and some people probably thought my website went bye bye.
Yesterday was my Uncle Louie's funeral. He was 80 something I think. I was kinda close to him. He was awesome. We couldn't make the funeral due to being in dire straights financially, so I want to share the two little stories I was going to say at his funeral. Ready?
Growing up, I remember seeing Uncle Louie underneath the hood of his orange ford mustang ALL THE TIME. (pause for slight laughter because it's true AND funny) So I guess that made him a bad mechanic? (wait for an uproar of laughter and possible cheering)
And then this little nugget:
About 8 years ago, my cousin Kev and I were at Grandmas playing a hockey video game. This particular game had built in names you could use for hockey players you created on your own. You weren't able to actually use your real name because like I said, as there were only about 20 names that were pre-built into the game that you could choose from. One of the names available for use just happened to be "Uncle Lou". So I chose that name because it was funny to hear the announcer say "Uncle Lou with the slapshot! Uncle Lou gets checked into the boards!" and what not. Well one day Uncle Louie came over while Kev and I were playing. He kept hearing the video game say those things. So he came over to me very sincerely and said "Hey how come they keep saying Uncle Lou?" I told him "That's the name I chose for this guy to have!" Uncle Louie thought I must have done it in his honor because he said "Wow, I can’t believe you'd name your guy after me! That's pretty neat! Thanks!" Me, not wanting to take the air out of his sails, I didn’t have the heart to tell him it just happened to sound funny to me at the time.
I'm watching the Oakland Athletics play their home opener right now on my huge TV. And I'm sad. Why? Well, because since 2001, I have not missed an Oakland A's home opener. Not one. Every year I'd go with a group of friends, usually Jackson, Jesse, Michael and others, and we'd sit in the second deck, talk about how excited we were that the A's could go all the way that year, and then make out with each other out of sheer excitement. I texted the guys tonight, to see if they were in fact going to the game, or if they were going to sit this one out because you should NEVER LEAVE A MAN BEHIND. YOU HEAR THAT JESSE AND JACKSON?YOU NEVER LEAVE A MAN BEHIND. I mean really, how selfish are you guys? I move to Lincoln, a good 2.5 hours away from the Oakland Coliseum, thus negating me from attending any A's games without making an entire day out of it. And what do you guys do? You keep tradition. And don't give me that "Ricky would have wanted us to go" crap either. Because if you would have taken the COMMON COURTESY to call and ASK me what I thought, I would have told you both to STAY HOME AND WATCH IT FROM YOUR LIVING ROOM, LIKE ME.
And now you just watched Jack Cust hit a home run. I'm watching it in Lincoln. On my couch. Alone. Naked. Crying. With bean dip. I hate you guys.
