Sunday, 21 July 2002
11:59pm

M

y birthday came and went without too much fanfare which is how I wanted it, really. I got to see my parents a lot (not my sister though... she is currently running around Europe somewhere)... I also got to visit with Lawrence, Zac and Karen, and I saw my old college roommate Kenny for the first time in a long time. I got to drive his S2000 while jealous riceboys looked on. Fun little car to say the least. I got a phone call from Helen wishing me a happy birthday, and also from Jenny who left a message on my phone -- she sang happy birthday to me... how sweet :)
Since my sister received a flat screen monitor for her computer for graduation, I was able to steal away her old 17" monitor to replace the seriously aging 15" one I had on my Windows 2000 machine... wow, what a difference. Bigger, brighter, sharper, better! That old one was 6 or 7 years old and was definitely fading fast! Of course, I have to deal with all the Blues Clues stickers she's placed all over it, but I'll gladly deal with that for a free monitor, hehe.
Before heading back to San Diego, I rescued Cami and Jeff from their little predicament, and picked them up from Jeff's family's house in Glendora. If you're lucky, one of them might even tell you about it all. As for myself, I'm gonna get ready for bed. Good night.

Monday, 22 July 2002
11:59pm

T

oday I went out with Tracy, a friend of mine who wanted to go see Road to Perdition and then maybe get some dinner afterwards for my birthday. And so we did. The movie was as Cami described to me, a beautifully shot movie. But I think overall just an "OK" movie. But there definitely were some beautiful shots in this movie... I especially liked the one where Tom Hanks was putting together the tommy gun while standing in front of a portrait of Jesus and Mary. Also the whole scene with the dark street and the machine gun... that was pretty damned cool too. And the bathtub shot... was cool, but I felt like I'd seen that somewhere before... and the final tableau (ooh now that's a big word!) was quite striking in its composition. My hats off to the director of photography (who also worked with Sam Mendes the director on American Beauty, another beautifully shot movie). But yeah. Overall just an OK movie if you ask me.
For dinner we ate at the "bubble restaurant", in La Jolla... I hadn't eaten there in like 4 years and I didn't even know if it still existed. But it did. The food was pretty good, but the view is really great. And uh yeah. Hmmm.

So oh yeah, Cami and Jeff tried to bring me back some chocolate candies in the shape of green chips, but they melted while they were stuck in the desert, and they were covered with some chocolatey ooze, but I wanted to make a visual record of them before I tossed them out so you could all see what a cool gift it was. And here they are. Way cooler than gold coins, I say.

Tuesday, 23 July 2002
11:59pm

I

  guess instead of having one big birthday blowout, I've been having a bunch of little celebrations along the way, and tonight, I guess was the biggest. Cami, Jeff, Ben, Kris, Leanne, Marissa and I all went out to the Brazillian barbecue place downtown and stuffed ourselves full of skirt steak, garlic sirloin, bacon wrapped filet mignon, bacon wrapped turkey, pork ribs, beef ribs... and so on and so forth and uh yeah. We were very full. There's a pic or two from tonight but they are in Cami's camera so I'll have to post it some time when I get ahold of it/them.
In other news, I have two new reviews for you over at the DVD Review and that's about it for right now.

Friday, 26 July 2002
11:59pm

S

o I'm back at my folks' place to finish putting together that new computer for my sister. On the way up here I saw the Tony Hawk's Gigantic Skatepark Tour bus going north on the 5. According to their website, they hit up the Encinitas YMCA skatepark today... I used to skate there a lot back in the day, you know, back before I got all fat and out of shape... oh, and back in the days where I carried medical insurance.
Well, with the new (actually my old) power supply and Zac's video card, it seems to be running fine. Tomorrow I'm gonna replace that tiny and slow 6GB hard drive with one of my old 20GB ones. In preparation for receiving a lot of video footage to edit from the riceboypage meet in vegas, I replaced one of the drives in my mac with a 60 gigger, and the one it replaced is going into my sister's computer tomorrow, if all goes well.
And if all does go well, then I will have a spare Celeron 300 mhz system back in my possesion, with that pitiful 6GB hard drive, but better than nothing, I guess... I'm not exactly sure what I'll do with it, especially since, believe it or not, it's actually an AT form factor case and motherboard... but I'm sure I'll find some use for it. Hmm I have Cami's old hard drive sitting around too... that's probably another 5 gigs right there. That would probably make a decent MP3 server or something... well maybe if it had a bit more storage than that.
Well, I'm rambling on, so I'll end this update real quick by saying that I've reviewed the Bond film Diamonds are Forever in the DVD Review, and it even comes with some screen shots of some great vintage shots of Las Vegas. Have a good weekend y'all.