Run With Scissors

Sup?

So I must say my new goal to cut down filling my downtime with the Internets has been rewarding. I’m down to pretty much having to have an agenda when I go on my laptop, today it was to catch up on all the shows I bittorrented this week (sweet sweet torrentspy).* Unfortunately, today’s casino excursion was postponed due to blizzard conditions, damn it. So instead, I’ve loafed around the apartment cleaning up from last night. Here’s a hint, somewhere between happy hour and power hour, have dinner. Otherwise, you burn out way too early in the night and miss out on ugly strippers.

Other fun notes:

• Watch committed. Holy crap, its like the LST crew got to make a TV show. Cripples, Old clowns, parapelgics all have been made fun of in 5 shows. Toss in poop jokes, a surprisingly hot lead lady, and this show is firing on all cylinders.
• Sabrina Lloyd is working again, this time in Numb3rs. This could confirm my theory about her being the black cat of the witty TV industry. You may remember her from Sports Night and the Season 3 of Ed, both of which were canceled. Quick poll, Carol Vesey or Sabrina? I think Ed made the wrong choice.
• So far in NFL playoff picks, I’m 4-4, with the Vikings and colts killing me last round. I’m back on the Pats bandwagon until they lose. Also, I’ll pick Atlanta to upset the Eagles.
• New job is nice. Another hint, if you have a co-worker on your team who sits away from the team, even by one row, go over and say hi every now and again. Being that much of the team’s beaten path definitely drops the social conversations you have. And I say this as someone who’s been on both sides of the issue (guess which side I’m on now ;p )

Superbowl poker tourney!

2pm start at my place, $10 buy in, top 3 pays. Aiming for 15-20 ppl.
Sign up in the comments section, or email me. (d o n j a y @ g m a i l . c o m)

Cashing out

I’ve come to the conclusion that my life has become way to boring. This fact occurred to me when I was able to sum up the last year in three sentences to a friend I was catching up with this weekend (and on the same subject, sorry for that last entry, I thought it was pretty crappy but felt compared to do some sort of year end wrap up).

So what’s to be done? Well, mainly I’ll be getting the hell off this machine. My one promise to myself was that I wouldn’t simply start plopping on the couch after work everyday, which I’ve been doing anyway. So starting tomorrow, all three (3!) of my computers will be powered down till further notice (laptop for work email may be the only exception). My new activities will be planning in detail my California plans, maybe budgeting a month or so to bum around the state before settling in SF to set up shop with The Berg. Other weekend trips (Boston, DC, Vegas, SF) will also be explored. And since I’m here, I’ll be enjoying Rochester. It’s a waste to be living in the young and cultural part of the city, and just watch Tivo’ed Adult Swim 2 hours each night.

So, leave comments to say hi or suggest fun Rochester things, or good places to go travel, I’ll still check this from work, and maybe hack a quick php script so I can still update this thing. Or even better, call me (five eight five, seven three nine, six nine three eight).

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

My 2004 review, if not a few days late. I’d rank the first half of the year as sucking, mainly for some big disappointments (I’m looking at you Google, fuckers), but the year finished strong (with the exception of November, which was a terrible month in every sense of the word). Onto the highlights…

Spring – I can do a quite a bit, but trying to trade up girlfriends and jobs in the same week was just a bit too much for me. Hey, I got some good stories and a trip to California out of it. Missing the Google job still pisses me off from time to time, especially now that they’re in the news everyday. Here’s a little hint 60 minutes won’t tell you, they’re HR staff has a nasty habit of stringing people out for 6 weeks at a time (when they say they’ll get back to you in a week). VERY unprofessional. Engineers were great though, damn smart people.

Summer - Being single made this summer damn fun, most days consisted of Golf (broke 100 a few times), boozing, and watching my checking account go in the right direction. Add a dash of hitting Charlotte beach and you got a good couple of months. Xerox started in July, as did my bi-monthly casino trips (and an uncanny winning streak). Oh yeah, and I moved on up to the new apartment in Park Ave. Also notable, Banner and Amanda leaving the area for Boston, the group’s first big exodus.

Fall – So apparently there was an election, I can’t remember, I passed out from having an embolism. November 3rd felt like someone died, I still haven’t been able to get back into politics, and I’m feeling myself grow very cynical (let’s just have fun and see how far down he can drag the country). Shortly thereafter, my grandfather died.

There were good times also, namely Eric’s wedding and the now infamous trips to Vegas & Boston.

All in all, the year from June on was pretty nice. Any good Don Jay 2004 moments? Share em below.

At Jud Berg’s request, an update (a hungover stream of thought entry).

Happy New years all. Six hours of sleep later I taste like cigars and booze. Good times. I’ve wanted to update for a while but the holiday thing had me running around. So lets just go through (this will probably be long, lot of stuff).

• The big “secret development” is that I’m switching jobs and leaving Xerox. My project there was canceled/pulled out, luckily I’m a contractor. That meant that within a day of learning about the cancellation, I had two interviews lined up at other places, and will now be working at current communications. They seem like a cool little company, they specialize in Broadband Over Power line. I’ll be helping write their internal apps, should be fun.
• It seems I’m no longer the smart sibling. My sister’s been accepted to be an intern at the Supreme Court, apparently one of the toughest internships to get down there. She takes off in 2 weeks, and will be down there for the whole semester. If you’d like to track her process, check out www.kateindc.com (yes I know, her name is Katie, but I bought the wrong domain without realizing it).
• Holy crap, the Bills just might make the playoffs! This has been the first season that meant anything since my freshman year of college. After that 0-4 start, everyone kinda groaned, and even when they started winning no one that it mattered. But when everyone but Denver lost last weekend, all we have to do is Beat Pittsburgh (resting their starters) and wait for either Pennington or Plummer to melt down. Yeah, having to rely on Mike Martz scares the hell out of me, but I’ll take my chances. And yes, I think our D can shut down Manning (if anyone knows the no huddle, it’s Buffalo and its fans. Hell just grab a polish guy from Cheektowaga and have him be the D coordinator, he remembers how Parcells did it to Kelly in the first Superbowl, we all do).
• 55 degrees for New Years made having the cigar a lot easier.
• This week another buddy leaves Rochester. Bryan (or as he’s come to be known, BERG!) has taken a job out in Palo Alto (Donna & Teddy, if you read this say hi to him when he’s out there). He’s gonna kick the place’s ass, and knowing another friend out there makes me want to be out there that much more. We’re doing a dinner party here for him tonight, should be a good sendoff.
• A great question from the latest Sports Guy column…if the Bush twins did Playboy, what would be the headline of the article? Presidential Sweet? The first Twins? Let’s make this a RWS reader challenge. Best response wins a beer from me next time I see you.