Jackie posted about the coolest site ever on her blog, Last.fm. It shows what music you've been listening to as well as some various trend information about what you listen to. It's also pretty cool because you can put your recently listened to songs on your website. Like this:



Cool huh? Well I thought so! You can view more of my recently played music here.

The Cubs traded Greg Maddux today, which I'm not really happy about but I can understand why they'd do it. Because they did this I really hope that they can find a really good young pitcher from the minors that can take over Maddux's spot in the rotation.

I went to Walmart this weekend looking for "weird" or different sodas that I could try. I had never actually tried Tab, so I decided to get that. Tab, as many of you may know, used to have a warning label on it saying that the artificial sweetener used in it caused cancer in lab mice. Well apparently that evidence wasn't enough because it's not on the can anymore. But I'm not too impressed with Tab anyway, it just tastes like Diet Pepsi, but a little more weird tasting. I also got one of the new Fresca flavors, black cherry and citrus. It's pretty good, but I think I like normal Fresca better.

I found out when I'll be coming back home next. I'll be coming back to Green Bay August 18th-21st.

I've been getting some irritating headaches the past few days, after a week or so without anyway. Friday I had one that wouldn't go away (which I posted about last time) and today I have one that doesn't seem to want to go away. My eyes have been irritated a lot too the past few days so I think it might have to do with the hot weather and allergies. It also doesn't help that for some reason our bathroom smells like cigarette smoke today. We have no idea why but we keep using Febreze in there to stop it.

The Cubs finished their sweep of the Cardinals today. So they've gone 6/7 versus the two best teams in the National League this past week. I'm hoping for a historic comeback and they make it into the playoffs somehow. So what if they're 18 games under 500, they are only 11.5 games out of the wild card race. Yeah that's still a lot to hope for, I know.

I added a black theme to the site today, which looks ok, but not my favorite. It is darker though, and I didn't really have a dark theme yet.

I downloaded Gaim 2.0 beta 3 this weekend to give it a try since I am getting really sick of waiting for them to finally release the final version of 2.0. I like a lot of the new stuff they've added but some things are really annoying. It really needs an easy way to change the status of ONE acount and not all of them at the same time. I know you can do that, but it's not the easiest thing in the world and in 1.5 it was. Also, why did they take out the big "Get Info" button on each chat window? I used that all the time, now I have to go to File > Get Info. Otherwise, the new sounds a WAY better thant he old ones and the smooth scrolling when you get/send messages is really sweet.

My brother finished his site today. He had one before but now he's redesigned it and updating it again. He's got some cool pictures on it right now, especially the cat ones.

I've experienced my first problem with Firefox that's actually annoyed me. The most recent version 1.5.0.5 has a bug which prevents Windows Media Player from streaming video. This is a problem for me because I like to watch baseball games on MLB.tv. Yeah I can just use IE, but I like Firefox better. There has been talk (apparently) on making a 1.5.0.6 fixing the problem but it's not out yet.

Today I woke up with a really bad headache and it still won't go away! Usually they go away after I take some excedrin, but this one is very resistant apparently.

I had a bunch of stuff I was going to write about that I saw in the news but apparently none of it was that important since I can't remember it all. Oh ya, I do remember one thing. After the Andrea Yates verdict Good Morning America had one of the jurors on to talk about the decision. Is it me or does it seem extremely stupid that jurors get interviewed after a big verdict like that? I don't know, I think it's wrong, but whatever.

It's supposed to be really hot this weekend, so hopefully I don't die. We already turned on our window A/C thing which works "OK". I'll probably spend most of the weekend sitting around reading Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 if I get to it. I decided to go with the future predictions/big brother books. Maybe I'll play some video game baseball too, who knows.

I've decided that The Killers new song is very good after hearing it several times on Yahoo Radio. Their website plays the song when you enter. Go listen. And yes their site is really weird. The album doesn't come out until October 3rd though, or something like that. There's just something about their music style that is really addictive.

In Cubs news, they ripped the NL leading Mets a new one when they took 2 of 3 games from them in New York. Mark Prior pitched his first really 'good' outing during the last game. He went 5+ innings and gave up no hits, but walked a few. The Cubs lost that game 1-0 though in 10 innings. They are currently winning the series with the Cardinals after winning the game today and yesterday both by 1 run. The Cardinals are leading the NL central division if you were not aware of this. Why are the Cubs beating the good teams? Who knows.

Carlos Zambrano, one of the Cubs pitchers, is by far one of the best pitchers I have ever seen as well as one of the more entertaining ones. If you aren't familiar with him, you should do some Google searches. He's a really huge guy who throws the ball with a lot of force. He loves the game and gets extremely emotional when things go right (or wrong). At least once a game you can see him yell at himself on the mound, break a bat, slam his bat down in frustration, or smile uncontrollably. Oh, I forgot to mention he's a pitcher that can actually hit the ball. His batting average isn't that high this year but he has 4 homeruns!! He hit one tonight which helped him win his eighth game in a row. When he got voted on to the all-star team this year he even said he'd like to participate in the homerun derby. That would have drawn huge publicity to baseball, so too bad they didn't do it. But overall, pretty good for a guy on a team that's pretty horrible this year. I hope the Cubs keep him, I don't want to see him sign with another team.

I've decided GMail is extremely awesome. I've always thought it was 'ok' but since I started relying on it more and more I find myself falling in love with it. I'm even forwarding other e-mail accounts to it now because I like it so much. I really don't know what it is that's so cool, but whatever it is it's working.

I'm trying to figure out when I'm coming home next for another doctors appointment. It will probably be towards the end of August before everyone leaves (I hope).

I've been obsessed with baseball for the past few days. It even got to the point where I needed to play a baseball video game and all I had was an old Dreamcast version. However, $7 bought me a slightly newer Xbox version which is very entertaining. Unfortunately, I now realize I will never be a team manager since I hate pulling my pitcher and I forget to have people warming up in the bullpen. Oh, I also swing at everything. But the game is pretty cool, you can manage a ton of things like who is warming up in the bullpen and the game even makes you 'draft' your managers (minor league, pitching, batting, etc). It's a little too detailed for me so I let the game do it for me.

The Cubs have had quite a few trade rumors going around lately. One even involves the Cubs getting A-Rod from the Yankees!! Of course, this will probably not happen. Also, if I get a job here someday I will definitely have to go to the Twins first game in their new ballpark which will open in 2010. It looks very nice and I love how the different fields around the league are all unique.

So since I messed around with Dreamcast again I started looking on eBay for cheap games. If I find a bunch of games that someone is selling in one auction and it has a lot of games I don't have, I may end up getting it just to keep me busy. Although the games I'm really looking for most people sell individually.

Oh ya... 8 days until V for Vendetta comes to DVD.

I have to admit I was a little worried that I might hate Clerks II before I saw it. I was worried that Kevin Smith would try and do the same exact things he did in the first movie or that he'd try to hard and it would end up a mediocre movie. I'm very glad to say that my worries were put to rest.

Clerks II is probably one of the better movies I've seen lately. No, it's not for everyone due to its extremely crude humor and lack of a really exciting plot. But if you know who the character are (by watching the previous Clerks movie) then almost every part of the movie is enjoyable because of all the stupid little conversations that go on. For example, a very religious and geeky coworker of Dante and Randall's is taking an order of a customer at their fast food chain. The customer orders onion rings and some other stuff (can't remember exactly) and then the geeky guy mumbles 'One ring to rule them all' and then the customer helps finish the saying with 'One ring to find them' and the two continue the saying as the geeky guy pulls out a ring necklace he has around his neck. Randall then comes over and argues with them about how he thinks the Star Wars Trilogy is better than the Lord of the Rings. This totally random conversation is what makes Clerks II so good.

It's been pretty nice bike riding weather out the past few days so I've finally been riding my bike again after the big heat wave we had. I'm hoping it stays like this for more of the summer.

Today was probably the most entertaining day I've had so far at work, or at least it's one of the strangest days. My team and I ended up messing up a few things that other people used so a lot of time was spent trying to figure out what was going on. Then we had a really bad thunderstorm early in the morning at work. I was walking to the bathroom and I noticed it was a little dark out and then on my way back to my office it was pitch black out and it suddenly just started to pour outside. It was so bad that parts of the building even leaked. It's been randomly raining all day. At least it's cooler out now.

I tried this soda called Vault on my way home to Green Bay a few weeks ago. It's like a mixture between Sprite and orange juice. It's pretty weird tasting but I kind of like it. I bought some more yesterday, well the diet kind (which isn't quite as good), and I'm starting to like it. I plan to be a soda connoisseur.

Clerks II comes out Friday and Justin and I plan on going to see it. Apparently movie critic Joel Siegel made a big scene by leaving in the middle of the screening of the new movie. He got up and screamed over the movie saying how this was the first time in thirty years that he had walked out of a movie. Kevin Smith, the movie's creator, posted back at Siegel on his website saying how inconsiderate it was to be so disruptive. It makes me want to see the movie more now if he thought it was so offensive that he had to leave.

There was something else I've been meaning to post about but now when the time comes to post, I can't recall what it was. Hopefully I'll remember and post it later.

Does anyone else hate how Windows XP badgers you to restart after you install updates? It will give you the prompt to restart now or restart later like every 5 minutes or something, it's so annoying!!!! There's nothing that's more annoying than trying to type something to someone on AIM and then having a stupid prompt come up to stop you.

You know what Windows, you will restart when I tell you to. Until then please go back in your little corner until I say to come back.

Just in case anyone cares, I can't wait for these bands to release new CDs: Green Day, 3 Doors Down, The Killers, Breaking Benjamin, and Jimmy Eat World. Some of them have CDs coming out before the end of the year and others are just rumored to be getting started. Here's hoping they are all good.

It's pretty hot here so Justin and I are keeping cool by watching movies in our 'den'. Today we saw Star Wars Episode III, since I hadn't seen it, and then Flightplan. Star Wars was good but I think they really need to world on the dialogue in those movies. Especially the love scenes, the wording is just really poor. Flightplan starts really boring but it pretty much leaves you guessing most of the movie. It's pretty good but I'm not sure I'd ever see it again.

Last night was pretty weird. Around 1am I woke up to the sound of thing blowing off of my dresser and then to people outside yelling 'Oh my God!!!'. Our apartment complex has some obnoxious people in it so that wasn't too strange, but the wind was. So I get up, put my glasses on, and head over to the window and it's pouring out. The forecast didn't even call for any rain, to my knowledge. The wind was also blowing so that it would go right through my screen door so I had to close it, which sucked because it was pretty hot inside. I sat and watched the rain for about 20 minutes then ended up falling back asleep. I like those kinds of storm more during the day or early night not when it wakes me up, especially since I rarely wake up to noises.

The Middle East seems to be going pretty crazy again if you haven't been paying attention. Hopefully it doesn't escalate too much and get the whole world involved in fighting. Everyone needs to calm down, there are too many things to freak out about lately.

I've been listening to Green Day's older CDs lately. I think I'm listening to Nimrod right now, hence the title of the post. I love how Green Day's CDs always have so many tracks on them. Maybe that's why a lot of people didn't like their CD, Warning, since it had less tracks than their previous CDs had. Artists need to go back to that trend and put a ton of tracks on their CDs. I hate listening to a 30 minute CD.

This weekend is supposed to be really hot here, so that is going to suck. We're going to go to a movie today but tomorrow is supposed to be a lot worse.

Does everyone use the default orange theme or one of the other ones for this site?

I wish I had the option to stay here for the next semester or to go back to school. I don't really know which I want anymore. I miss the school atmosphere, I like it a lot. I also miss my friends from school and from Green Bay. Things are ok here in Rochester, but they have their ups and downs. I also have no idea where I'm living when I go back to school. Maybe I'll just end up in the dorms again, which is fine with me.

Today was a pretty good day. Work wasn't much but I've been waiting for something to be fixed so I can use it to work more on things. I even got to meet someone new today which was great, it was a lot of fun talking with them. Then I came back home after work and fell asleep for a while and that's pretty much it.

This weekend is looking like it'll be pretty hot out. I was thinking I was maybe going to do some fun stuff outside but I guess I'll see when the weekend comes to see how hot out it actually gets. Hopefully not too hot though, because it's been nice out lately.

Well tomorrow is another longer day at work so I should probably go to bed. Maybe I'll post something more useful later this week.

Well I went home to Green Bay this weekend to get my braces off and to see friends, and it was a pretty good time. I got to see people I haven't seen since Christmas and even meet some new people, so that was pretty fun. We went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie on Saturday. We went to the theater nearby first but they sold out for the show we wanted (which we came to get tickets an hour and a half early for!) so we ended up going to the other side of town to the older theater. I had never been to it and had no idea it even existed. It was at least $2 cheaper though, so that was nice since Green Bay charges way too much for movies. The movie was pretty good, I like it a lot. It was quite a bit different than the last one but it was better in my opinion. Much more adult themed I guess.

I got my braces off this morning so I'm pretty happy about that. It feels weird right now but that's just because I'm so used to the braces. In about half an hour I go to get my retainer and then I'll be headed back to Rochester so I can finish the work week. Since I took today off in order to get my braces off, I have to work 4 long 10 hour days to make up the time which kinda sucks. Hopefully I have some good work to keep me busy though.

Cubs have won 3 in a row! Hopefully they keep it up after the all-star break.

My parents, Todd, and I went to Redwing, MN for something to do before the fireworks on the 4th of July. They are famous for pottery, which was interesting but expensive, and then we went to a park on a bluff there. It was a pretty nice view and a pretty interesting park. I took some pictures and put them here. We even saw a fox! Part of the park had a lot of vandalism all over everything and the picnic tables had been broken as well as a cement thing that looked like it used to have some plaque on it. It was pretty creepy actually. For some reason I just wanted to go explore everything because of the creepy-ness.

Fireworks in Rochester were pretty good, but I think Green Bay has them beat. Something must have happened during the grand finale because it seemed like it was broken up into three different chunks. We even started to head back to the car between them because we thought it was over. It turned out for the best though since we got home earlier than we would have and I was going into work at 7 the next day.

My parents came to Rochester this Saturday and are staying through tomorrow, so we've been going to different places in the area the last two days. Today we went to the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul to see the exhibit of the plasticized bodies. It was pretty cool but very crowded.

I have two interesting things to say about the UP.

First, there was several accidents in L'Anse (which is about an hour from Michigan Tech). However, these accidents involved hitting a horse and a moose. Yes, I laughed really hard too. You can read the story here. Basically, a car hit a horse and while the damage was being assessed another car hit the horse and then rolled. An ambulance came to take someone to the hospital and then hit a moose on the way. Talk about a bizarre series of events.

Second, Michigan Tech has received a grant to digitize its archives which includes tons of pictures of minining, which for some reason always captures my interest. Maybe I should have gone into mining? You can see the pictures they have done so far here. If you search for 'michigan tech' you can see pictures of what the campus used to look like.

I got my bill for next month's Charter cable and Internet service and I was not very pleased. Previously, I posted about calling them to get a $25 charge taken off of my account. Well they said they did it but I had to pay it and they would credit $25 towards my next bill (which I just received). You can tell where this is going, I'm sure. I got the bill and there was no credit given to me. I called Charter AGAIN and asked for a supervisor right away, because apparently everyone else is incompetent there. The girl who answered didn't seem to really want to give me to one and said she could fix it right now, but that's what they told me last time. So I had to wait about 15 minutes and then finally a supervisor came to talk to me. I complained about having to call so many times in such a short period of service and also about how they call me asking me if I want to upgrade my service. She basically ignored everything that I said except for my problem and she claimed she fixed it and it is now approved and will be on the next bill. Let's hope so, because I wrote her name down this time. Oh, I forgot to mention that the lady who originally answered the phone didn't speak very good English, which pissed me off even more. Not only am I paying an inflated price for cable and Internet, I'm paying for some executive's salary instead of better tech support.

Charter is THE WORST communications company in the world. Inflated prices, poor technical support, lying, and cheating you out of money are all things this comany enjoys doing.

This has prompted me to reveal my all-time worst companies in the world list. I hope you enjoy it.

1. Charter Communications: This post pretty much sums up why they claim the top spot in the world companies in the world list. They should be forced to break-up the company by the government just because they suck so much.

2. DHL: I thought it was cool when DHL started delivering packages in the USA to normal customers since it would give another alternative to UPS or FedEx. WOW, I could not have been more wrong. If your package is shipped DHL you better keep a close eye on it. Delivering the package to the wrong house, constantly being late, and delivering the package to the US Post Office and having them deliver it are all things that this company apparently likes to do.

3. D-Link: They have a very nice business here. They create these really cool looking technology products that are really cutting edge. If only they actually worked. Products I have purchased from them include a wireless router that can't reach more than 1 room, a wired router that locked me out of changing its settings, a USB wireless adapter which didn't work, and a really crappy MP3 player (although it was right when MP3 players came out).

4. Time Warner: Ok, so Charter is bad but unfortunately Time Warner is pretty bad too. When I first purchased cable Internet from them and had problems, they had a tech guy come to our house and check what the problem is. He claimed the signal was too weak and would never work. As soon as he left it started working again. A month later we find out that the modem they gave us was faulty and we had been suffering through several months of sketchy service because of their lack of caring.

5. Every company that makes cell phones: Do you guys test these things before you sell them? My last phone's speaker stopped working so I couldn't hear anything the person was saying. Kind of defeats the purpose of a phone doesn't it? Then the replacement to that phone had its battery expand to the point where it looked like it was going to explode. Finally, the current phone I have has a glossy surface on the outside of it which is easily scratched. They do realize they are phones that people carry with them, right?

While I'm complaining, I noticed today that I've seen more guys with their collars up here then I've seen everywhere else combined. Today I saw one guy in the mall standing outside one of those 'cool' clothes stores. I think it's the dumbest thing I have ever seen. To think someone would do that on purpose is laughable. If you think you look cool then keep doing it I guess, but don't come crying to the rest of the world when you get beat up for it.

Now that all that is taken care of... I watched Lord of War tonight which was completely different than I expected. There was very little action and was pretty much narrated the whole time. It was 'OK' overall, but I'd never watch it again.