Author: Josh

Elise, Maly, John, Christine, Jack and Grayson all drove to Irving on Friday, stayed with Christine’s parents that night and then drove up to Oklahoma on Saturday. John, Christine and the boys went to OK City for Christine’s Grandma’s 95th birthday and Elise and Maly went to Okeene to visit Elise’s Grandma as well as a fraction of the Boeckman uncle, aunts and cousins. Yours truly stayed here in Austin and endulged in some “me” time.

On Friday I went out with some coworkers for drinks at the bar at the Stephen F. Austin Intercontinental Hotel. I got home around 8 and played Scarface on the Xbox. Scarface isn’t really a game you should play if you have a wife sitting in the same room who might make note that every other word said is, “f#*k” or “cockaroacha”. Or a game you should play if you have an 10-month-old daughter whose first words, if exposed to said game, might be, “Tsay ello do my leedle fren!!!”

On Saturday I slept in really late. I woke up and decided it was time to treat the deck with water sealant. The last time I did that, I got really high. And then we had to drive to the hospital to have a baby. Ugghh.

This time I wore a mask but still managed to unintentionally get a little stoned. It’s hard to spray water sealant up without some of it coming down.

A trip back to the ol’ HoPot and another gallon of water sealant and the job was done. And then it was back to making coke deals as Tony Montana on the Xbox for the rest of the night.

On Sunday I got my haircut, fertilized the flowerbeds and garden, watered the lawn, cooked a Thai basil soup and then sold drugs as Tony Montana on the Xbox.

I rushed home from work on Monday in time to meet Elise and Maly after returning home from their trip to Oklahoma. I gave Maly a bath and played with her for a while before it was time for her to go to bed.

I played with Maly for an hour on Tuesday morning before my girls were off again. Elise drove to Mom’s house to drop Maly off so she could go on a photo shoot with Marc.

Elise and Maly and supposed to come either tomorrow or Friday. In the meantime, I’ve been building my empire, buying and selling cocaine, driving expensive cars and saying cockaroacha by night all while missing my girls.

Mom sent this photo today of Maly helping in the courtyard. Maly’s starting to stand on her own. I miss my little Sugar.

My Lacie d2 Big Disk Extreme was delivered yesterday. 1TB. That’s 1,000GB. This thing is awesome. I can store and backup EVERYTHING. I don’t even think anymore. When a thought comes to me, I don’t even bother processing it, I just throw it at this harddrive and am done with it.

What’s funny though is that I’ll bet it won’t take too long to fill it up with photos and videos.

What’s even more funny is that I’ll bet by Christmas we will be seeing 1TB thumbdrives.

I bought tickets to The Lion King as a Christmas present for Elise this past year. She’s really wanted to see this production for years and made sure to let me know as much in November. So I made sure to sell my left kidney so she and I could see this magnificent Broadway show while it was being performed in Austin.

Many of my friends have seen The Lion King and I was told that I would love it. I knew Elise would love it as she likes things like plays, flowers, talking about her feelings, breakfast foods and Grey’s Anatomy.

The night started out with something in the world of married folks we like to call “not communicating effectively”. Allow me to verbally paint the picture for you:

The male role: [While scratching his groinal region] “We need to leave at 7:00 p.m. to get there on time.”

The female role: 7:35 p.m. and we’re rushing out of the house late because: makeup had to be applied, the baby had to be nursed, earrings had to triple-checked, husband had to be ostracized because he’s wearing jeans, wife’s blouse had to be ironed, all the while said husband is also being yelled at for not mentioning the fact that the tickets clearly indicate that there will be no late seating. In black and white, plain English the ticket reads, “Those who arrive late will be denied entry and be forced to sit on the steps of the Bass Concert Hall where the husband will be subjected to discussing what happened on last week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Or his wife’s feelings on breakfast foods. Whichever is deemed by the wife to be more painstaking.

We were late for the show. I won’t name names here but someone had to to triple-check her earrings and hence didn’t eat dinner which meant the husband had to stop at Jack in the Box for a Jumbo Jack (excellent breakfast food, by the way) and we arrived somewhere remotely near the University of Texas campus at 8 p.m., which was when the show started. It was about at this point at which the tears started falling. I really didn’t want to spend two hours and forty minutes having “hakuna matata” beat into my skull. But the real tears were from my wife, who really wanted to see this show. We didn’t have $8 cash to pay to park in the parking garage (see wife needs Jumbo Jack meal above) so I pleaded with the gatekeeper to let me in and allow me to walk to the office to pay for a parking ticket with the credit card.

Elise had dressed up so beautifully for the evening and really wanted to see this performance and have a nice date with her loving husband. I was still in the dog house for “not communicating” that we had to be there on time. Just after we parked I gave her her ticket and told her to go to the show without me so she could secure our seats. I told her I would get into the theatre if it meant I had to discuss “my feelings” or last week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy with the box office attendee.

The University of Texas is nestled on 40 acres. I think I walked the circumference of 41+ acres while trying to find the Bass Concert Hall. I stopped and talked to two foreign exchange students who, in hindsight, clealy indicated that the Bass Concert Hall was, “over there”, but for whatever reason, I thought “over there” was actually, “over in that other direction.”

I finally found the Bass Concert Hall and was greeted by Elise. We found out that they did in fact allowed late seating. We had to wait a couple minutes for Scene I to end so an usher could show us our seats. While your humble narrator was trekking the campus, Elise was able to watch the performance on a television monitor in the lobby.

I sat there for two and half hours and tried to look at my own eyebrows while humans pranced around the stage in costumes that would make for great Gwar concert while singing “hakuna matata”. But I also held my wife’s hand because it was something that she wanted to do and that was the most important thing for me.

Next time, we’re going to see World Combat League.

And we won’t be late.

I sold my PC today. It had been on craigslist for a month or so and a college kid from San Marcos drove to our house this afternoon to pick it up. He told me he plans on adding an external 100GB hard drive and turning it into a DVR. Now my old computer will get some use. It was hard letting it go because my parents gave me the pieces in which to build that computer a couple years ago as a Christmas present. I severed ties and am now, officially, a Mac guy. I don’t “own” an Windows PC any longer. Elise has her HP laptop (which I don’t touch unless I have to fix something for her) and I have a Dell Latitude laptop that I’ve, on numerous occassions, wanted to give some serious latitude to — as in launching through the 8th floor window of the office. We’re supposed to get Macbooks for our work computers in a couple months and until then, I’m not attaching myself to my work computer any more than I absolutely have to.

In the meantime, my Mom emailed me last night to tell me that she’s having to ship her brand new Hewlett Packard desktop with Windows Vista © Doesn’tCrashAsMuch Premium computer back to HP because it, errr, crashed.

And I guess it should go here where I make mention that I’ve seen a 102.72% return on my initial investment in Apple stock five years ago after I realized that Apple is a bad ass company upon buying my first iPod.

You can now listen to the Janicek.com Podcast via Odiogo.  Pretty cool stuff, Maynard.

I bought my neighbor’s 1993 Toyota pickup truck three years ago with 80,000 miles on it for $2,000.

I washed and waxed the truck yesterday.  I put “For Sale” on it this evening at 7 p.m.  The truck was sold at 9 p.m. with 151,000 miles on it for $1,900.  In my book, that’s an awesome sale.  I’m happy that I got good money for my little truck but I’m kind of sad because of all of my vehicles, that was a damn good truck and probably my favorite.  I’m going to miss it.

Now the gauntlet has been dropped… I’m in vehicle selling mode.  Next on my hit parade is Elise’s Jeep.  I think some tears will fall after that sale.

I was doing some research at the office today on the technologies that the company employs.  I wanted to see if I could crack our system.  I figured if I could exploit a vulnerability and bring it to the attention to the organization, I would be helping the company to create an even more secure product for our customers and I would be applauded, praised and handed large sums of cash, stock options and gummi bears.

So I did what any other eager, semi-new employee would do.  I downloaded a progam that would aid me in my research.  Upon downloading the zipped binaries of said program, a window popped up with a bright red Trend Micro OfficeScan banner at the top.  I immediately knew that I’d screwed up because a pop up window with a red banner screams, “You’re an Idiot and because you did this at work, we’re taking away your stapler!”   Which is funny in and of itself because, despite multiple requests for one, I don’t even have a stapler.  HA!

I’ve dealt with computer virus issues, malware, hijackware, spyware and even tupperware many, many times in the past.  For most of us the anti-virus program window pops up and says, “Hey, Slingblade, put down the biskits ‘n’ musturd and tell me that you don’t REALLY want to download this!” and then we all click the quarantine or delete button and go about our day scouring the web for photos of Britney Spears exiting a vehicle.

Instead of asking me if I wanted to quarantine or delete the virus, I was told that the system has notified our Senior Systems Administrator and he will be at my desk momentarily to kick me in the yarbles.

So I quickly decided that I needed to make my case.  I decided that it would be best if I said, in my best Slingblade impersonation, something that I’ve never thought would ever, ever pass my lips:

“You see, it started when I began my research on MD5 cryptography and rainbow tables which are, as Britney Spears recently noted, a refinement of an algorithm that uses the inversion of hashes by looking up precomputed hash chains whereas each table depends on the hash function and the reduce function used.”

Much to my surprise, our Senior Systems Administrator didn’t come stomping over to my desk.

So I decided to leave work early.

Friday was my thirty-first birthday.  I was reminded of this on Friday morning when Elise woke me up by kissing me on the cheek and saying, “Happy birthday!”

It was a regular work day and at 2:51 I found myself on the phone with a client in a conference room.  2:51 was when I was born.

January 26th is a very important day as it the birthday of many other very important people.  For example, Frankie Rayder, apparently a faithful patriot, also turned 31 on Friday.  Film critic Gene Siskel was born on this day.  Bob Uecker and Paul Newman share the day with me.  Ellen DeGeneres, pro-arm wrestler and primary reason why laundry doesn’t get done in our house was also born on the 26th.  And my favorite, Eddie Van Halen.  Since I was ten-years-old I’ve made it a tradition to listen to Van Halen on my birthday.

I hurried home from work on Friday evening.  Mom had come up to spend the weekend with us and she and Elise were making dinner in the kitchen.  After dinner Elise and I drove downtown to see Dave Barry at the Paramount Theater. Dave was funny enough to keep a smile on my face for an hour and a half but Elise and I both left with a feeling that there was something to be desired.

We drove home while listening to Van Halen on the iPod.  When we got home, I opened presents.  Mom got me a Magic Bullet blender that I’m hoping I won’t destroy the first time I use it.  Elise got me Hudson on the Bend’s second cookbook, “Fired Up”, which, I’m hoping, will inspire me to cook again.

After presents we engaged ourselves in one of my favorite conversation pieces: religion.  I’m pretty sure I did a fantastic job of portraying myself as Marilyn Manson to my Mom and wife and I’m almost certain I heard Maly wake up and from her room snicker and say, “Dude, you’re sooo going to hell.”

On Saturday Elise textured our bathroom walls.  Earlier this month we experienced to great joys of stripping wall paper.  If you’re ever in the position where you have to either strip wall paper or play Russian Roulette with a guy named Twitch, choose the latter.

Saturday night we had dinner with our friends at what used to be the Y Bar and Grill in Oak Hill which is now Nunzia’s at the Y which we will probably NEVER patronize again.  We used to love going to the Y which became Nunzia’s, to our dismay on Friday.  Albeit our party was twelve-top but I don’t like 3-hour dinners.  Service was sub par.  They ran out of a wine we all liked.  After we ordered entrees it was brought to our attention that they’d run out of swordfish.  Ten minutes later we were told they’d ran out of halibut.  We were at the restaurant at 6 p.m. and one of the first tables there for dinner service.  The chefs should have a) taken inventory and stocked accordingly for Saturday dinner and b) informed the waitstaff of said inventory.  When we did finally eat, nobody mentioned their meal.  I wanted my friends and family to enjoy our time together but I really wanted them to enjoy their meals.  Nunzia’s didn’t pull it together for me.   I had a great time with everyone last night but I’m pissed at the restaurant.  I want to fire people.

We came home after dinner and put Maly to sleep.  Victor came over for a nightcap and helped me figure out the I-Cat that Jack gave me for my birthday.

After an hour or so Victor left, we all went to bed and I resolved to the fact that I’m now a thirty-something.

I was in the elevator this afternoon with two coworkers. The other two, both bachelors, were having a conversation about their friends who are parents. The gist of the conversation was, “Once you become a parent, you live, eat and breathe your children.” They went on to reflect on their respective social lives and how children have dramatically effected their friends. My understanding of the conversation was that neither of them were ready to contemplate having children. It was then that I chimed in and said, “I have a nine-month-old daughter.” One stated, “So, you know what it’s like!” To which I responded, “Yep.” And then went on to say something that I heard from Janeen years ago. “…And I couldn’t imagine life otherwise.”

On Saturday Elise went to brunch with her girlfriends and they all worked on baby books. Maly and I hung out most of the day. I did something to make Maly laugh and I saw what looked like a tooth poking out from her lower front gums. I put my finger in her mouth and, sure enough, she had cut her first tooth. I picked her up and we ran around the house while I gleefully celebrated a tooth. I was so proud at that moment and Maly giggled as I ran and her hair blew back. Even though she’s not consciously responsible for this milestone, I was so proud of her. A tooth meant that she can start eating real solid food. During lunch I started having visions of my daughter wanting to help me cook. The wheel starting turning and I smiled as I thought about my baby growing up.

This morning we took Maly for her nine month check-up. She passed with flying colors and I was really proud of that as I hadn’t been to a Maly check-up in six months. I was so proud that I took the tongue depressor that the physician’s assistant used with Maly. I kept it in my pocket today and clutched with my left hand while in the elevator this afternoon as I listened to my coworkers’ conversation.

And it’s so very true… I wouldn’t have it any other way. I couldn’t imagine life otherwise. Maly means the world to me.

And I’m keeping that tongue depressor.