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iBook uh oh

I left work yesterday afternoon and headed to Fry’s in north Austin via Hwy 1431. Traffic was a pain in the ass once I got to northwest Austin and 1431 is a road that’s best driven in a low profile sports car. Not a early-90s mini truck with no power steering.

I was on a mission to buy supplies in which to fabricate my own bus-powered external hard drive. Fry’s has clunky and ugly bus-powered enclosures and their 2.5″ hard drives are more expensive than I expected for Fry’s. So I held off on making any type of external storage purchase. Since I was there, I had to look around. I didn’t find anything that struck my fancy nor that I thought I had to have so I left.

I stopped in at the dollar store next to Fry’s. I needed some empty spray bottles for household and auto cleaning products. I picked up three of them. I walked to the register to find that there was a $7 minimum on purchases made with a debit card. I had to find four more items. Bandaids. Twizzlers. Air freshener. Shaving cream.

My debit card didn’t work. Our bank sent us new debit cards and I activated both of them. Apparently I have to have the PIN set. Wouldn’t you think your PIN would carry over?

So my Friday evening was a total dry run and waste of time.

I went home and pulled out my old external drive so I could backup the iBook. The iBook wouldn’t recognize the drive. Ugggghhhh! I plugged said drive into Elise’s laptop. Worked great. I messed around with this drive for at least an hour. I still couldn’t get it to mount on the iBook. I’d walk away and try again occassionally. It finally mounted and I started a backup.

Elise came home and I exlained my recent woes. I told I really didn’t want to, but it was looking like I was going to have to invest in quality, manufacturer-built external hard drive. She understood and agreed that this would be a worthy investment as I have, in the past, lost some important documents, website designs, photos, music, etc.

I left the iBook to back itself up and went to bed. I woke up this morning excited thinking I would find my external drive sitting on the kitchen table, where I left the night prior, with all of the iBook data backed up. Nope. It didn’t complete the backup. After a quick investigation I realized that the drive was full. So I started deleting older backups.

Elise woke up and needed to check her e-mail. I was kind of using her computer as well as the iBook. I handed over her laptop and she tried to open Firefox. “I can’t get online. Fix it!” So she handed over her laptop. I set her computer down in front of me and in doing so I accidentally bent the USB cable just perfectly so that it hit the power button on the external hard drive and turned it off.

Uggghhhh!

I started it up again and once again, the iBook can’t recognize it. I plugged it into Elise’s laptop and it’s recognized. Now I’m deleting 100 GBs of old data using Elise’s computer to see it will then be mountable on the iBook.

“But I still love technology.“

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Ride the spiral

If you read Janicek.com via a news aggregator, open your browser and visit the new site.

Elise and I are happy beyond words!

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Awesome veggie pizza

Here is a photo and simple description of an awesome vegetarian pizza that I made tonight for Monday Night Football!

Roasted fennel, garlic, cipollini onions and red bell pepper. Asiago, mozzarella and provolone cheeses and fresh basil from the garden. Mmmmm, good!

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Friggin\’ Hot

The AC in my monster truck went out on me this past Friday. I was driving home from work and I heard a “Thunk”, followed by a long “Flap”, and then a “Whizzzzzzzz”.

I figured I’d wait until the Spring before I get it looked at as I really won’t need it for quite a while. Or so I thought. I drove to work this morning as the temperature outside was a cozy 73 degrees. Driving home was a bitch. Black truck, no window tint, vinyl seats, black shirt and khaki pants.


Fall afternoon in Austin, TX

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Great pizza with roasted veggies

Here is a photo and simple description of an awesome vegetarian pizza that I made tonight for Monday Night Football!

Roasted fennel, garlic, cipollini onions and red bell pepper. Asiago, mozzarella and provolone cheeses and fresh basil from the garden. Mmmmm, good!

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More Than Meets the Eye

I was driving home this evening and for some reason had a vivid recollection of a conversation that I had with a classmate in the 4th grade.

Josh: Hey, Andy, we’re going to play Transformers during recess. I’m going to be Optimus Prime. Do you want to play with us?

Andy: Coooool! Yeah, I’ll play with you guys.

Josh: Cool!

Andy: My dad bought a new Nissan Maxima last week. Would it be okay if I was a Nissan Maxima?

Josh:

Andy: ?

Josh:

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4th Anniversary

4th Anniversary Creme Brulee
Happy Anniversary!

Elise and I celebrated our 4th anniversary yesterday. I took Elise out for a nice dinner at the Driskill Grill, a restaurant I’ve been wanting to try for years now.

Elise started the evening with a fine San Pellegrino while I opted for the Calera Pinot Noir.

We were then treated to an amuse-bouche. For the ladies it was a fingerling potato, green onion and korabuta bacon shooter. For the gentlemen a mint vinegar vichyssoise of halibut, hamachi and baby pearl onions.

For starters we shared the Hot Smoke Bandera Quail with Coriander Orange Curd, Patron Granita and Microcilantro. Elise liked the orange curd so much she thought about having a larger order later for dessert. The microcilantro was so amazingly fragrant (cilantro is my favorite herb) that it got me thinking about fabricating my own hydroponic herb garden.

Elise had the Charred Beef Tenderloin with Black Truffle Purée, Buttered Leeks and Smoked Mustard. I had the Mint and Peppercorn Crusted Rack of Lamb with Carrot Risotto and Cippolini Onions.

I don’t know why but I keep trying to convince myself that I really like lamb.

  Note to self:
You do not like lamb as much as you think you do.		  

Both meals were fantastic and the service was beyond anything we have ever experienced. Being a waiter at the Driskill Grill has to be an awesome job in that you have to eat everything on the menu, you have to know every ingredient and wine recommendations.

The two downfalls:

  1. We were at the restaurant for 2.5 hours, not by choice but by fine dining service standards. I would have liked to have been in and out in half that time.
  2. The experience was to “uppity” for us. We’re casual people.

We had a nice anniversary though. It was very quiet and layed back. We came back home after dinner. I watched the first episode of The Apprentice that I recorded and Elise conked out on the couch.

We’re such romantics.

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Rita Coverage from a close afar

The Austin American-Statesman is urging folks to blog about long lines at the grocery store or being stuck in traffic due to the imminent damage that hurricane Rita is to bestow upon Texas in the days to come.

I will be here to keep you folks in foreign regions such as “Minneapolis” and “Des Moines” up-to-date on armageddon. I will make sure Janicek.com stays online because 1) I pay a company large sums of money to make sure it stays online and 2) said company is located in Los Angeles, not in the path of Rita, according CNN.

Hurricane Rita is a Category 5 storm system with 165 mph winds headed toward the eastern coast of Texas.

“Rita is currently the third strongest hurricane ever in the Atlantic and could be the strongest hurricane on record to ever hit Texas” as posted on Local6.com.

Those fleeing Houston have been reported to be sitting in bumper to bumper traffic for over 13 hours. Water and rations are scarce. Hotels and motels are full throughout the state all the way up through Amarillo.

Traffic on the way to work this morning via HWY 71 was hell. I saw caravans of evacuees pulled over on the side of the road to regroup. All gas stations pumps were occupied by lines of cars. Traffic is terrible even here in Marble Falls. My office manager just returned from getting office supplies from Wal Mart and came back boasting not to go anywhere if it’s not necessary.

As of this morning Rita shifted slightly east so it’s looking as if Austin isn’t in storm’s direct line of sight. We’re expecting to see a lot of rain and 40 mph wind gusts in the days to come.

Tonight I am going to dig a fox hole under the house. I will need to stop at Home Depot on the way home for supplies. I will protect myself from frantic end seekers with my trusty Bowie knife. Damnit, I need to get a Bowie knife. I will rent a jackhammer to dig my fox hole. I will also get a 150 gallon deisel generator to power my iBook so I can safely post to the website without the threat of losing power. If we do lose power at any point and wireless internet access is lost, I will resort to looting. Looting WiFi would be a good name for a band. I’ll also need to get some war paint and a loin cloth.

So keep an eye out for me on TV. I’ll be the pale guy with war paint on his face a la Braveheart wearing a loin cloth while holding a laptop, dragging a diesel generator and a Bowie knife gripped between his teeth.


Austin

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Journey: Back and Into the Future

Elise and I went to The Backyard on Tuesday night to see Journey.

It was about two months ago where I found myself sitting on the couch and decided that I wanted to go to The Backyard as I’ve lived in Austin for over a decade and had not yet seen a live performance at this venue. My options for musical entertainment at the time were Tori Amos or Journey. Elise saw Tori at The Backyard a couple years ago and to be honest, I get my fill of estrogen on a daily basis at work. I bought two tickets online to see Journey.

I remember being a young lad and picking up a couple albums (those large, black things that pre-date the cassette, although cassettes were available at the time) at a local record store. I bought “Captured” and Black Sabbath’s self-titled album. I liked the Sabbath album more but Journey’s album was still pretty cool. I remember hearing Journey on the radio in Houston and being piped through the speakers at the bowling alleys and skating rinks.

So I have a long history with Journey. I listened to that Journey album on my portable record player when I was called to ‘Nam for my second tour, when JFK was shot, when JR was shot, when the Challenger exploded and after the series finale of 21 Jump Street.

The Journey concert was cheesy. I can’t sugar coat it. The tickets were expensive but at least the beer was relatively inexpensive and The Backyard really is a cool venue for a live show. It’s was one of those shows were you leave and say to yourself, “At least I can say I’ve seen Journey in concert”.

Elise and I got home around 10:30 and had a couple Hi-C juice boxes and break danced in the living room before going to bed.


Journey Ticket Stubs

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Josh does it by Symbolic Manipulation

Whoa! I just harnessed mathematical knowledge that I thought I would never use.

I had one of the girls create all necessary logo files in their respective sizes for a new customer’s product labels. Upon reviewing her work I noticed that the graphic on the logo looked “bulky” (note the mortar and pestle in Fig. B versus Fig. A)


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We size logos based on a template. An “A” logo is 66% of the size of the template. A “B” logo is 74% of the size of the template and so on.

When scaling these logos down, the weight of the graphic didn’t scale proportionately. The weight of the graphic of the template was 1.46 px. This weight carried over onto the scaled down logos.

“Hmmmm…” thought I.

A light bulb came on and I thought of Rodney Nunn. I then utilized the following formula:

    1.46/100 = x/66

Thus giving me the necessary graphic weight of 0.9636

To quote the great Napoleon Dynamite, “Yesssssssssss”.

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Testosterone and a little fish

I went on a weekend bachelor party to Port Aransas this past weekend for the soon-to-be groom Brad Patak.

Carlo, Brad, Steve and I left on Friday morning and headed down 183 south to Port A., stopping for lunch at Kreuz Market for brisket. Don’t ask for barbecue sauce there. You’ll be butchered.

We arrived in Port A. that afternoon and met up with all the guys. That evening we hit the local hotspot, Sharky’s for beer drinking and cat calling (well, for the unmarried guys).

We stayed up until the wee hours of the morning only to be awaken by the buzz of the alarm an hour later. Out of 12 men there were seven of us who droopy-eyed and foot draggingly made our way to the marina for a morning of bay fishing.

Fishing, cussing, telling jokes and drinking beer all before the sun came up. Real me we were. John caught a couple fish we later used for bait. I eventually caught a ~16″ redfish. Carlo made out best with a 21″ keeper that we decided to give to Captain Don.

That night we hung around the house and watched college football. All the boys sans John and myself went out for another night on the town. They came home early in the morn and must have forgotten that two of us stayed back and were trying to sleep. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep for the rest of the night.

John and I left early on Sunday and made it back to Austin in time for lunch. It was good to get away for a long weekend. I was let down by not catching more fish, but had a nice time nonetheless.


Josh's little redfish