Friday we made it through 5 years of marriage. Amazing how time flies when you’re having fun (and having kids). We spent a very nice evening at La Sorella di Francesca without Mason. It wasn’t our traditional trip someplace somewhere without any planning that typically makes our anniversary an adventure. But having a kid coming up so soon is bound to change a plan or two. We spent the rest of the weekend doing our normal house stuff, visiting with friends, and playing with the boy. Somehow it just seemed a little bit more enjoyable knowing that we’ve done this for so long, and there are so many more nice weekends to come. Happy Anniversary Tricia.

What a way to shake off a bad week. We had a great time travelling to Western New York for the 4th of July holiday. My wife purchased a welcomed addition to our travelling entourage. With 6 hours of Noggin to keep Junior busy, we had a quick trip. I got to watch a couple movies while driving. No, it wasn’t dangerous, you just put in movies you’ve seen before and listen to 90%, watch 10%.

We went to my sister’s wedding shower at my parents place on Conesus Lake. We actually made bridal gowns out of toilet paper. Afterwards was the beautiful ring of fire – everyone puts up flares on their shoreline so it looks like…you guessed it, a ring of fire. Mason got his first taste of lake water, and I’m still convinced that I must have a home on a lake as my permanent residence. My parents and family spoiled Mason silly which was very cool.

Onward to Tricia’s parents, where we had outstanding food. Roast pork, deepfried turkey, pulled pork. Come to think of it we had a total pig out fest. Much beer was drank. Much Q*bert was played. Yes, Adam has a ROM of Q*bert on his PC. And Matt and I played it for hours, discovering the joys that 80’s gamers must have had. I never played it that much. Nana and Poppy spoiled the Mason, so he is just brimming with memories.

After an excruciating 13 hour trip home, we’re all tired, and afraid of the work that awaits us.

It all started when we went to mid-Ohio last weekend and I picked up a souvenir headcold from my Dad that just won’t seem to go away. On the way back to Illinois I was slapped with a $108 speeding ticket – 74 in a 55. Then when we got home, I turned on the computers that we had specifically turned off so they would be “safe”, and found that neither my Mac or my PC could find their operating system. Strange. I wiggled a few wires and waved the magic wand on both, and they started to work. Unfortunaely neither of the 80 Gig data drives were working. After I gave up on trying to recover Gigabytes upon Gigabytes of downloaded music, and 3 years worth of digital photos, I decided to try and format the drives. Neither will even format!

Then on Thursday I topped off all of this good fortune by sideswiping a 1996 Chevy Lumina in the parking lot at the train station with my Dodge Durango. $1300 worth of damage just to my vehicle. Now that I’ve gotten all of this out in the open, I think I can move on, and start to have a much better week. Yippee!

Hey cool, I always wondered what this stupid method of capitalizing words that I’m using for my titles is called. NerdCaps or BiCapitalized. NerdCaps is almost as cool as using a dot in your logo. “tmp.worldwide”

We spent the past weekend soaking up the sun and sniffing the racing fuel at the Sprint Vintage Grand Prix in Mansfield, OH. Tricia, Mason and I met up with my parents and grandparents to watch my Dad race his ’71 MG Midget race car.

We watched everything from Corvettes to Formula 1 cars race. It was awesome seeing behind the scenes of the race as Dad and Mom hooked us up with Crew passes. It’s just as much fun seeing these guys tinker with their cars as it is to see them zoom around the track. We all helped Dad prep the car, get onto the starting grid, and hit the track. We were all glued to his every turn, gasped at his every spin out, and cheered at every pass. In racing years, he’s just a Sophomore, but he truly held his own against some excellent competitors. Congratulations Dad! Go Speed Racer Go!!!!

Dad takes a turn into the “carousel”. That’s a fancy nickname for a “big round turn”, but the racing guys need something more clever to bullshit about over beers.

Perfect weather for a Saturday drive. Zoom Zoom!

We’re teaching the boy early. You should have seen him change the engine! He is gifted.

Mason busy timing Grandpa’s Enduro race. Enduro = 1 hour race. Mason = fired from his timing gig.

Some of the Ziprrrz Racing Team – From left: Zip, Grandpa Zip, Tricia Zip, Baby Zip II (behind the pink tag on Tricia Zip), Baby Zip (Mason), Mom Zip, Grandma Zip, and Zip Sr.

Can someone please explain to me how Microsoft discontinuing Internet Explorer for the Mac is a good thing. I thought the browser war was over 2 years ago. How does Safari, that has been around for a year, scare Microsoft away from the platform? I’m just not in the mood for web design that looks different on my 2 favorite platforms. Sure Safari is a McGeek’s dream. But I just want standards support. I do not want any more bells and whistles. Just give me a big white window that gets painted with a web page inside it. And if Yahoo would just build a Mac Compatible Companion that stays docked there, so I can access my unversal bookmarks, yipee! I guess I was very easily converted to the iApps, so why not Safari?

So we went to the White Sox game yesterday for Father’s Day. It was a 1-0 loss to the Padres, but who cares about the Sox anyways.

There was a petting zoo outside. So Mason got to pet his first goat.

And what baseball game doesn’t have pony rides outside too? So Mason got to ride his first pony.

Oh yeah, and we watched a little baseball.

Yes, Mommy was there too. Thanks guys it was fun. Being a Dad is pretty cool!

I don’t know when it showed up on the bottom of the Monster home page, but there is now a link there for “patrons of Monster cable”. I’m surprised that Monster acknowledged another Monster. I wonder how many support calls they had received from customers looking for a new S-Video cable.

I guess most people would say that Nationals wasn’t very successful for team Salvo. I judge success more by the fun that I had, and the experience. Winning would have been nice, but the whole event was just awesome.

Friday May 23rd Travel/Rest Day
Tricia, Mason and I piled in the truck and headed to Minneapolis. The drive there takes you through some beautiful areas of Wisconsin. We arrived at the Minneapolis Hilton around 4pm. We found that it was connected to the Convention Center via the Skyway – an interconnected network of bridges between buildings. I can only imagine how useful that would be in the winter time. We went and checked out the courts – 30 on one floor and 30 on the lower level. What’s really cool is that the ceiling of the Convention Center is domed. We had an overly expensive meal at the hotel restaurant, then I practiced for an hour, and went to bed.

Saturday May 24th Pool Play Day 1
View the Day 1 & 2 Results summary
Story in progress…

I can finally edit my website at home again. I haven’t been able to FTP to my ISP over DSL for over a year. All it took was a guy at Catalog.com telling me to increase my packet settings in my router, then calling Linksys to find out where that undocumented feature was, and voila! I can upload crap to my website from home again. This means I don’t have to email anything to my work email and upload from there anymore. Ahhhhh the simple pleasures of working out a nagging technical error. I don’t want to drop kick my computer anymore…today.