Ryan’s Ramblin’

Yeah, it’s been a while. I know, blah blah blah, the usual excuses. Also, I joined TotalFark and it has broken my brain.

So what’ve I been up to? Not much. Playing some Xbox, which I haven’t done in ages. I found a great emulator collection for the Xbox, and have gotten caught up more than once playing an old NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Genesis, or Turbo Grafx 16 game. Super Volleyball is HARD when you don’t know how to play it! Also, Uniracers is so awesome. Not much else going on. Chris is in town, because he had a TON of vacation time that he had to use, and he brought some extra luggage so that he can help Lorna bring her stuff back to Canada. Or something. We went out Friday night, had a good time, went out Saturday night and broke our brains, which was fun, but painful. Walking for half an hour trying to catch a cab was SO not fun. I thought at one point that Chris was going to jump in front of a cab just to get him to stop.

Sunday was a super lazy day. Watched a bunch of episodes of Charmed, which I’m embarrassed to admit is a somewhat entertaining show. Played some more Xbox. Made some lasagna with Liz to freeze for dinner. All in all a nice weekend, if a bit on the short side. I went down for a little lay down yesterday afternoon, only to wake up an hour and a half later, all groggy-like. And then, of course, didn’t get to bed until midnight, didn’t turn off the light till 1ish, and had dreams of being unable to sleep. Those are the worst, because even though you DID sleep, you still have the grumpiness of having tossed and turned all night, even if it was only in a dream.

Jane Sibbett (who played Ross’ lesbian ex-wife Carol on Friends) was in Herman’s Head. I totally forgot that. I can’t believe that show started in 1991!

Hang Time
Running together
Putting it on the line

Hang Time

Thank you very much, Retrojunk.com! (Note, they do not have the intro to this show on there, so I have no idea how the song got stuck in my head. But it’s there!) Oh, and seriously, go play around on Retrojunk. That site is AMAZING. I love watching all the old cartoon show intros, and some of the commercials are PRICELESS!

Great weekend all around. Went with Liz to see Memoirs of a Geisha, which was a gorgeous film with a bit of a sappy, “I totally saw that coming 2 hours ago” ending. Dragged a bit at times too, but still a wonderful portrait.

Also booked our vacation to Lanzarote… I am so excited! It’ll be nice to get a bit of a sun vacation finally - the last couple vacations with Liz have been go-go-go-must-see-everything-in-3-days vacations which were AMAZING (I mean seriously, how many people have been to London, Amsterdam and Rome in a 6 month period while still working a regular 9-5 job?) but not overly relaxing. This one, we plan on doing a whole lot of laying in the sun by the pool. Yay!

What else, what else… Oh! Also, went to Jack & Jones with Liz, to return a birthday sweater that didn’t quite fit. I ended up exchanging it for two t-shirts and a pair of jeans, all for 30 euro! That store rocks, and all their clothes just seem to fit me right (except for that sweater).

We also finished watching Sex and the City season 6. I missed a bunch (like 10, at least) of episodes of that season, though I do recall watching the finale, but it was great to watch it all the way through from start to finish. It’s amazing, after watching it on TBS, you forget just how RAUNCHY the show actually was. With all the swearing and nudity gone, the show is definitely just not as entertaining. I was kinda peeved that the dvd set didn’t have any extras though. It was strictly the episodes, and that was it. Of course, it also had about 30 languages available, so perhaps there just wasn’t any room with all those audio tracks?

At any rate, it was a great weekend. Lazy, and restful. I’m looking forward to next weekend though, because Chris is coming over from Toronto to visit for a couple weeks! It’ll be nice to see someone from home again, as the next visitor is my mom, who isn’t coming until June. Unless I can convince Dan to come for a visit sometime before that.

I was out for a little jaunt at lunch today, and it was fairly typical Irish weather: a bit chilly, beautiful sunny view of the mountains, and raining. Now I know why the whole leprechauns and pot of gold at the end of the rainbow thing is so prolific. In the 6 months since I’ve moved here, I’ve seen more rainbows that I have in the previous 6 YEARS. And today was the first time I think I’ve ever seen a full-on, ground-to-ground complete half-circle rainbow. And, of course, I didn’t have my camera with me. The whole reason I BOUGHT the new camera is so that I could have it with me on just such an occasion, but I’ve been forgetting it since I got back from Rome. Argh. Oh well, I’ll have plenty of other chances.

Just in case you were wondering, as I was, how in the holy hell they justified making a sequel. Yeah. $173 million. I don’t have the words.

So, how often do you leave comments on blogs and then never ever return to the comments? Pretty often? I know I do. A LOT. I just forget to go back to the ones that I’ve commented on. Well, fear not friends! Co.mments to the rescue! It lets you add all your commented entries to a list and keeps track of updates for you! And you can subscribe to your co.mments RSS feed to get updates any time more comments are added! Very cool, and of course very Web 2.0ish as well. It seems to work with most Wordpress blogs and MT ones as well. I wish it worked for Metafilter, that would be the BOMB. I’m constantly reading threads on that site and I’d love to be able to go back and see what’s new in them.

(via MeFi, which is currently down so I can’t link it.)

Here in Dublin, we’ve got a couple different mass transit methods. The ever-unreliable Dublin Bus (seriously, the route that went past our old place would consistently be up to a half hour late), the Luas (an EXCELLENT service, which I used to use to get to work before we moved), and the DART. I’ve never used the DART for commuting, though I did take it on a pleasure trip when I was visiting Liz here last year in March. However, if I *was* using it for commuting, I would totally freak out over something as kickass as DARTMaps. This dude has taken the realtime DART train locations, and mapped them onto a Google Maps interface. Wow… just wow. And of course, you can click on each train to see which train it is (source and destination). Very, very cool.

John Scalzi gives a ton of tips on how to write more effectively. Specifically, some simple tips on how to be a better writer without doing too much work. More bloggers need to read this. Although none of the bloggers that I read; you guys are all cool. I wouldn’t read you if you weren’t.

(via WWdN:iX)

28 years old today. That number scares me a lot. I only have 1 birthday left in my 20’s! AHHHH! I have to say though, it’s been a great birthday this year. I did great for presents, including obviously my camera, but also got a pair of running shoes, some clothes, and a vacation to Lanzarote. Though the Lanzarote trip isn’t booked yet, because I have to make sure I can get the time off work. And the best present of all, I get to spend it with Liz! Our first birthday (well, my birthday, any way) together! Yay!

So, this week has seen the new Conservative prime minister in Canada do that which he railed against before he was prime minister. I mean, they say that power corrupts, but the man was in his FIRST DAY as PM, and he appoints a floor-crossing MP and a non-elected member of his campaign staff to the cabinet. I mean really, it doesn’t get any juicier than this. Harper spent MONTHS harping (pun intended) about Belinda Stronach crossing the floor to take a cabinet position in the Liberal government, and then DOES THE EXACT SAME THING. Some conservative pundits are saying “it’s not the same! There was no balance of power on the brink here, so it’s TOTALLY different!” I personally think they’re splitting hairs. The best was Peter Mackay’s quote: “”I don’t think he’s required to run in a by-election, it’s not legally necessary, it’s not something that he’s committed to do” - classic! Now I just need to find a quote from Mackay (or others) who said that the Liberals were splitting hairs when they refused to dissolve the government last year using legal technicalities.

So, the Turin Olympics have their opening ceremonies tonight. I had no idea when the olympics were starting, because unlike at home in Canada, they don’t get much press here in Ireland. However, I found out that Ireland does, in fact, have a winter Olympics team! Six athletes are listed, however only 4 of them actually have sports. So I’m guessing the other 2 are non-qualifiers. Tough break. Compare to the Canadian Olympic Team, which has 11 pages of athletes. Good luck, Irish olympians!

Listen. I know that you were engaged Lance Armstrong for a while (but not anymore), and he’s, like, athletic and stuff. So yeah, you got into the fitness thing too, that’s awesome. And for a while you were working the “Hey, I’m just a fit older chick” vibe. But let’s be honest with ourselves here. You are a lovely singer. You make wonderful songs. Nobody wants you to become a professional bodybuilder. So what’s with the “working out so much that your breasts are completely gone” thing?

Photo © Chris Carlson (A/P)

Hrmph. So much for my resolution to blog more.

What have I been up to? Well, last week Liz and I were in Rome, from Sunday to Wednesday. There is a LOT to see in Rome, as my over 300 Rome holiday photos show. We did a HELL of a lot of walking. Saw pretty much everything we wanted to see, except for the Sistine Chapel due to a timing goof on our part. Oh well, it ain’t goin anywhere. SO many amazing things to see, it was a really packed couple of days. Amazing food, if a bit expensive in places (sweet mother of Jesus, do NOT eat at the food place right outside the Colosseum Metro station!) but incredible ambiance. Oh, and lots of yummy gelati, too.

So, I’ve finally been tagged with the 4 things meme. That means that I HAVE to do it. I’m morally obligated, as a blogger. So, here we go:

Four jobs I’ve had:

1. Foxpro for DOS Software Developer
2. Powerbuilder Software Developer
3. Visual C++ Software Developer
4. Visual C# Software Developer

(Note, I’m not trying to be cheeky here… I’ve really only ever worked as a software developer!)

(more…)

Why oh why did I stay up till 3AM to watch the Superbowl? WHY??? I am absolutely exhausted now. 4 hours of sleep is NOT ENOUGH. But I guess it’s for the best, because now I can read all the stories about it without fear of spoilers (my original plan was to tape it, and watch it tonight). The only spoilers I have to avoid today are for Grey’s Anatomy, which I’ll be watching tonight.

Go Pittsburgh!

And now I’m going to bed. Oooog. Good on “Big Ben” for keeping his promise to Jerome Bettis last year.

My position on this day has already been made abundantly clear. Apparently the US hog saw his shadow. The Canadian one did not. Oh, the drama! Which one will be right? Does anyone actually care?