Back in the US

Hello everyone. I enjoyed my trip, but I have to say, it was good to get back and eat fried food and hamburgers again.

I haven't been actively posting since my life has been designated to working and very little leisure. However, I have to say that during my trip, I got a chance to read a lot.

I read a lot of Issac Asimov. He's a very popular science fiction author who writes some very interesting stories. The best way to describe his stories in my opinion are to say that they are like mysteries. The characters in his story are trying find the solution to a problem, whether it's a murder or the inevitable takeover of a planet. But they do so in a very nonviolent and ingenious way everytime. He can take a situation and turn it on its head very easily. If you're into sci-fi, I'd definitely recommend reading his Foundation series at least for a start. If you like those, read his other works too...they are also a great read.

Another book that I'm rereading now (with a lot of my spare time) is "The Agony and the Ecstasy." This is a historical fiction story about Michelangelo's life (the painter and sculptor, not the turtle.) Seeing the Sistine Chapel in person made me want to reread this. It's a very engaging story that puts you right in Florence and Rome in the time of Michelangelo very realistically. It's a classic for a reason. It is a long book, but very engaging. And it gives a lot more depth to his life and his works as a result.

And finally, if you're looking for pure entertainment, try reading Tricky Business by Dave Barry. Dave Barry is well known for his weekly newspaper humor column, but he also has written a few novels. It is an engaging story with humor that will sometimes leave you laughing out loud (literally). Fans of goofy movies involving Ben Stiller and Will Farrell would like this kind of movie, I am certain. That is, if you like to read anyway.

I haven't been playing a lot of games other than Team Fortress II. If you haven't played it since the new map Gold Rush, it's a lot of fun. Plus, trying to get the Medic achievements is a blast.

Hopefully I'll get more interesting as time goes on.

Website for Italy Trip

My trip chronicles with Justin have been relocated to a place where I can post some pictures.

By no means is this site a complete rendering of our trip...we have lots more pictures and some movie files to post. However, we don't want to spend our trip time working too much on the website and not enjoying the trip. But slowly we'll put our trip onto the site, a little bit at a time, so we can share our experiences with you all.

http://70.89.111.21:3002/index.html

Enjoy!

Trip To Italy - The Journey There

Bonnegiorno! Here I am in L’Italia. We had a pretty good trip. We had a connecting flight from Pittsburgh to Chicago in the morning, and had some time to kill, so we decided to take the metro into Chicago, walk around, and have lunch there. It was pretty nice. They definitely have “The Windy City” right. The first thing that I noticed was how flat it was. Everything was in a perfect grid compared to anything I’ve seen in PA. They don’t really have any rolling hills out there.

We walked around in Chicago and saw briefly the theater district, the riverwalk, and possibly the Sears Tower (we’re pretty sure we saw it, but couldn’t distinguish it from all of the other big buildings. We ate in a small place called Potbelly Sandwich Works. I had a lunch meat sandwich wrap made fresh and some chicken noodle soup. It was very good. We didn’t have too much of a chance to look around since we only had 4 hours there, and the metro was a 45 minute drive. Fortunately, the security checkpoints didn’t take too long to get through so there was no worry of missing our flight. Travelling on a Tuesday was a great idea.

The flight wasn’t too bad for a 9 hour flight. We brought plenty of stuff to do. I had my laptop (it’s amazing how little you can do without the Internet anymore), we brought several books from the library, and Nick and Jess let us borrow their Nintendo DS’s for the trip. We played Mario Kart through the whole flight from Pittsburgh to Chicago, and played a good bit of the trip on the way to Italy.

Justin’s seat tactics worked. We ordered our tickets online, and it gave us the option to choose our seats. The plane had seating that was 2/3/2. Two seats next to each other near the window, and three seats in the very middle. All of the seats against the window were taken, so Justin took two aisle seats in the middle section in the same row that had an empty seat between us. He figured that the middle seat would likely be the last taken by anyone, so if there were vacant seats, we’d have a shot at an empty seat between us. Well, that’s exactly what happened. It made sleeping a little bit easier, but it’s still definitely hard to sleep practically sitting up.

The food wasn’t too bad either – we got beef and mashed potatoes, a small salad, a dinner roll, and a really good triple chocolate brownie. I wish I had slept more though, because we took off at 3:00 PM, and we arrived 9 hours later…at 6 in the morning in Italy. Basically, it was Daylight Savings Time, times 6. So we didn’t get much sleep before our first big day in Italy.

I have a lot to tell about already, but time is short. I still have jet lag, am exhausted from today, and have to get some work done too. I’ll try to get some pictures up for next time as well. Ciao!

Trip to Italy

Well, some of you know, but most of you don't. I'll be taking a two week trip with my brother Justin to Italy starting tomorrow. Definitely too busy today to be excited - it'll probably start tonight when we leave for Pittsburgh.

We've been trying to learn at least a little Italian, but it's been pretty tough. I took too much Spanish to be very good at Italian - I keep lapsing into old Spanish habits.

What I've decided to do is TRY to do a daily blog to keep track of my experience. Or at least an every-so-often blog. So all of you lucky people get to see my trip firsthand. So don't be too surprised if you see a frenzy of activity in the next few days or so.

Wish us luck, and the next time I blog will be from L'Italia. Ciao!

Team Fortress Hilarity

Even if you've never played this game, you'll find this absolutely hilarious. Some moron is using game exploits and just stupid activity to screw over his team, including making teleport death-traps for his teammates, preventing his own snipers from seeing, and locking his team in their spawn point with a glitch. Absolutely hilarious to hear everyone's in game reaction to his antics.

Warning: strong language.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUPzN7tp7bQ

Brain Phenomenon

So I've been working all evening on some projects, and when Nick and I are tired, strange things start to happen (don't tell our clients). But tonight I realized just how much fun you can have changing songs titles that have "_-ain" in them to song titles with "brain" in them.

Take these fun examples:

"Have You Ever Seen My Brain" by CCR (Have You Ever Seen The Rain)
"Last Brain in London" by ELO (Last Train to London)
"Where's My Brain" by Eric Clapton (Let It Rain)
"Brains on the Scarecrow" by John Mellencamp (Rain on the Scarecrow)
"Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Brains" by Ricky Nelson (Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain)
"Crazy Brain" by Ozzy Osbourne (Crazy Train)

I calculated it, and I am roughly 215 times more likely to sing along to the "brain version" of any of these songs. Should this be called the "Brain Phenomenon?"

Is anyone else amused by this? Or is it just me at midnight being really tired?

Yeah that's what I thought. Anyway, feel free to add any song titles that you find amusing as well.

Someday I'll post something relevant and interesting, I swear.

Links

Well, I still haven't been doing a whole lot. Been working a lot, playing Titanquest, Team Fortress 2, and Rock Band a good bit. So nothing terribly new to report.

But I've been sent a number of purely entertaining links that I wanted to share with you all.

1. Mario in Javascript - Sure it isn't perfect, but if anyone has ever coded Javascript....this is truly a masterpiece.

2. Canada On Strike - The South Park season has kinda been meh so far, until last week's episode. Pure comedy. After watching it, make sure you watch the videos that inspired it. The list is located here.

3. Top 100 April Fools Jokes - Many of these were from a time when you wouldn't imagine too many pranks were played at a wide-spread level. Some are just awesome. I didn't realize that April Fools was celebrated internationally.

4. Speaking of April Fools - anyone who played WoW and missed this....inexcusable.

5. Windows 98 and XP Music - This is very nerdy, but still somewhat entertaining. I enjoyed it.

I know there are more...I'll just have to save them for another post later.

Keep posting fun links in your comments...I'm enjoying them, just never remember to comment back about them.