So I went to Florida for two weeks. It was the first time I've been there since I was 2. The first week, the weather was kinda cold. Too cold to do much biking. The second week was much better weather, 80s every day. One day we rented a boat and drove all up and down the canals in Ft Lauderdale. It was awesome, I even got a tiny little bit of color! It's so nice not being cold. I can't wait till summer. I almost wanna move to Florida. The only problem is there is NO PLACE to do ANY kind of good biking. Not even urban free-rides. Nothing but flat sidewalks to drive up and down. So maybe I won't move there. But I'll definitely go down there more often.

Oh so the trip.... The train ride down was horrible. It was so cramped, and the food wasn't that great. And the train car wasn't very clean. And it was SOOOOOO LOOOOOOOONG! And the bouncing. The normal rocking of a train wasn't so bad, but this car also has a bounce to it. A sort of rapid up and down movement that made it almost impossible for me to sleep. I was going out of my mind for a little while, so much sleep depravation, and being stuck in a into little room. But once I did get some sleep it wasn't so bad. I was able to connect my MacBook to my iPhone and get on the internet. So I went ahead and canceled my ticket home, and bought a ticket home on JetBlue. JetBlue was $109 vs Amtrak's $440, plus it was less than 3 hours to get home. It was great, I couldn't even finish my movie because I was home already. AND the plane was WAY cleaner than the train too. But for ~$200 round trip, I can go all the time realistically.

I have 202 pictures from the vacation, they're on my MobileMe and Facebook...

So a week before I left for Florida, I met this girl named Elizabeth. We hung out twice that week. I really liked her. She was very cute and funny. She eats all kind of weird food, so we were definitely opposites there. BUT by the time I got back from Florida, I could tell something was up, so I asked her what was up and she said she just wanted to be friends. Yeah. Ouch. That really sucks, the whole time I was in Florida, I couldn't wait to get back and see her again.

So I'm thinking about getting one of these new desks. It's a corner desk so hopefully it will give me more space. The grey shadows in the pictures represent my two monitors. Notice they don't fit very well. It would be much better of those two supports were on the outside of the desk instead of the middle. I'm going to have to trek down to the local Ikea to see it in person... with a measuring tape.

Mikael Corner Workstation

There are some possible options. I could mount both monitors on VESA arms. They would attach to the vertical supports, wall-mount style. The problems with that plan are first that those arms are expensive. Plus I'd need an additional adapter to make my Apple Cinema display wall mountable. Looking forward, another big issue is that I eventually want to switch from a Mac Pro to an iMac, and iMacs do not have VESA mounts. And finally... the desk is likely all particle board, so I don't know how strong those vertical supports would be, they might warp and eventually break under the weight of hanging monitors.

Another option might be to customize the desk. I've got a drill, I've got glue. Thats probably all I would need to move the supports out to the side edges of the desk. We'll see...

President: Obama
For the following reasons: economy/tax, health care, war, foreign policy, energy, overall approach
Also, NUCULAR is not a word. If you can't even SAY Nuclear Weapons, you should NEVER EVER EVER be in charge of Nuclear Weapons (sarah palin).

Question 1: Removing Income Tax (NO)
No more income tax. What do you want to be like New Hampshire? No offense but NH's government is poor, they can't afford to do ANYTHING that isn't funded federally. Yeah I'd like to keep more of my money but at what cost? How are we going to pay for.... everything? Schools, Police, Fire, Public Transportation? We've got a lot of stuff. Its not going to magically continue to function without money.

Question 2: Possession of Marijuana (YES)
Yes people who smoke week are retarded. Retards aren't criminals. They're just dumb. This won't make it any less of a crime to drive around high, just less of a crime (but still a crime) to have small amounts of weed on you.

Question 3: Banning Dog Racing (Skip)
If dogs are treated unfairly, don't we need laws to enforce better treatment of animals? Some people drive drunk. We don't make driving illegal, we make drunk driving illegal. The whole thing seems dumb, so I'm not voting on it.

If you know me, you know who Michelle is. Well you won't be hearing about Michelle any more. The short story is that I told her all I was to her was a free website (I made her website) and so I'm not working on her website anymore. She insisted that we were in fact friends. I haven't heard a word from her since. Today she deleted me from her social networking friends lists. That shows you how much she thought of me as her friend. I kind of expected it to go that way, still it's pretty shitty. I really liked her. I could elaborate on every part of this story, but I'm not going to.

www.lynch-cantillon.com/Obituary?id=1702

Edward F. Masone, 55, of Stoneham passed away unexpectedly Wednesday morning, September 3rd, at Winchester Hospital. He was the beloved husband of Diane M. (Quigley) Masone.

Ed was born in Somerville and raised in Winchester, son of Theresa (Pascucci) Masone of Derry, New Hampshire, and the late Nunzio Masone. He graduated from Winchester High School with the Class of 1971 and attended Northeastern University. He had made his home in Stoneham with his family since his marriage twenty-eight years ago.

Ed worked for various supermarkets throughout the area over the years, and was most recently employed as a department manager for Shaw's in Medford.

He was devoted to his family and enjoyed boating, fishing, and waterskiing at Beaver Lake in Derry New Hampshire. He was also an avid football fan.

Surviving along with his wife Diane and his mother, Theresa Masone of Derry, New Hampshire, are two sons, Eric W. and John F. Masone, both of Stoneham, a brother, John E. Masone and his wife Tricia of Boca Raton, Florida, and a sister Laura R. Masone of Derry, New Hampshire and New York City. Also surviving are many nieces and nephews.

The funeral will be held from the Lynch-Cantillon Funeral Home, 263 Main Street, Woburn, on Saturday, September 6th at 9:15 a.m., followed by a funeral mass in St. Barbara's Church, 138 Cambridge Road, Woburn, at 10. Interment will follow in Calvary Cemetery, Woburn.

Relatives and friends may call at the funeral home on Friday from 4 to 8 p.m.

I'd say there is a fair chance that I won't be seeing Michelle ever again. That sucks.

I've got even more RAM to add to my Computer Parts page. I have so much used RAM its not even funny.

I ask people "What do you think of X" and they hear "Please tell me exactly what I should do about X", and then they get pissed when I don't do exactly what they said. I'm not looking for directions, I'm looking for opinions to help me form my own decision. Pisses me off.

I've been biking like 3 days a week this summer. Last summer I biked 5-6 days per week. I'm not very happy about this. I also don't have the super man muscles like I had last year.

Speaking of biking, my Maverick Speedball adjustable seatpost is awesome when its working perfectly, but its damn near IMPOSSIBLE to get the seat adjusted on the post just right. The lever bring it up and down, but you have to fight with this really hard to adjust bold to rotate it forward and back, and slide it forward and back. It's very frustrating. I still recommend them to everyone though. Although Maverick isn't making them anymore, I think Crank Brothers is.

Also, I upgraded the brakes on my bike. I really wish I had a picture. I removed the 6" rear rotor and 7" front rotor, and replaced them both with 8" rotors. They are friggin' HUGE. They work amazing and when you look at the bike, it's ALL brake! I'm very happy about it.

I haven't sold my ML7 yet! I picked out the stocks I wanted to buy with the ML7 money MONTHS ago, but that niche bike just won't sell. Its on ebay right now so hopefully I'll finally get rid of it.

The Menus are coming in very slow these days :-/ Also I've been so busy ripping CDs that I haven't had much time to work on the login system, so it's still not public yet.

$65/hr is nice.

I started doing research on my next vehicle. The one conclusion I've come to so far is that I'm REALLY going to miss my RX-8 :-( At this point I'm thinking either a Mazda 6 or a VW GLI... but that will probably change a lot, my lease isn't up for another 9 months.

I've been thinking of getting a 15" laptop for my next laptop. More pixels and more firewire ports would both be great things. Aluminum is also nice. Hopefully Apple comes out with a 15" laptop that is less than $2000. My current Laptop is getting old fast, but my tower is still super fast. 6GB of RAM is awesome.

I'm pretty much just giving up on Wendys. Fast food is so yummy but only when it's cooked. No one likes french fries that look like cooked macaroni. It's so gross. I mean just good the goddamn french fries and I'd eat there once in a while!

As I type this blog entry, I'm telling Thomas's girlfriend what a butternut donut is.
Her: whats a butternut?
Me: good. thats what it is.

The boat is still in the driveway. Who has time. Stupid rug.

I still don't have an iPhone. I need one pretty bad too. I need to upgrade my MenuLizard iPhone app, and I have a whole other web app I want to make, that will be great. But I need an iPhone to actually make these things great.

I hope I see Michelle again.

So apparently my Jury Duty headaches are never going to end.

So First I got called to jury duty April 9th in Lowell.

I requested a transfer, and got changed to April 10th in Woburn.

Then I got a letter in the mail regarding my April 9th jury duty in lowell. I called them up and they had no record of any transfer to Woburn, even though I have right here in my hand, a card saying ""your juror service has been changed to the time and date below ... April 10th, Woburn Courthouse..."

So even though their records show Lowell, I want Woburn and have the card that says Woburn, so I decided I'll just go to Woburn.

So now, 7 days before my jury duty, I get another transfer notice in the mail, saying my jury duty has been changed AGAIN to lowell, April 17th. I never requested another transfer, so I don't know what the fuck is going on with these people, but it is seriously pissing me off, and stressing me out.

So I again requested another transfer to Woburn today, but that was denied. So NOW, I have to write a nice long letter, with copies of all these things they keep sending me, to try and get it transfered back to Woburn.

These people are so fucking retarded. You'd think after 232 years, they would come up with a way to do jury duty that didn't have errors like this.

I'm been at home sick since Friday. 4 days straight, going on 5. Its been like a crazy changing super flu. First it's a dizzy thing, then its a sore throat thing, then its a 'how many gallons of snot can we squeeze into your little head' thing. This is horrible. I haven't left the house since Thursday. I'm so sick and I definitely don't feel like I'm getting better, at least not quickly. Its too bad I don't have health insurance, I could go see a doctor or something.

Man I can not wait till spring, warm weather, sox games, urban bike rides, getting my snow tires taken off and whaling on my car. Ohh good times, I need you.

I made a new photo album, "Me Biking". Its a bunch of pics I got my hands on from all the DieselBikes rides I was on last year. They are all from Lynn and B&Ts, but I'll probably add more from the Fells and other places.

Michelle mentioned me in her blog today. It's all downhill from here ;-) I guess I made a decent website after all. And those Raleza's are all about calling me a genius. Hooray for my ego!

I finally got around to fixing the photo albums. They now link to my dot Mac account. They have really cool effects and stuff too. Much nicer than anything I would have come up with had i done my own photo album. I've had this dot Mac account for months, and I'm just now getting around to using it.

Also, some of the albums are again password protected. So if you want the username & password, just shoot me a message.

OK so yesterday I was thinking of actually writing Conan O'Brien a letter. His show is free but you have to wait in line to try to get in. I was going to politely ask if he could send me a pair of tickets that would somehow guarantee me seats. That way me and a friend could take the train to NYC, go see Conan, and come home all in one night.

And then I watched the news today. Well that plan is out! Why? Because a Priest from, of all places, my town of Stoneham, was arrested at the NBC studios for stalking Conan. The priest was Rev. David Ajemian, and apparently lots of people in town knew the guy? St Pats is the biggest church in town. That's pretty messed up. And everyone's first response so far has been: "But Conan's not a little boy?" heh heh thats funny & true & not funny, all at the same time.

I should start a MySpace group for people from Stoneham who are fans of Conan but are not stalkers.

So its been about a week and a half. I've only gotten two brochures 'returned to sender'. And starting friday, I did notice an increase in traffic that corresponds to the time when most restaurants would be getting the brochure. But, alas, I have not received any menus yet. 80 of the brochures were sent first class, so I should already be getting menus from those places, and I should be getting menus from the other 2,000 by the end of the week. I should be flooded by menus. But I'm not :-( Lets hope I'm just being impatient, and that the flood of menus is coming.

My waterbed needs more water in it. I guess its just stretching now that its been filled up for a few months. This saddens me, as now I have to go get a dirty hose from outside, and connect it to my bed. It's a pain in the ass.

I uploaded everything good that was in my iPhoto, and stuck them in the Photos box on this site. The albums themselves are just iPhoto web site exports, nothing special looking. They are password protected though, so if you need the password, just email me and I'll give it to you. BTW this is not my camera unfortunately, its just some generic camera image I found on Google Images.

Happy Thanksgiving