What Happens At Home

For all of you who think Miranda and I have a wild and crazy life, this is what happens at home. The dogs sleep, Miranda reads and I surf the internet/watch TV. I don't want this to sound like I'm complaining, it's nice and quiet and it all seems to just work.

Also, an interesting post on Metafilter with lots of interesting pictures: "Kirkbride Buildings. Once state-of-the-art mental healthcare facilities, Kirkbride buildings have long been relics of an obsolete therapeutic method known as Moral Treatment. These massive structures were conceived as ideal sanctuaries for the mentally ill in the latter half of the nineteenth century."

suprglu

I've come across an amazing website call suprglu. The best way to describe it is that it aggregates all of the pages which you create on the internet. If you have a blog on blogger or pictures on flickr or you constantly link to del.icio.us then it will draw from those websites and create a conglomerate of one giant page of all of your stuff. I have posted my suprglu page on my links if you want to know what I'm looking at and you feel like you need to stalk my every move on the internet.

Mavs Game - Return of the T-Storm

What a tremendous time at the Mavs game last night. I got the call around 5:30 and I think I was only 3rd or 4th on the call list (it doesn't bother me, really, it doesn't) and I was at the Jones' household by 6:30.

I want to give a huge shout-out to Mr. Thompson who provided the seats, they were greatly appreciated by all of us.

The game wasn't great, because the Mavs completely stomped a mudhole in the Pacers. The first half was closer that the second half but the Mavs had so much more depth it wasn't really fair. Once again, it's amazing how great Howard, Harris and Terry can be. This is going to be an amazing year. I also realized on the ride home to Terrell that Dampier had 14 rebounds (I was shocked to hear this).

By the way, the picture of Nick in complete defiance of his wife is priceless and will be worth quite a ransom, not that I would blackmail Nick. Let's just hope that Nick doesn't show this blog to his wife.

It's a shame that T-Storm is half-way across the country.

Christmas at the Fivecoat's

Christmas at the Fivecoat's was fun, I received a wonderful surround sound DVD player and Miranda and I watched two episodes of Band of Brothers (a DVD set that I received last year). Miranda received a new purse, a food processor, more flanel pajamas (for the love of God, no more flanel pajamas) and some new books. It is also without a doubt that Christmas at the Fivecoat's is really about Olive as she received a new t-shirt that says, "IT'S ALL ABOUT ME."

Both of our parents and family are so good to us and we cannot thank them enough for all of the wonderful gifts.

Christmas at Home

Let's not kid ourselves, Christmas at home was about three beings, all pictured above. Despite their love for chew toys and other things, I gave Miranda a Nano, which she loves and wanted since her birthday in August and Miranda gave me a new phone, which is sti nkin' cool. Miranda also got a new necklace, a coffee mug with a picture of her favorite dog, and herb egglings. All in all, Miranda and I had a wonderful Christmas and we hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas as well.

Christmas at the Jungman's - Part II

Christmas at the Jungman's

Another wonderful Christmas at the Jungman's under the belt. Although I'm not sure, I think that I was the only one taking pictures at either the Jungman's or the Fivecoat's, thus the pics are minimal. Nevertheless, I got a wonderful dog barn, which will come in handy for the puppy dogs when it rains and a bed-liner for my new truck. Miranda was very excited about new coasters and it seemed as if Jenson and Grace loved all of their new toys. Grace loves opening presents and she had no problem helping Uncle Cluck with his or anyone elses.

Mavericks win

I stayed up and watched the Mavericks game last night and I couldn't help but think that they were going to lose that game. Mark Cuban had an interesting post on his blog a couple of days ago and mentioned the failure rate of teams who play on back to back nights and then goes into teams that play back to back on the road (even worse). Needless to say, the Mavs pulled this one out and it was a really good game. I think the other thing that I want to eventually get into at a later date is the relative youth of the Mavs, detailing the large number of players under the age of 27 or 28 and that their window is larger than most people think. Just as an example, think about the ages of Harris, Howard, Daniels, Diop, Terry, Dirk, Dampier, Terry (all under the age of 30 at this point of their careers). Although they can't beat the Lakers (I think they just don't have anyone who can match up with Kobe, but then again who does) they are a very good team and I'm not going to go so far as to say that the Mavs will beat San Antonio, but it will be close.

The O.G.

You can take the man out of the gangsta, but you can't take the gangsta out of the man. I really couldn't help myself. This is Brady's new hat and I thought it would be best if I modeled it so he could know what a real O.G. is supposed to look like.

Font

I fixed the font and now I can sleep at night.

del.icio.us

Some of you may have seen the del.icio.us link on the right of this blog and wondered what the heck it is. For someone like myself, it is absolute and complete greatness, del.icio.us is social bookmarking. Basically, I have a personalized page that allows me to, wherever I am located, to bookmark to my del.icio.us page instead having to simply list it on my favorites on my home computer. I know that this seems a little odd, but the other nice thing about del.icio.us is that it allows to "tag" a website (i.e. assign a word to a website that helps define it) and then I am able to view what other folks are bookmarking and using the same tag. del.icio.us is easy to use and very enjoyable because it makes life simple.

It should also be noted that Yahoo purchased del.icio.us in early December and that will probably mean changes, but Yahoo also purchased Flickr and it seems like they have done nothing but great things with it.

You will also note that I am varying the fonts on this site so that I can find something that I like. I really don't like the default font, but I always forget to change it. Also, all of my fonts don't match (i.e. my links, title, etc.) and this bothers me.

Web 2.0 Calendars

I have been fascinated by finding web-based websites that contain useful stuff. In this post I examine the web-based calendar. Now, some of you may not know what "web-based" means, but basically, as opposed to having a calendar system on your computer, you can take your calendar wherever you have an internet connection by simply logging onto that website.

The best web-based calendar is kiko. The format is simple and clean and it's easy to work. It also allows you to invite friends and they can look over what's you want them to view as far as your calendar is concerned.

The other calendar is called calendarhub. Once again, simple is good and it allows you to do all of the things that kiko does, but for some reason I like the kiko interface better. Looking at it objectively, calendarhub allows you to do more, like publish your calendar to your blog and allows you to look for local events in the area.

Both are good strong calendar systems and I recommend them both. Also, it's free, and there's one thing I've learned since starting this stuff is that there's no real reason to pay for anything because you can get it free (Miranda will strongly disagree with me, but its true).

Rangers finally make a trade.

So the Rangers traded Chris Young, Adrian Gonzalez and Terrmel Sledge in exchange for Adam Eaton, Otsuka, and a catching prospect. I don't know how I feel about this, I know nothing about Eaton, but what I have read, he is in the last year of his deal and he has publicly stated that he does not want to sign here next year due to the fact that TBIA is a hitters paradise. What bothers me most is that I thought that Young was decent, but not special and never pitched far into games, but he was decent. I really don't like giving up Gonzalez for so little, but I have to imagine that John Daniels looked and was not able to find anything worth a dang. Nevertheless, I really don't know where this ship is sailing. Maybe the Rangers are gearing up for the DVD boys in 2007 and they're not worried about today. That's a risky proposition and I don't like the idea of dealing away bargaining chips (Young and Gonzalez) for little to nothing. If you don't read this website, Lone Star Ball, then you really don't have your pulse on the Rangers (I should also mention that Newberg will have his opinion sometime tomorrow morning).

Christmas Party

The annual Kaufman Christmas party was a huge success. There's nothing like celebrating baby Jesus' birth by exchanging sexually themed gag gifts. A good time was had by all, and for the record the ladies won at Pictionary, barely.

CHRISTOPHER!

 

Michael Toney's Bachelor Party - Part II

Please note, that the Kaufman crew was with Jim, Buddy and Rick. It says more about us than it does about them (i.e. we act as old as they are).

So the funny part is that we go to a very trendy bar in Dallas, called "The Fuse" and to say the least, we (we being J-Five, Tony, Chris, Stephen, Greg and myself) were the most out of place folks and to be quite honest the homosexual population at this bar outweighed the heterosexual population (not that there's anything wrong with that). So we end up leaving there and we go to another bar across the street. This was the type of bar that no one knows about and we went through some canvas cover to get inside. Inside, there were more pretty people than you could shake a stick at and we felt even more out of place. We were enjoying ourselves here and a manager comes up to Chris and tells him that someone at the front told us to take off our hats (which he did not) or leave. We told him that we would leave, but he was really a jerk about the whole situation. Nevertheless, we laughed and giggled our way out of the bar and into the parking lot.

Michael Toney's Bachelor Party - Part I

Nothing like a bachelor party at the AAC, we have Greggo getting his bounce "on" prior to the game, you have myself and Chris showing a sense of apathy during the game and a look at tip-off. In actuality, it was a pretty good game, but it shouldn't have been. As Chris said, he cannot remember the times that Dirk has hit a game-winning shot (and he missed one tonight to send it into OT). Jason Terry and Devin Harris are unbelievable, as is Josh Howard. DJ "Moose" Benga actually got into the game due to the ineffectiveness of Damp and Diop and he showed some athleticism.

But the game really isn't the story here. We all had a good time at the game, but with 4 minutes left to go, two guys showed up and told Greg and Stephen that they were in their seats. As Greg left, he gave one of them then turkey-wing brush-off, but the guy had already done his job and Greg was affected. He later proceeded to curse at an Adrian Griffin foul without issuing the warning of ear-muffs.

After we left the game, we headed to a swanky bar downtown and then the real party began.

The Panda Bear

My sweet clean buddy, Greggo, discussed the idea that panda bears may actually be related to raccoons. I laughed at the idea, but I did not laugh enough not to find out if this is accurate. Strangely enough, I found this on Wikipedia:

"For many decades the precise taxonomic classification of the panda was under debate as both the Giant Panda and the distantly related Red Panda share characteristics of both bears and raccoons. However, genetic testing has revealed that Giant Pandas are true bears and part of the Ursidae family. Its closest bear relative is the Spectacled Bear of South America. (Disagreement remains about whether or not the Red Panda belongs in Ursidae; the raccoon family, Procyonidae; or in its own family, Ailuridae.)"

I know that this may shock some of you, but Greggo was/is right.

I am going to a Maverick game tomorrow night and it should be quite a time. There will be pictures on Saturday.

Calvin and Hobbes

I don't think it's a good idea to have two posts in the same night, about 15 minutes apart, but I do love Calvin and Hobbes cartoons and I ran across this link. I know its stupid and childish, but I don't care. I enjoy them.

Time Wasting

Someone, I think Richie, mentioned on Sunday that he was wasting quite a bit of time playing online games. Thus, it was my mission to find a complete list of free games that were online, ranging from, well, everything. Some of these games cost money down the road, but live for today and play.

On another note, I've "discovered" web 2.0 and all of the applications that it can have. Over the next few weeks I'll be discussing many of the web 2.0 websites and what they can do for you, i.e. make your life easier and more fun.

Puppy Dogs

These are my wife's and my puppy dogs. The first is Blue. She chews almost anything she can, but for some reason she doesn't chew any furniture. The second picture is what Blue and Zoey do all day, the standoff and then they playfully "attack" each other. Zoey is our stray that Miranda picked up about a year and a half ago. Finally, there's Olive and without a doubt, this is Miranda's dog. This is our family.