Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

So it is about 10:30 AM in Manila right now. I talked to Gina a couple of hours ago, she arrived safely and has already completed her first day of work at the customer's office (technically she is into her 2nd day of work right now).

She said that the flight was not too bad and this time around she made a couple of friends.

Apparently Hotels.com has opened a call center in Manila, she ended up sitting next to a couple of guys from the Hotels.com's Dallas office.

She described them as Sales Guys and that they were going to Manila for three weeks. Apparently they are rotating sales folk through the Manila call center as part of training. (She didn't say whether it was the call center's training or the sales folk's training, my guess it is the call center's training.)

Apparently, the this was the first time for these two sales guys to visit Manila, they didn't know how LONG a flight to the Philippines was going to be. Having known a few sales folk in my time, I am sure that it was merely a lack of reading the ticket and doing the math. Because in the end, knowing how long you are going to be stuck in the airplane doesn't really matter, it isn't going to make the time go by any faster.

However, from what I am told a bag (of holding +2) containing a bunch of McD's food. The bag was rumored to contain chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers, snack wraps and I am sure there were some french fries.

They might have been thinking that it was the last time that they were going to see American food for three weeks (if you can really think of McD's as food). Gina said that one of them proclaimed 'The Stash' as emergency food in case the food on the flight was bad.

Gina said they seemed surprised when she told them that McD's existed in the Philippines.

Wait till they hear that KFC is making a killing in Taipei.

The Hotels.com guys had the same travel arrangements as Gina (For the most part).

Fly Coach and stay in a really NICE hotel, or fly business class and stay somewhere not so nice.

Both Gina and the Hotels.com guys choose to fly coach and stay someplace NICE, the Shangri-La hotel chain.

However, Gina is at the Edsa and I believe she said the Hotels.com guys were at the Traders one (across town).

Gina is getting to be quite the experienced international traveler, she told me that she helped the Hotels.com guys get through customs in Manila, since they were rookies.

I do find it sort of interesting that the Hotels.com guys are going to be working US hours (for the most part, they start work at 11PM Manila / 10 AM Central), while Gina starts her day at 9AM Manila / 8PM Central.

Just for the record I am stealing a bit of the wife's thunder here and blogging vicariously through her, because well she has been to the Philippines a few times now since her last blog post and I am not sure she is going to post anything up on FiveDogQuartet.com or not.

For me, it is just the same old with working and playing too many video games.

Speaking of both of those things call to me.

Laterz

Gina has made it home.

Unfortunately I was late getting to the airport, which has also unfortunately become the norm.

I vow that next time I will be there waiting for her down in the baggage area.

I won't get into the various reasons on why I was late to the airport, ultimately they stem from me not planning the morning out right.

However, it was lucky for me that Gina's flight was about 30 minutes late, so I got there before she got her bags.

We then proceeded over to Chuy's and had a good lunch.

Originally we had been planning on breakfast and then bowling. However, it turned into lunch and a movie.

Gina was not sure what we should watch, so she let me pick.

I selected 'Run Fatboy Run', which was FSCKING hilarious.

I don't want to put words in Gina's mouth, but given the amount of laughing that she did, I think it is fair to say that she enjoyed the movie. Which is a good thing, as she often doesn't like the movies that I pick.

She managed to stay awake until about 7:00 pm.

I took a nap from then until about 9:30 or so. I wanted to make sure to put away the pot roast that I had put into the crock earlier today.

I am watched 'Sunshine' a strange movie, reminiscent of the movie 'Event Horizon' and it seems like an episode of 'The Outer limits'.

I would give it a 7.5 or so on a scale of 1-10.

I think I might try to go bowling in the morning, which means I really should get to bed.

Laterz

Gina flew off to the Philippines on Friday the 28th and arrived on Sunday the 30th. While, this isn't necessarily a normal definition of time travel, the there are several things to keep in mind here.

For instance, I spoke with her while I was making dinner this evening (Monday night), this while she was on her way to breakfast on Tuesday morning.

The is already in tomorrow, while I am still in Today!

Ok, Ok I know she isn't really in the future. But that type of mindset may help you understand this next bit.

So my wife's birthday is on the 29th. She was on the airplane for her birthday. However, I would like to think that she was crossing the international dateline (though I am pretty sure she was a few hours away from that when the airplane crossed that median).

However, as far as I am concerned she ended up skipping the 29th, thus negating her birthday for this year.

And as it so happens, this year is her 30th birthday.

Which means that if she skipped the 29th of March, then technically she never turned 30, so she gets to be 29 for another year.

Apparently someone at work made a joke about how she isn't turning 30, she is just going to be celebrating the first anniversary of her 29th birthday.

Anyway, Gina is having a good time in the Philippines so far. She is going to be there for about 2 weeks, returning to Austin on the 12th.

That means that I am living it up bachelor style with the dogs.

I am trying to get them to respect me more. I am pretty sure they think I am just one of the pack, except I'm extra tall and have thumbs (which come in handy for opening things like cans of food and treats).

John finished up the gate he was making for Gina. It is custom fit to go across our wider than normal opening between the living room and the dining room. The height is perfect, not too high and not too low. The couple of previous gates we have had (from Wal-Mart or Target) tended to be too high, tends to make for banged up shins.

John does great work, when I get a chance I will post some pictures. John stated that if anyone else is looking for a custom crafted gate he might start doing them as part of his side woodworking business.

Well, I am going to see if I can finish my expense report tonight.

Laterz

I have been sleeping a ton the last couple of days. I hope it is just me recovering from fatigue of sort almost burning the candle at both ends the last couple of weeks and not a cold.

I have been wrapping Gina's gifts over the last two days, I am still not done yet. Partially because there are quite a few, but also because I keep falling asleep on the couch with the Emma and Buddy.

I would have been picking Gina up from the airport at midnight tonight.

However, because of the weather in the Mid-West, she was rescheduled to fly out tomorrow morning. I hope she doesn't get delayed again, otherwise she might miss out on the holiday festivities that are planned. (We will be watching x-mas movies with the Arntz's tomorrow night.)

She is due in at 10:20 AM tomorrow morning, I will make sure to set an alarm, even though I have not needed to the last few days. Even with as sleepy as I have been, I have been waking up between 7:00 - 7:30 AM.

Crazy huh?

Anyway, if I could have rented an elf, then I could have slept the last couple of days away completely, while the elf was wrapping the presents and maybe feeding the dogs.

Yesterday Jeremy and I went on a beer quest. It started over at World Market. However, the selection of beer there was not all that great. A couple of decent imports, but overall nothing very spectacular.

Upon my suggestion we headed over to Central Market. Their wine and beer section is quite amazing. They had all sorts of beer, too many to choose from really.

I forget everything we picked up, but I do remember that Jeremy picked up a 'sixer' of some beer with a crazy looking dog on it. And I grabbed a bottle of Chimay (burgandy label) and a bottle of Young's Christmas Ale. I think we picked up a sixer of Abita's Christmas Ale.

Gina request a particular Pinot Noir, something by the name of 'Rus'. She wasn't sure of the name exactly, either way Central Market didn't have anything like that. I picked up a couple of bottle of good looking Pinot Noir while I was over at Target.

I also picked up some popping corn, white and black kernel. The popping corn, beer, and wine are all for tomorrow's movie night.

Well, I need to get back to wrapping gifts. (unless I pass out again.)

Laterz

Once again I am faced with the fact that I have neglected my blogging. Course, I am not the only one

Work has been busier and busier, so I haven't had the opportunities that I usually do to log during lunch. I mean, if I managed my lunch hour a little bit better I could watch clips of The Daily Show, eat my sandwich and blog. Maybe I will try that tomorrow, course I still haven't quite learned to chew bubblegum and walk at the same time.

Jeremy is back in town.

He picked up a copy of Halo2 the other day at Fry's. We saw some videos on YouTube on some pretty impressive Lego Mindstorms the other day, so yesterday we went to Toy's R Us to see if they had any kits. Well, as with most sought after items Toys R Us was found to be lacking what we wanted.

Anyway, off and on over the last few days we have been playing Halo 2 after work, I have been lucky enough to beat him more often than not. However, he is getting better, while I am more or less just staying at the same skill level. However, neither of us are anywhere near being what one would probably call "Good".

I bought Stratego a few weeks back. We played a couple of games of it last night, I won them both. I hadn't played that game in probably 15 years or so.

We played a game of Scrabble after that, Jeremy beat me.

I brought my laptop home tonight and decided that I would boot up and blog a little while I am on the couch. Unfortunately, I am fairly I cannot bring myself to work on the specs that I should work tonight. I have been writing up specs for the last two days. While not overly, overly detailed specs it has taken a toll on the old mind. Especially since I have been fielding other requests here and there, interruption while writing specs or documentation tends to be more of a drain than one would usually think.

Anyway, I brought the laptop home thinking I would work a little bit, but that doesn't look like it is going to be the case.

I bought "Babylon 5: The Lost Tales" the other day. I had seen that there was a new Bablyon 5 DVD a few weeks ago and had spent the last few trips to Target and Wal-Mart looking for it. I finally found it at Best Buy, otherwise I was going to have to buy it online.

I have it on the TV right now. So far the storyline of the first lost tale is building, nothing critical has happened yet. I am not sure how the tale is going to play out just yet.

Anyway. Let me tell y'all a little bit about what happeneed this past weekend.

I dragged Gina out of the house on Saturday. (Pretty literally.)

The original idea was to drag her out of the house grab breakfast and maybe see SuperBad. However, that isn't how it played out.

We ended up going to The Salt Lick for lunch. Now, going to the Salt Lick from our place up here in Cedar Park is like an all day adventure, particularly since we didn't leave until about 10:30 almost 11:00. We had a good time at Salt Lick, we stopped on the way to pick up some Beer and Wine Coolers, since the Salt Lick is BYOB.

On the way out of the Salt Lick I saw that they had a small easel setup with these little maps to some wineries around there.

One of the little maps had something interesting on it "High Quality Olive Oil".

Gina and I have had some great olive oil from this place up north, a Spanish olive oil. (I can't spell the name of the place, but it is like Fugarelli's.)

So, we decided that we should follow the map and see where the adventure leads us. We ended up at this little ranch where they make their own olive oil, cold press, right there on the premises. They even grow most of their own olives. It is a working cattle ranch that also grows olives and grapes (for wine), they make their own wine on-site as well.

The olive oil was fantastic. I mean it is hard to describe, but as cheap as I am let me tell you I had no problem paying $19.99 for a bottle of olive oil that is probably about 1/8 the amount of olive oil that I get from CostCo for $10 or $12.

Anyway, they had some very interesting boutique type stuff too, mustards, jellies. However, the interesting thing was the balsamic vinegar, they infuse it with pears or lemons. We bought the one with pears. We also bought a couple of bottles of wine, a bottle of Sangria and a bottle of Tejanti.

It was a fun time, we made it home at about 5:30.

Well, I am getting sleepy, so best that I call it quits on the blogging for tonight.

Till tomorrow, while I blog, eat and watch The Daily Show.

Laterz

So I dragged Jeremy, Eddie and Gina to Food Shui for lunch.

Jeremy had already eaten there once before, so I knew he was going to like it.

Eddie said he liked it.

Gina ordered the Kung Pao w/Chicken. She kept passing me the pieces of green pepper that were in it. I ate them happily until I choked on a spicy one. I felt the spice sort of creep across my tongue onto the back of my mouth and then it hit that spot on your throat that makes you cough and choke a little.

I don't think I will be ordering the Kung Pao, seems a little bit too spicy.

This time I had the Mongolian bowl w/fried tofu. It was pretty good. I ordered their spring rolls too (not fried), quite tasty. Gina liked them.

Oh yeah, Gina had a taste of the tofu and said she liked it. She normally doesn't like tofu.

I'm just giving this quick update before going back to work. However, I have to post a link up to this song that I heard a while back, saw it on Digg I think. Then they played the YouTube video at the Web 2.0 conference.

I downloaded the MP3 and have been listening to it quite a bit, when I have actually had my headphones on the last week (ie not much).

YouTube - Code Monkey

Back to the grind.

Laterz

Yesterday afternoon, Gina and I had a scare about the puffed dog treats made by Sunshine Mills.

I love to pass out treats to the dogs. As Gina will tell you, I keep a bin of treats on my desk here in the home office, so that when the little tiny terror-iers come along I can give them something. About a year ago I found the PupCorn treats, they are a puffed treat that is low in fat and calories. The dogs love them, they are crunchy. I loved to give them because of the fact that I can hand them out without worrying that I am making them fat or ruining their appetite.

However, the puffed treats were put onto a short list of recall possibilities. This scared me a lot. We haven't been too concerned about what we have been feeding the dogs, because of the raw diet. However, when it comes to treats I tried to only buy high quality treats, like Old Mother Hubbard, OMH.

The puffed treats did not make it to the final recall list. This doesn't matter, we are pitching them and will never buy them again. The other thing that I learned from Gina is that OMH is made by Wellness. Gina said that while Wellness is issuing statements that they are not affected by the recall, that we shouldn't take any chances because of the outsourcing of the pet food and treat making, that we are just going to pitch it all.

This means that I will be learning to back dog biscuits. The dogs must have treats!

Gina said that Three Dog Bakery has some good dog biscuit cook books.

Cooking the Three Dog Bakery Way

Three Dog Bakery Cookbook

Recall Resources:
PetConnection Blog


Recall Mailing List

I need to go and get ready for work.

Laterz

PS- I will rewrite that dog entry I lost yesterday, today.

I spent about 20 minutes typing out a blog entry about the dogs.

I neglected to save it during that time period. There is an Autosave plugin for Serendipity, I might needs to install that.

Normally, after typing up a long blog post, I do copy the body entry, to ensure that I can paste it in case the server has logged me out.

I did that, then I remembered that I want to link to Gina's blog. So I copied the URL, and promptly forgot to copy the body entry again.

So, 20 minutes down the drain.

I will retype the entry during lunch, maybe it will come out better, since I had already written it once.

Gotta get ready for work.

Laterz

Spring arrived in Texas about three weeks ago I think.

Our winter was fairly mild, a couple of days and nights where the temperature made me think I was back in Michigan.

But about three weeks ago or so the rain really started.

During the winter we get the sporadic shower. But for the last three weeks we have had what I would call a fairly regular dousing. Rain that would mist, then drop a bunch of rain, then mist again.

Alternate a couple of days of rain with a full day of the Tejas sun and the plants decide it is time to start growing.

Over the course of the winter the front lawn was mowed possibly three times. The backyard, maybe once.

Now, I have had to mow the front yard twice in three weeks (about to go out and do it a third time). The backyard is starting to become the safari height that Curly loves. (Mind you safari height for Curly might be just below calf height of your average human).

We just got back from the new Super-HEB that is up near 2243 and 183 in Leander.

Very cool place, just like Meijers, minus a few things here and there. But very close to being Meijers. Gina loved it because they had a vast selection of beef organs. (For the dogs.)

In case you didn't know this. We feed our dogs raw meat (sometimes there are bones in there that they eat too). And since you don't want them developing allergies by feeding them a single protein source. Emma for instance has developed a food allergy to Chicken and Turkey. We have been feeding the dogs chicken necks for quite a while. And I like to feed them the ground turkey, because it is easy and you can get it for a decent price, plus if I want a turkey burger there is usually enough left over after feeding them for me to have one.

So, Gina bought some Beef kidney, a beef heart, some sliced beef liver, chicken hearts (not for emma) and some beef finger tip ribs.

Yesterday we stopped by one of Gina's favorite places in Texas, Tail Waggins . It is up in Georgetown, TX not too far from the Georgetown Animal Control (where Gina worked before NetworkIP.)

They had called Gina to let her know that the "Duck Necks" had arrived. Duck necks, from Long Island, NY. A 40 lb box of duck necks, vs the usual 40 lb box of chicken necks she would get (duck instead of chicken, for Emma).

In case any of you are worried none of our dogs eat the wet pet food that has been recalled recently. The nice folks at Tail Waggins have printouts of all the recalled foods, so that anyone wanting more information while there in the store can find out if their animal is at risk.

However, Tail Waggins DOESN'T sell any of the recalled food. They only sell the high-end premium lines like Innova, Wellness, Nature's Variety. And with that, they try to educate pet owners on feeding raw food, rather than a prepared kibble or canned food.

We did get some samples of a couple of different foods for Peanut as she has refused thus far to eat anything except the Eukanuba Small-Breed Puppy food. It isn't on the list of foods that have been recalled, but everyone close to the animal world believes that the ball isn't finished bouncing on the recalls yet.

Needless to say Tail Waggins is having a good month, given that everything they sell is high-end and made almost entirely from meat (couple of them include oats and rice, but I believe most of them are wheat free, given that many animals have wheat allergies).

Anyway, it looks like my PC is finished transferring the music to my Rio. Time to go and mow the lawn.

Laterz

I was a little bit late in picking Gina up from the airport.

Emma had decided to run and hide under the deck, instead of coming inside when called.

I picked her up and her 70 lb suitcase and we headed back to the house.

We stopped at this little Mexican place in Cedar Park, Taqueria La Tapatia. We have been eating there more and more, it has great food and the prices are pretty decent.

We had lunch and then headed back to the house. The dogs were ultra excited to see her.

She had a scare there in Hong Kong (pretty sure it was Hong Kong) where they didn't know where their luggage was.

However, as a I said the 70 lb suitcase made it here to Austin. From what she said the bags got shipped out on an earlier flight and were waiting down in the "Missing Bags" dept. They had neglected to tell Gina and Ron that their bags were being sent on ahead of them.

Back to the grind.

Laterz