Author Archive for Chalupa

No, seriously. I don’t have kids.

Published
by
Chalupa
on October 26, 2008
in Liz, Movies and Weird
. 5 Comments

It seems like people have always thought I’m older than I really am.  I’m sure there are a variety of reasons for that.  The summer after I got out of high school I worked with a bunch of late 20-somethings through 40 yr olds and they always invited me out to the bars with them after work.  It wasn’t until the end of that summer that they found out I was 17, not 28.  All through college people continued to think I was much older - probably because of the bald head thing and the facial hair.

Today really took the cake though.  Liz and I were meeting up at the theater to see Oliver Stone’s latest - W.  While I was waiting in the lobby for her to get off work, a woman kept smiling at me from about 5 feet away.  I eventually did the polite thing and said, “hi.”  I’m not sure if that was a good thing or bad thing.  She wouldn’t stop talking to me.  I kinda feel like she was hitting on me.  Turns out she was there waiting for her high-school-aged-daughter to come out of a movie to give her a ride home.  She apparently assumed I was there to pick up my 15 yr old too.  I told her I wasn’t waiting for my child, then had to repeatedly reinforce the fact I don’t even have kids.  Let’s just say I felt saved when Liz finally showed up and I could walk away.

Indecision 2008

Published
by
Chalupa
on October 17, 2008
in Politics
. 2 Comments

It’s not often that I talk about politics.  I definitely have my opinions, but I don’t often try to push those on others…especially ones I don’t know.  You’ll probably be hard pressed to find me knocking door-to-door or standing on a corner with a sign about any issue.

I’ve always considered myself a Republican and it’s only in the past 5 years or so that I’ve started realizing there’s more to life than having the biggest military in the world and making sure that certain religious issues are going the way I want.  This year is a big year for an election.  I feel whomever takes office will be at a turning point for our nation.  The past decade has seen some radical changes in economics, military might, world leaders, and global perception.  Couple that with the current economic crisis, health care issues, ongoing education issues, etc, etc. and there’s a lot that could go well or poorly.

On top of all this, 2009 is the first year there will be either a non-white man or a woman will be part of the executive branch.  It’s about time if you ask me.  I don’t always keep up on all the updates, who said what, latest speeches and policies.  One thing I do try to keep track of is the debates.  The hard part is deciphering all of the “make you feel good” statements from what the candidate can actually accomplish.  This time around it’s been strikingly apparent to me that McCain is just an angry old man on the verge of boiling over.  He constantly interrupts, attacks, doesn’t keep to the time limits, and seems disrespectful.  I’m not saying that Obama isn’t guiltly  of some of the same things, I’ve just noticed it consistently from McCain.

Yesterday Rolling Stone printed an article about McCain and his maverick-ness.  It’s a long read, 10 pages to be exact, but I think it’s worth reading.  I’m sure many will dismiss the content purely because of the source, however, most of this stuff I’ve heard before from many other more reputable news sources.  Everybody knows how McCain acted while he was in the Navy.  It should be common knowledge that his father and grandfather were two of the greatest Naval Admirals this country has ever seen.  I also know my mother’s opinion of him as a politician from Arizona because we used to live there when I was a child.

Oh, and Palin - don’t even get me started on her.  I firmly believe McCain is wondering why his people told him to pick her as a running mate.  I don’t care that she’s a woman or the way she speaks or the fact that she hasn’t been in politics very long.  More and more stuff, scandalous stuff, just keeps coming to the surface about her.  Even if you ignore that, it’s hard to ignore her lack of knowledge when it comes to things a vice president should know like Supreme Court cases, laws, processes, or even just having a general opinion about the war in Iraq.  She scares me.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I still consider myself a Republican, but there’s no way I’m voting McCain/Palin this year.

Robert Forster

Published
by
Chalupa
on October 13, 2008
in TV
. 0 Comments

Last week I totally thought Mr. Petrelli sounded like Max Cherry from Jackie Brown.

Brick Walls

Published
by
Chalupa
on October 4, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Since moving to New Hampshire, I’ve had the pleasure of living somewhere with exposed brick walls.  This was and is pretty cool, but the one complaint I’ve had is all the debris that seems to fall from them.  For a while I’ve been thinking I should attach the hose to the vacuum cleaner and try to clean them up a bit, but haven’t done it.  This week Liz took some initiative (aka avoiding homework) and worked on the living room a bit.  Today I worked on what I had access to in my offce/old elevator shaft/the Lebowski Podcast Headquarters.  You’d be surprised how much dust and stuff is just sitting there on the brick ledges.

Is this a common thing for interior brick walls?

Chicken Ranch Pizza

Published
by
Chalupa
on October 2, 2008
in Cooking and Food
. 1 Comment

All the pizza here in New Hampshire is pretty lame so I’ve had to resort to making my own.  Moving to Indiana I thought I was in the doldrums of pizza creativity, boy was I wrong.  You should check out the Northeast!  Instead of typing, typing, typing about this pizza, I decided to tell a story in pictures instead.

VP Debate

Published
by
Chalupa
on October 2, 2008
in Politics
. 1 Comment

Does anybody else have trouble not seeing Tina Fey whenever Governor Palin is on screen?  Fey even has the voice down.  This debate came off so much more like a high school debate to me.  There were points, counter points, and nobody was interrupting each other.  Biden seemed to be at east the whole time and there were definite moments where Palin seemed flustered to me.  Biden also seemed to have done his homework and was ready with details, reasons, and statistics for all his answers.  I think my favorite part was when he acknowledged Cheney as being quite possibly the most dangerous Vice President our country has seen.  Now I can’t wait to see what SNL has for us next week.

Excerpts from the Help Desk

Published
by
Chalupa
on September 29, 2008
in Internet and Nerdy/Geeky
. 1 Comment

I work in the IT profession.  I take phone calls and try to help people.  I create extensive documentation that makes me go crazy so we can try and avoid some of those phone calls.  Whenever I have to call up tech support, which I loathe, I always try to let them know that I’m “in the know” so they might skip some of the rigamorale.  Usually they have no idea what I’m talking about because they are script monkeys.

Recently our connection to Al Gore’s greatest gift to the Earth, the WWW, has been extremely slow.  Last night she gave out completely and much to my dismay, never came back on.  I tried all my tricks to no avail, so I gave Comcast a call after I got home from work.

Script Monkey: “So what’s your problem?”

Chalupa: “Well my internet quit working last night.  I’ve tried all the usual stuff.  I’ve restarted my computer, released and renewed my IP, reset my modem and router, etc, etc.  I’ve even tried plugging directly into the modem and I still can’t get anything.”

Script Monkey: “Ok, I think I can help you.”  <papers shuffling>
“What is the operating system of your modem?”

Chalupa: “My modem doesn’t have an operating system.  Do you want to know what brand it is?”

Script Monkey: “um, yeah”

Chalupa: “RCA”

<silence>

Script Monkey: “That doesn’t make any sense.  It’s supposed to be Vista or something.”

Chalupa: “If you want to know what OS I’m running, I’m on XP with SP3.”

Script Monkey: “Service Pack 3?  I’ve never heard of that.  Ok I need to you go to your computer and click on your Start button.”

Chalupa: “Ok, are you wanting me to check my IP?”

Script Monkey: “I need you to click on Run.  It should be at the bottom.”

Chalupa: “Do you want my IP address?”

Script Monkey: “Ok, now I need you to click on that and hit OK…..oh crap I gotta find the code you have to type.”

Chalupa: “Are you wanting me to check my IP or release it or something?”

Script Monkey: “Oh, here it is.  Type in ipconfig…..space….oh wait, no space.  Then hit OK”

Chalupa: “Are you wanting the IP address of my modem or my computer or my router?”

Script Monkey: “You don’t see an IP thingy?”

Chalupa: “There is an IP address, but this is the IP of my local machine and my router.  Since that’s all internal, it won’t really help you trying to find my modem”

It went on and on like this for a while.  And when she was telling me to hit “ok”, there is no ok.  Fortunately I was able to decipher what she really wanted and got her the needed info.  They kept insisting there was nothing wrong on there end, but after putting me on hold for several minutes, my connection magically started working again.  Luckily it only took me 2hrs to get things working.  Gotta love the Comcast.  How come whenever I call the techies I feel like I ended up helping them more than they helped me?

Chalupa is a mother-faker

Published
by
Chalupa
on September 16, 2008
in Asthma and Review
. 2 Comments

So after my recent visit to the ER last month I found myself a pulmonologist out here to get some sound lung-advice from.  I met with Dr. Ray yesterday and found out the following:

  • I probably don’t have asthma…..maybe mildly at best
  • I need to stop taking steroids
  • There’s no reason I should have a nebulizer
  • I should be able to control my “undefined lung issues” with maxair and singulair

This was all backed up with, “Your lungs sound clear today.”

…

Guess what doctor just lost a new patient.  I’ll give you 3 tries.

Searching for a good lunch

Published
by
Chalupa
on September 11, 2008
in Food and Review
. 0 Comments

Mmm-mmmm. That is a tasty burger. Vincent, ever have a Ramon’s Burger?

In my quest for good, cheap food, I’ve been taking my lunch to work every day in what my co-workers have deemed “the working man’s lunch box.”  It’s one of the smaller Igloo coolers that are sometimes associated with working men.  You know the types - construction workers, carpenters, plumbers, etc.

Today I did not bring my favorite lunch pail so I asked the guys for any lunch suggestions.  They listed off a few and I decided I needed to go get something from Ramon.  Ramon runs a lunch-wagon here on UNH’s campus.  He and his wife have to be some of the friendliest people on this campus.  They’ve given me free snacks on several occasions and today is the first time I’ve actually ever bought anything from them.

I decided to go with the bacon cheeseburger and fries.  The burgers are cooked on a George Foreman grill so they are dripping in grease.  That’s good for my arteries and the burger it rests upon.  Everything came in one of those large styrofoam food containers and the whole thing was bulging with fries.  This is one of the best burgers I’ve had in a long time.  It reminded me of something I’d make at home.

For the modest price of…

Bacon Cheeseburger - $3.50
Fries - $2.00
Total: $5.50

…I was able to stuff myself, not feel sick, and enjoy an amazing lunch.  If you haven’t been to Ramon’s, you need to check it out.

Blue Cheese experiment

Published
by
Chalupa
on September 6, 2008
in Cheese and Food
. 2 Comments

Some of you know I love cheese.  Really love cheese.  I picked up some Danish Blue the other day, and it’s definitely the strongest blue I’ve ever had.  A lot of times you eat some blue cheese and you hardly see any veining in it.  The stuff I got is probably 80% blue and 20% white.  I melted some on top of chicken the other day and tonight I made a grilled cheese with some in it.

Knowing this was going to be strong, I also included some New York cheddar.  That’s a bit strong all by itself.  It makes my face barely twinge when I eat it.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite strong enough to balance out the blue.

I don’t think I’ll be doing that again.  I’m trying to think of some innovative ways to use this cheese and not be forced to find something to wash that taste out of my mouth afterwards.