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Hello time traveler. You've found the REALLY old stuff.
Use the links below to navigate around, and
have fun browsing! This weekend was pretty cool. The highlight was definitely getting to see Brian, Courtney, Maggie and Jason at dinner last night. It was BYOB. It was also "Bring your own 2 hour wait." Luckily, we had a lot to catch up on, and there was a pub down the street. The last time we hung out was in late October. The time breezed by, and sooner than later we ended up at Tango Sur, that's the name of the restaurant.
One of the bottles of wine that Maggie and Jason brought came with a miniature plastic bull attached to the cork. In a matter of minutes I was able to create this mini-masterpiece:
Now, I have been making a concerted effort to reduce the effects of red-eye by hand, using Photoshop to painstakingly reduce the "demon-effect" from my pictures. I basically use the lasso tool to select the red part of everyone's eyes, then go to Image>Adjust>Hue-Saturation. I select the red color channel, and I turn the saturation to zero, and then the lightness to zero. Despite my efforts, it still looks like Jason has a glass eye in picture below (bottom, right). Oh well, better than red-eye right?
You would think that we brought the most wine of everyone at the restaurant, with five bottles. What this picture doesn't show is the raucous table of ape-men who brought a liter of gin and were throwing ice cubes at eachother. This was unfortunate because the room we were in was about 25 ft squared. And here's a picture of the girls, my best red-eye reduction yet!
The last picture is our favorite. Maggie and Jason ordered a meal for two, which came on it's own flaming metal tray. This picture captures the look on her face when they first delivered the meal while Jason was in the bathroom
Another weekend in the dust, and Laura and I are starting to succumb to the winter blues -- but before we started to feel too sorry for ourselves we got outside this afternoon and ran down to the Lincoln Park Zoo and checked out the monkey house. We met a few frighteningly tame squirrels, and any of the zoo animals that were hearty enough to brave their outdoor displays. There is no natural segue from the monkey house to my betta fish/plant bowl, but I thought I'd share a few follow-up pics 2 months after I started it.
Last night, Andrew and I went out for dinner with our friends, Maggie and Jason. It had been too long since we had last seen them, so we were happy for the reunion. We went to an Indian restaurant in Lincoln Park, which we had been to with Erin and Michael – who recently moved to Dallas.
At any rate, we had a great time. Maggie and Jason are two of the most upbeat, kind people I know, so spending time with them is always meaningful. As you will see in the picture below, Maggie has changed her look a little bit; she is now a brunette.
The food was amazing and so affordable. Our total bill was only $50 for four people – you just can’t beat it. Andrew thinks the picture of the food below is hilarious and semi-gross. It did look better in person, but it was very good and spicy. I found myself sweating while I ate.
After dinner, we met up with more friends from college. At that point, it had really started to snow, as Andrew captures here.
It’s so nice when we can actually get to see everyone. Even though we all live in the same city, life gets hectic, so time together is pretty special. Here is a picture of Jon, one of my best friends from Northwestern.
And, here is a picture of Craig and me. Craig is getting married this summer.
***
Hands down, the funniest thing I saw all week was in an email my brother Bill sent me yesterday. It said, "Just a reminder... It's another Van Dam Friday!" Click on the image below to experience just that. There is a relatively new site out there getting some decent traffic called digg.com. From their website: "With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do."
I'm conflicted about sharing it because although it provides me with so much entertainment on one hand... (Where else would I find a link to a stabilized animation of the original bigfoot movie?) On the other hand, I think it represents the darker side of the Internet. Yes, I'm talking about the Internet that makes you dumber. I'm more than a little concerned that people are searching, stumbling upon, or even sourcing content that is more popular than true. No I'm not talking about the big foot video. I'm talking about the rise in consumer generated content which has crowded the highest ranks of search engine results. It has become the scourge of Internet marketers like myself, because no one wants to advertise alongside content that was produced by Joe Sixpack while he was sitting on the toilet with his laptop (a truly underrated practice). But at the same time, it's hard to deny that people are drawn to it in large numbers. I digress, we are caught up on Lost, thanks to Itunes!
It's been a busy week. Last night, Andrew and I went out to dinner with Patrick and Sheila at Joe's Stone Crab Restaurant, pictured below:
We had a great time over indulging in rich foods including fried asparagus, fresh stone crab and rack of lamb, among other things. Sheila and I even enjoyed fancy martinis, a special treat in celebration of the occasion.
In between courses, they provided us with hot towels and squired lemon juice on our hands -- a practice of which we were not accustomed. These towels, without exaggeration, were close in temperature to 160 degrees. We marveled at how they got them so hot, and what pour soul had the job of handling them in the back room. Below is Patrick playing hot potato with his.
And here I am, acting like a fool.
By then, the towels had cooled off and we were well on our way to the main courses. This is when Andrew was delivered a piece of steak on par with a size 12 shoe.
By the time he finished it, Andrew was in culinary comatose and we had to go home. This morning I think he paid dearly for it. I hope everyone had a great weekend and is ready for another eventful week to come.
My co-workers and I walked there after work, which I assured to them was only “20 or 30 minutes” away, but the walk ended up taking more like an hour to complete – a fact a should have known, considering I’ve walked home everyday this week. In most circumstances, this wouldn’t have been an issue, but factor in a pack of women in heels and workpants, this was grounds for a fight. Luckily, my friends forgave me and we enjoy a nice evening out. Here is a picture of the four of us. From left to right, it’s Alison, Alison, me and Sheila. You all know She She, she’s a permanent fixture in our lives. Alison and Alison both started at Grant this summer and are incredible women. I’m so happy to have such awesome girls on the team.
Andrew eventually made it and within five minutes of arriving found, as well as introduced himself to the only gentleman in the room with a bonafide handlebar mustache. Then, he made Alison and I take a picture with him. Yes, that is his arm around my shoulder. If you look in the background, you will see Alison’s beau, Mike, who looks like he is having a pretty good time. He was. Our dog is crazy. You may remember what he did on the floor of our apartment the night of our 1-year wedding anniversary. People ask me "how long have you had your puppy? A few months now?" When I tell them he's over a year old, then the stares get directed toward me, like I've purposely cancelled his membership to the civilized canine club. I didn't do this to him. Oh no, this dog has always been like this. Example: At night, he will come into our bedroom and start digging at our feet. Then in a burst of activity, he will tear the sheets off our bare feet and passionately mount them. I can say with confidence that you are better off half-awake or asleep when this magical act occurs. If we play with him in the evening he calms down a little. It's really only once a month after he get's his flea medicine that he is truly sedated enough to slow down and sleep in his crate at a normal hour. Otherwise, he's pretty much hyperactive 24/7.
Ready for take off!
We have become completely addicted to the first season of Lost. This show rocks! Normally, I only spend money on Amazon.com when I have a gift certificate. So when I received a $50.00 gift certificate via email, I decided to see what all the hype surrounding Lost was, and ordered the first season on DVD. We have logged in some marathon viewing sessions this weekend, right now as I type this we are watching Disc 3 of 8.
We did manage to get some fresh air in the last couple days, the weather has been much warmer than normal (about 45 degrees). The sun actually came out long enough to bring some color to my face -- which is about the same color as the backdrop behind the text you're reading now.
Here is a picture from a neat landmark nearby where we live, the Chess Pavillion. Some day I need to learn how to play. Maybe I'll learn this winter?
I bring you Cirroc, Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, as played by the late Phil Hartman. It is one of my favorite Saturday Night Live skits of all time. Please click on the image below to watch it:
Phil Hartman is tied with Chris Farley as my favorite comedian from SNL. Phil Hartman also provided voice acting for some of the most popular Simpsons characters, I always looked forward to seeing him on TV. Today was a pretty interesting day in that Google released a new bundle of software called "Google Pack." You should definitely check it out. I've got to hand it to them, they have brought some much needed excitement and vigor to the online economy -- which I am very grateful for. The Internet is my livelihood and my playground in the informaton age we live in. These are exciting times! I thought I would share with you the cake Laura baked for me a few days ago.
It's slices have made many a fine dessert this week. In less than sweet news, I have to make an announcement about a event that has left me with a bad taste in my mouth: my latest DVD purchase. In a sentimental haze, I actually bought a movie at Blockbuster. That's on par with buying the overpriced candy, magazines or anything else other than renting movies. You just don't buy the extra goodies at Blockbuster because it's overpriced. You get that garbage at Walgreens. So I bought Enemy Mine with Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr.(of Iron Eagle fame) . I couldn't even finish it. This was a movie I was overjoyed with if I found it on network television as a child on a Saturday or a sick day home from school. I think the best option is for me to mail it to one of you, and you can keep it. All I ask for in return is that you email me a review (hand written preferred) of 75-100 words, and I will post it here. The only rule is that you have to finish the movie. It's up to you to determine whether or not the movie I purchased for $9.99 plus tax is worth your time. There is even a quote on the back of the DVD box from Gene Siskel "Exciting and funny..." I give you two warnings: 1) Never trust a quote that ends in ellipses. 2) Gene Siskel died at the age of 53. No details were released about the exact cause of his death, but it may have been a stroke brought on my Enemy Mine. Who knows, maybe that is what the elipses stands for.
Anyways, the movie is yours -- just email me! Welcome to the year 2006, is it everything you hoped for? Are you hung over? My nerd calculations tell me that you are probably reading this from work, and there is a high probability that you reside in California, Colorado, Texas, Illinois, Florida or New England. I don't know what I'm going to do with 365 more days. Last year I set out to find a new job, and get in shape. One of those things happened, unfortunately I still don't have abs you can easily count, or biceps you can easily see. But this large head floating over a spindly body has managed to produce a loyal readership of about 20 of you out there -- and I am thankful for that! You could say one of my goals is to diversify this website, and start creating more than just a vertical blog with pictures. Did anyone notice that the pictures in this website are painstakingly re-sized to a 16:9 width/height ratio like those fancy HD TVs? Probably not. Saying that sort of thing out loud is pretty much begging to be called a loser. But here on the Internet gentle reader, tech-speak is widely accepted! Some of you have also noticed that I've added Google Ads to the top of the main pages. I'm actually pretty amazed that Google has found sponsors for the site already -- a real testament to the sheer number of advertisers out there. Primer: Google takes advantage of the fact that billions of people use it. So they tell advertisers "billions of people use us, don't you want your ads here?" And advertisers say, "well that's just advertising on http://www.google.com, what about getting our ads onto indivdual sites?" Google responded with Adsense, which allows publishers (websites) like Artemenko.org to join several thousand other websites in answering the need of online advertisers who want more than just blanket exposure on Google's search results page. The money advertisers pay goes to the publisher (me) and a comission goes to Google (the man) for aggregating the network of publishers and acting as an agency for the advertiser. To conclude this first post of the year I bring you the Mint Brothers video. It is an Internet Gem, and this digital gift is dedicated to my older brother Bill. This is not to be confused with the video eternally dedicated to Ben, which is the Nukie video. If stranded on a desert island with only 2 items to pack for eternity, Ben would choose the Nukie video and a container of gnutella.
Just click on the image to start downloading the video. This may also be a good time to master the skill known as "right click, save as," which you can use to save the video to your hard-drive. Then you can watch it whenever you like. I was able to capture a screenshot of the Mint Brothers video with Windows Media Player Classic. I downloaded it in November and I'm very happy with this free program. ***  Update 1/1/06
Happy New Year's!!! Andrew keeps begging me to post, so here I go. Life's been pretty status quo recently, but I'll do my best to keep things exciting. I came back to work last week to a nearly vacant office, which would have been nice, but I had an extensive white paper to write (think term paper) on auditor concentration. I slacked off a little too much at work -- I'm always up for some office antics with the co-workers -- leaving the final editing to yesterday. The stress of wrapping that up, along with coffee so strong it could have awoken the dead, transformed me into a bit of a mess (Andrew probably would say beast is a better word choice). Needless to say, all of my plans to create some sort of grandiose New Year's Eve dinner went out the window, leaving me to make rolled cookies and a bag dinner instead. Luckily, Andrew's taste in food is rather primative, so he didn't seem to mind. As for New Year's resolutions, of course I'm going to try to eat better (I say that every year, but my weight always seems to stay the same) and I really want to buy our own condo, townhouse or single family home by this fall. We will see. Andrew and I seem to have different ideas as to what and where we want to buy -- poor Sherry witnessed the drama -- and per usual, we both think we are right, so coming to some sort of compromise may prove challenging. Now we are off for a long walk with the dog. I saw the most amazing sailor jacket -- navy blue, double breasted with a collar -- that would have looked perfect on Oreo in Marshall Fields last week. I'm tempted to go back and get it for him, but I'm afraid of what Andrew might say! I will keep everyone posted on the details.
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