Tecmo Super Bowl

The glory days of the early nineties were back for a night when Jen went out in San Fransisco with some friends. I stayed home to watch Hayley. After she went to bed I fired up the X-Box to play some Tecmo Super Bowl. I played a season as the Oakland Raiders with the greatest running back of any console football game... Bo Jackson. He opened the season with a 350 yard performance. He had a steller season with close to 2000 yards rushing. I get bored running the ball all the time so I tend to pass more after a few games so he could've had a lot more yards. I actually lost 3 season games and I was losing the AFC championship game by 20+ plus points when I decided to restart the game. After regrouping I crushed the Bills 51-0 and went on to win the Super Bowl 42-7 against the Vikings. Good times. I can't wait until the next girls night so I play another season and attempt a perfect season.

Formax Slicers

Yesterday I was talking to a co-worker about the glory days of working at Jennie-O. I was boasting about being a mechanic and fixing machines and how that was one of my favorite jobs I've ever had. The slicers they had there were one of the most phenomenal machines I've ever seen. Trying to explain it just doesn't do it justice so I went online and found this demo video of the slicer. It can slices over 100 stacks of meat a minute along with weighing each stack and accepting or rejecting the stack if it's over or under weight. So read about it here if you want or or just watch the video.

Wine Country

 

 

 

 

Santa Cruz - Boardwalk and Beach

Sunday we spent the day at Santa Cruz hanging out at the beach. The sand is not as good as Clearwaters, but it is a much larger beach and it is has better scenic view. Where Clearwater is more of beach to hang out on, Santa Cruz has a board walk with a theme park on the beach. It's pretty cool. After a few hours of throwing the football around and playing some volleyball we hit he them park. We were buying tickets to ride some of the rides when this lady handed us her braclets to ride all day for free. The rides were pretty cool except for Double Shot, which is similiar to the Power Tower. All I could think about is losing my feet but I survived. Traffic to and from the beach was pretty bad but other then that it was pretty cool. Check it out if you're ever in the area. http://www.beachboardwalk.com/

Happy B-Day Toni

I didn't get time to post an entry Saturday so this is a belated happy birthday to my sister Toni. Sorry I'm late. Hope it was fun.

Wine Country

This weekend we went to Napa and visited a few vinyards. I had no clue about touring wineries so I was a little surprised at the shear number of vinards and at how there are no requirements for reservations. Just drive up and start tasting. After visiting a bigger winery we found a ma pa shop where we got the run of the patio and the guy gave us an educational session on how wine is made, the types and location of grapes used, and he gave us a tour of the caves the wine is stored in. The wine was so good that I bought a few bottles. If you ever go on a tour of wine country I highly recommend visiting the ma pa shops and not the bigger wineries. You'll get a lot better service and they're not so busy so the guys can give you a run down of the wine your tasting instead of pouring as fast as they can.

Some interesting facts of wine making are:
- The flavor of wine has a lot to do with the type of wood the wine ferments in.
- A barrel of wine makes approximately 300 bottles of wine.
- Grape vines take five years to grow before making harvestable grapes for wine. The vines peak age is 10 years.
- When vines are growing grapes most of them are picked and thrown so the grapes that are left have more flavor.
- Caves are cheaper to build and maintain then a warehouses. The cave we toured costs approximatly 1 million.
- Not all wine tastes better aged. Some wines need to be drank within a month or two of bottling.
- The smaller vinards have a protable bottler come onsite to bottle the wine. (the guy offered us to watch if we wanted to come back in a few days)

In all the tour was awesome. We didn't leave ourselves enough time to visit enough of them. I'd say a full day is in order for wine tasting and a designated driver would be nice too cuz I had to cut back after a few since I'm a light weight.

Congrats Trent and Pam

I'm now a 4 time GGGGGreat Uncle, thanks to Trent and Pam and their new baby boy Preston Dion. (Dion Sanders is Trents favorite athlete)

Stats
born at 3:18am
Weight 7lb 8oz
length 20 inches

Congrats again and enjoy. They grow up fast!!!

Rain in Sunnyvale

It's raining today which is a big change in weather after 3 months of sunny blue skies with temps in the 70's. As long as it's not the start of the rainy season I can handle it. The weather in the valley is the best weather anywhere I've ever been. I can see why there are 10 million+ living here.

Happy B-Day Al

Checking my Google Calendar today I see that it's my brothers B-Day. Being the youngest of 7, and I'm over 30, I venture to guess that Al is close to 35. Who counts after 30 anyway.

Have a great B-Day Al and have a beer on me.

Lost - Season 2 Wrapped Up (DRM sucks)

Jen and I wrapped up season 2 of Lost last night. I'd call it a cliff hanger of an ending but we watched about 3 episodes of season 3 last year so we know what happens. I looked into getting season 3 but that doesn't start shipping until fall and then who knows when I'd get it from blockbuster. I started thinking about downloading it from iTunes and paying $34 for it but I'd have no way of getting to my TV because of the stupid DRM. So chalk it up as a no sale because of DRM. It sure would be nice to download it and move it to my xBox (I'm not paying $300 for an Apple TV either). I'd like to know the number of potential customers that won't buy movies/shows online because of DRM. Maybe it's just the geek community that doesn't like it.

Now I'm wondering if I should try out the video feature of my video iPod and get AV cables for it to output it to the TV. What's another $50 for the iPod, in the long run it'd probably be worth it.

Hayley Climbing

Although She's been climbing for a long time this was kind of funny.

Golfing

So I've got to use my driver for a week or so now and it's awesome. I shanked it the first time I used it but after that I've hit pretty well. I can hit the ball consistently 220-230 yards and one drive was 340 with some road help. Now if I could get the rest of my irons worked out I may be able to break 90. My 3 iron max is about 160. That's pretty bad if I play longer courses. My brother gave me something to work on out here so hopefully after some practice I can gain some distance on my irons. My scores over the week have been in the low 50's to high 40's. I feel like I should be around 45.

Firework Fiasco

What happens when one leaves used fireworks on a dock over night? The dock starts smoldering and leaves a big hole in the morning. What's worse the burning down your sisters dock? Burning down the neighbors dock.

The family chipped in a lot of money this year and we bought the fireworks after 4th so they were 1/2 price off. This year the display was going to be a huge. After almost cancelling the fireworks because the wind was blowing the fireworks back over the cabin, the neighbors said we could use their dock and watch them on their yard. It was one the best firework displays we've ever had and when we were done we started to pick up but some of the boxes were still pretty hot so we asked if we could leave them on the dock to cool down. We should have just kicked them in the water and everything would've been fine.

So we spent a good chunk of Sunday fixing the dock. The entire time we were in MN it was sunny, except for Sunday, while we were on the dock it started thunder storming. It'll be a 4th we won't forget.

Back in CA

For those of you who have missed the blog, I'm back. If you're suffering from withdrawels I'll work on a blog entry a day for a week. There's lots of stuff to cover that I know everyone is interested in, my golf game, NWA losing my clubs, skiing, the very eventful firework show, and the list goes on and on. So check back soon and you'll hear all about it. Unless I get lazy.