Tried to do an update yesterday, but lost it due to poor programming. I never do error handling with shell scripts. Anyway, I talked a bit about DDR, and how there should be a movie, and I saw a commercial about it, I think from FinishLine, which was really funny. Otherwise, not much else. Headed to Seattle tonight. Gone till next Wednesday, almost a full week. Then things quiet down after that. I think. And hope.

Back again. No email though, at least from work. Got to check out my home linux box. Might have died again. Not good. Get to find out tonight. Potlatch and Seattle rocked. Many thanks to Rocky and Shaun and the rest of the folks with Beer Run out of the Bay Area. No problems getting out there, did some hiking on Friday after driving by many many Teriyaki places in strip malls. Got to see a freestyle jam session at Green Lake. Set up camp, got some groceries, tried to sleep, found our team, played some games, went to the Titcomb Seattle Home Base, jumped in the lake, ate some pasta (Thanks Xtehn!) hung out, sat by a camp fire. Very nice saturday. Played some more on Sunday, stopped by the Titcomb home for showers and a dip in the lake before heading to the party. A little disappointing, or just maybe not my scene. Played even more on Monday, ended up somewhere in the middle of the B bracket, enjoyed playing very relaxed and fun, especially after a mini twister blew some straws onto the field, and I found my rally straw. Headed back into Seattle, into a great location hotel with tiny rooms and no AC, had a great seafood dinner with fabulous green curry mussels. Walked around Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square, and the City District, finally got some Teriyaki, then headed to the REI flagship store, which was awesome, and I don't think I got to spend enough time there. Then the long travels home, a layover (and quick loss to Leah in Rummy 500) in San Fran before the red eye back to Chicago and in to work this morning. Fun. I managed to do something to my right ankle playing on Monday, it's all swollen and stuff. I also managed to lay out sometime Sunday and get a huge nasty bruise above my right hip. But otherwise I seem to be healthy. Except for not sleeping. And so Potlatch 2004 might very well be the last grass tourney I play at for a while (not counting League stuff).

RCN I think is upgrading. Which is good. And it's bad. I'm having network connectivity issues from work, so email, hosted email lists, like beach, kaze, and the rest, all have issues. Oh well. Still tired, I'm looking forward to sleeping in plenty on Saturday and Sunday. Anything else? Nope, not really. Friday night going on a double date to Blind Faith Cafe and watch Fahrenheit 9/11 up in Evanston. Should be interesting. I might try and turn musings into my public journal for that whole voting thing that's gonna happen in November. Would that be exposing too much? Maybe. I'll show up at Beach tonight, won't necessarily play though.

Well, it looks like I'm back up to speed with my RCN cable modem service. No problems all day so far. Sweet. Beach was a bust for me, no playing, my ankle couldn't take it. Oh well. Ended up at some bar for food across the way from Adobo, had me some bangers and mash. I forgot to mention that I found my favorite, close to perfect, sandals for casual wear: Merrell Tacoma's. Only found one place that sells them online in the US, VillageShoes.com. And only in black. I'd like to get the beaver brown ones, but the only online place I found doesn't ship to the US. So that sucks. The strap is still a little too wide and they take a little breaking in (apparently my left foot is bigger than my right), but after that, they're great.

Had a pretty good weekend, and realized that I've got to find something to do with my time now that I don't really have ultimate anymore. Friday night watched Fahrenheit 9/11, read my take on it. Dinner was good at Blind Faith, had some Seitan Stroganoff. Saturday watched The Perfect Score, some TV, cleaned some, then went to Ravinia, got to use Leah's Porron, got stuck in traffic, all good stuff. Made me want to get all sorts of picnic related gadgets, fold up tables, lanterns, and so on. Sunday just lounged about, made breakfast, watched Search for Bobby Fischer, such a good movie. Made some Lemon Chicken, got some groceries to cook dinner for the next couple of days, watched Marge Vs. The Monorail and I Love Lisa Simpsons episodes from Season 4 and tried to see the resemblance between the The Neverending Story's Falkor, the luck dragon (pic halfway down) and myself. No summer league, trying to rest my ankle. Sony Ericsson will supposedly release new phones on Thursday, July 15th, maybe a P910, something else for me to drool over.

Watched Kissing Jessica Stein with Leah, and high fived at mention of a Jewish dinner in Scarsdale. It's a good movie, I thought, but the ending was a little perplexing and confusing. Made some fish, and cheapening out by using onions instead of shallots is not a good idea. You definitely lose some flavor by doing that. Not good when it's one of 4 ingredients. Also made some cookies and froze some batter for future easy fresh cookies. I learned that you can update the P900 firmware from Virtual PC, which removes yet another obstacle to getting a new phone. It's finally feeling like summer. I also saw a schedule on a store front for the Chicago Lugnuts, a semi pro baseball team. The Cubs, the Bears, the Bulls, Blackhawks, Wolves, Rush, Fire, Machine, Nemesis, but Lugnuts?

So the UK edition of Queer Eye was not so good. Maybe it's because I don't get that British humour, or maybe QE has either jumped the shark or gone GP. Either or, not so entertaining. Made some sweet quesadillas with pesto and goat cheese and a roasted red pepper sauce. My Airport Express shipped. Sweet. Oh, and Twenty Bucks was just announced for release on DVD. And I'm looking for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to be announced too, but no luck there. I found another pair of sandals that I like, the Adidas Dakar II which fit fairly well.

Got some sushi last night. Sai was especially good. Just sort of a last second impulse dinner. Then tried some Australian Homemade ice cream over on Southport, quite good Nut Butter Crunch, and found MyGuysWireless, also on Southport, which sells the P900; they actually had one in the window! So I finally get to lay my hands on one, and, just in time, SonyEricsson released info on the P910, it's replacement. Sweet! Damn. Anyway, I'll still check it out. Best new feature? Memory Stick Duo Pro support = lots of space for bring it with me TV and Movies. Anyway, brought Leah to the airport this morning, she's away until Monday. Gonna try and catch up on some movies, Anchorman, Harry Potter, Spider-Man 2, maybe Dodgeball if I can squeeze it in there. No beach tonight for me, still resting my ankle. Oh, and I keep forgetting, I have some Gmail invites to give out, so if you're interested, drop me a note.

Finally watched the HPPA (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) which I felt was good but completely different from the first two. That took a little bit to get used to. Would have been nice if WB had waited until all the books were finished and filmed all 7 back to back. Course, that would have been horrible for the kids. Definitely felt different watching the kids growing up, that's for sure. Going to see Anchorman tonight at 6:30 at City North before getting some Korean food. On a somewhat related note, Bryan's brother's band, Lystra's Silence, has one of their albums, Brink, available from the iTunes Music Store. That's pretty cool. I'm gonna try and get a viewing of Spider-Man 2 in sometime this weekend.

Anchorman was sweet. Very funny movie. Woo Chen, korean BBQ, was great as well. Saturday lounged about, watched a whole lot of I love the 90's and A2Z on VH1. Did some computer housecleaning, watched a couple of movies, Spider-Man and something else. Definitely a lounging day. Still got to go see Spider-Man 2, maybe later tonight, and headed to Russell's for a BBQ this afternoon. Leah comes back tomorrow, and I might try and play summer league, although the ankle still doesn't feel all that good.

BBQ was fun. Aside from friends, food and games, I got to play with some speaker wires. Whole house audio is pretty cool. I snuck in a late night viewing of Spider-Man 2 last night. I really liked it, struck a chord or something. Starsky & Hutch comes to DVD tomorrow, that's exciting. Sandblast this weekend.

So the ankle, not so good. Played a handful of points at summer league and it just doesn't seem to work right. Good thing I don't really have a season to worry about. I guess 2 weeks isn't enough to fix whatever is wrong with my ankle. Did manage to get some greek food afterwards. Really have to do some laundry. Found out that Cake's new album, Pressure Chef, is due out Oct. 5th. That's exciting. I wonder what their 1 radio hit will be this time? Maybe songs about being in love again, I think that's where their at in terms of their music/relationship cycle.

Laundry, Starsky & Hutch, and fried rice last night. Exciting, I know. Airport Express is really cool. I tried setting up WDS (Wireless Distribution System), but of course, I didn't look up any sort of directions, that would have helped me. But I think I've figured it out now. Got a couple, one for the living room and another for the bedroom. I'll use VNC to control the main Mac with all the music. That allows me to whip open the powerbook, set up some songs, then sleep the powerbook and keep the music rolling. It's just plain sweet. I've fallen in love with Wikipedia, an online open content encyclopedia. My favorite article from yesterday: 47, interesting because of it's prevalence in Alias.

Sketchy weather conditions and my choice not to play meant no summer league last night. Instead, Leah and I picked up her new REI fleece from the Niles store, got some dinner back in Evanston at Barcelona Tapas, had a Taro freeze with tapioca balls, and watched Dodgeball after getting caught in a torrential downpour and subsequent changing back into dry clothes. Funny funny movie. Seriously gets me to want to play dodgeball. Sandblast coming up, and I think I'm gonna have to play with an ankle brace.

So, it appears that friends of mine have been getting spam from my email address, or email addresses like mine, or at least from my domain. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that it's not actually from me. Why would I say that? Besides the fact that I get spam to, from me, to me, even to the point that I have a spam addressed management@abando.com from me (eric@abando.com) complaining about receiving spam from that domain. Said spam in question also contains a .bmp file and a password protected zip file with odd names. Anyway, to get spam from me, to get email address of people in my address book, that would be someone hacking into my linux box, looking in my home directory at my alias list for mutt and going through my procmail recipes for the pseudo listservs that I run for the email addresses, then sending out a bunch of emails with zips and bmps and pifs and what not. So, I'm gonna guess I'm not sending any spam. So who might be? Well, here's the kicker: I've gotten spam on my beach, boston, poker, and kaze lists. Trojans that run on windows harvest email addresses to either spam or propagate themselves from existing emails in Outlook. So, my guess it's someone on all three of those lists, who runs Windows most likely Outlook, and saves email. Doing some more digging, the only person currently on all of them is me. Whoops. That doesn't sound like a scapegoat. I still don't think I'm sending out all that spam. Anyway, Sandblast captain's meeting tonight, playing tomorrow and Sunday. I need to pump up the tires on my bike so I can ride to the beach. Managed to get my Airport Expresses working with no problems, no longer WDS, I didn't like the requirements.

So, I think, my competitive ultimate season for 2004 is over. Sandblast was a lot of fun, playing with some former Kaze teammates and extras. We, Burning Bush or Honky Kong, won our first two games, lost the next one, then lost the next two in our reseeded power pool. And power pool is right, because the next day our pool's top seed made it to the finals and the bottom two ended up fighting for 9th, which we got. Lots of fun. Piece was good on Friday and Saturday nights. Went to Adam's on Sunday for some chilling and dinner at Hillary's Urban Eatery. I hurt though, body's sore. Dropped by Russell's for some Scattergories (which I'm bad at) before watching Marc, Schulzie and Chuck play a set at Piece on Saturday. Summer league tonight, possibly Grant Park movie tomorrow night.

So summer league last night helped with the general body soreness from the weekend. Too much laying out. Gonna try and head out to Grant Park's outdoor film festival tonight, Mr. Smith goes to Washington. Might also actually use my bike tonight as well. New windows are getting installed in my condo building, and I'm guessing are going in at my place in 3 weeks or so. Otherwise, not much else. No new toys, gadgets, or movies, really. Just pretty cold July weather.

Okay, I've done the Grant Park outdoor film showing. Good, hard to see, but the projection was great, at least from my vantage point. And Mr. Smith in Washington is a good movie. Getting there at 7:25 is still way too late to get a good spot. Also it's true about all the folding chairs that destroy sightlines for a good many people, they do get in the way. Kaze Social Club had a good showing as well. Not sure if I have to go back, but I could. Summer league tonight, might try and hit the beach tomorrow, and then it's the weekend.

Okay, so I forgot yesterday, and I'm really late with my update today. So I've got to recap all the way from Wednesday night. That was a late day at work, no summer league, some chilling on my couch, trying to watch Fight Club. Thursday more working, hitting the beach for some mediocre play, a dip in the lake to clean off and dinner at Leah's. And tonight, probably catch a movie at home, do some ironing, some cleaning, try and put some camping stuff away from the beginning of the month. No real plans for the weekend, might try and go out to see some movies, maybe a drive in, maybe some mini-golf, maybe something else I haven't found yet. So if possible, my legs hurt from beach. Kinda annoying. And I think that's all she wrote.