Move over Roscoe’s, there’s a LoLo’s Chicken and Waffles in Phoenix! Strange sounding meal but completely delicious. Incredible fried chicken, delicious waffles, all on one big, happy plate! We ate here a few weeks ago and I forgot to empty out my camera — found this pic tonight :)

Fourth of July Weekend

2 Jul 2008 In: sea world

Headed off to San Diego this weekend for the 4th of July. It’s about a 5 and a half hour trip, so we have our audiobooks all lined up and the yellow roadster is all ready to go! We’ll be hitting up Sea World one of those days — I haven’t been since I was about 13 years old, so I’m sure it’s going to be WAY different than what I remember.


Looking forward to the nice break this weekend. Everyone stay safe and have fun!

IE Stands for "Is Evil".

19 Jun 2008 In: IE sucks

So I’m trying to get a very simple JQuery modal window that says “Thank You for Registering” on one of my websites. Super easy. Fill out the info, click Submit, and on successful submit the JQuery fades the background of the website and displays a small “Thanks for registering” with an OK button.

Not exactly rocket surgery. So I test it in FF2. I test it in FF3. I test it on Safari for Windows. I swear I tested this on IE7. Everything worked. Pushed it out to the live site, tested it in FF, all’s happy. Then I go to try it in IE7 and it bombs on me with this “Operation aborted” dialog box and refuses to load the page it just loaded a second ago. Piece of crap IE. So some Google-Fu comes up with this site: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/927917

Fail. Microsoft, IE5.5, IE6.0, IE7 all have this script bug. It happens when the DOM isn’t quite loaded and it’s trying to appendChild to a parent container.

Anyway, this is my rant. I’ll post a solution later if I can figure it out…otherwise I just went with the uber-lame Response.Redirect for now just so the live site works.

Murder Mystery Dinner?

13 Jun 2008 In: Uncategorized

We’re going to a "Murder Mystery Dinner" tonight somewhere in Arizona.  I’m looking forward to it!  I’m trying to stay completely oblivious and not look up anything online about it so I can be totally surprised.  I’ll post the happenings later this weekend.

Speaking of "The Happening", I was disappointed to not find anywhere in Phoenix that was doing a midnight premiere.  Darn Hulk is premiering all over the Valley, and being an M. Night Shyamalan fan, I’ve attended the last two of his movies on the Thursday midnight premieres — no such luck this time.  I’ll have to wait until Saturday morning BATM (Breakfast at the Movies, our own designated acronym hehe) to catch it.  Until then, eyes closed and ears plugged!

In other news, I updated Picasa with pretty much all the things we’ve done the past few months — here are the links to:

Testing Windows Live Writer

12 Jun 2008 In: Uncategorized

Please stand by… :)

Road Trip!

18 Apr 2008 In: Uncategorized

The yellow road(mon)ster is washed, polished, shined, and ready for a road trip! For our 2nd anniversary we’re headed off to southern Arizona to tour Kitt Peak Observatory, Kartchner Caverns, and some other fun Tucson and surrounding area stuff.

Now that EquiShopper has finally launched and I’ve postponed a vacation for months because of it, I’m excited to get out on the road, top down, enjoying the Arizona sunshine with my sweetheart. There’s nothing like getting into the car after a rough day at work, putting the top down, turning the tunes WAY WAY UP (hey, it’s a convertible, it’s gotta be loud — road noise and what not) and basking in the creamsicle sunset as I head west for home.

Mebbe some blogging from the road? Perhaps… although I’m keeping the BlackBerry on *silent*.

Have a great weekend everyone ;-)

Late winter, early spring in Arizona means there’s some event going on nearly every weekend. We’ve been doing so many things that I haven’t had much time to blog. But here goes:

Pics from the Indian Hoop Dance Contest the weekend before last:

The Indian Hoop Dance Contest was an experience that I’m glad we got to see. Indian drums, chanting and singing, and then members of different tribes all over the US meeting at this annual competition. They dance with small hoops — I think I’ve seen as many as fifteen on some of the seasoned competitors. Their agility with these hoops is incredible to watch, as they spin them around, place them on their bodies, and create stories with their dancing. They could take six or so hoops and create an eagle’s wings, or take more hoops and make a ball, or a flower — all the while stomp dancing to the drums and chanting. It was PACKED, but a gorgeous day for it. We sat on the grass and ate fry bread while we watched the dancers. Most amazing thing? The eagle serenely circling in the sky above the dancers. I have never seen an eagle in the middle of downtown Phoenix. Or anywhere else for that matter that wasn’t on a hike up in the mountains. Majestic probably describes it best.

Pics from the Chinese New Year Festival at the Chinese Cultural Center:

Later that same day we hit the Chinese Cultural Center for their Chinese New Year festival. Everything from martial arts displays, to the dragon dance, to dozens of booths set up with all kinds of different foods, clothing, and toys. We shared a young coconut drink — they split open the top of the coconut, give you a straw and a spoon and you get to drink the coconut juice and scrape the tender coconut meat off the sides when you’re done.

Coming up next (as soon as I download them off my camera and upload them to Picasa) is last weekend’s Renaissance Faire and a trek up to Jerome, AZ on a long Sunday drive. ;-)

Valentine’s Day Present!

12 Feb 2008 In: Saturn Sky Redline

My Valentine’s Day present came a couple of days early this year with a GORGEOUS 2008 Saturn Sky Redline in yellow!

We test drove a Pontiac Solstice and a Saturn Sky over the weekend and I decided that the Sky was for me. I test drove both stick and automatic, and much to my surprise, the automatic transmission outperformed the stick!

There was a used 2007 Saturn Sky Redline in silver that was used and a nice price compared to the showroom 2008 yellow one I was drooling on. Chuck had me talked into the silver one and the deal was set. I was trading in my 2001 Pontiac Aztek for the 2007 silver Saturn Sky.

We got to the dealership last night, and I was sad because the yellow one I kept ogling was gone. I said, “Aww, someone bought the yellow one… they moved it, where is it?” Then I noticed it’d been moved further down the showroom so I figured they were putting another car into its showroom slot. I glanced around the lot looking for the silver Sky thinking to myself, “Don’t they usually put the car you’re going to buy up closer? Weird, I don’t see it yet.”

So the dealer greets us and says, “So, are you ready to go see your car?” I grin and they say to me, “Go find it” — cheering me on with a “You’re getting warmer”… But I’m perplexed because they’re walking kinda towards the yellow 2008. Not even daring to get my hopes up, I start looking past the yellow one, eyes scanning the lot for the silver one, and they both stop in front of the yellow one.

My heart stopped. I could hardly breathe, and Chuck says, “Here’s your car!” The 2008 Saturn Sky Redline… in the hottest yellow you can imagine. I gave him a huge hug and had tears in my eyes — even the dealer had tears in his eyes too. The car is incredible, I absolutely love it. Even woke up and peeked in the garage before getting ready for work this morning. :)

Hot Air Balloons and Karazhan

11 Jan 2008 In: hot air balloon

Winter’s in the air when I drive to work in the morning, heading north on I-17, and I see no less than six hot air balloons dotting the horizon at varying altitudes. I love Arizona, I love the seasons (cool to HOT), I love seeing hot air balloons on the way to work in the morning. It’d be great to ride in a hot air balloon early some Saturday morning, Starbucks cup in hand with steam rising out from the tiny hole in the lid.

On the WoW side of life, our raid group is fully Karazhan attuned in guild, so now we’re at “homework stage” where we read about all of the fights, bosses, what to expect, YouTube videos of fights. Then we’ll shoot to down three bosses that first night and see how we do! Should be pretty fun :)

Here’s my Kara reading homework assignments:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Karazhan

Boss Guides for Kara: http://www.bosskillers.com/cgi-bin/bbguild/index.cgi?sid=xkKQTWlGBg&action=dungeonpage&dungeonid=37

Boss Strategies (W/Screenshots)
http://www.ampwow.com/wow/viewBCStrats/Karazhan.php

I hope everyone had a safe and happy new year’s eve celebration! Chuck and I went to Ninetta’s Passion Bistro for a six-course gourmet dinner with everything from escargot to foie gras to truffles. We were the youngest ones there, but we didn’t care. It was a nice, quiet New Year’s Eve party with no drunken insanity that the average club would have.

For Christmas I got Guitar Hero III – Legends of Rock for Nintendo Wii. LOVE it! We’ve both finished it on Easy and are now playing it through on Medium. Maybe one day I’ll be really good and finish it on Hard or Expert, haha. I also got tickets to see “Annie”, the Broadway musical. It was at Gammage Theater last Saturday night and I loved it! Annie was the first musical I’d ever seen, 1.2 epochs ago when I was eight years old.

Chuck’s epic loot for Christmas this year was a Nintendo DS with Flash Focus and Brain Age 2. Now since we both have DS’s, it should be pretty fun using the wi-fi enabled gaming features.

So… here are my New Years Resolutions:

  • Read less so I can write more
  • Study my Japanese more
  • Finally finish unpacking our house
  • Play a little less WoW
  • Fill my Moleskine journal so I can start on my new one — I try to go through one a year and I was nowhere close to filling my 2007 Moleskine last year. So now I have to write double-time to catch up. :)
  • Work on my dog site more (when it’s respectably developed with more content I’ll share the link)
  • Take, print out, and post more pictures from our adventures
  • BLOG MORE! (I promise!)

I love New Year’s Resolutions — just not the “tone up and exercise more” ones. Those just go without saying. :)

About this blog

Software Developer by day, gamer by night. Attracted to shiny objects that need recharging. Passion for life, love, and sushi. Hiking, hot air ballooning, books, dogs, graphic design and usability are just a few of my interests.


Photos

Chucks 3rd Flight  Hour & Lesson
Shari Second Flight
Ballooning Pics
Disneyland Christmas 2009

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog