This weekend, I was over at Chris’s home office and I was overcome with definite gadget envy. First off, he had a new Macintosh Powerbook G4. I’ve been wanting one of these computers, but I keep waiting for the next revision. Hopefully, the next revision will be out on November 5th, I’ll order it the same day. In addition, he had a nice multi-function printer/fax/scanner/copier the HP G85. A very nice printer that integrates very well with his computer. He showed me several scanned images that were very easy to import. He also had a cordless Vtech phone with headset. I’ve been thinking these were a good idea for a while.

Then the coup de grace. I noticed that the nice pine veneer table he had was adjustable! He could raise and lower it. I’ve been wanting a table like that for a long time for ergonomic reasons. He said he got it at Costco a few years ago, but I’ve been unable to find anything like it since I began searching for such a table. I did find something similar in Europe, but alas, they don’t distribute that to the US and it is prohibitively expensive to ship. If anyone finds such a desk here in the US, I’ll gladly pay a $100 finder fee. Just send me photos of it first. I’ll even pay for shipping. His was a pine veneer top, with silvery brushed metal legs. Modern and elegant looking. Damn I’ve been wanting some of these. It was about 60″ wide as the both of us sat at his desk easily. He said it even came with a filing cabinet that seemed to be accented with the same materials. He said it only cost him about $200. God I want one.

This all was very interesting to me because I’m looking at setting up my own home office. I figure I’ll put in all of these things. I’m also getting a new phone line put in just for the office, so I’ll need some phones. It’s fun to go shopping for gadgets, doodads, and just outright toys. I’ll probably be selling off some of my older toys to pay for some of this. Expect to see them on eBay sometime soon. It’s so much fun to fix up your own office, too bad it’s not on someone else’s budget.

I decided to tag along with Yara down to Orlando, Florida for the 2002 AABB conference. This is where all of the people who do blood transfusions meet to talk about new ways they can give people other people’s blood. I see that they had a talk about CJD otherwise known as Mad Cow’s disease. This one is my particular fear since I spent a year in Switzerland and England eating their food. Hopefully, my fears will be allayed and they will come up with a cure.

Also, I had the great opportunity to meet up with Chris and Rob. These guys are working the system down here. I helped them clean up a house they bought and are planning on listing on Monday. It was a little bit of work since the place was in great shape. It really helped me understand all of the time that can go into fixing a house and how you need to really respect and honor your time. Afterwards, Chris and Monique (his beautiful wife) treated me to an ass-kicking. Chris helped me look at what I’m doing in real estate and get past some of the time barriers I’ve felt that I have. I have a lot of work ahead of me when I get back to Birmingham. Derek and I have to talk and figure out how to make things work for us in Alabama.

It was a great time and I’m still here in Orlando. Hopefully, I’ll go to Disneyworld or lounge around in a pool somewhere before my flight tonight. Here’s to quick vacations!

Yesterday was a big day for me, I gave notice to my job. I let them know that I wanted to work on other things and needed my time to do those things. It was a hard choice to come to, but I knew it was what I had to do. I’ve had a great time at Unisource and it was a good job, but they’ve got big things coming up and I wanted to get out before getting reponsibility of those things.

Today, I spoke to my boss, Scott, about it. Scott was really cool. He asked about why I was moving and whether I was smitten with Yara. I laughed. Then we got down to the nitty gritty. I let him know yesterday that I didn’t have another job lined up in Birmingham, but I wanted to use the time for my other projects. He and I talked about it and we came to a pretty good compromise. I’ll work from Birmingham full time as a GP employee and help with an upgrade of our website. Then after about 3 months we would reevaluate and I would likely leave then. So, I’ve extended my resignation out for a while, but it should give me the time and locality to do what I need to. I think this was a win-win for all parties involved. I even told Scott that I was, “Open to that”.

Now Unisource will be able to hire the right person to replace me and we can do knowledge transfer as needed. I’ll have health coverage and an income while I become an S quadrant person and do real estate. Should be a fun next couple of months.

This weekend was barrels of fun. My brother, Henry, just turned 22! He’s now officially had his 1st birthday where his age just signifies how much older he’s getting. Nothing to look forward to legally until your 65! Drinking at 21 was a blast, the joy is over at 22. 22 is you start up this big hill to 30, from there you can leap into your mid-life crisis and then realize your 40. After that it’s justa blur till 50 and by 65, you realize what you should’ve done at 22. Ha ha. Nah, my little bro has got things in hand. Everyone keep their fingers crossed for his GRE and grad school applications (Note: you don’t need to keep them crossed always!).

Auburn, where Henry goes to school, was cool. I went to his church where they tried to brainwash me for a tithe and then forced me to listen to socialist propoganda. I’ll get into that later, it’s late and I need to go to sleep.

I also went to Fat Matt’s after getting back into town. Followed by seeing Spirited Away, possibly one of the best anime movies ever. It could definitely win an Academy Award this year. Look for it. I’ll be getting it on DVD as soon as it is available. It will go right next to my Band Of Brothers collection. I’ll write up a review of Spirited Away tomorrow or so. It’s off to dreamland for me now and it’s not this one. Although, that’s another good one to go to.

P.S: In my haste to sleep, I forgot to mention that on Friday my friend, Chris Tran, came up to Birmingham for dinner. We went out to Bottega and had a great time. We even got Yara a little tipsy with a great Merlot, Robert Svizerks (sp?) or something like that. The food was really good and the dessert was incredible. Unfortunately, they made my dessert look a little too phallic. Two scoops of ice cream with a nice long biscotti placed in the middle. They added to the effect with another scoop of ice cream under the biscotti to elevate it. My gaydar went crazy on the dish. I still ate it though. Mmmm… phallic sorbet. You know what flavor I had? Pistachio and Almond! No, just kidding, mango and strawberry. We ended the night with a lot of talking about businesses and real estate. Tran has a lot of great ideas and I look forward to working with him in the future. He joined the utahinvestor cult with me.

Over the weekend, Dylan and I played a new game, Robotech Battlecry. It was a solid revisit of the Robotech franchise. There was a lot of blasting and shooting. It was actually a pretty challenging game as Dylan and I worked pretty hard on a few levels. I really wish that this game had a better multiplayer environment with even more mechs available. It was pretty good as it was with a lot of the original voice actors from the show in the game. The only bad part of the game is the interviews you earn. There’s a reason why they are voice actors, when you look at them it is really weird to see live people with cartoon voices. They acted a little weird too. That was space on the disc that could have been used for more fighters and bots. It would also be nice if the multiplayer could have been cooperative like on Halo. I really like working with a friend in a game. They only let you fight your friend, and you can’t fight an AI bot or just blast some dumb Zentraedi. Fun anyways. Henry wants this game for his birthday, but I might see if he’ll hold out for one the better games coming out: Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 0, or Star Wars Bounty Hunter.

Yara and I played some Crash Bandicoot way past our bedtimes. Crash is fun if you dont’ like playing the same game over and over. It has vehicles and another character you can become to break up the monotony. However, it didn’t make me want to finish it as bad as I wanted to finish Diddy Kong. That was a good game. Hopefully gamecube will start to shape up. Otherwise that new Xbox bundle is looking good.