I learned how to type way back in high school—on a typewriter. For as long as I’ve been typing, I’ve always pressed the spacebar twice after a period. Still do.

Well I learned from some colleagues today that was a typewriter-only rule. Ever since the digital age the standard has been only one space after a period; the reason being that typewriters couldn’t sense if it was the end of a sentence, so you had to place another space in. So all this time, I’ve been doing it wrong.

Oh, and here’s the funny part—remember Fran from Department of Finance, the one who’s personal joy was to find my faults and errors??? She was always on my case if I didn’t have two spaces at the end of a sentence. HA! That shows her. — er, yeah.

Anyway, so there’s a tidbit of trivial information for ya. Only one space after a sentence—it’s a universal design rule. And yet… I still put two spaces (just take a look at the source code).

I guess old habits die hard.

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So I went to sleep okay but somewhere around 2 in the morning, I violently woke up in a coughing/choking fit with a surge of stomach acid in my throat. It was really bizarre—I was in a deep sleep and suddenly I’m out of bed, running to the kitchen sink and coughing and spitting out all the acid in my throat.

It burned really bad.

So I popped about four Tums and tried to get back to sleep. I think I’ve got a pretty bad case of acid reflux—it pretty well refluxed its way up to my throat and pushing its way into my mouth. Not fun.

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Not much happening here today. Slept in (missed the Sunday service at WHC of course), blew a couple hours on video games, and spent the afternoon with my wife running a few errands, ate at Green Mill [ooh, there's something I've gotta blog about] and watched a little Sunday evening bube tube.

So we went to dinner at the Green Mill in Oakdale (I-94 & Century Avenue) and all I have to say is this…. GHETTO. That place was such a dive, that I can hardly believe that Green Mill allows them to run the place like they do.

When you first walk in, you’re greeted with the stench of stale, smelly, greasey restaurant and most certainly reinforced by the dingy carpet which leads the way. The air was so heavy and stuffy, that it was literally hard to breathe in there; and when you did, you inhaled the combination of several-week-old-grease in tandem with second-hand cigarette smoke and what smelled like rotten cheese and/or milk spilled underneath the booths.

If that wasn’t enough to turn you off, playing overhead in the PA speakers was some sort of heavy metal / hard rock satellite feed or CD mix playing. In a pizza restaurant??? I asked them if they could change it—they humored me and changed it to techno. (rolls eyes)

The food was okay—the wings sorta tasted like they were mass-manufactured. The batter was kinda powdery tasting if batter can taste powdery. They just weren’t crisp like other wings I’ve had at other places. And the pizza? Well, we ordered something we thought would be semi-normal pizza:

Il Primo Pizza
Spicy Italian sausage, pepperoni, roasted mushrooms, red sauce and Quattro Fromaggi of Mozzarella, Provolone, Parmesan and Gorgonzola

Well, we got the pizza and it looked like something a high-schooler made—certainly not what I’ve come to expect from them in the past. When I bit into it, I tasted something reeeeeeeeeally unusual for a pizza… I had a huge chunk of bleu cheese in my pizza. There was BLEU CHEESE in the pizza. Funny, I don’t remember seeing bleu cheese on the description. Well, turns out that they use the fancy name “Gorgonzola” instead of just saying “bleu cheese”. So we sent the pizza back and had them make a new one without the “gorgonzola” cheese.

The wait staff and manager were very nice and accommodating, don’t get me wrong—but the restaurant was a DIVE and the food only so-so. So if you find yourself in Oakdale, MN and tempted to stop at the Green Mill, don’t bother. Keep on going to Woodbury and eat somewhere there instead.

Okay… end rant.

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Well tonight was the big night—the consumation of my $100 ticket and taking in the U2 Vertigo Tour concert. Of course I was way up in the nose-bleed section because of the unscrupulous web-based deeds of TicketSlaveMaster. Otherwise I might have been down on the floor. Lesson learned I guess… for the important shows it pays to go wait in line at the box office for the tickets.

I did start the show out right… of course I’m talking about a Guiness in hand and NOT about the boring performance of Dashboard Confessional. Sorry guys—I know you played your heart out and gave it your all, but your songs all sound the same and the EQ’ing was TERRIBLE. It wasn’t enjoyable to listen to and shoulda just waited to come later for U2.

But lemme tell you, when U2 took the stage, I was simply in awe from start to finish with that show. Not only were the lights and visual effects stunning, but Bono’s charisma carried us all the way through—uniting us all to learn to CoeXisT and simultaneously inspiring me to want to be a part of a world-wide human rights movement. He certainly is an amazing person, how he can unite such a diverse crowd of people.

It really did make me stop and think about how volatile the world is getting between the big three faiths, and yet in the midst of one of songs, Bono said that all three descend from Abraham—Jesus, the Jews, and Mohammed. He really did push the idea of CoeXisTing with one another and learning to love one another; something none of these religions or faiths have been doing very well at.

Despite the horrid seats, the show was still really fun. Oh, and somewhere in this post is a tiny little suprise from the show.

   

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Since my happy hour plans fell apart for an impromptu-pre-U2-concert hangout, I googled for information on any official U2 parties happening around the Target Center. That’s when I saw this link for ticketsnow.com that was selling tickets to u2 for their Minneapolis Vertigo show. Thing is… they weren’t the face value of the ticket… one of the tickets was going for around $570 for section 112 row S in the lower level.

I took screenshots to capture the prices and quantities available (as this page’ll expire after today): page start, continued, end

How can you charge $570 for a concert ticket when the original face value was no more than around $150 to begin with??? You do that on the street and that’s called ticket scalping. And that is suddenly legal on the internet? That’s just not right.

I counted 126 tickets that they were selling for these rediculous prices—that’s 126 people that might have been able to see the show at the NORMAL PRICE if these bastards didn’t swipe all these tickets and decide, “yah, we’re going to sell them for four to five times their value.” And it’s not just in Minneapolis. There was one city where a U2 ticket with a “VIP Pre-Party” was going for nearly $1,000. That is just not right.

I think I’m going to write the Attorney General’s office on this one for starters. It’s not a matter of “if we can’t do it on the street, why can they do it on the internet”, but moreso a matter of principle… if a PERSON is limited to X amount of tickets, the same should go for a company. It’s companies like TicketsNow and other online ticket scalpers that make it all the more difficult for the average joe/jane to get decent tickets at a decent price.

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So I stopped at Panera to get a sandwhich and check my email before I head to my class tonight. I got their Turkey Artichoke sanwhich and specifically said NO ONIONS and that I’d rather have the sandwhich made fresh instead of copping out and taking the onions off for me. To which the cashier replied, “uh, the sandwhiches come pre-made and we can’t make them fresh.”

“Well, the Hastings store makes them fresh when a customer requests so.”

She sorta shrugged her shoulders and gave me that blank teenager stare, “Well, sir, we can’t make them fresh. They come pre-made.”

Seriously. So I said, “well, I still want the sandwhich, just NO ONIONS. Just make sure they get that much right, okay?”

“Okay. It’ll take a little bit longer, is that alright?”

“Yes.” The sandwhich came out faster than I thought it would; and what did I find slathered all over that bad boy??? ONIONS.

Bastards! So you had better believe me that I was going to send off a heated feedback to Panera for charging me almost $7.00 for a sandwhich that was a step above leuke warm and filled with the rogue onions, which I specifically requested NOT TO HAVE SLATHERED ALL OVER MY SANDWHICH.

If it was a $3.00 sandwhich, I wouldn’t mind so much if it was pre-made and maybe accidentally had a few onions on it. But when you’re paying $7.00, it’s a whole different ball game.

So Panera, if you’re reading this… you better get your act together. Right now I’m not too pleased with your lack of service and overly-inflated sandwhich prices. Even Subway can get it right and make their sandwhiches fresh. Is it too difficult to teach those teenagers how to make a fresh sandwhich or is that asking too much of them???

Seriously Napoleon!

And ya know, it’s not just them. Applebee’s—all their crap is pre-made and basically heated to order. And I know that there are dozens of other chain stores that are guilty of the same—selling out the standard of quality for the ability to crank out quantity. So what you really get is second-rate sandwhiches and meals for an all-too-costly price.

It seems time and money are more important than quality and freshness. I wish there were a few good, well-located restaurants that were affordable, fresh, and offering a wide variety of food items… and with free WI-FI. You can bet that I’d stop going to Panera if that were the case.

Panera, consider yourself FLOGGED.

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Testing out an application called LogonStudio by Stardock. It allows you to customize your WindowsXP logon screen. Kinda interesting. Ill show you a preview of the one I’m working on when I’m finished.

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A busy day today—since I just didn’t have the stomach to listen/watch the Vikings game today (getting shut out isn’t my idea of entertainment), I decided I should make an attempt at cleaning the garage. So I brought my laptop outside, hooked up my speakers to it, and listened to a little Lounge Radio to keep me going.

The garage was pretty bad—about the same state as our basement—and literally pulled everything out, swept, and put crap back in some semblance of an order. I totally need to get some better shelving setup in there and some compartment things to help me organize all the tools and screws/nails/etc. But it’s good enough for now so we can get at least one car in the garage.

Oh, and my car is leaking antifreeze all over the driveway–albeit a slow leak, but enough to warrant some concern. What makes me a bit nervous is that I think it may be the radiator, as the leak seems to be coming from somewhere other than the hoses. We just can’t afford a major repair right now—anything over $300 would really set us back.

Anyway, break’s up soon. Now I have to get to the yard and mow it up. I’ve gone two weeks since our last mowing—I’m sure my neighbor isn’t thrilled with me (especially with my weed garden that I’ve got growing back there).

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I had blogged about a commercial I saw from Verizon and anywhere access to the internet using their wireless technology but couldn’t figure out where to find more information on it, since the commerercial was gone before I could write down the URL.

Well, I dug in VerizonWireless.com for awhile and found some wireless laptop cards that go in your expansion ports—it’s there that I saw the two options that Verizon offers.

One, they offer unlimited “faster than dialup” access (averaging 60 to 80 kbps) for $59.99 (in the Mpls/St Paul area) and unlimited anywhere broadband access (averaging 400 to 700 kbps) for a painful $79.99 a month (again the Mpls/St Paul area). I believe access is also only limited to one person per plan, so no sharing with the spouse or sig/other.

As much as it’d be cool to just take my laptop to the park, a nice quiet pub, or anywhere else in the Twin Cities, I think I’ll just have to do with access at home and the near by Dunn Brothers in Inver Grove Heights or the little ma/pa shop near by Ol’ Man River Cafe—both of which have FREE WiFi.

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This evening I went to the first of twelve class sessions at WHC called TNT (Theosynergistic Neuro-Transformation™), a class about taking control of the thought process that occurs in your mind and making positive changes in your thoughts/behaviors/habits as a result of doing this process. Sounds like an interesting class.

Anyway, there’s an old acquaintance of mine (from the Kairos days at North Heights) that is in my class and we were chatting afterwards and walking past us in the main hall area was an old ex-girlfriend of mine, Brande. I tried to get her attention to just say “hi” and do the polite catch up in two minutes or less, but I think she ignored me and hoping that I’d assume it wasn’t really her.

It was just a bit weird, I’ll admit. I don’t have many run-in’s with my ex’s—and she’s one that I thought I’d never see again. Anyway, that was just weird.

But the class that I’m taking should be good. It looks like it has the potential to set me up with a lot of tools to deal with personal baggage that I’ve been dealing with for years. It will be interesting to see how the twelve-week course pans out.

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