Ben Benner’s Blog

Not sure which title is more appropriate.

Let’s recap.

On Monday, I felt fine. I didn’t get to sleep quite as early as I wanted to on Sunday night and therefore was feeling just great for Camp Gladiator on Monday night. The workout at camp was great. I felt like I had made some progress and that the workout was good stuff.

I took a long hot bath to relax my muscles, during the bath I managed to get water up my nose. I felt it go through my sinuses, the feeling honestly made my nose feel like it does when I have a cold. I cleared out my sinuses the best I could and got ready for bed. I was beat.

So I crawled into bed to rest for a bit and woke up a couple of hours later. Still felt OK, so I fed the dogs and got ready for bed.

Then came the morning, overall I felt fine. But my through felt like sand paper. And my nose was a bit runny. As the day progressed my nose ran more and more. I had been hoping it was just allergies, as reports from everywhere seemed to indicate that cedar pollen was at an all time high.

By the end of the day I started to feel like it was more than just allergies. I headed home, took care of the dogs. I cut-up some pineapple, had some soup and then decided to get to bed early (took some nyquil before retiring).

I woke up several times during the night and found it difficult to get back to sleep.

All of this sounds pretty pathetic and whiny, right? Well, yup that is how I felt.

I called in sick on Wednesday. However, I did spend the morning looking into a few different errors. I had gone through about 1/3 a box of Puffs Plus (notably, the lotion is all that has kept my nose from looking as red as Rudolph’s). After getting things settled, I went back to bed and slept until about 8pm.

Gina’s plane was due to get in at 10:10. I figured this gave me enough time to get ready, do a little bit of cleaning and then get out of the house by about 9:00.

I was feeling pretty decent, in terms of having slept the entire day away, you know sick.

I got to the airport about 9:50 or so. As I walked in, I looked at the ‘Arrivals’ section of the monitors, looking for Gina’s flight. And there it was delayed until 10:20. OK, no biggie, 10 minutes.

Then after about 5 minutes, the board changed to say 10:35.

Awesome, my original plan was to grab her, head home, hitting HEB or something on the way as to grab some soup, cough drops, DayQuil, OJ and Vernors. Gina was exhausted by the time she got in and was not looking forward to my little excursion.

Gina surprised me when we pulled into the Randall’s parking lot. She informed me that she didn’t want me taking forever and to be quick about it.

As I got ready for bed I wondered if I was going to be well enough in the morning to go to work. Part of me thought that I might be, given that my nose wasn’t running nearly as much as it had been.

However, when I awoke, I realized that I was going to be staying home once again. Following the same routine as the day before, I answered email, took care of a few things and before I knew it the clock read 11:50am.

I took some more NyQuil and went to bed.

I woke up about 40 minutes ago and heated up some soup, then started this post.

Needless to say, an exciting time right?

For a brief moment when I woke up I thought, ‘Pizza sounds really good, I should go start some pizza dough.’ About 5 minutes later all I could think about was laying back down.

That brings us to me closing out this whiny post.

Laterz

bdbenner Personal cold, funk, sick

… of cabbage to turn into a delicious bowl of soup.

Gina made a ham for x-mas dinner and when we bought that precious piece of fully cooked hog, I said ‘I want to make cabbage soup, with ham.’

Earlier this year (feels like longer though), back in February I made some cabbage soup. I remember that the soup was good, but that a little bit of ham or bacon would have made it a little better.

Well, we have a decent amount of ham left and last night I procured a nice looking cabbage. This morning I have been busy, cleaned the kitchen, cooked the beans, chopped the onion and garlic. I had to look up the recipe (again) as it would appear that I neglected to bookmark it (or post a link in my blog). This recipe is pretty close to what I remember doing back in February. (Maybe it is the same one, maybe it isn’t).

I am hoping to have the soup done here in about an hour, I also hope to sneak in baking the last loaf of my garlic & herb bread, which I think will go very well with the soup.

I wanted to get a quick post in about this, as a means to get back into the habit of writing on a regular basis. Too often I put it off and either watch TV or play video games. I hope to moderate my recreational activities a bit more as I expect to have a very busy January and February, to which I still want to keep up with baking regularly and making dinner.

In an effort of help with that kind of thing, I have re-arranged my home office (as Gina says that I have been doing that steadily over the last 6 years). With the help of some of my x-mas loot, I have been able to ditch my bulky 27 inch TV that took up a HUGE portion of the entertainment center that was in my office. I have also ditched the entertainment center, in favor of the EXPEDIT bookcase. (Same one I have at the work office.)

The TV was replaced with a 23 inch HP monitor (widescreen). Seems like a downgrade right?

In terms of straight up number of inches, yes a downgrade. But the increase in resolution and the widescreen effect has proven to outweigh the fact that it is smaller than the TV. If I am looking to watch something on a BIG screen, I will walk my lazy ass over to the living room. What I am looking for is something that can be in the background of the computer monitors, allowing me to passively watch TV while working.

I had a similar setup many years ago, what feels like a lifetime ago. But I remember that back then I felt like I was able to get more done and still satisfy my addiction to having something like the TV going in the background. Music helps, but I am definitely an addict to the TV.

I thought long and hard about asking for the HP monitor vs asking for a LCD TV. And in the end for the size that I was looking for the monitor seemed like the better deal. I did think that after having to buy a special cable for my xbox and some other miscellaneous items, that the LCD TV might have been an overall better cost savings. But I think the monitor will still be more useful in the long run.

The monitor has both an HDMI and VGA plug. This allows me to plug in the U-Verse set-top box and the 360 at the same time. I bought some speakers that have dual inputs allowing me to run both the 360 and the U-Verse through some nice little Logitech (favorite brand of computer accessories) speakers.

The difference in the quality of the graphics for the 360 is amazing, particularly for one game where the resolution requirements were just TOO much for the old CRT TV. I mean words that were too fuzzy to read are now clear on the screen.

In regards to the bookcase, I love the one that I have at the office. It holds many books (tall and small) and you can get these ‘boxes’ to put stuff in. I think I might be able to fit two of them against the wall, which honestly I think would provide me the needed cubby holes to finish putting stuff away in my home office.

The other bit that is helping me with my six year mission, is purging stuff that I just do not utilize anymore. I have trashed a lot of old papers that don’t need to be kept, I have sold books to Half-Price books, gotten rid of games I don’t play anymore, donated gadgetry to Goodwill. (Still have a few that I would like to try to sell on Craigslist or eBay.)

I also started removing the carpet from my home office as it is the last room in the house with carpet. I am not sure when we will install the pergo like flooring, maybe in February.

I should probably go and start putting the soup together as I think all the ingredients are ready to go.

Laterz

bdbenner Cooking, Personal

I had a nice chat with my mom this morning on the way into the office. During which, she and David sung me Happy Birthday.

I made it into the office a bit earlier than usual this morning, I have a 9am conference call. As is the dogs woke me up at like 5am. No matter how you slice it, this morning was going to happen earlier than usual.

On a side note, if memory serves I was born at about 12:11am eastern time on this day so many, many years ago (31). I don’t think I was able to get to sleep until about 11:30 central, which means I was actually up for my birthday, hour and minute.

I attribute my midnight birth as to one of the reasons I have always been more of a night-owl. But who knows if that is really the case or not. I do know that because I was sick when I was born, I have the unatural power to fall asleep with the lights on (and usually the TV as well). I forget what I had exactly, but I know my mom said that they put me in a ‘box’ with bright lights, presumably lamps that would give me artificial sun light or something.

So here I am at the office, drinking my soy milk with a dash of coffee spilled into the mug. I have already had my GingerBread Squared (patent pending) toast and am listening to Sinatra belt out how he did it his way. I had the brief notion that I would like to dress up like Sinatra for Halloween. Not entirely sure I will be able to find a vintage-ish suit and more importantly a fedora that will fit me noggin.

Regardless, I will do it MY WAY!

I have been ‘penning’ a blog post a few minutes at a time over the last couple of weeks that I hope to finish today. My original intent was to do that this morning before my call. However, answering work email took longer than expected. I will see if I can get some writing in at lunch.

Birthdays are usually when I start getting all introspective and reviewing myself and what I am doing and what I want to do, I imagine that many other get this way around their birthdays. I will likely weave some more introspection into that blog post.

Well, 3 minutes until my call. I best head over to the conference room.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner Personal birthday, me, rambling

I was going to start this post with the usual sort of ‘I am sorry for not blogging more.’ type of apology. But in an interest of being different, I am just going to say that I have been hella busy.

At the beginning of the year I made the decision that I needed to be more social, get out of my comfort zone, etc. As part of those efforts I started ‘hanging out’ on Twitter, which led me to hearing about ProductCamp. I heard rumor about the 2009 Winter camp about 2 weeks after it had been held. So when I saw folks chatting about the upcoming Summer 2009 ProductCamp on Twitter, I decided to jump in and volunteer.

Right about this same time I happened to see something about about a company known as ‘Tech Ranch’ doing something in Cedar Park. I immediately took interest, given that i live in Cedar Park and Tech Ranch is a company that is in the business of fostering, growing and accelerating the entrepreneurial community. I re-tweeted some announcements about their upcoming town hall meeting. Due to my re-tweeting, I was invited to come on down to the Ranch (of Tech) and meet with the founders.

The Tech Ranch folks were looking for a ‘Wrangler’ or a ‘Mobilizer’ to help build and foster an entrepreneurial community in Cedar Park.  I volunteered to help them and the City of Cedar Park build the community.

ProductCamp was GREAT! Over 300 product development/marketing related professionals showed up to the UTC building down on August 15th. I showed up to the planning meeting back in June and had the intention of just volunteering to help with something minor, but instead I ended up volunteering to the be the Volunteer & Logistics Coordinator.

I recruited and organized all of the volunteers for the event. However, I cannot take all of the credit, I had some absolutely fantastic team leads that helped pull it all together. At several points during the process of trying to pull it all together, I might have thought that I never wanted to volunteer for anything again. In the end though, I am looking forward to the helping with the organization of the Winter 2010 ProductCamp.

I have been working on a few side projects, so my evenings have not been filled with the usual TV watching and video games, it has been filled with coding and having Hulu on in the background. I found a couple of great shows, Defying Gravity and Greek.

To be completely honest, there has been a little bit of video game playing. They released Civilization Revolution for the iPhone, which is a very good port of the game in comparison to the Nintendo DS version, which in turn was a fairly good port from the XBOX-360 edition.

I have still been baking bread, my last few loaves of Pepperoni-Cheddar bread were good, but I think I still need to find the perfect ratio of pepperoni and cheese. My last batch of Rye bread was GREAT. This evening I baked up an artisan loaf of mustard seed wheat bread. I also prepped a batch of pizza dough.

It is really late and I need to get to bed.

bdbenner Personal, baking, video games baking, catching up, video games

I hope that everyone is having a Merry X-mas.

I helped the dogs, rabbits and bird make X-mas cards for Gina. The dogs got her a Starbucks gift card and the rabbits and bird got her an iTunes card. Lula wanted to get Gina a new car, but well Lula is a dog and in these tight economic times she just couldn’t get a loan. I mean, one of these days soon Lula’s modeling career will take off and she will be able to get herself the personal chef she has always been wanting.

Gina got me some clothes (which was cool, cuz I picked them out), she also got me CronoTrigger for the DS-Lite, and she got me a really swanky beard trimmer (my last one broke). Gina and I got t-shirts from my in-laws, Gina’s says that “Everyone loves an Italian girl.” Mine says “Italian, by marriage only.”

I also got a micro-copter (which is proving to be challenge to fly, but one I am sure I will master). Gina got a bracelet.

I got Gina an Apple AirportExpress, so that when she travels she will always be able to have wifi at the hotel. I also got her the latest book by the lady that writes the Harry Potter books, JK Rowling, I believe the title is “The Tales of the Beetle Bard”. It is a small book, I think she will likely finish it in a day (if she reads it straight through).

We were going to see “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” with Jeremy and Nichole. However, it would appear that the movie was TOO popular. For almost evey X-mas for the last 10-15 years I have seen a movie. But both Gina and myself cannot ever remember the theatre being as busy as the Cinemark on 1431 was this afternoon. Jeremy and Nichole got there earlier than us and managed to get tickets, whereas Gina and I didn’t get there in time. I called Jeremy when we got there, to see if they were already in the theatre or if they were in one of the various lines that were outside the theatre (one of which looked like it might have been coming from inside the building.

He said that they were inside already and that it was pretty full. I stood in line to buy tickets and overheard someone say with amazement “It is sold out.” I didn’t catch what movie they were referring to, when I got up to the kiosk myself, I saw the “Sold Out” label on the picture of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”

I feel  bad that we were not able to catch the flick with Jeremy and Nichole. Hopefully, it is a good one. Tomorrow night Jeremy and I are going to see “The Spirit”, I am going to see if John can go tomorrow night. I think I will make sure we are there extra early, which should be easy since Jeremy and I are both taking the day off.

On a side note, it actually turned out to be a good thing that Gina and I didn’t get into the movie. Our “Rival 20 Quart (Electric) Roaster Oven” is amazing, it cooked the turkey to our amazement in about 1.5 hours. I mean it seems impossible to believe, but we reviewed various different websites to verify the necessary cooking time and temperatures (and to see if we could figure out the best place to put the meat temp probe).

The movie lasts almost 3 hours. This would have ultimately have meant that the turkey would have been way overdone.

Gina’s dad had told her earlier today that the roaster would could the turkey quickly, but he didn’t say it was going to cook it that quickly. I mean we had put the probe in about 1 hour in and it was already registering at 161 degrees.

Well, Gina just started cutting the turkey, so it is time to go.

Laterz

bdbenner Dogs, Personal, Uncategorized, food Cooking, Dogs, gifts, movies, pets, turkey, xmas

I took the photos a while ago, but haven’t really had a chance to put together a post.

(One of my gifts has been taking up a lot of my ‘free’ time.)

I’ll let you guys figure out which one.

Last year my mother-in-law, Brenda got me a cookie basket (mmmm… cookies). This year, to be a bit more healthy I got a fruit basket (with a balloon). The basket was mostly melon, which I will have to admit I am not a huge fan of. I have on occasion eaten a few pieces of musk melon, but not a fan. So I let Gina eat the melon, she LOVES it. I really enjoyed the grapes, strawberries, apples (dipped in cholocate) and the pineapple stars.

Thanks MOM(-in-law)!!!

Our good friend John Hale got me a 4th Gen Nano, in light of the fact that Steve Jobs stole my last one.

Thank You John!!!

This brings us to what the wife got me for my birthday.

The first thing I will mention is that she got me a Neti pot. Which I actually used, after weeks of it sitting in my bathroom, in the box. I NEEDED it when I was sick to help remove the pressure from the sinuses that were giving me a serious headache.

The next thing she got me was pretty much the only thing left on my list.

The Nerf N-Strike Vulcan EBF-25 gun. It is a fully automatic, belt fed NERF machine gun.

Because of the fact that while shooting the dogs might be fun (namely the evil little black and white one), the fun would be short lived as the darts would probably mean costly trips to the emergency vet, the gun is staying at the office.

The gun is a bit louder than I originally was expecting. I didn’t think it would be silent, but not quite as loud as it is. However, the speed at which it can burn through the full 25 dart belt is quite impressive. But the noise makes it like a after 5pm toy. (unlike the revolvers which are more of a ‘not on the phone right now’ kind of toy)

I also bought myself a couple of gifts, Civilization Revolution (for the Xbox360 and the Nintendo DS-Lite).

The folks at Firaxis did a great job of optomizing the play control of the game for both the Xbox360 and DS-Lite. As a long time Civ player, I really enjoy the fast paced action of the game. They made certain parts of the game simpler, in a good way. Except one.

They only give you one Nuke. For whatever reason, as Jeremy can (and does) comment on, I seem to like games with Nukes. In part, because I actually use them. In Rise of Nations, I can be found to use them to help level the playing field. In Civ3 and Civ4, there were a few times I found myself at a relative stalemate (cold war if you will) and had enough cities with high production, to be able to build enough of a nuke stockpile to be able to hit every city of my computer opponent, in a single turn.

The one thing I will say about the nuke in CivRevolution, is that rather than simply eliminate the enemy units (and reduce the population of a city) as it does in the other Civ games, the Nuke in CivRevolution completely removes the city in question off the map, nothing but a smoking crater.

Well, I need to pack it in and get to bed.

Laterz

bdbenner Personal, XBox360, apple, ipod, video games 4th gen nano, birthday loot, civRevolution, fun fun, games, gifts, ipod nano, l00t, nerf, nerf vulcan gun

Technically speaking (my modus operandi) I turned 30 last night at about 11:15 or so, give or take a few minutes. I am of course adjusting for Central timezone vs Eastern.

It was 30 years ago somewhere around 12:10-12:15 (I forget the exact) in the morning that I was born to Graciela Dominguez (Now Graciela Underwood) and Thomas J. Benner.

A couple of years back my father sent me an strangely thick envelope, it contained the receipt for my birth. The charges for all of the various bits of hospital equipment, room charges, diapers ($4 back in 1978), and a few other odds and ends. The total was somewhere between $3,500 and $3,800 (I am sorry to report my memory isn’t quite as sharp as a few years ago, course I also didn’t try to commit the number to memory).

I found a few inflation calculators online and ran $3,800 through them to see how much I would have cost in today’s day and age, purely on an inflationary basis. It would appear that it is between $12,000 and $13,000. I find it interesting that three different calculators all produced three different results. I can only surmise that they are using different inflation staticists for each year.

Regardless, having the hospital bill sent to you some twenty-odd years after the fact is kinda weird. After receiving the envelop, I jokingly asked my father if I was expected to pay him back. I forget what his repsonse was, but since we didn’t setup a payment plan, I am guessing he declined.

But that brings me to the next thing. I received a package from my mother recently. The contents of which filled in several holes what I knew to be the story of the day of my birth and some backstory on my parent’s early years of marriage.

It also contained some family tree information.

I have to say that I was quite touched to have my mother be able to recollect in a fair amount of detail the events leading up to my birth. For instance, my parents had gone bowling before I was born. My mom did not start giving birth at the bowling alley, though that would have been quite a story and a sign of things to come.

She did however manage to bowl the same score three times in a row, while not a high score, it is worthy of a league patch. And there apparently was a write-up in the Lansing State Journal about it, next time I am in Lansing I will need to hit up the library and see if they have the microfiche available.

I knew that when I was born that I was sick and had to stay in a “special box with lights” for the first few days of my life. This apparently was because I was jaundice(d) and apparently the lights in the “box” helped me get some vitamins that I needed.

I am pretty sure that my parents and wife will agree that the box with the lights probably has had a profound effect on me, as it has granted me the ability to fall asleep with the lights (and tv on). Course it may or may not have anything to do with me being solar powered.

I woke up early today and headed into the office. I have been here for about 20 minutes, I caught up on a the few emails that came in over night and have been writing this post, which I now must wrap up. As of about 4pm yesterday this went from being a normal week with a couple of birthdays thrown in there, into a week with a tight deadline and a couple of birthdays.

Jeremy’s birthday is on Friday, I forget his exact age, but I know he is OLD(er than me). I regularly forget that Jeremy is a few years older than me, to that effect I can never tell whether that is because I still act older than I should or if it is just Jeremy’s youthful spirit.

Meh, could be both.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner Personal 1978, birthday, inflation, solar powered

And grateful it is Friday.

I have a number of home projects that need to get squared away this weekend to ensure a relaxing vacation, so this weekend will be action packed.

The trip back from Dallas was fun. Jeremy and I had a chance to catch-up with a buddy who lives in Dallas. It was good conversation and pretty decent food (we went to Bone Daddy’s).

On the way back we listened to the music on Jeremy’s iPod  (we listened to some of mine on the way up). Oddly enough most of the music we listened to I also have.

We finished off the trip listening to different tracks off of Billy Joel’s greatest hits albums. I always enjoy a good singalong with the Piano Man.

Back to grind.

Laterz.

bdbenner Personal austin, billy joel, dallas, jeremy, road trip, travel

Jeremy and I are packing up and heading to Dallas tonight. (like probably right after I am done with this post)

We will be up there for meetings all day tomorrow, then driving back that night.

Not sure if posted an update about his car, if he hasn’t then I will scoop him here.

They believe it is a sensor in his transmission, so between the part, labor and changing the transmission fluid he will be out about another $300 bucks.

The mechanics believe that is all the work that is needed to fix his car.

Well I best shut it down and get the laptop in the bag so we can motor.

Laterz

bdbenner Personal car, dallas, jeremy, travel

While listening to the radio during my morning routine, Alice In Chains’ song “Rooster” came on. I came to the realization that I have heard that song almost everyday on the radio since my days in high school. That is obviously a bit of a generalization.

However, whether it is in the morning, during the day or at night, I swear I have heard the Rooster song at least once a day.

Bear in mind, I listen to “Alternative Rock” stations about 100% of the time. Back in Lansing it was 92.1 The EDGE. Here in Austin, it is 101X. (92.1 is no longer on the air)

My reason for bringing up my choice in music is that, by listening to an Alterantive Rock station I increase my chances of hearing the Rooster song significantly. But as I reached this seemingly mundane epiphany about hearing this song from 1992 almost everyday, I realized that my choice in music might soon become a form of ‘Classic Rock’.

The DJs on 101x have stayed relatively young, swapping out every few years. One of the ladies that did the morning show when I first moved down now has a show later in the day. And some of the DJs from that time period appear to have moved into management.

Another realization that I have had lately is that more and more of the new music that is dubbed “Alternative Rock” is just noise to me. It all sounds the same. Funny thing is there were a few bands that hit the airwaves about 6 months back that all seemed to want to be Pearl Jam, I mean their lead singers were trying hard to sound like Eddie Vedder.

Back in high school the rock of the ’80s was just becoming phased out into the ‘Flash Back’ hours (lunch breaks or drive-time nostalgia music hours). I still tune into the Flash Back lunch hour on 101x, the majority of the music there is from the ’80s, some of is now music from the ’90s.

Yet, still the Rooster makes its way into prime air time. I guess I am curious about what when will the “Classic Rock” be the music of the ’80s and ’90s. I mean, if Classic Rock today is the music of the ’60s and ’70s, will they tack the ’80s and ’90s music onto that genre or will they create a new genre, say “Classic Alternative Rock”.

I guess one thing that I am starting to realize is that I am getting old(er).

This year I will 30, the next big milestone for me. I think most people find 30 to be a defining point, the point at which they are no longer young and not quite old.

I have always said that I feel older than I am, I usually throw out 70. Oddly enough, these days I would probably say that I feel 60.

So by the time I am 40 I will feel like 50, so in theory when I am 45, I will say 45.

Anyway, it is time to snuff the rooster.

Night

bdbenner Personal, music 101x, 80s music, 92.1 the edge, alice in chains, music, radio, rooster, turning thirty