This is a simple photo of my cubicle at work... I'm officially in a real cubicle now, kind of exciting... I do have a red swingline stapler, but you can't see it in the photo... You also can't see my lava lamp in the photo... It's on the far side of the monitor...

You can also almost make out one of my illusion dragons in the photo on top of my monitor... You can also see my logo clock which you can buy on The Torgo Store.

You can also make out my 3 Extra Step awards, that I've earned with my time in the company. I have a 5 year award, but it's cut off and you can really make any of what made it in the picture out anyway...

You can almost make out some of my toys on the shelf. They include my color Dante & Randel in-action figures (I have B&W ones at home), my 1:48 scale Honda Insight model (to match my real car), and a couple other things...

I also have a web cam, but mainly use it for MSN, as most the developers at my work communicate with it...

So, that's my cubicle...

Well, I just drove to get my wife and am sitting waiting for her. My work told us to leave early today for various reasons due to the fire... Namely the fact that it was predicted the Santa Annas winds would pick up, and cause fire spreading... As of 4:00 it hasn't happened which is good...

The hill I saw on fire when I dropped off my wife this morning is now fully black, asside from the houses which appear cut out of the burned hill. I saw a couple points smoking, but no flames so it looks like the worry over here is over. Of corse the fire is nowhere near over, so elsewhere the story is different...

I had heard the flames here got pretty big durring the day, I was at work ready to pick up and run to get my wife if need be... Fortuantly no need for that ever occured...

The sky here is orange, and the ground is fully covered in ash. I've seen a few people out with cloth tied over their face... I have no trouble breating this type of air myself... I'm not easily bothered by things like that... My wife was choaking this morning when she got out of the car. I was surprised how much it effected her this morning...

Well, thats all the info I have. I'm feeling very relaxed now, after stressing out all day... I still need to drive home, all the way down the 101 to Camarillo... We'll see what happens...

If you read my prevous post, you saw I had a picture taken with my phone of smoke mentioning that I would probably get a picture of some flames in time...

Well I was half right. I did in fact see some large flames this morning, on the side of the hill near where my photo from yesterday was taken... However, the picture I got show no visible flames... This mainly has to do with the fact that my phone's camera sucks...

Unfortunalty my wife left my digital camera at home, which meant I could not take a good picture... But at any rate I'm posting the photo I did get below...

If you look near the dead center of the photo, there is a semi-lone tree, the flames were just to the right on the hill in the background... The tree is around a thirty degree angle up and to the right of the stop-light sign...

This is a photo I took of the smoke from the Simi-Valley fire. Can't get close enough to see flames... Though if it continues to spread, which on the radio they're saying it will, I may see some... Which isn't really a good thing...

This photo was taken about 10 minutes from my work & one minute from my wife's work...

Well, wouldn't you know it... Tivo had recently (though according to them mistakenly) implemented a feature to prevent some shows from being retained more than a defined period (in other words, you record a show, and that show is automatically deleted after 7 days regardless of weather or not you watched it yet).

Well, as of the 6th, Tivo is introducing a new little "feature". You see, you will be REQUIRED to sign up for a 1 year contract, and early termination will result in $150 early terminiation fee... So in other words, to prevent people from leaving due to this new "feature", they are making it so the customers cannot get out of their contract. I'm highly doubting this new contract agreement is independant of the feature mentioned above. I do believe it was a bug (as in it shouldn't have been active yet) but I also believe they are going to wait until more people are in manditory contracts before purposely instating this feature...

People are gona hate Tivo more than their cell phone providers at this rate...

I can't stop laughing at this...

Apparently there was a roster update for Madden 06, but it had to be taken down. Apparently someone hit the wrong button, and made Michael King of the NY Jets height 7 inches... I can only assume someone heald down the shift key when entering the height...

At anyrate, if these screen shots don't make you laugh, nothing will:





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http://forum.gaming-age.com/showthread.php?t=63503#madden

I just realized today that my favorite soda could have been causing problems with one of the medications I'm on...

Specifically Diet Squirt and Vytorin...

You see, one thing that I'm attached to in life is my diet soda. I always tell my wife (who thinks I drink to much soda), some people smoke, some drink alcohol... I drink diet soda...

I'm very attached to my Diet Squirt. I used to drink it when I was younger (I'm Diabetic, so I always drank diet for as long as I can remember), but Diet Squirt soon disappeared from store shelves. Over the years I would occasionally think about it, but NEVER saw it on store shelves. Until one day a couple years ago, and I've been hooked ever since. You will RARELY see any other form of soda in my fridge...

My wife thinks I drink way to much, but I tell her with no calories, carbs, or fat, there are much worse things I could be hooked on...

At any rate I was re-reading the warnings on my medication bottle of Vytorin. I noticed the "Do Not Drink Grapefruit Juice Or Eat Grapefruit" sticker once again. Having been staring at the 8 or so spent cans of Diet Squirt sitting on my nightstand a few minutes earlier, it all of a sudden clicked in my head: Diet Squirt contains grapefruit juice!!!

I was quickly panicked, and skipped my normal morning can on the way to work. My wife said I should stop drinking the soda, I on the other hand said I should stop taking the medication...

So when I arrived at work this morning I began a little research. After searching on warnings, they pretty much all said not to exceed a quart of grapefruit juice per day. They did NOT say to avoid it completely... So the first thing I thought was: How much grapefruit juice do I actually get out of my can o' Diet Squirt, so I did a little math...

1 can contains "less than 1% juice". Ingredients say less than 2% of "the following" with Grapefruit Juice Concentrate being listed first.

Each can is 12 FL OZ.
So for the sake of argument, we'll round the juice percent to a solid 1%...

1% of 12 FL OZ = 3.54882356 milliliters.
Round up to 4 milliliters...

1 quart = 946.35295 milliliters
Round down to 946 milliliters...

946 divided by 4 = 236.5
Round down to 236...

So this would mean I would need to drink MORE than 236 cans to exceed 1 quart of juice. Keep in mind that we rounded in the safest direction in each case, so the actual number of cans is higher...

However I realized shortly after this that the ingredients list grapefruit juice CONCENTRATE. I thought what if the 1% juice was actually 1% juice concentrate? So, seeing that concentrate is usually mixed with 3 parts water, which would mean concentrate represents 4 parts juice (3 parts water + 1 part concentrate = 4 parts total)...

236 divided by 4 = 59.

In the end, after rounding everything to be on the extra safe side, it turns out that I would need to drink at the very least an excess of 59 cans of Diet Squirt a day to exceed 1 quart of grapefruit juice a day. As much as I love my Diet Squirt, I can safely say even I do not drink that many cans A WEEK! So I think I'm OK...

Kevin Smith is auctioning off a walk-on role in Clerks 2, the proceeds of which will go to Katrina victims...

It's current at around $3,200 at the time I'm writing this...

Now I just need to come up with some cash...