For those of you that didn’t see the pictures I posted 2 weeks ago, we put up our Christmas lights, we also got our tree decorated (pictures will be posted at the end of the month).  The past couple weeks we have been taking care of our Christmas shopping and also prepping the house for the first of what will be many Christmas parties our house will be the host of.  This Sunday is my dad’s side of the family’s Christmas party, we should have about 20-30 relatives in attendance.  And then on Christmas day we will have a party for my mom’s side of the family, which will be a bit smaller but will also include Kelly’s family (actually both parties will include Kelly’s family) and any friends that want to come over.  Work is winding down for the year as goals have been met and projects have been completed, I’m happy to say I still have a job that I enjoy although this year was a lot different from the previous two years due to the lack of new hires our department had to train.  Kelly’s business is doing well, although we did have a decrease in business compared to 2008, but we are in good standing.  All the animals are happy and healthy and we are all looking forward to the new year.  I’m proud of myself for keeping up with my Weekly Cool Links project, even though it’s not quite as ‘weekly’ as it claims to be, I hope someone out there finds some entertainment in me sharing what I find interesting.  Lastly my Eat in OC project has been doing great, I typically have around 5000 visits a month and I’ve made some major inroads with gaining new readers.  I’ve been linked to on a number of local websites, and high-profile local blogs, and in addition my articles are routinely linked to in the Orange County Register’s Community Blogs section which is only 5 links deep from their front page, how many others can say something like that?  I’ll probably post one more time before the year ends, but for now let’s move on to the rather large links section!

Food
Lifehacker had a great article on maximizing Thanksgiving leftovers that will also prove useful with Christmas leftovers.  While over at Slashfood they had 4 fast recipes for making great Tomato sauces.

Tiger Woods’ Women, er I mean Chicks
Some of these links may not be safe for work, or family friendly.  But this is my blog so if you don’t want to see possibly scantily clad women don’t look at the links in this section.  If you are related to me and offended, oh well, I’m sure you have something else you can be proud of me for, get over it… ;)
Twitter is a wonderful tool for communication and for people to share pictures with, some pictures are more interesting than others as you can see from this collection of Hot Chicks that use Twitter for the powers of good.  I do not approve or disapprove of their use of Twitter…  Maybe Twitter chicks aren’t your thing?  How about Chicks dressed in various NFL Team Jerseys?  What’s that?  You like farm girls?  How about German farm girls that model to help German agriculture?  Here you go.  Personally I like my girls a little different from the norm.  Lastly there is the Internet’s Girlfriend…  Funny how I’ve been on the internet for 15 years yet hadn’t heard of her till recently.  One suggestion for her site, more pictures like this and less like the one on the top of her website…

Sports
It got so bad at Notre Dame this year that after they fired Charlie Weis they went straight to the big man in the sky and offered him the head coaching job.  The Onion reports that Jesus Christ himself turned down a 3 year multimillion dollar offer to coach the Fightin’ Irish.  Maybe he was just holding out for the right job?  Such as this Head Coaching position with the Lingerie Football League!

Cool
Virgin Galactic has launched their official site for the space travel, complete with Spaceship Two pictures and information on the roll out.  Never would have thought space travel (even of this kind) would be available to the general public in my lifetime.  Lifehacker had a number of cool informative posts the past couple weeks, including Fixing Your Relatives Computer, Guide to Avoiding Online Scams, and the Most Popular Top 10s’ of 2009.

Funny
I read three comics online; Order of the Stick, Dilbert, and xkcd.  I’m particularly fond on one of the Dilbert comics from this week, because it’s how I feel at my job sometimes.
Another one from this week that really hits the mark is this one regarding the use of FAX machines.  As for xkcd I have to give some love to ‘Daylight Saving Time‘.  Looking for a last-minute gift for a friend or loved one?  How about, How to Date a White Woman or the Gangsta Rap Coloring Book?  All these and more really do exist!  If you are single and looking for a Russian Mail Order bride one of the companies involved has started to compare them to celebrities!  Now you too can date a girl that sort of looks like Jessica Beil!  Just make sure you ask them these 10 questions from Deadspin before you ask her to marry you, it will save you a lot of heartache.  And lastly, now that you got your celebrity look a like wife, it might be a good time to reflect upon those stupid things you did when you were young and might regret someday…

Videos
My website is currently sponsored by Bitch Slap The Movie!, in theaters: January 8th, 2010!

If you know anything about the movie, commercial, or TV show business you might find some humor in this.

I love reading Maximum PC and listing to their podcast, I love this video someone put together from Gordon’s rant of the week regarding the Apple Tablet.

And last but not least at all, the Space Shuttle is awesome and this high quality video of the STS-129 launch is worth spending 15 minutes to watch.

STS-129 Ascent Video Highlights from mike interbartolo on Vimeo.

Oh and Merry Christmas!

UCLA Sucks!

What better way to celebrate what we are thankful for than to watch the USC Trojans beat the UCLA Bruins?

Proud USC Fan.

We’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving at my in-laws, and then on Saturday we are going to cook our own turkey at the house.  Not much else going on.  We did get baseboard put in living room, dining room, and hallway a couple weeks ago, things are really coming together with the house.  We will be having 2 Christmas parties at our house in December, one for my dad’s side of the family and one for my mom’s side of the family (which will include Kelly’s family at both/either of them).  It’s going to be a very busy December!  Work will be busy the first two weeks as well since I have to train new hires on high-speed online, but it shouldn’t be too difficult.  That’s about it from here so let’s see what I have to share this week.

Cool Food

Cheeseburger in a Can!

Have you ever been out camping in the wilderness and wished, “Boy I wish I could have a cheeseburger right now!”.  Well the wait is over, with the cheeseburger in a can!

Cool Stuff
When I was a kid I loved reading the various Choose Your Own Adventure books, I found this site that someone has analyzed all the books and has a bunch of data about them, with cool graphics and color.  It’s a pretty neat read if you loved those books as a kid.  Some more cool stuff, but in a much different way are these Civil War pictures (warning some of them are not for the faint at heart), I’d never seen this collection so it was an interesting look into battlefield.

Buying Stuff
If you are looking for the best cheap stuff to get for Christmas, check out this site called Cheapism that has reviews on cheap things.

Funny Stuff
Another weekly cool links and another great site to see pictures of people and go, what the fuck??  This weeks pick is Why the Fuck Do You Have a Kid?  You will be saying the same thing when you see this collection of pictures.  I’m sure a number of UCLA alumni are pictured on that site.

TV Stuff
Anyone that is both a sports fan and a fan of The Office will love this take on The Office done by the Kansas City Chiefs.

Videos

Everyone loves a douchebag.

Watch out for the Shiny Suds in your shower! (Loofah!  Loofah! Loofah!)

The best song of 2009 Show Me Your Genitals (NOT SAFE FOR WORK and people without a sense of humor)

Don’t miss his other great hits also on Youtube!  And you can purchase his songs on iTunes!

Bohemian Rhapsody, The Muppets Style!

MBA in 2 Minutes

1. Revenue – Costs = Profits
2. Businesses without customers are not in business
3. You must do everything you can to attract and retain customers

Besides work not much happened the last couple weeks, we had a couple various family gatherings, a relaxing 1 week vacation, and saw a couple movies.  Funny People (3 Stars) and 500 Days of Summer (3.5 Stars) you can check out my movie reviews here (more reviews to come as I catch up!).  Lastly I’m getting into golfing and bought some new irons last week, that should be arriving at my house today and I’m looking forward to playing 1-2 times a month if possible.

On to the Weekly Cool Links!!!!

Music
I have a bunch of music links this week, most of them about finding new music, something I struggle with because of my specific eclectic preference.  I’m always interested in finding more music I might like, iTunes DOES NOT CUT IT with their recommendations, even Genius is just sort of ok, but Lifehacker put together an article on articles and ways to help, with their Top 10 Tricks for Making Your Playlists Rock.  There is Project Playlist which can help you find music, generate playlists and create ringtones for you.  Lastly if you are looking into turning an old computer into a “media server” you might want to check out Amahi, doesn’t require much power or high priced tech to get running, and can stream to just about anything, in addition is has lots of features that compare to those of Windows Home Server!  And lastly, I thought I would share an artist I discovered yesterday, this girl can do wonders with just a ukulele and has a very pretty voice.  She is also playing in Long Beach in a week or so.

Movies
Not much on the movies front this week, but how could we all have missed the production of Lesbian Vampire Killers!  Most of the reviews say it’s pretty bad, but come on with a name like that it has to be at least entertaining.

Sports
I found this gallery archive of Iconic Dodgers Photos from Sports Illustrated.  My favorites include the picture of Sandy Koufax’s no hitter, if you look closely on the chalkboard someone wrote and then erased that he went 0 for 4 in the game.  Also love the picture of two of the best pitchers ever in baseball, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax.  Glad that they included one of my favorite Dodger of all time, Orel Hershiser.

TV
If you happen to know anyone that is looking for a job, perhaps Veridian Dynamics might be just the place.  Well regardless if it is, I highly recommend that you check out the two episodes of Better off Ted that will be on this week (Tuesday 08/11/09 at 9:00 P.M.).  Or maybe you are like me and you just accidentally want to somehow download all the TV shows you are interested in so you can watch them later on your own time and without advertising… Well ShowRSS might be able to help you out…

Tech
If you don’t know by now, both myself and Kelly have iPhones, and one way I keep up with the release of free applications I might want to check out is by visiting FreeAppAlert, actually I have them on my Twitter, but I check out their website via their feed there.  Talking about the iPhone I’m really stoked to see that the FCC is interested in getting to the bottom of the application approval process at Apple after their denial of the Google Voice app.  I was really looking forward to getting to use my Google Voice number, hopefully these questions that the FCC has made will get Apple and AT&T to stop with the antics.

Neat Stuff (probably tech oriented)
Did you know that my relative and US President John Quincy Adams is tweeting?!!?  It’s all being done by the Massachusetts Historical Society, as this article explains.  J.Q.A. kept a 1 line a day journal 200 years ago while he traveled to Russia to be the first US Ambassador to Russia.  According to my calculations he’s currently just off the coast of Canada make his trek to Russia.
View Larger Map

On to present day, I really thought this graph by the New York Times showing how people spend their day was interesting.  I love the data that have put together and the ability to filter through it and see some specific groups.  For those of my friends that enjoy beer, and especially Miller Lite, they are soon to release some new draft technology to be used in the home.  This one should probably be in the tech section, or maybe I should just make an iPhone section, but someone has come out with software that allows one to track what is in their pantry and allow it to link with their iPhone to help create shopping lists and keep your pantry items up to date.  With the integrating of the pantry list on your computer you can have an automated shopping list that updates to your iPhone pantry list!

Local
That’s right I have a local section, but not much to report.  OC Register posted a list on Certified Farmers Markets throughout Orange County, although it doesn’t include the one in Stanton on Mondays (unsure if it’s a certified but I could have swore it was), also check the comment section for most lists.  Lastly, Gustavo Arellano at O.C. Weekly wrote about an article he read in a Jewish satire magazine, in which porn star Joanna Angel praises the sausages from Mattern Sausage in Orange for, “Its curved shape was good for hitting my G-spot and, because it was a smooth surface, it was also great in my ass.”  If that’s not a praise for their sausage then I don’t know what is!  What Gus didn’t mention is that there is actually an article and pictures of Jenna von Oy from Blossom fame!!!

Videos

Ladies, is this what it has come to?  What extracurricular activity does the Shake Weight resemble?

Are all the people in Santa Cruz like this, or is their something wrong with the water?

Don’t forget the Aspray next time you have issues with your body odor.

And lastly I had to include this awesome time-lapse video of Disneyland construction, it’s amazing how quickly they were able to do stuff back then, compared to the time it takes today.

Have a great week!

Anyway enjoy the followup updated video about the DTV transition.

In addition to that I was able to get Apple to replace my iPhone due to various issues I was having with it crashing, hopefully this will resolve those issues, so far so good!  Kelly has to take a trip up to San Francisco so she will be gone Thursday night till Friday night, I’ll miss her.

Other then that most everything else is good.  We went to Oak Glen two weekends ago with all my family (parents, sister, brother in law and kids) and picked apples.  We brought them home and Kelly cooked an apple pie, while I BBQ’d for everyone.  It was nice all hanging out, I’m hoping we can start doing that more often on my side of the family.  I did something to my left shoulder on Sunday morning and it’s been very painful when I extend it forward and do other various movements with it, so I’ve had to pull up lame on softball for awhile.  If it still feels the same next week I’ll set up a doctors appointment to get it looked at; but as it is right now, I can’t swing a softball bat.

Work is good, very busy lately, but busy is a good thing, especially in this economy!  My cousin Tim is getting married this weekend, I’m really happy for him!  Next weekend we are going to see The Who!

Other then that not much has been going on.  We went for a drive yesterday around LA, that was fun.  Not really anything going on just working a lot.  I’ve been in Garden Grove primarily for the past 2 months, and look to be there for the month coming up as well.  I’ve been to my office in Anaheim a total of about 3 times in the past 3 months.  Kelly and I are planning to take a vacation in April once things settle down at my work.  Probably up the coast to San Francisco and Monterrey.