Nightlife

Friday was the 2nd of 5 Cards tickets we had with the group. I went to Harry’s for happy hour because I thought they had free appetizers and a free shuttle. They had neither but I did have the best chicken sandwich that I have ever ate so I can’t complain. The game was a lot of fun but our seats got no wind so some of us ended up walking around the stadium most of the game. We left early so we could watch the 4th quarter of the NBA game. I was amazed by Lebron’s last second shot but even more amazed of the giant yell from the crowd when he made it; didn’t realize there were that many NBA fans at Cards games. After the game, some of us went to Harry’s for Dr Zhivega’s only show of the summer. It was okay. I was actually pretty tired.

Mike and I went to Harry’s again on Saturday night. It was dead. I am disappointed with Harry’s so far. It has a totally different crowd. I actually feel old there now which makes no sense. We did briefly go to Dubliner before Harrys for Mike #3s (according to Smith) birthday. We went to Pepper Lounge on Sunday. It was a fun and very long night that concluded with White Castle’s at sunup. One of their oddest things about the weekend was that there was no Maruizos visits.

Chilaxing

Saturday and Monday were supposed to be a river day but the river was closed due to flooding on Saturday and it rained Monday. Instead of going to the river, I went to Brentwood Forest pool. Like always, there were a lot of good looking girls. Sitting by the pool and getting some relaxing sun was good. I did not do much on Sunday or Monday during the day except working out. I have been doing a great workout in the past week. I’ve had 2 hour workouts of cardio and weightlifting almost every day.

I caught up on some TV watching too. I also watched Mall Cop. I love Kevin Jame’s comedy and thought this movie had its funny parts but was expecting more. My streak of bad movies continues. Maybe I just dont like movies anymore.

That’s really it. I thought I was going to look for accessories for my place and the magicaly file cabinet I have been looking to buy forever but none of that happened. I also did not look into painting options either. I would say that I would do that this weekend but it probably wont happen due to graduation parties. With that said, I have grad parties the next 3 weekends so I am going to have to do it some time.

When I was writing this, I was thinking of the Urge song “open all night” (Going to the liquor store) so you need to say the title with that tone when you read it.

Needless to say, I meant to write a quick post on my experience with going to the chiropractor but did not get a chance before I went to Jamaica then never did it when I got back … until now. To start off, my lower back had been really hurting for almost a year. It would always hurt when I woke up and if I was standing a long time. I was having troubles standing up at trade shows it was so bad. The weird thing was that it would go away for a short period if I just sat down for like 5 seconds. Because of that, I thought something was out of place and I needed to get it resolved. I finally decided to visit a chiropractor in Clayton. I had only been to a chiropractor once before back when I was 18 when I injured my hamstring during soccer camp right before try outs so I need a quick fix. I felt like an old man and had problems bending over when it hurt bad.

I did not know what to expect from my visit. I was especially hesitant after I was charged $120 the first visit and the doctor did not do anything. I went back two more times in a week in which I saw massive change. I always started the visit with electroshock on the back. I had it turned down the first visit but I really cranked it up the second visit. It was a weird feeling 20 minutes. I then got a full back massage. The massage by this tiny girl made me almost cry it was so hard. It was very similar to the foot and leg massage I got in Taiwan that hurt so bad. The second time I went I got a different girl and she was very gentle and almost seemed to be coming onto me because she was going pretty far down in her back massage (if you know what I mean). I ended both visits with the actual doctor cracking my back in which she actually had a hard time doing. I fell like I was going to fall off the table both times. I also thought it was weird that I was changing in front of a window in which the adjacent Clayton office could see me plus I was always walking around in a robe.

All in all, I had a little soreness the first week in Jamaica and it has never hurt since. I am amazed since it has been over two months. I was really worried that it was my expensive bed that I bought when I moved in. She gave me all kinds of exercises but I have done none. I also got new tennis shoes with better arch support but I have barely worn them since I have worked out so little so I know that did not make the difference.

On a side note, my secondary insurance covered it “by accident” the first time so I had to pay the $80 the last two visits so I would go to a different doctor the next time because I think she was claiming it wrong.

First off, I had used Vista for work but not very much to really get a good use of it. I was running a 4 year old install of XP and my computer was running very slowly so a new install was needed. I was going to buy Vista but balked when I saw Windows 7 coming out. I also was running out of hard drive space so I bought a 1TB harddrive and decided to do a fresh Windows 7 install with the newly available version  (build 7100).

Things I like

• The complete install took less than 30 minutes and required no user intervention. I remember the days when an install took over an hour plus you had to always be making decisions. The other plus is that Windows installed all my drivers without any problems. Not sure XP even did that.
• All my games and apps (besides Nortons) work without any problem.
• The super fast boot time.
• I like the new paint. Wish I had it at work.

Problems so far

• I have some compatibility issues with my newly purchased Norton Internet Security 2009. I first had to put it in comparability mode to install it then kept getting a driver not compatible for a specific program within Nortons. It worked until I ran the updates so I had to uninstall it. Nortons knows there is a problem and has a beta version you can download but it only has a 7 day trial.

Things I am unsure of

• I am not a big fan of the the bottom task bar but I am getting use to it. I loved the quick start in XP. They seem to have the same thing but it floats. There is more of a quick start on the right. I imagine you can probably pin short cuts there but I have not figured it out yet.
• I don’t like how the wireless setup does not tell me the connection speed when I hover over it. This is a big deal considering I often have issues connecting to my wireless router because of distance. I do like the rumors about the ability to bridge between multiple wireless connections but unfortunately it does not work yet.
• Why it always prompt me for certain application that I run. There is no box that says always trust this app so not sure why I have to do it every time.
• It seems that every change that is an admin possible change has an icon next to it. That is fine if you were not an admin but I should not be getting prompt about admin rights when I am an admin login.

Things that surprised me

• No Windows Mail? I had to download it as an accessory.
• That I am not totally shocked by its new features. I really do not see major application difference between Vista. Maybe I just don’t know what they are. I have owned a Blackberry for 6 months and I just realized that I can “Alt Tab” like in Windows to view all my programs without going to the home screen. I also learned the “page up” and “go to the top” commands on top of changing my signal strength from a bar to the actual decibel level.

Overall, I think this is a pretty poor job at doing a review but I am very happy with Windows 7. The big decision will be if I actually buy it. I am hoping I can still possibly buy it through Wash U for $30 like I can with Vista now.

Graduation

This was a pretty big weekend for me. I had my graduation ceremony on Friday. Here are the pictures even though I am disappointed that I did not get any of the Wash U gang but I will get the pictures from some who took them.The whole family came out plus all of my Wash U friends were all walking. The ceremony was pretty good. Jeff Fox (CEO of the ownership group that owns the company I work for) was the speaker. He gave a pretty good speech on the different stages of life. I thought he gave some good advice. The student speaker from the full time program was okay. He obviously did not take a public speaking class because he was excessively leaning on the podium (almost as if he was joking around) and didn’t adjust the microphone nor understood how it worked so he was going in and out of loudness to plain out screaming. The sound people were trying to adjust it but they could not keep up. I rounded out the family time with a dinner at Blueberry Hill. I thought it was hilarious that Grandpa N thought I was taking him into the ghetto  but I think he really enjoyed the atmosphere and food.

Nightlife

I met out the group at Bar Louie after the graduation festivities. The entire Wash U gang was there along with some of my normal friends. It was actually a pretty low key night but we had a lot of phone. Mike and I bar hopped around some Wash Ave bars to finish it up then concluded the night with some pizza.

Saturday night was one of the most fun nights I had all year.One of my Wash U friends “rented” Double D’s for a couple hours. I was going to take it easy but the night started to heat up so I decided to leave my car at the bar and catch up with the rest of the group. The entire Wash u crowd and their friends were out. We did a ton of shots. Mike #2 was out in full force. It was really funny because it was like a switch was turned on after his first shot. I did a lot of karaoke for the first time ever although everyone kept stealing the songs were supposed to play. I closed out the bar PaddyO’s style with some Bon Jovi Livin on a Prayer. Mike #2 and I wanted to meet some of our friends on Wash Ave but had problems getting a cab so we went to Ihop. It was awesome. I felt like I was back living in Brentwood Forest between going to Double D’s and Ihop. Chris Mason and a bunch of other Blues were at Double D’s too. Pattison talked with them after he bumped into them in his drunken stumbling.

Sports

The Cards only played two games this weekend and lost both. They are really going through a funk. I am looking forward to going to the KC game next weekend.

The Lakers game was a blowout. It was nice to see them do so well without Kobe carrying the team. Mike tells me that the Nuggets will win the next series but I disagree. Rengel finally made it to my house to watch the second game 7 game. It was a good game.I expected the Celtics to win even though I think Orlando is a better team. I was totally wrong but the Celtics have been fooling me the entire playoffs. I really expected Chicago to beat them but Ray Allen was just too hot.

First off, I did not get to see this episode until Friday so I kept seeing everyone comments about the episode. To me, the episode had extremely high hopes. I did not see one comment from anyone that said it delivered the answered we were searching. Everyone said it was good (which is not very good in my eyes) to it proposed more questions than it answered (typical Lost). With that said, I do not know what they were watching because I thought the episode was amazing. The writers could have seriously ended the series in this episode (Carnivale style) and I would have been okay with it.

• The major revelation of the episode and the entire show was that there are two “Jacob” style man on the island. Plus, people keep coming to the island and fighting each other throughout time. The real kicker to the other Jacob that most are referring to Man #2 is that he found a loop hole in the system in which he could kill Jacob. He did that by appearing as apparitions to the survivors to get them to do what he wanted. I believe this included Kate’s unicorn, Jack’s dad, Locke on the island the second time, and many more. The only two apparitions I am questioning is if Hurley was seeing dead people and if Man #2 is also Smokey. I think Man #2 was the dead people Hurley was talking to thus why he told him in the cab that he was not crazy.
• Man #2 looked to bring Locke back alive when his father threw him out of the building thus explaining how he lived so a huge fall.
• I liked the back stories with Jacob meeting all the survivors thought their lives. The stupid thing on my part is that I did not realize that was Jacob. I must have been too tired.
• I am going to miss hot Juliet. I do think she is dead. She had been wearing a red shirt alot which supposedly is a sign that she is going to die plus she did not meet Jacob in her flashback. Her flashback seemed to actually portray that she needs to learn to “take one for the team” thus another reason why she would be dead.
• The good vs evil question in my mind was finally answered. Jacob seems to be the good along with basically everyone on the island except Man #2.
• Vincent, Rose, and her husband were back like promised. I expect this to be the end of them. It was a nice quick way to get their storyline finished so everyone would quit asking about where they were. Plus, I am pretty sure that Rose is one of the detectives Mom’s in Southland. The only thing peculiar about the exchange was the comment about the tea between Rose’s husband and Juliet. Not sure what was going on there. Are they really dead?
• We finally knows what lies in the shadow of the statue … it is Jacob. I am surprised to see that no one theorized that early.
• It turns out that Man #2 was the person in the cabin all along and not Jacob. What does this mean about Claire? Also, was Hurley the one that let his escape by disrupting the gun powder ring where he ran away from this place? Hurley really is cursed and brings only bad things with him.

This will be a short one! I lied. I thought it would be but it ended up being a longer post.

Nightlife

I did go out both night but nothing extraordinary happened. We did mix it up (somewhat). We went to Bar Louie and Sub Zero to start on Friday. I had not been to Sub Zero in forever. It was fun. I am sort of disappointed that I did not take full advantage of the CWE bars when I lived there but I do not think they are as popular as they are today. We ended the night at Rue 13. All I can say from the night is that I spent a fortune.

I was somewhat disappointed by my Saturday night plans because I was expecting to see London Calling at the Stable. We did not realize until we got there that it had moved to Halo Bar. Needless to say, the Stable is  a pretty cool restaurant and bar. I believe they start serving their own beer at the end of the month. We finished off the night at Pepper Lounge. BTW, we went to Maurizos both nights and it was delicious.

Sports

Overall it was a disappointing weekend of sports. The Cards did not do very well but they did pull off the win on Sunday. The biggest disappointment was the blowout of the Lake Show. It was supposed to be “easy” since Yao was out but obviously the Lakers heads were not in the game. Hopefully they can pull it together tonight.

In fantasy news, I played a tough opponent in Rengel’s brother. He is #1 in the league. I played neck and neck with him and ended up losing 6 to 7. He got two complete games which is impressive. The more impressive thing to note though is that he posted that it will be really hard to beat me in the playoffs due to my great pitching staff. I do have both Cy Young winners from last year plus previous winners too. I have a strikeout team along with great closers. Combine that with my stolen base and run machine hitters and I have a good team.

The Family

After a little confusion, I ended up meeting with the Krassinger family at my grandmother’s for dinner after I went to the cemetery to pay my respects to my mother. It was a pretty good evening. The whole family seems to be having medical problems so it was good to see everyone healthy and upbeat. I am looking forward to my brother, Dad, and all the grandparents getting together at my graduation this Friday.

Things I am looking forward to in the upcoming week.

• Graduation on Friday
• Installing Windows 7 tonight on my new 1TB harddrive
• Getting my 640GB external HD setup on my DVR so I can now begin recording HD movies like before without worrying about space.
• All the different parties on Friday and Saturday for graduation
• Parties in the Park on Wednesday
• The Lost Season finale on Wednesday

As of last Wednesday, I have completed my PMBA program at Washington University. I still need to officially receive my diploma but I am pretty positive that I passed my last class that I have yet to get a grade on. Its hard to believe that is had been 2 and a half years since I first started. Overall, I am very glad with my decision. It could have been a very different decision if it was not for a misunderstanding at work. I was accepted at SLU, Wash U, and UMSL but chose Wash U since my work provided 100% tuition compensation. I was contacted the week I was to deciding on which school by our HR department. They said there was a tax issue they were addressing that had to deal with the max of $5250 that could be deducted by a company each year. My first semester tuition was around $7000 so they said they were going to adjust my pay check to deduct the full $7000 without my take how pay changing. I left it at that and went on with my life. It was not until about half way through my first term that my company sent out a notice about the new tuition reimbursement policy where they only reimburse $5250 a year. I was shocked since they had just approved me only a month ago and nothing was mentioned about this. I then found out that they knew this when they originally approved me but thought that I was told about the future change. Obviously, this would have changed my decision if I would have known this prior to accepting the invitation to Wash U. I would have probably picked SLU instead. After I look back at it, I am glad for the outcome even though I am not looking forward to huge student load I am going to see in 6 months nor was I happy with how my company handled the situation. As a further update, my work suspended its tuition reimbusment program totally earlier in the week.

Overall, it was a great experience that I do not think I would have received at another St Louis school compared to what I know from people who have or are going to SLU, UMSL, and Webster for their MBA. I have to commend Wash U for their cohorts program. This was a tremendous way to introduce people which has gave me with a great source of business networks. In case you are not familiar with the program, it groups you in with 5 people with different skill sets and job experiences. For the next 1+ years, you basically take the exact same classes as your incoming class (PMBA 22) while being in this same group the entire time. This basically allowed me to have a pretty close relationship with at least half of the 75+ students in my class.

I had some great memories from the school and needless to say they all involve drinking.

• The first semester at the After Dark sessions on Thursdays. Half the class took part in the weekly free alcohol. What made this semester different compared to the the future ones was the combination of the keg with triple tap and the Cards in the World Series. I remember hanging out in the lounge trying to finish off the keg while watching the games then going down to PaddyO’s around midnight. It basically started my obsession with the ballpark bars.
• Going to Spyglass with Mike after one of the first After Dark nights of the year. All I can is that it got crazy.
• Going to Nick’s one Thursday in the first year for the $1 u call its. I remember chasing a shot with a vodka drink about every 10 minutes. Luckily I had a ride. The crowning moment was when I “accidentally” got “punched” by a great friend in which my tooth got chipped and had to be repaired the next day.
• Hanging out with the group on Thursday evening in Clayton after the Afterdark sessions.

How I am going to benefit.

• Going to a 20 top business school in the country has to give me some credibility. One of the whole goals of going to Wash U was so that I could go anywhere in the world and have my degree recognized as top notch.
• The network of people that I met and the resources that Wash U provides with its alumni department.

What classes I enjoyed most.

• As a side note, I thought I was going to do a marketing emphasis but all the classes started to repeat each other so I also took a lot of management classes too.
• I really enjoyed the sports management class. It was the first time offered at Wash U and had a tremendous list of guest speakers that ranged from the Director of Sports Marketing at AB (some said the most powerful man in sports because of the huge budget he controlled) to former director of the SEC and on the IOC to Selena Roberts who is writing the controversial book on Arod. There were many others. We heard amazing stories.
• I really liked the organizational design and science classes that we had first semester. I guess I liked them knowing how dysfunctional my current work is.
• I did take some good pricing and international marketing classes where I learned a lot that helps me everyday in my current job.
• I really enjoyed my Managing Innovation class. It was very relevant at the time since I was working on so many new products for the company.
• I also really enjoyed my communications class even though I also dreaded it. It was very good for me to have to get in front of a group for impromptu discussions while also being recorded so I could see my mistakes.

I hated:

• Anything that had to do with Econ, Finance, or Accounting. I look back on these disciplines and wish I would have taken more classes but they were so boring. I will probably take advantage of the half price Wash U tuition now that I am a graduate to go back and take some more classes.

What I am going to do with my new found freedom:

• get back in shape
• relax more
• regretfully probably work later
• travel more
• possibly move if the situation presented itself

I am glad to be done but I will miss it. Going to school and the people within it were such a crucial part of my life the past 2 and half years.

Overall, I was deeply disappointed in this episode. The reason being that it was thought that it was going to be a “Richard-centric” episode which it was not. I along with others had all these ideas running through our head about how we were going to finally find out at least some of the mysteries behind Richard. Unfortunately, all we got was a remark about him being very old and that he was like a spiritually guide in finding the leader. Two things that most real Lost fans had already figured out. The episode had no real big wows unless you consider Locke telling Ben that he was going to kill Jacob. I did not because I am not sure that Jacob is even a real person even though we supposedly seen him in past episodes. You would think that Jack’s dad is Jacob now or even the possibility that Locke has become the new “Jacob” in which he is going to “kill” him by disproving the fact that he exists.

Here are some of my other thoughts:

• Don’t watch the previews to the episodes which are hard since ABC shows them all the time in commercials. Why do I say that? In this past episode, you could already tell the bomb was in the tombs. Everyone thought it was in the temple but it turned out to be under the barracks. Same difference to me. I guess that came to a surprise to some but not me. The second being that the episode preview for next week showed Sawyer talking to Jack. Obviously something happens for them to get off the sub (which by the way had super cheesy CGI in its departure scene).
• Of course Kate does not want everything to reset back to normal if Jack is successful. If that happens, she would go to jail thus the tiff with Jack.
• I did think that Kate was actually shot in which I was excited for the mere shock value. But she did not which actually took more of the luster out of the episode.
• What is in the guitar case that Hurley is carrying around? Is it a submachine gun…lol. Doubt he could get that past the security checkpoint at LAX.
• I at least like that Sawyer toyed with the idea of he had a master plan on the sub when he said “we are not going back to Ann Arbor.” Instead he just said we could go anywhere in the world; besides the island.
• There now seems to a divided group in the Dharma clan which I assume is why the incident still occurs.
• Why did Daniel’s mom not take her son to the Temple to save him like Richard did for Ben? Is it because her baby’s daddy did not let her thus why they do not talk to each other anymore?
• I did like the scene with present day Locke telling Richard what to tell flashing Locke. It potentially might be the biggest scene of the episode. I think this because it might actually be leading us down the path that no one really has “super power” but instead keeps getting information passed down to them from “flashing” people who are on the island. We have already seen this a lot with Ellie thus why she did not know what was going to happen anymore in 2008.

I hope this 2 hour finale next week is amazing. I am hoping that it does not end on the incident. I would like to see some results of the incident. I can not wait another year to find more info.

• Very disappointed in the results of the Lakers game last night. They were miserable from the 3 point line plus Gasol couldn’t make a bucket. All problems contributed to everyone hanging out under the basket making it impossible for Kobe to drive to the hoop.
• Didn’t know McGurks was so nationally popular. Esquire rated it as the #1 bar in Missouri. McGurk’s website also claims it is a top 15 Irish pub in the country.
• Super bummed about a grade I received in one of my last classes but was also surprised to find out that everyone I have talked to from that class received the same grade. Not sure what the professor was expecting.
• My company just took away tuition reimbursement. It is hard to say that I am lucky to be graduating now since they took full tuition reimbursement away from me two years ago.
• The Ankiel video of him running into the wall is scary. I hope he is okay. Our outfielders are not on a good run the past couple years. Anyone heard anything about Juan Encarnacion lately?
• Not sure what my plans for Cinco de Mayo are. The holiday seemed to lose its “gusto” with some of my friends. I think going to Hacienda for the event is one of the better times of the year. I would take off if other people would. I always see so many people that I know too. Its light a college and high school reunion all in one.
• On a mini shopping spree after my failed attempt at furniture and home shopping over the weekend. I bought two phone docks, chargers, external eSATA harddrive for my DVR, and a new internal harddrive to install the beta version of Windows 7.
• Only two more episodes of Lost this season. Hard to believe.

I feel like this was a pretty boring weekend and that I did not do much but this is really not the case. Maybe it is because it was my normal style of weekend.

I went out both Friday and Saturday night. We went to Lucas Park then Rue 13 on Friday and Lucas Park on Saturday. Both times were a lot of fun. I struck out a lot Friday at Lucas but at least I tried. I went to Fast Eddies for the second time in 3 days on Saturday which is odd because I had never been there before this week. The place is sort of weird. Not sure how it ever got so popular. I feel like I could copy his business model in a more accessible location and easily take his market.  With that said, it has a lot of hype and I would say that it lived up to it. The best way to explain it would be to compare it to Pattyo’s. Thus you could see why I like it. We followed up Fast Eddies with going to the casino to gamble but I basically just watched the Bull and the Blackhawks games.

I thought I would sleep in on Sunday but that did not happen. Since I was up, I completed a trek around the Metro area looking for home accents and a file cabinet. Needless to say, I did not buy anything but I do have some ideas on what I am going to do above my kitchen cabinet. I am thinking various sized metallic vases. Maybe something like this but in different shapes and sizes. I am going to check the web for other ideas. I am pretty convinced that I will need to buy my filing cabinet that I also want to use as a night stand online.