Year: 2009

It’s Still March!

Hello Everyone!

Thanks for taking the time to read this amazingly awesome blog post. I have been getting reports that if you come to tristanpipo.com and then refresh the page that you get an error. But if you just visit the page this doesn’t happen. So my advice is don’t click refresh. This is due to the nature of calls that the website makes if a few people do it at the same time it can push me over the amount of connections I am limited to at any given second and clicking refresh will resolve the issue. With that said On with my life.

So since my last post was in the beginning of March. So you need to be caught up. Two Thursday’s ago my foot started to hurt. It was just a slight pain not a big deal. But the pain started to get more intense. Like to the point where I had to throw up the pain was so intense. I could hardly walk and this was annoying me so I was cursing a great deal and keeping Raleigh up.  So on Friday I was late for work because I had to go to the doctor. They told me it was some tendentious action and take some Aleve and my foot would be all good. It took almost 24hrs for the pain to go away but it did.

That weekend I really don’t recall what happened. I don’t remember it being very exciting. I have noticed that as I grow older it seems that most of life gets over run with sameness. I get up same time. Walk out the door at the same time. Catch the same bus. Sit in the same seat. Get off at the same stop. Go to the same job. Fix different things. Come home and do the same thing but with slight variations.

I guess this is the human condition since we don’t need to be constantly hunting or finding drinking water. I can see why some people go nuts. But I also see that we have the methods to keep people that are nuts still around. For example you have some guy who isn’t all that bright. Chances were higher that a Puma would find his stupid ass in the woods and idiot wouldn’t be around to breed anymore. Most idiots don’t get attacked by Puma’s anymore. Since they can get all their resources for living without having to deal with Puma’s. Seems like a good idea to me is to have a city surivial force of Puma’s and other various vicious animals around just to get that fear going. If moron A can’t make it to the bus stop without a Tiger attacking him odds are he won’t be breeding.

But I always have ideas like that. I mostly get told “Why do you waste time thinking of such things” or “You are such a dork” or “You are so weird” most of the people that get past this initial shock value of being around the Tristan of the Pipo find me to be an overall good guy. Took my current girlfriend a long time to realize this and pretty much everyone I have ever known.

So anyways week went on and I felt very productive. Friday came around and I didn’t really do a whole heap on Friday. Went home and chilled. Saturday was an interesting day. The Nick and J-Monster came over from Kitsap. I got to meet Justin’s new girlfriend. I will not butcher her name by typing it but she was cool in my book. She is very social and that is the type of person I dig because you don’t have to say much and you can be interested and make their day. So went and hitup SushiLand on Queen Anne Hill. I have seen one of these in Portland, OR as well. I am sure the Junniper will chime in and have many awesome things to say about me.

What has been interesting about Junniper and her blog and my interaction with her.  We exchange the occasional e-mail. Most of the time it’s like “Hey look how Portland messed up” or something I find about garfield. I have spoken to her on the phone once. Caught me off guard when I was hanging out with the KGB Mafia Man. She was at the SeaTac airport. I think she was trying to stalk me. What is also rather funny is how the times I am in Portland she is out of town. I can picture being 89 one day and getting on my floating wheelchair disc and going down to Portland and being like “Ah Ha! We finally meet!” Then that being it I go back to my Evil Mountian of Power in Seattle.

But that was a random tangent. I really have nothing to say just kinda doing a brain dump so there are probably tons of spelling and grammar errors. It’s never been my style to really fix them either. If you would like to make an attempt at being me in a funny manner. You could shoot me an e-mail and your parody post. I would be happy to give it a post.

So Saturday some friends and I went to Sushiland and then went and saw Watchmen in IMAX. What is awesome is that a standard movie ticket at a theater costs $10. The IMAX films cost $11. Plus you don’t have to deal with stupid public fuckers and them using cell phones. The most annoying movie theater people that need to be locked in portable toilets filled with bottle rockets and kicked off a building are the ones that keep their Bluetooth Headsets on. So you get that blinking blue light. They look like annoying ass cyborgs that ruin the movie. I wish someone would kick them in the skull when they walk in with those things.

After that we went to some bar called Pesos for like 15 minutes and then left and went home and passed out.

Sunday I went to my Grandpa’s birthday brunch came home and was tired.

I have no ending for this post so I place a few random periods…   .. ..

It’s March!

Holy Crap. January is gone. February is gone.  March is here. Last weekend was pretty fun. Friday night went and got some Sushi and it was freaking delicious. Went up to Lynnwood and grabbed some Blue C. Sushi.

After that went and checked out Slumdog Millionare. Which is a freaking great movie. I enjoyed it so much when the credits started rolling I brought out the Amazon app for my iPhone and ordered it on Blu Ray. Then the girlfriend said “You are such a nerd”. At that point I couldn’t disagree so after that we went home. When I got home I decided that I must have the soundtrack for this film. So I bought the soundtrack on iTunes and then burned it on a CD. I wanted to make a couple copies of the CD for my sister and a backup to keep in my spindle. But for some reason I was having difficulty making the CD into an ISO. WinISO, Nero, Toast Titanium just couldn’t seem to do it. So I gave up on the project and just performed this task via CD swapping. While this was happening I was playing some Team Fortress Classic and noticed it was 3am so I went to bed.

Wakeup at 8am because Saturday we went off to Kitsap County to celebrate my mom’s birthday. Recently my mom quit playing World of Warcraft. It’s been rather interesting to say the least. She has been playing online games since 2001 I would say. She got me Ultima Online for Christmas of 2000. I played it for a month and then asked if she wanted to play. Well that set it off so that my mom and my stepdad played games nonstop. Then one day my step dad decided to stop playing my mom didn’t. So now that she doesn’t have that outlet it seems like she has been trying to find a new one. Which can be daunting after 8 years of playing online games. I played Ultima Online for one month. Finished that and then in 2004 I was in the Beta for World of Warcraft which I played from April 2004 until May 2005. Then I played again in May of 2006. Since then I haven’t really been addicted to any other games. You can find me here and there on the XBOX 360 playing a game for an hour when I have nothing else to do. But I always get a tad freaked out playing video games I don’t want to find myself addicted again.

So got on the ferry and stopped by the Casino’s Resort in Suquamish. Stopped by the Spa and picked up a Gift Card for a 75 minute massage for my mom. Since trying to find out what my mom wants for a Christmas or Birthday present is probably one of the most difficult things alive. I usually find myself being met with.

  • “Oh I don’t know, You know me. Figure it out”

  • “Well you can’t really get me what I want. So perhaps a gift card”

If life was perfect everyone would have an Amazon wishlist and life would be grand.  So after that we swung by Central Market and had a mini lunch since Raleigh and I were starving. Then she wanted to go to Wal-Mart to pickup some items for various reasons. Then we went and hung out with my sister a bit.

Then went to Puerto Vallarta for lunch. It was all well and good. I had a large margarita and got a bit tipsy and made for an overall good lunch. I sometimes get the feeling my family doesn’t really get Raleigh. Or maybe they worry that she kidnapped me to Seattle. Who knows really. Only person who makes an effort to come see us is my sister Rachel. Rest of my family is kinda like “meh Seattle is far away”.  I am tending to see Raleigh’s point we make all the effort to go see them on Birthday’s and other occasions why doesn’t anyone come to our place to hang out.

So we make it a bit of an early day and head home. So that brings us to Sunday. Sunday was a bit of a chill about day and then we went to a Game Night with Raleigh’s family. This is always a bit interesting since they are a rather extraverted group. When I can be but generally I prefer to sit and observe. Sometimes I relate it to TV watching like when watching the Discovery channel and showing something I have never seen before. But every family has their odd behavior. They are into different things then I am. Doesn’ t make it bad or good just different.

Played some games had some food overall great experience. Went home and watched some Big Love. Was sad to see only 3 episodes left. I watched Flight of the Conchords and then passed out.

Monday comes around and another work week begins. Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. I know most of my posts turn into 1000 word essays and I thank you for the screen time. Hopefully you will be glad that this post is just around 900 words.

500 Internal Server Errors

Update: Looks like the changes that I was recommended to do didn’t resolve the issue. We shall see what GoDaddy support can do.

Well looks like the fun doesn’t stop around here. I have been getting reports of users getting “500 Internal Server Errors” this seemed to be happening for Firefox, IE, Safari. I did some googling and found out that the error is an issue with the hosting provider I use running out of memory allocated to PHP which is running WordPress. I have made the changes that the other sites have recommended and next time that the services are restarted for this server that should resolve the issue. So hopefully the GoDaddy Support team gets an easy close for the support ticket I opened.

RSS Downtime

To those that get to read blog posts from this via RSS. I wanted to let you know that RSS will be down for approx 72hrs while all the feeds get moved from Feedburner to Google that has not purchased Feedburner. On a side not that means if you are reading this via RSS this doesn’t really apply as the move has worked as expected. To those reading on the site that are going “RSS? HUH? Did you insult my mama?” Well then it doesn’t really apply to you either. I guess what I am saying is that I have nothing to say. But I am working on updating the look of the site yet again. So stay tuned as this is a work in progress in realtime. So changes could come every day or every couple of days to the design. So not really much to see or say.

Cheers!

Teleflora.com Has Made the Fail List

So Saturday is Valentines Day. I am going to write my experience thus far. I happened to be watching the Super Bowl and saw this rather funny commercial toward the end of the game.

So I got thinking hey this sounds like a good idea. This site looks they do flowers correctly. I think I could make a great impression with flowers like this. So next day I went to Teleflora.com and ordered the.

Deluxe Teleflora’s Rubies & Roses Bouquet

They show the default flower setup to look like this.

Teleflora Flower Arrangement

I paid an extra $10 for the deluxe set which they show on the Upgrade your Gift Page to add the following.

TeleFlora bouquet_deluxe

I also tossed in some balloons and a medium box of chocolates to my order. Which added up in price rather quickly. I placed my order on Feb 2nd and 1:15pm EST according to the site. I requested delivery for today Thursday Feb 2nd.  Well that part goes of fine they delivered them today. But they forgot the Chocolates. They didn’t deliver them at all. I also was sent a picture of what my girlfriend had delivered to her office.

Flowers from TeleFlora.com

How in the world does that look like a Deluxe Flower Arrangement from what I ordered above. I can go to Safeway and get a better flower arrangenent then that for what I paid.  That doesn’t look deluxe at all.

The description on the site for this arrangement reads as follows.

This elegantly romantic bouquet is a win-win gift of love. You’ll win her heart with lush flowers in a ruby red heart vase she’ll treasure. And she could win gloriously real rubies in Teleflora’s Rubies & Roses Sweepstakes.*

  • The radiant arrangement includes pink stargazer lilies, red roses, miniature pink carnations, red carnations and pink waxflower accented with lemon leaf and myrtle.

  • Delivered in a stunning clear glass vase decorated with an etched “necklace” bearing a ruby red heart jewel.

  • Bouquet is approximately 14.5” W X 17.5” H

  • Item number: 09V100B

So according to this I am supposed to have a Clear Vase with a “necklace” on it. They appear to have not been able to construct what they are clearly trying to sell me. Hmm maybe there is some loophole I am missing. Let’s take a look at their fine print.

So they have a “Substitution Policy” that states.

Substitution Policy
Occasionally, substitutions of flowers or containers are necessary due to temporary, regional availability issues. If this is the case with the gift you’ve selected, our experienced florists will ensure that the style, theme and color scheme of your arrangement is preserved and will only substitute items of equal or higher value.

Hmmm this doesn’t appear to be the case. You state a “Clear Glass Vase” It appears I got a dark short vase. It just seems like very little fluff when I was expecting a great deal more. Part of me wonders if I am just suffering from that symptom I had as a child where I saw I got a Tony the Tiger diver on the outside of a Cereal box only to discover it was an Orange Tube. But I feel like I am paying a great deal more then $3 for a cereal box in this case.

So moving on I get a phone call from the girlfriend about how excited she is and thrilled to get the flowers and all of her coworkers were jealous. So I feel on one front mission accomplished. But on the other front I feel like I need to fight this battle. So Battle #1.

The Chocolates.

I ordered a “Medium Box of Chocolates” for $19.99. I could probably order a better set then what they had offered but I was going for the complete package solution. So I wasn’t exactly wanting to coordinate that delivery as well. So I went for this. So I get a phone call around 1:30pm saying “I love you so great my jaw dropped I am told.” I ask about what she got and she said 2 balloons and some flowers. I asked what about Chocolate? She said I didn’t get any. I got rather pissed off about this so I called the company.

Most websites don’t have numbers to call right on the front page. This made it easier so I call them up and press 2 to get to some guy that is hard to understand. I let him know about the situation and he apologizes and says they can refund my account and someone will call me from research. He first tries to refund $9.99. I am like no that’s what I paid for the two balloons you need to refund $19.99 for your “Medium Chocolates” he said no they are $9.99. I went to the site and logged in and I said I paid $74.95 for the flowers and $9.99 for the Balloons and $19.99 for the chocolates on top of all your other fees. He finally agree to refund the $19.99. I would have preferred they just tell their delivery guy. “Hey you screwed up. Go deliver the chocolates.” I would have rather had this and got my service fee refunded. Since that seems like a better deal to me. Because I am still paying for the screw up.

So now I wait for their research department to call me. I will post about that when they call me back. But until then.

Teleflora.com is on my Fail List. I need to bring that page back.

Update 2-13-2009: A day later I still have not heard anything back. I got to see the flowers in person last night and they were even more disappointing then I had expected. I am going to call and complain again today. I feel like I totally got ripped off with this. 

Welcome to the new WebHost

Hey Everyone!

I have moved the site over to the new webhost. I still need to move the other domains that reference this site.

tristanpipo.net, siriusdude.com, siriusdude.net, xmdude.com, xmdude.net. They will still come up but there is currently a bit of an issue with this as they are hosted on another server that redirects to this one. So delays are still in place. Also the file.tristanpipo.com and me.tristanpipo.com are still in the process of being moved over since the DNS changed from the previous webhost to the new one.

So hopefully the speed increase works well for everyone. Happy Weekend!

Speed Issues

Hello Everyone! As I am sure you are all very aware that this site is very very very slow. My hosting company recommended I make some changes to the database and change some functionality of wordpress. So I did what they asked and the site still takes 15-30 seconds to load. Which this site is not very big it should take just a few seconds to load. So I am entertaining the idea of a new webhost. So I signed up with a GoDaddy account just to see what they can offer me for the time being.

TristanPipo.com will be the first site that I have to be moved over to that hosting company. Most of this transition will probably be translucent to you. Since it will probably go from the site loading slow to the site loading fast.

So I apologize it has taken me so long to get around to this. It has been pretty much the main reason why I haven’t been blogging. It is just painfully slow for the time being.

That shall be changed soon enough. And I will probably break a few things in the process. =).

50 Things

I saw this on YouTube where you just post 50 random things about yourself. Since I don’t feel like counting dots these are going to be numbered but are in no particular order.

  1. When I was a sophmore in High School me and my best friend got in trouble for spamming the Traffic Education Teacher. Cops were involved and everything.

  2. When I was  a child I had a goal to dig to China in my parents side yard. They kept refilling the hole every few months. I learned everything was an uphill battle.

  3. I tend to be very incredibly anal.

  4. I enjoy doing dishes when I am not being told to do them.

  5. I am constantly afraid of getting addicted to something. So I try to moderate everything.

  6. I try to keep my DVD’s in alphabetical order.

  7. I get a kick of doing things that keep peoples perception of me off balance.

  8. I don’t keep many friends just a select group of close ones.

  9. I really can’t stand myspace and prefer facebook.

  10. I enjoy Thai Food way to much.

  11. I drink maybe 2-3 beers a month.

  12. I have never tried any drugs or smoked anything.

  13. I dug my parents first pond when I was 12 for $20. I didn’t realize that 6hrs of work for $20 was getting shit pay.

  14. I really enjoy the MacOS but got tired of pushing it on people.

  15. I have this constant feeling that I never successful at anything but I like the fact that it drives me to try harder constantly.

  16. Almost every girl I have ever dated I have met online.

  17. I listen to podcasts all the time. I hardly ever listen to music.

  18. I once gave two underage girls a ride home because they asked me to. I was freaked out the entire time that I would get called a pedophile for just driving someone somewhere.

  19. I try as hard as I can to be a great guy.

  20. I am fairly quite and don’t say things unless need be. Which usually leads to people thinking I don’t care about them because I tend not to ask questions about people.

  21. I tip way to much because I feel bad. I never tip at coffee shops though. I feel $4 for coffee is enough of a tip. But I will tip $20 on a $30 haircut.

  22. I used to have this dream about how I was trapped in a Winnie the Pooh Scuba suit. I sometimes still have it and freak out every time.

  23. I sometimes get frustrated by people who don’t check their e-mail as often as I do.

  24. I really enjoy Amazon Prime.

  25. I hardly talk on the phone and try to use most of my communication via e-mail and SMS.

  26. When I was 4 years old my family took a trip to Canada and I fell out of a Van in a pancake house parking lot and had to get my head wrapped up like a mummy.

  27. I really dislike having to answer peoples questions that could be resolved if they just performed a quick google search.

  28. I am never sure how long to hug someone that I am not dating.

  29. I have a huge collection of socks that I never wear.

  30. I feel pretty good about not having any negative feelings about anyone.

  31. Whenever an HBO show comes on and does the little “Awwwww” I always do it to.

  32. I get stuck on sayings every now and then. “Delta”, “Pinner” and always feel stupid when people don’t get it.

  33. My current girlfriend has played enough Abba to make me never want to hear them ever again for any reason.

  34. I was really happy to break it off with an ex via SMS. Made me feel pretty good about getting revenge on the opposite sex for all the crap they have done to me over the years. I feel bad about someone having to face that though and would like to apologize.

  35. I update twitter frequently but I always get the feeling nobody cares except when it updates on Facebook and people comment on it.

  36. Growing up my house was the most popular place to be on the street. We had Swings, Tree House, The Digging Spot, We built forts on the rockery. Sometimes I miss being the popular kid.

  37. I chopped wood for 8hrs a day for 3 days in a row for the neighbors to buy a $10 marines hat when I was 11.

  38. I can’t mow the lawn because it will swell me up due to allergies.

  39. I am allergic to most pets. Cats at the highly allergic end. I am allergic to most dogs as well. But I like dogs.

  40. I caught Mono in the 8th grade and missed 2.5 months of school. I almost failed the 8th grade.

  41. I failed Spanish II on purpose because I really didn’t want to take that class.

  42. My favorite soda is sprite.

  43. People who text in movie theaters are probably some of the most annoying human beings alive.

  44. I always enjoy being around people. I am not much of a fan of being alone except when I am feeling burnt out.

  45. I have never really traveled that much.

  46. I always put the peanut butter and the jelly on the same side of the bread then add the dry side on top of the middle. I developed this habit to annoy the crap out of my ex girlfriend. It doesn’t seem to annoy anybody now.

  47. I save everything. Every chat, e-mail everything.

  48. I am really good at playing Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo.

  49. The sexiest part of a woman tends to be their legs.

  50. I am honestly shocked I came up with this many things. That I wanted to write something cliche about how I am shocked I came up with this many.

Hope you enjoyed reading this. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. If you come up with 50 things let me know in the comments and post a link to your 50 things.

Geekery from Amazon

Today Amazon made a delivery to make my day.

Amazon Geekery

We got the Race for a new Game Machine. A book about the story about the processor in the XBOX 360 and the Playstation 3. Read just a few chapters and must say the book has been great so far.

We also have the Die Hard Collection on Blu Ray. Makes for a great visual experience. I really only care about Die Hard 1 and 4. The other 2 I could care less about. But it was cheaper to buy all 4 then buy two as singles.

Then on the bottom in silver we got a new 320GB Laptop SATA drive to toss in the Playstation 3 to replace the 80GB one that the system came with.

I must say I have been loving Amazon Prime. That is probably greater then my Costco membership. It blows away my Barnes and Noble card I think I maybe use that thing 2-3x a year and mainly for Starbucks discounts. When I switch my grocery shopping over to Amazon Prime I will have become fully intergrated with the internet. Mwa ha ha.

I wish I could have some cool power right now like shooting a lightning bolt out of my hands and a cape like the count from Sesame Street with a huge popped collar. That would be the ultimate badass of badass.

Tristan Chimes In! With Ringtones! And Geekness!

So I got an e-mail yesterday from my stalker. Aka StalkerDave asking what ringtone I had on my phone. Well it’s the ringtone from the best TV show of all time. Arrested Development it’s the theme Gob uses in his magic show. I still need to grab the DVD and get his chicken sound for when I get a text message but all in good time.

I must say Arrested Development was introduced to me by my girlfriend when she got the DVD’s from the library. I got to watch 4 episodes or so before it ended up having to go back. I wanted to see more so I could have waited for her to get the DVD’s again but I didn’t have time for rational solutions. So I did some research and found that I could get each season for $20. I didn’t like this idea it just wasn’t geeky enough. So I found that you could hack an AppleTV with Boxee and watch Arrested Development via Hulu. I had been wanting an AppleTV for a while now so I decided to go that route since it was geeky and seemed cooler at the time.

Instead of spending $60 and getting DVD’s and being happy I decided to spend $300 on an AppleTV. Got a USB thumbdrive I had around the apartment and loaded the AppleTV Patchstick on there and installed Boxee and I could have Hulu on my TV. It has been shown that the AppleTV has been a great investment since it plays all my media now. I used to have this task delegated to the Playstation 3. But it wouldn’t play my DRM stuff from iTunes now the AppleTV does it all and I am happy. Plus the HD rentals on AppleTV make it worth my while.

But the moral of the story was I got to watch Arrested Development and every other TV show or internet video I wanted on the magic AppleTV box.

Which inspired my ringtone.

Here!

Link is in iPhone format so you will need iTunes to play it.

iPhone Ringtone Organizer