The Annoying Bird

Seems like I have a new stalker. It’s this little bird that comes to the extra bedroom window in our apartment. He is at the window almost every morning trying to peck his way through the glass to get in. Sometimes he is on the neighbors roof just looking in. I took some video so I have some evidence so people don’t think I am crazy.

Oh yeah not crazy. See him or her? Back to Saturday!

Happy Belated To Me

Also a Happy Friday to you! So thought I would take some time to write about my Birthday

experience.  Raleigh surprised me on May 12th 2009 with tickets to the Flight of the Conchords concert at the Paramount. I must say an epic show. I love Flight of the Conchords I got Raleigh hooked a bit as well. It all happened about a year ago actually.

We were down in Portland for Memorial Day and we stayed in a Holiday Inn. They had an HDTV in there and HBO. I must say one of my pet peeves is people that have an HDTV and don’t have it setup properly. But I can also understand that they have to pump analog to all these TV’s in a Hotel so most cable systems decode the digital signal and multiplex down their own systems so you can view all channels. So end result most Hotels with HDTV’s don’t have the HD setup properly. Also drives me nuts when going to someones house with an HDTV and they have their cable or satellite box hooked up via RCA. But anyways that was a tangent that has nothign to do with this. Well we had HBO in the room and they were rerunning some episodes of Flight of the Conchords.

It happened to be the episode featuring the awesome song of Business Time.

After that I bought their CD’s and Season one on DVD. It also spawned me to get HBO. Also for Entourage. After that HBO is like a bit of an obsession for me. I really only have it for their TV shows and don’t really watch the movies. But anyways the concert was awesome. One thing that was interesting was that they had someone doing Sign Language in the front. I must say I bet that ladies arms were tired. I wish I could have made out the motions for curse words. Also I can’t imagine doing sign language for a song is easy.

I must say that the concert was epic and thank you so much Raleigh for the awesome gift. In the meantime pretty much went along as normal. Nothing out of the ordinary and then the 20th came around.

I went to work on my Birthday and must say it was what you would expect for work on your Birthday. I went fairly low key didn’t tell anyone except for the people at work on my Facebook Friends List.

Raleigh picked me up from work and we went to Red Mill scored a Creamsicle Shake. I have been wanting one of those for probably a year now. I must say it was awesome and delicious. After that we went home and we were planning on going to see a movie but tiredness overwhelmed us so we popped on the AppleTV and rented a movie.  Raleigh got me some awesome video games. She picked up the Metal Gear Solid collection. Nice to replace all my old games. Metal Gear Solid 1, 2 and 3. Also picked up God of War for the PSP which is a totally awesome and radical game.  I must say seeing a game designed back in 1998. I remember getting it as a Christmas Present from my Dad. But now playing it on a HDTV 11 years later I must say I thought these graphics were crazy awesome. Comparing it to Metal Gear Solid 4 it’s like night and day. Time to play with some nostolgia.

This weekend we are heading to Portland so I call that Birthday Extension 2009 Memorial Day Awesome Fun Time. Pictures will be posted as things happen.

Time For A Drink

It’s May (Well Probably)

Hey Everyone!

I check out the hits on the site and people still come here which is encouraging. I am sometimes shocked I still have people that read this when I never post pictures of myself and I don’t really pimp out my site anymore. Since I finished school and joined the workforce back in 2006 it’s like life has gotten busy. But I am not really any busier then I was back then. It’s just that I work on a computer all day. When I get home I don’t want to touch the computer. Finding time at work to blog is close to impossible these days. So consider yourself lucky.

So it’s May. My birthday is in May. I found out yesterday that my 15 year old step niece gave birth to a baby boy. So now I am a Step Great Uncle. My step sister is married to a guy that is a year younger then me. He is now a grandfather at 24. I am 25 now and I look back at my life. I rewind a decade and look at life. All I can think about is that I was a dumbass compared to now. I hope that kid does okay. I am sure when I am 35 I will look at 25 and think “Man, I was a dumbass at 25″. I think people need to think about that more often. I also think that logic should be applied if you ever think about getting a tattoo. 10 years from now I will probably think this was a stupid idea.

But Birthday’s are never my thing. My girlfriend keeps asking me. “So what do you want for your Birthday?” I have no idea what I want since she told me no DVD’s or Video Games. Well that is all that I really want. I am still wondering where the new wallet I was promised for Christmas is. I ponder just buying it myself but I feel like that’s not the point.

I am the type of person that found out at an early age that you are hardly ever given anything and hand outs should not be expected. You gotta bust your ass for everything. I wanted a Playstation 3 I saved pennies and went out and bought the thing. I remember chopping wood as a child for the neighbors to get $20 to buy a Seattle Mariners hat. I chopped wood over an entire weekend for 6hrs a day for $20. They got a sweet deal and my 9 year old ass thought I was making a ton of cash. When I was 19 I looked back at that moment and thought I was a complete dumbass for getting so little money.

So I have no idea what I want for my birthday. If you would like to pick up a DVD or a Blu Ray you can get that info from my Amazon Wishlist Page. Just search for Tristan Pipo. There are not many. Though some girl on Facebook from the Philippines said I was her cousin. I said no but she has a cousin named Tristan Pipo who lives in San Diego. I recall seeing this info before back in 1996 looking on ICQ people search and there was another Tristan Pipo from San Diego, CA. I hope to one day meet this fellow. But until then I sit casually and lurk as my new facebook friend updates with pictures.

I look at the blog and I really need to get working on the fonts it is pretty hard to read. I will see about working on that sometime. Need to bust out the MacBook Pro and hack it up with some CSS action.

So I have been reading about this whole Swine Flu thing. Seems like another plot to install fear into people and keep them controlled. 13 cases in Washington State at time of this posting. 13,000 people on average die of the Flu every year. So far 1 person in the USA that was from Mexico and 2 years old with no immune system has died. Not like you had much of a life at 2 years old but thanks for fueling the stupid panic machine. Seems like everyone is recovering from the illness here in America. So I am confident that everything will be fine and all the idiots and hypochondriacs will be put in there place eventually.

On that note thanks for reading. I will work on being in touch. =) You can always follow me on twitter. twitter.com/tristanpipo

Comcast and Tivo

Hey Everyone!

So I thought I would give a quick update on what is going on around the Tristan circle of life. Last week I ordered a Tivo. This thing has been a pain in the ass. It took a week to get here. But there have been 2 major causes of frustration.

1. The Cable Card Experience.

So in order for the TivoHD to work you need to get a CableCard from the Cable Company. In the Seattle area we have Comcast. Usually for most of my issues I either hop on the Comcast Chat or get on Twitter and send a note to @ComcastCares. So my first try was with the Chat. I got one guy saying that I could just drive to the local Comcast Office and pickup the cable card. Slide it into the Tivo and drive home and call Comcast. Sounds good to me.

Some time passes…..

Tivo is actually coming now so I hop on Comcast Chat again and get a new person they tell me I need to schedule a tech to come out and install the card for a fee of $25. Previous guy told me I could do it myself.

The process of installing a cable card is basically moving one flap down and sliding in a PCMCIA card into the device. Didn’t seem $25 worthy to me. But I do recall charging people at Best Buy $160 for Hard Drive and OS Install.

Now that I had a conflicting argument from two different people. I hopped on twitter and sent a note to @ComcastCares I got the following reply.

So I have two people saying the same thing. So I decide to shoot an e-mail off to Comcast Cares. we_can_help@comcast.com I get a prompt reply from a Detreon Roberts. He says they need to schedule a tech to come out. So I accept that answer for the time being.

So I get home that night and make a phone call to Comcast. I get to speak to an incredibly seductive sounding woman named Jen or Jenn. I didn’t ask for the spelling but I wanted info about my Cable Card. She said that I can just go down to the Comcast Office and pick it up. I tell her about all of my experiences thus far. She says “They don’t know what they are talking about. I setup a CableCard for a guy today took 3 mins over the phone” So I e-mailed Detreon back and he says. “You should really get an installer out” So on Saturday the girlfriend of awesomeness decided to partake on the adventure of the Comcast store and we got the CableCard. Came home and installed it and it took about 3 minutes and we were golden.

So I guess I would like to thank the first Chat Person and Jen from Comcast in Washington for being the most helpful. Everyone else needs to think about what they are doing.

2. Upgrading the Hard Drive in the Tivo.

So this was a fun process that I did when the girlfriend was out tending to her late kitty cat Indy. So I was home alone which was probably a good thing because I was incredibly frustrated by a few sources. So I was cranky and just wasn’t a pleasant person.

So the scenario is that the Tivo HD comes with a 160GB HDD which gives you about 20hrs of HD recording. This was not enough for me so I bought a 1TB external eSATA drive hoping I could just plug it in and be good to go. This was not the case as Tivo doesn’t like this idea so I had to hack the box to get it working. So I take the TIVO apart and pull the hard drive. I come to find out that it would just be easier to install the external drive into the TIVO. So I have to take apart this external drive which I didn’t want to do but kinda have to.

At this point I haven’t even powered up the Tivo. So I take apart the external drive and then go to my Computer. I have this Pentium 4 3.6ghz machine I use to just screw around with when I am not using my Mac’s. Luckily I had this thing around otherwise I would have been screwed. So I open up the computer and need to free 2 SATA ports. Currently I have all 4 being used so I boot up the machine and find the HDD that I am not using and power it back off and unplug the two drives. Come to find out that I had these in a RAID 0 configuration so the computer won’t boot. So decide to say screw it all I can just reinstall Windows 7 Beta and just use one drive and setup the other drives later.

So I had to install Windows 7 again to just do what I needed to do. After that process completes I go download the TIVO hacking software called WinMFS.

I then shutoff the computer hookup the 160GB tivo drive and the 1TB HDD. Boot up the machine and followed the instructions located here.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/04/17/how-to-upgrade-your-tivo-hd-with-winmfs/

I am always baffled when people ask me questions on how to do things with their computer. Since I can find every answer by googling. See here is how you can do it to.

http://tinyurl.com/d9obnl

So I followed that process and swapped out the 160GB HDD with the 1TB and the unit would power on and then crash. So I said WTF! I spent over an hour reimaging my PC with Windows 7 and the process didn’t work. So I swapped the 160GB drive back in and powered it on. This worked great. So I went through the setup process and then took the whole thing apart again to reimage the 1TB HDD with the above instructions. This process worked but took a great deal longer I was getting a bit more positive messages.

As a note if you are going to use WinMFS with Windows 7. Be sure you click “Run as Administrator” or this whole process will never work. So now with all of that completed I have 141hrs of HD recording and something like 1500 hrs of Standard Def recording.

So I got home at 8pm last Thursday and I didn’t finish with the Tivo Hacking until 1:30am. I was rather cranky by the end of the experience. The girlfriend doesn’t even appreciate the Tivo yet. Hopefully she will and I will get some good appreciatin back.

So that has been my Tivo experience. I must say after all of that work I am now an expert in the process of expanding the storage of the Series 3 Tivo’s.

I am sure there are more important things in the world to focus on. Anyone have any ideas?

I’m on a boat….

Wishful thinking..

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.

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.

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.