subatomicsunday

I have successfully avoided posting in the month of November! I guess it’s not that big of a deal since I’ve gone months not posting anything before. This might be kind of a big update though.

A week after my last update, my roommates and I ended up going to a Halloween party. It was way on the other end of town and the house was packed. I didn’t drink that night because I was still afraid of drinking (I’ll explain that in a later post). I also carved another pumpking that kicked ass. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

This is my roommate Shawna and I. We’re dressed as the King and Queen of hearts.

These are both of my roommates. Tiffany, me and Shawna.

These are my roommates and Kyle. Shawna, me, Tiffany and Kyle. The funniest part about Kyle’s costume is that he didn’t have a costume to begin with - 45 min before we’re supposed to go to this party. Shawna had a dress she bought at Burning Man that was modified for him. They did his make up and turned him in to one ugly broad.

This is the 3rd pumpking I’ve ever carved. I did it from a stencil but I’m kind of proud how it turned out. Not too bad for neglecting normal holiday stuff for 26 years.

Up until the last few years, I haven’t really celebrated any holidays. It wasn’t really something my family did while I was growing up. Shawna and I decided to spend the day doing holiday stuff. My day started off with waking up early and going to a friends house to help him with his computer and get his scanner working. On my way home, I stopped my by Starbucks and got my housemates some coffee and a pumpkin spice latte. I ended up cooking breakfast burritos for everyone and then got ready to go to the local pumpkin patch with Shawna.

Once we got there, we went through the corn maze. She ended up finishing way before I did, but I eventually found my way once a guy pointed me in the right direction. Once I exited the maze, Shawna had been waiting for me for about 10 minutes. Apparently, my sense of direction is pretty crappy. We went through the pumpkin patch and found a few pumpkins to carve. We stopped by the store and got a few things to make halloween cupcakes an I thought it’d be cool to get some alcohol to make Brain Hemmorhage shots. Then we carved our pumpkins. Look below for the pictures.

This shot is called a Brain Hemmorhage. I saw it on BoingBoing and thought it’d be fun to make. It’s peach schnapp, float some bailey’s and pour a splash of grenadine through the bailey’s.

My super kick ass 2nd pumpkin I’ve ever carved. I just used a default template in the pumpkin carving book I had. I’m not that hardcore about carving pumpkins, I just like when they turn out nice.

Shawna’s pumpkin - Zombie Cat

Andy and Shawna

Shawna frosting the cupcakes.

Our halloween cupcakes.

Shawna and the cupcakes

Shawna with both our pumpkins

Me and the pumpkins

Shawna and Andy

There has been something I’ve been waiting for for a long time and I think I’ll have some pretty good news in the next week or so! Stay tuned.

Things have been somewhat eventful lately. A few weeks ago, I got invited to go with my roommates to wedding for one of their friends. It was a blast, mostly because the ceremony was short and there was plenty of beer and margaritas at the reception. I don’t have much else to say about it, so I’ll leave you with some pictures.

I have to say, last weekend was probably the best weekend I can remember having the past few weeks. As I mentioned in a previous post, I got to see one of my favorite bands, the Stone Temple Pilots on Friday night.

Saturday was pretty relaxed during the day, Shawna, Tiffany, Kyle and I went to Tiffany’s parents house for a BBQ and time in their pool. Unfortunately, we got there kind of late in the afternoon and I didn’t do much more than sit on the edge of the pool and share stories of old injuries with Kyle. Later that night, as we were driving home, there was a guy driving a white pick up who was swerving all over the road. He was swerving on to the rumble strips and into a lane of opposing traffic. We tried calling the police but they kept transferring us back and forth between departments who would handle the particular jurisdiction. After following him for a few minutes, we got near an intersection where we witnessed him hit the person in front of him. Kyle and I got out and made sure the people were okay, which they were, and got the guy out of his truck and turned it off. We were trying to talk to him and keep him there until the police arrived. Once they arrived, we got a statement filled out and watched them give the guy a sobriety test. The guy who was driving was sort of a cliche/stereotype. Without giving out specifics, he was an ‘ethnic’ person who didn’t have a drivers license nor did he have any insurance. We’re glad he got a DUI and got off the road. After that whole ordeal, we went to Kyle’s place to play some beer pong and rock out to some heavy metal. After some dumb shit happened there, I came home and went to bed around 4am.

Sunday, I woke up about 8am to get ready to go spend some time with a lady friend of mine. After a few hours of hanging out, I had to get home and finish up some stuff around the house. After I got some laundry and dishes done, Tiffany and I went to the grocery store to get some food for a BBQ. I invited my friends Natalie and Martin over for some food and good times. We hung out, ate until our belly’s were full and then smoked some pomegranate shisha from a hookah.

Good times. I wish every weekend was busy but as fun and relaxing as last weekend.

I just came back from an amazing show. I just saw the Stone Temple Pilots in what is the best show I’ve ever been to. I’ve been a fan for easily the last 15 years and have been wanting to see them ridiculously bad the last 10 years. Every time they were going to go on tour near where I lived, they’d go on hiatus because Scott Weiland would go into rehab or go to jail for drug use. It was definitely worth the wait.

They played at the Grand Sierra Resort casino in their showroom. At first, it wasn’t that packed but by the time they got on stage, the place was packed. I got there early and was able to get into the showroom before they started letting everyone else in and got great seats. This show was so good, my head is still ringing from it.

I’m tired and ready to go to bed, but I did manage to take a couple of pics with my cell phone. It has been a long time since I’ve had the opportunity to see them and it was definitely worth it. If you like them and want to see a great show, go see them!

I’ve been noticing e-mails going to my spam box that are titled, “CNN.com Daily Top 10″ which kind of confused me at first since I read most news websites and blogs through Google Reader. I opened the e-mail and noticed that all of the news links go to a ck-deautomobile.de domain. I figured it was a new method of phishing or installing some sort of malware and disregarded it.

Not too long after I noticed it, I get a phone call from someone saying that a pop-up just popped up saying they have 547 viruses. Knowing their computer habits, I seriously doubted that. When I showed up to check things out, there was an icon in the system tray for Antivirus XP 2008. It also changed the desktop background to display a message that “Spyware has been detected on your system!” while disabling the option in the display settings to change your desktop and screensaver.

After going around on the internet, I found a forum on CNET’s site that listed how to get rid of it. Since a lot of the threads on that forum showed a few different ways to remove it, I decided that I’ll post the method that allowed me to remove it. Here it goes.

First, we’ll need to remove it from start up and delete the folders it originates in. Click on the “Start Menu” and choose “Run…”. Type in “msconfig” and hit enter. This should bring up the System Configuration Utility. Go to the Startup tab and uncheck the box for lphc35dj0e1an and rhc75dj0e1an. Click Apply and then Okay. It may ask you to restart your computer, click Ok.

Once your computer reboots, we have to get rid of the files that are causing all of this trouble. Delete the file “C:\windows\system32\lphc35dj0e1an.exe” and delete the folder and all of it’s contents in “C:\program files\rhc75dj0e1an”.

That should take care of the problem with the pop-up in the system tray and the program doing anything malicious. The next thing we need to do is restore your access to the Display Settings. Click on your Start Menu and click on Run… and go type in “gpedit.msc” to open up the Group Policy editor.

Under “User Configuration” expand Administrative Templates then Control Panel then click on Display. You’ll need to go into the properties and choose “disable” for the following:

• Remove Display in Control Panel
• Hide Desktop tab
• Prevent changing wallpaper
• Hide Appearance and Themes tab
• Hide Settings tab
• Hide Screen Saver tab

Once you’ve disabled all of those, you should be able to change your wallpaper.

Also, here’s the link to the forum that had some helpful hints.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while and decided to relaunch this blog. I had a few years worth of writing already but I decided that the only way for me to keep this up regularly is to start anew. I have a few goals with the relaunching of my site.

1. Post every day
2. Post a photograph I took once a week
3. Keep this up until I’m unable to use a computer anymore.

While I don’t have that many goals, they’re kind of unrealistic. I mean, is it possible that I have enough to talk to internet strangers to post every single day? Here are some realistic goals I have.

1. Post at least once a week
2. Post a photograph once every two weeks (I’m going to broaden my options by allowing mobile phone pictures)
3. Keep this up for 6 months to start.

I figure if I can manage those goals and keep them up for 6 months, I can work my way into more frequent posts and ramblings.