Categories
Adventure

New Years 2014

I received a very rare phone call from the relatively silent Dustin inviting me over to a festive New Year’s celebration. While I was pretty much leaning towards simply sleeping and doing nothing, if he did make the effort to call I really felt like I should go.

Unfortunately the Shepherd didn’t intend to go, but we thought I would be able to drag him out. I decided to attempt to persuade him to come along in person. It’s always tougher to say no in person after all. So after defeating him in darts and losing by 1 lone point in a pretty intense game of Scrabble he was adamant to not join us. I had failed in my mission.

I still headed over though, and was pleasantly surprised to find a couple of Badgers there as well too. I’d have plenty to chat with after all.

We played a board game called Smart Ass that I pretty much dominated at to the humorous complaints of all in the room. It was a trivia based game, and I do tend to do well with the trivia after all. Fun stuff.

I really wasn’t paying much attention to the actual ball drop on TV, but apparently the banging of pots and pans is a tradition in Somers Point as many would partake in the excursion outdoors. It was rather funny and loud at the same time. Beautiful.

All in all a rather fun night with a rather different crew for me. Good times ringing in the new year.

Categories
Adventure Sports

2013 Honey Badger Holiday Party

The much heralded Honey Badgers franchise had their 2nd annual holiday party. Invites went out to current and past Honey Badgers greats. It’s a very exciting time.

The turn out was pretty solid, around 10 people or so. Unfortunately we did have a bunch of last minute declines, but realistically as we get older that no longer surprises me. People just seem to have more things going on.

Once again hosting veteran Fierce served as the generous host and did another fantastic job. This year we decided to hold a tournament of holiday themed games. I made a scoreboard all by myself with no help, and we would use that to keep official score of the various game’s outcomes.

Here were some of the amazing games that we played:

  • Cotton Ball Race
  • Toothpick Marshmallow Towers (the only failure)
  • Jingle in the Trunk
  • Merry Fishmas
  • Hannukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa (rock, paper, scissors)
  • Holiday Song Lyrics
  • Sudoku
  • Christmas Ball

I was very glad to see just how much fun everyone had participating. We had some very impressive and fun moments. Congrats to Caitlin and Dustin on their team victory! It was a true Christmas miracle!

The was also a gift exchange, where you could trade, open, or draw a swap from a hat. I’m not sure I can fully explain it as I’m not sure I fully understood it, but it worked and everyone walked away happy. There were high heels of lotion, a strange baby from San Diego, and countless other amazing goodness. Another Christmas miracle for all!

Another very fun and successful Honey Badger Holiday Party!

 

Categories
Adventure

2013 Holiday Gift Exchange

Holiday Gift Exchange 2013

It’s kinda hard to believe but this was the seventh Holiday Gift Exchange we’ve had it work. What really set this one apart to me from previous exchange’s was easily the amount of turnover in participants this year. We lost a lot of great stalwarts due to retirement, or employment elsewhere.
With all the change, I felt this would be the second most important exchange besides the very first one that set the precedent of awesomeness. This exchange had to work and work well if it were to have any hope of carrying on.

Even with several new faces this year, our numbers were still down a bit with nine participants. However, those participants really brought a great deal of energy and fun to the event. It was great!

What really added to the fun was the amazing amount of steals this year. I really should have counted them all, but they just kept coming. It was very funny and really made things interesting.

Wine and gift cards seemed to be very popular. Star Wars themed mugs is what I would end up with. Darth Vader, Chewbacca and Yoda mugs to be specific.

I was extremely please by the success of the event and thrilled that everyone had so much fun. Good times!

Categories
Adventure

Halloween Fun 2013

Unicorn maskI haven’t really been much of a Halloween person for quite some time. However, through the magic of the SJSL and younger friends, I did partake in a few more fun-tastic activities this year.

After shaking off my years of Halloween rust, I realized I had no idea what to be for Halloween. As simple as a task this should be, I was having much difficulty with it. Just couldn’t come up with a good idea. So I would visit the various stores on my lunch breaks.

On one particular break I randomly walked by a fairly large and somewhat creepy unicorn mask. I can’t quite explain why, but I just knew that it was right for me. I’ve long been a big fan of unicorns and all the magic and goodness that they bring to this world, plus it was also pretty creepy at the same time.

After purchasing the mask, I realized that I couldn’t see anything out of it at all. There were 2 small holes in the nostrils, but they were so tiny and far away due to the wonderful snout that it made for extremely limited vision. My only solution was to bring out the scissors and create new areas of vision.

First I expanded the nostrils a bit. While this did help a little, vision was still very much limited. I then decided to get bold and create a new hole were the unicorns mouth was. This did help out a lot, and didn’t deface the unicorn’s beauty that much at all. It seemed natural and allowed me some hope at not destroying everything in my blinded path.

The first Halloween party I would attend would be a jawn at dodgeball rookie sensation Dave’s home. He’s a good guy and really went all out in his party. It was pretty impressive, he even had a cauldron that let out an fine mist due to some dry ice. Very impressive.

What made this party so memorable to me was the age difference between me and the rest of the fine guests. During a match of dodgeball, age difference is harder to realize as we’re all just running and throwing for a few minutes once a week. But in a fine Halloween party (jawn) setting it becomes more noticeable.

I pretty much just stood behind my glorious unicorn mask and observed the ways of the young. It was pretty entertaining and thankfully the young Ricky and elder Kevin were on hand to converse with me. I didn’t stay too long, in fact I just abruptly left as Ricky would later call me out on. But it was a fun time while I hung in there. I was truly a grandpa unicorn.

The next night was another Halloween party at the Swift’s residence. This one would too turn out to be quite a fun time. Again I was a majestic unicorn. This night would however truly belong to the Honey Badgers. Nearly the entire dodgeball team was present at one time or another. It was pretty amazing to behold.

Soe stand out costumes to me were Jared who would transform into Bob Ross as the night great, Caitlin was a most amazingly well done Ms. Pac-man (and Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde), Dustin of course was Harry Pot-head, and Ricky was Quail man just to name a few. Though they were all pretty great and unique.

It turned out to be a pretty great time, and it was really nice to see most everyone on the team. They really are a pretty cool bunch.

So it turned out that I had a pretty eventful Halloween weekend.

Categories
Adventure Design

Lionel Ritchie Pumpkin Carving

I carved a pumpkin for work last week of our school’s logo. It turned out pretty nice and I had a lot of fun doing it as well. So I really wanted to carve another pumpkin. I really can’t explain why, but I decided to carve Lionel Ritchie. While I can’t say I’m a huge fan or anything like that, he is a solid artist and if by myself have belted out a Ritchie tune from time to time.

So the first step was to create a stencil. As luck would have it my co-worker Chelsea happened to have a pretty perfect image she came across a while back that would be perfect for a pumpkin carving. I scaled it and printed it out and step one was done.

Next I needed a suitable pumpkin. I stopped at Ronnie’s after work and after inspecting close to every pumpkin in the place finally found one that I felt was just right. I’m sure I looked like an insane guy picking up all those pumpkins, but well if I’m going to carve Lionel Ritchie I might as well do it right. There was also a very nice dog hanging out at Ronnie’s as a side note.

I got home and got straight to working cutting a hole in the bottom of the pumpkin and gutting it out. This guy had a lot of seeds, a whole lot of seeds. I took that as a sign of good luck by the pumpkin gods.

I then traced the stencil onto the pumpkin and began to saw it out. The fine lines in Lionel’s face were pretty tough. It’s really not much pumpkin to work with in many spots, but I was banking on him really shining through once lit up.

Categories
Adventure Development

Drupaldelphia 2013

Drupahdelphia 2013Decided to attend my second Drupaldelphia, I also went to the 2011 one as well. I do enjoy being around some like minded folk everyone now and again, and usually I walk away re-energized and eager to try developing new things as well.

This year’s was held in the Philadelphia Convention Center. I decided to take the PATCO train to 8th and Market from Lindenwold. I fully navigated the entire trip without getting lost a single time! This is pretty amazing for me!

The train tide was pretty simple. The whole experience made it seem like more of an exotic trip for me. Plus it was only $6 round trip, which seemed pretty cheap to me to get there and back.

I took in 4 sessions, most of which were pretty interesting. My favorite was the Intro to Migration session.

At this very moment I’ve been working on migrating much old data into Drupal, so the timing of this session couldn’t of been better. The speaker did a great job covering the various approaches and the pros and cons to each. I think it will be a very useful session moving forward.

Another treat of my Philadelphia adventure was meeting up with Honey Badger Hall of Famer Lauren for lunch. She works a few blocks from there and was kind enough to meet me for lunch and gave me a tour of the Reading Terminal Market.

It was pretty insane in there, with tons of dining options. We were a bit overwhelmed and couldn’t make a decision on what to get. Eventually I got a chicken parm sandwich and it was messy but good.

The ride home was a bit wet walking to the train, but besides that pretty easy. Just got on, got to my car then drove home. Again I didn’t get lost at all! So impressive!

I’m always impressed with the Drupal community, and this was no exception. Very well done, and very affordable! $25 and I got a t-shirt too! A great experience and I’m glad I went!