rand(Andy Trommer)

The past two weekends have been jam-packed with excitement.

Two weeks back, we went up to KC for Cathy’s graduation, Mom Chao’s birthday, and to catch up with the gang.  Angela, of course, documented the whole occasion in a timely manner, so I’ll spare you the play-by-play.  However, I had a great time with Katie, CC, Scott, and Shernuk.  I love how, no matter the time that has passed, we can fall right back into old times.

Scott, Andy and I watched Iron Man and I was happily surprised at how fun it was.

Last weekend, Brandon came in town to (hopefully) get some much needed relaxation in.  We ate out at BLT Steak Friday night.  It was decent, but the flavors were a bit too raw for me.  With that said, they had amazing gruyere popovers.

Saturday was shopping and a BBQ where we got a chance to meet Eric’s fun girlfriend, Brittany, as well as meet up with David and Anni.  I made ridiculously large burgers.  I believe some even referred to them as “hockey pucks”.  Either way, no complaints, and no food poisoning.  Angela made her mom’s potato salad (tasty!) and a fruit salad.

Sunday, we met back up with David and Anni for lunch at Central Market (note to self, we frequent CM way too much for lunches, but it’s so good!).  We then split up, guys and girls, with Anni and Angela off to shop for clothes while Brandon, David, and I went to Modia for my home theatre gear.

After getting lucky on some prices, I was able to get the exact set I wanted.  I ended up with the Rotel RSX-1057 paired with 2 B&W 685′s.  They sound amazing, especially considering that I only had the built-in speakers in my TV to compare to!  It still pains me that I spent that much on speaker cable, though.

This week will wrap up my 4 weeks of 4-day-weeks, and I’m certainly going to miss it.  Angela and I don’t have any time off planned until July, and work is looking to be very hectic over the next month, so I’ll be sure to use my new speakers for some relaxing music.

This weekend, Angela and I are planning on seeing the Sunday Concert in the Garden, and I suppose I should finally mow the yard.

Tags: Food, kc, Movies, Travel

Pickle cicles. Not kidding., originally uploaded by andytrommer.

Found there in central market and it made me shudder.

The past month has been so hectic that I’ve neglected this blog.  Angela has been keeping things documented so well over on her site that I haven’t been pressured into posting.

Last month we took a short but exciting trip to LA to see friends and family.  Angela’s relatives recently moved there and it was really great to see them.  We hadn’t really had time to see them since our trip to Taiwan in 2004.

Since then I have been busy at work, and so has Angela.  Jabber is as goofy as ever.

I picked up work on a new project in my free time, eXPlainPMT.  We use the tool internally at work, and it’s giving me a good codebase to play with Rails again.  In fact, I just put up a demo environment for people to explore on.

After getting frustrated with not having proper inputs in my car for my iPod, I finally replaced my stock deck with a new Pioneer.  It sounds good and has a dedicated USB input that actually handles my 13000+ song library on my iPod very well.  It does, however, rely too much on the remote for navigation, so I’m not looking forward to the inevitable day that I lose it.

In the garage, we finally cleaned out our old crap left over from the move in 2006 and I put some shelving up.  I think we gained a good 2′ of extra garage space on each side.

Inside the house, I got around to painting the kitchen nook.  It looks much nicer now, and since the paint has set in it no longer looks like the old Kraft Mac and Cheese nuclear waste orange.  I quite enjoy it.

I’m rambling, I know, but it’s been so long.  Last weekend we had everyone over for the KU-UNC game, and it was a great win for the Jayhawks.  On Monday I met up with Ethan, Donald, and Jeromy to watch the championship.  Amazing game, and I’m still in shock over Mario’s last second 3.

Alright, it’s time to actually get some work done.

Tags: Car, eXPlainPMT, House, Jabber, Jayhawks, KU, LA, Painting, rails, ruby, Taiwan

View from office, originally uploaded by andytrommer.

The snow is blowing in!

Last night, Eric and I saw Cloverfield. I left the theatre quite indifferent to it, but after letting it all soak in I’m a fan. Yes, the handicam cinematography got old in the middle of the film, but they always stayed true to that POV, which ended up working well towards the end. I didn’t want closure when the title credits ran, but I did want… something.

I haven’t seen the first ep of Lost for this season yet since Angela has been working nights. That means I can’t even sign into Google Reader until then, since most of the feeds I read probably mentioned all sorts of details that I’d rather hear organically.

In the mean time, I found this great short, Still Life. It’s about 8 minutes long, but it’s very worthwhile. Enjoy!

Tags: cloverfield, still life, surrealism, Video