I just found out today that one of my best buddies from high school died. What’s with death-related things coming around on my birthday man? Last year, I spent my birthday at my uncle’s funeral in Fairfax, VA. Anyhow, press read more if you want to hear the crazy story of how this guy died. It feels so unreal, yet it is. I’ve already contacted his family, and my high school class alums are organizing a memorial service for him this weekend. Press more…

UPDATE: a scholarship fund has been established in his honor…
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Woohoo! Today’s my birthday. I turned 24! Heh… Well like I said in my prior blog entry, it’s not really a big deal to me. Maybe when I turn 25 it will be primarily because it’s an insurance discount. LOL So how I spent my weekend on my birthday? Doing almost nothing. Well actually, not quite… During the last week, there was no blog entries primarily because I was at training for work. It was pretty rough with long group projects that went off into the night, and thus no updates. Saturday, the same class for training went to a Senior Center near New Brunswick, NJ to volunteer to spend time with the seniors. There, we chatted, played games, and entertained the seniors for a few hours. I met one guy who was an employee of Johnson & Johnson for over 47 years. Daaaamn! His name is definitely engraved on the J&J Employee Wall of Fame. One really friendly Italian senior had problems with her computer, so I offered to check it out. Turns out someone sold her broken speakers. Geez… How can you cheat a senior. No respect!

Saturday night Caroline took me out for my birthday at Sharaku and we had a huge sushi boat. Mmmm… Mind you both of us are big eaters, yet we still couldn’t finish this. Man were we stuffed!

I spent the rest of the weekend simply relaxing and playing games online. Aaahh… to relax. This week I gotta cram though. GMAT class on the 31st. Ouch!

Well sorta… As some of you may know I work for the Advanced Technology Research Group at Johnson & Johnson. Yup the baby products company. But we do a lot more than just baby products. Did you know that we’re the 2nd largest pharmaceutical company in the world (#1 is Pfeizer)? We employ over 106,000 people in 200+ operating companies like Neutrogena, McNeil, Ortho Biotech, Roc, Clean & Clear, etc. Anyways the work I do here is the bleeding edge of technology and our work has finally paid off. Every year, J&J prints out their annual report in high glossy pictures for all 10 million+ shareholders and stock analysts around the world. This year my group is featured in the actual annual report and my picture is in there! Check it out HERE. I’m on page 9 of the report (page 11 in the PDF).

Pretty funny right? Over 10 million people and analysts on wall street will see my little head in that picture. LOL *Starts singing the Jeffersons Theme* “Movin’ on up…”

My Tag Huer watch died… I got my Tag Huer Kirium Automatic as a gift back in December of 1999 from my boss, Simon Roffe of SDR Fund Management, back when I made him a ton of money as a fund manager. I guess to me its a symbol of my success. Anyways, the watch is kinetic and winds automatically, but the power storage spring got weak and now it’s dead. I took the watch back to Torneau and told them I want this watch just as I got it new. Well they’re gonna replace all the parts, polish it since the band has scratches, and when it comes back to me it’ll be practically new. $220 for the overhaul, $40 for parts, $45 for the crown, $10 for the toupe, $120 to repolish the band. So for $435 I get an almost brand new $2,000 Tag Heur Kirium watch. Not bad… It’s not like I’m going to say no… Otherwise that’s a 2k watch down the drain!

Some of you may know what the RatPadz GS is… If you’re a hardcore online gamer or techie you already probably know what it is. A big online gamer who happens to run HardOCP.com went out and engineered the ultimate mouse pad. He used polymers and tested different surfaces that would provide very slick surfaces yet grip mouseballs, while allowing compatibility for optical mice. Then end result was the RatPadz GS.

This sucker only cost me $10 and yet yielded me a lot! My Optical Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 glides over it like ice. The little bumps give the optical sensor more sensitivity, especially with very minute movements. The result? OMG… Photoshop you can trace hair with ease, drawing on Illustrator and using fine tools such as airbrush was a cinch. Playing Counter-Strike yielded headshot city. Playing Americas Army Operations sniping was easy as butter. Quake 3? OWNED!

I just can’t get enough of this mousepad. All others just plain suck. Seriously… I never am passionate about mousepads. But this thing just OWNS!!

Now all I need is the Logitech MX 700 Wireless Mouse and I’ll be doing some serious ownage!

A lot happened this weeked… The good news? I helped MAX Happy Hours throw a heckofa good party at Mars 2112 in midown NYC on Saturday night. Mardi Gras party, so the girls were earnings their beads… The bad news? A fellow ClubRSX member died this weekend in a high speed crash. The guy went across the bridge, lost control, and hit a pillar, where the car flipped over. Massive head trauma, which eventually led to death. Scary. I have a feeling that since it was cold, the bridge iced before the roadway. The car could’ve hit ice just before the pavement, and he could’ve veered slightly so that only one of the front times hit non-frozen pavement, which would’ve sent the car into a spin since that one corner would suddenly have stopped. More on his story is available on THIS THREAD on ClubRSX. RIP Bert–Sorry to see such a young guy die at such a young age…

Well back to the party stuff… I took Caroline and a whole bunch of her friends to the Mars 2112 party and they had fun. Since I’m part of the staff, I was given a whole bag of beads to give out to girls that earn them. Of course, this probably made Caroline a bit uncomfortable. LOL There was a point where a whole bunch of girls jumped at me trying to grab beads off of me. I was like, “Aaaah, Rape!” LOL Caroline jumped in and wrapped her arms around me like she was almost saying, “Back off! He’s mine!!” Pretty funny actually. In the end most of the beads went to Caroline, and I gave some out to her friends. I gave it to them for free without earning it, but should I have done that? Man… some of the crazy things that people were doing for beads. Weird what drunk people would do for plastic beads that are worth like 3 cents. Then again, the Dutch bought Manhattan from the Indians for beads too! LOL

Here’s a pic of Caroline’s roomate (Rujin) molesting some guys at the club, as well as one of me and Caroline. More pics in the gallery here.

Yeah so, my 24th birthday is coming up… Scary thing is that I’m not all crazy about it coming close. I mean it’s great an all, but I guess I’m at the point in my life where turning a year older isn’t a big deal. Let’s see… I think that ended around 21. LOL Hmm… let’s take a look at this… The first “big” age to hit I guess would be 13. Why? Becuase it’s the first age where you are officially a “teenager.” From there you wait till you hit 16 or 17 (depending on what state you’re from) since that’s the age you get your license. From there, you really don’t care for awhile, but you wish you were 21 because you hate trying to find a club or bar that doesn’t card (or you mischevious ones with fake ID). Then when you hit 21, you really don’t give a crap because there’s no real age to really wait for. I mean there is the quarter-century mark, the 25. And the benchmark bachelor age of 30. Then the 65 1/2 years mark where your IRA and 401k can be withdrawn from. LOL Feeling old? Pass the Polyefferdent and the Depends diapers. Yes, and please don’t fall or you may not be able to get up…

Anyways, I actually have to work on my actual birthday and that sucks bigtime… My birthday lies on a Sunday this year for crying out loud! Caroline’s been going nuts trying to find something to get me. Like most working guys my age with a decent amount of discretionary income, anything we want, we will buy (assuming it’s not too outrageous). I am the same likewise. Granted I do have an Amazon wishlist, but there’s no fun in that. It’s just merely a suggestion.

I’d say I’m doing farily well for my age. I have a great job with a great future, about to go to part time MBA on company’s expense, have a great girlfriend, a nice car, an apartment in New York City, a great family, and a very balanced and fulfilling life. Hehehe… Maybe that’s why it’s not a big deal for my birthday. I don’t really have much to wish for myself. I’d use my wish to help out my parents though. That’ll put it to better use.

I missed work all of last week due to viral bronchitis. It was so bad that my doctor said I had to stay home and ordered me to stop infecting people. LOL He put me on Zythromax Z-Pack (those 5 pill packs that do the same as those 30 doses of other antibiotics) and Motrin IB for the fever. My girlfriend Caroline came to bring me chicken soup depite me telling her not to, and tried to comfort me as I moaned in pain in bed. This only succeeded in getting both of us sick, and here were two people moaning, having high fevers, with viral bronchitis. Wonderful… LOL I’m better now though! Actually, I was 1 day away from being put on short term disability!

So people have noticed that I completely redid my website… Version 6! Yup. It was time for change, plus I needed to boost my PHP skills somewhat. As for whats been happening to me, PRESS THE READ MORE LINK BELOW
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Yeeeah… Finally! Version 6.0 is up and better than ever. I got rid of the PHPNuke Content Management Engine and replaced it with PostNuke CMS. Why? Well PHPNuke was a great idea but its only open source/closed development. Only one guy does the coding for PHPNuke, and thus updates and improvements are slow. Plus his code isn’t exactly very modular for good custom API development. PostNuke not only is better, but is completely open/open and has a lot better support from the programming community. Because of this the code is streamlined, modular and efficient, and thus this is why this site looks so damn clean! So how do you like it so far? For the most part everything is migrated. Only the Link section needs to be combed through to weed out the little expired links here and there. Most of the site I left open so that you can view and navigate without registering. Only if you want to comment to a blog entry requires you to register (but don’t worry I don’t spam or collect this info). Things have been a bit crazy for me, but I’ll explain that at another blog entry. Enjoy the new site!