2004

12.26.04

Christmas was yesterday, which means that today is National Gift-Return Day. I've been home for the holidays while the rest of the family is down in Charlotte, NC visiting family. I am using the rest of my vacation time at work, so I have the rest of the year off. It has been quiet here without the family around, but I've been keeping busy. I went to dinner at Marisa's Ristorante with Matt, his father, and Tim the other night. I spent this weekend up in Rhode Island with Matt and his family. Tomorrow night is the Owaneco Lodge 313 Winter Banquet, and later this week some of the NY.NJ.CT crew will be visiting to make a trip up to Foxwoods Resort & Casino.

11.21.04

I've had an exciting time over the past few days. On Thursday, Kelly and I went to an alumni event on the New York Stock Exchange to meet the new President of Fairfield University. I was able to meet and chat with Fr. Von Arx for a few minutes. I also met up with a bunch of old friends and professors from school who were also at the event. The most exciting part about the evening was actually being on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and seeing all of the trading desks where millions of dollars are made and lost. After the event was over, Kelly and I joined many of the other alums at a bar called Ulysses for some cocktails. We stayed for a little while and then headed over to the apartment in Hoboken.

This past weekend I was up at Siena College for the MAAC Volleyball Tournament. It was a good weekend, but the team fell short in their quest for the championship. Fairfield beat St. Peter's 3-0 on Saturday to advance to the finals. After the game, Sean and I joined the team and some family members for dinner at a Japanese hibachi restaurant. It was a neat experience and everyone enjoyed the food. Sean and I decided to stay in a hotel this time around and booked a room at the Courtyard by Marriott. The room was great and it was a lot more comfortable than sleeping in my car again!  On Sunday, Fairfield lost to Iona College in the championship game. It was a tough loss, but the team did have a fairly successful season. We'll make another run at the title next season when we return all of our players since there are no seniors on the team this year.

After the team got back to Fairfield, a few of us went to see the new movie, National Treasure. I thought it was an excellent movie and we all enjoyed it. Go see it, you'll agree!

11.13.04

Today the Fairfield Womens' Volleyball team won the MAAC Regular Season Championship with their win over St. Peter's College. The Stags will go into the MAAC tournament as the top seed as they look to capture their first championship and NCAA tournament berth since 2001. The tournament will be held next weekend up at Siena College. Go Stags!

In tech news, I recently started using The Facebook, which seems to be the latest craze at college campuses across the country. The Facebook is primarily made for college students and alumni. It has a similar concept to Friendster, which links people together among common friends. I also found a webpage that has images from a book published in 1971 called, "How it Works: The Computer." I flipped through a few pages of the book, and it's fairly interesting. It's amazing how far technology has come in a relatively short period of time. It's even more difficult to imagine what life was like before the computer and the internet were everyday items.

11.10.04

I served Jury Duty today. It was boring while it lasted, but I was dismissed early! I was able to leave at 12:30 and I ended up coming home to eat lunch. I was able to take advantage of my time off and take a nap! I haven't taken an afternoon nap since college. Ah, I miss that...

I also went to play volleyball at open rec tonight. They have been playing since the beginning of October, but this was only my second week playing. I can definitely tell that I'm out of game shape and a bit rusty. I can see the game and the play developing, but I'm slow to react. It's like my brain is in third gear and my feet and body are in first gear. Hopefully I'll get back into game shape soon because it's frustrating to play as poorly as I have been!

11.03.04

Well, there has been a lot going on since my last update. Most recently, President George W. Bush was elected to another term as President of the United States yesterday. The election was not as close as it was in 2000, but it was still down to the wire. Hopefully our divided nation will move on quickly, show the rest of the world how Democracy really works, and why this country is the best in the world.

Last weekend was Alumni Weekend at Fairfield University. It was a great time. I was able to see a lot of my friends and catch up on life. Exit 22 kicked off "Stagtoberfest" and played some of their older songs and a couple from their upcoming record. I wasn't able to stay out too late because I had to go to work on Sunday and work on the Macintosh servers. We think we have finally come up with a working solution to the problem that we've had. Over the last few weeks, the server has been extremely unstable and not functioning properly. I've put a lot of overtime in and the problem has caused a ton of headaches and stress, but hopefully the worst is behind us.

I have also been spending a little bit of time playing with my new 15" Macintosh PowerBook. I haven't installed a lot of software yet, but I did move my entire music collection over and I formatted my iPod to integrate seamlessly with the Mac. I haven't completely switched from Windows to Macintosh and I don't think I will. Each operating system has their own positives and drawbacks.

10.17.04

Well, that was exciting! I just returned from a weekend road trip to NJ and Baltimore. I went with my friend Sean. On Friday night, we made a spontaneous decision to surprise the Fairfield volleyball team and make the 2.5 hour trip down to Southern NJ for their afternoon match against Rider University. They were surprised to see us there. Sean and I were the two loudest fans in the audience of about 125 people. Fairfield ended up losing the close five-game match.

After the game, we said our goodbyes to the team and parted ways. The girls continued South toward Baltimore, MD for their game on Sunday against Loyola College. Sean and I turned North and stopped at Denny’s for some dinner before finishing the trip home. During dinner we were talking and out of nowhere we decided to drive to Baltimore. Since we weren’t planning on making it a weekend trip, we didn’t have anything except the clothes on our backs, a little bit of cash, and sore throats from cheering the team on against Rider. We ended up getting to Baltimore at around midnight after getting stuck in some traffic. We drove to campus, found a parking lot, and crashed in the car.

The team was really surprised and excited to see us at the game on Sunday. We were almost as surprised that we actually drove to Baltimore! Loyola was overmatched and Fairfield swept the match in three games. The trip was a lot of fun, especially since it was so spontaneous. We'll be talking about this one for a while...

10.14.04

Ok, so I've been slacking on updates lately. This this past Saturday a few of my friends and I hit up a few of the local spots in Trumbull and Fairfield for my birthday. It was a good time and everyone was well behaved, which is probably a sign that we’re all starting to get old.

I've been extremely busy at work, but that's nothing new. There just aren't enough hours in the day! I've been putting in a lot of overtime at work. There have been a few projects and server crashes to deal with. I will soon be getting a new 15” Macintosh Powerbook for work so I can remotely support the servers and fix any problems that occur.

This has also been an exciting week in Major League Baseball. It's version 2004 of "The Rivalry" between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. The Yankees have won some exciting games and currently hold a 2-0 game lead on the Red Sox in the 2004 ALCS. Winner goes on to the World Series, loser goes home.

In other news... my little sister, Caitlin, just got braces today (picture). She got pink and purple colored rubber bands on her braces, her favorite colors. I have also started to use a new webpage called BlogLines to manage the webpages that I read on a daily basis. Most of the pages that I have linked are technology related. It helps me keep up with the latest application, security, and technology news. The best part about it is that I have all of the webpages organized in one central location and it updates me when new material is posted.

09.26.04

This week has been an experience... It was another crazy week, but what else is new? We kept busy at work controlling a virus and fixing server crashes.

In Scouting news, the Owaneco Lodge 313 Executive Committee selected three individuals to replace the Lodge Chief. The Lodge Chief was elected to Section chief and was forced to resign his position. It was the first time in the Lodge's short history that a Chief has resigned. The Scout Executive will soon appoint a new Lodge Chief.

The Fairfield Womens' Varsity Volleyball team won their home opener on Wednesday night. This weekend the St. Louis University, Temple University, and the University of New Hampshire came to Alumni Hall for the Fairfield Volleyball Invitational Tournament. Fairfield defeated New Hampshire and Temple, but lost to St. Louis who won the tournament and went undefeated for the weekend. Fairfield has a young team, but they have looked impressive early on and it seems like this might be a special season. One of the highlights of the tournament was meeting Karolyn Kirby, who is currently working as the Assistant Coach for New Hampshire. Kirby is considered one of the best volleyball players of all time. She retired from professional volleyball in 1998 as the all-time winningest player with 64 tournament wins and was recently selected for the International Volleyball Hall of Fame. I remember watching her play on the tour almost every weekend and it seemed like she won every time. It was a memorable experience and an honor to meet her.

09.14.04

There hasn't been a lot of exciting news to share lately, but I have been keeping busy with a lot of different things for the past few weeks. The office softball team has games once a week. We play at fields all over the City - Central Park, 59th Street Bridge, FDR Drive, etc. Even though we won our first game, the last few haven't been pretty for the team as a whole. There have been some nice individual performances. I have been swinging a hot bat and playing some good defense. I even earned the "player of the game" award at our third game! I know you're impressed, haha... I went to a local Party for the President in Trumbull during the Republican National Convention and I've had a few other meetings to attend. Weekends have also been hectic. I have been away for the past three weekends for scouting events (Section NE-2C Conclave, September Ordeal) and spending time in NJ with the NY.NJ.CT crew over Labor Day. All in all, life has been eventful and going well...

08.30.04

Yesterday was the closing ceremonies of the Olympics in Athens. The USA was extremely successful during the games and won 103 medals in total. I really enjoyed watching the athletes, the competition, the patriotic support, and the memorable events of the Games. The next summer Olympics will be held in Beijing in 2008 and possibly in New York City in 2012. Check out the NYC2012 webpage, I'm in the Faces of NY section in the Support the Dream area.

The Republican National Convention is being held in New York City this week. A lot of New Yorkers are avoiding the City altogether, so the commute was easier than expected this morning. Unfortunately, I'm not able to get into the Convention even though it's being held five blocks away from my office. Security is tight, but everyone has been handling it well. The campaign will be in full swing after this week and it should be an interesting election... GWB for four more years!

08.22.04

As expected, it was a rough week at work but I managed to get through it. Friday was our first company softball game. We won 10-6, which was pretty amazing since we've never played together before. It was my first time playing a game in Central park, which was a really neat experience. Other than that, things have been alright. I've spent the weekend relaxing and watching the Olympics. Go USA!

08.6.04

I just returned from the 2004 National Order of the Arrow Conference (NOAC) held on the campus of Iowa State University in Ames, IA. It was my second time at ISU. My first  time there was back in 1998 when I served as Tankiteke 313's Lodge Chief. This time I served on the Inductions and Ceremonial Events Staff where I had several different responsibilities. My mornings were spent training "The Vigil Commitment" cell and afternoons were spent with Ceremonal evaluations. I had an awesome time at NOAC. It was great to see some old friends and meet some new ones. I can't wait for NOAC 2006! Some unforgettable memories: chips and salsa at EsTas, "blip," no appeals, where's my burrito?, donut dance, one leg...

07.26.04

Matt, Scott, Dustin, Charlie, and I spent the weekend up at Matt's lake house in Rhode Island. We cruised on the boat, went tubing, did some swimming, used the steam room, played ping pong, went to a party, watched some baseball, and simply relaxed. Going up to Rhode Island is like a mini vacation. It was a great time and we were able to kick back and enjoy the weekend.

07.23.04

The 9/11 Commission Report was released yesterday. The report details the tragedy that occurred on the morning of September 11, 2001. It tells about the events that unfolded, the failures that occurred, terrorism, and ultimately makes recommendations on what the country can do to help prevent another 9/11 from ever happening again. The full report is available online in a .pdf format (and also on my webpage by clicking here), but I decided to buy the book. I had to go to three bookstores before finding a copy. So far I've read through the first chapter and it only took a few pages for me to get chills and goose bumps. September 11, 2001 changed our world forever. We can only hope to learn from our mistakes, improve our security, continue living our lives, and never forget.

07.18.04

I have been laying low for the past few days relaxing, rollerblading, hanging out with the guys, and working on some things for the upcoming National Order of the Arrow Conference (NOAC). I also rediscovered rollerblading since Matt and Lisa purchased new skates. On Friday I rollerbladed around Trumbull High School and tallied a good five miles. Matt, Lisa, and I went yesterday and did some relaxing skating. Today I went back and did another five miles or so. All in all, it's just a good way to get some exercise in and get away from things for a while.

07.7.04

I spent this past weekend in NJ for the annual Fourth of July BBQ with the NY.NJ.CT crew. As always, I had a great time. Yesterday I went to see Spiderman 2 at the movies with my sisters. The lines for ticket sales was out the door, along the side of the theater, and wrapped back around. It was pretty crazy, but most people had the day off from work. We ended up buying tickets for a later show and going back. The movie was great, it's definitely recommended.

06.23.04

It's been a few weeks since my last update. Not much has been happening, I've just been keeping busy. I went camping a few weekends ago, Monday was a Trumbull Republican Town Committee Meeting followed with drinks at Marisa's Ristorante. It seems like I've been there a lot recently... Last night I had dinner in NYC with a few friends. It was a good time, we haven't done dinner together in a long time so we had a lot to catch up on.

Today was an up and down day. I've had a lot of those recently as well. My iPod case broke this morning - the belt clip broke off the rest of the case. I was definitely disappointed, I would have thought Apple would make a better product. The worst part about it is that they won't replace the case because "accidental damage" isn't covered under the warrantee. A replacement case is $40 from Apple, but I'm hoping to snag one on eBay.

The highlight of the day was receiving a Google Gmail invite. Yes I'm a geek, but that's how exciting life has been lately. I've been asking around for a few weeks and I was finally able to get an invite. Gmail offers 1gig of email storage on the web. It's supposed to have the ability to search through emails and you can track email threads (conversations) easily. Gmail is currently in beta testing and the only way to get an account is through invitations. I've seen some message boards with hundreds of people practically begging for invitations. Some people have swapped invites for pieces of the Berlin Wall, virtual dates, chocolate chip cookies, etc. Others have been selling invitations on eBay. If anyone's looking for an invite, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

06.6.04

Yesterday was Brian and Kim's wedding (pictures). The wedding was held in uptown Manhattan and the reception was in Chinatown. It was a very nice ceremony and the party was absolutely crazy! Brian and Kim are the first "kids" from the NY.NJ.CT crew to get married. We have all practically known each other our whole lives and we have grown up together. The entire crew was there to celebrate the happy couple's special day. Best wishes to Brian and Kim in the future!

06.04.04

Tim, Matt, Matt's father, and I saw the New York Yankees beat the Texas Rangers 7-6 at the Stadium tonight. We had awesome seats: MVP Field Level box seats behind home plate, 3rd box up from the walkway, under the netting on the first base side, next to the players' family section. The Bronx Bombers were down by four runs early on, but they came back and hit six homers to win the game (Bernie Williams, Alex Rodriguez, Enrique WIlson, Gary Sheffield x2, and Hideki Matsui). It was a great game!

06.03.04

"Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks..." After a short absence, Cracker Jacks are back at Yankee Stadium! Management recently replaced the bags of Cracker Jacks sold at the Stadium with boxed Crunch & Munch. Baseball fans everywhere were baffled by the change and several complaints were filed. Last night, peace was restored and everyone's favorite caramel covered treat (complete with peanuts and prizes) made their return. "Buy me some peanuts and Crunch & Munch" just doesn't sound right anyway...

05.31.04

This weekend was nice and relaxing. I spent some time cleaning my room and playing some Texas Hold 'em against my dad. We battled back and forth and had some pretty exciting games. This weekend was also Memorial Day weekend.  Our nation honored all those people who fought for our country's freedom. It was a time to support all of the troops who are currently overseas in Iraq and the Middle East, and also a time to honor and remember our Veterans. Saturday was the dedication of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC. I watched the ceremony on television and it's something that I'll probably remember for the rest of my life. Both of my grandfathers served in World War II. Unfortunately, neither of them lived long enough to see the Memorial. I definitely plan on visiting the next time I'm in DC.

This week should be fairly busy at work. Even though it's a short week, I probably have a ton of work waiting for me since I was out of the office last week taking a Microsoft Windows training course.

05.23.04

The Class of 2004 graduated from Fairfield University this morning. The rain and thunderstorms held off, and it turned out to be a beautiful day on Bellarmine lawn. The ceremony was a great celebration for the graduates and Frank Marx was also honored. After graduation I had a few parties to attend. I went to Laura's party at Marisa's and then I headed over to the party at Pure Luck. I still can't believe that everyone just graduated, it seems like only yesterday they were all incoming freshmen. It's definitely a strange feeling being out of school for two years. I can no longer say that I'm "just out of college." You can say that after one year, but after two years you just start feeling old!

Best of luck to the Class of 2004 and congratulations to all...

05.21.04

I just bought an accessory for my iPod called the iTrip made by Griffin Technologies. The device is a FM transmitter that plugs into the top of the iPod and allows you to play music over any FM radio frequency. From there, you simply tune your stereo to your iPod frequency and listen to the music through your stereo speakers or car speakers. It's a neat little device and it's worth buying if you have an iPod. I'll definitely be using it on those long road trips this summer!

05.20.04

Today was an extremely sad day for the Fairfield University community. Only three days before graduation, the valedictorian of the Class of 2004, Frank Marx, died early this morning when he was struck by a bus. He was an exceptional student, an athlete, a leader, a community volunteer, a caring person, a good friend, and an overall great kid. It was apparent by the overwhelming attendance at his memorial mass tonight at the Egan Chapel that he touched so many people during his four years at Fairfield. Although I didn't know Frank personally, several of my friends were close with him.  His tragic loss has touched all of us and he will definitely be missed.

05.16.04

It has been a crazy weekend... I spent Friday and Saturday at Marist College for the MAAC softball tournament. The Stags entered the tournament as the regular season champions and the number one seed, but we were upset on Saturday in the semifinals by the eventual champion, Canisius College. On Friday night I went out to the Thirsty Turtle in Stamford with the girls from Pure Luck (Kelly, Laurie, Kristin, Erica, and Marybeth). It was another memorable night and we all had an awesome time.

My sister, Allison, graduated from Trinity College today! "Dr. Ruth" Westheimer was the commencement speaker and gave the graduating class some great advice. She spoke about the importance of education and also about the importance of taking chances. She said that her favorite animal is the turtle because in order for the turtle to move, it must stick its neck out. After the graduation ceremonies concluded, we sat down for lunch with some of Allison's classmates and their families. It was a great day and, as always, we're all very proud of Allison and her achievement (picture in the Family picture album).

05.08.04

Today I went to the Connecticut Republican State Convention as a delegate. The event was held at the Aquaturf in Plantsville, CT (just outside Southington). Our primary responsibilities for the event were to select Presidential electors for the National Republican Convention this summer and to nominate a challenger for incumbent Senator Christopher Dodd's seat in the United States Senate. Jack Orchulli was selected as the Republican nominee for this fall's Senatorial election. I also had the opportunity to meet Connecticut's Governor, John G. Rowland (a picture of me and the Governor is here). All in all, the convention was an exciting event.

05.04.04

Well, I've been wanting to change the webpage for a long time now but I just haven't gotten around to it. I've thought about changing the site from html to php, but I haven't quite figured out what I want to do with it. The new frontpage will give me some space for me to make short news updates or room for some random thoughts. It might end up being  like a blog, but I wouldn't count on reading daily updates...

This past weekend was my friend Brian's bachelor's party in Montreal. There are a few pictures from the trip in the NY.NJ.CT section, but what happened in Montreal, stays in Montreal. We spent three days up in Canada and we all had an great time: Thursday at 46, Canadian dollars, Casino de Montreal, b*****s and popcorn, food coma, s.d., fish hook...

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