My Own Android App!

Thanks to my buddy Josh (theJTOG), I now have an Android app that links to a mobile version of my blog!  Why?  Why not?!?!  If you have an Android OS phone, just take a picture of this SQARQcode with your Barcode Scanner app and it will take you right to it on the Market.  If not, just search for "Perno" and it will pop right up.  Thank you again Josh!

Coldplay Fix You Meaning

My song interpretation of Coldplay's Fix You.

I think "you" and "your" is him speaking in the 2nd person for most of it about himself, which that could even be another focus "2nd person" is about this second person also.  Until he goes to the lights will guide you home part, which he's speaking to the chick.  This is just my take....

When you try your best but you don't succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

He's tried his best to make this girl love him, and he didn't succeed. 

He got a girlfriend and she wants to have a good time so physically maybe they're good, but she says she doesn't want anything serious, so no "love" which is what we all need.

I think this is just him not being able to sleep because he wants to fix the situation but can't.

Just moving backwards instead of forwards in the relationship because he's aiming for love but it just gets further and further from it, like he can't win.

When the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Don't even have to go line-by-line here, he's crying because he loves this chick, she's like "no, I just want to have fun or just be friends, if you can't do that then we're done" and he just wants her to love him.

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

I think he pictures himself as the light and he wants her to come "home" towards him and fall in love.  His "light" will "ignite" the love in her (hopefully) and he's trying to "fix her" since she's "broken", meaning unable to love him for some reason.

High up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
But if you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth

Maybe this is more big picture comparing two opposite spectrums of love, like "high up above" means you've found the one you love and you both love each other so much and are married and happy whereas "down below" is the point he's at, just down in the dumps about this chick not loving him back and never wanting to love him.  Both situations are too in love to let it go but the 3rd line is kind of like "if you never put yourself out there then you'll never feel either of these....yes most times you'll probably hit that low, but it's so worth it to get to that high in love that everyone needs so don't be afraid because when finally find that someone who loves you back, you feel the best you've ever felt and helps you to know your true worth when you see someone think the world of you."

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Tears stream down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face
And I...

(will try to fix you) is what he wants to say, he's being persistent and dedicated I think.

Tears stream down your face
I promise you I will learn from your mistakes
Tears stream down your face
And I...

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Please comment if you have any ideas!

Time to Get Fit

I think I'm at the least muscular and highest body fat percentage levels I've ever been in my adult life, so I've decided it's time to start cutting back on some things in addition to adding a little exercise to my life.  Not just for myself, but also because my son and wife deserve someone a little healthier than I am right now, I'm not living my life just for myself anymore. 

The only real time I have a problem with eating bad things is during the NFL season (Mikey likey his wingies!), and I have until September to get into a healthier mindset before football time comes around again.  So this morning I woke up about 20 minutes earlier than usual and went for about a mile walk with my pug.  It was great for both of us and I look forward to increasing my activity level every week.  My goal is to get to jogging 2 miles at a time about 3 times per week, which I should be able to get to that point some time next month.  Weight loss is also a goal, I weighed myself this morning and I'm sitting chubby at 244 lbs.  My goal is to break into the 220's, so we'll see how that goes.

With the help of my friends at Google I'm going to try to keep track of how far I walk/run and keep it in some sort of spreadsheet just so I have a better idea of how healthy I'm getting, or how much I'm slacking.  I've downloaded their My Tracks app onto my T-Mobile MyTouch 3G Fender phone from the Android Market and look forward to reviewing my activities on a weekly basis.  Wish me luck!

Allergified Definition

Allergified (v): to be struck with allergies in a way that is easily noticeable to the general public.

 

"Man I was so allergified last night, the grocery store clerk probably thought I smoked some dope before coming into the store.  My eyes were SO RED!"

 

Allergies are a pain, good luck to all my fellow allergy-ridden folk out there.

DREA100 pvt 32b

My T-Mobile G1 was recently stuck on the multicolored bootloader screen (with the first line reading DREA100 pvt 32b) and wouldn't load past that stage.  I tried a hard reset and wiped everything clean, talked to T-Mobile tech support for over 30 minutes (we wiped everything clean 3 or 4 more times just in case) and it still wouldn't go past that page.  All they could offer me was the phone number to the manufacturer HTC who said it would be anywhere from $50 - $250 to fix the phone, OR I could spend about $150+ on a new Android smartphone!  Lucky me!

 

I wasn't about to take this lying down so I wanted to try anything I could to fix the situation.  This is where the CyanogenMod comes in to play.  I've known about this CyanogenMod for at least a year now, and I've known that it supposedly makes everything run a little faster and smoother and has a few extra bonuses, but I've always been a little scared to try it in case I bricked my phone.  Well I'm proud to announce that I successfully installed the CyanogenMod on my phone last night and it's been working like a champ thus far.  If anything changes I'll definitely report back but I'm glad I finally made the jump.

 

Should you do it if you own an Android phone?  Well I consider myself fairly techy...I've installed some hard drives, graphics cards, and lots of RAM into desktop computers, but I've never actually BUILT a computer from scratch, so I'm nowhere near an IT professional.  I'd only attempt it if you're familiar with how computers work, otherwise it might be best to stay away.  It's not the hardest thing I've ever done from a computer standpoint, but there were a couple spots where it got a tad confusing.  Just go to the link above and they lay it all out for you.

 

All in all, a bad experience with T-Mobile tech support (since they couldn't help me), but a good experience knowing my phone is able to easily take on a brand new custom operating system.  Hooray Android!

 

 

Quick and Easy Slow Cooker / Crock Pot Recipe

I read someone's recommendation on Facebook a few months ago to throw some ingredients together into a crock pot, I tried it, and it came out great.  I made it for my mom when she visited and she's asked for the "recipe" like 3 times now.  There's really no "recipe", just put this stuff into a crock pot:

• 1 lb of chicken breasts
• 1/2 lb of chicken thighs (leave this out if you despise dark meat, but I added it and my wife couldn't tell. Makes it better IMO)
• 2 big jars of salsa (spicy if you like it spicy, or mild if you don't like spice)
• 1 can of corn niblets
• 1 can of black beans

Heat all this stuff on low for 5-6 hours.  After that, take the chicken out and shred it up with a couple forks, it will come apart very easily.  Put all the chicken back into the crock put to absorb more of the salsa juice (at least 15-20 mins), and you're done!  Serve the chicken in taco shells with cheese, sour cream, diced tomatoes, lettuce, or whatever sounds good to you.  Add more/less corn or beans, or throw in a can of green beans if you really want to get crazy. 

 

It's totally flexible and totally easy.  Leaving it cook longer will only make it better, so don't feel like you have to rush it.  Enjoy!

 

-MP

 

 

Super Bowl Office Pool Game

I put a little Super Bowl strip card game together for some people and thought it would be useful to put it on the Internet since all the strip cards I found cost money. 

The strip card game is much easier than the traditional football "squares" since you only need to fill 10 spots instead of 100.  Just like the squares, it takes absolutely no football knowledge to enjoy.

Here are the rules, and here is the spreadsheet I put together.  We're playing for haltime and for the end of the game, with the end of the game having the biggest payout.  Let me know if you have any questions, good luck!

EDIT: Go here to generate the random numbers.  Enter "0" for the smallest value and "9" for the largest value, then click "Get Sequence".  Then just fill in the sheet with the numbers.  Tell your coworkers they can watch you do it if they don't trust you.

Best Layaway Deal

I was speaking with a friend of mine today who's currently in the market for a new HDTV (let's call her/him Jimbo).  The problem is, Jimbo doesn't have the cash readily available, and he doesn't want to put the TV on a credit card since it's almost never a good idea to flash the plastic if you can't pay for the item outright...right?

He was shopping at Sears because Sears has some pretty good prices on the latest brands of TVs and they have the option to put items on layaway. Unfortunately every time Jimbo found a TV he was satisfied with, it seemed that particular TV was not layaway eligible.  Jimbo was sad, thinking he'd just have to save money the old fashioned way which works for some people, but not for others.

So I came up with an idea for Jimbo.  "Jimbo," I said, "why don't you just take a chunk of money every month, the same amout you would put towards your layaway payments, and email yourself an Amazon Gift Card with that money?  If you buy a $250 gift card per month, in 4 months you'll have a nice $1000 to spend, and could probably get a TV 46" or bigger!"

"Huh, I never thought about it that way," said Jimbo.  Jimbo was back to being happy.  He knew that if he just socked away $250 cash each month that he'd probably dig into the cash on days he wanted to get a nice lunch, buy a video game, or order the latest hamburger earmuffs instead of using it towards his ultimate goal - the HDTV.  This way it made the money a little less "liquid" and easier to forget about, which would allow him to reach his goal as quickly as possible -- all while not having to pay any fees or worry about losing his hard-earned money.

A happy Jimbo is my kind of Jimbo.  Best of luck to you buddy!

How I Ate Baby Puke

When my wife and I are hard up and looking for a meal to feed our 15-month-old Cameron, we usually turn to a nice and light frozen dinner. They're cheap, usually nutritious, and sometimes even tasty!

Well today we've been cleaning the house all day and didn't have the time or energy to make a nice meal so we heated up Michelina's Five Cheese Lasagna for the little guy. He loves pasta and we figured this would be right up his alley.

Tastes better without baby bile.

At first Cameron didn't take to it very well because he just had his 15 month vaccine shots, and his last 2 baby teeth are cutting through (yeah, the last 2 at 15 months old...jeepers) so he's a little crabby, has a slight fever, and a little cough...all expected. To get him to taste it I put some lasagna on his spoon and let him feed it to himself since he enjoys having control (I wonder who he got that from?)

He did well with feeding himself for his standard amount of time, about 5 minutes...after that I had to think of something else to make the food interesting, so I decided to pick up the lasagna with my bare hands and feed it to him like a wrap/sandwich. This 2nd feeding phase went very well, he had 3, 4, maybe 5 bites and loved it.

As a new parent, one of the best parts about having a new human in our lives (besides the love, compassion, teaching, blah blah blah) is eating whatever leftovers Cameron leaves on his plate, or even eating his food along with him. Sure, I'm probably the heaviest I've ever been, but for now I'm blaming it on the holidays and just enjoying the extra 300+ calories I'm eating since Cam never eats all his food. Sorry to digress...

So I was wrapping the lasagna, feeding it to Cam, taking a tiny bite for myself here and there, feeding it to Cam, etc. Cam was coughing regularly while he was eating, and here's where it gets gross. As I was about to give him another bite of his lasagna sandwich, he ended up vomiting up a few tablespoons of digested lasagna on his shirt. "Aww poor guy" we thought, "maybe it's time to stop feeding him." Then I had the bright idea of having one more bite of the wrapped up lasagna in my marina-stained hands...chew-chew-swallow. Uh oh...I say to Allison, "umm, I think I just ate some of Cam's puke." "How did that happen and how do you know it's puke?" she asked. To which I replied "apparently Cam got some puke on the lasagna, I took a bite, and now I can taste the bile I usually taste after vomiting. Awesome."

Allison was pretty disgusted and said she would have vomited on the spot if the same had happened to her, but not this guy...I'm not going to waste a nice bite of lasagna. Sure it had a bitter aftertaste from the bile/acid in Cam's stomach, but overall I'd say it was pretty tasty.

This is what happens when you have kids, beware youngsters!