Posted by Kevin, on January 27th, 2009 
I’m still playing catchup on my posts for this year…I just may make it to the present day before this week is through – no promises though. This is post number four for today, and thankfully that gets me to within a couple of posts of where I want to be. :) Just a little while ago, I posted about winning an iPod Nano in a contest that happened on Twitter. Well it arrived in mid January, complete with my name engraved on the back and everything (there goes any thoughts of selling it). I had offered it up to Amy, but she said she didn’t want to have anything to do with it. :) Instead, Amy has taken to using my old iPod shuffle, so this new unit has become what I use for running with when I run alone or on the treadmill. It’s amazingly light – it feels about as light as my shuffle, if that is possible. Sadly, I wont be using it to its full potential, it’ll basically be a high capacity shuffle for me, but whatever – I didn’t pay a cent for it so I’m not too broken up about it. Gotta love free stuff. :) Just as an aside, one of the other guys who won one of the Nanos lives in Holland and he got dinged with a 40 euro customs charge when he picked it up – that’s gotta hurt! Oh and if you’re really interested, I took a bunch of photos when I opened it up. [...]
Posted by Kevin, on January 27th, 2009
Late last year I borrowed a friend’s Apple TV and wrote up a post about my experience with it and what I felt was missing. At the end of the post I basically said that despite its shortcomings, that I would still like to get one, but that I’d likely wait until after MacWorld, just in case… Well that is exactly what happened, and instead of me purchasing it myself, Amy bought one for me! How awesome is that?! My initial thoughts still stand and I still think Apple could easily improve the product with a few software updates. However, in addition to what I was able to try out back in November, I’ve also installed Boxee onto my Apple TV and that has definitely added to it. Boxee is constantly improving – for instance they just added ABC to their list of content (in 720p no less) – so things are only going to get better and better. As for my old MG-35, I’ve moved it down into the basement for use with the old 32″ Sony CRT, so it certainly hasn’t been discarded. [...]
Posted by Kevin, on January 27th, 2009 
Last August I did some serious suffering with what I assumed was seasonal allergies. I complained A LOT – just ask Amy. I remember going into the pharmacy, looking for some drugs that would help alleviate my suffering, and feeling like it really didn’t matter what I got, cause nothing seemed to be working. When the pharmacist asked me something to the effect of, “How bad is it?” I replied with, “It’s brutal!” To which she countered, “It’s not brutal, it’s an annoyance.” Apparently anything that is non life threatening only qualifies as an annoyance to her. Anyways, long story short, I went to see my doctor (I have one now) and she sent me for allergy testing. I had never been for allergy testing before, and as far as I knew – I wasn’t allergic to anything. As you can kind of tell by the photo accompanying this post, it turns out I am in fact allergic to a bunch of stuff, albeit mildly allergic. Things like pollen, grass, ragweed, trees (in general I guess), dust, cats and dogs, and maybe a few other things. Unfortunately I can’t use this as an excuse to get rid of the cats – already tried and failed. :) Anyways, it was an interesting experience. In the end, the doctor I spoke with gave me a prescription for 20mg tables of Reactine and a nasal spray and told me to watch the weather network for signs of ragweed around August. Then I just need to use the nasal spray every day and add in the Reactine as needed. I would prefer not to have to take anything, but the vaccine shots are quite expensive I guess. Anyway, here’s hoping for an easy allergy season this year. :) [...]
Posted by Kevin, on January 27th, 2009
Way back on January 11th (I’m still playing catchup for this year) we made plans to go skating on the canal with the Lawsons. They had a pair of bob skates that weren’t in use this year, so we asked if Liam could borrow them, to which they agreed of course. Well as it turns out, they bailed on us for some lame reason (hehe) and we ended up going skating just as a family. We swung by the Lawson’s place “on the way” to the canal and picked up the bob skates. It was a cold day, so we didn’t plan on being out too long, but we wanted to give Liam a chance to try out skating for the first time. He seemed to enjoy it, for very short periods at a time anyways. We’ll definitely be getting out a few more times this winter, even if Amy says differently right now. ;) We took a few photos and some video, which are posted on Flickr of course. [...]
Posted by Kevin, on January 21st, 2009
A couple of weekends ago we celebrated my birthday. I originally didn’t have any plans, but Bonnie asked us a couple days before if maybe we wanted to go bowling. As soon as I heard that, I knew that’s what I wanted to do! I hadn’t been bowling in years and all of a sudden, I was really looking forward to it. Bonnie had taken care of sending out the invite to a bunch of people (I have no idea who was invited) but only a few could make it. We had a fun group out, it was me, Amy, Bonnie, Grant, Darcy, Anika and Dave. We met at a pretty sketchy bowling alley down on Wellington at first, but they seemed to be pretty booked up and also not too friendly. As a result, we decided to head out to the Merivale Bowling Centre. Once we got there, things just got better and better. It started with the awesome shoes, and went on from there.
They serve quarts at this place, so naturally we started with a big bottle of Export, or at least Grant and I did, Dave opted for Blue for some unknown reason. After that, it was onto pitchers. Personally, I could have continued on with the quarts all night, but since I wasn’t paying, I couldn’t complain. Oh, I forgot to mention that we were playing on the lower level, with the black light, blasting eighties / nineties music, and a whole crapload of teenagers for some reason. I had been hoping to pull off at least one win for the night, since it was my birthday and all, but in the end, I won every game! Don’t listen to anyone who tries to tell you that they let me win either, I just got better and better the more I drank. We were playing 5 pin (with the small balls) and my scores were, 151 (closest competitor was Dave at 139), 172 (closest competitor was Grant at 159), and 228! (closest competitor was Bonnie at 155 – nice work Bont!) Winning was nice, but I would have still had a great time even if I didn’t win…I think anyways. One funny story is that a group of people (3 girls, one guy) showed up at a lane a couple over from us and when they entered their names on the scoresheet, we had a good chuckle. See here to see what I’m talking about. A short while later I laughed even harder when it was updated. All in all a very enjoyable night of bowling. I’d like to get out again sooner rather than later. Full set of photos from the night are on Flickr of course.
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Posted by Kevin, on January 20th, 2009
As I mentioned way back at the beginning of December, I was growing my ‘Christmas beard’ throughout the month so that when the new year arrived, I would be able to shave it up into a wicked moustache for our first annual New Years Moustache Invitational DG Day. The photo to the left shows what I was able to accomplish, and if you’re interested in more photos – check Flickr. I also started taking (near) daily mugshots sometime in December, so you can actually see the beard growing if you look here.
As for the event itself, I’d call it a success. We had 5 guys come out, three of them (Dave, Matt and myself) with real moustaches, one (Grant) with a painted on moustache (with a sharpie no less) and one (Robbie) clean shaven participant. It was touch and go there for a while on whether we were going to allow him to participate. We insisted that for next year that he grow something. Grant ended up winning the day, on the last hole! He and I were tied going into the last hole and I ended up overshooting, and then allowing the wind to blow my disc out of bounds. D’oh! Congrats to Grant though. After the DG, we headed to Baton Rouge for some delicious ribs! Our waitress had a bit of a hard time keeping a straight face, especially when she looked at Grant.
Oh, I should also mention that JK wanted to attend, but was ‘stuck’ in Florida at the time. As a result, he participated virtually, see photo below:
The only disappointment of the day was that Trev didn’t get a chance to participate in the event that he helped conceive. Maybe next year…
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Posted by Kevin, on January 19th, 2009  Well it seems 2009 may not be the year where I keep up with my blog posting. We’re only 19 days into the new year and I’m already a few posts behind. Oh well, that’s the way life goes when you have a family I guess. I’d rather be concerned with living my life than writing about it. That being said, here is a quick little write up about Christmas at the Haggerty household. [...]
Posted by Kevin, on January 10th, 2009
The subtitle of this post should be, “December was a write-off” or something to that effect. I heard about a contest that was being put on by NameCheap though twitter. NameCheap is a domain registrar, and coincidentally I had just transferred haggaret.com to them back in October. The contest involved answering questions and getting the chance to win domain credits. The questions were asked every hour, on the hour, from Dec 1st through Dec 25th. Since it was December, the questions were all Christmas related. Unfortunately I didn’t hear about the contest until the 2nd day it was on (I think) so I was a bit late to the party, however, that didn’t stop me from making out like a bandit in the end. :) [...]
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