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If you’re interested in Paul’s new look, click the link below.

 Click here to see the pictures

So I was playing around with my father and sister-in-laws Comcast connection and they were getting upload speeds over 1 mbps. I heard the Comcast rolled out a new service for faster uploads, but I haven’t been seeing it at my home, so this morning I rolled the dice and decided to reset my modem hoping I wouldn’t loose my fast download and gain a faster upload. Well my results were good…

Tried again tonight, my download went down, but my upload is even faster. I think I live with these speeds 🙂

The best combo speed yet is the following morning 5/15…

So this past weekend one of my close friend’s Alan was suppose to come and visit from Socal with his wife Joann.  So for the past couple of weeks we’ve been getting friends together for “Alan BBQ”, but at the last minute Alan ended up getting the flu, which sucks, and he couldn’t make it.

Anyways, since it was Cinco De Mayo and everyone was already coming (about 20 people) we decided to keep the BBQ scheduled.  This is the first time Melanie and I had 20 people over, let’s just say it was challenging.  But the part I loved the most was seeing the kids run around the yard and house.

It was nice seeing the kids enjoying themselves, Melanie even got them bubbles and sidewalk chalk, but I think the main attraction was the Reef tank in our living room with Nemo.  Too bad Alan and Joann couldn’t make it, they missed one fun Cinco De Mayo!  Of course it’s always a pleasure seeing all our friends and catching up and we had some suprise shows as well.

Click here to see some pictures from our Cinco De Mayo bash

So Parker came home from the hospital yesterday. Melanie said that our vet said she wants to be his godmother, so if anything happens to us she gets him 🙂 Melanie and I are happy to have Parker back home, he was a little sluggish yesterday, but this morning we saw his tail wagging (at least what little he has of tail, it’s more his rear going moving back and forth).

You can tell Parker has some pain, you would too if you got cut-up like he did in his abdomen. We try to comfort him though by giving his pain meds. Hopefully the healing process goes fast and we have our Parker back to normal.

What’s been really cool throughout this is his brother Tobi senses something’s wrong with Parker and hes been hanging close by to keep him company. I’ve added some new pictures to our flickr site, click the link below.

Click here for more pictures of Parker

Also if you have Yahoo Messenger, you can check out his webcam by clicking the “View Webcam” option under the “Actions” menu item and you can see live video of Parker and Tobi (That’s how I’m monitoring them while I’m at work today)

Today Parker had his 2nd surgery and the doctor said it went well. She found some more grit and crystals in his bladder and was able to flush them out. From examining his bladder, I guess it has been inflamed for a while, so this surgery should get the bladder back to normal and Parker should be a happier dog. Melanie and I are sad since he’s spending the night at the hospital and we can’t wait to get him home tomorrow morning.  Below are more pictures and I’ve also added a picture of him with his IV to this blog.

Click here for more pics of Parker after his surgery

So as most of our friends and family know we love our two boyz, Parker and Tobi.  Parker and Tobi are miniature schnauzer’s, we’ve had Tobi since he was 12 weeks and we adopted Parker last year.

Click this link to see pictures of Parker and Tobi

On our morning walk yesterday Parker was acting weird when peeing, pretty much he’d sit there for 20-30 sec, then give up.   I didn’t really think much of it, but when I got home to take Tobi and Parker for a walk Parker started doing the same thing.  At this point I got worried and talked to Melanie, where we both decided to take him to the Emegency Pet Clinic, especially with the bad animal food problem happening.  Tobi and Parker get dry food and supposedly this wasn’t affected, but I was stilll worrying.

The Vet on site, informed us Parker was definitely having discomfort, but didn’t seem to have a blocked bladder, wanted to run more tests, x-rays, etc, but I made the call to wait for our normal vet (Dr. Johnson) to look at him in the morning and asked the vet at the ER if we could just give him some pain medication.

This morning we took Parker in and found out he had stones blocking his urethra and had to have emergency uresthrostomy surgery.  Parker went through the procedure this afternoon and came out like a champ, I’m monitoring him right now and it’s kind of messy, since he has an open wound, but we’re happy he’s peeing again.

Parker has another surgery scheduled for Tuesday, since he has smaller stones and they need to flush those out.  We’re just happy Parker is doing well…  Here’s some pictures of him after surgery, CAUTION: 2 of the pics are a little nasty.

Click here for Parker’s after surgery pictures

We’re hoping the Tuesday surgery goes just as well.

I probably should’ve posted this during the week, but it was one of those crazy weeks at work.  About 3weeks ago all my gaming friends purchased Guitar Hero 2, the majority of those friends are colleagues at Zazzle.  For days I was hearing, “you need to go buy Guitar Hero 2 for the Xbox 360” and how people we staying up till the wee hours of the night playing this game.

So 2 weeks ago, I decided to go on a hunt for my own copy of Guitar Hero 2.  I had some Best Buy gift cards and reward points to purchase Guitar Hero, so it had to be from Best Buy.  Got busy that weekend, so I actually didn’t start my search until Tuesday.  I called my closest Best Buy to make sure they had it and found out is was out of stock.  I then proceeded to call the other Best Buy’s close to me and one store said they had 4 of them, so I drove there, only to find out they sold out during the weekend and the person who I talked probably assumed the one’s in stock were for the Xbox, but were for the PS2.

Pretty much no luck finding Guitar Hero in the South bay or Peninsula, the closest store that had them in-stock was in San Fransicso, but I wasn’t that desperate yet.  The store that had the PS2 version said they may be getting a shipment that Thursday, so I decided to wait.  Called back on Friday to see if any of the stores received any stock, but no dice, they did get an extra guitar controller (So Melanie could jam out with me or a friend), so I picked that up.

It was my birthday that weekend and we were heading up to the Sonoma coast, so while I was buying my controller I asked them to look up stores in the North Bay that had them in stock, 2 places had them, Marin City and San Rafael, and these stores were on the way up to Sonoma.  Well, I found my Guitar Hero 2 at Best Buy in Marin City and I brought my Xbox 360 with me to play on my birthday weekend in Sonoma.

So the first time I played was with my buddy Skip after we got back from dinner, we had a fun buzz going on and the game ROCKED!!!!  Saturday morning I woke up and immediately started playing again, I guess I played for 4 hours.  Well, it’s  all downhill from there…  I’ve been averaging 4-5 hours a night playing Guitar Hero 2 and I’m totally addicted.

If you have an Xbox 360 or PS2, I highly recommend picking up this game, keep in mind you’ll need to get some rhythm in you to play this game, or you’ll hate it!  Below are links that will give you info on the game.

Click here to go to the Guitar Hero Website

Click here for some Wikipedia history about the game

I went to lunch today and had to stop by K-mart for some Zazzle fun presents and my buddy Andy spotted Xbox 360 Elite’s on the shelves.  These are suppose to be appearing on the store shelves around April 29, but it looks like K-mart jumped the gun.  Check out the images below.  BTW, we were looking if they had Wii’s in stock 🙂

So I get tons of people asking me where to go in the Napa Valley, since I lived there from 1976-96. Here is a link of all my favorite places to go using the new “My Maps” feature in Google. The cool thing about this is I could comment on all the places I recommend.

Click here to check out my “Napa Valley Tour” Google Map

There’s also a link to the left of this blog under “Our Sites”

So this past weekend we celebrated my grandmother’s 96th birthday. My aunt (Don’s mom) just got back from the PI (Philippines) were she volunteers with my uncle every year to help with medical needs. This time she brought back pictures of a surgery she assisted with, it was removing a 32 pound tumor from a 100 pound filipino lady (she was 132 with the tumor). Check out the picture…