Having blogger friends is awesome, Toast gave me a little information @ last weeks meet up that has made Kansas City my favorite city again, El Rincon Colombian its still Colombian owned.

When Bea and I had the shock of being greeted by “Banda” when we entered the Colombian restaurant in our last visit there, I was devastated. I have nothing against Mexican brass music, I even like some of it and will dance to it… but it is like walking into your favorite piano bar and being faced with a dude playing the banjo.

A lot of the traditional Colombian plates require either a deep fryer or long preparation. While I have made some of those dishes from scratch before, it becomes a game of picking which ones you have time to do.

Back in Chicago my Mom gets together with my sister and they make awesome Empanadas, but they take them hours of preparations to do. The only thing Bea and I get to do at home in a regular basis is Arepas, which we got Mike addicted to during his visit here.

Having a place where I can go and satisfy a craving for comfort food from my country is important. One of the many reasons why living in Michigan sucked so much was the lack of good restaurants, specially not a Colombian one unless you drove all the way to Chicago.

Think about living in a country, I know Melinda can probably relate, and craving good old KC BBQ and baked beans, or even just a plain old thick cheeseburger with fries. Just the cornbread made here in the US is completely different than anywhere in the world. Think of not being able to be reduced to craving Dominos pizza because it is the only thing available overseas that is even close to what you are used to savoring when you think pizza.

I am happy to inform you all the the owner is back from being out of town. It is a new owner, but he is Colombian and was out of the country getting married. He apologized for my experience when I went to visit my favorites spot on the west side, and assured me that he will take care of us if we go back as a blogger group again. Wookie does not know it, but he will be dragged out there soon, and I know Average Jane is ready for a trip back, we need to set that up… but just let me know when you are ready to get your Colombia fix.

I know my man card holding status is under question at the moment. It all started when I went to see the Sex and the City movie with the wife, and I totally think it is unfair to be judged this harshly by my peers. That movie was good, the series was pretty good and I feel like that one was not a painful thing to watch.

The only valid argument anyone has, its actually totally not my fault. Appearently taking my friend that was in town to the WWI liberty memorial flagged me as a frequenter of gay hangouts. In my defense, I did not know… aren’t your “boys” supposed to let you know before you step into these landmines? Also, I have no problem visiting a place with a phallic symbol right in the middle. I am totally secure in my sexuality and it is not like we went there in the middle of the night.

The latest argument, which does not have complete merit but I almost agree with is taking my wife to see Mama Mia. I am sorry but I grew up listening to ABBA and knew almost all the freaking songs, sad but it was a group that made it around the world with Chiquitita. So when she expressed interest, I said why not… better that one than another musical that I did not know any songs from.

The movie had funny parts, you could laugh out loud to. However, Pierce Brosnan cannot sing and it is almost painful to try to watch him do it. They recreated perfectly the scene in the club when a guy is using lines that will not work to the wrong girls… you watch and want to laugh, but you feel sorry. The other problem with the movie was that Meryl Streep was letting it all hang out and I have not reach the status Banky and XO have reached as cougar hunters, so my brain had an IO error trying to process that information.

Wookie made a great point in twitter

for every ONE chick flick you must see +3 Man Flicks (no homo) but you need to add +5 if it’s a Musical. “Grease” doesn’t count.

So no, I am not giving up my man card! I enjoy taking my wife to the movies even if it means catching a chick flick here and there… I say you can put my card under review, but not revoke it just yet.

I never really became a hacker, I used to hang out with some people in college that knew how to get around some places but were mostly not really dangerous or malicious. However, recently I have been wanting to just start all over again and just take down sites… which ones, the ones that take over my browser.

One of the most annoying things that a website can do is resize my window. I know I can prevent it, I know its not the end of the world, but I dislike it more than being bombarded with adds or music.

I am not sure why they are lazy enough to not do something that works with all resolutions, but even if they do want to do that then launch another browser window. Why resize my current browser window and make me to through extra clicks just to get my interface back to normal?

Most websites are designed to transmit some kind of message, and the ones that are advertising or selling a product are the biggest offenders. Why would I ever want to buy a product from a company that is already making decisions for me on how to set my home computer resolution?

So what are some of your web annoyances?

Should you be impressed by those numbers? I think not. I feel that 90% of them are spiders crawling the web. I really don’t think that stats mean much, at least not to me because I don’t try to make money of my blog (even though I do use google adsense and amazon links sometimes) and I do this blogging for totally selfish reasons. Sure it has been kind of cool to have a higher google page rank than most of my employers, but in reality it does not do all that much for me.

I have talked about the subject of why I blog before, but it boils down to two reasons.

Blogging is way better than therapy and I use it to practice my writing in English.

Recently Faith wrote a pretty good post, fueled partly by XO asking why any of us bothers. While the nicest side effect of the blogging world has been the friends I have made, one actually staying with us this weekend, I bother because in the back of my head I think I am doing something good. I hope I am sparking some people to look at a different point of view that their own.

When I started blogging I had no clue that it would actually get as many visits as it started to get. I think by my second year blogging I had become a total stats whore. I would go to other sites just fishing for more readers. Then life kind of made blogging take a different direction and it became my only outlet. I forgot about stats completely, I did not think anyone would care for vague posts that talked about almost nothing.

Moving to KC changed all of that. I had the chance to begin a new life and a lot of changes came about. Blogging was once again as fun as it used to be when I started. However, I never picked up the whole stats whore ways. I really don’t have the time, I barely get posts in when I want to… and have way too many (57 to be exact) half written and saved for another day.

If you want to be impressed by stats check out TKC. While Faith even put it simply as posting half naked woman and news links will get you there, I disagree. Even though I DO NOT share his views on many topics and he has ticked me off more than a couple of times with his borderline personal attacks (alas never on me) I do give him the credit that his writing style and good sources is what put him on the top of list of most visited sites in Kansas City. Anyone that is a stats whore would be jealous of the numbers of hits he gets. I just want to get to meet him some day, hopefully at one of our meet ups… I think Chimpo and I can do crowd control if things get out of hand. We almost thought he had shown up unannounced to our last meet up, but it was just a shy Mexican dude that sat at the bar.

Ever since I stopped being reading buddy I have missed it. I love my job and the rewards of a new feature that its released and makes the job easier for our workers or saves the company money, however it is nothing compared to a kid saying thanks you made it fun to read. I still have the hand drawn cards from the kids I help and I am very proud of having been a part of the program.

Last fourth of July I had the opportunity to be a part of a bowling team to support Big Brothers Big Sisters of Kansas city. Btw, thanks again for all of your generous donations. I have been thinking of Volunteering for this program since I learned about it on TV years ago. So I asked my wife and she was all for it. Since we both work and wanted to make sure we were making the right commitment we decided to become a Big Couple.

We met the director of the program during summer bowl and started the process right away. Last night was our home visit by one of the counselors. We had been filling out forms and giving references for a little while now, but yesterday made it feel real for me. The questionnaire and home visit really made me understand a little better what kind of commitment we are about to make. We both love the thought that we might be able to change a child’s life for the better.

I feel very good about what we are doing because we have such a team behind us. The counselor and everyone we have met from that organization has been very friendly with us. I am sure they make everyone feel this way, but they just keep on saying how perfect we are for the program and how much we can help.

We are not sure how soon we will be matched up with a little, but we are hoping soon. We cannot wait to be able to mentor and connect with a child. Being a volunteer is so rewarding that I crave it from the moment I stopped doing it a couple of years ago.

Growing up I remember that what belong to only me was limited to my clothes and toys. I did not have my own bedroom until I was adult and single. Even then I never personalized it.

Bea is a very accommodating person and she is always thinking of me. While out shopping the other day, she waited to get some new artwork until I was there to see it. We like to share our space and make it both of ours.

While neither of us is opposed to having our own bedrooms, I want one for computer stuff and she wants one for her crafts, we also like sharing spaces. Its hard to make a rented place your own starting by not being able to (or being too much of a hassle) paint the walls the color you want.

This has been one of the first times in my life where I truly felt like I have an opinion as to how the space where I live will look like. I actually look forward to being a part of making those decisions when we decide to move to a new place.

I came up with a theory, which Bea does not necessarily shares. I think that having to share your room with others growing up gave me a little more tolerance to having people in my living space. Not in a negative way, but having her own room growing up, I think makes Bea crave alone time and having a place where she can really be by herself.

Did you guys have your own room growing up? What about your spouse? Does my bedroom theory have any legs?

From WiKiPedia

A raid is a type of mission in a video game, where the objective is to use a very large number of people, relative to a normal team size set by the game, to defeat a boss.

I have spent the last three months plaing WoW (World of Warcraft) and I have to say that it is the most complete game that I have ever played. It has all the elements of the best RPG’s that the Finally Fantasy Series introduced to game, the progression mechanics that make everyone want to keep going and the social and team aspect of your best war shooter. A lot of negative things can be said about the game, about how it could suck your free time dry, but the pay off to me is well worth the time and money I spend into it… it makes my stress go away.

That said, the thing I dislike about the game the most is some of the people that play it. Here is where the motorcycle riding part comes along.

I love motorcycles, but what was coolest of all was getting a group of 20+ people to ride together even if it was just to grab a cup of coffee a town or two away. Riding in a large group is one of the most exciting things because it takes tons of trust for you to ride right next to someone. You need a leader both in the front and the back of the pack. You also need great communication to transmit messages such as “gravel up ahead” by just using non verbal signals.

Bad groups in motorcycle riding cause accidents and potential serious injuries, even death. The same goes for doing a raid in a game. However, in a game you can reset the game and just come back tomorrow, in motorcycle riding might have to remember one night for the rest of your life as the moment when one of your friends lost his ability to walk.

I try to approach everything in life with respect. To me when someone is in a group and does not respect the rules (or does not even know what they are) shows lack of respect. While it is the responsibility of the group to tech such rules, it is also necesary for the person to have the willingness to learn and listen.

I am a level 60 now in the game, and soon I will be moving toward the maximum level which is 70 right now. Now we I have started to participate in groups where roles have to be followed. This week I experienced the two complete opposite experiences in the same raid. I could not help but compare it to my best and worse riding experiences.

The worse ride of my life was not even one where I got into an accident. During that doomed ride we actually had 3 riders go down out of a group of about 12. There was no mayor injuries except for one bike that kind of ended up beyond repair. My day ended when I separated from the group because one of the riders that went down was too shaken up to continue so I chose to just follow him home to make sure he was ok.

Lots went wrong that day and I might some day list everything that happened, but it was doomed because of bad leadership. The last point of this post will tell you why.

The horrible raid this week was not due to bad leadership, it was actually people not listening to the leadership. However the result was the same as that doomed ride. There was no fun, there was a lot of disappointment. An activity that is supposed to make you feel better should not become frustrating.

The best raid I have had so far (besides the ones that Wook uses one of his awesome characters to dominate the game.) was a place where you need 5 people of around my level to go in. We only had 4 and I was the lowest level, everyone else was around mid 60s. It is a hard thing to do (which I found out with a bad group) this instance without a healer. The computer monsters hit pretty hard and with a bad group you end up dead a lot. However, with this group of other 3 people and no healer we were able to clear the whole place and never had a total wipe.

The best ride of my life was a charity ride with CLSB. Riding with them is one of the things I miss the most. That day we had 40+ riders and had to go quite a ways. However we had no issues. Even stopped traffic in some places without a police escort to keep the whole group together. It was a nice thing to have that many people ride together such a long distance and keep a nice pace the whole time.

What I have learned from motorcycle riding groups is that pace is the most important thing. Your leader has to set a pace and the group most follow. Great leaders will always set a pace that the most inexperienced rider can follow safely. In the game it is the same thing, a pace needs to be set and it is the responsibility of the players to follow.

The moment you start going to fast and not checking to make sure others around you are doing with the pace, the experience stops being fun and it starts getting dangerous.