Gout Hurts

So you all know about my battle with my heart condition. Well, today I've been pretty immobile just because of my bout with gout. The pain Gout as I understand is actually based on dehydration in my case. Of course my dehydration stems from my drinking of too much beer. Well, the pain is excruciating, believe me. So my advice, if you drink, slam some water before you head off to bed.

Heart Matters

Personally, I'm still trying to figure out whats been going on with my heart. You might have heard about it on the Podcast that my friends and I do. Well, I guess the question to ask is, "is it my heart that's giving me problems?" I'm still not too certain, only because it seems like its more of a shortness of breath than chest pains. The problem I'm having is how should I describe it if I've never felt it before? Theres just so many folks willing to advise me on what it is or what I should do, and if any of you read this blog, I would like to just say a big mahalo for all your concerns and advice.

My current belief is that it's anxiety based, but that belief could change real soon as I'll be performing at my church. The way I see it, if there's any time I should be feeling anxious, it would be at a performance, so if I don't feel the shortness of breath there, that could possibly mean it's not anxiety based. The good news is that right after church, I'll be heading to the doctor. I'll keep y'all posted.

Check Out My Mug

How can you turn down a mug like this? This picture was taken at Ruby Tuesday's in Kane'ohe about a week ago. I think even non drinkers would want to take a sip of this. The picture actually doesn't do justice to the actual beauty of this mug of beer. It actually comes with ice sliding down the side. MMMMMmmmmmmmmm.

Happy Easter

After church today, my wife, her parents and I headed over to Hale'iwa Joe's in Kane'ohe for brunch. While the food was okay as usual, the view was also awesome as usual. If you've been there before, you would recognize this familiar site. What a great Easter it was to be in Hawai'i. For the record, it was actually a bit overcast, but it's so nice to have a straight view of the Ko'olau with just a very small section of the H-3 showing.

Yahoo can bite me!

Yup, just went through hell with Yahoo web hosting. What a bunch of Yahoos. Here's what I went through:

I called Yahoo for the simple reason of finding out if I could put my blog on to the root directory of my server. You would think that it wouldn't be a problem, but the fella that answered the phone was extremely rude to me. It doesn't matter that it couldn't be done, it just sucked that the guy had no idea what he was talking about and also that he treated me like a second class citizen. At that point I decided that I needed to get out of this Yahoo situation, so I called GoDaddy. They were of course willing to host, but furthermore, they were polite and well informed. Go Daddy informed me that I needed a bunch of things to take place before the actual switch could happen. So, I called Yahoo and they told me that I needed to cancel my account with them prior to their releasing of my domain. I was only later informed that canceling prior to a domain release is a rare thing. So I canceled my domain, and they said they released it. But I don't believe they did because a day later I called Yahoo to do a status check (my website was down, and my email wasn't working so i needed this to happen quickly.) The guy told me i needed to relax. I can't believe that someone would be so rude as to tell me that I should relax. Well, I digress. He put me on hold (one of Yahoo's special techniques) then about 10 minutes later he comes back on the phone and tells me that everything looks like it's going well. About a minute after I got off the phone, i got the confirmation email that the domain had been released (I was supposed to get this email a day earlier) then the actual company that hosted my domain (Melbourne IT) sent me an email only moments later telling me that they released my domain. Well, well, well... It appears as though the previous guy I talked to didn't actually release my domain. Anyway, because I canceled the account, Go Daddy told me that I had to wait 5-7 days according to ICANN standards for my website to go back online. Well, you'll hear about this on a future podcast that has already been recorded so stay tuned in for that.

Lost Losing It?

Hey! Lost guys! Enough with the crappy shows. It seems to have all started with the Desmond Big Flashback episode. I figured I'd bare with it, and see what becomes of things, but wow, it hasn't gotten any better! I'm beginning to think that Gilligan's Island is a more entertaining and believable story. It's really too bad because I've been a big fan the show.

The Amazing Disgrace

Man, I'm pretty bummed. Most of you who know me, know how much I just love Reality TV. Most especially The Amazing Race and Survivor. Well, Rob & Amber just got the boot on Amazing Race last night. Even worse is that they lost by a hair to Sharla and Mirna. There went the ratings.

A Dog's Soul

You ever wonder about dogs and if they have souls? I have two beautiful dogs, and I often wonder. They both have such different personalities that it would seem only likely that they creatures with souls. Here's something I've always found amazing: How is it that a dog knows to look into your eyes when you're talking to him/her? When I open a door, the dog doesn't look at the door handle, but rather at the bottom of the door. Yet, when I talk to my dogs, they don't look at my mouth (which would be the more likely place to look) but rather into my eyes. My dogs seem to know when I'm pissed just by staring at my eyes. How funny.

The photo above is of my dog Maestro.

Pizza Pie?

Been spending a lot of time lately researching and trying to figure out how to make the perfect pizza. I don't actually have a pizza oven, but have been using a pizza stone. One thing that I've found is that using some of the recipes I've found online and through books, the pizza sauce gets pretty runny. I have come to the conclusion that crust and sauce are the most important things, so I suppose a runny sauce wouldn't work. So I basically decided to make the sauce using fresh roma tomatoes rather than a canned sauce. I chop em up, throw them in the frying pan and basically cook off all the juices. Nice! After I add all the spices, which include oregano and of course basil, I throw it in the food processor and puree it. Nice! As for the dough, I've learned that using a rolling pin makes the crust lifeless. Stretching and sometimes tossing are the only options that seem to work for the ultimate texture of the pie. So, if there are any Pizza makers out there that would like to contribute to my current quest, please feel free to comment.