Vineeth John

Yesterday, high school friend of DefiniTV and myself committed suicide. Announcing something like this on a blog that nobody read obviously has other reasons that to “let people know.”

Vineeth, DTV, and I were very close in high school. We had multiple classes together our senior year and pretty much did everything together. I told them about my sexcapades, and they told me about their handcapades. During English he would constantly give our teacher a hard time. He would use his sarcastic, cynical humor to pick apart arguments. His intelligence knew no bounds. I will not speak for DTV, but he was superiorly more intelligent that I could ever strive to be.

A regular occurrence for our trio was to go to IHOP extremely late at night and just have fun. One time we had a waitress named Priscilla who expressed her love for Vin Diesel. She then said that Vineeth looked like Vin and proceed to rub Vineeth’s head very sensuously while moaning. This was by far the funniest thing that happened that year due only to the face Vineeth made. It was a face of sheer terror.

On a more shameful note, on my part. When Vineeth and I were in 9th grade, we took a P.E. class together. There was kid who was a bad influence on me, and I was too eager to impress him, and whilst playing floor hockey, I checked Vineeth hard enough to knock him to the floor and his glasses off his face. After doing that, I got pats on the back from those guys. That is one of my greatest single regrets in my life, and something that I still to this day feel guilty about. That next year when Vineeth and I became friends I apologized to him for what I did, and he accepted. I regret what I did, but I would not change it if I had the chance. Vineeth taught me valuable lessons by extending his forgiveness to me. He taught me that everybody is equal. Not only did he forgive me, but he accepted me as a friend. He also showed me that being your own person, free thinking, and non-conformity are some of the most important things in life.

Vineeth John was one of the best people I knew. He had internal demons like we all do, but it seems that they won that battle. I will miss him very much and regret that we did not stay as close after high school as were in high school. My condolences go out to his family and friends, and I hope that he is happier in Heaven.

Pink Martini – Hey Eugene!

So last year Pink Martini came out with another album, and they once again bring their collective knowledge of music together and sync in a perfect way. This album compliments their last one, whilst exploring new sounds for the band. I recommend this album all together.

Pink Martini – Hang on Little Tomato

WOW!

This group was introduced to me by a co-worker and they are just phenomenal. This group is officially put into the International genre. The have very worldly music. There are songs sang in Japanese, Spanish, French, and English. Not only does this group provide worldly sound, they provide excellent music. In this song there is a tango, waltz, ballad, and even elevator music. It truly is phenomenal. My personal favorite is the song titled “Lilly”. It has a very upbeat salsa sound with English lyrics.

The musicians are all classically trained, and the singer is a throw-back to Ella Fitzgerald. This group is just beautiful.

Marc Anthony – Sigo Siendo Yo

I feel that I must first state that I do understand not every person who reads this post does not speak or understand Spanish. Having said that, I believe that everybody who reads this post has the capability of understanding good music.

This is why I am reviewing Marc Anthony’s album titled Sigo Siendo Yo. This album is by far one of the best Latin albums I have heard. Anthony does an amazing job of dictating through emotions through singing and lyrics. The slow songs are heartfelt and sincere, while the faster, upbeat songs keep your feet tapping and energy up. Hands down, the most amazing song is the last song titled “Que Precio Tiene El Cielo”. This song is truly moving. To provide sustenance to my statements, here is the aforementioned song.

Now, having said all of these wonderful things about this album, and giving you the opportunity to hear the excellence that is Marc Anthony, there is a downfall to this album. And it comes in the name of Jennifer Lopez. Now I am the first person to admit that I thoroughly enjoy doing things with my betrothed, but wow. Jennifer Lopez has absolutely no business singing on Marc Anthony’s album. If there is a weak link in every chain, this one comes in the form of song number 2. She makes three fatal flaws when she sings: 1) She has no vibrato in her voice. Whether it is by choice of lack of skill, (I think it is the latter) she needs to change that. 2) She tries to sing notes that are not within her perceivable vocal range. Enough said. and 3) SHE TRIES TO DO A DUET WITH MARC FUCKING ANTHONY!!!! Regardless of whether you like his singing or not, he is a phenomenal singer who has done an amazing job at bridging the gap between Latin and English music. He has set the standards on many different singing, songwriting, and performing levels. She is stupid for thinking that she belonged on his album.

Now you might say that maybe he asked her to sing with him because they are married, and I would say that she was stupid for accepting.

Peace,

Steven

Do you like carpet?

Three days ago, yours truly had to deal with flooding in his house. So I now know how to clean concrete, dry carpet, replace padding, and stretch carpet back into place. Now you might say to yourself, “Steven, what are you going to do with that knowledge?” Where I would reply, “I am going to teach you how to do it too!”

With water in your carpet, the most important this is to make sure it is 100% dry when you put it back in place. Another extremely important thing is to ensure that you do not keep ANY wet carpet padding. Even if it is damp or somewhat moist. IT WILL NOT DRY. EVER.

I will list tools that you need so you can repair it yourself:

Industrial blower – can be rented at The Home Depot or Lowe’s

Carpet stretcher: manual or automatic – also can be rented at The Home Depot or Lowe’s

Carpet padding: comes in pink, green, and blue. They have different purposes and thicknesses

Masking tape

Broom/Dustpan, or a Shop vac

Bleach/water mixture, or something that would kill mold or mildew

The first thing that need to happen is that you need to take action. You cannot wait a few days to get this problem taken care of. Waiting a few days will be enough time for water to get in your walls and cause major problems.

1) You should immediately start getting the excess water up with anything absorbent. If you have something that will suck up water, even better.

2) Once you have gotten the water up, you need to asses the damage. Find out how far the water has gone. You can do this by pulling the carpet up. Capet is held down by tack strips, which are wooden strips nailed into your foundation. They have little spikes sticking out of them that hold the carpet down. Find a corner of your carpet and start pulling the carpet up. Now there are some colors of padding that are easy to see if they are wet. If you can see the wetness, great. Otherwise you are going to have to feel. The easiest way to get carpet back away from the wet area is to roll it. Bunching it up, though effective, is harder to manage.

3) Once you have rolled the carpet away from the wet areas you can see where the wet padding is. Padding is never cut in one giant piece to fit your house. It is usually 6 feet wide and however long it is needed to be. Now you have assessed where the wet padding is, pull it up and get rid of it. It will be very heavy, so you should have someone helping.

*Sometimes padding will be glued down and stick to the floor – be sure to pull ALL padding up off of the flood that is wet.

4) Now that the wet padding is out of here, this is where your blower, broom/shop vac, and bleach water come into play. You might notice that on the wet floor there is a yellow muck on it. This is what has been pushed through your carpet by walking on it and doing other various things. This needs to come off the floor before you lay padding down. There are two ways to do it. You can scoop up the wet muck, or you can dry it then sweep/shop vac it up. Now that this is done, you need to spray the bleach/water mix on the concrete and let it dry.

5) Now that the concrete is dry, you need to unroll the carpet and lay it back into place without the padding underneath. While you are unrolling the carpet spray the UNDERSIDE of the carpet with the bleach/water mix to help prevent a musty smell from the carpet once it is cleaned.

6) Once the carpet is loosely back in place, you need to get it dry by placing the blower underneath the carpet for at least 24 hours. During this 24 hours you need rotate the placement of the dryer to ensure complete dryness in the carpet.

7) Once the carpet is dry, roll the carpet back up and begin to lay down the padding. The important thing about laying down the padding is to make sure that the pad touches the tack strip. Sections of padding should be taped together to ensure that there is no buckling of the carpet.

Once all of the padding is down, unroll the carpet and begin to stretch the carpet. Here is an example of carpet stretching technique.

You are done. It is a tough job, but home repair is extremely rewarding.

Phobos-Isn’t that that chick from Friends?

CNN.com is reporting that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter(MRO) has take two close-ups of Phobos, Mars’ moon. This is some pretty cool stuff due to the clarity of the pictures. I guess the geek in me just got overly excited.

Manny Ramirez?

As I watched the Red Sox and the Yankees play last night, I noticed a very funny thing. When did they let the Predator join the Red Sox lineup?

I will try not to Rush into this…

Ok. This will be my first post, that does not use a article specific hyper link. Solely because I heard this radioshow episode yesterday morning, and they did not, while I was listening, state which day it was.

I was driving to a friends house and had enough time to listen to about 10 minutes of the Rush Limbaugh show on the Excellence In Broadcasting network, played on the Houston News Station AM 740 KTRH. On this snippet of radio I listened to, a woman called into the show ask Rush some tangential question about Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. As I said, this was tangential. What is important is what was said after the question. Rush asked this woman why she is ashamed to admit that she is conservative. The woman then said that she has conservative ideas along with liberal ideas. Then he said that she is either conservative, or liberal, there is no in between. She then said that she hates to commit herself to a party because it promotes party line thinking. Rush then replied that it is “the only way to be.”

Now, I cannot listen to something like this and not say anything. THIS IS OBSCENE! I cannot belive that the self-proclaimed “leader of the conservative movement” would sit there and try to polarize people into mob thinking. The only thing I hear on the news is these days is how you are either liberal or conservative. What ever happened to free thinking? What ever happened to the thought process? I just feel that this is causing a HUGE polarized rift in American unity. It is no longer about being American, it is now whether you are liberal or conservative. What ever happened to sitting down with an idea and making an educated decision on it?

She’s F@#%ing Alex Rodriquez!

I’m not a Yankees fan, but that’s funny.

Tiger Woods is Lurking, Earning his Stripes and Ready to Pounce

Attention golf beat writers, generic sports headline creator and professional cliche guy: Can we stop already with using the phrase “Tiger is lurking?” Or any other play on words using the name “Tiger” for that matter. I am making this an official rule. If Tiger Woods is within 10 shots of the leader before Sunday, no headline shall refer to a lurking Tiger, a Tiger earning his stripes or a ready-to-pounce Tiger. We get it. He shares the same name as a commonly known ferocious cat. Any headline bearing these cliches will immediately be tossed in the recycle bin.

I really thought we were past this. As of late, things had seemed to die down. I foolishly called it a fad (see tie-dye t-shirts) and proclaimed the era of a lurking Tiger dead. Then something terrible happened. Tiger didn’t win a tournament. I realized the the lull in horrible headlines was due to the fact that Tiger was leading every tournament he was in. Then, two weeks ago at Doral, Tiger decided not to dominate. And the headline douchebags were out in full force.

I decided to do a search of the words “Tiger” and “lurking” on Google News. What I found was a laundry list of articles containing the same cliched headline vomited onto the top of the page. So I was really pissed today when I saw an AOL sports headline that read something like this:

“Only Tiger Woods Would Be Described as ‘Lurking’ Seven Strokes Off the Lead”

Really? This is the first thing I see when I’m looking for a little afternoon Master’s coverage. I really don’t think my request is that unreasonable. I’m not saying stop the 24 hour Tiger coverage. I’m just asking for a little creativity. It’s a shame that a pun-lover like myself has to be the one to say it. Enough with the cliches.

Now if only Tiger could Stewart Cink a putt.