The Lewis Show

Playing around with RSS feeds can be a bit tedious. I am going crazy, however, over Google Reader. I've even put a widgit in my blog that will highlight stories that I read over the course of the day. Once a week, or so, I'm going to comment on those stories, if anything to explain why such things would fascinate me. Over time, I'm even going to start my own podcast highlighting those stories. And away we go! (I"m not posting hyperlinks, go to my sidebar and click them yourself) Google is rumored to plans for purchasing FeedBurner for 100 million dollars. Google is freaking everywhere now as you can see they pretty much own my daily internets. With FeedBurner, Google is sure to jump head first into the podcasting market and pretty much every local and corporate podcast runs through Feedburner. Kudos to Google! iPhone is going to ship at this point on June 20th. A phone that runs Apple software. A year ago I would have laughed, but now I know for sure that Apple, Inc, i

Janine really likes Haste the Day. I like em too, very metalcore, but that's ok. So I'm really interested in going. I assume that it's a show at the Norva where maybe three other bands were playing. Boy was I wrong. I give you the 2007 line up to the Van's Warped Tour . All 9 million bands! Heck yeah, I'll go! A Static Lullaby The Actual Agent Orange Alesana Alkaline Trio All Time Low The Almost Amber Pacific Anberlin As Cities Burn As I Lay Dying Authority Zero The Automatic Bad Religion Bayside Biffy Clyro Big D And The Kids Table Bleed The Dream Bless The Fall Boys Like Girls The Briggs Buck O Nine The Chariot Chiodos Cinematic Sunrise Circa Survive Coheed And Cambria The Confession Cute Is What We Aim For Daphne Loves Derby Desperation Squad The Dear And Departed Dont Die Cindy Drop Dead Gorgeous Envy On The Coast Escape The Fate Evaline The Fabulous Rudies Family Force 5 Fishbon

Seven hundred dollars. That's how much it cost to get my car back on the road again. Two weekends ago, I'm driving along Iron Bridge Road, minding my own business, when I noticed the coolant light flashing on. I pulled right over just in time to see steam coming out of the hood. That's not good. The main hose had completely popped off, which apparently is a sign of the thermostat going bad which means I had to rig it back together, fill the radiator with water and try to drive it home. I was able to limp it back home, but it was seriously overheating, so I decided I would go to Advance Auto on Monday, drive the car to Petey, my regular mechanic, when I can't take the car to Dad, and have him fix it for me. That plan didn't work. I was able to drive it all of two miles before it started to act up again. It was hissing and the hose popped off again, so I decided to pull the car into a local shop next to the Advanced Auto to get a thermostat, have them replace it and

Last Monday when I was off, it was cute... Even the neighbor's dog thought it was amusing but today I have been constantly heckled by this bird... Even Topaz is annoyed. Which isn't saying much... It's the ever peeping, pissed off, daddy Cardinal!!! peep peep peep peep peep peep peep peep!!!

It has been a busy couple of days but I've gotten to eat at two of the finest restaurants in Richmond! Last night after work, we all got together at Franco's Italian Ristorante to have dinner with some guest speakers at our symposium. That was a very enjoyable evening. I got to meet one of my biggest producers, and got a few stories from my boss on Kelly. I'm sure there will be a time when I can share those stories! I had the penne alla vodka, and it was very good, I highly recommend it. The food was wonderful. There's something about eating at a fancy restaurant, something about eating food that requires different utensils, something about a dimly lit room and lots of Chardonnay. Tonight, to honor my first year with Janine, I made reservations at The Tobacco Company in downtown Richmond. I'm sure many people figured out from my hint the location. We had a really, really good time. Our waiter, Jay, was helpful and professional. The food was amazing. I was just thril

I'm taking Janine out to celebrate our anniversary this Thursday. I haven't told her where we're going, but I thought it would be fun to post a hint. A lot of Richmond natives know this location, but I figured it would be fun to tease Janine just a little. Shhhh!!

I've said many times how fortunate I am to have such great, loving parents. I may not have grown up in the best environment, but they both did the best they could to take care of my brother and me. Over the past 5 years, I've been scared out of my wits because of my Mother's various illnesses, but over the past 8 months, she's been doing better than she has in a long, long time. Heck, she's even thinking about visiting Janine and me over the next couple weeks. This would have been unheard of around Christmas, 2005, because at that time, Dad was telling me to come over to say my farewells to her. She's now back to her old self again....or as I call her, the original smartass! Judy has been a rock, and my strongest supporter through all the bad and stupid decisions I've made in my life, my loudest but most constructive critic, and the one person I can talk to after a bad day and know that everything is going to be allright. A blog post certainly cannot express

My team has had a very rough 4 weeks, but my 3 drivers qualified in the top 3 spots for tonight's race. I think this is going to be a good week for Team Ugly. Janine and I will be living it up tonight at Kelly's house. I look forward to good times...and a big, big win!

Sam and I trying to not look like we are in a Ben Franklin Craft Store! Zeus is feeling 100% better after her cold. I love this pic of Janine and me! We were attending lunch at her aunt and uncle's house for Easter. D-Ray at his birthday party. That was a very fun night! No! I r not siez elevuns!

I've been pretty outspoken about how outdated the business model is for the Recording Industry and the Motion Picture Association is, but the perverbial shit hit the fan last week, when a user posted the HD DVD encryption on Digg . I frequent Digg daily to get my dose of geek, and as you can see in my sidebar, you can even see the stories that I've dugg. One of the founders of Digg, and the public face of the company, Kevin Rose, has been under fire from Digg users for pulling the article after he received a cease warning from the big faceless copyright board. Kevin eventually put the post back on his website, and now the next battle begins. As many of you know, Windows recently released their latest operating system, Vista, which pretty much bows to the demands of content owners and their legal armies and they along with HD providers had made extra steps in preventing such cracks from getting out. Anyone with half a brain knows however, that these things were meant to be crac

Last year, I took a day off from work. Janine came to get me that afternoon and we went to the Hollywood Cemetery . From there we went to have dinner at Cracker Barrel , and then on to see Silent Hill. The movie, which is ok at best, was just scary enough for Janine to grab my hand the entire movie and hold on tight. It was at that moment that I knew that I had something going on with this girl and we became serious. That was May 10, 2006. One year later, I am happier than I have ever been and I know now that I'm with the person who was meant to be with me. Happy Anniversary, Janine. I hope this is only the beginning of a wonderful life together!

Last Friday when Sam and Jessi came into town, we all met up at Red Lobster for dinner before going to see SpiderMan 3. At the table Sam and I immediately started talking about the geekiest things that we could possibly talk about. So, in the name of education, I figured I'd go over this geek talk and explain what it all meant. Gene and I would blow everyone away whenever we talked about apps and software and music, so without further adieu, I give you show notes from The Sam and Mike Show! Sam has recently installed Ubuntu linux on his PC. He's been having problems which are very unusual with his wireless Internet card. He basically had to switch to a hard line connection which means instead of computing wirelessly , he was plugged into the router through his ethernet . Apparently the problem is somewhere within Windows, because the wireless card works perfectly fine with Linux. I think there's something up with the drives, but that's still a mystery to me. I was u

In a vain attempt to keep up with the goings ons here in Richmond, I figured I'd look around to see what was going on during the month of May here in town. Here's what I found..ok, it's mostly stuff that I would be interested in doing or seeing. There's plenty going on for everyone's taste. This is just my flavor: As I Lay Dying with August Burns Red and Fair to Midland on May 9th Richmond Luche Libre on May 12th Big Bad Voodoo Daddy on May 31st And looking ahead to June, Three DaysGrace/ Breaking Benjamin with Puddle of Mudd and RED on June 3rd Live on June 6th

My goodness. It looks like hell has frozen over. Gas is steadily increasing and will probably hit four dollars a gallon by the end of summer in Virginia. The Dallas Mavericks, the top rated seat in the NBA Western Division, knocked out by the lowest ranked Golden State Warriors. The weather has been a roller coaster of extremes, one day posting over 90 degrees, the next, barely 60 degrees. The stock market, which 5 years ago was looking very bleak, is posting record highs. People are getting paid less to do more and expected to accomplish wealth, people have to be either incredibly lucky or incredibly crooked. Extremists are undermining our efforts to bring Democracy in Iraq in the name of holy war. Okay , nothing sounds too shocking, until I wake up and find out that a conservative won the Presidential election in France. You have got to be kidding me! I thought Europe hated Bush with such a rabid fervor that people literally foamed at the mouth. Especially the French! What is a B

I thought I'd leave a quick post. Jessi and Sam arrived around 5:30 yesterday afternoon. We met at the Red Lobster on Hull Street, which I still think is the coolest Red Lobster that I've ever visited. I mean where else can you sit next to an aquarium full of fish and force them to watch you eat....fish. We then rushed out to catch Spider Man 3. I, for some still unknown reason, had Sam preorder tickets for the Broad Street theater which was a mess when we got there. There may have been 4 seats, but they were scattered all over the place! Janine saved the day by going to the manager and getting us bumped to the 8 o'clock SpiderMan. That was a relief! The movie itself if jam packed with geeky goodness, if anything, there may be too much goodness. Plot twist after twist...after twist...after twist. But I enjoyed the movie, and it is by far the best of the trilogy. Afterwards, Jessi and Sam followed us home. I'm so glad that we got the upstairs decent enough for them to sl