Mike Hall: For Sale

Alright, so as you can guess I really am not a very good blogger. Nikki on the other hand, she’s incredible. She blogs about everything! She is the best at documenting. The cool thing about it is that someday our friends and family and even we will be able to look back at all of our adventures. It will be fan-freaking-tastic.
Alright so Nikki’s been bugging me to blog for a while now about my birthday and what an amazing wife I have. So here it is. Don’t the the title of this entry confuse you. I really do have crabs. Two of them to be exact! Nikki gave them to me for my birthday. That and something else that I’ll get to in a minute. So here is their introduction to the world wide web. Introducing…

So for those of you that aren’t Lost fans (even though everyone should be) Jack, Sawyer and Kate are all characters in this amazing show. Jack and Sawyer have been fighting over Kate for a long time now, for years. It’s crazy. So we figured these could be some good names for our crabs and fish. So there you have it! Meet the crabs and fish. But I have to mention that Nikki also gave me an incredible gift for my birthday.

Yep, she got me an Xbox 360 Elite. An Xbox you say? Yes! I know! Crazy eights, but she did. So if anyone wants to get on live and add me as a friend or maybe play some Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, my name is…Scatolax.

So for anyone that actually reads this, that’s my birthday crabby update, and to Nikki, here is my blog. Sorry it’s been so long but I’ve been busy! Once I graduate in April I hope to have more time to blog and do all this fun shtuffs. Enjoy!

So for those of you that don’t know this. I have the most amazing and spectacular fiance in the world. She literally rocks my socks off. I love her so very much. So my birthday is on January 28th and this year I truly had a fantastic one. So I have needed a new phone for a while now and Nikki, being the phenominal woman that she is, knew that I not only needed a new phone but that I’m a kind of picky person. I just love to have all sorts of amazing gizmos and gadgets a plenty. So yes, Nikki gave me the killer G1 for my birthday! Talk about incredible, I know!

So that was one of the first things that made my birthday great this year. Then… I also got a refresh on my hosting from my parents. They also gave me ‘Star Wars: The Force Unleashed’ for the Wii. Talk about exciting I know! Oh and my family always has a birthday dinner for each of us kids on our birthday. That’s when they gave all this jazz. So I had my Mom’s amazing lasagna and my favorite kind of cake… can you guess? Yup, German Choloclate. Yum. Then I also went to dinner with a bunch of my friends. We went to Red Lobster. Delicious as always. Thank you to all who came and to those who couldn’t make it I’m sorry. Maybe next year. But I just wanted to shout out to all my friends who made my birthday wonderful. And thank you for all the gifts. You all know who you are. I just had to tell the world that I have some of the greatest friends I could ever ask for.

So… that’s ma birthday this year. I can’t believe it but I am twenty three years old. Gawsh, I never thought it would come. For those of you that can appreciate the G1 stay tuned. I’ll be blogging shortly about some of my favorite features and apps. Thanks again to all you all. I love.

According to Gizmodo, the following is a list “50 Skills Every Geek Should Have.” Now usually I’m not one to brag but I thought that this would be fun to see what all I have accomplished on this list. I’m torn as to whether I should be proud or sad… well… I’ll take proud. So have a look, here is how I measure up to Gizmodo’s standards. I hope some of you can find this interesting and to those of you that don’t (Nikki) well… you can just roll your eyes and stop reading now. Your welcome, you have been spared. Alright, on to the list, as I said before, I am proud to say I have achieved 41 out of these 50 various skills. Enjoy.

1. Install a hard drive in a laptop
2. Perform a clean OS install on a machine with two OSes
3. Swap out the battery on your iPod/iPhone
4. Jailbreak an iPhone
5. Wire your house for Ethernet and Coax cable
6. Use BitTorrent and RSS to automatically download new shows from trackers
7. Use an A/V receiver to its fullest capability (every port is taken)
8. Calibrate an HDTV without the manual
9. Use a DSLR in full manual mode
10. Hack the encryption and mooch your neighbor’s Wi-Fi
11. Solder cleanly enough to get around a circuit board
12. Use your 3G phone as a Wi-Fi access point
13. Shove the guts of a modern game console into a retro game console
14. Design a webpage in HTML by hand that features a picture of your cat
15. Use Photoshop to imperceptibly doctor a photo
16. Abstain from buying extended warranties
17. Know where to buy cheap cables and accessories
18. Fix your parents’ computer over the phone without looking at a computer
19. Enter the Konami code
20. Comment on Gizmodo from your phone
21. Type quickly using T9 texting
22. Program a universal remote
23. Contribute code to the Linux kernel
24. Hide porn from your significant other
25. Avoid DRM on everything
26. Know how to back up your data to networked storage—and actually do it
27. Watch TV shows on the internet for free
28. Edit together digital video ripped from YouTube
29. Play any SNES game on your computer through an emulator
30. Reset expired trial software by messing with the registry
31. Hackintosh your PC
32. Download pre-release movies from Usenet
33. Hack the Wii to play homebrew games
34. Get around web content filters on public computers
35. Get into a Windows computer if you forgot your password
36. Securely erase your data so it can’t be recovered
37. Share a printer between a Mac and a PC on a network
38. Build a fighting robot
39. Write your own Firefox plugins
40. Navigate and reorganize the files on your computer in DOS
41. Get something on the front page of Digg
42. Get through to executive customer service
43. Rip a CD to V0 quality MP3s
44. Rip a DVD to DivX
45. Build your own computer from parts
46. Swap out the hard drive in your DVR for a bigger one
47. Get an NES cartridge working again by blowing in it
48. Calibrate a 7.1 surround-sound system
49. Play downloaded games on a Nintendo DS
50. Talk about things that aren’t tech related

I don’t know about everyone else out there but I am definelty ultra obsessive compulsive about my music collection. I always insist on having the best quality and best organized collection I possibly can. One of the hardest things to do is find quality album art work or cover art for your albums… enter Album Art Exchange. You can find them at http://albumartexchange.com and it has been my savior many times when looking for album art. So go and take a look all of you people out there that, like me, insist upon utter and complete music library perfection.