David Pitlyuk

Sunday was my 26th birthday, and I threw a bit of a party on Saturday at my house to celebrate. What I realized is that I took a couple videos before everybody got there, and took barely any pictures…when I was planning to record the whole night. I’m pretty sure the alcohol had an affect on that But hey, it was my birthday, and I think it’s a valid excuse right?

I had about 50-60 people show up at the house, we had 2 kegs, a backup 30 pack, a fully stocked bar, and a big Gatorade jug of margaritas. All of it was gone by this morning! We also had a beer pong tournament with 3 separate tables and 15 teams with a $150 pot to the winner. The beer pong tournament didn’t get started until about 12am, so when I was taking some of the video we only had one table setup. My team won the 1st round, but we got knocked out in the 2nd round. My buddies Mike and Chris ended up winning, they are really good, and usually win tournaments.

On Sunday morning, a bunch of us headed over to Friday’s for lunch…trying to get rid of our hangovers. We all hung out for a bit, and then after doing some cleaning, headed over to Sakura Steakhouse with a friend for a birthday hibachi dinner.

The house is pretty dirty, we’ve got a maid coming tomorrow to clean it up, and then we’ll be getting the carpets steam cleaned. Between the alcohol and cleaning the house, cost of the party was about $700 or so. But it was well worth it, and I had a blast. Thanks to everybody who showed up!

Here’s a little video compilation of more of the beginning of the night:

My business partner for Tri Megatech drives a Subaru STI when he’s not managing or setting up a network. He sent me a video this morning which I thought was worthy of sharing with you guys…they take a Subaru STI out snowboarding…you just have to watch and see:

This should have been an ad for the Super Bowl, I wanted to go out and buy an STI after seeing it. Eric took his STI snowboarding with us last a couple weekends ago, here’s his with the snowboard rack:

Here’s a video I did back in college featuring a buddy’s WRX tearing it up through the snow:

For those of you that were caught up in the hype of American Gladiators re-launching, just to be disappointed, join the club. I had a ton of complaints about the show when I finally saw my first new episode. Then I happened to check my e-mail inbox where I saw the subject “AG Monologue”…and it was from one of my good, hilarious, friends Elliott Antal. This should be good I thought to myself. As always, Elliott didn’t disappoint…so I asked for his permission to repost it on here to share with the world. Let us know what you thought of American Gladiators by posting your comments.

• 45 minutes I’ve been at work
• 25 emails
• 1 coffee run

Sounds like I’m ready to run down some observations about the greatest comeback since Michael Jordan playing baseball…that’s right…the AMERICAN GLADIATORS!!! Or the ‘AG’ as NBC likes to slang it. If you have watched any of it so far this e-mail will make sense, if not then I hope this e-mail will make you search YouTube for any clips supporting or denying my claims.

• First off NBC played the celebrity card to try and get viewers tuned in, I don’t know how many people I ran into before the first episode aired that said, “Hulk Hogan is going to be a Gladiator” just to find out that the Hulkster is actually a glorified sideline reporter, and because the job is too big for one ex-WWF wrestler, they had to find him a partner in Ms. Ali.
• Second, I don’t remember the first ‘AG’ having so many damn in game interviews. I don’t care to hear the philosophies of some random blue contestant, I tuned in to see someone with a name like Titan sit on your head!
• Thirdly, the Gladiators. I think they grabbed these guys in a San Fran court house, I believe these are all witnesses in the ongoing BALCO investigation. And in Barry Bond’s defense, steroids by themselves do not increase an individuals ability, and not in Canseco’s defense, they do tend to kill some brain cells. Case in point, the Gladiator named Wolf…I’d hate to meet this guy in a dark alley….until I saw him in the rings event and learned that if I do meet him in an alley, all I would have to do is look for the nearest gym apparatus to climb on. The guy they call Titan looks like he’s been posing for the cover of romance novels chipping away at Fabio’s profits. By far my favorite Gladiator is Helga…I have $50 that says even the guys can’t get by her, I also have $100 that says she celebrates a victory by chugging a keg and smashing it on her forehead.
• Fourth, the new event. Instead of trying to fight a Gladiator out of a ring, like traditional wrestling, the ring is now elevated and rotates called EARTHQUAKE. This is another event in which steroids don’t help the Gladiators much, a sense of balance is something you don’t expect from a jungle living Gladiator called TOA.
• Fifth, where is the classic event. Am I the only one that noticed that the new ‘AG’ doesn’t have that human ball rolling event anymore? You know the one where they tried to roll into a pod and wait till smoke shot up their butt to record a point. NBC lost some major points by not bringing that back.
• Sixth, the Eliminator. This event can hardly be called the Eliminator, this is nothing like the original. Contestants get to frolic through some obstacle course that looks about as hard as any event you did during Field Day in Middle School (if your school had those). There are no Gladiators like in the original and it doesn’t even look as long. Which makes me wonder why these contestants are always so winded and cannot run up the damn escalator at the end of it…did anyone screen these contestants for athletic ability before they applied?

Well for those of you who waited for the return of a classic 80’s show and were disappointed…you don’t have long to wait. NBC will soon be destroying the legend of Knight Rider next.

All around the net I’ve seen my favorite bloggers post their happy new years posts, and I thought I’d do the same.

Let The Festivities Begin

For New Years Eve, we headed over to Glen Burnie, MD for a party that our friend Butch was having. When I was back in college in Baltimore I used to live in a duplex type townhome with two best friends. The house attached to ours was what became 3 good friends of ours (One of them, Eric, is now my business partner for Tri Megatech). Almost every Saturday we used to throw dual house keg parties. Butch’s party had a lot of those people that we hadn’t seen in a long time, so it was like a big reunion. The party had about 40-50 people, 3 kegs, food, and a midnight champagne toast.

Here’s a few of the girls from the party:

Here’s me with a few of the girls:

Here’s the host of the party, Butch:

My buddy Mike and I ran the beer pong table towards the end of the night, never losing a game. Check out the below video, and you’ll see my excitement about that at the end:

What I Want To Change In 2008

There are quite a few things I want to do in 2008:

• I will eat much better and cook for myself more.
• I will workout more and get in better shape, especially by this Summer
• I will clean up my current businesses. By this I mean I will sell/get rid of what I feel I don’t want to continue or spend more time on so I can put more concentration on what I want to grow.
• I will launch a new site that I’ve been thinking about for about 6 months now
• I will help grow Tri Megatech by at least 200% of gross revenue from 2007
• I will generate at least $5,000 in revenue from Carbon Fiber Gear
• I will launch the new design for this blog

What are your goals, and what will you be doing to accomplish them?

For years I’ve always wanted a better solution for car games and how they are played. There is just nothing that really gives you the full immersion of being in a car, although things like force feedback and better steering wheels have gotten better. Although this is more than likely meant for simulation rather than video games, Festo has come up with an awesome solution:

What’s better than a picture? The guys over at one of my favorite sites (Autoblog) made a video:

I can’t see anybody not wanting to try this!

Lauren Porter, an art student, knitted a life-size Ferrari 355 for her honors degree. She spent 10 months, 12 miles of yarn, and 250 squares on top of a steel frame in order to make the car…and it turned out pretty good too! It would be a nice addition with your Lamborghini Countach hanging on the wall. Here’s a few pictures of the results:

You can find a video of the setup on Lauren’s site. You can also find a good video that Reuters did here. Here are a couple of videos I found on YouTube:

Since I own a Dodge Viper, this news immediately caught my attention. A red and white Dodge Viper GTS lost control and hit a fire hydrant during rush hour traffic in Addison, Ill. The car flipped over, and leveled off the fire hydrant, causing water to gush everywhere. Luckily the driver managed to get out of the car uninjured. Sounds like a scene from an action movie, huh?

The Viper forums had a couple of notable quotes in response to the accident that made me chuckle:

I guess this is not the best way to get a “free car wash”.

I wonder if that hydrant was loaded with Mr. Clean Auto Dry…

Ebay Listing: Clean Title, Florida car, never seen rain!

Well, thats one way to wash the underbody

There are two videos that I found, the first one is a news report by a CBS affiliate. This video is the best, but can only be played on their site.

The other you can watch here:

Although the Viper is a great car, they also make great Dodge trucks. They look best when coupled with the newest truck accessories and truck bed covers. People also seem to like chrome accessories to make their truck shine! Read all about trucks today.

I caught a link to this speed typing test over at LifeHack.

I got this score after doing the test a few times, and my fingers were already hurting! My best score was 95wpm with 3 errors. I sent a link to a few buddies, the worst was 48wpm, and the best was 105wpm with 0 errors. Most of the people I sent it to were in the 80-100wpm range.

Try it out, and let me know what you get, but don’t cheat! Otherwise you can get a “copy paste” score like this:

Last weekend Crystal and I went to Bamboozle Fest at Giants Stadium in New Jersey to see Linkin Park. Bamboozle Fest is a two day event where over 100 bands played. Each day there were two major headline bands, My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park. Crystal and I are both big Linkin Park fans, so we decided to go on Sunday for the day they were playing.

I’m not a huge concert kinda guy, but it ended up being a lot of fun. The weather wasn’t too hot, and there were plenty of vendor-type things going on all over the place. There were a ton of stages, so you could go and see a different bad at any time of the day. When Linkin Park played, they were the only band, so everybody watched them. We were at about the 5th row, just looking back there was an unlimited amount of people.

Here we are arriving at Giants stadium.

Even though Meadowlands (Giants stadium) is in NJ, it’s right across the water from New York City. Here you can see the NYC skyline from the stadium parking lot.

Here’s Crystal and I at the concert

I forget which band this is, but you can see how many people there were. When Linkin Park played, take this and multiply it by about 100.

Even more people behind me!

All of the pictures I took when Linkin Park was playing came out blurry, so this is the best you’ll get.

Overall it was definitely worth the $35/ticket, and I recommend checking it out next year if you are in the area. Linkin Park put on a really good show, this is the 2nd time I’ve seen them live.

My business partner for Tri Megatech turned me on to a comedian that has now become my favorite. His name is Brian Regan. Surprisingly he is a clean comic (meaning no cursing), but I find his comedy to be gut-hurting funny. If you’ve never heard anything from Brian Regan, watch this video from the Improv (and let me know what you think!):