A Little Goofy

Watching the big wigs

2009-10-11T09:13:00.002-05:00

I had the opportunity to attend the ACA (Air Commando Association) renunion dinner last night. It was a special evening for a lot of reasons. The original general who started the 1st ACG was in attendance. Major General Jon Alison sat with his troops from WWII.

Gen Arnold directed veteran fighter pilots Lieutenant Colonels Philip G.Cochran and John R. Alison to build a self-reliant composite fighting force to support British Brigadier General Orde C. Wingate and his “Chindits” on long-range penetrations into Burma against the Japanese. By March 1944, this force was designated the 1st Air Commando Group (1 ACG).
These air commandos flew over hazardous mountains and jungles to find and resupply the highly mobile British ground forces in hostile territory. From these missions, the 1 ACG earned its motto of “Any Place, Any Time, Any Where” - a variation of which is still used today

There were a lot of current Air Force in attendance as well. Saw quite a few "stars". I believe there were 5 uniformed Generals in attendance, and a myriad of retired. The draw for all these "stars" was the speaker and honored guest, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz spoke to the group. I was quietly amused at how many active duty high ranking staff became ACA members in the last few months. I imagine the opportunity to sit with, hear, and talk to the highest ranking military officer in the Air Force doesn't come along very often.
I was incredibly impressed by Gen. Schwartz. He didn't appear to fit the stereotype of what one would expect from a career military man who sits with the President as part of the Joint Staff. When the ROTC presented colors and sang the national anthem he made a bee-line for the singer and shook his hand. His speech was on target, and well prepared. He generally addressed Gen. Alison and his group. This was to be their last formal gathering.

Whenever I attend these functions I am always impressed by the people. 300+ individuals who served us, their country. They are all almost to a one full of pride, strength, heroism, and commitment. Yet, they have no ego. They voluntarily chose to make their sacrifices.
It was honor to sit beside them.

Catching up on the old intertubes

2009-08-04T17:33:00.002-05:00

Phew.. happened to look at this site and realized it's been too long again.

Soo? What's new.

I went to Colorado springs for a vacation. The pictures are up in the flickr account.

I had issues with my knee again, but no cyst/tumor, just muscle and tendon issues. Will be in physical therapy for a month or so.

Haven't won the lottery yet.

Back to two monitors on the ubuntu machine. Had to buy a new graphics card, but it made a huge difference in performance. On board graphics really sucked up the processor.

Nothing new in the garage. Knee pain and hot weather are the biggest reasons. Taking a 5% pay cut also hampers buying too many toys.

yea, nothing too exciting..

111 with a birdie and two pars

2009-05-18T08:12:00.000-05:00

Dad and I played the Oaks on Sunday. We were able to get all 18 holes in without any rain. There was a lot of hate in the clouds around us, but it remained dry the whole time.

I had a great day on the course. I know 111 isn't a great score, but it doesn't completely reflect the change in how I played from my previous rounds on the Pines. I played double bogey golf with some errant holes on both sides of the scoring line to make the score what it was.

The Oaks course was not in good shape. Stepping back a bit, and realizing it was 'only' $40.00 to play it wasn't horrible. However the greens were in rough shape. Missing grass, noticeable patching of the greens, all the hole plugs visible. Most of the grass was brown. Someone told me that the Oaks had room for 14 holes, but they put 18 in anyways. I would agree with that. We played 18 holes in 3 hours. Only bumping up against the foursome in front of us two or three times. We were only rushed on one hole. However, with fairways separated by a single line of oaks, there was some delays as balls crossed fairways. It's obvious that little attention is being paid to this course when compared with pines. Still, $40.00 is pretty cheap, and it is a muni. The Oaks is a more challenging course than the pines, but it's also uglier and more claustrophobic

Not a complete play by play, but here's the day:
1st - Par 5 - 7 - 90 degree in mid air drive which just cleared the girl tee into the woods. Batted a couple shots in the trees then made it to the green with a good putt.
2nd - Par 3 - 4
3rd - Par 4 - 7 (Putting - extra approach)
4th - Par 5 - 11 - OMG, this hole was insanely aggravating. I hit a decent drive, but it clipped the top of a tree, and sent my ball into some fir trees and against a net. I punched out into another tree which ricocheted into the neighboring fairway. Two more shots off their fairway to get back onto mine. Infuriating because the shot that finally made it through the trees landed in a fairway bunker. I clipped the shot high on the ball sending it wide right of the hole. Two chips on to the green.
5th - Par 4 - 4 - First par of the day, and glad to get it after the previous hole
6th - Par 4 - 5 (Putting)
7th - Par 3 - 7 - Out of bounds on the first shot. Hitting 4 to get on the green...
8th - Par 4 - 6 - This was actually a saved double bogey. I hoseled my second shot bad.
9th - Par 4 - 5 - (Putting)
Out in 56
10th - Par 4 - 6 (Approach and putting)
11th - Par 4 - 9 - Another one where I played the wrong fairway. There are three water traps on this one. Two were dried up, but I ended up missing all of them. Once i got to the green, I just played ping pong with the edges of the green and chipping. Lost three strokes to chasing the chip.
12th - Par 5 - 5 - Woohoo! Second Par on the second hardest hole of the course. Great drive which clipped the corner. I didn't have a club to get me on the green, so I went down a bit hoping to come 80yards short of the hole to give me an approach shot I am comfortable with. I nailed it, but didn't know there was water (hidden by a hill). Luckily the course was in such bad shape the water receded enough I could still play it. I punched it out of the water to the edge of the green, chip and a putt and I was out!
13th - Par 3 - 6 - Silly hole for me. Pin high but way left, then chipped around the green a few time for no reason...
14th - Par 4 - 5 - This one was amusing only because my drive was 80 yards off the hosel. I hit a 3 wood to within 20 yards of the hole.
15th - Par 4 - 5
16th - Par 4 - 8 - Horrid drive, good second shot, but right behind a tree. Third shot clipped the tree. 4th was a punch out. On the green with the 5th, 3 putt.. =(
17th - Par 3 - 2 - First birdie for me. It's a short (118) Par 3. Pin was in the front. I landed my ball in the middle of the green (inch behind the middle pin position) and was able to sink a 20 ft putt. The last 1/4" of rotation it had left was in the hole.
18th - Par 5 - 9 - Not a great ending. I had dialed in (mostly) my driver and hybrid. I had a great drive, but somehow wildly shanked to the right into the woods. Third shot I actually had a lane to the hole. I clipped a tree top and it bounced into the fairway. 4th shot was the right length, but in a bunker. 5th shot was 4ft out of the bunker. 6th on the green, then 3-putt. Very silly hole.
Out in 55 for a 111

Workshop projects

2009-04-27T09:41:00.002-05:00

I spent the weekend 'off the grid'. It was a nice break, only checking email two or three times, and watching television during dinner.
Saturday was yard day, and shopping day for the Sunday projects.
Sunday was great. I spent the entire day in the garage building stuff. While spending 10 hours in a hot garage breathing rust and weld particles can be tiring, it's soo much fun to see something come together at the end of it.
I recently purchased a metal craft workshop and needed a place to setup the tools. Our garage is a two car garage, but we really only have room for one car. The dog wagon is relegated to the driveway. The two cars are just too big to both fit, even if I didn't have tools spread around the perimeter. The metal workshop is centered around a scroll bender. The issue I ran into was that anything to be scrolled defined the radius of a circle required in space. A 3ft stock required a 6ft. diameter circle. This meant I couldn't setup a workbench against a wall. I needed to work in the center of the garage. This isn't conducive to parking a car. =)
The solution was to create a rolling workarea. Almost all my workstations in the garage use a wheeled solution. My welding table is on wheels. My radial saw is on a cabinet with wheels. Welder is on wheels. You get the point.
The issue with this new rolling work area is that it needed to be stable once it was in the center of the garage. Pulling metal around the scroller would just turn the cart in a circle. Locking wheels were an option, but I wanted to experiment.
I went through a couple of design ideas and finally settled on a dual lever setup.
The final implementation works very well, and only added about 6" to the width of the cabinet. I am now able to roll the cart out to the center, raise the wheels, and work.

The metal stock came from a huge drying rack Paul was able to scavenge. I have used pieces off it for a year or more.

First step was to cut all the stock down to the right sizes.

Second step was to drill the 1/2 holes for the all-thread rod which passes through the cabinet.
This was done in three steps. The final 1/2 hole was the worse. Used 1/3 of a bottle of oil to keep the bit lubricated.

Next step was to weld the rear lever to the pivot point. This double height setup allows the rear lever to sit on top of the front lever flat which was a key design to allow a simple mechanism to lock the two in a wheels down position.

With the arms completed, I moved back to the cabinet. The holes in the lever are 1.5" from the edge. I located the 1/2 rod 2" from the bottom, and 2" from the cabinet edge. This allows the levers to rotate in a complete arc. The image doesn't show it, but in the final build I added fender washers between the nut and the cabinet casing.

With the threaded rod installed, I tested the fit of the levers and determined where to place the wheels. I ended up just picking a random placement just forward of the hole for the threaded rod. Next step was to weld the casters to the levers. Unfortunately welding the caster burns out the bearings. Makes the swivel less than smooth. This doesn't matter much since it's moving across less than 10ft of floor.

Getting to the last of the build. I installed the lever arms with the casters. Using jamb nuts to lock the outer nut on. The wheels rotate up off the bottom and the cabinet sits on the floor. The weight of the 'stuff' inside it and the friction of the base on the floor is enough to stabilize it for scrolling.

To move the cabinet, I just lift the edge of the cabinet up a few inches. The weight of the levers rotate the wheels down. I built a little clip (using the metal craft tools) which slips over the outer two levers. It locks the wheels in the down position. Not pictured is a small tack weld on the clips. They worked without it, but I was in a welding mood.

And now the cabinet fits back in it's original location!

The metal workshop tools were installed on the top. That was it's own stroke of luck. There are four tools in the version I bought. A shear/punch tool, square brake, circle maker, and two different scrollers. The scrollers require a clear radius over the other items. I mounted them on a 2x6 platform. I got lucky in that the box allowed me to mount both scrollers on one box. To use the smaller one, I just rotate the box, add a 2x4 shim and they are both locked against the braces on the top of the cabinet. To use either the shear or square brake, I remove the box and I have enough space to work.

My other project was a tow dolly for the tractor. I had to relinquish the camera to Jeanette since she was going to see the newest addition to her family. I did manage to snap some pictures of the progress at the end though. I will have another post about it later.

New Computer setup

2009-04-15T09:23:00.002-05:00

Thought I would share my new desktop setup at the house.

I work out of my home, which has it's advantages and disadvantages. We have 4 active computers in the house, my personal computer, my work computer, and one each for Jeanette and Hannah. Added to the network is a VOIP phone through packet8
With working from the house the separation between a work and home computer wasn't that easy. I use a dual screen setup and if I wanted to do something off the work computer, I had to physically move to a corner of the desk, and be 'stuck' with one monitor.

My personal computer is a desktop with Ubuntu 8.10. It's setup with a raid drive which all the computers in the house back up to. We store our music there as well. I have been running this machine for a few months, testing and playing with it to make sure it was stable.

The new setup is pretty sweet for me. I reduced my desk footprint, and have a more efficient (for me) working environment.

Primary computer is the Ubuntu machine running dual screens. I am using the open source ATI driver for this. I loose compiz and other accelerated graphics, but that's not a big deal. I couldn't get the flgrx driver to run BigDesktop. Maybe the better way to put it is I gave up. =) I am still fighting some contrast/brightness issues with the VGA monitor in this setup. The VGA monitor is 'washed out' on the subtle colors. I am considering purchasing a NVidia card with dual DVI heads + TV at some point. The current x1200 ATI is an on board card.
I setup VirtualBox to run an install of XP Home which I had left over from Hannah's laptop. I converted her laptop to Ubuntu several months ago. I have to run a windows setup for work. VPN, Outlook, Intercall, etc are still windows only, or more appropriately they run smoother on windows. I know about evolution, and can run intercall in a wine setup, but the virtualbox setup was dead simple.
I still have a laptop from work which sees use when I travel. I couldn't completely scrap that one, so I have it running as well. I access that from the Ubuntu machine through rdesktop. I have a webcam for conference calls which I have not successfully integrated with Ubuntu yet. Really haven't tried that hard either.
With Gnomes window switcher I keep one of the desktops with a full screen of the XP Home, and the other with the rdesktop to the laptop along with a browser.
The great feature here is that I can run another desktop with my current projects files. It's a clean screen focused only on that task. One click and I am back to the email/windows environment.

To coordinate all the files, I use a few different methods.
The Virtualbox XP Home is 90% to run Outlook. I use google sync to sync my calendar to a gmail account setup for work related items. I can view that gmail calendar from anywhere.
My files are saved to the RAID drive on the Ubuntu machine through shared folders. This keeps the VirtualBox XP setup 'clean'. I could loose that setup completely and not loose any files at all.
The laptop uses synctoy to synchronize it's files with the RAID on the Ubuntu machine. Every night it grabs the updates made during the day. Of course it still has Outlook installed, so I try to run that every night to catch up on the IMAP updates. Even if I forget, it will catch up the next time I run it. My emails are remote. The laptop also has Google sync on it, but it syncs read only to Jeanettes calendar so she can see what times I have appointments. Helps if she is planning things.

So I am now protected from any one of three failure points. If the Ubuntu system completely and totally crashes I only loose that days files, and can switch to the laptop.
If Virtualbox XP crashes I can switch to the laptop, or the primary ubuntu machine (accessing email through the web). If the laptop crashes I have the Ubuntu machine.
The laptop can be taken off the dock and used at any time and have the most up to date files as long as I run synctoy just before it.

The best part for me is that I can shut down Virtualbox, and not feel guilty for doing my personal work. I am not on a company computer. I can test applications, work on personal projects, etc. without worrying about uninstalling or such. However, I am just one rdesktop command away from using the laptop to "get back to work".

There are still some todos to work out:
* VGA wash out. - This is an OCD issue for me now. I know it's possible to fix. I will either buy a new card, or learn whatever language is required to write a new driver.
* Archived emails are on the laptop. Single point of failure, but in the end not horrible. Archived emails are 12 months old.
* Clunky access to files in Virtualbox. Windows defaults to My Documents which is empty. Need to investigate how to remap that without having a domain controller.
* Speakers. Only an investment in new ones will fix this. I have ferritte cores on the wires, but cellphones, wireless routers, sun flares cause an incessant clicking.
* Volume control from keyboard. I didn't realize how much I used that in the windows environment. This is another driver thing possibly. Have not investigated.
* Webcam on Ubuntu. - All the required stuff is installed, but it's not recognized.
* Tinker with xorg and properitary driver to get compiz and potentially brightness/contrast controls while maintaining dual monitors/one screen. - I played with this for several hours already. I can get it working all the way until gnome loads (i.e. login splash and intermediate). I can get dual monitor/one screen but then gnome won't load and one monitor get the black "X" cursor..
* Setup 'ghost' from my primary drive on Ubuntu to the RAID so I can have a drive failure on the primary (or goober up the OS as I did with APM stuff) and get it back.
* Setup 'ghost' from the work laptop as well. I would like to system restore it back to day one, but then I loose one of my redundancy.
* Setup a USB drive backup of files so I could have a lightning strike kill all the computers and still work once I get a computer back. (This also serves my desire for a netbook for Christmas).

Golf killing me at the range

2009-04-09T11:38:00.002-05:00

Went to the range last night after making some changes to my swing thought. I realized I wasn't dropping my right shoulder.
Took a 8 iron and 6 iron and got 90 balls or so. I went through maybe 60 with the 8 iron. Maybe 10 of those were 'bad' shots. All the bad shots were short as I skulled the ball. However, the good shots were freaking sweet. I was dropping them around 130 to 140 yards with the 8 iron. Rolled out to 150 to 160 for a majority. I was stoked. This was a 20 yard improvement from several months ago.
In comes the 6 iron. I am thinking I can drop it around 160 to 170 and roll out to 180. 200 is where my driver lands, so this is massive improvement. No dice though. 6 iron was dropping 120 yards, with roll out to 140. I couldn't hit a 6 iron farther than my 8 iron. I thought I was crazy so I went back to the 8 iron. 140 yards, rollout to 150.
Swing changes after ingraining bad swings for two years is a tough thing to do. I am not getting my hips around in time with my shoulders. Still trying to 'arm' it through the ball.

Next trip, I am going to slow down the swing. I would be happy with 8 iron to 140, and 6 iron to 170. Will see how it goes.

Brainwashed....

2009-04-07T20:59:00.004-05:00

What the fuck? Listen until the end.

via: http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200904070031?show=1

Weekend update with Lowes and Tractors

2009-03-23T09:06:00.002-05:00

Phew... What a weekend.
I did a fairly good job of being a normal person on the weekend. I.E. not working and doing stuff other than computers!

The week before last we bought a used lawn tractor. It was too good of a deal to pass up. Our old push mower was seeing it's last days. The lawn tractor was a little less than $400.00 bucks. 15HP Craftsman w/ 42" mower + baggers. The bagger system was $300 new. The mower, while several years old was close to $1,500 new.

This last weekend, we had the first chance to play with the mower. Of course, being me, there were issues. The battery was completely dead. This isn't uncommon with lawn tractors if you leave the seat down. I didn't make that mistake though, so I was confused as to why it happened. I put a trickle charger on it, and went about my business. 2 hours later, still nothing. Took the battery out with the assumption that it was dead. It was, but it also sitting in water about 75% of the way up the side. The drain in the battery box was clogged, and presumably the previous owners had cleaned it before we bought it.
New battery bought and installed, and it still was hesitant to start. Never seen it before, but it acted like the motor was seized. Eventually it got past the 'hiccup' and started. We were off to the races!
I started in the backyard for two reasons. One, the front yard isn't much of a yard. With a push mower, it's about 30 minutes to do. The backyard however takes about an hour or more. The other reason is the backyard is completely fenced. If I took off out of control there was a fence to stop me (or at least slow me down enough i could jump off).
The mower is sweet. It vacuumed up the leaves with ease. We spent a total of 3 hours from start to finish of the whole yard. This included an hour and a half break in the middle to trim puppy nails and hang out with Jeanette's dad.
In that hour and half we pulled 12 or more lawn bags of mulched leaves and grass. I ended up mowing the front of the neighbors yard where it comes around the bend in the road. I mowed the strip of grass in front of our property next door. It was a blast. What a wonderful tool. It's overkill for our current yard, but it was an amazing reduction in effort.

The biggest issue was where to store it. While it might weather sitting in the yard in the rain, I don't think it's the best for it. We now needed a shed or something to cover it.
Jeanette's dad had a temporary carport setup he brought over. It's a series of pipes with connectors which builds a huge covered awning (10' tall, 10'wide, 16' or 24' deep). The only issue was that it was missing the covered part. We thought we could work out a tarp/canvas solution.
The second project was to re-engineer the gates to the backyard. With the wider mower, we have to open both doors to the gates. The presented a problem as we usually just used one side. The gate is 8' wide, and the right one was usually stationary. Now with both being opened and closed the dogs have a way out through digging on the right side. Solution idea was to create a concrete transition which would securely hold the right side door.

Off to home depot with the trailer we went.

Left home depot with the trailer we did. Home depot sucked. Well, actually the tarps at home depot sucked. No matter how we figured and finagled, we couldn't work out a series of tarps which would cover the awning. The less than optimal solution we came up with required 5 of a specific sized tarp. They had 3. They were $40.00 each.. $200.00 for tarps (even if they had them). Hrrm..

Off to Lowes we went.
Lowes happened to have sheds setup outside. We went looking. We were surprised. They were cheap. $500.00 bucks for a metal shed, 10' x 12'. Hmm.. Well after noodling on a bit we decided to buy this shed from lowes. The cost (shed + other material) was more than the tarps, but 1/2 to a 1/3 of what we considered it would cost to build a wood shed. It would last at least 2 or 3 times the tarp solution, and was prettier. We committed to putting away a little each month toward a wood shed/planting/storage thing. We will at some point double the size of the backyard by clearing the underbrush on the property beside us.

OK, now the fun starts. The shed requires a base to build it on. 2x4x12, and 3/4 plywood solves that problem. The wood can't rest on the ground due to rot and termites. Concrete blocks are required.
We still had the transition to build for the gates. Concrete doesn't go far. 800lbs of concrete was needed. (8' x 4' x 3"). Pea gravel will be mixed with the concrete.
For randomness (remember it is us we are talking about), we also wanted a grill. Ours died a year ago, and we miss it.

Here is the math so far on weight:
800lbs of concrete
14 half sized cinder blocks
(8) 2x4x12 pressure treated
(5) 3/4 plywood pressure treated
(6) .5 cu ft pea gravel
shed. metal shed.
grill

I initially loaded all the concrete in the yukon thinking all the flat stuff would go in the trailer. The trailer is only rated at 1,500 lbs. Trailer tongue at 2,000. After loading the concrete the trailer tongue was only about a foot off the ground. The tires of the Yukon were bulging.
After loading the wood on the trailer I decided to move half the concrete on to the trailer to make it 'pull' weight and not 'push on the axle' weight.
That worked, and then we got the shed itself. Somehow a 10'x12' shed fits in a 12', by 4', by 4" box. It's a lot weight in a small package.

The Yukon actually did great with it. The slack between the hitch, and trailer was a bit disconcerting and I had to be careful easing off stops, but it worked.

Half way home, I find out that one of the dogs has to go to the vet on Monday. That means the Yukon needs to be empty. The order of where things need to go is trailer and shed materials first, then the concreted at the gate. Concrete can't be put outside since rain makes it stiffen up a bit.
Sooo... after loading 800lbs of concrete, moving 400lbs of it, I have to unload all 800lbs of it into the garage. Eventually I will need to move all 800lbs of it again. Will have moved 1.5 tons of concrete before it's done. =( Will take pictures during the build process.

In the end it was worth it. We had discount cards with lowes (randomly in Jeanette's purse...).
We have still spent less for the tractor and it's house than a new lawn tractor, and will now be able to empty out 1/3 of the garage, our crappy lean-to shed, and store the tractor. The yard looks great as a result too.

Now I just need to get grass to grow so the mower is mowing grass instead of weeds and leaves.

My own round of golf.

2009-02-26T18:30:00.001-06:00

Well hell! I have been posting my guesses on the Accenture, and forgot to post about my own golfing.

I bought a new set of Nike Victory Red Irons. I had no idea they were the new irons being touted by Tiger. He plays the 'blades' while I play the full cavities.

We went out on Sunday and played 18 at the Pines. It was fairly cold, about 50 with a 10 to 15MPH wind that seemed to come up and down randomly.

I shot a 116 which is my worst out the last three times I went. However, it was a failure across all the clubs.

First tee I spent 3 strokes in the woods. Actually had one go behind me after hitting a tree. Second shot went into the bank of another tee box. Got up and down though pretty well.

Second tee was another one where my tee shot just sucked. First one was lost to the right. Second one in the trees. Third shot stayed in the trees as well.

My round actually fell apart the worst coming down the end of the first 9. I was 6 strokes over those last 4 holes the last time I played.

I hit one in the water on a par 3, with my follow up going over a bowled green.

I did end up with two par holes, which was the first for me (having two in one round). Those came on the back 9 where I shot a 56.

My best hole was a long (for me) par 4 with a water carry before the green plateau. Driver off the tee for about 200 yards, then a 3 wood for 190. Setup a nice 7 iron to the green where I putted in for par.

Went back out this week a couple of times to the driving range to give me some more time with the new clubs. Realized that a smooth, less arm muscled swing makes the difference. Being a tech goober, I went into Google Earth and 'played' the holes using my yardage. It's possible with two putts on every green for me to shoot a 73. That's with a 200 yard driver, and 6 iron at 130 yards. Accuracy is soo much more important then distance. I am going to take that to the course next time. I think I can break 100 with this new knowledge.

Dad broke 100 for the second time as well. Two more rounds and we can have official handicaps. Being even more of a geek, I have an excel sheet with auto calculating handicaps based on all the local courses. =)

Accenture - Next Round

2009-02-26T17:59:00.001-06:00

Well, I didn't do so well in the last round. Decided to stick to my guns in the guessing this time

Here it goes

Bobby Jones
- Clark
- Villegas

Gary Player
- Poulter
- Casey (great match to come)

Sam Snead
- Fisher
- Wilson

Ben Hogan
- Els
- Cink

Taking the guess a bit farther.
Jones Division
Villegas will beat Clark

Gary Player
Poulter will beat Casey

Sam Snead
Fisher will beat Wilson (Good match up though)

Ben Hogan
Els will beat Cink

Final Match ups
Villegas against Els
Villegas will win

Fisher against Poulter
Poulter will Win

Leaves the final pairing to be Poulter and Villegas
Picking Villegas over Poulter to win the whole thing.

2009-02-26T09:59:00.001-06:00

: using maxto desktop placeholder software to much success.

Accenture Winners

2009-02-26T09:39:00.017-06:00

Update: Wow... Shouldn't have made these picks with such haste! Oh well. All in good fun!

Bobby Jones:
~~- Woods~~
- McIlroy
- Ogilvy
- Villegas

Gary Player
- Poulter
~~- Weekley (have to root for the local!)~~
- Hanson
- Casey

Ben Hogan
~~- Singh~~
~~- Stricker~~
~~- Johnson~~
~~- Westwood~~

Sam Snead
~~- Perez~~
- Furyk
- Leonard
~~- Kim~~

If I had to venture some future guesses.
I think ~~Woods~~ will beat McIlroy. ~~I can't see him standing up to the pressure of the third player in the round, Tiger's presence.~~
Villegas will beat Ogilvy. Villegas just seems to be on his game lately.
Leaves ~~Tiger~~ and and Villegas in the Jones division winner match. ~~I will go with the heresy statement and say villegas beats Tiger.~~

Poulter will probably beat ~~Weekley~~, but I think it's going to be a close match. Casey will beat Hanson, leaving Casey and Poulter in the Player division championship. Let's go with Poulter.

In the Sam Snead, I guess Furyk (with that goofy swing) ~~will beat Perez,and Kim~~ will take Leonard.
~~I will go all the way on this one and say Kim will beat Furyk.~~

In the ben hogan bracket, Stricker will beat Singh. Singh's knee can't hold up.
Westwood will beat Johnson, and go on to take that bracket.

Villegas will take Westwood, ~~and Poulter will take Kim. Leaves Kim and Villegas in the final. Kim wins it all.~~

Will update this tomorrow once the next round is over, adjusting the picks...

2009-02-25T21:40:00.001-06:00

Updating me status from ping.fm Should have tested it ages ago.....

4 days in the hospital

2009-02-17T20:02:00.002-06:00

Not me, my Mom.

She had two hernias removed on Wednesday (11th). Originally she was supposed to be out on Thursday. That didn't work out since she wasn't able to keep liquids down through the night and Thursday morning.
Friday came around, and there were more complications.
Saturday was a long day as we knew she was going home, but we had to wait until the doctor said it was OK. That happened at 3:30/4:00. Discharging took another couple of hours.
I was at the hospital every day by 10AM, and left around 7:00 - going to her house to entertain the dogs. Home by 9:00 or so.
It's amazing how much longer time appears to be when you're sitting in a 10x10 (basically) room. Compounded by intense worry about mom made the first two days seem to be an eternity.
She is doing great now though. Follow up appointment with the doctor tomorrow to hopefully get the drain removed. She looks soo much better now. She was even able to go out to eat last night.

Cause I like to point out odd things and make lists:

* Lifetime is NOT the channel to watch on Valentines day for good dramas.
* Dean Kane is the Scott Baio of the 2000s
* Matlock isn't really that bad of a show.
* Medium Sudoku is the best balance of brain tease, and repetitive motion.
* Tea is free at the cafeteria (when it's open).
* Park in the outpatient parking. Longer walk, but almost entirely inside, and the parking lot is safer.
* Use the dome mirrors. Doctors with patients on gurneys are in a hurry.
* Overhearing a nurse say, "Remember that guy [...], he died last night [...]. There are brownies in the break room" is unsettling. Not because of death, but because it's a part of their job. Amazing respect for what they do.
* "How are you doing?" is a stupid question for people to ask in an elevator at a hospital.
* If you're going to be in a hospital for more than a day. Immediately identify the best bathroom, where the coffee is, where the water, and ice are.
* The best bathroom at FWB is by the outpatient entrance (after 3:00PM).
* Coffee on the 4th floor is most quickly found in the cancer ward.
* Water and Ice are in front of the center nurse station.
* ATT's blackberry internet service sucks ass compared to my old Sprint blackberry.
* Blackberry exchange server is pretty sweet.
* It's a small world. I met the 'tool lady' who's husband was having surgery the same time as my Mom. The 'tool lady' and her husband sold me tools when I was a mechanic over 12 years ago. She was quoted in the paper that morning.
* They live less than a mile from me now, after moving to Colorado and back.
* Life is soooooo not as bad you think, enjoy the time and freedom to enjoy it.

Blantantly stole this

2009-02-04T13:30:00.002-06:00

I took this from Mark Roberston's site, reelseo.com to test his copyright protection vendor.

Longtail Video was co-founded by Jeroen “JW” Wijering and started with his incredibly popular open-source JWplayer embeddable media player that has been downloaded more than 7 million times since 2005. In fact, the JWPlayer was the first player used by online video powerhouse YouTube, purchased from Jeroen for $20 Euros. Over the years the JW player has grown, expanded and increased in versatility and usability. It’s even fully skinnable now so you can make it look exactly how you need it to and has a plug-in and modular architecture.

Trying out Flock

2009-01-21T10:26:00.001-06:00

So I downloaded flock to give it a whirl. I have seen it before, but never gave it much of a thought. I never really used too many of the 'social' aspects of the web. I tend to ingest a ton of content though. Currently I use twhirl for my twitter. I would like to have an application which integrates my large google reader feeds, and the twitter streams. Making it easier to interact with the services will be beneficial too.

I plan on playing with FLock for a few weeks to see what I actually use in it. I have a feeling firefox with add-ons will allow me to accomplish the same thing. It seems in intial testing that Flocks goal is to summarize things. That's a good thing.

Life with 5 Dogs

2009-01-06T08:00:00.002-06:00

List of things that go along with 5 dogs

* You seriously considered having Mike Rowe do a segment of Dirty Jobs while cleaning up poo.
* The hacking sound that comes before puke create a pavlov response to get towels.
* There is always a nuzzle to be rubbed no matter where you are.
* "I'm sorry" is uttered a lot when company is over.
* "Yes, 5 dogs" and "We do have a big backyard" are common phrases uttered.
* The Dog Whisperer would not step foot in our house.
* It's easier to count dogs, then remember individual dogs while leaving the dog park.
* "Jake, Bailey, arrrggh, whatever your name is, stop it"
* At night, it's better to shuffle through the house instead of walking.
* Your ability to balance on one foot while avoiding a spooked dog is greatly enhanced (if you don't follow the above rule).
* Always a helpful clean up happens when food is dropped while cooking
* Never stop being amazed at the hair in the $300.00 vacuum cleaner you had to buy because the others died too often.
* Bathroom time becomes a spectator sport.
* You know which oblique angles to hold the remote to get past the dog blocking the receiver.
* Opossums aren't the smartest, but are very quick.
* You can remove leashes and collars from the pegboard with the quietness of a ninja.
* You have a vehicle affectionately known as the "Dog Wagon".
* You gave up cleaning the windows of the "Dog Wagon".
* Walking the dogs is a multi-step process since some of them are too old to go for as long as a walk as the others.
* Long haired collies create A LOT of short hair when brushed.
* You don't care how much energy/money is wasted with a dog door.
* You know how to treat a myriad of ailments a dog can get. Rest is the #1 solution for most injuries.
* Your dogs have had more knee surgeries then the humans combined (+1 for us).
* You have "dog sheets" which are separated from the other sheets.
* Leather furniture wasn't a luxury purchase, it was required.
* You're able to classify the dogs to make conversation easier; Senior citizens, rascals, The boys
* Despite the smallest dog weighing 55lbs, you still sometimes call them puppies.
* Unexpected company initiates a pre-existing action plan for getting the dogs penned off.
* The action plan involves separate areas of the house for each classification defined above.
* Nail clippers don't last very long. 92 nails to cut (one has rear dew claws).
* Those nail shaving devices on TV don't work, but considering a dremel tool.
* The "schhtt" sound Cesar Milan uses is actually effective.
* You have more then one vet, and use some as specialists for specific issues.
* Grass isn't a realistic option for the backyard. Neither is playing in the backyard.

I will think of more, and add it to the list...

Lucky Brushing

2008-12-30T20:55:00.002-06:00

Brushed the newest edition this evening. After 20 minutes, I gave up. He was getting too finicky and probably aggravated. If you ever think about getting a long haired collie, be prepared for the grooming needs. It's not easy, and it's never ending! He probably needs at least this much brushed out before he is done.

I probably could have picked a better background since it's fairly camouflaged here, but I think it still gets the point across.

That's a size 12 shoe sitting above it for a reference.

Compiz Settings Manager

2008-12-16T18:20:00.003-06:00

Well, son of a bitch. I have had this Ubuntu machine for awhile now. I installed compiz, which is a window manager enhancement for the desktop.
It's common to see the image of the desktop cube as it's example. I setup the enhanced feature, but never saw what all the buzz was about. It didn't 'do' anything. That changed when I found out about compiz configuration manager. For reasons I don't know, this settings manager isn't installed by default.
I installed that, and then spent an hour tweaking the settings. I am freaking love it. I have remapped keys to allow for a ton of features.

Hit a key combo and the window shrinks. Not resize, but shrink. Hit again, and it shrinks some more. One more time and it comes back. Think of it like Windows "Arrange Horizontally" in how it resizes the window. This is even cooler.

Hit another and it allows you see the images like an itunes "flipper"

I remapped a few other keys which aren't specific to compiz, but with the 'cool' look of compiz
ALT+SCROLL(MOUSE) and it flips desktops
CTRL+ALT+left/right keys does it too.

This has made my life so much better when writing code. I can keep the browser window open full screen on one desktop, and the ide on another. Click a key and the programs(desktops) are switched.

Happy days

He-Man on Hulu!

2008-12-16T10:36:00.001-06:00

How awesome is this! He-Man is on hulu.

They have the whole first season. Looks like they are trying to get the remaining ones.
http://www.hulu.com/he-man-and-the-masters-of-the-universe

OPML file from Reader

2008-12-15T13:45:00.003-06:00

After getting through all the feeds, I have (for now) finished the migration to the pipes/twitter setup.

I thought I would post my OPML file for the google reader. It's very centric to mysql, php, project management, and ubuntu.

OPML FILE

Twitter setup & cleaning google reader

2008-12-15T09:02:00.003-06:00

So, I started playing a bit with twitter. Of course, being me I ran into a few issues right off the bat.
In evaluating why to start using the application there were a few reasons. It's obvious that this is the micro blogging platform. I wasn't sure if another startup was going to pop up and overtake them. I played with yammer a bit, but it's not what it's cracked up to be in a company with as many users as we would have.
Twitter serves two purposes. sending information, and receiving information (Ground breaking analysis to be sure). I probably won't have much use for the sending information. It may become important in unique situations like hurricanes. So, with my primary use of to be receiving information, I tried to look at how this tool could help.
I found that reasoning in my google reader account.
Here is the stats from google reader:

From your 142 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 12,251 items, starred 0 items, shared 2 items, and emailed 0 items.

So, the math works out to 408 items a day. Looking at it deeper, I don't really use this computer (and reader) much over the weekends. Over the last 30 days, it's closer to 20 days, monday through friday. That brings the daily items to read at 612.

Obviously I work during those days, and it's usually 10 hours a day at the computer. I need to read a feed every minute I am at the computer to stay on top of the feed. It's just not possible. I don't think they want to pay me to read feeds all day.

After determining that I just can't read that many feeds, I looked to twitter as a way to still see some of the feeds I usually skim. I looked at all the feeds, and picked out those that weren't directly related to my job. Only found 6 or so of them so far. =)

I took those 9 feeds and put them into yahoo pipes with a simple sort feature. This takes these 9 feeds and aggregates them to one rss feed. Using the resulting rss feed
I feed that into twitterfeed.com to post to /wetmonkey. I then subscribed to /wetmonkey from my /switkos account.

The twitterfeed api limits the update to 5 RSS items for each update. I set the update to 30 minutes. However, it's possible I will miss some items in the feeds. I am OK with that because of the passive nature of twitter, and my goal to reduce the clutter from my google feeds.

The cool thing is that as I go through my google reader feeds, I can evaluate each feed. If I still want random updates I move it to the yahoo pipes. If I just don't read it, I delete it.

Site Updates

2008-12-12T15:23:00.001-06:00

I decided to segment off the site a bit.

I created two new blogger sites with subdomains of alittlegoofy.com
code.alittlegoofy.com
musings.alittlegoofy.com

The code.alittlegoofy.com site is where I will post random code things I find. I have been playing with a new site, www.grocerylistsort.com in the evenings. It's been a fun learning tool, and I find myself solving problems others have already solved. I thought I would post to the code.alittlegoofy.com site these tidbits and discoveries. Sort of a personal library for me.

The grocery site was an offshoot of a hacked together script I put together for Jeanette and I to use. I am retarded in the grocery store trying to find things. Being ADD, it's easy for me to spend twice as long going back and forth through the store looking for things. This tool makes it easy, once you have created the stores and aisles.
It's a bit of a pain to initially setup, but once it's done it's easy enough.

The musings.alittlegoofy.com site is where I will post the stupid crap I find on the internet. I am always finding random things. Instead of intermingling it with the updates on alittlegoofy.com I thought I would put it on a separate account.

this site, blog.alittlegoofy.com will be where I post updates about life, rants, etc..

All of the *.alittlegoofy sites with the exception of the main page (www.alittlegoofy.com) are powered off blogger (if you couldn't already tell). This makes it easy to post to the sites through a browser tool from the google toolbar.

Crappy Bike Rack.

2008-12-09T19:20:00.003-06:00

Jeanette's been complaining about trying to ride her bike to the pool. She has a duffel bag with all her stuff, and a swim board. The original idea was to create a basket saddle. I will still build one of those, but after seeing her struggle so bad the other day I knocked this one out for her.
It only took 2 hours to put it together, and it shows. I was even too lazy to paint it!

I enjoyed playing with fire and high voltages.

In the Dog House

2008-12-09T09:46:00.001-06:00

Gold. It's obviously a commercial (viral video), but it's perfectly executed.

Little Bill O!

2008-12-08T21:16:00.002-06:00

This is so full of win. I think it's a bit old, but I haven't had as much of a chance to 'putz' on the net lately.
This kid does a perfect impression of Bill-O, and his hate-mongering.

SpikedHumor.com » Little Bill O'Reilly » SpikedHumor.com

Text message arm removal

2008-12-06T08:46:00.002-06:00

Doctor amputates boy's arm using SMS instructions | Register Hardware

The graphic they included on the story is hilarious. Good on the doctor for being resourceful, and being able to perform the surgery with what had to be simple instructions.

My guess is it was an email, not SMS.

I could see a mashup from webmd and twitter in the works!

Big Ass Truck Rental & Storage

2008-12-05T16:55:00.002-06:00

YouTube - Jones' Big Ass Truck Rental & Storage

He's a bit drunk, and having a sale. You got ane weed?

Chainsaw Bayonet

2008-12-03T11:36:00.001-06:00

YouTube - Chainsaw Bayonet

DO want!!

Star Trek Movie

2008-11-25T08:55:00.001-06:00

Star Trek | Official Movie Site | In Theaters May 2009 | Star Trek Movie

I guess I missed it that this was coming... Looks absofuckinglutely stupid.
Snapshot preview of the preview
Young Anakin, err, I mean Tiberius begins his journey to be the captain of the enterprise.
Young Spock, and Young Tiberius battle like the did in the series, but now it looks like two emo kids.
There is some tits and ass cause that's what will sell the movie to adolescent kids.
There is a battle with some of Kevin Costners friends from waterworld, who were left over from Mad Max originally.

I have a wonderful idea for film studios. Will same them millions. Just directly sample the movies you copy your ideas from. You're doing nothing original anymore.

Computers and the Internet

2008-11-20T11:04:00.003-06:00

Computers and the Internet according to "normal" users

Muahhahahah!! This is still very true!

Creepy ass shit.

2008-11-13T15:48:00.000-06:00

Dactyl Fractal Zoom

This freaks me out.. a lot.

Welcome to Spamradio - Spamradio

2008-11-12T16:12:00.000-06:00

Welcome to Spamradio - Spamradio

Click the "Start Playing" submit button. Good stuff.

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Rules For Writing Fiction � Novelr - Making People Read

2008-11-10T18:09:00.000-06:00

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Rules For Writing Fiction � Novelr - Making People Read

I am not a writer, which anyone reading this blog can easily surmise. However, this could be adapted to a lot more then writing...

YouTube - Under The Bridge: Literal Video Version

2008-11-04T06:40:00.000-06:00

YouTube - Under The Bridge: Literal Video Version

I never noticed how much Kiedis seems awkward in the walking scene through LA

I think there are a few of these literal versions of songs, but this one is great...

Stupid Spam

2008-11-04T06:24:00.000-06:00

So I get an email from flyingaway[numbers]@yahoo.com with the subject "Account Reactivation"

Here is the body of the email - Yep, spoofed yahoo.com email to send a Google Adwords hack/spam attempt...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message. If you have any questions, please visit the Google AdWords Help Centre
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello Advertiser,

Our attempt to charge your credit card for your outstanding Google AdWords account balance was declined.
Your account is still open. However, your ads have been suspended. Once we are able to charge your card and receive payment for your account balance, we will re-activate your ads.

Please update your billing information, even if you plan to use the same credit card. This will trigger our billing system to try charging your card again. You do not need to contact us to reactivate your account.

To update your primary payment information, please follow these steps:

1. Log in to your account at [
http://www.adwords.google.com.[spam/hackdomain].cn/select/Login
]http://adwords.google.com/select.
2. Enter your primary payment information.
3. Click 'Update' when you have finished.

Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

(c) Google AdWords Team 2008

Saw V

2008-11-02T11:56:00.003-06:00

Finally got to the movies to see the latest Saw V.

I enjoyed this installment. A lot of the reviews touch on some elements that I agree with. There was some continuity issues, but I think they were minor, and potentially add a twist. The gore was toned down a bit from Saw IV which was not a bad thing. They left enough in to make you a bit squemish, but not soo much that it became 'normal' and therefore not as 'icky'.

I was kicking myself while I watched Carlo Rota trying desperately to remember where I saw him before. I kept thinking movies, and never connected him with 24.

The movie tried to tie up loose ends, and setup further installments of the franchise. It's my guess Tobin will be in the next ones, but only as the flashback character of previous installments. There are a lot of characters credited on imdb. They only appear as either pictures in the movie, or 5 second jump cuts (Wahlberg's head being bashed).

Worth seeing in the theatre only for tradition. It was a bit sad being there by myself since my Saw partner upped and moved away. My better half would not have lasted through the Edgar Allen Poe beginning.

McCain

2008-11-02T11:54:00.001-06:00

McCain SNL Intro

This is awesome! I would never vote for the goober, but this is an awesome skit. Perfect.

Hairy

2008-10-31T09:15:00.003-05:00

I shaved the beard off. Started it at the beginning of the year, but have become bored with it. I had one spot that just never really came in. I have thought about shaving it for awhile now, but wanted to wait until the winter so I didn't have some odd tan line. I kept the goat though.
Unfortunately I have some weird in-grown hair/tumor/cyst thing on my jawline. It's really quite gross, and hopefully will go away soon.

Travel Fun

2008-10-18T10:56:00.002-05:00

So, I just got back from another trip to Irvine last night. I have been making the trip every 4 to 6 weeks now, so it's become 'normal', and not that big of a deal to spend the day traveling. I have become comfortable with the roads in Orange County. It's almost like a really long commute.
However, with me being me, there is always some quirks that come up when I travel. The flights out were uneventful. I finally got enough frequent flier miles to become a "priority access" flier. I am able to board right after the first class passengers. This was a nice surprise, and it does make it a bit easier to get in the seats and get settled.
When I arrived, I had a rental car with Hertz. This time I had a mustang. Not a GT, just a V6 model, but still not a bad car to tool around town. I got to the hotel, and rolled my window down to get a parking ticket, and heard a horrible metal sound. As I parked, I realized it was the brakes on the car. I looked at the back rotor, and it was shaved half way through. The pads were gone, and it was just bare metal scraping the rotor to stop it. Not a good, or safe situation. I took the car back to the airport and was quickly able to switch out cars. Good service by Hertz! They got me into an impala with their GPS system for the same rate.
My second quirk was a bad air conditioner in my room. I thought it was just me the first night, but the second night I came back to the room, and it was like opening the door on an oven. The maids leave the curtains open after they clean the room. The sun beat into the room all day, and without air conditioning it was not too comfortable. I went down to the desk and they sent someone up to the room. It was a horrible hour or so I had to spend at the bar having a couple white russians. I suffered through the drinks and went back to my room where the A/C was working.
Thursday was the last quirk of the week.
On my way down to the car, I went to the elevators and hit the button. I have never had much success with elevators. No matter where I go hotel elevators hate me. This time proved no exception. I waited for about 5 minutes, then gave up, and took the stairs. This hotel had some retarded planners. The first floor exit was an emergency exit which meant the alarms would go off if you opened the doors. There was another guest coming up from the first floor about the same time I arrived at the second floor. We both exited at the second floor where the hotel had conference rooms, and a mezzanine which exited out to the first floor. We commented on long the elevators were and how dumb the first floor emergency bell exits were.
As we crossed through the mezzanine we passed the area where the elevators were. He commented that one of them was stuck. I don't know why but I paused and went back around to see. I am glad I did, as there was another guest stuck in the elevator with it half way between floors. We helped him with his luggage and to jump down. Just as we finished a maintenance person showed up. We tried to tell him that people may be stuck in elevators. We did this many time times, but he was either dumb as nails, or could not speak english. He kept repeating that the elevators would fix themselves. We gave up on him, and told the front desk....
So, I go to work, and come back to the hotel that evening. The word clusterfuck comes to mind when describing what was going on in the lobby.
There was a convention for the California chapter of the National Association for the blind. 150 blind individuals were showing up to the hotel that evening for a weekend retreat and conference.
Here was the scene in the lobby.
One elevator was working, servicing 13 floors.
There were 6 blind individuals, two with dogs, 3 with canes, and one with a sighted guide.
There were 5 other guests. Two being some of the hottest girls I have seen in awhile. However, they were both cunts (yes, a derogatory and horrible term, but very fitting, bear with me). The look on their faces at the blind individuals was disgusting to me. Somehow these cunts were offended or otherwise upset that there were blind people around them. My bitterness toward them continued to grow. I was downstairs for about 15 minutes and by the time they left, I could not see them as anything but horrible disgusting pigs.
Anyways...
With the one elevator, and 12 people waiting to get on the wait was quite awhile. There were three instances of exiting and entering the elevator before I ended up getting on. I got to watch these incredible people ignore their handicap and manage quite effectively to navigate the area. However, there was one person who got off the elevator who I assume recently got her guide dog. She was not comfortable with the dog at all, and they were not quite a team. In fact she was unjustly harsh on the dog. With 15 people milling around a relatively small lobby, most of whom were blind, there was not room to move easily. It's not like the blind folks could adjust their position for her. The dog was doing a decent job of getting her through this crowd. I guess she thought she was the only one down there though because she was jerking the dog around.
The dog got revenge though. She wanted to take it outside to go to the bathroom. I swear the dog got aggravated and just walked her into a corner of the lobby. She was soo mad, but the dog had a smile on it's face. It was priceless. Now, bear in my mind I am not laughing at her being blind, but how the dog reacted. When I was young my family fostered and trained a dog for hearing imparied. My Mom teached the mentally handicapped. I have a ton of respect for people with any impairment or disability. All of that time taught me to not treat anyone differently because of those impairments or disabilities. It's OK to laugh at things, but it's not OK to laugh at the impariment itself.
I end up taking on a bit of an assitance role throughout this time. Another lady had got lost in the parking lot, trying to find the front door. There is a covered entrance, so the sound of the door opening and people echoed causing her to get lost. This was actually pretty scary as people were coming back to the hotel and flying through the entrance way to the parking area.
After finally getting everyone on the elevators, and getting to my room, I ended up going back down stairs to get some water.
I met a couple who I wish I had got their names. I think he was a proffessor somewhere based on the conversation. We talked about the time my family spent working with the dog for the hearing impaired, and the transitions they were going through as the husband went blind after they were married. Their dog, a beautiful German Sheperd, was his first guide dog. One of the rules of working dogs is that they aren't normally social with other people, and petting or calling to the dog is a big no-no. The dog is the persons eyes and distractions from well meaning people can be a terrible situation. It's hard to respect that and not try to interact with the dog.
I ended up meeting another individual named Andre and his working dog. I gave him some help getting out the door and to the grassy area. The dog pulled him in the wrong direction at first. It was another great conversation, and a real treat to meet him.
Despite goofy elevators, and dangerous rental cars, I realized those things aren't so bad.

WTF-

2008-10-11T08:08:00.002-05:00

http://www.wlwt.com/video/17686606/index.html
- I thought being a "celebrity" candidate was a bad thing according to the GOP?
I expected Macho Man Randy Savage to come out next and endorse her, errr.. him and her.

New Puppy

2008-10-10T11:51:00.003-05:00

I know, I know... Needed another dog like we needed a hole in the head.
Another rescue for us, bringing the total to five dogs. The newest member to our pack is Lucky. He is a 2 year old Rough Collie (Lassie). The previous owners shaved him to get rid of mats in his fur, so he doesn't have the traditional mane yet.
He was living in the backyard of Jeanette's dad's neighbor. His previous owners gave him up after they had a baby.
He is a sweet dog, but not used to living in a house. After spending a year outside, the concept of hard floors is taking him some getting used to.
He's a bit underweight, but still bigger in height and length then any of other dogs. They have accepted him into the pack, although Jake is a bit jealous since Lucky sees me as the pack leader.

Breaking 110

2008-09-26T15:18:00.002-05:00

I have been busy this week, and neglected to talk about a great thing that happened on Sunday. Monday was Dad's birthday so I took him golfing on Sunday to play a full 18 holes. We had played a local 9 hole executive course a few times which is fun, but different then a real 18. Until the college started tearing things apart we would go to the 3 hole course they had. It's not so much a course as it was fields cut through trees.
In the past I had played in several charity tournaments with best ball setups.
This Sunday was the first I played a real 18 and it was an amazing time. Based on what I shot on the executive course, I was guessing my round to be above 120. We played the Pines course in FWB, and I actually shot a 108. This included a devastating 8 on a par 3 due to continuing to hit balls in the water. I actually one-putted that 8; yep, 3 balls in the water, on a par 3.
Dad had a great day though, shooting a 97. This was his first sub-100 round. It was a great day for both of us. I enjoyed spending the day with him, and being there for his first round in the 90s.

I had an EA/Tiger Jesus shot on one hole. I had a 6 or 7 iron to the green over water. I hooked it right just enough to be on the edge of the water. Through some miracle the ball went into the water, then back out and onto the rough outside the out of bounds marker.
The golf gods punished me though because the next hole was the Par 3 I shot an 8 on.

Coming around the turn we were counting our scores and commenting on how we were not doing too bad. Neither of us had that bad of shots. I tee off on the 10th hole and send it flying to the right. The ball sailed over the thin set of trees into the 9th fairway. I was aggravated and grabbed a club walking over there while Dad teed off. I knew there were golfers on the 9th hole, and I did not want them to confuse my ball. While I am walking over there Dad tees off and sails his shot directly over my head on to the 9th fairway, about 20 yards deeper then me.
We catch up with the guys on the 9th hole, and in a 40 yard circle there are 5 balls. After a bit of waiting like 4 people at a 4 way stop, they hit their balls, and we hit ours. Mine was buried under the lip of a sand trap, but was able to get a decent out.

The whole day was great. Nice weather, good pace, and great company. Looking forward to the next one.

Computer Update

2008-09-24T10:47:00.002-05:00

So, we are now up to a 4 computer house hold with three people. It's technically a bit more then that, but only 4 of the computers are functional. The others are either old laptops, or junked machines scavenged for parts.

I built a system from pieces bought off newegg.com. Everything minus the keyboard, mouse, and speakers came to less then $700.00 including shipping. I installed Ubuntu 8.04. The kid got my old (non-work) laptop and the monitor since I had an extra monitor laying around.

The build, while not complete, went fairly well. I was able to get it to booting in less then 2 hours including breaks. I have two 500GB drives I will be setting up in a RAID, but I was missing a cable to connect one of them. I have another 250GB drive for the primary OS.

I did run into some quirks with the machine though. It's an AMD 64bit processor. Apparently the Sleep and Hibernate features don't play well with Ubuntu. It essentially trashes the filesystem. I am no guru with Linux, so I was forced to reinstall. Four times. I finally found the right combination of search keywords to find the gem about adding "iommu=soft" to the kernel load script. This resulted in a finally stable setup. It still doesn't sleep how I want it to, but at least it's not crashing the file system.

Hopefully this week I will be able to connect the other two drives and get the RAID setup. It will be the backup point for all the other computers, so getting this stable will be important.

I am still fighting a few other elements
* Washed out screen brightness. I am using the restricted flgrx drivers and even with the catalyst center, I can't get it to be my friend
* Wake on lan (and power systems in general). Since it's going to be a backup system, I would like to automate the setup and not be required to remember when to leave it on. With 3 systems backing up to it, I need to stagger it. I could leave the system running, but I would like to save energy where I can.

Here are some pictures of the computer in it's build up.

Random Update

2008-09-10T10:23:00.003-05:00

I installed Ubuntu yesterday. I have played with Linux off and on for several years. I have installed Fedora (Core2), debian, and slackware in the past. I have to say that Ubuntu was amazingly simple. I downloaded the single iso from the site. Once it was downloaded, it took me 45 minutes to burn the CD, install the OS, and do all the upgrades. The computer it's on is a desktop I had from at least 4 years ago. The applications and OS run very smoothly and required no fiddling with any settings. I did have to adjust my monitors horizontal position, but that's nothing.
I need to upgrade the PSU and fans in the desktop because it's noisy as hell.
Not sure what I will be doing with this machine, but I kept seeing ubuntu stuff in my stumbleupon stream, so I figured I better mess with it.

Thought I would pass along some great customer service I recieved today too. I bought a shirt from syswear.com. They shipped it on August 20th, but I noticed that USPS never actually recieved it. I emailed them, and within a day they responded. Once they realized that the shirt never left, and that there were delays, they refunded my shipping cost. They did this without my asking. I was never pissy with them either. It's awesome service. Go buy a shirt.

Lastly, I installed xobni for my outlook. It's a simple program, but I have had the greatest fun playing with it.

Bathroom is finally functional

2008-08-08T13:45:00.005-05:00

Finally. It has been an amazing day today for us. The plumber installed our sink, toilet, and finished the shower installation today. That means after two years, we have a functional second bathroom. Most of you probably already know the story of this bathroom, but I thought I would recap for posterity.

In February of 2006 we decided to get a termite bond on the house. Previous to this we had removed the fireplace in our living room after finding the remnants of termite damage (not active).
This required that we replace the siding on the SouthWest corner of the house. Removing the old siding we found an active termite infestation all the way to the king studs (where the roof meets the house). I removed siding down each side of the house until we got to the point we could not cover it with a tarp and then stopped.

Several contractors gave us quotes. In 2006, the housing boom was still in full swing so a remodeling style job was not attractive to construction companies. It was several weeks later when we finally found someone willing to take on the job of replacing 40% of our exterior walls. The contractor was not the best from a reliability standpoint. They did accomplish the job, but it was an interesting experience. One of the two guys working was allergic to sawdust, stopping every few hours to rest from the migraine which followed sawdust. Remember these are construction guys....
During the remodeling one of the exterior walls to be replaced was where our bathroom tub was located. There was termite damage, but not an active infestation to the tub rough in. We had the bright idea that if we had to remove the wall, we should put in a whirlpool tub.

This is where things went downhill fast.

In April of 2006 we contracted a company to relocate the drain for the installation of the new tub. This required the jack hammering of the floor to move the drain approx. 3 ft into the center of the bathroom. While they were doing that the jack hammer bit fell into nothing below the concrete. We found out that there was hole under the bathroom floor. The hole measured approx. 10 ft x 6 ft across, and in places 5ft deep. It took almost 9 yards (an entire cement truck) to fill it properly. We had engineering consultants and the county out. No one could really determine how it happened. As we progressed through the project, I became convinced it was an indian burial site which collapsed.

After the repairs to the hole were made, the new tub was installed. The walls were finished, and we even had new windows installed in the kitchen and master bedroom. The bay window we did have in the kitchen was rotten and improperly installed (in the 80s when the house was built). The west and south walls were covered with concrete style siding, and we had the whole house repainted (inside and out).

We finally made up to May of 2006 with all these changes. We were left with a repaired exterior, termite bond, and a bathroom with a functional tub, and toilet, but nothing else. There were still areas of bare wood.

None of the above items were covered by insurance. We were considering going to Europe where we have some family, but all that cash was consumed by the above projects. Just prior to this we had a new roof and air conditioning installed. In 2004 we found we had a septic tank which required us to convert to county sewer lines. It seemed never ending the list of things to do.

We had essentially ran out of disposable money to invest in the tiling and new fixtures for the second bathroom and decided to wait awhile to do anything in that room. Quite honestly we were just tired of that room. We were sick of construction. Sick of debris. Sick of writing checks to random people. It was like going through surgery. You have 20 bills to pay to people you never met. The doctor, the nurse, the knock-you-out guy, the person who cleaned the bed, blah blah.

Time went by and we did other smaller projects throughout the house. Re did the floor in the master bedroom, flower beds, etc. Relatively small stuff.

In late 2007 we decided to come back to the tub. We realized that with the tub only being a tub and not a shower we were hurting the resale value of the house. We had had discussions all through the fall and winter of 2007 trying to decide what to do. We had saved up some money and decided to tear out this tub and put in a whirlpool tub with a shower.

I don't regret the decision, but I rue the aftermath of it.

We had several people come and quote us what it would take to install a shower with our tub and tile the bathroom. We soon realized that the tub style we had would not work with a shower. It was a drop in style tub so the edges rolled off to the wood surround. Making this water tight would not be feasible (at least not with us who went through half the house being destroyed by wet wood eating termites). In early 2008 we made the decision to get rid of the tub we had and get a proper shower style tub.

We got quotes and our project list made. It seemed simple. Remove the old tub, install a new one, plumb it for a shower, and then have it all tiled. We researched tubs, found one we liked, and then set about measuring the area for tile. We bought the tile, grout, mud. We ordered the tub.

We ripped the old tub out. This was a sad day for us. The tub we had was quite big, and we really enjoyed soaking in it. The tub had originally been installed through an exterior wall which was missing. Getting out now required that it go through a 32" door. We quickly realized it was not going to come out. We had to take a sawzall to it and cut it in half. $900.00 cut in half and dragged to the trailer to go to the dump.

We were left with a bathroom shell. We cut the drywall out, and ripped the framing for the tub out. There was still a toilet, but nothing else. The construction demons then reared their ugly head. The drain had to be moved back to the original location. This meant cutting a trench in cured concrete that was solid for 5 feet. It's quite a mess and overwhelmingly noisey to cut a 8" by 36" trench in concrete. It took us two weeks to clean the dust out of the house. 1,200 sq ft of house covered in layer of concrete dust.

The tub finally arrived. It wasn't the right tub. The shower edging was this crappy glued on silicone strip. I will give Kohler credit though. They were absolutely great about returning the tub and helping us to find the one we really needed. The right tub was finally delivered. We now had an empty bathroom, a drain trench cut, and tile. The homestretch was on it's way.

Despite this positive movement, there was still demons ahead. It took us forever to find a plumber who was able to come and actually install the tub. We finally got a recommendation and a plumber showed up to install the tub. Finally. Unfortunately this guy turned out to be a piece of shit. Mike Nichols was the plumbers name. We paid him $1,100 to install the tub completely. He came and put the tub in the room and connected the drain. Somehow he screwed up the diverter valve and had to get a new one. That was the last we saw of him and our money.

Back to the task of finding a plumber. During this 2 month period we kept putting off the tile guy we decided to use. We were at risk of losing him, and I don't blame him. We would give him a date to start, then call 3 days before hand with another delay. Finally we found Willingham Plumbing. Corey is a saint. He came in and pulled the tub back out to fill the trench with concrete and properly support the tub with mortar. He installed the diverter valve, and we had a tub installed correctly. Shit for brains Mike actually installed almost everything wrong in some way or another. The only thing he did correctly was glue four pieces of pvc together for the drain. Everything else he did was wrong. The valves didn't have gaskets. The holes he cut were too big (luckily that was fixable). The spray foam bed was only 3 inches wide (not the entire tub). I hope Karma gets him.

We finally had everything lined up, and ready for the tile guy. Bill Kaufman did the tile for us. He spent two weeks and a few days doing an absolutely wonderful job. After two years, I think we would have been happy with anything. Despite that I can say he is an amazingly detailed craftsman. The tile installation was 100 times more then we expected.

That leads us up to today when Willingham came back and finished the job installing the faucets, and toilet. We have a functional bathroom. It's an amazing weight which is off us.

There is still more work to be done. I have wiring to do, and drywall repairs, install lights and a mirror, but it's the easy stuff. I can do it myself without paying anyone. We are finally clear of 30 months of this. It's over. I am happy.

Flickr photo set of the entire project.

Photoset from the first day (use the navigation on the right, under "House Damage (Set)" to move through it chronologically)

Rocking and Rolling

2008-07-29T22:37:00.002-05:00

WOOHOO!! I experienced my first earthquake today.
After speaking at a Public relations conference on Monday, I was in California first thing Tuesday morning. The speaking engagement went very well (in my opinion). I hope I added something to the conversation. I was worried going into the meeting that I wouldn't have enough material to cover the time slot. It worked out that I ran out of time. The engagement from the audience was awesome. I am considering enhancing the presentation with the detail I had to leave out and put it up as a separate blog.

Tuesday morning, I was on a plane by 6:30 in the morning. Flights were good, and I landed in Irvine by 11:15 Pacific time. While waiting at the airport for the hotel shuttle, I leaned against a barrier wall. All of sudden it felt like the wall moved under my arm. It took me several seconds before I realized it was an earthquake. It lasted about 15 seconds total, and it was actually neat to watch. There was a tour bus in the shuttle area, and it was rocking back and forth. A tile (or something else, couldn't tell) fell from the ceiling in the other waiting area. It wasn't until I got to the office that I realized it wasn't a tiny quake. Luckily it wasn't a huge one either though! I found out that taking my luggage up 6 flights of stairs is more difficult then I would have thought. The elevators at the hotel were out to make sure they were OK. I have now experienced every major natural disaster except tsunami level tidal floods, and volcanoes. Not sure I want to push it any farther. I am OK with keeping things at this level.

Dark Knight

2008-07-29T22:29:00.002-05:00

So, I went to see the Dark Knight over the weekend.
I really enjoyed the movie. All the accolades which are being poured on Heath Ledger are well founded. His performance was amazing to me. He completely embraced the role, and lost himself in it. I found the sociological aspect of his evil very well written and thought out. There was perfect tension built and twists which played out perfectly. I think the unsung hero is Gary Oldman. His Commissioner Gordon character is a pivotal part of the series. He plays it so well and perfectly understated. I had to laugh when I told Jeanette that he was the cop in "The Professional".
I will say that Christian Bale absolutely sucks. His acting is rigid and it seemed to me like he was reading from a teleprompter. It's amusing that he is Batman, but serves as the worst part of the movie, and despite that the movie is amazing.
The Thank you for Smoking guy seemed almost thrown into the movie. Seemed like they could have left out his transformation to Two-Face out, and kept going with the Joker. They could have saved the Two-Face role for the next in the series.
I also wasn't happy with how the portrayed the Rottwielers. Being a rotty owner, I can't stand to see them portrayed as vicious horrible dogs. I thought their performance was a touch better then Bales though..

Getting the site back

2008-07-23T11:46:00.001-05:00

Still have not figured out what to do with this site. I think I will keep it "mine" and start a new one later which is separate from this.

Things are going fairly well. Work on the bathroom is getting closer to completion!
Bathroom Progress

Better Google Reader

2008-05-15T19:03:00.000-05:00

I use Google Reader for my homepage, but found it too big. I know, silly.

I also use the Better Google Reader extension from lifehacker with the Air Skin. I ended up creating a greasemonkey script which makes it even more compact.


// ==UserScript==
// @name           Delete Search
// @namespace      StevesStuff
// @description    Delete the search item in Reader
// @include        http://www.google.com/reader/*
// ==/UserScript==

function addGlobalStyle(css) {
    var head, style;
    head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
    if (!head) { return; }
    style = document.createElement('style');
    style.type = 'text/css';
    style.innerHTML = css;
    head.appendChild(style);
}

addGlobalStyle('#logo-container { height: 1px; ! important;}');
addGlobalStyle('#logo { display: none; ! important;}');
addGlobalStyle('#search { display: none ! important; }');
addGlobalStyle('#gbar, #guser, #global-info { font-size:10px; ! important; }');
addGlobalStyle('#entry { font-size:11px; ! important; }');
addGlobalStyle('body { font-size:80%; ! important; }');
addGlobalStyle('.entry .entry-title { font-size: 110%; ! important; }');

Cookie, Fisher, Revv it up

2008-03-05T20:09:00.001-06:00

Bird Feeder

2008-03-03T12:26:00.000-06:00

Built a prototype for a bird feeder stand.

Take a look

2008-02-27T15:47:00.000-06:00

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?
Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.

http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/

Eating Crow

2008-02-26T20:40:00.000-06:00

Ok. My initial reaction to the fact that NBC decided to 'redo' Knight Ridder pissed me off. No talent assholes rehashing old stuff is aggravating. Michael Bay's adaptation of Transformers for example was horrible to me. I grew up playing with transformers, and G.I. Joes (which is also in production). While I enjoyed the subtle humor of new bumblebee slamming his car door on old bumblebee the rest of the movie was just a long CGI effect, which bored me.
Thanks to the power of hulu.com I decided to watch the new Knight Ridder. It actually was better then I expected. I enjoyed watching it, and they did a good job bringing elements of the car/action together. When I read the early reports of the car transforming to "pursuit" mode, I had visions of the shit ass work Michael Bay did with transformers. The nano-technology element was well thought out, and actually a bit more plausible then some of the 80s transformations that KITT did.
The endless commercial for FORD was offputting, but the same happens now with Dirty Jobs and 24. The fact I could watch it on my home computer with 150 seconds of commercials means TV media has to find other ways to finance it's efforts.
Kudos to NBC. This isn't a stellar hit by any means, but worth the time to watch.

Mmm... The feet are tasty!

Opossums, Netvibes, and google Reader

2008-01-30T09:52:00.000-06:00

Keeping the tradition alive, I haven't posted in awhile.

Things have been changing for me lately. I took a new job within the company. I now work from home, and travel to Irvine once a month. It's been amazing how much more I can get done working from home.
I wish the whole company could understand that technology workers can be productive from home. I have talked with others who felt they couldn't work from home. The distractions would be too much for them. I have had the opposite problem so far. I find myself working 10 hours a day (with little breaks), instead of an eight hour day with longer breaks. Oh well, work ethic gets in the way I suppose.

Random thing ::
We had an opossum come into our front yard, right under our kitchen window. It was actually really cool to sit there and watch this little creature forage around under the bushes. I had no idea that these animals were like buzzards in their desire for carrion. They actually eat rats as well. Actually, they pretty much eat anything. I watched him/her for about 20 minutes before he moved on to better hunting grounds.

Second Random thing ::
I made a dual switch to google reader. Part of the new job is (finally) a true dual monitor setup. While two 19" 4:3 aspect monitors seem a bit small to me at first, I actually like it. I am able to arrange on one screen, my email, tasks, and reader feeds. Basically, my left screen is all the information, while the right one is my working screen. I still have netvibes as my home page, but may consider another option at some point. It always takes me a week or more to get used to something...

Oh well. Back to work. This break has been way too long.

Finally Fixed my blogger account

2007-09-20T09:30:00.000-05:00

I used blogger to post to my site. It broke quite awhile ago, and I am just now fixing it.
Two more posts were made but never published. I suppose it's like finding a rare painting in a old shed, except mine aren't worth anything.

Will have to find some new material to write about now.

Hotels and an update

2007-05-17T08:32:00.000-05:00

Yea, yea, haven't updated.

Things haven't changed a whole lot. I did get a new car after the lease expired on my old one. I bought a 2005 Acura RL. If you actually care, then click on the flickr photos and navigate your way to all the photos.

I thought I would share a few goofy lines about hotels. I am traveling a bit more with my new job (well my additional job, I didn't leave my old one).

* One afternoon, went back to the hotel to take a quick nap before the afternoon/evening events. Put the Do not disturb plastic thingy in the door, and then laid down on the bed. 20 minutes later, the phone rings in the room. It's room service asking if I want my room to be cleaned. Sigh... Do not disturb must mean different things to different people.

* Nameless hotel in Irvine has 5 elevators. None of which respond to arrows. It was a haphazard delivery system. May get on an elevator and go up 3 stories before going down 5 to get someone and bring them up 2 stories before going down to the first story. I seem to remember an algebra equation similar to this. Maybe the hotel is smarter then I thought.

* None of the soda machines work in any hotel I have ever stayed at. Always sold out. I am still an idiot though trying to feed it money.

* Porn movies advertising. I find it amusing that they always say that the titles won't show up on your bill. Never mind that they are always $3.00 more then any other movie. THAT won't give it away.

* Nameless hotel lounge singer. Wow. Elton John, White Snake, and Bobby McFerrin make for an interesting series of songs to listen to. Too bad it is so insanely loud that everyones ears start bleeding.

* I have yet to figure out why hotel beds have that one long cylindrical pillow, except as a device to trip you in the morning while trying to find the bathroom.

* There are probably enough people checking into hotels who are over 5' 6" tall. I wish the shower heads matched that. Being 6' 1" and trying to contort while naked in a slippery tub isn't fun.

* Checking 5 times before you leave that you have the credit card key, and then having it quit working because it was beside your cell phone is a wonderful experience. It is even better when you do it three times in one week.

LIfe in the Redneck Riveria

2006-08-27T19:44:00.000-05:00

I have lived in N.W. Florida for something like 20 years. I am 30, so this is pretty much where I grew up..
I had an irreverent look at life in the O.C. Here are some fun facts about living in the R.R.

* Infrastructure, schministracture....
* At any given red light, you have an equal chance of seeing a 1987 truck as you would a Lexus. The truck's tires are probably higher then the Lexus.
* Basing assumptions on how many guys who wear white ribbed tank tops, domestic violence is an issue here.
* 80% of the people who make a right turn can't do it over 2 MPH, 5MPH if the speed limit is 45.
* Generally the Teeth to Tattoo ratio can be considered pretty much even. [full disclosure: I have three tattoos, but 30 teeth]
* Zoning, schmoning: House's and businesses within 200 feet of the beach seems like a good idea here. Actually, this one doesn't apply to just here since everyone sees the insurance hikes due to this fact.
* More then once a week, conversations with people end with someone muttering, 'stupid redneck' [full disclosure again: In my late teens, early twenty's, I had a mullet]
* Comparing current housing costs with median household incomes, it would appear the 'median' people are homeless.
* I am only guessing, but I believe there is some sort of group home in Tennessee, with 'special' people which lets them out every once in awhile to drive down here. Note: Not all the TN drivers, but a larger percentage then from other state which have homes for 'special' people.
* You can't drive for 20 minutes down one road without seeing a convenience store, bank, or bar. It's like the old west, except no robbers because in 20 minutes you only made it 3 miles.
* English, m*th*rf*ck*r, do you speak it?!?! - Not very well if you work in fast food, hospitality, landscaping, or Applebee's.
* "Wow!, What a beautiful view, such a pristine area. This is a great place to attract vacationers" -- "Your right, lets put up gigantic condos so the beautiful area can be overcrowded with cars, have no indigenous vegetation, and they can even block the view"
* Swampy areas make great base material for construction!

House Done

2006-08-27T19:39:00.000-05:00

This has been done for awhile, but I just got lazy about posting the images. We still have the bathroom to complete, but it's functional (without a sink). Happy days..

Life in the O.C.

2006-08-03T18:11:00.000-05:00

So I spent this week in Orange County, Ca. for a business trip.

Here are some things I learned about life in the O.C.

- Silicon Valley has nothing on this area, and it's not computers.
- Women in the area have a hundred yard stare that is amazing.
- I learned a new term "Newport Ford" which means a Mercedes.
- I believe there are only 5 domestic vehicles in Orange County, and I think they are all rental cars
- There are no single women in the bars. They all have guys with them, who apparently only own faded jeans, and dress shirts with broken buttons on the cuffs.
- I only saw one bird in the four days I was here. It was probably lost.
- A majority of the locals don't know how to get anywhere without getting on to an interstate. This is true even if the interstate is a mile away from a destination 400ft away.
- There are so many interstates that they aren't called interstates, only numbers prefaced with 'the'. The 405, The 55, The 73 are examples of this.
- I do the same thing...
- MaCarthur, and Jamboree were designed by someone handicapped.
- The ocean 'should' be to the West, but here it's south. This makes the 4 versions of MaCarthur and Jamboree really fun.
- North of The 55 is a different part of town. Why? No clue.
- No matter what Starbucks you go to, there is one closer to where you started from.

I may remember some other stuff.. It made me think of some for Florida too.. Will have to post that eventually..

Another Update

2006-07-14T19:24:00.000-05:00

I have not updated the site in quite awhile. It's been nice the last month or so, since the house is basically put back together. We had the outside painted, as well as all the interior walls. The soffets are installed, and we even have our motion lights back. The temporary fence was removed, and the side gate reinstalled. The dogs are happy to have their whole yard back.

There are still some "to-dos" to do, but the house is as normal as it's ever been. The back bathroom still needs tile, and a sink. At least the freaking bathtub is finally working. That was a nightmare from the hole in the ground to the broken faucets..

The master bedroom will be next after the bathroom is done. Moderate work on that w/ new floors. A new sliding glass door was installed along with all the other repairs.

I actually worked on the Blazer some as well. The seat is back in. I haven't replaced the rocker panel yet. I ordered a flanging tool and some body hammers since that install will take some work. I started to change the headers out on it. I was kinda pissed when I realized that the passenger header was as long as the old one. The length puts the collector too close to a brace. Oh well, at least with my torch I can dimple it better then I did w/ the old flex house. Picture are updated on the right -->

You know you are a geek when...

2006-03-30T21:49:00.000-06:00

You know you are a geek when... Written in 2002... I can remember relating to more then 50% of these. Some of them look like inside jokes with his/her friend.

I made two realizations this week as I pondered turning 30 in less then two months.

1) There are people driving right now who weren't born for at least some period of time I was in high school.

2) I have been on the net for 14 years now. I find it odd/amusing how something that is 14 years old is so mystifying, and innovative for people. I guess cause the link above was appropriate for me 4 years ago.

House Damage update

2006-03-30T21:20:00.000-06:00

The concrete is poured, life is getting better..

House Damage - a photoset on Flickr

No words

2006-03-21T10:08:00.000-06:00

I can't put this into words.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nfsw_photos/sets/72057594087329603/

Vacation Hell

2006-02-22T21:54:00.000-06:00

I took this week off in the hopes of working on my blazer. That is not how this week ended up..

On Sunday we decided to go to the hardware store and get some siding for the house, and a new trailer. We knew we would be getting new floors for the bedroom, and a sliding glass door, so the trailer made sense. We were happy.

Monday morning rolls around, and I go to the back of the house to start pulling off some of the old rotten siding that needed to be replaced. I cut it out and immediately notice the tell-tale signs of termites. Shit. I pull the sheething off and find even more signs of termites. Specifically, I find about 20 of the little bastards crawling through the remains of one corner of my house. 4 hours later, I had pulled approx 25ft of siding off my house, and still didn't find the end of where the termites were feeding. Happy f*cking days.

Short plug for Killingsworth Pest Control. They arrived within 5 hours of my first call to them, and sprayed the exposed 2x4's. Within 24 hours of that, they did a spot treatment in the concrete. Charged me very little (in comparison to their immediate response). HIGHLY recommend them.

Monday night, I put plastic wrap on the house, and on Tuesday I began the phone calls to contractors. As most of you who read this know, I am pretty handy with home repairs. Having 20% to 30% of your exterior walls needing replaced requires a contractor though..

In our market, houses are going up at an alarming rate, so contractors are few and far between. I contacted roughly 20 contractors. 8 said they might be able to do it, and would call me back. So far only 4 have called me back. Only one has shown up. If his rough estimate of cost holds out as true, I could buy a 18' boat for the same price. I know that because the boat show is going on at the mall right now. Those boats sure look a lot more fun and pretty then one corner of your house exposed, and eaten.

By today, I was relegated to the fact I am going to play the waiting game with contractors so I finally got started on the blazer.

Here is the flickr pool where I will posting pictures, and keeping the progress updated.
Blazer Flickr Pool

Math Problem 2

2006-02-06T20:41:00.000-06:00

This one is killing me.. I can't figure it out at all. I was trying to help Jeannette with math by coming up with a math problem.

This is what I came up with

(x(.20))-(.15(x+50))=35 solve for x.
.20x - .15x+7.5=35
.05x+7.5=35
.05x=27.5
x=550

Pretty easy right.. Here is the odd part.
I used these initial numbers to generate the math problem.
x = 850
y = x+50

Interest on account x was 20%, Interest on Account y was 15%. The difference between the two was 35.
Account x is (850*.20)=170
Account y is (900*.15)=135
The difference between the two is 35. Starting to see the odd ball in this?

So going back to the original problem, using the 550 for x

Interest in 550.00 was 20% or 110.00.
Interest on 600 (x+50) was 15% or 90.00
The difference between the two is 20 (not 35.00)

Rewriting the problem above with 550.00

(550(.20))-(.15(550+50)) = ???
110-82.5+7.5 = ???
Equals 20?

I have no clue on this one.. I don't understand how the original problem results in 550 as the answer, yet it's wrong when you put the numbers back in?

UPDATE: Mark figured it out. When I distributed the .15 I didn't carry the negative with it to the 50.

(x(.20))-(.15(x+50))=35 solve for x.
.20x -.15x-7.5=35
.05x-7.5=35
.05x=42.5
x=850

LA Auto Show

2006-01-08T21:29:00.000-06:00

Sweet!
I made it to my first Auto Show this weekend. I was in California for a conference, and was able to spend a few hours to go up to LA and see the show.
It was pretty cool. I had hoped for more concept cars, but I would guess they are all at the Detroit show. It's probably easier to do it their instead of treking across the country.
I took some pictures and uploaded them to my flickr account. Check it out here http://www.flickr.com/photos/nfsw_photos/sets/1797490/

Google Games

2005-11-18T15:26:00.000-06:00

I saw this somewhere else, so with apologies to whomever originally created this, here are my version of the rules for the google game...

Best played across IM

The main object of the game is to string together words that will give 0 results.
This proves to be difficult since a lot of "word lists" are on the web. This isn't a googlewhack game, so no cheating by using those.

Play is taken in turns with two people.
Player A searches a word
example: "hacienda" which results in 2,710,000 results

Player B adds the word "optical" so the search becomes "hacienda optical" which results in 64,800

Player A adds another and the two go back and forth.

All words must be underlined in the google results (in other words, they have to be real words). Corrections to misspellings are allowed.

This continues until one of five conditions conditions are met.
A) Zero results (almost impossible) - whoever gets the zero results wins
B) Entering a non-defined word results in a loss for that person
C) If adding a word the list increases the results then you lose.
D) You have the same results three times. The third time that person loses.
- i.e. "monkeys web twister" has 350 results for player A, player B adds "wrench" which keeps the results at 350, player a adds "lunch" and the count is at 350 - player A lost

The Whore wins

2005-11-03T09:22:00.000-06:00

Kevin 'Whore' McHugh was the first to submit the correct answer to the math problem.
I schooled him with shorter php code, but he trumped me with a C program that answers the riddle....


#include 
#include 

char backwards(char *a, char *b)
  {
    char c;

    for(c = 0; c < strlen(a); c++)
      {
        if(a[c] != b[strlen(b) - 1 - c])
          return 0;
        }

          return 1;
      }

int main(int argc, char **argv)
  {
    char a[5];
    char b[5];
    int i;

    for(i = 1000; i < 2500; i++)
      {
        sprintf(a, "%d", i);
        sprintf(b, "%d", (i * 4));
        
        if(backwards(a, b))
          printf("%d * 4 = %d\n", i, (i * 4));
          }

        return 0;
        }

Math Problem

2005-10-24T19:18:00.000-05:00

Hannah had an interesting math problem today.
Try and figure out the value of a,b,c, and d in the formula below.
Each letter represents a unique number. All the numbers are between 0 and 9 (inclusive).

abcd
x 4
****
dcba

I ended up writing a php script to solve this for me..

Enjoy, I will post the answer... eventually.

Password Keeper

2005-10-20T11:41:00.000-05:00

There are quite a few of these floating around, but I rebuilt one for what I needed. These password bookmarklets are a great way to keep you passwords separate from each site. I copied the script from this site and added the feature to change the hostname to whatever you want. Some sites use different sign-on urls, then what your accessing. I plan on using mine with hostnames like "FTP password for whatever".
The basic usage is that you remember a master password. It's best to pick two words and sprinkle some numbers in the middle. Something like "r0s3s4r3r3d". This password isn't saved anywhere, you type that in each time. The bookmarklet asks you for this master password, then allows you to keep the domain name or change it. The final prompt is if you want to see the password it generated.
The idea is to save the "monkey" bookmark to your toolbar. On the pages you have a password field, click on the bookmark, and the script will auto-fill in the unique password.
Here is the link to the with the "monkey" bookmarklet. You can always visit this page from any browser and retrieve your password. (Nothing is saved on my site ). Copy and past the code to your site if you want.

Cleaning Blood spatter is tough work...

2005-10-17T21:28:00.000-05:00

Wow.. So today is one of those days when you realize how easy the other days are.

Day started with a trip to the doctor with Jeanette for her foot. All is well with the bones, nothing damaged. The pain is still overwhelming. The doctor seemed to think it was a hematoma, or an infection starting.. She is one antibodics for the possibility of infection. I have no clue what the fix for a hematoma is. I know it was surgery for one of my dogs, but who knows. We go back again on Wednesday to have the stitches removed. He will evaluate again to see what the issue may be with her pain.

Today (well yesterday) was boss's day. My staff got me a cool shirt and decorated my office w/ balloons. I used to hate any sort of big deal made about things, but it I guess I have mellowed even more. I enjoyed it, and appreciated what they had to say.

One of my friends had some issues today. It's amazing how relationships can be. It's a tough ride to deal with. It made me think back to some past times with me. Mixed emotions of the good times, and the horrible times. Certainly glad things are much more even now.

Coming home proved to be the most interesting part of the day. I had gone shopping with the hopes of cooking up yet another incredible dinner. The modesty is amazing isn't it? So I get home about 6 or so. Hannah informs me that Jake cut his paw or something. She saw some minor blood stains on the floor. I put the groceries down and go to look at what he did. All five of the dogs are excited that I am home. They are dancing around, so I decide to let them settle before I look at jake. About that time he turns his head, and flings blood all over the floor. I thought it was coming from his mouth, but it turns out it was his ear. Not sure what happened, but the tip of his ear was sliced about 3/4 of inch. By this time, it's pouring blood out of it. Most of it was matted to the fur of his neck. Now it was dripping all over the place.
Panic sets in to get it stopped so I can take him to the emergency vet. Taping a happy and strong dog's ear isn't easy. I eventually get it on, and get him into the laundry room. He then proceeds to pull the gauze off, and drip blood all over the laundry room. Now we have two rooms with blood everywhere.
I finally get another bit of gauze on him, and wrap his head w/ tape (medical tape). I get him into the Yukon and set off..
Of course, he gets the bandage off, and begins dripping blood all over the back of the yukon. The annoyance of the cut ear causes him to shake his head.
Finally to the vet, he is brought back to the room, and quickly stitched up. I can't say enough how much the emergency vet in Niceville is great. Wonderful people!
Moving him back to the car, get him home, unload him. He is drowsy and not real sure on his feet, so he konks out easily in the bedroom..
Phew.. Now to clean the back of the yukon. I felt like I went into a scene from CSI.. Blood was in every cranny in the back. I was able to clean what I believe is most of it. The hardest part was the fine mist sprayed when he shook his head. I am not sure I will ever be able to get it out of the headliner.
I certainly respect any individual that regularly have to deal with a blood soaked scene. It's amazing, and rather disturbing how it can fling everwhere..

I finally got around to cooking yet another great concoction for dinner..

Update...

2005-10-16T21:55:00.000-05:00

Wow, Too long yet again. The story of this blog.
Things have been pretty good lately. I feel like there is something new about things, but I don't know how to put a finger on it. I have found a new interest in my old music files. Back in the days when Kazaa wasn't known by the mainstream. It's still amusing to see the labels fighting the music sharing, considering I bought CD's because of the songs I downloaded...

Jeanette's surgery has taken quite the toll on her. I wish I could do something constructive to help the pain. I end up being her crutch so she can walk. I can sympathize with her, remembering my knee surgery. I really hope that the x-rays tomorrow show that all the bones are setting correctly. It's been 8 days, and she is still in a great deal of pain. I have slowly got over my issues with seeing joints with pins sticking out of them.. Uggh, it's still ugly though. I don't think she will do the other foot, even though she needs it and could recover better...

I haven't worked on the blazer much. Playing nurse-maid has kept me busy. It's a lot of work keeping the house running, and working full time. The job has kept me stressed, but in a good way. I can't make time move any faster, but I wish I could. We have this huge potential, and it's slow realizing it.

The dogs are fine, and have adjusted to the new schedule w/ Jeannette off her feet. They don't get as much petting as they used to, but they are managing.

I am still working on my online grocery picker. I find myself frustrated when I go grocery shopping. The main reason is that my grocery list isn't in order of the aisles. I am trying to build a simple shopping list tool online that will always output a list that is in order. This is a ADHD project for me. I have finally come to grips with the fact I can't focus like normal people. The "ADHD Projects" help me to focus on things.. I have found a few tricks that help.

To anyone I haven't said hi to in awhile, it's not personal - just soo much going on!

Storm update

2005-08-29T10:42:00.000-05:00

Not sure if anyone is looking to see how things are here. If you are then things are fine. I ended up coming into work, which is scary across the mid bay bridge.

Google Talk

2005-08-23T22:43:00.000-05:00

I rock.. was jabbering within 5 minutes of the official launch..

Google Talk is live.
VOIP built in (when using their client)

Hawt..

The new things are so much like the old

2005-08-16T21:44:00.000-05:00

Came up with a new saying today. "Hope for the best, deal with the reality" That may exist somewhere else and I remembered it now for some reason. I tend to lock away random memories of things, but somehow can't remember why I got up out of my chair. I hate that feeling of, "Ok.. I opened my browser to go what site?..?". I am not talking any length of time here, it's on the order of 4 seconds and it's gone out of my head.
My staff must love trying to deal with this.

So I went out to the driving range tonight. I am probably around a 40 handicap at this point. It's mostly due to my inability to hit a driver. I tend to be accurate enough with irons, if not short on the distance. The driver on the other hand is my personal weapon against earthworms, calm water, and any wayward tree living animals. I sometimes like to beam carts, and other objects on the course as well. It's fun to watch me I am sure, but sucks for me. The trip to the range was helpful, but painful. I switched my stance a bit to try and better accommodate my height of over 6 foot. The strain on my back was quite a bit. The benefit was good to see though. 175 to 200 yard drives, while not impressive by most standards, was a huge improvement for me. I could use some pajamas with alternate heating and ice-packs built in. That would be a great thing. Just wear pajamas with temperature regulating features around everywhere. I could set a new trend! I guess it would be embarrassing though to show up at someone's house with just pajamas on... Oh well, it was a fun thought at the time.

Jumping on to another random thought.. We had our roof put on this last week. We went with a metal room, which I am very happy we decided to do. With hurricanes a constant threat, the protection against wind (by itself) damage will be less to worry about. The additional help against rot will be nice too. Always fun dealing with older homes.
We also repainted the living room this weekend, again. I think we decided we are up to 10 coats on those walls. (See earlier posts for why 6 of them were put on). This new paint doesn't scratch, and discolor like the old stuff, which is great. Now we just have to fight with fixing some of the baseboards. The newest dog "sugar" has chewed up a corner pretty bad.

Umm.. What else... Guess that's enough for now. Toodles..

Hurricane Update

2005-07-10T01:01:00.000-05:00

I put this blog up for our hurricane updates
Click Here to see the latest on our hurricane information.

No information will be posted to alittlegoofy.com, all hurricane information will be here

Pre-Hurricane hysteria

2005-07-08T18:35:00.000-05:00

Ugghh.. Hurricane Dennis is most likely going to hit us on Sunday morning. I say morning since the storm is has a 65 mile radius from the eye. With a 2PM landfall, we should get hit about 10AM with the first of it. Happy days..
The worst part is the hurricane, but the annoying part is the majority of the people. I have been pretty sickened by the way the weather channel does it's best to scare the ever loving shit out every person within a 1000 mile radius. I am surprised they don't have reporters in Kansas, waiting for the .0004 inches of rain that Dennis will dump on them. I can completely understand the need to warn people, but it's the way that they do it that bothers me. I find it repulsive how people will find excitement and true joy out of a situation like this.

Looking toward the other real tragedy going on, I have been impressed by coverage of the London bombings. It seems that the channels I have watched/heard are actually reporting information. Some jump on the sensationalism, but most are reporting facts, not emotional attempts.

My best guess is that this storm will be around the same strength as Ivan when it hits. In my area the effect will probably be bad, but not overwhelming. I do worry about Pensacola, and Alabama, as they are still no where near being back up and running from last years storms. At least in my area, the weak trees were knocked out during Ivan.

We have our generator ready, chainsaw ready, boards up, radio, batteries, and water. We will do our best to make it through. I am sure that we will be without communication for several days.

Thanks to Ray, Stephanie, and Marshall - GREAT PEOPLE!!

Cards are against me

2005-06-13T21:34:00.000-05:00

Uggh! On a bad streak with poker lately. Was up quite a bit, and now can't seem to get a tournament to go my way. Going to have to tighten up the game.

Got back from California last Friday. Was a nice trip. Always enjoy visiting the area. It's sad to see that the home prices in Orange County California are only about 20% more than here. This area is going to crash horribly one of these days.. I hope it doesn't, but I just can't see it working out. The trip itself was rather uneventful, but seeing everyone was nice. Tim and Mike still both suck and wiggled their way out of me buying them a drink.

The plasma cutter finally came in while I was gone. Haven't hooked it up yet, but can't wait to start hacking away at some metal. Not sure how I am going to handle 80 degree weather, with 150% humidity since I have to wear long sleeve shirts, and pants with the welders. Will probably keel over and die after the first 20 minutes.

Arlene was boring, which I am very happy about. With the stuff we are hoping to do with the house, a real hurricane would not be a good thing.

New Things

2005-05-09T20:31:00.000-05:00

Wee, finally got my welder. I purchased it from Daytona Mig, and it's nothing too fancy. They actually screwed up my order, and sent me the wrong welder. I realized after I received it that it will work out. It's a 110 - 140Amp model. I also bought a plasma cutter, but that hasn't arrived yet. This tool was like most everything else I end up doing required me doing about 5 other projects just to get it up and running. I had to run a new 30A circuit, which I of course ended up cutting two holes in the wall for.
My life is so amusing at times. I bought the Blazer three months ago, and instantly hit a snag once I worked on it. Waited three months to get the welder and then instantly hit a snag. When I got the new outlet installed, I sat down and noticed the termites flying around my overhead lights. It's swarm time here, and our neighbor has termites, and it's being treated.
So basically I waited three months to get the welder, and now I will need to wait a few more weeks before I can use it. The only way to keep the termites from swarming the house (outside) is to turn off all the lights inside. I can't work in the evenings now, only on the weekends.... Sigh.. Such is my life.

Hannah found a gigantic turtle (in my opinion) at her dad's house.. She brought it home and gave it Jeanette for Mother's day. It's now in the woods/swamp beside the house. Jeanette named it Isaac. No clue why..
It ended up snapping at Jeanette shortly after this picture was taken. I am wearing my new welding gloves and I could still feel the claws.

Changes

2005-04-27T20:26:00.000-05:00

Well things have changed a bit in the last month or so. Jeanette finally quit her job. I was tired of her anyways, so it worked out. =) Actually this will be a good thing. She will be able to be home when little one gets home from school. We will have some distance which we desperately need. It's not easy working with your other half.
We haven't done much of anything exciting lately, although we did get a fun new toy. Our old TV went tits up, so we splurged and got a 42" flat screen DLP and surround sound. It's nice, but it really shows off how much the picture quality sucks for non HD programming. Hopefully the broadcasters will actually convert to HD next year.
The blazer is still in the garage. I got to stopping point until I could get a welder. Will be ordering that this week, so I have something to do over the weekends again. Will be fun playing with intense amount of electricity and heat! Can't wait to get some scrapped knuckles.
Work has been exhausting over the last few weeks / months. Finally back to a point where I am overwhelmed, but don't feel it breathing down my neck.

Weekly Update

2005-03-08T20:56:00.000-06:00

Nothing too exciting in todays edition of random updates. I got the monster in the garage and pulled the driveshaft. It was pretty bad, but repairable. I was surprised it had a 12 bolt rear end. Not something I expected on this beast. Will be working on this one for awhile.

Going to Dallas in a few weeks.. wee... the excitement is overwhelming. I am excited about going to the "O.C." in May. Haven't been to corporate in a year or so. Be good to see the gang.

Golf is still a stupid sport..

Another Random Update

2005-02-24T20:52:00.000-06:00

Uggh... Got in the bad habit of not updating again..
sooo, here is an update.

The Blue Monster has been moved to the driveway for further inspection. The old owners drove it for quite a while with a broke u-joint in the back. Worst case a new yoke. The rust is pretty extensive around the cab, but this is a beater so I am not surprised, nor worried. The frame/suspension seems to be rust free. Probably becuase it was coated in motor oil from the leaky engine. Not sure what that is about, but have to clean it at the coin op wash to see what I can find.
Exhaust is missing on the passenger bank. This is a good thing since it was previously rubbing along the transfer case mount..

We got our Yukon back from the body shop. The repairs they made are amazing. The further damage the caused afterward is sorta sucky. They will be repairing the two spots they damaged, but it sorta sucks to bring it back. Some rubber/metal gaskets on the roof are peeled up, and they scuffed/cut our passenger seat. I am glad I had before repair, after accident pics!

I got back from Punta Gorda Florida on Tuesday. Delta sucks. Two landings were actually minor crashes. Was there on a business trip...

Ummm.. guess that is enough for now.

Toodles

Monster

2005-02-12T23:41:00.000-06:00

The (blue) monster is home.
It is almost midnight on Saturday night. Very tired, so short post.

The truck is only slightly better than I thought it would be. This is a good thing since I expected a HUGE piece of work. It is only a minor piece of work.

Needs an exhaust, some floorboards, and a tune up. The same size tires will help too..

More on the trip tomorrow or monday. 36 hours round trip, too tired.

Chevrolet : Blazer

2005-02-07T19:35:00.000-06:00

Finally got my blazer!!! I have no clue what shape it's in, but I won =)

eBay item 4524283381 (Ends Feb-07-05 16:19:29 PST) - Chevrolet : Blazer

Hopefully Pick it up soon. Then I can start having fun with a passion I had to leave behind several years ago. I have always been into cars, and it's been a fantasy to have a true project vehicle. Something I don't have to make run by Monday morning so I can go to work. After leaving my job as a mechanic, and not being able to finish that "goal", this will be fun.

Sweet..

Crash!

2005-01-22T19:45:00.000-06:00

Everyone amazingly was ok, but we were in an accident this afternoon. A jeep cut in front of a BMW and was T-Boned. The hard top to the jeep flew off like a frisbee and crashed into our Yukon. It was rather scary considering it hit the drivers window. The pictures below are from my camera phone. I couldn't get a picture of the jeep where the BMW hit it. It actually knocked the tire off the axle and sent it about 100ft behind us. The entire side of the jeep was destroyed. The passenger seat was actually pushed over, and the driveshafts were separated.
The BMW damage is obvious. The driver got out after the air bags deployed. Was amazing that no one was hurt.

We have glass all over the inside of the Yukon. We were both covered in it. Jeanette was driving. The hardtop actually crushed the door frame above the window, and dented the roof. The entire side of the Yukon is dented/scratched. There is even damage on the top where the hard top hit it. The rear wheel even had gouges in the aluminum. It appears the Jeep hit us after the hardtop. If the hardtop had been 3 or 4 inches lower it would have hit Jeanette in the head. Very scary stuff.

inside.jpg
jeep.jpg
yukon_side.jpg
bmw.jpg

Yukon damage detail

QDB: Quote #447149

2005-01-20T21:18:00.000-06:00

QDB: Quote #447149
spE4Ce pREtZEL01: how do I end up being a therapist for all my old gfs
OMGIMJ4KE: comes with the territory
OMGIMJ4KE: same thing happened with mine
spE4Ce pREtZEL01: not that I mind, I love 'em all
spE4Ce pREtZEL01: collect 'em, trade 'em, show 'em to your friends
OMGIMJ4KE: gotta catch em all
spE4Ce pREtZEL01: Wendymon, I choose you! Bipolar attack!
OMGIMJ4KE: "Im happy! Now im sad!"
OMGIMJ4KE: Monster is confused!

CNEWS - Weird News: 'Nail man' wants to make pizzas

2005-01-19T13:42:00.000-06:00

CNEWS - Weird News: 'Nail man' wants to make pizzas

I can't figure out for the life of me why this idiot is getting any news coverage. He shot himself in the head with a nail gun and didn't know it. Ok... great for him, glad he lived, move along now... Why is it news that he now wants to make pizza?? So freaking what. He is obviously not smart enough to do much more than that. He states in the article above that he didn't have insurance. Basically says he didn't think he would need it. Umm hello! Why would someone who works on a construction site with power tools, exposed wood, sharp objects, and equipment need insurance. I am sure the OSHA is rating this job as no risk at all.....

Blah..

Christmas 04

2004-12-26T22:07:00.000-06:00

Well we survived our Christmas Party. It was pretty insane with 19 people in our house. With the weather in the 30s and slight rain we decided to leave the dogs inside. Yeppers, 19 people, 5 dogs, and a ton of food. Good times for the most part were had by all. There were some unfortunate mishaps. I was able to take the leather and camel hair off my couch and cut some new pieces of wood to repair that damage.
I think most of the family had a good time. It's been a long time since Tina and Skip have been over to see Jeanette, Cheryl and Paul. It was the first time I met them.
Here are some pics of the party.

Probably post more about the party later. I am pretty tired, and will probably be a long night. The dogs ate two platters of assorted cookies. Some of which had chocolate...

Burnout 3 SUCKS!

2004-12-20T22:04:00.000-06:00

Ok.. I normally wouldn't post a few thoughts about why a game sucks so horribly as Burnout 3, but I will make an exception tonight.

I have had Burnout 3 for a few months, and have played it off and on throughout that time. I have jumped between Rallysport2 and this turd of a program. Both are supposed to be excellent driving games. Burnout 3 does not fulfill that promise.

I played the original Burnout, and was very impressed by the game. One of the big features of the game is the simulated crash physics. They allow you to move in "impact time". Impact time is a way of slowing down the game play to the point you can "aftertouch" your car while it's crashing. This features lets you slide your car a bit off it's normal course. You do this so that you can crash into your opponents, or other non-combative vehicles. This feature works great, and have had no problem with it.

The issue that arises while using afterthought is that you can't see how much the game sucks ass in very slow motion. During the last week or so, I have progressed to about 33% of the game completed. The levels increase in difficultly. I expected that. I also expected I would struggle a bit through them as the competition got more heated. The competition that I elude to is the computer generated competitors. I should correct myself, competition I elude to is a big ole pile of computer generated crap.

I kept losing one of the Grand Prix races. You basically have to come in 3rd or better overall through 4 races. For a whole week every time I played this particular race I kept losing. I started noticing little things which I thought were off about the game. I would crash when I barely glanced against a wall. I noticed that my pseudo competition would crash half way through my crash, yet be ahead of me when I came back on the track. I kept complaining to the dogs (they are the only ones that listen) that the game cheated.

I grew up on console games. I owned a coleco vision w/ the driving wheel, and pedals. Moved from that to Atari, Nintendo, PC, Xbox, etc.. I always got mad at the games and claimed cheating. I always knew in the back of my head that the game didn't cheat. I always knew I just wasn't good at the game yet. It always worked out that once I played for awhile I got better and beat the game. In the case of Burnout 3, I am not wrong. The game cheats. Well, maybe it doesn't cheat in so much as it fucking sucks.

I watched during one of my "aftertouches" that a competitor hit a bus ( sending the bus from behind me to in front of me ), then slid into to regular vehicles, before slamming into the back of an SUV. I missed hitting the competitor by a fraction of an inch. I had originally crashed when I slid into a guard rail at 60MPH. Gameplay is normally around 150MPH. My 60MPH hit was not hard by the normal standards of the game. I watched as the vehicle continued along the track, never having crashed. This was the worst example of competitors' not having the same physics applied to them. In every race I have done, I see the same thing. I even watched a car flip a bus over, and then the car ran into the tumbling bus. The car never slowed down, just scooted to the side and took off...

I have seen the press that the class action suit against game manufacturer is getting. I think it may be a good thing. I can tell the programmers tried to do a good job. I have to believe the allegations of over-worked, stressed-out programmers are true. I can't imagine anything else explaining how a game that cost 50+ dollars could suck as bad as this game does. The programming of the AI for the competitors is way off. It makes the game unnecessarily difficult and wholly pathetic. Burnout 3 is the worst game I have played for the XBox. Do not buy it.

RallySport is pretty cool though. I suck at the ice racing, but that's only cause I haven't practiced enough..

Sugar Gallery

2004-12-19T11:32:00.000-06:00

Ohh well.. Guess we have another dog. Those of you counting will know that we are up to 5 dogs again. At least this one doesn't shed...

Sugar

The definition of a bad day

2004-12-13T21:45:00.000-06:00

I believe that I have had a day which will epitomize what a bad day is.

From the beginning...
I slept through my alarm clock, and woke up about 30 minutes late. I was taking four of my dogs to the vet today all at once. I had hoped to got up early enough to get them loaded up in the Yukon. After taking a quick shower, dressing, and loading a change of clothes for work in the Yukon I started to load the dogs up. I was running about 10 minutes late at this point. I do hate to be late to anything, so I was already slightly into a bad start.

I was able to load Bailey into the Yukon. Things began the downhill slide from there. Jeanette was coming out with Hannah's bookbag when Jake slipped through her legs and bolted down the street. Jake is a border collie lab mix who is actually pretty damn quick. He was excited because Bailey had made it to freedom so he was ready to run. Jeanette and I took off after him.

I was pretty pissed that she let him out and I told her that. Jeanette and I ended up having an argument as we walked down the street. After the very brief spat, I was left to get Jake by myself. I chased him about a block when he went through an unfinished house and out the back. I chased him back around another house, which resulted in scaring the crap out of a guy leaving for work. I can imagine seeing a 50lb dog, and me coming out from the side of your house as you pull away would be a bit disconcerting.

Finally Jake was caught by a construction worker and I got him home. Athena, and Sugar ( my newest dog ) were already loaded into the Yukon by Jeanette and Hannah. After Jake calmed down I got him loaded up and was on my way. 20 minutes late....

I get to the vets office. I was the talk of the early morning crowd since I was bringing in 4 dogs at one time. One of the vet techs loves Athena, our 125lb Rottie. The tech came out and wanted me to get Athena out first. I had been in the vet office about 30 minutes by this point. It takes awhile to fill out all the paperwork when you bring that many dogs in. When I got to the Yukon I popped the rear window glass. The smell of dog shit was quite lovely. When Jake jumped up and put his crap laden paws on the window sill it was even better. Bailey had taken a dump in the back. All four of the dogs had stepped in it.

We got Athena out, and into the vet office. I was so angry at this point, I didn't think about what would happen with the other three still in the Yukon. I finished the paperwork, and went out to get the other dogs. I realized upon walking up to the vehicle that three excited dogs with crap all over their paws were jumping through the whole vehicle. I had the joy of dog doodoo from the front dashboard to the rear window. Even had some smeared down the outside of the tailgate from the initial jumping excitement.

To increase my wonderfully bad day, Jake decided to greet me as we got him out. Jake greets you by jumping up and putting his paws on your stomach. Normally not a bad thing, but with fecal matter it becomes a not so nice situation.
An hour after getting to the vet, I am finally done. The dogs are dropped off, and I have a paper towel to wipe off the front seat so I can drive home.

I took the Yukon home and cleaned it up. Nothing too horrible, but the smell has stuck in my nose all day. I kept thinking I had crap in my hair or somewhere. I didn't luckily. It was my nose playing tricks on me..
Now you may be thinking that this is enough to define a bad day. Well your absolutely right, but wrong in the assumption that is all that happened.. Read on....

I get to work, to have two people immediately tell me that we have problems. These two individuals are usually pretty good about handling issues, so I knew that my day was only getting better. Two of our products went completely tits up. I was able to work out one issue within 30 minutes.

The other one just about killed me.

I can't stand vendors (well most vendors). Relying on another company for the success of yours is difficult. This vendor is the worst though. They made changes to our system which caused us to lose about 50% of our customers for this one product, for one of my clients. I know all that reads in a manner like I write speeches for the president, but I don't want to be too specific and get sued or something. Suffice to say, it was a fiasco to get fixed. I spent 4 hours on the phone, mostly on hold. There were other things to help make the day a bit more crappy, but those were the normal. They only added the equivalent of poking yourself with a stick after a tree falls on you. Mildly annoying, but doesn't really add or subtract from the pain you already feel.

The fun continues...

I leave work around 4:00 with a briefcase of things to work on tonight. I get back to the vet and meet with the doctor. Three of the dogs have some random issue, and at least two medications each. The stray (Sugar) has worms, Jake is fine, Athena has some eye booger disease, and tapeworms, and Bailey has a skin infection. We are pretty committed to the care of our dogs. Hearing that each of them is defective in some way is disheartening. The doc does say that these things are very common due to the flea and mosquito population after Ivan. None of the issues are life threatening, and are more or less easily treated. We do have the possibility of the stray infecting the other dogs though. I get to find out if that bit of excitement comes to pass in three months.

Ok, so I go to actually take the dogs and load them into the Yukon to get them home. A vet tech is nice enough to help out. We take Athena, Jake, and Sugar to the Yukon. Athena lumbers into the back by herself (mostly) and then Jake jumps in. The tech lets go of Jakes leash, and bends down to get Sugar. Jake then jumps out of the Yukon and runs through the parking lot. Sugar follows him. Sugar is able to follow him because I let go of her leash when I fell into a bush. I had tried to grab Jake, and tripped over the curb, flailing like a moron in the dark into a bush. Jake is quickly caught by the tech, and I was able to grab Sugar. I then realized that Athena was by herself in the back of the Yukon. Luckily she is fat and didn't want to jump out.

I go back in to the vet office and get Bailey. He is one dog, so I thank the tech and tell her I can load him up alone. Well I can, but not without yet another horrible mishap. I opened the tailgate of the Yukon, where the other three dogs are. Athena is happy and content to lay down in the back. Sugar is not really interested in getting out either. Jake on the other hand has tasted the sweet delight of escaping twice in less than 12 hours. He wants out.

Picture this situation; I have Jake hooked by one thumb in the back of the vehicle. He is desperate to get out. All 50lbs of him is working to jump out. Bailey is on a leash which I have by my right hand. The liftgate is up. Bailey will not jump into the back. Sugar realizes the possibility of escape and is making her move to get out. I quickly survey the situation. I can't let go of Jake or he will bolt. I can't let go of Bailey because he will also bolt. I can't shut the hatch because both my hands are tied up with dogs. I am around the corner of the building from the vets office. They can't see what has happened. I almost cried at this point...

I finally decide to go for the hatch. I hooked Baileys leash around my thumb and reached up, slightly choking him, and grab the handle for the hatch. I quickly pull it down and slide out of the way. Well actually I almost slide out of the way. My right forehead didn't make it. The corner of the hastily closing hatch catches my forehead right at the hairline. It actually stuns me to the point I start to kneel down on the ground. I catch my breath, pop the back window of the tailgate and lift Bailey in through the window. It's not easy to put a 65lbs bassett/beagle mix through a tailgate window, but it is possible.

I finally have them loaded up and I go back inside to the vet to pay the bill. I come around the corner to cashier and slip on dog pee.. This wasn't too bad though. I think I only pulled a muscle in my leg. It hurts a bit to sit in a chair for awhile..

I get the vet bill. I had expected it to be expensive. I didn't expect it to be the equivalent of two BMW lease payments. That hurt, but I am glad they are back in the regiment of shots..

Ok, I know by now you are really thinking that this is a bad day.
It gets a bit worse, but only slightly.

Jeanette decides to be nice to me and get an ice pack for the bump on my head. She gets a bag of frozen raspberries and a paper towel. She gives it to me and I go to put it on my forehead. The towel slips just before I make it to my head. The raspberries shoot out between my fingertips and smacks me right where the now bluish bump on my forehead is. I reach up instinctively in pain. I miss and poke myself in the right eye.
Ohh and I forgot to mention that I have a horrible head cold that started on Saturday...

Ick.

2.5 billion pixels

2004-11-26T22:50:00.000-06:00

TNO TPD - GigaPix UK is the coolest thing I have seen in a long time..

If your reading this, than it worked

2004-11-24T17:58:00.000-06:00

Testing out the email - to - blog features. Recently got a blackberry and
email enabled phone, so I can see this actually being useful.
No posts in quite awhile. Things have been busy, and I haven't really had
a lot of time at home to sit down and write about mundane things.
I did get bit by a bird.. I know that sounds weird, but it looks like
gunshot wound in my arm =(

Happy Turkey Day.

Poker Table

2004-10-16T21:47:00.000-05:00

The Poker Table is coming along.

This has been a very fun project so far. It's something I have been unusually excited about. I guess because it's a "me" thing.. More updates tomorrow night. Hopefully wil have all the padding and felt on!!

Update: It's done!

About Google Desktop Search

2004-10-14T15:52:00.000-05:00

About Google Desktop Search This freaking rocks!!! I installed at work, and it took about 2 hours to index my computer. Now I can find emails from two years ago in less than a second. Very impressive tool. I have watched the packets off of my drive, and nothing is being sent ( yet?? ).

Yea, another Update

2004-10-11T13:05:00.000-05:00

Ok.. quick updates.

Went back to the docs to start the process of figuring out what is wrong with my stomach. Hopefully this doctor won't be such a dumb ass as the last one. The first test was this morning. I thought I would give you the inside track on a gastric empty test. You get to eat microwave eggs. I was sorta amused by this since the eggs are mixed with isotopes. I am suppose microwaves don't effect microwaves from radioactive material... Once you have finished this taste sensation, you get to sorta lay down in an uncomfortable lay/sitting postion. Then a large metal box is positioned above your stomach. This box sits about 3 inches from your face. The fun part begins next. 90 minutes of doing nothing. 90 minutes of just sitting there while little white dots on the screen slowly move down through your insides. I fell asleep for about 45 minutes. After that my butt stayed that way. Legs went numb. Ohh joy of joys...

Other things going on.. Jeanette smashed the yukon into a fence post. Damage is minimal, but nasty scrape and dent in the back. At least I have that now in my arsenal for our competition on who is the better driver.

Starting a new project, with Paul. Going to build a poker table. I saw this one and knew we could do better. Hopefully start making some cuts next weekend and have it finished for a 23rd poker night.

After the storm

2004-09-22T15:19:00.000-05:00

I updated the Ivan gallery. The two people who look at this site have probably already seen it. I did update the gallery script. It uses thumbnails now. It's setup to use thumbnails if they exist, or use the originals if not.
There is also a way to add text to the images. I haven't added any for the ivan gallery yet. Currently it just displays the image name.
Most are self explanatory - but will probably add captions, just to test the system. I want to build one that jumps into a "first previous next last" system. That will come much later though.
We did ok during the storm. No damage other than the trees.
Jake ( we renamed the dog ) had his first doctor visit today. Just a check up. He is fine, with a small rash on his paws. I suspect it's a lingering condition from being in the concrete pen for 3 months.

Ivan stuff

2004-09-14T17:36:00.000-05:00

Ivan pics Nothing really there now. Just getting some before pics. I expect we will miss most of the storm, but enough will hit that we get some debris. We boarded the windows and have all the provisions. We are staying through this one. So is all of our local family, so we are going to be fine.

More tomorrow, if I have an internet connection.

Jack

2004-09-12T22:10:00.000-05:00

I have no idea why, but we got another dog today. Welcome Jack
He is a border collie mix from the ruff shelter we volunteered at. So far so good..

Other news - del.ico.us is breaking.. sorry for no links.

It's late I am tired, and I have a new dog. cya