vacation?

Where should we go on vacation? We are taking suggestions. Our requirements are:

1. no giant city, -- no NYC or Chicago
2. must be within < 11 hours drive. I think that's all our little X can handle, no flying for him yet
3. it can't be north of us

I think that's it as far as restrictions go.

Last year we picked Charleston, SC on a whim and it turned out to be a great time. Good food, nice city, had some nature stuff in there, American history stuff and cheap hotels. It really was a great time.

So now what? Will the 'just pick something' strategy work for us again? I'm not so certain. I keep getting teased at work with our seemingly random vacation selection. Maybe it's the peer pressure from my peers that makes me doubt my vacation hot spot selection skills.

I'm only 28 and plan on taking many more vacations so the 'just pick something' and go with it strategy seems to be flaw free to me. And as long as we stop at an IHOP or a Waffle House on this vacation Amanda will be satisfied.

So far we've been thinking of Ocean City, MD, Virginia Beach, VA, the Outer Banks,
Chincoteague Island.

Suggestions?

Spartacus -- a real tough guy

We watched Spartacus this past weekend. It almost took all weekend too because the movie is 3 hours long. Watching this movie got me to thinking that these days there are no longer any tough guys in the movies. Sure, we have these big muscle bound guys like Arnold and The Rock. But they aren't tough guys. Sure they might have cooler fight scenes because Jet Li's cousin is the fight sequence choreographer, but they aren't tough. They aren't bad. They don't have grit. They don't make me want to try and walk with a swagger.

Here's my tough guy actor list in the order they float to the top of my head.
1. Kirk Douglas
2. Paul Newman
3. Jack Palance
4. John Wayne
5. Steve McQueen
6. Clint Eastwood

Honorable mention.
1. Harrison Ford
2. Sly Stallone (excluding everything but Rocky 1)
3. Al Pacino
4. Bruce Willis (pre-head shaving days --the cue ball look detracts from toughness)

I will never buy a belkin

So at work I've been experiencing hardware troubles with a Belkin USB KVM. KVM stands for keyboard, video, mouse. A properly working KVM allows you to use one keyboard, one monitor and one mouse to control multiple computers. And in this case, the USB indicates that they keyboard and mouse have USB connectors.

Well, this fine Belkin product (PN: F1DS104U) is a piece of crap and I want to run it over with my truck.


The problem with this KVM is that the hotkeys don't work. Hotkeys allow you to switch between one computer and the next with certain keystrokes. In my case, it is imperative that they hotkeys work because the KVM is inside a temperature controlled enclosure. Opening the doors to switch computers defeats the purpose of having the KVM.

Oh, but wait...there are firmware updates! Just plug a cat-5 cable into your PC and plug the other end of it into the RJ45 jack on the back.... Wait a tic! There's no RJ45 jack on the back! Then how do I get firmware updates?

Yea, that's a problem.

Other than that....I think we are going to watch "A Roman Holiday" tonight.

catching up

I spent the past week in Baltimore for work. It went well. There were some unexpected hiccups that I had to work around and were difficult, but...that's the only way you learn. I had crabcakes every night which was good and a couple of fancy beers. I feel like I'm a crabcake connoisseur now. Yingling was one of them and it's only available in Maryland, I think. I just know you can't get it here in Ohio. I recommend it.

We had a great weekend around the house though. We watched Tremors friday night. Man, that was a funny movie. When I realized the dad from the tv show Family Ties was playing a gun toting, crazy, shoot-em-up lunatic I nearly died laughing. Then at the end when the killer earthworms had the people trapped on the roofs I was losing it!

Saturday night we had our game night. I forgot to send the email invite out and we had a lower turnout than usual, but I still ate my fill of beer cheese fondue, so nothing else matters.

Today I hung some used cabinets in the garage in what will become my second man area. I already have one in the basement but my needs for a macho-sawdust-grease-gun-monkey-wrench-hammer and nails area has increased. Eventually (maybe later this month) I'll build a little workbench area under it.

I picked up the cabinet for the garage and one for Amanda's craft area at this resale shop here in town. It's like Home Depot's version of Salvation Army. I'll hang the cabinet downstairs in the basement for Amanda once my design gets the blessing of the mechanical engineers at work. See, I can't bolt it into the concrete wall and I have to hang it from the floor joyces and I just want another opinion on what to do.

And now we are caught up.

bathroom and other news

I finally got around to finishing the bathroom. I restained the trim and let it lay in the hallway all week because I couldn't muster the energy to install it. Going back to work for 8 hours took too much out of me. Here is the final product...




Like the new rugs? You better, it took two trips to Bed, Bath and Beyond for someone to be satisfied.

So did you know they are coming out with a new Knight Rider tv series? I refuse to watch it. Why? Because they --the sitcom writers are ruining a good thing. They change KITT's red hood LEDs to blink in a different pattern and they change KITT from a Trans Am to a Mustang. Why do they have to ruin a good thing? Those two items are at the heart of my memories of growing up watching Knight Rider and to go and change those on me is disappointing. Why don't they just go all the way and let Micheal Knight be played by some dork like Ryan Seacrest.

The new American Gladiators show looks cool though. Put Hulk Hogan on anything and I'll watch it.

back to work....

So tomorrow I'm back to work. Blah. Vacation has been great. I had plenty of time to work on projects around the house and I made time to relax. I'm thankful to have had a full 2 weeks off of work.

We had a great New Year's Party last night. Whoo, lots of fun. Sergey, Lee and Andrea, Lee's roommate Dan and Lori stopped over. We had some great games of Scene It, both the Disney and Movie versions and some hysterical games of Bullsh!t. I can't believe what a lying bunch of people we had over. Liars all the way around -- Bullsh!tters, really!! :)

I had a great workout this morning too....I deadlifted 345 pounds. I didn't know I could do that.

Hooray it's finally snowing here. Happy New Year everyone! I would post a picture of our family up here, but I'm the only one awake (and it's only 6pm)!!