Chicks514

Brilliant!!

2010-12-04T11:29:00.002-05:00

I just had a brilliant moment with my son. On my laptop I have the software ExamDiff Pro. It is used to "diff" two files. Meaning, you can use it to compare two pieces of software to find any and all differences in two files. I've never noticed it before, but the icon is an apple and an orange.

Do you get it? It is used to compare files and the icon is an apple and an orange....like the phrases commonly used "we have to make an apples to apples comparison" or "we're comparing apples and oranges here". He just made me realize the significance of the icon and I've been using the software for over 3 years. Brilliant!

stagnation

2010-10-10T15:33:00.002-05:00

Holy smokes this thing has gone stagnant!!

Our time out here in California is going to slow our home projects down. One thing we'll be able to do is to take time and decide what we want to update outside. The homes here in our new neighborhood are so beautiful. Nearly 1 out of every 5 can go on the cover of a home renovation magazine, others....need some work.

I think we'll do something out back definitely, and maybe I can convince the wife for a pergola out front.

Missing my wife

2010-08-21T21:09:00.002-05:00

I miss my wife and kids. And out of boredom I google "I miss my wife". I end up on you tube watching videos of women who miss their wives. I guess straight guys don't do that.

boot bench is finished

2010-01-03T13:44:00.003-05:00

The boot bench is complete. Here are some pictures of the intermediate steps.

Here it is after 3 coats of stain.

X helped me break up the tile for the bottom shelf. He loved helping. Yes, I let my 2 year old swing my biggest hammer.

He also likes to tile. Guess which pieces he put down in the mortar?

Here it is after tiling.

Applying the grout.

Finished product.

boot bench

2009-12-06T20:43:00.003-05:00

I've been working on a boot bench since March. At least that's when I printed these plans.
http://www.outdoorlife.com/articles/do-it-yourself/2007/09/boot-bench

I bought the wood in August or September, then did some cutting in October and then the bench got shelved for the previous 2 posts, among other things.

I modified the plans a bit. They tell you to buy a 36" stair tread and then cut off 1/3rd of it. Seems a bit silly to me, so I left it at 36". They also suggested using pine for the sides and base. I didn't like that idea so I went with red oak (because Home Depot offered red oak or pine stair treads) for the top and sides and pine for the base. I left the base pine because I thought it would be cool to use some leftover tile from our master bathroom project and use that instead. I figure that if we are going to put wet, snowy and dirty boots and shoes, why not make it something that a little more durable.

I got the tile idea from an art show we went to in Worthington over the summer. This guy did some awesome mosaics with mirrors and stands so I thought I could apply the mosaic idea here.

The above is where the mosaic will go.

The next step is to install filler plugs over all of the holes.

And I'm not going to paint it either. Red oak is expensive and to put paint on it would be a shame.

away in a manger

2009-12-06T20:33:00.003-05:00

We put up our Christmas decorations Thanksgiving weekend. Amanda put up the nativity and said, "Gee, I wish we had a manger".

So last weekend I built this:

I used some leftover plywood for the base and sides and leftover masonite for the back and roof. I routered the base so the wisemen wouldn't cut their feet on the sharp edge.

garage storage solution

2009-12-06T20:11:00.003-05:00

We needed to add some storage space to our garage to accomadate camping gear, kid stuff, strollers, tools and so on. I found an article that had some good suggestions and liked the angle bracket idea.
http://www.rd.com/easy-garage-storage-solutions/article17442.html

The angle brackets were the most expensive part. That was probably 85% of the total cost of the project. The hardest part was finding the studs in the walls. 16" on center, right? Sure.

The good news is we can still park both of our cars in the garage....for now.

Yup, that's the helicopter hung upside down in front of my parking spot.

Helicopter!!

2009-09-20T19:08:00.002-05:00

The helicopter was finished in time for Xander's birthday and it was a hit! Here it is on it's maiden voyage. I did add a couple of handles on each side to facilitate easier access after this picture was taken and our neighbor painted a bumble bee on it and painted "The Stinger". I'll put more pictures up later with that.

THANKS MANDY FOR THE BUMBLEBEE IDEA FOR THE PAINT THEME!

As you can see in the picture below it is complete with a ceiling fan for the top propeller and 2 smaller fans for rear propellers. You have twice the turning power with 2 rear props. There is also a CB antenna for calling in backup (not needed with the flying ace pictured below).

Inside the cab we have fan switches up above and a telephone in the rear. The dash has the original steering wheels (I don't know what you call a steering wheel in a helicopter), original fuel and oil gauges, a video tracking device and another button.

A plexiglass windshield keeps the bugs out when you are traveling through hyperspace. It ain't like dustin' crops, boy!

more helicopter

2009-09-07T19:52:00.002-05:00

This was last weekend when I started assembling the new helicopter by using the old one as a template. I borrowed my neighbors jigsaw to make all of the circular cuts and it was a lifesaver.

Our neighbors were throwing out a ceiling fan so it became the propeller.

The landing gear.

Another neighbor built a fence last year out of lattice. I used some of his broken leftover pieces for the rear tail.

I still need the rear propeller. I'm paying a coworker to fashion something for me. Hopefully he'll have that to me this week.

I started painting this weekend and put 2 coats on and realized that the plywood was going to suck all the paint up and I needed primer. So then I ran out and bought some primer and primed it. I need to put another coat on there then I'll go back to painting. It should look like a giant bumblebee when I'm done.

coffeetable

2009-09-07T11:45:00.002-05:00

I fixed up a coffetable for Sergey. He built it last summer and the top wasn't sanded down enough so when it was stained it looked terrible. So I sanded it all down.

Xander helped too.

And put 3 or 4 coats on the top surface, 2 or 3 on everything else. It turned out pretty good.

helicopter updates

2009-08-22T20:41:00.003-05:00

While completing the helicopter tear down I found the turbo's under the seat.

Whew! I thought they were lost! They were also there with a mighty huge mouse house. Full of dirt and poop and stink. Those boards will need replacing.

Today I spent the morning buying new parts and using my new (craigslist) table saw to make the back, top, and bottom pieces. I had to borrow my neighbors jigsaw to make the round cuts for the sides. I tried using the router for the windows in the back wall and they turned out terrible and I had to recut the back wall. A jigsaw was my only option. The sides don't match perfectly, but neither did the originals.

Tomorrow I plan on assembling the cabin and maybe build the skids.

Oh, and the only thing I was able to keep was the pvc. Plastic lasts forever, plywood doesn't. I thought I might be able to keep the steps, but I realized that even those are rotted out.

And thanks Mandy for the paint theme idea! I'll go with the bumblebee colors. I'm going to try and commission the neighbor lady to paint a tough looking bumblebee on the sides.

the story of a boy and his helicopter

2009-08-15T19:38:00.004-05:00

When I was a mere boy, my grandpa built me a helicopter. It was made out of pvc pipes, plywood, 2x4s and had a cb. It didn't fly, but it was really cool. So now, years gone by, the helicopter was passed to my cousins and now it has been passed to Xander and Josie. Being that it is made of plywood and is more than 25 years old it needs some rework.

Here is a picture before I started the rework. That's the plexiglass window in the cockpit. The rod across the front is a support.

Here is an interesting fact about my grandpa, he only bought green and yellow paint. I swear. And my uncle kept with that same theme when he repainted it for my cousins, but just a different shade.

Here is a picture of the propeller, it's going to be replaced. Can't fly rescue missions with a bum whirlybird.

After Xander got up from his nap he helped me take the rear rudder and the roof off.

The rear rudder is broken in the middle and needs to be replaced. The part where it is broken is where the rear roof fastened to the rear tail.

Here are the cockpit controls. No wonder it never flew, no fuel or oil. I'll have to add some more switches and buttons. Another 10 or so just might send Xander into toddler ecstasy. That boy loves switches.

I got all the parts with it except for the turbo pipes. Those were just 5" diameter pvc pipes mounted on the rear roof.

Any suggestions on color?

gross

2009-08-07T11:24:00.002-05:00

I was helping my brother in law move last night and boy do I have stories for you!

I was holding one end of a loveseat, we turned it upside down to set it in the back of the truck and as we did a fingernail clipping fell out onto my arm. How disgusting is that?

In his defense this is a hand-me-down couch and who has done what on it. Still, someone chewed on their fingernail and either spit/dropped/threw/lost it in the loveseat.

The fingernail was in addition to all the crumbs other clods of dirt that fell out of it when we turned it over. The fingernail just happened to land on my arm and not bounce off.

Vick

2009-07-29T19:34:00.003-05:00

Did Michael Vick commit a crime?
Yes.

Did Micheal Vick go to jail for the crime he committed?
Yes.

Does Micheal Vick deserve to be figuratively nailed to a cross for the rest of his life for the crime he paid for with jail time?
No. Leave him alone.

clarification

2009-06-30T16:18:00.002-05:00

Ikkin: A bunch means 2 diaper boxes full of cds. Which when I went downstairs and counted turned out to be 233. This includes full length albums, singles and burned stuff. Plus around 40 in our two vehicles and another 10 or so lullabys and disney things and kid stuff.

Sergey: Yes, I still have the 40 GB one from you and the 80 GB. I'm not sure the 80 GB will work with my computer since it is a SATA and I don't have a sata hard drive. Plus, I'm a goober because I looked on my hard drive and I've got over a 100 GB of space left. I'll probably go to half price books tonight.

Asa: Thanks, I'll give CD-ex a look.

So if I have around 280 cd's with an average of 12 songs per cd that gives me around 3360 tracks. So I guess I don't have as much music as I thought. I probably have 15 versions of evenflow. I can't ever get enough of that!

Thanks guys!

looking for ideas

2009-06-29T19:54:00.002-05:00

I've got a bunch of cds that I don't listen to anymore but I don't want to throw out. I'd like to rip them to my pc but it's only 160 GB hard drive and I'm afraid it won't be enough room.

I'm looking to either buy a 2nd computer with a huge internal or external hard drive to rip all the music or find some boombox or home stereo with a hard drive and a cd drive to rip all my cds.

Any ideas or suggestions?

I think I might be leaning towards getting a cheap refurbed computer at microcenter for around 100 bucks, a 500 GB hard drive for another 100 bucks and going with that....

an update

2009-06-02T20:20:00.005-05:00

A picture update of what we've been up to lately.

Xander's black eye. It was a little darker than this but now it's starting to fade a bit. Those ornery swingsets.

Our new kitchen sink and faucet. From 6.5" to 8" deep! Whooo hooo! Thanks to Amanda's dad for the help.

We had some whip cream in our fridge. Amanda's biggest concern was the expiration date on the whip cream, not the fact that I was giving our son whip cream directly from the aerosol can. I was hoping his fingers would be strong enough to operate the nozzle and I was going to let him make a big old mess in the backyard. Alas, we'll have to try again next year when his hand strength improves.

Fun at my 30th birthday party with sidewalk chalk! Yes, I wore that shirt to work on my birthday. No, there is no dimmer or off switch on that shirt. Yes, I'm going to keep on wearing it because I am awesome.

30 is here

2009-05-14T20:34:00.001-05:00

I'm 30.

Amanda made me a spice cake and it's good. Nope, not sharing.

...almost there...

2009-05-13T20:16:00.002-05:00

I'm almost 30. I had some thoughts on this when I was out in California a couple of weeks ago. I wrote them down in my journal and wanted to share them here; however, my journal is ALL THE WAY UPSTAIRS. So it's from memory.

Basically, I'm doing my best to quite that big whining voice in my head that says "oh crap I'm getting old". The way I see it, I'm in my prime. I'm on the peak. I'm on the crest of the wave. I'm going to ride this puppy for all it's worth. I've never surfed before, but the way I see it is I'm in the tunnel on my board. The wave is rising up behind me on my right, curved over my head and crashing into a mound of foam behind me on my left.

Whhhoooosh!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CXiWfcsNco

Let me ride.

this continues to make me laugh

2009-05-11T20:12:00.001-05:00

I love this picture.

back home

2009-05-08T21:26:00.002-05:00

Finally, finally, finally back home. I'm so effing sick of traveling for work. These last 2 weeks I was in California and it was a real pain in the rear. There's two real things that ate at me the whole time I was gone 1) homesickness and 2) working around the house.

Item 1 is a lot of things. I've been out of town now for nearly 8 weeks this year and we aren't in the 2nd week of MAY yet! That's cool though, it pays the bills and my job is nice, but I like my wife a lot (Love, actually). I enjoy coming home to our house and chatting about my day.

Tack on top of that Xander is starting to be really, really cool. Apparently while I was gone on this last trip his vocabulary is suddenly turned a corner and is taking off. While I was away he threw a temper tantrum because there was a commercial during wheel of fortune (aaah, my son). Aaaand, I've gotten him to like eating chips and salsa. Right before I left we were having some chips and salsa and I was dipping the chip in the salsa for him (it was hot, so I just dipped it in there) and he loved it and demanded more. So while I was gone Amanda was feeding him tortilla chips and she would hand him a chip and then he would hand it back and say "baaaa!" (please). How awesome is that??!!

So the 2nd thing I missed out on is working around the house. I have 2 weekends to kill in Silicon valley and it really grates on my nerves that my honey-do list is just collecting dust. And really, why do I even call it a honey-do list? Amanda puts 1 thing on there for every 10 I put on there myself. I think I call it that so she can feel free to add projects on there, so it can be "our" list. But it's not. It's mine, it's all mine. I drive my wife nuts working around the house: wash the car, change the oil, weed the garden, weed the flower beds, plant this bush, paint that, put up this shelf, paint this room, put up a fan. AND I LOVE EVERY SECOND OF IT!

"Why don't you just relax?" she says. Because it's too damn much fun!

So there I am wandering around state parks of California (Mt. Diablo and Henry Coe --very nice by the way, had a great time) and I'm missing good, sunny, fun in the yard weekends here in Ohio. But I'm home now...lookout!

virtual stock exchange

2009-05-01T11:02:00.002-05:00

I joined a virtual stock exchange league with some of my co-workers. I'm blown away by the results. We all started off with 100k and could make any trades we wanted. I bought some stocks based on what I have purchased in real life, others based on what some wisecracking online trader advised and the rest on just a hunch.

What is really killing me is that after 71 of the 90 days of the game is that I'm in 1st place with 136k. My nearest opponent is at 113k. I'm happy I'm doing well and want to do the same in real life, but I'm really afraid this is just a fluke. I really don't know what to make of this.

Want to baffle yourself? Sign up for a league of your own....
http://www.virtualstockexchange.com/Game/Homepage.aspx

have you ever wanted...

2009-04-14T20:10:00.002-05:00

...to just tell people where to go? But I can't. At least not yet. I haven't lost it yet.

The other day someone did their best at ripping me a new one (which, by the way, I did NOT have coming to me and was in no way my fault). I think the best part was that I just stood there at looked at the person and said "thanks" at the end of it. I think THAT may have been better than any witty retort. Considering the fact that as they were walking away they called me an "A$$HOLE!", like a pouting teenager.

Oh--before I forget, I am supposed to blog about how amazing Amanda's fingernails and toenails will be after her manicure and pedicure tomorrow. Her feet will look so fabulous in her shoes.

It's incredible the wonderful things you can think of to blog about your wife when she has you in a headlock and you are losing your supply of oxygen to your brain. It somehow allows me to focus on all of her wonderful qualities, which are in fact, overwhelmingly abundant. I could go on, but I'm blacking o u t a lit tle here ..

catching up...

2009-04-10T19:38:00.002-05:00

hey, it's been a while....here is what I've been up to....

Spent nearly 3 weeks in England for work. This time I actually got to do 2 weekends worth of sight-seeing. Went to London and saw: St. James Park, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, The Thames, The London Eye, London Bridge, Tower Bridge and Abbey Road. I actually got pictures of my coworker and myself crossing Abbey road, almost just like The Beatles (That's what my current Facebook picture is). The next weekend I went to Stonehenge, a car museum and The Isle of Wight. I'll put up some pictures, but they are on my work computer.

Oh yea, when I was there I did some work too, which went over well with the customer and everybody was happy.

Now that I'm back and I get into my truck I keep reaching for the clutch that isn't there, because my rental car had a manual transmission.

I've also been enjoying working in my flower beds with my little helper. I've got to remember not to leave tools lying about because he tends to pick up things he shouldn't and walk around with them. Not that it's a bad thing, but he was walking around with garden claw and falling down; I'm just glad we didn't have to run to the emergency room.

Looking forward to a nice Easter weekend visiting with family. Happy Easter to you!

F L E X !!!!

2009-03-08T20:12:00.004-05:00

I went to the Arnold Classic again this year and saw the usual band of narcissistic freaks that I see there year to year. For whatever reason, I just wasn't excited to go. It was more of a 'well, I've gone in years past and feel I should want to do this'. Eeeh. It was just as much fun to hang out with the guys and people watch.

Ever see the P90X infomercial? I got the dvd's from my bro-in-law and am going to try it. I had Amanda take a before picture but I'm too chicken to post it. I'll let you know how it goes.

backlog

2009-02-19T21:29:00.002-05:00

I spent the past 2 weeks in California for work. I created some posts while I was there but waited until I was home to post them.

Amanda was able to fly out for Valentines Day weekend and we had a great time.

X's Aunt T is the best Aunt ever because she stayed and watched him while we were out gallivanting the California coastline.

dirty knick knacks

2009-02-16T19:40:00.005-05:00

So Amanda and I were walking along the tourist traps at Fisherman's Wharf. All of a sudden she starts laughing and I ask her what's so funny. She points out that in the glass display case we just passed there are small porcelain figurines the size of a kiwi that are of a man and a woman in various sexual positions. This is awesome! There must be 50 of them there all laid (hee hee) out for people to see and buy! Cool!

So I think, hey, why don't I take a picture of this! So of course I do, at Amanda's disapproval. I would have seen the eye rolling or heard the sighing if I'd have been paying attention to anything except the x-rated knick knacks in front of me. It's not like I wanted to buy one!

I get my picture and we keep on walking. We are back in the parking garage waiting and waiting and waiting to leave so I thought hey, let's review today's pictures. So we flip through them and we get to the pornographic knick knacks and Amanda's telling me I have to delete it.

C: What? What are you talking about? No way?

A: Oh yea? Well what if Xander sees it on the computer. (sidenote - at home we have our pc's screensaver set to the top level folder where all our pictures are --so eventually it would pop up--pun intended)

C: So. He's not going to know any better.

A: Well, if he were to see us *cough* *ahem* he wouldn't know any better either, but we wouldn't do that in front of him now would we?

C: No.

A: No, because he would think it's happy hugging time and jump on in!

God, I'm laughing as I type this! She killed me with that one. So I guess I'll delete the picture.

stuff I noticed about myself in California

2009-02-15T00:36:00.003-05:00

Traveling to California these past 2 weeks has hammered home a point with me as a person. I don't dress cool anymore. Not that I was ever on the cutting edge of fashion, but I thought that I had some semblance of a cool, grungy, hippie look. I was in Boston a couple of months ago for work and walked around Harvard Square and had similar thoughts. However, I stalled this train of thought with the idea it was just an east coast phenomenon. My latest trip to the west coast has confirmed my fears that I'm just a working stiff that tucks in a collared shirt everyday.

Just a few random thoughts that I have that tell me I'm completely out of it...
1. Tell me, when in the hell did tight jeans become the in thing for guys too?
2. I hate uggs.
3. Why is it that the bigger your sunglasses, the cooler you are? Why don't you just walk around with a tinted windshield on your nose? Just wear it as a necklace and have a strap at the top and wear it like a headband.
4. How many people fit in Doc Brown's DeLorean time machine? You must be able to pack them in like sardines because they all went back to 1955 and forgot to unroll their pants from the flooding.
5. What is this emo crap? Is this the goth replacement?

Is anybody else out there in the same boat?

stuff I noticed while in California for 2 weeks.

2009-02-15T00:34:00.003-05:00

Do you know what California has an abundance of? Toyota Prius's and graffitti. They are everywhere. Stop at any traffic light in silicon valley and you'll spot one or the other. Or both.

wife swap

2009-02-15T00:31:00.003-05:00

Do you ever watch wife swap? A couple of weeks ago Hugs and I caught parts of an episode where the hosting husband was a complete jerk, http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/husbands-behaving-badly--120. I couldn't get over what an ass this guy was.

One characteristic that makes a person good, is when they can get along and understand people across the classes.

you know what's funny???

2009-02-13T00:09:00.002-05:00

You want to know what's funny? Two grown men acting like 3 year olds. It went like this, Brat 1 is moving equipment around in the lab getting it arranged just so. What Brat 1 doesn't realize is that he's not the only one who uses this equipment or this lab space. I considered it quite a futile effort...but that's just me.

Brat 2 comes in and says "don't bury that simulator back in there, we need to use it with these *crummy* testers."

"It's not made for those testers, it was designed to work with these *cool* testers."

"No it's not."

"Yes it is."

"No it's not."

"Yes it is. It was designed to work with the *cool* testers" (--sidenote --he is so full of crap)

"No it's not."

"Yes it is."

Brat 2 finally realizes this is going nowhere and says "well the simulator needs to be out where everyone can access it" and walks away.

Brat 1 not wanting to be out done, tries to get the last word in by says "well, it's not supposed to be!". He then carries on to me about how he's right and Brat 2 is wrong after Brat 2 has walked away. Like I care.

At this point I give a mental sigh of relief, thinking, aaaah --the awkward moment is over. I can stop admiring the white tile with flecks of gray.

Aaah, and here's the best part: within 1 minute both of them were on their cellphones calling Daddy to tattle on the other one. Well, Brat 1 was, I couldn't hear Brat 2, but if I were a betting man.....

So to enlighten you readers out there....first, I did not play the roll of brat 1 or brat 2 above. Second, this childish behavoir was carried out by engineers. So for those of you out there who know an engineer and think that they are so smart, and know so much and you look to them for their divine engineering wisdom. Phah, I say!

Know this, we do not have people skills nor do we know how to interact with others in a constructive way. If we did, we'd all be driving speeders like George Jetson. We are flawed with ugly traits like, pompusness, an inability to work well with others, arrogence, pretentiousness..... just like everybody else. Don't get me wrong, we do some pretty cool stuff too like make ipods and ataris, but we are just as average as the next guy.

No good segue for this one....I just finished reading 'The Silence of the Lambs'. Excellent book. I highly recommend it. I wasn't at all grossed out, although my tolerance might be out of calibration.

recent books

2009-02-08T00:11:00.002-05:00

Have you ever read the first book in a series and thought, wow, this is pretty sweet...then you pick up the next one and it sucks? Well, that happened to me. I read Dune, by Frank Herbert and according to the cover of the book, it is one of the all time greatest sci-fi novels ever written. So I think, okay, I'll give it a whirl.

The story is set 10,000 years in the future, so there is intergalaxy travel, force fields to protect those inside and deciet around every corner. It's about a royal family, the Atreides, who are going to take over control of another planet, Arrakis whose sole planetary output is a spice that allows the person who eats it to have a prescience and see into the future. The spice is the most valuable commodity in the entire known galaxy. The current royal family in control of Arrakis, the Harkonnens are the archenemy of the Atreides. So we've established our good and bad guys.

Now our good and bad guys are both trying to stay on the good side of the emperor and remain an important contributor to the galactic economy. The spice that is a product of the planet Arrakis is imperative to the guys in charge of the interplanetary transportation, the Guildsmen, to safely navigate from one galaxy to the next. Without it the trade between planets would cease to exist and chaos would ensue.

The story unfolds with our good guys ending up on the short end of the stick and how they fight back and overthrow the bad guys. I enjoyed how the main character matured and grew into his role. I also liked how the author switched between different points of view on the fly between characters within a scene, allowing the reader to understand each characters perspective as the story played out.

However, I'm certainly not on board with the rest of the readers who think that it is a masterpiece and most likely the best sci-fi book of our time. It was an interesting story, but it just didn't pop for me.

So I pick up the next one in the series thinking I'll get a glimpse into the story arc that the author has created (there are 6 books by the original author, then a bunch more by his son) and follow the adventure. Turns out that I can't take it any more. I realize now one of the aspects of the author that really annoyed me was his failure to get to the meat of the story and send our cast of characters on their adventure. It wasn't so bad in Dune, but in Dune Messiah the author seems be taking his sweet ass time establishing the adventure.

Combine that with the fact that I found a used bookstore and bought 10 used books for 5 dollars, my patience and desire to stick to the story and carry on with the adventure bottomed out. I moved on to The Silence of the Lambs. Much more interesting. I've seen the movie, so I know what's going to happen, but as always, the book is better.

My Gang

2009-02-05T23:26:00.001-05:00

Get your own Family Sticker Maker & MySpace Layouts.

facebook

2009-01-28T15:53:00.002-05:00

I just found out that my mom is on facebook. That almost ruins it for me....and the wife agrees.

If you found out your mom was on facebook, how would you feel?
A. ruin it for you
B. yea - another friend to keep up with
C. indifference

I keep flip flopping between A and C.

Dune

2009-01-25T20:18:00.002-05:00

I finished reading Dune by Frank Herbert this past week. You wouldn't like it, it's science fiction. But there was a movie based on the book made back in the 80's with Sting and the soundtrack is by Toto, so you know that's going to be awesome!

I can't stay off of facebook or wikipedia long enough to put down something to make this post interesting!!!

college textbooks

2009-01-02T17:41:00.002-05:00

I just posted a couple of semesters worth of college textbooks that Amanda and I have been hauling around these 8 and 6 years, respectively, since undergrad, online to try and sell them. Some of them I still have the pricetags still on them, $75, $85, $65, ridiculously inflated prices. It is woefully disgusting how much money they cost us, and how useless they are to me now.

It makes me wish I wasn't so damn anal retentive when I was in school. I was one of those college kids who blindly went into the bookstore and bought what was recommended for the course. In hindsight that wasn't too bright.

Another good idea would have been to see if the professor even used the stinking $70 dollar textbook for the class! I made that mistake a couple of times.

It would have been smart to sell some of them back at the end of the semester. There were some I could have, some I knew I should keep and others that were in between. What would have been smart was if I sold them back when I graduated, by that time I had a good idea of what I found useful and useless. And which fields I wanted to get a job in --meaning which books I could unload back to the bookstore.

Flipping through some of them actually brought back sharp memories of aggravation, frustration, success and horrid disgust. Infinitesimal analysis *shudder*.

my kindhearted wife

2009-01-02T08:39:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, Amanda, Xander and I were driving and I asked her what the speed limit was as we coincidentally passed some roadkill.

"Fast enough to kill a cat" she replied.

"Ha".

Then she says "...but slow enough to give it hope."

That kept all of us laughing for the next mile. That's something funny about our kid too, if we laugh he just starts laughing.

book review...

2008-12-14T20:21:00.002-05:00

Lately I've been fiddling around trying to read different genres of book and it hasn't been going as well as I'd hoped. In an effort to read something intelligent, I picked up a copy of The Golden Ratio by Mario Livio. It is about the number phi, 1.6180339887...; which is expressed more precisely as the ratio of the diagonal of a pentagram to its side. This number is often referred to as the golden ratio, or the golden number because it often appears in plants, artwork, poetry, architecture and music (and in geometry it's called the golden angle). It has been studied by many and has some very interesting properties.

What I thought was interesting about the book was the author discusses how we as people understood the concept of counting higher than the number of fingers we have. Have you ever though about how cavemen went about bartering antelope meat for lima beans? One antelope carcass has got to be worth a whole horde of lima beans, but how does Iggy (the hunter) tell Narg (the gardener) that he owes him 20 meals of beans for his one killed antelope. Well, it seems that there were some archeologists that found a baboon thigh bone from 10,000+ years ago that had notches on it. So I would guess that Iggy just notched his bone for every meal of beans he recieved from Narg.

Something else that I found interesting is how we ended up with 60 seconds as our time base when we have a base 10 numbering system. The author explained that way back when, different cultures had different numbering systems. And as one culture was overrun by another the numbering systems were adopted, meshed or thrown out.

One other common theme of this book is the Fibonacci sequence and how the sequence approaches the golden ratio as the sequence approaches infinity. The Fionacci sequence is this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 39, ... and is achieved by taking the previous two numbers in the sequence and adding them (1+1=2, 2+3=5, and so on). What is neat about this sequence is how it appears in nature as well. It is called phyllotaxis and it is when plant leaves or flower petals arrange themselves in this manner. This appears in the pineapples, sunflowers and roses. In some plants it also describes the arrangement of branches on a tree in relation to the trunk. Very neat.

There are also some very cool mathmatical examples which were shown in the book, like how Fibonacci numbers are related to Pythagorean triples. For example, if you take any four consecutive Fibonacci numbers, such as 1, 2, 3 and 5;
The product of the outer numbers 1x5=5,
twice the product of the inner terms 2x2x3=12, and
the sum of the squares of the inner terms 2^2+3^2=13...
gives the 3 legs to a Pythangorean triple. Also, note that the third number, 13 is a Fibonacci number. Pretty sweet, huh!

So I was able to find some gems in the dry roughage of this book. I really found it boring how he presented arguements concerning plagerism of certain mathematicians of the 1600's. And the chapters on poetry and music I skimmed them (that's being generous). But will admit that I would pick up another book by this author if I had the chance.

all finished except for the....

2008-11-30T21:07:00.003-05:00

I'm all finished with the bathroom except for the....baseboard. Daaaaah! Bloody baseboard. It wouldn't be a problem except I broke some on the removal. I bought replacement baseboard and tried to color match it to the trim on and around the door and it's not working well. Luckily I've got another project lined up for the baseboard so I don't feel too much guilt in going back to HD and searching for pre-stained baseboard.

Oh, and I'm waiting on the sewing department to sew me up a new curtain. Waiting....waiting...waiting. Once those two hanging chad tasks are done, then the bathroom will really, really be complete.

And by the way, it looks awesome! The tile turned out great, the soft pink walls are soothing, the drawer pulls and towel rods all match and a fresh batch of caulk has been caulked into place.

So stop by and see it!

TSA and weightlifting

2008-11-26T22:13:00.003-05:00

Did you hear that the TSA has a new method of screening for terrorists and other lawbreakers?
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20081118/1a_offlede18_dom.art.htm

I had read about this last week, but the article that I read didn't go into detail about what the new screening methods consist of. This morning while returning home from a work trip to Boston I think I may have experienced those new methods....

After receiving my ticket and proceeding to the line for the X-ray machines into the terminal at Boston Logan I got into line and waited to be screened. Up ahead next to the TSA agent who looks at your ticket and ID was another TSA agent that was chatting with nearly everyone in line. I make my way through the line and I try and avoid talking to the woman (I hate talking to strangers at airports) but she asks me in a friendly-getting-to-know-you way where I'm headed, how often I travel, if I'm from the area, if I'm looking forward to the holiday...blah blah.

I joked with my coworker that this was there new terrorist screening method. Which seemed funny at the time because she looked like she should be taking her grandkids to the zoo instead of screening for terrorists. Maybe this is their new method...deploy extra agents to chit chat with those in line and see who acts out of character. Or, was she just a bored TSA emploee. I wonder.....

I finally joined the 1000 pound club this afternoon. It's no official club, but it is when the sum of your squat, bench press and deadlift are equal to or greater than 1000 pounds. I had a squat of 385, bench press of 290 and a deadlift of 365 --totaling 1040 pounds.

The squat and deadlift are new personal bests for me. Just 5 more pounds on squats and that's all the weight I have to use! 390 is all I have!

Happy Thanksgiving!

bathroom update

2008-11-18T21:28:00.004-05:00

My helper and I spent this past saturday working on installing a toilet, new towel rings, a toilet paper holder and new blinds. It took all day to do them as well...unfortunately my helper wanted to be in the thick of the action. Too bad for him he isn't allowed to touch the hammer, screwdriver, the spot light, the caulk gun, the wax ring for the toilet, the new blinds, etc.

Bathroom projects proceed most efficiently with a lightsaber at the ready.

Master bathroom update

2008-11-06T20:33:00.004-05:00

I grouted for the first time last night. I think the floor looks pretty darn good. It was a lot of hard work, but it was worth it.

On to painting this weekend!

tiling is...

2008-11-02T20:33:00.003-05:00

...really darn hard. I'm not going to sugar coat it for you, this is a tedious, knee-hamstring-lower back killing, difficult project. Although Amanda's impressed reaction of delight was worth it.

It took me a little over 5 hours to get all the tiles laid out just the way I wanted, cut and dry fit. The hard part of it was the bathroom is upstairs and the wet saw is in the garage. One of my mistakes was just leaving the saw on the floor. So I'm up in the bathroom hunkered down on my knees making measurements, then into the garage on my knees cutting tile. Not good.

First piece of advice, mount the wet saw on a table top to save your knees.

Second piece of advice, buy the expensive knee pads. I went through saturday without any. This morning after church I went to Home Depot and bought a (relatively expensive) 15 dollar pair. They were worth every freaking penny. Every single one. Each one.

So here are all of the tiles laid out and dry fit.

Not much of a difference here in this next picture, but this after putting down the mortar and laying the tiles. What really boggles my mind is that I bought a gallon of pre-mixed mortar which says will cover 50-60 sq ft. Our bathroom is just a smidge over 30 sq ft. Somehow, I ran out of mortar. I don't really know how thick to put it on, but I thought it was going on rather thinly. I don't know, it must be because it's pre-mixed.

So this is now my biggest worry. I didn't get the gushy mortar effect that I was expecting to have, based on what I learned from my co-workers who have tiled. I'm just hoping it's this pre-mixed stuff that is causing this.

Anyway, I'll buy more tomorrow and see what happens.

Master Bathroom Project Phase 2 part 1

2008-11-01T20:44:00.004-05:00

My helper and I started on the tiling project for the master bathroom. Here is a before picture:

I first convinced my helper that he should sit in the pack and play for a little bit while I was moving all of our stuff to the other bathroom. He was content with that for a while, but wasn't having it when the fun started happening. The fun was the removal of the light fixture, toilet paper holder, towel racks, door, shower doors, wood trim and the toilet. I've never taken a toilet all of the way off. Tank yes, tank and bowl, no. Today's experience taught me that used wax rings are gross. Now our gross wax ring is in a plastic zip lock bag waiting to be taken to Home Depot to match up with a new one to replace it.

Now that my helper was free to roam around our bedroom, he decided now as a good time to try and fit between the headboard of our bed and the wall. Nope, he still doesn't fit. But it was a good photo opportunity. I took the picture too late, he squeezed out already.

I then managed to install the wonderboard while my helper played peek a boo with my tarp. It was a good use of his time. Wonderboard is concrete that is sandwiched between to two pieces of meshed screen like material. It is supposed to go down on top of the subfloor before you install tile to keep the floor from flexing over time and preventing the grout, mortar or tiles from cracking.

Ta da! Wonderboard installed. My helper can take as much credit as he would like. To be honest, Xander was pretty darn good all day long and let me get quite a bit of work done. I can't complain that he made me take too many breaks because I would have been breaking to eat any way, he just made it convenient for us both.

I just laid out the tile tonight before stopping and it looks pretty good. It is an almond color and should look good.

on a recent flight

2008-10-27T19:19:00.002-05:00

I spent this past week in California for work. On my flight back I had the window seat and a woman and her significant other had the middle and aisle seats, respectively. I boarded the plane, entertained myself by proceeding to tear into my greasy steak, egg and cheese sandwich. By the time we had achieved our cruising altitude the woman and man were asleep. I think the term, passed out, might have been more appropriate but I'm not certain.

Over 2 hours pass by and I have to pee. They are asleep and I don't want to bother them, but there is no way that I can get by them without waking them. I tap the woman on her wrist. No response. I feel anxiety over having to work harder to get her to wakeup, it's just not something I want to do. Both her and her man are completely zonked out. I tap her harder on her shoulder. She then wakes up then wakes up her man and I get out and go to the bathroom.

I come back from the bathroom and as I'm sitting down the guy says something which I think was directed at me, but at the time I though he was talking to her --something like thanks for waking me up. I didn't think anything of it, because I make an effort to ignore everyone else when I travel.

So we land and I make a phone call while we are taxing and beginning to de-plane. Right before the woman and her man get up, he says to me (clearly directed to me this time) "Thanks for not waking us up during that long flight. That was clutch." Then he hops up and leaves the plane and she follows.

I was so shocked that he said that to me I sat there grinning in shock and the people behind me started exiting. I couldn't believe it. What a joker! Any sort of level headed person should realize that you can't be upset with someone for needing to take a leak during a 3 hour and 20 minute flight. Sitting in the aisle seat on a plane ride you should never expect to not be bothered.

Master Bathroom Upgrade 08

2008-10-12T19:20:00.002-05:00

Phase I - Replace the exhaust fan for an exhaust fan and light combo.

I spent the afternoon replacing the exhaust fan in our master bathroom. It is a relatively simple project....take out the old fan, hop up into the attic and tack the new fan in, wire it up, bam! You've got lights and fan.

Yup, that easy....as that blue cloud of profanity remains floating over our neighborhood. Aside from one tough little part it went well and would do it again.

Easy part: Wiring it up. 8 years of studying electrical engineering gives me an edge there. Black is hot, white is neutral, bare is ground. Piece of cake, baby.

Hard part: Dealing with the insulation in the attic and the location of the fan. It's blown insulation so it's a bit more hard to deal with and put back when you are finished. I borrowed a mask from my neighbor to keep from inhaling all of the fiberglass and that was a good idea. Long sleeves would have been a good idea as well, but the weather wasn't cooperating. Additionally, the location of the fan made it more difficult because it was within three feet of where the roof comes down and meets the ceiling. I felt like Rand in WoT when he was kidnapped and in that trunk for about 2 weeks traveling to Tar Valon. Hot, cramped and uncomfortable is not the ideal condition to nail in a fan box one handed.

Lessons learned: Figure out at what height the fan box needs to be hung vertically by assembling it all before you tack it to the rafters. That blue cloud of profanity could have been avoided by a little bit of thinking ahead.

Oh, and if you do try this at home, remember to take everything apart nicely. I had to reuse my vent adapter from my old fan because the new one was too big for the vent pipe.

Next up, Phase 2 - adding knobs to the drawers and painting the ceiling.

being on site

2008-10-01T20:04:00.003-05:00

So like I mentioned in the last post, I've been at a customer site the past couple of weeks. At this site the security is high, so that means I have to be escorted at all times. At all times means even to the bathroom. This was difficult for me to adjust to since I exercise quite a bit and tend to drink lots of water. Well, what goes in must come out.

Now they don't follow me into the restroom, but they do have to stand out in the hallway while I take care of business. How awkward is that? Real awkward. But you get used to it.

Have you ever seen that episode of Seinfeld where in the standup bit in the beginning of the show Jerry is talking about how he used to work in an office and he would pass the same people in the hall multiple times a day and each time he felt compelled to say something different to them. Saying 'hi' to Jim in the early morning turned into 'hey Jimmy' around lunch and 'yo Jimbo' in the afternoon. Just saying 'hi' over and over again feels weird. I know exactly what Jerry is talking about!

I ran into this same issue asking my escorts to escort me to the bathroom.
'Hey Brian, how about a bathroom break?'
'Hey Brian, let's hit the head, huh?'
'Hey Brian, it's 10am, guess what I want to do?'

Then at some point (over the course of nearly 3 weeks) it stops being a question and becomes a statement.
'Hey Brian, potty break.'
'Alright, gotta take leak.'
'Hey Brian, guess what I need to do.'

However another issue that comes up is getting "synched up" with your coworkers who also on site with you and also have to be escorted. That meant if my coworker had to go and I didn't, I went anyway; and vice versa. You learn things like not to have that 2nd glass of OJ at breakfast and to sip your drink at lunch.

What ended up happening was a very dehydrated me returning home earlier this week. And now that I'm back at the office I enjoy my unescorted liberties!

Boston

2008-09-30T20:20:00.002-05:00

I've had to travel to Boston quite a bit recently for work. On my last flight there last week I have the window seat, a Bostonian woman has the middle seat and a Texas gentleman has the aisle. During the decent into Logan (Boston's Airport) the Bostonian and the Texan start chatting. Their topics were the usual boring where are you headed, what do you do, where will you be staying chit chat that strangers have on an airplane.

At some point during my eavesdropping, she tells the fella (I'm trying to type accents here, so use your imagination) "You gotta go to Haavaaahd squwair. There is this greaat place called Fiya an Yce (Fire and Ice). They have gweat dwink specials an' the menu is auwsome."

The Texan says "Whuut's the naame agaain?"

She replies "Fiya an Yce."

Then he says "Culd you repeat that again?"

Again she says "Fiya an Yce."

Then it clicks for the Texan..."Oh, Fiyer and Iyce."

South meets northeast and the communication barrier is bridged.

the great wind storm of aught eight

2008-09-21T05:14:00.003-05:00

We had a wee bit of wind damage from the great wind storm of '08. It was very minor compared to others in our neighborhood who lost entire sections of shingles or others in town who had trees falling on rooftops, garages and cars.

I had to fly out of town for work on monday so our neighbor was nice enough to tack up my fascia/flashing (whatever it's called -- see photo). But I still had to snap back in a piece of siding above the garage door and shimmey up onto our roof and flip a shingle back over. That, let me tell you, is not something I want to do again soon. I was scared out of my mind climbing up there....but all is back together again.

5k

2008-09-07T20:25:00.002-05:00

Xander and I ran our first official 5k together today and it was awesome! We've been running together since it's been nice this spring and we have a good time on saturday mornings when we go out.

I ran a pretty good race and finished with 26:10. I ran the first mile in 7 minutes, but then completely fell off the pace when they introduced the hills. My 5k route that I take through our neighborhood twice a week has no hill action what-so-ever. Nothing. So when I get these itty bitty hills, my legs cried revolt!

It was pretty awesome though because the race takes place 15 minutes before our local parade starts and the streets are lined with onlookers. Xander and I were the first parent-kid combo to run along the route and I ran in a wake of "oh, look at the baby", "ohh, how cute", "now that's how I like to run"; as Xander relaxed and enjoyed the scenery. There was even a female onlooker who crooned "whooo-hooo 121!". It's tough to laugh when you are wheezing and gasping for air.

did you hear that?

2008-09-01T20:02:00.002-05:00

That was the sound of me falling off of the blogging bandwagon. KerthUMP.

I'll put something up here interesting once I'm not working a crapload of hours.

The cool things to talk about like our front yard that we are trying to landscape or the garden have fallen by the wayside because my weekends have been occupied with work. Thank goodness I haven't had to cut the grass.

I'm timid to admit this but I'm reading one of the wife's chick novels starring Stephanie Plum; it's pretty funny. One for the Money is the title. It's a nice easy mindless read that takes place in New Jersey. Lately I've read books that are based in NJ...each one of them talks about how gross and disgusting it is...and for some reason I still would like to visit. Or at least go to Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash in Redbank, NJ.

weekend wrapup

2008-08-10T19:36:00.002-05:00

So did you see in the news that Mr. Sunshine John Edwards had an affair? Dude, I tell you what, I've lost all hope in politicians. They are all buggery turds. Give me another 10 to 15 years and I'm going to figure out what I have to do to run for office. Hopefully once I figure it out I'll follow through and run for office.

We found this ice cream shop down the road that serves Tofts ice cream. Tofts is the best ice cream in the whole world, in case you didn't know it already. It's made in good old Sandusky, Ohio and is another fine Ohio product just like myself. So on weekends we walk a mile down to the ice cream shop and back and it is awesome. The two mile round trip melts the guilt away.

We went over to Ukie's apartment this weekend and saw Cloverfield. Sweet flick! I highly recommend it. I thought it was written very well.

brain fart

2008-08-04T19:41:00.002-05:00

So yesterday I'm in my garage talking with neighbor #1, the cop. We are chatting away and neighbor #2, the lawn expert stops by to drop off some books on perennials and landscaping. Neighbor #2 and I are yacking a bit and I feel I should introduce Neighbors #1 and #2.

"Hey, Neighbor #2, do you know.... (insert long awkward pause here were I look Neighbor #1 directly in the eye, stand there with my mouth open waiting for my tongue to kick into action) ...umm. Thank God they finished up the introduction for me because my brain just...stopped...

Now that's an embarrassing brain fart.

It's better than..."this is my wife, umm....what's your name again?" --that's never happened!!

Anne Geddes drugs her models

2008-08-03T19:49:00.002-05:00

More flower boxes. One more for the wife, two were supposed to go to the wife's brother and fiancee as a wedding gift, but then I thought about it and thought I should give one to my mother in law since she gave the plans for the boxes to Amanda and I wondered if that had some subtle undertones......so one for the wife, one for the mother in law and one for the brother in law (and I don't think any of them read this so the surprise will be at the delivery).

Anyway, here they are with my underpaid model.

He is underpaid because he can't stay focused on the objects that the photographer wants to take pictures of and instead tries to eat sawdust and paint chips off of the driveway. Tangent: let me tell you what I'd like to do to the previous owner of this house for painting the garage floor....I want to THROTTLE her for it! Ever since the first time we parked in the garage paint chips have been coming up and it really grates on my girdle that I'm constantly sweeping them up.

This pose worked until he realized his rear end was wedged into the flower planter box, which means he can't move and resulted in the last photo down below.

So I'm convinced Anne Geddes drugs her models, because mine is hardly ever cooperative.

Ha, here's the really funny part....to do the legs I took a 1x6 piece of cedar decking (expensive, not something you want to make mistakes with) and ripped it lengthwise (the rip was off center so I could make L shaped legs). I had to do the ripping with a circular saw, which is tough because there is no guide to make sure your cuts are straight. Whereas with a table saw it is a piece of cake.

So I get finished and I'm cleaning up the garage and there is some leftover pegboard that I found in the shed from the previous owner that I used for my man area. I didn't need the rest of it and was giving it to my neighbor and while we chatted I told him how tough it was to rip the legs with a circular saw. He pointed out to me that he has the same saw that comes with an attachment and I should check the box that it came with....."wait, you mean this?"

Neighbor: "Yea, see it slides right in the front there."

Blood and bloody ashes Moraine. All those headaches and I had the tools right there in front of me. Bollocks.

workbench

2008-07-27T17:26:00.003-05:00

I built myself a little workbench in the garage. My man area is now growing from the basement to this nook I've made for myself out here. I'm pretty pleased with it because it only cost 3 dollars to build (the wood I scavenged from various places) and that was for the screws to put everything together. Well, the cabinet was 30, but still, I think that's a pretty cheap work area. I just added some pegboard to the wall under and to the right of the cabinet. Now I just need pegs to hang my stuff up and I'll be all finished.

It got its first use this weekend because I supervised Sergey building a coffee table. It was much easier working waist high instead of squatting and working on the floor.

X supervised as well, he's good at that!

true story

2008-07-09T19:14:00.003-05:00

So we went to a soccer game last week and had a great time. Here's a funny story I forgot to tell about what happened afterwards....

Leaving the stadium we are driving through neighborhood streets that aren't so nice. Traffic is pretty heavy but we are moving. Amanda, Sergey and I are having a good time chatting when we happen upon a little boy (10-12 maybe) dancing on the sidewalk shouting at the cars. I shout out the car window at him:

"IT'S PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME!!"

I was laughing. Amanda rolled her eyes and I think Sergey chuckled.

But that's not the funny part! Still stuck in traffic, we come up to an intersection where we don't have to stop but the cross traffic has a stop sign does. We go through the intersection bumper to bumper as a local motors her way up towards us. I hear the (I'm guessing here) Mom say to the son "No, we can't do that, tomorr' you have to go to Church." She then passes us and someone in the intersection pulls out and startles her and I hear her say "You M*TH*RF*CK*R!!".

Whenever I hear her words run through my head it doesn't stop being funny...

"No, we can't do that, tomorr' you have to go to Church............You M*TH*RF*CK*R!!"

what color is your thumb?

2008-07-07T20:06:00.002-05:00

You aren't going to believe this crap. So we keep having visitors over to our house and we are overjoyed at the gobs of green goodness growing in our garden, however, there has been a slight hiccup. I've realized that my green and banana peppers have been looking a little funny. By 'funny', I mean, the seeds that I planted weren't growing up to look like the starter pepper we put in next to our tomatos.

I keep holding my breath thinking that one day they'll match up or suddenly they'll sprout a little pepper and everything will be fine and I can rest assured that I am indeed growing peppers. So we have a heavy rain and now the peppers have fallen over and are now growing along the ground. What the deuce?!

So the in-laws visit over the weekend and my MIL mentions that those peppers look like pumpkins. Dude, no, I distinctly remember picking up bell and banana pepper seeds from Ace. Then we have some friends over for s'mores saturday night and I mock my MIL's comment about them being pumpkin vines. Dude, no. I can see the package of seeds in my head. Not pumpkin!

So this morning over breakfast it dawns on Amanda that last year when we carved pumpkins we threw the insides into the compost pile. Months go by and I use my compost pile to fertilize my new garden. Aaaaaah ha!

Anybody know a pumpkin salsa recipe?

So now I have 9 tomato plants, 1 pepper, and 10 pumpkin vines.

Angels and Demons

2008-06-29T21:37:00.002-05:00

I just finished Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. All I can say is, wow, I didn't see that one coming! I thought it was a pretty good book, but it seemed quite predictable through the middle of the book.

Here are some of my thoughts floating around in my head after reading it:
1. I wish I knew more about art. I sure would like to make time to read more about Michelangelo and DaVinci and Bernoulli. Eventually I'll pick up something on art and read it...maybe.

2. I don't understand the hub-bub surrounding Dan Brown's books. Specifically, why there was such bad press about this book and the DaVinci Code. I'm Catholic and these books don't offend me. If anything, they've increased my faith and make me want to learn more about Catholicism.
Did I tell you, that when we lived in The 'Nati (when The DaVinci Code came out) we went to Mass one weekend and the priest had a visit priest give a homily touting his book "100 and 1 things wrong with The DaVinci Code"? I don't know if that was the specific title, but it was the biggest waste of a homily. I was so angry and irritated that they would waste time over a work of FICTION! What's next? JK Rowling the Atheist?! Good grief. Is their faith so weak that they can't handle a work of fiction? Or is my faith so weak that I fail to understand how and when I should defend my faith? No clue what the right answer there is.

3. Better than Angels and Demons, better than The DaVinci Code, is another book by Dan Brown called Digital Fortress. I liked the characters better and I liked the adventure better. The author spent more time writing from the bad guys perspective which I find much more entertaining. Lately I've been entertained more by cunning deceitfulness than charming heroics.

woot!

2008-06-27T21:37:00.002-05:00

I bought my very own mp3 player off of woot.com. They were having a woot off last week and I picked up a 2 GB SanDisk player for 35 buck including shipping. Online the cheapest I've seen have been 60 bucks, so I think it's quite a deal. So now the next time I fly for work I don't have to suffer through the music that they play.

One downside of it was that it was a refurbished model (hence the cheapness), so it came with no manuals or software, so I had to spend about an hour and a half how to make it work. A quick firmware update and some additional finagling and I'm in business!

And it's the weekend and I don't have to work!

And we are going to our first MLS game tomorrow!

Honey did list

2008-06-21T20:19:00.003-05:00

I built a flower box for the wife. X helped me a little.

It is a plywood box with cedar legs and cedar siding. It was supposed to be cedar shingles on the sides, but the lumberyard I went to didn't have the shingles. This is before I put the top on.

And this is the completed box.

The hardest part was cutting the trim pieces for the top. I was supposed to put a beveled edge on it, but I wasn't going to try that with a circular saw. If I only had a table saw.... And I nearly went bonkers trying to get the 45 degree angles cut right. I knew that was going to be a pain so I skipped the beveling. Maybe I should get a miter box. I was supposed to join the top trim pieces together by routering out a hole and using glue and biscuits, but I don't have a router so it was good old hammer, nails and glue. I put a coat of stain on it and I'll put another on there tomorrow and call it done.

This cost probably 70 dollars in material (cedar is expensive!) and 7 hours of labor. I think it turned out pretty good for my first try and the wife looooves it, so it did turn out very well.

garden

2008-06-20T20:41:00.002-05:00

The first 'maters of the season.

riddle me this, Batman

2008-06-16T20:05:00.003-05:00

It feels nice that we are finally getting this house broken in. I think I'm getting used to living here and it feels like everything fits. Little by little we add in our own touches and make it better than we found it.

So one of the new touches that is on my honey-do list is to install ceiling fans in Xander's room and the spare room. In town there is a used household goods store where anybody can donate their surplus home renovation supplies. It is also full of home goods that are from persons renovating their homes and putting to good use gently used items. Cabinets, paint, doors, windows, mirrors and craploads of chandeliers. Well I went there this past saturday looking for ceiling fans. I pick out a couple and head up to the register. The guy at the register finally is able to ring up my two fans. He looks at the first one and somehow comes up with the price of 10 dollars. He looks at the second fan and says 'wow, that's a really nice fan. How much do you want to pay for it?'

'10 dollars,' I reply.

He gives me a 'you cheap ass' look, but I keep my mouth shut. First, there is a huge sign that says "ALL SALES FINAL"; all this crap here is used, how do I know it works? I don't. Second, don't ask me how much I want to pay for something and then act surprised when I'm cheap on what I want to pay. Mark the price next time. I'm shopping here because I'm cheap and want to capitalize on rich folks supersizing perfectly good household goodies.

Anyway, I got out of there, with what I hope are two just like new ceiling fans for 20 bucks.

Oh, and we are never again going to our local Dairy Queen. I can't emphasize the seething irritation that I have for unsupervised teenagers. Lazy, snotty, snooty and obnoxious. Although it was comical the sound that a large vanilla cone makes when it falls from a height of 4 feet. bllluurchhh.

Not all of them now, there were 2 of the 8 that were carrying the load.

to and fro across the pond again.

2008-06-09T19:48:00.002-05:00

I made another trip to and fro across the pond for work again. That gave me time to read some. Here are the minutes from my book review club meeting...

The Sphere - Michael Crichton
I didn't think too much of it and was rather disappointed. I enjoyed the story, but I thought it was more of a psychological thriller and was expecting some sort adventure of jurassic-like proportions. The whole ending just didn't sit with me well. Oh, let's just pretend it never happened. I was hoping they would take the spaceship for a spin, but that never happened.

Hold Tight - Harlan Coben
I really enjoyed this book. I picked it up at Heathrow (and got ripped by the exchange rate, but I knew that was going to happen) and read it for the entire flight to Philly. Being a bit hungover and short on sleep for the week (bad hotel room, lousy traffic next to the hotel) I was anticipating sleeping a bit on the plane, not with this book. It didn't grab me from the get-go, but it slowly built up and then brought back characters from The Innocent that I really enjoyed (Inspector Loren Muse - love that character!) and I just couldn't stop. I like the how Coben writes his characters thoughts and actions. To me, his characters get stuck in bad situations but follow their own intuition and gut instinct and get out. I don't know how to say it really, but I like the way he makes his characters think, how their thoughts evolve.

Book review club

2008-05-21T19:42:00.002-05:00

I started a book review club. So far I'm the only member. Here is a summary of the group's recent adventures in page turning...

Harlan Coben, The Innocent

I read this on my trip across the pond. I really don't know who a master of suspense is, but the author did a great job of keeping me interested in the plot with all of the twists and turns. I liked the characters that he created in the story and I thought I really got to know them in on a close personal level. I really felt for the main character, the twist that his life takes is something that could have happened to me. Or still could.

Great book! I'll read Harlan Coben again.

Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October

I picked this book up for a dollar at a rummage sale last fall. I thought I would really like it since way back in 2002 I desperately picked up Rainbow Six on a whim at LAX and really loved it. I started it back in November, but fell off the wagon and just now got around to finishing it. I really didn't find it that interesting. It's about a Russian submarine. There's a movie about it. It was like reading the play by play of a chess match. Well, it wasn't that boring, but it took my stubborn streak for force myself to pick it back up and finish it.

I won't give up on old Tom just yet.

David Baldacci, Simple Genius

I found this book last summer during a layover on a trash can at LAX. This was another one of those that I started, but loaned to a coworker, then I read some other books and then came back to this and finally finished it. The story was pretty good, but in the middle it became a bit drawn out.

"Oh, we're two private detectives and we ran out of clues. Oh, but wait, we can investigate this! Oh, we are out of clues again. But wait, we can investigate this! Out of clues again...la la la, what to do, oh wait, we can investigate this!"

All in all it was a pretty good book. I didn't have any expectations from Baldacci, so I wasn't too let down. Let's just say I wasn't as let down as when I read The Hunt for Red October.

Now I'm onto reading The Sphere by Micheal Crichton. I've never read anything by him before. I have high expectations from him.

Caution!!! Wild Animal Violence!

2008-05-21T19:19:00.003-05:00

Caution, below are images of a killer cat poaching on her realm, proceed with care.

Over the weekend I was puttering around the yard. I got rid of our old firewood storage system behind our shed a few months ago. It was two pieces of u-channel (the same green metal that street signs are mounted on) welded to two pieces of angle iron for the ends, with metal poles keeping the logs from rolling off. Well, this was no good in keeping the wood off of the ground and caused most of our firewood to rot. So I threw it out and built a new one from some treated 2 x 4's and used treated 2 x 6's as the ends.

Anyway, for the month or so from when I had thrown the old one out and built the new one last weekend I stored the remaining firewood in our firepit just off of our patio in our backyard. Well low and behold, some happy little family of mice built themselves a comfortable home there. Upon restacking the firewood one of them scampered out of there and I thought that there would be more in there.

So I asked myself, what would be better than seeing if Ainsley would chase a rabbit? I know! Ainsley chasing a mouse! So I grab Ainsley and move a couple of more logs around and scare the next mouse out. Shazaaam! The Orange Lightening Bolt returns!

I moved the picture far down there to give you a chance to not look.

Happy birthday to me!

2008-05-14T11:32:00.002-05:00

29 and feelin' fine!

I feel like there is something that I need to do to fully appreciate being 29, so when I'm 39 I can look back and reminisce with fond memories. Oh, I'm sure I'll have fond memories of being 29, but there are all those folks out there who say...'ah, to be 29 again'.

Well, dear readers, I am now 29, now what? What should I do so that in another decade instead of saying 'ah, to be 29 again' I say something like 'Hell yes! 29! I kicked the crap out of it!'

That's it. I've made up my mind. I'm going to have a theme for this year, and it is to kick the crap out of 29. I've never had themes before, let alone a theme for a year of my life. Look out 29, there is a size 12 headed for your hindquarters!

So what should my focus be? I don't know. Don't lose focus!

Weezer and bleach

2008-05-12T19:17:00.003-05:00

So Friday night we were in Best Buy to buy Amanda her mother's day gift, 27 Dresses. We were in the checkout line and she says "Do you still want that Weezer cd?".

"Heck yea!" I say.

So for the entire weekend I've been jamming to Weezer's first cd, the one with the Sweater Song. You know you like that song! It's going to be stuck in your head all day now.

I spent saturday afternoon playing in the yard and now I have poison ivy on my left forearm. It's kiling me! My in-laws told me to put bleach on it. Yea, while I'm at it I'll shove bamboo shoots up my fingernails and rig up a contraption to conduct self-water-board torture.

As it turns out, today at work I was mocking their home remedies to my coworkers and they back up that logic. So right now, as I resist the urge to rake a jagged piece of broken glass across my forearm, I am wondering where we keep our bleach.

rising gas prices

2008-05-05T19:34:00.002-05:00

You know, with rising gas prices fast food chains ought to do all they can to speed up drive though lines and decrease the time customers spend waiting in line with their engines idling. Why just yesterday after a hearty 2 hours volunteer gardening at our church we decided to treat ourselves to some DQ goodness. Would you believe it took 3 minutes and 45 seconds (Do the Evolution played while waiting) to get our tasty goodness? That is entirely too long to wait for ice cream.

The problem was all of the doodoo-heads in front of us ordering sandwiches. Sandwiches from Dairy Queen? You don't go to DQ and get sandwiches! Where's your brain people?

And do you know 2 small twist cones cost 2.98? 2.98!! Fricking outrageous! Oh and small means small, it wasn't opposite day.

In other events, with my child's supervision, I planted bell and sweet bananna peppers in the remaining garden area. I planted seeds so hopefully that turns out okay. Never tried that before. I gave them some 'roids too, so I hope to have some super peppers.

Before I got started gardening I wanted to clear it with the wife so I said to her "Is it okay if I plant my seeds?" Thinking it's best to see if she needs a break from the kid. "IN THE GARDEN!!" I add in a shout.

Garden

2008-05-01T20:04:00.002-05:00

The garden has been started! First we had to get rid of a few bushes that seemed to me to be a various random assortment of miscellaneous plants hodge podged together in the flower bed. Amazingly we convinced the in-laws that the various random assortment of miscellanea would go perfectly at their new house. They were convinced and came over last weekend and picked them up.

Prior to that, we were on vacation in Williamsburg and I got some new ideas for the garden. The first was to take two rows of treated 1x8's and use that as border to keep the rabbits out. The second was to use soft pine needles as border instead of buying mulch; or just leaving the dirt exposed. I just don't see the sense in buying mulch year after year. I just don't see the benefit. Lucky for us the previous homeowner put down expensive mulch so we don't have to. That leaves time for the ground cover we planted to take over so we don't have to buy mulch in the future! But anyway, the soft pine needles look really good around the veggie patch.

Ta da! In-laws also purchased some tomato plants for me for my upcoming birthday, so I planted those and an onion that was sprouting in our kitchen cabinet. The red tarp stuff came with the tomato plants and is some form of mulch. I was just going to chuck it, thinking that the 'roids that I planted the tomatos with was enough, but I got one of those "it's free why not use it (you big dummy!)??" looks from the wife, so I put it down.

I think this weekend we'll put in some sweet corn and zucchini.

1 project complete

2008-04-28T19:35:00.003-05:00

Thanks to a helping hand from Sergey, I now have a nice shelf under our basement steps and rolling carts for storage. The reason behind it is we hope to create a little play area for X in the basement so that Amanda can play in her sewing area or workout and X can play and be semi-attended. In order to do that we had to make room for X's play area by getting rid of what we had stored there. So now our camping gear is stored under the stairs.

Here are 2 before pictures:

Here are the after pictures:

My next work in progress is our garden. I made a wall to go around the garden (16X5) to keep the rabbits out. I'm told that I have tomato plants arriving for my birthday....and I think we'll put in some sweet corn, zucchinni, onion and peppers. I brought some used coffee grounds home from work and put them in there today. I heard that coffee grounds are good nitrogen boost so I spread them over entire bed.

dr visit and other news

2008-04-16T19:32:00.002-05:00

I'm starting to grow up. There have been 2 new developments around here that tell me that. The first is there is a new radio station in town that plays 90's music (93 up to some new stuff...skipping some garbage from 00-04) that is fricking awesome. That's got to be a sign that I'm ...oooh, ...I hate to say it, aging. However the radio station is awesome! It takes me way, way back to 95 and 96.

Second is the fact that we have a family doctor and I went on a visit voluntarily (with minor *harrrumph* motivation from Hugs). He told me to get some blood work done, all routine, so I did that this morning.

Have you ever had blood drawn from you and had it make a noise as if it was coming out of a high pressure hose? You know the sound when you take your garden hose and go to fill up a bucket when you wash the car and the sound it makes when the water squirts into the bucket? Well, my blood did that into the test tube this morning. Of course you couldn't hear it in the next room, but I didn't imagine it.

There was something else I was going to yap about but I can't remember....must be aging to fast to remember.

redneck weekend

2008-04-07T19:47:00.004-05:00

I spent my first weekend home from 2 weeks out of the country outside in the beautiful Ohio weather. We replanted some daffodils and some other plants to make room for our garden. Hopefully next weekend I can put that in. Oh, but I need to remember to put up a fence to keep the rabbits out. And I sharpened my reel lawnmower so he should be ready to roll very soon.

And now that I've given myself the inaugural farmers tan for the season I'm ready for summer. My neck and forearms are killing me!

It was great leaving work today and 1) not being the last one out and 2) it still was daylight.

Here's a picture of Amanda in her "Football kit" (soccer jersey) and X in his new coat. When we first put the jacket on him and pulled the hood up we though he looked and sounded like Kenny from South Park.

Day Seven through Twelve

2008-04-05T20:37:00.002-05:00

On Sunday we were invited to a guys house to have a traditional English breakfast. It was great! Carrot and curryander (sp?) soup, roast, veggies, worchester pudding (not really pudding) and for dessert spotted dick. I'll just come right out and say it...

I ate the spotted dick. The spotted dick was good. I had seconds on the spotted dick.

Spotted dick is a sweet bread with custard and currants.

The rest of the days are a bit of a blur. We worked late every night and seeking a new pub to eat at wasn't as high of a priority as getting back to the hotel to go to bed was.

Driving back to Heathrow at 4am the GPS was a godsend again because I had to take a detour and when I went off course the GPS automatically recalculated the roads to take.

Overall it was a great time.

Some other thoughts I had while I was there...
The forearm tattoo is big over in England.

So is smoking! Thank heavens that the smoking bans in the UK are strict like they are over here in the US.

Alright, the jet lag is starting to catch up to me a little bit...need to get to bed.

Day Six

2008-04-05T20:35:00.001-05:00

I think the jet lag is catching up to me. I feel like crap. I’m very tired and have zero motivation.

For lunch I had a bacon and brie baguette with some onion soup. The baguette was awesome. I ignored my chips. I’m sick of their chips. Everywhere they are the same. There must be only one chip vendor for this town.

I’m getting used to round-a-bouts. However, I’ve been driving on streets that aren’t too busy, so there isn’t too much traffic to content with as I count the exits on my way around-the-bout.

We had some fancy Indian food for diner. The Brits here tell me that curry has replaced fish and chips as the national meal. The dinner was okay, not as good as the Indian restaurants in Cincinnati.

Day Five

2008-04-05T20:33:00.001-05:00

We finally left work at a decent hour and went to a pub. It was a nice place, but the employee that brought out our food gave me the creeps because I couldn’t figure out if it was a man or a woman. I had the lamb (fatty) with a potato in a jacket served with a side of, wait for it, wait for it…peas!

Back at the hotel I had a great hot chocolate and fell asleep watching the original Transformers cartoon. That was awesome!

Day Four

2008-04-05T20:31:00.002-05:00

Busy day at work. Ended up trying to eat at a carvery, but it was after 9pm and the dinner choices were very very slim. That's one weird thing about England, all the kitchens close at 8:30 or 9pm and stop serving food. Of course they keep serving beer. I ended up back at the hotel restaurant eating a sausage and onion sandwich and some nachos. The sausages were puny, but the bread was very good. Over here, when you order a sandwich they ask you if you want white or brown bread. I’ve only had the brown and it is good.

Day Three

2008-04-05T20:28:00.002-05:00

Another busy day. I was supposed to go out with a few of my new ‘mates’ and watch the England vs France Football match, but I wanted to get back to the hotel at a decent hour. Kickoff wasn't until 7:30pm and I had to send some emails. I ended up at a nice, clean little pub. I had the largest hamburger I’ve ever eaten, with chips of course and a Strongbow. The Strongbow tasted like apple cider. It was so sweet and didn’t taste like beer at all. I bet I could get Amanda to drink it.

The bartender was Scottish and actually chatted with em for a minute. Everyone else so far just seems to tolerate me.

Day Two

2008-04-05T20:26:00.004-05:00

I had a busy day at work so I just had time for dinner and no sightseeing. I ended up at a dive because all pubs look like dives from the outside. When I went in and ordered the locals at the bar stopped all conversation and looked at one another with expressions that said “WTF?” and “a damn bloody Yankee is in here!” Those wankers were smirking to themselves and it was quite funny.

I ordered bangers and mash and a Carling. The Carling was a good tasting beer. And of course the bangers and mash came with peas. Everything here comes with peas or chips (fries).

Day One

2008-04-05T19:42:00.004-05:00

Day 1…
the flight over was good. Not much to talk about if you’ve flown on a plane before. Although it was my first time on a 777. I had a night flight so I landed at Heathrow at 11am and caught about 3 – 4 hours of sleep on the plane, after a full day of Easter Sunday activities. Surprisingly, I wasn't too tired. My mind must be running off of excitement of being overseas for the first time and reading the Harlan Coben book, “The Innocent” (very good book, almost done!).

I get my passport stamped and grab my bag off of the carousel. Which, by incredible luck, was there on the carousel after waiting there for 10 seconds; that’s never happened before.

I ended up getting a new wallet for this trip, one that is slimmer, holds less and goes in my front pocket (to avoid being pick-pocketed). The width of the billfold works just barely for dollars, but of course, was not designed for the pound which is a full half inch taller than a dollar. The lady at the exchange counter suggested I get a new wallet, thanks but…

Aaaah, now onto the rental car. I get on the shuttle bus to go to the rental agency and try to enter the bus on the wrong side. See, if you didn’t realize, in England everybody drives on the other side of the road, so that means everything is on the other side.

I finish up at the rental agency and get situated in my Vauxhall Vectra with a 6 speed manual transmission and GPS. I take extra care in ensuring that the mirrors are adjusted correctly, I know where the turn signals are located, the wipers, my maps; all this extra effort to ensure that my brain is able to focus more attention on driving on the left hand side of the road.

I pull out with the rental car and end up stalling it three times before realizing that I’m trying to take off in 3^rd gear. Blast! The gear shift locations are in the same locations on vehicles on either side of the pond; my only problem was my left hand's inability to know how to put it into 1^st gear. I was afraid I would end up putting it into reverse, but finding reverse will be another adventure to tell you about later.

The GPS was a godsend. I would have gone crazy trying to get out of Heathrow with out it.

So once I was trundling merrily along headed to my hotel, this is what my vantage point was driving:
The devil is in the details when it comes to driving on the left. This means that nearly everything is opposite, stuff you wouldn’t even think about (at least I didn’t):

The exits are primarily on the left
Faster traffic travels on the right
Your blindspot is now on the right
Looking in your rearview mirror requires you to look to the left (that’s a tricky one!)
The wipers go from left to right, not right to left
When I drive, I have a tendency to slouch to the right…I can’t do that now. Well, I have to slouch to the left instead.
The guy inside the round-a-bout has the right of way
Parking the car is difficult
The seatbelt is on the left

Once I was settled in my room I took a walk and here are some pictures.

Danger! Speed cameras!

This is a 50 mph speed limit sign. I’m surprised everything isn’t in km’s, but maybe I’m missing something here.

A road like this, is called a dual carriageway. Look out for buggys!

There were a couple of other buggary things that happened…when I arrived to check in my reservation wasn’t reserved and the clerk said “blimey”. I could not stifle my laughter.

This whole left hand side driving hoses me up in another category: crossing the road. I don’t know if you are like me, but when I’m in America and I cross the street I have a tendency to first look left as I proceed across the road, then when I reach the median I look to the right to ensure I’m not going to be Froggered. This is a problem in the UK. I crossed half of a road while I was on my walk, made it to the median and looked to the right, saw no one coming and proceeded to cross. Then there was that unmistakably new sound approach me, the whir of a 4 cylinder diesel bearing down on me traveling at 40+ mph. Zoinks! Time to run you stupid tourist! Of course if I looked both left and right before I crossed I wouldn't have that problem.

Once I got across it took a few minutes before I stopped laughing at myself.

For dinner I walked to a restaurant across from the hotel. When I ordered the 7oz fillet, the waitress confirmed my order by saying ‘the phil-ett’? Yes, the phil-ett, with a Stella Artois to wash it down.

Baked potatoes are referred to as jacket potatoes.

There and back again

2008-04-05T19:14:00.003-05:00

I had a little work trip to England. It went okay. Fortunately we finished most of what we were to do there, but unfortunately I'll have to go back over there in a month or so to wrap up the program.

There are so many things to tell you about this trip. I knew I'd have so much to blog about when I returned that I'd have trouble remembering so I kept a little journal to update this blog when I returned. But in the meantime, here are some highlights in no specific order....

Driving on the other side of the road is something else. I am sooo happy that I ordered the GPS with the car, otherwise I don't think I would've been able to leave Heathrow without going insane. Needless to say I was only honked at once as I was leaving Heathrow.

They don't have light beer over there. Here, if you sit down in any bar there are so many light beers to choose from. Over there, just real beer. It's good beer too. I had ale for the first time as well. I'm not a big ale fan. It tastes like stale flat beer. It must be an acquired taste. And everywhere I went it was ordered by the pint (or half pint). There was none of the 12, 16 or 20 ounce choice. Here's 2 pence, gimme a pint. It's straightforward. That's how ordering and drinking beer should be.

I tried to survey the people of England and see if they were fat like Americans. You know what? They are fat like us. I didn't see anyone that needed to use a wheelchair to get around, but there were obese folks there. The locals that I was working with said that England is more like the US when it comes to obesity, but the rest of Europe is not. So, we are infecting Europe 1 country at a time.

In the city I was in, I liked the fact that I didn't see restaurant chains. Oh, I saw the McDonald's, and Domino's and Burger King's, but for local food, everything was different. Every pub was different. They all had Fosters and Carling on tap and either a football (soccer) game was on or BBC was broadcasting. I liked the uniqueness of the pubs.

So I'll post on here the events of the days that I recorded.

Cheers mate!

Happy Easter

2008-03-23T08:36:00.001-05:00

Happy Easter from our Family to yours!

blasted pcv valve

2008-03-15T20:35:00.002-05:00

I was so excited this morning when I woke up. An entire 2 days off of work! I had my nice jog, changed the oil in Amanda's car, mixed coffee grounds in my compost pile to make better compost and then proceeded to break my truck.

I thought it would be a good idea to check under the hood and check fluid levels, belts and hoses. In doing so, I wiggled my breather hose going to the pcv valve on my right valve cover and it snapped right off. Blood and bloody ashes Moraine. First I had to figure out what I broke. I look in my little Haynes manual and figure out it's the pcv valve. At first it looks like I have to take the entire valve cover off, but a quick call to the father-in-law and some more looking in my Haynes manual tells me that it should pull right out. Ummm, no. Not happening. I ended up destroying it taking it out. The pcv sits so tightly inside this rubber grommet on the valve cover that it was a curse fest getting it out. I actually said the Queen Mother of all swear words trying to get it out...usually I'm a bit more patient.

Now onto getting a suitable replacement. I call Autozone and they have one in stock and I run down there and buy it. I try to install it and ....what the dilly o, it's too small?!? It doesn't fit in the grommet. Alright, so I call the dealership and see if they have one because I've ran into problems before with fuel filters that Autozone just doesn't carry the right one even though they think it's right.

So I run over to the dealership and pick that up. I get out to the car and realize the dealership gave me the same part as Autozone. Blast! So Autozone is right and I have 2 of the same part and neither one fits in the grommet in the valve cover. So now what? Great. Am I telling them the right part that I need replaced? Am I telling them the right vehicle information...year, make, engine size and so on?

I stop back home and look at my Haynes manual again hoping that I missed some brilliant line of wisdom or that by some chance I'm wrong and that the pcv valve from the dealership fits into the grommet. Nope. No dice.

Now at this point I'm getting desperate. I've destroyed my original piece and the two replacements I've found don't work. And it's a saturday so the dealership closed at 1pm so now I'm stuck until monday. I decided to try a third parts store in town and they guy ended up telling me that the pcv valve from both Autozone and the dealership was correct. Dang! However, he did have grommets! He ended up selling me a grommet, to go in my grommet to hold my new pcv valve.

Now onto the installation, which is not the reverse of removal in my case. I spent quite a while trying to figure out do I put the pcv in grommet 1 and grommet 2 and then jam the whole assembly in there. Or do I put grommet 1 in the valve cover, put the pcv in grommet 2 and then stuff those two into grommet 1? The problem was that the grommet grommet fitting was so tight, and the new pcv was an L shape, so I couldn't make it happen. I ended up turning the L into an I and jamming it all in there.

The right thing to do was to get the correct grommet, but according to the guy at store #3, he only had it in stock in a store 2 hours away. I could have probably waited until monday to go to the dealership and get the right grommet, but, eh, I needed to get it working and didn't feel like waiting.

So hopefully my jimmy rigged pcv valve will hold up.

catching up

2008-03-08T21:40:00.002-05:00

What's new? I've been working a crapload. The current project I'm on ships next thursday to England. We had the customer over for a week and I entertained them part of the time by running tests for them on the system they are buying. The one guy said "bugger" once when we where having trouble getting two traces to display on the spectrum analyzer. It was tough not to laugh out loud. He also said funny things like "spot on" when a measurement was good. Typically I'll say "dead nuts", or "that's tight" or "good". He didn't say "God say the Queen!" (although I almost did once) or "cheerio" though. I was just a bit let down.

Watched a couple of movies lately...last night we watched "Wayne's World". I saw it in high school, but that was years after the original came out and everyone was quoting it. I was behind the cool curve on that one. It had it's moments, it was funny. Seeing the flames on the Gremlin make me wish I still had my Festiva. I shoulda put flames on it when I had it. I wish I never sold it. I'd put flames on it if I still had it. Yes I would.

It took me three sittings to watch "The Chronicles of Narnia". I fell asleep 30 minutes into it (at 9 pm last saturday night) the first time, then the next sitting I had to go to bed....then I finally finished it wednesday night. It was pretty good. When I was watching it I wondered why do all the evil characters have to be ugly? There were one eyed things and trolloc look-a-likes and wart covered things...and they were all evil. The good side had the lion, the unicorn, the phoenix, the jaguars, the beavers...all these pretty animals. I did like how the wolves had American accents and the good guys had British accents.

We had a blizzard today. I don't know what exactly constitutes a blizzard, but it happened. I shoveled a boatload of snow. Although we have nice neighbors with snow blowers who do the sidewalks sometimes.

week update

2008-02-24T21:23:00.002-05:00

I had monday off as a holiday, but I made up that time at work tuesday through saturday. I'm feeling the deadline pressure looming. My boss asks me "Are you feeling the pressure?" I replied "Yeah" --in a 'you ain't fricking kidding, dude' tone. He responded "Good." It's hard to explain, but it was a healthy work conversation. My workload, like everything else in life, is like a sinusoidal wave and right now I'm headed to the maximum amplitude point of the curve. So I'm tired, but hopeful and not worrying.

Although it really sucks only seeing my kid for 30 minutes in the morning and maybe 30 more at night. That's the hardest part of being a parent so far.

The best part about today was after I left work I picked up X from Amanda at her sewing class and went over to Barnes and Nobles and bought a magazine and a Tazo green tea from Starbucks (gross drink --do not get this!) and sat a read and X slept. When Amanda came by after her class and picked us up I felt so refreshed. It was like I took a nap.

cake

2008-02-17T21:16:00.002-05:00

I smashed a piece of cake in my wife's face tonight while she proofread our city taxes. It was really, really funny.

What do you know, our camera worked perfectly!

catching up

2008-02-17T17:45:00.002-05:00

Hey, I'm still here. I've been working a crapload of hours lately (including saturdays) and haven't had much time for fun things like blogging. However, thanks to the holiday weekend, I have some extra time.

I just finished our taxes. Boy, when you have a kid and a house you get a crapload of money back. I was skeptical about that, so that was a pleasant surprise. When are you going to be able to file city taxes online?

I'm a single parent today. Momma's off at a sewing class so I'm in charge. Xander was being crabby so I put him down for his evening nap. The screaming stopped so I think he's asleep. It was only 5-10 minutes of yelling. It's good that it only lasts that long. Maybe we'll go for a drive later and go to the carwash.

So for Lent I decided to give up sweets. At first I decided to just limit myself to only one per meal, but then Amanda and I were talking and I felt guilty and inspired at the same time so I chose to give up sweets altogether. It hasn't been to bad, except last night when we sat down to watch 'Live Free or Die Hard' and Amanda sat down next to me chomping on a candy bar. I did take advantage of the 'you can have what you give up for Lent on sundays' idea this morning after mass. They had free coffee and doughnuts after mass...and let me tell you, that was one of the BEST doughnuts I've had in a long, long time.

Live Free or Die Hard was a good movie. I didn't realize the Mac guy from the Mac vs PC commercials was in it. He was pretty good. I kept waiting for him to say something Mac-oriented, but he didn't. It was a good action flick. I think I'd most likely put Bruce Willis on my tough-guy list. The semi-truck vs fighter jet was a silly scene, so was the bit in the elevator shaft. It was all realistic up until then :)

addendum

2008-02-04T21:16:00.000-05:00

I would like to add to my rant from yesterday that I think Wes Welker of the Patriots would have deserved MVP honors if the Pats would have won. His performance was phenomenal. That little squirt is unstoppable.

We had another fun Home Depot trip this weekend. Bought a hot water heater blanket, an AC cover, a peephole and some wood to build some rolling storage bins under the basement stairs. We also picked up some paint for the master bathroom. We are going to paint it Lauren's Lullaby, which is light pink.

The only problem is I'm not finding too much time to work on my favorite project which is building my little storage area with drawers on wheels in the basement.

Funny thing: while at Home Depot searching for casters for my rolling bins, I asked a HD employee where the casters were and he replied "What's a caster?". I was really surprised, 99% of the time they know exactly what I ask.

Still no hot dog vendor at HD.

Proof!

2008-02-03T22:11:00.000-05:00

There is a God and he is just and true! Do you know what is almost as good as your team winning the Superbowl? Watching the Patriots lose the Superbowl!!

"Oooh, look at us Patriots with our perfect season. Oooh, our coach Bill Belichick is a coaching genius. Ooooh, look at Tom Brady he's so awesome. Ooooh, look at his little girlfriend Giselle (oh, but that's not his baby momma!! --classless!)"

Okay, okay, I'll stop with my childish and immature rant. Let's be honest though, how big of a rock do you have to live under if you haven't heard anybody with a soapbox rant and rave at the quest for the perfect season, how good Tom Brady is and what a coaching genius Belichick is? The rock has to be the size of Iowa if you haven't.

I guess my problem is a combination of a few things:
1. Jealousy - because Belichick used to coach the Browns and now everyone strokes his ego about what a genius he is
2. .....

Yeaaa. I guess my problem is just jealousy. But listen, that's enough of the negative comments. I want everyone with a soapbox to jump back on it and cheer for those underdog Giants! Were they 10 or 17 point underdogs? I can't remember the last time I really enjoyed the Superbowl. I really enjoyed it because it was such a close game. I certainly haven't enjoyed that much because my team hasn't been there.

Next year is our year! Remember, starting tomorrow, everyone is undefeated!

vacation?

2008-01-31T20:38:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-27T13:15:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-19T18:37:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-13T20:46:00.001-05:00

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

2008-01-06T12:40:00.001-05:00

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....

2008-01-01T17:51:00.000-05:00

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)!!

around the house during vacation

2007-12-30T18:03:00.000-05:00

Most people relax and enjoy themselves over vacation by reading books, sleeping in until 9am and do some plain old sitting around. Nope, not me. I worked on a bunch of projects like:

1. I repainted our downstairs bathroom. Right now I'm staining the wood trim because the previous painters painted on the trim and then painted over their mistakes with paint to match the wood trim. *not going to say anything bad, not going to say anything bad*
2. Swapped the living room and study. Sergey came over the other day and helped me move all the furniture around. Now we have a much bigger living room and I think it looks awesome.
3. I took the scrap plywood that I dumpster dove for over the summer and installed that in the attic over our garage to make the space usable to store Christmas decorations and other stuff we'll only use once a year, if that.
4. At the direction of my wife, I insulated the all of the outlets and switches on all of the outside walls in our house.
5. Bought and installed faucet covers for the water spigots outside.
6. Insulated some pipes in our basement.

And with all this I made about 4 trips to Home Depot. Speaking of Home Depot, ever since AKM3 mentioned that their Home Depot sold hot dogs, which they voted to be the best hot dogs around, I've been secretly hoping that upon my next trip to HD that I'll find a hot dog vendor dressed like a circus clown with a 3 wheeled cart selling hot dogs. I continue to be let down each trip.

Speaking of food, I just posted a comment on Steak n Shake's website and asked them to build one in our town. I love Steak n Shake!

Bambi almost bit the dust....

2007-12-21T21:25:00.000-05:00

About 2 hours ago we were coming back from my grandma's and almost killed Bambi. That little fella is one lucky bugger.

So we are driving home along a 2 laned state route through areas that switch between woods and farmland and I have the cruise control set somewhere between 55 and 60 mph. Bambi decides to amble out in the road right in front of us and stop. The next three seconds go something like this....I slam on the brakes and begin slowing down. "OH SH*T!!", I exclaim (which then requires a deposit to X's swear jar). We are slowing down some more and Bambi just stares back at me with the same blank expression any hoofed creature has before it meets it's maker. "OH SH*T!!", I exclaim -- with increased urgency (and of course an additional deposit is now needed). We keep slowing down and finally Bambi decides to start moving. Again, "OH SH*T!!" -- ever the increasing urgency (that's 3 deposits now). Bambi, in his or her finite wisdom decides to start running. That's good. The bad news is that Bambi is running in the same direction that we are traveling. At this point we are essentially chasing Bambi down the road. Bambi finally gets up to top speed as we are coming to a halt and for a split second we are clipping Bambi's rear legs with our front bumper (about 3 to 4 Bambi strides). Thankfully I only thought "Move your @ss you stupid deer!!" and didn't say it, otherwise I'd have a 4th deposit to make. Finally, finally, finally Maxxwell comes to a halt and Bambi skeedaddles his or her arse off to play chicken with Chevy's another day.

So then everything is well and I begin laughing hysterically over the whole thing. We pulled over at the next gas station and Bambi didn't leave a mark so all is well thanks to the big guy upstairs. Whew!

lemme get a ...

2007-12-19T14:49:00.000-05:00

...UPGRADE!

Don't you love my Beyonce reference? Amanda hates it when I sing that. Anyway...I know a guy who has a rental property and there is a huge back story of my friend the landlord getting hosed out of 8 grand and the tenants trashing the place and moving out with 3 days notice. It's a sad story, but on the upside the tenants left some junk in the house that my friend let me take. So we've now UPGRADed to a newer computer desk and added 2 10 pound dumbbells to our gym downstairs.

Now as I use this nice "new" computer desk I like it! What a nice UPGRADE!

And I'm off work for the next 2 weeks!! Whoo-hooo!

We took X to get his picture taken with Santa today. We'll post that later. Did you know Santa drinks Starbucks? He does.

sprucing up the bathroom

2007-12-16T20:40:00.000-05:00

My little helper X and I started work on the downstairs bathroom. You can see the evil outhouse with cats border in the background that we scraped off. X wasn't as much help as I'd hoped he would be. I had to carry a bib in my back pocket because he kept drooling. The sling makes him drool for some strange reason.

But we got all the crummy border off and I took off the toilet tank because I hate seeing that part of the wall unpainted. I was thinking of taking the bowl off, but I don't want to mess with the wax seal and I don't know how to get the water out of the bowl. I'm not desperate enough to try siphoning.

I also took all of the wood trim off because a hasty painter before me didn't tape off the trim and got paint all over it. Well, in taking off the trim and sanding the paint off I realized that the fool went and bought paint to match the trim and painted over the paint on the trim. I'd like to wring their neck.

But I got the ceiling painted and tomorrow after work I'll tape off the floor and ceiling so I can paint the walls.

This ain't no Keebler family

2007-12-12T21:04:00.000-05:00

This holiday season, we're doing our part to combat war, poverty, hunger and global warming by spreading the Elf joy.....

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1343876569

travel complaint

2007-12-05T20:01:00.001-05:00

I just went to Baltimore on monday and tuesday of this week. Do you know what annoys me about traveling? Well, to state it plainly, it's the people...however I'll be more specific and not such a Ted Kaczynski.

Have you ever flown into an airport and had to take a shuttle bus to get to the car rental agencies? At BWI you have to...it's no biggie. The shuttle buses are nice and user friendly. You just wait for the shuttle bus, get in, set your luggage on the rack and sit down and enjoy the ride.

This is my complaint: people get on the bus, put their luggage on the rack AND STAND RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT. What's wrong with you people! Are you afraid someone is going to steal your crummy underwear? Are you going to get cooties from sitting on a bus? No, no, I'm too cool to sit down. I have to stand here and look cool and talk and text on my cellphone because I'm a big shot.

Alright, enough complaining.