tv song
Well, it looks at least for the moment that the fixes around the house are good. No new water in the skylight or basement, and it rained most of the day yesterday. So that's a relief.
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March 31, 2006
March 30, 2006
your momma dont dance
well, now is the beginning of the real test. It is raining pretty good right now, and it's supposed to most of the day. Now we will see if all my fixes for the basement and the skylight are good enough to hold.
Keeping my fingers crossed....
March 29, 2006
gods of war
I just got home from working 12 straight hours. 12 hours isn't remarkable, but I've been actually coding for 12 straight hours, which is quite exhausting, mentally. But I got my new demo working, and now that allows me to throw the ball into the court of the people in chicago. My stuff is done, jerks! is yours?
March 26, 2006
still standing
Jus posting this so that I don't forget the name of the hottest commercial salsa I've ever had, XOCHiTL which was pure pleasure/pain. Just want to be sure I remember the name so I can get it again. My brother gave me this for christmas or my birthday, recently. He was also the source of my finding this salsa,
which I consider the best-tasting commerically made habanero salsa I've ever had.
Turns out, my brother is a good source for salsa...
Finally got the table hoist
Finally got the table hoist done. Went to menards last nite, but they didn't have everything I needed, then they closed. So this morning I went to home depot, and got the rest of the cables and pulleys. I still need one more heavy duty pulley, but it still works right now.
I have it up right now with ~100lbs on it, to make sure it won't fall, and it definately hauled it all up there no problem. After almost 6 months of planning, building, and errors, I'm hoping this is it.
March 25, 2006
headwires
We're home, and I can honestly say that the entire trip was a success. All went as I had planned, even the stuff I wasn't 100% sure about, like renting a larger car than I reserved, switching hotels in the middle of the week, and driving around LA ourselves without getting carjacked.
First 4 days were all Disney, and it nearly killed me. My knee found new levels of pain, my feet felt like balloons filled cement, with sharp tacks in my heels. Every nite we would get back and all of us would immediately go right to sleep. We barely had the energy to eat dinner most nites.
But everyone had a real good time. We all liked the thunder mountain roller coaster best until we rode space mountain, then that was the hands-down winner.
The 3rd day, Abby, Ally, Ann and I all rode the tower of terror ride, where you drop 3 stories repeatatly in an elevator car. Very cool. Abby liked it so much she and I rode it again the next day.
The last day, I had to go get the rental car and switch our hotelfor ridiculous reasons not worth retelling. So I left everyone in the park to play for a couple hours while I took care of it.
That nite, we went to Damon and Jacy's house, and had dinner at in-n-out burger, a place I had been wanting to eat for a long time.
The next day, we went with Damon and Jacy to Huntington Beach and had lunch at Wahoo's, for some fish tacos. They were very good.
The beach was a little cold, and we all got some oil deposits on our feet, so that was not cool.
After the beach got too windy and too cold, we went to Tom and Michelle's house. Their house is beyond huge, beyond nice. It was incredible.
The next day, Tom's family and our family went to San Diego to go to SeaWorld.
I actually liked SeaWorld better than Disneyland. Less crowded, cheaper, not as much merchandise shoved in your face, and more places for me to sit down. My feet liked it a lot better.
We went back to Tom's after that and ordered some sushi. It was extremely good. I still am not "proficient" enough a sushi eater to truely appreciate the quality of the fish I had, but the taste of how some of the pieces were made was enough for me to tell that it was easily the best I've had.
The travel back was predictably long and horrendous. Everything at least went as planned, minus a short moment of panic when I couldn't find the van keys.
March 17, 2006
the plan
Well, we're off. I have the van loaded, and I'm just waiting for the kids to finish eating breakfast, then we're on the road.
This will be a long day of travel, as it's not a direct flight. I managed to screw up that deal. We don't get there until 5pm, so no disney until tomorrow.
Probably no updates til we're back, and then with tons o' photos.
Til' then, faithful readers!
March 15, 2006
street sweeper
T minus 2 days, and everything is in a panic.
I have a big project to turn in for class before I leave.
HUGE project deadline for work. The deadline is actually while I'm gone, but everyone knows that really means it needs to be done before I go. I kindof think it's done, but I highy doubt it.
Misty's "monthy" tournament is tomorrow nite, so I don't want to miss that.
Tonite I wouldn't mind playing some cards, but I need to weigh that against homework, work, and oh yes, packing for this trip.
This weekend and early this week, Ally has been acting sick, complaining of everything from stomach hurts to ears hurt. That's some great timing, Ally. Get sick just before we leave, then everyone else will have it while we're there.
At least for now, she seems better and no one else has shown any symptoms, so hopefully that will stay true.
March 14, 2006
crash
Ann and I watched crash sunday nite. Very good movie. Ann didn't like the ending because everything wasn't wrapped up nice and neat with a bow on it. I liked it very much.
Good acting, good script. Although they really hammer the theme of the movie over your head. I think the neighbor kid with down syndrome would have gotten that it was about the racial tensions in LA.
Even so, I liked it a lot.
Well, all but one part.
I have watched a lot of movies, and it's always been quite easy for me to seperate the movie from reality, and never really get drawn in too much. This was true for me in all the scenes except the one where the locksmith was about to get shot. I just about couldn't watch. It was the most uncomfortable scene I've ever seen. Even more than the big scene in The Crying Game, and the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs.
But a good movie otherwise.
March 12, 2006
denied
Had an uneventful weekend for once.
Played no poker, and didn't have tons of homework to do. Not none, mind you, but not so much that it was all-encompassing. Friday nite I did mostly nothing, tried to build my 2nd mythbox for the millionth time, still without a real hard drive, so that's a fairly wasteful exercise.
Saturday with no poker to play, Jeff came over and we thought we had finished the poker table hoist.
I'm not sure why Jeff ended up doing all the hard work. But we got it all up and I got it wired up such that the 1 way pulling winch I bought would go both ways, and work exactly as expected.
Up until today, that is.
I finished one of the two remaining items from last nite.
1) no safety catch mechanism.
2) the platform is not straight, it needs more support on the bottom so the tables will not warp from sitting on it.
Got the safety mechinism working, but it was a huge jerry-rigged deal.
While working it, though, one of the ropes broke, so now that implementation is done.
I will have to rebuild it with cable.
March 10, 2006
oz factor
So here's a sad story for you. Or perhaps for me, whenever I think I'm working too much.
My brother and his friend, Tom, bought tickets to Vegas in Decemeber on the new allegiant airlines flying out of Lincoln for $99. Signed up for the weekend of 3/11, you know, right now.
I of course forgot this, and called him for something completely unrelated tonite, and heard a lot of background noise, so I said "where are you?"
"I'm in Westport, Kansas City"
"What are you doing there?"
"Shopping with Shannon"
"Neat"
"Yeah, I supposed to be in Vegas"
"What happened to that?"
"Tom was supposed to go with me. Remember how I told you how he was working 90 hours a week for the last several months?"
"yeah...."
"Well, he put in for the vacation for this trip back when we bought the tickets. So last weekend, he said "I'll be gone next thursday and friday, you know, for the vacation I put in for 3 months ago"
And the response was apparently, "Yeah, you're not going to be able to go"
"But I already had the vacation approved"
"Yeah, you're not going to be able to go"
"I already had it approved, I'm going"
To which the response was "if you go, you won't have a job when you get back"
Neat.
I have a big customer demo due right when I'll be gone to disneyland, effectively the same situation. Nobody's telling me I can't go.
So Tom had to pay my brother back for the plane ticket, and couldn't go. So Joe had to burn up his ticket too.
The plan was for their wives to go shopping together in Kansas City while the boys were in Vegas. Instead, Tom's wife stayed, and Joe took her place. He had to go shopping instead of going to Vegas, the ultimate screw job.
Even I'm not that unlucky.
mr grieves
wow. I took a monster of a test last nite for my class. It turned out to not be quite as bad as I thought it could be, but it was still pretty bad. And I studied like crazy for it, so when I was done, it was a huge relief.
School is great!
After that, I went straight to Misty's to play poker and get drunk. Solves all my problems. It was pretty fun, as I didn't lose any money.
You know something funny about this class? It's a class on digital communications, so much of it has to do with probabilities of errors during transmission and receiving. When I first started taking those classes, I hated all the probability calculation crap. Very tedious, and uninteresting. Then I started playing poker fanatically, and it turns out, to know what your chances of winning in certain situations are (ie, being able to come up with those nice little percentages you always see on the poker tv shows) you have to do some whopping probability calculations. So, to better understand how to make good decisions in poker (read: not lose so much money) I needed to be able to figure out my probability of winning in many different situations, so I had to refamiliarize myself with probabilty theory. Now I'm fairly comfortable with it, and it's making my life in this class much easier.
I would be struggling in this class if I hadn't gotten better at probabilty theory.
So the lesson is, poker helps you in all avenues of life!
March 9, 2006
I'm the least you could do
I don't typically spout off too much on politics, mostly because although I have plenty of opinions, I generally don't like to debate politics much. Usually because in the end it gets down to an "well, if I was in charge" type of comment, and we all know that's not going to happen.
But I will say this. I have no real love or hatred for Bush. I thought he picked cabinet members that I liked, but in general, the thrust of this presidentcy has been too single-issued. I think most americans are tired of the "push forward blindly" towards whatever our goal is, which I also think is less and less clear.
I think this presidenty has screwed the next republican candidate. I'm predicting right here and now that the democratic nominee will win, barring him colossally screwing up, like Nixon.
Notice I said him. I would be surprised if any of the women who are suspected of running actually get the nomination. There's a lot of people around still who don't take kindly to that kind of thinking.
seein' red
Candy bars today are a joke. I will now sound like the sterotypical old man in the movies, but this has always been a source of irritation for me. While the portions of every other food item being sold to the public are doubling, candy bars sizes continue to shrink, and the prices continue to rise.
Fun size!??! Whoever though of that should stand trial for treason.
The latest trick I've noticed is the "packaging misdirection", where the box says clearly it's a 1oz candy bar, but no one reads that. You're looking at the item on the shelf, and it's just as long as you remember a candy should be. Yet when you open it, you're lucky if the actual candy bar is 70% the size of the wrapper.
The people doing this are all going to a special level of hell, I'm sure of it.
March 7, 2006
starla
Jeff and I may have finally figured out the final design for the poker table hoist. Every idea we've had thus far has been unimplementable. Finally, on itea #6, I think it will work. I have a winch that I completely took apart to use it in my own manner, but now I'm going to use it exactly as intended, so I now have the fun job of putting it all back together.
Then we discussed how the bathroom was coming along, and I realized that I cannot go any further until I get a shower and shower head fixture, and have a plumber come over and setup all the drains in the floor. So that just ground to a halt. I have a crazy busy week this week and next, and then I'm gone to CA the following week. Bathroom has no chance of being done until april/may now.
March 6, 2006
sleeping bag
Dave and I were discussing band names, and I mentioned the following to him
If you like those names, here are several others I have tried recently and didn't like:
Death cab for cutie
The get up kids
Dashboard confessions
Atom and his package
Bright eyesMineral
Cursive
At the drive-in
Weird names of bands I like:
Build to spill
Sunny day real estate
Alkaline trio
These you've probably heard of, but seriously, what the hell?
Ween
G. love and special sauce
Foo fighters
Nerf herder (actually I know this one. Came from star wars)
It's like a "who can weirder" contest when it comes to naming your band....
clint eastwood
I have written of now several times, but it continues to frustrate me.
My current desired bike is this one.
But I am also open to the Vstrom, due solely to price.
I have been obsessed with watching the papers, up to 7 different fourms dedicated to these styles/models of bikes, but I cannot find anything close by. I'm just too gutless to fly out somewhere with the intention to ride it back, not being able to test ride the bike first. I just can't get past potentially spending too much on the bike, possibly burning up a plane ticket, etc.
There's a lady who works in this building who has ~4 bmw motorcycles herself, and her husband apparently has several himself. I finally asked her where she thought I could get one, and she mentioned several places I hadn't checked, and offered to check with her "group" as well. So hopefully that will be more productive, as anyone she finds should at least be in this region, and I could drive out to it first.
head on
Had a productive weekend.
Friday nite, Shelton and I went out and bought all the pex tubing for the bathroom water lines. This stuff is great! It's infinately easier to install, and even a little cheaper!
Then I stayed up til 2am doing some homework.
Saturday, I woke up and worked on a project for class until 4pm. Then I ran the water lines in the bathroom in 2hrs! If I had to do it in copper, I would be ~30% done after 2 full days. Now I just need to get a shower fixture, and hook it up to the main water lines.
Then we had a small hold'em tournament. I was 2nd out, so I don't want to talk about that anymore.
Sunday, went to church, then went and signed the girls up for track. They're dying to do track now, so that ought to be fun to watch. Sunday was really nice weather, so I worked all day in the garage trying to get a winch I bought to pull up poker table hoist. No luck. I don't have enough room, but I'm convinced I can still use the winch to get the job done, just beed to come up with another implementation.
The kids and I all played baseball in the front yard for a while too, it was so nice. Grilled some steaks for dinner, which was a first for the year.
Not a bad weekend in all, although I still have to finish up this project, and I need to figure out a working design for this winch....
March 2, 2006
happiness
I just found out my friend Jeff got a job with the Lincoln Fire Department, which is extremely cool. I'm sure it had been quite frustrating for him, because he had been at the top of the list to get into the Beatrice (a nearby smaller town) firehouse, but someone had to retire or die or similar. So he wait for a year, and no one leaves. Then the testing starts over. So if you were at the top of the list last year, doesn't matter for squat this year. Gotta take all the tests again, and just keep waiting.
In the meantime, he's working a job he clearly has no love for, so it's just a constant state of happiness.
Then Lincoln decided to hire a few more, and he interviewed for that too, and got it straight away. Which is even better than Beatrice, since he already lives here.
So it was cool to see someone get a job they very much wanted, and clearly deserved.
sad astronaut
For the first time in something like 2 years, my current favorite song is not from one of the following bands:
Unwritten Law
Foo Fighters
Lagwagon
The Offspring
My current favorite song is "soul meets body" by death cab for cutie. So I got a couple more of their albums, and huge disappointment. Most of it is crap. They are loosely catrgorized in the body of music said to be "emo". I had to go to wikipedia to find out what in the world an emo type of music even was. It turns out, no one else knows either.
I'm going to disneyland!
We've had a mystery package from fedex for the last couple of days. They always seem to show up to deliver it when no one's home, so we get these stickers saying "we tried to deliver you a package", but we had no idea what it was.
I went and picked it up, and it was all the disney travel tickets, so it's all going to happen now. Should be pretty cool, and kids are all excited. Heck, me too. I've never been there. Plus I'm going to visit some friends out there too. Get to see Damon's new kid, and get to see Tom's mansion.
I've been looking feverishly for a new motorcycle. Ann says I'm obsessed. I guess I am. I told myself I was going to stick with this smaller bike I got last year for at least a year to get experience. It's still a good bike for around town, but anytime I went out of town on a real highway or interstate, it lacked. So now I "served my time" with it, and I do want a bigger one for this year. Only now are people starting to sell stuff. My problem is that nearly all of them are not here. Convieniant. This means it's quite possible I will have to fly somewhere and ride it back. I don't like this idea, as what if you show up and it turns out you don't want to make the deal for one reason or another?
Don't know. Still giving high preference to anything within a couple of hours of here.
March 1, 2006
still
Ann had her lasik surgery yesterday, while I was in Chicago. (-20 points for Aaron)
All seems to have gone well, although she reported when got home that "I would not be proud of her". She is notoriously bad when it comes to needles, or doctors doing anything to her that will cause some expected pain/pressure. She apparently "freaked out" 3-4 times, but did make it through the surgery, and says she can see the difference even now, although it should only get better as everything heals up.
So hopefully that will be worth all the pain the suffering she put herself through. I'm only apprehensive that I was benefiting from her lack of sight. Now she can see what I really look like, and I could be in trouble!
Trip to Chicago went good, at least I got back on schedule. Now things are expectedly hectic everywhere. I have a million things on my plate, but I'm doing none of them becuase I'm now off to class. Yeah, I'm spread a little thin.