Turbo Tax is published by idiots.

Today Mary and I went over to her old boss's house four our yearly install of his tax software. He tried to do it himself, but is quite computer .. well... friggin-hopless. He tried to install Turbo Tax, but it would not run. I had him list off all the things on the CD and none of them were images, or programs except for one .exe file. So we went over there and sure enough, even though it said win/mac, it was not mac compatible. We looked on the website and sure enough that was the case. They had mailed this thing to him and he was supposed to install it and then pay for it. They e-mailed him to confirm he got it. So WHY didn't they mail him to say, "sorry, we are stupid throw out that disk, and don't call your ex-employee and her husband on their day off"
So we go to download the damn thing. But you have to have Firefox. Not IE. Not Safari. I can see not supporting IE because it is from Microsoft and therefore sucks ass. But if you are going to pick one browser to support on the Mac, why not use the ONE THAT SHIPS WITH EVERY DAMN MAC?
Morons. So we d/l that and then d/l the correct software version for his computer.
Sheez.

Saturday

Well Iowa lost a bowl game. In other news, the sun came up today. At least they did not get their asses handed to them like they normally do. I think they need to pay the coach more. Yea, that is it.

Thought this short clip was really funny

stuff

Well we made it through Christmas. We were going to get the kids a Nintendo Wii, but that was not to be. I stood in line at 5:00 at Target trying to get one, but came up short. I was #21, and there were 15. I felt bad for the father and son that were #16. They had been there since midnight. We got the kids some alarm clocks that dock up their iPods. Alex got a digital camera and Tim got a slot car set and his letterman jacket. We had a nice time and later went up to Mary's dad's house and had dinner there. I got Mary a under the counter TV for the kitchen. I wanted to have one of those at the other house, but did not want to try to run the coax to the kitchen. This one has an icemaker in the 'fridge, so I figured I could follow the water line up from the basement and that worked out well. Mary got me a park flyer type R/C airplane. It is pretty cool. I went out today and flew it a little bit. I have not flown anything for about 10 years, so that was a trip. It can go pretty slowly, and there was a little wind, so when I brought it in at 1/2 throttle it was pretty much in a hover. Makes for a soft landing. I did come in hard one time when I first started out. I hit the ground and it popped the canopy off. I did not realize it until later but the front gear came out. I could have just put it back, but when I realized it was gone I was frozen and not feeling too good, so I just came home. Pretty fun plane though.
I went to West Liberty yesterday to see Ranger Rick and (not my) Cousin Steve. Rick has the Daytona up on stands and is doing a lot of work on her. That was really great to see her in the shop and being worked on. We went over to (not my) Cousin Steve's and saw his '71 Dodge Dart that he had just gotten. It is 35 years old and has 7,100 miles on it. That is like 200 miles a year. I have never seen anything like that. There is a paper tag by the manifold that is still tied on and the original tires have a ton of tread left on them . I had never seen (not my) Cousin Steve's other cars, but they are all pretty damn sweet. He has 2 Austin's and they are just friggin' cool. He brought one of them back in the back of his pickup, so that gives you an idear of the size of these things. The picture here is not of his roadster, but just one I found on google.

I have been sicker then a dog the last day or so. I started to feel pretty bad in West Liberty and had to cut it short. I got home and just crashed. I am doing a little better today. I probably should not have gone out to fly, but that was only for about 15 min. I was not sure how long the weather would be nice enough to fly, so I thought I better go try it out while I could.

my new hero

This guy is cool.

**** in a box

Earlier I posted about a MS Word glitch type thing. I got it wrong. Sorry, Stove and Matt.
Type in =rand(200,99)

If you have not seen Justin Timberlake's video on SNL yet, then it is time you do so. I don't like him, but I really thought this was funny of him to do this.

the future of computing

Aaaaah. The Commadore 64

another great Mustang ad.

-Big Tim sent me this Ford Ad. Gotta hand it to those guys, they are doing a great job making people want a new 'stang. Not that it is really hard to do that.


-Too bad the dumb asses at Microsoft can't hire them to try to make somebody want a zune. Instead they have ads like this one. And why does everything in their ads look like a penis? This time it is a penis with wings instead of a penis with a new eyeball.


-Strange: Type this into a new word .doc.
rand(200,19)
Then hit return. Saw that on youtube.

-Here is an example of just about everything you can do WRONG with a table saw.

Zune still sucks

In an attempt to boost the slow sales of the turd colored ipod wanna be player known as a Zune, Microsoft produced 100 gay-ass pink ones. But now they are also selling some random Zunes with GAY PORN pre loaded!
Actually I am sure it has to do with Walmart taking stuff back, but my version is more fun.

See if I can post this before Steve does..

OMG. We all need at least one of these!

-and I guess it was just a matter of time before somebody made a USB powered electric shaver.

PS3 vs Wii

-Mary sent me this link to the Onion's comparison of the PS3 and the Wii.

-Here is an interesting article on how to photograph christmas lights with an average camera.

-The iPhone was finally released. But not by Apple.

USB guitar

-this USB guitar plugs right into your computer. Don't know how good the guitar is, but at $200 it might be a cool thing to have if you don't wan't to just get a USB cord to plug into your guitar.

the perfect holiday gift..

-How about a $25K collection of video games. Start your own museum.

sorry for the Dealy

-Just in case you have not seen the Tom Delay blog by now, here is a link to it. Well.. actually it is a repost of his blog. He thought that like everyone else, he needed a blog. He was too self absorbed to realize everyone hates him and since he left it open for people to leave comments, they did. He pulled it down after about an hour, but somebody had captured it and they have reposted it for the world to enjoy.

-So if you get busted for making crack, make sure you sue Arm and Hammer for 425 million dollars for not posting a disclaimer telling you that making illegal drugs can send you to jail.

-This salad dressing has a bit of a whang to it.

-This is a pretty long recording but I thought it was worth it. A guy gets quoted a price from Verizon and is charged 100 times more because they don't understand the difference between .002 cents and .002 dollars per K.

-Somebody bought a Wii sales reciept for $451 on eBay. I guess in the end he did not have to pay it though.

-Tut will like these retro iPod docks.

Glad I don't have to clean this one up.

iSpy

I usually don't get into spy photos of new cars, but Jalopnik posted one of a new Dakota and I had to check it out. I really don't like what they did to the Durango and Dakota. If somebody offered to trade me a new one for my 2000, I would seriously not take it. So I had to check the photos out. Naturally, it is hard to tell if they fixed it from the photos. But at least it is good to know they are not leaving it the way it is.

still yet another reason why microsoft sucks.

Microsoft has a problem. Vista, its long-awaited update to the Windows operating system, can't run the current version of SQL Server ....
....So companies looking to install Vista, which went on sale to corporate customers Nov. 30, are going to have to get their database management software someplace else.

so to recap... The music MS told you to buy won't play on the turd colored .mp3 player they told you to buy and the turd colored .mp3 player won't play on the OS they told you to buy and the OS they told you to buy won't run on most computers people have and if they do get new computers that can run the OS, it won't work with their database management software.
GREAT PLAN! WTF? They were supposed to release this OS like five years ago, and they still don't have a clue what they are doing.

oh HELL NO!

-There is a rumor running around the interweb that Ford is working on a mustang wagon. WTF are they thinking?

-Here is a great Mediacom story. A friend of mine at work has his phone through Mediacom cable. His phone stopped working, so he called it in. His wife went home to wait for them. They did not show. So my friend called them from work. It turns out that the technician was on the way over to fix the phone and he CALLED them to confirm the appointment and .. get this.. they did not answer. So he did not go. My friend called Mediacom and yelled at them and they came over the next day. When it was hooked up again they got their voice mail and the guy left them a message and, I swear to god, he said that he was on the way over to fix the phone, but since they did not answer the phone, he assumed they are not there.
Where do they find these guys?

-Will It Blend finally got around to an iPod.

stuff II

I bet Microsoft was behind this too!

This is old, but I stumbled across it again today. I feel bad for posting it. But yet I did.

stuff

Vista boss Jim Allchin said he would buy a Mac if he wasn't working at Microsoft. 'nuff said.

Tut's blog had this gem: Seems MS is not even creative to steal the design of Apple icons. They now just copy and paste them.

Microsoft ROCKS and so do these guys!

roller coaster tycoon

This is what happens when a sick sumbitch plays a game like roller coaster tycoon.

capstan tables

These are really a great design for a table. Make sure to watch the videos.

Here is how to control your Roomba (robot vacuum) by tilting your macbook. Thank god they finally figured that out! Kind of funny though.

OOPS. The Honda robot falls down the stairs.

LEC? The light-emitting capacitors (LECs) are essentially 1-mm-thick sheets of plastic. Inside is a layer of phosphor that when hit with an alternating current, shines bright white
HERE is a video of them wrapped around some drums.

And finally.... I thought this was really well done.



The Hole - video powered by Metacafe

gawd

Boy holds up convenience store for $1 candy
11:15 PM CST on Friday, December 8, 2006

By JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News
A boy believed to be about 12 held up a Pleasant Grove convenience store at gunpoint before school Wednesday after a girl he was with got mad at the clerk for charging her tax for candy.
At 7:40 a.m., six youths entered the Heba Mini-Mart in the 9500 block of Scyene Road near St. Augustine Drive.
A girl, whose age was not reported, tried to buy $1 worth of candy but did not "want to pay the tax on the item," according to a police report.
The clerk insisted that she would be charged the tax. "What is your problem?" asked the boy, pulling a chrome, semiautomatic pistol on the clerk.
As the boy and girl left the store, one of them took the dollar's worth of candy. The other four kids followed them out.

another dumb as hell zune commercial

Who comes up with this crap?

-Former Iowa Congressman makes the news. What a dumbass.
EDIT: He may not be from Iowa. Somebody commented that he is from New York.

- if 2 10" JL Audio's are good then 42 of them must be just swell! Phucktard.

iPhone

How funny. This guy wrote a column about how Apples' new iPhone will be a flop. That is funny since it has not been released yet. Hell Apple still denies that they will be making it.

vista

Sounds like if/when the long awaited Vista finally does ship, it will have many of the same features and look that OSX has had for quite a while. More innovation from the visionaries at Microsoft. Too bad it is such a hog that most businesses won't be able to run the POS.

About half of the average business PCs in North America are unable to meet the minimum requirements for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, while 94 percent do not meet the system requirements for Vista Premium. -eWEEK

I don't know if the turd colored iPod wanna-be (zune) will run on the crappy OSX wanna-be (vista) by release or not, but last I heard it would not. I do know the zune won't play the songs you bought from the iTunes wanna-be places that Microsoft told its people to buy from.

So those loyal to Microsoft have songs that won't play on their ugly ass players. Ugly ass players that won't talk to their OS. An OS won't run on thier computers.
Great plan.

I'm back.

I got back from Oklahoma today. Went to see mom and dad. Had a really nice time and it was great to see them. I have never taken that long of a trip by myself. The funny thing was that I made it through OK city, Kansas City, and Des Moines navigating and driving without a hitch, but when I got to Iowa City I missed the turn. *DOH*
I drove 700 miles in 10 hours. Now I must sleep.
But first.... "big" Tim sent me this today. I thought the disclaimers at the end were great.

great quote..

I like this guy.
"Let's face it, we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn." - Bill Watkins, CEO Seagate

And HERE is the "billion dollar patent".

Iowa made it on Fark.com

Fark.com reported today that Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack is running for president. They gave it a "dumbass" tag. *smirk*

Here are the transcripts from the meeting in which Microsoft decided how to design the Zune.

Zune sucks.

Zune sucks. Oh, wait that is not news. Everybody is saying it. But here is a very long article outlining what went wrong in making the Zune. The article had to be long to cover it all.
I guess it is no big shock that their ads suck too. WTF is THIS all about? And why does that little penis with legs get an eyeball? Or is that an iBall? I must be missing something. Speaking of ads that suck, check out the girl in this one.
Seems like one of the biggest of many problems with this turd colored iPod wanna-be is that even Microsoft knows it sucks. "Microsoft is going to put tons of money in this over time, much like they did with the Xbox" video game console, she said. "It's not about the first generation (of devices)." So they plan to make a better one in the future. But if the maker says it sucks, why would you buy it? The only slightly cool thing about this thing is that you can (kind of) share music with other Zunes. But if you have the only one around...... After you get done with that you could go out in the yard and play catch with yourself.

KGAN can kiss my ass.

HERE is an open letter from Mike Sullivan, Station Manager at KGAN. It is a lame ass propaganda page telling us why we are going to lose their station on Mediacom cable. Now I have had issues with Mediacom in the past, but of the two I gotta side with Mediacom on this one. Even if KGAN is right in their demands, this page is crap. Instead of facts, it is full of "we believe" and "we can't discuss" statements.

we believe that in certain cases compensation is being paid but is just being disguised in some manner.........
we believe that Mediacom, like all cable companies, routinely pays the owners of the vast majority of the channels it carries for that right........
We believe such fees range as high as $2.00 per subscriber per month for ESPN........
We believe that even channels with a narrow audience appeal, such as Animal Planet and HGTV generally receive monthly per subscriber fees......

Well I believe this is a bunch of crap.

KGAN will pay me $150 to drop Mediacom and get a dish. WTF? KGAN's little station is so hard up for money that they need a dollar month from mediacom for me to (not) watch their station, but they can give me $150 to switch to a dish and (not) watch it on there? How about they just STFU and let me (not) watch their station on my mediacom cable for the next TWELVE AND A HALF YEARS- the amount of time it would take them to recover the $150. What? You say that KGAN is not really paying me $150 and that it is just a rebate from Direct TV? No. You are wrong. Mike Sullivan said "CBS 2 will pay you $150"

I like how he also gave the phone number for Mediacom's Senior Vice President for the division as well as an easy link to launch off a letter to him. Why didn't they post the phone number of the senior vice president of KGAN so I can call and bug him?

I really hope that Mediacom will find a CBS station, perhaps out of Chicago, that wants to expand their base and increase ad revenue. Those who care can still watch football and CSI and most people just watch KCRG news anyway. I don't even know who those people are on the home page for KGAN news so I think I can live without them.

Saturday stuff

Note to Microsoft: This is an example of why you will never be as friggin cool as apple.



Note to Tut: YOU ARE FIRED!
Blink 182

Friday stuff

Ooooh, thank you, Chrysler Great commercial

I mentioned to (not my) cousin Steve and Ranger Rick the other day that they are going to race Avengers next year in the cup series. Steve (who has an Avenger) pointed out that they don't make it anymore. I thought, "oh yea good point"
Looks like the will be making it in January. JALOPNIK
Now THAT is a big ole fish.

I read this today...
Iowa decided to forgo hiring a head coach in 1895 to save money. The plan backfired, as the Hawkeyes limped to a 2-5 record. Iowa football would never again go without a head coach
I thought that was funny since this year we doubled the salary of thier head coach to 2.84 MILLION DOLLARS A FRIGGIN YEAR (plus other perks) and their conference record was 2-6. And if they had actually won a few games he would have made much more. I think he wound up making 3.6 MILLION.
And while this is going on they make it so folks that I know can't afford tickets anymore. They have to make a donation ( a.k.a. extortion) in order to buy the tickets that they have had for many years or even decades. These folks bought tickets and filled the seats even when they sucked ass. But now that we have dumped 80 kazillion dollars into rebuilding the stadium (which really does look nice) instead of moving it away from the hospital so that people don't have to die trying to get to the hospital in an ambulance during game traffic. We double the salary of the coach. Guess what? They still suck. Money well spent.
But the good news is that they will still probably go to a bowl game. Not because they are good, but because of fan support. Fan support means lots of Iowan's love football and lots of them will jump on a plane to go somewhere warm in the middle of an Iowa winter to watch their team get their butts handed to them. They will fill the stands and dump lots of cash in the city. The team will make lots of money for being on TV but they will spend almost all of it sending everyone on the planet, their kids, and babysitters for their kids to the game.

WELCOME HOME, AARON

My brother Aaron is home in TX. Back from his second tour of Iraq. Have not talked to him yet (CALL ME, BRO) but I am sure he is glad to be home and I know the rest of us are glad he is back safe.

On to stupid stuff.... PS3 on sale today. I checked eBay to see how much people are shelling out so they don't have to wait a week or two until Sony "finds" a bunch of them they did not know they had and accidentally created a mob frenzy and media hype of such stupid scale that people are getting robbed in line and shot. I came across this. Some jerk is selling an email address that he created FREE on yahoo. It is so that you will have a "trusted" email address. WTF? I guess whomever bids on this ($280 so far) deserved to take it in the shorts. Oh, wait. Here is the same BS with a gmail account. Some fool payed $280 for a gmail account. A fool and his money....

Here is a guy with money that is not a fool. Check out his garage.


And finally this: "Herro I'm a Mac" commercial.

easy steps for installing Zune software

Here is what you need to do to get your POS zune to work. Or whatever it does.

This is old, but really good. How M$ would package the iPod. Very well done.

zune zune

Well M$ finally released the zune. In keeping with the M$ tradition, they went out and copied somebody elses idea and did a poor job making an ugly product. Usually the either buy out a company that creates something cool, or drive them out of business. They can't do that with Apple because they need Apple around so they can get a vision of what they should try to make software look like a few years later. So you get the Zune. The best part is that if you are a M$ loyalist and have been buying songs from sites supporting M$ crap, you get to start all over again because they won't play on this thing. Good luck with that. I think they one reporter nailed it in the very end of the video. "why don't they (M$) hire some decent design people to make things look better?"

still moving.. even more

We are still trying to get the last of the stuff out of the old house. There is an open house tomorrow.
Ranger Rick came by yesterday and took away the Daytona. That was really sad, but mostly a very happy thing. We had finally given in to the idea that I we needed to let her go. I was ready to call the junk yard a while back and it just broke my heart. Ranger Rick and his cousin Steve came over the other day and loaded it onto a trailer and took her away. Rick is going to fix her up and Steve will paint it later on.
The Daytona was kind of special to us because it was the only new car we have ever bought. We got it when we did not have a lot of money, but damnit it was cool and we wanted it. But then we had twins and about the same time the band broke up. (for a while) At that time, we really could not afford it, but we loved it and if we sold it we would not come out ahead. When the kids were tiny, we had to load the car seats backwards, but I could not drive with the seat up far enough for that so Mary had to sit in the back for a year or two. So through all of that, we kept her. When Tim was about 2 he loved that car. "Daddy go by-by in 1989 blue dodge daytona es turbo" he would say.
So it has been a part of our family for a long time and I am so glad to see that it will be saved.
Mary had a job interview today. Kind of weird situation. 2 of the Lawyers she works for are leaving. They have both gotten her interviews at other firms. The one today was with the lawfirm that one of them is taking a partnership in. So she left her job to go to an interview, and when she got there her boss was there to interview her. Needless to say it went well :-)
I have been off since Tuesday moving stuff out of the shop to the house. It was SO nice. About 70 most of the time. Yesterday 70 degrees. Today rain, sleet, and snow.
Go figger.

wow. I thought Carousel Motors SUCKED

You gotta read this. I thought carousel motors in iowa city SUCKED ASS. These guys are even worse then Carousel Motors in Iowa City, Iowa. Can you tell that I think Carousel Motors in Iowa City is run by crooks?

This is just brilliant. A great remix of Office Space trailer.

see through concrete and other stuff

Wow. Who woulda thunkit? (CLICK)

Hey, woodworker/geeks check out this gadget. There is a demo video. Very cool. Oddly enough Sears sells a version of it.

OMG THIS is great. A bunch of photos a home inspector took of DIY stupidity. Makes me feel better about myself.

stuff

Pretty cool Marshall radio. And yes, it goes to 11.

And here are some retro tv's that Steve will probably want. Check out the cursor on the site, nice touch.

And if you have not seen the giggly baby video by now you should really check it out. Very cute.

This video is not so cute. A new Eleanor Mustang (beauty) being driven through a wall.

Still moving.

Well here it is Wed. and we are still moving. The weekend was crazy. Tim's friend Jerry came over with a truck and helped a ton. We loaded the 2 trucks and ran them back and forth. Got a lot done that way. Sunday Ranger Rick brought over his cousin Steve's trailer and big ass 2 wheel dolly. Tim had a couple of friends come over and help move the bowling ally out of the shop. Even with all of those guys it was really not very much fun. Rick and I got the Unisaw into the basement. That was not as bad as I thought it might be. Don't know how we would have done it without the B.A Dolly though. Then Dwight and the crew came over with his truck and we loaded up trucks some more and ran them home.
I always tell people that you find out who your friends are when you move. I found out I have some good friends that bailed my butt out of a mess. It has still been a nonstop adventure and we have a ways to go, but I can't imagine how we would have gotten to this point without them. THANKS!
I had the day off and spent it loading stuff out of the shop. Got quite a bit done way more to go.
Can anybody get anything right around here? Mary called last week and told the mail, cable, and phone to change over on Friday. The very next day I went to get the mail and there is a slip in our box saying that we had moved. WTF? So I go to the new house. Same slip. Cripes. The phone is STILL not changed over. The cable guys said they could not do it Friday but could be over on Tuesday. Great. No TV or internet for four day, but what can you do? So Tuesday comes, but naturally it is one of the few days a year I have to work late. So Mary takes time off work to be there. Nobody shows. I call and they say the guy came and could not find the house. He called the primary and nobody answered since the phone company sucks too. So he went home. Today I went in and told them they needed to fix this TODAY and she said they could come over Friday. We went back and forth and I pointed out that if he had called the other number instead of just giving up he would have gotten me on the cel. She did not budge so I said I wanted to see her supervisor. She said I could not but she would call him and then I saw her write "rick" on her page. I asked Rick's last name and she said she could not tell me. I asked if it was Karnes, and she said yes. SCORE! Rick was a good friend of mine about 20 years ago at the hospital. I told her to have him call me. He called me back about five min. later and 2 hours later we had cable. The guy that came over could not find the house either. But get this... he got out a FRIGGIN MAP AND LOOKED. Crazy, ain't it?
So that is where we are now.
But Here is a pretty amusing clip about the 68 R/T charger.

Saturday

moving today! *woot*
thought this picture was kind of funny.

Busy Friday.

Today I got to work at 5:30 a.m. Worked 1/2 day and left at 10:00. Picked up Mary. Bought a washer and dryer. Went to the bank. Bought a house. Started a new checking account with that bank. Strangly it takes less time to buy a house there then it does to set up a stupid checking account. Went to Menard's and bought paint. Ran over to the new house and taped off Tim's room a bit. Then we ran over to the school and watched Tim's last football game of the year. Went to the new house and painted Tim's room. Now it is 11:00 p.m. and I am one tired dog. Tomorrow we move stuff. The paint in Tim's room was a really glossy brown. It is a biotch to paint. I am going to have to put on a second coat tomorrow. *ack*

Here is a video that I hope everyone in the county sees.

stuff

Well we close on the house tomorrow. I can't take any time off of work so it is going to be kind of crazy getting moved but we will get there. Ranger Rick is coming over Sunday and I think Tom is going to be over also. I would really like to have three guys to move the bowling ally bench top that is in my workshop. Dwight and I moved it out there. He was okay with it, but it just about killed me.
There is a couple that is interested in our house and requested a second showing. *woot*. They want to make the shop a bedroom. Here is what I think about that: #1. That is a total waste of a shop. #2. I don't give a crap as long as they buy the house.

Here is a silly toy that I think is really funny. A a retro bluetooth headset for your phone.
Here is a very simple but very hard (for me at least) game. I got to 25.something seconds and had to quit.

happy birthday, iPod.

Yup. The iPod turned five today. Hard to believe that only five years ago they introduced the little gem. Now five years and 70,000,000 units later they are a part of our culture.
I got a chuckle from a friend of mine. He is a PC user and we were talking about computers. He was asking me how to get rid of spyware or whatever that stuff is. I told him I don't know because we have three mac's and have never had a virus or anything like that. He said he did not like Apple computers, but he loves iTunes. Ok. So the only Apple software you can run on your virus infested PC is iTunes and you love it... but you don't like Apple? I kind of chuckled.

Break.com had this video of a drag racer's tires @1000fps. Pretty amazing. Also Darwin missed this guy by a few feet. Finally an instructional video on how NOT to tear down a building.

Steve needs one of these:

our leader

Here is a funny clip that somebody made. It is a bogus "state of the .. state of the .. state of the ... my speech to the nation.. whatever you want to call it" that they hacked together making our leader look really stupid and evil. The second one is just as funny but took less work. It is GW making himself look stupid. "families is where our nation finds hope. Where wings take dreams" or "for a century and a half now America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times." I guess he never rented Pearl Harbor when it was out on DVD.

Weekend... again.

If you have not seen some of the electric R/C stuff out there then check out a clip. It is amazing how they have progressed since I last looked. He actually has the power to hover that big plane. Nice stuff.
Or you could watch them launch a Cutlass out the 18th story of a parking ramp into the Chicago River.
This clip... well this is the most I have ever laughed at a clip on the web. It is definately NSFW, nor is it in good taste. I think what made me laugh the most was the camera man laughing so damn hard.
Steve's blog had this link to a 1/4(ish) scale blown hemi.

day off today :-)

got the day off so I am just kind of hanging out. Here is some stuff for you to look at:

shopping cARTs. Cool art made out of shopping carts.

I need this sign for our yard. >>>
I hate soccer.

Weekend

Redline from Ambrosia is a pretty decent driving game for your Mac. Here is the demo / download page



Sunday Sunday Sunday! we went to the Iowa Speedway to see the ARCA race. "Ranger" Rick and his cousin Steve met us there. It was raining and cold when we got up but the rain stopped and it was just cold and a bit windy after that. The new track is really nice. People were driving in lots of different lines and they all had great things to say about it.
Rusty Wallace helped design the track and is part owner. His son Stephen drove his car in the race today and won the race in dad's car at dad's track. Sweet. Here is a panarama I slapped together of our seats.

FRIDAY!

*woot*
Here is the perfect gift for the finger drummer in your family. Kinda fun I guess.
But if you need one of these french fry holders for your car then probably eat too DAMN MANY FRIES.

Tech Blog had this video of ferrofluid. It is beautiful and fun to watch but I really don't understand it. Much like Jessica Simpson.




Did you know that some people will pay $13 a can to freeze dog poop. Make sure to read the reviews at the bottom.

Well. It is nice to see that Americans are not the only ones to over-compensate in fighting discrimination. Brit's can do it just as well.

fair:

Here is what would be fair. Line up every autistic kid in america and let them throw a baseball at this guy's head. Hell. He isn't using it for anything anyway.

Pick up your very own flying car here

A clip from 1981 with Steve Jobs and others. Kind of fun to watch.

Xogen clip. Kind of drawn out, but interesting. Turn water into fuel. I can see the headlines: New company turns water into unlimited fuel. In other news the U.S. recalls all its troups around the world and tells the world to kiss its ass and go ahead and blow themselves up because we never really gave a shit about them.

MORAN AWARD

Since Muslims around the world have nothing else to worry about, these MORANS decide that they should worry about Apple's 5th ave. store. LINK
EDIT: My profile indicates that the picture you see here is NOT me. Apparently that may or may not be true. I am reading now that the above story is either a hoax, or more likely a manufactured story to generate hatred toward muslims. I read the following on one blog:
The reason for Memri's air of secrecy becomes clearer when we look at the people behind it. The co-founder and president ofMemri, and the registered owner of its website, is an Israeli called Yigal Carmon.
Mr. -- or rather, Colonel -- Carmon spent 22 years in Israeli military intelligence and later served as counter-terrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin.
Retrieving another now-deleted page from the archives of Memri's website also throws up a list of its staff. Of the six people named, three -- including Col. Carmon -- are described as having worked for Israeli intelligence.
Among the other three, one served in the Israeli army's Northern Command Ordnance Corps, one has an academic background, and the sixth is a former stand-up comedian.

That same blog says .....Aside from the lack of any cites or references (just an anonymous "an Islamic website....." The irony is that the above quote has a link to its source that does not go anywhere. At least not on my browser.
I am through with this story. If you are interested in it, go read some more.

Quisp and stuff

HOLY COW QUISP IS ALIVE!!! HE'S ALIVE I SAY!! Okay, I am dating myself here, but I used to love Quisp. The cereal was great, the toy inside that shot the little hook was cool and besides Quisp could kick Quakes ass any day of the week.

HERE is a chance to pick up Gene Simmon's Axe.

Gravely ill woman kills son, is freed, kills husband I can't even think of what to add to that one.

This guy Gustov is not a bad little guitar player. He has a lot of videos on Goo.. ..er .. um.. You Tube. I liked THIS one because he is playing a mini guitar.

OUCH..... A WOMAN has suffered severe burning to her anus after being struck by lightning which hit her in the mouth and passed right through her body.

how long did this take to set up?

Pretty impressive though. I guess.

new toys and stuff.

These look like a lot of fun. Really amazing how small they are. Fairly cheap too. Well... sort.


Oh, yea. Mary was reading some of the papers we got with the new house. One of them told of all the appliances that are in the house. Including a "free standing Steve".

Here is a website with a bunch of workshop tours. Kind of fun to look at other people's shops. Some are amazing because the are so messy. Some because they are so small. Other's are just amazing. I chatted with Terry Hatfield via e-mail when I was looking for a saw. Very nice guy. He had nothing but good things to say about the Griz' saw, and I was sold on it until I found a new Unisaw for the same money. His work bench is too nice to be in a shop.

letter home from Iraq and other stuff...

Here is a letter home from a Marine in Iraq. Pretty good read.
*****
This is great. Found it on Fark. Battle of the album covers video.
*****
If anyone needs (or just wants) an iPod go to the Apple Store. You can get a new 2gig nano for $99. Or a 30 gig 5.0 ("video") for $179.
*****
HERE are some tube driven speakers for that iPod. I thought audiophiles were too pretentious to use iPods. Whatever..
*****
Are people REALLY THIS FRIGGIN STUPID?
*****
MIT Geeks are cool. Here is a very impressive and kind of silly demo of some new technology.

Iggy's rider.

HERE is what you gotta do if you wanna have Iggy Pop play at your venue. Very witty stuff.

Camels from above.

look at the photo and you see camels, right. What color are they. Black? wrong. Look again. The black camels are the shadows. What a great shot.

matchstick museum

Great news! The matchstick museum is not that far from us!! *woot* Actually there is some really cool stuff. Check out the models, especially the Harry Potter castle at the end.
LINK

Amazing shot of lightning hitting the ground.

grabbing the ball with one hand.

not him, the guy in the background.

bird doing moon-walk

I thought this was pretty funny.

choking on the mic

a drunk guy hits mic and shoves it into singer's mouth. I think that she has the ball lodged in her mouth, like on a sm 58 (is that right?)

stuff

Here is some GREAT video of a camera mounted in an R/C plane. Lots of folks doing that these days, but this guy mounted a gyro from a heli- onto some VR goggles so that the camera in the plane follows his head movement. If you have ever flown R/C planes you know you don't fly them between trees. He does.
If you were going to put some Ivory soap in the microwave later today and see what happens, somebody saved you the trouble. Here is the video.
"googlewhore"? New term. Interesting article. Gives you an idea also of just how friggin' big Google has become.

Open house today. Gotta load up the kids and go bowling for a few hours. Hope somebody buys this place. Fast. Man, we missed it. We could have had one of the Singmaster Mansions in Keota.

WE GOT THE HOUSE!

We signed the papers today. We were very happy with the deal we got on it. Now we just have to sell ours. But today was a very good day. I was putting up a new ceiling fan when our neighbor came over. He is part of the Cambodian family that lives across the street. They are the nicest folks and the best neighbors you could ever want. I told him we were looking for a house and he said, "oh no. You can't leave us here" in a very sad tone. He said, "you wait and I win lottery then we all move together". That broke my heart. So we hate to leave them behind, but it must be so. I am also very sad to leave this house behind after 10 years of building on it and fixing it up. I hate to think of it falling apart. Ok.. back to the story.
I am hanging the fan and the doorbell rings. It is dad from across the street. He says his friends want to buy our house! OMG. That would be SO perfect. His friends would get a great house. I could feel good knowing that they would take good care of it. We would get ours sold fast, and I could feel much better knowing that they would not be left alone over here. Our realtor called and said that they had called and set up an appointment for wed. to see the house. Man I hope that works out.
It is not that far away from us but yet it is a world of difference in the neighborhood. I will be quite busy for a long time. I have to build a shop, but can't do that until next spring. Then there will be lots of things to do to make it our home just like this one has been for the last 10 years.
Wish us luck.

Here is a short clip that I thought was pretty funny

might have a new home...

We put a bid in today. Not too far away from here, but far enough that it is a world of difference in the neighborhood. People over there actually work for a living. We met the neighbor next door yesterday and he seems pretty cool. He has been mowing the yard next to him just because the house is empty and he did not want it to get long. What a nice change of pace from where people won't even mow their own yards.
There is space in the basement for the pool table and lounge/den/NASCAR shrine etc. We are looking to build onto the side and back of the third garage to make a shop. I was not sure how they would pour back there but was sure it could be done. Tonight I had a horrible thought: How do they excavate to pour the walls? DOH! I will have to look into that directly! There is a pond behind us and there is a great view out the back of the house. Ours went on the market this week. We will find out on Monday if they take our bid on the new one or not.

a guy playing Tom Petty on Guitar.

Did I mention he has no arms?

Take this to your next gig.

and keep them boys in line.

LINK to story

beer cannon

funny video of cans of beer being shot out of a cannon at random objects. It is cool because it is well done and silly. Also because they don't use good beer.

Always stand down wind when you dispose of weed

Officers from Prescott National Forest, Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office and the Drug Enforcement Agency bring the first load of marijuana plants to a waiting fire Sept. 6 near Cleator. BB / CCN Photo / Jo. L. Keener

still working on getting the house done

We have painted almost every room and ceiling in the house now. Replaced almost all of the carpet. Today I ripped out the hallway carpet upstairs. It really needed to be replaced, but was going to be a bitch to do and so we decided to leave it. But then we put in new carpet in the bedrooms around the hall and all of a sudden the hallway carpet looks like hell, so out it came. I really think that we will be done with major stuff after that. Just a lot of small fix-it stuff that should have been done before. Need to repair the sliding door where the dog scratched on it. I was reminded why I don't want another cat when I pulled up all of the carpet in the house and got to smell that. Not to mention replacing the door jamb and several sets of door casings that the cats destroyed. I already replaced some drywall downstairs a few years ago because it was destroyed by them.
The house really looks nice. The new brighter paint and the carpet makes it look and smell new. I really hate to leave here. I already know that we won't get what we should for it because of the decline of the neighborhood, but I am hoping that we can do okay with it and get out before it gets any worse. I also hope that when people come over to look at it they do it before school is out. I had a day off last week and I was amazed at how quiet and nice it was during the day. You don't have kids running in the street spitting on each other and then yelling, "YOU BASTARD!" Thank you Iowa City for letting this part of the town go to hell.

John Travolta's house.

Not bad. Pull the planes right up to the house. Gotta like that. Way to go Vinnie.

morons with a mower.

I guess I should just be happy they are mowing at all. One of the kids next door in the HABITAT FOR HUMANITY house mowed 2 days ago. Took him about 3 friggin hours. Mow for 1 min. Shut it off. Kick the soccer ball against the house. Kick the soccer ball against my truck AGAIN. Start the mower and mow for one min. REPEAT.
I noticed that it looks really crappy when they get done. So I looked at the mower as it sat in the yard while he was taking a soccer break. It was visibly tipped from 20 feet away. One of the wheels is set all the way down I would guess. It leaves a kind of terrace looking path as they mow. One side is long. the other side is scalping the yard. Nice.
So three hours later I am getting in my truck and I look at what he did. He mowed down along the fence in our back yards. But as soon as the fence ended, he took a sharp left and moved over three feet into their yard. It is not like he drifted off course. He stopped, moved over and then kept going. The blue line is an extension of our property line and the red shows where he mowed. Ours was not mowed yet so I guess that he thought I could mow part of their damn yard too. Nope I mowed the next day right down the property line and left this big ass tribute to their stupid lazy asses in their yards.

BIG NEWS!

Tom Cruise's baby has pooped! Yes, that is right. And you own a sculpture of it. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH US?
bid on it on eBay

EDIT: It has been removed. Sadly people were bidding on it. Just proves you can put any kind of crap on eBay and some fool will bid on it. Must have been one of that fake Tom Cruise's baby poop bronzed and put on a piece of wood things.

RIP SRV

Matt's blog reminded me that it has been 16 years since we lost Stevie Ray. About this time each year I wonder how many great songs the world missed out on.

house update..

We decided to "step back" a bit from the whole house thing. It all moved so fast. Too fast. We have been bustin' our butts getting this ready to sell. I have been painting and fixing stuff nonstop for the last 2 weeks and I am tired. The house we are looking at is not even built so it is not like we have to sell this house this week. I have to go pick up Alex now and then come home and.. you guessed it... paint. *aarg*

Steve's first keynote

Kinda' fun to watch. Hard to believe that it has been that long ago.

barrel man to retire

If you are Denver Broncos fan like we are then you know barrel man. He has been at broncos games forever. Well, he is retiring and his barrel is on eBay if you want to bid on it. It is signed by the superbowl champ team and expected to bring as much as $75K.

new home.

It is all but official. Things are looking good for getting a new house. Away from the CRAP THAT THE IOWA CITY - CITY COUNCIL AND HABITAT FOR HUMANITY has dumped over here. I like to keep putting that in because there is a chance that Google might find it and people can know that I think HABITAT FOR HUMANITY SUCKS AND THEY CAN KISS MY ASS.
I digress.....
We found a developement near the kid's school. The bad part is that it is farther to get to everything else. By everything else, I mean Work and Menard's. But that is cool. There is a house that Mary fell in love with but it was not going to work because of my silly need for a shop. It is very large, but if I took over the basement with a shop, we would lose an office, a guest room, we would lose the pool table and the den space that we enjoy in this house. So it looked like they could build another garage stall beside the 2 and I could put a shop in there. Heating it might be harder, but it was a solution. But they came back and said they could only go 14x22. That just was not going to work. I tried to explain to her why and she did not get it. My current shop is 20x20 and if I had it to do over, I would have made it at least 24 feet on one side. 14x22 would be a tool museum where you could look at tools, but not use them. Then the builder suggested that he could excavate the area under the garage and put a shop there. It would be 20x20. DING!
I don't really like the looks of the house so much from the front, but I can live with it. It is really laid out cool inside. The great room is valuted up to the second floor and you overlook it from a walkway that goes to each bedroom. The kitchen is great. There is a nice screen porch and the bedrooms are about 2x bigger then here. We don't have a basement here so when the tornado sirens go off we just hope for the best. Not only will this have a basement, but the shop will be a like a bomb shelter with cement all around. Hopefully we will never need it, but it will be a good feeling to be able to go there when the storms come. The yards are a bit smaller then I would like, but I can live with that.
I GOT MY SHOP! *woot*

Farewell to Bill Gates.

My FIL sent me this. Very funny.

Travis nails the double

OMG. This really is amazing. I love to watch this kid ride, but this is just crazy.

Alex gives a Fark.

Alex posted onto fark.com today. The theme: Pac-Man is apparently 64 percent violent. Photoshop him up to 100 percent. Here is her entry. I was impressed. Here is the link to the contest.

Here is a drumkit that will provide you with minutes of amusement. Click to get the keys shown on the screen.

Happy birthday, hard drive

Yea, the hard drive turns 50 soon. Here is a short clipping from an article on *gag* MSNBC. Pretty amazing stuff.

The RAMAC, designed in Big Blue's San Jose, Calif., research center, is the ultimate ancestor of that 1.8-inch drive that holds 7,500 songs inside your pocket-size $299 iPod. Of course, the RAMAC would have made a lousy music player. The drive weighed a full ton, and to lease it you'd pay about $250,000 a year in today's dollars. Since it required a separate air compressor to protect the two moving "heads" that read and wrote information, it was noisy. The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-oxide-coated disks—each of them a pizza-size 24 inches—was 5 megabytes. That's not quite enough to hold two MP3 copies of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog."
And if that were not amusing enough. You can check in with the guys at Micro$oft and see yet another demonstration gone wrong.
But my favorite was on Conan a while back when Bill himself got to demo crappy software. I love when he says, "we must have the wrong remote. Good thing we only have one". (??) Good save, Bill.

more power to ya'

So I get home from work today and am starting to work on the house. All of a sudden the power goes out all over the neighborhood. It was about 100 degrees out and humid as all get-out. My hat is off to those guys that go out there and fix that stuff. They had in back on in less then an hour. I can't imagine the power draw when everybody's hot houses came back online at the same time and everything kicked in full at once. But it held and we are cool.
Got the bathroom pretty much done today. Photos tomorrow. Put ceramic tile in and I really like it. Wish I had done it a few years ago so I we could have walked on it.

R/C cars. Big ones.

This is pretty funny. If you watch it follow it through to the end. The oval track race is a hoot.

PC guy on net neutrality.

Here the "and I'm a PC" guy explains 'Net Neutrality on the Daily show.

fark photo contest

I almost missed this one: Fark had a photo contest to recreate your favorite album cover in MS Paint *ack* Some of them were pretty durn funny.

more cars you can't have

Ferrari made a one-off with a price tag of $3 million. I like the lines.
And if you want to stand out from all of the other Bugatti Veyrons in your neighborhood then you can get a 1.9 million targa version soon. But the bad news: The top end on the targa is electronically limited to 217 because "the aerodynamics of the Targa model will not be suitable for the car's regular top speed of 250 mph" Bummer that.

HABITAT FOR HUMANIT STILL SUCKS.

Well they finally mowed the "yard" next to us in behind the Habitat For Humanity house they dumped on us. I am going to assume that it has something to do with Mary calling the city and filing a complaint because even if he would get off his ass and mow it, hit mower would not go though 4' tall weeds. I was going to mail off a letter to them today but I guess I won't. I was looking through their website and I noticed they had a photo gallery. Lots of happy folks taking part in a "blitz" That is where everyone comes in and wears t-shirts and drinks lemonaide and it is just the feel good event of the summer. Some were of the dedications of the new homes. What they don't show it the people that have to live next to this crap for the rest of thier lives. So I sent this with the subject line, "please add these to your photo gallery"

When the Iowa Valley chapter of Habitat for Humanity decided they were going to build a small house with no garage next to our house we were not happy. They had already built 2 others just on our block and were slowly taking over our neighborhood. We paid full price for our home, and then spent thousands of dollars and many many hours building on to and remodeling it. We were planning on staying here forever. Now we are trying to cut our losses and sell our house while we can still get something for it. We contacted the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity and expressed our concerns. There are other empty lots on our block and we wanted to know if they intended on buying them also. They responded by telling us that "while they are Muslims, they are nicer then many Christians I know" That was the most gross display of ignorance that I have ever heard. We really don't care about their religion at all. We care about protecting the single largest investment and asset our family has.
We watched the construcion of the house next door. That first weekend there was a huge surge of people. They were all smiling and getting their pictures taken. They were building walls that were 1-1/2 inches too tall because the journeyman was not there and nobody knew how to frame a house. Nor did they know how to make the interior walls plumb. I could stand in the street and see that the walls were a mess. But then after the party was over and everybody felt good about themselves, everybody just left. The family that would eventually take it over lived down the street. They drove by it every night on the way home. I guess they had put in their time and now somebody owed them a house. I guess her name was Rita because she was the only person we would see over there for weeks at a time.

When a representative of Habitat finally came out, many weeks after he said he would stop by, I again expressed my concerns about the value of the neighborhood being depreciated by over-saturation of small houses with no garages. As well as the stigma of H4H housing. Yes, there is a stigma. I know you feel very strongly about this cause. I commend you for trying to make a difference. But as a home-owner and average citizen I can tell you that from the perspective of the rest of the world, having Habitat houses on your block does not exactly sell your house for you. Now we have three. We would have probably had more except the city said to stop. There is a reason for that. I talked to Rita from H4H since at that time nobody had come by to talk to us. I expressed my concern. She said that is not true about devaluation of the neighborhood. I disagreed. She said that she bet I would not mind if somebody had come in and built some huge mansion on the lot. I said, "You are right, and thank you for proving my point for me" The rep. from H4H that came out said that having a house next door, even a smaller one that has no garage, is better then having an overgrown, empty lot. I told him that I had been mowing that lot every week for the last nine years and it has never been overgrown.
The whole conversation changed nothing since the damage was done, and the city had already told them they could not build anymore houses on our block. But a year or so later here is what I have next to me. Instead of a nicely cared for lot that the kids used to play football on, we have a house that looks like a double wide trailer with three satellite dishes and with weeds grown up over the windows. Somewhere in that mess is an apple tree. You can't see it because they knocked it sideways, and the weeds are as tall as it is now. I know it is there because now I have apples in my yard that I throw back over the fence.
We are NOT impressed.
I have been interested in H4H over the years, and have thought of contributing to the cause. On TV they always show the blitz. How fun it is to do something good. But they never show the aftermath of what they have done. I looked through the photos on your website and it is the same thing. The pictures of the house next to us show lots of happy people working hard. They even caught the home owner on one of the few days he came over to help. Your pictures also captured them putting up the walls wrong because nobody knew what they were doing.

New top dog

There is a new entry into the world of going silly-fast. The Barabus has 1,005 hp, about the same as the Bugatti Veyron, but from what I can see it is much simpler (only 1/2 the cylinders) and probably a lot lighter. They claim 0-60 in 1.67 seconds and a top speed of 270. But can it run on E85 fuel?

here is a clever laser etching on a powerbook

Wish I had thought of this. I also wish I had a powerbook.

The perfect gift!

No, not for your kid.. For that nephew of yours. It is a toy robot with a flame thrower hacked onto it. And while you are at it, make sure the kid learns the words to the song in the soundtrack too.

student saves a bus load of kids.

Preatty amazing. The driver of the school bus has a seizure and a kid from the back comes up and saves them all. Watch the back of the bus as one kid takes a wild ride when they cross a bridge way too fast.

Human Space Invaders

wow. This took a lot of time.

the Refreshments

I was looking around on youtube. What a great place to kill time. Found some video of my new fav-o-rite band the Refreshments. Great guitar sound, lyrics are just off the wall. Fun stuff. I don't know if the internet audio/video is out of sync, or if they went to the Keith Moon school of "this is all fake so why pretend". Here is a link to Dead Hot Workshop. They are mentioned in the song and I had to google them to find out what that meant. "we could all wear ripped up clothes and pretend we are Dead Hot Workshop" Wonder if they are friends or rivals of the band.

I got sick of West Music in Coralville.

When my mom was up here we drove out to West Music to look at a midi to USB device for the mini that she is getting. I got a M-Audio unit that works well, but I remembered that they had one that had XLR inputs on it was well. That would be much better because she could run her keyboard sounds through there and her midi through the same device. She could also record vocals on it. I asked the girl working if they had one and she did not know what I was talking about. She got the expert and he did not know what I was talking about. But they said they were getting in a USB mic soon. WOO! That would limit her to one mic, and it would not get her keyboard sounds into the comp. He said he was going to the NAMM show soon and maybe they were coming out with something like that. Great. We left. I come home and look on the net and find the unit that I saw in that store 2 years ago. I called out there yesterday to see if they could order it in since they are listed as a Tascam dealer. They were all busy so I left a voice mail at about 4:00. After they closed at 8:00 it became clear that they were not going to call back. So today I called at about 4:00 again. She said they were all busy and I could leave a VM. I told her that I did that yesterday and am still waiting on a response, but go ahead. I waited about three or four hours and called back. After 10 min on hold a different guy actually answered the phone. I asked if they could get in the us-122. He said, "yes, we usually have them in stock." WTF? So I told him that I had been blown off yesterday and was thinking about just ordering the damn thing off of the net, but I would rather get it from them locally. He said they could get it for $200. I told him I was tired of them and was going to order it off of the net for $149.00 delivered and be done with them. MORANS!

Comcast tries to cover their own arse.

Remember the link to the video of the Comcast tech sleeping on the guy's chouch? Here is how that story played on Comcast.

carbage

I was reading Steve's blog tonight. He had a link to topgear.com. I really liked the section called carbage. It was a TON of photos of butchered/bastardized autos. Heres a few.

Bill Gates... visionary?

Here is an article on Bill Gates. It is from ZDNet. I quit reading their site many years ago because they were usually very anit-Mac. That may have changed. I don't know. I did agree with the intro to the piece......

A week or two ago I made an unguarded comment about Bill Gates being an opportunist rather than either a visionary or a programmer. That drew a lot of argument - on both issues.

The visionary versus opportunist side of this is pretty clear. Visionaries create new strategies, drive the public's understanding of new ideas through innovation, and generally lead the charge in new directions. Microsoft's record of innovation is a null set: just about everything they've done has been opportunistic, making money on other people's ideas or products.

Basically Bill Gates has made more money for himself and his shareholders selling Steve Jobs' ideas to the public than Apple has, but it's easy to see who's been the visionary and who's been the opportunist in that relationship.

wooden Caddy'

Here is a car a guy built with a body made of wood. It has 2- 500 cid caddy engines, and it is really easy to spot in the parking lot and the mini-mart.

etch o scetch

Some geeks put mouse control on an old etch 0 scetch.