Jesus uses GPS

Jesus found his way home with the aid of GPS. Read on.

wed,

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. We got up about 6:00 and started ripping stuff open. Then we spent the rest of the day playing with our new toys. The kids got some great new video games (Halo3, Guitar Hero3, Dance^2 Revolution, and Mario Galaxy) and we had fun with that. I got Tim a subscription to Xbox LIVE so he (we... I) can play on the internet against other people. After doing that for all of a day now I can honestly say that I suck at the first person shooters. Some of these kids are just crazy good. Mary liked the digital photo frame I made for her and she got me a 16ga. finish nailer that I wanted so we are all good. Then around dinner time her dad and Susie came over as well as her niece, her boyfriend and their son. It was nice to have a little kid in the house and we all enjoyed that big-ass ham that our neighbor gave us. So all in all it was a very happy day.

-Sometimes those safety regulations on cars seem kind of stupid. Here is a reminder of why they are important.

-And I will never forget those words my mom told me when I was a little boy. "Just because you CAN make a motorcycle out of 24 chainsaw motors, does not mean you SHOULD" She is ver wise. The guy in the video.... not so much.

I played Guitar Hero 3 just enough to realize I suck at it. It really has nothing to do with playing guitar, and I think it actually works against me that I do. This kid is amazing. I just wish he had put that much time into playing real guitar.

9 Year Old Beats Hardest Guitar Hero Level - Watch more free videos

Fugly car alert.

Found this on eBay today. WTF where they thinking?

Saturday.

We had rain, then sleet, and now snow. Not too much on the ground so far.

It seems the Army has been using Mac's for some of their servers for a while. Now they are adding more to diversify the network and make it harder to hack into. I like this quote..
Outside security consultants say that diversity isn't enough, though -- while OS X may be difficult to break, hackers will simply learn to target the Army's Windows machines. "In the story of the three little pigs, did diversifying their defenses help? Not for the pig in the straw house,"

The dog was going crazy wanting out so Mary looked out the door and there was Ken and Jenny's Ferrit. We took him home.

This is one very lucky and stupid guy.

Thursday

   Mary and I went shopping tonight.  She wants some jewelry and I wanted a watch.  Yea, a watch.  So I picked out a watch and she bought it.  Very nice Skagen watch with a steel band.  It is the first real watch I have ever owned and I am sure that when I open it up on Christmas I will love it.  We struck out on the jewelry thought so I think we will go on a bling run tomorrow.  Then we are (hopefully) done with shopping.

  

   -If you are a 57 year old guy appearing in court for the 14th time THIS YEAR and the 126th time since 1993... you may be one of those people who will just never get it.  

   -here are 10 fugly-ass attention whores.  Ewwww.

    and now I must sleep.

I have been sicker then a  dog the last 2 days.  Yesterday was my day off but today I had to suck it up and go in.  I am hoping that tomorrow will be better.  

  I was thinking that it would be cool to get some vintage cameras and have them on a shelf.  But then I remembered that I don't have any more shelves.  Perhaps some day I will get some built and get the stuff out of boxes that are still packed from the move a year ago.  If at that point I find I still have room, I would like to get 10 or 12 old cameras just to look at.  I just love the looks of them and it reminds me of the old cameras I used to look at when I was a kid and how amazed I was by them.  Goodwill's website always has them on there.  They generally go for about five bucks.  Perhaps some day.   I scored a Harmon Kardon Drive + Play there.  $20 shipped new in box.  Can't beat that.

  That is weird.  I was going to post a link to a couple of cameras on shopgoodwill.com right now, but when I paste them, they show up outside the text window here.  I tried it 2x.  So go look yourself if you are curious.  This weeks selection is not as good as usual though.

sunday

EDIT: I FIXED THE LINK TO "THIS guy is having a really bad day"
I had to work today. A girl I work with had her toilet go nuts overnight and it flooded her house. So that motivated me to fix 2 of ours that have been acting up from time to time. Stopped by Menards on the way home and got a couple of kits and took care of that.
When I was there I saw some wireless ear-muff style headphones. They were only $15 and I thought there had to be a good use for them, but could not think of it. At dinner it struck me that it would be cool to wear them in the shop and plug my iPod into the transmitter. I am sure they are not the best at cutting out sound, but it should make a big difference and be much better then nothing which I what I usually use because it is a pain in the butt to take them on and off. Yea, I am lazy. So we went to Menards and Mary bought them for me for Christmas. She seems to know just the right things to get me.
Anyhow.. a couple of quick videos.
THIS guy is having a really bad day.
I thought this was funny. This poor guy gets invaded by internet cliches.
-HERE is a list of the worst band names of '07. Some are pretty funny.

how not to ..

How not to sell a coat on eBay. I was looking through eBay looking for a NY Rangers jacket for my son Tim. I found one and scored a great deal on it. But in the process I came across a listing with this picture. Now I believe that it is just common sense that when you sell a used clothing item on eBay, you should show it hanging on a hanger. People know they are buying a used item, but they don't want a visual of another person actually wearing it. But for God's sake if you are going to post a picture of your item being worn, DON'T put it on a creepy looking woman who looks like she is naked under the coat they want you to buy.

upgrade, ice, and stuff

   Spent the day chipping ice off of a 3 wide drive way and a 3 level deck.  Fun stuff.  

   Shot a few pictures of the ice on the trees.  Man I love that stuff.

  

Looks like KITT got a major upgrade.  

Here it is. The Porsche-a-mino. I have no words. Just none.

THIS is great. If you can afford a Veyron ($1,000,000+), you would think you could afford gas even when it is over $3/gallon.

Sunday

Here is a very cute video about a cat and a crow that are best friends.

HERE

  here is a site that has thousands of tv theme shows for your listening pleasure.  At the bottom is a link you can click to play a name-that-tune type game.  Kind of fun.

FRIDAY!!!

THIS is cool.
THIS is not. OMG.
THIS is creepy.

Thursday

  Snow moving in today.  Looks like we may get a lot.  Such is life in Iowa.  

  Leo posted a picture of Amy Winehouse on his blog.  I added a couple of other photos that show the decay of a young woman strung out on success and meth.  Pretty sad.   You can see that weight loss, number of tattoos and loss of teeth all happen at a similar rate.  Hope she can get straightened out by the time the grammys roll around.  She is nominated for six of them.   That would be impressive if not for the fact that Kanye West is nominated for EIGHT of them, effectively eliminating any credibility that still associated with  that institution.  Hope that he sweeps them so that he does not have a hissy fit like he did when he was not picked at the MTV awards.

  -Seems Dodge has a hit on its hand.  6,600 folks put deposits down in the first couple days to secure their Challenger.  Pricing on the bad-boy R/T looks to be about $40K, so I guess there won't be one of them in my driveway soon.  

  -Looks like it is pretty easy to hook up your Rock Band PS3 drum kit into your Mac and use it to trigger Garage Band.   -LINK

duh

Here is an article that says that diet soda drinkers are likely to be fat, so diet soda must make you fat. DUH. Do you suppose people drink diet soda BECAUSE they are fat. They should probably go to an AA meeting so that they can determine that AA causes people to become alcoholics.

Thank you, Iowa City

This is the CRAP that happens in our old neighborhood and the reason we had to leave the house we planned on living in for the rest of our lives. Thank you, Iowa City and the City Council for introducing us to this wonderful diversity. -STORY-

Microsoft says that Vista is being pirated 1/2 as much as XP was. They say that they were able to achieve this by increasing the authentication on Vista. Or it could just be that Vista sucks ass and nobody wants it?

sunday

Perhaps this is why Ferrari won't sell its supercars to just any dill-hole with a big wad of cash and NO FRIGGIN BRAINS. Nope. Those people buy Lambos.

Sat.

Well it looks like bad taste was not limited to white folks in the 70's. Here is an amusing look into the past.

thanks

Thanks for the comments. She was 96. We went to the funeral in Keota today. It was nice. Some of my family is staying at the Singmaster home that is a bed n breakfast now. Wow. That is a LOT of quartersawn wood. It was really nice hanging out with them and should be able to do more of that tomorrow.
Storms on the way, so I am hoping that everyone can get back home on time and safely.

sadness

Last night I got the call that my grandmother passed away so I will not be around here for a while.

OMG

Just OMG. Anyone seen the 40 year old virgin? I guess it was a true story. LINK

-Somebody give me $40K. I need to buy one of these. Why do I need it? Dunno. But it is just that cool.

what I like about...

-WTF? Activision secured rights to do a cover of the song What I Like About You by the Ronantics for Guitar Hero. But now the Romantics are taking them to court because the cover sounds too good. STORY HERE

While Tim Allen's Vette is a pretty good deal at $60K, the Pacer from MTV's Pimp my Ride was a real deal at $6k. That is if you don't mind driving a fugly-ass POS. Probably had $6k worth of stereo in it though.

-One of the hot gifts for Christmas this year is Guitar Hero III. While it is a fun game, you have to ask yourself: Will it blend? Here is the answer. I love the look on Tom's face as he is doing it.

Sat.

So they found the identity of another suspect in the killing of the British student. STORY HERE. Today I saw a video that this same waste of skin posted of himself on youtube. Naw. He is normal. VIDEO HERE

Steve mentioned "the pringles guy" in a reply to the story about the tank car. I could not think of Dennis Gage's name so I googled him and wound up reading up on him. I knew about his connection to Pringles, but damn this guy has done some stuff. Here is a short bio. And here is a short story about how he got the gig as the car guy.

-I remember Hardcastle and McCormick, but I don't remember the car being this fugly.

-I would much rather have this one-of-a-kind Pontiac Banshee but I suspect it will go for more.

Back to work.

Thought I was off for four days. Got a call tonight. Stuff happened at work and I have to go back tomorrow and work the weekend. That just really sucks.
I cranked out this shelf for above the fireplace Wed.
-HERE is a story for Stove. Leno took a tank engine and built a hot rod around it.

Monday

Day off! So I started it out by taking stuff back to Menard's. Went through more then 80 receipts from the store and matched them up with boxes of screws, joist hangers, etc.. that I did not need. It was really foggy as I was headed out there. The guy ran out of bills when he was giving me back $100 for a humidifier that won't work on my furnace and so he gave me $5's. I had to get a small thing of paint and so when I was at the register I saw she had a stack of $20's in there. I told her that the guy over there just gave me $100 worth of fives and asked if I could buy some 20's from her. She said, "no". I was like.. if I give you four fives, you can't hand me a 20? She said she can't do that. WTF? I saw the store manager walking by and thought about yelling to him but decided to let it go. His name is Terry. He likes people who frequent his store. He loves me.
So I decided to stop at Wally-world on the way home. Without thinking I turned into the old Menard's store one block too soon. Partly because of the fog, and partly because my truck just thinks that is where it should go. So I got into the lot and turned the corner to come back around to the highway. I eased into the throttle and the back of the truck just spun out from underneath me. I let off and corrected and made a really nice save. It really surprised me so I did not have time to yell, "YEEEE HAWWWW". Otherwise it would have been perfect. I guess the fog on the blacktop and not having traffic on it because the store is closed brought up the oil.
Now... I must get something done.

SUNDAY

Here is a link to an article on some really odd kid's toys.

stuff

I had to work late this weekend, so I did not get much done.
But here is some stuff I came across tonight when I was surfing.
You may have figured out by now that I think Fox "News" is a big joke and Bill O' is the fat punchline. This video is kind of good. It shows how Bill preaches against sex on tv and exploiting women but the whole time he is showing the videos on tv. Best of both worlds. Take the high road, AND show some T&A. Nice work Bill.
-Here is a story of a p-38 Lightning that was ditched in 1942. The sand shifted recently and there it was.
-Here is the gun you need for you next pheasant hunt.
-Some fool paid almost 10K to buy some other guy's character in World of Warcraft. This kind of thing happens a lot, but usually not on this scale. Well Blizzard frowns upon it and three days after he got the character Blizzard locked it out.

Thursday

Here is the coolest steampunked iPod skin ever.

Fark

A couple of things on Fark.com caught my attention just now. One was the story of a guy who was sucking gas out of a car with a vacuum and got blowed up real good. The amazing part of it is that I remember somebody doing that same thing within the last year.
The other was a story about a pancake that somebody sold on eBay for $300 because it had Jesus and Mary on it. Sheez.
This morning when I was going to work the news said that Australia is asking the Santa Clauses down there not to use the phrase "HO HO HO" anymore because it might offend. I just stood there with my mouth open.
In our school they raised the minimum GPA necessary to play football because it was discriminating against black kids. If I were an intelligent black person I would be standing up and saying, "NOW WAIT JUST A SECOND!" But I am neither so I won't.
I went to Best Buy yesterday. I saw the new iMac's. Man those look nice with the aluminum and glass. The BFB dork came over and I asked him what was new in leopard and he showed me how you can turn on this program and when he hit random keys on the piano next to it, they were recorded. I said yea, that is Garage Band and I have that on my Mac, but what is new. That went nowhere so I just ignored him. He came over and I mentioned that it was just a really nice looking machine. He told me that the best part is that the hard drive and the CPU are all inside the monitor. MY GOD! THIS WILL REVOLUTIONIZE THE INDUSTRY! Oh, wait. It already did that in 1998. When he was in 2nd grade.
I am off to patch some drywall above the new door on the second floor. There used to be a window there and I have to piece in some sheetrock so I can put trim around it. It would not be so bad but there is that damn texture stuff and now I have to try to match it. I hate that stuff. Lazy contractors.

Tuesday

My friend Mary brought her dog Buster over today. She has no pictures of him, and it was a nice day so I said bring him over and we will let the dogs run and I will take photos. Buster was not up for new friends and went after Bentley. I was very proud of him because when Buster struck at him, he jumped back and just stood his ground. He did not run away, and he did not attack him. Good boy. The photos tell the story. Unfortunately they loaded in reverse order. Click on the second one to see a larger version of the photo and look at the expression on Bentley's face.






The whole "let's see what we can do with a spare USB port" craze really amuses me to start with. Now the same people that brought you the USB humping dog offer a USB chameleon. So stupid and impractical that I have to chuckle.

DONE!

The deck is finally done. I went to Menard's to take some of the stuff back that I don't need. 1.5 hours later I was done. But when she was ringing up a couple of the items she said that she would have to give me in-store credit since they were more then 90 days old. I said, "god". She apologized. I said that the credit was fine, but I could not believe I have been doing this for 3 months. Next summer I will add the flower boxes in front of the lowest deck and a walkway from the stairs coming from the second deck to the door to the lowest deck. The lowest deck will get screened in and that will be that. But for now. DONE! Sweet.
So now I can move inside. I have a lot of cabinets and things to build there. I got the shop .. well not done, but to where it will function. It will be fun.




Well this is just creepy. Gibson made a guitar that tunes itself. Yea, that is cool indded. But wait. You want to use an alternative tuning? just fiddle with the master volume knob and it will change to an open G or whatever it is you want. Pretty damn cool.

HERE is the company that makes the tuning part of it.

40 years ago today

The Edmund Fitzgerald went down. Somebody put together a really well done video as a tribute. Nice work. EDIT: It was removed.

Thursday

-HERE is the coolest lawnmower you are going to see today.

I guess that is about it.

well that confirms it..

I am truly an idiot. I have been working on making the last set of rails for a few days. That is a lot of work and it is tricky to get 20 spindles, which are jammed into holes on the bottom set of rails at a 35 degree angle, to go into the 20 holes in the top set of rails. I got it all done last night. I came home from work and lugged the thing outside. When I hung it up on the deck, I realized that it was 3.5 inches too short. CRAP. I had marked on the back side of the 4x4 post it attaches to and forgot about it. When I took the wood to the basement I used that mark instead of the correct one.
I made it all the way through this project and did not screw up any cuts. It is only $10 worth of wood (I know because I went to Menard's to replace them already) but it is a lot of work to replace them. Damn I make myself mad sometimes.

-I don't know if you have seen the guy's website that is tying to find the girl he saw on a train, but it was kind of cute. Well, the good news is he found her and the better news is that he is just thanked everyone and said he will not post anymore about it.

-Here is an article telling you why it is actually cheaper to own a Mac then a PC. The usual argument is that PCs are cheaper up front but by the time you buy Norton to try to keep it running and buy apps' to do the things that come shipped in osX (but not as well) you spend more. Here is a different spin: He compares the resale value of the 2 platforms and if you use each for a year or 2 and sell them, you come out way ahead with the Mac even before you buy the software. And as an added bonus you don't have to piss with Norton and get a much better OS. Or as COMPUTERWORLD put it: Leopard spanks Vista, continues OS X's reign of excellence

-Google: coming to a gas pump near you.

Tuesday.

I had the day off and thought I would get done with the deck for the season. As per usual, things took longer then they should have, and I did not. I am getting close though and really want to move on to something else.
-Here is a map you can click on and it will tell you what music is popular in that area.

-HERE is a map that shows percentage of fat people as a function of time. Wonder if you can cross reference to two and find out what kind of music fat people like?

Monday

what the hell is this guy thinking?
Dont Juggle Bowling Balls - Watch more free videos

I saw a link to Rosie's blog and just had to check out what she had to say. There was this poem on there.

brothers and sisters
fantastic
i am all caught up
triple loving it

sally rob calista
all perfect
great tv is exciting
inspiring

walking in manhattan
alone tonight
i herad my name and turned
2 find
a young asian woman
in a columbia sweatshirt
do u remember me? she asks

i did not

i was on ur show
i was the last super kid
yes
i remembered

kelloggs paid for 50 kids
to go thru college
she went to yale
and was now at columbia

she asked for a hug
said thank u

what r the chances
really

spingle deluxe

focus
relax
breathe
pray

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? How lame can it be? And just because she is fat and stupid does not mean she can't spell out the words. Or did she do this on her cel-phone? Oh, she is just so "hip" that she can talk a 14 year old. Gawd. Sorry I made you read that. NOTE TO ROSIE: U R LAMERZ.

Well this is funny. The Social has been canceled. Microsoft canned the ad agency that came out with those STUPID AS HELL ads for the Zune and dropped the whole "welcome to the social" tag line. Now it is "Make it you" In other words, it is hard to have a social when you are the only one. And in case you have not heard, the one Zune fanboy on earth that got a zune logo on his arm, and then later 2 others, now legally changed his name to "Microsoft Zune"

Saturday.

1986 Nissan 300ZX Turbo --Custom Show Car

HERE is the best costume I saw on the internet this year.

HERE is the worst product name I saw all day. If you are going to make something that is an iPod clock why would you name it the iH8 iPod alarm. I HATE iPod Alarm? Sheez. Not as bad as the i.beat Blaxx that I posted before. But again. Say the name out loud before you release the product.

-HERE is the Fugly car of the day. WTF are they thinking?

Friday

Gotta work this weekend. So here is a quick one. The mustang in the photo was done by some dumb ass. That is one thing. But the one in the link was at the SEMA show and was made by a team of (very stupid) professionals. Sheez.
LINK TO UGLIEST MUSTANG EVER

day off

Got a lot done. I got the rest of the carsiding on the middle deck. There is a hole in it where the Bentley the dog can go under. His old house is under there now, but eventually I will build a new one under there.
-Here is an interesting article. This guy takes cars and trucks and converts them to bio-diesel. He gets some pretty amazing mileage and screaming horsepower. It is a long read, but I found it interesting. He has some good ideas about how to get away from gasoline. Much better then the KNOT-HEADS in charge that are leading us down the path of Ethanol.

The fastest Windoze laptop.....

The fastest laptop computer in the world to run windows comes from APPLE! Too funny. :-) LINK. And as the article points out:
MacBook Pro's PC WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88 beats Gateway's E-265M by a single point, but the MacBook's score is far more impressive simply because Apple couldn't care less whether you run Windows

SCORE ONE FOR THE GOOD GUYS! Those nutty bastards that call themselves a church were ordered to pay $2.9 million (so far) to the family of a soldier who was killed protecting idiots like them. STORY

Finally.. somebody found a good use for the PS3.

Tuesday.

-THIS is just great. it is a SD memory card with wi-fi built in. You shoot on your camera and it uploads to your computer and if you want it to, it will log into your Picasa or Flickr (or whatever) account and upload them there also. That is a lot to jam into a little tiny card. I am impressed.

-HERE is a girl that plays piano quite well. Oh, yea. She only has 2 fingers.

drums and stuff

well.. this guy does not suck.

Amazing Drum Tenor Solo - Watch more free videos

Sunday

-First off... HERE is a great blog. He takes everyday objects and gives them simple arms and legs. No big deal. But they all have meaning and are doing different things and it makes it really cool.

I got the patio blocks done today. Now that I am done with it, I know how I would have done it if I knew what I know that that I am done with it. I also got the drain dug in. There is a pipe that is buried beside the patio. It catches the rain from the gutters on the house on that corner. Then as it passes the corner of the patio there is a "T" so that when I get the drainage under the top deck, it can tap into there. The pipe runs down the hill and empties into the yard. It will be nice to have all water taken away from the house.
I went to Menard's today. No, really. The new store opens Tuesday and they have everything 40% off. OMG. It was a zoo in there.
The only things left to do is a hand rail going up to the middle deck and put the carsiding on the part of the second deck. I had to get the blocks down first because the siding goes down to the lowest deck. It will look much better once you can't see all of the crap I have stashed under there.
Today we had about 150 geese in the pond. That is cool. They come over the house really low and land. We had a guest visitor though. It was a huge bird of prey that hovered around the pond looking for fish. He crashed down into the water 2 times and must have missed. On the third time he got a fish. It was really cool. My neighbors (the cookie lady) said it was an osprey. I grabbed my camera when I saw him. I had the big lense on it already. Cool. I got out there and I had let the battery go down. DAMNIT. That would have been so cool to try to get that shot. I will put one on from the web and you can pretend that I shot it.

Friday

I took today off from work so I could have 3 days to get the patio part of the project done. It went well. I needed some more sand so I headed out to S&D. The last 2 times I have gotten sand I told them to give me a load and they put .75 tons in. I have hauled a full ton in the Dakota before, so that's cool. Both times it cost $5.30. Today I got on the scale and the guy says it is almost $10.00. Wow. So I look at the ticket and the guy put in 1.4 tons of sand in my poor truck. I really thought 1/2 ton would be enough, but thought I would get 3/4 just so I did not run out. Now I have WAAAY too much sand and will have to find a place to dump it.
I had to drive to menard's to get some 3/4" PVC to use as spacers so I could screed off the sand. I did not feel like putting a strap on them on the back so they did not slide around. Instead I opened the window and passed them through. I have done that before and it just saves time. Well.. there was still sand in the bottom of the bed from the last load. I got up to speed and all of a sudden it started swirling in the back and all came in the window. DOH!
Our neighbor Marcia always brings us cookies. Today her husband saw me out shoveling sand and brought over a tray of spider cookies. They are funny looking and very good. Taste like Nestle Crunch bar.
I spent about 10 hours working on the patio today and got it about 1/2 done. But I had to make 2 trips to Menard's and one to the sand pile, plus pick up the kids. Tomorrow I don't have to do any of that so I should easily get it done tomorrow. Well.. maybe not easily. But it will get done.

-I love the show Scrubs. Here is a bunch of interesting trivia about the show. I found it because i wondered if "janitor" had a real name. He does not, btw. There is a lot of quirky stuff.. like this..
In the Season 4 episode "My Malpractical Decision" (409) Dr. Chris Turk, played by Donald Faison, changes his cellphone number to 1-916-Call-Turk. Unlike other shows and movies, this number is actually a valid number that most of the times will take your to a voice message telling you the latest info about "Scrubs" (2001). However, as the phone is placed on the set where Scrubs is being filmed, every now and then, people from the cast or crew answers the phone to have a word with whoever is calling.

-We Didn't Start the Viral is a pretty well done. I am sorry to say I recognized most of them.

happy birthday, iPod.

Six years ago today the iPod changed the music industry. I remember watching this keynote and thinking "who needs 1,000 songs in their pocket and who would pay that kind of money for an .mp3 player" Well I guess I do and I guess I would.

Sunday

If you are VanHalen, and they accidentally play back the pre-recorded synth part at 48K instead of 44.1K, this is what you get. It is not pretty.

man i can be stupid..

Last week I went to Menard's and looked at patio blocks. The ones I wanted were on sale for about a buck off. Score!. I need about 150 of them. I talked to the guy to see how much it would cost to deliver them. $40. Naw, I don't spend that for delivery. I am a man, damnit. So I loaded up 65 of them on the truck. Now I have loaded a full ton of gravel and stuff on it before and it took it fine. When I got those blocks on there it was REALLY saggin'. Got them home and unloaded them. I went back yesterday because I assumed the sale ended that day. They were not on sale. I guess I must have been there on Sat. last week and not Sunday, and THAT was the last day of the sale. I got 1/2 of the remaining blocks I needed and loaded them on the truck. I have to get one more load today. So by doing all of this work myself, I spent an extra $60 over what I would have spent buying them all on sale and having them delivered. Duh.
I have been using the riding mower to pull around a wagon. I haul tools back to the deck and cut off of it. The last week I have been hauling tons of dirt, rock, and soon sand. For some reason yesterday I thought, "I should check the oil in that thing". Then later I was loading some dirt in the wagon and smelled something. I looked up and it was smoking. CRAP. Shut it down and sure enough she was way low on earl. I put about 3/4 of a quart in and she runs fine. Can't beat an old Briggs.
Here is yesterday: Go to menards and get patio blocks. Unload blocks. Go to quarry and get one ton of rocks. dig up the yard some more so I can lay in the rock and then sand over that to accept the blocks. Moved the dirt I dug up over the to new flower bed. Dug a trench for the drainage tile. Then while I was doing that I threw on some of the big ass chicken fillet's that the neighbor gave us. Ate them and went back out with just enough light to mow the front yard. Then Mary and I went to Best Buy to look at TV's.
We are looking at a smaller TV for the living room. This one is just too big for the space. If we get a smaller plasma or LCD, it can go over the fireplace and the big one can go in the front room to mostly play XBOX and Wii on. That should be really cool. The 360 looks good on the tv it is hooked up to, but it is not HiDef. The big one is and it should look much better.
Today I need to work on the 2 hand rails. I want to get sand, but they are closed. So handrails it is. The reason I did not do them is because the code requires them to be a profile that is not like the rest of the deck rails and I want to keep that going all the way down. So I decided to make the rails the way I want and then I will screw on a piece of pipe to make it conform to code. When they leave I can take it off and go on with life.
I took tomorrow off from work so I can go out and get some sand and hopefully get some blocks laid. It looks like today will be another perfect day. Yesterday I had shorts and enjoyed the dry warmer weather.

-I liked this FARK tag: Two carjackers apprehended by police. From the mugshots, see if you can guess which one resisted arrest -LINK
Now leave me alone. I have too much to do to sit here chatting with you.

-HERE is a one of a kind car. 2002 White Chevy Mustang, auto. Dark Tint Windows Gray cloth seats, tires about a yr old, a/c gets cold fast, car is very reliable and great working condition. Non-smoker. 86000 miles Feel free to ask questions will send pics serious inquires only please.

FRIDAY!!!!

It stopped raining and I got some work done in the yard. I need to hit it hard this weekend. It is supposed to be clear both days. Photos soon.


This guy is just amazing. He builds TINY little four stroke engines. Yea, that thing runs.

Tuesday

Here is the short (9 min) film that inspired this guy to drive cross country in 32 hours 7 min. Yea, that is an average of about 87mph average. The end of the short film is great.

Sat.

Spent the day digging in the yard. I am going to try to pour the concrete extensions by myself. It is a hell of a lot of work, but why stop now?
-Here is some really tiny art.

-But his skillz are nothing compared to hers.

-This is a very sad series of photos showing the downward spiral caused by drug addiction.

Wed.

Hero: Cop responds to save kid from drowning. Asshat: Same cop sues family because she slipped and fell on some of the water that was on the floor from the drowning boy who suffered brain damage from the near-drowning. -Source-

-Wow, video from inside a four stroke engine. Damn impressive.

More Tuesday FIXED LINK, THANKS, STOVE

Here is the most bad-ass Jeep you will see all day.

-It would really suck to get a pod for your birthday and find the box full of rocks. But wait.. it gets better.. LINK

Tuesday.

The shocks on my Dakota sound like the bedsprings in the honeymoon suite, so I am headed over to Ranger Rick's after work. He is going to help me put them on, and I am going to look at his iMac which is not playing nicely.
If you have been following the huge x wing model those guys built, it flew today. I am not so sure flew is the right word, but it was spectacular.

And this is a great demo of one of those cool ladders that bends into all of those different configurations. I gotta get me one of them. Especially after seeing that demo.

Sunday

Good thing Marty McFly did not crash at 86 mph, because 40mph is bad enough.

the DD&D diet.

Right before I started this whole deck project I found out that Diet Mt. Dew is actually quite good. I switched over. Well between the diet dew and spending every spare moment I have building on the deck, I have lost 30 lbs. as of Tuesday. I weighed in at 205 when I started this thing and I hit 175 a couple of days ago.

I have to work last this weekend, so I won't be getting a damn thing done. Yesterday I went to work at 4:30 a.m. Came home at 1:00 and started in on the deck. Picked up Alex at 3:30 and then came home and worked on the deck. Took Tim to the football game at 5:00 and grabbed some Mickey D's on the way home. Went back out to .. you guessed it. work on the deck. It started getting dark and I was out of wood, so I cleaned up they yard and shot a photo. Then I mowed the yard as the sun was setting.

That was a long day.

Here is a photo that is kind of cool. Lots of glowing apples. :-)

So this guy calls McDonald's claiming he is a cop and tells the manager that she should take an employee in the back and strip search her. She does. Then he tells her to bring in other people and watch her. She does. He tells one of them to have her jump up and down naked on a chair to shake anything out. They do. It goes on for over 3 hours. WTF? He has been calling these places for 10 years and people actually do it.
The manager gets probation, her boyfriend gets jail time and the guy on the phone... he gets off in several ways. This is wrong.
So they go to civil court and they sue McDonald's. McDonald's told the managers about these calls. So sue the manager. Oh wait... no money.. sue McDonald's. Everything about this story is just wrong.

So today..

I made a door for the underside of the deck. Here is what I learned: Don't do it the way I did. I measured all of the carsiding pieces to the exact length. Then drilled the holes for the screws. Then I mounted the top cross piece and bottom one. Okay. Now I need to add the cross brace to make the Z. It was a pain in the ass to get it square once I stood it up because it wanted to rake. I should have cut them long, made the door and then trimmed the whole thing off. Now I know.
I ran out of daylight today so after I got the door made, I had to pack it up. Tomorrow is another day.....

-If you have not seen the video of the South Korean crowd flipping cards, it is damn amazing. And here it is.

Wed.

First off.. I gotta say the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame is just the biggest friggin joke around. Grandmaster Flash got nominated this year. If I remember correctly, RUSH, Stevie Ray, and Genisis are not it. But Donna Summer is. Somebody could say (incorrectly) that SRV played blues not R&R. But Donna Summer was DISCO! Disco tried to kill rock and roll. So letting her in is like saying that Lee Harvey Oswald was a great president.

I had the day off and got the underneath done on the deck. That turned out well.

wow

-Here is a civic with close to a million miles on it.

-Here is a great riddle somebody made. The image here holds a hidden picture. Try to find it. Or better yet, save yourself a lot of trouble because you won't get it. Instead save it and open it in Photoshop and look at the histogram. Here is how he made it if you want to know.

Monday.

I did not feel so good today and barely got through work so I did not work on the deck today. Yesterday I got a lot done. I got some of the carsiding on the front. I got the tin back up under the old part of deck2 to shed the water off. Then I dug under the extension of deck 2 and put left-over 2x6 in channels I dug. Then I poured some concrete under them. They will be like joists for the decking under deck2. I saved the old decking off of the original deck and am going to use it for under there. I was not sure why I saved it, but I thought it might be a good idear. I have Wed. off from work and hope to get some landscaping done that day. (click picture to enlarge it)

Here is a short funny clip. I think a now ex-employee cued up the wrong video.


Kevin Everett News Mix Up - Watch more free videos

Sunday

-wow. This is pretty amazing. An Einstein robot. Kind of creepy.

-I took Friday off and had three days to work on the deck. That was good. I have been working on leveling the ground so the steps actually go somewhere. I got the rock in, but was going to get dirt Sat. and found out the dirt store was closed.

-This woman works at a daycare? Nice mugshot, biotch.

-Here is a great high res photo of the moon.

George answers his own question.

The leader of the free world (which is totally screwed up right now) who promised to be "the education president" earlier asked "is our children learning?" Well good news: This week while speaking to a group of school children about the impotance of education told them, "Our children is learning"
I am not sure if this is really good for our children. They are sitting there thinking, "education can't be that important. He is the president and he is the biggest idiot I have ever met."

Wed.

Irony: Putting a 'chute on your powered hang glider for safety and having it deploy as you take off causing you to auger in hard.

-If you steal an iMac, be sure you try out the built in camera to take a picture of yourself. Oh, BTW, it uploads the images to the account of the person from whom you stole it.

-Somebody with too much time took scenes from the Simpson's movie and lined them up with the original scenes from all the movies it makes reference to. I did not know a couple of them. The one with all the money in the courtroom.. what is that?

-I did not realize that in DUH-bya's remarks to the YOU-ENN that they had to use phonetic spelling on the teleprompter so he could get the names of the some of the countries and the name of the French president right. I could not say a lot of the names either. But then again I am not the leader of the friggin free world.
The United States salutes the nations that have recently taken strides toward liberty – including Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan [KEYRgeez-stan], Mauritania [moor-EH-tain-ee-a], Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Morocco.
I bet those countries would feel like you were more sincere in your salute to them if you even knew how to pronounce the countrie's name. Dumbass.

Sunday

You knew this was not going to end well. Something about this made me laugh.

TV hits a new low when the "leave Brittney alone" guy gets his own TV show. I assume that by now you have heard about the hit-and-run she pulled off. Now it turns out she did not even have a license to drive the damn thing. I read somewhere else that she never has been issued one. Even back when she was driving around with the kid in her lap. I don't know why this even matters, but in the video where she smashes into a parked car, when she gets out of her car she slams her door into the car she just crunched. Just shoot her now.

Wed.

I have tomorrow off so I hope to get rails done.
-I was not aware that Shelby made a 1,183 hp super-car, but I guess it is now the fastest ever production car. Suck it Bugatti
-Train to Bangkok. This is just amazing to me.

photos.

Here a couple of photos of the progress. More can be seen HERE

well that was fun

I took friday off so I could work on the door upstairs. I had to rip off the siding, and cut a bunch of seeting off of the house so I could run electrical. Well now it is Sunday and I am not done.
Last night I was working on it and Tim told me it was going to rain soon. I had siding and sheeting still off. I covered the side of the 2nd story with plastic. It worked. It was all dry this morning.
I had a ledge built over the stairs so I could get to the top of the house with a ladder on that ledge. But I could not replace the siding starting from the bottom because the ledge was there. So I had to start at the top and work backwards. If you have ever done that you know it sucks. You have to beat on it and make it lock in. And I put some more housewrap over the old because it was all beat up. But now I can't see the holes where the old siding was to make sure my spacing is right. Got that done though.
The door is a double door that hinges in the middle. It is heavy. My big neighbor came over Friday and helped me put it up on the top deck before I put the ledge up covering the stairs.
I got the door set today and got 1/2 of the siding on. The electricity is run. I am tired. So I go up to take a shower. There are blinds inside the glass. I go to close them and one of them DOES NOT FRIGGIN WORK. I don't know what I am going to do yet. I can't imagine trying to take it out and haul it back down the stairs and cart it across town with it hanging out the side of my truck and then bring it home and doing it all over again. I am too tired to be pissed off.
There were handles screwed to the frame, but they are long gone now. I don't think we can haul it down without them.
Hell. I am going to bed. Back to work tomorrow.

Thursday

Woz has a car for sale. How better to do it then to recreate the famous Z-car ad he did years ago.

Monday

I usually don't pay attention to this crap, but here is Britney "singing" at the VMA awards this year. If you have not seen it yet, it is worth checking out. Has she ever heard this song before? You will find better lip syncing at any slumber party. And the dancing is just sad. And those shoes!

New wheels.

I started to work on the deck today but got sidetracked. Mary and I decided she needed some new wheels. I really like this little car. It is a Honda Cvic Si. It has 197hp and is really .. um.. peppy. It is kind of a cab-forward setup and there is quite a bit of room in it. It is black with a blue metalic fleck so it is a good thing I like to wash cars. It has a six speed manual tranny. That took a couple of minutes to get used to. Mary is happy. So we are all happy :-)

-The Emmy awards just got a big nod from me. The song "dick in a box" got a nomination! Now that is funny. Story here. Original video here

duh

The British Minestry of Well, No Shit has published a study that says rock stars are more likely to die an early death then normal folks. Drugs, alcohol, fast food, and small aircraft... who whould have known?

-Cute USB remote control car. I need one of them and then I need to clean off my desk.

Three days

Got quite a bit done on the rails on the deck. HERE are some photos.

Saturday

So I finally get over what ever I had before and now I got a terrible head cold. Oh well. I can work through that. Got a lot done on the deck today. Pictures tomorrow.
-HERE are the best photos of one of the worst air show crashes you will ever see.

wow

This really makes you think. Here is an amazing 12 year old creates inspired paintings.

down for repairs.

I called in sick today at work. I really don't like to do that, but I just feel awful. But now I am going stir crazy. I am stuck at home, and can't work on the deck or anything else. I have been going at it for so long, that I feel really uncomfortable just sitting down for a while, much less a whole day. I hope that I feel better by tomorow because this sucks.
-I had the song Red Barchetta in my head today as I was toasting an english muffin for breakfast. I wondered exactly a Barchetta looked like and googled it. I wound up at wiki and it mentioned that it was inspired by a story published in Road and Track. I followed some links and found out that Neil tried to contact the author, but could not. The guy who wrote it eventually hooked up with Neil and rode with him between concerts recently. Turns out they both rode the same BMW bike. Here. Read it your own damn self.

Well today is a bust. I felt really sick all day at work and so there is NO way I am going out into the heat and work on the deck. Man I would really like to get that done. I think my neighbors would too.
-Here is the funniest best man's speech ever. Kind of long, but worth it.

Sunday

Just because you are the CEO of an airline, does not mean you are smart enough to understand e-mail.

-Pointless but cool

-WTF? So you have this company. They make .mp3 players called i.beat. Very imaginative. Your naming protocol is such that you have made the i.beat cebrax and the i.beat organix. So now you make a smooth black one. So the logical name for it is I.BEAT BLAXX? Did nobody in the company say the damn name out loud before they went into production. Crap. Here comes Al Sharpton.

If you have not seen the ZunePhone yet here it is in all its glory.

How cool is this...

Mary noticed that there was a slip on the door and UPS tried to deliver a package to us. I had no idea what it was, but it said it was from MN. I thought maybe Stove sent me a CD or something but it said it was 14 lbs. They were closed by then, so I looked it up online. It said it was delivered to Coralville. WTF? Then Mary noticed the name Gunder on it. He is our next door neighbor. So I grabbed his ladder that I borrowed and went over. He was coming out the door with a package for me. We traded. I opened it.
It was a friggin XBOX 360.
A friend of mine at work gave me a ton of Pepsi caps with codes on them and I entered them a while back. It has been quite a while and I assumed I did not win anything. I guess I did.
Tim has a first gen Xbox in his room but the damn thing ate most of his disks. That is a bunch of crap. For some reason it scratches up the disks (at $50 a pop) when you play them.
So we went to Wally to get some games and another controller. I was amazed to find a kid there that not only knew EVERYthing about gaming, but was really exicted to talk about them.
We were going to get guitar hero, but he suggested we wait a couple of weeks and get it for the Wii. He said the Xbox guitars tend to break. He also said the Wii guitar has a wah-wah pedal and you can download your own tunes into it and play them. He also said to bring in the other Xbox and he would fix it. That was really nice to ask some kid at one of those stores a question and not find out that I know more about it then he does.

-Every once in a great while, the ACLU actually sticks up for somebody that should be helped. Sadly nobody takes them seriously since 99.325% of the time they are full of crap.

-I first saw a video of Terra Naomi on Youtube a while ago. Something about her really caught my attention with her song Say It's Possible. She had played the coffee houses and such around the city and decided to stay home and host a "virtual tour" hoping to get noticed. She did. I just saw that she played Live Earth at Wembly. Good for her. The break at 2:40 into the song is really intense. There is something very honest about her music that I just really dig. Another song of hers that I really like is The Vicodin Song.
In is great how the interweb is changing how we can access music and decide who WE think is worthy.

-I guess when you are the president of France , you get your love handles Photoshopped out when the photo gets printed in your friend's newspaper.

-Deezer streams TONS of songs to your computer fast and free. Kind of cool for here at work.

Monday

Back to work today. *ACK* It is supposed to rain all week so the deck is on hold for a while.

-This is pretty interesting. Tear apart a one dollar batter and you will find $40 worth of smaller batteries.

-I really hope THIS was not a real Cobra. Still a damn shame even if it isn't.

Thursday

Your tax dollars at work. The gubment paid almost a million dollars to ship 2 washers. Somebody goin' to jail.

-It is raining today so I am sitting inside. I loaded up some of the CRAPPY composite lumber I bought at Menards to take back. I bought 36 of them and about 12 are junk. I was in a big ass hurry to load the stuff because I thought they closed at 6 on Sunday and I had to load $1,800 worth of lumber on a trailer in 1/2 hour and nobody would friggin help me. I finally pulled out my cel-phone and was going to call them and tell them to send somebody out and the answering service told me they were open until 7:00. By then I had thrown on the 20 foot long composite decking. They were about out and there was not much to choose from anyway. The best part is that it looks different every time they get some in, so I will probably have the top deck in a two-tone.
-Here are some photos of the deck.

Here is how not to launch a 1.5 million dollar yacht. Great photos, though.

Monday..

I had to work today and stopped by Menard's on the way home. Got some screws and stuff. Then I was getting ready to go out and work on the deck when I started thinking about the total. $70.. hmm.. I looked and she charged me for 2 boxes of screws when I only got one. It was an $18 box of screws, so I will have to go talk to them about that one.

I don't know if anyone besides Stove will find this as funny as I do, but it is very well done.

Sat.

Well back to work today. Went in at 5:15 and left about 12:30. Came home and .. you guessed it.. worked on the deck. I got the last of the decking onto the lower deck today. Man it feels good to get something completed. Tomorrow I have to work so same deal. I hope to get the stairs put in to the upper deck.
I had originally put in for this vacation time right after my birthday in June. As it turns out the weather was perfect then. It was in the upper 70's and we did not even run the A/C most of the month. But I got denied. So had to wait until the hottest damn time in history to do this. I put in for 3 weeks knowing that I would have to work this weekend. So when I left 2 weeks ago I was off for the 2 weeks posted. Today I went in and noticed that I have to work Monday as well.
Crap.
So after the stairs go in I am hoping to get enough of the upper decking on to be able to set the door.
Right now I am just tired. Good night.

Monday

Man it was hot today, but I got a lot done on the deck.

-The story goes that this video was made by a MS employee who was fired as soon as they found out it was on the web. Funny though.

Sunday..

How many of these 80's commercials do you remember?

Saturday

Well it rained most of the day so there was not much progress on the deck monster. The good part was that since it was raining, I sat inside watching Carrie's team win the state championship.
After it cleared out I got the tops of the posts notched out and the rest of the ledgerboard onto the house. We are extending the old deck also. The new 2x8' joists are fatter then the old ones that they extend off of so I had to notch them out on the bottoms where they sit on the beams to match up. That sucked, but it is done.

Sports stuff..

A big CONGRATULATIONS (!) to Carrie (formerly Harbach) Wieland. She took over as coach of the Highland softball team a few years back and Sat. at noon they play for the state championship. Good for her. I bet she is a great coach. Well.. duh. They are in the finals.




If you have never seen Travis Pastrana ride, then you are missing out on some amazing stuff. Here is one of his rides. And, yes he landed the jump in the photo above.

Jake Brown had one of the worst crashes ever on a skateboard at the X games. The top of this silly ramp is 27 feet tall and he was almost 20 feet above that when he lost it and fell onto the flats. Amazingly he walked away with some help, but he is in the hospital with liver and lung injuries and a fractured wrist. They say he will make a full recovery. Man..

day... hell i don't know.

I was going to post a picture from the end of each day. But the end of day 3 looked like the end of day 1 from pictures, so I have not bothered.
We ran into all kinds of problems but are starting to make progress. The first problem was the retaining wall. I needed to sink a post by the wall and was going to do that but then I wondered if they counted the 42" from the top elevation or the bottom. Turns out they count the bottom, so we would have had to dig a hole about six feet deep. Yea... right. So we worked around that by moving out the wall. I was going to change it so that the wall was farther away from the hole and it would not effect the frost line of it. But as I was digging I found the foundation tile from the house right where I needed to dig. Hell. Bu then I got to thinking that I could run a post up from the od deck to the new deck to support that corner. SCORE! But that was another trip to the building permit place.
Anyhow, today we got some done. The posts are all set and I hope that it will start to look like we are doing something.

this made me smile.

What would you do if you had 2 big ass tesla coils? Well naturally you would program them to play the Mario Theme. Too funny.

Day 1

Got the door off and put the new one in. Got it painted. Tomorrow I should have permits in hand and start diggin' some holes.