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.

Sunday

Well I went to Menard's today and got the stuff to build a deck. Tomorrow I dig holes.
Yesterday I was there I was so sick of them not knowing what was going on. I got 2 doors for the project. They both open on the right side of the double door. After I found out how far the stairs come up to the second floor, I decided I better trade on in and have it open on the other side so you don't walk out and be right beside the stairs. As I was driving over there I realized that I did not grab the paperwork. I was almost there so I figured I would see if I could trade it in without it.
Guy at gate :no problem go get the one you need.
Guy at door 8: here's you door, just take this paper to millwork and they will get you fixed up.
Guy at millwork: You are good to go.
Guy at gate: Have a nice day.
Guy at gate that does not look like Jack Black: WAIT! You have to go to the desk and get papers drawn up to show the exchange.
*back up the truck and park it in the yard*
Guy at the desk. You have to go to customer service
Guy at customer service. Do you have a reciept?
Me: no, but they said I could just exchange it or I would have gone and gotten it.
Guy at customer service. Did you pay with a credit card?
Me: I don't know, my wife paid and I am not sure.
Guy at customer service. Well I will have to do a refund at the lowest sale price and the ring up the new one.
Me: Fine, I got this on sale and they are still on sale so it should all be good.
Guy at customer service: Okay, that will be $29.90.
Me: FOR FUCK'S SAKE WHY DON'T YOU PEOPLE GET YOUR SHIT STRAIGHT?
Guy at customer service: *blank stare*
So I call Mary and she tells me it is on a credit card and I go to the damn computer thing and it prints out a reciept.
Finally I get the hell out of there with the door I wanted.

Today I delt with this kid that knew nothing at all. That is FINE. I asked this kid a question one day and he told me he was sorry that he did not know since he was new, but Ed would know and he helped me find Ed. That is great. Perfect. Everyone is new at some time, but don't just spew out crap if you don't know.
I am using this stuff that attaches to the joists so you can screw to the composit decking from the bottom. I did now know what screws to use. I was holding a Torx bit that I had gotten to take out the old steps. I asked the kid today and he said "you have a torx bit" I told him that that was for something else. He said "we have torx head screws over here" I put the bit behind my back and said "pretend you never saw this, okay?" Then he mumbled about using triple coated deck screws probably about 2" long. Christ. So I looked around the stoor for the one guy I knew actually knows stuff and he told me that there are "deck mouting screws" in isle 9 (or whatever"
Can you tell I am sick of them already?

-Thanks to big Tim, Ranger Rick, and hillbilly Tom for getting my mower running. I had the motor off of it last weekend and was going up to Big Tim's. He said bring it along. It has leaked gas for a while but now it just stopped working. I have not run it for quite a while. Big Tim cleaned the jets on the carb and replaced the fuel line. Sweet. But it still didn't work. Ranger Rick suggested I might also sand off the coil and the flywheel. I did that and turned it over once and it took off. It runs like a sumbitch now. Clean jets and good spark. But the tire always goes flat on it. I took it off and was ready to take it in and remembered hillbilly Tom saying to shoot some Slime in it. I have never heard of that stuff but tried it and it took care of it lickity-split.
-More thanks to Big Tim. I called him to see if he still had his dads post hole digger. I left a message. He called back a few hours later and I told him wud up. He started laughing. The reason he did not answer his phone is because he was up in Delhi getting the post hole digger. I was going to be thrilled to go up and get it, but they even delivered it to me today.
-I called T&M Jay to see if I could borrow a framing nailer. He comes by sometimes with woodworking stuff... like can you rip this board kind of thing. He said if I ever need anything so I took him up on it. That will be nice.

-Moving on. This is what happens when a 200 TON marine enging falls off a truck and crushes a car so hard it drives it through the cement braking water lines. Yikes!

-Here is how you crash a super-yatch 30 seconds after you launch it for the first time.

-This guy is Way too good on an etch-o-sketch. I can't make a damn circle. Stove will like the one of Andy and the gang.

well that sucks

2 mustangs crashed today at Oshkosh. One dead.

-On to the good stuff.. 70 percent of zune owners want to ditch the zune in favor of an iPod or iPhone ASAP.

I was watching RIDES and they did a feature on Impressions. This is an amazing car that Chip Foose did. It was built from the ground up with about 4,000 one-off parts. I don't know what anyone could do to top this thing. Sometimes Fooses goes overbaord with huge ass wheels, but this thing is about as classy of a roadster as you will ever find.

I am not sure if it was that show of another where i saw Unique Performance featured. They are pretty amazing guys too. They comb junkyards and find POS mustangs and transform them into Eleanor's for public consumption. These things are so totally rebuilt that god himself, a.k.a. Caroll Shelby, issues them a new serial number. Cool to see some car guys from Texas who were able to turn their love into a successful business.

VACATIOIN!

I am on vacation for THREE weeks! SCHWING!!!!

Here is a PC case that is built into a drum. It is really cool except for one thing. It is stupid as hell.

it was loud in my neighborhood last night.

This was taken off my back deck. The Johnson County Fair ended tonight. That was cool.

Just when you thought you had seen it all..

After years of trashing the Mac, John C. Dvorak actually uses a Mac for a while and finds out that they are more stable and elegant then PC's. Wow. Who knew?

It's very quiet, and it performs as well as the PC on general office applications. Generally speaking, the interface is slicker than the PC's, and you get the sense that the computer isn't about to start acting weird because of some virus, spyware, or endless Firefox loading procedure going on in the background and killing all the cycles of the computer


To me it would make sense for a journalist to actually use a product before they go and trash it for years all over the net. That's just me though.

changing of the guard.

Well my days of stopping at UI surplus are over. Back in the day they would have a Mac marked at say $50 and I would ask Brandon what he would take for it. He would say $20 and I would ask how much for 2 of them. He would say hmm.... $20 and I would get two of them. A few weeks back I stopped in and they had some G4's marked for $150 and I asked the kid with the goofy ass mohawk how much he would take for it. He said $150 like it says. He is really cool because he carries around drum sticks to let everyone know he is in a band, so he is my hero.
Today I was driving by on the way home from submitting my plans to get a permit for the new deck. They had a shit load of Mac's but they were overpriced and so I just looked around and left. But while I was there this lady came in and said she wanted to look at Mac's. Now to me if somebody says that, then they probably already know what they are but he offered his expert opinion on the subject.
there are 2 kinds of computer. Ones that run Windows and ones that run OS X
It would seem that it is actually pronounced "O S (letter)X" He is after all an expert. I guess he does not know about the millions of Linix users out there either.
She said "i know but you can do a lot of cool things on a Mac"
Captian Mohawk said: Yea if you spend three thousand dollars to get an intel Mac so it can run windows
What a dickweed. Perhaps she does not want to run friggin windows and besides you don't have to get a fully loaded Mac Pro to do it.
The whole thing pissed me off and I was leaving anyway so I walked out. But after I left I wondered why I did not call him on his stupidity. It is not like before where I had a relationship with them that I needed to maintain. Brandon was a full tilt geek. He had Mac's and Windows boxes, and a Next cube at home and knew off the top of his head what mother board and what type RAM was in any given computer. This dork has .. well...
He has drumsticks.
So it was fun but now it is over. Sadness.

This was kind of fun to watch this kid progress on the drums. RUSH at age five. SRV at age six. And wipe out at age 11. Hey, wait a minute.

A Drumming Legend In The Making - Watch more free videos

State tetris. What a great idea.

well I give up.

Mary is on the board of the home owner's assocation. The pond looks like crap covered with algae. We need to do something about it. The board has been talking about doing something for a while, but nothing got done. Mary and I both spent a fair chunk of time reading up on it on the 'net. She found the Iowa Pond Guy and had him over. He suggested we get the aeration system that they had been talking about, except it was going to cost a lot less then they had been quoted by somebody else. So the plan was to get electricity run out to the pond to power it and then we would have him install it. But there was not enough money to buy the thing and pay $1600 for an electrician to run the wires. But we needed to get it done. So the president set out to get the electrician up the street to get it done. A month or more it still is not done. Mary went ahead and ordered the pump for the system, but one of the board members was all upset because she thought that we were going to get the electricity run and spend all of our money on that and then some day we would get the aeration system to run on our fancy new outlet. WTF? Our pond would be totally covered with algea and the fish we bought will all be dead by then, but damnit we would have an outlet out by the pond.
So I was thinking about it and wondered why we could not put the pump by our house on the side. It is small and very quite. We could run some hose down to the water. We would save $1,600 for the electrician. Plus I know it is just a matter of time before some kid threw the thing in the water if it was sitting down there. Brandon the pond guy and said sure we could do that and so he came over yesterday and installed it. He ran the hose across the yard down to the water. Today I spent about five hours digging up our yard and burying the hose all the way down to the water. That turned out really well.
So I am damn tired and have 2 big ass blisters on my hands, but I feel pretty good about it. Then the president calls and asks what is up. I am thinking that he will be thrilled that SOMEBODY friggin did something. It takes a month for one of them to make a phone call and the other one can't get a news letter sent out for the last 2 months. I set up a website so that we could post news and people could contact the board via email, but nobody knows about it because she can't get the friggin news letter out that includes the info about the website. Anyhow, the president was not thrilled. He is worried about what will happen if we move. WHO THE HELL CARES. If we move it will be years and years from now. Why would it be a problem when we do anyway? And if he is so damn worried about it then when they have enough money they can pay an electrician to wire up the pump down by the pond so it can be destroyed. Or they could just go throw $3,000 right into the pond.
Christ that pissed me off. Mary was about ready to quit a while ago, but then nothing would ever have gotten done.
Why do people get on the boards if they don't give a shit and don't want to do a damn thing? It is not like it pays money, or is a really cool thing to do.
I am pissed off and going to bed now.

FRIDAY

Here is an F4 Phantom being vaporized as it crashes into a wall. Cool and sad all at the same time.

Harry Potter stuff.

It is now reported that the guy that shot the pictures of the harry potter book and posted them on the web might just be in a world of troule. HERE is the META data (or whatever it is) that is stored on the digital pictures he took. Including the serial number of his camera.

Fark off

Those of you who frequent FARK know this guy. If not, well he is a cliche that lives in Farklore. He became famous for being busted for huffing paint. If you can't see it, he has gold paint all over his chin. Well.. he is back at it.

-You have never heard of this Iowan, but you have heard Paris Hilton's name about 12,000 times in the last year. Yea, that makes sense.

I want one of these

Too funny.

Monday

Thought this was kind of funny..

Sunday

I love the last line in this article.

I am not really sure exactly what this means, but I think somebody needs to ask the question. EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUDGET OUTLAY JUMPS 10X in one year and doubles that the next?

-OOPS

- I thought this was well done.



-This is just wrong. -FARK-

-Most interesting mug shot of the day. -FARK-

a dingo ate my baby..

Gotta work late this weekend, so the whole deal is shot.. but hey what can you do?

-here is some justice. I love stories like this.

-Talk about putting a happy spin on things: This is amazing. There is a parade. Float loses brakes. Citizen struck by float. Serious head injuries. Except for a tragic accident, the 35th annual Bath Heritage Days parade went off without a hitch.
Then the article spews a bunch of fluff and paints a picture of a parade that was perfect in every way. They never actually said what the incident was. One of the FARK readers found that in another article WTF? Is this FOX news reporting about the war or something?

Some contractors were at the hospital today. They had a Toro Dingo. I have seen those before and thought they were cool little front loaders. But these guys had attachments for it filling up a trailer. What a great little machine. They used a forklift to bring in palets of stuff, a tiller to cultivate the bed, a front loader to bring in mulch and I also saw an auger on the trailer as well as a back hoe. So I looked up the attachments that are available for it. Sheez, there are over 30 of them. You can even get a cement mixer on it. I think I need one of them. That and another job.

-OUCH "we're not doin' that anymore!"

-HOLY CRAP!



-Better then this I guess.

-DAMN! This guy knows how to use Illustrator. Amazing stuff.

i phone

Will the iPhone blend?

Instead of blending it, use it to control your PC.

Speaking of Apple, looks like their market cap passed Dell and Oracle. Suck it, Micheal Dell. Remember this quote?

In 1997, shortly after Mr. Jobs returned to Apple, the company he helped start in 1976, Dell's founder and chairman, Michael S. Dell, was asked at a technology conference what might be done to fix Apple, then deeply troubled financially.

"What would I do?" Mr. Dell said to an audience of several thousand information technology managers. "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."

Friday!

-I will be curious to see how much these guitars go for. TOM JONES! WOOO

Happy 4th.

Hope everyone enjoys the day. It is really nice here although a little hot. Hey, it's July in Iowa. Dwight (big D) and family are coming over to go boating and grill out. Then it is off to the fieworks in Coralville.
This is a great test. I counted 16 white shirts, but the end was a total surprise.

some things..

some things you did not know the iPhone could do :-)

JUSTICE!!!

Thought this was kind of funny:






-I hate tech-scalpers. You know the guys that buy up the latest gadget and put it on ebay. We waited months to get a Wii because none of the stores had them. But yet, there were a million of them on eBay. So this video made my day.

Sunday.

You know.. Leo's post of Heart's video back in the glory days reminded me of something. Last week they were pimping a comp. cd of metal bands on TV. Vixen was on there. Don't know much about them, but I remember people saying, "they are hot". As far as "they are a great band"... not so much. So I wondered what happened to them and consulted Google. The good news is they are still at it. Playing live. The bad news is there are photos.
Photo 1
Photo 2