Happy New Year

We are staying home tonight. Some friends are coming over, and we will sit around eating junk food and probably playing cards or something. I have to work at 5:00 tomorrow morning, so I won't be drinking very much and will try to get to bed asap. Hopefully by 1:00. :-( Oh well....

I have been reading the rumors on the web the last few days. Macworld Expo is coming up next week. Apple already announced that Steve Jobs won't be there, and they are pulling out after this year. That will mean the end of the expo, probably.
It has always amused me that they Macworld Expo takes place the same time as the CES. In one building you have Apple stuff. At another show you have EVERY OTHER company that makes software, hardware, and any kind of gadget. Most of the press is over at Macworld to see what the next cool item will be and the rest of the industry gets overshadowed.
Hopefully that will continue...
But here are a few of the rumors that I have read this week that I can remember.
*Steve Job's health is very bad and he won't be around much more. I think that was on Gizmodo, and so it is on thousands of blogs. It is based on an un-named source.
*Steve Jobs is doing fine because one blogger knows somebody that works in the yogurt shop where Steve goes, and they said he is fine.
*There will be a smaller iPhone probably called the nano.
*There will be a bigger iPod touch.
*There will be an updated mini that can hold 2 HD and be a server.
*There will be an update to the iMac.
*Monkeys will fly out of my butt.
*quadcore macbook pro's.
*an Apple netbook.
It is like a train wreck. I hate the dumb rumors, but I can't help but look. They have hurt Apple in the past when they hype up so much crap ($800 macbooks) that they can't possibly live up to the hype and people are let down. They have hurt them when they speculate about Steve Job's health (Rumor: he had a heart attack) and stock dives. I feel like part of the problem because I read them too.

Monday

In case you can't read the text on the ad below, it says,"our new photo printer poops out your prints." I may be wrong about that.

HERE is why florida has its own tag on FARK.

DOH! I just accidentally figured out that if you have an extra finger on the trackpad on the Macbook when you click, it acts as a right click. Well that makes it a lot easier.

I thought this article was interesting. The guy from Snapper tells Wally that he does not want to sell their mowers at the biggest consumer outlet in the world. Kudos to you, sir.

sunday

How many matchsticks does it take to make a full sized F1 race car? Well, I don't know. But this guy does. The real news story here is that he has a woman in his life besides his mom.

Here is my contribution to the whole global warming thing. I am still not convinced if it is a problem or not, nor am I saying that this guy has the solution. Merely that it is interesting and he has a few good points.

Last night when I was watching kids play guitar I saw this kid. I really like this little man, but somebody needs to tell these kids that if they take all that time they wasted practicing guitar, they could have learned how to beat the hard level on Guitar Hero like everyone else.
One more kid for you to watch if you wanna. He is really good with many instruments and just looks natural doing it.

Saturday

Had to go back to work today. Blah. Oh well.
So what were you doing when you were 8 years old? This kid was playing with Buddy Guy. Kind of a long video but it is worth it to see the exchanges between the 2 musicians and the smile on Buddy's face.

Merry Christmas.

We had a nice day. Got up at 06:00 and opened a bunch of stuff and then just hung out all day. Mary's niece came down with her boyfriend and their son. Always nice to have a 'ute around for the holidays and it was nice to see them. Her dad and his wife came down after that. I kind of wanted to do ao big roast but we were not sure who was coming over and when, so Mary made a pot of chili and I made some corn muffins and just left it on the stove all day. That worked out well. Everyone got home before the rain started. It is pouring rain now and I am sure it is freezing. It should be a big ole' mess tomorrow, but we all have the day off so that it good. All in all a pretty good Christmas indeed.
**
This video would not be funny to me if it were some red necks doing this and I had some clue as to what they are saying, or if the one guy was not laughing. Anyhow, watch it because I said so.

got one cabinet done!

I finished up one of the cabinets today. It has all of my air tools in it. Each drawer has a tool and the nails/brads/staples that go with each. The router table is about done, but I have to make 2 doors and have not gotten around to that yet. I think that I will do raised panels and that takes some time. Plus I needed the router table to be done enough to use it before I could do that. The dust collection is from below. You can kind of see the hole in the bottom. Right below that is a lever that you can't see that opens the blast gate and also turns on the dust collection.
I used the flooring that I got cheap off of Craig's List to make the face frames and the drawer fronts. That was a lot of extra work, but I am too cheap to use real oak for something like this.
I am trying to figure out how I want to do the fence. I have some T-Track to use to secure it. I want to make a hole behind the hole for the router in the top. The fence will have a tunnel that covers the hole and so the suction should draw the dust back through the tunnel and into the hole. It will be such that the hole is covered by the fence as it moves back and forth to be adjusted. Does that make sense? I have never seen anyone do it that way before, but I think it should work. I can't hang a hose off of the back like most people do. I kind of don't like that setup anyway. I just need to figure out how big and how tall I want to make it.
If you look closely you can see that there is a second hole cut out in the table saw extension. I wanted to put the router table farther to the left, but that would limit how long of a board I could work since the miter saw is there. If I had done that I could have used the table saw's Biesemeyer for a fence and that would have been slick. The second hole had a blank Lexan plate over it. I can put the router in that slot and then I can slide panels across the table saw to cut dados on bigger pieces. I did that when I made the router table and it worked out pretty darn slick. There is another hole in the back of the router table cabinet with a 5" collar on it so I can run some flex hose from that part to the main part. I am hoping that when the blank plate is on the second hole it won't effect the suction in the main part and when I switch them out it should suck out of the second part. If that does not work I will just add another blast gate and another damn wye on the DC. I would like to avoid that if I can.





****
So your client is on trial for smashing a 12 lb rock over the head of a puppy. You claim that it is really a dog and the media is posting cute pictures of the dog to unfairly get support against him. Then you say this: "I'm sure Jeffrey Dahmer had baby photos that were very cute,"
How exactly does that help your client? Yea, most serial killers start out by killing animals.
I was reading up on this and followed some links. Found some sad stuff. HERE is a video of a dog being shot by an officer who stopped for directions at a woman's house. HERE is a (poorly written) article about "puppycide" which included this: Milwaukee resident Virginia Villo is suing that city for the 2004 police shooting of her lab-springer spaniel mix, Bubba. As part of her lawsuit, she requested police reports of every dog killed by Milwaukee police over a nine-year period. The request turned up 434 dead puppy reports, or about one every seven-and-a-half days.
***
HERE is a bunch of real life Far Side re-enactments. The end result is not as funny as the concept, but still...
***
HERE is a video for ya. Watch it. Enjoy. The first guy plays guitar and then starts singing. I think really nice voice. Second guy sings. Cool voice. Third guy sings. Really unique voice and I really like it. Then the guy with the teeth sings. Cripes. Where does that kind of voice come from? It is like the first time you saw Don LaFontaine, the movie voice over dude. You know voices like that are out there, but you don't really expect them to belong to a real person. Okay, that made no sense. But neither do I.
Turns out he was a "world idol" contestant (winner?). Hey, look he knows willie.

Tuesday

Here is some great reporting from our local news source. It seems that furnaces break down more when it is cold. I never thought about it, but now that they mention it, it seems like my furnace never breaks down during the summer. Good work KCRG. HERE is the scoop.

Fox news just had a story that FEMA has thousands of empty trailers that they have to pay to store and they should get rid of them because that costs millions of dollars. But if they... oh, never mind.

Right now they are showing a water main break in MD. The pipe was either 5.5 feet in diameter or 8 feet (2 different reports) and is flooding the road. There are people trapped in cars. FOX is there. "but how could they (the rescue squad) know how to call them on their cellphone?" "They probably looked up their license plates." Or... Do... You... Suppose: People trapped in cars in raging rivers USUALLY CALL 911.

HERE is a story of a guy that buys 1,300 bucks in Wally gift cards to give out to randome folks. Walmart: You have to leave. Target: Bring 'em over here and we will honor them.

THIS guy knows how to wheel a car..

Placement of the price tag can be important....


This clip is kind of odd.. Watch it and then read the comments below...

The story is that somebody in the audience memorized all of the prices on the show and was feeding them to the winning guy. Drew knew he would have a perfect bid and was not too thrilled about it. Hence his reaction.

Sunday

First off... Brrrrr. -40 wind chill.
Second: You have won the race. You are a hero. Make sure you do something really stupid and dangerous and top it off with a big FAIL tag. HERE YA GO.

When we lived in the other house somebody named their wireless network "bush is a douche bag". I thought that was kind of clever. I just saw this on macenstein and was amused. I guess he does not like his neighbors so much.

Man it is windy and snowing out. Good day to stay home. Our neighbors had a dinner party so they brought thier son over to hang out. He is a pretty good little dude and Alex and he are playing on the Wii. They are some nice folks so we were glad to help them out. Plus they bring us meat:-)

Michael Connell. Never heard his name until today. He died when his airplane ran out of gas. That works out really well for GW and some others. HERE is the story.

HERE is the coolest way to scan books that I have seen all day.

Damn, Mike...

****
Ya know what... this one starts out okay but falls apart really fast..

The Worst Iron Man Cover - Watch more Free Videos
But this one, on the other hand, really never stands a chance.

The Worst Nirvana Cover Ever - Watch more Free Videos

So there has been a "ninja robber" running around in Iowa City. (It made FARK today) Turns out it was one of the nice people that they arrested at Gasby's the other day. Then ones that live in assisted housing in my old neighborhood. Awsome.

I am on vacation now :-) Bad week at work, but as always we seem to get through it. We had 2.5"of snow and .5" of ice last night. I went in at 4:00 a.m. because it promised to be an interesting day. Days like that are kind of crazy, but it is kind of fun to try to make it work and in the end you walk away feeling pretty good that you pulled it off.

We ordered some stuff for the kids and had not gotten them yet. Can't say what they are just in case one of the might check in here, but they are fairly expensive. Mary and I were in the garage today and I saw a crumpled up piece of paper on the garage floor between the cars. I picked it up and found it to be a UPS package that had been ripped open and thrown into our garage. The kids and Mary were home all day and I got home before noon. (the nice part about starting work that early). So why didn't they ring the doorbell or if they came into our garage, knock on the door? We were worried because we did not know if both of them were originally in the package or not. I called the company and the other one ships Monday so it was not missing. Then I called UPS to let them know that I was not impressed with the service.

Crap I just checked the forecast. More snow tomorrow and Monday will have a high of -9. BRR.

one more thing to think about..

I know.. I said on Leo's blog that I quit reading this crap because every expert has a different opinion about global warming, but I had to read this one because it fits my opinion, so IT MUST BE RIGHT. Electric cars are a bigger damn joke then ethanol.

Anyhow... happy holidays.

why we moved..

THIS JUST IN: This will be Apple's last appearance at Macworld Expo and Steve Jobs won't deliver the keynote. That is kind of sad. I am sure that it will be enough to send stocks down again. This weeks stupid ass rumor is that they are going to announce a Mac netbook even though Jobs said that they will never do it. Somebody reported that they are going to and now people are just accepting that it will happen. Last week it was that Apple will sell the iPhone at Wally-world for $150 for the 8gig model.
We went through this all before. Somebody said they would release an $800 macbook and so when they did not, everybody was disappointed, felt cheated, and stocks fell. Here we go again.
*****

Some guys tired to rob a gas station in town but some cops were there and took them down. This was in the paper today

“Fearing the suspects would harm the clerk; Rich entered the store and confronted the suspects. Rich detained one of the men inside the store, later identified as Frederick Hamp Reid, 26, of 2418 Aster Ave. The second suspect, Ahkinea Deon Cox, a.k.a. Lil Bit, 29, of 2548 Indigo Drive, ran from the store, but was “caught and overpowered,” by the SCAT officers and K-9 unit a short distance away, according to police.”

“Further investigation by police revealed that one of the suspects threatened to cut the clerk. The clerk also told police that the men indicated Reid was carrying a gun.”

“While conducting a search on Reid, police found crack cocaine in his pocket. Reid allegedly admitted to using crack cocaine, police said. Police said Reid has several previous drug convictions. Cox was charged with and pleaded guilty to assault causing bodily injury earlier this year.”

That house that the admitted crack head lives in is, yes, owned by the city. There is our old house, then a Habitat for Humanity house, then the crack house owned by the city. The other one on Indigo is a block over from us. Probably low income also.

saturday. Service pack. 1.3.2

Well this is about the coolest looking car (?) I have seen in a long time. The only problem I can see with it is the little issue of safety. But it sure is a slick design.

Saturday

Here is a video of me (I wish) using an band saw. I think he has done this before.

Friday

That week went by quickly. Tim was sick the last two days and now Mary has it. Pretty nasty stuff. Hope you all stay clear of it. Hope I do.
As much as I like to say that our dog Crosby is stupid, he really is a smart dog. Mary taught him to bring his food dish inside. Then he brings it over and drops it on her lap when he is hungry. Today he did that and Mary was not feeling up to getting to food so she told him to take it to Tim. Crosby took it over and gave it to him. Pretty smart for a dumb dog.
**
HERE is a look at the future of American currency. Yea, keep crankin' out those bills. If my calculations are correct, my house would cost about 12.5 trillion Zimbabwe dollars. I am rich!

HARARE, Zimbabwe, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe introduced new $200 million and $500 million notes in Harare on Friday.
The RBZ says the new notes should pave way for the increase in withdrawal limits to $500 million a week.

A week ago, the RBZ unveiled $10 million, $50 million and $100 million notes.

Officials say the 500 million Zimbabwean dollar note is worth about $8 in U.S. currency, enough to buy eight loaves of bread, in the southern African country's latest sign of spiraling hyperinflation.

****

I gotta ask... what did they think would happen?

Tuesday

Well we missed the snow and ice so far. They called off school, but as it turns out it was really unnecessary. The kids get a free day. Since they are seniors, they don't have to make up snow days.
Our internet is out right now. I guess that one of my neighbor's is not, however. I was able to log onto their network and post this. :-)
**
If you are going to steal something, you might not want to steal cameras that record you committing the crime.
Reminds me of these dumb ass criminals that stole 14 GPS units from the city. How did they ever get caught?
***
Stove had a link to this video about a dumb ass biker dude. If case you did not see it there, you really should see it here. The very ending is the best part.


***
I have gotten used to using the macbook and really like the 2 finger scrolling. I knew that 3 fingers did something, but I did not want to read the directions because.. well. I am a guy. Last night I was on the net and accidentally dragged three fingers across the pad. It went back to the previous page. Sweet. Went the other direction and it went forward. That really makes it slick to surf. Nice touch.

Sunday

I just read that Adobe dropped out of Macworld Expo. I read a few days ago that they laid off 600 workers also. Belkin also dropped out of the Expo. I am not sure what all of this means, but it is noteworthy.

Saturday

Mary and I went shopping today. It was really kind of fun. We got some things for the kids and did well on some sales. People were actually quite friendly at the stores. We held doors for folks and they held them open for us. It was what Christmas shopping is supposed to be like.

I got the Macbook Pro yesterday. Golly it really is cool. Steve and I did a video conference just to try it out. That is pretty slick. He took over my desktop and moved stuff around. Kinda weird. But then again, so is Steve. I have my monitor hooked up to it right now and have mail on this screen and my web browser on the other. Why? Just because I can. I am getting used to the keyboard and actually like it once I get my hands to start in the right place.


********
Here is a video of some cops busting into a house because they got information that there was pot being grown there. It was actually a sting and they were just growing evergreen trees. So how did they get the warrant?

cool tool box

This is really impressive..

funny

HERE is a pretty funny spoof of the Apple culture by the Simpsons.

Wed.

So Microsoft had this great idea. Have people create animated avitars. Funny thing is that they look just like the ones on the nintendo Wii. Even the music that plays when you edit them is a rip off. Pretty lame. My avitar is kind of funny though. This is me


FARK had a link to this Craig's List ad. Pretty funny stuff.

FARK also had a link to this list of optical illusions.

***********
THIS is pretty scary....

Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

Tuesday

Spent my day off today painting some more. I think we are about done with that. It really does look nice and I am so glad to not be looking at white walls.
I had a couple of guys come down from Cedar Rapids to buy the lights and the light trees (A.K.A. "Klingon warrior weapons"). I got $ 150 out of it and they seemed quite happy with the deal.
We had our meat all lined up for Thanksgiving. I have a turkey my neighbor Scott gave me and a ham that my boss gave me. Today Scott came by and dropped off another ham. That one is frozen, so it went into the freezer for future reference. Man, I love that.
My neighbor Dan stopped by last night. His big TV went on the fritz and nobody would work on it. He knows a guy who's dad fixes TV's in Williamsburg. I told him I would take him over in the truck. He got it fixed and we went to pick it up a week later. After the first trip Dan tried to give me gas money, but I really did not want it. I am just so damn glad to have nice neighbors that I was glad to do it and it was kind of fun to go on a trip. So his wife baked us some cookies. She likes to do that. Last night when he stopped by he dropped off a gift certificate to Okaboji Grill. That is one of our favorite places. I get the 14 oz steak burger and Mary gets steak. Yummy! My neighbors are trying to make me fat.
Here is a feel good video for you.

Sunday

We are going to try to paint today *bleh* so that should suck up most of the day.
HERE is something you have never seen before: A meteor caught on a police dash cam. Daing!

saturday

We are watching Fast Times right now. We were telling Tim about all of the people that went on to become way famous. All of the stoners.. Erich Stolz, Anthony Edwards, and Nicholas Cage were all in one scene with Sean Penn. I was trying to tell Tim who Nicholas Cage is (besides Francis Ford Copela's nephew) and IMDB'd his name. Wow, he is busy..

The Dance (2010) (announced) .... Billy 'The Kid' Roth
Electric God (2009) (announced)
Amarillo Slim (2009) (pre-production)
Riot (2009) (pre-production) .... Karl Rix
... aka John Carpenter's Riot (USA: complete title)
The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2009) (pre-production)
Season of the Witch (2010) (filming)
Astro Boy (2009) (filming) (voice) .... Dr. Tenma
Kick-Ass (2009) (filming) .... Damon Macready
G-Force (2009) (post-production) (voice) .... Speckles
Knowing (2009) (post-production) .... Ted Myles
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009) (post-production)

Friday 1.1

This is silly and cool.

FRIDAY!

I will say it again... FRIDAY!
THIS got a well deserved FAIL tag on FARK. Suicide bomber is badly injured when he can't get the toilet stall door open and can't run into packed room and kill a bunch of folks.

Tuesday

I have the day off so NANNY NANNY POO POO.
I was just reading about Timothy Mcveigh who blew up the Murrah building in OK and killed 168 human beings. This is what I found funny.....
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wrote to the warden and to Timothy McVeigh, requesting that his last meals be vegetarian so that he would not be involved in the taking of any more lives.
Yea, like if he dined on tofu and sprouts before they killed him, he could die with a clear conscious and be assured of his ticket to heaven.
Morons.

monday

HERE is the new voice recognition app from Google that they released for the iPhone. That was surprising since it is not out for Android yet. Really slick stuff.

Sunday

Wonder what Obama's website would look like in Hebrew? Well it would be a mirror image since they read right to left. Giz has the story. Kind of funny that they make no apologies for it.
Hope that is not too political for anybody.

Saturday

This guy got a Hero tag on FARK. He deserves it.

Friday

Gotta work this weekend. *ack* That happens I guess. I have gotten a lot done on the router table and extension table thingy. I used the oak I got in the flooring deal to trim out the table. Looks really nice. Pictures soon. Really.
HERE is a puppy cam. Kind of cute.
Live video chat by Ustream

Thursday..

I took tomorrow off. I was able to take a rare vacation day. Sweet!

Here is a unique property. click on the "more images" at the bottom.

Wow. You can get a 1TB HD for a hundred bucks now. Sheez.

This is a cute little app for your iPod or iPhone to record four track stuff. Don't know how practical it is, but it looks cool.

Wow

DIG THIS CRAZY NEW TECHNOLOGY!! LINK
***
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." LINK

Today he is asking his workers to take unpaid time off to try to save the company some money. Apple increased the number of folks on its payroll by 48%.
**
So I don't get this: Launching action against iTunes because you can't put the songs on other media players? Yea? Here's the deal. If you don't think that it is fair, don't buy it. Simple.
**

I really want to vote..

I really want to vote today. But I can't. Because neither party can give me a candidate that does not scare me to death.
I would vote for Obama, but I really don't know what the hell he stands for. He has not been around long enough to tell. What I have seen worries me. What worries me more is if the Dem's control the whole shootin' match. Got help us.
I really would vote Republican but that scares me also.
Here is what I can predict, however. There will be an assassination attempt in the coming months. There are millions of rednecks and skin heads in this country. The vast majority of them own guns. Do the math. On the other hand, if the election goes the other way, it won't take long for Iran (or any other country that hates us) to figure out that we are one bullet away from having Sarah Palin running the country.
**
So iPhone production being cut. That is the news all over the net. Here is a guy on cnet that calls out the guy making this claim.
**
THIS is pretty funny.

FRIDAY

And I hope everyone has a good weekend. I have been going in at 05:00 so as a result I get out early and get to start the weekend. Lots to do, but I wanted to pass this on. I think that Microsoft is starting to hear some footsteps behind them...

Tuesday

WOW. You can watch all of MTV's videos now online. Very cool.

FRIDAY!!

I really enjoyed this from the head of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division:
"Apple had a big launch of a new product, and they launched at scale in a lot of new countries with a lot of new operators," Bach told BusinessWeek. "This quarter, RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) is having its big launch, and at some point we'll have our big launch.
So after RIM and Apple spend millions of bucks developing a new device that changes the industry, Microsoft will come along, rip off their ideas, and still manage to make a clunky, ugly ass knock off. They just don't know when.
HERE is a kind of interesting article on how much revenue the iPhone is really bringing in.
HERE is a guy that wrote an app for the iPhone and made $250,000 in the first two months. Daing! I think Stove should port "Warren" to the iPhone. :-)

I liked this one...

I usually don't get into these ad's so much, but I liked this one....

the iPhone will fail!

I saw this blog entry from a Microsoft employee a long time ago and bookmarked it like he said to. He, being an employee of MS, knows everything and could see the inevitable failure of the iPhone. He said to bookmark the page so we could look back in Dec. of 08 at how he had predicted the epic failure.
Bookmark this page and come back in December 2008 if Apple sells anywhere near the 10M phones they're targeting
Apple sold 6.9 million phones THIS QUARTER. Add that to the 6.1 million original phones sold and you are already over the top. We still have the holiday season before his deadline.
So feel free to stop by and tell him how silly he really is looking right now.

tuesday

Remember the Enzo that became famous when Eddy Griffin crashed it onto a barrier? Well it got restored. Nice. If you can't afford the $1.2M, you could always build your own lambo in the basement and then cut a hole in the foundation to drag it out.

It looks like my hours got changed a bit. We have been going in at 5:00 instead of 5:30 off and on for the last six months because we are short of supervisors more times then not. We went ahead and changed it to 5:00 every day so I don't have to keep checking every day and changing my alarm and stuff. That is actually a good thing. It is nice to get off at 1:30.

Monday

I had the day off today. Nice. Worked on the shop cabinets. I wound up buying some oak off of craigs list today. It is used oak as seen in the photo. I need to trim out the cabinets that I am building and I can use this stuff for that, so right there it was worth it. Now I need to unload it and find a place to put it.


I think that Apple forgot something on this Macbook. It is the "B" key in case you did not figure it out.

Sunday

HERE is a guy's feedback page. He is a great vendor. Lots of positive feedback. Lots of nice camera equipment and laptops. Oh, he was a TSA employee. Ya, know.. the guy that takes your luggage at the airport and puts it on the plane. You can't lock your bag because they have the right to break the lock. You can't sue the airline or TSA because they make you sign away your rights there too. He was only caught because he tried to pawn off a $50K camera that he stole from from CNN. I guess he thought that a $50K cameras are on eBay all the time and nobody would notice it. HERE's the story.

I am SICK of Iowa City. There was a robbery here. The local rag reported the story. Notice anything missing from the following information:
The store's clerk said a subject entered the store and demanded cash, and at some time during the encounter, the suspect displayed a black handgun. No one was injured.
The suspect fled on foot to the north along Gilbert Street with an undetermined amount of cash. The victim described the suspect as a man between 25 and 30 years old, about 5-feet-7-inches tall, wearing baggy pants, a hooded sweatshirt and a bandana over his face.
In case you don't live in IC and have not figured it out here is what was missing. He was black. The police report said so. But in Iowa City it is okay to say that the gun was black, but not the perp. Welcome to extremeliberaltown, USA. I am not a conservative any more then I am a liberal, but too much of anything is just bad. Except pizza.

Friday

Here is something you don't often see on eBay. A car with this: Two custom built jet engines, hand built from polished stainless stell, were fitted around the Keith Black Nitro Hemi
HERE it is.

Thursday

HERE is a history of pranks at MIT. Funny nerds.

Wed. Service pack 2.4.1

I found this on boingboing. GREAT STUFF.

Wed.

This poor guy. He bought a black iPod for his daughter. The earbuds were white! And the store would not fix the problem! How was he to know that even thought the first 100,000,000 iPods sold had white earbuds that his would too? Just because they are an icon of a generation?

too funny

Sooo the new Macbook launched today. Pretty cool. But what about the $800 price tag that was reported on the net? Well it did not happen. And the best part is that the guy that started the rumor is taking credit for it and saying that he was right. He said that Apple would launch an $800. Well, the cinema display launched today was $900. So I guess in his mind a monitor for 900 bucks is the same as a laptop for 800. Talking about the Cinema Display he said...
It’ll be available in November for $899 — presumably making it the rumored $800-range product first reported here last week.
Yea, you were right on the money there, dork.

Tuesday

Let's just get this out of the way right now. If a valedictorian had given her speech and praised Buddha or Allah or Rocky the Flying Squirrel, that would have been okay because we are free to worship whomever we wish in this country. But this student had the NERVE to praise Jesus Christ. What was she thinking. Can you imagine if we had denied graduation to a student because he praised Allah what an uproar we would see.
I drove by the old neighborhood on the way home from work today. I saw Steve in the garage and stopped in. Steve is the son in the Kim family. They were great neighbors that came from Vietnam. He and his wife and son live with his mom and dad in the house across the street from out old house. He asked me if I wanted to see the baby so I came in to see his son. WOW. They had another 'yute. Little girl. Cute. As I was leaving he said how he wanted to get out of there, but mom and dad are about ready to retire and he works for a company that makes car parts here in town and so he is not so sure about his future with them. I feel really bad for them. The house is paid for. I would sell it NOW for whatever I could and get the hell out. A year from now the neighborhood will not be any better. They are slapping THREE more habitat for humanity houses on the block. Did I mention Habitat for Humanity SUCKS? That makes about 8 or 9 now. I think I would get what I could for that house and go buy while the market is depressed. They might have to pay $30K or something. But if they did a loan that would probably be less then our cable bill. They bought the first house built on that block as part of their American dream. They had no idea that Iowa City was getting ready to take a dump on that part of town. Nor did we. That was a very expensive lesson.
Ok then. I am done. I am off tomorrow so I hope to get some stuff done in the shop and if I do, I will post some pictures.

FRIDAY!

I just got done doing a double at work. In at 5 a.m. out at 7:30 p.m. Long day to say the least. While at work a woman told me a story about my old neighborhood. It seems her brother in law works for Habitat For Humanity. If I have not mentioned it today, Habitat For Humanity SUCKS!! I digress. Seems they were building YET ANOTHER house by our old house and the cops came by to tell them to stay inside because somebody was running loose with a gun. Thank you Iowa City for killing a really nice neighborhood.

So if you are Comcast and you already have a ton of bad PR and now your guy floods a woman's kitchen with sewage, wouldn't you pay the extra $3,000 NOT to have this all over the internet? What are they thinking? I am sure they will spend $3k left and right on ad's. STORY The woman just wants her stuff fixed and if they had, nobody would have ever heard about this.

HERE is the most fugly car I have seen in a long time.

Great FARK tag: Former Mad Magazine cover artist takes job as Houston PD sketch artist. You have to click on the link and see the photo before you LOL.

-So the new Blackberry Storm is out. Cool lookin' phone indeed. But if you are going to get people to leave the iPhone, what better way then to show it with the iPhone screen and interface pasted over your phone? Too funny. STORY

{ More)Tuesday

I have the day off and have a lot to do. So that is why I am sitting here playing THIS game. The best I have gotten was a 42. How did you do?

HERE are some pretty cool photos.

Sunday

HERE is a great story about Chuck Yeager.

Sat.

In case you need more proof that Bill O' is a total ass-hat.. here you go.

We have the window and door out of the house that we replaced when we built on. It was supposed to go to a relative about a year ago, but that never came about, and I really want them out of the garage. I was going to give them to Habitat for Humanity, but I would rather smash them to bits and then pay to take them to the landfill. So I thought why not try Craigslist. I put $100 on them both just to move them out. I posted last night and had 3 people wanting to but them. I guess I should have asked more, but they will be gone, and I will have $100 bucks.
Listing HERE. (thanks, Stove!)

Friday

I have been getting through a killer cold, and hope it is on the way out. I have to work this weekend.

-Here is the Sarah Palin debate flow chart.

-Ever wonder what those CNN guys are doing with all of those laptops? Here is your answer.

-Remember that flying car from the 80's? It could be yours!

record this..

Leo posted about the threat of the iTunes store shutting down. I was thinking about the whole deal. Here is my point of view..
When the record companies were losing there collective asses to illegal downloads, they did not know what to do. They could not figure out a solution, so they just sued NAPSTER. Everyone said not to do it, but that is all that RIAA knows how to do. They screwed themselves in doing so. Now they have NO control because they spread it out all over the world. Along comes Apple and says that they will do the work to set up the HUGE servers needed to handle selling billions of songs. They will do what they do best and make it easy and fun to download songs when nobody else could do it. Now that over FIVE BILLION songs have been SOLD, the record labels are not happy. They want more. They were happy with the setup when they thought they were going to go out of business. They wanted to control the price a few years back. They thought that a flat $.99/ song was great when they were getting $00/song.
So instead of fighting the movement, why don't they just jump on board? I am talking about doing away with CD's. The number one seller of music in the USA is a computer company called Apple. Screw the CD's. Look at how much money they spend making them. Shipping them. Shipping them back when they don't sell. Shipping them back to the store again to be sold at a cheap rate. Mary used to work for Handleman Co. They supply CD's to Wall-world (formerly the largest seller of music) and Kmart and the likes. She used to drive a company car to stores and unpack CD's that were shipped there and put them on the racks. Handleman's stock has dropped like a rock (see the graphic) over the last five years.

They tried to do digital downloads but they could not figure out how to make it work and they eventually dropped it.
There are consumers who can't figure out how to download music. Fortunately those same people don't really buy very much music. The vast majority of all music is purchased by young people. How many 14 year old kids don't have an iPod or iPod wanna-be? How many of them don't know how to download a song? There are some folks (chime in here, Stove) that just like to have thousands of CD's. I can appreciate that. I like collections. But if somebody likes music that much and has that wide of a variety of taste, do you think they will stop buying music because they are stubborn? There are people that still want to listen to LP's. They hate CD's. Did that stop the record lables from changing over? No. They still had control over what was shipped to the stores. They got to re-sell the same damn songs all over again on CD's. That was all good. But now the control freaks known as RIAA are cranky.
Let it go. Handleman was a huge corporation and they are going under. Let them go. Close the plants that make CD's. Thousands of people on the payroll. Let them go. Embrace the technology. Save the money it takes to print CD’s in different languages. A few people won’t get it. The kazillion dollars you saved will more then offset those few people who can’t figure it out.
Just my take on it.

Rush

In case you did not know, VH1 is showing 24 hours of RUSH starting tonight.
Monday 9/29
7-10pm: VH1 Classic in Concert- Rush, Rush in Rio
10-10:30pm: Hangin' With Rush
10:30pm-1:30am: VH1 Classic in Concert- Rush, R30
1:30-2:30am: Rush Videos
2:30-3am: Hangin' With Rush
3-6am: VH1 Classic in Concert- Rush, Rush in Rio
Tuesday 9/30
6-7am: Rush Videos
7-10am: VH1 Classic in Concert- Rush, R30
10-11am: Rush Videos
11-11:30am: Hangin' With Rush
11:30-2:30pm: VH1 Classic in Concert- Rush, Rush in Rio
2:30-3:30pm: Rush Videos
3:30-4pm: Hangin' With Rush
4-7pm: VH1 Classic in Concert- Rush, R30

Sunday

Only in Texas.....
*********
Today I worked in the shop. I am rebuilding the downdraft table which is part of the outfeed table on the table saw. That is a lot of tables. It was not really laid out well for the new shop. I went downstairs to build a new router table and got sidetracked with this. I got most of it done, but now I have to drill about 600 holes in the top.
I made a jig a while back for making dados and got to use it a bunch on this project. I had a Tsquare setup before and it worked well but it was a pain because you had to clamp the square to the board and then put some clamps on the board to keep it from moving when you route it out. I made this jig so that it just clamps to the TS fence. Once that is done you can move the fence to set it for the width of the board to be cut (it is blue here). Then I can just slide the board under it and set one clamp. I can see exactly where it is going to cut by looking where the router bit cut on the jig. Cut it, remove one clamp, slide it down, set one clamp and go.
The blue board in the photo is one of 9 panels I got at UI surplus. They are 1.25" thick MDF panels with the same color gray laminate as my table saw and extension. They are 4x5 feet wide and weigh at least 90 lbs each. I got all nine for $20 :-) The blue stuff is the plastic covering the new laminate that will be removed when I am done.
My Bosch router has had problems with the switch for about 2 years now. About six months after I got it, the switch got funky. If I turn it on/off about 100 times I can get it to work. I FINALLY called Bosch and they sent me a replacement switch that is sealed so it won't suck up dust. When I was doing the dados on the shelves I had to unplug it and set it aside so I did not have to keep restarting it. Man I am glad to have that fixed.

Up and running

Well a week later and I got my internet back. They were supposed to work until 7:00 on Friday so at 6:55 I called to make sure they got it done. They said they had fixed it. I, however, still had no internet. I told him that when the guy was here on Wed. he replaced the modem. That could be the problem, says he. So he configured it (correctly this time) and it is all good. The new router is supposed to be faster. I am getting 7.8Mb/sec. now so that is good.

I thought this was funny.

well Mediacom sucks.

Last Friday I noticed that the internet had come to a screeching hault. I thought it would come back up like it does usually. By the time I realized it was out it was too late to call. All weekend.. no internet. Well we had internet but it was much worse then dialup. Monday I tried to call. It took about .5 hour to get through because I kept getting a busy signal. I finally get through and I am put on hold for 20 min. Then the guy says he will send somebody out on Wed. between 1 and 5. I told him before that, but told him again that it is not my connection. My neighbors have the same problem. It is something in your box like a bad amp or something. He asked if I could be there in that window and I told him I can't be home until 2:00 and asked if he could put a note on there that I would be home then and he could go do another call first. He said that policy would not let him do that and if I was not home then he would just leave. I told him AGAIN that it was not my connection anyway. We went back and forth and I decided just to hope I could leave work early Wed. Well Tuesday comes and I start to think how stupid that is so I call back. I am on hold for another 20 min. I get the guy and tell him what is going on with my situation and that I know he can't change it, but I think it sucks and I want to talk to a supervisor to let them know that I think they suck. I also told him that being on hold for 20 min. is not cool. He said that I was lucky because there are people that have been on hold for an hour and 14 min now. Oh, well that makes me feel better about your "service". He says he can put in an order and within 24 hours either a supervisor or he will call me back. I told him I don't want to wait until tomorrow and get a personal call at work only to be talking to the same guy that I am talking to now. I want your supervisor. So the supervisor comes on and I tell him the whole deal. I am not sure if I can leave work tomorrow and that I car-pool so not only would I have to take vacation time, but so would my rider just to make sure we are home by 1:00 even though there is a pretty good chance it would be after that and besides the problem is not even in my house it is in the box. He said he could put a note on the ticket to have the tech call 1/2 hour before he gets there. PERFECT! Now why can't the other guy do that? I don't know. So I am leaving work yesterday and the phone rings. He is on his way. I pull up to the house the same time as him. He looks through my stuff and finds out that it is not in my house, but rather in the box. NO SHIT. He tells me that they will have to get somebody else to look at that and it would be sometime this week. If only I had TOLD THEM OVER AND OVER THAT IT WAS NOT MY CONNECTION, they could have sent Mr. Wizzard out instead of this guy. Oh. Wait. I did that.
Mediacom customer service SUCKS. That is what you get when you have a monopoly. I am paying for 8Mbps download. I just did a ping at Speakeasy.net and I am getting a whopping 7kbp download and 8kbs up. So I drive across town to talk to them because you can't call the office, you have to call an 800 number that rings up in MN or drive over there. I am not sure why I went over. I just wanted to let them know that they suck and that I was not happy with them and that I would not be paying for a week of internet service. I accomplished all of that and took my small victory and went home. I am not sure if I will be able to upload this or not. We shall see.....

Monday

The power of the interweb...
Mary's Honda Civic Si is a cool little car. About 200hp, a six speed gearbox, and pretty sporty suspension make it a fun little car to zip around in. Especially when you usually drive a truck. But it has had problems with third gear. I have ground that sucker more then a few times. I know now that when I shift into 3rd to make sure it seats in there all the way or it grinds. I was reading about the Si and it turns out that a lot of others are having troubles too. Thousands signed a petition online saying that they had troubles but still Honda said they had never heard of it. Well now that folks are picketing outside dealerships, Honda has heard of it and they are issuing a TSB. NICE WORK FOLKS!

Wed

Ford shows a touch of class and wishes GM a happy 100th. Nicely done, guys.

tuesday

This could be handy. But I am not sure if you listed to the radio while cutting wood, or if the saw is for cutting up radios. But if I don't know, Stove is not going to tell me :-)

You may have seen the reporter on Wall Street video by now, but just in case you have not.. here it is. This is so totally stupid and the reporter is so serious that it struck me as funny.

Awesome Wall Street Prank - Watch more free videos

Monday

So I am in the shop listening to the iPod and Weird Al comes on. The song is Genius in France. I am thinking that it is totally a zappa song. So I come up here and google it and sure enough it is a tribute to Zappa.

I am working on the shop of late. Trying to get the main part done. It will have the table saw in the middle. The outfeed table will also be a downdraft table with sanders stowed below it. There are drawers that hold sand paper and stuff. As you are facing the saw, if you look to the right, there will be a router table on the end. It is all one big surface so the dust from them wont get in between all of the equpment. I have some extra space beside the router table, and have not figured out what to do with that. I may put a cabinet with shallow drawers for had tools. I am not there yet, though.

If you are a retired F1 driver and you want to hear your cute wife yell at you in Italian, you could always take her out on the track with you for a nice drive. Funny stuff in any language.

Sunday

Wow. I have seen several wooden cars before. They are impressive. Take a caddy frame and build a wooden body for it. But THIS is truly friggin amazing. The car is really made of wood. Leaf springs, frame, A-arms, spokes wheels. The website is very well done too.

FRIDAY!!!

*whoot*
Well Kan-yay (be a bigger dumb ass) is at it again. This time smashing cameras in an airport. He was able to post bail. Really. Video here I am still trying to figure out why Apple has had him "perform" at one (or more?) of their keynote addresses. Could you find a bigger loser to associate your name with? Get over yourself, man.

It seems you can put lipstick on a pig, but can you put a tattoo on a pig? I guess so.

It also seems that you can stuff 125 rwhp into a golf cart.

Thursday

If you are wondering if the Hadron collider has destroyed the earth, you can check here. Thank goodness we have the internet.

Monday again..

Wow, a week has gone by since I was here last. Must mean that not much is going on.
Here is a nice tribute. You probably don't know his name, but there is no way you don't know his voice. Don Lafontaine. He was a very cool guy.

Monday

Got the sides of the deck sanded and stained today. Then tonight I launched the boat and went fishin' at sunset. That was a nice way to end the day.
And now I will leave you with this.....


A Moment For The History Books - Watch more free videos

Sunday

Today I got up and hit it again. I have a bunch of grass that I planted that died. It is all around where I built. I also filled in a bunch of dead spots in the yard. Well... right after I planted that grass we got rain every day for weeks. Hence the floods here. Well the grass grew like crazy. Then one day I looked and it was all dead. It never really took roots since it was so wet. What is worse, the spots that I had filled in came in really strong and now there are dead spots all around the yard. So I dug up all the dirt and replanted it today. I cleaned some more of the carsiding on the deck and that is ready to seal up tomorrow. I used oxygen bleach and it really took off the crud. Mary went to Fareway yesterday and got steaks. There was some confusion about what she wanted, I guess because she came back with 4 steaks that weighed over five pounds. So $40 later I was grilling up some of the nicest steaks you ever saw. After dinner I went fishin' and did not catch much. It was still nice. Then I sat on the porch and watched the sunset. I should have taken the picture sooner, but you get the idea...


-here is a video of the ZR1 vette's run at Nurburgring sync'd up with the Viper ACR. Both boast over 600 hp and it was a pretty close battle. VIDEO

Saturday

Spend the day doing odd jobs. Washed a car, sanded a rail, scrubbed the carsiding on the side of the 2nd deck, went fishin', mowed the yard, took a nap, played some Gears of War on the Xbox. A good day all around. I put some Oxygen bleach on the pine carsiding and then power washed it off and that really took off the uglies. I am going to try to seal it up tomorrow.
-HERE is a table saw with a granite top. A bit over the top, but pretty cool. I would rather have the riving knife then the top.

FRIDAY!

-This pen is for sale (at least right now) on John McCain's official website. I am not the grammar police, but I just thought it was funny they are promoting students for McCain and they gorfed the use of the apostrophe.

-Steve Jobs must have been bummed when he read the news today. Turns out he is dead. That is no way to start the day at all. Somebody is looking for a job right now.

Gone fishin'

I got crazy and bought a fishin' rig today. I spent most of the day down by the pond and in the boat catchin' fish. Mostly small bluegill. I went out after dinner and the bluegill were hitting on almost every cast, so I switched over and went for some of the bigger bass from the boat. That was really relaxing. I can see why people get into this stuff.

-Hey, here is a Batmobile if you need one!

pond stuff

I went in to work at 05:00 today and left at 11:00. When I got home I found out that the neighbors had shown up early to drag the pond. I had to wire up the second strainer thing I made and I was out helping by 13:00. We got a lot of it out. If the wind were only blowing more pushing it over, we would have gotten all of it. But it is much better and I was really impressed with the turn out. The pictures are small so click on them if you wanna see them bigger. I did a cheezy photoshop crop job because I am tired. Good night :-)

pretty good stuff...

And I thought he was such a nice young man :-)


Here a bunch of great mods to Mac mini's.

leno

Leno knows cars. He has one of the most impressive collections of cars in the world. But the reason I respect him is because he understands and appreciates all of them. He does not just buy them because he can and because it is cool. Anyhow, here is what he had to say about the US auto makers.

SWEET!

The University of Iowa made a list on Forbes!!!

The most overpaid coach is Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz, who made $3.4 million last year despite lackluster results on the field, for a score of 71. Just how lopsided is Ferentz’s deal? During the last three years he’s pocketed $10 million, including a record $4.7 million in 2006, but has led the Hawkeyes to just a 19-18 record.

Monday

Well that weekend went by fast. I think that I am pretty much done with the deck. I got the trim pieces up inside and the lights behind them. They cast a nice indirect glow up on the ceiling at night. I took a picture of them but it is not that good because I am just too lazy to get the tripod. I cut some flashing in half and put in along the inside to reflect the light up. It kind of evens out the light also so you have a long consistent glow instead of a bunch of little lights that the rope lights put out. I am going to replace the ugly mason jar looking light fixture today and then about all that is left is to put in some screening under the overhang so the birds and bees don't make refuge in there. I told Tim last night that I thought I wasabout done and he said, "what about the ceiling fan?". *AARG* I forgot about that. I need to clean off the bricks and then look into putting some sealer or something on them if that will keep them darker. (click on picture to see bigger version (as always))





The kids are finishing up their first day of their senior year. That is just wrong. Wrong I say. Tim is driving them to school this year, so that saves me a trip (sometimes 2) in the middle of the afternoon to pick them up. It is still wrong though.

Wow

HERE is what you get when you take a pretty cool dad, some really cute kids, and a Mac. Most impressive, indeed.

We are in trouble..

I don't know if this video is real or not. I am pretty sure you will hear a lot about it in the coming days and the truth will come out. If it is indeed real then somebody is going to get a visit from the cops.
Rejected Olympic Sport: Toddler Tossing - Watch more free videos

I see that the guy that was bathing in the dish sink at Burger King got fired. The sad part is he is thrilled about it because he is not getting his 15 min. It just sad that he is getting interviewed on TV and such like he is somehow a hero.


Now for a link to somebody who actually has skills and has contributed something. HERE is a fun collection of stuff from Niki. Niki likes to tinker.

Tuesday

I posted a link to the story about the guy that took his life by yanking his head own head off. I guess that it was not an original idea. HERE. Don't know why I shared that, but I did.

-This also sounds morbid, but it really is not. It is a site of who is alive and who is dead. It is kind of interesting to go through old shows.

-Here is a 60 foot wide (I am guessing) BSOD projected in front of how many millions of folks around the world at the Olympics. What a proud MS moment that is :-)

Saturday.

I am almost done with the deck! If things go well tomorrow I should finish up the vinyl siding on the top part of it.

I took time out today to mow the yard. Then I did my neighbors yard. They have been at Sturgis for the last week and were getting home today. I was sure that after a week of Sturgis and the drive home that they were in no mood to mow the yard.

I noticed something today. A couple in the neighborhood has a Ford hybrid SUV thing. Fine. But it is that fugly green color. That makes me think that they are not driving it because they think they can save the planet or even that it will save them money. But rather they got the fugly green color so that everyone will know that they are driving a hybrid and they are better then the rest of us. Or else they just have really bad taste.

-THIS is the most bizarre and sad thing I have read in a long time. Business man splits with wife and so he ties a rope around a tree and the other end around his neck then goes speeding off in his car.

-Don't get me wrong, I love the iPhone. I would have one if I could justify spending that much money on a phone. I would have it because it is cool. Not the kind of cool like "Look at me, I drive a hybrid and I am better then you" but rather the kind of cool that you just kind of look at it and enjoy and appreciate all that it does. Not to mention how well it does it. But some get it because they want everyone to know that they can spend that much on a phone. So some guy has the idea to cash in on those folks and make an app for the iPhone that costs $9,999. The kicker is that all the app does is display a red glowing gem on the screen so that you can prove to people that you have so damn much money you can waste it. EIGHT (!) people bought it before Apple pulled it from the store. STORY

FRIDAY!!!

Well, folks, we made it!
I got the yard mowed (HOT!) and got the last of the screening done on the porch. WEE!

I am starting a Minnesota tag because so much stupid stuff happens there and also as a bonus Stove lives there :-)
Minnesota: A state DOT worker who skipped out when the big bridge disaster happened and billed the state for some unauthorized travel is now working for.....Homeland Security. I feel better already.

FARK had a link to this 3D paintings in a parking garage.

I have been watching XGames this week. Reminded me of this video from that nutty guy named Travis.