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.
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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.





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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.
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HERE is a bunch of real life Far Side re-enactments. The end result is not as funny as the concept, but still...
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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...

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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.
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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.

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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. :-)
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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?
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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.


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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.


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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.