Workout from hell...

We were at the local mall last night after dinner and my wife expressed interest in Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix for our Xbox. I know you've seen this game at places like Dave and Busters or your local arcade. It's the game where you have to stomp your feet in the direction the screen points while keeping with the beat. Not something I was ever interested in because I don't dance. We tried EB who said they were all sold out of the game. All they had was the mat. We wandered over to Gamefellas and all they had was the game but no mats. We bought the game there and went back to EB and bought the mat.

Once we got home we hooked it up so she could have a go at it. All I've got to say is my wife is very white. If you've seen The Jerk, he's John Travolta compared to my wife. She just could not keep the beat. After she tried it a couple times I decided to get up there and give it a shot. Dear Lord it's hard. I did do better than she did though. The game is kind of neat in that it has a "Workout Mode". You enter in your weight and it keeps track of your calories burned. All I know is that after a few times of playing it my calves were burning like hell.

I dropped in Tetris to see what it was like. It was very interesting getting a workout playing Tetris but it is still playable once your feet figure out what the hell you're doing.

: Son Of A Son Of A Sailor from the album "You Had To Be There - Disk 1" by Jimmy Buffett

Idiot neighbors

Apparently one of our neighbors' kids backed into another neighbors' car last night around 1:30AM. Ok, accidents happen but this idiot teenager decided to drive off after sitting and thinking about it for a minute. He drove off while two witnesses stood in the yard and watched. My sister had just gotten home from a night out with a friend and happened to be standing in the driveway talking with her friend when it occurred. The teenager saw them standing there and still drove off. This morning he was parked across the street, not his normal spot, and down the block from where he hit our neighbor. The idiot didn't even bother to clean the broken glass out his his tailgateless pickup bed. I don't know what's become of the situation right now because I'm at work. He hadn't dropped by the neighbors' house to apologize or anything by 11AM which I think was more than enough time. I told the neighbor to just call the cops and let them handle it then.

We've been waiting for these teenagers to move out of the house for years now but apparently they are going to college locally and will be around a while longer. I almost shot one of their friends a few years ago after he decided my bushes were a great place to hide to avoid a drunken brawl that was about to occur after one of their many parties, that occur when mom and dad leave for the weekend, went south. When a man holding a .45 tells you to come out of a bush, you come out. Don't try to make yourself even smaller and try to make him think you're not there. Your alcoholic haze does not provide an invisibility shield. *sigh*

: It'll Be a Long Time from the album "Smash" by Offspring

Old School Gaming...

My Nana is the best. My wife was over visiting her yesterday and Nana gave her something she had been holding on to for many years. Nana told her that my sister and I used to fight over it. Yes, it is an actual working Parker Brothers Merlin from 1978. All I had to do was clean the battery contacts and drop in some new batteries and it powered right up after a bit of noise. This thing is built solid. How many GameBoys do you think are going to still be working after 25 years?

It plays 6 games. Yes, count 'em, six. That's six exciting beep and blinkerific games.

It plays all your old favorites like:

• Tic Tac Toe
• Music Machine (It's a lean mean beeping machine)
• Echo (A copy of Simon, another great game from the 70's)
• Blackjack 13 (what it sounds like)
• Magic Square (Heck if I know)
• Mindbender (don't remember this either)

This thing would amuse me for hours on end. It was the GameBoy of its era. If you'd like to try your hand at what we considered cutting edge in 1978 there is a Virtual Merlin. Yeah, it's a Windows app. I had to find a windows machine to try it out.

: Been It from the album "First Band On The Moon" by The Cardigans

WWJD

To the idiot in the Toyota Tacoma driving up Mopac this morning, in response to your sticker, I'll tell you What Jesus Would Do:

He would use his fucking indicator and not cut people off. I should have just hit you. Lucky for you I wasn't driving my Defender this morning.

: On A Bad Day from the album "Barricades & Brickwalls" by Kasey Chambers

Defender dead. Again.

Sunday was a BEA-U-TIFUL day here in Austin. 70-72 degrees and clear as a bell. We decided to go for a drive in the Defender with the top off to catch some of that warm sun. Hopped in the green beast and turned the ignition. Nothing. Could hear the fuel pump whirring so I knew the battery was good. Hmm, try again. Nothing. No click, not a noise from the engine. Crap!

Push it out of the garage to get some light on the problem. Everything looks good other than the usual Land Rover Drip©. Get out a stick and bang on the starter like a crazed monkey. Give the ignition another try and it springs to life. Yep, bad starter. While I had it out of the garage I decided to fix the speedo which has been acting up and I took off the running boards. Taking off the runing boards makes it look like I gave it a 2" lift. I like the cleaner lines also.

Ordered parts from my favorite Rover parts supplier on Monday. They should be here Friday in time to pull and rebuild the starter. That's how I want to spend what's predicted to be another nice weekend.

: Shove This Jay-Oh-Bee from the album "Office Space" by Biz Markie

Hooray for rain...

We got our first good rain in a long time last Friday. We got several inches which was enough to make some really good mud to play in. I was out at the ranch on Saturday and took the chance to 'check on some roads' that were supposed to be graded and worked on last week. The mud out there is mostly limestone so it is very thick and sticky. It clogs your tires in seconds leaving no traction but that doesn't stop the fun. You just head into the muddy bits with a bit of speed and you'll be just fine. I also got to introduce my son to the joy of mudding in a 4x4. I found a hole that had about 24" of water in it and dove right in time and time again. The downside to the fun is the cleanup job I have this week because the Defender is caked in mud now.

I took this pic when I got out to scout an old jeep trail on the side of the mountain. You can see how caked the tires get out there.

: I.U.V. from the album "Dance Naked" by John Mellencamp

Ewwww

Went back to the doc today to have that nasty mole removed. It got me 6 stitches. Unfortunately I didn't get a script for any drugs to go with it. The procedure was was fairly straight forward. Nurse led me back to the mini operating room and asked where the mole was. Since it was on my shin I didn't even have to take off my jeans or shoes. She got all the stuff together for the doc and left.

They both came back in about 5 minutes later. He shot my shin full of Lidocaine. That was probably the most painful part of the whole thing. When he started to cut I flinched because it wasn't quite numb. It didn't hurt but i wasn't gonna let him continue until I felt nothing. I've always needed about twice what others need in the numbing medication department. When he was about 1/2 done I started feeling hot and a bit light-headed. this was a new experience for me. I've never in my life felt like I was gonna faint. I don't know what it was. I used to be an EMT. I've been on the scenes of some pretty gruesome accidents. Hell, I wasn't even watching him do it. I was just laying down and looking at the ceiling. Whatever. I've had stitches literally dozens of times for various injuries. I mark it up to the fact that my grand total of food intake for the day was one small muffin 6 hours earlier. Doc was nice enough to get me an apple juice and wait around a few minutes taking my BP which he said was low. After a few minutes we both agreed I could drive home.

Looks like I'll have another 2cm scar to add to the collection. Sweet.

: We're All Gonna Die Someday from the album "The Captain" by Kasey Chambers

Mars goodies...

I've been watching the progress of the Mars Rovers just like everyone else. I was curious as to the location of the Spirit rover on Mars so I fired up xplanet to give me a view of Mars from Earth. I looked around and found coordinates for the lander and all previous and future landers. I also found coordinates for major features on Mars and included them. With this data I was able to generate this file. I've setup a cron job to update the picture every half-hour for your enjoyment. If you're lucky you might get to see one of Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos passing through the frame.

Feel free to click the thumbnail to see where your favorite rover is right now. If you don't see the rover you're looking for it's probably on the far side of Mars at this time.

A visit to the doc

I finally gave in and went to see the doc today. I had a couple of reasons to go. The primary motivation for the visit was a mole on my left shin that's been itching for a few weeks. There's one thing I know and that is you don't screw around with 'funny' moles. I also wanted to beg for some allergy meds to help me with my Cedar Fever problem. The doc took a look in my ears, nose, and throat and said 'yep, you've got allergies'. Thanks, doc, you really know your shit. He wrote me a scrip for Zyrtec and RhinoCort Aqua. I had no clue what Zyrtec was until he prescribed it. The Rhinocort is a spray-in-your-nose thingy with some sort of steroids. Whatever, as long as it works. The Zyrtec already seems to be helping. We'll see come morning because that's usually when things are at their worst.

Next he wanted to take a look at my leg. I pulled up my jeans and down my sock. He leaned over and looked at it and sat up in less than a second and said 'that's gotta come off. You'll have to come in next week and we'll numb it up and cut it off and throw a couple stitches in it. We'll send it to the pathologist to take a look.' The quickness with which he sat up was a bit disconcerting. Oh, boy! A baby surgery and another scar. I've got at least a dozen scars from various stitches I've had in the past due to injury. I guess I collect them like some folks collect tattoos. Maybe they'll have to take the leg below the knee and I'll get one of those cool carbon-fiber prosthetic legs.

I go in next Tuesday to get it taken care of.

: We're All Gonna Die Someday from the album "The Captain" by Kasey Chambers

Lost forever....

I borrowed a Windows file recovery program from a friend that does exactly what I needed. Unfortunately, the one file out of 10,000+ that I wanted, needed, to restore is gone. It got written over in the 'the first great Tony fuck-up of 2004', I'm sure there will be more. I made VHS copies of the video that I gave to family so I can get a better copy of it than the small Quicktime on the website but that's not the point. I lost the original. I pulled an all-nighter editing that together the night before his wake so it could be shown at the wake. I lost other important stuff but this was irreplaceable to me.

I am so pissed-off right now I could scream. What a way to start my year...*sigh* Someone pass the whiskey.

: Smash from the album "Smash" by Offspring

Time Waster

I've been wasting entirely too much time lately playing Enemy Territory. A completely free game from Activision. It was a planned multiplayer add-on to Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The project was scrapped but Activision released it anyways as a gift to gamers. Its best part is it's supported under Linux, 3D acceleration and all. I don't have to reboot into GameOS to play it which is a really big bonus. I'd have gladly dropped $40 for this game if it had been released. It has a good balance of player classes that make for a lot of action. I prefer to play Engineers and Medics. They may not rack up body counts but they see a lot of action.

Hosed my firewire drive...

Was playing around with Maestro, the software that they are using to control the Mars Lander, on my iBook and wasn't thinking when I told it to install to my external firewire drive. The problem with this is that the drive is formatted FAT32 so I can use it on my iBook, my Linux box, and a Windows machine. When OS X went to write to the drive it totally hosed the file allocation table. FAT32 doesn't support some of the file names that HFS+ does. Somehow this screwed up the whole works.

I _know_ the files are there I just can't see them. I'm looking for a restore utility that doesn't cost and arm and a leg. I found Virtual Lab which seems to do what I need but they want about $300 to recover the data. That's just to recover the files this one time. If I needed the program in the future I'd have to pay again. I don't think so. If anyone has any recommendations on software that might be able to un-fuck me, please leave a comment.

I'm most upset about the fact that the original of the video I made after my uncle died was one of the files that went missing. That archive means a lot to me and I want it back.

More allergy misery

Our canister HEPA filter died last night. This is a really bad thing. It's the only thing holding back the flood while I try to sleep. The fan blade came off the spindle and no matter what I tried I could not get it to stay on. Hose clamps, screws, and even epoxy. That thing had a whole lot of air flow going through it that would pull the blades right off again. It was really a bad design flaw once I looked at it. It was getting old but these things are expensive and we had just bought a replacement filter for it last month at $75.

We decided to go out today and look for a new one. Our old one was one of the biggest that Honeywell makes. Our one requirement of the new one was that it needed to use the same filter because there was no way I was throwing out a $75 filter cartridge. We found exactly what we were looking for at Home Depot this morning. It was _not_ cheap. $165 to be exact but it's worth a good night's sleep. We ended up getting the biggest one they had again. It's the Honeywell 50250. It's a little larger than our older one but it appears they fixed the design flaw of the previous version. It is also quieter.

Thank God allergy season only lasts 4-6 weeks.

: I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow from the album "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" by The Soggy Bottom Boys

I went to the fights...

...and a hockey game broke out.

Last night I went to my first hockey game. My sister is a season ticket holder for the Austin Ice Bats. Her seats are on the glass near the home goal. I'm not much of a hockey fan but it wasn't too bad. I was disappointed that there were no fights though. I always say: You're not having fun until someone is bleeding. I did manage to get a puck that was shot over the glass into the net. It was also fun having hockey players faces smash into the glass 2 feet from your face when they got checked.

: Souvenirs from the album "Margaritaville Cafe - Late Night Menu" by Jimmy Buffett

Stupidity on the road...

I was driving up 183 in Leander this morning when I heard a siren approaching from the rear. I can hear them a long way off because I drive a convertible so there's not much sound-proofing. I was sitting at a light in the right hand lane and the fire rig went to go around the stopped traffic in the turn lane. I was at the head of the line and the light was green so I pulled across the intersection to give cars room to make room for the truck. I eased over to the shoulder and the guy behind me took it as his chance to pass me, cutting off the firetruck in the process. You know the type, white trash, driving a souped-up '90 Camaro, wide tires on the rear, hood scoop, and all. I decided that he wasn't gonna pass me or cutoff the firetruck to do so. I pulled out halfway into the lane he was in and hit the brakes. I guess there's something about brake lights higher than his hood suddenly appearing that caused him to rethink his actions and let the truck pass. I caught up to the firetruck a mile or so down the road after it appeared they got called off of their run and were sitting at a light. I got a wink and a thumbs up from the fireman in the passenger seat.

I kinda hoped Camaro Boy would hit me. He'd have plowed far enough under my Defender to rip that silly hood scoop right off his piece-of-shit Camaro and rest my bumper firmly on his windshield. I, of course, was told that I was #1 for my troubles.

: Sunny Afternoon from the album "Fruitcakes" by Jimmy Buffett

Cedar Fever

They say there are two kinds of people in Central Texas: Those that have allergies and those who will get them. I'm one of those with allergies. We've lived near Austin for 8 years now. The first couple of years I had no problems then the problems started. This is the worst year yet. I've tried everything. Sudafed, Claritin, Benadryl, you name it. We have a large canister HEPA filter going 24 hours a day in our bedroom but nothing helps. Luckily this only last a few weeks every year.

Mountain juniper
An invention of Satan
It should all be burned

Damn cedar fever
Runny nose and stuffy ears
I am suffering

My allergy meds
They don't stop my misery
Please pass the Kleenex

Here comes the pollen
A nasal amputation
Is the solution

Happy New Year...

Well, here's to hoping this year is much better than this last year. 2003 really sucked. 3 deaths in the family, unemployment for several family and close friends, and extended hospital stays by multiple family members.

It wasn't all bad though. I did get the car of my dreams, my Defender 90. I did get re-hired by IBM after last years' lay-off, and we took a really good trip to DisneyWorld.

If it wasn't for close friends and family I don't know what I'd have done.

I think I'm due for a good year.

: Navras from the album "Matrix Revolutions" by Juno Reactor Vs. Don Davis