Not Necessarily Interesting News

My wife and I have wanted to find an old building for the longest time that we could restore. What is ideal for us is an old commercial buisness building where we could live upstairs and run a business on the lower floor. We found a building that we liked and toured yesterday. It’s an old bank in a town near here. It was built in 1880. The interior was in pretty rough shape but that was fine to us as we want to do the restoration ourselves. The 3rd floor had been a pigeon roost for the past 5 years and was nasty as hell. Almost all the windows on the upper floor were gone also.

The building is currently being used to film a movie called Every Word is True. It’s about the life of Truman Capote and will star Toby Jones, Sandra Bullock, and Gwyneth Paltrow. The film crew has a lot of work on their hands to get it in shape as they are to start filming in 3 weeks.

It’d take a lot of work and money to get to even near livable shape. We’ll keep looking as there are other possibilities around. This isn’t the only building we looked at, just the most architecturally interesting.

If you know me, you know I’m against employee drug-testing. I’ve refused jobs in the past because I am against it. What I do on my own time is my business and no one else’s. I’ve argued with friends and family about it. One argument was, “Yes, they are only testing for illegal dug use. What about when they start testing you for legal things that might be bad for you like smoking and drinking?”

Well, it’s happening now. A company in Michigan is now testing their employees for cigarette use. If they are found to be using cigarettes, even on their own time away from work, they will be fired. They have so-far fired 4 employees for refusing the test. Will they start firing employees who are a bit overweight now? That’s more of a health risk than someone who fires up an occasional ciggie on the weekend.

“Hey, you with the Big Mac! You’re fired.”

I’m still working on losing weight. I’ve dropped 5 pounds in the past 2 weeks. I can just barely tell it in my waistband. The great part is I haven’t really made much dietary change other than switching from regular Coke to diet. I’m normally a Coke man but Diet Coke tastes like ass to me. I’ve tried a lot of different sodas in the past couple weeks and, to me, the best of the diets are Diet Vanilla Pepsi and Diet Cherry Coke. I guess the extra flavoring covers the aftertaste a bit. As for other diet changes I still enjoy my normal food. I had pizza for dinner last night for example. I’ve cut back a bit on the snacking at work but not drastically. Between that and regular excersize the pounds are just dropping off.

I haven’t decided how much I want to lose. I’d like to drop a couple waist sizes I guess. I only have to drop one waist size to be where I was 10 years ago. Any smaller than that and I’ll be smaller than I was when I graduated high school.

…that I find hippies getting OC spray applied directly to their eyeballs funny as hell?

Listen for great quotes such as, “THIS IS A DEATH SQUAD!”, and (to a cop)”would you do this to your daughter?” (cop)”Nah. My daughter’s not an idiot”.

Watch for a girl with a mustache named Spring and a chick named “Bonka”.

It’s gets even funnier when the hippie gets flattened by a falling tree. I guess that tree was sick of being hugged and decided to take out the nearest thing that smelled like patchouli. Really, how tough is it to get out of the way of a falling tree? Two steps to either side and you’re clear. I guess self-preservation wasn’t that guy’s best trait.

I seriously admire the restraint showed by all the cops in that video. The hippies claim they are being tortured even after the cops explain to them what they’re going to do and why. It’s for the safety of the hippies. Nothing more, nothing less.

A couple times a year we like to take a day and head out for a drive. We have no idea where we’re headed as we walk out the door. We fill the tank in the Mustang and point it in a random direction and go. This Saturday we headed north and east of Austin. It’s one of my favorite drives.
The first town we passed through was Andice. It’s a speck on the map with a population of 25. Then it was on to Florence to one of our favorite antique stores. It was closed and out of business. That happens a lot on our drives. We find a little place that’s fun to hang out and talk to locals and it’s gone a year later.
We next drove through Jarrell. It is semi infamous for a tornado that passed through it in 1997 that killed 27 people. We stopped at the memorial park at the spot where the worst of the damage occured. There are now a couple of storm shelters at the spot. My son had never seen one and wanted to look inside. It was quite sobering knowing that just a few years ago many people died in their homes even though they did what they were told to protect themselves. As you drive around the community these days you can see many new sotrm shelters in the ground around houses.
We next drove through Salado. It’s a very touristy small town. Lots of over priced antiques and boutiques. We stayed long enough to get some taffy, my son’s new favorite candy, and look in a couple of stores at art and such we couldn’t think of affording. We got back on the road and decided to head east.
We passed through Holland before turning south towards Bartlett.
Bartlett was once a thriving community. The downtown section is a few blocks long with nice turn of the century buildings. It was once a bustling little town. Now it’s nearly a ghost town. Of the several dozen store fronts only about 4 were open, all of them antique stores. We stopped in at all of them and talked for a while with a nicer older lady at one. You could tell she’s loves the town and hates to see it dead. She hopes one day it’ll come back alive. I doubt it’ll happen in her lifetime though. As it is it’s a very depressing town to drive through. You can tell it was once a happening town. It still has real brick streets, you can see the faded 75 year old billboards painted in the alleys for things like Coke and Wrigley’s gum. I’d have loved to see it in it’s hey-day.
We pushed on through Granger and Circleville before stopping in Taylor.
Taylor is starting to recover as it’s now becoming a bedroom community for Austin. It’s a bit of a drive from downtown but from places like Round Rock it’s within commuting distance. We hit a few antiques stores and noticed a beautiful old building we’d like to buy. We still have that dream of owning a coffee shop and this building was perfect. It was right in the middle of downtown. Looks like it’d get a lot of traffic. I had a decent ground floor plus area upstairs for living and offices. We’ll have to check it out a bit more soon.
It was starting to get late but we still had to make it to Elgin to pick up dinner. Nothing beats fresh Elgin sausage on the BBQ for an easy dinner. We picked up some sausage and headed home to dinner.
I love going through all the old towns even if it is a bit depressing. You can tell the folks there love their towns but are powerless to stop their decline. I’d love to be able to live in a small town away from all the BS that is daily life in the rat race.

Yeah, I did what everyone else does at this time of year. I decided to get into better shape. I’ve already cut out/down my Coke intake from 3-5 cans a day to zero-1. I thought I could eliminate Coke completely but my body screams for the sugar. Diet sodas don’t stop the urge. Still, that’s around 600 calories a day I was consuming right there. According to experts there’s 3,500 calories per pound so just cutting that equals over a pound a week.
As for excersize, I’ve started a nightly workout using (now don’t say it, I know I know) Dance Dance Revolution on our Xbox. It’s got a workout mode that keeps track of calories burned from day-to-day. I’ve been trying to get in around 45 minutes a day on it and am averaging about 500 caolries burned per workout. I suck mightily at it but can beat my wife about 50% of the time. I’ve also been doing the requisite pushups and situps that all excersize programs seem to need.
I’ve never had a problem with the way I look. Yeah, I’m a bit overweight but I never cared. ‘You think I’m overweight? That’s your problem.’ My weight has remained the same/stable for about 10 years or more. I’d just like to lose about 40 pounds over the next few months and maybe drop a size or two in jeans.
Anyone out there wanna be a weightloss buddy?

I recently got a bunch of old SCSI drive in housings. Yesterday I decided to move my SCSI array from inside an old ATX case I was using to power the array to a real SCSI cabinet. I opened up the old one and there were four 9GB drives inside. I removed those and noticed the name of the company that I guess built the original array. I don’t know if I’d fell good ordering computer equipment from a company named Uptime Limited.

: Something To Believe In from the album “Smash” by Offspring