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A Chick-Fil-A opened up near my apartment yesterday. I don't know why I get excited when I see a Chick-Fil-A... It's not like their food is especially good. All it is, is a chicken patty (not chunked and formed like most other chicken patties), a couple slices of pickle, and bread. I think there might be cocaine ingredients in there, somewhere... Well anyway, they also do breakfast - and guess what they have on their menu for $2.35? Breakfast burritos! So I tried them this morning, one sausage and one chicken. The chicken one was better, but neither were anything to scream about, unfortunately. Egg, peppers, meat, and a packet of salsa. No potatoes, no cheese (or, at least not enough that I could taste it). Good quality, good flavor, but not great. I still long for a breakfast burrito of the same quality that you could get at Bubba's in Jackson Hole, WY.

I got a new computer chair. The last one had all the cushion of a pillow case, and was getting torn up. I ordered a new windshield last week. Still haven't gotten the call from the place I ordered from... The longer it takes them to contact me, the more reluctant I am to trust them to install it. Other than that, there is nothing new going on.

Sara Palin announced her resignation from her governorship today. Almost every media outlet I've looked at, has tried to make it look like she's doing it to angle herself to run for president in 2012. While I seriously have problems with her wealth redistributionist policies, I still think she's received a very unfair shake from the media and her opposition. Her family, especially (I remember, when Obama came out, the GOP were trying to go after his wife. After McCain won the primary, he did what the Obama supporters wanted, and that is to leave the candidate's family alone, which is perfectly reasonable. However, when Palin came out, it was an all-out assault on her family, which was justified because she "brought them into the spotlight with her"... Funny, I don't seem to remember her daughter ever speaking for her like Michelle did for Barrack). This move, I think, is because she's tired of being in the spotlight and has decided to end her political career. I know I'm going against the grain with that, but I think it's a better explanation than the DNC chairman's assessment that it is simply a "continuing pattern of bizzare behavior".

Tomorrow is the fourth of July, also known as Independence Day. At the same time there's a proposal sitting on the desks of our congressmembers that would turn you, or your employer into a criminal for not purchasing health care. - 03JUL2009

Juicy, no? Article here. Obama's foreign policy, for the most part, so far has been to apologize to everyone for everything America has done to them. Now here we have an Iranian president, reelected in a very fishy election, unashamed of the innocent people protesting shot down in his streets by his regime, demanding an apology for the comments that Obama made (way too late - and if you saw that press conference, he really tried to be nice about it. "Let's see how this plays out." What a cop-out.). No, I don't think Obama will apologize. But I do wonder if he will address this at all, and if he does, how (UPDATE: He dismissed it. I wonder if ole Mahmoud will respond.). There's a lot of things going down in Washington that are set to change the country in a big way (that's what 53% of the people voted for), and I'm in a mode where I'm overwhelmed by it all, so instead of getting angry or frustrated, I'm just enjoying the show. In the back of my mind, I'm remembering McCain, and aside from Obama's medical reform non-plan, he's pushed for everything Obama is doing domestically at least at one point in his career. My only hope is in a handful of fresh GOP congressmen, who actually understand the importance of economic policy over personally held moral values (and the forcing thereof on others). They probably won't make it far.

In speaking of personal moral values, the South Carolina governor Mark Sanford (R) had an affair with some Argentinian lady, and disappeared last week to go see her. He's married. And he has four sons. The GOP needs to stop running on the moral high ground because they are obviously incapable of holding to it. Rush Limbaugh today said something to the effect of "Well, at least the GOP has standards, even if they can't hold up to them." which is completely pathetic, and another reason why I've lost interest in a lot of talk radio (now I mostly listen to Jason Lewis (grab his podcasts!) and Grandy and Andy (get theirs!). There's also a Republican senator from Nevada... Ensign or something like that who also cheated on his wife. Again - take away the moral high ground, and what do you have? They need a new platform. One that actually affects the country. Less government. Less spending. Maybe even eliminate a federal program or two. Simplify the tax code. Maybe do something about the debt we're in. I dunno.

(The above paragraphs were written JUN 25, 2008, and aren't structured very well)

Michael Jackson is dead, and I find myself not caring. I didn't really take to his music, and honestly, he was a running joke for most of my life. Farah Fawcett died on the same day. I don't know much about her, except that some people thought she was hot.

As many of my readers may know, I was on vacation from May 29th through June 9th. A road trip to North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and North Carolina again - lots of people to see, and lots of driving involved. Words of advice: Don't rent a Ford Fusion if you plan on driving for more than a couple of hours at a time. The head rest is awful in that, if you lean back in your seat, your head is pushed forward so that your chin nearly rests on your chest. To combat this, you're constantly sitting up, relying on your lower back muscles to keep you from leaning back too far, and this causes great pain throughout your neck and back. We took the headrests completely off, and it made a world of difference, but then I got scared of whiplash and put mine back on.

The trip was awesome. We got to see tons of people that we haven't seen since our wedding (and my wife got to meet my cousin Stacey, and her husband and son for the first time), we had great food everywhere we went, and we both got our first tour of New Orleans from my cousin-in-law, Frank. If I talk any more about it, it will be a new page (I'll let you know when it's up, if it ever is. I've been horrible at creating new pages, and adding on to this website, generally) complete with pictures and maybe even some video.

There's a place called Sunny's Deli in a business park near where I live. I've gone there several times and was never impressed, but never disappointed either. They decided to leave menu flyers all over the neighborhood and I noticed they dropped their prices. An item caught my eye: Breakfast Burrito - Ham, Cheese, Egg, Potato - $2.45. Sure to be better than McDonald's breakfast burritos, I decided to try it out the next morning. Awful. Easily the worst breakfast burrito I've ever had in my life, taking the crown from one I got at a Brownsville, Texas Exxon station. The ham was standard sliced sandwich ham. The cheese was okay, but very pasty and gummy. The egg was good. The potato? Mashed. I was thinking home fries, or maybe tater tots, or some form of hash brown... but no. Mashed potato. It was all at the bottom too. There was also some sort of salsa, that was mostly sweet, which doesn't go with mashed potatoes as well as it might hash browns. The guy who owns the place is Chinese, and didn't speak English too well. It's possible that if I told him how to make a proper breakfast burrito (diced ham or sausage, cheddar cheese, any potato but mashed potatoes) and if I told him it would be okay to tack another fifty cents onto it if he needed to, that he might actually do it. I'll let you know if that ever happens.

Other than that, there's not much going on. I'm trying to keep busy for work so that I don't get booted, and after hours I play games on my computer. Nothing new or exciting... Except the Prelude needed a freon recharge for the first time since I've had it. Such an impressive little car - the A/C still works splendidly. -26JUN2009

The wife and I have been watching a reality TV show (is there any other kind of show these days?) called Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment. If you're not familiar with it, the basics are: No prize at the end, a mix of city slickers get thrown into Alaska with a very limited amount of supplies, and they have to hike from shelter to shelter until they find civilization, hunting/fishing/stabbing for food along the way. At any point in time, one can push a button and a helicopter will pull them out, and the rest continue on, with the extra burden of that person's supplies. I really took a liking to one guy on there, Jake, who seemed to have by far the best attitude of the group. I developed a great amount of admiration and respect for the guy... He was extremely laid back, humorous, and did things that were necessary for the survival of the group, alone, while everyone else was depressed and sleeping late. As the series progressed, I felt like he was a good friend of mine. After he would say something witty, I'd point to the TV and tell my wife "He's my friend."

Well, last night's episode he talked about his boyfriend, Andrew. My eyes widened. "He's gay?" I mumbled to myself, to which my wife looked at me incredulously, "You couldn't tell? It's pretty obvious, babe... I knew from the first episode." Well, I happen to be keeping in touch with an old army buddy of mine, who happens to swing that way (which, incidentally, I did not know until he told me, long after we had both separated from Ft. Bragg)... I mentioned this to him, and he replied "Dude, he's got the accent, the looks, the charm and the required level of narcissim [sic]. SO GAY. And just on his introduction you knew, er, well you didn't but everyone else did. HA! But seriously, I think your gaydar works fine. Maybe you just don't realize the blips as being possible homos because you really don't care about their sexuality." While this comment toward me made me feel like I was an upstanding person, I looked up the guy on Al Gore's amazing internet, and found a number of sites that made me slap my forehead with the palm of my hand. Jake's horse training site. Jake's photography site. Jake's twitter site. Even his Facebook picture is teeming with gayness. But the real question is, if I didn't know he was gay beforehand, would I have known after viewing pictures of him riding horses with a see-through white shirt, buttoned half way? I honestly don't know.

Yeah, I know this was a strange post, but I haven't updated in a while, so this is what you get. Also for a good read, and to see a bit of this guy's personality, click here.

This paragraph just for me (because no one likes reading about my political-ish stuff). Obama picked a Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor. I believe this is more of a toe-dipping in that Democrat strategists are seeing how far they can go, and how much they can get away with, than it is an actual nomination. After hearing a number of things she's said, and what she apparently believes I find it hard to accept that she has the slightest chance of getting confirmed (or is it affirmed?) by even a Democrat controlled Congress. Right wing pundits are going ape-s**t over it; Obama and his advisors undoubtedly expected nothing less.

The Dow has been stagnant since I last talked about it. A 10% VAT (or, if you're a right wing pundit a "VAT tax" because you aren't smart enough to know you're being redundant) is being considered at the federal level (I wonder when politicians and their supporters will realize that higher taxes after a certain point = less production = less revenue, and that we've been past that "certain point" since Clinton) (Also, when are politicians and their supporters going to realize that more taxes do not mean more revenue? You tax one sector of the economy, all that means is another sector of the economy loses that portion of cash flow, which means less tax revenue from that sector). North Korea is upsetting the UN with their underground nuclear explosions and missile testing; I think the sooner this is nipped in the bud, the better. Problem is, we can't afford to do it ourselves... it's time for other countries to be the bad guys this time (they're used to the United States stepping in, spending tons of money, and protecting their socialist run governments, as we have for decades. This time, we have our own socialist government to support, so we won't be doing any of that. North Korea will probably grow into an amazingly serious problem in the next few years). General Motors and Chrysler are on their way to being spayed, and will soon be owned by the federal government and UAW (now there's a winning combination). More people are dying of the swine flu recently than a month ago, but somehow it's no longer in the news. Interest rates are set to spike. Oil - last I checked was sitting around $42 a barrel, is now $63 a barrel (still low, but ... that was pretty quick). - 27MAY09

Happenings: My wife is getting promoted soon. I've been especially busy at work for the last month. I got a new laptop because I was getting frustrated that flash banner ads would entirely cripple my old one while browsing the internet. I haven't bought any new PC games (I have bought some old ones, though). The crack in the Subaru's windshield now takes up nearly half the window, straight across. My lips are chapped, and they hurt real bad. When I was in New York last week, I found a place called Beers of the World, that actually carried one of the best beers I've ever had, Svyturys, from Lithuania. I bought a case and a half of it.

Website updates: None. Except that now, my Asurion page has finally been indexed by Google, and I'm getting a large number of hits from it.

News: New fuel efficiency standards are in the works. An insane 35.5 MPG average for cars is to be mandated by 2016. It's policies like this that will bring change to America, right? Well, for those that have a short memory, George W. Bush signed into law in 2007 a very similar policy... one that mandated 35 MPG, by 2020. If it were the policies of the last 8 years that brought us to this economic downturn, then why is Obama continually expanding upon them?

A thought came to mind... What if General Motors (assuming they'll still be around in 2016) simply refused to go along with the new standards? What if they quietly continued to produce and sell cars that only got 30 MPG? What would the federal government do? Would they fine them into oblivion, thereby destroying American jobs and production? Would they jail the people who made them and sold them? Would they take the corporate jets away from the executives? I would like to see a scenario like this play out in real life. -19MAY2009

-02MAY2009-

Yeah so I've been a horrible website master (by not updating very often). I'm cooking myself dinner right now. I enjoy experimenting - I'm simmering some cheap steaks in beef broth and spices, and I'm taking the broth and putting it in a pot with carrots and celery (and a moderate amount of pepper), and simmering that. It smells amazing, and it's hard to keep myself from plating it early (in about half an hour, the steaks will hopefully get really tender). In the meantime, I'm typing here.

So I got addicted to Robin Hood for a bit. It's a Facebook game that serves absolutely no purpose except to annoy your friends with constant automatic updates of your progressions. I, of course, did not know that the game did that because I never looked at my home page (if I did, I would have seen what everyone else was seeing). But eventually, I did notice. "I deposited $3,403,283 in my bank! PLAY ROBIN HOOD", "I fought someone and won! PLAY ROBIN HOOD" Ugh. The game is nothing but a cash cow for the developers, as you can buy tokens and crap for real money, that you can use to upgrade your character. I can talk endlessly about the problems of the game, but all that would do is make me look even worse for playing it (and even worse, being addicted to it). But I'm over it now. Done. Finished. I will deposit my money in my bank when I get on Facebook (which, before my wife asked me to join her Robin Hood band, I rarely logged on), and when I have enough to buy new land (to bring in more money) I will do that... But fighting (clicking on a random name) people and doing quests at this point is... well... pointless.

In the news we have a swine flu outbreak (overreaction and panic, which will ultimately lead to legislation being passed and one or two lucky companies getting a large government contract); Barack Obama's 100th day (he's the best president since FDR - depending on your definition of "best") (it's hard to be angry because I can't say McCain would have been any better... In fact, I'm glad we don't have Mr. "I looked in his eyes and all I saw were the letters KGB" Mc"Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran" in charge of the country); Arlen Specter left the GOP, giving Democrats that 60th seat to make them filibuster proof (not that they could have been filibustered before, with Specter voting with them anyway); the economy is still imploding, but now at a faster rate than before. -29APR2009

I need to update more often. -23APR2009

(Nearly) Every morning I have a PowerBar Harvest (Peanut Butter, Chocolate Chip. The only good one.), so when they are in stock at the grocery store I buy them in bulk. They come in a box of 15, but when scanned they need to be counted as individual products (they don't sell the box as an item). So, the last time I bought some, about two weeks ago, I noticed that the cashier only counted them as 10 instead of 15 PowerBars. I corrected her, grabbing one from the bag that was already placed in my cart so she could scan it to count five more. The grocery bagger was very surprised at this, and informed me that something good was going to happen to me for being honest. "That's what they say." I said, shrugging it off. Monday, last week my boss said that I needed to pay a visit to the headquarters in New York for training. I did, and turns out that training was the secondary mission... The primary mission was a promotion. A promotion with a pay raise, and no strings attached. I specifically asked "What new responsibilities will I be taking on?", and was specifically told "None. Just keep doing what you're doing.". Unbelievable. I'm not saying that the two events are related in any way... I'm just sayin'.

I meant to mention on my last post about what I saw that night watching the NBC Nightly News show... They had a 6 minute segment about how the rest of the world was faring during this tough economic time, comparing EU countries to each other, about how Spain is kicking out immigrants so their residents can go back to picking strawberries, etc... And then they got to talking about the Dow. 5 seconds - "Stock markets finished up for the month, believe it or not.". That's it. 8.6 - 11% gains in a month across all three and that's apparently not news, according to this particular news show. A few days later, the Dow has its best four week run since 1933. Did you know that? Aren't you glad you view this website every day, so you can learn these things? -05APR2009

I'm famous again! I got an email from a journalist, asking permission to use one of my pictures. I granted it (immediately), and he used it in his article. I expected it to be a local person for a local news site, or some other site, but it turns out that it was Associated Content contribution (see it here), which I find to be even neater than the Russian article that credited this site for a similar picture. The article itself has a theme that I would have definitely gone with, in that it doesn't even dance around the issue of the intimidation tactics of the current administration in how they want a business to operate. I bet Rick Wagoner is feeling real good right now... not only has his company sunk like an anvil, but it continued to do after getting 18 billion dollars of taxpayer money (the money saved GM, kind of like the trampoline saved this baby), AND he gets fired by the president of the United States.

I'm watching C-Span right now. Three or four Republicans are giving a special order speech to an empty auditorium, talking about the new Obama budget. They keep talking about how Obama's budget will double the debt - the same debt that it took over 200 years to accumulate from Day 1, to the time Bush left office. What they keep ignoring, is that Bush's budget doubled the debt as it was when he took office. It is refreshing though, that after looking a couple of them up (Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan), they are new hires, and were not around during the Great Republican Growth of Government (or GRRRGGGG for short). Now Democrats are up with the "Populist Caucus" special order speech, scaring the hell out of me. They know their goals, and their goals are noble; it is obvious they have no idea how to get there, except that if you keep voting for them, we'll get there eventually. -31MAR2009

I think the "Undo" feature is the best feature in the world. I could erase anything I want right now and all it would take is a Ctrl + Z to bring it right back. Heck, I could even hit Ctrl + Z right now and undo most of what I've typed here, without using the backspace or mouse. Let's try it. Yep, it works. "How does this paragraph make sense? If you hit Ctrl + Z and deleted half of it, I would no longer be able to see it. Did you type it all out again?", you ask. No, I did not type it all out. Instead, I hit Ctrl + Shift + Z, and undid my undos. This paragraph brought to you by me seriously screwing something up while trying to think of something to update this page with, and fixing it with ease.

So I have nothing to talk about really. I could talk about my PC games, but that's boring. I could talk about my beer, but none of you drink or care about beer. I could talk about my fatness (thank you, beer), but that's boring. I could talk about my car (oh yeah, I have a crack in my windshield. In two weeks it's grown to about two and a half feet), but that's boring. I could talk about my job, but there's nothing to complain about, so that's boring. I could talk about politics, but I've been out of the loop for the last week, on purpose. I could talk about books I've read, but I haven't read any books. Movies... nope. Today I did see a large, balding Asian man wearing a pink collared shirt, and a schoolgirl-style miniskirt in the parking lot of the grocery store. He was pushing someone in a wheelchair... I tried to get a picture of it with my (K1m RAZR - I still haven't activated the v710 my wife got me) phone, but my thumb kept hitting "Videos" instead of "Capture" and they went out of my line of sight before I could figure out that I, in fact, was not snapping multiple pictures. Shame, because he had really pretty legs.

I went to my wife's best friend's wedding in Georgia last weekend. Very informal - it was nice. She seemed like a completely different person, but then her attention was pretty divided between the near hundred guests. Here is a picture of her with her daughter and husband - easily the best picture I took during the whole thing. -29MAR2009

I started a couple of times, writing an update focused on the AIG bonus fiasco. But then I realized there really is only one thing I can say that hasn't already been said (or at least, from what I have heard)... and that is, after all this bad PR congress is throwing at the company, effectively turning all AIG employees into criminals, who will want to do business with them? How will they ever get solvent and pay the loans back? Congress has spent about $200M (and it's not over yet) in man-hours grandstanding about $165M in perfectly legal bonuses, that they allowed for in the first place, while they pass hundred billion dollar pieces of legislation without hesitation (that wasn't supposed to rhyme). How many billions of dollars of business has AIG lost because of this? What is this helping, other than making people feel like they're administering their own sense of justice?

Things have been pretty boring lately. I cancelled my Angelfire account - the site is still there, and in "free" mode complete with banner ads and hundreds of pop-ups. That's $5 a month that went to complete waste for years. In the spirit of making the most of my money, I increased my 401k contribution to 15% two weeks ago, while DOW was below 7k. Let's see here, I increased my 401k, and DOW grew by nearly 1,000 points since. Looks like I am the one brought it back up... At first I was skeptical, but the proof is too solid to deny. -20MAR2009

Yesterday, the DOW was up by 300 points. That's good. Today a rally turned into a crash, but still finished up at +3 points... or something. That's good too. Savings rates have risen, while retail sales have seemingly plateau'd (well, the opposite of a plateau; it's leveled out after dropping is what I mean). This recession, I have believed since the beginning, was one based mostly on fear more than an actual economic downturn. Yes, the housing market crashed. That was real. But there was also a bubble prior to that, where a lot of people made a lot of money. The people in real trouble are the ones currently stuck with houses they never planned on actually living in in the first place, and the bank executives that authorized the policies to lend them money. People constantly say there's a credit crunch, but I don't buy into it. I've yet to see any stats on how many people have been denied loans today, versus a year and a half ago (a Google search turns up nothing, and I sure didn't learn anything of the sort by watching CNN). I predict, (and this is on the record) that when the economy comes back, it will come back strong. I think it will happen soon. I don't see double digit unemployment rates, until after the second minimum wage increase kicks in this Summer. But after that, there will be a rebound. It will have little to do with the stimulus plan, and everything to do with natural market forces, reacting to three years of too easy credit, followed by a year of banks acting like banks again. The stimulus plan, if the money is spent as transparently as Obama says it will be, I think might actually do some good (not necessarily for the economy as a whole, but for public services to be improved upon). I've never considered the amount of money spent on pork to be a problem, but rather the anti-competitiveness of it to be toxic. I believe transparency will allow competition to thrive slightly better (e.g. Paul Kanjorski might not be so quick to give his family business $9.25M with nothing to show for it).

Yesterday was our 2nd anniversary. To celebrate, we went to a restaurant in D.C. - Vidalia, described in the Washingtonian magazine as a modern Southern restaurant. She got the shrimp and grits (delicious), and I got venison (also delicious). It was a fancy restaurant - the kind they make fun of on TV, complete with the really small portions. Thanks to the refillable bread (delicious as well), we were pretty full by the end and didn't want dessert. Getting out of DC, as usual, was like working your way across a plate of spaghetti, if you were an ant, and there were tons of traffic lights on the spaghetti, and sometimes spaghetti strands ended without warning, for no reason, and you pissed off other ants trying to get into their spaghetti strand.

Also I got a Motorola V710 as my anniversary present. It's used (of course), but looks pretty good, and I look forward to ditching my K1M. It even came with contacts already in the contact list. I don't know who they are, but I think this is a sign to start meeting new people. And with these, I already know their names. How exciting!

I was cleaning out a drawer in my bedroom and came across an old game brochure for my Atari Jaguar. I didn't want to get rid of it, and I didn't want to keep it. So I scanned it, and now I can throw it away. Do you want to see it? Really? Okay, click HERE! Back in the infancy of this website, I wanted to make entire sections dedicated to the old video games that I used to play, 3DO, Sega CD, and especially the Jaguar games. That would be a LOT of work, but I'm thinking about doing it again. And I'm still not finished with my Ireland page. -11MAR2009

Here is a Crawdaddypage Media Exclusive! So I was driving back from a customer site visit, and put on the AM radio as I am often inclined to do. Rush Limbaugh was on, talking about himself, as he is often inclined to do. Well, he finally went to taking calls, and he introduced someone by the name of Ferris. For those of you unfamiliar with the name, Ferris is the main character in the excellent movie, Ferris Beuller's Day Off, and is played by Matthew Broderick. The call is quite weird, and awkward...

Normally, I would not have suspected a thing... except towards the middle of the conversation, Ferris mentions his friend Cameron. Cameron, like Ferris, is a peculiar name, and also happens to be a character name, a character who happens to be Ferris's friend in the movie Ferris Beuller's Day Off. So I get home and look for anything on the internet about Matthew Broderick calling the Rush Limbaugh show as Ferris, and found nothing. This, ladies and gentlemen, could mean that I am a pioneer in observation, because what I did find in my search, is that Matthew Broderick is a flaming Barack Obama supporter. If you watch the video in that link, you may notice a slight similarity in voice betwixt the two sounds (or maybe I'm just very hopeful). When you take all of this in, as this is happening at the peak of Limbaugh's notoriety (thanks to RNC chairman Steele, and Limbaugh's response), it kind of makes sense that Broderick may have called to thank Limbaugh for helping to bring the Republican party down.

I got a new computer right as my last one completely died on me... Literally. I built the new one (parts mostly bought from Micro Center, a walk-in store that actually sells real computer parts, a la the failed CompUSA (it's online only, now, I think). They were actually cheaper than NewEgg (not to mention CompUSA, which seemingly had a 75% mark-up on every computer part they sold - no wonder they collapsed). I put everything together in my living room, and then tested it. I turned on my old computer and started uninstalling large programs and online-activated DRM applications, with plans to transfer the hard drives from the old, to the new, as additional storage. Well, during the uninstallation of Grand Theft Auto IV, the computer crashed. For the last time. I was unable to get it to boot up, as it would just turn itself off and all the fans would kick on at 100%. I gave up, and everything transferred over just fine (even using the same copy of WindowsXP - surprisingly I didn't have any issues activating it with Microsoft), and now I'm enjoying my new computer (Intel Core i7 920, 6GB RAM, Radeon HD4870), except on 1st Page (the software I use to type my HTML in), scrolling is still slow and choppy. Maybe it has more to do with the amount of text on the page than anything else.

I'd like to use the computer swap as a reason as to why I haven't updated in a long time, but that would be lying because I've had plenty of opportunity. At least, I was out of town this last weekend, helping my mom out with her home office. Everything went great there too. I put together the biggest computer desk I've ever seen (and my wife put together a file cabinet), all the rough edges were hidden (I often forget to pay attention to that when putting pressboard furniture together), and everything seemed pretty sturdy. It was raining pretty bad when we left Sunday morning, but surprisingly, we were only stuck in traffic for a few minutes going into D.C. (commonly, on Sundays, around noon - 6PM things will back up a LOT before the HOV lane gets added in on I-95N).

The next morning my wife had to get up much earlier than I. I heard her leave (closing the door), then come back, then leave, then come back again, and then leave. I look out the window and I see this:

She had a pot in her hand, trying to scrape the snow off the Prelude. There was no way she was going to be able to get the Prelude out of there, even if she did manage to get the snow off of it with a pot, so I took her to work in the Subaru. Despite my previous problems with the car, I'm glad I went with the AWD route because it performed admirably, and I think I'll never get a non AWD car for as long as I live north of Florida. -04MAR2009

Marco Island pictures are posted. It took much longer than I thought. I find myself caring more and more about aesthetics with each time I update a page. I think the biggest reason behind this, is I designed most of this website to be seen at 1024 x 768, and then 1280 x 1024. Pretty much all the pages I did look like feces smeared on the screen when viewing the site on a widescreen monitor (1680 x 1050, which is what I use now). So, to tighten up the page, I table-fied all the entries. I also did something different with the Marco Island post, compared to the others. This one is four pictures across instead of three, and the captions are centered instead of aligned left. On previous posts, the captions give the images an off-center illusion (some are really off-center, most are not). I moved the Korea post from the bottom of the 2nd page to the top of the first after I noticed that the 2nd page was 3x bigger. The rest of the 1st page is untouched, so you can get a good look at how awful my work used to be. Work that I was once proud of, that I am now embarrassed by.

I screwed up my computer... A plastic spring loaded clip snapped off, effectively removing the heatsink from my motherboard chipset, causing it to overheat and make my computer freeze up about five minutes after booting it up. With some electrical tape, and a wire I've re-made contact between the chip and the heatsink, but I think some permanent damage was done. The computer, while games still act normally, is a bit slower than it used to be. Even typing this here is slower, letters appearing about a half a second after they are entered. Starting up Firefox used to be instant. Now it takes about 10 seconds. It's a good time to get new computer parts... everything is on sale and the dollar is about to go belly up. Intel just came out with an i7 series of CPUs, the lower end of which are reasonably priced and blow away their competition. I just don't like spending money, so I'll probably live with this for much longer than I need to. -15FEB2009

I don't like putting up boring, passionless posts, so I just don't post. It's nothing personal.

Just got back from New York, once again. Imagine waking up at 5:30 in the morning in your warm hotel room, showering, not drying your hair (because guys usually don't do that, and you're a guy), getting dressed and having to walk to a rental car that's been sitting in 4 - 8 degree (Fahrenheit) temperatures all night. Those of you that read this, that live in New York, probably know what I'm talking about, and are used to it. Those that don't - grab some ice out of your freezer and put as much of it on your face as possible. Now keep it there for 10 minutes. That's how it feels (except ice tends to be warmer)... it's so cold that it burns. I usually have pretty good control over my shivers but what I have experienced over the last four days has forced open mental doors that I've closed for a long time (In Wyoming at -15 degrees wearing nothing more than a suit because I couldn't afford a good coat to go with it at the time). The final morning I walked outside to the rental car, and instead of 8 degrees it was 16, and it actually felt comfortable, and I didn't shiver.

I finally replaced my printer. It had to be printed from it often, or else the ink would dry at the tips and you'd have to buy new expensive and hard to find cartridges. The annoying commercial on the radio for the Epson Workforce series had me looking for the printer, and I bought it. I went to Circuit City first, but they didn't have it. Also I got depressed watching all the riff-raff rummaging through the stock - like vultures fighting over the last pieces of someone you knew. :( Anyway, I ended up going to Micro Center, a shop that will undoubtedly take up more market share as time goes on. Ironically it cost just as much as my previous printer (an Epson Stylus 880), bought over 8 years ago. Obviously it does more (Wi-Fi and network capabilities), and fits exactly the way the old printer fit on the top shelf of my computer desk. Thank you, China Indonesia.

Something in the news has been bothering me... This time, it's executive pay limitations. It doesn't just bother me... it downright scares me. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Commission, the government guy in charge when all of this stuff went down, wants to limit executive pay to all U.S. businesses due to some "deep rooted anger" among the American people. Wealth envy is going to bring this country down faster than any terrorist attack, and maybe even faster than teachers unions (smirk). You are allowed to have all the envy you want, but when you start turning envy into legislation, nothing good will ever come of it. It's nobody's business how much anybody makes, and I'm insanely frustrated with how much attention is being paid to CEO salaries and private jets. It's none of our business, unless the money has been stolen from us. The CEOs have no power over our money. Only the president and Congress does. Our anger should be with them. Barney Frank should have been replaced as chairman long, long ago. Now - I'm going to hold my hands over my ears and yell, pretending that I didn't just read that article, hoping that it's too absurd to ever be seriously considered, and ignoring the trend of the exponentially growing government control over the economy.

I have no problem with executive pay being limited to companies that take federal funding. In fact, I encourage strict rules on any company that participates in pork barrel projects, especially business owners that have familial ties to congressmen. What I have a problem with, is adding the limit retroactively, effectively chasing away the people in charge, and leaving the position open to someone willing to take such a large responsibility for $500k a year, and banned from perks that would cause bad PR. Had they asked initially to the executives "Would you still take this bailout money if we imposed these limits on you?", much liked the AP asked the CEO of General Motors if he'd step down were the tax payers to bail them out, I would feel much better about all of this. But they didn't dare ask that question then, because those CEOs (like the GM CEO) might have said "No, thank you."

I drove to the car wash today. For the "Worst Financial Crisis Since the Great Depression", there sure were a lot of people sitting in their running cars in line, waiting to pay $18 to get their cars washed. My car is still dirty. I'll go tomorrow morning. -07FEB2009

Looks like Circuit City's heartbeat suddenly flatlined. Before Christmas they announced they were going to close 20% of their stores and then all of a sudden, on the 16th of January they closed their website, and are liquidating all of their stores (this makes me very very sad). Everything is 10 - 30% off, so if you have a store near you, now's the time to go (well, at least it was when I started this post, four days ago). I went to a store near me, and it had more customers than I'd ever seen (in that store). I walked around; there was plenty of stock, but I just wasn't in the buying mood. Even with the discount, I couldn't justify getting anything that I wanted. But I did have two $25 Best Buy gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, so I went to Best Buy. They were more packed with customers... I guess the high ceilings really do a lot to bring people in.

After weeks upon weeks of the meteorologists telling me that it was going to snow, it has finally snowed. I got to play around in a parking lot a bit with my Subaru. It's scary how easy it is to lose control - and how far the car slides even if you're only doing 10 MPH. I don't know what makes cars slide off the road, when the road is straight... and I don't want to find out (I suspect it's sudden lane changes, or maybe hitting the brakes too hard - two things I try very hard to avoid doing). All day, I didn't hit anything, and nothing hit me despite tons of cars and trucks sliding off the road all around me. I'd love to say that's because I'm a very wary driver, and while I am, I think it had more to do with luck than anything else I made it through the day unscathed.

Just like when I stopped at the first paragraph before I ignored it for four days, I've stopped at the second one. I have writer's block. With that, I'll just leave well enough alone and post what I have, unedited and commercial free. -27JAN2009

Happy Barack Obama day. There was virtually no traffic in and around the D.C. area. I'm sure it was packed inside the city - but anywhere outside was light for a Sunday morning. Bush goes home quietly and unmissed. I can't help but feel sorry for him.

A week after my company's holiday party (this last weekend), there was a perk that I got to participate in. Basically, about 16 people are hand-picked to have made the biggest difference with the company, plus the sales guys that made their quota, to go to Marco Island, Florida. Obviously, I was picked and that's where I was from Thursday - Sunday. So the trip was good, but what's even better is all the stuff I got. An iPod touch (basically an iPhone that doesn't call anybody), an iTunes gift card, a pair of Maui Jim sunglasses (one for me and one for my wife), a 5 pound crystal trophy, a man bag (plus a tote bag for the wife), a golf jacket (plus one for the wife), four $200 American Express gift cards, a hat, a towel, and the best gift of all - a bag of Chex Mix with a bottle of Fiji water! Our suitcases were pretty packed on the flight back. When I get a round tuit, I'll add Marco Island to my pictures of places I've been section.

So, that's where I've been, and that's why I took so long to approve comments and update this site. - 20JAN2009

My company had a holiday party this Friday (two nights ago), that I took my wife to. Since my company is based 7 hours north of here, that's where we had to go for the party. It was a very well put together shindig (as expected)... Open bar, live music, lots of food, etc. Everyone got a $1000 chip to gamble with (fake money, of course). There were gambling tables set up... poker, roulette, blackjack, poker, blackjack, more poker, more blackjack... you get the point. Whoever won the most at the end, got a prize. Even though someone gave us their $1k chip, we still managed to lose everything. It was fun though.

Just like last time, we drove on the beautiful drive. This time it is a much different time of year, so I thought it best to take a whole 'nother series of pictures for my own archival purposes, and for your viewing pleasure.

Pretty, isn't it? It snowed very heavily during the drive there, and the drive back. Couldn't see anything except a faint indication of grooves left by a vehicle in front of me (that I could barely see). What is normally a 6.5 hour drive was turned into a 10 hour one. I think, for the next holiday party I'm going to fly in. I don't want to go through that ever again ever again ever again. Ever.

It appears that spambots have found my Wordpress "application". It's only a matter of time before they figure out how to register, completely bypassing my moderation and filling your heads with advertisements for v1agRA and cheap Nike Jordan Shoes. When it gets to that point, my comment feature may be discontinued. I hate spambots. -11JAN2009

Mutual funds are great because they are low risk, and one of the safest ways to invest. But not for me. Yeah, economic downturn blah blah, but let me take the opportunity to say that Dow Jones did not drop as low as my mutual fund did. It would be marginally acceptable, but the value has not increased since I started the mutual fund in 1998, putting in $20 a month every month for almost 8 years (plus a $2 fee for the service of them taking my money). I've been waiting for the market to go back up so that I can at least break even by the time I take my money out, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon. So, stay away from Pioneer Investments for anything money related, unless you can't find a hole to throw your extra cash in instead.

I actually worked on the Ireland page today... added three paragraphs. The page is going to be huge... I don't want to split it up but I might have to, because it will take you half an hour to scroll down to the bottom by the time it's done. -05JAN2008

Of the four blogs I link to below, three of them are now dead. My sister Nina has discontinued her blog as a way of welcoming the new year, resolution-like. (I am against the idea behind New Year resolutions, by the way) I'll leave the link up for the foreseeable future, you never know when it will magically go back active.

My five days off were pretty relaxing, but very unsatisfying. I accomplished nothing I listed out. I didn't even spend my gift cards. I did cut my great grandfather's European Vacation home video down to size, but it's still massive. 220MB, so if you're on dial-up it would take you about ten hours download it (as opposed to a day and a half). I haven't made it available for download yet, and will let you know when I do. I also made some minor adjustments to my High Heat Baseball 2003 review, making it slightly less ugly. Eventually I'll do the same for the rest of my reviews (some are just horrible looking, and read that way too).

Well, I guess other than that I have nothing more to say. Israel is finally laying waste to Hamas in Gaza. G.H.W. Bush wants Jeb to become president (someone get these people away and make them shut up, please). Obama is looking to add some 600k new government jobs. John Travolta's son died. The world is still turning. -04JAN2008

I had one of the better New Year's celebrations I've ever had last night. I drank more than I wanted to, but it was pretty fun. We went to a friend of the wife's house back in our old neighborhood. Street parking, and the only space available was right in front of her place. I somehow managed to parallel park perfectly (for the only time in 2008). After eating (and drinking) there, we went to a little bar nearby called Fireflies. They cleared the place out to make room for people, and they had a very unique live band. Unique in the sense that they were all black guys (and one portly white guy playing the keyboard) with either shaved heads or dread locks, in suits, singing classic rock (they even sang "I like that old time Rock 'n Roll") and blues. The Kelly Bell Band. Towards the end, my wife asked me for $15, and without asking I gave it to her. Next thing I know, I'm getting two CDs shoved in my pocket. The music was performed exceptionally... very precise. They kept making jokes; "I bet you guys didn't think we could do that, did you?" when they played certain songs, and they made jokes about being the only black guys in the club.

So, Happy New Year everybody. 2008 was a beast of a year. Gas prices dropped below $1.50 for the first time in five years. House prices became affordable again. Our military are all but finished in Iraq. Yeah, I'm ignoring the bad stuff because I think it was all necessary. Bubbles pop. The bigger you let them grow, the bigger the pop will be. What sucks about that, is government budgets are made based on the bubble's growth, and when it pops budget deficits cause officials to go crazy with raising taxes. I am not looking forward to 2009.

So I'm starting off the new year by making some homemade chili. It smells wonderful. (UPDATE: It's finished.) It's my favorite thing to make because it helps to get rid of some of the spices we never use; I just basically walk around the kitchen looking for things to add to it, and it tastes different every time, always delicious. I don't use recipes. I'm off till Monday so I have plenty of time to work on the ole website and cook things in the crock pot I bought my wife for Christmas (her favorite gift by far). I might even finish reading Atlas Shrugged. I also have some $75 worth of gift cards to spend, so I'm pretty excited about having nothing to do.

When I was visiting my grandfather in Florida, my grandmother Elizabeth treated me to coffee made in a french press. I was very impressed with the strength of said coffee, so much so I commented about it to my wife at a much later date. As a result, I got my own french press for Christmas, and I don't think I'll ever use my coffee maker again. I rarely drink more than two cups, so having a 12 cup maker is a little more than I need. The only downside to the french press is how nasty it looks when you're done. It just about forces you to clean it thoroughly every time you use it (kind of like when you get fingerprints on your iPod). In speaking of the iPod, that reminds me of an old vacation video my great grandfather made while vacationing with my grandfather in Europe. It's about 20 minutes long, no sound, filmed like an animated slideshow, quality stuff. I'm contemplating posting the movie on this site, maybe on the movie page, maybe on the family page, maybe both. First though, I have to figure out how to cut it down to a reasonable size to download.

It looks like I didn't finish my Ireland page before the end of the year like I expected to. I haven't touched it in a couple of months. I guess this means that my Asurion page really is the best page of 2008 (according to me). It's one of my favorite ones to look at; great color scheme, nice image layout, easy to read, and just very professional looking. -01JAN2009