Category: Uncategorized

I noticed that I don’t post as much anymore…. and when I do it’s about stupid shit like this…

I went to home depot tonight to look for mist heads for my misting system that is on the back porch. You know it 110 for 3 days in a row thought it would be a good idea. Spent a hour in the home depot looking for the parts… finally found them and the registers were down (how is that home depot is the only place I can walk in to on just about any day of the week and their registers are down?)

So I put my stuff back and walk out… I will come back later in the week when I have a more extensive list of things to get done around the house.

I get home and go to take off my shoes and notice that my pants are still cuffed from yesterday… why are they cuffed you ask? Simple the jeans I bought are to long so I rolled them up a inch or two so they wouldn’t drag on the floor.

Now imagine me walking around home depot looking totally lost with my pant legs rolled up.

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Ok you can stop laughing now.

Ahem…

GO SUNS!

That is all

So I was thinking the other day… as I often try not to do. You know what they say a room full of free thinkers will use up all the oxygen in the room in 20 minutes because they won’t stop their yammering. As a direct result of that statement I try not to think to much.

So I was thinking… you never realize it how good you have it until it’s all gone. Well I’m happy to report that I have realized how good I have it and I’m apperciating every minute of it. And you know me Mr. Always look on the bright side… things only look to be getting better.

Any questions?

Yes you in the back?

How many beers have I had tonight?

The proper answer to that question is not how many beers have I had it’s how many beers haven’t I had.

Wow concerts are so much better when you know all the words to all the songs…

TOOL May 6th 2006 Gammage Theater… holy crap that was cool.

3,300 people… small warm up show… 3rd show of tour.

I’m still just in wow of it all

moving on…. askaninja.com I recomend the following episodes

Special Delivery 1, 2, and 3 along with Questions 17 and 18

Go and understand that I have way to much time on my hands.

Worked from home today…. It’s a interesting feeling… Getting up at my usual time.

Making a pot of coffee

Having breakfast

Surf the internet

And sit at my kitchen table for the next 8 hours because I don’t want to work in my office since that is where I game.. And I don’t want to associate gaming with work.

Why did I work at home… I was getting my AC serviced… Why because it’s old. How did that go? Well lets just say I’m not entertaining the thought of high efficiency cooling units.

I will be comfortable this summer… May not be able to do anything else but I will be comfortable.

On the bright side the new TOOL and Pearl Jam albums came out today. I already had pre-purchased Pearl Jam on iTunes… I downloaded it first thing this morning.

Good stuff, go get if you have anything more then a passing interest in Pearl Jam… Then again most of you really like their crappiest song that won alot of awards and haven’t moved on. Oh well.

TOOL on the other hand is not down with the internet music thing. So that required me to get out and go to Borders… OK not a huge deal I haven’t been to Borders in a while and it’s a cool place.

So off I go to Borders, it’s a Tuesday afternoon about 5pm. It’s dead silent, it is a book store after all, and there are maybe 30 people in the whole joint not including employees. I wander around for about 10 minutes. No new books that I’m real keen on picking up just checking things out. There is someone about every 3rd aisle or so. I make it over to the CD section.

It’s abandoned… Seriously there are no employees over there at all it’s all just sitting there. Things are dusted but that is about it. I start looking for the new TOOL CD. Takes me about 10 minutes… But I have a ritual I go through every time I buy a TOOL CD. The first TOOL CD I bought was Ænima in 1997 (yes Cody I was a late catching the TOOL bus). I found Ænima by going through every rack at a Best Buy in Las Vegas because for what ever reason the Best Buy method of alphabetical does not match up with my grade school definition of alphabetical.

So I start my ritual… I can’t help but notice that most of the bins are half empty some are almost completely empty. It’s been a while since I bought a physical CD… Actually it’s been something like 3 years. I’ve bought music it’s all been on the internet though. Now I don’t know if the bin situation is a normal thing but maybe part of the music industries problem is they can’t keep fucking product on the shelf. Never mind that about 90% of it is crap to begin with.

So I get the TOOL CD… pay for it and head home.

Once I get home what is the first thing I do ? Yep I rip it to my computer to put on my iPod because I FUCKING BOUGHT A CD AND I WANT TO LISTEN TO IT ON MY FUCKING iPod.
Well 60 minutes later it’s done ripping and it’s not even a usable rip… It keeps skipping which my computer can handle but will cause the iPod to choke and it sounds like crap when it skips.

So that was my day… For those of you keeping score at home…

A/C unit… 1 down
2 Albums bought… 1 really good… 1 Artistically good… Technically leaves something to be desired.

With Cinco de Mayo quickly approaching I decided to celebrate my own personal diversity.

So I bought a selection of beers at Safeway today.

Guinness for my beer loving welsh/English/non Irish heritage.

Corona because a man can not live by beer alone occasionally he needs water and it’s a good beer for Mesa.

Sam Adams… I don’t think I had any ancestors fight in the American Revolution but you can never be to sure… and really since I’ve lived in the U.S. my entire life what is heritage day with out a little self heritage pride.

And Herminger Premium Bier from Germany (thanks Cody) to celebrate my oh so white northern European/German/Austrian ancestry.

Or maybe it was just a good excuse to buy a lot of beer that was on sale and I’m a sucker for a good deal 🙂

So I’ve been taking a break from EVE (the game not the wife of a friend of mine). What have I been doing with this break? Watching movies, doing stuff around the house (read as cleaning) and generally trying to become more human again. I know I have a highly addictive personality.. You know a personality that lives and breathes something for a period of time and then falls out of it. I think I’m through the living and breathing thing of EVE I did this exact same thing with SWG but I blame that on other things. Things that we won’t discuss here.

So in my procrastinate on cleaning the house ( if you say you don’t procrastinate then you are lying to yourself and everyone else. Procrastination is like masturbation… No one owes up to it but everyone does it). I was reading ye olde tyme blog I have going on here. I do that from time to time.

And some time ago I wrote about TV piracy and my proposed solution. A iTunes like service that you could download TV shows from. Low and behold someone took my idea and ran with it and has forgotten my royalty check for coming up with the iTunes TV studio… OR I took the next logical step of a business model already out there and plans were in the works long before I dreamed up my thing.

Anyway point is you can purchase and download TV shows from iTunes and several other outlets on the internets. How many have I purchased?

Zero.

Yes I’m a huge fan of Battlestar Galactica. Which quite honestly is the only show on there that really interests me. Lost probally would get me too if I would give it a chance.. But see 3 paragraphs ago about addictive personality.

So why haven’t I purchased any Battlestar Galactica’s (BSG) for download?

Short answer it’s stupid for me to pay $1.99 for content with no added value.

Long answer BSG is a fantastic series, I want it to grow and flourish I want others to grow to love this show like I have. I want other people to have debates about the larger context of the show and how it relates to our current situation in contermpary EARTH. I want other people to talk about incredibly evil Dr. Baltar is and how you really can’t but help to hate the character but see what he does next. I get all of this for the $40.00 I give the friendly folks at my cable company every month. Actually I get Multiple showings of BSG and I get my choice between HD and Regular.

But $1.99 a episode is to much to pay for just a show. No commercials, no additional content, no second track with commentary.

$1.99 is to much to pay for a piece of video that I can watch on my computer but I can’t burn to a DVD and watch on my huge TV with surround sound.

$1.99 is to much to pay for DRM codecs that may or may not be around in 5 years and I’m stuck with data that may or may not be intact.

$1.99 is to much to pay if I lose my hard drive because someone is to cheap allow multiple downloads of something I purchased.

Will I buy BSG season 2 when it comes out on DVD? You betcha! Will I pay $100 for it? Hell no! Will I pay $50 for it? OH yeah. Why because it has added value above and beyond the original. There is commentary (yes I’m one of those fan boys), I can watch it on any TV that has a DVD player hooked up to it.

Once again the pissed off ramblings of a random blogger that no one will ever listen to.

I would talk about my lack of a sex life.. But that would really get pretty boring very quickly.

Until next time kids.

Birthdays are a funny thing… Every year I don’t say a word about the silliest day of the year (or the 3rd holiest day of the year depending on who you are… And every year with out fail people remember. It’s really kind of disturbing. I mean I can barely find their houses and here they are remembering a random day in April.

I guess that is how you figure out who really gives a crap and who doesn’t it would appear as though I have more people then I thought who give a crap.

Yes that is me being nice… Take it for what it’s worth… And considering how often I’m “nice” well at least in this medium.

Ok moving on to things of a more technical nature….

PDA’s

And I’m not talking about sticking your tongue down someone’s throat in the middle of a public place.

I recently sold my iPaq to Curtis. Why you ask? Well it’s simple he was going to use it way more then I was and the price was right. Of course the bitch of it is now that I don’t have the stupid thing I realize just how much I did use it. Granted it was mainly for stupid things like lists and calendar but still I actually used it quite a bit.

Why don’t I just buy a new one? Simple I’m waiting for the Treo 700p so I can make a choice between that and the 700w. I’m a gadget whore, get off my case and let me have my technology.

Anyway, in a fit of desperation and because my blonde hair is in no way or shape a dye job. I found a notebook that was of the small form factor. Holy crap it’s a life saver. But that is not why I’m writing. When I found the notebook it was in the center console of my truck (which a year later still does not have a name) and started looking through it. It was the my old notebook from KRMC. It was interesting to flip through it and see what my notes to myself where like a year or so ago (SHC has provided with a laptop for work which for all intents and purposes is my PDA… A very large one but a PDA none the less). I also thought it was interesting that the last date that I used it was was June 21, 2005 also known as the day that everything changed for me.

I stole this…

Yes I’m a bad person….

Yes it was worth it!

1. You must learn to pronounce the city name. It is: “FEE – niks”.

2. The morning rush hour is from 5:00a to 10:00a. The
evening rush hour is from 3:00p to 7:00p. Friday’s
rush hour starts on Thursday morning.

3. The minimum acceptable speed on all freeways-I-10, I-17, U.S. 60, Loop 202 — is 85 mph. You may only exceed that speed on Loop 101, where the speed is allowed to match the highway number. Anything less is considered wussy.

4. Forget the traffic rules you learned elsewhere. Phoenix has its own version of traffic rules. Cars/truck with the loudest muffler go next at a four-way stop. The truck with the biggest tires go after that. (Note: East Valley cell phone-talking moms ALWAYS have the right of way.)

5. If you actually stop at a yellow light, you will be rear ended, cussed out and possibly shot.

6. Never honk at anyone. Ever. Seriously.

7. Construction is a permanent fixture in Phoenix. Detour barrels are moved around during the middle of the night to make the next day’s driving a bit more exciting.

8. Watch carefully for road hazards such as drunks,
skunks, dogs, barrels, cones, cows, horses, cats,
mattresses, shredded tires, squirrels, rabbits, crows,
vultures, javelinas, roadrunners, and the coyotes
feeding on any of these items.

9 . You must know that Maricopa Freeway, Papago Freeway and the I-10 are the same road.

10. To find anything in Phoenix, it is required to know where Central and Washington are. This is our Alpha and Omega-the Beginning and the End.

11. If someone actually has their turn signal on, wave them to the shoulder immediately to let them know it has been accidentally activated.

12. If you are in the left lane, and only driving 70 in a 55-65 mph zone, you are considered a road hazard and will be flipped off accordingly.

13. Ground clearance of at least 12 inches is recommended for city driving.

14. You are allowed to wear potholders to protect your
hands and fingers during summer driving.