Ahh... New Years Eve and my Birth Day, 37. You would think that having on a birthday on New Years Eve would be a big party, at least once in your life. The most exciting thing that happened on my birthday was meeting Sarah. It's odd I never partied during the typical partying years. Tonight Sarah and Ruby have crashed out and Gryphon and I have been rocking the new Eye Toy for the Playstation 2. It gives your arms a big work out and you can really work up a sweat.
I went to the Willow Grove Mall during my lunch break today and bought new skateboard trucks. The ones that I have were bought almost years ago. I got some Tensor trucks, the Rodney Mullen pro models if you want to know. I also picked up some Bones RED bearings and Element hardware. It was $65 which is better than I could find online for all three( trucks are $19 each, bearings are $15. So this year my xmas money doesnt go for some sort of electric thing. At some point I'll have a new board from my buddy whom had a 100 or so FDR benefit boards made up. That should be about $25.
And some New Years resolutions:
- for the family we want to be more on time for things. Small things like being at places at the right time and big things like being prepared for holidays, birthdays and such...
- for me I am going back on a diet. Its the Chris diet. I had gotten under 170 a couple years ago. Daily exercise and cutting out breads, butter and cheese were a major part. I do let my self eat what ever on Fridays and have to be better about eating lunch. I think I am pushing 185 right now, but Ill start weighing in tomorrow. Ill do a two day detox type of thing and probably skip the first friday of free eating. So tonight I drink all of my beer and eat lots of chips and stuff... I plan on doing some sort of exercise at work. the skatepark (if you can call it that)near work is kind of far for a lunch time session but what I did to loose the weight last time was walking and there are many good walking places near work. I also hope to add a mini-ramp to our yards soon along with skateing at joes once a week if possible. Another thing is DDR that I will try to do for a half hour everyday. Im also going to cut out coffee. I dont really like it but its something that I seem to get every morning at work. Im going to try replaing it with Green Tea that they have at work.
So i think Ill try to find some sort of count down thing on the web since we dont have the cable TV and dont get very good over the air reception...
Have a good one...
Monday, December 31, 2007
HaPpy NeW YEarS aNd stUfF...
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Torn...
This week the company I am with had their Holiday Party. I had planned to hit the party at 5:30, have a few drinks, dinner and then head to out to skate the mini-ramp at Joe's around 7:30.
I almost left as soon as I got to the party. It was a lot of outgoing type people and I am just not that kind of person. I saw that they had Guiness on draft so I found a corner of the bar and thought I would a drink and maybe I could get over the anxiety. Ive come to appritiate Guiness draft. Getting a Guiness from a bottle or can is just not the same. I watched the bartenders make there drinks and hopped that more people would start arriving so they would start dinner. By the time I had hit drink #2 lots of people were there including my coworker. One of the other people that I had been in the new hire training had started talking to me to. They had some killer seafood type appetizers. It was getting to be like 6:30 and they had not hinted at dinner yet. The bar was flowing though, it turned out to be open bar all night... Finnally at about 7is they seated everybody... I drank down the last of my beer and made the choice to head out just before they came out to take orders. Getting the change to skate rarley loses out to anything even a very , very nice office party.
The skate session was my first since before we moved. So that was the week before Thanksgiving. i thought i would be way off and would have to spend most of the night just getting my basics back. It was so much the opposite as I had a great night and was able to pull some stuff off that I had not done since my teenage skating days. I can't wait to get a ramp set up in my yard and to get back to Joes. Ill have to get some video one of these days...
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Rember Christmas is about the first 6 letters...
... was on a sign that I saw today. Now, the first 6 letters are: a,b,c,d,e,f, and g. hmmm...that doesnt make sense... Oh wait, drr, that was 7. So we have abcdef. is this some secret code? Are they trying to be like Google and only have smart people attend the church?
Maybe it's an Acronym? Here is what I found:
1. American Boys Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn
2. Abstinence, Be Faithful, Correct and Consistent Condom Use and Circumcision, Diaphragm for HIV Prevention, Exposure Prophylaxis, Female-Controlled Microbicide's (approach to prevention of AIDS virus)
Hmm... I don't know if either one of those says Christmas to me.
Maybe it's an Anagram. let see:
Abc Fed
Cab Fed
Ehh.. nothing there.
Maybe it has something to do with the first 6 letters ever. Man, you have do a research paper to figure this stuff out. i think I'm, done.
Happy Holidays to you...
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Blogging is for people with nothing to do, part 5 :: We've Moved
Ah yes, here is something that can take some blogging time away, moving. After being in North Wales for about 9 years...wow, we have moved to a little house with a big yard in Souderton. The move wasn't to bad and we got it done in a week. We had to clean the new place pretty good and ran into massive issues with u-haul (coming to a post soon will be a rant on uhaul). I had some good help from a couple friends and we got the big stuff over. Then we shuffled stuff over in the cars and then finnally today we jumped started our 'extra car' and drove it to the new place where the battery promptly died again. if your up to it, look up the location of a 1996 plymouth breezes battery... funny huh. So now the kids can run outside and I have my first place that does not have anybody attached to one or more of our walls... very nice.
Our verizon DSL speed here is only the 1.5 teir instead of the 3 that we were used to but i guess will make due or get Comcast at some point. Maybe there run FIOS near here at some point...
Thats all for now.
Blogging is for people with nothing to do, part 4 :: New Job for me
So I prettied up my resume and went full on a job hunt. I got some small hits here and there. Then I get a call from a "head hunter". She's got a job in Horsham, 9 miles from my house... Wyeth was 24 miles. I had a great interview and I really felt like I would fit in. After sweating out the next couple days I finally get the call that I got the job. It is working in the IT dept of LA Weightloss Franchise inc. I mainly support the Point of Sale software that the centers use. The salary is more than what my raise at CAI would have been plus I get to have payed vacation, Sick days and Holidays and all the good stuff that comes with working for a strong small company. I started Oct 26th. While we were living in North Wales it only took me 25 to35 minutes to get to work... Which leads to the next post.
Blogging is for people with nothing to do, part 3 :: Our shows are back on.
Ah yes. Line them up and BitTorrent them down. Family Guy, American Dad, Ghost Hunters, The Office, Project Runway, Curb you Enthusiasm, and My Name is Earl (Jason Lee AKA Earl is a long time ProSkater).
So the shows take me away from Blogging and PlaneShift...
Blogging is for people with nothing to do, part 2 :: Skateboarding
So skateboarding came back to my life in a big way as I helped a friend build a mini-ramp in his garage. It's 19ft wide about 3 or so feet high and fun as all-get-out. I started skating the ramp and skating with alot of people in there late 20s and 30s, awesome. I also learned that Pabst Blue Ribbon is this weird skater choice of beer when skating. I never had the opportunity to drink beer and skate... odd thing.
Any way I can skate the mini better than I ever could and am learning new things every time I go. I looking to add a ramp to my new yard... but thats for a latter post.
So Skating has been dragging me from posting and PlaneShift...
Blogging is for people with nothing to do, part 1::PlaneShift
So in August when my classes ended I started playing PlaneShift when I had a spare minute. It's a free Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, like World of WarCraft. It's great because it is still in development and you get to see changes in the game. Plus you don't feel guilt that you are paying a monthly fee and not playing it if you dont feel like it.
Check it out, PlaneShift: Crystal Blue.
So that pulled me away from blogging...
Monday, December 03, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
iPAQ Filestore and how to fix it.
What is the iPAQ filestore you might ask? Well the iPAQ is a pocket pc. I am writing this from it now. It has 64 mb of RAM (like the memory in a PC) and 128 mb ROM (like a SD flash memory card). You try to keep the RAM pretty empty as the iPAQ uses that to do stuff. You install the programs you use alot on the ROM. The OS uses up some of the ROM and leaves you about 96 mb free. This is more than enough. Its best to put music and media onto SD Card. Anyway, Ive had the iPAQ for a couple years and have heard of this bug but I never ran into, till now. Aparently when you put to much on this filestore,as its called, you lock up the memory. You can use whats there but you can not delete it, or save anything else to it. Not even flashing the ROM (re-installing the OS and the very basics of what makes the device work) would clear it out. I chatted with HP, they said to send it in for repairs. Yea, no, I'll fix it my self. I did lots of surfing and reading through message boards. I tried a couple things but was coming up empty. On the fun side I am going to get mobile phone soon an considered this to be good time to get PoketPc Phone. I found one last thing to try... and it worked. I'll give you the basics and then the whole thing for anyone who might actually be looking for this fix.
It involves flashing the device with a ROM for another language then flashing it back to your own language. you also have to trick the flash program into thinking you have the correct language... For those who need it and for anyone else, enjoi.
1. Download the latest English and German ROMs.
2. Unpack both.
3. Make copies of the unpacked English and German ROMs.
4. With the original German ROMfolder, rename "d2b10111go.nbf" to "d2b10111uo.nbf ".
5. Run "ROMUpdateUtility.exe" in the original English ROM folder.
6. On the screen just before proceeding with the ROM update (After the checks) copy the renamed "d2b10111uo.nbf" from the original German ROM and overwrite the " d2b10111uo.nbf" in the original English ROM.
7. Proceed with the ROM update.
8. It will take a very long time to start and longer than normal at 90% but be patient.
9. Now you have a German pda. Check that the filestore is now fixed by deleteting the backup folder in the filestore and/or running the format filestore found under sttings (use the icons to direct you if you can't read German).
10. If it works you now need to install the English ROM back again we need to trick the ROM update again.
11. You can now delete the two original unpacked English and German ROMs just leaving the copies of them. (This is purely to make it easier and I will refer to them as just the English and German ROMs).
12. With the English ROM, rename "d2b10111uo.nbf" to "d2b10111go.nbf".
13. Run "ROMUpdateUtility.exe" under the German ROM folder.
14. After all of the checks and just before proceeding with the update copy the " d2b10111go.nbf" from the English ROM and overwrite the "d2b10111go.nbf" in the German ROM.
15. Proceed with the ROM update. Again, it will take a very long time but be patient.
16. Run the format filestore program found under settings just to make sure it is fixed.
17. Now you are back in English with a fixed filestore.
18. Enjoy!
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Short Timer...
... Sniff, sniff. Do you smell that?
It smells like a new job to me...
Sniff... 10+ miles closer to home.
Sniff, sniff... More money, full benifits...
Sniff... regular hours and paid time off...
Yhea... thats what it is...
Next Thursday I start, nice.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Finished the garage mini-ramp
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Scarred For Life...
Scarred For Life... Eleven Stories about Skateboarders
I just finished this book. It's a good one that really hits at the mind and motivations of a true skateboarder. They all managed to make skating be a part of their life. We (Kyle and I) had a plan to save up and buy a car. We were going to drive that car to California after we graduated. We were going to skate where ever we could and then once in CA we would find some kind of jobs and skate...
Click here to check it out at Amazon.
Cure Lyrics Fun...
I love this line...
Remember the last time I told you I love you -
It was warm and safe in our perfect world -
You yawned and I had to say it over
Now the full lyrics.
"There Is No If..."
Remember the first time I told you I love you -
It was raining hard and you never heard -
You sneezed! and I had to say it over
"I said I love you" I said... you didn't say a word
Just held your hands to my shining eyes
And I watched as the rain ran through your fingers
Held your hands to my shining eyes and smiled as you kissed me...
"if you die" you said "so do i" you said...
And it starts the day you make the sign
"tell me I'm forever yours and you're forever mine
Forever mine... "
"if you die" you said "so do i" you said...
And it starts the day you cross that line
"swear I will always be yours and you'll always be mine
You'll always be mine
Always be mine... "
Remember the last time I told you I love you -
It was warm and safe in our perfect world -
You yawned and I had to say it over
"I said I love you" I said... you didn't say a word
Just held your hands to your shining eyes
And I watched as the tears ran through your fingers
Held your hands to your shining eyes and cried...
"if you die" you said "so do i" you said...
But it ends the day you see how it is
There is no always forever... just this...
Just this...
"if you die" you said "so do i" you said
But it ends the day you understand
There is no if... just and
There is no if... just and
There is no if...
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Nu Jetta Getting old..
The Nu-To-Us Jetta is getting old. It still gets 350 or so miles on a 12 gallon fill up... The clutch is holding in there, but for how long... dun, Dun, DUN...
Building a Ramp...
Here is something I have been doing. Helping a friend build a mini-ramp in his garage... I can't wait to help put the final layer on this baby and get skating again.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
oh, hello there...
Hey look a blog... hmm. Looks like i need to sweep out the spiders and do something here...
Thursday, August 16, 2007
skatedaily.net gets a RSS Feed...
A site I visit often ,http://skatedaily.net/, has finally given in and created a RSS Feed! Thanks Bryce!
What's an RSS Feed, check it out here.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Gryphon in the Deep End...
Gryphon took the leap into the deep end of the pool this weekend. When he got to the pool he was able to swim under water. He was swimming around with a tube to the deep end and also jumping in the showler end with out the tube. I got him to jump off the diving board with the tube on. Later he showed me that he could swim accross the shallow end with out touching. I convinced him to do the same in the deep end. He can do it all under water or come up for air when he needs to. Then I had him jumping off the side and swimming and then we got to the diving board. Boing he went flying off, hit the water and started simming to the ladder. Needless to say once he got that down he was unstopable. Its' also good to see that if he falls in to water that he will be able to swim to safty. Now we need to work on treading water and then he will be set.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Self-Sustainable Chair :: J o o Y o u n ::
Self-Sustainable Chair :: J o o Y o u n ::
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
HTC Advantage- If I were getting a phone, I think this would be it.
Sent to you by tagar via Google Reader:
Filed under: Handsets, HTC, Windows Mobile, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, UMTS
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Thursday, August 02, 2007
The FireWall is now blocking Google's Picasa Web...
I guess that webmail and blogger could soon fall under the "Online Storage;Personal Pages" rules...
...Access Denied (content_filter_denied)
The following URL is blocked by Wyeth policy because of its content categorization by our subscription service: "Online Storage;Personal Pages"
http://picasaweb.google.com/home
Monday, July 30, 2007
Work's FireWall blocks off another Google application...
I use Google's online documents to do and organize my homework. This worked well as I could also work on things during lunch at work... No more though, well I can just email myself with the updates, like Google Talk the firewall here at work has stopped access
****
Access Denied (content_filter_denied)
The following URL is blocked by Wyeth policy because of its content categorization by our subscription service: "Online Storage;Computing/Internet;Personal Network Storage;Interactive Web Applications"
****
I guess Googles news reader could be next. i dont think they would stop gmail or other web based email...
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Tenth Anniversary...
We had a GREAT date night for our anniversary. We hit Tokyo in Skipback for sushi and sushi on the deck. We drove around a bit scouting for Karaoke spots(didn't find any). We went to 99 for a drink at the bar ( wont go back there. The tall bass ale was nice but the two drink Sarah got (apple martini and something else green) were only enough to give her a sugar high. We were going to go in to Bertucci for a drink bu they were packed. The Comedy club at the beef and ale in Audubon was next up and we had a great time there. We ended up being the only ones dancing after wards at the bar and had allot fun. Sarah sat and chatted with a guy for a bunch of songs but I just said !@#$ it and danced by myself though all of the bad songs and the songs we requested. I asked for Jr/Sr Rhythm Bandits... he played don't stop your feet. We asked for jamiriqui canned heat and he got that one. We asked for Will smiths if you cant dance to this... we got that one. We asked for crystal method... He didn't have it. I asked for Rage against the machine... he had bring the funk. I rocked out to that one by myself pretty hard. I think he was digging my dancing. Not that I was dancing well but I pulled out my old break dancing foot work an i heard him wooing to something one he knew at the bar... ROCK!!! I just kept dancing to everything my god it was fun. Dana, my cousin happened to come online and i relied what was being played to her and danced till he was done at 1ish. Sarah joined back in for the last group of songs. He played allot of junk rap but there was enough of what we asked for with some other good choices to keep me jamming...We will have to go dancing next time we get to go out.
I tried to tip the DJ but he just said to keep it... ROCK!!!
I was OK to get the kids from my parents and get home...
Pictures later...
Friday, July 27, 2007
Wyeth catches up with Google Chat
Wyeth BNS (Border Network Security) blocks all the fun stuff: any streaming video or audio, social networking sites, game sites and any sort of chat services. One that they did not get right away was Gtalk. I didn't use alot but I would chat with Kyle and Brendon from time to time. Today I see that they caught up with it and disabled it for all network users... oh well.
Monday, July 23, 2007
4WinMobile.com's Xda Flame Mini-Review
Sent to you by tagar via Google Reader:
4WinMobile.com has an O2 Xda Flame in their hands, and aside from a couple of shortcomings, they like what they see! Check out their thoughts here.
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Saturday, July 21, 2007
Got our Harry Potter Book...
We were number 310 and it only took till 12:45 to get the book. The BN party was wild and long but we had a good time. Pictures to follow...
Friday, July 20, 2007
July 2007 updates
i hurt my lower back last sunday. not sure how it happened but it was the first time I have hurt my back. It had me on the floor trying to find just the right position as to not be in sever pain. Its getting better day by day now... Im scarred of what this means for any skating that I may have had coming to me...
I got back on track with my online courses. I am trying to plow through one Author a day and answer the questions associated. I am going through my math homeworks at work. I really dislike the Eng. Lit. I don't enjoy enturperating what people wrote about and comparing them against other writers. These writers always over describe things without actually saying what they were talking about. Add that to the old or proper english and terms of the day plus they seem drunk or on drugs and you ended up guessing at what they are refering to... blah.
Gryphon is hyped on the Hogwarts summer corospondince course that he is taking and Ruby is working through some rough 2 year old issus. Ruby is also pretty much potty trained, diapers be gone with thee! She is also very scarely unafraid of the water and I think now that she sees Gryphon swimming under water and jumping all around she is trying to imatate that.
Sarah and I have a new PS2 game that we are gunning for Guitar Hero, check it out.
We got our first working laptop from Sarahs dad. It got rattled around abit on the trip out and the harddrive popped out. i just pushed it back in and it runs really good for being older with 600 or 700 mhz CPU and 256k of ram and still running WinXP with no lag. It found and connected up to the wireless network with out a hitch. So far i was able to get the desktop to get into the laptop but didnt have time to work it the other way.
Thats it for now... going to the harry potter book release party tonight too...
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
urnx by tmbg
urnx, ni, imnx
ictv
ictv, nicu
icu, icu, nurok
urnx
urnx, ni, iw
icatv, icadvd, nicu
icu, icu, nurok
icu, icu, nurok
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Nice article i want to finish reading...
http://www.webdelsol.com/Topic/articles/04/howell.html
--
-=Chris Faulkner=-
cfaulkner@gmail.com
ossus.blogspot.com
"Peace, it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart."
Monday, July 09, 2007
iPhone nano
You just press the call button and it shuffles your contacts and calls a random person. Ha!
Sent to you by tagar via Google Reader:
Filed under: Cellphones
While analysts have been speculating that Apple may unleash a smaller (and cheaper) handset in the not too distant future in order to grab a sect of market share not interested in the relatively pricey iPhone, the rumors are seeming to gain traction. According to Kevin Chang, a JP Morgan analyst based in Taiwan, Apple is actually looking to "launch a cheaper version of the iPhone in the fourth quarter that could be based on its iPod nano music player." The report cited anonymous sources "in the supply channel" and also referenced the now-famed patent that suggests such a device could be materializing. Still, we'd highly recommend taking all of this in with a healthy heap of salt for the time being, but don't be incredibly shocked if your next iPod nano unexpectedly rings while you're stereotypically browsing through Gorillaz tracks.[Thanks, Matt]
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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Friday, June 29, 2007
Note to me to check this out...
--
-=Chris Faulkner=-
cfaulkner@gmail.com
ossus.blogspot.com
"Peace, it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart."
FDA recalls Veggie Booty snacks - Reuters
Sent to you by tagar via Google Reader:
Reuters - 6 hours ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Veggie Booty, a snack particularly popular among small children, may carry Salmonella food poisoning and should be thrown out, the Food and Drug Administration said.
Salmonella reported in four kids Seattle Times
Snack Food Recall FOX News
Seattle Post Intelligencer - Los Angeles Times - Dog Flu Diet and Diseases - WETM-TV
all 265 news articles
Things you can do from here:
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Sputtr... A cool looking site to start a search from...
Sent to you by tagar via Google Reader:
There are more meta search engines out there than stars in the sky, I reckon, but this one is quite good-looking: Sputtr.com* collects a variety of search engines under a single search box. There's Google News, Google blog search, Google Video and so on for the Google-lover; there's Snap, Live.com and Ask for those who like to see how search underdogs perform; there's a lot of social news sites, like Digg or Reddit, and there's a lot of miscellaneous engines. All of this is laid out with a large-font & icons design screaming "2.0" (and though the icons are large, you can hover over them if in doubt). Search-Engines-Web.com, who pointed to this site in the forum, says Sputtr makes "a damn good browser homepage."
Also see my multi search gadget for iGoogle (and feel free to clone that gadget to adjust to your needs).
*"Sputter" means "To spit out words or sounds in an excited or confused manner."
[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]
[Advertisement] Google books at eBay: background info on Google, AdWords, AdSense, Blogger and more... [Advertise here]
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Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Looks like a MAC...
Neutral Milk Hotel...
I also found Broken Social Scene, again I have no idea where it came from but I like it...
"How Does A Duck Know?" by CRASH TEST DUMMIES
"How Does A Duck Know?"
How does a duck know what direction south is?
And how to tell his wife from all the other ducks?
You can cut a chicken's head offand it will keep on running and twitching
[CHORUS]When everything seems planned outwhen everything seems nicely planned outwell the human race will come and smack your face
How come all my body parts so nicely fit together?
All my organs doing their jobs, no help from me!A person pulls a spider's leg out
To watch it keep on moving and twitching.
Satan lives here: on grain and earth, rain and air.
How come I just smoke and smoke and smoke and curse every butt I spit out?
All night long I grind my teeth and I wake up when I cough
You can put me in and iron lungand I will keep on breathing and twitching.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Eastern Exposure 3, circa 1996
This video has some places that I have skated. If you watch the whole thing you will see:
- Love Park, of course.
- Cheap Skates
- Spinning wheels skatepark.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Wierd...
So I was helping a person at work with an Adobe Acrobat problem. I connected to their computer and proceeded to pick a random PDF that was on the computer.
I couldn't believe what I saw open up in the PDF... I though for a second that I was at home. It was the Intake Form that I had created for a local Chiropractor 5 or so years ago...
I just happened to get her call, I just happened to by pass all of the other PDFs that i could have opened and picked one labeled INTAKE_FORM.She is going there tomorrow, She said she would say Hi for us... weird.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Skateboards not allowed (phillyBurbs.com) | Intelligencer
Wish I still had my "skateboarding is not a crime" teeshirt... (I can't even find a picture of the shirt on the web...)
Saturday, June 09, 2007
At work on a Saturday...
So, I am at work making up for taking last Monday (see Blown Away at Assateauqe...).
I took a hand full of calls from other people try to work while at their 'Lake Homes' or Vacation homes... I managed to finish another of the homework assignments that I am late on for my math course.
I can hear somebody watching Cocktail... great movie.
2o minutes left...
...Gett'n kind of hungry...
Friday, June 08, 2007
Thursday, June 07, 2007
MyMiniLife | Your Life Miniaturized!
This looks like it could get addicting and kill some time...
/me runs from it...
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Blown Away at Assateaque...
The wind blew almost everything away...
(one of the photos below is a video of the blowing tents and the wind, i think you can click it to see it.)
We packed the car very tightly. I was surprised that we fit everything. Gryphon and Ruby were belted in and then packed around. After a stop for gas and ice we were on our way. We had the AC on the whole time as it was pretty hot. As we drove through the campsite we noticed that it was not very hot at all. we did see a couple ponies on the way in.
We pulled up to our spot and noticed that what was probably my cousin's tent was already up but their car was not there. We got out and then got hit by the WIND! It wasn't just a gust of wind but a non-stop gale force wind. Their tent seemed pretty sturdy so we set about getting our stuff ready.
As soon as we got ruby out she started to cry from the wind and just sat on the picnic table and cried for a couple of minutes until she got used to the wind.
We were getting ready to set up the gazebo first when my cousin pulled up. After the hellos, he mentioned that the gazebo may just blow over. We decided to go with the tents first. Jeff had gotten some advise about holding down tents in windy weather. He had some plastic plates with holes in them. You put a rope through the holes and bury the plates in the sand. You then just tie the ropes to the same spots that you would put the steaks in. So we did this and fought the wind to get the tent somewhat standing. The whole side of the tent was just bent in and the poles were bowing in a bad way. We repositioned the tent so that it had a edge cutting into the wind. That seemed to be a small help. As you can see from some of the pictures it was still falling in even with a ton of anchor ropes. It was standing though so we put up Gryphons smaller tent in back of the big tent so it would not get as much wind.
Renee and Adam rolled up and after the hellos again we helped get there tent up. It was a bit stronger but still leaning with the wind. We also watched a lot of other people struggling with their tents. They also managed to get there stronger gazebo up as well.
So we walked down to the beach to check it out. Water was cold, very cold. No ponies here.
Back at the camp I broke out the camping stove that we got from freecycle. i got it set up and was trying to light it when i noticed that a pipe was leaking fuel... I stopped trying to light it. So now we had to try to get a fire going. Adam had some kindling and we had some logs still at our site from the last campers. We did get a week fire going and were able to warm up our veggie dogs and burgers. i was able to keep the fire smoldering and burning until we could add some more big stuff to give us a fire to sit around. we had a beach umbrella laying down in front of it to break some of the wind at this point to. The kids loved the sand dune next to us and it kept them busy. The wind died down a bit at night and it got chilly. We did catch a guy walking around oddly at like 1am and even stealing wood from our neighbor. When Jeff talked to the ranger the next day he said that wood is like gold here and if we could identify the guy to let him know. We also saw 2 ponies walking down the street late at night too. I had no problem sleeping once My feet were warm (I'm sure the beer didn't hurt too).
In the morning the wind was still blowing but not as hard at first but it back to roaring by midday. we contemplated putting up our gazeebo but as the wind was keeping us cool and blowing the bugs away we kept it down. The birds were having a hard time flying too. You could see them a stream lined as possible to fly in the wind. we used Adams stove to cook up some breakfast... I think. We spent the day at the beach and hanging at the camp sight. I think Sarah took a nap and I sat and played with my GPS and read some of my book. I had a change to try Jeff's Trick Kite. that was cool. It almost pulled you off of the sand! Gryphon and i headed to Food Lion to get s'mores supplies and some veggies. I noticed that it was blazing hot in town which made the wind easier to bare with when we got back to camp. We got another fire going for the night as the darker clouds started to roll in. Sarah and I decided to pull our blankets out and sleep on the dune. To bad the sky wasn't clear but it was still nice.
I woke up at one point and heard rain. Pulled the blankets back and mentioned the rain to Sarah. It was just a drizzle so we pulled the blankets back up and went back to sleep. A little later we woke to a more steady rain. we got up and saw the clouds were pretty thick and the rain didn't seem like it was going to stop. Jeff had gotten coffee and some donuts and then had left overs so we had some of that. Still hoping to make another day we put up the gazebo. we had the same problems with the wind and the one side of the gazebo was being pushed in by the wind. Jeff and carol packed up and took off before it started to get bad. We decided to go for a geocache, do the nature center and then comeback to make our decision. Adam and Renee headed out to get some better rain gear. They were here for the week so they would not be leaving because of the rain.
I sure up the little tent and through a tarp over the bigger tent and the gazebo. Then we scooted out and stopped at the camp store and got the kids some rain slickers, a pony pin and pony magnets. Then we headed off for a geoCache called 'Don't Rock the Boat'. The cache was a mini, which ment that it the size of a film canister. We have yet to find one of these mini caches and this would not be the first. It was pouring down rain as we found the spot. There were a bunch of old little boats set on small rocks along the parking lot of a bar. i guess the cache was around the rocks or just off in the woods. It sounds like not everyone looking for this finds it and it has had some problems with not being there in the past. On the way back we hit the nature center and watched a video on the ponies and got to "pet" some live water creatures and long dead remnants of creatures. We took a ride down the road to the State Park and saw some ponies by the road. Going back to our camp we noticed that even more people had left. people with RV's were hanging but there were very few tents left. When we got back to our site we noticed that the little tent was gone with the wind... We jumped back in the car to see if we could find it. the tent made it accross the road and got stuck in some bushes. Sarah rained it in and pulled it back to camp risking being blown away as she did so. We broke that tent down and saw that our other neighbor who was not back yet was now missing their gazebo( the same one we have by-the-way). A quick look around and we saw that it too was stuck in some bushes. They arrived shortly after we did and pulled it back and were packed up and out of there before we where. We checked out the inside of our tent and found that water had made its way in and the blankets were wet. We decided to pack it in. If we were staying for the week or a couple more days I may have wanted to stick it out. So we quickly broke everything down as the wind seemed to pick up... We said our good-byes to Renee, Adam, and Conner. Connor was hanging in their jeep as they tried to water proof there tent and gazebo.
The ride home was long, 4hours, and cold and sandy. it was nice to get home and get showered and dried off.
So was it a bust? hmmm... we did have a nice Friday night, Saturday day and Night. we did do a couple things on Sunday. It would have been nice to be able to do the beach and campfire again on Sunday and we did have a cache that would have given us a nice beach walk. The high winds did make it exciting but the rain+Wind made it blahhh. So I would say it was a 1/3 bust.
I hope we can do it again next year...
Monday, June 04, 2007
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Some Cure videos...
Such a cool think that you can do on youTube. You can watch those videos that you may have only caught once on MTV or Friday Night Videos so very long ago...
Check this one from the cure (Robert Smith with short hair). Remember though if you want to see the videos that Robert Smith liked search for his favorite directors name... Tim Pope.
Another cool one. I dont know who directed it... The 13th.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
I figured out where we are camping...
Map of Assateague State Park
Then click on the circle with the 'I' , we can then see our campsite, 102.
So we are loop 'I' not '1'.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Camping on Assateague Island...
"Here’s a wimp warning — there is absolutely no shade on the island. The sun can be brutal during the summer, especially when reflected off the water and white sand..."
Camping on Assateague Island, Go World Travel Online Magazine
Just looking forward to our little vacation here. Bummer though it looks like the Oceanside camp sites do not have ground fire pits...
SPC » newbies
Well I did it for my blog and found this one linked to me.
SPC » newbies
I didn't know what it was at first, now i remember I was doing something called self portrait Thursdays or something like that.
And on this page http://selfportraitchallenge.net/2005/09/page/2/ You can see that I was the 57th person to join (Sarah got in before me, although the link up there does not point to here page anymore)
612 Howard St, San Francisco, CA 94105 - Google Maps
612 Howard St, San Francisco, CA 94105 - Google Maps
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Got my extra sections in place...
As you can see I now have three columns and even went back and added the bar under the name and address. All of the new sections work with Bloggers layout editor too.
Geocaching on May 26th...
We went with Friends Nick and Leslie. I had 4 caches planned out, two in Harleysville and 2 closer to the Indian Valley Library (we had to drop off some books).
Since it was their first time out GeoCaching, I had the first two relatively close together as to give some quick and easy satisfaction and then the 3rd if they wanted more and the 4th if we were making good time and wanted a challenge (it was a micro-cache, meaning it is the size of a film canister.)
1. Explorers Cache :: Blah, we had three GPS's between us and the parking coordinates seemed to put us a half mile from the cache. We ended up driving around until we got closer and found a somewhat close parking lot. The cache coordinates seemed to put it into somebodies garage... hmmm. Nick had been a surveyor and was able to check and convert all of the styles of coordinates we had (It turns out that different GPS's can take different styles of coordinates). They were all right... we gave up on this one. i checked the caches log later and people did not seem to have a problem finding it. We will have to go back and try again.
2. pack 137 cache :: ugh... There is a fair in town and all of the roads are blocked or say no parking. i think the cache is probably very close to the fair and we would have had to park very far away or pay to park, No thanks... we pass on this one too.
3. Chestnut Grove cache :: This one is a car trading themed cache (they only want car stuff to be in the cache) We find this one pretty easy, Sarah gets the find.
4. We called it quits after the last one so we will have to go back for the micro cache another day.
I hope this doesn't turn them of to GeoCaching. We sometimes do not find a cache but not because of wonky GPS's or lack of parking.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Google Trends: May 28, 2007
Being that it is memorial day and we are not busy at all, we decided to see if we could get something up on the charts. Well we did. we choose cai (the company we work for). We just did a search and kept clicking search. I would say we clicked less than 200 times. Anyway a couple hours later cai shows up at #97, :o)
So now we picked google sucks, just to pick something. We should have picked like "lets be number one". So the two of us clicked search for about 3 minutes straight. lets see what happens.
Google Trends: May 28, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Angelina Jolie's Geocache Tattoo « Google Sightseeing
This is pretty geeky cool. She tattooed the coordinates of her adopted and natural children's birth places on her arm!
Huh, I didn't realize that Angelina was so nerdy. I wonder how she came up with this idea...Angelina Jolie's Geocache Tattoo « Google Sightseeing
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Google Talk Not displaying the Current Music Track as Status message: « My Collection
Bump in the right direction...
I had a classed get canceled out from under me again at Delval. The Continueing Ed person said i might be able to take on of the classes online. Hmmm... well I looked at the available courses online and WOW, there are allot that I can take. So this term and any term i can swing it i will be taking all of my classes online.
I have English Lit. which, I am going to be able to scoot by with out a book as the stories we will be reading are all public domain and the questions we have to answer are in the online class room. I did have to buy access to the Elementary Functions class. it was only $52 compared to the $100 or so if I had to buy the book.
The math site is a bit complicated and takes extra plug ins for Internet Explorer (it doesn't work with Firefox) but the English Lit site has a setting for PDAs so I can sit outside of my house and work on my iPAQ :o)
Three column success...
Ah ha! With help from flysheep's show I was able to get the three columns to work...
Monday, May 21, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Messing with the layout...
You might be able to see that I am starting to tweak the layout here. So stuff might be broken at times.
I think i found my Social Networking site of choice... del.icio.us
del.icio.us, is more my kind of social networking 'thing'. MySpace, Orkut, and countless others are more for people who like to chat and such. They take up a ton of time. myspace was kind of neat because you can add 'famous' people to your friends and have their cool little icon show up on your list. But, I am not chatty. The site, like I said, takes to much time with little return of anything of use, for me. Kinda cool to look up old friends but then it stops. MySpace will be vacant very soon.
Kyle introduced me to del.icio.us.com. Now this i can use. It is basicly a site to keep your favorites at. When you add a page to your favorites you get to tag it with key words and you can see what others have tagged it with. Back at your home page for del.icio.us you can see how many other people have tagged sites that you have tagged and add people to your network and such. You can then add a button to your browser to access your favorites and sort and search them. Cool for me. It is something useful, get a bit of the 'Friends' thing and it tweaks the little bit of geek in me. I like my blog, I can add stuff here and there and have fun with it. Look at the bottom of this page for my 'cloud' of tags.
Bye
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Amazon Stuff...
I put some code in that is supposed to pick up on key words and link to their site. Like if you want Harry Potter, you should be able to click the name and have a little ad pop-up. If you buy the book from my site I would get a little bit of credit. So lets see if it works.
Ahh.. now its working. Just look for links in light green with dotted lines... cool. Not that I think i am going to make money, I just wanted to see it work.Star Wars
The Cure
Why MySpace...
... Why (now) am I drawn to this hard-on-the-visual-senses social networking mess? I tried to avoid it. I have ad an account for awhile now just to check out a person's space here and there. I never looked there to much. Most sites are very hard to look at and hard to listen to and well hard to take in altogether.
Wendy (damn you!) showed Sarah how to search for people from school... That's what started me looking just to see who I could find... and then it started. I'll just add that person and this person to my friends list to see if they would respond or remeber me. Then I had to look at the horrible default profile and I think that is when it clicked that if I was going to have a space in MySpace I would have to dress it up a bit and figure out what the deal is.
So I borrowed some layout code and will look at it to see what needs to be done to make it mine. The crazy thing is how many people are doing MySpace and how horrible the UI is. My god! Man, the editing pages and "home" page is choked full of adds and very hard to work with. They don't give you a blank page that you can wipe clean. From what I can tell so far you have to use a hacked up CSS code to hide all of the pre-filled sections and even that code you have to put into the "About field" or one of the others. Weird stuff man...
It looks to be a decent place for bands and other pop culture type things to promote themselves though. In my smattering of real people I have also befriended Mike Vallely and They Might Be Giants. I am still waiting on the Cure and Robert Smith... hmm lets see... Grr... cant get to MySpace from work... ahh, yea. I don't really care... I'll have to have Sarah check my site and see if I get new friends and give me an update on it :/
Anyway, I guess, check out Never A Dull Moment on MySpace .You will have to search for me since the firewall at work will not let Social networking sites filter through. (and make me your friend)
I'll add a link when I am at home.
I still want to check out Google's Orkut.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Disintigration...
Doing my none-on the phone duties here at work today and listening to The CURE. In the book I am reading, the Cure are in between Pornography and The Top. At this time they put out a bunch of singles; Love Cats, The Walk, Lets Go to Bed and some others as they transition to a more pop-ish band. Anyway I just wanted to say that when ever I hear a song from Disintegration it really hits me how great that album was... Give 'Last Dance' a listen if you have it...
Thursday, May 03, 2007
3hive - sharing the sharing
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
The car story continues...
So i think when we left off in this post'Car fun, car fun, yhea, yhea, yhea...' with "Up next, pick up the Taurus, get the Jetta and hope the Stanza is as good as it feels."
So... Yhea the Stanza is holding up fine the clutch is good and it seems like a nice reliable car again.
The Taurus, yea... well I went to pick it up that night and it still felt like the power steering was out and such. Stupidly i drove it off all the time thinking "nobody is going to buy this car..." i was just getting angry as I went along that I even agreed to take it back. As we got to Main Street in Lansdale the engine light came on and the power started to decrease in the car. I was stopped at a light and again had to make a quick decision about how to handle a dying car while driving it... I started moving forward and the power drained out. I had enough momentum to get around the corner and then I had to open the door and push with one foot... I managed to get it into a side street and parked safely by the curb... Very angry at this point I open the hood and see the serpentine belt sitting in the engine instead of around the pulley things... Sarah is right behind me in the Stanza so we race back to the AAMCO to take care of things. I am done with the Taurus so i get the guy to call a tow truck for it. i also complain a bit and he agrees to do some future work for free. So, we truck back to the Taurus to unload all of our stuff. I try to get the serpentine cable off but the car just wants to keep it. So long taurus. That car was 600 bucks and wasn't not expected to last long but until this day it was pretty much rock solid for the 5 years or so that we had it...
So moving on we get the Jetta. Sarah and get used to the aging clutch and the car is a fun car to drive. Its got the sun roof and the cd player and once you get used to the clutch, it can still get going pretty quickly. Then the engine light started coming on and now a week ago the OIL light started blinking and Buzzing at 2200 RPM. In our fleet of cars we did have a 80 something or 90 jetta that had the same issue. It turned out to be a bad sensor that I was able to replace... I wonder if that is blogged somewhere... I tested out these sensors and could tell if they were bad plus I had put to much oil in and hadn't a chance to drain some of it. Anyway we will be taking that in for the freebie promised by AAMCO. hopefully its not in need of something since our money again is nil.
But what will we do if we have to ground the Jetta? Go back to one car? NO! We have added another car to our fleet. We got a call last week from one of Sarah's friends that her husband was going to give there car away since they were getting another from her Mom... they thought of us first for some reason. So Monday we added a 1996 Plymouth Breeze. Excellent condition with the possibility of a slight oil leak. Its a no frills car but probably the nicest one we have had yet. For now it will sit until we figure out what the Jetta is going to do. Then we may get the Breeze ready to go or see what we can do to just have it with out insurance and registration or something... we will see.
So we end this leg of the story. Jetta going to the shop, Stanza holding steady, and a Breeze in the wings ( Breeze in the wings.... ugh)
