What's cool?

Friends with blogs, trains and red wine.

What sucks?

Being on call, being on a diet and taxes.

Since they're not paying for my parking anymore at work, I'm commuting by train. I drive down to the Park-N-Ride at Fort Snelling and catch the light rail into downtown. It's fast, smooth and, dare I say it, fun. I can even get back to Gus' daycare in time to pick him up before closing time. I win.

Being on call sucks. I know, I know. Water is wet, the sun is hot and farts smell. I especially hate being on call when some new fresh hell is thrust upon us. Two times ago it was a new project we had to get ready for in a hurry. One time ago it was yet another new project that just went live. This time it's spammers finding out our trouble ticketing system's email address and spamming the living shit out of it. It's hard to sleep when your phone goes BUZZ, BUZZ, DING! every 5 minutes non-stop.

Yes, I could mute it, but that sort of defeats the purpose of being on call, no? Besides, the reward for being on call is the following Friday off with pay. Now that's a bennie I can believe in.

Hey, what's up with all the Obama appointees bombing out? Hasn't anyone in the new administration ever heard of vetting candidates? Is everyone in DC that dirty? Isn't there someone out there qualified to do these jobs that doesn't have an entire graveyard full of skeletons in their closets?

I guess not.

Hey Mr. President! I can do that CIO job. I'm so damn clean I squeak. I drove school buses for 10 years and have a C&R license. I've NEVER been arrested. Ever!

Pick Me! Pick Me!

Shit, I even know a fair bit about IT and stuff.

Sunday March 8, 2009

What's cool?

Facebook, Colt 1903 pistols and getting back in touch with old friends.

What sucks?

Dieting, the high cost of everything and daylight savings time.

Come say hi to me on Facebook. No really. It won't hurt you. I'm not a zombie that's come to suck all the time out of your hectic life. No, not at all. Not even a little bit. Now about getting you signed up for Facebook. You do want to reconnect with all your old friends, don't you? So what are you waiting for? Sign up already. Don't make me eat your brains...

oops.

Seriously, there's nothing to be afraid of. Just sign up and everything will be cool. Remember that one with the large bazoombas back in high school? She's on Facebook. Single, too. Now sign up already before I have to eat your ... uh ... lunch. Yeah, I'll buy you lunch if you sign up for Facebook. That's it. No, not really, but I won't eat your brains, either.

Damn.

Truly Facebook is a wonder. Never in the history of time has it been possible to just look up all your old pals and have them be there. It's freaky. Scary cool.

Braaaaaains...

Dieting sucks ass. I'm down 35lbs from my high of Fatass, and I'm nowhere near done. I've said this before. An addict of one thing or another can stare it cold and not have to take that drink or hit that cig or shoot that smack or whatever. A person with the eating problem has to stare that fucker cold three times or more each day.

Do you have any fucking idea how intrusive that is? I'd love to live a life where I didn't have to think about what's going into my mouth whenever I open it. It seems that I'm thinking about nothing else but what not to eat, when not to eat it, or what will happen when I eat that thing I shouldn't. Not to mention how stupid I feel when I betray my own damn meetable goals.

Daylight Savings Time is stupid and should be ended. I don't know what the original purpose was to play head games with the clock, but whatever they were saving daylight for, it's time to spend that bitch. I'm tired of it. It really messes with me, it messes with Gus' bedtime ritual and it turns everyone psycho for at least a week. Forget it. Time to consign this idea to the heap of stuff that sounded like a good idea at the time, but didn't work out so well. Granted, it isn't as big a failure as Communism, nor is its death toll nearly so high, but it has its price and I for one am sick of paying it.

Enough for now.

Tuesday November 18, 2008

I'm out of .22 cartridges. I can't believe I've shot through 3 boxes of the rounds. I'm not even counting the kind of expensive CCI stuff, either.

It looks like I'll be buying some ammo come payday.

One of my co-workers has bought himself a nice, little .45 for concealed carry. I'll have to arrange a time to go shooting with him because I'm intrigued at how a tiny 1911-style .45 will handle recoil.

I'd have to say that right now the gun list stands as follows: An SKS, because I don't have a centerfire semiauto. At least one .38spl revolver for a soon-to-be-completed "bug out pack," and the ever popular and long awaited Colt 1903.

I'm digging my way out of a huge mess down in my office. I'm replacing one of my servers, throwing out old equipment and reuniting CDs with cases. For 3 night's work the place actually looks worse than when I started, but I've thrown out at least one large garbage bag of junk. Hooray for me.

I'm going to try to scrimp and save and try to get a hold of a couple of LCD monitors for down there. I have a 19" and a 24" tube currently and I'm sure I'm taking it in the shorts trying to power those things when they're on.

I'm trying to think of any further wisdom to impart to a cruel world today, but I'm pretty much tapped. I'm hoping I'll have more mojo to turn into text here shortly.

Sunday November 2, 2008

What's cool?

60 degree days in November, getting stuff done and hanging around with my sister and her family.

What sucks?

MNDOT, financial issues and banks.

I'm sure it doesn't cost $35 fucking dollars to process a bounced check. I'm damn near positive it doesn't. Banks suck.

To be fair, so do my financial skills.

Hey MNDOT, why on earth did you take away the lane you added to westbound I-94 across the river that you added after the I-35W bridge collapsed? That's just great. Now I have a brand-new traffic back-backup to deal with when I'm half awake. Nice job, assholes. Put the lane back before someone gets killed.

Not much to say on the gun front. I got the barrel for the 514 in the mail last week. I'll have it off to the gunsmith pretty soon. I was thinking about how the breech got eroded under the extractor like that and I may have stumbled on a possible reason. Perhaps the person who owned the rifle before me didn't notice the broken extractor and, since it wasn't getting enough purchase on the spent cartridges, decided to file a bit more relief into the breech to help the extractor work a little better. If that is truly the case, they should have stopped right there before they decided to be an amateur gunsmith because they ruined the barrel.

The extractor job cost exactly as much as the new barrel did. Thanks a lot.

Tuesday October 22, 2008

What's cool?

Getting some linky from Jay G over at MArooned, The Rays in the World Series and catching up with old friends.

What sucks?

Being sick, 3 hour tech support calls and political ads.

My digital cable signal sucks. I'm getting a storm of pixels whenever I want to watch an HD channel. They're coming by to fix it next Thursday. This is their second visit to fix it and it better be fixed or we're going satellite.

It sucks that the Twins didn't make the post-season, but at least Hookers and Blow didn't go any further than the first round. For those of you who don't know, Hookers and Blow are the Chicago Pale Hose. Who suck.

As for the current teams in the Series, I don't really have a favorite. There are lots of reasons for cheering for either team. The Rays have a couple of key players (Garza, Bartlett) who are former Twins and they've never been this far in the playoffs before. Shoot, I think I heard somewhere that they never had a winning record before.

As for the Phillies, since the Expos are no longer a team, this is my favorite National League team. For me, having a favorite National League team is a lot like having a favorite barnyard reek, but if I had to choose a team from the land of the batting pitcher, it'd be the Phils.

At work, I'm trying to straighten out a lingering problem with one of our backup jobs that won't do what we want it to do. I talked with Mac (aka Kumar) in India for almost 3 hours today and I think we might have gotten it figured out.

By the way, it seems that ArcServe 12 SP1 is the real deal. When used with the SQL back end it's stable, reliable and pretty darn smart when dealing with complex hardware setups like they almost all inevitably become. If you need help with AS12, just get in touch with me. I take PayPal.

Is it the election yet? I am sick to death of political ads. I'm sick of turning on MPR/NPR and hearing election coverage. I am sick of the media boosting the anointed one at the expense of fair journalism. I just want the election to be tomorrow so everyone can shut up already.

Of course, nobody will shut up once it's over. Whoever wins, it will be some kind of horrible vote-rigging conspiricy or some other kind or other or some other thing that will keep the looneys blogging, protesting and fuming for four or eight more years. Divided we stand!

Sunday October 19, 2008

I'd like to thank MNDOT for making the medians, shoulders and ditches of the freeways around the metro area look so nice in the fall. Whoever is planning your plantings is doing a bangup job and makes me feel good as a taxpayer that I'm paying that person's salary.

I was able to get a lot of my firearm collection photographed and cleaned this last week. I didn't get all artsy with them or anything, but I did get some nice documentary shots for proof and insurance purposes.

I looked under every nook and cranny of my Ruby pistol and can find absolutely no maker's mark on it save for an index number and serial number. I was able to take apart the firing pin spring and firing pin assembly and cleaned that up. It's amazing how bent up some pieces of this pistol are and how well it performs in spite of it. The firing pin had a serious bow to it and the rod that the recoil spring runs through is decidedly bent as well. How I've put 200+ rounds through it and only had one misfeed is a mystery.

I got the pump .22 back from the gunsmith's last week and it functions pretty much like before the blowout. Cleaning it before I took it to the range made it cough up the rest of the case that blew up. No more .22 shorts for that one.

The boltie is still messed up. It's looking like a new barrel might be in order. The area under the extractor hook at the breech is eroded such that the cases bulge and prevent the extractor from getting a good purchase on the spent case. I can't imagine this is something that could be welded up and re-machined. I looked online and found that replacement barrels are less than $50 so it might be worthwhile to not muck about and just replace the barrel.

It was major-league disappointing to have it still broken after having it in for service. I don't blame the 'smith. He wouldn't have test fired it. Whether or not he would have noticed the breech erosion is something I'll just give him the benefit of the doubt on.

At the range I was shooting next to someone who was having trouble putting shots on paper from some 9mm Glock thing at 25yds. I was shooting my semi-auto .22 that is scoped off a sandbag rest and pretty much punching the red bullseye out of my target. She was impressed at my grouping when we went down to pull our targets after the range was called safe. I told her that it's quite easy to do what I was doing with my setup. I switched targets and when we got back and went hot, I offered her the first few shots. As soon as she brought it to her shoulder and looked through the scope, she said, "Oh, I see..." and proceeded to hit the bull. I know I would have appreciated a different look at a tough situation and I think it really opened her eyes a bit to the difficulty of what she was trying to do.

Tuesday October 7, 2008

So I'm home sick today. Let's turn back the clock and write a little on my blog.

What's cool?

Firearms, plasma TVs and my son.

What sucks?

Ramp metering lights, being sick and anything to do with the financial services industry

Um, not bad for a first post of the year.

OK, it's lame, but I'm tapped.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

So for my second post of 2007, I'll catch everyone up on how we've been. We've been well.

Ok.

Um...

Since I don't have much space any more for cars and motorcycles, I've decided to get into guns. They take up a lot less space, they're greasy and they're dangerous. What's not to like?

I've not gone nuts, so just relax. I have a safe place for them, I'm not stockpiling for doomsday and I don't have any plans to do anything with them except shoot paper targets. That said, there are certain things that interest me about guns.

I like older rifles. I find myself facinated by old battle rifles. I have acquired an old, sporterized Lee-Enfield #4 Mk1* that I've unsporterized. It didn't take long to find a good sight on eBay and I also found the forestock and handguards at another on-line gun shop. The only downside to this particular rifle is that .303 ammunition is rather expensive.

More later.

Sunday February 20, 2007

I can't help but feel a little bit bad about this being my first post of 2007. I didn't mean for this little blog of mine to lay fallow for so long, but I just haven't had the time nor the inclination lately to write.

This isn't saying life is boring. Oh, noooo.

We put Gus into a different day care setting. We found a home day care about 5 blocks away that we think suits him better at this time. He was having a hard time with all the rules and structure where he was at before and it was making him a world-class pain in the ass to deal with here. We are very happy with his new setup and it being just a couple of blocks over means he spends less than 5 minutes in the car per day than the nearly an hour he was spending. He seems happier as well.

Work is pretty much the same. I do have challenges coming from our backup scheme and our various corporate dictates that must be followed. The cool thing is that they're just challenges, not life killing, soul crushing hurdles to jump over or burn out upon. I could use to do a little more studying for the new stuff I'm going to have to deal with, but until we get another person on staff, it just isn't going to happen without seriously cutting into my living time.

In surprising news, a friend from elementary school, Wendi wrote to me saying hi and offering up a bit of the past in the form of 8mm film now on DVD of one of her birthday parties. For the life of me, I can't figure out how old we all are there, but I'd hazard a guess that we're all 9 or so. It was amazing to see it and I'm extremely thankful that she sent it to me.

Baseball season is coming up. I can't wait.

Sarah and I just recently celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. 10 years. That's a long time. I love you, dear.

For our day out which turned into our half-day out, we tested out a couple of cars. The Mazda CX-9 and the Ford Edge.

The CX-9 compared favorably to all the other 9 passenger CUVs we've tried. I think it was a lot more engaging to drive than the Pilot and certainly a bit more roomy inside than the Commander. It felt a bit more substantial than the Freestyle, but all in all I think there are other, cheaper choices out there.

The Ford Edge was pretty nifty. It was fairly thoroughly panned by most of the motomags I read, but I think they're all high on crack. I think the Edge could have used a bit more power, but I think it mops the floor with all the other 5 passenger CUVs out there with the exception of the Mitsubishi Endeavor.

My biggest complaint is that the engine noise seems to always be there, but there's now enough engine with the 3.5L V6 so that you're never left wanting for power. It had that smooth interstate cruising ride and I really think it would be a good car for us should we need another one soon.

That said, we'll still likely try to go for a 7 passenger just for the convenience of being able to haul both us and my sister's family around at the same time.

Lastly today I'd like to tell you about the gun show I went to. I went not really knowing what would be there. I figured there'd be guns, but what else? It turned out that there was a bunch of other stuff, but very little of the negative crap I expected. I guess I thought I'd see a bunch of survivalist/religious crap, and see table after table of nazi stuff. In reality, I saw a couple of new-looking nazi knives, but that was about it. I was impressed.

I got what I came for as well. I now have some idea what I should be paying for the type of firearms I'm considering buying. I also saw some cool stuff and got to handle some of the guns I was considering. All in all it was a successful day.

Tuesday July 4, 2006

Happy 230th birthday, America!

Don't let them get you down. You're still the best and the place that everyone wants to come, even though they may say differently to the press.

What's cool?

The Twins, Joe Mauer and they're going to fix my car.

What sucks?

Checking account scares, Justin Morneau not making the All-Star team and those shiftless, shit-witted human waste-oids that walked over my car.

All is right with the world. Mauer will be at the All-Star game. The Twins are flying high with most everyone having the year they're supposed to be having. It's been some fun baseball lately. I suffered through the early part of the year and it's just like it's a different team.

The insurance company will be fixing my car starting tomorrow. I don't know how long it will take, but I'm hoping it doesn't take too long. I'm thinking I'll get it back either next Monday or Tuesday. They have some pretty big work to do on it.

It turned out that the insurance adjuster's estimate was exactly the same as the one I got from the body shop. We'll be using a shop that comes well recommended, and if I like their work, I'll certainly let you all know who it is. If it isn't, well, just assume I'm less than pleased.

I had a close call today with the ol' checking account. Murphy's law was also in effect as my company sent my expense check to our old address. I got it straightened out and all is well for the time being.

Thursday June 22, 2006

What's cool?

Finding out the insurance company didn't raise my deductable from $250 to $1000 when I told them to, finding out my car is still worth a lot and meeting my neighbors.

What sucks?

Having both our cars vandalized, swearing in front of Gus and having to pay a deductible for the first time in my life.

A bunch of guys with nothing better to do walked all over our cars last night. My car has dents in its hood, roof and trunk. They also kicked the wing off the edge of my trunk. Sarah's car's roof is caved in as well. I think if I would have witnessed this sort of senseless, idiotic, meaningless act done to my car, I would have shot these toads just to relieve society of the expense of having to take care of these future convicts. I could have saved Minnesota a lot of money. Anyone who walks over someone elses' car with no provocation really just needs to be castrated and shot.

I'm a little pissed off right now.

I'm looking at paying my deductable soon. That sucks, but the $4,300 in damage to my car is a bit hard to take. All I really want to do is swear, hop up and down and wrap my fat fingers around the necks of these jerks and squeeze until I feel I've done my fill of squeezing. I'll show them just the same amount of concern for their necks as they showed for our cars.

I believe we've been the victims of what we've come to call the "slap down." Living in proximity of some people who have less than we do has been insightful. Within a certain strata of our society, some folks seem to have the unsuppressable urge to deliver the slap down to anyone doing better than they are. It could be through luck, hard work or just plain old ballin', but the result is the same; someone gets something nice and they get the slap down.

What happened to our cars last night was done by a group of young guys who were on foot. Obviously, they didn't have a car or they wouldn't have been on foot. Since they were on foot and there were our cars, sitting there minding their own business, why not deliver the smack down because we're on foot. Fuck them for having a car when we have none.

I fear we're not long for our current neighborhood.

I've had enough of this shit.

It wasn't just us last night that got hit. There were several other cars on the block that got it, too. The only bright spot is that our neighbor said that the guy who kicked the wing off my trunk, fell off my car after he did it. Good, I say. I hope the fucker broke his fucking neck, too.

Later that evening...

OK, still really mad and rageful about this little speedbump in my life. No new news, just a few resolutions about what we're going to do in the future around here. We're looking at pricing out sliding gates for the back fence so that we can park the cars around back. We're also resolved to stop parking on the street for a good, long while.

Here's a bit of better news. Francisco Liriano is the real deal. He totally dominated in his start tonight against the Astros. The big news was that Roger Clemens was making his Major League debut this year after coming out of retirement in this very game. However, Liriano looked to be the better pitcher by far. I don't doubt that Liriano could learn a few tricks from Clemens, but he certainly was the best pitcher out there tonight. Impressive. Damned impressive. Here's hoping you have a Hall of Fame career because it looks totally likely given the effortless stuff you had this evening.

I'm off to call some old pals and bitch about the world.

Wednesday May 17, 2006

What's cool?

AWD, time off and a glass of nice wine with lunch.

What sucks?

Rain on your birthday, muscle pain and not having enough energy to do much of anything.

Our little birthday celebration was very nice. It was cool to run around during the work day with my wife and without Gus. I love the little guy, but sometimes you just have to do something without him. Speaking a complete sentance would be one of those things.

We went to our local Audi dealership and test drove an A4. Nice car that. It handled quite a bit like the Jetta we tested except it had no torque steer and when we hit some gravel on the shoulder, it didn't try to yank the wheel out of my hands. AWD just directed the power to a different wheel. That's some cool technology.

The car was, alas, a bit too small for Sarah and I. She didn't have any problem with the car vision-wise and neither of us had any space issues by ourselves. The space thing came into play when we were both in the front seats. It was a little crowded at the shoulders.

I didn't really have any other complaints with the car. It had a longitudinally mounted engine. That surprised me as I assumed all AWD cars with fours or even V6s were all transversly mounted. I guess I'm wrong.

The little bugger was fast and didn't have that much turbo lag. It didn't have a whole lot of go off the line, but it certainly could dring deep of it's turbo once the revs were up a bit.

All in all, a nifty vehicle. It's probably waaay too expensive for us as the one we looked at started at about 38 large. That's not happening any time soon.

We had lunch at Zander Cafe over on Selby in Saint Paul. Now THAT was excellent. I had some kind of pasta pomodoro dish that just rocked. We also had their excellent caesar salad and I had the creme brulee for dessert. It was a quality meal that lasted the better part of two hours. I couldn't recommend Zander any more highly. Go. Do. It's good.

We brought Gus to Edinborough Park in Edina to burn off some of his near limitless energy. Sunday Mornings are a good time to go there. It's not too busy. I climbed around the climby thing with him for about a half hour and did some of the slides until I sweatted through my shirt. I had to leave him alone to find his own adventures after that. When you sweat through an article of clothing you're sliding on, it will get hot and you will go slow down the slides. Not fun.

The muscle pain on Monday from that bit o'fun was truly staggering. My shoulder was darn near unmovable and my ribs and abdomen still hurt. I'm in such fine shape, you know...

I've been in decent health of late except for the usual May sinus blitz from the lilac bushes. I love the way they smell, but I'm terribly allergic to them. Just call me Mr. Sneezy.

Thursday May 11, 2006Well here it is, the middle of May. What's happened to my blogging?

The answer to that is complicated, but suffice to say that I just don't have a lot of blog in me lately.

What's cool?

Getting stuff for your birthday, Gus learning how to spell his name and time off of work.

What sucks?

Road rage, rain and cold on your days off and not sleeping.

What can I say about getting stuff for your birthday that hasn't been said before? Not much.

Gus was sitting at the dinner table the other night. Sarah was playing with one of those magnetic sketch boards with him. She spelled out "GUS" on it and when she showed it to Gus, he said "G-U-S, Gus!" It came totally out of the blue. It blew us away. He's 2 1/2.

I'm taking some time off of work. Just a couple of days around the weekend so that I might get some time to relax. I've been a bit tense lately and I need some time to unwind.

I saw someone had keyed the living crap out of a car next to mine in the parking ramp the other day. Not a body panel was spared. It was a silver Buick and it had "Fuck You" keyed on the hood, "Fag" keyed on the trunk and some pretty mean scribble scrapes on each door and on the top as well. This person either pissed someone off big style or someone has a bit of a rage problem. Scary.

Tuesday March 7, 2006

Kirby Puckett

1961-2006

We'll miss you, Kirby.

Thursday February 16, 2006

Um, hi.

I'm not pleased that this is the first entry of 2006. Unfortunately, I really can't do this at work on break any more due to corporate policy. Also, the fact that I don't have much of a battery on my laptop sort of prohibits me from taking advantage of the 5 or so hotspots around us to blog from. I intend to remedy this soon, but for now I'm not doing much posting.

My pal Illya had a son last week. Henry. Welcome to this world Henry and Sarah Gus and I wish you all the best for a great life. I know you have great parents already so you're already well on your way. I owe you a brewski, Louie.

For our wedding anniversary, Sarah and I took a day off and just went and did fun stuff. First up was breakfast at Al's. This was the right thing to do because this was where our wedding reception was held. The 4 of us.

After Al's, we went to our local "Ford Store" (a term I loathe) and test drove a Ford Escape Hybrid. It was different. That's not a "different" as you might hear from a Minnesota stay-at-home-mom out in the boonies just after tasting sushi with wasabe, it was more of a "different" as in not very much the same at all.

The first thing that strikes you about the Escape Hybrid is how much just the same it looks compared to a regular Escape. It's roomy and comfortable inside. The ride is a little smoother than one could reasonably expect from a small wheelbased SUV. The thing that was different was the sounds you heard or didn't hear when you stepped on the go pedal.

I think the thing a hybrid owner needs to get their head around in order to have a meaningful relationsip with their hybrid is that the position of the accellerator pedal has next to nothing to do with the sounds coming from the front part of the car. The Escape can go as fast as 15mph without the motor coming on. We never experienced this, but when we put the hammer down, it was very, very quiet from up front. It felt as if the engine was idling up until we got rolling to about 10mph or so. When it did kick in, it felt as if we should be going about 10mph slower than we actually were. The motor sounded a bit small for the vehicle until I realized I was passing traffic and the guy in the back seat started getting nervous. The engine rpm levels out when you hit about 60 or so. You're still accellerating at that point, but it is pretty obvious that whatever management system is working is now not charging the batteries much any more as it devotes the engine rpms solely to getting you going faster. There's a needle gauge on the dash that tells you if you're charging the battery or not. It swept to the other side after about 60 or so.

The brakes felt a bit heavy and stiff, but that's not that big a deal to me. They worked.

The battery was underneath the back of the passenger compartment--right where you'd expect a spare tire to be. That's on the outside, underneath it between the tires.

All in all, I could see owning something like this especially if I did a lot of rush-hour crawling or had a long commute. I'm nearly there on both counts, so the Escape Hybrid remains in contention for our next vehicle.

We have some new 2-way radios. Since our Cingular cell service sucks for reception, voice quality and the fact we're locked into our plans and locked our of our phones due to being AT&T customers prior to the buyout, we're looking for some other way to communicate between the two of us.

I doubted that FRS was going to do the trick for us as when we're downtown, we are about a mile apart and there are buildings between us. I think GMRS may do the trick at 5W of power, but we've yet to test it. To use the 5W setting, you need a license. When you get a license from the FCC, they give you your own call sign.

I'm now WQEJ837

So.

Whoop de doo, huh?

Anyway, it's good to be square with the FCC.

I have tons more to say, but no time left to say it.

Saturday October 22, 2005

What's cool?

My son turing two (years old, not a double play...), hockey on TV and the video iPod.

What sucks?

Corporate policies, traffic and the White Sox.

Gus is two on Friday. That's so cool. It's hard to believe it's only been two years since he was born. That's awesome.

Hockey is back and it's a blast to watch. The Gophers swept Mankato this weekend and it was great fun to see them looking good on the ice.

My co-worker bought a video iPod. I'm interested in it, but I'm not sure how interested in it I am. I think it would be cool to have, but I'm not itching to blow 3 bills on one at this moment in time.

Corporate has finally detailed it's policy on work product produced during business hours. Naturally, I don't do any posting from work, but now it's completely out of the question. I really dislike their position on them owning any work product produced during business hours, but it's not that big a deal.

Traffic sucks. I'm currently short of time, so I'm just going to say it.

I'm thinking the White Sox will win the World Series, but I'm not happy about it. That said, I'm not a huge fan of any team from Texas, either. I'm just watching it for the baseball.

Monday October 17, 2005

What's cool?

Hockey is back on TV, the Baseball playoffs and the Jeep Commander.

What sucks?

Colds, sleep deprivation and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

We went to try out the Jeep Commander last Saturday afternoon. We totally expected it to be like the Jeep Grand Cherokee, but we weren't ready for it to be a lot better. It was. It was wider, it had a better driving position, it went down the road better and it just had that MDU (Mileage Disposal Unit) feel to it. The JGC did as well, but the Commander had more of it.

I'd have to say the list right now has the Mitsubishi Endeavor tied with the Commander on basis of price alone, then the JGC and the Freestyle bringing up a tie for second. Again, a message to Ford:

This contest would have been a done deal, signed and delivered, if the Freestyle had more guts. The CVT is a nice addition, but it seems harsh and I'm no stranger to your 3L V6. I had one in my old Sable and that car needed more go. The Freestyle needed a bigger engine or an engine with more go. If you all were using the CVT, all you really needed was an engine that had go in a certain rev range. It could have been peaky as all hell and it wouldn't have mattered much as long as the NVH factors were well attended to.

That said, if gas prices hit $3/gal for an extended period of time, we may revisit the Freestyle in its current state.

Really, the killer app for that vehicle would have been the 3.8 out of the Endeavor or one of those SHO V8s from Yamaha. Better yet, scrap the whole transverse mindset and give us a longitudinally mounted inline 6. I'd bet the 250cid out of the '70s era Maverick would update pretty quickly. If not that, then how about a new DOHC I6? Give us 4L of I6 and that thing would FLY out of your show room doors.

Gus had his first ear issues last week since his tubes were put in. I would be willing to bet that it would have been yet another ear infection if not for the fact that his ears can now drain the crap out of them. And crap there was. Oh boy was that nasty. He's been back to the Doc and they say he's clear as a bell inside his ears. That's a nice thing.

I suppose I should mention why I've missed a whole month here. I changed the name to the "Intermittant Stuff" because I knew I would be busy as all get out this fall. We're doing the whole Sarbanes-Oxley compliance thing at work and it has taken some long hours to stay on our schedule. We've done most of the work and now it's time to do some more. After that, we relocate to another place close by. That's big fun, you know. Moving a business is a drag. The last time we moved, I swore that that would be the last time I did something like that. Hopefully, this move goes a bit more smoothly.

I don't think I'll have that much more time to write between now and the New Year. Gus is being his usual Gus and not giving us much free time at home. This leaves me with even less time to write about stupid stuff. Heck, I can't even make it to the clothes store to buy some clothes for fall that don't make me look like a total slob.

Friday August 26, 2005

I get my own window seat at work today. It's temporary, but still it's way cool.

Sarah's parents are in town for a week. We have them at a downtown hotel. It's one of those places that has all the cool stuff a hotel should have like a pool and a bar and such. It also has ducks in the atrium. Gus just loves looking at the ducks. I have to admit that they are mighty cute.

Mom's looking after Gus during the day. Our daycare is on a staff development break. Mom does really well with Gus.

It's far too early to be posting. I can't seem to come up with very complex sentances. Blah.

Tuesday August 16, 2005

What's cool?

Favorite 100 songs lists, seeing other top 100 songs lists and new kiddie pools.

What sucks?

The runs, AOL and headaches.

A friend asked that I make a list of my favorite 100 songs. I did it. It was a neat thing to do. I had a nice resource in my iTunes data, but I don't have all my favorite songs on iTunes. I had to do a little thinking out of the box, as they say. Of course, the instant I sent off the list, I thought of a couple of cool songs I missed. My head is like that.

I'll probably post the list here soon. It's not an easy task to format it for the page and to write comments.

We got Gus a used kiddie pool. Sarah bought it from a friend of my sister's sight unseen. It turns out it's pretty large and I was glad I pulled the Large Blue Thing out of it's storage place. I hit the road for the hinterlands--also known as the northern 5th of Washington County, hoping the truck would hold together for one more trip. It turns out that I needn't have worried. It did just fine. It's funny: It runs like hell. It sputters and snorts and backfires, but get it up to highway speeds and it just sits there and runs. No muss, no fuss, just a lot of exhaust fumes in the cab.

Anyway, Gus will be very happy when he sees it this afternoon. He'll be seeing it sooner rather than later due to his exclusion from daycare for the day. He has, um, ah.... the ah... um... runs. So. He'll be out until whatever is eating on him goes away. I hope that will be soon.

AOL sucks. All the garbage their install package adds to PCs clobbered one of our sales guy's modem settings. He ended up having to send the laptop back to me to de-bug it. Here's a thought, DON'T INSTALL AOL, EVER!!!

Sheesh.

Monday August 15, 2005

Holy cow has it been a long time.

Gus is doing very well and he's getting his words very rapidly. His sleep problems have resurfaced somewhat and we're probably going to have him in to get tubes in his ears. I'd rather not do this, but then again, I'd rather him not have hearing loss because of his constant ear infections.

Sarah had a blow recently. A friend and collegue died recently. It was a sudden and very sad thing. We wish her family all the best in their time of grief.

Our family finances have taken a beating of late. Our lovely car, the Grand Marquis recently needed a major repair. Ford, in their infinite wisdom, after making intake manifolds out of things like iron and aluminum for the better part of the last century, decided in 1996 to start making them out of plastic instead. Why? Only God and Ford know that for sure. I'm sure it was cheaper and probably lighter. Unfortunately, where the engine coolant flows through it between the heads it tends to crack. Ours went longer than most, but it ended up running hot a couple of weeks back.

It was running a bit hot. This was odd as the temp gauge never moves on this car once the car is warmed up. It never overheated, but I don't like it when cars run hot. Heat bakes gaskets and then these break down and start letting oil out. Not good. Anyhow, its performance hadn't been all that great lately so we took it in the same evening it started running hot.

Would you believe a little more than a grand for the manifold? Believe it. Ouch. That. Hurt.

So much for discretionary income for the next couple of months.

After all was said and done, we were close to two grand for the manifold job and other preventative maintenance stuff.

I googled it and found that this was a relatively common problem and that Ford had voluntarily replaced some manifolds on fleet vehicles and such. I got most of the info I needed on the Flaming Fords website.

There's a proposed settlement, but it leaves out our car as being too old. I wrote a letter to the court and both sides stating why I think this is unfair. I sure hope they decide to include our car as I could really use the $ back.

I got back on a motorcycle for the first time in about a year yesterday. It felt good. I put about 30 miles on just cruising around the city. The little Yamaha isn't a rocket, but still goes pretty well and can keep up with traffic. There's lots of work that needs to be done to it, but it runs and rides OK now and that's the important thing.

Friday July 8, 2005

I'm not impressed nor am I terrorized. If indeed this London bombing thing was an Al Queda thing, you guys suck. You suck at bombing, you suck at killing people and you have really picked the wrong people to fuck with. My mother-in-law is English. There's more backbone there than you could know.

Where you all tried to make victims of Londoners, you just got flicked just like a bug off someone's shoulder. Perhaps it's time to hang this shit up, no?

Anyhow, back to the cars.

The Volvo is no longer one of my cars. The guy who gave it to me had a bit of trouble with a stump and a sliding car and ended up needing a replacement at short notice. Since I never did use the Volvo all that much, it's probably for the best that we part company. I had the Volvo about 10 or so months and I probably put less than a thousand miles on it. So there it is.

I now also have a motorcycle again. My buddy Bob sold the Yamaha XS400 Special back to me. This is a good thing. There's nothing wrong with it and it runs and I don't have to mess with it. Good, good, good.

I have yet to get out on the road with it. I need to score some insurance and change the title over to get tabs. That should be done by the end of this coming week. I can't wait.

So the big treat last weekend wasn't only the 229th birthday of the country I love. Mercedes sent me an invite to their Road Rally program. For those of you who haven't experienced one of these kind of deals, here's the deal. MB brings a dozen or so tester cars and another 10 or so display cars to a large parking lot where they also lay out a cone course with some obstacles. You get in a line and take your turn driving whatever car you're in line for around the cone course. Big fun.

The purpose of this event was to show off their newly re-designed ML320 SUV thingy.

Let me set one thing straight at the outset. These were niiice cars. All of them were plush, sumptuous and lovely to look at. We tried three MB products around the cone course. We tried the E500 sedan, the C230 Kompressor Sports Sedan and the ML350 SUV.

First up was the C230 Kompressor. I REALLY liked this car. It was fast, it didn't seem like a small engined car and it really handled well. The steering was a bit slow, but I could have forgiven that flaw easily.

The second car was the E500. I really thought I'd like this car more than I did. It was the lap of luxury, to be certain. However, when pushed it felt as if it was understeering a bit. It had a tendancy to push a bit in the corners. It felt as if it was fighting the tires and sidewalls and trying to continue to go straight. It also had a hood line such that all you could see ahead of you was the base of the windshield and the hood ornament. The hood sloped away such that it was invisible to the driver. I don't really care much for this layout, but then again, I'm probably not going to be buying one of these cars any time soon. This car just felt a bit heavy and ponderous. Truth be told, our Grand Marquis feels a bit lighter on its feet than the E500.

The third car we tried was the reason they were there. The ML350 SUV. Once again, the luxury in this vehicle was amazing. It was beautiful on the inside. As for the outside, I think it's middle of the pack. It certainly isn't ugly like an Asstek, but it isn't as nicely shaped as the Endeavor or the Jeep Grand Cherokee. Anyway, it had a good bit of pick-up and handled pretty well. However, there was one glaring flaw that even if I was considering this vehicle would have DQ'ed it straight away. The steering. I thought the E500 had fairly high effort steering, but the ML350 was either underboosted or over-damped. Whatever the cause, it was unpleasant. If you let go afer a turn, the steering wheel felt as if it wasn't going to return to center. If it was going to, it seemed like it would take its sweet time. This was highly disconcerting. I didn't like it at all.

Now remember that my current car, the Nissan Maxima has the best steering I've ever experienced. Smooth, precise, and controllable. It's just a flat-out joy. If it weren't for this fact, I might have been able to forgive the steering in the ML350, but since the Maxima is so sweet, the ML350 seemed glaringly hard to steer and to get used to.

Tuesday June 14, 2005

What's cool?

Weather radar on the web, thunderstorms that don't kill people and Team America World Police.

What sucks?

Ear infections, back pain and people who don't plan ahead.

We had a thunderstorm last night. It was a decent sized cell that ran from the south to the north. It dumped rain on us, but I could see that the big time action was immediately to our east. After a big cell ran through our neighborhood, I went outside to a sky that was half blue with the moon visible and the with the other half a building cell. I stood there and it was like standing next to a tall building. I could see various layers of the big thunderhead just like focusing on different floors of a skyscraper. It was way cool. The cell had a flat bottom and was really pulling air in. It was mostly still where we were, but I think the front had already passed us. It was about 10 degrees cooler than before the rain came through.

On the weather radar, our neighboring cell was not there, there, and then a bright red dot within the space of about 4 frames. I think they're taken about 15 minutes apart so it didn't take long for that bad boy to build.

Enough weather geek stuff. OK, perhaps just one more thing. If you've not been to Extremem Instability, go and look around. There is an annoying heartbeat sound on the page and the animated .gif of the title is annoying after about .5 seconds, but it gets his point across.

Lileks has his responses to on of those little poll thingies about music up on his site. I feel inspired to fill in my answers.

Total size of music files on computer

60Gb on the server at home, 15Gb of "hits" on my laptop, 8.5Gb of the really good stuff on my iPod.

Last CD purchased

K.C. and the Sunshine Band Greatest Hits
Stand by for Joy by the Sugarcubes
The Very Best of Badfinger
Blue by Third Eye Blind
By the Grace of God by Hellacopters
Wish List by The Falling Joys
and
Love Junk by The Pursuit of Happiness
All of these came in a shipment from a used CD store.

Playing now Flaming Youth by Kiss
Just before that was Chemistry Set by The Suburbs

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me

iTunes tells me that my top five most played songs are:
One Simple Thing by Stabilizers
The Sounds of Science by Beastie Boys
Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles
She Don't Use Jelly by The Flaming Lips
My Sharona by The Knack

Five songs that mean a lot to me:
True Faith by New Order
Kids Don't Follow by The Replacements
Screenwriter's Blues by Soul Coughing
I Desire by Devo
Gray Matter by Oingo Boingo

True Faith captures a time in my life where things were really good and really bad at the same time. I like to focus on the good parts, but when I hear the song I invariably think about the bad stuff, too.

Kids Don't Follow saved my life. Actually, the whole "A" side of The Replacements' Stink album saved my life, but KDF is the first among equals. Songs like Stuck in the Middle, God Damn Job and Fuck School really sum up the late teen early twenties angst and rage.

Screenwriters Blues is here because it or one of the other songs on Soul Coughing's best of CD was playing when my boy was born.

I Desire I once used as a love song. Enough said.

Gray Matter helped me out of a tough bind. At the time, I felt as if I wasn't getting anywhere. Then there came Danny Elfman telling me that at least he and his band believed in me and that really helped. Of course he wasn't talking to me personally, but it meant a lot nonetheless.

Honorable mention goes to No by the Big Boys, New Day Rising by Husker Du, In My Time of Dying by Led Zeppelin and The Great Deceiver by King Crimson.

Monday May 16, 2005

We did some fun stuff for Sarah's birthday on Saturday. We saw Kung Fu Hustle. That was an awesome flick. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if you like action and can read, there should be a bunch of fun waiting for you inside the theater. I really can't say any more about it. Go and see it. It's way cool.

We also went out to look at cars again. We stopped by the Jeep dealer and took a Grand Cherokee with a Hemi out. I don't have a lot of experience with Jeeps. My buddy has one--a Jeep Jeep. The only other time I rode in or drove one was my friend's dad's Cherokee. It was about 15 years ago and let me tell you, things have changed. The Cherokee of yore had low seats, a flat floor and a wheezy engine. This current JGC was really nice. It was wider, longer, and didn't have very truck-like handling. I don't know if I'd take such a nice vehicle off road, but apparently it will do that and more quite willingly. It drove really nicely. Smoother than the Endeavor, but not quite as smooth as the Freestyle. It had more pickup than both thanks to the 5.7L V8. That was a sweet motor. It got to 60 very quickly. It trucked down the road in that lazy fashion that V8s have. Apparently, DC has put a variable displacement motor in there. That means it will disable two or four of the 8 cylinders when they're not needed. It's a nice touch that should save a bit of money on gas.

It was competitively priced. Actually it was a lot cheaper than I thought it would be. I think it came in right around the same as a totally loaded Freestyle or Endeavor. It had a ton of creature comforts and really gave the impression that this was a nice, luxury car.

It wasn't all sweetness and light, though. The seating position seemed too tall if that's even possible. It felt as tall as my big, old, full-sized pickup. It didn't feel tippy, but it sure made me feel like I would have to check on their rollover safety rating before I pulled the trigger.

The height issue is not something that can be helped. It is what it is. The thing that chapped my ass was the length of the seatbelts. They were too short. Yes, I'm a very big man, but to date I have driven precisely zero vehicles where I found the seatbelt too short. These were too short. This is absolutely a deal killer if it can't be remedied. I'm beside myself trying to figure out why DC would put such short seatbelts into a car with so much room.

The other thing we found that was problematic is that with the seats all the way back, there wasn't very much room for the back seat passengers. It had the smallest back seat of any of the SUVs we've tried thus far. This on a car the sales guy told us had had its wheelbase stretched 5". I believe I wouldn't fit in the last model.

Anyhow, it's definately a top 3 contender. It has definately displaced the Saturn Vue from the number 3 spot.

Thursday May 12, 2005

There is something unmistakeable about the sound of a warbird. We live in the flight path to Holman Field down on the river flats across from downtown St. Paul. Several times a year, we hear the basso profundo droning of multi-engined WWII-era warbirds.

The last one I saw flying over the house was a B-25. That's a twin-engine twin-tailed medium bomber. It sounds so cool. The first thing you hear is a soft rumble. This develops into a droning sound that shakes the windows in their sills. As the plane passes over, the droning sound turns into a crackling, bassy sound that you can feel in your chest. It slowly tapers off.

These planes are incredibly loud compared to the rest of the air traffic we see around here. Mostly you have general aviation planes which are mostly quiet. Anything else is usually newish high-tech bizjet stuff which are whisper-quiet and there and gone in a heartbeat.

I wonder what it must have been like to have lived near an airfield in England during the war. I can't imagine how it must have been to have 50-odd B-17s flying over or nearby your house or apartment. The noise must have been incredible. It must have been horrible to know that many of those powerful airplanes wouldn't be coming back.

Tuesday May 10, 2005

Happy birthday to everyone I know who has a birthday in the month of May. This includes Amanda, Mark, Sandy, Karen, Katie, Morgan, my lovely wife Sarah and yours truly.

Is it me or is projection endemic to our times? Hate something about yourself or your culture? Project it on someone else and hate them for it. An example: Suppose the leaders and sages within your religion want nothing short of global dominance. Suppose you're willing to kill for it. Suppose you will stop at nothing to make sure that this new paradise will come to pass. Suppose you have an adversary who is full of inner turmoil, somewhat confused, but brilliant and efficient once they've decided on a goal. What to do?

Well, you could call white black and black white and say that this adversary secretly has all your goals in mind. This puts them on the defensive in the court of public opinion, this stirs up their inner turmoil and, most importantly, gives you cover while you go ahead and press on towards your goals.

Another example: Suppose you're afraid of your government. Suppose you hate the current leadership. Suppose you and your friends know that if you were in charge, there'd be no more evil politicians working for the clampdown. Suppose you are concerned that your freedom of speech is being impinged upon. Suppose you're concerned that a small group of fanatics want to impose their ideas of what's right and what's wrong on you. What to do?

Well, in the interests of our common goal, we will certainly brook no internal dissent. What's important right now is to stay on track and make sure that come the next election, those greedy power mongers will be out on their ass. Then we'll show them what a fairly elected government who's going to look out for the little guy can do the fat cats.

Yep, big changes will be made. We'll get those big programs we've always wanted and we'll get the government to run them. Once our guys are in power, we'll make sure that everyone pays their fair share. If anyone points to a failing in this particular solution, we'll make sure we can discredit them and be sure to dig up some dirt that will make them go away. If there isn't any, that won't stop us. We'll just have someone who knows someone make something up. Make sure it's untraceable, though. We wouldn't want to be caught doing that.

If we can't tar and feather them in the public eye, we can just rope-a-dope, and fast talk and prevaricate and come manufacture slanted statistics so that we can get our agenda through no matter what. Besides, it's for the greater good. How can you argue against that.

Perhaps it's me and perhaps this is a straw-man festival. It just seems that lately groups that really want to make the opposition look bad accuse their opposition of harboring the same evil intents that they themselves have.

And don't get me started about externalization.

Monday April 18, 2005

Sarah and Gus are in Chicago on businss so I'm taking some time to re-acquaint myself with my blog.

We spent about a whole week getting ready for our trip to San Francisco. We flew out Friday night on the red eye and got in just about midnight Pacific Time.

San Francisco airport has got to be the most frustratingly laid out airport I've ever been through. We got in, deplaned and walked the catacombs to get our luggage. Then we followed the signs up, down, sideways, up again, across a large and deserted parking ramp to an automated "Air Train". This transported us slowly 5 stops(!) to the rent-a-car counter.

The devilishly clever people that designed this travesty did have the humanity to have the doors at the rent-a-car terminal open up and deposit us directly in front of the car rental counters. That was a nice and convenient touch--the only one we observed at SFO that night.

Hertz upgraded us (again) from a mid-size car to a luxury car. We had a choice between the Kia Amante and the Toyota Avalon. One guess which one we chose.

I'd have to say that by sheer dint of its impressive ride quality and amenities, the Avalon has made the short list of cars we'd consider buying. It's a long shot as we have two cars that already fill the role we would consider the Avalon for. We have the big, floaty, roomy, mile-disposing freeway cruiser in the Grand Marquis and we have the front-wheel drive sedan in the Maxima. Still, it was an excellent vehicle. The only thing I can think of that I didn't much like were its looks. It looks pretty generic. This isn't saying it looks bad, it just doesn't have very compelling looks.

You know, it must really suck to be Oakland, California. Oakland has a really bad rep. I heard it was a gang-filled, terrible place. It's really not.

Um...

Er...

Okay. It's bad, but it's not all bad. I think the thing that must really irk Oakland is that one if it's best features is the view of San Francisco across the bay. It must be like being the ugly sister to a beautiful one.

Our hotel was really nice. Everyone there was very nice. I tip well, so over the course of 5 days it really paid off. There were nice restaurants within a block and services within a couple of blocks. There was even a nice playground with kiddie swings and such, but we never went there. Whenever we passed by, there were scores of old guys loitering nearby.

We even got shook up by an earthquake. It must have been pretty small, as nobody even mentioned it the next day. It rocked us gently for about 30 seconds. Normally that would mean it was a pretty big earthquake, but alas the reason it was so noticeable for us was that we were 16 floors up.

When you're 16 floors up and the building starts to shake, your brain goes into full-on, red-emergency denial mode. I was on the bed, trying to get Gus to sleep when the bed started rocking. Not sharply rocking, but gently sashaying back and forth. It was kind of like someone standing near a corner and pushing the mattress back and forth on the springs. I lifted my head and expected to see Sarah standing there, but there was nobody. I heard the ceiling creak and, about 5 seconds before it stopped I finally figured out it was an earthquake. I said to myself, "Oh. This must be an earthquake. I'll be dipped..." And then the shaking stopped.

Sarah was in the bathroom taking a shower and when she got out I asked her if she felt it. She did. Again, what are you going to do when you're 16 floors up?

While we were in the Bay Area, we hooked up with my old pal Adina and went for Chinese food. We went to the Exploratorium, the Oakland Zoo (twice!) and hit the beach up in the Marin Headlands. Gus and I walked around Jack London square and also drove around Alemeda. We got to drive around the Point Alameda Navy base area and saw where Jaime and Adam from Mythbusters do a lot of their myth-busting.

All in all, it was a fun, if exhausting trip.

Today, after Sarah and Gus left for Chicago I did some fun stuff. My buddy Louie wasn't busy so we banged a bucket of balls around the driving range. After I dropped him back off, I went to try to find Armored Fire shooting range. It turns out that Bill's Gun Shop of Robbinsdale, MN has bought Armored Fire. I did find the place and was surprised to find my old pal Jon and his pal Kenny there. They were shooting their heavy irons and invited me to blow some of their ammo with them.

They have some pretty nifty setups. Kenny had a custom-made .40 pistol which was very sweet to shoot. He also had a DEagle. For those of you who don't play CounterStrike, the DEagle is the .50 caliber Action Express shooting IMI Desert Eagle. This pistol does incredible damage in the game and it's quite impressive to shoot in real life.

Shooting it is like this: You're standing there holding something that weighs about as much as a medium weight laptop in your hand. You aim. You squeeze the trigger and there's a huge pop. Simultaneously, the target is blotted out by an 18" across ball of fire jetting out from the barrel of the gun. The kick isn't so bad compared to some of the other iron they had. It's less recoil(to me) than the .44 Magnum they had. It was a whole shitload less than the monsterous .44/70 Government rifle cartridge shooting long-barreled revolver that Jon had. That one was the only one that chewed up my hand that day. The DEagle kicked pretty hard, but it was fairly manageable. I think part of that was the layout of the pistol. It was a 1911-style pistol in that it wasn't a revolver. It loads from a clip inside the hand grip. To me, this puts all the dynamic force over the top of your hand and not directly into it like a revolver.

Shooting their .22 LR pistol after that was unreal. It was like you weren't even shooting anything at all.

After all that fun, I drove home and got Boo and we went to the off-leash dog park near our house. He really appreciated that and he's still sleeping it off.

I'm going to head off to bed as it's been a busy day.

Action Shot:

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