The green thumb report

The inside plants are doing really well. This is the money tree. It's suppose to get pretty big so it'll be a cool tree for the house.


Our next plant is the blueberry bush that resides in the big window sill on the stairs. It had a case of fruit files or gnats or something but I fixed it with a little vodka. Yuppers, I poured some cheap vodka in the soil and it killed all the bugs! The plant survived too... I don't know which of the 12 steps it's on but at least we have no more bugs!


The big surprise is the Rose of Sharron tree. It was the cheapest of all the plants and looked the crappiest when it came... and it's doing awesome! Go tree go!!


BTW, it's 100 degrees here. We got the kids a little swimming pool which Hayden loves.


Serenity was enjoying some water and some sun too... she didn't want any tan lines... you know how that is.


The best part was Seri trying to drink from the hose. That's my little red neck. She hasn't quite gotten the knack of it yet.


I think I'm going to start guitar lessons next week Saturday. I want to see how involved college is going to be first. I still have to get my books for my Intro to Computers course. It's $120.00!! Thank you Northrop for tuition reimbursement! They pay for books too!

The big chunky

Brad, our security guy had me out to the cooperate site to load up a 2003 domain with exchange and whatnot. It was going pretty smooth until I forgot that when you promote your first DC on the domain you shouldn't add the DNS service first. For some reason it just works better when you let the OS do it as part of the DCPromo. So, when I ran forestprep it died. Dcdiag showed me that the exchange server couldn't resolve the DC's guid so I starred at it for about a half an hour and then Brad took me out for a burger.

We went to a place called Chunky's. It was pretty awesome. They have a burger called the big chunky that is 4 1/2 lb patties on a bun. If you get a big chunky with 5 patties and finish it you get your picture on the wall. If you beat the record (which is 8 patties... a 4 lb burger) you get this big mural on the wall commemorating your bypass surgery! After lunch I fixed the DNS and we were off to the races. I blamed the problem on solar flares or service packs... and it was all good.

Now, back to Chunky's. I checked out their web page and it's pretty crappy. Here, see for yourselves. I'm thinking about making a better one for them. I might mess around with it for a while to see what I can come up with. I like the line "No one leave hungry". I was thinking of a cartoon burger holding a flag or something and screaming it. Anyway, good stuff. After about 10 minutes of messing with the letters I got this... but I'm not sure of the colors yet.



That actually looks like a restaurant name. I'm going to try to get all of my fellow contractors out there because I'm really sick of all the places we currently eat at... so this will be a change of pace at the very least.

Nothing else is really going on, besides Joy and I being swamped with work. I did get to hang out with Jeremiah and his wife. It's always fun going over there. About 2 months ago I let him borrow my guitar tuner and I thought I brought it back home with me... I searched everywhere for it and even called Jeremiah up and asked about it. He told me that he was sure I took it with me when I left his house, so I broke down and bought a new one. So what do I see as soon as I walk in his house, my guitar tuner stuck on the neck of his guitar. He swears that I never called him. Oh well, he got a free guitar tuner out of the whole deal! I don't need two anyway.

I wish I would of brought a camera, he has a friend named Ian who is from England and was in the RAF for a couple years, so he has this really think English accent. He married a girl from Louisiana and she's got the deep southern accent. It's great because I can barely understand either of them. I have no idea how they communicate with each other!

We're suppose to go and see a firehouse with them next week. They have a buddy who's up the ranks as a fireman so I guess we'll get the grand tour when we go. Hayden's already ramped up about it. It should be fun. I promise to bring the camera and get some good pictures. I'll also post some progress on the Chunky's site.

College starts next week... wish me luck!!

Hot enough for ya?

It got up to 98 degrees yesterday. Joy and I just got our Zoo passes in the mail so we decided to go. It was pretty rough but the kids liked it. We stopped for snow cones which made it more bearable.



I also got some work done on the Great Wall of Arnold. I leveled out the smaller wall and put in some flowers and a frog (for some reason). It turned out pretty sweet actually.



I pulled out all the bushes on the other side and have to get that started as well... but I don't have enough bricks so I'll probably work on the wall around the front tree and then do the big wall next week, unless I can put if off longer for some reason. My big problem is the grass. My grass looks horrible and I don't know what to do about it. It just looks crappy. I've tried fertilizer, re-seeding, over watering, under watering and anything else I can think of. I'm really getting sick of it.

Other than that things are good. I start college again in a few weeks. I have College Algebra and Intro to computers. Guess which one will be the fluff class! I'm pretty excited, just a year and a half and I'll finally be qualified for the job I've had for 3 years now... funny huh. Anyway, the kids are up and hungry so that means it's cereal time!

Toys R Us vs. Home Depot

Right now Seri has two favorite toys. The first is her glow worm, which we call glowey. She loves it and carries it around pretty much all day.


Her second favorite toy is... the bucket I use to mop the kitchen with.


I swear this kid loves it. She loves just sitting in the bucket with glowey, chatting away. If she's not doing that, she puts glowey in the bucket and carries it around the house.


The best part is that carrying that bucket around really wipes her out so it's a win for daddy! I think I'll get her a dust mop for Christmas.

Low rider

I bought all the bricks for the wall. That's as far as I got. I tried... I really did, but then there was this thing... and we just got a new gallon of chocolate ice cream. It was rough! I took most of Saturday and played super-baby with Seri. That's where I put her blanket around her like a cape and we chase each other around the house.


I have this problem with Serenity. She's an absolute cutie... and I'm not just saying that because I'm her dad. I checked around, do you know how many ugly kids there are these days? Well, there 's a ton. So, when it's me and her at the house I tend to give her whatever she wants. She also happens to be one so she really can't tell me what she wants... so it ends up being whatever I want... that she can also enjoy. I think she's going to have a much easier life than Hayden. I mean, I spank him just so he remembers what it feels like... just incase he was thinking something bad. With Seri... I think she's going to run the house.


Other than super-baby it was a pretty quite weekend. I did get all the bricks I needed. Like an idiot I asked the Home Depot guy if it would be to heavy for my truck. I swear that this was the conversation.

HD guy - Well, a full pallet is 144 bricks at 3500 lbs... you got about 75 bricks so that's a half a pallet at around.... (really long pause) 2500 lbs right there.

Yeah, so I loaded it up and made the truck a low rider for a while. I think it looked pretty cool actually.


The truck handled fine... I've loaded it with enough wood to drop it like that before and it handled it... so I was pretty sure I was good to go. Hopefully, I'll get the project done this weekend and we'll have some cool pictures of the great wall of Arnold to share. Well, I'm going to run... that ice cream isn't going to eat itself!

I was really considering putting this on my office door today. It's Friday after all. Well, instead I tried to load Share point Services on my Solar Winds server at work. They no likey each other. I think it has to do with both of them wanting port 80. I tried to load each with another high end port and it didn't work. I think if I completely remove the web portion of Solar Winds I can then reinstall it on a high port and it'll work again. Honestly... I'll probably just grab this spare Dell 1850 I have laying around and build that out. I'll call it share... it'll be epic.

Hey, if you have a 360 and are running the 360 wireless NIC on a Linksys N wireless network... try setting the wide channel to 9 and the standard to 11. I was having problems with my PC going from 270 Mb to 13.5 Mb randomly and I would drop signal on the 360 as well. I tried all the channels on the thing and this works the best. It may just be from interference from neighbors or something but... it works for me. Oh, and use static IP's... I don't no why but wireless N seems to want to renegotiate DHCP every so often. It's really annoying.

Didja hear this? San Antonio is the second best place to live in US. This poll was obviously done by people who don't live in San Antonio! What's funny is, I really want to move out of here and my first pick is North Carolina... which happens to be on the top of the list for places to live in the US! I just want to get a place away from everyone... where it's not 100 degrees 8 months out of the year (it's 110 the other 4!)

People rallying against gay marriage in California. Why? Honestly, I don't get why people are so up in arms about this. I think that as long as you don't get some weird tax break that'll mess up the economy (even more than it is right now) then go marry whomever your whatever you want. You want to marry a table or a horse or something... rock on! This just goes along with my 'you be you' theory on life. If it doesn't affect anyone else then who cares. For example... if I happened to name my new blueberry plant something like... I don't know... Muhammad, i think it's retarded that anyone should care. If I want to move to the woods and make all my cloths out of poison ivy... as long as I don't get welfare or free health care for my itches... then I should be allowed to go. So if uncle Jack wants to marry aunt Frank then they should be allowed to. Now, I'm not going to hang around San Fran for a while... I read the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah and I already have enough sodium in my diet.

Oh, I might build the great wall of Arnold in the front garden this weekend. I'll post some pictures if I do. The cool thing is after I do I can start up on the closet under the stairs! But, before I start that I have to check out Bioshock on the PC. I already beat the 360 version but... FPS's belong on the PC! I'm pretty excited actually, despite all the warnings about the bad port and crazy audio problems. Wish me luck!

FOOD FIGHT!!

heh...

The farmers tan is free of charge...

Operation, put stuff in dirt is in full swing. I started out with building a little area around the cable box. It went pretty sweet until the wheelbarrow that I borrowed from the FIL broke. I asked him about it and he said "I've owned that thing for almost 40 years now and that axle always falls out."

That just begs the question, why would you keep a wheelbarrow for 40 years when the axle keeps falling out? I didn't ask because I feared for my sanity. Anyway, it turned out pretty well and I don't have to weedwack around that stupid thing anymore. This is good because it's a pain in the butt. It's bad though, because I'm starting to think that I can put wood chips anywhere I don't want to take care of and I'm good to go. I might try putting wood chips on the dishes next!


The next job was the rose tree in the front yard. I had to pull out a major bush for this one, which brings up a great story. Now, if there is one thing that can be said about my father is that he likes to help people. If there is another thing to be said about my dad is that he runs into a lot of weird people that need help. If there is one more thing that can be said about my pop is that when he wanted to help one of these weirdo's but didn't want to do it himself... he'd send his kids. That is how I found myself at this lady's house at the ripe age of 14 pulling out bushes from their front yard. Apparently her husband was a alcohol tester for the FDA, it was all really hush hush so he hid his identity with the cover story of being a drunken layabout. The man was a pro. If you saw hin on the street you'd have given him money. So there I was with a shovel... just loving and respecting my dad for getting me into this with every back-breaking hour when the booze hound ... I mean, secret undercover FDA... whatever. Anyway, he comes stumbling out of the house and informs me that I'm doing 'it' wrong. Whatever could he mean? I'm shoveling dirt with a shovel... I didn't know it could be done wrong. He then hops in his pick-up backs it up to this huge bush I've been working on for the last 2 hours and straps a tow chain to it. Now, some people would slowly pull the truck forward till the chain was taunt and then carefully apply gas untill the bush pulled out. Lets put those kind of people in column A for... not complete frigging idiots. Our friend here was more of a column B guy. There was all sorts of slack in the chain and he guns it like he's drag racing. It got the bush out, it almost swung out and hit his truck. He also managed to leave huge ruts in his yard and wreck his truck in the process. I remember thinking about how I would never do that to my own property... ever.

So, I have this huge bush in my front yard that I have to get rid of. I took one look at the shovel and thought 'screw that... I gotta truck!' It's funny how time will change a persons view on things. It worked out, I didn't do the redneck special on it... and I wasn't half in the bag either. Here is the rose tree we planted in the front.


Then we took a break and decided to spray each other with the hose until we cooled off. It was in the high 90's today and everyone was working really hard. Joy was watching the kids, Serenity was running around in a diaper and Hayden was begging me to rip another bush out of the ground with the truck. Ok, I guess... I was working really hard. Anyway, we got them a little soaked. It was so hot outside that the water from the spigot was luke warm. It was like an outdoor bath for Seri. She loved it!




I then moved to the front and finished getting the bench in order. I think it looks pretty cool. All those bushes in the front are going to go. I'm going to move them in the back for the most part.


For good measure we decided to plant a stick in the ground as well. It's going to be another rose tree or something, Joy swears that it's not dead... just dormant, like Stalin. I think I planted a stick.

Joy was looking for the plant in the garage but couldn't find it. I told her that it was hard to find because the plant is inconspicuously hiding as a dead stick. She didn't find that as funny as I did.


To top this post off, here's Hayden with his bad guy look. According to him, this is what bad guys do right before they do something bad. It'd a novel idea because cops can just walk around waiting to get the stink eye from people. It's save a lot of time! In all honesty, I think this is the look my engineers get when they decide to try to 'fix' my network themselves instead of telling me that they broke it. Weird huh?

He got this funky high from the yellow sun

Superman was faster than a speeding bullet. He could leap tall buildings in a single bound and... he kept our presidents in line when needed.



Then, tragically... the man of steel died defending the planet.


Shortly there after... this happened.


Dammit.

Return to sender

A little blurb about a Russian script kiddie who tries to hack 127.0.0.1. That's a standard loopback address that's used to check your local network connection... more or less. I use it to check for open ports. In any event, this kid uses it to wipe his own hard drive. Pretty funny stuff. If you really want to learn how to 'hack' (and I'm no expert) go to Hackthissite.org. It's a great place to start.

So the plants that I said I was going to take pictures of and didn't are doing well. I should have some pictures this weekend. I have a ton of projects to do around the house. I've talked about building a wall around the garden out front and it's finally time to act... next week. Seriously, the weather is just too good not to stay inside and cuddle up with some nice wholesome GTA VI!

The big project that I am really excited about is to knock out the wall in the closet under the stairs and build out that area. I'm going to make a cubby space out of it. I think that if I finish off the space with drywall, run in some lights and a carpet I can make a cool hiding spot for Hayden and Seri... and more importantly a place for their toys down stairs. It'll be an out of sight play room. Rock and roll! More importantly than that, I can use the space to run CAT-5 from the first floor all the way to the attic like I should of when we built the house. If I can get up to the attic I can wire whatever I want wherever I want. Since I rigged the speaker system to stream my MP3's from my server I can run speakers upstairs and have the stereo play through the house. The system has 5 zones I can run so I can turn them on and off as needed. I also can get a hardwire connection to the 360 and my den PC. The wireless is fine but everyone knows you need copper for gaming... I'll probably still suck at Halo.

I think that this is going to be great. I'm not really mister handy but I want to learn how to be. When it comes to electronics and cars I can make things go but I'm just not good at making things pretty. We'll see how it turns out.

Other than that life is good. It's almost mothers day and I have no idea what to get Joy. I don't have a clue. I think I might figure out a way to surprise her with getting her hair done. I'll have to figure something out... the couch is comfortable and all but... we got that tempur-pedic bed!

I got to see Iron Man... which made me want to take apart the Honda. I think that I can get it running really nice if I try. It needs new shocks in the front, a new chain, the engine is oxidized and some of the electric is faulty. Not too bad for a 30 yr old bike! I really want to sand down the tank and re-paint it, but that gets into the make it go/make it pretty thing and I'm only good at the former.

Anyway, I have a ton of stuff to do, which starts with watching the first season of House... which I happened to have just finished 'obtaining'. Cheers!