The GPS made me do it!

The Garmin that Joy got me has this cool feature where it keeps track of all sorts of stats for you. It measures your average speed, the amount of time you have spent moving, the amount of time you have spent stopped... and the top speed that it has traveled.


When I first checked this out I was at a measly 80.2 mph for a max speed. Of course I couldn't let this stand. So I found a lonely stretch of road and set a more respectable 92.1 mph as my max speed. It would have been faster but I'm in the truck and it has a governor on it. Joy's car doesn't though! I think I've gotten the car up to 110 if I remember correctly.


Well, we'll see this weekend if I can't up the stats a little bit. After that I'll have to rely on more devious means to get the speed higher... I wonder if I can get a good enough signal on an airplane? I have a trip to either Baltimore or San Mateo, CA coming up soon, we also have a trip to Japan planned out for next fall as well. It'd be nice to have a max speed of 560 mph to show off!

The hand-me-downs

Seri is starting the feel the pains of having an older brother. She's getting his hand-me-down clothes to play in.


For now she's cool with it. Honestly, it's just for when she's inside. Joy would kill me if she was dressed like that when she meets the public. In fact, we just got her some new shoes which are her princess shoes and I think she really gets into dressing up. After Halloween I'll get some pictures in of her princess Lea costume. She didn't want to take it off when we put her in it.


One good thing about San Antonio is that you can grill comfortably well into November. This is really my favorite time of year for this place. I say this place because... I really would like to be anywhere else but, while I'm here I try to make the best of it. We finally got to air out the house as well. It was cool enough to have all the windows open for most of the weekend.


Well, that's about it for now. Halloween is coming up and I'm stoked. We're going to a party this year so it should be fun. I'll get pictures of the kids... I promise!!

It's almost scary really...

I'm usually don't like talking politics but, I am so sick of going to church and hearing that Obama is a horrible Muslim and McCain is a wonderful Christian. I can't believe that people can be just lead by the nose like this. It's just stupid to think that Obama can go to a church for more than 20 years just to deceive America into electing a terrorist as President and at the same time think that McCain goes to church solely for the religious experience and that it has nothing to do with his political career. How can people be so blinded?!? I'm not saying that Obama is a better candidate or even a better person, but every four years it seems that the 'Christian Majority" gets behind one candidate and all of a sudden he is Gods divine messenger for the US, while the other candidate is Satan's minion. Honestly, it's getting pretty stupid. Let me spell it out for you. Politicians lie about pretty much everything. When a senator kisses your baby, it's not because he's into babies... or just a good kind-hearted guy. It's because it's a photo-op. When a candidate gives a moving speech, it's not because he is an articulate person... it's because he hired a good team of writers. When a candidate says that he prays every night just like you do, he's saying it because there's millions of idiots out there that will buy it and vote for him based on that alone. Wake up.

The Stink in Farts Controls Blood Pressure

Read the article here.

I knew it. I happen to have a blood pressure of 5 over 13. Oh yeah.

The new Xbox Menu

The new Xbox 360 menu is soon to be upon us. I'm a little worried about loosing the ability of adding in my own background. For some reason I just find it hilarious to put Mario on the Xbox.


In other news I crashed the web server. For those of you who use it... it's back up and good as new. Luckily I didn't loose anything. It happened on the same day that Joy bought me my new Garmin GPS. It's awesome. The best thing about it is that you can change the voice from American English to either Australian English or British English. I started out with Australian but got sick of hearing about every wallabee crossing in San Antonio so I settled on British English. Since this is the last weekend before Halloween, I think I'll actually put some decorations out. I'm worried about not being home to hand out candy but I think I'll just give our bags to the neighbors and let them hand it out. We're going to a friends to trick-or-treat and have a little get together as well... so it should be fun. Hayden is going Anakin Skywalker and Serenity is going as Princess Amadalla. I'll be going as awesome. I'll get some pictures of the kids so be sure to check it out!

Kid. Candy Store.

In my recent experience... there is a definite reason that the saying "like a kid in a candy store." has been used for so many years. When you actually take a kid, preferably a young one, and put them in a candy store... the result is rather unique. Now, I think my kids are rather well behaved. Serenity is probably one of the few 1 yr old's that will stay in a corner for 5 whole minutes. But, when she saw all those bins of candy that were right at eye level for her, she lost her little mind!



She ran and ran, just amazed at the amount of candy in front of her... it was really cute, and then she figured out how to open them! We purchased about $5.00 worth of candy... Serenity probably ate $3.00 worth of candy while we were in there. That's my girl!

We also made Hayden's Jack-o-lantern. He drew it himself and I cut it out. I think it came out pretty well.


He insisted on fangs... which I think complement the evil eyes nicely. We fill them with glow sticks for safety. Not the kids safety mind you, we do it for my safety. I'm a little retarded when it comes to fire (reference 'Fire in backyard 2008). It has a cool affect anyway.


There is a good chance that I will put up all our Halloween decorations while cleaning the house and mowing the lawn. There's a better chance that I'll just play with the kids all day and have fun instead. Guess which one I'm rooting for!

Remember the Rovio?

Now you can control it with your Wiimote...



I do not see coincidence, I see providence.

"I am your father... and I'm kind of a jerk too."

Enjoy.

"You are all individuals."... "I'm not!"

I saw this on Yahoo and it cracked me up.


"Embrace your individuality by doing what we tell you to!"

That reminds me of a movie called Idiocracy. Now, it didn't do that great in the theaters but it was a really funny movie.

The movie starts by showing how an intelligent couple keeps putting off having kids for the right time and eventually die without having any offspring. Meanwhile, a white trash family has tons of kids and their kids are getting pregnant while still teenagers. This leads to the trend of dumb people over populating the Earth over time. It's like revers evolution.

Anyway, this guy who is the most average guy around the turn of the century. The gov't want to do some kind of experiment on him for something and they freeze him. Then the program gets shut down and he sleeps for 500 years instead of just 1.

When he wakes up, the average intelligence has degraded to a point that he is the smartest man alive. It's a dark comedy and it's pretty crass but I think it's funny. Well, now I pretty much spend every day here in San Antonio, or as I like to call it... the village of idiots, and feel that I'm stuck in that movie.

Today at work we had a guy come in to change out any blown lights in the office. He walks by one of our engineers door, dragging this huge box of florescent tubes and the engineer asks him whats he doing. The guy answers that he's changing out blown out lights for new ones. Then the engineer looks straight up for a while... and then goes "My lights good."

Seriously?!?! If it is not dark in your office... then your light is good. On top of that... the guy was in his office. Did he really need to be told that the light was on? Scary stuff man.

So you think that you want kids?

I come home today to this.


Serenity got into the bathroom and went right for the Q-tips. I started cleaning it up and then saw the coup de grâce.


I swear that this was not a plant. Serenity had found a toothbrush and decided to 'hold on' to it for later. She is starting to use her diaper as a impromptu pocket. What made it really funny was that it was Joy's toothbrush!

Go parenting!

Dryer repair 101

The dryer decided to give up the ghost over the weekend and I finally had a chance to check it out. I quickly determined that it wasn't working due to the thing not making any noise. Based off of this acute analysis I decided to take it apart. You know that feeling you get when you're about half way through something and then you realize that you're an idiot when it comes to mechanical stuff... yeah, good times.


Everything was going swimmingly, so I decided it was time to cut myself. You know... to liven things up. My dad always says 'If you're not bleeding, then you're not trying hard enough!' Well, it sounds like something he'd say anyway.


Honestly, I was guessing that there was some kind of fuse that burned out and I was right. There's a thermal fuse right on the heating coil. It's that thing with the green sticker on it. You can get at it by popping the top off the dryer and then breaking all the bones in your hand so you can fit it in this little crevice in order to unscrew that thing.


The best part was that stupid thing cost $37.00!! I decided to obtain one another way so mine cost nothing... but is a 210 F thermal fuse instead of the 260 F one that was there originally. So, I might be replacing it again soon. I ran it on back to back 1 hour jobs so see if it'd die and it was good to go. I ran it empty which might affect the temperature near the fuse, as opposed to being full of undies, but... at least it works.

So, at the end of the day I found out that I can fix stuff, if I have enough free time. I also found out that dryers come with approximately 3 extra screws for some reason. Weird huh?

Hayden Kenobi? I wonder if he means old Hayden Kenobi?

Yeah, my son is a Jedi.


What's your kid going to be? Probably some kind of non-lightsaber wielding pirate or something... lame.


I'm having a hard time not buying myself this costume. If I had one... I'd wear it to work everyday and just tell my users "This is not the e-mail you're looking for." Knowing my guys... it might just work!

Need it.

It's the Rovio from WowWee. It's a WiFi robot that has a webcam and hosts it's own webpage to monitor your house. You login and then tell the robot where to go and what to look at. It can also charge itself so it won't run out of juice while you're away.

Here's some Youtube on it.



Now, I'm not posting this in hopes that someone might buy it for me... it's just to further demonstrate why I cannot be left alone watching commercials! What possible reason do I have to buy a $300 robot? Especially when I really just want to see if I can flash the OS and make it do other stuff. I wonder if I can mount a paintball gun to it?

Comercials and you.

Over the last couple of months I've been on a mission to eliminate commercials from my life... well, as much as humanly possible. This all started with Noggin. Noggin is a 24 hr a day pre-school channel with no commercials. Now, Hayden isn't much of a whiner and we're going on 5 years now without a department store meltdown or any other temper tantrum but, I did notice the the lack of commercials have stemmed the 'I wants' down to almost nothing. That's pretty cool. I started to think about how much the average person is bombarded with advertising in a given day. Now that Joy and I have more expendable income it's hard not to run out and buy the latest do-dad that catches my eye. Truthfully, I'm just tired of having to sit through so many stupid commercials.

The worst thing is that most commercials these days seem to be aimed at idiots. If I have to watch another commercial where the moronic husband can't comprehend some obvious fact, and then needs his wife to explain it to him... all the time shaking her head as if to say "I know I should just let him drown in his soup but... that's the average middle age white male for you!" Yeah... I get ticked.

Anyway, I started with just not watching TV, but I don't have that kind of willpower. So, I tried using Hulu. It's a great site that has the latest episodes of my favorite shows with only one commercial per break. Also, since I can stream it to the Xbox 360 using Playon whenever I want, I don't have to plan my day around a certain time or rely on my craptacular DVR from Time Waner. The DVR only records shows that I ask it to... if it feels like it... and there's a full moon... Tuesdays only.

Well, Hulu is cool and all but it's not High Def and I've had some streaming problems with them. So, I decided that bit torrent is still the best way to get what I want. Currently I'm watching House, The Unit and Chuck. I can get all the latest episodes in high def, with no commercials, the night that they air. Pretty sweet huh?

BTW, if you're not watching House yet, you should. I usually wait till I'm 3 episodes deep and then brew up some Earl Grey tea, watch them all in a row and then pretend to be smart for a while. It's all good.

In other news, Mega Man 9 is out. It's a throw back to the old school 8 bit days and it's awesome!! I'm totally hooked on it. The guys over at Penny Arcade made up this comic which pretty much sums up Mega Man 9 for me.


Unfortunately, I am the only one in the family that has the gamer gene. I have a brother-in-law with a weird WoW growth but that's not the same thing. I just can't drop to that level. Honestly, he won't get all retarded and foamy at the mouth over Force Unleashed with me. I mean... I stabbed a Rancor in the eye. It it's freaking EYE! It was epic. If I could I'd buy a shirt that says 'I throw Wookies.' which pretty much sums up why Joy does all my cloths shopping for me.

While I was looking for that comic I also stumbled onto this one... which pretty much sums up everything that is wrong with having me raise a child.


Ok, that's all I got for now. Oh, Hayden's going to be a good Jedi for Halloween and Serenity is going to be Princess Lea. I'm taking Hayden to the Renaissance Festival next week and I'm going to let him wear his Jedi costume... so that should rock. I'll get some pictures. Lastly, I recently discovered that If I wear my wife's bra on my head I can make it look like a pope hat. The more you know...