mindsquirt

Toddler Upgrades

2011-06-29T15:54:00.001-07:00

Prepare for Upgrades:

I made Sam a sweet ramp to launch his hotwheels.

Here it is in action:

This shows a shelf to store some of the cars before action, and a little flat platform that starts the ramp.

There is a stool that is seperate, so it is easy to take apart and transport. here it shows them apart. Sam is mad I took them apart and wants them back together.

Here it is together with Sam on top, ready to launch some cars!

Same deal, but different angle. as you can tell by now, I hodge-podged it together from scrap.

New truck

2011-05-08T17:00:00.001-07:00

Bought a new truck! See pics below. It has everything I wanted, including the color(s) I wanted. I have been looking for months.

That topper makes it look a little goofy, but is nice to have. I'll probably take it off and put it on as-needed.

I sold my 03 sedan and 01 f150, within 7 hours of posting them on craigslist. I got $1000 more than I thought I would. Nice.

Also, as a bonus, Sam with a light saber.

old timey beer sign

2011-05-06T16:00:00.001-07:00

As seen at West Baden hotel

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

mystery

2011-04-11T18:17:00.000-07:00

I replaced one of my toilet bowls over the weekend.

I put the used one by the curb for the trash man.

Around midnight last night, under the cover of darkness, my neighbor 2 houses down drove his pick-up over and took the toilet.

Why?

Before the morning (but well after midnight), he put his old toilet in front of my house, in the same spot.

Why?

Portland, the land of the supersized urinal and sushi

2011-04-10T15:52:00.001-07:00

I think this new app, made my Google for blogger (they own blogger) should work.

I went to visit my good friend Michael last week, in Portland, Oregon.

It was a week-long trip, and we got in some quality snowboarding, beer drinking ( including merryment), and some Euro-table-top games.

Portland is a pretty typical mid-size city, except it is overrun by hippies, outdoor enthusiast (see hippies), craft breweries ( see hippies), and over-sized urinals ( hippies have bad aim).

It also has its fair share of hipsters, who are not quite committed to being a full hippie, but want to appear to have some hippie leanings. I liken to the kind of people who wear cowbow hats in Indiana. ( the bonus of those people is I can use the phrase "that guy is all-hat and no cattle", which is probably true in that case ( but not true in Texas, where everyone has at least one cow and carries a six-shooter))

Here are some exciting pictures:

Some brewmasters at one of local microbrews looking at their work

Extremely big urinals ( biggest I have seen up to that point) in some bar.

A shot of the peak of Mt. Hood

The approach to mt. Hood, where it was snowing as we went up.

Extremely large sushi

Mike looking at his pet-chickens

Another bar with even bigger than the first urinals, which completely blew my mind.

2010-12-25T14:12:00.001-08:00

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

2010-12-25T09:45:00.001-08:00

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

2010-12-25T09:39:00.001-08:00

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

pictures i meant to post

2010-11-16T15:56:00.001-08:00

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.2

2010-11-14T16:03:00.001-08:00

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.2

ya'll

2010-11-13T09:25:00.001-08:00

Hello.

Recently, I have decided to get back to my redneck heritage by saying "ya'll" a lot.

I said it regularly whilst in high school and earlier. Then, while going to college, i was frequently mocked or asked if i was from the deep south. Needless to say, i stopped saying it. After about 10 years, i feel like i have abandoned my roots, so I am bringing it back, ya'll. *

Please think on it's utlity while enjoying the pictures I posted.

They are a picture of me standing by Thomas Edison's desk, 6 cases of Sam Adams Oktoberfest I bought before they stopped making it, and some delectible sushi i made last week.

Next week's pictures: a pair of piggie salt and pepper shakers, a fry shaped like a ladle, and my slippers.

Bye bye.

* I have also adapted the south-eastern Indiana habit of saying "yet" at the end of sentences. As in: we still need to buy Cooper a glam outfit yet.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.2

hobos

2010-10-28T17:41:00.001-07:00

Last night we had "hobo dinners". This is the first time my wife has made them, so i wasnt sure what to expect. At first I was a bit hesitant, as i was sure that my palate was more refined then a homeless person's.

In fact, when i found out about this dinner, the dinner that is better suited to a man that wanders the streets, sleeping in an ally, or maybe a dumpster, i looked at alex and told her we were eating a homeless man's food tonight. This made her raise her eyebrows at me. Then we just kind of looked at each other.

My expectations were low. They were on par with the "hobo hut", a local eatery that i think is the only local resturant where you can still smoke. The tagline among people i work with for the hobo hut is " where you don't have to light-up to smoke".

( a side note: the hobo hut was the first establishment I saw when i interviewed for my current job. It was a good preview of the rootin'-tootin' good times ahead working in a small Indiana town)

My wife told me that hobo dinners are a mix of food that you basically find a bunch of stuff around the house, like meats and onions and potatoes, and throw it in some foil and bake it. Except if you are really a hobo, it would be stuff like watermelon rines, cat food scrapings, and other hobo cuisine cooked in a wendy's wrapper.

I guess my point is, it could be dicey.

It was good.

Cooper barked.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.2

business trip from baltimore to nyc

2010-10-11T05:54:00.001-07:00

Hello.

I am using my phone once again to update my blog. This time from the philidelphia airport as I await the second leg of my flight from louisville to albany, ny.

This time, i thought i would show some pictures of a recent trip i had to take to do a software update in some of the products i work on at my job. I literally found out i was to travel the morning i came into work, and i was on a plane at 6:00 pm that day.

The products i had to update were in 4 citys on the east coast: baltimore, camden nj, newark nj, and yonkers, ny. I made flight arrangements to fly into baltimore on wednesday night and leave from new york city on saturday night, thus giving me 3 working days to drive to each city and update them. I snapped some events along the way on my phone:

unwinding at a bar Wednesday night after updating a few units:

outside shot of the deli where I was eating a real phili cheesesteak:

There is a phili cheesesteak up close. It looks gross but was delcious.

Here is a mysterous shot of the lovely New Jersey Countryside. Their guardrails are slanted there.

This is crossing Jersey into The Bronx, NY. This is the George Washington bridge, which I thought was really cool.

This is the next day, when I was driving from Yonker's NY, into Queens to go to Laguardia. There was a terrible wreck that I was almost in. Notice the upside-down minivan. I had to help some poor dude out of that upside down van, as he was still seatbelted-in to the van upside down. Within seconds of getting down, we pulled him out, and realized he was okay, he went back in to get his smokes. yeeish.

I got a burger here at Laguardia but almost didn't b/c they did that thing were they have a picture of the animal you are about to consume.

Here is a shot from my lap to someone else's lap, whilst waiting for my plane to board. This guy pulled a large zip-lock bag of lunch meat out of that plastic bag on the right and started eating it.

I thought it was a strange choice of pre-flight snack.

here are some pajamas that I bought for my wife and daughter. kinda awesome.

blogs

2010-09-18T13:22:00.001-07:00

hello there.
i decided to make more of an effort to blog since my wife and I recently purchased smartphones.

we'll see if this will really happen.

seeing as it has been almost 6 months, i have lots to talk about, including changing jobs twice, and a fast paced trip to nyc.

for now, a quiz. which pumpkin was made by an engineer?

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.9

Gettin' Sassy

2010-02-28T15:58:00.001-08:00

Hello.

Listing stuff on Craigslist is ALWAYS an experience! As one of my friends puts it, it is the place he "goes to sell stuff to losers who pretend to want to buy his stuff". I won't get into all of the craigslist transactions I have gotten into through the years, but I WILL mention this one, because I can easily copy-and-paste it from my email.

I was attempting to sell my cheap-o plastic playhouse for the kids. We bought it for $250, so I thought selling it for $200 would be a good deal. Apparently that is a tremendously low price, and within a day I had at least a dozen hits on it. I had to pick my potential match carefully, as to minimize effort on my part and maximize all the cold, hard cash.

That's what I did, and I was called some names and I had to dole out a little sass.

Here is the email chain, with the "lady" responding to my ad:

Lady: I can commit to buying this if you can meet in cincy. I live near kings island. I could get this Monday or tomorrow night.thanks

Me 1: sounds good. we possibly meet somewhere in between us? I am thinking the colerain exit on 265 or Winton Rd./Cincinatti Mills exit.

How about Tuesday-day or Tuesday Evening? Please get back to me as I have other interest, but you are the only one who is "committing". Also, If we are going to meet I am going to hold firm to $200.

Lady: My husband can meet you tuesday during the day. Would that work? Also, would you take 175 for this? Thanks!! Oh cincy mills is fine.

Me : I will not take 175.

*** long time period ***

Me (later email) : sorry. when you said 175 i made arrangements with
someone else who will pay full price.
good luck.

Lady: I simply asked a question...please
follow craigslist rules. That was tacky.

Me: The only thing tacky here is the name-calling.

I am familiar with the Craigslist rules and I am 100% sure that I am following them.

Let's be clear, no transaction was agreed upon, and I went with someone who was willing to pay full price in a timely fashion and wasn't trying to shake me down at the last minute. Further, I was up-front about the fact that I had other buyers: "Please get back to me as I have other interest".

From your response, I can only guess that you are a novice at buying used goods. I suggest you learn a little bit about how this works instead of calling people names when you don't get what you want.

Sincerely,
Tacky

I was offended, and I told her what I thought. That is what happened. I think she overreacted a bit to what was basically common sense when it comes to selling stuff. I don't know how many times in life I have been told or said something along the lines of: "Don't wait for me, if you find another buyer before I get there".

My favorite part is when she told me I wasn't following Craigslist rules. Please.

My last email could have used some F-bombs, and maybe a reference to Cooper. ( or a threat that Cooper will come bite her if she keeps up the sass-back).

Next week I'll teach you guys how to not take any shit from those hotshots down at Arby's.

*including the one last year, where I was certain my friend and I were part of a trap where the person who placed the ad was luring people to his farmhouse to kill them.

LEGOS!!!

2010-02-21T17:24:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

I am very happy to report that the eldest of our brood has moved on to actual Legos. not Duplos (baby-sized legos), the real thing.

I realized it was time about 2 week ago, so I splerged on about 1000 pieces on ebay. They were all very small (but hard to find) pieces (see octangle-shaped box below), and I decided that Sunday morning that we were going to the Lego Store that day to get some more basic shapes.

We dropped about $110 and we got everything seen below (including a Darth Vader minifig keychain for dad that Alex is holding)

So, $110 buys everything you see below. Those contansters on top of the boxes are included in that.

You see, this marks a very important milestone at our household. This can very well be a new era where dad doesn't have to color fairy coloring books, play candyland, or be dressed as a princess.

we dumped them all in this larger contanster, and Alex lovingly laid her head on them (as I would do as a 4 year old (I did it later that day)).

I made a sweet house, but I didn't want to take a picture of it. I also remembered the most frustrating part about playing with legos, which is hunting for the right part. I'd say half of my time is spend looking for parts rather than building.

That is a life lesson, I guess.

Here she is bobbing for Legos.

Sam watched us for a while. He liked all the activity and color, but hated the sound of digging through a giant tub of Legos.

You gotta take the good with the bad, Sam.

That is a life lesson, I guess.

Here is Alex talking to Grandpa. I Don't know why, but I like this picture. She looks very "Adult" in this picture. I guess she is growing up.

So, in summary, Legos are fucking awesome.
The End.

A follow up to selling my car

2010-02-01T18:23:00.000-08:00

Hello.

Now that it has been almost 5 weeks, I thought I'd update you on the status of selling my car. I know each and every one of you have been on the edge of your seat waiting for the very moment that I post an update about this tantalizing subject.

Well, I sold it.

In fact, I sold it to Bean and Stephanie. Thanks Bean!

A few days later, we got a real family car, a Ford Freestyle, like in the picture below. That actually isn't our car, but it is the same color. Our car would have lots of dirt on it and some cornfields behind it.

It is about the same size of an Explorer, but gets much better gas milage. It is basically a station wagon, but sits up higher and is less lame. It also has more cupholders for my kids to fill up with cereal crumbs and kool-aid.

My wife gets it, and I get her left-over car. Feeling slighted, I have taken the opportunity to shower myself with fabulous cash and prizes. In the past weeks, I have bought a LCD TV, road bike, and am minutes from buying a table saw and thickness planer. I was thinking about getting a boat, but my friends talked me out of it. Brad told someone that next time he sees me, I'll be flying an Ultralight.

I should also get a hovercraft or maybe a sailboat.

A Normal Post

2009-12-16T18:45:00.000-08:00

Hello to one and all.

Today, I tricked Cooper into thinking I was throwing him food fifty consecutive times. Each time, I said "here cooper!" and made a throwing movement with my hand. Each of the fifty times, he jumped up as though I was throwing food.

It was very discouraging.

However, I was encouraged, when Alex came over to see what I was doing, and after one throw, looked into my hands and told me nothing was there. Good girl Alex!

I told her she was smarter than a doggy, which I think is a fairly good conclusion from the whole exercise. In fact, she is roughly fifty times smarter than a dog. To be fair, though, I stopped after fifty fake throws, so she could be as much as one hundred times smarter than a dog.

Speaking of dogs, since third grade, I have been aware of the fact that if you reverse the word "dog" it becomes the word "God". Please noodle on that for a while and let me know if it means something significant. At the time, I was sure it meant something.

Also, all day today I have the word "critty" stuck in my head. I don't know why, because it is a made-up word.

Now that I have typed sufficient poppycock , this is brings us to the real reason I am updating my blog:

I am selling my car.

Please buy it or convince a loved one to do so.

I am selling it due to it being way too small for my growing family (new baby and all). I wish I could keep it, but it's size is impractical for a family of 4 and a gulliable pooch.

here is the criagslist ad
here is a old post about how i love it.

Halloween and Christmas Decorating

2009-11-22T15:11:00.000-08:00

Last time Alex got a time-out, she got back at me by hiding in her toy chest.

This is her sulking when I discovered her:

Alex as Snow White for Halloween:

Later, as sassy Snow White:

Alex and I decorated the outside of the house for Christmas over the weekend. It was very important for her to "hold" the ladder.

It is kind of hard to see, but alls we did was put up wreaths and candles in the windows. I usually try to stay clear of the Christmas lights.

Here is Alex in front of the stockings we hung on the inside.

Kinda awesome.

Baby Sam is here!

2009-10-28T17:23:00.000-07:00

Baby Samuel Paul.

Born Oct. 23 at 10:57 am.

6 lbs, 6 oz, 20 inches

foo

Just a few minutes old here:

foo

day 2:

foo

day 3:

foo

Here is big sister Alex reading Sam a book while he warms up in the sun and with a heater:

Dressing Room

2009-09-13T15:57:00.000-07:00

Hello.

I work near a furniture factory. They make commercial and consumer-grade furniture such as end-tables, buffets, entertainment-centers, and large desks.

Twice a year, they have a factory sale, where they sell remnant wood assemblies, and heavily scratched and dented furniture, or simply furniture they couldn't sell.

I go mostly for the remnant wood assemblies. I usually walk out with a truckload of wood for about $30. Unlike years past, I went early, before the professional woodworkers and tradesmen got there, and scored some pretty big finds. FOR CHEAP.

This included more than $1500.00 of hardware such as drawer-slides, cabinet knobs, puck-lights, door catches, and other sundry components that a amateur furniture maker dreams about. I bought all that stuff for probably $60. Booya!

I spend maybe another $40.00 on some wood: I scored fourteen 35" wide drawers and probably ten or so 78"x 15" slabs of press-board with a birch (or poplar?) veneer. I also got a fetching cabinet door.

I really had no clue what to use all this crap for.

After a few weeks, I decided to use the drawers and the aforementioned slabs to redo the closet system in our master closet. I bought some additional poplar trim, some brushed nickle hanging-polls, some matching pulls, a mirror, and dark walnut stain, and spent the next few weekends building up the cabinets.

Over labor day weekend, the wife and I took out the cheap-o wire shelving, but in some light-colored bamboo flooring my sister gave me, painted the walls light green (doesn't show up in pictures), and installed the cabinets and finished it all up. They total bill was probably around $300 or so.

Here are some before/after pictures.

BEFORE is on left.

AFTER is on right.

If you are using Mozilla, click on these and adjust zoom via crtl-mouse wheel for best results.

view into the closet towards the LEFT

View into the closet toward the RIGHT

View into the closet toward the CENTER. The mirrored door covers up a "shoe tower" that has eleven movable shelves for the 100 or so boots, sandals, slippers,moccasins, clogs, sneakers, heels, stilettos, flip-flops, and mukluks that belong to my wife. I get one shelf. The door is being held up by clamps while i wait for hinges.

Here is a blurry picture of the left side "tower", which has four drawers in the bottom and hanging space on top. Notice the full-extension drawer slides. Booya.

The great part is, I got maximum effect for very little work and money. Most of the difficult parts, like building the drawers, or assembling, planing, and sanding the side panels was done! I just assembled everything, brought it up stairs, and put the hardware and face-frame on.

We have been using this system for a week and it is flippin' awesome.

This will be my last project for at least 6 months, as we await baby #2. I am glad to have it done so I can focus on my family.

But I also still have a lot left to do in the basement. {sigh}

//////////// UPDATE/////////////////////////////

A picture of the shoe tower sans door. kind blurry too. the top and bottom shelves are fixed to add strength to the tower. 9 shelves are shown will 2 that are unused and stowed on the top shelf. there is a run of that adjustable-shelving stuff on both sides of the tower, which allows you to adjust shelved in about 1" graduations. i also ran it above the highest top fixed shelf, and below the lowest fixed shelf, so we could put some in those large spaces you see, if we wanted. but we didn't b/c those are good spaces for boots.

I'd like to show some support to myself

2009-07-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

In the last few minutes, I decided I'd like to be the kind of person who puts bumper stickers on my car.

Up until now, I have been very bumper sticker adverse on my new car. I think that the reason is that I have mostly viewed bumper stickers strictly as a way to express something to other people. The people immediately behind you, I guess. Plus, they are kinda fugly.

Anyway, who cares? I am soundly indifferent about the strangers in front of me and their views on religion, evolution, abortion, politics, or witty slogans.* Or the mother ship of bad bumper stickers, a Calvin peeing on Ford or Chevy symbol. Awwwwww man, don't get me started on that pointless redneck contest.

Also, all of these non-military magnetic ribbons. Yuck. I think Bean said it best in this blog that people should "stop showing their support"**.

So, you can see I feel pretty strongly about not using my car's aft as a means to advertise pointless blather***.

HOWEVER!

I have came to the conclusion, again, about 5 minutes ago, that I could use bumper stickers as a means to communicate with myself. Sounds crazy, I know. Hear me out here, folks.

Let me let you in on a little secret. At many times in my life I purposely send signals to myself to serve as a reminder for something important that I'd rather not do.

For instance, for the semester-long final stretch for my thesis defense, I grew out my beard. The idea was that I would see myself in the mirror and it would remind me to stop procrastinating and finish my manuscript! Plus it kinda got unruly and nasty and kept people from bothering me at Panera.

Another example is putting a reading nook in my bedroom. I rarely use it to read now, and I knew I wouldn't, but it reminds me daily about the importance of books.

The bumper stickers are a similar idea.

The reminder I need is about my health. You see, I am a believer that there are 3 themes in life that are in direct conflict with one another: health, family, and career. The maxim goes: You are only allowed to pick two. Some people pick none. But the most you can do well, are two. As I look at everyone around me, this is pretty true.

In my quest for balance these three themes, I think these reminders will urge me to improve my fitness. Again, this came at me like a revelation from God, and almost knocked me out of my chair, a mere five-to-ten minutes ago.

Yes, it will do nicely. So, I am thinking some choice pro-fitness decals and stickers should work. This way, when I walk to my car after work, I will be reminded to go to the gym, or take a bikeride or run before going home to eat pizza, drink beer, and fart into the couch. This will really prove my committment to myself, since it is at odds with the part of me that dislikes bumperstickers and the like.

I hope this doesn't sound too crazy. I really would hate it if we weren't friends anymore.

This means I will probably finally put up my imba and Cannondale decals, but not necessarily my ChildFund or Ill Mitch ones.

So, are we on the same page here people? I know this is a difficult concept, but I swear I just can't make this post any longer.

* I commented to my wife last night that I am going to make an effort to use the word slogan more. I think we can all agree that it is a great word.

** Like Bean, I condone the use of said ribbons for showing support for our soldiers.

*** blather is another good one.

Another Picture Dump

2009-07-16T18:44:00.000-07:00

Hello.

To those of you that aren't privy to the reoccuring theme here at mindsquirt, I have a habit of snapping pictures with my camaraphone, and then dumping them on this blog for all to enjoy.

Here goes:

Here is an assortment of the stuff we put on our lips in the our household. I kept on buying more because I thought we were out. Really what was happening is that my wife was putting it all in a drawer and not telling me about it. (aka"hiding it from me")

anyway I found it one day and I was pretty surprised.

there are 16 kinds of chapstick there:

We saw this boat-themed minivan at a Truck stop in Seymore, Indiana.

Here is a picture of my daughter about 1 year ago intentionally trying to hurt me by pressing on my eardrums. It hurt, and you can see me grimacing in pain. If you pretend i am smiling, it just looks like we really love each other.

Here is Alex laying down to admire this bug. I thought it was a nice picture.

Here is a picture of a sweet entertainment center I bought from the seconds at the furniture factory close to my work. I got a sweet deal on this baby. It doesn't look impressive but it is frickin' awesome. I got it for probably 10% of retail.

Here is a man dressed like papa smurf at the backside at Churchill Downs on Derby Day.

Here is a lead-horse from the backside at CD.

Here is a coloring-book page that Alex entered in a contest at the local pizza resturant. She colored it while we were waiting for our food. The whole time she colored it, she would brag about how she was going to win the contest, and she would recieve her prize shortly. The entire time, we had to bring her back to reality by telling her that she may not win, and there are many kids in the contest, etc...

Here is her recieving her prize a week later after winning the contest. The gigantic easter basket is on the left.

Here is a Golf cart turning left onto the highway where the speedlimit is 55 mph.

Here is some marketing mumbo-jumbo by the checkout line in the pharmacy I go to. I think the drug was a cholesterol-lowering drug. I was amused how this poster dumbed-down the concept that fatty foods change your cholesterol by actually putting the fatty food in your bloodstream. I am hoping that some people will walk away from that poster and actually think that tiny versions of food are running through our veins.

Here is Alex playing Doctor with classmate. I thought this was pretty cute as well.

This ends my latest picture dump.

Thank you for your time.

June Stuff

2009-06-23T18:12:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd go ahead and get you peeps updated with what June has been like.

As you know from the post below, in early June I finished my Nightstands. I'd say that my audience's reactions to that post ranged from mildly aware to vaguely interested. No seriously, thanks for all of the comments.

That weekend I also spent alot of time fixing up my house. With the help of my wife and daughter, I installed a powered roof vent on the top of my 2 story house. Our upstairs gets hot, and it should cut down our electrical bill due to running the AC. My roof has a very steep roof and I thought I was doomed for sure multiple times. But it is up there now, and I am sure it has turned on at least once in the past month.

Cha-ching!

Also this month, Alex and I went to the "Daddy-Daughter Ball" at the local YMCA. The time leading up to this event was a big deal in our house. Alex kept talking about how we were "getting married" (me the prince, and her the princess), and I envisioned us doing some dancing and just spending some time together. We generally have good times. All-in-all, expectations were met. There were plenty of photo-ops, cookies, dancing, fanfare, and her favorite, Princesses!

Cinderella in blue, Alex in pink/white, Snow White on right

Yes, some local teens dressed up as some of Alex's favorite Disney Princesses (her latest obsession), and she was in hog-heaven. At first, I was stoked that she could hang out with her idols, but then she really got out of control, and wouldn't leave them alone for 5 minutes. I tried to pull her away from them, so we could dance, talk, or do an activity, but during these times she just plotted on how to ditch me and return to them.

To give you an idea, here is a video. This went on for 1.5 hours virtually non-stop (I managed to get one slow dance, one fast dance, a hokie-pokie, and a chicken dance).

I kept trying to get her to dance/play with me, but at some point I just gave up and stood against the wall. I also talked to some of the other dads, who kind of depressed me. At the end she was really getting grumpy, and we were lucky to leave without a tantrum. Too much excitement for one night. Again, it had some downsides, but was a fun night for us both.

I have been working on various small projects as well. My bike, Cars, etc. I recently wanted to make some corn-hole boards.

I decided to paint the likeness of Chuck Norris on them. For those of you not in the know, google "chuck Norris facts".

corn hole boards*

I think they turned out pretty well, but they could probably be mistaken for the Marlboro Man, or some random hat-wearing man with a handsome beard. I think they are flippin' awesome.

Sunday was also father's day, which I got to spend with my dad and also my daughter and wife. I got some cool gifts, including a Rubik Cube, which I would like to try to solve unaided. I was inspired to become an expert on one ever since last saturday when I saw Will Smith solve one in a cab ride in "The Pursuit of Happiness".

* For some reason Blogger rotated this image when I uploaded it. It may have been due to the awesome power of Chuck Norris's image.

Completed Furniture Page

2009-06-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

Updated on 6/7/09 in red.

My intent with this post is to display some of the furniture I have made in the past few years. I plan to add to it as projects are completed and when I get some of the furniture that I have built out of a storage garage.

Format:
An outline of the cost, time, difficulty, type of finish, and some discussion are included.

I also make guesses about how much it would cost to buy something similar to what I built. This is always hard because 1) this would be considered "custom" work and 2) I refer to catalogs like pottery barn for comparison, and 3) the quality of construction and wood tends to make this kind of thing vary a lot. Please feel free to offer constuctive criticism. Any other form of criticism will be deleted before others can see it.

The difficulty is on a scale of 1-5.

1- kit assembly. Assembly of some pre-cut plywood or fiberboard with a screwdriver.
5- Professional woodworker. Requires elegant joinery, inlays, and/or carvings.

;************************************************************************

Project: Matching Walnut Nightstands
Date Completed: July 2009
Time to Build: 100-120 hours

cost: $100 (walnut plywood, stain, and finish only)

Guess cost in stores: $800-$2000 for both

difficulty: 4/5

finish: minwax walnut gel stain with 2 coats lacuqer

wood: black walnut everything. drawer bottoms and side panels are walnut plywood as well.

in place with neutral-stained walnut headboard.

both together

now not.

Discussion: If you include planning, this was my longest project yet! This started with the planning in November here (including some solid models and also voting by YOU on design) and some intial posts about my progress here.

Around Christmas, I took lots of time off work to get started on these nightstands. I did the bulk of the construction then, and left some of the light-lifting for the next times that I was visiting my folks, and ultimatly took them to my house for finishing. Anyway, due to not living close to my dad's shop anymore, this project moved slowly.

The idea was to make some more furniture for my master suite, which already has a white walnut lingerie dresser and headboard, which are also detailed on this page. The nightstands replaced some mis-matched painted endtables that didn't look very good and also were not very functional.

For this project, we were out of white walnut, so I used black walnut, which did not match at all in color, but did in grain and whatnot. I was hopeful that the contrast would act as an "accent". I think they look pretty good together. However, I am torn b/c I typically don't like to stain these things that dark, b/c it covers up the beauty of the wood.

The building was pretty uneventful and slowgoing. I didn't make any mistakes which made me have to re-cut or throw away any jointed boards or assemblies, which is probably a first. However, due to the inconsistant thickness of the wood and my (lack of)skill at dovetail jiggery, the dovetail joints ranged from tight(good!) to loose (bad!), which made them not look good at all and were probably bad and unreliable joints. To bolster the joints, I tacked the side board to the front of the drawer box, and i knew the nail-holes would be covered by the false-fronts.

here are some other factoids:

>I also used 7/8" walnut to make the entire drawers, including walnut ply for the bottoms. While this arguably a waste of costly and beautiful walnut, especially considering there are 6 drawers between them, it made them look really good and was much easier to work with when using a dovetail jig than plywood! Now when I open the drawer, I gasp in overwhelming satisfaction!

> I recently went to a furniture factory by where I work and they were selling lots of reminant wood (for next project)and hardware. The plywood back (which is not seen) and the drawer pulls were bought there for pennies on the dollar, making an already cheap project even cheaper! sweet!

> At said factory sale, I bought two cases of self-closing drawer guides that had invoices for $350 on each on them. I bought these boxes for a mere $15.00 !! ( this has nothing to do with this project, but I had to share it on this blog.)

> there are three drawers on each nightstand. That is a grand total of six drawers!

;************************************************************************

Project: Toy Chest

Date completed: March 2007

Time to build: 7 hours

Cost: $60

Guess cost in stores: $120 ($200 according to this custom toy-box builder)
Difficulty: 2/5
Finish: paint

Wood: Birch Plywood

Discussion:

I built this out of scrap cherry, birch plywood, and iron-on veneers. It is intended to be a toybox/bench for small kiddies. It can support my weight in case Alex has some fat friends over. The thing that looks like a picture frame is some scrap cherry from my last project, and the rest is plywood. It is held on with glue and brads. the plywood "box" is screwed together and pluged with hard wood plugs. There is a piano hinge holding the top on, and a dampener to keep the lid from slamming on Alex's fingers (this is on the left but hard to see due to shadows). There is some space behind the lid when it is opened in case we find or make a cushion to go on top. I painted it that green color, and my wife did the beautiful artwork. I was very happy with it. The artwork turned it from a simple and bland look that you could buy anywhere to something very distinctive (and cute?)!

I am pretty sure you could sell this kind of thing at a craftsy tourist trap like Nashville, IN for a pretty penny. Names could be quickly painted on in an hour or less while the patron has an ice cream. Anyone want to go in business?

;************************************************************************
;************************************************************************
Project: Cherry wine cabinet/curio cabinet/buffet
Date completed: January 2007
Time to build: 100 hours
Cost:~$700

Cost in stores: $2000-3000

Difficulty: 3.5/5

Finish: pre-stain wash, cherry stain, 2-3 coats of lacquer

Wood: American Cherry

Discussion: As you might be able to tell, this is cherry. (the drawer sides are birch plywood). Since we don't have a house for this to go in I mostly made this for fun and because it geve me something to do for 2 weeks when I was off work around Christmas. It is a traditional design that is modified from a picture of a similar craftsman design on the internet somewhere. The large "X" can be folded and taken out so it can be used for china or other curios. It also is about the size of a buffet, so I was thinking it would look good in a dining room or foyer area. Right next to the grand piano.

A journal of this project is located here, here, and here.

Here is a updated picture of the wine cabinet, in our house, complete with some bric-a-brac and old timey pictures.

;************************************************************************

Project: Lingerie Dresser

Date completed: July 2002

Time to build: 180 hours

Cost: ~$100 (hardware and finish only)

Cost in stores: $2000-3500
Difficulty: 4/5

Finish: no stain, water-based polyurathane

Wood: White walnut aka: Butternut

Discussion:
This is easily my favorite piece. The idea behind a lingerie dresser is that there is a drawer for your lingerie for each day of the week. I didn't really build it with that in mind, I mostly just liked the way it looked. In fact, my brother made a fetching one before me and gave me the idea. I made it for my wife when she was just my girlfriend in 2002. You can see a plaque on the top where I dedicated it to her. I also chopped off some of my finger building this.

It started out as wood paneling in a dentist's office and my dad payed someone to pull off the wood. That means the wood had to be reconditioned from 7/8 tongue-and-groove planks into 5/8 dimensional furniture-grade wood. This alone probably took 40-50 hours. It was also very dry and splintery and I took great pains to avoid using wood that had blemishes, knots, and nail-holes. This also added to the difficulty.

The wood is very beautiful. Please notice the swirling grain on the top drawers. The "outside"
is white walnut. Some of the "guts", the recessed panels, and the drawer sides are birch plywood. According to my dad white walnut is in very short supply these days and is basically unobtainable for furniture building. But he also makes up all kinds of shit.

It was pretty difficult to build due to the low tolerances involved when building a piece this small with numerous drawers. I was also extremely anal retentive about it and wanted to make sure that EVERY joint was perfect (like my wife) . I am happy to say that only one joint was more than 0.5 mm!

;************************************************************************
;************************************************************************

Project: Headboard
Date completed: May 2004
Time to build: 40 hours
Cost: ~$30 (finish only)

Cost in stores: $800-1500 ??

Difficulty: 2.75/5
finish: no stain, water-based polyurathane

Wood: White walnut aka: Butternut

Discussion: The pictures above are of this bad boy in place, in our new house in South East Indiana. Sorry about the pictures. They look a little yellow because I took these pictures at dusk and had to use incandescent lights.

anyhoo, it is made of the same White Walnut as the lingerie dresser above. When I made this, I was much less obsessive about knots, nail holes, and joints then the peice above. This means it went much faster. I also did a pretty poor job at finishing it because I was rushed. It has a dead mosquito in it, and i didn't do a great job at getting polyurathane on the sides of the slats (in between them). there is some exposed wood there. I guess that is okay, because most of the "bad" joints are hidden by the mattress and it is hard to see the wood in between the slats that is exposed.

I think this would probably fall in the mission- style catagory. We don't have any other mission furniture to match it, but I saw a picture of a similar one in a magazine that I really liked (and the wife), so I built it! Cooper doesn't like the idea of clashing furniture, but he is not the boss of me!

The only notable thing is that I used 5/8" wood for everything. So the posts on the sides were made of five 5/8" peices glued together and the 3 horizontals (the bottom is not shown) are made of three 5/8" peices. Where the vertical slats engage the two horizontal pieces, I simply used small peices to fill in where the slats didn't lap the horizontals, giving the illusion that the horizontals were made of one peice. fooled you!

I made it to fit a standard king-size bed frame, in case we buy a new bed. Some day, I may build runners for the sides and a footboard, but probably not.

I don't think I eradicated any fingers on this one.

;************************************************************************

;************************************************************************
Project: Bookcase
Date completed: Sometime in 2003?
Time to build: 5 hours Cost: ~$80
Cost in stores: $200-300 ??
Difficulty: 2/5
finish: Provicial colored Minwax Stain with probably a matte water-based polyurathane
Wood: Oak plywood and solid oak for the top and bottom trim

Discussion:

Cheap and simple bookcase. The plan was to make several matching bookcases and distribute them throughout my living quarters. That never happened as of now.

I like books!

Plywood is very simple to use, and is very strong! It isn't the best looking stuff, but most people would not guess it is plywood. Fools!

The plys are hidden with a thin oak veneer that is ironed on with a clothes iron. I made the skirt and top moulding out of solid oak to dress it up a tad. Believe it or not, there isn't a drop of glue on this badboy (except the veneer). Screws only, with plugs to cover them up. Naw, just kiddin'. It is made of glue that is poured into a mold.

As you can see, it could use more gingerbread. If I had it do over again, I'd probably make a solid face frame for it so that the skinnyness of the plywood was not so obvious.

The stain I picked out really makes the oak stand out, but I am also not a real big fan of oak. I sure am hard on myself.

;************************************************************************
;************************************************************************

Project: Desk

Date completed: Sometime in 2000, whilst in College

Time to build: 40 hours (I was a rookie)

Cost: ~ probably $200 or so

Cost in stores: hard to say ??

Difficulty: 3/5

finish: No stain, probably a matte water-based polyurathane

Wood: Birch plywood with white walnut trim

This desk is dope. It is so dope it is difficult for anyone to understand who hasn't used it. I would love to let you use it. Inquire!

Once upon a time, in 1999, I was a physics major, and while I fought off the lady physics-students with a stick, I had a tiny desk that I hated. Multiple textbooks, and a computer were needed at once, and a tiny desk meant stacking of said books, and general disorder, chaos, and then punching the air in rage. Unknown to me at the time, the trend of sitting on my ass for extended periods of time at the end of the day and obliterating my brain cells with the laws of the universe was just beginning, and would only end 7 years later. I am sure glad that I was prescient enough to build this hum-dinger of a sum-birch!:

As a senior, I had one credit I needed to burn on a general humanity course, so I picked some kind of "art" class that allowed me to use the wood workshop. It was awesome (I can get credit for doing a hobbie!?). I picked a desk as my project, and I designed a desk that was purely functional!

These were my desk requirements:

1) It should have an enormous top so i could lay out all my stuff to work on, plus my computer monitor

2) It should have a dedicated place for my (at the time large) computer tower,

3) It should have shelves to hold a bunch of books, notebooks, and a printer

4) It should have a stow-away keyboard so i could quickly change from writing, reading, etcetra, to using the computer.

5) It should be cheap.

6) It should be able to be moved

7) It should have a secret compartment

The result was flippin' awesome. I forgot how much i love this desk. All the joinery was butts into datos. pretty simple and straight-forward. As usual, I used glue hand-over-fist.

It can be disassembled by taking off the top, and it leaves the left and right "towers", which is spanned by a drawer in the middle that has my keyboard on it. Those, too, can be taken apart, and taken out of a room one-by-one. Which is good, because the tabletop alone is 3'x7'. The left tower should have a computer in it, but lately I have been working on my computer so it is under the scoot-in part. Please try not to give me hard time about it.

This desk has put in some serious time while I was a undergrad, teacher, and grad student and served me well. Nowdays I really only use it for bills, bloggin', and showing off to the ladies. If you are related to me I may give it to you when I die.

What happens when I work-out

2009-05-14T18:26:00.001-07:00

In an effort to be a better person, I started working out during my lunch break at work. There is a YMCA near my work that I am a member of.

Like most people with a shred of self-awareness, I adhere to a certain code of the locker room. Most of you probably get this. Don't overexpose yourself, don't look directly at people when they are naked, don't leave your stuff everywhere, limit socializing, in general, act like it is a shared space in which you change clothes, shower, and use the toilet. This is the social contract in which everyone maintains dignity.

Of course, there are those of us that do not subscribe to this philosophy. we might freely walk from shower to locker without bothering to cover up ourselves. We might try to conduct conversations in the midst of a loud bowel movement. These are all very moderate on the scale of inappropriate behavior.

In the time it took for me to come into the locker room, take off my work-out clothes, fold them and put them in my gym bag, change back into work clothes, and lock my locker, there was a man was standing at the sink of the locker room completely naked, using the sink and doing other miscallious sink-related tasks.

He had a huge unkept, white santa clause beard, a huge beer belly, and in general looked like a wandering vagrant. Under his beer belly, there was a clear view of his masculine parts, which again, he had no problem sharing with the rest of the room.

I was horrified.

I couldn't go up to the sink to do my usual hand/face washing because I didn't want to get that close to someone who clearly doesn't have the consideration to cover himself up. It would have been akward, and kind of weird, to be a fully clothed man using the sink next to the naked man brushing his hair. I probably would have felt like we were in his bathroom at home and he just got out of the shower.

Besides, I was afraid he would try to help me get a paper towel or something, and bump into me and maybe rub his genitals on my shorts or maybe my exposed hand. So I stayed at my locker, and I kept trying to stall, hoping that he would go back to his locker area, but he kept hanging out up there.

As I said above, it is best to limit your nakedness in these situations. At the least, you should try to stay in the shower area, or the locker area, where there is some limited cover there, and the expectation that people walking in there, that others might be naked.

In case you don't understand this, look at the diagram below.

As you can see, this guy was in the middle of the room (blue x). naked. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

I was stuck between two rows of lockers (black), waiting for him to go away.

At one point, he went back to his locker (green x) and I thought the coast was clear, but he returned to the sink wearing only his shirt. Not his underware, his shirt. This was the first garmet he thought he'd put on while he finished combing his hair. Unfortunatly, I noticed that when it was time for him to put on his underware, he had his bare ass sitting on the locker room benches.

That was the cherry on top of this little episode.

the end

some cute videos

2009-04-27T18:51:00.000-07:00

all,

About 3 weeks ago, I went to a yard sale.

I bought a Barbie Powerwheel Jeep for about $50 for the girl. It required a new battery and a charger to the tune of about $90. My calculator tells me that is a $140 investment.

I also bought the cheapo princess-singing doodad in the video below for a single dollar. She loves this about 2000% more than the expensive and garage-hogging power wheel.

Alex also recently got a jump-rope. Here is her idea of jumping-rope:

I like how abruptly she gives up and walks off.

Making a Garden

2009-04-27T18:29:00.000-07:00

Dearest all,

I had a terribly difficult weekend. I started what I thought was going to be a three hour job making a very small garden. I went to the Home Depot to get some landscaping timbers and some topsoil because I wanted to raise the garden up out of my terrible soil, which is nothing but clay and rocks.

The clay and rocks meant a tough time digging, and 3 hours became 15 or so. In the sun. I got sun-burned, kinda dehydrated, really sore, and a really-really exhasted.

My exhastion left me confused all day at work. I couldn't complete sentences. I couldn't focus. I would drop important objects. I kept missing my mouth with my sandwich and got it in my eyes.

My sunburned shoulders made me real paranoid and flinchy around my coworkers (there are alot of unsolisited back rubs at work).

Also, I ran into someone I haven't seen in about 6 months and called him "Rodger". His real name is "Al", which he reminded of me right away. Who is Rodger? I don't think I have ever met a Rodger in my life. Why did I call him that? It was a confusing day.

The icing on this painful cake is how pitiful and small this garden looks. When I look at it, it makes my heart sad.

I should get some more plants.

Basement Blog 4

2009-04-05T16:27:00.000-07:00

Hello.

I have had my basement finished* now for about 2 months.

It is high time I show it off.

What follows are two videos that show off the two sides of the basement. They are similar to the way I shot the videos on basementblog3, when we just got drywall. This epic is also journaled in basementblog1 and basementblog2, which has a floorplan.

Here is the rec-room and ends at a double-door that goes into the mechanicals room.

Here is the second picture, turning left from the bottom of the stairs. What is shown is the bathroom (notice granite vanity top and wainscoating) and the guest bedroom.

This is the entertainment center that is built-in to the wall.

Did you try to click on it to play it? It isn't a video.

As mentoned in the other blogs, there is a little bump-out in the foundation there, so I put it to use. I made it out of birch plywood from Home Depot and banded the edges with veneer. I'll paint it white to match the trim one of these days...

I ran a power outlet in there, as well as cable and speakerwire for surround-sound. It also has a peice of conduit in there that is run through the walls to a panel in the wall, so that if I ever buy a flat screen TV, and want to mount it on the wall, i can pipe my A/V through there. dope.

That's it.

* ie: liveable, safe for kids, Carpet laid, trim up, mostly painted, but still some odds-and-ends unfinished**

** such as the banster, some missing door knobs, some unpainted doors, etc***.

*** etc=et cetra

snow shoveling

2009-03-25T17:10:00.000-07:00

Hello.

We recently bought a new Hard-Drive based Camcorder.

It is pretty awesome.

I wanted to test out if I could upload some of the videos to blogger.

The answer is yes. see?:

Stress at Work

2009-03-23T17:43:00.000-07:00

Hello.

For the last 2 months,I have been pretty swamped at work.

I am really getting stressed out working in that pee-pee soaked heck-hole.

This has lead to a decreased blogs, a general feeling of lethargy, and a bad case of the dropsies.

Most of my time has been spent trying to get a vendor to make a part operate in the limits that they said it would operate. They spec'ed a range where it would operate, and doesn't actually operate at the bottom of that range. In fact, they didn't even test it.

Ridiculous!

For those of you that are not engineers, this might not seem absurd, but it is. I'll use an analogy that everyone can relate to:

It is kind of like I went to a restaurant and ordered a shrimp cocktail, that on the menu, says I'd get 6-10 shrimp. Instead, I got 5.

Also, the shrimp cocktail is not for just me, it is for my entire dinner party.

Also, the waiter has about 20 other tables and they are ordering 20 shrimp cocktails a piece. The other tables are fine with their orders and he doesn't think it is worth his time to correct the mistake and gets defensive about it and claims things like the menu is wrong.

Also, the other people in my dinner party didn't really want a shrimp cocktail anyway, they wanted to order steak like they always do, and the steak is always pretty decent and is never screwed up. But, the shrimp cocktail is already at the table, and everyone is really hungry. To help get the problem solved, the other people at the table call more friends to the restaurant, and everyone is really pissed and covertly resenting me for ordering it.

Except instead of getting the wrong number of shrimp, it is more a more serious difference, like getting some shrimp that are not cooked, or getting hush puppies instead of shrimp.

Also, the shrimp cocktail gets bolted on a very complicated and expensive electro-mechanical doo-dad that sells for a very large fraction of my salary.

See? It is just like ordering a shrimp cocktail.

Oh! and Also, I have to fly clear across the country on the next delivery of the doo-dads to make sure they are working correctly, because the shrimp might have been chicken nuggets.

Although, there are things in life that make my life meaningful.

For instance, Television.

I am really getting into that show (stop me if you have heard of it) "The Celebrity Apprentice". The way this show works, is they take your standard washed-up celebrity, pit them against one another to complete trivial and unrealistic business tasks in a group setting, and are ultimately fired one-by-one by a overbearing, self-absorbed blabbermouth with no soul and who claims to be a business genius but really just inherited his fortune and managed not to piss it away.

You obviously can tell I don't care much for Donald Trump.

However, I really like this show because it makes me feel like nothing less than an evil business mastermind when compared to the likes of the celebrity dingleberries they brought on. I am confident they couldn't have found a more inept and detached group in all of Hollywood. While they bumble their way through projects I could do single-handily, I sit back and feel like Warren Buffet.

I feel very satisfied when one of them gets knocked off their Hollywood high-horse with a triumphant "your fired" at the end of each episode. Although, in real life, a more likely scenario is that their boss would lock the entire team in a bus and drive them into a river.

anyway, I think the worst of the problem is behind me, and I am looking forward to not wanting to throw myself into traffic on my way into the office anymore.

Dieting

2009-02-15T20:17:00.000-08:00

I went on a Diet last week.

I made sure to let everyone at the office know this, because it is the best defence against pigging-out. Someone is always bringing in candy, nuts, popcorn, or some kind of snack to work. A new guy moved in and he constantly has a huge bowl of peanut M&Ms on his desk! Do you know how big of a deal that is?

Anyway, nine out of ten times someone tells me that I am in no need of a diet. At that point, I tell them:

"My pants are getting tight."
or
"I am trying to maintain my weight."

Both of these statements are true and will not cause a me to lose status at the workplace amongst other men.

Here are some statements that will:

" I need to look good in a swimsuit this summer."
" I think I look fat."
" I need to fit into my skinny jeans."

Here is a picture of someone eating.

What they don't understand is that I have a system:

For the past 4 years or so, I usually go on a diet for about 1 month in the spring to shead what I have gained in the previous 11 months. After that, I can go back to a quasi-healthy diet with sprinkled-in beer and fast food. It works pretty well.

This year, I tried the South Beach Diet. This was a horrible idea. It is bascially like the Atkins diet. On paper, the idea is total hogwash. The primise of it is to not eat any refined sugars or carbs of any kind. I would say that 50% of my diet up to this point was carbs. I should have known my body was goign to revolt.

I did what the book said and ate lots of meat, cheese, and other non-carb things.

I ate tacos or chili almost every day.

For days 1-6, I thought it was awesome. I would tell people: "Can you believe this is a diet?" as I ate an enormous pile of meat and cheese. I would also claim I was on an "all-chili diet". However, On day 7, I felt like I got kicked in the stomach by a donkey. I felt sick for a good part of Saturday night, and there was some other unpleasantness that I would rather not talk about.

That was the end of that. I figured I would take a break, and then start up next week on another more healthy diet. I started this plan this morning with 4 Hurshey's kisses.

I did lose 4 pounds in that week though. Booya.

I have a real problem,

2009-01-26T16:54:00.000-08:00

with not posting pictures of my family.

So here is a real treat!

A video from Alex's Christmas Play, which was actually in mid-January.

Enjoy!

btw, I just bought a new camcorder, so expect all kinds of videos!

A change of pace

2009-01-24T19:32:00.000-08:00

hello.

I have been doing an awful lot of posting about finishing my basement and working on those nightstands. I think we all need a change of pace.

Feeling uninspired, I thought I would go to wikipedia, and devote a blog to one of the featured articles. I was bound to find something entertaining on wikipedia.

That brings us to this guy:

.

This man made some poor choices.

Actually, from the looks of it, he made forty to fifty poor choices.

This was Barnet Burns, born in 1805 and was a sailor, trader, and a showmen. Lucky for him, these are all jobs that don't require an interview. He lived with the tribal society of Paketa Maori for some time where, although it does not say this, he must have lost a very serious bet and they tattooed his face.

This picture certainly is an eyefull. One of my favorite things about this picture is that he dressed and posed for this portrait in a way so he could try to look dignified, despite the fact that he looks as though he passed out early at a house party with some dudes that had a magic marker nearby. I really expecting to see " I love balls" on his forehead.

This concludes this post that isn't about building furniture or finishing my basement.

nighstand saga II

2009-01-12T17:46:00.000-08:00

Hello, and welcome to the tenth or so consectutive tedious blog about me doing chores.

Actually, this is more of a hobby. Here is the first blog about me making the nightstands.

This is probably around my 30th hour of working on my black walnut nighstands. Here is a shot from the front of one of them, that shows the carcass, with the face frame and the top on, but no back and no drawers.

kinda handsome.

Here's another shot that looks sorta angelic.

Here is another angelic shot of me.

actually, I was taking a picture of myself to try to show all the sawdust that gets on me while using the router to make dovetail drawers (see below) and all the protection I have to do to keep my nose, lungs, eyes, epiglottis and ears safe while doing it.

The sawdust didn't show up well, but there is alot of it.

I also look kind of alarmed in that picture but I do not know why.

here are the dovetail drawers I spent all day Sunday making. This is what they look like before putting them together, from the inside.

and below is after, from the outside.

I hope you enjoyed this blog about me doing things. Next blog: me cleaning the garage.

Finishing Basement III

2008-12-27T13:35:00.000-08:00

Hello.

This is installment three of me finishing my basement. Installment two is here.

As you can see from the picture below, it shows drywall, that has been primed. This picture is from the corner of the recreation room. Looking toward the back of the house. The door you see goes to my backyard.

At the time of these pictures, the drywall must be painted, flooring must be done, electric and plumbing, and also trim/doors.

I took two videos below, to give you a tour of the basement. I start out at the steps of the basement and turn right in the first video, and left in the second video. Sorry about the lighting, but there isn't electric lighting yet! I'll do another post to show it off when everything is done.

This video shows the bathroom, bedroom/office and ends in the closet of the bedroom/closet.

This video shows the recreation room and ends in the mechancial/ storage rooms.

Since these pictures and videos, we have painted, done electric, and grouted the tile floors. Last weekend we put some of Alex's and Dad's stuff down here, and we play all the time!

Nightstand Saga I

2008-11-30T16:21:00.001-08:00

Hello.

This is installment 1 of me going in to excruciating detail about making matching nightstands. If you do not appreciate anecdotes about my private carpentry projects, I hear YouTube has some good stuff.

Anyway, Nightstands. I have already planned what it will look like, after looking at some models online.

The next step was selecting the wood. My dad has some cherry, oak, and black walnut that he said he would let me use. Normally, selecting the black walnut would have been a no-brainer, due to it's complex and deep grain, but it didn't really match my other bedroom peices, my bed and lingerie dresser in color (they are white walnut). I ultimately decided to use it regardless of the fact that it will be much darker then my white walnut pieces, simply because it is so darn beautiful (click on pics below)!

I worked for the better part of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning selecting the wood, and cutting out oversized blanks for what will become the crucial pieces of the nightstands.

I started out with the widest boards for the table-tops. I went ahead and glued them up and put them aside.

I then started to make the side panels (again, see this link for what the piece will look like).

Here is what some of them look like dry-fitted together, but without the center panel.

Here are two. the one on the right is partially disassembled so you can see the construction type.

On this piece, I decided to make the rails and styles (the horizontal and vertical boards) mate using a mortise and tenon joint.

I am pretty sure that this was overkill for this type of joint and normally I would not have done it this way, but I wanted to try a new joint type on this piece. Also, for those of you who speak carpentry, because this piece has legs, I have to do a blind-dato, and I also didn't know how to square-off my dato where my bottom style was.

It required the use of a mortising chisel, which is like a drill press with a square chisel surrounding the drill bit.

I have never used one, but I have seen Norm do it, and it was pretty simple.

here it is in action:

far

near

That machine would make the mortise (the female part, on left below) and I would cut the tenon (the male part, on right below) by rebating the end of the wood with the table saw.

I hope to have these done by 2010. Things move slowly in the furniture business.

Which Bedside Table Should I Make? UPDATED AGAIN!!!!

2008-11-16T13:33:00.000-08:00

Hello there.

I plan on making 2 bedside tables this Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday.
As you can see in this ongoing post, which documents all of my furniture projects, I have already made 2 peices out of White Walnut: my head board, and a lingerie dresser for my wife.

I would like these to match those two peices as close as possible, in style, wood type, and finish, while also looking good by it's self. I found the following pictures on the www (which is my typical MO when making a new peice) and I plan to make one just like these. I'd like everyone's opinion, and you can vote for a number in the comments.

I will be using Black Walnut (my dad is out of White Walnut) and finishing to match my other two peices the best I can. Please don't consider the finish and wood type. If you need a reference, the 5th one looks most like the wood and finish I will be using. You'll notice these all look about the same. This is true. I picked them out because they look like the would match the lingerie dresser I already did. ( my next peice will probably be a chest-of-drawers to match everything!)

My opinions are in the comments.

1)

2)

3)

UPDATE***************************************************

Instead of working for about 2 hours today at work, I modeled up my vision for this peice, which I will put dimensions on at some point.

Thank you Google Sketch-up!

Here are some highlights showing the top detail and the overall peice:

bedside table 3d drawing

top left edge

UPDATE 2:

update 2, shows chamfered legs, thicker styles on the face frame, and pulls.

new boots

2008-11-12T19:23:00.001-08:00

hello.

Remember when I blogged about the Merrell boots I bought that I loved so much? (here is a reminder)

They crapped out.

On one hand, they lasted 2 years. On the other hand, they were $150. On some kind of third hand, my first pair are in prety good shape too.

WTF?

The sole cracked and detached from the rest of the boot on a small part.

The upshot is, I sent them to merrell, and they replaced them with a new pair of slightly less cool ones. I wasn't really stoked about that, but on the forth hand, I also have a brand new pair of boots. Sweet action. I just tried them on, and they are really kinda awesome.

This is one of my "life's little victories". booya.

Finishing the basement ii

2008-11-09T10:00:00.000-08:00

Hello.

Finishing my basement has consumed me.

Literally. My basement has come to life, and takes bites out of me when I go down there. It is very difficult to make anything done this way.

Seriously, I wanted to update you guys on the progress. To be honest, the pictures you see below are about a month old, but I wanted to show a progression. I will post a more updated blog later.

This post brings us up-to-date on framing, electric, and plumbing. When I took these pictures I was almost ready for drywall. The layout of the basement includes a 1) "rec-room" that is about 500 sq ft, 2) a small/medium sized bedroom ( about the size of bedrooms in our second floor) , 3) a very large walk-in closet attached to the bedroom, 4) a mechanical room, that houses our furnace, water heater, etc, that has some extra storage space as well, and 5) a bathroom.

I wanted a bedroom down there so we can market this house as a five bedroom house (which should give us an edge on other houses around here). This means it must have a large window and a closet. Which it does. This space could obviously be used for other things, such as an office (I wired it with cable, phone, and the network in my house), or an excersize room. I think the window will brighten things up in these types of rooms where you might not want to spend alot of time.

Here is the layout (you might have to click on it to expand). The top of the picture is the front of the house.

The two pictures below show the same POV as the original post here. As you can see, those aren't very good pictures, due to there being walls right in front of the camara, but I didn't think about that when I took them the first time. They are marked with red arrows in the layout above.

bedroom looking toward back-right side of house.

inside bathroom looking towards linen closet. the bedroom is on the other side ofthe closet/shower you see.

You can also check out these pictures:

entering the bedroom, looking towards the back of the house.

All of the exterior walls are full-framed-up walls, meaning they are similar to the exterior walls on the first-floor of a house. This wasn't the cheapest way to do it, but it was the best way. It also allowed me to insulate the basement, which also was not cheap. Another benefit was that I could hide various things, like the 3" pipe you see in the right corner. My goal was to make the basement look like the living space on the first and second floors, and I these kind of considerations helped.

looking into the bathroom from the foot of the stairs.

In the picture above, you can see all of the plumbing we had to do. The good people who built this house took the effort to bury a stub for a tub drain. All it took was breaking up the concrete to get to it. They also put in a 4" stub, that came out of the floor for the toilet. When my dad and I did the pluming, we were sure there was no such thing as a 4" toilet flange (the thing that the toilet attaches to) , so we dug everything up and replaced it with 3". The little rag on the floor is where the toilet will go. The vanity will be on your left. I also had to run fresh water to the bathroom, which was probably a 2 day job. Finishing basements is tough work.

btw, I just explained the concept of food turning into poop to Alex. I think I blew her mind. She g ave me a blank look, and said "okay". I reemphasized, and she called me discusting.

picture dump iii

2008-10-23T16:37:00.000-07:00

Hello.

Time for an ol' fashion picture dump!

I now have a new cell phone, equipped with a microSD card for easy removal of pictures (and with a LCD screen that becomes reflective, approved by Lauren Conrad)

1) Great American Ball Park in Cincinatti.

I am 29 years old and this was my first time in a baseball stadium. If it wasn't for a work outing, I would have never gone. It was as boring as I thought it would be. I spent most of my time alienating coworkers by drinking excessive amounts of beer and being profane. One guy behind me moved to another section. I am not joking.

2) here is a cute picture of Alex. I am not sure why I like this picture. I guess because it looks like she is trying to be silly for the picture. It also reminds me of my buddy steven in a picture in this post.

3) Here is Alex filling up her gas tank in her car with rocks. She later filled my tank with rocks and it filled me with so much rage I smashed all 4 windows with my bare knuckels.

Just kidding.

4) Here is a picture of my daughter being very safety-conscience while digging. The helmet, plus the way I shot the picture makes her head look really big. Silly big-headed kid.

5) The crown jewel of this episode of picture dump is a recent mention of Gern on a whiteboard at work. It was there for at least 2 weeks before being erased.

For more background of my double-secret, and potentinally reputation-ruining experiment, please check this blog, and this one.

A blog I Forgot to Post

2008-09-12T18:31:00.000-07:00

Well hello there! What a pleasant surprise this is! Here you are, coming to my blog, and there is a new post! I bet you didn't expect that! Today is your lucky day, buster! Aren't you in for a treat?

Today's blog is a blog I meant to post mid-July, but forgot. I stumbled across some pretty serious pictures that I thought I should share before July 2009.

Anyway, I was with the family (wife and daughter, and my parents) at my parent's lakehouse. Good times were had.

Then I was stung by what felt like a white-hot poker. Twice. In the arm.

There isn't a summer that goes by that I am not stung by something, so you know I am not exaggerating when I tell you this was extremely painful. In my experience, most bee/wasp/hornet stings feel like a hard pinch. In fact, earlier that day I was stung by a bee (I stepped on it) and I thought that I had just stepped on a rock. This felt like someone jabbed me with a icepick. Twice. In the arm.

I didn't get a good look at it because I jumped in the nearby water to avoid further carnage. Then Cooper jumped in.

Then came the swelling:

Soak it in people. At first glance, it doesn't look that bad. But it is. It was very hurty.

Also, please soak in the irony of me wearing a shirt with a hornet on it.

Dear Coworker,

2008-09-03T17:49:00.001-07:00

Dear coworker,

I understand lableing the location of the utinsils, coffee filters, and creamer ....

....but did you have to label the can opener?

love,
Foo.

College Pictures

2008-08-17T14:52:00.000-07:00

In an effort to have new material for a new post, I went through some of my digital pictures on my computer.

I can't believe I have been writing this blog for 3 years and these classic college pictures haven't made it.

College roomate family portrait

The story with this one is that the three of us pictured rented a house off-campus . In the days leading up to class starting, we were all moved-in and bored, and needed some stuff to hang on the walls. Since there was one girl and two boys, we thought we would do a family portrait at Wal-Mart.

Alf over for cake

Fun with Paintshop Pro! Yes, this is what happens when two nerdy upperclassmen can't find anything else to do on the weekend.

Alf was the best. I wish he was real.

paranoia cure

2008-08-07T18:51:00.001-07:00

I wrote this blog a few months ago about my anxiety while going to sleep.

Since then, I have not had a restless night due to these thoughts. I tend to be skeptical about easy cures, especially "soft" ones such as talk-therapy, consoling, voodoo, and other types of miracles that are typically found in the back pages of magazines.

however, after writing that blog I was literally cured overnight. I think it forced me to examine my behavior, and in an attempt to be humorous, I accidentally pointed out to myself how very silly all that paranoia was.

Stay tuned for my next blog about my silly ol' bleeding ulcer.

Finishing the Basement 1

2008-07-27T16:44:00.001-07:00

Unsatisfied with the uninspired derelict that this blog has become?

Me too.

Here is a tip. Go to my wife's blog, which is continually updated and everything that this blog is not, as far as eye-tingling gingerbread and heart-warming pictures and slogans go. If you're lucky, you can look at the comments and catch some quality "girl talk", which is 100% identical to the inane banter I have to sit through when we go to bars with her girlfriends. (Picture me with my head on my hand and eyes slowly closing)

In all seriousness, in this comment thread on her blog, you will find the greatest comment of all time, left by my buddy Bleach.

HEY! In true Mindsquirt fashion, let' s move on to a completely different topic.

As the above subject suggests, I am finishing my basement. I plan to keep a series going to keep folks updated, and also to force me to keep writing. However, given my track record lately, I am confident that this will be the last you hear of it.

Here are a few shots of my basement after 2 solid weekends of framing:

Shot from front-left corner of basement.

Shot from back left corner of basement. Not pictured: entrance to secret lair.

I have all of the exterior walls framed-up. The next job will be building interior walls, building a soffit around the beam and trunk lines you see coming from the furnace, and roughing in some additional plumbing, electric, and vents to the rooms I am making.

I had a friend from work help me for about 7 hours on a Friday night and Saturday morning. He wanted to quit after I kept remarking about how cool it would be if "we dug a pit where he could live". The rest of the framing I have done by myself, which is pretty slow-going. There isn't much to see now. I mostly wanted you to see the closest I could get to a "before" picture. If I was a more responsible blogger, I would have taken a picture in the very beginning, when my basement was awash in a sea of junk.

Moving that junk was a big deal! It took me all week after work and I even had to ask the guy from work to help me move the bigger stuff (kegarator, air hockey table) I moved it all from the basement to my garage. My once-pristine garage is now cluttered with all of our junk. Below is a picture of how much a family of three can accumulate when they have a basement.

Due to the lighting, it doesn't look like much, but there is really only one pathway from the front door to the garage door in a entire two car garage. The rest is all of our Worldly possessions. When I was moving all this stuff I kept questioning how in the world we held on to so much useless trash. This motivated us to give away, throw away, or sell some of our junk. (The white shelf in the front was chock-full of decorative knick-knacks, trinkets, and other useless doo-dads) Another monument I had to get rid of was my mini climbing wall, while awesome, I simply did not have time for it anymore.

I'll keep you guys posted. I will also make sure to keep a list of injuries, which to date has been minimal. I did have one incident today where I crushed my hand with a 28 oz. hammer.

There was a lot of screaming.

Video of alex from cell phone

2008-07-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

Wife and I got new cell phones last week. A bonus of the new phones are the integrated microSD cards, which allow for easy transfer of video, pictures, and music to and from the phone to a PC.

Here is an absolute gem that I received from my wife via cell phone whilst at work today.

One million points to whoever deciphers what she is saying! (answer to come in comments)

PS. Alex has really turned a corner in the past few months. She has seemed to move on from the terrible-twos that we suffered from in late winter (constant tantrums, never-pleased-disposition, general cantankerousness, smelly pants). She is now an absolute joy, and can have pseudo-conversations with us. It is pretty neat.

I am also her favorite.

Conundrum

2008-07-07T09:23:00.000-07:00

I am in a real conundrum this very minute.

I bought a bike rack for my new car (see here), for about $75. It is the type that straps on to the trunk/hatch.

I imagine, over time, the bikes will eventually start to destroy the back of my car, due to them swinging around, etc.

The other 2 ways to go, is a roof rack system or the type that engages into a hitch. I am not real hot on the roof rack, due to the difficulty of getting bikes on and off the roof of my car. I also figure that sooner or later, I will forget the bikes are up there, and smash them into the top of my garage, or worse, through the drive-through of Dairy Queen.

The hitch is near-ideal for me, but much more expensive. I figure about $300, plus some more time to order the stuff and install a hitch on my car. It is easier to get bikes on and off, and easier to put and take off my car, plus it will protect my car from scratches and bike-shaped impressions.

If you haven't guessed it, my conundrum is that I cannot decide if I should take back the hatch-mounted rack that I have (thus eating some return shipping costs) and spring for the more expensive, but better mounting system using a hitch.

Here are some more things to consider that will muddy up the waters:

1) I still have a pickup truck, which I can use to transport the bikes where ever. I figure using my car with the hatchback-mounted bike transport system over my truck, will pay for the $75 cost of the rack THIS SUMMER. Whereas the hitch mounted will take 4 summers. This is if you only count me taking my bike to and from work.

2) The hatchback-mounted rack can also be used on my wife's car, should we want to use it.

3) I mostly mountainbike after work, in Batesville, which is about 20 miles from my home. I probably do it 2 times a week. I also want to start taking my bikes to new albany, where I would NOT want to drive my truck.

4) I am cheap, obsessive about purchases, and tend to suffer from a disproportionate amount of buyers remorse.

Any opinions on what I should do?

How to Make Sushi

2008-06-27T17:15:00.001-07:00

Hello.

I took some time just now to write-up a reciepe on how I make sushi for a coworker of my wife's. I thought I would go ahead and share it, rather then fire it off to some clown I don't know.

We eat alot of sushi, and I am at a point where I can consistantly make it well. Good enough for me, anyway. In case someone here wants to take the plunge, here you go:
/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

How to make kappa (cucumber), California (avocado, cucumber, crab), yum-yum (aka spicy crab rolls)

Ingredients (a regular grocery with a good international section will usually have this stuff (try meijers))
Sushi rice (kokuho rose or nishiki brands, but I have had better luck if it says “sushi” on it somewhere)
Nori (sheets of seaweed)
Imitation crabmeat
Cucumber
avogado
Sugar, salt, vinegar or seasoned rice vinegar (Marukan brand)
Mayo (light is better)
srirachi hot sauce
soy sauce (kikkomen low sodium is my fav (do not be tempted to buy generic))
sesame seeds(optional)
wasabi (optional)
pickled ginger (optional)

Directions:

1) Rice:
a. cook rice in a pot according to directions. For 4 rolls I count on using up 2 cups of dry rice. Pre-rinse the rice before cooking to get all the dusty starches off (which tends to make it sticky and goopy). It is important to leave it in the pot with the lid on after cooking for at least 10 minutes as it cools. Scrape out the rice, and make sure to separate the dried-up and crunchy parts that are on the walls of the pot from the soft parts. Give the crunchy parts to your pooch or your neighbor.
b. While rice is cooking, prepare the seasoning for the rice. ¼ cup white or unseasoned rice vinegar, 3 tbs sugar, 1 tsp. salt. Or, ¼ of seasoned rice vinegar bought in a bottle (see above). I usually have to microwave it to get the sugar to dissolve.
c. Spread the rice on a dinner plate to allow it to cool. I cover it lightly with saran wrap so it doesn’t harden up too much, too quickly.
d. Pore the seasoning (see b) on the rice and work in with your fingers.
e. Wait until the rice cools to room tempature (or near). You’ll have to play with taking the saran wrap on and off as it cools, and when to add the seasoning (I usually wait 10-20 minutes after it cools from cooking). The desired texture is as dry and uniform as possible, free of crunchy pieces here-and-there, and not a stuck-together goopy mess. Starting with high quality rice is a good idea (whatever it the most expensive at the store).

2) The insides:
a. I usually stick with 4 ingredients:
i. Cucumber, no skins or seeds. Skin the cucumber, slice it down the middle, take out the core with a spoon, pat dry with paper towel. Slice what is left as thin as you can.
ii. Avocado, try to make thin as possible within reason. I sometimes skip these because they are kinda expensive
iii. Crab. By the imitation crab that look like little sticks. I usually cut them as long as possible with a ¼” cross-section.
iv. Spicy crab mix stuff, mince crab, mix with mayo and srirachi hot-sauce to taste. I probably use a ½ tsp. of mayo per 6 sticks of crab. IT IS VERY EASY TO ADD TOO MUCH MAYO. You should never really taste the mayo.

3) Assembly:
a. Orient the nori sheet with the long dimension from right to left. Spread rice one-kernal thick on to a sheet of nori. Pre-moistening fingers helps. You should see very little nori and make sure to do it to the edge. Make sure to leave about 1” at the top (the edge away from you) uncovered.
b. Sprinkle some sesame seeds on the rice. I don’t always do this, and I am not convinced anyone can tell… except for kappa rolls. They do stand out on kappa rolls.
c. Put the stuff in and stack it close to the end facing you. In general, don’t add too much stuff. It is easy to do this.
i. California rolls: equal parts crab, avocado and cucumber. It is also pretty good to use the spicy crab mix instead of plain crab. This is sometimes known as spicy California rolls.
ii. Yum-yum rolls: all spicy crab. I sometimes put a few slivers of cucumber in there.
iii. Kappa rolls. Just cucumber.
d. Roll it up starting with the side closest to you. Fold and roll once, and then roll the rest once. Like a sleeping bag. Get the non-rice covered part a little wet, and press it tight against the roll. If you can buy one of those bamboo sushi mats, it’ll probably help.

4) Serving:
a. Wait until they dry and cut into 1/8ths
b. Serve with a dollop of wasabi paste, a small bunch of pickled ginger, and some soy sauce.
c. Place in mouth, chew, swallow. Make sure to chew at least 30 times per bite.

Tips:
Most of the stuff that I added was based on trial and error over the years. I have found that getting the rice done right is pretty darn important. It is easy for me to under/over cook it, under/over season it, or let it go to dry or be too wet. All of these conditions ruin the experience. I took me time to get it right.

Do not use cheap ingredients. It is tempting to do this due to the ingredients being generally expensive, especially for up-front cost on the condiments and other things you do not usually use. Don’t do that.

Also, be patient. After probably 4-5 years of consistently making sushi I have just recently in the past 2 years gotten it to taste close to what you would buy in a restaurant. You are probably a better cook than I, though.

Chewing: As I have said, please make sure to chew thoroughly.

New Car

2008-06-03T16:17:00.000-07:00

I bought a new car, which I very much like. The entire day, and some of the days afterward, when I would think about the new car, or talk to someone else about it, I would hear the voice of Rod Roddy saying " A NEW CAR!".

This really added to the excitement!!

As you might remember, I was thinking something more sporty, but I had a moment of clarity and decided to get a cheaper "s" model of the Mazda3, which is slightly sportier then the base model, but less than the Mazdaspeed3. This saves me significant money on the initial cost, fuel (both economy and not buying premium), and insurance. I also realized one day, that if I bought a sports car, I would not drive it fast very long, especially with my daughter in the car.

So, I did the right thing and got something more practical. It is roomy-enough (due to being able to haul both babies and pooches), relatively cheap, good-looking, pretty good on fuel economy (29 hwy), and fun to drive, despite not having a turbo. Believe it or not, I like small cars like this, due to snugness of the cockpit, the inherent handling, and ease of parking. And, like I said, this is the sportier version of this car, so the steering is extra tight and responsive, handling is excellent, and the engine/acceleration is decent.

In general, I am opposed to putting alot of cheap add-ons to a car in an attempt to make them look cool, so I don't think I will do that. Besides, I like the way it looks, and I really cannot afford to spend money on spoilers, trim, rims, tassles, etc.

It was a long and difficult road. For months, I watched the market and considered the gas milage and prices of many cars, including Subaru WRX, Nissan Sentra R, Honda Civic Si, Mazda Speed3s, Toyota Corrola, Mini Coopers, Mazda3, and Mazda6s. Then I looked over Memorial day weekend, I seriously considered many other cars, including: Mazda6, Mazda6 wagon, Saab 9-2, Saab 9-3, VW Passat wagon, VW Jetta, and even a Mini Cooper. I finally decided on the Mazda3, due to it nailing everything I deemed important. Please do take the time to inform me of the inferior/superiority of any of the above models, in order to highlight your automotive knowledge, and/or drive me into a unrecoverable buyer's remorse stupor.

I'd really like that.

Anyway, please congratulate me on this purchase, which I have been looking forward to for years.

While you are at it, also congratulate me for my 1 year anniversary at my new job coming up this week. They still haven't wised up and fired me.

You know what? You might as well also congratulate me on my 4 year Wedding anniversary coming up in July. She still hasn't wised up and fired me (out of a cannon and through a giant paper hoop with a divorce lawsuit written on it ).

Lazy Sunday, Sleep

2008-05-11T09:50:00.000-07:00

I spent the better part of yesterday doing some landscaping. The wife and I built some raised beds in front, which almost killed me. I had planned doing some mulch-spreading today, but it is raining. The wife, Cooper, and Babe are gone. My truck is full of wet mulch and really shouldn't be driven. I really have nothing to do. So today is a Lazy Sunday. It basically drives me crazy. Due to my industrious nature, and my many responsibilities (job, house, daughter, doomsday device research), I never really get to relax. I have so much to do in a small amount of time that most of my relaxing is planned, or during sleep.

That brings me to an interesting topic: sleep. I remember when I got alot of it. The first time I paid attention to sleep was probably high school. I probably went to sleep from on average at 9:30 on weeknights. I would wake up around 7, so that was about 9.5 hours a night. I also was a competitive weight lifter back then (aka powerlifter), and I think the workouts would make me want to sleep more. I didn't really put that together until much later, so I am unsure if that is why I slept so much. College was a sleep fest as well. Classes, friends, grades, were all second to proper sleepage.

Summer of my Sophomore year I took Calculus 3 (The Return of Newton). It was an early class, that I actually had to go to to get good grades in. I started drinking coffee at that time. That was basically the beginning of me getting much less sleep. But, it didn't last long, because when the fall semester started, I started back to my old ways of only attending post-10:00 classes. What a terrible way to start the day, at 10:00.

Really, I started getting much less sleep when I started my first real job as a teacher. I simply worked so hard that I had to put in a lot of long days and weekends and I could not find the time to sleep. I also drank a lot of coffee. Grad-school also showed me how much I can get done if I put in long hours. When our daughter came things went from bad to worse.

These days I probably average 7 hours and am unaffected if I get 6. the amount of times I have broken that rule this year can probably be counted on one hand. I worked so hard yesterday moving all that dirt that I'd thought I would sleep until 10:30 in the morning. I woke up today at 6:00 when my wife left for work and could not get back to sleep. There is no amount of activity or prior lack of sleep that would make me sleep 9 hours. I ran a mini marathon about 2 weeks ago and I did not take a nap that day or get extra sleep that night.

I tried napping today due to overall weakness and fatigue and just laid there. Sometimes I will be so sleepy that I am 100% sure I will fall asleep. And when I go to take a nap, I just lay there.

I think my problem is my mentality toward sleep. I basically view it as a chore, and something that detracts from the things I could be doing with my time. When I lay down for a nap, or in the morning when the sun is out, I think about all the things I should be doing, and I cannot rest.

I guess my point is, that I think it is remarkable how my sleeping habits have changed over the years. I have went from 9 to 7 hours, on average. That doesn't seem like alot, but 2 hours a day is alot of extra time. ( almost 10% of your day) I have also noticed that it takes me much less time to fall asleep now, which is great (even if I think about the murderers coming to get me). It used to take me probably 30-60 minutes to fall asleep, but now I am out in less than 5 minutes. That seems drastic but it is true. I am pretty sure that is because I only lay down to sleep when I am truly sleepy, and do not oversleep anymore.

Anyone else out there have opinions about sleep?

What a boring blog. I should have told you the story of how I became a Sea Captain for the day.

Paranoid Fantasies

2008-05-01T19:03:00.000-07:00

When I am in bed, I am in a almost-constant state of paranoia. Oftentimes, in the moments before I sleep, I have thoughts about how people are going to sneak into my house, and without a sound, burst into my room and slay me in my bed.

Many times, these thoughts pervade my dreams, and I waken in the night suspecting that there really IS someone in the house. Sometimes I will search the entire house, but if I am feeling extra nervous, instead of going down the stairs and confronting the imaginary criminals, (where they could easily ambush me), I look out the window for signs of a get-away vehicle or listen intently in bed, at my bedroom door, or at the top of the stairs for further evidence of them sneaking about. I haven’t yet, but should I ever hear anything suspicious, I would have to jump into directly into attack-mode, which believe me, is so frightening it is beyond description.

Sometimes just waking up sends me into these panicky fits. The worst is when I wake up suddenly and for no reason in the middle of the night. If there is no obvious sound (such as a dog continuously barking), it bothers me because I don’t know the reason I woke up, and I lay in bed and wonder what made the mystery sound that woke me up but I can’t hear anymore. At that point, I can only assume that it is a burglar that made the noise, and they then realized their mistake, and would be extra sneaky on their way up to assassinate me.

Often after I get woken up abruptly, I fantasize about what the gang of maniacs are doing at that moment in my kitchen, and how I most effectively could dispatch them. After some thought, I realize that if someone really wanted to get me, even if I knew about it, there is little I could do about it unarmed and in my underwear in bed. This leads to more paranoia and less sleep (and some walking around, see above). Other times, I am too sleepy to care or I rationalize the situation based on the facts that A): I haven’t met anyone in my entire life that has had their house broken into , B): I live in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in rural South Eastern Indiana, far from the bad guys, and C): I don’t have anything really worth stealing or anyone that wants to kill me. Makes sense.

My only explanation for this behavior is that ever since we have had my daughter, I have had it in my head that I am now the guardian of my wife and daughter, who cannot defend themselves from the likes of the drugged-up murderous thieves that exist only in my mind. This mentality has festered in my brain to the point where I am obsessed about it and I continually go through these scenarios where someone would actually want to hurt one or all of us, and how to deal with them. These thoughts tend to happen in bed at night, where we are arguably the most vulnerable. These thoughts could be typical of fatherhood, or boarder-line psychotic, I am not sure. I also might simply just have an unrealistic fear of people getting us.

I thought I’d share it, because at this point, it is really kind of ridiculous. Anybody out there relate? Comments?

updates on work experiment UPDATED

2008-03-22T06:21:00.000-07:00

rememeber this blog?
I DID put some wacky phrases on white boards throughout my office. There wasn't much fanfare, but I got a chuckle nontheless.

1) "Call Gern Blanston". I put this baby up in a conference room amid numerous notes and drawings. I wrote it with my left hand in case anyone was slick enought to try to figure it out. It stayed up for about 2 weeks and eventually was erased. I didn't hear anybody say anything about it, so I doubt anyone noticed or cared about it. Moving on.

here is a picture that i took with my cell phone and emailed to myself on 4.1.08.

2) "Extenders (non-meat)" I put this up in the break-room, which I thought was fitting b/c of the mention of meat. It was the only phrase on a newly-cleaned white board. It was erased in less than 12 hours, which kind of made me nervous.

3) "Twine-Thrust" in a little box with a arrow pointing to some stuff that was already up there. This was up on our main conference room, where many people high in the organization sometimes hang out. During a meeting with about 30 people in it, someone pointed to a portion of the board right next to it, and I got so nervous and gitty that i almost crapped my pants. Man, I really shouldn't have put that up there. It was erased about 3 days later. It looked like someone just wanted to wipe away a small space to draw something small. kinda awesome.

4) "Consult Dr. Cooper"- This one was kind of dicey b/c many people at work know my dog's name. After this was up I stopped this little immature game because I started getting scared someone would figure me out.

It was a good run. I was hoping I would hear someone ask another person what one of these phrases mean. Actually, that might be a bad thing, because I would probably laugh out loud and show my guilt. At any rate, b/c of my coworkers poor awareness, I am going to suggest that my boss fire them all and he and I run the ship.

Now that I have been there for almost a year, I am getting pretty bold with my pranks and office humor.

Here is some more office hijinks:

on our paper shredder, there is a picture of a baby with a line through it. I suppose that is meant to tell people not to let kids shred paper. I put a post-it note on it that said "NO SHREDDING BABIES!" This was taken down by the time I came in the next day. WTF?

I very rarely take a form seriously. For a while, when I would reserve a conference room, I'd put "nap-time" for the reason it was being used. I just recently put "going to Neverland Ranch" when I asked off for vaction time. When my boss would ask me to technically evaluate a product or technology we could incorporate into our designs, I'd write back to him and all the engineers looking at it "this idea is a heap of horse-shit", or " A monkey with a doo-doo stick could create a better design". I made that last one up. That would be awesome if I did that, though.

home made knee wraps

2008-03-08T07:36:00.000-08:00

I made some ice-pack-holding-knee-wraps. now that I am training for a mini-marathon, I need to make sure to keep the inflammation down in my knees.

Why make your own knee wraps? I refuse to spend upwards of $50* (per knee) on what is no more then material and velcro, both of which we have laying around at work.

My wife made some quick-and-dirty ones, that didn't really work real well. At the time, I didn't know how to use a sewing machine (or how it works, wow!) Last night I busted out the sewing machine, and sat down and watched three movies and made these bad boys.

here is a picture of one on my desk. the darker black are strips of velcro, and there is two pockets that hold cold-packs with goo in them (you can see the white tops of the goo-bags poking out the top of the pockets like little prairie dogs). the tapered part on the right allows me to start wrapping at the backside of my knee which makes it easier to start. the material is a stretchy synthetic of some sort with a urethane coating (which is why it is shiny). The two independent strips on the left allow one wrap all the way around my knee, and I can cradle my kneecap so it stays on better.

here is a picture of me putting them on. they don't look like much, but they work pretty well. Again, the white stuff poking out the top are the goo bags.

*http://coolrelief.net/ik.html

Alex is Thirty-Nine

2008-03-03T17:58:00.000-08:00

I swear we didn't teach her to say this.

Also, Bean semi-recently posted an interview of me. Any time spent at Bean's blog is not wasted (especially if you are a Lost fan).

Time for a new post

2008-02-26T18:34:00.000-08:00

I think it is time for a new post.

I have been hesitant to post anything because I haven't had anything Earth-shattering to say, so instead I thought I could just update you people with small things.

here is a list of noteworthy events that might tickle you:

1) People at Work:
There is a guy at work that keeps stealing my ideas and passing them on as his own in front of other people with me right there! How irratating! This has happened more than 3 times. In an industry where good ideas are a tremendous feather in your cap, it is highly frowned-upon to take other people's ideas. An aknowledgement is the least you could do. I would have accepted a wink, a nod, or preferably, a " this was foo's idea". I would have also accepted a thumbs-up or pointing, but not really an ass-slap.

2) Minimarathon Training.
Me and the wife are training for a minimarathon (13.1 miles). We plan to run in the minimarathon during Derby week in Louisville. So far, training isn't so bad. I ran 10 miles last week and 12 this week. In the peak, I should be running about 20. Aside from the aches, time commitment, and difficulty of running long distances, running isn't too bad. An unexpected perk of running for a long time is it allows me to listen to audiobooks and kind of zone out. Another perk is my knees sound like broken glass.

I am listening to Brave New World right now, and then plan on listening to Alan Greenspan's new book about a talking dinosaur. No, it is about the economy. Wouldn't it be funny if he wrote a children's book about a talking dinosaur?

3) Vegas.
The wife and me are going to go to Vegas in June. It should be pretty dope. The marketing slogan for Las Vegas is "What ever happens here, stays here", which I am 100% sure is a scheme to get fencesitters to take advantage of legal prositution.

That slogan does sounds real good, and I might make it my mantra for the trip. Maybe it'll magically apply to the inevitable two-grand I will lose on a single game of rouillette. I have found that slogans make vacations more fun. My last trip was to Chicago for a wedding, where the slogan is "Yes, it really costs that much". I think it was that. That is what an awful lot of people were saying to me, anyway.

Anyway, wish us luck and fun on this travel which may end in divorce or bankruptsy. Hey, that is probably a more accurate slogan: "Las Vegas: Your trip may end in divorce or bankruptsy."

I need to go to bed.

Some old blogs

2008-02-16T21:07:00.000-08:00

In observation of the Writer's Guild strike*, I am continuing to not update my blog.

However, the show must go on, and I at least need to get in 2 blogs a month. In true Hollywood fashion, I thought I might use some old material to create an entirely new blog!

Below are some of my favorite blogs of late 2007 and 2008, (which I also included in the "best of mindsquirt links" side bar on the right)

Banner Ads
How To Get Out of a Work Christmas Party
Cubical Game
One of Three things will Happen
Faulty Grinders

*Almost over you say? Poppycock!

an experiment at work

2008-01-04T19:50:00.001-08:00

I detained myself in a conference room this week at work so I wouldn't be disturbed. As a result, I got kind of bored at times, and at one point I noticed the writing on the whiteboard, and tried to figure out what it meant. There was some geometric drawings and the phrase "60 cat" up there. I couldn't figure out what it meant, and eventually gave up, but would still look up at it from time-to-time and wonder about it. I knew that what ever it was, it didn't seem to fit in with the normal verbiage in our offices.

As you know, I like to keep things interesting at work. I decided today that I would try a new experiment out at work. Over a 4-8 month time span I want to put random words and phrases up on various whiteboards to see if people notice. Much like "60 cat", I have to keep them obscure so people wonder why the hell they are up there. So, normal product development and engineering terms like "electronics, tooling, and actuator" are out, phrases like "egg-salad, naptime at 11:30, and WWCD?" are in.

The test will be to see if anyone catches on. If I witness a person say "what in the world is project: butterknife?", I will have learned that that coworker is observant and inquisitive when they see something out of the ordinary. As for the ones that don't notice, I will have to assume they are all brain-dead buffoons.

Ultimately, I can show these results to my boss, so he can more appropriately fire people. This willl also assuredly secure my position for years to come!

Please wish me luck with this horrible plan.

also, now is the time to make requests for phrases. Remember, they have to be appropriate for work, obscure, but you can't overdo it. what's the fun in that?

I'll keep you updated.

evil santa

2008-01-01T16:45:00.000-08:00

Me and Alex were playing with playdoh on Christmas day. We didn't have any red or white, so I used purple and black and made an evil santa.

building a foldable step stool for Alex

2007-12-17T18:59:00.000-08:00

I built a folding step stool for alex so she could reach the bathroom sink to brush her teeth and wash her hands.

alex brushing her teeth

You can buy a simple stool at Target for $20. Instead of doing it the easy way, I decided to design and build one with the following constraints, which are heavy on the functionality.

i) it should fold up easily and fit betwixt the toilet and the wall in our tiny downstairs bathroom (see pic below)

ii) it should have rails on either side so that she can easily climb up it and so she doesn't fall when she is up there for a long time (this will come in handy when she wants to use it to help us in the kitchen)

iii) it should be cheap

iv) it shouldn't take long to build.

v) It should be overbuilt enough to support Daddy's weight.

The best thing about it is that it folds up flat. I came up with a simple 2-step box that skewed (or sheared or whatever) sideways and becomes flat. I created a working model out of cardboard and duct tape to make sure it would work.

When the treads of the steps are in place, it keeps it from skewing on accident. the corners of the box are held together with continous hinges (aka piano hinges).

The pictures below take you through how it folds up:

1) before folding

2) fold up the treads (thanks Alex!)

3) hold the back in place and push the front to the left (skew the footprint (think parallelogram))

4) folds up flat! (or the thickness of 3 sheets of plywood (3.25")

Here it is stashed in the tiny space between the toilet and the wall in the tiny bathroom. Take that Target!

I won't take you through the building techniques. I'll save that for my furniture page.

I know it isn't a work of art, but I am very happy with the way it turned out. It does exactly what I wanted it to do (according to the above requirements) and she loves to use it! It is very handy to store away, which is the primary reason I went to the trouble of making it.

Life is about small victories, people.

chapstick

2007-12-15T09:54:00.000-08:00

here is alex putting on some starburst flavored lipgloss. please note the precious lower-lip sticking out.

i personally like how at the end she tries to eat it. good stuff.

fiddle faddle

2007-12-05T16:58:00.000-08:00

hey! remember fiddle faddle! I am not sure I do, but I do remember the wacky name.

here are some things that went on 2 weekends ago, but I never had time to post.

Apple Pie. I made a apple pie and it was kinda dope. the ice cream and pie combo almost made me poop my slacks.

I took this picture when I reflected on the amount of medicine that we stock-pile for our 2 year old daughter. Yeish. sometimes I think we are running a TB ward.

For those of you without infant or toddler kids, this is the quanitity and varity of cold medicine that is an absolute must.

here is a photo shot out my kitchen window. if you squint, you can see a deer. There are plenty of deer around here, but this is the first time I have seen a buck on my property and also the first time I had a camara around. I would love to shoot a deer like this on my property, but I am not sure how legal it is, with poaching laws and all. Please, someone let me know if it is legal to slay a deer from the convenience of my kitchen window, Because I think everyone would agree that me bagging a deer during breakfast would be awesome.

ebay feedback 4

2007-12-01T09:41:00.001-08:00

here is some new ebay feedback. Some of these are a bit funnier when you look at what I was buying, so I included some inset pictures and information about the product when needed. enjoy! (you might click on picture to bigify it)

kid at daycare

2007-11-08T18:25:00.001-08:00

here is an example of someone that Alex goes to school with who we call snot ball.

the proportion of surface area of snot outside of the nose to face surface area is accurate.

garage bench, faulty grinders

2007-11-04T16:59:00.000-08:00

I think we can all agree that I have done a horrendous job of updating this blog. I have been largely uninspired, and really haven't put much thought into new blog ideas because of life. Most of my time that isn't spent on work and family goes into improving the house.

With that in mind, it occured to me that maybe I can devote some future blogs to home improvement.

anyhoo, on with the show.

One of the first things I did to the house was build a work bench. The garage is a 2-car garage and includes a alcove that was a good spot for a workbench. The workbench itself I built in July, and then shortly-thereafter, I put up the pegboard and put in some extra outlets. Now that it is getting colder, I like to park my truck in the garage, which means less floorspace for junk. That justified some shelves in the unused space above the bench.

This was a pretty cheap and simple idea, really. . The total was about $20, which has to be one of my cheapest projects ever. As you can see, I simply made a platform above the peg board, and suspended one end of the platform with the all-thread, which runs through the drywall and into some 2"x4"s that span the ceiling joist.

booya. That is how you build a workbench people.

here is a what a workbench looks like. W-o-r-k b-e-n-c-h.

Something pretty interesting happened while building it. For those of you that have never cut a bolt in two, you have to file or grind down the threads so a nut will go on. I decided to use a $5.00 angle grinder that my dad bought. You read that correctly. $5.00 I would have guessed that is was the price of the cardboard box it came in.

When I asked my dad why he thought it was a good idea to buy it, he claimed that i might be okay to "use for one job". That makes sense, I guess. The funny thing is that it didn't even last that long.

It is picured below, and is probably the cheapest and most dangerous consumer product I have ever laid my hands on.

First of all, the on-switch didn't work. I guess I should say that the off-switch didn't work, because it wouldn't turn off. I plugged it in, and it was on.

I am glad I had it aimed away from face.

read the manual you say? I did!

I definatly agree that while the on/off switch can be "self-looked", I have to disagree that it can be turned on and off speedly. (see number 2 on the left in the picture below)

manual for the grinder #1 (click to zoom in)
f

manual for the grinder #2 (click to zoom in)

Second of all, once I started using it to grind, I put just a wee-bit of force on it, and it slowed down the wheel almost to a stand still, almost to fingernail filing speed. In fact, at full throttle, I probably could have stopped it with my hands. Then, all of a sudden, smoke started poring out of slits in the plastic housing. I am pretty sure that is what they were put there for, for the inevitable fire that would start inside.

It started to get pretty warm, and started making a griding noise. I was hoping for an open flame, but the smoke just billowed out, and it just stopped turning all together, so I threw it on the ground and let it die with compassion.

and that was it.

Honestly, I can't think of too many ways it could have been any more dangerous or of any poorer quality. I suppose it could have shocked me when I turned it on, or the wheel could have immediatly flew off and into my eyes, or maybe it could have somehow shattered like glass after dropping it once. Then again, who's to say that those things wouldn't have happend if I gave it time?

this is the very grinder in question

Having seen this kind of failure before, I figured I burned up the coils of the stator of the motor. I actually found that kind of hard to believe, given the special design considerations covered in the manual: "The windings of the armature and stator are made of high intensity pokycaster round the copper wirehad got special insulation treatment." (see #1 on left)

It turns out all of their pokycaster insulation couldn't keep the coils in the magnets from igniting. see the pic below.

here is the inside, showing the burned coils

Like I said, it almost seemed like it was designed to do harm. All it needed was a fuse! Maybe this is a new kind of cold war betwixt China and the US. They are trying to defeat us internally by killing off consumers with their shotty merchandise! Maybe I could work for them. I can design some disasterous products for the to sell to Americans. Here are some ideas:

1) A car that shifts into reverse and floors the engine when you put it into drive.

2) A light switch that uses your body to complete the circuit (read: it shocks you).

3) A house-hold door that hinges from the bottom and falls on you.

4) lawn darts. but sharper and harder to see.

5)plasma t.v.s that shoot balls of plasma at the viewers

6) infant toys that contain lead paint

wife's blog

2007-10-09T18:18:00.000-07:00

My wife's blog is linked on the right. please go there, to make my marriage less stressful.

No, seriously, there is some good blogs there including some sweet pictures of wasps that lived in our fireplace (and lined up on a peice of sheet metal and watched us, real-creepy-like), and numerous pictures of our daughter that should melt your heart.

this blog is 100% about killer robots

2007-10-03T18:14:00.000-07:00

Starting in May, I decided to start doing push-ups before I went to bed every day. My goal was to do 75 in a row by July 4th, which was an easy date to remember and an obtainable goal. I remember starting that day doing 10 push-ups, then being laughed at by my wife. I also remember being sore the next day, which brought more mocking by my wife.

Last night for the first time in my life, I did 100 push-ups in a row. Good for me. Thank you to all who supported me on this journey to hell and back. I couldn’t have done it without you.

In all seriousness, I think that is a big improvement in 4 months, and I am proud of myself.
I like having routines and habits like this. It makes me feel like I am not a total goldbricker and increases my self-image, which often is low due to my inability to form friendships and feel these so-called “emotions”.

Speaking of habits, I am starting to brush my teeth at work after lunch. It is part of a new hygiene initiative that is a three-prong strategy that also includes singing the happy birthday song while washing my hands to make sure I wash them long enough, and shaking three times instead of your more standard two.

This topic reminds me about an incident in a class in college. In those days, professors would go around the room and ask the students to say their name and interests. This professor in particular asked each student to tell the class something interesting about themselves. One enthusiastic young lady told the class that she brushed her teeth NINE times a day. The best part was that she said it so cavalierly, as though she didn’t say something as equally crazy as “the voices in my head make me brush nine times a day”. Another doofus admitted that he saw Star Wars: Phantom Menace more than 10 times in the theater. Yet another doofus said he was born underwater. That doofus was me, and it was my default lie about myself that I used in that kind of situation so I would seem interesting to my classmates. Suckers!

So now you all know that I invent habits for myself and I am also a filthy liar.

Don’t you dare judge me.

also, killer robots are scary as fuck. think about it.

hottub time

2007-09-25T16:53:00.001-07:00

I can't believe I used to have time for these kinds of projects. (plus write a multi-page blog with diagrams)

I would pay money for time at this point in my life. Unfortunatly it would be wasted on blogs about Cooper.

On the other hand, the 27-year old father Fooie owes the 25-year-old restless Fooie bigtime for the fully-functional glam hottub out on my backporch, which I rather enjoy on these cool autumn nights. It really takes the edge off of long day of work, especially from the neck-down. (snicker)

Thank you ample-time Fooie!

babies and lemons

2007-09-24T18:26:00.001-07:00

Hey there fellas and gals!

Alex loves to eat lemons when we are out to eat. She also makes this concerned face when she eats them, as though she just realized she made a horrible mistake.
alex has been making some faces at us lately when we tell her something she doesn't want to hear. It is a a cross between sad and indignant. but also pretty cute. sometimes I can't keep from laughing when she gives me look, which is not at all the thing to do.

I like this picture, because it looks like she was trying to tell me not to take a picture of her, and I did anyway, and she ended up looking terrible because of it. I can't wait to do that in her teenage years, and give them to her boyfriends (as well as hot-lead).

Her is a picture of my wife and a clone of Secretariat at the derby (07). I like this picture and wanted to share it. (not shown: horse biting her on the lips)

car advice

2007-09-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

hello.

I drive a 2001 standard cab F150. It is a salvage, and it shakes like the dickens, as though it has an unbalanced tire when at driveway speeds. I have asked around, and I can't seem to figure out what is wrong with it. It has been wrecked and had frame damage, so I tend to think that the frame is to blame. I dunno. It is also close quarters for a daily 20 mile commute with a toddler (adn gear), and isn't exactly easy on the gas.

This has made me want to get a new car. I have wanted a new car for at least 4 years, when I sold my old elicipse gsx, which was quite dope, to have money to go to grad school. However now I may be able to afford a new car payment within a year from now.

I ask the peanut gallery for suggestions.
here is what I am looking for, some what prioritized (some of which may be mutually exclusive)

1) sporty suspention
2) 4 doors
3) decent gas milage (20/27 or better)
4) sporty engine
5) less than $25k new (but i will buy used)
6) handsome appearance

and of course, reliable, which is kind of understood.

all of these point to a mazda speed6, which violate 3 and get too close to violating 5 for me. plus, they look kinda clumsy.

any thoughts?

UPDATE
I just read some article of sporty compacts and they ranked them thusly:
1) mazda speeed3
2) subaru WRX TR (my initials are in there! bonus!)
3) Honda accord si
4) mini Cooper si (named after the glam celeb, of course)
5) VW GTI
6) Chevy Cobalt SS
7) Dodge box on logs

ice cream story

2007-09-09T18:44:00.000-07:00

Last week I ended the diet I was on. I lost about 12 pounds in the middle but gained back 2 for a net 10 pounds lost. Not bad considering it took me at least a year to gain it.

To cap-off the diet, I thought I would stop at the Dairy Queen (Braizer) and enjoy a delicious soft-serve with rainbow jimmies after work. Plus, Alex was with me and we could share it as a nice treat!

This was probably the second time I had ice cream on the diet, so I was probably not sharing as much as I should with Alex. Plus, it is difficult to share a soft-serve with rainbow jimmies with a toddler while going 75 MPH on the expressway without it ending up in their hair. But, I was still being a hog. As toddlers do, she was also being a bit of a piggie, and she ended up grabbing the cone with both hands and wouldn't let go. At which point I tried to get it back by pulling on it, and she let go and it sprang from our and fell on to the floor. When I recovered it, I saw it was caked with detritus, so I threw it out the window.

I think it is a near-ideal demonstration of what can happen when people are greedy. I wanted to share it with you, so everyone can learn from our loss.

At the time, I told her something like "there is a lesson to be learned here". After thinking about it, it seemed like the type of thing that would happen in some of the corny cartoons that Alex watches all the time. you know, sharing, caring, being honest... all of that liberal crap. Maybe I should sell this story to the Snorks. Are they still around?

Alex is a good sharer though. Here is a picture of her sharing a snack with her "bay-bee" and drink of water with Cooper .

Lists

2007-08-27T19:14:00.000-07:00

Hello.

I don't know about you folks, but when I write out lists, I find it impossible to not include a comical entry just for S&Gs.

for instance, a shopping list might include:

butter
sugar
bread
onions
celery
horse-meat

or a hardware-store list:

tape
screws
wood
drill bits for human skulls

I am silly with it, i tells ya. Sometimes I will include them even if the list is only 2-3 things. I was reminded of this when I was going through some old documents and saw an invitation to a bunch of my wife's friends to come to our summer house to celebrate her graduating from nursing school. It follows in red below...

It actually is not much at all like the lists above, but it still reminds me of the fact that I can't be serious for any reason. I sure hope everyone is okay with that. I was also showing off in front of my wife's friends, which I recommend to husbands everywhere.

1) Rough River is in a dry county. Running out of booze is the worst disaster that could happen that weekend. Corydon, (our state’s old capital), is the last good place to buy booze. You will pass a Wal-mart after leaving I-64 on the way to Rough River. If you forgot to buy alcohol before you left, please go there.

2) Please bring double the amount of booze you would drink. If you plan to drink a six pack of Sam Adams, bring two. If you buy a 5^th of Captain’s, bring another. In true socialist fashion, we’ll put the other amount in a kitty for the greater good. Also, if you think you are buying too much, see rule #1.

3) The only near by (15 miles) grocery store is an IGA, which mostly only sells bologna, grape drink, and other redneck nourishment. Consider packing food or going to the Wal-Mart in Corydon before arriving (Corydon is about 45 min from Rough River)

4) With as many people as I envision coming, refrigerator space will be limited. Please bring a cooler with ice for your adult/child beverages. Or, eat/drink before you come and after you leave.

5) I am not going to be in charge of food. I have tried to dole out responsibility to certain people to cook certain meals and it is often not worth the trouble. I encourage people to band together and work out meals if they wish. I personally plan to eat what you guys drop on the ground.

6) There is a grease-ball restaurant down the road that has good sausage sandwiches for breakfast and fried chicken at night for cheap monies. Me, Brad, and Mike’s philosophy is to eat there as much as possible, in order to maximize time on the water and having fun. If you want to spend time cooking, please do so. Make me some.

7) we have a grill and might make an open fire for weenie roasting. We also have other cooking accouterments, but nothing too fancy.

Activities

Here is an idea of what we usually do at Rough River:

Swimming

Boating (tubing, skiing, face-planting)

Jetsking

Sleeping

Enjoying nature (walking, looking at stars at night)

Ping pong

Drinking (see #2 above)

Cards and board games

Walking up and down the hill to get to the lake

Bring

Food for yourself

2x the alcohol you think you would drink (see #2 above)

Swimming attire

Life jackets (if you have them, we have some)

TOWELS

Swimmies

Kids

sunscreen

board games

outdoor games

your sense of merriment and gayety

bathing cap

thing that holds your nose closed when you swim

folding chairs or lounge chairs

floats/rafts

Don’t Bring:

Firearms

Danger

Winter hat

hitchhikers

Price of admission:

Any gas we consume in boating

Community booze (see #2 above)

I guess that is the end. Please leave some silly lists, you silly bitches.

update

2007-08-15T17:45:00.000-07:00

HEY! Is this blog still here? I expected that it had been taken over by brigands by now.

Sorry about the infrequent blogs. Things at work are quite wacky. I started out being so bored that I feel asleep some and now I have at least 5 projects and my mitts in some other issues. I figure, the more projects the better! Right? Spreading yourself thin is how to get ahead in the workplace, right?

I should take on a project a week from now on and pass them off to interns and temps when things look dicey. But if they are looking good, I'll continue to work on them and get all the credit. I'll let you know what happens. The way I see it, one of three things will happen: I'll get fired, promoted, or nothing will happen.

It is quite a change from my old job which occupied a generous 10 hours of the workweek. A great deal of time at my old job was writing this blog! You might say I blogged for a living.

I should ask my current boss if I can get a blog project. The way I see it, one of three things will happen: he'll say yes, no, or nothing will happen.

I sure like it there though. I have found in my professional life, one of the most important things about it is the way I am "allowed" to talk to people. When I was a teacher, I couldn't have a normal conversation with anyone and had to be hyper-professional all the time. And I could never cuss. If you have spoken to me for more than 10 seconds you would know that I use spicy language. 99% of the people I talked to at school were akward teenagers that were also shitheads. I had to act like a teacher, and everyone knows teachers suck.

When I was in research (4 months ago), my only work buddies were research scientists. Let me say this, any verbiage I used was well-thought-out ahead of time. Any thinking-out-loud, dumbed-down statements, or inaccuracies got me an intellectual dressing-down the likes of which you have never seen. Generally speaking, scientists and professors hate it when you can't talk gooder than them. Socializing at work was painful as well. I mostly just avoided everyone at work and any outside of work socializing was a non-issue.

At my current workplace, I am as sassy as I want to be. I said the f-word probably 5 times yesterday to a co-worker. I said it in a meeting and it was even on the powerpoint I was presenting. I even say borderline inappropriate innuendoes and use flamboyant hand gestures for accentuation. The bottom line is I finally work with normal people so I can talk like a normal person again.

so that is kinda awesome.

The wife and I started a diet on Monday. I bought some fat pants last winter and now even they are getting tight. I have been a size 34 since 8th grade up until a few months ago so I decided I should try to be less fat. please wish me luck in this endeavor, which might last well until mid-next week. The way I see it, one of three things will happen: I'll lose weight, gain weight, or nothing will happen.

I am constantly hungry and often times kinda sleepy. I had a very vivid dream last night that I was on a cruise and you could not walk in any direction and not have a piece of cheesecake within reach. There were multiple racks of cheesecake everywhere! I didn't make that part up. Then I woke up and walked to the bathroom and ran into the wall. When my lips touched the corner of the drywall I thought it was a cheesecake and I started chewing on it. Sometimes I do things like that when I am partially asleep, walking, on a diet, and have my lips on the wall.

I guess this is a good stopping point. See you in a few months. This long-distance thing is hard! We might need to consider seeing other people.

Sesame Street Favorites

2007-08-11T08:55:00.000-07:00

Since we had our daughter (who is now about 20 months old) we have been watching an awfuly lot of Sesame Street.

Big Bird and Elmo aside, it is a pretty good show. Now that I am older I can appreciate it on a completely different level and laugh at some of the absurdity and rock-out to the groovy songs. Here are some classic Sesame Street Clips from my era (and before).

enjoy!

Ladybug’s picnic
classic. I sing this song all the time to Alex and sometimes Cooper.

Jelly man Kelly
make sure to pay attention to James Taylor's wacky facial expressions.

Yip Yips
Your standard alien nonsense

Alligator King
This is a fun song! It is catchy, and also teaches children to check to see whether fruit might be precious gemstones before eating them.

Layin' eggs around the clock
the best part is watching the farmer wife while the farmer is singing. and the end.

Value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rN7sEwWQx8k">

Dance Myself to Sleep (Bert and Ernie)
This is another time you can watch what the puppets in the background are doing and it is much more funny. Instead of watching Ernie, watch Bert.
Man! What a terrible roomate!

cubical game

2007-07-12T17:47:00.001-07:00

I just started a new job.

The weeks before I started work I was elated because it occurred to me that I might be getting an office. All the other engineers have offices, so I thought I would too.

Guess what? I got stuck in a cubical.

My spirit is crushed.

It isn't a big deal, because the cubical I had in my last job didn't have enough room to revolve my chair without hitting something. I usually had to slip into my chair from above. Anyway, I hear we are being moved to what are called "pods" which I think are pretty small as well (too big to be a cubical). I think after a few months in the pods we will move into cardboard boxes.

Before this, I also shared a small room with a who's-who of stereotypical ethnic grad students. Who, by the way, yammered in their native tongue all day directly in my ear. It was very distracting. One also would watch what seemed to be some sort of Indian Cartoon which looked like a rip-off of voltron except everyone had blue skin and some sort of golden armor (along this line). But I digress...

With my current cube mate (across the wall) I have heard some interesting conversations. I usually catch some part of a conversation here-and-there. Sometimes I try to piece together what the context of the conversation is by hearing only a few words. It is usually about work or about her house, which really isn't exciting.

On some lucky days she shares a recipe with another coworker, and I try to figure out what dish she is making with just some tidbits of information. Then I imagine her with an apron and a chef hat on, and serving it to me over the cubical wall.

A lot of my fantasizing during work involves food*.

Today I heard her say, "...chicken and egg" **. I quickly figured it was part of a recipe, and I tried to think about what dish it would be.

I was thinking of some kind of chicken salad with egg in it. All at once, it sounded very disgusting to me and I felt sort of uncomfortable. I am not sure why. I like eggs, and I like chicken. I guess it is the principle of eating two generations of an animal in one dish, which is all kind of mashed together in mayonnaise. The worst part is that you could potentially eat a lot of it and then realize that there is both eggs and chicken in it. You might even bug your eyes and balloon out your cheeks in surprise like Jack Tripper would do.

John Ritter as that lovable Jack Tripper, from TV's Three's-Company. Next Week's obscure reference: Uncle Jesse.

FooFooFOoFooFoo
Hey! Let's all agree to make some chicken and egg salad and bring it to our next office pitch-in.

Holy shit! What a great idea! I am so going to do that. This is my chance to freak-out a whole new group of coworkers. I will be known as the guy who is usually normal, but always brings in odd dishes that no one touches. I can bring in stuff like refried bean-and-yogurt dip, or tossed salad with ketchup on it, or Jello squares with olives instead of fruit***. Or, I can bring in food where it is clear I just grabbed something out of the pantry on my way out the door. I can bring in stuff like frozen waffles, cans of creamed corn, or a jar of gravy.

And if someone confronts me about it, I will get defensive and hurt about it until they leave me alone. See? Foolproof!

Please support me in alienating my co-workers with this evil plan.

Love,
Foo

*the other is that my office is taken over by zombies and I have to fashion weapons and fight my way out.

**I later decided she meant "chicken and egg", as in; "which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

***or gristle-lumps

Defending my Honor

2007-07-02T17:11:00.000-07:00

hello.
Some recent scathing feedback has prompted me to prove that I am original and don't rip off other people's work and pass it as my own.

As most of you know, I have a few blogs devoted to some silly ebay feedback that I left just for fun. They are here: one, two, and three. on the second one, you'll see that someone thought I stole the idea from someone named mr_bo**ox. That person also had no compunction about calling me "lame" and also doing that thing where you substitute words for numbers and spell all crazy. Which is kinda cute.

I also hasten to point out that said person didn't provide a URL to prove his alligations. A quick google search of "mr_bo**ox" eventually led to his ebay page, where, as expected, I didn't find the feedback that I supposedly ripped-off.

HEY! I am not taking this lightly. I know this is just a silly blog, and I am totally wasting my time worrying about some 11-year old shut-in's fat-rage, but being called unoriginal is total bullshit, especially since a) that feedback was created by me and b) I thought (at the time) that the concept of leaving crazy ebay feedback was entirely my idea. After seeing mr_bo**ox's work, and doing a google search of "silly ebay feedback" I see that multiple people are doing it (go here for some REAL laughs), which really shouldn't surprise me.

anyway, to prove I didn't rip off anyone I went to my ebay feedback and captured my "left for others" feedback. It is below (you might have to click on it to enlarge). I think all or most of the feedback in previous blogs are on that image. I made sure to cover up anyone's secret identity with hats. Including my own user name. I made sure everyone can see the begining of them name, which starts with Tim, which we all know is my real name.

so suck on that, fatty.

Elements of Style ala Mindsquirt

2007-06-23T20:32:00.000-07:00

It occured to me that since I can not write blogs at work anymore, this blog might not be what it used to be. In case someone out there wants to take over, here is a typical breakdown of a Mindsquirt blog:

Witty story generously-worded to seem entertaining. Maniacal, wordy gibberish riddled with spelling mistake after spelling mistake. Blurry or poorly-lighted picture with a caption that under 10% of the audience understands.

One-sentence paragraph for emphasis.

Further details of story in indigent tone to mask any wrong-doing on my part or social ineptitude. Statement of self-righteousness and lamenting as though I have been put-upon. Anger/outrage towards stranger. Plea for the public’s use of common sense. Multiple redundant passages reiterating what I said in the first paragraph but with more cussing and exclamation marks. Careless diatribe about a co-workers's habits that could get me fired.

Example of some scene-making public debacle that inadvertently turns into the second half of the blog. Factually incorrect dialog between myself and another containing gratuitous use of commas and quotation marks.

Third akward segway into a completely different topic containing more factual errors. More inane blathering and inconsequential nonsense. Some run-on sentences. General decrease of quality as writing enthusiasm wanes.

Tie-in to Cooper. Flippant remark to conclude.

please standby

2007-06-14T11:40:00.001-07:00

hello all,

Please forgive me for my infrequent blogs, but I just started a new job and moved my family from new albany, IN to Northern Dearborn County, IN.

Not only do I not have a ISP at home yet, I don't have the luxury of writing blogs at work. So, this here blog might be in the middle of a downward spiral directly into hell.

picture dump ii

2007-05-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

Once again I downloaded some pictures from my phone. enjoy.

Here is a picture of my lovely daughter alex when she was about 12 months old. she is trying to hide that knife she always finds.

What a little scamp.

Here is your typical upside down pick-up bed on top of another pick-up bed.

Here is an advertisment for some kind of energy drink. This one has an "obscene" amount of energy, which is at least double the amount of "uncomfortable energy"and triple the amount of a paltry "acceptable energy" drink.

This is one of my favorites of all time.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime picture of the blind leading the blind, which I was fortunate enough to witness on the corner of Keystone and Broadripple in Indianapolis a few months ago.

YES!

silly ebay feedback iii

2007-05-21T12:35:00.001-07:00

more silly ebay feedback. click to enlarge. please enjoy.

Bacon-Loving Viking

2007-05-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

On a recent trip to the grocery store, I noticed for the first time that there was a cartoon Viking on a package of bacon. He was winking as if he was approving of me buying his meat. I was confused about seeing a Viking as a bacon mascot, but then I saw the bacon fork and the “That’s-a spicy meatball-a” gesture and then I knew he was a bacon-loving Viking, which makes perfect sense. So I bought some. I think the marketing company really won that little battle.

You can see the lovable scamp on the very left. It is hard to make out, but don't worry, there is a bigger picture below. Keep reading, devoted reader!

Here is how I think their product mascot meeting went:

Boss: “We have 60 seconds before lunch to figure out a likable and recognizable mascot for Plumrose Bacon”
Bob: “A pirate with a chef hat on!”
Sally: “a rapping elephant eating bacon!”
Fred: “An Eskimo on a sled pulled by bacon strips!”
Sally: “An astronaut on the planet bacon!”
Fred: “a winking Italian Viking with a fork..."

Boss: “Done! What about the motto?”
Bob: “We will pillage your taste buds and brutally murder your hunger for bacon.”
Boss: “Done!”

Anyway, some time passed and I forgot all about the bacon Viking. Then some more time passed and I started thinking it was odd that there was a Viking on a package of bacon. Then some more time passed and I doubted it happened at all.

Then I was driving on I-65 and a semi passed me with a picture of the bacon Viking but no pictures of bacon.

"Our bacon really takes the edge off of a week-long pillaging stent. "

When I returned to work the next day, I was still confused. When I thought about it, I wasn’t sure if that bacon was involved at all. The Viking could have been the mascot for shoe polish or lemon drops. I would have googled it, but I wasn’t able to really remember the exact name brand on that truck or on the package so I couldn't look it up.

It really bothered me for some reason. Was there such thing as the bacon-loving-viking?

I even emailed my friends to try to get some answers:

“When you guys buy bacon, have you ever seen the mascot on the bacon packaging that looks like a Viking that is winking and doing that “that’sa spicy meatball” think with his fingers?

What brand is that?”

I eventually tried to get to the bottom of it via Google*. After 20 minutes, I got desperate and started putting in phrases involving bacon and Vikings.

I couldn't find sqaut...

I even used ham instead of bacon. I still couldn't find jack! I tried many possibilites and it started getting pretty absurd, and when I checked my search history I found this list that might terminate my position if my boss ever saw it:

1) bacon Viking
2) ham Viking
3) ham brands
4) bacon brands
5) ham mascots
6) bacon mascots
7) Viking mascots
8) A Viking eating bacon
9) Winking ham Viking
10) Winking Viking who eats ham
11) Winking Viking who eats bacon
12) Viking with a chef hat on who eats ham
13) Is that a Viking chef on the ham package?
14) Why is there a Viking on that ham?

Man, I do love that list. I have read it at least a dozen times and still LOL. I am glad to have shared it with you. If you aren't laughing, please say #14 out loud until you do so.

*I did find the motto of Hillshire farms: “Go Meat!”
http://www.gomeat.com/

Computer Virus

2007-04-27T11:45:00.000-07:00

My computer contracted a virus last week. At first I thought he was faking it because I just saw a sniffle and a pathetic cough, but when the blue screen of death came, it was like he threw up in my lap.

Fortunately I was able to recover all of my pictures and music by using a bootable-from-CD-ROM OS called bart PE. If you are ever in this situation, please use it. It is free and works well.

Getting my OS to come back to life was about 20% of the work. Reinstalling lost drivers, applications, and settings is the real hassle. Damn you 14-year-old virus writing poindexter!

I finally got my TV tuner and DVR/media player working in the nick of time to catch an episode of Jerry Springer called "Pregnant by Your Brother", and capture this delightful character:

This is what you call a setup. Please add your own joke.

4/25 is Malaria awareness day

2007-04-24T10:43:00.000-07:00

Please be aware of malaria today. If you are reading this on Tuesday, please be aware of it tomorrow.

Link to CNN article and interview with Ashley Judd, your favorite glamorous movie star and proponent of Malaria treatment/prevention in African Countries.

From what I read 90* African children die a day, and if you go here or here****, you can give only $10 and provide a bed net to a family that helps prevent infection**. That is only a little more than a Qudoba burrito with guac and a large drink that I sometimes get at lunch.

please join me in donating a small amount of money that can save lifes! WWJD?

I know for a fact that Cooper is on board of the celeb bandwagon and is going to be on Larry King on Wednesday. WWCD?

* 3x the amount of people dead in the recent VT tradgey***
**The effectiveness is not stated but I have to assume that it is signifigant.
*** I am not making light of this, like this douchebag did.
**** Please do not let the presence of Ryan Seacrest on this site dissuade you from a nobel deed.

break room food burglar

2007-04-23T14:15:00.000-07:00

I just came back from the break room. When I was there getting some tea, there was a stranger in there rifling through the staff refrigerator. She looked to be throwing away some food items while stealing others. She was putting our food into a giant shopping bag!

May God strike me down if I am lying. I tried to monitor her while avoiding eye contact. But it occurred to me that I wouldn’t have tried to stop her even if she was taking my own food, so I left. She should have known that stealing food is my responsiblity.

I went to Rough River Kentucky over the weekend with my parents and Alex. On the way back, I got stuck behind about 15 bikers on a 2 lane highway. They weren’t going that slow, but I thought I would pass them anyhow. They took up the length of probably 2 semi trucks and I was in my pickup truck, which is full size and only 6 cylinders. It was a bad idea for all involved.

As I accelerated into the incoming lane and hit about 80, another truck unexpectedly turned into the incoming lane, and I was forced to wimp out to avoid death. It was pretty dangerous because I was pretty close to that oncoming truck and I was going pretty fast. I slowed down to about 30 and waited for the bikers to speed pass me on the right so I could get back into my lane. While I was waiting for this, the last biker flicked me off! And it was as angry as flicking off I have ever seen. His arm was fully out-stretched and he made a shitty face and everything!

At that point I was battling the emotions of anger and confusion. Anger because I was just rudely gestured at, and confused because I wasn’t real sure what the source of injury was to the biker who did the flicking. I didn’t cut him off or in any way inconvenience him. I was pretty steamed for the rest of the day. I would have felt better about it if I cut him off in the process, or almost ran into him, but he was basically giving me a hard time about me making a mistake. He had no reason to give me the finger!

It would be like if I was in a long line at McDonalds and I went to the shorter line, but when I did that someone else got in the shorter line and I went back to the longer line. And maybe on the way back I tripped or something. And then the last guy in the long line gave me a dead-leg for it. Some people are just total assbags.

That reminds me of the time I was moving a bunch of my crap from my dorm to my apartment in Bloomington. I cut some guy off with my truck and then I gave him the finger for it. Then, at the next light, he pulls up next to me and says “What the hell are you giving me the finger for?” He was right, he should have been flicking me off. At the time, I didn’t apologize, although I wish I had. I guess I finally got my comeuppance.

We sold the POS yesterday

2007-04-10T10:16:00.000-07:00

We sold the POS yesterday.

It was a truly horrible car that sucked away my spirit the moment I would sit foot in it. Every feature in that car was designed to piss me off. From the J-shaped seats that permanently set my spine to the way the hood rattled and made me think it would fly open at any moment on the expressway.

I could usually count on it to make 4-5 irritating sounds at a time. Some of them were on the threshold of causing me to swerve into oncoming traffic. One of my favorites was when I closed the door, it rattled the entire car and caused a hanging piece of the muffler to scrape on something and creak like an old creaky door. I think that really impressed some people in my parking lot. I think you would be impressed too.

I was hoping that one day Satan would open the earth and suck it back into hell. Sometimes I would fantasize about blowing it up.

Instead I did the practical thing and sold it for a cool $1600. Now some other sucker has to deal with it!

I witnessed something fantastic yesterday

2007-04-04T07:43:00.000-07:00

I was very fortunate yesterday to see someone’s wheel fall of their car while driving it.

Actually, I got to see the aftermath, I wasn’t fortunate enough to see the wheel spin off the hub and continue to go the direction the car was headed. That would have been a little too good to be true.

Here is the scene:
I came to a stop light in upper-downtown Indianapolis, and I looked to my left, and I see a car midway through a right turn and it has no driver-side front tire. The driver was looking around as though he didn’t understand why his car wasn’t moving. I see the hub and brake rotor of the driver side front spinning, as if he thought it just needed a little more gas. I then look to the right and saw the tire in the middle of a busy intersection as if it kept going straight after the rest of the car turned. Classic.

Here is an illustration of my perspective from my truck window when I pulled up.

What is not shown in the illustration is the 40 other cars that this calamity was blocking.

After I pieced-together what had happened, I had a good laugh. I wasn’t laughing at someone’s misfortune, I was just laughing at the outrageous circumstances. It reminds me of the classic shots in car-chase movies where the hubcaps roll off of the car and keep going, except this was the entire wheel, which at least a 100 times more comical.

Then things got even better! The passenger, who looked like Bubb Rubb*, slowly got out as if there was no emergency, walked around the car, looked at the wheel, and acknowledged that it indeed fell off. He showed absolutely no sign of surprise or worry. Then, he just stood there and stared at it for at least 30 seconds. It was the middle of rush-hour!

I really wished that I would have harassed him while he was standing there. I think a smartass remark like “Hey man, I think your wheel might have fallen off!” would have been so well-timed and sarcastic it might have made me pee in my pants.

I loved the part where he stood motionless the most because it was the exact opposite of what I would do. I later thought about how I would react. I think my reaction would begin with me jumping out and saying, “Holy shit! Your mother-fucking wheel came off!” Then I would frantically scramble around and try to do what I could to get the car and wheel out of the way of traffic.

That is all I got for now. This blog could have been doctored-up, so re-read it and pretend that all of the wheels came off at once, and then the steering wheel came off in the driver’s hands, which made him go cross-eyed.

* Please do yourself a favor and watch the Bubb Rubb video on YouTube.com if you haven’t already done so.

Banner ads-UPDATED!

2007-03-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

Hello to all.

I decided to share some of my most loathed banner ads with you that I encounter on an almost daily basis. Most of them are from checking my yahoo account. If any of you use yahoo mail, they might be familiar.

1) This is a video of a woman dancing by her work computer who is "surprised" to see the camera sneak up on her from the behind. I only hate this one because she does such a poor job at acting surprised. It is also pretty obvious that this company didn't want to shell out the dough to get a advertising company, so they asked Shelly down the hall to do the acting.

I also hate it because of the dancing. This is an ad for an online educational do-hickey, and dancing has nothing to do with it. They clearly just put in the dancing to lure the eye. I hate that.
If I were an banner-ad advertiser I would probably push the envelope and get people's attention by showing guns pointed at them and firing. There also should be some menacing-looking text that says "I am going to fucking kill you".

I might also use flashing signs that claim that their loved ones are being held hostage and show a picture of a person with tied up with a bag over their head.

Sounds far-fetched? Wait a few years.

2) I am not sure what the photographer was going for here in this personals ad. If they wanted it to look like the man in this picture look sadistic and is trying to force himself on this girl, they did a bang-up job. Notice she also is nervously smiling while shying away in an attempt to placate him in order to escape. She has a look of "Please save me".

If I was a woman, this is not the situation I would be looking for. Good work, Yahoo!

3) This add has Jared. I have more hate for Jared than there are stars in the sky.

I don't know who the other guy is but he has earned my hatred by appearing in the same ad.

4) Half of the time I check my email I have to stare at this idiot. I hate his cocky little smirk and that silly leaning stance of his. I would like to see him lean so far that he topples over that railing behind him into a tank of sharks.

I am not sure why Yahoo thought I would want to see him when I checked my email.

5) These dancing silhouette guys are the worst. They pump their fists up and down at about 10 Hertz and are really distracting.

Not so much "what is that?" curiosity/distraction, but more of a primal-flinching-instinct that goes back to when we lived in caves. It is more of a "My life is in immediate danger"-type-distraction. This is exactly what I don't like to go through when I am checking my email.

After seeing this one I was sure I had seen the worst. Then, recently I saw that they squeezed three of these hand-pumping maniacs into one banner. I like to call it the "Triple Lindy".

!!!!!UPDATE !!!!! : I FOUND A TRIPLE LINDY AD:

FOO
FOO
FOO
FOO
FOO

When I tried to find an example of the Triple-Lindy for this blog, I couldn't seem to find it quickly. I guess the company had enough of the death threats. I hunted around on Monster.com and I made sure to search for job postings in true 2nd grade fashion and find some that contain the word "shit". Believe it or not, I found two. One was for a internet clothing store. A link is below in case you decide to shop there or want to avoid it forever.

http://www.karmaloop.com/

There is an exerpt from the job posting in red below . Please form your own opinions. I have none to share.

Isn't it interesting how I always start my blogs on one topic and end up on another? When that happens I call it a Triple-Lindy.

The Karmaloop Story:
Karmaloop was founded in 1999 to battle the evil forces of McFashion. In a world populated by Abercrombie Zombies Karmaloop was created to provide a universally accessible alternative - a boutique to outfit cutting edge culture. Plus, it seemed like it would be fun to start a web site & get free clothes.Against the odds, Karmaloop has weathered the storm & is a dot.com survivor! Karmaloop never received any venture investment and grew solely through the hard work of the Karmaloop staff & the support of the many we consider to be part of the Karmaloop extended family.

Every member of Karmaloop's staff is in their 20's. We don't just work for Karmaloop we live it (& all have closets full of clothes to prove it!).

Karmaloop has been through having one computer, storing clothes in my parents basement, carrying orders in shopping bags on the subway to drop at the post office before going to our paying jobs, working out of a tiny apartment, a crazy landlord at the piano factory, a crazy hosting company, low-money, no money, late pay checks, busted hotels, hundreds of trips on the Fung Wa (chicken run!), chasing a crack head out of the office, sharing an office with crazy people, drinking binges, a flood in the warehouse, and about a million people telling us "the Internet, ha ha ha, you will never make money on the Internet!"But through it all we always new we would make it for one reason: you!

Despite everything we were up against & all the crazy shit we had to go through, we had incredible support from our partner brands & you, our customers. You never doubted us, you spread the word, were patient when we screwed up, & gave us love when we did things right!

Here is a picture of alex

2007-03-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of alex. She is about 13 months in this darling picture.

bottle opener

2007-03-06T10:15:00.000-08:00

I was admiring my friend mike’s bottle opener last night.

It is elegant in it’s simplicity. It has many features: keychain hole, beer tab opener, magnet for the fridge, and j-shaped thing for opening bottles. All of this fits unto something 3” long and is a single piece of extruded aluminum, except for the magnet. It probably is made of about 12 cans worth of aluminum. No space is wasted. There is no flashy decoration or gimmicky ergonomic handle. It is all there.

I covet it.

I am serious, I really admire it’s simplicity and functionality. I know a lot of other engineers / tech geeks read this blog. You guys may feel me. Any comments from you dorks?

There is a person in this very room who continuously choughs. It is next to impossible to concentrate when I hear her coughing every 20 seconds. I am about to lose my mind on her. Before lunch I was trying to read a very complicated paper on image reconstruction and it sounds like I am in a TB ward. I have tried passively-aggressively retaliating with counter-choughs and slamming my drawers loudly right after she coughs, but she isn’t catching on. I don’t see myself speaking to her, so I guess this will go on until I quit. She isn’t sick because she has done this for the 2 months I have been at my new desk. Maybe they are sympathy choughs and she wants someone to ask her if she is okay.

BTW, this is the same person who puked in the hall way, who I abandoned without pause. You can read about that in this blog.

When I was in another part of the building about a year ago I was trying to finish up my master’s thesis and I was writing my manuscript and finishing up a model or two. It was all somewhat new to me and difficult. There was a guy up there who also coughed about 2 times a minute. His choughs were about 100 times worse than this girls because it sounded like he was choking when he coughed. There were wet and gagging. You know, like when a small bit of food is resting in your throat and you have to hack it back into your mouth for more mastication? He did that 2-3 times a minute nonstop from morning until 5, when he left. After about 2 months of this I was convinced it was a nervous tick and not a pathological problem with his esophagus. He eventually went back to China, so I didn’t have to assault him after all. He also had his fingers in his nose quite a bit. He went way beyond normal booger extraction and would just kind of dig around in there for minutes at a time. I think he did it when he was deep in thought. I wish I were making that part up. He was a real piece of work.

In that area of the office, the desks were arranged without partition walls. I eventually got so sick of his hacking and fingering of his nose, that I started stacking stuff in between our desks in an attempt to block him from my view and muffle the hacking noise. I used file cabinets, bookshelves, and I even stood some ceiling tiles on end like a shield between us because I thought it would absorb some of the hacking sounds. It extremely obvious what I was doing, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. Other people asked why I was doing that and I openly admitted I thought the coughing guy was a sociopath. Sometimes I did it within ear-shot of the guy, but I STILL don’t think he caught on.

That is all I got for now. Please check back later for a story about how annoyed I get when my pens fall out of my pen holder.

Cold

2007-02-16T09:16:00.000-08:00

I am pretty sure my version of hell is as cold as it is outside this very moment. That is all my hell would be. Me on a park bench in 5 degree weather. I am about ready to move into a volcano.

One of the worst things about the cold as getting cold feet. From the end of November to mid-March my feet are in a constant state of uncomfortableness due to the cold. The only time they are warm is after I have been in bed for an hour or so, and I am asleep so I don't know they are warm. Sometimes when I have the chance, I use an electric blanket to warm up my toesies. I am going to start bringing it to work.

I work about a half mile from where I park. The path that I took was encumbered by at least three 2-3 foot piles of snow and trekking through 10-12 inch snow drifts. Although most of the snow was already tamped-down by previous people going into work. Let me say this though. I am glad I have my glam hiking boots. Wearing loafers in these kind of ground conditions would only exacerbate my cold-foot situation.

In the past 3 years I have worked with numerous lesbians and met their girlfriends. Like me, all of them tend to wear hiking boots (even in non-hiking situations). I am not sure what to think about this coincidence.

Hiking boots help with traction as well. Last week I slipped. I had my hands in my pockets so I couldn't break my fall with my hands. I had to awkwardly twist my body mid-fall to keep from breaking the fall with my face. Don't worry though, the entire weight of my 185-lb frame landed on my keys which was conveniently re-directed to my hip.

When I was at IU-Bloomington I had one of the most disastrous and embarrassing falls in a life time. Again, I had my hands in my pockets, so any last-ditch graceful recovery was out of the question. I was walking down an inclined walkway, that apparently someone sabotaged by spraying it with a garden hose. I saw the ice yet decided to walk on it anyway. I saw about a dozen people walk around it moments before I fell. But I thought that somehow I was special and the low-friction rules of ice didn’t apply to me.

Anyway, I slipped and my feet went backwards and the rest of my body went forward. Since it was an incline, I somehow negotiated the fall to where I did a front flip and landed on my back with my legs and arms sprawled. People laughed and some 90 lb Asian girl helped me up.

I guess that is what I get for being cocky. And thus the circle is complete.

Okay, I have had enough of these cold feet. I am going to go get some coffee to pour into my boots.

P.S. I just bought $133 a piece tires for $74 a piece online. They didn’t have the $74 tires so the salesmen hooked me up with their primo $133 tires for free! I hope someone is happy about this monumental deal because no one else seems to care.

The bearded soup smeller and policeing the coin cup

2007-02-08T12:17:00.000-08:00

I just went to lunch in the near-by hospital’s cafeteria. There are numerous lunch items that are served by friendly workers. There is also some items like yogurt, sandwiches, and fruit in separate coolers and even a soup and salad bar. Sometimes I get a soup and salad because it is somewhat healthy and cheap. Today, however, I opted not to. As I approached the self-serve soup caldron things, a man with a terrific white Santa-Clause beard opened the tops of the soup pot, and stuck his face in the pots with reckless abandon in an attempt to smell the soup. His face was so close that at one point his giant beard touched the edge of the pots. He did this to both pots, but his beard only mingled with the contents of one of the pots.

When I realized what had happened, I froze and looked at him in terror. What hubris that this man had to stick his face in a community-shared soup pot! I have to hand it to him though, he really must take his lunch seriously. He obviously thinks that pre-smelling his food is more important than committing cafeteria soup-smelling faux pas. Usually, reading the contents of the soup is all I need to make an instant judgment of whether or not I will be eating it. If I am really being feisty, I might open the lid to have a look. At no point do I use any of my other 3 senses. I would have really admired him if he drank some out of the ladle before deciding. LOL!

He ended up not getting the soup and moved on to one of the lines where the food is behind the glass and you have to ask the lunch ladies for what you want. Although he didn’t ask to smell any food, it would have been fantastic if he did. It would be a truly awesome sight to see the lunch lady scooping up a spoonful of lasagna and reaching it out over the glass for him to smell. Some getting in his beard would be a nice touch.

This reminds me of another remarkable event that happened to me at this cafeteria. You guys know about the spare-change containers that sit next to many cash registers in gas stations and whatnot right? I don’t know about you, but my experience with those is that is the public’s money. Anyone can come in and claim it. Someone put it there because they didn’t want it, so any customer who is paying for something can use it. I think that is pretty fair.

Evidently a certain cashier at that cafeteria has some kind of code of ethics to go along with her change cup, and she has the authority to enforce it.

Here is what happened. On three separate occasions she has informed me that I should make sure to contribute to the change cup from time to time. The first time I used some of the change, she said, “make sure to give some change to the change cup.” And I said “okay”, and thought she was just reminding me how the cup worked.

The second time she said basically the same thing and I think I just ignored her. The third time she said “you need to give some change to the change cup, because it is unfair to everyone else”. Which I responded, “I do that sometimes”. Then she said “do you?” really insincerely like she thought I was making that up. She made it seem as though I am THE guy that takes advantage of the cup. I just walked away, wondering what just happened.

Now, mind you, this happened over the time span of several months, and she would have to have somehow remembered that I am the one that always has my greedy mitts stuck in the goddamn change cup. After that third time, I started to question my own morality based on using someone’s change that they left there for me to use for that very purpose. I wondered, do I use that cup unfairly? Am I taking an inappropriate amount of change out and too frequently? Am I robbing the poor? Am I stealing food from babies mouths? I tried to understand what would drive her to single me out or even care about the contents of the change cup to begin with. She actually used the word “fair”. I don’t see how fair enters into it, seeing how i was using someone's discared change. It was all very confusing.

I tried to get in her head and figure this out, but I have no idea what would possess someone to take their cashier job so seriously that they think their influence extends the 3” beyond the cash register and into the change cup. My understanding of being a cashier has 3 responsibilities:
1) push buttons
2) take money
3) make change.

Basic math, verbal skills, and eye-contact are not necessary. They have robots that can do this at Kroger. Fingers are important.

I think they need to get her a job with more responsibility. One that is more akin to the one she made up for her job: “Keep track of the change that reoccuring customers are putting in the community change cup”.

This is the end to my stories about the hospital cafeteria. Please, someone reassure me about what has happened. I should also mention that I never use that cup now, and try to avoid her cash register when I can. I fear her.

Some pictures of Alex and Cooper

2007-01-29T10:20:00.000-08:00

As tara pointed out, I have been neglecting to post some pictures of Alex.

Here are some dope videos of Alex and Cooper playing. I took them about a month ago, when she was about 13 months. I know it is pretty low quality, but it is all I got.

Here is another recent picture of Alex taking a bath. Good stuff.

furniture project 3

2007-01-23T09:52:00.000-08:00

I can tell people aren't that interested with the ins-and-outs of how I made this wine cabinet. So I will make the conclusion of this story brief:

step 13)drawers: cut the dovetails.

this required a dovetail jig and a router to do.
as you can see, dovetails create dovetail-shaped "pins" that fit together like a puzzle. There is no room for error.

I really like this look, and most high-quality drawers are made this way.

this seemed like it is fairly complicated to do, and I had never done it before, but after reading the instructions to the jig, it was quite easy. It did, however, take alot of prep time and any mistakes are costly. I made one mistake, but it was an easy fix.

step 14) drawers: glue them together

this is actually kinda difficult. you have to put togeher 5 peices of a puzzle at once, within 10 minutes or so or your glue will dry.

the bottom of the drawer is pre-finished cherry, the sides are birch plywood, and the front and back is cherry hardwood. As you will see in the finished product, the wood contrasts really look good!

here is a picture of a drawer glued up and clamped.

step 15) build the wine rack.
I wanted this peice to be able to be used as a wine cabinet, or just a curio/china cabinet. With this in mind I wanted to be able to have:

a) a removable wine rack
b) hidden stemware holders
c) glass doors
d) have adjustable interior shelves (for different sized curios)

the stemware holder and glass doors were a snap compared to the removeable wine rack.

I wanted my wine rack to be the popular "X" type, where bottles are essentially stacked on one another. (as opposed to single cubby-holes per wine bottle)

After talking to some people, and thinking and drawing up some ideas, i opted to make a 2 half-lap panels that had sloppy enough engagments to where they could fold a little bit and slip out of the interior of the cabinet.

To get a better idea of what I am saying, make the Vulcan hand sign in both hands. now make it to where the web inbetween the middle and ring finger of both hands touch. see how if you look at your hands right, they look like an "x"? that is what i needed to do.

unfortunatly I don't have many pictures of this and I am certain you are still lost. So I wasted everyones time with that half-hearted explanation. perfect.

step 16) build the stemware holders

this was pretty easy. I made a bunch of "T"s and 2 "L"s and screwed them on. They weren't going to be seen at all with the doors closed (see step 15 a) so it was okay If they were a bit sloppy. It did actually take me all lunch to figure out the dimesions of them, so that I could hold the maximum numbers of wine glasses, and have them be symmetric.

this is the view as you look into the cabinet from the front. glasses are turned upside down and the bases are inserted into those slots.

step 17) mock up the doors and drawers

with the drawers and doors finished, I needed to make sure everything fit before staining. It was a good thing I did too, because the doors needed to be trimmed to fit!

here is a picture of the mock up. I also put on the back, so I could get a vision of the final product. The doors are held on with bungee cords. those wont be permenent. :) The wine bottles inside might give you an idea of what I was talking about in step 15. also, there are some wineglasses in their holders.

step 18) drawer guides.
I had to make drawer guides to make sure the drawers slide easily.

step 19) Staining, finshing, and install hardware

staining took awhile because I couldn't make up my mind. I tried mutliple test-runs on parts of the cabinet you could not see. I asked many people, and then ended up making the wrong choice.

Long story short, it took about 3 full days to sand, wash(partially seal), stain, sand,re-stain, sand, and put 3 coats of lacquer on it. I made sure to get it really smooth. certain parts are as slick as glass (like the top, which is the first thing I check for on any peice of furniture I touch).

hardware (pulls and hinges) was easy. Just drill holes and make sure they are lined up with one another. The hinges on the doors were actually a bit tricky, but I was happy to see that the gap in between them was very small and looks great!

I fastened the top of the peice with screws.

the last step was to nail the back of the peice on, and then the glass in the slots of the doors and secure them with little wooden strips I cut.

The end. I think it looks pretty glam. I have included multiple shots so that everyone can admire the various things I talked about (mistake on the top, paneled sides, the smooth top, dove-tailed drawers)

full frontal

top. mirror shine! boo-ya! (click on this picture to see the beauty of the wood I chose for the top)

side view.

How to ruin a perfectly good finger

2007-01-19T14:14:00.000-08:00

At one point in my life, my middle finger on my left hand was in good working order. It could poke, manipulate, gesture, flick, and point. The nail was a suitable length and neatly bitten. It would glisten in the sun.

Now it is stubby, and ugly, and the nail is only about a 1/2 inch long. (I measured) It is a laughing-fest for my other 9 fingers and often has to be roused out of stints of deep morose.

As promised in this blog, I wanted to tell you the story of how it came to be this way.

but first, a Horrifying picture:

wait

for

it!

boo!

This is what my finger looked like about 2 weeks after running the sumbitch through a router. It essentially cut a dato in my finger and destroyed the bone right along with it.

the thing in the end is a pin that they shoved in the end to keep the end from falling off. the silver nail-looking thing is a peice of metal they put under my skin to keep my skin from growing over my nail bed.

you will notice that my index finger is bleeding. That was a walk in the park compared to the middle finger. it basically just had the nail cut through. However, the middle finger went straight up satan's asshole.

They say that losing parts of your hand is one of the most alarming parts of your body to lose. I guess that is becasue they are your primary feeling devices. Of course, I didn't lose entire fingers at the first knuckle, but it was a tad jolt to look down (after feeling a numb sting) and see somethign that looked like this:

Whoopsie-daisy

I am not exaggerating.

This happened because I was not paying attention and I set up the guard on the router table wrong. The peice of wood I was running through the router pinched between the router blade and the guard and launched it across the room (20 feet). My hand was holding the wood, and was pulled into the blade, the rest is history.

Fortunatly, I went to Kutz and Kleinerts at Jewish Hospital (in Louisville), which is arguably one the best hand surgery clinics in the country. I don't remember much, but I do remember my friends coming pre-surgery and not seeming that impressed with the amount of carnage they saw, and the surgeon trimming my finger bones down to "something he can work with". It sounded alot like the sounds that finger nail clippers make. I didn't ask if he was using finger nail clippers, but I really should have.

bubbles follow up

2007-01-19T09:21:00.000-08:00

I don't think alot of people out there know how awesome Bubbles is!

Here is a short clip of him from YouTube.

Watch out if you are work! He says several rated-R words:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-GqxYtCccc

Trailer Park Boys

2007-01-11T12:30:00.000-08:00

There is a low budget comedy out there called "Trailer Park Boys". It is Hi-larious.

I suggest it to all. You can get most of the seasons from Netflix.

It is about 2 bumbling criminals from Canada and is shot documentary style. The acting is pretty bad, but the plot and reoccuring jokes are top notch.

everyone's favorite character is Bubbles, the slow and lovable ally to the 2 main characters that often is more thoughtful and moral than everyone else on the show. He also wears thick glasses, loves kitties, lives in a shack, and talks funny.

One of my favorite things about Bubbles is the way he makes money. He goes to one "mall" (a mini-mall actually) and takes the shopping carts and throws them down in a ravine by the parking lot. Then at night he fishes them out and repairs them at home. Then, he sells them to another nearby mall.

Brilliant!

once or twice he has been seen repairing carts or flipping them into ravines or dumpsters. It is really something.

Here is a picture of him with some guy. I photoshopped myself in to impress my friends. I thought I should share.

furniture project 2

2007-01-11T09:42:00.000-08:00

Go here for the first of the series of me building a wine cabinet.

step 7) build the face frame

the face frame is the part in the front of most peices like this that FACE the person looking at it. without it, the ends of the carcase face you and i think that makes the peice look cheap. (you might notice that the picture of the wine cabinet i was basing my design off of used this method. (go here to see it)

building the face frame wasn't too hard. In fact, it was one of my favorite parts of the project. I basically cut the peices to length, cut a dato in them, and stuck them on the front with glue and clamps.

in the picture below you can see the many clamps I used to hold the wood on while the glue set.

face frame

step 8) admire your progress

I cut a peice of 1/4 plywood for the back. this plywood was pre-stained and finished, so in the picture below it looks much darker than the unstained wood I have been working with.

I took the clamps off of the face frame and temporarly stuck it on the back so I can see how it looked.

this is how it looked:

very handsome

It is much easier to see the face frame here. You might also notice the gental sloping do-hicky on the bottom. It is easy to overlook on the pictures above. It is called a skirt, I guess.

I also might add that the face frame gives a little more thickness to the front of the peice. If I didn't use a face frame, the front would all be about 7/8 inches thick. Instead, most of the face frame peices were 1 1/2 inches thick or 2 inches thick.

step 9) make the door rail and styles

AS you remember from looking at the design here, the doors hold glass so you can see the impressive amount of wine inside.

Making doors that hold glass and are not flimsy is no trivial task. I decided to make the doors the same way I made the side panels (see step 4). Instead of putting a wooden panel in the inside, I will jsut put glass inside.

each side of the door (rail or style, to use the proper parlance) required 3-4 runs through the router or table saw to create a rabbet, dato, or the decrotive rabbet. To make 4 doors, it required 16 peices of wood, so there was alot of cutting to be done. This also meant that many opportunities to mess up or create another dato in my flesh and bone*.

You can see 3 runs in the picture below on one of the rails. The arrows show which way the rabbet goes. 2/3 of the cuts go "into the picture".

rabbets and such in door rail

step 10) glue up the doors.

Then I glued the doors. I made a jig out of plywood and made sure it was at 90 degrees so that my doors would be square (or rectangle, I suppose). This is on the left and bottom of the picture and has screws in it. Then I glued and clamped em'!

foo

step 11) Make a horrible mistake

In my (limited) experience making furniture, it is incredibly easy to make mistakes that cause major set backs. To not make a mistake that ould cost me a whole day of work is rare in a project of this scope. Luckly this one was easily mitigated (although It yeilded less than perfect results), and did not require an entire day.

When I went to put the top on the carcase I noticed it was too small. So, I added another board to it. My original top board had only two boards and thus one joint. Look at your table tops at home. If they are solid wood, you will notice they are made of many smaller boards. If they are well made, they have very small joint lines. like this one:

This is a good joint. notice you can hardly see it! Booya!

foo

Then I had to add the other board on (to add size) and I ended up getting a bad joint. This joint is big and full of glue. It is unsightly, but so far no one but me has noticed.

foo

I thought about completely re-doing the entire top, but decided just to keep the imperfection and not waste anymore wood or time.

step 12) take a seductive picture of coop.

Cooper! you ol' dog! (to fully appreciate this caption, please go here)

foo

I think this is enough for now. I should get back to work.

next: drawers, wine rack, stemware holders, finishing, and hardware!

* again, the story about the day I created a dato in my fingie to come!

mindsquirt

Toddler Upgrades

New truck

old timey beer sign

mystery

Portland, the land of the supersized urinal and sushi

pictures i meant to post

ya'll

hobos

business trip from baltimore to nyc

blogs

Gettin' Sassy

LEGOS!!!

A follow up to selling my car

A Normal Post

Halloween and Christmas Decorating

Baby Sam is here!

Dressing Room

I'd like to show some support to myself

Another Picture Dump

June Stuff

Completed Furniture Page

What happens when I work-out

some cute videos

Making a Garden

Basement Blog 4

snow shoveling

Stress at Work

Dieting

I have a real problem,

A change of pace

nighstand saga II

Finishing Basement III

Nightstand Saga I

Which Bedside Table Should I Make? UPDATED AGAIN!!!!

new boots

Finishing the basement ii

picture dump iii

A blog I Forgot to Post

Dear Coworker,

College Pictures

paranoia cure

Finishing the Basement 1

Video of alex from cell phone

Conundrum

How to Make Sushi

New Car

Lazy Sunday, Sleep

Paranoid Fantasies

updates on work experiment **UPDATED**

home made knee wraps

Alex is Thirty-Nine

Time for a new post

Some old blogs

an experiment at work

evil santa

building a foldable step stool for Alex

chapstick

fiddle faddle

ebay feedback 4

kid at daycare

garage bench, faulty grinders

wife's blog

this blog is 100% about killer robots

hottub time

babies and lemons

car advice

ice cream story

Lists

update

Sesame Street Favorites

cubical game

Defending my Honor

Elements of Style ala Mindsquirt

please standby

picture dump ii

silly ebay feedback iii

Bacon-Loving Viking

Computer Virus

4/25 is Malaria awareness day

updates on work experiment UPDATED