busy morning

Busy day and it is only 11am. I took a picture of the moon at about 7:30 just before I dived into Denny's for a bite.

Work at home day

Not by choice but because I have the alarm people coming to figure out why the house alarm stopped working.
They said 8-10, now it turns out they meant 8-12.

They should finally be here soon.
I had to do a conference call from home with Europe., lot of fun that.

On top of those mild items we had to take star back to the Vet this morning, he was just not getting any better. Hopefully they will figure out what the problem is this time but it is sure to cost us some more money.

This is not unexpected since my horror scope said we would be speanding a lot this month. Now if only the other half comes true and we get a nice lump sum from somewhere to pay it all off. That would be nice.

Vacation

On vacation at the moment until next year.
Might even update the blog but no promises.
It is in my mind a lot as I go through the day and still have a lot to say but I never get around to it for one reason or another.

Another being that my eyes are really not in great shape. I have my contacts on today but in order to do anything like read I need to wear reading glasses now. That is really very much at odds with what I bought contacts for in the first place.

Happy Thanksgiving

Was a great Thanksgiving, in some ways, food was great,, I learned a new way to carve a Turkey from this link which I got from the usual place (HT:Glenn).
We had way too much food so it was important to strip the whole bird which we did.
We expected the Step Son and family, including three grandkids , two fo which we have never met. They showed up but had to leave due to job related problems the same day which left us with a 23 lb bird and 5 extra tickets to the Ren Fest which we were going to take them to Saturday. Nothing like driving 20 hours turning around and driving right back but that is part of a long story the plus side of which is the the SS is a lot stronger than I was at that age and everyone made it back inone piece.

Degrees of Geekiness

I was just in bed, at 5am, just lying these and thinking about a problem I have to solve at work today and came up with a good way to do it.
I thought to myself, "If thinking about programming problems at 4am is not geeky what is?"

Guilty!

sigh.

new pictures

I should be posting some new pictures pretty soon whenever I figure out how flickr works.

First I will post some from last year that I took with my trusty sony 2.1 mp, then my new toy.

I finally broke down and ordered a canon a630 from buy.com two weeks ago.
They told me it was back ordered and I exchanged email with them for several days even offering to upgrade to the a640 which by the time I did they were sold out of that too.

After a few days of this non happiness with their continued inabilitiy to get me the product I ordered I canceled it and went to my old stand by Amazon,

I odered the A640 and it came very few days later. I have used it just a little and just got my new Sd cards for it but already I am very happy and hope to post all my new garden pictures sortly.

Thank god its November

Aside from the awful election results I am glad it is November because I am looking forward to the end of 2006.
Aside from the dreadful turn my employment took, after being let go from a job I thought I would have for many years to come. to one of the worse I have been at to one that proved even worse 2006 has not been a very good year.

My latest mistake was walking in my front yard without socks on. Not a bad thing as I am sure most of you will agree except that this low growing vine reached out while I was quickly going past and since it had (of course) many thorns the top of my angle was nicely though (thankfully) not deeply sliced.

I start a new job on Monday and am hoping that my luck on that front may have finally turned.

Twofer

I am really considering a new category for my various damage incurred in 2006. Being an optomist hoping this will end.

My latest injury was getting stung by a bee while visiting our favorite nursery the Arbor Gate yesterday,
I took two benadryl after we left by buying a pack at the grocery store where we went to shop. Usually taking two will knock me out and indeed I went to bed soon after we got home only waking several hours later to take another two..
I just took another one.

Update Monday:
I went to my doctor and he gave me a shot and as I related in this post it has affected me the same way as it is now 2:15am, I have to get up at 5am and I am not at all sleepy.
SIGH
On top of that fun I had to remove my contacts Saturday because something got in them and scratched my cornea or lens , joy.

Ouch

I hope to survive this year.
I was kind of hoping that this cycle of hurt would end during the Jewish year having just past but now I am holding out hope to make it to January.

A few days ago I raised a nice knot on my leg, the one that was broken in Jan. this year and I don't even remember what I ran into to cause it.

Just now I was running a little late and hurried out of my room to promptly stub my toe,

I was thinking about taking some self defense training but I am going to wait until 2007 in hopes I won't kill myself in the process.

Damage Continues

I was opening a can of dog food and the pop top broke off.
I used an opener that didn't work too well and ended up with a sliced thumb.

This is getting old fast.

More Damage

In line with my theme for this year I stepped out of the house this morning in the dark pre dawn to ealk mt daughter to the bus stop, tripped over a hose and fell down onto my front walk.
I ruined a pair of fairly new pants, bloodied my knew and jammed my hand pretty hard breaking my fall.

I wish this year was over already I have not been this beat up in my entire life.

The Wee small hours

I start my new job in the morning well later this morning actually.

I am wide awake listening to Carly Simon sing, "In the Wee Small hours of the morning".

It is my doctors fault. I went into him today because I have had a sore throat for the last few days. He decided I needed a steriod shot, just like the one he gave me a year ago when I was having breathing problems.

It worked wonders until as I was in bed at midnight wide awake when I remembered that last year I was not able to sleep at all after he gave me a shot last year. Joy.

I got up and had two ice cream bars, no luck, a shot of JD, well maybe I well go back for another after I post this.

When I was much younger I recall I never slept before starting a new job. I hope I get a few hours since what I am doing now requires a lot more alertness then flipping burgers.

sigh.

I hate this

Looking for a job again.
This really sucks.
I wish that Lady Luck would get off her ass and let me win the Lottery.
It doesn't have to be mega millions but 1 or 2 would sure be nice.

State of my health

It was getting a little better until I tripped on my own feet at work yesterday and fell into the wooden keyboard tray of my desk. I now have a nice gash across my chest and my left arm hurts.

This is in addition to my right shoulder which started hurting while I was still using the cane and my broken leg which is still painful when I overdue it.

Other than that I am in fine shape, lol

Cat rescue aftermath Update

It turns out a little bit better than I thought.
I do not need surgery, that is a relief.
The doctor said that if I came to him after it happened he would have put me in a cast but as since I had been walking on it for a week it showed him it was stable so he put me in a boot.

(picture maybe forthcoming in this space)

I took this thing I got into the car and drove to where I had to go with great difficulty. When I got there(about 25 miles away) I called the doctor back and said it was really hard to drive with.

I was told "you are not supposed to drive with that on, in fact you will get a ticket if you are stopped"

Nice of them to forget to mention that, sheesh.

Typical of most broken bones it is a six week deal and I have to go back to the doctor in 3 and then hopefully the last in 6 .

Happy New Years

I wish you and all yours a happy and healthy 2006.

Busy weekend

I have an old college friend coming to visit this weekend.
Tonight we will be working on my long delayed homebuilt pc.
We have tickets to see the Astros and Cubs on Saturday and Sunday.

I hope I have enough Jack Daniels left.

Harry Potter

It is very difficult to tear the kid away from the computer these days unless she is on the Play station. Yesterday when she woke up there was a copy of the new HP book on her desk and this morning at 2:30 she dropped it off by the wife for her turn (I come last now , sigh).

It is nice to know she can still read a book when she wants to.

Update: The only thing I know about the book at this point is that several times while reading it, when she would come up for air, the kid said she was having a headache trying to figure out if Snape was good or evil.

Let's hope Voldermort is having the same problem.

Some more HP coverage and links over at Glenn's

Lawnmower Blogging

There are places in my lawn that I can't get to with the riding mower or even the power mower. I could use the trimmer but that is a lot of work.
So I went down to Lowe's this weekend and picked up this retro model.
So far I am very impressed, only 3 bolts to attach and I am ready to go.

Vacation Roundup

Back from vacation. Had a great time.
More than ever I am reminded of the saying "NY is a wonderful place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there." I wouldn't.
I did for most of my life and that is more than enough for me.

Let's see if I can boil the trip down.
Plane in, saw the movie Robots, not bad.

Saturday: Ellis Island, WTC, Dinner, Empire State at night.
Ellis Island was interesting but took forever. We got downtown by noon but didn't get to the island until after 2. There is a line to buy tickets and then there is another hour line just to get through security where they were more strict than the airlines screeners.
There were a lot of people going to liberty (even through you cannot go up to the crown anymore) and ellis.

We finally got back to Battery park after 6 and walked up to check on the WTC site. The good news is that there were a lot of other people there checking it out. the bad news is that there has not been a whole lot of action since the last time I looked 2 years ago, that sucks.

As we were on the ferry I heard some people looking back at the island showing others where the trade center towers would have been in th skyline. The fact that there is no construction going on at this site yet is to my mind a disaster of major proportions.

Had dinner at the wonderfully expensive Palm which my sibling (bless her heart) picked up the tab for.

After dinner we walked down to the Empire State and had to wait an hour until we got through to the 85 floor. Mostly the wait was security again. Everything in NY has security now.

I had never seen the city from the ESB at night and to me it was worth the wait.
Pictures later, if the came out.

More on vacation later.

Anime Update

Anime you say. Well yes. I watch quite a bit these days thanks to my Daughter who not only watches but is becoming pretty god at drawing also.

She goes through phases. She has been through her Pokeman phase and her DBZ phase and others.
Her latest phase is Getbackers. She has taken all her money and purchased not only the Manga but the complete series of anime.

When she got the DVD's she watched them non stop, through the entire series. Now she is determined to make me watch though my limit is between 1 and 4 per day. She is persistent though.

Travel plans

I will be traveling to NYC in June on the weekend on the 17th and if any kind of blog parties or get togethers are going on please let me know.

I will be visiting family and I don't know how much time I can steal away but I am always interested in meeting other bloggers.

I plan to be the Yankee game on Monday so if you are going to be there drop me a line and I will buy you a beer or whatever you are drinking.

Things get better from there

I had a hard day at work yesterday then went over to Fry's to return a digital drawing pad I had bought from my daughter on Sturday from this company,aiptek.com. I will never buy another product of their's. My theory is that at this point if you can't even get the install program to run correctly then you don't get my money. I even went to the web site and downloaded the latest drivers and even they would not install.

Fry's was very nice but the kid had forgotten to put the CD back in the box so it was a wasted trip.

I called home and complained. I was informed that the home netowrk was down, to which my reply to the kid was to go read a book.

I had them call ahead to the Chinese place in town so the food would be ready when I picked it up. the restaurant was swamped and even though we called ahead I still had to wait over 30 min. At this point I knew this was a day to forget.

Luckily the network was not the disaster I was led to believe so I was able to veg out and kill some nasties on Ragnarok for a while.

I also spent time going through posts one at a time deleting spam comments, pings and locking down the old posts to prevent new garbage.

Today will be better. I hope..

Top DVD of the Year

According to Amazon the winner is Return of the King -Platinum Series Special Extended Edition(try saying that 3 times fast), which by a happy coincidence was under the tree with my name on it Christmas morning.

I have been spending this weekend looking through it. Some of the stuff they had to leave out is wonderful and I am not even half way through it. There are 4 separate commentaries by difference groups (actors, directors ect.) and if you add that up it is a lot of movie but it sure looks great on my new TV which was my big present.

The scene in front of Isenguard at the start was one that I knew was obviously missing when I saw it at the theater and Christopher Lee is great in it.

The problem is that now I will have to go out and buy the first two movies in the extended edition also.

Happy 24th

I did all the Cristmas shopping I had left to do yesterday since I got out of work early.

We finally got the tree decorated this afternoon.

Then I took the wife to Breakfast and then to Target to see what they had in Christmas decorations that we could pick up for a song in two days. They had a lot left I thought but the place was as busy as I have seen it since if opened six months ago.

Of course we ended up buying something and then more when the wife saw some glasses that she liked. I picked them out while she went to the lady's room so naturally we got them home and found one with a chip.
Back to Target which was just as well since we needed to buy groceries also.

(exhale)

Christmas comes early

The wife decided to get some of her shopping done early at least as far as the family was concerned.
For over a year I have been watching a TV where the picture was in shades of green due to a surge that clobbered the tube. Being as I was out of work at the time and have been catching up since a replacement has not risen to the top of my priority list yet. I was very surprised when she came home last week and handed me a reciept for this Panasonic 32" HDTV and told me to pick it up whenever I had a chance.

I was overcome, picked it up the first chance I got and have been enjoying real color ever since. It is wonderful to watch my Babylon 5 DVD's on something other than my 17" computer monitor.

Update: In order to get HD with this monior, even though it says it is HD ready, you need to buy a separate box which sells for $200. I checked with Dish and they told me that they would rent me the box for free when I bought their HD package which costs $9.95 per month. I am going to hold off on that a while since there is not that much I watch that is on HD but since I will have to pay the $9.95 anyway when I decide to get it it's nice to know that I don't have to pay another $200.

Oni-con

I have a bunch of catching up to do and some pictures to post here about Oni-con.
what is Oni-Con you ask? Glad you asked.
It is an Anime convention that was held in Houston for the first time this year. I think they hold them in other cities but this was the first in Houston. I found out about and debated if I should tell my daughter or not. I did and of course she insisted I take her.
My flash skills are not the greatest so much of the pictures I took didn't come out too well but these three will give you a taste of what I let myself in for.

It was help back on Oct. 23 but I did say this was catching up didn't I.

I have no idea who these two characters are supposed to be:

Or these for that matter.




These at least I know came from a series that she watches called Inuyasha

The convention ran for three days and according to the organizers I spoke with the turnout totally overwhelmed them. I guess that means they will do it again next year.

Phone troubles

I was on my way home last night and called ahead to see if I should l pick up something,
line busy.
Not unusual for a home with a teenager but as I tried several more times as I picked up some milk,just in case, my imagination went into overdrive, bad overdrive.
I got home and everything was of course fine, except the phones.
I used my cell to call SBC, went through the auto bs until I spoke to a person who directed me outside to check the network interface box. I was able to get a dialtone from there once I figured out which line was which(they really should label these things better) and was instructed to take all my phones offline (4) wait 5 minutes and everything should be fine.
I did and of course it wasn't.
I called SBC back and the are coming out today between 8am and 7pm. I have to take Ghost to the vet prior to getting him fixed so I am sure I will miss them.

I hate coming home to things like that. By the time everything was taken care of I was worn out.

New Car

I have a new car. A Honda Element. More on that and a picture tomorrow. I spent Saturday on the car and since then helping my daughter build her new Crusader character, don't ask.
It was a lot of fun but as good as I once was in almost all games she is better than I am.
Maybe I can still beat her at pinball, if I can find a machine.

New Car

I have just about decided on getting a Honda Element but it seems that due to my credit, which has been pretty damaged from almost two years of unemployment, I can't get financing for less the 13 percent or so.
Damn that hurts.
I think I might just end up biting the bullet and trying to pay it off fast.
Either that or get a really cheap car which I will have to finance at an even higher rate.

Shouldn't we be entitled to resonable financing on cars?
Shouldn't we all be entitled to cars?

I better shut up now before that ends up being added to the Democrat platform.

It is about the money

My friend Mr. Lion pointed out that he considered a new car a waste of money when you could get a pre-owned a lot cheaper.
Good point but you have to factor in the financing.
Suppose I buy a pre-owned car for 15k and get a 5 year loan for 10%. My total cost for the car is 22.5k.
Or I could buy brand new for 21k at 1% and over 5 years pay 22.5k.
Ok I might be able to do better on the used but not by much or I might not and new car rates of 1% or lower are not unheard of.

If the ultimate cost is pretty close I would rather go for a new car.

Always at the worst time

As if things were not bad enough being out of work extra expenses always seem to appear at times like this.
To recap how my summer has gone.
Drove riding mower over a root, more to fix than a new one costs.
Garage door opener dies.
Garage door dies.
Wireless router dies.
Spare computer dies (at least that was still on warranty).
Wife's Imac dying, slowly.
Car not feeling too good.
Dog needs to go to the vet.
Gutter in the front of the house falls off.
Gutter in the back of the house falls off.
Large tree looks to be dead.
Flowering Peach Dies (One of the wife's favorites).


Now today as I was clearing some high grass with the brush trimmer my father-in-law was nice enough to buy me last year the dang thing falls apart.


Now that I listed all that stuff and see it in one place, I am sorry I did. How depressing.

Want to live 10 to 20 years longer

Two articles via Drudge on new anti aging research, here and here
.
The long and short of it is, nothing much for several years yet but you should watch your calories and drink red wine.

Nothing Day

Aside from calling my Mom and sister to see if their lights had come back on yet, mowing the lawn and sending out more resumes I didn't do much of anything today.
I really must make better use of my time.
Being out of work wouldn't be as bad if I did something productive with my time.

School starts

My daughter is starting High school tomorrow.
A freshman already.
I was never a freshman since my junior high was 7,8 and 9th grades.
In some ways I wish she was still 5 years old.
I am getting ready for what I am sure is going to be an exhausting 4 years.
I think maybe it is time to go shotgun shopping :)

Back to normal

I got three hours sleep this morning which wasn't enough and I had to lay down later after the planting incident.


The planting incident was where the wife and I went out to plant some passion flower vines we bought last week around two oak trees. Things were going pretty well until as I was bring two bags of mulch over my wife suddenly jumped up and moved about twenty feet from where she was working. She looked at me and said "run". I looked around and didn't see anything to run from so I waited till she walked very quickly over to and past me when I joined her. She was brushing her shirt as we walking and finally enlightened me with one word "bees".
We walked back to the house and directly to our bathroom where she knew I had a stash of Benadryl in case I am attacked by fire ants. It turns out she was stung about 8 times but everything seems ok. We went back out an hour later and though we can't see the hive we think it is about 30 or 40 feet up a tree behind a dead branch.
That finished our planting for the day and the Benadryl made her sleepy. Since she was laying down I lay down also and woke myself an hour or so later not knowing exactly where or when I was. That is my typical reaction when I take mid day naps like this.
I tried to impress on her that if she had appended the word "Bees" to the word "Run" I would have reacted faster. For some reason she didn't appreciate this advice.


Listening To: You Keep Me Hanging On - Vanilla Fudge

I did it again

The kid tells me that everytime I water it rains. I watered all the fruit trees today and all the roses in the back and guess what, it is pouring, perhaps she knows what she is talking about.

I did it again

The kid tells me that everytime I water it rains. I watered all the fruit trees today and all the roses in the back and guess what, it is pouring, perhaps she knows what she is talking about.