Saturday, December 31, 2005

Happy New Year!!!


Well, here it is New year's eve, and I'm well enough to send new year's greetings to all my blog friends. Not all the way well yet, I'm still coughing my head off and snotting. I hope I'm through with it soon, this has been enough. I haven't seen a doctor about it because I've just figured they'd tell me it wasn't nothing but a cold, and there isn't much they can do for it anyway. I've got Monday off, my last day off, and if it doesn't seem better then I may see if my doc is available.

I picked up a bottle of rum and a bottle of Champaign and a bottle of extra strength tussy at the store tonight. Old habits die hard, I can't remember the last time I've actually been out for new years. Last one that sticks out in my mind was the night I got 86'ed from a bar in Tijuana. My stomach was broken the whole next day. I would have liked to go over to Sammy's tonight for the festivities, but with the coughing I don't really feel up to it.

I did get to hang for a little bit with my East side buds, Lilly, Granny and Bob. It was only 9 for me, but it was new years for them. That was cool. Skimmed through everybody's blogs just now, and saw where Steve made mention of me on Susan's: "aye gets whumpy with his shirt off, keep it cyber." I have no idea what whumpy is, but that sure made me want to take my shirt off!!! I do keep it cyber, don't I???

Happy new year, one and all!!!

Thursday, December 29, 2005

That's What I'm Doing Next Year


I hope this is readable when it posts. It looks so small here!!! If you can't read it, you can click on it and it will enlarge I've learned. But I know exactly what he means, I've got a lot more money in Runescape, as well as the ability to make some very cool armor and jewelry. Who wouldn't like a full mithiril set of armor, complete with your choice of weapon and shield??? Or, I could make a sapphire, emerald, ruby or even diamond ring. Oh, here's a good one, I could make a nice sapphire amulet and cast an enchantment on it to improve your magical abilities!!! Heck, I could even just make you something nice to eat, like a lobster dinner, or a chocolate cake.

My parents took my oldest son and his cousin on a road trip the last couple days. They're staying at Camp Pendleton Marine Base, and making a trip to Legoland. There was susposed to be rain coming in from up north, but so far it hasn't even made it so far south as the L.A. area, so I think they've stayed pretty dry. Good deal.

We made homemade pizza tonight. That was something my parents gave us for Christmas, a nice pizza pan and cutter, a box full of ingredients, and a thick little pizza recipe book. The crust and sauce were from a Chef Boy Ardee kit. The crust was good enough (and easy to make), but the sauce... well, I'd never heard of vanilla flavored pizza sauce before!!! I bammed it up with some spices and garlic, and it came around. All in all, it made for some very good pizza!!!

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

100!!!

Welcome to what is my 100th post here on Blogger. I can tell you've all been waiting for this momentous and special occasion.

I had wanted to send out special Christmas wishes to all my 'net buds, but I came down with a debilitating cold. After getting home Thursday evening, I mostly stayed in bed until Christmas day morning!!! I tell you, I haven't been this sick in AGES!!! I'm feeling a lot better, but I'm still coughing and snotting. I know what happened, I jinxed myself. A few weeks ago when Sammy and his family were sick, I told him, "don't worry about me, I've got a kick-ass immune system". He told me right then to knock on wood, I just jinxed myself, and damned if he didn't call it!!!

Anyway, apologies for that lapse. Hope you all had a good one!!! Thanks to Lilly and Susan for the merry Christmas wishes. Poor Granny, seems like some of the darkness within has hit her kind of hard, as is understandable during this season. My heart goes out to her.

My boys enjoyed the Christmas festivities, and the living room here still looks a bit like a catastrophic north pole industrial accident. We had originally planned on having Christmas at my parents house on the 24th, but that didn't happen, so they came up here on Christmas day instead. They brought all the gifts, as well as a lot of the food that had been left over from the day before. It was the first food I'd eaten since Thursday, and although I had little appetite and swallowing anything was very painful, it was certainly welcome. My mother and I both got near identical gifts for each other, sudoku puzzle books!!! My dad was thrilled with the custom milled aluminum license plate frame that I made for his Studebaker.

I took Nyquil for the first time that evening. I slept fairly well until about 3:30 the next morning, when I awoke with visions of unsolved sudoku puzzles in my head, and lines from David Gray's "Aint No Love";
'I feel the dampness as it creeps
I hear you coughing in your sleep
beneath a broken window pane....'

Thursday, December 22, 2005

California Christmas

Credit: Genaro Molina
Too funny!!! The sign between 'em says "Don't touch aliens". I suppose a probing is out of the question???

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

I Dream of Michelangelo

Credit: Genaro Molina

Sunday, December 18, 2005

The Boss Man


Here's another picture from Friday's Christmas party. As it was winding down and people were trickling out, Sammy dared me to get the owner to put the yule time hat on. It wasn't a thing to me, I just walked right up to him and asked him to put it on for a picture, and he did without a moment's hesitation!!! It actually came out as a really good picture of him and his wife, I think. Sammy had brought the hat and said we were going to rock-paper-scissors to see who had to wear it to the party. I won, then I asked him "This means I get to wear the hat, right???" LMAO!!!
Here he is with the hat on, as you can see it had no negative effect on his play!!! Don't they look cute together???

Interestingly enough, when it came time to fly the plane later on, we rock-paper-scissored again, and I won again... I don't know if Sammy noticed, but we both did the exact same pattern BOTH TIMES!!! I was stunned that it worked twice!!!

Saturday, December 17, 2005

.... & THAT'S how I ended up a tree at 1:30 in the morning


Well, actually there's a lot more to the story, but yea, I was way up a tree at 1:30 this morning. Last night was the company Christmas party. Since I had to go all the way down into the south bay area to attend, I went in and worked for a while today. Sammy came over before the party started, and we rolled from there together. It was actually a pretty decent party. The food there wasn't that great, and the banquet room reminded me more of a storage room, with bud boxes stacked up in the corner and industrial freezers along one wall. It was interesting, for the most part all the night shift workers were at one table, the day shift workers at another, and the office people at a third. I took a bunch of pictures. Most of the ladies looked really good compared to how they usually look at work. There was one who I couldn't even connect in my mind with someone who works with me.

Sammy went outside to have a smoke with the night supervisor, Lady G, and I came out a bit later and took some rather cozy pictures of the two of them together. He was telling me later that he had been feeling up her ass while they were out there, and that he was thinking that this would have been the perfect evening to hook up with her, being as her husband knew that she was going to be at the party... Now its Sammy's turn to sing perfect situation!!!

We left out of there, and he asked me if I wanted to go to his place, have a couple shots, hang out for a while. That sounded good enough to me, so we headed off that way (we were about 1/3 of the way there from work) and got within a block of his house when he remembered that his truck was still at the shop!!! D'oh!!! Turn around, go back...

Finally we got to his place and after a while he was showing me some of the stuff he'd bought for his Godson for Christmas. One of the things is a remote controlled airplane. Well, as you may have guessed, he got it cuz he wants to play with it!!! We took it out and put it together. I suggest that we take it to the college parking lot to fly, where there's more open space. We got there and flew it a few times. It worked OK, but it has no vertical control, so it crashes fairly regularly. I got to looking around, and there's this 6-level parking structure just a ways over from there. Brilliant idea for more hang time, launch it from the roof of that!!! Sammy stayed on the ground and I sprinted up the steps to the top. I had to piss by the time I got up there, so I got a chance to pee down 6 stories, that was pretty cool. Does that count for wild, impulsive, and possibly illegal??? Or is it just juvenile and disgusting??? Either way, it was pretty cool to shoot an arc out several feet!!! After that I launched the plane, and it flew GREAT from there!!! Sammy was running back and forth trying to stay under it, but eventually it landed in the top of a rather tall bottle brush tree. As I was working my way down the steps a police unit rolled through, but luckily they didn't stop. Sammy helped boost me up into the tree and I was able to free the plane. While I was up there another police cruiser rolled by, but also didn't stop. I guess they didn't pick up on the peeing off the roof part!!! I tell you, I saw no less than 10 police units tonight!!! in spite of that, it was a really fun evening!!!

Friday, December 16, 2005

Contrasts in Burgers

Two of my favorite burger places: Tommy's Burgers and In N Out. Don't ask me which one is better, because I love them both. You poor people east of the Rockies have no idea what you're missing, unless you've ever been out here and tried 'em. The picture is of a couple of Tommy's Burgers, the sloppiest, greasiest, messiest, and tastiest chili burgers you've ever seen!!! The chili absolutely makes these burgers. I always get an order of chili cheese fries with onions whenever I go there, too.

In N Out, on the other hand, has just plain ol' burgers. Their claim to fame is that they use the freshest ingredients, and their slogan is "quality you can taste", and I'm here to tell you, you can taste the quality!!! I don't know what it is about them, but they are some of the best burgers anywhere, bar none. Hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries and shakes are all they make there, but believe me, that's enough. I can't think of a time that I have ever been to one that there hasn't been a line. I remember going to one before they were open once, I'm thinking at 9:45 in the morning or something, and there were already 2 cars in the drive through waiting for them to open!!! Whenever I go there, I order mine "animal style" (with grilled onions).

That's where I went tonight after school tonight, In N Out. My stomach was growling during the finals. Almost 11 when I left out of there, and there was still a considerable line at the counter and at the drive through. I think I did quite well on the final tonight, and the instructor was pretty understanding about my missing items. I don't think I'll get quite as high a score as I did last semester, but I think I'll do well anyhow.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Late Nights

Two nights in a row I've ended up getting home kind of late. Yesterday was understandable, I had an appointment with my orthopedic surgeon that morning, so it was after 10 by the time I got there. Today I had a LONG program to run on my machine. I'd thought the 8000 line ones were sizeable!!! The one I ran today was 310,000 lines!!! I started it just about the first thing when I got there today, and it didn't finish up until after 10 PM.

Tomorrow is the last day of class. Finals. I'm rather unprepared. I was getting my stuff prepped yesterday on my jumpdrive to take into work and print out my projects for the notebook I have to turn in tomorrow. Well, the power went out, and it completely erased all my homework from this semester. Showed my drive as unformatted. I've got all but a couple of the projects already printed, so I'll just explain to the instructor. Or maybe I'll fake 'em at work tomorrow.

I'd wanted to get on here and see what's been going on with my friends' blogs. Doesn't look like I've missed much, except some posts have gone missing. Hope you're all doing well!!!

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Nice Shot

I was out doing some yardwork this afternoon as the sun began setting, early as it does this time of year. Even earlier when you're living back in a canyon!!! The sunset was coming out rather nice, so I went upstairs and got my camera to attempt to capture the moment. Several of them came out pretty good, which worked out well for me. I hadn't updated my wallpaper page this week, so I got a nice one to use for that. It would be nice if there weren't so many power lines criss-crossing the view, but what are you going to do???

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Moon Eyes


My dad and I went to the Moon Equipment car show today. Its really an enjoyable show, there's a lot of cars there that don't have the high dollar look to them, but rather a down and dirty look and LOTS of innovation!!! Wish I'd thought to bring my camera along. One thing I've noticed in the last five years or so, there seem to be a lot more ladies getting into the car scene than when I was younger. A lot of Rockabilly hoochies with tattoos in eye-catching locations!!! I even managed to get the phone number of one little cute brunette!!! OK, truth be told, she had a falcon just like mine that she'd stripped the side trim off from, and was offering it for sale. I know I'm missing a couple of pieces, so I'm going to have to take an inventory and see if she can help me out.

Friday, December 09, 2005

Constent Meyhem

Who says it was just "back then"???

"What did you steal???"


That was the question being posed to listeners on a radio program one morning this week. People were calling in with various thefts, and everything that made it past the screeners was fairly amusing!!! The among various things stolen were a Ronald McDonald statue, an 800 pound bell, the rims off a deadbeat friends' car, and a illegal immigrant crossing sign like this!!! I thought back to another perfect crime committed by myself and my good friend Sean back when I was probably 16 or 17. We, along with some other friends, had gone to a party at a gated condominium complex right across Pacific Coast Highway from the ocean. Even in the 80's those places were probably going for more than a million. It was incredibly boring and lame, we probably didn't stay more than a couple of hours all told. For some reason, we'd left at one point and returned later, I have no idea why. On one of the walks back out to the car, we noticed a sign on the block wall: "Warning: These premises patrolled by armed security patrol" We took that as a challenge I guess, and decided we must have it for our own. It took a little bit of doing to get it unfastened, and then we had to get it out to the car across a busy parking lot shared with a shopping and restaurant complex. It was sizeable. We laid it flat, covered it with our jackets, and carried it out to the car, feigning that it was incredibly heavy. We caught a lot of slick eye, and one person crossing our path said "looks like you've got a live one there!" LMAO!!! He had it hanging in his room for years after that, and then in his car hole.

Now I feel like doing something wild, impulsive, and possibly illegal. I have no idea what, but I'm feeling up for it. I'll keep you posted.

Until such time as that happens, please share your crime and theft stories here, and I shall live vicariously through them!!!

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

We Shall Never Forget

A date which will live in infamy. One of those days that prompts people to say "we shall never forget". I don't know how many people actually remembered that today was Pearl Harbor day. I usually hear something on the radio or television making mention of it, but I didn't hear anything about it today. It was mid-day before I wrote down the date, and I remembered at that point. How many days that we shall never forget are lost in the sands of time???

One of my most vivid memories (being as I was born more than a quarter century later) was a few years back. One of the guys I worked with, Fred, an old, grizzled, crazy looking guy didn't come in that day. His excuse was that he was feeling nostalgic about it being Pearl Harbor day. He was something like 2 or 3 when it had happened.

At least he remembered.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

512!!!


Must have been a lucky day!!!

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Bob's Art

Here's a couple of pictures that Bob the not-often blogger and the crew's unoffical scetch artist did on Friday evening. They needed to be shared, I think he caught our essences quite well!!!

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Perfect Situation

My doctor's appointment went quite well. I got a couple of new prescriptions for my back pain, and I like my new doctor well enough. He's in Glendale, so of course most everyone working there is Armenian. Main thing is he actually is there on Fridays, so I don't need to miss work to see him!!! He wanted to have my blood worked up since its been a few years since I've had that done, and he asked me if I had eaten anything yet that day. I had woken up that morning and showered and got on here and blogged until it was time for me to go, without having had a chance to eat, so there was perfect situation number one!!!

His office is a couple of blocks from the hospital and the surrounding medical buildings. It costs $1 an hour to park in the parking garage there, but the parking at the doctors office is free. I just hoofed it over to the lab by the hospital and saved myself the parking fee, as well as the aggravation of parking there. Perfect situation number two!!! It didn't even rain on me either way, which it did off and on most of Friday.

I got to the lab a little before they took lunch. The guy behind the counter had the same first name as I did, that was interesting. It didn't take them long to get me in there and draw out my blood, which was good because I was very hungry and was needing to pee. After they took my blood, they gave me a cup to go get them a urine sample, I didn't know they were going to want that!!! Perfect situation number three!!!

After doing the shopping and banking and picking up my new prescriptions I came home and was able to chat with Lilly, Granny, and Bob, as well as briefly with an old friend I hadn't seen in a while. The messenger service was messing up at first, but it got better, and we all got stupid and silly. A fun time was had by all

Here's to good
friends!!!



I ended up falling asleep on the couch after I ate some, probably around 11:30 or so. I awoke around 2:30 or 3, and I had all these pics I needed to save before I'd be able to shut down my comp and go to bed. I didn't feel much like it, but I made myself, and by the time I was done I wasn't sleepy anymore. I played some runescape, then noticed Granny was on and chatted her up some. My wife got up at some point to pee and was sure to come out and give me some shit about not having come to bed and being on the comp too much and bla bla bla. Then just hovered over my shoulder for too damned long. Funny how I was just posting yesterday morning how she doesn't like to be touched while she's sleeping and I enjoy the spooning. Doesn't like to be touched, but gives me shit for not being in there next to her, go figure!!!

I got to read the paper and listen to Handel on the Law in peace. Speaking of peace, William Wolf Handel, Esq. has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize!!! That is actually very amusing if you ever listen to his show, he's anything but. They got him nominated just to illustrate how easy it is to do that, in light of the Tookie Williams activists. Long story. I turned Granny onto his show, too.

I updated my Wallpaper page with a great pic I found a while ago with an Aussie kind of theme to it, in honor of our antics last night. WEEEEEEEE OOOOOOOOOO!!!

Later on in the day, I set up a Festivus pole in the front yard. I strung lights around, in breaking with Festivus tradition, but it looks good to me!!! I didn't end up taking a nap as I thought I might end up doing, but I'm about out of steam as I type this. We went to Wally World and got some essentials, as well as taking care of a couple of Christmas presents and a birthday present.

I got home late, but in time to take a couple of pics of the new yard decoration and then catch the crew before they all went off to bed. Lilly and Granny were ripped!!! No one had their cams going, but that may have been a good thing, apparently Granny was nekked and had a bucket in case she needed to piss!!! Lilly was going on about how she had shaved up some, a first for her I believe. It was amusing, but I wish I'd been with 'em longer, as they both went off to bed not long after that.

Oh yes, the title to this post actually refers to the song by Weezer of the same name. I just got that song the other day, and Foo Fighters DOA and wanted to make myself a CD with those on it. I made it, but I spaced out on putting Perfect Situation on it!!! A perfect situation, but not such a perfect disc!!!

Friday, December 02, 2005

How Could It NOT Be Good???


What a good day I had yesterday!!! I've always said any day I get to weld is a good day!!! I actually got up close to "on time" for a change, mostly from having to piss. Naturally I woke up with a pee hard-on. I briefly tried rubbing it up against my wife's ass, but she didn't appreciate that much. Truth be told, she doesn't much like being touched while she's sleeping at all, bad for me because I like nothing better than to spoon. Oh well, you take what ya got, huh??? Too much information??? Well, that's my life!!!

I got to work only a couple minutes after the "official" start time and fired up my CNC. The day before I'd been roughing out a prototype for a frisbee, and something funky had happened to my Z axis. Fixed that up and re-did that (fortunately, it was to the plus side instead of the minus!!!) and then generated a finishing tool path. Poor little small-brain HP about choked trying to do that. 72,000+ lines of code!!! Somewhere in there, Rosa, the other CNC guy's helper (I'm going to need a helper one of these days...) came over and asked if I could do a little welding for her.

Apparently the motor on one of the band saws has been replaced with one that has a smaller drive shaft, and the big wheel had a sleeve welded into the middle to make it fit. Only tacked in four places, though, and it finally gave out. First thing I tried to do was change the tungsten on the welder to the type for welding aluminum. I looked all over and could not find the right parts (collet) to make it work. About the time I was going to give up I saw Sloppy Joe going by and asked him if he'd seen it, and he said no, but he had some brand new ones!!! Good deal!!! Then, since it had been probably close to a year since I'd welded aluminum, I had to try and remember the correct settings. I didn't at first, but finally got it. I had to lay an arc to the thing for the longest time before it would bead up nice, a large aluminum piece like that will soak up the heat thru the whole thing like a sponge!!! When it finally got hot enough, the weld fairly well flowed around the whole edge, making a beautiful weld!!! There's nothing like the feeling of having that little sun of superheated plasma, sheathed in a ball of argon gas, at your fingertips!!! A comment that I've remembered from my high school welding class days, one of the students saying TIG welding is so clean you could weld in a tuxedo. True statement. One of these days I'll have to try that!!!

The L.A. Times had an article on blogging in L.A. that caught my interest. I'd tell more about it, but I have a doctors appointment I must be off to. However, there was one that caught my interest for the words they quoted in the article, Heathervecent. Also caught my interest because she lives in my 'hood. Check out her links on the left side to the cover pictue from the article, now there's some great Hotoggin'!!! I didn't realize that it was her on the picture until I checked her blog. I was considering cropping the picture and using it as my weekly Wallpaper image, but its kind of small. I could dig it out of the trash can and scan it, I guess, I'm still deciding on that. Scanned newspaper sometimes doesn't come out so good.