Happy Hump Day

I had a good day today. I learned how to do 3-D contouring on my CNC, as well as figuring out (once again, I think I'll remember it this time) how to control my machine directly from the PC. Now I'll be able to cut the tool for that double dildo!!! Guess you could say I've got that dildo licked now!!! LOL!!! Now, if our company would just pay up with our supplier so I can get some metal to cut it in....

I was making up a prototype this evening for a frisbee, since I'm now able to do this kind of thing. I'd written a program last Wednesday for the SHAPE of the thing, but didn't have the skills to make a cut-path until today. It makes for a sizeable program, I think something like 20,000 lines.

While I was cutting it, around 5:30, a ball of tape came flying in from behind me. I knew right then: Sammy's back!!! He'd come back in to work on a die, the guy who does some stuff at night who was going to do it called in sick. We talked a while while it was cutting, then I asked him if he was interested getting some dinner chow. He was up for it, so we went to our favorite place, El Tarasco. They've been fixing up the place, painting it, new windows, new block walls in the parking lot, new sign out front, and new menus. They're doing murals on all the interior walls, and its really shaping up. It used to be a weird little hole in the wall place, but its looking nice now. Used to be the place was mostly deserted in the evenings when we'd go there, but it was probably close to 3/4 full tonight. I don't know if that's all attributed to the new decor, but good for them!!! Good for us, too, our usual table was available when we got there!!!

Boring!!!

First day of the week back at work, and damn, it was BORING!!! I had a couple things to do, but not near enough to keep me going for a full ten hours. I was considering taking off and telling them to pay me one of my vacation days (they didn't pay me for the last couple of vacation days I took, after all their paperwork and everything... I didn't say a thing, I didn't need the money and I'll just keep the extra days!!!) One across on the crossword puzzle today: BORING!!!

Around the middle of the day something interesting happened. They brought me out an 18" double dildo vibrator with dual controls in a nice shade of purple!!! They want me to make a tool for it. I'm not completely convinced I'm "up to it", so to speak, but I'll give it a try. I talked to the other CNC operator and asked him how to go about doing it, and he gave me some guidance. I spent the rest of the day design programming the tool, then attempting to generate tool paths for it. The comp I use at my CNC to generate my tool paths with is a weak old HP running what could possibly be the worst operating system ever foisted upon an unsuspecting public, Windows ME. I got it do one end somewhat, but after that it kept crashing the CAD program. I'd try to recover, and it would freeze. I did a couple of re-starts, and eventually the CAD program wouldn't even start. That was the point I said enough is enough, I'm giving it a rest until tomorrow. Ended up shorting myself by ten minutes, but oh well.

I rolled out at 5:12 and was home by 6:15. Not too bad for rush hour. I was actually able to get some chat time in with the balance of my East Side crew, so it was a much better evening than it was a day!!!

Over the weekend, I managed to advance my smithing skill on runescape. I'm now able to smith adamant bars and make them into daggers without first pounding a dwarvian stout (a dark, thick, strong ale). If I do have a dwarvian stout I can make them into axes. I can then sell them for (guess how much!!!) 512 gold pieces!!!

Ends Too Soon

The wonderful four day weekend is drawing to a close. I would rather it not, but that's the way it goes. I really didn't do much of anything, but it was a good nothing!!! I didn't end up going down to my parent's house yesterday, they came back here and picked up my nephew. And hung around here for a LONG time!!! I had about enough of the racket and was getting ready to split to do the grocery shopping, but my wife was saying she wanted to go, too. Then everyone decided they had to eat. Blew most of yesterday with that. Finally got out to shopping, and it was very windy and a little chilly out. Winter has come to Cali!!! I read Serenity's blog, and I can't even imagine living like that.

I feel like I haven't blogged in a while, even though I did manage to get a wordy post yesterday morning. Lilly, don't you worry about saying anything coherent, just the occasional weeeeeeeee ooooooooo to let me know you're there will do fine!!! LOL!!! Seriously, I appreciate any feedback I get from anyone. I always seem to think of things that I want to mention here, but forget when I'm at the keys.

One of those things I had wanted to make mention of here is I discovered how to thwart some anti-piracy measures on a CD. I'd recently gotten a disc that, when inserted into a comp, wants to install some damned software for it to play. The disc is made by BMG, so naturally I was thinking it was one of these Sony-BMG ones with the hidden file installer wherein trojans and viruses can lurk. I went to the Sony site to find out about getting it replaced, and found it wasn't on the list, so I took a closer look. Turns out it was a different software, and all you have to do to get around it is to hold down the shift key to prevent it from auto-playing when you insert it, and you can rip all the tracks flawlessly!!! Wery cool!!!

I was able to get a chance to chat some the last couple nights. Granny was absent both nights. I wonder if she's still adjusting to her new meds??? Lilly had her friend Pearlie there all this weekend, and I think that was just about long enough for her!!! She pointed her cam over towards her bed where she was sleeping, and I snapped a pic, but you really can't see anything, so I'm not going to post it here. Lilly had a new top on that was pretty cool, if I were to post a pic of anything here related to chat it would have been that. Oh yea, she modeled Chat Suit #3 for Bob and I, but once again, I don't think that's one I'd put a pic of here. She also dragged in a new friend she's found who's located between her and Granny (THERE'S a thought to keep ya up at night!!!), and he seemed to fit right in.

I miss blogging

I miss blogging. I miss chatting. Seems like I've had very little free time to either this long weekend. With the notable exception of on Thanksgiving day itself, when I got to chat with Granny, who I taught how to take pics of people's webcams, one of my favorite pastimes!!! So, Kabila's help desk got some action, so to speak. By the way, she's got a new home at Blogger, if you hadn't noticed. Time to do a little more upgrading on my faves page!!!

Thanksgiving was pretty good. We had free range turkey at my sis's house. Not much fat on a free range turkey. We played balderdash for quite a while after that, until it was time to go. If you're not familiar, it has a bunch of cards with bizarre words on one side, and the definitions on the other side. You read the word aloud, then everyone does a secret ballot with a definition on it. They all are read aloud, along with the true definition, and then everyone votes on what they think the true meaning is. You learn a lot of words this way, but after all the different definitions, you're lucky to remember what the real meaning was!!! A few that I remember:

Flapdragon = a game of plucking flaming raisins out of flaming brandy and eating them (at the risk of being burned). Its played around Christmas time, so now you have a fun, pyromaniac activity to try out!!!

Mecock = A henpecked husband. Sounds like it, huh???

Zarp = A South African Policeman. This was one of mine, and I zerped everyone with it!!! It was funny, because everyone on the previous two rounds had been putting in African this and that's, and I read the real definition and no one was buying it!!! My nephew came up with my favorite definition for this one: Slang word used by welders to refer to an arc. Sounds just like it, huh??? Also, reminded me of zerp!!!

Mundungus: Second rate tobacco. I like the sound of that word. You smokers commit that one to memory!!!

My sister also had pumpkin cheesecake for dessert, that was greatly enjoyed by all!!!

Every night except last night this weekend I've fallen asleep uncharacteristically early, and woken up fairly early too. Unusual for me.

Yesterday I tried to participate a little in the black Friday festivities. Staples had a 200 gig hard drive for $29.99 after rebates. I went there after I woke up on my own, ended up being around 9 when I got there. They were already sold out by then. I had to exchange the rental car, too. Got the exact same kind of car again, only silver this time.

Did quite a bit of yard work yesterday, then my parents came up with my niece and nephew, children of my sometimes homeless sister. She was absent at Thanksgiving dinner, first time I remember that ever having happened. She's been on rants with my parents fairly constantly these days, calling them up COLLECT and yelling and screaming at them, making death threats and stuff. My dad wants to update their will to include a Menendez clause, not a bad idea. No telling when that will happen, so I made a voice recording of him stating that this is his intention.

We took all the kids to see the DWP's Light Festival in Griffith Park, an annual tradition for us, but my parents and niece and nephew had never been. We had my nephew spent the night last night, he's always wanted to do that. I hope it was everything he hoped for. I've got to take him back later on today. I'm hoping I can stop by and visit with my good friend Sammy a little while I'm down there. We hardly ever get to hang out any more. This morning I updated my wallpaper page, and now here I am updating my blog. Hopefully I'll be able to chat some tonight!!!

Amazing Gourd!

Since the trend of late seems to be "theatre of the absurd", figured I'd post this picture I took over the weekend. My aunt grew this wild gourd, and gave it to my mother. Why is it that gourds just put you in the mood for Thanksgiving???

Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends!!!

Enough Said

I have no idea...
What do you think?

The Snowball Effect

Well, I got the flapper to fix up my toilet downstairs today anyway. Put it in, and all was good... except the water was flowing VERY slow into the tank.... nothing unusual, but I figured while I was there I'd see if I could do anything about that too. Bad idea. I went to see if I could crank the valve for it open some more, and twisted the pipe right out of the damned wall!!! Way inside the wall. Of course, I couldn't find a proper wrench to shut the water off in a hurry. I ended up with a very moist floor down there once again.

Not having the tools or inclination to attempt the repair myself, I called Nate the plumber. He was on his way to another call, but said he'd come over as soon as he was done, probably around 4. At 5 I called him again, and he was on his way. Within 30 seconds, he showed up. He busted the wall open, and everything wasn't too corroded in there, so he was able to get it fixed fairly easily. Well, easy for him!!!

After that, I came back in and turned this on and discovered that Granny had been attempting add hyperlinks on her blog. Shout outs for Kabila's help desk!!! At first it was kinda messed up. We messed with it for a while, and got her code all cleaned up. I don't know why it gave her such a hard time, but it wouldn't let her post it once it was corrected. Something about not having a properly closed hyperlink. After much messing around I finally sent her a copy of Frontpage Express to do her linkin' in that instead. She was going "what, I could have done it like that from the beginning???" I replied, "well, if you didn't HAVE Frontpage Express, no!!!"

Happy Saturday!!!

Happy Saturday!!! Once again, I had an amusing time with Lilly and Granny, as well as Pearlie and Bob and Joey last night in chat!!! Lilly was getting a lot of shit about how her webcam had a lot of glare because she's so, well, lilly white!!! She came up with a way to take some of the glare off with a bit of heavy make-up. Daps (her baby boy kitty) was just a little leery of her with that on her face. He usually lets her kiss him right on the nose, but he wouldn't let her with all that on her face!!! See the picture where he's pushing her away??? That cat has such a personality!!! While we were chatting, Lilly got a phone call from Suzanne from Cat Shit Mountain, VA. That is always entertaining!!! While Granny was taking a piss, Bob made up a sketch of her nether regions!!! I swear, we're such a bunch of crazy asses!!! Granny is on a whole bunch of new meds, so she was a little out of it, much quieter than normal. As long as it works for her, that's good. As you can tell, I was clicking away with the old print screen key!!! The only thing that was kind of a bummer was that everyone went off to bed kind of early. And I'd gotten my drink on already!!!

Its really nice weather here. Quite dry, so it dries out your lips and sinuses, but very pleasant. I don't have a lot of plans for the day, but I think I'll do a little yard work, as well as picking up a new flapper for the basement toilet. My wife wants to go out to get some meat at a restaurant today, she's doing that Atkins diet. She was doing the Sacred Heart diet with some results, but then she changed to this one. She goes on about how much she's losing, but I notice that when I get on the scale, it weighs me about 20 pounds lighter than what I weigh at the doctor's office and the freight scale at work!!! Oh well, as long as she's losing, its all good. There's a party for one of the guys at work tonight, but I don't feel much like going really. I'd rather hang out with my crazy ass 'net buds!!!

I've already done some of my normal weekend stuff. I updated my weekly Wallpaper page, did the sudoku puzzle in the paper, and am listening to Handel on the Law on the radio. And, of course, I'm making a post (mostly about nothing) on my blog!!!

On My Own Time

I got to thinking today about how my attitudes about time have changed. My work always runs two shifts, from 6 AM to 4 PM, then 4 PM to 2 AM. Four days a week, Monday thru Thursday, although it often is more than that. I've gotten into the bad habit of hitting that damned snooze bar too many times (usually after staying up too late blogging or some damned thing) and by the time I hit the road, the freeways are pretty clogged and I end up even later getting in. However, I haven't had much of any negative feedback about it, they don't seem to care so long as I get my hours in. Usually I end up with around two hours of overtime most weeks.

Just about a year ago I broke the middle finger of my left hand. Its still not back to its full strength and flexibility, but its healing. While my hand was in a splint I couldn't wear a watch. Up until that time, I'd worn a watch most every day since I was in school. Suddenly, I found I was having to look around for clocks. Of course, my phone has a clock built in, so I can usually fall back on that if I care. Thing is, I don't!!!

After years of having to be somewhere at sometime, I've largely began running on my own schedule. I have very few obligations that absolutely NEED to be at a specific time for. I eat when I'm hungry. I go to bed when I'm tired. I wake up when I'm tired of listening to the damned snooze alarm. I find this to be very liberating, and has reduced the stress that I've felt in the past where I've felt like I'm rushing all the time.

My body rhythms seem to run towards the nocturnal. I could probably get them to let me work something like noon until 10 PM, but I'm not sure I'd like that too much either.

I realize that I'm fortunate to be able to live my life like this. While I look forward to getting a better paying job in the future, I dread having to go back on a regimented schedule, as well as having to work five days a week.

There are some of my recent thoughts. Here's another picture of my baby. She's a goodurn!!!

Getting as Serious as I Get, Part 2

Know how I made mention here about how if I was going to get serious about photogging I'd have to get a tripod??? Well, I didn't do THAT, but I did remember I had a fairly versatile base I'd made up for my dad that he didn't end up using that he gave back to me. It has a spherical part about the size of a handball, on a square base. It has a knob on the side that you can loosen and rotate a shaft on the top, or rotate, or tilt up to 90 degrees. I had mounted it to a larger wooden base, with a rubber pad on the bottom. I took that and my camera into work today, because last night there was a pretty nice sunset and I'd wanted to take a pic. I snapped several on the drive in, some of which came out semi presentable. Well, when it got to be sunset time, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and therefore no dramatic sunset. I guess its the old watched pot syndrome. Later on I went out, and the near full moon has a thin wisp of a cloud looped lazily around it!!! I took a ton of pictures, messing with all the settings with it set on the roof of my car. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but you get the idea I think. The stand or whatever you call it worked quite well. Likely a conventional camera would have been able to get better results. I remember last month when the moon was at this stage... Ah, memories!!!

Made decent progress on the second tool today. All the metal I'd ordered yesterday was going to be ready first thing this morning. I told our crack shipping department yesterday, and he said no problem. He was also going to pick up a board we'd had made in a rush last Thursday, which was ready that afternoon. Big rush, and they can't get someone out there to pick it up!!! Anyway, long story short, I didn't have material to start in on the latter part of the tooling until after 4:00. I only have a little more to do on my part tomorrow, and the other guy still has ALL of his part to do!!! Better him than me!!!

Of course, the machine they're putting in to run this job still isn't quite ready to go. I'm guessing most of tomorrow to go still.

I took a few pics of my machine running, too. I like this one of the control panel!!!

Surprise!!!

Ever notice how when you go to leave a message on someone's phone your IQ seems to drop to about half the normal level??? I wonder if that's because when you're actually talking to someone they reply before you can get too stupid??? There's my random rave for the day...

I had a couple surprises today at work. Remember how I kept going on about the tool I made last week not having a machine big enough to fit it??? Well, when I got in today, there was a different machine in the place of the first one!!! It looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Of course, it was nowhere near ready to start making product on yet. A bit later, I was talking to one of the machine operators (I think the only one still there from when my old company was bought by these jokers 5 years ago) and he asked "isn't that the machine you guys used to have at the old place???" Yes, that was it!!! The owner of the old place had picked it up (probably for next to nothing, she is a very shrewd businesswoman) and it was sitting in our plant for probably 4 or 5 years, never got hooked up or anything. Only thing it got used for was when one of our lines would break down it would get parts stolen off it. I spoke briefly to Sloppy Joe AKA Messy Marvin and made mention of that to him, and he said yea, it was missing a lot of parts. Ironically, they yanked a bunch of them off the line that they took out.

The next surprise came a while later on. The plant manager came up to me while I was taking my break and tells me they want to make another tool, exactly like the one I made last week!!! I thought he was joking at first, they aren't even running the one I made!!! No, they're actually going to have another company start to form the parts too!!! It amazes me that we can actually pay someone else to run our jobs and still make money. Even more amazing is that the customer we're selling it to is doing a little processing on it, then selling it to the actual customer, and from there it goes to retail!!! A lot of fingers in that pot, tell you what.

Interestingly, I had a dream this morning where my wife had gone into business selling frozen foods, and that's pretty much how she was doing it, buying from a supplier and selling to a retailer. I was asking her how could she possibly be making much doing that, and she was showing me the figures. Guess I've been around that kind of thing long enough to see plenty of people doing just that. All you need is a phone, a warehouse and a calculator with a markup key!!!

Got another hit on Wheres George, putting my numbers at an interesting place. I have 333 bills that have been hit, and, with multiple hits on bills, a total of 369 hits. I thought that was pretty wild.

The Handy Man

Its been a busy day for Aye!!! No, not really busy, but I did get alot done.... I installed sound cards on three computers today and now the place is full of sound!!! The one I put in mine is a Creative Media Sound Blaster 512 that I picked up on Ebay for just a little more than that!!! None of them seem any different than the other, but with that number I had to have it in my computer!!! After that I went down to the basement to work on some backed up plumbing down there. It was the strangest thing, the only thing that would cause it to leak was running water in the kitchen sink. That would cause it to back up through this broken T that used to be for a sink in the bathroom down there. Its in a bitch of a spot or I would have the wall torn out there and replaced it by now. I tried the shower stall down there, and it was draining real slow too, so I figured it was blocked around there. I used this amazingly effective little tool made by GT Waters, called the drain king. You screw it onto the end of a garden hose and shove it down the drain pipe a ways. It blows up like a balloon and lodges in there, then it does a bunch of high powered pulses of water down the pipe. It opened up the shower drain in no time, but the kitchen sink still backed up the pipe and overflowed at the break. I had to go in through the clean out plug outside and shove about 8 feet of hose down it. Turned on the juice and the drain king did its thing. Problem fixed!!! Only thing is the hose and the drain king were filthy with black greasy slime when I pulled them out, I had to spend a while cleaning it off. After all that I got out my pruners and bypass shears and trimmed back growth by the street. My oldest helped cutting stuff back by the driveway. We mostly filled up both of the greenery trash cans.

Back to my computer, and I had offline messages from Granny, calling out for Kabila's Help Desk!!! Apparently Lilly, who's been house and cat sitting for her sister must have had too much fun with us all last night on her sis's comp, cuz when she went to start it up today it went into one of these continuous re-boot loops, and it'd run but the video comes on but wouldn't stay on and all kinds of stuff. It wouldn't boot in safe mode, wouldn't come on in BIOS setup modes, nothing!!! I've seen this kind of thing before, most recently with my son's comp. I also at one point saw the same problem with Granny's comp. I strongly suspect a fucked up boot sector, and of course its not booting far enough that it'll even hit the CD drive so you can attempt to re-install. My suggestion was to format a hard drive (I'm pretty sure Lilly has at least one extra viable hard drive around she could do that with, but naturally it was back at her place) and do a clean install on it. After that, put the original back in as a slave and copy off all the illegal music and movie downloads you've got on it, as well as all your porn. If it works. I give it a 68% chance of working. Kabila's Help Desk, where we're not really that much help!!! If that doesn't work, probably a new motherboard and processor are in order. Of course, at that point its probably a toss up between doing that and just springing for a new comp to replace a four year old one. Likely more money, but a lot less headache!!!
That was Granny last night!!! LMAO!!! We had a time, so we did!!! I also got to reunite with an old friend from back in the Pow Wow days!!! That was very cool. East side was up until 2, and I blogged a bit after that and played some Runescape until I was up after 2 myself!!! Granny was falling asleep on us at the end, I buzzed her and she woke up looking around, "huh??? What what???" It was a lot of fun. I discovered something pretty cool, I can connect my MP3 player to my comp speakers and use it to DJ while I've got my headphones plugged in. The headphones plug in to the USB port, and while they're plugged it it defaults all the sound through them. I did that to play a song or two, and it just kept rolling the hits!!! Oh, and poor Lilly had gone out with her friend to go to a club, and they wouldn't let her in because she was wearing tennis shoes!!! It was good that she had fun with us when she came back from that anyway. Then she has the troubles with her sis's comp and can't even play with us tonight... Hope your weekend had some other bright points that I just haven't heard, girl!!!

Get out and take your damned Sacajawea dollars witch ya

I failed to mention, I bought gas after school last night because the station by the college has it fairly consistently for about eight cents less than everyplace else. I'd bought a little a couple days before cuz I was getting low, so it was still half full and didn't take that much. When I went in for my change, the guy gave me two fives and two Sacajawea dollars. Not that I'm opposed to Sacajawea dollars, but you can't enter 'em on Where's George, one of those things I do (I've entered more than $25,000 there since I started in April 2003, and had 368 hits so far; 9.25% rate in case you wondered) Oh well, not a big deal to me, but the mere fact of getting those Sacajawea dollars reminded me of a Simpsons episode. Homer and Comic Book Guy are going into Moe's, and Homer is telling him that if he wants to make friends, Moe's is the friendliest place in the rum district. Immediately following that, they enter and Moe has a shotgun pointed at a customer.

Cue Moe: "Get out and take your damned Sacajawea dollars witch ya. I'll give you till three" (he cocks the shotgun as the guy starts to run). "One." (he pulls the trigger)

LMAO, the things I remember!!!


In other interesting developments, after my post I did two ago "What do you do? " I read this as my horoscope for the day:

Study your setbacks, as embarrassing as they may seem. Everyone has made mistakes - at least yours were made out of the goodness of your great, big, trusting, naive heart.

I just kind of tripped when I read that!!! I've yet to have a chance to beg forgiveness again on that, the time I tried it was not well received, as you may have gathered from reading that blogstrosity. Granny, it wasn't exactly that a case of 'I'm Sorry' just doesn't seem to be enough for some people so much as it wasn't well received, as though there was doubt to my sincerity. Thats why the wording of that particular part of that post. I appreciate both of ya's words of encouragement regarding that, by the way, thanks.

Oh yea, sorry about the word verification bullshit, but I've about had it with the blogspam comments some ppl put up there. I'd grant you an exemption if that were doable. Please don't let that discourage you from commenting.

I am, however, enjoying modifying words with blog!!! Blogfoolery, blogstrosity, blogspam..... could you call Haunted Beauty's blog a fuckblog??? Feel free to if you like, but I don't think so exactly, but its got some of that in there. I do like her style!!! Come on, you know me, thought I wouldn't???

Up A Foot!!!

Upon my arrival at work this morning my good friend Sammy greets me and asks "how's it hanging???" Now, what is an appropriate response to such a question??? Without missing a beat, I responded "up a foot!!!" You do the math. It had the desired effect, Sammy looked at me as if I'd lost my mind and had no idea how to respond, much less what I was even talking about!!! I went into the office right after that to make a copy, and one of the office girls says, "good morning, how are you doing???" I was THIS CLOSE to using the same response on her!!! Decided that that would be completely inappropriate!!!

I had a pretty decent today, I think I might be feeling a little better after my last posting. Therapeutic, in a way. I just hope my apologies are accepted, you know what I mean if you've read it.

I had worked 13 hours yesterday finishing off the tool I've been making all week, and it almost came out good... I had it flipped over drilling vacuum holes, and on the last one of 147 something went awry... I have no idea exactly what happened, but it broke the drill bit, drove it out the other side of the tool, and the drill chuck kept coming down until it was embedded about 1/4 inch into the tool and the motor had overloaded. Well, that's what epoxy is for I guess, but that kind of bummed me out.

Now, on to more blogfoolery!!! There's my contribution to the English language, and once again, if you've read some of the stuff out there I'm sure you know what I mean!!!

I was cleaning up the tool and drilling the rest of the vacuum holes on it today and I thought of a pretty lame joke that only a machinist type would get: What did the machinist name his daughter??? Colette!!! OK, dialing 1-800-WHY-THATS-FUNNY for all you non-machinists, on mills the part that holds the cutter is called a collet... OK, that's pretty bad.... OK, what did the machinist name his son??? Chuck!!! OK, if you didn't get that, re-read the last part of 2 paragraphs up... I told Sammy both of those, with an interval of a couple minutes in between, and it elicited a rollen of the eyes!!! Mission Accomplished!!!

Lilly, I didn't have a comment at the time you did you Australia post, but now I have a down under connection to throw out for ya!!! Steve Irwin was in town the other day I hear (after the fact, of course!!!) discussing that he will make an attempt at snagging Reggie the 'gator from Machado Lake this spring. I know its very close to where I work and I should have made it by there to rubberneck some, but so far I haven't. Well, if Steve Irwin is going to be out there, just let me know when the media circus is in town!!! Also, I had gotten to thinking I should grab my parents photo album of their Australia trip and scan some of the pics. My father is quite the photog, too.

Speaking of photogging, I took some shots tonight. It was supposed to rain all day yesterday, but it only did a little. Then, it was supposed to rain hard and heavy all day today and tomorrow (later today???) but it was actually a beautiful day most of the day. By the time I got out of class, the rain had started to fall. (There was a crew out in the parking lot running a backhoe in the rain. You know what a backhoe is??? A ho that take it in the back doe', LMAO!!! Blogfoolery) I didn't rain in any serious fashion, and by the time I got home the moon was shining through the clouds, and it was looking good!!! I broke out my cam and took several shots. Never thought I'd be saying this about my point and shoot digital camera, but I think I need to get a tripod if I'm going to keep doing this kind of thing.


Speaking of taking pictures, that reminds me of the first time I saw Niblet. After reading Lilly's recent post and Granny's comment, I remembered my first impressions and confusion, and I can say that I don't really understand much more!!! Pretty funny, though, and quite amusing!!! My initial impression of Niblet (link removed per Lilly's request) was something like this: " I've never gotten the whole story straight on 'em, but apparently he's Lilly's bastard child , and Granny has been raising him, this being the actual first time Lilly has actually seen him since his birth. Granny left him there for Lilly to raise now. Did I get that right, ladies??? Having only fragments of the whole story is SOOO confusing!!!" You're not really missing much, they weren't exactly great pictures of Niblet... had some fairly decent ones of Lilly and Granny, though.

What do you do?

What do you do... when you do something for someone with the best of intentions, from the heart, no ulterior motives... but without actually using your head and thinking things through and realizing that it really wasn't the best idea???

Apologize, beg forgiveness. Yea. Talk is cheap. Even if you mean it, it may not SOUND convincing to them, and maybe even not to yourself.

Feel remorse. Of course, if you've thought things through after the fact it probably led to your remorse. And if you've apologized, and mean the apology, it probably stemmed from your remorse.

Ponder the error of your ways. Dwell, obsess, whatever you call it. I try not to do this one so much, because it is largely a futile exercise. But usually you are powerless to completely avoid it.

Try to come up with a way to make up for it. Great idea, doesn't always work tho. Not truly effective either, because it does nothing to undo events that have transpired.

Go onward wiser, and learn from your mistake.

If, ever in the future the planets align in such a way that you are in the same situation again, use your head for a change and do the right thing this time.


OK, Y'all take a picture, this is about as serious as I ever get on here yo

My Abbreviated Weekend

Take a look at that plant!!! Isn't that wild??? Have you ever seen a plant with square leaves like that before??? Looks like something Dr. Seuss would come up with or something!!! What possible advantage could there be to having square leaves like that??? We've had the plant for maybe 4 months or so now, and it just recently sprouted the flowers on the ends of the stalks. I really like that plant cuz its so weird, and it does well with very little care. I was out doing yardwork today and decided I needed to share some pictures of it here, so you can all love my crazy square plant!!!

Work went well enough for having to work on my day off yesterday. 5 1/2 hours of overtime. The owner came up and asked me if I could work today or tomorrow, too. I politely declined. He's stressing about the job that we have no machine tooling to mount it to. I made mention of that to him. I finished off the top half of the tool I was working on. The results were completely satisfactory. Now all I have to do is flip it over and have my baby drill 216 holes in the bottom, then machine a simple vacuum manifold into it. Already have the programs written. Did I make mention that I generated the programs for the next tool while I was at school the other night, using Surfcam!!! Looks like the code came out clean and tight compared to the bullshit that Bobcad comes up with.

Got up this morning and was wanting to do a post on here, but it didn't seem to be working. Updated my Wallpaper page instead, a little tie in with Lilly's first reading post that she had a week or so ago, which if you didn't catch, you've missed. Then, while I had my HTML editor open, I messed around with re-doing my home page. I have a little HTML page of my favorites links stored on my hard drive that I've got set as my home page. Needed to update it because I've got all these blogs that I have bookmarked that I needed to add to it!!! My old home page had a kind of bright background with pale polka dots, and I changed it to a darker, lightly gridded background with some purple squiggles. Fancied up the text colors on it some, too. I'm pleased with the results.

I'm amazed at how well my youngest has done with his potty training!!! It doesn't seem like its been that long since we started with him, and he's really almost got it completely perfect!!! The part that really amazes me, though, is that he is staying dry all night now!!! We weren't even working on that with him, but he seems to have picked it up anyway. My oldest is just barely getting to that point himself. I blame genetics, I was a bed wetter until I was much older myself. Still have an accident occasionally, come on, who doesn't??? LOL, no, not really.

Meet Marvin

We have a new maintenance guy at work. His name is Joe, he's an older guy and seems at least semi-competent. Only thing is, he leaves crap all over the place, wherever he's been working, which is mostly the whole plant!!! Just about everyone has noticed this and commented on it. While I was working the other day, I was thinking about him and remembering that old commercial that had the kid 'Messy Marvin'. Later on that night Sammy came in to do a little change over on a job, and we went out for some tacos at our normal place (there's a funny story I'll have to share about the first time we went there sometime). I told him how I was thinking about that, and that Joe's new nickname could be Marvin. He was amused by the idea. The next day I was looking for Joe and I asked Sammy if he'd seen Marvin. He knew exactly what I meant. Today Sammy came up to me and tells me "We've been overlooking the obvious, we don't need to call him Marvin. 'Sloppy Joe' is perfectly fitting!!!"

Sammy went for his first flying lesson last Friday. He did quite well, and was pretty buzzed about it all the way through until at least Monday. That's pretty cool.

I was cutting my next tool on my CNC today. Using the Bobcad software I've got on my machine tends to make a somewhat fucked up tool path. Oh well, gets the job done, and I'm learning a lot more of actual editing of the code this way. The owner came by and was watching it go. I asked him what he thought, and he replied that it beat doing it manually. I agree. Then I asked if he didn't think that I was deserving of a raise since I'm now a CNC programmer, set up guy, and operator. He said "we'll see". It's been a while since I've gotten anything, so I suspect that I will be seeing something anyway. Probably less than I'd really like, but half of something is better than all of nothing. At any rate, I just am glad that I'm doing this type of work now. I'll just get some time of experience in then take my mad CNC skillz elsewhere, hopefully with a less hellish commute, if I'm not reasonably compensated. He asked if I could come in tomorrow, he's stressing a bit about a couple of jobs in the works. One of which we have none of the necessary equipment for the machines to actually produce parts off. Not my concern!!! Not especially looking forward to going in, but it should be an easy day *knock on wood* as I've got the whole job already programmed. All I have to do is feed the program in and baby sit it while it does the hard work. I'll carry my phone with me and play games and text people while I'm sitting. Not that I ever get replies to my texts, but oh well. No love for Aye. Double-Ott slugs, no love, straight thugs.


Got a different rental car again this week. There was some sort of safety recall going on with the Maliboomer, so they wanted it back. Now I'm rollin in a Kia again. A lot nicer than that first piece of tin shit they rented me at first. It's an Optima with a V-6, I think the same powerplant as the Hyundai had, but the whole car seems a bit smaller all around. It has 4 wheel discs and a few power doodads. No remote entry, no power antenna, no driving lights, no sunroof.... but those are the only things that seem to be missing. It has a great color, a deep cobalt blue. So far I like it. I've got to get some legal going on this, it's taking far too long.

No Rockstar for me tonight. Being as I have to work tomorrow, I got a different drink tonight. Its called Fuse, and it has all kinds of vitamins and minerals in it, but not all the caffeine and amphetamines that Rockstar has. Fairly tasty, I could drink it again. I still feel fairly awake, but I know I must get my ass to bed.