NEW TOYS!!!

Well, one new toy anyway!!! I picked myself up a little MP3 playa today after work. It was on sale for only $49.99, and had the one function that was pretty high on my list, the ability to record. It's only 512mb, but 512 is cool with me!!! It's tiny, just a little bigger than a bic lighter, and has a bunch of cool stuff it does. If you have a .lrc file to go with your MP3 or WMA file, it'll display the lyrics to the song as it plays. You can store any type of file on it as a flash drive. You can make phone number and address lists to display on it (in case you lose all the info in your cell phone, I guess). Took me a while to figure it out, because the one forward-backward slider it has also doubles as a push button. I'm very pleased with it, now that I've got it figured out tho. Main reason I'd wanted to get a recorder of some sort is because of the Counting Crows and Hollywood Bowl Orchestra concert I've got tickets for near the end of this month. I also picked up a network card there too, because they were only 99 cents, and you can never have too many network cards. Well, actually, I guess you could. In fact, I'd only need about 2 or 3 more to have too many!!!

They had a guy come in and work on my CNC last Friday, and he replaced the inverter bleed element that had heated up the one time the power had gone out, and declared everything to be fine. I turned it on when I got a chance this morning, and the screen still came out blasted with pixels. Seems like the guy had it running, he got the table all centered up and everything. I kept messing with it, but had no luck. The other CNC operator went in and moved things around inside later and got it going. He says to just not shut it down, just turn off the video and activate the emergency stop button. Seems like the wrong way to deal with it to me, but we'll see.

Oh Yea

I forgot in my post (as if it wasn't long enough) I did my typical weekend thing and updated my Wallpaper page this morning, and I know I always say this, but you GOTTA check it out this week!!! It's an AWESOME picture!!! I found it while I was looking for some clouds to use as a background for the flying page I was making for Sammy, and found it. It was taken by Steven Pinker from Harvard's Department of psychology. He's got a bunch of pictures posted there, and tell you what, that boy has some mad photog skillz!!! I highly recommend you check the rest out, if you are a photographer or enjoy great pictures!!!

The Latest and The Greatest

It's been an eventful few days, and boy have I missed my blog!!! LOL!!! Thursday I went back to work and tried my machine, still busted. I ended up cutting the final cut with a manual mill, it came out OK (which reminds me, I took a couple pics... now I'm gonna have to post 'em so you all can see) Installed it on the machine it's going on, and it went on like it was made for it!!! LOL!!!

Anyway, I was feeling pretty good about it, the parts fit in nicely and stuff. Then I started fixing the machine up (it was missing the wheels off the trays) and cleaning them up some (the whole thing was filthy) and put the sealing jigs on. Well, surprise!!! With the wheels on it, they're too tall to fit the parts under the head!!! Actually, they'd make it under BARELY but then they'd get stuck in the clearance holes!!! So I'm looking at it, and the maintenance guy is fixing the timer (the head would go down and not go back up) and decide to make a spacer under the cylinder to boost it up a little. Trying to take it apart, I see that it's got a sleeve that threads up into the cylinder, so I start screwing it up in there to shorten it up. It doesn't work, I don't know why. The customer they'd told he could pick it up at noon. I kept saying in response, "that's interesting" LOL!!! He showed up and saw what was happening and says he'll go for lunch and come back in a couple hours. Oh yea, the day before the owner had given me a drawing that he needed modified, he wanted by afternoon the next day. My bud Rafael found me at some point in there and says the owner had been looking for me about the drawing. I told him to tell him so sorry, its gonna be Monday. About 10 minutes later the owner and the sales guy come over and starts going on (nicely) about how he really needs to get this drawing to the customer. I (grubby up to my damned elbows) tell him, OK, you take over here!!! He gets a look at the situation and sends me away to draw. About 10 minutes later the salesman comes over and asks me to go take a look at what the owner's doing, cuz he didn't think he was doing it right!!! LOL!!! I was very amused!!! Anyway, I got back to the machine a while later, and end up deciding we need to extend and boost the whole top end up, and make up these adapter plates and bolt 'em on. The customer comes back, and he's helping out, too. He was just about the nicest guy, and he needs to get it back to their plant in Mexico so they can pack out 4000 pieces for in the morning. O yea, I learned a new word in Spanish, "Chiconada", which is doing something improperly but so it works, I think it's a similar connotation as "nigger rigging". I was taking off these springs and ended up launching the wrench about five feet in the air!!! We were trying to slide the jig trays under the head at one point to put things back together and activated the cylinder and kinda smashed the side of one of my fingers, and got the middle finger of the customer bad enough to bust his fingernail. Anyway, ended up not getting out of there until after 9 at night, missed class. But I did manage to get the machine going right!!!

The next day was Sammy's birthday, and as I said here before, I took him flying with my nephew. He declared it his best birthday ever, so I guess you'd call that a success!!! I got him some memory for his comp and installed it, he's now officially a 512'er!!! I took a bunch of pics, and put them on his computer, then re-sized some of them and uploaded him to his newly opened geocities site, and tried to put together a page for him, but the MS Frontpage it comes with is nothing like the one I'm used to. I could have done better just text coding it!!! I took and made a page this morning and mailed it to him with explicit instructions on how to upload it, but so far he hasn't. So, I uploaded it to mine because you all gotta see it, you can check it here. I wrote it from his perspective, but I think it's pretty accurate. After that, we went, along with his brother, to the go-cart place we'd gone to for my birthday. But, when we were signing in the desk guy asks Sammy if he's been drinking (guess the smell tipped him off) and he answered honestly, so the guy sent us packing. We went bowling instead, three games. We played for 5 cents a pin, and I ended up taking the first game, think I got 119. That's close to my best score!!! I shall not go into detail of the next two games, but suffice to say my game went downhill. It was a really fun day!!! Sammy kept going back and looking at the pictures, he was just beside himself. He wants to get his license now!!!

Granny, you gotta check out my response to Lilly's Saturday post, I'm sure you'll be amused!!! You have such trouble with your colors!!! Don't take it so hard!!!

What a Day!!!

Indeed, what a day!!! I'm so glad to finally be home!!! I got to work today and started in on machining a head for a sealing machine. I wrote a program for it yesterday, but it was too big to fit in my CNC's meager memory. I tried to DNC (I think that stands for direct numerical control) feed it the program, but it wasn't working right. First attempt I've made to do that. Well, this morning I wrote two new programs for it, only cutting half at a time. They came out small enough to work, around 1,300 lines each, which isn't really that big of a program. By way of contrast, this very page probably takes up more kilobytes than the simple text program I'd written. Cut the first half, and it came out smashingly!!! I was pleased. Then, with the help of the other (guess you'd call him the senior) CNC programmer-operator, tried DNC'ing the second half. Didn't work. I loaded it in the memory and started cutting it, and it came out good, too. Oh yea, it still does the
INVERTER FAULT
INVERTER FAULT
INVERTER FAULT
INVERTER FAULT
INVERTER FAULT
INVERTER FAULT
INVERTER FAULT
INVERTER FAULT
INVERTER FAULT
thing if you don't shut down and re-start the machine in between. Wrote two more programs to do final clean-up cuts on both cavities with smaller cutters. Other CNC guy remembers something else on DNC'ing and we tried that, once again it doesn't work. I cut the first one normal, then try to do the second one. The tool changer goes to change to the appropriate cutter, and it sticks in the changing position!!! Keyboard and everything freezes up. I re-start it again, and now my video screen doesn't come on right, its all blasted with pixels. Shut down and pull the video cards and re-seat 'em, and it works, tool changer retracts, all seems well.
Except
It thinks that it has tool 1 in the spindle, when I can clearly see it's got tool 2 in there!!! I pop tool 2 out, and give it the command to change to tool 2, and the changer crashes the spindle into the side of tool 1 that's really still hanging in the changer!!! GRRRRRR!!! Eventually I got it straightened out, after I took a break and ate some lunch, and let everything cool down. Cut the final cut and was happy once more. Flipped the plate over to cut a little groove in the back, the final finishing touch, and once again the video won't work right!!! Messed with it for a while, then left it cooling once more and came back around an hour later. Still didn't work. Fuck it, that's enough for the day.

Left just a bit after 7, and I swear traffic was worse tonight than last night when I left at 5:30!!! Bunch of assholes out on the road, of course, too. Had 2, almost 3 cars change lanes as if I wasn't even there!!! Maybe a white car is just too invisible. I'll keep you posted.

Got another hit on Where's George when I checked my E-mail. Always cool when that happens. This one was from Nacogdoches, Texas, one year and 79 days after I'd entered it. That makes 347 total hits!!! Lucky number 347!!!

SAMMY'S BACK!!!

Actually, he never left, but you all gotta see this!!! He's been feeling flu-ish for a few days, so his mom applied this ancient Asian remedy, you may have heard of the stuff (I had), Tiger Balm. If you haven't heard of it, its similar to Vicks vapo-rub. The part I hadn't heard of is this method of application. Apparently, you take a coin (or they sell a coin-on-a-stick implement for this) and vigorously rub it into the skin, and it helps to open the pores and draw out toxins and stuff. He showed me this morning and I was amazed!!!

WOW!!! He also had some on his chest, you can check that here. Guess it worked, he said he was feeling 100% better this morning. Purely psychosomatic, I'm sure.

The car rental company called me yesterday. They wanted their Hyundai back. That was really a nice car!!! I especially enjoyed the sunroof, I had it open most of the time I was driving it!!! Now I've got a Malibu, I'll give my full report on it later, but so far it seems pretty good. The engine is snarlier, and has more torque I can tell, and it has a couple of other nice touches the Hyundai didn't. One I especially like is the radio continues playing until you exit the car, very cool!!! The timing was pretty good too, I was preparing to send a certified letter to Infinity insurance asshole adjustors' supervisor, now I've got another receipt to send along. Next stop after that will be the courthouse, I think.

Seems like there was something else I wanted to blog about, but damned if I can remember it!!! Oh well!!!

Home Again

Back already from my camping!!! It was good. Could have stayed another night, but I had to get back to my blog!!! I want to camp some more, fortunate I bought the annual wilderness pass so I'm good to go. Bonehead move, I forgot to bring flashlights and coat hangers for marshmellows!!! Fortunately my dad and nephew came up, late but not too late, and they had extra flashlights and marshmellow forks. We hiked up to the falls today, then up a fire road.

A really good weekend so far!!! And I got to come back and shower off the camping yuck feel, and catch up with my loved ones online!!!
Life is good!!!

Hey everybody!!! I gotta get going but I had something exciting happen this morning!!! My youngest took his first dump in the toilet!!!

There he goes!!! OK, see if my HTML junk works OK in here or what, I've noticed mistakes before and have yet to figure out how to edit stuff on here.

I also updated my wallpaper page this morning. Pretty cool picture from the L.A. Times, I used yellow text to go with their yellow journalisim!!! Last night at class I set Highway None, a previous selection, as my wallpaper and the teacher came to help me with printer problems and was tripping on it.

Damnit Lilly I wanna play wit you and Granny while you're all 12-packed up!!! I'd head back tomorrow night early enough to catch yalls, but sounds like you'll be at a kid's party. Oh well, I'll have fun with you later on, and I'll have some fun of my own anyhow!!!

Let the Weekend Begin!!!

Today was a pretty good day. Woke up kinda late, but still managed to get in my 40 hours this week, even leaving kinda short today to get to school. I kept busy enough at work, but not too busy, but not to where I'll be getting behind. I wrote a little simple program for a collet holder tool, not even a hundred lines, and cut it out. Basically a big hole cut all the way thru a block of aluminum, with an even larger hole stepped out halfway through, and a couple of slots cut in either side. I came out great!!! The owner is going to call a guy to come out and give my baby some love, hopefully fix the inverter problem its having, so that's good news.

Class went well tonight, except we were having a lecture to start out with tonight, and I was having trouble staying awake for that!!! Funny how I'm having no such trouble now. Sammy was going around all tired all day today, and didn't come tonight. I think he's flaking out, but hey, that's his prerogative.

taking my firstborn up camping for sure tomorrow. My dad is going to pick up my nephew and bring him up, too. Not sure if we'll just stay overnight then hike to the falls the next day and come home, or if it'll be two nights. We'll see how it goes.

No Cure For Blog Addiction

Well my ladies Lilly and Granny are getting their MySpace pages all done up nice now!!! I hadn't even realized Lilly's tiger is named "Pisspot" until later!!! Maybe if I'd noticed that before I wouldn't have poked him in the butt with my cursor so much!!! Very cool that I was able to finally check out Granny's stuff. Interesting tho, that the comment she posted for me to check it out was attached to a blog post I did back on August 31st!!! Just maybe she hasn't gotten EVERYTHING quite figured out...

I got in touch with my nephew yesterday and scheduled for us to go flying around for a while on Sammy's birthday, a week from this Friday. I gotta get him something else too tho, after how he did it up for my birthday. Ironic that the very day after I get that set up there's a Jet Blue flight that has a landing gear malfunction and has to make an emergency landing. At LAX, no less, an airport that they don't even fly out of!!! One thing I hadn't thought of, all the seats on Jet Blue have DirectTV screens on them!!! You could watch your flight going down in flames!!! Fortunately, the pilot did an excellent job sticking the landing, didn't even buckle the front gear as most commentators thought would likely happen!!! Good job!!! I like Jet Blue a lot, I think its the best airline I've ever flown on. I just wish they had more routes and flight times.

Another interesting thing in the news about the Harbor City gator Reggie, they had a guy who'd been displaced out of the swamps of Louisiana here who said he could get him. They sent him packing tho, due to his not having liability insurance. Ummmm, isn't a gator in your lake something of a liability already??? Anyway, he called the boat that the other gator wranglers from Florida had "retarded" LMAO!!! That was yesterday. Today in the paper the wranglers from Florida were reported to be heading home. Apparently they took offense to their boat being called retarded!!! No lie, that was the gist of the article!!!

I can't believe I forgot...

Yesterday was talk like a pirate day, and I didn't once use the catch-all pirate phrase "AYE!!!"

I had a hard time getting out of work tonight, some asshole had parked in front of the driveway. Took three different numbers before I finally got in touch with parking enforcement. They said they were sending someone out, but 20 minutes later they hadn't gotten there. Shortly after that asshole took off, so all's well that ended well. I wouldn't have been so pissed if I'd still been on the clock :Þ Next time that shit happens I'm breaking out the forklift!!!

I tried to see Granny's page and see if she had any new stuff on her page or blog, but it said it was undergoing maintenance. WHAAAAAA!!!

Is there such a thing as blog addiction???

Avast, Me Mateys!!!

Yarrrrr!!! I heard on a couple of the radio stations today that today is 'talk like a pirate day'!!! I thought that was so appropriate on the day after I added the "what kind of pirate am I?" quiz on my MySpace site!!! Unfortunately, there are not enough responses to find out yet. Shiver me timbers!!!

It was a stupid day at work. I finished the tool I've been working on since two Fridays ago this morning, and I'm quite pleased with the results. I was even able to plot out the die line for Sammy to cut. OK, hold on, this is where things get stupid!!! We don't have the material in stock to run it!!! We'll have it towards the end of the day, OK, no biggie. The pressure box we have isn't the right length. More of a biggie. The trim station top is too wide to cut against.... not a huge problem, but one more thing that must be done. The bottom trim station doesn't have the proper size legs. Fairly major problem. This job has been in the works ten days that I know of, I'm positive at least one more than that, and it takes until NOW to take a look at these minor details???

When I got home from work tonight there was a Sunday New York Times in my driveway. I had to wonder why anyone would get the New York Times in L.A.??? Less yellow journalism and media bias??? Not likely.

I just went outside and turned the sprinklers off, and wouldn't you know it, its RAINING!!!

My oldest's comp has gremlins. On Thursday I found out he's got some kind of boot sector failure. I put in a different hard drive (couldn't find the one he used to have in there that may or may not have had a workable operating system on it) and ghosted a clean operating system onto it. I updated it on the microsoft site, and now the damned internet explorer doesn't work right. And it spontaneously reboots, although I've gotten that problem largely reduced. Major pain in the ass, now I know why people hate microsoft!!!

I'm glad to see Granny is figuring out how to do stuff on MySpace. I see she has a video and a kitty on there now. Way to go, girl!!!

New Theme Music For ÃÝË!!!

Well, if you read my last post here and were wondering, no, I did not end up going camping today. After therapy I had to go and get a wilderness pass (I paid $30.00 for the one year pass, I intend to camp at least one other time this year) and then to Fry's Electronics cuz they had McAffe virus scan plus firewall for free after rebates, and by the time I made it home it was 6:00 and starting to get dark. We'll go next weekend, right after school gets out instead. My virus scan has been reminding me for the last 6 months or so that it's expired. Don't know why I buy it, I use the free online scanners at Trend Micro and Panda, as well as using Ad Aware and they all seem to catch and clean stuff as well as or better than McAffe's does. Guess it's because it's been pretty much free to update it ever since I got my first comp in '99.

Hey, if you looked at my profile on MySpace, I figured out how to do cool stuff with it!!! If you noticed, its sinister now!!! (Sinister being from the Latin meaning "left handed", just something I learned from watching The Simpsons. Educational as well as entertaining!!!) I found this Site that easily generates the HTML to change your shit around. All I was really looking for was WHERE to insert the tag for the background color (you know, grey is my favorite color) and I found it. Apparently all you have to do is put your HTML tags in the "about me" place on your profile edit. But, that site you can change alot of stuff up, so I did!!! Another thing I found is a site that hosts a bunch of music videos to paste into your music area. If you noticed, I've got "Mr. Brightside" in there now. Love that tune!!! My new theme song, huh??? That one and "Sugar We're Going Down" by Fallout Boy, but they didn't have a video for that. Mmmmmm, going down..... "Wishing to be the friction in your jeans" YEAH!!! Rock on, Fallout Boy!!!

I finished up cutting the tool I was making at work. It came out great, but my machine is indeed fucked up, most likely from our power outage. The owner filed a claim with the LA DWP over it, but probably they won't do anything. I was able to manually edit my program and cut the time it took to cut in half!!! I'm really getting the hang of it now!!! Anyway, the fuckup of which I spoke is the inverter that I mentioned in my last post. I have to shut down the machine (manually with a big knife switch, seems so wrong to shut down a comp, albeit a rudimentary one, like that!!!) after every spindle shut down. $6000.00 for a replacement inverter. My poor baby needs some LOVIN'!!! We'll see if our guy can handle fixing it up first. MAINTENANCE!!!

Since we didn't get to camping tonight, I made up a little camp fire in my old barbecue and we all toasted marshmallows over it. It's a really good night out, not too cold, clear, and a full moon!!! It was my youngest's first time even seeing a camp fire, and having toasted marshmallows, and he really enjoyed it.

Blackout Revisited

I didn't make mention here of the famous L.A. blackout on Monday. It didn't affect me a whole lot, or so it seemed.... The power at work was only off for less than I minute I'd guess (as opposed to by my home, where it must have been out for 15 minutes or more. My youngest boy is potty training, and he enjoyed sitting in the bathroom with a candle going, I hear) I had my CNC on, but not running when the juice cut out, and just a bit after it came back on Tom (Sammy's dad) notices there's smoke coming out of the top of it!!! I bust ass over there and cut the power, and get a look at where its coming from. On the top of the back panel there's a punched metal enclosure, and it looks like a rod like a heating element in there. Its glowing red, and there's even a little fire burning on one end. After it burns itself out I look inside the panel, and there's only two wires going up there, and the closer I look the more it looks like a heating element!!! I was leery of turning it back on, so I called tech support and asked 'em what the heating element on the top of the thing is. Turns out its some kind of thing to dissipate the charge in the power inverter that does the speed control for the motor. They said to go ahead and turn it back on, and if it doesn't work I'm gonna need a new inverter. I turn it on, and everything seemed fine. I finished writing the proggie I was working on, and ended up running it yesterday (typical stupid shit at my work, this is a priority job, yet I didn't end up getting the metal to cut it into, ready since Monday morning, until after 4:00 yesterday!!! Don't come bitching to me....) Anyway, yesterday night I ended up cutting nearly half of the tool, the first actual milling that I've done on CNC, a big thrill for me!!! I was very pleased with the results. Got in today and finished the half I was working on today, moved my fixturing around and roughed the other half. I'd been thinking of a way to clean up the program and speed things up, so I stopped at this point and modified it. Afterwards I went to run it, but I ended up getting an error message:

INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR
INVERTER ERROR

Damit!!! Strange that would happen after working fine for more than a day...

I went over to my parent's house after work today to get sleeping bags. I'm planning on taking my firstborn camping this weekend. The street in front of their house has been tore up for a few weeks, because there was a low spot in front of their house that was always wet, and usually green and scummy. Perfect place for west nile mosquitos!!! Anyway, they're putting in all new curb and gutters. My dad had the driveway widened some time ago from 2 cars to 3 cars, but he didn't have the ramp widened, having to go through permits. Well, he kept asking them about it, and they ended up making it 3 feet wider each way!!! I tell you, that's a good looking driveway ramp!!!

Last of the Mohegans

Got into work today, and Sammy told me that they'd fired Gab's ass. He was the last of five other employees who came to work at this dump when our company was bought out by them in 2000. He was always saying to me "we're the last of the Mohegans!!!!" He came in later, and I heard a quite different story from him, but oh well. He had been getting quite lackadaisical with his work, think it was time. I'm surprised he stayed on that long, he lives way the hell out there, I think around 60 miles or so.

I did as I'd wanted and got those tickets that I desired over the weekend. I've just been feeling ecstatic pretty much ever since!!! I'm SO looking forward to this!!!

It's late. I must play runescape for a bit and go to sleep.

Hey, where's my day off???

I ended up going into work today again. I miss my 3-day weekends when I do that, but it seemed like a pretty good day today anyhow. I went in and wrote a program for this tray tooling that I'll probably be making next week. Only thing is, the coolant in my Fadal needed cleaned out. Its been in there for something like 3 years or more, and it was pretty rancid. That's how I spent the later part of my day. The stuff was pretty nasty, it had a layer of oil on the top, then under that it had what looked like the skin that grows on old pudding, only slightly less appetizing. Gotta do just a little more clean up on Monday morning, then fill it up and I should be good to go.

Picked teams for he regular football season pool the other day. I stayed with my pick from last year, the Steelers. Pennsylvania has been good to me. I don't follow it that close, but I have a general idea who's got a decent team. They already beat the Patriots in pre season play, and I like their schedule for regular season play. If Ben Roethlisberger has a year like last year, I should do well. I hope. Is 2 years in a row asking too much???

Went to school last night, and I'm learning well. Sammy and I didn't want to carpool this time, because he didn't want to end up waiting if he finished earlier. Oh well, it makes for a little quicker trip going home, not that I mind getting home a little later. He's wondering why he's going, I don't think he can picture himself programming or running the CNC. He's doing well in class so far, but I think he's wanting to punk out. I tell him its always good to have extra stuff like that in your resume, even if you don't use it.

They caught "little Reggie", the second gator of which I spoke in my last post. Didn't need the "gator rustlers" that have been trying and failing to capture the big one, just the animal control people put out a net, and then as he worked free from that the fire department snared him with a net off their big ladder. One down, one to go!!!

The Counting Crows are doing a concert with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall near the end of October. I'm considering checking out ticket prices, I'm sure it will be a great show. I can definitely picture a lot of their songs done to orchestral accompaniment!!! I made mention to my firstborn, and he expressed interest in going, too. Only thing, its on a Tuesday night, starting at 8:00. Why do they always do that??? I swear, every time I see them its on a week night!!!

There Goes The Neighborhood!!!

I heard news about the Harbor City gator today for the first time in a couple weeks. As I figured, the wiley gator is still at large (its a good sized lake) but the news is another one has been spotted in a river that feeds into the lake!!! It would appear that we have an infestation!!! Of course, it makes you wonder now, are they breeding in there or what??? As it's often said, must be something in the water!!!

I had not made mention here yet, but I made chili on Monday in my new birthday crock pot. First time I've used it. I opened up the box and checked it out when I first got it, because the box was pretty beat up, but I didn't take it out of the plastic wraps or styrofoam. I was just making sure the lid and pot weren't broken. Well, getting a better look at it, it's all dented up on the outside!!! One of the stamped feet is a little collapsed, pushing up the inside, and the sides are wrinkled on the back. But the stoneware still fits down inside fine, and it works fine. I tell ya, every time I make it it comes out better!!! This is the best chili I've ever made, and I said the same thing last time, too!!! This time was better!!! I think it has a lot to do with cooking it with Heineken Dark beer, it has a great flavor when you drink it, and I think that translates well into the cooking too. I think it's my new favorite beer, I just wish it didn't cost so much. Well, I guess you get what you pay for!!!

Holy Guacamole!!!

I discovered something very cool today. I was out doing some of the constantly required yardwork, and my youngest comes up to me with this dried up seed pod looking thing and asks me what it is. I tell him its a seed pod of some kind. Just a bit after that I found another one, only it was split open, and I could see the seed. Turns out to be an avocado!!! I've known that I had an avocado tree since I moved in, but I thought it needed a fertile branch grafted in so it would produce. This is the first time in the 10 years I've had this house that it's ever produced fruit!!! I picked 9 more. I'm going to have to top and shape it some now, I think. Well, maybe after this season is completely over. It had been cut down in the past, and it's grown a new tree out of the stump of the old one, so maybe it was just still getting over the trauma of having been cut down. My wife had just been saying how she wished we had an avocado tree that produced, and I was saying I think ours needs fertilized. Anyway, I see guacamole in my future!!!

Speaking of yardwork, I found the receipt for that piece of shit Toro weed eater last week. (if your not familiar, you can click here to read about it) I didn't think I had saved it. Just for kicks, I took it back to home depot to get my money back, already thinking I'd be wasting my time. After standing in line for too long I got my turn. I put it on the counter, and I swear, the bubblehead chick running the return desk looks at the 4 or 5 pieces and then at me, and asks me, "what's wrong with it???" I was nearly speechless!!! She had to call a rep from the garden area, who wouldn't OK the return, so I had to talk to a manager, who also wouldn't OK a return. It would have been OK with them if I'd exchanged it for the same one.... ummm, I don't think I'd take one of those pieces of shit if you gave it to me free!!! Of course, I might could get that and return it in a couple weeks.... I do have intentions of making a pain in the ass of myself over it, at my convince, of course. I knew I had to share all that with you when it happened!!!

Has Anyone Else Made This Connection???

All the talk and images about Hurricane Katrina keeps triggering one of those thought-association thingys with me. Does anyone else remember the one-hit wonder "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves???

The hurricane has spawned an amazing amount of people saying idiotic things along with all the misery and destruction. One of the most off the wall comments was one I heard from a pastor at one of the AME churches, where they were having a rally about the "police brutality" suffered by Tony Muhammad of the nation of islam. I wish I knew who said it so it could be properly credited here. The pastor was asking if anyone had made the connection that the hurricane had a sista's name, and it occurred 50 years after the lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi. He pretty much said that it was the spirits of all the mothers of slain black youth come to wreak vengeance. Yea, sure, that's it!!! That's why it only caused death and destruction of whitey and his property, huh???

Another prime example was by New Orleans Mayor Ray C Nagin, who, during an otherwise very lucid speech on CNN, was talking about the looting and lawlessness. He claimed that it was being committed by "a very small majority". Point taken, but hey, Mr. Mayor, contradiction in terms!!!

OK, now that I've shared some stupidity for your entertainment, CLICK HERE TO DONATE!!!

What Part of "Crush" Don't You Understand???

I was at work until 9:30 last night getting a job ready to go. Two of the items on the run were new ones, that have an opening cut into the tops of them, for a distributor who our salesman calls "the Mister Magoo of packaging" LOL!!! Anyway, I'd told 'em from the beginning that we don't do that type of thing on this type of run, and the response I kept getting was "just run it, we'll "crush cut" the opening into it. I (and Sammy and Rafael) both keep contending its going to look like shit if you try that.
Anyway, when I finally got in to work this morning (8:20 instead of six, anyway) the first thing I hear is the plant manager saying they couldn't run the job because its crushing the parts, and it looks like shit!!! ROLLEN' MY FUCKIN' EYES!!! Actually, when he started I was telling him "let me guess, its looks like shit?" Long story short, we end up blowing more than half the day messing around with it and getting the machine going. Glad I get paid by the hour!!! Oh yea, I talked to the salesman who was the one who said to crush cut it to begin with, and he acted like he'd never heard of the project!!! UNBELIEVABLE!!! Actually, unfortunately, all too believable.

I'd just typed a big old paragraph on how my sister (middle child, myself being youngest) is now officially homeless, and the damned spellcheck just kinda ate it!!! Damned thing. Anyway, here's the short version cuz I aint typing all that again. My parents bought her a mobile home and she got evicted from the place it was on for hanging around the wrong people or some damned thing. My mom gave her $2000 to find a new place and she and her boyfriend pissed it away. My mom has been trying to help her for about as long as I can remember, and I think she's about at the end. At what point does it stop being helping and become enabling??? Its got to be hard being a parent in a situation like that. My heart goes out to the both of them.

And Home Again!!!

Back from San Diego!!! Vacations are nice, but its also nice to be back home when they're over. It was a good little weekend. The drive down there was kinda rough, but we made it there OK. After getting our stuff moved in we went to Silver Strand State Beach. It was already pretty far on in the afternoon, but it was cool. Nice beach, very fine sand and no rocks, and very flat going out into the water. The surf was very light, but there were still guys out there with their surf and boogie boards!!! The older went out pretty far several times, while the younger played in the sand with me quite a bit.

The next day we went to Sea World after breakfast, and stayed there all day!!! Me and the older went on the Atlantis water coaster, a smallish coaster, but fairly innovative. It has an elevator that the boats go up in at one point, very unexpected. They have a great penguin exhibit. Got to see the dolphin show, and get right down in the front row for the Shamu show. Not the best for viewing, but we did manage to get soaked, which was the main purpose behind sitting there. That brings me to another point I wanted to make mention of, on both the Atlantis coaster and the Shamu show, there was a group of black people, and they put on ponchos before!!! I don't get it, why would you sit in the "splash zone" and do something like that??? To me, its like taking an umbrella into the shower!!! Anyway, we stayed until 10:00 when they did the firework show. The poor younger one was so tired he would hardly stop crying the whole time we were going out into the parking lot. He had such a fun time though!!! I'm glad we got to go.

The main reason I didn't go down there on Friday and come back Monday was I had a physical therapy session scheduled that afternoon, but then I went and completely forgot about it!!! I did the same thing last Friday too!!! Guess I can't have an appointment in the afternoon and expect to make it!!!

On Saturday morning before we left, I went ahead and shaved my head down to skin. I've been wanting to do that for a while. It doesn't feel exactly like I thought it was going to. I think I've gotten that out of my system now, it took a lot of work to do, and it'll be a lot to maintain. Just had to try it, though!!! I think it would look pretty good, if my scalp were to get tanned so it matched everything else up there!!!