UniDuck

Bought a pack of Orbit gum a couple weeks ago. Melon remix, I believe, was the flavor. Pretty tasty.

The thing that I found to be blogworthy about this occurrence was the artwork on the package. The target duck appears to have a unicorn horn coming out of its forhead!!! Everyone I've pointed this out to has been duly impressed. I think it's actually just the end of the spiral behind it, but an actual UniDuck is much cooler!!!

Bonus XP Weekend

Last Thursday afternoon the supervisor who does the scheduling comes up to me and asks if I want a middle shift for Friday. "Yea, sure, thanks", I'm usually up for getting out of work an hour 15 minutes earlier than normal, even when it means having to get up earlier, and usually worse traffic too. Then she says, "And you've got Monday off..." Huh??? I do??? Apparently I'd selected it when they were doing the vacation selection at the end of last year, and I was just throwing on random Mondays. Cool.

Saturday and Sunday weren't much different than normal weekend days, although it was wet and rainy most of the first half of the day, and it was pretty cold the rest of the weekend.

I have been doing a little work on the walls in the kitchen, trying to get 'em evened out for fresh paint. Did a bit of sanding on them.

This morning it was bright and sunny, but still chilly. Got the family together and we went up to Mount Baldy!!! It was an awesome day for it!!! Much better than the last two times. The drive out didn't take long at all, and it wasn't crowded.

There was a good amount of snow, around 6 inches most everywhere, and a good 4 inches or so of that was fresh powder. We got to do a bit of sledding, rolled up some snow balls into snowman size balls. A great way to spend the last day of Winter!!!

One of my co-workers had a half day of Friday for his birthday. His wife and him were going to Souplantation. I haven't been there probably more than 20 years, and that got me thinking. On the way home we stopped there.

If you've been following my Twitter feed, you've seen what else I did this weekend. Runescape was having their bonus experience weekend. I did just over 8 hours, racking up about 950,000 experience points. Started off with herblore, which I leveled 3 times, in the first half hour when the bonus factor was 2.7x. Next I did construction for 2 levels. Got 2 levels of agility, and one each in thieving, crafting, fletching, and prayer. Not leveled but heavily trained was smithing, which I did a lot of right after the herblore and construction. Did around 3/4 of the way to the next level, not bad since I'm at 86.

Oh yeah, the first picture is a snow apple core my boy made me!!!

AppleCup

I've always got things I should blog about, but I often delay and then they go away. I have a post (with no images as of yet, probably I'd just web source 'em) about a couple of really good burger places I've recently come across. Just last weekend was my boy's birthday celebration, it came together pretty well, and that one I do have a few good pictures of (but I missed the one I wished I got).

Anyway, here's one that I've had for a while that I've been meaning to do. Not long after I came up with my OC I did his cutie mark on my cup, leading to the rather lengthy explanation. Even people who didn't get the back story liked the art. My older boy did a link to that particular post on his tumblr, so a lot of the bronies got a chance to check it. One of his circle was complaining about everyone making up alicorns, and my boy asked him, "Even my dad's trollicorn???" and the guy responds, "No, that one's awesome!!!"

I've got some of Applecore's back story worked out in my head, and I can picture a comic of him telling his story to the cutie mark crusaders...

Second shot here, I saw in a parking lot a few weeks back. I LOLLed, Manther was one of the cats we used to have. Full name Samantha, but as that name is too long, it was naturally shortened to Manther. She was mostly black fur, so Manther the panther. That reminds me, the older boy was taking some pictures of our cat the other day, wonder if they are on his tumbler now???

The Frickin' Lions...

As alluded to on an earlier post, here's a shot of the lion casting I had been doing some work on.

Actually, the first shot is one of the beam being shot up into the sky. Not a great shot, but it came out pretty cool, seeming to split the clouds it's shooting into. Nice intense beam, huh???

And, of course, the second shot is how I pictured the lion shooting the beam from it's mouth. Dr. Evil would be proud... "The frickin' lions, with the frickin' lasers shooting out of their frickin' mouths!!!"

Happy Valentine's Day

I've had this picture saved for years, and somehow I always seem to forget to use it on Valentine's day!!! Ferrets to you!!!

Found the first couple of images on I Can Has Cheezburger. The last one, I don't remember exactly where I found, but it's been one of my favorites.

Googling the text at the bottom of it didn't help figure it out, but adding "kinky" to the end of the search did come up with some interesting images!!!

Aurora

Happened across this on NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day site, and found it too cool not to post!!! I would love to see this with my own eyes!!!

Aurora 2012 from Christian Mülhauser on Vimeo.

512 to the Shirt!!!

So, I finally did it!!! Years ago I came up with this 512 logo, along with a few other variants. I've seen it put onto beanies and hoodies, as well as having put it on many of my cups at work, but up until now I've never had any of my own gear. That was one of the things I had asked for for Christmas was some fabric paint and a dark green shirt. My wife got some paint (not fabric paint, though) and a nice green polo shirt. I'd picked up some foam from my work (the same kind I made the Minecraft Diamond Sword out of, I should give some detail on how I made that, it seems to be a popular search) and I cut it into a stamp of the logo. Of course, I also exchanged the paint, as well as located a T-shirt. I actually had enough foam left to make a small one, that I was going to use on one side of the polo shirt, and possibly on the upper back of the T-shirt.

That was what I tried to do first, but unfortunately the shirt was rather coarse and absorbent, so it came out very thin. In attempting to add onto it and thicken up the design, I smeared through one of the numbers and proceeded to rinse it off as well as I could. It may still come together. A few days later I put together the T-shirt version seen here. It also soaked up quite a bit of the ink, but I've left it pretty much like that. Perhaps a more porous foam would do a better job??? To keep the paint from soaking through to the back, I had used a piece of cardboard box inside it. I hadn't counted on the flap seam coming across the print, just a bit above the equator, and leaving a distinct stripe. The actual inspiration for this whole idea (I'd had the idea to attempt to do actual silk screen for years) came from one of my co-workers. One of her shirts has a series of multi colored dinosaurs down the front. Having seen it several times, I finally asked her when we were working together if there was any significance to her shirt. She replied that she had the fabric paint and the shirt, and that the dinosaurs just happened to be the stamps she had. Inspiration struck.

The cool part was wearing it to work. I got a lot of responses to it, and everyone knew what it was!!! The semi-weathered appearance of the paint soak was universally regarded as a good look.

When I got my camera out to pose for the picture, I also dug out my Mind Expandy Smurf shirt to get a shot of it for this post. Right on top of it was the tree shirt that I'd gotten as one of the last three random shirts from Woot (along with the robot-skyscraper from Big and the 8-bit Princess Bride shirt for my younger) and thought that it would be good to get a shot of here, too. I don't know what it is about that shirt, but everybody LOVES it!!!

I took a few of the stars and orbs from around the Smurf and added them around my own head for effect.

I notice in the three shots of me, my head goes progressively higher and to the right...

Of course, for the last shot, here's what a cat looks like in a dress shirt and bow tie. I was amazed that he stood still for this!!!

Where Is Everybody???

There was a picture of this Roy Lichtenstein painting in the paper today. I love it!!! I can imagine someone looking at it hanging on a wall and going, "... HEY!!!"

I'd totally get this and display it, but not at the price that it sold for last year, $43.2 million!!!

What I Did This Weekend...

I'm sure it's not the ONLY thing I got done this weekend, but it's pretty much the most major thing. My dad's Studebaker had been getting a bit tired in the engine leading up to the later part of last year, and he decided to replace the vintage 327 with a fresh 350 crate engine.

He did a nice detail job on the engine compartment. He'd picked up what he thought was some catalyzed black paint at a fair discount, but as you can see, it came out an... INTERESTING shade of brown!!! Good enough, he thought, it rather compliments the yellow outer skin, and I have to agree, not to mention it's something you don't really see. He tends to never show it with the engine compartment open, anyway, as it looks much better with it closed. Not that the engine and compartment aren't on a showable level.

While he had the engine out, he made up a custom recess for the firewall to clear the distributor better, which was always a tight fit. The final touch was the addition of a Dynamat type sound and heat insulator. Two last things once all the parts are back together are going to be the replacement of the air conditioner condenser, which seems to have some seepage, and eliminating the leaks in the power steering system.

It was no small job, but all that was really done was to swing the engine in, bolt it to the transmission, bolt the torque converter to the flexplate, and bolt down the engine mounts and tighten up the transmission. A series of twelve bolts turned.

Anything else??? Yea, spent quite a bit at Big Lots! for their 20% off day, and visited a seafood restaurant my wife had spotted in Glendale.

I'm doing a bit of work for a neighbor. He has a couple of cast bronze lion faces that were originally for a fountain where it squirts from the mouth. The studs were frozen in it, and one snapped off. Spray penetrant loosened 'em up. He's going to mount them and use them as wall hangings. I was thinking of the intense green laser I got for my son, and got the idea that it'd be pretty cool to take the element from one of those (or possibly two), hook it to a wall transformer instead of the batteries, and set it up so the lion would shoot a laser beam from it's mouth!!! Would that not be awesome??? Now I'm thinking of contacting my foundry guy and see about getting a couple duplicates cast up!!! Set 'em up with motion detectors, set up little mirrors and bounce a grid of beam all about the ceiling, set it up with a little motor to make the beam track back and forth... the possibilities are pretty cool!!! If I get anything together, I'll take a picture...

Gusher

Coming home last night, the road opposite ours going up the canyon we live in was blocked off with cones and a parking enforcement vehicle. "Odd", I thought to myself, "Must be some sort of parking emergency!!!" This means I was forced to drive up our street, which is counter to my normal routine, as usually I drive up that side so to be pointed the proper direction to park on the street or pull into the driveway.

As I ascended, there was a flatbed tow truck idling right opposite my driveway. Hmmmm... I get to the top of the street, turn around and park, and go to investigate. In addition to the tow truck, there's parking enforcement and another flatbed tow truck on the opposite street, and cones set up there, too. A few people are milling around over there. I thought maybe someone had wrecked over on that side, or maybe someone managed to drive into the canyon. From the days when my grandfather lived here I'd heard tales of parked cars rolling down into the canyon, yet I've never seen the likes of it.

The property opposite us on that street has some nice river rock retaining walls. I finally notice that the portion by the corner is fallen down into the street, of course followed by much of the dirt behind it. Hmmmmm again!!! I make mention to one of the neighbors out there that it's a shame, I really liked that wall. They agree, and then say something about how there was so much water. ??? It had rained that morning until around noon or so, but nothing serious, only about half an inch at most, I'd guess, and probably less.

Well, you probably guessed from the pictures, I was missing a key element here. Somehow, the fire hydrant over there got sheared off!!! Apparently it was pretty loud and of course went on for a while. My oldest had the presence of mind to take the camera out and get a few shots, as well as a video. Used to be able to post video on here, but I don't see the link for that anymore. The second shot I cropped for effect, you can see the spout is going about three times as high as the basketball hoop!!!

I like the last shot, with the water just cascading off the yard. I still wonder exactly how it happened!!!

Christmas 2 Random

Anyway

Seems like a lot goes on, doesn't it??? Yesterday I had it in my mind to change the master cylinder on the Maverick, as it seems to have developed a leak past the seal. I've been considering various destinations for this coming Summer vacation, and they were having the Los Angeles Travel & Adventure show... down in LONG BEACH!!! So, I was thinking that if I got through the master cylinder job I might go down and check that out.

As plans often change, my wife wanted go go to the Golden Star restaurant in Long Beach for breakfast. It had been a while, and sounded pretty good, so instead of wrenching on the car, we headed there instead, then to the travel show after.

My younger boy was going on quite a while about My Little Ponies. I had to come up with my OC, original character, and I came up with Apple Core, a Pegasus-Unicorn hybrid who launches apple cores at other ponies from his horn. Today I did the drawing & spent entirely too long modifying it in PaintShop Pro.

On the way between those destinations, they had several streets to the West blocked off. Found out, on the news that evening, they were having the MLK day parade. The parade looked pretty ghetto. MLK would have been proud.

For the most part, I found the travel show to be a bust and a waste of money. Did, however, discover that for driving into and out of Canada, you can get by with a Country of origin drivers license or some such instead of having to have a passport, so this may open up a possibility...

A few shots of the final 2011 Christmas celebration with my parents, or the Best Christmas Ever. My older boy got a gorgeous acoustic guitar, and the younger got an AirHogs Hawk Eye RC airplane. I 'shopped my arm out of the picture of it.

Funny how they have the MLK day parade on the Saturday before. Is that for the people who would like to attend, but actually have jobs where they have to work on Monday??? Like everyone who doesn't work for a bank or government???

Discovered something quite interesting while checking flight and lodging prices. From here, it costs very nearly the same to fly and stay in Oahu, Hawaii, as it does to fly and stay in Iceland!!! Mind blown!!! Iceland hadn't really been on my travel radar in any serious fashion, but now it really is!!!

I didn't get a chance to finish this post off the day I started it, so some of the references to yesterday and such aren't going to come out exactly right, unless you time travel with me.

The second to the last picture is my mom's ICD implant. Funny thing, all the pictures I took of her showing it off, she's got her eyes closed in. It seems to be suiting her well, but as you can see, it's fairly prominent on her. The heart medicine they've got her on makes her "woozy", but she's getting her strength back, walking around the neighborhood and the park and stuff. The burn on her leg is getting better, but it remains a pretty serious burn. Third degree, it was.

Today I wore a shirt I got from my parents for Christmas for the first time. It's a tie-dye look, but with incredibly vivid colors, and a picture on the front of a smurf (Brainy) sitting on top of a bunch of mushrooms with spots & stars whirling around his head. I call him mind expandy smurf. It got a lot of comments, somewhere around 18, and everyone really liked it.

As always, I'm sure I'm leaving out more than I can remember.

Oh yea, the second picture scan!!! It's just a piece of paper I found with some weird doodles on it.

DropShip Like it's Hot!!!

I had meant to include this one in last night's post, even to the point of expressly posing these pictures before I did, but then completely spaced. That's OK, give me a chance to get a jump on starting this year off. Besides, I think the last post had plenty going on.

This was one of the items high on my younger boys' wish list, the Mega Bloks UNSC Pelican Dropship from the Halo series. Not only is it pretty massive, it's pretty cool and pretty detailed.

Of course, I ended up being the one doing most of the construction. Lego does a much better job of organizing the parts, and much of the assembly process was akin to a jigsaw puzzle where you spend more time searching for the right piece than doing the assembly.

Unfortunately, I was just getting the sick when we started. Went for an hour or so, and my headache became unbearable. The ticking of the animated clock decoration on the Christmas tree and my wife's application of Rapture perfume were both exacerbating this condition. I showered off, then soaked in a hot tub of water, then went to bed for several hours. Woke up in the middle of the night and did a little more, then went back to bed.

Did a lot more the next day, and wrapped it up on the third. By that point I'd gotten a clue and was building both sides of mirror image parts, that worked out much better.

In other news, yesterday got a shipment of things I'd ordered from Focal Price for Christmas. Didn't think I'd get it in time, and I was right, but that's OK, everyone liked their swag. Bought lasers for all the guys, a green one for the youngest (very intense beam, and it goes through the batteries), a purple one for myself, and a red one for the first born. The red isn't too exciting, I know, but it has a second button that gives the presser an electric shock. Got more headphones for the older, as he seems to go through them. Got an MP3 player for the younger boy, he'd been wanting one, and it seems to be pretty nice and fairly rich featured. Found a nice watch for my wife. Focal Price has some great deals and free shipping from Hong Kong. I've already thought of another order I need to place with them!!!

Maybe This Year Will Be Better Than the Last

SO much to blog!!! I keep thinking I'll do better, but there's always something else, it seems. Oh well, it is the way of life.

Welcome to my year end wrap up!!! If I finish before 12 tonight, I'll have one more in for 2011!!! I'll go over a little of this & that interspersed with the pictures from this year's Christmas.

Completely unrelated thought, know how some stores (most, I would estimate) shun using the actual word "Christmas" in any of their advertisements and promotions??? Perhaps all us consumers should thusly shun doing any of our actual Christmas shopping at their establishments...

I like the way my son caught my wife giving me the sideways eyes in the first shot.

I think I did all my Christmas shopping online this year...

Bought our cat a catnip apple for Christmas. It's always lost. He never tells where it's at, if he knows.

Seems like work was busy all year. Goodie day came and went, and our department didn't do the T-shirt exchange that we usually do. Kept me from having to find one for a co-worker, usually with only a week or so of shopping time. Gravy day elicited a roar of approval from packing when it was announced to them, moments before our department. Biggest one I've ever had, bigger than everyone was thinking it was going to be, much to our delight. Not too far below the amount it was the one year prior to my arrival that the employees ended up shutting down the local branch of the bank the checks were drawn on because they ran out of cash!!! Signs so far tend to indicate this coming year will be at least as good!!!

Too much zoom in the shot of my wife getting the DVD set of Dexter season 5, boy. Actually, it came out a pretty good effect, though!!!

Now, to get on to non-Christmas related news, and in relation to the post title... Two weeks ago today I was actually up fairly early for a Saturday, when I got a call from my dad. He found my mom keeled over & unresponsive when he got up. She was already on her way to the hospital, and he was heading over.

They managed to bring her around, and the thing everyone (including myself) goes to is a stroke, so that was what they were treating her like. Turned out not to be the case. Arrhythmia and cardiac arrest was what was actually going on. Of course, we visited her that day, but she was heavily sedated and had, among many others, a tube down her throat. Somewhere between 13 and 30 times they've had to defibrillate her to get her going again. THEN she gets infected where they had the IV inserted in her hand, so it was later before they could implant the ICD... Pretty impressive device, they're able to externally adjust it, which they had to do a couple times in the next days. She seems to finally be in fairly good shape.

One bad thing, though, there's been illness within my household, so we haven't been able to visit much. I've called my dad most every day, and my mom several times also. My dad's been there every day, of course. Best Christmas ever, he says. I agree. My oldest sister has been there a lot, too, which is also a good thing.

I'm sure I could say much more, but don't want this post to be nothing but. I think I've covered most of the salient points. Oh, a little insult to injury, she went out with her leg on the little electric heater. Looks nasty, but it's healing up. Oh, another one, one of her rooms at the hospital got flooded out by the toilet. My dad was the one who discovered the extent of that one.

Got my boys a night vision viewer with video capabilities. It's pretty sweet, for the money I paid. I think they managed to delete the one pretty hilaras video of the older boy spooking the younger by coming forth from the darkness.

Massive windstorm last month. Knocked out power for something like four days and blew a sizable branch off the tree, narrowly missing the Falcon. My wife finally finished the book she was working on for a year or more. Had to use watches and phones to wake up. It was an adventure. I was very glad we have a gas heater.

I don't think I saw a single movie in the past year, with the exception of the documentary "Born to be Wild" when we were vacationing in San Diego at the Science Center's domed IMAX theater, and that was included with admission. It's about orphaned orangutans and elephants and the people who rescue them. It was narrated by Morgan Freeman, which was pretty epic. The movie was pretty decent, but you could tell it wasn't designed to be projected onto a dome, it didn't come out right around the edges. Much like facial piercings, I found that to be... distracting. They had another movie coming on after that one that I'd wished I'd opted for instead about storm chasers (which may have been the title of the movie, as well).

The couple of pretty good books I got in this year were one we'd got from my mom, John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany". Had that for a long time before I got to reading it. My wife started on it, but found it too dark. Got Stephen King's 11/22/63 when it came out, and went through that in fairly short order. It ended, I though, surprisingly upbeat for a King novel. I certainly enjoyed it. I'm currently going through Douglas Adams' HG2G books. I'd long ago gone through at least the first three (and in the middle of the third is where I currently at) but know I never made it through the final one. A couple years back, I think it was, I bought the five in one ultimate one for my first born, and that's the one I'm currently in. The one the seller shipped at first was a collectors edition with photos and such, but not all five books. They made it right, though.

Hey, it's already 2012 on the Eastside!!! Happy New Year!!!

Car news. The last week my wife was working this year, the traitorous starter on Janice went out again, less than three month later. Do NOT buy your starters from Auto Zone, their rebuilders suck. That was what I was going to be doing the weekend my mom went down, so that was delayed. Oh yea, we had been planning on doing the family Christmas the following Monday (I had it off, along with the Tuesday after Christmas as my last personal days) so needless to say that has yet to happen.

The Wednesday following THAT, Baby started showing some problems... First sign was she stalled right after starting up!!! That never happens... Had to two-foot her when coming to a stop and such. Checked forums and it sounded like (along with a previous symptom I'd noticed) a bad coolant temperature sensor. Bought a new one, as well as a fresh set of plugs and wires, the next day. When I went to install it, made the mistake of giving it one too many cranks tightening it down and snapped it off down in the hole.

Didn't want to try and get it out in such an awkward area, so I JB welded it back together. That seems to be doing fine, and it seemed to be working fine until it warmed up, then it was worse than before!!! Limped her home again, and popped the hood and heard what sounded like a major vacuum leak. Turns out both ends of the PCV hose has elbows that were both cracked open. Of course, no one makes anything like that, so I've fabricated a lengthy section of hose and an elbow from one of Janices' repairs. So far it seems fine, but I've yet to drive her any distance. At this rate, that won't happen this year!!!

Counting Crows' "A Long December", in case you didn't get the title reference!!!

And, finally, a little Christmas something for all you that read or happen across my low traffic blog, a shot of my wife's boobs (or at least cleavage) in her Christmas Victoria's Secret push-up bra and pajamas!!!

And to all a good night!!!

Pepper Jack!!!

First time in a while that I've made the time to do some artwork on one of my cups. This one may require a bit of explanation...

At work, there's several different way to get a difficult order. You could get a cut, a big count, something bulky, or something heavy. At some point a month or two back, one of the guys started to announce when he'd get a heavy order by announcing something to the effect of "I got a 122 pounder... With cheese!!!" Kinda like a quarter pounder with cheese, is the idea, if you didn't get that.

So, that became a thing, where a few of the guys would say that. I decided I was going to start calling out all different types of cheese whenever I'd get a bad order. Limburger!!! Gouda!!! Deep fried mozzarella (I particularly liked the way that one rolls off the tongue..)!!!

Then I threw out "Pepper Jack!!!" That struck a chord!!! A play on the term "jacked", and now whenever some of us would get a bad order, we'll say, "I got pepper jacked!!!"

One day I'm working on one of the printers where you're likely to get a difficult order, and I penned this on my cup. Several people got it right off, but some aren't quite clear on what was going on. A couple of people wondered, "what, no funfetti cake???" No, no, I love that stuff. A couple of people thought it had something to do with the Green Bay Packers. Ha ha, closer but no. I'd have used my highlighter and yellowed it some for that.

I used this cup for more than a week.

I like the way the picture I took of it came out, with the shadow and light. This is on the end table I have next to my recliner now, since my older has moved a new desk into the corner here. He's got the best seat in the house, I think.

The connotation attached to pepper jack is unfortunate. I rather like pepper jack.

Gotta Find a Geekier Neighborhood...

So last Monday was Halloween. As we often do, we went to my parents' neighborhood to trick or treat, as it's much flatter lands with sidewalks there.

First up is the youngest. He changed his costume idea from Assassin's Creed to Minecraft. The diamond sword was the trickiest part of the costume to come up with. The rest of the costume was just getting the boxes cut to shape and colored. One other kid recognized it for what it was supposed to be.

Next up is my older boy. His original idea was to be a Halloween decoration. I thought that'd be great, to get a large circle, cut a hole in the middle and put a tablecloth on it and stick his head through the middle. He'd changed it to Discorda from My Little Pony, but finally went with Dr. Who. Bow tie, and a light stick fashioned into a sonic screwdriver, and he was set. He'd trick or treat, then tell people he was the doctor. Only one customer had the proper response, "Dr. who?" To which he responds, "Precisely!!!" I don't know if anyone got it.

For my own, I already had a mask (don't know where it came from or how long we've had it, but it's been a decoration in our basement for years) and was easily able to fashion a mohawk from the leftover foam I'd made the boy's diamond sword from. Used a piece of cardboard to make the name tag, and my wife had some beads to complete the look, and I was Geoff from Craig Ferguson's The Late Late Show!!! A few people called me by name, but I'm not sure if I was recognized for the costume or the name tag. Balls!!!

Yep, definitely have to find a geekier neighborhood to get the references!!!