It’s Saturday again, and we all know what that means around my house - well what it means when the weather is nice.

It’s project time!

We started out knowing we needed to goto Lowes (trip 1) for some supplies. We got some fertilizer for the lawn, some paint brushes, various other little things. We also decided that since our ~7 year old craftsman screw gun has failed (I suspect the batteries) we better get a new - enter Karma (round 1).

There just happened to be a sign by the power tools that read something to the effect “Power Tool and Pneumatic combos 20% off”. My wife and I figured this would be great to help get us into a new one. So we grabbed one of these off the shelf. A WH12DAF2 12V Cordless Impact Driver. Which I thought was the right tool for the job.

Posted in Family, General 4 Comments »

I don’t think it’s gotten as bad as I’m going to make it out to be, but it’s something to consider for those who use a computer for a majority of their life, and those who have kids who are growing up using computers for everything.

I remember when when I was a kid being graded on penmanship, hey wait - I’m not that old, but I remember taking pride in my small neat cursive and getting marked accordingly. As I grew so did my writing, into a haberdashery of cursive mixed with block letters and scribbles. My signature is never the same even on one document (they loved me when I signed for my house). But what does it matter now? I don’t write much on paper, unless it’s to jot down a note or two or if I have to sign a receipt. In fact, except for the occasional thank you note I don’t think I’ve actually sat down and written a sentence in years.

Posted in Computers, General, Nerdom 3 Comments »

I’ll disclaim this (only for myself), refined white sugar is horrible for you. Same with those chemicals in diet soda. So personally while it may be true that it contains liquid which hydrates you, and the since I couldn’t find the technical data behind it to show the trade offs, I’ll still maintain that soda is a horrible replacement for water.

I’m gonna get a little gross here and speak of urine. This will also show how bad I am at taking care of my self too…

Since I tend to drink soda all day, I have a bit of experience in this. Urine is a window into your dehydration. If it’s darker that means there’s more urea in it (Mercedes Benz has developed a urea injected diesel motor, there’s urea in fertilizers too - granted it’s all Bull urea but still…), less water, dehydration.

Posted in General 8 Comments »

For the past few years we’ve been going to the zoo at least once. This we added something a little extra to the day. We thought we’d take a bit of tie and check out the free tour at Mrs. Cavanough’s chocolate factory and see what’s it’s all about.

We were scheduled for a 10 am tour of the factory and actually made it to SLC with about 10 minutes to spare. We got in and they took us upstairs where a couple of pieces of chocolate were waiting for us (SWEET! and I mean that both ways). They had us watch a movie about the history of the Cavanoughs and chocolate (Montezuma would drink 50 cups of bitter chocolate drink!). As a treat, anyone that thinks we’re loosing touch with our Constitution and our government is overgrown it’s role will love the end of the movie.

Posted in Family, General, Photography 3 Comments »

So there I was…

It was an old house, very dark and shadowy. There was a lot of scared movement, seemingly coming from everywhere. A family, huddling in what I perceived to be the living room, or maybe in this time period what they might call a great room. I huddled with them, then all the sudden I felt a hot liquid flow from my chest and down my legs. I looked up, and there I was impaled on the ceiling….

Posted in General, Story 2 Comments »

So here I am eating a turkey and bacon sammich, and tooling around on the laptop - bored, oh yeah you could say so. The dialog of a Barbie Princess (and yes, it IS Martin Short playing the villian) movie playing the background along with merry musings of both my boys building something out Imaginext.

But, as I was cruising through Amazon’s mp3 downloads (no DRM, decent prices - did I mention NO DRM?), I found myself looking in the International section, listening to some pretty fun Buena Vista Social Club (mental list, # 5) and then I found something that caught my eyes. It was a lullaby version of Bob Marley tunes. It wasn’t as good as I thought it might be (granted I only listened to a few songs), but something way better caught my eye lower on the screen.

Posted in General, Music 6 Comments »

Yup, it’s true I lost everything.

That’s what happens when hardware fails and there aren’t any good backups. So I’m rebuilding.

Posted in General 4 Comments »