A Whole New Year!

     My blog has been looking pretty "political" lately, I know. I didn't mean for it to, but the world has been pretty political for the past few months, and my life has been somewhat embroiled in that so this blog has reflected that. Of course, I have no real direction that this blog goes in anyway.

     I'm now gearing up for my second semester in college. I'm getting into some more fun classes this semester...classes like "Intro to computer graphics" and "Fundamentals of design", also "digital imaging". I hope to keep up on this blog on a regular basis just the same, and maybe what I learn in class will be making it's way here as well. I've been using more of my own artwork on the blog lately, both to get more practice in and to become more confident in displaying what I create. With the added benefit being that if I create it myself, I know there's no question about my using it copyright-wise!

     

Settling In

Well, we're finally pretty much all moved in to our new house. 90% of the boxes have been emptied and we've even started hanging pictures up on the walls. I haven't exactly kept up this blog all that well during this process, Getting a house, and moving in was a much more intense experience than even I (a person who hates change) has been able to handle. But we did make it through it, and we're really happy here in the new house.

The garage is one place where I hadn't been able to make any progress, until today. I got out there and cut a padlock off the garage door track that I don't have a key to, and found that the garage door opener works fine, which was good news. I did discover though that whoever wired the electrical up for the garage apparently didn't know what the heck they were doing. There's a light switch in the back hallway of the house that when flipped up, turns on the power for the garage and four lights on poles in the back yard. That's crazy! Why would you want to turn on four yard lights every time you want power on in the garage? I'm going to have to track the power lines down and try and split those yard lights off from the garage so they can each be turned off and on separately.

I still have a couple of minor plumbing issues I have to tackle yet, I was hoping to take care of them in the next couple of days, but I may have to wait another week to do that. All in all though, everything has gone pretty smooth and it feels really good to be a homeowner.

Creeping closer to closing on the house

Well, I was contacted today by my realtor, and the title work is finally complete. The only thing holding us back at this point is some miscellaneous paperwork that the mortgage company is waiting on. I did some digging myself and sent them what they hopefully need. If so, then we should be closing by next week. If not, there could yet be a slight delay waiting on a credit bureau to get them the final papers they need. Either way, we're almost home, literally!

Star Wars The Clone Wars

The first season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars was all right, it was good enough to keep me watching, but didn't really wow me. Season 2 has now reached it's second episode and the show has improved considerably! The character models appear to be more detailed, and the lighting and textures have been improved as well.

The storyline seems more mature as well. In the first season, there were an awful lot of stories that seemed, light-hearted, and to be brutally honest, silly. This season's shows I've seen so far are much darker, with a much more mature theme. I'm looking forward to seeing how this season progresses!

Fantastic news!

I've been pretty lazy lately about posting new info here, but it's been pretty busy lately in my defense. I've finally got great news to impart. Our offer on our dream house was accepted! Not only that, but since then I've gotten my mortgage paperwork in and now we're only waiting for the appraisal to be done which is happening tomorrow afternoon. Then it's just waiting on the underwriters to finish all they're paperwork. We've got a tentative closing date of October 21st. There's a slight threat of the closing date getting pushed back a little further though. Hopefully that doesn't happen though, we're really looking forward to getting moved in and starting what we're calling "part 2" of our lives.

House hunting....house buying...I don't know....

Well, house hunting has pretty much come to a stand-still. The good thing though is that we have an offer in on our dream house once again. We won't know until late this week whether or not we'll have any luck this time and get it. We've all got our fingers crossed, so cross yours as well for us.

If we don't get the house this time, I'm stepping back from looking for a house until next spring. I've about had my fill, and frankly, we've run out of nice homes in our price range anyway. I'm really, really hoping that we'll get the house this week. All of us want this to happen. So wish us luck!

House hunting goes on...but at a slower pace

Unfortunately, we're still in the "house-hunting" phase, and the pace is going to be slowed down. We've pretty much gone through all the houses that are worth a close look in our price range and the pickings have come up slim. I'm still holding out hope that our "dream house" on Sherwood Terrace will come back on the market and that we'll be able to make another offer on it.

We were looking at a house this morning with our realtor that I was marginally hopeful about, but it turned out to be a dud. This house was listed as being a 2, possibly 3 bedroom a little less than 1100 square feet. The possible third bedroom was described as a "loft" that could possibly be a 3rd bedroom. The loft turned out to be a partially finished attic of about 240 square feet that a normal sized adult wouldn't be able to stand up straight in! I don't see how anyone could consider this a "possible bedroom".

The listing agent who described the property said that it had, a newer roof, newer vynil siding, newer windows, newer furnace, newer water heater, and the remodel is complete. Notice there's a lot of "newer's" there and not "new"? And I think by "the remodel is complete", they meant, "this is as much as we're doing, and we're not doing any more!" I found light fixtures and thermostat's hanging by their wires, wiring for the furnace wire-nutted and taped together instead of being properly in junction boxes. Holes in the walls that had been painted over without being spackled first...and the list goes on. In the back yard behind the detached garage were six old car tires and about a 6 yard dumpster's worth of trash.

We left this house realizing that we were starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel. So we're now basically hoping that our "dream house" comes back on the market and waiting for some new listings to come on the market. Wish us luck, looks like we'll need it!

Still House Hunting

Well, the first house we made an offer on didn't pan out. Since then we'd put in an offer on a second home, which we just loved...unfortunately the house got pulled off the market and is now in "limbo". We're hoping it may get re-listed soon and we can make our offer again, but until that happens, it's back hitting the bricks to look at more homes. It's the extended holiday weekend though, so we've been slowed down to a stand-still until it's over with, and we can get back to work! Wish us luck, house-hunting has certainly proven to be frustrating.

House Hunting

I've been pretty quiet lately on the net. I've had to be, my wife and I have been house hunting. 19 years of living in the same mobile home has finally worn thin, and it's time to move into a real house. This process can take awhile, but we've gotten to the point of making our first offer on a home. Hopefully by early next week I'll know something, and hopefully it will be good news. We found a really nice two bedroom home that would fit us perfectly. So wish us luck and maybe I'll be announcing our moving plans here soon!

My Fathers Day Gift

I've had this recliner on layaway for about a month and a half, and my loving wife has helped me get it out today so that I could enjoy it come Father's Day! It's really comfy and I may never get out of it!

Take the Zombie Survival Quiz

You have a 68% chance of surviving a zombie outbreak

 

You will probably end up killing a few zombies and saving some innocent people, but you would die just before it was over

Zombie Survival Test
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Buried Treasure - Part II

Well, turns out unfortunately that the vintage VHS camcorder that was found at work wasn't in working order. At least the battery/battery charger didn't work, so hence, no working camera either. We were sorely disappointed. I wasn't able to get the VHS tape out of the camera either, although I haven't been willing yet to break the camera o get it out. Maybe I'll go that far this weekend. After all, I wouldn't be willing to pay a penny for this thing even if it did work! Updates on what's on the tape when I find out myself...

Buried Treasure - A blast from the past

A co-worker found this "ancient" camera at work today. Apparently, someone threw it into a dumpster there, and someone had dug it out thinking it might be something worth keeping. They then "rightly" decided it wasn't and threw it on the ground where he later found it. In it's day, it actually probably was a quite expensive and nice video camera. It has a I.D. plate on the bottom of it that dates it's manufacture to October of 1987! And yes, it is a full size VHS camcorder, the kind that uses VHS tapes! It's a complete kit, a gorilla case with foam inserts, camera, battery, cables, and editing dock etc.
We've got it all layed out on this table in the shop letting it dry out, as it had been raining and everything was soaked. When it's dried out, we're going to try charging the battery and see if it works. It does have a tape in the drive and we're curious to see what might be on it. I'll report back on what results we get if any in a couple of days.

Homeless in L.A.

Obama on National Security 5/21/2009

Today, President Obama has re-affirmed my belief that voting him in as President of the United States of America was a good and sound decision. Today, he did what he does best...he instilled in me a sense that he can lead this country back onto a path of true justice and good moral standing. He spelled out, in simple to understand terms that what has transpired over the last eight years was flawed and wrong in it's execution, if not it's intentions, and that the U.S. government would once again operate as a single and whole entity rather than just the Executive branch operating as the sole executor of the will of the American people.

In hearing in recent days the assertions that Mr. Obama ordered the closing of the Gauntanamo Bay prison without considering the problems it would cause, I was hoping that he would respond to these accusations. He did, with style. You could tell that those who were making these accusations simply wanted to pretend that "Gitmo" doesn't exist. They wanted us all to just "leave it alone", and let those detained there simply fade into obscurity and eventually die of old age! That cannot be allowed to happen, and President Obama has made it clear that he will not let it happen.

Facebook Sucks

Facebook sucks! That's the long and short of it. I got on Facebook against my better judgement since quite a few members of my family were on it, and it did make it easier to stay in touch with them. During the "entire" week that I was on it though, my virus scanner alerted me to more viruses, trojans and worms during that week than it had for the entire previous year! On top of that, several of my accounts got hacked, not very seriously though thank GOD!

In the end, my netbook was so compromised by Facebook, I had to reformat the hard-drive and re-install the operating system. Well, actually it was my son that did that for me, and he did a great job. Now it's simply become a matter of getting all my software back up and running. So, make sure you steer clear of Facebook at all costs, it just isn't worth it. If you want to stay in touch with family and friends, just use email and a secure chat program!

CinemaNow is still around!

I'd been wanting to see the movie Wall-E for awhile now. I missed it in the theaters, and have yet to see it. A lot of the reason for that is that we don't rent DVD's anymore, or buy them for that matter. What's the point in buying something that you might watch once, then never watch again? What I wanted to do was rent a movie download over the internet, but lately, that hasn't been too easy.

My favorite site for renting and downloading movies was MovieLink. Unfortunately it was bought out by Blockbuster, and although they claim to have incorporated it as it was, it's just not the same. Blockbuster has a pathetic lineup of movies available for download and they're just not worth it. My next choice I looked into was Netflix. I really don't want to deal with another monthly subscription though, and apparently you can't actually download movies to watch later, you have to watch them as streaming movies, and I really don't like that. So, I googled for any other choices out there and what showed up in the search? Cinemanow! I'd been a registered member there way back in 2005 and 2006, but frankly, I didn't even know they were still around. I went there and sure enough, they were still running, not only that, they've got a surprisingly big library of hit movies including a lot of new releases that have just recently come out.

I wanted to rent Wall-E, and sure enough they had it available for download, unlike Blockbuster who only had it available as a rent-by-mail item. I needed to be logged in though and figured I'd have to re-register. I took a chance though and tried to sign-in with what I was pretty sure used to be my username and password. Lo and behold it logged me in and still had my user history intact! I couldn't believe it, I hadn't even rented from there since July of 2006! I rented Wall-E and tried to start downloading it and found out that I needed to have some software installed called media-manager. So I started installing it and unfortunately it tried downloading the movie as soon as it thought media-manager was installed even though it hadn't finished yet. Long story shortened, it messed up the download and Cinemanow thought that I'd successfully downloaded it and wouldn't let me re-download it.

At this point, I was a little irked since I'd already paid my $3.99 for the movie. My only options were to either forget it and quit, or call Cinmeanow's customer service number. Now, I've had a lot of bad experiences with customer service phone calls in the past, so I wasn't looking forward to that option. I decided to try it anyway. Wow! Was I ever surprised. My call was answered in under one minute by a courteous, English speaking American citizen. I don't remember her name, (and I wish I did), but within a couple of minutes she had my account brought up and walked me through everything without any problems whatsoever. She wound up giving me a promotional code for a free rental so that I could re-download the movie. This was the best customer service I believe I've ever received over the phone. I told her so and she said that I'd made her night!

So I want to give a big shout out about Cinemanow and anyone reading this should go register and rent a few movies from them. A great website like that should get plenty of traffic that way they won't go the way of the dinosaur and leave us with nothing but a couple of ugly, lame sites for renting movies!

Pepsi Throwback

I'm sitting here in the living room watching Primeval on the Sci-fi channel and enjoying a 20 ounce bottle of Pepsi Throwback. Haven't heard of Pepsi Throwback yet? Pepsi is "temporarily" making some of their classic products like Pepsi and Mountain Dew with the classic formulas from the 60's and 70's that made them famous. Basically speaking, they've taken out the HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) that we've been forced to use as a sweetener in just about everything for the past 30 plus years and gone back to using natural sugar as the sweetener.

I can definitely say it has a "crisper" taste to it than I'm used to, and that's a good thing! It doesn't taste as "syrupy" as I've come to expect Pepsi to taste. Unfortunately this is only supposed to last for a few months, unless maybe enough people cry out that this is so much better, Pepsi will be forced to shelve the old corn syrup and keep giving us the good stuff!

TV SUCKS...WHY?

It's Easter Sunday, and TV sucks! It doesn't even really matter that it's Easter, TV sucks all the time anymore. Why? For as long as there has been television programming, and movies, why does TV have to keep re-showing the same crap all the time? Why have I been seeing the same twenty or thirty movies being played over and over and over and over again! My GOD! How many times do they have to replay Batman Begins? How many times do they have to have a Battlestar Galactica marathon?

The real problem is that there are only a few wealthy people/organizations that own the rights to too much of the media for the last 50 years or so. There might be 150 channels out there, but 99% of them don't have any "rights" to show some of the great things that have been produced over the years. So we get stuck with the same few things they do have the "right" to show, and sucky reality TV programming.

In my opinion, the whole concept of copyright needs to be re-thought. I think the copyrights to anything, should last no longer than twenty years. Once you create something, you get the exclusive rights to it for twenty years, then after that, it's fair game. After all, twenty years gives plenty of time for a whole new generation to come along, and for the most part, they're not going to care about what was created by the generation before them anyway. Just because a new medium comes along and someones work gets transcribed to it, does that automatically mean they should be entitled to make people pay for it all over again just to see it on the newest device? I think not.

I hate to think about the fact that I've had to buy the original Star Wars movies on just about every medium they've come out on. VHS, DVD, digital, etc. etc. If I've bought them once, shouldn't that give me the right to see them from then on in whatever format they're in? I mean, it's not like the content changes...well, in the case of the Star Wars movies, I guess the content does change since George Lucas can't seem to leave well enough alone, but you get my point, right?

37,000...Really?!