Eeek! A dragon!

My birthday was a couple of days ago, but since my in-laws were leaving on the day, Stacy decided to celebrate the day before. I usually don’t go in for birthday parties. They make me uncomfortable for some reason. It was nice to have family and friends nearby, though. I also got some nice loot.

I used to make a mental list of my gifts the day after I got them, just to keep track. I figure now that I’ve got this here blog thingie, I can do the same thing here. So, for those of you not interested in my gift list, you can skip down to the geeky pictures I took of my new dragon.

Here they are, with gift givers and in no order whatsoever:

Rappan Athuk Reloaded numbered 456/1000 – Stacy

Races of Destiny and Races of the Wild– McCoards


Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf for Nintendo DS – Vincent


Star Wars Legos II for Gamecube – my girls


Mythology – Jon

High Anxiety – Jon


Fomorian Giant – Ryan & Katie

Papasan – Ryan & Katie

Sofa, Loveseat, & Tables – Frisbys, Ryan, & Katie


$25 – Frisbys


$40 – Mom




Keane, Switchfoot, & Jack Johnson CDs – Julia & Brad

Colossal Red Dragon – Neil & Jo

This is where I geek out. Stacy made me guess what was in the last present before I could open it. Judging by the overall theme of the gifts and the size of the box, I figured it out and I couldn’t have been more excited. Here is the Colossal Red Dragon in all its miniature glory.

Here you can see the full model

Ground level so you can get a feel for scale

This is my favorite shot. How would you like to be at the business end of this fireball?

Thank you to everyone that wished me a happy birthday and especially to those that gave me gifts!

I'm Still Alive, Just in Training

Finally! I actually have some time to write. Ugh, these past couple of weeks have been sorely lacking in recreational PC time. I have either been at work, doing school work, helping Stacy around the house, or showing the visiting in-laws a good time every single day this past week. Now, I'm sitting in Red Hat training. I have once again found myself with some free time at the end of a lab. The book provides twice as much time as I need for the labs and the instructors generally let even more time pass before moving on to the next section.

Classmates, what ya gonna do?

Speaking of instructors, this is my first Red Hat training here that has a different teacher. As you may remember from a previous post, my instructor for the first three courses was Wooly Willy himself. This week's course is being taught by Robby Coltrane's sister. Well, I don't know for a fact if they're related, but if she's not his sister, then she's Coltrane in drag. She's a nice Norwegian with an English accent, which sometimes has the odd effect of making her sound Russian at times. Plus, she laughs like a chipmunk. Hmm, Robby Coltrane in drag as a chipmunk. I need sleep. She's the same instructor that Jon had in his last class. Apart from her, this class is a total SausageFest. Seriously, she is the only person here without a y chromosome. Ah well, it's not like I'm here looking to score. The receptionist down the hall is cute enough during my all-too-frequent trips to the bathroom.

Sadly, Robbie's audition didn't go as well as he'd hoped

In related news, although I caught it late, I did watch this week's premier of Family Guy. Peter's prostrate problems aside, Stacy and I got the biggest laugh at Stewie's sudden dependence on Lois. If Scarlett could talk, that would have been a direct translation of Stacy's daily life. I guess it's a wonder she hasn't dumped Scarlett in a washing machine yet. I maintain that God made kids cute as a defense mechanism.Baby animals are almost as bad

Venture Brothers, although in the midst of an on again, off again season, did premier a new episode this week, too. The reappearance of the haplessly old-fashioned astronaut, Col. Manstrong, was great, as was Brock's fued with one of the president's secret service men. We also got a glimpse of Jonas Jr.'s new home life with Mr. Incredible's wife and good friend Ned (hilarious Venture Bros analogues to Marvel's Invisible Woman and Thing). Brock is incredibly restrained in this episode with any ultraviolence kept off-screen sadly. We do actually see Rusty shine for just a few minutes as he traps the president, Monica Lewinsky's parellel, Brock, Brock's SS rival, Rusty, Col. Manstrong and Mama Manstrong in the oval office with a force field generator. Rusty shines that is, until the final post-credit scene when the white house maid dissolves the force field with the Universal Cleaner, club soda. Not going to protect many men in the field when all the enemy has to do is bring a seltzer bottle. It does, however, open up entire realms of possibilities with enemy uniforms. Imagine, the base camp is perfectly safe under their Venture Industries Force Field when suddenly, they are assaulted by a platoon of circus clowns crammed in a tiny VW Bug. What's next, exploding cream pies? Hmmm, exploding pies...

Latest in military firepower, the laser-guided multi-warhead tactical cream pie

I promised some pics of our New York trip and have not delivered yet. Sorry. I'll get them up next time I can blog from home. We've since been to the Civil War Manassas Battlegrounds, the Natural History Museum, and Luray Caverns & Garden Maze to name a few. Like I said, it's been a busy couple of weeks. I actually look forward to the relative quiet of my work week now.

New York, New York, New York-What, It wasn't so Nice that They Named it Thrice?

Stacy’s brother and his family came into town last week. Between them and my other obligations, recreational time in front of the computer is minimized to slow periods at work, like now.

We suggested a few places to go for sight seeing and such, including a possible overnight trip to New York. Naturally, they waited until the day before to decide on going to NYC. After a mad dash to reserve a hotel room in Manhattan and plan the trip, we were ready.

The drive up to Manhattan is five to six hours long, depending on whether you drive like a bat out of hell or my grandma after she forgot her glasses were propped up in her mass of the blue light-bulb-head hair. We drove somewhere in-between, which would have gotten us to NYC in about five and a half hours. I say would, because that’s not what happened.

Stacy’s sister-in-law has a bladder the size of a baby titmouse’s. I lost count of the times we had to stop on the New Jersey turnpike so she could avail herself of the facilities. In spite of her overactive plumbing, we got to NYC in about six and a half hours. That got us there just in time to check into the hotel room.

We had reservations at a place run by Woo-Go. I’d never heard of them and had a hard time taking any company with a name that rhymes with Yugo seriously. After circling the block umpteen times, we found the building, unnumbered and unnamed. The lobby was clean but looked like it was original 1930s interior. We tried to check in at the front desk but once the clerk found out we were using Woo-Go, we were directed to apartment 14A. Wait a sec, this is an apartment building? Curious and withholding judgment, the four of us dragged the six kids up the elevator to the 14th floor (which, incidentally, was not a renumbered 13th floor.) Apartment 14A was too cramped to fit more than one or two of us. From what I glanced from the doorway, I figured it was a residence apartment, complete with a dumpy galley kitchen and a couple of desks in the living room. Stacy’s sister-in-law checked us in and pointed us to our apartment, 8A. Another quick elevator ride and we arrived at the door to our room.

Behind the door the wondrous land of New York apartments greeted us. We had a three bedroom suite with a fold-out couch in the living room. There were ten of us with sleep arrangements for eight, but the babies would be sleeping with the parents anyway. The entire apartment had bare wood floors complete with unidentifiable stains in every room, doubtless some sort of bodily fluid. The stains were not restricted to the floor alone. The walls were a dingy, marked off-white in dire need of repainting or cleaning.

The concerns about the room ended there, though. The furniture was in moderately good repair and the entire apartment was very clean. I was waiting for the night to set and the famous cockroaches of NYC to make their appearance, but not even a NYC-street-vendor-hot-dog-induced midnight trip to the dark bathroom coaxed them out. Woo-Go may need to find better offices and refurbish their apartment, but other than that, the room was a great value.

Our first day there was Tuesday, which was overcast and drizzly. After we checked in we decided to do a guided tour of the major sights in NYC the next day. With the rest of the day left to us, we decided to go to the top of the Empire State Building. Our hotel/apartment was two blocks over and twenty blocks down. It’s a good walk, but not unreasonable. We bundled the kids into strollers and frontpacks and headed into the city. Luckily, we had the foresight to pack ponchos and three umbrellas. Between those and jackets, we kept the bulk of the drizzle at bay.

Stacy and I have been to NYC a couple of times, so we weren’t too keen on snapping a bunch of pics on the way to the ESB, but her brother had his camera at the ready the entire time. I kept my eye out for Michelle sightings, but sadly, there were none. I don’t know what I would have done if I had seen her. Run up like a star-crazed fan and ask her to sign my boobs? I think we’d both exit that scene embarrassed and slightly ashamed. If we had more time and Michelle was making a comedy club appearance nearby, I would have made a point to go, though.

The Empire State Building was empty. The only people we saw on our trek up to the observation deck were employees. Each of whom made it a point to tell us that there was zero visibility because of the clouds and that we should pay extra for the audio tour so we knew what we were missing. Isn’t that a little masochistic? Stacy and I had seen the view from up there, so we didn’t mind. Her brother and clan still wanted to go since that was their only chance. Go we did. The observation deck was a sight to behold. The top of the Empire State Building was wreathed in misty clouds. Occasionally, the wind would shift just right and the clouds would part enough to reveal a nearby building or the streets below. The rain didn’t so much as fall as hang in the air. The overall effect was very surreal. If we didn’t know we were on the top of the building, we could have been in a deep, isolating fog anywhere.

We stopped by a hot dog vendor on the way back to the hotel and I wolfed down two of the greazy sausages and half a pretzel. I would later regret that decision as mentioned before, but I won’t go into the details. One of these days I’ll have a Papaya Dog when I’m up there. If Food Network is to be believed, they’re one of the best East Coast dogs you can get besides the Coney Island dogs.

Besides the unfortunate trip to the bathroom, the night passed uneventfully. We got up early to pack up the room and check out before our tour. The shuttle parked one block down and three over, so the walk was much shorter that morning. The weather was cool and overcast, but the rain held off. A native New Yorker named Robert guided our tour. Working on eight years of guiding tours, he was knowledgeable about every site we saw, even imparting some little anecdotes from past tours and famous happenings.

There were a lot of highlights on the tour, too many to impart in the limited time I have before I’m relieved today. One of my favorite sites was Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi kitchen. I’ll be back later with pics and a little more on the tour.

When Love Bheits, I Laugh

Another fantastic episode of The Venture Brothers aired tonight. In this decidedly twisted tale, one of our titular brothers is mistaken for a lovely lass resplendent in a gold bikini circa Princess Leia of Return of the Jedi by Baron Underbheit, the jawbone-challenged despotic ruler of Underland, apparently formerly the state of Delaware. Not sure what McCulloch has against Delaware. Underbheit begins plans for a wedding and hilarity ensues. The triumphant return of Cataclopse, with one of his cat head’s eyes missing, Girl Hitler, and Manic 8-Ball also feature in this episode. If you haven’t seen The Venture Brothers yet then this is probably not a good jumping-off point. I recommend checking out the first season, now out on DVD. It's under 20 bucks for the entire first season, buy it! Heck, I'll even float you the $20 if you don't end up liking it! However, if you have seen it (Jon, I’m looking at you) you’d agree that Brock outdid himself in this episode. As I watch the show every week, I have to wonder how they are going to top the previous episode’s mayhem and carnage that is Brock in action. An early episode had him kill a man by clamping on another man’s hand during a body cavity search and slamming said body cavity searcher into the first man. In a recent episode, he forced a man’s thumb into the guy’s own—well—cavity. In last week’s episode, Brock conducted his sanguine gorefest completely sans clothes (“It’s intimidating.” Yup, it is.) How did they top it this week? Brock bats a spear out of a charging Underland guard’s hands, it spins up in the air and buries itself deep into the skull of the guard. Seeing another guard charging with a dagger, Brock grabs the spear, still embedded in the first guard’s gourd, and plunges it into the new assailant’s friggin’ face! What does Brock have now? A double-ended guard staff! I am not kidding, he uses the guard-capped spear to mow through the rest of the enemies. This is all after he uses Dr. Venture himself as a human battering ram to take down the first few guards (“Useless in a fight, eh?”) Bravo McCulloch, bravo. I eagerly await the next installment of The Venture Brothers and Brock’s over-the-top act of ultra-violence.

Diet is Just Die with the Letter "t" at the End

Stacy and I started a diet this week. Stacy wants to get rid of the few ounces left from being pregnant. She’s almost back down to the same weight she was when we got married. This is mostly due to hours of hard work as she’s gone to the gym 6 out of 7 days a week for the past few months. Me, I’ve spent hours of hard work building my gut to massive proportions over the years. It’s about time I take care of that. I want to be around for a long time and bordering on morbid obesity may put a crimp in that plan. I could easily stand to loose 150 pounds and still be healthy. Stacy’s sister-in-law lost quite a bit of weight on this diet, so we’re giving it a go.

This is after an aborted attempt at another diet from a leading heart clinic that they use to get patients’ weight down before surgery. That diet consisted of eating nothing but a particular vegetable soup and assorted fruit on the first day, nothing but the soup and vegetables on the second day, a mix of soup, fruit, and vegetables on the third day, the addition of meat on the fourth day, and the addition of legumes, nuts, corn, etc. throughout the last three days of the diet. We were supposed to loose 10 to 17 pounds by the end of the week, not to mention have extra energy and feel great by day three. We made it to day two before we realized how prohibitively expensive the diet was going to be. Stacy spent $80+ on groceries for the first day, we spent about $50 for the second day and decided that we’d break the bank by the time day seven rolled around.

That brought us to the current diet. In this one we have to eat something every two hours. The theory is that waiting longer between meals and snacks causes your body to shift into starvation mode. Anything you eat after two hours is stored for fat instead of energy. We’re trying to keep it relatively healthy, but I still have something sugary once or twice in a day. There is a bit more to the diet, but that is the main thrust. The first day I weighed in at 240. I’ll check again in a couple of weeks to see if I’ve lost anything. If not, I’ll have to get more strict on myself.

I’ll be joining Stacy at the gym soon, too. I will probably just stick to Nautilus and Ellipse machines for the beginning. I’m too body-conscious to work out in a group like Stacy does every time.

On a different note, I get into all sorts of interesting conversations in some of my online classes at University of Phoenix. Since I’m required to post substantive comments four out of seven days, I try to stay up on all of the conversation threads. I had a classmate in my last class that worked in the airport industry. I do not remember how we got on the topic, but one conversation was about the levels of service as affected by security measures in airports. He was very vocal about his feeling that flying was a privilege and not a right. If we (meaning those upset by the lack of good service) didn’t like the way things were, we shouldn’t fly. He went on to state that we should be grateful for all of the things that TSA is doing to make us more secure and that if TSA didn’t continue to take similar steps, we’d all get into trouble. My point is that we as consumers should expect a certain level of service that we do not get at airports. Jon sent me a link this week that expounds upon that subject by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. He writes much more eloquently than I can cuz he talk gooder than me. Here’s a preview, check the link for more.

It's not enough that the Transportation Security Administration wastes
hours upon endless hours of time. It's not enough that they confiscate our
Chapstick and toothpaste and claim that it is for our own protection. It's not
enough that we must fork over our ID at five different checkpoints before
boarding a plane, and have strangers paid with our tax dollars rifle and snoop
through our bags again and again.

No, that's not enough to keep us secure on our airline flights. Now we
must be careful not to wrinkle our noses, press our lips together, raise our
upper eyelids, or – Heaven forbid – thrust forward our jaws.

Here is a graphic from the New York Times that illustrates what the TSA
will now regard as suspicious behavior:

Your Evil Intent

Sunday, Bloody Sunday and the Hazzards of Jessica Simpson

Now that I have traded Thursday with Sunday for days off, I find myself with one fewer relaxation day. As most of readers of this blog know, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the LDS church, or a “Mormon” depending on whom you ask. As such, my Sundays are as busy as a workday. Actually, considering how slow my weekend workday is now, Sundays are even busier.



Not hanging out here anytime soon
Let me lay out standard Sunday meetings for those of you not familiar with the way my quirky religion does things. The church is split into geographical areas depending on population. The individual areas are called wards. Multiple wards make up a stake, multiple stakes make up a district, and multiple districts make up an area. I’m a little fuzzy on the larger units, but I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s split (heh heh, I said unit.) Every ward meets for three hours each Sunday in a yearly revolving schedule depending on how many wards use the same building. Ours starts at 9:00 AM this year, ugh. The three-hour block is split into Sacrament Meeting, Sunday School, and Priesthood or Relief Society, depending on gender.


Gotta keep 'em seperated
Vicki goes to Primary School for the second and third hours, Zoe goes to nursery, and Scarlett goes to my arms. Stacy teaches Vicki’s primary class each week, so the Screaming One can’t burden her. Instead, it is my job to convince Scarlett that the thing she wants most in the world is to sleep. This kid doesn’t even want that in the middle of the night. Convincing her of that in the middle of the day takes everything short of a miracle. That “everything” involves me pacing the halls for the hour after Sacrament Meeting. By the time the third hour has rolled around, Scarlett is usually asleep and my back is killing me. I’ll usually sneak into Stacy’s class to help her with the five-year-old hellions while trying to keep Scarlett asleep on my shoulder.


Don't let the yawn fool you. This kid'll be up for hours yet
By the time we limp home, we’re pretty beat. It’d be great to slink off for some Sunday afternoon naptime, but the fun isnt’ over yet. For one thing, the kids would never tolerate such laziness, at least not for both Stacy and I. Instead, one of us has to amuse the locals while the other one grabs some illicit rest. For the other thing, I have been busy home teaching every week for the past three weeks.




Still not going here.
Another quirky thing my religion does is home and visiting teaching. Every growed up man in the church is partnered with another, or his son if he’s old enough (yeah, not going to happen in this family!) and they are given a few families to visit. The home teachers see their families monthly (or semi-annually for most home teachers,) share a spiritual message, and make sure the family doesn’t need anything. This way, we take care of our own.




We're here to take real good care of youse. Reeeeaaaal good.
It also means that I have been out and about with my home teaching partner, a man I barely know, every week. I am a shy person. I try to overcome that problem by making conversation, but I am really no good at it. If I don’t have something in common with a person, the chances are we’re going to end up talking about the weather or Virginia traffic at length, at nauseating length. Guess what my home teaching companion and I have been discussing every week as we drive from family to family? Traffic, nothing but traffic. He reminisces about how well traffic flows in his small central California home town and I just nod, agree, and interject about Virginia traffic madness once in a while. It’s fascinating, scintillating conversation, let me tell you. It’s almost as interesting as this post. Why are you still reading, anyway? I probably would have given up reading after the first or second paragraph myself. **YAWN** Ah well, it’s your ocular cancer.


Bout as entertaining as talking to this guy would be
To make an already unnecessarily long story a little shorter, Sundays have been no day off. I enjoy spending the time at church with my family, but as weekend days go, I think I miss Thursday just a little bit.

On a completely unrelated and decidedly more secular note, Stacy and I watched The Dukes of Hazzard last night. I know it’s been out for a while, but we just got around to renting it. I don’t know why it didn’t do too well in the theaters. Sure, it’s no masterpiece, but it’s definitely entertaining. They captured the spirit of the old TV show rather well. It had its shortcomings, of course. Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott as Luke Duke and Bo Duke respectively came off a little more American Pie than Appalachian American, but they still did a respectable job. Willie Nelson as Uncle Jesse spouted more one-liners than down-country wisdom, which had me scratching my head a little. (Here's another one; drunk walks out of a bar and runs into a guy carrying an antique grandfather clock. The guy drops the clock, breaking into a million pieces. He looks at the drunk and says, "Why don't you watch where you're going?" The drunk looks at him and says, "Why don't you carry a wristwatch like everybody else?") Burt Reynolds added a little more menace than comedy in his menacingly comedic role of Boss Hogg. Enos, Rosco, and Cooter were along for the ride, but I wouldn’t give them credit for much more. Lynda Carter was looking a fine 55 as Pauline. Wonder Woman has aged well! Not one of them holds the barest flicker of candle light to the stars of the show, though, Jessica Simpson’s twins. Catherine Bach had to be crying as she watched her Daisy Dukes stride across the screen above Simpson’s stunning gams. Holy smokes! This movie is worth the rental just for Simpson’s scenes. I’ll warn you, though. She’s not that great of an actress. Don’t expect to be amazed by her skills as a thespian. As a matter of fact, you’d appreciate the scenes just as much with the mute on as off. Her video in the bonus materials section is worth the cost of the rental alone. Go relive the spirit of NASCAR’s beginnings and treat yourself to the guilty pleasure of The Dukes of Hazzard and you’ll see what I mean.


Speechless

Hurricane Stacy Makes Landfall!

This week went by rather fast. I decided to check out Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby on Monday. Being a Will Ferrell fan, I thought I was in for a treat. It turned out a bit dull. There were funny moments, to be sure, but it was certainly no Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Will does his signature screaming act, which is funny at times. Throughout most of the movie, he comes off more like his George W. Bush character as a racecar driver. Sacha Baron Cohen (of Ali G and Borat fame) turned in a marvelous performance as Ricky Bobby’s arch-nemesis, the Frenchman Jean Gerard, who was married to Andy Richter’s Gregory. Yeah, try to flush an image of those two locking lips out of your head. Leslie Bibb played Ricky’s extremely hot, superficial, extremely hot wife, Carley Bobby. This being a rise-fall-rerise story, she doesn’t last long as his wife, but she’s still great screen candy. Gary Cole gives a standout performance as Ricky’s recalcitrant father, Reese. Mediocre performances by The Green Mile’s Michael Clark Duncan and John C. Reilly (who I saw most recently in A Prairie Home Companion but you may recognize from his supporting roles in movies like The Aviator, Chicago, Gangs of New York, or The Perfect Storm) rounded out the cast. There were a few other characters, but none worth noting further. The movie had possibilities, and maybe if I were a NASCAR fan I would have seen more, but it ultimately fell flat for me. If you still want to see this one, I would definitely wait for the DVD.

What's that you see on the horizon, Ricky? High DVD sales?

Stacy and the girls flew in on Tuesday. Unfortunately, Stacy came home to a house that changed little from when she left. The lawn was still only half done and I never got around to buying ¼ round to finish the floors. It seemed I only had enough energy to keep up with standard chores like laundry, dishes, and taking out the garbage for the past two weeks. Rather than going to a ton of movies the past two weeks, I should have been fixing things up and doing more housework. I was in the doghouse for that until the tidal wave of frustration hit the shores on Wednesday. With a good fight out of the way, Stacy came up with a plan for ensuring that we do an equal share of housework from now on. I have never been able to keep a real schedule. Any time I try to organize my life in such a way, I am able to adhere to it for a couple of days before I leave it behind. Stacy has drawn up a schedule that should account for housework, homework, and work, leaving room for family time. I am not optimistic, but I’m game. I can’t really complain, I was pretty lazy for the past two weeks.

Projected path of Hurricane Stacy

On the plus side, I did finally finish Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil on the PC. I had a long spiel written here about the game both in its tabletop and computer forms, then I realized that anyone reading this doesn’t really care. The short of it is that I had a good time seeing a well-crafted graphical representation of a place I had only seen on graph paper and heard described. I know that this doesn’t sound too impressive to non-RPGers (read: it sounds über-nerdy.) The only reason it is a noteworthy accomplishment to me is that I have started and restarted the game multiple times in the past. A very clunky interface made was almost a deal-breaker for me. Why take all the time to create a game so true to its roots and then screw it up on the interface level? I hope that 1) they keep making games along these lines and 2) they learn from their mistakes on this one.

Then I cast magic missile on the ogre!

Back to housework: Tuesday was the first day in the past two weeks that temperatures have not been in the 90’s by 11:00 AM. I finally got outside to finish the lawn. By this time much of the grass was above my waist. I waded to the shed for the mower. I felt like I should have been using a machete instead. Insect life of all kinds fled the light as I hauled open the door. There were spiders along the walls, crickets the size of my thumb hopping to the back of the shed, beetles running for the grass, and a mass of ants that would make your skin crawl. They did mine. The ants were centered on two rolls of trash bags. They happened to be the bags I had to use for grass clippings. I picked one up with the intention of shaking off the ants, but immediately dropped it. Underneath the bags was an entire ant colony. I know it was a colony because of the larvae all over the place. If I saw the queen, I would have called Brian down to stock his ant farm. She never showed up, though. I grabbed a couple of shots with my camera phone, then went inside for my camcorder. By the time I came back out, half the larvae were gone. The ants were scurrying about crazily, picking them up and ferrying them off to I-don’t-know-where. I’m assuming they’re living under the shed now. By the time I had some footage and went for the bug spray, the ants were all gone and only a few larvae remained. It was almost as if they were never there. Kinda creepy. I sprayed the crap out of the shed anyway. Damn ants.

All the black spots are ants, you can guess at the white spots

We have a tiny little electric mower that chokes at three-inch grass, so I had my work cut out for me. After a couple of swipes, it stopped working. I’m used to it jamming up, so I checked underneath; no jam. The circuit breaker on the mower wasn’t tripped either. Great, I thought, I’ve fried our mower. I trudged to the front where Stacy was using the carpet cleaner on the van. That had died too. Apparently, running the computer, fan, and clock radio upstairs at the same time as the carpet cleaner and lawn mower outside was too much for the 15 amp circuit. Go figure. I hit the breaker and got back to work. About an hour later, I had finished terrorizing all of the bugs in our yard and the grass was cut. I gave up on grass catching early on. I just let the grass fall where I cut it. I figure it will cover up the dirt between clumps of crabgrass in case of rain. That and I’m lazy. I’m also a fair-skinned, red haired bald man. Do you know what happens to fair-skinned, red haired bald men in two hours of direct sunlight? I’ll give you a hint, it’s lobsterific! To make matters worse, I was wearing a sweatband. Now I have a retarded halo of unburned skin around my head. I think I’ll leave you with that pleasant mental image. Good day.

Bachelors, Ex-Girlfriends, and Pirates. Oh my!

Week two of my forced bachelorhood is nearing its end. Stacy’s flight back starts Monday night, but ends Tuesday morning. So what have I accomplished with all of my free time? Nothing. Nothing productive, at least. I did get in some quality video game time, catch up on a bunch of recorded TV, hang out with my brother-in-law, and watch a bunch of movies. Doing the laundry and mowing half a lawn in the last week and a half is as productive as I have been. I’ll be getting to the rest of the lawn on Monday. Record temperatures kept me from doing lawn work this last week, that and my inherent laziness. It was all I could do most days hauling my butt out of bed before noon. Meh.

Jon and I went to My Super Ex-Girlfriend this week with my brother-in-law, Ryan. I have to admit that it was a lot better than I thought it would be. I was expecting a few laughs here and there, but I was not prepared to laugh as much and as hard as I did. Jon and Ryan seemed to enjoy it too. There was even a good dig at Utah in there. Being pretty self-deprecating anyway, I can take a good joke at the expense of the physical capital of the LDS religion. Utah does suck by many standards. Uma Thurman plays the psychotic ex-girlfriend a little too well, which added to the fun of the movie. Just imagine anything a crazy ex-girlfriend might do and then multiply that by a hundred. Hilarity ensued. Luke Wilson, the tolerable Wilson brother, played a decent straight man. I was a bit disappointed in his lack of adventurous spirit, though. Even with my fear of heights, I think even I would have enjoyed the triple F (free fall [expletive deleted].) Ah well, his attitude was more of a plot device than anything, so I can’t fault him too much. I was pleasantly surprised when Eddie Izzard made his entrance. I hadn’t done any research on the movie and didn’t know he was in it. I enjoy seeing Eddie in anything. If you haven’t seen it already, find a copy of Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill. You will thank me or I will mock your sense of humor mercilessly. (I see at Amazon that Eddie has some more work that I need to check out.) Anna Faris was just kinda there. She didn’t add much to the experience. I can’t take her seriously after seeing her in Scary Movie and its many sequels. The show stealer was definitely Rainn Wilson of The Office fame. Far from his love-to-hate character of Dwight, he played Luke’s lecherous friend. His sage nuggets of man-wisdom were interrupted only by his chauvinistic pick-up attempts. Should you go see this? Definitely. It is one of those rare films that is fun to go see it with the guys or on a date with your better half. Just hope the latter doesn’t get any ideas for what to do to you if you dump her (or him, whatever.)

I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest with Ryan and a coworker of his last night. It was just as good the second time around. We went to the Manassas Cinemas to see it, which besides being only a couple of blocks away from home, is the only movie café nearby. I dig ordering dinner while watching a movie on the big screen. I recently spoke with Jamie about this movie and she, as she is wont to do, waxed crazy. “We didn’t like it. There weren’t enough fight scenes.” Awuh? Lessee, I counted four fight scenes, one of which was the most fantastic feat of fight choreography I have ever seen. For those sad few of you that haven’t see the movie, let me just ask you to imagine a three-way sword fight taking place on top of and inside a runaway mill water wheel. Sound cool? It is. That is not including the two (or three, depending how you count them) fantastic scenes battling the [spoiler deleted]! The surprise ending was a stroke of genius. Not only did it end the movie with a marvelous flourish, it made me really excited for the trilogy finale. Then there is the fact that it’s about pirates, and there’s nothing better than pirates.

And, since you can’t top pirates, I think I’ll draw this entry to a close.

Stacy A-Go-Go

I promised to share Stacy’s traveling woes with you a few days ago, so here you are. First, let me make her situation clear. She was flying Delta out of Dulles with three little girls, ages 5 years, 2 years, and 7 months. She had three car seats, one large bag for clothes, one smaller bag for leftover items, one carry-on backpack, and a stroller to gate-check. To say she had her hands full would be a woeful understatement.

The porter I hired to carry bags didn’t show up

Thankfully, she was able to use the sky cap to check in the luggage and car seats, but that left her with a backpack, a baby strapped to her front, and a double stroller with two willful little girls. Her flight would take her to Salt Lake for a three-hour layover before continuing on to Boise, ID.

Boise, world capital of, um, well, nothing at all

Nicole was to pick up Stacy from Boise and they would make the drive to Portland together. Odd travel plan, but the money they saved on the flights made the difference between driving and flying straight to Oregon.

Stacy and the girls made it on to the airplane with no problems. The first leg of the journey went off without a hitch. It wasn’t until she got to Salt Lake and found out that her flight to Boise had been cancelled that the fun really began. She had already planned to have lunch with her dad during her layover, since he works in Salt Lake. Now, it appeared she would be spending the night at his place with the girls, because the airline did not have another flight out until the next day. To make matters worse, the airline could not locate her large bag with all of the clothes in it (plus our nice digital camera and the power cable to my laptop!)

Poor luggage, lost out there, all alone

All Stacy had was the car seats and a bag with no clothes. In such situations, Delta has a policy to furnish stranded passengers with necessities, such as diapers for babies and the like. They did not do this.

Bare baby bum, not safe for the Internet

Stacy swung a deal to have Delta fly her and the girls out to Portland the following evening rather than force Nicole to make the trip to Boise twice. Nicole was having her own adventure. She was half way to Boise when Stacy called. While she was thankful she didn’t have to drive the whole way and that Stacy would be coming into Portland, she was also stranded. She forgot to fill up the gas tank on her trip and found herself unable to get home. After calling her husband to pick her up, she sat in the van with her kids and watched movies on the DVD player. Little did she realize that by the time Ryan arrived, the battery in the van would be completely dead from the drain of the DVD player. One gas tank and a long battery-charging jump later, she drove home with very few words passing between her and Ryan.

Ryan’s cold shoulder may have been a little excessive

Meanwhile in Utah, Stacy and the girls were having a grand time with grandparents. The next morning, Stacy called Delta to find her bags. Delta still had nothing to offer. Stacy found out that Delta would replace up to $1000.00 worth of items from the bag, so she should keep receipts for any replacement purchases. However, they specifically stated that they do not replace cameras. Great.

Do you know how long I had to save up for that? That’s top of the line!

Stacy’s flight to Oregon was exhausting, but without mishap. Ryan was waiting at the airport for her when he heard a call over the intercom for Vicki to come to the baggage claim. Wondering why our 5 year old would be getting paged, he responded and found that not only had they located Stacy’s bag, but had delivered it to Portland. Odd, considering Stacy’s flight plan never hit Portland until after they lost the bag. Stacy and the girls arrived safely, found all of the luggage, and made the trip to Ryan and Nicole’s without any more problems.

Now Nicole is a couple of sizes bigger and drugged while Stacy is corralling all of the children until Nicole recovers. After that, watch out Portland!

Quasi-bachelorhood, Sweaty Work, Screaming Slugs, Overweight Houses, and More Sweaty Work

Monday found me spending the morning with Stacy and the girls at Dr. Jim’s Emporium of Back Ache, Neck Injurie, Spine Crackyng, and All Natyral Remedys. Stacy wanted to get in a good session of spine crackyng before she and the girls made the arduous journey to Portland, OR. Stacy will be there for her friend’s life (and breast)-altering surgery. I say good on her. If you don’t have much to begin with and adding somewhat will make you feel good about yourself, then get implants by all means. With her husband going to school full time, she won’t have much help around the house with her three little boys. This is where my wife comes in, with her three little girls. So what you actually have now instead of an invalid with three boys is an invalid, three boys, three girls, and my wife. Lucky her. More on her traveling travails later.

Don't worry, she's used to traveling!

In the meantime, I have been plunged back into quasi-bachelorhood. As I’ve said before, I am a boring bachelor. Not only do I not do any of the “fun” things other bachelors do, I don’t do any of the “fun” things other people in general do. My idea of a wild time is catching a double feature at the movies. Wooooo! That being said, my next two weeks will most likely involve puttering around the house while I try to finish up projects that have been waiting forever.

I've really got to finish that living room!

One such project is the yard. It’s amazing what weeds will do when left to their own devices as we vacation, recuperate from minor surgery, sit on our lazy asses, etc. I made some good headway today, but was cut short when my lawnmower got so hungry that it decided to perform some self-cannibalism. Either that, or the rubber piece that smooves down the grass before cutting suddenly became suicidal. It went right under the blade, metal mounting rod and all. I decided that since I had already sweated out my first two bottles of water and I still had a service project to attend later, I would stop for the day.

Foreground: Mowed, Background: Overtaken by the Verge

I’ve seen a few trailers for Monster House over the last couple of months and thought I’d preview it to see if Stacy could take Vicki. Unbeknownst to me, the theater I chose was showing the 3D version. Bonerus! I sat through the usual batch of kid movie previews and was surprised at how entertained I was at the trailer for Dreamwork’s Flushed Away. The screaming slugs just put it over the top for me. Although Nick Park (the feller what does the Wallace and Gromit) has nothing to do with it, it is an Aardman Animation production. The animation looks like computerized versions of Park’s work. There’s a short clip of one slug below, but the big one is at the end of the full trailer. Check it out here.

The movie itself wasn’t bad. I certainly wouldn’t take Vicki to see it, though. Just the first 15 minutes would give her nightmares for months. The animation was done Polar Express-style with motion capture suits on the original actors. The cast list is impressive, including Steve Buscemi, Catherine O’Hara, Fred Willard, Maggie Gyllenhal, Jason Lee, Kevin James, Nick Cannon, Jon Heder, and Kathleen Turner. Everyone did a fantastic job. The big payoff is when you find out that a former circus sideshow “giantess” (which is a nice way of saying, “she’s as big as a house”) is responsible for the haunting.

Oddly enough, she didn't sing

I polished off the day with a couple of hours helping a lady from the church. Apparently, the church has been helping her remodel her home after a bunch of unfortunate flooding accidents. I worked mainly on some drywall with a sprinkling of electrical work. I also could have filled another couple of buckets with sweat. I don’t know if it is the humidity or just me, but I have been perspiring like a perforated swine.

Because I've mentally scarred you with this talk about sweat, here's a picture of sexy Halle Berry in sweats. Feel better?

There Go My Dreams of Winning the Indy 500

Red Hat class is over. I am not sure if I’ll be attending RH300 in a couple of weeks or in October yet. Class was pretty good. I had a better grip on the information this time around than in my last class, but I still feel unprepared for another test.

A fun thing happened on the way home from class on Wednesday, though. As soon as I started the car, the engine rumbled to life a few decibels higher than usual. No big deal, it sounded a little more throaty, like I had a cold-air intake on the engine. By the time I made it home, it sounded like I had a sports car with a coffee-can-sized muffler. I shrugged and figured I’d let the mechanic take a look at it next week. The next morning, about ¾ of the way to Red Hat training, I shifted from 3rd to 4th gear and it sounded like I had left my exhaust on 495. I checked my rear view mirror to watch the carnage as rush hour traffic swerved to avoid the debris, but there was none. That didn’t stop the engine from deafening me, though. Where before the car sounded like it had some aftermarket exhaust work done, now it sounded like I was front-row at the Indy 500. I made it to Red Hat and texted Stacy the good news after my teeth stopped rattling. Just what she needed on her birthday, right? Oh, did I mention that she was due for a root canal in the afternoon, too? Yeah. Great birthday. Anyway, my drive home involved me slouched down in the seat as every person I passed glared at me until I was out of earshot.

“Mommy, why is that car so loud?”
“Because the prick driving is an inconsiderate jerk, honey. Let’s give the bad man dirty looks until he goes away.”

I kept waiting for a cop to pull me over for the noise, but I lucked out. Once my hearing returned, I thought I’d give Stacy the thrill of pretending she was in an F1 racer and let her drive the car to the mechanic. As she drove ahead of me, I noticed that the pipe that leads from the catalytic converter to the muffler was dangling. Rust had eaten clean (dirty, actually) through where the pipe met the converter. I guess that would explain the extra noise and the new soothing rumble seat feature! Stacy looked like she had just gotten off a death-dealing bad carnival ride. I went inside to hand over the keys while she tried to stop her whole body vibrating. I figured with over 100k miles on the converter that it had finally given up the ghost.

Update: I just heard from Stacy. Turns out the catalytic converter is fine, it’s just the pipe that connects to it that needs replacing. 100k+ miles and that converter is still converting. I love that car.

Secondary Thoughts on Superman Returns

Well, Superman Returns has been out for a couple of weeks. As promised, here are more of my thoughts on the movie. Be warned, spoilers abound below.

Superman Returns had good, bad, and elements that were both good and bad (further known as “gad.”) It’s been a couple of weeks, so I figure anyone who reads this and intends to see the movie already has. For those of you that haven’t, spoilers follow.

The Good:

• Flashback to young Clark discovering his powers as he runs and jumps through the Kansas cornfields, ultimately falling out of control to the barn floor, but not landing


• Homage to the cover Action #1 when Supes lowers a runaway Ford Mustang to the ground


• Homage to Man of Steel when Supes rescues an out-of-control space shuttle and airplane with Lois Lane aboard


• Supes outracing said plane after it lost its wings, catching it on the nose cone, stopping it with the power of his flight just inches from the ground in a full sports stadium, then gently lowering it to rest


• Various scenes portraying Supes flying through Metropolis as its citizens look up in awe. This is reminiscent of the citizens in the comics that are safe and secure in the knowledge that Supes is watching over them and are used to seeing him flying through the streets


• Television footage of Supes fighting everyday crime in convenience stores, banks, etc


• Supes floating above the Earth and just listening until he hears a crime. Not only does this showcase his devotion to fighting crime, but it gives a little bit of insight to what it would be like to be able to hear everything all of the time. Plus, the visual with the cape billowing in zero-G was cool


• Supes walking up to a full-sized chain-gun on full auto until it runs out of ammo, after which, gunman closes the distance and shoots Supes point blank in the eye. Does Supes flinch or even blink? No, he takes the bullet straight to the eye, it deforms from the impact and falls to the ground, harmless. Both the thug and Supes take a moment to watch the bullet fall


• Supes takes Lois up above the city for an object lesson on why the world needs Superman. “What do you hear?” “I don’t hear anything.” “I hear everything. You say the world doesn’t need a savior but everyday I hear them crying out for one.”


• Lex gets out of jail because Supes doesn’t show up for Lex’s parole hearing


• Supes flies on his back and lays down a broad beam of heat vision to take out falling debris and save the people on the ground


• The Daily Planet globe’s slow fall and ultimate catch by Supes, who then lays it to rest gently on a Volvo

The Bad:

• Oh, where to start? Crystals, that’s where. Everything to do with Krypton crystals should not have been there. What a horrible plot device. By extension, most of the movie was bad


• Crystal-based Krypton sucks, as does the sterile environment of the crystal-based Fortress of Solitude


• Lex Luthor was the old land-grabbing kook from the original Donner films. Why? Why not the xenophobic business tycoon that carried on a personal vendetta against Supes through many years of the comics? Why not the man that was so charismatic, he became the US President before his treachery was revealed?


• Cyclops as Lois Lane’s love interest. Not nearly as annoying as he was in the X-Men movies, but lame nonetheless.


• The homage to the first Donner film with Supes outracing a natural disaster to save thousands while Lois, this time with bastard son and annoying fiancé, sinks to her death. Still an earthquake, but this time it hit Metropolis, and this time Lois is drowning in water instead of earth. At least Supes didn’t have to travel back in time to save her this time.


• The Boy. I can’t express the amount of my dismay at The Boy. First, they make Supes and Lois parents of a bastard child. This is the most morally-straight man on the planet. His scruples have scruples, he’s so righteous. Yet they portray him as someone that has not only had premarital sex, but has fathered an illegitimate child. Second, they foreshadow that The Boy is really Supes’ son by laying on the health maladies so thick that The Boy shouldn’t even be walking. Third, when The Boy does exhibit his super-strength, he uses it to kill a man. The Boy is already a killer at five years of age. Fourth, when given not only the opportunity, but the motive to use his powers again, The Boy sits on the floor playing with olives. Gah! The Boy!


• Superman becomes Superstalker. Would the man who holds principles as dear as Supes use his X-Ray vision and Super Hearing to spy on Lois and her family? I think not


• Superman drinks beer. COME ON


• Supes leaves the planet for five years without telling anyone why. Weak


• Constant focus on Luthor’s thug’s “eyes on the back of his head” tattoo. It was a dumb joke and repeated display only makes it worse


• Supes gay costume. The “S” shield was too small, his hotpants were too small, there shouldn’t be an “S” on his belt buckle, there shouldn’t be “S”s on the backs of his heels, there should be a yellow “S” shield on the back of his cape, the blue and red in his costume should have been brighter. In other words, his costume should have looked like this:

The Gad:

• In the context of the bad, some of the elements of the movie were good. Lex using a crystal encased in kryptonite to create a continent laced with the only thing Supes is vulnerable to is one of those things. The crystals are bad, but the concept was cool


• Lois uttering the Freudian slip, “I did Superman!” in response to being assigned Supes as an article subject. Said joke reinforced by the snickering of Olsen


• Lex causing massive EMPs everytime he uses a crystal in water


• Supes using his heat vision to punch a hole underground and lifting the entire Krypton continent into space, regardless of the kryptonite that is growing out of the bottom


• Supes pulling half a yacht out of the water to save Lois and her family, then dropping the yacht as they hang on to him. Powerful image


• Luthor’s thug playing the piano with The Boy. The Boy shouldn’t have existed, but since he did, it was kinda cool


• Lois doing what Lois would have done, brazenly entering Luthor’s yacht to track down a story even with The Boy in tow

There is more, much more, but now I am down to minutiae and I’m running out of items. My conclusion? Go see the movie if you haven’t already and make your own decision on the merits of the movie. It was not as bad as I thought it would be, but obviously, I still have some issues with quite a few of the concepts. Still, nothing compares with seeing Superman in action on the big screen.

Idiocy, Wooly Instructors, Hot Canadians, and Not-So-Hot Receptionists

So I'm an idiot. I really need to learn how to read. For example, the class in which I am now sitting, RH253, is not a five-day course with a test during the last day. It is a four-day course with an optional test in which I could enroll. I would know that if I had read the friggin' Web site where I found the course in the first place. I could sign up for the test at the end of the week and try for my Technician and Engineer certification now, but I don't think I'll be doing that. There is another course, RH300, which reviews information from both the RH133 (the test I failed) and this course, followed by the tech/engineer test. That one runs from July 31 to August 4. I'll be signing up for that one. With the abysmal scores I got on the RH133 exam, I need as much review as possible.

My embarassing senior picture. Man am I glad I got rid of the side-fro!

Unlike Jon, it seems I lucked out in class this week. Number one, my class is not facilitated by Jabba the Hutt. Rather, it is being led by a man that bears more than a striking resemblance to Wooly Willy. I never really made the connection in my first two courses taught by him, but now that I have, I can't look at him the same. Don't get me wrong, he's a great instructor and a very interesting person. We've had a few good conversations during breaks.

Hi! My name is Willy. We're gonna learn all about Red Hat today!

The other good thing about class this week is the guy/girl ratio. There aren't a lot of people in this course, just 9 enrolled and eight actually attending, but two of them are girls. One is a techie from way back, she's been using Unix for over 13 years. She is what you would expect someone like that to look like, hair pulled back in a pony tail, no make up, t-shirt and jeans, nothing special. The girl sitting behind me, however, is much easier on the eyes. She's from Canada (she's already thrown out an “aboot” for us,) and is very cute. She has short, curly hair and a pixie-ish face. I mention this only because I have never been to such a technical course that is attended by any woman above the attractive level of a Polish babushka that doesn't believe in shaving her mustache. So, it looks like I have Canada to thank for this one. They can make a few things right Up North.

Blame Canada

The cute chick in class makes up for the letdown I felt when I passed the other office on this floor on the way to the bathroom. Jon had me all prepped for a hot receptionist down the hall. Not so much. What was sitting behind the reception desk was very greasy, from her hair to her shiny face. Maybe I caught her at a bad moment and she'll freshen up to beauty, but I couldn't help but think of Soul-Glo as I walked by.

Just let your soul glo!

On that note, I'll get back to class. I finished the last lab and lunch about an hour early, so I can already tell how fast this week will go by, which is to say, not at all.

Update:

Apparently, the receptionist I saw this morning was just the morning person. That, or she changed clothes, got a dye job, and drastic reconstructive facial surgery because now, there is a decidedly hot blonde sitting behind the desk showing off an amount of decolletage of which I definitely approve. I may be making some more trips to the bathroom. Eh? Eh? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink! A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat, eh? Eh?