When a Weekend is This Frustrating

You should be able to get a refund. Or a do-over. At least MI State made it to the final four. Basically everything else I touched turned to crap, kind of a reverse Midas touch so to speak. Really it was getting so bad I was afraid to take a piss.

Finally, late Sunday I just gave up. The weekend won and it was clear I was not going to get anything productive done. I had no more fight in me and I just relegated myself to the couch for the rest of the day.

Today is not starting out that great either… maybe I will just go home.

Cable TV Sucks

I hate Comcast.
Worthless crap.

Cool Tools: Evernote

Sometimes you run across something that is really useful.

For me *evernote* is one of those things. Briefly it is an online place to store, notes, pictures, files whatever you want. Not really like a flicker account to share but like an extension of you memory. Usually these things don’t work so well, but this one is AWESOME.

Here is what is really cool about it: your at Lowes, you want to remember the dimensions of something say like a new sink, but you don’t want to write it down. You snap a photo and hit the evernote button (or if online you just “clip” it to evernote) and you forget about it.

Two months later you are at home, trying to remember the dimensions, you pull up evernote and type in “sink” and it searches you photos/notes/files for anything to do with sink. And bingo you have your photo in front of you. The trick is YOU DON’T HAVE TO LABEL IT because it can read the text EVEN HANDWRITING from the untouched photo and it flippen works perfectly.

Now you can see the photo you snapped, the price, the dimensions, the color. Everything.

So run with this idea: business cards, wine labels, anything you would want to recall later and holy shit you have something pretty damn awesome. Although this works best with some smart phones you don’t need one for this to be a pretty awesome tool.

Best for last: its free. The basic service is anyway. But if you get into it and find your usage exceeds the allotted free limit then you probably will be willing to pay the small fee.

Handy Life Lessons II- Friday Rant Dumb and Dumber Edition

Please understand… I am the first to admit when I do something wrong (Not a word Andrew) but in today’s post I wanted to just highlight some quick things that you might want to review, you know in case you have to interact with another person or something.

1) Learn how to Speak English.

No I am not talking to you Mr. Foreign exchange student. I am talking to you Mr/Ms ghetto dweller. If you keep getting funny looks from people you run into ITS BECAUSE WE CANT UNDERSTAND YOU. If only you and the feral cats living under the garbage pile in back of your house can understand your particular dialect of grunts and clicks, its time to do some “BOOK LEARNING”

2) Learn how to write a check.

I dont understand why the bank will give you a checkbook with out making you take a test first. Seriously its not that hard. If don’t get it, ask for a debit card. If you are over 30 and still don’t know how to write a check ask someone. If you still cant manage someone else should be taking care of your finances for you. Also if you write a check you gave us permission to take the money from your account, if we do it electronically IT’S THE EXACT SAME THING. No I cant opt you out of that. Oh and post-date anther check and I will punch you in the mouth.

3) Stop asking me stupid questions.

How the hell would I know where you pay your speeding ticket? Try looking on the ticket. This is not the utility company and I don’t really know how late the oil change place is open. If you start the question with do you know how THEY… stop right there buster. Since THEY are not I then maybe you should march right over THERE and ask THEM. Since I am not THEM you can bet that THEY know better about what you are talking about.

4) Learn how to drive.

I cant stress this enough. I know you are a moron from the way you made a right turn from the left turn lane. Here is some more advice: if you miss a turn go to the next intersection. Don’t back up … just because you are facing the right way does not make it ok… you are still traveling in the wrong direction. NO I DON’T KNOW how much that ticket will cost you. Please review #3

5) Finally, just because you believe something it does not make it true.

You neighbor did not have to pay his deductible? Good for him. He told you that you should not have to pay? Clearly you should be filing this claim with him. Really its not your fault, oh I am sorry, I will get the guardrail to pay that deductible for you, right away. I don’t care what you heard, seriously I am not making this stuff up. You once believed in the tooth fairy didn’t you and look how that turned out for you Einstein.

Its not even 10 am yet.

And my Brain hurts.

I cant even blame this one on

Alcohol.

Fun Fact

Here is a fun fact.

My friend called me while driving on I275 the other day. What is so strange about that you might ask? Well that is what I asked, anyway.

This is the deal, he said to me:

I never drive on 275 (if you live in SE Michigan you know it can be a dangerous nightmare especially around rush hours) I usually take the back way 8 or 9 mile to avoid the traffic. But since all the lay-offs TRAFFIC IS VISABLIY LESS. You see, that area is usually flush with automotive workers. Auto executives, auto suppliers, auto related support industries but the recent decline of the Big three has so effected the area that there is visibly less traffic.

WOW.

Shop Update- Small Chest

This weekend did not start out so well. In fact Saturday sucked as I broke something that will not be easily fixed.

So I spent some time Sunday knocking out this small chest in the shop.

Although its not going to make up for Saturday, building something made me feel a little better anyway.

At the game.

Pistons vs LA Clippers.

First Day of Spring Again!

Its spring! Both Michigan teams are in the payoffs, the days are getting longer. As you can see here Tanner can barely contain herself.

Calm down girl!

(T)What Is Twitter?

This is going to sound a little hypercritical (sic) but.... do we really need twitter?
I mean do I really need to know what someone is doing all the freaking time?
For those of you who dont know, Twitter is a small "IM" like client that y0u continually update with your status "what are you doing right now". Then everyone can see what you are doing right now. Its billed for knowing what is going on with someone between blog posts. Really? Do I need to know my friend is taking out the trash right now?

I did see one guy rigged his washer to auto-magicly tweet him when it finished a load. Do you need this? What is next? Was that the toaster? Before I turn around let me check my phone to see if the toaster updated its status. Yes that is but my shoe just tweeted its untied I better bend down and tie it... updating status...
I am ( bending down to tie my shoe)
I thought I had a sickness. A kind of connected-disconnected disorder. I mean my alarm clock is even internet connected. But this, this is just not right. I can see people tweeting there way down the street running into lamp posts for f-sake. Did we learn somthing from Wall-e? Put the twitter client down and go build something damn it.

Cool Gear- Flying Car

I have wanted a flying car forever. Now there is one.

*Check it out here*

Sadly this is still a prototype and it likely will not be in my price range but still a guy can have a dream right?

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Still not drinking for lent, and that always takes a we-bit-o-fun out of St Patrick's day.

But still, all the best to our Irish and those Irish at heart on this day.

Maybe I will go home and drink some green tea.

THE NETWORKS DOWN! THE NETWORKS DOWN!

Well it took us all day, but we finally tracked the problem to somewhere in this area (flailing arms wildly).

Dear Corporate:

Seriously, how in the hell do you expect me to get any of this work shit done with the network down?

If You Are That Big of a Geek:

If you even know that the iPhone has a software update tomorow... this post is for you.

(click to enlarge)

Cool Tools: You Get Signal

For all you geeks out there, I ran into this neat tool over at You Get Signal where along with some other cool tools you can get a graphic trace back to a network and more.

Its kind of cool and fun to watch it work.

Sadly I will only trace back the the *known* interweb locations and not all the back the the Matrix, but still fun.

Saturday- Pleasant Phesant Time

Today I got a way for a little "me in the woods time" when Ron was kind enough to invite me pheasant hunting up in Brown City.

Usually I am not one to get up too early on the weekends but I got up at 4:30 so I could be up there by 7:00 but all in all it was worth it so spend some Guy Time shooting guns and grunting and stuff.

Science Time

Here is a quick shot of my nephew who was awfully proud standing in front of his science fair project. I know I might not be the most objective but it was obvious he had the best display of all the kids.

Insect Hunter, you better believe it.

Is It Just Me?

Or is anyone else bummed out by the fact we have so much low orbit space junk flying around out there?

I mean by the time I finish with the semi-autonomous death ray I am building in the basement and get it up and running, hurl it into orbit it is likely to come down in flames due to some piece of random old satellite flying by at a million miles an hour.

How depressing. Click *here* to read more about it.

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Bad luck

Seem to have had a slight run of bad luck lately.

I mentioned we have been getting a lot of rain, but worse than the rain is the power surges that can be caused by the weather and other factors. Yesterday I came home to the acrid smell of electrical burning. I went all over the house and I found the modem/router was out but could not find the source of the smell. I was worried as that smell is never good. Checking the power did not make me feel better as my Fluke meter showed 150 volts ac coming into the home, every plug had to much juice (should be 120).

A quick run over to the neighbors showed they were having the same problem… with similar small items going out. (and my meter still reading 150 volts ac)

Finally I realized our furnace was out, and sure enough when the power surged it ate my transformer. The smell was from the transformer that bit it hard.

One cold night later, new transformer, and $200 lighter wallet. Still waiting for Edison to fix the power coming in.
*** ret my call from after hours message I left***
DTE: Edison, did you call regarding low power?
Me: Yes, yes I did, but I don’t have LOW power, I have TO MUCH volts coming in.
DTE: To much?
Me: Yes you phone message does not list an option for too much power. I hit to little but it needs to be fixed I show 150 volts coming out of every socket. Not telling you your job but both neighbors showing similar problems so its likely outside.
DTE: OK we will send someone out.

**** UPDATED****

DTE: Hi were are at your house you called about Low voltage?
Me: Yes, but really its HI voltage, not low I explained this to them earilier.
DTE: Oh, well I will check your meter
Me: Yes and check the neighbors becase I dont think I am the only home affected.
DTE: We will let you know what we find out.

*** call back***

DTE: Mr ***** ?
Me: Yes
DTE: I show you and your neighbor are getting 151 volts, thats to high.
Me: Really!?
DTE: Yep I will have to get an overhead crew out here.
Me: Thanks...

Rain

This weekend it rained. The entire weekend. Between work, the heavy
rains and a stuborn bathroom fan that died and had to be replaced it
was a somewhat unsatisfying weekend.

Spring Madness

As mentioned it appears spring in MI is happening, although it may snow yet again you never know.

With spring brings out all the people who have been cooped up inside all winter to the various parks where Tanner and I frequent all year long. Lots of people were out yesterday in the 66 deg weather including this kid who thought it was hilarious to go as fast as he could through this small lake of a puddle soaking him and everything else around him. I caught this quick sequence of shots with my phone that I thought was interesting.

Spring!

In honor of the Spring like temperatures today here in the Midwest, I pulled out this picture from last spring ( I think this was Gabriel's bday party in May) staring my niece Mina enjoying a pickinic outside with some friends.

I colorized this on my phone with a new app I have called Color Splash.

What a cool result.

Yea Spring!

The Two Faces of Kitty

In what could not be a more physically representative picture looking into the mind of kitty, here you see her perched on a knifes edge between good and evil. This is where she lives, seemingly two different personalities both frustratingly completely opposite.

Tomorrows Update Tonight

In case I don’t get a chance to update… tomorrow I will be reporting for Jury Duty AGAIN but now that my brother is a COP I am hoping to get out of serving. Especially because the court is a short gunshot from his beat, I cant see any defense seeing me a non-biased partial person. No sir-e-bob. Especially with my patented "I want to be on the Jury because I can tell if a Man is guilty by just looking at em!" In my best sling-blade voice of course. Don’t get me wrong civic duty thing I get it but after the day I had today (maybe more on that later) I could use a break.

Thanks American Justice System!

Cool Gear: 'Misty' - Stealth Satellite

Your not paranoid, someone IS watching you:

'Misty' is the code-name widely attributed to a stealthy imaging satellite launched by the space shuttle Atlantis in 1990. A US patent from Teledyne Industries details a method of suppressing the visibility of satellites by means of an inflatable, reflective balloon, which would be inflated in orbit, and pointed towards the earth to deflect radar, lasers and also to defeat optical searches.

Due to the covert and highly secret nature of this program, it's not known what technology is used to hide the satellites, but this is a credible scheme.

With stuff like this floating around My Goog Hat I idea is not so dumb after all…