Sunday, July 30, 2006

Moments of Clarity...

Does anyone else ever get those times where you see things that are so crazy that everyone else seems to take as normal? Or just times where people do things that are so stupid you can believe they would consider it?

Some examples:
CNN online had a video clip of the jewish shooting in Seattle. People running and police with guns. But right before the clip they had a commercial of Liberty Mutual showing people helping people and doing kind things. Stupid or sending a message?

Last week the wheelie master thought performing some tricks in gridlock would be cool. Sad to say I almost wanted to see him crash just to laugh at how stupid he was being.

More examples to come as I remember them. There were so many last week!

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Google Parachute...

Some quotes from from Google founders eager to take users for a ride

Sometime soon, the Boeing 767 jetliner purchased by Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page for their personal use will make its first flight.

Those fortunate few on board might hear this over the intercom just before the plane pulls away from the new Google wing at Mineta San Jose International Airport:

Good morning. Welcome aboard BillionAir Flight 1.

This is your captain, Jerry Yang, speaking.

My co-pilot, David Filo, and I would like to start by thanking our fellow Stanford University dropouts, Sergey and Larry, for giving us jobs in the cockpit.

Yahoo!, our little startup, never stood a chance once Google got going, and we're grateful to have gainful employment.

In the seat pocket in front of you, you'll find a complimentary copy of BillionAir's in-flight magazine IQ. It was GQ, until Google bought it.

After takeoff, we'll be cruising at an altitude of exactly 31,415.93 feet. If you don't know why, you aren't smart enough to be on board. Please disembark now.

I'm now required by the Federal Aviation Administration to give the following safety instructions, because our aircraft is in beta and always will be:

In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, stock options will drop from the ceiling above you. Please inflate the options until you feel financially secure.

In the event of a sudden loss of propulsion, look under your seat for the blue, red, yellow and green Google parachute. Place the straps around your shoulders, tighten the waist belt, jump out of the aircraft and press the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on your chest.

Made by Steve Terjeson, http://ironvine.blogspot.com

Monday, July 24, 2006

Over, under, around, and through...

Saturday was a long day as I ended up driving a little over 500 miles. At first I was just going to go to Yakima and back, but I decided to go around south and come back up. I ended up taking a long shortcut through the middle of Skamania county, which is basically all volcanic mountain ranges. What they don't tell you on the map is that about 30 miles of the road is actually "offroad" dirt, gravel and potholes. Frontwheel drive is quite difficult to manage offroading... Anyway I think I startled a few campers going by in my car on that road.

Fortunately, I found my way to the other side and solid pavement again. It was a maze of backroads that could have either taken me to Portland or Eatonville. I did get to see 5 different mountains though, that was kinda neat. Took quite a few pictures. Chinook Pass was quite pretty and I got to play in the snow a bit. Too bad it was mostly cloudy all day and about 110 in Yakima. Got rained on around Mt. St. Helens. Car is a dirty mess now from all the dust and rain.

Here is a map that has links to the pictures I took. It will link you to the interactive page.

Friday, July 21, 2006

The Stupid and the Annoying...

Ok, now I don't mind people posting on my blog here... but spammers need to have their heads shaved and fingers superglued to their face. No one cares about your insurance rates.

I read in the news today about people who post their innermost thoughts on MySpace.com. That is all well and good until you run into people stupid enough to put down what amounts to a criminal confession. *BONK* I mean if you are stupid enough to commit a crime, you have to be even more stupid to tell the world on your myspace account.

Maybe they are just trying to get a high page rank... talk about black hat SEO. rofl.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Which would you trust...

Would you trust a swordsmanship manual that had blood on the pages, or would you be more worried about how the book did not seem to be helping since someone was bleeding while trying to read it?



Found from Treatiſe of the Gladiatory Art of Defence

Vade Mecum...

This scanned work was quite interesting, if not a little challenging to read. It's not very often when you get to read something from the 17th century or before.

I was looking for longsword form diagrams when I came across this site which has several old historical records of swordsmanship and attack.

The Swordsman's Vade Mecum

Monday, July 17, 2006

Strawberry Jam...

I finally got around to making something with the 4lbs of strawberries I got last week. Last night about 6PM I started to make strawberry jam. Initially I was just going to use my bread machine to do it, but it would have only made 1 1/2c of strawberries at a time. Figuring I had about 10c of strawberries I quickly surmised this wouldn't work out too well. So I ran to the store, got some jars and pectin, ran home and proceeded to core all the strawberries. (Good excuse to take the new car out.)

Now, I have this huge bowl of cored and washed strawberries, what to do... Freeze half of them. Good start, bowl is much emptier. Need to mash the rest up, but can't find my potato masher! Settling on using a metal specula to chop them worked pretty well until I tried to press flat and smash them a little. *specula breaks* Great, things are going well so far. I finish smashing them all up with my broken specula.

Got the jars all ready and the strawberries on the stove starting to boil. 8:30PMish. Not going to let these burn! Stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, *arm sore switch hands* stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, *switch back* stir, stir.

Rolling boil finally, add the 8.5c of sugar, am I making jam or candy??!? Stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir. Getting really foamy and close to the top of the pot, uhoh. Trying to lift it off and stir is not good. The thing weighed about 15 lbs, so I just slid it off the burner as best I could till it foamed down a little.

Finally ready. Sheesh.

Pour jam into jars, stick them in boiling water to seal. Not too easy to do when you can only do 4 at a time. This part was pretty easy though. Downhill slope, almost done, yay! Got all the strawberry jam in 10 1-cup jars, all boiled finally, some took twice to seal properly.

Let them cool all night and this morning all seemed to be properly sealed, woohoo! I was worried as some of the tops still popped a little last night.

So much for throwing stuff in the bread maker and being done.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

New Car...

Here is a picture of me and my new car!

Ironvine Suzuki Verona

Read the long story of how this came about.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Ironvine Blog...

I am just posting this as a test to see if it will register a link to my other blog on a few places. If you really are interested about search engine optimization or search engine marketing or what I do every day look at my Ironvine blog.

Ironvine Blog

Trans...

What it stands for is "transmission" or lack of, or failure of, take your pick. I decided it would be a nice day to go for another drive. So I figured I would head over to Yakima and pick up some cherries or something, didn't really matter what. I went to Ellensburg last weekend and I wanted to go somewhere different. I really just wanted to go for a drive and relax, and breathe fresh air! (You can breathe so much better once you get over the mountains...)

Anyway, moving on with the story. I was going along just fine, heading up over hwy 410 up through Enumclaw, Greenwater, and into Mt. Rainier National Park. All of a sudden I start coasting and the engine is just revving and not making me go anywhere. Fortunately this happened right before one of those turn offs and I was able to coast to the shoulder/pull out, barely. That was much preferrable to the cliff straight down to the river about 10 feet before.

Joy. I am stuck.

No cell service, of course.

(Glad I didn't have the kids along at this point, some choice words ensued.)

So I get out and take a look. Nope, not overheated, engine starts and seems to run fine. Nasty deerflies eating me up at this point. Sunny and warm at least. Let it set for a while and tried it again. No luck. So I get out, raise the hood and stand there on the side of the road for about 45 minutes watching the cars go by. Nice of people to stop and check to see if I was ok... Anyway I wasn't planning on hitchiking back to town unless absolutely necessary.

I wasn't too concerned because I was on a major hwy though the national forest and I figured a park ranger would drive by eventually. Which they did. The two nice ladies radioed for a tow. So another sitting around for an hour, reading my book, in the fresh warm sunny air waiting for the tow truck.

I did have a little entertainment during this break period as the park rangers pulled over a brand new white Escallade right in front of me. I got to watch the two chicks with guns *so hot* get out and give this guy a ticket. Back to reading my book.

Tow truck shows up and pulls my truck up onto the lift bed thing, I get in and we start the long 60 mile trek home. At this point I am thinking this is going to be an expensive trip. The $50 in gas I put in at the beginning of the day was only the beginning. So after a very bumpy tow truck ride I get home and pay the $310 tow bill. Great now I am stuck with no way to get to work.

*sighs*

Well I have been planning to get a car soon anyway. Guess it is going to be sooner rather than later. I have dad come pick me up and we drive down to this spectacular repo car sale in Fife. Get to meet a nice texan used car salesman and we look around at some of the cars they have there.

I took a few test drives. Chevrolet Malibu, Toyota Camry, Chrystler Seabring?, Suzuki Verona, and one or two others.

Finally settled on the Suzuki Verona. Nice midsized car, not too small, not too big, good handling, very roomy, drives pretty well. Initally I told the guy we wanted to stay in a $10-12k price range, this is really only a commuting, reliable car.

*Interesting note: While on the first test drive he of course asked us what we do, and we are like, we are computer programmers. He goes, oh, yeah computers eh. Wow I just learned how to turn one on a couple weeks ago. This fact will come into play shortly.

After taking a couple test drives we sit down at the desk talk a few things over and he goes off to get the price. Of course we, in the mean time while going on a test drive, had called mom and had her look up the prices on the internet of what the same model was running for around town. She finds a EX model, which is the top package car, for $12,977, same year (2004) with half the miles, at McCann Cadillac just across the freeway. Well the one we had been test driving was the S (standard) model. Not that it didn't have all the features, power everything, CD, AC, etc.

He comes back, not knowing we had just researched prices on him, lays out this price sheet with the car listed for $18,599 and making $399 a month payments for 60 months. Good God. We were expecting something like $9-10, not freaking $24k. Dad and I just kind of looked at the paper and the guy like WTH are you thinking dude, that's like full price for a brand new one. If you do the math (yes I can do a little math), you figure a top of the line package with half the miles runs you $12.9k so the standard models are usually $2-3k less than that. $9-10k right? Well dad and I thought so, this car salesman didn't seem to get that though. I mean this car was even missing one of the hubcaps and had this weird flutter in the gas pedal. Tough schamolies for him.

We tried to explain to him that there was an EX model across the street for $6-8k less than what he was asking, full leather, sun roof, alloy wheels, sports package etc. It was quite funny to watch him flounder at this point. So we explain how we know all the details about the car from calling mom with our cell phone and having her look up prices real time and that there is one that extremely undercuts his price on the other side of the freeway. Went so far as to quote him the prices from the blue books and how much lower they were than his lol.

He goes off and talks to someone, and I guess they look up the same car mom found and other general prices for the model in the area. He comes back and goes 'yep ye'r right that's a helluva deal.' The guy is like 'I really hate technology' because you could just tell that he knew he had lost his sale at that point. So I'm starting to stand up and head out. This is pretty pointless to continue. He starts to make the objection and say that he might be able to go as absolutely low as the high $11 range. Hah, too little too late. Sorry dude, schmooze the next guy.

**I did get the special giveaway they had, however. A free 3 day/2 night hotel package for 2 to a whole bunch of different cities. Of course I would have to pay airfare and expenses etc. Well, maybe I will get to go somewhere, sometime with someone.

It's about 8:30p at this point, but we drive over to McCann's to look at the other car. They were closed of course, so we snuck onto the lot and went to see it. It was so much nicer and looked a ton better.

So we are going over tomorrow morning to get me a new car! (If it drives well, which it should from one of the premier car dealerships.) I much prefer to get a nice car with a warranty from a dealership that takes pride in their cars, and doesn't have to fly in import used car salesmen from Texas just to sell off extremely overpriced bank repos.

***Things to note: I am not trading in my Blazer, it just needs the transmission fixed. Frankly the one transmission took it 400k miles, it had to give up someday. It will be a nice camping vehicle or something. Will have to call around on monday to get some prices for that.

Very expensive weekend. I am tired. It has been a long day. Going to bed.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Dew Death Calculator

Dew Death Calculator

I would have to drink 211 12oz cans of Mt Dew to kill myself. I am thinking this would be theoretically impossible because by the time I had drunk 20 gallons of Mt. Dew I would have flushed about 19 of them. The things people think of.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Where did the weekend go...

Weekends definitely need to be longer. They seem to be over before I get everything done I wanted to. Had a fun day Saturday. Decided to go for a drive since it was so nice out. Took Hwy 18 up over the pass and down into eastern Washington. Ended up in Ellensburg, bought a slurpee and came back. Stopped at the Thorpe Fruit and Antiques store and got a few things to decorate the office like a 10"x10" square light up DO NOT ENTER sign and a 50 year old glass Quickie pop bottle (with the grapefruit/lemon pop still inside). Quickies all around!

Watched the World Cup yesterday. Was fairly boring. Those guys could be stuntmen, they are good at taking dives.

Weird things I have seen in the last few days:
- A foreign lady changed lanes. Twice. Sounds pretty normal. Except she used the wrong blinker.
- Santa Clause left his coat along side the freeway on Hwy 167
- It was 90 degrees at the top of Snoqualamie pass at the ski resort and 103 down a ways.
- A 65-80 year old woman neatly dyed her permed short grandma hair. Blue and purple.
- I found out that a Quickie is a carbonated beverage.
- I got strafed by a P-51 Mustang.
- Redken shampoo and conditioner gave my hair a greenish tint.

I'm sure there was something else, I just can't remember what it was.

Need to remember to get a haircut this week.

Supposedly I have some doctors appointment tomorrow. I am assuming that this is scheduled by the insurance company for an independant medical examination. Weird thing is they called my parents house and the lady was trying to push herself to get information about me while she was trying to confirm the appointment *rude*? I was supposedly to receive a big letter about it before then? Didn't get that whatever it was. Anyway they have to go through my attorney and shouldn't even be calling me directly, so I'm not going. I have better things to be doing than going to doctors appointments I didn't even know about and the attorney didn't approve.

Off to do some work. Wish it was still Saturday.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Free Latte...

Traffic was light this morning and I got to work a bit early, so I decided to pop over to Starbucks to get a little wake up juice. I put in my order and move over to the pick up area and stand around for a little bit, everyone else is getting their coffee but me... turns out they forgot mine. So they spit it out nice and quick and I got a coupon for a free whatever I want next time. Works for me, was worth 3-4 minutes of my time. :)

Had quite a productive day yesterday. I cleaned, baked a cake, baked some french bread, finished my book, started a new one, rearranged the living room a bit and watched the space shuttle launch.

I'm still pretty sore from the bbq I gave myself. Should be alright though unless someone tries to give me a shoulder rub, not that it ever happens. I took a few pictures of my back monday night just to see how red it was. It was quite impressive.

Had to write my performance review for work as well. I hate talking about myself, what I did good, what I did bad, and whatever else other people did to me *cries* they hurt me, and called me names and... no they are all nice :) Next thing I have to do is write up a list of goals to accomplish. 1) I will be at work tomorrow $500. 2) I will do what I normally do everyday $500 3)... I don't know, I'll tell you later $500. There all done. Might have to refine the list a little before I submit it hehe.

Hope everyone kept their fingers intact last night.

Monday, July 03, 2006

Crispy Critter...

I went swimming with the kids yesterday for a few hours. They got sunscreen, I didn't. Last night I was laying down reading and my shoulder started itching and burning. So I went and looked in the mirror and my whole torso was bright red. Then it all started to hurt. Not good. Put on lots of aloe, that helped a little. Didn't get a lot of sleep, kept waking up when I rolled over onto a sore back or shoulder. I don't have a problem being cold today, I am radiating heat.

I was thinking about Harry Potter last night as I watched the Sorcerer's Stone to fall asleep. What is she going to do with Ollivander? I assume that he is off being forced to make wands for giants, or goblins or something for Voldemort? Anyone's guess at this point. All we know is that he is missing.

Work is so quiet today, only 4 or 5 people are supposed to be here all day today. Well it's not too quiet, I have some Ozzy and other misc rock stuff playing hehe. Glad it doesn't smell like a paint factory in here today. I had a killer headache till Sunday from the fumes last week. Not sure how much work is going to get done today. It is quiet, but then who really wants to be here in the first place ;)

I started an exercise calendar on my whiteboard at home last week. Been filling it in pretty regular. Seems to be helping, at least I am making a regular effort to do something at least each day for an hour +. Mostly strength training or swimming so far. Went for a jog a couple times.

I had some weird dream last night. I can't remember too much of it. Something about rescuing the damsel in distress.

Just about finished with book 4 of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I have found so many spelling and print errors in these books, I think I'm averaging 4-5 per book at least. The story itself seems to jump around a lot and there are a ton of people who have really no story relivance that just confuse you. It tends to jump around a lot as well. Oh well, it's something new to read.

Women Drivers...

Ok, I know that most people would give me a lot of flak about this *cough women* but I do believe that it is a rare quality in the farer sex to be able to drive with any sort of deft touch. Take today for example, one of the three days of the year where you are actually able to drive 65 down the freeway to work, the whole way. So, inevitably you get some crazy woman driver who has to go 80 swerving around everyone and tail-gating, only to get off at the next exit *nuts*. Then there is the lady who is enjoying the empty freeway by going 50 in the fast lane. Maybe this I can excuse because everyone is used to going 5-15mph, but please ladies if you see there are 15 cars piled up behind you and no one in front and you are going less than the speed limit, that means that you should probably move over into the right lane...

Still I got to work about 40 minutes early. Does that mean I get to leave early too? :)