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I would like to remind the LiveJournal using public that no matter the topic, poster, context or tone; that LJ is all about me. My interests come first and I reserve the right to be an utter ass-hat and usurp any thoughtful conversation in order to state that everyone else is wrong and unhelpful, because only I have the answer. Only I hold the keys to universal knowledge, and fuck everyone else in the ear for not listening to me and my obviously more important than thou viewpoint.
Furthermore, the parent or even the original post does not matter and I will run off on a tangent whether people care or not, because anyone that doesn't care are stupid and small compared to the importance of the disseminating of my opinion. Also, I demand to be treated with kid gloves, and I will not tolerate any dissent, or else I will turn your LJ post into a flaming martyr to my righteousness.
That is all. |
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I've been watching the posts of friends mourn the loss of freedom and sense of adventure as they return and slowly reintroduce themselves to their mundane work-a-day existence, post ConFusion (Sorry, I couldn't make it, it was my wife's birthday weekend, and she doesn't care for conventions.)
And then had an idea for a documentary. In the style of the "The Endless Summer" a camera crew follows around a well-healed group of Sci-Fi fans around the world in search of the "The Endless Convention", beginning and ending at World Con. The idea being that with enough money and time, the convention never has to end. |
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Homemade cornbread equals nom nom good. That is all. |
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I showed up at the nose doctor. He spent ten minutes in the room, agreed that I do indeed have a nasty nasal-polyp issue (his exact words were, "Yep, you have polyps. Big ones. On both sides." and that the next step is an MRI and after that surgery to get the buggers removed. On the bright side after it's done and I've healed I'll regain my ability to smell again.
If that was it. Not too bad, but I've been having stomach cramps off and on today, chills, sinus pressure and a headache all day. I am not well today.
But wait it gets better. I had a technician come in to look at my furnace that has been shutting off at random times. The technician's prognosis; I need a new furnace. I need more bills like I need a hole in the head. |
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2:00am - Woken up by a racking cough.
4:00am - Can't sleep. This is the suck.
5:00am - After reading for an hour go back to bed.
8:00am - Not feeling good at all. Inhaler is now useless, cough medicine is not working, decongestant not decongesting. I'm exhausted. Thinking about going the doctor, except DOH! I left the insurance card at home. Plan on calling the insurance company, but the plan was thwarted by sleep.
1pm - Start work on fil's puter, and sure enough he's infected.
5pm - Steak and Shake for dinner. Seriously, this ain't that great.
8pm - Wishing I'd called a doctor. My diaphragm is tired and sore tired from my meager attempts at breathing. Cough is mostly gone, but I'm blowing my nose every 15 minutes. Finally clean the fil's computer but some system files were hosed and now Windows won't boot. Glorious! Fil does not have a Windows XP install CD. I've hit the wall of fail! I give up till tomorrow when I can go to Dunkin Doughnuts for coffee and wireless to download some isos with which to repair his computer. (And that is where I'm at now.)
9pm - Wish I could go to sleep but I have to wait for the fil to watch the 11pm news. He always watches the news. Nothing gets in his way. Not even sleep. Fortunately, Karate Kid Part II is on.
11pm - I don't remember this movie being this long, and now it's news time. The ending of Karate Kid, Part II is preempted by fil's OCD news and weather fixation. Grump!
12pm - I'm pretty sure I'm going to die. |
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As soon as I step in, I realized the house reeked of smoke, but the wife didn't notice. Did I mention that the father-in-law has nothing but dial-up internet but his Windows machine has been root-kitted (trojan)? And all the wireless networks around his house are locked down? This is teh suck.
9am - After a night's sleep I find that the cold has taken a turn for the worse, but I'm clearly not dead yet.
11:30am - Off to church. People gladly greet my wife and kids but mostly ignore me or give me dirty looks. What has the father in law been saying about me?
1:30pm - After church we head to wife's grandmother's to meet the wife's paternal grandmother and aunt & uncle. The f-i-l and aunt get into a private argument, the grandmother shows us around her place. Grandmother trips and falls, but is not hurt.
3:30pm - We head back to fil's house, he puts on a roast and gives us our gifts. Cash! We all head out to spend our Christmas dough.
4:00pm - Son buys a DS Lite.
4:30pm - Daughter buys Rock Band.
5:00pm - Wife and I pick up a sweet digital camera to replace the one we lost.
6:00pm - Dinner is served. I'm one drink down in the effort to drown out the cough-and-wheeze with alcohol. Fil's neighbor joins us for dinner.
12:00pm - Everyone is situated for a long winter's nap. Received a call from our house-sitter that the internet is down, the cable is down, and possibly the home-phone. Too tired to care, go to bed. |
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The day after Christmas the fam and I took off for Florida. This is the log of that trip:
4am - Get up and nudge the wife awake and then head for a shower to wake up.
4:30am - Kids are up and getting dressed
5am - And we're off. The wife is taking the first shift of driving because she's afraid of the mountains.
5:30am - Wife is near dozing off and I can't sleep, I take driving over duties for a while. See some flurries but missed the snow. Yippee!
11:30am - Time for lunch @ Burger King about 8 miles from the Tennessee border. Wife takes over again despite the worst of the mountains still lying in wait.
6:30pm - Wife is going googly eyed again and the kids have been hungry for hours. We stop at a restaurant call Margarita's Mexican Grill off of 475 exit 3 in Macon, GA. Great food, fast and courteous service, good prices. Four thumbs up from the fam! Also it's my turn to drive.
7pm - How much further Georgia? How much further?
7:30pm - In Florida now. Yippee! Now only 5 more hours to go till New Port Ritchey and the father in law's house.
8:30pm - Wife is ill from the BK earlier. It looks like I'm taking this one all the way to the end.
9:00pm - Dry cough for no reason what-so-ever.
11:00pm - Wheezing now. Not good. Hit the inhaler.
12:30am - Almost there. Exhausted and almost certain that I've contracted a cold over the Holidays. Stop at a gas station for cough drops.
1am - Arrive at destination and after greetings, all go to sleep. Only spent $65 on gas, Prius rocks.
(to be continued) |
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I have been chosen by the Cheese and Burger Society (also http://www.cheeseandburger.com ) in the Wisconsin Cheese Grill Giveaway Sweepstakes as a winner of a cheese and cracker basket with an approximate retail value of $100.
Sure it's not the grill, but still it's $100 worth of freaking cheese. Now if I could win a prune basket, I'd be set. |
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Thursday I got the call. My buckets were ready to pickup at Bennett's Orchard. 15 gallons of sweet-sweet apple juice. I showed up and they rolled them out from the walk-in, I loaded them into the Prius and headed to the Muskrat Masher's brew club meeting, where I tasted over a dozen different varieties of beer and mead (small quantities only) and was fed a wonderful pulled-pork chili (quite inventive.)
I then came home, verified that indeed the buckets were still too cold to pitch my yeast.
After work on Friday, I measured the sugar levels of the juice to around 1.040 or roughly 5% alcohol, and then spiked all three buckets up to 1.080 or 10%, pitched champagne yeast, lidded the buckets and filled the air-locks.
This morning only 12 hours later they have begun to bubble.
It's ALIVE!!!
In three to four months I should have some very potent and delicious bubbly cider. |
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My son last night noticed an ant dragging off dead ant and thought it was neat that there were nurse ants, coming to heal the disabled soldiers. We informed him that no, the ants were bringing it back to cannibalize it and not waste food and energy.
Which is truly profound when you think about it. A dead ant is the perfect food for an ant. It has all the essential vitamins and minerals necessary for an ant's balanced diet.
Which led me to thinking, maybe Swift was on to something! Because there is no way I could eat an entire human in a single setting, but babies are like snack size. Yeah. |
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Has just realized when Christian friends are in trouble and ask a community to pray for them. It costs nothing for atheists to chip in.
In fact, if things turn out good, they can take credit. And if things turn out bad, it's Ghod's will.
Neat, huh? |
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LOLZ!
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Aug. 20th, 2009 @ 09:07 am
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That goes out to all the sysadmins out there. From one (previous, because I just couldn't take the user abuse.) techie to another have a great SA day! A special woot goes out to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) muteid10t , because although we put him through shit he still hasn't deleted our personal files, and in some "special" cases that takes almost Herculean restraint. |
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Rain is totally underrated. It is the only baptism I will accept. I stood outside of my porch and watched the storm roll in. In all it's power. I let it wash over me. I removed my hat and shoes and walked through the grass while the rivulets danced down my face. This is good. |
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And to think I only missed the 60s by 20 years or so. Some things were not meant to be.
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| » We Have Zubbles! |
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Received this in my email today:
Hello to all of you awaiting Zubbles Magic, the World's First
Colored Bubbles! Thank you for your support and patience over
the past few years! We are thrilled to announce, to all of you
before anyone else, that the first bottles for public release
are currently in production and a limited supply will be ready
to ship sometime in the next couple of weeks. As a result, we
are ready to take pre-orders on our website:
http://www.zubbles.com.
We regret that we are only able to take orders for the U.S. and
Canada at this point. To those of you from other countries, we
apologize for the delay, and rest assured that we are working to
make Zubbles available to you very soon.
Thank you again,
Marc
JAMM Companies, Inc.
info@zubbles.com
Bwahahahaha. Finally a purchasable real product, after how many years of promises? Well pre-order anyway.
Jun. 25th, 2009 @ 12:02 pm
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| » Welcome Back -or- The Good Bad Good Bad Weekend |
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My weekend started Thursday with a Michigan based brewery beer tasting after work in downtown Monroe (So metropolitan. I know. Y'all are jealous.) I tasted many great brews, and was extremely impressed with Monroe county's own brewery Original Gravity Brewing in Milan, MI. I tried their smoked jalapeno and Belgian (lambic-style) brews. Yum.
Afterward, we were hungry and the wife, a new found friend and I headed to the Mexican eatery across the street. *Insert diabolical music snippet here* The food tasted good, and off to home sleep off the happy beer buzz.
Friday, the wife wasn't feeling it and so stayed home from work. I wasn't sick in the least and had a productive day, leading into another quiet but productive drinking evening, this time at home. After sleeping for two hours I had to get up, and to put it mildly, it was Old Faithful on the flip-side all night long.
Understandably I was feeling queasy, sleepy, irritable and more than a bit tender Saturday morning. I did what any Dad would do. I took two anti-diuretics and made Becca drive the car up to Kensington Metropark (awesome park by the way.) Despite my previous bouts with evil, I had a good time. I read some of my book Legacy by Greg Bear while watching the kids swim, helped Toby attempt to fly a kite and once I felt up to it rented a peddle boat to tool around the lake with Toby as my skipper. A good time was had by all, and heat exhaustion that a day spent in the sun can bring was brought to a pleasant end by cool shower at home.
Woke up Sunday morning, went to church and then off to my dad's for father's day. About now I'm beginning to feel like an over-inflated beach ball so I didn't eat much of the yummy ribs my dad made. My dad offered me a beer, so I drank it, but continued on with plain water the rest of the day. Other than that, it was nice seeing my family and I was grateful to be able to catch up with a post-op Uncle Art who is doing better than expected, although he is obviously antsy to get back to his normal active life. He's not one to stand still for long.
After I returned home, the wife went off to the store and I stayed home to fold the clothes and do laundry. As it turns out, I was able to fold the clothes. I had no energy, was now extremely uncomfortably bloated, and it was becoming obvious to me that I was dangerously dehydrated. Of course the gallon and a half of water I was consuming in order to take control of final issue didn't help any with the primary or secondary issue.
Monday morning I awoke with a dehydration headache, called in sick to work, brought the kids into day-camp and proceed to sleep and drink fluids, plenty of fluids, lots of fluids, and was mostly normal around eight-o-clock hydration-wise. Hooray. And the rumblings in my belly region foretell of an impending and probable sudden end to my beached-dead-whale-laying-all-day-in-the-sun syndrome, though hopefully not in as violent a fashion.
Jun. 23rd, 2009 @ 08:09 am
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| » The will of Wheaton |
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I've seen this opinion expressed in several places now, including possibly hearing it a couple times at con, but I'm now curious.
Who out there feels that Wil Wheaton now owes Penguicon, something? (Usually showing up as a Nifty next year, or some such.)
And why?
May. 8th, 2009 @ 01:37 pm
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| » On my way to Pendwort Calms |
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So I've been working slavishly on fixing the gaping hole my bathroom ceiling, post pipe leak. And you know what there is no piece of drywall that is lightweight while balanced atop a ladder, holding a drill in one hand, and simultaneously holding the drywall up with my head and free hand, and a mouth full of screws. Also I've learned that while squaring out a hole it is best to use a straight edge of some sort or be stuck forever measuring and remeasuring and recutting the same piece of drywall over and over again.
In short I'm exhausted. Only one more frikken day!
Apr. 30th, 2009 @ 09:14 am
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| » Cider Update |
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The last of my cider, 4 gallons of it, the one inoculated with english cider yeast is to be bottle this evening. That said, I decided to risk a tasting yesterday.
It tastes strongly malic (it's the first thing I noticed as cracked the seal on the carboy) and a hint of acetic, tart but not bad. Tannins are present, but not noticable after the second sip. It is otherwise dry and clean without any noticable flaws. This cider unlike the others did not clear, so much haze is present, but it doesn't taste yeasty so I'm not worried. The only decision now is whether to carbonate or not. If I prime the cider the yeast may not completely consume the priming sugar by Penguicon. Which would result in a slightly sweeter version of the cider. If I go this route it would be good for the temperatures to stay up as it would facilitate the residual yeast in quickly carbonating the brew.
The alternative is to bottle it as a still cider, which would be true to style (english cider) , but I'm worried that it may not age anymore without the sugar boost.
I also made chicken paprikash last night and used the cider in lieu of water or milk in the spaetzel. Yuummmm! That brings back so many memories of childhood.
Apr. 27th, 2009 @ 09:09 am
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