October 2007

Thursday Thirteen #5 – Thirteen Songs on My Motorola Q


Thirteen Songs on My Cell Phone

Sort of a simple list of thirteen, but they are some of my favorite songs.

  1. (We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock – Bill Haley and His Comets. A bit before my time but I love good old rock & roll.
  2. 21st Century Schizoid Man – King Crimson – I love the first couple of albums that King Crimson put out with Greg Lake. Their other stuff is also pretty good but I started listening to Emerson, Lake & Palmer as a kid and he is one of my favorite vocalists of all time.
  3. Baby Please Don’t Go – Willy and the Poor Boys. These Arms of Mine is actually ‘our song’ but this is one of my favorites off of the album.
  4. Beverly Hills – Weezer. I don’t know what it is but I really like this song.
  5. Blister in the Sun – Violent Femmes.
  6. Bone Machine – The Pixies. I started listening to the Pixies just this past year and there isn’t much that they did that I don’t like.
  7. Caught in a Dream – Alice Cooper. One of my all time favorite artists.
  8. Go to Hell – Alice Cooper. This entire album just rocks.
  9. Headhunter – Krokus. An anthem of sorts.
  10. Hell’s Motel – MD45. The original version with Lee Ving (Fear) rather than the remaster that has Dave Mustaine doing all of the lyrics. The remaster was crap compared to the original.
  11. House of the Rising Sun – The Animals
  12. In the Evening – Led Zeppelin. Soon to be available on iTunes W00t!
  13. Seven Nation Army – The White Stripes.

Nothing spectacular but I love music and each of these really entertains me.

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Just Five More Minutes…

You know, I just did not want to get up this early today. I am still trying to nod off as I sit here and write this. Just a couple more minutes of sleep…

This is the type of day where I would lie back down while waiting for the coffee to brew and then wake up two hours later. The wife is smart and all-knowing though and set it up on a timer. It was waiting for me to get out of bed and have that first cup.

Apparently I fell asleep on the couch last night because I woke up at two and went to crawl in bed then. I must not have slept very well. I don’t normally have this much trouble waking up.

I am spending today and tomorrow down in the hole. That’s my store with the incompetent manager. It really does sort of sit in a hole back away from everything, thus the nickname.

I’ve had two of my day shift waitresses give their written notice so far since this woman has taken over the restaurant. Both of them I am transferring to busier stores in order to keep them from quitting. I may be a picky asshole but they are my employees and I don’t like losing people unless I plan on letting them go for some reason. This close to Christmas I certainly don’t need to be losing any help, not to mention the fact that heavy turnover is never good for business. 90% of my business is repeat business and people like to come in and eat and see the same friendly smiling faces every day. It’s hard for people to learn your name when they keep switching.

Thursday is normally our meeting day but apparently my boss and his boss have to drive to Norcross to meet with our senior vice president. The meeting has been moved to Friday. When I reminded my boss that we also have a football game to do tomorrow evening all he said is, ‘yep, and we have a football game’ which pretty much means a fifteen hour day tomorrow. Not exactly my idea of fun going into the weekend.

We had a pretty good time last night, although it was kind of quiet. We took Pete to O’Charley’s for her tenth birthday dinner and let her pick out whatever she wanted. Both of the girls were extremely well behaved, an unlike the Marine she didn’t pick out the most expensive thing on the menu. Although I let her order from the normal menu she still looked through the kids menu (and colored on it for a while) and she was extremely impressed with the fact that the kids menu is for ‘ten and under’. She made sure to let us know that she won’t have to order off of it after next year.

As I mentioned night before last, although we are having her birthday party on Saturday I stopped and picked her up a couple of gifts on the way home from work Tuesday night to wake her up with. One of them was this Technosource Rubik’s Revolution…

 rubikrev

Both girls have been having a pretty good time with it. Pete decided to share with her little sister RePete and she has had as much fun as her older sibling. It’s pretty good for hand-eye coordination and as you play it speeds up. She has been doing pretty good with it.

The other thing I pick up was this i-dog thing. It’s a plastic dog-shaped thing that you hook your iPod into via line out/in…

idog

It light’s up when the music is playing through it’s built-in stereo speaker, taps it’s foot, wags it’s tail and moves it’s head up and down. Oh yeah, it’s face lights up too. I made a pretty good choice with this one. Both girls were singing and dancing around the dog (as you do) at six AM yesterday morning. Pretty damn funny actually, but they had a good time.

Although it seems like I have spent more money on gifts than I would, we are kind of toning down the amount of them we are giving out. I want to get a bit more simple, particularly when Christmas comes. The only caveat to that is that my brother and his family normally come down and spend the holidays with us and it sort of sucks to get my kids a couple of gifts and then they get to sit and watch as their cousins open a ton of them. I usually go slightly overboard in compensation.

Fun With Tasers…

Just a quick collection of Tasers and news stories about taster incidents for your enjoyment…

The Real Fugitive…CAUGHT!

A guy that escaped from a New Jersey prison 28 years ago was arrested Wednesday at his Philadelphia home where he was making one last bid to conceal his identity and remain a free man.

Wedding Entertainment

When the wife and I got married 19 years ago, we didn’t have tons of money and neither did anyone in our family. The reception itself was held in the clubhouse of the condo’s where my wife’s Aunt lived at the time, and for entertainment we pretty much had ourselves and possibly a country music station. I don’t really remember too many details as I had been up extremely late the evening before. I do have lots of pictures though and they help bring the memories back. The one I remember most is the feeling of relief when we got the heck out of that place and drove off to go on our honeymoon.

Hopefully it will be quite some time but when the girls eventually get married I want them to have fond memories of everything that happens on that day and that includes even the Wedding Music because one of the big things that they will remember is the music that is played at the wedding. I can remember times in my life and certain years and decades by the songs and when I hear one it brings back those memories. That’s why GIGMasters can be such an integral part of the whole thing.

GIGMasters is the Internet’s premiere booking service for entertainment since 1997. The provide entertainments for weddings as well as other special events and have a large database that includes thousands of performers all across the United States and Canada. They will allow you to book a wedding band, DJ or musician in just minutes with access to audio, video and client reviews.

Wednesday Hero

Sgt. Robert M. McDowell


Sgt. Robert M. McDowell
30 years old from Deer Park, Texas
2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade

Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division
April 01, 2007 

Sgt. Robert M. McDowell was a military police noncommissioned officer assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion.

Originally from Deer Park, Texas, he joined the Army in February 1998 and completed training at Fort Benning, Georgia.

In June 1998 he was assigned to Fort Hood where he served until being reassigned to 1st Battalion, 1st Aviation Regiment at Katterbach Kaserne in Germany in January 2003. While a member of 1st Infantry Division, he served as an AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopter repairman.

McDowell was assigned to Fort Drum in March 2006 after completing military police reclassification training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

He was deployed to Bosnia from February to September 1999.

His awards and decorations include the Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Joint Meritorious Unit Award, Valorous Unit Award, Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Kosovo Campaign Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon, NATO Medal, Combat Action Badge and the Army Aviator Badge.

Sgt. McDowell was killed when and IED struck his vehicle in Baghdad, Iraq. He is survived by his wife and son, of Evans Mills, N.Y., and a daughter, Madison McDowell, of New Mexico.

Also killed in the attack were Staff Sgt. David A. Mejias, Staff Sgt. Eric R. Vick and Sgt. William G. Bowling. You can find more information about them at this site.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your blog, you can go here.

Wordless Wednesday #6

Comparison Shopping

One of the things that I like that seem to be popping up more and more are the comparison shopping sites such as Mpire. Mpire allows you to compare prices and find the best deals available online from major retail web sites as well as the auction sites such as eBay. You can find some of the best deals and coupons around for products from stores such as Best Buy, Target, Eddie Bauer and Dell along with thousands more.

I was able to find prices for the Canon Digital EOS-300D ranging from $450 all the way up to $1200. That’s a huge prices different and why Mpire does so well at comparison shopping. They allow me to pick and choose from vendors, give ratings for each store as well as the shipping costs right there on one single easy to read page.

Why would I want to only stick with going to one single place for all of my shopping when I can easily find the best deals over at Mpire. The thing is, there are a few names that I trust on the Internet and I will always buy from them rather than their competitors. The only problem is that sometimes their web sites are so large that finding a great deal can be difficult, and that’s where Mpire comes in. They show me the best prices and from what I’ve seen, my favorite sites are usually in the list and at a lower cost than I found on the original site in the first place.

Late Day

I’m going in late today. A few weeks ago it was decided that the districts and divisions needed to start working some evening shifts, which is actually a pretty good thing. It allows us to do a bit of training with some folks that don’t normally work with us. It also allows me to sleep in a little bit since I have scheduled most of my seconds to come right after my one or two days off. I hate working the evening shift because it means I don’t get to see my family but you have to do what you have to do to make money I suppose.

It is still raining off and on here, thank goodness. I know my plants and fish really appreciate it, but that means that we have done no more decorating since the other day when I posted those pictures. Maybe tomorrow afternoon if it is dry we can get a bit done, otherwise there is probably stuff to do inside the house. We have to start getting ready for this weekend. My daughter turns ten tomorrow and her birthday party is Saturday. As usual we are having a Halloween party. That’s one of the things she gets to enjoy each year. Since her birthday is so close to Halloween they normally wear costumes and have a bit of creepy fun.

She has already received her big birthday present. The wife took her out and let her get her hair done, now she has colorful streaks in it. Other than that she has asked for some board/DVD combo game from Disney that I need to go out and look for.

Took me a second to find the game on Amazon, but this is what she wants…


I just ordered it for next day delivery but it looks like they won’t have it here until Thursday. Plenty of time before the party anyway.

Flood Waters Rise in New Orleans

I was just watching this Associated Press video of New Orleans and it’s like a flashback to 2005. Even though most of the southeast is in a drought, New Orleans is getting a ton of rain and flooding in parts. They’ve closed down some streets and Mayor Ray Nagin is asking residents to stay at home.

Apparently the pumps are doing what they are supposed to, but it’s just not fast enough. It’s not as if it’s going to get any better any time soon. That’s what happens when you sit in a bowl that’s below sea level. They do have some choices as to what to do with the city. The need to look at the Netherlands for some examples of engineering if they city is going to remain for another 100 years. Floating houses and better sea walls, rebuilding the natural areas around New Orleans, building up some of the extremely low levels, these are some of the things that they can do.

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