Just Atwitter…

rmiles7721July 13, 20073Blogging

Is that even a word? It is now…

For the time being I have taken the Twitter widgets off of my sidebar. They don’t interfere with the content of my site loading but they seem to be the biggest culprit in long loading times for my page and that is just irritating as hell, particularly when my sitemeter and other counters load after it does. Twitter is pretty cool and I will still use it a bit, but until they either get a bigger pipe or speed up the service I will just have to keep it off of here.

Time for me to go ahead and get ready for work. I have two managers off today so it should prove interesting to see if everyone shows up or not.

My mechanic called yesterday. My car is finished and it’s going to run me $541. Damn. I suppose it could be worse. I am going to try and get out of my stores at some point this morning and go by to pick it up if the wife isn’t busy. It may just have to wait until this afternoon. I didn’t get out of my meeting until 5:30 yesterday afternoon and by then they had been closed for awhile.

Boring Days Are Not Always Bad…

rmiles7721July 12, 2007Parenting/Family

I was all set to come home and do a bunch of writing but it’s just not happening tonight. I am pretty tired and thing I am going to get a good night’s sleep tonight. A couple of drinks certainly helped me along the way to being ready to hit the sack. They damn sure relaxed me anyway.

For a first day back at work it was rather uneventful. Most of my folks showed up for work, on time even. I had one manager off today, so I spent the majority of the day in her store although I had to visit all three in order to put together the end of week paperwork that they should have all done yesterday.

It was meeting day, being Thursday, so I didn’t get home from work until almost six this evening after making a brief stop at the grocery store. The wife had invited friends over for supper and they arrived shortly after the time I got home.

We had a pretty nice dinner consisting of home-made Fajitas. My tomatoes have been ripening lately and with all the rain we’ve had the last few days they are looking really nice. I only have one Bell Pepper plant this year, and it’s not doing so well because of the dry spell we went through. The banana and jabenero peppers are looking great though. Pretty soon I will be able to start making salsa again. I don’t know a whole hell of a lot about preserving and canning, so I just freeze the shit. It keeps for awhile and it’s not like I am trying to store several years worth at a time.

Anyway, the wife made Margaritas to go with dinner. They were pretty good although she and her friend said they tasted funny. They seemed fine by me, but I only had one and then had a bourbon and Coke after. Can’t drink much on a work night, so that was all for today.

The wife made our reservations for Helen the weekend of October 12th-14th. I still don’t know if I am going to manage to get the weekend off, but the wife will be there at least. We are staying in a cabin this year. Right now the manager has set aside a couple of cabins and something like five rooms aside for us as well, all in the same general area. The rates are pretty damn good as well. There are more details over at V-Man’s site. I had my next vacation all set up to be on the original date we had agreed upon for Helen in September but then the boy had to go off and join the Marine Corps. Damned inconvenient kids. 🙂

I suppose that’s about it tonight. Nothing profound or particularly gruesome and not even a single paid post for the evening. How fucking boring. Maybe I can dredge something up later. If it’s anything like last night I will be awakened around 2am by a small child crawling into bed and be up for an hour or so before I can get back to sleep for that final hour before the alarm sounds.

Digital Picture Frames

rmiles7721July 11, 20072Technology

One thing that I think is really cool that I have not had the opportunity to purchase is a digital picture frame like the ones over at Digital Framez. I toyed with the idea awhile back of making one myself using a linux based PC and a touch screen but it is pretty cost prohibitive just for a few photos. I did use my 3Com Audrey for the same thing for awhile, but it certainly doesn’t even look like a picture in a frame. Some of the digital photo frames over there are just really sharp.

Check this one out for instance,

469140-6.jpg

it’s a ten inch frame with remote and includes a 256 meg SD card to put your photos on. It includes a 5 in 1 card reader in case you have a different photo card you want to use, a USB post, infrared remote, stereo audio output for earphones or speakers, a built-in speaker and will play back jpegs as well as mpeg movies. There are a few different styles to choose from. This thing is pretty cool for just under $200. I might be able to put something together for $200 but it certainly wouldn’t have as many features or look nearly as nice. The next time you are looking for digital frames then one place you might want to shop is Digital Framez.

New Take on Spam

rmiles7721July 11, 20074Uncategorized

Just got this one via email. Same old schtick with a new twist:


Dear Friend,

I am John England, an Army contractor attached to the US Army corps of engineers in Iraq. The reason why I’m explaining my findings to you are to seek for your assistance to enable you contributes immensely to the actualization of my dream.

On the 30th day of June 2007, I and my group of men under my supervision were alerted on the need of some urgent reconstruction works in Haifa Street, a long thoroughfare of high-rise buildings built and occupied by Saddam Hussein when he was alive here in Baghdad. Immediately we proceeded to the site and as we commence work to our utmost surprise we discovered a huge underground bunker in one of the buildings.

Upon investigation of the bunker to our surprise we discovered one very lager box safely hidden and sealed together with numerous other boxes filled with different item, However I was attracted to the large box which was the only sealed box of them all, I told my men to open the box in order to find out the contents and when they were opened to our amazement the boxes contained US Dollars which amounted to $46M after time was taken to count them in bundles and rolls.

I however instructed them to keep this in high secrecy so that we can have the money to our selves, they all agreed to the plan, I wisely took the decision for us to share the money between our selves right there in the room to avoid suspicion in moving the very large box and that led me to having US$10.2 Million (US$10,200,000) as my own share of the money after which I concealed it in one box and decided to get the money out of the country but first I hid the money in a safe and untraceable location.

I am now in desperate need of a “Reliable and Trustworthy” person like you who would receive, secure and protect these boxes containing the US Dollars for me up on till my assignment elapses here. I cannot leave the boxes here in Iraq like most of my men have foolishly done due to many reasons one of which is because Iraq is getting unsafe and dangerous everyday and a full blown civil war among Shiites and Sunni Iraqis may start any moment. I assure and promise to give you 14% of this fund,

however feel free to negotiate what you wish to have as your percentage in this deal.

Please assure me of your keeping this topmost secret within you so that my job would not be jeopardized. Kindly get back to me through my personal e-mail: johnnniengland@yahoo.co.uk

My Sincere regards,

John England

Asshats

Around 200 Emails Later…

rmiles7721July 11, 2007Travel

Damn. Although I have kept up somewhat, answered a few comments and emails for the most part I have spent the week ignoring them and enjoying myself. I’ve just gone through the list of emails, spam track-backs, comments, etc…What a job. Now I can get some stuff taken care of.

Have to go out shortly and return the rental car as well. The wife ran to Carrollton for awhile and is supposed to call me later and let me know when to meet.

Hopefully my car will be out of the shop today or tomorrow as well. It did end up being the starter, but I also asked him to go ahead and give me an oil change and tune-up as well. Now I just need to get the air fixed. Maybe in the next couple of weeks I can get that done. Riding in a car with no air sucks.

Vacation Time…

rmiles7721July 11, 2007Parenting/Family

One of the things that I have really learned to appreciate over the last few years at my job is the limited time that I get with my family. During the normal course of the year my days off rotate so that one week I have two and the next week I get one day off. Since they normally fall during the middle of the week that still doesn’t give me much time to spend with the rest of them except during summer break. It makes me really appreciate the time that I do get to spend with my wife and kids on vacations and those rare weekends off that much more.

One of the things that we really used to enjoy doing was to get together with another teacher friend of my wife’s and her husband and children. We would go over to their house and cook out and then shoot pool for a couple of hours. We had a pool table in the house when I was a child and I always loved getting together as a family and relaxing together over the pool table.

We haven’t completely finished our basement yet, but depending on if I get promoted again this year and move or not, I am considering getting a pool table. My sponsor of this post, Boston Tables, has a really nice selection of pool tables shown at their web site like the one pictured below.

What is really funny is that as soon as I started browsing through the page the wife got up and came over and wanted to know how much they were. She enjoys shooting a game of billiards as much as I do. As a matter of fact in college we were both considered non-traditional students but even being older than other students doesn’t exempt you from the physical education requirements, so she took stuff like Pool and Billiards and I took a Camping class. At least it was stuff we enjoyed. Could have been underwater basket weaving 101.

Anyhow, the prices over at Boston Tables are pretty competitive and they also carry other stuff too, like Poker Tables, Bar Stools, and one of my favorites, Home Theater seating. I really need to take a look at their stuff and do a write-up on it for my tech blog. Anyone that’s hung out her longer than a year or two knows I am very much into HTPC setups and home-brew Tivos, so setting up a home theater in the back room of my basement would be really cool.

Now that I have wandered completely off the subject of Pool Tables it’s about time to stop while I am ahead. There is one over there that I have my eye one though, an 8′ Nantucket Walnut Pool Table for just under $1600. It’s pretty sharp and would fit nicely in my basement.

Starting Out On a Good Foot?

rmiles7721July 11, 2007Site News

These people should take a lesson or two from Shadowscope & his lovely bride. They have been happily married for quite some time now and are just the sweetest couple. This bride is already on depressants on the wedding day and attacking her husband with a shoe?

“While the guests were enjoying the wedding reception downstairs, the newlyweds engaged in a fight-like situation in their hotel room that later ended in bride striking her new groom with heel of her stiletto shoe. Police arrested 33-year-old Teresa Brown in the couple’s hotel room for attacking his 40-year-old groom Mark Allerton. According to her attorney, Brown had been on antidepressants and drinking at the time of the incident. “

Come on girl, give him at least a one month grace period. Then you can start to beat his ass.

…and the skies opened

rmiles7721July 10, 20072Blogging, Travel

Just as soon as we got the bags in the house probably the heaviest thunderstorm we have had all year hit. It didn’t last very long, which is nice as my back yard already looks like a river. I think one of my flower gardens has pretty much been washed away, at least the mulch.

I am in the process of upgrading to the latest beta version of MT, so if shit acts weird it will only be for a short time.

Not back yet…

rmiles7721July 10, 20077Site News

…but I will be this evening. Just relaxing and taking a bit of time to post before I come home and lock the keys back up for awhile. Something wrong with my damned archive links so that will be the second order of business once I get unpacked and get the dog walked.

The first order will be getting the keys back. After getting photographically abused by Chickie, getting fat porn from Velociman as well as ass-fucked (I enjoyed that big boy) AND found in a Google search for bald men, accused of kidnapping by Mr. Fabulous (I swear she’s in one piece), berated for paid posts by Sam, getting defaced (AND shit-faced, but that’s a whole ‘nother story) by my little brother (the link to KOS had to be the worst one), receiving weird shit (what did I expect) from Elisson (I did recognise the daughter by the way) and having Redneck ramble for awhile I am ready to be back. Oh, and don’t worry Redneck, you fit right the fuck in here with just another gotdamn redneck. If they were easily offended they wouldn’t be here in the first place. It’s amazing the abuse that people can take…

I do sincerely appreciate you folks looking after the place whilst I was being vacant which seems to happen quite a bit more as I get older. I may even invite you back to the house even if you do have a hard time with the interface. By that time it should all be out of beta and should be a bit easier to navigate. What better way to beta test the interface than invite a bunch of people that have never fucking seen it before to post over the last few days…

Sooner or later it will be back to the same old bump and grind (one can only hope). Gonna try and pick up a few paid posts today as a matter of fact in order to cover expenses…If you see them start popping up here and there it just means back to business as usual but I will try and keep them light Sam. I am just another whore after all but I do take everything with a grain of salt (and lime in the case of the Corona I was enjoying last night…

In Ruins…

rmiles7721July 10, 2007Travel

Monday we drove into the island around noon to go sightseeing and generally do touristy things that we don’t normally do while on vacation. First order of business was lunch, so we stopped at Coligny Plaza and had a bite at Steamers which I have reviewed in another post.

After lunch we decided to go check some things out. There are a couple of areas that were civil war area forts around. I knew there wouldn’t be much left but wanted to take some pics anyway and have a walk around.

There first two that we wanted to see were located near Mitchelville, named in honor of Union General Ormsby Mitchel. We visited the site of Fort Mitchel. All that is left is the earthen mounds that were the walls of the fort and the moat. There are some signs up showing how everything was situated and where it was all located. It was pretty cool visiting this historic site. The mosquitos were particularly bad around here so we didn’t stay very long. I did get some pictures which I will eventually post but my camera is such a piece of crap and with the humidity they are all slightly foggy as the previous pictures will attest. I may be able to clean them up a bit before I post them.

After we walked around there we drove a little ways down the street in hopes of looking at the Fort Howell ruins. They are located inside Palmetto Dunes, which is apparently a gated community. The asshole at the gate simply said that there were no historic sites there and wouldn’t let us in. Not rich looking enough I suppose. The fucking Hilton Head Chamber of Commerce needs to take the shit off the map if the communities aren’t going to let people in to see them. It was hot and humid so that aggravated my mood a bit I am sure.

We made good use of the Sea Pines pass that we had and drove down to the south end of the island after that where we wandered around the ruins of the Baynard plantation. Some of the tabby walls are still intact and I got some shots of them (a couple from my cell phone have already been posted). Once I get home and get time to mess with the photos I will re-post them and the others as well along with a brief history of the place. Tabby is made with sea shell, which is all I know about it right now. It’s pretty cool.

We left there and went back down to the lighthouse area again where we treated the kids to ice cream before heading back toward Coligny. We parked near the Art Cafe and walked down to the beach where we hung out for awhile. The wind was pretty strong so the waves were nice. We played there for a couple of hours before meeting up with our friend and having dinner at Steamers again.

I think we ended up getting back to Bluffton around 11 last night. I pretty much went straight to bed as I was slightly toasty and very tired from being in the sun all day.