Well, now that the kittens are starting to stumble around the room, we thought it was time to shoot some video. Thanks to Candi for finding the right time last night to do the shooting!
May 022008
Life In General
Apr 232008
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From left to right: Motorola 120e, Motorola V557, Blackberry 8100 Pearl, Blackberry 8300 Curve.
I have heard that the old 120e actually had a GPS capability on it. Simply amazing. I will admit that I can’t possibly imagine going back to a phone that doesn’t have a full-sized keyboard anymore. I got the Pearl just because I wanted a phone with good voice recognition and worked well with Outlook. But that’s just to get you hooked on “push email”. Once you’re used to it, the full-sized Curve is the only way to go! The shear volume of work I can get done while sitting on the toilet just blows my mind! I never need directions to someone’s house, just an address and my phone will get me there. How did I live without it for so long?! My curve is actually the first phone that has forced me to change my wardrobe. I no longer wear shirts without a pocket. I refuse to wear it on my belt! Anyways, I thought some of you would find this photo interesting…
Apr 222008
Well after a few days in a clean room, being well-fed, using a litter box, and not being harassed by the outside world, the “Kujo Mother” doesn’t seem to stink nearly as much! I’m relieved to find out that I don’t need any shots for the many bites and scratches I received -just a regiment of antibiotics and anti-inflammatory meds. I guess that the lymph nodes are located just inside my armpits so the doctor told me just to keep that in mind in case they start to hurt. The 4 kittens seem to be getting along well. They are just starting to open their eyes and mother is still a good, attentive caregiver. Candi and I are still trying to decide if we want to keep one of them as a memento to the savage attack I received from their mother! I hope some of them have kewl markings…
Thanks to my mom’s ample supply of cat-ready antibiotic medicine, we’re getting the mother cat as healthy as she can be while she’s here with us. I only hope she calms down a little after getting more food in her belly!
Apr 172008
So we manage to find a stray cat in one of the rooms we’re remodeling in our home. She’s got a litter of 5 kittens….
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Looks cute… But my wife and I slowly realized that they couldn’t stay there –and we weren’t about to let them lose on the neighborhood since there are already a good population of strays out there, we didn’t feel good about adding another 5 to the mix. I figured we have another spare room in less of a state of disrepair (but still a work in progress) that we could keep them in with safety until the kittens are grown enough to find homes for them…
“Do you think I should get some gloves?” I asked my wife…
Scratch and bite marks on the left hand.
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Minor scratches on left bottom of left forearm.
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Bite marks on left wrist.
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Bite and scratches on right hand.
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Deep scratches on right forearm bottom.
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Deep scratch on right outside forearm.
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…Somehow I don’t see her getting house broken!
Nov 052007
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I’ve been slowly getting my life together lately with special thanks to David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” audio book. I have to say, after using Franklin-Covey for so many years, I had no idea how much I was missing! Anyways, while getting my home office up and productive again, I decided to buy a nice stapler and thought the “Office Space” stapler would be an interesting office prop… $20 dollars later from eBay, here it is!
Holy cow is this thing heavy! At my “day-job” office, we have a bunch of old office products and one of the staplers we all fight over is this Swingline “747” model. Its all metal and just feels solid when using. Well, as it turns out, the red Swingline in Office Space IS a model 747…
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I had no idea such a simple thing could make me so happy! Now I understand the significance of Milton’s stapler in the movie at an entirely new level!!
Apr 062007
Well the winds of the Antelope Valley (also known as the “High Desert”) have struck my house like never before! I wake up to shingles in my front yard…
Mar 132007
The idea that a comedian can suffer from clinical and severe depression just seems amazing to me but I now know that just because you don’t lay in bed all day or act “blue” doesn’t meen you’re not depressed. Richard Jeni was one of my favorite comedians –I could nearly quote most all of his HBO specials to you. There are few comedians I will listen to over and over again but Richard was one of them. His family has a statement on the official website makes things pretty clear that his death was a suicide. Sad, sad day. Richard, you will me missed dearly.
Feb 112007
Well after seeing these guys selling their products on eBay, I figured I could do better. First of all, I realized that they were just using normal 3/4″ steel pipe. But I wanted to mount the laptop on the side of the floor and not the bottom. I managed to score some spare thick plexi from the local hardware store since it was sitting outside for a few months and was just a mess (but since I won’t ever be looking through it I didn’t care how messed up it was)…
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Jan 222007
Well when the temps get below freezing here in the High Desert of Southern California, pipes start to freeze. Normally that’s not too big of a deal as we just keep the water flowing through the night. But this year, even the hot water pipes froze! That’s never happened in the 17 years I’ve lived here. Anyways, I had a pipe break under the foundation this past Thursday so I had to bypass the entire run to get water flowing again -and that meant nearly re-plumbing my entire house. I had to do it as a temporary fix since I’m planning on hiring a plumber for my remodeling project in the summer but it also means that the pipes will have to remain outside in the frigid cold for the rest of the winter…
Well that means GARDEN HOSE!!
More pictures are below if you care to see how it went down…
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Jan 162007
Sacha Baron Cohen wins Best Speech of 2007 Golden Globes (SlashFilm.com)
I am still laughing at it! Sacha is comedy genius (well, at least to me).
Jan 142007
Just thought I’d snap a shot of the quick work my wife is able to make in a single sitting with a bag of sunflower seeds. It winds up replacing a meal for her! I don’t know how healthy this can be but I’m NOT about to get in her way when she does this!!
Jan 092007
All I have to say is Kraftwerk is ‘da bomb! I downloaded what I think is a bootleg video recording of a live concert taken from London in 2004. I am just amazed. I mean, I grew up listening to these guys (and they seemed to grow up too) but they still have it. All they did was stand there in the center of the stage and make amazing music. You could hear the crowd just going crazy. All they needed were some keyboards and laptops on the stage. 2 hours straight they played!
Dec 222006
Well my back continues to trouble me. I still can’t stand up straight, sit or walk for more than a short time, and am barely able to work. I’m just grateful that I have the kind of job that allows me to work while laying on my stomach. I’d like to see my doctor do that!
And what the hell is wrong with Healthnet?! They were great when I had to spend 2 weeks in the hospital earlier this year. That was a $100K bill I didn’t have to pay! But now I’m just going out of my mind. [the sorted details are to follow…]
Dec 172006
Well my lower back problems no longer keep me from being productive! Thank god I still have my large screen laptop!…
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Since I feel the best when laying on my stomach, I now live, eat, sleep, work, and play in the living room. I have to thank my wife who has been sleeping in the living room with me this whole time. She’s a real trooper. Although it feels like I’m getting better but I won’t know until the MRI get’s done and looked at by a specialist. At this rate, I fully expect to have all my lower back problems solved by the time my kids graduate college! So in the mean time I’m stuck in the living room on my belly for the time being…
Dec 072006
65 years ago today. I’m feeling very glum, introspective, and retrospective. I’ve been collecting my thoughts for most of the afternoon as I’m stuck home waiting for my back to heal -just me and my thoughts. I’ll probably post something deep and thoughtful tonight when it gets real late or something. Who knows…
Dec 052006
Well I’ve managed to keep vertical for the last few months but my lower back pain finally caught up with me. I am once again stuck in the living room on my belly working from my laptop now and just hate it. I can’t even tie my own shoes anymore. I am slowly losing faith in the whole chiropractic practice as I don’t feel like they’re actually doing anything to improve my back other than take my money and give me a great deep tissue massage. Now I know that the history of chiropractics is fairly shoddy and even the modern practice is still a questionable thing, I have had hope that there’s at least some they can do for me. Well now it looks like I’m going to have to see the real MD’s and get this looked at more closely. I’m terribly worried about it too. I know that any more “looking” into this problem means more missed work but I just am being backed into a corner now. I either stay like this forever or finally get some real help. I’m also afraid it may mean surgery (even MORE time off work we can’t afford). I blew our savings this year with these problems in the first place and now we don’t have anything to work with -no savings and not credit to pull from. Maybe we can look into a home equity line of credit to get us through this but I’m just worried about getting in even deeper debt as a result. Alas, we do only what we can with what we have… I’m just really worried…
Dec 052006
Well as it turns out, I wasn’t the only one missing those 3 hours of time each day lost driving to and from work. Eventhough I was already “planning my escape”, one of the key people at my office was doing the same thing! It was decided that our office would split in two and go from a single office in Van Nuys to an office in Torrance and and office in Acton. Praise be to GOD in heaven!!! Now my drive is a dreamy 30 min from home to desk with little to no traffic most of the time. We actually have windows now –and there’s something worth looking at outside. We have hills, trees, horses strutting by and all. It’s more like a “retreat” than an actual work environment. I got upgraded from CRT screens to LCD finally so when we actually get the building completely setup, I’ll have a LOT more desk space to work with. In the mean time, here’s a shot of my new workstation area…
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Dec 052006
While researching the band L7 I decided to find out where they got their name from. That took me on a journey through the wonders of Wikipedia I’ll never forget. While just the fact that the term “69” is there wasn’t enough, the term “Date 68” is the one that caught my eye. If there isn’t a punk rock song in there somewhere, I’ll be sad. I don’t know how long Wikipedia will keep up their article so I’ve decided to repost the text below the LJ cut for your reading dementia…
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Aug 102006
Ever visit an old grade school or middle school you once attended? Doesn’t it all look smaller now?! I recently had a similar experience when hunting down a movie I wanted to watch again for tattoo ideas…
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Aug 072006
I have been working at my current job for over 2 years now –a new record for me! Before that, I was changing jobs every year for the past 7 years or so. Anyways, the kind of work I do requires me to bounce from one project to the next several times a day. There’s just NO way to keep track without a good note-taking system. So I use a legal pad during the day to answer phones and attend meetings. In the evening before going home I transfer it all to a journal book that records all my hours and the like. It’s saved my tail so many times in the past I can’t possibly remember! Funny thing is that I also keep the old legal pads too. Recently I had to go through and old pad looking for some information I hadn’t copied to my journal book and I found this kewl little thing. I was on the phone with a good friend almost 2 years ago and we were talking about some neato words that he felt like sharing with me. I still have ’em down on paper –never to be forgotten!
Jul 262006
Well we finally got another cat in the family. This one looks like a fighter too! Even after Candi and I decided on NOT getting any more cats, this one just seems to jump up on us and we couldn’t say no…
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Jul 232006
Actually it wasn’t that great –but it sure was good for my health! I sure am glad I had health insurance through all of this. I don’t know if we would have had to pay all of this but I can’t immagine what it would have done to us otherwise. I think we still wound-up paying around $1000 for doctor’s bills and the like over time but it sure beats $100,000!!
Jul 062006
Speaking of my body, I managed to find an old pic of me from my college days in Florida. This was how I used to exercise. I’d go out late at night (dressed like you see there) and “speed skate” through the newly-built housing tracts near my apartment. The asphalt was only weeks old and smooth as silk. I would play heavy-metal or the B-52’s or something to keep me going. I’m sure I scared a lot of people that saw me.
Jul 062006
Well it’s been a few weeks now since both my “Appendix near-death experience” and my lower back problem. Once I felt I had fully recovered from my time in the hospital, I decided to start getting back into shape. The first place I thought of was the racquetball courts. Well all it took was 10 min in the courts and my lower back was killing me. I couldn’t even lean over to tie my shoes after that! Two days later my wife finds me in the office on my hands and knees -I can’t get up! I spent the next 2 weeks in bed and slowly started healing…
Well now I’m fully recovered from BOTH bad physical episodes and I’m overjoyed. I have been back to playing racquetball 3 times a week now and it feels fantastic. I’m finally doing something about my health and I am just amazed at the rapid transformation I am experiencing. From a completely sedentary lifestyle, to being totally immobile for weeks at an end, to be able to play sports again is simply amazing. I only pray that the circumstances in my life continue as they are so that I can keep this up.
May 132006
My lava lamp collection is growing! I’ve added a rear-view mirror and a sweet back-scratcher thanks to Pampered Chef stuff that my wife likes for the kitchen. After catching me using her’s several times, she got me my own! It’s also nice to have my entire music collection with me at my side through the work day.