Rubber Meets The Road

New tires are my 2nd least favorite thing to buy, right after a root-canal. As I listen to the tire guy explain the features of the big black chunks of rubber he is going stick on my vehicle I can't get too excited. It might be due to the fact that I sell homes for a living, and I am a comparison shopper for various gadgets that leads me to expect a long list of features and benefits. After asking all sorts of questions like how will these affect my milage? Will these be better in snow or rain? How many miles will I get on these? The answers are faugue and of little variance. Basically I am going to drop one "Benjamin" per corner to drive another year or two, and I am supposed to be excited about it. When I drive off, I feel like I just left the dentists office too, violated, and don't really notice a difference besides a bad taste in my mouth. Hopfully at least these new tires won' t leave me stuck at Crater Lake like the new ones that came with the SUV! 

Bank On It

On-Line banking is one of modern day's convienences that I take full advantage of. My better half, however is not so impressed. I am the tight-wad, and I gripe about every penny spent. Always looking to save a buck, from making special trips to several stores to get the best deal, to finding ways to make the things we buy, last longer, no matter how much duct tape and bubble gum it takes. Since we pay most of our bills online, the need for handwritten checks has become obsolete (in my opinion) and I have been in debate with my spouse as to why she still feels the need to write a check when she has a debit card. My question was answered when our bank began offering images of the checks she writes online for review. Now there are no more secrets, as the $80 check #1234 I might have assumed was a bill, was actually written to the beauty salon! I love technology, but not as much as I love my wife, so I best just shut up. As they say: "When Mama's happy, everybodys happy"

Sheeple

On a return trip from the snow, I stopped to appreciate a sunset, and the shadows cast on a herd of sheep. The kids thought it was strange that I pulled over to take photos from the shoulder. This is a great example of my viewpoint, and why I enjoy having a camera close at hand. So often I wish there was a rewind and pause to the minds eye. 

Detroit Rock City

Returned safely from my trip to the Motor City last night with a couple of delays. The time change is really doing a number on me, as we had meetings starting early eastern time, and then I didin't get home until 1:30 Pacific, and since I was up at 6am eastern it made for a really long day. During our visit, Scott, one of our regional IT managers was kind enought to take a detour downtown for some sight seeing and dinnner at Detroit's Hard Rock Cafe.

The weather was mild when we arrived, but began to get chilly by the time I left Friday afternoon. My return trip via Chicago was delayed on both legs of the journey but I was fortunate to have good conversation on the longer return flight to Portland.

I am too tired to come up with anything witty or interesting, I think I will go take a nap now.

Air Travel

I rarely fly, when I do, it facinates me to watch the people. Business people will sit on the floor to get a plug-in for their laptop and work while waiting. Kids will be running up and down the concourse while frantic parents struggle to control both the children and thier baggage, and lastly there is the lines to board the plane.

Southwest flights are the most intresting of them all. Seats are first come first serve, and passengers are grouped by A,B,C to determine boarding order in three groups. Group A travelers will squat at the gate to be the first to enter the plane, even using luggage as make shift lounge chairs. Group B passengers are usually envious of the A passengers, and can be the most grumpy and unruley. The C crowd, are a mix of the clueless and carefree.

I like to print my boarding pass online, as soon as possible just to get it out of the way, and that usually places me in the A crowd, but just to piss off the B's & C's, I lay low, on the opposite side of the concourse, and swoop in the end of the "A" line just as they enter the plane. Gotta run! Time to board!

Nerd Alert

I have been accused of being a "Nerd" on many occaisions, and it is justified by several facts:

• I own more than one computer
• I keep several personal electronic devices close at hand
  
• I know some (but very little) computer programming code
  
• I often start a conversation with, "I read online...."
• In waiting areas, I wonder to myself if WiFi is availible.
• I post to my Blog regularly

On the other hand I have "regular" freinds, so I think... I don't or very rarely play a video game, I enjoy outdoors, snow & water sports, I have never owned a graphing calculator, and I suck at math.

After getting my laptop out at the airport, while listening to my Mp3 player, and downloading my digital camera pictures, I thought about this and did a search for the definition of "Nerd" then I found and took a quiz to determine the extent of my "Nerdiness" and got the following results: This is a 9 out of 100, not 10, yet one fact remains: I was nerdy enought to post this on my blog, so I think that is a LEAST a 10 point penalty... I think can live with that. Send me your results and I will make a graph or something nerdy like that.

Happy VD

Be Mine from Daisy!

 

Snow Day

I had some quality time, with my 2 youngest on Saturday, we went up to the pass to play in the snow. We tried a tubing hill but the lift cable broke down right when we arrived, so we had to hike up the hill for our first run. Isaiah got scared going down and wouldn't go a second time. Karmann and I only used 3 of the ten-runs before calling it a day because when the lift was fixed the line was so long it took 20 minutes to get up and 10 seconds to get down. As you would expect "NO REFUNDS". We made up for it going to another snowpark and had a hill to ourselves. The weather was perfect, and the snow was just right for a snowman. Karmann made a smaller one, so it could take this picture of us. I love Oregon because I can visit the snow whenever I like, and leave it behind when I have had fill.

More Grizzly

I had to stop this clip early because I was at work and haven't yet seen the whole thing. This fits right in with my prior post and is a must see spoof on the Timothy Treadwell story I discussed prior, it is a perfect example, although I am sure it is funnier if you saw the original.

You might need a viewer from Google if you don't see the video above. You can also find it directly on google video HERE.

Girlizzly Man

The Discovery Channel gets me hooked on some of the most interesting shows. Friday there was a show about Timothy Treadwell, a guy who studied, and protected the grizzly bear in the Alaskan wilderness. While watching, I have to say I was very dissapointed. Tim was less than "grizzly", in fact, for a moment, I thought I had turned to queer eye for the outdoor guy! Regardless I couldn't help but watch as this flamingly-femmy naturalist, is playing closer and closer to these wild and enormous grizzly bear. It was sort of like america's funniest video's meets wild kingdom, and your just waiting to see somebody get hurt. Well to make a long story short, he is not gay(not that there's anything wrong with that), he just wishes he was, and then he takes his girlfriend to visit his new bear friends and they both get eaten. THE END. Oh, I almost forgot... speaking of dragging women to Alaska, here is a a video I wanted to embed into this post, but unfortunately my computer skilz are not worthy. click on the link to watch the news report on how a small Alaskan town is working to restore an out of balance male to female ratio that is common in Alaska. My Uncle Mark sent this to me and I am sure you will find it more educational than Discovery's "Grizzly Man" documentary.

Skater Boy

I always wanted to be a skater, I just never had the devotion or the balls. During high school, I would drive friends from ramp to ramp, and we would skate around Portland or Salem, but I mostly took pictures. That was my excuse not to skate too hard, I had a camera around my neck. Today that still holds true, and I still enjoy taking pictures of skaters whenever I get the chance. Going through my photos, I noticed I had a series I took here in Albany during a summer concert event at the park. I'll post a few pics, as these kids really were flying high.

Dark Fiber in Google's Diet

The Times Online, reports Google may be working on a strategy to create it's own private internet, or at the least, become it's own internet service provider. Recently Google has made some interesting purchases of "Dark Fiber" or unused fiber optic networks, left incomplete from the dot-com crash in the late 90's, that create speculation that google may be in the early stages of creating it's own nation wide, or even global private internet network providing even more focused audience for it's advertising clients.
With it's per share value now declining after a huge ralley well over double the issue price, Google needs to disclose some of it's prospects if it wants to hold this incredible growth rate. My opinion Google will be like the Ford Motor Company of this century but without all the steel and gas and stuff.

URGENT: Karma Sutra PC Virus

WARNING: Real virus threat: Karma Sutra, will render uselses your Microsoft Office files, delete or disable antivirus programs, mass-email it'self to everyone in your outlook address book, and disable your internet connection on Friday the 3rd if you don't get rid of it beforehand. I assume it got it's name from the many ways it is sure to screw you over. Fortunately Microsoft has a detection and removal tool you can download on the 14th. YES, 11 days after the virus is activated! Tech Web news reports. The GOOD news is, if you have been keeping your Anti-virus software up to date, you should have nothing to worry about, but if you have any reservations, you can get a removal tool HERE from Symantec Security. The only way your PC would be infected is if you had ither opened an attachment infecting your machine, or are networked to a system that had, and your PC was set up for un-secured network file sharing. Oh, and no, this is not a joke.

Cruise'n

Mom is in Florida, heading out on a cruise ship for the week, we are so jealous! We got nearly a foot of rain in January and I could use some sun!