The Van is back, the escort is gone.

Anthony helped me replace the serpentine belt on the van last night. It went fairly easily and only took one 15mm wrench and a jack. Well, and the new belt of course. So I’m really happy about that. Now I get to re-figure out insurance as Mags drives the jeep around.

They towered off the escort yesterday and I’m only upset about that b/c I forgot to siphon the gas out of it. Since it’s so expensive now, that could have saved us some money.

Tags: cars, family, friends

need more coffee….

Sleepy, but awake, sometimes I feel like I can fall asleep just about anywhere, and probably could. Drinking coffee but it’s not helping.

Bought a new tv this weekend.

It is the second tv I have ever bought. I’m very happy with it. I’m using a playstation 2 as the DVD player. It’s a good dual-use device. For some reason I was in a spending mood this weekend.

I got a chance to talk with a friend from G’ville yesterday and it was great. I hadn’t talked with her in a long time and I’m glad we got a chance to catch-up.

I’ve been working on an application to categorize images based on tags and also to change the size of the tags based on the popularity of the tag (where popularity is simply a measure of the number of clicks an image receives). I’m having a lot of fun working on it, but I’m getting to the last bits of code clean-up and it’s a real pain.

I’ll post more when I’ve got something for download… Although, you can see the results at http://rdex.net/image_tagger/browse.php

Pooks is healing well, she’s back at work today. She’s working back at her old office, but doing her own work, so that she’s around people. It helps her work.

Tags: family, friends, programming, tv

Sunny Thursday Morning…

The rains have mostly gone, but the ground is very soggy in places. I worry about the back of the house where the AC drain comes out. That area is extremely wet with standing water in low places.

Pooks & I went out to a trivia night thing with a bunch of ppl from work. We answered questions and ate a ton of wings. I was pretty drained from the day though so by the end of it I was ready to take off. We had a good time though.

I set up a feedburner feed for my warcraft journal. It seems like a cool thing, we’ll see how well it works and if it generates any traffic. I want to keep up my writing on that blog too, I enjoy writing the mini-histories of my characters in WoW. The feeds allow a central location for people to “subscribe” to the updates to the journal. It will be cool to see how and if it works…

Tags: friends, rss, warcraft

so long

Ed left work today. He is a friend who’s moving out of Jax and onto VA beach. I missed his going away lunch b/c I was too tired & worn out from being up all night last night. It started w/ a doughnut run at 1:30 and a bad night for Maggie and me getting the bug to setup a streaming music server in the house. So I was up all night and left about 3 hrs early from work.

Part of it was left-over excitement from Sunday. Idzeeboo and I went too compusa and Dave&Busters. I had never been to D&B before, it was really an arcade that recognizes adults have more money and slightly different interests than kids. Both me and idzee tried to do Dance Dance Revolution, but i think the we either suck at it or that the machine was broken. It must be the machine.

8 days before motorcycle lessons! I tried a motorcycle simulator while at D&B and was wondering why I wasn’t going anywhere. Someone told me that my right foot was on the back brake… doh! Once I took my foot off the brake I was able to move forward and then it took me a little bit to figure out the throttle on the right handle bar. There was a gear shifter but apparently I was in automatic mode and didn’t use it. After the game was over I realized there was a front brake on the right handle bar that I hadn’t touched at all. doh! So my riding experience was less than stellar, but I’m still looking forward to the real thing.

When I got home today I relaxed for a while and then slept for 7 hours. I woke up around 9:30pm when the girls got home. We hung out for a while and then I made myself a small dinner and started blogging. I’m still in bed, just doing this instead of sleeping. I did like going in at 7am this morning though. I think I’m going to try to keep that up. I like the idea of getting out a little earlier than everyone.

Tags: ddr, family, friends, games

Sometimes….

I’m wrapped up in a blanket sipping on hot coffee on this chilly morning. It’s been an interesting night and day. I didn’t get any of the chores done last night that I had wanted too. So dishes are collecting again and laundry and we’re still surrounded by boxes and Christmas crap.

Thinking about some old friends yesterday and I miss them.

I did get some new things yesterday, a pair of black canvas converse hightops, and the ErgoProxy anime dvd set. ErgoProxy got a little damaged in the mail, but nothing serious. I want to re-arragne my office better so I can watch dvd’s while working on my computer (or just playing games really). I kinda wish there was more room for some comfy guest chairs, or even just a nice rocker for me.

I’m still in motorcycle expectation mode….

Train of thought break….

I’m listening to NPR podcasts this morning, and I’m getting pissed at the people trying to block the increase of troops in Iraq. It seems to me that the pacification of a nation needs enough people to actually do it. Shows of Military strength are one of the ways that conquerers have always shown the locals, “Yes we won and it is stupid to resist b/c we’ll kill your ass.” Of course we’re also trying to feed and restore Iraq back to some of it’s pre-war functionality. Or at least I think we are, it would be stupid if we were not. Giving people more than ideological reasons to hate America is something we tend to do pretty easily. Not feeding the hungry would be one on them.

and back to motorcycles….

I’m getting a new set of motorcycle gloves from off of ebay. They look like big gauntlets, except in black leather instead of beaten metal.

out of coffee, damn… brb…
ahhhh…. first cup was black, this one I put chai spice in and it’s tasty! (I’m no sissy I like the taste.)

So I have 22 days before my motorcycle class and I can’t wait. I did have to get the gloves b/c the ones I have now are not full finger. That was also the reason I got the Cons they cover my ankles. I did look at full bike boots, but they would be a special order for my size 16 feet and would cost $$$$. So I think I have everything I need except actually knowing how to ride a motorcycle and actually having one. Little things.

Well it’s off to work for now.

Tags: anime, blanket, chill, coffee, friends, Iraq, motorcycle, npr