Sleeping in!

So i was able to sleep as long as i wanted with no one to wake me up and i was able to make it until 10:00am before waking and not sleeping again. I rolled out of bed at 10:30 or so. The church across the street from me likes to let it's bells ring and wake me which explains the hour and half hour times. I still think i accomplished enough today being that i got up later than normal. I went and got some neat computer stuff i've kinda wanted for a while. I got a USB adapter for use with any hard drive or cd/dvd drive. Also i got a case to use with laptop hard drives to be used with USB as well. Both of which seem to work well and conveniently.

Leaving the country

Today i accompanied the Twigg's to the airport to see them off on their trip to Europe to visit Cat and Stephen in Prague and Bosnia respectively. The drive went fairly smoothly they made it to the airport safely and i returned their car to their house in the same condition as when i started driving it. I did however see a few deer and one did decide to run right in the middle of the road in front of me. That was within a mile or two of returning the car but i managed to avoid it completely. I know jealousy isn't really a good thing, but i definitely would like to be going along on the trip and be able to visit as well. I believe it is now time for some much needed rest though. I think i get to sleep in tomorrow for the first time that i can remember!

Halloween Party

I'm going to a party tonight in a very small town, but apparently this is one thing they are really good at. I'm looking forward to it and eatin lots of candy. I don't have to wear a costume or anyhting, but those of you that go to other parties are welcome to share your costumes in pics or words. I don't think that comments allow pictures, but maybe a link or i can post it up if you want me to.

I also did a little raking as fall means lots of leaves. Oh it's time to change clocks back tonight! don't forget and uh, smoke detector batteries or something too. Yay for an extra hour of sleep!!

good food

So i have been eating fairly well lately. I've been to Texas roadhouse, Kokomo's and Cracker Barrel recently. Today i had a chinese buffet ( i mostly just eat sweet and sour or general tso's chicken w/rice) then tonight i went to El Rodeo. Tomorrow i'm going out to eat with my family for breakfast at Country Meadows in E-town. I wonder if i'm gonna be gaining any weight, not sure i'm really too worried, but i'm definitely not eating lightly.

Trick or Treat

I went to cracker barrel tonight fir dinner with my family. It was good food, but i was barraged with questions the entire time. I'm going to go out to breakfast with them on saturday hopefully it will be a little more relaxed.

My brother ducked out early so that he could go Trick or Treating. I think he might be a little old for that, but I guess i'm ok with it as long as he shares the candy. My aunt and uncle actually went out after dinner because they didn't have candy to give the kids and needed to hide. I suppose i can't say much because i wasn't around to hand out candy either and i thought my bro could, but instead he was out getting it.

Oh and i took the eclipse out and it's still a wonderful and exciting machine!

Buffet lunch

Today I went out to lunch with a lot of my coworkers and had the wing buffet at KoKoMo's. It was good food and nice to visit with everyone outside of work. It was also mentioned that i was the first to get a "sendoff" lunch without actually leaving the company. For those who don't know Thursday is my last day at Tyco for a while due to orders from the Air National Guard.

In the evening I was able to work on recovering some files for a friend and after much searching in the wrong directions it appears i have recovered everything! This isn't an advertisement for me to work on everyone elses computer though so i'll let out the secret that i used: Knoppix.

Guitar stuff and traps

So for some reason tonight when i wanted to practice the guitar i decided that I needed a capo and some more picks. Well the capo idea was partly decided by the tabs i wanted to practice with i guess. I only had 3 picks though and none were medium thickness. I decided to go to guitar center and get a few things. I looked around at the music, but ended up just getting those things that i went for. Then when i came back to practice i heard a click and after realizing why i went and replenished my mouse trap supply. Once it gets cold outside and damp too, they really like to come inside and die in my mouse traps. Luckily they are pretty cheap.

Oh and feel free to suggest accoustic guitar music for me to learn

Crashed

I don't often get enough sleep and usually after a guard drill weekend it starts to catch up with me. This week is no exception. After work i was awake for a little, but then i went to lay down and didn't get up for a few hours. I'm sure i needed it though so that was good. It did limit some of the things that i did tonight, but i was able to get groceries still.

Actually this morning was good too because the guy actually came to fix the furnace and charged me less than he said he was going to!!! That might have been part of why i felt comfortable enough to take a nap too.

My day

I had guard drill again today and that doesn't usually amount to a whole lot of excitement. I was able to visit someone that i haven't seen in a while afterwards though. I had to do laundry tonight and i actually managed to cut myself in the process. The dryer duct on the back wasn't attached to one spot and in trying to move it and reconnect it my finger got scraped on the plastic. Nothing serious, but who cuts themselves doing laundry? Ohhhh!!!! one thing that sort of amazed me was that i got a call tonight from one of the contractors about looking at my furnace!!! hopefully they will be here by 7:00 tomorrow. It was the cheapest of the people i called too. We'll see how it all works out, but that was a very nice surprise.

Texas Roadhouse

I had guard today and i am now a staff sergeant! Kristin from my shop took her test and passed so she will also become a staff sergeant when the paperwork is done. After guard we decided to celebrate this by going to Texas Roadhouse. Her boyfriend and another friend came down as well. The wait for a table was 70 minutes, but we were at Gabriel brothers and we had to drag Kristin out to leave in time for our seat so the wait wasn't too bad. The food was great as always and the bread is worth going for. It was a good time and we came back to my house partly for me to show off my car and house a little, but largely to get some tea for their trip home.

Contractors

Does anyone have a recommendation for someone that will clean my furnace? I called multiple places that i found in the phone book and two times in a row nobody showed up. On the other hand i had a leaky roof and i was able to get a recommendation for someone. Showed up the day he said he would and took care of the roof. I will probably call him back again for any other things i might need done too. It's amazing that people don't notice that. One place i called said "do you buy oil from us?" since i didn't they replied, "Well we don't service furnaces unless you buy oil from us" What is the deal with that? that attitude isn't gonna sell any oil either.

Wild at Heart

Not sure if any of you have ever read this book, but i've been gathering on Thursdays at church to study this and it has been quite interesting. The book is by John Eldridge and it is designed for men so it may not be suited to all my readers. I don't really want to talk this up too much and sound like an ad, but i do think that it is a great book and i would welcome anyone to ask me about it or discuss it with me. If you feel your life is tame and boring this book might be for you.

Ok so other then that i also...yup you guessed it drove the eclipse. The coolant didn't leak, but the oil still did so i have a little more work to do there.

Eclipse

I worked on my eclipse a bit tonight as the real reason i took it out yesterday was so that i could try to determine where this oil leak was coming from. I noticed that the pivot bolt on the alternator had no nut on it. I wouldn't have thought this to be the cause, but it's location does seem to be crucial in holding the oil filter housing tight against it's mount. Also i cleaned off the oil with SuperClean and that spot was right in the middle of where all the fresh oil ended up. Hopefully the nut i put on there will be enough to keep it from leaking, but it is a DSM so i'll keep an eye out for other spots. I also patched the coolant overflow bottle, we'll see how that holds. For those of you that don't like cars... um I also.... um posted to my blog this evening. So i like cars, is that so bad?

Kill story

This is an Acura NSX. They aren't the cheapest cars as you might guess. I saw one on the road today while i was driving the eclipse and was pretty excited. When i gassed it a little the guy seemed to think that i wasn't worthy and i shouldn't be wasting his time. It was quite amusing though how later after we cleared some traffic he tried to pass me. He was already going probably 10-20 mph faster, but i caught up to speed and topped out 3rd gear pulling ahead. Shifted into 4th and walked away. Walk being relative as you can guess about how fast that is. I didn't get to talk to him afterwards, but i bet he was surprised that my car was faster than his more expensive one. Oh and this one is actually more expensive than all the money i've put into my car over the years if he got it new. The thing is 290 hp just doesn't cut it against my car. Ok so that was a little too much bragging, but the car is so much fun and it was too exciting not to share.

edit: I just read that MSRP on a new one is $89,000 ::coughRIPOFF::

Boss's day

Work wasn't very exciting today. Then right before i was ready to go home they had a cake in honor of Boss's day. It was actually quite good, but the work day was still boring. Once i got home I was quite happy though. It's funny how I can be at work all day in front of a computer and be so bored by it depending on what there is to do at work that day, but then come home and be so excited to use it. Incase you don't know it is because of the VOIP that i mentioned in a previous post and has nothing to do with it being a computer. That has been such a wonderful part of my day lately and i was able to share a realization that was very exciting to me. Afterwards i took care of a few things and watched Braveheart. That is a long movie and i was going to try to get some extra sleep tonight. Oh well guess i'll go now.

Day of rest

This morning's sermon was about keeping the Sabbath as a day of rest and i took that literally this afternoon by taking a much needed nap. After staying up til around 3 am last night i was kinda beat today. Afterwards though i was able to spend some time practicing the guitar. Slowly getting better. I'm glad i'm not in a hurry to learn, but i do like the instrument a lot. I found a few things to play that were for acoustic guitars too. Say what you want, but one that i liked was the beginning of "Ready to go" by Republica. The chords in the intro sound pretty nice and they were fun to play. I still can't quite get them perfectly, but each time i practice my hand gets a little stronger and it's always easier the next time. I think i might go read now and maybe even get to bed early. Not sure about that as that hasn't happened as long as i can remember.

Light!!

So this may not seem like a big deal to most people, but the reason i didn't post last night was that Brian and i were re-wiring and adding more lights and switches to the basement! It was always really dark there and now we have lots of light so once i get something to do down there (like a pool table) then it will be fun to have people over and use the basement for something. In addition to that I also washed my miata. I'm glad that car is small it doesn't take long at all to clean. Well i'm off to church now, maybe i'll post something here tonight as well.

Flightplan

I just watched this movie, but i'm not one to really throw around reviews after seeing a movie one time. There have been many movies that i noticed are better after a second time. There is a minimum standard below which i would probably say "Don't waste your time"::coughBrothersGrimmcough::, but since this is above that level i don't have much to say. Notice the entry title is a link to IMDB however, where you can get a plot outline and reviews. I was glad to go out to the movie tonight, despite it being friday night and there being lots of kids around. Wow i can't believe i'm 24 and think that the "kids" at the movie theatre are annoying hehe, i'm old.

Is anybody out there?

It doesn't appear that many people are looking at my sight lately. Now i realize there could be many reasons for this, but I hope that my effort to continue updating doesn't go completely un-noticed. The possible reasons that i can think of off the top of my head are:

1. it is the middle of the week, lay off, i will check all your entries this weekend
2. you are really boring, do you actually expect people to read this?
3. i'm too busy with my activities to really care about yours
4. you have a blog?

I'm sure there are many others, and if you do happen to read this, please leave a comment about what you think the reason is or perhaps the reason you don't come more often.

guitar

In my effort to include different topics i will mention that I practiced the guitar for a while tonight. I found a finger strengthening exercise and i'm not sure how much of it i will continue to do, but i did notice that i was straining with a bit of it. I want to ensure that i am using proper technique before i continue stressing my hand though. I've been noticing that most of the music i have is electric guitar. I'm not saying that i want to get an electric, but it has made me try harder at making sure i know what i'm doing before working on just learning song after song (perhaps with poor technique). I know guitar is an instrument that lots of people learn on their own, but I still feel that if it is worth doing at all, it is worth doing it right. It is amazing how much easier a G chord or an F chord is now that i've built up callouses and done a little practice. Hopefully i will be able to switch chords while strumming soon. I sometimes can depending on what chords they are, but that is obviously an important thing to be able to do every time.

Not rally racing related

I did something different today so i won't be writing about rally racing this post. I'm not sure how many people may have been sick of those posts, but this isn't any more exciting that is for sure. Sorry.

So last time it rained (for many days!) my roof was leaking. Today i decided to go up and take a look. It turns out that the flashing around the chimney is all pulled away and the putty is cracked. I temporarily patched it a little in an effort more to reduce the leak until a roofer can come out than to actually fix it. While i was up there i also decided to take the time to clean the gutters. They needed it really badly.

With how exciting my stories are you probably wish i started making things up instead of writing what i'm doing don't you?

Gran Turismo 3

Well in an effort to quench some of my desire for rallying i decided to pull out the Playstation 2 and the Logitech stearing wheel i have. It was fun, but just doesn't quite seem real enough. I guess it's a good thing, but hitting walls at high speeds doesn't even break anything in a game. For those of you that are sick of reading about rallying just be happy i'm not talking about my day at work writing scripts to start and stop SAP in parrallel. Can you see why i want some reckless fun?

Still researching rally racing

This afternoon/evening after church i spent most of my time looking at websites about how to get started rallying. It looks like i will try to go to an event and maybe a class or so before digging too deep into my wallet. If i'm lucky i'll be able to be a co-driver first before buying anything. Also i might volunteer at a checkpoint. Now i gotta figure out when and where the races are so i can arrange it. Just checking out the videos at www.rallyvids.com was really fun the STPR video is a course in PA!

Rally racing

Anyone have any information on rally racing? I want to start, but that will require at least another car and a trailer. Also i'm not sure where to go to do it. Luckily it is something that can be done in the winter as well though. i guess i need to start looking around. I'd love to have a car that i can roll and just say "wow that was awesome!!"

Denny's Menu (Strong Bad email)

Denny's Menu

I know it say's this is the Denny's menu, but really it's Strong Bad's email on homestarrunner.com. An intersting note is that if you search google for "Denny's menu" this is the first result. They added a new feature now "random.bat" So you can click and watch a random email that you missed or forgot about. The newest one is the geddup noise. Not sure why i'm promoting homestarrunner really, but i haven't been there for a while and i figured that i'm not the only one. It's usually good for a few laughs.

Support for the blog

I haven't been updating this site very regularly, but hopefully the addition of the ads at the bottom of the page will change that. I figure I get something out of making the site more interesting it is more likely to happen. Feel free to comment with any suggestions.

oh and...Yes the Eclipse is still running!