Thanksgiving is coming!

I am going to AZ for thanksgiving this year which will be a first for me. I'm looking forward to it for the change as well as for getting away for a while. I was more bored this weekend at wichita falls than i have been any other weekend. And that is even with the xbox with halo 3 and live.

Hopefully i will be eating good food and have some more to write about by the time i get back. mmmmm fooooooood.

Three Day weekend

I was thinking of going down to Houston this three day weekend, but those plans kind of fell through. I also had something i had to do for the base on Friday night. So instead of sitting around being bored all weekend i got myself an Xbox 360 and Halo3. I was able to play my brother on it as well since he was borrowing a consol from a friend. Xbox Live is kind of like a big conference call that way and we got to play video games too.

On Saturday i went to Dallas to hit the mall for a little while too. It was the Galleria mall which is very ritzy and didn't really have anything I wanted (expensive clothes and jewelry aren't really at the top of my must have list). The way back from dallas i recieved my first Speeding Warning ever!

By that i mean it was the first time i was pulled over and didn't have' to pay money, not that i never had a ticket. I pulled the military card bigtime and it worked for me. Must be something about Texas =)

Sunday i did a bit of running, but nothing else too exciting for the weekend. More Xbox live and going out for food i guess, but that's about it.

Explosions!

In class yesterday we went out to see some live explosive demonstrations. A practice bomb, a signal flare, some det. cord, an ignitor, and then a little tnt and c4. Overall not too bad for an hour and a half of our school day. The det cord was actually the coolest to watch because it was out in the open and you could feel the shock of it. the tnt and c4 were buried in sand behind concrete walls in addition to the distance.

Other than that nothing super exciting in wichita falls lately, but dinner tonight at a steakhouse should be good.

air show

Today at the base i worked a little at an air show and then i came back later to just watch. It was a good day overall for a wichita falls weekend actually. I was able to see an F-22 which is a pretty interesting plane fly around for a while. It has a thing called thrust vectoring which enables it to fly in different paths than a normal plane. There were some other interesting planes as well, and overall a pretty decent day.

The base was pretty busy though and i hear at the peak times it took at least 1:40 to get from the gate of the base to the gate of the air show which seems a bit rediculous. Volunteering on info booth and teardown though i didn't have to worry about any of that

wifi toy

I got a new wifi USB device today. It has a threaded antenna connector so it can be used with large external antennas, but just being USB makes it easier to put in some of the free/cheap reflector type antennas for better signal. the other cool thing about this is it supports packet injection so that should be fun to play with this weekend.

Book Depository, Book Depository

Still in Dallas so i went to the tourist sites today. I saw the 6th floor museum today and could see the window and where the boxes were stacked for cover. Also saw the other end of the floor where he stashed the rifle. It was an interesting museum and i went down to where the X is on the street and took a picture of that and the view from that area to the Depository window. After looking at all the Kennedy info i went to the Red Court House museum which they just opened in may. It was also interesting to see.

After all the museum stuff i went to fry's which is a computer place around here the place is a huge warehouse type building and it's all electronics. Very nice to visit and lots of selection on all types of stuff.

4 wheeler

Yay i got to ride teh 4wheeler for a while today. Unfortunately it was kinda misting out so i got soaked, but still had fun. Rode through 50+ acres of land with some cattle, trees, fields, ponds and a little bit of creek beds to cross too. It was a honda 400 and pretty good, unfortunately the polaris 600 they had was stolen a while ago so i didn't get to ride that.

After that i got to shoot a colt 45 revolver with a hair trigger. that's scary the first time you pull it cuz it has no trigger pull at all. I blew up a McDonalds cup for a while with it though. That's what it gets for not having the instant win monopoly pieces on it!

Dallas!

Well it's a 3 day weekend so i decided to make sure i left the base for a while. I am staying in Dallas area and tomorrow i should be out riding a Quad. Never done that yet so i'm kinda excited. I'm sure i'll find some other interesting things to do as well, but in the meantime i'm kinda happy that they have wireless internet here so i can update this blog etc. Hope everyone is doing well.

block 2 of 7

i'm in the next ~2 week block now and i had a good score on my first test for the maintenance officer course. today we were volunteering to help set up a festival for the weekend. We got out of class in the morning to do it and it looks good to volunteer as well. It wasn't perfectly efficient, but we did get a lot accomplished which was good.

I also got some huge progress on one of my completely dorky hobbies of my cell phone. Got some help on the internet from some other people into it and it was entertaining for me at least =) no need to bore you with the details though, but thanks for reading

TX after a week

I've been here about a week now. Our class has 15 people in it, but only about 6 of us have really been hanging out regularly. I suppose a few of the others might have formed their own group, but it is kind of interesting. There seems to be a divide among the ROTC students and teh Academy students. I'm the only guard member, but since i went to a regular college the ROTC students feel i'm one of them heh. Not sure how many of you will know the difference or maybe some of the readers will actually have witnessed this difference themselves, but it seems quite distinct seeing them interact fresh after commissioning like this.

In other news i've been keeping up with the material, and getting some exercise. Saw a bit of the town already and participated in Meals on wheels today.

Wichita Falls

Well i am in training now at Sheppard AFB. It's not too bad i haven't gone out too much yet, but i don't htink there will be a ton to do in the local area. Not a huge deal as i can entertain myself fairly easily and i will have enough other work to do. I will probly travel to Dallas on the weekend at some point since it's only 2 hrs away.

Unfortunately I got a ticket on the way here, but other than that the drive was fine. I'm pretty much settled in now, but i might change rooms in 2 weeks anyway. Feel free to send me emails and you can ask for my address if you like as well.

I should be graduating on Dec 14th

Preparations

Today i did some work on the truck to get ready for the trip to Texas. It was the first time i changed spark plugs on a V6. All my other vehicles are 4 cylinders and the plugs and wires are about the easiest thing to change on them. I do have a wonderful trick i heard about though for getting the plugs and wires changed on a v6 with a lot of miles. I couldn't pull the boot off of the spark plugs on most of them so i used a hammer and chisel to break the porceline part of the plug off with the boot attached. Then i just used the socket to take the rest of the plug out and replaced it and the wires with new ones. This was still a long, hard, dirty and sometimes painful task though when compared to my other cars. Oh i also did an oil change on it and my brother's car. Those were uneventful though.

Still haven't packed and i really don't want to, but i know it will need to be done shortly. I've been saying goodbye to friends and family lately too. I'm really glad i'll be able to have my phone and the internet on this trip though!

Travelling

My brother just came back from Oregon this week. He's planning on staying at my house at least 3 months now. The reason for the 3 months is because I am going away that long. I'll be in Texas from Sept til Dec. Should be back at work just before Christmas though. If anyone wants to visit I'll still be around all next week. Also if you're on the way to texas let me know!


Random shameless plug: Watch the Arrested Development series, it's hilarious.

Cedar Point and DSM shootout

I took thurs and fri off work to go to Ohio. Thurs was mostly the drive and we went out to dinner. Friday we went to Cedar point though. That was a lot of fun! There is a coaster that goes 120mph in 4 seconds. We waited for the front seat on that one and it was worth it to see and feel the speed. There were other good coasters we went on as well. It was a great time and after about 10 hours in the park we were getting a little tired.
Saturday was a carshow and dyno sessions at Buschur racing (a big Eclipse and Evo shop) That was a fun day as well, but not as exciting as the coasters were.
Sunday was supposed to be the races which would be the main event. Unfortunately it was cancelled due to the rain. I suppose it wasn't too bad though considering we ended up sleeping in pretty late and would have missed a lot of the races anyway. The drive back Sunday was not too much fun in all the rain either, but we made it.

Volleyball

We've been playing volleyball after work on monday's lately and its pretty fun. It is usually most of the newer hires. We were challenged by the old timers recently and that game was yesterday. It was fun, but there is definitely more of a selection process for the old timers than there were for the new guys. First 3 games they were up 2-1. Then a few people had to leave and the director called me over to his team, i wisely accepted (although my previous team came to hate me). At first i wasn't able to get the ball because the director would get it and block me incase i wasn't going to play well for his team. In the end though we won the game when i was serving the final 4 points. I'm glad i didn't get beat up for that one =)

Fortunately we are all playing for fun so it wasn't too bad, but it was still competitive.

Hopefully i'll have more to post here after this weekend, sorry for the lack of content recently.

I was a Mover today...oh and more miata stuff

Helped my cousin move all her stuff to her apt in DC for college. Long day lots of riding in a uhaul/van/car. Didn't do too much driving, but i did do a lot of packing and unloading. I used my phone's GPS for some of the directions, but it was still tough to find the loading dock that was in an unmarked alley on a side of the building that all streets seemed to be one way away from. Finally got it though. Was a good day over all, had a nice big dinner with her side of the fam for her birthday too.

Yesterday i got the miata inspected. The exhaust came on thursday so i installed it then, but had to wait until friday for the inspection. It took a while and they wanted to say no because i didn't ahve wiper nozzles (just the hose) but it sprays on the windshield and it was like that since i got it and no other place fussed about it. They decided to let it go and i just needed one side marker bulb which was like 2.49 so i didn't do too bad. Also the miata sounds much better with a real exhaust rather than a big leak heh. Now if i can stop the buzzing heatsheilds from the resonation of the new exhaust.

Garage stuff

I got the miata back this week, it was on time and same price as the estimate....$75 plus tax. The thing looks good too i'm very impressed and have already referred people to them even though they didn't need body work hehe.

Milestone for me today with the garage though. I can't believe it's the case but it is the first time i've ever had a garage remote in one of my cars to open the door when pulling up. I had to get a new battery and reconnect the one lift for the bay with the pit. I also went ahead and got a remote setup for the Eclipse bay too. Now the truck is left out, but i don't have an opener there either and don't feel like gettin the whole kit and installing it.

While i was at it though i once again re-wired teh speaker in the garage too. There shouldn't be any more squirrels after the soffit replacement.

miata

I had a crack in my windshield on the miata and it should be fixed this week. I have to get it to a body shop though cuz there is rust underneath the windshield in that area. The windshield is covered under insurance and fortunately the body damage isn't too bad. It needs to be inspected this month though and it also needs a new exhaust before then. Not too bad though i guess since i'll get myself a better one in the meantime and i didn't like the leak sound anyway.

Back from AZ

I was in AZ for the past week visiting my grandmother. Unfortunately they day after i got there she broke her ankle and we had to go to doctor visits etc. I was still able to help her out with things though and made the best of the time there. It was good food as always too.

Now that i'm back home i checked the basement and it seems to be ok still. No more flooding. The clock was still running as it's an 8 day weight drive too. I should be asleep now actually, but the jet lag makes it feel much earlier.

Fireworks etc.

Guess i've been keeping fairly busy lately since i haven't posted updates even though i had some things to write about. I went to a friends 4th of july party on Sunday and saw some awesome fireworks in Lancaster.

Then on tuesday i went and got a new laptop to replace the 4yr old one i've been using (screen is about to fall off). I got it at circuit city and they have lots of rebates now for free printers, routers and discounts on the laptop. I was looking at some that were 399 after rebate, but settled on one that was $499. If this one lasts me just over a year it will still be a better value than the old one which was top of the line when i got it. Stupid disposable society.

Last night i went to Hershey for the 4th of July fireworks there too. I try to hit a few of them kinda like i do with Thanksgiving dinners. I'll be going to AZ on saturday, maybe there will be some fireworks shows out there too!