Proper use of earmuffs

Here you go. If you ever wondered how to properly use earmuffs, wonder no more.

60 Minutes for all demographics.

I'm the dude...

http://sixtymins.ytmnd.com/

This is halloween, halloween, halloween.

Have a spooky halloween!

Vote for me!!!

You scored as Pedro Sanchez. Pedro Sanchez 75% Napoleon Dynamite 42% Deb 33% Uncle Rico 17% Lafawnduh 17% Kip 0% Which Napoleon Dynamite character are you?!? created with QuizFarm.com

3.0 is here

3.0 is here. A wee little one. Lots of hair.
Email me if you want the details. :)

JC

Geocaching

The kids and I have gone Geocaching a few times. Lots of fun. I bought a used Garmin Etrex Legend C about a month ago and it's worked very well. It gets us to within feet of the caches.

It's a fun outdoor activity and weather permitting it can be done year round. The kids really enjoy getting out and searching for the caches. I think they just really like to play w/ the GPS receiver. It's fun to find caches in places that you might have walked/driven by hundreds of times.

Anyway, just thought I'd mention it. You might want to give it a whirl. Use the geocaching site and see what caches are in your area.

Aun mas weedeeos

More videos for your viewing pleasure:

Prez bush uses celebrity translator

Mentos Commercial featuring Van Damm in Bloodsport

Beer Canon Montage

Everyone needs a little canon

Here, have some. Get your canon here.

Kids are in school

Both our kids are now in school. One in PK and the other in K. So it's not "real" school yet for both, but it's getting there. Time sure has gone by fast. Before we know it, they'll be writing term papers and going to prom. I hope we as their parents and the school system teach them how to write better analogies than these.

Super Mario Music

The secret is finally out. This is where the Mario music comes from. No, not really.

Do google's work for them.

Ever wondered what it's like to work for google? Me either. However, they can't take over the world without your help. Really! They need your help. So to my two readers, I present you with this cool little game that allows you to label images for google. The catch is that someone else is labelling the exact same image at the exact same time and your labels need to match in order to get points. I present to you, Google Image Labeler. Go crazy.

http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

Why the Daily Show is a must see.

Take 'em out

I have an xbox. I have Halo 2. Jayden has played it a couple of times. Today I was reading on Wired magazine about a kid who is 5 and is a professional Halo player. Well, Jayden heard me telling Tara so he got to talking about Halo.

A little later, Tara tells me about the how the conversation went:

Jayden describes many different types of weapons on Halo and their pros/cons etc.
Tara: Jayden, I don't like you talking about that game.
Jayden: Why not?
Tara: Because it's about killing.
Jayden: Would it make you feel better if I said "take 'em out" instead?

That makes perfect sense to me. How about you?

What's behind curtain #3?

What's behind curtain #3? A Boy! The little guy, or 3.0 as I like to call him, will be arriving in a few months. I waited until we had some screen captures of the ultrasound to post. Tara went to the doctor's office again this morning to get a second ultrasound since the first one resulted in a bad disk and no pictures.

Some might wonder if we have a name picked out yet. Well, no, we don't have a name. You may suggest some if you like.

Yeah, he's confident like that. Or maybe just lost.

This story is about Jayden.

The four of us got to church on Sunday right at 11:00. After finding a parking spot we made our way into the building. On the way in the kids decided they were thirsty. It must have been the exodus across the parking lot that made them so. Jaxon must have gotten too much sun on the way in because he starting having a little tantrum. I decided to go on and find us a place to sit in the chapel while Tara took the kids to get their drink on.

10 minutes later...I'm sitting solo...

15 minutes...still solo...

20 minutes later, Tara and Jaxon finally show up. Before I can ask her, she asks me, "Where's Jayden?"

Me: Uh...(I have a confused look at this point)...uh...He was with you.
Tara: He got a drink and I told him to come sit by you.
Me: He never showed up. Maybe you should go look for him.

Five minutes go by...I decide to join the hunt for Jayden with Jaxon in tow.

I go down the hallways. No Jayden. Check the bathrooms. No Jayden. Find Tara. No Jayden. Hm...where's Jayden? I have an idea. I start looking in the other ward's primary rooms. No Jayden.

Just then, a member of the other ward that meets from 9-12 (so we overlap an hour) sees us and asks if we're looking for Jayden. Hm...I think I know where this is going.

Me: We are.
Lady: Oh, he's in a class.
Me: Can you take us to him?
Lady: Sure, he's right over here in this classroom.

Tara and Me: Why are we not surprised?

We get to the classroom where Jayden's been the last 30 or so minutes and retrieve him to come join us in the chapel. He told us he was making new friends. The lady said she had seen Jayden walking in the hallway and he said he was supposed to be in primary.

We couldn't help but laugh at Jayden and his comfort in going into another ward's primary class and staying there for a good 25-30 minutes. We figure he's confident. Or maybe just lost.

The Good, The Bad and The Nacho

Help Nacho do good!

If you think you have what it takes then click here!

Can't touch this

Behold, the evolution of dance!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg

Not a condiment

Sketchup is not a condiment. It is a cool little tool from a company google purchased. It's free. And what it does is let you easily draw 3D objects. Check it out.

http://sketchup.google.com

Easter Egg

Do you know what an Easter Egg is? No, not the kind that come from bunnies. I mean those hidden artifacts in software, movies, etc. Well, here's one in a movie trailer. Check it out.

Apocalypto

When it gets to the screaming monkey part, pause the video then use your back arrow to move back frame by frame and find it.

Ask a ninja...if you dare

Everything you ever wanted to know about ninjas, and then some. Go ahead, ask a ninja. Then you can view the rest at askaninja.com. (I haven't seen them all so proceed at your own risk).

What did you do this weekend?

Here's what I did. A fast internet connection is recommended. I've put it on youtube.com so you should be able to view it on Mac or Windows.

Tannerite and the death of a stump

In case you're wondering what Tannerite is you can find some info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannerite

And just so you know we're not the crazy ones, here's this video by some people I don't know but are acquainted with tannerite as well. Somewhere, a child weeps.

Cut finger

Jaxon's finger has a cut. Can you guess which one?

Monthly Man

Getting rid of personal responsibility at an early age.

Personal responsibility must be done away with as early as possible. Wouldn't you agree?




In case you can't read it...the shirts say "it's my brother's fault."

Mas weedeeo

I like trailer #2.

You might too.

http://www2.warnerbros.com/happyfeet/


May I present to you...the one and only...NACHOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo...........
http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/nacholibre/

Life Lessons...'tis better to learn from other's mistakes

I watch TV on my computer because I can. :) Lately I've noticed some new commercials on TLC (the learning channel) called Life Lessons. So check them out.

tlclifelessons.com

Be vewee vewee qwiet

Today we kept telling our kids to go play outside. The weather was very nice and they hadn't been outdoors for a few days. They went outside for a few minutes then decided it was boring and came back inside. In trying to get them to go back outside I started suggesting things they could do so it wouldn't be so boring out in the wilderness that is our backyard. Nothing interested them until I suggested they build a rabbit trap.

After carefully designing a trap using purple marker and scraping together some building materials, the kids produced the following wabbit trap:
The trap consists of a White Cloud Value Pack diaper box filled with baby carrots. From the trap's designer himself: "The ribbons are so the rabbits can make it tip over on them. The line of carrots outside the box are so the rabbits can follow them and find the string and make it tip over. After they eat all the carrots the rabbit will get fat enough that he won't be able to escape the box. And that's it." Well, there you have it folks, a homemade wabbit trap.

Below you'll see how well this went. You can click on the pictures to see a larger image.

First, the trap was set.

With the trap set, it was time to hide...

And wait for the wabbit to fall in the trap. Maybe our unwanted guest will take the rabbits out first. Only time, and carrots, will tell.

Unwanted Guest

We have an unwanted guest. No, it's not a relative. We struggle to get those to come be guests. :) We're out of everyone's way here in the middle of nowhere USA.

Our unwanted guest is of the canine type. Check it out. I took these pictures this morning in our back yard. My camera's zoom leaves something to be desired but I think you'll be able to spot the guest. And yes, it can jump the fence.

Another cool weedeeo

I surely don't want it that way, but these guys do.

Cool Weedeeos

Make sure you have sound.

Honda Ad

Juggler

Da Plane! Da Plane!

Ever since I was a little kid I've wanted a remote control airplane. This past summer I got one. I bought a nice six channel Futaba Radio and decided to start out with an electric airplane. I purchased a slow stick. It's a 3 channel airplane. That means that one channel is for speed, one is for rudder, and one for elevator. It wasn't too difficult to learn to fly it although I have crashed it several times and probably snapped half a dozen props. They are easy to replace and are less than $2 each.

I chose electric because 1) it was cheaper and cleaner and quieter than gas and 2) when (not if) I crash it, no big deal. It's so light that it usually isn't damaged and if it is, I can repair it, and 3) I can fly it anywhere, anytime. You can fly most electric airplanes anywhere there's enough room. I usually go to an open field at the edge of my neighborhood to fly.

I haven't flown for a while because the weather has been either too cold or too windy. Usually both. I did try to fly when it was borderline too windy and had an awesome crash. My plane flew for about 4 seconds until the wind slapped it right back into the pavement. That did some good damage and took some fixing.

Now that spring is here I'll be getting back into the flying and maybe get a new airplane, something like a Piper Cub or maybe even a Sportster. We'll see what happens.

Hindsight

Hindsight can be an eye opener to say the least. Check these out:

http://www.bvp.com/port/anti.asp

My Flux Capacitor

My PC is four years old now. I built it from scratch back in March 2002. I got the parts that gave the most bang for the buck back then and have upgraded things as needed. This is just a chronology of my PC's parts changes.

Started with 512 MB ram. Currently holds 1 GB.

Started with a 60 GB Hard Drive. I have 2 hard drives with a combined 420+ GB now (The original hard drive died a slow death which was great because I was able to replace it before losing any data. I'll probably take it with me next time I go shooting and put some holes in it, you know, so my data is safe.)

Started with a 64 MB ATI Radeon 8500 video card. I sold it a few months later and replaced with it with an 128 MB ATI Radeon 8500 All-in-wonder so I could have TV on my pc. I love TV on my PC.

I have the original MOBO and CPU (AMD Athlon 1700+ XP) though I did replace the heatsink & fan on the CPU a few months ago. The fan died suddenly. Lucky for me my motherboard had a sensor and immediately shut down the machine.

I've upgraded to a wireless mouse but not the keyboard. The wireless keyboard I want is too pricey and overkill since keyboards don't have to move. I've also added a FireWire/USB 2.0 combo card.

I had an extra montior when I built it so I used it instead of getting a new one. A year later I bought a Sony 19" Monitor that only lasted about 2 yrs. So I went back to using my crappy old monitor for about 6 months until things got blurry and I bought a 19" LCD. I like my LCD. I hope it lasts. My eyes love me for it.

I started with 4.1 altec lansing speakers. I never did use 2 out of the 4 spears in 4.1, but since they had been only $22 I didn't care. The subwoofer died a slow death as well. I replaced them about a month ago. I now have some nice sounding Logitec 2.1 speakers. Muy nice.

The part I hated about my computer was the case. I didn't know much about cases and such when I built it and so I bought one I thought would be fine. It sounded like a jet engine. And it got worse over the years. I finally had enough right after Christmas and bought a new case for my PC. I got a Antec Lifestyle Sonata II case. It rocks and is SO QUIET. I transplanted my PC's entrails from the old case to the new case and the difference was night and day. Tara asked me what the new noise coming from the PC was. It turned out to be the muted noise hard drives make when reading/writing. She'd never heard that noise coming from my PC before. I also realized that my xbox (I have it hooked up to my All-in-wonder) has a fan I can hear.

So all was bliss for a few months. Then I started getting some fan noise again. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR. I tracked it down to the video card's fan. I took it out, blew some compressed air in there, added some graphite lubricant, etc. Sometimes it's noisy, mostly it's very noisy. So I took the fan off the video card, found the manufacturer info on it and found one place online that supplies such fan. Since I don't need a new video card I decided to just get the fan. It arrived yesterday. I will install the fan this week and see if my computer is silent once again.

I was thinking about the changes I've made to my PC. You wouldn't recognize it as the same PC I built 4 years ago. All the external parts were the ugly PC tan color when I built it. Now it's all black except for the keyboard. Some day that too will be black. The xbox is black. I also have a DVD Recorder/VCR device on my desk. That's black too. New hard drives and more memory. Once I replace the Video card, Mobo and CPU, I'll have rebuilt a completely new machine.

And in case you're wondering, Tara has a nice Dell. We bought it last May.
P4 3.0 GHz CPU w/ HT.
1GB RAM
460 GB SATA hard drives.
128 MB PCI Express Video Card.

She needs the power for her MaryKay emails. :)

If I wanted to read I'd go to school

I don't read many books. And those I do read are usually technical books. So to change all that I've decided to start reading for me. I think I'll start with those motivational, empowerment type books. Luckily for me, I have found the perfect book to read.

Flickr Mashups

I found a link to webmonkey on wired.com that talks about Flickr mashups. I found some of these to be interesting. Give them a try:
http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/06/08/index4a.html

Readers responded to that article with a few more links:
http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/06/09/index1a.html

Cuatro

Since Jen tagged me a while back, I figured I should get this over with. Everybody thank Jen. (pictures to follow)

Four jobs you have had in your life:
Cleaning bathrooms in the HBLL
Hotel Front Desk Clerk
Delivery Truck Driver for Bakery
Code Monkey

Four movies you could watch over and over:
None come to mind. I usually watch whatever is on.

Four places you've lived:
Nuevo Casas Grandes, Chihuahua
Provo, UT
New York, NY
Bellevue, WA

Four TV shows you love to watch:
Battlestar Galactica
My Name is Earl
Anything on the History Channel
Iron Chef America (because I can't/don't cook)

Four places you've been on vacation:
San Diego, CA
Nauvoo, IL
Jackson Hole, WY
Las Vegas, NV

Four of your favorite foods:
Gyros
Guacamole
Steak
Oreo Shakes

Four places you'd rather be right now:
Brighton
Riviera Maya
Some cool place in Italy
Seattle, WA

Four sites you visit daily:
yahoo
google
si
wired

Four people who I am tagging/alienating:
I don't know four people to tag/alienate

Got Widgets?

I just got widgets. I remember seeing the original konfabulator as being available only for Macintosh machines. However, now that Yahoo! got its hands on it, they have ported it for PC and call it Yahoo! Widget Engine. At first, I didn't see a personal need for widgets. Just another needless app running on my machine. After a few months of seeing the widgets ads on yahoo's site I decided to give it a shot. I've installed them at home and at work and I'm happy to report I like what I've seen so far.

One of the default widgets hooks into my outlook and shows me my appointments for the day and my tasks list in a concise format. I hate opening those screens in outlook. Another checks my yahoo.com email account every 10 minutes and lets me know if I have new mail. Another shows me current weather conditions for my location of choice.

There are over 1000 freely available widgets, but what really prompted me to download them was the idea of building my own for whatever I might want. First off I'll tinker around and see how it all works under the hood. All widget run on a "widget engine", which is really the platform that does the heavy lifting and executes the widgets via a vast api. Widgets are written in XML and Javascript, two very simple and easy to learn programming languages. One is a markup language and the other a very friendly scripting language. So I believe anyone can build widgets, including me.

Take a look at the list of widgets available. Chances are someone has already built something that you've been wishing you had available. If not, drop me a line with ideas of which widgets still need building.

Basketbrawl

So there's this sport called basketbrawl. It's played just like basketball, except that it's full of hacks. Yes, it's that time of the year again. The annual church basketball tournament is going on and for the most part has been non-eventful. Us overweight and out of shape married folk have been getting better every week. By "getting better" I mean that we aren't sucking wind after one round trip up and down the court anymore. And that's a 3/4 length court.

I personally hadn't played basketball in about a year so I was really hurting the first night. My legs felt like they would fall off at any moment. But after three weeks and playing two or three times a week, we can play the game without hurting anymore. That is, until we played the more than famous, the in-famous, Single's ward.

Playing other wards is playing other overweight and out of shape married folk. Just like us. But playing the Single's Ward. Well, that's a whole different story. These guys are 18-30 years old, single (of course) and with lots of "energy". I realized that us fat married folk play while trying to not get hurt. Single guys don't worry about getting hurt. In fact, I think they try to get hurt while playing so they can get some simpathy from the single girls. They play a more aggressive game, and about five seconds into the game it became clear it would be a hack-a-thon.

So they game went on, tempers flared here and there, I few bruises were issued, but being Church ball and all, no fights broke out. We came up three points short at the end of the game, but I think if we had refs half their team would have fouled out before half-time. Did I mention we play without refs? Oh yeah. Because, hey, what could possibly go wrong?

We have three or four more games left. I think we'll be able to play a bit more competitive each week and come away with some victories. We play the tournament games on Thursday nights and play for fun on Tuesday nights.
My hope is that the biggest losers are our collective waistlines and that we keep playing after this tournament is over. It's more likely we won't play again until next year's tournament, and the wind sucking will comence once again.

What does it mean?

Welcome to Throwing the bar. What does this phrase mean? Well, it has nothing to do with drinking. Sorry. It's actually a literal translation from a Spanish slang phrase used to mean kicking back, being lazy, taking it easy or something along those lines. The Spanish slang phrase is "tirando barra". Since we spoke Spanglish where I grew up, we decided to use that phrase in English, and the literal translation was "throwing the bar". So now you know.

And this is me.