Six Flags Holiday in the Park

Went to Six Flags week before last and this week. Both days the weather was in the 70's. May I remind you it's winter...

Anyway, if you want to spare yourself the agnoy of waiting in all those lines (and the agony of having to buy a Flash Pass) just take this tip...

Go about four hours before the park closes.

1.) It will be dark/getting dark, cooler temps.

2.) The park starts thinning out making the lines so much shorter.

About an hour before the park closes is the best time to ride those rides that have long lines. The line are non-existant at this point.

My show is back on TV

Incase you didn't already know my (and Chris') show is back on TV in Fort Worth. According To Whim ( http//:www.accordingtowhim.com )

Ham radio operator

I finally got my radio operator's license from the FCC last week. My callsign is KE5WWV. I picked up an ICOM handheld too so I am ready for the apocalypse!

The happiest day of my life...

Ok. It's not often you can say: 'there was this day that I can say was the happiest of my life... and I have the picture to prove it!'

Visiting Silicon Valley

It's a nice place... but I wouldn't want to live there.
Spent a few days in Santa Clara at Foundry Networks for a training class. Found a few things interesting:
1.) There are a lot of Pakistani living there.
2.) People don't give a crap about driving laws.
3.) Santa Clara is very well kept.
4.) Can't talk on the phone and drive at the same time (oops!)
5.) There are fifteen million Indian restaurants.
6.) People are not all that friendly there.
7.) The airport is a nightmare (they are updating it though).

It's one of those trips that makes you really appreciate home.
Here are a couple of pics:


Heres a pic from my rental car. On the left is Citrix on the right is Foundry.

These 2 are from inside Foundry who was Lucasfilm used in the production of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. Thats a switch on the left.

Old roomates moving back in

My mom got tired of dealing with my old fish. Saturday I moved them back to my house. It's been almost 3 years but she got tired of all the trouble. So Fred, Ethel, and Suckface are back where they belong. Fred and Ethel are huge goldfish and Suckface is a sucker fish (duh). They are mutants cause they have lived wayyyyyy past their life expectancy. All three of them are more than 8 years old. Suckface could eat my cat Judy (if somehow Judy got into the fish tank).

Painting tips I keep remembering

I start a project and come to some understanding on how to do something very efficiently (after getting halfway through the project) and then totally forget when I start a similar project. Case in point: Painting... After starting and gaining little ground cause I am having to do second and third coats it dawns on me that I figured out how to avoid this last time I painted... Thicker paint!
So here is a little tip that will save you TONS of time while painting. Use a lot of paint. Slap it on thick. Don't try to spread it out too much. You will be amazed when you get the work done in half the time. Also, do all the fiddly bits first. The corners, the trim, everywhere your roller won't get to. It's a lot easier doing the hard stuff first. You get real tired of painting when you do the rolling first then realize you have to do all the fiddly bits. Hope my tips help. Oh yhea, I painted the bedroom this weekend (after having it sit unfinished for 1 1/2 years).

Refried beans... American style!

Redneck Home Theater

This is my little invention when I needed a screen for the projector I am borrowing from work. It's a nice DLP projector but I have no where to display it. I used thumb tacks, a queen size sheet and a 2x4 and 1x2 to make this fantastic screen!

Punch and Backscratchers

Punch loves to be petted with the bamboo back scratcher. When she hears it rattling around she comes running. Anyway I was petting her last night and I took this photo with the phone when she stopped moving about.

Flower bed done!

I finally got the front flower bed fixed! Yay! It's been over 2 years (almost) and I just said 'dang, I gotta do this'. It was ratty and overgrown. I ripped it all out (except the bushes) and just did it. Now for the front porch...

The Library room

Incase you haven't been to my house in the last few months I finished the 'library room'. Basically it got a new coat of dark green paint. All I can say is that painting somewith with dark paint sucks. You have to paint and paint and paint to get it even. It's nice and all but come on!

Grain Silo or Superhero Hideout?

There are these grain storage facilities in Saginaw. Does anyone else think these would make great superhero hideouts? They are huge (to hide all those great superhero vehicles in), tall (to oversee the city), really long (perfect for a jet landing strip) and totally innocuous.

'Mexican' Tacos

Mexican tacos sold here... not them damn Russian ones!

Grapevine Mills dirty little secret

If you notice in the 'sports' themed area of the mall the upper walls are decorated with drawn fans watching some sport or another. The pattern of about 40 people is repeated over and over again. But if you take a real close look you can see something very interesting. Pasted over the drawn faces are photos of random people's heads. I am guessing these are the architect's photos or board members or something similar. Take a look at the photos. The original drawings are in red and the pasted real photos are in green circles. Sorry the pics are not better.

I hate the mall!

Women,

Men hate malls. We'd rather be at the dentist than farting around at the mall. Grapevine Mills is the worst too! The place is so crowded and there are no MAN STORES. The music store... wowee.

Your life reshuffeled

This is what you get if you go to NathanStout.com. I used to own this site. This is where my home page was. you can find it now at http://www.DragonOfTheBlackPool.com basically it has all the stuff I like etc... Well I let the nathanstout.com name expire since I really didn't want it. As with most defunct websites that had content a big company bought it up and placed link ads on it. What they do obviously is take the old content subject(s) and try to link it to ads to generate sales. Well, I have put a red dot next to each item below to let you know where in the hell they got this info from:

#1 'Nathan' - That's obvious.
#2 'Games' - My website had a whole lot of games listed (video and board).
#3 'Front' - This refers to Front Mission; the game I had a huge page devoted to.
#4 'Cast' - This is referring to the Cast and Crew section of my Robotech fan page.
#5 'Mission' - See #3 above
#6 'Dragon' - The forwarding page was to my new homepage: DragonOfTheBlackPool.com
#7 'Robotech' - I had a huge fan page for robotech.
#8 'Red' - I had a Red Dwarf page.
#9 'Shell' - I had a section that talked about Ghost in the Shell (the animation).
#10 'Die' - This is referring to Dice (the singular).
#11 'Macross' - I talked about Macross while talking about Robotech.
#12 'Pinball' - I had a page about my Hook Pinball machine.
#13 'Ball' - See #12

It's strange to see all this stuff about yourself all deconstructed, taken out of context, and used by someone else to make money.

Alton Dolby

Is it just me or does Alton Brown (from FoodNetwork) look like Thomas Dolby's brother? * I added the hat on Alton.

Another reason to love the 80's

Chris revealed to me that the theme to National Lampoon's European Vacation (and the first one) was sung by the one and only Lindsay Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac. Here is the video to the song that has nothing to do with the movies or anything to do with comedy or fun... but it's cool. Oh and one more thing, the 2nd movie (European Vacation) was the best.

Heres the link cause YouTube was messing up my code:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqhcE4aZMLQ

And heres a Thomas Dolby song Chris showed me too. It's cool too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb-8SHznFw0

Creepy

This is just creepy. No wonder kids are afraid to go shopping with mom. Some display dummy at Penny's.

Greedy buffet eaters

Geeze Louise! So we are eating at the Chinese buffet near the joint reserve base in West Fort Worth and the usual type crowd is there early on a Sunday. Well I get a double barrel of bad customers this time. This guy is sitting there with a plate full of the the two most expensive food items the place carries. You know, they put some higher end stuff out there to get more customers (make them happy, etc...) Well this guy has an over full plate of oysters and another over full plate of crab legs... and nothing else. These cheap asses come to these buffets and get only the most expensive stuff they have. Greedy butt. Same goes for some woman eating nothing but crab legs. Come on! There are like 100+ items out there! I feel for the poor owners of that place. I hate to be so... hateful but I hope they choke on their own excess. By the way, can you identify the food that's left on the plate above?

Where are the Castles?

I remember back in the 90's that dollar stores carried lots of little decorative castles and houses. What happened? Now a days all they have are animals and disproporinate children.

Ah, the good old days...

Wait a second... I hated the 90's.

BTW: I can't seem to find those miniature houses and castles anymore, so if you know where I snag some, lemme know.

Chris' car's black eye

See the nice windshield too... well the hood came loose and flipped up the next morning while he was driving and destroyed the windshield...

Pot Pies.. Catlicious!

Punch loves pot pies. My cats don't like human food. I have no idea why this is the one thing that she likes..

The phone is here... yay

I looks a little girly being flash with gold trim (I swear it didn't look like this on their site) but I have it up and running with the bluetooth headset. Later!

Another reason the 80's ruled... the Max Headroom TV Hack

OK, this is creepy and cool at the same time. Back in the late 80's someone hacked 2 television station's signals to broadcast this VERY strangeness.

There are a lot of theories about why and what it's all about. Some say it's just fun, some say it's got messages in it (hacker stuff I guess), and other say he's just drunk. Well, I don;t know but it looks bizarre and has this insidious feel to it. The clip is made all the more better with the TV show being cut into and then abruptly coming back at the end. Of course it's made all the more nerdy since the show it cut in on was Dr. Who.

Enjoy the strangeness.

New phone NOT on the way.... boo to youuuuuu...

The package was shipped the day it was ordered! Wow... Only problem is that it requires a signature for delivery and we both work so no one is home to sign. Usually FedEx leaves one of those notes that you can sign but they didn't leave one yesterday. Boo. So now I will have to see if they left one today. Hopefully they do.

New phone on the way

My new phone has been shipped by Verizon last night. I made sure to get a camera with a 2 megapixel camera so I could take lots of great pics to upload to my new blog here. I also purchased a bluetooth earpiece. This is so I too can look like a total dork and walk around talking to myself making people wonder if I'm insane. I have a pass on it though since I work in the IT industry (we are allowed these sorts of things, you know).