"I'll be right by your side, come hell or water high..."

microfroooog....

2009-11-15T02:16:36Z

That, on the left, is a WEEEEEE-TINY frog. Our yard, apparently, is replete with these tiny little frogs. Aggie Ring on right is for scale. Yep.

11/2/09

2009-11-03T03:34:07Z

I love full moons...

why?

2009-10-18T00:38:47Z

...because theater 8 nine!

Open Letter to whoever picks the music for all the Lincoln vehicle ads:

2009-10-09T15:07:02Z

Open Letter to whoever picks the music for all the Lincoln vehicle ads:

KEEP AT IT. Whoever picks that music knows exactly the music that I like...

The Cat Power one, singing "Space Oddity", would be AWESOME if it were a whole song, rather than just that clip.

Then there's another with "Coming Home"(originally Peter Schilling) by Shiny Toy Guns.

The newest one is "Under the Milky Way" sung by Nicole Atkins. Another good song...

So. Yeah. not going to buy a Lincoln, but I love their marketing department audio people.

mental midgets?

2009-10-07T15:52:56Z

It has amused me more than once to see that in this particular phonebook, MENTAL and MIDGET are the two headings... That _can't_ be entirely chance...

rileydoooogggg

2009-10-01T04:31:20Z

Is that not cute? He just passes out all cool like that...

9/26/09

2009-09-26T20:27:29Z

I need one of these...

shoo fly.... Lobotomy?

2009-09-25T03:39:35Z

so... I'm in the study a minute ago, and on Facebook, posting about the asshole terrorist in Dalla-- wait, that's another story.
So Nicole's singing in the living room, and I hear "shoo fly..."
and the next thing I hear -- in my half-deaf left ear-- is
"Lobotomy".

(same cadence as "don' bother me", it was....I'm not a moron...honest)

jspurlin @ 2009-08-25T13:10:00

2009-08-25T18:15:00Z

It's actually really satisfying to put together something that functions as intended, when it's something that I'm doing for the first time...

I put a network together at work, see, and it's working as intended. In a whole freaking bunch of places. I WIN.

(now, granted, it's not elegant, but if they want elegant, they gotta pay someone who knows what the hell they're doing. I have some slight idea, but am by no means an expert.)

((and I'm still not cool with getting up on rafters and walking around. I could NOT be an insulation installer...))

The more I read about geocaching, the more I think it looks like a good excuse to go outside and go someplace with a purpose...

Y'all doing good?

jspurlin @ 2009-08-13T10:46:00

2009-08-13T16:04:53Z

so. I broke an AC unit at work, right. I'm all "it's cool, I can change the thermostat, how hard can that be", and I change it out.

It then completely refuses to work.

I get irritated, and revert to the original thermostat. (this omits the part where I cuss the thermostat and the wiring for being crappy, what with that being the probable issue.)

Still nothin'.

I go look at the AC unit, flip the onboard breakers to reset them, try other things. Nothin'.

I attempt to call the air handler manufacturer.

Their phone system repeatedly, for an hour, hangs up on me every time I try to transfer to someone who can help me.

Eventually, I get to someone in tech support, who goes "have you tried replacing the fuse?"

*blank look from me* (yes, over the phone. pff.)

So I turn off all the breakers and go find the fuse -- behind, naturally, a panel labeled "NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS. CALL FOR SERVICE." or some other equally ominous warning.

It's a 3-amp regular automotive fuse. They're 3 dollars for a pack of five.

Lo and behold, I change the thermostat to the new one, and reinstall a new fuse, and we're good.

But I can see how some AC repair calls take three minutes, now.
I bet they still cost the same, but the effort is minimal. It took more time to reinstall the flimsy panel on the housing than to replace the fuse...

woo, bone-resonating hearing aids.

2009-08-11T16:32:11Z

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/hightech-hearing-aid-the-ultimate-ipod-accessory-20090809-ee8p.html

Bone-actuated hearing aids.

We live in the freaking future.

And as someone who has pretty-damn-bad speech-interpretation-level hearing in one ear, I'm pretty excited to see where this goes.

My left ear sucks, in terms of the frequencies at which human speech is. High pitch? TOTALLY CAN HEAR IT. Low Pitch? sure, it's ok. middle frequencies? it's like hearing through mud.

So someday when this improves, maaaaaybe that's an option.

But I like that the tech is still being worked on.

hhhhhh tsshhh hhhhhh tsshhh

2009-07-29T03:19:33Z

This is a rack to hold our tupperware. But to me it looks like (with the exception of the hole in the top middle) Darth Vader's helmet.
No, really.

7/22/09

2009-07-23T03:46:27Z

Very relaxed right now. Laying on the couch in our new house, just decompressing from a long day.

I'm currently VERY much enjoying the lack of other-people-around-us sounds. And being in _our_ house is awesome.

Everyone doing good?

Aerial view of fireworks? HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

2009-07-05T03:34:30Z

So...flew back from Vegas tonight. Took off from DFW for Killeen just as all the fireworks were teeing off... And the pilot kept the plane at 4000 feet for 30-some miles, so we saw thousands of fireworks. Amazing, seriously. Won't happen often, since there's about a one-hour-a-year window to fly to be able to see it...
Anyway. If you can, do it. High point of the evening...

suicidal food, round two

2009-07-05T01:05:51Z

Those are chickens in a mural at the DFW Airport Popeye's Chicken, covering each other in tabasco. Genuinely creepy, when I first noticed it... At least the suicidal catfish in the same mural seemed dumbly happy, not manic...

7/1/09-- Caesar's palace

2009-07-04T09:21:01Z

Ok... Pretty cool. But I still don't buy that the slot machines are random...

Toby Keith's "I love this bar" bar... Mason jars and all...

2009-07-03T07:45:31Z

Well...cross that off the drinking checklist

7/1/09

2009-07-02T04:44:28Z

Ok, so... Caesar's is cool...

Vegas!

2009-07-02T01:39:44Z

View out the window of our room...

Vegas, baby!

2009-07-01T15:17:32Z

off to Vegas for the first time... Staying in the Monte Carlo until the 4th. Give me a call or an email if youalre around; maybe we can work something out....

wow.. This was unexpected...

2009-06-03T13:47:42Z

So I'm working on a computer that crapped out the other day, and I put the hard drive into another chassis we got at a police-seizure surplus auction, k? And today I'm working on drivers, and I see "TAE_BO" listed as the contents of the drive... And this was in it.

Odd...someone was watchin' Tae Bo when the cops bust in...

cannibalistic swine...

2009-06-02T02:02:30Z

K... Something seriously wrong with a pig enjoying a big ol' bowl of pork rinds...

5/31/09

2009-05-31T19:36:14Z

Only at Walmart; a Christmas tree in the back of a truck, the day before June....

tsss AAA hey what the crap

2009-05-31T18:56:27Z

So. There's a motorola batteryin the grass outside our apartment, a few minutes ago. I pick it up, if for no other reason than to throw it away. There was a cover sticker missing, and apparently a contact shorted somewhere, because it MELTED A SLICE IN MY FINGER.

wtf.

so. Science news for the day: phone batteries have enough juice to melt skin. Tadaaaa.

Everyone doing okay?

5/29/09

2009-05-30T04:41:05Z

If you can't read all that...

Buy one, get one free, or 2.99 each.

*boggle*

what?