Four Wheeler
October 4, 2008
Check out this awesome bruise I got when I flipped my four wheeler into a ditch yesterday.
Pretty neat huh?
Topics: Things I Did | No Comments »
Truck Sold
September 18, 2008
I just sold my truck, I’ve been trying to sell it for the last 6 months and now its finally gone. The guy who bought it didn’t have a drivers license, only an ID but he paid cash so I didn’t really care. I wanted to take a picture of him driving my truck away but I didn’t have a camera on hand. Luckily, I made a copy of his ID card and was able to recreate the moment.
Looks pretty real huh?
Topics: Things I Did | No Comments »
C-attle
August 8, 2008
Jenn and I went on vacation to Seattle last month. Jenn has a lot of family in Seattle so we were able to stay with her aunt for free which really helped keep the cost down. we took an Amtrak train there and flew back. the train actually cost a little more than the plane but my parents had already planned to take the train to Glacier Park so we took the same one to Seattle.
It took 38 hours to get there but there was a lot to see so it turned out to be pretty fun. Once we were in Seattle, we spent a few days walking around the city. I’ve grouped the things I found interesting into this picture:
After that Jenn’s cousin Sarah took us on a two day trip to Victoria BC. Victoria is on a peninsula so the easiest way to get there is via ferry. We went north from Seattle, crossed into Canada, took a ferry south to Victoria where we stayed overnight, took another ferry south to the US, drove south to Tacoma and then north back to Seattle.
The best part of our trip was going to Mount St. Helens with Jenn’s aunt and uncle. On our way there we stopped at the “Charles Bingham Forest Learning Center.” Standing outside the learning center there was a forester giving a little speech so we decided to stop and listen. As we were listening this lady walked up next to us, she stood with us as the forester explained how after the eruption in 1980 the government sold off all the destroyed lumber. Then right in the middle of his next sentence this lady interrupted by saying in a real bitchy tone “they should have left those trees right where they were, the greedy corporations just pressured the government into selling them so they could rape the environment.” It was at that moment that I realized that this lady was a actually a guy, I was just thrown off by his long ponytailed hair. This led me to realize that I was in the presence of a real live hippie. I was shocked, I’d never seen one in real life before. I thought about peeing on his shoes or maybe kicking him down the mountain but decided instead to see what he would do next.
When he was finished with his BS environmental rant he went inside, Jenn and I followed him. We made sure to maintain a safe distance because once indoors he kind of smelled like swiss cheese. He pretty much went straight through the learning center over to the information desk where he wrote on something and then left.
I went to investigate and found this:
I’m sure you can’t read it in the picture (and I want the search engines to pick it up) so here it is typed out
| Name | City, State / Country | # In Your Party | Comments |
| Macke Family | Ojai CA | 4 | What a crock of crap! Pro Business Pro $ Profit only |
The way he signed it makes it seem like he had his family along but I didn’t see anybody with him. Maybe they found an opportunity to ditch his stinky ass.
Topics: Places I Went, Stuff I Saw | No Comments »
New(ish) Computer
July 12, 2008
My old server, and I use the word server loosely here, was a 2.8Ghz P4, 2GB RAM with a 1.5TB RAID5 array. The last time it saw an upgrade was about two years ago and it’s work load has tripled since then so I finally broke down and rebuilt it.
These are the parts, I bought and sold them all on eBay.
| Parts bought for new machine | Qty | Price | Total |
| Biostar I945G-M7 MoBo | 1 | $47 | $47 |
| 2.66Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU | 1 | $148 | $148 |
| 1GB Kingston DDR2 RAM | 4 | $10 | $40 |
| 1TB Western Digital HDD | 4 | $149 | $596 |
| Dell (LSI) PERC5 RAID controller | 1 | $39 | $39 |
| Total | $870 |
| Parts sold from old machine | Qty | Price | Total |
| Biostar P4M80-M4 MoBo | 1 | $20 | $20 |
| 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 CPU | 1 | $26 | $26 |
| 1GB Kingston DDR RAM | 2 | $8 | $16 |
| 500GB Western Digital HDD | 4 | $80 | $320 |
| Pacific Digital ZL150 RAID controller | 1 | $15 | $15 |
| Total | $397 |
In the end it only cost $473 and now I’ve got 3TB of space which should last a couple years.
The old machine was running Windows 2000 Server which as the name implies, is a little out of date. So I went ahead and put Windows Server 2008 (64bit) on the new one.
Pretty happy with it all so far.
Topics: Crap I Built, Items I Bought | No Comments »
Sprint is Crap
June 14, 2008
My 2 year contract is up and I’m jumping ship. Poor coverage, horrible customer service, confusing website, consistently incorrect billing and overpriced service; these are just a few of my gripes with Sprint.
Working for Honeywell, I get a massive employee discount with both at&t and Verizon. I have five lines with Sprint but Verizon can’t port any of them, they say they don’t have a license to do business in northern Minnesota or some such thing. at&t has better coverage up north than Verizon and Sprint combined plus they can port all my lines, so I’m going with them.
I can safely say that I’ll miss Sprint like I miss a bad case of cancer (not very much at all)
Topics: Items I Bought | 1 Comment »
Dog Stairs 2.0
May 4, 2008
Ever since we moved out of Rice I’ve missed having dog stairs. After a good amount of work I rebuilt the stairs for this apartment and we put them out this weekend.
They are awesome. Since the new stairs are so much smaller I was left with a good amount of leftover wood so I built some stairs for inside and he seems to like them too.
Bottom Line: I like building stairs for the dog.
Topics: Crap I Built | 2 Comments »
Fun With My Car
April 7, 2008
I’ve had a good deal of success working on my own vehicles in the past and this last weekend was my biggest undertaking yet. My car had a leaky heater core so the first half of Saturday was spend disassembling the dashboard. Once I found the heater core, I drained the coolant and replaced the heater. Next I went after the timing belt. To get access to the timing belt I had to un-mount one side of the engine and jack it about 5 inches out of the car. Once the belt was off I took out the water pump. It was getting dark out so quit for the day and went back at it Sunday morning. Reassembly went a lot faster than disassembly. I put the new water pump in, aligned the engine and installed the new timing belt.
After that I remounted the engine, rebuilt the dashboard and refilled the coolant. I started the car and everything worked, which is always good. All that would have cost just under $2,000 at a shop. All it cost me was my weekend and $300 for parts and tools.
Topics: Items I Bought, Things I Did | 1 Comment »
S10 Starter
March 31, 2008
Back in November, the starter died in my truck but I wasn’t willing to dish out $400 to have it replaced. I bought a starter on eBay for $30 and waited for a weekend warm enough to install it and yesterday was it. It took me 4 hours, most of which was spent trying to loosen a single bolt, but I finally got it. Now that it’s running, I’m going to sell it before it breaks down again.
Topics: Items I Bought, Things I Did | 1 Comment »
Cookies
March 24, 2008
So I’ve only lived in central Minnesota for about a year and a half now and I just recently discovered the biggest reasons I hate it down here (there’s no lack of things I dislike about this part of the state)
The Girl Scout Cookies
Girl Scout cookies are expensive, but they are also delicious so when I get the opportunity to buy them, I do. I bought a few boxes last week but was disappointed to find that every time I ate one I would throw up all over the place. After some research I found out that they don’t sell the same cookies here that they sell up north. The boxes look the same but the products are very different. There are two companies that make Girl Scout cookies and they both have their own recipe for each cookie. Once I realized what was going on I got a hold of some of the good cookies from up north and did a little comparison.
If your Girl Scout troop sells cookies made by “Little Brownie Bakers” you’re better of just going outside and eating a handful of mud. They’re seriously nasty.
Topics: Items I Bought, Things I Did | 1 Comment »
New Alternator
March 11, 2008
I took Jenn and her sister to the airport Wednesday Last week so they could meet up with their cousin and go to New York City for spring break. It was business as usual while Jenn was gone except I had to work all weekend. I left work Sunday around 4pm and picked up Jenn and her sister at the airport then headed home. Once we got home we unloaded the car, had dinner and went to sleep. The next day, I went out and got in my car to go to work and it was completely dead. It turns out the dome light was on all night because the trunk didn’t get shut all the way. I waited patiently for someone else to come out and start their car so I could get a jump. I was already late, so as soon as the car was running I took off. This proved to be a mistake.
Since I didn’t let the battery charge I ended up burning out my alternator and getting stranded on an off ramp just a few blocks from work. I could have fixed it myself had I made it to a parking lot, but being on an off ramp I had to call for a tow. It ended up costing just under $500
Topics: Items I Bought | 1 Comment »