Archives 2007

See all of em here. This is a damn fine photo shopping if I do say so myself.

Spartan CAM!!

Yes the big day has finally come.  It’s a relief in many ways.  I get to finally shave off the mess on my face.  I can have less dinners that look like dog food and the self inflicted pressure I have been putting on myself to get to this point can be relaxed a bit.  Last night I took my pictures for the Spartan Halloween contest.  Some of them are pretty decent.  Today I need to do some photoshopping to them so I appear to be in the middle of a Greek battlefield instead of our bedroom.

My vball buddy Jeremy reads my blog pretty regularly and sometimes will comment on it.  Unfortunately he makes his comments through my Facebook page so the comments are only visible via Facebook.

So anyway, Jeremy commented on yesterday’s entries.  He found my run in with the guy at the gym comical but noted that I probably could have taken steps to defuse the situation, presumably being more apologetic or whatever.  He’s probably right, I probably could have done that but there is no way I would have.  I am the type that will very rarely initiate hostility or conflict. However, if someone initiates it with me, a switch flips and I will not back down, to a fault I’m sure.

Jeremy also asked if I had looked into some of the Loose Change debunking information.  The answer is yes.  I read the entire Popular Mechanic article that supposedly addressed the majority of the questions.  After seeing the film I realized that it actually didn’t address nearly all of them.  basically what I read were scientific scenarios to explain certain aspects of the disaster.  What they don’t account for is all of the eyewitness accounts that depict occurrences that would point to the Loose Change conclusion.  I also saw nothing that explained why there was no 757 wreckage found at the Pentagon or the “crash site” of flight 93.

  Speaking of flight 93, did you know that in 2001 it was nearly impossible for a person to make a cell phone call from a plane with the technology that was in place? A study placed the odds of a successful call going out at like one half of one percent, yet supposedly there were all of these cell calls placed from the plane.

In the video of the towers collapsing, Loose Change points out that you can see small explosions blowing out windows below as the buildings start to fall.  Debunkers say this was because of air pressure from the floors above pancaking down.  There are two things that make me not believe that.  First, if it was air pressure why would only small sections of windows break out instead of the pressure popping windows throughout the floors?  Second some of those explosions were 30 or 40 floors BELOW the collapsing area.  Air pressure would not be blowing out the windows that far down. 

Loose Change Final Cut will be released November 11 th.  You can bet I will be downloading that one as well.  It seems that the real evil here isn’t necessarily from W. He is just a puppet figurehead that is dumb enough to be the front man for the powerful people in government that lie at every opportunity to further their agendas.  Watch the documentary, please.

Over the weekend I ran to the convenience store to grab some Diet Coke and to fill up the truck with gas.  When I pulled up all the pumps were taken.  I surveyed the vehicles and saw a Grand Am with people in the two front seats just sitting there so I assumed they just got done pumping gas so I pulled behind them.  They continued to have a nice little chit chat as I grew increasingly more annoyed.  Then after a minute or so, both doors open, a Hispanic woman and guy get out and they saunter into the store.  Most Hispanics don’t have credit cards to pay at the pump.  I was annoyed that they were just taking their good ole time and immediately surveyed for another spot.

I found one and after waiting another couple minutes I was pumping gas.  The Hispanics still had not come back out.  I finished pumping 15 gallons of gas, the Hispanics had still not come back.  I go inside to pick up the Diet Coke, the Hispanics are in the line at the Subway ordering lunch!  F’in idiots!  I can’t stand it when people have no consideration for others.  Ignorant and worthless are the adjectives that came to mind as I shot these morons dirty looks.  

The store had no Diet Coke, only Coke Zero.  I don’t quite understand why you need Diet Coke, Diet Coke with Minerals and Coke Zero.  Evidently Coke Zero uses a different sweetener than Diet Coke.  When I tried it at home I wished they had Diet Coke instead.  Coke Zero is too sweet, yuck.

I expect many things when I go to the gym.  I expect it to be hot, I expect it to be dirty, I expect it to smell, I expect the weights to be strewn about in a haphazard fashion and I expect the owner to be sitting on his ass behind the counter caring less about it.  What I don’t expect is to get into a loud verbal confrontation with a fellow gym member.  Well that is what happened today.

I go into the gym and start stretching on the barbell tree.  The barbell tree in an inverted V shaped rack that holds the preset barbell weights ranging from 20 to 110 pounds.  I immediately notice that someone decided to pull down one of the normal barbells and threw an olympic bar on there with 40 pounds on either side.  There was no one in the vicinity except a woman so of course I figured once again, some lazy ass threw the bar there and was too much of a slug to put it back, so I pull it off and grumpily plop it in the floor against the wall and then go back and put the preset barbell back.  Every single day I find myself picking up after lazy/ignorant people at the gym that are unable to comprehend the concept of putting stuff back where it came from. I figured today was just another day of the same.

So I am down on a flat bench doing dumb bell chest presses and some guy comes over grumbling.  I have seen this guy at the gym for a long time, I never talk to him.  He has some sort of accent that sounds eastern European to me. He is a pretty big guy.  When I walked in he was up at the squat racks towards the front of the gym, at least 50 feet away.  So anyway I hear him bitching about someone moving the bar.  I sit up and say “I moved the bar”  He says “Why you move the bar??!!”  I said because it was on the regular barbell rack, it isn’t supposed to be there”   He said he was using it.  I said I didn’t know he was using it or else I wouldn’t have moved it.  By this time we both were using very angry and an increasingly loud tone of voice.  He says “You should ask someone if they are using something before you move it”  I say “Everyday I pick up shit people leave sitting around here” He says “I’m not other people’s!!!”  I was really angry by now and  fired back “how was I supposed to know you were using it??!!”  “You made a mistake!” he says.  “No I didn’t make a mistake!” I returned.  Then he walks over to the bar which was still on the floor and says “Can you at least help me carry the bar back over to the rack, I don’t want to hurt my back because of your mistake.”  I’m sure fire was in my eyes.  I say “Oh, you want HELP carrying the bar?” in my best “you are a pussy” tone.  As he was on the one end of the bar waiting for me to lift the other end, I stomp over grab the bar with both hands, yank it up myself, stomp back over to the rack and as I threw it down I said “I did not make a MIS (CLANG as I dropped the bar onto the hooks for emphasis) TAKE!”  No further words were spoken. But boy did my work out have a nice angry edge to it.

As I worked out I analyzed the confrontation to see if I was somehow at fault.  Nope, Igor is just a dick.  How was I supposed to know that the guy 50 feet away from me was coming back to use the bar. Before I use anything in the gym, am I supposed to go around and do a personal meet and greet to make sure no one is using the piece of equipment I want to use/move?  Of course not.  The guy is just a big dickhead.   

There is some good follow up info in the comments of the entry two below this one regarding the Loose Change Final Cut documentary.  Here you go for those that are too lazy to scroll down.

Tim Sparke Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 6:22 pm e

Hi Mr Duff

Do get ready for Loose Change Final Cut which proves the official story of 9/11 can’t be true.

This is an online event to be the first to watch the new film Loose Change Final Cut on www.joiningthedots.tv, the new online documentary film site.

I am new to this forum and aware that many of you think that ‘Loose Change’ is ‘conspiracy bullshit’. I have to admit that I was one of those who didn’t question the official story of 9/11 up until this weekend. I even supported the invasion of Iraq – arguing against my even more conservative brother, that if I can’t believe my Prime-Minister, Tony Blair, that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction then we should all give up…..sadly he was right, I was wrong….and the rest as they say is history…..

I saw the new film Loose Change Final Cut on Friday in Sweden at a secret test screening. I expected the film to be full of half-truths, insinuations, and attacks on the Bush administration…..instead it was a cogent mature fact filled essay which showed evidence culled from the US networks (Fox, NBC, CNN, ABC etc) that:

1) At least 6 of the 9/11 hi-jackers were trained at US military bases and two of them shared a home with an FBI informant.

2) That US agents had been tailing the hi-jackers prior to 9/11 and made three attempts to inform the FBI – each time the meetings were cancelled.

3) That the man who according to the fbi funded 9/11, the head of the Pakistan Secret Service, was meeting with key government officials on the morning of 9/11.

4) That Dick Cheney was warned that a plane was going to hit the Pentagon, officials requested permission to shoot it down and he refused permission, effectively condemming 120 US patriots to be killed.

5) That the part of the building which was hit at the Pentagon was, according to Donald Rumsfeld investigating a missing 2 trillion dollars….

There is other utterly damming evidence regarding how Bush forced the EPA to change the air quality warnings about the safety of breathing in toxic fumes from the dust that covered Manhatten and more, and more and more…it is quite remarkable….and all of it, straight from the mouths of CNN, Fox, ABC etc.

As I say I was quite prepared to dismiss the film before I watched it, but don’t take my word for it, watch it yourself and make up your own mind.

After seeing this evidence…which is all from mainstream sources my opinion about the Loose Change boys changed….

23:20 for my 300 today.  The clock has become my mortal enemy.

I’m happy the Red Sox won the series.  It’s impressive that they swept a team that had won 21 of their last 22 games.  I didn’t watch one second of any of the games.

A bunch of the guys that are in the Spartan Halloween challenge got together for a party over the weekend.  Evidently a lot of them know/work together out in California.  Some funny pictures are here.

Speaking of funny, how about an extreme beard close up??!!

Saturday morning I headed out relatively early to Home Depot to pick up some stuff.  One of the things I was looking for was a pole saw to assist in our pruning project.  In 39 years I never have used a pole saw.  I am embarrassed to say that when I saw them over the years they looked overly complicated with the ropes and stuff.  I didn’t really know how they worked.  Well I’m glad I overcame my fear of pole saws, they are a godsend when you have hundreds of branches to knock down that are 15 feet off the ground.

So we started on the pruning right after lunch.  Thankfully it was overcast, otherwise I may have melted into the ground.  We pruned and collected branches all afternoon.  We didn’t mess around with the tractor and the yard cart, the truck was used to dump the junk.  I bet we made at least a dozen trips out to the pit in the back.  It is incredible how much junk you can get off these trees.  Like I said before, the pole saw was awesome.  Instead of having to climb up a ladder and awkwardly and dangerously reach for high branches with a hand lopper, I could remain on terra firma and reach as high as any tree top.  The pole saw allows you to take down bigger branches with the saw part of it, for smaller, rounder branches like the seed branches, you can use the lopper.  The rope is used for the lopper. 

Even with my tool for branch removal, the job was extremely tedious.  My neck was cramping from looking up all the time.  I was constantly getting showered in tree debris, ants and other organic matter.  It seemed like no matter how many branches I removed from a tree, there was always one more dead or unsightly one to cut.  By the time we quit I had no gas left in the tank.  There were actually other trees we could have attended to in the back of the property but I called it as “good enough”.  I had no inkling that this pruning project would be so extensive.  We spent at least 8 hours in total pruning and I bet we could spend another 4 yet if we wanted to get EVERYTHING.  I weighed myself before taking a shower to wash the grime off me.  My dehydrated weight was 178 pounds, whoa.

Saturday night Ali and I sat down and watched Loose Change, 2nd Edition.  Some of the video clips I linked last week were from the Loose Change movie, there are two of them currently and there is another due to be released soon, Loose Change Final Cut.  I told Ali what it was about, she really didn’t know what to expect.  Like me, she never had looked into the 911 Conspiracy theories.  Wow that was some flick.  Some of the stuff they brought out was flabbergasting.  I misquoted last week when I said the guy took out a 3 million dollar insurance policy on building 7 and the rest of the WTC 6 weeks before the incident, it was 3.2 BILLION.  He was paid over 2 BILLION in his insurance settlement, although originally he tried to get over 7 BILLION..  Did you know that Marvin Bush was the head of security at the WTC up until 9/11?  Did you know there was an estimated 193 billion in gold housed in the WTC and only 200 million of it was recovered?  Did you know there were no documented 757 plane parts found at the Pentagon or the crash site in Pennsylvania? The video the government has told us contains Osama Bin Laden confessing to being behind 9/11 is an OBVIOUS fake.  It’s all documented for all to see, if you only take the time to look.

Here is the quote regarding the mission statement for the ultra-right wing neo-con group that included the likes of Dick Cheyney, Donald Rumsfeld and Jeb Bush among others.

September, 2000. The Project for a New American Century, a neo-conservative think tank whose members include Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush and Paul Wolfowitz, releases their report entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.”

In it, they declare that “the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

There is just example after example of suspicious to down right criminal things that are exposed in this documentary.  I challenge ANYONE to watch this and not come away with serious doubt about the story that has been told to the American public. At the link listed above you can watch the documentary in it’s entirety for free.  Not that we need another reason to despise the Bush administration but this is truly unbelievable, even if only a fraction of it is true. Take the time and WATCH it.  Please post your comments after you see it.

After the movie Ali didn’t really know what to say.  Her dislike of the Bush administration was already so deep that piling on top of it is nearly impossible.  It’s almost like we are living in the Matrix, the government manipulates us to see what they want us to see, feel what they want us to feel, all to serve a truly sick master.

Hey the Eagles won.  They were setting things up to almost follow the Bears game plot exactly however they managed to come up with a defensive stop and then actually were effective with clock management and left the Vikings no time to come back.  They were doing a good job of letting the Vikes 3rd string QB look like Joe Montana for awhile. Hey it’s a win.

When I got Ali the Treo 750 phone, I was very proud of myself.  It addressed some of the complaints she had about her Treo 650, namely it’s poor reliability with synchronizing her outlook email, calendar and contacts.  The 750 does a fantastic job of this and actually does it in real time instead of just once an hour.  The IE browser in Windows Mobile is far better than what the Palm OS offers as well.  Windows Mobile just has more bells and whistles.  Well last night I was working on her phone trying to address a couple issues and Ali asks me if it would be possible for us to simply swap numbers between our phones.  (I still have a Treo 650)  I told her it couldn’t be done, although if we were willing to eat a ton of fees, I think it actually could be.  All the bells and whistles that I find so cool just seem to frustrate Ali.  She said she actually liked the 650 better…. what?????  Hearing that hurt since I thought I did a good job of addressing the problems Ali presented to me with her old phone.

Well one of the things I have been waiting for is the Windows Mobile 6 free upgrade to be released by ATT/Cingular for the 750.  It has even more cool features and would address a couple of the quirks Ali was complaining about.  There have been many rumors that it has been ready to release for months but ATT is sitting on it for some reason.  I have been patiently waiting for the official release although there has been an unofficial version of it floating around for a month or so.  Well last night after hearing Ali’s complaints, I lost my patience.

I downloaded and installed the unofficial version.  It went well.  I had the unit back up and working in about 20 minutes.  I am hoping the OS upgrade will make Ali feel better about the phone.  I still have some more tweaking to do.

My 300 time dropped by another minute.  I have to say, I am surpassing what I thought I would be able to do 6 months ago.

Remember how I said I was impressed by Eric Zichella coming door to door looking for votes? Scratch that, now the guy is just plain annoying.  He has deluged our home with nearly daily junk mail as well as having recorded messages calling our house at least three or four times.  He has crossed the line from “getting the word out” to being a genuine pest.  He is the son of a wealthy developer.  I read in the paper he is leading all the candidates in fund raising, having generated over 100 grand.  It’s almost like he is trying to buy the election, we have received at least four or five times more junk from him than any other candidates.  Even if I was voting republican, I would not support the guy.  You can’t be too smart if you think burying people in junk mail is going to win votes.

Last night there were two disgusting things I watched on two different shows.  On Survivor they had the traditional “eat disgusting things” challenge.  They are in China this season so of course knowing what Chinese eat, this isn’t going to be good.  Ali left the room during this segment, I wished I did afterward.  Among the disgusting things they ate were chicken hearts, eel, and most disgusting of all, baby turtles and unhatched ducklings.  I always fancied myself as being able to hack Survivor, however my love of animals would wreck me.  I would fall flat on my face being the hunter or fisherman.  In a challenge like last nights, if I had the turtles or ducklings in front of me I would have just bowed out.

Then while I was in bed watching Last One Standing, a show of a bunch of guys traveling the globe participating in various third world fighting competition, I had to fast forward through another segment.  They were in India doing some foot fighting thing.  The locals tradition before a tournament is to eat dog.  The actually showed the dog that was going to be eaten.  He was just lying there sleeping.  It really made me sick.  No they didn’t show them killing the dog but man, that was just shitty.  With as close as we are to Nicki, eating a dog is akin to cannibalism in our book.

  On last week’s show they sacrificed a cow. They showed the cow tied up, on the ground and then one of the villagers stabbed it to let it bleed to death. They showed the blood coming out while the cow was squirming around.  It was f’ing sick.  I didn’t know it was coming or else I would fast forwarded over that as well.  I know in the big picture it’s somewhat hypocritical of me to have this love of animals but still eat meat.  I have read all the horror stories about the meat business, how the animals are treated and if I think about it, it does really bother me.  So for the most part, I just try to not think about it. 

It was actually 69 degrees this morning.  Normally once we finally dip into the 60’s overnight that is a sign that the cooler, less humid weather is on it’s way.  It felt good.  90 degrees and 90% humidity does grow a bit old after awhile.

You can see just how hairy my face currently is, yuck.

This weekend I want to finish up the surprisingly big job of pruning the trees on our property.  I also am planning to swing by my mom’s place to caulk around her newly installed ceiling and at that time swap out vehicles.  I am going to let her drive my truck while I drive her Rav 4 for a few days.  Mom says that she has this weird issue that her brakes intermittently will fail momentarily while the AC is running.  So she has just not been using AC.  AC in Florida is kind of important so I want to see if I can recreate the problem.  If it happens to me I will probably be better at describing the conditions to a mechanic.

This hard to see but if you look closely you will recognize that this is the display of the HP Color laserjet in my office and yes, that is the local Naples weather conditions on the screen.   Pretty cool huh? It’s a little hack I found while perusing for Roboquad modifications.  This site has TONS of do it yourself, geeky projects and hacks.  Check it out.

So my Roboquad showed up yesterday.  As you can see, his coloring is a bit different than the one I posted last week which was all white.  This one I got from the Discovery store, I guess they have their own special color Roboquads, Sharper Image sells red ones.

  Before I was able to slap batteries in him and play, I had to release him from the shackles of his box.  Getting the robot out of the box was the most annoying unpacking experience I ever underwent.  Roboquad was secured by 8 thick wires coated in plastic.  They were twisted in a way that you couldn’t undo easily.  After trying to untwist the wires unsuccessfully for 5 minutes I had enough and wielded the scissors.  The wires were so thick that I had to squeeze mightily with the scissors to finally snip through.  By the time I got all 8 wires off I had to unscrew it from a plastic base that had another 4 screws in it.  I bet I literally spent 15 minutes getting the damn thing out of the box.

So I throw some batteries in it, fire it up and the Roboquad comes to life.  He does some quick diagnostic tests accompanied with flashing led’s and R2-D2 sounding beeps and noises.  The controller for him is a bit confusing at first and remains somewhat confusing even after.  There are dozens of movements the robot can do but they are accessed through various combinations of buttons on the controller.  You really need a manual handy at all times if you want to put him through his paces.

Of course the first thing I did was the demo mode where the robot “dances” it’s cute.  Then I started messing with the controller a bit, walking the robot around the floor.  Nicki of course was scared of it and scurried away to hide even though I assured her it was “safe”.  There were two modes so far that I liked the most. Guard mode, where the roboquad scans for movement in front of it while remaining still.  If it spots movement it roars to life, making a racket, flashing lights and moving around, a great cat prank.  The other mode I thought was cool was the autonomous one where the robot roams around freely, scanning back and forth for obstacles and avoiding them.  The noises this thing makes would drive Ali mad in no time so he may wind up spending more time at work with me than at home, we’ll see.  By the end of the night Nicki had lost her fear of it and actually jumped in front of it doing a play bow with the Roboquad, acting like she wanted it to chase her.  It was cute.   I will probably wind up doing some sort of “hack” with it, that is what makes it fun.

Last night in the shower I had an Alzheimer’s moment.  I normally wash my hair first.  Last night, I washed my hair, forgot I washed my hair, and started to wash it again.  I was like “What in the F is wrong with me??!!”  My hair was extra clean last night.

I can’t wait to shave this beard off, it sucks.  

On the way home from work I pull up behind an old, plump woman riding her pink accented scooter with matching pink helmet.  It just struck me as funny so I took a picture.

The first 10 minutes is scary enough, if you have an hour and a half to kill watch it all. Suspicious stock activity on American Airlines pre-crash, guy taking out a 3.5 million dollar insurance policy on building 7 six weeks before the event, government testing of remote piloted full size planes and much more.