All posts by Duf

I got my Xbox yesterday and the the 2 games. The games were in fine shape but the xbox itself was very dirty and well worn looking. The listing on half.com described it as “like new” “mint condition” & “fabulous” I posted a complaint to half saying the quality description was far from accurate. After looking into the guy’s feedback I saw that he had about 10-20% of all of his feedbacks being neutral or negative. I should of checked that ahead of time. However the console does appear to work just fine and I cleaned it up myself so it looks better now. I spent most of last night playing it.

I got my longer firewire cable so I was able to point my webcam on our bird Tuki. He is very entertaining.

The smoking ban passed in the election yesterday. That’s cool. Basically there will be NO smoking in public buildings except for a few exceptions. People should just quit smoking now. It is very expensive as well as becoming more and more inconvenient. Not to mention it kills ya. 🙂 Jeb won reelection, oh well.

My buddy stole my thoughts page from me, which I stole from my buddy Rich. It is a cool concept open for duplication. 🙂

4 sales so far off of half.com Not big money but it’s money I didn’t have before so I can’t complain. I have at least a hundred items up there as of now.

Today is election day. Alison and I voted before work. It was a looooong ballot. We went right as the polls opened at 7. A lot of voters were there. Hopefully turnout will be good. Jeb Bush’s campaign posters this year crack me up. Normally candidates have their name with some catchy slogan associated with it. Jeb’s posters are simply “Jeb!” Hope he didn’t pay too much for that slogan. 🙂 He didn’t get my vote.

Got my first part of the Xbox yesterday, the DVD playback kit. Looking forward to receiving the rest!

The birds are back. Every morning we have a hundred or so birds at by our feeders. If the feeders are empty they stare at you until you fill them again. Funny.

We have picked Sunday as our Disney day. It will be a lot of driving but will be a good time. Park opens at 9. 🙂 Then we have Monday off to recover.

It’s Monday already? Ugh. Well at least I have a 3 day weekend coming up next weekend. We are closed for Veteran’s day. Government jobs rock! On Saturday I was up in Sarasota getting that office hooked into the Sov network. A nice paycheck for a day’s work.

Saturday night we watched Blade II. A good movie, nice action and freaky special effects. Sunday I flew my planes a couple times, did yardwork, worked on the Buick and watched the Eagles play. The Eagles game was brutal to watch but at least they won. I also started to list a bunch of our cd’s, vhs and dvd movies on half.com. I already sold 3 of the dvd’s. The stuff sells for only a few dollars so I am not sure it will be worth the effort I have to put in to package and ship the stuff but we will see.

What is up with SPAM? It is unbelievable. I have a couple hundred keyword/phrase filters in place and I still get flooded with the shit. What is the damn point? Do people actually buy things off these spam links? I can only guess they do. It is crazy. Someone needs to drop the hammer on the spammers. What a colossal waste of time and money it is.

I should be getting lots of toys this week. I am expecting the XBox to show up as well as some accessories for my plane. Christmas in November!

I’ll take a win over a loss anyday BUT, the Birds have had a TON of breaks and a ton good field position the last 2 weeks and they barely squeaked out wins against teams they should dominate. They should have scored double what they did. Don’t buy your super bowl tickets just yet.

McNabb has not had a strong passing performance since he signed his big contract, anyone notice? Sure he can still run it but I’d like to see him pass like the multi million dollar player he is as well. His accuracy still, well it sucks. After 3 years he still throws the ball to the worms and has a very difficult time hitting a receiver in stride on a consistent basis. Sure his receivers are not top caliber, but either is his passing performance.

The Eagles have developed a very worrisome trend of not being able to punch it for 7 when they get in the red zone for the last month. Last year they were near the top in efficiency in this category.

Freddie f’in Mitchell is a chump. He gets a chance to make his 2nd or 3rd catch OF THE SEASON and he can’t manage to fall ahead for 1 yard on a 3rd down play. He must be really dumb if he can’t crack the starting lineup of this obviously average corp of wide outs.

What again does Cecil Martin do for us? Why do they throw the ball to him? Does he EVER make a big play?

Al Harris, still hate him. A walking penalty maker.

Last night we set up the candy and lit the pumpkin. All night it was quiet, then we got a lone kid at the door. Once he found out we were “open for business” he signaled back to all the other kids that were out on the street to come and get it. So we had a group of about 10 kids all at once but after that, nuthin. You want to see our pumpkin? Do you want to see a funny halloween costume my buddy wore?

Thursday is our big reality tv night. We started by watching our tivo’d episode of Bachelor. The chick that got kicked out was a joke. She is not getting married anytime soon. Brooke and her hee-haw family was a turn off. So I think it is down to Gwen and Helene. Helene seems like too much trouble and she always looks uncomfortable with him. I think it will wind up being Gwen but she is 31 already. I don’t think it is ever good for a man to marry someone their own age. Just my feelings. 🙂

Next was Survivor. Again they pulled a fast one on the contestants. They gave them every indication that the tribes were merging without actually saying it. However when the challenge came they informed them that they were still 2 tribes. Very sneaky. The game is setting up nicely, I think it will be interesting.

Finally was WWE Tough Enough. No I am not a big wrestling fan but it is very interesting watching the kids getting the hell beat out of them. It is hard core work. 2 girls already quit in the first week because they couldn’t hack it.

This getting dark by 6 deal is a bummer. I don’t get a chance to fly my plane afterwork anymore. 🙁 I may have to take it to work and try to get some lunch time flying in.

Last night I finally attempted to fix the garage door problem. I reversed the two electric eyes. It worked! It is nice to be able to close the door during the daytime again. 🙂

Last night I watched the Wizards/Raptors game because I wanted to see how Jordan looked. I came in during the 4th quarter. It was sad. Jordan looked old and slow. In the space of a couple minutes he clanked 2 free throws, missed a dunk and had a pass stolen. Having ample knee problems myself I can only imagine what playing pro basketball on bad knees is like. I feel bad for him. It is hard to know that you used to be able to perform at a certain level physically and not be able to do it anymore. Hopefully he gets better as the season goes on. I am certainly pulling for him, but last night I felt embarrassed for him. The game itself was horrendous to watch. So sloppy. The NBA just isn’t that fun to watch anymore except for a couple of teams.

This morning I had to scoop a toad out of the pool that was swimming around. The last thing I need is a pool full of tadpoles!

Last night was our Halloween preparation night. We have not carved a pumpkin since we have been down in Florida, but Ali has a pumpkin carving contest at work so we picked one up. My job was the gutting of the pumpkin. It was odd, up north I am used to the inside of a pumpkin being cold and clammy from sitting out in 40-50 degree temperatures. Our Florida pumpkin was hot inside. 🙂 Ali did a nice job of carving. We finished up the night by watching the Peanuts Halloween special. (We have em all on tape) Even though I have seen it a couple dozen times, I still laugh.

Went to bed at 9:30, really tired from the prior nights football game.

Told Ali my spending binge was my last this year. She let’s me get away with a lot. 🙂

Well I didn’t puke at the gym but I sure was tired. Nothing makes me sweat more than leg work.

The time change has had several adverse effects to our daily routine. First, the electric eye on our garage door is flaky and doesn’t work well when there is any sunlight present. Since it is now bright and sunny when we leave, the damn door won’t close. Secondly, when we get home at night it is pitch dark so the outside floodlight is on. This light brings thousands of bugs which in turn brings out the hoardes of toads and frogs. Before we can open the door we have to battle through the insect swarms to chase the frogs and toads away from the outside of the garage door. Once we do clear them out it is a mad dash inside to minimize the amounts of bugs that follow us into the garage. Crazy stuff.

Watched the Eagles on MNF last night. It was another frustrating game. They won but it was ugly. They dominated the game on the ground but couldn’t score points. A couple of lucky breaks that would have went the Giants way and the Birds could have wound up losing a game where they rushed for almost 300 yards! Well a win is a win, I just hope they start clicking on all cylinders. Donovan hasn’t had a good passing performance since he signed the big contract.

It seems like my ex-coworkers up north enjoy analyzing my appearance on the webcam. Oh well it’s funny.

We scored 2, 1 day free passes to Disney from one of Ali’s friends. Looks like we will be doing a 1 day Disney blitz sometime in the next couple weeks.

I went on a bit of a buying binge today. A longer firewire cable, a better battery charger for the plane, a collection of battery packs for it, a used xbox and 2 games all in the space of 24 hours. Yea it is a little over the top. My extra income from Sov more than covers it but I need to cool it. I seem to be a binge spender. Comes and goes in cycles. I am constantly on the look out for more items around the house to sell on Ebay to help offset stuff like this.

Another weekend flies by. Busy busy weekend. Saturday we/I cleaned, pressure washed the bird cages, cleaned all the outside bird feeders, dug out 2 new planting beds to put the plants we bought earlier in the week, installed new steering wheel and repaired clock in the Buick and went out to dinner. I also flew my new plane for the first time. It was rough going early on but my last 2 flights have been crash free except for some rough landings. It is a cool plane much more manueverable than my Firebird XL.

Sunday we had some friends over and watched football most of the day. We had tons of food and I ate like a pig. Gonna punish myself in the gym today. I”l do legs till I barf.

I have my webcam at work setup. During the day it will be on different things in my office, after hours it will be used to babysit my fish. 🙂

Is there a better name is women’s tennis than “Anna Smashnova”? It CAN’T be her real name, no way.

I watched a little bit of the world series. It’s amazing how disinterested I am in baseball now. When I was a teenager it was EVERYTHING to me. Now teams rosters change so often it doesn’t pay to be a fan. I enjoy football so much more. Side note, how lazy are we as a society that we now use big dildo looking balloon contraptions to make noise at games instead of just clapping and yelling? Are we that lazy? And that idiotic Angels fan that thought it would be fun to beat the Giants outfielder on the back with her noise maker, I’m glad she was ejected, hopefully she was fined too. Brainless lemmings.

Remember those catfish I saved and put into the top section of our pond? I went looking for them over the weekend but couldn’t find them. Granted the water was very cloudy so I couldn’t see but I had my hand all over the bottom and didn’t feel one. Odd. However, somehow we now have a crayfish in that top section. No idea how he got there either.

Eagles play the Giants tonight in MNF, gonna be a late night. Medium coffee is on the breakfast menu for tomorrow morning for sure.

Have more Sov contract work lined up so Ali and I splurged at Home Depot last night and bought a bunch of plants and grasses to landscape another area in the back yard. Should look good. I got a chance to put together the rest of my RC plane as well. Looks cool, hope I can fly it without major carnage. 🙂

This weekend is shaping up to a busy one. We have to clean, mow,and landscape. We may have some friends over Sunday and I have some work I would like to get done on the Buick. I’d also like to fly my new plane as well as about half a dozen other miscellaneous jobs. Guess it is better than having nuthin to do.

Watched the Bachelor on tivo last night. I liked that Heather chick he got rid of last night. Too bad she didn’t light his candle. Gwen is too old and Brooke seems too dumb. It will be interesting to see who he chooses. Also saw Survivor, glad to see Rob get kicked, he was an embarassment to the male race, as dumb as they get. Surprised the old folks are hanging in there as well as they are. It was cool when Ted took over defending Rob in the challenge and shut him down. (Yea I watch reality TV, so sue me) 🙂