Category Anything and Everything

Where to start? Hmm well Friday night Ali and I did the Teco concession stand thing again. They needed someone to do the cotton candy stand so I volunteered our services. Ugh, I spent 3 hours spinning my right arm around the cotton candy machine. You also get covered in the junk. It was not a good time. I’ll never eat cotton candy again. For all you youngsters considering cotton candy making as your vocation of choice, DON’T!

Saturday we did some house work and Mike came over in the morning to fly our RC planes. Look for pics and videos here. We got some cool aerial shots of our property.

Sunday was our big Disney day. We left at 6 am and didn’t get home till about 10:15 pm. It was a lot of fun. We ran into an unsuspected snag. Evidently Disney has implemented biometrics (finger print scanning) in an effort to stop people from using 4 day passes with a day or two left on them that people buy. Basically when a card is first used they scan the fingerprints of the person using it. Then any subsequent uses they scan again to make sure the fingerprints match. Ali and I saw this and were nervous, of course we failed the scan. However after simply saying that we were the people on the cards they typed in a code and let us through. Even funnier at Epcot, Alison passed the fingerprint scan. 🙂 Evidently they aren’t that accurate so that would explain why it was easy to get in.

We went to Animal Kingdom and Epcot. The parks weren’t packed but full enough. By the end of the day we were both so sick of humanity we could have thrown up. You are inundated with big fat slobs, screamin kids and armies of strollers and wheelchairs. I can’t imagine doing 4 days of park hopping back to back. Regardless it was fun to do something different and we saw all sorts of cool stuff at the parks. The weather was perfect! My favorite things were the free flight bird show, the dinosaur ride, and the safari ride. Look for pics of the trip here. I used our new digital camera for the pics. Great pics and with a 128 meg flash card you can do over 200 pics one one card at the highest res. WOW!

I was off work Monday for Veteran’s Day. (Government jobs rock!) Had a list of about 10 or 11 things I wanted to get done. I did em all. 🙂 Finally got the steering wheel straight on the Buick. I also flew my plane 6 or 7 times.

This week the new Best Buy opens in Naples! I can’t wait to check it out!

5 more half.com orders going out today. I am really surprised at the amount of sales I am getting.

Wow temperature in the 50’s overnight the last 2 nights! A pleasant change however the warmer weather is back already. Sooner or later we will settle into the awesome winter pattern of highs in the 70’s lows in the 50’s.

I have the Xbox all hooked up, it will replace my 3 year old DVD player as well. The games look great on the big screen and sound even better on the surround sound. I hooked it up to my broadband connection already so once I hook in to Xbox live I will be ready to rock.

My half.com business is booming. I just received my 9th order in a week today! How easy.

My webcam seems to be getting semi regular visitors. I often forget I even have the one in my office. I am sure there are lots of stupid pics hitting the net.

This site is EXTREMELY funny. You must check it out.

We are going to Disney this Sunday, it should be a fun long weekend. I got my extra batteries and charger for the RC plane. Mike is coming over Saturday morning to do some flying around our backyard. Should be cool.

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.